Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Time Zero by Justin Richards (featuring Jon Arnold, Andrew Batty & Luke Sims-Jenkins)

Transcript

Time Zero by Justin Richards (featuring Jon Arnold, Andrew Batty & Luke Sims-Jenkins) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  It was a long 5 minutes, every second of it, and she was sure
• 0:05
  they would realise she was still on the plane and searched for
• 0:07
  her. She could imagine them wrenching
• 0:09
  her out of her hiding place, dragging her back to the cabin
• 0:13
  at the point of a gun, but they were too busy attaching cables
• 0:16
  to the pallets and changing into bulky white military clothing.
• 0:20
  Before long the troops. Obviously they were military.
• 0:24
  How could she have ever thought this?
• 0:25
  Lower accountants were lined up by the rear doors and she
• 0:29
  counted 14 of them in total. Hartford and the dozen others
• 0:33
  she had seen in the cabin, plus another man somewhere.
• 0:36
  Thorpe opened the back doors of the plane, using the control
• 0:38
  that Angie had found. He didn't need to use both
• 0:41
  thumbs. She noticed the wind was less
• 0:43
  severe this time, and she guessed the plane was flying
• 0:46
  lower. She had felt her ears pop a few
• 0:49
  minutes earlier. The metal side of the cargo base
• 0:51
  slammed into her back as the plane's nose lifted.
• 0:55
  At once the pallet started to roll backwards towards the
• 0:57
  opening doors. One by one they reached the
• 1:00
  edge, tilted, toppled heavily backwards and fell into the
• 1:04
  white sky outside. When the last of them was gone
• 1:08
  and she climbed out of her hiding place and made her way
• 1:10
  carefully to the rear door, she held on tight to the stanchion
• 1:14
  as before and leaned forward to see outside.
• 1:18
  Behind the plane and far below, she could see the gently
• 1:20
  twisting circles of white parachutes dropping lazily
• 1:23
  towards the ground. Then a swirl of cloud blew
• 1:26
  across and they were lost to sight.
• 1:29
  The plane was still tilted at an angle, the engines labouring.
• 1:32
  It seemed to have straightened out just before Halford and his
• 1:35
  team jumped, and she wondered if she should close the cargo door
• 1:38
  and decided against it. She knew now that there were
• 1:41
  controls for it in the cockpit, and the pilot would see that
• 1:44
  somebody was operating the controls in the cargo Bay.
• 1:47
  She wondered why he had not closed the doors himself as she
• 1:50
  struggled and staggered towards the front of the Bay.
• 1:54
  The cabin was empty of course, most of the lockers have been
• 1:59
  left open, the kit bags gone, and she closed the door behind
• 2:02
  her and was relieved as the rushing air was stilled.
• 2:05
  She made her way as quietly as she could towards the cockpit,
• 2:08
  brandishing the heavy piece of wood, ready to clobber whoever
• 2:11
  appeared. But nobody appeared.
• 2:14
  The cockpit door was swinging open and on its hinge the
• 2:17
  cockpit was empty. Two extra people.
• 2:20
  She fought pilot and copilot. 16 parachutes, 15 people jumped,
• 2:27
  and Angie had thrown her own parachute out of the plane.
• 2:31
  She stood for almost a minute in the doorway, looking around in
• 2:33
  disbelief. This could not be happening.
• 2:36
  They must have left someone to find the plane, mustn't they?
• 2:41
  But they hadn't. The plane was expendable in
• 2:43
  exactly the way Angie had reasoned.
• 2:45
  She was not. Except they thought she was on
• 2:48
  the ground by now. They were looking for her.
• 2:50
  It wasn't. It wasn't much of A triumph that
• 2:53
  she had fooled them by staying on the plane Plane, and she
• 2:57
  realised as she stared out the front windows that was now
• 3:00
  flying at low altitude towards a range of mountains.
• 3:04
  And she rarely swore without good reason, and hardly ever in
• 3:07
  public. But as she slumped into the
• 3:09
  empty pilot seat and stared at a Bank of incomprehensible
• 3:12
  controls in front of her, she decided she had a very good
• 3:16
  reason, and there was nobody else on the plane to hear her.
• 3:25
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 3:28
  My name is Joe Ford and counting down to time 0.
• 3:33
  Today we have the the evil and devastatingly violent John
• 3:41
  Arnold. Hello.
• 3:43
  Hello, sorry, I'm just back to bring a sword along, right?
• 3:46
  Or a gun or whatever you want. You just make it quick like
• 3:51
  Halford does, all right? Oh yeah, totally.
• 3:53
  But a recent poetry while you do it.
• 3:55
  All right, I'll do it. Also joining us is The Walking
• 3:59
  black hole himself, Mr. Luke Sims Jenkins.
• 4:02
  Hello, Luke. Just making this half all right.
• 4:11
  Hello. And unfortunately trapped in a
• 4:16
  plane heading towards some mountains and abandoned by the
• 4:21
  SAS. Andrew Batty.
• 4:23
  Hello, Andrew. Hello, I wanted to be the rubber
• 4:27
  faced Duchess but you know all the tricks.
• 4:34
  That's all. Right.
• 4:36
  We've got sort of a group chat going on.
• 4:38
  And at one point Andrew went, this is getting like fucking
• 4:41
  scooby-doo in this book. How are you all fellas?
• 4:48
  Grant So you must be trading as Jill then?
• 4:51
  What's that? What may be rude, Maybe not.
• 4:55
  Yeah, that's that'll do. It's definitely.
• 4:59
  Rude to be rude today. We are here today to talk about
• 5:03
  ARC Culminator and also ARC Kicker Offer Time Zero by Justin
• 5:10
  Richards. But before we do that, the the
• 5:13
  question posed all of 10 minutes ago to you chaps was how well do
• 5:19
  these books? I'm talking specifically the new
• 5:22
  adventures on the EDA because those are sort of the running
• 5:24
  stories. How well do they do these Ark
• 5:28
  culminations? And let's go across to because
• 5:33
  I've already told him I'm going to pick on him, John.
• 5:36
  I'll start with the Virgin books because I've read those more
• 5:40
  than read the 8th Doctor ones. I think it'd be a little unfair
• 5:43
  because I've forgotten a lot of the Virgin.
• 5:45
  The 8th Doctor arts. It's a mixed bag.
• 5:50
  I think Time Worm was all over the shop.
• 5:54
  It never really felt linked, you know, infamously down to details
• 5:59
  such as Hemming's name not changing.
• 6:01
  So whoever's supposed to hear we're seeing that those arcs and
• 6:05
  the cat, that non existent cat's cradle arc, they they, they're
• 6:10
  absent without leave away at the wheel.
• 6:15
  I did like the alternative history 1 though.
• 6:17
  I thought that one really kind of stood up to it.
• 6:19
  They did seem to be a loose enough plot to connect the
• 6:24
  books, even if it was a bit dodgy.
• 6:27
  High concept. But I I do like No Future Anyway
• 6:31
  and the great kind of it's a wrestle T Davis for the season
• 6:35
  finale. It's just like, what can I drag
• 6:38
  up from the past to just have a big nonsense fun finale and the
• 6:43
  greatest single joke in all the Doctor Who books?
• 6:46
  Oh go on, what's the joke? Oh, it's the It's when the
• 6:50
  Brigadier runs into the top of the pop studio and Paul
• 6:55
  McCartney's up there with his band and they need to stop this
• 6:58
  worldwide broadcast. So obviously chat with Wings 5
• 7:05
  rounds rapid Oh. Boy, oh.
• 7:08
  My God, it's so. Loud.
• 7:10
  It's out the other side of genius.
• 7:12
  I just. Remember the hard hands and the
• 7:15
  meddling monk and thinking, oh boy, they're getting desperate?
• 7:19
  And the Chronicle and the. Chronicle Fucking hell.
• 7:22
  And they said Russell T Davis was desperate and wish world
• 7:25
  come on. But it's a lot of fun in a very
• 7:29
  kind of grimy era, though. It's trying to be large.
• 7:31
  It's trying to do something. And apart from, I think there
• 7:36
  was the, yeah, the the future history thing was part of the
• 7:40
  nonsense, really just the excuse sounds.
• 7:43
  Then at the end, I didn't think that arc worked in the late,
• 7:48
  late stages. One of the few things that
• 7:49
  didn't. But the books are good enough
• 7:51
  that you don't care anyway. I suppose you could mention
• 7:54
  Langbarrow then, which did wrap things up kind of satisfyingly
• 7:57
  for me because it did try and explain everything that's been
• 8:01
  underpinning the books for five years.
• 8:03
  Although I I appreciate that it tastes, if you like Mark Plow or
• 8:08
  don't and he can be an acquired taste, particularly in Bros,
• 8:12
  it's it's not going to be satisfying if you don't like
• 8:14
  him. I mean, Andrew, how did you feel
• 8:18
  about hanging out with that bunch of weirdos in that house?
• 8:21
  A. Boring pilot, but apart from us.
• 8:29
  So how about the book? Oh that's not fair.
• 8:34
  You guys are great. I could never compare you to the
• 8:37
  tedious characters of Longborough Do.
• 8:40
  You remember any of them? I remember 1's called Badger.
• 8:44
  Yeah, he's a guy in the front cover.
• 8:46
  I. Don't remember anybody.
• 8:48
  Else really, That's not the 7th Doctor.
• 8:51
  Oh, it's the seventh. Yeah, 7th Doctor.
• 8:53
  And there's a guy doing the Tom Baker punting thing.
• 8:57
  I realise we've said that the lightnesses on these covers are
• 9:00
  a bit dodgy. I can't afford that thing.
• 9:02
  Rowing was McCoy. It's still early in the morning.
• 9:08
  About. Culminations in the books.
• 9:13
  Yeah, I feel like the new adventures were a bit better at
• 9:17
  them in terms of sort of like, I feel like with the new
• 9:20
  adventures they like decided what was an arc, which books
• 9:25
  were in the arc, when the arc was going to start and when the
• 9:27
  arc was going to finish. And even if it like this, even
• 9:33
  if you didn't like the story, like it kind of like had a had
• 9:36
  set parameters and someone was keeping track of what was
• 9:39
  happening in each book and when it was going to pay off.
• 9:42
  I feel like with the BBC books, it was a bit more free form.
• 9:46
  And yeah, it felt like kind of individual authors were more
• 9:53
  sort of like left to do what they wanted to do.
• 9:55
  And then occasional points the editor would decide, I decide,
• 10:00
  right, we're wrapping this up now.
• 10:02
  We'll have one book that tries to wrap everything up.
• 10:04
  But it feels like there were just like lots of hanging
• 10:07
  threads in the in the BBC books that were kind of only resolved
• 10:13
  if like the author came back and decided to resolve something
• 10:16
  from a previous book or an editor had sort of like paid
• 10:19
  enough attention to remember to pay something off.
• 10:22
  So yeah, I feel like the the Edas, like I always wanted them
• 10:28
  to kind of have these payouts, but they were always slightly
• 10:32
  disappointing when they did. And they never, it never came to
• 10:34
  a point where it's like, yeah, I think with the new adventures,
• 10:37
  it was kind of like, right, that's done now we're moving on
• 10:39
  to the next thing. Whereas with the Edas, like
• 10:41
  things just sort of bled across books and arcs.
• 10:45
  And then you kind of got, like, the Gallifrey Chronicles trying
• 10:48
  to wrap it all up at the end, but there was just so much from
• 10:52
  so many different arcs that never kind of got concluded that
• 10:57
  it could just sometimes be a bit frustrating.
• 10:58
  And I was reading at the time, like, trying to keep track of
• 11:01
  all the threads and being like, oh, this is so clever and this
• 11:04
  is going to pay off. And then, oh, they've like, but
• 11:07
  actually, like when you go back like, then it's the, yeah, it's
• 11:10
  not as tight as perhaps you'd hoped it would be.
• 11:15
  Luke. I think the BBC books took The
• 11:20
  X-Files round of yeah, we've got this big story out.
• 11:23
  Cool, this is monster of the week.
• 11:25
  You know, all the equivalent thereof rather than anything to
• 11:29
  do with the mythos. I kind of disagree.
• 11:33
  I think the Ed as did the story arcs better than the new
• 11:38
  adventures. I'm with you, Luke.
• 11:41
  My my top three worst story arc books ever were all three of the
• 11:47
  Cats Cradle books. If you guys remember the future
• 11:53
  history one that's not even an arc.
• 11:55
  Oh yeah, they're all set in the future, so.
• 11:58
  And like one of them's transit cycle.
• 12:01
  Though rather than an. Arc Yeah.
• 12:03
  Oh, it was marked. By any other name really isn't
• 12:07
  it? You know, I like the future
• 12:09
  history, the arc, the psy powers one just like that was really
• 12:13
  loose and all that kind of stuff.
• 12:16
  I'd also say Gallifrey Chronicles is a lot better and
• 12:19
  cheaper the lung Barrow. So there there is that.
• 12:25
  But I I remember really liking the books, most of them from
• 12:31
  interference to the ancestor cell.
• 12:34
  Not all of them are bangers, but none of them, I don't think
• 12:36
  there are many of them that are absolute garbage.
• 12:39
  So I like that that kind of story out and I like the
• 12:42
  ancestor cells. So I'm I'm pretty satisfied with
• 12:44
  how that wraps up. All right, we got escape
• 12:47
  velocity. There's no getting around that.
• 12:49
  That book sucks. But you know, that's that's
• 12:53
  that's all right. But then you've got a whole
• 12:56
  bunch of loose stories, mostly from Earth world up up until
• 13:00
  maybe adventurous, which kicks off the Sabbath stuff and it
• 13:05
  culminates for the first time here in time zero.
• 13:08
  And I thought not only wraps up the keep my power dry, this is
• 13:16
  fucking awesome. It it wraps up that story arc
• 13:21
  whilst simultaneously kick starting off the next story arc
• 13:26
  as well, which culminates in sometime never another book I
• 13:30
  think is really good. So I don't know.
• 13:33
  I like I like it. Yeah, I, I, I, I liked that not
• 13:39
  every book in a row was an ARC book because sometimes you just
• 13:43
  needed a breather or something like that, like a crooked world
• 13:47
  or something, you know, just a nice standalone like ATV series
• 13:51
  would do. And that's what lots of TV shows
• 13:55
  were doing at the time. They were either doing, you
• 13:58
  know, your big mythos story arc kind of episodes like the
• 14:02
  exercise or like, even like Buffy, you know, this is a big
• 14:05
  bad episode that builds on their who the big bad is.
