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Hamster Book Club - Love & War by Paul Cornell (featuring Paul Quinn) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:18
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 0:21
  My name is Joe Ford and dragged away from a foursome and forced
• 0:28
  to read a book which I believe he may have called at some point
• 0:31
  in our childhood, repugnant Mr. Paul Quinn.
• 0:35
  Hello, Paul. Hello, Joe, How are you?
• 0:38
  Yeah, I'm really well, thank you.
• 0:39
  Was it repugnant? Loathsome.
• 0:41
  I can't remember the exact word you chose.
• 0:43
  What I wrote inside the front cover I rubbed out and so I
• 0:47
  can't. A back cover so I can't actually
• 0:48
  see. Stupid.
• 0:49
  I can make out I probably didn't describe it.
• 0:52
  You wrote on the cover. Inside the front car, inside the
• 0:54
  back cover like I rubbed it out. Did you do that on every new
• 0:58
  adventure? No, no, I mean I've, I have a
• 1:01
  difficult relationship with the New Adventures and I've, I have
• 1:03
  a changing relationship with the New Adventures.
• 1:05
  Because I'm going to surprise you, Joe, when I reread this, I
• 1:08
  actually quite enjoyed it. I'm going to surprise you as
• 1:11
  well because when I reread this I enjoyed 1/3 of it, which is I
• 1:18
  should say we are Talking about Love and War by Paul Cornell.
• 1:23
  Yeah, that's a good place to start and I can kind of
• 1:28
  summarize it as The Who thought. Is that how you say it, Houthi?
• 1:32
  Something like that. Whatever you want to be, Joe.
• 1:34
  The great gas dirigibles that are a bit like the Doomsday
• 1:37
  Machine from Star Trek. That third of it I thought was
• 1:40
  superb. And the Ace part of this is a
• 1:45
  lot more problematic, but we'll get there.
• 1:47
  Can I ask you about the new adventures then?
• 1:49
  Because you just said you have a problematic relationship, a bit
• 1:52
  like Ace and her mother. Yeah, not quite as poisonous as
• 1:55
  that. I don't know.
• 1:56
  I mean, I came up 9192, wasn't it?
• 1:59
  So I would have been 14 or 15. And I I really liked Time of an
• 2:04
  Exodus. I really like time.
• 2:08
  What's the Mark Platt one with the big times?
• 2:10
  Crucible. Which is a mad book.
• 2:12
  I'm gonna. Read somebody out to like that,
• 2:14
  you know? I do, I do.
• 2:15
  Like I'm gonna reread it. I I remember.
• 2:16
  It is ambitious. I was reading that going up to
• 2:19
  Manchester without to see my aunt and and I I I've a distinct
• 2:22
  memory reading in the back of the car.
• 2:25
  You know, high science. We give credit where it's due,
• 2:28
  even if the source becomes corrupted later on.
• 2:30
  You know, a poisoned river at some point probably was clean
• 2:34
  high science. Terrible cover though.
• 2:36
  Oh boy, all the. Cover were terrible yeah my wife
• 2:38
  looked at revelation and when is that meant to be McCoy and my my
• 2:43
  summer what's McCoy wearing because you can't tell unless
• 2:46
  you look closely that it's Death's dress or ALB or cassock
• 2:50
  not that Mccoy's in some type of velveteen gown.
• 2:53
  So the Francovers are terrible and and I don't know going back
• 2:57
  over them now I realized probably I they weren't for me
• 3:02
  then but now I'm really enjoying them and so now I'm on a full
• 3:05
  full on reread and what I'm kicking myself over it.
• 3:08
  They would have been in the shops there at 499 now or having
• 3:14
  to use a, a particular cookie copy that I, you know, someone
• 3:18
  kind of giving me access to. And so I think I'm going to go
• 3:20
  through all of them on my kind of reread because I, I'm reading
• 3:24
  them completely differently now. I don't know.
• 3:26
  I mean, Lovermore is kind of an adolescent text in many
• 3:29
  respects. I think weirdly enough, it's
• 3:34
  this kind of a Battlefield remembrance vibe to it in that
• 3:37
  you'd expect the weakest story to be the first one.
• 3:41
  But I think I'm nearly finished Revelation.
• 3:44
  I thought I'd finish it last night, but it was my son's
• 3:46
  birthday and we were out one of my son's birthdays.
• 3:48
  And so I've got about 100 pages to do.
• 3:49
  And I think it's a much more interesting book because it's
• 3:52
  not getting tied down in Ace's tedious love affair, which is,
• 3:56
  by a country mile, the worst thing in love and war.
• 3:59
  Which we've already done right this far into the range.
• 4:02
  What? We did it in Apocalypse.
• 4:04
  I can't remember the fellows name.
• 4:05
  Raphael was it? We did it in Nightshade with
• 4:08
  Robin. Yeah.
• 4:10
  OK, well, let's start with Ace. Let's start negative and then go
• 4:14
  positive. Yeah.
• 4:15
  Because at the end of Nightshade, as far as I recall,
• 4:20
  it's been a while since I've read it, The Doctor wrenches Ace
• 4:23
  away from the great love affair of her life with Robin, right?
• 4:27
  Robin Newton? And there's no consequences to
• 4:29
  that at all at the start of this book, is there?
• 4:32
  No, that's. Very odd, isn't it, in a running
• 4:35
  series of books? I suppose part of the problem is
• 4:39
  how are they? How are they viewing the stand
• 4:41
  alone books though? Because of course they've had
• 4:43
  two groups stories, haven't they?
• 4:46
  Four and a three, The witch Mart stuff and then you've got these
• 4:50
  standalones, but you would expect there to be connective
• 4:54
  tissue across the store would. You not remember how histrionic
• 4:57
  that was at the end of Nightshade?
• 4:59
  No, I didn't like that. She's like take me back, take me
• 5:01
  back. She's screaming in the TARDIS
• 5:03
  corridors. He is mentioned in this as well.
• 5:06
  Isn't. He is, yeah.
• 5:07
  Yeah, he is. I mean, what's interesting in
• 5:09
  Revelation and you that's the moment you go well, really when
• 5:14
  ghost Adric goes Katrina and goes Sarah Kingdom turn up to
• 5:17
  show Ace that the Doctor can kill companions.
• 5:20
  She's been with him a while now. She knows what he can do.
• 5:22
  I don't think they can write Mccoy's doctor, particularly, if
• 5:25
  you will, either. I I think probably there's an
• 5:28
  argument to make that they should have come up with a new
• 5:30
  Doctor for the range and had an idea about what that character
• 5:32
  would be like. Because a lot of this, I think,
• 5:36
  and it's it's affects the the picture of aces.
• 5:38
  A lot of it is just reheated. Season 25 and 26 got with a
• 5:45
  particular focus on Briggs's construction.
• 5:47
  Briggs was the weakest writer of that group.
• 5:49
  I think he's a really important writer and certainly
• 5:52
  novelization of cursor Fenrick is pointing forward to this run,
• 5:56
  but he was the weakest right here.
• 5:58
  But then Ace on the page. I mean, you, you've got ideas
• 6:04
  about Sophie Aldrin's performance, as we all know.
• 6:08
  Yeah. Dafta worthy Sophie Aldrin.
• 6:13
  There's a reason she was doing corners before right and
• 6:17
  Unsolved Mysteries on CBBC afterwards.
• 6:20
  I mean, I, I, I'm kinder to her performance than you are, but on
• 6:24
  that when there was always an issue with Ace in the script
• 6:27
  because of course they couldn't have a speak the way they really
• 6:29
  needed to have a speak because of the 25 to 8 broadcast slot, I
• 6:34
  think they've. Taken that they have taken that
• 6:36
  into the new adventures, haven't they?
• 6:38
  And then but also try to present her in AI love to say a more
• 6:43
  mature way, because there's very little that's mature about her
• 6:46
  romance in this, but they're they're that's what they're
• 6:49
  aiming for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 6:51
  absolutely. With that shitty dialogue that
• 6:53
  she had in 25 and 26. They've made the same so so
• 6:56
  miles and would point out that even even with the PG or you
• 7:02
  type of profanity, quote UN quote profanity that she hasn't
• 7:04
  on screen, it sounds like something from 1984 rather than
• 7:08
  1987. So there's a whole question
• 7:10
  about how long Ace has been on ice world anyway, because I'm
• 7:12
  never sure if that's really established and that storm is
• 7:16
  there in this book. It keeps coming back to and in
• 7:19
  revelation that the time storm is like really important there.
• 7:22
  I mean, I've been. Storm, are you talking about
• 7:24
  that? You're talking.
• 7:24
  About the Time Storm or the storm that brewed between her
• 7:27
  and Glitz on Ice World, which you may say I'll make looking it
• 7:30
  up at this absolutely established come no future.
• 7:34
  It's quite, I mean it's, it's the illusions to it here are
• 7:36
  quite clear that that. It's hard, isn't it?
• 7:39
  And I mean, and glitz, glitz are kind of a throwback anyway to,
• 7:43
  to season 23. The way Tony Selby's performing
• 7:47
  it, that's the end of that type of performance in, in, in Doctor
• 7:50
  Who at at that point in time. So the whole idea of suddenly
• 7:53
  glitz, is this kind of what is he?
• 7:55
  Is he a seducer? Is he a rapist?
• 7:58
  Is he a bit of rough? It's not quite clear.
• 7:59
  I mean the idea that Mel goes up and might have sex with him on
• 8:01
  the back seat of the Nosferatu is is disgusting enough.
• 8:05
  I mean, it is, but she's a consenting adult ace.
• 8:07
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can see that.
• 8:09
  Whereas with Ace, because Ace is that weird kind of child grown
• 8:13
  up figure. I said to you before the call,
• 8:15
  I've been writing about Ace this week for for work and thinking
• 8:18
  about in terms of of fairy tales.
• 8:20
  And of course, you know, notoriously I'll put out a call
• 8:23
  for this and someone did kindly provide the material where they
• 8:27
  they, they might give her the surname GAIL, which makes a
• 8:30
  Dorothy GAIL, which of course is from Wizard of Oz.
• 8:33
  And so the time storm is Ace. Has Dorothy been carried off?
• 8:37
  But in fairy tales, as I've said before, so I won't bore anyone,
• 8:40
  once the female characters become interested in sex,
• 8:45
  they're not going to be left in the fairy tale world much
• 8:47
  longer. And so what's interesting is
• 8:49
  when Ace has the kind of pseudo relationships on TV, both the
• 8:53
  men die, They're both from totalitarian regimes or their
• 8:56
  interest in totalitarian politics.
• 8:58
  So probably she's better off with them dead.
