Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Dalek by Robert Shearman (featuring Anthony Carroll)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Dalek by Robert Shearman (featuring Anthony Carroll) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  He supposed at some point it became an addiction.
• 0:04
  It wasn't that he enjoyed inflicting pain, it was a need.
• 0:09
  Sorry. The little boy would whisper to
• 0:11
  the spide as he squashed to the ants.
• 0:13
  He boiled to the daddy long legs as he broke off each of those
• 0:17
  long legs one by one. Sorry and thank you.
• 0:23
  He would have liked to have stuck with insects, but as he
• 0:25
  got bigger, so the pain got bigger too.
• 0:29
  He had to move on to small animals.
• 0:32
  He would have liked to have stuck with small animals.
• 0:35
  At school, he would target his victims carefully.
• 0:37
  He'd look out across the playground and it was as if he
• 0:40
  had a sixth sense. He could just tell which of the
• 0:43
  other children would give his head the most relief.
• 0:46
  There was always a method to it. Sometimes he would stalk his
• 0:50
  prey for weeks before striking. The preparations were fun, and
• 0:54
  they even ease the pain a little.
• 0:56
  Yes, the pain was still there, but this was good pain.
• 1:00
  It was excited pain. It was pain that egged him on in
• 1:05
  time. He forgot to say sorry, and he
• 1:07
  forgot to say thank you. He smiled in class.
• 1:10
  He was good at smiling. Mama always said it could.
• 1:13
  Melt A room. And he was unfailingly polite.
• 1:17
  He didn't want anyone to realize he was a hunter, and when he
• 1:20
  took his prey, he frightened them so much he made sure they'd
• 1:24
  never tell. It was a need.
• 1:27
  It wasn't that he enjoyed inflicting pain, but we all
• 1:30
  start to enjoy the things we're good at.
• 1:33
  Then there was that one big mistake.
• 1:37
  Danny Simmons joined the class. Oh, he was perfect.
• 1:40
  So shy and awkward and fat like a butterball.
• 1:45
  Danny didn't have friends. He'd just stand at the side and
• 1:47
  watch the other kids play. Aaron thought.
• 1:50
  It couldn't just be him. Surely everyone must be queuing
• 1:55
  up to bully Danny Simmons. Aaron go to bed and dream of
• 1:59
  Danny. How juicy he was, how ripe.
• 2:03
  Aaron got carried away and he broke all his rules and he
• 2:07
  forgot to be discreet. He was expelled from school
• 2:10
  before Danny made it out of hospital.
• 2:12
  He didn't mind being expelled, he knew it was fair.
• 2:16
  Papa minded though, and beat him with his belt.
• 2:20
  Aaron laughed at his PP. Didn't know the first thing
• 2:23
  about pain. Didn't know he couldn't hurt
• 2:26
  him, that nobody could. Hurt him.
• 2:28
  He spent the rest of his childhood being moved from
• 2:31
  school to school, tougher schools, schools that felt like
• 2:34
  jails. His cover had been blown and he
• 2:37
  always came to each new faculty with an ever bulging file of
• 2:41
  psychiatric reports. And each time Aaron would charm
• 2:44
  the authorities, he told him he'd seen the error of his ways.
• 2:48
  He was truly penitent. He wanted to grow up and become
• 2:52
  a decent and youthful member of society.
• 2:56
  It was a great relief to everybody when he turned 16 and
• 2:58
  was old enough to leave school, go out into the real world and
• 3:02
  offer his talents to those who could make use of them.
• 3:05
  Why me? Says Aaron, and his voice is
• 3:08
  soft. It makes him sound like a little
• 3:10
  boy, someone who is polite grown-ups and plays well with
• 3:14
  others. I am, Henry Van Stetten,
• 3:18
  replies. The man and I only take the
• 3:20
  best. He doesn't leave the room
• 3:22
  immediately. Some instinct tells him he
• 3:24
  doesn't want to follow too close on Henry Van Stetten's heels.
• 3:27
  He waits a few minutes, and then at last, he leaves the room too.
• 3:31
  And he knows this isn't a joke. He knows this is desperately and
• 3:34
  dangerously real, and that his life has subtly changed forever.
• 3:39
  But what if this is a joke? What if the guards outside are
• 3:42
  waiting for him? What if they laugh?
• 3:45
  There are no guards outside, nor in the corridors, nor by the
• 3:48
  open door leading to freedom. It is as if they are all hiding
• 3:52
  for him. It occurs to Aaron that he will
• 3:55
  never see his Mama again, and she will never find out what's
• 3:58
  happened to him. His stomach clenches, just for a
• 4:01
  second, and then he puts the thought away for good.
• 4:05
  Outside the prison, Aaron Denton finds waiting for him a brand
• 4:08
  new car. There was a suitcase full of
• 4:10
  clothes, an envelope full of money, and keys dangling in the
• 4:14
  ignition. Aaron Denton has chosen his new
• 4:19
  name, but he isn't ready to own it yet.
• 4:22
  He practices the sound of it in his mouth.
• 4:24
  He likes the way it rolled off his tongue.
• 4:27
  He can hardly wait for it to be his.
• 4:30
  He has already driven well over an hour back to the town where
• 4:33
  he grew up, and now he's forced to wait, staring at the front
• 4:37
  door of a Pretty Little house on a pretty residential St. in the
• 4:41
  suburbs. It has always been peaceful.
• 4:44
  Aaron knows nothing bad ever happens here.
• 4:48
  People smile as they pass each other on the sidewalk.
• 4:51
  They even smile at the strange man sitting in his car and
• 4:54
  speaking his new name over and over again.
• 4:57
  No one seems to find him suspicious.
• 5:00
  Once Upon a time, Aaron loved to wait.
• 5:03
  It was all part of the fun of stalking his prey.
• 5:06
  Perhaps he's out of the habit now, because he begins to get
• 5:09
  worried. He's thinking of the address
• 5:11
  that Van Stanton gave him and how he mustn't be late for the
• 5:14
  rendezvous. It makes him start to fidget.
• 5:17
  His hands itch, another itch growing, his head beginning to
• 5:20
  smart. The hours pass.
• 5:24
  The sidewalk empties. It's dusk now.
• 5:26
  It's dark. It will be safer to abort the
• 5:29
  mission. It will be safer to leave right
• 5:32
  now. Do not be late for the
• 5:34
  rendezvous. He doesn't want to think what
• 5:35
  they might do to him, but he doesn't want to leave.
• 5:38
  He won't leave. This is all he wants, these last
• 5:41
  few hours as Aaron Denton, and he is going to use them well.
• 5:46
  But what if all this waiting is for nothing?
• 5:48
  It is not for nothing. For what if the man has moved
• 5:53
  away? He has not moved away all these
• 5:57
  years. He's made sure to keep up to
• 5:59
  date. Be patient.
• 6:01
  He was once so good at patience. Be patient and ignore the
• 6:05
  itches. And there, oh praise Jesus,
• 6:08
  there at last he sees him, a little man crossing the road and
• 6:12
  walking up the path to his home, still fat like a butterball,
• 6:17
  hobbling slowly on one good leg. There is no need to rush now.
• 6:21
  Aaron yearns for him, but he can afford to enjoy the
• 6:24
  anticipation. Let the poor man relax for a
• 6:27
  while, Make him feel comfortable first.
• 6:30
  It is the least he can do for him.
• 6:33
  But Aaron has waited such a long time already, he can only be so
• 6:37
  generous. And last, he gets out of the
• 6:39
  car. He fetches his tool kit from the
• 6:41
  trunk. When Danny Simmons opens the
• 6:44
  door, Aaron can see he's been recognized, and that makes him
• 6:48
  happy. It's touching to know that after
• 6:51
  all these years, he's mattered to Danny just as Danny has
• 6:54
  mattered to him. I'm sorry, says Aaron kindly,
• 6:59
  even tenderly, and it's nice to say sorry to his prey once more,
• 7:04
  just as he'd do when he was a little kid.
• 7:08
  I'm sorry, but we have unfinished business.
• 7:12
  He steps inside the house and closes the door.
• 7:27
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 7:29
  My name is Joe Ford and third time's a charm.
• 7:34
  Anthony Carroll, welcome back. Good evening.
• 7:37
  How are you doing? I said that time's a charm, like
• 7:40
  we've only done shit so far, but I think we've only done gold.
• 7:44
  We've we've had banging after banging.
• 7:48
  Your Jews have it really shit, you know.
• 7:51
  I mean, yeah, I'm used to having the shape thrown at me when it
• 7:55
  comes to the Virgin You adventures, but this time you
• 7:58
  always help me see through it and see the goods in the show.
• 8:02
  There are. The actual show that's on right
• 8:04
  now? Other things that now I'm going
• 8:06
  to ask you this every single time you come on, but how's it
• 8:09
  going with the new adventures? It's going well.
• 8:13
  We just did the highest science. There was a surprising amount of
• 8:17
  people who quite like that and they were quite disappointed
• 8:21
  that I found it fine and our guests and Alistair did not find
• 8:28
  it good at all. Now I am sorry specifically to
• 8:33
  David Kitchen for that because he I think it's his favorite
• 8:38
  virtual new adventure. No, he's not.
• 8:40
  There, Yeah. Come on, favorite human nature?
• 8:43
  Just war the dying days. Might have that when you have
• 8:46
  the Colonians. Yeah.
• 8:49
  And every book is just like in the show itself, some story is
• 8:52
  someone's favorite and that is totally, totally fine.
• 8:55
  But yeah, we did that when I found it.
• 8:58
  Fine enough. And yes, I I think I don't know,
• 9:03
  I'll be having the same opinion of the next one.
• 9:05
  Which is are you doing The Pit? Oh no, famously the worst new
• 9:09
  adventure of all time. How far into that are you?
• 9:12
  I'm about 1/4 of the way in and I actually was OK with it.
• 9:16
  I was getting fine with it. I was like, you know, there's
• 9:19
  some nice stuff here, there's some good world building.
• 9:22
  And because I was reading it whilst the opposite of good
• 9:25
  world building was happening on our screens with the finale, I
• 9:30
  actually was enjoying it. But then it came and I don't
• 9:34
  know, there's a certain point when I was like, this is not,
• 9:37
  this is actually not sticking together as much as I wanted it
• 9:40
  to. And it's it's a bit dry.
• 9:43
  It's it's not really got got what others have really yet,
• 9:48
  which is a shame. Ask you a personal question.
• 9:52
  Sure. OK, so do you, You don't.
• 9:54
  Do you leave your books around the house like, you know, do?
• 9:57
  Do you take them from room to room?
• 9:58
  The living room, the toilet, whatever.
• 10:01
  And sometimes, yeah, well, I take mine down to work and.
• 10:05
  Well, I certainly hope you are not putting a put the pit down
• 10:09
  on any surfaces. Well, that woman with her blue
• 10:11
  tits on the cover? Oh goodness, they must wonder
• 10:13
  what the hell you're reading. I'll not be leaving that
• 10:16
  anywhere on my lunch break in Glasgow City Chambers anytime
• 10:19
  soon. Oh.
• 10:20
  My God. Like should not be seen in any
• 10:22
  public sphere. Imagine the controversy online.
• 10:26
  But I had that I had the exact comment because I was reading it
• 10:29
  in the living room after like some dinner and my flatmate
• 10:34
  walks in and and stops and just peers forward-looking at what
• 10:40
  I'm reading is like is she naked?
• 10:43
  Who's I was like, yeah, yeah, I I can't defend that.
• 10:46
  It's the 90s. It's some 20 something horny
• 10:50
  writers and artists who are Doctor Who fans.
• 10:53
  Of course it's going to be some naked blue women on the cover.
• 10:57
  And let's say the new adventures, they appeal to all
• 10:59
  sorts. You know, in transit you had.
• 11:02
  What's her face? Cathy?
• 11:03
  R2. Yeah, two.
• 11:05
  Eating her cola nuts to get rid of the taste of the seamen.
• 11:07
  In damaged goods, you have Chris Quedge going down in the back
• 11:11
  alley giving a bloke a suck job. And in the pit you've got that
• 11:14
  lovely lady with the blue tits on the cover.
• 11:16
  I mean, everyone is catered for. Everyone it's it's truly the the
• 11:21
  most happy played one for everyone.
• 11:23
  Yes red, white and blue happy pride and so what's after the
• 11:32
  pit just to sort of figure out where you.
• 11:35
  Want my mind's blanked after that.
• 11:36
  I genuinely I'm not sure. Oh, it's not.
• 11:40
  It's not where ice comes back. Is it deceit or Lucifer rising
• 11:43
  around that sort? It might, it might be Lucifer
• 11:46
  rising I. Don't.
• 11:49
  Know it is this is the seat. To see, to see.
• 11:52
  It's OK, but Lucifer is a, is a banger.
• 11:55
  You got a great book coming up there.
• 11:57
  Is that M Peter Devil Evan this one deceit?
• 12:01
  That's yeah, that's Peter. And then Lucifer rising is Andy
• 12:05
  Lane and Jim Mortimer, who are great writers independent of
• 12:10
  each other and brilliant writers together.
• 12:12
  So. Well, I, I want to see for that
• 12:16
  one, we may be having a guest who has been on your podcast
• 12:19
  many times. Who's that?
• 12:21
  That one, Gareth Bowley, oh Gareth, wonderful plummy voice
• 12:26
  man, shall be joining us hopefully for that one.
• 12:29
  That's an exclusive if we get an episode in time to.
• 12:33
  You know what we'll say though, you'll go.
• 12:36
  Thank God you've given me something good to read.
• 12:38
  And that bloody hamster book club.
• 12:40
  All I get is the Drakes. Although no, he's currently
• 12:43
  reading The Last Dodo by Jacqueline Rado, which is a very
• 12:46
  funny book from the new series Adventures.
• 12:49
  Oh, no, sorry, I'm wrong. He's he's not doing.
• 12:51
  Look, if he's doing like. Gorgeous.
