Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Interference Book One by Lawrence Miles (featuring Andrew Batty, Jon Arnold & Luke Sims-Jenkins)

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Hamster Book Club - Interference Book One by Lawrence Miles (featuring Andrew Batty, Jon Arnold & Luke Sims-Jenkins) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:03
  Badar turned his head. He saw the outline of the other
• 0:07
  prisoner hunched over the handle of the door.
• 0:10
  The man kept scratching away at it, tapping the lock, twisting
• 0:14
  the handle. Badar realised he was using both
• 0:17
  hands. How he could do that kind of
• 0:20
  thing with a broken arm, Badar wasn't sure.
• 0:23
  I can't do it, he said. Badar.
• 0:26
  Granted, he said yesterday, no escape, but I know why I can't
• 0:33
  do it. The man moved away from the
• 0:35
  door, then collapsed, folding up into a little bundle in the
• 0:39
  corner of the cell that I guessed he hadn't had much
• 0:42
  choice. You couldn't stand up straight
• 0:45
  for long, not after the guards had used the batons on your
• 0:48
  spine. I've been in prisons before, the
• 0:51
  man said. I told you that, didn't I?
• 0:54
  Plenty of prisons I've escaped from, most of them bargained my
• 0:57
  way out of the rest. He let his snapped arm flop onto
• 1:01
  the floor by his side. Did I tell you about the Daleks?
• 1:06
  No, said bada. Machine monsters, the man
• 1:11
  explained. Very important to that mythology
• 1:13
  of ours. Dark things, non darker.
• 1:18
  I've been kept in prisons by them more than once.
• 1:21
  They use torture too, but they're much more precise,
• 1:24
  methodical. They have exact formulae for
• 1:27
  calculating when prisoners should be hurt and for working
• 1:30
  out the optimum times for interrogation.
• 1:33
  In dialect prisons, you settle into a kind of routine that I
• 1:37
  saw the man's pale fingers tapping against the floor.
• 1:40
  In fact, most of the prisons I've been in have been like
• 1:42
  that, Regulated. They do everything they can to
• 1:45
  destroy yourself will, but they do it by numbers.
• 1:48
  They use mind probes, neural implants, hallucinogenic drugs,
• 1:51
  sometimes everything done by the book.
• 1:55
  No bulk, said Bala. Not here.
• 1:58
  I know, the man said. That's the point.
• 2:02
  I escape so often, I never stop to think about the way I do it.
• 2:05
  But I'll tell you the secret, if you like.
• 2:08
  The way you escape is by slipping through the cracks in
• 2:10
  the routine. You work out how your captors
• 2:13
  operate, and you fill up all the holes in their schedules.
• 2:16
  You've got to turn yourself into a kind of skeleton key, find the
• 2:19
  gaps in their system, get into the workings of the lock, turn
• 2:23
  the tumblers from the inside. But there's no logic, he went
• 2:27
  on. No system, not here.
• 2:30
  They didn't have any real excuse for locking you up.
• 2:33
  Your arrest was very nearly random.
• 2:35
  They don't even have any reason to torture us.
• 2:37
  They just do it when they feel like it.
• 2:39
  There's no routine, no order, nothing you can adapt to.
• 2:43
  That's why I can't escape from this cell.
• 2:46
  I can't concentrate properly because there isn't anything to
• 2:48
  concentrate on. There's just brutality.
• 2:51
  Pointless brutality. You see, this isn't like Holam.
• 2:56
  There's no implant, there's no super alien intelligence
• 2:58
  stopping me from getting out. It's not an experiment, it's not
• 3:02
  part of some master plan or other.
• 3:04
  It's real. Move through time, said Bara.
• 3:09
  Stop everything. I can't.
• 3:13
  Even if I had the TARDIS, I can't turn back time.
• 3:16
  It's all in the equations. It's a bit like Schrodinger's
• 3:19
  cat. I can't erase this part of
• 3:21
  history, not now. We've seen what's in the box.
• 3:24
  Maybe if we were in the middle of a timing malfunction.
• 3:27
  No, it doesn't matter. It can't be done, not even by me
• 3:31
  that I wasn't sure what any of that meant.
• 3:34
  But he wasn't going to let it stop him.
• 3:37
  But if you escape, you could walk through time, stop the
• 3:40
  future, bring down the governments, get rid of the
• 3:43
  majors, the Blairs, the Clarks. Yes, said the man.
• 3:48
  And he said it as if it were a confession.
• 3:51
  Yes, I could. I could rewrite the whole of
• 3:54
  British history from this point onward, and world history and
• 3:58
  galactic history. You could stop the British, stop
• 4:02
  my people, stop the torturing. I could, but I wouldn't.
• 4:08
  You stop it on other worlds. I know the man cut in.
• 4:12
  We've already been through this. The answer to your question is I
• 4:15
  don't know. I don't know why Earth should be
• 4:18
  different. I don't know why I don't sort
• 4:20
  out the Troubles in Ireland. I don't know why I don't disarm
• 4:23
  Iraq. I don't know why I don't stop
• 4:26
  the genocide of Malaysia. Perhaps you're right.
• 4:29
  Perhaps I've become so attached to Earth I'm scared to interfere
• 4:32
  too much. And yes, I know there's no
• 4:35
  difference between what happens on Earth and what happens on
• 4:38
  Terra Alpha or Varos or Proxima 2.
• 4:42
  But I can't change things. I've made a decision, I've drawn
• 4:46
  a line in the sand, and if I cross that line, I'll end up
• 4:49
  just like the master, meddling for my own purposes.
• 4:53
  You do that anyway, Badaar pointed out.
• 4:56
  You bring down tyrants, you said, just because.
• 5:00
  Because you think they're bad. Bad people.
• 5:04
  In the darkness on the other side of the cell, Badaar could
• 5:07
  just make out the prisoner's head bobbing up and down.
• 5:10
  Yes. It's got nothing to do with the
• 5:13
  laws of time. It's all to do with me.
• 5:15
  It's to do with the way I see things.
• 5:18
  I see people in need of help on the outer planets and I tell
• 5:21
  myself it's a crusade. I see people in need of help in
• 5:24
  Africa or Israel or even in Britain, and I tell myself it's
• 5:28
  only local politics. I like to think I've got
• 5:31
  principles, but it's the way things look that makes me act
• 5:35
  the way I do, not the way things really are.
• 5:38
  It's true what you said. I just do whatever I think I can
• 5:42
  get away with. Hamster book club the Doctor Who
• 5:58
  novel Review podcast with Joe Ford, Andrew Batty, Luke Sims
• 6:03
  Jenkins, and John Arnold. Interference by Lawrence Miles,
• 6:15
  Book 1. We are gathered here today to
• 6:27
  discuss the very sad and imminent departure of Fitz
• 6:32
  Criner from the 8th Doctor books.
• 6:35
  Oh, spoiler for book 2. Welcome back to the Hamster Book
• 6:39
  Club. My name is Joe Fors and again,
• 6:42
  second time in one week I have assembled the dream team of Are
• 6:47
  you ready for this John Arnold? Hello Luke since Jenkins.
• 6:53
  Hi I'm. Andrew Batty, how are you guys?
• 6:59
  Good. Thanks.
• 7:02
  Yeah, this is the first time we've finished a book like we
• 7:05
  finished in Wonderland because it's a, it's a, it's a quick
• 7:08
  read, but we before we even recorded that, I think all four
• 7:13
  of us already finished interference.
• 7:16
  Both books I think. Yeah, yeah.
• 7:19
  Yeah, this is the most like planned ahead we've ever.
• 7:22
  Been. Yeah, 600 pages.
• 7:26
  Easy. All right, and we're a bunch of
• 7:29
  nerds. This is a big book in every
• 7:32
  sense of the word. Big, yeah.
• 7:35
  Big ideas, big developments. Just big in terms of lots and
• 7:40
  lots of pages with varying font sizes.
• 7:45
  Before we get onto interference by Lawrence Miles that we are
• 7:48
  already doing Book 1 today. There's so many talking points,
• 7:51
  we've decided to sort of split this like the book into two
• 7:54
  parts. I'm going to hand this over to
• 7:58
  lovely Luke to give us our icebreaker question today.
• 8:02
  Yes, it's been over a year, but we're still awkward around each
• 8:06
  other and we need to break the ice some more.
• 8:07
  So get. Get the juices flowing, you
• 8:11
  know. That's right.
• 8:12
  That's right. Well, yes, indeed.
• 8:14
  So. So should Doctor Who books
• 8:21
  intrude on TV continuity? That is our ice breaker
• 8:25
  question. I'll throw it.
• 8:27
  Who's looking the most terrified at getting this question?
• 8:31
  I think it's Andrew, but I'll go to I'll go to John first.
• 8:33
  What? What do you think mate?
• 8:35
  I am quite happy to see it intruded on Constiguity if the
• 8:39
  story justifies it. You know, again, this is going
• 8:43
  to be an editorial call. But if it's just, you know, say
• 8:46
  David A Mcatee comes in going, I just were off Sarah Jane Smith.
• 8:50
  I mean, no, that's no fun. That's just something for
• 8:54
  impact. It's nothing that serves a
• 8:57
  story. It's all if you've got a good
• 8:59
  story, and I think it's the same is true with television, you
• 9:02
  know, with some of that times children.
• 9:03
  If you've got a good enough story that you think has enough
• 9:06
  impact and enough weight to, you know, to make a change and you
• 9:11
  can then kind of give the fans a little room to be a bit
• 9:15
  comfortable with that change, then go for your life is what I
• 9:19
  I say. Yeah, what about you, Andrew?
• 9:24
  Yeah, similar to John, I think. Yeah, if you've got a good story
• 9:27
  to tell. But I think I do like a series
• 9:31
  to follow its own continuity, and I get a bit frustrated when
• 9:35
  it doesn't. So I think, you know, you should
• 9:39
  respect what the writers have done before you and you should
• 9:42
  try and tie into it where you can and use it as a starting
• 9:45
  point. And I think you see it with Big
• 9:48
  Finish now where because they've been going for so long, they've
• 9:51
  started sort of contradicting their own stories and redoing
• 9:55
  some of the same ideas, but also still being in the same
• 9:59
  continuity. So it just feels a bit like, I
• 10:02
  think if you're going to break it, say that you're going to
• 10:04
  break it and say that it's like a new series.
• 10:06
  It's something different. So that you can kind of, I think
• 10:09
  that the reason why it annoys me sometimes when you get these
• 10:12
  contradictions, because it's, it's less to do with like, Oh
• 10:14
  no, like that my my Doctor Who chronology has broken.
• 10:18
  It's more to do with the characters.
• 10:21
  And it's like, well, if that didn't happen, how can I invest
• 10:26
  in these characters and how can I invest in these stories that
• 10:28
  you're telling? If next week we're going to be
• 10:30
  back to the reset button and you know, like error mems never
• 10:34
  happened to to Perry and the 6th doctor and they don't remember
• 10:38
  that character then like, well, why should I invest in the story
• 10:42
  you're telling now? Because the stuff I've been
• 10:44
  invested in for 20 years didn't happen?
• 10:46
  I mean, they I don't that was just an example plucked out of
• 10:48
  nowhere. I don't know if they've written
• 10:50
  them out. But you know, it's just this
• 10:51
  thing of like, I want the characters to have gone through
• 10:54
  events that they've gone through and for it to matter and for it
• 10:56
  to affect the stories that are going forward.
• 10:59
  I'm less worried about like, oh, they've done Atlantis twice.
• 11:03
  That's it. Poor Aram no longer exists
• 11:05
  anymore now because of that run, you know, right?
• 11:07
  Kingmaker gone. Council of Garcia gone.
• 11:11
  All. Those bride of Peloton.
• 11:13
  Fuck off, mate. All right, I'm.
• 11:15
  Sorry, Dragon. I mean, it doesn't make any
• 11:17
  sense though, does it? Like in case of Androsani, the
• 11:20
  the point of that story is he say he sacrificed his life for
• 11:23
  somebody that he's just met. But that's the point.
• 11:26
  Right. Yeah, totally.
• 11:29
  I don't think it bothers me the way I feel like the 5th Doctor
• 11:31
  would have saved her if she'd met her for five seconds or 500
• 11:34
  years. So it works.
• 11:36
  I also kind of like a lot of the stories in there, so I'm willing
• 11:39
  to let it stretch. Now.
• 11:42
  Do I like the idea that you just said, Joe, that he just met her
• 11:47
  and he saved her life? Yeah.
• 11:48
  I think it works a lot better in terms of the story and things
• 11:51
  like that, but there's so many good Airman stories in that run.
• 11:55
  There's only maybe a couple Conquers.
• 11:57
  I mean, Necromanty is there? I know Conrake's got a story in
• 12:00
  that bunch as well. He sucks.
• 12:03
  I've got to get my break in. But yeah, I don't mind him
• 12:06
  stretching a bit. I don't think Tegan and Nisir
• 12:09
  probably had that many adventures with the 5th Doctor
• 12:12
  either, but every year there's more, so I'm happy with that.
• 12:18
  As with messing with continuity and characters and making it
• 12:21
  feel like it matters and things like that.
• 12:23
  I was a massive fan of the Star Wars book.
• 12:24
  So yeah, saying what they did to my boy Luke in in The Last Jedi,
• 12:29
  I was. I just watched that today.
• 12:31
  You know I. Know you put it in my mind.
• 12:34
  Loved it, I loved it. I don't hold the TV show as
• 12:40
  something as sacred. You can't break as much as
• 12:42
  others. I got in Doctor Who through the
• 12:45
  books, the books. I'm a wilderness kid, so I was
• 12:48
  never watching things in order anyway.
• 12:53
  So you know, Andrew Zani was my first Davison story.
• 12:57
  My second one was Castro Velva. Everything in between is a
• 13:00
  missing story as far as I'm concerned.
• 13:02
  You know, I'm more, I know they're always going to survive.
• 13:05
  So it it's never been a huge big deal for me.
• 13:10
  Just make it good. There's like even even with my
• 13:14
  rudimentary teenage knowledge, Doctor Who, I knew that legacy
• 13:18
  Daleks shit. I just like I knew that this
• 13:21
  kind of style of meshing things that it wasn't working.
• 13:25
  But there's ways to do it that I do think does because I've I've
• 13:29
  read divided loyalties. I've heard that it's not for
• 13:31
  everyone as well. That's some kind of John Peel
• 13:33
  levels of continuity. And yet I will just destroy that
• 13:38
  book in like a day and a half, two days, because it's just so
• 13:42
  much fun and such. Together, a small prospectus of
• 13:45
  those books, maybe Legacy of the Daleks, divided loyalties, be
• 13:48
  faced to the enemy you know, and harm them to all the big
• 13:51
  finished writers and say look, no, This is why you don't do
• 13:54
  this. Don't do this.
• 13:55
  All right, stop meshing together all this continuity and slapping
• 13:58
  1099 on the cover. They've just got the thrill of
• 14:02
  the name there. That's all they're looking for
• 14:04
  in that they can play with those toys.
• 14:06
  You know, because it's just got all the faces on the cover.
• 14:08
  But that's what story is all about, you know?
• 14:11
  I'm also, I also want to make the point that if you're willing
• 14:15
  to take these toys and do something different with them.
• 14:19
  Also keep in mind that other people are going to play with
• 14:22
  these toys and just chill. Because this is the first book
• 14:26
  of ever I can think of in my head where I've I'm reading
• 14:31
  interference book 1 and I'm like, all right, so Lawrence
• 14:34
  obviously likes this story. Thought this one sucked and like
• 14:38
  this one. And I never really got a feeling
• 14:41
  or vibe from that from other Doctor Who writers reading
• 14:44
  reading the books. I've referenced other books, but
• 14:46
  they might not say things like like like shit like shitting on
• 14:49
  them. So I get the impression I
• 14:51
  already knew we didn't in real life anyway.
• 14:53
  But just from reading this, he does not like our Natural
• 14:56
  History play with his toys in a way he doesn't like it.
• 15:01
  Yes, I can. Tell you.
• 15:03
  Exactly that for facts. I do think there is a I'm not
• 15:06
  going to pick a Last Jedi style fight with you here.
• 15:09
  I do think there is a massive difference between making
• 15:12
  character choices because I don't think they shitted on any
• 15:16
  continuity at all. I just think people don't didn't
• 15:18
  like the direction they took his character in.
• 15:21
  That wasn't going back and rewriting anything that had
• 15:24
  already been. It was just like this is who he
• 15:26
  is now. What Lawrence Miles is doing in
• 15:28
  interference is complete, like retroactively rewriting Doctor
• 15:33
  Who history as a way of saying don't get comfortable because
• 15:39
  anything could happen now, anything in your beloved
• 15:42
  comfortable show. And what's more comfortable than
• 15:45
  fucking season 11, the perk we era?
• 15:48
  You know, if you think this is all safe, all bets are off when
• 15:54
  it comes to a continuity itself. Yeah, I think do it if it's
• 15:58
  going to innovate the story you're telling or the direction
• 16:02
  the books or the audios or whatever are going in.
• 16:04
  Don't do it just because I don't do it for a cheap trick.
• 16:08
  And I think that has been done like, I think like this
• 16:12
  bafflingly rewriting continuity. I think it's something Steve
• 16:17
  Moffatt said fairly recently, which is to be he should be
• 16:20
  maybe respectful of it, but not reverent, because if you're
• 16:23
  reverent, you've got it on a plinth.
• 16:25
  This is object something that you know, it's a solid that you
• 16:30
  can't fiddle with it. It's it's almost like you see,
• 16:34
  you know, you see your favorite person around and you can't talk
• 16:37
  to them. But this is Miles is always in a
• 16:39
  conversation. He's always interested in doing.
• 16:41
  You know what he did with the Crotons in alien bodies, for
• 16:44
  instance, My God, one of the greatest things in Doctor books
• 16:48
  when they you know, he pulls a cliffhanger halfway through
• 16:51
  where it's the Crotons. You're expecting the Daleks.
• 16:55
  The story of the Croton who has to go on that journey for five
• 16:58
  days. He's just walking all the way up
• 17:00
  these steps to go to Croton Heaven or whatever it was.
• 17:03
  Oh, hilarious stuff. But like I think both Moffett
• 17:07
  and Chibnall people say, you know, when he brought in the
• 17:10
  ward Doctor, so he wedged in a regeneration that we never knew
• 17:14
  about, just technically changing continuity, right?
• 17:16
  We didn't know that was there. And chippers with the Timeless
• 17:18
  Children who say actually this wasn't the 1st Doctor, there was
• 17:21
  loads before that, but you can still have him as your First
• 17:25
  Doctor. And you know all those.
• 17:27
  I think they learnt a way of shocking added layers but
• 17:33
  keeping Canon intact. Because the only other approach
• 17:38
  you can have is the rest of today.
• 17:40
  So when we go there's a time war, all bets are off.
• 17:43
  So you don't have any continuity essentially as blanks like, but
• 17:48
  you can only do that every so often.
• 17:50
  I mean, you don't get. The time warms without Lawrence.
• 17:53
  Wow, quiet. And that's how why it became
• 17:55
  Star Wars rather than this fabulous set of books that we're
• 17:58
  talking about today. But like seriously like would.
• 18:03
  I'm sure the new series would have done something big with
• 18:06
  time wards and things like that, but would there have been an
• 18:09
  actual time war in the new show without?
• 18:12
  I mean, this was, this is a whole giant of the books the
• 18:16
  whole time War faction paradox stuff time.
• 18:19
  War stuff, which he comes from the Alamo backup strips in that
• 18:23
  they just released from DWM. And even with my rooted, I've
• 18:28
  seen most of the new series once.
• 18:30
  I've seen all of it, but I've seen most of it only once.
