Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Doctor Who in Wonderland by Paul Magrs (featuring Andrew Batty, Jon Arnold & Luke Sims-Jenkins)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Doctor Who in Wonderland by Paul Magrs (featuring Andrew Batty, Jon Arnold & Luke Sims-Jenkins) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:01
  He's Lewis Carroll, he's the epicentre, he's the source, he's
• 0:05
  the creator, if you like, of this whole world around us.
• 0:08
  Well, of course we're safer keeping close to him.
• 0:10
  Nothing bad can happen to him inside a world of his making,
• 0:13
  can it? The doctor was still trying to
• 0:16
  smile benignly happy with his reasoning.
• 0:19
  Tegan said. Then how come he's turning into
• 0:21
  a dodo? The doctor was shocked.
• 0:25
  What? It was true.
• 0:28
  Dodgson had been twisting and gurning for some moments.
• 0:31
  He had gained feckless looking flapping wings and his face was
• 0:35
  busy sprouting a bulbous, absurd looking beak.
• 0:38
  Feathers had fluffed up all over his body under his dandified
• 0:41
  suit and his feet, which had transformed into 3 toed claws
• 0:45
  and burst out of his polished shoes.
• 0:49
  Oh no. Exclaimed the mathematician.
• 0:52
  Not a dodo. Not a dodo of all things.
• 0:57
  Why had something less silly looking than a dodo?
• 0:59
  Why must that be sort of absurd? The Doctor stepped back a pace.
• 1:05
  Ah, I see. Well, never mind.
• 1:12
  The savage roar from deep inside the dark wood shattered the
• 1:15
  relative peace once more. It was much closer now.
• 1:20
  Tegan grasped the Doctor's arm. What the hell is that?
• 1:25
  Whatever it is, it's getting closer.
• 1:28
  But as I say, I'm sure we're quite safe here with Charles.
• 1:32
  But Charles Dodgson had started to hair around in tight little
• 1:35
  circles of panic. He was flapping his ineffectual
• 1:38
  wings and honking in dismay. What's the matter?
• 1:42
  Taken shouted at him. The ghastly roar, repeated and
• 1:49
  just announced, shattered their eardrums.
• 1:53
  The dodo squawked and started jumping up and down on the spot
• 1:57
  as if he thought he could take flight.
• 2:02
  The doctor was looking worried by now.
• 2:05
  Who's here? What are you talking about,
• 2:07
  Dodgson? The dodo's eyes were bulging in
• 2:10
  his feathery face, but try as he might, he just couldn't get his
• 2:16
  words out. Another terrible screeching roar
• 2:21
  shook the blade. The very earth under their feet
• 2:23
  trembled, as if something very large and vastly heavy was
• 2:27
  approaching them. Tegan shouted.
• 2:30
  It sounds like AT Rex. It sounds like Godzilla.
• 2:34
  The dodo was frozen in shock, his head swiveling round to the
• 2:38
  source of the awful noise. At that very moment, they came
• 2:49
  through the trees, the most appalling looking beast that
• 2:52
  ever that Doctor Ortega had seen in a long while.
• 2:56
  It was something like a zombified dragon, with tattered
• 2:59
  purple wings flaring around it's flailing reptilian limbs.
• 3:03
  Dripping yellow teeth were bared each time it roared, and it's
• 3:07
  eyes were spiralling brightly, madly in their vast sockets.
• 3:11
  The Jabberwocky half flew, half hopped through the trees,
• 3:15
  reflecting golden talons and bellowing with ravenous hunger.
• 3:20
  You can't eat me, the doctor says.
• 3:23
  So didn't you hear him? Professor Dodgson cried.
• 3:27
  I created you. I made you up.
• 3:31
  You can't eat me. But the creature threw back his
• 3:36
  dreadful head and gave a horrible laugh as he reached out
• 3:40
  a handful of claws. Tegan screamed No, and the
• 3:45
  doctor dived forward to drag her out of the way.
• 3:48
  The dodo stood up bravely in the face of the beast.
• 3:52
  I deny you. You aren't real and you can't
• 3:56
  eat me. And in a flash, the Jabberwocky
• 4:00
  ate him. Hamster Book Club, The Doctor
• 4:16
  Who Novel Review Podcast with Joe Ford, Andrew Batty, Luke
• 4:22
  sins Jenkins, and John Arnold in Wonderland by Paul Mars.
• 4:39
  Welcome back to the hamster book club.
• 4:42
  My name is Joe Ford, otherwise known as the Mad Hatter of this
• 4:49
  podcast. I have assembled a number of
• 4:53
  worky and eccentric characters for our tripping to fantasyland.
• 4:58
  Today we have the March Hare here, otherwise known as Andrew
• 5:03
  Batty. Hello, Andrew.
• 5:04
  Hello, I wanted to be Alice but I'll take.
• 5:09
  I was decided whether you and I should be the Queen.
• 5:12
  All right. OK.
• 5:13
  I'll then go with either of us. We have got the loveliest
• 5:18
  dormouse I ever know. Mr. Luke Sims Jenkins.
• 5:22
  Have a look, I'm profession. You probably are the mad hair,
• 5:28
  aren't you? Yeah, maybe.
• 5:31
  I don't know. I wanted to be the cat.
• 5:33
  That way I can get padded by Anissa.
• 5:35
  That would be nice. Thank you.
• 5:37
  On the on the. Construction, I should say
• 5:40
  sorry. Behave yourself.
• 5:43
  This is a puffing book, you know.
• 5:44
  Good grief. Oh.
• 5:46
  My goodness. On the subject of the Cheshire
• 5:49
  Cat, he's here with us today dispensing wisdom, and let's
• 5:52
  hope he doesn't pop off at some point during the conversation.
• 5:56
  Mr. John Arnold. Hello, John.
• 5:58
  Hello. Well, it's nice.
• 6:00
  I'm going to get to sit around on top of various things and
• 6:02
  just late about. It's great you guys could do all
• 6:05
  the work. I mean if we was going to be the
• 6:08
  5th Doctor Adric T no Adric, sorry Telo, Tegan and Nyssa, who
• 6:12
  would be who? I'm Tegan.
• 6:15
  Oh, you're definitely Tegan. Yeah.
• 6:17
  Who's who's the nicest person here?
• 6:21
  That would be the doctor, ain't me.
• 6:22
  Jesus Christ. I'll be Terlo, all right.
• 6:28
  Oh, Tegan and Nyssa. Wow, boys.
• 6:32
  No, Luke's Tegan, we've. Already got the Tegan, yeah?
• 6:34
  We've got left. Oh, Nyssa and the doctor, Oh,
• 6:36
  they're both pretty boring. It can't be alright.
• 6:38
  You've got to have. The accent accent so you can say
• 6:40
  useful things like it's an entry coder.
• 6:44
  Or doctor look. Out Cybermen who would be best
• 6:47
  at going? I know so little about
• 6:49
  telebiogenesis. I knew nothing about
• 6:52
  telebiogenesis. There you go.
• 6:53
  Me neither. I'll take it.
• 6:55
  And John does have an open on his face, doesn't he?
• 6:58
  Be honest. We are here today to talk about
• 7:03
  Doctor Who in Wonderland by Paul Mars.
• 7:07
  People are going to think we've got a fetish for Paul Mars.
• 7:09
  The amount of books we've covered on this book club
• 7:12
  because. We do.
• 7:12
  I'm OK with. That.
• 7:14
  It's it's a fusion of Doctor Who and Alice in Wonderland.
• 7:20
  Whoever thought that would be a possibility or this good?
• 7:25
  Well, that's Paul Mars. Obviously.
• 7:27
  Before we get into talking about the book, I've posed a little
• 7:31
  puzzler for all of us today. And that is, if you was to
• 7:34
  choose another classic or another book to inspire a Doctor
• 7:39
  Who story, what book would you choose and what TARDIS team
• 7:44
  would you throw in there? My God, look at Luke, he's so
• 7:46
  excited. Off you go, Luke.
• 7:49
  All right, this is an easy 1, and that's why I wanted to go
• 7:52
  first because just in case one of you 3 gentlemen stole it.
• 7:56
  But I do believe we've had the 6th Doctor meeting HG Wells
• 8:00
  before, have we not? We have.
• 8:03
  So there you go. Let's go for The Time Machine,
• 8:06
  All War of the Worlds, all the First Men in the Moon.
• 8:10
  Something HG Wells mash up with the 6th Doctor.
• 8:14
  HG Wells, and let's go with Mel. Yeah.
• 8:20
  That. Would be there, Karen?
• 8:21
  Would it be there, Karen? Oh, no, not again.
• 8:23
  The Herbert. OK, Andrew, what have you got
• 8:28
  for us? Well, as I was reading Alison,
• 8:35
  Doctor Who in Wonderland, I was also like Googling through like
• 8:38
  what books are actually on the pet Puffin classics list and
• 8:41
  what could be coming up next? So I went through like loads.
• 8:44
  Of crime and punishment. I had quite a long list of like,
• 8:46
  oh, what could work. But then when I was trying to
• 8:49
  think of my favorite one, I was like, oh, maybe, maybe Dracula.
• 8:53
  I mean, that would be quite a easy one to put Doctor Who into,
• 8:57
  but who? It's like, who would you put?
• 8:59
  Where would you insert the Doctor?
• 9:00
  Who would he be? Would he be Van Helsing or would
• 9:03
  you do like something more, more creative with it?
• 9:05
  That could work. One that I thought would be
• 9:08
  really charming would be five children in it.
• 9:12
  That he Nesbit was mainly because I love the 90s version
• 9:17
  and I could just imagine Sylvester McCoy being the Samiad
• 9:22
  in the middle of a Sam pier being very grumpy of Victorian
• 9:25
  children. But I'm not going to pick those
• 9:29
  two because. One that was amazing.
• 9:32
  I'd love to read that. There's one that I would just
• 9:35
  like, genuinely adore to read and like would be the
• 9:39
  culmination of just like childhood for me.
• 9:43
  And that would be Doctor Who in Narnia and the.
• 9:50
  Wardrobe is bigger on the inside.
• 9:52
  Yeah, exactly. And the Doctor, the Widow and
• 9:57
  the wardrobe is just such a pile of shite.
• 9:59
  I hate that episode so much. And I feel like it like, ruined
• 10:05
  that whole concept of Doctor Who meets Narnia.
• 10:07
  And it means that you can't really do it until that is a
• 10:11
  distant memory. But Narnia is out of copyright
• 10:16
  in in 2033. So if the Puffin children's
• 10:19
  classics are still going, then they can they can do it.
• 10:23
  But I was think I was trying to think about like how you would
• 10:25
  actually do it. And I was thinking like, I
• 10:29
  probably just want it to be like quite surreal and unexplained.
• 10:32
  And maybe you'd have like a child version of Susan or
• 10:35
  something like going into Narnia and just meeting like Doctor Who
• 10:39
  character inspired takes on the Narnia character.
• 10:43
  A little bit like the Blue Angel, where there's like that
• 10:45
  bit where the Doctor's just living in the council house and
• 10:47
  it's never really explained like what that bit is.
• 10:50
  So maybe it's like the obverse universe version of Narnia.
• 10:55
  That's what I want. Paul Mars, get on it.
• 10:58
  I am going to direct him to this episode.
• 11:00
  When it comes up. Because I think we're all going
• 11:02
  to be quite positive. So, Paul, you've got a year, all
• 11:06
  right. Now he's he's got, he's got nine
• 11:09
  years. Oh yeah, sorry, now 7 Narnia
• 11:12
  books. I'm saying you shouldn't be
• 11:15
  time. To be published all in one year.
• 11:17
  What was it? He goes through, he's better
• 11:19
  start now. Oh, wonderful.
• 11:22
  OK, Well John, what have you got for us?
• 11:24
  See, I had two here, and I couldn't make up my mind between
• 11:27
  them because most of these puffing doctorate books here,
• 11:30
  they're in kind of fantasyland. So I was like, OK, any
• 11:33
  classicals? I was like, OK, can we do Pride
• 11:36
  and Prejudice? Oh fuck, that's my choice as
• 11:39
  well. But I couldn't look at my
• 11:43
  weather. I I won't take it.
• 11:44
  So I was, I was going, do I put McGann in there is Darcy or do I
• 11:48
  put Matt Smith in there because it's funnier.
• 11:50
  So I went, no, I thought I'd go for because I could work out.
• 11:56
  It's going to be a little funnier.
• 11:58
  I'm going to go for Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
• 12:02
  Oh, and I, I had kind of three tireless teams in mind.
• 12:07
  First one I thought you could do it with would be Sick Doctor
• 12:10
  Male because you can easily do Sick Doctor Ballyard nice and
• 12:14
  easy. All the two sides of male, you
• 12:18
  know. Yeah.
• 12:19
  Oh yeah, it seems. Psychotic exercise and heroin.
• 12:25
  Oh, you've you've read Death in the Stars, have you?
• 12:27
  No, yeah, no. Then I was thinking you could do
• 12:31
  again Matt Smith, probably Clara turning into Capaldi when he's
• 12:38
  oh do I just go Capaldi and Clara are just Capaldi and no
• 12:42
  one could tell the difference between Jekyll and Hyde.
• 12:46
  That's brilliant. Yeah.
• 12:49
  Well, who is Doctor Jekyll? Well, either one of them really.
• 12:54
  Well, I mean you have said my book I chose Proud and Prejudice
• 12:57
  by Jane Austin. I don't know who's going to
• 12:59
  write this, but I'm having the 1st Doctor, Stephen and Dodo in
• 13:03
  this book. And Stephen is going to be the
• 13:06
  dashing Mr. Darcy type, being rude to all and sundry in high
• 13:10
  society. Obviously Dodo is the freshest
• 13:13
  vixen in town. She's the talk of the town and
• 13:16
  every eligible bachelor wants to mark her dance card.
• 13:20
  Imagine Dodo. Fabulous frocks going to all the
• 13:22
  balls and everyone's after. Her I'm not.
• 13:28
  Sure. I'm sort of desperate to try and
• 13:30
  somehow shoehorn the Doctor into this.
• 13:33
  So I've said that it's going to be a comedy, right?
• 13:35
  The Doctor's going to be in a sort of Mr. Bennett role.
• 13:37
  Yeah, it has to be. Forced to try and stop his
• 13:40
  companions from being married off throughout the book.
• 13:42
  And that's better. That's just hard.
• 13:44
  Or doing all the comedy and that's my book sounds quite good
• 13:47
  though. I think that's.
• 13:48
  Brilliant. Big Finish, Get on it coming
• 13:53
  soon from Steven Noonan. I'd also like to see the 8th
• 13:58
  Doctor in 20,000 leagues under the seat.