• 12:53
  Retract that. Oh, that's not a bad one as
• 12:55
  well. He's doing the one after that
• 12:58
  and so you've got a wee bit longer to wait for him to
• 13:00
  appear, but I'm sure it'll be worth hearing his his dulcet
• 13:04
  tones. Wax letter.
• 13:05
  Sorry Gareth, you almost had a banger there, but you're on the
• 13:08
  one after that. Sorry.
• 13:11
  You're welcome to join for that banger too, but.
• 13:13
  Well, let's swing ourselves away from the new adventures.
• 13:16
  For once, we're not reading an Eighth Doctor book.
• 13:20
  We're going just one doctor ahead.
• 13:23
  The knife Doctor. What are we doing today?
• 13:26
  Go on, let everybody know. Why are we?
• 13:28
  Yeah, do that by Chairman. Now look, I did ask you to do
• 13:35
  some homework, you know, I don't know if you remember at the end
• 13:37
  of the last episode I said, would you mind please listening
• 13:40
  to Jubilee and watching the episode Dalek and then reading
• 13:45
  the book? How many of those 3 did you
• 13:47
  achieve? I did exactly 3 for three.
• 13:50
  Oh. My God, well done.
• 13:52
  I only did two, I'm afraid, but I haven't listened to Jubilee
• 13:55
  too long ago. Well, see, I thought I had a
• 13:58
  copy of Jubilee because I had the CD from years ago and I
• 14:03
  burnt them all into a hard drive and the files weren't working.
• 14:08
  I was like, Oh no, am I going to be able to actually?
• 14:10
  But apparently it's on Spotify so you can just like listen to
• 14:13
  it, which is great and had a brilliant time listening to it
• 14:16
  and it's been many a year since I have so pretty much enjoyed
• 14:20
  it. I'm at the end of the episode.
• 14:22
  I'm going to put you in the disadvantageous position of
• 14:26
  ranking the three in your order of preference.
• 14:29
  All right? So just have a sort of think
• 14:30
  about that as we're going through.
• 14:33
  But can I ask you before we talk about the target book, which is
• 14:37
  a kind of unique target which we'll discuss in many ways, what
• 14:42
  do you think about the episode? And like, what did you think
• 14:47
  when you first saw it? What do you think of it now?
• 14:49
  What's your journey been with Dalek Now So.
• 14:52
  Dalek has been a story that I've really held quite close to home
• 14:59
  for a lot of my Doctor Who kind of time, because I think I might
• 15:03
  have mentioned in one of the podcasts before, was about the
• 15:08
  first time I properly watched, you know, the new series as a
• 15:12
  kid. And we had that, you know,
• 15:16
  season volume box sets that were coming out at the time.
• 15:18
  So like, you know, we had like, Volume 1, Volume 2, things like
• 15:22
  that. And my first was Volume 3, which
• 15:26
  was just after Dalek. It was like, yeah, every child
• 15:30
  dog dance and stuff like that. And like, yeah, all, all the
• 15:34
  classics in in there. Then after that one, I did then
• 15:38
  pick up the volume to 1. I was just going, oh, about the
• 15:41
  joint was not picking a good order to watch it all in.
• 15:44
  But Dalek was on that one. And I have such vivid memories
• 15:50
  of that because that was for my first time kind of encounting
• 15:55
  Daleks. It was not, oh wow.
• 15:57
  You know, everyone, everyone really talks about it being in
• 15:59
  sort of cultural zeitgeist. It, it wasn't really as much
• 16:04
  until like at least on my reader until watching that and then
• 16:09
  hearing from friends being like, Oh my God, what was that about?
• 16:12
  And we would go to like the Library and they had that
• 16:15
  brilliant Flash game where you are Dalek and you are going
• 16:18
  through the from the cage through the underground.
• 16:22
  It was we would play that incessantly on like library
• 16:25
  computers as a kid. It was great and so.
• 16:29
  It sparked so much when you're introduced to evil space Nazis
• 16:33
  that go around murdering people. All right?
• 16:36
  They're not supposed to be educating you, so you want to be
• 16:38
  them. No, yeah, I'm, I'm going exactly
• 16:41
  against what Dalek and especially Jubilee was trying to
• 16:46
  tell about how these are truly horrific, fascistic creatures.
• 16:50
  But I was 9 and I was in the library and I saw a fun game
• 16:53
  where I get to shoot people so that that that trumped any, any
• 16:58
  sort of that sounds. Fun now, but never know being 9.
• 17:02
  True. But yeah, that, so that was, I
• 17:06
  guess the legacy of the Dalek was actually more so the the
• 17:10
  game and how many times I would play that game.
• 17:14
  And with all of those computers, it was a favorite.
• 17:17
  I've had everyone, I think, growing up.
• 17:19
  Yeah. But the episode itself, yeah,
• 17:23
  genuinely watching that now. I watched it after the day after
• 17:28
  the CDs 2 finale that we've just had.
• 17:32
  And it just reminded me of how we can have such a great
• 17:37
  cracking, speedy story, but still not hasty, been told in
• 17:44
  like 45 minutes and caring about everything happening in the
• 17:48
  characters in it. And you know, having actual arcs
• 17:53
  within a one episode story, It's great.
• 17:55
  It's genuinely one of the best and one of the best seasons of
• 17:58
  Doctor Who do. You remember those heady days
• 18:00
  when narratives made sense, you know, And there was a simple
• 18:03
  logic that ran through episodes and they slowed down for
• 18:07
  character moments to a hit properly.
• 18:10
  Couldn't we wish for that world? Oh, what I said of the wish
• 18:14
  world. Yeah, any any world that Russell
• 18:17
  T Davis would like to these days.
• 18:18
  I mean, we did get the Rani back, you know, Anthony.
• 18:23
  We did. We did.
• 18:25
  Thanks for that happy pride month again.
• 18:30
  She genuinely, yeah, I'm not going to go too much on that
• 18:32
  tangent like that, but genuinely thought that Rani was fine for
• 18:36
  what we saw until we didn't see her.
• 18:39
  And Venomous. He ate the wrong Ronnie.
• 18:42
  We should have kept a new one. We don't want Anita Dobson
• 18:45
  plaguing Doctor Who till the end of time.
• 18:47
  Oh, sorry, I've got off on that tangent now.
• 18:51
  But we do not. We do not we wish to.
• 18:52
  Maybe, maybe she'll pay trainity again.
• 18:54
  I don't know how it works. I don't think Russell Davis
• 18:56
  knows how it works. So what matters anymore?
• 19:00
  I, I adore Rob Sheerman's work. I love his big finished work.
• 19:06
  And I'm, we will talk about Jubilee later as well.
• 19:08
  But I know that bringing Dalek to the screen, the script, it
• 19:15
  was a bit of a tricky affair. And Rob was inexperienced with
• 19:20
  writing television. And there were more drafts of
• 19:23
  that script than you would ever care that a point where the top
• 19:27
  profane were going to be the monsters instead of the Daleks
• 19:29
  because they didn't, they didn't know that they were going to get
• 19:31
  the, the rights to the Daleks. And you know, I don't think it's
• 19:34
  even any a secret that Rusty Davis eventually said to Rob
• 19:37
  Schumann, you've got one more chance to write this script the
• 19:40
  way we need it, and then I will just do it.
• 19:43
  And I think he came through at the 11th hour, and fuck me, what
• 19:47
  he delivered genuinely catapulted the Daleks into the
• 19:52
  zeitgeist again for a whole new generation.
• 19:55
  That's no small thing to do. No I mean for me as an 8-9 year
• 19:59
  old, like I just was not seeing any of those faults when
• 20:03
  watching it. I just was in raptured.
• 20:06
  I felt every moment I would. Gasp when that door would close
• 20:10
  and Rose is on the other side. That was the that was the first
• 20:14
  Doomsday. Russell D Davis copied that for
• 20:16
  Doomsday and that's the first proper time Rose is against a
• 20:19
  wall where you feel sad for her. Like there's there's so much
• 20:22
  moments that you feel for the characters in this and the arc
• 20:26
  the Doctor goes through in particular.
• 20:28
  It's one of the, if not maybe the best Dalek story still
• 20:34
  within the new series I. Think so, Yeah.
• 20:36
  Well, be because it just strips it back to one, right?
• 20:40
  How powerful? I mean, I know the whole idea of
• 20:42
  that was we'll give you 1 Dalek so that at the end of the season
• 20:45
  when there's hundreds of the buggers, well how you couldn't,
• 20:49
  you couldn't fight one, how are you going to fight hundreds of
• 20:52
  them? So it was a great idea to strike
• 20:54
  the season like that. But I think he makes that one
• 20:57
  Dalek the single most powerful Dalek we've ever seen.
• 21:01
  Exactly, and that's that's the point of it is to show just how
• 21:05
  ruthless, just how dangerous they are that they can't be
• 21:08
  reasoned with. You cannot negotiate with
• 21:13
  something with no morals, with no qualm of killing it and an
• 21:18
  instant anything that is not a Dalek like it's it's the perfect
• 21:23
  encapsulation of everything that's a Dalek, but at the same
• 21:25
  time does something completely new with Daleks and that you
• 21:30
  know, you then go on to like explore and it doesn't quite
• 21:36
  happen in similar ways in in the show in the future, but it it's
• 21:40
  the most original and yet traditional ideal of a Dalek
• 21:43
  that you can find. I don't think I've ever held my
• 21:46
  breath more than the moment where the Dalek goes to the
• 21:49
  Doctor. You would make a good Dalek.
• 21:52
  And then it just cuts to Chris Ferguson looking like he's going
• 21:54
  to explode. I was like, Oh my God.
• 21:58
  You know, And that normal, normally Daleks talking is so
• 22:01
  boring, isn't it? It's so functional.
• 22:04
  He makes it a character. And you know Nick Briggs is no
• 22:07
  slouch, No. Like he, he does bring like
• 22:13
  because of how the Dalek is essentially evolving, like it
• 22:17
  evolves how the Dalek thinks and it has so that has that more
• 22:21
  almost human reaction. So it can be catty to the to the
• 22:24
  Doctor in response. It's it's it's doing that sort
• 22:28
  of evolution that helps to bring out this really interesting
• 22:33
  dynamic of it being aware of itself and aware of therefore
• 22:37
  what the doc they see within themselves reflected in the
• 22:40
  Doctor and stuff like it's, it's great seeing that original take
• 22:44
  kind of happened while I was introducing this character for
• 22:50
  for many for the first time as well.
• 22:52
  And I don't think it's any secret that that is considered
• 22:56
  one of the highlights of that first year, that probably the
• 22:59
  anti child and the Doctor dances in the last two parter as well.
• 23:01
  Although I think as a whole that first season is pretty damn
• 23:05
  perfect. Doctor Who?
• 23:08
  Yeah, like I I watched because it was the 20th anniversary of
• 23:11
  this year of the show coming back.
• 23:13
  So I watched series 1 again and genuinely Eve, even the aliens
• 23:19
  of London, World War 3, I actually enjoyed.
• 23:23
  I genuinely enjoy the political drama.
• 23:27
  I enjoy, yeah, but most of the narrative because it perfectly
• 23:34
  ties free up, like free stories happening concurrently like
• 23:37
  that. That cliffhanger is great of
• 23:41
  having which. One, there's so many.
• 23:43
  Yeah, like having Jackie tile in the kitchen, the Doctor in
• 23:46
  Downing St. like this, there's so much happening, but they tie
• 23:49
  it together. So even though what people
• 23:52
  perceive to be the weakest still holds up great and is one of the
• 23:57
  best seasons of Doctor Who. Phil, stop.
• 24:00
  You know what baffles me? I'm sorry.
• 24:01
  I promise you we'll start talking about the book in a
• 24:03
  second. Is that no one gets the joke
• 24:06
  about the Slovene that they're political windbags.
• 24:09
  That's why they're fine all the time.
• 24:11
  Because, sorry, forgive me, Anthony.
• 24:13
  Politicians tend to, you know. Exactly.
• 24:17
  Exactly. Certainly not handsome ones like
• 24:20
  you, but you know all the all the rest.
• 24:24
  Those idiots. But.
• 24:26
  Yeah. Have you read many of the new
• 24:29
  serious targets? Now this, I don't know if that's
• 24:32
  me. Indeed, shock a lot of your
• 24:34
  audience. This is the first target I've
• 24:36
  read, full stop. Ever.
• 24:41
  Yeah, wow, Yeah. I mean, that's great.
• 24:44
  This is the only one you've read.
• 24:45
  Yeah. I mean, I have, I'll be honest,
• 24:48
  like have read some of others because so like back in the day
• 24:53
  there was a guy in Glasgow that sold Target novelisations, but
• 24:58
  he sold it on eBay. Oh.
• 24:59
  On. EBay, OK, No, no, no.
• 25:01
  It was on eBay but it said, you know, like 10 of the Zygons for
• 25:05
  example, plus gifts and that was quite ominous.
• 25:08
  And I was like, what was a gift in this context?
• 25:12
  So I bought 10 of the Zygons and Doomsday Weapon and they arrived
• 25:19
  and the gift was a copyright copied DVD of the stories.
• 25:26
  This was before they came out in DVD properly.
• 25:27
  So this is about mid 2000s. And so he had his own menus on
• 25:32
  them. He made the menus exactly kind
• 25:34
  of like the actual official menus.
• 25:37
  They had chapter selection. Well, this was great.
• 25:39
  And the and the covers he printed and designed and they
• 25:41
  were almost exactly like perfect professional ones.
• 25:46
  Like almost. Some of them almost actually
• 25:48
  were the same design years before.
• 25:51
  They have really kind because he's not making any money out of
• 25:53
  that. Is it you you're buying?
• 25:54
  Not not the TV programme. No.
• 25:57
  And so I that's that was my weed basically.
• 25:59
  I was buying a target novelisations, but absolutely
• 26:02
  not for the novelisation because I clocked on.
• 26:05
  He would give me a free DVD out of it every time.
