Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Bad Therapy by Matthew Jones (featuring Dan Pinn, Gareth Bowley & David Gillespie-Pratt)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Bad Therapy by Matthew Jones (featuring Dan Pinn, Gareth Bowley & David Gillespie-Pratt) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  Under the bed, quick. The doctor opened his mouth to
• 0:03
  protest, but such was the panic on Jack's face that he allowed
• 0:07
  himself to be ushered under the other single bed in the room.
• 0:11
  A moment later there was a knock at the door.
• 0:14
  As he lay there in the dust, staring at the Criss cross of
• 0:18
  wire that formed the base of the bed, he was aware that Rosalind
• 0:22
  Forester would have had a few arch comments to make about him
• 0:25
  being secreted away in a young man's bedroom.
• 0:29
  He heard the door being opened and the heavy footsteps of a
• 0:32
  large man entered the room. From his low vantage point he
• 0:38
  could only see the newcomers black shoes and trouser bottoms.
• 0:42
  The man's voice was old and low. He said he had come to click
• 0:46
  some money of that implied threat he made.
• 0:49
  When Jack replied that he didn't have, it suggested that the man
• 0:53
  was not from a bank or a reputable company.
• 0:57
  A loan shark? The installment sounded
• 1:01
  considerable, and the doctor wondered what Jack had needed
• 1:04
  the money for. The young man didn't seem to own
• 1:07
  much. The room he shared was barely
• 1:10
  furnished and Jack's clothes were neither new nor expensive.
• 1:14
  Well, he wasn't going to find the answers to his questions
• 1:18
  down here. Despite Jack's strange request
• 1:21
  for him to remain hidden, the Doctor was about to climb out
• 1:24
  from under the bed and ask when he caught sight of a magazine
• 1:28
  tucked beneath the mattress, presumably by Jack.
• 1:34
  As he pulled it through one of the diamond shaped gaps in the
• 1:36
  wireframe, a few small brown envelopes slipped from its
• 1:39
  pages. The title of the magazine was
• 1:43
  Physical Strength and Fitness. The Doctor grinned.
• 1:47
  He'd forgotten how innocent mid 20th century Britain could be.
• 1:52
  It was a magazine for weight trainers.
• 1:56
  Most of the text was made-up of dietary advice for those in
• 1:59
  training and excited reports of national competitions and
• 2:04
  championships presumably included to encourage the
• 2:07
  dispirited. However, the doctor suspected
• 2:12
  that it was the pictures which had attracted Jack to the title.
• 2:17
  They were all of young men exhibiting the results of the
• 2:20
  hard work they've done at the gym.
• 2:23
  Some of the models have been photographed nude, but the
• 2:26
  publishers had discreetly superimposed black underwear
• 2:30
  over the offending parts of the photographs.
• 2:33
  To the doctor, this coyness seemed somehow representative of
• 2:37
  the age. There were some loose pages that
• 2:41
  had obviously been torn from other exercise magazines,
• 2:44
  pictures of healthy looking young men flexing muscles and
• 2:48
  lifting weights. All of the models in the
• 2:50
  pictures had cherubic expressions and golden hair.
• 2:55
  The doctor was reminded of the boy who died at the hospital,
• 2:59
  reminded of the blood making pink streaks in the fair hair.
• 3:05
  The envelopes which had been secreted between the pages of
• 3:08
  the magazine were all addressed to Jack Bartlett, Esquire, and
• 3:14
  also contained photographs, or rather, the doctor discovered
• 3:19
  after examining them, each contain a single copy of the
• 3:22
  same picture. From the grainy texture of the
• 3:26
  image, it was clear that the picture had been taken from a
• 3:29
  distance, probably with a telephoto lens.
• 3:33
  The picture was of two young men sitting on a bench facing each
• 3:37
  other. Despite the poor quality of the
• 3:39
  photograph, the two men were easily identifiable.
• 3:44
  The blonde boy, his dark hair in this picture, was reaching out
• 3:48
  to touch Jack's face. There was something familiar
• 3:51
  about the envelope. A fault in the typewriter had
• 3:55
  meant that the Q in Esquire had been printed slightly lower than
• 4:00
  the other letters in the line. The doctor had seen this before
• 4:05
  when he'd called at that flat earlier that evening.
• 4:08
  There had been a similar letter for Jack on the sideboard in the
• 4:11
  hall. He'd noticed it while Missus
• 4:15
  Carraway had been bitterly sounding off about the
• 4:17
  inadequacies of her tenant. 3 months behind with the rent and
• 4:22
  coming in at all hours from those pubs in the West End.
• 4:26
  Jack's voice, raised in anger, brought the doctor into the
• 4:29
  present. That's too much.
• 4:31
  I can't get my hands on that much.
• 4:33
  They're already asking questions at work.
• 4:35
  I've given you money this month, I just can't get you anymore I'm
• 4:38
  afraid. The croaky voice rasped, not
• 4:41
  sounding afraid at all. But in the interest on your debt
• 4:45
  has increased. The people I represent are keen
• 4:49
  to make the most out of their investment, but they're not
• 4:53
  greedy. They want just one more payment.
• 4:57
  If that isn't made, they will be forced to take extreme action.
• 5:02
  Letters will be sent, statements will be made.
• 5:05
  Public statements, if you catch my drift.
• 5:10
  The doctor's face hardened. It wasn't a loan.
• 5:13
  Jack hadn't borrowed any money. It was extortion.
• 5:17
  Jack Bartlett was paying to keep the photograph secret, paying to
• 5:21
  keep the touch that moment in the park quiet.
• 5:24
  The photographs in the envelope were to remind Jack of the
• 5:27
  blackmailers hold over him. The doctor placed the envelopes
• 5:31
  back between the pages of the magazine and pushed it back into
• 5:34
  its hiding place in the folds of the exercise magazine.
• 5:39
  The coyness of the magazine had suddenly lost its charm.
• 5:45
  The doctor climbed slowly and calmly out from under the bed.
• 5:48
  Jack's guest was a stooped, elderly man with roomy eyes and
• 5:53
  a pinched, vicious face. On seeing the Doctor, the old
• 5:57
  man let out a winning of a laugh.
• 5:59
  Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize that I was
• 6:03
  interrupting something. He raised an eyebrow somewhat
• 6:06
  theatrically. Well, there's no stopping you
• 6:09
  devils, is there? I wonder if I should let my
• 6:12
  employers know about this little liaison.
• 6:15
  They're always on the lookout for new clients.
• 6:18
  And who might you be? Mister Jack shouted that it
• 6:22
  wasn't like that. The Doctor only calmly brushed
• 6:25
  the dust from his jacket with his hat.
• 6:27
  It's not Mr., It's Doctor, actually.
• 6:30
  The old man's lined face broke out into a grin, displaying a
• 6:34
  few yellowing tooth. It gets better and better.
• 6:38
  In our business, we find that men who have much are always
• 6:42
  willing to work that little bit harder to keep hold of what
• 6:45
  they've got. The doctor reached into his
• 6:49
  jacket pockets and dramatically emptied their contents onto the
• 6:52
  bed. Without looking at the debris,
• 6:54
  he said 2 apple paws, a catapult, 14 inches of a
• 6:58
  starring a cricket ball, 23 arcturion pounds, the key to an
• 7:02
  obsolete blue telephone box and a three God stoppers. 1/2
• 7:06
  sucked. That's all I have in the world.
• 7:10
  The blackmailer looked at the doctor as if he were mad.
• 7:14
  The doctor continued, his voice measured and even.
• 7:17
  I don't have anything. No job, no employers.
• 7:21
  View to contact no colleagues for you to whisper to.
• 7:25
  My doctorate is entirely my own invention.
• 7:28
  I am a traveller. I have no home here, no spouse
• 7:32
  and new children. I am not a member of the Rotary
• 7:36
  Club and the police do not know my name.
• 7:38
  In fact, I don't even have a name, not anymore.
• 7:43
  You're lying. The old man sneered, but he
• 7:47
  sounded unsettled in the face of the Doctor's calm sincerity.
• 7:51
  No one can live like that. Everyone's got something they're
• 7:54
  scared of losing, something they'll pay to protect.
• 7:57
  We'll find out all about you, don't you worry.
• 8:01
  The Doctor shrugged and leaned forward on his red umbrella
• 8:03
  handle. I'm not worried.
• 8:06
  There's only one very small thing about you that interests
• 8:09
  me. Your work must be very
• 8:12
  lucrative, am I right? The old man glanced at Jack and
• 8:15
  sniggered. Well, we can't complain.
• 8:19
  I'm sure you must have made a lot of money out of people,
• 8:23
  people who can't possibly refuse your demands.
• 8:26
  You can go on and on until you're drunk and then completely
• 8:29
  dry, and even then there's nothing to stop you going
• 8:31
  through with your threat. The old man looked pleased that
• 8:36
  someone appreciated how powerful and clever he and his friends
• 8:40
  were. Oh, we often expose people even
• 8:43
  after they've paid up. The publicity persuades anyone
• 8:46
  who might be thinking of refusing us to come around to
• 8:49
  our way of thinking. That must prove to be the most
• 8:53
  effective, the doctor commented. So why, if it is so successful,
• 8:59
  so perfect, are you letting this particular client off?
• 9:03
  It's this strange act of generosity that interests me.
• 9:07
  What do you mean? Well, you said a moment ago that
• 9:09
  your employers only wanted a one more payment from Jack, a large
• 9:13
  payment, and earlier than usual. Why?
• 9:18
  The blackmailer narrowed his eyes.
• 9:20
  That's none of your business. Oh, everything is my business.
• 9:24
  The doctor scoffed. You're letting him off because
• 9:26
  you know something? You know something about the
• 9:28
  other boy in the photograph, am I right?
• 9:31
  I am, aren't I? The doctor took a step forward
• 9:35
  and the old man nervously scuttled to the door.
• 9:38
  You knew before you came here that something had happened, or
• 9:41
  was going to happen to the boy in that picture.
• 9:44
  The old man slipped a hand around the door handle,
• 9:47
  preparing to leave. Who are you?
• 9:49
  Beads of sweat appeared on his wrinkle brow.
• 9:52
  How can you know all this? I'm that doctor.
• 9:55
  He thundered. And the answers to my questions
• 9:57
  are written in that fear on your face.
• 9:59
  You can give your employers a message.
• 10:00
  You can tell them that if they are in a trouble, you can tell
• 10:04
  them that they would expect a visit from me.
• 10:08
  With no answer to give to this, the old man just snarled a
• 10:11
  threat at the Doctor and left, closing the door after him.
• 10:15
  The Doctor's mood changed dramatically.
• 10:18
  The darkness left his eyes and suddenly filled with energy, he
• 10:22
  ran over to the bed and started to refill his pockets.
• 10:24
  Right now, we'll have put the wind up him.
• 10:26
  We'd better follow him to their lair while that trail's still
• 10:30
  hot. When Jack didn't answer him, the
• 10:32
  Doctor turned to find the boy staring at him.
• 10:35
  He's dead, isn't he? Jack said quietly.
• 10:39
  Eddie's dead. For a moment there was silence.
• 10:43
  Eddie, I didn't know his name. The doctor looked away for a
• 10:47
  moment and then met Jack's gaze and nodded.
• 10:51
  Yes, I'm afraid he is dead. He was murdered earlier this
• 10:56
  evening. He was dying when I found him.
• 11:00
  I tried to save him, but I couldn't.
• 11:04
  Jack put down heavily on his bed and buried his face in his
• 11:08
  hands. The doctor could only stare down
• 11:11
  as the teenager was gripped by the 1st spasm of grief.
• 11:18
  Hello and welcome to Hamster with a Blunt Pen Knife Book
• 11:22
  Club, the Doctor Who Review Podcast.
• 11:25
  My name is Dan Penn. I'm your host for tonight, but
• 11:27
  please don't let that put you off because I am joined by three
• 11:31
  of the finest Doctor Who fans that there are out there.
• 11:34
  I'm joined by Gareth Boley, David Gillespie Pratt and Joe
• 11:39
  Ford. Hello gents.
• 11:40
  How? How the devil are we?
• 11:42
  Hello. Hello.
• 11:45
  We've doubled our audience now they've realised that you're the
• 11:48
  host. No, we've only got 1 listener
• 11:52
  left. That's my mum so well.
• 11:57
  But I've caught the sun. I've been to a big gay party
• 11:59
  this weekend and oh sorry, I better say that sounds really
• 12:03
  dodgy. I've been to the Mighty Hoop
• 12:05
  this weekend and I've been out in the sun for 13 hours so I'm
• 12:09
  sort of a bit of a tomato. But delighted to be here.
• 12:12
  Thank you. Yes, it's been a long time, long
• 12:15
  time since we last recorded together, wasn't it?
• 12:17
  But it's it's, it's kind of the anticipation has been building
• 12:23
  for this one. Forever.
• 12:24
  For how long, gents? How long has this one been in
• 12:27
  the pipeline? I I think I've managed to read
• 12:30
  the book three times since since I'm going.
• 12:33
  To do it. I think I finished it.
• 12:36
  I finished it about six months ago.
• 12:38
  I think I. Think it's been about 3 months.
• 12:41
  I think we were due to do it in February because it was LGBT
• 12:44
  History Month, which I thought tied in quite nicely with the
• 12:46
  themes of the book. It is now 2nd of June.
• 12:49
  It's now Pride month in a way. We're good, we're good.
• 12:53
  We're thematically on on brand here.
• 12:56
  I'll have to bring it out this month, now wouldn't I?
• 12:59
  Now you've no pressure. No pressure.
• 13:02
  There's still a long, long, you know, bit of June to go yet, you
• 13:05
  know, Okie, dokie. So yeah, so obviously we're
• 13:10
  doing bad therapy tonight, but we've got an ice breaker
• 13:15
  question to to to break us into this this podcast.
• 13:21
  So as as toys are kind of like an important part of of
• 13:27
  tonight's book, I'm going to ask you what is or was your favorite
• 13:33
  toy. So I'll start with you, Jill,
• 13:36
  because you're giggling away me. Does it have to be an innocent
• 13:43
  toy? No, you can be whatever you
• 13:45
  want. Oh, well, I've got this 18 inch
• 13:49
  veiny. No, I haven't.
• 13:51
  Well, I mean, I do, but I don't want to talk about that.
• 13:55
  You know what, I sort of, I'm going to cop out because I don't
• 14:01
  really collect Doctor Who toys. I've got a few around me that
• 14:05
  have been gifted to me, but I've never been a Doctor Who like
• 14:09
  figure person Mars got like a, a whole box.
• 14:13
  You know, when they were bringing out every fucking
• 14:15
  character in RTD 1, You know, our Grandma Donnelly destroyed
• 14:19
  Cassandra, all of that bunch. I just look for it and go, what,
• 14:23
  what are you going to do with these?
• 14:24
  Like they're just bits of plastic.
• 14:27
  But I do understand the obsession.
• 14:29
  However, I did buy something from Snoopers in Brighton which
• 14:34
  is so ridiculously detailed I keep it right next to the
• 14:39
  monitor every time I'm recording.
• 14:41
  So technically this is my favorite figure and it is an 80s
• 14:45
  Cyberman, right down to like all of the wiring in the crinkly
• 14:50
  trousers. The fabulous arse of David
• 14:52
  Banks. You know, it's so accurate.
• 14:55
  So that is, I'd probably say that is my favorite doctor.
• 14:58
  It's the only time I've gone into a shop and said I want it.
• 15:02
  Is that the talking one? The one it.
• 15:04
  Is unfortunately when you press him now, it just sort of goes
• 15:08
  because the batteries are going. So he's a.
• 15:10
  One of David, is it one of the five Doctors ones?
• 15:13
  The ones that's getting beaten up by the robotic puking up I.
• 15:17
  Mean, honest to God, I mean, look, they've even got the the
• 15:20
  sort of lining of the trousers right around the bulge.
• 15:23
  I mean, it's just perfect. It's yeah.
• 15:26
  So that's probably my favorite Doctor Who toy.
• 15:28
  And I do love my Jodie Whisker Sonic screwdriver as well, which
• 15:33
  I used to wave around like a lunatic every time she was on
• 15:36
  the TVI used to pretend to turn the TV on with it.
• 15:39
  It used to drive my ex mad. They're probably my favorite
• 15:42
  too. Nice one.
• 15:44
  Thank you very much. Let's go to Gareth next.
• 15:48
  Tell us yours. Well, it would probably be far
• 15:51
  too easy for me to raise the police officer Amy figure, which
• 15:56
  I'm not going to do. What I'm instead going to raise
• 15:59
  is the Lego Dimensions set for Doctor Who.
• 16:03
  So if anyone's au fait with Lego dimensions, TT games produce
• 16:08
  this game with lots of IP in it. It was amazing.
• 16:12
  Lego Movie 18, Knight Rider, Mission Impossible and Doctor
• 16:16
  Who. So there is a the only way you
• 16:20
  can get the Peter Capaldi version of the figure.
• 16:25
  They did do a Lego set with Peter Capaldi, but in Matt
• 16:27
  Smith's outfit, the only way you can get him is through the
• 16:30
  dimension set. But the reason why I enjoy this
• 16:32
  toy toy, not just because it's made of Lego, is because I spent
• 16:36
  ages with my son playing the game because it is actually a
• 16:39
  computer game to play as well. And it's one of those games that
• 16:42
  involves thinking, puzzle solving, as well as bashing
• 16:45
  Daleks over the head with a Sonic screwdriver.
• 16:47
  So that's my favorite toy do. You get all the doctors.
• 16:53
  No, they only, they only ever did it when Peter Capaldi was
• 16:55
  the Doctor. So there's like there's that
• 16:58
  Lego idea set they brought out and then this dimension set they
• 17:00
  did do a, a Cyberman with. Who else came, You know, it was
• 17:06
  a Cyberman with a Dalek and that was it.
• 17:09
  Can you hold him up again? Did he have a little Sonic
• 17:11
  screwdriver? He does have a little Sonic
• 17:12
  screwdriver, but he also came with the set, came with the
• 17:17
  little TARDIS and the little canine as well.
• 17:23
  Oh my. God, with the little Lego bits
• 17:26
  on the side. Yeah, that's gorgeous.
• 17:30
  More importantly, is there a Lego Clara?
• 17:33
  Yes, there was a Lego minifigures Clara in the in the
• 17:36
  Ideas set. Gareth and Are We the Angel as
• 17:39
  well? Unfortunately, she's somewhere
• 17:42
  on the way to the sea now. Yeah.
• 17:43
  Is that right? She's.
• 17:44
  Still in the box, and then she shall remain forever.
• 17:51
  Are any of you guys aware of like a company called Mini Fig?
• 17:54
  Me, I think it's called. Yes, they do.
• 17:58
  They're all customers, don't they?
• 17:59
  I don't know. Yeah.
• 18:01
  But there's there's you can get all kinds of different.
• 18:04
  I'll take take the plastic cough because then so you get wow,
• 18:08
  they're really, really good. Will you please do an audio
• 18:11
  description because that's just our staring at the.
• 18:13
  Screen yeah, right now. So basically they take official
• 18:18
  bits of of Lego for, for minifigures and they custom
• 18:22
  print on them. And they've released like a
• 18:25
  series pretty much. You can get every doctor,
• 18:28
  there's a few companions. You can get people like Maestro,
• 18:37
  the the toy maker. They've done, they've done all
• 18:39
  kinds of things. But yeah, they're really, really
• 18:41
  good. And I got a few of those because
• 18:45
  love Lego. Like like, like the self-care.
• 18:48
  Well, you do as well, don't you, David?
• 18:50
  You, you're a big Lego fan. I am I last year for my birthday
• 18:54
  I got the lighthouse and I did look into the minifigures
• 18:57
  because I was looking can I get a fourth doctor in Leela to go
• 19:02
  on the lighthouse and it and they did it was just a bit too
• 19:05
  pricey at the time, but it's like it it needs to be done at
• 19:08
  some point because you can't build a lighthouse like that and
• 19:12
  not have a Doctor Who reference to somewhere.
• 19:13
  When I got the light going did a video of it.
• 19:16
  Of course, I went to the horror Fang Rock, got a bit of the
• 19:18
  music and stuck it over it because.
• 19:20
  That's what you do as a doctor, in fact.
• 19:22
  Oh yeah. Lego enthusiasts, do me a favour
• 19:25
  please. I've recently did a commentary
• 19:27
  on Power of Crow and was absolutely appalled that there
• 19:30
  was no Crowl merchandise out anywhere.
• 19:33
  I mean, you'd think that monster would be absolutely perfect,
• 19:36
  right? Like the thrashing thing.
• 19:38
  So, you know, if you've got any time to spare on one Sunday
• 19:40
  afternoon, it's raining, you know, and you got loads of green
• 19:43
  Lego, you wouldn't just try and knock up a Crowl, would you at
• 19:46
  some point? I'm up for that challenge, OK?
• 19:50
  Have you got loads of Lego then, Dan?
• 19:52
  Yeah, got a load because hello, my, my son's now 21, he's still
• 19:59
  very keen on on Lego, like Star Wars sets and stuff like that.
• 20:03
  But we got we got a shed load up in the attic.
• 20:06
  If you build it, when you present it to us, can you raise
• 20:10
  it up on the screen and we can't roll, roll, roll.
• 20:15
  I am not painting myself green. Oh, get your fives out, David.
• 20:19
  Come on. I don't know if I should respond
• 20:23
  to that. Well, you could, you could tell
• 20:26
  us. You could tell us what your
• 20:28
  favorite toy is. Do do that, David.
• 20:30
  Segway, Segway. Segway, Yeah.
