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Hamster Book Club - The Eyeless by Lance Parkin (featuring Kieran Pell) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  The Doctor stepped into a room that was a tiny hollow pyramid,
• 0:04
  it's interior virtually featureless.
• 0:07
  There was barely room for him, let alone anyone else.
• 0:11
  Not enough room to swing an eyeless.
• 0:14
  He was worn out, but he had work to do and he'd already got his
• 0:17
  glasses on. He now in the centre of the
• 0:19
  room, concentrating on the weapon.
• 0:22
  It was suspended in a web of power lines to humanize.
• 0:26
  It must have looked rather plain.
• 0:29
  It was a cylinder about a metre long, 10 centimetres wide.
• 0:33
  It was burnish metal. No obvious controls or trigger,
• 0:37
  no letters or numbers or symbols.
• 0:40
  More interesting things were going on in higher, lower and
• 0:43
  sideways dimensions. Obviously infinite menace and
• 0:48
  slight hum, said the Doctor out loud, quoting Douglas Adams.
• 0:52
  It was activated by touch, so he couldn't use bare hands.
• 0:57
  The Doctor fished around in House's bag and found a pair of
• 1:00
  woolly gloves. He slipped one on.
• 1:03
  He could have reached out already, plucked the weapon from
• 1:06
  its cradle. There wasn't anything stopping
• 1:08
  him. There wasn't a booby trap on the
• 1:11
  weapon that would risk damaging it.
• 1:13
  The Doctor's hands was at his side.
• 1:15
  Why hadn't he destroyed it already?
• 1:19
  He knew he was holding back. He wasn't sure why.
• 1:22
  He looked around sheepishly. The weapon continued to hang
• 1:25
  there. Go on, he willed himself.
• 1:30
  It would be so easy to imagine that his hesitation was the
• 1:32
  result of a last line of defence, that it was the weapon
• 1:36
  itself staying his hand with some sort of hypnotic command.
• 1:41
  That wasn't what was happening. The Doctor hadn't moved for a
• 1:45
  minute. Now he could feel the energy
• 1:47
  crackling inside the cylinder, like a trapped perpetual
• 1:50
  lightning bolt, perfectly black, so dark it would blind anyone
• 1:55
  who looks straight at it. Why hadn't he destroyed it?
• 2:00
  We're both the last of our kind, he concluded quietly.
• 2:05
  It was complex, uniquely so, but there was no mind in there, no
• 2:09
  consciousness, no life, nothing that could answer back.
• 2:13
  Destroy it. The Eyeless could be here any
• 2:16
  minute. Destroy it.
• 2:19
  If the Eyeless got hold of you, then, well, that would be
• 2:22
  terrible. Worse, he wasn't like the
• 2:25
  Eyeless, not at all. He travelled the universe like
• 2:29
  them, true. Flitted from planet to planet,
• 2:32
  rebelled in new experiences, didn't put down roots.
• 2:36
  They were irresponsible though. Not that he was the most
• 2:39
  responsible person in the universe, but his hearts were in
• 2:41
  the right places. He didn't kill people.
• 2:44
  The eyeless he just sent plummeting up to it's doom might
• 2:48
  have been the last one. The memory of the reptile hand
• 2:51
  clawing at the sustained limestone.
• 2:54
  The doctors force had returned to the battle with the dinosaur
• 2:57
  man in the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament.
• 3:00
  The Stagosian he told Gar and Elsa about.
• 3:04
  The doctor could recall the creature's rank, not his name.
• 3:07
  There was no one left who could remind him.
• 3:10
  The Doctor had let the Stagosian captain fall to his death,
• 3:13
  knowing he was the last of his kind.
• 3:15
  He remembered the last of the Ragnos consumed in flames.
• 3:19
  He remembered the death rows of the Pyrov Isles.
• 3:22
  He remembered an army of Daleks sucked into the Howling Void.
• 3:26
  He remembered Richard Lazarus dying in the Blitzkrieg of
• 3:29
  Sound, courtesy of the Cathedral Orben and the Sonic screwdriver.
• 3:34
  They weren't victims. They had been poised to kill.
• 3:38
  Springing traps they'd set themselves.
• 3:41
  The best word to describe them was monsters, and the best thing
• 3:44
  to do with monsters was to fight them.
• 3:47
  The people of Acropolis, they were victims.
• 3:51
  Why? This weapon could be used for
• 3:52
  good. The doctor hadn't taken his eyes
• 3:56
  off it. There's no such thing as evil
• 3:59
  science, he said. Finally.
• 4:02
  Anything can be turned into a weapon.
• 4:04
  Anything. If you're worried about what
• 4:06
  wicked men might do, you'd never invent anything.
• 4:09
  You'd never light a fire or pick up a rock.
• 4:11
  You can kill people with medicine, drown them with a
• 4:14
  bucket of spring water, burn them up in sunshine.
• 4:18
  The opposite was true also. Any sword could be beaten into a
• 4:22
  ploughshare, every spear into a pruning hook.
• 4:25
  It was sometimes difficult to see how he alone in the universe
• 4:29
  had the knowledge to do it with this weapon.
• 4:32
  No one else understood the science like he did.
• 4:35
  More than that, he knew it was at least possible because he'd
• 4:37
  seen the ghosts. The weapon wasn't meant to leave
• 4:40
  traces, but the ghosts were traces.
• 4:44
  The Doctor tapped his teeth with his fingers and then wrapped his
• 4:46
  forehead with his knuckles. This was a change of plan, no
• 4:50
  doubt about it. He could study the weapon, learn
• 4:53
  more about it. It might be possible.
• 4:56
  There was a chance, though. If I destroyed the weapon now, I
• 5:00
  would lose that chance forever. Good point, the Doctor noted.
• 5:06
  He peered up at the weapon over the top of his glasses.
• 5:08
  He might be able to use it to create, not destroy, reverse its
• 5:12
  polarity, whatever. Every instinct was telling him
• 5:16
  to destroy it. He took a step back, fought for
• 5:19
  a moment. Was it possible to use this for
• 5:22
  good? No one else possibly could.
• 5:25
  You might. The Doctor decided not to
• 5:28
  destroy the weapon. Some superstitious urge made the
• 5:31
  thought of touching it uncomfortable, even for a glove.
• 5:35
  He slipped Elsa's bag off his shoulder, turned it inside and
• 5:38
  out, and put his hands in like it was a giant oven mitten, then
• 5:42
  reached into the web of power lines and began plucking the
• 5:45
  weapon from it. The cylinder was solid,
• 5:48
  surprisingly heavy. It was warm even through the
• 5:51
  artificial fibre of the bag. The detached cables still
• 5:55
  buzzed, still had enough energy in them to buy it.
• 5:58
  The Doctor was cradling the weapon now, needed both hands to
• 6:01
  lift it, one last power line to detach.
• 6:05
  Then the weapon would be free and he would turn the bag back
• 6:08
  outside in and hide it outside and out of mind.
• 6:12
  As the Doctor tugged it loose, there was a clattering noise
• 6:15
  from outside the chamber. He glanced through the door.
• 6:19
  The very last thing he saw before the whole Fortress went
• 6:22
  dark was an army of Eyeless charging down the walkway
• 6:25
  towards him, arms raised like clubs.
• 6:29
  There was a theory that the way to defeat an enemy was to turn
• 6:32
  their own strength against them. Well.
• 6:34
  The Doctor sniffed a leaf. I've got plenty to work with.
• 6:39
  The Fortress Strategy computer recognised that it was about to
• 6:42
  be deactivated, knew it had no options remaining.
• 6:46
  It drew all its strength from the weapon, and the Doctor was
• 6:49
  well on the way to disconnecting it. 1000 subroutines had warned
• 6:53
  it not to underestimate the Doctor from the moment he'd been
• 6:56
  identified. Yet it had done just that.
• 7:00
  It had been overrun. 88 of the aliens inside, all exploiting
• 7:05
  the safe route to the weapon chamber, all heading for the
• 7:08
  Doctor. The guns in that sections had
• 7:10
  all been disabled. The power will be shut off
• 7:13
  within moments. The Doctor would destroy the
• 7:16
  aliens, of course. The strategy he would adopt was
• 7:19
  straightforward. The computer felt no regret or
• 7:22
  anger. It cycled through its complete
• 7:25
  list of strategies one last time, not knowing anything else
• 7:29
  to do. And then the machine stopped.
• 7:42
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 7:45
  My name is Joe Ford and after meeting in person recently, not.
• 7:51
  In a, not in a sex. Dungeon, but in a or a dirty
• 7:57
  nightclub or anywhere like that? No, no, no, no.
• 7:59
  We met at the Target Book Day. Mr. Kieran Powell.
• 8:02
  Hello. Good evening, pleasure to be
• 8:04
  here once again. Jesus Christ, sweaty.
• 8:10
  Yeah, it was warm, wouldn't it? Yeah, if you, if you thought
• 8:13
  about you missed not you missed going, don't You did the right
• 8:17
  thing. It was fucking disastrously hot.
• 8:19
  You couldn't move. If you went through your top
• 8:22
  three favorite talks of the day. Now, not to denigrate anybody's.
• 8:27
  Talks but your absolute. Top three?
• 8:29
  Who would you say that was? Paul Quinn was ghost like talk.
• 8:36
  Incest and ghost light that's. Right incest and ghost light
• 8:42
  Matthew Sweet and crossroads. I never thought I could see
• 8:45
  Crossroads as some kind of like Backrooms liminal space
• 8:51
  nightmare programme, but that kind of makes me want to go back
• 8:55
  and watch Crossroads and they've been there the.
• 8:56
  Hell did happen to Sheree McPhee.
• 8:58
  Well, now we know he was in. By dinosaurs and probably Max
• 9:04
  Holidays. No, even Max Halladay's romance.
• 9:10
  Like romanticy and like linking out to the targets.
• 9:13
  Now it's different on television.
• 9:14
  Or Steve Cole's editing thing. Did you notice?
• 9:23
  I don't know if you listen back to them on the hamster thing,
• 9:24
  but I had to edit a bit of that out at Steve Coles.
• 9:28
  Eric Saywood. That whole Eric Saywood bit,
• 9:30
  yes. And that shall remain between
• 9:33
  everybody that's at the Target Book Day.
• 9:35
  It's like a secret that nobody else will ever know about.
• 9:37
  But let's just say Resurrection of the Daleks was edited
• 9:40
  slightly more than other books. I mean, you would you would
• 9:45
  think that like what was in there was bad enough, but you
• 9:49
  you got lucky and not to be subjugated to like the literary
• 9:54
  nightmare. Well, no, the verbal kind of
• 9:57
  diarrhoea that was kind of expounded by Steve Cole.
• 10:02
  Eric Saywood via Steve Cole have.
• 10:04
  You ever been bitten by a spill? Snape, Kieran.
• 10:07
  I don't think I ever want to be, no.
• 10:09
  Super powered by all accounts, honestly.
• 10:11
  I mean, I'll just can I just make a punt as well for John
• 10:14
  Grind Grindrod's blurbs when he was all the blurbs with the
• 10:19
  italics on and shouting them all out because that really made me
• 10:22
  laugh. And reading games with Pip and
• 10:24
  Jane. That was funny as.
• 10:26
  Well, yeah, but no. A fabulous day though.
• 10:30
  Wasn't it Really nice? Of course of.
• 10:32
  Course we had a massive resemblance of the Ham fam as
• 10:34
  well. And I bought too many Doctor Who
• 10:37
  books, and I probably should have.
• 10:40
  Well, Kieran, what are we here to talk about today?
• 10:42
  We're here to talk about the only new series adventure that
• 10:46
  matters, The Eyeless by Lance Barkin.
• 10:49
  The only one that matters? Wow, sorry about all your hard
• 10:53
  work chaps, but Lance is the only one that matters.
• 10:58
  Pretty much. Can I ask you before we go into
• 11:01
  the book? And there's plenty to discuss in
• 11:03
  there. This is a rare thing.
• 11:07
  The only new series adventure not to have a companion in it.
• 11:13
  The literally the only one are. You sure?