• 9:00
  Once she has text with Yan, of course that's she's going to.
• 9:04
  Yeah, although we sort of know that's going to happen anyway
• 9:08
  before they kind of even meet because the doctor in the first
• 9:11
  half of this book spend so many things brooding after her going,
• 9:15
  oh, God, you could go this way or you could go that way.
• 9:18
  I could intervene. Yeah.
• 9:20
  I was like, Jesus Christ, will you stop signposting this,
• 9:22
  please? The.
• 9:23
  Whole times Champion business is deeply, deeply tedious and like
• 9:28
  depressed McCoy. I mean, just give him a bottle
• 9:31
  of special brew or something. Or like Buck Fuss and have.
• 9:34
  Pissed. Depressed doctor.
• 9:35
  That would be much more interesting than brooding Dr.
• 9:38
  You know what? You know what I've realized over
• 9:40
  the years? Yeah, because I used to be so
• 9:42
  hard on Mccoys performance and I don't think he's much of an
• 9:44
  actor. I think he's a great performer,
• 9:47
  but he does have charisma and he does have personality and he
• 9:49
  does have natural eccentricity, right?
• 9:52
  And he brings all of that to the screen and he's hugely charming
• 9:56
  on the screen. A lot of the time they've
• 9:58
  forgotten that completely. Well, except we will get to
• 10:03
  Benny, the accepting the scenes with Benny where this adult
• 10:06
  walks into his life and suddenly there is a bit of charm there.
• 10:10
  But all every time he's handling Ace, it's so dark, it's so
• 10:14
  unpleasant. I was surprised at how little
• 10:19
  Benny is in this. I'd forgotten, frankly, just how
• 10:22
  little she was in it. I mean, Ace does prefer to them
• 10:25
  as Mum and Dad, doesn't she? Which again, is quite likely.
• 10:28
  I mean, that's straight from Brookside isn't it?
• 10:30
  You know, fake mum and dad. Yeah, but So what did I like
• 10:35
  about it? I liked.
• 10:37
  I thought it was interesting about death.
• 10:40
  And of course, because we've just done season AB and I, in my
• 10:45
  madness, defended Dark Water and Love in Heaven magnificently.
• 10:51
  Though. You can see links here.
• 10:54
  I assume Moffat read this because of course he's part of
• 10:59
  the crowd at this point. He will publish that short story
• 11:02
  in Decalogue. And so the idea of creatures
• 11:05
  that can monsters that can weaponize the dead.
• 11:08
  It's not original and so it doesn't have to be from from
• 11:11
  this, but I think it's really significant.
• 11:13
  Also, I could see echoes forward echoes of Game of Thrones when
• 11:18
  the when they I I thought the scene where the their case
• 11:21
  descends, the bone staircase, whatever it is descends and the
• 11:24
  dead start walking down. It's stunning.
• 11:26
  It's like maybe the best thing in this book, but it made me
• 11:29
  think of that hard Home was the end of season 5 of Game of
• 11:33
  Thrones and it. But what's interesting with
• 11:36
  Cornell is, yeah, with Moffett, because Moffett doesn't believe
• 11:40
  in an afterlife at all. And kind of it becomes a plot
• 11:43
  point that misses kind of gold humanity into believing the
• 11:46
  possibility of an afterlife. Whereas I I was looking up
• 11:49
  Cornell online last week and he, you know, he likes paganism, but
• 11:53
  he calls himself a Calvinist because he doesn't like hymns.
• 11:56
  So there's a weird kind of double religious element running
• 11:59
  through this. I think all the stuff about the
• 12:02
  feminine divine is really interesting and I've missed all
• 12:05
  of that. But I suppose that's the
• 12:06
  difference between a 15 year old reading it who's getting ready
• 12:08
  for GCS ES and A and a middle-aged academic who's done
• 12:12
  stuff on religion and religious controversy and religious
• 12:15
  imagery and, and like English Protestantism and you bring that
• 12:18
  to bear. But I thought all the stuff like
• 12:19
  that, the the tarot card was really interesting.
• 12:21
  Oh, I mean tarot cards are in as well, of course, because the big
• 12:24
  exhibition of the war that I was reading about at the weekend.
• 12:27
  And the Tarot card only becomes with the associated with the
• 12:31
  occult in the 18th century. It's another one of these 18th
• 12:34
  century constructs that we've inherited and we think is real
• 12:37
  or it's always been like that. Rather what I should say until
• 12:39
  that it's it's a card game. But I thought, you know, the the
• 12:42
  loading up to some type of proto matrix.
• 12:46
  It's all really, really interesting.
• 12:47
  Cornell's. It's a far better read than I
• 12:49
  thought, but the ACE relationship is awful.
• 12:52
  But OK, let's talk about pewter space.
• 12:56
  Oh, God, he's not cruel saying that because they love a bit of
• 13:01
  cyberspace, don't they? At this point, the new
• 13:03
  adventures, you know, with basically that have been
• 13:06
  transits next, for goodness sakes.
• 13:08
  I know you probably love that one.
• 13:10
  Yeah. I do like.
• 13:11
  Transit. I bet you do.
• 13:12
  Yeah. I mean, well, building wise, it
• 13:15
  was an incredible read. Not sure it's anywhere I'd want
• 13:18
  to go, but yes. So we we spend a fair amount of
• 13:24
  this book inside pewter space experiencing all manner of
• 13:28
  strange visions, Audrey coming along to Horn Ace and they get
• 13:33
  to have lovely therapy scenes in there and all of that.
• 13:35
  What is going on there? Will you please explain it to
• 13:37
  me? Because honestly, I zoned out.
• 13:40
  Anytime we go into this sort of never space, I just zone out
• 13:44
  because it's to me. I just see a load of pretentious
• 13:47
  faux poetic imagery. But.
• 13:52
  But because isn't he, isn't he responding to what's going on in
• 13:55
  wider sci-fi at this point in time?
• 13:57
  I'm just trying to think when Gibson writes Neuromancer.
• 14:00
  That's around this time, absolutely.
• 14:02
  Someone made that point recently to me.
• 14:04
  It's definitely there in transit, isn't it?
• 14:07
  I'm trying to think virtual murder, which is of course,
• 14:10
  there's a book coming out on that, the BBC, One of their
• 14:13
  attempts to do Doctor Who, but not doing Doctor Who.
• 14:16
  But this was slightly later. I think it was 9:00.
• 14:18
  It's the one that has John, John Pope is a matador, a murderous
• 14:22
  former matador. It's it's mad Nicolas Clay, Paul
• 14:26
  Nicholas Clay. He died when he was really
• 14:27
  young. He's really, really good,
• 14:29
  Handsome, handsome, devil, charming.
• 14:32
  What's the name? Lizette Anthony is in it.
• 14:34
  It's kind of like proto Moulder and Scully.
• 14:36
  There's definitely the opening episode of that is about virtual
• 14:40
  reality and loading up and and you can kill people in this
• 14:44
  virtual reality. If you kill them in virtual
• 14:46
  reality, they die in real life, which I think The X-Files will
• 14:49
  do in series 5 or 6. I think could be what's.
• 14:54
  This about kill switch? That's that's Gibson, isn't it?
• 14:58
  Yeah. So you can see that it looks old
• 15:01
  hat to us now, because we're looking at it after the matrix
• 15:04
  and no. It's just that there's so much
• 15:06
  of it. There's so and then the run
• 15:09
  going ahead. There's there's tons of this.
• 15:11
  Downloading, they're all reading it that that's that's the point.
• 15:15
  And but because there's I don't think the editing is strong
• 15:18
  enough. No, this is Darvel Evans, isn't
• 15:20
  it? Rebecca Levine's not here yet,
• 15:22
  and the shift when she arrives is extraordinary.
• 15:27
  It's about shared consciousness, isn't it?
• 15:29
  Because. Because the travellers are, we'd
• 15:33
  have to describe much closer to the, the, the planet people that
• 15:37
  Neil has in, in Quaker Mass, the conclusion.
• 15:41
  And they've got guns as well. So they're, they're not, they're
• 15:43
  not hippies, although there's a hippie, they're kind of hippie
• 15:47
  adjacent. But this is a shared space for
• 15:49
  them to go into. And then it becomes corrupted
• 15:51
  and it becomes invaded. And a lot of the imagery there I
• 15:54
  think is coming from, from the Tarot.
• 15:56
  It's from paganism. It's kind of, it's kind of
• 16:00
  almost like they can get access to paradise while still in the
• 16:04
  real world. I think that might be what's
• 16:06
  going on there. But what's interesting is it
• 16:09
  moves the natural world into this kind of cyberspace, into
• 16:13
  this no place. And so it's not, it's not real,
• 16:16
  but it's also hyper real as well.
• 16:18
  It might just be me, but it really kind of appealed to me.
• 16:20
  You know, given that we've got at the moment that AI is going
• 16:23
  to come and come and kill all of us.
• 16:24
  But isn't it hilarious that shit Deep 6 has come along to kill
• 16:27
  all the tech roads, AI, that suddenly we've got something
• 16:31
  that was a nice use of AI and then it becomes corrupted.
• 16:34
  But the idea he's only really, I think, building on what you get
• 16:38
  in Revelation, which is that don't they upload into some kind
• 16:43
  of parallel universe that's being run by the Time Worm?
• 16:45
  And so that's why you get all the strange themes in it.
• 16:51
  But yeah, I, I don't know. I mean, I think part of the
• 16:53
  problem is that we we know it. We know it when we first read it
• 17:03
  and then coming back to it. We've got 30 years worth of
• 17:06
  Doctor Who book audio TV, but we've got Internet revolution
• 17:12
  that's changed our views of this type of material, but also how
• 17:16
  that material is for kind of saturated popular culture.
• 17:20
  And I think that's part of the problem this because there's too
• 17:24
  much in the in the New Avengers. I'd I'd forgotten, I'd forgotten
• 17:26
  that that was coming down the line a lot for for the rest of
• 17:29
  this run. My biggest problem with this was
• 17:32
  yeah, and it just beamed off every page.
• 17:35
  He wants every page to mean something.
• 17:37
  Yeah. You know, and there is a like
• 17:40
  it's an overused word, but there is a pretentiousness to the
• 17:43
  writing. Well, I was like, you know, it
• 17:45
  starts off with those owls flying about in the sky making
• 17:48
  poetry. And I was like, yeah, there we
• 17:50
  go. I'm in an early new adventure
• 17:52
  straight away now. I have I have read some latter
• 17:55
  day EDA's recently and it's it's sort of dropped that
• 18:00
  pretentiousness that, that that desperate need to to go, you
• 18:04
  know, Oh my God, you know, take all these meanings from this
• 18:07
  book. You know, it's going to change
• 18:09
  your life. This will be an epiphany for
• 18:11
  you. And they eventually they just
• 18:13
  tell a story. Yeah, but as it's it's partly, I
• 18:16
  mean some of those later EDA's are written by authors who are
• 18:19
  who are old. And Cornell is at this point,
• 18:21
  Cornell must be in his early 20s at at this point.