• 14:08
  And then then next week they're singing and dancing.
• 14:10
  So, you know, you just. Yeah, yeah.
• 14:14
  So you. I don't know, EDA for me.
• 14:16
  I'm biased though. I mean, I am too because
• 14:20
  obviously I much prefer the EDA, but I think I don't like
• 14:24
  Revelation and I don't like Witch Mark and I don't like No
• 14:28
  Future. Is that all of them in the new
• 14:31
  adventures? All the ends of the arcs.
• 14:33
  So violence then? Which I think is a bit
• 14:36
  overrated. Sleepy.
• 14:38
  Doesn't sleepy in the soy powers?
• 14:40
  I remember liking that. It's more a kick off isn't?
• 14:43
  It and London Barrow I don't like but I don't love and it
• 14:49
  doesn't feel like a climax, it just feels like let's take the
• 14:52
  Doctor. It's more like a character
• 14:55
  climax rather than plot. So I think I feel like there's
• 14:58
  more of a sense of occasion with the 8th Doctor books are all
• 15:03
  climactic moments that hit better.
• 15:06
  So I love there's a little arc when Sam kisses the Doctor in
• 15:11
  The Longest Day and you get a four story arc there, which
• 15:16
  culminates in the wonderful scene where Sam and the Doctor
• 15:19
  are in the cell together. And he literally says, I'll have
• 15:22
  three years of nothing trying to find you, you know, being stuck
• 15:26
  in this prison. And it's a great, great moment.
• 15:28
  Oh. Seeing Eye, yeah.
• 15:29
  That's there though, yeah, yeah. A off to that is that Sam Jones
• 15:32
  is grown up sometimes, depending on the writer, and there's
• 15:37
  certainly a sense of climax in interference.
• 15:41
  And boy, is there a sense of operatic climax in the ancestor
• 15:46
  cell which ends on that massive twist of Gallifrey being blown
• 15:49
  up escape philosophy. What a shame, because like the
• 15:53
  rest of the books on that run are pretty great.
• 15:56
  But there is still that wonderful moment where we go
• 15:58
  into the TARDIS in that which like a sense of occasion time
• 16:03
  zero. I mean, this the end of this
• 16:06
  where sort of spoiler for the later conversation, but where
• 16:08
  all the time zones are overlapping and there's a walk
• 16:11
  in black hole going around and people are being murdered left,
• 16:14
  right. I mean, it's just got a sense of
• 16:16
  occasion to it sometime. Never, I think absolutely
• 16:19
  brilliantly ties together the 8th Doctor and the past Doctors,
• 16:23
  all those books where people have been bumped off and it
• 16:26
  just, it ties the two into this huge running story and brings
• 16:31
  that to an end. That wonderful bit where Sabbath
• 16:33
  puts the gun through his head and goes, oh really?
• 16:35
  You think you can predict my moves and ensures himself in the
• 16:38
  head. It's a great climactic moment.
• 16:41
  And then the Gallifrey kind of course, we've already covered.
• 16:43
  So they're like, they're not always the best books in the
• 16:46
  run, but I do think, I do think the AF Doctor books have a sense
• 16:49
  of occasion that perhaps the new adventures are climaxes.
• 16:55
  Don't Talking of a sense of occasion, let's move on to time
• 17:03
  zero. And can I ask you chaps, please
• 17:05
  to give me just give me an overall sense of, of your
• 17:10
  enjoyment levels of reading this book because I'm really hoping
• 17:13
  someone comes at us and says they fucking hated it.
• 17:15
  Let's let's go round in the same duration again.
• 17:18
  John, how did you find it? I remember not particularly
• 17:24
  during it first time round, but that might be because I was
• 17:26
  quite busy because I was leaving my job and I was getting married
• 17:28
  that month. So I was quite a few things on
• 17:31
  my mind. Yeah, obviously this comes at
• 17:35
  the end of an absolute banger run of books.
• 17:38
  It's probably, I think we're saying I was seeing him chat.
• 17:40
  He's probably the best friend of consecutive stories in all of
• 17:44
  Doctor Who. It's up for you.
• 17:46
  So it's kind of we've turned. Him.
• 17:48
  We've turned him. I didn't need much turning, you
• 17:54
  know, And yeah, so I thought it was a step down and I still
• 18:01
  think it's a slight step down. I, I liked it a lot more second
• 18:05
  time. But there's one aspect of that
• 18:08
  to this which I was just not not quite on board with, but we'll
• 18:13
  we can come to that one. It's it's just kind of drags it
• 18:16
  down a little for me. So it's kind of a step on the
• 18:19
  descent to the Infinity race. I'm pleased because I this has
• 18:23
  been a loving, you know, four way loving.
• 18:25
  That might have been a bit tedious, Andrew.
• 18:29
  I fucking love it and like going back to this has been like such
• 18:37
  a nostalgic thrill for me because these three books so
• 18:41
  like History 101, Camera Obscura, Time 0, this is where I
• 18:45
  started reading the series in order.
• 18:50
  So, yeah, this summer when these came out, like it was just so
• 18:53
  exciting. And like I had, I think, you
• 18:56
  know, when I was talking about my frustrations with the Arcs,
• 18:59
  like because I was like paying so much attention to them,
• 19:02
  that's when I sometimes got like annoyed when things didn't plan
• 19:05
  out or like when it didn't quite plan out in in the way that I
• 19:08
  wanted it to. But we can get into that.
• 19:12
  But yeah, History 101, it was a good jumping on point and it
• 19:16
  kind of did they work really well as a trilogy, these three
• 19:19
  books, because it kind of sets out Sabbath's kind of view on
• 19:25
  time and history and what he's trying to do.
• 19:29
  And you get kind of like inklings of that starting in
• 19:33
  History one O 1. And he'd like sets it out.
• 19:35
  And then you get like the doctor versus Sabbath's agendas fully
• 19:40
  played out in camera obscure. And then this is sort of like
• 19:43
  the fallout from that and then into the next arc.
• 19:45
  So, yeah. And it's also, it's just such a
• 19:47
  thrilling story. Like it's so pacey, so much for
• 19:52
  the three regulars to do, including Angie, who is like the
• 19:56
  probably the the character he has most to do in in this book.
• 20:00
  And I love her. Yeah.
• 20:04
  And just like so many exciting images and like just the three
• 20:11
  parallel stories going on in tandem and they all flow on from
• 20:15
  the previous book. So yeah, like, this was such an
• 20:17
  exciting time to be a Doctor Who fan for me.
• 20:21
  And then it all came crashing down in the Infinity.
• 20:25
  Oh, we'll get there one day. Can I ask you a little side
• 20:28
  question before I jump over to Luke, because obviously you love
• 20:31
  these. At the time, this was your
• 20:32
  gateway into it. Now, I've seen fabulous pictures
• 20:35
  of your holiday over the last couple of weeks.
• 20:38
  I know you took these books away with you to read.
• 20:40
  I mean, talk about winning a life, but there's a danger of
• 20:47
  going back to stuff that you loved.
• 20:51
  What's the result been? Have they held up?
• 20:55
  Yeah, absolutely. They're they're three of the
• 20:58
  best Doctor Who books, I think. And yeah, I find that like,
• 21:04
  often I'm like, oh, I can't possibly agree with like what I
• 21:06
  thought when I when I was a teenager.
• 21:09
  And then I go back and like, I'm like, no, I was right at the
• 21:11
  time. I had great taste, great taste
• 21:13
  now. And often I find that with
• 21:16
  movies, like often like I'll go back to something really
• 21:19
  highbrow, which I watched as a teenager that everyone loved and
• 21:22
  I didn't like it at the time. And I'll be like, oh, you know,
• 21:25
  like I'm far clever at these days.
• 21:27
  I'll get it now and then I'll watch it a bit.
• 21:28
  No, still fucking hates it. It's shit.
• 21:30
  So yeah. I mean, we've all, I think,
• 21:33
  doing these book clubs, we've all had a moment where we loved
• 21:37
  or hated a book in the past and now our opinion was complete.
• 21:41
  So there's the danger that could happen.
• 21:43
  I'm really pleased it didn't. Happen maybe I find that maybe
• 21:47
  with stuff from like from when I was a kid, like when I was a
• 21:49
  little kid, when you go back and watch like films that you loved
• 21:53
  when you were like 7 or 8 and you haven't seen, sometimes that
• 21:56
  can be disappointing. But yeah, I think feel like when
• 21:59
  I was a teenager, like maybe my critical faculties that
• 22:01
  developed enough that like, yeah, usually when you go back
• 22:05
  and watch that stuff like it's, it's still good.
• 22:07
  I. Just don't know why we weren't
• 22:09
  hanging out when you were taking HG and we would have had the
• 22:12
  best time reenacting these books.
• 22:14
  Maybe not murdering a lot of people, but.
• 22:18
  You've had to fight on. Which one of you was Angie
• 22:20
  though? Come on.
• 22:21
  Oh yes, well, who could be bitchy?
• 22:23
  I think that's tough between you and.
• 22:25
  Me. Oh.
• 22:28
  Bitch, you have to do it. Come on.
• 22:30
  Blended episode with one of those.
• 22:32
  Maybe. Maybe I'll be tricks because
• 22:34
  then I can wear lots of different wigs.
• 22:35
  Oh. OK, and then Luke can be Fitz
• 22:39
  and John. Yeah, there we go.
• 22:42
  Why don't we all know each other at 14, for fuck's sake?
• 22:46
  Unless we found each other now, right?
• 22:49
  Well, Luke, I mean, I've got an inkling, but what did you think?
• 22:52
  I knew Andrew liked this book because every group chat for we
• 22:56
  have about like whatever book we're covering, three of us will
• 23:02
  say lots of things and one of us, he's a fucking snob.
• 23:05
  No, no, I'm I'm joking, but doesn't say much at all this
• 23:09
  time. You said something really
• 23:11
  positive about this book, like he couldn't hold it in.
• 23:13
  I'm like, oh, fucking Andrew loved this.
• 23:15
  Didn't. He it.
• 23:17
  Was nice to get confirmation from that.
• 23:20
  He is the powder is dry of us. Oh my God, I don't want to keep.
• 23:25
  Away in the group chat before we have these these chats.
• 23:28
  I mean, let's be honestly, it's great when he turns up on these
• 23:30
  calls and fucking hates it and flaws.
• 23:35
  He's got a sense of drama. We've done a few Justin Richards
• 23:40
  books now. I can think of at least two
• 23:43
  previous ones. I think we've done Grave Matter,
• 23:46
  I don't know, three Grave Matter, Shadow in the Glass with
• 23:49
  Stephen Cole, and Sands of Time. This is the best one that we're
• 23:54
  I've reread so far and I think it might be his like he's this
• 24:00
  might be his best book. I have not reread or read all of
• 24:03
  them, but so far this stands head and shoulders above all of
• 24:08
  them. As and you guys were saying from
• 24:11
  City of the Dead to now, it's like the best round of stories
• 24:13
  ever. No, you didn't get back far
• 24:16
  enough. For me, it's from Earth World to
• 24:18
  now, so that's even more. I don't think there's anything
• 24:22
  below A7, at least for me. And there's a freaking Dave
• 24:24
  Stone book in there and I liked it.
• 24:26
  All right, so. Yeah, you're mad.
• 24:28
  The Slow Empire is terrible. Oh my goodness.
• 24:32
  But this, this felt like, like a Michael Crichton thriller.
• 24:40
  We meaning like really good brainy, smart ideas, but you're
• 24:45
  on a roller coaster as you fight, as you're, you know,
• 24:48
  someone's telling you all these smart, amazing ideas whilst
• 24:53
  you're you're flying like a speeding bullet going down on a
• 24:56
  freaking roller coaster or something.
• 24:58
  And you're able to retain these amazing ideas while you're on on
• 25:04
  for the ride. Hell, Angie goes for a buddy few
• 25:06
  rides in this as well. The aeroplane and stuff.
• 25:12
  I don't know, I knew I'd like it because it's Justin Richards,
• 25:16
  but I absolutely loved it. It it ties things up nicely.
• 25:22
  I'm not as fresh on the previous two books, but it didn't matter.
• 25:27
  I felt like I was able to kind of pick it up and and follow
• 25:30
  what was going on. We'll get there, all right.
• 25:33
  Yeah, I'm all you know at some point.
• 25:36
  Oh, I'm very happy with that. So it's it's, it's all good.
• 25:39
  We're doing the dude against children next, I think.
• 25:42
  But yeah, I thought this was a great time.
• 25:48
  Yeah. I every now and again when doing
• 25:52
  these book clubs for either because it's absolutely great or
• 25:56
  because it's so terrible, I will ping a message to my Untitled
• 25:59
  Star Trek Co host, Nathan Bossumley in a really excitable
• 26:04
  way. I'm going to read out the
• 26:05
  message I sent. I was reading it at 4:00 in the
• 26:08
  morning and it's sort of like halfway through the day for him.
• 26:11
  And this is what I wrote to him. I was sort of like halfway
• 26:13
  through the climax when everything's going to hell.
• 26:16
  Let's put Christ this is good. One of the best Doctor Who books
• 26:20
  I've ever read since starting the book club.
• 26:22
  It had the excitement and brutality of Michael Crichton,
• 26:25
  mind bending science pin, sharp characterization of the
• 26:28
  regulars, massive twists and turns, and urgent and
• 26:31
  suspenseful prostyle and structure.
• 26:33
  It's counting down chapters to time 0.
• 26:36
  Just brilliant. Absolutely everything I want
• 26:39
  from a Doctor Who book. And it is true.
• 26:41
  Now I've got a feeling I know what your big sticking point is,
• 26:45
  John. I'll be really interested to
• 26:47
  explore it because I think it's a lot of people stick.
• 26:51
  Is it the science? No, I don't mind the science.
• 26:55
  It is complicated. But I have read, I have read A
• 26:58
  Brief History of Time and Carlo Ravelli stuff.
• 27:01
  So I don't understand it because no bugger does.
• 27:05
  But I can at least comprehend it.
• 27:07
  It's it's more a kind of a plot issue with me.
• 27:09
  That's all that is. Well, tell us, come on, let's
• 27:12
  let's get the bad out of the way first.
• 27:15
  The only thing is, and I know Andrew said Angie has a lot to
• 27:17
  do. Angie doesn't have anything to
• 27:21
  do that really effects a plot for my mind.