• 11:16
  Is there enough one? What about like, I think this
• 11:19
  was part of like a trilogy and it was like a Slovene 1 and
• 11:22
  Acrylotine 1. Nazi they do have they have like
• 11:26
  surrogate companions in them a bit like OK, but I wouldn't say
• 11:31
  that the little girl in this is any kind of companion.
• 11:34
  No, OK, No, OK, I'll concede my point.
• 11:37
  But but my question is this is like did you like you know the
• 11:42
  specials so the. Lead up.
• 11:45
  To his regeneration, did you like the fact that we skewed the
• 11:48
  normal companion set up and did like special guest star of the
• 11:53
  week or do you prefer it when there's a companion?
• 11:59
  I don't really care, to be honest.
• 12:04
  I guess it's quite interesting for, however, how many specials
• 12:07
  were there? 3 or 4?
• 12:09
  Five. Yeah, 4 And I guess it's nice to
• 12:11
  have someone new not every week, but every what, 3 months?
• 12:14
  So when they came out just to spice things up and see how the
• 12:18
  temp talk to interact with those people.
• 12:20
  But I guess on the other hand, I want I want Donna to be there
• 12:22
  and I want Donna to be to slap him about until I'm not sure if
• 12:26
  it's pretty. You know, by all means, bring in
• 12:28
  Lindsay Duncan, bring in the fairly replaced Jackson Lake,
• 12:32
  bring in Michelle Ryan. Absolutely.
• 12:34
  Don't bring in Michelle Ryan ever again, please.
• 12:36
  But we want Catherine Tate as well.
• 12:38
  Yeah, definitely. We always want Catherine to
• 12:41
  take. Mind you, this would be a very
• 12:42
  different book if it had Donna in it.
• 12:44
  I think then. We'll be probably about half the
• 12:47
  length maybe. Yeah, she'd be there straight to
• 12:49
  the fortress, right? Give me a spanner.
• 12:52
  Right. OK, it's done.
• 12:54
  Let's go. Well, OK, let's skip into the
• 12:58
  islands. First of all, I want to ask you
• 13:00
  about Lance Parkin and what Lance Parkin books you have read
• 13:04
  before this. So if you know sort of what
• 13:07
  pedigree of Riotery is. My experience with Lance Barking
• 13:12
  books has been the Infinity Doctors.
• 13:16
  Bang up and father. Time trading futures.
• 13:20
  Oh, just done bang. Up goodness, what else are the
• 13:24
  ones I've read? I've definitely read more.
• 13:27
  I think maybe the eyeless. Of course, I've not read just
• 13:30
  wore. I've done the audio for just
• 13:31
  wore. Oh, cold fusion as well.
• 13:34
  I wasn't a big fan of that one, but fair enough.
• 13:36
  But no, he's he's, he's a writer who likes lots of secrets,
• 13:39
  doesn't he? He really likes to layer on all
• 13:42
  these things in in the text. So I listen to any of the other
• 13:45
  Lance Parkin novels on this book club, the Clayde or.
• 13:51
  Don't you bring up the fucking Clayde.
• 13:53
  All right, all right. Just read the Infinity Doctors
• 13:58
  and take a a stab where the fuck that fits in or even if it does
• 14:03
  or not. Patronized me for that entire
• 14:05
  episode that I didn't realise that was an anagram of Dalek all
• 14:09
  right. I wouldn't have known either, so
• 14:11
  and then. Had the nerve when we did
• 14:13
  trading futures to say do you know what on here is an anagram
• 14:18
  of? And I was like, yes, I did
• 14:19
  figure out it was rhino backwards.
• 14:21
  Thank you very much. Yeah, but I don't know if this
• 14:24
  is controversial, but I think Trading Futures might be his
• 14:26
  best book because I finished it. Usually Lance Parkin books take
• 14:32
  me a while. I don't know why because his
• 14:34
  prose is so simple, everything he does is so effortless.
• 14:37
  And I usually I really want to read them.
• 14:39
  But I think trading features was so I guess for lack of a better
• 14:43
  term, pickupable. But I just did it in about less
• 14:46
  than 24 hours. It was front to back and I was
• 14:49
  just completely blown away that this is.
• 14:51
  I'm not even a big Bond person either.
• 14:53
  I just thought it was absolutely hilarious.
• 14:55
  I can, I couldn't stop reading it until it was over.
• 15:00
  So whenever I see Lance Parkin on a book I'm like gagging to
• 15:05
  read it like one of his. He did a faction paradox book,
• 15:09
  Warlords of Utopia, which was about if every alternate history
• 15:13
  if Rome survived went to a war with every alternate history of
• 15:16
  Hitler one I got his. Head around that.
• 15:23
  Well considering that of the city of the same gave me like a
• 15:26
  migraine I can still kind of have the remnants of in my head.
• 15:29
  Now I'm a bit scared to approach that one.
• 15:34
  We do need to apologise again, you know, because Kieran, I do
• 15:37
  have a habit of promising that we're going to talk about a
• 15:39
  particular book on the next episode and then failing to do
• 15:42
  that completely. But this time it's my fault.
• 15:45
  I've done too many miserable mid range new adventures.
• 15:48
  New adventures. I did Parasite.
• 15:50
  Oh yes, I did love and more. You know, all these depressing
• 15:54
  books. We were supposed to do Warlock
• 15:58
  animal. Experimentation Drugs.
• 16:00
  And drugs. And detectives with dead wives.
• 16:05
  Yeah, they don't show about. I was about halfway through and
• 16:08
  I was wondering when Doctor Who was going to turn up in this
• 16:10
  book. It doesn't really, does he?
• 16:13
  Anyway, that's for another day. No, I know, I know.
• 16:16
  Well look, one thing I do know about Lance Barking because I
• 16:19
  did a extremely long 5 hour interview with him.
• 16:23
  Which most of it's not even out. The last set.
• 16:27
  We will be coming out alongside trading futures soon.
• 16:29
  All right, you cheeky git. He did say that.
• 16:32
  What he always did in order to get the gig.
• 16:37
  Yeah, was he always tried to pitch something that nobody else
• 16:41
  was doing. So Justin Richards or whoever
• 16:44
  Rebecca Levine would go. Oh, my God, you know, yes,
• 16:47
  please. We want a bit of that because
• 16:48
  that's not the norm. So he did a a missing adventurer
• 16:52
  and put the 7th. Doctor.
• 16:54
  In it, no one else was doing that.
• 16:56
  He did. Just past Doctor Adventure with
• 17:00
  I guess the TV movie continuity. Yeah, absolutely.
• 17:04
  Nobody was quite brave enough to do a bon pastiche quite that
• 17:07
  silly, But he thought, no, I'll have a go at that father time.
• 17:11
  What? Doctor?
• 17:11
  Other kids? Yeah, like, amazing.
• 17:14
  And here I think what nobody is doing in the new series
• 17:18
  adventures is great mythology busting, very serious ideas
• 17:27
  heavy books with for this series, dense passages, minimal
• 17:33
  dialogue and some really quiet dark ideas.
• 17:40
  Very, very disturbing ideas that if, but they're given such
• 17:44
  little space where if I guess the recommended reading age,
• 17:49
  this is probably 8 to 14, but you just read that and you just
• 17:53
  roll over it because you you're just having fun with the book.
• 17:56
  But if you catch on to the just the strange things that some
• 18:01
  people say that just throw out and just say normally you think
• 18:05
  that, well, that's that's just not appropriate.
• 18:10
  I mean, it's about mass murder, this book, right?
• 18:14
  And what happens when you erase someone from history?
• 18:19
  A tragedy occurs and people are picking over the remains of
• 18:23
  their lives, which is so appropriate for what is
• 18:27
  happening in the world right now.
• 18:29
  I actually, there was a few moments in this where I was
• 18:32
  actually, I wasn't seeing this planet.
• 18:35
  I was seeing what's happening in the world and blasted cities and
• 18:39
  people picking over the remains of their lives.
• 18:42
  It's weirdly, it's weirdly modern, isn't it, this book?
• 18:47
  I would say so. It's timeless.
• 18:51
  Oh, well done, that's another one.
• 18:53
  Well, why don't you tell everybody what are premises
• 18:56
  here? The city of Arcopolis, thousands
• 19:01
  of Spires and a perfect utopia by all accounts under a
• 19:06
  brilliant green sky. And one day the fortress appears
• 19:11
  and destroys everything. That's about it, really.
• 19:15
  Millions. Of people die, what I think what
• 19:19
  is the number? Is it like quadrillions of
• 19:21
  people die in Arcopolis? And how many are left 30, 15?
• 19:26
  Just a handful of people entire building in a train are torn
• 19:29
  apart, aren't they by this thing?
• 19:31
  The only people that survived are 15 people in a train
• 19:35
  carriage underneath this weapon when it kind of drilled itself
• 19:39
  or materialized itself into the middle of this city.
• 19:42
  So it is just torn buildings in half where it sits just a black
• 19:47
  grotesque obelisk. Imagine like 2001.
• 19:51
  A space obviously, but it had load of spikes mate.
• 19:55
  I'm going to read something to you right now because this is
• 19:58
  very early in the book. It's in the 1st chapter.
• 20:00
  And I was like, Oh my God, that's so.
• 20:03
  That is beautifully envisaged. This is going to be a great
• 20:06
  book. So he describes city as the
• 20:08
  buildings of Acropolis were made from miracle materials that
• 20:13
  could be as tall as you wanted in any shape at all.
• 20:16
  So the skyline was made-up of towers, spheres, Corkscrew,
• 20:19
  pinnacles, domes perched and tiny columns, crystal pyramids
• 20:23
  and complicated combinations of all those and more.
• 20:26
  All of them were sheer, smooth and gleaming metal and glass and
• 20:29
  plastic and ceramics. A view from the window was of
• 20:32
  1000 such buildings and walkways and metal roads which connected
• 20:36
  them. A few miles away, right at the
• 20:39
  heart of the Acropolis, glimpsed amongst the native buildings
• 20:42
  like a Wharf in a forest, was the reason that no one lives
• 20:46
  here anymore. The Fortress.
• 20:50
  That's all letters and make it more sinister.
• 20:54
  The Fortress. Is.
• 20:59
  A weapon from a time long by or a time that never happened.
• 21:05
  Why don't? You identify where this this
• 21:08
  weapon, which war this weapon may have come from, because I
• 21:11
  think there's a couple of options.
• 21:13
  So option one is of course the obvious one.
• 21:16
  This is from the Time War. Option 2, which I think is the
• 21:20
  correct one, is the War in Heaven from the 8th Doctor book
• 21:24
  series. This comes out in a trilogy or a
• 21:27
  set of books with a lot of returning villains.
• 21:29
  So the book before this is Beautiful Chaos by Gary Russell,
• 21:33
  which is the mantra Helix. I think you get Sabine 1,
• 21:36
  Acrylotine 1, the Dalek 1 and well this is seemingly the even
• 21:40
  on Tardis wiki. This is the only one with no
• 21:42
  returning elements, but the returning element is the enemy
• 21:45
  from and the War. All this bizarre Lawrence Miles
• 21:49
  madness from the 8th Doctor book slash faction paradox line has
• 21:54
  kind of just smashed its back, smashed its way back into Doctor
• 21:58
  continuity like a like a sore thumb.
• 22:01
  Well, like a black obelisk in the middle of a utopia.
• 22:04
  The biggest clue that this is from the 8th Doctor, the EDA
• 22:10
  Time War rather than the new Series 1, is that when the the
• 22:15
  Doctor has a flashback of the destruction of Gallifrey, it is
• 22:21
  word for word the way Lance Parkin describes the destruction
• 22:25
  of Gallifrey in The Gallifrey Chronicles.
• 22:27
  Go on. There was a flash as bright as
• 22:30
  the sun for the merest moment, annihilation so profound it
• 22:33
  stretched deep into the past and far into the future.
• 22:37
  Then Gallifrey was gone. Word perfect and word for word
• 22:42
  what was in the Gallifrey Chronicles?
• 22:43
  So he's literally pointing in that direction.
• 22:47
  It's me. So yeah, I guess I, I've not
• 22:51
  read the Gallifrey Chronicles, so my idea of this war in heaven
• 22:54
  is still ending at the ancestor cell.
