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Hamster Book Club - The Gallifrey Chronicles · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:02
  An hour and a half later, and very far away, a police box that
• 0:07
  wasn't a police box speed through a place where there was
• 0:10
  no time and no space. As with a book, you couldn't
• 0:16
  judge the TARDIS from what it looked like on the outside.
• 0:19
  It appeared to be an old wooden police telephone box with
• 0:22
  peeling blue paint, but again, like a book.
• 0:26
  Inside it was far larger, more grand and complicated, and as
• 0:31
  with the best novels, you couldn't always tell where it
• 0:33
  was going. The TARDIS was a machine,
• 0:37
  capable of travelling to any point in space and time.
• 0:40
  That alone would be enough to make it special, but what really
• 0:43
  made it unique was that it was the place the Doctor called
• 0:47
  home. As with his ship, there was more
• 0:50
  to the Doctor than met the Eye. He was an adventurer a.
• 0:54
  Bookworm. A champion, a detective, an
• 0:57
  explorer, a father and grandfather, a historian, an
• 1:02
  iconoclast, a Jack and apes, a know it all.
• 1:05
  A Lord, a meddler, A nuisance. He was old, a physician and a
• 1:11
  quack, A renegade, a scientist, a traveller, A utopian, A
• 1:16
  violinist, A widower, A zohanan. He was youthful, and he was a
• 1:21
  zealot. One thing he wasn't, though, was
• 1:25
  human. Two hearts beat in his chest.
• 1:28
  He'd lived for centuries. At the very least, the doctor
• 1:32
  didn't think much about his past.
• 1:34
  He rarely talked about it, even with his friends.
• 1:37
  He lived in the now, the only time that meant anything to
• 1:41
  someone who could spend yesterday in the far future and
• 1:43
  tomorrow in the olden days. Now he stood at the central
• 1:48
  console, right in the middle of the cavernous control room, the
• 1:51
  very first room you'd come to if you just stepped inside the
• 1:54
  TARDIS. The console was hexagonal, the
• 1:58
  size of a large desk thrusting out from the centre.
• 2:01
  Right up to the ceiling was a powerful piston encased in a
• 2:05
  glass tube. It rose and fell, pulsing with
• 2:08
  blue light as it did so. The Doctor watched it, almost
• 2:12
  hypnotized. He was still wearing his frock
• 2:15
  coat. He would occasionally break away
• 2:18
  to start operating controls, check readouts and generally
• 2:21
  fuss about. He wasn't steering the ship
• 2:24
  though, so much as trying to decide where it was heading.
• 2:27
  The Doctor was smiling to himself.
• 2:30
  A tyrant toppled was always a good day's work.
• 2:33
  The planet Mondova had taken control of had been a beautiful
• 2:37
  world of orchards, sculpture and music.
• 2:40
  Now it could be all those things again.
• 2:43
  That would be for the people there to decide.
• 2:49
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 2:52
  My name is Joe Ford and I am here to take with the man with
• 2:57
  possibly no easily the sexiest voice in podcasting.
• 3:03
  Unfortunately, he brings along smarts and wit with him as well.
• 3:06
  Mr., Ken Moss, Alan Ken. Hello Joe.
• 3:09
  It is a it really is on this one.
• 3:12
  A pleasure to back. I'm so glad you asked me to do
• 3:15
  this one. I've no idea how this is going
• 3:17
  to go down because I'm so used to you being such a cynical
• 3:19
  bastard in, but I know you love the book we're talking about, so
• 3:23
  that's oh. God, do I?
• 3:26
  Yes. Well, can I just give you carte
• 3:28
  blanche straight away to just get your sort of geek gasm on
• 3:31
  with this book then yeah, as much as you feel the need to.
• 3:36
  Well, I mean, as you certainly know and other listeners may
• 3:39
  know, I do lots of other podcasts with other people,
• 3:42
  primarily Simon Exton. And we tend to come to things
• 3:47
  from very different angles. One, do one more shred.
• 3:51
  Whatever we're watching or listening to in this instance, I
• 3:57
  don't think either of us are going to shred, are we?
• 3:59
  No, we're not. But before we get to the
• 4:05
  Gallifrey Chronicles, I've got a little because this is the first
• 4:08
  time you've done one of these, hopefully not the last.
• 4:11
  I'd like to ask you a question, and that is, I ask everybody
• 4:16
  this when they first come on, and it sort of just gets me to
• 4:19
  hear about your history with the books and how you came to them.
• 4:22
  What was your very first Doctor Who book that you read and sort
• 4:26
  of what was your journey after that with the books?
• 4:31
  I knew this was coming and I've been trying to think what the
• 4:34
  very first Doctor Who book was that I picked up.
• 4:38
  I think it was genesis of the dialects in our school library,
• 4:42
  I think, but it's a bit muzzy because I remember vividly
• 4:48
  sitting in our school library reading the bit where he's got
• 4:52
  the wires and the Dalek runs over them.
• 4:55
  So that could be the first book. But after that, our local
• 4:59
  library in our local village. I went there and I just hoovered
• 5:03
  up. Or did they have a lot?
• 5:06
  Oh, they had hundreds of them. Bastard.
• 5:08
  My library had none. Yeah.
• 5:11
  And so I I remember certainly things like the two Doctors and
• 5:15
  the Faceless ones, the Target novels, which were magnificent
• 5:19
  in my head. And so I read those way before
• 5:23
  I'd seen them on UK Gold in the early 90s.
• 5:26
  I saw them on transmission, but I've forgotten all about them
• 5:28
  because I was a kid. But after that, I started buying
• 5:33
  Doctor Who Magazine after the 9293 repeat season, and 93
• 5:41
  really is where my my sort of proper geek journey kicked off.
• 5:45
  So that, you know, at the ripe old age of 1415, I went on this
• 5:51
  massive nostalgia trip for all those years ago.
• 5:57
  So Hoover upon the VHS is mordering.
• 5:59
  Undead was my first one. And then, of course, the movie
• 6:02
  came out, and that was this massive, massive event for me.
• 6:07
  And I'd missed out on The New Adventures because I'd read
• 6:10
  about them in the magazine, but they'd never really thought,
• 6:15
  well, I'm halfway through the room here and they don't sound
• 6:17
  like Michael Petit, they don't sound like Doctor Who, They
• 6:20
  sound a bit adult. And then the TV movie kicked off
• 6:23
  the BBC range. So I started with the 8 Doctors
• 6:28
  and get the goblins from there. OK.
• 6:31
  I hoovered up 8 doctors. Oh, what before?
• 6:35
  Yeah, in a day. That's all.
• 6:37
  It takes about 3 hours I think now.
• 6:39
  Thank you. It's terrible, so it's a very
• 6:42
  easy read. Well, I would.
• 6:44
  I know people have a a downer on the 8 Doctors and I I know why
• 6:48
  because it's so different from the style of the Nas that I get
• 6:54
  it. It must have been like the step
• 6:56
  down from the BBC range to the Christopher Eccleston BBC range.
• 7:04
  You're sort of stepping down again.