• 20:33
  I I my favorite Doctor Who toy. I don't have any more, but it's
• 20:38
  one that it it was the dapple dialects.
• 20:43
  I had loads of those. I mean, they broke so easily.
• 20:48
  But, and I've told this story before like somewhere else, my
• 20:52
  best friend and I would make our own with he had quite a lot with
• 20:56
  Apple figures. I just had some dialects.
• 20:57
  We would try and make our own adventures using a video camera
• 21:00
  and instead, you know, we couldn't get the dialects to
• 21:03
  move. We couldn't get anyone to move.
• 21:04
  So what we did was sell a tape chopsticks to all of them.
• 21:07
  So somewhere on a video tape, I think long gone is this whole
• 21:10
  scene of the and you can see my feet at one point, I think.
• 21:13
  And it was brilliantly amateurish.
• 21:18
  And my favorite bit is we tried. Between the two of us, we saved
• 21:22
  up our pocket money to get the console.
• 21:24
  The firesided console couldn't afford it.
• 21:28
  So instead we went through our Playmobil set and found what we
• 21:32
  thought was the nearest match for a TARDIS console, which was
• 21:35
  a hospital trolley, which was the wrong shape, the wrong
• 21:38
  colour, and of course we covered it with a line.
• 21:49
  You love the imagination of children.
• 21:51
  Like we can't afford it though. We're going to cobble it up out
• 21:54
  of something else. So yeah, that was there was some
• 21:57
  happy days kind of just looking around with toys and filming it.
• 22:03
  Amazing. God I forgot about the dapper
• 22:05
  once. Yeah, great.
• 22:07
  I do have that TARDIS. I think I got rid of it.
• 22:10
  I don't know where it is now. I think Crystal has them.
• 22:14
  My friend Chris still has some of them because we're we're
• 22:16
  going over there next next month and he's kind of like I've got
• 22:19
  Doctor Who magazines and Doctor Who stuff.
• 22:21
  Do you want it? Because my wife wants rid of it.
• 22:23
  I'm like, if you're giving anything away I will happily
• 22:26
  take. It a lot.
• 22:28
  I I thought you were going to say that you were going to make
• 22:30
  a new a new video. Well, to be fair, we might, you
• 22:35
  know, we we're going over and it's like, yeah, we used to sit
• 22:37
  up watching Doctor Who into the night.
• 22:38
  It's like, are we going to do that again?
• 22:39
  Because my mum, my wife might not approve.
• 22:42
  And it's like she'll watch City of Death.
• 22:43
  That's apparently the only one she'll watch.
• 22:45
  Oh, OK. We want the sequel, The Doctor
• 22:48
  Who and the Chopsticks of Death, featuring Daleks.
• 22:52
  Picturing Daleks and we didn't have, we couldn't do a Tata
• 22:56
  sound, but we did have a toy horse that made a Ning sound.
• 22:59
  You squeezed it, it made a Ning sound.
• 23:00
  It sounds a bit. They were so amateurish.
• 23:03
  It was so. And it's when we moved into the
• 23:06
  live action era that I'm really glad those tapes do not exist.
• 23:10
  Oh, shame. Hey, good, no need to watch.
• 23:14
  This my my mum chucked out a lot of my VH s s and stuff like that
• 23:17
  and that tape went with them and I've never been proud.
• 23:21
  Damn, you know, like since you're hosting today, I suppose
• 23:24
  I I've been longing to ask you this for a long time now, but
• 23:27
  what's the favorite toy of yours in in your bedside drawer?
• 23:31
  Well, and I have a snap with one of my fellow hard captors
• 23:37
  tonight. Yeah, I like David, loved the
• 23:43
  Dapple range for Milo. It was really hard, really hard
• 23:48
  to get hold of them. No one local to where I lived
• 23:53
  was selling those. None of the toy shops because,
• 23:55
  because I think even in 198889 or whenever they were still very
• 24:00
  Doctor Who was a niche toy franchise really at that point.
• 24:07
  So I was lucky enough that we weren't that far away from
• 24:11
  Longley. So we I think I must have gone
• 24:13
  about five times when I was a kid.
• 24:16
  And the best thing about that, I mean, it was, don't get me
• 24:20
  wrong, it was, it was lovely seeing Davros and canine and all
• 24:23
  that sort of stuff. But the best bit was the was the
• 24:27
  shop at the end where it had every conceivable wit of Doctor
• 24:30
  Who merchandise. And with my pocket money, I
• 24:36
  bought the the the black and silver Dalek Supreme from
• 24:41
  Remembrance of the Daleks. And and yeah, I totally get what
• 24:45
  you were saying, David. They, they broke so easily and
• 24:50
  the, the silver paint rubbed off really quickly because I
• 24:54
  overplayed with it and everything.
• 24:56
  And to the point where I I, you know, child childishly attempted
• 25:01
  to paint the the silver dots back on on, on the base of it
• 25:05
  kind of thing. But yeah, but I think it was
• 25:08
  just the fact that that that was my one and only Doctor Who toy
• 25:11
  for for years and years and years.
• 25:14
  And I absolutely loved it. I don't know where the heck it
• 25:17
  is now. It's, it's, it, it's gone, you
• 25:20
  know, lost in time somewhere. But, but it, I, I just, it was
• 25:24
  just fantastic. And, and it also has, it has the
• 25:27
  Side Story of like my mum loved Doctor Who.
• 25:31
  My dad hated it, but my, it was me and my mum, we loved it and
• 25:34
  she loved everything about Egypt.
• 25:38
  And at that point we didn't have pyramids of Mars.
• 25:40
  And she was like, no, get get that video, get the pyramids and
• 25:43
  Mars video. And I was adamant I was getting
• 25:45
  that Dalek. I could only get one thing.
• 25:48
  And yeah, so so I ended up getting a Dalek.
• 25:51
  I didn't bound to the pressure for my parents.
• 25:54
  Look at you now, you've got shelves full of Daleks behind
• 25:57
  you. Now I'm I'm making up for the
• 25:58
  lost time. When I was a kid I had one,
• 26:02
  whereas now I've got 101. Do you?
• 26:07
  Know Dapple did a tech trap, didn't they?
• 26:08
  Because I bought it from it. He found it in a second hand
• 26:11
  shop in Brighton, like a flea market.
• 26:15
  They had a box full of toys and it was a tetrap.
• 26:17
  Tapple tetrap without the box or anything.
• 26:23
  And it was my favorite present for the whole of Christmas.
• 26:26
  I'll tell you what. Yeah, because I I used to drool
• 26:31
  over that advert in the back of Doctor Who magazine, where it
• 26:34
  had the IT was, it was the crappiest advert ever because it
• 26:37
  was just beige, wasn't it? With like pictures of the toys.
• 26:39
  But you know, you had that TARDIS set and. 2 males.
• 26:44
  Yeah, like a weird looking John Pearl away, Sylvester in his
• 26:50
  brow and his cream jacket. Yeah.
• 26:52
  Oh, happy times. I need Tom Baker.
• 26:55
  Yes, yes. Scarfless Tom Baker seemed to.
• 26:57
  Regardless, but if he stood him next to Sylvester McCoy, there's
• 26:59
  a major height difference between the two of them.
• 27:01
  Tom would. Have liked that.
• 27:03
  Do you know, I realized I was talking absolute bollocks and I
• 27:05
  was in The Who shop earlier today and I picked up, it was
• 27:09
  sort of quite a large Jodie Whittaker doll.
• 27:12
  I thought, bloody hell, but this is going to be bright.
• 27:14
  It was only £20. I went, oh, I just want to buy
• 27:16
  it just to annoy people that hate Jodie Whittaker.
• 27:18
  Just post those pictures of it online in various places.
• 27:22
  But I didn't get it. In the end I bought 6 Doctor Who
• 27:25
  books for the book club instead. So yeah, I'll ditch the figures
• 27:29
  I got. I got Christmas on a Rational
• 27:31
  Planet for £8. I couldn't believe it.
• 27:35
  I was like, you're The Who shop. You should know better than this
• 27:37
  I. Was going to say because I went
• 27:41
  there last December and I came out with nothing because
• 27:45
  everything was so expensive. I mean and.
• 27:48
  I got I got killing ground for 10 quids.
• 27:50
  I couldn't believe it. They had loads and loads of new
• 27:53
  adventures and. Missing.
• 27:55
  Adventures. And they were so cheap.
• 27:58
  Jeez. Well now, now I know where we're
• 27:59
  going on our week off. We're going to the Bloody Who
• 28:01
  Show. Who show I've.
• 28:03
  Yet done the loads of BBC. Books if you're missing cats on
• 28:06
  BBC, I have loads of them there as well.
• 28:08
  IIA couple years ago I made my wife and my son go to the Isle
• 28:13
  of Wight because they used to be, I think it was who who won
• 28:18
  on on in, in. I think it was in Ryde in in and
• 28:22
  and basically I had no interest in the rest of the island.
• 28:25
  I just wanted to go to that shop.
• 28:28
  We had one at Saint Leonard's Warrior Square, which is near
• 28:30
  Hastings. There was a Doctor Who shop down
• 28:32
  there, Burns I think it was called.
• 28:34
  Yeah, but it became who won it it.
• 28:37
  Yeah, it was because because I remember getting mail order
• 28:40
  books from from Burton's and St. Leonards on sea.
• 28:44
  Oh what? And they moved to the Isle of
• 28:45
  Wight. Yeah, I think it's it's it
• 28:47
  changed changed ownership and it it went to the Isle of Wight.
• 28:51
  But yeah, you. See, got my hopes up there
• 28:53
  because on our on our week off next week, which we have no
• 28:56
  plans for at the minute, one of the things that my husband's
• 28:58
  been saying for the last 11 years is I need to take you to
• 29:01
  see Hastings because that's where he was born so.
• 29:04
  Yeah, I near them all, I'm afraid.
• 29:06
  And so it's like, you know, yes, let's go to Hastings and.
• 29:09
  Go to Snoopers Paradise in Brighton, all right, because
• 29:12
  I've got our whole Doctor Who section.
• 29:14
  Books, audios, annuals. You'll find everything complete
• 29:17
  Histories, DVDs, toys. I might have suggested going to
• 29:21
  Brighton as well, but you know, that's because we've never
• 29:23
  because we've never been. I've never been.
• 29:27
  Oh, it's lovely. Oh, fellas, right, We're going
• 29:29
  to have a meeting in Brighton one day.
• 29:32
  A book club meet up. That's right, yeah.
• 29:37
  Well, why are we talking about toys?
• 29:40
  Well, why not, obviously. What I did there?
• 29:43
  Yeah, well, we're, we're talking about the main meat of this this
• 29:49
  episode tonight is, is is bad therapy.
• 29:52
  So right, let's, let's, let's just jump in and go.
• 29:59
  Right. OK, so So what is our our
• 30:00
  general view of this of or opinion of this book?
• 30:05
  We'll go, we'll go with Gareth. You go first, mate.
• 30:08
  Okie, doke. Well, because I consulted my
• 30:11
  what do I think of it 20 odd years ago star ratings, I
• 30:15
  discovered I gave it five stars. Oh.
• 30:18
  Wow. However, when I've read it this
• 30:21
  time round I've knocked it down to 4.
• 30:24
  Oh, OK. It's not to say it's a badly
• 30:29
  written book, far, far from it. It is actually a very, very good
• 30:32
  book. I suspect the reason I gave it
• 30:34
  five stars back in the day was predominantly for a returning
• 30:38
  character, which I think we can. We can break that news to anyone
• 30:41
  who's listening right now. We're not spoiling anything by
• 30:43
  this. The fact that Perry returns, so
• 30:47
  I think back then my 20 odd year old self just went, oh, this is
• 30:50
  fantastic. This is amazing, best thing
• 30:52
  ever. And when I've come to read it
• 30:54
  now I've found that takes a completely different Sheen and
• 30:58
  as especially in in today's who will and what happens to
• 31:02
  companions afterwards. Yeah, so.
• 31:05
  Much Doctor Who has come since this.
• 31:07
  I think like you, you can't help but your opinion be different
• 31:10
  because every time new Doctor Who comes out, you sort of
• 31:13
  reformat the comparisons and all of that, you know, So I'm not.
• 31:17
  All surprised. OK, David, tell us what you
• 31:23
  think. Yeah, some similar experience to
• 31:26
  Gareth because I remember I read this early 2000s, it was when I
• 31:30
  was buying up these books as as much as I could find them, you
• 31:34
  know, searching all those shops. There was a shop in Sheffield
• 31:37
  called Galaxy 4 which I think is still there.
• 31:39
  And it's got. Quite a few there and I was on.
• 31:43
  Every now and again I would search online.
• 31:45
  It was an American bookshop and it had a whole load of end of
• 31:48
  new adventure books, about 5 lbs each.
• 31:51
  This was 2000 and one 2002 and. It.
• 31:56
  Was it was bad therapy room with no doors, death of art and it
• 32:02
  was all, you know, there was there was another one and
• 32:05
  eternity weeps and I think that's cost me a £25.
• 32:08
  And then ship them from the States.
• 32:10
  And I remember really enjoying it.
• 32:13
  And I read this at a time and this is probably going to be a
• 32:16
  theme that comes up. I was reading at a time where I
• 32:17
  was very much in the closet and the idea of having anything gay
• 32:22
  and anything was like, no, I don't want to read that.
• 32:24
  I don't like, I don't want to acknowledge it because I was
• 32:26
  that firmly rooted. And I think I enjoyed it and it
• 32:32
  made me think it kind of, I'm not going to say it helped me or
• 32:36
  anything, but I would say it was the start of kind of being a bit
• 32:40
  more accepting of things this time around.
• 32:43
  I think those themes struck much more of a chord with me now
• 32:47
  knowing a lot more about history and what was really going on the
• 32:50
  time when the book was set. I think my problem with it that
• 32:53
  once you get, and this happens with quite a lot of books, and I
• 32:56
  think it kind of happened with our last book, Easter of Wasps,
• 32:59
  is that it gets to a point where it's been doing all this
• 33:01
  wonderful world building and scene setting that it's just a
• 33:04
  bit turns into a little bit of a run around.
• 33:06
  I think we had that with Seeing Eye as well.
• 33:08
  It's like just for about 75 pages or so in the sort of in
• 33:14
  the third quarter, it's kind of like, OK, we're treading water a
• 33:17
  little bit here. And that's a shame, but it's
• 33:20
  going to, I'm going to steal your, your, your rating system,
• 33:23
  Gareth. It's gone from A5 to a four, but
• 33:26
  a really good solid 4I did. I enjoyed reading this.
• 33:29
  I thought coming off of Eater of Wasp, which I thought was a
• 33:32
  really good horror book, but it did have a lot of depth to it.
• 33:36
  Really, this book had loads of depth.
• 33:38
  This is a book that had a lot to say and I enjoyed it for that.
• 33:44
  Joan. I read 2 new adventures
• 33:47
  back-to-back for the book club. I read Love and War and then I
• 33:52
  read Bad Therapy and I really like Love and War.
• 33:56
  I just found it angst ridden, melodramatic, childish at times
• 34:05
  and then this was the complete opposite of that.
• 34:08
  This was evocative, it was hard on sleeve, it was gentle.
• 34:14
  Love and War had a brutal 7th doctor that manoeuvred people
• 34:19
  into positions. I was like what are you doing?
• 34:23
  Why are you murdering people? Why are you upsetting your that
• 34:27
  your lovely companion? Why aren't you telling her the
• 34:29
  truth of what she's about to face?
• 34:31
  Why aren't you stopping her falling in love with this man?
• 34:33
  Like, just all of these. And whereas in this you get a
• 34:36
  very, very sweet, funny, kind, gentle 7th Doctor where I could
• 34:44
  absolutely see Sylvester McCoy saying every single life, just
• 34:48
  purring and being charming as hell.
• 34:52
  I love this. I really, really love this.
• 34:54
  I do agree with David, though, that I think like the first half
• 35:01
  is very like there's the scene setting is very evocative.
• 35:07
  And then it does become all about science fiction in the
• 35:10
  second-half. Evil rulers, time corridors, the
• 35:13
  planet from Tip, you know, whereas the first half is so in
• 35:16
  the setting and so in the world of those characters, I was
• 35:22
  totally sucked in. But even in that second-half, I
• 35:25
  think the dialogue he gives the characters is thoughtful.
• 35:28
  I think the characterization of the Doctor and Chris, especially
• 35:32
  the Doctor, but Chris as well, and I don't often say that was
• 35:35
  incredible. And the way the Doctor tries to
• 35:40
  solve the problem, I think is the best solution the 7th Doctor
• 35:46
  ever came up with. It spoke to me trying to throw
• 35:49
  that party for the toys. I just thought that was
• 35:52
  beautiful. So on the whole, I just thought
• 35:54
  this was the best new adventure that I've read so far for the
• 35:57
  book club. It this, this just it, it
• 36:00
  dismisses every issue I have with the new adventures.
• 36:03
  It wasn't too graphic, it wasn't too silly, it wasn't too
• 36:07
  melodramatic. You know, it wasn't too bogged
• 36:10
  down in law. It it was just a really great
• 36:14
  character book. Very, very well titled,
• 36:17
  beautifully written. You know what it reminded me, I
• 36:20
  was thinking about the maturity of this book and then about how
• 36:24
  immature the it's like the Torchwood scale.
• 36:27
  You know when the new adventure started.
• 36:29
  It's we're adult, but for adult read, you know, sex, guns and
• 36:34
  violence, what you have here is a proper adult book.
• 36:38
  This is kind of this is that the sort of children of Earth, sort
• 36:40
  of the era? This is actually no, no, when we
• 36:42
  talk about grown up, it's the grown up themes.
• 36:43
  It's dealing with adult emotions and themes and difficult
• 36:48
  concepts, but it's not massively gratuitous either.
• 36:52
  It's, it's a, it was a very different read to some of the
• 36:54
  other Virgin books that we've done or I've revisited in the
• 36:58
  last few years. I think it happened around
• 37:00
  Sanctuary. If you compare the romance in
• 37:02
  Sanctuary to the romance in Love and War in terms of maturity,
• 37:06
  they are world support. And I know Rebecca Levine's well
• 37:09
  in at that point. So you've got a woman in there
• 37:11
  saying, no, we're not fetishizing women.
• 37:14
  We're going to, you know, we're going to properly show
• 37:17
  relationships as they are. And this is obviously in that
• 37:20
  run, but yeah. Fabulous.
• 37:25
  Yeah. I, I, I concur with all three of
• 37:29
  you, really. I, I, it is a book that I, I
• 37:36
  think I picked it up a couple years after it was, it was
• 37:40
  released. I managed to pick it.
• 37:43
  I think it must have been, I was at work.
• 37:45
  So I reckon it must have been 9899 when I found this.
• 37:50
  So there was a shop that kind of it must have had like when
• 37:55
  Virgin would towards after they kind of like started selling
• 37:59
  them off quite cheap, a bit like, like what you were saying,
• 38:01
  David. So this this shop had like a, a
• 38:04
  load of them. So I, I, I, I kind of filled in
• 38:07
  a lot of the gaps that I missed and, and bad therapy was one of
• 38:10
  the ones that I picked up. So, yeah.
• 38:16
  And like, like I say, I think I've probably read this one now
• 38:20
  probably about half a dozen times.
• 38:22
  And, and I loved it the first time and I, I still love it
• 38:26
  more. And I think it is because this
• 38:30
  is, this is the, the too broad and too deep for the, for the
• 38:35
  small screen that I probably was looking for it.
• 38:38
  What like like, like you guys say it wasn't the, yeah, we're,
• 38:42
  we can do adult now, which is sex and swearing and violence
• 38:47
  and nudity and all that sort of thing.
• 38:49
  But it, but it was sort of like social issues, adult issues
• 38:54
  thing, you know, relationships and all that sort of stuff.
• 38:59
  And, and yeah, I, I, I, I love, you know, I loved it the first
• 39:03
  time. I think the second time I, I
• 39:05
  read it, it was, it was after my mum had passed away.
• 39:08
  So the, you know, the bits on grief, both the doctor and
• 39:13
  Chris, but also Jack, you know, he's, he's grieving for, for
• 39:18
  Eddie. Those really spoke to me.
• 39:21
  So, you know, and it and it's for me, that's why I put it in
• 39:27
  my my top ten favorite Doctor Who books When when I did that
• 39:30
  episode with Joe. Yeah, I just I just love this
• 39:33
  book. So I can't I can't wait to talk
• 39:36
  about it. It's.
• 39:37
  So perfectly placed as a wake for Ross, isn't it?
• 39:43
  In that, unfortunately, the violence scene has not been
• 39:48
  released yet and we're dealing with the after effect that is
• 39:51
  not Matthew Jones's fault. But then to sort of carve out a
• 39:56
  story about loss and grief and put those two characters in a
• 40:03
  position where they have to confront it because it's
• 40:06
  actualised with the aliens of the week, it's really, really
• 40:11
  clever. Yeah, And and and and and and.
• 40:15
  That's amazing that this is his first Doctor Who novel, isn't
• 40:20
  it? Unbelievable.
• 40:21
  Prose is so confident. Hit the ground running and and I
• 40:25
  think like it it. It's such a shame that this book
• 40:28
  came so close to the end because of the range, because you could
• 40:32
  have seen him doing doing more Doctor Who books if, if, if the
• 40:38
  new adventures had continued. Because obviously the BBC, they
• 40:42
  kind of almost wanted to they, they cherry picked which authors
• 40:46
  they took with them, didn't they?