• 18:25
  And it that's where some of the adolescence comes into this is
• 18:30
  juvenilia really isn't. I mean, I don't I'd have to
• 18:32
  reread Human nature. I flicked through before we did
• 18:35
  season 3 last year and I didn't really like it.
• 18:38
  I might have to look at it again, but this, I was
• 18:41
  pleasantly surprised this, but it, it is pretentious.
• 18:43
  I mean, one good thing with the new adventures was they did give
• 18:47
  space for new writers too. But that's like a blessing and a
• 18:52
  curse. Right.
• 18:53
  Yeah, that. Means you get a first time
• 18:55
  writer like Cornell or you get a first time writer like
• 18:58
  Christopher Beulis. Yeah.
• 19:00
  Yeah. What's interesting now, the ones
• 19:03
  who remain readable are the ones who have had careers subsequent
• 19:07
  to the publishing by Ronovich. Yeah.
• 19:09
  Or they'd already written for the TV and then they built on
• 19:12
  that. And it is.
• 19:13
  It's Cornell, it's a Ronovich, it's Platt.
• 19:16
  Although of course, Platt's kind of got locked into writing for
• 19:19
  the Doctor Who and whether he's. Yeah, before Mars, Miles.
• 19:24
  Yeah, again, Miles, there's a kind of a tragedy there.
• 19:27
  We haven't seen more from him but where he goes to in terms of
• 19:30
  establishing the war in heaven. I'm doing of the city of the
• 19:34
  saved right now and I'll tell you what my mind is being
• 19:37
  restructured. It's amazing, but it's very,
• 19:41
  very niche stuff. But for all of them, then you
• 19:43
  get the ones who you never hear of again, or they just remain
• 19:46
  stuck in, in, in in this, I think.
• 19:49
  Niche. They can write good books within
• 19:52
  their ability, but they write too many and too many of them
• 19:57
  are very mediocre. Like Cornell's got one big
• 19:59
  strength over most New Adventures writers in that he
• 20:01
  can actually write a sentence. You know, like some of it may be
• 20:05
  pretentious, but it flows and the imagery is good that the
• 20:09
  imagery of the the victims of The Who Thai exploding is is
• 20:13
  unforgettable. He can't plot though.
• 20:17
  You can't really plot, I don't think, because you know, was it
• 20:22
  Rosa treading on the fibre that, you know, I'd forgotten that
• 20:26
  she, but it's so badly telegraphed at that point.
• 20:29
  All the kind of references to her boot and then the doctor
• 20:33
  being infected with the chalice because there's such, there's so
• 20:37
  much weight placed around that chalice and that church.
• 20:40
  I mean, I thought the church was really interesting and, and that
• 20:44
  figure of Pedreas is really interesting.
• 20:46
  It made me think, weirdly enough, because of how my mind
• 20:49
  was shooting in all directions about Sarah Kay, the playwright
• 20:52
  who who who's writing at this point because she writes for
• 20:55
  Drea because it's later in the in the 90s.
• 20:58
  But again, she's part of that in your face tradition.
• 21:01
  She writes Blasted, which is a phenomenal play, but it's a
• 21:04
  gruelling play. And of course theatre world fell
• 21:07
  in on her. And of course, you know, it
• 21:09
  ended the way that it kind of looked like it was always going
• 21:12
  to win. And it's one of the great
• 21:13
  tragedies of of literature in this country in the 90s that
• 21:16
  came was destroyed or destroyed itself.
• 21:18
  But that kind of backdrop, I think you can see here the kind
• 21:21
  of pretentiousness, the focus on the body.
• 21:25
  It's here in for essentially, I don't know who's meant to be
• 21:30
  reading the new adventures as a, as a, as a, as a. 52, it's 15
• 21:35
  year old boys. I think that's what they're
• 21:37
  aiming this at. You think, or is that who ends
• 21:39
  up reading it and they think they're writing for an older
• 21:41
  audience who ends? Up writing it, I don't know, it
• 21:44
  feels like it. Yeah, but I don't know, I was
• 21:48
  surprised because I started because I sent you the picture
• 21:50
  and it begins and I started reading some ho hum, you know,
• 21:53
  here's Yan. Oh, Ace is so horny for him
• 21:56
  straight away. Isn't this awful?
• 21:58
  But I was couldn't read those things.
• 22:01
  I just couldn't read, you know, all of that.
• 22:02
  Oh, he's fire. I've been waiting to burn
• 22:05
  brightly for somebody. And then they fuck.
• 22:08
  Yeah, she's kissing his snake. We've seen we face too much
• 22:12
  deft. Let's have sex.
• 22:14
  And. Oh, because like who?
• 22:15
  I mean, who? I'm not straight, Paul.
• 22:18
  Is this how straight people interact?
• 22:20
  When they're. Having sex.
• 22:22
  I don't. Well, I mean, that might be the
• 22:25
  other issue I have of it, that having a fairly stunted
• 22:30
  development at 15, that stuff probably kind of repelled me.
• 22:36
  Probably. So maybe I was the repugnant
• 22:37
  figure. No, I think it's a particularly
• 22:39
  bad way of writing about sex. I think they should have called
• 22:43
  it sex and death and be done with it.
• 22:45
  That's really what they mean. I mean, does she really love
• 22:47
  him? She says she loves him, doesn't
• 22:49
  she? But she lusts after him because
• 22:52
  it's because it the whole world makes.
• 22:53
  Him different from Robin though, because like, I think there's a
• 22:57
  line about him giving himself completely to her or something
• 23:00
  like that. It's the first time that
• 23:02
  somebody has done that and I don't even know what that means.
• 23:05
  It's a weird, I mean, he's obviously well written.
• 23:08
  I don't, I don't know what the appeal.
• 23:10
  Deeply unlikable. Isn't it?
• 23:11
  Yeah. He's boring.
• 23:13
  He's boring. What's interesting in terms of
• 23:15
  his bad plotting, though? I'm just thinking about the end.
• 23:16
  Because of course, once, once Jan has turned into the computer
• 23:19
  and then the doctor uses his ability to turn into fire.
• 23:21
  Because he's some type of X-Men, isn't he?
• 23:24
  And I don't. Have a fire, Jan Make fire.
• 23:29
  At the climate, so the doctors with Ace and you've got no, no,
• 23:33
  the the Benny's with Ace and the Benny's with the Doctor and Ace
• 23:37
  is somewhere else and you've got the bit in puffer space.
• 23:40
  But then you've got the siege at Jonestown.
• 23:43
  But the siege is now being run by travellers who we don't
• 23:46
  really know who they are and we don't really care about.
• 23:49
  And say in a more mature author, you'd surely put one of the main
• 23:54
  cast there to up that peril. The man with the gloves.
• 23:57
  I've forgotten what even the significance of the gloves was.
• 23:59
  I think the most interesting figure actually is Christopher.
• 24:02
  That's a really interesting figure that that Cornell has
• 24:05
  written there, this victim of military experimentation that he
• 24:08
  now has no gender. He's some type of ghost, I I
• 24:12
  think. And, and the fact he's the
• 24:14
  priest and again, this shows you the difference between Moffett
• 24:17
  and this you actually got a priest and he's not some type of
• 24:20
  creepy paedophile type figure. And he's training the women to
• 24:24
  be the priest to replace him. The group needs a priest.
• 24:26
  Again, this is that there's some type of medieval or some type of
• 24:31
  cult or Pagan or or tarot card inspired community here.
• 24:36
  They're the good figures. Where is the church, the Church
• 24:39
  of the Vacuum, which is fascinating concept.
• 24:42
  And the fact he's called Fodreus.
• 24:43
  I think we can see that Cornell knows a bit about the actual
• 24:47
  Fodreus who's drummed out of whichever the Greek city states
• 24:51
  he lives in because he he commits, he profanes a religious
• 24:57
  ceremony. And the religious ceremony is
• 25:00
  about eternal life. So what you've got there is
• 25:02
  somebody intervenes to say there is no eternal life.
• 25:04
  And of course, the church, the vacuum, they're all kneelists,
• 25:07
  aren't they? There's nothing else.
• 25:08
  You may as well give yourself up.
• 25:09
  And then I mean that, that opening scene where he peers,
• 25:12
  kills himself on that rack and the bloodstream.
• 25:14
  Now it's a phenomenal scene, but it's all dragged down by, oh,
• 25:18
  look at look at Yan Snake. I'd love to get my lips round
• 25:22
  that. I love you, Yan.
• 25:24
  And then the doctor wakes up from his like depression and
• 25:28
  because when McCoy when the doctor's doing proper doctor
• 25:30
  things like excavate in and the business with the telescope, I
• 25:34
  think you can see there's echoes of that.
• 25:36
  Not deliberate, but Pullman in the in the amber spyglass, the
• 25:40
  spyglass that can see things because the glass.
• 25:43
  The telescope's doing the same thing here.
• 25:44
  All that's really good but it's just weight it down with this
• 25:48
  need to get rid of ace and to get rid of in this entirely
• 25:51
  conventional way of she has sex let's kill him now she has to go
• 25:55
  away and and it just it's frustrating me just think as.
• 25:57
  Well, they just transferred the worst of the McCoy era on TV,
• 26:02
  right? They they they focus so much on
• 26:05
  the betrayal of Ace in the climax of The Curse of Fenrick,
• 26:10
  They forget that in that ghastly scene afterwards, she jumps in
• 26:13
  the water and is reborn. And their relationship is good
• 26:16
  now, you know, But then we sort of regress back to it again is
• 26:20
  and if Christopher is the best character in this, I shall tell
• 26:23
  you who's the worst. All right, Julian, the gay best
• 26:27
  friend. Julian for some reason, was he
• 26:30
  was he infected by The Who? I'm not sure what was going on
• 26:32
  with him at the end of the book, but we keep coming back to this.
• 26:36
  And I was just like, Cornell has never had a gay best friend or
• 26:39
  has ever known anyone who had a gay best friend.
• 26:42
  Oh, it was hideous, all of that. But of course, what they've done
• 26:46
  there is, you know, Ace is friends with Asian girl.
• 26:50
  She definitely got a gay best friend as well because she
• 26:52
  becomes a great repository. I mean, my wife said to me last
• 26:56
  night she ran Rev that podcast. Yeah.