• 27:22
  And this it's she gets captured and escaped and that's all she
• 27:26
  does. She's stuck in the like, you
• 27:28
  know, the Doctor Who, the Ubliet, just like captured.
• 27:32
  Escape, capture, escape, get out, go back.
• 27:35
  Tied, tied to her, everyone. Loves.
• 27:40
  Yeah, that's it. She's blended.
• 27:43
  There's your bird. She checks her way out of that
• 27:47
  plane. I mean, she's just.
• 27:49
  Fabulous. That's that's just an escape.
• 27:51
  Well, yeah, it's cool escape, though it does make half of his
• 28:00
  men look bloody stupid because it go oh, I'll just hide behind
• 28:02
  this door on the plane. Oh, she's probably gone off.
• 28:05
  Let's go. What the hell?
• 28:07
  Come on, you're supposed to be efficient soldiers, and you are
• 28:10
  for the rest of this book. She did prefer parachute out of
• 28:14
  the plane though, to make it look like she'd left.
• 28:17
  True. Will you Will you meet is in the
• 28:19
  middle though, because I think if she's not affecting the plot
• 28:23
  a lot, her characterization in this.
• 28:26
  I was going to say her characterization is fantastic,
• 28:31
  which was what was frustrating about it because I wanted more
• 28:34
  of this Angie and I think we met you.
• 28:37
  I think it's in chapter 50, the one where she's she had foams
• 28:41
  days parents. I think that might be the best
• 28:44
  chapter Justin Richards ever wrote for Doctor Who.
• 28:48
  It's a gorgeous kind of exploration and brief
• 28:52
  exploration of grief and the different things around grief of
• 28:57
  how she can't really cope with either Fitz or Dave being
• 29:01
  absent. But more fits now, which really
• 29:04
  says so much about what a relationship this TARDIS crew
• 29:07
  has built. Up and seriously, go back and
• 29:09
  read Earth World, All right? You know, when Fitz was sort of
• 29:11
  going around going, oh, I'm the experienced time traveller and
• 29:14
  she's like, oh, he's so fucking annoying, Jesus Christ, they've
• 29:17
  come a long way in about 20. Books.
• 29:20
  Well, let me throw it to Andrew and Luke then.
• 29:23
  Angie Kapoor in this yay or nay I.
• 29:28
  Think it's amazing I was. Going to say 1000 times.
• 29:32
  Yay. I mean, I do, I do agree that
• 29:36
  she is a bit escape capture, but like, that's where all the drama
• 29:43
  comes from. Like it's so thrilling.
• 29:44
  Like he sets up all these little set pieces of Angie sort of, you
• 29:47
  know, she falls out of the plane, she gets lost in the
• 29:50
  snow. What else happens to her?
• 29:54
  Like there's just like thing after thing after thing and she
• 29:56
  has to kind of use her wits without the Doctor or Fitz being
• 29:59
  there to kind of navigate her way.
• 30:02
  And it's there, Andrew, when Hartford starts murdering
• 30:05
  everybody because he's convinced that she's been in this time
• 30:07
  machine that he's looking for because she's travelled through
• 30:10
  time. Yeah, so she comes up with a
• 30:12
  very clever solution to that to say, well, yes, I have travelled
• 30:15
  through time, but The Time Machine isn't here yet because
• 30:17
  it hasn't been built yet. I've come back from the future,
• 30:20
  which, you know, it's very, very smart, logical way to kind of
• 30:24
  get herself out of the situation and stop him killing people.
• 30:27
  So yeah, just just bloody love Angie.
• 30:31
  Luke. This isn't Angie who thinks her
• 30:35
  time with the Doctor and Fitz is over.
• 30:38
  So what I like about it is she doesn't know she's ever going to
• 30:41
  see either one of them again. And she does think Fitz is dead
• 30:45
  but because she's had all those experiences over the last like
• 30:49
  20 or so books plus one because for itself has happened.
• 30:53
  But she don't remember that she she's not just smart and really
• 30:59
  good at her job. She's now she's like really good
• 31:03
  at thinking on her feet, thinking fast, getting out of
• 31:07
  trouble in situations and stuff. And you know, escape catcher
• 31:11
  escape capture is all of Joe Grant's time in in the TARDIS
• 31:15
  and everyone loves her. So go away.
• 31:22
  I think she's great And she's she also manages to be quite
• 31:25
  human and and lovable while simultaneously being a an
• 31:30
  awesome smarmy bitch, which is what I like about her as well.
• 31:34
  Oh, that's the best thing about her.
• 31:36
  That's the mix about. Isn't she?
• 31:39
  Oh, yeah. But that's that's the perfect
• 31:40
  mix. Like, you know, you know, she's
• 31:42
  a genuinely good and nice and dependable person in there
• 31:47
  somewhere. You just got to get to nowhere
• 31:50
  and stuff. Otherwise, you, you and what?
• 31:54
  All right. What?
• 31:55
  I like her immediate reactions to tricks because that'll change
• 32:01
  over time to the point where he should she's saying the tricks.
• 32:04
  I bring his magazines from the future and I'll start making
• 32:08
  nest eggs for all of us, which is pretty cool.
• 32:11
  So they eventually will eventually become quite close
• 32:14
  friends, but her immediate reaction and compared to Fitz's
• 32:19
  reaction, which might have been mine of the cartoon eyes popping
• 32:23
  outgoing A Wooga, A Wooga, but. It's a very particular sort of
• 32:27
  bitchiness. Because it isn't jealousy,
• 32:29
  right? She's never jealous because she
• 32:31
  don't fancy Fitz and she don't fancy the Doctor.
• 32:33
  It's just like, you know, I'm the competent smart one in the
• 32:37
  TARDIS. All right, you.
• 32:39
  But also like she can see right through her.
• 32:43
  It's this trick tricks is Wiles don't work on Angie.
• 32:46
  Could she? She can see exactly what she's
• 32:48
  doing to to fit. And yeah, it's just very funny.
• 32:53
  Do. You know, I've often said I
• 32:55
  think that Angie. Sorry, Luke.
• 32:57
  Sorry, Marw. And chess club.
• 32:59
  Angie, is Tegan done Well, I don't think Tegan was well
• 33:03
  characterized on TV. And I complained in Arc of
• 33:05
  Infinity that she goes home. Yeah.
• 33:08
  And we don't deal with the death of Auntie Vanessa.
• 33:11
  We don't deal with any of that stuff.
• 33:12
  And then she steps back into the TARDIS and we never have a
• 33:15
  conversation about him leaving her at Heathrow Airport.
• 33:18
  And it's just terrible the way they characterize her.
• 33:21
  Whereas I love not only the bit where she phones up those
• 33:24
  parents, but there's a whole section where I'm going to sort
• 33:27
  of read it out, where she talks about her work, and her work was
• 33:30
  her life before it absolutely would.
• 33:33
  That was what her whole world was built around.
• 33:37
  And she returned home after years away.
• 33:39
  But everyone in her life thinks it's three weeks and she's just
• 33:42
  lost that, lost Dave. She barely knew these people
• 33:44
  anymore. So much had happened to her, so
• 33:46
  much had changed. She had changed so much and yet
• 33:49
  they were all exactly the same, exactly the same saying, shallow
• 33:53
  and pointless to her now. The work, the work that had been
• 33:56
  her life, her soul, her being was dot, dot, dot, just work.
• 34:02
  I just think that's a huge development of her character,
• 34:05
  that seeing all this stuff, people that say that she doesn't
• 34:07
  go on a journey, It's just nonsense.
• 34:10
  At the end of the book where she is reunited with Fits, Yeah, she
• 34:15
  throws her arms around him. And there's a wonderful bit
• 34:17
  where they think they're going to part company again before the
• 34:20
  universities have all shattered and they're outside the TARDIS
• 34:24
  and. And the description is that, you
• 34:26
  know, for once they weren't being sarcastic, and they were
• 34:29
  just so easy around each other because of the journey Colonia
• 34:32
  that they've gone on. This is really good, really
• 34:35
  mature development of these characters.
• 34:39
  Underrated, I think. I think that's part of this
• 34:43
  book. It's thematically, I think one
• 34:46
  of the strongest Doctor Who books there is.
• 34:48
  Because you know, this book depends a lot on the
• 34:51
  quantitative and particularly on Schrodinger's Cat or
• 34:54
  Schrodinger's Cat. And you've got so many
• 34:58
  characters, practically every character you can go they are
• 35:02
  one thing and the other at the same time.
• 35:04
  It's indeterminate and it's so beautifully done.
• 35:09
  And they and it's all about them deciding who they are in the
• 35:12
  end. So I thought from that point of
• 35:15
  view I would agree that I think in a lot of places apart from my
• 35:19
  1 issue that this is just in strongest book on that school.
• 35:25
  Well, I mean, there's so much happening in this book.
• 35:29
  How do we how do we split this up?
• 35:30
  Let's talk about Fitz and his expedition.
• 35:34
  And I'm going to go across to Andrew first because you've read
• 35:37
  the three previous. Yes.
• 35:39
  So that's set up previously. Yes, yes.
• 35:42
  So George Williamson. So he appears briefly in Camera
• 35:48
  Obscurer, but Fitz has been kind of feeling a bit adrift since
• 35:53
  History of 101, where he has his whole separate adventure, goes
• 35:57
  off without the doctor and Angie, and is feeling a bit sort
• 35:59
  of useless. Then he sort of latches on to
• 36:02
  George in Camera Obscurer and decides he's going to go off on
• 36:07
  this Arctic expedition with this, I guess.
• 36:12
  Is he a paleontologist? But so yeah.
• 36:16
  And then that's that's kind of where we start at the at the
• 36:20
  beginning of time zero that all this has happened and Fitz has
• 36:23
  decided that he's leaving the doctor on Angie.
• 36:26
  There's some sort of Angie has also decided that she's leaving
• 36:30
  and going back to to London in the 2020 first century because
• 36:36
  they've been both put through the absolute emotional ringer by
• 36:39
  the Doctor and Camera Obscura where he's not been letting them
• 36:43
  in on what's going on and he keeps almost dying.
• 36:46
  And they are just fucked up with it.
• 36:48
  And they care about the Doctor, but they're just not here for it
• 36:51
  anymore. And Fitz kind of feels like he
• 36:53
  wants to do something for himself.
• 36:55
  So yeah, it's a really interesting place to start the
• 36:58
  story that all three of our regulars are all kind of split
• 37:00
  off into their different storylines.
• 37:04
  I suppose that's that's the way this feels like a climax, right
• 37:07
  in that, yeah, it was like it is this team separating.
• 37:11
  The unusual thing is, by the end of the book, we're all back
• 37:13
  together again. Yeah, exactly.
• 37:15
  And that's what was really nice at the time, not knowing where
• 37:19
  this story was going to go. And they'd also stopped by this
• 37:22
  point saying which companions were in the books on the back of
• 37:25
  the books. I can't remember when they
• 37:27
  started doing that. But it meant that when you were
• 37:30
  reading the book blurbs for like months ahead, because they did
• 37:33
  release them like maybe about six months advance.
• 37:35
  And you didn't really know who was going to be in the book.
• 37:38
  So there was genuine peril about like, is Fitz actually going to
• 37:41
  survive this book? Is Angie going to come back with
• 37:44
  the Doctor at the end of this book?
• 37:45
  Like you didn't know. It was really exciting.
• 37:49
  And that whole like indeterminate state of Fitz
• 37:52
  throughout the the book. And the Doctor thinks that he's
• 37:54
  dead from the outset just generates so much tension.
• 37:59
  And like, reading this at the time and not knowing what was
• 38:01
  going to happen, it was so tense because Fitz is a character that
• 38:04
  we all really, really care about.
• 38:06
  And the the tragedy of him kind of deciding he's going to go off
• 38:11
  and do something for himself and that potentially being the end
• 38:14
  of him is, yeah, just a really good source of drama.
• 38:19
  Don't you think as well the the fact that it's dropped right at
• 38:22
  the start of the book in that really dark moment between the
• 38:25
  doctor and Angie? No, Fitz isn't going to make it.
• 38:28
  He's going to die. That's obviously why she's
• 38:29
  crying when she phones up days. But then so we're just waiting
• 38:32
  for that moment throughout the entire book and it's so fucking
• 38:36
  gruelling, that expedition. I think it's just horrible.
• 38:40
  I think if he knew what he was signing up for, maybe he would
• 38:43
  have thought twice. But you know, there's murders,
• 38:45
  there's bloody dinosaurs coming after him and all sorts.
• 38:49
  I. Remembered the dinosaurs, but I
• 38:50
  hadn't remembered the whole murder mystery part that that
• 38:53
  happens in Fitz's story. Which then ties into his
• 38:58
  friendship with George as well at the end.
• 38:59
  And yeah, it's just, it's all very clever how it's all
• 39:02
  interwoven and all comes to a head at the end of the book.
• 39:06
  Well, Luke Schrodinger's Fitz. I love it.
• 39:11
  You've also got like the Doctor knows he's going to die before
• 39:15
  he even reunites with Fitz in 2001 because of a book that he
• 39:20
  that Doctor buys. I think it's the 30s.
• 39:23
  I think it was. So he, he knows for like over 70
• 39:26
  years and then travelling with Fitz.
• 39:29
  This is this is how he's going to go.
• 39:34
  I don't mind that Fitz gets maybe the least amount of page
• 39:37
  time out of the three regulars because there's so many Fitz
• 39:40
  books with Fitz in it that it's it's absolutely fine and he gets
• 39:43
  some really awesome things to do.
• 39:45
  Plus the way I mean, I, I could understand that someone was like
• 39:50
  shredding his Fitz. That's fucking bullshit.
• 39:53
  That's really dumb. I have the opposite reaction to
• 39:57
  that of going, Oh my God, that is genius because he's been
• 40:01
  dropping seeds about you won't the doctor and I guess Justin
• 40:06
  won't shut up about Schrodinger's cat.
• 40:08
  The whole whole book shut this and it's just that weird random
• 40:12
  times just bringing it up. Schrodinger, Schrodinger,
• 40:15
  Schrodinger and everyone that's listening to him just wants him
• 40:18
  to shut up about Schrodinger already.
• 40:20
  And then then you know. But Fitz pops out.
• 40:25
  I wrote it when I first read this.