• 7:06
  Well, it feels like it, but then you get vampire science
• 7:08
  afterwards, which is effectively a new adventure.
• 7:11
  It's Kate Orman and John Blunt. Is it a new adventure with the
• 7:14
  8th Doctor in it? So I felt as if they were a bit
• 7:16
  confused in their opening salvo of, like, who are we aiming
• 7:19
  these at? You know, the sort of the kids
• 7:21
  or the more mature audience that came before.
• 7:24
  See, at the time I really didn't give a shit.
• 7:26
  I that was to me, proper Doctor Who with who has remained my
• 7:33
  favorite Doctor, Paul McGann. I love the 8th Doctor, so I
• 7:36
  could vividly picture. I mean, there's one scene in The
• 7:39
  Body Snatchers where he's clinging to this robot's leg or
• 7:45
  this big walking machine as it's walking through the Thames.
• 7:49
  And there's all sorts of there's a bit where there's a prostitute
• 7:52
  thrown out of the window to the Scarison.
• 7:55
  It's just all they're so vivid, the imagery of those books that
• 8:01
  is my golden age of Doctor Who, because it really was just the
• 8:06
  fans. It wasn't this great popular
• 8:10
  thing that it's now become, and it felt a bit special.
• 8:15
  It's funny, you know, you mentioned the Body Snatches
• 8:17
  there. Now, I haven't read The Body
• 8:19
  Snatches for about 10-15 years. And yeah, I can still remember
• 8:24
  spoilers for anybody who's listened to this.
• 8:26
  So skip ahead maybe 15 seconds. The end of a Clap, a chapter
• 8:30
  that said Emmeline was turning into a Zygon.
• 8:34
  I just feel like, Oh my God, I can't put this down.
• 8:36
  I need to read the next page. I'm sort of halfway through the
• 8:39
  book. It's funny how certain things
• 8:40
  stick in your head like that. You remember people being eaten
• 8:43
  by scaras ants. I remember women turning into
• 8:45
  Zygons. But there are, I think that some
• 8:49
  of those BBC books like I can't really speak for the New
• 8:53
  Adventures, and it would be unfair to comment in any depth.
• 8:55
  I've read some of the the poignant ones, like I read a
• 8:59
  couple of the Time Worm Bonds to Kick it Off wasn't mad Stroke.
• 9:05
  I've got it. They were very fan continuity
• 9:09
  heavy, even though you know Terran sticks.
• 9:11
  The great Terran sticks kicked those off and I read Nightshade
• 9:15
  at some point and was impressed with that.
• 9:17
  I read Shadow Mind very much less impressed with that.
• 9:21
  And I've certainly read Long Barrel, which was a very clever
• 9:25
  book. It cleared things up and muddied
• 9:28
  the water at the same time. Do you want to say?
• 9:30
  About the new adventures is it's pretty much all first time
• 9:34
  writers. Yeah, the first shot they had at
• 9:36
  writing a book. And so it goes one or two ways
• 9:39
  like it does with a first time writer.
• 9:41
  Either they are very good, you know, at their craft or they're
• 9:45
  not. So those books are so up and
• 9:47
  down depending on who you're reading, you know, and some sort
• 9:50
  of get worse and others hone their craft.
• 9:53
  So it's an interesting journey reading them, but you have to
• 9:55
  wade through a lot of dirge to get to the gold.
• 9:59
  Well, again, I'm one of those fans.
• 10:01
  I had all the new adventures and read about 10% of them.
• 10:05
  Well, you bought them on didn't read.
• 10:07
  Them. Oh, Ken.
• 10:09
  I do remember Gary Gillett doing an article in Doctor Who
• 10:13
  Magazine years ago where it was sort of the tropes of a Doctor
• 10:17
  Who fan. And he's there in an anorak with
• 10:19
  a satchel on. And one of the tropes of a
• 10:22
  Doctor Who fan was has all the New Adventures, hasn't read A1.
• 10:26
  And I thought, Yep, that's me. So have you still got them?
• 10:30
  No, I've flogged them all I've bought.
• 10:32
  Them, I was going to say they're worth a three penny now.
• 10:34
  Well, I got 3 grand for them, which is way more than I paid
• 10:38
  for. That's about what I got as well,
• 10:40
  you know. Did you did you sell them as a
• 10:41
  full collection? Yeah, and because they don't
• 10:43
  come up as full collections, I could just basically that's what
• 10:46
  I want. Blocks of five, right?
• 10:48
  And there's the ones near the edge.
• 10:49
  You know the rare ones? They went for about £800 for
• 10:52
  five books. I couldn't believe it.
• 10:54
  I figured I would get maybe £500 for the lot and as the money was
• 10:58
  rolling in I thought bloody hell, if anyone sort of bought
• 11:01
  one or two of these back in the day, they're made.
• 11:05
  Oh yeah, I'm. I'm thinking back.
• 11:06
  I could have asked basically a fortune.
• 11:08
  I could have paid off my mortgage if I've been savvy
• 11:10
  enough, but I I didn't have the balls to put it on eBay for some
• 11:14
  sort of ridiculous reserve. But I really should have done
• 11:18
  balls. So did you read all of the 8th
• 11:21
  Doctor books? All of the 8th Doctor books from
• 11:24
  beginning to end. Now those I really did enjoy, we
• 11:27
  got there were several phases of the 8th Doctor books.
• 11:30
  You had sort of eight doctors to alien bodies and then they took
• 11:36
  a shift and then you had alien bodies to interference.
• 11:42
  That was a Toshi. Period interference.
• 11:45
  Oh, interference to the burning and then the burning.
• 11:50
  Well, I suppose the burning to vanishing point and then or
• 11:53
  escape velocity and then the rest of the series.
• 11:56
  So there were there were several things.
• 11:58
  I do remember reading on the back of Shadows of Avalon that
• 12:01
  this is the end of a period for the 8th Doctor.
• 12:05
  And I read it and thought, how is this anymore end of the
• 12:09
  period than any of the other end of periods?
• 12:11
  Literally passing the baton on, isn't it?
• 12:13
  That shows the Avalon and now Ancestor Sale was oh man.
• 12:18
  Oh oh, Peter Angelides. Yes, I remember reading that and
• 12:22
  that was because this is heavily referenced him.
• 12:25
  Yes. Well, yeah, we'll get there.
• 12:27
  I mean and there's so many Easter eggs in the Gallifrey
• 12:30
  Chronicle sort of celebrating and criticising the 8th Doctor
• 12:34
  range. So it's kind of nice that we're
• 12:35
  we're looking at the range as a whole now.
• 12:38
  What was your favorite period of all those periods?
• 12:42
  Quite honestly, probably that first eight doctors to alien
• 12:45
  bodies because they weren't. They rewarded you for following
• 12:50
  the characters. I was one of the three people
• 12:54
  that really loved Sam Jones. Oh, you and my other half.
• 12:59
  Oh, yeah, I I, I Oh yeah, because there were several
• 13:05
  descriptive passages about Sam Jones.
