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Hamster Book Club - Original Sin · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:05
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 0:08
  My name is Joe Ford. You all know me.
• 0:10
  I've got 3 magnificent guests with me today to talk about
• 0:15
  Original Sin by Andy Lane and I'm going to ask them all to
• 0:19
  introduce themselves now and to tell us what the very first
• 0:22
  Doctor Who book they read was. First.
• 0:24
  I'm going to throw it over to you, David.
• 0:28
  Hello, this is my podcast debut. I'm David Glossby Pratt and nice
• 0:33
  icebreaker. First first Doctor Who book
• 0:37
  nonfiction and it was it's had the special effects of visual
• 0:40
  effects. It's the Matt Irvin book on
• 0:44
  visual effects from 86 and it was in our school library and it
• 0:49
  was around the time of the 92 repeats when Revelation was on
• 0:52
  BBC2. And that's kind of when I
• 0:54
  started watching the series and. It was just like all these
• 0:58
  photos. I didn't.
• 0:59
  I don't think I actually read any of the words.
• 1:01
  I just looked at the pictures and it was just the most
• 1:04
  exciting thing. It was like, what is this series
• 1:06
  and what were all these things? So it's like that was one of the
• 1:11
  bits that started to get me into the series proper.
• 1:14
  And then, yeah, I borrowed that book so many times.
• 1:18
  What was your first fiction book?
• 1:20
  The same library also had. Inferno and Snake Dance, and I
• 1:26
  borrowed Inferno because I thought the cover was brilliant.
• 1:29
  I think I probably read about half of it because I was about
• 1:32
  10, so I think a lot of it just went over my head.
• 1:35
  But that was kind of the first book that I started to read, and
• 1:39
  I've read it since, and I now get it and I understand it, and
• 1:42
  it's a much better book than I realized.
• 1:44
  The thing I wish I'd done because it was the proper
• 1:46
  hardback as well. I wish I'd nicked it, because I
• 1:50
  believe that's quite a rare one. Oh my God.
• 1:53
  Criminal criminal credentials set in stone already.
• 1:57
  I got banned from my local library for Nick in their copy
• 1:59
  of Rusty Benjamin Cook's The Writer's Tale.
• 2:02
  They wrote to me for like a year and then they told me never to
• 2:05
  come back in. So still on my shelf with the
• 2:07
  stickers on it. I shouldn't really say that out
• 2:08
  loud. Okay.
• 2:09
  Next I'm going to throw it over to the man who is responsible
• 2:13
  for every podcast I've ever done.
• 2:15
  And that is Mr. Paul Quinn. Hello.
• 2:18
  Hello, I'm Paul Quinn and. I jinx every podcast I'm
• 2:25
  associated with, so this one could disappear quite rapidly.
• 2:29
  My first October, let's think. So I started watching Doctor Who
• 2:34
  about 86 or 87 and it was being a cushion film, the second one.
• 2:39
  And then when I went, when I changed school in the autumn of
• 2:43
  87, our class library was very small and was on a window sill
• 2:49
  and it had Monstra Paladon. They are the Daleks, Dalek,
• 2:53
  Invasion of Earth and Underworld.
• 2:56
  And I think it was probably Underworld, Which is why I have
• 2:59
  a strange love for that story, even though, you know, it's
• 3:03
  demonstrally a terrible piece of television.
• 3:05
  But in a book it kind of works. You don't get Tom Baker flapping
• 3:09
  the scarf in that bored fashion. And we had what do we have?
• 3:14
  We had Seeds of Doom. In the main library and we might
• 3:19
  have had masks and dragger. We all set The Time Machine
• 3:21
  which is like Doctor Who old Doctor Who isn't it?
• 3:25
  Cause we were blessed in town that time Joe cause we had lots
• 3:28
  of places to buy them from. Oxfam was settling for 20P.
• 3:32
  There was the Book Exchange. Which had the curtained area
• 3:36
  over and is it something something not right you know
• 3:39
  he's a bit risque. Oh it's your comics you're
• 3:42
  embarrassed about. But there was the shop next to
• 3:44
  John's Fish Bar that did sell pornography and that's where he
• 3:47
  made most of his money from. It was like it was like in the
• 3:51
  big sleeve isn't it by by Chandler where the book they got
• 3:54
  the pornography around the back of it.
• 3:56
  So yeah, it would have been. It would have been Underworld, I
• 3:58
  think. Or or.
• 4:01
  Day of the Daleks definitely remember when they were doing,
• 4:04
  seeing if you could read at an appropriate level, reading Day
• 4:08
  of the Daleks to my teacher and and he had a very strange way of
• 4:12
  talking. I remember that Exterminate,
• 4:14
  Exterminate and it was a very, very odd moment.
• 4:16
  And because it's got the beautiful but really rubbish
• 4:19
  pencil illustration and those, I think the Xabi is probably there
• 4:22
  as well. So yeah it it it's one of those
• 4:26
  I I distinctly remember they're the Daleks and underworld and I
• 4:30
  remember reading Dalek, Invasion of Earth that Christmas when we
• 4:34
  were away and just it's the bit with Larry and the brother and
• 4:37
  you get them him remembering life before the invasion because
• 4:41
  it's Dick's feeds that stuff in and I remember it now and that's
• 4:43
  what like 40 years ago or something insane like that
• 4:47
  little 35. So yeah it's one of those from
• 4:50
  that run. So it's it's it's definitely a
• 4:51
  Terence sticks. And it's from that small library
• 4:54
  of first books you got there, you know, OK, I said.
• 4:58
  That's an entire library of first books, You.
• 5:00
  Got it, is. Yeah, it's terrible.
• 5:02
  And now I'm going to hand over to the wonderful James Age, the
• 5:05
  man who can defend the Ergon, the Monoids and Tanya Lenox's
• 5:12
  costume. And tonight, I think in the
• 5:15
  spirit of original sin, I'll say come on, my actual name is Body
• 5:18
  dysmorphic Continuity obsessed. You can call me James as a as a
• 5:24
  shorthand, yeah, I'd say kind of.
• 5:28
  It's interesting kind of Paul's comment about Oxham stuff I
• 5:33
  finally worked out because I since you did the pilot of this
• 5:37
  and I thought, oh God, he's going to ask me, isn't he?
• 5:39
  Finally I had the first one that kind of I actually got would
• 5:43
  have been the visitation. And I think my, I know my
• 5:48
  parents bought it for me and they probably bought it for me
• 5:50
  because they recognized Peter Davidson on the cover and
• 5:52
  thought, Oh yeah, we watched that the other week.
• 5:54
  Yeah, because that was, I mean that wasn't a second hand one
• 5:58
  that was brand new and that came out ridiculously swiftly after
• 6:01
  the the TV episodes were shown. But then yeah, the kind of this
• 6:07
  whole thing of charity shops and second hand book shops which is
• 6:14
  all but vanished from the world. Used to carry around a scrap of
• 6:18
  paper with me, you know which kind of is gradually ever
• 6:21
  diminishing list of books I needed to get.
• 6:24
  And there was one particular book shop in St.
• 6:27
  Leonards the name of which escapes me.
• 6:29
  I could direct you to it by telling you which roads to go
• 6:32
  down. But yeah, and he used to have a
• 6:35
  massive Doctor Who section and kind of being good at maths was
• 6:40
  quite useful because I used to kind of say right.
• 6:43
  If I've got this much money, what combination of books will
• 6:47
  get me the most words or the most pages for the least amount
• 6:51
  of money? So yeah, but it's interesting as
• 6:55
  well. Just looking at the show, I've
• 6:57
  got special effects, technical manual.
• 7:00
  Technical manual, I know was an early one for me as well.
• 7:02
  And like David, it's like, wow, you know, the pictures of all
• 7:06
  these things, like the spaceships and the line drawings
• 7:09
  and the cutaways and stuff. So yeah, kind of say kind of.
• 7:15
  We got the the visitation soon after it was broadcast and that
• 7:19
  was it. That was the biggest mistake my
• 7:21
  parents ever made. Well, I said, yeah, possibly a
• 7:26
  few other ones, but yeah, like giving me pocket money.
• 7:30
  That was another one I think. But yeah, kind of.
• 7:33
  And there is, as Joe sings before.
• 7:38
  But yeah, there's there's five entire IKEA bookcases aside me.
• 7:42
  Of Doctor Who books of various descriptions.
• 7:48
  And yes, I'm also going to put my hand up and say there is at
• 7:51
  least one somewhere on the shelf which I might have accidentally
• 7:56
  borrowed. Oh, there it is from my primary
• 8:00
  school library, which I never even told them I'd borrowed it.
• 8:06
  It might be the first edition of The Crusaders that I
• 8:09
  accidentally nicked. Your fee is bloody enormous now.
• 8:13
  Yeah. All right.
• 8:17
  Well, that's a very interesting selection of books there.
• 8:20
  And I'm assuming, I'm assuming that you went on to buy more.
• 8:24
  I know you did, Paul, because I had enormous book envy of this
• 8:27
  incredible floor to ceiling bookshelf that he had in his
• 8:30
  bedroom. I used to put him quite a lot.
• 8:32
  Well, that was fabulous that we talked about this yesterday.
• 8:34
  Those fabulous. Do you remember those double
• 8:37
  edition targets with the? Silver ones, Yeah, the only
• 8:42
  books that ever steamed up in the bathroom.
• 8:52
  Today we are here to talk about Original Sin, which is New
• 8:57
  Adventures number. I haven't done my research, but
• 9:00
  it's coming in just after Human nature and just before Zampa I
• 9:04
  believe. Introducing Christopher Quedge.
• 9:09
  Thank you other. But he insists on Quedge because
• 9:16
  it's easier. And Roslyn Forrester.
• 9:19
  We've got the Doctor and Bernice at their heights.
• 9:22
  I'm going to do a quick round Robin again and ask what your
• 9:26
  relationship with the New Adventures is.
• 9:28
  Back to David. New adventure.
• 9:33
  So when I started buying Doctor Magazine regularly, 94, they
• 9:37
  were just something that was in it and I wasn't really
• 9:39
  interested in them and I think there was like one of those.
• 9:43
  It wasn't the works, it was kind of the equivalent of the works
• 9:46
  so late 90s and they had basically all for about £5,
• 9:50
  about 30 different titles. And I was like I'm just going to
• 9:53
  buy one because like I've seen so much about them and they did.
• 9:56
  I think they just done one of Doctor magazines, had done their
• 9:58
  polls. So I thought.
• 10:00
  Everyone bangs on about human nature.
• 10:01
  I'm just going to buy this and see if this is any good.
• 10:04
  And very much on the shelf. They had like all the ones now
• 10:08
  that you probably spend about £500 on.
• 10:10
  So there's a little bit of my brain going, why didn't you buy
• 10:13
  more? But no human nature.
• 10:15
  And I I liked it and it took me a while to get into it because I
• 10:19
  started kind of doing the BBC books around that time and then
• 10:22
  when I got to. Union around 2002.
• 10:26
  That's when I properly got into new adventures and I was
• 10:29
  scouring second hand books. I was in Liverpool at the time
• 10:33
  going through second hand bookshops, book fairs and picked
• 10:36
  up quite a few. I think it was one second hand
• 10:39
  bookshop that had two copies of which mark they just could not
• 10:42
  get rid of that because it is bloody awful.
• 10:47
  And that was actually the 1st when I started reading about
• 10:49
  that that cycle. That was the first one I read
• 10:51
  and it nearly. Killed me on that.
• 10:55
  Then I was like, no, these are meant to be good.
• 10:57
  Keep going. And the book after that is
• 11:00
  Nightshade and that I think I read in a day.
• 11:04
  And then I didn't read every single one in order.
• 11:07
  I think I kind of picked and chose ones that interested me
• 11:11
  and I had quite a full set. Then I moved to London.
• 11:15
  I got very poor and I had to sell some of them.
• 11:20
  And I had, I had dying days, I had happy endings, and literally
• 11:26
  I was at rock bottom. It's like I I got to sell some
• 11:29
  of these precious things and I regret that.
• 11:34
  Yeah, you could buy a house with those now.
• 11:36
  Do you know that that would buy? In London, you couldn't.
• 11:40
  But I've still got majority of of the collection, so when New
• 11:45
  Adventures came up, it was original.
• 11:46
  Since I've got that one, I remember reading that one.
• 11:48
  That's a good one, I think. Sort of.
• 11:51
  What's your general feeling about them?
• 11:53
  At the time, so I say it was about 2002 when I was kind of
• 11:57
  really sort of came my way through them.
• 11:59
  And these were really, I enjoyed them.
• 12:01
  I was kind of, you know, Doctor Who's not coming back.
• 12:03
  This is doing something different, something a bit more
• 12:05
  bold, experimental. But reading this back now, it's
• 12:12
  it's dated I think in some ways. And so my relationship now is
• 12:17
  they're interesting. But it's almost like a road not
• 12:21
  taken down. Yeah, I don't disagree with that
• 12:24
  system, actually, Paul. Well, as you reminded me last
• 12:29
  night, I don't like love and war.
• 12:32
  I never liked love and war and I and I think probably problematic
• 12:36
  would be the description of my relationship with the New
• 12:39
  Adventures. So I read them, started reading
• 12:41
  them when they first came out, and you know, it was axed.
• 12:46
  It wasn't axed. It wasn't coming back.
• 12:48
  Was it stories brought wide or more breadth that you can show
• 12:52
  on the television and you read Genesis and you think, I'm not
• 12:56
  sure about this. He is the doctor sending that
• 12:59
  woman back off into prostitution.
• 13:01
  It's it's it's an odd one to try and reconcile what you just
• 13:05
  watched. Then of course, excess comes
• 13:07
  along and you're in safe hands. And next, this is awesome.
• 13:10
  You still remember bits of X? It was a bit weird and I kind of
• 13:15
  dipped in and out. I had no memory of this
• 13:17
  whatsoever. And I'm not sure I even read
• 13:19
  this the first time because I went through the box in my dad's
• 13:21
  loft where they're now archived and they're archived to my sons.
• 13:27
  Get a hold of them and then they will pull them out and go,
• 13:29
  what's this, Daddy? Which do you like?
• 13:31
  And this type of thing? So I had to buy a copy of this
• 13:33
  because I I mean, it's terrible because if you say his name, it
• 13:37
  might appear behind me like Candyman.
• 13:39
  But yeah, I really enjoyed highest science.
• 13:42
  But I I think he's mostly television stuff.
• 13:44
  Is is God awful? I mean he's he's he's let's
• 13:48
  let's play oblitery, prestige. He's just terrible.
• 13:52
  I mean it makes me want to take out bits of my eyes rather than
• 13:55
  watch it even before his other stuff.