• 40:47
  But they wanted new ones because they wanted it to be a very
• 40:50
  different kind of kind of range, the BBC books.
• 40:53
  But yeah, you know, you and I think after reading this, you,
• 40:58
  he would have been an author that you would have.
• 41:00
  Oh, his next book's coming out. I'm really excited for that.
• 41:02
  I'm definitely going to get that.
• 41:03
  But yeah. Beyond the Sun didn't really hit
• 41:06
  me in the same way like he did that for the Benny range, but
• 41:10
  that was a very science fiction story on a science fiction
• 41:14
  planet about two fucking irritating children, so
• 41:18
  unfortunately it didn't quite have the rismas of bad therapy.
• 41:24
  I I quite like the I've never heard the book, but I like the
• 41:27
  audio of that because I mean, coming off of the cassette of Oh
• 41:31
  no, it isn't. It's like I have to listen to
• 41:32
  the second one and it's not as good, but I really enjoyed it as
• 41:40
  well. And I think it's again, it's
• 41:41
  interesting that I don't know if it's in imagine it probably
• 41:44
  isn't the book, but they've also got Emil who's coming out and
• 41:48
  dealing with his sexuality as well.
• 41:49
  So click. That's something that's the
• 41:51
  theme in the the two things that Matt Jones that I've really come
• 41:55
  across, not forgetting that he did he did write for the TV
• 42:00
  series. I might almost remember.
• 42:02
  The Satan Pit and the Impossible.
• 42:05
  Planet Impossible Planet. So it's it's really surprised.
• 42:07
  There's probably a reason why he didn't do anymore because that's
• 42:09
  a great two parter. So I I really like to write.
• 42:13
  I thought, you know, someone said this is his first book.
• 42:17
  I think he did a couple of short stories he wrote for Doctor Who
• 42:19
  magazine. Yeah, but this is his first book
• 42:22
  and there were, it's like the the, the maturity of that
• 42:25
  writing. That's somebody who could have
• 42:29
  gone a long way. But clearly when some went to
• 42:33
  BBC, some went to Virgin, he he stuck with Virgin.
• 42:37
  I think he understands people. That's what I took away from
• 42:40
  this. He really understands
• 42:41
  relationships and what they mean to people.
• 42:44
  And I think some Doctor Who writers are just writing sort of
• 42:48
  science fiction and they just don't get how to write people.
• 42:52
  Whereas I didn't really care about the science fiction part
• 42:55
  of this book, but I was totally invested in the people.
• 42:59
  Yeah, Yeah. OK.
• 43:02
  So, so we've got this setting of, of 1958, it's Notting Hill,
• 43:09
  but it's a very different Notting Hill to the one that
• 43:11
  we've, we, we, we, we know and love today.
• 43:16
  You know, there's none of the, the posh coffee ship shops or
• 43:19
  the, the boutique antiques and none of the shop owners are sort
• 43:23
  of foppish Hugh Grant types. This is, this is, this is a
• 43:28
  Britain that's still recovering from the war, isn't it?
• 43:32
  And, and so it's opened up the, the borders to the Commonwealth
• 43:36
  and this is where the West Indian immigrants have kind of,
• 43:40
  kind of settled. And, and also you've, I think
• 43:43
  it's alluded to in the book also, you've got artistic types
• 43:46
  live there as well. So it feels like a great setting
• 43:52
  because it, it, it meant that there were a lot of social
• 43:55
  things that you could get out of it.
• 43:56
  And I, I, I've listed 4. So there's the, there's the
• 44:01
  homophobia kind of element, there's the racism, there is
• 44:06
  grief and there's also identity. So what, what do you, what do
• 44:10
  you think of sort of like these themes that are rung through it?
• 44:12
  Should we take, should we take the what do we wanted to go with
• 44:16
  first? Racism or or homophobia?
• 44:22
  I don't know why I'm laughing. Should we start with homophobia?
• 44:27
  Homophobia out of the way, right?
• 44:31
  The things I don't like about gay people.
• 44:33
  No, sorry. All right, those, those themes
• 44:38
  that run throughout the book. Does anyone want to kick us off
• 44:43
  on those themes that run through the book?
• 44:46
  I will, I will kick us off because this is some, as I said,
• 44:49
  I think the themes on homosexuality, homophobia spoke
• 44:54
  to me a lot more this time round.
• 44:56
  And that's partly because I've done a bit more reading on the
• 45:01
  history and history of the 50s and 60s and what it was like for
• 45:05
  gay many gay men in the UK in the 50s and 60s.
• 45:10
  And it really does capture some of the oppression and the
• 45:18
  persecution that was going on. And I think there's there's a
• 45:23
  lot that said. So the law changed in 1967 for
• 45:29
  homosexual offences. So I think it's said quite a lot
• 45:33
  of people say it was illegal to be gay.
• 45:35
  It's like not technically the bit that was illegal was the
• 45:38
  sexual offences. That's what people were
• 45:40
  persecuted for and the punishments were harsh.
• 45:45
  So I in, I think it was in the 50s there was a report called
• 45:51
  Wolfreden report, because basically after World War Two
• 45:55
  there was a massive increase in convictions for homosexual
• 45:59
  offences post war. I think that's a society had
• 46:02
  changed after the war and this report was conducted because it
• 46:07
  was kind of acknowledged that maybe the law needed to change.
• 46:10
  So the report's available online, It's long, it's
• 46:13
  detailed, it's full of case studies.
• 46:15
  What's interesting as part of it is it details what at the time
• 46:19
  were the punishments that men could receive if they were
• 46:23
  prosecuted and convicted of homosexual offences.
• 46:26
  And I'll just trigger warning it because, you know, some of the
• 46:30
  terms and things in here might be difficult for some people.
• 46:34
  So for the offence of buggery, the maximum punishment was
• 46:39
  imprisonment for life and that and that happened and that did
• 46:46
  happen. If it was attempted, that would
• 46:48
  be 10 years imprisonment. Indecent assault, which covered
• 46:53
  basically anything up to the point of that would also be 10
• 46:57
  years in prison. So the character of the major in
• 46:59
  the book who's arrested and we last see, I think under arrest
• 47:02
  is looking at a lengthy prison sentence.
• 47:06
  And that's how it was. And there's a number of case
• 47:09
  studies in this report and the one that really I felt, and this
• 47:13
  is something I I usually share this this extract usually during
• 47:16
  LGBT History Month. It's on the subject of
• 47:19
  blackmail. And I think blackmail of gay men
• 47:23
  is a big chunk of this book because the doctor saves Jack by
• 47:27
  destroying the evidence. And I'm going to read this.
• 47:31
  I'm I'm, I'm taking this down a very serious path here.
• 47:34
  But, you know, bear with me. We'll get back to the I'm.
• 47:36
  Going to give you I'm going to give you an alternative routing
• 47:39
  in a minute. So that's.
• 47:41
  What we're here? So according in this case study,
• 47:44
  man there's man A, man B and they met in a cinnamon.
• 47:48
  Afterwards they went to Ace Flat and committed buggery for a
• 47:51
  period of about 7 years. B visited Ace Flat regularly and
• 47:54
  the men committed buggery together on each occasion.
• 47:57
  B then commenced to demand money from A from for a period for
• 48:03
  about 3 months. We retained £40 a month.
• 48:05
  A finally complained to the police.
• 48:07
  Facts reported to the Director of Public Prosecutions who
• 48:10
  advised that no action should be taken against B for demanding
• 48:14
  money by menaces, but that both men should be charged with
• 48:17
  buggery. Both men were charged with two
• 48:21
  offences and they both were sentenced to nine months
• 48:23
  imprisonment. So the character of Jack in the
• 48:26
  story is being blackmailed and there's no the idea that he
• 48:31
  might go to the police and report that he's being
• 48:32
  blackmailed isn't even considered because this is how
• 48:35
  the police and the police were persecuted.
• 48:37
  The police would know of notorious homosexuals and they
• 48:42
  would keep watches on them and they were almost at times set
• 48:45
  them up because they they couldn't get them for just being
• 48:47
  gay. You had to pretty much catch
• 48:49
  them in the act. So the police would knew who
• 48:52
  they were looking for and they would wait for their moments.
• 48:54
  So this was a, this was a difficult time, particularly in
• 48:58
  the late 50s into the 60s, because this is when the police
• 49:00
  persecution was probably at a high point, which is why there
• 49:04
  was those record and most convictions, which is what led
• 49:05
  to eventually the change in the law.
• 49:09
  Having read that and read a lot of this book really captures
• 49:11
  that feel of it's not, it's that, Oh yeah.
• 49:17
  But it's it's dangerous to be gay.
• 49:19
  The attitude in the opening chapter when Eddie is with, you
• 49:22
  know, he does he change his hair colour or something?
• 49:25
  He was being more open and they just fire him for just being
• 49:32
  different. And I think some of those bits
• 49:36
  in this book, really, having read some of that history,
• 49:40
  really kind of like that, that really does evoke this era of
• 49:43
  fear that a lot of gay men had. I mean, that's the serious bit.
• 49:52
  Yeah, because because that was that was the thing, because I, I
• 49:54
  did a bit of, of, of reading up on, on, on this myself, both
• 49:59
  both like that and the the, the, the race rights of from Notting
• 50:06
  Hill. Because it wasn't the things
• 50:08
  that, well, it's not stuff that's really taught in schools,
• 50:10
  is it in history and all that sort of stuff.
• 50:12
  But yeah, I mean, that was the thing.
• 50:15
  The fact that I think I read that in 1952, there were over
• 50:23
  1000 homosexuals in prison because they had been sort of
• 50:27
  like, like, like you say, they haunted down, persecuted almost
• 50:32
  by by by the police. It was, it was their sort of
• 50:37
  that was their way of going about and dealing with these
• 50:41
  sort of things. But but, but also I thought it
• 50:44
  was the, you know, you've got this.
• 50:47
  One of the central characters is Jack, who is homosexual and, and
• 50:51
  he's, he's living in fear of being discovered as such
• 50:55
  because, because it's not only the, the fact that he, he might
• 51:01
  receive sort of state punishment, which like you say,
• 51:04
  could be imprisonment or like what happened to, to Alan Turin,
• 51:09
  where he, he took the, the alternative of, of chemical
• 51:12
  castration. And it's just, it's just
• 51:15
  horrendous to think that that was even an alternative to, to
• 51:20
  that sort of thing. But it, but it's the stigma,
• 51:22
  isn't it? Because it, it, if, if you were,
• 51:25
  if you were discovered as homosexual, that letters would
• 51:28
  be sent to your employer, your, your landlady, etcetera,
• 51:32
  etcetera. So you would end up losing your
• 51:35
  job, your home, your friends, your family.
• 51:38
  So you can kind of understand why, why Jack was happy to to
• 51:45
  what he wasn't happy because he would be.
• 51:48
  But when he was being blackmailed, you know, he
• 51:51
  resorted to basically stealing from the company that he worked
• 51:55
  for to be able to pay the blackmailers to keep the the
• 51:58
  photographs of him and Eddie that they had.
• 52:00
  And, and it wasn't, it was quite an innocent photo as well,
• 52:03
  wasn't it? It was only they were only sort
• 52:05
  of, were they? They were touching.
• 52:06
  His face. Yeah, yeah.
• 52:08
  And and you know, very innocent, but but it was something that
• 52:13
  they they basically had a hold over and sort of things.
• 52:16
  So you can kind of understand it.
• 52:19
  It just felt what how Matt Jones took that and kind of weaved it
• 52:23
  into this Doctor Who story. You just, it just felt so real.
• 52:29
  I think when this was released 90 end of 96 because I think
• 52:35
  there was still it was getting less during the 90s but there
• 52:38
  was still taboo around gay issues.
• 52:41
  I was reading a review, I was reading the Doctor magazine
• 52:43
  review of the book, which I think it was Dave Owen reviewed
• 52:47
  it and said after having read Damaged Goods saying that got
• 52:52
  some negative reviews due to the gay content.
• 52:56
  And they said that the review that reviewer probably doesn't
• 52:58
  want to open this book at all. So the fact that even in the 90s
• 53:02
  releasing a book with gay themes was still attractive.
• 53:06
  To be fair, we're getting that now.
• 53:08
  You can't mention anything being openly gay and and it's without
• 53:13
  it being woke and this book is full of it.
• 53:16
  Although. Pleasingly, in the new series of
• 53:18
  adventures aimed at children, there are a significant number
• 53:23
  of gay characters. And it's just the norm now.
• 53:27
  It's just the norm. I think like that's that that
• 53:31
  has been, I think like since the the wilderness years, Doctor Who
• 53:36
  has been kind of at the forefront really of bringing
• 53:40
  these kind of issues to, to, to, to to the forefront.
• 53:47
  Really, you know, and, and, and I think that's the thing like,
• 53:49
  because this, you know, the last couple iterations of Doctor Who
• 53:54
  have have, you know, you've got people like the Daily Mail
• 53:57
  calling it woke and the woke doctor and all this sort of
• 53:59
  stuff. But it's because it's because
• 54:01
  they're bringing these, you know, they're make they're not
• 54:05
  Doctor Who is kind of normalising this, this, this is,
• 54:08
  this is all fine. This what why why the hatreds,
• 54:11
  you know, but it's sad that we're still in a situation where
• 54:17
  there's still hatred for for things that are different from
• 54:20
  what is perceived as as normal by by this vocal minority.
• 54:25
  I suppose in a way it's. Can I be brutal for a second?
• 54:31
  Yeah, do it. Don't worry, I've got I've got
• 54:34
  something brutal coming. I really.
• 54:35
  Don't care. That Jack's gay, that has no
• 54:40
  interest to me whatsoever. And I so I'm pleased that me and
• 54:43
  David are here because obviously we're both gay and we clearly
• 54:48
  are coming in from this at different directions.
• 54:50
  I've got no real interest in gay history.
• 54:53
  I don't really like watching gay TV programs.
• 54:56
  I don't I'm not really a part of gay culture, which is odd
• 54:59
  because I'm probably the gayest Doctor Who podcaster out there
• 55:03
  in terms of being filthy. But it's just not anything.
• 55:08
  And I think maybe it might be that might reflect on me because
• 55:12
  I've never suffered any kind of indignity because of my
• 55:17
  sexuality in my life ever, beyond my dad's bad reaction to
• 55:20
  it. Since then, nobody has ever
• 55:22
  given me any hard time. I don't know why.
• 55:24
  Maybe I've just been very lucky in my work with my friends or
• 55:27
  whatever. So I've never sort of suffered
• 55:30
  like that. So I've never really felt the
• 55:31
  need to sort of dig into it. And maybe there's some residual
• 55:37
  I prefer to be from my dad and me.
• 55:38
  I don't know. I don't want to go there, but I
• 55:44
  think Jack is a great character regardless of being gay because
• 55:48
  he is so beautifully defined as a lonely young man who's found
• 55:54
  his soulmate, who dies in the 1st chapter.
• 55:58
  And that just so male or female, I don't care.
• 56:02
  That speaks to me. And that's really poignant, you
• 56:06
  know, when he finds out under the spasm of grief, and then the
• 56:10
  doctor coming in and saying, do you know what?
• 56:13
  When he realises that he's being blackmailed by these people in a
• 56:16
  truly wonderful scene where he hides them to Jack's bed because
• 56:21
  he thinks the Landlake is coming up.
• 56:22
  So the Doctor's under the bed and finds this like, gay porn
• 56:26
  magazine under the bed and goes, oh, how innocent human beings
• 56:30
  are, sort of tucks it away. And then the Doctor literally
• 56:33
  goes, we're going to bring these people down and we're going to
• 56:36
  do it right now because you're, yeah, you're a good bloke.
• 56:38
  I'm paraphrasing, but it it just means that Jack's suddenly got
• 56:44
  the most impressive person in the universe on his side.
• 56:47
  And that's just a wonderful pairing throughout the whole
• 56:50
  book. And also, though isn't, isn't
• 56:53
  that like the catalyst for, for Jack to really flourish?
• 56:57
  Because there is a, there's a, there's a journey that he goes
• 56:59
  on in this, in this book. And I think like we'll probably
• 57:02
  talk about that later when we're, we're, we're taking all
• 57:05
  the, the various characters in it.
• 57:07
  But but he has this, you know, because, because he is very
• 57:09
  timid and very loney and, and, and what have you at the
• 57:14
  beginning. But but it's a very different
• 57:16
  Jack by by by the end of the book to the point where he
• 57:19
  makes, he makes quite a difficult decision.
• 57:24
  Well, a very difficult decision. And and I don't know if if if I
• 57:28
  would have been strong enough to make the same decision.
• 57:30
  At least she wrote that in my notes.
• 57:31
  I said I wouldn't be as strong as Jack at the end of this book.
• 57:34
  If someone offered me my mother as a toy, I would be like yes
• 57:39
  please, thank you very much. Yeah.
• 57:45
  OK. So is it, have we got any more
• 57:47
  to say on that particular sort of theme of Fred?
• 57:51
  I think we. I, I don't want to dismiss what
• 57:54
  David has said though, because I think it is beautifully evoked,
• 57:57
  all of that, like you guys have all said.
• 58:00
  And I think it's really important that there's
• 58:03
  visibility. It's just whether it interests
• 58:06
  me or not. But that's the same with any
• 58:08
  topic, right? But I, I think it's beautifully
• 58:11
  captured here, you know, that sort of fearing to go out and be
• 58:16
  yourself. I mean, can you even imagine
• 58:17
  being in that situation, you know, where you're afraid to
• 58:20
  show intimacy to the person you love in public?
• 58:23
  That's just outrageous. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's
• 58:28
  dreadful, isn't it? And it, and it's not that long
• 58:31
  ago neither as well, really. It's, it's sort of like, you
• 58:34
  know, living memory for, for my what if my mum and dad were
• 58:39
  about it would be living memory for them, you know, sort of
• 58:41
  thing. And it's horrible to think that.
• 58:44
  Well, yeah. And and well, as we've said, you
• 58:48
  know, have things improved? Yes, they have.
• 58:51
  But have they improved enough? Probably not.
• 58:53
  You know, we've just. Shifted to a new minority group.
• 58:58
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much yeah.
• 59:02
  So let's pick up one of the one of the other sort of threads.
• 59:07
  And that, that was about sort of like the, the, the, you know,
• 59:12
  the, the, the victims of racism in this book.
• 59:14
  And, and obviously the, the Notting Hill rights are kind of
• 59:20
  the, the, the rumblings of building up to that are kind of
• 59:24
  like the, the backdrop to all of this, aren't they?
• 59:26
  So is there, is there is anyone got any, any comments on this?
• 59:30
  Because I mean, I, I know that personally, I, I didn't really
• 59:33
  know a great deal about the, the Notting Hill rights.
• 59:36
  So I had to, I had to look this up myself.
• 59:40
  And so, yeah, so it was basically they, they happened in
• 59:49
  the started on the 29th of August and they lasted till the
• 59:53
  5th of 5th of September. So and it was like a series of
• 59:57
  obviously racially motivated riots.
• 1:00:00
  The trigger is believed to be that there was a a white Swedish
• 1:00:06
  lady named Margaret Morrison who who was married to a Jamaican.
• 1:00:13
  And basically they had like AI suppose a domestic argument and
• 1:00:21
  a bit like what happens in the book with with little Dennis
• 1:00:26
  being attacked by Carl. Basically a group of white
• 1:00:31
  people rushed in because they saw it as a white woman being
• 1:00:35
  harassed and intimidated by, by, by a black man.
• 1:00:42
  And, and that was kind of like the catalyst for, for these
• 1:00:46
  riots kicking off. And later on, we've got like
• 1:00:48
  mobs of 300 to 400 white people, you know, attacking the houses
• 1:00:54
  of West Indian residents in Notting Hill.
• 1:00:57
  And that was going on every night until the 6th of
• 1:01:01
  September. And the, the police arrested
• 1:01:05
  more than 114 people during those disturbances.
• 1:01:10
  And most of those were, were white youths.
• 1:01:14
  Yeah. So, so that was that was kind of
• 1:01:17
  like the, the backdrop of, of, of this story and that.
• 1:01:23
  And that's where it kind of builds up, isn't it?
• 1:01:25
  Because we've got like I say, you know, you've, I, I guess the
• 1:01:30
  book is kind of slightly changing the catalyst for those
• 1:01:35
  riots. Whereas here it was, it was, you
• 1:01:38
  know, this lady being being seemingly attacked.
• 1:01:43
  Whereas obviously we we had Dennis being attacked by Carl.
• 1:01:47
  Carl's going to kill him. So naturally a group of West
• 1:01:52
  Indian men step in to save what they feel is a is a little
• 1:01:55
  little lad being being attacked by a white man.
• 1:01:58
  And then basically we have like a mob of white people thinking
• 1:02:02
  Carl is then being attacked by these West Indian people.
• 1:02:05
  And that's what starts starts the riots in the book.
• 1:02:09
  There's like a, there's a sense of any unease, isn't there, that
• 1:02:13
  if you don't fit the 1950s ideal, you know, 2.4 children,
• 1:02:19
  white family, then life is pretty dangerous, you know, and
• 1:02:26
  that that is just prevalent throughout the entire.
• 1:02:29
  And in fact, it's then it's really interesting when they
• 1:02:32
  make the comparison with the toys, which are a minority group
• 1:02:36
  that have been constructed that somebody wants rid of, you know,
• 1:02:41
  Mariah wants rid of, you know, you were just a wasted
• 1:02:43
  experiment and I want you gone. And again, it gives the doctor a
• 1:02:48
  chance to, to fight, you know, for a minority group, it's
• 1:02:53
  rather wonderful actually. Yeah, I, I, I think that's, I
• 1:02:58
  think that's that that's one of the most pleasing aspects of of
• 1:03:02
  the Doctor's character in this, isn't it?