• 13:08
  You were 14, right? Yeah.
• 13:10
  No, I was. I was when the 8th.
• 13:13
  I was 19 when they first started publishing those and that was
• 13:17
  part of my awakening period. Did you see the picture of who
• 13:24
  they based her on in the Doctor Who Magazine?
• 13:27
  There, there was a feature wasn't out of the blonde girl.
• 13:31
  Yeah, and I do have that somewhere.
• 13:34
  And she looks really thrilled to be posing for that photograph.
• 13:39
  She's one of the BBC books staff, I believe.
• 13:42
  I wonder where you are now, Sam Jones.
• 13:44
  Well, she's dead in a grave, if you believe this book.
• 13:49
  We'll get there. We'll get there do.
• 13:51
  You know, my my favorite period is I I do like the the Steve
• 13:55
  Cole period of the books, which was right up until that's kind
• 13:59
  of from Your Bodies right away up until the Ancestor Sale.
• 14:02
  But I love the Justin Richards bit.
• 14:04
  I love the six part Trapped on Earth books.
• 14:10
  And then I really love the team of the 8th Doctor, Fitz and
• 14:13
  Angie, and I think that sort of run from City of the Dead
• 14:17
  through to Time Zero. It's almost like an unbroken run
• 14:22
  of really great books. So, so my preference sort of
• 14:27
  towards the towards the latter end, but it's nice to hear
• 14:30
  somebody that likes the stuff right at the start excuse.
• 14:34
  Me. Yeah, I think because it
• 14:37
  probably because I was brand new to it and they were all stand
• 14:40
  alone adventures in those days. I mean, you have the whole bit
• 14:43
  with Sam and the guilt trip on tractis and paratractis having
• 14:49
  killed one of the oh, I can't remember the name of them.
• 14:54
  Is that Dreamstone moon? It ran through a few because I
• 14:59
  think it was it's. Longest day, isn't it?
• 15:01
  Where where she leaves him, she kisses him and leaves him for
• 15:05
  dead. And then Dreamstone, Moon,
• 15:06
  they're both on their own. He's trying to find her and
• 15:09
  she's trying to avoid him. And then you get the Dalek one,
• 15:13
  where it's just the Doctor and then you get seeing eye.
• 15:16
  Oh, seeing eye, which is. Fabulous, isn't it?
• 15:18
  That's a marvellous book. Oh yeah, I mean, that one I can
• 15:23
  picture clear as Dave. There's one really clever bit
• 15:25
  where he's he goes to a receptionist and she won't deal
• 15:29
  with this bit of paperwork that he's given to her.
• 15:33
  And he travels to 10 years in the future, and it's still on
• 15:35
  her desk, and she's not done. Do you Do you remember the bit
• 15:39
  where Sam finds him and he says it was three years of nothing
• 15:44
  because he tries to escape every way he could possibly think of,
• 15:48
  and we're with him every step of the way.
• 15:49
  The thing he doesn't know is, is that they're looking through his
• 15:51
  eyes so they know exactly what he's doing.
• 15:54
  Such a clever book. What?
• 15:55
  OK, I'm going to throw a question to you then about the
• 15:57
  8th Doctor books. If you could name five that
• 16:00
  stood out to you as being particularly excellent, what
• 16:04
  would you choose? Oh, that's because they're going
• 16:07
  to be all my personal favourites.
• 16:08
  Go on, that's what I want to. Know first and last Eight Doctor
• 16:12
  8 Doctors and Gallifrey Chronicles.
• 16:14
  I would not be without either of those.
• 16:18
  This is going to be controversial.
• 16:20
  Go on. War of the Daleks?
• 16:23
  No. Yeah, explain yourself, Sir.
• 16:29
  God, I knew you'd shred me for this because I loved it so much.
• 16:34
  That was another one I devoured in about a day and a half.
• 16:37
  And you read this thing and it's this continuity nightmare.
• 16:42
  Oh, John Peel, you should have been strung up by the left
• 16:46
  bollock for that one, the whole antarless thing.
• 16:52
  So I don't know whether to put that in there, but Vampire?
• 16:54
  Please do please put war of the diox.
• 16:56
  It's a war of the diox, the one where you rewrote remembrance of
• 16:59
  the Daleks and and suddenly Scaro's back with us again.
• 17:02
  Yeah, because it wasn't really scaro at all.
• 17:04
  It was antalis. This water world vaporized.
• 17:08
  And does it have the Spider Daleks in it?
• 17:10
  Spider Daleks. Strider Daleks.
• 17:12
  Marine Daleks. Oh, there's all sorts in there.
• 17:14
  Yeah, that sounds pretty good. Now you're talking about maybe.
• 17:16
  I should revisit that one. Some of the imagery in it, it's
• 17:19
  brilliant, but the continuity did piss me off, and they also
• 17:22
  flip-flopped the Renegade and Imperial dialects, just because
• 17:26
  he didn't like the way round that they were made.
• 17:29
  That's a very fanish mid 90s thing to do, isn't it?
• 17:33
  And it was a a way of getting the Davros to be the Emperor
• 17:37
  Dalek all along. And the supreme dialect was, oh,
• 17:41
  it's just a mess. It was a mess.
• 17:45
  Vampire science. I remember reading that and
• 17:47
  being so impressed with that. And what are the the burning?
• 17:51
  Oh yeah. Oh, the burning was a belter.
• 17:55
  And in fact, that whole Earth arc.
• 17:57
  Really. I actually thought that the most
• 18:00
  disappointing bit was it was almost a damp squib, that it
• 18:06
  ended on escape. Escape.
• 18:10
  Yeah, because I remember he got to Saint Louis, this cafe that
• 18:16
  he built purely to fulfil the the note prophecy.
• 18:21
  Yeah, And then he's like, right. There it is.
• 18:23
  Have the keys. I don't give a shit anymore.
• 18:24
  I've got my TARDIS back and he walks through the doors and it
• 18:27
  all starts coming to life. And that's about the only bit I
• 18:32
  remember from that book. It's a shame because I'm sure
• 18:35
  it's very good, but. In there you've got, like you
• 18:38
  say, The Burning, which manages to be a very traditional Doctor
• 18:42
  Who story and completely revolutionize the range at the
• 18:45
  same time. Casualties of War, which is a
• 18:48
  really great sort of psychological horror.
• 18:52
  The Turing Test, Father Time. I mean, these are fabulous
• 18:55
  books. Oh, they were great.
• 18:58
  They were some really great books in that room, Father time.
• 19:04
  I don't know how he packed so much.
• 19:05
  He backed a decade into that book and it didn't feel rushed.
• 19:09
  And it was only 280 pages. See, some of them were.
• 19:14
  I got to say that the there weren't many duds in the 8th
• 19:20
  Doctor range. There's some that I've I've read
• 19:25
  and I've sort of edited out, but the highs I think are really
• 19:28
  high. Then I've got one more question
• 19:32
  for you then, before we skip into the Gallifrey Chronicles.