• 40:27
  That was quite interesting because I'd never heard of the
• 40:29
  idea of Schrodinger's cat. So I found that and as a way of
• 40:33
  introducing decisions, splitting off into different universes, I
• 40:38
  thought that was real clever. As for Fitz himself, it it's
• 40:43
  great. He's looking forward to this
• 40:44
  really fun, awesome adventure. It's fucking terrible.
• 40:48
  It gets framed for murder. They they find some kind of
• 40:52
  portal, which means like there's monsters coming through it
• 40:56
  that's picking them off 1 by 1 and and it's just like from one
• 41:04
  piece of shit terror to the other one to the next one.
• 41:08
  Kind of like Angie but completely different
• 41:10
  circumstances. Only we are all expecting fits
• 41:14
  to die. Can I make one complaint that's
• 41:19
  not about this book? I like that on the back of these
• 41:22
  EDA that they do that Mister Andrew about not saying things
• 41:25
  about the companions. Then why are they doing them
• 41:28
  with the PDAs? Why do they stop going?
• 41:32
  This book is set between this one and this one.
• 41:34
  Why? Why would you do that?
• 41:37
  Everyone who buys APDA knows that they're set between TV
• 41:41
  stories, so why did you stop freaking telling us that?
• 41:44
  Also, Big Finish, why did you stop?
• 41:47
  Everybody knows all of your output is set between two
• 41:50
  stories. Sorry, that's the only rant I
• 41:53
  have today everyone, because I love this book and yeah.
• 41:56
  I should put it in a siren or something to warn people you're
• 41:59
  about to go off. The grumpy signal what?
• 42:05
  Do you think as well, though, the whole Schrodinger's Fits
• 42:07
  thing is literally we're thinking throughout this entire
• 42:11
  book, is he going to die or not? So thematically, it's perfect
• 42:16
  for that, you know, and playing about with that, that like,
• 42:18
  yeah, he is. No, he isn't.
• 42:20
  He froze the grenade. Yeah, he's definitely dead.
• 42:23
  That whole cabin's gone in. And then that wonderful moment
• 42:26
  where he comes smashing out of the ice TARDIS.
• 42:29
  Oh fabulous. It's a great entrance, though,
• 42:32
  as well, which is why it works. It's, you know, it's a doctrine,
• 42:35
  Angie. They refuse to believe he's
• 42:37
  dead. It it's like what Russell's
• 42:39
  Davis brings into finales a couple of years later.
• 42:41
  It's an emotional resonance, glorious.
• 42:44
  And that hero moment. That's what adds the extra layer
• 42:47
  to this. Like it is suspenseful, it is
• 42:49
  full of action, it's full of clever ideas, it zips along.
• 42:54
  But it's got so much heart this book hasn't it?
• 42:56
  And I think that's what adds adds the substance to it.
• 43:01
  I agree. I think the heart needs a bit of
• 43:06
  darkness and a bit of evil mixed in with it just to make that
• 43:10
  make those kind of really heartfelt moments pop.
• 43:13
  So then you've got like pricks like Hartford, you know, you've
• 43:16
  got the you got, you got Sabbath popping up.
• 43:19
  You've got, you know, the the the evil dinosaur creature
• 43:24
  monster things and you've got all these, all these things are
• 43:29
  the black hole people that are just, Oh my God, how they
• 43:32
  describe him killing people and how he needs to kind of feed.
• 43:37
  It's awesome. But you need with your big ideas
• 43:42
  and your really bleak sections, you kind of need those sections.
• 43:45
  Those sections of like joy and heart just kind of pop out even
• 43:50
  better. Like, does that make sense?
• 43:52
  Absolutely it does. Yeah.
• 43:54
  Well, John, what about I think you said on the group chat about
• 43:58
  Hartford being the biggest bastard we've ever seen in
• 44:01
  Doctor Who? Oh.
• 44:02
  Geez, he's so ruthless. It's it's a scene you don't
• 44:06
  normally get something that someone as brutal as him in
• 44:10
  Doctor Who, you know, he's there, he wants to get his way.
• 44:13
  And he used to the scenes where they threaten to do something
• 44:18
  and he, he does. He shoots the guy, and then he
• 44:21
  doesn't stop there. You've got to start.
• 44:23
  Yeah, No, 30 seconds. Don't tell what I want.
• 44:25
  You're going as well. The fact he goes get and these
• 44:28
  are brutal deaths. I think what you said, because
• 44:30
  you've read parasite recently and this this is the violence
• 44:35
  and brutality that works because it's shocking.
• 44:37
  It's certain it's not wall. It doesn't want you to wallow in
• 44:40
  it. It wants you to just go, this is
• 44:42
  brutal. This is all this guy is
• 44:44
  horrible. And then you get, oh, he reads
• 44:47
  poetry in his spare time as well, so he's got the heart soul
• 44:50
  of a lovely, beautiful poet. Why?
• 44:53
  It's so swift. He shoots these people dead and
• 44:55
  then the plot just moves on straight away.
• 44:57
  Never mind. Well, they're gone.
• 44:59
  Let's go. It's sudden death.
• 45:01
  It's glorious. Yeah.
• 45:02
  Normally you set people up that you've known for ages in this
• 45:06
  and they get their deaths are moments.
• 45:10
  These are moments. They're just bang gone with the
• 45:13
  story. Yeah, I just quite like that.
• 45:15
  It meant that like, oh, we're not gonna have to worry about
• 45:17
  this character. Yeah.
• 45:19
  Like, because you know, there's like that that female scientist
• 45:22
  who's like the spy in the in the base.
• 45:28
  Like. She's kind of our viewpoint
• 45:30
  character earlier in the book, and I was like, I don't even
• 45:32
  remember this character and what goes on with that.
• 45:33
  Just no shot in the head gone. Did I misread it or was Hartford
• 45:39
  working for Control? He was, yes.
• 45:42
  Martin Daly's character, now, I've just read Trading Futures
• 45:44
  recently and he was in that as well.
• 45:46
  And I think I heard the Eurozone mentioned in this book as well,
• 45:49
  which is a big part of Trading Futures.
• 45:51
  So there's sort of a very minimal future history being
• 45:55
  built out of this range at this point.
• 45:58
  And controls been around for a while.
• 45:59
  He's in the first PDA ever, the Devil Goblins of Neptune so.
• 46:05
  And then he turns up again in the 5th Doctor of PDA, The King
• 46:09
  of Terror by Keith Topping. Sorry about that.
• 46:13
  I think that was one of the ones I got for you on it.
• 46:16
  Oh dear, I'm sorry. I apologize.
• 46:20
  I like you. Really it?
• 46:25
  Pops up at least twice. There might be a third time, but
• 46:29
  at least twice in the EDAS. Think you've just mentioned both
• 46:32
  of them. I can't think of any others, but
• 46:34
  I like him. He's kind of the leader of
• 46:38
  America's own answer to it to, to unit like that, you know,
• 46:43
  because they want to do their own separate shit, even though
• 46:46
  they will also want to be in the United Nations.
• 46:47
  You know, the cake and eat it too and all that stuff.
• 46:51
  And yeah, I I thought going back into this, that he'd be a bigger
• 46:56
  part of the book, but he's not, and I'm OK with that.
• 47:00
  I like that. It's just like a cameo.
• 47:03
  And yeah, it's nice. To be there, don't you?
• 47:06
  Yeah, that makes sense with an established character.
• 47:09
  With Hartford, one thing I thought was amazing was his exit
• 47:13
  from the book where he says is, is there a time machine here?
• 47:18
  The doctor goes, yeah, yeah, there is.
• 47:20
  And will you stop it? Yeah, I will.
• 47:22
  And he goes, right, fine. And then he he, because his
• 47:24
  job's going to be done, he goes off and sacrifices himself in
• 47:28
  like a moment of heroism after being a total bastard throughout
• 47:32
  the whole thing. So it's being a professional
• 47:34
  soldier, isn't it? It's it's, you know what
• 47:37
  situation is you read it and you act on it.
• 47:40
  Well, the guy why, when a guy mentions that he's retired and
• 47:43
  he's gone back to on duty and then he wants to go back to
• 47:46
  retirement, that's a death sentence right there.
• 47:49
  And I knew he was going to cuck it.
• 47:52
  It's like that cop thing with like, I'm three days away from
• 47:55
  retirement. I'm like, oh, well, unless
• 47:57
  you're Robert Devalom falling down, you're you're going to
• 47:59
  die. So.
• 48:01
  Yeah, he strives me as like the most vicious henchman we've seen
• 48:04
  since, like, maybe Scorby in Seeds of Doom is that same sort
• 48:08
  of sort of swift and brutal violence.
• 48:12
  Or that dude in Ambassadors of Death or something like that,
• 48:15
  you know? Yeah.
• 48:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Andrew, please tell me about O
• 48:20
  regions and the light that travels slowly.
• 48:25
  God, that's awesome. Are you expecting me to give you
• 48:28
  a science lesson? Well.
• 48:30
  Just. Sort.
• 48:31
  Of paraphrasing. It's it's an A level physics
• 48:34
  exam all right. Yeah, like you were saying
• 48:38
  earlier, I think I was the same. And that like a lot of the
• 48:41
  scientific concepts in this book were new to me when I read them
• 48:45
  as a teenager. And then I could impress all my
• 48:47
  friends by knowing what Schroedinger's cat was and a
• 48:49
  little bit of quantum theory. But I feel like he does a good
• 48:52
  job of sort of it's it's, I think I like Doctor Who where
• 48:58
  it's based in real science. I mean, obviously this book is
• 49:01
  ludicrous. You've got like a man who's also
• 49:04
  a black hole walking around. Ludicrous stroke.
• 49:08
  Amazing. Yeah.
• 49:12
  It's like it's taken real science and then created like a
• 49:15
  sci-fi cool visual with it. And I think I like that and I
• 49:19
  like, you know, rather than the the way that the series has has
• 49:24
  gone recently where it's just like, it's just whatever the
• 49:27
  fuck I say it is this week. And you know, oh, it's magic.
• 49:30
  It's a God. It's like you're getting to the
• 49:32
  same ends, which is like you have some fantastical events
• 49:35
  happening. But I prefer it when it's
• 49:37
  grounded in some real science. And it's nice to kind of use
• 49:41
  that as a as a springboard to to tell these stories and like take
• 49:48
  those. Interesting ideas that are
• 49:51
  probably a New Scientist or in a brief history of time and kind
• 49:54
  of extrapolate a Doctor Who story from them.
• 49:58
  Yeah. And I mean, I don't know if that
• 50:00
  O Regis stuff is is real science or not, if that was just for the
• 50:05
  book, but it's the stuff about like light travelling at
• 50:07
  different speeds because of gravity or something, I don't
• 50:13
  know. Well, it's coming.
• 50:14
  It's coming because he's turning into a black hole, right?
• 50:16
  So it's sucking in light from other universes or other
• 50:20
  galaxies. Yeah, and the light moves
• 50:22
  slower, so it affects time or something.
• 50:28
  And that's why we're able to trap fits indeterminately in
• 50:34
  that ice TARDIS, which is a representation of the collapsing
• 50:37
  multiverses. Am I making any sense?
• 50:39
  Yes, and also trapped in the ice is then released and becomes the
• 50:45
  fire from the burning. Yes, Oh my God.
• 50:49
  I mean. Dude that was so cool.
• 50:51
  Don't you think as well because because it was sort of annoying
• 50:54
  in the burning that it was left so ambiguous at the end.
• 50:56
  What the hell was that, You know?
• 50:58
  So to have to go from the burning to time zero, that is
• 51:01
  just one sort of circular story there.
• 51:04
  That's really neat. That's so Justin Richards.
• 51:08
  Yeah, it's very clever and really satisfying.
• 51:11
  And yeah, one of those things where you're pulling together
• 51:13
  the threads of the book and making it feel like it was
• 51:16
  always planned that way when it probably was.
• 51:17
  Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if, Oh
• 51:20
  yeah, Gordon riot, Yeah. I think the science things is is
• 51:26
  like it's popcorn science. So it's easy to kind of get your
• 51:30
  head around, but it's not so detailed that your head
• 51:34
  explodes. It's also, whilst educating you,
• 51:38
  it's also complete bullshit, which is another thing that I
• 51:41
  really like about it. So Schrodinger's cat, Yep, I can
• 51:45
  get all right. Yep, I know, I know what we're
• 51:47
  doing doing here. Cool walking, black holes and
• 51:52
  all this other stuff. Absolute rubbish, but fucking
• 51:57
  awesome. Like like most doctors do.
• 51:59
  Ideas and science. Yeah, these are regions aren't
• 52:03
  they? Pieces or areas of space that no
• 52:05
  other sunlight has ever touched before?
• 52:08
  Or not, or very rarely, so the light from.
• 52:12
  There the universe, aren't they? Yeah, so the light from those
• 52:16
  regions move slower to everywhere else in the in the in
• 52:19
  the universe or something. A freaking it melted my brain in
• 52:24
  in in the really cool way and. There is like a moment, isn't
• 52:28
  it, where it's almost like it's not like a science lecture
• 52:31
  because there's two people having a conversation and
• 52:33
  wonderfully, one of the SAS people goes, is any of this
• 52:36
  relevant? I thought, yeah, well done.
• 52:39
  I don't think it disrupts the pace though.
• 52:41
  Like like the pace is so furious in that second-half.
• 52:45
  I, I just, I thought it was sort of, it added some, some
• 52:48
  scientific depth to it, but it wasn't an issue.
• 52:53
  But I have read other people that have read this who said
• 52:56
  that was it. They felt that they were getting
• 52:57
  a bit of a lecture. Yeah, I, I just treat it as much
• 53:01
  as the kind of technical you get in Star Trek.
• 53:03
  Does it make sense for the plot? Does it with plot?
• 53:06
  Yes, it does. I'm fine.
• 53:07
  I said they make jokes, but they get cool imagery out of it.
• 53:10
  I can cut. I can understand what it does in
• 53:14
  relation to this book. I'm fine with that.
• 53:16
  If it means that people are being sucked off by a walking
• 53:19
  black hole when the bounce. But enough about last Wednesday
• 53:24
  night. Oh, yeah, sorry.
• 53:27
  Sure. Oh, no.
• 53:29
  What about the doctor's misadventures then, after the
• 53:32
  auction house in the past, agonising over whether to pick
• 53:36
  up this journal? Chasing after the Grand Duchess
• 53:41
  in taxis, Andrew. It's it's all a bit timey wimey
• 53:45
  Season series 6, series 5, series 6 Moffaty isn't it?
• 53:49
  But kind of much less annoying. I wonder if you read this book?