• 22:57
  So I don't, I don't know if anything's changed.
• 22:59
  And it's a flashback. It's a flashback to the ancestor
• 23:03
  cell, but better because it's written by Lars Bargain, also
• 23:09
  as. Well, as the cell wasn't
• 23:10
  perfect, was it? The fact that the the weapon is
• 23:14
  designed to remove all trace of the civilisation it targets.
• 23:20
  Every single trace Well, how the enemy in the 8th Doctor Time War
• 23:25
  was basically unknowable, right? They didn't really know what it
• 23:29
  was. And here's.
• 23:30
  A Was it like entropy or something?
• 23:32
  Or like future humans? It was like an idea more so than
• 23:37
  anything physical, right? Yeah, but the fact that this
• 23:40
  weapon is sort of targeted to destroy something that kind of
• 23:45
  doesn't exist, remove it from existence again.
• 23:48
  That that. What the hell has that got to do
• 23:50
  with the Daleks? Nothing at all.
• 23:52
  There's a great passage that I've not written down, which I
• 23:57
  have now where it talks about if if just you wanted to get rid of
• 24:01
  one tribe, one small like 10 person tribe.
• 24:03
  You have to get rid of the planet.
• 24:05
  Well, you have to get rid of everything relating to it.
• 24:07
  Every person who's ever saw it seen that tribe.
• 24:09
  So basically the whole planet, any star system that has ever
• 24:12
  seen that planet, the sun and basically anything in the
• 24:17
  extreme universal slash multiversal slash, non linear
• 24:21
  time travelling versal scope that has ever witnessed or ever
• 24:28
  heard of this planet just pop out of existence.
• 24:30
  And that's just one village compared to like you say, the
• 24:32
  enemy, something that's all the kind of unknowable ones just
• 24:36
  resides over this multi spatial conflict for Infinity.
• 24:43
  Big ideas though, right? For 8 to 14 year olds.
• 24:47
  Yeah, I'd say so. I mean, I don't think you should
• 24:49
  ever talk down to kids. I think you should write smart
• 24:52
  things for kids. And I think the best Doctor Who
• 24:54
  books can be read by kids and adults.
• 24:57
  Well, it's because as a kid, you don't want to be treated like a
• 24:59
  kid. The worst thing you can do to a
• 25:01
  kid is treated like a kid because it pisses them off.
• 25:04
  They want to be treated like an adult, like Elsa in this book.
• 25:08
  Boy, we won't get to Elsa. Because I think that is
• 25:11
  something that's very out of the norm for the new series of
• 25:14
  ventures as well. But like the fortress itself,
• 25:16
  Yeah, this great terrifying black obelisk of a weapon that's
• 25:21
  sticking out on this planet like a sore thumb.
• 25:25
  It's a character in its own right, isn't it?
• 25:27
  In the second-half of the book when the doctors inside this
• 25:30
  bloody thing with fucking mechanisms creaking and clanking
• 25:34
  around him, trying to kill him in any way possible, this thing.
• 25:38
  I mean, there's a wonderful description here.
• 25:41
  The Fortress was far more than just a machine designed to kill
• 25:44
  an intruder. It was a machine designed to
• 25:47
  enjoy killing an intruder because it likes being vicious.
• 25:51
  Almost the opposite. It likes solving puzzles.
• 25:54
  Murdering him would satisfy the fortress in the same way it was
• 25:58
  satisfying to solve a crossword. There's one of my favorite lines
• 26:03
  in this book is so simple but highlights this kind of sadistic
• 26:08
  nature, but also like calm computer just monotone of this
• 26:13
  thing. The computer selected the best
• 26:15
  strategy to stop him and implemented it.
• 26:19
  Listen to this, then listen to this.
• 26:20
  The fortress took no pleasure watching the eyeless ship
• 26:23
  slamming into the tall tower, it's mast toppling and the whole
• 26:27
  Corkscrew in down to the ground. The ship flipped over as it
• 26:30
  fell, bounced off other structures, carved great gouges
• 26:34
  into buildings, scooped out blocks of missionary.
• 26:37
  The fortress updated its records to register it had neutralized
• 26:41
  the threat. I mean, it's just so passionless
• 26:45
  about it. It doesn't really enjoy it, does
• 26:48
  it? It's just going through the
• 26:50
  motions. It's like having a job that you
• 26:52
  don't really like. It's like I've got to replace
• 26:55
  the milk in the milk aisle or re refill up wine or something.
• 26:59
  Like just there's another one talking.
• 27:02
  About my job there. Well, no, I I worked in a Co-op
• 27:06
  for a few summers and it was the same monotone, just like flat,
• 27:13
  mindless kind of numb. That's.
• 27:17
  The first time I've ever known working in retail be comparable
• 27:21
  to, you know, the four processors of an intergalactic
• 27:24
  super weapon. But here we are.
• 27:28
  I mean, why not? But it's great that before us it
• 27:31
  does become this great cat and mouse between the Doctor and the
• 27:35
  Fortress in that. Section Basically, yeah, it is
• 27:39
  the most complicated Tom and Jerry.
• 27:42
  Yeah, but but just brilliant because because he's on his own
• 27:46
  and he can't be witty, you know, because he's got no.
• 27:48
  One to know he's got no one to be witty too.
• 27:50
  He's just so he's just sort of terrified, isn't he?
• 27:54
  Yes, what we're talking about the Doctor the best.
• 27:58
  This book accomplishes one of the simplest things that I love
• 28:01
  about Doctor Who book in that it starts with the Doctor arriving.
• 28:07
  So, so many the wilderness Doctor Who books start with like
• 28:12
  more Drannon Stegel Bean fixing the Beggles line capacitor of
• 28:17
  their ship before it goes. And it's like 20 pages of just
• 28:20
  rubbish, which I don't care about.
• 28:22
  So I don't know these people. I'm not giving any back story to
• 28:24
  do anything. And then a doctor arrives and I
• 28:26
  can finally start. You know, sometimes I'll flip to
• 28:28
  when the doctor first shows up. That's where the story begins
• 28:31
  for me and this. Or they start with the Doctor
• 28:35
  already halfway through the story and that's all.
• 28:37
  Annoys me as well. I kind of prefer that one, but
• 28:42
  this is how the book starts. Sea green waves broke against
• 28:46
  the white sand of the beach, then crawled away again before
• 28:49
  crashing back. If anyone had been on the beach,
• 28:51
  they could have stared out to sea, listen to the waves and
• 28:54
  thought that this was an untroubled piece.
• 28:56
  Then a new noise, a bit like the crash of the waves at first, but
• 28:59
  soon louder and more discordant until it sounded like a couple
• 29:02
  of elephants competitively clearing their throats.
• 29:06
  A pure white light began flashing 3 metres in the air and
• 29:09
  slowly a solid blue shape filled in beneath it.
• 29:12
  After a few seconds seconds, rows of square panels were
• 29:15
  visible. By the time the strange sound
• 29:17
  had died away in the writing, on one of the writing, on one of
• 29:20
  the wood panels and over the doors, legible, the TARDIS had
• 29:23
  arrived. And it's there.
• 29:26
  And it's very upfront as well about where we are in the 10th
• 29:29
  Doctor's run, because it specifically says he met Rose,
• 29:33
  who was, oh, hang on a minute. Now, the Doctor travelled alone
• 29:36
  before, often for decades at a time.
• 29:38
  After the Time Law went, the Time War, where he lost
• 29:40
  everything but the TARDIS, he decided he didn't need
• 29:43
  companions or friends. Then he met Rose, who had been
• 29:46
  both those things and so much more.
• 29:48
  He failed to travel alone after he lost her.
• 29:50
  Well, that hadn't lasted, and quite right too.
• 29:54
  So we're post Donna here. Pre Donna I was thinking oh was
• 29:59
  it post? Martha post Martha.
• 30:01
  OK. That's what I'm thinking because
• 30:03
  you know, there's that bit in the partners and primaries on
• 30:06
  his own at the beginning. I reckon it's just there, but
• 30:10
  that's jumping to the end of the book.
• 30:11
  Why I think that's there and that come to that later.
• 30:16
  I want to talk about children. Oh, this is never going to end
• 30:21
  well. Well, because I really hate
• 30:23
  children, being a Doctor Who. And, you know, it really fucking
• 30:26
  irritates me that every new series adventure, every single
• 30:29
  one has some ooey gooey little Kitty wink in it.
• 30:34
  Yeah, that either goes on for the adventure or it's
• 30:37
  absolutely, you know, baffled by the magic of the doctor and and
• 30:41
  I just hate it. Well, this book, Lance, thank
• 30:45
  you very much. The first thing this this pack
• 30:48
  of children, it's basically like fucking Lord of the Flies, these
• 30:51
  horrible children. Much.
• 30:54
  They're trying to bash his brains out with bits of rock.
• 30:58
  And then the main child of this book, Elsa, is she's so much
• 31:03
  more interesting than the usual children.
• 31:06
  She is, she's deceitful, she's angry, she's clever, you know,
• 31:13
  And in that second-half of the book, it's basically because the
• 31:16
  Eyeless and Elsa work together. She's effectively controlling
• 31:23
  the monsters in this book so that the monsters are being
• 31:25
  powered by the emotions of a horrible child.
• 31:30
  It's it's like my worst fear come true.
• 31:36
  I loved the introduction to the children that Doctor gives and
• 31:39
  that he's so immediately patronising.
• 31:43
  They go like you, you're a, you are a ghost.
• 31:45
  Wait, no, you is a ghost. And he goes you're right the
• 31:48
  first time, the doctor said helpfully.
• 31:50
  You are talking to a ghost. Just a Dick, just no worries.
• 31:55
  But in his place he get no. He gets his bubble burst several
• 31:58
  times in this, but there's a. Wonderful bit where he does make
• 32:01
  those. You worry I'm the only person
• 32:03
  that can take down the fortress and then straight away someone
• 32:06
  goes. You were knocked out by a 14
• 32:08
  year old girl. Now come.
• 32:09
  On with a rock. And there's a even better in the
• 32:12
  second-half of the book. He goes, you know.
• 32:14
  Oh, you're the eyeless. You must be well travelled.
• 32:16
  You must have heard of the Time Lords.
• 32:18
  And I, I, what's her name? Elsa goes yeah, no, they've
• 32:22
  never heard of you. Sorry.
• 32:24
  Like totally beating him down. He needs it.
• 32:27
  Sometimes he does need it. Definitely more than meant.
• 32:32
  Most of the doctors think it needs to be put down a peg and
• 32:34
  put in his place. I guess that's why Donna works
• 32:37
  so well. But because Alsa is this that
• 32:39
  kind of character here? Or most of the Arcopolians are
• 32:45
  the people of Arcopolis, I'll say.
• 32:49
  I thought the way he structured this book as well, So
• 32:52
  effectively, the first half of this book is the doctor in
• 32:55
  Acropolis laying down his intentions to go and stop the
• 33:01
  fortress. And there's a lot of really
• 33:04
  intelligent discussion around how a civilization survives in
• 33:09
  the wake of, you know, effectively like a massive
• 33:12
  nuclear disaster. Really quiet disturbing in
• 33:18
  places that first half and then the second-half of the book is
• 33:22
  the doctor in the fortress trying to bring this super
• 33:25
  weapon down. And I think it is.
• 33:28
  It was a smart move to split the book sort of 5050 definitely.
• 33:32
  Because I think if it had been all the first half, that would
• 33:35
  have got a bit tiresome. And I don't think you could have
• 33:37
  an entire book with the doctor not talking to anybody trying to
• 33:40
  bring down a super weapon. Definitely, I think one of the
• 33:44
  most disturbing pieces about because nothing or nothing to do
• 33:49
  with the fortress, but it's about the people and how they've
• 33:51
  structured their new society. The only doctor they have is an
• 33:57
  obstetrician. I believe it is so like a
• 33:59
  basically a midwife that like the next level up from what I
• 34:03
  understand and she's kind of held this knowledge of like how
• 34:08
  to help people give birth as ransom to kind of install
• 34:12
  herself as a matriarch to the rest of these people and.