• 13:57
  But highest times, I've got a lot of time for even transit.
• 14:00
  I look back at transit now before this and actually
• 14:02
  transit's better than I remember.
• 14:04
  And transit was setting a direction of travel, I think.
• 14:07
  And given Aronovich has actually got a proper rifous career, I.
• 14:14
  Who emerges from this series? I prefer the BBC stuff with the
• 14:19
  the McGann material, but I think that's partly how the 7th Doctor
• 14:23
  appears in this series. This in particular struck me is
• 14:27
  is. Awkward and odd and yeah, I
• 14:30
  think dated is is the word to describe it.
• 14:34
  It's screaming mid 90s. It's #30 yet as well, Joe.
• 14:36
  I just just run pretty quickly. So it's there.
• 14:39
  But of course the, you know, things are changing down.
• 14:42
  The Mcgantin is coming the following year, isn't it?
• 14:44
  It's interesting now looking back with hindsight, what's
• 14:47
  coming and what's not going to happen and then what's going to
• 14:50
  take 10 years to come along. So problematic, I think, is my
• 14:54
  relationship with these, and I know we're going to get a
• 14:57
  completely different opinion now from James because I know what
• 15:00
  you think of the new adventures I.
• 15:02
  Love them, but I do agree that there is a an interesting start
• 15:09
  with Genesis. I mean I was really lucky.
• 15:12
  Although I was living in Suffolk when they started coming out, my
• 15:17
  dad actually worked about 3 minutes from one of the
• 15:22
  specialist shops in London. So basically kind of I was I
• 15:25
  could get them almost on day of release just because he was able
• 15:30
  in his lunch break to go across and get it.
• 15:35
  Genesis, yeah, it's an unusual. But I mean, having reread it
• 15:38
  recently, it's what it's kind of it's more the alienness of the
• 15:44
  Doctor coming through and it's kind of, you know, something
• 15:49
  that sort of comes up in original sin is kind of
• 15:52
  balancing of. Does he get involved in the
• 15:57
  civilization or does he try and interfere and change it?
• 16:00
  Kind of thing? I wasn't massively keen on the
• 16:06
  Cat's Cradle stuff, the Times Crucible, although I do actually
• 16:12
  quite like which Mark I think, especially as it was done just
• 16:18
  after the BBC did Narnia. I think it was them trying to
• 16:22
  capitalize on, you know, and then, yeah, when basically when
• 16:28
  Benny came along, it's like, oh, I like these even more now.
• 16:34
  Cuz I did struggle. I didn't struggle with the
• 16:36
  characterization of the Doctor, but I struggled with Ace, if you
• 16:40
  kind of say David, nodding their heads right now.
• 16:44
  Yeah, I mean across the first seven books.
• 16:48
  Cases age kind of oscillates all over the place.
• 16:52
  Her abilities oscillate, her personality changes from and
• 16:57
  then finally Benny comes along. We've got rid of Ace eventually
• 17:01
  and then yeah, the kind of the, the, the era of Quedge is
• 17:09
  basically the era that I absolutely adore.
• 17:14
  I was just finishing A Levels, I was taking a year off before
• 17:18
  university and yeah, it's kind of like, you know actually as a
• 17:24
  year long kind of great way, you know, the run of books.
• 17:28
  I mean, OK, I know Sky Pirates is a little bit strange.
• 17:35
  If you nod your head much more, Joe, it's going to fall off a
• 17:38
  little bit strange. Yeah, it's Dave Stone.
• 17:41
  He's somewhere on another planet.
• 17:43
  Yeah, I am inordinately fond of the new adventures.
• 17:47
  I love them to bits, the missing adventures I am currently
• 17:50
  rediscovering and loving. I've had reason to revisit the
• 17:56
  Eda's recently, and that's an experience.
• 18:06
  Because I've not been asked to discover them in order.
• 18:10
  And it's very strange because I'm in this weird situation
• 18:13
  where for this one I read Original Sin.
• 18:17
  And yeah, what you said was book #38.
• 18:20
  I didn't feel as I needed to know the previous 37 books.
• 18:23
  I mean, I know it's kind of like a fresh start, new season as as
• 18:26
  Dietherum called it, but. I'm looking at the kind of the
• 18:32
  the Eda's I'm supposed to be reading for later in the year.
• 18:34
  And I'm thinking, no, I'm going to have to actually sit down and
• 18:37
  work out the arc up to that point.
• 18:40
  Because otherwise if I go in blind, I know I'm going to
• 18:44
  struggle because, say, by the time the Eda's have come along,
• 18:49
  I've done university, I had a job, and some of the Eda's I
• 18:55
  found so painful to read, I stopped reading them.
• 18:59
  And then I tried to pick them up again and dig.
• 19:01
  Or the one I tried to pick up again.
• 19:02
  That was the biggest mistake possible.
• 19:06
  I tried to pick up the EDA arc in the middle of the last
• 19:10
  resort. Ah, bloody love, the last
• 19:14
  resort. Yeah, but if you don't know
• 19:18
  what's gone before it, it is. It is a little.
• 19:23
  Bit little bit difficult to kind of get your head around.
• 19:28
  But I, you know, I am, I'm, I love.
• 19:31
  I'm a huge reader. I think it's a terrible shame
• 19:35
  that kind of the interest in the new series books has never
• 19:41
  really taken off. You know, it was wonderful when
• 19:46
  they announced the kind of the 9th Doctor novels.
• 19:48
  And I would tell brilliant, yeah.
• 19:50
  But DWM hardly covers them. It's interesting.
• 19:52
  DWM hardly covered the EDA's either.
• 19:55
  But they still talk about the Virgin New Adventures.
• 19:58
  So it's just like, yeah, it's I love the virgin, but then yeah,
• 20:02
  the EDAS was just because of where I was in life.
• 20:06
  I think it was a struggle. I'll tell you what though.
• 20:08
  I worked for Gardner's books in Esport, which is I think it's
• 20:11
  now the biggest book distributor in the Europe.
• 20:15
  And those new series of ventures, that's the most Doctor
• 20:18
  Who books that ever sold. Those first round of those new,
• 20:21
  they said they sold by the bucket load, certainly more than
• 20:25
  you know, the burning that ended up overseas, shoveled into a
• 20:28
  furnace to power a building. And I don't know.
• 20:30
  I'm not sure what the circulation laws has come the
• 20:34
  end of The Beneath New Adventures, but obviously they
• 20:36
  weren't selling enough. I have some data about that
• 20:39
  later on. Okay, yeah.
• 20:42
  But also what you said there about original sin.
• 20:44
  I do agree with what you're saying, but this is kind of like
• 20:47
  a new beginning in the. We got very, we got very lucky
• 20:51
  with the jumping on point. Yeah, it is kind of like
• 20:54
  specifically you can join in at this point because yeah, who?
• 20:57
  Knew. I think the New Adventures did
• 20:59
  that really well and really often.
• 21:03
  I think they made the conscious decision that they weren't going
• 21:06
  to have like a six year plot arc that they forgot to finish.
• 21:12
  So I forgot to finish. I think it was supposed to have
• 21:14
  the Daleks at the end and then Terry Nation Estate came in at
• 21:16
  the end and said no, you're not doing that.
• 21:18
  Yeah, the rumor is actually kind of the Daleks was supposed to
• 21:21
  come in timeless. I think it is, yeah.
• 21:27
  And they suddenly found the license here.
• 21:29
  So yeah, it kind of went a bit tits up well then sort of as a
• 21:35
  reintroduction to the new adventures.
• 21:38
  How do you think original sitting fares, David?
• 21:44
  I think it fared quite well. I quite enjoyed it this time
• 21:46
  around. I mean, there's a lot to go
• 21:48
  into, but I think there's they. It's accessible because I think
• 21:53
  talk about things like the EDA's and especially how they went on
• 21:58
  that they are so dense. I think sometimes the new
• 22:01
  adventures could get a bit like that as well, but because I
• 22:05
  started with Human, my first one.
• 22:07
  New adventure was human nature. The book before that works quite
• 22:09
  well as a startup even though it falls off from Sanctuary, but
• 22:13
  that so they're kind of going through this kind of some good
• 22:16
  entry level books. So if you're new and I think
• 22:19
  this is new adventures kind of at their peak in terms of where
• 22:22
  we now 95. And so I dug out Doctor Who
• 22:26
  Magazine from around the time it came out.
• 22:29
  And bear in mind, if you go to Gallifrey Guardian at any point
• 22:31
  in the 91 to 95, the number of stories that are.
• 22:36
  There's been a deal done. There's been a script written.
• 22:38
  We've got so many false Dons but the issue before and the issue
• 22:42
  that this book came out, it was it wasn't amble it was universe
• 22:47
  whoever. I can't remember who eventually
• 22:49
  did it. So in one issue it's they've
• 22:52
  signed up to this TV movie and in the issue that Original Sin
• 22:55
  is reviewed is Matthew Jacobs has been hired to write a script
• 23:00
  for Doctor Who pilot movie. And it's like the benefit of
• 23:03
  hindsight of that's the one. That actually happened, but the
• 23:08
  number of times there was articles like that, so the books
• 23:13
  were the only proper new story. There was the new adventures,
• 23:17
  Missing Adventures in the comic strip, and I think by 95, apart
• 23:21
  from maybe ghost event spaces, I think.
• 23:22
  Did that come out properly? 95 I know it was held over for
• 23:26
  good. But.
• 23:27
  New Doctor Who stories were thin on the ground so they were
• 23:30
  flying high. So the fact that they decided to
• 23:33
  do this entry level. Reboot almost is like they know
• 23:38
  this is where people they want new Doctor.
• 23:39
  This is where they're going to come like Stephen Moffett and
• 23:43
  the pilot wasn't. He kind of knows he's on his way
• 23:45
  out. But we're going to, we're going
• 23:47
  to kick start renewed interest in the TV series.
• 23:51
  And I think it's it's a fairly straightforward story as well,
• 23:54
  because some some of those new adventures are.
• 23:56
  I mean, I did start Sky Pirates years ago.
• 23:59
  I did dig it out last night because I finished Original Sin
• 24:01
  last night. I thought, I'm just going to.
• 24:04
  It's a part of me tempted just to keep reading and then I think
• 24:06
  I just had this quick skim through Sky Pirates and like,
• 24:10
  I'm not sure I I couldn't finish it last time.
• 24:13
  I'm not sure I can actually get around to starting it this time.
• 24:15
  So it's interesting that you have this kind of clean, slight
• 24:18
  blank start, fresh start, and then you follow up with
• 24:22
  something really, really weird, impenetrable.
• 24:27
  And I think that's what sometimes the the the new
• 24:30
  adventures would do. They would also like between.
• 24:33
  These quite straightforward books with slightly darker, more
• 24:35
  grown up themes and then there'd be something where it's like
• 24:38
  what the hell am I reading? And and I think that's just how
• 24:43
  they were and I think they were enjoyed before that.
• 24:46
  There was the variety and then that's the that's the beauty of
• 24:49
  Doctor Who is the variety. And I think the new adventures
• 24:53
  absolutely get that. And then you get your good ones
• 24:56
  and you get your bad ones. And when they're bad, they're
• 24:59
  bad. But I don't think this is a bad
• 25:02
  one. Do you know?
• 25:03
  No, no, I really like this. I I liked it the first time
• 25:06
  around and I I think after about halfway I was I was struggling a
• 25:12
  little bit. I kind of reading it chapter and
• 25:14
  I and I got a certain point in the book and then all of a
• 25:18
  sudden it's like I'm reading 2-3.
• 25:20
  I'm getting through this much quicker and I think it's when
• 25:22
  the pace picks up because it it spends a lot of time world
• 25:27
  building. Oh boy.
• 25:29
  Yes. And then it decides to kind of
• 25:31
  do away with some of that and actually gets on with telling a
• 25:34
  story. I saw that when I got to the end
• 25:36
  of it, I was like that was a really good book that could have
• 25:40
  lost 100 pages and that the the plot has still have played out
• 25:44
  perfectly well. It's one of the longer ones,
• 25:47
  isn't it, 320? I think 90 or 1000 words.
• 25:51
  It's towards the upper end of the Virgin year adventures.
• 25:54
  It's not the longest who novel, but it's virgin wise.
• 25:59
  It's. Towards the top end.
• 26:02
  Judging by the books on my shelf, Falls the shadow looks
• 26:05
  the longest. I've got the numbers somewhere,
• 26:07
  I can dig them out at some point I think.
• 26:09
  It felt the longest, torturous in every sense of the word.
• 26:15
  What about you then, Paul? Did you?
• 26:17
  How did you find this? Do you think it was quite a
• 26:19
  smooth read? It is.
• 26:21
  I mean, in terms of a jumping on point, it's a question who?
• 26:28
  Who do they think jumping on at that point?
• 26:31
  I mean, who are they pitching it to?
• 26:33
  Or is it playing to a relatively small relationship, taking your
• 26:38
  inside knowledge in terms of how many was selling, how many
• 26:43
  gardens was shifted? I was at the other end of that
• 26:46
  supply chain as I was working for.
• 26:48
  I was just about started working for Dillon's at that point and
• 26:51
  we weren't doing much in that line two years after, a year
• 26:55
  after. So it's interesting.
• 26:57
  A box turned up one day with a damaged copy of Eight Doctors in
• 27:01
  it, which is probably appropriate somehow or other,
• 27:03
  given how bad Eight Doctors is. But it's a question of who's
• 27:08
  jumping on at this point, or who the prime readership is.
• 27:12
  I didn't get the impression it was either jumping on it, but I
• 27:13
  got an impression it was to introduce new companions.
• 27:17
  And because you're no longer in the world of two years worth of
• 27:22
  continuity, you know the termination point that you can
• 27:25
  reintroduce everything every two years because that's the average
• 27:28
  length of a companion. Therefore you choose everything
• 27:30
  and to the read. To the audience, that's not who
• 27:33
  they're assuming as reading this at this point, they assume it's
• 27:35
  a fan base, hence all the continuity in this.
• 27:38
  But of course if the continuity is wrong.
• 27:41
  Or slightly off or doesn't sit properly.
• 27:43
  Then there's a problem there for that long term readership.
• 27:45
  I mean I think it is too long and but I I mean I was rereading
• 27:50
  it today and I had found it slow and I found it ripped on a feral
• 27:55
  pace. It's really badly structured
• 27:58
  though and it's interesting what what would have been cut or has
• 28:03
  been cut for the audio version. You can see what they're trying
• 28:06
  to do. Yeah, they separate Benny from
• 28:08
  the docs and you have that kind of.