• 18:33
  And even I could pick up just just from reading interference
• 18:36
  book 1 and and I guess 2 that yeah, I would say the first two
• 18:43
  showrunners of the new series of Doctor Who have definitely read
• 18:46
  Lawrence Miles interference definitely.
• 18:49
  I mean, in Book 2 I started to make a list and it became quite
• 18:52
  a compelling case of, well, I won't go down in illegal.
• 18:57
  Even that because because I did a read of The Invisibles for
• 19:01
  this podcast as well and Lawrence has been reading Grant
• 19:04
  Morrison. It's a lot.
• 19:07
  But but but weaving in Doctor Who consonancy so I can't think
• 19:11
  it does feel original. It's the way I put it is, you
• 19:14
  know, it's not a RIP off. It's a, he's in a conversation.
• 19:19
  He's, he's made. If he's using concepts, he's
• 19:21
  using them for his own purposes, using them very differently,
• 19:24
  which I think is fine because you're bringing something else
• 19:27
  to it. You're not just going, oh, I, I
• 19:29
  fancy that from someone else's work.
• 19:30
  You're just going, right? What can I do?
• 19:32
  How can I use this? What is exciting is he's
• 19:36
  obviously dipped his toes in at the time warring alien bodies
• 19:39
  and here he dies in Head 1st and says and there's more or less to
• 19:43
  come and it's really exciting. So let's talk about the book.
• 19:48
  He's going to stay. We've, we've gone beyond ice
• 19:50
  cream, you know, we're just. Talking.
• 19:52
  About all right, well, can I, can I do the usual thing?
• 19:55
  Can I ask you all just to give me like your your opening
• 19:58
  thoughts on the book Book 1? And then we'll sort of go into a
• 20:02
  lot of this very complicated stuff.
• 20:05
  Andrew, what did you think of Interference Book 1?
• 20:09
  Well, I've been trying to play my cards a little bit closer to
• 20:12
  my best in the in the chat. I didn't want to tell you I've
• 20:15
  tried to finish both volumes, but I think that this is one of
• 20:20
  the best Doctor Who books ever written.
• 20:24
  And I had a complete like about face while I was reading it
• 20:29
  because at the beginning I wasn't really enjoying it and
• 20:34
  because because it's kind of goes out of its way deliberately
• 20:38
  to kind of antagonize and shock. But then once, like reading
• 20:43
  through our chats, especially the stuff that John said, I was
• 20:46
  like, Oh yes, I meant to feel that.
• 20:47
  But I think that's what the book is doing.
• 20:49
  It's deliberately doing that. It's deliberately, it's
• 20:53
  examining what it means for Doctor Who to be placed into
• 20:58
  real life politics and how it works and how it doesn't work
• 21:02
  and how it fails and how the Doctor fails and also how the
• 21:06
  world operates when you remove the Doctor from it.
• 21:10
  So yeah, it's just, it's a really fascinating, lengthy and
• 21:16
  like really dense, but in a good way, exploration of some really
• 21:22
  interesting themes in a way that very few Doctor Who books kind
• 21:26
  of explore this kind of material.
• 21:29
  I mean, it's kind of unique, this book, and yeah, I
• 21:33
  absolutely loved it. You really did keep your cars
• 21:35
  close to your because I thought you were going the other way on
• 21:38
  this call. I'll meet you, Tom.
• 21:41
  I'm inviting you to poker next. All right, Luke, Interference
• 21:46
  Book 1. I read interference book one in
• 21:50
  2 1/2 days. I absolutely love Interference
• 21:54
  book 1. This I, I do remember on the
• 22:04
  chat saying, oh, I had a fun time reading this.
• 22:05
  I think feel like fun was the wrong word.
• 22:08
  Like when you read a book in that man of time, the first
• 22:13
  thing that pops in your head was like, wow, I read that so
• 22:15
  quickly. I must have had quite a bit of
• 22:17
  fun. Fun's the wrong word.
• 22:20
  It's engrossing. It's got so many intelligent
• 22:23
  ideas. It's so well written.
• 22:26
  It's it's a bit slow, but not a bad way.
• 22:29
  I'm kind of I'm I'm interested in what he's laying down.
• 22:32
  I like the philosophical discussions.
• 22:34
  I feel like Beta steals the show for me in book one just in terms
• 22:40
  of his his thought processes and logic, in terms of his
• 22:44
  conversations with the Doctor. And then I think like the other
• 22:47
  character who steals the show, I think if in both books is Sarah
• 22:52
  Jane Smith, who I think is the best character in the book by
• 22:56
  none. By none.
• 22:58
  So much to talk about with Sarah Jane Smith in this book.
• 23:01
  I think this is one of the best. Lawrence Smith One thing wrong
• 23:04
  with Sarah. Yeah, there was one thing it's
• 23:07
  saying book one or book 2. It might be Book 2, but look,
• 23:11
  it's, yeah, it's just this one little mention.
• 23:13
  And I was like, I hate that. I'll ignore that because
• 23:17
  everything else was Sarah Jane. Was it a sterilary?
• 23:20
  Is that what you're talking about?
• 23:21
  Yes, yes, old. I can't imagine any doctors
• 23:25
  actually like even the 3rd Doctor.
• 23:27
  The 3rd Doctor's not going to like.
• 23:29
  Wait, if he did that with Sarah, do you think he did that with
• 23:31
  Joe? No way.
• 23:33
  Get out of fucking here. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly
• 23:44
  what I was going to say. Well, Luke said enjoyment is the
• 23:47
  wrong word. But the ideas here, it's a bit
• 23:53
  slow because this is essentially all set up for the second-half
• 23:58
  for the resolution plot, but it's just throwing ideas at you
• 24:01
  on every single page. It's unsettling you.
• 24:04
  It's going at you. And this is a book that could
• 24:08
  really only have been written at that time because the the
• 24:15
  grammar, attentive visibles, it was grammar.
• 24:18
  It was a magic spell for the end of the 20th century, and I think
• 24:23
  Lawrence is almost trying that with Doctor Who here.
• 24:26
  But the problem is it's neutral. Neutral because on the Backpage
• 24:30
  is that advert for the for signs of time.
• 24:32
  So Big Finish are on their way. So it's the last time the books
• 24:37
  are the centre of attention. It's the last time that you can
• 24:40
  write a book that you can go this book will change Doctor Who
• 24:44
  forever or I will try and change Doctor Who forever with this
• 24:48
  book. And it just took me back to
• 24:50
  night notes. I wasn't long online.
• 24:52
  The Jeeper go to meeting list. I swear the discussions we used
• 24:56
  to have on interference what about twice as long as book on
• 24:59
  every single damn thread because there's that much there.
• 25:04
  This is what we needed, Andrew, when we was younger, you know,
• 25:07
  we needed our own little jade pagoda.
• 25:10
  Sorry, me and Andrew was just reading the books, desperately
• 25:13
  wishing we could talk to somebody else about them.
• 25:15
  That's why we're getting it all out of our system now.
• 25:18
  I just used to lurk on like Gallifrey based on the official
• 25:21
  one but yeah never contributed because it was just people like
• 25:26
  shouting at each other. The golden was mostly that too,
• 25:30
  so you didn't miss it. I'll, I'll, I'll put my castle
• 25:34
  on the table. I, I said in the I mean, I've
• 25:36
  said this in the chat about 50 times.
• 25:38
  I think Lawrence Miles may possibly be my favorite Doctor
• 25:42
  Who author, and this exemplifies why, because he's just
• 25:46
  interrogating Doctor Who in so many interests.
• 25:48
  He's not doesn't want to write a, a cliche potboiler.
• 25:52
  This isn't cursile. He's taken apart Doctor Who, and
• 25:55
  he's going to make you sort of look at it and go, well, yeah.
• 25:58
  Why is the doctor able to do that and not able to do that?
• 26:01
  And why is that OK? And I think I know why this
• 26:05
  lingered right at the bottom of all those polls.
• 26:08
  Was it the dynamic rankings? It was the the least popular
• 26:12
  book at 35% interference, and I think it's possibly because of
• 26:17
  what it did to poor old Jon Pertwee in Book 2, and possibly
• 26:23
  because it just isn't interested in being a lovely, fluffy Doctor
• 26:29
  Who adventure. It really does want to lift up
• 26:31
  the stone and look at the ugliness that's underneath.
• 26:35
  And you're either going to get on board with that or you're
• 26:37
  not. And I was so engaged with it.
• 26:40
  I think the problem with it a little bit is that it's all of
• 26:44
  those things, but then it's also like this cornerstone of the arc
• 26:48
  and the range, and it feels like the only person who can really
• 26:52
  tackle these Lawrence Miles ideas is Lawrence Miles.
• 26:55
  And then when you get other writers kind of trying to fit it
• 26:58
  into a normal Doctor Who framework, it just doesn't
• 27:02
  really work because it doesn't have this sort of thematic depth
• 27:05
  to it, which you wouldn't expect it to because they're not
• 27:07
  creations of those authors. And it's like compassion.
• 27:11
  I think she just doesn't work in other writers hands in the way
• 27:16
  that she does in this book. And she doesn't really work as a
• 27:19
  companion and that her journey isn't told by her creator.
• 27:24
  It's like, I wish, I wish they'd just sort of been like Lawrence
• 27:27
  Miles gets like a six book set. He can do what he wants with
• 27:32
  them. They're divorced from like the
• 27:33
  constituency of the rest of the wage.
• 27:34
  He can just do whatever he wants.
• 27:36
  Get it out of your system, Laurence.
• 27:38
  Well, I just mean like, because it's worth it.
• 27:39
  Like he's, he's an artist and this stuff is great and it feels
• 27:43
  like, you know, if you've got someone with this talent, just
• 27:46
  let them cook. But if you're trying to tell an
• 27:49
  ongoing storyline with multiple authors, it doesn't really work
• 27:53
  involving him in that because. He.
• 27:56
  His, his creativity sort of and his ideas overflow.
• 28:00
  And it's not, it's not really the fault of those other writers
• 28:03
  because they're just not doing it in the same way that he's
• 28:06
  doing it, you know? What I do I agree and I
• 28:08
  disagree, which is a great. Start to a conversation.
• 28:12
  I agree because I think nobody can do it as good as Laura's.
• 28:14
  Like he, he sets it all up and nobody else really matches him
• 28:19
  for both the privacy of the prose and the the fullness of
• 28:24
  the ideas. You know, the imagination.
• 28:27
  But I love watching the this is something I've learned about the
• 28:30
  8th Doctor books as I've come back to them, is I love watching
• 28:33
  those writers flail around trying to do something with
• 28:35
  those ideas. So taking a Planet 5, Shadow of
• 28:39
  Avalon, Ancestor Cell and all of that, they, none of them are as
• 28:43
  good as this, but they're all kind of exciting because there's
• 28:48
  all those writers trying to go, well, how can we make these mad
• 28:51
  ideas work? And like it or not, there's such
• 28:55
  ambition in these ideas that it just spreads right way through
• 29:00
  to the ancestor cell. Whether those books are good or
• 29:03
  bad, they're massive. They're huge ideas books.
• 29:07
  I really like that. It's really exciting you.
• 29:09
  Can't not engage with the ideas if you're a writer, but the
• 29:12
  Ranger don't think if because automatically you read something
• 29:16
  like interference. It's got that momentum and then
• 29:19
  you've got what's it the blue Angel afterwards and then take
• 29:22
  your black, which gains those deers and then you how do you
• 29:25
  write an Audrey book? And you need ordinary books in a
• 29:28
  you know, you're doing 11 books a year at this point.
• 29:31
  So the problem is, yes, I would love to see Andrew's idea of a
• 29:35
  Lawrence Miles miniseries. But in reality, Steve Cole, I
• 29:39
  think, you know, he didn't have talk.
• 29:40
  He had to sweep the office up as well.
• 29:42
  He's already got two books a month.
• 29:43
  He can't edit three. Yeah, yeah.
• 29:46
  Exactly it just. Didn't really fit with the way
• 29:48
  that the range was set up. And like, I think with like the
• 29:52
  Star Wars books, I think they were more sporadic.
• 29:54
  They weren't like that. So they were more sort of like
• 29:57
  events which they sort of dropped and they were like, you
• 30:00
  know, best sellers which ran for months.
• 30:01
  Whereas the Doctor Who line is a monthly series where you've just
• 30:04
  got to keep, keep printing. So yeah.
• 30:08
  Tread to treadmill. What's super interesting is when
• 30:10
  Justin Richards is like, right to ask Steve Cole.
• 30:13
  I'm taking over now. Oh God almighty, look how
• 30:16
  complicated this has all got, right?
• 30:18
  Blow up Gallifrey, end the time War, take away his memories, get
• 30:21
  rid of all continuity, put him on the train and we'll have a
• 30:25
  nice cosy Horror Story in Middleton.
• 30:27
  Lovely. That's what we all want, yeah.
• 30:30
  They totally pushed away from all of this, didn't they?
• 30:32
  The the reaction to the success of this arc was to basically
• 30:38
  dismiss the whole thing. So does that mean then the none
• 30:41
  of these ideas were viable? Oh, or you could say that it's
• 30:45
  because of this book that the range goat gets better.
• 30:51
  Because I like From the Burning to the end.
• 30:54
  I can't remember the strength of the books between this and the
• 30:58
  ancestor salary, I don't think. It's a bad run.
• 31:01
  I think it's a. Pretty good run, yeah?
• 31:03
  Yeah, but no, I, I, I get, I know it's going to sound strange
• 31:09
  because I've said just said I I love book one, which obviously
• 31:14
  infers that I'm not huge on book 2.
• 31:16
  But if I was Stephen Cole at the time, I might have submit.
• 31:20
  I would, I might have even if they would have said, Nah, we
• 31:22
  don't do that. I might have submitted this to
• 31:24
  the Hugo award because even though I don't love everything
• 31:29
  in it, this is this is a literary book.
• 31:31
  Maybe that's another reaction people have for that.
• 31:34
  People don't. People maybe don't have that
• 31:37
  mindset of like, I want to read Doctor Who book.
• 31:39
  Fuck, I hope it's literary and I hope it's got a lot to say.
• 31:43
  Instead people are like, I want to see the Doctor Who battle the
• 31:46
  Cyberman with, you know, on earth in an adventure.
• 31:51
  I've never seen on the telly before something like that.
• 31:54
  Illegal alien. That's what I want.
• 31:56
  Well, you know what Andrew just said about Miles being an
• 31:58
  artist. That's such a great description
• 32:01
  because I feel like, you know, if we do a comparison, Mike
• 32:05
  Tucker and Robert Perry are sort of using big fat crayons and
• 32:09
  drawing on a bit of paper. And Lawrence Miles has got like
• 32:13
  the most sophisticated sort of scalpel, like watercolor
• 32:17
  paintbrush, which he's painting his picture with such detail,
• 32:21
  you know, and breath. Is that rude or is that true?
• 32:26
  It's not rude, I enjoy it. I enjoy illegal alien for what
• 32:30
  it is. It's a.
• 32:32
  What else? You crayons?
• 32:33
  Enjoy yourself I. Can I can handle some crayons I
• 32:37
  think. I think after reading
• 32:38
  interference I wanted some crayons but I didn't go in that
• 32:42
  direction. But now.
• 32:43
  You've got attracting. Pollock after this.
• 32:46
  Yeah, it did, yeah. It can't be this every month.
• 32:49
  It could be because this is this is an examination of what Doctor
• 32:56
  Who is and what it can do. Like you don't want that level
• 32:59
  of sort of introspection every month.
• 33:01
  You just want Doctor Who to be Doctor Who for, you know, 8 out
• 33:05
  of 10 of the books that you read.
• 33:06
  But you do you want this sort of stuff occasionally and this sort
• 33:09
  of level of, yeah, examination of what, what you're consuming
• 33:16
  and it's not going to work for all readers.
• 33:19
  But you know, like, I wish we had more Doctor Who's like bits.
• 33:23
  Yeah, you, you, you need the the kind of ordinary books so that
• 33:27
  these come along and then stand out, I think.
• 33:30
  Although you recently talked about frontier worlds, didn't
• 33:33
  you? I did.
• 33:34
  And that is a typical Doctor Who book with a big environmental
• 33:38
  measure. But it's a good one, right?
• 33:39
  Say after this. It's really good and the
• 33:41
  companions are so well written in it as.
• 33:43
  Well, does compassion bury an axe in somebody's head?
• 33:46
  Yes. Yeah, that's.
• 33:47
  What I love that right? She's fabulous in it just a bit.
• 33:52
  Just have. This.
• 33:54
  Yeah, totally. I'm going to do something I
• 33:56
  would never normally do on the book club because usually we're
• 33:58
  just singing about all over the place, but I'm sort of going to
• 34:00
  go guide us through the story and see where we end up.
• 34:03
  Yeah, we. Haven't mentioned anything that
• 34:04
  actually. There's so much to talk about.
• 34:08
  We're doing 2 episodes, yeah. We're sort of opening on
• 34:12
  Foreman's world, aren't we? Now, can someone please?
• 34:16
  Oh no, that's a small of the book.
• 34:18
  I guess we can't say that. Well, let's just say that the
• 34:22
  Doctor and I am Foreman. There's a name you might
• 34:25
  recognize or having a little chin wag about sort of where
• 34:29
  their adventures are. The Doctor is essentially
• 34:31
  detailing the story of interference, isn't he?
• 34:34
  And we do keep, we come back in sort of the middle of the book
• 34:37
  and then the end of the book, then start a book 2, then the
• 34:39
  end of book 2. And we do find out eventually
• 34:43
  how formless world came to be. But we will get there.
• 34:47
  Where we start the book is our beloved Sam Jones, quoted as the
• 34:53
  worst companion of all time by two of the book clubbers on this
• 34:56
  call. Not me and Andrew, I might say.
• 35:00
  Who can you mean, Sam Jones? Seems to be hanging out at an
• 35:04
  international arms fair taking place in the middle of London.
• 35:08
  Discuss, John. But these arm spares do happen.
• 35:13
  There's a yet. No, there's a the comedian
• 35:18
  activist Mark Thomas has done a book on it where they went and
• 35:21
  deliberately fucked around with these guys because that, you
• 35:25
  know, they took them on a bus and showed them videos of their
• 35:28
  effects of all this stuff as used on the famous Nelson
• 35:31
  Mandela. It's a hell of a read.
• 35:32
  I was like these do happen because because Lawrence says
• 35:36
  this in the full word says I haven't exaggerated much on
• 35:39
  these, but it's wonderful. And I think we could almost
• 35:45
  start with Sam Jones here because Sam Jones is beautifully
• 35:48
  written in this in a way that she doesn't get enough of all
• 35:52
  those you know you've had. I think she's been in the hands
• 35:56
  of authors who may be quite artistic.
• 35:58
  John Peels portrayal. I think you said this on the
• 36:00
  book. The Was It Dance Top 10?
• 36:03
  Yeah. She says yeah, gramophone for no
• 36:07
  reason whatsoever. So much damage, those Dalek
• 36:09
  books. Yeah.
• 36:10
  Yeah, so much damage, don't they?
• 36:12
  She was very well written in alien bodies, you know, John.
• 36:15
  Yeah, what? I guess coincidence, isn't it?
• 36:19
  But he finds something interesting.
• 36:21
  She's proactive. She, you know, I think you know,
• 36:25
  spunky, if you are is from the words she has, she's proactive.
• 36:29
  She's going for it. She's driving the story along.
• 36:32
  She's brave. She's resourceful.
• 36:34
  Yeah. This is what you need, the
• 36:36
  companion. I think the thing that he does
• 36:39
  with her, which is really a really interesting approach,
• 36:41
  which a lot of the other authors haven't haven't done when
• 36:46
  they're dealing with that, is taking the character on her own
• 36:48
  terms because she's a character who was introduced as this sort
• 36:52
  of activist character. So she's this sort of Greenpeace
• 36:56
  eco worked and that's part of her back story.