• 34:16
  She's essential, yeah. She's the kind of one of the
• 34:20
  only, the most important person of the society, and every woman
• 34:26
  is basically just a breeding machine.
• 34:29
  So like this generation will have 10 kids and the next will
• 34:31
  have 6 and then so on, so on. And I guess Alice's first kind
• 34:38
  of, well, main kind of where a problem stem from I think is
• 34:43
  that she goes, well, I'm this is not my I don't want this future.
• 34:46
  This is not going to happen. And so she's kind of been
• 34:52
  everyone else is trying to drag her into this kicking and
• 34:54
  screaming when she's trying to break away and kind of forge her
• 34:58
  own path. And I guess I can kind of relate
• 34:59
  to that. And I think most teenagers can,
• 35:01
  you know, your parents do all. It is perhaps not as extreme as
• 35:05
  Elsa in this book, but you know, your parents are doing have led
• 35:09
  their life this way to the point where they've raised you up to,
• 35:11
  to the point where you are a teenager and you kind of feel
• 35:14
  like that's the only way you can go down.
• 35:17
  You know, all my family's work in a trade, you know, all
• 35:19
  electricians and such. So I thought the longest time
• 35:22
  I'm going to be an electrician, I'm going to be nothing.
• 35:24
  So the stupid kicking and screaming I did was go to
• 35:28
  university way too early and figure my own path out from
• 35:34
  there, you know? So it's completely relatable and
• 35:37
  most of what ALSA does, although it may be malicious at times and
• 35:41
  self-serving, never is never like just for the sake of being
• 35:48
  bad, it's always understandable. And if you were Alsa's age and
• 35:52
  in a position you would do the exact same thing at any
• 35:54
  alternative, you would grasp at the white knuckle, you know?
• 36:00
  I think the heart of really good, intelligent drama, yeah,
• 36:03
  is when you have two opposing points of view, which you have
• 36:07
  here. You've got the the adults
• 36:10
  basically saying, no, we just need to cannibalise what's been
• 36:13
  left behind, You know, what's the the line?
• 36:17
  Living in the shadows is better than dying in the light.
• 36:20
  That's a fabulous line. And you know, one of them goes
• 36:24
  the survival of our species is more important than any
• 36:27
  individual and their wishes. And you absolutely understand
• 36:30
  that, right, Because they they've suffered at terrible
• 36:32
  losses. And you can understand Alice's
• 36:35
  point of view where she's saying, no, let's go to the
• 36:38
  fortress, let's use the technology there, let's rebuild
• 36:42
  our society and let's try and be what we used to be before, you
• 36:45
  know, it took totally irreconcilable point of views.
• 36:48
  And yet both of them are sort of nodding, going yes, yeah, yeah,
• 36:51
  I get that. I get that.
• 36:52
  Fuck, where do I stand with it in this argument?
• 36:54
  That's smart writing. Definitely it's it's.
• 36:58
  There is no right answer. But you know, Shades of Grey is
• 37:02
  is far more interesting than black and white.
• 37:04
  And the last place you'd expect to find Shades of Grey or like
• 37:08
  some kind of moral argument on how to live post apocalypse is
• 37:12
  in a Doctor Who new series, in a Doctor Who book, full birthday,
• 37:16
  and then a new series adventure underneath that where you get
• 37:19
  books like, I don't know, I'm trying to think of a just to run
• 37:23
  around 1:00. The stone rose, which I love.
• 37:25
  Stone rose. But it is just.
• 37:27
  The wrong Read it. You know what Lance does that
• 37:30
  somebody like Jim Mortimer utterly fails to do?
• 37:33
  Yeah. Jim Mortimer murders hundreds of
• 37:36
  millions of people in every book that he writes.
• 37:38
  Yeah. And I don't know how to feel
• 37:40
  about that because he gives me no reason to care about that.
• 37:43
  What Lance does is he boils down the loss of 200 million people
• 37:47
  on this planet, the destruction of this vast mega city, by
• 37:52
  focusing on a pocket of survival and beautifully defining that
• 37:56
  culture with the catastrophe. The catastrophe defines them,
• 38:01
  and that's what makes this really interesting.
• 38:04
  There is a line where it's like all of the people of that city
• 38:08
  are remembered by the few that they remember by, by the few
• 38:10
  that they knew or something, something along the lines of
• 38:12
  that. And that makes sense of how you
• 38:16
  can mourn 200 million people. You do it through your postman
• 38:20
  or something or the bloke who works at the corner shop every
• 38:23
  day is just the small people like that it come idea comes up
• 38:27
  in turn left where Sylvia says she remembers someone new every
• 38:31
  day that died in the nuclear explosion in London.
• 38:36
  Yeah but you're kind of right on the Jim what on the thing of.
• 38:39
  I've only read his first second novel blood Heat and yeah it
• 38:46
  says oh Joe Grant's dead. I just, I don't care.
• 38:52
  And you should care. I really should, but it's just
• 38:55
  like I've not got. There's no drama to it really,
• 38:59
  is it? It's 100. 90% of the UK in that
• 39:04
  in blood T and you just don't give a shit about any of them.
• 39:07
  You know, Not really. The pockets of survivors are
• 39:09
  just aren't very well defined. This society just were in the
• 39:14
  wrong place, weren't they? They were in the wrong place at
• 39:17
  the right time. That weapon came to do what it
• 39:20
  had to do, and they were just in the way after.
• 39:23
  What's the line? He says.
• 39:24
  We were like an anthill run over by a tank.
• 39:27
  That's it. I've got that written down as
• 39:29
  well. Great line.
• 39:31
  And then later on they realised what is it?
• 39:33
  No, you were, you were, you were literally less than that within
• 39:37
  this great temporal conflict that was going on, he says.
• 39:41
  We were a flea on an Ant on an Ant being run over by a tank.
• 39:48
  Yeah, I mean, Jesus. And do you know what?
• 39:50
  The saddest thing, the thing that I I thought really was
• 39:53
  poignant was when the the male scientist goes the Acropolis was
• 39:58
  a place of peace. We hadn't known war or serious
• 40:01
  crime for thousands of years. The weapon was never going to be
• 40:05
  a temptation for us like they were.
• 40:08
  They were nice people. They were good people.
• 40:10
  It's just, it's just so happened to be there and that was it.
• 40:13
  It's just some tragic, just a tragedy, just a tragedy scale.
• 40:20
  What's clever there as well is that it leans into the Time War
• 40:25
  as seen in the new series. If this is the 8th Doctor Time
• 40:27
  War fine but the Doctor has lines like do you think the
• 40:30
  worst thing that could possibly happened is to see one
• 40:33
  civilisation fall and he goes the the scientist goes well we
• 40:37
  lost everything and the doctor just goes you don't even know
• 40:40
  the meaning of the word lost. Yeah, I lost everyone, mate.
• 40:45
  Suddenly it redefines the whole thing from the doctor's point of
• 40:48
  view as well. And he he thinks this tragedy of
• 40:52
  200 million people, which is a lot of people, that's nothing
• 40:56
  for the time war. It's it's big.
• 41:00
  The scale is massive. But it never feels out of reach.
• 41:05
  It never feels like, what's the word I'm looking for?
• 41:09
  Meaningless or just blase. Like I know that in some books,
• 41:16
  like a planet would just be destroyed.
• 41:17
  And it's like, well, how many people lived on that planet?
• 41:19
  And I just don't care. It's just a heap of rock that
• 41:23
  just blew up and I just give fuck all about it.
• 41:27
  Listen to this. I say, don't punch down to kids.
• 41:29
  Yeah, listen to this for a line, because this would be a great
• 41:32
  line in any Doctor Who book. Touch a button and no more
• 41:36
  enemy, no more traces of enemy. They'd be gone.
• 41:40
  The weapon doesn't just kill them, it kills everyone that has
• 41:44
  ever heard of them. It destroys everything they've
• 41:46
  ever built and drawn and written, everything they've ever
• 41:49
  seen, even the stars in the sky. It raises it all.
• 41:53
  It's a weapon that that would give you give your run of a
• 41:57
  meal. Ultimate weapon, an inferiority
• 42:00
  complex. That's a great line.
• 42:04
  Who do you think created this weapon?
• 42:06
  I think it was the Time Lords to defeat.
• 42:10
  I thought that as well because they there is a line where they
• 42:13
  say it materialised, so meaning it just made its way there and
• 42:20
  just fucking set off somehow. Yeah, don't.
• 42:23
  You love the fact it materialised as well where there
• 42:25
  were a load of buildings and it literally just.
• 42:27
  Peers just cut them like a car factory in half.
• 42:30
  Yeah, it's fabulous. Astonishing.
• 42:33
  I like like, like that's good science fiction.
• 42:37
  It's it's. Not just good Doctor Who, that's
• 42:39
  good science fiction. It's simple imagine to a kid as
• 42:42
  well, like same with the green sky.
• 42:43
  It's something that's just immediately alien or like this
• 42:46
  white utopia with just an ugly, just black obelisk in the Middle
• 42:51
  East. So easy to conjure.
• 42:53
  It's not like lengthy passages describing what the fortress
• 42:58
  looks like because you just don't need it.
• 43:00
  You just say it looks ugly and it's it's it's black, it's
• 43:04
  slimy, it's ugly. You know, it's a bit like
• 43:06
  Lovecraft, you know, I guess you just fill in the blanks of
• 43:08
  what's so terrifying about it. Did you ever read Lance's blogs
• 43:11
  on this? So he wrote a series of blogs.
• 43:13
  On the other SO. I didn't.
• 43:14
  I took a look. I.
• 43:16
  Wish I had now. He said that the editing process
• 43:18
  was really smooth for this, and really the only things they
• 43:21
  asked him to take out was in the 1st chapter where he went about
• 43:26
  three times as long describing describing the city and the
• 43:29
  fortress. And they went no no no, simplify
• 43:31
  that. The kids don't want pages and
• 43:33
  pages of what all this looks like.
• 43:35
  This isn't, you know. I agree.
• 43:37
  You don't need. You don't need it.
• 43:40
  Just get straight to the heart of the story, which she
• 43:43
  absolutely does, but I can't. But I'm desperate to read those
• 43:47
  descriptions now. It's really good.
• 43:48
  Go check it out. It's.
• 43:49
  Really check it out. Within the society as well.
• 43:54
  I just loved this idea where Elsa was going because something
• 44:00
  happened years ago, something too big to comprehend.
• 44:03
  Why are there no choices now? All I've got to look forward to
• 44:08
  is a treadmill of duties and obligations and no chance of
• 44:11
  escape. And the doctor just goes, yes, I
• 44:18
  was like, yeah, we don't see the temp talks are like this very
• 44:23
  often. Cautious, focused, and afraid.
• 44:27
  He is really on the back step for this whole book.
• 44:30
  I mean, I think as as a line in there somewhere how he's kind of
• 44:33
  been putting this off like and he's just going, I've just got
• 44:36
  to get it over and done with. I've just got to go and sort
• 44:38
  this out before anyone else happens to stumble along and
• 44:44
  someone else does again after a while in the glass men, the
• 44:50
  eyeless, they just pop their heads in or their smooth glass
• 44:55
  orbs in. I don't.
• 44:58
  This is called the Eyeless, right?
• 45:01
  I think the Fortress is the villain of the piece, and the
• 45:05
  Eyeless is an interesting side note in the second-half of the
• 45:10
  book because you don't see the Eyeless until the second-half of
• 45:12
  the book. I think that they're there.
• 45:16
  I know there's like a six fingered hand stroking the
• 45:18
  TARDIS at the end of chapter 1 I think, and then a glass man
• 45:23
  scene running and there's a great description how they run
• 45:27
  but they don't move their arms, their arms are just by their
• 45:29
  side but they're full Sprint which is just an absurd image
• 45:33
  for for someone to conjure. And that's it until Part 2.
• 45:37
  What are the artists? So they're, they're basically
• 45:39
  like scavengers, aren't they? They're like scavengers.
• 45:43
  OK, There's a description of some.
• 45:45
  I think Elsa sees what the eyeless kind of homeworld or
• 45:48
  what something is and I'll find it here.
• 45:50
  There's a description of it. Give me a moment.