• 26:08
  Well, whoever you are, very benevolent man who was, you
• 26:11
  know, skimping copyrights and very kindly giving these things
• 26:16
  that we salute you, Sir. Oh, very much.
• 26:19
  And yes, so he was my way to be able to have some of the
• 26:23
  targets. And I did read.
• 26:26
  I remember reading a bit of the doomsday weapon and invasion of
• 26:32
  the dinosaurs. I remember reading maybe a
• 26:35
  chapter 2 of that and then just going oh, wait a minute.
• 26:38
  I have the DVD. Why am I why am I reading this?
• 26:42
  Which? I mean, they're pretty good,
• 26:44
  both of those, but. They they are.
• 26:46
  They could well have been. I just never finished because I
• 26:49
  had the DVD. You took the lazy route, is that
• 26:51
  what you're saying? But but this is this is this is
• 26:54
  the thing I think before, like in particular having new target
• 26:58
  novelisations these days, like who, who are they for?
• 27:01
  Is the key question I think of when I see these come out.
• 27:06
  I think I have an old Sir. Yeah, well, yeah.
• 27:09
  Yeah, exactly. They're they're for us, right?
• 27:11
  Like they're they're the old star Achillios covers.
• 27:14
  They are for older fat. I don't think they're for kids.
• 27:17
  These star. Kids, No, not at all.
• 27:18
  I like I mean when you think about it with how at the time
• 27:22
  back in the day it was more so just to be experiencing that
• 27:24
  story because you won't have Avhs, you won't see them
• 27:27
  repeated. You can watch style like on
• 27:30
  iPlayer right now. You can find it on Blu-ray, DVD
• 27:34
  probably, if like anywhere on your phone, on your watch, like,
• 27:39
  you can have it accessed anywhere.
• 27:42
  That's one of the biggest challenges, I think, for these
• 27:46
  books is to not just be a retelling of the story.
• 27:50
  And for this one, it does exactly what this range should
• 27:56
  be doing, which is very briefly having a skeleton saying, yeah,
• 28:00
  this is the Dalek story, but then adding the flesh on it of
• 28:04
  just things that are too broad and too deep for the small
• 28:07
  screen. Every time you say that, it's
• 28:09
  never about the new adventures. Exactly.
• 28:13
  I've got bad news for you though.
• 28:15
  We may have set the bar quite high with the Target books for
• 28:19
  you, and you can be in for a little disappointment if you
• 28:22
  explore more of them. That's not to say that they're
• 28:25
  bad. I think beyond Robert Sherman
• 28:28
  and James Goss, who recently novelized The Giggle, and he did
• 28:33
  some pretty spectacularly unusual things with the book
• 28:38
  that were very different from from the TV version, they are
• 28:41
  pretty much script a page with some extra characterisation,
• 28:46
  maybe a little bit more detail in the setting.
• 28:49
  This is really unique, this one, in that the episode itself
• 28:57
  accounts for about 30% of the book.
• 29:00
  Yeah, it's it's so it's so sparse, but you know, that's
• 29:07
  like, you see, it's not for learning what the story of Dalek
• 29:10
  is, because everyone picking this up would have watched it
• 29:14
  back to for an umpteen times already.
• 29:17
  It's about exploring the world of Dalek more than anything.
• 29:21
  And like, you know where the TV show was all set inside?
• 29:25
  You know, that bunker, that museum underground, this book
• 29:29
  goes everywhere. We jump into the time war, we go
• 29:32
  into the history of all of these characters and various parts of
• 29:36
  the world. You know, it really, it really
• 29:39
  makes it like a lot more expensive.
• 29:41
  Robert Sherman wrote some fantastic short story
• 29:46
  connections and essentially the way he's structured it here is
• 29:51
  is you have maybe 2 chapters of Dalek the the TV episode and
• 29:57
  then you get a long short story focusing on one of the
• 30:02
  characters within the book. Did you like that approach?
• 30:06
  I loved it. I absolutely love OH.
• 30:08
  I love hearing you say that. I'm not making you read anything
• 30:11
  bad. No, I'd like, I mean, when it
• 30:14
  first happened, I was like, oh, OK, we're we're taking an aside
• 30:19
  from the story. And I wasn't used to that
• 30:21
  because that's not the convention you typically see in
• 30:25
  these a lot of these books in general from Doctor Who books.
• 30:29
  But when it just started saying the torturer's tale and I was
• 30:33
  like, OK, right, let's see. And it goes into this wonderful
• 30:36
  story about not wonderful, but wonderfully deep sort of back
• 30:43
  story for what is essentially a character that may have two or
• 30:46
  three lines. Yeah, within the episodes and
• 30:49
  you you learn about his whole history, his his growing up, his
• 30:53
  pain, his family, his whole life story and and that happening
• 30:59
  multiple times threaded through just the the biggest thing I I
• 31:05
  really liked about it was it was so many different people.
• 31:08
  It was like this guy in America of a torturer.
• 31:10
  It was this is really a couple. There was Adam Mitchell and you
• 31:16
  are all seeing all these international stories and
• 31:19
  they're all getting huckled down in a bunker dealing with that
• 31:23
  pressure, claustrophobic story that we have with Dalek and it
• 31:29
  it helped build such a world outside of that bunker him for
• 31:34
  for the episode that we all do love to watch.
• 31:37
  Every single 1 is pretty much how that character wound up here
• 31:43
  and it was really surprising each time how they all got there
• 31:46
  like Diana Goddard story and we will get there.
• 31:49
  But I'm like is that who she wasn't?
• 31:53
  I had no idea he took a character.
• 31:56
  I gave her a completely different back story within
• 31:58
  Dalek I had no clue about. Yeah, and that's what I love
• 32:05
  about it was just having so many different takes and sort of
• 32:11
  making some, I don't want to say like sympathetic characters, but
• 32:15
  like adding some weight when you read the book to flavour how you
• 32:20
  feel about some of these more peripheral people that are just
• 32:23
  in shorts or seen a few sentences here and there.
• 32:27
  Like it it it's a wonderful complementary piece to have to
• 32:32
  watching the episode. Like, it's not a replacement
• 32:34
  naturally, but it's it's there to build that story and that
• 32:39
  world in a way that very few books can do.
• 32:44
  And I'm very glad he did. But the danger that you're in
• 32:48
  when you're doing a second version of a beloved episode is
• 32:55
  you might make the episode seem more boring as a result.
• 32:59
  What Rob Schumer does here is a complete reverse is he just adds
• 33:03
  so much depth and nuance to what you've already seen.
• 33:06
  It's almost like what you see on the screen is just the tip of
• 33:08
  the iceberg. And actually, all the
• 33:09
  interesting stuff came before Dalek.
• 33:12
  Yeah. Yeah, like I mean even like I
• 33:15
  think one of the last maybe the last chapter where like it's
• 33:21
  taught it just starts to do almost again.
• 33:23
  Another sort of flashback of fan stand talk about when he
• 33:27
  remembered getting the Dalek delivered to his place after
• 33:31
  taking down an ice cream giant and all of this.
• 33:33
  And it's like we're doing this. It's only like a few 2 pages of
• 33:36
  life or something, but it doesn't really matter.
• 33:40
  It's it's because we know what those beats are going to be
• 33:43
  about. Yep, Vince, that and faces a
• 33:45
  Dalek and it's like, oh, I just wanted to to get you to talk and
• 33:50
  that's that beat is there, but it's around that beat.
• 33:53
  There's this whole like Symphony of the world and his memories of
• 33:57
  seeing the Dalek getting delivered and him having Dalek
• 34:02
  style thoughts of as when he touches the Dalek and things.
• 34:06
  And it's, it's, it's that it sort of builds every single beat
• 34:10
  of a story, has so much around it that does make it sing.
• 34:15
  I mean, I mean it has no insult to the episode Dalek, but when I
• 34:19
  got to the end of the book, I was like, fuck, I would love a
• 34:21
  mini series called Dalek where there are it's it does that
• 34:27
  running story of what's happening in the bunker.
• 34:29
  But there are whole individual episodes where we do the
• 34:31
  torturous tale where we do Diana Goddards.
• 34:34
  I just love to see them as like hour long dramas because, I
• 34:38
  mean, they're dark, right? There's some real for a book
• 34:44
  that is primarily being aimed at a child audience that have been
• 34:50
  captured by the new series to read.
• 34:54
  There's some dark stuff in here. Like really the the the stuff in
• 34:59
  the torture. Well, tell you what, should we
• 35:01
  take those tales and, and just do do like a little.
• 35:06
  This is what's happening and this is what we thought.
• 35:08
  Because in the torturer's tale, he gets really bad headaches,
• 35:14
  doesn't he? So this is the fella that's
• 35:16
  torturing the Dalek in the cell. And as a child he got really bad
• 35:21
  pains in his head. And then he found that by
• 35:24
  killing insects. Yeah, he's, he's sort of, he has
• 35:28
  another buzz around him and it's a sly and he's kind of drawn to
• 35:33
  it. And he goes oh, and he slowly
• 35:36
  says, it's the way that Rob Truman describes it because he's
• 35:39
  he slowly applies this pressure. At first it's just kind of
• 35:43
  almost like a pet of, of a flight and then squeezes and
• 35:48
  squeezes down. The pressure gets the bit.
• 35:50
  He likes it when the fly starts to resist.
• 35:53
  Yeah, and Wriggles and all of this.
• 35:55
  And it's it's you can you can you can see the switch happening
• 35:59
  and his character at that moment and and then it splatters and
• 36:04
  it's unlocked this thing within of the sadism he.
• 36:09
  Does this repeated motif where he says he would like to have
• 36:12
  stuck with insect, but as he got bigger, the pain got bigger too.
• 36:16
  And so he he moves on to small animals.
• 36:19
  And then the real zinger is when he goes, yeah, he would have
• 36:22
  liked to have stuck with small animals.
• 36:24
  And you're like, well, what the hell?
• 36:26
  And then he starts spotting this kid at school, doesn't he?
• 36:30
  Yes, there's so he yeah, he he naturally what a surprise.
• 36:36
  He turns out to be a bully in school, not just out of like any
• 36:41
  particular reason, he just genuinely just feels he can and
• 36:47
  he even feels it's kind of low hanging fruits to bully the
• 36:49
  person he does because he just he previously just go for anyone
• 36:53
  and he really goes to town. Excites, doesn't he?
• 36:57
  He follows him around and he he tracks his moves and he waits
• 37:01
  for his moment. Yeah, and and it's something
• 37:06
  that he not just does like end of school because he then goes
• 37:10
  to jail because of all of us. And he still fixated about this
• 37:15
  kid. Like he's still wanting to get
• 37:18
  like that Edge isn't scratched until he has exterminated a
• 37:22
  life. And yeah, it's, it's a really
• 37:28
  it's, it's quite a journey he goes through.
• 37:30
  I felt really edgy reading of all of the book.
• 37:33
  That was the bit that made me feel really on edge.
• 37:35
  I started reading it in bed going.
• 37:37
  I think I need to read a bit more after this chapter because
• 37:39
  this is really creepy. But it's just how Van Staten
• 37:42
  then offers him a job. He's found out this guy that
• 37:45
  likes hurting people and that's what he wants in the base,
• 37:48
  someone who can hurt the Dalek. So he offers him the job and
• 37:52
  lets him out and then the the singer, that last line where he
• 37:56
  says, I'm sorry, but we've got unfinished business.
• 37:59
  When all of those years later he goes back to that kids house,
• 38:03
  now an adult and the lioness, he steps inside the house and
• 38:06
  closes the door and that's all you know.
• 38:10
  Yeah, it's, it's so, yeah, it's so good just having like, not
• 38:17
  needing to tell that tale, as it were, of what then happens
• 38:20
  because, you know, you just the way the build up of who this
• 38:24
  character is, the escalation from the fly to the kid he
• 38:29
  bullied in school many years ago that he's still fixated on.
• 38:33
  Now we know he's got a bloody drill and he's drilling into
• 38:36
  that Dalek, so we know what a monster he becomes.
• 38:40
  But as well, like as a I'm going to say as a expert in the new
• 38:45
  adventures now, you know, as you work your way through, you know,
• 38:48
  sometimes with the new adventures, more is more, right.
• 38:50
  And I think this is a great example of less is more to just
• 38:54
  give you the seed of he shut that door.
• 38:56
  My imagination is going to do way more than anything Rob
• 38:59
  Sheeran could have told me he's doing to that kid in that house.
• 39:03
  Yeah, exactly. I mean, when I think about some
• 39:05
  of the violence they'll be having in the Virginia
• 39:08
  adventures is all quite sometimes gratuitous in terms of
• 39:13
  or wouldn't be edgy if say someone has like an cat's cradle
• 39:21
  warhead, for example, some of the sort of like poppy scenes of
• 39:27
  like those that kid gang beating up people and things like that.
• 39:30
  Like it's it's so there's no point and purpose towards it
• 39:36
  whilst this is because it still does, still has the graphic
• 39:40
  scenes like even that fly getting squashed, but it's there
• 39:44
  to build up what he has in his head, his solution to his pain.
• 39:52
  And so that by the time you get to an actual like Madon, you
• 39:57
  don't need to have it because you understand this character,
• 40:01
  you understand. The journey from squishing a fly
• 40:05
  through to small animals to bullying in school to to killing
• 40:10
  someone without needing to see it.
• 40:14
  And that that's, that's the purpose that you can have with
• 40:17
  violence in these books that, yeah, sometimes it's just for
• 40:21
  the flash bang of it and others. I've read quite a few Doctor
• 40:25
  Who's short story collections lately and to be honest, I've
• 40:28
  been a little disappointed with the sort of how mundane the
• 40:34
  storytelling is. And because it is a short story,
• 40:37
  they don't put too much effort in.