• 28:10
  Typical way of telling a Doctor Who's story that you have the
• 28:13
  companion and the Doctor separate and they they come to
• 28:15
  the same but there's the other pieces of they don't and it's a
• 28:18
  promising modern who as well. I mean Chippenham does this in
• 28:21
  time as children where the Doctor has to be told everything
• 28:24
  doesn't discover anything and it's that it's that argument
• 28:28
  against Davidson that he's he's he's a juvenile.
• 28:31
  He's not answering the he's not asking the right questions.
• 28:33
  In this you get told a lot of things uncover a huge amount.
• 28:37
  It's quite an odd characterization.
• 28:40
  For all the characters, I I think all the points that when
• 28:42
  Benny comes in it it really kick starts.
• 28:44
  It's because you need your original characters because then
• 28:47
  you can break away from the from the television and and
• 28:51
  Sophiology is wonderful and Ace is wonderful.
• 28:53
  There is something, I think, that argument that that you've
• 28:55
  got a character appears in 87, but everything about screams 84,
• 28:58
  so there's something wrong in that back story anyway.
• 29:02
  And then, you know, you get the very wellmeaning politics, but
• 29:04
  it always becomes a joke of white kids.
• 29:06
  Fire bond. Although, because that then
• 29:07
  turns into an incredible sequencing, rumors of the
• 29:09
  darkest in the novel. So I enjoyed it, but I don't
• 29:14
  know how far it is a Doctor Who novel because I don't know how
• 29:16
  far it's the Doctor and therefore the jumping on the
• 29:19
  wizard. There's an argument maybe they
• 29:21
  should have regenerated it and then you could just do what you
• 29:24
  like with it. In, in, in, in the new
• 29:27
  adventures. But.
• 29:30
  Yeah, I mean, what it doesn't do is get bogged down in Hello, I'm
• 29:35
  the Doctor. This is because it very stupidly
• 29:36
  dodges. Explain what The TARDIS is going
• 29:38
  to run a joke, isn't it? What's the TARDIS?
• 29:40
  They just don't answer that question to the two new
• 29:42
  companions. Who on first reading, do you
• 29:45
  know they're going to be companions?
• 29:46
  If you go into it cold, you know they're companions.
• 29:48
  I'm not sure we know. We read it before.
• 29:51
  We know where it goes after that.
• 29:52
  So there's something funny about dodging all that type of of of
• 29:56
  minutia, but also, of course, because they're not with the
• 29:58
  Doctor. There with Benny and because you
• 30:02
  just a lot of jump in between sequences, here is also you
• 30:04
  don't know what's being said outside of those sequences.
• 30:07
  Is it, you know haven't denounced the structure it's
• 30:09
  quite an interesting structure as well.
• 30:10
  But yeah, good. But I think is where I'd go with
• 30:15
  that. James, You got a lot of faults.
• 30:22
  I want to do specifically want to hear what you think about the
• 30:24
  world building in this novel. So first, we're just going back
• 30:28
  to a comment. I've I've called up my data.
• 30:30
  It's approximately 100,000 words.
• 30:33
  It's one of only five that broke the 100,000 mark in the Birds
• 30:38
  new Adventures and falls. The Shadow isn't the longest.
• 30:42
  Warlock is. Yeah, Thank you for not choosing
• 30:47
  that one right. The world building, it's a bit
• 30:52
  of a cheat because it doesn't build the world.
• 30:54
  It builds upon a world that already exists.
• 30:58
  The fact that there is reference to solos and things like that,
• 31:04
  you know this is very much trying to give us the world that
• 31:09
  the 3rd doctor future earth stories like the mutants colony
• 31:13
  in space. I mean basically you know, the
• 31:16
  novelization of colony in space, you know doomsday weapon, you
• 31:21
  can very easily map. The stuff that was kind of added
• 31:25
  into that about the world that the colonists have left behind,
• 31:29
  you can put that into over City Five.
• 31:32
  You can put that into what they've generated in Original
• 31:36
  Sin. So on that side of things, I
• 31:39
  think it's, you know, it's building upon a world that had
• 31:43
  already been hinted at the idea of just kind of like the.
• 31:52
  The floating structures with the anti grav engines and stuff.
• 31:56
  I I always wonder about these things in science fiction about
• 32:01
  kind of like, well you know would you actually do that?
• 32:05
  Would you risk the engines cutting out and the whole bloody
• 32:09
  building falling? I mean, I think it's Star Trek
• 32:13
  Discovery where you see this kind of bureaucrat sitting on a
• 32:20
  chair. But the chair is kind of
• 32:22
  hovering in midair. It doesn't have support, doesn't
• 32:24
  have legs and stuff. And you think, well, it's a
• 32:27
  chair. Why would you go to the effort
• 32:30
  of, you know, I love the moving walkways though.
• 32:34
  I love this idea of the kind of the culture of the world that's
• 32:38
  built up. One of the things that I think
• 32:42
  this does. But then the range doesn't take
• 32:47
  advantage of. Is I think this would have been
• 32:50
  a really good world to go back to occasionally.
• 32:55
  You know it is such. I found it so easy to visualize,
• 32:59
  so easy to picture. It's just kind of yeah, I I I
• 33:07
  could I could see. Although it was very depressing,
• 33:10
  I realized that I wasn't seeing it with 90 CGI.
• 33:13
  I was seeing it kind of 2023 CGI.
• 33:17
  And the thought of in the 1990s then trying to do a slug like
• 33:21
  creature crawling up a rope to get it, He's like, that's yeah,
• 33:28
  so I love the world building the Doctor bit as well.
• 33:32
  He does discover some stuff. He's the one that puts it
• 33:38
  together, says well, OK, so where were all these acts of
• 33:42
  violence? Oh, it's random.
• 33:44
  Where were all those people 10 days ago?
• 33:47
  You know he's the one that realizes that kind of you can't
• 33:50
  look at this as a as a murder mystery sort of thing.
• 33:54
  Kind of like you know where where was the murder committed.
• 33:57
  You've got to bring the 4th, the 4th dimension in.
• 34:01
  And I think kind of that's one of the bits where I thought
• 34:05
  actually, yeah, this is a reminder that the Doctor is a
• 34:09
  traveler in time, that you've got the kind of the his.
• 34:15
  Brain, that works very differently companion wise.
• 34:22
  I'm going to point out something really cruel.
• 34:25
  There is a very, very big giveaway that Quedge and
• 34:29
  Forrester are going to be the new companions.
• 34:31
  It's the fact that they're the only ones that have their
• 34:35
  portraits drawn at the star of the book if you actually a look
• 34:41
  at the cover, but B if you got the physical book.
• 34:44
  There are two pictures, one at the start of the novel and one
• 34:47
  at the end. Kredgeon Forester in their
• 34:51
  adjudicators gear at the start and Kredgeon Forester with
• 34:54
  Kredge in Bermuda shorts at the end.
• 34:57
  I hadn't skipped to the end though when I was reading it at
• 35:00
  the start. They say, but the fact that the
• 35:03
  the fact that there is the picture of them at the start is
• 35:07
  just like this, Oh, what is interesting is that they were
• 35:10
  never meant to be companions really.
• 35:14
  Yeah, Andy Lane didn't envisage them as companions.
• 35:19
  He just saw them as kind of like, you know, characters that
• 35:23
  were in the book, the Companion, because original SIM was always
• 35:26
  going to introduce a new companion.
• 35:28
  The companion was supposed to be a tramp called Old Tom, and he
• 35:35
  was supposed to be like kind of 60 or 70 years old.
• 35:38
  So a very different TARDIS dynamic looking down on the
• 35:40
  Doctor as a son kind of thing. He was supposed to be a raging
• 35:44
  alcoholic. I have no idea if any of the
• 35:46
  writers would have had any experience of being raging
• 35:49
  Alcoholics. You know how old Tom would work
• 35:52
  out in Damaged Goods because you know what Chris Gredge gets up
• 35:55
  to in that six year old tramp in?
• 35:59
  That the other interesting is which Andy Lane didn't tell
• 36:01
  anyone at the time, was that old Tom was supposed to have a
• 36:03
  secret and that actually he was to turn out to be Benny's
• 36:07
  father. Oh, good grief.
• 36:09
  Yeah, so. Basically that he realized that
• 36:13
  Old Tom was boring and apparently he was writing it and
• 36:17
  he was having so much fun writing Chris and Rose that he
• 36:22
  then said forget what I said about the companion being Old
• 36:25
  Tom, I want to bring these two in and everyone said yeah, he
• 36:29
  said that basically he saw them like a Han Solo and Chewy kind
• 36:33
  of pairing, which given that Chris starts because a giant
• 36:38
  teddy bear, I suppose. What is that all about?
• 36:42
  The body, Bethel. It's just it's a wonderful bit
• 36:47
  of what looks like world building that turns out to be
• 36:51
  vital to the plot. And that's just really weird
• 36:56
  because you've got this, these very grim, dark scenes, and then
• 37:01
  you've got Chris Crutch. There is the teddy bear and then
• 37:05
  is it. Bell Tempest is a giant elephant
• 37:08
  and. They're just times where it's
• 37:10
  it's really jarring, I think. I guess that's the point.
• 37:14
  It's weird. But then again, I mean, I, I
• 37:19
  look at this world, you know, the real one around us and I
• 37:22
  look at, OK, so at one end of the spectrum we've got Jacob
• 37:25
  Rees, Mogg and at the other end of the spectrum we've got Lord
• 37:27
  Bucket Head. You know, I mean, that's kind of
• 37:33
  jarring and that's just in the world of politics, you know, I
• 37:35
  mean, are you trying to say that you would prefer to live in this
• 37:39
  world as worldwide, Tobias Vaughn?
• 37:44
  It's I do like the world. It's a very problematic world.
• 37:50
  But then what world isn't very problematic?
• 37:53
  You know it's a place where when you read the bits between the
• 38:01
  the acts of violence, where they actually talk about.
• 38:05
  Up until recently, there were virtually no murders.
• 38:08
  You know, there's an awful lot of detail in there which
• 38:11
  basically says, you know, this used to be a really lovely place
• 38:15
  and then all of a sudden it's a shit show and there's, I mean,
• 38:20
  yeah, 100,000 words. It could definitely do with
• 38:23
  losing about 15,000 words or so. That would put it down to around
• 38:30
  the same length as the highest science, which actually I think
• 38:33
  is. More or less the ideal length of
• 38:35
  these books, unless they've got something, is really
• 38:38
  ridiculously complicated to to to tell, I'll say, you know, So
• 38:45
  it's interesting that kind of like between this and the Pert
• 38:49
  we years, you get a very kind of coherent view of 30th century
• 38:56
  Earth. I think it is.
• 38:57
  But the difference between this and the pert we years is fans,
• 39:02
  and that's what Terroristics says a commentary.
• 39:05
  When Toby Haydoke says to him, you know you get this wonderful
• 39:08
  sort of rise and decline of the Earth empire in In the John
• 39:11
  Potley years we did three stories.
• 39:14
  Which three? Is it the Mutants Colony in
• 39:15
  space and frontier in space And he details it and then
• 39:20
  Terroristics just goes. Fans, because we had none of
• 39:23
  that in mind at all. We were just putting out in the
• 39:26
  90s. Of course we have to join all
• 39:28
  the dots, bring it all together, you know, It is like an
• 39:32
  encyclopedia sometimes, rather than a novel.
• 39:36
  Serious about that, though, because there's certainly a
• 39:39
  suggestion that there are wider issues, particularly the journey
• 39:46
  that Perpley's Dr. seems to undertake.
• 39:49
  So how far is he just taking on a kind of persona as all these
• 39:52
  these wretched fans, look what they've done because it it it.
• 40:00
  It's almost perfect because you do get that rise middle period
• 40:03
  and the decline and and I think then the when Hulk develops it
• 40:07
  in the novel of colony in Space, The Dudes, that still sticks in
• 40:16
  the mind even years after reading it.
• 40:17
  It's such a good piece of world. But with this one I think we've
• 40:20
  got that. But also we can see the other
• 40:21
  books that that Lane has read. You know, you've got Blade
• 40:24
  Runners in here and you've got June, you've got a kind of 50
• 40:26
  years worth of scifi and that that helps us respond to this
• 40:31
  world and the way we do because we know those other worlds that
• 40:32
  he's built upon. There's another world that he's
• 40:34
  built upon there as well, which is why I think that's that's one
• 40:37
  of the strengths of the novel. The problem of course, is it
• 40:38
  moves around bit you probably don't need and that if you stay
• 40:46
  there in two locations, you've a type of narrative I think
• 40:49
  working there. But I think its relationship
• 40:52
  with, yeah, it is right. It's there in the 90s where it's
• 40:55
  become kind of a small audience and therefore it's there for
• 40:59
  people to play with. And it's this connecting back to
• 41:01
  what we've seen particularly and it's interesting, it's PERT is
• 41:05
  is the is the touch point for that.
• 41:06
  I think because more coherent across the across those 34
• 41:11
  seasons, season seven is doing something different, I think.
• 41:15
  And then once you get into to Baker because you've got 3
• 41:18
  distinct periods, I think. So it's interesting PERT with
• 41:21
  the touchstone that. I seem to remember, and it's the
• 41:23
  age of the people involved. In Loose Horizon, they sort of
• 41:27
  cherry picked IMC as well, didn't they?
• 41:29
  And expanded that quite a lot too.
• 41:30
  So it was quite a popular era to go to.
• 41:33
  All right, well, I'm going to ask you all then.
• 41:35
  If we've all said that this is a bit too long, what would you?
• 41:38
  Lose, David. I think you could get rid of
• 41:42
  some of the random acts of violence, because I think
• 41:46
  there's one. There's one per chapter.
• 41:49
  And I think by the time you get to chapter three, Chapter 4,
• 41:51
  there's a kind of OK, we've got the OK, we get it now, you know.
• 41:55
  And every and I found this time I was almost skipping over them
• 41:58
  because it's like, OK, there's a there's a paragraph starting
• 42:00
  with characters we've not met before probably because I've
• 42:04
  read it before going this is they're not important to this.
• 42:07
  And OK people get introduced scenes that oh someone's going
• 42:11
  to meet a grizzly end and you kind of looking to see how it
• 42:13
  goes. But it's like I'm not sure.
• 42:17
  How much they have because they're not.
• 42:18
  If you meant, if it's meant to be selling, they could have,
• 42:20
  like they will be affected by the Akron radiation and they're
• 42:24
  all going mad. It's all this brutal rioting
• 42:26
  that doesn't really come across. It's a bit, I think someone
• 42:31
  described as PG-13. It's all a bit, you know, bit
• 42:35
  bland at times. Well, as well as you've got both
• 42:38
  the acts taking place in the scenes and then you've got them
• 42:42
  being reported. At the beginning of chapters as
• 42:44
  well. And I'm like, why are you
• 42:46
  telling us twice? We don't need to know twice.