• 46:01
  Edit, edit edit. Something about orbs and shit in
• 46:08
  the sky. Let me find it.
• 46:11
  Can't find it now. Something about orbs and light
• 46:14
  and some buildings and. Whatever, I mean, I I've, I've
• 46:18
  written down here, there are a race of glass telepaths that
• 46:22
  forage for technology. They can read mines and they can
• 46:25
  usually come to an easy arrangement with the original
• 46:28
  owners of the things they want to cherry pick.
• 46:31
  But if they can't, then they'll take it anyway.
• 46:35
  See, I thought this is where me thinking, well, this is a Lance
• 46:38
  Parkin book. There's probably a little extra
• 46:41
  bit in here. And my little pet theory is
• 46:43
  this. This is some kind of far future
• 46:46
  version of the remote from interference in considering that
• 46:51
  conscious tight. It was the same where it just
• 46:52
  kind of nick bits and change through signals so easily.
• 46:55
  Like if you as soon as they get hold of Alice's anger and they
• 47:00
  find that new emotion, they've really clutch onto that and
• 47:02
  become a lot more aggressive attacking the fortress and just
• 47:05
  gone on an all out assault or just collecting these bits like
• 47:08
  someone's eyes or like AI think there's one's like a beef,
• 47:11
  there's like a beef Stew in one of them that they've just
• 47:14
  absorbed. And it was technology and a lot
• 47:17
  of thing with the remote and interference was the remembrance
• 47:21
  tanks and just like degrading someone over hundreds and
• 47:26
  hundreds of years to where they're kind of just like a
• 47:28
  generic person. And I thought, well, if they
• 47:30
  keep going like that for however many hundreds of thousands of
• 47:34
  millions or quadrillions of years, surely they would end up
• 47:37
  just becoming blank slates that just roam around scavenging for
• 47:40
  this technology. I could be completely off my
• 47:42
  rocker, but that my little pet theory is this is also the
• 47:46
  remote from that kind of war era of Doctor Who.
• 47:52
  What do you think? Well, alternatively I was
• 47:55
  thinking it could be the other big, but from the latter half of
• 48:00
  the Edas, which is the crystal skeleton people from some time
• 48:03
  never that turned out to be the the big bads, you know, behind
• 48:07
  Sabaf and all of that. And fill me in.
• 48:09
  I don't. Know what happened afterwards
• 48:11
  they the council of eight yeah sort of skeleton men that wanted
• 48:14
  to control all of time. But they were all all their
• 48:17
  their their palace in in the multiverse was shattered apart
• 48:21
  at the end of sometime never and we never really found out what
• 48:24
  happened to them after that. So I thought, well, maybe it
• 48:26
  could be that maybe it's both, you know, and the time was mixed
• 48:30
  them all up together. Probably, or it could just be
• 48:35
  some shitty scavenger race from Galaxy 7 or whatever it's
• 48:38
  called. That that works too.
• 48:41
  I mean, I do love the idea of glass people.
• 48:43
  That's a really vivid image. It comes up quite a lot I think
• 48:48
  in the in the Blue Angel. There's also the glass men of
• 48:50
  our seer in like wheelchairs. You should mention that, Yeah.
• 48:54
  What I love though as well is that they get they they can
• 48:56
  choose between the doctor and Alsa.
• 48:59
  In the second-half of the book, they choose an Alsa because
• 49:02
  she's more cunning, she's more ambitious, she's more forward
• 49:05
  thinking and she's more devious. Which means there is a child's
• 49:09
  emotions controlling the eyeless, and they came to the
• 49:15
  Acropolis because they detected the TARDIS.
• 49:18
  They had no fucking thought about that.
• 49:19
  Weapon until she tells them. The fortress and the weapon is
• 49:23
  just like an extra like oh OK, and then they.
• 49:25
  Go Oh, really? There's a there's an
• 49:29
  interdimensional super weapon, is there?
• 49:30
  Well, while we're here. They can't get into the doctor's
• 49:34
  head, can they? They don't speak, so they kind
• 49:39
  of just stand and just just face the doctor about saying anything
• 49:43
  and we get it. All related for Alison, which is
• 49:45
  absolutely hilarious at certain types.
• 49:47
  I mean, I basically summed up the second-half of the book as,
• 49:50
  yeah, because last, you don't want to make things easy for the
• 49:53
  Doctor. He's facing a Time War super
• 49:56
  weapon that wants to kill him, a race of tech thriving nomads who
• 49:59
  won his TARDIS, and worst of all, a demented child that wants
• 50:04
  her own way to save her civilization from poverty.
• 50:09
  Yeah, pretty much I. Mean that's quite a heavy day,
• 50:11
  you know? Definitely.
• 50:18
  Once the fortress starts being activated, that's when I think
• 50:23
  this is really terrifying, where suddenly it is just blasting
• 50:28
  those eyeless ships out of the sky, you know, and they're
• 50:31
  coming down, they're raining down on the buildings.
• 50:35
  Definitely, that's the very beginning of Part 2.
• 50:39
  There's a little like monologue about.
• 50:42
  I'll just read it until sorry about the first page of it.
• 50:47
  How do you define intelligence? It's a word that means different
• 50:50
  things to different people. The scientists who built the
• 50:52
  fortress weren't worried so much about an abstract debate.
• 50:55
  They needed a practical answer. The fortress could have been
• 50:58
  given an artificial mind, so brilliant, so adaptable, that
• 51:01
  would be able to solve any problem instantly by thinking it
• 51:04
  through. Imagine a student who was
• 51:06
  brilliant at mathematics and so smart enough to pass any maths
• 51:09
  exam or test. But the idea of creating so
• 51:12
  powerful of mind or either the builders of the fortress.
• 51:14
  They knew the they knew plenty of examples of creations rising
• 51:17
  up and destroying their creators, and they couldn't take
• 51:19
  the risk. The fortress would have access
• 51:21
  to the ultimate weapon, and making it intelligent and
• 51:24
  resourceful was just asking for trouble.
• 51:26
  Luckily, there was one way of doing it.
• 51:29
  There was another way of doing it.
• 51:30
  Sorry, imagine a second student would have been given a list of
• 51:34
  all the answers. He would also get a perfect
• 51:36
  score. Most people say it was only the
• 51:38
  first student who was really demonstrating intelligence, but
• 51:42
  the results would be identical. The Fortress had been giving a
• 51:45
  giant list of every possible problem and the best solutions.
• 51:48
  Its builders had set it up so that the Fortress would
• 51:51
  automatically perform the required actions.
• 51:56
  So even just comparing it to a school child being given the
• 52:01
  answers, that is so easy because a school child's going to be
• 52:04
  reading this go oh, so that's just how it works.
• 52:06
  That's it brings this again, this multi dimensional
• 52:11
  unimaginable weapon down to cheating on a school test.
• 52:15
  But. You understand cheating on a
• 52:19
  school test? You understand on massive
• 52:20
  weapons, no. He brings it down to such a
• 52:25
  simple level that anyone can understand and I honest it's
• 52:30
  wizardry to a degree of how he's done it because I.
• 52:34
  I mean, I think, I think taking these enormous ideas and
• 52:39
  bringing it down to a level that a 10 year old can understand,
• 52:43
  yeah, the fucking New Adventures and Avve Dr. books could have
• 52:46
  done with a bit of that. Because sometimes.
• 52:49
  Just impenetrable, you know, as we head into cyberspace and
• 52:54
  everything's being told through bloody metaphors and weed.
• 52:56
  It's all italics. What the hell is this?
• 52:59
  Like, what is going on? I knew exactly what was
• 53:02
  happening in this book, but I also had a sense of the epicness
• 53:07
  and the scale of it, but also the intimacy and the character
• 53:11
  works. I don't know.
• 53:12
  You're right, it is wizardry in a way.
• 53:15
  Speaking of the new adventures, you're funny you should say
• 53:16
  this. This was going to come up
• 53:17
  somewhere. Lance Parkin loves the throw.
• 53:20
  A nice little reference, doesn't he?
• 53:22
  When the Doctor's picking up all of his items after he's been
• 53:24
  knocked out, he, you know, he picks up his Sonic screwdriver,
• 53:27
  his bit of the, his bit of the, and a bag of cola nuts.
• 53:31
  Yes, you filthy slag Lance barking.
• 53:35
  We noticed, don't you think? We're not on to you park in all
• 53:38
  right, And we now precisely what kola nuts are used for.
• 53:42
  Do you think attempt doctors to wash the taste of seeming out of
• 53:44
  his mouth very often? Then, well, he's very pretty I
• 53:46
  would imagine. Well, he's travelling with Jack
• 53:47
  Hart. Yes, I imagine so.
• 53:49
  Yeah, I I think as well. The way he captures the inner
• 53:54
  workings of the fortress. Great.
• 53:57
  You know, hydraulics. And these Pistons and churning?
• 54:01
  Yeah, it's proper steampunk stuff, isn't it?
• 54:03
  That really, I think the sound is described as like the inside
• 54:08
  of Tower Bridge, you know, sort of clanking up really slowly.
• 54:13
  Have you ever played the the video game Half Life 2 by any?
• 54:15
  Chance I have never played a video game.
• 54:17
  So if if any of you listening are familiar with Half Life 2,
• 54:21
  this alien species called the combine that build these kind of
• 54:26
  weird mechanical sort of bio like human infused or alien
• 54:32
  infused mechanical things that just dig into the earth and just
• 54:36
  look absolutely disgusting. So as imagine it's all jagged
• 54:39
  and sharp and just like an eyesore.
• 54:42
  So if any of you listening you've played half 52, you know
• 54:44
  exactly what this thing looks like.
• 54:46
  I imagine Lance Barking has as well because that I can imagine
• 54:50
  exactly like the forget what the tower is called net games from
• 54:53
  Tower or other. But it's all just fantastic
• 54:56
  descriptions of, like you said, like churning.
• 54:59
  Like I don't know if it's ever told that it's like oily on the
• 55:03
  inside, but imagine just like a stick of oil and everything, and
• 55:07
  even the bits that aren't designed to kill you can still
• 55:10
  kill you. Like there's a section where I
• 55:14
  think a bridge is rising or something, and a doctor's being
• 55:17
  pushed up by this piston, this huge piston, and it stops just
• 55:22
  before it squashes him or something.
• 55:23
  But it wasn't even something designed to kill him.
• 55:25
  It was just a mechanism of the fortress just moving about.
• 55:29
  There's one bit where it spits out plastic strips and they're
• 55:33
  described as being like boa constrictors.
• 55:36
  You know they wrap around your neck and try and throttle you.
• 55:39
  It also tries to use π against the Doctor.
• 55:41
  Yes, well, yes, thinking about the five doctors, you know, it's
• 55:45
  trying to exactly the, you know, 3.14265 that's right.
• 55:50
  So they're child. Simple as pie.
• 55:55
  But of course, I think it was always going to come down to the
• 55:59
  point where the Doctor has this weapon in his hand.
• 56:04
  It's like the end of the time. What is like the end of Parting
• 56:06
  of the Ways? It's like the end of the
• 56:09
  ancestor cell. He's got this enormous galactic
• 56:13
  super weapon in his hand and he's got to make a choice.
• 56:16
  And and there's a bit where I just held my breath.
• 56:20
  Why hadn't he destroyed it? Asks Lance Parkin to the
• 56:25
  audience. And the Doctor says we're both
• 56:28
  the last of our kinds. What I love about so, the actual
• 56:32
  weapon, once we get to it, it is so boring.
• 56:35
  It is like a cylinder, just a metal, just a plain metal
• 56:39
  cylinder. And all you have to do to
• 56:40
  activate is to touch it. That's it.
• 56:42
  There's no complicated controls. I was thinking, this is the
• 56:45
  moment, isn't it? This is the day of the doctor
• 56:48
  it. Is but.
• 56:51
  Five years. Early, I mean, he says, you
• 56:55
  know, wonderful. And there's no such thing as
• 56:57
  evil science. Anything can be turned into a
• 57:00
  weapon. If you're worried what wicked
• 57:02
  men might do, you'd never invent anything.
• 57:09
  Yeah, it froze. Just brilliant.