• 36:59
  And then most authors and I think if I was writing for the
• 37:01
  character, I would do have just ignored that and just been like,
• 37:04
  doesn't really work. Like it's just a bit annoying.
• 37:07
  We'll do something else. Like when we were doing the
• 37:09
  Scarlet Empress, they just thought Paul Mars were like, you
• 37:12
  know, she's just a 90s teenager and she's fun.
• 37:14
  Whereas in this book, Lawrence Miles is like, well, if we have
• 37:18
  a character who comes from that background and that's who she
• 37:22
  is, what does that mean? What does that mean for who she
• 37:25
  is, how she behaves in the Doctor Who world and where she's
• 37:28
  going as a character? So it's a real like, as you were
• 37:32
  saying, Joe, that he gets the scalper out and starts examining
• 37:36
  exactly what that means if you have a character with those
• 37:39
  beliefs. And and yeah, it's it.
• 37:43
  That's where her departure comes from because this is her leaving
• 37:46
  story. She's essentially left the
• 37:47
  doctor already at the start of the book.
• 37:50
  And then it's looking at kind of her politics and what they mean
• 37:56
  and where they came from. We get to meet a younger Sam in
• 37:59
  the book as well, and also where they're going.
• 38:01
  And it's just. It's such a great.
• 38:04
  Time in wimey stuff with that attic scene.
• 38:07
  I'll tell you what. But what I really love to talk
• 38:09
  because I've recently read seeing eye and that promised you
• 38:13
  know it did the three years of growth.
• 38:16
  She's her own person now and she learns a lot of lessons in that
• 38:19
  year that you can't be this sort of placard waving person anymore
• 38:23
  that sometimes small things that you do make a big difference and
• 38:26
  she just learns a lot of different.
• 38:27
  Sometimes you have to compromise, you know, lots of
• 38:29
  little things that she learns. And it promised the new Sam,
• 38:32
  didn't it, you know, And I think sometimes that works.
• 38:36
  Paul Bars wrote a very mature, very fun Sam and in a few other
• 38:40
  books. But other writers like Gary
• 38:42
  Russell and The Placebo Effect were just writing basically
• 38:45
  three years ago, Sam and Nevermind.
• 38:47
  But she is really savvy and smartly written in this book.
• 38:53
  And I love the fact that before she goes into the arms thing,
• 38:56
  she sees a load of placard waivers.
• 38:58
  Yeah. And she thinks, wow, she goes,
• 39:01
  that's the sort of person I used to be.
• 39:03
  And it looks sort of ridiculous and ineffective and actually I'm
• 39:07
  going to go in and truly do something dangerous and try and
• 39:10
  make a difference. And it really shows because
• 39:13
  that's who she was at the beginning of the book.
• 39:15
  She was the Black Eyed waiver. And now, now she's somebody that
• 39:19
  slaps on a wig, goes into the arms deal.
• 39:22
  Was it just Sarah wearing the wig?
• 39:23
  I can't remember now in a really dangerous, dangerous place to
• 39:29
  be. And she's like, no, no, I'm
• 39:31
  going to go in and I'm going to do it.
• 39:33
  And the nice thing is that this being her departure, so it's all
• 39:37
  about that character. It's all about how she's changed
• 39:39
  over her time with the Doctor, those three years.
• 39:43
  And that's a perfect way for a companion to exit, you know,
• 39:46
  There's no. And then she just laughed and
• 39:49
  said goodbye. That's enough.
• 39:50
  You know, I've had enough fun. It's become too much, you know,
• 39:53
  the Teigen approach. It's someone it's it's about the
• 39:57
  politics, it's about her as a person.
• 39:59
  It you know, it's interference is dealing with big ideas and
• 40:03
  big stories, but it's the characters in this are just so
• 40:08
  worried that the Lewis character complete asshole.
• 40:12
  You typically written relatively.
• 40:14
  You know he's got the guy in work he hates.
• 40:17
  It's just this normal guy. Bloody Morgan.
• 40:21
  I love his comeuppance, but I must stop skipping forward to
• 40:24
  book 2. I I would say someone who isn't
• 40:28
  a Sam fan, I would say she's my second favorite character in
• 40:31
  this whole book after Sarah Jane Smith.
• 40:37
  I don't know, you can have good stories with characters you just
• 40:42
  not into It happens. You know, I like, I like some
• 40:48
  there's like a little bit of season 9 and 10, even though I'm
• 40:51
  not a huge fan of of that era all the time.
• 40:55
  So you know, you can get it anywhere.
• 40:58
  And it's just a shame that I'm reading ASAM that's this well
• 41:05
  written. She's not.
• 41:08
  It's, it's just like new ice in set piece.
• 41:10
  You're like, fuck me, where was this ice in the last 15 books?
• 41:15
  Oh wait, that's next time, isn't it?
• 41:20
  Didn't you love as well though How?
• 41:22
  I'm sort of jumping ahead a bit, but via the remote, Sam gets a
• 41:28
  load of scripted scenes, right? And and in a way that makes the
• 41:31
  story sort of flow beautifully at those points because it's all
• 41:34
  just dialogue. So we can discuss big ideas, but
• 41:37
  in a really sort of quick way. I just love the fact that for
• 41:41
  those periods of the book, Sam actually did make it onto TV.
• 41:44
  Doctor Who, hurrah. She's Canon.
• 41:47
  But also I really loved Compassion, questioning Sam's
• 41:54
  morals and saying why is it that you would go to an arms fair and
• 41:58
  try and make a difference there and yet you're perfectly happy
• 42:02
  for people to drive about the place and.
• 42:05
  These death machines. Yeah, and these death machines
• 42:08
  that kill far more people than these weapons do.
• 42:12
  And she can't answer the question, can't she?
• 42:13
  She she tries. She tries to say, well, yeah,
• 42:15
  because that's right and that's wrong.
• 42:17
  And she goes, yeah, But in terms of people dying, in terms of
• 42:20
  numbers, it's not. It's the other way around.
• 42:23
  Really Interesting. Yeah, it's, again, this is when
• 42:26
  the big themes, The Invisibles, which is the Invisibles are
• 42:28
  essentially a terrorist group trying to bring down this
• 42:32
  overarching conspiracy. So, you know, obviously there's
• 42:36
  lots of guns. It's comic, lots of guns, lots
• 42:38
  of bullets and and you don't think much of it.
• 42:41
  And then they get something like, I think it's issue 12 of
• 42:43
  it. And there's this story and it's
• 42:46
  just about it came from no, it's just a guy's life.
• 42:49
  And then it comes to it. He's just one of these like
• 42:51
  grunts who was offed by the main character.
• 42:54
  And it's it makes that whole thing a complete tragedy.
• 42:57
  And it pays off in the last episode, but it's trying to make
• 43:01
  you think about the world that again, it's what Lauren says at
• 43:04
  the start. The point is to think about it,
• 43:07
  because it's fable, not, you know, also parable.
• 43:10
  I mean, the idea is, is the the theme is sort of signals, isn't
• 43:13
  it? It's we all get signals and
• 43:14
  ideas from television, from radios, from books, from
• 43:18
  conversations from our friends, from social media and that sort
• 43:22
  of, I mean, I think, I think the what do I call it on Twitter?
• 43:26
  You know, when you look at one thing and then suddenly you get
• 43:28
  a load of the same thing. The algorithm.
• 43:31
  Yeah. You know, it's a bit like that
• 43:32
  in life, isn't it? You sort of go down, you get an
• 43:34
  idea, and then you're looking for something else, and then
• 43:37
  sort of an idea forms in your head of, right, that's how I
• 43:39
  feel about this thing. And then you pursue more along
• 43:42
  that Ave. and sort of block out everything else.
• 43:44
  And it's really nice that compassion actually breaks down
• 43:48
  Sam's core beliefs and makes her look at where she is in life.
• 43:55
  Yeah, how much are you the signals that you receive, That's
• 43:58
  the whole question at half interference and that's quite
• 44:01
  that holds up so well. The theme today, again through
• 44:03
  social media, which wasn't even a thought when you know Lawrence
• 44:07
  was writing this book. Imagine the fun he could have
• 44:09
  with that though. Oh my.
• 44:10
  God, Oh my God. Well, look, let's because
• 44:13
  there's way more to talk about with Sam, but let's swing around
• 44:17
  to what I think is going to be a hugely positive Copic
• 44:20
  conversation and that is our lovely Sarah Jane Smith,
• 44:24
  probably everybody's favorite or near the top TV companion.
• 44:30
  Andrew, how did you find Sarah? Sarah is brilliant in this book
• 44:35
  and I much prefer this Sarah to the Russell T Davis Sarah Jane.
• 44:42
  Interesting comparison, right? Yeah.
• 44:45
  And just like the way that her life has gone in interference
• 44:50
  kind of feels more in keeping with what you'd expect from that
• 44:55
  character. Whereas in the TV series, she's
• 44:59
  sort of like she's put there to be a counterpoint to Rose and to
• 45:01
  kind of signpost Roses department.
• 45:04
  And that means that her relationship, the Doctor kind of
• 45:06
  gets these shades of sort of like romance, which aren't
• 45:08
  necessarily there in the plastic series, and that she's just sort
• 45:12
  of like lived her life full of regret that she's no longer with
• 45:16
  the Doctor. And that's kind of the pattern
• 45:17
  that they've done with all companion returns and with most
• 45:20
  companion departures in the new series.
• 45:22
  Whereas here we get a Sarah who's, you know, she's an adult
• 45:28
  woman and she's got her own life and she's continued living her
• 45:32
  life and built this career for herself post leaving the Doctor.
• 45:36
  And she's kind of, you know, she's kind of glad to see the
• 45:38
  Doctor, but it's not the people on end all she's got also kind
• 45:41
  of glad when he goes. So.
• 45:43
  Yeah. And she's just so smart and
• 45:45
  resourceful and driving the story.
• 45:47
  And she's, I think probably because we all love Sarah so
• 45:52
  much. I feel like Lawrence Miles can't
• 45:57
  can't do things to Sarah that he can do to some of the other
• 46:01
  characters. So a lot of the kind of
• 46:03
  lightness in the book and more of the it's fun to spend time
• 46:08
  with Sarah Jane Smith in this book.
• 46:09
  And those sections take the edge off some of the more horrible
• 46:15
  stuff that happens to characters in this book.
• 46:17
  And you're like, oh, we're back with Sarah.
• 46:18
  OK, good. She's so absurdly competent in
• 46:21
  this, isn't she? Yeah.
• 46:22
  Like, and I love the fact that she's there trying to bring down
• 46:25
  the, you know, expose these arms deals and the government's.
• 46:28
  Oh, no. But going forward to Book 2,
• 46:30
  again, shut up, Joe. All right, well.
• 46:32
  That's only modus operandi book 1.
• 46:34
  Like, let's speak to those documentaries here.
• 46:37
  So you're fine. But also you get great throwaway
• 46:41
  lines like every time she rings up K9 or needs him and he's not
• 46:45
  doing what she wants she goes I've got 3 words for you.
• 46:48
  Pets wins prizes or something. I mean that did take this.
• 46:53
  But I love, I love that she's got K9.
• 46:55
  You know when like they did the miserable Big Finish series with
• 46:58
  Sarah Jane and it's like, oh, we don't want K9K9.
• 47:01
  She didn't want it, did she? I think that's why Elizabeth.
• 47:04
  Hayden. She was wrong.
• 47:07
  And it's like, you know, Sarah has canine, like, embrace it,
• 47:10
  like make it fun. He's in.
• 47:12
  He's like interfacing with her Land Rover and like driving
• 47:16
  through warehouse windows. Like, it's brilliant.
• 47:19
  I promise you I'm going to stop doing this in a minute, but
• 47:22
  there's another character that's introduced with Sarah and Canine
• 47:25
  in Book 2, and that is ATV series I want to see more than
• 47:29
  anything. Oh yeah, Sarah Canine and Lost
• 47:32
  Boy. But we'll get there.
• 47:35
  But I, I think it was interesting that Andrew brought
• 47:37
  up School Reunion because that's exactly what's being done here
• 47:40
  as well. It's it's that contrast with
• 47:43
  Sam, what she is, what she wants to be.
• 47:46
  And Sarah? But there's no conflict there,
• 47:49
  is there? There's no jealous.
• 47:50
  Oh wait, we're both on the same page.
• 47:52
  Let's be amazing together. It's too competent women and and
• 47:56
  that's so hard for a lot of these Doctor Who writes of this
• 47:59
  era because, you know, they don't have that much experience
• 48:02
  of women or they don't they can rub themselves.
• 48:06
  I'm not saying am I giving too much away.
• 48:11
  How else you know these authors? Jobs.
• 48:16
  Well, I stayed at Lawrence's house.
• 48:18
  Works. How's that?
• 48:19
  Oh, oh, right, you think of a nice story to tell us about that
• 48:23
  for Book 2. All right, all right, no
• 48:25
  problem. Polish is off.
• 48:27
  Luke. Sarah Jane Smith, I.
• 48:29
  Do I do love that someone with the name of Oh, by the way, this
• 48:33
  is Smith and Jones before Smith and Jones, right?
• 48:36
  Yes. Sarah Jane Smith and Sam Jones.
• 48:39
  Well, no, that was done in the 8 doctors as well.
• 48:41
  Remember at the end of the eight doctors she goes Doctor Smith
• 48:45
  and Jones we're made for each other.
• 48:47
  Oh, Terrence. I do.
• 48:49
  I do love that someone with the boring surname of Smith has a
• 48:52
  pseudonym that is bland. Which?
• 48:55
  Also is. Doctor Who writers of the time
• 48:58
  using the name Bland as well. So I got a really huge kick out
• 49:01
  of that. I this felt like the Sarah Jane
• 49:05
  Smith that has been away for a long time.
• 49:08
  She's she's got a life. She's the fucking lowest lane of
• 49:11
  Doctor Who. Intrepid reporter, fearless
• 49:14
  going in and doing stuff. How am I getting all this info
• 49:17
  as well? Oh, there's a robot dog what,
• 49:20
  roaming around that everyone thinks might be one of the
• 49:22
  bloody weapons that's on for sale around?
• 49:24
  Here, that was so funny, wasn't it?
• 49:26
  It's just trundling about it. If I was going, oh, what's that?
• 49:29
  What could you use that for? I also love Sarah thinking
• 49:32
  wondering how racist everybody is to think these two Ogrons.
• 49:37
  Yeah. Not Ogrons and that they're dark
• 49:42
  skinned. Gentlemen, that was I'm
• 49:45
  comfortable. Maybe even a little too real in
• 49:49
  in in in that terms, this book does get a little too real in
• 49:53
  some of it. She's also very horny as well as
• 49:57
  she. Was not expecting, sorry.
• 49:59
  He's also very horny as well because she's got this fellow
• 50:01
  Michael. She's date sort of semi dating.
• 50:04
  And every time she we, we read her notes and she's like, Oh
• 50:08
  yeah, I've got to do this. I'll stop thinking about
• 50:09
  Michael. It's not miracle.
• 50:11
  It's Paul. Oh, Paul, who the hell is
• 50:13
  Michael? I don't know.
• 50:14
  Who's Michael? No, Michael's got more than one
• 50:17
  man on the go. But I did like that.
• 50:19
  Michael Mills is up. That's it.
• 50:20
  She's a big fan. I'm obsessed with him.
• 50:23
  I'm obsessed. But like, we've all been to that
• 50:26
  point right where we're trying to work and you're thinking
• 50:28
  about that fella. I'm.
• 50:30
  I'm half wondering, sorry. Maybe not you, John.
• 50:32
  Sorry. Oh, you, Luke.
• 50:33
  Sorry. Don't.
• 50:36
  Worry we could. Do you?
• 50:40
  Did anyone remember that bit where she's where she's talking
• 50:43
  about her sex life and she sort of intimates that she has an
• 50:48
  alien fetish? Oh.
• 50:52
  God. Yeah, she's talking about
• 50:54
  because, you know, she just sort of, I think it's the bit where
• 50:56
  it's like her notes and she's like, oh, don't, don't let Paul
• 50:59
  think that you've got an alien fetish.
• 51:00
  I was like, oh, OK, Sarah. I mean, do you remember how she
• 51:03
  floated with Vashinsky and Planet of Evil?
• 51:06
  You know, I can see it. I think I think some of this is
• 51:10
  in the Bridget Jones thing because Bridget Jones is a thing
• 51:12
  at this time. She was in newspaper called mid
• 51:14
  90s onwards. So I think that's where Lawrence
• 51:17
  is drawing from for the. That's still very different from
• 51:19
  Benny though, doesn't it? Those scenes, even though
• 51:22
  they're doing sort of the same thing, you're very Privy to all
• 51:24
  of her thoughts, but it's written in a very different,
• 51:27
  what a very contemporary way. Sorry, Luke, Contemporary way.
• 51:30
  Benny you kind of always wait for a punchline, aren't you?
• 51:33
  But Sarah, you're not necessarily, but it's a natural
• 51:36
  kind of humour from the character.
• 51:38
  Well, I mean, I'll say I have read Managra and I'm currently
• 51:42
  reading the ghost of In Space, and obviously I read
• 51:46
  Interference and those are three very different approaches to
• 51:49
  write in Sarah Jane Smith. And this was by far the most
• 51:54
  assured and the most authentic and the funniest as well.
• 51:58
  But he packs those things full of gags.
• 52:01
  Again, it's come back to what Andrew said, wrenching the
• 52:04
  Russell T Dave's the Russell T Dave's series almost a
• 52:06
  caricature and all and being and this is again, it's a detailed
• 52:11
  portrait. It's a believable character.
• 52:14
  And I know it's part because launch here has the space to do
• 52:17
  so, but it's it. Yeah, you I would read the I
• 52:22
  said I'd read the spin off of this absolute.
• 52:24
  You could do about four spin offs of this book alone.
• 52:27
  That's how many ideas there. Aren't I mean the RTD?
• 52:30
  Oh, sorry, Andrew. I was, yeah, I was going to say
• 52:32
  about the RTD stuff. So as you were saying, John,
• 52:36
  it's interesting that they're using the same character to sort
• 52:38
  of do the same thing, but taking like the opposite approaches.
• 52:41
  Because then School Reunion, she's sort of there to signpost
• 52:44
  that leaving the Doctor is terrible and it will ruin your
• 52:47
  life and you should stay with him, Rose, even if it's going to
• 52:50
  hurt. Whereas here it's she's there to
• 52:52
  show actually there's life beyond the Doctor and you can
• 52:55
  get on with the rest of your life and live, live for
• 52:57
  yourself. And actually the Doctor is a
• 52:59
  small part of your life that has shaped the rest of it.
• 53:02
  So yeah, it's it's doing the same thing of using her as an
• 53:05
  example to the previous companion, but in a completely
• 53:10
  opposite ways. Yeah, it's it's inspirational,
• 53:13
  isn't it? Doctor is inspirational rather
• 53:15
  than the guy you pine for for 30 years or whatever it is.
• 53:19
  Which I, I do think is a bad approach, but in defence of the
• 53:23
  RTD approach, I think they do put a bow in it in School
• 53:26
  Reunion. And then they give her her own
• 53:28
  series where she basically does this and she is confident and
• 53:31
  she goes off and has her own life.
• 53:33
  And never mind the doctor, if he turns up, he's on her show now.
• 53:36
  You know, get in the attic. You're on my.
• 53:39
  Show again though you could say this is the same thing she's
• 53:42
  almost a mentor to Sam by that's a point in this book and that's
• 53:47
  exactly what she becomes so it's it's two different roads to the
• 53:50
  same destination do. You know, in that sort of
• 53:52
  muffet, timey wimey way, just saying those words.