• 40:38
  But I just think Rob Sheeran has the skill in 20 pages to tell an
• 40:45
  entire story. But he's like, he's like a a
• 40:48
  musician in an orchestra who's starting out slow in the song
• 40:53
  and it builds and it builds and it and he takes it up to this
• 40:55
  massive crescendo and then cut and and that's how you do it,
• 41:00
  right. That's how you you make an.
• 41:02
  Impact and that's that's one of the things and and comparing to
• 41:07
  see something to to a virgin your adventure.
• 41:09
  You know, this book's for 180 pages and it's a much bigger
• 41:14
  font as well compared to say, imagine your adventure, which
• 41:18
  might be about 250 pages of a smaller font.
• 41:22
  And I've I've looked there to see in my book there's 1234.
• 41:27
  There's five chapters, as it were, of these tales within it.
• 41:32
  And think of that compared to needing to have the the thread
• 41:36
  of the main story as well. It's it's exactly like you say
• 41:40
  you do. You just you want to leave the
• 41:43
  audience with more about that character and you cut exactly
• 41:47
  where you need to by having these 20 odd pages of these
• 41:50
  until it's doing it. Well.
• 41:53
  Let's us then jump from the Torturer to Henry Van Staaten.
• 41:59
  Yes, there's a lot going on with Henry Van Staaten and his.
• 42:05
  Book. I think he's probably the most
• 42:07
  covered character really in this in terms of the the kind of
• 42:13
  introspective work, in terms with the narrative as well.
• 42:15
  Really like he is front and centre for a lot of this.
• 42:19
  I think, I think he's really fleshed out in the book as well.
• 42:22
  Like he's a vivid character in the story, but he's basically
• 42:28
  the villain, you know, and that's his role.
• 42:30
  And the Dalek is the more interesting character.
• 42:32
  Whereas in the book, I mean all the back story here about his
• 42:35
  childhood is it does explain how he became this big bully
• 42:45
  millionaire controlling everything and wanting things
• 42:51
  that nobody else has. Yeah, exactly.
• 42:54
  I mean, kind of like, well, you, you can very much imagine this
• 43:00
  being a real life person and that it's a billionaire in terms
• 43:04
  of like, not just the childhood aspects of his father being
• 43:08
  someone who doesn't like, who doesn't support him, does not
• 43:10
  want to know him, becomes cold to him.
• 43:13
  And in turn he becomes cold himself.
• 43:17
  And the only way he can prove himself is to try and make loads
• 43:20
  of money. And when he does, he's still not
• 43:25
  liked. Like the billionaire class
• 43:27
  doesn't like him when he's trying to buy artifacts and
• 43:31
  such. And he still isn't getting that
• 43:34
  that satisfaction from anyone, which is yeah, you can this is
• 43:39
  maybe a absolutely. You can maybe think of this in
• 43:43
  this current era of life who are kind of like that I.
• 43:48
  Don't know who you're talking about, you know.
• 43:52
  But but it's interesting how that then bleeds into the Dalek
• 43:55
  as well, because he his whole thing, especially near the end
• 44:00
  is when he's wanting to say all I do is just want to get you to
• 44:02
  talk to me. I just.
• 44:04
  Acknowledge me. I want to be acknowledged.
• 44:07
  Exactly. He wants validation from a Dalek
• 44:10
  because he's not getting it from his billionaire pals.
• 44:12
  He's not getting it from his DA. He's not getting it even from
• 44:16
  that old guy because he's been fired.
• 44:19
  He's and a lonely man who's stuck in a bunker that has tried
• 44:23
  to impress people, and so the only way to do so is to try and
• 44:28
  control everyone and make that somehow an impressible,
• 44:33
  impressive sort of thing. And this is the day, right?
• 44:37
  This is the day where he comes face to the face with the one
• 44:41
  thing he can't control and the one thing that can tear his
• 44:44
  empire down. Yes, exactly.
• 44:48
  It's it's wonderful scene because like you say in the
• 44:52
  episodes, it's like, Oh yeah, he's you know, the the crafts
• 44:55
  Belonar and did it and he goes for the beats.
• 44:58
  But in this you, you really see the the length of power that he
• 45:03
  he has and he tries to yield on people and also how he he wants,
• 45:14
  yeah, kind of just not to be not liked really, even for other
• 45:23
  people try to do a lot to impress him.
• 45:25
  Ultimately, it's about not trying to be seen as something
• 45:28
  that's not liked. Similar to Jubilee with him.
• 45:32
  That is it. Nigel Rochester.
• 45:36
  He's got a beast, isn't? He yeah, he's got, he's got a
• 45:39
  certain scene, I think in episode 3 or something where
• 45:42
  he's trying to plead with the doctor saying I'm just a really
• 45:45
  nice guy. I just.
• 45:46
  It wasn't to want to. Do this stuff.
• 45:48
  It was not me and and he still does all that mad stuff, but.
• 45:53
  The legs that we go to Anthony for somebody to validate us and
• 45:58
  say I love you, even if it's a Dalek.
• 46:02
  Literally like at the end of he's just wanting to be like,
• 46:04
  none of this stuff has been me. It's been I'm not, I'm not a bad
• 46:07
  guy. I'm just I'm, I'm, I'm trying to
• 46:10
  just make make, you know, get impressed, impress everyone in
• 46:14
  this room and he just fails every time.
• 46:18
  He always. You know, you know, when he
• 46:20
  finally, the Dalek finally talks to him, it's just to say, fine,
• 46:23
  listen to me talk, exterminate, you know.
• 46:27
  Exactly. And and then he just walks out
• 46:29
  and he's he's still like trying to shout at it and get his
• 46:33
  attention. He doesn't care, and that's the
• 46:35
  biggest deflation of them. But do you know, do you know
• 46:39
  what I find so interesting? I find I find it more
• 46:43
  interesting when writers take a villain or the bad guy.
• 46:48
  Yeah, and make you feel for them and give them a genuine motive
• 46:55
  for why they're doing what they're doing.
• 46:56
  So the scenes at the start of his story where his dad isn't
• 47:02
  buying him gifts and his daddy's worker is taking on the parental
• 47:07
  role. And then he gets the telescope
• 47:09
  and the dad literally has the telescope smashed up in front of
• 47:13
  him, his favorite possession. And I really felt for him, even
• 47:17
  though I know, I know Van Stanton is a monster, but it
• 47:20
  just makes him so much more interesting that OK, I see where
• 47:24
  all this is coming from. I empathise with you.
• 47:27
  Yeah. And I never thought if I'm just
• 47:29
  watching the episode, I never thought at any point I would
• 47:31
  empathise without asshole. But here we are.
• 47:34
  Yeah, no, like, I mean like it has those beats that you could
• 47:37
  just never capture in the episode of showing that
• 47:39
  childhood and showing the level of like work he does to try and
• 47:45
  impress his father. Like the whole thing where he
• 47:47
  tries to, I think he gets $1,000,000 from his dad to try
• 47:52
  and set him off. And so he he talks about how
• 47:57
  it's almost like that that parable, parable of the talents
• 48:00
  in the Bible about making two different servants do different
• 48:06
  things. And one of them like plants the
• 48:10
  stuff in the ground and goes nowhere and dies in the vain was
• 48:14
  the other like wellfully uses it.
• 48:19
  That venue will come to profit in a few years.
• 48:21
  And that's meant to be the nicest, you know, thing to do,
• 48:25
  the good thing to do in that parable.
• 48:27
  And that's what Van Stanton does.
• 48:29
  He still doesn't get his dad's approval for it.
• 48:32
  His dad still eats him. He's not got his dad on side for
• 48:37
  really everything. You know, when he turns the
• 48:40
  tables on him, you know when he oh, yes, and I was sort of
• 48:44
  punched in the air going, yes, good.
• 48:46
  You know what? He's treated you terribly.
• 48:48
  You should RIP this company from under him.
• 48:51
  But then by the end of the chapter, you realise that in the
• 48:55
  episode, it's the cure for the common cold.
• 48:57
  In the book, it's the cure for cancer.
• 48:59
  And you know, like I lost my mum to cancer and I read that line
• 49:04
  and I was like, no, he is a monster.
• 49:06
  Whatever his dad did to him, he is a monster.
• 49:11
  And using that as a bargaining chip as well in trying to get
• 49:15
  the Dalek from a collector who runs an ice cream company who is
• 49:19
  dying of cancer. And to say, well, I could
• 49:22
  negotiate a deal with you here because I've got the cure.
• 49:26
  And the desperation of this, of a millionaire desperate just to
• 49:31
  cling on and have life still and still just get screwed over by
• 49:36
  Van Stan. And it really shows his
• 49:38
  character when it comes to his negotiating style, to his
• 49:42
  character of what he really like when he's got a leg over
• 49:47
  someone, he'll absolutely like abuse that.
• 49:50
  And it's when he doesn't, when he absolutely flounders.
• 49:54
  And that's what happens for the other parts of the study
• 49:57
  instead. I mean, these are pretty adult
• 50:00
  themes, right? The the need to hurt people, the
• 50:04
  the need for endorsement from your parents.
• 50:08
  It's it's not shying away from sort of how mature it is.
• 50:12
  I really like that and I like the kids will read in this as
• 50:15
  well. Exactly, exactly.
• 50:19
  It's what exactly what the kids should be doing.
• 50:20
  And like this that that found out it's, it's literally 20
• 50:24
  pages or so, that Van Stanton story, but there's so much
• 50:27
  happening within that and it doesn't feature the doctor at
• 50:30
  all. No, it's it's, it's all just
• 50:34
  solely about his character. In fact, like you see by the
• 50:39
  Doctor, like he's one of the few people we rarely in the book get
• 50:42
  any insight to as the Doctor. I think there's maybe a line or
• 50:45
  two and a very important lens, but for the most part, it's to
• 50:51
  delve into the the psyche of this world and of the people win
• 50:56
  it. And Van Stanton is one of the
• 50:57
  ones that you really do get such sort of comprehensive idea of
• 51:03
  who he is, how he devolves into such a monster and how even that
• 51:09
  monster is nothing to add a like, like near the end when
• 51:14
  he's he's trying to negotiate with.
• 51:19
  Is he? Yeah.
• 51:19
  He's thinking he can use the Doctor to negotiate with a
• 51:22
  Dalek. And the Doctor's just like, no,
• 51:25
  you cannot negotiate with this deaf machine.
• 51:28
  It does not recognise you to have anything to bargain with.
• 51:32
  You are loving it. You have no chance.
• 51:35
  But he still thinks he can use the word old.
• 51:37
  He's used to to manipulate and get a leg over a Dalek.
• 51:42
  It makes the Dalek seem so impressive because by all
• 51:45
  accounts, Henry Van Stanton is the most powerful person on the
• 51:48
  entire planet. But the Dalek is just in his
• 51:51
  way. Excuse me, I just need to kill
• 51:55
  you on the way out. Yeah, it's.
• 51:58
  It's wonderful. What about Diana Goddard, then?
• 52:03
  FBI agent? By all accounts, yes.
• 52:07
  Who knew? Who knew?
• 52:10
  I certainly didn't when I was watching Dalek, but I now do,
• 52:13
  and that's good. So I, I find it quite fun
• 52:20
  because essentially thinking of when this book was well, not so
• 52:26
  much when the story's set, but when the book idea of the
• 52:30
  episode was happening around 2000 and four, 2005, like the
• 52:34
  memory of things like The X-Files and stuff like that.
• 52:39
  Even sizes and Lambs decade earlier like that probably was a
• 52:44
  good driving force to that might have been in one of the scripts,
• 52:48
  you know, drafts about having. I think that twisted, yeah.
• 52:53
  Having that twist near the end instead on screen, which, yeah,
• 52:58
  might not have worked because he'll just came quite out of the
• 53:00
  blue. But having time to delve into
• 53:04
  that and to delve into how she relations with her boss and how
• 53:09
  the boss is also in this story of character were going darling.
• 53:12
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but she demoted him to the
• 53:15
  guard, didn't she? He was the powerful one and she
• 53:18
  was the lowly guard. And then Van Stanton took a
• 53:22
  liking to her. So she then she goes, well, we
• 53:25
  can't both be in high position, so I'm going to demote you to
• 53:28
  being a guard. Yeah, like.
• 53:31
  It was it was a great scene, this sort of like like like
• 53:36
  proper sort of like thriller stuff because it sets the
• 53:39
  parameters in the previous tale about what I understand is like
• 53:42
  he's such an impulsive man who just does things on a whim.
• 53:46
  And then having people who have such a regimented system like
• 53:50
  working in the FBI, having to deal with a guy like that I'm
• 53:54
  and having her just be immediately becoming the chief
• 53:58
  of staff on a whim on a like flight back from the president.
• 54:02
  And she just has to roll with it.
• 54:03
  Because if you didn't, then that would give a bit of a game.
• 54:06
  Your mind is wiped and you're gone.
• 54:09
  Exactly and so. Like, you get this, this
• 54:13
  wonderful sideline of subterfuge within it that I really enjoyed
• 54:17
  seeing that extra sort of layer beneath.
• 54:21
  It's almost kind of like Power of the Daleks in some ways.
• 54:24
  I'm having that sort of, you know, line of trying to take
• 54:27
  over the base there and having the revolution in that way and
• 54:31
  take down the leader of the base the the the moment like.
• 54:34
  You're waiting for the moment where they're going to make
• 54:36
  their move. You know, she's going to reveal
• 54:38
  who she is to Van Stanton. But the dynamics between her and
• 54:41
  By Water as well are like, I was sort of getting that sort of, Oh
• 54:45
  my God, is she going to betray him?
• 54:47
  Is she enjoying this role a little bit?
• 54:49
  There's all of that going on as well.
• 54:51
  And it's so clever because it doesn't contradict anything in
• 54:56
  Dalek, but it's absolutely. Not what's?
• 54:59
  Being told in Dalek. So it's really clever how he
• 55:02
  sort of puts this in and you can say, yeah, I can.
• 55:04
  That absolutely could be playing out.
• 55:06
  We just never got to see that. Yeah, exactly.
