Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Alien Bodies (Redux) by Lawrence Miles (featuring Paul Quinn)

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Alien Bodies (Redux) by Lawrence Miles (featuring Paul Quinn) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

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  The gravitation feed is dropping.
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  A dinosaur is moving out of balance.
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  Starting feed switch to full volume.
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  Volume on systems. Check comments.
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  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
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  My name is Joe Ford and looking slightly nervous because a
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  chainsaw wielding maniac may attack him at any moment.
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  Hello, Mr. Paul Quinn. Hello Joe, it's not Elon Musk or
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  that madman with the big sideburns from South Africa.
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  It's just my neighbor. But he is a massive dose, so you
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  know. Do you get on?
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  Are you are you quite safe? No, I don't get on with him at
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  all. I mean, I haven't spoken to his
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  wife in 10 years because she's a truly horrible individual and
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  and he's carved in law. Before I leave this house, I
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  will deal with all of them. I just so happen to have, you
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  know, a duplicate copy of The Pit by Neil Penswick that you
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  could post through their letterbox.
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  You know, if you're feeling particularly mean.
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  They they don't, they don't read, I don't think.
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  They're not particularly literate family.
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  I don't think. Even in the world of essentially
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  illiteracy where TV and the Internet has destroyed everyone,
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  yes, I am reading Neil Postgate or Neil Postman.
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  I am that white guy. So I did find the book that
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  everyone's talking about at the moment, was it amusing ourselves
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  to death? These people I don't think read,
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  so they don't know what to do with the pit.
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  They probably do what everyone does with the pit and they use
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  it for cat litter. Jordan.
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  Look at those, you know, green boobs on the front and be like
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  what is going on? They're blue, sorry, aren't
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  they? They are blue because it is.
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  It is a homage to prog rock albums or to the front covers of
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  Michael Moorcock's books from the 1970s.
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  What were they thinking? Lovely blue titties, but that's
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  why I did a parody of Blake's poems on where you put the
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  picture. As usual, I have to read it a
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  couple of times. Or what's he getting at here?
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  What's he talking about? Eventually I get there.
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  You know, I think that's why people like to listen to your
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  episodes, you know. All right, all these points that
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  that require some repeated listening.
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  Well, I'm pleased to say that you are carrying one of the
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  thickest Doctor Who tones, just in case he does come after you
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  with a chainsaw to protect yourself with Alien Bodies by
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  Lawrence Miles. Now, we've been meaning to talk
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  about this for some time, and it's one of the very few
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  recordings I'm genuinely excited to talk about. 1:00 because I
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  love this book, and two, because I know you're going to have
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  brilliant things to say about it.
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  I'm going to ask you from the outset, are you going to break
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  my heart? Did you hate this thing?
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  No, but weirdly enough I didn't think it was as good this time
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  as the last time. How comes?
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  Well, I was trying to work out so before we got married.
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  So we're married 13 years this year and before we got married,
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  I think I've said before all these recordings I went on some
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  rereading or reading for the first time. 8 Doctor Adventures.
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  Oh, the last chance to read Doctor Who books before married
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  life. Like that's actually how things
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  have panned out. So I definitely read it then,
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  but I'm wondering if I read it when it came out because this
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  came out 97, didn't it? So if if I had this or you had
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  this, we would have talked about it at some point in the mid to
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  late 90s. And I don't remember US ever
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  talking about. I don't either because I think
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  at that time we would still had the back end of stuff on UK Gold
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  that we haven't seen on video and we were X filing it and we
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  had the Blake 7 videos had come out a couple of years earlier
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  and you were very into Star Trek and I was watched it on Sky and
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  you had the video. So I think we're all TV sci-fi,
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  definitely. I mean, I wasn't reading these
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  at the time. I came to the 8th Doctor books
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  way later I. I definitely had eight doctors
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  and Vampire science because I 97 I was working for Dylan's and I
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  I got damaged copies. So I definitely had them.
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  So I'd I'd read them early claws, but I don't know if I
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  read this at the time. So the last time I definitely
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  remember reading this, which may have been the first time I read
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  it was about 1314 years ago. And this time I can see some of
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  the problems with it. Now it's head and shoulders
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  above pretty much everything else, and given it comes
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  straight after War of the Daleks, which is a terrible book
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  and which is weird because John Peel's dissent.
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  Because Peel had a good reputation, didn't he?
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  Because he'd done those adaptations of Dalek Master Plan
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  around 1991? And hadn't he done the original
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  evil of the Daleks? Yeah, yeah.
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  And they'd all gone down the storm.
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  But that's him. That's him using Whittaker's
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  work and just adding functional prose.
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  But. But padding it out a big target
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  always felt like something special, didn't it?
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  Yeah. And I remember, I remember
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  definitely reading one of the two partners of Darling Master
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  plan. Well, we are away.
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  I think we were gone for my cousins wedding or something, a
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  cousins wedding. But if you compare Peel's use of
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  continuity and back story of Doctor Who, so Miles's story,
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  it's like chalk and cheese or wine and piss.
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  I mean, there's no comparison between what Miles is doing and
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  what Peel is doing. It was absolutely necessary.
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  It sets in motion everything that's going to come.
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  There's some phenomenal ideas in it, but there's bits in it.
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  This time I thought I don't know that works.
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  Well, I look forward to, I'm picking that.
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  I mean, with Peel, I did War of the Daleks last year, a truly
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  abominable read. He's rewriting Doctor Who
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  because he doesn't like the way it went in the 80s and that's
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  just wrong. Whereas Miles is kind of
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  revolutionising ideas that people have given up on, like
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  the Crotons and things like that.
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  It's a total difference. Well, look, I figured to go into
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  this, we would take so essentially alien bodies, as I'm
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  sure everybody will know, but let's get everybody up to speed.
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  Sets place in the jungle. Is it Borneo?
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  It is Borneo, and in this huge ziggurat where a number of
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  quirky and eccentric bidders are attending an auction for
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  something very mysterious called the Relic.
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  And I thought it would be quite interesting for us to take the
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  bidders one at a time and see what Miles is doing with each of
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  those characters, the concepts that he's using, that the the
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  back story and the arcs that he's creating.
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  Let's start with Mr. Homunculus. Yeah, what do you want to say
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  about Mr. Homunculus? Mr. Homunculus, who we meet, I
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  think post Dalek invasion of Earth, is that right with so he
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  goes, he goes there. And so every single short story
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  that we get shows how the different bidders ended up
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  getting their invitation and coming to the relic to, to, to
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  go to the auction, right. So Homocula comes in and this
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  introduces the idea immediately of a future time war.
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  Yes. Go.
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  So, I mean, he turns up in the House of Parliament, doesn't he?
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  And he's a Time Lord, but he's a Time Lord from the Doctor's far
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  future. That's right, isn't it?
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  It's difficult to keep track of this.
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  And he's dressed, Oh no, is he dressed all in black?
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  So he's like the Master. He's dressed.
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  So he's meant to recall the Time Lord who appears float in next
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  to the radio telescope in terror of the Autons.
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  This is pure miles that he's trying to connect these figures
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  up. But Homuncula is only
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  interesting in so far as he's got a relationship with Marie, I
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  think. Marie being for everybody
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  listening, the humanoid TARDIS that he travels around in, and I
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  don't want to know how he gets in there, right?
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  All we hear is that there's a lion, and light comes out of
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  her, and in he steps. But he's entering into Marie is
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  a significant trope across this text, and it ties up with
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  another text where I think Miles is consciously making use of an
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  important cultural artifact from the early 90s.
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  Because it's also the idea of the the aperture by which you
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  get into McClain, which of course is the city of the dead.
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  And we get references to the aperture.
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  The doctor goes through the aperture to get there.
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  This is it. The celesti.
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  Is that how you pronounce it? Yeah.
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  They open an aperture to look down on the war in heaven.
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  And so this sense of opening things up and going inside and
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  entering people is a, is a recurrent trope.
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  It's it's revolting and it's disturbing with Marie because
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  Marie by a Country mind is my favorite character in this book.
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  Oh, really happens? I I I'd forgot we see the wings.
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  You were texting me and you were reading it because I'd started
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  reading it and I. Know it's an annoying habit I'm.
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  Sorry, it's a great habit because it made me think I'd I'd
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  I'd forgotten Marie and I'd forgotten Dark Sam.
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  And then I got my books in the wrong order because I thought
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  Unnatural History was before this, that we'd already.
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  Which is why I asked you, was this the first faction paradox?
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  Because then I thought, aren't they in Christmas on a Rational
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  planet? Or isn't there some reference to
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  them in Dead Romance? Which of course I.
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  Think there's a reference or they're mentioned, but they're
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  they're not explicitly part of any story before this.
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  Because fraction paradox. Sorry, I've wrecked your scheme
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  already. Go.
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  On No, no, don't go for it. Go for it.
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  Paradox may be my favorite extra concept in Doctor Who that's
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  added on to the myth. Of in Doctor Who's entire.
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  Well if you think so, what's established as Doctor Who's
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  mythology is only really properly from 1969 and the War
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  Games. Because the explanation for the
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  Doctor leaving his home world. It's interesting of course that
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  Miles has to go back to using Homeworld when he starts writing
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  his non BBC properties. That's a very different
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  explanation of what's hinted at in Unearthly Child, which is
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  still has the echoes of the original idea that Susan is a
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  Princess. And they're they're they're
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  they're on the run from something, something's happened
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  on the home world. Hence the Doctors line.
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  We're exiles in time and space. And that they're, it was Susan
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  says she was born another time, another world.
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  It only becomes codified that the Doctor is on the run from
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  his people and he's bored. In the War Games, there's a
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  sense in which the accepted back story of Doctor Who starts in 69
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  rather than 63. You've got the Doctor as a
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  traveller in time in space, and he's got a TARDIS.
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  But of course in The Chase it suggested that he's built the
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  TARDIS. He doesn't have two hearts at
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  this point. That doesn't come to a spear
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  every place, even even the Daleks, which I was trying to
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  watch this week for another podcast.
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  When the Daleks say we want you to test another human, the
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  implication at that point is the Doctor's human, which that's an
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  odd thing for Wicked to do, but yeah, the only.
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  I mean, to be fair though, right?
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  Had we started Unearthly Child and he went, oh, well, you know,
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  I was a bit bored so I left. You know, if we had that 69
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  explanation in 60 three, maybe it wouldn't have caught on so
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  well. I think that's true.
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  I think the mystery and of course, you know, Doctor Who,
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  Who is he? Which, of course, Moffy will
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  then kind of. Like J&T and all those bloody
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  question marks. But I think the only thing in
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  the in old to use a horrendous or the in the original version
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  that I think comes close to exciting me is the Valley yard.
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  But even that they fudge because the reveal of the Valley Yard is
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  bodged, as we said when we're doing vervoids and obviously not
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  in verbals. And also they they buckle it
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  because of course it's no longer it's the doctor.
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  It's a weird fetch version of the doctors.
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  It's gone too strong. What is it about Faction Paradox
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  that you like so much Like. Visually, it's such an
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  interesting that they they're so ornate in their description.
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  The idea of them is these kind of agents of chaos, the fact
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  that they've come out of the time wars, so they've got all
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  the benefits of time on technology, but they've gone
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  down this this weird ritualistic side, the image of the skulls,
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  which both are real and not real because of course they're from
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  an alternative vision, future or or timeline where the time was
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  looped. Isn't it really twisted?
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  It's it's fantastic and the fact is then run off into this entire
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  continuity or of its own. The only thing in revive Doctor
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  Who that sparked my interest in quite the way Fashion Paradox
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  did is The Timeless Children. It's one of those.
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  Always sort of Gallifrey adjacent then when you're
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  getting excited. Yeah, because Gallifrey's
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  overused, of course. I think we can all agree that
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  1980s Doctor Who turns Gallifrey into something that's far too
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  familiar, and the Doctor can just pop back and forth to it in
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  a kind of tedious way. Whereas Miles out of everyone
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  and presume it's an editorial decision.
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  What he lays in the groundwork for here is to completely change
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  our understanding of Gallifrey and the Time Lords and that
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  they're not just these omnipotent figures.
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  And of course, what it does is it takes Graham Williams
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  reconstruction of the Time Lords where they're kind of lesser
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  beings with these these gods above them.
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  And he kind of runs with that idea that what does happen to
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  beings who think they're immortal and decide to not do
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  anything if they're then challenged by people with
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  similar powers or the same powers as them.
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  And it's utterly fascinating. But yeah, that faction parallels
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  I always see. I remember when Miles was
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  interviewing DWM for interference and you know, he
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  talks about Robert Holmes, his vision of the Time Lords and he
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  kind of ties it to that and the kind of that quote UN quote,
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  gothicism of of the Hinchcliff years, particularly in in 14.
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  And that he extends that visually because then he gets
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  into the Doctor Who will never come back.
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  And if he did come back, he would have to be as an animated
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  series and he would have to be solo authored and that it would
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  be him and it would be the war in heaven.
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  And so you can see why people turned on Mars because it's this
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  great statement of intent. But he's one of the, he's the,
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  he's one of the great stylists of that range, him and Paul Mars
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  and Lance Parkin and Orman. And what's interesting, three of
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  them also wrote for the new adventures.
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  So there's a sense in which they bring the best of the new
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  adventures with them into the Ed Eights and Miles gives it the
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  kick up the backside that it really needed.
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  For the most part, I think those 4 writers that you just
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  mentioned as well do their best work.
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  When the new adventures end, it's like it's like they've
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  learned all their lessons. When I read set piece recently
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  which was so inured in new adventures, you know dreamscapes
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  and angst and all that bullshit Stillwell written because it's
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  Kate Orban. Then I read Year of Intelligent
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  Tigers, which was all the angst was gone, all the pretension was
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  gone, and she just wrote a great book.
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  What I love about Faction Paradox and what I love about
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  the Time War, and I especially loved it on this read, is the
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  doctor is so on the back foot. And I really like that suddenly
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  he's about 15 steps behind everybody else because they all
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  know his future and that it's unusual to be in that position.
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  It's because Miles clearly he makes the point at he makes this
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  point several places in the book to contrast the 8th Doctor with
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  the 7th Doctor and because the 7th Doctor, particularly in The
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  Virgin Adventures, become this kind of omnipotent figure who's
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  always 12 places ahead in the chess game with his opponents.
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  So of course, Miles illustrates this by the Doctor not knowing
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  how to play chess when he's playing chess against the
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  murderers General right at the start of the book, there's a
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  very conscious attempt to make the Doctor not know everything
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  again, that he has to work things out in a way that
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  Moffett, who of course is indebted to this book and Miles
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  vision. Oh boy, yeah, that idea that the
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  doctors got too big and too loud at the end of season 6.
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  And I, I, I love bits of season 6.
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  I know I'm a lone wolf on this, but that's a very Milesian
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  notion of to make the doctor small and to have to him to have
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  to learn things again and not be this omnipotent super figure.
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  Having read this and interference within a year, I
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  can understand why Lawrence Miles is a little pissed at some
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  of what Moffett brought to the screen.