• 53:57
  It really amused me to think that when I was reading The 8
• 54:00
  Doctors, you know, and all the scenes with Bazz and that and
• 54:03
  school and Sam home and all of that, all this stuff with Lost
• 54:08
  Boy, the Ogron and her dad getting his arm twisted and all
• 54:11
  of that, all that was going on at the same time.
• 54:13
  I didn't even know about it. Well, obviously it wasn't
• 54:15
  written yet, but it, it has a nice sort of circular plotting
• 54:19
  to it. It makes you reinterpret what
• 54:22
  you've already read in a in an interesting way.
• 54:25
  Yeah. And I think this is part of part
• 54:27
  of what books trying because the book set in 1996, which is the
• 54:34
  mirror of the TV movie, which is 96 set in 99.
• 54:37
  So I think Lawrence is trying to reverse kind of what was coming
• 54:40
  in and almost impose a version new version of the 8th Doctor on
• 54:45
  the range. Well, that is a great segue into
• 54:51
  the big, big question. And that is, how do you feel
• 54:56
  about the Doctor being removed from the action to the extent
• 55:01
  that he is? Because he really isn't involved
• 55:04
  in the plotting of this book at all until the end.
• 55:07
  And that's about 500 pages in. And #2 how do you feel about the
• 55:12
  series throwing him in a Saudi prison and tortured and
• 55:19
  examining why he can save alien planets and calm, you know, get
• 55:25
  involved politically on Earth? That's a lot of questions.
• 55:28
  And I'm going to throw them all at Luke.
• 55:32
  You mean the sections where Lawrence Miles totally breaks
• 55:35
  Doctor Who? I don't mean that in a bad way.
• 55:40
  These so he's got a cellmate for most of the portions in the
• 55:44
  Saudi prison. His name's Beta Bader don't know
• 55:49
  how to say it. Like so Beta and they're having
• 55:55
  this long philosophical conversation, like the doctor
• 55:59
  gives him the general premise of Doctor Who and Beta thinks about
• 56:05
  this premise and and he's like, this doesn't make sense and
• 56:10
  things like that. So like, is it the future
• 56:14
  someone else's past? The heck can you interfere in
• 56:17
  that point? Because that's some point that
• 56:20
  someone's you know, that's someone's past.
• 56:22
  That's someone's history as well.
• 56:23
  Just I guess because where what Doctor Who is usually said when
• 56:30
  they when they're in the modern times.
• 56:34
  What am I trying to say? When we're in history or
• 56:37
  whatever, we've got a character that's from now and they know
• 56:41
  how things are going to go from the past to now.
• 56:44
  And so they know when they're in the past, not to kind of mess
• 56:46
  with that, but what about when they're in the future?
• 56:49
  That's not their past. They feel like they could do
• 56:51
  whatever they want in that future, but that's also in the
• 56:55
  history. History to some, to another spot
• 56:59
  that's in the future as well. Also, oh, so this far away
• 57:03
  colony Dr. in the future. So you're right, messing with
• 57:07
  that up and totally destroying the government and you know,
• 57:11
  bringing in this new regime then pissing off.
• 57:14
  What about earth? I'm being tortured in the cell,
• 57:16
  man. What about me?
• 57:19
  I'm in this cell getting tortured every day.
• 57:21
  It's uncomfortable to have it spelled out to the degree that
• 57:25
  it is, isn't it? I was reading it sort of
• 57:27
  squirming, going how is he going to answer this?
• 57:31
  Like how is he going to give a satisfying answer to this?
• 57:35
  You're listening to him and talk about this stuff and they just
• 57:42
  kind of right, like this is someone this would be like, all
• 57:47
  right, neither of you are Doctor Who fans.
• 57:49
  Welcome to my podcast, by the way.
• 57:51
  Did you like interference? This would be like someone who's
• 57:53
  not into Doctor Who and you've spent like maybe a couple an
• 57:58
  hour and a half couple of hours telling them like the concepts
• 58:02
  of Doctor Who and they've come back at you with, Oh well, what
• 58:06
  about this and what about this and what about this?
• 58:09
  And me as the fan is just like, I'm not sure I want to talk to
• 58:14
  you anymore now, but. We're so into it, aren't we?
• 58:17
  We're so buried and not Doctor Who.
• 58:20
  We don't think about these things.
• 58:21
  We make concessions for these things.
• 58:23
  Lawrence can seemingly can take like this one step back.
• 58:26
  It's not a big step because there's things that piss him off
• 58:30
  and he will mention them a lot that he can't really kind of
• 58:33
  take a step back from. But in terms of Doctor Who story
• 58:37
  logic and things like that, Yeah.
• 58:40
  So is that like, why can you interfere in some far off world
• 58:44
  which would change history for them?
• 58:48
  But but not if, you know, there's things like interference
• 58:51
  and counter interference. And is the Doctor trying to say
• 58:55
  like, oh, I can't get into involved in politics, but I'm
• 58:58
  like, hang on, you're turning up and saying dictatorships are
• 59:01
  wrong. Like straight away, like boom,
• 59:03
  we're going to get rid of those do.
• 59:05
  You remember what his answer is. Dictatorships right now on
• 59:07
  earth, What was it? I do what I think I can get away
• 59:12
  with. Yeah.
• 59:13
  Ouch. Yeah.
• 59:15
  There's so much moral ground in that answer.
• 59:19
  Yeah. It's interesting though, because
• 59:20
  it's it's this sort of thought experiment in sort of if we took
• 59:25
  the show literally, like how would this work and what are the
• 59:29
  Doctors morals within it? But there is obviously like a
• 59:32
  reason why the show doesn't do that and can't do that.
• 59:34
  And it's because it's a family show for on British television.
• 59:41
  But also it's kind of a Doctor Who takes place ostensibly in
• 59:48
  our world. So if the the world that the
• 59:51
  doctor inhabits needs to be our world for us to then understand
• 59:58
  how it works and, and, and his and the history that it does
• 1:00:00
  have. So.
• 1:00:02
  The Doctor can't really do something that will change the
• 1:00:05
  Doctor Who universe so much that it's no longer recognizably our
• 1:00:09
  universe. So that's why you don't get
• 1:00:11
  stories or the Doctors toppling Thatcher or like, you know, the
• 1:00:15
  Saudi Arabian government because then you know, it's not it's no
• 1:00:18
  longer Doctor Who and it's no how do.
• 1:00:20
  You reconcile that though, because you can't get the.
• 1:00:22
  That's what the book is trying to do, isn't it?
• 1:00:24
  It's it's, it's finding an in universe reason for what the
• 1:00:28
  Doctors moral compass is, for why this is the case.
• 1:00:31
  And it's it's, it's odd because it's like it's, it's not really
• 1:00:35
  a sort of moral problem of storytelling.
• 1:00:38
  It's not like it, yeah, it's a, it's an interesting sort of part
• 1:00:47
  of Doctor Who that he's chosen to kind of tackle.
• 1:00:53
  And I feel it's like the answer that you give within the text is
• 1:00:56
  never really going to be satisfying because it's not sort
• 1:00:59
  of a moral imperative of the character that he behaves that
• 1:01:04
  way. It's it's because of the sort of
• 1:01:06
  like storytelling implications of what the show is and what it
• 1:01:09
  can and can't do without sort of ruining itself.
• 1:01:13
  What's really the fact that there's no easy answers?
• 1:01:16
  The fact that you he cannot give a satisfactory answer to that
• 1:01:19
  question is why I was so tense reading those scenes.
• 1:01:22
  So I was like, I know there's no good answer today.
• 1:01:24
  It's like, yeah, it's just. Going to have.
• 1:01:27
  To it's there to make the reader feel uncomfortable and like, oh,
• 1:01:30
  what am I reading? Why am I so invested in Doctor
• 1:01:32
  Who? Oh, it's not engaging with real
• 1:01:33
  world Like it's it's there to yeah, it's twist that.
• 1:01:38
  Make you think, although if this was Paul Mars, you know what he
• 1:01:41
  would do, right? You just said it there,
• 1:01:42
  actually. He'd literally have the doctor
• 1:01:44
  look right out the page and go look, it's because of you, all
• 1:01:46
  right? Fucking around with politics.
• 1:01:48
  You aren't going to recognise modern day Earth anymore and it
• 1:01:51
  ain't going to make sense. Yeah, it's pointing out Doctor
• 1:01:55
  Who's one big limitation is that it can't deal with those real
• 1:01:59
  life horrors. You know, you look at the TV
• 1:02:02
  show, I think the first Second World War story doesn't come
• 1:02:05
  along till is it Curse of Penrith, I think.
• 1:02:08
  Because all those, you know, all those stories up till the McCoy
• 1:02:13
  era are written by writers who either lived through the war or
• 1:02:17
  grew up, you know, in the aftermath of the war.
• 1:02:19
  So they know that kind of horror.
• 1:02:21
  You can't deal with Doctor Who works because it's allegorical
• 1:02:25
  storytelling times. You know, Terry Nations dealing
• 1:02:28
  with the bomb with the Nazis, but at a remove.
• 1:02:32
  And Chris Chibble bumps into accidentally with Spy for,
• 1:02:34
  doesn't he with, you know, there's newer Alec Khan.
• 1:02:36
  Yeah. We have to let her go off and be
• 1:02:38
  executed horribly. Wow, I mean, you know, I'm going
• 1:02:42
  to make this point. I think Moffett bumps into it in
• 1:02:45
  Dark Water when he asks Danny Pink look into a room and murder
• 1:02:49
  a child. You know, like, that's, that's
• 1:02:52
  too much for me. Weirdly, this isn't, but that is
• 1:02:55
  too much for. Me you know what I'll just
• 1:02:56
  remind you again a Moffett story.
• 1:02:58
  It's it's hell bent in heaven sent the two that those two
• 1:03:01
  parts because again the Doctor is in a cell for a lot of that
• 1:03:06
  away from Yeah, but it's asked it but it's again a question on
• 1:03:12
  the limit of Doctor Who. It's why did you know why didn't
• 1:03:14
  you just go back and say the companions from dying What you
• 1:03:17
  that whole thing about Clara. It's again it's point head limit
• 1:03:21
  the Doctor just go and do it. Yeah.
• 1:03:24
  And the only thing anyone could come up with is it, you know,
• 1:03:26
  it's a fixed point in time, which is just a, you know,
• 1:03:30
  authorial shorthand essentially goes.
• 1:03:33
  Back to what Andrew said is we want these to matter.
• 1:03:35
  We want the stories we've experienced to matter.
• 1:03:38
  And if the doctors just going to go and pick Andrew up before the
• 1:03:42
  end of, you know, earth shock or go save syrup Kingdom and all
• 1:03:47
  these other things that the impact of those moments, they're
• 1:03:50
  gone and they don't feel like they matter to the to the viewer
• 1:03:54
  anymore. I think again that that's what
• 1:03:58
  interferences backed as well to a.
• 1:04:00
  Large and it's like it asking these questions sort of makes
• 1:04:05
  the moral compass of the show sort of fall apart.
• 1:04:08
  And then it also metaphorically makes the show fall apart by
• 1:04:12
  then intruding into the continuity of the series and
• 1:04:16
  doing horrible things to the person.
• 1:04:18
  See now why it lingered at the bottom of that pole.
• 1:04:20
  You know all those Doctor Who fans were having nervous
• 1:04:22
  breakdowns reading this guy. Oh God, what am I doing with my
• 1:04:25
  life? I'm pretty sure it's bottoms of
• 1:04:27
  DW import for the year as well. Crazy, right?
• 1:04:30
  Absolutely crazy. It's ridiculous.
• 1:04:34
  I wouldn't have put it in the bottom of that, but I feel other
• 1:04:38
  people's pain. It's going to be a bit more of
• 1:04:39
  that. I feel like most Doctor Who
• 1:04:42
  readers are are reading for pleasure, and this is the book
• 1:04:45
  that you read for pleasure. It's a book that makes you think
• 1:04:48
  about stuff. Challenges.
• 1:04:50
  You it's challenging and it's uncomfortable and it's like my
• 1:04:55
  heart was beating reading this book, which, you know, doesn't
• 1:04:58
  happen with a regular Doctor Who book.
• 1:05:00
  It's tense and it's the closest parallel is like to like horror
• 1:05:05
  for me, like reading a book that's like full of tension.
• 1:05:10
  And I would say I was thinking about this actually, because
• 1:05:14
  again, the way that John was challenging me when I was saying
• 1:05:17
  that the book was was horrible and difficult to get into and
• 1:05:20
  unpleasant at the start. And then I was thinking, well,
• 1:05:23
  actually, when I'm not reading a Doctor Who book, like I'm happy
• 1:05:25
  to be challenged. I will read the most horrible.
• 1:05:27
  Like I don't know if anyone's read Penance by Eliza Clark that
• 1:05:31
  came out last year, which is sort of an examination of like
• 1:05:34
  true crime and like our obsession with true crime.
• 1:05:38
  And it focuses on like the murder of a teenage girl and the
• 1:05:42
  way that it's then exploited by various different journalists,
• 1:05:46
  etcetera. And it's like this 500 page epic
• 1:05:48
  kind of like interference with lots of different perspectives.
• 1:05:52
  And I was like, I loved that book, but it was horrible.
• 1:05:55
  And it was like forcing you to confront difficult, nasty ideas.
• 1:05:59
  And I was like, well, that's kind of what this is like.
• 1:06:01
  And it's like, if I like that outside of Doctor Who, I can
• 1:06:04
  also accept doing that with Doctor Who and being challenged
• 1:06:08
  and feeling uncomfortable and coming away thinking, oh, I've
• 1:06:12
  I've been exposed to all these ideas and challenged and
• 1:06:16
  interested. So yes, that's where my love for
• 1:06:19
  the book. It's so interesting.
• 1:06:20
  Because one of your favorite authors is Paul Mars.
• 1:06:23
  And I think his books are challenging narrative and
• 1:06:27
  they're challenging tone and they're challenging sources and
• 1:06:31
  all sorts. But because he makes you laugh
• 1:06:33
  and he basically wraps you in a warm hug and like, it's OK.
• 1:06:37
  You know, like Blue Angel doesn't give you an ending,
• 1:06:40
  takes the doctor out of the climax, and then has a whole
• 1:06:42
  subplot which is not related to anything in the obverse.
• 1:06:45
  And I mean, that's challenging in all sorts of ways.
• 1:06:47
  But man, it's so funny. Who cares?
• 1:06:49
  You know, like we just go with. It oh God the 20 questions went
• 1:06:52
  down really badly at the time. So it must just be the tone
• 1:06:55
  then, right? That it is.
• 1:06:56
  It is the the realism. Yeah, but I think with Lawrence
• 1:07:03
  Miles does it well, like often this just like grim dark misery
• 1:07:09
  and the kind of. As an.
• 1:07:13
  Example. Transit.
• 1:07:16
  Yeah, something like that where, you know, it feels immature,
• 1:07:20
  this feels mature and it feels like it's not just, it's, it's
• 1:07:23
  doing these things to shock you, but it's doing, it's shocking
• 1:07:26
  you for a reason. And it's then examining that
• 1:07:29
  shock. And yeah, it's a shock tactic.
• 1:07:34
  We've done a lot of books, you know, where they're sort of
• 1:07:37
  throwing ideas at you, but they're not really asking you to
• 1:07:39
  go away and think about it. Whereas throughout this book,
• 1:07:41
  every idea is sort of pulling it.
• 1:07:44
  It's it's like when we did 10 Little Aliens when there's just
• 1:07:51
  those sort of adult moments where they drop in like, oh,
• 1:07:54
  Frog has been sexually assaulted as a child.
• 1:07:57
  And it's like, it's just like a little sort of subplotty bit of
• 1:08:01
  that book that's dark and miserable and tells you
• 1:08:04
  something about character, but it's not really examining that
• 1:08:06
  theme and in any detail. This is introducing dark,
• 1:08:12
  difficult themes, but then it's examining them and it's looking
• 1:08:15
  at them what they mean for Doctor Who and what it means.
• 1:08:19
  It smashed those things into Doctor Who.
• 1:08:21
  It's not just that they're to sort of pepper a story and and
• 1:08:24
  make it feel I. Don't know.
• 1:08:26
  That's grown up, isn't it? Yeah.
• 1:08:28
  But I think it's rooted into the 80s comic culture as well.
• 1:08:31
  It's stuff that Batman, Dark Knight Returns of.
• 1:08:34
  It's particularly what Alan Knight did, Alan Moore did with
• 1:08:38
  Watchmen. It's deconstructing the whole
• 1:08:41
  thing. It's putting that too into real
• 1:08:44
  life. It's what would this be like if
• 1:08:47
  it was? If it was in reality, how would
• 1:08:48
  these? Characters deal.
• 1:08:50
  With that, yeah. And that's and that's, and I can
• 1:08:52
  understand exactly why people don't like the book at all.
• 1:08:55
  It's not sustainable, this approach at all, is it?
• 1:08:58
  It's a 101 you. Can you can do only do this once
• 1:09:01
  because your readers will bugger off in a heart.
• 1:09:03
  Thankfully you kind of learnt that like, and whereas those
• 1:09:08
  other properties like Batman for example, are still stuck in that
• 1:09:11
  like dark misery phase and everything, like it's not
• 1:09:15
  examining anything anymore. It's just sort of that's the
• 1:09:17
  aesthetic of it, even though like the thing that it was
• 1:09:21
  before was this sort of, you know.
• 1:09:23
  With the Adam West. Book it's a different.
• 1:09:25
  Thing, yeah. I think Badar is the perfect
• 1:09:27
  example of what you were just talking about there.
• 1:09:29
  Andrew, is that, you know, he describes what they'd I was
• 1:09:34
  going through and his bows opening and him being tortured
• 1:09:36
  and it's really horrible and unpleasant.
• 1:09:39
  But that is there. So when he says to the doctor, I
• 1:09:42
  don't need to be in this situation, if you only topple
• 1:09:45
  governments and did this, it's there to provoke the discussion
• 1:09:49
  later on. It's not just the Colonel's, you
• 1:09:54
  know. Well, I'm going to ask you all a
• 1:09:58
  question now. You see that fellow over there?
• 1:10:00
  Just over there. Do you see him?
• 1:10:01
  Look over there where? There he looks very familiar to
• 1:10:05
  me, but I'm not sure where I've seen him before.
• 1:10:07
  He looks like he wants to have a fag in his hand, but he's not
• 1:10:10
  got a fag in his hands. You're pointing at your beep the
• 1:10:14
  meat. What's beep the meat?
• 1:10:20
  Trying desperately to segue, I was in an entertaining.
• 1:10:23
  Way he's tried to kick the habit, you know, the smoking.
• 1:10:28
  Now look here, Luke, you're, you're, you haven't said
• 1:10:31
  anything for a while. You're being a bit remote.
• 1:10:33
  So why don't you talk about the remote?
• 1:10:36
  Oh my goodness. I like the remote as a concept.
• 1:10:39
  There's one part of the remote I don't like, and that's probably
• 1:10:44
  the one thread I don't like throughout the entire novel.
• 1:10:48
  So from book 1 into book 2, and that's absolutely everything
• 1:10:53
  involving Fitz Kreiner. I don't think I'd have a problem
• 1:10:57
  with it if it was a different character, but because it's my
• 1:11:00
  boy I, I'm not sure I like it. And I feel like just like
• 1:11:04
  everything else in this book, that's that's the point.
• 1:11:07
  But. That's your limit, is it?
• 1:11:09
  That is your limit on the torture.
• 1:11:12
  That's fine. Arms fairs?
• 1:11:13
  No. You touch Fitzcreider.
• 1:11:17
  God damn it, you even took his libido away.
• 1:11:19
  You've destroyed him. He's a shell of a man,
• 1:11:23
  literally. It's also, look, I know it's
• 1:11:30
  Sam's leaving story so you might want to give her a bit more
• 1:11:33
  attention. That's fine, I agree, but she's
• 1:11:37
  so well written in that and I don't like her that much.
