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Hamster Book Club - Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:05
  Hello and welcome to the Hamster Book Club.
• 0:08
  My name is Joe Ford and I am here.
• 0:11
  I haven't scared off 3 returning.
• 0:14
  Guess I've got Luke back. Andrew and Mark say hello boys.
• 0:19
  Hello boys. Oh boys, very nice fellas.
• 0:24
  So, so it wasn't too bad the first time around then?
• 0:27
  Oh, it was quite an experience, Joe.
• 0:30
  That's very good. I've got all your ass at the
• 0:32
  same time there, but I'm sure people will be able to pull them
• 0:34
  apart. It's.
• 0:35
  Going to make for great audio first.
• 0:37
  First time around I asked you what your first Doctor Who book
• 0:40
  was, just to get a taste of where you were with Doctor Who
• 0:44
  books. This time, I'd love to ask each
• 0:46
  of you who your favorite Doctor Who author is and why, and I'm
• 0:51
  going to throw it out to Luke first.
• 0:55
  All right, so I I felt bad because last time I was like,
• 0:57
  hey, I like Steve Lyons in The Crooked World.
• 0:59
  And I was about to say him again because I really like Steve
• 1:03
  Lyons. But instead I'm going to keep it
• 1:05
  Australian. I love Kate Orman.
• 1:08
  Oh, yes. I've read almost everything that
• 1:11
  she's written either with by herself or with John Blum,
• 1:15
  always rich in characters, and also, if the doctors get in a
• 1:18
  bit too big for his britches, just read a Kate Orman book.
• 1:23
  Because she's going to torture him big time, no exceptions.
• 1:28
  So yeah, and I think my favorite, and it is my bias
• 1:31
  showing, but my favorite is probably the year of intelligent
• 1:33
  tigers. So it's my favorite era of the
• 1:37
  books. It's just, it's like it's like
• 1:40
  the Silurians just without the Brigadier unit in it.
• 1:43
  I guess that makes sense. And set on an alien world with
• 1:47
  tigers. All right.
• 1:48
  So that those first couple of chapters as you're exploring, is
• 1:52
  it Hitchimus? Is that what it's called?
• 1:53
  Yeah, God, Oh my. I mean, she can evoke a world in
• 1:57
  prose so quickly. I kind of wish she was still
• 2:02
  doing. I know she did a second Doctor
• 2:04
  story recently. I haven't heard it, but I wish
• 2:07
  she did a lot more. It's been a while.
• 2:10
  A friend of mine, Nathan, he knows her quite well because you
• 2:12
  know, they're all out in Australia and he said that in
• 2:16
  the nicest possible way. She's a very smart woman and
• 2:18
  she's batshit crazy as well. That's why they all love her and
• 2:22
  it's. A winning combination the the
• 2:23
  sort of the Flight for entirety podcast.
• 2:25
  Those boys know her quite well. And when she was writing her new
• 2:29
  adventures, stuff like Sleepy, they were sort of getting the
• 2:32
  manuscripts through and giving notes on those books.
• 2:36
  So there's anything you don't like in her books.
• 2:37
  You can blame that bunch, right? How about you then, Andrew?
• 2:44
  I'm intrigued. Well, I think I'm going to sound
• 2:47
  like a broken record because I'm going to say Paul Mars, who was
• 2:50
  also the author of the book that I chose as my recommendation
• 2:53
  last time, The Scarlet Empress. And yeah, I've just loved his
• 2:59
  book since since I was a kid. Really.
• 3:02
  Because I think I read read The Scarlet Empress when I was about
• 3:04
  11 or 12. Probably understood about half
• 3:07
  of it and then yeah, just kind of followed his work.
• 3:10
  And I've also ventured into his other fiction as well.
• 3:13
  So I'm kind of very deep into the Mars verse at the moment and
• 3:17
  it's really nice how all his books kind of cross and
• 3:20
  interweave with each other. So some of the characters from
• 3:23
  his Doctor Who books also feature in his other non Doctor
• 3:26
  Who stuff and I just love the kind of.
• 3:30
  Postmodern clashing together of different characters and eras
• 3:34
  and talking about storytelling as a whole and just like the the
• 3:40
  thing about like, I think a lot of people lapped onto like the
• 3:42
  camp side of his work, which I absolutely love, but there's
• 3:45
  this really kind of warm humanity to it as well.
• 3:48
  So it's not just kind of silliness and kit, well, it is
• 3:51
  silliness and kitsch, but it also kind of has this real, real
• 3:54
  kind of seriousness and. Yeah, emotion to it and kind of
• 3:58
  emotional truth, which sounds very pretentious.
• 4:00
  But yeah, I just love his work so much and it's just very
• 4:02
  Doctor Who for me. So when I asked this question
• 4:06
  last week, I chose Paul Mars as well.
• 4:09
  I I I basically said that he's a very clever man, writing very
• 4:15
  clever books and making it look really easy and really simple.
• 4:20
  But you kind of look underneath all the jokes and the campery
• 4:23
  and the sort of the optimism, there's some really clever
• 4:26
  things going on. He's such a such a brilliant
• 4:29
  one. In fact, I'm doing an interview
• 4:30
  for him for the Hamster Book Club very soon.
• 4:33
  So get get your questions in for that one.
• 4:35
  All right? Because I'm going to ask
• 4:36
  everyone to sort of contribute. Do you?
• 4:38
  The Scarlet Empress is your favorite, isn't it?
• 4:40
  What would be after that then? Probably the other the the Blue
• 4:48
  Angel and Verdigree, because they were kind of like my.
• 4:51
  The ones that I really latched onto when I was young.
• 4:54
  But I've also really, really enjoyed the return of Robin Hood
• 4:57
  and Josephine and the Argonauts recently.
• 5:01
  They're just, it's just really nice that they kind of just
• 5:05
  really latch onto an era and feel really authentic.
• 5:09
  But they're also doing that thing of kind of mashing Doctor
• 5:11
  Who together with other characters from fiction, which
• 5:14
  is really Paul Mars Territory. So yeah, they're just, they're
• 5:18
  just like like a warm hug. They're lovely books That's sort
• 5:22
  of quietly subversive at the same time as well, because he
• 5:24
  leans into those areas and does surprise.
• 5:26
  Do you remember in 3rd degree where he had the nerve to have
• 5:30
  that sequence set in unit HQ and it was all written as a series
• 5:33
  of steals and it's basically a load of telesnaps?
• 5:37
  Yeah, with the with the mechanical sheet, you've got
• 5:39
  some nerve. Paul Mars, have you explored
• 5:42
  Brenda and Effie and all of that?
• 5:44
  Yes. Great books, aren't they?
• 5:45
  I've I've just finished Brenda and Effie like the kind of the
• 5:49
  the series books that I think there's one more, which is short
• 5:51
  stories. So yeah, I'm feeling a little
• 5:53
  bit bereft now. I've kind of, yeah.
• 5:57
  Have you been to Whitby Bay yet? I have been to Whitby, and I
• 6:00
  also used to read these books called The Whitby Witches when I
• 6:02
  was a kid. So yeah, Whitby is.
• 6:05
  Yeah, it's kind of like a storybook come to life for me.
• 6:07
  It's amazing. I feel that's great.
• 6:09
  That's 22 chalks there. First, Paul Mars on this one.
• 6:12
  Brilliant Mark. Oh God, I feel like such a
• 6:16
  heathen now listening to you guys because you're all so well
• 6:18
  read in all this stuff and I've not really read that much.
• 6:22
  I was going to have to say something like Terrance Dix
• 6:24
  before we start. I thought, no, as as much as I
• 6:26
  love Uncle Terrance and I owe him a lot for encouraging me to
• 6:30
  read at a a young age, actually. You've encouraged me, Joe.
• 6:37
  I know it's I still shouldn't really be, shouldn't be praising
• 6:41
  you or making you too big headed, but you have encouraged
• 6:45
  me to read some. Well, just read because my
• 6:49
  attention span was horrific. But I've been encouraged and
• 6:54
  I've read a few of the books that you've mentioned that
• 6:57
  you're covering, and a couple have sprung up that I really
• 7:03
  enjoyed. I'm part way through one of them
• 7:05
  at the moment and they are written by Lance Parkin.
• 7:09
  Oh, he's fabulous. So you mentioned that you were
• 7:13
  going to be looking at Father Time, so I've read that,
• 7:16
  thoroughly enjoyed it and I am about halfway through the
• 7:22
  Infinity Doctors at the moment, so.
• 7:25
  Nice. Which Doctor is that mark?
• 7:27
  Which Doctor do you imagine is in The Infinity Doctors?
• 7:31
  I don't know. It's supposed to be part of the
• 7:32
  8th Doctor range, but who knows? Does it matter?
• 7:36
  Does it matter? I think that's the point.
• 7:38
  Yeah, he manages to do that thing in The Infinity Doctors to
• 7:42
  make the Sontar and Ruten conflict have enormous scale,
• 7:47
  doesn't it? Like it's in a proper science
• 7:49
  fiction novel. Yeah, I just really enjoy his
• 7:52
  pros. I find it quite accessible and
• 7:55
  enjoyable. So yeah, I would recommend Lance
• 7:57
  Parkin. Oh, that is a great choice.
• 8:00
  That is 3 stunning choice. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
• 8:10
  However, we are not here today to talk about Kate Orman or Paul
• 8:14
  Mars or Lance Parkin. We are here today to talk about
• 8:20
  Steven Moffett's novelisation of The Day of the Doctor, a choice
• 8:27
  that brought me out in hives. It seems appropriate, doesn't
• 8:33
  it? Really.
• 8:34
  Well, can I throw this to you straight away, please.
• 8:36
  Because I I want you to Just very quickly tell us your love
• 8:40
  of the Steven Moffett era. Please.
• 8:43
  Well, obviously we come. The Steven Moffat era from
• 8:47
  slightly different angles, it's fair to say I thoroughly enjoyed
• 8:51
  Russell T Davis's take on the show, and I don't think I'm
• 8:55
  alone in thinking that. Moffat wrote a lot of the best
• 8:57
  stories in that era and I just love his creativity.
• 9:04
  I know some people find the the intricacies a bit much sometimes
• 9:11
  when he decides to really go out there and.
• 9:15
  Create these crazy stories, though.
• 9:18
  So weirdly interwoven unless you're paying attention.
• 9:22
  Sometimes it can seem like gibberish, but I enjoy that.
• 9:26
  I enjoy TV. That makes me actually use my
• 9:30
  brain and I have to concentrate. You must have had a terrible
• 9:34
  time during the Chris Chipner era, then.
• 9:36
  No, I'm joking. I love it.
• 9:40
  I think he brings a humor to it as well, which his.