• 14:01
  Think that'd be a fun time. It's set in that era and he's
• 14:04
  got the, I mean like the old costume for him.
• 14:06
  That's right, yeah. I'll tell you what, right, If we
• 14:09
  go into the next sort of couple of years and they start
• 14:11
  appearing in the Puffing Classics range, OK.
• 14:14
  We. Need to direct the lawyers to
• 14:16
  this school. That's right.
• 14:18
  Disclaimer. Yeah, well, they're doing Frank.
• 14:20
  Feel like Lawrence Miles in the new series?
• 14:23
  Who's in that? 1.
• 14:24
  Who's in the Frankenstein? I don't think they've said who
• 14:27
  it is yet, and so it's in the back of this one, but it just
• 14:30
  says Frankenstein by Jack Heath. I don't.
• 14:33
  As long as it ain't Mary Shelley again, all right.
• 14:36
  Oh God, we're going to. Touch one right in the sequel.
• 14:40
  Well, OK, I am now going to hand over to the March Hare as we
• 14:44
  head into Doctor Who in Wonderland.
• 14:49
  Yes, yes. So we are doing this wonderful
• 14:53
  little book which was published earlier this year.
• 14:57
  So it's is it the 4th or the 5th?
• 15:01
  I think, Oh, they're all on back.
• 15:03
  So 12345, it's the 6th book in this Puffin Doctor Who mashup
• 15:10
  series. And yeah, I was just so excited
• 15:14
  by this one because it's Paul Mars and it's Alice in
• 15:18
  Wonderland. It's just a beautiful
• 15:19
  combination of two things that I love dearly.
• 15:22
  So I was really excited to read this one, and I'm really looking
• 15:26
  forward to hearing what everyone else thought.
• 15:30
  So yeah, Luke, what were your first impressions?
• 15:34
  This is Paul Mars, Alice in Wonderland Davidson story.
• 15:40
  He doesn't even know me and I feel like he wrote a book for
• 15:42
  me. Like.
• 15:44
  What are you doing, Paul? So yeah, I, I open it up first
• 15:50
  couple pages. I'm like, oh, it's set here
• 15:53
  right after Morden undead. OK, so it's a it's a four part
• 15:57
  story now and rather than three and I, I, I just loved it.
• 16:03
  I also, I also loved that it might be the same size as a
• 16:08
  certain more recent new book that we read, but there's like
• 16:13
  three times the story in it and it promises stuff and it
• 16:16
  delivers. I I'm sorry.
• 16:18
  Which book are you talking about?
• 16:20
  Ruby Red This was cheaper than Ruby red.
• 16:23
  It's the same, it's the same, it's the same length and it's
• 16:26
  just it feels a little bit more jam packed as well.
• 16:29
  So it's. It's got double the regulars and
• 16:32
  gives them more to do. Yeah, now I thought, I thought
• 16:36
  this was an absolute joy to read and it's nice.
• 16:40
  It's the first, I think, David Davison original novel since
• 16:43
  what Empire of Death. And if this had been the first
• 16:49
  book in the range, I probably would have more books in this
• 16:53
  range because it's a Davidson story.
• 16:55
  So you kind of jumped out at me, but I have a couple on the way
• 17:00
  just off off the strength of this.
• 17:03
  John. I had 10,000 sticky buns worth
• 17:07
  of fun with this. Can you explain that reference?
• 17:12
  Please. It's a case of this is where
• 17:15
  it's so perfect. It's it's because Hallmarks has
• 17:18
  such a handle not only on the Doctor Who stuff, because it's
• 17:22
  so perfectly set. Just after Mordering, you know
• 17:26
  the detail, you couldn't set it imagine except to any of the
• 17:29
  stories. He's got such a handle on the
• 17:32
  Carol stuff, the nonsense and the maths.
• 17:34
  And a bun is a unit of pleasure. So one bun, one unit of
• 17:41
  pleasure. And Teagan beautifully calls
• 17:44
  this out all the way through. You can't measure it like that.
• 17:47
  There's some nonsense around it, you know, like pleasure and
• 17:50
  measure fun and fun. And he just has the word play.
• 17:56
  He has that kind of the mathematical play as well.
• 18:00
  I can't put it any differently because it's it's, it's number
• 18:03
  play. How's that?
• 18:06
  And it's just that perfect voice.
• 18:09
  It's it's just one of those books where the you can tell how
• 18:13
  good it is. It's the author could have
• 18:16
  written this just one burst in just a bunch of joy.
• 18:21
  Instead, he's written and the details of what absolutely makes
• 18:26
  book all the way through. It's good.
• 18:30
  It's much better than it needed to be.
• 18:32
  And that's how you can tell what a really good book is.
• 18:37
  Go. Hello, I'm going to say
• 18:40
  something slightly controversial now and it's not that I didn't
• 18:44
  love this book but I really fucking hate Alice in Wonderland
• 18:48
  right on a level I can't even describe.
• 18:52
  My partner loves it and has about 1515 versions of it in
• 18:57
  books and it's even got like this weird porn book about I
• 19:01
  don't even go there all. Right, lost girls.
• 19:03
  Australia. That's what it's called.
• 19:05
  That's what. Yeah.
• 19:06
  Honestly, have you seen the illustrations?
• 19:08
  Yeah. Yeah, I've got a copy.
• 19:09
  Alice in Wonderland getting kind of lingers.
• 19:11
  I couldn't believe it. Alan Moore, yeah.
• 19:14
  Close that book up. I don't want to read it anyway.
• 19:17
  Yeah. And, and so I have been forced
• 19:20
  to endure March Alison. One we've even got like an old
• 19:23
  print, a really expensive old print of Alice in Wonderland up
• 19:27
  on the wall. So I, I'm exposed to it a lot.
• 19:31
  So I went into this book going deep breath, OK, more Alice in
• 19:35
  Wonderland. And finally I feel like I'm in
• 19:38
  on the party with everybody else because seen through a Doctor
• 19:42
  Who lens, clearly that's all I can do later in life.
• 19:48
  I fucking read now. I really loved it and I loved
• 19:52
  all the characters and just seeing those regulars
• 19:55
  interacting with those characters.
• 19:58
  It was telling me stuff about those regulars that I would
• 20:01
  never have thought about before. And there's a ton of like back
• 20:04
  story for some of them and really interesting observations.
• 20:08
  But just that Paul Mars has a weird freewheeling style anyway,
• 20:14
  right where he he appears to be making it up as he goes along
• 20:18
  and you just have one insane thing happen after another.
• 20:21
  And the the magic of Paul Mars is he just ties it all together
• 20:25
  into a rock solid plot at the end of the book in a brilliant
• 20:28
  way. So this was like a marriage made
• 20:31
  in heaven, right? He's he's, he's aping Lewis
• 20:34
  Carroll, but he's absolutely doing Paul Miles.
• 20:40
  Well, my, you've, you've gone into my next question and my
• 20:43
  question to everyone was going to be what was your, what's your
• 20:45
  initial experience of Alice in Wonderland and do you like it?
• 20:48
  And, and what's what's. But Joe, have you have you read
• 20:52
  the books before or is it this just from like the Disney film
• 20:55
  or? I haven't, no.
• 20:58
  I wonder if I read them when I was younger, then I would be on
• 21:01
  the same page as everybody else. But I was reading Target books
• 21:04
  when I was younger. And not Alice in Wonderland.
• 21:06
  Unfortunately, and I've read, I spoke to a lot of people on the
• 21:09
  Desert Planet Discs that have chosen Alice in Wonderland as
• 21:11
  like the book that they would take.
• 21:13
  So I know this captured the imagination of so many people,
• 21:16
  but I didn't have any Daleks in it, so Terence was always going
• 21:20
  to be. In unfortunately.
• 21:21
  Lewis Carroll But yeah, this, this really worked for me.
• 21:27
  It makes me want to go and read Alice in Wonderland.
• 21:30
  That's the highest endorsement I can give it.
• 21:34
  So Luke, what's what's your previous Alice experience?
• 21:39
  The Disney cartoon was where I first got exposed to Alice in
• 21:42
  Wonderland. I think I read them maybe in my
• 21:46
  early teens or something like that.
• 21:47
  Maybe a little older than the age group it was maybe written
• 21:52
  for, but didn't matter. I still still enjoyed it.
• 21:55
  So it's always been something I've I've liked, but I wouldn't
• 21:58
  necessarily say like it's transformed my life and I
• 22:01
  absolutely adore it. But having read a book like
• 22:04
  this, it makes me think like maybe I should give this another
• 22:08
  read as well. And but maybe that does need a
• 22:12
  Doctor Who lends because I always thought I like Alison
• 22:15
  Wonderland. I don't love it, but I like it.
• 22:18
  And then reading a book with, like, my favorite bloody
• 22:22
  characters in it in that world. Yeah.
• 22:25
  Like Joe said, it kind of makes you a believer in a way, you
• 22:30
  know? So yeah, it's a it's a beautiful
• 22:33
  book. I I was very happy.
• 22:37
  Smile on my face the whole time, even now.
• 22:39
  Like talking about it. I'm going to say this now
• 22:41
  because I will forget later because I did it right in my
• 22:43
  notes. You know, that weird sort of
• 22:45
  hallucinatory way that in Alice in Wonderland, things transition
• 22:51
  from like one place to another or suddenly they're massive or
• 22:54
  suddenly the seas there or whatever.
• 22:56
  You know, it's like a like a dream.
• 22:58
  Yeah. Like you go from 11 weird
• 23:01
  landscape to another and it's in a second.
• 23:03
  It seems to happen like very Mars of that, just perfectly in
• 23:08
  this, didn't he? I thought one minute I'm in a
• 23:10
  wood, the next minute I'm in the ocean.
• 23:12
  I'm like, what's going on? The the party where they're all
• 23:15
  suddenly animal, you know, we you can't tell at first whether
• 23:19
  the port of the guy in the door is a mouse or not.
• 23:22
  And then he just everything's turned strange.
• 23:25
  It's just beautifully the the dream logic is so good in here.
• 23:31
  I love that Nyssa doesn't even know that anything's wrong.
• 23:35
  She's chilling on a on a like on a punt little canoe thing,
• 23:39
  talking to a cat like it's no big deal.
• 23:41
  And when Turlo kind of like wakes up, I think he was, he
• 23:45
  passed out or he fell over or something.
• 23:46
  And. It's perfect.
• 23:49
  Sees this conversation, he's like.
• 23:50
  Why do you what? What are you doing talking?
• 23:53
  Cats can't talk. Oh, can't they?
• 23:56
  I've just been talking to. This this has never seen a cat.
• 23:58
  Before he's late for a haircut or something, wasn't he?
• 24:00
  Like he's we're late for the hairdressers.
• 24:02
  I love the way Lister's trying to rationalize it.
• 24:04
  Or it's a cat. It's maybe it's mutated or
• 24:06
  something so. Are you bloody?
• 24:09
  Mad. He's beautiful.
• 24:12
  Such a good character note. Yeah, I mean.
• 24:14
  He he gets the regulars so spot on.
• 24:18
  It's almost like eerie, like, and the the dialogue feels like
• 24:23
  1980s dialogue that in a way that doesn't feel like clunky
• 24:27
  and terrible. Like that dialogue was like,
• 24:30
  he's really kind of taking that tone and just, yeah, making it
• 24:34
  really work and really work as a piece of children's literature.
• 24:38
  Like the prose in this is so clear.
• 24:41
  It's very much that sort of puffin tone of voice, which he
• 24:45
  just, you know, masters so ably. And the word that I kept on
• 24:49
  thinking when I was reading this was just effortless.
• 24:51
  Like he's that just skilled writer and it's there's no sort
• 24:57
  of, there's no pain points in this.
• 25:00
  It just sort of like flows perfectly.
• 25:02
  It's so. Fluid isn't it?
• 25:04
  Like I'll pick it up and then I'd put it down.
• 25:07
  I'd realised I'd read 100 pages. I'm like, what the hell, I was
• 25:10
  only reading for an hour. I had to slow.
• 25:13
  Myself down because I wanted it to last.
• 25:16
  I'd yeah, I I was. Going, I'm going to go through
• 25:18
  this in, you know, a day, two days.
• 25:20
  I said I'd, I'd had to force myself to go over a week with it
• 25:25
  and like, it was like every time I was like, I want to pick this
• 25:28
  up, I want to go back to it. I need to because Andrew's
• 25:32
  actually right. The regas of Beatles.
• 25:34
  Davison always had a reputation back in the, you know, the PDAs
• 25:38
  and the miscommandures of being a difficult doctor to write for.
• 25:43
  And there weren't very many that captured him well.
• 25:47
  And I think Paul and Paul Mars gets it because he gets a sense
• 25:50
  of humour of them all. He's got that, you know.
• 25:52
  And it particularly comes through.
• 25:54
  I think it helps on the behind the sofas, the DVD countries
• 25:57
  that you know, that kind of exasperation, the sarcasm of the
• 26:00
  5th Doctor and that is it all the way through this.
• 26:04
  I mean, he could be. Sarcastic on the TV as well.
• 26:07
  Oh, I told you he was. This is this is what was missed
• 26:10
  in the books. They they didn't go for the
• 26:11
  humour of it. They're making noise and.
• 26:13
  That's really boring, I. Agree.
• 26:17
  Also. There's a, there was.
• 26:17
  A tenancy in the books. Look, I'm going to drop a
• 26:20
  bombshell on you guys, and it shouldn't be that surprising
• 26:23
  since I love the Davis scenario, but.
• 26:26
  I don't mind Eric Saywood. I know he's not perfect, he's
• 26:29
  got some faults, but a lot of the Davis scenario was was done
• 26:34
  by Eric Saywood. And so when you got people like
• 26:38
  I really remember liking Fear of the Dark by Trevor Baxen Dale,
• 26:42
  but then we got to do the worries of the deep ending.
• 26:46
  I'm like, come on, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.
• 26:48
  Oh look, the only people alive the rig, sorry if you guys
• 26:51
  haven't read that, but the only people who have other regulars.
• 26:53
  I'm like we. I've already got Warriors.
• 26:55
  Of the deep like come on, man. So there's a tendency to be
• 26:59
  like, oh, it's a book set during the time of mercenaries and
• 27:03
  people being nasty. So we've got to do that for Al
• 27:07
  Davison book and Paul Masters. It's like Nah, not doing that
• 27:14
  making it make this fun and magical instead.
• 27:16
  So it's a different vibe. I agree.
• 27:18
  I agree with John. Yeah, I would agree with you.
• 27:20
  About Eric Saywood, you know, but I'm about 3 chapters from
• 27:23
  the end of Revelation of the Daleks at the moment, which is
• 27:26
  one of the few literary crimes, like I say, that has been
• 27:29
  committed in the name of Doctor Who.
• 27:31
  I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's.