• 55:10
  So it was really nice having that sort of like extra layer
• 55:14
  really to it and that I absolutely don't need to, but
• 55:18
  it's, it's wonderful to have it to, to give more flavour to this
• 55:23
  story and more people to have more reasons to be there in that
• 55:27
  base. Not just everyone just got
• 55:29
  packed down because Van Stanton said.
• 55:31
  So there's people who willingly want to be there to try and
• 55:35
  change the whole regime. What do you think about Adam
• 55:39
  then? I mean, I don't know if that
• 55:44
  was. A big soy like in concept, Adam
• 55:49
  could be an interesting character.
• 55:51
  I've on TVI really don't like Adam.
• 55:54
  I don't think that's a controversial thing to say, but
• 56:00
  there's very little, like, apart from some of the parallels
• 56:06
  towards the Doctor that you have in the episode and in this book,
• 56:10
  you don't get that. Continuing the same vein
• 56:13
  afterwards, Like there's that wonder about the universe and
• 56:15
  such, but he's just a sly wee wee guy who thinks he's better
• 56:20
  than everyone. And that's what his tale is all
• 56:24
  about. Is this how he thinks he's
• 56:27
  better than everyone? So he's just not going to talk
• 56:29
  to anyone for the first, like for one year when he's like 6 or
• 56:33
  7 years old because he thinks they're not worth talking to.
• 56:37
  Oh, that whole, yeah, that whole bit.
• 56:38
  About his childhood where he shut up for a year just to prove
• 56:43
  that he could do it and they got in experts and his parents were
• 56:46
  screaming at him. And then he just went down one
• 56:49
  day and was like, oh, hi, you know what a cum.
• 56:52
  I'm sorry. Exactly.
• 56:54
  He's just, he's just a wee. Cunt and he and this he he is,
• 56:59
  he is just more of a cunt. And you know, that's a fair
• 57:04
  character to have. It's not what I would want to
• 57:06
  have in the TARDIS and I thought they were going to have a wee
• 57:08
  thing at the end instead that he just.
• 57:10
  He stayed there. Yeah, Steed and got full of.
• 57:12
  Concrete or something but. We ain't novelising the long
• 57:15
  game, so you. Can stay right here exactly,
• 57:18
  but. Yeah.
• 57:19
  I mean, what do you think of the bit where I mean I?
• 57:21
  Initially like stopped and wrote it down.
• 57:23
  I was like, I cannot believe he had that thought where Rose is
• 57:26
  behind the door, apparently murdered by the Dalek and his
• 57:30
  first thought is now she won't take your job.
• 57:34
  Yes, literally. Yes, he's he's constantly like
• 57:39
  thinking about himself, thinking about like what's important for
• 57:44
  him. And you can kind of get it
• 57:46
  because there's a scene within his tale about Sven, who he
• 57:52
  lives Slash works with in the bass and he doesn't get along
• 58:00
  with him because he's quite annoying and all this.
• 58:04
  And by then starting off with him, a choice to say, well, do
• 58:06
  you want your own room? And he was, yeah, I would.
• 58:09
  And Sven gets pulled out and just mind wiped immediately on
• 58:13
  the spot, taken away. Now you've got your own room and
• 58:17
  he doesn't mind. Yeah, that's the thing.
• 58:20
  He doesn't mind. He actually.
• 58:22
  Is happy about that instance because like you see with Rose
• 58:26
  being potentially at the picture, he's just like, oh,
• 58:29
  glad my job's still safe. It's always about him, even when
• 58:34
  people have lost like Sven did well.
• 58:39
  I mean, I'm very quickly go to sleep because I think Ashley
• 58:41
  Adam's story, even though it was still very well written, he's
• 58:44
  just not the most interesting of characters.
• 58:46
  So of all of them, I thought that was the weakest insofar as
• 58:50
  he's the weakest character. Not that that wasn't a good
• 58:53
  little short story. My favorite one was the Dalek,
• 58:58
  right? And I'm going to read you
• 59:00
  something now which I just. He couldn't quite fit into the
• 59:04
  interior cavity that was perfectly normal.
• 59:07
  All children mutated differently.
• 59:09
  They took hold of all of his extraneous limbs and hacked them
• 59:13
  off. For some reason.
• 59:15
  He had been born with two good eyes, but he only needed one, so
• 59:18
  they put the other one out with a spike.
• 59:21
  He genuinely makes you feel sorry for a Dalek mutant being
• 59:27
  forced into this prison of hate. It has such the script, without
• 59:35
  going into too much detail about what's happening on SCAR or
• 59:38
  what's happening in the time war, what's happening in the law
• 59:41
  that we all want to try and delve into.
• 59:45
  It just has a few sentences about clinically what's
• 59:48
  happening to create this being. I think it's it's something
• 59:53
  about 7 seconds is sort of given towards before was put into the
• 1:00:00
  into the Dalek as well, because it's the it's the optimum time
• 1:00:05
  before the nails properly hit and set in.
• 1:00:09
  And also just the functionality wise for them to get the casing
• 1:00:12
  on and all of us. And it's it just paints a
• 1:00:15
  picture about how they operate in, in, in this area in the high
• 1:00:20
  control of of Scarrow on, on just what's happening to train.
• 1:00:26
  And still like hyper propaganda within that split amount of time
• 1:00:32
  to get that hate fueled for a lifetime in a Dalek.
• 1:00:36
  And I think that was maybe my favorite chapter this way,
• 1:00:38
  actually. Yeah.
• 1:00:40
  So I mean like it's insight. Into I mean, I never thought
• 1:00:43
  we'd get massive insight into a Dalek in any story if I'm
• 1:00:46
  honest. Like the TV episode did well,
• 1:00:49
  but like the line and agony was more reliable and constant than
• 1:00:53
  happiness could ever be. That's such a chilling line.
• 1:00:57
  But also as well, like the the stories bookended with two
• 1:01:01
  scenes. And at the start it felt very
• 1:01:03
  new adventures to me. You know how we go off into sort
• 1:01:05
  of cyberspace and stuff like this and all this random stuff
• 1:01:08
  happens and it's like, oh, the boy on the hill was flying the
• 1:01:11
  kite? It doesn't explain at all space.
• 1:01:15
  Did you? Say 2 hours.
• 1:01:16
  Yeah. They.
• 1:01:19
  Circled into a little heart and then.
• 1:01:21
  They started having it off now. But you know, what the hell is
• 1:01:26
  that all? About like, what the hell?
• 1:01:28
  And then in this chapter is where he drops that.
• 1:01:31
  What they do is they extract dying dreams of their enemies,
• 1:01:36
  like final fantasies of happiness before their lives are
• 1:01:40
  snuffed out. Injects that into the Dalek
• 1:01:43
  mutant so they can remember that sort of joy and and resent it
• 1:01:50
  because they'll never have it because they're trapped inside
• 1:01:52
  these war machines So given a little bit of happiness from
• 1:01:55
  their victims and said right, this is something you'll never
• 1:01:59
  have so fucking kill them all right exactly like I think I
• 1:02:03
  think they called it this is a. Sentence it does talk about that
• 1:02:05
  as well. Of the child had had his grand
• 1:02:08
  revelation and everyone seemed pleased with him.
• 1:02:11
  He now knew that happiness in life was a delusion too soon
• 1:02:15
  snatched away like this idea of the grand revelation being, you
• 1:02:19
  know, within the system of Daleks to make sure that from
• 1:02:23
  the offset they have that propaganda is idea of happiness
• 1:02:30
  that will never be theirs, kind of put into their actual being
• 1:02:33
  and never realised was. But he does the impossible
• 1:02:38
  right? He turns the.
• 1:02:39
  Daleks into tragic figures because all of this is just
• 1:02:43
  forced on them, you know, like like in other circumstances, if
• 1:02:47
  all this was this height and all this nonsense they the limbs
• 1:02:50
  weren't cut off, they could be just as happy as those Daleks
• 1:02:53
  whizzing about and evil of the Daleks going dizzy, Dr. Woo, you
• 1:02:56
  know, they could be having a grand old time exactly, but
• 1:03:00
  instead. Yeah, you, you just, you can
• 1:03:03
  imagine that. You can you can imagine this
• 1:03:04
  conveyor built system of like New Mutants inhibit its
• 1:03:11
  emotions, go through the propaganda, get it in the case
• 1:03:14
  and get it sorted into soldier commander out to the battlefield
• 1:03:19
  like in a mass conveyor Beltway. Like it's a, it's a really kind
• 1:03:24
  of you, you, you capture in the middle of a chaotic moment in
• 1:03:29
  Scarwell and potentially the Time War of Daleks and the
• 1:03:33
  day-to-day life and, and Scarwater and how they make
• 1:03:36
  Daleks. You remember that game you said
• 1:03:38
  you played when you? Were a Dalek.
• 1:03:40
  Yeah. Yeah, this is literally he.
• 1:03:42
  Literally takes. You, you inside the Dalek shell
• 1:03:46
  and you get to experience life as a Dalek and, you know, stuff
• 1:03:50
  like this, where what is it being?
• 1:03:53
  It gets bolted inside. Literally his limbs are bolted
• 1:03:57
  down and then they force this massive pipe down his throat.
• 1:04:02
  It's like it's claustrophobic and it's kind of terrifying.
• 1:04:06
  Yeah. I mean.
• 1:04:08
  We can have time and maybe to a wee bit of what Jubilee has as
• 1:04:12
  well, because in Jubilee there are small people that are put
• 1:04:18
  into Daleks for the pleasure of the president in in Jubilee and
• 1:04:24
  I've just remembered. And so I.
• 1:04:28
  Don't know if Robbie Sheeran's got this thing about squeezing
• 1:04:31
  beings into Dalek casings, but I was thinking about that and
• 1:04:34
  hearing, remembering the the, the sounds and all of that from
• 1:04:38
  that particular scene. What does the fella say?
• 1:04:40
  The little, the little person he goes.
• 1:04:42
  I'm sorry, Sir, but the the cavity seems to be too small.
• 1:04:46
  Oh dear. Really chops his arm off,
• 1:04:48
  doesn't he? You hear the squenchy noise and
• 1:04:51
  it's like. Oh, but that's that's, that's
• 1:04:54
  just that's always kind of a comical version of what happens
• 1:04:57
  when in this book of the of how how this kind of scar goes
• 1:05:01
  through it. And like you say earlier, if
• 1:05:03
  kids are reading this like this is a truly good gruesome idea of
• 1:05:07
  scene behind the casing and what actually makes a Dalek how they
• 1:05:11
  how they get created. And kids love that stuff, right.
• 1:05:14
  Oh yeah, like when I was. Younger man, the more murders
• 1:05:17
  the better, you know, the more aliens shooting things and
• 1:05:20
  exactly like I mean, I remember I would have watched.
• 1:05:22
  Revelation of the Daleks on holiday I think on a wee DVD.
• 1:05:28
  Portable DVD player maybe 2000 and nine 2010 and I don't just
• 1:05:32
  know how old you were into I would.
• 1:05:34
  Not say how old I was. I was sick.
• 1:05:37
  I was, I was young enough to be enraptured by the scene of
• 1:05:40
  seeing that mutant in the Dalek, clear Dalek, and was just like,
• 1:05:46
  oh, this, this is what it's about.
• 1:05:48
  This is great pulsating organ. On his head when he gets really
• 1:05:53
  excited, you know? Yeah.
• 1:05:56
  You know what? That's that.
• 1:05:57
  Chapter about the Dalek does. As well as just being
• 1:05:59
  beautifully written is it explains why when the Dalek
• 1:06:05
  comes out of his casing at the end, he lifts up his tentacle to
• 1:06:08
  the sunlight because the memory he's been given is of being on
• 1:06:12
  in sunlight in the hill. And it's the first time he's
• 1:06:14
  ever truly felt that. So it I thought that was because
• 1:06:18
  in the TV episode I was like, oh, that's all a bit bizarre.
• 1:06:21
  Like, I mean, he's been affected by a human being, but I don't
• 1:06:24
  generally go around going, oh, son, you know, whereas the book
• 1:06:28
  actually gives you a rational reason for it.
• 1:06:32
  And one one thing as well, I. Think as well about it's about
• 1:06:38
  maybe familial connections and the the validation as well of
• 1:06:45
  others similar to what we're talking about with Van Stanton.
• 1:06:48
  It seems to be something that the Dalek has as well, because
• 1:06:52
  in their chapter they talk about how, you know, they go through
• 1:06:56
  commander like 10 a penny because it's the time where
• 1:06:59
  everyone's getting blown up every 5 seconds.
• 1:07:01
  But after he gets a new one, he they all say commander like in
• 1:07:07
  agreement of whatever he's he's ordered them to do, but he says
• 1:07:11
  father. And so he has this sort of
• 1:07:14
  fatherly connection towards getting orders to getting, you
• 1:07:18
  know, being instructed to do things.
• 1:07:21
  It's, it's almost like a that, that sort of like relation, that
• 1:07:24
  like dependency relation that he has with this parental figure.
• 1:07:28
  And he, he misses that as a Dalek right into the end.
• 1:07:34
  But having that validation, his validation is to have orders.
• 1:07:38
  That's why he keeps asking, isn't it?
• 1:07:40
  Yes. Yeah, in the same way.
• 1:07:42
  That, you know, Van Stanton's validation is to have or does as
• 1:07:49
  well of of saying you are good enough or you you have done well
• 1:07:53
  or like he he needs Van Statten needs that.
• 1:07:56
  While a Dalek just needs told go do this, go do that.
• 1:08:00
  There's a there's a similar parallels of that they need for
• 1:08:04
  validation for who they are and what they do.
• 1:08:07
  And he ultimately the Dalek gets that with rules and Stanton
• 1:08:11
  never does. Which is the more tragic aspect
• 1:08:13
  of it is more tragic, but maybe? Deservedly.
• 1:08:17
  I never thought I'd say this, but the human is probably more
• 1:08:20
  evil than the Dalek in this. Yeah, I mean.