• 9:44
  You know, I know it's not for everyone and but I just find his
• 9:48
  humour tickles me. Andrew, can I ask you, and I'm
• 9:53
  going to ask you, Luke as well, just just very quickly what how
• 9:55
  you feel about that era because this is basically Moffett
• 9:59
  Distilled this book. Yeah, yeah.
• 10:03
  And I like Stephen Moffett. I think I'm quite basic in my
• 10:07
  taste and I like Series 5 a lot. And then kind of slowly kind of
• 10:13
  went off it a little bit as it went along, I think mainly
• 10:17
  because it often felt like it was promising something and
• 10:20
  building to something and then went in a different direction to
• 10:23
  what you were expecting, which I often found frustrating.
• 10:26
  And it kind of felt sometimes like Stephen Moffitt got bored
• 10:28
  of his own ideas and kind of changed direction part way
• 10:31
  through. So yeah.
• 10:36
  Mixed, mixed feelings. But I mean the the best of
• 10:39
  Moffett is kind of the best of Doctor Who.
• 10:40
  Like, he's a great writer. He creates great stories, I
• 10:44
  think. But maybe it just didn't hang
• 10:46
  together as as well as I wanted it to, Luke.
• 10:52
  If it wasn't for Mark saying, hey, we should read this Target
• 10:55
  novelization, I might not have bought it.
• 10:57
  It's not. It's not to say I don't like
• 10:59
  Moffett. I just.
• 11:01
  I never finished his era. It's the only era I haven't
• 11:06
  completely finished. I will.
• 11:07
  I'll get to it. I've seen all of Matt Smith, so
• 11:11
  I wasn't confused reading this or anything like that.
• 11:13
  But I like Matt Smith as the doctrine.
• 11:16
  I like parts of that era. It did get a little convoluted
• 11:19
  for my brain so maybe I do need to have another look at it.
• 11:23
  I got to the Zygon Inversion Invasion and I I took a break
• 11:28
  and. He didn't get back to it.
• 11:30
  So, oh, Luke, you missed series 10.
• 11:33
  That's where it got really good. I think although I'm a Muffet
• 11:38
  fanboy, I would admit that for a while, Certainly in Capaldi's
• 11:44
  era, which I adore, it did feel as though he was very much
• 11:48
  writing for the fans rather than for the the mass audience, which
• 11:53
  I think was what had really made it so popular in Russell's time.
• 11:58
  I think he started off very much following that template but then
• 12:02
  wanted to go down his own route, which I personally enjoyed, but
• 12:09
  it's fair to say it wasn't for everyone my briefly.
• 12:13
  My take on the Moffett era is like Little Little Miss Muffet.
• 12:18
  When he was good, he was very, very good.
• 12:20
  And when he was bad, it was awful.
• 12:22
  And I kind of swung. I swung two ways with him and I
• 12:24
  do. I think what Andrew just said is
• 12:27
  very true is that at his best is the best Doctor Who we've ever
• 12:30
  seen. Because I think a lot of the
• 12:32
  stuff he did during Rusty Davis's time is extraordinarily
• 12:36
  good. And then I think there are
• 12:37
  selected episodes throughout his era.
• 12:39
  Well, enough of time, listen, Day of the Doctor, Time of
• 12:44
  Angels, Flesh and Stone, stuff like that, which is just peak
• 12:47
  Doctor Who. It honestly cannot be beaten in
• 12:49
  terms of like substance, emotion, ideas, creativity.
• 12:54
  It is. But then on the other hand, it
• 12:56
  can get incredibly indulgent and as Andrew said again, a promise.
• 13:00
  A ton and not deliver and and you can feel the weight of a
• 13:05
  genius shouldering 2 massive television shows and not quite
• 13:11
  knowing what to do with IVA when he's doing them both at the same
• 13:14
  time. Joe, I'm shocked to hear you say
• 13:17
  you swing both ways. Well, there you go.
• 13:21
  A revelation for our book club today only when it comes to
• 13:26
  Steven Buffett. OK, so have you guys explored
• 13:35
  the new series targets beyond this book?
• 13:39
  Let's just touch that very quickly, Luke.
• 13:42
  I've read The Witch Finders and I think I have good blame on the
• 13:47
  shelf. I haven't got to it.
• 13:47
  I'm a I'm a Jody fan. So.
• 13:50
  I did get those. So yeah, they're they're the
• 13:52
  only ones I've read of the brand new series Targets, Andrew.
• 13:56
  I've got my eye more though. I had read this one before, and
• 14:01
  I've read Rose. I'm trying to remember which
• 14:04
  other ones they've done. And if I oh, I've read The
• 14:07
  Crimson Horror. So I kind of, I think I've gone
• 14:09
  for mainly the ones where it's like the TV writer adapting
• 14:12
  their own script rather than kind of someone else doing their
• 14:15
  own spin on it. Hey, Mark.
• 14:18
  I've read Rose and I've got Twice Upon a Time on the Shelf,
• 14:22
  but I've never got round to reading it, which probably says
• 14:25
  a lot. I've done Dalek, the Witch,
• 14:29
  Finders, Rose and Day of the Doctor so far, and the weird
• 14:34
  thing about those books is every single writer takes a different
• 14:37
  approach. Sue Davis takes his original
• 14:40
  script and goes right, but if we had a Hollywood budget, how
• 14:43
  would this look? And then writes that story and
• 14:45
  adds loads of character depth that isn't there.
• 14:48
  Rob Shearman, I mean, guys, go and read Dalek.
• 14:51
  It is unbelievably good. He manages to give all of those
• 14:55
  incidental characters that you see throughout that episode
• 14:58
  these very disturbing, very funny back stories that you will
• 15:02
  never forget. There's a scene from the
• 15:04
  torturers point of view from his childhood that is one of the
• 15:08
  most disturbing bits of prose. I can't believe that's going out
• 15:11
  to kids, if I'm honest. And then we've got Dale the
• 15:14
  Doctor, which it is giving you what's on the screen, but it is
• 15:20
  giving you a hell of a lot more. It's bonkers, isn't it?
• 15:23
  It's crazy. So let's before we go into sort
• 15:28
  of the insurance and outs, what's just sort of overall
• 15:32
  sense of this book and let's go to Mark first because he's the
• 15:35
  big fan of the era. OK, I thoroughly enjoyed it
• 15:39
  however, and I feel you are to blame because I've been reading
• 15:46
  some of these other 90s books. It has perhaps not been quite as
• 15:53
  exciting to read it this time round as it was on the initial
• 15:56
  read, because now I've been spoiled by reading all these
• 15:59
  other books like Alien Bodies and and Lance Parkins books.
• 16:03
  But I I did. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
• 16:05
  And I love, I think where the Target books are at their best
• 16:08
  is where they take the story and they embellish it and they add
• 16:12
  in all these extra little Easter eggs for you to enjoy that won't
• 16:18
  affect. Your reading of it, if you're
• 16:23
  perhaps coming to the story for the first time, but it's just it
• 16:26
  gives you that extra level. If you've really enjoyed the TV
• 16:30
  version and you're getting this new prose version by you, then
• 16:35
  Andrew. Yeah, so I love the TV version
• 16:39
  of Day of the Doctor. This book.
• 16:43
  I like bits of it. I hate other bits of it.
• 16:46
  So it kind of feels like. And in of the Moffett, yeah,
• 16:53
  it's like the most Muffetty Moffett work in existence.
• 16:58
  It kind of feels like it's like if he'd never written any more
• 17:01
  Doctor Who, this would have been the last word and kind of
• 17:04
  Stephen Moffett Ness. So yeah, it's got kind of
• 17:07
  everything that's really great about the Stephen Moffett era
• 17:09
  and everything that I personally don't like about it.
• 17:12
  So yeah, well, I look forward to digging into both directions
• 17:18
  there, Luke. I all right.
• 17:21
  I didn't finish his era, so I wasn't sure how I'd feel.
• 17:25
  I read this in three days, which is really good for me.
• 17:27
  So it's got to say something. I think the the moment of this
• 17:32
  book where I was like, all right, you know what?
• 17:33
  I think I'm going to sit down and read this.
• 17:35
  I saw the word fits. I was like, he did the thing he.
• 17:39
  Did me he? Did me the fan service that I
• 17:41
  like and and I wound up laughing and crying and just having a
• 17:46
  really good time. I enjoyed it.
• 17:50
  I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'm starting to wonder
• 17:52
  if I enjoyed this most out of the four of us, because I
• 17:55
  absolutely love this. There was there was one section
• 17:59
  where I just didn't like it because it was written from Kate
• 18:03
  Stewart's point of view, and I don't think that character could
• 18:05
  possibly be interesting, even in prose.
• 18:08
  I was just going, can we please get back to the doctors?
• 18:11
  She's so boring. But apart from that, I just flew
• 18:14
  through this. What surprised me was all the
• 18:17
  things that irritate me about this era.
• 18:19
  Matt Smith, the humour, it all worked in prose.
• 18:24
  It all really came together in prose for me.
• 18:27
  So I was, I was like, is it Matt Smith?
• 18:29
  Is it the way the characters are saying those jokes?
• 18:31
  Because on the page I was laughing myself silly.
• 18:36
  I love Matt Smith. I love everyone.
• 18:39
  Everyone adores Matt Smith except me.
• 18:44
  It's a weird, a weird thing. OK, well, where do we even start
• 18:50
  with this book? How did you think?
• 18:54
  How did you think this was interpreted as a book?
• 18:58
  Like, let's go into how this book is, how we're sort of
• 19:03
  guided through this book by a first person narrator who
• 19:07
  remains nameless until almost the last page.
• 19:14
  How did you find that, Andrew? Are we allowed spoilers?
• 19:19
  Can we say who it is? Absolutely, yes.
• 19:23
  So yeah, it's it's a very different experience of the
• 19:26
  story in book form because it's kind of presented as fragments
• 19:34
  of many different narratives combined together by the
• 19:36
  narrator, who, Spoiler, is the curator.
• 19:41
  So is the Doctor. And much of the book is kind of,
• 19:45
  well, it's all a lot of the book is about authorship and identity
• 19:52
  and narrative and reliable narrators versus unreliable
• 19:59
  narrators and deception and copies of people with Zygons and
• 20:05
  all that stuff. So it's really clever the way
• 20:07
  that it does all of that. And kind of gives you another
• 20:11
  element of mystery, I guess, that adds another layer to the
• 20:15
  story if you know it from TV, kind of piercing together where
• 20:18
  these different bits of the story come from, who's telling
• 20:21
  you the story. Kind of gives you another aspect
• 20:24
  to it, which makes it kind of more rewarding than just being a
• 20:27
  straight adaptation. And yeah, but that comes along
• 20:34
  with kind of lots of, yeah, quirks and interesting things.