• 19:34
  And that is, I feel as if the tide's turning and I've
• 19:37
  certainly found a lot of people to come on to the book club and
• 19:41
  sort of Lord the 8th Doctor books.
• 19:43
  Why are they generally considered lesser or less
• 19:49
  influential than the New Adventures?
• 19:52
  I think because at the time the new adventures were too broad
• 19:57
  and too deep for the small screen and it was only the fans
• 20:02
  that were buying it. No casual viewers of Doctor Who
• 20:05
  were buying those and you had to stick with them, I think because
• 20:09
  there was such a a deep rooted journey for Ace and then
• 20:14
  Bernice. And then Quedge and Roz.
• 20:20
  And because the tone was so different from televised Doctor
• 20:24
  Who, I mean, I didn't read a single one that I thought, I can
• 20:26
  picture this on TV. No, yeah, I agree.
• 20:29
  Maybe Nightshade. That's just especially quite a
• 20:32
  mass. It's quite a mass really, yeah.
• 20:34
  And but I mean, it was excellent.
• 20:36
  And yeah, of the ones that I have read that's probably the
• 20:38
  nearest to but the BBC range, because they were so
• 20:46
  comparatively tried, I think they were looked at, you'd got
• 20:50
  by that .7 nearly eight years of people being used to very
• 20:56
  different Doctor Who in print. So all the people, all I mean
• 21:00
  all the the basically the fan base that were buying these
• 21:03
  things, they were suddenly faced with something that was massive
• 21:06
  step down for them. And so I think you lost a lot
• 21:11
  sort of fandom, but I mean they were they were publishing 2A
• 21:15
  month, so they must have done quite well for nine years.
• 21:18
  I know that around the burning they weren't selling, they were
• 21:23
  selling in the couple of thousands, which is, you know,
• 21:25
  sort of death or a book range. I think they just kept going
• 21:28
  because they wanted a Doctor Who book range going and they were
• 21:32
  sending out, genuinely sending out boxes and boxes of these
• 21:36
  books overseas to an orphanage where they were being they, they
• 21:39
  were buying these books en masse and burning them in a furnace to
• 21:43
  heat the orphanage. Justin Richards tells that.
• 21:46
  Story. Yeah, I do remember hearing that
• 21:49
  story. That's I think that's so sad.
• 21:51
  One, that they don't have fuel for the orphanage, and two.
• 21:53
  That they're burning Doctor Who books.
• 21:56
  Oh, they were so lovely. I mean, oh that I mean I can
• 22:00
  understand why. Again, towards the end of the
• 22:02
  8th Doctor run, these were not trad stories.
• 22:06
  There was a a very definite middle range with things like
• 22:09
  Time Zero and sometime never. And what was wrong with the
• 22:14
  crystal? The last resort was it?
• 22:16
  The last resort was. I love the last resort, but it's
• 22:19
  divisive. Yeah, I feel like they they
• 22:22
  started going a bit trad towards the end when they knew they were
• 22:24
  going to win tomorrow. Winters.
• 22:26
  Oh no. Sleep of reason isn't very trad.
• 22:28
  However, Deadstone Memorial was maybe.
• 22:30
  Yeah. Like you say, it's a sort of
• 22:31
  5050 at that point. Well, the the last two or three.
• 22:35
  They to me were a really solid, very short run of books.
• 22:40
  Tomorrow Windows. I've got a load of time for.
• 22:42
  Oh, it's. Glorious.
• 22:43
  Isn't it Deadstone Memorial I thought was fantastic.
• 22:46
  I really. Oh, that's another one.
• 22:48
  I hoovered up. Do you remember the scene of him
• 22:50
  taking Hazel out on the roof to wave at the stars?
• 22:53
  I was like, Oh my God, that's Paul Mcgahn from the TV movie.
• 22:56
  Totally. Because they it's this really
• 22:58
  improbable climb up to the roof and you think, well, my house
• 23:02
  isn't, I don't know any houses are like that, but but fair play
• 23:05
  to you, it works well in print. And As for the tomorrow windows,
• 23:09
  the mayor? Of London is going to explode.
• 23:11
  It's. Crummy.
• 23:13
  They must not like the Mayor of London at the time because he
• 23:16
  gets eaten in this one. Yeah.
• 23:20
  And then what was it to the slaughter, which I don't
• 23:22
  remember much about? Oh yes.
• 23:24
  That was the penultimate one, wasn't it?
• 23:26
  I can remember the cover, but I can't remember it.
• 23:28
  Was about the moons of Jupiter and an auction and it had thinly
• 23:32
  disguised old Doctor Who Moses in, but they didn't want to pay
• 23:35
  for them. So they only described them but
• 23:37
  didn't name them. It was it was sort of light.
• 23:41
  It was light and sort of throw away because all you know all
• 23:44
  the meats here in this one. That's probably a good segue to
• 23:47
  go into The Gallivray Chronicles.
• 23:49
  Just before we do, just one last note on the BBC range.
• 23:52
  I think actually you've briefly there just touched on possibly
• 23:57
  one of the problems with the book range as an entire whole.
• 24:02
  They just didn't pay for any of the classic stuff that was
• 24:06
  recognisably Doctor Who. So in the whole of 15 years we
• 24:12
  had two dialect books. Well, officially.
• 24:15
  Dialect books. Do you know why that was,
• 24:19
  though? It must have been cost issues.
• 24:22
  I don't think it was what? Certainly, because I know Justin
• 24:25
  Richards a beer and I've interviewed him a couple of
• 24:27
  times and what happened was, obviously there's a ton.
• 24:31
  If you look at the books, the first half of the 8th Doctor
• 24:33
  Rage, there's a load of continuity.
• 24:34
  You've got Wirin and for Marcy and Daleks and Zygons and all of
• 24:40
  that, but to the point where it's sort of starting to
• 24:43
  disappear up its own ass like it did in the 80s.
• 24:46
  And Justin Richards kind of went, no, I want that.
• 24:48
  And that's why he said, I want rid of Gallifrey.
• 24:52
  I want to basically reset the universe.
• 24:54
  I want a Doctor with no memories so we can actually start telling
• 24:57
  original stories again, completely continuity free
• 25:01
  stories that stand up in their own right.
• 25:03
  And that's where that Earth arc starts.
• 25:05
  And then from that point on, there's really no continuity.
• 25:07
  And I think that's why I like that run, because those books
• 25:10
  are all sort of doing their own thing.
• 25:13
  They've got their own identity. Yeah, I can see why that would
• 25:18
  appeal to some fans. I mean, I am not one of those
• 25:22
  fans. I found the whole Amnesia thing,
• 25:25
  Gallifrey destroyed thing. I thought, well, Gallifrey
• 25:30
  really is so thinly scattered through Doctor Who that it
• 25:33
  doesn't need to get in the way. I've heard the argument that,
• 25:37
  well, the Time Wars can just swoop in and solve everything,
• 25:40
  but they never do. They never do.
• 25:44
  So I've never, I've never got the argument that Gallifrey gets
• 25:47
  in the way. The amnesia thing.