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  Because there is definitely a congruence, especially in stuff
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  like Name of the Doctor, of just all of his ideas just thrown
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  into that era. And I'd kind of say in a lot of
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  ways done less well because it's on television and and there
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  isn't the space of a book to explore those ideas in the way
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  that you can hear. Yes, I know that that that's
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  fair. I, I think any reasonable person
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  would have to agree with that now, because they're two
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  different mediums. Miles would admit that himself
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  as well, I think, because isn't there the occasion where he put
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  up a screenplay called the? Book the library one, yeah.
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  Library one because then Moffett had the library.
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  Another one of my book club has read that and said it was really
• 17:57
  tedious. So maybe Miles just wasn't
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  suited for writing for television in the way that he is
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  with books. I think that could be true as
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  well because he's often his power lies in his descriptions.
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  What's interesting is when Moffett gets a chance to write
• 18:13
  Doctor Who book and he writes Day at the Doctor, and he does
• 18:16
  add a lot Today at the Doctor in that book.
• 18:19
  It's messy and it's unfocused and there are bits of it that
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  are great. It's nowhere near as confident
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  as Alien Bodies is. So I think maybe Miles is suited
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  to books, Moffett suited to the screen.
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  I mean, if you look at Miles's other stuff.
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  So beyond the the titles he does for 8th Doctor Adventures, which
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  I think there's some of the best books in the series, aren't
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  they? In terms of ambition, yeah.
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  And creativity, yes. Have you looked at like Book
• 18:49
  Book of the War, which is a fabulous Trixie game player,
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  heavy, light, ironic text. It's fabulous.
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  So I'm flicking through it again this week.
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  And the fact that he he designs it in such a way you can just
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  open up a page and just follow it.
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  Then you're kind of lost in this maze of this this Milesian
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  world, which is Doctor Who, but is increasingly moving away from
• 19:10
  Doctor Who. And I think his whole his whole
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  business about the bottle of the universe, which of course turns
• 19:18
  up in a sequence here, isn't it about the bottle.
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  That was a fascinating concept. And really that was a way to go,
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  you know, the way of the, you know, if you were getting tied
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  up in continuity problems, bottles of in bottles.
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  Fabulous mind expanding stuff. It actually links the range, you
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  know, the bottle universe because it turns up again in
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  interference and it's a very important part of that book.
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  And then a bottle universe is how Mano in the Gallifrey
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  Chronicles finds the Doctor and we learn what what we learn in
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  the Gallifrey. So, so it's sort of there as
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  temp pegs throughout the rub. They they never forget the debt
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  they owe to Miles throughout this run.
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  Even when they push all the continuity aside, they never
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  quite forget. It's so big and it's so
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  all-encompassing and he's given such thought to it.
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  But also what's interesting at the end of it, which, well,
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  spoiling too much, suddenly we're left with the potential.
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  There's another story here that we haven't been told, which is
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  when Kyoto is thinking about what's, because there's a
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  question raised at the end. Is it actually the doctor's body
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  in that coffin? Sorry, spoilers because we were
• 20:26
  just talking with the relic that last a couple of pages with
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  Kyoto and then you get to the doctor burying his own body and
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  there's a suddenly throws up question about how much this is
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  actually. True.
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  I mean, I like, I like to think that it is, and that after
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  everything that's come since alien bodies, this is still his
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  end point, which makes this book very important.
• 20:48
  Ultimately, this is where his body lies after everything that
• 20:51
  comes after this. Well, not.
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  Not on trends at all. No.
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  Well, well, that was wiped out, wasn't it?
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  Then the very next story? Who?
• 20:58
  Who knows how things have got so tested there.
• 21:01
  And of course Miles gives you the opportunity to have them and
• 21:05
  them not to exist at the same time, because his use of paradox
• 21:08
  Sam and particularly our factory paradox is, is is brilliant, I
• 21:11
  think. You know the sequence?
• 21:14
  Yeah, but we totally got off whatever structure I was going
• 21:16
  to give this. Let's just abandon it and talk
• 21:20
  the sequence where we it's from the faction paradox members
• 21:24
  point of view and it's like a mini short story where he's on
• 21:29
  what's the planet called? I forget now, we keep returning
• 21:31
  to it for. Hours near K 98 or is it drone
• 21:36
  it drone it. Acid.
• 21:39
  And at the end of that, when he murders himself and you actually
• 21:42
  see the grandfather paradox in action, it's fucking terrifying.
• 21:48
  It's it's my favorite section of the book on this reread.
• 21:52
  Well, that particular section. Yeah, it's, it's phenomenal.
• 21:57
  It's horrific because of course it's the death of a child, which
• 22:01
  usually gives me the creeps. But actually it's that idea of
• 22:04
  circularity. He kills himself so he can't
• 22:07
  become himself, but he kills himself so he can't become
• 22:09
  himself. And, and the fact that the
• 22:11
  grandfather, but it's not actually the grandfather that
• 22:14
  turns up at that point, is it? It's the shadow of the
• 22:15
  grandfather. But they revel in that paradox
• 22:17
  and kind of draw this ritualistic energy from it.
• 22:20
  And it's, it's, it's phenomenal, I think.
• 22:22
  And of course it's a punishment because he's missed the chance
• 22:25
  to get the relic because they haven't told him they need the
• 22:28
  relic. He performs the rituals, which
• 22:30
  is to send the relic off into space, but he's, he hasn't done
• 22:34
  what he's meant to do. I mean, it's, it's brilliant.
• 22:36
  I mean, I think because of Faction Parrots is partly coming
• 22:40
  out of Longborough, isn't it? Because all the idea of them
• 22:42
  being cousins and brothers, that's the type of titles.
• 22:46
  They're the honorifics that plaque gives to the doctor's
• 22:49
  family on Longborough. So I like the fact it connects
• 22:52
  back to plaque. So I love plaque.
• 22:54
  I mean, obviously I don't know his stuff and Big Finish, so I
• 22:56
  don't know. I know that he doesn't maybe do
• 22:59
  as well as he does with ghosts like in the books, but I think
• 23:01
  that connection back to the Lungborough is really important.
• 23:04
  His trouble on audio is he want to bring, he wants to bring the
• 23:07
  denseness of a novel to an audio and as a result it can be a bit
• 23:12
  dry. Whereas in a book, he's got the
• 23:14
  space to to bring a bit of poetry to his ideas.
• 23:18
  I mean to leave it around to try and get it back to your
• 23:21
  structure. So I'm not entirely some type of
• 23:23
  time travelling anarchist. Why do I like Marie?
• 23:24
  I think the idea of a sentient TARDIS is utterly fascinating,
• 23:30
  and of course it's setting the groundwork for compassion.
• 23:32
  Yeah, later in the run, but it's also horrible because of course
• 23:35
  you get this kind of sense of of forced birthing taking place.
• 23:39
  That's what they wanted to do to compassion.
• 23:41
  So in in in that latter half of the run, Ramana or the war
• 23:45
  Ramana or whatever you want to call this dark haired Ramana is
• 23:48
  going after the Doctor because she compassion is the only type
• 23:52
  1O2 TARDIS that there is. She wants to force breed it.
• 23:56
  I mean, it's horrible without other TARDIS, and I guess the
• 24:00
  fact that Marie exists means that this did happen.
• 24:03
  But I wonder then, is Marie meant to be Compassion's child?
• 24:08
  Is there some type of familiar? Relationship.
• 24:10
  If Moffett was right in this, absolutely.
• 24:13
  But if Moffett was right, they'd then go and live together in
• 24:15
  some suburban house and drink wine and.
• 24:17
  Talk about Doctor. Where is this?
• 24:19
  What's interesting here is how many people don't die.
• 24:22
  I mean, Marie is horrifically assaulted.
• 24:24
  That sample where the furniture is sort of vomiting out of her,
• 24:29
  that justifies the human TARDIS concept alone, that is.
• 24:33
  I found that really disturbing to read.
• 24:35
  I. Mean and that's when homuncular
• 24:38
  becomes interesting to to come back to your opening question,
• 24:41
  because he's I mean, we discovered that the shift that
• 24:45
  non corporeal entity is having an impact on how people are
• 24:48
  behaving. So even the doctor when the when
• 24:50
  the doctor beats up, that's partly because the shift is is
• 24:56
  exacerbating everyone's emotions.
• 24:57
  I didn't like that twist because I was like, well then isn't
• 25:00
  nobody responsible for what they've done to the book today?
• 25:03
  But I suppose he does explain it, that he's taking differences
• 25:07
  and issues that people have and it's just accentuating them.
• 25:10
  Yeah, but I think homuncular is is odd as a time law because we
• 25:15
  don't tend to find that kind of physically brutal, really angry,
• 25:21
  maybe quite stupid in the time laws.
• 25:23
  We don't tend to see it. But I suppose it's it shows
• 25:26
  what's happened to the time laws after however long they've been
• 25:29
  at war. Because the other interesting
• 25:31
  thing that you find there is the the notion of force
• 25:33
  regenerations. The timers are carrying on.
• 25:36
  They're going past their regeneration point, which I
• 25:38
  think might be a kind of a link back to the minions in in
• 25:43
  Underworld Who. Well, of course.
• 25:46
  Because they they it's the opposite, in fact, isn't it?
• 25:49
  Because they've allowed themselves to die.
• 25:51
  They've gone beyond the point at which they need to rejuvenate to
• 25:55
  carry on this mission. They get entirely just in time.
• 25:57
  They make her regenerate in a scene that loses the power on
• 26:00
  the screen. But actually as an idea is kind
• 26:03
  of horrific because there's something running through this
• 26:05
  book overtly with Trask and the Shift, obliquely with other
• 26:11
  references about it's their armies of the dead, because
• 26:13
  those timers will be dead. And it's like the arms dealer in
• 26:18
  the House of Parliament who's described as the black man.
• 26:21
  But of course, Miles says his blackness isn't just genetic is
• 26:24
  because of the pollution in the atmosphere around him.
• 26:26
  And of course, he sells weapons. That fabulous opening tableau of
• 26:32
  of all the the mannequin that's. So vivid, isn't it?
• 26:37
  But even there you can see because he wears a top hat and
• 26:39
  there's he's got the red flower and when he smiles, it's this
• 26:42
  whiteness. Even now, I think Mars is
• 26:44
  probably he wants us to think about live and let die and the
• 26:48
  credit sequence with the top hat and teehee.
• 26:50
  I think because Mars is so pop culture literate and culturally
• 26:56
  literate, all those references I think are there and they're
• 26:58
  there deliberately. And in a lesser author it would
• 27:03
  just be kind of ho hum, have you got no original ideas?
• 27:06
  But what he's doing is he's taking those ideas and he's
• 27:08
  putting them in such an unusual interest in a new fashion that
• 27:12
  we recognise the reference, but we don't go, isn't this tedious?
• 27:15
  Have you no original ideas? Because boy, has he got original
• 27:18
  ideas. Well, he's putting, he's putting
• 27:20
  that character in the Houses of Parliament in a book with a
• 27:23
  voodoo cult in it. I mean make the links.
• 27:26
  He can't quite let go of the Houses of Parliament either
• 27:29
  because in interference, when we go to the 11 day empire, which
• 27:34
  is this 11 days that we lost in the calendar that the faction
• 27:39
  Paris has has annex basically and and then set up shop in the
• 27:44
  Houses of Parliament in this grizzly version with skulls and
• 27:48
  blood dripping from the walls and all of that.
• 27:51
  He can. He can put a vivid image on the
• 27:53
  page, can't he? Phenomenal.
• 27:54
  I mean, I think the faction paradoxes ways a TARDIS, but
• 27:58
  it's not a TARDIS, it's a what what what are they?
• 28:03
  Are they Tardises when we're all the skulls on the room and they
• 28:05
  have to perform the the blood ritual to get the The Time
• 28:08
  Machine travelling? It's an amazing.
• 28:11
  And it's got its roots in Hinchcliffe, right?
• 28:13
  It is that gothic sense of Gallifrey from The Deadly
• 28:16
  Assassin, but just taken to a really horrific NTH degree.
• 28:21
  What's interesting in Miles is his touch point in this and
• 28:24
  interference, and he was quite clear on this in that interview.
• 28:26
  It's the Third Doctor. So it's the Third Doctor dumped
• 28:29
  into a kind of Hinchcliffian world, which of course reaches
• 28:32
  its end point, its high point of the end of interference, which
• 28:35
  is one of the greatest endings of Doctor.
• 28:37
  All that is in the back of my mind every single day of my
• 28:42
  life. You know, what's more shocking
• 28:44
  than him being killed is the bit where the woman froze a cup of
• 28:49
  coffee in his face in the first book.
• 28:52
  And it's it's an indignity that the 3rd Doctor just wouldn't
• 28:56
  face on television at all. And he just, he's horrified that
• 29:01
  somebody would have the nerve to do that.
• 29:03
  Because he dumps, he dumps the 3rd Doctor in in a different
• 29:06
  world and it's the same way and it and it's the same thing that
• 29:09
  you're talking about in reference to hear he wants to
• 29:12
  put the doctor on the back foot. He wants to put the doctor.
• 29:15
  That's interesting, right? That's.
• 29:18
  And because because the 7th Doctor or the version of him in
• 29:22
  the books have become fairly tedious.
• 29:25
  Early doors, he's fairly tedious.
• 29:27
  He might get more interested as the run goes on, but this is
• 29:30
  something new. And of course, because we only
• 29:32
  have under an hour of McGann on TV, there's a sense in which
• 29:35
  he's a he's a Tablo Raza, and you can do what you want to.
• 29:38
  But what? Literally, Paul Marr says that
• 29:39
  right when I interviewed him for Desert Planet, he said we
• 29:43
  created the 8th Doctor. We had, we had, you know, the
• 29:47
  drums to work with and we made a cake.
• 29:50
  All of these different authors that came in and put them
• 29:52
  together. But everything they do seems
• 29:55
  consistent with Mcgann's performance in the TV film.
• 29:59
  He's funny, he's light, he's caring, he's adventurous.
• 30:04
  He can turn on on a hairpin. They don't go down the tedious
• 30:08
  route of oh, I'm so lonely, I'm so sad, I've just discovered I'm
• 30:12
  half human. And of course, that's played up
• 30:14
  mercilessly by Miles, this notion that he's, it's half
• 30:17
  human. It's, I mean, we describe love
• 30:19
  and war as adolescent and there's a sense there's a
• 30:22
  growing exercise during the new adventures.
• 30:24
  And once you get over the kind of stumble at the start of
• 30:27
  these, this is the mature run of Doctor Who.
• 30:29
  And it's like you said with that master manipulator 7th Doctor
• 30:34
  Who knows so much and has pre planned every book.
• 30:38
  It's so fucking tedious come the end it's so boring.
• 30:41
  So to go in the other direction and, and have, you know, foes
• 30:44
  that are have far more knowledge than the Doctor, and yet he
• 30:48
  still manages to be funny and improvise and he's amazing in
• 30:52
  this book. You know, even when he's on the
• 30:56
  back foot, when, you know, 20 paces back, he's still
• 30:59
  brilliant. I mean, I think he's more
• 31:00
  brilliant. He's more impressive.
• 31:03
  I can see why you get a group in fandom, Hussein Mcgahn is their
• 31:09
  favorite doctor based on some big finished performances, but
• 31:13
  how he's portrayed in the better of the books because it's a
• 31:17
  really amazing portrayal of a doctor.