• 20:40
  Meta A. Lot of meta jokes, isn't it?
• 20:42
  I'm sure I just have things to say about it as.
• 20:44
  Well, there was one bit right where he goes, oh, I'm sure
• 20:47
  you've all got an opinion. Why don't you go online and
• 20:50
  write a review about it? And I said, oh muffin, for God's
• 20:53
  sake, What did you think then, Luke?
• 20:57
  How, how did you feel about sort of how you were guided through
• 21:00
  this book or the structure of it?
• 21:02
  All right, it was about halfway through this book where I
• 21:05
  decided, wait a minute, is there even a Chapter 9?
• 21:07
  What's going on here? And that was the best part of
• 21:11
  the book, I thought. Chapter 9.
• 21:13
  I loved it. And I was like, why isn't there
• 21:15
  a Chapter 9? It promises to answer all my
• 21:17
  questions. Why is the Doctor's
• 21:20
  granddaughter named Susan and UNIT dating.
• 21:23
  Oh, nice. That's that's it's really nice.
• 21:25
  But. It's so cheeky, you know.
• 21:28
  But there's no Chapter 9 because.
• 21:30
  Well, the 9th Doctor is Christopher Eccleston and he's
• 21:33
  not part of this, but he didn't want to do this story, so he's
• 21:37
  not here. Another thing for me is usually
• 21:41
  when a book spends this much time inside the Doctor's mind
• 21:44
  and his thought processes, I'm like, this is a bit of a no no
• 21:48
  for me. I don't think I had that feeling
• 21:50
  too much reading this and that surprised me.
• 21:52
  I just found it really engaging and sharp, so I liked it.
• 21:57
  Mark. Yeah, I well, I have to mirror
• 22:01
  what the other guys have said. I like the way that you're, it's
• 22:06
  given to you in a sort of non chronological aura.
• 22:09
  So you start on Chapter 8 because that's The Night of the
• 22:12
  Doctor, which I think is just beautifully realized.
• 22:18
  Are you talking in prose now, or the actual episode?
• 22:20
  Oh, both, both. But what's the highlight of the
• 22:24
  anniversary? What?
• 22:25
  It so good, So good. I love the bit where he says how
• 22:31
  O'hila had a cup with some lemonade and some some dry ice,
• 22:38
  so there was no elixir in there at all, which I found quite a
• 22:41
  few just. Been tricked into it.
• 22:43
  Yeah, yeah. No, I really enjoy it.
• 22:46
  I just think it's it keeps it fresh as well.
• 22:49
  So it's obviously because it's such a generally, I think it's
• 22:54
  fair to say it's quite a beloved story.
• 22:58
  You're going to be very familiar with it.
• 23:00
  So it's nice that it's kind of structured in a slightly
• 23:03
  different way so that you're not, doesn't feel like a trudge
• 23:06
  going through it. You're like because you know it
• 23:09
  so well, you're not sort of sitting there going, oh God,
• 23:11
  yeah. And then now it's going to be
• 23:12
  this bit. It's I like it.
• 23:14
  I think you did a really good job of keeping it interesting.
• 23:17
  I thought. Not that it was such a dense
• 23:20
  script. What hit the screen, the only
• 23:24
  way you could possibly because it flits about all over the
• 23:27
  place is have someone hold your hand and say right, we're going
• 23:31
  here now, now we're going here. This is going to make sense.
• 23:33
  Pay attention to this bit because that bit you know and
• 23:36
  and so someone's sort of guiding you through the whole thing
• 23:39
  because you haven't got the visuals and all of that.
• 23:41
  And it is very scattershot in its approach.
• 23:44
  I mean it all locks together. In a really satisfying way.
• 23:47
  But I was just like, Oh yeah, thank God there's somebody here
• 23:50
  sort of helping me out through all this madness.
• 23:55
  OK, well then the next question I want to ask you guys is witch
• 24:01
  doctor, like, translated best into print.
• 24:06
  Who is your favorite? Let's send that across to
• 24:13
  Andrew. He looks like he's pondering the
• 24:16
  most. Yeah.
• 24:19
  So I I'm going to go maybe left field and say the curator,
• 24:24
  because he's probably the Doctor we know the least about coming
• 24:28
  into this. So yeah, he's a he's a side of
• 24:33
  the Doctor, which the TV show hasn't really explored very
• 24:36
  much. But he is our narrator in this
• 24:38
  book and it kind of gives you more insight into his character
• 24:41
  and what he does and how he and he's very much is the Doctor.
• 24:45
  He's the retired Doctor. So yeah, I think he's the he's
• 24:51
  maybe the one you come away from from it getting more, more
• 24:56
  insight into. Luke.
• 25:00
  I'm tempted to say the eight, that's my bias showing again.
• 25:03
  But I really liked getting into the War Doctor's head a bit and
• 25:07
  his thought processes and just kind of his shame and his
• 25:10
  emotions and just. And didn't you know that scene
• 25:14
  where they're doing the prison thing?
• 25:16
  But you get it from three different perspectives.
• 25:18
  So. It's just like best.
• 25:21
  Chapter in this entire book. Yeah, I'm going to have to deal
• 25:25
  with this in another few centuries.
• 25:26
  And then you see you feel the emotion from all three and how
• 25:29
  they react to the War Doctor in that moment in in kind of two
• 25:32
  different, completely different ways, but they're both very
• 25:35
  similar as well. There that that was just to see
• 25:38
  that kind of insight. Into that how they feel about
• 25:40
  the War Doctor and everything like that.
• 25:42
  Apparently how to come to terms with your troublesome past is
• 25:45
  for three versions of yourself to be in the same room together
• 25:49
  having a conversation. Group therapy.
• 25:53
  How about you though, Mark? Blimey.
• 25:55
  Thing is, because I'm old and I finished this quite a few days
• 25:59
  ago, I'm trying to remember which doctor was which in
• 26:02
  certain scenes, and it's a really beautiful scene with.
• 26:08
  The Brigadier at the care home and I can't remember which
• 26:12
  doctor it was. Was it the 11th?
• 26:14
  The 11th Doctor. Oh, I can't remember Ivan.
• 26:17
  I only finished it this morning. Because he lets Kate think that
• 26:20
  he never bothered to go and. See him?
• 26:23
  He's there the whole time. He went every day.
• 26:26
  Yeah. Yeah, that was so beautifully
• 26:28
  written. It is.
• 26:30
  And I always felt like with the Brigadier, that that bit in The
• 26:33
  Wedding of River Soul was it when River Soul, it just felt
• 26:36
  dropped in? And a bit pointless, I know they
• 26:40
  were trying to acknowledge the fact that he died, but the way
• 26:42
  this fleshed that out, it was almost like he'd look, because
• 26:46
  this obviously is written after he's chipped out and he's and
• 26:49
  he's OK. I could actually take those
• 26:50
  things that I wasn't happy with. For example, the end of the book
• 26:54
  where all those Dalek ships are surrounding the planet.
• 26:58
  And that every single Dalek ship shoots.
• 27:00
  Every other Dalek ship where I was always going, oh, please,
• 27:03
  really. And he goes, no, it creates an
• 27:05
  enormous supernova, which destroys them all.
• 27:08
  I'll go, Hey, you go. He did the terrace sticks
• 27:10
  things. He fixed it with a line, you
• 27:11
  know, I just think he was doing a bit of repair work or just
• 27:15
  like, you know, I could have explained that a bit better.
• 27:22
  Go on. I was just going to say you're
• 27:25
  just tightening things up. That's what the target's for,
• 27:28
  just to tighten up all the little things that you couldn't
• 27:31
  get right when you when you made the TV story.
• 27:34
  I've got to say, and I don't want you punching the air mark
• 27:36
  cock for him. But I thought the 11th Doctor
• 27:39
  came across in print so brilliantly in this novel, The
• 27:43
  way he's so awkward and gangly in all those ways that annoy me
• 27:48
  on the screen, the way he described it as he just sort of
• 27:50
  can't hold himself properly. And I was like, oh, this is so
• 27:54
  fun. And a bit at the end where he's
• 27:56
  made the decision to save Gallifrey and all of this and it
• 27:59
  says he went to straight in his tie and he realised it's the
• 28:02
  straightest it's ever been in his tile.
• 28:05
  Oh, that's perfect. Absolutely perfect.
• 28:11
  Should this be a target novel? That's a question I want to ask
• 28:14
  because this is taking enormous ideas and trying to boil it down
• 28:18
  into what is essentially, you know, I don't have any pages to
• 28:23
  see it's 180 something like that.
• 28:27
  Can I say something really controversial?
• 28:30
  I don't think any of them should be target novel novel.
• 28:34
  Explain yourself. I think Doctor Who publishing
• 28:37
  has gone into this really weird like backwards looking nostalgic
• 28:42
  phase and it's like these these would have mass appeal to kind
• 28:47
  of casual audiences I think in the their new modern adaptations
• 28:53
  of Doctor Who stories. But they kind of get packaged up
• 28:56
  like like even if you have to be quite hardcore into Doctor Who
• 29:00
  to know what a target novelisation is and the kind of
• 29:03
  size format of the page count. Chris Akilios artwork I I mean I
• 29:09
  the the cover up work is beautiful and obviously like
• 29:12
  that's it's in my bones. As a Doctor Who fan, I love this
• 29:15
  style, but I kind of feel like maybe they should do like the
• 29:19
  the deluxe fan versions and then they should be like a kind of
• 29:22
  mass audience version. And I yeah, like just let the
• 29:26
  books be what they need to be rather than conforming to this
• 29:28
  kind of target. What a what a target has to be,
• 29:34
  yeah. Actually, I, I, I sort of go in
• 29:37
  the other direction. I'm really sad that there is a
• 29:39
  target for every single bloody episode, you know?
• 29:41
  But that's only because I'm a man.
• 29:43
  What? What did you think that Luke?
• 29:46
  Do you think this suited that format, that sort of scaled down
• 29:49
  target book format, this story? I don't think I've ever read it.
• 29:54
  Target book quite like this that's.
• 29:57
  Gets around one like this, no? One's getting escaped or
• 30:00
  captured or escaped again or anything like that that you get
• 30:03
  in the terrace sticks, normalization.
• 30:04
  Are you mad? There's plenty of escape and
• 30:06
  capture going on in this. But not chapter titled titles or
• 30:10
  something like that. But I'm actually glad this is a
• 30:14
  book, because if it wasn't a book, then Mark couldn't have.
• 30:20
  Said, hey, we should read this, and I wouldn't have given
• 30:23
  anything Moffett had done. Like a a actual critical.
• 30:26
  I had another look and just realized, hey, being so grumpy
• 30:31
  about this era, there's there's really great stuff in there.