• 42:48
  They, they're. Really laying on.
• 42:50
  But the weird thing is that they later on the book where they
• 42:53
  sort of tone some of that. There's less of that later on
• 42:56
  and you're getting this. There's lots of reports of these
• 42:58
  riots and this kind of chaos that's going on, but it's all
• 43:01
  happening kind of off stage. And it's like, well, actually
• 43:04
  not that I wanted to make the book longer, but actually if you
• 43:07
  really want to sell the chaos that this is all doing, we're
• 43:12
  not seeing any of that. But I think Paul's point about
• 43:16
  losing one of the locations you could lose this, this, that, and
• 43:20
  I think it was actually really more obvious.
• 43:22
  Listening to the adaptation, that just felt totally almost
• 43:26
  superfluous. In fact I I was questioning what
• 43:31
  does that be along price, which is I couldn't work out if that
• 43:33
  was just a really stupid name or not.
• 43:36
  Again, in this serious tale, you've got this stupid name and
• 43:40
  it's like. Okay.
• 43:42
  So we've got some of these moral arguments, but actually in terms
• 43:46
  of moving the, I just, I don't know.
• 43:48
  I think the plot could be moved on without him and some of the
• 43:51
  other characters touching some of those.
• 43:53
  Beats, you notice as well. In those things, between the
• 43:56
  Doctor and the Zebulon Price, in between the moral arguments of
• 43:59
  the dialogue, you have the Doctor just flashbacking to
• 44:03
  every single adventure he'd ever had.
• 44:05
  And I'm I remember the AP, CNET and then I'm going to talk about
• 44:08
  the Matrix and just these weird tangents and this.
• 44:14
  Reminded him of the time he was struck down by radiation on
• 44:17
  Metapedius 3 and things like Is this how he thinks?
• 44:21
  And that's the other thing as well in that this is a typical
• 44:25
  of yeah, it happens in quite a few new adventures is let's
• 44:28
  trash some of the past because I think we've got referenced sense
• 44:31
  fears conquered. And I think Metabeatus 3 has
• 44:34
  been ravaged. And is it Florana as well?
• 44:38
  It's like so all these beautiful places, all these pieces were
• 44:40
  played. No, not not anymore.
• 44:42
  You skip into the BBC books, they start trashing all the
• 44:45
  companions. Everyone's bloody miserable in
• 44:47
  those. This sure doesn't get out of the
• 44:49
  new adventures. Go cross miserable Dodo gets the
• 44:52
  red blown off on another virgin, isn't it?
• 44:55
  James? What are you losing?
• 44:57
  What are you cutting? First off, by the way, Zebulon
• 45:01
  is a biblical man. It still sounds it still sounds
• 45:05
  like a space name though. Yeah, say, yeah.
• 45:06
  But my my biblical knowledge isn't great.
• 45:10
  He's one of the sons of Jacob. So kind of.
• 45:12
  I did wonder if there's some biblical reference in the
• 45:17
  zebulon price stuff. I wouldn't lose him because I
• 45:21
  actually like some of the stuff that he does, and I think some
• 45:24
  of it makes it kind of interesting moral Gray areas.
• 45:32
  I agree that we don't need the double hit of each act of
• 45:37
  violence. What I I I would probably get
• 45:42
  rid of the TV reporting ones. What I really regret not having
• 45:48
  to I I kind of I I meant to do this, but then I kind of run out
• 45:52
  of time because of course again that it's revealed that everyone
• 45:58
  who has been in over city and who has been body baffled.
• 46:02
  Is and I want to go back to those violence bits and see how
• 46:07
  much information is in them that would actually enable you to
• 46:11
  work out this in advance the doctors revelation or if it is
• 46:17
  just acts advance the the new adventures there as with the Ed
• 46:23
  A's with all of them you need to read them twice you know because
• 46:27
  say kind of yeah once there's this reveal of kind of why
• 46:30
  everyone is. You know is is is rioting and
• 46:34
  everything. I wanted to go back and find
• 46:37
  out, had the groundwork for that been laid or was it kind of like
• 46:43
  out of nowhere you're. Asking me to read parasite
• 46:47
  twice. No I like you.
• 46:49
  So I won't I I I'm say there was somewhere when you said I we'll
• 46:58
  see what the randomize was chosen for you.
• 47:00
  You should have seen the prayer that I really I'm not a
• 47:03
  religious person. But Diego I would say please not
• 47:05
  parasite, please not force the shadow, please not strange you
• 47:08
  know. Please not adventurous of
• 47:10
  Henrietta St., you know. Love that one.
• 47:13
  Yeah, my eyesight can't focus on type that small very.
• 47:17
  Strong on my glass, I think that might be the longest, you know.
• 47:20
  It is. Oh, it is.
• 47:21
  But it's one. It's 126,000 words ish.
• 47:26
  Was never one to follow the rules, was.
• 47:29
  He No. So I would have got rid of the
• 47:31
  reporting because I don't think it really added anything.
• 47:36
  I would maybe have got rid of some of the bits of violence,
• 47:39
  but again, for me at the time especially, I felt that kind of
• 47:47
  it helped set up the atmosphere of the world.
• 47:51
  Where you've got the CD dives, where you've got the absolute
• 47:54
  slums, where you've got the penthouses.
• 47:56
  And I just felt the kind of, you know, if you got rid of all the
• 47:59
  violence, then you wouldn't get to see some of the bits of the
• 48:04
  world you made the comment about it being PG-13 on our kind of
• 48:10
  our Twitter thing. I've actually got a question
• 48:14
  which ties in with something that Paul said.
• 48:17
  You know what age group? Is this aimed at?
• 48:24
  I think sort of midrange teenagers.
• 48:31
  David, what do you reckon? Yeah.
• 48:34
  So by the time I started reading 8 Doctor books was when I was
• 48:38
  about 1516. And I think the kind of that
• 48:42
  level of it's Doctor Who, but it's violent and it's got it's a
• 48:47
  bit more sexy and it's. And certainly with early new
• 48:51
  adventures, it's a bit more sweary.
• 48:53
  It's it's a bit like what Torchwood did at first.
• 48:57
  It's like we can be grown up now and we're going to do grown up
• 49:00
  things. But Grown up things is not tone
• 49:03
  theme. It's we're going to say naughty
• 49:07
  words or we're going to have. I think.
• 49:12
  It was what they got away with because was it iceberg that?
• 49:16
  Has quite a lot of F bombs and that.
• 49:22
  So I think there's it's definite sort of teenage, teenage
• 49:26
  attitude maybe, but I think it's teenagers as Doctor Who facts a
• 49:30
  certain age. Or do you reckon I think it's 15
• 49:33
  through to 25 as they're working the assumption of what age the
• 49:36
  people were when Doctor Who? And then those two, you get that
• 49:41
  quite wide range in age, but it is kind of caught in all we can
• 49:45
  set. People can rub up against each
• 49:47
  other in a sexy way in space, but it is that.
• 49:51
  Because one of the things that kind of I was always supposed to
• 49:54
  be adult books, it's like if you actually look at the back cover,
• 49:56
  their science fiction slash TV tie in, you know, So I think
• 50:01
  kind of they've got to be a bit careful about what they show
• 50:04
  because they're being told to put this in the television
• 50:08
  section. And you'll notice that that's
• 50:10
  not on the back of any of the BBC books.
• 50:14
  So you get books like Rags, which then up the gore, up
• 50:17
  everything like that. Because it's no longer in the TV
• 50:21
  section, it's in the science fiction section.
• 50:24
  I think they learned their lesson from those earlier where
• 50:26
  they pushed too far and I'm not going to detail the scene with
• 50:30
  the prostitute in transit, but it is grim and it's certainly
• 50:33
  not for a young. There's there's actually far
• 50:35
  worse than that in some of the other earlier books.
• 50:39
  So kind of, yeah, I agree that kind of like, yeah, the the age
• 50:42
  group, I say. So if you're aiming this like,
• 50:45
  you know, the youngest is about 15 or 16, I think showing too
• 50:50
  much violence is going to cause a problem with letters of
• 50:54
  complaint. Yeah, the whole sex thing is
• 50:58
  just so ridiculous. Then in the same breath in your
• 51:02
  climax, you got the Doctor slicing the head off the villain
• 51:05
  you know. Now the villain is a robot,
• 51:07
  though that doesn't count. Death to robots is fine, you
• 51:10
  know. You know the only scene where
• 51:14
  he's rooting around in the soldiers?
• 51:17
  I can't remember if that's so, if that face is metal, or if it.
• 51:20
  And that's right. That's a peculiarly undoctorish
• 51:24
  moment and it makes me think of when he when refuses to cut the
• 51:30
  arm off in Caesar do yeah and there's a yeah, but we'll yeah.
• 51:35
  When when Mccoy's dissecting the the bomb on the on the go Kart
• 51:38
  in happens patrol So what he will take what he won't.
• 51:44
  We got him merrily scraping away in this.
• 51:47
  I didn't say the section when he pulls the guy's brain apart, the
• 51:50
  guy is actually categorically dead.
• 51:51
  He doesn't kill him by pulling the brain apart and he does
• 51:54
  actually. Yeah, lots of the plot detail
• 51:57
  that we need to to move on. Because again, I was thinking
• 52:02
  about this and I think Joe, it was either you or David who said
• 52:06
  you know on the the Twitter thing and it's been said like
• 52:09
  you know, is it Doctor Who? And I think we've got the real
• 52:13
  problem is that because Doctor Who ended in 1989, it kind of,
• 52:21
  it had this big decision to make about, you know.
• 52:26
  Do we try and write stories which are what the TV could
• 52:30
  possibly have evolved into or do we kind of throw everything to
• 52:35
  to the wind and say, right, we're going to do big scifi
• 52:39
  cities, you know? And I I think my main problem is
• 52:44
  that actually we, we regularly kind of miss that target.
• 52:50
  I think we miss, you know, the kind of the knowing what it's
• 52:54
  aiming for. And it was very interesting when
• 52:58
  you said, you know Per Tree is pretty consistent and then
• 53:00
  you've got the three distinct areas of Tom.
• 53:04
  You haven't got any kind of consistently themed runs of the
• 53:11
  stories. And I think coming here this is,
• 53:14
  let's say I would I I would have been much happier if Original
• 53:18
  Sin had been this length, but then there had been pay off in
• 53:24
  other books. Where the world being built was
• 53:28
  revisited because we wouldn't have then needed to rebuild
• 53:32
  every single world right the way on so as.
• 53:38
  You know, because it is so richly described, there's a lot
• 53:41
  of detail in there. And that's why, why I'm kind of
• 53:44
  really struggling to say what I would cut, because in my brain
• 53:48
  we've got an entire world that is still there, still visitable,
• 53:52
  and if we start to cut things like the violence.
• 53:55
  I mean it's, I mean it's even things like the small detail
• 53:57
  like the fact that kind of, you know, there are man satellites
• 54:01
  up there that they've got lasers that can wipe out entire over
• 54:04
  cities because you're pissed off, your boyfriend is cute.
• 54:09
  I mean I say, I mean that was just lovely.
• 54:11
  Yeah. But just that brief
• 54:13
  acknowledgement of homosexuality in the middle of the book, it's
• 54:15
  just like yeah, that's actually really welcome.
• 54:17
  You know, I I I remember reading it and thinking, oh, this is a
• 54:22
  future that actually. I still have a place in kind of
• 54:26
  thing, you know, so. I can tell you what I'd lose
• 54:30
  because, well, I finished it today and the sequences with the
• 54:35
  his character, whose name eludes me, now homeless.
• 54:40
  Betrayed and alone. Whichever one is scuffling
• 54:43
  around the city for interminably length passages.
• 54:47
  Because I thought the regulars were really quite fun in this.
• 54:49
  I thought the Doctor and Bernice worked really well together and
• 54:52
  I really like the journey that Chris and Ros go from her seeing
• 54:55
  him going, oh good grief, whoever got lumbered with here
• 54:58
  to know he's my partner, we're going to go off and have
• 55:01
  adventures together. I like that.
• 55:03
  So I thought they were really, really fun.
• 55:04
  But then we can't go back to scenes of that, his character.
• 55:07
  And honestly, like David and the violence, I kept skipping those
• 55:10
  bits going. I don't feel like this is going
• 55:12
  anywhere. I just like reading was almost
• 55:15
  like a travel log. And if you're invested in the
• 55:18
  world, I I get. And that's my problem is I got
• 55:21
  invested in this world and I think it's.
• 55:26
  Like I think, I think the pros, it went down like vanilla ice
• 55:30
  cream. It was read and I've read a lot
• 55:33
  of Doctor Who books from, you know, a mixed range of authors
• 55:38
  quality wise and some of the pros in some of those.
• 55:41
  But I don't know if you've ever read The Longest Day or I mean,
• 55:45
  I could name a couple. You know, these things can be
• 55:47
  tough to read, whereas I'll skip through this.
• 55:52
  Yeah, it's it's an easy read. I think he Angela has written it
• 55:56
  quite well because I say once I got past a certain point, I just
• 56:00
  skip through it really quickly, I think on the stuff with the
• 56:03
  hit. So we might talk about the Big
• 56:04
  Finish version at some point, but it mostly jettisons a lot of
• 56:09
  those things and in a way I actually missed them a little
• 56:13
  bit because. All that stuff with the hiss and
• 56:16
  the the the conquest of that planet and losing it and the
• 56:19
  sort of tragedy of that that's mostly absent from the big
• 56:23
  Finnish version. And I think it loses something
• 56:25
  because I think that's another layer of, you know, this is the
• 56:28
  Earth Empire, a bunch of bastards really, you know, it's
• 56:32
  all the Commons, the empire and you get this point of view from
• 56:35
  the subjugated people and. I just think it does add
• 56:41
  something, right? They go on a bit too much,
• 56:43
  There's a bit too much of them, but I wouldn't lose it
• 56:45
  completely. I think it does add another
• 56:47
  layer to the story. Well, I just mentioned Chris and
• 56:52
  Rose there and we sort of flirted talking about them, but
• 56:56
  how do you think this fares as an introductory story for them,
• 57:00
  Paul? I can't really remember.
• 57:03
  It goes, Joe, that's the problem.
• 57:04
  So I mean, AS2 characters, yeah, I think that they are.
• 57:08
  They're engaging characters. It's interesting that they
• 57:10
  weren't meant to be companions, because when you know that
• 57:15
  they're going to companions, they scream companions.
• 57:18
  I mean they're fulfilling that kind of cliche around the the
• 57:23
  grizzled old detective and the young part who's put in there.