• 1:11:40
  So when you get to the fits, I like him.
• 1:11:44
  I wasn't a fan of it, but I do find a lot of the remote stuff
• 1:11:49
  quite interesting. It's like a culture that doesn't
• 1:11:53
  really have morals or anything like that.
• 1:11:57
  The way we know them, they follow the signals they follow
• 1:12:01
  and just interpret those signals however they they wish to.
• 1:12:07
  So what is the anathema with the planet which on which they're
• 1:12:13
  on? He names things so well, doesn't
• 1:12:16
  he? That's a great name.
• 1:12:18
  Dust is a good name as well. Like I know it's a simple one,
• 1:12:21
  but I think the descriptions we'll get to dust, the
• 1:12:23
  descriptions of it add to the actual name of Dust.
• 1:12:28
  But so the remote, they all have receivers, they all live on this
• 1:12:34
  weird place. You think the way they're doing
• 1:12:36
  things is timey whammy, but it's not like Capaldi in that two
• 1:12:41
  parter he's doing. They're doing things kind of the
• 1:12:43
  long way around. Because the versions of them we
• 1:12:48
  meet aren't the ones that we were introduced to earlier or
• 1:12:53
  later on in the book. Because they all get re
• 1:12:57
  remembered and lose all their memories.
• 1:12:59
  And the only memories they kind of have is the ones that the
• 1:13:02
  people who know them have of them.
• 1:13:05
  And that's kind of your personality going forward.
• 1:13:08
  So you, the more, I guess the the signals and the more you
• 1:13:12
  live, I guess over time, the less of you there is, the less
• 1:13:17
  of the real you there is, because it's all been replaced
• 1:13:20
  by other people's impressions of you and the signals.
• 1:13:23
  So I guess it's looking at how much of you is you and how much
• 1:13:28
  of you is influenced by outside factors.
• 1:13:32
  All right. I don't mean outside factors
• 1:13:34
  like going out and have coffee with your mates and things like
• 1:13:36
  that. But I mean the radio, I mean
• 1:13:38
  podcasts. I mean, now in this day and age,
• 1:13:41
  you got Twitter, YouTube, you got an opinion.
• 1:13:46
  You can stay in that echo chamber.
• 1:13:48
  And and there you are. You're only getting feedback on
• 1:13:55
  the on the kind of things that you want feedback from.
• 1:13:58
  That's. Why these are great with groups
• 1:14:01
  of people because you get so many different opinions coming
• 1:14:04
  at you. There's always a wonderful
• 1:14:06
  Andrew Batty in there going no, no, this ain't no good.
• 1:14:09
  All right, Yeah. You need that diversity.
• 1:14:12
  Otherwise, so easy to be in that echo chamber.
• 1:14:16
  Yeah, and it's almost the planet of an echo chamber, you know, in
• 1:14:22
  in a way, because they've all, they're all been.
• 1:14:26
  I think my wife's just brought in coffee.
• 1:14:27
  This is very lovely. But I see.
• 1:14:31
  So now I'm going to get distracted and she's going to be
• 1:14:33
  like, it's not a problem, is it? Luke?
• 1:14:35
  No. Hello.
• 1:14:37
  Missus Luke, Hello. I heard her making it.
• 1:14:40
  She's not in here yet, sorry. But yes, it's all it's all that.
• 1:14:44
  Planet of Anathema is an echo chamber.
• 1:14:47
  But once they start getting signals and interference from
• 1:14:50
  other places like they're on Earth and things like that,
• 1:14:54
  their behaviours all start to change.
• 1:14:56
  It's because now that code and compassion are over here getting
• 1:15:00
  new signals, they're getting new ideas, they're getting new ways
• 1:15:03
  of thinking and doing things. But the point is on that planet,
• 1:15:08
  no one on on anathema, no one really thinks for themselves.
• 1:15:11
  They just follow the signals, which means like they follow
• 1:15:14
  what other people say in effectively.
• 1:15:17
  And it's very satirical. I think it's.
• 1:15:22
  Not the kid that's brought up in the community, isn't it?
• 1:15:25
  And isn't exposed 20 ideas outside of it and then goes out
• 1:15:28
  into the big wide world and it completely changes who you are.
• 1:15:32
  But what you said there about people being remembered, I just
• 1:15:36
  thought suddenly, like, that's what happens when people die,
• 1:15:39
  right? All that's left of that person
• 1:15:41
  is how we all remember them. And he's found the way via this
• 1:15:44
  science fiction book to actually actualize that as as a
• 1:15:48
  remembered person. And you know what, I don't know
• 1:15:52
  if my mum would be actually who she was because I remember being
• 1:15:54
  a writer with Howard and sometimes, you know, like,
• 1:15:58
  sorry, that went very dark then for a second, the remote Andrew.
• 1:16:05
  Yeah, they're, they're really interesting.
• 1:16:08
  I don't want to say villains because they're sort of, it's
• 1:16:11
  not that simple. They're just sort of another
• 1:16:15
  race that we're examining in this, in this.
• 1:16:18
  Well, they're not because they're human.
• 1:16:20
  They're sort of humans plus. But the way the book is
• 1:16:24
  structured is really smart because we don't know upfront
• 1:16:29
  who they are, what their agenda is, what they're doing, how they
• 1:16:32
  work. And it's all drip fed throughout
• 1:16:36
  the book as we kind of learn with Sam and she starts to
• 1:16:41
  understand who they are, what anathema is, where, where in
• 1:16:46
  time they come from, what they're trying to achieve.
• 1:16:52
  And you've kind of got these three individuals there.
• 1:16:54
  You've got guest who is the leader of the group who is hell
• 1:17:02
  bent on this mission that he's trying to achieve.
• 1:17:05
  But we don't really know what it is.
• 1:17:07
  And at the start, we just think that that's selling this weapon
• 1:17:11
  to earth. You've got Compassion, who's the
• 1:17:15
  sort of security of the group, and she's very sort of sarcastic
• 1:17:20
  and short with people and very challenging to Sam.
• 1:17:25
  And then you've got Code, who's this sort of young teenager who
• 1:17:29
  doesn't really seem to have a purpose, and he's just kind of
• 1:17:32
  hanging around. But as you go through the book
• 1:17:36
  as Lucas saying that each of the characters sort of changes as
• 1:17:41
  you learn more about them and as they're influenced by the other
• 1:17:43
  characters. And you kind of it's interesting
• 1:17:47
  that compassion is a companion, but she's not in this book like
• 1:17:52
  she's a she's one of the she's a character in this book and
• 1:17:56
  there's really no intimation that she's going to.
• 1:17:59
  Well, we're getting into Book 2 there, but.
• 1:18:01
  She's very remote though, isn't she?
• 1:18:04
  Yes, nice fun it. Took me two halfway through the
• 1:18:09
  book, you know, and I thought, Oh my God, last two of the
• 1:18:12
  doctors companions going forward, didn't it?
• 1:18:14
  I forgot all about it. Like it's it's well hit.
• 1:18:18
  I mean, it's subtly enough done, isn't it?
• 1:18:20
  With code. And I, I think as well, I, my
• 1:18:24
  experience of reading this, I well, I didn't read interference
• 1:18:26
  at the time, but I did read the Blue Angel because I'd loved the
• 1:18:31
  Scarlet Empress and you know, I was like, oh, Scarlet Empress
• 1:18:34
  Empress too. I'll read that.
• 1:18:35
  And they hadn't, there had been no sort of publicity that Sam
• 1:18:38
  was leaving the books or the compassion was this new
• 1:18:41
  companion. There wasn't like an article in,
• 1:18:44
  in Gallifrey Guardian or anything like that to tell you.
• 1:18:47
  And I just picked up this book, and because it's a very oddly
• 1:18:50
  structured book, the Blue Angel, I was like, well, Sam's going to
• 1:18:55
  turn up at some point. Like who's this compassion,
• 1:18:57
  Like, is that like Iris's companion?
• 1:18:59
  It was really confusing. And I guess that was part of the
• 1:19:02
  whole like shock tactic of the book that they were.
• 1:19:05
  Doing. Big changes to the companions
• 1:19:08
  and changing the crew and not publicizing that and kind of
• 1:19:15
  taking this as an opportunity to surprise the audience.
• 1:19:18
  Maybe took that a little bit too far and that some readers then
• 1:19:21
  didn't know who the TARDIS crew were.
• 1:19:24
  But yeah, I've I've drifted a little bit from the remote, but
• 1:19:28
  yeah, why? I apologise.
• 1:19:30
  I. Think the remote drift aways
• 1:19:32
  from the remote itself, like as soon as they're a way from
• 1:19:35
  getting new signals and new kind of things like.
• 1:19:39
  They're kind of kind of sheep, aren't they?
• 1:19:43
  They just pick up everything else, which is kind of
• 1:19:46
  interesting. It doesn't make them
• 1:19:47
  particularly interesting people. But that whole I, I think what's
• 1:19:52
  interesting about them is the games.
• 1:19:54
  Lawrence Miles has played his identity right through a novel
• 1:19:56
  because so many characters aren't named or they're going
• 1:20:00
  into pseudonyms. And you and he never actually,
• 1:20:03
  there's never a point where she goes, oh, you were so and so all
• 1:20:06
  along. It's always there for the reader
• 1:20:08
  to work out. And that, that's brilliant.
• 1:20:11
  And that's kind of plays into that whole thing with the
• 1:20:14
  remembrance, because I suspect the the remembrance thing is to
• 1:20:18
  do with, you know, if you take something off telly or if you or
• 1:20:23
  a computer file, you lose definition with each generation.
• 1:20:28
  And he has just applied this to a human being, to humans.
• 1:20:31
  What if humans lived like meat? They are an actualisation of the
• 1:20:35
  way media works and reproduction of media works.
• 1:20:39
  So they're, they're again, they're an allegory in
• 1:20:43
  themselves, so. Each generation you sort of
• 1:20:45
  forget a bit more, don't you? Yeah.
• 1:20:47
  So so you become less and less who you are and more but who say
• 1:20:52
  that's not how it works with us through our lives.
• 1:20:55
  How, you know, our brains work? Are we the people we think we
• 1:20:58
  are, or are we the people that other people think we are?
• 1:21:01
  Reacting again, there's so much different deep ideas.
• 1:21:07
  We're going to leave this episode with a lot of
• 1:21:09
  existential angst, you know? Oh God, yeah, I'm there.
• 1:21:12
  Already. Did anyone notice the second
• 1:21:15
  code entered the book? It's departed the book from that
• 1:21:19
  thread. It was almost like a straight
• 1:21:22
  swap and I only noticed that because I knew the twist that
• 1:21:24
  were coming up later. But I was like, well, that's him
• 1:21:27
  gone. And I know you, you said you.
• 1:21:31
  And I understand why, because what happens if it's throughout
• 1:21:34
  just the first book, it's even worse in the second is really
• 1:21:38
  dark and really uncomfortable and done in such an interesting
• 1:21:42
  way. We've just got two page chapters
• 1:21:44
  called Travels with Fits, which I've just peppered in throughout
• 1:21:48
  the book. We'll sort of keep getting
• 1:21:51
  reminded about it. What we don't realise is that
• 1:21:53
  those are also telling the story of Anathema and the history of
• 1:21:58
  Faction Paradox and all of this stuff.
• 1:22:00
  But that's not all explained until book 2.
• 1:22:03
  It just, we just think we're following fits at this point.
• 1:22:06
  I really love those scenes. My stomach was clenched with
• 1:22:12
  each one, more and more as we went through going this is
• 1:22:15
  wrong, this is wrong. Where's the Doctor?
• 1:22:17
  When is the doctor going to save him?
• 1:22:19
  Obviously knowing that the Doctor is never, ever going to
• 1:22:23
  come for him. And he can't come for him
• 1:22:25
  because there's something that happens in Book 2 and we're not
• 1:22:27
  there yet. Yeah, really unpleasant thing to
• 1:22:31
  do to a lovely character. But he was quite a new character
• 1:22:37
  at the time. So it's kind of in retrospect, I
• 1:22:42
  think that this feels so horrible because it became such
• 1:22:44
  a long running character after this point.
• 1:22:46
  And I think if it had been planned that he was going to be
• 1:22:50
  the Bernice of these books and carry on for for so long, would
• 1:22:54
  they have let Lawrence Miles do? I don't know.
• 1:22:58
  This is his 7th book. I just had a quick now.
• 1:23:01
  So the taints only like 5, you know, six books ago.
• 1:23:05
  The February of the year, this was August.
• 1:23:08
  Yeah, I mean, I say that like there's any like letting
• 1:23:10
  Lawrence Miles do anything. Try.
• 1:23:13
  Stopping him. He does this stuff with fit and
• 1:23:16
  then he does it in a way that he can give Fitz back at the end of
• 1:23:19
  it. But you know, having been
• 1:23:23
  through this meat grinder and completely destroyed basically
• 1:23:27
  so. And it is sore.
• 1:23:29
  It is picked up like it's picked up in Earth World and it's
• 1:23:33
  picked up in Half Life and obviously fear itself when they
• 1:23:36
  wanted to have that conversation.
• 1:23:38
  But it isn't really tackled in a in a massive way after this
• 1:23:42
  because I just want to get on by telling Doctor Who books again
• 1:23:45
  but. Again, we're getting into Book
• 1:23:47
  2. Yeah, it's very hard not to,
• 1:23:49
  isn't it? Again.
• 1:23:51
  It's entirely deliberate that Fitz is put through this really
• 1:23:54
  horrible story because he because Fitz is the character
• 1:23:57
  that reassures you about all the it's you.
• 1:23:59
  It's like, as I'm said, it's like beneath it's he'll have a
• 1:24:02
  smart line. He'll be the funny guy.
• 1:24:04
  You know, currently you'll have A and again, you'd be relieved
• 1:24:08
  from the story, from what you're going through, and Laura's wants
• 1:24:12
  to take that away from you completely.
• 1:24:14
  So he puts him into his own section, bent him off, and up he
• 1:24:18
  goes. I've just read The Tame Right
• 1:24:20
  which is Fitz's first story and had he's not much like the Fitz
• 1:24:25
  from Escape philosophy onwards. That's the Fitz I love.
• 1:24:29
  You know, the Fitz and Angie Fitz and tricks Fitz and he
• 1:24:36
  really doesn't want to be there and he really can't be asked.
• 1:24:38
  And if he has to do something in the plot, it's always like, oh,
• 1:24:41
  right. You know, like, like, you know,
• 1:24:43
  he's a bit more proactive later on.
• 1:24:44
  And I'm wondering if there is a change after interference.
• 1:24:48
  I'll be interested to see in those books, between this and
• 1:24:51
  the ancestor cell, whether there's a shift from that fits
• 1:24:55
  to the code fits. In a range that is multi
• 1:25:00
  authored, what is a character but who they remember to be by
• 1:25:05
  the author? They're all remote.
• 1:25:12
  Wow, that's OK. That's good.
• 1:25:15
  I fancy a little vacation now. I've heard of a delightful
• 1:25:19
  little. World called OH.
• 1:25:21
  God, what's occurring on the zoom call?
• 1:25:23
  There's blood all over the screen.
• 1:25:26
  The horror. Oh my God, we haven't even
• 1:25:29
  gotten to the PDA section. Oh my God.
• 1:25:31
  We haven't even talked about we haven't even talked about
• 1:25:34
  faction Paradox yet. We're on our end.
• 1:25:38
  But let's talk about dust and who wants to take it.
• 1:25:41
  I'll, I'll take. I found it the hardest section
• 1:25:48
  to get into because it's such a horrible.
• 1:25:53
  I think meat grinder was a brilliant word.
• 1:25:55
  So when you say yeah, it's a meat grinder of a world.
• 1:25:58
  Dry. Isn't it?
• 1:25:59
  Yeah, absolutely. It's it's like the Pertwee
• 1:26:03
  colony world. It's supposed to be.
• 1:26:05
  But again, it's done with realism, which is just horrible.
• 1:26:12
  It it's like the worst aspects of Malcolm Hawke's version that
• 1:26:15
  you had in Cold, in Space, in the OR in Doomsday Weapon
• 1:26:18
  particularly. We're talking about that quarry
• 1:26:21
  though, John, don't you? How terrible Lawrence Miles
• 1:26:25
  describes Dust is still not as miserable as that quarry in
• 1:26:28
  colourful space. Horrible.
• 1:26:32
  I was just going. It's a it's a old western town
• 1:26:35
  with a quarry outside it basically.
• 1:26:39
  And it's, yeah, it's deliberately unsettling by
• 1:26:44
  putting him in a situation we're coming because.
• 1:26:49
  But we, as Luke said earlier, it's a comfort era for most.
• 1:26:53
  It's one. It's one of those nice cosy
• 1:26:56
  edges sounded off a little, you know, and he is a big
• 1:27:00
  reassuring. But, you know, it seemed as that
• 1:27:02
  kind of mother head was is always the description you get.
• 1:27:06
  And it's absolutely not that character in here.
• 1:27:09
  You get that whole scene with the TARDIS, with the blood
• 1:27:12
  dripping from the walls where everything's wrong.
• 1:27:16
  And it's so well done that it's you put this character in a
• 1:27:20
  situation, they can't win it. There is a few lines of book 2
• 1:27:23
  about this, but it's it's the TARDIS normally takes into
• 1:27:27
  places where he can make a difference, which which is kind
• 1:27:31
  of maybe answering the question a little from earlier, but this,
• 1:27:37
  yeah, it's it's just the horrible grinding section.
• 1:27:41
  But what I did about in the end was the IM Foreman circus that
• 1:27:45
  comes along because you have, I think there's there's 13 wagons
• 1:27:50
  and you get the various iterations of them.
• 1:27:53
  Someone like the if the creature that breathes time.
• 1:27:57
  My God, what a great idea. And it's it's a little intrusion
• 1:28:01
  of fantasy into something that is deliberately real.
• 1:28:04
  Are you? Is it?
• 1:28:05
  Is it this book where he has the coffee thrown in his face?
• 1:28:08
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a MO.
• 1:28:11
  It's a, it's a little thing. It's a tiny.
• 1:28:13
  Moment, yeah. But you can't imagine that it.
• 1:28:17
  And it's deliberately uncertain just with that action.
• 1:28:20
  And this is where the whole book's almost LED you to that
• 1:28:23
  Lawrence can get away with it. And certainly you're making it
• 1:28:26
  all so wrong. Yeah.
• 1:28:28
  He's definitely his sort of usual charm, his way out of
• 1:28:32
  every situation, you know, sort of comedic, almost comedic self.
• 1:28:37
  And then he's. Had no.
• 1:28:38
  Conversation with Magdalena, who's this sort of peacekeeper
• 1:28:43
  in the town, who's this woman with a gun basically and yeah,
• 1:28:48
  she. She just throws a cup of coffee
• 1:28:50
  into his face while he's talking to her.
• 1:28:51
  And it's just so it doesn't sound like much when we're
• 1:28:54
  discussing it now, but it's just such a shocking moment of like
• 1:28:58
  the indignity of it. And just the, as you're saying,
• 1:29:00
  just the way that he's not equipped to deal with this world
• 1:29:03
  in this situation. And it just adds to this
• 1:29:06
  mounting sense of dread where all of the stuff that's happened
• 1:29:11
  with the 8th Doctor and not being resolved by the time we
• 1:29:14
  leave that section of the book, we then go into the 3rd Doctor
• 1:29:18
  section and it's just this ominous sense that something
• 1:29:23
  awful is going to happen. And I mean, I knew obviously we
• 1:29:28
  all went into this reading knowing exactly what was going
• 1:29:30
  to happen, but it still has that feeling of like wrongness and,
• 1:29:35
  you know, dread. And the, the uncomfortable thing
• 1:29:40
  as well is like, because this section of the book has kind of
• 1:29:42
  been caused by the 8th Doctor because there's this intrusion
• 1:29:46
  that the 8th Doctor makes while he's kind of on the psychic
• 1:29:49
  plane into the mathematics TARDIS by like, Lagopolis
• 1:29:53
  mathematics. Oh, it's so cool.