• 30:33
  So I'm actually glad that this is the target, this one
• 30:36
  specifically. I I found personally that when
• 30:41
  you're in the era watching it, you get.
• 30:46
  Sometimes quite het up about certain things that when you go
• 30:48
  back to it in retrospect, you do find later actually.
• 30:52
  Why was I getting so cross about that?
• 30:55
  Frequently. I like it's interesting that we
• 31:00
  did Alien Bodies 1st and then this, because I saw a lot of
• 31:05
  similarities in the two books. There's so many ideas in both
• 31:09
  books. Both of them involve big twists
• 31:11
  around the Doctor. Both of them involve a time war
• 31:16
  to be at a time war that's gone. Both of them are juggling, you
• 31:20
  know, 500 ideas, things like, I felt like Alien Bodies have time
• 31:24
  to breathe. It's nearly 300 pages long.
• 31:28
  And it didn't feel like it was always, I feel like this novel's
• 31:31
  got ADHD, you know, it's like, look over there, look over
• 31:33
  there, look over there, look at that.
• 31:35
  But like, you're never bored because there's so much
• 31:37
  happening all the time and and because it is ultimately a very
• 31:43
  well structured piece of fiction.
• 31:47
  But I do, you know, I kept thinking to myself, I wish this
• 31:49
  was 300 pages long. I wish this had more time, even
• 31:52
  more time to sort of breathe and to tell these things in a longer
• 31:56
  way, to get inside these characters heads more.
• 31:58
  Even though I think he did a bloody good job with with what
• 32:01
  he had. Well, it's a tough.
• 32:03
  It's a tough ask to take possibly the densest Doctor Who
• 32:06
  script. And how many pages is this?
• 32:08
  Because I had the e-book. I've got it in front of me.
• 32:12
  Oh, thank you very much. And 32 pages.
• 32:15
  That's quite a bit smaller than the others.
• 32:18
  Yeah, that's that's quite long for a target book and it needs
• 32:21
  it as well. All right.
• 32:24
  Andrew, I'm going to ask you specifically then what did you
• 32:28
  not enjoy about this book? What did I not enjoy?
• 32:32
  There's there's lots of kind of, there's lots of bits which are
• 32:39
  like I find this a lot with Steven Moffat stuff, where it's
• 32:41
  like it's a joke. You laugh at the joke, but then
• 32:44
  you think about the joke and it's just annoying.
• 32:48
  Like the the kind of implication that with the Doctor papers
• 32:53
  that, you know, they're all written in the third person, but
• 32:56
  it's the Doctor writing it. And it's kind of this like
• 33:00
  implication that maybe the whole of every single Doctor Who book
• 33:03
  you've ever read is actually written by the Doctor.
• 33:05
  And it's like, that's just a bit stupid and like the black and
• 33:11
  white things. It's a bit in the it's it's just
• 33:16
  a joke. It is just a joke, but it's like
• 33:19
  the Doctor realises that for his first two incarnations he was
• 33:24
  seeing the world in black and white and he was colour blind
• 33:26
  and he didn't realise it. It's like it's like a meta
• 33:30
  textual joke about black and white, but it's just annoying,
• 33:34
  not. As not as bad as that Peter
• 33:36
  Cushing joke I was going, for God's sake.
• 33:41
  That's kind of the superficial bits that I don't like, but
• 33:44
  there's kind of Steven Moffat's version of the Doctor.
• 33:48
  There's bits of it that I just really don't like.
• 33:50
  And the main thing I don't like is the kind of, oh, the Doctor
• 33:54
  is just some bloke and he just, you know, he fancies all the
• 33:58
  companions, but he just kind of pretends to be this nice
• 34:01
  grandfather figures. But actually he just wants to
• 34:03
  shag them all and like that's that's a big part of the Muffet
• 34:08
  era. There's yeah.
• 34:10
  And I just don't like it and I don't like it in here.
• 34:13
  And there's like all these kind of bits where the where the War
• 34:16
  Doctor is looking at Clara and it's it's it's just oh, I don't
• 34:20
  like it. I think that's more Moffett,
• 34:22
  though, rather than Moffett's doctor, 'cause you look at, you
• 34:27
  look at Mcgillop in this, you know, he's fixated on Osgood's
• 34:32
  bottom, yeah. Numerous times I'll say it
• 34:36
  before and. I'll say it again if he'd only
• 34:38
  have a good wank before writing a script or a novel.
• 34:42
  We we have all that stuff removed.
• 34:44
  Sorry Luke, I'll see. You look quite shocked there,
• 34:45
  Luke. Clearly, don't listen to too
• 34:48
  many episodes of this thing. And I think that the thing for
• 34:52
  me was like part of the appeal of the character of the Doctor
• 34:55
  when I was a kid, When I first got into Doctor Two was that he
• 34:57
  was very different to the other heroes you saw out there.
• 35:00
  And you know, as a young queer kid, before I knew I was a queer
• 35:04
  kid, seeing a character who was just like the doctor companion
• 35:09
  relationship has always been quite important to me.
• 35:11
  And that seeing that kind of platonic friendship where they
• 35:14
  were just friends. And throughout the classic
• 35:17
  series, he's just friends with the Commanders.
• 35:19
  He just likes them. They just like each other and
• 35:21
  they go off and have adventures. And that's a dynamic that you
• 35:24
  don't really see that often in any media.
• 35:27
  So that's always been quite special to me, and obviously
• 35:29
  that's something that's kind of gone out of.
• 35:32
  I've gone out of Doctor Who with the new series and I just kind
• 35:34
  of have to go over. But the Muffet era is where it
• 35:37
  most kind of leans into just the Doctor wants to shag the
• 35:40
  companions, and he's pretending that he doesn't.
• 35:44
  I will say that I do know somebody who was brought up on
• 35:48
  New Who and then has explored Classic Who afterwards.
• 35:52
  So he's obviously a lot younger than me and he loves that
• 35:55
  element of new who and when Jodie Whittaker came along and
• 35:59
  was completely sexless for her entire era, he really felt so I
• 36:03
  think there is a portion of the audience that loves this stuff,
• 36:06
  you know, looking at Scar, Clara's short skirt and stuff
• 36:10
  like that. I'm with you.
• 36:12
  I don't know where you fall with this mark, actually.
• 36:16
  But I do rather love Clara so. Fair enough.
• 36:19
  She's very pretty. Yes, she is.
• 36:22
  She is. I feel like I do have to defend
• 36:25
  Moffett slightly. I totally take on board Andrew's
• 36:28
  points and you know, that's, yeah, perfectly well argued.
• 36:33
  I do feel in his defense that his portrayal of the Doctor, I
• 36:37
  find. Better in some ways compared to
• 36:41
  RTD, because with RTD, as the series went on, you it became
• 36:46
  the lonely God and he became this sort of, you know,
• 36:50
  omnipotent being and all knowing and everything and it's.
• 36:55
  Just a bit. Yeah, I just get a bit much,
• 36:57
  doesn't it? Whereas I prefer, I suppose,
• 36:59
  because I was brought up on Tom Baker, I prefer the kind of
• 37:01
  buffoon that wanders into the situation and.
• 37:06
  He's got the smarts to sort it out, but he doesn't really know
• 37:08
  what he's doing. And I prefer that.
• 37:10
  Yeah, Madman with the books. Like, yeah, exactly.
• 37:13
  I loved that aspect of Massive. Yeah.
• 37:16
  That's why I love Capaldi, you know, Because then he came in
• 37:18
  and it was all the quirks without the sex.
• 37:21
  Until Riversong came back, of course.
• 37:22
  But you know, nevermind Luke sex in Doctor Who.
• 37:26
  Yay or nay. Sometimes I'm.
• 37:35
  I'm with Andrew. I kind of like that platonic
• 37:39
  friendship stuff. I don't know why.
• 37:41
  It just, I don't know why it just worked for me.
• 37:44
  It just, it just did. So I found, I always found the
• 37:47
  new Series A little jarring when I first saw it, that that was
• 37:50
  going in that direction because I was like, wow, that's not like
• 37:53
  the old stuff. But they're not trying to do the
• 37:55
  old stuff. So I don't, I don't know, I
• 37:57
  don't mind. But then you got Leela in the
• 37:59
  loincloth and I'm just like, well, I understand, Doctor,
• 38:02
  that's fine. As your favorite game I.
• 38:04
  Started it all, yeah. Yes, that's right, he.
• 38:08
  Shocked this thing and the ash broke up against a tree.
• 38:11
  Exactly. He never looked back after that
• 38:13
  did. He he just regenerated.
• 38:15
  He wasn't thinking right. No, he was.
• 38:17
  He was. A lot of Doctors have used that
• 38:20
  as an excuse. Should I?
• 38:22
  I actually thought region is I thought the sexual tone was
• 38:26
  toned down from the TV version. So all those sequences with
• 38:31
  David, Tennant and Elizabeth? Sorry, David Tennant, the Doctor
• 38:35
  and Elizabeth, you know, it was all made perfectly clear that
• 38:39
  he's hunting a Zycon like the whole time, whereas as it played
• 38:42
  out on the thing, it was all a bit kinky and a bit naughty with
• 38:44
  lots of rude lines. So again, I think in prose it
• 38:50
  was less offensive to me because I I feel kind of the same way
• 38:53
  about the the sex and Doctor Who, or some of it.
• 38:55
  Anyway. I don't mind it when it leads
• 38:57
  into romance, but I don't really like it when it.
• 39:00
  That leans into sleaze. I ain't too often.
• 39:03
  Well, I didn't really object to that here.
• 39:05
  OK, so then we've talked about what Andrew didn't like about
• 39:08
  this. Luke, what did you love about
• 39:12
  this book? All right, I know it's just 4
• 39:16
  letters and it's the arrangement of them that was very pleasing
• 39:21
  to me. I.
• 39:23
  Fits. I like seeing fits being
• 39:24
  mentioned. I'm.
• 39:25
  Sorry, I love this, but that's one word I can't have anything
• 39:34
  you like about. This book.
• 39:37
  So after this put it into context for me.
• 39:40
  After I read this book, I liked what both you, Joe and Andrew
• 39:46
  said about the tomorrow windows. So I read that, and now I'm
• 39:49
  halfway through the sleep of Reason, the next book, and.
• 39:53
  It put me it it made me appreciate Moffat's 8th Doctor a
• 39:57
  lot more because now it's fresh in my mind, Those
• 40:00
  characterizations. And I thought he he nailed it in
• 40:03
  a completely kind of different way.
• 40:05
  It felt like the 8th Doctor. It felt like the one with no
• 40:08
  memory. It felt like the one on audio.
• 40:10
  It just felt like a distillation of him.
• 40:13
  This is him at the the final point of his life.
• 40:15
  I loved his characterization. I thought it was great.