• 57:29
  But of course there's a interesting play with that type
• 57:32
  of cliche and that she's a woman of color and he's a teddy bear
• 57:36
  and of course she's rich as well, which comes into play so
• 57:39
  that we're getting in some other cliches around private
• 57:42
  detectives of the 1930s made with those type of figures there
• 57:46
  and I think as guides through the city, but also that they
• 57:52
  through them we learn about the corruption in the city.
• 57:55
  So I think what's interesting is there's a there's a kind of
• 57:57
  discordance between we're told there were no murders but we do
• 58:01
  have this kind of quasi religious adjudicator wing who
• 58:05
  have like Judge Dredd. So here we are again.
• 58:08
  Another world is this has been built upon and I think the the
• 58:13
  hit sequences are needed because they are exactly this just been
• 58:17
  point to be made there to show what this world does to non
• 58:20
  humans. It's to show what this empire
• 58:23
  does. There's too many of them but
• 58:25
  that's because the book needs another ready.
• 58:27
  It's the same with the the scenes of violence and the the
• 58:29
  newscasting. What's interesting kind of the
• 58:31
  kind of missed something there because as we revealed that kind
• 58:33
  of really striking to the Empress is you know it's kind of
• 58:38
  like Baron Hart Cohen it's kind of like the God Emperor in the
• 58:41
  4th book. It's kind of like that central
• 58:43
  relay that's running satellite 5 at the end of season one.
• 58:47
  It's all plugged in. Everything runs through her.
• 58:50
  It's they. But yeah, we got the TV
• 58:53
  broadcast that seems to be like it's entirely honest.
• 58:55
  So what you do almost we see the violence and we have the TV
• 59:01
  increasingly happen to cover up for what's going on there.
• 59:03
  And that would fit in more, I think with some of the things
• 59:05
  that are in the book. That's implied then that our
• 59:07
  journey with the hit and Christian Ross's discovery and
• 59:10
  then of course the discovery that Ros knew all along and her
• 59:13
  mind's been wiped and then the mind wiped is really interesting
• 59:15
  how it works here. But I think in terms of
• 59:17
  introducing these characters it'll be so important to where
• 59:20
  it goes. My memory, I think it's really
• 59:22
  good introduction. Sorry it's one of the better I
• 59:25
  think. I think Benny comes across there
• 59:30
  immediately as some of you look to something's going on here as
• 59:33
  well as our kind of introduction to to these two characters
• 59:36
  whoever that double of here are the companions but also these
• 59:39
  are our guides through the Doctors and with us and Benny
• 59:44
  doesn't know. So I mean it's an interesting
• 59:46
  about Benny and archaeology and how we had the 16th century
• 59:49
  church, the 17th century church. This kind of notion is keeping
• 59:52
  everything on top and you kind of lose a sense, a distinct
• 59:54
  sense of the past and just built upon it.
• 59:56
  And so we need that guy because this is a portal world.
• 59:59
  So we need those type of figures.
• 1:00:00
  I mean that's the reference to Nani and this.
• 1:00:04
  These are our guides through there.
• 1:00:06
  We don't have the kind of Lucy character we learn with.
• 1:00:09
  We're guided with these figures who are relearning their world.
• 1:00:12
  So I think in terms of that. How they work in the narrative
• 1:00:15
  and that function really important and and well done.
• 1:00:18
  I really love that, that thing that they don't do very often.
• 1:00:22
  They did it with Sarah Jane in there, this high warrior, where
• 1:00:24
  they completely get the Doctor role, you know, and accuse him
• 1:00:29
  of something that he hasn't done.
• 1:00:30
  That's always really, really fun, Okay.
• 1:00:32
  What about you, James? I think credit's done really
• 1:00:37
  well. I think the the the kind of the
• 1:00:40
  picture we get of this hymbo almost.
• 1:00:44
  Yeah, I mean he's got his model spaceship still.
• 1:00:47
  He's got his parents. I mean the fact that they can't
• 1:00:49
  have the interrogation scene in his parents house.
• 1:00:52
  I mean, it's just there is this wonderful kind of innocence
• 1:00:56
  about him and you just think, yeah, you're about to have your
• 1:01:00
  world really bloody shattered, aren't you?
• 1:01:03
  In the Bloody New Adventures, he's got some shocks coming.
• 1:01:06
  He's got a lot of pleasure coming as well, but that's a
• 1:01:08
  whole lot of range of the, so I mean, I yeah.
• 1:01:14
  I'm not going to deny that there is the whole, the the whole
• 1:01:17
  cliche of old grizzled and and new rookie.
• 1:01:20
  But as Paul says, you know, the revelation about what actually
• 1:01:25
  happened to Ross's previous partner, I think kind of that
• 1:01:30
  that benefits from, you know, the the kind of the naivety of
• 1:01:34
  of Chris and everything, the fact that he's body baffled
• 1:01:37
  himself to be a teddy bear. It's like, Oh my God, that is so
• 1:01:40
  gorgeous, you know, you know? But then.
• 1:01:43
  Ross James on Chris Quedge. I had the mother of all crushes
• 1:01:48
  on him when I was younger. I really did, Yeah.
• 1:01:50
  In. That sense, you know.
• 1:01:53
  It's one of the biggest. One of the biggest
• 1:01:54
  disappointments of the audio adaption is the cover where they
• 1:01:58
  didn't give him blonde hair. It's like you bosses.
• 1:02:01
  Quedge is blonde and built for saying.
• 1:02:05
  And I admit that kind of. That's a minority comment, but
• 1:02:07
  you know, a few people just say Quedge.
• 1:02:09
  The whole point of me is this. Gorgeous hunt kind of thing,
• 1:02:15
  Rose, I felt. I knew a bit about her
• 1:02:18
  personality, but kind of. I didn't think her background
• 1:02:21
  was quite as well established. But again, kind of, you know,
• 1:02:28
  one of the things you know that's going to it's strange
• 1:02:31
  that in this one we've got Quedge's background being very
• 1:02:34
  well established and then it's so vile a sin.
• 1:02:37
  Which is Rosie's last one. That's where we finally kind of
• 1:02:39
  get the roles, background and everything.
• 1:02:41
  And of course you get the whole the decalogue about the family
• 1:02:46
  and everything. So kind of it's almost like, you
• 1:02:48
  know, we start off knowing everything about one of them and
• 1:02:51
  nothing about the other. And then the kind of, you know,
• 1:02:53
  as the books progressed, everything kind of swept over.
• 1:02:57
  I think it's yeah, it's it's kind of seeing the corruption as
• 1:03:02
  they discover it. I think is really well done.
• 1:03:07
  And yeah, it's just kind of, you know, this, this wonderful
• 1:03:11
  things like, yeah, actually we've almost got like a male Joe
• 1:03:13
  Grant joining the TARDIS, You know, he sees the best in
• 1:03:18
  everything. He's just kind of happy.
• 1:03:22
  And the scene where he has all his fur burn off because he's
• 1:03:26
  basically sacrificed himself to try and save Rose and Benny.
• 1:03:31
  He's actually like, Oh yeah, OK, you know.
• 1:03:36
  Doesn't he? He loses say, kind of, you know,
• 1:03:39
  there's there's quite nasty descriptions of kind of, you
• 1:03:42
  know, clumps of fur falling off and the burnt flesh underneath
• 1:03:46
  and everything. So again, I mean, there's this
• 1:03:51
  whole, you know, rebirth thing then with the body bap and
• 1:03:54
  everything. So I think, yeah, I think it's a
• 1:03:57
  wonderful book for them. I think it's, you know, it's a a
• 1:04:00
  great way to do it. David, are you Team Chris, Team
• 1:04:05
  Rolls or Team Chris? Definitely Team Chris and Rolls.
• 1:04:09
  I think this wasn't the first books I read that I wrote.
• 1:04:12
  Read them, sort about a sequence at times.
• 1:04:14
  So going back to their introduction, I mean, you
• 1:04:17
  wouldn't get away with companion like Ross now, not as she's
• 1:04:21
  written because she's borderline xenophobic.
• 1:04:24
  And I can't remember how much that's dealt with in subsequent
• 1:04:29
  books, because it's not. Yes, she's had a memory wipe.
• 1:04:31
  She's had a change that all aliens are bad because she's had
• 1:04:34
  this implanted memory. But it doesn't kind of, yeah,
• 1:04:38
  there's no death moment of oh, I love aliens now or they say they
• 1:04:42
  don't. So I can't remember whether or
• 1:04:43
  not that becomes more of a plot line.
• 1:04:46
  But it's that is one of the sorts of things of file under.
• 1:04:50
  You could not do that in the Doctor Who fiction now and
• 1:04:54
  again, I think. She's an interesting character.
• 1:04:59
  I think of the two I find her much more interesting.
• 1:05:03
  I think Chris is he's a Himbo, but I don't know it's it's a bit
• 1:05:10
  obvious. The thing I find interesting
• 1:05:12
  because I was I was going to say I was digging through things
• 1:05:14
  like Doctor Who magazine managed to find when they were first
• 1:05:16
  announced and they were they only did very small articles but
• 1:05:19
  they were announced as question Forester.
• 1:05:22
  And I remember that in this generally in the pros, that's
• 1:05:25
  how they're referred to because obviously they're not regulars
• 1:05:28
  yet. But Sky Paris does that and then
• 1:05:31
  Doug Zamperov and Zamper, it's only, I think it's Toy Soldiers,
• 1:05:34
  which is their 4th book that they become Chris and Ross in
• 1:05:38
  terms of the pros. So whether or not that's meant
• 1:05:40
  to be a deliberate evolution of them becoming part of, you know,
• 1:05:44
  the TARDIS family and all, or is it just the kind of like someone
• 1:05:48
  just said, no, no, don't call them question for us or call
• 1:05:51
  them Chris and Ross. It just sounds a bit better.
• 1:05:55
  But there is something about, and I think Mel has issues with
• 1:05:58
  it in head games of gun toting companions.
• 1:06:02
  He's got a few issues with Sylvester Mccoy's Dr. as well.
• 1:06:05
  Yeah, I think. I think she storms out at the
• 1:06:08
  end. But yeah, it's bold, it's
• 1:06:11
  interesting, and it's one of those things that new adventures
• 1:06:13
  could do is that you could have companions who you didn't get on
• 1:06:17
  television and going back to the point of like, is it Doctor Who?
• 1:06:21
  And it was like it was Doctor Who in 95.
• 1:06:23
  Because that's where it evolved. We're looking at it now knowing
• 1:06:26
  that it's sort of circled back to something closer to not so
• 1:06:32
  much what we had in 89, but it's closer to kind of the the spirit
• 1:06:35
  of Doctor on television. So now we we've got this kind
• 1:06:39
  of, I wouldn't say aberration because that's not the right
• 1:06:41
  word, but. Training back alley.
• 1:06:45
  Interesting, yeah. It's it's an experiment of
• 1:06:48
  Doctor Who being more grown up, but it's now kind of gone back
• 1:06:51
  to being more family friendly, more accessible.
• 1:06:56
  You couldn't. It's not just sex, violence and
• 1:06:59
  language. I think some of the the tone of
• 1:07:01
  some of the stories and new adventures, they wouldn't be
• 1:07:04
  probably even allowed to consider doing that a.
• 1:07:07
  Lot of torture in them. There's a real.
• 1:07:09
  Lot of There's a sadistic streak through a lot of these books.
• 1:07:13
  I think even just at the end of the book, when Vaughan is just
• 1:07:16
  trying, you know? Grasping the doctor and and
• 1:07:19
  that's quite graphically described as well.
• 1:07:21
  And yeah, I'm trying to remember, somebody said it on
• 1:07:25
  Twitter. I think it was Gary Russell said
• 1:07:26
  it on Twitter. He was talking about some stuff
• 1:07:28
  that you wouldn't do. Now.
• 1:07:29
  We're not without a number of edits.
• 1:07:31
  I did a Big Finish, Fred, about the Rapture.
• 1:07:34
  Yeah, Rapture. That, that that sort of pointed
• 1:07:37
  Big Finish that you couldn't do now.
• 1:07:39
  Well, I I, I know it's true because I know a fair few people
• 1:07:42
  that work for Big Finish and so the people Commission of it, it
• 1:07:45
  all goes through Cardiff now and they will come back and say yes
• 1:07:49
  or no, no, you're not doing that.
• 1:07:50
  You're not touching that one because that's what we're doing
• 1:07:53
  on TV or two because it's just inappropriate.
• 1:07:56
  Yeah. So yeah, you're right.
• 1:07:57
  And I don't think they touch, I think about 80% of the new
• 1:08:00
  adventures. No way.
• 1:08:02
  And I'm not saying that's that means the that 80% is bad.
• 1:08:06
  Well there is a sense I mean can we come back to Torchwood how
• 1:08:08
  far is to what the new adventures is and that you do in
• 1:08:16
  you did in torture you didn't torture what was done here and
• 1:08:18
  you kind of keep it away from the from the main or
• 1:08:22
  particularly tortured trouble of Earth.
• 1:08:24
  But that sticks off of a sore thumb that where is the doctor
• 1:08:27
  he's not coming to save you And so there is a sense in which you
• 1:08:31
  can do it but over there. So it's interesting in this
• 1:08:34
  whole talk about a Doctor universe, will there be
• 1:08:36
  something there while they're going to be too wary of it?
• 1:08:38
  Because it's interesting just saying that with a Cardiff of
• 1:08:41
  what say they kind of can't do. If you think back to the series
• 1:08:45
  one, where they're essentially learning how to make Doctor Who
• 1:08:48
  and Equiston without his shirt about to be tortured and the
• 1:08:54
  corresponding team where he tortures the the Dalek do, the
• 1:08:58
  Where the Dalek isn't tortured. Do we get that now?
• 1:09:00
  Or is there a sense in which that's kind of a hangover of
• 1:09:02
  another way of making Doctor Who very early on and that you would
• 1:09:07
  just wouldn't get it because he did.
• 1:09:08
  Yeah. The Doctor being tortured, the
• 1:09:10
  Doctor without a shirt on is a striking moment and and and and
• 1:09:15
  and where you find it is here in the New Adventures.
• 1:09:17
  And of course because Davis has worked with these.
• 1:09:20
  Is there a kind of a connection back there as part of that
• 1:09:23
  awkward first half of that season before rediscover what we
• 1:09:31
  said here that that that family view which is children, adults,
• 1:09:34
  the 15 year olds and then you know, you forget about this
• 1:09:37
  strain or you you you produce torture and don't quite get it
• 1:09:39
  right to start with because what's adult or what's mature,
• 1:09:45
  it's sex. Well, no, it's not.