• 53:56
  Oh hey, you read it the journal. The journal is river songs book
• 54:01
  from because it it does exactly the same thing in the plot,
• 54:04
  doesn't it? In what's that episode called,
• 54:07
  Angel Takes Manhattan that book. Yeah, yeah.
• 54:13
  The Doctor. So yeah, he's flitting about in
• 54:15
  the narrative and we we're not entirely sure like what order
• 54:20
  events are happening in. And it's as you read more of the
• 54:23
  book, you understand that it is non chronological and a very
• 54:26
  important event earlier in the book where he goes back to visit
• 54:30
  fits doesn't happen from the Doctor's perspective until later
• 54:33
  in our book. So it's, yeah, it's all very
• 54:36
  clever and very intricately plotted and reminded me of The
• 54:39
  Sands of Time and the way that he did that in that book as
• 54:41
  well. So you've got kind of like fits
• 54:44
  and Andy's stories, like happening in parallel, but then
• 54:47
  the Doctor sort of like is nipping around the narrative a
• 54:51
  little bit, which is great. And the Doctor is also
• 54:55
  characterized here. He's that kind of sarky bastard
• 54:59
  8th Doctor that works really well, but he's just got like
• 55:04
  this verve and confidence, which is kind of new woke from reading
• 55:08
  them in order. Like he he's kind of going
• 55:12
  through the wringer in the last couple of books because he's
• 55:14
  lost his heart, which happens back in adventures of Henrietta
• 55:20
  St. and kind of culminates in camera obscure And like he is
• 55:25
  like camera obscure. I think is maybe my favorite
• 55:28
  characterization of the 8th Doctor in these books in that
• 55:31
  he's just like he's the absolute like Sarkiest wind up merchant
• 55:37
  and he's such a prick to Sabbath in that book and it's great.
• 55:40
  But he's also really frail and fragile in that book and almost
• 55:43
  dies about five times. So to see him back at like full
• 55:47
  speed Doctor in this book, even though Angie and Fitz have
• 55:50
  deserted him like it's, it's really nice to kind of get to
• 55:53
  that point with the 8th Doctor that it's kind of a bit
• 55:55
  triumphant again. And you also get the really
• 55:59
  important moment, which I, I would have missed if I hadn't
• 56:02
  read the other two books before. But you get confirmation that
• 56:06
  the doctor's heart is back. He's got 2 hearts again because
• 56:10
  you, you find out at the end of camera Obscura that he's
• 56:13
  regrowing his heart. But there's a bit in this book,
• 56:16
  which is quite subtle and they don't really signpost that much,
• 56:18
  but it's where the soldiers are like checking him out when he's
• 56:21
  passed out and they hear the double heartbeat.
• 56:24
  So you get that like, ah, the the heart is back.
• 56:27
  And in these books, like that heart is also integral to like
• 56:31
  time travel and being a Time Lord.
• 56:34
  And so yeah, like it's it's like a little bit of a one up on
• 56:37
  Sabbath, which this book is kind of leading up to in the end with
• 56:42
  the doctor being right and Sabbath being wrong or the other
• 56:44
  way around. Who knows where's the art going
• 56:46
  to go? So yeah, a really strong doctor
• 56:49
  book. And it's another one where I
• 56:52
  would love to hear Paul McGann say these words like get him to
• 56:55
  do the audio book. It would be great.
• 56:58
  John, what did you think of his, you know, misadventures, the
• 57:00
  sort of comedy Bargain Hunt when he was offering 50 grand of
• 57:04
  somebody else's money? I'm right with Android.
• 57:09
  It's exactly the way to use the Doctor in a good book, because
• 57:11
  this is a it. The characterisation is
• 57:14
  brilliant. It's a plot book as much as
• 57:16
  anything, and it's what you do to the Doctor to keep that plot
• 57:20
  moving. It's kind of paced with
• 57:23
  Revelations and yeah, there's bits where maybe he doesn't
• 57:27
  reveal a bit where, you know, you go, why aren't you doing
• 57:31
  this? Because just because to keep the
• 57:34
  suspense going for the writer. So in places, yes, he's a plot
• 57:39
  device, but he's a such an entertaining plot device.
• 57:42
  You know, it's the way he knows what's up.
• 57:45
  Something's up with tricks from the start.
• 57:48
  So the grand. Duchess goes.
• 57:50
  Yeah, I've always wanted to say this.
• 57:52
  Follow that taxi. Taxi.
• 57:54
  Yeah, he's having the best time doing this.
• 57:57
  It's fabulous. It's again, I think he's what
• 58:01
  gives this book a kind of sense of fun, which might otherwise be
• 58:06
  a really grim and almost new adventures read.
• 58:10
  Although there's some dark moments, there's a moment where
• 58:12
  that moment where he goes back to see Fitz and Fitz goes, Oh
• 58:15
  well, I'll tell them what's going to happen.
• 58:17
  And he just flashes like dark eyes and goes, but you dare like
• 58:22
  really serious. I love that that came in from
• 58:26
  the burning onwards, that that sort of sudden anger that he can
• 58:29
  have or that viciousness that he can have that wasn't really
• 58:33
  there in the first half of the 8th Doctor books when they were
• 58:35
  doing that cuddly TV. He's kind of puppy dog, isn't
• 58:38
  he, for that first half of the thing, and then this one adds
• 58:41
  that steel there which lightly makes him sing as a doctor.
• 58:44
  That's sort of unpredictable nature.
• 58:46
  I think the doctor should occasionally make you go.
• 58:49
  Yeah, and it's like, Andrew, you can really see Paul McGann doing
• 58:52
  that, and he would kill it. Luke, did you like the, you
• 58:57
  know, the Doctor and Sabbath sort of theories of how the
• 59:01
  universe works at the end of, you know, I think it works this
• 59:05
  way. Well, I think it works that way.
• 59:06
  No, no, no, no. Yeah, I think it's great because
• 59:11
  it's all leading up to setting up the next story arc.
• 59:14
  And is this the first book you get an indication that Sabbath's
• 59:16
  actually working for others? Is this is that from here from
• 59:19
  the previous two books, Andrew? I think there might be hints of
• 59:25
  it in Camera Obscura, but. An acrophobia.
• 59:28
  The last scene in an acrophobia, he says.
• 59:30
  My employers wanted rid of somebody in the time vortex.
• 59:34
  All right, so we get we get more of that.
• 59:37
  Yeah, I like it. He's see the doctor's the
• 59:39
  smartest person in the room. Rich womb.
• 59:43
  Well, all of them. So, you know, he's got tricks,
• 59:47
  Peg, You're not the, you know, the, you're not the descendant
• 59:50
  of the Lassar. He's got, even though Sabbath is
• 59:54
  a big bloke and he's in a smaller man's body.
• 59:57
  I like that disguise, by the way.
• 59:58
  That's so cool. Very slow.
• 1:00:00
  Wasn't it? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:03
  Russell's right. There, come on.
• 1:00:06
  I've read all of these, haven't I?
• 1:00:08
  He's got he's got Sabbath pegged.
• 1:00:11
  He has his suspicions as soon as he sees the first, like black
• 1:00:15
  Pebble on the ground, what might be happening and what's going
• 1:00:19
  on. He he knows that Fitz is
• 1:00:22
  probably going to die, but doesn't stop it from happening
• 1:00:26
  and still manages to kind of have this kind of fun buoyancy
• 1:00:31
  about him. But yeah, the difference is in
• 1:00:33
  in time. Sabbath wants one timeline, just
• 1:00:36
  one. That's it.
• 1:00:39
  You know, everything else is just chaotic, too confusing.
• 1:00:42
  It's a fucking mess. And the doctor says it's, it's
• 1:00:46
  not as easy as that. The universe is like, like
• 1:00:50
  nature, you know, it's it just, it's, it's, it's everywhere.
• 1:00:53
  It just grows in unpredictable in different ways.
• 1:00:56
  And you can't, you can't, you know, you can't just cancel all
• 1:01:01
  that. But they also have an argument
• 1:01:02
  about time travel and how you changed history and things like
• 1:01:08
  that. So, you know, how is it?
• 1:01:10
  Is it the same past or future that you go into when you're
• 1:01:14
  travelling through time, Doctor? And he goes, yeah, it is
• 1:01:17
  because. And how do you, how do you know
• 1:01:19
  that? And this, this human Sabbath,
• 1:01:21
  having this debate about what it means to go back in time and to
• 1:01:26
  change things or to interfere and things like that.
• 1:01:29
  I just, I found it fascinating. I thought that's the making of a
• 1:01:33
  really good time travelling villain without it being it's
• 1:01:39
  the master again, you know what I mean?
• 1:01:42
  Or it's the monk though, you know, he's got a different kind
• 1:01:47
  of way of operating and it's just totally different aims and
• 1:01:51
  things like that. So it's it's nice to have a
• 1:01:55
  villain in or ongoing villain in your book that does travel in
• 1:02:00
  time as well, but you don't go, oh God, all right, he's just the
• 1:02:04
  master again or something like that.
• 1:02:06
  He's he's something completely different than you.
• 1:02:08
  They do fall into that trap occasionally, I think.
• 1:02:11
  I think Sabbath is actually a bit more interested than that.
• 1:02:14
  More often than not. I think they they get him right.
• 1:02:18
  There's a couple of books like The Infinity Race where he is
• 1:02:21
  just so, haha. It was me all along, you know.
• 1:02:24
  You guys are making me want to reread that now, by the way.
• 1:02:28
  But on the list. Although the Doctor's reaction
• 1:02:32
  when he finds out how Sabbath sees, you know, he thinks that
• 1:02:34
  every time the TARDIS lands that the universe splits off, you
• 1:02:38
  know, and he goes, you're, you're so fucking arrogant.
• 1:02:40
  So I'm paraphrasing, you're so arrogant.
• 1:02:43
  He goes, you know what, what the hell are you trying to do?
• 1:02:45
  You know, rewrite history to your design.
• 1:02:48
  You know, who the hell gives you the right?
• 1:02:50
  I think they're seem sort of sizzled in that climax.
• 1:02:53
  Although my favorite Doctor moment in the whole book, and
• 1:02:56
  I'll just read it very quickly. It's when Harford kills more
• 1:02:58
  people and he's just so angry about it, he goes, That was a
• 1:03:02
  destructive act, pure and simple.
• 1:03:04
  There's nothing creative about killing.
• 1:03:07
  Nothing can be made of it. You do it so easily.
• 1:03:10
  Have you ever thought about how much harder it is to preserve
• 1:03:12
  and save lives? How much more of a challenge
• 1:03:15
  that is? I love this sort of fierce 8th
• 1:03:18
  Doctor. He's so great.
• 1:03:21
  I also like he's the only one to figure out that there's English
• 1:03:25
  soldiers out in the snow. So he's talking to Angie and I
• 1:03:30
  think one other character, it might be Williams, the ghost of
• 1:03:33
  Williams or whatever. And he's saying all this kind of
• 1:03:36
  stuff and they're like, and Angie's like, what?
• 1:03:40
  I'm not talking to you. And he's just giving away true
• 1:03:43
  positions and things like that to the English soldiers.
• 1:03:46
  So they that they say they know where all they are and they know
• 1:03:51
  that he's talk, that the doctor's talking about them.
• 1:03:53
  And then they're just like, what a sly bastard this guy is.
• 1:03:57
  How do you figure that out? Because he's seen the tiny
• 1:04:01
  little cameras. You love the bit as well when
• 1:04:03
  Angie realises he goes, you know?
• 1:04:05
  Yeah, we know you've been travelling through time.
• 1:04:07
  That's how we know there's. She just laughs her head off
• 1:04:09
  because she knows I've been dragged out here for nothing,
• 1:04:12
  for God's sakes. And the the Doctor's been like a
• 1:04:15
  step behind Sabbath throughout the whole arc since adventurous
• 1:04:21
  of Henrietta Street, where he keeps turning up in adventures
• 1:04:24
  thinking he's doing what he wants to do, but actually he's
• 1:04:27
  been manipulated into Sabbath into doing exactly what Sabbath
• 1:04:30
  wanted him to do. And that all kind of like plays
• 1:04:33
  out in in History 101 where it's all because Sabbath had like.
• 1:04:42
  Cafe scene. Isn't it wonderful?
• 1:04:44
  Oh, my dear fellow. Hello.
• 1:04:46
  Yes, it was all me. Yeah, but so to see the Doctor
• 1:04:51
  back in control and always to be one step ahead of everyone else
• 1:04:55
  in the book throughout the whole book, yeah, it's a really nice
• 1:04:58
  culmination to the Ark to see him back as like in control of
• 1:05:03
  the situation. We thought we needed that at
• 1:05:04
  this point, didn't we? Yeah.
• 1:05:07
  Beyond the back. Well, can I ask all of you
• 1:05:08
  gentlemen please to identify your all time favorite moment?
• 1:05:13
  Oh, sorry, John, you're right there.
• 1:05:15
  Your all time favorite moment in time Zero.
• 1:05:18
  And why is Angie in the plane facing the mountains?
• 1:05:22
  No, no, no, sorry. What's your what's your
• 1:05:24
  favorite? Moment I think you need to start
• 1:05:26
  by talking about Angie in the plane.
• 1:05:28
  Actually, I've got a different moment I want to choose,
• 1:05:30
  although that is one of my favourite.
• 1:05:32
  I I vividly remember reading this book at the time and that
• 1:05:36
  chapter on the edge of the Oh my God, like not realizing that a
• 1:05:41
  book could make me this excited. It was so ridiculously exciting.
• 1:05:45
  But no. Your favorite moment, Luke?
• 1:05:50
  I'm basic bitch. It's shredding his fits, popping
• 1:05:54
  out of the ice TARDIS It was. It was ridiculous.
• 1:05:59
  Awesome in a way only Doctor Who can do.
• 1:06:02
  Why not believing that he was really gone?
• 1:06:05
  It saved Fitz's life. Because if they had believed he
• 1:06:08
  was gone, he wouldn't have been in the bloody ice TARDIS.
• 1:06:12
  So because they did believe he's in there and he bursts out of it
• 1:06:17
  and it's awesome. Yeah, that's.
• 1:06:21
  Yep. Is this my favorite part?
• 1:06:23
  That's the universe word I like. Can we wear things into
• 1:06:25
  existence? I will the 8th Doctor, Fitz and
• 1:06:27
  Angie to have a. Daleks.