• 40:20
  If you think about it, he he's obviously a huge fan, so I know
• 40:24
  there's certainly photos of him as a kid reading Target books
• 40:27
  and I'm I'd be very surprised if he wasn't reading those 90s
• 40:31
  novelizations as well. So you're not here at all this
• 40:33
  time. About that fabulous meet up they
• 40:35
  had when Big Finish got. Paul, Paul Mcgahn, did you hear
• 40:39
  about that and. And they had a meet up before
• 40:42
  that happened and Stephen Moffitt was invited to the
• 40:44
  meeting. And then we're going to be doing
• 40:47
  Doctor Who audios, you know, classic Doctor's plot.
• 40:49
  And he absolutely was convinced he was going to be right for
• 40:52
  Paul Mcgahn. But we haven't got Paul Mcgahn.
• 40:53
  He went right. That's it.
• 40:54
  I'm off. He just left the party.
• 40:56
  He didn't care. So he's really loves me, but
• 40:59
  he's had 40 odd years to write this book or you know, to think
• 41:04
  about what he'd like to put into a book like this.
• 41:07
  And I think it's just a joy to read.
• 41:11
  Well, you say it's a joy to read.
• 41:13
  Then now we're going to come over to you and you're going to
• 41:17
  let us know something you loved and something you did not love
• 41:19
  about this book. Blimey, I did not love the idea
• 41:27
  of coming on here and trying to compete with you guys because
• 41:31
  you're so well read and you know all the books.
• 41:33
  And so that was slightly worrying.
• 41:37
  I just enjoyed all of it. I just enjoyed all of it.
• 41:41
  It was so much fun. It's very cheeky the way it's
• 41:45
  written. I like the the way it kind of
• 41:52
  tries to wrong foot you into thinking it's one author when
• 41:56
  it's another. And I just love all the little
• 41:59
  set pieces there because I enjoy the the televised version so
• 42:03
  much. It's just another way of
• 42:04
  reliving it, but it gives it a whole new kind of twist.
• 42:10
  I've got to say, one thing I really, really loved in this
• 42:12
  book was his chance to give all of the classic Doctors a bigger
• 42:18
  slice of the pie in the climax. So instead of just having a
• 42:22
  quick second of Colin Baker on the screen, he's coming out of a
• 42:24
  mine holding a load of kids and Tom Baker's scarf, saving a load
• 42:28
  of people. And I just thought that that's
• 42:30
  what he would have done if he. You know, he had CGI and did
• 42:33
  that sort of Star Wars things have been, you know, Yeah.
• 42:35
  And of course, he's got the benefit of being able to put
• 42:37
  Jodie in it as well, which he couldn't have known back at the
• 42:40
  time. Yeah, that that whole chapter,
• 42:44
  it's called, it's chapter seven, Day of the Doctor.
• 42:47
  That's the bit where all the Doctors come together and kind
• 42:49
  of save Gallifrey and you get all these kind of little
• 42:51
  vignettes of them helping people from crashing boats and and
• 42:56
  scaling cliffs. Absolutely.
• 42:57
  A Cliff down his scarf. And yeah, it's kind of like it's
• 43:01
  just like a really beautiful Doctor Who moment.
• 43:04
  I think in the way that I guess it's kind of replacing the bit
• 43:07
  at the end of the day of the Doctors where you see them all
• 43:09
  lined up. This is kind of putting them all
• 43:12
  into a chapter together and kind of elaborating on that moment.
• 43:15
  And it's just like I like I said, it's kind of got like the
• 43:19
  best of Stephen Moffitt and the worst of Stephen Moffitt.
• 43:20
  The book, this book and that chapter is definitely some of
• 43:23
  the best. And it has a really beautiful
• 43:26
  section where the doctor kind of talks about.
• 43:30
  His redemption that he feels through through saving
• 43:34
  Gallifrey. And it's kind of it's different
• 43:38
  to the speech at the end of the TTV version.
• 43:41
  So you kind of get something different from and it's it's in
• 43:44
  I I think you'd read it in The War Doctor's voice and it's
• 43:47
  just, yeah, it's beautiful. There was 3 words.
• 43:51
  I think it was at the end of that chapter where.
• 43:54
  And he goes, Doctor once more. And I was like punch in the air.
• 43:57
  I was like, yes. Come on, John Hurt.
• 44:00
  Off you go. Oh, man, this is such a such a
• 44:04
  great book. Well, well, where do we go from
• 44:07
  here? Oh, you've all gone quiet.
• 44:11
  OK, the day the. Doctor has a has a story in its
• 44:19
  own right, and I'm kind of including the episode here
• 44:21
  because obviously this is a novelisation of the episode.
• 44:24
  What is so special about this story and why did it deserve the
• 44:29
  novelisation treatment? Mark?
• 44:34
  OK, well, I'm sure because we're all nerds.
• 44:36
  We know the whole back story of what Moffett was up against when
• 44:39
  he came to write this thing. And the fact that he only had
• 44:42
  Jenna Coleman signed up to a contract before nailing it all
• 44:46
  down and coming very close to getting Christopher Eccleston to
• 44:51
  come back. And then having to hire John
• 44:54
  Hurt at a very, very late stage in in the game.
• 44:57
  And to have pulled it off with such a plum and it must have
• 45:01
  been such a pressured situation. You imagine it's being simulcast
• 45:07
  across the world to millions and millions of people.
• 45:10
  And this is the one big story that everyone is going to be
• 45:13
  talking about for years and years to come.
• 45:16
  I mean, admittedly we did have the after show, so you know, it
• 45:19
  wasn't all Jesus Christ do. You remember Muffet's face when
• 45:25
  it all goes. He just had his head in his head
• 45:27
  and it's so funny, So funny. I'm surprised he didn't put a
• 45:31
  little reference to that in there somewhere, but I don't
• 45:34
  think. I've ever seen anyone look more
• 45:36
  pained in the television. It's so funny, So funny.
• 45:39
  It's on YouTube. I think it's great.
• 45:42
  If you've not experienced it, it really is something else.
• 45:45
  It turns up and you know that Twitter account?
• 45:47
  Crazy ass moments in Doctor Who? Just that picture of his face.
• 45:52
  Yeah, sorry. Sorry, please continue.
• 45:55
  Just such a celebration of the show, isn't it?
• 45:57
  It does so many clever things it.
• 46:01
  I mean I'm not necessarily always a fan of retconning, but
• 46:04
  it does it in such a really daft way, the whole way it ties up
• 46:08
  the Time War but it doesn't affect what's gone before
• 46:13
  because obviously it's been set up in previous multi doctor
• 46:17
  stories that they're not going to remember what happened.
• 46:20
  So Christopher Eccleston still believes he's killed them all
• 46:24
  and it's just so beautifully put together and it's just got all
• 46:28
  the things that I really love about Moffett, Who in it?
• 46:33
  Luke. I think he.
• 46:38
  Writes books the way he writes. He works for TV because this is
• 46:41
  a really fast-paced, kind of manic book.
• 46:44
  But I feel like he also gives himself a little bit of a chance
• 46:48
  to breathe with this and just expand on stuff just to take his
• 46:51
  time a little more. Except maybe towards the end
• 46:54
  where he's just like, all right, we're going to wrap this up now
• 46:56
  for the page count or something. I feel like they're not rushed,
• 46:59
  but it just ended, oh, it's over.
• 47:02
  Maybe that's just me because like you do, I wish there was
• 47:05
  maybe another 100 pages. You were loving it so much,
• 47:07
  yeah. I feel like as someone who was a
• 47:11
  bit down on Steven Moffat's era, that the fact that that's how I
• 47:14
  feel about this book, that's a credit to the to the man's
• 47:18
  writing and just everything you did in it.
• 47:21
  So yeah, Noah. Were you keen on the episode as
• 47:25
  well? Yes, all right.
• 47:27
  So one of my big weaknesses in Doctor Who is multi doctor
• 47:30
  stories. I don't care if it's good.
• 47:33
  Or bad. Oh, if you don't mind, it's bad.
• 47:37
  Then I'll suggest you subscribe to Big Finish immediately,
• 47:39
  because I do one every other week, all right.
• 47:43
  Sorry. I like the gates of hell,
• 47:45
  though. Sorry. 5:00 and 10:00.
• 47:47
  That's just, that's that's my thing.
• 47:48
  I love that, that that's, that's for another time though.
• 47:51
  But yeah, no, I love the book. And I.
• 47:56
  It makes me want to experience some some more fat and neck and
• 48:01
  I'm like you gentlemen. I have some more fat I've never
• 48:03
  seen before, so I get to watch it for the first time.
• 48:05
  You lucky thing. You get to what?
• 48:07
  Oxygen Extremist world? Enough in time, world.
• 48:10
  Enough in time. Bastard.
• 48:12
  Honestly. What about you then?
• 48:16
  Andrew? Day of the Doctor Sort of the
• 48:18
  The story of Day of the Doctor. Yeah, I I absolutely love the TV
• 48:22
  version. I think it's one of the best
• 48:23
  Doctor Who episodes of all time. And like Mark was saying, just
• 48:28
  the way it kind of takes the Doctor's biggest defeat and
• 48:31
  turns it into a triumph and does it in a way that has so much
• 48:36
  emotional heft to it. And I saw it at the cinema when
• 48:39
  they did the broadcast and like so many people came out in
• 48:42
  tears. It was just such a lovely kind
• 48:44
  of communal moment to see it. So yeah, I absolutely adore the
• 48:50
  TV version. The book, I feel like it doesn't
• 48:53
  add to my enjoyment of the TV version.
• 48:56
  It kind of puts more elements into it that great for me.
• 49:01
  So it doesn't really add layers to the story that make it more
• 49:04
  enjoyable for me. It kind of detracts from it a
• 49:06
  little bit, you know, like we were talking about the lemonade
• 49:09
  moment where you kind of like not, but kind of.
• 49:15
  Undermined the drama of his own moment.
• 49:17
  That was always going to go one or two.
• 49:21
  Ways which some people I know will love, but for me it like
• 49:24
  cuts the drama at that moment and you just yeah just I just
• 49:29
  find it a little bit annoying. So yeah, for me the the TV
• 49:33
  version is the kind of definitive.
• 49:35
  And this is a interesting side note which has some some fun
• 49:39
  additional bits to it, but also some irritating bits.