• 27:33
  Perfect, but. Unlike the Davison era.
• 27:35
  And he's a big part of it, I think that is.
• 27:38
  Right, Paul Miles, apes of style, but somehow manages to
• 27:42
  make it very quotable and they're just sobtical as well.
• 27:45
  There's I've I've written down a shit ton of quotes, which I'm
• 27:47
  sure we'll get to. Joe, I've got an idea, right?
• 27:50
  There's four of us here. Should we all take one regular
• 27:53
  each and then sort of springboard conversation that
• 27:57
  way? And I have Turlo.
• 27:59
  You start with Turlo then. Off you go.
• 28:03
  Turlo is so good in this, they just, he's just such a prick.
• 28:13
  And because it's the sort of post mortem and undead Turlo, he
• 28:17
  can just be the worst version of Turlo.
• 28:20
  Yeah. And he's just.
• 28:21
  So mean. And he's so like down on
• 28:25
  absolutely everything and it's hilarious.
• 28:27
  And I think the way that he sort of distributes the characters is
• 28:31
  really clever. And the way that he puts Turlo
• 28:34
  and Nyssa together is like, it's quite unexpected.
• 28:37
  Like you normally think of Tegan and Turlo as the kind of
• 28:40
  bantering too, but taking like very serious kindnessa and
• 28:46
  putting her with this absolute bastard.
• 28:48
  It's just cute. It's so funny.
• 28:51
  It's comedy gold. Isn't it?
• 28:52
  Yeah. And also it kind of.
• 28:54
  Softens him because he can't quite bring himself to like
• 28:56
  fully hate Nyssa. She's being like, oh, Mr.
• 29:00
  Caterpillar, you'll turn into a beautiful butterfly like we have
• 29:04
  on on truck and huge butterflies and then it's just going giant
• 29:09
  butterflies. Sounds awful.
• 29:12
  When am I going to get out of here?
• 29:13
  This is terrible. It makes you realise it.
• 29:18
  Wasn't horrible enough on the screen, wasn't it?
• 29:22
  And then you've got like interplayed between him and the
• 29:25
  Black Guardian kind of going throughout, which because it's
• 29:28
  part of that, it's inserted into that trilogy, it doesn't need to
• 29:32
  be resolved. So it's just this sort of like
• 29:35
  you get this bitchy Black Guardian who turns up at various
• 29:38
  points in the book as well, including spoilers as the as the
• 29:43
  Red Queen, as the, you know, the Queen of Hearts Valentine.
• 29:47
  Dial with that. I was, I was just hysteric, so
• 29:51
  I'd put yeah. So.
• 29:55
  I think he just really nails, like making Telo horrible, but
• 30:00
  also funny and kind of likable for that reason.
• 30:03
  So he just, yeah, makes that character work really well.
• 30:08
  There was one. Moment though, that I just
• 30:11
  adored where Nyssa says that she's happy to see him and Mars
• 30:15
  describes it as a small glow of happiness inside of him and he
• 30:18
  goes. No one had said anything like
• 30:21
  that to him for a good long while.
• 30:23
  And you can see just the the start of him potentially thawing
• 30:27
  out on this journey with the doctor, which was so cute.
• 30:33
  Oh, he's such a cunt. I loved him, he.
• 30:35
  Is it's that whole? Chapter at the start, which is
• 30:39
  just his point of view. It's glorious because they
• 30:41
  summarise everyone. Beautifully.
• 30:43
  Yeah, there's three and it's perfect, you know, sweet and
• 30:47
  trusting Vanessa, you know, and he get brash and argumentative
• 30:51
  and oh, and that he likes them underneath it, but he's just
• 30:55
  such a bastard to him. Brilliant, he says.
• 30:59
  Nyssa. Is embarrassingly easy to
• 31:01
  hoodwink, which I thought was really funny.
• 31:03
  And what is it that the Doctor's impossible to like?
• 31:06
  Like he figured given what the Black Guardian has told him,
• 31:08
  he'd be just awful when he goes, but he's got so much enthusiasm
• 31:12
  he is impossible to dislike. Which is kind of the 5th Doctor,
• 31:15
  isn't it? And I like his.
• 31:19
  Opinion on Tegan? I feel like this book, it must
• 31:21
  be a piece of shit there. He describes her as.
• 31:26
  Dopey but shrewd. Which is kind of great as well
• 31:31
  because. She.
• 31:32
  Has him measured from the start, doesn't she?
• 31:35
  It's. A lot of writers find it hard to
• 31:39
  capture regulars in a 280 page book.
• 31:43
  Miles captures these regulars in that opening couple of
• 31:46
  paragraphs. From Telos point of view, you
• 31:48
  just, it's them there, you're there and you know you're in
• 31:51
  safe hands from that point on. I feel like we.
• 31:55
  Just finished Morden Undead and it's just like kept going like
• 31:59
  we've just got this extra, we've got this instead of.
• 32:01
  Terminus. That would have been a.
• 32:04
  Wonderful. Like Terminus, I'm sorry, but
• 32:08
  can we have both? Can we keep both like?
• 32:10
  No, Yeah, we can only have. That phrase.
• 32:13
  Oh, I'm. Choosing Wonderland anyway, but.
• 32:16
  Well, who wants to take? One of the other regulars then.
• 32:20
  I'll I'll do Tegan. Because I hope you will
• 32:23
  represent. Hey.
• 32:27
  Lost legs and I, I love Tegan in this book.
• 32:31
  We get a bit of a back story in these, in the in the Outback.
• 32:35
  And how is it a bit of a lonely time because it's all this wide
• 32:39
  open space, it's on a farm and all this kind of stuff.
• 32:41
  And one of her main ways of escaping was into this kind of
• 32:45
  fun fantasy dream world that Lewis Cowell had written.
• 32:50
  And it was also really fun to. Read a book.
• 32:53
  Where they arrived somewhere that Tegan would actually like
• 32:57
  to be. So is she still a little
• 33:00
  Teganish? Sure, of course.
• 33:03
  But she has fun in this. Like she's at the Tea Party.
• 33:07
  And there's something in it that could be like, you know what?
• 33:10
  I could handle this this way, if I will.
• 33:12
  You know what? I'm just going to go with this.
• 33:14
  And this is my favorite part of the book.
• 33:16
  I'm. Just so like.
• 33:17
  I'm I'm in it. Let's go, let's I'm just going
• 33:19
  to tea party it up. And it's just her experiencing
• 33:24
  all this kind of of joy. But she runs through the gamut
• 33:27
  as well, like, you know, sees the doctor being eaten by the
• 33:30
  Jabberwocky and all this kind of craziness.
• 33:33
  And she gets to meet one of her heroes, Lewis Carroll, the
• 33:37
  person who made her lonely Outback Aussie days more
• 33:41
  bearable. She's, I guess delightful is not
• 33:45
  usually the word you use to describe Tegan, but I would say
• 33:48
  in this book she she. Is delightful.
• 33:52
  You know, so she'll happily she'll complain.
• 33:56
  About it. Like I do like an early in the
• 33:58
  book all these cake cakes are sold.
• 34:01
  She's like you, there's heaps. Of them here.
• 34:04
  Screw you. What kind of salesperson?
• 34:07
  Is that the doctor's like? I'll handle this.
• 34:10
  She's like, no, so she doesn't like bad customer service.
• 34:14
  So there's in love. She's definitely the type of
• 34:17
  person to carrying it up at a retail store.
• 34:20
  Definitely right. You know that speech?
• 34:24
  She gives in Power of the Doctor when she goes back to Kate
• 34:27
  Stewart, you know, and I was and I was an Australian air
• 34:30
  stewardess. That's exactly how she is in a
• 34:32
  shop. You know, big speeches, all of
• 34:34
  that. Did you not think the?
• 34:37
  Bit a bit where it says that she was a lonely child that was on
• 34:42
  the farm and that she would go and find a shady spot after
• 34:46
  she'd done her work and sit down and read Alice in Wonderland and
• 34:50
  read the Tea Party. And that to her felt more like
• 34:53
  home than anywhere else because she was quite an orderly person.
• 34:56
  And that was such a chaotic world.
• 34:58
  I was like, this is the sort of insight into Tegan I've never
• 35:00
  had before and I really love it. And it explains.
• 35:05
  Why she might want to, you know, leave and travel the world and,
• 35:09
  and and see some things like that, you know, and why she's
• 35:11
  such a bitch. Because, yeah, she's not been
• 35:14
  around anyone else, you know, socially weird, Yeah.
• 35:20
  Absolutely I. I also really liked the fact
• 35:26
  that in true Tegan style, when the story is go in the way it
• 35:32
  should go, and that is the people at the Mad Hatters tea
• 35:35
  party are on an endless loop of basically torture.
• 35:40
  She goes well fuck the story let's go and she takes a move
• 35:44
  into the woods and goes, I'm not having this, I don't care what
• 35:47
  you wrote, I like all of you and I'm taking you with me.
• 35:50
  That's so Tegan, isn't it? And I this, this, I'm going to
• 35:56
  do a Joe here but quote something because Tegan's
• 35:59
  complaining like this is ridiculous.
• 36:03
  Us being in an Alison Wonderland.
• 36:06
  Well, Doctor, he's like. There's.
• 36:09
  Got to be a rational, rational explanation for this, hasn't
• 36:11
  there? Has there Doctor shrugged.
• 36:13
  Fish people causing the Great Fire of London. 10 soldiers
• 36:16
  asleep aboard a spaceship, waiting until it's time to wake
• 36:19
  up and conquer the world. Giant frog people and a kind of
• 36:22
  Noah's Ark in space. A giant snake who can possess
• 36:26
  people's hearts and souls. It's like when you you have that
• 36:29
  kind of meme or joke of someone trying to describe a movie with
• 36:32
  like eating the most. Silly way?
• 36:36
  Well. Blunt way possible and it just
• 36:38
  nails like the last few stories I've had.
• 36:42
  And Tiggers, like I see your point.
• 36:43
  They when you put it like that, this isn't any more ridiculous
• 36:47
  than any shit we've done. We normally go.
• 36:50
  Through, Yeah. So yes.
• 36:55
  This is if you a Tegan fan, you're going to love this book.
• 37:00
  I think so, yeah. Yeah, so we've got.
• 37:04
  We've got the Doctor and Nessa left.
• 37:06
  Who are you going to take? John?
• 37:07
  John, you take the. Doctor, I'll do Nessa.
• 37:10
  Oh, I was. Going to I'll do Nessa.
• 37:12
  Yeah. Oh, OK.
• 37:16
  I can't believe we're fired over.
• 37:20
  Nessa Josh is not going to be happy.
• 37:24
  Oh. She's so The thing is Nyssa is
• 37:29
  quanta dull character and she's the way, the only way she works,
• 37:34
  I think on screen is when you leave her with Tegan in the
• 37:36
  stories because you have that contrast of cut that kind of
• 37:40
  more forceful forward character. And then this is innocent.
• 37:44
  And that's exactly what Mars gets to you.
• 37:47
  It's almost indivisible with Andrew's point.
• 37:49
  She is, you know, she is the Alice of this book.
• 37:53
  She is this cut the kind of naive character, the one but the
• 37:57
  one who sees wondering because she's the one who's not familiar
• 37:59
  with this story at all. So she, so everything about her
• 38:03
  is like, wow, you know, she's got a wide sense of wonder, but
• 38:07
  you need her paired up with this absolute wanker here.
• 38:14
  Because. It's it's like sugar and spice.
• 38:17
  You know, she's that innocent view, but you can undercut that
• 38:23
  almost immediately on that next line with Turlo's point of view
• 38:27
  and she. And it's.
• 38:28
  Wonderful because we never really got this partnership on
• 38:31
  screen. You know mordering.
• 38:34
  There's everyone else around them at the time, Terminus, you
• 38:38
  know, she gets shoved off in the, you know, in the
• 38:42
  interference in the TARDIS and chucked away from he's busy
• 38:45
  checking out. Tegan's bum in the fence, the
• 38:47
  whole terminus or something. And there's Nyssa.
• 38:51
  Come on. Yeah, he he.
• 38:54
  Wants someone who's a bit more balshy I suppose.
• 38:57
  He like he likes them rough, so to speak.
• 39:02
  Don't let hit Teegany you say that or Janet.
• 39:05
  Fielding. You know what if.
• 39:08
  They had their wits about them. They would have realized that
• 39:11
  that that cult, that kind of clash of characters is really
• 39:17
  funny when you write it well. And they would have written out
• 39:20
  Teegan in Terminus and kept Nyssa, and this would have done
• 39:23
  the rest of the run. I could see her leaving in
• 39:25
  Resurrection of the Daleks saying I'm sick of all this
• 39:27
  murder. That would have made perfect
• 39:28
  sense because it would have been so funny.
• 39:31
  It's. Even better.
• 39:32
  Yeah. It's even better for Nyssa,
• 39:33
  isn't it? Because she is that nice
• 39:35
  character who would kind of be pushed to that limit.
• 39:41
  Absolutely. You know, and I know.
• 39:43
  Yeah. Term is fine.
• 39:43
  She's altruistic. Can you imagine Tegan going like
• 39:47
  that now? I fancy saving everyone.
• 39:50
  It can work. It can actually work, I think
• 39:53
  because it's she, you know, it's her against the universe.
• 39:57
  Perfect. But yeah, I think that I.
• 40:00
  Think what he does with the three companions in this this
• 40:02
  book that's quite clever is like Alice is quite conspicuous by
• 40:07
  her absence in this book. Like she doesn't, we don't get
• 40:09
  to meet a version of Alice until about 2/3 of the way in.
• 40:13
  And I think that he kind of takes the different
• 40:17
  characteristics of Alice in that book and sort of splits them
• 40:20
  between the companions. Because Alice, like, I think
• 40:23
  particularly if you're only familiar with the Disney
• 40:25
  version, you think of her as quite a sort of empty character
• 40:28
  and quite nice. But she's actually like, really
• 40:30
  multifaceted faceted in the book and like, she's got kind of like
• 40:34
  this. Young and naive.
• 40:37
  Wide eyed thing, which is the Nessa bit, but then she's also
• 40:40
  got this like determination and like being a bit like bossy and
• 40:46
  and that that's like the Tegan bit.
• 40:48
  And then she can also be an absolute.
• 40:50
  She can also. Be an absolute brat, which is,
• 40:53
  which is Telo. So you kind of you get all those
• 40:56
  different bits and then you've got you're covering kind of all
• 41:00
  those bits of Wonderland with these three characters because
• 41:02
  the Doctor has also been kind of like sidelined off into his own
• 41:06
  storyline. So I think, yeah, that's kind of
• 41:08
  what he's doing with the three companions and yeah.