• 1:06:29
  Master. Plan.
• 1:06:33
  And Andrew's version of the 8th Doctor arc trapped on Earth to
• 1:06:36
  exist now with Disney money. John, the other part of the
• 1:06:40
  water menace. Well, apart from chapter 50,
• 1:06:44
  which I said is just an extraordinary bit of writing.
• 1:06:48
  Just to hear a moment, I just absolutely fucking loved it when
• 1:06:51
  Curtis just goes with the first time you get him with the black
• 1:06:54
  hole thing and he's wandering around with the black hole
• 1:06:57
  brand. I completely forgotten this from
• 1:07:00
  the first time round. I was just like, yes, this is
• 1:07:04
  good. This is what I want in my dark
• 1:07:06
  room, big dark, taking huge swings.
• 1:07:09
  And I do think this but really does work towards the end.
• 1:07:12
  But so you know, it's it's just like he set so much up to the
• 1:07:16
  book and just setting the fireworks off at the end indoor
• 1:07:20
  set in black hole. Did you like it when the dog got
• 1:07:24
  killed on the Blue Peter set? I mean, Jesus.
• 1:07:27
  Oh. My.
• 1:07:27
  God, what a oh. Andrew is shaking his head.
• 1:07:33
  Killing dogs? Yeah.
• 1:07:34
  Well, yes, yes. Yeah.
• 1:07:36
  Poor floppy. I mean, it's a great first line
• 1:07:39
  though, right? It's one of the things you
• 1:07:42
  shouldn't laugh that that you do.
• 1:07:44
  How did the line go again? We can all remember everyone in.
• 1:07:49
  Britain. Everyone in Britain.
• 1:07:50
  Yeah, Yeah, everyone in Britain. Remember when he died?
• 1:07:57
  No, OK, no. I mean, I don't really like
• 1:07:59
  animals. In a book, I can handle it.
• 1:08:01
  On TVI can't at all. What was your favorite moment?
• 1:08:06
  I think we've already spoken about the bit with Fitz and
• 1:08:09
  Angie where they when they're back together at the end and
• 1:08:13
  it's that the kind of than no bullshit between them anymore
• 1:08:17
  and they're just like super happy to see each other.
• 1:08:19
  That is lovely. But because we've already talked
• 1:08:21
  about it, I'm going to talk about another moment, which is
• 1:08:23
  just the the bromance between George and Fitz and like the
• 1:08:29
  new. Bastard, this is my man.
• 1:08:31
  Well, no, you, you talk about it.
• 1:08:32
  No, no, no, no. No, it's still yours.
• 1:08:35
  You go. It's just really sweet.
• 1:08:38
  Where again, like Fitz has like latched himself onto another
• 1:08:43
  excitable puppy of a man who is very knowledgeable about a
• 1:08:48
  particular area of so he's found himself another doctor to latch
• 1:08:52
  onto. And then their friendship sort
• 1:08:56
  of goes through the ringer with Fitz being accused of murder.
• 1:08:58
  And then eventually you kind of in a very, it was a very Agatha
• 1:09:03
  Christie like revelation that the murderer is George and that
• 1:09:08
  there's a logical reason you could have worked it out.
• 1:09:09
  If you're paying enough attention to the scene where it
• 1:09:11
  happens that George was the murderer because of where people
• 1:09:14
  were at the time. The the, the Fitz walks in on
• 1:09:19
  the murder scene. So yeah, they had they had this
• 1:09:23
  falling out and then like Georges end where he like
• 1:09:27
  confesses and like you find out what really happened and then he
• 1:09:29
  tells Fitz like what a wonderful guy he is and.
• 1:09:33
  I'll read it because I've got the line.
• 1:09:35
  Here. Yeah, I feel like Luke could
• 1:09:37
  have written this. That you're a decent, honest
• 1:09:41
  person, that you'd do anything to help if you thought it was
• 1:09:44
  for the best and never hurt anyone.
• 1:09:46
  That you'd go to Siberia on a whim just because someone
• 1:09:49
  respected asked someone you respected asked you.
• 1:09:52
  That you're dependable and brave and the best friend a man could
• 1:09:56
  have. I don't cry at books.
• 1:09:58
  I cried when I was reading that. That's so touching.
• 1:10:01
  That's our fits right there. Yeah, there's the real bromance.
• 1:10:08
  So have you written Fitz and and Dave O ban picking?
• 1:10:14
  When can we read it? Ends up on a teaspoon of open
• 1:10:21
  mind. I know what your content is
• 1:10:22
  going to be. All right?
• 1:10:23
  Obviously, now I've got to choose a different moment.
• 1:10:28
  Now I know you've chosen all my favourites.
• 1:10:32
  I mean I will say I was howling with laughter during the 1
• 1:10:36
  chapter. Andrew, what you said we've got
• 1:10:39
  so scooby-doo. Everyone was being unveiled.
• 1:10:42
  It was like I'm not the docious, I'm Drakes, I'm not holiday, I'm
• 1:10:47
  suburb. Everyone's tearing off miles and
• 1:10:50
  right and centre. I was like OK, this is brutal
• 1:10:52
  and it is kind of scary with the black hole killing people, but
• 1:10:56
  actually it is really ridiculous as well.
• 1:10:59
  Which Doctor Who should be right?
• 1:11:01
  It's silly and fun as well, yeah.
• 1:11:03
  I I completely forgotten holiday was Sabbath and I'm going oh for
• 1:11:07
  fuck's sake, I should have remembered.
• 1:11:09
  That realised like just before it happened I was like, Oh yeah,
• 1:11:12
  he's called Holiday and I messaged you when we were
• 1:11:16
  reading History 101 to be like, oh, his agent is called another
• 1:11:19
  day of the week like I'd and then I've read the whole of this
• 1:11:22
  fucking book with a character called Holiday and Sabbath yes
• 1:11:26
  and like the oh. Me right now, after I who has
• 1:11:31
  spoiled books that you have haven't even read and you
• 1:11:33
  remember those twists. Not only have you read I hope
• 1:11:36
  three you've read this before. I just didn't remember that he
• 1:11:42
  was like a secret. Oh, I love the fact that you
• 1:11:46
  well, you mean you guessed, but you were still surprised.
• 1:11:49
  Yeah, well, it is over 20 years since I read this talk.
• 1:11:53
  What do you guys think of how Justin structures this with the
• 1:11:58
  counting down chapters and the fact that there are three or
• 1:12:04
  four? Well, let's say the three
• 1:12:06
  because it's the three regulars all doing different things, but
• 1:12:09
  in short, sort of two to three page chapters and then we skip
• 1:12:14
  to the next one and the next one and the next one, sort of
• 1:12:17
  counting down to time 0. Did you like that approach,
• 1:12:20
  John? Yeah, it's, it's like Luke said
• 1:12:23
  it, it does move like a Michael Crichton book.
• 1:12:25
  It's a, it's a big reason is you are counting down to something.
• 1:12:30
  There is a it's automatically attention there.
• 1:12:33
  You know where the big event in the book is going to be.
• 1:12:37
  I do want this tireless crew together as much as possible
• 1:12:40
  because they are so good together.
• 1:12:43
  I could kind of live with it because they do get bits and
• 1:12:46
  pieces here and there together. They're not separated for that
• 1:12:49
  long. I mean and and they always.
• 1:12:51
  Lately, John and they they in this run up to times they do get
• 1:12:55
  a lot of time together like in. Variables.
• 1:12:59
  So, yeah, I mean, this is obviously reading it on its own,
• 1:13:02
  which I haven't read it for you 23 years now.
• 1:13:06
  Is it? And then so we didn't have the
• 1:13:08
  context for it, but I think you you come together to start and
• 1:13:12
  they, it's this TARDIS team is splitting up.
• 1:13:14
  And I was like, I couldn't remember why but.
• 1:13:17
  They just had enough of each other, you know?
• 1:13:18
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. One day somebody will make the
• 1:13:22
  call on the club. You know we've had enough of you
• 1:13:25
  now, right? We're done.
• 1:13:27
  Fuck it, I'm going to Siberia are.
• 1:13:32
  You going to work in Canary Warf Andrew?
• 1:13:35
  I don't think the financial sector would have me.
• 1:13:39
  Good luck. Andrew, I hope you face
• 1:13:41
  dinosaurs, people being pegged into the ground, you know?
• 1:13:48
  Yeah, it's it's it's fun. It moves so quickly is the
• 1:13:52
  thing. And before I did say about that
• 1:13:55
  Angie plot line as looks, it's what gives the book its pace.
• 1:13:59
  And it's because even if he's not getting up too much, it
• 1:14:02
  feels like things are happening anyway.
• 1:14:05
  So yeah, the structure of it, Justin is probably one of the
• 1:14:11
  smartest writers of random structure.
• 1:14:12
  I mean, I remember talking to Nick Walters, you know, who
• 1:14:18
  wrote Fear Itself, and he said Justin is absolutely perfect on
• 1:14:23
  structure. He is as good an editor as you
• 1:14:26
  want on that front. And yeah, he is the only kind of
• 1:14:30
  guy who tries to do something with this kind of time you want
• 1:14:33
  me structure plus the science concept, which might be ever
• 1:14:36
  going. But it's always clear.
• 1:14:38
  It's always good kind of clear story.
• 1:14:41
  It's not going to be the kind of, you know, Lawrence Miles or
• 1:14:45
  Corner who you are, who are going to make some poetry, who
• 1:14:47
  who you're going to remember everything by.
• 1:14:49
  I don't think it was interesting that Lawrence was involved in
• 1:14:53
  the plotting of this. He was.
• 1:14:56
  It's in the acknowledgments at the back because Lawrence
• 1:15:00
  normally doesn't play well with others.
• 1:15:02
  Obviously he hated the answer itself because no one asked him.
• 1:15:05
  But it is complicated, isn't it? It's very hard to be clear and
• 1:15:09
  complicated and I was never lost reading this.
• 1:15:12
  No, it's there's so much going on.
• 1:15:14
  There's so many arc stories. And you know, even with the fact
• 1:15:17
  I hadn't read the books behind his arc in most of them in 20
• 1:15:21
  years, I always knew what was going on.
• 1:15:24
  I was, yeah, you're never, ever lost.
• 1:15:28
  Which is a hell of a skill. It's it's it's like a Taran
• 1:15:30
  stick skill. I just love those tiny little
• 1:15:33
  bursts that you get of, of each plot and then you know, the way
• 1:15:36
  it is, sort of you get a moment of suspense and then it cuts to
• 1:15:39
  the next one, a moment of suspense.
• 1:15:41
  So you're just 'cause I just wanted to keep reading.
• 1:15:43
  I just didn't want to stop a page Turner.
• 1:15:47
  I think that's what I'm trying to say.
• 1:15:49
  Luke, did you like the structure of this?
• 1:15:51
  I did look I like to read but I also have ADHD and one of the
• 1:15:59
  things that can annoy me is really long chapters and Justin
• 1:16:04
  Richards in previous books, whilst having really fun pacey
• 1:16:08
  reads also has a history of long fucking chapters.
• 1:16:14
  In fact I'm reading Terminus but Stephen Gallagher and it's got
• 1:16:18
  no fucking chapters in it. Put some chapters in it.
• 1:16:21
  So this is him. So this is not the norm for at
• 1:16:27
  least for the ones we've been covering.
• 1:16:30
  It's it has he might have changed the montage and optional
• 1:16:35
  like I don't know yet because I haven't reread them, but this is
• 1:16:38
  this makes the book feel punchy more more punchy.
• 1:16:42
  Like I, I read this in bigger chunks, I think because I get to
• 1:16:46
  the end of like four or five page chapter and I'm just like,
• 1:16:51
  oh shit, OK, yeah, now I've got to go on now, you know, And it,
• 1:16:55
  I don't know, there's something to be said about that.
• 1:16:58
  It, it does give the book a bit more of a pace and, and and and
• 1:17:03
  easier to kind of break it up, if that makes sense as well.
• 1:17:07
  Because you know, I'm not going to sit there and read for six
• 1:17:11
  hours straight and I need, I need breaks and stuff.
• 1:17:13
  So yeah, in terms in from that perspective, yes, short
• 1:17:17
  chapters, awesome. In terms of a book perspective,
• 1:17:20
  it makes it feel pacier and punchier.
• 1:17:22
  It's and flow a lot better. You know, like Buffy and The
• 1:17:28
  X-Files and shows like that. You know when they would do a
• 1:17:30
  season finale and suddenly everything felt a bit more
• 1:17:33
  dangerous and a bit more like, shit, maybe not everyone's going
• 1:17:37
  to get out of this one alive like this.
• 1:17:39
  Had that feeling to me. It's not like, I don't know,
• 1:17:42
  what would you call it, event, Who?
• 1:17:44
  There you go. What they're trying to go for
• 1:17:46
  with the new series finales and fucking fail practically every
• 1:17:50
  single time, Andrew. Yeah, Pace instructor, yeah,
• 1:17:59
  it's good. And yeah, the way that like,
• 1:18:03
  although you're kind of flitting between lots of different
• 1:18:05
  locations like the. The.
• 1:18:09
  Parts in different locations are also moving the plot on for all
• 1:18:12
  the other locations at the same time, so something happens for
• 1:18:15
  Fitz in his time zone which will then have ramifications for
• 1:18:18
  Angie and the Doctor. So it's all really cleverly
• 1:18:22
  connected to each other. Like like with the ghost in the
• 1:18:30
  Siberia sections, you're then kind of wondering, you've then
• 1:18:33
  got the tension of like who is who is the ghost?
• 1:18:37
  And you know, you're kind of misdirected to think that Fitz
• 1:18:40
  is going to be the ghost and that Fitz is dead.
• 1:18:42
  But actually and and obviously there's candidates of the whole
• 1:18:46
  exhibition of who's going to be in that position and there's
• 1:18:49
  dramatic tension around that. So it all kind of it's all
• 1:18:53
  driving for the plot of each section with the within each
• 1:18:57
  other section. So, and having the journal as
• 1:19:00
  well and knowing that kind of like bits of Fitz's story are
• 1:19:03
  then in the present day with the Doctor.
• 1:19:06
  And yeah, it's just, it's, it's all very cleverly tightly
• 1:19:09
  plotted, like Sands of Time was. Could you write a book like
• 1:19:13
  this? I mean my brain just isn't
• 1:19:14
  organised in this way. No, no, you know, mine would be
• 1:19:18
  like a Steven Moffett season. None of it would come together.