• 31:20
  And I think making him, I mean the the the section, the run of
• 31:24
  books there from the burning through to escape philosophy.
• 31:29
  Isn't it where he's lost his memory and he kind of has to
• 31:31
  learn who he is again. And in the centre of that, he's
• 31:34
  father time, which is one of the great books on the wrong thing.
• 31:37
  And he's parking as well, of course.
• 31:38
  And of course, it's Parker and Gallifrey Chronicles, who, as
• 31:40
  you rightly say, he picks up the threads of Miles.
• 31:43
  There's a sense in which he goes back to where the story could
• 31:46
  have gone or maybe should have gone or would have gone.
• 31:49
  And there's a sense in which he brings closure to Miles, his
• 31:52
  plot line, which Miles starts here, and he so.
• 31:54
  Clearly does what no one has fought to do to that point, and
• 31:57
  if he hadn't have done it, the range would have felt so much
• 32:00
  lesser. Is that he retroactively
• 32:02
  rewrites or ties together that entire run of books in that last
• 32:08
  one. And of course, there's a lot of
• 32:10
  miles in there. There's a lot of Faction Paradox
• 32:12
  in there. There's the end of the Ancestor
• 32:14
  sale in there, Father Times in there.
• 32:17
  It's just brilliant. I mean, obviously the problem is
• 32:21
  that it's just for the fans. It's just for the people who
• 32:23
  stuck with the range. And I think there's a kind of
• 32:25
  tragedy around Miles that you couldn't just get a not we to
• 32:29
  read alien bodies. It's not designed to be read by
• 32:32
  people who don't have some type of knowledge.
• 32:34
  Doctor Who you could, but part of the joy of it is seeing where
• 32:39
  he takes what you know and adds to it or changes it.
• 32:44
  Or I mean, it's that construct of Gallifre.
• 32:46
  I think it's the most interesting thing, which is why
• 32:48
  Fraction Paradox is I like them so much.
• 32:52
  The sellers kind of feel superfluous, actually, at
• 32:55
  various points in this book. Is it the sellers who come back
• 32:58
  as the Council of Eight at the end of where, where they can't
• 33:00
  use the dialects? Is that the implication there or
• 33:03
  not? I can't remember.
• 33:04
  No, it's the Council of Eight because it's supposed to be
• 33:07
  represented by the eight different doctors.
• 33:11
  But it's basically that the the void that was left when the Time
• 33:14
  Lords were erased had to be filled by something and and they
• 33:19
  decided they took it upon themselves.
• 33:21
  But that's a whole nother story. My issue this time reading this
• 33:26
  is that some of the concepts are too similar and some of the
• 33:32
  characters are too similar to exist in the same book.
• 33:37
  And I think Jen has. Well, if you think so, the
• 33:40
  Zealots are Well, the doctor accused him of being the
• 33:44
  Sylvester Intervention Agency, doesn't he?
• 33:46
  When he turns up at Mick? They've seen the danger from the
• 33:50
  enemy and they move themselves out of physical time and space.
• 33:54
  They, they, they abandoned their bodies, don't they?
• 33:56
  Which? Does strike me as a typically
• 33:58
  sort of insidious and cowardly Time Lord reaction.
• 34:03
  And of course the Doctor likens it to the land of fiction,
• 34:07
  doesn't he? In In The Mind Robber, but
• 34:09
  you've also got, as you've already alluded to will
• 34:13
  discover, but we know it because we've read the stuff before that
• 34:18
  the faction paradox have bought the 11 days that are removed
• 34:21
  when the Julian calendar switches to the Gregorian
• 34:24
  calendar in was it 1753 and causes those riots because of
• 34:28
  course, it's it's a quote UN quote Catholic calendar.
• 34:30
  And they move that into a kind of pocket universe, don't they?
• 34:34
  It's not in real time and space. So they're not the same concept,
• 34:37
  but they're quite similar. And the Unthinkable City is very
• 34:42
  similar as well. It's a Brigadoon.
• 34:43
  It just appears. And how you enter into it, yeah,
• 34:46
  you only, there are only limited ways of getting into it.
• 34:48
  So that's very similar to those two concerts, but Trask and the
• 34:52
  Shifts are quite similar as well.
• 34:53
  Yeah, I thought that this time, like you only needed one of
• 34:57
  those two. I I think he just wanted Trask
• 35:00
  because he wanted another little layer of continuity where people
• 35:04
  go. Well, that's a bit very, very
• 35:05
  clever, bringing in that no one character from the Highlanders
• 35:09
  that that's. Not who he is, though.
• 35:10
  Is it not? No, it's not consistent with
• 35:14
  what we're told in the book. It's on one of the Doctor Who
• 35:16
  wiki pages. But when you, when you follow
• 35:18
  the link, it doesn't take you where you think you're going to
• 35:20
  go. So Trask has got a name because
• 35:23
  we're told when Trask first meets the sellers, don't we?
• 35:27
  Let's see what's his name, where we find the bit.
• 35:28
  I, I, I, we going back over this last night.
• 35:30
  I knew this would come up because of course you discussed
• 35:32
  this on your previous. Discussion.
• 35:35
  So the shift story, let's have a look. 237.
• 35:38
  I don't think it can be. I think the name is the same,
• 35:41
  and it's probably Miles goading you.
• 35:42
  So no, not the shift story. It's it's who's the dead man's
• 35:45
  story, isn't it, 281? I mean, he's a he's a fabulous
• 35:51
  image because of course, when Bergman sees him, she gets sick,
• 35:53
  doesn't she? Yeah.
• 35:55
  And then of course, you get the joke because he's got no joints,
• 35:57
  so he falls over. So it's incredibly black humor
• 36:00
  around this figure. So 2 where is he?
• 36:02
  Where is he? The dead man's story.
• 36:05
  So the dead man is, is is Trask. Firstly, my name is Christopher
• 36:09
  Patrick Unglund. So he tells us what his name was
• 36:11
  before he died. And then he tells us how he
• 36:14
  first meets the cellist because of course the cellists offer you
• 36:19
  to say to save him. He he's, he's on the operating
• 36:22
  table and the anaesthetic isn't working.
• 36:24
  Well of course Trask in the Highlanders is pre anaesthetic.
• 36:28
  We're also told in the book that Trask dies in a lake.
• 36:31
  He's drowned in a lake, whereas Trask in the Highlanders drowns
• 36:34
  in the sea and it's Jamie who knocks him into the sea.
• 36:37
  So I don't think it can be Trask from the.
• 36:39
  Highlands. But is he encouraging you to
• 36:41
  think that it is? I possibly.
• 36:46
  I've heard it mentioned many times.
• 36:50
  The text alone tells you it can't be him, unless we're meant
• 36:54
  to think that once he is trashed, that he's, once he's
• 36:57
  died and he's working for the Sellers, he's like, he's like a
• 37:00
  servant for them though, isn't he?
• 37:01
  That then they send him down to the Highlanders.
• 37:03
  That's how you could marry those two points up.
• 37:05
  But the idea that the Doctor kills him, which he doesn't, and
• 37:08
  then he becomes trashed, Alien Bodies doesn't support that
• 37:11
  reading at all. I was really interested when
• 37:14
  that came up on your previous recording, and I thought, is
• 37:16
  that right? And I went ferrying around and I
• 37:18
  think I'm not sure it is. With the greatest respect to
• 37:20
  your fellow commentators. Well, I mean always ready to be
• 37:26
  contradicted, but I've. Thrown you there slightly off.
• 37:29
  What I do love is the fact that this ghastly zombie with a big
• 37:35
  smile on his face, it's just in the room.
• 37:39
  I mean, it's it's a grizzly image though, isn't it?
• 37:42
  But again, it's part of this notion that this this book is
• 37:45
  haunted by the dead because for a while there last week, I, I
• 37:49
  was, I couldn't remember if it was the unthinkable city.
• 37:51
  I thought it was the unreal city.
• 37:53
  And then I went down a whole route of seeing TS Eliot all
• 37:56
  over this book, which I think actually Elliot is here because
• 37:59
  although it's the unthinkable city in the wastelands, Elliot
• 38:04
  talks about an unreal city and he's he views people walking
• 38:08
  over London Bridge. And he said I had not thought
• 38:10
  death had undone so many. And of course, for Elliot in the
• 38:14
  waist. And one reading of that text is
• 38:16
  if there is hope after the First World War, it's in the East, and
• 38:20
  it's around Eastern mysticism, which I think you'd land in this
• 38:23
  book on the figure of Colonel Cortez, who's all over good
• 38:29
  Buddhist mysticism. And like what?
• 38:31
  What's he offering Quixote? He's quite.
• 38:34
  Funny. Cloud 9 and he's a fabulous
• 38:37
  character. He's great.
• 38:39
  It's almost like a Barry let's or Barry let's has been planted
• 38:42
  in the middle of this book. But it's also, I think it's
• 38:48
  indicating source text for miles, which is alluded to on
• 38:54
  your previous recording. And he's also kind of alluded to
• 38:57
  on close to library. So so I listened to your
• 39:04
  recording after I'd read the book.
• 39:05
  So I don't, I don't want to think that I've lifted this
• 39:07
  idea. In fact, I'm just going to
• 39:08
  expand a point on your previous recording for a couple of years
• 39:11
  ago, Andrew, I think it was points out that in one of the
• 39:15
  dream sequences, it's it's an angelic character.
• 39:19
  It says in the book says sometimes my arms bend
• 39:22
  backwards, which is a direct quotation from Twin Peaks.
• 39:26
  Laura Palmer says it in a dream sequence.
• 39:28
  She whispers it to to Dale Cooper.
• 39:30
  Miles has definitely watched Twin Peaks.
• 39:32
  Absolutely, because and so this cloyd slavery picks up on that
• 39:36
  point. But that sparked something in my
• 39:37
  head and I thought, yeah, this is 97 Twin Peaks.
• 39:40
  This is 9192. And it's the big TV moment for
• 39:43
  someone who's immersed in television like Miles is.
• 39:46
  It has to be there. And like, you know, for the
• 39:48
  anniversary last year and and around when Lynch died this
• 39:52
  year, a lot of obituaries are talking about how that's the
• 39:56
  birth of modern TV. We think about the HBO series,
• 39:59
  but actually this is the big moment and how amazing that it's
• 40:02
  on network TV because at two other points in that same dream
• 40:07
  sequence, Quixote says the schoolgirl is not what she
• 40:11
  seems. And right at the end of the
• 40:13
  book. Cortez says the village is not
• 40:16
  what it seems, and I think that's a conscious echo.
• 40:19
  When Cooper is warned in Twin Peaks, the owls are not what
• 40:23
  they see because the owls in Twin Peaks are linked with Bob.
• 40:27
  And this got me thinking in terms of Twin Peaks and liminal
• 40:31
  spaces and arms. In fact, I told you this, didn't
• 40:34
  I know? One of one of my stranger
• 40:35
  moments this week. I counted the number of times
• 40:38
  arms appears in alien bodies, not by turning the pages.
• 40:41
  I used another method. I'm used to your quirks now go
• 40:47
  on. One is 160 references to arms or
• 40:51
  arm in some of those are army and some of them are arms.
• 40:58
  Yeah, but once you get into actual arms, there's something
• 41:01
  really interesting going on. So very early on when the
• 41:03
  doctors in Geneva and the trap is sprung on him and they shoot
• 41:06
  at him, he says he grabbed his arm as if he was mortally
• 41:10
  wounded. Sam, when she's talking to the
• 41:12
  doctor, she's very conscious. References.
• 41:15
  She crosses her arms about three times.
• 41:17
  When Marie is lying prone on the floor after the attack, her arm
• 41:21
  has come off When we get the shift story because of course
• 41:25
  the shift even before he dies, it doesn't have a physical
• 41:28
  formula. He's not biped, is he?
• 41:29
  They're in those suits to give them for when they're fighting
• 41:32
  for the timers. The arm comes off when when
• 41:36
  Quixote we get his back story when he's on, he's on drug need
• 41:39
  as well, isn't he? He says that will cost me an arm
• 41:42
  and a leg. And of course the grandfather
• 41:47
  has taken off his arm, hasn't he?
• 41:48
  That's, that's, that's why the, the silhouette or the shadow of
• 41:52
  Grandfather Paradox is always 1 armed.
• 41:54
  And it's he takes off his arm because he's got a Time Lord
• 41:56
  tattoo on his arm, which of course we're meant to also think
• 42:00
  in terms of John Perky's, which of course, I assume is from when
• 42:04
  he was in the Navy. But of course fans have to
• 42:06
  accommodate that. Therefore, Time Lord prisoners
• 42:08
  get this tat. This is why come the ancestor
• 42:11
  cell grandfather paradox is revealed to be the Doctor.
• 42:14
  Yeah, that was always going to be the case, wasn't it?
• 42:17
  I mean, well, until the Gallifrey Chronicles when Lance
• 42:19
  Parker says no, no, I love that so much.
• 42:22
  It's going to be whoever fights Grandfather.
• 42:24
  Paradox is a mirror of that person.
• 42:27
  So that's just like Harry Popper, you know, and we can
• 42:30
  live without that. I think the Doctor has
• 42:31
  Grandfather Paradise or a version of the Doctor is much
• 42:33
  more. Interested.
• 42:34
  I must know where you're going with all these.
• 42:36
  Arms in Twin Peaks, there's the one armed man yeah.
• 42:44
  And so he's called Philip Gerrard.
• 42:46
  And of course that's Lynch deliberately referencing the
• 42:49
  fugitive because in the Fugitive, Richard Kimber's wife
• 42:52
  is killed by 1 armed man. He spends the series.
• 42:54
  And then in in the film version with Harrison Ford chasing the
• 42:58
  one armed man Philip Gerrard in in the fugitive is the policeman
• 43:04
  or the FBI agent who's hunting Richard Kimber.
• 43:06
  So this notion of Gerrard as a hunter of a killer is
• 43:10
  significant. Lynch picks up on that because
• 43:12
  of course, Twin Peaks is Lynch's homage to and pastiche of soap
• 43:18
  operas, but he's also got The Fugitive is in there.
• 43:21
  And if you'll recall, the one armed man is often in the
• 43:26
  background there. And eventually they bring him in
• 43:28
  and they he's on medicine for schizophrenia and they won't
• 43:32
  give him his medicine in a really dodgy moment.
• 43:35
  But that means that the figure inside the one armed man is able
• 43:39
  to speak and you discover that he's Mike and he'd been Bob's Co
• 43:45
  criminal in a previous life. And then what is he says then I
• 43:50
  saw the grace of God and and he's he reformed.
• 43:54
  I took off the arm but stayed close to this vessel, meaning
• 43:59
  that one armed man to for one reason only and Cooper Dale
• 44:03
  Cooper, the easing character, of course, and how horrible where
• 44:08
  he ends up. He says to stop to to find Bob
• 44:11
  and Gerard goes no to stop him. So by having all these one armed
• 44:15
  figures and this notion of of the one armed grandfather,
• 44:19
  paradise front and centre and alien bodies, Miles is
• 44:22
  connecting us back to Twin Peaks.
• 44:24
  But he goes further than that because in your previous
• 44:27
  conversation, Andrew draws attention to the Buddhism of
• 44:34
  Cortez and links it to Bobby Briggs's father, the Air Force
• 44:42
  Colonel, who seems he, he, he, he, he, he is.