• 26:59
  I didn't really like the book then.
• 27:01
  Like it, like it now and about, you know, Ace.
• 27:04
  And Ace is a lesbian, isn't she? Where is that from?
• 27:09
  She's a lesbian. He's got the big bomber Jack
• 27:12
  here. And like, this isn't, my wife
• 27:13
  doesn't know this run at all. And he actually, that's right,
• 27:16
  isn't it? Because of course Cara is the
• 27:18
  great relationship and of course Cara dies and of course it's
• 27:21
  almost like Cornell's forgotten survival that they think Series
• 27:25
  26 ends with Cursor Fenrick. But even then they ignore the
• 27:29
  end of cursor Fenrick because you're right.
• 27:30
  What's weird in Survivor is she doesn't go back looking for the
• 27:33
  mother. She goes to see the French, she
• 27:35
  goes home again. But this is where she's
• 27:38
  different from Dorothy in, in the Wizard of Oz.
• 27:40
  She she can't stay home. I mean, last week in a kind of
• 27:44
  absolute academic frenzy, I tried to make survival into a
• 27:48
  version of the Wizard of Oz. I got some of it, but I couldn't
• 27:52
  get all of it. But there's definitely something
• 27:54
  there because the the other of course, that she's connected to
• 27:57
  is Alice because it was in ghost, like she's called Alice.
• 28:01
  And you know, that concludes with light doesn't recognize a
• 28:04
  reference to the band of statues and the slightly toes.
• 28:07
  So of course ghost light is read through Alice in Wonderland.
• 28:10
  But of course, if you know the background to Alice in
• 28:13
  Wonderland and Alice's Adventures Underground,
• 28:16
  something's happened between Dodges and Carroll and and and
• 28:20
  and what's what's Alice's family called in?
• 28:24
  Real. Oh, Lidl.
• 28:25
  Is it Lidl? Yeah, it is.
• 28:27
  Yeah. Because aren't they some type of
• 28:28
  relative of to come in a parka bowls or someone like that?
• 28:31
  Weird stuff going down there in those boats as well once.
• 28:35
  The children grow up once she grows up, of course, this is
• 28:39
  where you get the whole question about around Carol and sexuality
• 28:42
  and like the photographs of the children, But Ace is following
• 28:46
  that same pattern. Once Ace grows up, she has to
• 28:49
  leave this type of fairy tale environment.
• 28:50
  What's interesting with the new Adventures, of course, is
• 28:53
  they're trying to reject that fairy tale motif and go down
• 28:56
  cyberpunk and it's very serious. And we can do we can do things
• 29:01
  like the Cathars when they get to what's Mcatee's book set in
• 29:06
  South of France. I've forgotten that one
• 29:08
  completely, which I do have. I picked that one up in a
• 29:11
  charity shop and it's signed by Liz Slade and Geoffrey Breves
• 29:15
  and Zoe Wendy Padbery. So someone had clearly been to a
• 29:18
  convention and got all these people to sign a new adventure.
• 29:21
  What's that one called? Sanctuary, isn't it?
• 29:23
  Oh, Mckinty's, yeah. Far more interesting books
• 29:27
  coming, but you've just got to go over this, this lump here.
• 29:29
  But actually, I don't think this this this lump isn't as bad as I
• 29:32
  thought it was when I was young. I think this would ride better
• 29:35
  for me because I think the story here is good and I think the the
• 29:39
  dramatic momentum of this story is good and the climax of the
• 29:43
  story is great. Like it does end on a high.
• 29:47
  I just can't get over the poetry in the right and all the the
• 29:51
  adolescence. That's the word you use and it's
• 29:53
  perfect because I just was sighing all the way through.
• 29:57
  You know, you mentioned survival there, right?
• 29:58
  The one thing I love about survival.
• 30:01
  Well, there's lots of things I love about it, but the one thing
• 30:02
  I really love about it is I think it almost reinterprets Ace
• 30:05
  a little bit because I'm absolutely convinced she comes
• 30:08
  from one of those middle class houses on those streets, right?
• 30:11
  And she goes down that youth club and pretends This is why
• 30:14
  Sophie all just playing it like this, you know, you say a middle
• 30:17
  class girl trying to play rough. I don't think the New Adventures
• 30:21
  are doing that. I think they think she's a rough
• 30:23
  girl from a council estate, you know, And it doesn't work.
• 30:27
  It doesn't work with Sophie. All just performance.
• 30:28
  Go listen to Love and War from Big Finish.
• 30:31
  Yeah, a poor Sophie Allred trying to play out the.
• 30:34
  I mean, she can't do it anyway. The ending is hysterical.
• 30:38
  Take a nurofen or some form paracetamol at the end of that.
• 30:43
  Yeah, I do. You know what?
• 30:44
  I almost wish there was another version of this story which has
• 30:48
  the Doctor Bernice and The Who Thai and the other plot is just
• 30:53
  completely gone because I think that would be a superb book.
• 30:56
  Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.
• 30:58
  I, I think, I think there's a lot, there's really a lot to to
• 31:02
  like about this book, but I think that's the central
• 31:05
  relationship is so badly done. What about?
• 31:08
  What about Bernice? I mean, I do think she gets and
• 31:13
  she gets a back story in the same way that Ace got a back
• 31:15
  story in Dragonfly. Remember when Ace is talking
• 31:17
  about being whisked off and her mum and all of that?
• 31:20
  That sort of speech she gives. Well, Bernice gets a speech in
• 31:22
  this, doesn't she? Like 2 pages worth of dialogue,
• 31:25
  Quite naturalistic sounding dialogue.
• 31:27
  I thought as well, he wrote that he's right in Bernice in a
• 31:30
  naturalistic way, in a way that he's not right in Ace.
• 31:36
  You all right? She doesn't appear.
• 31:38
  She has like a scene early on and then it's about halfway
• 31:41
  through which she actually starts by taking an active part
• 31:44
  in the plot. Yeah, I suppose because the
• 31:47
  Macguffin is the book and she's got the book, so she has to be
• 31:50
  kept separated from the doctor long enough so it doesn't come
• 31:54
  up in conversation. So because you get all the
• 31:56
  business, they have to go back to the library to go into the
• 31:58
  computer. And the old man in the library
• 32:01
  is then kills he Trench, isn't it?
• 32:02
  Or Trench getting killed by the the Zombie Who site.
• 32:06
  I mean, what's interesting, and again, it comes back to Cornell
• 32:09
  in religion, which is, is is fascinating to me.
• 32:12
  Bernice's mother is Catholic and so is Hemmings mother.
• 32:17
  In Revelation you get these repeated use references to the
• 32:22
  Mother's rosary beans once in Love and war and then a few
• 32:24
  times in in Revelation and say. Trying to say them I'm.
• 32:28
  I'm not sure I need I need to drill down into that, that
• 32:30
  you've still got a Catholic Church in the 26th century or
• 32:34
  whatever. This obviously Hemmings is a
• 32:36
  20th century figure in alternative reality.
• 32:38
  I just I just I don't know because religion in in these
• 32:41
  type of books is interesting. We tend to think about like faux
• 32:47
  medieval high fantasy. There'll always be a religious
• 32:49
  element in that. So, you know, not overtly in
• 32:52
  Tolkien, but Tolkien is writing a deeply Catholic text and the
• 32:56
  various religions in Game of Thrones, whereas hard sci-fi
• 32:59
  tends not to have religion. That's why June is interesting
• 33:03
  because of course there's clear religion in June.
• 33:05
  And, and although June looks like hard sci-fi, really, the
• 33:08
  sandworms are essentially a dragon and you've got all about
• 33:11
  like clashes within the, the the great houses.
• 33:14
  So the fact that Cornell's kept religion here is telling us
• 33:16
  something about him personally, which you then see affirmed in
• 33:21
  in his in his bibliography. And and it's it's a weirdly
• 33:27
  neutral, I suppose, moving towards positive, whereas
• 33:32
  Moffett say on TV, there's no real religion there whatsoever.
• 33:35
  And where you do have religious motifs that can, they're there
• 33:38
  to be set up as something that it's lying to humanitarian or
• 33:41
  it's a crutch to humanity. Even though Moffett himself, as
• 33:44
  we've said, can't kill his companions.
• 33:45
  They keep coming back in some weird type of parody or or you
• 33:50
  get some type of afterlife. But I think it gives it gives
• 33:55
  Bernice a kind of believable back story.
• 33:58
  And and of course, it is setting up for the missing father.
• 34:01
  And when's he going to turn up? Because you're left with that.
• 34:03
  And me again, I hadn't spotted it years ago.
• 34:06
  Now I'm just waiting for her father.
• 34:07
  Have you read that one? What the return of the living
• 34:10
  death? It's such wank.
• 34:13
  She'd never bring a figure like that back into this.
• 34:15
  You should never. What's interesting you about you
• 34:17
  said about the dialogue? Because of course Cornell can
• 34:19
  write from his own head. He's not having to work with
• 34:23
  what Sophie Audrey playing Aiden was like on the TV with the
• 34:27
  terrible dialogue. Although I will say it's it's
• 34:29
  pin sharp accurate that yes, not but, but not good, yeah.
• 34:34
  Not in a good It's interesting you're reading there about
• 34:37
  survival and that she's this middle class figure who's
• 34:41
  cosplaying the rough child because because in all the
• 34:44
  stories, all the scenes from Ace as a child in Revelation are
• 34:49
  pointing to someone who doesn't belong in that working class
• 34:51
  background. So I hadn't thought in those
• 34:53
  terms at all. I mean.
• 34:55
  Wait, was that performance that took me that way because she
• 34:58
  sounds so middle class? Yeah, because.
• 35:00
  She can't play, she can't play working class.
• 35:02
  But I mean, she just needs to sit down and watch that clip
• 35:05
  from the young ones that I sent you last week.
• 35:09
  Britney don't say fuck, not that one gel the good life.
• 35:14
  But again, look to the young ones actually for where some of
• 35:18
  Cornell's stuff is coming from. Because of course Rick is the
• 35:20
  people's poet middle class figure pretending to be this
• 35:24
  kind of anarchist figure and writing this really over
• 35:27
  inflated poetry and expecting that if he killed himself by
• 35:30
  eating laxatives that although was he said, although the skins
• 35:33
  and the wrasses would come together and they'll say the
• 35:35
  people's poet's dead. Why are the kids crying, the
• 35:37
  people's poet's dead and Cornell's coming from that fact
• 35:40
  that. Literally sounds like love and
• 35:42
  war to me. That's.
• 35:43
  It that's it. So he can't escape from what was
• 35:48
  a parody of what was going on in the 80s anyway, I mean.