• 1:29:55
  Yeah. Which causes this whole sort of
• 1:29:57
  schism in time. And it's like all this bad stuff
• 1:30:01
  is happening all. And it's also sort of the
• 1:30:02
  Doctor's fault while he's in this prison cell being sort of
• 1:30:06
  his morals are being examined. He's also caused this terrible
• 1:30:09
  thing to happen in his own past. And it's because.
• 1:30:11
  Of Sarah, Is it because? Because Sarah's there and she's
• 1:30:16
  there. Is that why?
• 1:30:18
  He's thinking of Sarah, Yeah. And then and it hits that point
• 1:30:23
  in her life. Yeah, so it tracks him back to
• 1:30:26
  the Third Doctor's TARDIS, where she is also.
• 1:30:29
  So yeah. I thought, I thought Miles
• 1:30:31
  wasn't just deconstructing Doctor Who, he was
• 1:30:34
  deconstructing Doctor Who books and tearing down the line
• 1:30:38
  between past Doctor and 8th Doctor books.
• 1:30:40
  Yeah, I'm not doing this. Jesus Christ.
• 1:30:43
  Let's just whack them all into one and I'm going to have the
• 1:30:46
  3rd Doctor from a past Doctor adventure walk straight into an
• 1:30:49
  eighth Doctor adventure and not be equipped to deal with it in
• 1:30:53
  any way, shape and form. And let's see what what happens.
• 1:30:56
  Let's see where we go from there.
• 1:30:57
  And And you're right, it's so uncomfortable to read.
• 1:31:00
  But the bit where he describes the TARDIS bleeding and it's
• 1:31:03
  like terrible, degrading things were happening to his oldest
• 1:31:07
  friends. And he.
• 1:31:08
  I think he just keeps saying this is wrong.
• 1:31:10
  Wrong. Yeah.
• 1:31:11
  And all that wrongness that we've had from the book so far,
• 1:31:14
  we're in an arm's fair. That's wrong.
• 1:31:15
  This is Doctor Who. You know, the Doctors in a in a
• 1:31:18
  prison in Saudi. That's wrong.
• 1:31:19
  This is Doctor Who. Fiats is been abandoned by the
• 1:31:23
  Doctor. That's really, really wrong
• 1:31:25
  though. You say it's the wrongest wrong
• 1:31:27
  for the very last section where the 3rd Doctor unfortunately is
• 1:31:31
  in the middle of effectively a new adventure at this point and
• 1:31:34
  you know who wants to be there and it's.
• 1:31:37
  Just like little details that make it even worse because like,
• 1:31:41
  again, this sounds really silly, but Sarah's described as wearing
• 1:31:44
  dungarees and you just think like she's dressed like this
• 1:31:48
  sort of 70s TV presenter stumbling into this awful,
• 1:31:52
  horrible world that just wants to kill her and the Doctor.
• 1:31:57
  And it's just, oh, he just, he just really knows how to, how to
• 1:32:01
  make it feel as uncomfortable as possible.
• 1:32:03
  And. It's like the ultimate splash in
• 1:32:06
  the faces as well to all those colony wells, because this is
• 1:32:08
  like the furthest the human race goes out, isn't it?
• 1:32:12
  And it's just literally dry as dust, and everyone's face is
• 1:32:18
  like old leather and everyone's just, no one can give a shit
• 1:32:22
  anymore. Everyone's going for it.
• 1:32:24
  Just sounds like the most. Yeah, we reached out into the
• 1:32:27
  stars. This is as far as we got and we
• 1:32:30
  just stopped decayed. It sounds miserable.
• 1:32:36
  Yeah, it's, it's everyone giving up, isn't it?
• 1:32:39
  I think part of it is to try and make sure that no one could
• 1:32:41
  write this kind of poetry. Standard collie adventure again.
• 1:32:45
  But then you get Carney of Lies. Yeah.
• 1:32:47
  Exactly. No, it didn't work.
• 1:32:52
  There's also this thing like, all right, so this is the PD,
• 1:32:56
  the EDA and PDA of, of this month of August would come out
• 1:33:04
  around the time of my birthday that year.
• 1:33:06
  Happy birthday. Sorry you didn't like what
• 1:33:13
  happened to Fence. Wait for the Third Doctor.
• 1:33:15
  Yeah. That's right.
• 1:33:17
  Happy birthday to you. Funny, I'm I not the hugest Pert
• 1:33:26
  we fan. I'm 7 and 11 is probably my two
• 1:33:29
  favourites for him so I was looking forward to it.
• 1:33:32
  Like I remember getting up to these bits.
• 1:33:34
  I'm like oh he's got to deconstruct the third doctor,
• 1:33:36
  this would be great. I'm reading.
• 1:33:38
  I'm like leave this poor man alone.
• 1:33:41
  This is book one. I'm not even this guy's biggest
• 1:33:44
  fan. I'm like leave him alone you son
• 1:33:46
  of a bitch. Like there's also another thing
• 1:33:50
  that I like that I wish because you feel writing APDA, you don't
• 1:33:56
  have to pay attention to what someone's doing 5 books before
• 1:34:01
  because this book said 100 years before that in the timeline, all
• 1:34:05
  this kind of bullshit. I'd say there's only one time
• 1:34:10
  the PDAs really should have been like, oh, oh, we can do that
• 1:34:15
  now. And that's interference.
• 1:34:17
  Because I'm not saying that I needed Heartnell to die and the
• 1:34:22
  City of World's End or like so the next few books we've got
• 1:34:26
  City at Wilds End, Divided Loyalties, Corbis, Marker, Last,
• 1:34:28
  The Gathering Tomb, Valdemar, Verdigree and I think Grave
• 1:34:33
  Matter and Harder TARDIS. There's some it's a mixed bag.
• 1:34:35
  There's some great shit in there.
• 1:34:37
  But what none of them do is maybe for now.
• 1:34:42
  I'm not saying they killed the Doctor in here, but would have
• 1:34:44
  been nice in a nice a couple of these books that someone got a
• 1:34:49
  continuity reference wrong, the writer, but they didn't get it
• 1:34:52
  wrong. It's changed now and it's a
• 1:34:54
  little bit, and that's still like 1 little faction paradoxy
• 1:34:58
  thing that's happened that's affected the Doctor's timeline
• 1:35:02
  or something like that. That would have been this nice
• 1:35:04
  little nugget to to put in the past after adventures.
• 1:35:07
  But they ignored the PDAs, ignored it.
• 1:35:12
  And I can understand that maybe they wanted to keep it separate
• 1:35:15
  because you've got to. I used to get both but I was a
• 1:35:19
  little bit more selective of the PDAs I guess but.
• 1:35:24
  I mean, what I will say is the PDA.
• 1:35:25
  Is the readership who read the PDA's didn't want any of that
• 1:35:29
  interfering interfering with their?
• 1:35:31
  Well, they did do this, but not with this, didn't they?
• 1:35:34
  They they started sort of bumping off companions.
• 1:35:38
  And then with. The hey, that's the beta.
• 1:35:40
  Yeah, it's just the in zero. Yeah.
• 1:35:43
  What bullet time and heritage. And then they yeah, they did it
• 1:35:47
  in. But it's so subtly that no one
• 1:35:50
  really noticed, you know, in in a scene full of metaphors and
• 1:35:53
  egg timers that everyone was like, well, what was that?
• 1:35:55
  And it wasn't until you read on TARDIS Wiki, you're like, oh,
• 1:35:57
  right. Yeah.
• 1:35:59
  So I don't know, maybe is that too much, though?
• 1:36:02
  To, to, to to make the past options and the Egg Doctor into
• 1:36:05
  one massive narrative together. No.
• 1:36:10
  You love it, don't you? Yeah, and I think it was Luke
• 1:36:13
  who suggested like, why didn't they do an alternative 4th
• 1:36:16
  Doctor? Yeah, Planet of the Spiders
• 1:36:19
  robot. How did that work, given what
• 1:36:22
  happens in interference? Like that would have been great.
• 1:36:26
  And to maybe you've introduced like a little bit more faction,
• 1:36:29
  like actually faction Paradox are not in that many books.
• 1:36:34
  And like, even in interference, which is sort of like their main
• 1:36:39
  appearance in the book, they're not in it that much.
• 1:36:41
  Two, they're in it a lot more than they are in book one.
• 1:36:45
  I know it's but even then it's only about 1/3.
• 1:36:47
  Yeah, I feel like they could have, they could have maybe done
• 1:36:50
  like a past Doctor faction Paradox story and just yeah,
• 1:36:55
  connected those those ranges a bit bit more.
• 1:36:58
  There's still time, Andrew. If you write it, we'll cover it
• 1:37:00
  on the book club. Well, what I need is to join
• 1:37:03
  Faction Paradox, go back and yeah, redo this.
• 1:37:09
  Grandfather Andrew. As an as an example of the ideas
• 1:37:13
  that Miles conjures up and he just his imagination is
• 1:37:17
  limitless, I think because to follow alien bodies, which was
• 1:37:21
  just a wealth of creativity with this, which takes some of those
• 1:37:26
  ideas and then expands them all and then brings in all new
• 1:37:29
  ideas. And every single time he's doing
• 1:37:31
  it, he's completely restructuring the entire fucking
• 1:37:34
  range as he does here. The idea of the 11th Day Empire,
• 1:37:40
  these 11 days that went missing and I was like, oh, what a what
• 1:37:44
  an imaginative idea. And then I googled it.
• 1:37:46
  I was like, Oh no, it actually happened.
• 1:37:48
  They genuinely did take 11 days out of the Gregorian.
• 1:37:51
  Calendar it's like that Steven Moffett thing of like you take
• 1:37:54
  your biggest movie idea and Doctor Who will just like eat it
• 1:37:57
  up like that is such a brilliant idea.
• 1:38:01
  That idea of those 11 missing days from the calendar and
• 1:38:04
  they're actually being something that happened there and that
• 1:38:08
  period of time still exists and it's this voodoo cult live
• 1:38:12
  there. But that's that's such a a
• 1:38:15
  strong idea and you can understand why he spun it off
• 1:38:18
  into that range. But it's like, oh.
• 1:38:21
  Visualizing more the Houses of Parliament with skulls
• 1:38:25
  everywhere you know, and these people in dreadful hideous robes
• 1:38:30
  going about and blood ceremonies and more police.
• 1:38:34
  Because then I think Faction Paradox is doing the same thing
• 1:38:37
  as Iris Wildtheim was doing. They're both there to disrupt
• 1:38:40
  Doctor Who, to make you think, to interact with it and
• 1:38:43
  undermine what you're doing, what you think Doctor Who is,
• 1:38:47
  and it's beefed up. Iris does it more, obviously
• 1:38:50
  with a few more laughs, but Faction Paradox is genuinely
• 1:38:54
  anarchic. They could be funny, but there's
• 1:38:57
  an edge to it because you don't know what they don't care.
• 1:39:01
  Yeah, that's, that's, that's horrible.
• 1:39:03
  Like because I didn't, I didn't read this book at the time and I
• 1:39:06
  didn't, I didn't read any embodies at the time.
• 1:39:08
  So I think my only experience of them was the ancestor cell,
• 1:39:12
  which I, which I loved, which I talked about on the on the
• 1:39:15
  podcast before, but that's a more kind of conventional Doctor
• 1:39:17
  Who tale about them. And actually, when when you read
• 1:39:20
  this, like they're horrible. Like they're so like they're so
• 1:39:24
  grotesque and like they're rituals and things that they do
• 1:39:28
  to people, like they are proper nasty villains.
• 1:39:30
  And I think just from like seeing the illustrations in
• 1:39:33
  Doctor Who magazine that they did and like, I kind of was
• 1:39:36
  thinking of them as just, you know, normal Doctor Who baddies.
• 1:39:39
  But then when you actually like experience the concept of them,
• 1:39:42
  like they're they're they're not cool.
• 1:39:44
  There wasn't there. A picture of Paul McGann with
• 1:39:46
  her woman sort of standing over him, like with her applause out
• 1:39:49
  and a big Cape. Yeah.
• 1:39:52
  Scary. Although I've got to say I'm not
• 1:39:55
  sure if it was book one or book 2 so forgive me for this but but
• 1:39:59
  there was a bit where I actually felt.
• 1:40:01
  Sympathy of action paradox. And I thought that was
• 1:40:04
  interesting where you realize just how much the time laws have
• 1:40:08
  hounded them and effectively almost completely wiped them
• 1:40:12
  out. And anathema is basically their
• 1:40:15
  their sort of last refuge. And and that's, you know, that's
• 1:40:19
  why they're taking on the remote and all that.
• 1:40:21
  So it's almost like they're reacting to the Time Lords being
• 1:40:25
  this all these all powerful gods, you know, stamping out any
• 1:40:29
  sort of chaos in the universe. I don't think the Time Lords
• 1:40:32
  come out of this particularly well either.
• 1:40:34
  They actually do feel like a that ominous threat you had in
• 1:40:39
  the war games before we moved into, you know, the three
• 1:40:42
  doctors. OK, I'm glad if one agrees.
• 1:40:48
  Yeah. They're very, it's, it's very
• 1:40:51
  deliberate giving Faction Paradox a motivation for their
• 1:40:54
  actions. And it works because I, I think
• 1:40:59
  it was Gary Dillett observed that every range, every
• 1:41:04
  showrunner of Doctor Who basically since the the late
• 1:41:08
  80s, they come back to Gallifrey in the end, they have to deal
• 1:41:11
  with. It's obviously they have to do
• 1:41:12
  with Doctor Who's law. And this is kind of an attempt
• 1:41:17
  to make the Time Lords again, unsettling, uncomfortable again.
• 1:41:22
  I don't think they ever appear, do they?
• 1:41:24
  You know, by the Doctor there's nothing.
• 1:41:26
  It's just myths and history, isn't it?
• 1:41:28
  Yeah, it's their reputation again.
• 1:41:31
  It's their memory is what's making them so powerful again.
• 1:41:35
  And their methods and their weapons and oh God, I love it.
• 1:41:39
  Gives me chance. That war, yeah.
• 1:41:41
  The war that you should be getting book 2.
• 1:41:42
  I can't remember if it's a book or a book 2, but yeah.
• 1:41:45
  Got nothing to talk about in book 2 now have we?
• 1:41:47
  Oh this heaps. Don't you worry, I've.
• 1:41:52
  Got a lot, yeah. Jesus Christ and some fabulous
• 1:41:55
  readings. But OK, let's sort of try and
• 1:41:59
  summarize interference with book one if we can, because rather
• 1:42:04
  brilliantly someone says towards the end, I'm a foreman.
• 1:42:06
  I think she goes, I think we're about halfway through now,
• 1:42:08
  aren't we? That's so cheeky.
• 1:42:11
  Although there was a chapter, I don't know if it was chapter 8
• 1:42:14
  or Chapter 9, where you catch up with every single character for
• 1:42:18
  one scene and it's from each of their points of view and there's
• 1:42:22
  nine different characters points of view.
• 1:42:25
  And it's like what? I realise this is unwieldy and
• 1:42:28
  there's a lot of characters and tons going on.
• 1:42:31
  So I'm just going to, it's a bit like a bit like Chipnall did at
• 1:42:34
  the end of the Halloween apocalypse.
• 1:42:35
  Do you remember when he went from character to character at
• 1:42:37
  the end of that episode? Don't worry, I haven't forgotten
• 1:42:39
  about any of these people. They're still.
• 1:42:40
  Part of the narrative. It's like the chapter title,
• 1:42:43
  isn't it? Yeah.
• 1:42:44
  Oh, is it catching up with everyone?
• 1:42:46
  Basically it's equivalent of yeah.
• 1:42:50
  Well, any book 1 notes that you would care to throw out?
• 1:42:54
  I mean, there's a million that I've mentioned, but Andrew.
• 1:43:01
  Oh, we can't hear you. He's muted.
• 1:43:04
  What a pro. The dog was barking again.
• 1:43:08
  I mean, yes, tons of stuff, but that we can talk about in
• 1:43:11
  episode 2. But there was just one little
• 1:43:14
  piece of foreshadowing that I noticed in this book that, well,
• 1:43:18
  I think it's a piece of foreshadowing.
• 1:43:19
  And if it is, it's quite clever. So there's the bit where the
• 1:43:24
  Doctor gets drawn into the story by answering the telephone from
• 1:43:28
  the the space-time Telegraph, like the one that he left the
• 1:43:31
  Brigadier. But it has turned itself into a
• 1:43:36
  like a red telephone box in the TARDIS now.
• 1:43:39
  And then when he arrives at UNIT HQ, he discovers that the other
• 1:43:44
  end of the Telegraph has also turned itself into a red
• 1:43:47
  telephone box because of the connection between it and the
• 1:43:51
  TARDIS. And I was like, oh, this is what
• 1:43:55
  happens to compassion. Oh, so compassion.
• 1:44:00
  Spoilers for where the where the line goes.
• 1:44:02
  But because of her remote implants, which receive signals,
• 1:44:06
  they get tuned to the TARDIS. And because of being connected
• 1:44:10
  to the TARDIS, that's what then turns her into the TARDIS.
• 1:44:12
  So this connection between two points with signal changes the
• 1:44:18
  thing that is attached to, and I was like, is this a bit of
• 1:44:21
  intentional foreshadow? And it kind of shows the
• 1:44:23
  Doctor's irresponsibility again in the he's done this and he's
• 1:44:28
  seen this example of what's happened to this time.
• 1:44:30
  Space Telegraph doesn't think about that, does this thing to
• 1:44:35
  compassion later on, and then it has all these consequences.
• 1:44:40
  And that's another like core part of this story of the
• 1:44:44
  consequences of the Doctor's actions where he's not thinking
• 1:44:47
  about the big picture, that he's doing these little things which
• 1:44:50
  have massive ramifications for the entire universe and not
• 1:44:54
  taking the warnings when he sees them.
• 1:44:56
  So I was like. Oh, I didn't spot that.
• 1:45:00
  You're very clever, man, Lawrence smiles.
• 1:45:01
  If that was intended. That's another one for I Who?
• 1:45:05
  Five. Yeah.
• 1:45:07
  I mean, oh God, where the hell was I going then?
• 1:45:12
  I certainly got out of my head. Anyone else got any notes?
• 1:45:17
  I want to talk about one of the a concept and I was like, this
• 1:45:24
  is too dumb. By the end of it, I was like,
• 1:45:26
  I'd read a comic book all about that.
• 1:45:28
  Sign me up. And it's all about Lawrence
• 1:45:33
  saying there's no such thing as bad superpowers.
• 1:45:36
  Like, imagine your superpower and this is all you could do.
• 1:45:40
  You had the ability to turn things pink.
• 1:45:44
  And he takes that. He's just like, well, that could
• 1:45:46
  change the world if you soften everything up you like, because
• 1:45:50
  colours do affect us and our emotions and our formal
• 1:45:53
  processes like Reds really have a strong thing with the softer
• 1:45:57
  colors could bring off softer emotions and things like that.
• 1:46:00
  But it's for if you can make turn everything pink, what
• 1:46:04
  effect would you have on the world just by having that one
• 1:46:08
  silly power? And I was just like, put this in
• 1:46:12
  a comic. It's going to be very colorful.
• 1:46:14
  It would be like Green Lantern pink.
• 1:46:16
  So I'd be like, Yep, let's do it.
• 1:46:18
  And it was just like this really silly idea that I was like, is
• 1:46:22
  he really going to sell me on this concept?