• 44:47
  He's been on Project Blue Book, so he's been involved with
• 44:50
  investigations into space. But he's this very serene Zen
• 44:54
  character. Weird enough, the actor also
• 44:56
  plays Dana Scully's father in the first season of The X-Files.
• 44:59
  So we never got that crossover between The X-Files and Twin
• 45:02
  Peaks that was mooted, but we have got those links between
• 45:05
  David Duchovny and Oh. Don Davis, the big, big bull
• 45:08
  guy, Yeah. Yeah.
• 45:10
  And but actually there's another Eastern reference there and it's
• 45:14
  around Cooper himself because very early on in Twin Peaks,
• 45:19
  I'll assume everyone who's on this call knows what Twin Peaks
• 45:22
  is. So I'm not going.
• 45:23
  To. I would imagine so, yes.
• 45:25
  It's interesting, I couldn't remember Danny Latham's name the
• 45:28
  other night when I was talking about Broadchurch and how I
• 45:30
  don't really like it, but Laura Palmer will haunt me till the
• 45:33
  day I die. But that's really I think
• 45:36
  Chipman was looking for that type of resonance there.
• 45:38
  I still think you know, and this is a total sign note, I still
• 45:41
  think the first episode of Twin Peaks is possibly the best first
• 45:45
  episode of anything, including Doctor Who, that I have ever
• 45:48
  seen. But Cooper goes out with the
• 45:54
  police team, isn't it? So it's Harry Truman and it's,
• 45:57
  it's what's the secretary called?
• 46:00
  Oh, my name's gone and my mind's gone blank.
• 46:02
  And Andy and Hawk and he sets up some bottles and some
• 46:08
  chalkboards and he throws stones and it's a, it's a Eastern, it's
• 46:13
  a Tibetan investigative technique is, or deductive
• 46:17
  technique is what Cooper says. So Cooper is another
• 46:19
  centrepiece, a figure centred around Eastern mysticism and
• 46:23
  Buddhism like quarters. And so you've got that in alien
• 46:27
  bodies, you've got that link to Twin Peaks, but you've also got
• 46:30
  the use of dreams in alien bodies because they're really
• 46:32
  interested, because they work in a similar fashion to Twin Peaks
• 46:36
  in the things are revealed in those dreams in an oblique
• 46:41
  fashion. So Cooper's dreams are leading
• 46:43
  him down the path of discovering who was killed.
• 46:47
  Laura Palmer You've got the idea of doublings in Twin Peaks,
• 46:52
  which you've got here with when Dark Sam appears.
• 46:55
  Because Dark Sam, of course, is a version of Sam that could have
• 46:59
  existed. But the doctors interviewed in
• 47:01
  her timeline. That's right, isn't it?
• 47:03
  I think it's the one that did exist, but forces turned her
• 47:11
  into the perfect companion. So when he met her, she took him
• 47:15
  with him. He took him with her.
• 47:16
  Sorry. So Laura Palmer has a double
• 47:19
  life because outwardly she's this very popular figure.
• 47:23
  She's the homecoming queen. She does good works by bringing
• 47:27
  Meals on Wheels to Howard Smith, who's got her secret diary, but
• 47:31
  also that old woman whose grandson is a magician and he's
• 47:35
  dressed to look like David Lynch and he's got the cream corn in
• 47:39
  his hand, hasn't he? But of course, her inner life,
• 47:42
  her secret life, is she takes drugs, she's in Skin magazine,
• 47:47
  but of course, ultimately she's the horrific victim of incest.
• 47:51
  And of course, what's always skirted over in Twin Pieces,
• 47:54
  whether Leland knows he's raping his daughter or if it's Bob
• 47:58
  that's doing it. The film Firewall with me, I
• 48:00
  think makes it clear that Leland does indeed know that he's
• 48:03
  raping his daughter, which is why I've seen Cheryl fan has
• 48:06
  been approached by victims of incest to say how grateful they
• 48:09
  are that it's portrayed in that film, that people are aware that
• 48:12
  it happens. So that sense of the the double
• 48:14
  life. You think that's deliberate,
• 48:16
  Dark Sam? I think life because because the
• 48:23
  the unreal city or the unthinkable City operates in a
• 48:26
  similar way to the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks, because the Black
• 48:31
  Lodge is there alongside Twin Peaks, but you can't see it.
• 48:35
  So it's like the unthinkable city.
• 48:36
  You can only enter into it in certain places, like the
• 48:39
  unthinkable city. So how do they get in there at
• 48:42
  the end where Cooper has to go and save Annie?
• 48:44
  They go to the the circle of trees for Glastonbury Glow
• 48:47
  Grove, because Lynch is thinking in terms of King Arthur, but
• 48:51
  also the you need the black oil. That smell that always
• 48:54
  accompanies Bulb is the smell that is associated with entering
• 48:57
  into the into the Black Lodge. And so the sense of this other
• 49:01
  place where strange unnatural things happen in a place that's
• 49:06
  there but can't be seen and can't be entered.
• 49:09
  Miles uses that in this text, but of course he uses it then
• 49:14
  Mcclane as well, which is part of the problem because
• 49:16
  essentially the same concept is used twice in the same book, and
• 49:19
  it's going to be used again with the Other Day Empire.
• 49:21
  So dark Sam, blonde Sam, dreams, alms, all of this.
• 49:27
  Well, what's the point of all this?
• 49:29
  Just to go well, I've watched Twin Peaks.
• 49:31
  No, because it's it's, it's the same type of ideas that that
• 49:34
  Lynch is playing with. It's around identity and it's
• 49:37
  around secret. Self, I mean another genius,
• 49:39
  right? I think that.
• 49:41
  I mean, I, I, I mean, it struck me when Lynch and Tony Slappy
• 49:45
  both dive in quick succession. It was really, it was important
• 49:48
  to me because I would have been, I watched 10 people when I was
• 49:51
  too young. And that's why I'm terrified of
• 49:52
  Bob. I mean, Bob is terrifying
• 49:53
  anyway, but I was about 13. And so when he crawls over that
• 49:56
  setting. Oh God, that thing.
• 49:58
  I mean that haunts me every night.
• 50:00
  Well. When he turns up, then in the
• 50:03
  second season when, when David Warner, of course, is it by that
• 50:06
  point, and then Josie Packard gets killed and her face appears
• 50:08
  in the hand that the drawing Bob appears there.
• 50:11
  You get the smell again. The smell is there.
• 50:13
  Although one of my students, who's a brilliant student, one
• 50:16
  of the best students I've ever talked, he's well into this.
• 50:19
  And so he's argued that actually it's a cup of coffee and that
• 50:22
  you get this over this overhead shot of a cup of coffee and it's
• 50:25
  what is it? It's a circle of brown.
• 50:27
  So it's like the the oil that the log lady uses to get into
• 50:31
  twin. I've conscious this has become a
• 50:32
  conversation about Twin Peaks. That's.
• 50:33
  OK, go on, but. I can see Miles is intersecting
• 50:38
  with ideas about Eastern mysticism, about hidden selves,
• 50:42
  about Cooper doesn't know what's happening, and Cooper's got this
• 50:46
  dark future coming down the line and he doesn't know about it.
• 50:49
  Because the clue there is when they interrogate the one armed
• 50:52
  man, he says about Bob, few can see him, only the gifted and the
• 50:59
  damned. And we assume because Cooper
• 51:02
  sees Bob that he's gifted. But in fact that's not the case
• 51:05
  at all. We're told they we don't realize
• 51:07
  it at the time Cooper is damned, and so he gets trapped in the
• 51:11
  Black Lodge for the 25 years. The revival was amazing because
• 51:14
  it's exactly the period of time Lynch has Laura Palmer say, I'll
• 51:18
  see you again in 25 years. And then we got the third series
• 51:21
  that we weren't expecting. And but even then, like Lynch,
• 51:24
  like Steven Moffitt goes his audience, he said, well, you
• 51:27
  want this, You want Cooper to be out of the Black Lodge, which we
• 51:30
  all did. But he leaves and stuck in there
• 51:32
  for about 8 episodes and then he brings it out.
• 51:34
  So all those long shots and goading him.
• 51:37
  Miles is the Lynch of these these series of books because
• 51:41
  the Doctor doesn't know what's coming down the line.
• 51:44
  He gets a hint of it here. And of course, because it's the
• 51:46
  Doctor, he always thinks he can, he can avoid this, you know, but
• 51:50
  he can't. And we haven't seen it yet.
• 51:52
  And of course, then when it transpires that he's
• 51:54
  grandfather, the paradox, which makes it a much, much darker
• 51:58
  story. But idea this, this, this is in
• 52:00
  communication with Lynch in a deep and profound way, I think.
• 52:03
  You desperately maybe want to go back and watch Twin Peaks now,
• 52:08
  Not just for these parallels, just because I want to.
• 52:10
  It's because it's fabulous. It's, it's, it's one of the, I
• 52:14
  mean, it's interesting because Doctor Who had gone off the air
• 52:16
  when it came on the air. Is there a sense in which fans
• 52:19
  of a certain age jumped on that? Maybe pause?
• 52:22
  Maybe. It was strangeness in a, in a,
• 52:25
  in an everyday setting, which of course is, is Doctor Who.
• 52:28
  And of course it leads to The X-Files.
• 52:31
  Because if you don't have Twin Peaks, I don't think you get The
• 52:34
  X-Files, although The X-Files is drawing from Colcheck, the Night
• 52:37
  Stalker as well. That idea of the FBI
• 52:40
  investigating strange events, that's, that's Del Cooper.
• 52:44
  I think The X-Files, probably quite wisely, is a lot more
• 52:48
  mainstream and a lot less weird, and as a result it found an
• 52:53
  enormous audience. I don't know, I think home.
• 52:58
  Oh, that. Well, yeah, but.
• 53:00
  There was a reason why they wouldn't show that again, you
• 53:02
  know? But that's taken us a long way
• 53:05
  away. Well what about the structure of
• 53:07
  this thing then? What about how he structures
• 53:09
  this book so he's got now? I didn't realise this until I
• 53:13
  read an interview with Lawrence Miles in that you can actually
• 53:17
  detail the journey of the relic if you read the separate bidders
• 53:22
  back stories in reverse. So if you start with the last
• 53:26
  one and go back to the first one, you'll actually see the
• 53:29
  relic go from person to person before it hits the ziggurat.
• 53:34
  Yeah, I hadn't, I you said that to me and I thought that's,
• 53:38
  that's really interesting because again it's he's playing
• 53:41
  with continuity, he's playing with with time there and and you
• 53:44
  can see that that's a very miles in thing to do in this.
• 53:48
  It's also a very muffy thing to do, isn't it?
• 53:50
  Well, yeah, I've got a lot in common.
• 53:52
  The opening of this book where it jumps around the place,
• 53:55
  that's Moffett Chipnall does it as well.
• 53:57
  Of course, there are a couple of Chipnall episodes where he does
• 53:59
  that as well. But when it's done well, it's
• 54:00
  really effective. And I think because because he's
• 54:05
  playing with concepts of time, because because the unthinkable
• 54:08
  city kind of exists outside of time.
• 54:13
  And and there's a there's a kind of triple timeline in this book.
• 54:17
  There's what's the figures from the future and the Doctor can't
• 54:20
  know about that, but how has the relic got from the future into
• 54:25
  the present of the book? So the store.
• 54:28
  So then, as you say there the, the, the various short stories
• 54:31
  track the path of the relic essentially back in time.
• 54:35
  You get to the end of the book and then you go back in time by
• 54:37
  following the relic. But of course, you, you can't,
• 54:39
  you have to pick those chapters. So again, it breaks down the
• 54:43
  usual way of reading a book. And again I'm thinking in terms
• 54:47
  of there the book of the war, how you you have to jump into
• 54:49
  that at various points at this point to tell that other story
• 54:53
  which is running through this. But then just have it as a
• 54:55
  single story. You have to pick out separate
• 54:57
  sections of the book and read it backwards.
• 54:59
  What's so great is that not only is the main narrative super
• 55:04
  interesting, but he also, he leaves you on fucking humdingers
• 55:10
  of cliffhangers, right? Then he goes into these short
• 55:13
  stories, which are brilliant, just brilliant stories in their
• 55:16
  own right, independent of this narrative, but also informing
• 55:21
  this narrative. Moffett himself is quoted as
• 55:25
  saying that the end of Chapter 5, which is where the Doctor
• 55:29
  goes, come on, Mr. Kyoto, what are you selling here at this
• 55:32
  auction? Whose body is it?
• 55:34
  And he goes, oh, you're sorry. And then the Doctor punches him
• 55:37
  in the face that that is the single best cliffhanger ever in
• 55:42
  Doctor Who. I don't know that's true, but
• 55:44
  it's a fucking great moment. It's an incredible moment.
• 55:47
  And even even though you know it's coming and you've read the
• 55:50
  book once before, or because you're aware of where this book
• 55:54
  is in terms of the, the, the wider chronology of the, the
• 55:58
  series, it still works because you know it's coming.
• 56:01
  And so you have a different response to it because the first
• 56:03
  time you read it, you don't know it's coming.
• 56:06
  But when you read it a second time, you know it's coming.
• 56:09
  So you have a sense of anticipation.
• 56:10
  That same kind of frisson the Doctor is faced with the fact
• 56:13
  that he's going to die, which has to be at the back of his
• 56:16
  mind at some point. But of course, the point with
• 56:18
  the Doctor is there's all it's kind of like Jim Kirk.
• 56:21
  Jim Kirk never faces death until Wrath of Khan, because of course
• 56:26
  he's cheating on the the, the, what's that the ship called the
• 56:29
  cobra murashi, isn't it? He cheats on that exam.
• 56:33
  The Doctor always escapes death. You know, John, Nathan Turner
• 56:36
  tries to do something with it, get rid of the Sonic
• 56:38
  screwdriver, but there's always the Doctor will get away with
• 56:41
  it. Here.
• 56:42
  Suddenly you get proof positive you're going to die and it's a
• 56:48
  sobering moment for the Doctor. Oh, in defence of Mafia, but
• 56:52
  it's more about Matt Smith. Matt Smith in Name of the Doctor
• 56:58
  when he's on the settee and he starts crying.
• 57:00
  It's a brilliant performance from.
• 57:02
  Matt Oh, absolutely. And what's interesting, the 11th
• 57:06
  Doctor reacts in that way to the revelation of his death.
• 57:10
  The 8th Doctor punches Kyoke, but it is kind of undercut.
• 57:15
  By then we discovered the Shift has been manipulating the Doctor
• 57:18
  as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:19
  I kind of wish that that wasn't there.
• 57:22
  But then I think then he then when I thought, OK, this can't
• 57:26
  possibly get any better because we're now dealing with the
• 57:29
  endpoint of the Doctor. The next chapter ends with,
• 57:32
  well, why the hell don't you just invite the Daleks?
• 57:36
  And then he looks at the screen apologetically.
• 57:38
  He's like, oh, you didn't. And it's just glorious.
• 57:41
  So then we're and we know the Daleks are coming into the
• 57:44
  range. So it's like, this is absolutely
• 57:45
  a possibility because yeah, you said earlier War of the Daleks
• 57:48
  before. It's actually the one directly
• 57:50
  after this. Oh, is it?