• 1:03:05
  Because he's he's not being the the the times champion of, of,
• 1:03:10
  of the virgin new adventures. He's sticking up for the the
• 1:03:15
  downtrodden. He's sticking up for for the
• 1:03:18
  abused. He's sticking up for the, for
• 1:03:20
  the little person, you know, and he's not, you know, he's not
• 1:03:24
  saving the universe here, but he's he's trying to change
• 1:03:29
  people's lives who are having it difficult through no fault of
• 1:03:32
  their own. And I think that's that's that's
• 1:03:34
  amazing thing that. Matt Jones knows that as well
• 1:03:37
  because he has a moment where the doctor goes.
• 1:03:40
  You see, this is what happens when you don't plan it all out
• 1:03:43
  and you're not 5 steps ahead. You're sort of having to
• 1:03:46
  improvise on the spot. You know, he makes a joke out of
• 1:03:50
  it, but it is very funny. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:55
  And then, of course, we've, we've then got grief that's kind
• 1:03:59
  of weaved through through this story.
• 1:04:01
  So is it, I mean, there's, there's a, there's a whole hope
• 1:04:04
  of a whole host of people in this book or characters that
• 1:04:07
  have that have lost someone in some, some fashion or another,
• 1:04:13
  you know, so the most obvious ones is obviously you've got the
• 1:04:15
  doctor and Chris dealing with losing Raz, Jack, obviously he
• 1:04:20
  loses Eddie. You've got, you've got, you
• 1:04:26
  know, like, like we've mentioned Perry's in this and she it's
• 1:04:30
  sort of like the loss of her friendship with the doctor in a
• 1:04:34
  way, isn't it? And then being in this marriage
• 1:04:36
  that she doesn't really want to be in.
• 1:04:40
  Obviously all of all of the toys as well, isn't there, you know,
• 1:04:43
  sort of thing where you've got, you know, I've forgotten what
• 1:04:48
  her name is. Now you've got Pat.
• 1:04:50
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:04:51
  Patsy as well, because she she's she's lost her her husband who
• 1:04:57
  who was, you know. Yeah.
• 1:04:59
  So so there's there's a lot of grief isn't there in this.
• 1:05:02
  And people trying to deal with that in in.
• 1:05:04
  Some a lot of loss, yeah. Now the Scranton's because
• 1:05:08
  because what? They lose one of them before 2
• 1:05:10
  of the brothers, isn't it? So they just felt.
• 1:05:12
  Don't know what that was. They lose 2 of the brothers,
• 1:05:15
  don't they? And he gets the Empire as a
• 1:05:16
  result. But the the act of the grief,
• 1:05:20
  the loss of Patricia, is what then pushes this whole
• 1:05:24
  enterprise forward. So it's actually the starting
• 1:05:26
  point for it all. And everyone just ends up
• 1:05:28
  becoming more and more entrapped with what's going off around
• 1:05:30
  them socially and with the stuff that Mariah is bringing down
• 1:05:35
  upon him. And.
• 1:05:37
  He's lost his wife, hasn't he? Yeah, but through every folk of
• 1:05:44
  his own. Really.
• 1:05:45
  Absolutely. You know, I thought, I thought
• 1:05:47
  the way that Matt Jones wrote The Doctor and Chris, two men
• 1:05:53
  not being able to say to each other, I've loved Ross and I
• 1:05:58
  really miss her. And please, you know, let's get
• 1:06:02
  through this together. They go on a journey of this,
• 1:06:04
  but where finally at the end of the book they get there, you
• 1:06:06
  know, through this incredibly bad therapy of poor old Chris
• 1:06:12
  actualizing Ross in the form of Patsy, you know, cynical, hard
• 1:06:17
  hitting, sarcastic woman. But that just speaks to me so
• 1:06:24
  much. You know, like, I think men have
• 1:06:27
  gotten better about sharing their feelings, but not always.
• 1:06:30
  And I think it's hard. And so that that the start of
• 1:06:34
  the book where they're just not talking to each other and
• 1:06:38
  they're both trying to make themselves busy so they don't
• 1:06:42
  have to deal with how they're feeling.
• 1:06:44
  And it all just catches up with him anyway.
• 1:06:46
  It catches up with Chris on the train, I think, when he's
• 1:06:48
  heading to to the asylum and with the doctor throughout.
• 1:06:54
  I just thought, yeah, I just thought that was really, really
• 1:06:56
  what? And it made me empathize with
• 1:06:57
  Chris in a way that I've been gagging to do ever since I've
• 1:07:00
  been reading his books because it took the loss of somebody for
• 1:07:04
  me to feel something for this guy.
• 1:07:06
  But but it's something you can grab hold of, right?
• 1:07:09
  I don't, I can't really grab hold of some cocky, you know,
• 1:07:14
  kid cop from the future. But I can grab hold of somebody
• 1:07:18
  who's lost their best friend, who's aching to talk about it
• 1:07:22
  but can't quite do it and then is forced to face the mirror
• 1:07:26
  reflection of her after she's died.
• 1:07:28
  I mean, that's, that's really moving.
• 1:07:32
  Yeah, I think like of the sort of the, all of the threads, this
• 1:07:37
  is the probably the one that chimes with me the most because
• 1:07:42
  I can't really experience the, the previous two that we've,
• 1:07:45
  we've, we've spoken about. I, I can just, yeah, empathise
• 1:07:50
  with with, with those that have suffered.
• 1:07:53
  I do wonder what this book would have been like because I know
• 1:07:58
  when I read it I got all I had survival Sin and I was aware of
• 1:08:00
  Rosa's death. I do wonder what this book was
• 1:08:04
  like having not read Survival Sin or knowing what was coming
• 1:08:07
  with Survival Sin, because the fact that they, it is something
• 1:08:10
  that is there that is not talked about for so long, it's almost
• 1:08:16
  felt rather than it actually being there.
• 1:08:19
  And I can imagine that being quite an interesting experience
• 1:08:22
  having had the character of Ros for so many books beforehand to
• 1:08:25
  suddenly not have her there. The reason why she's not there
• 1:08:28
  is never spoken about, which again, would feel odd for those
• 1:08:32
  two characters. It just, I just think that'd be
• 1:08:35
  an interesting experience that I'll never get, but I'd be
• 1:08:38
  fascinated to see what you to feel, what that would be like.
• 1:08:42
  No, because. Because I'm guessing that all of
• 1:08:44
  us have read this book knowing what happened in Sun Violence
• 1:08:49
  and regardless of whether it was published or not at that that.
• 1:08:52
  Point. Yeah, it's on the first page of
• 1:08:54
  the book, isn't? It.
• 1:08:55
  We're so sorry. That we haven't published, but
• 1:08:59
  this book will deal with his consequences.
• 1:09:02
  Please enjoy I. Think it's quite in ways it's
• 1:09:06
  probably to its benefit that it does because obviously they
• 1:09:09
  don't want to spoil survival scene because that's coming soon
• 1:09:12
  at some point. But I feel that kind of works in
• 1:09:15
  its favour. The fact that they they don't
• 1:09:17
  talk about it and OK, it doesn't spoil the book that hasn't come
• 1:09:20
  out. But it's like because I knew
• 1:09:23
  that it happened, but I hadn't really read all the books at
• 1:09:25
  that point. So I hadn't read Savannah saying
• 1:09:28
  because it was years later. And I think it what you can read
• 1:09:33
  this book not knowing much about what happened to Ros.
• 1:09:36
  I think it doesn't almost doesn't matter is these are two
• 1:09:39
  characters that suffered a loss. It works better.
• 1:09:43
  Because you can almost compare those two to Mariah and the
• 1:09:47
  impact of loss on 2 separate people have never met by that
• 1:09:51
  point of what extremes it can lead to.
• 1:09:54
  But as well with the Doctor, Chris and Ros, Ros is the
• 1:09:58
  dominant personality of that three, right?
• 1:10:01
  She's the one that will always speak up.
• 1:10:03
  She's a very proactive one as well.
• 1:10:06
  You take her out of it and you're left with two people who
• 1:10:09
  don't really know how to be around each other without that
• 1:10:13
  third person there who's such a big presence.
• 1:10:15
  It is like when I lost my mum, like my family just fell apart
• 1:10:19
  because she was the centre of the family and no one else.
• 1:10:23
  What the hell do we do with each other now?
• 1:10:25
  You know, she was in charge and Ross was in charge.
• 1:10:29
  You know, it's really well done. The one thing it reminded me of,
• 1:10:33
  there's an episode of Black Mirror, which very early 1 and
• 1:10:37
  it was about somebody dealing with grief and it was about some
• 1:10:41
  technology that, and I think this is actually becoming a
• 1:10:43
  thing in the real world where the AI can generate the
• 1:10:46
  personality of a, of a loved one.
• 1:10:48
  And eventually in this story, it starts to take form.
• 1:10:52
  And I think there's something about when they're imprinting on
• 1:10:53
  the toys with their memories, it's like it's not becoming that
• 1:10:56
  person. It's becoming their memory,
• 1:10:58
  their interpretation, their feelings about them.
• 1:11:00
  So they're becoming a mirror for them.
• 1:11:02
  They're not becoming that person they're becoming.
• 1:11:04
  How you remember? You remember them and I thought
• 1:11:07
  that was really interesting as well.
• 1:11:08
  I, I think that theme, I think the theme of loss, almost
• 1:11:13
  everybody in this book has has suffered a loss of some sort.
• 1:11:17
  And I think that that's a real and we talk about the maturity
• 1:11:20
  of this. It deals with it in they're all
• 1:11:23
  dealing with it in different ways.
• 1:11:24
  And I think that's what makes it so interesting.
• 1:11:27
  But because they are remembered versions, that's why Chris
• 1:11:31
  doesn't quite figure out that is him creating roles again,
• 1:11:37
  because he doesn't look like roles, he doesn't sound like
• 1:11:39
  roles. It's got all of the personality
• 1:11:40
  quirks that he remembers, you know, and how we remember people
• 1:11:44
  and who they were are two very different things.
• 1:11:47
  Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the thing
• 1:11:51
  though, isn't it? Because, because it's sort of
• 1:11:52
  like, I think like, as Joe pointed out, that men aren't
• 1:11:56
  always very good at talking about their feelings and, and,
• 1:11:59
  and all that sort of stuff. But, but it it it, it's almost
• 1:12:02
  like you've got two people here in the Doctor and Chris who
• 1:12:08
  obviously don't really want to talk about it.
• 1:12:10
  They go their separate ways and they, they, they, well, they go
• 1:12:13
  off on separate, separate adventures that somehow manage
• 1:12:18
  to, to come back round together. But Chris's, Chris's journey
• 1:12:26
  with Patsy, it's forcing him to confront his grief.
• 1:12:30
  It's forcing him to kind of deal with it rather than do the the
• 1:12:34
  man thing of kind of, I'm going to put it away in a box and just
• 1:12:38
  push it down and, and not talk about it, you know, kind of
• 1:12:40
  thing. And I think that's that's quite,
• 1:12:42
  quite clever. Well, toys are such an inspired
• 1:12:45
  idea. It's it's the cleverest type of
• 1:12:48
  science fiction idea. If science fiction is supposed
• 1:12:50
  to be like, hold up a mirror to reality and, and issues and
• 1:12:55
  feelings and things like that, you know that we're going
• 1:12:57
  through now. Then using them as a way, like
• 1:13:00
  you say, for him to get therapy. It's so clever.
• 1:13:05
  Yeah, Yeah. And I think that kind of leads
• 1:13:08
  into the to, to that, that sort of 4 theme of identity, doesn't
• 1:13:12
  it really? Because that's, that's the thing
• 1:13:14
  you've got, because you've got this with the toys, they're
• 1:13:19
  almost a blank canvas, aren't they?
• 1:13:21
  And their identity kind of becomes, it is kind of generated
• 1:13:26
  out of whoever they're paired with, isn't it?
• 1:13:31
  That that then becomes that's what that's what makes them be.
• 1:13:35
  So you've got like like Mikey, who obviously he has a a
• 1:13:42
  difficult relationship with his family.
• 1:13:44
  So when he's paired up with a toy, he he imagines a little
• 1:13:49
  brother that he's got to look after and then you know, and,
• 1:13:52
  and yeah, you know, and with, with Chris, obviously he's
• 1:13:57
  grieving Phil Ross. So you, you, it's quite, you get
• 1:14:03
  this. They're very subtle changes,
• 1:14:05
  aren't they, with, with Patsy? But you get like like she's a
• 1:14:10
  time she calls in Quedge rather than crit.
• 1:14:13
  And that's what Ross always did, you know.
• 1:14:15
  So it is quite, you know, so obviously identity is kind of
• 1:14:18
  like a big, a big part of this as well.
• 1:14:20
  I know it's like Ross. She's always leading him into
• 1:14:24
  that. He's following around after her
• 1:14:26
  and she's always leading the way, just like Ross always does.
• 1:14:30
  Yeah. But like with Jack as well, you
• 1:14:32
  know, he's he is a shy young man, so he actualises more
• 1:14:40
  confident, you know, quirkier, sort of hip, stylish, everything
• 1:14:46
  that he isn't as his like perfect partner to fall in love
• 1:14:50
  with. It's so it's such a, a moving
• 1:14:53
  idea because they don't exist without than that other person,
• 1:14:58
  you know. And when that other person, if
• 1:15:00
  they don't know and then they discover the truth, obviously
• 1:15:02
  they're going to sort of push them away.
• 1:15:04
  What an existence you know. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:08
  But then Jack. Jack reacts a bit like a toy as
• 1:15:10
  well, because being with a doctor and going through those
• 1:15:12
  adventures, he's kind of had some of that imprinted on him.
• 1:15:16
  And he because this, you know, he's discovers his identity, he
• 1:15:18
  becomes more confident in his identity.
• 1:15:21
  The point that towards the end, you know, he's a little bit more
• 1:15:25
  reckless and going off a little half cocked and that's because
• 1:15:28
  he's grown, he's discovered more about himself and that's really,
• 1:15:33
  you know, it's your identity through grief, your identity
• 1:15:37
  through emotions, but your identity through experience as
• 1:15:40
  well. Yeah, because that because that
• 1:15:43
  that that, you know, experience shapes you as the person that
• 1:15:46
  you are, isn't it? Because Because like, you know,
• 1:15:48
  I think all of us here would say like the version of us that was
• 1:15:52
  like 15 or 16 is quite different from the one that we see here
• 1:15:58
  and now, isn't it? So, so it's, yeah, you know,
• 1:16:01
  the, the, the way that shapes who we are and how, you know,
• 1:16:04
  and who we identify as is very, very sort of telling.
• 1:16:08
  And that's an interesting point for the Doctor as well, because
• 1:16:10
  the Doctor's kind of gone back to a former version of himself.
• 1:16:14
  Really. It's kind of gone back towards
• 1:16:16
  the Happiness Patrol version of McCoy.
• 1:16:18
  You know, there's a lot more mercurialness, chicken in the
• 1:16:20
  air, fingers, a deadly weapon, all of that sort of hydra.
• 1:16:23
  It's all with a little twinkle in his eye, which the new
• 1:16:26
  adventures have kind of moved away from.
• 1:16:28
  They've built this God like entity or there's almost like
• 1:16:31
  he's had a factory reset and gone.
• 1:16:33
  No, I need. My way of dealing with this is
• 1:16:35
  to throw myself into the work that I used to do, and this is
• 1:16:37
  how I'm going to do it. This line literally could come
• 1:16:40
  from the Happiness Patrol. He goes, I'm England for the
• 1:16:43
  English until all the faces are white and there's no difference
• 1:16:46
  from from any of you at all. No queers, no yids, no darkies.
• 1:16:51
  I don't think so. And then the fellow goes, Oh
• 1:16:53
  yeah, you're going to stop me. And he just goes, Oh yes, I
• 1:16:58
  could be recoyed from Happiness Patrol.
• 1:17:00
  You could hear him saying that line.
• 1:17:02
  They would. They would say there's certain
• 1:17:03
  bits. Every line in this.
• 1:17:05
  Even when he's getting beaten up, it's like that bit when the
• 1:17:08
  is it the Chief caretaker's ramming in against the wall in
• 1:17:10
  Paradise Towers when he's getting sweet bumbled to death.
• 1:17:14
  Jack help me. But there's a bit in this where
• 1:17:17
  McCoy, sorry, the 7th Doctor, is thrown into a room and he just
• 1:17:21
  falls to the floor in a awkward, embarrassing heap, which I've
• 1:17:25
  just seen time of the running. Speaking of embarrassing Heap,
• 1:17:30
  the one thing we can't forgive this book for is giving us a
• 1:17:33
  naked Sylvester McCoy. Oh.
• 1:17:35
  Boy, yeah. Did anyone else just read in Go?
• 1:17:40
  Yeah, yeah, I, I, yeah, try to ignore that image.
• 1:17:45
  It painted in my mind. Well, that's.
• 1:17:47
  Something they had good money to see that on stage, didn't they?
• 1:17:51
  Yes, yes. Yes, the ferret in his trousers
• 1:17:54
  too, yeah. Should we, should we?
• 1:17:58
  So let's, let's talk about the Doctor and, and his
• 1:18:02
  characterisation in this because, because that seems the
• 1:18:04
  way that we're going. So, So what, what, what are
• 1:18:07
  your, what are your views then of the, of the Doctor?
• 1:18:09
  Because we, we've discussed a little bit of this.
• 1:18:11
  So I'm guessing it's a It's a positive view of of this version
• 1:18:17
  of of the 7th top. Yeah, there's, there's no
• 1:18:19
  grandstanding in this one. There literally isn't.
• 1:18:22
  There's no big empire to top. I think there's even isn't there
• 1:18:24
  a scene later on in the book where he talks to one guy in the
• 1:18:27
  bar, the bar man, almost very similar to the remembrance of
• 1:18:31
  the Dalek scene with Harry and the sugar and all of that.
• 1:18:34
  And so he almost goes down to grass roots, almost taking like
• 1:18:37
  little snippets of the TV show of McCoy though those sort of
• 1:18:39
  quieter moments and building those out a bit.
• 1:18:43
  Which again, is a completely odds with the version of the 7th
• 1:18:45
  Doctor that you've seen striding around the universe righting
• 1:18:50
  wrongs with a plan left, right and centre.
• 1:18:52
  This just jettisons all that baggage and it feels freer for
• 1:18:55
  doing that. I.
• 1:18:57
  Mean like I, you know, I'm, I'm a massive fan of, of the new
• 1:19:03
  adventures. I, I, I, I, I, you know, don't
• 1:19:05
  get me wrong, I, I love them to bits, warts and all.
• 1:19:09
  I, I know there's problems in it.
• 1:19:11
  I know there's rubbishy wonders in it, but but when it, when
• 1:19:14
  they're good, they're, they're brilliant.
• 1:19:16
  But for me, I reading this, I can't help wonder why this
• 1:19:24
  wasn't the version of the doctor that they ran with.
• 1:19:27
  You know, because you, we see, we're reading this version of
• 1:19:32
  the Doctor and you and we've all said you read the line and you
• 1:19:38
  can envisage how Sylvester McCoy would deliver it.
• 1:19:41
  This feels so much closer to the 7th Doctor that we saw on on the
• 1:19:46
  on the TV than it does to the new adventures version.
• 1:19:51
  And it's almost like the new adventures bit, they pick the
• 1:19:53
  dark, the mysterious, the times champion bit to go with.
• 1:19:58
  Whereas I don't know this this feels.
• 1:20:01
  This should have been the direction that they went with.
• 1:20:03
  I think Matt, Matt Jones was really, really on to something
• 1:20:06
  here. I I, I think the reason for
• 1:20:08
  that, and I'm going to quote Terrence Dicks, it's fans,
• 1:20:11
  because I think fans when these books started coming out, they
• 1:20:15
  wanted it dark. They wanted it to do all those
• 1:20:18
  sort of things. They re tap into law and tap
• 1:20:21
  into all the all the stuff with the doctor and the other and all
• 1:20:24
  the stuff teased in Ghost light and what Ghost light was
• 1:20:28
  originally meant to be what we got with Longbarrow.
• 1:20:31
  And this this just feels a reaction against that.
• 1:20:33
  It's it's it's almost like what if the doctor wasn't the arch
• 1:20:36
  manipulator and he's actually having to improvise a plan.
• 1:20:39
  What I can't remember because obviously this is the beginning
• 1:20:42
  of the end, because this is the this is the last book with the
• 1:20:45
  Doctor Who logo on because they dropped it from this point for
• 1:20:47
  the last few is how's it? I can't remember how the doctor
• 1:20:50
  was characterised in the last few books.
• 1:20:52
  Is this a a permanent? No, he's quite sweet.
• 1:20:56
  Yeah, in room with no doors, he's quite sweet.
• 1:21:00
  He's not really in eternity, weeps.
• 1:21:01
  No one's in eternity weeps. And he's very sort of mournful
• 1:21:05
  but gentle in Lung Barrow. So yeah, I think they sort of
• 1:21:09
  see him out in quite a nice way. I.
• 1:21:12
  Think so. It does feel like the the death
• 1:21:14
  of Ross does have a lasting impact on the character.
• 1:21:18
  And whether or not that's something they would if they
• 1:21:20
  hadn't lost the license, that's something they would have ran
• 1:21:22
  with of actually bringing him back.
• 1:21:24
  Or was it because he when he appears on screen in the TV
• 1:21:27
  movie, it's like we have to kind of start moving to tie up with
• 1:21:33
  how we see him before he gets shot?