• 1:09:47
  So no, it's not. You can do a different type of
• 1:09:49
  story. So it's interesting, that kind
• 1:09:52
  of relationship. Look at The Sarah Jane
• 1:09:54
  Adventures and then you might see some mature storytelling
• 1:09:56
  taking place, you know? In a very childish way, yeah,
• 1:10:00
  yeah, yeah. Yeah, but it's worth mentioning
• 1:10:02
  as well. Isn't it the influence that the
• 1:10:05
  new Adventures have had on the new series as well?
• 1:10:08
  I'm surprised given Andy Lane can clearly write Doctor Who.
• 1:10:12
  This is steeped in Doctor Who and it's got a pretty good plot
• 1:10:16
  that he was never chosen for those first four years.
• 1:10:21
  It's amazing how many of not just the virgin people, but the
• 1:10:25
  the EDA and the PDA. Who?
• 1:10:28
  I mean, you know, the one that astounds me is Jacqueline
• 1:10:33
  Rayner. How?
• 1:10:33
  She wasn't asked to write for the 13th Doctor.
• 1:10:36
  It's just like she would have been contact, you know?
• 1:10:39
  Yeah. Jonathan Morris How he never did
• 1:10:41
  a Stephen Yeah script baffles me cuz he did.
• 1:10:44
  I think that's because Stephen Moth that did a Jonathan Morris
• 1:10:46
  script. Well, OK, so so to kind of
• 1:10:54
  gently ran off original SIM. Is I'd like you all to recommend
• 1:11:01
  because we said what we car. Let's recommend something about
• 1:11:04
  the book and if there are any further thoughts that you have,
• 1:11:08
  I'll know you do James, I can see you there.
• 1:11:12
  Let's start with David. I liked the reveal of the
• 1:11:18
  villain and I and as much as we've talked about, you know, is
• 1:11:21
  it too continuity or heavy if that had just been, if the, you
• 1:11:24
  know, Tobias Vaughn, the villain of the books.
• 1:11:27
  Of this book. Sorry, that would have been That
• 1:11:31
  would have been fine. You didn't need all the extra
• 1:11:33
  stuff. But those scenes between the
• 1:11:35
  Doctor and Vaughn, and that's what kept me that they were the
• 1:11:39
  most interesting bits of those final chapters.
• 1:11:41
  I just like the sort of dynamic between the two of them and
• 1:11:45
  don't know everybody else, but you were reading that with Kevin
• 1:11:47
  Stoney's voice and you know, you can just imagine that kind of
• 1:11:51
  silky, smooth articulation. Yeah.
• 1:11:55
  And and I really like those bits, I thought and it was
• 1:12:00
  difficult. So I I when I was, you know,
• 1:12:02
  starting to buy the books, I was on the Internet, I'd reading
• 1:12:05
  synopsis all over the place. I knew that twist and I really
• 1:12:07
  wish I hadn't. And it's a shame that if anybody
• 1:12:09
  goes to pick up this book as a result of listen to this,
• 1:12:12
  they're going to have that spoiled, which is a shame.
• 1:12:15
  But you know you we can't not talk about the big, the big
• 1:12:19
  reveal of who the villain is. And.
• 1:12:22
  You know, I was like and then when I got to that point where
• 1:12:24
  it revealed it at the end of that chapter, I went, well, of
• 1:12:27
  course in a book stuff with this much continuity, the main bad
• 1:12:30
  guy is a TV Doctor Who villain. Sorry, back to you.
• 1:12:35
  It kind of, it kind of worked. But The thing is, now, with the
• 1:12:38
  benefit of what another six or seven Doctors, the idea that
• 1:12:41
  he's been hanging around for 1000 years and he just hasn't
• 1:12:44
  been quite able to grab the TARDIS off of him, it's like now
• 1:12:48
  it feels like ridiculous. Because it's like all the
• 1:12:52
  opportunities. It's like even if, oh, I was
• 1:12:55
  nearly there, but I was too slow.
• 1:12:56
  But it's like it's been 1000 years and the Tortoise has been
• 1:12:59
  everywhere in that thousand years and it's like that's even
• 1:13:02
  back in 95 now with you know how many TV series, Big Finish
• 1:13:08
  novels and everything. It now just feels slightly.
• 1:13:13
  Ridiculous, but ignore that. I really enjoyed those bits.
• 1:13:16
  I thought it's a good villain. It was believable in the context
• 1:13:19
  of yes, of course you know he didn't trust the side men.
• 1:13:22
  Yes he did Her downloads, his consciousness.
• 1:13:25
  Can we buy whether or not he couldn't have built an effective
• 1:13:30
  replica after 1000 years And all the tech?
• 1:13:33
  Considering how sophisticated all the other tech is?
• 1:13:38
  Again, I'm not entirely sure, but.
• 1:13:41
  Now, definitely, if you're going to use a villain, if you're
• 1:13:43
  going to bring a villain back, that's a good one to bring back.
• 1:13:47
  Bring back the best. And and the irony of bringing
• 1:13:51
  back Kevin Stoney, who died at least twice before his official
• 1:13:54
  death, you know? I'm sure it pops up every now
• 1:13:59
  and again. He's the sort of Tony House of
• 1:14:01
  the Doctor Who was. Transferring his mind to other
• 1:14:03
  bodies. What about you then, Paul?
• 1:14:07
  Well, I'd either cut Tobias Vaughn entirely and make price
• 1:14:12
  to the villain, or I'd cut Price and just ratchet up the Vaughn.
• 1:14:15
  Given a lot of the early stuff of Vaughn is hands moving across
• 1:14:18
  a desk, I thought it was either Bruiser or Chancellor Harding
• 1:14:22
  because that's what they do in their various villains.
• 1:14:25
  It's lots of hands in darkened rooms.
• 1:14:28
  But I mean, and it would go back to this of cutting the
• 1:14:31
  dissection, I assume you know this purgatory, you know, Bell
• 1:14:36
  Tempest quoting from the 23rd Psalm.
• 1:14:40
  There's a reference to grace there.
• 1:14:42
  The title itself. There's always kind of
• 1:14:44
  theological stuff kicking ass. Never.
• 1:14:45
  Really it doesn't know really what it should do.
• 1:14:48
  And I think, I think the biblical name.
• 1:14:51
  I mean, I've just, I've just had a look there because I I'd
• 1:14:54
  overlooked the Price has got a biblical name.
• 1:14:57
  He's not. He's just picked a name up of
• 1:14:58
  the looks. If you look at the there's only
• 1:15:00
  wiki I've looked at. He's just sounded, I say with
• 1:15:03
  Bell Tempest, you know Lord of the Storm.
• 1:15:05
  He's an elephant mate. You know, there's a sense
• 1:15:07
  there's a lot, there's a lot of jokes going on here.
• 1:15:10
  I think a lot of this is kind of pasticial parody, and I think
• 1:15:14
  Vaughn is all. I could have got the TARDIS if
• 1:15:16
  only I hadn't been going have off to the toilet or something
• 1:15:19
  like that for the kind of a weird joke there.
• 1:15:21
  And that you accept it and then you don't accept choose.
• 1:15:29
  I choose the villain, and I'd either have Tobias Vaughn or I'd
• 1:15:32
  have the the weird Hannibal Lecter looks like he's something
• 1:15:36
  from a Blake illustration. I've got one or the other to
• 1:15:39
  tighten it up. And then if you were going to
• 1:15:41
  keep this, just do more to really is because the kind of
• 1:15:45
  theological thing going on here, I think.
• 1:15:47
  Or just get rid of it and then you can get rid of this and you
• 1:15:50
  don't need to, because perpetry is kind of a weird thing as
• 1:15:52
  well. It's not really.
• 1:15:57
  It's not. It's not perfect in the
• 1:15:58
  theological sense. It's just like they've gone for
• 1:16:00
  the name because it's kind of sinister and this is something
• 1:16:02
  that will kill you. But actually it feels like, I
• 1:16:04
  don't know, Vogue's miniscope or that weird light show thing in
• 1:16:09
  in Nightmare and Eden or even the war games.
• 1:16:13
  You know, the designs put up against each other kind of we
• 1:16:16
  got vague memory. This will shove it in here
• 1:16:18
  because it was good then and we can kind of ratchet it up.
• 1:16:20
  So there will be tweaks I think and I think the kind of under
• 1:16:24
  score this what this world is like.
• 1:16:26
  So remove one of the journeys off world, keep us in that world
• 1:16:30
  that we'd know we like. We recognize, we see where all
• 1:16:33
  these touch points are and just kind of spend more time there
• 1:16:36
  and it's just just a bit more. There's an intimate
• 1:16:38
  acknowledgement where he suggested he made it up as he
• 1:16:40
  went along, which I don't think he did.
• 1:16:43
  There is a sense there of almost the the episodic there and you
• 1:16:46
  know now in our four Part 14, it's all revolved.
• 1:16:49
  I did this. There's just there's too much.
• 1:16:51
  But I think, yeah, born in bringing a bit earlier, or get
• 1:16:57
  rid of him and just a price and then go full on that kind of
• 1:17:01
  psycho horror that's there in that middle bit.
• 1:17:04
  As as I was reading the things between the Doctor and Vaughn, I
• 1:17:08
  was like, haven't I already done this with the Doctor and Price?
• 1:17:12
  It's it's so weird. You have they have that thought
• 1:17:13
  almost like the same debate and I'm like well it's kind of muted
• 1:17:17
  version of the middle of the book which is strange.
• 1:17:20
  But even though I do think that the scenes we're born are better
• 1:17:23
  and sort of talking about how he's manipulated the world and
• 1:17:26
  and all of that. What about you, James?
• 1:17:30
  I would definitely, and I'm sorry David, I would definitely
• 1:17:34
  get rid of Vaughan. I would keep Price two reasons,
• 1:17:39
  one of which. Is I like the I love the
• 1:17:43
  discussion that they have which is a very Doctor Who thing where
• 1:17:47
  the where it's about kind of like why murder is intrinsically
• 1:17:50
  wrong and kind of you know why price killing people is wrong
• 1:17:56
  but the Doctor choosing to sacrifice planets is right
• 1:17:59
  because the Doctor just knows because the Doctor kind of goes
• 1:18:02
  with you know what he knows is right and this whole thing about
• 1:18:07
  you know what is Doctor Who. I mean, there is no such thing
• 1:18:10
  as Doctor Who. If you took someone from the 60s
• 1:18:13
  and showed them season 17, they'd go, what the hell am I
• 1:18:15
  watching? Yeah.
• 1:18:16
  And as David said, you know, this is Doctor Who from the 90s.
• 1:18:19
  This is a very specific era, something that David, you would
• 1:18:23
  have missed out on. Paul, I don't know kind of if
• 1:18:26
  you would have picked this up at the time, but there is a huge
• 1:18:30
  problem with 1995 and Vaughn is the problem.
• 1:18:37
  So in 1995, the books are coming out two a month.
• 1:18:39
  You've got the New Adventures and you've got The Missing
• 1:18:42
  Adventures. And the book that's paired with
• 1:18:47
  Original Sin is System Shock, which is all about I ^2, which
• 1:18:54
  is all about a technology company, which is all about the
• 1:18:57
  Doctor breaking in and stealing cd-roms and stuff like that.
• 1:19:02
  That's in the same month as Original Sin.
• 1:19:06
  System Shock though actually leads into another book, the
• 1:19:09
  book from December of 1995, which is Millennial Rights,
• 1:19:16
  where basically we learned that International Electromatics has
• 1:19:22
  completely folded. It's gone.
• 1:19:25
  There's a new company that's taking its place.
• 1:19:27
  You've got this guy called Ashley Chappell who basically is
• 1:19:30
  ruling the world on the technology front and.
• 1:19:33
  I can remember back in 95 going hold on a couple of months ago,
• 1:19:36
  Didn't you say it was Vaughn who ruled the world on technology
• 1:19:39
  front? And so kind of, for me, it's
• 1:19:43
  very strange, this conflict between reading it now outside
• 1:19:47
  of the context of 1995 and thinking, yeah, this is a nice
• 1:19:51
  reveal of Vaughn, but back in 95, thinking, hold on, this kind
• 1:19:56
  of really messes up with what's been going on in the other books
• 1:19:59
  and everything. And the most bizarre, the most
• 1:20:02
  bizarre thing is System Shock is Justin Richards, this is Andy
• 1:20:06
  Lane. Then your rights is Craig
• 1:20:07
  Hinton, who were all at university together.
• 1:20:11
  Yeah, but it's, you know, Justin and Craig have very clearly
• 1:20:18
  shared the kind of the idea and they've kind of left handing out
• 1:20:22
  the loop a bit. And it's why I was asking
• 1:20:25
  earlier who edited it. And I think Rebecca Levine
• 1:20:27
  should have looked at this and said there's a real kind of
• 1:20:32
  problematical sorts of continuity going on between our
• 1:20:35
  different ranges. But you and I have had this
• 1:20:38
  debate, haven't we, When we've talked about TV Doctor Who,
• 1:20:41
  absolutely. The person that needs that
• 1:20:45
  chapter of Doctor Who to fit into the overall.
• 1:20:49
  Yeah, because my brain works like that, basically.
• 1:20:52
  Without contradictions. And you know, you know me, I'm
• 1:20:54
  that person that can just sit there and watch that one story
• 1:20:57
  and say it's very interesting. Kind of reading it now out of
• 1:21:01
  sequence, out of context, out of 1995, comparing it to how it was
• 1:21:06
  back in 1995 when it kind of sits very awkwardly between the
• 1:21:11
  two other books that form like kind of 1 bigger Picture.
• 1:21:14
  It's also great example of how Doctor Who fans really cannot
• 1:21:20
  make their mind up as to what good Doctor Who is.
• 1:21:24
  So again, going back to DWM, when it came out it was the
• 1:21:30
  fifth most favorite book of that particular year.
• 1:21:36
  It was beaten by Human Nature, Shakedown, Warlock, and also
• 1:21:40
  People. And then when they did their
• 1:21:42
  massive poll of all the books and got you to vote for Marks
• 1:21:45
  out of 10, it actually suddenly became the third most popular.
• 1:21:49
  That year. Warlock had dropped to position
• 1:21:52
  33. Original SIM was the 11th most
• 1:21:55
  popular. They got got 73 ish percent as
• 1:22:02
  this kind of mark in their big poll which puts it roughly in
• 1:22:07
  the region of damaged goods return of the living dad also
• 1:22:12
  people and blood heat. I mean, it's, you know, so
• 1:22:16
  again, this whole question of what is Doctor Who, What is good
• 1:22:18
  Doctor Who like? Because if you then skip forward
• 1:22:23
  many years, it gets exactly the same mark out of 100 as Crooked
• 1:22:27
  World does. And the crooked world is
• 1:22:30
  marvelous. No, no, no.