• 57:51
  So we know we know the Daleks are coming, so there's every
• 57:54
  possibility they might be. And then obviously a Dalek ship
• 57:57
  does turn up and. Well, is it a Dalek ship,
• 58:00
  though? That's the other thing.
• 58:01
  You know the kind of they fudge that point, I think.
• 58:04
  It's been. It's been eaten from the inside
• 58:09
  the Dalek mutant by some kind of crystals and of course, well,
• 58:14
  who is attending the auction poll It's.
• 58:16
  The Creighton's obvious. It could have been the quarks.
• 58:21
  He could have gone down that. Way please.
• 58:24
  The quarks have been in comic strips and been kind of made
• 58:27
  serious in the comic strips, hadn't they because they because
• 58:29
  they use them in or is it TV 21 of those, whereas, you know, the
• 58:33
  crotons suddenly, but it because they're they're partly a joke
• 58:36
  because of course, the way that he prints their the the
• 58:40
  typography to indicate their speech patterns where he's
• 58:43
  trying to replicate the sound from from the crown.
• 58:46
  I mean, I quite like the crowns. I think as a concept in the TV
• 58:49
  program. The issue is they just haven't
• 58:51
  got the money, but it's really interesting idea.
• 58:54
  And so then Miles takes it and it's.
• 58:56
  Got legs, doesn't it? Clearly.
• 58:57
  Well, no it. Doesn't.
• 59:01
  I think when it, when it. If you just said to me, right,
• 59:04
  If you just said to me that a chapter from a croton's point of
• 59:07
  view, discovering about the relic going on this fabulous,
• 59:11
  you know, religious pilgrimage where he has to walk for days
• 59:14
  and days to get to the high brains and, you know, bypassing
• 59:19
  torturing a Time Lord horribly along the way.
• 59:22
  I mean, that chapter is terrific.
• 59:25
  Yeah, it's AI mean. There's a joke there, isn't
• 59:28
  there? Because, you know, it's about
• 59:30
  how cumbersome the quotes are on TV.
• 59:32
  But the idea that it's this is how you approach the high brains
• 59:36
  and it gives them a kind of a sense of religion then expands
• 59:39
  what the characters are because otherwise they're just kind of a
• 59:43
  bog standard killer robot. But when you give them this
• 59:46
  concept of hierarchy and robots and mission, and then of course,
• 59:51
  it's alongside the the the creeping tension around the Time
• 59:55
  Lord. And then because we never see
• 59:56
  him torture, but we hear him screaming as this thing go.
• 59:59
  And of course you're left with the idea.
• 1:00:00
  Well, the time will screams will echo down that tunnel.
• 1:00:04
  Will it take three days for the sorts the information out of
• 1:00:06
  him? Because what's so interesting
• 1:00:08
  here is how he does. I mean, they literally take that
• 1:00:10
  time all apart, I think. But Miles is deconstructing the
• 1:00:14
  time laws, which is why I'm kind of disappointed with Homuncular.
• 1:00:17
  I don't I don't. I think he's kind of not as
• 1:00:19
  interesting as some of the other characters.
• 1:00:23
  And there's a sense in which either that's a mistake on Miles
• 1:00:27
  part, or he's making a comment on how boring time wars have got
• 1:00:30
  because they are quite boring. And you're right, I think
• 1:00:34
  Homunculus is only interesting in relation to his relationship
• 1:00:39
  with Marie because he's very interesting.
• 1:00:41
  His reaction when she dies is really interesting.
• 1:00:44
  He's in love with Marie. No, that's, that's another link
• 1:00:48
  between peaks actually, because you said you didn't want to talk
• 1:00:50
  about how he gets inside Marie. And of course the, the, the beam
• 1:00:53
  of light. Well, that's, that's a lynching
• 1:00:56
  image there of the light coming from where there's no face.
• 1:00:58
  But Leyland Palmer, we're told he opened himself up.
• 1:01:02
  He let Bob in, which might be sexual given that it's Bob, but
• 1:01:06
  it tracks with this notion of apertures and entering into
• 1:01:09
  people. And the idea if you put the mark
• 1:01:12
  on Trask or you put the mark on the shift or the mark on the
• 1:01:16
  doctor and the idea of carrying that taint around with you,
• 1:01:19
  that's that's like Bob in in inside Leyland.
• 1:01:24
  And of course it will be the doctor in interference, won't
• 1:01:26
  it? Because they infect the doctor
• 1:01:28
  because essentially the plot of interference, we're told here,
• 1:01:31
  aren't we, the faction paradox to go and rewrite your your
• 1:01:34
  timeline. That's Miles telling us what's
• 1:01:36
  going to happen. But the idea of you carrying the
• 1:01:39
  tape inside you and, and you've been unaware of it or you doing
• 1:01:43
  things that you're not necessarily aware of, which is
• 1:01:45
  what Twin Peaks suggest in the TV program that's, that's here
• 1:01:49
  in this book as well. Is there anyone in Twin Peaks
• 1:01:51
  that loses their shadow? That's the mark that the
• 1:01:53
  Doctor's been tainted. His shadow vanishes in one book
• 1:01:57
  and he suddenly realizes he hasn't had a shadow for a while.
• 1:01:59
  I can't, I can't think. Although again, it might be
• 1:02:03
  Miles. Looking at other stories, I
• 1:02:05
  think there might be a there's either George MacDonald short
• 1:02:08
  story called The Shadows, or there's something in Hoffman
• 1:02:10
  about someone who loses their shadow.
• 1:02:11
  There's it's an established trope somewhere that to lose
• 1:02:14
  your shadow is to lose an essential part of yourself.
• 1:02:17
  Or it could be is it Poe? No, no, it's Hoffman I think.
• 1:02:20
  And then the shadow comes after the person.
• 1:02:22
  The shadow becomes sentient and BES stalks the person.
• 1:02:26
  The fact, the fact that you can pull it in this many sources
• 1:02:32
  into this book, it just goes to show you the levels he's working
• 1:02:35
  on right compared to the other writers writing Doctor Who books
• 1:02:39
  at the time. I mean an argument that Miles
• 1:02:42
  and myself are both too immersed in cultural references and it's
• 1:02:46
  a form of madness. Because I'm not, Yeah.
• 1:02:49
  And so some of the bits that you're talking about here are
• 1:02:52
  absolutely, you know, about others.
• 1:02:53
  I don't. And you know me, I love
• 1:02:55
  listening to you. But as a piece of entertainment,
• 1:03:00
  yeah, this is a really funny book.
• 1:03:03
  It's a really scary book. And it's a really, it skips
• 1:03:07
  along, given it's all in this one setting.
• 1:03:09
  It skips along from one set piece to another, one surprise
• 1:03:12
  to another. So purely just as a piece of
• 1:03:14
  fiction, I think this is a master class in how to write a
• 1:03:18
  Doctor Who book. It's phenomenal.
• 1:03:21
  I mean, where he intersects with other Doctor Who writers is
• 1:03:24
  interesting because of course he's one of his obvious touch
• 1:03:26
  points is Douglas Adams because of course no job need is where
• 1:03:32
  the rival Cardinal sets up and that's where Skagra comes from
• 1:03:39
  in Sharda. But of course, that's adding to
• 1:03:44
  the idea that Miles is writing about paradoxes, about things
• 1:03:47
  that don't exist because Sharda doesn't exist.
• 1:03:50
  But there are multiple versions of Sharda as well.
• 1:03:52
  So it's kind of meta textually building on what's in the book
• 1:03:57
  about these places that don't exist, but they do exist at the
• 1:04:00
  same time. Or like in like Paradoxes where
• 1:04:03
  whatever cousin, what's his name is, he has to, he kills himself,
• 1:04:06
  therefore he can't be there to kill himself, but he kills
• 1:04:08
  himself. And so the fact that it's a
• 1:04:10
  missing story, an incomplete story, and it's a story that by
• 1:04:14
  this point does exist because the script is out.
• 1:04:16
  So we knew what Drogdnid was, and the video is out with Tom
• 1:04:20
  Baker filling in the narration. But also it doesn't exist.
• 1:04:24
  He's really interesting. I mean, he's touched point, I
• 1:04:26
  think is Adams and the kind of humor is Adams.
• 1:04:28
  What the the the most telling one, I think was that book, the
• 1:04:32
  the yes, that the unit operatives read and and half the
• 1:04:35
  stuff in the book is genuine aliens and half of it is
• 1:04:38
  bullshit. And the test is you've got to
• 1:04:40
  try to figure out which is which.
• 1:04:42
  Which to me, just if Adams was writing a unit story, that
• 1:04:46
  absolutely would be the start of gag he'd have in there.
• 1:04:49
  I mean, he got the joke from the start because he's got, you
• 1:04:52
  know, when you turn the so you get you get the front is piece.
• 1:04:55
  You get other books. Other Doctor Who books include
• 1:04:58
  I'm going to get a list of stuff that you might want to read but
• 1:05:00
  not War of the Daleks. And then you get the epigram.
• 1:05:04
  And then you get, which my daughter assures me is is
• 1:05:08
  Einstein. And then you get a quick note on
• 1:05:11
  cross species translation conventions.
• 1:05:14
  In any bodies, the word man is used to describe any male
• 1:05:16
  sentient life form. And the word woman is used to
• 1:05:18
  describe any female sentient life form.
• 1:05:21
  Then it goes on. Anyone requiring further
• 1:05:22
  information about cross species translation conventions should
• 1:05:24
  consult Preface 3. Professor Thriftstead's
• 1:05:27
  excellent. Ask your local library if you
• 1:05:30
  can order a copy, if they if they can order you a copy, but
• 1:05:33
  only if you enjoy wasting people's time.
• 1:05:35
  And it's a brilliant joke because it becomes para text
• 1:05:38
  because that's where you would usually get an author's note.
• 1:05:41
  But actually it becomes part of the joke.
• 1:05:43
  It was part of the story. It's and Thripstead.
• 1:05:46
  That's a reference from from original run Dr. Who, isn't it?
• 1:05:48
  I can't remember who references Thripstead.
• 1:05:51
  And then the third zone is 2 doctors isn't?
• 1:05:54
  It those two doctors. And so it's, it's, it's
• 1:05:57
  fabulous. And then of course, there's
• 1:05:58
  darkness there in a way that Adams doesn't go that dark in
• 1:06:02
  Doctor Who. So again, he takes Adams and he
• 1:06:05
  dumps him back into Hinchcliffe or maybe dumps it into season 22
• 1:06:09
  because there's images here that wouldn't be out of place in
• 1:06:12
  season 22. I think obviously, you know,
• 1:06:14
  it's far more intelligent than season 22 in this far.
• 1:06:16
  There's there's wit there as well.
• 1:06:18
  He gets round of course, the issue, the potential issue of
• 1:06:21
  having a single location by having the short store.
• 1:06:24
  Back well, but so many of those are set around droned, so you
• 1:06:27
  get droned in all like various time periods.
• 1:06:30
  So you get this huge like another planet talked about and
• 1:06:34
  just given massive detail, which I really loved as.
• 1:06:37
  Well, I don't know. Dronid always works though.
• 1:06:40
  Go on. Because he's got so the so
• 1:06:43
  faction Paradox are kind of a crime syndicate, aren't they?
• 1:06:46
  And, and Dronid is now being run by various criminal syndicates.
• 1:06:49
  And it kind of. And then when Kyoto's there,
• 1:06:52
  he's in a bar trying to negotiate buying the relic and
• 1:06:55
  he's run into trouble with some local mafia type.
• 1:06:58
  It all feels a bit Star Wars to me.
• 1:07:00
  It's 6 tracks. He wanted it to be Drax, I read,
• 1:07:06
  but it's not Drax. It's much closer, I think,
• 1:07:09
  verbally to glitz. I mean, I, I, I kind of always
• 1:07:14
  think it is Drax in my head. Until the moment we discover
• 1:07:17
  he's got a TARDIS, but he doesn't call it a TARDIS.
• 1:07:19
  And then it's more likely to be Drax.
• 1:07:22
  But verbally. Up until that point, it's more
• 1:07:25
  like glitz than Drax. But again, it could be a
• 1:07:27
  completely different character. It's like Traskers, the
• 1:07:30
  Highlander know the names are the same.
• 1:07:32
  He wants you to think that these they're the two obvious flaggers
• 1:07:36
  in Doctor Who. I just love the fact that if it
• 1:07:38
  is Drax and he's doing all this dodgy dealing with like genetic
• 1:07:41
  material and terrifying super weapons and not exactly the the
• 1:07:47
  the happy chirpy chappy we met in the Armageddon Factor, I
• 1:07:50
  suppose he was happy to do a deal with the devil.
• 1:07:54
  I mean, it isn't on that level. It's much closer to glitz and
• 1:07:57
  getting the stuff from the matrix and sending it on.
• 1:07:59
  Because of course there's there's clearly weaponry in in
• 1:08:02
  there. Because of course, where this is
• 1:08:03
  pointing forward, I think into revive dots.
• 1:08:06
  Who is is the idea of the time War and these these these
• 1:08:10
  unearthly weapons, these these temporal weapons, I mean, they
• 1:08:14
  rarely get it as good as this in the revival.
• 1:08:17
  I think probably Davis is the closest when he talks about the
• 1:08:20
  Nightmare Child and you get that confrontation between Tenant and
• 1:08:24
  Davros at the end of four and that Davos had disappeared early
• 1:08:27
  in the time. Moffett.
• 1:08:30
  Visually they can't do it anyway.
• 1:08:31
  The budget is just not there. And of course, I think Moffett
• 1:08:34
  was probably right not to have had the dot to destroy
• 1:08:37
  Gallifrey, but then of course to try and portray Gallifrey in the
• 1:08:40
  last days. It's a few kids wandering around
• 1:08:43
  in dressing gowns. Oh, mundane, isn't it?
• 1:08:47
  Daleks going Pew Pew Pew please. Where is the idea of the moment?
• 1:08:51
  That's much closer to it. That's a margin idea.
• 1:08:53
  But you go go read. I mean, you'll find some pretty
• 1:08:56
  dreary prose, but go read The Ancestor Cell and how the Time
• 1:09:00
  War is depicted there. It's ghoulish and there's, you
• 1:09:05
  know, hauntings from past and future and hold swathes of the
• 1:09:10
  web of time. And it's exactly how the sort of
• 1:09:13
  the the things that Rusty Davis is alluding to but knows he can
• 1:09:16
  never show you and but it's enough to sort of entice you.
• 1:09:20
  It's also, I think that Davis is afraid of sci-fi anyway.
• 1:09:25
  He doesn't really want to do it. He thinks.
• 1:09:27
  He thinks it will drive the audience away in Season 1, and
• 1:09:30
  he doesn't really do it. He's not.
• 1:09:32
  He's wrong though, you know. He's not wrong, but I don't
• 1:09:35
  think he's that interested in time travel either.
• 1:09:37
  He's interested in being able to travel in time, but he's not
• 1:09:39
  interested in in the complexities around time.
• 1:09:41
  Moffett tries and usually gets it wrong or he loses control
• 1:09:44
  because season 6 is a brave failed experiment to try and
• 1:09:47
  have that type of complexity around who's wearing time and
• 1:09:51
  dropping Amy Rory off. And that's them back at the
• 1:09:53
  start, you know? What series 6 would be great as
• 1:09:55
  a book or a series of books? They're not written by Muffin.