• 1:21:36
  I think with the Sylvester McCoy era, the New Adventures took the
• 1:21:41
  stuff from Curse of Enric. You know, the arch miniature,
• 1:21:43
  like the very Dark Doctor. But they forgot that Sylvester
• 1:21:48
  McCoy was very funny, like a natural comedian and just at his
• 1:21:53
  best when he's, you know, love was never known for its
• 1:21:56
  rationality. Yeah, well, that sort of stuff.
• 1:21:59
  They forget all of that. Matt Jones, though, he's got a
• 1:22:01
  good long memory and he can remember all that great stuff.
• 1:22:04
  I mean, listen, sis, you can just hear McCoy saying this
• 1:22:06
  stuff. He's talking to Inspector
• 1:22:09
  Harris. He goes, oh, he's very brave.
• 1:22:11
  Well, one of them. Pardon.
• 1:22:14
  You know, Well, they're not really men at all, are they?
• 1:22:16
  Unfortunate devils, Chief Inspector.
• 1:22:19
  What are you talking about? Doctor, You are aware that your
• 1:22:21
  young friend is almost certainly a home homosexual?
• 1:22:24
  I'd gathered as much. I see.
• 1:22:27
  What? What is it you see, Chief
• 1:22:29
  Inspector? You know you can just in every
• 1:22:32
  single line. I did damaged goods a couple of
• 1:22:37
  years ago. Now, that is a handful of books
• 1:22:40
  back from this. Not that long at all.
• 1:22:42
  Two or three and it's a completely different 7th doctor
• 1:22:46
  in that book. In this book, he's invested in
• 1:22:49
  the lives of people, he's treating people with respect and
• 1:22:52
  he's making their lives better. In Damaged Goods, he allows a
• 1:22:56
  massacre to take place at the end where people's cocaine heads
• 1:23:00
  are blowing up all over the place and forces poor Eva
• 1:23:03
  Jericho to give birth to a mutant offspring tearing out.
• 1:23:10
  I mean, he's just hideous. In Damaged Goods, he's a
• 1:23:14
  monster. And it's almost as if they went,
• 1:23:17
  oh God, we need to claw this back a bit.
• 1:23:20
  Matt, please give us a lovely 7th Doctor.
• 1:23:23
  And it's just the fact that he is.
• 1:23:25
  I'll go back again to the party at the end because there's a
• 1:23:29
  wonderful bit where and everybody's at him at that
• 1:23:34
  party. Everybody Chris is angry with
• 1:23:36
  him because of Patsy and Perry's angry with him because she
• 1:23:41
  abandoned him. And he just turns around at one
• 1:23:44
  point and he goes, is nobody aware that I'm trying to help
• 1:23:50
  this species to survive? You know, and he and just that
• 1:23:54
  just that his his solution this time.
• 1:23:56
  It isn't for massive cocaine heads to explode and for fetuses
• 1:24:01
  to turn into a mutant babies. You know what?
• 1:24:03
  It's still inside the lady. It's to throw a party and to
• 1:24:08
  bring people together and to make connections.
• 1:24:11
  That's so beautiful. That's the doctor.
• 1:24:15
  Yeah. Yeah, I mean.
• 1:24:17
  I'm the same. I'm the same as you, Dan.
• 1:24:19
  I I love the new adventures. I think they are great.
• 1:24:23
  But I do wonder if the Doctor's character and the way it
• 1:24:27
  develops is their attempt to create a character that is
• 1:24:30
  continuously developing. Because in the TV show, did you
• 1:24:34
  really get that? Strictly speaking, up to that
• 1:24:37
  point, it was just the Doctor at that moment.
• 1:24:41
  Whereas what they tried to consume to Christ construct with
• 1:24:44
  the New Adventures as an ongoing narrative art where he builds
• 1:24:47
  himself up, up, up, up, up, darker and darker and darker.
• 1:24:50
  Where do you take that? Where do you literally go with
• 1:24:53
  that? And you know, you get yourself
• 1:24:55
  into writing cul-de-sac other than one great epic fail to
• 1:24:59
  bring them down like a House of Cards, there's nowhere to go
• 1:25:02
  with it. So at that point they've got to
• 1:25:04
  readdress the balance and factory reset seemed like a the
• 1:25:07
  best solution that could come up without without coming out with
• 1:25:09
  something where literally the doctor falls.
• 1:25:11
  I think Colin did. Colin developed, but in the
• 1:25:14
  other direction. I think he started off in a very
• 1:25:16
  dark place and then got lighter and lighter and lighter as his.
• 1:25:20
  It's a shame you missed the scene, the series between Trial
• 1:25:25
  and Revelation of the Daleks, because then you could see that,
• 1:25:29
  that ease. I mean, yeah, the the way he
• 1:25:31
  appears in Mysterious Planet, arms around Perry, twizzling
• 1:25:34
  around the forest, Magical stuff, absolutely magical stuff.
• 1:25:37
  And you can insert that into there, but you don't actually
• 1:25:40
  see it played out in real time. Whereas in the books, they kind
• 1:25:44
  of do have that luxury of doing that in one long narrative.
• 1:25:49
  It was a shame we didn't see the in completely invented season
• 1:25:52
  right now between season 24 and 25, when McCoy turned from
• 1:25:58
  whoever he was in 24 to who he was in 25.
• 1:26:04
  They explained, I think they explained that in head games
• 1:26:06
  it's like, oh, Ace has turned up.
• 1:26:07
  I'm I must be Times champion now what?
• 1:26:09
  Was that when you just jettison's Mell out?
• 1:26:11
  Sorry, Mell, you've got to go. Is glitz all right?
• 1:26:13
  Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
• 1:26:16
  It's Cheerio. But it was Chris's reaction to
• 1:26:21
  the doctor at the end of this, you know, where he says, don't
• 1:26:25
  you even come near me, I'm going to have to lose her all over
• 1:26:28
  again. Yeah.
• 1:26:30
  It's so different from the end of Love and War, where Ace is
• 1:26:34
  just screaming, oh, fake mum and dads and all this to the doctor
• 1:26:38
  and Benny. It's just so mature, One,
• 1:26:41
  because I understand where Chris is coming from and two, it's
• 1:26:45
  just it, it's not hysterical, you know, it's not Mad Angus
• 1:26:50
  211, it's it's just really well pitched.
• 1:26:53
  I just think this series of books has matured as it's gone
• 1:26:57
  along, you know, and they've learnt how to deliver this stuff
• 1:27:00
  in a less 14 year old pimply schoolboy sort of a way.
• 1:27:07
  Yeah, for sure, for sure. So has anyone got anything else
• 1:27:10
  to say about the doctor or. I had loads.
• 1:27:16
  I, I, I, yeah, I've got a, a few bits because I, I like, I think,
• 1:27:23
  like, as we've said, I think Matt Jones here has taken all
• 1:27:28
  the best bits of, of Sylvester's Doctor and kind of woven it into
• 1:27:32
  this. And I and I think because of
• 1:27:34
  that, this is possibly my favorite version of the of the
• 1:27:38
  7th Doctor in in print. But but it, but I think it's
• 1:27:45
  sort of like those little moments.
• 1:27:46
  And I think that that that's very Sylvester McCoy as well,
• 1:27:49
  isn't it? Because it's the little things
• 1:27:51
  that you kind of notice in doing.
• 1:27:53
  But it was like like the scene in the morgue where he's
• 1:27:59
  examining Eddie's corpse and and he's talking to the to Inspector
• 1:28:04
  Harris and he and he just kind of like suddenly strokes Eddie's
• 1:28:10
  hair, doesn't he? In an almost.
• 1:28:12
  And and I think Inspector Harrison notes that it's a a
• 1:28:16
  distinctive, distinctively eternal gesture.
• 1:28:20
  And, and I thought because that, you know, it's like, like him
• 1:28:24
  bopping, you know, ace on the nose, isn't it?
• 1:28:28
  You know, aces are rare and he bops her on the nose kind of
• 1:28:30
  thing that that sort of and and I thought that was brilliant.
• 1:28:34
  Then when him and Jack get the tax, not the killer taxi taxi
• 1:28:42
  taxi back to the house and he's trying to pay with the alien
• 1:28:47
  currency and and the and the driver gets frustrated and in
• 1:28:51
  the end just drives off with a rude a rude gesture.
• 1:28:53
  And the doctor raises his hat and Jack noticed a a mysterious
• 1:28:59
  self congratulate re grin on the doctor's face as if the whole
• 1:29:04
  business was a scam. And I'm thinking Sylvester, 7th
• 1:29:07
  Doctor, there it. Is don't you love it when
• 1:29:11
  Harris, in a wonderfully surprising moment, breaks him
• 1:29:15
  out of jail and he's like, Chief Inspector, I could kiss you.
• 1:29:18
  At one point, I even say it's like, I love human beings.
• 1:29:22
  There's no logic to your behaviour at all.
• 1:29:25
  And yet you're so irresistible. How do you do it?
• 1:29:29
  He's just. But they've suddenly remembered.
• 1:29:30
  Sylvester McCoy is so nice. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:36
  It's. If, if Big Finish were ever
• 1:29:38
  doing their, their adaptations, he could do this.
• 1:29:41
  Some of those adaptations don't work because they're asking
• 1:29:44
  stuff from him that he can't do because they've forgotten how to
• 1:29:46
  write his voice. This is one that wouldn't need a
• 1:29:50
  huge amount of, you know, this would work.
• 1:29:53
  This would work as an adaptation.
• 1:29:54
  I'm surprised they didn't run with it because there's just,
• 1:29:56
  there's so much for an audio adaptation to run with this in
• 1:30:01
  terms of the character. And you, you said you could keep
• 1:30:05
  saying you can hear Sylvester doing it.
• 1:30:07
  This plays to his strengths. Telling me when they did damaged
• 1:30:10
  goods for the audio, they rewrote huge chunks of that.
• 1:30:14
  There was no cocaine heads exploding, no fetuses growing
• 1:30:18
  out of people you know, They turned it into a doctor's story.
• 1:30:23
  Yeah, yeah. Should we talk about Chris then
• 1:30:27
  let's go through the the the main TARDIS crew.
• 1:30:29
  So it's to so Chris, what are your what are your thoughts on
• 1:30:32
  on Chris? I know, I know, Joe.
• 1:30:33
  He's not your favorite. So boring.
• 1:30:39
  This is the first I've done 8 Chris books.
• 1:30:41
  This is the first one where he's fucking done something.
• 1:30:44
  Sorry. I know he in in original scene
• 1:30:47
  he turned into a teddy bear for a bit.
• 1:30:50
  That was marginally interesting. No, I think I should speak quiet
• 1:30:54
  and let everyone else talk about Chris.
• 1:30:58
  OK, who wants to lead on this? I yeah, Chris is, is, is a
• 1:31:06
  character at times. I have, I think Jonathan, I'm so
• 1:31:10
  much you going back to I remember getting into these
• 1:31:12
  books called, yeah, Chris and Ros.
• 1:31:14
  Oh yeah. They're a bit more modern and
• 1:31:17
  they're a bit more dangerous and, and yeah, Ros was much more
• 1:31:21
  of an interesting character. I think Chris suffered in
• 1:31:26
  comparison to Ross. And I think the idea that he
• 1:31:28
  followed her around a little bit like a puppy and he was kind of
• 1:31:31
  in her thrall. And so he did.
• 1:31:34
  I've always felt it wasn't anywhere near as interesting,
• 1:31:37
  but here and it's it's obvious that he gets the chance to shine
• 1:31:42
  and he is much more interesting and has given some proper human
• 1:31:45
  emotions to feel. And we're going to keep using
• 1:31:50
  the word mature. This is a mature reading of the
• 1:31:52
  character. And it's a shame that we didn't
• 1:31:54
  get this interpretation of the character sooner, whether or not
• 1:32:00
  this was planned or whether or not this was.
• 1:32:01
  Oh yeah, we reset the 2nd Doctor.
• 1:32:04
  Let's reset Chris a little bit, make him a little bit mature, a
• 1:32:06
  little bit wiser, a little bit more depth.
• 1:32:08
  Because I do seem to remember that he's a little bit more
• 1:32:12
  interesting in the final books. Not Eternity, because no one's
• 1:32:16
  in that, but I just remember he was a much more interesting
• 1:32:20
  character after this. I do know that come the Straight
• 1:32:24
  New Adventures without the Doctor, he goes off in a totally
• 1:32:28
  different direction. And I've tried reading up on, I
• 1:32:31
  was on TARDIS Wiki, reading the Future History of Chris Quedge,
• 1:32:34
  and it was like, don't do it. He tries to get complicated.
• 1:32:38
  He was a non entity in Mean St. He becomes the entire army of
• 1:32:43
  Quidjun at one point, doesn't he?
• 1:32:46
  And he becomes a fat old man for some reason, I don't know why,
• 1:32:49
  like. Because isn't there a range of
• 1:32:52
  books that are just about Chris but like some independent
• 1:32:58
  publisher? I've never read in not.
• 1:32:59
  Coming soon from the Hamster Book Club, Unless you want to do
• 1:33:04
  well, I'll do it. No, but I I totally agree with
• 1:33:08
  you, David, because it because it does feel like I don't get me
• 1:33:14
  wrong, I I love Roz and Chris, but I think it's I think as a
• 1:33:18
  double act. He is very much the sidekick to
• 1:33:22
  to Roz. Roz is the the dominant, the the
• 1:33:25
  interesting one. Where is he?
• 1:33:27
  He's kind of there just to, you know, exposition and fervor, the
• 1:33:32
  plot along most of the time. Whereas I think, you know, it
• 1:33:39
  was a smart move to to separate him from the doctor as well in
• 1:33:43
  this so that he goes off and he has his his own journey in this
• 1:33:49
  book. But both both in a, you know, in
• 1:33:54
  an adventure kind of way with, you know, helping rescue the,
• 1:33:59
  the, the toys from the, from, from the asylum and, and all
• 1:34:02
  that. And where he can put his
• 1:34:03
  adjudicator training into, into practice, but also also the, the
• 1:34:07
  emotional journey that he goes through.
• 1:34:10
  And, and I, and I think like, like you just said, from this
• 1:34:15
  point on, Chris is a much more interesting character or handled
• 1:34:19
  in a much more interesting way, you know, up to Longbarrow for
• 1:34:24
  me. But yes.
• 1:34:27
  Sad is removing the more interesting character makes
• 1:34:33
  Chris more interesting which makes me think that that
• 1:34:37
  character is ill defined to start off with.
• 1:34:40
  If taking away the more interesting character is then
• 1:34:42
  puts the shifter but it is again I think it just goes back to the
• 1:34:46
  absence of that person and how they react to it that is
• 1:34:48
  interesting rather than Chris himself.
• 1:34:51
  I just don't know much about him really.
• 1:34:55
  Well, that's the thing though. It's sort of because, because
• 1:35:01
  I'm, I've got all these characters kind of written out.
• 1:35:03
  I think we should also talk about Ross because, because it
• 1:35:06
  still feels like, you know, she is really, although she's not
• 1:35:11
  present, she's impacting this, this this story, isn't she?
• 1:35:14
  Because of the grief that she's kind of caused.
• 1:35:18
  And both of the, of the doctor and Chris are dealing with the
• 1:35:23
  effects of that. So do we want to talk about
• 1:35:27
  that? There's a wonderful moment where
• 1:35:29
  he's on the train and he's so caught up in the adventure that
• 1:35:32
  he realises he's forgotten about Ross for the first time since
• 1:35:37
  she's died. And he gets really angry and
• 1:35:41
  thinks that I shouldn't feel guilty for just being alive,
• 1:35:44
  should I? Which I think maybe we all go
• 1:35:48
  through well with. Somebody totally, totally, you
• 1:35:52
  know, having lost both both my parents a wee while ago.
• 1:35:58
  Yeah, I I can totally void with with with that because because
• 1:36:04
  you're so you're so wrapped up in the grief that you do forget
• 1:36:08
  to live your own life, don't you, for a time and and that you
• 1:36:11
  you have to learn to enjoy life again, don't you?
• 1:36:16
  And I think, I think that that he he's kind of going through
• 1:36:19
  that kind of process and I thought that was really good as
• 1:36:22
  well. Even the doctor, you know, the
• 1:36:24
  most powerful character in this book, he closes his eyes at one
• 1:36:27
  point and he's unable to present prevent himself imagining Ross's
• 1:36:32
  face on one of the toys that he wants to see her so badly.
• 1:36:36
  So I don't think like sort of Ross impacts the story as a
• 1:36:40
  character because Shane in this, but just the consequence of them
• 1:36:45
  losing her, it informs so much of the book.
• 1:36:51
  It it, it she's she's a presence, but not one that
• 1:36:54
  dominates. I mean, I was reading the Doctor
• 1:36:57
  magazine review of this and they said, could you imagine watching
• 1:37:00
  Time flight? But Earth shock had gone missing
• 1:37:04
  and it's at least there they could have got for the grief
• 1:37:06
  straight away and moved on. It's like here, it's so central,
• 1:37:11
  you know, I can just imagine trying to do a story about
• 1:37:14
  Adric's death but not actually see it.
• 1:37:18
  I mean I don't want to be too mean about Stephen Moffett on
• 1:37:21
  something he's got had no impact and whatsoever, but fuck me.
• 1:37:25
  You know? Like when he lost Clara we were
• 1:37:27
  stuck walking around that boring castle for 300 million thousand
• 1:37:31
  years. Oh God Stephen, you should have
• 1:37:34
  read bad Therapy and nicked all the ideas from this is a much
• 1:37:36
  better way still grief. Head to the fag infested 50s
• 1:37:41
  London with Tilda chap Come on. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:37:46
  So should we go with Perry next or, or shall I say Gillian,
• 1:37:53
  what, what, what do we think about that And, and, and also
• 1:37:57
  like was it necessary as well as a question I want to ask of you
• 1:38:03
  guys? Was it necessary?
• 1:38:06
  Probably not. Is is my honest answer.
• 1:38:09
  You could take all the interludes out, say Mariah came
• 1:38:12
  from insert generic planet name somewhere and it would make no
• 1:38:17
  difference. The story could still play out B
• 1:38:19
  for B as it did. Gareth, this would be a Tellos
• 1:38:22
  novella then it. It it it doesn't.
• 1:38:27
  I mean, like I think I said at the top end of this, you know, I
• 1:38:31
  I I was deep into Doctor Who law at the times returning
• 1:38:33
  companions a great thing wonderful like that continuation
• 1:38:36
  the story trials a favorite of mine.
• 1:38:38
  So this should should have sung to me this time round, but it
• 1:38:41
  really didn't and I couldn't make my mind up why.
• 1:38:45
  There was a couple of things I think that bothered me about
• 1:38:48
  Perry. I can't understand deep down why
• 1:38:54
  she would stay on Crontep if she was that unhappy about
• 1:38:58
  everything. We know this is a woman that
• 1:39:00
  tried to get away from Howard back in Planet of Fire the first
• 1:39:03
  second she got. She doesn't strike me as someone
• 1:39:06
  who would just sit there and accept her fate.
• 1:39:09
  She never did in any of the stories we saw on the screen.
• 1:39:12
  And so I kind of struggle with that a little bit.
• 1:39:15
  And then you've got the reconciliation with the doctor
• 1:39:18
  that never really takes place because she still blames him.
• 1:39:22
  And this is a this is a woman who forgave him for trying to
• 1:39:25
  throttle her. And and so I can't equate that
• 1:39:31
  character with Perry. I I just can't this time around.
• 1:39:36
  It just it just doesn't sit well with me at all.
• 1:39:39
  I found a nuisance when it came to trying to solve the problem
• 1:39:42
  at the end in the fact that she's the one in the corner
• 1:39:45
  group. And it just, it just took all
• 1:39:47
  the air out of that end bit for me.
• 1:39:49
  Every time she was in, I was just like, oh, don't, don't
• 1:39:51
  bring don't don't bring her into the story again for me, please.
• 1:39:56
  And she I don't really like. Violence and Doctor Who, you
• 1:39:58
  know, But I did think it was totally justified when she
• 1:40:02
  slapped him around the face. But he but he did say to her as
• 1:40:07
  far as he knew, she wasn't there and she's it's like I say, she's
• 1:40:10
  accepted worst in the past from me.
• 1:40:11
  She also knows that he's a different person when he gets up
• 1:40:14
  and changes. But yeah, she still takes the
• 1:40:16
  angst out on the littlest funniest looking there's there
• 1:40:20
  in front of her who's clearly trying to do something at great
• 1:40:23
  pace right now. I just.
• 1:40:25
  Feel like a weird added element in the climate of like, OK,
• 1:40:30
  you've got this problem that you're trying to sort out, and
• 1:40:33
  then there's a sort of extra little problem that doesn't
• 1:40:36
  impact this problem really at all.
• 1:40:39
  I still thought it was well written and well handled.
• 1:40:42
  But yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely it is.
• 1:40:44
  I'm I'm not, I'm not saying this is not a well written book, Far,
• 1:40:46
  far from it. It's it's still a four-star in
• 1:40:49
  my opinion. I just felt that Harry didn't
• 1:40:53
  quite come out well on this. That I those interludes and all
• 1:40:57
  that, that could be a great short trip.
• 1:40:58
  You know when they do those short stories?
• 1:41:00
  That would be a great short trip by Matthew Jones, of course.
• 1:41:04
  But again, you know, and I'm open to the fact that maybe I'm
• 1:41:07
  projecting subsequent stories of Perry that have come down the
• 1:41:11
  road since this book was written.