• 49:43
  What he managed to achieve with the 50th anniversary is nothing
• 49:48
  short of a miracle because the weight of expectation that that
• 49:52
  episode had and the fact that once it aired, so many people
• 49:57
  like, I think that you could count the detractors in the
• 50:00
  thousands of hundreds of thousands of Doctor Who fans on
• 50:03
  one hand, probably the fact that he's, you know, that it wasn't
• 50:06
  an enormous disappointment to everybody, especially what you
• 50:10
  said Mark, about. Where he started, what
• 50:13
  contracts. What I thought was so impressive
• 50:17
  as well was he got the most phenomenal actor in John Hurt in
• 50:23
  and instead of just making that, you know, Oh well we've got this
• 50:26
  celebrity actor. He he kind of pivoted the story
• 50:30
  around him, gave him a ton of, like, really emotional stuff to
• 50:34
  do and he earned, he earned his crush throughout this episode
• 50:37
  and you go on that journey with him as much as anybody without.
• 50:41
  Short changing all the other Doctors and Clara and Osgood and
• 50:45
  Kate Stewart and the Zygos subplot and all this other stuff
• 50:48
  that's going on. I just think it was an
• 50:51
  extraordinary achievement. And I actually think reading the
• 50:54
  book, because I know the story so well, I actually could just
• 50:58
  let the plot wash over me. I just enjoy the extras and so
• 51:02
  that's what I was taking from this all, all of these extra
• 51:05
  bits. Although I've got to admit, that
• 51:06
  bit with the Cup, yeah, he knows.
• 51:12
  He knows that's going to piss. People.
• 51:14
  Oh yeah. He's like, he's the ultimate
• 51:16
  troll. He knows that we have to push
• 51:18
  fans buttons. What is it?
• 51:20
  Again? It's.
• 51:20
  Like, I know he's doing it and I know exactly why he's doing it,
• 51:24
  but it's still great. And it's like, I guess that's,
• 51:28
  you know, he's a great writer. It's.
• 51:29
  Like, remember every interview he said about any episode coming
• 51:32
  out and you, everyone was just going don't listen to him.
• 51:35
  Stephen Moffitt lies, you know. Like.
• 51:38
  No, we're not going to have the Master back in well enough time
• 51:40
  when the Doctor falls. Hang on a minute, what's that
• 51:42
  trailer all about? You know, he was a very bad man.
• 51:47
  OK, so away from the sort of the celebration of Doctor Who, what
• 51:53
  about the Zygons, then? Because I take up a lot of this,
• 51:56
  But in fact, I felt as if they took up more of the book than
• 52:00
  the TV episode. And when I watched the TV
• 52:04
  episode, I was like, well, that's fun to have the Zygons
• 52:06
  back, but it's kind of distracted me from the weight of
• 52:10
  what's going on here. How do you feel about that whole
• 52:13
  subplot? Because there's there's like a
• 52:15
  whole sequence, isn't it, where we don't know who's who?
• 52:18
  It's like you said, that whole identity thing of like, who the
• 52:20
  hell point of view am I looking at here?
• 52:22
  And sometimes we switch within the same sort of scene, yeah.
• 52:26
  How did you find all of that then, Andrew?
• 52:32
  I think it's really clever and it kind of the Diagon story
• 52:36
  parallels the Gallifrey story and then all the kind of.
• 52:41
  Identity stuff kind of parallels the Doctor authorship stuff in
• 52:44
  the book, and you kind of get the bit where it's from Kate's
• 52:49
  perspective, but as the chapter goes on, it's actually from the
• 52:52
  Zygon copy of Kate's perspective.
• 52:54
  You get the Osgood chapter, where again, it's which version?
• 52:58
  I think it's the real Osgood, but it's all that kind of, yeah,
• 53:02
  yeah, it's it's very, it's very clever.
• 53:04
  And I think the story wouldn't work without that element,
• 53:07
  because you kind of need that. That half of the story to kind
• 53:11
  of inspire the Doctor saving Gallifrey.
• 53:14
  So it's kind of it's, yeah, it's all a very clever constructed
• 53:20
  story. And the Zygons, with their kind
• 53:23
  of shifting identities, are really good, particularly for
• 53:28
  the novel version. They're a really good adversary
• 53:30
  to have because they have this kind of parallel to the way the
• 53:33
  narrative is being told in their shifting identities.
• 53:36
  Plus, you you don't have to look at those terrible rubbery
• 53:38
  costumes either, do you? Oh, what were they thinking?
• 53:42
  How about you then, Mark? I think it was just a a chance
• 53:46
  to bring back a monster that a lot of old Hoo fans really
• 53:52
  venerated and thought was one of the best monsters ever.
• 53:55
  So to bring it back, I got a feeling David Tennant may have
• 53:58
  had some sort of influence on this because he he was saying
• 54:02
  that was his monster that he really wanted to bring back.
• 54:05
  I think because and now that in the UK on iPlayer, they've just
• 54:08
  chucked everything on there and I was watching the The
• 54:13
  Confidential for Blink and he's chatting with Moffett and
• 54:17
  they're talking about what scared them and what were the
• 54:21
  best monsters and he says the Zygons.
• 54:22
  So whether that kind of got him thinking, I don't know maybe I'm
• 54:27
  reading too much into it. But I think it does.
• 54:29
  It sets up, as Andrew was saying, sets up the whole thing
• 54:32
  with the way that they eventually come up with a plan
• 54:37
  to save Gallifrey. You know, they've gone through
• 54:39
  it. And again, it's mirrored in
• 54:41
  things like the when they're stuck in a cell and they're
• 54:44
  trying to figure out how to open the door.
• 54:47
  And you've got the whole thing about the the Sonic screwdriver.
• 54:50
  It's the same device but with a different casing.
• 54:53
  And then obviously that reflects on the Doctors as well.
• 54:56
  They're the same guy, but with a different aspect.
• 54:59
  So yeah, I thought it worked really well.
• 55:02
  It's still funny and prose when she comes in the door, innit 400
• 55:06
  years you never thought try the door.
• 55:08
  Come on, Luke Zygons. I love terror the Zygons.
• 55:17
  Is there anyone who doesn't? I'm I'm sure.
• 55:20
  Someone here doesn't. No, I love.
• 55:23
  It yeah, it's it's amazing. So I love that story.
• 55:25
  So it was good to see them, especially for an anniversary
• 55:28
  story. So a lot of people are going to
• 55:29
  be interested in an anniversary story.
• 55:31
  More than, say, the everyday stress.
• 55:33
  That's more eyes on the Zygons. I'm happy with that.
• 55:37
  I tend to find Osgood on the telly, cringy because like in
• 55:45
  pros, yeah, sure, they describe what she's wearing, but I can
• 55:48
  just ignore that and be like, all right, I'm just going to
• 55:50
  take the character as a person, let's go forward and that.
• 55:53
  But every time I see her, she's got Sylvester's sweater vest and
• 55:59
  everything, and I'm just like. I know she's supposed to be the
• 56:02
  fans and still stuff but I don't want to watch me.
• 56:05
  Doctor Who. It's kind of weird so it's a
• 56:09
  little cringy but I'm more I'd be more like Tegan anyway, just
• 56:12
  complain the whole time. But but I did like her sections
• 56:17
  where it's she's having kind of an identity crisis this am I the
• 56:21
  me me. Or is this that one that or my
• 56:24
  the Zygon I really liked though. That's the portions where they
• 56:27
  get into her head. So that's another thing in the
• 56:30
  book where? On screen, I see her and I'm
• 56:32
  like, cringe. Then I read it in the book and
• 56:35
  I'm like, I've really enjoyed it.
• 56:37
  It kind of works for me. I couldn't believe how
• 56:41
  astonishing. Queen.
• 56:44
  Oh, God, I need to get this right.
• 56:46
  I can't remember her name now. Is it Queen Anne?
• 56:48
  No. Queen Elizabeth.
• 56:48
  Queen Elizabeth Elizabeth the 1st.
• 56:51
  God, sorry. Queen Elizabeth the first.
• 56:52
  How bearable she was when she isn't.
• 56:54
  Played by Stacey from Gavin and Stacey.
• 56:57
  He came across as a formidable character in print, which I
• 57:00
  didn't quite get on the TV episode sometimes.
• 57:05
  What I thought was super clever in both the TV and in this, and
• 57:09
  and how well it was explored in this, was how the element of the
• 57:13
  Zygos going into the painting lent into the climax of the
• 57:16
  story. You don't realise that that is
• 57:19
  how he's going to ultimately save the day and then the
• 57:22
  sequence. Where the three of them are in
• 57:24
  the tower and the ideas go from one to the other, that's
• 57:27
  introducing the idea of, you know, you can do this thing over
• 57:31
  time. So that sets up the calculations
• 57:33
  in the climax. And I'm just like, it's one of
• 57:35
  those times when I'm just like, fuck me.
• 57:37
  He's a clever man. He's such a he plots so cleverly
• 57:40
  at his best and you don't even realise that he's introducing
• 57:44
  all these ideas that I got a lot together at the end.
• 57:48
  It's just so great and it feels like it's just like a comedy
• 57:50
  subplot. But it's so important to the
• 57:53
  plot. Yeah, it's crazily good and
• 57:55
  that's why he's my favorite. And I know there are some
• 57:59
  episodes that aren't as good, but it's worth those to get
• 58:02
  episodes like this. Indeed.
• 58:05
  You didn't think we were going to be sorry in a call, did you?
• 58:07
  I know. I know, Joe.
• 58:08
  I'm. Astonishing, isn't it?
• 58:11
  Well, let's let's round off Day of the Doctor then.
• 58:15
  But I want to ask you all if there's anything we haven't
• 58:17
  covered. Say your piece now.
• 58:20
  Because I'm sure. I mean, I took notes.
• 58:21
  There's about 15 things I haven't covered.
• 58:23
  But I'd like you to sort of give an overview of what you thought
• 58:29
  of this. Also, just highlight one chapter
• 58:31
  that you thought worked particularly well and why?
• 58:35
  So say, say somebody hasn't got time to read the whole book, but
• 58:38
  they're just going to pull out one chapter and read it and
• 58:42
  everyone's looking scared, so I'm going to throw.
• 58:43
  This over too? No way, but no.
• 58:47
  I'm probably going to. Steal Andrew's here.
• 58:50
  But I I was set 7 because I feel like everyone's seen this this
• 58:54
  story. They've seen all the different
• 58:56
  Tardises with all the different Doctors going around Gallifrey.
• 58:59
  But to to watch or read all the Doctors actually getting out of
• 59:03
  the TARDIS and saving people and doing all that kind of stuff.
• 59:06
  Yeah, I'd say. I think that's Chapter 7 is
• 59:09
  over. Right.
• 59:10
  Day the Doctor. Yeah.
• 59:11
  Thank you, Andrew. Yes, that one.
• 59:14
  For sure. You thought I was going to say
• 59:15
  no to the doctor, didn't you? But no.
• 59:18
  Oh, actually did? Yeah, I really did.
• 59:20
  Is there anything else that we haven't covered within the book
• 59:23
  itself that you want to talk about Luke?
• 59:30
  Oh no. We've hit upon all my notes.