• 41:11
  I think the interesting thing I've got is that Sarah certainly
• 41:13
  of course played Alice, yes, back in.
• 41:16
  I would love to go back and watch that after reading this to
• 41:18
  see how that kind of compares that thing.
• 41:22
  It'd be really fast because that'd be a really nice extra
• 41:24
  kind of meta textual layer to it.
• 41:26
  Didn't you love as well? Though the fact that you know,
• 41:28
  obviously Turlo is being snidey, sarcastic and insulting to every
• 41:32
  single person they meet in this story and this is being lovely.
• 41:35
  Though she meets the playing cards guards and just ends up
• 41:38
  gossiping with them, you know and think oh how lovely a
• 41:41
  playing card that talks. But when the is it the March
• 41:44
  hair who turns into the the raft when they're in the water?
• 41:48
  It's only the fact that she's so nice that it's like, well,
• 41:50
  you're my friends. You're the only person that's
• 41:52
  been nice to me. I'm going to help you.
• 41:54
  And you think actually, maybe hers is the right approach.
• 41:56
  The thing is. I think too much of Taylor would
• 42:00
  be unbearable and too much of missus approach are unbearable
• 42:02
  but you put them together. Totally.
• 42:05
  As funny as hell, because. Has anyone?
• 42:08
  Ever seen that thing on YouTube? The Nyssa and Tegan sitcom where
• 42:11
  they've done a title sequence with Shirley.
• 42:14
  Someone now can. Someone now do the Nyssa and
• 42:17
  Turlo 1. Where she falls in the lake.
• 42:23
  In Castro. Velba, but with a laugh track on
• 42:26
  it and you realise. Just how many scenes there are
• 42:29
  of Tegan and this are looking at each other sort of despairingly
• 42:33
  or out there? Run.
• 42:34
  I'll send you the link, Luke. It's so funny.
• 42:36
  Nice. Oh my goodness.
• 42:40
  Well, I guess it. Leaves me with the Doctor, does
• 42:42
  it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:45
  I find the 5th Doctor generally very boring.
• 42:48
  And so Paul Marr. Sorry, Paul Marr does a super.
• 42:52
  It was a triumphant term for the 5th Doctor.
• 42:55
  This book I especially liked where he took on the Jabberwocky
• 42:59
  with the waffle blade and then got swallowed, but sort of as a
• 43:04
  metaphor or an allegory rather than being digested.
• 43:08
  I thought that was very amusing. But what I especially loved was
• 43:11
  what, whilst everyone was sort of reacting to the madness of
• 43:13
  what's going on, but just like, oh, it's just taking all of his
• 43:17
  stride wherever he goes, wherever he does, he's just very
• 43:20
  calm about it all. When he's stuck in the Infinity
• 43:23
  of passageways, he goes, well, I'm used to the cavernous
• 43:26
  interior of the TARDIS, you know?
• 43:27
  Infinite recursion quotes from Castrovalva, which I thought was
• 43:32
  very, very funny. Did you see the bits where he
• 43:34
  was thinking about the master? Oh boy, he goes.
• 43:37
  Someone with wit and flair designed this, which obviously
• 43:40
  ruled out the master. What a bitch.
• 43:44
  That sounds like Davidson to me, talking about Anthony and Amy.
• 43:47
  And then there was a bit because the master never read any books.
• 43:50
  Indeed, it was the most heinous thing about him.
• 43:54
  It just made me. Laugh.
• 43:56
  It's great, isn't it? Hang on, I did have some more
• 44:01
  bits about the Doctor. Oh, there was a not a lovely
• 44:03
  line as well about the Doctor being used to having at least
• 44:06
  one companion to discuss things with.
• 44:08
  But in recent years he's ended up with a surplus of companions,
• 44:13
  which I thought was very, very funny.
• 44:15
  He was great. I just thought he was, he was
• 44:17
  very funny. That relationship he had with
• 44:19
  Alice Little. And because I haven't really
• 44:22
  looked into Alice, I didn't know any of that.
• 44:24
  I didn't know about them. What's his name?
• 44:29
  Dodson and this and that and the family going out on the on the
• 44:33
  river and him telling the story of Alice in Wonderland and her
• 44:36
  asking him to rise here. I didn't know any of that.
• 44:39
  So I got a massive education from this book.
• 44:42
  Of course then, isn't it, you know.
• 44:44
  I went. On to Wikipedia, right?
• 44:46
  And I started reading about it and then it was like potential
• 44:49
  dodgy allegations against Mr. Dodge.
• 44:52
  And I was like, OK, I'll stop reading now.
• 44:54
  I don't want to know. But the Doctor was very charming
• 44:58
  with the older Alice. I thought he was super charming
• 45:03
  on the ship as well, in the way that only Davison could be.
• 45:06
  Yeah, I don't know. He just sort of improvised his
• 45:08
  way through the book, but just in a sort of calm and unbothered
• 45:13
  way, despite whatever was thrown at him, despite, you know, being
• 45:17
  squeezed down the throat of a Jabberwocky.
• 45:19
  He was just like, yeah, well, let's see what comes next.
• 45:22
  And I think he's a bit of a. Fan too, because he's quoted
• 45:26
  Alice in Wonderland a few times, you know, like what?
• 45:29
  The Five Doctors and things like that.
• 45:31
  So I can see this being right in his wheelhouse and him just go
• 45:35
  on with it. Let's go and he's the.
• 45:37
  One that realizes how do you bring the illusion of Wonderland
• 45:41
  to an end, that you introduce rationality and time and order?
• 45:46
  Because none of those things exist within that story.
• 45:50
  So yeah, it was like 4 for four, right?
• 45:52
  They're all spot on. Yeah, I did like.
• 45:55
  That the Doctor's storyline kind of went in that unexpected
• 45:59
  direction when he turns up on the, on the, the Mauritania or
• 46:05
  the Lusitania or whichever, whichever one it is that ship on
• 46:08
  the way to New York, because it's kind of, you know, the
• 46:12
  shape of the story of Alice in Wonderland.
• 46:14
  So you kind of know where that part is going to end up.
• 46:17
  It's all heading to like the, the Queen of Hearts is and the,
• 46:22
  and the croquet lawn and all that stuff.
• 46:24
  So to have this bit, it was like, oh, I we're we're back in
• 46:27
  the real world, though we, I don't really know where this is
• 46:29
  going. And then it starts introducing
• 46:32
  that kind of real history to it by having the real Alice Liddle
• 46:36
  turn up. So yeah, I really liked that.
• 46:39
  And you can tell that he's really well versed in like the
• 46:45
  sort of Alice history and culture, but kind of plays it
• 46:51
  quite lightly. It doesn't feel like you're
• 46:53
  being lectured to. And there's lots of kind of
• 46:56
  illusions and references in the book, which if you know them,
• 46:59
  they're there to pick up, but they're not kind of in your face
• 47:02
  shouting. You know, I, I've read 20 books
• 47:05
  about Alice in Wonderland. And I think you'll find it's
• 47:08
  kind of like these nice little bits which are there for you to
• 47:10
  notice if you want them to. And I think, you know, he's
• 47:13
  definitely aware that Sarah Sutton was in that TV
• 47:16
  adaptation. There's little bits like I Am
• 47:20
  the Walrus playing in the background.
• 47:21
  So it's bringing in all those kind of like 60s illusions.
• 47:25
  There's another bit where there's a song playing in the
• 47:27
  book shop. And I think it's really clear
• 47:29
  that it's like the Jefferson Airplane White Rabbit, Yes.
• 47:33
  Yes, it's all these little. Little things.
• 47:36
  And I think that kind of 60s Alice is kind of what looms over
• 47:40
  this because there was a big resurgence of interest in Alice
• 47:44
  in Wonderland with all the kind of like psychedelia and
• 47:47
  Victoriana revival that happened in the 60s.
• 47:50
  So there's like a huge influence of that here and that kind of
• 47:58
  there was a 60s adaptation which had Michael Goff in it and we've
• 48:02
  got like a reference to the Celestial toy maker, which is
• 48:05
  also a reference to divided loyalties.
• 48:07
  So it's like kind of reference thing going on.
• 48:11
  And yeah, for like a book which is ostensibly written for
• 48:15
  children. Like there's a lot of depth here
• 48:17
  and a lot to take out of it if you're an Alice in Wonderland.
• 48:20
  Because I, I can imagine people who are Alice aficionados who
• 48:25
  aren't necessarily Doctor Who people, but who pick up
• 48:29
  everything that's Alice in Wonderland related would
• 48:31
  actually get a lot out of this and really enjoy it and see all
• 48:34
  those illusions going on. Such a tough.
• 48:37
  Line to do right? Because odds are, one lot of
• 48:41
  those fans, Doctor Who fans or Alice fans, should feel a bit
• 48:44
  shortchanged right by the fusion.
• 48:46
  Because you're not getting the whole of Doctor Who and you're
• 48:49
  not getting the whole of Alice, and you have the two things just
• 48:52
  meshed together so beautifully. I can't imagine any either side
• 48:57
  coming away unsatisfied. Yeah.
• 49:00
  And when I, before they released this, they were really cagey
• 49:04
  about which TARDIS team was going to be in there.
• 49:07
  So I spent 8, I was trying to guess who it was going to be.
• 49:10
  And I, I thought maybe it'd be the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria,
• 49:13
  because you've got like, Victoria feels like the closest
• 49:17
  you've got to Alice in the kind of companions repertoire.
• 49:20
  So I was actually really interested when it was the 5th
• 49:22
  Doctor because I was like, oh, this is, this is not what I
• 49:24
  expected. Why the 5th Doctor?
• 49:26
  Why? I wasn't really sure how it's
• 49:29
  going to work, but it absolutely works and it it he makes it
• 49:33
  work. And it feels like it couldn't
• 49:35
  have been anyone else, any other team in this book because it
• 49:37
  works so well. I wanted us to be the. 1st
• 49:40
  Doctor Stephen and Dodo. But just because I want more
• 49:42
  Dodo. All right, Imagine Dodo and
• 49:44
  Alice. You know, Mr. Hatta, what are
• 49:46
  you up to? Are you up to no goods?
• 49:48
  Yeah, it. Would be great.
• 49:51
  I think Stephen. Deserves a fun rollicking
• 49:54
  adventure after the master plan, the massacre, and having to
• 49:59
  fucking travel with Dodo. So that's like, yeah, you could
• 50:02
  call it. Dodo in One Direction and then
• 50:06
  she turns into. The Dodo.
• 50:08
  Oh, my sequel. I think Stephen is such a
• 50:16
  miserable bar socky bastard. He could play the turtle wrong
• 50:19
  with this. Oh.
• 50:20
  We could, couldn't he? Yeah, so I'm reading.
• 50:24
  All the way through. Sorry, sorry, Andrew mentioned
• 50:28
  it, but I I didn't expect it like I expect little winks and
• 50:31
  nods to what we see on the screen.
• 50:34
  Little did I know that NASA would be like, hey, doctor, is
• 50:37
  this is this the toy maker? Oh my God, divided loyalties
• 50:42
  reference. So he's got if he's got deep
• 50:44
  cuts with his Doctor Who references.
• 50:47
  I can only assume that if there's any Alice in Wonderland,
• 50:51
  like diehards, they're going to pick up some stuff.
• 50:54
  I never would have, you know, noticed because you know, I've
• 50:57
  just, I've just got to I don't. Know I.
• 51:00
  Guess I'm just a casual viewer of, of the of, of Alice
• 51:05
  Wonderland. I guess that's the equivalent.
• 51:07
  But so if there's got, if you've got that with the Doctor Who
• 51:09
  side, you've definitely got that with the Alice side, right?
• 51:11
  That it'd have to be, it seems so diligent on both sides.
• 51:16
  In a in a book. That was all about sort of
• 51:18
  shifting locations and perspectives all the time.
• 51:22
  There was such a funny moment where the Black Guardian was
• 51:25
  talking to Turlo, and he describes a number of Doctor Who
• 51:29
  stories, but essentially turns the Doctor into the villain in
• 51:33
  all of them because he must be killed.
• 51:36
  Because have you heard of the Cybermen?
• 51:38
  The Doctor destroyed their hibernating armies.
• 51:40
  He watched the last surviving Tereleptils burn and ruthlessly
• 51:44
  disposed of a genius who was the same with the Khalid race.
• 51:48
  You know, it's all a matter of perspective really, isn't it?
• 51:52
  Oh my God, He does the same thing that kind of the doctor
• 51:54
  does, but he he makes it sound sinister rather than just plain
• 51:59
  ridiculous. Yeah.
• 52:01
  Yeah. And I think that's.
• 52:02
  Key it's so it's so playful with both of them and that's what you
• 52:06
  need to make them both work because you both have these kind
• 52:08
  of elements of chaos to them. So it's yeah the rationality is
• 52:14
  completely absent and I think of all doctor authors only Paul can
• 52:18
  do because I was just being re reminded irresistibly the
• 52:22
  Scarlet Empress all the way through because it's got that
• 52:24
  same kind of freewheeling travelogue through various
• 52:27
  bizarre situations all that. It's not as dense is it?
• 52:30
  It's. Not the proseism as dense, but
• 52:32
  it can't be. No, it's not.
• 52:34
  Drawing on, you know, the 1001 nights, there's so much more to,
• 52:38
  you know, to delve into and the, you know, the mythic overtones
• 52:41
  of it. Alice there's there's less to
• 52:44
  delve into perhaps, but he has absolutely that kind of spirit
• 52:51
  the play for us and exactly how the TARDIS he would work in that
• 52:55
  situation. I did read the interview with
• 52:58
  Paul back this way. He said it was you know, it was
• 53:00
  his dream job. Essentially.
• 53:01
  He wanted to write this book since he was five maybe or maybe
• 53:05
  misquoting him this. I'm sorry Paul for listening.
• 53:08
  And you can tell you absolutely. You can tell you know when you
• 53:11
  read a doctor. Hubert right.
• 53:12
  And you're like, oh, man, they just fought with this book all
• 53:15
  the way through from the beginning to the end.
• 53:17
  And in the end, they went, oh, just publish it.
• 53:19
  It'll be fine. Yeah.
• 53:21
  There's no sense. Of that at all here is there?
• 53:23
  No, not at all. Yeah, he's just the perfect
• 53:28
  writer for this series. And this often when you get
• 53:33
  these kind of like, it's Doctor doing that, Doctor Who doing
• 53:35
  this or it's Doctor Who doing that, and then you like see
• 53:38
  who's writing it and your heart just sort of sinks and you think
• 53:40
  like. Oh, come on, Nathan.
• 53:42
  Shame. I'm not going to name and shame,
• 53:47
  but you know, like, oh, actually, no, I can name and
• 53:49
  shame. There's a Doctor Who.