• 25:49
  I spent the whole run of those books just waiting for him to
• 25:52
  get it back again. I can see the argument because,
• 25:56
  you know, you don't want this doctor that knows every damn
• 25:59
  thing, because they do do eventually turn into a God.
• 26:04
  That one with a single boundary was free.
• 26:07
  So I can get the reasoning, but because of that complete
• 26:11
  disjoint with everything that had gone previously, there was
• 26:15
  no even passing references. I think he.
• 26:20
  Do you remember, Do you remember at the end of Sometime Never,
• 26:24
  when all the universes have been restored And then you've got one
• 26:28
  of the one of the Council of Eight and a character called
• 26:31
  Zezan that's in the book. And he turns into the First
• 26:35
  Doctor because he's got the Doctor's memories and he's like,
• 26:38
  come on, Zezan, back to the ship.
• 26:40
  And it's basically Justin Richards explaining how in this
• 26:43
  new universe you could have a Doctor Who origin story, which I
• 26:47
  did think was both fucking cheeky and very clever at the
• 26:51
  same time. Again, it's only something that
• 26:54
  would be happening in the spin off medias, but fair play to
• 26:57
  him. Oh, and I I thought that was
• 26:59
  actually quite clever. A few people I remember at the
• 27:02
  time, they took it very literally that they thought that
• 27:05
  that was supposed to be an unearthly child.
• 27:09
  How it starts. No, mate.
• 27:11
  You've. Mentioned me and Lavina have
• 27:12
  read that Oh. My God.
• 27:14
  It's one leg going and the caps lock button just punched into
• 27:19
  the floor. I'll.
• 27:21
  Tell you what, right If you did have issues with the amnesia,
• 27:25
  and this is a good segue into the book, you must love the bit
• 27:29
  in this end where Fitz turns around to the Doctor and goes,
• 27:32
  oh, you don't remember. Except when you do, you know,
• 27:35
  get over it, Doctor. It got old years ago like.
• 27:38
  This is Sam. This is what?
• 27:40
  You know, there's a bit where he really calls him out.
• 27:43
  Oh, that's that's quite an uncomfortable scene now because,
• 27:48
  excuse me, Fitz was never, they never had any sort of antagonism
• 27:53
  between them. It was a very blokey Macy
• 27:56
  relationship as near as it ever gets on the TARDIS.
• 28:00
  So for Fitz to round on him like that and all this kettled
• 28:05
  frustration with his amnesia comes out all at once.
• 28:10
  That was quite savage. It's quiet.
• 28:13
  It's almost like an avatar for the audience, isn't it?
• 28:15
  For you, Gary? Well, yeah, this did get.
• 28:17
  This did get old years ago, and actually you don't remember.
• 28:20
  You know what happened with the YESI and the two team Beck.
• 28:22
  Except when you do and so. I thought, I thought, as a way
• 28:27
  of critiquing the range. The Gallifrey Chronicles is just
• 28:33
  such a clever piece of work because it not only celebrates
• 28:37
  everything that came before and we'll sort of talk about because
• 28:40
  there's a flashback to Father Time.
• 28:41
  Obviously Sam Jones is in there. Angie Kapoor turns up the
• 28:46
  destruction of Gallifrey and all of that, but it does make some
• 28:50
  quiet. Pointed remarks about the range
• 28:53
  as well, I thought. Have you noticed any of those?
• 28:55
  All of them. And I was foolish enough to
• 28:57
  start writing down the Easter eggs.
• 29:00
  And then there's just not enough paper in my office because I've
• 29:04
  got. I've got a few betweeners.
• 29:06
  We'll probably get them all. Well, I'll just open volume one
• 29:11
  of my notes. You go.
• 29:13
  Well, the first one I've got written down actually is 22
• 29:17
  pages in There's a Death Comes to Time, this Chasmus's speech
• 29:24
  about once long ago on an island in a sea of clouds.
• 29:28
  And that's that's not the only Death Comes to Time reference.
• 29:31
  Tannis is mentioned later on, but only a page later it goes on
• 29:37
  about some, oh, some terrible book covers.
• 29:40
  They were the main problems. They were the least of the
• 29:43
  problems with those books. The actual line is like whatever
• 29:47
  the book's literary merits were, the covers were always a
• 29:50
  problem. Is that Lars Parking talking to
• 29:54
  Black sheep Do? You I again.
• 29:57
  I must be one of two people and the other one being the guy at
• 30:01
  Black Sheep that actually quite like the Black sheep covers.
• 30:04
  I do as well. Con.
• 30:06
  No, no, I really con. Who's Con Ken?
• 30:09
  I love those. I love those covers as well.
• 30:10
  I do think sometimes they do rely on the sort of swirly
• 30:13
  pattern thing. And they love skulls.
• 30:16
  Have you noticed there's a lot of skulls on them, but the best
• 30:19
  ones I think are really vivid. I think of like year of
• 30:22
  intelligent tigers with the Tiger's eye, you know, and
• 30:26
  Father time with the little girl in the snow and stuff like that.
• 30:30
  I mean, the 8th Docks range, I do remember, I think it was
• 30:33
  Steve Cole that kicked it off and Justin Richards carried it
• 30:37
  on. They wanted a circular motif and
• 30:40
  they said right from the start that they weren't going to have
• 30:44
  Paul Mcgann's face on it. I think largely because they
• 30:47
  didn't have many, many pictures of Paul McGann, so he doesn't
• 30:51
  appear on very manner of them. I remember being wildly excited
• 30:56
  when he did so. Things like De Montage and.
• 31:00
  Parallel 59, that's the one where it's got all nine of blood
• 31:04
  going down it and it's a picture of his face.
• 31:08
  But there was one. Where is it, Hope?
• 31:12
  Where there's three of them walking to camera, it's just
• 31:14
  silhouettes. That's adventurous in Henrietta
• 31:17
  Street I think you're talking about.
• 31:18
  It's all in silhouette through a spyglass.
• 31:21
  There is 3 people on the front of Hope, but it's supposed to be
• 31:23
  the sort of Android character. They look like they're in a gay
• 31:25
  disco. It's all very purple.
• 31:29
  Go and check. Out my cover.
• 31:30
  Honestly, any any gay disco you go to looks pretty much like
• 31:33
  that. Well, I'll tell you what one of
• 31:35
  the lines in this is Model's books have become an
• 31:39
  impenetrable jungle, alienated even his most loyal fans.
• 31:44
  I thought Lance, honestly, you are cheeky.
• 31:47
  Oh, this thing was riddled with it.
• 31:49
  I mean, it was only as I've not read.
• 31:50
  Like I said, I've not read this since 2005.
• 31:53
  But you it's so circular. This book, I mean it references
• 31:59
  the TV movie sideways and it referenced this is Terence
• 32:04
  Dixie's prose from the 8th Doctor.
• 32:06
  It does, doesn't it? Doesn't.
• 32:08
  It isn't something called. A series of illogical,
• 32:11
  impenetrable events. Possible illogical events, yes.
• 32:16
  Oh, it's it's the fight on Gallifrey.