• 59:37
  I just want to say didn't expect to.
• 59:40
  I expected it to be readable. I didn't expect to kind of love
• 59:44
  it and I'm very happy about that.
• 59:48
  How about, let's go to Mark last.
• 59:50
  So how about Andrew? Yeah, I think I've already
• 59:55
  probably said enough about Chapter 7, but yeah, chapter
• 59:57
  seven I think is is where it's at.
• 1:00:00
  If you're going to read one chapter of this, I think it also
• 1:00:03
  probably like comes out as quite a nice extract in itself as a as
• 1:00:07
  a nice piece of writing and A and a beautiful little chunk of
• 1:00:11
  Doctor Who. The things that we haven't
• 1:00:14
  spoken about, the robot clown. I was going to mention that the
• 1:00:19
  robot clown is kind of, yeah, it's an invention just of the
• 1:00:22
  book, where again, it's this clever Muffety thing where it's
• 1:00:26
  kind of an offhand mention in an early chapter.
• 1:00:30
  And then you kind of get more mentioned and you're like, oh,
• 1:00:32
  what? What's going on with this clown?
• 1:00:34
  And then the kind of clown becomes more of a it's quite an
• 1:00:37
  important part of the story and that it kind of he explains an
• 1:00:42
  aspect of the TV version. It's.
• 1:00:45
  I think it's one of those ones where it's again, Moffett going
• 1:00:47
  back to rewrite his own work and kind of explain that part of the
• 1:00:51
  story where the Doctor has forgotten how many children died
• 1:00:55
  on Gallifrey and work it into quite an emotional story, which
• 1:01:00
  involves Riversong and this robot clown that can erase
• 1:01:03
  painful. Memories so beautifully done,
• 1:01:05
  yeah. And then at the end it comes
• 1:01:07
  back again and links into Cat. So yeah, I thought that was a
• 1:01:11
  really nice extra bit of the story, which when you first come
• 1:01:16
  across it in the book, you're just like, what's that about?
• 1:01:18
  And then? Yeah, that's weird.
• 1:01:19
  It kind of blossoms into something really nice.
• 1:01:23
  Mark. Well, these two bastards have
• 1:01:25
  stolen the two things that I was going to talk about.
• 1:01:31
  I thought it was a nice touch that Jodie's doctor got to see
• 1:01:34
  Cass and have that. A moment where they actually did
• 1:01:42
  have a connection there and she didn't hate the doctor.
• 1:01:46
  So I thought that was kind of a nice moment to have her
• 1:01:49
  represented in the story and also just as a bit of sort of
• 1:01:53
  closure on that, what is effectively the start of the
• 1:01:57
  story. But yeah, I just it's if you
• 1:02:01
  haven't read it and you like to have a doctor, I think you would
• 1:02:05
  have so much fun reading this. Perhaps you gentlemen could
• 1:02:09
  educate me as to what this chapter is, because I've
• 1:02:12
  completely forgotten and I don't have a copy of the book in front
• 1:02:14
  of me, but it is the chapter where they're all in the Tower.
• 1:02:19
  I thought that was the best chapter in this whole book
• 1:02:21
  because it takes a scene on the television episode that is very
• 1:02:27
  good and makes it fucking sublime.
• 1:02:30
  Like the the, the collect the smarts.
• 1:02:33
  In that as we go from one point of view to another and have the
• 1:02:36
  same sequence take place, which is an old trope in fiction and
• 1:02:40
  telly, and just to do so many clever things with it to come to
• 1:02:43
  that conclusion and then still have that bloody joke at the
• 1:02:46
  end. Yeah, I just don't.
• 1:02:49
  They and they they show it from all three of their perspectives
• 1:02:51
  and it's got a different take each time that you go through
• 1:02:55
  that. Scene again.
• 1:02:57
  So clever. You know, you know what I feel
• 1:02:59
  about Stephen Moffett. I'll look for things not to
• 1:03:01
  like. And the fact that I thought this
• 1:03:03
  was so extraordinary clever was really irritating me as I was
• 1:03:06
  reading it. This is so good.
• 1:03:09
  It's so bloody annoying. The only other thing I really
• 1:03:13
  wanted to say was I thought it was very clever.
• 1:03:15
  There was a point where he managed to collect, connect what
• 1:03:18
  had come. So within one paragraph he talks
• 1:03:21
  about. The doctor meeting Rose and
• 1:03:24
  having an uneasy feeling about meeting Rose because of the John
• 1:03:29
  Hurt doctor meeting the the moment, thank you, but also the
• 1:03:35
  moment at the end of Partner the Ways when he says I'm a coward,
• 1:03:38
  I'm proud of it and that. Can exist as well.
• 1:03:42
  And then the Fear mates companions of all of us, which
• 1:03:44
  hasn't even happened yet. That's going to and it's all
• 1:03:47
  within the same. And that's another thing that
• 1:03:49
  Moffett just does. He can pull it all in and have
• 1:03:51
  it make sense. And this story impacts all of
• 1:03:55
  those things. So it's like adding extra layers
• 1:03:58
  to all this stuff that we've seen and all this stuff that
• 1:04:01
  we're going to see. And that's why he's such a
• 1:04:04
  clever bloke. I just, I just couldn't believe
• 1:04:06
  how entertaining this was to read.
• 1:04:08
  I don't think there's another target, but quite like it.
• 1:04:12
  I do wish it was longer, and I do wish we had a bit more time
• 1:04:15
  to explore some of this stuff like the Time War, which I think
• 1:04:18
  is potentially really interesting.
• 1:04:20
  But what we get in prose is what we got on the screen as the most
• 1:04:24
  boring example of just Daleks and time laws going like Star
• 1:04:29
  Wars. Which, you know, we we heard all
• 1:04:31
  this stuff from Rusty Davis about, you know, the Army's
• 1:04:33
  happens and never was, and the nightmare child and all this
• 1:04:36
  sort of Carmel esque ambiguous stuff that is so too too, you
• 1:04:41
  know, extraordinary to even imagine.
• 1:04:44
  And what it actually turned out to be was a sequence from Star
• 1:04:47
  Wars. Which is a shame, but I think
• 1:04:51
  the books would have been the best medium to do that in.
• 1:04:53
  I know that Big Finish have made about 50 million.
• 1:04:57
  Are you heard of that's? Now?
• 1:04:59
  No, I'm not really interested in it because as you say, it's just
• 1:05:01
  shooty shooty Dalek stuff, whereas yeah, you need something
• 1:05:05
  a bit bit more like the Faction Paradox arc that we were talking
• 1:05:09
  about last. Time where it's this kind of
• 1:05:11
  rewriting of history and different strands and massive
• 1:05:14
  budget and more about ideas than big battles.
• 1:05:19
  Yeah. I mean, I certainly put the
• 1:05:20
  money on the screen. Those sequences were
• 1:05:23
  extraordinary of Vitalics attacking and flying through
• 1:05:26
  cities and all of that. But but yeah, what a astonishing
• 1:05:30
  book like. So there you go, Mark.
• 1:05:33
  Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, all right.
• 1:05:35
  I'm so pleased that you enjoyed it.
• 1:05:39
  I was. I was slightly dreading your
• 1:05:40
  reaction, but I'm so happy. Well.
• 1:05:44
  Always thank you very much for that.
• 1:05:46
  I mean, I I think it's sort of been some mixed opinions, but
• 1:05:49
  generally positive about Day of the Doctor and now we're going
• 1:06:01
  to move on to my favorite part of any episode and that is the
• 1:06:03
  recommends because I'll never know what's coming next and I'd
• 1:06:08
  like to start with Luke. All right, so.
• 1:06:14
  I like a bit of Tom Baker and Leela, and so I've got science
• 1:06:21
  fiction here by Chris Boucher. So if you've read Last Man
• 1:06:25
  Running, you thought that's a bit of a run around.
• 1:06:27
  And if you read Corpse Marker, his sequel to Robots of Death,
• 1:06:30
  and thought that I was a little uninspired, I would say give him
• 1:06:35
  a third chance with science fiction.
• 1:06:38
  So. I feel like he he gets better
• 1:06:40
  each time so I I haven't got matched the day yet I'm I'll get
• 1:06:44
  that soon. But science fiction was just a
• 1:06:46
  surprisingly really good psychological kind of scary
• 1:06:49
  story It even he even manages to make Leila absolutely terrified
• 1:06:55
  and it just works because that's she's not a character you see
• 1:06:59
  fearful very often. So just to get into her mind as
• 1:07:02
  she's just literally running from the dark in in one scene is
• 1:07:07
  just. Just really incredible.
• 1:07:10
  And Tom's Doctor, he, he feels like there's some kind of
• 1:07:14
  manipulation going on. So he's kind, but he's been
• 1:07:17
  manipulated too. So he's in character, but he's
• 1:07:20
  kind of out of character. At the same time, it's really
• 1:07:23
  well done and there's some really good side characters as
• 1:07:26
  well. So, yeah, science fiction.
• 1:07:28
  I'll never forget when I read that.
• 1:07:29
  And I was like, hey, this fella has read some Stephen King in
• 1:07:33
  his life. I swear it's even set in Main or
• 1:07:35
  somewhere like that, isn't it? That's all the recommendation I
• 1:07:38
  need it. It reads very like a Stephen
• 1:07:41
  King book. Yeah.
• 1:07:43
  Yeah, it's a grey one. OK, Andrew, how about you?
• 1:07:47
  Yeah, so I was so last time, I think we talked about quite a
• 1:07:50
  lot of 8th Doctor books because we were looking at Alien Bodies.
• 1:07:55
  And I think one of the books that we didn't mention, which I
• 1:07:57
  think is one of the standouts of the range, is Anacrophobia by
• 1:08:03
  Jonathan Morris, which it's a very creepy, timey, whiny story.
• 1:08:11
  And I think one of the things that I really like it when
• 1:08:15
  Doctor Who novels do is that the imagery in it is really strong.
• 1:08:19
  So the villains in it are these people with clock faces.
• 1:08:23
  So they're very, they're a bit like a sapphire and steel
• 1:08:27
  character. It's this kind of bowler hatted
• 1:08:30
  man with a with a clock for a face and also kind of based on
• 1:08:34
  Rennie Magritte paintings. And they're so sinister and the
• 1:08:38
  kind of way that they come into being is really sinister.
• 1:08:43
  And yeah, it's just a very atmospheric, very Doctor Who
• 1:08:46
  story and you can imagine it them doing it on TV because it's
• 1:08:49
  quite a kind of small contained story with this really strong
• 1:08:54
  but potentially quite cheap visual of people with clocks for
• 1:08:57
  faces. So it feels like a classic
• 1:09:00
  Doctor Who story that's just, yeah, dripping an atmosphere.