• 57:11
  And and then, you know, when he realises that because the
• 57:16
  eyeless are addicted to anger now and they're taking pleasure
• 57:19
  from it, that if they got in contact with the rest of their
• 57:22
  kind, that anger would spread across the Galaxy and they would
• 57:26
  be an advance race with a massive space Navy with an urge
• 57:30
  to and fuelled by anger. Yes, they've and, and he
• 57:34
  literally says they'd swarm across the cosmos.
• 57:37
  And so he realizes like a God, there's.
• 57:41
  An. Easy way.
• 57:42
  There's an easy way to do this. A surgical strike.
• 57:45
  Use the weapon just once. And do you remember?
• 57:48
  Do you remember what line the next line was?
• 57:50
  It's so telling. I can't remember.
• 57:53
  Exterminate. Oh boy.
• 57:59
  Brilliant. He's become the Daleks.
• 58:02
  You would make a good Dalek. It's so good, so good because it
• 58:10
  it ties into all of that potency of the Time War in the new
• 58:15
  series by putting him in that same position.
• 58:18
  But it also, if you're a fan of the EDAS, it takes you right
• 58:21
  back to the ancestor cell as well, and the excitement you
• 58:24
  felt reading that. So at this point, the doctor
• 58:27
  remembers all of this stuff, right?
• 58:29
  Yeah, He remembers all of the. OK, OK, we've got that out of
• 58:32
  the way. I.
• 58:32
  Just I just can't think of another new series adventure
• 58:35
  that's playing on this field. The thing is with this weapon as
• 58:40
  well, it goes off again and it wipes the eyeless out and I
• 58:46
  think the doctor says, well, it must have fired a dud twice
• 58:50
  because the first time some people with our coppers survived
• 58:52
  and the second time we all survive and still remember the
• 58:55
  eyeless. But I don't think the second one
• 58:57
  is a dud. I think the second one is kind
• 59:00
  of like permanently ripping off the Band-Aid and removing all of
• 59:06
  that War in Heaven continuity. The Eyeless, which could be the
• 59:11
  glass man or the remote are gone.
• 59:14
  The Fortress, which is from I guess the enemy or faction
• 59:17
  Paradox or the Time Lords of that kind of war era, gone.
• 59:22
  And yeah, that whole it's tied up in an eat little bow, it's
• 59:27
  gone now because all the ancestors, I was supposed to do
• 59:31
  that. It did it very messily.
• 59:32
  And then some stuff from Faction Paradox still kind of seeped its
• 59:35
  way through here and there only. Because last parking, not last
• 59:40
  parking, Lawrence Miles wanted to keep writing them.
• 59:42
  Of course, but then even then I say that it tired of neat little
• 59:47
  bones kind of chucked faction paradox outside of the Doctor
• 59:51
  universe. Is it Dave Rudden into the
• 59:54
  winter time? Paradox just brings them back
• 59:56
  anyway. Or I was Scott Hancock in the
• 1:00:00
  Empire in the Empire of Death novel, says Susan Twist in a
• 1:00:04
  Mask of Bone at one point. Like, OK, well, they're just
• 1:00:08
  back anyway. Fair enough.
• 1:00:10
  There's, there's a, there's a wonderful moment in our climax
• 1:00:13
  as well, you know, where the Doctor offers the last Eyeless,
• 1:00:16
  the TARDIS if it destroyed the weapon and it just tries to take
• 1:00:21
  both. And so the Eyeless are
• 1:00:23
  completely wiped out of existence.
• 1:00:25
  Yeah, I love that bit. There's like this to to the
• 1:00:29
  bitter end. The eyeless is like, well I need
• 1:00:30
  it, like it. I guess it was you're a thief,
• 1:00:36
  you're a murderer. I meant everything I said.
• 1:00:38
  You had your chance and you blew it.
• 1:00:41
  I I kind of feel like they get that from Elsa, that like
• 1:00:43
  childish rage of just one. I will have it.
• 1:00:47
  There's no reason. But also as well, I think he
• 1:00:53
  saved his best character beat for after the climax when the
• 1:00:58
  fortress is completely destroyed.
• 1:01:01
  And for a second, for just a second, the Doctor thinks he's
• 1:01:05
  the only person left in the universe.
• 1:01:07
  That in taking out the Fortress, in activating the weapon, he
• 1:01:11
  might have literally destroyed every living thing in the entire
• 1:01:16
  universe. The Time War will over again on.
• 1:01:19
  But that was just. Definitely more he.
• 1:01:21
  Thinks it's everything and and like, you know, he's there
• 1:01:25
  standing there thinking. Is it just me?
• 1:01:27
  Am I alone? Am I going to be alone for Am I
• 1:01:29
  going to be the last person in the universe?
• 1:01:32
  I kind of feel like this the doctor at this point would be OK
• 1:01:36
  with that. I think he would see that as
• 1:01:38
  like a just punishment for himself for the time War still.
• 1:01:41
  So I if this book, but it would never end like that.
• 1:01:47
  But if it didn't like that, I think that would be a perfectly
• 1:01:49
  reasonable ending as well. Well, the end of Doctor Who.
• 1:01:51
  He's alone. In the universe, he feels like
• 1:01:54
  that's what he deserves. And that's.
• 1:01:55
  Just bleak ending, Kieran. Oh whoops, I accidentally won't
• 1:02:02
  wiped out everybody in the entire universe.
• 1:02:04
  Oh well, the end. Didn't for the valley.
• 1:02:09
  I did it in that unbound 1 didn't he?
• 1:02:13
  So out of the question Doctor will do it eventually.
• 1:02:16
  But by the end of that, him and male are like flies trapped in
• 1:02:19
  honey as the entire universe melts around them.
• 1:02:22
  I can't move. But it's it is impressive this I
• 1:02:27
  think like I I felt like the best Doctor Who books.
• 1:02:32
  You have ideas so interesting and so big that I kind of feel
• 1:02:37
  my brain restructuring a little bit to, to sort of fit them all
• 1:02:41
  in. You know, the very best Doctor
• 1:02:43
  Who books. I think this is one of the best
• 1:02:44
  Doctor Who books because I really, I, I was able to
• 1:02:49
  comprehend the impacts that this sort of weapon can have and that
• 1:02:58
  so so he made me understand the stakes.
• 1:03:00
  And then at the end of the book he activates the fucking thing
• 1:03:04
  and we know what it can do. Yeah, he's always it was built
• 1:03:07
  all up over the past 200 pages. I feel like the best Doctor Who
• 1:03:10
  books make you think about the Doctor Who book after you're
• 1:03:14
  done reading it at the at the moment I'm reading Fear of the
• 1:03:18
  Dark by Trevor Baxendale for Luke Sims Jenkins podcast.
• 1:03:22
  And I guess a little spoiler is I don't.
• 1:03:25
  As soon as I put that book down, I don't think about it.
• 1:03:27
  It's just gone. No, this this book.
• 1:03:31
  Reading around, are you right? Yeah.
• 1:03:33
  Reading for other podcasts. But I unless it's.
• 1:03:39
  Exclusivity contract I suppose. No, Yeah, I got, I got my NDA or
• 1:03:42
  whatever it is. Yeah, not Yeah, the best Doctor
• 1:03:46
  Who books I think about now fondly, or have at least one or
• 1:03:49
  two ideas that have always stuck with me, like Magic Words and
• 1:03:53
  The Adventures of Henriette Street, or pink poodles in space
• 1:03:57
  and mad dogs and Englishmen, or clocks in people's faces in an
• 1:04:00
  acrophobia, or the Weapon and the fortress in the islands
• 1:04:04
  where some things like the dark in fear of the dark or what?
• 1:04:09
  Let's find another example. I don't, I don't think.
• 1:04:13
  Whatever was going on in Vanishing Point?
• 1:04:15
  I don't forget Doctor Who book should be like this.
• 1:04:18
  I don't think everything should be this science fiction heavy.
• 1:04:21
  No, I certainly don't think every Doctor Who book should
• 1:04:24
  have this sort of scale. I think it's really impressive
• 1:04:27
  that within this range that has tended to err on the side of
• 1:04:31
  cautious storytelling for children.
• 1:04:34
  Like tie in that Lars Parkin just said, no, I'm going to
• 1:04:39
  write a book as bold as I would if it was an original Doctor Who
• 1:04:43
  book for older kids, but I'm going to do it in a way that
• 1:04:47
  kids can comprehend it. I disagree, I think any book
• 1:04:52
  should have an interesting idea about it.
• 1:04:54
  I don't, I guess no, I'm torn. This.
• 1:04:57
  There is room of course for runaround stuff because if every
• 1:05:00
  book you had was some kind of mind shattering idea then it'll
• 1:05:03
  become very boring very quickly. You need like the resurrection
• 1:05:07
  casket in there to kind of just. Don't you come for the
• 1:05:10
  resurrection? Casket make everything else
• 1:05:12
  stand. Pirates.
• 1:05:15
  Oh, they were wonderful. But like I feel like if you read
• 1:05:19
  a book and not even just a Doctor Who book, but any piece
• 1:05:22
  of fiction or non fiction in general, and you put it down and
• 1:05:26
  you have nothing. You've come out with nothing, no
• 1:05:28
  new ideas, no new opinions or perspectives on anything, then I
• 1:05:32
  think you've completely failed as an author.
• 1:05:36
  Which is sometimes what the new series books kind of did when
• 1:05:39
  they were in their kind of height, where they were
• 1:05:41
  publishing 10 to 20 a year, where it just kind of became
• 1:05:46
  like green, like just grey goo. I just think they they don't
• 1:05:50
  think that children can handle sophisticated ideas and they're
• 1:05:55
  wrong language and they're wrong.
• 1:05:57
  Yeah, they're absolutely wrong. And I think, I think from this
• 1:06:01
  point on, I think this book made some changes because suddenly
• 1:06:05
  you had books like Touched by an Angel Boratani.
• 1:06:08
  Dead of winter. Dead of Winter, The Blood Cell,
• 1:06:11
  they started punching up a little bit and they're quite
• 1:06:16
  impressive books. They started they, I think they
• 1:06:19
  started cherry picking the best authors from the original books.
• 1:06:23
  They got they got a definitely. They also got like same with
• 1:06:27
  Naomi Alderman. They got a catch before they
• 1:06:30
  knew it. Really with an author like that
• 1:06:33
  or, you know, getting Jonathan Morrison, getting a book like
• 1:06:37
  touch like an Angel out of him was also just a catch.
• 1:06:40
  I think some of James Goss, you know, the stars aligned a bit.
• 1:06:45
  Absolute banger out of Baxendale in Prisoner of the Daleks.
• 1:06:49
  That's a great book. Or Juno Dawson.
• 1:06:52
  There's another catch for the good doctor that.
• 1:06:55
  Was a goodie. Yeah, you're right.
• 1:06:56
  They do kind of punch up after this, because beforehand I'm
• 1:07:00
  thinking of all the books like the Clockwise Man, Only Human,
• 1:07:06
  where they're all serviceable books.
• 1:07:09
  But you're right, there's nothing to kind of take home
• 1:07:12
  from it. I think they're feeling their
• 1:07:14
  way in at that point, yeah, You know.
• 1:07:16
  Do you think they go too far in the opposite direction?
• 1:07:19
  Came in with quite a good one with the pirate loop.
• 1:07:21
  I think that that's got some massive ideas in it.
• 1:07:24
  So yeah, do you think that from 2005, the sleeper reason,
• 1:07:29
  someone slitting their wrists, they kind of felt they had to go
• 1:07:32
  extremely in the opposite direction because Doctor Who's
• 1:07:34
  back on telly for kids now? Very possibly.
• 1:07:37
  But then last park in where, well, I'm going to kill 200
• 1:07:40
  million people. Is that right?
• 1:07:41
  Yeah. And take a child's eyes out.
• 1:07:43
  Oh yeah, Jesus Christ, And I'm going to have the children as
• 1:07:47
  horrible feral little monsters. You know, scavenge.
• 1:07:50
  Around the street, I was telling you this, The Cliffhanger's Part
• 1:07:53
  1 is terrifying because it's the mother of that child staring the
• 1:07:56
  eyeless with the eyes and realizing that it's her
• 1:08:00
  children's eyes, but they're not.