• 35:52
  Maybe that's it. Maybe that's it, right?
• 35:53
  He's trying so hard. I'm so, you know, pushing
• 35:57
  against how much he's trying to make me feel in this book, but I
• 36:00
  just don't feel a thing. When Yan Jan dies at the end, I
• 36:05
  was like, good. He was annoying prick.
• 36:07
  I'm glad he's gone. He's got an awesome death scene.
• 36:10
  He was a deeply tedious character, but he's gone out
• 36:13
  with a bang, quite literally. And he's taken Ace with him, but
• 36:17
  not like that. I mean, bringing Ace back then
• 36:19
  is weird as well. Oh.
• 36:20
  Boy, I mean, it's perfect, right?
• 36:22
  Get rid of her. I mean, this does make more
• 36:24
  sense if she never comes back. Yeah.
• 36:26
  Yeah. As a, as a dramatic climax to
• 36:29
  her run. I mean, I don't really like it.
• 36:32
  It would end here because, you know, like, that's the one
• 36:35
  strength of the doctrine Ace on TV is the chemistry between
• 36:39
  McCoy and Aldred, which is gorgeous, Right.
• 36:41
  And they're kind of abandoned that with these new adventures.
• 36:45
  And to end a clearly loving paternal actually relationship
• 36:50
  on this? No, but it makes more sense than
• 36:53
  then bringing her back as lever clad sexy space bitch ace who
• 36:59
  hates everything who doesn't want to travel in the TARDIS and
• 37:03
  eventually goes off on her time bikers times vigilante or
• 37:07
  something. I mean, I preferred is it's in,
• 37:11
  it's in Fenrick, isn't it in the book where the afterword or the
• 37:15
  epilogue is in Paris in the 1880s and she's living there.
• 37:18
  That's nice. I mean, that's much, much more
• 37:21
  interesting than essentially. I mean they do call her that
• 37:24
  though. Don't know that's the name she
• 37:25
  adopts at the end of the New Adventures.
• 37:27
  It's. The only time it works because
• 37:30
  in Revelation, when she's dot Dotty, they're thinking Dorothy
• 37:35
  was the wrong name here. And because you're desperate to
• 37:37
  make it just like the Wizard of Oz, you've given her a really
• 37:40
  stupid name that doesn't quite work.
• 37:43
  I mean, I mean, the transformation of it into it's
• 37:47
  essentially Sigourney Weaver, isn't it?
• 37:50
  Or it's one of the marines from Alien.
• 37:52
  That's that's their touch point. And if they'd hung around a bit
• 37:55
  longer, it wouldn't have been the Marine in Resident Evil that
• 38:01
  kind of. I'm hard as nails.
• 38:03
  I can. I've had to fight my way up
• 38:04
  here. Here's my big gun.
• 38:06
  But it's kind of clunking and tedious and it's, it's a bit
• 38:12
  adolescent boy game of wank fantasy really, isn't it?
• 38:15
  Which I don't know. I don't know.
• 38:17
  Were there many people wanking over Sophie Aldridge?
• 38:19
  No, and what's really interesting is the more book
• 38:22
  club, as I thought to Right. Yeah, it was beneath that they
• 38:26
  all wank fantasy. I won't go that far.
• 38:30
  It was beneath that they were attracted to that slightly
• 38:33
  older, funnier, more likeable woman.
• 38:38
  Yeah, which I actually maybe that explains the reemergence of
• 38:43
  Bonnie Langford into TV since she was an older companion.
• 38:47
  And now, now they've got, which is again a strange decision.
• 38:50
  And the Ace is back as well, and Sophie ordered.
• 38:52
  I'm afraid he's cruelly exposed now that she's back on TV.
• 38:56
  Against the actors of today? Absolutely.
• 38:58
  And Bonnie isn't, interestingly. No, we see Bonnie Langford, of
• 39:02
  course, she'd been kind of a hate figure for fandom, but
• 39:06
  she's had a long career. And if you look at the careers
• 39:10
  post who careers of most of the companions from the original
• 39:13
  series, it's not lining up IMDb. Whereas Bonnie Langford part of
• 39:18
  the problem. It makes sense, don't it?
• 39:20
  I mean, her inclusion makes sense.
• 39:22
  I said it, if you're going to bring someone back, that's who
• 39:25
  the general public would recognize because you've been in
• 39:27
  East End. I'm not sure, Janet Fielding.
• 39:29
  And so if you're quite the same. What's got a fucking?
• 39:33
  Clue. Who?
• 39:33
  Janet. Fielding is sorry, I didn't
• 39:36
  expect them if they're listening to this in the off chance but.
• 39:40
  I've got to say though, I do think Fielding pissed all over
• 39:42
  order than that. Like she took, I took those
• 39:45
  terrible chimney lines. I did make something funny out
• 39:48
  of them. Because she's, she's doing it
• 39:50
  for the last one. I don't know, I think Aldrin
• 39:52
  might have been doing it seriously.
• 39:53
  But it's like, what's that thing called where they have McCoy in
• 39:59
  his outfit in the TARDIS talking to Audrey?
• 40:01
  Was it tales? Tales from the TARDIS.
• 40:03
  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they're dog shit though,
• 40:06
  aren't they? Well, I did, I like the Stephen
• 40:10
  and Vicky one, but I just love seeing more and O'Brien and
• 40:12
  Peter Purvis back. But they're for a certain,
• 40:16
  they're for Sarah Jane Adventures fans, you know,
• 40:18
  they're that sort of tone. Because again, all this
• 40:22
  business, unfinished business between the doctor and and AC,
• 40:26
  just it just, it feels weird. It feels off on their TV
• 40:31
  adventures. That's a great statement of
• 40:33
  intent. At the end of survival, there's
• 40:35
  somewhere else. Yeah, they often adventures
• 40:38
  somewhere else that he's getting called Common Ace.
• 40:39
  We've got words to do. It's a great triumphant moment.
• 40:42
  He should have said. Come on, Ace, we've got a toxic
• 40:45
  relationship to explore. That's the point, isn't it?
• 40:48
  That's the problem with it, that what you go is, let's look at
• 40:52
  season 26. Ace is this angsty relationship
• 40:55
  with her mother. It's season resolved.
• 40:57
  What is it? Stories too broad and too deep
• 41:01
  for the small screen No, I mean the visuals obviously there, but
• 41:06
  all they've done is done a really bad version of that
• 41:08
  relationship and make like of Ace's relationship with her
• 41:11
  mother, but turn it into Ace's relationship with the doctor and
• 41:14
  it's just it's just weird and that's why I think but.
• 41:18
  This isn't written more complexly than, say, Ghost
• 41:20
  Light. No, no, you won't get anything
• 41:25
  as complex as. We should say less broad and
• 41:28
  deep than the small screen, but it's I'll tell you what though,
• 41:32
  I will tell you something I really like because I've been
• 41:34
  quite negative in this and I did come out more favourable than I
• 41:39
  thought while still thinking this was very problematic.
• 41:43
  I really liked for once, and I don't usually like this, the
• 41:47
  back story with The Who thought of the time laws.
• 41:49
  I thought that felt genuinely mythic.
• 41:51
  I really liked how they see the planets.
• 41:54
  I thought that was really clever and I just loved the last 30 SO
• 41:59
  pages and as it all turned to chaos and shit and I thought he
• 42:03
  captured the horror of what was happening really, really well.
• 42:07
  Yeah, I think it's a horror novel and as as kind of maybe a
• 42:11
  bit of Lovecraftian. Oh, definitely.
• 42:14
  I think many are tentacles, isn't there?
• 42:16
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we're all up.
• 42:20
  I read. I read somewhere where the
• 42:22
  tentacle first appears in in in literature and I've forgotten
• 42:25
  where it is. I think it just it predates.
• 42:29
  Oh, you wrote about it in your fury from the deep comment
• 42:31
  didn't. You.
• 42:33
  But the bit there was a bit where they were in the library
• 42:35
  and that fella's head explodes. Yeah.
• 42:37
  And I, that was so horrific. I said to Mark, I think I'm done
• 42:41
  for tonight. And like, I was like, I'll go to
• 42:43
  bed on that image. There is a real creeping dread.
• 42:47
  He's very, very. The problem is have.
• 42:49
  You heard the audio because it's it's like the audio is historic
• 42:53
  and angsty and terrible in many ways, but that creepy, that
• 42:56
  ominous feeling is pervasive in the audio.
• 43:00
  The problem is it's a Doctor Who book.
• 43:01
  He can't really write the character of the Doctor that we
• 43:04
  would recognize from the TV at that point.
• 43:05
  And he certainly he he, he can't write Ace because Ace isn't well
• 43:09
  written. Once you put Ace into the into
• 43:11
  the page, it just doesn't work. Which is telling you something
• 43:15
  about much and all, as Aldred's performance might be maybe a
• 43:20
  step above amateur. She's doing a lot of heavy
• 43:22
  lifting there and the relationship is doing a lot of
• 43:25
  the work on the TV. Once you poison the relationship
• 43:29
  in the way that it's so fundamentally messed up in this
• 43:32
  book, you need someone else then.
• 43:35
  So you get weird things. So you know, Bernice has to be
• 43:38
  introduced because you need a companion at that point.
• 43:41
  Whereas Christopher is almost he's kind of like the doctor in
• 43:45
  Papa space before the doctor gets in there.
• 43:48
  You can complicate these things, but it's kind of needless
• 43:52
  complication in in this case. And I I think you're right.
• 43:54
  The the the better book is a version of this that doesn't
• 43:57
  have ace in it that it comes later in the run.
• 44:00
  They land on this planet, they get involved with the the the
• 44:04
  travellers and the who's like what plays are and actually, you
• 44:08
  could do it. The ace plot line is kind of a
• 44:09
  complication and it does pull away from it's dominates,
• 44:13
  doesn't it it? Is it is a good half of the
• 44:15
  book? Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 44:17
  And the. Problem is, it's not, it's not a
• 44:19
  convincing enough relationship for us to care.
• 44:22
  And that's the other thing, of course, I think because, and
• 44:24
  it's like with Moffett, a response to this is often what
• 44:29
  you're doing about the death, isn't it?
• 44:31
  And what you do about dead bodies, because arguably this is
• 44:35
  worse than what what Moffett does.
• 44:37
  I mean, obviously there's a wider discussion about every
• 44:41
  corpse on Earth is turned into a sideman at the end of season 8,
• 44:44
  but this one? And it comes back to the point
• 44:46
  about Julian. Why is Julian turned into a who
• 44:49
  side? I had no idea.