• 1:41:13
  You know, the Blu-ray release where she looks quite happy in
• 1:41:15
  that robe. Age of Chaos where she's in the
• 1:41:20
  robe again at the end. How many versions of Perry have
• 1:41:24
  we had now? The Widow's Assassin from Big
• 1:41:26
  Finish, which was still in her head.
• 1:41:29
  What else have we had? There's been more.
• 1:41:31
  Oh Peter Scum paradox which was another feature the best best
• 1:41:36
  version of her as well. Another book?
• 1:41:39
  What was the book Mine Warp where her and Yukanos ended up
• 1:41:43
  on Earth and he was a pro wrestler?
• 1:41:44
  Oh, pro wrestler, Yeah. So many endings, Perry.
• 1:41:48
  The. So I can't just, I just can't
• 1:41:50
  reconcile this Perry. It just doesn't sit in my head
• 1:41:53
  cannon alongside everything else and it just sticks out like a
• 1:41:56
  sore thumb for me. I.
• 1:41:58
  Think what they're probably trying to do is is bring in a
• 1:42:01
  former companion that again shows the impact of travelling
• 1:42:05
  with the Doctor and it doesn't always have to be a death.
• 1:42:08
  It's the loss of time for her, yeah.
• 1:42:10
  The loss of time to a life, yeah.
• 1:42:13
  And so she's, that's what, you know, she's grieving the loss of
• 1:42:16
  the life that she could have had.
• 1:42:18
  And but, yeah, you know, it, it feels like she's been there for
• 1:42:23
  however many years because reasons, even though she's been
• 1:42:26
  unhappy the whole time. Yeah.
• 1:42:29
  Does it does it work with or without it?
• 1:42:30
  I don't know. It it there.
• 1:42:34
  There was a point where every time you went back to Gillian's
• 1:42:37
  story, it was just like, oh, do we have to?
• 1:42:39
  Well, I. Was just wondering how it was
• 1:42:42
  all going to connect up and it kind of never did that.
• 1:42:45
  The plots met up, but I was like, well how does that It was
• 1:42:50
  just that Mariah was from the same place, wasn't it?
• 1:42:53
  That was. The first king of the contest
• 1:42:57
  wasn't him or something, but. And during those sequences where
• 1:43:02
  we are doing Perry coming into the plot and a lot of the stuff
• 1:43:07
  running to and from the asylum, we lose Jack for about 50 pages.
• 1:43:12
  And he's so central to the start of the book.
• 1:43:14
  And I just kept thinking, where's Jack Like this?
• 1:43:16
  I thought this was his book, you know?
• 1:43:18
  But we're suddenly, we're deep, you know, balls deep into Chrome
• 1:43:21
  tap and time corridors and things like this.
• 1:43:23
  I was like, OK, all right, we're in a different Doctor Who book
• 1:43:26
  now. It.
• 1:43:27
  Didn't seem to take her forever to turn up, you know, they were
• 1:43:30
  teasing for ages and there was just like, is she actually going
• 1:43:33
  to join the story? They leave it very late, don't
• 1:43:36
  they to actually, for her to actually come from those
• 1:43:41
  interludes into the actual main, main part of the book.
• 1:43:44
  It you know, because, because I think like, like, you know, we
• 1:43:47
  were saying in a sort of overviews at the beginning.
• 1:43:51
  I know a couple of us have kind of said that, you know, the,
• 1:43:53
  the, the, the main chunk of the book, the world building bit was
• 1:43:57
  really, really good. But then all of a sudden you've
• 1:44:00
  got about 50 pages to kind of bring it all together.
• 1:44:03
  And therefore it kind of loses some of that because it's got to
• 1:44:07
  it's got to wrap up all of these loose ends.
• 1:44:08
  One of those being this this story of Perry and unhappy.
• 1:44:14
  Marriage. Don't you feel though there is,
• 1:44:16
  there is another chunk of the book that you could possibly
• 1:44:18
  remove, which is that train journey going back and forwards
• 1:44:22
  that when it kind of happens, you kind of lose a little bit of
• 1:44:25
  the pace around it, you know, why couldn't it have been at a
• 1:44:27
  factory? I would never lose a single
• 1:44:31
  scene with Tilda Chuck in it. Well, I, I did, I did.
• 1:44:35
  I did think that, you know, there was some synchronicity
• 1:44:37
  here with Eater of Wasps with a cheery inspector and a train
• 1:44:41
  involved. So, you know, maybe we've got a
• 1:44:42
  pattern going on here. I don't want to tempt anything.
• 1:44:45
  But I did wonder, you know, again, if, if you would have had
• 1:44:49
  those to keep that pace element going.
• 1:44:51
  Ditch Perry, ditch the train, and you've got a bit more
• 1:44:55
  self-contained, a little bit tied because this is quite a
• 1:44:57
  hefty book for a new adventure in terms of page count.
• 1:45:00
  And you most of them get up to about 2:50 and then finish off,
• 1:45:03
  and this one goes on for quite a bit.
• 1:45:06
  Yeah, because it did feel like there was a lot of toing and
• 1:45:09
  froing. Then after the train journey,
• 1:45:11
  which is almost our first visit to that asylum, there's,
• 1:45:15
  there's, there's a lot of toing throwing from there to London,
• 1:45:18
  back to there, you know, and wrapping it up.
• 1:45:22
  I did like, though, how Perry coming in and being so angry
• 1:45:27
  with the Doctor means that he suddenly starts questioning the
• 1:45:31
  morality of what he's doing within this story.
• 1:45:34
  I did like that because I don't think the 7th Doctor genuinely
• 1:45:39
  generally questions the morality of what he's doing in these
• 1:45:42
  books. He just does it, you know, and
• 1:45:44
  says, well, I'm times champion. It's for the best.
• 1:45:47
  I don't know. So that was just another notch
• 1:45:49
  on the Yeah, this is a really engaging take on the 7th Doctor.
• 1:45:55
  Yeah, OK, so let's do Jack next then, because it feels like he's
• 1:46:03
  very much the Doctor's companion for this story.
• 1:46:07
  So. So what are my thoughts on Jack?
• 1:46:09
  Oh, he's lovely. He's so lovely.
• 1:46:13
  The bit where he thinks the Doctor snogged him.
• 1:46:16
  It's so funny. Oh, you didn't kiss me then.
• 1:46:19
  No, I'm 900 years too old. And another species altogether.
• 1:46:23
  Oh, he's great. They're a great team.
• 1:46:26
  I could have done. I could have done a run of books
• 1:46:29
  for the Doctor and Jack. You it does feel at times that
• 1:46:34
  they're setting up Jack to come in because obviously doctors
• 1:46:38
  usually one in one out. So the fact that there's a sense
• 1:46:42
  but something I was reading the end of the book and there's an
• 1:46:47
  epilogue. The epilogue is set what
• 1:46:50
  contemporaries in the book was written at some point in the 90s
• 1:46:53
  and obviously Doctor and Chris, they're in Soho and everything.
• 1:46:59
  It was interesting that Jack doesn't appear in the epilogue
• 1:47:03
  and it just made me wonder though, it's because obviously
• 1:47:09
  what what was going on with gay men, particularly in the
• 1:47:11
  Seventies, 80s and 90s, is Jack's absence from the epilogue
• 1:47:17
  significant? Is basically does Jack survive
• 1:47:21
  to the mid 90s because not a lot of gay men did.
• 1:47:28
  So I just, I just thought when you're reading that going, you
• 1:47:32
  really feel his absence in that scene, you know, because he has
• 1:47:35
  his moment, he sees Eddie, he takes them back and you have
• 1:47:38
  that kind of moment where he gets to see their first
• 1:47:40
  encounter again. And that's the last we see of
• 1:47:42
  him, I think. And it's just, it was like when
• 1:47:46
  they go back and having this happy ending, it's like he's not
• 1:47:50
  here. So you just want to throw that
• 1:47:54
  bit of? Well, thanks David, we all
• 1:47:57
  thought he had a happy ending at the end of this.
• 1:48:00
  You could make a good point, though.
• 1:48:01
  Maybe, you know, he is obviously the surrogate companion in this
• 1:48:05
  story because Chris is so absent from the side of the Doctor.
• 1:48:08
  Maybe, maybe that is done on purpose to make you think that
• 1:48:11
  Chris won't reconcile with the Doctor, but for the loss of Ross
• 1:48:15
  by the time we get to the end of this, I think Joe said it
• 1:48:19
  earlier, but he's quite right. You know, we see, we see Jack
• 1:48:22
  grow from where he started at the beginning to where he ends
• 1:48:25
  up at the end. You know, he's a sense of always
• 1:48:28
  being entrapped whenever he's, he's going through a bit of the
• 1:48:30
  Taxi Skanton brothers to literally making the decision
• 1:48:35
  that kind of frees him a little bit at the end and takes that
• 1:48:38
  weight off his shoulders. And yeah, I think you're right.
• 1:48:41
  The fact that he doesn't go into the TARDIS just feels like a bit
• 1:48:44
  of a misnomer. He's so frightened at the start,
• 1:48:46
  isn't it? And he doesn't want to be
• 1:48:48
  involved in any trouble, which makes moments like where he
• 1:48:51
  picks up the crystal ball, but, you know, as a real hero moment
• 1:48:55
  because you're like, yeah, go on, Jack, save the Doctor's
• 1:48:58
  life. It's funny that that was that
• 1:49:01
  was the scene I was thinking about exactly the same time
• 1:49:04
  that, that, you know, because because we the the when we first
• 1:49:07
  meet him, he's very timid, very, very shy, very, very not wanting
• 1:49:12
  to cause any, any trouble. But yeah, you know, to the point
• 1:49:15
  where he's almost legging it up the stairs and leaving the
• 1:49:19
  doctor to his fate. Isn't he sort of thing.
• 1:49:22
  But then something just clicks in his head and he like grabs
• 1:49:25
  the crystal ball and smashes it over over the over the head of
• 1:49:30
  was it was it Carl? At this point?
• 1:49:31
  I think it was, wasn't it or was it called Gordy?
• 1:49:35
  I can't remember who he one of the Scrantons that he he smashed
• 1:49:39
  his own head, but I don't. Want to shit on Chris even more
• 1:49:43
  than I usually do. But there's just an instant
• 1:49:45
  rapport with the Doctor and Jack, and he can talk about his
• 1:49:49
  feelings, the Doctor with Jack in a way that he can't with
• 1:49:52
  Chris. And so there's just, I just felt
• 1:49:55
  there was like, oh, yeah, something here, you know, we
• 1:49:57
  should have done something with this, that there's an exchange.
• 1:50:00
  I always knew I was different, says Jack.
• 1:50:02
  I thought I didn't belong, you know?
• 1:50:04
  Oh, yes, the Doctor said, his eyes full of dark fire.
• 1:50:07
  I know, you know, I'm just like, yeah, there's definitely
• 1:50:11
  something here. Yeah.
• 1:50:15
  So, so is that another missed opportunity?
• 1:50:17
  So we we we've identified one that that, you know, this
• 1:50:22
  character, this characterisation of the Doctor probably should
• 1:50:25
  have been the one they went with.
• 1:50:26
  Is is it? Should we have had Jack and the
• 1:50:28
  Doctor here on in? I think the only problem with
• 1:50:31
  having Jack here on in is they probably knew it was the end of
• 1:50:33
  the line for the new adventures. So introducing a new character
• 1:50:37
  at this point was probably a no no goer for them at the
• 1:50:41
  beginning because you can probably look at a book to tie
• 1:50:44
  them up in what is essential. What do we say?
• 1:50:45
  It's a six or five book to the finale now from this one.
• 1:50:49
  So if you think there's another book to write this person out
• 1:50:52
  plus tie everything else up you've been doing, it does tie
• 1:50:56
  your hands a lot in doing it that way.
• 1:50:59
  And it would have it would have made even more people present in
• 1:51:04
  London borough as well, isn't there?
• 1:51:05
  Because it's quite a lot of the doctors.
• 1:51:08
  Lung Barrow. More reality, war and journey's
• 1:51:12
  end put together. More lung, more Barrow.
• 1:51:16
  Yeah, yeah. But but both those missed
• 1:51:21
  opportunities are huge strings of this book.
• 1:51:25
  The 7th Doctor and Jack, they're massive string.
• 1:51:28
  They're just a reason to go back to this book.
• 1:51:34
  Absolutely, And you know, it's quite telling that they're in
• 1:51:37
  the sizeable chunk of this. You know, Chris has kind of
• 1:51:39
  sidelined for a lot of the book in his own story.
• 1:51:42
  You could kind of take that out to a certain degree.
• 1:51:45
  Perry's beat. You could take that out to a
• 1:51:47
  certain degree. You'd start a cracking yard, but
• 1:51:51
  you'd still have a cracking story on the face of it.
• 1:51:54
  But Doctor Meeks new companion sorts out problem that's
• 1:51:58
  happening which which is what it says on the tin for it.
• 1:52:02
  I like to think there's a moment where the doctor sort of easy,
• 1:52:04
  you know, he's travelling the entire with Chris after this,
• 1:52:07
  but you know, he just goes off in the cupboard and we don't
• 1:52:10
  know it, but he's gone off and had, you know, 100 adventures
• 1:52:14
  with Jack and then he comes back out of the cupboard and goes,
• 1:52:16
  ah, Chris, yes, let's go, you know, so there's a whole series
• 1:52:19
  of adventures with Jack out there we don't know about.
• 1:52:22
  Well, they're in. Well, if we are heading to a
• 1:52:24
  Wilderness Years Part 2, you know if anyone is out there and
• 1:52:27
  listening. Yeah.
• 1:52:29
  Let's finish. Matthew Jones on the bottom.
• 1:52:30
  Let's get the adventures of the 7th Doctor and Jack.
• 1:52:35
  If it if there's a degree of synchronicity, because I dug out
• 1:52:38
  the Doctor Who magazine the month this came out.
• 1:52:41
  It was the issue where the front cover was talking where now for
• 1:52:45
  Doctor Who because it was in the December 96 and it was a whole
• 1:52:49
  piece about the TV movie kind of hasn't materialised and kind of
• 1:52:53
  the aftermath and talk about what next for the wilderness
• 1:52:57
  year. So it's just interesting that of
• 1:52:59
  all the times that we sit here at a book that was published at
• 1:53:03
  a point that the future of Doctor Who was so uncertain is
• 1:53:07
  that's kind of where it is now. It is.
• 1:53:11
  Yeah. Well, if someone could produce a
• 1:53:14
  book as good as bad therapy, we'd be very happy.
• 1:53:16
  Thank. You although I do think this
• 1:53:20
  book carnie gets forgotten. It's it oddly muted in
• 1:53:25
  conversation about it bad therapy.
• 1:53:28
  I like, you know, people talk about damaged goods.
• 1:53:30
  They talk about Lung Barrow. They talk about love and war.
• 1:53:32
  They talk about no future. They talk about human nature.
• 1:53:35
  They're the big hitters in the new adventures.
• 1:53:37
  And yet. You tend to find that with the
• 1:53:41
  back end of the Ranger, especially because they had such
• 1:53:43
  a limited print run by the time that they stopped doing them.
• 1:53:46
  The all the others have been around for so long because I
• 1:53:49
  think they said that, you know, one of the reasons that you
• 1:53:50
  know, lung Barrow costs are astronomical is because they had
• 1:53:53
  that one print back to then that were it, everything was turned
• 1:53:55
  off. But I think people talk about
• 1:53:57
  like, eternity weeps, you know, the horror of eternity weeps
• 1:54:01
  more than bad therapy. But isn't that more the impact
• 1:54:03
  on Liz than that people generally remember about
• 1:54:06
  eternity weeps than anything else?
• 1:54:08
  There's a catch on it. This this one kind of stands
• 1:54:12
  alone on its own right as a good Doctor Who story first and
• 1:54:16
  foremost. Perry stuck in there.
• 1:54:17
  He's almost had a non bonus at this point in time, which is
• 1:54:22
  solid in what it does, absolutely solid in what it
• 1:54:25
  does. Whereas some of the others that
• 1:54:26
  you get later on are a little bit gimmicky.
• 1:54:29
  You know, it's like the one, like the one with the maggots.
• 1:54:31
  You know, you kind of label it like that as you go further down
• 1:54:33
  the range. You you can't really do that
• 1:54:35
  with this one. But also I think this is the one
• 1:54:39
  in that last run that doesn't really conform to the range that
• 1:54:43
  it's in. Maybe shakedown as well just
• 1:54:46
  because it's so fun. I know you love that one too.
• 1:54:49
  Dan. Chris does fuck all in that 10.
• 1:54:53
  Sorry, but but yeah, maybe that's why because it just
• 1:54:58
  doesn't. I don't Maybe it doesn't stick
• 1:55:01
  to like platonic ideal of the new adventures this and there is
• 1:55:05
  gentle and it is character lead and it has a sweet doctor and
• 1:55:11
  maybe that's why. But I I definitely think it's a
• 1:55:13
  sleeper hit, though. I.
• 1:55:15
  Mean I think some like damaged goods only really gets talked
• 1:55:18
  about in high price because of who wrote it.
• 1:55:21
  I I I don't think if if that had been by another writer, I think
• 1:55:25
  it would be a bit more forgotten than it is.
• 1:55:28
  It's always Russell C Davies. Therefore it's put on a pedestal
• 1:55:32
  I. Mean.
• 1:55:33
  It's a it's a astonishing book. Book.
• 1:55:35
  It's horrible. It's just miserable.
• 1:55:38
  It needed the lightness of this in it damage.
• 1:55:41
  This has got a this has got a twinkle in it, an absolute
• 1:55:45
  twinkle, and that's what keeps it interesting.
• 1:55:48
  You've only got to compare the 2 gay storylines, the one in
• 1:55:51
  Damaged Goods, which is David Daniels and Harry Harvey.
• 1:55:56
  Harry Harvey who was married but is gay and is now his missus
• 1:56:01
  died and his missus best friend was David Daniels who's this
• 1:56:05
  very stereotypical mincy gay man who he fancies the arse off and
• 1:56:11
  he knows he fancies the arse off him and he won't give him
• 1:56:14
  anything. And it's just all the worst of
• 1:56:17
  homosexuality. It's it's the sort of the
• 1:56:19
  twisted toxic relationships you can have.
• 1:56:22
  And then Harry goes to the park to cottage and get stabbed in
• 1:56:26
  the gar, and then Chris is sucking someone off down a back
• 1:56:30
  alley and it's just all the lurid signs of homosexuality.
• 1:56:34
  And then you come to this book where it's a sweet, gorgeous
• 1:56:37
  little romance with tragedy at its heart and a lovely a lovely
• 1:56:42
  character like Jack. And it shows you sort of the
• 1:56:45
  flip side of the coin I much prefer.
• 1:56:47
  To read it, but it's also this book is also about a sense of
• 1:56:50
  belonging, about just wanting to belonging to the world that
• 1:56:53
  you're in. Whereas when you get to damaged
• 1:56:55
  goods, that's a world that everyone really wants to be out
• 1:56:57
  of. Thatcher's Britain, Yeah, to.
• 1:57:00
  Yeah, so so the, the, the literally the, the, the inviting
• 1:57:04
  and the expulsion of the two different ones placed place to
• 1:57:09
  their strengths. But I will say they're both
• 1:57:13
  bangers. I just don't want that much good
• 1:57:15
  at all. Yeah, that's fair.
• 1:57:19
  That's fair. So should we do Inspector
• 1:57:23
  Harris, What, what do we think? Because we've mentioned how we,
• 1:57:27
  we, it's sort of a linkage to the last book we did Eaters and
• 1:57:31
  Wasps. We've.
• 1:57:32
  Got redoubtable. Yes.
• 1:57:35
  Who else wants to spin off with Inspector Harris and Tilda Chop
• 1:57:39
  Lily Law? Oh please.
• 1:57:43
  That would be. Awesome 00 Harris isn't
• 1:57:47
  altogether likable, is he? He's homophobic himself.
• 1:57:50
  I think that's the thing, isn't it?
• 1:57:51
  Because again, he's another person that goes on a journey
• 1:57:55
  and I think at at at the beginning, you know, he is this
• 1:57:59
  solid and dependable police inspector, very much a product
• 1:58:08
  of his time, isn't he? Because he has got those, he has
• 1:58:11
  got those views that are very much of that time that, you
• 1:58:17
  know, and, and, and very anti Auntie Jack and, and people like
• 1:58:22
  him. But, but I think there's like,
• 1:58:26
  there is a gradual shift, isn't there?
• 1:58:28
  Because I think the more he, he's with the doctor, the more
• 1:58:31
  he's with Jack, the more that prejudice starts to dissolve,
• 1:58:38
  the, that barrier starts to kind of breakdown, you know, to to
• 1:58:45
  the point where he at the end, he does a very Don Manly on
• 1:58:50
  1950s thing and he just breaks down in tears when he, when he
• 1:58:53
  talks to, to Tilda. So I think it's, it's
• 1:58:56
  interesting. I kind of liked him.
• 1:59:00
  I liked him. No, no, I liked him because of
• 1:59:03
  it, because I think making a very flawed character and I
• 1:59:11
  don't think his homophobia will ever drop completely.
• 1:59:14
  I think that's Leighton in People, but he's someone who's
• 1:59:20
  helping the doctor, somebody who helps the doctor escape at some
• 1:59:24
  points. He is kind to Jack later on in
• 1:59:27
  the book, so he does sort of start to grow.
• 1:59:29
  Like you say, a flawed, likable character is so much more
• 1:59:33
  interesting than just someone who beams with purity.