• 1:09:59
  Wow, yes, I mean, what one thing I'll say about Miles here, and
• 1:10:04
  it really stands out here compared to his other texts.
• 1:10:07
  Christmas on a Rational Planet was a brilliant book, but it's
• 1:10:10
  absolutely it's the one where he basically said I wanted a
• 1:10:13
  continuity reference from every other Doctor Who's story in
• 1:10:16
  there and built a story around that.
• 1:10:19
  And interference is absolutely trying to be a massive tempo in
• 1:10:23
  the 8th Doctor's range, but it's very, very serious.
• 1:10:26
  Those scenes in the cell in Saudi between the doctor and the
• 1:10:30
  other prisoner. It's as dark as doctor.
• 1:10:32
  Whoever got with morally complex questions being asked that the
• 1:10:35
  show usually can't answer because it's a family show and
• 1:10:39
  then an adventurous on Henrietta St. which is probably his magnum
• 1:10:44
  opus, right? It's absolutely brilliant, but
• 1:10:46
  it's written as academic texts. So there's you're like once
• 1:10:50
  removed from it. This is the most overt.
• 1:10:54
  This is the book where he's trying to entertain you the
• 1:10:57
  most. He's it's his funniest book by a
• 1:10:59
  mile. I really love it for that
• 1:11:01
  reason. I think because by the time he's
• 1:11:05
  really leaning into this idea of let's disconcert the Doctor,
• 1:11:12
  let's interrogate the Doctor, let's put the Doctor in places
• 1:11:15
  where he wouldn't usually be. So as you write, you say Pertwee
• 1:11:19
  gets coffee thrown in his face. He's on this dirty, grim
• 1:11:23
  frontier planet, and then he gets.
• 1:11:24
  You remember the blood coming down the walls in the TARDIS as
• 1:11:27
  a portent of what he's about to see.
• 1:11:30
  It's it's really visceral, interesting what he does.
• 1:11:35
  But then of course, putting and began into the cell, having him
• 1:11:38
  tortured Ascension, of course, the the trick where you think
• 1:11:41
  it's an alien cell, but actually it's a cell on this planet.
• 1:11:44
  And actually that whole question around Saudi treatment of
• 1:11:49
  prisoners and the weapons fair, of course.
• 1:11:51
  Yeah, it's it's it's an armament fair, isn't it?
• 1:11:53
  That's a very, very contemporary book now.
• 1:11:55
  I mean, fandom hated it at the time, didn't they?
• 1:11:58
  He asked that question that we've been debating ever since,
• 1:12:01
  you know, the heart of years. The the prisoner in the cell
• 1:12:04
  asked the doctor, well, how is it you can interfere on other
• 1:12:08
  planets? And yeah, when you go back in
• 1:12:10
  time and it's just a not and he can't answer it.
• 1:12:12
  There's no answer. And so Miles comes to the
• 1:12:15
  conclusion. The Doctor says I do what I
• 1:12:18
  think I can get away with, and that's his.
• 1:12:20
  Answer I mean doesn't seeing isn't seeing eye?
• 1:12:23
  Doesn't that have the doctor put through the ringer in in a
• 1:12:26
  prison as well? Or am I misremembering?
• 1:12:28
  Yeah, no, it is. He's he's in prison for three
• 1:12:30
  years because they're looking through his eyes.
• 1:12:32
  So every single escape attempt that he tries, they're with him.
• 1:12:35
  So they're there to react to it. I'm Big Finish.
• 1:12:37
  Don't they? They is it is or is it?
• 1:12:39
  Is it the 7th doctor? Isn't there there prison stories
• 1:12:42
  there as well? Of course we get the doctor
• 1:12:44
  locked up and you can allude to these horrific things that are
• 1:12:46
  going on. So Miles isn't alone in doing
• 1:12:49
  that, but it's really what he does with the 7th doctrine.
• 1:12:52
  The timeless, I think is where you look to how he's, he's
• 1:12:55
  taking the established law and then he's just, I'm not going to
• 1:13:00
  throw it out the window, but I'm going to put it through a
• 1:13:02
  blender and then we're going to pour the guts through a sieve
• 1:13:06
  and let's see what we get. What he does with the 7th Doctor
• 1:13:11
  in Christmas on a Rational planet.
• 1:13:12
  Do you remember the ending of that?
• 1:13:13
  No, I can't. I was looking at Dave romance
• 1:13:15
  the other day because I think that's a really that's AI mean.
• 1:13:18
  It's a very dense book, a very difficult book, but it's, it's a
• 1:13:21
  really, it's, it's a, it's a great book.
• 1:13:24
  He's sick to death. He's absolutely sick to death of
• 1:13:27
  the the Doctor planning everything to the yeah degree.
• 1:13:30
  So he has a plot where he's totally bamboozled and the other
• 1:13:34
  person's been out plotting him. And at the end of the book, the
• 1:13:37
  TARDIS saves the Doctor and it's just the most punch in the air
• 1:13:41
  glorious moment. And yeah, when the 7th Doctor is
• 1:13:46
  basically on his facing oblivion, it's wonderful.
• 1:13:51
  Mars is good on the yeah, he's good on looking at the TARDIS
• 1:13:56
  beyond just as a as a travel device, He's looking at that
• 1:13:59
  relationship between the time travellers and their tires.
• 1:14:02
  Kamonka loves Marie, whether it's a sexualized thing, an idea
• 1:14:06
  of him entering her that that's kind of left obliquely, but the
• 1:14:09
  attack on Marie really affects him.
• 1:14:12
  Which of course is then why he turns on Cousin Justina with the
• 1:14:18
  Sonic wrench. I had a point in which she also
• 1:14:21
  says her arms are in the wrong place again.
• 1:14:23
  There's another arms reference there.
• 1:14:25
  One bit as well with Justine. And is it man, Julie, is that
• 1:14:28
  how you say it, where she looks down on him?
• 1:14:32
  She remembers that before they were Faction Paradox members
• 1:14:35
  because he's, you know, he's of another race, that she never
• 1:14:39
  would have spoken to this Millie peasant in a million years.
• 1:14:43
  But now she's been forced into a position where she has to work
• 1:14:46
  alongside him. I thought there was just lots of
• 1:14:49
  moments like that where I was like, that is good.
• 1:14:52
  She's Victorian, isn't she? And from a street gang.
• 1:14:57
  Yeah. And and of course, he he he puts
• 1:15:00
  them because they're kind of doctor companion or kind of a a
• 1:15:04
  messed up version of doctor and companion.
• 1:15:07
  And what's interesting is how he groups the figures together.
• 1:15:09
  So Sam who? Of course, I'd forgotten how
• 1:15:13
  much SAT Sam is hated by fandom because she's the perfect
• 1:15:17
  companion. Wrongly I think.
• 1:15:19
  I think wrong because I think Sam is.
• 1:15:21
  I mean, part of the problem is because it's Terence Dix really
• 1:15:23
  didn't like the McGann movie and therefore he makes that quite
• 1:15:27
  clear in The Eighth Doctors when he said it was so confused and
• 1:15:30
  illogical. That's the Doctors aside.
• 1:15:32
  You know, what Parkin does in the Gallifrey Chronicles is when
• 1:15:36
  the Doctor shown a vision of the end of the ancestor cell.
• 1:15:39
  The Doctor goes, oh, it's full of confusion, illogical events,
• 1:15:43
  wasn't it? It's so cheeky and.
• 1:15:46
  There's a lot of points going goes on across the books as
• 1:15:48
  well, I think. But but, but Miles and Natalis
• 1:15:52
  is interesting because because the only other person who really
• 1:15:54
  thinks in those terms is is big meat with me thinks about the
• 1:15:57
  TARDIS as a complex space-time event to to take a line from
• 1:16:01
  Moffett. And so of course he's
• 1:16:02
  interesting that block transfer computation is used by Kyoto to
• 1:16:05
  make the the unthinkable city. This is again a reference back
• 1:16:09
  to a direct reference back to an earlier Doctor Who story.
• 1:16:14
  But also there's a sense in which the feel around or the
• 1:16:18
  idea around the Doctor and the TARDIS is there and you'll get a
• 1:16:22
  compassion as well, of course. Because with it's compassion is
• 1:16:25
  a TARDIS travelling inside the TARDIS.
• 1:16:27
  And my misremembering compassion has got some type of resonance
• 1:16:31
  with the Doctor's TARDIS. My misremembering that there's,
• 1:16:34
  there's some there, there were kind of a sides there where
• 1:16:37
  because we don't know she's a TARDIS to start with, do we?
• 1:16:40
  No. So in the shadows of Avalon, his
• 1:16:42
  TARDIS explodes. Yeah.
• 1:16:45
  And she then transforms into a TARDIS of her own.
• 1:16:49
  I mean, the remote and interesting concept, which
• 1:16:51
  that's not in this book, is it? But it'll be an interference
• 1:16:54
  because they're a society who's dependent upon TV signals.
• 1:16:58
  Picking up signals, yeah. And all of the discussion around
• 1:17:01
  that and interference of how the various signals that that come
• 1:17:05
  out as shape our opinions, it's sorry, interesting.
• 1:17:10
  It's Miles making a point about TV.
• 1:17:12
  And now, because we're going to extend it to a.
• 1:17:14
  Very cynical point because he takes it to a dark conclusion.
• 1:17:18
  He's right though. I mean, I assume he was aware of
• 1:17:21
  amusing ourselves to death, which makes the argument in 1985
• 1:17:25
  that TV has replaced literate society and we're just looking
• 1:17:29
  for like binary opposites and characters.
• 1:17:33
  And he Postman's right at a point where because of course,
• 1:17:37
  at that stage, we're all thinking, is it going to be 1984
• 1:17:41
  or is it going to be brave new world?
• 1:17:43
  And he argues that in fact, it's brave new world that we're just,
• 1:17:45
  we're just immersing ourselves in entertainment.
• 1:17:48
  And of course, everything he says in that book you can now
• 1:17:50
  say about the Internet and, and, and, and more so.
• 1:17:53
  And I think Miles is probably making a similar point there
• 1:17:56
  about about the remote. But of course, the fact that he
• 1:17:59
  structures these texts around conscious references to popular
• 1:18:03
  culture, to particularly the television, there's kind of a
• 1:18:07
  double argument there about the nature of TV.
• 1:18:09
  But I I'd forgotten the remote and then and then I thought, are
• 1:18:11
  they in this? No, no, no, it's later on.
• 1:18:14
  But the idea, the signals and the fact that in a sense we're
• 1:18:17
  the remote because we get the signals from the telly and it's
• 1:18:21
  Doctor Who that would think. Well, he is bringing us this
• 1:18:23
  book, isn't it? With all of these, I mean, all
• 1:18:25
  the Doctor Who comes to the stuffed in here, he's been
• 1:18:28
  taking in signals all of his life.
• 1:18:30
  Go, go back to Sam quickly. Because I think the interesting
• 1:18:32
  thing about Sam is they've quickly realized she doesn't
• 1:18:35
  work. Yeah, she's this plucky blonde
• 1:18:38
  activist, you know, Greenpeace activists who's out there ready
• 1:18:42
  to fight injustices in the universe.
• 1:18:43
  And they very quickly realise that's really boring.
• 1:18:46
  And so the Miles is like, right, fine, we're going to make the
• 1:18:50
  fact that she's a lucky blonde activist part of the story.
• 1:18:53
  And that has been deliberately dumb.
• 1:18:56
  And then Kate Allman comes in with John Blum and they say,
• 1:18:59
  right, we're going to give her three years away from the doctor
• 1:19:02
  and grow her up a bit and try and make her a bit more mature.
• 1:19:06
  And then Paul Mars comes in and he says, you know what, I don't?
• 1:19:09
  I don't think you should be doing this.
• 1:19:10
  Take the character as written you can and just make her really
• 1:19:13
  fun. So he writes a brilliant Sam
• 1:19:15
  Jones in in the Scarlet Empress, but to the original design.
• 1:19:20
  And then in interference he's and it's like a constant
• 1:19:23
  reaction all the time with Sam. She's changing all the time.
• 1:19:27
  I don't think she ever truly settles down to be a consistent
• 1:19:30
  character, but I love watching that journey.
• 1:19:35
  Well, it's it's far more interested in what they do of
• 1:19:37
  Ace in the new adventures. Anything would be more
• 1:19:40
  interesting than that. They've got the same notion.
• 1:19:44
  Let's change the character because they think what they're
• 1:19:46
  doing is consistent with watching the TV.
• 1:19:47
  Because we've said before it misses the point.
• 1:19:49
  That storyline essentially is finished with survival.
• 1:19:52
  Do something different. I suppose the point with Sam is
• 1:19:56
  that she is a pencil, a blank slate, because.
• 1:20:02
  Or she's the perfect companion. I mean, there's a comment there,
• 1:20:05
  I think, about how thin manly TV companions had been and that the
• 1:20:11
  writers recognized that and that there's a sense.
• 1:20:14
  What's he saying? Yeah, that's deliberate.
• 1:20:16
  That's what he's saying here, isn't it, though?
• 1:20:18
  Yes, she's deliberate to be made to be that thin.
• 1:20:21
  Well, what what's what's What's quite striking, I think, is when
• 1:20:27
  Sam and Bergman enter into the crypt and of course it becomes a
• 1:20:33
  very love crafty and with the the organic God.
• 1:20:36
  That was weird. I mean, I love the prose there.
• 1:20:39
  It was twisted and weird. And and the sense in which
• 1:20:43
  they're attacked by their darkest fear.
• 1:20:45
  So of course Bergman's own sense of inadequacy is used against
• 1:20:49
  her. But then the various babies that
• 1:20:53
  are. No, no mincemeat babies.
• 1:20:59
  But what you get then isn't is it at that point is earning
• 1:21:02
  test. You get the info dump about Sam.
• 1:21:04
  She was born in 1980, whatever and it become, it's essentially
• 1:21:08
  the type of thing that you give the writers to describe the
• 1:21:11
  character and it highlights exactly your point that she was
• 1:21:14
  designed to be this kind of tedious right on perfect figure.
• 1:21:19
  It not a million miles from the type of kind of flat characters
• 1:21:22
  that you often get in the character in the companions on
• 1:21:25
  TV, where it's often the actor elevates it or the scripts
• 1:21:29
  elevate it, which is what you've got here.
• 1:21:31
  This is a close you've got to attempting where the character
• 1:21:35
  isn't always consistent, but she isn't.
• 1:21:38
  Trust me she isn't but watching them trying to make her work.
• 1:21:43
  Yeah. It's really interesting.
• 1:21:45
  I mean, it's different. So, so on, on on the TV, there's
• 1:21:49
  clearly 2 versions of Adricht. And I don't know how you end up
• 1:21:52
  with the version of Adricht that you get in Cooper tracking and
• 1:21:55
  in Lagopolis and in Earthshop where he writes really well.
• 1:21:59
  And that original idea about how he works in relation to the
• 1:22:01
  Doctor really comes to cross there.
• 1:22:03
  And then you get the other version, which is usually
• 1:22:05
  Terence Dudley's, where he's miserable, misogynistic, a
• 1:22:09
  child, he's only interested in food and.