• 44:51
  I I didn't quite understand how how he was there when that
• 44:56
  happened. Like, I'm sure it was all
• 44:58
  explained, but that again, felt like a needless complication.
• 45:01
  Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't.
• 45:04
  If if Julian had been a love interest for Ace, you could see
• 45:08
  that it's there as a kind of reflection of or a looking
• 45:14
  forward to, Yeah. And the fact they're both dead.
• 45:17
  But of course, because Julian is her gay best friend in an
• 45:20
  entirely unrealistic fashion. But he's got a car and they do
• 45:24
  go off and, you know, he comes out to her mother, doesn't he?
• 45:27
  And Audrey, does anybody really care about Audrey?
• 45:30
  She, she haunts these books in a way she shouldn't do because
• 45:34
  we've seen Audrey, we've seen Audrey as a baby.
• 45:37
  And Aces insured has ensured her future takes place in Fenrir
• 45:40
  because she sends the mother and grandmother off.
• 45:43
  Then she she saves them from the from the vampires.
• 45:47
  All this digging around into Ace's back story there every
• 45:49
  time she appeared in this. Audrey I I was clenching my butt
• 45:53
  as much as I was in cursor Fenrick You know, I mean we.
• 45:57
  Laugh at it. White kids firebombed it as a
• 46:00
  line in remembrance. But actually that story tells
• 46:05
  you far more about Ace and enables you to develop a picture
• 46:08
  of Ace as a teenager. And then when we shoot minutiae
• 46:13
  in in survival and like Midge, but you know, right?
• 46:18
  Do you remember? In the the the remembrance
• 46:20
  novelization, yeah, there's a a small exploration of the the
• 46:25
  bombing and scenes in the hospital.
• 46:28
  Isn't it as well? Beautifully done, yeah, but.
• 46:31
  Economically done. It doesn't take over the book
• 46:34
  like this does. Like if you're going to look to
• 46:37
  anything, look to remembrance as to how to do this.
• 46:40
  Yeah, I it was. It was bizarre that that that
• 46:43
  was the choice they went with that it was, I suppose because
• 46:46
  Briggs wrights dragon fire and Briggs Wrights cursor Frederick.
• 46:51
  There's a sense that Briggs vision of Ace and what Briggs
• 46:54
  would have done is where you go to.
• 46:56
  But you're right. There's it's that image of the
• 46:58
  doctor as the chess. Player isn't it, you know,
• 47:01
  fighting the gods, which I just love it.
• 47:04
  Yeah. And it it's done.
• 47:06
  You if you've done it in Fenrick, that's fine.
• 47:08
  It works for. I mean I don't like Fenrick as
• 47:11
  you know, but I do think the 4th episode of Fenrick is one of the
• 47:13
  best episodes in the original run.
• 47:15
  I think not. I think McCoy, they are trying
• 47:19
  something new to be. Fair to them and you know, after
• 47:22
  the mid 80s where there wasn't too much being tried that was
• 47:25
  new. That's that's good.
• 47:27
  The version you need to see. Of episode 4 is the cut that's
• 47:30
  on the video release, the one where John Nathan Turner does
• 47:33
  people over, doesn't he? He does over Nicholas Mallet.
• 47:36
  That's because you get the extended dialogue between Fenrik
• 47:40
  and the Hem of Oars, and you get the crucial scene between McCoy
• 47:43
  and the the Ancient One. But it's done.
• 47:47
  It's done there. Ace's relationship with her
• 47:48
  mother is done. The doctor as chess player is
• 47:50
  done. Do something else.
• 47:52
  If your whole premise of these books is wider, deeper, you
• 47:57
  know, elongation, whatever the hell they're describing them as,
• 48:01
  don't just go back and go. I would just do longer versions,
• 48:05
  more chronicle adult versions of what you've already seen on the
• 48:06
  telly. No do something new if you know
• 48:10
  why. Paul Mars.
• 48:12
  Wrote The Scarlet Empress as he did, as just this mixture of
• 48:16
  different sources, different tones, as a great sort of
• 48:20
  surrealist fantasy, because he even, he writes A blog about it.
• 48:24
  He was rejecting all of this. He goes, no, we're not going to
• 48:28
  have form. We're not going to have
• 48:29
  convention. We're certainly not going to
• 48:31
  look back to the Sylvester McCoy era.
• 48:33
  I'm just going to do freewheeling creativity and fun
• 48:37
  and let's go for it. And that to me, that feels too
• 48:40
  deep and too broad for the small screen.
• 48:42
  Yeah, I mean, I think the. Other thing and you come back to
• 48:46
  to Miles and what what he has to do because of the copyright
• 48:50
  reasons with the faction Paradox universe.
• 48:54
  Surely now we'd be looking at spin offs you wouldn't be doing
• 48:57
  with McCoy. You do something else.
• 49:00
  You do the companions, I mean, surely Ramana are in E space
• 49:04
  free enslaved line people. That's more interesting.
• 49:08
  Some of the stuff that you get. There's a kind of a fear that it
• 49:11
  has to be Doctor Who and it has to be this particular type of
• 49:13
  Doctor Who because that's what they locked themselves into.
• 49:15
  That's how much compassion appears.
• 49:18
  In of the city of the safe. I mean that that that copyright
• 49:21
  line is very thin. Oh well, no but it mean but.
• 49:25
  Miles has copyright for compassion, surely it's.
• 49:28
  Well, I should hope so, because. She's the second figure of that
• 49:31
  book. Time Lord?
• 49:33
  Doctor Daleks. Yeah, and they use Time Ships.
• 49:36
  Homeworld, you know, he's very careful with the words.
• 49:40
  I mean a compassion. That's a far more interesting
• 49:44
  and adult run of books, I think, than what you get here.
• 49:48
  And there is a sense Lord again. Oh, absolutely.
• 49:52
  I mean, but I think. Miles you know is is is a really
• 49:56
  interesting author that emerges in the the 8th doctor range and
• 50:01
  floor and niche. But he can he can write and he
• 50:05
  can mind expanding. I was reading.
• 50:07
  Interference and Jesus Christ, the ideas in that.
• 50:11
  I mean, you could power the entire 8th Doctor run on just on
• 50:14
  those like what they did, didn't they?
• 50:16
  I mean, they're kind of they throw it all away.
• 50:18
  Of course, don't they? Ancestor Cell wraps things up in
• 50:20
  the movie wisely. I think it's like, OK, we're.
• 50:22
  Going to reject continuity a bit and try and do something a bit
• 50:25
  more original, but you know, but continuity.
• 50:28
  Is kind of weighing down the early one of the but here as
• 50:32
  well there. Was so much continuity in this
• 50:35
  book in in what interference we're in love.
• 50:37
  Of war, in love of war. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 50:39
  That's that's why I was saying that.
• 50:41
  It's kind of weighing them down. There's a sense which we we
• 50:43
  can't escape from it. Whereas when it's done like with
• 50:47
  Platt and like Gallifreian travellers from the dawn of
• 50:50
  time, that's taking the mythos but doing something different
• 50:54
  with it. I mean, as you will, it's
• 50:56
  probably just like Underworld in that respect, because it's
• 50:59
  something from it all comes back to Underworld as Underworld as
• 51:07
  its touchstone, not Star Wars as as we know, Underworld is better
• 51:10
  than Star Wars. Let's get that out again.
• 51:12
  You don't need to do the the cliffhanger music like different
• 51:16
  type of podcast. But yeah, I think, I think that
• 51:20
  run. I mean, I was reading some of
• 51:22
  the reviews on close to library, which I've forgotten existed.
• 51:25
  And I do think they're, they're, I mean, they're, they're I do.
• 51:28
  Battle with a lot of those reviews though.
• 51:31
  But I know Stacey Smith, but I think she talks bullshit
• 51:34
  sometimes. Yeah, but that's that's the art
• 51:36
  of a good review. Isn't it?
• 51:37
  I mean, that's that's you think about kind of Tynan's point.
• 51:39
  What's his maxim? Is goad, lacerate, raise
• 51:42
  whirlwinds? A good review?
• 51:43
  Hamster, Paul, right? That's what.
• 51:47
  I did. I did.
• 51:48
  When I appeared on one, I did have raised whirlwinds on a bit
• 51:51
  of paper in front of me, but I also said be concise.
• 51:53
  That went out the window as well.
• 51:55
  But I think a good review shouldn't just affirm what you
• 51:59
  already think because it's an echo chamber.
• 52:01
  A good review should challenge you and you should either be
• 52:03
  able to look back and go they're right or they're wrong.
• 52:06
  You've got to be open to the challenge though.
• 52:08
  And so, you know, I'll podcast it for some people that are, as
• 52:11
  I said, at a particularly. Fractious meeting about a PhD
• 52:14
  not long ago. If you can't defend your
• 52:16
  position, you haven't got a position.
• 52:18
  And I think. But looking at some of the
• 52:20
  reviews on Closer Library, particularly for this early run.
• 52:23
  Oh, they love, he loves. Sorry, she loves the new
• 52:26
  adventures and is far less keen on the EDA's It's so interesting
• 52:31
  styles it it is but because they that.
• 52:34
  You know, this is a necessary book.
• 52:36
  Revelation's a necessary book. Transit's a necessary book that
• 52:39
  they they set in a type of tone. Whether it's the right tone is
• 52:43
  different. I suspect it's an education as
• 52:45
  well. Isn't it they're learning,
• 52:46
  they're learning what to do and what not to do and it I think it
• 52:50
  takes them half the run, but the second-half the run is way
• 52:54
  stronger as a result. Where do you think the the?
• 52:57
  The turning point is, is there a novel that you can see it in?
• 53:01
  Maybe. I mean, there's good books
• 53:03
  before this. Obviously I love Conundrum and a
• 53:05
  few others, but I think maybe sanctuary, Sanctuary, human
• 53:09
  nature, original sin. I think they're turning a corner
• 53:12
  there and then you know, you've got damaged goods.
• 53:15
  Christmas on a rational planet. Lung Barrow bad therapy just
• 53:19
  wore you know that that latter half is just what the phenomenal
• 53:24
  book. It broke.
• 53:27
  We'll talk. We'll talk.
• 53:30
  Can I ask you? 1.
• 53:32
  One last question about love and war, because Cornell himself
• 53:36
  said that there was an AIDS metaphor in here and there is
• 53:44
  there's an early scene where one of the travellers says about
• 53:47
  spreading Jan, spreading his seed.
• 53:49
  He can spread his seed as much as he likes, but as long as he
• 53:52
  comes back to me. And obviously that's what The
• 53:54
  Who Thai are doing as well. Can you see it?
• 53:58
  I mean, I was, I started looking for it and I was sort of on the
• 54:02
  edge of grasping it and then I just decided to hide it.