• 53:51
  There's like a 7th Doctor Ace and heck story where it's like
• 53:56
  Doctor Who meets Beowulf and you just think, oh, what a perfect
• 54:00
  marriage. And then you listen to it and
• 54:02
  it's just the traditional Big Finish shout down the
• 54:05
  microphones and a few laser effects type story and you just
• 54:09
  think this was such a good concept.
• 54:11
  We've wasted it now. Now they're not going to do that
• 54:14
  again. I, I can't remember who wrote
• 54:16
  that. I think it was Matt.
• 54:17
  Fitton our fate. So it's just so nice when you've
• 54:22
  got projects which are clearly the rights to loves them and is
• 54:27
  invested in making them the best that they can be.
• 54:30
  And it's just like, Oh my God, we're just so treated with this,
• 54:34
  with this series and having Paul Mars writing for it, like these
• 54:38
  are just like my favorite thing that Doctor Who is doing at the
• 54:40
  moment. Can I?
• 54:41
  Can I? Ask you all a question.
• 54:43
  Actually, two number one was why did I approach this with
• 54:46
  trepidation because of the Alice stuff?
• 54:49
  Did you guys all go into this with like, yes, bring it on Paul
• 54:52
  Mars, Alice in Wonderland, Let's go.
• 54:55
  You know, were you like literally jumping into page one
• 54:57
  like the rabbit? I wouldn't say.
• 55:01
  It was the Alice aspect that made me super excited.
• 55:03
  It didn't make me unexcited. I was all right, cool.
• 55:06
  That's that's a that's a cool mash up.
• 55:08
  Like I'm interested. Like for me it was look at this
• 55:12
  TARDIS team. I haven't I want to spend more
• 55:14
  time with them. Let's go.
• 55:16
  So that that that's what that was the absolute draw for me.
• 55:21
  I was just imagining. You look, you know the day that
• 55:23
  announcement came out, 5th Doctor Tegan Tolow Nessa.
• 55:26
  Yeah. Your poor.
• 55:29
  Wife must have been like, Oh my God, what's happened?
• 55:33
  No. I I was absolutely like Mars
• 55:36
  Wonderland. Doctor Who.
• 55:38
  Yes. Let's go.
• 55:39
  You waited. You You waited until your
• 55:41
  holiday to read this. I did and like his books are
• 55:45
  such good holiday reads because they're very like the opposite
• 55:48
  of a good holiday read would be something like interference.
• 55:52
  But you also too. You also read.
• 55:56
  But yeah, I, I don't think I was like massively into Alice in
• 56:00
  Wonderland as a child. Like I'd seen the Disney movie.
• 56:02
  I think it was more when I was sort of like later teenager, I
• 56:06
  think. I think we did do it at
• 56:08
  university. And then I think after I
• 56:10
  finished university, I kind of got a little bit like fixated
• 56:14
  and like read a lot of Alice in Wonderland stuff.
• 56:16
  What watched a lot of the adaptations and really kind of
• 56:22
  like went deep into where I think I've forgotten a lot of
• 56:25
  that stuff now. So it was quite nice to kind of
• 56:28
  go back into that and have my that sort of passion rekindled
• 56:33
  and like remember a lot of this stuff that I'd maybe forgotten,
• 56:36
  but I was very into like in my early 20s.
• 56:38
  John, I think you. Read this before all of us.
• 56:40
  So you must have been raring to go.
• 56:43
  Got it. Well, it's Paul Mars book just
• 56:46
  started as I see Paul Mars book name on a book.
• 56:48
  And yes, thank you very much. Great on the even on I don't
• 56:55
  think there has been an occasion I haven't enjoyed it.
• 56:56
  Paul Mars book authority. I know there'll be stuff in
• 56:58
  there that I love. So there'll be a turn of phrase.
• 57:00
  There'll be seeds of people. The story will go places I
• 57:03
  didn't expect it to go because he's so good at he he knows the
• 57:07
  kind of structure stories and how to twist them satisfyingly.
• 57:13
  And Alice and what that I've we had two really kind of nice
• 57:16
  additions as a kid of Alice and Alice through the Looking glass.
• 57:21
  So I did know it. I'd liked it, but I don't
• 57:24
  remember it being an absolute kind of enchanting favorite.
• 57:28
  I I did remember more through the Disney film, but yeah, it's
• 57:35
  the way Paul talks about before it came out.
• 57:37
  I think it was in DWNI was just like, yeah, I want this book.
• 57:40
  And I saw when I was going in to get it because I had a
• 57:44
  Waterstones back chair. I got like spent enough money to
• 57:47
  get the money on the car. I went there.
• 57:48
  All right, OK, lunchtime, go from work, don't get it.
• 57:51
  Went out anyway and there's this just in front of me.
• 57:55
  This kid picked it up with his mum.
• 57:57
  I was just, yeah, I was going to.
• 58:01
  Back away from the. Book, put it down, give him the
• 58:04
  look back on the shelf. See if it works.
• 58:07
  I will pick you, yeah. Yeah, so he's got you.
• 58:12
  No, his mom was there, so I couldn't have got away with it.
• 58:15
  Mug that kid. For his Alice in Wonderland
• 58:17
  Doctor Who'd? Yeah, I I did try.
• 58:19
  Chambling into kind of the car look black the the grim kind of
• 58:23
  sucky bastard. I was just saying like a slow.
• 58:26
  Motion no that. Was it?
• 58:31
  That was it. But he put it down and it's
• 58:33
  like, yes, I'm backing it and I've, you know, back, OK, extend
• 58:38
  outbreaks. He started like and that.
• 58:40
  Cover right. It just invites you to pick it
• 58:42
  up, doesn't it? It's so quirky.
• 58:44
  Tell me it's it's. Like my wife saw Alan, so she
• 58:46
  was like, that's an unusual cover.
• 58:48
  Is it? Yeah, it's great.
• 58:51
  It's it's eye-catching. It's you look at you want to buy
• 58:54
  the book. You know, it's, it's a lovely
• 58:57
  kind of artifact, as well as being a good book in itself, I
• 59:01
  mean. We have talked about this
• 59:02
  before, Andrew. You talked about this when we
• 59:04
  did 10 Little Aliens. You know, they're sort of the
• 59:06
  beautiful 50th anniversary. Yeah.
• 59:08
  So how good the binding was and everything and how, what a
• 59:11
  pleasure they are to read. Man, oh, man.
• 59:13
  This was the easiest in terms of just holding a physical book.
• 59:17
  It is a beautiful. Like they're beautifully
• 59:19
  packaged. They put the Nsas, the Edas, the
• 59:23
  new event, all of them to shame. Oh God.
• 59:26
  The binding on the LA. Let's face it.
• 59:29
  Oh Jesus, Jesus, I do have one other.
• 59:33
  Question though, how funny is this book?
• 59:38
  It's just. Hilarious.
• 59:40
  Like I was laughing on every page.
• 59:42
  Oh, go on, Andrew. My favorite bear was when So the
• 59:48
  Doctor Teegan and the Doctor Teegan and Dodgson have gone
• 59:53
  into Wonderland. You think that they're going to
• 59:56
  be this like group for the rest of the book.
• 59:59
  Then they meet the Jabberwock, and with him like a cup within
• 1:00:04
  like a page and 1/2 he has eaten Lewis and it.
• 1:00:08
  Is so funny. Let's go in a different.
• 1:00:14
  Direction. You can see his shape going down
• 1:00:16
  his throat. And later on.
• 1:00:21
  Right. Doesn't the chap of Rockies
• 1:00:23
  bursts out of the sea in a fabulous moment of like sort of
• 1:00:26
  Hollywood movie and Alice, it all goes well.
• 1:00:30
  It's just a a savage poem, like it's not real.
• 1:00:33
  And then the last line of the chapter was the savage poem had
• 1:00:37
  devoured. Her.
• 1:00:39
  He made me laugh. Any other funny moments?
• 1:00:44
  Come on, it's a funny book. Look, I can't help.
• 1:00:48
  But want to drink a book that sounds amazing because I know
• 1:00:54
  this isn't funny funny but I like the visualness of the
• 1:00:58
  doctor's library that that Paul paints at the start and he
• 1:01:02
  doesn't just paint them, paint the picture of like his books.
• 1:01:06
  No, it's the task. That goes through time and
• 1:01:08
  space. So, you know, and this is kind
• 1:01:11
  of fallen asleep reading Alice in Wonderland and she's got like
• 1:01:15
  multiple different copies of it on a little table in front of
• 1:01:19
  it, like a paper bag, hard cover.
• 1:01:24
  And then they all start getting more fantastic all the way to
• 1:01:26
  the one that's like this jar of liquid that is apparently all of
• 1:01:30
  all of us in Wonderland. And I think it's funny that in
• 1:01:34
  order for this thing to work, the Guardians just like, Oh
• 1:01:37
  yeah, so just crush this over the telepathic circuits and
• 1:01:40
  voila, we've got Alice World. That's all you need.
• 1:01:43
  Right. You don't need anything more,
• 1:01:45
  Yeah. So I'm a guy who'd like I could
• 1:01:48
  read The Crooked World and like that never got explained, but I
• 1:01:50
  don't I don't mind that so. I for me everything with the
• 1:01:57
  Black Guardian in this book, particularly when he turns up as
• 1:02:01
  the Queen of Hearts when just then she's Valentine's.
• 1:02:05
  Dial dressed like that would have been amazing.
• 1:02:07
  Oh. God, Can you imagine when he
• 1:02:09
  pulls back the veil? Sour little face.
• 1:02:12
  Yeah, it's me. Boy, I can't really wish.
• 1:02:16
  Director said it, but by all accounts Valentine's dial was
• 1:02:19
  quite a shy bloke, right? And between takes he was, you
• 1:02:22
  know, doing a grave voice and he'd go.
• 1:02:25
  Was that alright darling? Did I do OK?
• 1:02:27
  Imagine him dressed as the Queen of Hearts, lifting up the veil
• 1:02:29
  and going. Was that all right?
• 1:02:31
  Oh boy. Oh.
• 1:02:35
  Boy, I would like to just mention a couple of wonderful
• 1:02:42
  philosophical moments that Paul Mars threw in and he manages to
• 1:02:47
  melt my heart like butter in a way that no other Doctor Who
• 1:02:51
  author can. And the story of Is it Liddell,
• 1:02:54
  Alice Liddell or Alice Liddell? Like the?
• 1:02:57
  Supermarket. What's the other one called?
• 1:03:02
  I was going to make a terrible joke then.
• 1:03:04
  ALDI. Alice.
• 1:03:04
  ALDI. Alice.
• 1:03:05
  ALDI. Yeah, no.
• 1:03:08
  So the story about Alice Little on the golden afternoon with a
• 1:03:12
  picnic by the river and the line is why can't we remain in our
• 1:03:16
  stories and our golden afternoons forever, eh?
• 1:03:20
  Which I just thought was so gorgeous because we've all had
• 1:03:22
  that afternoon, right? Well, we wish we could be all
• 1:03:25
  the time. But then there was another quote
• 1:03:27
  just a couple of pages later, which I really thought was maybe
• 1:03:31
  the point of the book where the quote is the real magic isn't in
• 1:03:36
  the pages and ink. It never is.
• 1:03:39
  Physical objects and bodies are always, always beside the point.
• 1:03:43
  They are mere repositories for the true magic of ideas and
• 1:03:47
  dreams. And if there was ever a Paul
• 1:03:49
  Mars line, that's the one I found in this book.
• 1:03:52
  He's got such. Ability to be that kind of
• 1:03:55
  writer and the reader at the same time.
• 1:03:58
  He absolutely understands what a reader's going through.
• 1:04:02
  It's like Russell T Davis with the TV.
• 1:04:04
  He knows exactly what TV viewer wants, how TV works, how to get
• 1:04:08
  Mickey most effective. And it's just those moments
• 1:04:11
  where where you're going, the he, the the author understands
• 1:04:16
  me. You know, it's that beautiful
• 1:04:19
  thing where you just in the nicest possible way, it stops
• 1:04:23
  me. And I kind of have to walk off
• 1:04:27
  for a couple of seconds just to go.
• 1:04:28
  Yeah. I went through lines and I was
• 1:04:30
  like, OK, compose yourself. Yeah, bask in a little bit.
• 1:04:34
  You. Know.
• 1:04:35
  Yeah, yeah, totally. But also as well.
• 1:04:37
  How? Many of these, you know, I mean,
• 1:04:39
  we've done a few now where they haven't got the assignment
• 1:04:41
  right. So I'm investing in, we want you
• 1:04:43
  to write an NSA bit like The Hunger Games.
• 1:04:45
  Have fun. You know, he didn't get the
• 1:04:48
  assignment at all, did he? Like he was like, oh God, what a
• 1:04:50
  chore. Whereas I really felt Paul Marsh
• 1:04:53
  just got the assignment here. Like he absolutely knew what he
• 1:04:55
  was doing. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:05:00
  And there's one there's one little There's only one bad
• 1:05:05
  thing about this entire book 1. Off with his.
• 1:05:11
  Head, Yeah. Fair enough.
• 1:05:14
  There's no fucking audio book. What?
• 1:05:18
  Yeah, wouldn't you have? To read it though all I was.
• 1:05:21
  Saying to Joe before you guys all jumped on that, I, I think
• 1:05:26
  all four of the regulars would have a great time reading this.
• 1:05:28
  So I, I don't help even have them all do it.
• 1:05:33
  If, if you want, I know that that probably never happened.
• 1:05:35
  It should be Davidson. Right.
• 1:05:37
  You know, he's so bitchy, he'd be able to take the piss out of
• 1:05:40
  all of their acting. So yeah.
• 1:05:42
  Yeah, although. You could.
• 1:05:44
  You have to have that first chapter in Terlovs, yeah.
• 1:05:47
  Sort of. You know, that's a pitch, sort
• 1:05:51
  of. Sniffly.
• 1:05:52
  Way as of talking, yeah. Although imagine this again.
• 1:05:56
  Oh, I didn't understand it at all.
• 1:05:58
  It was so illogical and chaotic. It made no sense.
• 1:06:02
  What do you mean cats? Can't talk?
• 1:06:06
  Andrew. Andrew, there's something I'm.
• 1:06:08
  Desperate to ask you, you know, after your confession, I can't
• 1:06:11
  remember which book it was now that you felt truly disgusting
• 1:06:14
  when you split the spine. Oh, there's Managra.
• 1:06:17
  That was it. Yeah.
• 1:06:19
  Did you split the spine? No.
• 1:06:21
  I don't think you can. With this, try it.
• 1:06:23
  I'm not sure you can. I'm not asking you to torture
• 1:06:27
  that book in front of you. No.
• 1:06:29
  And it's it. Falls apart easily.