• 1:46:25
  He does just and it's it's his way of saying like you don't
• 1:46:30
  need all these highfalutin, super amazing powers in order to
• 1:46:35
  affect change in the world. It could be something small, it
• 1:46:38
  could be something silly, but it it could give you the power to
• 1:46:41
  change things and things like that.
• 1:46:43
  So it's just a silly little thing idea he has in the book
• 1:46:51
  that just popped out at me and I, I loved it.
• 1:46:54
  It also sang to the comic book fan of me because I could just
• 1:46:57
  try to visualize someone just touching stuff and it's turning
• 1:47:01
  pink. And just how that would work and
• 1:47:04
  people's reactions to it would be great.
• 1:47:06
  He's got so many ideas, so that's just a throwaway idea.
• 1:47:09
  He goes, yeah, this big bag of ideas I've got.
• 1:47:11
  Yeah, you can have that one, right?
• 1:47:13
  I've got more for book 2. Don't worry, Job.
• 1:47:18
  We haven't mentioned the act, the cold itself, have we?
• 1:47:20
  We haven't. Oh my God.
• 1:47:22
  Bloody hell no, you go. It's, yeah, it's a pretty
• 1:47:27
  concept. It is, again, reread The
• 1:47:29
  Invisible and it's called, it's obviously inspired by the
• 1:47:32
  concept of a kind of magic mirror, because it's this stuff
• 1:47:34
  from outside the universe that basically just takes chunks out
• 1:47:39
  of reality. It's it's almost like
• 1:47:41
  interference patterns on television or, or a videotape.
• 1:47:45
  Yeah. Where where there's drop outs, I
• 1:47:47
  think that's where it comes from as well.
• 1:47:50
  And it it's such an eerie horrible weapon and they just go
• 1:47:54
  and they just yeah, the sea selling it, you know, it it's
• 1:47:58
  you know, again, I think what Luke said about that thing with,
• 1:48:02
  you know, turning the world pick, yeah.
• 1:48:04
  If that something that miner can change us, how could this
• 1:48:09
  weapon, which is more powerful than anything that we've got on
• 1:48:13
  Earth up to nuclear bombs, etcetera, how would that change
• 1:48:16
  the world? And it's a really horrible
• 1:48:20
  concept which never gets overplayed, Jessie.
• 1:48:23
  Little bits of it chunk it, which is makes it all the more
• 1:48:27
  terrifying, I think. And brilliant.
• 1:48:30
  Lewis and Peter Bloody Morgan are just so excited about it,
• 1:48:33
  aren't they? Like, oh, what we could do.
• 1:48:36
  And the weights of the little skulls in their mouth, chomping
• 1:48:39
  away. Do you remember?
• 1:48:40
  That and that image in the Jonathan Morris comics
• 1:48:43
  Supernature where all the faces are coming out of the TARDIS.
• 1:48:46
  I was seeing that, but just sort of coming out of horrible black
• 1:48:48
  tar, you know? Yeah, although it's in the on
• 1:48:51
  the front of Book 2, obviously. Yeah.
• 1:48:55
  Yeah, I I didn't realise it till I think the end of reading it.
• 1:48:58
  I was like, Oh yeah, shit. That's the.
• 1:49:00
  There was a moment with the cold in Book 2 where I had to jump
• 1:49:04
  out of the bath and message you all immediately because I was
• 1:49:07
  just so excited. But we'll get there.
• 1:49:11
  I just wanted to add as well, I've forgotten that you did have
• 1:49:14
  scenes from the Ogron's point of view.
• 1:49:15
  In this Lost Boy, thoughts are relayed through canine in a
• 1:49:19
  wonderful sequence where it's so brilliantly written because you
• 1:49:24
  think you couldn't really have a poetic Ogron.
• 1:49:27
  And yet he says things like we give you poetry and you hear it
• 1:49:30
  as meaningless, meaningless words about rots and things like
• 1:49:34
  that. Again, it's doing what he did
• 1:49:36
  for the Crotons in alien bodies. He's doing that with the Ogrons.
• 1:49:38
  He's gorgeous. It's so funny.
• 1:49:40
  So much more of that in Book 2, and it's very funny indeed.
• 1:49:45
  He's very useful, that Ogron, isn't he?
• 1:49:47
  Oh. He's funny as hell.
• 1:49:50
  It's again, it's it's, yeah, he's played for comedy, but not
• 1:49:56
  in a way that, again, you could mistake them for that racial
• 1:50:01
  stereotype that everyone at the Bay does.
• 1:50:03
  It's making them brilliant as well.
• 1:50:07
  Can I sort of ask one last question before we go into our
• 1:50:11
  ranks? And that is like, does this arc
• 1:50:15
  stuff excite you or do you find it a bit wearying?
• 1:50:19
  Like I I know people that go in both directions with this stuff
• 1:50:22
  and some people are just like, I just turned up to you, something
• 1:50:24
  like Jesus Christ stop sign of pushed this poor little show in
• 1:50:28
  all these very strange directions.
• 1:50:30
  Or are you like, my God, we're racing down the track.
• 1:50:32
  I don't know where we're going, but woo Hoo twist some surprises
• 1:50:36
  and shocks Andrew. The latter that was your.
• 1:50:42
  Why is that? Well, I think The thing is
• 1:50:44
  you've got, it's a continuing series, so it makes sense for
• 1:50:48
  there to be continuing storylines.
• 1:50:50
  You've got that split of new 8th Doctor stuff and old familiar
• 1:50:55
  stuff in the PDA. So you've kind of got both
• 1:50:58
  approaches for two different audiences.
• 1:51:01
  And you've got a paying up audience of Doctor Who fans who
• 1:51:06
  are super well versed in all the continuity and will pay
• 1:51:11
  attention to the details in your book.
• 1:51:13
  So this is where you can do it and you can you can explore
• 1:51:18
  these ideas over a / a long period of time.
• 1:51:21
  So I loved it. Whether it was always effective
• 1:51:24
  is is another matter particularly, particularly in
• 1:51:29
  this book line where it would be very exciting but where you
• 1:51:33
  ended up was not always satisfying.
• 1:51:38
  I mean, we're doing our top art books this episode, and I was
• 1:51:41
  going to suggest we did our bottom art books in the same
• 1:51:43
  episode so we can explore sort of both angles.
• 1:51:47
  Luke, does it excite you? Well, yeah, just one.
• 1:51:51
  Andrew just said, oh, I don't want an arc book.
• 1:51:54
  Well, here's the powerstop for adventure.
• 1:51:55
  There you go. Boom.
• 1:51:58
  I do like the odd 8th Doctor standalone, like a crooked world
• 1:52:03
  or intelligent tigers or something like that, but also
• 1:52:06
  his memories and stuff. Anymore.
• 1:52:08
  I want an ongoing story. I want to find out more on what
• 1:52:11
  I want some I want some continuity, I guess in my in my
• 1:52:15
  ongoing narrative. And I know the old show wasn't
• 1:52:18
  like that, but between that show ending in these books becoming
• 1:52:22
  huge for me, I guess you've got Babylon 5, you've got Deep Space
• 1:52:27
  9, you've got Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you've got all these
• 1:52:31
  shows who are popularizing for better or worse for TV in
• 1:52:36
  general, story arcs. They've been in books for ages.
• 1:52:39
  I guess it's. Just at this time, isn't it?
• 1:52:41
  So 1987? Yeah.
• 1:52:43
  So it's really getting popular at this time.
• 1:52:45
  So that's really hitting and and that's all right.
• 1:52:49
  We don't have ATV show for Doctor Who, but we got these
• 1:52:51
  books. So we can inject some of that
• 1:52:53
  into these into the into the books.
• 1:52:55
  And I liked it. I mean, like that one's ever
• 1:52:58
  going to do the J Michael Stratinsky approach.
• 1:53:00
  Like I'm a mad boss is going to write 40 TV episodes in a row,
• 1:53:06
  you know, because every everything else is more
• 1:53:08
  especially about like, Hey, let's play with these these toys
• 1:53:10
  together and see what we can come up with together and and go
• 1:53:14
  to worse. With varying degrees of success,
• 1:53:18
  I would say if Lawrence Miles wrote 40 books on the bounce
• 1:53:21
  yet, there would be some ups and downs.
• 1:53:23
  So thank God we only got him every couple of years.
• 1:53:25
  I just remember the Earth arc. What I like about it is it's not
• 1:53:29
  just a Lance Parkin or a Justin Richards or a Paul and we got
• 1:53:34
  it. You got some Steve Emerson.
• 1:53:36
  Casualties of War is a great book.
• 1:53:37
  We got it all right. We would call and break.
• 1:53:39
  It didn't work out, but that's the other risk you take too when
• 1:53:45
  you bring in like I've seen. Maybe for me, if I was doing
• 1:53:50
  Arcs, I may have kind of concentrated more on established
• 1:53:55
  authors doing the Archie books and maybe go on for less
• 1:53:58
  established authors for a standalone or something like
• 1:54:03
  that because but you know, there are one off, oh, sorry, new
• 1:54:09
  writers who can do ARC stuff. I think Mag sell Holiday, it
• 1:54:13
  managed it quite well and there's a couple of others as
• 1:54:15
  well, but I don't know, when you've got like so many chefs in
• 1:54:19
  the kitchen, you're always going to get a mixed bag and it's just
• 1:54:22
  going to have to deal with it. I guess it's the same with the
• 1:54:25
  season of Doctor Who. You never know what you're going
• 1:54:26
  to. Get John Are you excited at this
• 1:54:29
  point in Inspirance because the Ark.
• 1:54:32
  Positively too massive. What?
• 1:54:37
  I think it's almost impossible post that kind of mid 90s
• 1:54:41
  explosion with that arts. It's it's very, very difficult
• 1:54:44
  to do a story that because otherwise you might as well do
• 1:54:47
  you know, the PDAs you need the kind of direction for the range.
• 1:54:52
  And it's kind of I think my problem with, you know, Jodie's
• 1:54:55
  first series 11 where you haven't got that ongoing story
• 1:54:59
  that's kind of underpinned all the others.
• 1:55:01
  It's an interesting experiment to kind to go for, but you just
• 1:55:06
  go where is this going? What where why should I TuneIn
• 1:55:11
  next week. You need that kind of sense of
• 1:55:15
  direction, that sense of purpose and I think the best ones that
• 1:55:20
  they at least have to allow a kind of a conversation between
• 1:55:22
  authors. I know there's a delay here
• 1:55:25
  because you know of the writing deadlines and how and how things
• 1:55:29
  might change in manuscripts. But the thing that I always
• 1:55:32
  lived back, the new adventures and a lot of Vdas, that was the
• 1:55:36
  sense of the ongoing conversation with the authors.
• 1:55:40
  Were they picking up on what Lawrence did what or Mars did
• 1:55:44
  occasionally? What Kate Orb and John Bloom,
• 1:55:47
  what Lawrence Parkin are doing? But the most part, they were
• 1:55:50
  talking at the same time. I don't think anyone was talking
• 1:55:52
  to Lawrence Miles or I don't think Lawrence Miles was talking
• 1:55:55
  to anybody. But I think all the other
• 1:55:57
  authors that were right in sort of for, you know, the four or
• 1:55:59
  five books from that chunk, I think they were all having
• 1:56:02
  e-mail conversations. Yeah, Lawrence is almost
• 1:56:06
  impossible. It's it's almost like Lawrence
• 1:56:07
  just needs his own sandpit, which obviously he got with
• 1:56:10
  other ranges. But yeah, it it's as long as it
• 1:56:15
  gives that range a sense of direction, as long as you're not
• 1:56:18
  just going in for no reason. Yeah, These five books will
• 1:56:21
  relate to each other. You need to make sure those
• 1:56:25
  books will be satisfying or at least a really solid building
• 1:56:31
  block in their own right. You know, interference book one
• 1:56:33
  in its own. It's got loads of ideas.
• 1:56:35
  It's brilliant. It's not a satisfying book
• 1:56:37
  because it doesn't tell that whole story, but you need to
• 1:56:40
  make sure that it it's like an episode.
• 1:56:43
  It's something that's like lost with television to a certain
• 1:56:46
  degree, where it where they just say one huge story.
• 1:56:49
  So it's some like Game of Thrones.
• 1:56:51
  So what you but doesn't always make for a satisfying episode.
• 1:56:54
  It's so right, that story from. Making it so boring.
• 1:56:57
  I'm like, will you get this story?
• 1:56:59
  Star Trek The Next Generation would have done this in 45
• 1:57:01
  minutes. Come on.
• 1:57:02
  Yeah, exactly that it's. Yeah.
• 1:57:05
  So just make sure you get as long as you're telling good
• 1:57:07
  stories and if they're linked, even better.
• 1:57:11
  I reckon the the arcs, all of them, every single one in the
• 1:57:15
  new adventures and the Edas are messy as hell.
• 1:57:19
  All of them. None of them work 100%.
• 1:57:22
  I fucking love most photo like because I like the fact that
• 1:57:26
  they're they've got the ambition to tell a series of books and
• 1:57:30
  just just to make it feel bigger, you know, and sometimes
• 1:57:35
  you get a run of books in those arcs which work really well.
• 1:57:38
  Sometimes they cap it off brilliantly.
• 1:57:40
  Sometimes they start it brilliantly.
• 1:57:43
  For some reason. I don't think any of them do all
• 1:57:45
  of it well, which is annoying. But I suppose in our who ranks,
• 1:57:49
  we're going to find out where we think the success is.
• 1:57:52
  Long way, Luke. Can I just the ongoing coffee
• 1:57:57
  saga? Apparently she she put it right
• 1:58:00
  beside me and I missed it, so I sent her a message going Did you
• 1:58:03
  make me my coffee? She's like, it's been there the
• 1:58:05
  whole fucking time. So if you got a word with Naomi
• 1:58:10
  Alderman, she can give you a watch, you know, where you could
• 1:58:13
  go back 1/2 hour or so, but there's a lot of interest on it.
• 1:58:17
  OK, So be careful. Nice.
• 1:58:19
  It's still warmish, so be it. But favorite ARC books?
• 1:58:26
  There's at least one predictable name in in mine.
• 1:58:28
  It's, well, I I put Conundrum there as one of my favorite ARC
• 1:58:33
  books. Yes, it is Stephen Lyons.
• 1:58:36
  Yes, I did read this before I'd ever seen the Mine Robber.
• 1:58:38
  Everyone. Everyone I've heard who's a
• 1:58:40
  wilderness kid like me got to see the Mine Robber when they
• 1:58:44
  were young. I feel like I'm the only one who
• 1:58:46
  didn't see the Mine Robber until he was like 20 or whenever it
• 1:58:49
  came out on DVD or my dealer gave me a copy.
• 1:58:54
  It was an early release on the video and it got repeated in
• 1:58:57
  9119. Yeah, yeah, I missed the ball,
• 1:59:01
  but I've I've seen it now and read this book again in context,
• 1:59:07
  but I really like this book getting involves I guess a lot
• 1:59:11
  of the things that John and I have been especially John has
• 1:59:14
  been mentioning in this about interference, like comic books
• 1:59:18
  narrative, how you how you play with that and how you tell an
• 1:59:22
  interesting story with it. It's got a companion like not
• 1:59:27
  the hugest biggest new Ice fan, but I think she's great in this
• 1:59:32
  as well. Same with Beneath.
• 1:59:33
  And then you've got all the land of fiction kind of stuff when
• 1:59:37
  there's tie insurance that will eventually culminate in no
• 1:59:41
  future, which is also you could say, hey, we like this arc, but
• 1:59:45
  not so much that, though I have a soft spot for for that.
• 1:59:49
  So conundrums kind of my first. It was the Varden's all along.
• 1:59:52
  Oh, sorry. It does have the best gag in any
• 1:59:57
  Doctor book though. Oh, really?
• 2:00:00
  I'll tell you what. Right.
• 2:00:01
  I'm going to switch this up now. So John, you do your first one,
• 2:00:04
  then Andrew, you do your, then I'll do my first, and then we'll
• 2:00:06
  go round again. Yeah, OK.
• 2:00:10
  Well, the way I did it, I thought I won't just pick my
• 2:00:14
  favorite books from each one because otherwise I know that
• 2:00:16
  Luke would pick and and so would I.
• 2:00:19
  So what I kind of, so I kind of was I structured.
• 2:00:24
  So I thought I'll try and pick something that I thought starts
• 2:00:26
  an arc. Well, I'll pick something that.
• 2:00:29
  Is a good. Middle and then a good ending.
• 2:00:32
  So the first one I'll go for would be the burning, because
• 2:00:36
  it's a nice simple thing. It has a lot to do.
• 2:00:40
  You know, the story itself is as as you said earlier, it's quite
• 2:00:44
  a simple story. It's just the doctor available,
• 2:00:48
  but what it does, it examines what this doctor, this new
• 2:00:55
  amnesiac Dr. what is he like in this Doctor Who adventure?
• 2:01:00
  And it's got some beautiful imagery.
• 2:01:02
  But what it does, it tells a really satisfying story, sets up
• 2:01:06
  that whole arc gorgeously. And it's and it's just got some
• 2:01:12
  lovely imagery in it and it's a a brilliant, well told story.
• 2:01:16
  And again, it's just a reset. It's a template.
• 2:01:19
  It's perfect. I, I tend to think Justin
• 2:01:21
  Richards kind of one of those authors who's just there a lot
• 2:01:25
  of the time. He's really good on structure,
• 2:01:28
  really writes a bad book. But it again, isn't, if not the
• 2:01:32
  first ones I pick up, but the burning, I'll go back to that a
• 2:01:36
  few times. It's It's a really nicely
• 2:01:38
  launched Arg. Always wondering people, when
• 2:01:40
  they first read The Burning, they thought, well, OK, well
• 2:01:42
  we'll have this. At the end of the episode, you
• 2:01:44
  get the TARDIS back, you get his memory back.
• 2:01:46
  And then whenever at the end of it, they're like, oh, what's
• 2:01:47
  this? What's this like?
• 2:01:51
  And then after casualties of war, you know, getting ever more
• 2:01:54
  fraught that this was going to be Doctor Who forever.
• 2:01:57
  But they're so good. Who cares, Andrew?
• 2:02:01
  Well, I thought it was worth giving a shout out to the sort
• 2:02:05
  of first Ark finale that we had in the books, which was
• 2:02:08
  Revelation. I know that you're not a big
• 2:02:12
  fan, Joe. But it's So what?
• 2:02:16
  I think you mentioned in another episode, but yeah, just that it
• 2:02:21
  was, yeah, the rounding up of the first arc that the books
• 2:02:26
  were trying and it was a new author and he was sort of doing
• 2:02:30
  a new sort of storytelling style in the book.
• 2:02:35
  So it was kind of a lot of firsts all in one and manages to
• 2:02:38
  do them all pretty successfully and sort of stick in the mind
• 2:02:41
  with so many memorable imagery, images and the way that it plays
• 2:02:47
  with the characters of the Doctor and Ace.
• 2:02:50
  Yeah, I don't know if it's like one of my favourites, but I just
• 2:02:53
  thought, you know, as an ARC book, it's one worth worth
• 2:02:58
  appreciating. So rare that the finale is
• 2:03:01
  appreciated as much as that book is appreciated.
• 2:03:03
  Right. Exactly.
• 2:03:04
  Yeah, Well, I'm going right back to near the start of the 8th
• 2:03:09
  Doctor books and predictably Our Chosen Alien Bodies by Lawrence
• 2:03:12
  Miles, because I think subtly, brilliantly introduces ideas
• 2:03:17
  that affects that range until the Gallifrey Chronicles, they
• 2:03:23
  sort of all roll on. But yeah, it is very influential
• 2:03:27
  and it brings up all of the stuff of the future war with
• 2:03:30
  Faction Paradox. And in most cases, it's probably
• 2:03:35
  done as well as those ideas were ever done in the books.