• 1:59:40
  Because because I think also that like when when we first
• 1:59:42
  meet him, he's also a little bit lost as well, isn't he?
• 1:59:46
  Because you know, when he, the reason that he brings the doctor
• 1:59:51
  into his investigation so readily is because his normal
• 1:59:56
  police procedures are proving faultless, that he, you know,
• 1:59:59
  there's all of these, is it 6 or 7 unconnected murders And he,
• 2:00:03
  he's drawing a blank. So he's, he's bringing in,
• 2:00:07
  bringing in the doctor as a, as a bit of a Hail Mary pass to
• 2:00:10
  kind of bring in. Not by choice all the time, Dan.
• 2:00:13
  I was. Going to say a bit blindly.
• 2:00:18
  Chief Inspector up at Whiting Studio Coffee, where you been?
• 2:00:21
  But even even the way the Doctor brings himself into it is better
• 2:00:25
  than flapping about a piece of psychic paper.
• 2:00:27
  Yes. Since there's some new serious
• 2:00:30
  bias there, Gareth. Yeah, it's a psychic paper show
• 2:00:34
  and I'm not a big fan of it. I'd rather just have someone
• 2:00:37
  there that can talk at a rate of 50 knots and everyone just
• 2:00:39
  accepts it. I just like it when the doctor
• 2:00:43
  wins people's trust and sometimes, sometimes by being
• 2:00:47
  honest, sometimes by being completely deceitful, and
• 2:00:49
  sometimes letting people assume and think that he's someone else
• 2:00:54
  because he's very adept at. He doesn't lie, he just lets.
• 2:01:00
  People. Think and doesn't correct them
• 2:01:03
  and I quite like that. That's a really nice sort of
• 2:01:05
  character trait because it's a case of, you know, he's not
• 2:01:07
  going to correct and he's not, but it gradually comes out in
• 2:01:09
  conversation. But that he was an interesting
• 2:01:12
  character and I think even though there's prejudice because
• 2:01:16
  it's a, you know, the world of Shades of Grey, and I think
• 2:01:19
  that's what makes things interesting.
• 2:01:21
  You could easily have just said this characters are wrong and
• 2:01:23
  condemn him because of his views, but actually Matt Jones
• 2:01:27
  dares you to like him. It's like Joan in human Nature,
• 2:01:32
  isn't it? Who is blatantly racist with
• 2:01:34
  Martha and yet we are invited to like her character as a romantic
• 2:01:40
  foil to the Doctor? It's just it's so much more
• 2:01:43
  interesting. And some fans really struggle
• 2:01:45
  with that. They've yeah, but they find.
• 2:01:47
  That the reaction's interesting as well, and.
• 2:01:49
  I find that quite interesting. It's like they they have some
• 2:01:54
  terrible views, but there's something about them that you
• 2:01:58
  like and that makes you challenge yourself a little bit.
• 2:02:01
  Not your views. You're not going to change your
• 2:02:02
  mind on your views, but it just keeps your mind open that not
• 2:02:07
  everybody thinks the same way you do.
• 2:02:09
  It's difficult. The world is difficult.
• 2:02:12
  And and is is Inspector Harris helped by the fact that the only
• 2:02:16
  other policeman in this is it Bridie, is it complete?
• 2:02:19
  And. Yeah, you get the other side,
• 2:02:22
  you get the other side of the spectrum there, don't you?
• 2:02:24
  For every other character in the book, literally the the other
• 2:02:27
  people, the wrong one, and the one that's not so bad.
• 2:02:31
  Yeah, yeah. I just, I just think like
• 2:02:35
  anyone, they pair the 7th Doctor in, in this, it just works like
• 2:02:39
  gangbusters. Whether he's with Jack, whether
• 2:02:41
  he's with Harris, whether he's with Chris.
• 2:02:43
  Maybe the 7th Doctor is like the key to this book, you know,
• 2:02:46
  because he's done so well. But all of those parents work
• 2:02:49
  brilliantly. Right, so let's, let's talk
• 2:02:53
  about some of the toys then. So we've got we've got Patsy
• 2:02:56
  Malone, who who befriends Chris. Yes, dear, we've.
• 2:03:01
  Got Tilda, Jup or Mother and the Major.
• 2:03:05
  So these are sort of, I suppose, the three main toys that we meet
• 2:03:10
  in this other than Dennis, of course.
• 2:03:14
  Do you want to talk about any of those?
• 2:03:15
  All three of those people are in every gay bar I've ever been to.
• 2:03:19
  All right, there's a very recognisable and.
• 2:03:22
  There's a major in every gay bar, all right, Even though the
• 2:03:25
  one gay bar in Eastbourne down the road that's only got 3
• 2:03:28
  people frequented, frequented it, that's those three people.
• 2:03:34
  They they're very recognisable figures.
• 2:03:36
  I think that's what he's done. He's kind of recognised some of
• 2:03:38
  those archetypes and put them in this story and you know, the
• 2:03:42
  major running would you call it a club?
• 2:03:45
  Would you call it? I don't know what you'd call it.
• 2:03:48
  House of Pleasure who? Knows I think gentlemen's club
• 2:03:51
  and what's and that's that's the the tragedy of it because it's
• 2:03:57
  all quite a playful ever and and then there's a raid and you know
• 2:04:02
  the 2nd that the police turn up it it it with that with that
• 2:04:07
  added level of the history and everything it's it's as I say
• 2:04:11
  the major would not have had a happy ending in this and they
• 2:04:14
  don't really I don't think they even go back to it.
• 2:04:17
  He's he's in it until he and. Yeah, because he doesn't he pop
• 2:04:21
  up like because he's in the same cell the doctor gets.
• 2:04:24
  Yeah, he does disappear briefly at the end, doesn't he?
• 2:04:27
  To kind of move, move the plot along.
• 2:04:30
  But yeah, because, because I mean, that that's horrendous.
• 2:04:33
  Even the fact that he, he's blatantly suffering from the,
• 2:04:40
  the, the, the smoke from the, the, the fire bombing or, or the
• 2:04:45
  petrol bombing of, of, of, of his club, and yet he's not given
• 2:04:49
  any medical assistance in that cell.
• 2:04:52
  He's just left. He's just left there and, and
• 2:04:55
  it's only like sort of Chris that's there to kind of comfort
• 2:04:58
  him and and help him. Is, is, is dreadful awful.
• 2:05:02
  I. Wasn't at those times.
• 2:05:05
  Yeah, I wasn't sure how I felt about the twist.
• 2:05:09
  It wasn't a bad twist. It was well handled, but of
• 2:05:12
  Tilda being the what was she the toy of Mariah's wife?
• 2:05:21
  Because I just liked her being this fabulous camp fag hag, you
• 2:05:25
  know, that breaks them into places and is, Oh my God, she
• 2:05:30
  was just so camp, wasn't she? I mean, with those things with
• 2:05:33
  Chris at the start when she's sort of basically licking his
• 2:05:36
  muscles, it's just so funny. And obviously, yeah, she takes
• 2:05:40
  on a massive role towards the end where she is Mariah's
• 2:05:45
  ex-wife as a toy. But that makes your buckets of
• 2:05:50
  personality. I just loved hanging with her.
• 2:05:54
  And, and I suppose going going back to that theme of identity,
• 2:05:57
  she, she and the major are kind of toys that aren't actually
• 2:06:03
  bonded to anyone. They've managed to kind of
• 2:06:07
  become their own. Sense of self.
• 2:06:10
  Yeah, yeah. They've got their own.
• 2:06:12
  They've got their own identity. And that's where she's moved
• 2:06:15
  away from. It's Petrushka, you know, she's
• 2:06:19
  moved. She's got her own identity.
• 2:06:22
  And and that I like, I like, you know, that she's no longer bound
• 2:06:28
  by Mariah. That whole operation of her
• 2:06:31
  taking the toys from, I keep saying the asylum, I forget what
• 2:06:36
  it's called from the place in the country asylum.
• 2:06:43
  Good Grish, bringing the toys to London and then introducing them
• 2:06:48
  to somebody who has even lost somebody or was missing
• 2:06:51
  something in their lives. That whole set up is just so
• 2:06:54
  wonderful. And I love the fact that, that,
• 2:06:57
  that it's, it's the, it's Tilda and the major that kind of
• 2:07:03
  making those decisions because I think like she, she was unsure
• 2:07:08
  of pairing a toy up with Jack, wasn't she?
• 2:07:12
  But she said the major saw the potential in you sort of thing.
• 2:07:16
  And I thought that was really good that, that, that it was,
• 2:07:20
  you know, almost they were, they were kind of a double act in
• 2:07:24
  that kind of way of, of getting the toys out of, of, of that
• 2:07:27
  institute, saving them. And then who do we, who do we
• 2:07:31
  pair them up with? And then, and you know, it
• 2:07:34
  wasn't just a, there's a human that'll do kind of thing.
• 2:07:38
  It had to be the right, the right human because otherwise we
• 2:07:41
  end up with Gordian Karl, who obviously aren't the right, it
• 2:07:46
  wasn't the right human. And then we ended up with the
• 2:07:48
  right sideds. Married at first Sight, 1950s
• 2:07:53
  version. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:07:57
  And I would say with Patsy, I I didn't think she was especially
• 2:08:01
  interesting in her own right. And she is another very camp
• 2:08:05
  character. And unfortunately she's out of
• 2:08:07
  shine by Tilda there. It's just camp, it's Christmas.
• 2:08:12
  But she becomes interesting because of the impact she has on
• 2:08:15
  Chris. So the relationship is
• 2:08:17
  interesting. Do you?
• 2:08:18
  Do you? I mean like, obviously she meets
• 2:08:21
  an untimely end, doesn't she? She sacrifices herself so that
• 2:08:24
  that Chris might live. Do do do you think that at some
• 2:08:30
  stage she would have would have got to to the same?
• 2:08:33
  You know that that position that Tilda is in where, where she's
• 2:08:37
  her own person, her own identity, where whereas
• 2:08:39
  obviously at this, when we meet Patsy, she's lost her husband
• 2:08:45
  and, and is really struggling because of that and becoming
• 2:08:48
  very lifeless, meets Chris and is rejuvenated.
• 2:08:52
  And then when Chris kind of turns his back on it because he
• 2:08:56
  he finds out what she is, she she starts to dip again.
• 2:09:01
  She she hasn't got to that stage of finding her own identity as
• 2:09:04
  she she's still depends on her so.
• 2:09:06
  Sad for her, don't you? Yeah.
• 2:09:08
  He's sort of rejected her and you are totally understand why
• 2:09:11
  he's rejected her because he doesn't want that reminder of
• 2:09:14
  Ros. But but it's not her fault.
• 2:09:16
  You know how you know how, how she's, you know, been created,
• 2:09:20
  isn't it? Yeah, Yeah.
• 2:09:22
  And then because she sacrifices herself to save Chris, is that
• 2:09:26
  the Ros projection, you know, still kind of put doing what Ros
• 2:09:34
  would do in that circumstance, which is sacrifice herself?
• 2:09:39
  It's really hard. It's really hard to present a
• 2:09:41
  situation where two people are in pain and one is being
• 2:09:46
  unpleasant to the other, and yet you understand the motivations
• 2:09:50
  of both characters and why they're feeling, and you don't
• 2:09:53
  hate either of them. That's some very mature Ryan
• 2:09:57
  there. Yeah, and it's very real, isn't
• 2:10:01
  it? Because that that that's real
• 2:10:02
  life right there. Yeah.
• 2:10:05
  Yeah. OK, so let's talk about the
• 2:10:09
  baddies then. So we've got Mariah and we've
• 2:10:12
  got Gordie and Carl Scranton. Is it really bad that I don't
• 2:10:17
  remember really anything about the Scranton's at all?
• 2:10:20
  Mariah, I remember because I just kept thinking, oh, he'll be
• 2:10:23
  played by Brian Blessed because he's a bit of a boomer, you
• 2:10:26
  know? But Brian Blessed's elsewhere in
• 2:10:28
  this book. He's very tallied.
• 2:10:31
  Don't play 2 roles. I was I saw Mariah like Kingpin
• 2:10:34
  in across the spider verse. Just this massive block of a
• 2:10:40
  wall or it was really undefined and I couldn't.
• 2:10:43
  And usually I can I can cast these when I'm reading them in
• 2:10:45
  my head. Mariah I couldn't.
• 2:10:48
  It just became animated in my head for some reason.
• 2:10:50
  Wasn't he described as like a Big Bear of a bloke though?
• 2:10:53
  That's why I'll say and bless it.
• 2:10:56
  And, and, and he'd gone to seed a little bit.
• 2:10:58
  That was employed as well, wasn't it?
• 2:10:59
  That he wasn't wasn't quite as in shape, in as good a shape as
• 2:11:02
  he was in his Jimmy De I? Just keep it.
• 2:11:06
  Whether or not this was described in the text I kept.
• 2:11:08
  Imagine dressed in black. I don't know why.
• 2:11:13
  But again, they, they've got someone who's lost all the time
• 2:11:15
  that he's ever had, lost the love of his life and created all
• 2:11:19
  this around him. You know, there's almost culture
• 2:11:21
  in the toys, completely oblivious to it.
• 2:11:25
  And, and I suppose he is kind of kept in the shadows for quite a
• 2:11:28
  lot of the book because he, you know, the only kind of
• 2:11:33
  interaction we get with him is, is via that.
• 2:11:36
  The voice in the crystal. Yeah, and, and and even then,
• 2:11:40
  he's not, he's not portrayed as Mariah.
• 2:11:43
  It's, it's, it's like Gordy's devil, isn't it?
• 2:11:47
  He's almost like he's made a deal with the devil and that's,
• 2:11:50
  that's who he thinks it is. Yeah.
• 2:11:55
  And, and the fact that he's got like a very quiet, quiet, almost
• 2:11:58
  whispery voice as well, isn't it that he's kind of implied kind
• 2:12:02
  of throughout, but. He said OK, no one's truly that
• 2:12:06
  impressed with him at the climax are they?
• 2:12:08
  Just go away, leave us alone. Although I did like it when the
• 2:12:11
  doctor said to him you should be proud you know you created a new
• 2:12:15
  life because he just considers them cast offs in it to be
• 2:12:18
  gotten rid of. But but that's that's that's the
• 2:12:21
  thing that I think that's the thing that kind of highlights
• 2:12:24
  what a bastardy is though, because obviously he's in this
• 2:12:29
  situation because he was coercive of his wife to the
• 2:12:33
  point where the only way she could escape him is by taking
• 2:12:37
  her own life. That is, that is awful.
• 2:12:40
  But but then, you know, he wants to recreate her and in doing
• 2:12:45
  that universally creates this new, new race.
• 2:12:48
  But he doesn't want them. He still wants to control them.
• 2:12:51
  He's still got this controlling kind of, you know, to the point.
• 2:12:55
  Well, if they're not going to be under his control, he's just
• 2:12:59
  going to kill them, you know, kind of thing.
• 2:13:01
  And I think that that just sums him up as just a horrible,
• 2:13:05
  horrible person really does. But the doctor still kind to
• 2:13:09
  him. He says.
• 2:13:11
  Then we have to face loose with the people we care for.
• 2:13:13
  We can't avoid it and it hurts sometimes it hurts so much I can
• 2:13:18
  hardly bear it. Like the Doctor opens up to him
• 2:13:21
  as well. Because the Doctor's inherently
• 2:13:24
  good and will always try and save.
• 2:13:27
  And sometimes in the TV series, that's quite frustrating because
• 2:13:31
  it's like you're trying to save someone who's a right bastard.
• 2:13:35
  That's what he would do. And he recognises, again, this
• 2:13:37
  is somebody who's affected by grief.
• 2:13:40
  But it's a very believable villainy, the controlling, you
• 2:13:45
  know, looking at this again, particularly, you know,
• 2:13:47
  discussions in most recent series about, you know, toxic,
• 2:13:51
  toxic masculinity and coercive control and everything.
• 2:13:55
  It's like that's such a theme here from his behaviour.
• 2:13:59
  So it's interesting that these conversations are, they're not
• 2:14:02
  new and they're going to keep coming back because it's still
• 2:14:05
  an issue. I would go as far as to suggest,
• 2:14:08
  though you might fight beyond this, that this is one of those
• 2:14:12
  rare Doctor Who stories where the heroes are way more
• 2:14:16
  interesting than the villains. Like the villains were good, but
• 2:14:19
  I think the the the good guys, you know, and their journeys are
• 2:14:23
  much more interesting, which is unusual I.
• 2:14:26
  Was just going to say Mariah is just the big bad at the end
• 2:14:30
  though, isn't he? He, he is the Croagnon in the
• 2:14:32
  cellar that just turns up and like, oh, that that's what that
• 2:14:34
  is. You know, you, you could have
• 2:14:36
  had, you could have, like we said, if you, if you're in the
• 2:14:39
  junk, the Cron tech thing, you could have just had average
• 2:14:43
  scientist of the week creating something instead of someone
• 2:14:47
  that is based into Cron tech mythology.
• 2:14:51
  You know, it doesn't really make any difference.
• 2:14:53
  The fact is, you've got a someone who is not aware of
• 2:14:55
  their own cause and effect on others.
• 2:14:58
  Gareth, you've can't take out the villain as well.
• 2:15:00
  You've only got a flyer of a book now.
• 2:15:03
  I've got a prologue. You've got the apology.
• 2:15:07
  You're very good. Prologue and that's it.
• 2:15:12
  But I mean, it's interesting though that the the toys are
• 2:15:16
  obviously created for, for therapy, for therapy usage.
• 2:15:22
  Yeah, the therapy for him doesn't work because of his own
• 2:15:26
  self loathing and hatred and guilt.
• 2:15:29
  That that that's why all of these all of these different
• 2:15:33
  versions of of his wife reject him because of because of his
• 2:15:38
  own guilt and herself hatred. It's.
• 2:15:42
  What they call the brides of Protrusca seeking revenge.
• 2:15:48
  Ripping apart at the end, yeah. I mean it's.
• 2:15:50
  Quite satisfying as well, yes. But yeah, you could take, you
• 2:15:53
  could take, you could take the villains out and this would
• 2:15:55
  still work as a story. I don't think the climax of the
• 2:15:58
  book is confronting the villain. The climax of the book is when
• 2:16:02
  everyone's on the dance floor and those toys start turning
• 2:16:06
  into people, and you realize there's a future for the toys
• 2:16:10
  and avatars for these people to have therapy.
• 2:16:14
  I mean, I think after after what David pointed out to us about
• 2:16:19
  the epilogue, I might not see it the same way ever again.
• 2:16:22
  But but I thought that was because it's alluded to the, the
• 2:16:27
  Dennis survives all of this and goes on to have a family and all
• 2:16:31
  that sort of thing. And I thought that was that kind
• 2:16:33
  of just sums it up, sums up how lovely that that is that that
• 2:16:38
  basically the toys survive and they go off to live normal human
• 2:16:44
  life, you know, in in amongst us sort of thing.
• 2:16:47
  And I thought that was that was really a really nice way of kind
• 2:16:52
  of like, you know, wrap wrapping it up and going.
• 2:16:55
  Yeah, yeah, I like that. I like that.
• 2:16:57
  I'm. Very sorry for destroying the
• 2:16:58
  happy ending. It's just I've never thought of
• 2:17:03
  that at all. It is just one interpretation.
• 2:17:06
  I must have been talking about several characters here, but I
• 2:17:08
  wrote a line right at the end that the ending is people who
• 2:17:12
  can't let get go, people who can't let things go and accept
• 2:17:16
  the truth. I think that's Mariah.
• 2:17:18
  People who want to move on and forgive, that's Perry.
• 2:17:23
  And people who want one last memory of the happiest of times,
• 2:17:26
  and that's Jack. But in all three of those,
• 2:17:29
  that's kind of beautiful. Yes.
• 2:17:32
  Yeah, it's just so delicate, this book, it's so delicately
• 2:17:38
  dumb, but more emotional for it. Sometimes less is more, I think.
• 2:17:44
  I think it's not all about universe shattering consequences
• 2:17:47
  and big fight scenes and big set of scenes.
• 2:17:49
  This is a very personal, very emotional, very human book.
• 2:17:57
  So is it has anyone got any any more to say about about bad
• 2:18:01
  therapy let. Me.
• 2:18:04
  Just have a squeeze. I mean, hands down my favorite.
• 2:18:10
  I know I've said this. Hands down my favorite 7th
• 2:18:13
  Doctor new adventure by a mile. Just perfectly characterized.
• 2:18:18
  If I'd have had a whole series of books like this, you'd be
• 2:18:21
  here at a different hamster book club from me.
• 2:18:25
  There was one thing, one thing I didn't like, and that was the
• 2:18:28
  the the the dramatic irony of the TARDIS blocking the alley
• 2:18:34
  and being the cause of Eddie's death.
• 2:18:37
  Yeah, it could have been anything.
• 2:18:40
  It was just unfortunate the Doctor happened to land there.
• 2:18:44
  And does he know? Does the Doctor know?
• 2:18:47
  That's why I'm not sure he does. Does he?
• 2:18:50
  It's not not the in other books, probably, but this time he
• 2:18:53
  freely says he's. It's probably, again, it's
• 2:18:56
  probably gearing up the TV movie of not realizing he's
• 2:18:58
  materializing into a hail of bullets that's coming towards
• 2:19:01
  him. Oh.