• 1:08:04
  They're snapped one above the other, so they're just not in
• 1:08:07
  the face properly. And it's mortifying to read.
• 1:08:12
  And the last line of Part 1 is? Bella screamed, full stop.
• 1:08:17
  I I've got a that's chilling that bit, absolutely chilling
• 1:08:22
  just those. 2 lines just they're not even blinking, they're just
• 1:08:26
  they're unmute. It's disgusting.
• 1:08:29
  There's a passage I want to read you here, and because one, I
• 1:08:32
  just think it is so intelligent. But it is indicative of how
• 1:08:35
  Lance writes in this book. And there's no complicated
• 1:08:39
  language here, but it's all about fascinating ideas.
• 1:08:43
  Yeah. So it's about remembering
• 1:08:46
  people. Human beings had the expression
• 1:08:49
  their memory lived on, but it wasn't true.
• 1:08:51
  Not really. It just meant people remembered
• 1:08:53
  the dead. And it wasn't that the parents
• 1:08:56
  remembered everyone. The 37 parents were just
• 1:08:59
  ordinary people. They had friends and relatives,
• 1:09:01
  very small families back then, from what they've always said,
• 1:09:04
  ones with less than a handful of kids say they knew 1000 people.
• 1:09:09
  Being really generous. This was a dizzying number of
• 1:09:12
  people. For Houser say, for the sake of
• 1:09:14
  argument, they each knew a different 1000 people.
• 1:09:18
  They knew a woman they passed on the street, or a neighbor that
• 1:09:21
  they never talked to, or some shop assistant.
• 1:09:23
  That would mean that between all of them, they were only
• 1:09:26
  remembered 37,000 people out of the 200 million in Acropolis.
• 1:09:33
  It's dizzying, isn't it? The parents only remembered
• 1:09:36
  about one person in 5405. It was total oblivion for
• 1:09:43
  everyone else. Not even the names survived.
• 1:09:46
  They didn't even count as strangers, just faceless and
• 1:09:53
  names. Great writing.
• 1:09:56
  It provokes like the images and you know, in year 9, it's like a
• 1:10:00
  history school trip went to Belgium and there are these
• 1:10:03
  graveyards full of nameless headstones of just this was a
• 1:10:07
  soldier who died. We don't even know.
• 1:10:09
  This is just someone, not even like you said, not even a
• 1:10:12
  stranger, just a body. Or it's even worse.
• 1:10:15
  This is not even a body. There was just there's just one
• 1:10:18
  number in 200 million. I'm coming to reconsider these
• 1:10:26
  new series adventures because I I, I absolutely think there are
• 1:10:29
  duds in there and I think there are unambitious books in there.
• 1:10:34
  But I'm starting to think you know the best of the new series.
• 1:10:38
  Adventures can hold their heads above the parapet with some of
• 1:10:43
  the best of the original novels. The few new series adventures
• 1:10:48
  that I've read, I've said this off Mike, but I should have been
• 1:10:54
  the perfect age for these books and they were pretty much all in
• 1:10:58
  my school library and I just never read a one of them.
• 1:11:01
  I definitely know that the Ielus was one of them because that
• 1:11:03
  cover of just the disgusting monolith is is is captivating.
• 1:11:09
  You know, it would have been that like a Slovene 1 or
• 1:11:12
  whatever, whatever. And I just never picked up these
• 1:11:15
  books. But if I think I did as a kid, I
• 1:11:19
  would have been so much more. My mind would have been
• 1:11:22
  expanded. It would have been blown, you
• 1:11:24
  know, But in the same way that if you read the clockwise man,
• 1:11:28
  I'm I've not read that, but I imagine it's got a fairly boring
• 1:11:31
  plot. And whatever plot twist comes
• 1:11:33
  because Justin Rich is always a little twist in there.
• 1:11:36
  Whatever rather generic plot twist it would have to my 12
• 1:11:40
  year old man would have been just exploded all over the
• 1:11:42
  place. I don't know.
• 1:11:44
  I've kind of lost the point where I was going on, but yeah,
• 1:11:47
  I think. Lars is a genius I think.
• 1:11:49
  I think he can write books for adults like.
• 1:11:52
  Definitely. Doctors that's that's absolutely
• 1:11:55
  like as close to hard SF as you're going to get, but.
• 1:11:58
  It's really just a science fiction book on its own, mostly.
• 1:12:00
  Proven here he can write hard science fiction for children and
• 1:12:05
  that. He should that's.
• 1:12:06
  Difficult. He Should I start writing more
• 1:12:11
  science fiction for children on its own, I could see him.
• 1:12:16
  I don't know really what he does now.
• 1:12:18
  If he writes often, I don't think.
• 1:12:22
  He's writing books anymore, and frankly, Lance is not better
• 1:12:25
  than these tatties high in books.
• 1:12:27
  I can see him being on the same calibre as like a Benner
• 1:12:30
  Onovich, maybe even above Benner Onovich.
• 1:12:32
  I can see him being like a genuinely respected literary
• 1:12:35
  author with within a book or two.
• 1:12:40
  You know if it was marketed and pushed, right?
• 1:12:44
  I think at his best, and he's always at his best when he's
• 1:12:48
  writing Doctor Who. I think there's a beauty in his
• 1:12:51
  writing, there's potency in his character works and he just,
• 1:12:56
  he's an ideas man. He's always comes to the table
• 1:12:59
  with big ideas. And it's never difficult to
• 1:13:01
  read. That's the best part.
• 1:13:04
  That's so excruciating while being dense.
• 1:13:10
  It's so excruciating to read something like The Infinity
• 1:13:13
  Doctors where you can pretty much clearly understand what's
• 1:13:15
  going on. Or my worst Doctor Hubick ever,
• 1:13:19
  The taking of Planet 5, which is incomprehensible.
• 1:13:23
  It's full of ideas, but yeah. It's, I would admit it's full of
• 1:13:27
  ideas with 7 copies of Gallifrey to use as like ammunition, but
• 1:13:31
  it's just completely, just like it's unintelligible.
• 1:13:34
  It's like a madman just writing it on a typewriter and just,
• 1:13:38
  it's basically a monkey typing it on a typewriter just.
• 1:13:40
  And Lawrence Mars is giving it a thumbs up.
• 1:13:42
  Kieran, the coming of the Terror files.
• 1:13:45
  I mean, fuck me, I can't. Even get a.
• 1:13:47
  Sentence on that. I've not read any Michael
• 1:13:49
  Walcott, but I'll be glad to cover that one if no one else.
• 1:13:53
  I found that was a really unambitious story told in the
• 1:13:57
  most complicated way possible. This is a massively ambitious
• 1:14:01
  story told in a Really simple. Way.
• 1:14:04
  And that's so difficult to do. It's so easy to tell a simple
• 1:14:07
  story in a massively complex way because you just add a lot of
• 1:14:10
  it, really long words and boring descriptions.
• 1:14:13
  But to tell a complex story in as few words as possible?
• 1:14:16
  How many words are these new series adventures?
• 1:14:19
  There 70,000 not many. If that's I know the Ed as were
• 1:14:24
  like 80,000, I guess this is like 50,000.
• 1:14:26
  So maybe nearly half because the text is quite big on the page
• 1:14:30
  and to tell such a story of such amazing scope, deep
• 1:14:34
  characterisation and just her ideas that you page after page
• 1:14:39
  and have it be 50,000 words and a readable to an 8 year old is a
• 1:14:45
  feat of a genius and I don't use that word lightly.
• 1:14:48
  But I I the thing he cracked most for me of all the lovely
• 1:14:52
  things I've just said about him in this book is yeah, is that he
• 1:14:56
  cracked the kid, the kid in the new series adventures just by
• 1:15:01
  making her the biggest fucking cum in the entire book.
• 1:15:05
  She's just and I wanted to spend every second of this book with
• 1:15:09
  her. She was just so vile.
• 1:15:13
  But she gets she does get a redemption at the end as well.
• 1:15:15
  Like where it basically he's. She's given a choice.
• 1:15:19
  There's the. Weapon, you want it, you want to
• 1:15:21
  use it there you go. And she's she's like she can't,
• 1:15:24
  you know, she can't do it. And he says to her, well, OK, do
• 1:15:28
  you want to see what happens? And takes her to the future of
• 1:15:32
  the Acropolis. And it's starting to become a
• 1:15:35
  thriving community again. And in a wonderful moment, they
• 1:15:38
  go to we. Never came back.
• 1:15:40
  I'm so sorry you didn't ever come back.
• 1:15:42
  Yeah, so, so clearly you can't ever go back.
• 1:15:44
  And she just goes, well, that's all right.
• 1:15:45
  I'm going to stay now in the future.
• 1:15:49
  OK. Why not?
• 1:15:52
  But that's that's a fantastic resolution to her arc as well.
• 1:15:55
  And that she she got to decide where she stayed.
• 1:15:58
  She got that choice in the end given to by the doctor of I, I
• 1:16:04
  want out of this half laid out for me.
• 1:16:06
  And she got that she could be a kid.
• 1:16:08
  And yeah, that in a last section is fantastic.
• 1:16:12
  Reminded me of the terrifying things that are happening to
• 1:16:17
  war-torn countries at the moment.
• 1:16:19
  Yeah, the fact that there was that glimmer of hope at the end
• 1:16:22
  that actually those civilizations will thrive and
• 1:16:27
  rebuild. I was, I really thought.
• 1:16:29
  I needed, I really needed to read that because, you know, I
• 1:16:32
  can't even turn on the news these days because it horrifies
• 1:16:35
  me so much. No, I've I've it's, it's it, I
• 1:16:39
  guess it's kind of it's really self-serving.
• 1:16:47
  But I do the set. I can't watch the news anymore.
• 1:16:48
  It it does actively depress me to the point where I'd rather
• 1:16:53
  focus on my small win consequential life.
• 1:16:56
  And even that is just a lot to deal with anyway.
• 1:16:59
  So just having global issues going on as well is just too
• 1:17:02
  much for me to handle and I just can't.
• 1:17:04
  And that is incredibly selfish. But I think sometimes you can't
• 1:17:10
  just have to be selfish. But I guess like ALSA, ALSA is
• 1:17:16
  nothing but selfish, but I guess ends up getting her way in her
• 1:17:20
  own utopia in this future archopolis.
• 1:17:23
  I, I, I just, I think, oh God, what's the line from Genesis of
• 1:17:27
  the Daleks? Out of all this evil must come
• 1:17:30
  something. Some good.
• 1:17:32
  And I like to think that that is true.
• 1:17:34
  And, you know, the fact that you can make that parallel between
• 1:17:39
  what's happening in the world and what's going on in this
• 1:17:41
  book, I think makes this book even more potent.
• 1:17:45
  What? How?
• 1:17:46
  How many years later? 715-1617 years later?
• 1:17:52
  Yeah, not many books survived that long, let alone of Doctor
• 1:17:55
  Who. No, no, indeed, indeed.
• 1:17:57
  Well, look, do you have any more?
• 1:17:59
  Any closing thoughts? On the There we go through my
• 1:18:02
  notes, we forgot to talk about the ghosts.
• 1:18:07
  Oh my God, I mean that that I found really quite chilling
• 1:18:12
  because they're basically, it's a bit like he describes it,
• 1:18:15
  doesn't he? When a nuclear bomb goes off, a
• 1:18:17
  trace is left behind. So it's sometimes it's a shadow
• 1:18:20
  of people, isn't it? And that's what they are.
• 1:18:23
  And one of the ghosts says, well, it's no, it's not been 15
• 1:18:26
  years. It's been like 15 minutes tops.
• 1:18:29
  And it's just like like these like shards of people that have
• 1:18:34
  just been maybe weaponized by this fortress, the kind of act
• 1:18:39
  as deterrents. And if they're if they touch
• 1:18:43
  another person, they're just wiped from existence.
• 1:18:46
  It is completely horrifying. It, it's just that this, the
• 1:18:48
  memories of these people are forever just out of reach.
• 1:18:54
  Because if you try to connect to the old world, it will take you
• 1:18:57
  with it. That's fantastic stuff.