• 1:06:31
  You don't need to crease that spine at all.
• 1:06:34
  I've only got. I've only got 1 spinal crease so
• 1:06:38
  boom you. Wouldn't be really open.
• 1:06:42
  You're admitting that's the first.
• 1:06:43
  Time I realized anyone ever had issues with creasing spines and
• 1:06:47
  ever since I've been asking people and everyone's going to
• 1:06:49
  me. Are you mad?
• 1:06:50
  Do I crease the spine? Sorry.
• 1:06:54
  I feel like I horrified. People when I made that post
• 1:06:56
  about like one of my books and like this is yeah.
• 1:07:01
  We are book torturers. Oh dude, I'm.
• 1:07:05
  Like Bane and Batman, I'm take this book and I'll just break
• 1:07:07
  it. Absolute.
• 1:07:09
  Perverts. Well.
• 1:07:14
  Look. But if you go to an author, if
• 1:07:16
  you go to an author with a cracked spine, book with that
• 1:07:20
  much love, much abuse book, they will love you for it.
• 1:07:23
  Yeah. You've read it.
• 1:07:24
  Yeah. Because they know you've read
• 1:07:25
  it. They haven't just read it.
• 1:07:26
  You've read the shit out of it too.
• 1:07:27
  Yeah, totally, absolutely. You should see Terence with my
• 1:07:30
  copy of Three Doctors because it's literally held together
• 1:07:33
  with like just a bit of love, bit of affection.
• 1:07:36
  Did you say that? I met Armistead Mopan once and
• 1:07:39
  he signed a copy of Tales of the City that was completely falling
• 1:07:43
  apart. And he just like, picked it up
• 1:07:46
  like it was a dirty nappy and was like, what's wrong with this
• 1:07:49
  one? And I was like, oh, that sounds
• 1:07:52
  very Mopa. What have you done?
• 1:07:54
  To my manuscript. I mean it.
• 1:07:59
  Was a second hand. Copy.
• 1:08:00
  I wouldn't have done it if it was my own book, The New
• 1:08:03
  Avengers. Authors wouldn't have a problem
• 1:08:04
  at all because no one of my books is holding together over
• 1:08:07
  there. I'm afraid they're all falling
• 1:08:09
  apart. Well, look, I mean, I'm sure
• 1:08:12
  we've got a million things to say about Doctor Wonderland.
• 1:08:14
  Are there anything from your notes?
• 1:08:16
  Have a quick scour now and tell me.
• 1:08:19
  Say your piece. Oh, just one thing I I can
• 1:08:24
  absolutely imagine this on TVI can imagine them having a
• 1:08:29
  completely overly ambitious 1980s production which is a
• 1:08:33
  cross between like The Box of Delights and Time Flight.
• 1:08:38
  Just like having terrible CSO but being like, utterly
• 1:08:43
  charming. And you you wouldn't have to
• 1:08:45
  think. Too hard, would you?
• 1:08:46
  Because all the characterisation is there, yeah.
• 1:08:49
  Like completely overlay. Terrible.
• 1:08:52
  They even tried to do the bit on the boat with the monster
• 1:08:54
  attacking and everything. And yeah, do you remember the?
• 1:08:57
  CSO in Box of Delights when they're on the river, it's
• 1:09:01
  dreadful. And that awful Dormouse costume
• 1:09:04
  that you've seen that that was. All I was.
• 1:09:06
  Seeing in this when I was reading that that was like.
• 1:09:08
  A multi £1,000,000 production in the 80s and like it doesn't look
• 1:09:12
  that that different from Doctor Who.
• 1:09:14
  I think they should ask for a. Refund.
• 1:09:18
  I think the book would fit. In really well with season 20
• 1:09:22
  and I don't think it would would have been 100% out of the realm
• 1:09:25
  of possibility for Saywood to say no.
• 1:09:28
  Enlightenment does have a quite magical quality to it.
• 1:09:32
  So yes, he does have his violent mercenary streak, but there's
• 1:09:37
  other stories in that era that reflect different kinds of
• 1:09:40
  sci-fi and storytelling. And I think I think a little bit
• 1:09:43
  of it is a little bit of fantasy in that era as well.
• 1:09:46
  So I can, I can definitely see this being part of Season 20.
• 1:09:50
  I don't often. Do this late, but can I take the
• 1:09:52
  exception with what you just said there?
• 1:09:54
  I don't think season 20 is very fun at all and there is a a
• 1:09:58
  dearth of humour in that year. I'm not saying it's all shit, I
• 1:10:02
  think Snake Dance and Enlightenment are great stories,
• 1:10:04
  but even they're not particularly fun watches.
• 1:10:08
  This was still like a sore thumb if it was in season 20 of like,
• 1:10:12
  oh God almighty Doctor Who's having a laugh finally.
• 1:10:16
  It would be nice if it. Was there though, Yeah.
• 1:10:19
  I don't know, maybe I'm. You do.
• 1:10:22
  Yeah. He doesn't like.
• 1:10:24
  No, he doesn't. Mean season 2010?
• 1:10:25
  No he doesn't like 22. He means season 20 as well as
• 1:10:28
  well. Yeah, because I know you don't
• 1:10:30
  like the. Collins.
• 1:10:33
  Season 22 you. Can get in the bed.
• 1:10:37
  Season 22. I want the.
• 1:10:41
  Texas Chainsaw Massacre book starring Colin Baker from season
• 1:10:44
  22. Oh, you barely have to conjure
• 1:10:47
  up Just watch 22 another. Face doesn't stand a chance.
• 1:10:52
  Another. Face is going to.
• 1:10:53
  Be in an acid bath in no time. It's Luke.
• 1:10:56
  John, anything in your notes this?
• 1:10:59
  It feels wrong to be kind of go sing on a plotting point, but
• 1:11:03
  the Jack first two books. Let's see if the Jack Raymonds.
• 1:11:06
  I thought they got kind of wrapped up in how the doctor
• 1:11:09
  gets into a literary story. It's just this is done so deftly
• 1:11:16
  and with such a Luke Luke array measure that great idea of a
• 1:11:20
  book in in a cube. It's like that, that liquid
• 1:11:23
  book. And it.
• 1:11:25
  It's it's no wasting time, it's just OK, this is how we get into
• 1:11:28
  it. Now let's have some fun.
• 1:11:32
  Is that from Journey? To the centre of the.
• 1:11:34
  Tardis. I thought it was, yeah.
• 1:11:36
  Because it's the TARDIS library has that thing it doesn't it
• 1:11:38
  horror. It.
• 1:11:40
  Has. That that TARDIS library in
• 1:11:41
  Gentry Centre. TARDIS is gorgeous.
• 1:11:44
  That's a. That's a redeeming feature of
• 1:11:45
  it. I mean, I'll just sort of, I
• 1:11:48
  mean, did you see that bookshop that you described in there, All
• 1:11:51
  the trees? I don't want to go there so
• 1:11:54
  badly. I know it's fictional, but I
• 1:11:56
  still want to go. By the way, the.
• 1:11:58
  Idea of a night time bookshop and absolutely love like.
• 1:12:04
  An all night sit shop in the corner with a.
• 1:12:07
  Glass of red and. The nerve, though, when he goes.
• 1:12:12
  I put up all these posters on the trees.
• 1:12:14
  I sent out all the birds to Twitter.
• 1:12:16
  I was like. That was great.
• 1:12:22
  But I've just got. One more note, and it's my one
• 1:12:25
  of my favorite ever Tegan moments.
• 1:12:28
  And you know, before if you'd asked me 10 years ago, I'd have
• 1:12:31
  scraped around to find one. I've kind of fallen in love with
• 1:12:34
  Tegan over the last 10 years, mostly through the Big Finish
• 1:12:37
  and some of the books and reevaluating on TV a little bit,
• 1:12:41
  I think. And.
• 1:12:44
  Exposure to you as well? Yeah, that's also beguiled me.
• 1:12:48
  A quiet wow. Aussies, Really.
• 1:12:50
  Are like that. Oh, OK.
• 1:12:55
  It makes me appreciate. Oh yeah, imagine him.
• 1:12:58
  Dressed up and can. You come along.
• 1:13:02
  Next time please. Dressed up like that.
• 1:13:05
  I've got the shock of my life. This time when he had no
• 1:13:07
  mustache, I thought his son had turned up for the call.
• 1:13:12
  No, but it's it's the end where obviously we've we've found out
• 1:13:16
  throughout that this is her favorite book.
• 1:13:17
  These characters are characters she's comfortable with.
• 1:13:20
  The Mad Hatter tea part is where she feels at home and just the
• 1:13:23
  tiny but again heart warming payoff is at the end where the
• 1:13:27
  dormouse is a dormouse again and she gives the doormat over and
• 1:13:32
  she goes. He likes his tea hot and sweet.
• 1:13:35
  Oh, I was just like, Oh my God, Tegan, why can't you be real
• 1:13:38
  like this all the time? That's so gorgeous we didn't
• 1:13:42
  mention. That the dormouse is a tiny
• 1:13:43
  trouton. Isn't there a Worzel?
• 1:13:49
  Gummage. It's Trouton.
• 1:13:50
  Reference as well. Yeah, the mad.
• 1:13:52
  The the hair is Pertwee and the Mad Hatter is is Tom Baker a
• 1:13:59
  little 20th anniversary reunion 20 Oh, would that.
• 1:14:03
  Make the Caterpillar Matt Smith? Sure.
• 1:14:08
  Didn't you? I mean like Caterpillar.
• 1:14:10
  Maybe he's Richard. Only one.
• 1:14:12
  Person can wear a fez obviously and it's the 11th Doctor.
• 1:14:15
  So like if you see a fez, obviously it's a reference the
• 1:14:18
  older. I get, you know, and the more of
• 1:14:19
  these Doctor Who books I've read, I do, I think that
• 1:14:22
  Caterpillar's got the right idea.
• 1:14:24
  He goes, oh, it just sounds too stressful to be going off having
• 1:14:27
  all these adventures in time and space.
• 1:14:29
  Just stay on the tree like me. You know, you can have
• 1:14:32
  adventures just sitting here. It's a lot easier way of going
• 1:14:35
  about things, frankly. Well, fellas, anything else
• 1:14:40
  before we wrap up this delightful book or.
• 1:14:43
  OK, let's describe the book in one word, Luke.
• 1:14:50
  Wonderful. Well done, Andrew.
• 1:14:56
  Well, I think I. Already got got my word and it
• 1:14:57
  was effortless. John, I'm going to hyphenate it.
• 1:15:02
  Comfort Creed. And I want to go with heart
• 1:15:07
  warming because I just felt as if I just sort of begin giving a
• 1:15:12
  massive hug when I was reading. This you'll be.
• 1:15:15
  Doing something nasty. Next time to cut through.
• 1:15:17
  That's right. Torture, horror arms, people
• 1:15:21
  wearing Saudi sails. Lovely.
• 1:15:24
  But this is one of those. Books.
• 1:15:26
  You can just imagine when you need to pick me up when you're
• 1:15:28
  down, but you're just going to get it off the shelf, lose
• 1:15:31
  yourself for an hour or two. Yeah, hell, he's going to just.
• 1:15:34
  Open it up. Wherever and just be like, Oh
• 1:15:37
  yeah, just. Read a page.
• 1:15:39
  Yeah, if. You just read a page.
• 1:15:40
  You're going to find something gorgeous on that page, and I can
• 1:15:43
  actually. Imagine that 8 year old who was
• 1:15:45
  picking the book up off off the shelf that John scared off.
• 1:15:50
  Like never read a Doctor Who book before.
• 1:15:53
  You could read this and just get so much out of it.
• 1:15:55
  Like you. It it introduces all the
• 1:15:57
  characters perfectly. They're all perfectly
• 1:16:00
  characterised. You don't need to know any back
• 1:16:02
  story, you just how a lovely adventure I want to go.
• 1:16:06
  And buy him a coffee now it's. Too late, he's dead.
• 1:16:10
  Please don't start. Pursuing children, please.
• 1:16:15
  Mummy, mummy. I want to read everything with
• 1:16:17
  her Loki in it. Come on.
• 1:16:21
  They wouldn't know how to. Pronounce the names right.
• 1:16:23
  Come on, I said logo polis. When I was younger, I said logo.
• 1:16:27
  Polo. I.
• 1:16:29
  Didn't even. Try Mandracora.
• 1:16:32
  I said that. But that's a sign.
• 1:16:35
  For an autodidact, if you've only read it on the page, you
• 1:16:38
  don't know how to pronounce it I.
• 1:16:40
  Used to say Magneto. You say what Magneto Because
• 1:16:45
  it's a magnet, not a magnet. No, it's.
• 1:16:50
  Magneto. OK, Magneto.
• 1:16:53
  Sounds like a Cornetto. Sure.
• 1:16:57
  I'm going to leave it to you to put the bow on this Paul Mars.
• 1:17:02
  Loving that we're having today well off.
• 1:17:06
  You go. OK.
• 1:17:07
  Well, for this one, for this one, Joe suggested possibly the
• 1:17:11
  hardest task any of us have had on any of these these podcasts
• 1:17:17
  and that is he wanted us to narrow down 4 miles is 8 foot,
• 1:17:23
  you know, Big Finish, Doctor Who, whatever to a mere 3
• 1:17:28
  favourites. I was just I just started going.
• 1:17:34
  How the hell do I tarry this thing to anything?
• 1:17:36
  So I'm I'm going to take chance to put one of you guys on spot
• 1:17:40
  first, obviously. So, Andrew, you're a man of
• 1:17:44
  taste and discretion. Well, I have banged on about
• 1:17:49
  Paul Mars's Doctor Who output so much on this podcast.
• 1:17:53
  I think everyone already knows what what I like.
• 1:17:56
  So I have gone for three works which are outside of his Doctor
• 1:18:00
  Who work. To hopefully.
• 1:18:03
  Introduce people to the broader world of Paul Mars.
• 1:18:06
  Well, that's good. I've been curious.
• 1:18:07
  About his non who work, Yeah, yeah, so.
• 1:18:10
  So the first one I was going to recommend is still sort of
• 1:18:13
  Doctor Who. It's a book that he wrote called
• 1:18:15
  The Secret Diary of a Doctor Who Fan, which is a sort of coming
• 1:18:23
  of age story, a pretty autobiographical account of a
• 1:18:29
  young teenage boy in 1980s north of England and the kind of his
• 1:18:37
  relationship with doctor too, and also his fan, his family.
• 1:18:40
  And it's it's, it's a story of a family.
• 1:18:43
  And the book is basically a sort of half sequel, half rewrite of
• 1:18:48
  a book that Paul Mars wrote called Strange Boy, which is
• 1:18:52
  also a really beautiful book. I actually prefer Strange Boy to
• 1:18:55
  the secret Diary of a Doctor Who fan, but Secret Diary of a
• 1:18:57
  Doctor Who fan is maybe like the weigh in for Doctor Who fans.