• 32:19
  It's where Marnell, I think. It's where Marnell's looking at.
• 32:23
  The end of Gallifrey, I think. Or is it when he goes and meet
• 32:27
  Hugh Lassies and Penelope and Lana?
• 32:29
  Could it be? I can't remember.
• 32:31
  I've just put the line. I've put the fight on Gallifrey,
• 32:33
  full of improbable, illogical events, whatever that means.
• 32:37
  Yeah, yeah. We'll go with that.
• 32:39
  The the other digs at the range. Yeah.
• 32:43
  Well, I don't know whether I can't.
• 32:47
  I can't picture any other digs, but there's certainly lots of
• 32:50
  references. Like when Arnold's got his
• 32:52
  bottle equipment. There's one scene early on where
• 32:57
  he's sort of tuning in and it describes all the title
• 33:01
  sequences from Hartnell through to McCoy I've.
• 33:04
  Never noticed that. Yeah, page 36.
• 33:07
  Kids look that one up. But it's all about like a a
• 33:12
  light carving up the screen and then swirling into clouds, and
• 33:16
  then a blue howling tunnel, a star field, and then a purple
• 33:21
  swirling Galaxy. And it's all described in there.
• 33:25
  How did I miss that? See, I've read it 8 times and I
• 33:29
  missed that. I think it's just one of those
• 33:32
  things that there's going to be so much in there that I have
• 33:35
  missed because there are references peppered through this
• 33:38
  thing to all the books in the range.
• 33:41
  There's a reference there to sending K9 off to Espero and.
• 33:46
  Yes, that. Yeah, that's in Half Life a
• 33:48
  couple of books earlier. Madame Zing, who is heavily
• 33:52
  implied as compassion. But I just found that the actual
• 33:56
  for the first half of the book, certainly there was a lovely,
• 34:00
  flowing, quite linear narrative to it.
• 34:04
  As you know, you've got Minal in this Victorian semi in the
• 34:10
  middle of London with his garage, his books and this
• 34:14
  wonderful image. Oh, now while it's fresh in my
• 34:16
  mind, who did you have cast as the versions of Mono?
• 34:20
  Because I know what I've got in. My head, Well, I think I told
• 34:23
  you I, so I I. Know Lance Parkin always puts
• 34:28
  Miles Richardson's father in every book, doesn't he?
• 34:31
  What's the fella's name from House of Cards?
• 34:35
  Oh, Ian Richardson, he. Puts him in, he puts him in
• 34:37
  every book. So old Mano I had as Ian
• 34:39
  Richardson and young Mano I had as Miles Richardson.
• 34:45
  Oh, now young Marno I had, because I don't know what Miles
• 34:48
  Richardson looks like, but I had him cast as Colin Fur.
• 34:53
  Oh, good choice. Yeah, Blummy toes.
• 34:56
  Yeah, yeah. Perfect.
• 35:01
  But I mean, it's just this really unlikable character Marno
• 35:04
  in this old bookworm saddled with, you know, stuck on Earth,
• 35:09
  really bitter about the fact that it's never explained how
• 35:13
  he's ended up on Earth. Is this?
• 35:16
  There's a there's a scene towards the end of the book, I
• 35:18
  think, where he goes off on a mission, doesn't he or no, no,
• 35:23
  he's in another book. I knew we'd get tangled up
• 35:25
  talking about this. He's in another book.
• 35:27
  I think it's the Infinity Doctors, and that explains he
• 35:31
  goes missing in that book and then this is where we catch up
• 35:35
  with him again. But that's also Lance Park in
• 35:38
  the Infinity Doctor. So it's sort of all time
• 35:39
  together. Oh, that was the 30 5th
• 35:43
  Anniversary adventure. Another great.
• 35:46
  Mate, what's Lance? Isn't it?
• 35:48
  It's of course it's great. But you know, what I absolutely
• 35:52
  loved about those early scenes with Marno was one.
• 35:56
  I love the idea that he had written out the entirety of Time
• 36:01
  Lord history in this series of, you know, this ever long series
• 36:06
  of books, sort of tokenist length series of books, but with
• 36:11
  no idea whilst he was writing it that it was all actually facts.
• 36:14
  And it's not until he regenerates that that sort of
• 36:17
  last link clicks and then he can use the books to create the
• 36:21
  bottle to find the Doctor. So all the stuff's in there for
• 36:24
  him to use. I thought that was super super
• 36:26
  clever. But then, via the bottle, he
• 36:29
  effectively gets to watch the entire 8th Doctor book run and
• 36:33
  critique it as well. Which was.
• 36:36
  Wonderful. At one point, doesn't he go?
• 36:39
  I mean, it's a bloody mess he's got, he's got 3. 19 carnations.
• 36:46
  He says that on page 62. Is that Rowan Atkinson from
• 36:49
  Curse of Fatal Death? Well, I.
• 36:51
  Was going to ask you about this because I've the three that I've
• 36:54
  got as logical ones are Christopher Eccleston, Rowan
• 36:58
  Atkinson and Richard E Grant. Those were the three I had as
• 37:01
  well, yes. But you've also got in there the
• 37:03
  Nick Briggs Dr. Oh yeah, of course, of course I've tried.
• 37:08
  Heavily implied in the comics and things to be the 9th Doctor
• 37:14
  when they didn't really give a toss and they didn't think it
• 37:17
  was going to come back. It was just sort of like they
• 37:18
  had this future incarnation. We already had Paul McGann, it
• 37:22
  was never coming back, so we'll imply and shade at some point.
• 37:27
  In Wormwood, he regenerates from 18 to 9, and that's who the 9th
• 37:34
  Doctor is. Yeah, I do remember all that
• 37:36
  exciting times, you know for the comic strips as well.
• 37:40
  But what's great is whilst Marno is basically reading the 8th
• 37:44
  Doctor adventures, the Doctor fits and tricks are having a
• 37:49
  series of little vignettes aren't they little adventures?
• 37:53
  They go off to a Roman orgy and defeat somebody.
• 37:56
  They topple A galactic tyrant on the on his home planet and and
• 38:02
  I'm sure you noticed they face the Daleks on Mars.
• 38:06
  But unfortunately they can't use the word Dalek, but they are
• 38:09
  very well described within those sequences.
• 38:13
  Oh, the clade, The clade. Yes, the clade pop up a couple
• 38:17
  of times. I think they're in one of the
• 38:20
  Earth arc run one the. It's far the time, yeah.
• 38:24
  It's Lance. Market is 1.
• 38:25
  Yeah, yeah, it's Pepper. I mean, they have several super
• 38:31
  condensed adventures within just the opening passages where
• 38:35
  Marnall's having his periodic rants at his house with Rachel
• 38:41
  and it's all just these lovely little, as you say, vignettes
• 38:47
  leading up to them finally coming together and how they end
• 38:52
  up coming together and him being captured and locked up in a
• 38:55
  cellar, basically. Well, let's talk about how they
• 39:00
  come together then, because what Marno does is lures the Doctor
• 39:04
  to Earth by leaving an alien device on around a Greystone.