• 2:03:39
  So, yeah, it's just that a brilliant book.
• 2:03:42
  And it's it's a great read, though.
• 2:03:44
  It's a great, funny read, which obviously we've covered before.
• 2:03:47
  But yeah, huge ideas and they they're going to go on to make
• 2:03:52
  an impact, Luke. Well, I've gone to the Earth arc
• 2:03:59
  and what I think if I was objectively looking at the Earth
• 2:04:04
  arc, all right, Father times, probably the best book in that
• 2:04:08
  bunch. But for me, my favorite or the
• 2:04:11
  one that kind of hit me because it's like a historical it's a
• 2:04:15
  piece of history I'm interested in.
• 2:04:17
  It's a historical figure I'm also interested in as well.
• 2:04:21
  And that's the it's the Turing test by Paul Leonard, because
• 2:04:26
  it's a it's not just the code breaking and all that kind of
• 2:04:31
  stuff I find interesting. It's like it's the tragedy of
• 2:04:36
  Alan Turing and his life and things like that as well.
• 2:04:38
  And I really like that this book handles it in a respectful kind
• 2:04:44
  of adult way. It's a really cool story to
• 2:04:47
  boot. It's it's, it's a very rare,
• 2:04:52
  like World War two-story. Even at that time.
• 2:04:55
  There hadn't been too many World War Two stories by that point,
• 2:04:59
  like just war, maybe a couple other little things here and
• 2:05:04
  there. Illegal alien, maybe Shadow in
• 2:05:08
  the Glass, illegal alien, maybe. So that would be sort of.
• 2:05:13
  So. Yeah.
• 2:05:13
  I just remember this being a book that's in my wheelhouse.
• 2:05:18
  I mean, I'm already invested. I've read the previous two
• 2:05:20
  novels and I've. Oh my God, where are we going?
• 2:05:23
  And it's just, it's, I can't remember so much about it
• 2:05:29
  anymore, but I just remember the relationship between the Doctor
• 2:05:32
  and Alan Turing being one of my my favorite things in a Doctor
• 2:05:37
  Who book. So that's much my choice.
• 2:05:39
  It's so good. He's so hot for Paul McGann,
• 2:05:43
  isn't he, in that? Book We're all blaming Paul
• 2:05:45
  McGann. It's true Joe hasn't seen Widner
• 2:05:49
  yet and I told him look at Paul McGann and Widner.
• 2:05:54
  But he's on the turn. Look.
• 2:05:56
  I know, I know, what can I say? It's Paul Leonard.
• 2:06:01
  I was I was thinking of picking the Turing test because Paul
• 2:06:04
  Leonard, he writes a lot of these kind of mid arc books for
• 2:06:07
  the range. He does Dreamstone moon, he does
• 2:06:09
  Turing test and I'm going to go for for one where I think it
• 2:06:13
  picks up the themes of the ark. It picks up what the ark is
• 2:06:17
  doing and it's going to be the last resort.
• 2:06:20
  Oh, I love the last, which is a head fuck of a book.
• 2:06:24
  It's it's like it's it's almost it's not quite every sentence.
• 2:06:28
  It's set in a different reality, but it's not far off it and it
• 2:06:32
  plays with that time being out of joint, out of kilter.
• 2:06:36
  And I think it's one of those quietly really big and ambitious
• 2:06:39
  books that no one talks about that really should be talked
• 2:06:43
  about more. It's.
• 2:06:44
  Did you use a chart when you read it?
• 2:06:46
  It's the only time I've ever done it.
• 2:06:48
  Yeah, after, yes, I went back after it went right, but yeah,
• 2:06:52
  matched it all out which. Fucking really?
• 2:06:54
  Am I in now? OK.
• 2:06:55
  Yeah, right. It was a mess, wasn't it?
• 2:06:57
  Right. It was like a spider's web.
• 2:06:59
  At the end note with all those tardises.
• 2:07:03
  Yeah, that big, the cover where you don't realize what the
• 2:07:06
  cover's going to be doing. I would say the two hardest
• 2:07:11
  Doctor Who books to to write in terms of a plotting structures
• 2:07:15
  standpoint would Master be Festival of Death and The Last
• 2:07:18
  Resort right? But Justin Richards did make
• 2:07:22
  Johnny Morris submit a flow chart to make sure he had a.
• 2:07:25
  Hand. Demanded.
• 2:07:26
  What was happening with that story?
• 2:07:28
  He was the first time novelist at the time as well.
• 2:07:30
  So I can I can kind of understand that.
• 2:07:31
  Yeah, this is a great synopsis. You may want to say the last
• 2:07:35
  resort, Jordan. Honestly, Andrew, what's your
• 2:07:39
  #2? I had a well, I was going to
• 2:07:43
  choose the cheering test, but I'm not going to say, and I've
• 2:07:45
  just had one that has like this very second occurred to me that
• 2:07:49
  I really enjoyed and again, is one that people don't really
• 2:07:51
  talk about. And it is Heritage from the past
• 2:07:55
  Doctor books, which is actually quite similar to like the dust
• 2:08:01
  sections of of interference. So the past Doctor adventures
• 2:08:06
  didn't really do arcs that much, but one of the ones that was
• 2:08:09
  running was the sort of 7th Doctor, an Ace one where you
• 2:08:13
  find out that Ace is dead and she's going to die.
• 2:08:18
  And the Doctor then has to deal with this and like work out and
• 2:08:22
  try and save her before she's going to die.
• 2:08:25
  And at one point, they land on this desert planet called
• 2:08:29
  Heritage. And along with, like, dealing
• 2:08:33
  with Ace's death, they also find out that Mel is dead.
• 2:08:38
  So it's a really bleak, depressing book.
• 2:08:41
  But I do remember really enjoying it.
• 2:08:43
  And again, having that feeling of like something bad is
• 2:08:46
  happening here, something wrong is happening here.
• 2:08:48
  This is exciting. How is it going to resolve?
• 2:08:52
  And again, sort of the Doctor being put in a situation where
• 2:08:55
  things are out of control, things which aren't meant to
• 2:08:58
  happen are happening. And yeah, eventually that
• 2:09:02
  storyline then gets resolved in the 8th Doctor book.
• 2:09:05
  So it was an interesting sort of like as we were talking about
• 2:09:08
  earlier, that opportunity to do something between the two
• 2:09:11
  ranges. And.
• 2:09:14
  Yeah, yeah. I guess what I'm saying.
• 2:09:17
  Heritage. They did do the PDA thing that I
• 2:09:21
  wanted them to, it just took them a few years to to finally
• 2:09:25
  start doing. It I mean, if they hadn't have
• 2:09:27
  corrected it, we wouldn't have got deaf in the styles by Bonnie
• 2:09:29
  Langford, would we? So crime What I second then is
• 2:09:35
  it is a transitionary book because it's a book that's
• 2:09:38
  setting up stuff and it's a book that's paying off stuff and it's
• 2:09:42
  a book that's giving long standing characters motivations.
• 2:09:49
  Anyone got any ideas? 0 isn't it?
• 2:09:51
  I think you. Yeah, it's Camera Obscura by
• 2:09:57
  Lloyd, because it sets up Angie wanting to go in Time Zero.
• 2:10:03
  It sets up fits. Going off with George Williamson
• 2:10:06
  in Time 0 is the best examination of Sabbath and why
• 2:10:11
  he's doing what he's doing. I think without that book,
• 2:10:14
  Sabbath's Run, that makes far less sense.
• 2:10:18
  There's all of those conversations between him and
• 2:10:20
  the Doctor and about why he wants to order and structure
• 2:10:23
  time, and the Doctor gets to have his piece about why he
• 2:10:26
  wants time to be chaotic and people deserve a choice.
• 2:10:31
  And it's just a bloody bit of brilliant writing in his own
• 2:10:33
  right. What some of the best prose
• 2:10:35
  you're ever going to read in a I've.
• 2:10:37
  Got the sandbags bit. Oh shitty now.
• 2:10:40
  Oh, and it pays off Adventure wrestling Henry at St. as well,
• 2:10:43
  Yeah. Exactly.
• 2:10:44
  Oh, I'm just going to grow a new one.
• 2:10:46
  That's right, isn't it? All right, Luke, back to you.
• 2:10:51
  I was like, as soon as you started describing your previous
• 2:10:53
  choice, Joe, it's like, motherfucker, you stole mine and
• 2:10:56
  then Andrew's like, it is, isn't it?
• 2:10:58
  Now it's time 0. There's, there's lots of I've
• 2:11:04
  spoken about some of the bigger books like Henrietta St. and
• 2:11:07
  other things in other, other places.
• 2:11:09
  I think I'm impressed by this book because I never saw this
• 2:11:12
  from, I didn't think of Justin Richards as this guy.
• 2:11:18
  Now I know he did the 1st art book for you know, from the
• 2:11:22
  burning, you know, and all that kind of stuff.
• 2:11:23
  But that doesn't it feels like a #1 issue, like a comic series
• 2:11:27
  has ended. The next writers, come on,
• 2:11:30
  here's the direction we're going rather than this is the middle
• 2:11:34
  of my run and here's all this kind of stuff going on.
• 2:11:39
  So I've never seen Justin Richards be that kind of big ARC
• 2:11:43
  kind of book guy. And Time 0 proves me wrong.
• 2:11:49
  It's all count counting down backwards.
• 2:11:51
  It's a page Turner that I couldn't really put down.
• 2:11:54
  And it's like a it's almost like a double arc book because he's
• 2:12:00
  not just wrapping things, some things up from the last story
• 2:12:05
  arc that's just been kind of set up.
• 2:12:07
  He's also setting up for this is kind of like that midway point
• 2:12:11
  where, all right, some of these things are coming to a head.
• 2:12:14
  And I'm also setting up things that are going to come to a
• 2:12:16
  hidden future novels as well. So it's it's kind of like a it's
• 2:12:21
  doing two things at once there, plus telling a really good
• 2:12:24
  story, really cool story for fits for Angie and the doctor as
• 2:12:27
  well. So, yeah, so like I never saw
• 2:12:31
  him as that, that kind of writer and this and I like sometime
• 2:12:37
  never as well, but I I give that one's not as good, just reasons
• 2:12:42
  out of his control. Like let him use the fucking
• 2:12:44
  Daleks. Come on, man.
• 2:12:46
  Big Finish can use it for some of those.
• 2:12:48
  Like by then Big Finish had made some bad Daleks stories by then,
• 2:12:51
  right. I mean, they couldn't use them
• 2:12:54
  to be the big birds in a book. Come on, Nation state, what are
• 2:12:57
  you doing? But yeah, Time 0.
• 2:13:00
  Yeah, John, right. So, yeah, obviously I was going
• 2:13:03
  through beginning, middle and end.
• 2:13:04
  So the trouble with that, Sir Marks is once they've once
• 2:13:10
  you've had the climactic plot events, what's the weight?
• 2:13:13
  What's the effect of them? And the one I what really want
• 2:13:16
  to see for that is bad therapy. Because we had back in the day,
• 2:13:24
  you, you had that blank month where there was no, so violence
• 2:13:27
  in there was no plot, you know, you, you all you know was a note
• 2:13:32
  in the front of bad therapy with by the way, Ross died.
• 2:13:34
  And there was no guarantee you were ever going to see that.
• 2:13:37
  Story anticlimactic It's. Working up to everything.
• 2:13:40
  The big bug, it's the one that's Ben or Andre's hard drive
• 2:13:44
  failed. But bad therapy.
• 2:13:49
  It's almost like it's almost like a pause in the store.
• 2:13:52
  There is a really beautiful, satisfying story, particularly
• 2:13:56
  about gay life in London in the 50s.
• 2:13:58
  A bit of history that frankly, you know, if you're not in the K
• 2:14:01
  community, you would almost certainly not know.
• 2:14:03
  I didn't know it. It was a really beautiful
• 2:14:05
  education to be on that front. But it's luck.
• 2:14:08
  Mailing shit like I never knew anything about that.
• 2:14:11
  Holy crap, what a position. The cabs going round to that,
• 2:14:14
  it's like, wow. Terrifying.
• 2:14:16
  And yeah, again, you put yourself in some, well,
• 2:14:19
  situation. So that was a, you know, it's a
• 2:14:22
  satisfying story and that went some wrong, but it's also about
• 2:14:26
  Chris and the Doctor healing. And obviously you get the Doctor
• 2:14:31
  Perry coming in as a kind of way of the Doctor being able to heal
• 2:14:37
  his past, you know, a loose end from his past that he needs to
• 2:14:40
  get hold of. And you get that parallel with
• 2:14:43
  Chris and the Doctor getting over the events.
• 2:14:46
  And it makes that kind of Sipow's arc, even though you
• 2:14:50
  hadn't had the big plot, the big story, it made it a really
• 2:14:55
  satisfying ending with consequences for the characters.
• 2:14:59
  They, they, they were still there for other authors to play
• 2:15:02
  with in the future, but they had kind of changed a little for
• 2:15:06
  their experiences. So yeah, bad therapy because it
• 2:15:09
  gave that arc, those, those events, the consequences.
• 2:15:14
  They needed the weight of it. Andrew.
• 2:15:21
  So yeah, I I also thought about mentioning Time 0, but I've gone
• 2:15:27
  for the sort of daddy of all arc conclusions, wrapping up
• 2:15:34
  multiple storylines from an entire range.
• 2:15:37
  The Gallifrey Chronicles. Oh shit.
• 2:15:39
  That's my last one. Luke's taken off his headphones
• 2:15:46
  so that we don't spoil anything. I don't think I am actually
• 2:15:48
  going to spoil anything, but it's just they the IT was kind
• 2:15:53
  of one of those it must have been one of those nightmare
• 2:15:56
  briefs to have landed with Lance Park in of wrap up this entire
• 2:16:01
  range and all of these plot threads that we've just left
• 2:16:05
  dangling and not really done anything with for the past five
• 2:16:09
  years. Here you go, Lance, 250 pages do
• 2:16:13
  it. And the way that he does it is
• 2:16:15
  so satisfying. And it feels so intentional.
• 2:16:19
  It feels like, yes, this is the ending of that story that
• 2:16:22
  started back in Alien Bodies. It feels, you know, like it was
• 2:16:28
  all planned. And you leave that range feeling
• 2:16:31
  satisfied and not like, like, oh, they just had to wrap things
• 2:16:37
  up in this last book. And, you know, there we go.
• 2:16:40
  And I think it probably benefited from coming out a bit
• 2:16:43
  later than the series that ended because it came out after the
• 2:16:46
  new series had started, I think after and after the range had
• 2:16:50
  wrapped up. So maybe there was a bit more
• 2:16:52
  time to kind of craft it into this, into this, this conclusion
• 2:16:58
  to the range. So yeah, for all the kind of
• 2:17:01
  faults of the 8th Doctor range and particularly the arc
• 2:17:04
  storylines, it's just really nice that we got that final book
• 2:17:09
  that that delivered really. And it was kind of like a nice
• 2:17:14
  little a nice little like send off for a range that they didn't
• 2:17:19
  really need to do that forgiven the readership and where the the
• 2:17:22
  series had gone by that point. So I'm just thankful that they
• 2:17:25
  did give us that, that end to that series.
• 2:17:29
  How that book celebrates like the good of the EDA.
• 2:17:33
  So it brings back Angie, you know, it goes to Sam's grave and
• 2:17:37
  go whoops, I guess. Sorry.
• 2:17:41
  Luke and and and other stuff, but it and it also criticizes
• 2:17:46
  the range and goes. It got a bit complicated and a
• 2:17:48
  bit up its own arse. They're talking about Marnell's
• 2:17:50
  books and those dreadful covers. You know how it critiques the
• 2:17:54
  range as well. I just thought it's just that
• 2:17:58
  take him off, take him off off Luke.
• 2:18:01
  This is the biggest spoiler of all the the fact that the thing
• 2:18:07
  that frustrated so many people, which was the amnesia, the fact
• 2:18:09
  that he gave a reason as to why he didn't go after the memories.
• 2:18:14
  Because there is a built in thing that if he goes near those
• 2:18:17
  memories, he and they do it in Camera Obscura where you have
• 2:18:20
  the 7th Doctor there in that sequence going go away, get out
• 2:18:24
  of here as he's getting closer to the thousands and thousands
• 2:18:28
  of blossoms, which is the Time Lord memory.
• 2:18:30
  You're right, it feels intentional.
• 2:18:32
  It wasn't at all. But he, he puts a bow on that
• 2:18:36
  wrench that makes it feel intentional.
• 2:18:38
  And that is something of a bloody miracle, right?
• 2:18:41
  Oh and the the actual ending where it's the open ending when
• 2:18:45
  it gets good. It's the only way you can read
• 2:18:47
  the end. The Doctor.
• 2:18:48
  The adventure goes on. Although I'm not going to choose
• 2:18:51
  Gallifrey Chronicles because you just had that one.
• 2:18:55
  So I am going to say I want to dip into Virgin.
• 2:18:57
  Actually, I really did struggle to find.
• 2:19:00
  Although I do think Blood Heat is a great ark book.
• 2:19:05
  Yes, you're going to say this isn't an ark Happy Endings by
• 2:19:09
  Paul Connell because it ends the Bunny Summerfield arc.
• 2:19:14
  Well, no, for a little while anyway.
• 2:19:16
  She's back in a few books and that is more Return of the
• 2:19:18
  Living Dead. But anyway, nevermind as a huge
• 2:19:22
  big party and everyone comes along and all of that continuity
• 2:19:26
  that they have raked together for the new adventures and just
• 2:19:30
  to have everyone in one book, it does feel sort of like the end
• 2:19:34
  of an era just before we kick off into, you know, original
• 2:19:38
  scene or whatever's coming. What's coming next after happy
• 2:19:40
  endings. Oh, Jesus.
• 2:19:45
  Well, yeah. But yeah, it does.
• 2:19:48
  It does feel like a bit of a full stop for a certain style of
• 2:19:53
  new adventure because Chris and Ross and the Doctor is a very
• 2:19:57
  different tone to Chris and Ross and Bernice.
• 2:20:01
  And it's just really funny and it's full of all that sort of
• 2:20:05
  wanky in jokes and names of people they know in the book and
• 2:20:09
  all of that stuff they love doing in the mid 90s.
• 2:20:12
  But it's fun. It's wonderful fun.
• 2:20:16
  It's a celebration, isn't it? It's so gorgeous, it's joyous.
• 2:20:21
  You wouldn't recommend it to anyone who didn't know the
• 2:20:23
  range. It's much like, I'd say, with
• 2:20:25
  interference, But if you know the range, it was just like,
• 2:20:29
  this is great. This is just like and services.
• 2:20:32
  Oh, it's beautiful. I love it.
• 2:20:35
  Well, fellows, I don't really need to ask us where we're going
• 2:20:38
  next, do I? Because that's rather obvious.
• 2:20:41
  What's Book 2 called? Hour of the Geek.
• 2:20:45
  Hour of the Geek it certainly is as well.
• 2:20:48
  Well, how do we end this interference?
• 2:20:51
  I suppose we should. Supposed to be here.
• 2:20:53
  Some form of a shock twist. It was white noise or something.
• 2:20:59
  No. How are we burning perky DVDs
• 2:21:02
  on? Yeah, let's pretend to burn our
• 2:21:03
  perky DVDs. On Well done.
• 2:21:05
  You're doing something hideous over there.
• 2:21:06
  Who wants to torture somebody? I'll torture somebody.
• 2:21:09
  Luke, it turns out, is on his 18th version of himself from the
• 2:21:13
  first book club that we did. Anna, Andrew.
• 2:21:16
  I'm just going to hang out with my robot dog.
• 2:21:19
  Anna. Anna Ogron.