• 1:19:00
  Have you ever been to New York? I have.
• 1:19:03
  So did you go to the the Memorial of the Twin Towers and
• 1:19:08
  I it's. Haunted.
• 1:19:09
  That's what I, I, I felt a sense of the people that were lost
• 1:19:14
  when I was there. There was just an unnerving
• 1:19:17
  sense when I was there. And I thought the book captured
• 1:19:20
  that with the ghosts, you know, but it's.
• 1:19:24
  Definitely. The haunting of all the people
• 1:19:27
  that were lost needlessly. It's really potent.
• 1:19:33
  I love I. Love.
• 1:19:35
  I love. Go on.
• 1:19:39
  Yeah, One of the most harrowing things I've done is go through
• 1:19:41
  the 9/11 museum. I don't think you can't go out.
• 1:19:47
  Go in and come out not in tears like strong that comes on even
• 1:19:53
  even I'm not I'm not an American citizen.
• 1:19:54
  I don't really have stakes. And it is it wasn't even an
• 1:19:57
  event that happened within my lifetime.
• 1:19:59
  But it's still just such a strong cornerstone of this
• 1:20:04
  modern culture. It just ripples out, similar to
• 1:20:08
  how I guess that's this book is kind of.
• 1:20:14
  Talking about 9-11, maybe in a way very loosely, and about the
• 1:20:19
  ghosts that kind of reside after or just a great tragedy in
• 1:20:22
  general. I'm just drawing lines to 911.
• 1:20:24
  No, but I think, I think those parallels are there to make if
• 1:20:29
  you want to make them. You know, what he's talking
• 1:20:32
  about is a weapon going off, a disaster occurring and the
• 1:20:38
  consequences afterwards, You know, and that could be any
• 1:20:42
  number of real world events if you want to make the parallels
• 1:20:45
  of. Course.
• 1:20:47
  I love this, this description of I really fucking love the 10th
• 1:20:50
  Doctor in this book. I think he's, he's so
• 1:20:53
  responsibly written. It's none of that sort of jazz
• 1:20:56
  talk that that Tennant does all the time.
• 1:20:59
  It's our focus character. And he literally, when he goes
• 1:21:02
  to go to the fortress, he says he hopes against hope that
• 1:21:05
  nobody would try and stop him. Not because he was worried that
• 1:21:08
  any of them could, but because he was worried about what he
• 1:21:11
  would do if anyone tried. I've got another note of I don't
• 1:21:17
  think the Eyeless would. That's their race name.
• 1:21:20
  I believe they they're called the Eyeless because it's the
• 1:21:22
  first thing they realise that the humans have that they don't
• 1:21:26
  is eyes. So they're just the eyeless to
• 1:21:28
  the humans. I don't think they ever say what
• 1:21:32
  their actual race name is, but it's not really important
• 1:21:34
  really, is it? Or if they even have one,
• 1:21:38
  they're just some kind of just stole super intelligent
• 1:21:41
  telepathic thingy. So I, I love that there's still
• 1:21:45
  kind of a mystique behind who they actually are, even after
• 1:21:48
  the end of the book. Listen to this for a
• 1:21:51
  description. It's when Japhic dies.
• 1:21:53
  Smoke was pouring from his mouth and nostrils.
• 1:21:56
  He tried to pull himself up, he tried to cough, but instead all
• 1:22:01
  he did was die. Was die when one of the kids
• 1:22:06
  gets zapped by a ghost they go. A shame but at least it wasn't a
• 1:22:10
  girl. That that line really freaked me
• 1:22:14
  out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:15
  But, well, they make the point, don't they, that they need, they
• 1:22:18
  need those. I will.
• 1:22:22
  I mean, he makes the point, but it's kind of true, right?
• 1:22:27
  How about this? Then the IT hit the eyeless
• 1:22:29
  chest first with the sound of somebody dropping a crate of
• 1:22:33
  beer bottles shattered. I love that they just smashed
• 1:22:42
  just so easily. Oh my God, it's just replaced.
• 1:22:44
  The whole the whole fortress was rotating on its central axis.
• 1:22:50
  It was like watching a mounting, turning to get a better look at
• 1:22:53
  something. Hold on, I've got to find this.
• 1:22:56
  It's at the end of a chapter. It is so, so good.
• 1:23:01
  Hold on, it's when there were what the five or six eyeless are
• 1:23:09
  about to go into the thing. I can't find it here.
• 1:23:23
  I can't find it, but it's something like we need a handful
• 1:23:27
  of people to go through this weapon because there's only a
• 1:23:29
  certain percentage of people get through and also goes, well, I'm
• 1:23:34
  safe with it. A handful and they raises his
• 1:23:36
  hand and goes for a handful of 6.
• 1:23:39
  Oh boy, yeah, they real. She realised she's part of the
• 1:23:43
  suicide plan, yeah. Horrible.
• 1:23:47
  What by this? An infinite menace and a slight
• 1:23:49
  hum? Said the Doctor out loud,
• 1:23:51
  quoting Douglas Adams. Literally, says quoting Douglas
• 1:23:55
  Adams. That brings so much, so many
• 1:23:57
  questions of does Doctor Who existed and Doctor Who that I
• 1:24:01
  rather not think about. The the moment I think that
• 1:24:04
  really made me gasp. It was a very simple line was
• 1:24:10
  when the doctor just thought what if the weapon could be used
• 1:24:13
  for good? Because I think a lot of people
• 1:24:17
  in a lot of situations. I would I would I?
• 1:24:20
  Thought that way I could, I couldn't.
• 1:24:22
  Say no to a weapon like that. I'd be evil.
• 1:24:25
  I'd. I'd appreciate.
• 1:24:26
  Yeah, let me use that. And the last description I'm
• 1:24:29
  going to give is in from the very last scene.
• 1:24:31
  There was a gap in the style, in the skyline where the fortress
• 1:24:34
  had been, like the city was missing a tooth.
• 1:24:39
  Wait, hold on, there's one more. When he leaves the ghost behind,
• 1:24:47
  I will come back for you. The doctor.
• 1:24:49
  The doctor type quickly where is he aware as he did so that he
• 1:24:52
  made a similar promise to Della. He added a little more until it
• 1:24:55
  read I will come back for you plus Della.
• 1:24:58
  Then the doctor swept past, careful to avoid even the
• 1:25:00
  slightest physical contact with the ghost.
• 1:25:03
  He didn't look back as he carried it away so didn't see
• 1:25:05
  that giggle was watching him go tearful.
• 1:25:10
  But this is when he's about to, when he's about to activate the
• 1:25:13
  weapon. The fight had gone from him.
• 1:25:15
  This was his death, and there was no one in the universe that
• 1:25:18
  would mourn him. It's just, it's endless, isn't
• 1:25:22
  it? It's.
• 1:25:23
  Just wonderful. It's a terrific book, the last
• 1:25:26
  thing you expect from this range, but terrific.
• 1:25:30
  I mean, I've got no notes. Like, I mean, I've got loads of
• 1:25:32
  notes, but I've got no critical notes on this.
• 1:25:36
  I just think it's really sharp. I don't think it wastes a word.
• 1:25:42
  My only preference I think. I think part one goes oh maybe
• 1:25:45
  like 10-15 pages too long. I'd cut 10 pages maybe from Part
• 1:25:49
  1. That's just my personal thing
• 1:25:52
  because I found it getting a bit slower before we actually enter
• 1:25:56
  into the fortress. That's that's such a slight like
• 1:26:00
  little niggle with this book that it doesn't really matter
• 1:26:03
  because 10 pages you just read and they just get on with it.
• 1:26:06
  I knew we were going to the fortress because he leaves, you
• 1:26:12
  know, determined. And then we get a section where
• 1:26:15
  he finds the dead body and the the mother follows and all of
• 1:26:21
  the sort of horror around that. I don't know.
• 1:26:25
  Well, I mean if if that's all you can say, 15 pages less in
• 1:26:29
  one section. Yeah, even if that, I mean, if I
• 1:26:33
  read it again, I could be completely different or I don't
• 1:26:36
  know. That's that's some that's
• 1:26:39
  amazing. That's not even a definitive
• 1:26:41
  critique. But just just an impressive bit
• 1:26:44
  of work I think, and one that holds up in this range where
• 1:26:50
  relatively few do. It's one that I would say.
• 1:26:54
  Yes, you want to check out one. From that range, read The
• 1:26:57
  Eyeless. Especially this period where
• 1:26:59
  there are so many new series books coming out that is a kind
• 1:27:04
  of sea of maybe mediocrities, of a rude kind of comment that
• 1:27:12
  unambitious, where it's difficult to stand out.
• 1:27:14
  It's difficult to stand out because there's just so many.
• 1:27:17
  It's it's well, he wanted to stand.
• 1:27:19
  Out, he said he pitched it to. They they did and I think you
• 1:27:22
  sort. Of said it well, you know, we've
• 1:27:24
  just read a book about a load of class men.
• 1:27:27
  Kieran, where are we going next? The obverse, Well, glass men,
• 1:27:34
  elephant headed people, Iris, Wild time.
• 1:27:36
  Oh boy. Postmodern scenes in the cold
• 1:27:41
  and 20 questions. We're going to The Blue Angel by
• 1:27:45
  Paul Mars and Jeremy Ho. Yeah, his partner.
• 1:27:48
  That's right. I think this has one of the most
• 1:27:50
  beautiful covers of any Doctor Who book.
• 1:27:53
  It's absolutely. I would think it's also got It's
• 1:27:55
  also got one of the best chapter titles and they've got 2
• 1:27:57
  numbers. Oh, go on.
• 1:27:59
  Fits mate iris come dot dot dot because each chapter begins with
• 1:28:03
  the first sentence of the. And you know, I have done so
• 1:28:09
  much exploration recently of my favorite period of the EDA is,
• 1:28:13
  you know, sort of Fitz and Angie period that I've had.
• 1:28:16
  I've given relatively little consideration to Fitz and
• 1:28:20
  compassion. And this is where compassion is.
• 1:28:23
  I've got a soft spot for this era.
• 1:28:25
  Stepping well, I certainly think.
• 1:28:26
  There's we don't, we don't get a lot of compassion in this book,
• 1:28:29
  I'll tell you that much. She's very, very boring in this
• 1:28:31
  one. I won't I, won't I?
• 1:28:34
  Think it's because no one knew what to do with her at this
• 1:28:35
  point. But until we head to the
• 1:28:38
  obverse, Kieran, where can people find you?
• 1:28:41
  Online my friend. You can find me on Instagram and
• 1:28:46
  Blue Sky under at left-handed Dalek.
• 1:28:50
  Where did that come? From.
• 1:28:51
  Yeah, I'm left-handed. Oh, are you a Dalek?
• 1:28:57
  No, but I don't know. After I came up with it, I
• 1:28:59
  thought Daleks don't even have hands, do they?
• 1:29:01
  Do you know, or what is their primary hand?
• 1:29:03
  Is it the gun or the plunger? I've always got it in my head
• 1:29:06
  that you're at inflatable Dalek. I don't know why.
• 1:29:10
  So I always put inflatable in and I'm like, where is he?
• 1:29:14
  Where is. He Who do you think I am?
• 1:29:18
  I don't know you sick fucker. Whoever you are, inflatable
• 1:29:22
  Dalek, I, I apologise. Goes to a lot of fairy
• 1:29:26
  conventions. You got my attention, Karen.
• 1:29:32
  Thank you so much for reading this.
• 1:29:34
  I think we both got a race through this book.
• 1:29:37
  I'm it was an absolute pleasure. It came completely out of
• 1:29:40
  nowhere going. Do you want to read this one?
• 1:29:42
  Yeah, All right. And that consumed in about two
• 1:29:46
  or three days. I was so desperate I sent the
• 1:29:48
  bloody thing to you. The last copy I had, the first
• 1:29:53
  one read this, was I loaned off a friend and gave it back to
• 1:29:56
  them. So it was absolute pleasure to
• 1:29:58
  reread, of course. Well, let me just.
• 1:30:01
  Say was the only one I've done on here that I have read before.
• 1:30:04
  Thank you very much for your time tonight.
• 1:30:06
  And thank you. Until next time.