• 1:08:24
  I mean, the Dalek still does have the idea that what he is
• 1:08:30
  doing is what the Daleks would want him to do.
• 1:08:35
  And like what he believes that Dalek should do in that
• 1:08:38
  situation, that he should, he should die because he's not
• 1:08:43
  really a Dalek anymore. He is evolving into something
• 1:08:46
  else, to something more human. And there's a part in the book
• 1:08:50
  as well where it talks about the Dalek idea of death.
• 1:08:53
  And it says for the Dalek, death itself is never a deterrent.
• 1:08:58
  Death is an essential part of existence.
• 1:09:01
  In most cases, a death that is both well times and well
• 1:09:03
  executed can be a great value to the welfare of the Dalek race, a
• 1:09:07
  duty to be embraced, not something to be avoided.
• 1:09:11
  At worst, to be postponed. So yeah, like if he was to die,
• 1:09:18
  what's the thing? I'm going to try and quote
• 1:09:20
  Shakespeare about a Doctor Who book.
• 1:09:21
  Come on. But if it were done, went is
• 1:09:23
  done, went well, it were done quickly.
• 1:09:27
  From Macbeth is maybe the power I'm going to somehow make about
• 1:09:32
  Daleks and Lady Macbeth. Oh, that's too smart, is sexy,
• 1:09:35
  you know? Jesus Christ, is that why every
• 1:09:39
  time Dalek and we've seen a lot of them blow up, we sort of hear
• 1:09:42
  them going yay, finally I've given my life to the Dalek
• 1:09:47
  calls. Exactly.
• 1:09:50
  We should have just. Little little little cheers
• 1:09:52
  every time. They don't say that somebody
• 1:09:55
  will do that on YouTube. Right.
• 1:09:56
  It'll be a Smurf or something, that sort of noise.
• 1:10:00
  I mean, OK, well, so we have covered a lot of the book there.
• 1:10:04
  There's one thing we haven't really spoken about is the
• 1:10:06
  Doctor and Rose. They turn up every now and
• 1:10:10
  again. You know, I think that in there
• 1:10:12
  somewhere I'm. I mean, it is a great story for
• 1:10:17
  them. Yeah, but that story's on the
• 1:10:19
  TV. Isn't it?
• 1:10:21
  Exactly. It's like I say that like this,
• 1:10:23
  isn't? A Like an accompanying piece to
• 1:10:26
  the episode. And yeah, the episode is where
• 1:10:29
  you get to see most of that take place of what the Doctor then
• 1:10:34
  feels. It doesn't stop there being
• 1:10:36
  really good moments of characterization of this.
• 1:10:39
  Like I think there's a part where it talks about how near
• 1:10:41
  the beginning with throws and the Doctor just kind of
• 1:10:46
  recapping essentially their relationship and who they who
• 1:10:49
  they are to each other. That kind of perfectly
• 1:10:51
  encapsulates that seemed like the universe was theirs and all
• 1:10:55
  they had to do was to go, and all they had to do was seize
• 1:11:03
  hold of it together. And I said that's all they need
• 1:11:07
  to do. Like it's a simple, really
• 1:11:11
  succinct. Moments out of the dialogue as
• 1:11:15
  well. So the bit where Rose says it's
• 1:11:17
  not the one pointing the gun at me at the end, the line straight
• 1:11:21
  after is the Doctor looked as if he had been slapped because he
• 1:11:25
  realizes, yeah, yeah, I am the Dalek in this moment.
• 1:11:29
  Yeah. And it's the same thing we were
• 1:11:30
  talking about. Like the torturer of how it kind
• 1:11:33
  of builds up because there's there's that anxiety and urgency
• 1:11:41
  about dealing with a Dalek. Like near the beginning when he
• 1:11:44
  realizes that there's a Dalek and it just kind of ramps up
• 1:11:48
  into ways that you think are almost on Doctor.
• 1:11:51
  Like like the bit where, you know, Adam arrives after
• 1:11:57
  escaping from the Dalek and he just looks over and I think he
• 1:12:02
  sees Adam looks a bit guilty. And then it's got the the NM
• 1:12:06
  monologue of the Doctor and it says, Good Hope he hope it
• 1:12:10
  chokes you. Like he's so this one where he
• 1:12:16
  goes. He would save his rage for the
• 1:12:19
  Dalek, because he knew he hadn't seen the last of it.
• 1:12:21
  Sooner or later, it would appear on the screen and demand to be
• 1:12:24
  released from the vault. Would it beg?
• 1:12:27
  The Doctor hoped it would beg. Yeah, like.
• 1:12:31
  There's this proper amounts of the docs, like we don't go into
• 1:12:36
  the doctor's mind all the time. We don't have whole sort of
• 1:12:40
  scenes kind of delving into what he feels, what he's like
• 1:12:46
  thinking about at that time. But it's only, it's only kind of
• 1:12:49
  little asides almost that we have about what the doctor
• 1:12:54
  thinks about really kind of where he is at that woman.
• 1:12:57
  And a lot of the moments he's just raging with dialects he
• 1:13:03
  hates, doesn't he? He hates.
• 1:13:05
  Them as much as they hate everybody.
• 1:13:08
  Well, exactly. And yeah, like you see.
• 1:13:10
  With that rose moment, that that moment for him is where he
• 1:13:14
  falters. And you, it's a beautiful one.
• 1:13:17
  On the episode with Israel where Eccleston's just, like, started
• 1:13:21
  and just be like, I thought I yeah, I mean, if you can't get
• 1:13:26
  it out because he has lost for words.
• 1:13:28
  And that whole scene talks about how lost for words, for a man
• 1:13:31
  who never has lost for words manages to be.
• 1:13:35
  It's an incredible performance in the episode.
• 1:13:37
  Isn't it Christopher Eccleston? Oh yes, that's where you need a
• 1:13:40
  good strong actor in that. I mean, if there was one last
• 1:13:45
  one as well. I had where he thinks, oh,
• 1:13:47
  pleading with a Dalek, It embarrassed him.
• 1:13:49
  It made him feel dirty and small.
• 1:13:53
  You're right, he's just enraged, I think.
• 1:13:56
  I think it's like an insult to the decision that he made at the
• 1:13:59
  end of the Time War that this one little bastard survived.
• 1:14:05
  Exactly like it's it's really enraged him to be in a way that
• 1:14:10
  he's, he never really normally can be.
• 1:14:15
  He's even kind of at one point questioning whether it's worth
• 1:14:19
  saving Rose as well. And like when he's talking about
• 1:14:23
  the door needing to be closed and how it has to be his duty
• 1:14:28
  and he's he's going well, should I do with this?
• 1:14:31
  Is is this something that I should do to try and stop this?
• 1:14:35
  She's just one girl. She's just one human girl.
• 1:14:39
  And then he has to catch himself.
• 1:14:41
  He'd be like, right now, what are you thinking?
• 1:14:43
  Like it just feels like the stakes are huge, doesn't?
• 1:14:46
  It if it really feels like for once the standard, it is just
• 1:14:50
  one darling like. And I loved the offhand way that
• 1:14:55
  Rob Shearman writes in the last chapter right at the beginning.
• 1:14:58
  So the time war was over and the doctor had won.
• 1:15:01
  How about that? Yeah, I was just.
• 1:15:07
  I was a wonderfully. Yeah, almost flipping away.
• 1:15:12
  There. There goes.
• 1:15:13
  That's it. Done.
• 1:15:14
  Do you? Not think it was clever as well
• 1:15:16
  the way. Because obviously time has
• 1:15:18
  passed since Dalek was televised.
• 1:15:21
  A lot of Doctors who has come since Day of the Doctor wasn't
• 1:15:25
  even a gleam in Stephen Moffat's eye when this was made and put
• 1:15:28
  out. But when this was novelised,
• 1:15:30
  absolutely it existed. So he incorporates, you know,
• 1:15:34
  the John Hurt Doctor and the Dalek on the battlefield at
• 1:15:37
  Arcadia, and that's just lovely kisses to a wider mythology
• 1:15:42
  that's taking place there. Yes, it was.
• 1:15:45
  It was a nice little bit. I'm glad I didn't do too much
• 1:15:49
  with it to just be like, oh, we're going to have a chapter of
• 1:15:53
  this dull, like encountering, you know, the War Doctor or
• 1:15:57
  things like this. Like it just was a very brief
• 1:16:00
  thing. It just showed a tired old man
• 1:16:02
  who just couldn't be us fighting another Dalek, and that Dalek
• 1:16:06
  then being taken away through to crash through time at that
• 1:16:11
  moment as well. So I was happy for the little
• 1:16:14
  brief carry of that. I'm glad I didn't focus on it
• 1:16:17
  too much like some of us could. I've got one more question for
• 1:16:22
  you about the book. I would, I do quickly want to
• 1:16:24
  ask you about Jubilee afterwards, but and that is, was
• 1:16:28
  there anything in the book that didn't work for you?
• 1:16:30
  So was there anything like that? You sort of went, OK, we could
• 1:16:33
  have done without that. I mean, it's so past for 180
• 1:16:37
  pages, but go on hit me. I have one thing that I.
• 1:16:42
  Have circled in my notes over and over.
• 1:16:45
  Go on. Wow, you must have been crossed
• 1:16:47
  as angry. As the Doctor was at the Dalek,
• 1:16:51
  but this is the thing that probably.
• 1:16:52
  Will get me kicked out of fandom from a certain certain folk.
• 1:16:57
  It's not without face, Anthony, no.
• 1:17:00
  It's the use of pepper pot. What this book is quite
• 1:17:06
  literally as it were, peppered with so many usage uses of
• 1:17:11
  Pepper pot as the idea of what a Dalek is and such.
• 1:17:18
  I've never I've, I mean, I don't know what Pepper Potts folk have
• 1:17:21
  around the house. I don't even call it a pepper
• 1:17:23
  pot. I don't even use a pepper pot.
• 1:17:25
  I just pinched a bit of pepper. And put it over myself, I've got
• 1:17:28
  a wee packet, whatever sachet. I don't I've never used the word
• 1:17:32
  pepper pot in common pollens. I know it's the term for
• 1:17:35
  conventional fan wisdom to use. That was the one weakness that
• 1:17:40
  was like this is just because fans use it.
• 1:17:43
  It's not that anyone can relate to this, and I know kids
• 1:17:45
  probably aren't reading it, but they build what is a hyper pot.
• 1:17:49
  Suggest a more appropriate word. Then a conical shape.
• 1:17:56
  Conical shape. Unfortunately, I'm not Robert.
• 1:18:02
  Sherman I don't have such a wide variety of vocabulary with me
• 1:18:08
  slightly phallic. Objects if you've got a
• 1:18:12
  particular type of STD, what's a better version of Pepper Pot?
• 1:18:19
  Yeah, I mean. I'm looking at it.
• 1:18:21
  I mean literally I've got as a light bulb, maybe a light bulb,
• 1:18:26
  the light bulb shaped creature. Moved forward.
• 1:18:29
  I don't know. I mean, my God, you weren't.
• 1:18:31
  Right in this. Exactly.
• 1:18:35
  I'm happy Robert Schumann did, but it's just, I don't know,
• 1:18:37
  like the what the freeze pepper pot is such a Doctor Who
• 1:18:41
  conventional term that it's used so much and to the point I think
• 1:18:47
  Adam calls it a pepper potnik. Oh yeah, actually, that should
• 1:18:52
  make me. Groan, but so many people was.
• 1:18:55
  Calling it a pepper pot who are American and all of us and like
• 1:18:59
  I don't think this was. I think it's a term that's used
• 1:19:01
  in the 1960s and 70s Britain and no other time or police.
• 1:19:08
  There are there are so many points in this book.
• 1:19:10
  Where being a fan of Doctor Who works to Robert Schumer's
• 1:19:14
  advantage. Lots of little kisses, but
• 1:19:17
  other. Other.
• 1:19:18
  Ways as well where he knows he doesn't just want to rely on our
• 1:19:21
  continuity and he's doing like lots of original things.
• 1:19:23
  But that is a fan talking there isn't it Pepper blind?
• 1:19:28
  Yeah, like no one would. Use that term these days.
• 1:19:33
  And so, so I appreciate maybe sprinkling a little one here or
• 1:19:36
  there, maybe especially from Adams, given that's a more
• 1:19:40
  British term perhaps. But it it was used so much that
• 1:19:44
  I was like it, it became noticeable.
• 1:19:47
  I was like counting how many times Pepperbot was coming up
• 1:19:49
  and I gave up. I was just like, Nah, I shan't
• 1:19:52
  say it again in the episode then if it.
• 1:19:54
  Makes you that angry. It doesn't leave me out.
• 1:19:56
  I was just like you slapping. Around your roommate tonight or
• 1:19:59
  anything? That made you so cross I was
• 1:20:03
  it's it's. It's the minorest of issues, but
• 1:20:06
  it was something that that kept coming to the surface going, oh,
• 1:20:09
  there's Pepper Pot again. And yeah, it feels like, yeah,
• 1:20:14
  something that I thought was won out from the amount of times
• 1:20:18
  it's used by like, 80s and 90s tabloids, writing journalists or
• 1:20:23
  whatever. You're better than the son,
• 1:20:25
  Robert Sherman, all right. Try harder yes, but overall,
• 1:20:30
  overall what what's what's your sort of overall opinion on the
• 1:20:33
  book? Overall, I loved it.
• 1:20:35
  I. Just loved having something that
• 1:20:40
  went further than what we saw on the screen and had us the
• 1:20:43
  opportunity to explore the background of the people who are
• 1:20:47
  stuck in this situation because it is is a claustrophobic, it's
• 1:20:51
  a small scale story in terms of where it's set and what people
• 1:20:55
  have to do in that small setting.
• 1:20:57
  But we got to expand outside that that cavern, outside that
• 1:21:02
  base with this book to see where the characters went, where they
• 1:21:07
  came from and why some of them are there and in ways that you
• 1:21:10
  just would never get to explore on on an episode sometimes.