• 1:22:31
  You leave it alone, all right? I love it.
• 1:22:32
  Don't get me wrong. That's why.
• 1:22:33
  That's why I checked that particular.
• 1:22:35
  But I know that that was one that kind of caused all the
• 1:22:37
  controversy. It's Pleasantville, the Doctor
• 1:22:40
  Who novel. Yeah.
• 1:22:42
  What's very satisfying though, is it's not quite twice the the
• 1:22:49
  percentage of the lowest ranked Doctor Who book ever, but it is
• 1:22:54
  quite close to the lowest ranked Doctor Who book ever is 42%.
• 1:22:58
  Which is. Any guesses anyone?
• 1:23:01
  Transit. Goes to end space pull.
• 1:23:09
  From across past Doctors and 8th dot, yes.
• 1:23:14
  Doctor and new adventures. Oh gosh, I don't know. 8-8
• 1:23:23
  doctors, something like that. I don't know officially the
• 1:23:27
  worst ever Doctor Who book as ranked by DWM is interference.
• 1:23:33
  Oh, please, save yourself 43 percent, 4200 bit percent.
• 1:23:38
  Well, like the Jody Whisker era, it's clear the Doctor Who fans
• 1:23:41
  back in the day didn't talking about either.
• 1:23:44
  I say it's it's look, I mean, you know I went through loads of
• 1:23:47
  the the charts to see what kind of what was roughly seen as
• 1:23:51
  equivalent of what times. And yeah, Original Sin was very
• 1:23:57
  popular in the year it came out. And yeah, 11th out of all the
• 1:24:00
  NA's. It's interesting.
• 1:24:03
  Interference gets that bucket pulled on it because it was when
• 1:24:06
  that came out, there was a big old interview with Mills and I
• 1:24:10
  Yeah, if he was in charge of the show because it was very much.
• 1:24:14
  You know, if it was Babylon 5, and it'd be like maybe he'd be a
• 1:24:17
  single author and they like, like how it was like Robert
• 1:24:20
  Holmes. And it was, and it's a great
• 1:24:22
  book, but and it doesn't deserve that.
• 1:24:25
  I think they say it's probably probably got the same number of
• 1:24:28
  10 out of 10s as one out of 10s. In terms of ambition.
• 1:24:33
  Yeah, yeah, interference. Great Doctor Who, That's for.
• 1:24:38
  That's for a. Boost.
• 1:24:41
  I've read a lot of those Bbs. That's for another day.
• 1:24:44
  And the I enjoyed interfered. I mean, it's the only, is it the
• 1:24:48
  only two-part proper 2 parter, all of them.
• 1:24:52
  I said you got system shock and Millennium shock, millennial
• 1:24:55
  shock. And it writes out Sam Jones as
• 1:24:58
  well. I mean, yeah, but yeah, I think
• 1:25:01
  kind of you know if we're looking to score it, I would
• 1:25:03
  actually say around about the 75% mark for me is a really
• 1:25:08
  accurate representation of you know, I'm thinking about 8 out
• 1:25:13
  of 10 sort of region for me. Well, so my final question about
• 1:25:16
  the book is before we recommend a book of our very own is, would
• 1:25:21
  you recommend this book to another Doctor Who fan?
• 1:25:24
  Because there are certainly Doctor Who books that I would
• 1:25:26
  not, David. It would depend who's asking and
• 1:25:33
  maybe how sensitive they might be and how much they'd be able
• 1:25:37
  to accept. This is a book that was written
• 1:25:39
  in the 90s. And it some of its values might
• 1:25:43
  not work or be representative of now because I know there are
• 1:25:48
  some fans that sometimes can't put the distance between when
• 1:25:53
  something was written to when they read it.
• 1:25:55
  But I would recommend, I think, yeah, 75%, seven, eight out of
• 1:25:59
  10, that's kind of where it sits with me.
• 1:26:01
  I enjoyed it. I think it needs the flab
• 1:26:04
  cutting. But it's an enjoyable read, and
• 1:26:07
  as we said before, it is a good if you've never read a new
• 1:26:10
  adventure before. I think this is a good, this is
• 1:26:14
  not a bad one to watch, to watch if we could, to read for the
• 1:26:19
  first time. So yeah, I'd recommend it.
• 1:26:22
  I I was like you. I think the first third, I
• 1:26:24
  struggled a bit because I was like, OK, so some mix I thought
• 1:26:27
  with adjudicators and the Doctor and Bernice are over here and
• 1:26:31
  Chris and Rose are over there and I'm like, when are these?
• 1:26:34
  People going to come together like this is taking forever.
• 1:26:36
  Then somewhere halfway through the book, the momentum just
• 1:26:38
  accelerated right through to the end.
• 1:26:41
  And I was it was a clean ride and.
• 1:26:43
  I was just a just a weird thing. Just just remind you that
• 1:26:46
  they've got all that stuff with adjudicators and everything and
• 1:26:48
  then they've just got this very strange joke that the Rasheed
• 1:26:53
  has got piles, which which is just, I've forgotten that.
• 1:26:59
  It was just one of those very strange.
• 1:27:02
  Moments. And there was that.
• 1:27:03
  And there was, I think we've got so Lurian singing The Rolling
• 1:27:06
  Stones at one point as well, which I think is in one of the
• 1:27:10
  acts of violence that I would have cut.
• 1:27:11
  But actually that bit I thought, this is weird.
• 1:27:14
  There was some jokes that I thought really landed,
• 1:27:17
  especially around sort of McCoy being a bit impish and a bit
• 1:27:20
  naughty. There was a bit where they were
• 1:27:22
  on those those things and they're going in different
• 1:27:25
  directions. She goes, oh Doctor, we're
• 1:27:26
  drifting apart and he's like, oh Bernice, I know we've been
• 1:27:29
  through some scrapes, but yeah. I like that.
• 1:27:31
  And the bit where he sort of got dressed up in the bot costume.
• 1:27:34
  Oh yes, that's right, I. Thought like some of that stuff
• 1:27:37
  was really fun, so maybe it wasn't the most responsible 7th
• 1:27:41
  Doctor representation, but it was fun about you, Paul.
• 1:27:44
  Would you recommend it? I I would, yeah.
• 1:27:49
  I mean for Doctor Who fans, yes. And I'd say seven or eight out
• 1:27:55
  of 10 to non Doctor Who fans. I don't know.
• 1:27:59
  And I'd be less less certain about that.
• 1:28:01
  But yeah, I I would definitely recommend it.
• 1:28:02
  And I think there are some funniness.
• 1:28:03
  The piles. I'm wondering if they know that
• 1:28:07
  General Melcher in black and it goes forth, he's meant to have
• 1:28:10
  piles, he makes weird and he sits down, and I'm wondering if
• 1:28:14
  there's something going on there about figures of authority.
• 1:28:17
  It's a It's a running joke. But yeah, yeah, it's, it's,
• 1:28:19
  it's. It moves along with a fair old
• 1:28:21
  lick. Once you get into it, it it does
• 1:28:24
  need re editing or it needs further editing but yeah it's
• 1:28:26
  it's. I think for fans Vaughan means
• 1:28:31
  something. For non fans, it's just why have
• 1:28:33
  you got another villain turned up at this point?
• 1:28:35
  But yeah, I think 7, seven or eight is where it is.
• 1:28:41
  Games and I think Paul, sorry, I think David made a really good
• 1:28:45
  comment about it depends. Yeah.
• 1:28:48
  Doing the fish pump in the air doesn't work on audio.
• 1:28:50
  I know, I know, it. It depends very much on who is
• 1:28:57
  asking because as I was saying here, some of the marks awarded
• 1:29:06
  to Doctor Who books over the years have been really bizarre
• 1:29:09
  and I think you need to be of a certain type to enjoy original
• 1:29:16
  Sin. I think if you want, if you like
• 1:29:20
  your Doctor Who to be meaningful and emotional and powerful, then
• 1:29:29
  no, I wouldn't recommend it. If you want Doctor Who to be
• 1:29:33
  this kind of fun, OK, high body count in this case, but kind of,
• 1:29:38
  you know, story where kind of there are aliens, there are
• 1:29:43
  ships, there's discoveries, there's all kinds of quirks and
• 1:29:47
  everything like that, then yes, I would.
• 1:29:49
  So I would recommend it to some people.
• 1:29:54
  But given that it's the start of Quege and Rose, then yeah, I
• 1:29:58
  think it's a good jumping on point regardless.
• 1:30:02
  Then I think we're four for four because I would recommend this,
• 1:30:05
  but certainly to Doctor Who fans, maybe to.
• 1:30:09
  Non Doctor Who fans that would be intrigued to see just how tie
• 1:30:13
  in the science fiction was written in the 90s.
• 1:30:15
  It would be very different right now, but like whilst I've got a
• 1:30:18
  small list of complaints about the book, I think I've got a
• 1:30:21
  small list of complaints about every Doctor Who book I keep
• 1:30:25
  saying it. It was such an easy read and
• 1:30:28
  there are a lot of these books that are a struggle just just in
• 1:30:32
  the pros to get through. And I I zipped through this.
• 1:30:35
  So yeah, it's a it's a firm recommended for me as well.
• 1:30:38
  And I I just love the regulars. I thought every time we were
• 1:30:41
  with the doctor Benny Crystal Rose.
• 1:30:42
  My attention was completely there.
• 1:30:44
  Otherwise it was thinking about the dinner.
• 1:30:47
  Something like that. Okay.
• 1:30:56
  Well thank you very much guys. That was incisive and wonderful
• 1:31:01
  now. I know some of you have been
• 1:31:03
  agonizing over this. Others probably just pick
• 1:31:06
  something off the shelf like me. But I need you now to recommend
• 1:31:12
  a Doctor Who book for the listeners to buy or grab off the
• 1:31:17
  shelf. And I'm going to start with
• 1:31:23
  David. This one's been mentioned.
• 1:31:28
  It's the burning because. It was one of my first eight
• 1:31:33
  doctor ventures. In terms of this is when I
• 1:31:35
  started buying the Monthly and I know Doctor Who magazine picked
• 1:31:39
  it up. This was going to be a reset.
• 1:31:42
  It was going to be a reboot and bizarrely I did retry and read
• 1:31:47
  The Ancestor. I did read The Ancestor Cell,
• 1:31:49
  but I think so much of it went over my head that was kind of
• 1:31:55
  enjoyed it, but I was like, I don't actually know what's going
• 1:31:57
  on, but I think. The burning and then that that
• 1:32:00
  story arc, I think throughout the the next five books until
• 1:32:03
  Escape Velocity. I thought they were brilliant.
• 1:32:07
  I thought it's kind of what Doctor Who does every few years.
• 1:32:11
  It says, you know what, let's just Chuck all this back story
• 1:32:14
  out out the window and let's just start afresh.
• 1:32:17
  And I think the ideas probably needed to do that a little more
• 1:32:20
  often. I think it definitely go back to
• 1:32:23
  James's point earlier that they got even more so than new
• 1:32:26
  adventures they got bogged down in.
• 1:32:29
  Their storylines, but The Burning is a another great entry
• 1:32:34
  level book. I think it was for me, it was
• 1:32:36
  the one that really could have went from picking up the
• 1:32:39
  occasional title to I need to read the next one now.
• 1:32:41
  I need to keep going this and then getting to escape velocity
• 1:32:45
  thinking OK they're going to resolve this five book story arc
• 1:32:49
  and he's going to get his memories back and we're going
• 1:32:50
  to. OK now we don't.
• 1:32:51
  And it goes off in a different direction.
• 1:32:53
  And that's a conversation for another day.
• 1:32:55
  But I just. Remember really enjoying it was
• 1:32:58
  one of the took it on holiday, read it in a couple of days and
• 1:33:02
  for me that's usually a measure I'm enjoying it or not.
• 1:33:05
  Because I think the some of the slowest ones like the pit took
• 1:33:09
  weeks to read but with the burning did it in a couple of
• 1:33:13
  days. It was just a you know, Justin
• 1:33:15
  Richards writes really sometimes really easy to read enjoyable
• 1:33:19
  Doctor Who books even though the Doctors lost his memory.
• 1:33:22
  The TARDIS is a small cube in his pocket.
• 1:33:27
  But it works and it's just a really enjoyable story whether
• 1:33:31
  or not you can get off the shelf because if it's been pulped or
• 1:33:35
  burnt or ended up in landfill or whatever, but if you if you can
• 1:33:39
  get a copy of the burning, I would give it a go.
• 1:33:41
  I hate to tell you this, but the very next Hamster Book Club
• 1:33:46
  episode is the burning. We missed it just by one
• 1:33:49
  episode. I'll be fascinated to see how
• 1:33:54
  that goes down because I said I didn't read it, I just picked.
• 1:33:57
  I said I went kind of picked off the shelf.
• 1:33:58
  I was overthinking it. But in terms of what book, would
• 1:34:01
  I pick something serious or I pick something meaningful?
• 1:34:04
  Will I pick one of those library books that I don't have?
• 1:34:07
  If anybody asks. But it's like, you know what?
• 1:34:11
  That's just the one that's like it's just a really nice
• 1:34:14
  straightforward and it's kind of.
• 1:34:18
  My Doctor Who was, we talked about 1990.
• 1:34:20
  That's where Doctor Who was in the early 2000s and that's when
• 1:34:24
  I so graduated from you know watching just TV to read the
• 1:34:27
  books. And so it's it's got a lot of
• 1:34:30
  memories for me as well-being just that's when I got into the
• 1:34:34
  wider. I don't like the term universe.
• 1:34:36
  I'm probably going to get some heat mail for that, but I can't
• 1:34:39
  stand it. But the wider Doctor Who
• 1:34:41
  universe, The Burning was kind of one of the first books for me
• 1:34:43
  that got me into that. It's so great, isn't it?
• 1:34:46
  Because it's it's kind of mired in the cliches of Doctor Who
• 1:34:50
  because it does feel like, you know, an old gothic horror, but
• 1:34:55
  there's no continuity whatsoever.
• 1:34:57
  I think there's one continuity reference in there and it it was
• 1:35:00
  so refreshing at the time. On the back of The Ancestor
• 1:35:03
  Cell, which Light original sing was just drowning in Time Lord
• 1:35:08
  Law and stuff like that. That's a great choice, yeah.
• 1:35:11
  And I'm looking forward to recording that one.
• 1:35:15
  I'm going to cheat and I'm going to give you 2.
• 1:35:17
  I'm going to give you one that Doctor Who comes from and
• 1:35:20
  because I've got a plug for work so that's RUR the check play
• 1:35:24
  that gives us the word robot because you wouldn't have robots
• 1:35:26
  of death or modern ideas about robots in sci-fi.