• 54:04
  It was very distasteful and I just abandoned that approach of
• 54:08
  thinking. Well, I mean, what we meant
• 54:13
  what's, what's Julian meant to have died off?
• 54:17
  It's not explicitly. Stated is it?
• 54:20
  I mean if if if. He's on he's on dodgy ground
• 54:24
  unless of course he's trying to challenge what had been the
• 54:28
  predominant message in the right wing shit sheets of the late 80s
• 54:32
  when when we became aware of AIDS publicly and that it was
• 54:36
  quote, quote, UN quote a gay disease, which of course is the
• 54:38
  same discourse you getting horrendous American evangelical
• 54:41
  circles even today. And no doubt we're going to find
• 54:43
  it a lot more often now that the orange one has returned.
• 54:46
  Big shout out to all the American manga people who are
• 54:48
  listening to this. But you know, I love you, but
• 54:51
  your man is a Dick. So to have the to have the gay
• 54:57
  character, but not be explicit as to how he died because I took
• 55:01
  it to beat cancer. But then to have all these
• 55:04
  straight characters because I don't think Yan Yan is spreading
• 55:09
  his seat. But amongst women, it's a it's a
• 55:11
  very conservative view actually of sexuality and the Houthai.
• 55:16
  The houthai is as as infection. I don't, I don't know.
• 55:19
  I think I'm with you. I think it's distasteful
• 55:21
  actually, if you if you are looking, it would be the right
• 55:25
  time you'd expect to push back and you'd expect a type of
• 55:29
  metaphor because of course we're after the John Hurt voiced aid
• 55:33
  don't dive ignorance campaign. We're beyond that we're even I
• 55:37
  think beyond weird things on TV like what's his name?
• 55:42
  Oh thingy Stapleton put in a condom on a banana or what that
• 55:47
  weird thing was some early evening show as part of
• 55:51
  well-intentioned public health. But very, very odd public health
• 55:56
  exercise. So I mean you, you would expect
• 55:58
  it to to turn up. That's a wholly negative view.
• 56:02
  Right. If it's there, there's no
• 56:05
  positives. I mean obviously you don't want
• 56:07
  a positive start on age, but it seems to be suggesting that
• 56:11
  spreading your seed at all safe sector they had got you have to
• 56:18
  you have to. Remember, this is 92 so you
• 56:20
  haven't had the advances in medicine, which means people can
• 56:24
  live with AIDS now for for and liver for an active life.
• 56:28
  And thank God medicine has got us to that point.
• 56:31
  You're really looking back to the type of world that Davis is
• 56:34
  describing in It's a Sin where and and it's some really
• 56:39
  interesting documentaries have been on around It's a Sin on BBC
• 56:42
  Four about how sex lives change and where you get like people
• 56:49
  don't penetrate because that's here's the most dangerous thing
• 56:51
  you can do and you shift into different.
• 56:54
  This has gone into a very odd direction here, Joe, hasn't it?
• 56:56
  That like like foolish, it always does.
• 57:00
  I did ask the question. Remember that comes after.
• 57:04
  Or no, no, those type of attempted to negotiate around
• 57:07
  what at that point is a death sentence.
• 57:10
  That's that's concurrent with this book.
• 57:13
  And so it's interesting. Therefore, we don't get a kind
• 57:17
  of safe sex message at all. What we've got is because Yan's
• 57:20
  in an open marriage. That's really that's how I read
• 57:22
  that. And because there's weird things
• 57:25
  where Yan and ASA they're going to get married and these kind of
• 57:28
  the ceremonies in this book are really interesting.
• 57:31
  And what you've got is, I think, an attempt to make a kind of a
• 57:33
  positive statement around religion and and and ceremonies
• 57:36
  are in religion. And that's around the figures of
• 57:39
  the Travers. But the Travers are also the
• 57:40
  people that have sex. And so we've got 2 views of sex
• 57:43
  a +1 but which is kind of then wrecked by ace having sex
• 57:47
  because it makes her really unbearable.
• 57:49
  And then the church, the vacuum where there is no sex because
• 57:53
  there is no life and therefore the only life associated with
• 57:56
  them is an anti life because it's a kind of an eternal,
• 57:58
  eternal death. And that the then if anything
• 58:02
  it's about procreation, it's an anti procreation or kind of
• 58:07
  parodic appropriation. Are The Who if I following like?
• 58:10
  A biological function or is it a chosen method of propagating?
• 58:16
  Does it say I can't remember? I don't think it does, yes.
• 58:19
  Or maybe that's all a bit muddy to make any definitive statement
• 58:23
  as to whether that's there. I mean, sorry.
• 58:27
  When does Cornell say it's an AIDS metaphor?
• 58:30
  Around the time we write. I'll try and pull out.
• 58:33
  Pull out the interview. I think it's in.
• 58:35
  I might be in license tonight. It's certainly in a published
• 58:38
  article, right? I didn't.
• 58:40
  See it? I mean, you'd send it to me in a
• 58:43
  message, but I didn't see it myself.
• 58:46
  And then when you try and pared down where it could be, you can
• 58:50
  see from that rambling conversation there that it's not
• 58:53
  not quite clear. I mean, it could have been
• 58:55
  worse. Of course he could have done a
• 58:56
  really heavy-handed discussion around it, which which would be
• 58:59
  worse? But if anything I think it's
• 59:01
  around the fact he calls it love and war, not sex and death is
• 59:05
  telling you something about how he reads the travellers and
• 59:07
  sexuality I sent you. A message didn't I, saying is
• 59:12
  there a more new adventure sentence than Ice walks away
• 59:17
  from him, thinking about sex and death.
• 59:20
  I was like, Yep, there it is. It's all there.
• 59:23
  So profound they never would have been out for.
• 59:25
  A company of sex. And death they would.
• 59:26
  They come on not at this point and get it on the.
• 59:29
  Shelf. No, not well.
• 59:31
  That's the only thing, of course.
• 59:32
  Because they they, they just put up on the shelf next to the
• 59:34
  Target books, aren't they? That's, that's where you found
• 59:37
  them. There was no sense of you put
• 59:39
  them over there in a different bit.
• 59:40
  And so the fact that Noah was paying much attention to the
• 59:44
  Doctor Who at that point, apart from a small fan base, means
• 59:48
  that you could go down and buy the last of the Targets or you
• 59:52
  might pick up this. And the last of the targets of
• 59:55
  course are really interesting and and by and large they're
• 59:57
  well written and they expand those scripts and reading all
• 1:00:00
  the cotton's lately. Fenrick does.
• 1:00:03
  Stuff in terms of how you write the book as an epistolatory
• 1:00:07
  style, which you don't see anywhere else apart from like
• 1:00:09
  the Romans. We said this, didn't we, that
• 1:00:13
  Cotton does something completely different with his books,
• 1:00:15
  particularly the Romans in terms of the form.
• 1:00:17
  And so there's there's an interesting moment there when
• 1:00:20
  the Targets are still being produced and these are appearing
• 1:00:23
  on the shelves or they're on the shelves, they're selling through
• 1:00:25
  the Targets where I think a lot of the.
• 1:00:27
  Audience dipped their toes into this and then went, I'll go back
• 1:00:31
  to the targets. Yeah, well, I mean.
• 1:00:34
  I think my problem was, but we would have got cable not too
• 1:00:38
  long after this and so you were getting the TV stuff then?
• 1:00:43
  The stuff I hadn't seen. And Blake.
• 1:00:45
  And that will always be real Doctor Who.
• 1:00:47
  Won't. Yeah, you know, this is it.
• 1:00:49
  But yeah, so. Like I said, when I was on Jim
• 1:00:51
  Allenby's podcast, yeah, you had Blake 7 on there.
• 1:00:54
  At that point, Edge of Darkness was being reshown.
• 1:00:58
  That's when I first saw I, Claudius.
• 1:01:00
  That's where I saw Quaker Mass and all that seemed more
• 1:01:03
  important. Why would you waste your time
• 1:01:05
  with? This slightly tawdry adolescent
• 1:01:08
  version of Doctor Who. And yet they are They are being
• 1:01:12
  ambitious. They are trying some new things.
• 1:01:16
  I think a lot of the new adventures are a bit of a blind
• 1:01:18
  alley. Like, obviously the TV series
• 1:01:20
  takes gentle things from this but doesn't embrace it entirely
• 1:01:26
  because it can't. I think you're all right.
• 1:01:28
  And, and and Mark said it to you, didn't he, as you said on
• 1:01:30
  the podcast about season 8B has got a new adventures vibe to it.
• 1:01:36
  And I, and I think that's right. There are elements of it or
• 1:01:39
  echoes of it there, and they think there's a certain.
• 1:01:42
  Style of Doctor Who fan that lies season 8B you know yeah was
• 1:01:46
  it usually like. Babylon 5 as well, you know.
• 1:01:49
  They'll have Babylon 5 as well. You could be describing me of
• 1:01:52
  course of. Course I have, yeah.
• 1:01:55
  But now, now I think it was a mistake.
• 1:01:57
  I suppose of course 94 through 96 would be GCSE and then A
• 1:02:04
  level, and you've got other things to do that the new
• 1:02:06
  adventures. If it if Doctor hadn't hadn't
• 1:02:09
  been on the TVI suspect I would have stuck with the new
• 1:02:12
  adventures more consistently than just dipping in and dipping
• 1:02:14
  out again. But now I think it was a great
• 1:02:16
  mistake, so I'll go back. Do you know well?
• 1:02:19
  And I hope we can explore that some more, saying Babylon 5 is
• 1:02:24
  bizarrely appropriate because those that did read the new
• 1:02:29
  Adventures at the time and stuck with them.
• 1:02:31
  Yeah. And embrace them.
• 1:02:34
  They remind me very much of Babylon 5 fans.
• 1:02:37
  So not you, Of course, you're an academic, so you can see the
• 1:02:40
  good and the bad. But let's just think about those
• 1:02:42
  nut cases that absolutely devote their lives to these things.
• 1:02:45
  New Adventures Babylon 5. You can't, you cannot say there
• 1:02:49
  is a flaw in them. Those people are apoplectic.
• 1:02:52
  If you suggest that this you know, the sainted New Adventures
• 1:02:56
  have a our lovely James HB is one of those people you know who
• 1:03:01
  suggests that these are all, you know, incredibly written tones,
• 1:03:06
  you know, and a Bible for the series.
• 1:03:08
  And clearly, clearly they are deeply, deeply flawed.
• 1:03:13
  But there's there is a genuine seed of ambition here.
• 1:03:18
  I think that should be recom, you know, commended.