• 2:19:03
  Yeah. This man who plans for
• 2:19:05
  everything is suddenly confronted with something that
• 2:19:08
  he never planned for. That would be interesting to see
• 2:19:12
  if that pops up in the subsequent books between now and
• 2:19:15
  one Barrow. Is he no longer as in control of
• 2:19:19
  the situation? So that kind of resets up
• 2:19:21
  because that question of how could the arch manipulator of
• 2:19:23
  the universe and times champion just walk into a hail of
• 2:19:26
  bullets? So is it?
• 2:19:27
  But he's got his feet up in the TARDIS there, hasn't he?
• 2:19:30
  So he's clearly at peace with everything, whatever's going
• 2:19:32
  off. So he's kind of just junk that.
• 2:19:33
  So maybe, yeah, maybe we do need to revisit the other books.
• 2:19:36
  But he's been through the last day and that's that's why, you
• 2:19:39
  know, he's experienced. That.
• 2:19:42
  He. Doesn't want to move anymore.
• 2:19:44
  He runs, he runs into those boats.
• 2:19:47
  If there was ever an argument for the The New Adventures, it's
• 2:19:50
  the last day. Yes, read the New Adventures
• 2:19:52
  instead. Although if he was planning
• 2:19:57
  ahead, maybe he could have saved that 80% of the world's
• 2:19:59
  population that died in Eternity weeps, and possibly Liz Shaw's
• 2:20:03
  life as well. You know, maybe he should have
• 2:20:05
  had his eye on the ball a bit more.
• 2:20:08
  The one good thing Perry survives this one and has
• 2:20:12
  relatively happy ending because a lot of brought back
• 2:20:15
  companions. Don't.
• 2:20:18
  Is this? Is this the?
• 2:20:19
  Start I I suppose Mel came back, didn't she in in earlier on in
• 2:20:23
  the range. But this is kind of that, you
• 2:20:25
  know, because we've got Perry and this one.
• 2:20:28
  Then a few books later we've got Liz quite early into the BBC
• 2:20:33
  ones. We've got Joe Grant and yeah,
• 2:20:36
  it's sort of like this. Feels like it's the catalyst for
• 2:20:40
  those. Beginning.
• 2:20:42
  It's so strange to think that Perry just missed the 7th Doctor
• 2:20:44
  by two stories, isn't it? Because I just don't think of
• 2:20:48
  those two characters together at all.
• 2:20:50
  No, no, But yeah. No, I, I, I thought it was
• 2:20:57
  great. Like, whatever flaws I had with
• 2:21:00
  this were minor and maybe just things I didn't like, but in
• 2:21:05
  terms of execution, it wasn't like it wasn't even flashy
• 2:21:08
  prose. It was just really confidently
• 2:21:11
  written character work that just.
• 2:21:15
  I was just absorbed by it. Yeah, I thought this was
• 2:21:19
  fantastic. I I think Eshwar Ross was the
• 2:21:22
  best film we've done. In terms of a movie, this was
• 2:21:26
  the best novel. Yes, yeah, definitely the best
• 2:21:29
  novel so far, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, having
• 2:21:33
  read this one now for quite a, you know, again, it's, it's
• 2:21:39
  still in my top three Virgin New Adventures.
• 2:21:42
  You know, if anything it makes it more solid in that top three.
• 2:21:48
  What surprised me because I wanted to give it another read
• 2:21:51
  before we recorded this. And I tried to get back into odd
• 2:21:55
  pages, to get back to read little bits that I wanted to
• 2:21:57
  cover. But I found myself longing to go
• 2:22:00
  back to the beginning of the book and just rereading it all
• 2:22:02
  again. And, and and I was kind of
• 2:22:05
  chastising myself for dipping into bits of the book going, no,
• 2:22:08
  I've written this number. I just want to check this.
• 2:22:10
  Oh, yeah. But where did that bit come
• 2:22:11
  from? And how did that?
• 2:22:12
  Oh. So it gives a sense of longing
• 2:22:14
  to want to come back to it. This one because it is an
• 2:22:16
  enjoyable read. Yeah, I think of of all the new
• 2:22:20
  adventures, I think this is this one, Blood, Heat and Shake Down,
• 2:22:25
  and probably the ones I've read reread the most, you know, sort
• 2:22:28
  of what. Did you enjoy blood here?
• 2:22:31
  Don't. Listen to my bloody episode
• 2:22:33
  that's coming out soon. Jesus Christ.
• 2:22:36
  It was my first one. Don't, don't, don't kill it.
• 2:22:42
  It's dead, I thought, but what you said there gap the 1st 100
• 2:22:47
  pages, that's the start of this book is just in terms of evoking
• 2:22:51
  a setting spot on. Right.
• 2:22:57
  Well, that's that's bad therapy, gentleman.
• 2:23:00
  Hooray, Good therapy, good therapy, good therapy.
• 2:23:03
  Yeah. A fully endorsed new adventure
• 2:23:06
  on the Hamster Book Club. Yes, you boys, you're turning me
• 2:23:09
  into something I'm not. Jack Bartlett was dreaming.
• 2:23:14
  Dreaming that he was on the bottom of a vast ocean.
• 2:23:17
  He was struggling to swim to the surface, but his legs were
• 2:23:21
  incredibly heavy and he kept being pulled back down to the
• 2:23:24
  sea bed. Finally, he couldn't hold his
• 2:23:28
  breath any longer. He relaxed his aching lungs and
• 2:23:32
  waited for them to flood with salt water.
• 2:23:36
  Jack. A voice said close to his ear.
• 2:23:39
  Jack woke with a start and gasped for breath, feeling as if
• 2:23:43
  he really had just surfaced from the deep in the ocean.
• 2:23:46
  He was lying on a cold bench. Marble.
• 2:23:50
  It slowly dawned on Jack that he was in a morgue, and he was
• 2:23:53
  lying on the slab. Oh, Blimey, he exclaimed.
• 2:23:57
  Am I dead? The Doctor was sitting next to
• 2:23:59
  him, his arm resting gently on Jack's.
• 2:24:02
  He smiled kindly. You're not dead, very much
• 2:24:06
  alive, in fact. But we're in a lot of trouble
• 2:24:10
  and a lot of danger. Keep your voice down.
• 2:24:14
  Jack swung his legs off the bench and hopped down beside the
• 2:24:17
  Doctor. He realized too late that his
• 2:24:19
  feet were full of pins and needles and collapsed in a heap
• 2:24:23
  on the floor. Ow.
• 2:24:26
  The doctor chided. He knelt down beside Jack and
• 2:24:29
  started to rub the life back into his numb legs.
• 2:24:31
  I think it's an effect of the anaesthetic.
• 2:24:33
  You'll be all right. Why am I wearing pyjamas?
• 2:24:36
  Jack asked, noticing that the Doctor was similarly attired.
• 2:24:41
  He realized that he'd never seen the Doctor without his funny
• 2:24:43
  little hat. What happened to our clothes?
• 2:24:47
  I've no idea. Were you particularly attached
• 2:24:49
  to them? If it's really important, I
• 2:24:51
  suppose I could go and look for them, but I'm a little bit more
• 2:24:54
  concerned with getting us both out of here alive.
• 2:24:58
  I see. Jack thought about this.
• 2:25:01
  The events of the night before came rushing into his head like
• 2:25:03
  a tidal wave crashing onto a dusty beach.
• 2:25:06
  Hey, what happened to that black cab behind me?
• 2:25:09
  I was inside it. Where are we?
• 2:25:11
  Doctor, what's going on? The Doctor finished his
• 2:25:15
  impromptu massage and fixed Jack with a weary look.
• 2:25:18
  To take your questions in order. I don't know, Somewhere very
• 2:25:22
  dangerous, nothing good. What's the last thing that you
• 2:25:25
  remember? Jack searched his memory.
• 2:25:29
  Being sucked inside that horrible taxi, and then, oh, he
• 2:25:33
  found himself suddenly blushing furiously.
• 2:25:35
  You kissed me? The doctor laughed.
• 2:25:39
  Jack thought that it was an easy laugh, not one out of
• 2:25:42
  awkwardness or embarrassment. I had to blow the liquid from
• 2:25:46
  your lungs, and I put you in a trance to reduce your body's
• 2:25:49
  requirement for oxygen to near a 0.
• 2:25:53
  It's a little trick I picked up from Mr. Benton.
• 2:25:56
  Jack grinned. I bet that's what you say to all
• 2:25:59
  the boys. He wasn't really sure that he
• 2:26:01
  understood what the doctor was saying, but that probably only
• 2:26:05
  meant that things were getting back to normal.
• 2:26:08
  There's only half of what the little man said ever made any
• 2:26:11
  sense. So you weren't kissing me then?
• 2:26:14
  No. The doctor said and climbed to
• 2:26:16
  his feet. You're almost 908 years too
• 2:26:20
  young for me, Jack Bartlett. He added as he headed for the
• 2:26:23
  door. Not to mention an entirely
• 2:26:26
  different species. Different species.
• 2:26:30
  Things were definitely getting back to normal.
• 2:26:33
  Good. Jack whispered to himself as he
• 2:26:36
  followed the Doctor out of the room.
• 2:26:45
  OK. So, so to to close us out, we
• 2:26:48
  have a ranking question. Oh God, I forgot what it is.
• 2:26:52
  I didn't prepare anything. Oh no, what is it?
• 2:26:54
  Well, we'll come to you last then.
• 2:26:56
  Joe basically is right. So we had Matt Jones obviously
• 2:27:00
  wrote this book. He then went on to to to write
• 2:27:04
  for the new series. So the question is, which three
• 2:27:08
  Doctor Who authors would you most like to see write for the
• 2:27:12
  TV series? So we'll we'll come.
• 2:27:15
  We'll come to you. So where should I go?
• 2:27:18
  I'll go with you first, David. Oh, does it have to just be the
• 2:27:22
  book? So can we cast the net wider?
• 2:27:24
  You can cast the net. Wider I I I would love to give
• 2:27:27
  John Donney a chance to write for the television series
• 2:27:30
  because I think there there are not many names where you can say
• 2:27:34
  you're going to get somebody who could just write a really good
• 2:27:37
  script. And I always think certainly for
• 2:27:39
  the big finished off John John, John Donney always writes good
• 2:27:43
  scripts. There's not many, you know, the
• 2:27:45
  hit rate there is fantastic. The other one will be Johnny
• 2:27:49
  Morris. I would love to see him get a
• 2:27:51
  cracker at the TV series and. David Jonathan Morris was on a
• 2:27:58
  list of three names the of extended media that was down to
• 2:28:06
  write for the TV series in Moffett's time.
• 2:28:09
  He's very good friends with Steven Moffett and and the first
• 2:28:12
  person on that list had a stab and it went spectacularly badly
• 2:28:18
  and so they scrapped the list. So he came this close.
• 2:28:22
  That is such a shame and. Do we?
• 2:28:26
  Know who that one was that? No, he didn't name and shame.
• 2:28:30
  Unfortunately it was. It was on the Johnny Morris
• 2:28:33
  interview I put out. But no, he didn't name and
• 2:28:35
  shame. We can narrow it down and what
• 2:28:39
  the What the hell? Give Nick Briggs a go?
• 2:28:44
  Oh my. God.
• 2:28:47
  I did not see that coming. Only because I would love to see
• 2:28:52
  ATV adaptation of Dalek generation.
• 2:28:54
  You want to see Jelly? Blobs.
• 2:28:56
  Oh, Jelly blobs. You want Jelly?
• 2:28:57
  Blobs, Jelly bobs, merchandise, that's what you're after.
• 2:29:00
  It would be a script called Saturation of the Daleks and
• 2:29:03
  it's just a load of Daleks talking to each other, voiced by
• 2:29:06
  him. Yeah, OK.
• 2:29:10
  No good, good, good choices. Gareth, what about you?
• 2:29:14
  Well, I'll take it in reverse order.
• 2:29:16
  OK. Number three, I've got Gary
• 2:29:18
  Russell because. Technically.
• 2:29:22
  He did. Wow.
• 2:29:25
  But not for the actual show, you know?
• 2:29:27
  So I'd like to see him do at least one and and put his stamp
• 2:29:31
  on it and just see what he comes up with.
• 2:29:34
  My second one for similar reasons is James Goss.
• 2:29:39
  Oh yes. Because again, he's someone who,
• 2:29:42
  when I went on a bit of a deep dive, I've enjoyed his books.
• 2:29:45
  But when I've been on a further deep dive, I was surprised how
• 2:29:47
  much of his DNA is in so much of all the other projects that's
• 2:29:51
  happened across Doctor Who. And my number one spot is
• 2:29:54
  Jacqueline Rayner, because I've not disliked a single thing that
• 2:30:01
  she has done. No, not one.
• 2:30:04
  I, I, I haven't got a bad word to say about any of her work at
• 2:30:07
  all and I, I think she she produces some phenomenal stuff.
• 2:30:11
  Oh, can we do a reign of books soon then, please?
• 2:30:13
  I'll just make sure. That please, Yes.
• 2:30:15
  Yeah. Yeah, OK.
• 2:30:17
  Get it in. Do you do you want to go next
• 2:30:20
  Joe or? I've got a list.
• 2:30:21
  Now I've got a. You've got it right, OK.
• 2:30:22
  They sort of cherry picked some of my favourites but I've got to
• 2:30:25
  go for other people. I would like to see just shits
• 2:30:30
  and giggles. Lawrence Miles, right, for the
• 2:30:33
  television, just to show them all how it's done, given he
• 2:30:35
  hates it all so much. And, you know, he can put them
• 2:30:38
  all right. Lance Parkin, I think, would
• 2:30:43
  write a bang. I mean, his script for Davros in
• 2:30:46
  Big Finish is just gold. He can write the most beautiful
• 2:30:50
  dialogue. So I think Lance Parkin would
• 2:30:52
  write a bang out. I think he'd do mythology really
• 2:30:55
  well. You know, in a way that sort of
• 2:30:56
  mythology is being done quite badly at the moment.
• 2:30:59
  I think he put together a very original story with lots of
• 2:31:02
  doctor mythology in it. And I was going to say Johnny,
• 2:31:07
  Johnny Morris. I was going to say John Dorney.
• 2:31:08
  I was going to say James Goss and Jacqueline right now.
• 2:31:12
  So my third choice is going to be Oh, yes, let's give Lloyd
• 2:31:18
  Rose a punt of sitting at the dead camera obscurer and under
• 2:31:23
  the algebra of rice, because I'll tell you what, she is a
• 2:31:25
  really refreshingly different sort of voice.
• 2:31:29
  She she deliver, you know, a story of the engine type of
• 2:31:32
  episode where it's totally out of left fields.
• 2:31:35
  Nothing we've seen before. It would have great imagery in
• 2:31:39
  it. Yeah.
• 2:31:40
  Lawrence Miles was my second one.
• 2:31:43
  Lance Parkin and Lloyd Rose, the elves I've.
• 2:31:49
  All of mine have been have gone now and the three that I've been
• 2:31:55
  snaps. Can I go with those and explain?
• 2:32:00
  Yourself, Sir? So #3 Jonathan Morris, I think
• 2:32:07
  he for me, he's written two of the the best or or my favorite
• 2:32:13
  new series books, Touched by an Angel and Plague City.
• 2:32:18
  So I I think he would do I have a really, really good job.
• 2:32:23
  Number 2 is, is Jacqueline Rayner because, and and I'm not
• 2:32:28
  really sure why, why this hasn't happened because she's written
• 2:32:34
  so many new series books that it's almost like she's she's
• 2:32:38
  there in the wings, but just hasn't been as it hasn't been
• 2:32:42
  brought out. You know it shows Gareth.
• 2:32:44
  Roberts instead of Jacqueline Rayner.
• 2:32:46
  What was he thinking? Yeah, you know, and also, you
• 2:32:50
  know, all of those, those Doctor Who related books that she's
• 2:32:56
  turned into audio scripts for Big Finish, you know, the, the
• 2:32:59
  Benny range and all that sort of thing.
• 2:33:01
  It, it just feels she's there. Why?
• 2:33:03
  Why hasn't any of the showrunners tapped into that?
• 2:33:06
  I don't know. And then #1 he is my, I would
• 2:33:11
  say he's my favorite Doctor Who author of all time, and that's
• 2:33:14
  Lance Parkin. You know, he seldom puts a foot
• 2:33:17
  wrong. That back catalog of his father
• 2:33:20
  time, the dying days just wore the Infinity Doctors Co fusion,
• 2:33:24
  they're all great. Russell T Davis, make it happen
• 2:33:27
  and make it happen. Now that that's my free.
• 2:33:32
  I think we need to, you know, like if recent Doctor Who has
• 2:33:37
  anything to go by, perhaps we just need a clean sweep.
• 2:33:41
  No one that's written for the show before, no one that
• 2:33:43
  understands Doctor Who of the of the past, you know?
• 2:33:48
  Yeah. It needs something new.
• 2:33:51
  And yeah, I think it was because it was a point you made on Joe,
• 2:33:58
  which is so most the one that everyone loves was the well, and
• 2:34:02
  that was the most trad. And it's like, do we need do we
• 2:34:04
  want trad? Do we still want to keep
• 2:34:05
  referring back to, oh, that was like a classic who story?
• 2:34:08
  Or do we want something that's recognisably who but going in a
• 2:34:13
  different direction? But there's also coherent and
• 2:34:16
  and wraps of a season in a way that makes sense.
• 2:34:21
  I don't know if it's possible, but I think the next showrunner
• 2:34:24
  shouldn't be a a fan of Doctor Who.
• 2:34:26
  Oh, absolutely it should be. Someone that just understands
• 2:34:30
  good TVI. Just I get the concept.
• 2:34:33
  It's a time travelling machine. He's an alien, right?
• 2:34:36
  Let me go and do my own thing with it.
• 2:34:38
  Yeah, Yeah, You know, because, because I think that's the thing
• 2:34:41
  it feels like now certainly before we've we've had in the
• 2:34:45
  last two years, it's because that's the thing.
• 2:34:49
  Russell T Davis, he, he was very careful not to add loads of law
• 2:34:53
  and continuity when he first, you know, whereas now it's sort
• 2:34:58
  of like how, you know, how much can I of really niche Doctor Who
• 2:35:05
  continuity, how much of that can I throw in there?
• 2:35:06
  And who's he doing that for? Because if it's not.
• 2:35:10
  The last 20 years have generated its own continuity.
• 2:35:12
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:35:13
  You know, I I've never personally understood why my
• 2:35:16
  people in the 80s kicked off about referencing Time Lords in
• 2:35:19
  the 80s. Having gone through what we've
• 2:35:21
  gone through, though, now I can understand it.
• 2:35:24
  But for God's sake, don't give me another.
• 2:35:26
  Well, please don't he. Never would have had the 9th
• 2:35:30
  Doctor. You know in a story with a unit
• 2:35:33
  based 2 Ranis and Omega in season 1 that.
• 2:35:37
  Sounds like the start of a joke. I know it was.
• 2:35:41
  Oh, sorry, I quite enjoyed it. Because pretty much all we got
• 2:35:45
  was was Daleks, wasn't it? And that was.
• 2:35:47
  Cyberman head in a cage. Look at you.
• 2:35:49
  Oh. Yeah, and then just an entirely
• 2:35:52
  new vision of the show. Exactly what we need now.
• 2:35:55
  We need Andrew Cartmel, someone young with loads of ideas.
• 2:36:00
  I'd never thought I'd say this in a million years.
• 2:36:03
  Here we are. Yeah, So what are we doing next?
• 2:36:08
  What? What?
• 2:36:09
  I've got a confession to make to you boys and you're not going to
• 2:36:12
  be very happy with me. I just recorded a commentary
• 2:36:17
  last week on Face of the Enemy, another book club.
• 2:36:21
  I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
• 2:36:24
  This is a betrayal. This is the ultimate betrayal
• 2:36:27
  for you. True face of the enemy.
• 2:36:31
  I'll read anything you want as penance, all right?
• 2:36:35
  It may be we need to find a Jack Rainer book.
• 2:36:38
  How about winner takes all? Isn't that one of the new series
• 2:36:41
  ones? We haven't done a new series
• 2:36:43
  book yet, have we? Nick Briggs.
• 2:36:46
  Nick Briggs, darling. Yeah.
• 2:36:48
  Oh yes, no, Oh no. We raised that one from my
• 2:36:51
  memory. Come on, if we're going to do a
• 2:36:53
  new series of Jack Rainer, surely we should do either The
• 2:36:57
  Stone Rose or The Last Dodo. Last dodo.
• 2:37:01
  Last Dodo. I haven't read those two for a
• 2:37:03
  long time, so you. Have you not?
• 2:37:07
  Oh my God, it's so funny. The last dodo.
• 2:37:09
  Yeah. Dodo it is.
• 2:37:12
  I'll just say this as a professor who's got the missing
• 2:37:15
  link between humans and birds lying around in a bath.
• 2:37:19
  The the most genius link in evolution.
• 2:37:23
  Oh, it's so funny and it and it comes as an audio book if you
• 2:37:27
  don't want to read it. Oh, OK, Who's it read?
• 2:37:34
  By frame regimen, Yeah, so full of enthusiasm.
• 2:37:43
  So, yeah, all right then the last.
• 2:37:45
  Oh, there it is then. That's our next, next.
• 2:37:47
  Going to be more different from bad therapy if you're trying it.
• 2:37:52
  That's the joy at this I suppose, isn't it?
• 2:37:53
  Knocking them out from one mad genre to another.
• 2:37:57
  Well, we've done Wasps, now we do dodos.
• 2:37:59
  That's. Right I miss you like the moon
• 2:38:03
  misses the tide. Like a song that lost its rhyme.
• 2:38:08
  Every moment, every day, I. Wish you hadn't walked away.
• 2:38:16
  I miss you.