• 1:22:11
  He's with the villain. And I don't quite know how you
• 1:22:15
  end up with those two radically different versions on screen,
• 1:22:18
  except that there's a complete cock up in terms of control of
• 1:22:21
  script, whereas this is doing something different because of
• 1:22:25
  course all the different versions of Sam, they all work.
• 1:22:29
  I think from memory. I think they move.
• 1:22:31
  Yeah, they're right. They have to do something with.
• 1:22:33
  The character, except when John peels Ryanair and then she is.
• 1:22:37
  We leave Peel to one side as a strange aberration kind of fetch
• 1:22:41
  version of the 8th Doctor. But given that we're in Buckle
• 1:22:44
  universes and and potential universes where they don't exist
• 1:22:49
  but they do exist, that works really well for the idea of Sam.
• 1:22:53
  There are multiple versions of Sam there because we're in this
• 1:22:56
  now this. It's not a multiverse, it's not
• 1:22:59
  that, but there are multiple versions of these characters.
• 1:23:01
  You're going back to all those sharders again.
• 1:23:05
  That's what he's doing there, I think.
• 1:23:06
  I think those references to Sharder is part of this effect.
• 1:23:09
  He's real and isn't real at the same time.
• 1:23:11
  Do you remember the? Conclusion that Miles draws in
• 1:23:13
  interference with Sam. So it's not that so so they go
• 1:23:16
  for our Natural History where due to a splinter, the dark Sam
• 1:23:20
  comes to be and the blonde Sam's gone and then effectively the
• 1:23:24
  dark Sam has to choose to kill herself step back into that
• 1:23:28
  splinter for the blonde Sam to be.
• 1:23:30
  And I wondered if we were going to end up with that that that
• 1:23:33
  dark Sam would come to be in the end because he brought up the
• 1:23:35
  idea no no, what he does in interference is he says, right
• 1:23:40
  she is three years older now she's learnt all these things
• 1:23:42
  about herself. She knows this isn't how she was
• 1:23:44
  supposed to be. And then she comes to the
• 1:23:47
  there's a wonderful scene at the start of interference just
• 1:23:49
  before she's about to go into the arms fair where she sees a
• 1:23:52
  lot of protesters outside. And she looks down at them off
• 1:23:55
  from the from the the rooftop and thinks, that is just how I
• 1:24:00
  used to be. That's a little bit
• 1:24:02
  embarrassing. And then she goes off to do
• 1:24:04
  something like genuinely heroic. And she's just a mature, fully
• 1:24:09
  actualized version of that character from the 8 doctors.
• 1:24:14
  It's really, really unusually for the books.
• 1:24:17
  Her last story is her best story, and it's Miles again.
• 1:24:23
  I mean, there's a sense which you want the last story to be
• 1:24:25
  the best story. You want them to go out on a
• 1:24:27
  high. How often do you get in TV .2
• 1:24:30
  where the last story isn't the best story?
• 1:24:32
  There's this, you know, Leela, write her out because she wants
• 1:24:35
  to go Nyssa dampscrib an ending Tegan time for the go.
• 1:24:39
  Anyway, there's care here in a way that you can have when
• 1:24:44
  you've got more time and more thought and where you've got the
• 1:24:47
  space to develop these characters.
• 1:24:49
  Well, I think Sam's a good character.
• 1:24:52
  I, I, I the hatred towards. I mean, it's kind of it's
• 1:24:57
  fandom. It's fandom and it's worse.
• 1:24:59
  And you could you could see it now writ large in how people
• 1:25:03
  respond to characters and of course then by association to
• 1:25:07
  the actors playing those characters in Internet culture
• 1:25:11
  around knew who revived to So of course Mars is was kind of
• 1:25:15
  prissy in there I think as well. I.
• 1:25:17
  Think with with Sam, she's a she's definitely a flawed
• 1:25:20
  character in that she never was consistent.
• 1:25:22
  But I think she's being written by the very best and the very
• 1:25:28
  worst, Yeah, of the Doctor Who book writers.
• 1:25:31
  And that's just fascinating to read.
• 1:25:33
  Yeah. And some of them get a bang on
• 1:25:35
  and others get her when you do the run.
• 1:25:37
  I can understand why people are like, this is all over the
• 1:25:40
  place. It's Andra Sarni to Twin
• 1:25:42
  Dilemma. You know, it's Time Lash to
• 1:25:44
  Revelation of the Daleks. But when it hits like in this,
• 1:25:47
  in this book, she, she just is a young woman who loves being with
• 1:25:53
  the Doctor, Who is competent and funny, who learns something
• 1:25:58
  quite hideous about herself and just really engaging I found in
• 1:26:02
  this. But doesn't know what's in the
• 1:26:04
  box. Crucially, she's never told
• 1:26:07
  what's in the relic. The Doctor is kind of there's a
• 1:26:11
  there's a resistance to tell her the whole story.
• 1:26:13
  Which of course then we get at the end of the book when there's
• 1:26:16
  the hint that Kyoto hasn't told everyone everything and there's
• 1:26:18
  a completely different story there.
• 1:26:20
  Suddenly the whole thing has become kind of an unreliable
• 1:26:23
  narrative. Or we've become like the doctor.
• 1:26:26
  We think we've discovered it. But actually there's there's
• 1:26:28
  more to discover, which I think we have.
• 1:26:31
  We do actually discovery do this is kind of a sense of which this
• 1:26:33
  is, this is the end of that. And then that particular plot
• 1:26:36
  line isn't really picked up. Is it that?
• 1:26:38
  Last scene where he buries his own body, I just think that's so
• 1:26:44
  beautiful. The last line of another 100
• 1:26:47
  million nights passed on Quisia or Quisessia or however you're
• 1:26:51
  saying that nothing changed and no one else came.
• 1:26:55
  It's so poignant. But of course it's it's the
• 1:27:00
  linking back with Lyca, isn't it?
• 1:27:03
  And the only idea because because the relic is partly
• 1:27:08
  alive, isn't it because he's in, he's in some there's those weird
• 1:27:11
  psychic communications with the Doctor and the Doctor in the box
• 1:27:15
  isn't there? And again, that that sense of in
• 1:27:19
  communication with the dead, the motif of the dead walking
• 1:27:23
  amongst us is there. But of course, the box starts
• 1:27:25
  stops talking to him in the end, doesn't it?
• 1:27:27
  It's silent when he buries it. And there's a sense in which the
• 1:27:30
  Doctor, or what's left of the Doctor is now dead on its own in
• 1:27:34
  a box like Lyca dies on its own in space.
• 1:27:38
  And then the Doctor performs the funerals of both those
• 1:27:41
  characters, these pioneers, the he he rescues their bodies.
• 1:27:46
  And so there's a kind of a beautiful symmetry between the,
• 1:27:48
  the opening and the close of the book.
• 1:27:50
  And it's really skillfully done. But of course there's the joke
• 1:27:53
  because of course, the the Mac Guffin of the bomb that he gets
• 1:27:55
  from the Cortez, he uses to then destroy the but he gets the
• 1:27:59
  timing wrong and so he nearly gets caught in the implosion and
• 1:28:03
  said the the poignancy of it isn't undercut.
• 1:28:07
  Actually, it's supported by or it runs in tandem with this
• 1:28:10
  joke, this very doctorish moment of getting the timing wrong.
• 1:28:14
  And use Weapon of Destruction actually to ensure that a worse
• 1:28:18
  weapon isn't used by his friends and his enemies.
• 1:28:21
  That whole tone that he captures with the 3rd Doctor as well.
• 1:28:26
  It's there at the start of this book where they discover the
• 1:28:30
  body of Lyca. It's there in interference when
• 1:28:34
  they go to dust. And it is there, there is a
• 1:28:37
  taste of it in the air between Monster of Peloton and planet
• 1:28:40
  the spiders. You know, it's not much because
• 1:28:42
  it's still, you know, great adventure telly.
• 1:28:45
  But there's there's, there's like a touch of it.
• 1:28:47
  But he really captures that beautifully, I think.
• 1:28:51
  And it's, it's a peek into another Third Doctor era.
• 1:28:54
  I'd kind of like to see a bit more of it's.
• 1:28:57
  There at the end of Green Death as well, of course, driving away
• 1:29:02
  and leaving. Well, was she his lover?
• 1:29:03
  Did she want him? Did he want her to be his lover?
• 1:29:07
  What's interesting as well, of course, this was after N Space,
• 1:29:10
  wasn't it? And what's the other shit on
• 1:29:13
  that? Barry?
• 1:29:14
  Let's dance. Paradise of death.
• 1:29:16
  I mean, they're terrible. I remember the crushing
• 1:29:18
  disappointing of listening to them on the radio, the
• 1:29:20
  excitement. We just got back from holiday in
• 1:29:23
  time to listen to them and my, oh, they're awful, aren't they?
• 1:29:26
  They're terrible. But.
• 1:29:28
  I quite enjoyed them, but I'm perverse.
• 1:29:30
  That way on a kind of perverse. No, they're terrible.
• 1:29:32
  I mean, I think Andrew described it as entertaining hot trash.
• 1:29:37
  That strange chinless wonder that's hanging around with Sarah
• 1:29:40
  Jane from from the from the offices as well.
• 1:29:43
  And it doesn't feel like the characters anyway.
• 1:29:46
  But I think what aids the sense of laments or elegy that Miles
• 1:29:54
  has here around the 3rd Doctor is the per We was dead by the
• 1:29:58
  time this was published. And of course I.
• 1:30:02
  Think that's why the interference twist went down as
• 1:30:05
  badly as it did. But that's that's partly fandom
• 1:30:09
  recognizing that they turned on Pert we Pert we had become a
• 1:30:13
  kind of figure of mock amongst some figures in fandom because
• 1:30:18
  of course he was still there. He was telling the same stories.
• 1:30:22
  He was playing a version of himself and the sense that he
• 1:30:25
  was always going to be there. And suddenly he wasn't.
• 1:30:26
  I mean, I well, remember I was doing my A levels and I was
• 1:30:30
  going up the school for a level revision and I had the the news
• 1:30:34
  on at lunchtime and it was announced he was dead.
• 1:30:36
  And I got a real, I got a real drop because I, I didn't like
• 1:30:40
  Pertwee for a while. And it's, it's because of how
• 1:30:44
  he's portrayed in Terror of the Autumns when he snaps at Joe
• 1:30:48
  bits of how she what she says something about the Brigadier.
• 1:30:50
  And I thought that's Purpley, but actually it's not.
• 1:30:53
  That's the aberrant script. And Holmes, that's a bad script
• 1:30:56
  by Holmes. I think there's some interesting
• 1:30:58
  set pieces, but it's not a great vision of Purpley.
• 1:31:01
  But actually he was a great doctor and it's a great run.
• 1:31:03
  And I think fandom jumping on Miles is partly fandom realising
• 1:31:08
  that they disrespected perp. Miles wasn't doing it.
• 1:31:12
  Miles. Miles is quite clear the reason
• 1:31:14
  he uses the 3rd Doctor is because you can't use Tom Baker
• 1:31:17
  because the image is so set in people's minds, but because
• 1:31:20
  there's a kind of still a protein nature around what we
• 1:31:23
  knew about or what we remembered about Perfect, he could do this.
• 1:31:26
  Also, it's partly, I think Miles responding to the complaints
• 1:31:30
  about and how bad Planet of the Daleks, the Planet of the
• 1:31:34
  Spiders is, which it isn't. But of course, Gary Russell's
• 1:31:36
  review of that had kind of set the tone for Planet and the
• 1:31:40
  Spiders a couple of years earlier when the video had come
• 1:31:42
  out and it was, it kind of denounced in that review.
• 1:31:45
  It's the same review page, I think, when he has, when he goes
• 1:31:48
  after City of Death. And so of course, here's Miles
• 1:31:51
  going, well, you don't like Planet and the Spiders, let's
• 1:31:53
  have a different ending. But it's going to be my ending,
• 1:31:56
  which is I'm going to have him gunned down in the street.
• 1:31:59
  And so I think it says more about Fan than it does about
• 1:32:01
  Miles, because Miles is quite clear why he does it.
• 1:32:04
  And it's do you know what? Like when I say the 8th Doctor
• 1:32:08
  range starts here, it starts here.
• 1:32:10
  That scene with the 3rd Doctor and Laker at the start of here
• 1:32:14
  is picked up in interference which leads to his death at the
• 1:32:17
  end of that, which is the faction poisoning the the 8th
• 1:32:22
  Doctor's timeline. So throughout between the 3rd
• 1:32:25
  Doctor and the 8th Doctor that's been getting stronger to the
• 1:32:28
  Ancestor Cell where you lose Gallifrey right?
• 1:32:31
  The way through to the Gallifrey Chronicles where all of that is
• 1:32:35
  explained. It's it's not a continuous run.
• 1:32:38
  It's still an anthology book series.
• 1:32:40
  There's lots happening that isn't this arc, but it all
• 1:32:44
  starts here. The Milesian vision, the
• 1:32:46
  Milesian vision is there throughout and it's it's picked
• 1:32:49
  up when it needs to be. And I think it's interesting.
• 1:32:51
  Of course, it's it's Miles who introduces Sabbath.
• 1:32:54
  Isn't that when the Doctor loses one of his hearts as well?
• 1:32:57
  Yeah. So again, that deconstruction,
• 1:32:59
  literal deconstruction of the Doctor, Miles is all over body
• 1:33:02
  horror. And here the Doctor is the
• 1:33:04
  victim of a physical assault. I mean in in in Henry F history
• 1:33:08
  and. He's the first person to ask the
• 1:33:09
  question. If the Time Lords have gone,
• 1:33:12
  then who controls the heaven? Yeah.
• 1:33:15
  And it was no one or, you know, nature aboard the vacuum.
• 1:33:19
  And so something will step into it.
• 1:33:21
  So there's there's an interesting wider philosophical
• 1:33:23
  discussion around authoritarianism and and anarchy
• 1:33:26
  within might. And again, that's another reason
• 1:33:29
  why he's head and shoulders above most of the authors on on
• 1:33:33
  in that range. Well, do me a favour then, try
• 1:33:37
  somehow to summarise the myriad of thoughts that you have had
• 1:33:41
  today and draw some kind of a conclusion about alien bodies.
• 1:33:45
  I mean, it is good in a way that there was a few things that
• 1:33:50
  impressed you less this time because I think two people just
• 1:33:53
  sitting here going, well wasn't this fucking marvellous, can be
• 1:33:56
  a bit tedious, but I think we can both agree in terms of
• 1:34:00
  innovation, this is one of the best of two stories of all time.
• 1:34:05
  Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a
• 1:34:07
  fabulous book. It it points forward to where
• 1:34:10
  the range is going to go. And in fact, as we've said, I I
• 1:34:15
  think it's fairly clear it has an influence on, on the revival.
• 1:34:19
  I think the possibility the. First mention of the Time War,
• 1:34:24
  Paul. Well, the possibilities that
• 1:34:26
  Miles affords in that you don't have to be slavishly tied to the
• 1:34:31
  continuity in a way that maybe the show had been for all the
• 1:34:34
  new adventures do different things.