• 1:03:21
  Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean.
• 1:03:23
  It's this or no Doctor Who and how far then the interest is
• 1:03:28
  kept alive, albeit with a particular subset of fans.
• 1:03:31
  Who who you know and you're in, You're in the trade.
• 1:03:35
  I was in the trade. You don't keep a range going if
• 1:03:38
  it's not bringing enough money to justify it.
• 1:03:40
  So, however small that it was, you send those books off to that
• 1:03:43
  orphanage. To, you know, fuel the fire.
• 1:03:46
  It's interesting about Babylon 5.
• 1:03:47
  And fandom, because I remember when they did the big Lawrence
• 1:03:50
  Miles interview in DWM for interference just before he'd
• 1:03:54
  come out. And then DJDJ.
• 1:03:56
  They, the readers hated that, didn't they?
• 1:03:58
  I I cool 35% bottom. Of the pole.
• 1:04:01
  Absolute mad mad. There's a letter there from.
• 1:04:05
  Someone who who realized it was pointed out to him that that
• 1:04:10
  Babylon 5 was Doctor Who dumped quote UN quote properly and that
• 1:04:15
  Babylonians this is this is I think it's the question
• 1:04:18
  Babylonians think whovians are babyish.
• 1:04:21
  Well, you've just called yourself a Babylonian, and
• 1:04:24
  you've called Baby. Is there and.
• 1:04:27
  The weird thing of if you liked 1, you had to just like the
• 1:04:30
  other. I mean, I, I do think there's
• 1:04:32
  some phenomenal stuff in Babylon Five.
• 1:04:33
  I think I agree. I I.
• 1:04:35
  Just can't watch it now. The TV production standard is so
• 1:04:39
  terrible, I I think Strakinsky. Gets his vision on there pretty
• 1:04:43
  much how he wants it I you know it's the type of thing that we
• 1:04:46
  we Lord now if we see it on one of the streamers but what he's
• 1:04:50
  fighting with with network TV yeah and also have just given up
• 1:04:54
  and walked away he just needs money don't he I.
• 1:04:56
  Want someone else to write his romantic dialogue as well?
• 1:04:59
  Yeah, I mean it's the. Usual the the seasons are too
• 1:05:02
  long. That's always a problem with
• 1:05:04
  these, you know, Star Trek seasons are too long as well.
• 1:05:06
  That's why you get filler and but it looks better in the case
• 1:05:10
  of Star Trek, whereas of course we never had money on Doctor
• 1:05:13
  Who. We had much shorter seasons and
• 1:05:15
  therefore the kind of expansion into other universes or into
• 1:05:19
  otherwise comes in these books. And so, however floor they might
• 1:05:23
  be, come back to your point about ambition.
• 1:05:26
  And actually some of the stars are still there.
• 1:05:28
  And you know, Aronovich, I think is, is really interesting as a
• 1:05:31
  figure, a woman I think as well. Yeah, one one of the one of the
• 1:05:35
  great. Late stories, Battlefield is
• 1:05:38
  still great. He's in here.
• 1:05:40
  And then he goes on to the the, the big career with his own
• 1:05:43
  universe now, which of course had been adaptive for TV with
• 1:05:45
  the The Rivers of London series. So we can't dismiss them.
• 1:05:49
  There are people, people seem to think I'm blind.
• 1:05:51
  To the floors of the 8th Doctor books, and trust me, I know
• 1:05:55
  they're there. They can't structure or complete
• 1:05:57
  an arc for toffee. You know, every other book is
• 1:06:01
  deeply flawed, but I think the middle ground between TV Doctor
• 1:06:05
  Who and a novel is much more, it's much more comfortable in
• 1:06:10
  the 8th Doctor books. There's, there's the ambition
• 1:06:12
  there that's here, but there's none of the adolescents and and
• 1:06:18
  you know, they are learning lessons of how far they can push
• 1:06:20
  it and they push it too far and they've learned that come the
• 1:06:23
  8th Doctor books. And so we don't really go there
• 1:06:25
  again. If you're going to set a book in
• 1:06:28
  in a whorehouse, you know, with great a spin tearing through
• 1:06:33
  time and space, then you write it as a historical document
• 1:06:37
  because as a book it would be too much.
• 1:06:39
  They learn some lessons. I think they they.
• 1:06:42
  Hit their run, probably. Their early sign of greatness is
• 1:06:48
  probably alien bodies. Yeah, I think so, yeah.
• 1:06:52
  I don't want to piss. On what's there before it, but
• 1:06:55
  alien bodies is where you go. This is really interesting and
• 1:06:58
  it's using Doctor Who's history, but it's doing something
• 1:07:02
  different with it. It's not kind of slavish, just
• 1:07:05
  retreading. It's got to affirm of what
• 1:07:07
  you're you're in your head cannon and the actual cannon.
• 1:07:10
  And I think you're right to establish their own continuity
• 1:07:14
  was really important and that that's and it literally in terms
• 1:07:17
  of. Like ambition, Alien Bodies
• 1:07:19
  kicks into interference, which kicks into the ancestor cell.
• 1:07:24
  The consequences of that are felt right the way through,
• 1:07:27
  because then you have Sabbath and and they're his masters
• 1:07:31
  coming in to take over, which goes all the way through to the
• 1:07:33
  Gallifrey Chronicle. So the arc starts in Alien
• 1:07:36
  Bodies and it ends. I mean that's mad right?
• 1:07:40
  And with mistakes along the way, but fuck me ambition.
• 1:07:45
  But it also it shows. Yeah, but it's also showing how
• 1:07:50
  far they are looking in terms of arcs as necessary.
• 1:07:58
  Because you've got Babylon 5. It's still on by this point,
• 1:08:02
  isn't it? And of course you can see Star
• 1:08:05
  Trek DS9 that gets Arclightis really, doesn't it?
• 1:08:13
  I mean, it's it's quite a sub arc become with the money.
• 1:08:18
  So there's always a sense in which you'd have to have an arc
• 1:08:21
  because that arcs are in at that point in time.
• 1:08:24
  And so it's interesting that what's on the telly in other
• 1:08:28
  formats, because even if you, if you look at what they're
• 1:08:30
  planning to do with if they go to series in America, if you
• 1:08:35
  look at the leaky Bible, there's some type of art there because
• 1:08:38
  it's a questionnaire. Isn't that New Adventures stuff?
• 1:08:41
  Mythology, Time Lords, the Doctors family, all stuff we've
• 1:08:45
  touched on in the new adventures and so.
• 1:08:50
  They're incredibly important going forward, but they're just
• 1:08:55
  incredibly important in and of themselves.
• 1:08:56
  And I'm kind of kind of kicking myself, like I said, that I I
• 1:08:59
  miss them. But yeah, loving words.
• 1:09:01
  By no means perfect and, and a shouldn't come back, but I think
• 1:09:06
  it's got an ambition to it. The problem is that it's the
• 1:09:10
  Doctor Who elements don't really work in it.
• 1:09:12
  Yeah. Or the Doctor Who.
• 1:09:14
  Elements they're borrowing yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:16
  Or. This there's a sense in which is
• 1:09:19
  a zombie version of Doctor Who, because it's not McCoy.
• 1:09:22
  Yeah, that whole run of the Doctors really depressed and
• 1:09:25
  he's making around the Tardes and he's thinking about Susan.
• 1:09:27
  He's thinking about Dodo. No, he's not McCoy.
• 1:09:30
  McCoy can't flip between light and dark.
• 1:09:33
  I mean, I think Mccoy's a better performer than you do, because
• 1:09:35
  I'm thinking about when he was Leah's full in that RSC of King
• 1:09:41
  Leah when he was cast, of course, because Timothy, Timothy
• 1:09:44
  Dalton's there as well. But the Fool is an interesting
• 1:09:46
  figure because he has to flip between light and dark, I think.
• 1:09:50
  I think when he played that he. Had the time to rehearse it.
• 1:09:53
  He had the time to get it right on Doctor Who.
• 1:09:55
  He was he literally says it in that Silver Nemesis documentary.
• 1:09:58
  We haven't got the time to get it right, you know, and it's
• 1:10:01
  there on the screen. He's not he's not had adequate
• 1:10:04
  time to hone his performance, but he can do it absolutely.
• 1:10:07
  But I think he's always better in Doctor Who.
• 1:10:09
  When? He's got better actors around
• 1:10:10
  him. Oh, you're talking about Ghost
• 1:10:12
  Light again, aren't you? Guys, I'm also talking about.
• 1:10:14
  Rumours of the Daleks because Pamela Sell and Simon
• 1:10:20
  Williamson's, they're phenomenal.
• 1:10:22
  George Saul is Ratcliffe. Mike.
• 1:10:25
  I mean, again, another great loss figure there because that's
• 1:10:27
  a really interesting good performance from Dinsdale.
• 1:10:31
  He plays, he does he. Yeah.
• 1:10:34
  And again come back. To discussion around late 80s
• 1:10:39
  and sexuality. What a loss he is, because you
• 1:10:41
  can see he's charming, he's beautiful, but he's also a
• 1:10:44
  fascist and you could see how he tries to seduce Ace, both
• 1:10:49
  sexually but also politically. And it's a really interesting
• 1:10:53
  role, way more interesting in the.
• 1:10:54
  Book as well. So you know Rachel Jensen, she
• 1:10:58
  knows all about it in the book and it's just unspoken.
• 1:11:02
  Well, look, you and me could talk all day till the cows come
• 1:11:05
  home. I think we've covered an awful
• 1:11:07
  lot here. What I'm going to say is thank
• 1:11:10
  you very much for coming on. Thank you for reading Love and
• 1:11:13
  War. Now, we've made a few promises
• 1:11:15
  to each other, so read a few more here.
• 1:11:17
  And we've got our Christopher Beulis that we're going to read
• 1:11:20
  State a change. And just today you've agreed to
• 1:11:25
  read and Give your opinion on Underworld by Terrence Stricks
• 1:11:30
  and more importantly to me, Terror of the Vervoids by Pip
• 1:11:35
  and Jane Baker. Now I'm going to throw it open
• 1:11:37
  to you to choose which one we do next.
• 1:11:41
  Oh, should you? Fanny's in space.
• 1:11:43
  Yes, please. Can we?
• 1:11:45
  Please take the vervoids because I opened up one page and they
• 1:11:50
  started a sentence with Pell male comma and I just want to
• 1:11:54
  know where that sentence goes. I wonder if we'll.
• 1:12:02
  Find the experience better or worse than reading Love and War?
• 1:12:05
  Let's find it. Different, Paul, thank you very
• 1:12:10
  much. For your time.
• 1:12:14
  Thank you.