• 1:19:01
  Strange Boy was published in the early 2000s.
• 1:19:03
  And it's sort of a story of like a queer kid growing up where
• 1:19:09
  Paul Mars grew up in the north of England.
• 1:19:12
  And it has an interesting history.
• 1:19:15
  It was like banned by a lot of schools because of the queer
• 1:19:18
  content in it. And Paul Miles had this strange
• 1:19:22
  period of his life where he was sort of, you know, this
• 1:19:26
  mouthpiece for against censorship and stuff like that.
• 1:19:28
  So I would also like highly recommend that book.
• 1:19:31
  And they're kind of a pair. Those book I think of in my
• 1:19:34
  head. The next one I was going to
• 1:19:37
  recommend is his Brenda and Effie series, which is the sort
• 1:19:46
  of back of a fab packet pitch for it is it's the Bride of
• 1:19:49
  Frankenstein meets the White Witch of Whitby.
• 1:19:55
  They run and they run. One owns an antique shop.
• 1:19:59
  The other one runs AB and B and they have adventures in Whitby
• 1:20:02
  and it sounds like so twee and like.
• 1:20:09
  Just a bit airy fairy and not something that I'd really be
• 1:20:11
  into. But they are so like bitingly
• 1:20:13
  funny and heartfelt. And there's a whole series of of
• 1:20:20
  these books. The early ones are sort of a
• 1:20:24
  different adventure in each chapter.
• 1:20:25
  The later ones kind of tell tell more novel length stories.
• 1:20:30
  And the one that is my favorite is called Brenda and Effie
• 1:20:32
  forget forever. And it was sort of the last
• 1:20:35
  book. He's written another one since.
• 1:20:37
  But this this one is kind of where all of the sort of
• 1:20:41
  dangling plot threads from the previous books, which you've
• 1:20:46
  thought like, oh, that's sort of ended in a strange way.
• 1:20:48
  I wonder if there is ever going to come back to that.
• 1:20:50
  They all come back together in this book.
• 1:20:53
  And this book has such a sort of doom laden atmosphere.
• 1:20:59
  It's quite a tense read when you kind of love these characters
• 1:21:02
  because you know, it's kind of the last one and all of these
• 1:21:04
  things are coming together and all these sort of enemies have
• 1:21:07
  been secretly conspiring against.
• 1:21:08
  These two characters are kind of coming out of the woodwork and
• 1:21:11
  you're like, oh, I just thought that that was never going to
• 1:21:14
  mean anything or you'd just like sort of forgotten about the
• 1:21:16
  idea. But they all come back together
• 1:21:18
  and it's like very cleverly plotted and really moving at the
• 1:21:21
  end of it. So that was number two.
• 1:21:25
  Number one, I absolutely adore this book.
• 1:21:28
  And I think that this book should be like an absolute
• 1:21:34
  Christmas classic that everyone in the country reads should be
• 1:21:37
  like the snowman and it should be on every like table in
• 1:21:41
  Waterstones is across the land. I don't understand how it isn't.
• 1:21:45
  It's a book called Stardust and Snow.
• 1:21:46
  Oh yes, it's very short. It's only 50 pages long.
• 1:21:53
  And it's a short story, which was based on a story that one of
• 1:22:01
  Omar's friends told to him. I think it's based on his actual
• 1:22:04
  experience as a child where he won a competition to go and meet
• 1:22:08
  David Bowie around the time that the Labyrinth came out.
• 1:22:13
  And this is a sort of fictionalized story of that that
• 1:22:15
  boy, he's autistic, and he's going with his grandma who
• 1:22:19
  doesn't really understand what this is or why it's important to
• 1:22:22
  him. So they go to London to meet
• 1:22:25
  David Bowie, and this is sort of a fictionalized magical version
• 1:22:29
  of that story. And it is so again.
• 1:22:33
  It sounds. Like it could be twee, but it's
• 1:22:34
  not like it's got such like bite to it and it's so moving.
• 1:22:39
  And I it's available from our first books.
• 1:22:42
  You will read it every Christmas and you will cry next to the
• 1:22:45
  Christmas tree. I guarantee it.
• 1:22:49
  I was going to pick up. Two of those as well.
• 1:22:50
  So very good. I thought I was being.
• 1:22:52
  So original, not picking Oh, you were oh.
• 1:22:55
  You were, but yes, yeah, yeah. Stardust.
• 1:22:59
  It's it is magical, particularly about David Bowie, what he meets
• 1:23:03
  people, how he was with people as well, Dave.
• 1:23:07
  But I, I once commissioned Paul to write for the Dave Bowie
• 1:23:11
  tribute book I edited and he gave us a cut up of, you know,
• 1:23:16
  Dave had a technique called cut up where it's you take one line
• 1:23:20
  and you get the contrast from a line pick from somewhere else.
• 1:23:23
  And he wrote a poem from the tributes friend that posted on
• 1:23:28
  Facebook the day that David Bowie died.
• 1:23:30
  And it was gorgeous. And it was.
• 1:23:34
  He sent that in to. Myself and Candy, my Co editor,
• 1:23:37
  I always went that's got to end the book because it's just
• 1:23:42
  beautiful. It's perfect.
• 1:23:44
  But yeah, absolutely brilliant choices.
• 1:23:48
  So Luke, mine are going to be mine are.
• 1:23:53
  Going to be Doctor Who, I really want to check out his Mars
• 1:23:57
  trilogies. Well, that looks quite
• 1:24:00
  interesting to me for Paul. Mars.
• 1:24:02
  Yeah, thank you. I guess now I know what they're
• 1:24:05
  like. They're good.
• 1:24:06
  All right, I'll check them out. I want to go for.
• 1:24:09
  A story that really surprised me.
• 1:24:12
  I'm just going to make this my number one.
• 1:24:15
  Yes, it is a Davis. I'm sorry, it's the Peter Loo
• 1:24:17
  Massacre because I rather rightly or wrongly, had pigeon
• 1:24:23
  holed Mr. Paul Mars as being this whimsical, magical, fun
• 1:24:30
  writer. And yes, he's all those things.
• 1:24:32
  That's that's true. I think so.
• 1:24:35
  But the Peterloo? Massacre is none of of those
• 1:24:37
  things. It's a straight up historical I
• 1:24:40
  guess. Weird.
• 1:24:41
  I like those a lot. So the Aztecs as a kid and I
• 1:24:44
  kind of fell in love with the genre.
• 1:24:47
  And. I'd never heard of this before
• 1:24:50
  the the Peterloo Massacre. I had no idea it was a thing.
• 1:24:54
  And you, you listen to it and you, you, even though you've
• 1:24:59
  read the blurb, you might have heard a few things about the
• 1:25:02
  Peterloo Massacre. You're still waiting for the,
• 1:25:04
  the jokes, right? You're still waiting for a
• 1:25:05
  little bit of magic to turn up and it doesn't.
• 1:25:10
  And it, and it's Paul Mars. Someone like, hey, I'm a, I'm a
• 1:25:15
  really good writer. I, I don't have to, I do the,
• 1:25:19
  the fun, magical kind of stuff because that's my wheelhouse.
• 1:25:23
  That's what I like the most. I guess that's the feeling I
• 1:25:25
  get. But I can do.
• 1:25:27
  Like some I can do some John Lucarotti shit with these
• 1:25:31
  characters and just, it really was, it's like it's really dark,
• 1:25:36
  historical, really, really disturbing imagery.
• 1:25:40
  That's the one I put probably at the top just because it's so
• 1:25:45
  different. And it's like whenever I see his
• 1:25:48
  name now, I just think. Like that could be any.
• 1:25:51
  Kind of genre or story, and it's not going to really matter.
• 1:25:55
  It's probably going to be great. So yeah, the Peterlee Massacre
• 1:25:58
  for me. The next would be Mad Dogs and
• 1:26:02
  Englishmen, because I remember being exhausted after Henrietta.
• 1:26:06
  I love that book, but I was exhausted.
• 1:26:10
  Maybe. Is it as long as interference?
• 1:26:12
  It's close, right? It's just smooshed right down
• 1:26:15
  and it's written as a history book.
• 1:26:16
  I'd never read history books by that, that by that time, fucking
• 1:26:20
  exhausted. I'm not sure.
• 1:26:21
  I'm so exhausted. I'm like, do I want to read a
• 1:26:23
  few more things before the next book?
• 1:26:25
  Then I see the cover of the next book.
• 1:26:27
  I'm like, you know what? I think the next that.
• 1:26:29
  The next book is probably exactly what I need.
• 1:26:33
  It is the. Greatest Doctor cover of them
• 1:26:35
  all. I think so too.
• 1:26:39
  You see that book and you've got to be thinking like what the.
• 1:26:43
  Who's that poodle? Pink hot pink fluoro.
• 1:26:47
  Hot pink cover dog. A poodle having a smoke with a
• 1:26:53
  smoke holder on it. The one. 100th.
• 1:26:56
  Doctor Who book, I love that it's celebrating the fact that
• 1:26:58
  it's an anniversary book too. And it's like, and here's what
• 1:27:01
  we're doing. We can do anything.
• 1:27:02
  Pink covers, poodles smoking with the laser gun Go out logo.
• 1:27:06
  As well. Oh yeah.
• 1:27:09
  It says something, you know, where I was in my life when that
• 1:27:12
  came out that I rushed into that Waterstones and I picked it up
• 1:27:16
  off the shelf and I just didn't think it was camp at all.
• 1:27:19
  I was like, it's the latest Doctor Who book and they're all
• 1:27:22
  looking at me, at the tail going, Oh dear.
• 1:27:24
  It's got a book with a. Big poodle on the cover.
• 1:27:27
  I'm just so excited. Reading.
• 1:27:30
  It in work it's like what are you sorry?
• 1:27:32
  Anyone who says black sheep can't deliver.
• 1:27:36
  I got some amazing covers, and that's definitely one of them.
• 1:27:39
  Sure. And then I think the third would
• 1:27:43
  be the Scarlet Empress, because that's the intro to him.
• 1:27:47
  And I think he's the first author to make me go.
• 1:27:53
  I think I Magic and Doctor Who can really work.
• 1:27:59
  And he's probably the, that's probably the book and he's
• 1:28:02
  probably the author that I, I, I, because I don't, I'm not into
• 1:28:08
  fantasy that often. I don't really go out and read
• 1:28:11
  stuff about Dragons and shit like that.
• 1:28:12
  It's not my Braille house. But for some reason playing Paul
• 1:28:16
  Mars proved it with the Scarlet Empress.
• 1:28:19
  You put Doctor Who in a magic setting.
• 1:28:21
  I love it. And it doesn't matter if it's
• 1:28:24
  this kind of 1001 nights kind of thing in the Scarlet Empress or
• 1:28:29
  if it's friggin dark magic in City of the Dead by Lord of
• 1:28:34
  Rose. For some reason that book opened
• 1:28:37
  the kind of floodgates for me to be a bit more exposed and
• 1:28:41
  interested in other other kinds of genres and things too.
• 1:28:44
  So yeah, that's my three. I think it took a.
• 1:28:47
  While didn't it? He opened that door and it took
• 1:28:50
  a while and then he did the Blue Angel and he opened the door a
• 1:28:53
  bit more and then the other author started going.
• 1:28:56
  Do you know what? I'm going to play in this
• 1:28:57
  sandpit as well. Yeah, I think it's easy for
• 1:29:01
  authors to follow some like Lawrence Miles, because he's
• 1:29:04
  also doing the same thing and expanding what Doctor Who fans
• 1:29:07
  can do. But it's easier to kind of
• 1:29:09
  follow him. Paul's voice and what he's doing
• 1:29:13
  is so it's, it's unique in Doctor Who.
• 1:29:17
  It's such a beautiful idea of things.
• 1:29:20
  But anyway, just I'm going to not steam your Thunder.
• 1:29:23
  I'm really interested in what you got here.
• 1:29:26
  It's funny, you know, we could all.
• 1:29:27
  Remember that Paul Miles follows Lawrence Miles, but we cannot
• 1:29:30
  remember at all who follows Paul Miles.
• 1:29:33
  Who can? You.
• 1:29:34
  Who the hell was? It I can't even remember who
• 1:29:37
  came off the Blue Angel was. It.
• 1:29:40
  Planet 5 taking planet 5 maybe? Or frontier worlds Frontier.
• 1:29:44
  Worlds is the frontier on if I'm going interference with the
• 1:29:49
  August came after Mad Dogs. Was it hope?
• 1:29:54
  Yes, so. Mark, Mark Clapham There you go.
• 1:29:56
  Mark Clapham follows Paul Mars with a big gay.
• 1:29:59
  Disco on the front, fabulous 2 gay covers back-to-back.
• 1:30:04
  But then you got anachophobia, so you know, so the Janus.
• 1:30:07
  Conjunction is the Janus conjunctions after the Scarlet
• 1:30:11
  Empress OK. Don't.
• 1:30:13
  Remember much about that? Sorry, Mr. I think Baxendale
• 1:30:17
  became a better writer after his first couple.
• 1:30:19
  Like, yeah, that's how I describe it.
• 1:30:22
  Blue ain't taking a Planet 5. That's.
• 1:30:24
  Hey, that's the second time Mark Clappen's followed.
• 1:30:27
  Yeah, that's. What I said.
• 1:30:28
  Paul Mars. Yeah.
• 1:30:29
  Yeah, sorry, I'm just, I'm catching up, right, I was.
• 1:30:33
  Looking at the list just as you. Only Paul Masker for sorry, Paul
• 1:30:37
  Masker for Lawrence Miles, and only Mark Clapping can follow.
• 1:30:41
  Who the hell follows Mark? No, no, let's not do that.
• 1:30:45
  Peter Angelides. Jonathan Morris.
• 1:30:47
  Man. They know what they.
• 1:30:49
  Were doing in that run. Yes, Paul Mars.
• 1:30:54
  No my. Thunder has been well and truly
• 1:30:56
  stolen because my list mirrors Luke's entirely.
• 1:31:00
  I had Peter Loo Massacre on there, so I'm going to change it
• 1:31:03
  up now. I've just been doing some
• 1:31:04
  thinking while he's been going through it going fuck fuck.
• 1:31:07
  That's all my list. I'm last here.
• 1:31:09
  What do you think? I'm thinking I do.
• 1:31:11
  I mean I I just thought the Peter Loo Massacre was a
• 1:31:14
  wonderful fuck you to. I think both the people that
• 1:31:20
  mock his work and the creatives he works alongside that think he
• 1:31:25
  can only do one sort of thing. And what he did was write a
• 1:31:28
  script which knocked out of the park against anything anyone was
• 1:31:33
  doing at the time. And in terms of drama and given
• 1:31:36
  those regulars dramatic things to do, it is unforgettable.