• 1:19:21
  All our friend would be left hand also.
• 1:19:25
  John, Johnny Morris, he when he was doing Festival of Death,
• 1:19:28
  just enrich his main do a flow chart, see how it all fitted
• 1:19:30
  together and I'd get the thing. Justin did exactly the same with
• 1:19:33
  this. Justin probably read that flow
• 1:19:35
  chart and went, well, it's a bit simple, isn't it, you know?
• 1:19:38
  Yeah. Well, look, fellas, we can
• 1:19:42
  probably talk about this book to all blue in the face, but
• 1:19:45
  summarise your thoughts and within your summary, please,
• 1:19:48
  will you just give a brief moment for our Beatrix McMillan,
• 1:19:52
  who makes her debut in this book in a little spectacular, I don't
• 1:19:57
  know, in style, shall we say surprising style.
• 1:20:01
  Let's go across to Luke for your closing thoughts on time 0.
• 1:20:05
  Anything we haven't covered for you I.
• 1:20:08
  Think we've covered almost everything, Yeah.
• 1:20:13
  Tricks, I don't know. You never find out much about
• 1:20:17
  tricks from here on till the end.
• 1:20:20
  And I know that's frustrating for us readers, but I also
• 1:20:24
  believe that Shrix McMillan wouldn't have it any other way.
• 1:20:28
  She doesn't want you to know who the fuck she is anyway.
• 1:20:31
  So the fact that you don't, that's really in character, so
• 1:20:35
  I'm all right with it. So, you know, I like her intro.
• 1:20:38
  I forgot that she debuted in this, so I knew Sabbath was the.
• 1:20:43
  Grand Duchess was a real person then.
• 1:20:46
  Yeah. She got.
• 1:20:51
  The. Same book as the freaking black
• 1:20:53
  hole people. I don't believe anything.
• 1:20:55
  Fair. Enough wasn't sure how.
• 1:21:01
  Yeah, I like her debut like that.
• 1:21:07
  She just kind of goes, hey, hey, Doctor and everyone, what's that
• 1:21:12
  over there? And then gets her ass in the
• 1:21:14
  TARDIS. And I think the the last thing
• 1:21:17
  we haven't really mentioned is the end where.
• 1:21:25
  All right, all right, Angie, I'll take you home.
• 1:21:27
  But first I've got to drop this book off.
• 1:21:30
  Otherwise none of this is going to happen.
• 1:21:33
  Like, you know, it's going to change things.
• 1:21:34
  So let me drop the book off 1st. All right, Doctor, let's do it.
• 1:21:39
  And then he has has to haggle with the freaking book salesman
• 1:21:42
  and he's really pissed off about him with him and stuff like
• 1:21:45
  that. And then you find out the
• 1:21:46
  currency is different, which leads the Doctor to believe
• 1:21:49
  like, wait, what? What do you mean the currency is
• 1:21:51
  different? Oh shit.
• 1:21:53
  That ended straight out of an episode of Slide.
• 1:21:57
  Oh, it does, yeah. It is.
• 1:22:01
  Oh my God, it. Is like every fucking episode of
• 1:22:03
  Slide. It's like, well, we're home.
• 1:22:06
  Oh no, there's an airship. I could just see the professor
• 1:22:09
  coming in and going, oh, we are in trouble here, aren't we,
• 1:22:14
  Jerry at. Home.
• 1:22:15
  Oh no, the Golden Gate Bridge is.
• 1:22:17
  Blue. Yeah.
• 1:22:20
  I thought exactly the same thing.
• 1:22:21
  I was like, yeah, it's the slow motion, glass falling, We're not
• 1:22:25
  in the right place. But it's a good way to contrive
• 1:22:29
  in a time travel series why Angie can't go home right now.
• 1:22:34
  And it works. Angie.
• 1:22:36
  It's better than this stupid May 24th thing.
• 1:22:39
  Go to the week before May 24th and wait.
• 1:22:44
  Fuck's sake. Fucking time anchors, get out of
• 1:22:47
  here. Sorry.
• 1:22:49
  Although do you know, like, because the immediate hatred
• 1:22:53
  between Angie and Tricks is so great and it's great and
• 1:22:57
  timeless as well when she gets and they're actually, she's out
• 1:23:00
  in the open at that point, I would have just had her
• 1:23:03
  discovered in the Infinity race and just had three companions
• 1:23:06
  for that whole run rather than her ducking in and out of
• 1:23:09
  stories in very like in the Last Resort.
• 1:23:12
  It's so confusing anyway. And then you have tricks turning
• 1:23:15
  up in random scenes like, well, who's this?
• 1:23:17
  And she's not connected to anything.
• 1:23:19
  She's not meeting up with anyone.
• 1:23:21
  Very odd. Very strange.
• 1:23:25
  Yeah, I think that was my feelings on tricks as well.
• 1:23:29
  And like the these books were kind of infuriating sometimes
• 1:23:34
  for having things happen off screen, I mean, off page as it
• 1:23:38
  were. But like, I remember at the
• 1:23:41
  time, particularly the character stuff, just wanting to see it
• 1:23:43
  and it to happen. And it's, it's like, it's a very
• 1:23:45
  muffety thing, isn't it? Of like, oh, you know, like
• 1:23:48
  we've just dropped the companions off and they've been
• 1:23:50
  home for six months. And I in this book, I remember
• 1:23:53
  at the time being annoyed that we didn't get to see Angie and
• 1:23:56
  the doctor's actual goodbye. And it was like, yes, we've got
• 1:24:00
  to Point C from point A, but we haven't seen point B in the
• 1:24:03
  middle, which was like, I would have just liked to see like a
• 1:24:06
  little and just a little bit of a connecting scene between them.
• 1:24:09
  And then with tricks, obviously we just get like her in this
• 1:24:14
  book. And it was like, I think it was
• 1:24:16
  said, oh, she's going to be a mystery that's going to play out
• 1:24:18
  and we're going to discover it. And there's all these hints in
• 1:24:21
  the following book. And then, you know, in timeless,
• 1:24:23
  she's just there and we miss out on that whole her being
• 1:24:26
  discovered scene. She's just part and parcel of
• 1:24:29
  the of the TARDIS. And yeah, I just, those were the
• 1:24:33
  bits that I found annoying in the BBC books, particularly in
• 1:24:35
  the Justin Richards bits that we don't always get to see all of
• 1:24:39
  the connective stuff between stories.
• 1:24:43
  Well, we could have had five books, Andrew of bitches, bitch
• 1:24:46
  offs exactly gold. And you know, since you have
• 1:24:50
  read the three as you'll sort of sum up, I'm going to ask you to
• 1:24:53
  rank please the three that you've read back-to-back where
• 1:24:59
  at times. Oh, that's brutal.
• 1:25:01
  You know. I think they are all brilliant
• 1:25:05
  and it's a really strong run. I think probably Camera Obscura
• 1:25:11
  is the strongest in terms of like a novel and the prostyle
• 1:25:17
  and the way that it's written. Camera Obscura is probably the
• 1:25:21
  strongest. I think it's tricky between the
• 1:25:27
  probably Time 0 next because the plotting of it is so intricate
• 1:25:32
  and it's also very easy to understand, even though it's
• 1:25:36
  very complex. I think that's slightly the
• 1:25:38
  floor of History 101 is that I absolutely love that one, and it
• 1:25:42
  was the one that I kind of came into the series on and got me
• 1:25:44
  reading the rest. But reading it, it doesn't quite
• 1:25:48
  have the clarity of storytelling that Justin Richards does.
• 1:25:51
  And there's a lot in it where it's doing kind of stylistic
• 1:25:55
  things with perspective, and it's hard to tell exactly what's
• 1:25:57
  going on, and it's hard to tell exactly what Sabbath's doing and
• 1:26:01
  what the aliens are doing. And it needed like a little bit
• 1:26:05
  more of that pulling out. But it's really strong on the
• 1:26:07
  character stuff and the emotional stuff and the time and
• 1:26:09
  place and setting. So I think probably that's the
• 1:26:12
  ranking. Novel.
• 1:26:16
  Yeah, for a first novel. For a first novel it is amazing
• 1:26:19
  and I don't know, maybe if I was doing it with my heart, maybe
• 1:26:23
  I'd put. Maybe I'd do it the opposite way
• 1:26:25
  round and put for History 101 at the top.
• 1:26:28
  But yeah, it's just such a strong run of three books,
• 1:26:33
  though, and then it drops off of a Cliff with the next one.
• 1:26:35
  I mean Sasha sacrificing himself for fits in history 101 boy oh
• 1:26:40
  boy. Yeah, there's my fanfic.
• 1:26:42
  There's a bromance, yeah. I spend a lot of time in that
• 1:26:45
  house getting down. Like a whole book of deleted
• 1:26:50
  scenes of Fitz's hot gay sex that happens throughout the 8th
• 1:26:54
  Doctor books. It's a weird double of Swords
• 1:26:56
  with History 101. What is it?
• 1:26:57
  Because the most interesting thing about it is that is
• 1:27:00
  showing all those perspectives, but then that also makes it a
• 1:27:03
  bit bloody confusing at times. Yeah, yeah, but I still bloody
• 1:27:08
  love it. Like the I'm just like, I'm so
• 1:27:11
  happy to have gone back and read these three would.
• 1:27:15
  You remember what's before History 101.
• 1:27:16
  The crooked world, for God's sake.
• 1:27:22
  Chance. Now come on, have we changed
• 1:27:23
  your mind a little bit about time 0?
• 1:27:27
  Yeah, I'm, I'm still going to say that the Angie, but I I
• 1:27:29
  would love Angie to have more to do it, but you can't do that in
• 1:27:31
  every book. Anyway, I will say I knew from
• 1:27:36
  the end of this book now exactly how tricks fits into this.
• 1:27:40
  It's it's an appropriate character for this alternative
• 1:27:43
  universe thing where you know, she's she's a mistress, guys.
• 1:27:46
  You don't know who she's going to be from story to story, from
• 1:27:49
  of page to page all the time. But I don't think it's a great
• 1:27:53
  introduction for her as a companion because you don't get
• 1:27:57
  to know she's not. Though is she she's?
• 1:28:00
  She's not a companion. No, not yet.
• 1:28:02
  But but it's, you know, it's what she become.
• 1:28:04
  So I was reading this, obviously, you know, she does
• 1:28:08
  become a companion in the end. Oh my God.
• 1:28:10
  So it's totally the end of what's the one with Michelle
• 1:28:14
  Ryan in it Planet of the Dead. You're dead?
• 1:28:16
  Yeah. Yeah, where she goes, you know,
• 1:28:18
  take me with you. And a lot goes no, fuck off.
• 1:28:21
  That's what he says. The tricks at the end of this.
• 1:28:23
  Yeah. You've been a criminal
• 1:28:26
  throughout this whole thing. You're not coming with me.
• 1:28:29
  Yeah, I think or you mentioned Bull has read.
• 1:28:33
  I think the Doctor might know that she slipped inside the
• 1:28:35
  TARDIS though at the end. Yeah.
• 1:28:38
  Rafty bastard. Like, yeah, it's like Zoe, isn't
• 1:28:42
  it, in the end of Wheel and Space?
• 1:28:45
  Yeah, she may come useful in the future.
• 1:28:47
  You never know. Yeah, I mean, for my part, I
• 1:28:52
  just thought this was magnificent.
• 1:28:53
  I thought as a sort of a final book in that run from the
• 1:29:00
  Burning all the way through the Time Zero, it's incredibly
• 1:29:03
  satisfying because it is leaning into stuff that happened during
• 1:29:07
  that arc and it's absolutely setting up the monsters in that
• 1:29:11
  arc. So I think there's more, there
• 1:29:14
  is more that coheres this era than people suggest.
• 1:29:18
  But just as a read, man, I tore through this and I love the
• 1:29:24
  imagery and I love the action and the shocks and the surprises
• 1:29:27
  and the character work. And it's just all that tasty
• 1:29:30
  stuff that I want from Ty and Doctor Who book, you know?
• 1:29:34
  You may not, of course. Well, at the end I have.
• 1:29:37
  Don't pick up that fucking boat. Go straight to the domino
• 1:29:46
  effect, for God's sakes. No, fuck, don't go past that
• 1:29:49
  one. Andrew likes that one.
• 1:29:51
  Andrew likes that one. It's got Ace in it, for God's
• 1:29:54
  sakes. Well, fellas, thank you very
• 1:29:57
  much for that examination of the book, our top three today.
• 1:30:02
  And I'm so intrigued because it really could be anything that
• 1:30:05
  you're choosing today. Andrew, I'm looking at you all
• 1:30:07
  right? It could be anything.
• 1:30:10
  It's your. So this has a walking black hole
• 1:30:14
  in it. Truly terrifying image of this
• 1:30:16
  man with a swirly, whirly blackhead going around sucking
• 1:30:19
  people in. So the sort of poser was, what's
• 1:30:22
  your favorite image stroke ideas that really struck you in the
• 1:30:28
  books? There's a lot of books.
• 1:30:30
  So let's do it in this order. OK, I'm making Andrew go before
• 1:30:35
  me, John. Andrew, Luke, Me, John.
• 1:30:40
  I will open up with I tell it's when you've covered on another
• 1:30:44
  book club, but it's it's in that first moment in Eaters of Wasps
• 1:30:48
  when out the corpses mouth the Wasps and he's just Oh my God,
• 1:30:56
  It's just a visceral reaction on that one.
• 1:30:59
  It's so yeah. I mean, it's because I was so
• 1:31:03
  real. It's worth so well described.
• 1:31:06
  But you just you always had. I always had to physically put
• 1:31:10
  the book down at that point. Just go.
• 1:31:12
  I'll come back to this at another point because it's just
• 1:31:16
  sending shivers up my spine, should we say?
• 1:31:18
  That bit, they've got me. You know, when he's on the
• 1:31:20
  autopsy table, that body and he's rivalry and the doctor
• 1:31:24
  grabs the scalpel and cuts him open and all bloody Wasps come
• 1:31:28
  flying out of his gut. Sorry, Andrew.
• 1:31:36
  Bus in the Desert from Sparlet Empress.
• 1:31:41
  It's just such a great visual and one of my favorite Doctor
• 1:31:46
  Who stories ever. And you can understand why they
• 1:31:50
  stole it for the TV series but made it not as good.