• 1:09:04
  And I think it came out the same month as The Chimes of Midnight
• 1:09:09
  and it was they were both kind of have a similar vibe to them,
• 1:09:13
  but Chimes of Midnight is the obviously the kind of one which
• 1:09:15
  people speak of as this Stone cold classic, which it is, but
• 1:09:19
  Anacrophobia is also really good.
• 1:09:21
  In my Who it says there was a there's an interview with
• 1:09:26
  Jonathan Morrison there and apparently they had like a
• 1:09:28
  series of. Emails going back and forth.
• 1:09:30
  Rob Sheerman and Johnny Morris because they were both doing
• 1:09:34
  these sort of sapphire and steel sort of type books.
• 1:09:37
  Are you doing this? No, right.
• 1:09:38
  I'll put it in. Are you doing that?
• 1:09:40
  I'll put it. In do you?
• 1:09:42
  Remember that sequence? I'll never forget it.
• 1:09:44
  It chilled me to the boat. And I'll never forget the image
• 1:09:47
  where the fella is so depressed he slashes his wrist at the end
• 1:09:51
  of us of of and all he's got in his wrist is cogs and whirs from
• 1:09:55
  the inside of a clock. Yeah, chilling that book.
• 1:09:59
  Yeah, it's like they kind of the, well, I won't spoil it
• 1:10:02
  because it's a recommendation, but yeah, like, like I said, the
• 1:10:04
  way that these clock people are created is really creepy and
• 1:10:09
  upsetting in a really good way. You think like a sort of cheap
• 1:10:13
  base under siege Doctor Who's story would not translate well
• 1:10:15
  in print, but it is stifling that one, Yeah, Mark.
• 1:10:22
  OK, well, as I've already said, I'm not.
• 1:10:24
  Craps as well. Read as you guys one.
• 1:10:28
  Thing we're getting you there, though we are getting you there
• 1:10:30
  you are you're. Doing God's work I've recently
• 1:10:35
  picked up. It's Only Just Come Out.
• 1:10:37
  It's an anthology of the 4th Doctor comic books from Doctor
• 1:10:43
  Who Weekly. So bizarrely, although I started
• 1:10:46
  watching in 1979, I didn't have any knowledge of Doctor Who
• 1:10:52
  Magazine until probably. I think I remember getting the
• 1:10:56
  The Summer Special with Peter Davidson on the front of it.
• 1:10:59
  So it would have been like 8283. So I missed out on all of these
• 1:11:04
  and obviously The Star Beast is coming up as we record now for
• 1:11:09
  the 60th. So that's one of the stories
• 1:11:11
  that's included. The Iron Legion's in there and
• 1:11:14
  there's lots of really great stories.
• 1:11:16
  So I've only just started reading through it, but it's
• 1:11:19
  quite interesting. It's like a little snapshot of.
• 1:11:22
  Of what was going on back in the early 80s.
• 1:11:26
  Pick it up. That sounds great.
• 1:11:28
  Yeah. I would like to recommend
• 1:11:31
  Vampire Science by Kate Allman and Jonathan Blum.
• 1:11:36
  I was almost going to be controversial and recommend the
• 1:11:38
  eight doctors, but even I couldn't go that far.
• 1:11:42
  The eight doctors here and everyone went what the hell is
• 1:11:44
  this? After the new adventures we've
• 1:11:46
  just had? So Viola Sin and Lung Barrow and
• 1:11:48
  all these, you know, dense books and suddenly terrorist sticks is
• 1:11:51
  plundering is. After that, it was back into
• 1:11:55
  trying new things again, and it's Kate Allman and John Blum
• 1:11:59
  basically taking the remit of the TV movie The romantic
• 1:12:03
  doctor, the American setting, and what effectively should be
• 1:12:08
  Grace Holloway. But unfortunately they didn't
• 1:12:10
  have the right, so they made a Carolyn.
• 1:12:13
  I think her name isn't that. It's the first proper adventure
• 1:12:19
  for Sam Jones. And she's always written
• 1:12:21
  brilliantly by that, this pair, this and C and I I think they're
• 1:12:24
  right. And like, there's one sequence
• 1:12:28
  where Sam is all bravado bluster and it's set in a nightclub and
• 1:12:34
  it's really puts you there in the scene with the crazy music,
• 1:12:37
  the lighting, and everything's going on.
• 1:12:38
  And she's bitten by a vampire because she's so, you know, I
• 1:12:42
  could do anything. I'm travelling with the Doctor.
• 1:12:44
  And so it's like a cautionary tale for her.
• 1:12:46
  It's a morality tale about vampires as well.
• 1:12:49
  It puts the Doctor in an impossible situation where he
• 1:12:52
  has to make really tough choices.
• 1:12:55
  It's a really great character story as well because Karen is a
• 1:12:58
  bit disillusioned and goes on a journey of sort of discovering
• 1:13:02
  the joy of life with the Doctor throughout the book.
• 1:13:06
  It's got great set pieces and it's just a really bloody good.
• 1:13:10
  Talk, let alone a good Doctor Who book.
• 1:13:12
  And it's definitely one of the standouts.
• 1:13:14
  It's probably that Alien Bodies and Scarlet Empress in that
• 1:13:18
  first salvo of eight Doctor books.
• 1:13:21
  I think that's that's probably three of the best.
• 1:13:26
  Well, everyone's not in the red, so I'm assuming everyone's read
• 1:13:28
  it. Yeah.
• 1:13:31
  They all sound like cracking recommendations.
• 1:13:33
  Fantastic recommends boys. I've got a suggestion.
• 1:13:38
  If you are happy to read another Doctor Who book, and I would
• 1:13:42
  quite like to go, but now we've done a Moffett, which is
• 1:13:46
  obviously Mark's wheelhouse, I really fancy the three of us
• 1:13:51
  pulling apart the Scarlet Empress because because that's
• 1:13:56
  that's Andrew's big love and that was his recommend last time
• 1:14:00
  and it's just such a different. Sort of book.
• 1:14:04
  It's it's such a it's like distilled fantasy in Doctor Who,
• 1:14:09
  isn't it? What do you reckon?
• 1:14:13
  Let's do it. I realise I've done a lot of
• 1:14:16
  eight, eight Doctor books recently but I've got a ton of
• 1:14:19
  other stuff coming out. So Rob Sherman's Dalek, In fact
• 1:14:23
  we're doing third degree as well.
• 1:14:24
  I'm Mad Dogs and Englishmen. I've got a bit of a hard on here
• 1:14:26
  for Paul Boss. What time of your life and some
• 1:14:30
  missing adventure? A couple of new adventures as
• 1:14:31
  well. So how about it?
• 1:14:34
  Scarlett Empress Next time. Yeah, let's give it a go.
• 1:14:37
  Definitely. Then before we vanish, I'm not
• 1:14:41
  sure if I asked you this last time, but would you care to just
• 1:14:44
  let everybody know where you might be online?
• 1:14:47
  I think I did, but let's do it again.
• 1:14:49
  Andrew, you go first so you can find me on Twitter.
• 1:14:55
  So I'm not calling it X Doctor Who Cover Story, which is DW
• 1:15:00
  Cover Story is my app and where I look at cover art from across
• 1:15:08
  Doctor Who history. And I've recently done a series
• 1:15:12
  of tweets about the Star Beast with it being pretty current and
• 1:15:16
  I haven't been as active on the account as I would like to be.
• 1:15:18
  But yeah, hopefully in future we'll we'll be looking at some
• 1:15:23
  more exciting stuff. I said it last time, I'm going
• 1:15:26
  to say again, you put up those covers and the nostalgia it
• 1:15:29
  instills in me is extraordinary. It's it's amazing how a cover
• 1:15:33
  image, though, can just take you back to when you first read
• 1:15:35
  something or watch something or listen to something.
• 1:15:40
  Yeah, completely. I mean, that's why I do it.
• 1:15:41
  It's it's kind of for my benefit as well as my followers just
• 1:15:45
  indulging in my own nostalgia. You know, on the last episode I
• 1:15:48
  recorded on this, people were very mean about black sheep
• 1:15:51
  covers of hey, will you do a series of those please?
• 1:15:55
  Just to show people how good they can be.
• 1:15:58
  I've gone through all of the 8th Doctor stuff if people scroll
• 1:16:00
  back, scroll back far enough. But yeah, I've actually got a
• 1:16:02
  big soft spot for the for some of the black sheep stuff because
• 1:16:05
  it was very much like my era. And I think they do interesting
• 1:16:08
  stuff, they do interesting visuals and kind of were pushing
• 1:16:11
  the limits of what Photoshop could do at the time.
• 1:16:14
  Just those weird swirly ones they did at the beginning.
• 1:16:16
  They were very easy on the imaginative the.
• 1:16:20
  Ultimate treasure or something like that, Yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:25
  I remember that cover. I am on the tweety at Grumpy Two
• 1:16:31
  EB for Electric Boogaloo. I don't know.
• 1:16:34
  I don't know why if you feel like you're.
• 1:16:38
  If you feel like you're interested in men pretending to
• 1:16:41
  beat each other up, I do a Japanese wrestling podcast.
• 1:16:44
  It's the Never Open Podcast, which you can also find at the
• 1:16:46
  Tweety at Never Open Pod. I'm a lot more sweary and.
• 1:16:50
  Everything there, I'm a bit more polite.
• 1:16:53
  I'm just getting to know you guys.
• 1:16:55
  Right now, so. Even a few podcasts are We were
• 1:16:58
  like, oh, that's sort of a yeah. I think Marvel, that was going
• 1:17:04
  to be this episode, you know? Absolutely.
• 1:17:06
  Did you see me and Andrew's eyes light up then when you said it's
• 1:17:09
  all about men wrestling each other?
• 1:17:11
  Oh yes. Instant subscribe.
• 1:17:16
  Mark, where are you? Online.
• 1:17:18
  OK, so myself and my friend Ian Martin, we have a podcast called
• 1:17:23
  All of Time and Space and we're watching all of Doctor Who in
• 1:17:26
  broadcast order. We have some fabulous guests and
• 1:17:30
  we have a lot of fun. We have do silly quizzes and
• 1:17:33
  yeah, it's just we don't take it too seriously, but we're we're
• 1:17:36
  enjoying taking the journey the long way around.
• 1:17:38
  You can find us on Twitter at Time and Space Pod, and I am
• 1:17:43
  imaginatively at Mark Cochran. Took you a long time to pick
• 1:17:47
  that one up. Didn't it?
• 1:17:47
  It really did. Gentlemen, it is a pleasure to
• 1:17:52
  talk about Doctor Who and pros with all of you.
• 1:17:55
  I cannot wait till next time. Thank you very much.
• 1:17:58
  Well, thank you very much for inviting us on.