• 1:34:35
  I do wonder whether the Timeless Children does emerge from a
• 1:34:39
  similar mindset there to let let's let's look at where the
• 1:34:42
  doctors come from, because Miles will do that, won't he?
• 1:34:44
  I am Foreman isn't just a name on the gates.
• 1:34:47
  The I am Foreman. It's a trapping circus, isn't
• 1:34:50
  it? And then it's sentient mass in a
• 1:34:53
  like mind expanding way. I think so although it's Doctor
• 1:34:57
  Who, he proposes the potential for multiple universities in
• 1:35:03
  that bottom bottle pattern that he looks at.
• 1:35:07
  He deconstructs the timeless. He reveals something quite dull,
• 1:35:10
  but interesting things emerge from them.
• 1:35:13
  The most interest of which I think is factual paradox.
• 1:35:16
  The set is a kind of dull in comparison.
• 1:35:19
  I think there's a, there's a kind of, there's an energy
• 1:35:23
  around faction paradox, interestingly enough, given that
• 1:35:26
  they're based around death and paradoxes and things not
• 1:35:28
  happening but happening. The Setus are just up there.
• 1:35:31
  They are kind of like the worst version of the time loss.
• 1:35:36
  The discussion within themselves about whether they should fight
• 1:35:38
  with the enemy and or fight with the time laws and stay neutral.
• 1:35:41
  It's interesting. We haven't really spoken about
• 1:35:42
  the enemy. That's because the books never
• 1:35:46
  decide what the enemy is. No.
• 1:35:48
  And maybe that's the point. I I think that probably is I I
• 1:35:53
  think I. Mean it could turn out to be the
• 1:35:55
  Daleks, but that would be very boring.
• 1:35:58
  It's better that there is no enemy, that ultimately it's a,
• 1:36:02
  it's a, it's a, it's a shallow, it's, it's, it's emptiness and
• 1:36:05
  that these forces of chaos has developed and you think there's
• 1:36:08
  an enemy, but it's not because you want a guiding principle,
• 1:36:11
  because if there's an enemy, you can kill it.
• 1:36:13
  If it's just chaos, you can't stop it.
• 1:36:16
  And of course that's back to kind of notions around entropy
• 1:36:18
  fields in Logopolis. That's why manner effects
• 1:36:21
  Logopolis is the ultimate story, because you can't stop an
• 1:36:24
  entropy field. All they can do is open up
• 1:36:26
  another CVE. I don't know if you remember
• 1:36:30
  this, but you have literally just described what the enemy
• 1:36:34
  turns out to be in the ancestor cell, which is the ancestor cell
• 1:36:38
  is is this sort of chaos that in no way can exist within our
• 1:36:44
  universe. So it's exactly what you just
• 1:36:47
  said, that entropy basically. And I, and I think that's given
• 1:36:52
  that and I'm, I'm as guilty of it because because I, I queried
• 1:36:56
  when you said about the Fendal not speaking, that you want the
• 1:36:58
  doctor to be able to speak to an enemy.
• 1:37:00
  You want that kind of face off, but actually you don't need it
• 1:37:03
  all the time. And what you want is something
• 1:37:05
  so big and so indescribable and something that that you can't
• 1:37:10
  fight against. But within Doctor Who terms, he
• 1:37:12
  always has to win. That's why this turning on the
• 1:37:16
  fact that there's a point somewhere in your future Doctor
• 1:37:19
  where you don't win and in fact you die, but you've got an
• 1:37:23
  afterlife because your body is so changed, altered, corrupted,
• 1:37:28
  mutated, that you have an A use of life, but as a weapon.
• 1:37:32
  Because of course the doctor, the doctor doesn't want to be a
• 1:37:34
  weapon. The doctor is studiously anti
• 1:37:36
  weapon, but of course he always uses weapons at some point in
• 1:37:39
  the stories. It is a kind of tension within
• 1:37:40
  the stories. The great Pacific figure is
• 1:37:43
  always involved with violence. And you know, that's why there's
• 1:37:46
  that strong reaction against and I think it's where is it?
• 1:37:50
  There's a there's a reaction against Trouten's famous
• 1:37:52
  statement about there are things in this universe they must be
• 1:37:56
  fought, which of course, neo con viewers are dots who love that.
• 1:38:00
  And then you track it to him hunting down sea devils.
• 1:38:04
  But there are stories with those enormous lamps or D Mac gun or I
• 1:38:08
  mean, there's many times where. He's the Doctor's physical body
• 1:38:12
  to become a weapon. And so then at the end, the
• 1:38:15
  Doctor has to destroy his own body.
• 1:38:17
  I mean, it adds to that. That final scene is brilliant,
• 1:38:20
  as you rightly said, but the ideas behind it, the to stop, to
• 1:38:24
  stop what's just happened, happened happening again.
• 1:38:27
  I have to destroy my own body. And therefore he knows
• 1:38:31
  absolutely he's got an end point because he's just overseen it.
• 1:38:34
  It's undercut across by Kyoho, suggesting it's more complicated
• 1:38:38
  than that. Although I just love the added
• 1:38:42
  way of he goes, no, no, no, not your body as it is now.
• 1:38:45
  No, no, you're going to go on to have all.
• 1:38:47
  So everything that happens in the new series and beyond the
• 1:38:50
  comics, whatever you want to say has all been knitted into that
• 1:38:54
  bio data. And obviously a lot has happened
• 1:38:56
  in the new series, right? I mean, look at fucking heaven
• 1:38:59
  sent. He spent a long time punching
• 1:39:01
  that crystal wall. I don't know.
• 1:39:04
  It just adds weight to all of what's to come as well.
• 1:39:07
  Yes, yeah. I mean, it's it's it's it's
• 1:39:10
  concerned with the past of the show is significant.
• 1:39:15
  It's setting the course for the books is significant.
• 1:39:19
  But the idea of a future beyond the books or beyond narrative is
• 1:39:25
  where I think it leaves the most thought in your mind.
• 1:39:28
  And it's a book that prompts intellectual engagement in a way
• 1:39:32
  some books don't. Plenty of Doctor Who books like
• 1:39:36
  well and look at where we're going next.
• 1:39:40
  From your memory, do you think this is miles strongest?
• 1:39:45
  Do you think that's interference adventurous?
• 1:39:49
  I don't know that is his strongest.
• 1:39:51
  I think it might be his most. I think it's his most
• 1:39:55
  accessible. Yeah, accessible is the word I
• 1:39:57
  couldn't think of there. For me it is his most accessible
• 1:39:59
  Dead Romance is very odd book. It's a great book.
• 1:40:02
  It is a very odd book, adventurous.
• 1:40:04
  You rightly say it's it's kind of, we don't engage with that
• 1:40:09
  necessarily on an emotional level because it's a history
• 1:40:12
  book and interference. I love interference and there
• 1:40:15
  were bits of interference in my memory that I thought was in
• 1:40:17
  this, but interference is, is a kind of it takes the Doctor into
• 1:40:22
  really dark place and becomes a kind of gruelling book as as a
• 1:40:25
  result. And of course there's a lot
• 1:40:27
  going on in there because of course you've got the remote,
• 1:40:29
  you've got compassion and there's a sense in which to read
• 1:40:32
  interference. You need to have alien bodies in
• 1:40:34
  your mind. You need to have taken to Planet
• 1:40:36
  5, you have to have Shadow of Avalon.
• 1:40:40
  Whereas this you can approach it and all you really need is to
• 1:40:43
  know a basic back story of Doctor Who.
• 1:40:47
  I think, I think this opens up Doctor Who unlike any of his
• 1:40:51
  other books, OK, this, this offers potential and future
• 1:40:55
  ideas to to expand upon. I think Interference as a book,
• 1:41:01
  I mean, it's 650 pages. Interference as a book, it is
• 1:41:06
  probably the most impactful work that he did.
• 1:41:11
  There's lots going on in there. Like you say, there's Fitz
• 1:41:14
  turning into Father Cry now Sam's written out.
• 1:41:17
  There's a wonderful one, the probably the best imprint
• 1:41:20
  depiction of Sarah Jane that you've ever had, where she's
• 1:41:23
  funny and so brilliant and all all of those really dark
• 1:41:29
  questions that you cannot ask on ATV show, but you can ask when
• 1:41:33
  nobody's really looking at Doctor Who anymore.
• 1:41:38
  And Adventurous is a book that's so horrific in parts.
• 1:41:42
  It has to be written as an academic text, because I think
• 1:41:45
  if that was written as just regular Mausian prose, it would
• 1:41:50
  be too much. Those baboons coming into the
• 1:41:52
  whore house, tearing that man or fucking that woman and ripping
• 1:41:56
  him apart, it would probably be a bit much.
• 1:41:59
  Right. It's, it's, it's said to him.
• 1:42:01
  Oh, isn't it? It's the murder in the room
• 1:42:03
  morgue. It's it's Miles again, taking an
• 1:42:06
  established text and then doing something more interesting with
• 1:42:09
  it because it was murder in the room.
• 1:42:10
  More is one of the most stupid murder mysteries ever written.
• 1:42:13
  It's the absolute epiphany of when you've eliminated the
• 1:42:15
  impossible, whatever remains so ever improbable must be the
• 1:42:17
  solution. Well, it's improbable it is a
• 1:42:20
  monkey with a razor blade. But you tell me that Poe.
• 1:42:22
  And it's grand. Whereas to actually have them
• 1:42:26
  the kind of full implication of if you let these wild animals
• 1:42:29
  loose, yeah, it'll be a big end. It is horrific.
• 1:42:32
  So it's it's Miles pastiche of academic texts and historical
• 1:42:39
  fiction and Poe and there's another another whole world of
• 1:42:45
  stuff to be to be said about miles sources in in that book.
• 1:42:49
  Do you know what pisses me off about that book?
• 1:42:50
  Just one thing. And I don't know what happened
• 1:42:53
  between Connell and Miles, but I know there's a lot of bad blood.
• 1:42:56
  It was supposed to be Benny that wrote that book.
• 1:43:00
  It was supposed to explicitly be Benny that was right in that
• 1:43:02
  academic text, which would have been gorgeous.
• 1:43:05
  OK, my last question then, before I was letting everybody
• 1:43:09
  know the exciting new direction we're going into is, can you see
• 1:43:12
  why this book is as popular as it is?
• 1:43:15
  Like, I put a photograph of this and I had a record number of
• 1:43:19
  people getting in touch going. I fucking love that book.
• 1:43:23
  I absolutely can see why everyone loves it.
• 1:43:25
  I love this book. I mean, having said that, I, I,
• 1:43:27
  I didn't, I didn't think it was as good this time.
• 1:43:30
  I still enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed it the last time.
• 1:43:33
  I think it gets the Doctor right.
• 1:43:36
  So well, it is the 8th Doctor and he is funny and he is on a
• 1:43:41
  back foot and he's still the lovely moment where you think
• 1:43:44
  he's taken the mark and the slight smile plays on his lips.
• 1:43:47
  Although I think that Mcclane section at the end, it's kind of
• 1:43:51
  too short and it kind of is kind of an abrupt movement into
• 1:43:54
  somewhere that he shouldn't be able to move into.
• 1:43:56
  But of course we know he's already been there because of
• 1:43:59
  course that's the first time Trask sees him, isn't it?
• 1:44:02
  And then it was in this, he remembers him killing him, but
• 1:44:05
  it's not quite clear if that if that's what's happened.
• 1:44:07
  So I think, I think in terms of his ideas, in terms of the
• 1:44:11
  introduction of factory paradox, in terms of the introduction of
• 1:44:14
  a sentient TARDIS, I can absolutely see why why fans love
• 1:44:18
  it to bits, because I adore it. I'm just going to add one last
• 1:44:22
  bit about the Doctor, which I adore, and that's him diving out
• 1:44:25
  the window from the chess match at the start.
• 1:44:28
  That's the difference between him and McCoy.
• 1:44:30
  He's the ultimate improviser. But it no, no.
• 1:44:33
  But it's not, though, is it? Because of course, Sam has
• 1:44:35
  discovered the computer program where he's run the simulations,
• 1:44:38
  and it keeps showing the figure falling, missing the tiles and
• 1:44:41
  splatting on the ground. So it looks like he's purely
• 1:44:43
  improvised. And then you discover, as you
• 1:44:45
  know, he's planned it, but he's had to keep planning because he
• 1:44:47
  keeps killing himself in the simulation.
• 1:44:49
  It's a hugely funny bit and it pays off brilliantly.
• 1:44:53
  It's much better than the River Song jumping out the window.
• 1:44:56
  Anything would be, well, OK, let's move on to Miles.
• 1:45:00
  But I mean, this conversation has been so tasty.
• 1:45:03
  I am tempted now to try somehow to twist your arm to do all of
• 1:45:08
  Miles's other books at some point.
• 1:45:10
  I think we'd have a wonderful interference conversation.
• 1:45:14
  I can be. I'm twistable, Joe, you know
• 1:45:16
  that. So yeah, let me know.
• 1:45:17
  We can work it out. I need a bit of time to reread
• 1:45:19
  it, but that's fine. Well, look, what's our journey
• 1:45:22
  been so far? Where did we start again, you
• 1:45:24
  and me? Did we start with love and war?
• 1:45:27
  We did start. And we started with Cornell and
• 1:45:30
  then then we moved on to Pip and Jane.
• 1:45:33
  We went up to Pip and Jane. We went up to Pip and Jane.
• 1:45:37
  And then we went up again to Miles, right?
• 1:45:41
  So will our ascendancy continue? We're doing the Hamster Book
• 1:45:45
  Club's first ever. And how that is possible given
• 1:45:49
  that he's so fucking prolific. Christopher Beulis book.
• 1:45:54
  This is like when when the Colonel is going up cloud 7
• 1:45:59
  cloud 8 Colonel we're going to cloud 9 with Eulis and he's
• 1:46:04
  weird counterfactual, which is usually as genre.
• 1:46:07
  I hate I I have a real antipathy towards imagine what would
• 1:46:10
  happen if the Nazis won the Second World War invaded
• 1:46:13
  Britain. Whereas this one because it goes
• 1:46:15
  somewhere somewhere different. I'm I'm quite interested by the
• 1:46:18
  bits of it I've read. But you know what intrigues me,
• 1:46:20
  right, is that nobody has a good word to say about Beulis, right?
• 1:46:23
  You go look at all of his books. No one's got a black meat and
• 1:46:27
  potatoes. The average typical Beulis
• 1:46:31
  Awful. I've gone looking for reviews of
• 1:46:33
  State of Change, which is what I should mention.
• 1:46:36
  We are covering. There is A1 bad review for this.
• 1:46:40
  I was really surprised and a lot of people were going this is the
• 1:46:44
  6th Doctor and Perry we should have had on screen.
• 1:46:48
  Keep that in mind. All right, why she's that bird
• 1:46:51
  from Vengeance on Virus on the cover, I've no idea.
• 1:46:54
  It's cosplaying. It's all kinds of pink.
• 1:46:57
  OK, well, look, I mean, like I say, it is the first.
• 1:47:01
  Eventually I had to get around to Beulis.
• 1:47:03
  It's probably one of his more intriguing books.
• 1:47:06
  So I'm excited. Are you?
• 1:47:09
  Oh yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm too masculine thinking about it.
• 1:47:13
  But you know what? I'm gonna get it there.