• 1:31:54
  But yeah, just like it's such a Doctor Who image of taking like
• 1:31:57
  a 20th century icon and putting it out of context, which is
• 1:32:01
  obviously the TARDIS. And this is another TARDIS and
• 1:32:04
  it's a road trip and it's in the desert and it's amazing.
• 1:32:09
  Look. Oh, wonderful.
• 1:32:11
  Yeah, so good. They did it again and again.
• 1:32:14
  All right, one of them was ideas.
• 1:32:18
  The the idea for me was the non aggression pact between the
• 1:32:23
  people and the climb Lords. How does that work?
• 1:32:28
  Why would they have such a thing?
• 1:32:31
  And they're only small, little like they're smaller than fits
• 1:32:36
  the story in interference, right?
• 1:32:39
  Like every other chapter, you'll just get like one or two pages
• 1:32:42
  of just how this works. And it's that same.
• 1:32:48
  It's a similar kind of mind bogglingly really cool idea that
• 1:32:52
  you'd get from say, a Miles book or something like that.
• 1:32:57
  The Time Lords aren't allowed in their whole Galaxy and the
• 1:33:02
  people aren't allowed to develop time travel and just the the
• 1:33:06
  rules and things based on, you know, all these kinds of things
• 1:33:09
  that what might, what could and might happen if, if such, if
• 1:33:15
  either race was just decided to break their treaties and things
• 1:33:19
  like that. And part of like my favorite
• 1:33:23
  moment is in those because the one exception that the Time
• 1:33:29
  Lords say, look, none of us will go over to your Galaxy and fuck
• 1:33:35
  around in there. But we take no responsibility
• 1:33:37
  for the Doctor. And in fact, if he turns up, you
• 1:33:39
  can do whatever the fuck you want to him.
• 1:33:42
  And the people accept it. So like, so that, that whole
• 1:33:47
  idea, I love it. And then you've got that little
• 1:33:49
  moment in that idea that makes me laugh.
• 1:33:52
  And I absolutely kind of just kind of fits.
• 1:33:55
  I like that a lot. I can't wait till we cover that
• 1:33:59
  book. Oh, it's going to be a bang.
• 1:34:00
  Awesome. Yeah, well, I feel a bit
• 1:34:03
  irreverent suggesting this one now after that wonderful one,
• 1:34:07
  Luke, but mine is the hundreds of Knoll cowards walking up and.
• 1:34:13
  Down the wet. Of the time vortex with their
• 1:34:16
  pinking shears cutting their way through into the different
• 1:34:20
  timelines. I mean, what was Paul Miles
• 1:34:23
  drinking that night? But it's fabulous, Andrew,
• 1:34:26
  that's not on your list, is it? OK, good, John.
• 1:34:32
  I'm going to go back. It is a book on the book cover,
• 1:34:36
  but I'm just going to go for that moment in Revelation with
• 1:34:39
  the Doctor on the moon dancing with death with the church
• 1:34:44
  behind him. And it just, oh, and just the
• 1:34:48
  image of it. It was because it was just
• 1:34:51
  beyond almost anyone think they're being thought of in
• 1:34:55
  those first three books or anything in the Target house.
• 1:34:57
  It was someone you're grabbing Doctor Who's by the by the
• 1:35:01
  throat and going, this is what I want to do with it.
• 1:35:03
  And you and I don't know this particularly well because it's
• 1:35:06
  very visibly the work of a first time author, but it's got so
• 1:35:10
  much of you. And Pocono was always really,
• 1:35:13
  really good with his imagery. So yeah, just that way.
• 1:35:18
  It just blows your mind. And it's also in that one where
• 1:35:21
  Ace runs out of the pub and onto the surface of the moon.
• 1:35:26
  What the Hell's going on? Gorgeous?
• 1:35:30
  Yeah, it's full of that kind. Of interesting that one.
• 1:35:33
  One day, you know, I think, Oh yeah, it's time to return to it,
• 1:35:37
  Andrew. It's another 8th, 8th Doctor one
• 1:35:41
  from me. But compassion turning into a
• 1:35:45
  TARDIS. And just like, conceptually that
• 1:35:48
  but also the scene where it actually happens, where she gets
• 1:35:51
  shot, she like, falls off a building and then she sort of
• 1:35:55
  regenerates into a TARDIS as she's falling, if my memory
• 1:36:01
  serves me right. Again, over 20 years since I
• 1:36:04
  read the book. But yeah, just a really kind of
• 1:36:08
  strong image and a strong idea of having a human TARDIS, which
• 1:36:13
  was something completely new and weird and yeah, captivated me
• 1:36:20
  when I was reading these books. At the Shadows of Avalon, Yeah.
• 1:36:24
  Oh, add it to the list, Luke. The doctor playing violin and
• 1:36:30
  controlling the weather in the year of intelligent tigers.
• 1:36:36
  The dude's just this. He is a force of nature and then
• 1:36:41
  here he is controlling in nature.
• 1:36:44
  It's amazing. And just like it's a scene that,
• 1:36:49
  I don't know, I reckon Nick Wallace read and thought, you
• 1:36:53
  know what, I'm going to do something similar, but all
• 1:36:55
  right, not as good. But I don't, I'm not the thought
• 1:36:57
  to disparage him with the dance, with his with the 8th Doctor
• 1:37:01
  dancing, you know, and that kind of thing.
• 1:37:04
  It's that similar kind of vibe. But and he's a force of nature
• 1:37:08
  in that book anyway. But yeah, just, you know,
• 1:37:11
  everything's come to a head between the tigers and the
• 1:37:13
  humans. The old tiger technology has
• 1:37:17
  gone haywire and the. And because they get Dumber over
• 1:37:20
  the generations because of some problems they have and then, oh,
• 1:37:25
  no, they older they get, the Dumber they they get.
• 1:37:28
  I think that's the thing. Yeah, that's the thing.
• 1:37:30
  And they lose knowledge because of that.
• 1:37:33
  As it's passed down through generations, it's less and less.
• 1:37:36
  Man, that feels way too real and in, you know, in terms of, you
• 1:37:43
  know, human colonies and then, you know, the indigenous people
• 1:37:49
  losing their culture. But yeah, the doctor just
• 1:37:53
  controlling that weather and kind of saving the day that way
• 1:37:56
  and then telling them all all right, fuck off.
• 1:37:58
  I'm I'm I'm out of here. You sort this shit out now time
• 1:38:01
  for you to grow. He.
• 1:38:02
  Goes. I'm done.
• 1:38:04
  I've had enough. But yeah, the visuals just,
• 1:38:07
  especially when you've got Kate Orman kind of writing that too.
• 1:38:10
  It's just, it just really pops. It's beautiful.
• 1:38:14
  My next one is a book that Andrew has recently read.
• 1:38:18
  It's something from Camera Obscura and weird enough it only
• 1:38:22
  tickles out the sides of my memory and I can't remember it
• 1:38:25
  entirely but I remember it scaring the life out of me when
• 1:38:29
  I read it. And it's the bit where the
• 1:38:31
  doctors in the cell and, and the creature is next door and it's
• 1:38:36
  described as sort of rustling and it, it's like a toaster
• 1:38:41
  attached to it. It's like dragging it and it's
• 1:38:44
  utterly indefinable and just chilling.
• 1:38:49
  She describes the noises of it and that.
• 1:38:52
  Yeah. And you're absolutely there.
• 1:38:53
  And I just remember reading that and being absolutely petrified.
• 1:38:58
  Yeah, it's trying to like, get into the cell with him through
• 1:39:01
  the bars and like, stroke his face.
• 1:39:03
  Up a horror moment. Yeah, John, I'm.
• 1:39:07
  Going to go for when I think you're reading at the moment
• 1:39:09
  from the book club. I'm going to go with and I've
• 1:39:11
  met we mentioned this from the book of the still.
• 1:39:14
  It's the moment. On the they're on.
• 1:39:16
  The planet, Oh yeah, they're on the, I think it's Rean on there.
• 1:39:21
  And this planet is going to die. They're, they're doomed.
• 1:39:25
  And the Doctor and she learns to she teaches the doctors in a
• 1:39:30
  moment, you know, all this chaos, all this death and
• 1:39:33
  destruction coming up. It's just this one moment of
• 1:39:37
  almost perfect beauty. I think it's the best moment in
• 1:39:40
  that book by a Mart and it's gorgeous.
• 1:39:43
  And I said that to you, bastard, because it's just, it's so
• 1:39:50
  perfectly Doctor Who that, you know, it was everything I want
• 1:39:54
  to be doctor, which is, you know, it's, it's the the kind of
• 1:39:57
  luck this the EDA's had, which isn't often.
• 1:40:00
  They're in the Virginia Adventures.
• 1:40:03
  Yeah, it's really emotional, that bit.
• 1:40:05
  Surprisingly so, Andrew. I was just going to go for
• 1:40:10
  Faction Paradox as a concept and as an image and revisiting them
• 1:40:18
  in Alien Bodies for the book club and then doing
• 1:40:21
  Interference, which I hadn't read before.
• 1:40:23
  And just like, I think when I was a teenager, I thought they
• 1:40:27
  just like looked cool, but conceptually like they're just
• 1:40:32
  and like I hadn't really appreciated just how fucking
• 1:40:35
  horrible they are and how like depraved and just nasty they are
• 1:40:41
  as a concept and reading interference that just really
• 1:40:44
  brought that all into focus. And they're just a really good
• 1:40:47
  concept for a Doctor Who baddie, but also really strongly visual
• 1:40:54
  with the bone masks and the Victoriana and everything.
• 1:40:58
  And they're just so goth and they're great.
• 1:41:01
  And it's a shame that I think it is a shame that we lost them
• 1:41:07
  from the BBC books so early and that they were such a strong
• 1:41:11
  concept. And I know that they wanted to
• 1:41:13
  kind of clear the decks, but I think maybe there was room for
• 1:41:16
  them to come back and do something else with them later
• 1:41:18
  in the arc. It's so good they spawned their
• 1:41:23
  own spin off range. Several, yeah.
• 1:41:28
  Luke. Archivist Hegelia decides to
• 1:41:34
  find out what it means to be turned into a Cyberman in Steve
• 1:41:40
  Lyons. Amazing.
• 1:41:42
  My favorite Doctor Who novel, Killing Ground.
• 1:41:47
  She has a recorder and she I'm spoiling this for two of you.
• 1:41:52
  If some of you, I don't know, she, she all right.
• 1:41:55
  She has a recorder, some kind of recording device and she's in
• 1:42:00
  the machine like just think of it like as a, the human outline
• 1:42:07
  big thing from like tumors Simon, just to make it easier.
• 1:42:10
  She's kind of climbed into something like that, ready to be
• 1:42:14
  converted. And as it's happening, she's
• 1:42:17
  describing everything that's going on and the changes in her
• 1:42:21
  body, and she pretty much records everything it means to
• 1:42:28
  be turned into a cyber man. But when it's finished and it's
• 1:42:32
  over, her cyber brain is just like, this is irrelevant and
• 1:42:38
  crushes the tape. And it's just that that whole
• 1:42:43
  thing. Yeah.
• 1:42:44
  It's she's a she's obsessed with them and their history, and
• 1:42:51
  she's old as well. So that's another reason why she
• 1:42:55
  decides like to do it. I've had a long life, I've done
• 1:42:59
  all this stuff, but there's one mystery.
• 1:43:03
  There's one thing I just don't know.
• 1:43:05
  And that's the one thing she wants to know.
• 1:43:08
  What it feels like, what conversion feels like.
• 1:43:11
  Yeah, that's mine. It's fucking horrifying.
• 1:43:16
  Coming soon to the Hamster Book Club, it's pulling Ground I.
• 1:43:20
  Feel like we've said we're going to do killing.
• 1:43:24
  I've just bought it as well. I finally got an actual copy.
• 1:43:27
  Yeah, the Hooshaw menu to up your prices.
• 1:43:29
  That was, well, cheap. My last one is a bit of a cheat
• 1:43:32
  because it is literally an image.
• 1:43:34
  It was. It came out alongside the dying
• 1:43:37
  days on the Bbci website. But it's the 8th Doctor.
• 1:43:41
  It's always the 8th Doctor, isn't it?
• 1:43:43
  Even if it's a virgin 8th Doctor on that bomb coming out of that
• 1:43:48
  ship, trying to figure out all the way down he's going to get
• 1:43:52
  out of this situation. It's just such a heroic image of
• 1:43:56
  him, his coat, house flying, hugging on to that bomb coming
• 1:44:01
  down. It's just everything I want the
• 1:44:03
  Ave. Doctor to be.
• 1:44:04
  Just quick on his feet, romantic, you know, gorgeous,
• 1:44:10
  clever, funny. That whole sequence is just, I
• 1:44:13
  mean, it's an incredible book, but that whole sequence is just
• 1:44:16
  wonderful. Yeah.
• 1:44:17
  But, you know, that was an actual image.
• 1:44:20
  That was me nicking from somebody else's.
• 1:44:22
  There we go. Wowzers.
• 1:44:24
  Wonderful, wonderful images, wonderful ideas.
• 1:44:27
  God knows, fellas, Where are we going next?
• 1:44:30
  Oh, yeah. John's already done the work,
• 1:44:31
  hasn't he? Andrew, why don't you tell us
• 1:44:33
  where we're going next? The first for the Hamster Book
• 1:44:35
  Club as well. Oh, lucky us, Lucky us.
• 1:44:40
  We are sampling the delights of the prolific Christopher Beulis
• 1:44:46
  with Vander Decken's children. Is that right, Vander
• 1:44:52
  Christopher? I've never read any of this.
• 1:44:57
  You. Know the rules One good 11
• 1:45:00
  grumpy. That's right.
• 1:45:01
  And you know the grumpy ones, man, they get the best lessons
• 1:45:05
  and people are there for it. John, will you give us just a
• 1:45:09
  one word spoiler please? You've read this book sort of,
• 1:45:12
  you know, just one word summarise.
• 1:45:14
  Found the Deckins children for us.
• 1:45:18
  It's it's, it's very bewless. God damn it.
• 1:45:28
  Well, how do we sort of end this episode in a Time 0 sort of a
• 1:45:31
  way, everybody? Maybe we end it, maybe we don't.
• 1:45:39
  Maybe we end it. Maybe we don't.
• 1:45:41
  Maybe we end it. Maybe we don't.
• 1:45:43
  Maybe we end it. Maybe we don't.
• 1:45:45
  Maybe we end it. Maybe we don't.
• 1:45:47
  Maybe we end it, maybe we don't.