• 39:11
  What do you think about ceremoniously killing off Sam
• 39:14
  Jones? Again, that was.
• 39:16
  I mean, I suppose that was the ultimate dig, wasn't it?
• 39:20
  Yeah, I know there wasn't an awful lot of love for Sam Jones,
• 39:23
  although I was really sad when she was he autumn mixed when she
• 39:28
  left. I think that was a.
• 39:29
  Lot I know it was interference. Yeah, at the end of
• 39:31
  interference. It was interference, yeah.
• 39:34
  And so I was gutted when she did, But I know a lot of fans
• 39:39
  were not. It's oh, it's just a proto ace,
• 39:41
  just. But if you think about it, every
• 39:44
  single teenager that's been a companion in Doctor Who is
• 39:48
  effectively an Ace. Rose was compared to Ace.
• 39:53
  Ruby Tuesday. Ruby Sunday, whatever her name
• 39:55
  is, she has been compared to Ace.
• 39:58
  Whereas I think she's far more in touch with Clara, to be
• 40:00
  honest. Ace is the prototype, isn't she?
• 40:03
  So they can't help the comparisons with Sam Jones.
• 40:05
  I feel like, like when they lent into that sort of very green PC
• 40:10
  activist Sam Jones, that was annoying because that was dated
• 40:14
  even then. But when she was just like a
• 40:16
  mature young woman being quite competent, she was really fun.
• 40:23
  Well yeah, and then you've got Dark Sam, who was really fun.
• 40:28
  So yeah, that was a a fairly sideways dig, but also during
• 40:32
  both the 8th Doctor and past Doctor range.
• 40:35
  At this point they were killing off companions left, right and
• 40:39
  centre. I think Sarah Jane was implied
• 40:42
  to have snuffed it, Mel. Bullet time.
• 40:44
  Yeah. Mel was heritage.
• 40:48
  I can't and Harry in wolfsbane as well, yes, but don't you
• 40:52
  remember in the sometime? Never.
• 40:54
  There's a chapter in the Council of Eight where they say, you
• 40:58
  know, we've been, we've been excising all these people the
• 41:02
  Doctor has infected. So he ties it all into one big
• 41:05
  narrative, all these different deaths.
• 41:08
  And at the end of the book, when all the universes spring back
• 41:11
  into life, it does all of that so they're all back to life
• 41:14
  again. It's very clever.
• 41:16
  Yes. Also, Sam's nothing to do with
• 41:18
  that, I thought. So unfortunately this is after
• 41:21
  that, so Sam Jones is dead. And you're the only person not
• 41:25
  cheering. I'm not.
• 41:26
  I'm I'm weeping into my box of Kleenex.
• 41:33
  But that. Does that does then get the
• 41:35
  doctor on the scent of marno, doesn't it?
• 41:37
  And then all the conversations can start there.
• 41:41
  Yeah, and it's sort of this quiet, invasion esque way of
• 41:49
  tracking down where the TARDIS has gone on the back of a lorry,
• 41:53
  literally phoning up the haulage company who hired a truck.
• 41:56
  Yeah. He's watching just the CCTV
• 42:00
  cameras going, right. It's gone there, It's gone
• 42:02
  there. I just like it's so sort of
• 42:05
  undramatic, isn't it, that trucks just come along and hold
• 42:08
  it away? It's described in the narrative
• 42:13
  as this throwaway line. The The only sound they could
• 42:16
  hear was a truck in the background.
• 42:17
  Yeah, yeah. Coughing.
• 42:19
  You've missed it. And then, bang, the TARDIS is
• 42:22
  gone. And then, obviously, the doctor
• 42:26
  finds Marno's house and this is where he's tied to the chair and
• 42:32
  forced to reckon for what he's done.
• 42:37
  See, that was great, really. Like I said, even though I
• 42:40
  wasn't keen on the whole amnesia thing, those whole scenes where
• 42:43
  he's tied to the chair, they're so vivid and you can hear Paul
• 42:49
  McGann delivering those lines. Every single line in this book,
• 42:53
  you can hear Paul McGann doing them.
• 42:56
  And that's not always true with a lot of the rest of the range.
• 43:01
  But I mean, he's Marnell actually gets into the TARDIS at
• 43:05
  one point. He's got his own key because
• 43:08
  spoilers, boys and girls, Marnell is the original owner of
• 43:11
  the TARDIS. Oh, that's.
• 43:12
  Such a great twist. Oh.
• 43:14
  Lovely. That comes right towards the end
• 43:15
  of the book, but he starts fiddling about with the
• 43:19
  controls. Just half the systems aren't
• 43:21
  working, most of the other half don't even seem to be turned on,
• 43:25
  and he's just furious that he's tardish.
• 43:27
  And then later in the book he rattles off alphabetically,
• 43:31
  starts going on about all the systems that are basically
• 43:34
  fucked up, said well, I don't care, gets me from A to B.
• 43:39
  It's what I love is, you know, in the face of all of Marno's
• 43:43
  accusations. So Marno shows the Doctor the
• 43:47
  end of The Ancestor Cell. I cannot say Lance Parkin
• 43:51
  rewrites that whole sequence, just it is like a movie
• 43:57
  sequence. It's gorgeous.
• 43:59
  He manages to tell it on such an epic scale and then bring it
• 44:02
  down to one room where the Doctor is grappling with
• 44:06
  Grandfather Paradox, this twisted version of himself with
• 44:10
  one arm and, you know, pulling the lever that destroys
• 44:13
  Gallifrey. The seas are boiling, you know.
• 44:16
  But that how that's depicted. That's how I figured the Time
• 44:21
  War was when Rusty Davis dropped the odd reference in series one
• 44:26
  to four. What the Time War that I got in
• 44:29
  Day of the Doctor was Star Wars. You know, Daleks versus Time
• 44:32
  Lords. Pew, Pew, Pew.
• 44:34
  Whereas this, it's just like they talk about people popping
• 44:37
  in and out of existence and ghosts of people everywhere.
• 44:41
  Them having a record of the future so they can avoid every
• 44:44
  bullet because they know where they're going to fire.
• 44:47
  All of that is just so impressive.
• 44:53
  Gallifrey's atmosphere was swirling off into space in
• 44:56
  streams of ionised gas. The ice caps melted, then
• 45:01
  vaporised. Land and sea were boiling as
• 45:06
  great earthquakes rippled across the surface.
• 45:08
  The cities were shattering or tipping into great chasms of
• 45:11
  lava. The capital had been the primary
• 45:15
  target. Not even photons had escaped its
• 45:18
  destruction. The few time ships that tried to
• 45:21
  pull away were torn apart. Time and space was screaming as
• 45:27
  Gallifrey was uprooted from them.
• 45:29
  The whole. Planet was distorted, losing
• 45:32
  form. The Ivory Moon Asithia
• 45:35
  Gallifreya was caught and consumed by one of the
• 45:38
  atmospheric flares. The Faction Paradox Fleet had
• 45:42
  ceased to exist some time ago. Unnoticed and unmourned, there
• 45:47
  was a flash as bright as the sun for the merest moment,
• 45:51
  annihilation so profound that it stretched deep into the past and
• 45:55
  far into the future then. Gallifrey was gone again.