• 1:21:15
  And so it's it's genuinely a perfect companion to the
• 1:21:19
  episode. Like I would recommend if I was
• 1:21:22
  to ever recommend people watching wanted to watch Doctor
• 1:21:25
  Who and I was recommending dialect.
• 1:21:27
  I would also say to them read this book as a as a way if you
• 1:21:31
  really liked it and read this because it's a perfect
• 1:21:35
  compendium to go with the episode.
• 1:21:38
  Even if you have never picked up a Doctor Who but before like
• 1:21:41
  this is the one to pick up I think the last thing I expect.
• 1:21:45
  From a target book is to be surprised because I know it's
• 1:21:48
  the TV episode that's being novelised.
• 1:21:50
  And this, this bloody book surprised me about twice a page
• 1:21:54
  going, oh, whether that was insight into somebody, how dark
• 1:21:58
  it got, you know, a plot twist. Yeah, Really, really dramatic.
• 1:22:04
  Just beautifully written as well.
• 1:22:05
  He's he's a great writer of praise because there's no
• 1:22:08
  complicated language in here, but he tells those stories
• 1:22:13
  really vividly. Like in a way that it sort of
• 1:22:15
  sits in your mind afterwards, after you put the book down.
• 1:22:19
  That's exactly, yeah. It's something that you also
• 1:22:23
  very rarely would get out of other Doctor Who books in
• 1:22:27
  general. Not just target novelizations,
• 1:22:29
  but like the ideas and themes of, you know, what characters in
• 1:22:35
  this book go through are things you very rarely get
• 1:22:38
  characterized in so many other Doctor Who books.
• 1:22:41
  And to have that on top of an already brilliant Doctor Who
• 1:22:45
  story, it's, it's just a wonderful mix.
• 1:22:48
  So yes, very much so pleased you enjoyed it.
• 1:22:51
  You know, I hope you're. Not sending Alastair messages
• 1:22:53
  saying hi, what bullshit we're reading on that podcast.
• 1:22:56
  But you should see these other books that are out, you know?
• 1:22:59
  Absolutely. Can I ask you a question about
• 1:23:01
  Colin Baker? Oh, violin.
• 1:23:04
  Yes. Yeah.
• 1:23:05
  Have you ever met him? I have.
• 1:23:07
  Indeed, Yes, I have, yeah. Were you incensed enough to want
• 1:23:10
  to? Chop his legs off and put him in
• 1:23:13
  the Tower of London for 100 years.
• 1:23:15
  No, instead I got him to sign my copy.
• 1:23:17
  Of Doctor Who and the Pirates. Well, Robert Sherman did.
• 1:23:22
  Oh, an old Phil Cotton. He sounded so sad without his
• 1:23:28
  legs. And that the bit where he goes I
• 1:23:32
  have. No orders to give you.
• 1:23:34
  All you can do is kill me and the Dalek goes, all right, it's
• 1:23:40
  a very different story, isn't it?
• 1:23:44
  What's that doing that this isn't there's?
• 1:23:47
  There's quite a. Few different areas this.
• 1:23:51
  I mean, there's, there's, there's common threads
• 1:23:54
  throughout some of it like that is a Dalek that is kept locked
• 1:24:01
  up. That Dalek is used to be able to
• 1:24:05
  validate someone rich and powerful.
• 1:24:09
  The Doctor is full of hate of Daleks in the conventional
• 1:24:15
  sense, but his companion is not and tries to teach him to not
• 1:24:20
  feel or be like a Dalek when dealing with a Dalek.
• 1:24:26
  So those, I think those are maybe some of the key areas
• 1:24:28
  where there's that overlap, but there's so much different
• 1:24:33
  aspects to this. I mean, we have a instead of a
• 1:24:38
  sort of billionaire tech pro sort of running a base in
• 1:24:43
  America, we've got a F2 nationalist fascistic English
• 1:24:49
  government ran by a guy called Nigel by Martin Jarvis.
• 1:24:54
  In a truly spectacular performance, yes, I mean that
• 1:24:58
  that could never happen Happen. Having a photistic government
• 1:25:01
  load bag. Yeah, he called Nigel that would
• 1:25:02
  never. I can see that especially, you
• 1:25:04
  know, he's got the Americans right.
• 1:25:06
  Under his farm, hasn't he? You know, Yes, Patronize is.
• 1:25:10
  The president in the story as. Well, all I should.
• 1:25:14
  Say as well, should we be speaking without our without
• 1:25:18
  condensing our words and by having our yes, of course, no
• 1:25:22
  contractions, No. Contractions.
• 1:25:24
  We should all be not speaking. With any contractions anymore in
• 1:25:28
  this interview and I've put a huge amount of slap on.
• 1:25:31
  Tonight as well, just like Miriam.
• 1:25:34
  Oh, she was great. She was such a bizarre character
• 1:25:39
  to follow because she is plain almost actually similar to the
• 1:25:45
  role of Goddard and Dalek of being someone who is is, you
• 1:25:52
  know, basically second in command.
• 1:25:55
  In that way I bought has alternative motives to try and
• 1:26:01
  depose the person in charge except for her.
• 1:26:05
  She's also just like batshit crazy and it's just as what does
• 1:26:09
  she say? Yeah, he slapped me, but he
• 1:26:12
  didn't slap me hard enough. Like she wants to be the little
• 1:26:15
  woman as well, you know, under the thumb.
• 1:26:18
  She's, I mean. There's so, I mean, you think
• 1:26:22
  you know where she's going and how she's wanting to just be
• 1:26:25
  equally as such a powerful figure, but she just marries A
• 1:26:30
  Dalek. Yeah, I've forgotten about that.
• 1:26:33
  Marry me, Dalek, it's such a wild adventure.
• 1:26:40
  You go. On with but she's she is
• 1:26:42
  wonderful. She goes through such a a
• 1:26:45
  journey of you thinking she's that traditional, almost like
• 1:26:50
  wish world and such. It's like the traditional figure
• 1:26:53
  of of submissive women towards the the husband who then kind of
• 1:27:00
  twist around and is the main sort of progeny out of this
• 1:27:05
  revolution. And yeah, there's so many again
• 1:27:10
  with the side characters, like he loves his side characters
• 1:27:13
  where I was shaving. And he gives them all
• 1:27:16
  opportunity, not as much as in the dialectic novelization, but
• 1:27:20
  gives them a a chance to be fleshed out in some way.
• 1:27:23
  The bit where Pharaoh tells the. The God to hurt the Dalek and
• 1:27:30
  then the Dalek says to the God hurt Pharaoh.
• 1:27:33
  That whole sequence is so disturbing.
• 1:27:37
  Exactly when when they're saying we we need.
• 1:27:39
  You to prove that our alliance is is trustful and then he the
• 1:27:46
  dialogue doesn't shoot and says well kill this guy and you need
• 1:27:50
  to prove that this alliance is Trussell and the power dynamic
• 1:27:55
  is great. It's a similar yeah, sort of
• 1:27:58
  power dynamic of what you think with Van Stanton and a Dalek.
• 1:28:03
  But you don't get that manipulation side.
• 1:28:05
  You just get the immediate. This guy just flails.
• 1:28:08
  As soon as he's confronted with a pat more, he starts screaming,
• 1:28:11
  doesn't he? I've signed so.
• 1:28:12
  Many things that have had people killed, Yeah, but you didn't
• 1:28:15
  pick up the weapon and kill them.
• 1:28:17
  Yeah. And that's what and the the
• 1:28:19
  relationship between Evelyn and the Dalek.
• 1:28:21
  It is akin to Rose and the Dalek, but there's more of a
• 1:28:25
  maturity there because Evelyn is an older woman and so she is
• 1:28:29
  empathetic to the Dalek. But there's a wonderful moment
• 1:28:32
  where the Dalek says to where you frightened of me.
• 1:28:34
  And she goes, yeah, more than I could tell you like.
• 1:28:38
  And and that's, and that's what the Dalek appreciates throughout
• 1:28:40
  it. Is is that the only person who
• 1:28:42
  is afraid of the Dalek is Evelyn Frouds the episodes and one of
• 1:28:51
  the big themes and and and The thing is about how no one's
• 1:28:54
  really afraid of the Daleks because they defeated them.
• 1:28:58
  They got complacent about what the Daleks and they've got
• 1:29:01
  lovely fun fairground rides of Daleks and singing Daleks.
• 1:29:07
  He's angry about that. Rob Sherman is there's so.
• 1:29:09
  Much anger in it, that where the Doctor goes, you've taken
• 1:29:11
  something that's holy evil and marketed it exactly like all
• 1:29:17
  that complacency. About these fascistic creatures
• 1:29:20
  just been left to to to not be seen as a threat and for Evelyn
• 1:29:27
  to be the one that's still frightened because she's not
• 1:29:30
  part of that world to for a dollar it seems to be.
• 1:29:33
  It's quite refreshing and is widely bond probably more
• 1:29:37
  because it validates who he is. In the same way we talked about
• 1:29:40
  the validation of the Dalek in this novelisation, the Dalek in
• 1:29:43
  Afghanistan is that he and Jubilee gets validated because
• 1:29:48
  everyone's the one who is scared.
• 1:29:50
  It's a, it's a wonderful sort of parallel on this.
• 1:29:53
  He's talking about Ralph Schimmer's.
• 1:29:55
  Talking about like the Nazis, isn't he?
• 1:29:57
  And and and things like the Tower of London that we turned
• 1:30:00
  into tourist attractions and actually they were, you know,
• 1:30:05
  places of torture and execution and truly horrific places.
• 1:30:10
  It works on a lot of level. But then it's what, it's two
• 1:30:14
  hours long, the audio, whereas the TV episode is 45 minutes.
• 1:30:19
  So it just has more time. I think it's more grotesque as
• 1:30:23
  well. And it's got more of that, of
• 1:30:26
  that sort of dark, jet dark humour the the Robert Schumann
• 1:30:32
  loves doing, you know? Yeah, I mean that whole scene
• 1:30:36
  where the. The Prime Minister of America
• 1:30:38
  fills up and. And he's he's, he's been.
• 1:30:43
  Like what? All just big fans and of you
• 1:30:46
  over here and we would love to come one day and and they
• 1:30:49
  immediately are shutting it down.
• 1:30:51
  Be like, oh, your your accent is awfully awful.
• 1:30:54
  I cannot stand it. And I do not like the American
• 1:30:58
  peoples. Very much, you know, and, and
• 1:31:01
  the fact that they're like, like.
• 1:31:03
  He's like, oh, I would love to see America, the UK one day in
• 1:31:06
  England and it like, absolutely not.
• 1:31:09
  You have left England. You are not English.
• 1:31:12
  Like it's the same hatred of anything that is not English
• 1:31:16
  that the hate that anything that is not idyllic, that that
• 1:31:20
  happens throughout, you know, they had more of an influence on
• 1:31:24
  the English people. 'S that just invading, didn't
• 1:31:27
  they? All those ideas filtered
• 1:31:28
  through? Yes, exactly.
• 1:31:31
  And you know. They the doctor I think at one
• 1:31:36
  point talks as well. He's talking about the effects
• 1:31:39
  of World War and I think they say in this universe has only
• 1:31:42
  been 1, so the second one doesn't happen and the ideas of
• 1:31:49
  the empirical ideas still fester and grow and is what drives so
• 1:31:55
  many of them. They don't have that
• 1:31:59
  recalibration about what empires does and fascism and and it's
• 1:32:04
  it's fascinating that, yeah, the Doctor just fine goes out and
• 1:32:07
  says you are just the same like on their jubilee.
• 1:32:11
  And it's great speech, isn't it? It's our proper.
• 1:32:15
  Doctor Furious, morally upright speech.
• 1:32:19
  Although it is funny as well. Do you remember the bit where
• 1:32:21
  they're flying over the the ruined city because, oh, my
• 1:32:24
  father, who was going to build the New London, it was going to
• 1:32:27
  be Absolutely Fabulous. He was always all rubble.
• 1:32:29
  What happened? He goes, oh, he got bored.
• 1:32:31
  You know, it happens. Yeah.
• 1:32:36
  Oh yeah, there's some there's some wonderful moments and this
• 1:32:39
  about yeah, like the characterisation, especially of
• 1:32:43
  yeah, the president, like I mean, he is so comically
• 1:32:48
  obsequious statistic and yes. Oh, what you mean?
• 1:32:51
  Nigel, sorry. Nigel, sorry.
• 1:32:53
  I thought you meant the American president.
• 1:32:54
  Yeah. Nigel.
• 1:32:55
  Oh, no, no, sorry. He's a Nutter.
• 1:32:58
  But yeah. But like.
• 1:33:01
  There's, oh, I'm, I'm testing my knowledge here.
• 1:33:05
  There was a 1970s TV show called The Guardians.
• 1:33:08
  I want to say OK, it's only. Like one season.
• 1:33:12
  And it's a similar thing. There's a persistic takeover
• 1:33:15
  coup of government and such. And the way they help to try
• 1:33:18
  stabilize things is by having a very plummy man to be the the
• 1:33:22
  president and and such. And there's it's a brilliant
• 1:33:26
  British political intrigue thing about what if there was just a
• 1:33:29
  coup like this that succeeded. And, yeah, that it felt there's
• 1:33:35
  aspects of that about, you know, what if we had a more starker,
• 1:33:43
  like, idea of us being like, in terms of the UK being like that
• 1:33:48
  sort of like fascistic concept. And what do you mean?
• 1:33:52
  What if that's the way we're going?
• 1:33:55
  I know. But it's something that I'm
• 1:33:58
  counting on you to turn the tide, Anthony.
• 1:34:00
  All right. I will single handedly, but it's
• 1:34:04
  something. That what she even really does
• 1:34:06
  sort of delve into and and this and and Jubilee quite a bit.