• 1:35:30
  So that's one. You can download that for free,
• 1:35:32
  but Doctor Who but Cart Mill script Doctor I've been
• 1:35:37
  rereading recently and it's. Beautiful and self aggrandizing
• 1:35:42
  I think. And the pictures make you sad
• 1:35:45
  about how beautiful and young everyone is.
• 1:35:47
  And it was it was in other words based on something that was
• 1:35:52
  snatched away from us, I think just at the wrong time.
• 1:35:55
  And then you think about what a cart will produce series with
• 1:35:58
  Ben Arnovich missing deadlines would have looked like in the
• 1:36:00
  1990s and and it would have been it would have been a beautiful
• 1:36:02
  thing. But yeah, I I am script doctor.
• 1:36:05
  He's just for the nostalgia I think and are you are.
• 1:36:08
  And if you want something else to go along with that, the
• 1:36:10
  machine stops by Foster which is another one and there's just a
• 1:36:16
  plug for my modules. But yeah, are you are script
• 1:36:19
  doctor for the doctor you want? Whatever.
• 1:36:21
  I've got a wonderful story about Script Doctor because he goes to
• 1:36:24
  a lot of conventions and Andrew Carmel walks around with copies
• 1:36:28
  of that book and he gets you goes, oh hi, what's your name?
• 1:36:31
  He goes, oh, Mark. And then he writes it in the
• 1:36:33
  front of the book and goes, right, you got to buy that.
• 1:36:34
  Now he sells that bloody book. He's a Jew.
• 1:36:40
  And I I never forget the section on Tom and the Ronnie with all
• 1:36:43
  the stories about him ringing up Pip and Jane Baker and Pip Baker
• 1:36:48
  sort of tentatively saying, Oh yes, you're here to talk about
• 1:36:51
  the script. And then Jane Baker's there
• 1:36:52
  going, who is it? Andrew Cartmel.
• 1:36:54
  She just grabs the phone off him and goes, we're not changing the
• 1:36:57
  script, go away. I'm just banging the phone now.
• 1:37:01
  It's Glory. It's a great read that.
• 1:37:03
  I mean, I think it's slightly skewered, but it's a great read.
• 1:37:06
  It's. Absolutely it is.
• 1:37:10
  It's 1 person's view and it's the last man standing.
• 1:37:12
  But it's a great book I think. And yeah, it's it's fun and it's
• 1:37:16
  sad and it's nostalgic and yeah, it's a great book.
• 1:37:23
  James, where are you taking us? I Yeah, again, I was trying to
• 1:37:29
  sing it. Do I kind of pick one of these
• 1:37:31
  reevaluations? Do I pick one that is a classic?
• 1:37:36
  And actually kind of I I changed my mind halfway through.
• 1:37:41
  I've gone for one of the virgin missing adventures because when
• 1:37:47
  I was trying to think you know, you know what, you know what
• 1:37:52
  would be good. And there's a book that kind of
• 1:37:55
  didn't go down brilliantly at the time.
• 1:37:57
  You got a very bad review. For example, in I Who.
• 1:38:01
  But then they got exactly the same mark, almost to the nearest
• 1:38:04
  decimal, as the book that they described as the best ever
• 1:38:07
  missing adventure. So kind of.
• 1:38:10
  And it's Eye of the Giant. Oh, wow.
• 1:38:14
  OK And there's there's three things I think really as I'm
• 1:38:18
  going to try and do this without giving away too much because I
• 1:38:21
  do want if people read it, I don't want them to kind of
• 1:38:26
  necessarily know too much about where it's going to go.
• 1:38:31
  Yes, it's a bit B movie to start off with, but it's about a B
• 1:38:37
  movie. That's one of the the whole
• 1:38:39
  point is that kind of, yeah, you've got these people who are
• 1:38:42
  straight out of a B movie because they're literally
• 1:38:44
  filming A/B movie. There's a wonderful kind of
• 1:38:49
  jewel plot, same as we talked about with the original Sin of
• 1:38:52
  kind of like what you've got unit who are investigating one
• 1:38:55
  thing and you've got this weird island which is seemingly a
• 1:39:00
  totally different plot, and then you know, you can slowly start
• 1:39:06
  to see them coming together. Second recommendation is because
• 1:39:11
  it features Liz Shaw and Liz Shaw, I mean, she's undergoing
• 1:39:16
  the Renaissance at the moment because of big Finnish.
• 1:39:17
  But you know, I think really this is kind of like if you like
• 1:39:22
  Liz Shaw, if you like, if if you like Season 7, there's a big
• 1:39:27
  chunk of the book that is Season 7.
• 1:39:29
  If you like Season 8 perch. We there's a really big chunk of
• 1:39:31
  the book that Season 8 perch. We.
• 1:39:33
  It's this fantastic kind of bridge between seasons 7:00 and
• 1:39:38
  8:00. And without going into too much
• 1:39:42
  detail, about 2/3 of the way through, it suddenly becomes a
• 1:39:46
  21st century story as in reboot style Doctor Who.
• 1:39:51
  And I think at the time people weren't prepared for this.
• 1:39:57
  And I say kind of, you know, time travel and Doctor Who and
• 1:40:01
  all kinds of things. You know, they're absent from an
• 1:40:04
  awful lot of the books. Time travel is usually just a
• 1:40:06
  taxi device to get people into the story and then out of the
• 1:40:10
  story at the end of it. I have The Giant Plays with it
• 1:40:16
  and it's one of the first books you know as in in release order
• 1:40:21
  that I think actually plays with time travel and starts to show.
• 1:40:26
  This is what Doctor Who could do.
• 1:40:31
  And as I said, you know, about 2/3 of the way through it does
• 1:40:34
  become very 21st century who, as far as I'm concerned.
• 1:40:39
  And yeah, I just think kind of, you know, I can see an awful lot
• 1:40:45
  of not just kind of modern Doctor Who in it, but the
• 1:40:51
  history of science fiction in it.
• 1:40:53
  There's giants, there's insects, there's ridiculous actresses.
• 1:40:59
  There's wonderful. And also there's Osgood, there's
• 1:41:04
  Corporal Bell. It kind of it brings these
• 1:41:07
  people in, but it reinforces that unit was an organization on
• 1:41:15
  TV. We just got these characters
• 1:41:17
  appearing in one or two stories. I think kind of the eye of the
• 1:41:20
  Giant again is this first indication that kind of unit
• 1:41:23
  could have been more so. I think it was under
• 1:41:27
  underappreciated at the time. People complained that it was to
• 1:41:30
  be movie like without realizing the whole bloody plot of it is
• 1:41:33
  about filming A literal be movie And then yeah the the change in
• 1:41:40
  tone 2/3 of the way through into something that would not be out
• 1:41:46
  of place in modern who I thought was brilliant.
• 1:41:49
  And to me it has a logical cause and effect type thing.
• 1:41:58
  But again, I can't say too much without giving away big plot
• 1:42:01
  twists. Well, I never would have guessed
• 1:42:03
  that book in a million years, so thank you for choosing that one.
• 1:42:07
  I'm going to recommend the Doctor Who Program Guide for a
• 1:42:12
  very specific reason that I can remember aged.
• 1:42:15
  Good grief, what would I've been 6-7, Eight being around one Paul
• 1:42:20
  Quinn's house. Very impressionable young man
• 1:42:24
  having synopsis of Doctor Who's stories read out to me.
• 1:42:29
  And stories such as The Twin Dilemma and Underworld and The
• 1:42:33
  Horns of Nymon were made to sound and and beautifully read
• 1:42:38
  out, may I say were made to sound completely enticing.
• 1:42:41
  And an entire world of Doctor Who was sort of being described
• 1:42:45
  to me. And it gave me the bug, which
• 1:42:49
  then got me buying books and videos and Blu rays and not
• 1:42:54
  having a mortgage because I'm spending too much bloody stuff
• 1:42:56
  on Doctor Who's starting podcast starting a review website.
• 1:43:01
  It it caused a lot of trouble for me in my life.
• 1:43:03
  So thank you very much, Paul Quinn.
• 1:43:06
  Welcome. But it's.
• 1:43:08
  I mean, it was like a Bible back in the day.
• 1:43:11
  And you know, it had, I kind of had the ratings.
• 1:43:14
  It certainly had the actors, writers, the directors.
• 1:43:19
  There was enough information in there.
• 1:43:21
  So you'd start cling on to and then want to go on that sort of
• 1:43:24
  archaeology of discovering Doctor Who.
• 1:43:28
  And I've been doing it for many years since.
• 1:43:34
  I won't disclose my age, so I I just think it's a wonderful
• 1:43:36
  resource. It certainly was back in the
• 1:43:38
  day. It wasn't one.
• 1:43:40
  We have opinions like the handbooks that came out and
• 1:43:42
  things like that. So it was just a reference
• 1:43:44
  guide. So it kind of left it, gave you
• 1:43:46
  the ideas that left you to form your own opinions.
• 1:43:49
  And I think, yeah, that's that's definitely something that kind
• 1:43:52
  of the books evolved into in the 90s, wasn't it?
• 1:43:57
  The kind of like, this is what you should think, No.
• 1:43:59
  Yeah. The reference.
• 1:44:01
  The handbook, The reference guide.
• 1:44:02
  Yeah, my mine. I'm on by my third or fourth
• 1:44:06
  copy because mine's been annotated over the years.
• 1:44:09
  I almost went with the completely useless encyclopedia,
• 1:44:12
  but I might use that in another episode.
• 1:44:13
  You know it's one of the. Funniest Doctor Who books ever
• 1:44:16
  written. Guys, that was a wonderful
• 1:44:19
  conversation. Thank you so much.
• 1:44:21
  I'm hoping that I haven't scared the three of you off and I can
• 1:44:26
  entice you back. Let's talk about another book in
• 1:44:28
  the future, if you'd be willing. But we'll discuss that off Mike,
• 1:44:32
  because I think it's a bit unfair to ask you as we're still
• 1:44:35
  recording the episode, but it's been an absolute delight.
• 1:44:39
  Thank you so much. If you're online somewhere, can
• 1:44:42
  you just tell people where you're at in case people are
• 1:44:45
  intrigued and want to learn more?
• 1:44:47
  David. Hang on, this is where I go.
• 1:44:51
  What's my Twitter handle? Because I never pay attention.
• 1:44:53
  Yeah, I'm. I'm mostly on Twitter.
• 1:44:55
  I'm Pi 1883. It's mostly Doctor Who nonsense.
• 1:45:00
  Or occasionally I'll venture an opinion.
• 1:45:02
  But also I'm building my YouTube channel, doing short videos,
• 1:45:06
  mostly missing episode All I just get, I get stuck into
• 1:45:09
  camera scripts and I keep finding these weird random
• 1:45:12
  facts. It's like I need to tell people
• 1:45:13
  these facts and some people are actually interested.
• 1:45:17
  So yeah, find me on Twitter. Yeah, I find him on Twitter.
• 1:45:20
  You know, he posts a lot of very sexy running pictures as well.
• 1:45:24
  So you won't be disappointed James.
• 1:45:29
  Mostly, yeah, on Twitter and like like David, I just had to
• 1:45:33
  double check the exact wording of my handle.
• 1:45:35
  It's at Fit Geek under Score UK, mostly kind of Doctor and
• 1:45:43
  science fiction stuff. I occasionally use it for
• 1:45:49
  lascivious purposes and kind of, you know, so kind of I I flirt.
• 1:45:54
  I flirt a lot with people in there as well.
• 1:45:58
  I've made some fantastic friends on there over the years.
• 1:46:02
  I've met wonderful people in there over the years.
• 1:46:06
  I've, you know say kind of so it's at 50 under score UK.
• 1:46:10
  I'm cleaning it up a bit these days for various reasons.
• 1:46:13
  But Doctor Who? Cult TV and yeah, I'm gay.
• 1:46:19
  I used to be a kind of a gay rights activist when I was
• 1:46:22
  younger. There's a lot of that on there
• 1:46:24
  as well. Tough shit if you don't like it.
• 1:46:30
  Well, in my day job I am a lecturer at the University of
• 1:46:34
  Chichester and I'm the director of the Chichester Center for
• 1:46:37
  Fairy Tale Fantasy and Speculative Fictions.
• 1:46:40
  So there is a Twitter feed for that group, but I can't remember
• 1:46:43
  the handle. But if you put in chitchat fairy
• 1:46:45
  tales, you'll find it. My own personal Twitter feed,
• 1:46:48
  which is remarkably unpopular, is Paul under score L under
• 1:46:53
  score Quinn. It's mostly Doctor Who stuff,
• 1:46:56
  and probably giving a kick into the Tories when I'm on there.
• 1:47:01
  But you know, all friends gratefully receive, because I'm
• 1:47:04
  a lonely old academic here, writing quite a tedious book
• 1:47:08
  that has a chapter on Doctor Who.
• 1:47:09
  In it. And so yeah, I did it.
• 1:47:12
  I was on TikTok for a while. I might go back on I I read out
• 1:47:16
  unpleasant fairy tales that people didn't know from the
• 1:47:18
  grooms and got lots of likes, but I didn't know what to do
• 1:47:21
  with it. And then I panicked and deleted
• 1:47:22
  it. But I might have to go back to
• 1:47:23
  that. I don't know.
• 1:47:24
  But yeah, Twitter is the main place to get me.
• 1:47:26
  Or you if I'm on the university website.
• 1:47:27
  And you can send hate mail if you like, but my PA might deal
• 1:47:30
  with it while I say pH. Not really.
• 1:47:32
  PA What is? I don't know, you know.
• 1:47:34
  But yeah. So we are.
• 1:47:35
  Oh, yeah. And I will plug what might be
• 1:47:37
  our Doctor Who. Lewis conference in November.
• 1:47:42
  If it happens, and I will put it out on Twitter, and because Joe,
• 1:47:46
  you're very popular, you might send around the information
• 1:47:49
  about and maybe give a paper on CS Lewis or Doctor Who or both.
• 1:47:56
  The challenge is to do Doctor Who or the Sutley and CS Lewis
• 1:47:59
  given the anniversaries are all there the same weekend.
• 1:48:01
  But yeah, that's me. It's a it's a very obscure level
• 1:48:07
  of popularity. If it is boys go and go and seek
• 1:48:11
  out these guys. It's three, as you've heard,
• 1:48:13
  unique voices. You've been absolutely wonderful
• 1:48:16
  today. I can just say thank you very
• 1:48:18
  much. Pleasure.
• 1:48:20
  Really, really loved it. Thank.
• 1:48:23
  You great. Thanks everyone and I'll, I'll
• 1:48:26
  see you down the line I hope. Well, Amaral, I think we come
• 1:48:33
  down in some depth, you know.