• 1:31:40
  The end of episode 3 is I'll never forget Sarah Silas before.
• 1:31:43
  At the end of episode 3. Is it the horse and the baby?
• 1:31:47
  Is that the horse and the? Pregnant.
• 1:31:49
  Yeah. Horrible.
• 1:31:51
  But. I.
• 1:31:53
  Can't. Believe that any publisher or
• 1:31:56
  company on this world, in this world who have a writer like
• 1:32:00
  Paul Mars willing to write for you would say no.
• 1:32:04
  It's like there are very few Doctor Who writers who have like
• 1:32:08
  a really unique voice and something to say.
• 1:32:11
  And he is one of those people. He's one of the best.
• 1:32:13
  Like it baffles me how anyone could.
• 1:32:17
  Well, BBC Books and. Puffin seem to know they got a
• 1:32:21
  very glad you big. Finish it's.
• 1:32:25
  Just because he seems difficult to pigeonhole as a writer and
• 1:32:28
  he's he's, you can't just sell him as one thing.
• 1:32:33
  So. Yeah.
• 1:32:35
  It may be it's. Just the the marketing
• 1:32:37
  department can't quite get hold of how do you sell this guy who
• 1:32:40
  wants to shape shift through genres, but they don't really.
• 1:32:43
  Sell them on authors. They sell them on that week.
• 1:32:45
  So like, like there's so many people who haven't established a
• 1:32:50
  name for themselves, but right, like 12 things for Big Finish in
• 1:32:52
  a year. And it's like, but you're
• 1:32:54
  turning down somebody who has a name, has ideas, has an audit.
• 1:32:58
  Baffling. I can, I can.
• 1:33:00
  Only imagine. Yeah, you would.
• 1:33:02
  I would, Andrew would, Luke would.
• 1:33:04
  I can only write go. For it that.
• 1:33:07
  If that is happening then it's the person that's commissioning
• 1:33:12
  that's not to their taste and those people are insane.
• 1:33:16
  Also the worm. I'm going to start with an.
• 1:33:20
  Audio as well. I'd like to start with Find and
• 1:33:22
  Replace from the Companion Chronicles because I think it's
• 1:33:25
  one. I was thinking of that ever.
• 1:33:28
  Joe Brav and Katie Manning's performance and that the dual
• 1:33:30
  rowers Iris and Joe is just sublime.
• 1:33:35
  But mostly for the sequence at the end where Joe and Iris
• 1:33:40
  confront the doctor and she gets to say to him, this was the best
• 1:33:43
  time I ever had, please can I stay?
• 1:33:46
  And realizes that he's trying to sort of take those adventures
• 1:33:48
  away because he wants her to be safe.
• 1:33:50
  And she says, well, I'm not doing that because that was the
• 1:33:52
  best time. It's just beautiful.
• 1:33:55
  And I just love the ending as well with her.
• 1:33:57
  And Iris go off in the bus to go back to.
• 1:33:59
  And then the bus gets way late. She goes, come on, Joe, we're
• 1:34:03
  going to have a wonderful adventure.
• 1:34:05
  And it's just it just makes me have chills listening to that
• 1:34:09
  story. How beautiful does?
• 1:34:11
  He write for Katie Manning, though.
• 1:34:12
  It's a match made in heaven. Yeah.
• 1:34:15
  Although we did. Another Katie Manning.
• 1:34:16
  One too, which is really good with the the little author
• 1:34:20
  dudes. Oh, the.
• 1:34:25
  Novelisers of verbatim six. Yeah, because.
• 1:34:28
  I love ring pool world out of her low.
• 1:34:30
  One as well. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:34:33
  A bit. In Find and Replace as well,
• 1:34:35
  where Iris knocks out Sergeant Benton with A and then you've
• 1:34:43
  got them all sort of tiptoeing through the unit.
• 1:34:45
  Oh, man, I just love it. So that's my number one, my
• 1:34:50
  number 2. I had the scarlet.
• 1:34:55
  Empress and I really want to keep it as the Scarlet Empress
• 1:34:57
  because. I think it is one.
• 1:35:01
  Of the best written Doctor Who books of all time.
• 1:35:03
  I think in terms of you are there after this.
• 1:35:06
  We did the episode, you know, Yeah.
• 1:35:08
  It's just absolutely gorgeous. And my number one, I'm just
• 1:35:11
  going to keep it. It's Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
• 1:35:14
  It's my favorite hardest team, the 8th Doctor Fitz and Angie.
• 1:35:17
  It's a piss take of George Lucas.
• 1:35:20
  It's a piss take of Jr. Soul Kitten.
• 1:35:23
  It's insane. Pig poodles shitting all over
• 1:35:26
  the place and shocking the regulars into cells naked.
• 1:35:30
  And we're all trying not to look at the doctor's knob and failing
• 1:35:33
  miserably. It's just wonderful.
• 1:35:36
  It's so funny. It's so well written.
• 1:35:39
  It's really complexly plotted. I just love that book.
• 1:35:45
  Yeah. So those are my three.
• 1:35:46
  Predictable, but there we are. My 3 I cannot avoid picking the
• 1:35:54
  Skull Empress. Because it was on my.
• 1:35:57
  Top 10 for a good reason as it opens up Doctor Who to new words
• 1:36:02
  and you can almost see kind of Russell T Davis in reintroducing
• 1:36:06
  fantasy as in that lineage. I I don't know if you've read
• 1:36:10
  the book, but that's the kind of thing that skull Empress opens
• 1:36:14
  the door on you. You know, it's it's one thing,
• 1:36:19
  but the Doctor Who I I know you have the Ravi trad thing, but
• 1:36:21
  The thing is more people who are reverent with Doctor Who's
• 1:36:25
  people who want to play with Doctor Who, you know who want to
• 1:36:28
  engage with it. And that's what it does.
• 1:36:31
  And it's just this is what Doctor Who can be.
• 1:36:35
  It's it's possibility. It's a world of possibilities.
• 1:36:38
  And all his books are like that. They open the verdigre the way
• 1:36:42
  it the way it takes the piss out of every other MA and PDA it's.
• 1:36:47
  Glorious. And yeah, I, I could have put
• 1:36:51
  any of his books on there. He's the.
• 1:36:53
  Only writer you know that writes the line.
• 1:36:56
  Oh, that companion didn't last too long.
• 1:36:59
  He got the squits every time we went through the time.
• 1:37:03
  I love that line. It works.
• 1:37:07
  OK, second, I will go with an audio or I will cheat and go
• 1:37:13
  because there's one big reason I will go with the Nest Cottage
• 1:37:16
  Chronicles. Oh, glorious.
• 1:37:20
  It's again, it's all Mars inventing his own version of
• 1:37:26
  Doctor Who. Now there was a terrible
• 1:37:28
  proposal from Gareth Roberts, take the Hickman and Mark Gatiss
• 1:37:32
  in the early 2000s, which was essentially the Doctor retires
• 1:37:36
  to the countryside. It will never work.
• 1:37:40
  No. And this you give you give it
• 1:37:43
  Tom Baker having, you know, no, no one was particularly looking
• 1:37:46
  to Richard Franklin coming back, were they?
• 1:37:48
  Let's face it, God bless him. But look and Susan Jameson, oh,
• 1:37:53
  how good is she? Is Miss Websey in this?
• 1:37:55
  She's so. Crabby.
• 1:37:57
  I love her, it's perfect. It's the.
• 1:37:59
  Companion Tom Baker should always have had It's almost like
• 1:38:03
  an older version of the Hall of Wards Romana in a way.
• 1:38:06
  Who will answer him back? Who will have that rapport with
• 1:38:09
  him? It's a different version of
• 1:38:13
  Doctor Who, but it's a perfectly the same Doctor Who that, you
• 1:38:17
  know, it fits, but it's unique. It's it's poor Mars essentially
• 1:38:21
  getting to do the version he's always wanted to do.
• 1:38:25
  And it is glorious, the story. I've.
• 1:38:29
  Always heard is like that Tom Baker enjoyed doing the nest
• 1:38:35
  cottage thing so much that he was like, yeah, I'll do some big
• 1:38:39
  finishes now. So yeah, hey, Big.
• 1:38:42
  Finish. Thank, thank.
• 1:38:44
  You thank Paul Mars over here. Like just slayed and smoothed.
• 1:38:47
  Away a little bit as well. So much fun.
• 1:38:49
  She was having. Working with definitely better.
• 1:38:52
  The 4th audio. Of the first nest Cottage
• 1:38:54
  theory, A Sting in the tail is one of the creepiest audios I've
• 1:38:59
  ever heard. He could do horror really well
• 1:39:02
  as well. The.
• 1:39:03
  Variety is the the different stories he's playing with.
• 1:39:06
  You know, what's it you know, what's it Star Wars, Star Wars.
• 1:39:09
  We've got Tom Baker in Rasputin as the on the on the cover of
• 1:39:14
  it. Was it Aladdin time?
• 1:39:16
  Well, he's doing the pantomimes gorgeous.
• 1:39:19
  It's the breadth as well. You know, it's, it's such a
• 1:39:23
  flexible format even within that kind of mini new series of
• 1:39:27
  Doctor Who. Yeah.
• 1:39:29
  And so, yeah, I do it. And the other one, I think it's
• 1:39:32
  one that kind of changed my perspective on Doctor Who.
• 1:39:36
  And it's a short story. I think it's in short trips and
• 1:39:39
  sidesteps. It's called the longest story in
• 1:39:41
  the world. Oh.
• 1:39:43
  I've not read it. Oh it.
• 1:39:45
  It essentially frames Doctor Who was one big story.
• 1:39:51
  It's it's kind of Doctor Who as the as told as the Arabian
• 1:39:55
  Nights in a way. And it go, you know, so it's one
• 1:40:00
  of those if I'm being a smart ass, I will go what you know,
• 1:40:04
  people ask me what my favorite stories.
• 1:40:05
  I'll go it's the one that started in 1963 and it's still
• 1:40:08
  going right now. So it's it's that whole it's
• 1:40:11
  Doctor Who seen as just this one continuous long tech patchwork
• 1:40:16
  text. And it's a such a gorgeous idea
• 1:40:19
  just in one kind of brief story. So I would.
• 1:40:26
  And you and you get the 1st Doctor in Susan in it as well.
• 1:40:27
  So it's I'm always happy with that.
• 1:40:30
  So that would be. My kind of third choice.
• 1:40:33
  And I feel guilty for not going to 100 and going wider because
• 1:40:37
  you cannot, you cannot pick up a Paul Mars book and not find
• 1:40:42
  something absolutely wonderful. At least one or two little gems
• 1:40:46
  that will stay with you. I, I asked a couple of book
• 1:40:52
  clubbers to read their degree and they didn't like it at all,
• 1:40:59
  but they couldn't say it was a bad book.
• 1:41:03
  And that's the thing about you cannot like the style or the
• 1:41:06
  tone, But I don't think you can read a, he's got such a mastery
• 1:41:10
  of English, you know, and a, and 1000 sources that you froze in.
• 1:41:14
  I don't think you can read a book, even if you don't like
• 1:41:17
  what it's doing and say it's a bad book.
• 1:41:19
  I don't think he's got it in him.
• 1:41:21
  Oh God, the. Sheep.
• 1:41:26
  I've never ever stopped. Laughing at Mike Yates being
• 1:41:28
  put. Him in your pocket, it's so.
• 1:41:34
  So funny. I'm just a quick word for sick
• 1:41:38
  building as well. I've really excellent NSA where
• 1:41:43
  he doesn't the last thing you imagine you would ever do, and
• 1:41:46
  that is massacre an entire family in the most bloody and
• 1:41:50
  violent way possible. And he knows what kids want,
• 1:41:54
  right? Like.
• 1:41:56
  He knows adults. Want affairs when kids want a
• 1:41:58
  massacre? The closest he gets to
• 1:42:02
  adventures is right in that giddy book.
• 1:42:05
  I forgot one before he. Wrote.
• 1:42:07
  It. He understands that doctors got
• 1:42:10
  this audience, which goes from 5 to 95 and he.
• 1:42:15
  Absolutely. Captures that hoard.
• 1:42:17
  One of the very few who can do that, I think, and.
• 1:42:20
  Intriguingly, this this week I think it's been spotted that a
• 1:42:24
  book's gone up on Amazon that's coming out next year, which I
• 1:42:28
  don't think has been properly announced yet, which is Paul
• 1:42:31
  Mars and Steve Cole, a collection of short stories
• 1:42:35
  called 1001 Nights. So I think I'm into.
• 1:42:39
  A club, Nick? Yeah.
• 1:42:42
  Last time, those two. Gentlemen worked together on a
• 1:42:44
  project. We got the wormery.
• 1:42:46
  So I'm yes. Oh.
• 1:42:48
  My. God, there's only one bad thing.
• 1:42:50
  About that and it comes out the week after my birthday.
• 1:42:53
  Oh. We can spend your book.
• 1:42:55
  Tokens. Yay.
• 1:42:57
  Wormwood's got one of the best lies ever.
• 1:42:59
  Ever. And Doctor Who was it.
• 1:43:01
  You can't have a diabolical denouement in a patisserie.
• 1:43:08
  Wonderful. Well, I'll tell you what.
• 1:43:10
  I'm going to throw another impossible puzzler to you.
• 1:43:13
  This has been a huge love for Paul Mars's work.
• 1:43:17
  Sum up his work in one word, Andrew.
• 1:43:23
  One word. Yes.
• 1:43:25
  One word only. Multifaceted.
• 1:43:27
  Oh, John. Oh.
• 1:43:31
  God, can you come back to me? I'm going to have to think about
• 1:43:34
  this one and. No, not Andrew Luke.
• 1:43:37
  Sorry, Luke. Wonderful.
• 1:43:42
  How original? Jukes.
• 1:43:46
  John, I've got. Loving because he always has
• 1:43:49
  that, whatever he is, he never takes the piss.
• 1:43:53
  It's always done with that very British kind of love for it.
• 1:43:59
  And I will finish this off on magnificent, which is a word
• 1:44:03
  I'll probably bandy around too much, but never has it been more
• 1:44:07
  authentically used than talking about Paul Mars's work.
• 1:44:12
  We love you, Paul. It's writing a Davidson.
• 1:44:17
  Book for me, Paul. Thank you, I loved.
• 1:44:20
  It. I want rather.
• 1:44:22
  Colin, again, please for Big Finish.
• 1:44:23
  Thank you very much. And they all vanished quite
• 1:44:35
  slowly, ending with their grins, which remained some time after
• 1:44:40
  the rest of them had gone.