• 1:34:14
  But also, I think 1 is to try as well and Dalek just in terms of
• 1:34:19
  that sort of fascistic way of things that anything that is not
• 1:34:23
  like the person in power is is therefore not acceptable.
• 1:34:29
  And and then stands the same. Like whether things that he is
• 1:34:32
  not like that he is one thing that he supports that those
• 1:34:38
  people are wiped away, discarded in the same exact way.
• 1:34:43
  It's not fleshed out as much as Jubilee because you don't have
• 1:34:46
  that much time to do that. But yeah.
• 1:34:48
  And even that very nature of the Doctor, literally.
• 1:34:51
  Says you've taken the stars and you've ripped them out of the
• 1:34:54
  sky and buried them out. It's almost like, yeah, yeah,
• 1:34:57
  yeah. They're different from us.
• 1:34:58
  We'll keep them nice and safe down here where they can't do
• 1:35:01
  any harm. Yeah.
• 1:35:02
  It's the commodification of of. Things that can ultimately very
• 1:35:07
  dangerous and the same way if the Dalek being a metal Tron,
• 1:35:11
  it's a nice oh, space age name. Whoa, metal Tron now it's it's
• 1:35:16
  it's all this stuff that ties into the same ideas of oh, let's
• 1:35:20
  have a like some singing Daleks made of little Oh my God, I've
• 1:35:24
  forgotten about that. What is it?
• 1:35:26
  We are the Daleks. Would you like to hear our song?
• 1:35:30
  Yeah. Oh.
• 1:35:31
  Do you remember the movie trailer?
• 1:35:32
  Evelyn? Hot Lips Live It is the doctor
• 1:35:36
  scalper. Scalper.
• 1:35:39
  Yeah, now I've defeated the Daleks, Anthony.
• 1:35:42
  I'm going to defeat you, all right?
• 1:35:46
  Oh, that was a wonderful piece. That's 10 out of 10.
• 1:35:50
  Doctor Who was that? I want to see that TV movie.
• 1:35:53
  Would it be accurate to? Say, I mean, look how much we've
• 1:35:58
  loved talking about these things that this book, the TV episode
• 1:36:02
  and the audio Jubilee is like halcyon days of Doctor Who,
• 1:36:07
  right? It's about as good as it gets.
• 1:36:10
  Oh yeah, I mean, it shows. Such fizzingness of it.
• 1:36:16
  Not just the ideas of what you want to do with a Dalek.
• 1:36:20
  Like it's fizzing not just with Aboriginal ideas, it's fizzing
• 1:36:24
  with a brilliant way to present the traditional ideas of what a
• 1:36:27
  Dalek actually is as well. And it's also, you know, in
• 1:36:32
  particular with the novel and, and things like Jubilee as well,
• 1:36:36
  bringing such depth to characters and giving you
• 1:36:40
  perspectives of people being stuck in this situation that you
• 1:36:44
  might otherwise not know about. And it's something I'm looking
• 1:36:47
  forward to when it comes to the Jubilee novelization as well
• 1:36:50
  coming out later this year. It's going to be different
• 1:36:52
  again, isn't it? I don't I.
• 1:36:53
  Think he's going to do what he did with Dalek is it's going to
• 1:36:56
  be the bare bones of Jubilee, but he might not even go down
• 1:37:00
  the short story route. I don't know.
• 1:37:02
  But he's just too clever a writer to just do a scripted
• 1:37:06
  version of that story. No.
• 1:37:09
  Yeah, I feel there's going to be.
• 1:37:11
  Sort of a side towards the the president and or maybe even in
• 1:37:17
  particular around the Prime Minister in America and just how
• 1:37:19
  much of A like waste of like how much anticipation he has about
• 1:37:25
  England and such and how much of a let down he is to to the
• 1:37:31
  president Such like. I can imagine, you know that I
• 1:37:34
  just. Please don't think less of me
• 1:37:36
  for saying this, but I hope he goes into some graphic
• 1:37:38
  descriptions about that man who has his arm cut off and forced
• 1:37:42
  into the Dalek. So that's so funny.
• 1:37:44
  Yeah. Oh.
• 1:37:46
  I can imagine there will be. Yeah.
• 1:37:48
  I am quite looking forward to that novelization coming out.
• 1:37:51
  We'll compare notes when we read it.
• 1:37:53
  All right. But, you know, there, there's
• 1:37:55
  one creative then that ties this, the TV episode and
• 1:37:59
  Jubilee, and that's Robert Sheeran himself.
• 1:38:02
  And I just think even though he has he, he's a handful of big
• 1:38:06
  finishes, but not many. One TV episode and one book so
• 1:38:10
  far. We're kind of lucky to have him,
• 1:38:13
  you know? Yeah, I I absolutely wish he
• 1:38:16
  will. Stand with some idea, some
• 1:38:21
  showrunner of Doctor Who. 2028 Robert Sheep.
• 1:38:25
  I mean, I don't want to have. I mean, I've seen earlier, I do
• 1:38:29
  not wish fans to run the show anymore, but if there's some
• 1:38:34
  lovely ideas he's got to make the odd episode or two
• 1:38:37
  absolutely wire. Then he would be such a great
• 1:38:41
  person to come back with something that really is needed,
• 1:38:44
  which is explanation of characters and people in this
• 1:38:49
  world that need explored. Like that's what I think he
• 1:38:53
  would do. Brilliant at whatever story that
• 1:38:56
  comes to his mind to attach that onto.
• 1:38:59
  Well, I want to. I want to give you a.
• 1:39:00
  Massive, massive thank you because not only did you read
• 1:39:03
  the book, but you also watch the episode and listen to the audio.
• 1:39:07
  And I very rarely give out homework beyond reading the
• 1:39:10
  book. Thank you for doing that.
• 1:39:11
  But it is really nice to see it all in context.
• 1:39:14
  And exactly, it was a pleasure encountering.
• 1:39:16
  Old forms of Robert Shaven's work like, and he seems like a
• 1:39:21
  very nice man as well when I've seen him on DVD extras and such
• 1:39:24
  and I've seen him down in the corner of the pub at BFI events
• 1:39:28
  that I'm too shy to go up to. But he's lovely, he's lovely.
• 1:39:32
  I will. Next time I will.
• 1:39:34
  But he always seems just to have a very positive outlook about
• 1:39:39
  about things, despite the fact dark characters so bleak.
• 1:39:46
  But I'm always, always. Keen to hear more of those
• 1:39:48
  stories? As well.
• 1:39:49
  It frightens me, you know, that he's so bleak about.
• 1:39:53
  Human beings, but often scarily accurate as well.
• 1:39:57
  Oh yes, absolutely ties into my cynical view of humanity.
• 1:40:01
  The older I get the. More cynical, I get.
• 1:40:03
  Well, look, you was on the fence, shall we say, with the
• 1:40:09
  highest science. Yeah, I find it fine.
• 1:40:13
  It was a perfectly fine. Serviceable like if you said you
• 1:40:18
  found me, fine, I'll say right, you need to go away.
• 1:40:21
  And rethink that, all right, fine is a high the highest
• 1:40:25
  compliment when it comes to some of the virgin.
• 1:40:27
  Adventures. Did you see that as a batting
• 1:40:31
  average? Fine is pretty high.
• 1:40:33
  Yeah. Like, yeah, it was a
• 1:40:36
  conventional Doctor Who story. I find it.
• 1:40:38
  Like bucked well, wasn't something for me that like I was
• 1:40:42
  singing the highest of science praises about, but the the only
• 1:40:46
  reason I bring it up is that obviously that's written by.
• 1:40:50
  Everybody's favorite infamous Doctor Who author Gareth
• 1:40:55
  Roberts, you know, recently brought out his own article as
• 1:40:57
  to why the show should have arrest.
• 1:40:59
  Actually, I didn't disagree with all the points in that.
• 1:41:02
  But anyway. But I'd like to invite you to do
• 1:41:06
  another Gareth Roberts. But now I don't want to get too
• 1:41:09
  sort of edgy with the things that we're talking about.
• 1:41:12
  But that did have a hermaphroditic race, didn't it?
• 1:41:17
  Science. Yeah.
• 1:41:19
  Well, the The Plotters by Gareth Robbins, which is a missing
• 1:41:22
  adventure starring the Dr. Ian Barber and Vicky, features a
• 1:41:28
  comedy subplot where Vicky is mistaken for a boy and King
• 1:41:34
  John, a famous rampant homosexual, is after a for a
• 1:41:40
  book. Cheesy peeps, do you still want
• 1:41:44
  to read it? Why is this a theme I mean?
• 1:41:48
  I was. I was.
• 1:41:48
  Talking about this, I think in the episode of the highest
• 1:41:50
  science of this idea that certain writers in the 1990s had
• 1:41:56
  about how plots and and concepts of whole things like can
• 1:42:01
  predicate upon just having a a quirky sex change and that
• 1:42:05
  therefore makes especially that rise to watch and yeah, he sees
• 1:42:10
  that quite a. Thing for it, and despite the
• 1:42:12
  fact he really doesn't have a thing for it these days.
• 1:42:14
  I don't think he has an opinion. It's all about people changing
• 1:42:17
  sex. Yeah, let's not go there, but it
• 1:42:21
  is a really fun read and it's, again, we've done 28 doctors at
• 1:42:25
  Target. It'll be really fun to sort of
• 1:42:27
  dip into the missing adventures. Yeah, definitely.
• 1:42:30
  I mean, and that taught this team as well.
• 1:42:32
  I I. I really like the Crusade I it's
• 1:42:35
  one of my favourite Hartnose in general as well.
• 1:42:39
  And so if it's got those sort of vibes as it sounds, minus the
• 1:42:42
  King John power, I think, I think it's more like the Romans
• 1:42:45
  actually. How do you fare with the Romans?
• 1:42:48
  I like the Romans as well. I.
• 1:42:52
  Like all hartnose historicals to to most degrees.
• 1:42:56
  But I mean, we can't talk about these books every time and just
• 1:42:59
  say how fabulous they are. Every now and again we're going
• 1:43:01
  to we have to say, well, you know, it needs to be, I mean,
• 1:43:05
  well, this is the thing that's this is my output to read could.
• 1:43:07
  Talk to who knows compared to the that I have to went through
• 1:43:10
  now you'll be messaging out as they're going.
• 1:43:12
  Oh my God, we should have done the missing.
• 1:43:14
  Adventures, not the new adventures.
• 1:43:16
  We may well one day, but yes, well before we.
• 1:43:20
  Out were you just very quickly, Very, very quickly.
• 1:43:22
  I'm always. Going to ask you to do this, do
• 1:43:24
  one last little plug for your podcast because I don't think we
• 1:43:27
  mentioned what it was called at the start.
• 1:43:29
  Yes. So if you don't know, I host
• 1:43:32
  Doctor Who podcast. About the virgin New Adventures
• 1:43:34
  called Too Broad and Too Deep, you can find us on all your good
• 1:43:38
  Spotify apps, not just Spotify. I don't know, I just mentioned
• 1:43:41
  that one because it's the only one that's on my tab now, but
• 1:43:44
  you can find us an all good podcast and apps and online Blue
• 1:43:48
  Sky, Facebook, too broad too deep pod, which is the #2
• 1:43:53
  Instagram as well. So give us a message about any
• 1:43:58
  of those books. We're doing the pet soon.
• 1:44:00
  And after that we had we already talked about that.
• 1:44:04
  I came from deceit. Deceit.
• 1:44:07
  So deceit. Lucifer rising.
• 1:44:09
  White. Darkness, if you've got thoughts
• 1:44:11
  of them, give us the messages. We will be reading them out, I'm
• 1:44:15
  sure, by the time this comes out.
• 1:44:17
  You've gone for this sort of very ambiguous title for your
• 1:44:20
  podcast. Yeah.
• 1:44:21
  Too broad and too deep. OK, now that could be talking
• 1:44:26
  about books and all sorts, but around my neck of the woods that
• 1:44:28
  means something quite different. Is why is why.
• 1:44:32
  Helpfully, on very social media I have the prefix.
• 1:44:35
  Of Doctor Who. Oh, well done.
• 1:44:37
  OK, so that it's not mistaken for.
• 1:44:40
  Some sort of smutty bill? Braggs video as well.
• 1:44:42
  If you guys listen, have a listen Jet.
• 1:44:45
  It is a wonderful, wonderful. Podcast and by by with two hosts
• 1:44:50
  that have no preconceptions about the books that they are
• 1:44:53
  reading on the whole. You've read.
• 1:44:55
  You sort of touched upon some of the menu.
• 1:44:57
  But yeah, like for myself, like I have read.
• 1:45:02
  Maybe a spattering of them and most of them I have went through
• 1:45:06
  on this podcast already. So it's not like I'm basically
• 1:45:10
  going in new to a lot of these. Alistair read them at the time
• 1:45:15
  so hasn't read them about 30 odd years.
• 1:45:18
  But it's a it's an interesting dynamic to then wade through.
• 1:45:23
  So you throw in fabulously jaded guests.
• 1:45:27
  That read these books and know them well and all their
• 1:45:29
  strengths and weaknesses. And then you, you were, you were
• 1:45:32
  a wonderful guest, too. Oh, I was the most jaded of all.
• 1:45:35
  Didn't you hear me? Jesus Christ, Adolescent
• 1:45:39
  nonsense. Yeah, true.
• 1:45:42
  It's most. Of it is to be fair, but there's
• 1:45:43
  some good Nuggets. Amongst it, so you never know.
• 1:45:46
  It's a wonderful podcast. Check it out.
• 1:45:49
  Alison, thank you. Thank you very.
• 1:45:50
  Much for your time tonight. What a wonderful book to read.
• 1:45:54
  No worries at all, thank you for having me as always.
• 1:46:02
  Who are you? Greetings we.
• 1:46:06
  Are the Daleks? Would you like to hear our song?
• 1:46:10
  You are not the Daleks. Who are you?
• 1:46:14
  I'm sharp. We are the Daleks.
• 1:46:22
  We are very naughty and likely to wrong.