• 46:10
  Ancestor Cell. Peter Angelidi's God bless the
• 46:13
  man that was so well described because it was a proper time
• 46:16
  war. These two factions, you know,
• 46:20
  the Time Lords and this unnamed other at the time, I think.
• 46:24
  Have they been called Faction Paradox by then?
• 46:26
  Yes, they have interference. I think Inter no.
• 46:29
  If faction parables first came in in alien bodies then they
• 46:32
  were that was it. Father Kriner?
• 46:35
  Fitz Kriner becoming a member of faction.
• 46:37
  But that happened in interference and then by the
• 46:39
  time you get to the Azusa cell, they're well established.
• 46:43
  Because I'd misremembered, I thought that Fitz, or a version
• 46:47
  of Fitz, had eventually turned out to be Grandfather Paradox.
• 46:52
  I'd completely forgotten it was the Doctor.
• 46:54
  Well. This is where the rewrite was,
• 46:55
  because in The Ancestor Cell it's explicitly stated that the
• 47:00
  Doctor is Grandfather Paradox, whereas in the Gallifrey
• 47:05
  Chronicles that's rewritten. So what you see when you see
• 47:10
  Grandfather Paradox is a twisted version of yourself.
• 47:12
  So everybody would see a twisted version of themselves, which I
• 47:15
  think is a better answer because I don't want the Doctor becoming
• 47:18
  that. Well, no.
• 47:20
  And it was. I was reading that thinking,
• 47:22
  well, I don't remember that, but I like that as a sort of you're
• 47:26
  facing your own demons, basically whoever looks at this
• 47:29
  thing. So yeah, I was, I was kind of
• 47:31
  fine with that but I do remember them going further and further
• 47:35
  back in time each it was very curse of fatal death, you know
• 47:38
  travelling further back in time And the walls of the Panopticon
• 47:42
  it was started out as 10 sided and then it was 9 sided and
• 47:46
  eight sided. The further the book went on to
• 47:49
  show and fits there saying can't you see what's going on here?
• 47:53
  What are you going to do when it's a two sided room?
• 47:57
  Oh, that was brilliant really. But I mean, it wasn't popular at
• 48:01
  the time though, because I think because of what they did to
• 48:03
  Gallifrey. But I think, I think that was
• 48:06
  worth celebrating in this book. And Lars just does it in his own
• 48:10
  prose, obviously, and his prose is superb.
• 48:13
  It's the same sort of epic prose that he brought to the Infinity
• 48:17
  Doctors. You know, it's Doctor Who done
• 48:19
  on an enormous budget. And sort of when that is in
• 48:24
  between very intimate scenes of just two people talking in a
• 48:28
  garage, it just shows you the best, the Doctor Who doesn't.
• 48:31
  It sort of the epic and the intimate side by side.
• 48:36
  Well, I thought this because one of the problems I've got with
• 48:41
  modern Doctor Who is that it's all epic with none of that
• 48:47
  intimate sausage sandwiches by the fire.
• 48:51
  You know, glass of Brandy and carpet slippers, interaction
• 48:56
  between characters anymore. There's no scene setting.
• 48:59
  You launch straight in great orchestral score, I'm afraid to
• 49:02
  say. Even the audios, They've all
• 49:05
  gone bang, bang, boom, boom, 100 miles an hour, blinking.
• 49:08
  You've missed it. This line of light.
• 49:09
  Dialogue's important. You've missed it.
• 49:12
  Oh well, tough. The next 5 scenes aren't going
• 49:13
  to make sense. All start, Ken, with that
• 49:16
  orchestral sweep, don't they? And you're like, oh, here we go,
• 49:19
  another movie soundtrack, right? Let's go.
• 49:22
  They do, and I miss the, the wormeries the.
• 49:26
  Spectre of lanyon morph. Oh, you know, they land on a
• 49:30
  heath and he's got a cold. And the worst?
• 49:34
  Thing that happens is even smashes a.
• 49:35
  Window, you know. That's great.
• 49:38
  It's but it's so small scale. I mean the first major sort of
• 49:44
  battle in the audio range I think was the apocalypse element
• 49:48
  with the dialects invade Gallery and there's gantries falling
• 49:51
  down, but it was it felt. Fresh, didn't it?
• 49:54
  It felt fresh then. Now it's just it.
• 49:56
  Wasn't on my throat. Oh yeah, it's, it's, it is all
• 50:00
  the time. And audio wise that's wearing.
• 50:04
  By the same token, I don't think that relentless prose, that's
• 50:08
  all huge cataclysmic explosions works very well as a constant.
• 50:15
  I do think nails it right. Yeah, absolutely.
• 50:17
  And I do think that's something they got really right towards.
• 50:20
  Again, I can remember at the end of the Tomorrow Windows, after
• 50:22
  all the bangs and whistles, they're literally sitting in a
• 50:24
  pub having a drink, the three of them.
• 50:27
  And I obviously the bit in the Deadstone memorial, which is all
• 50:29
  set in that house. So it's just full of intimate
• 50:32
  moments, isn't it, of him just helping that one family.
• 50:36
  And I remember Fitz going. You know, you've got the whole
• 50:39
  universe to save. Why are you?
• 50:41
  Why are we doing this? And he goes, What makes this one
• 50:45
  family any less important than the rest of the universe?
• 50:48
  We're here to help. It's great.
• 50:50
  Well, you get a flash of that in this when fits and tricks.
• 50:55
  Eventually they get together in this book.
• 50:59
  I don't really. Have having it off and then
• 51:02
  some, aren't they? Oh, yes, and then.
• 51:06
  Who's Trixon? Who did you cast as Tricks?
• 51:10
  She was a difficult one. I've got the general type in my
• 51:14
  head. It was sort of, oh, who was
• 51:17
  Harley Quinn? Oh, we're going down the same
• 51:21
  lines because I saw, I just saw Jessica Rabbit.
• 51:25
  Yeah, sort of. A little bit more roughed up.
• 51:27
  I mean tricks I always saw as. I mean, she was always a bit of
• 51:31
  an edgy character. You never quite knew what was
• 51:33
  going on with her in her head. You couldn't trust her.
• 51:38
  She was basically a hot mess. I mean, from my point of view
• 51:42
  she was a sort of girl that I would have been a moth to a
• 51:45
  flame. I would have wanted that with
• 51:48
  every loin, but knowing full well I would have come out just
• 51:54
  a spat out mess, because that's what women like that do.
• 51:58
  I'm sure the gay equivalent is true, as well as absolutely you
• 52:01
  love your hot messes, but that was the sort of character I had
• 52:06
  tricks as. Whereas Fitz, I seem to remember
• 52:11
  Doctor Who magazine's got a lot to answer for.
• 52:13
  I seem to remember him being the guy who played one of the
• 52:18
  Blake's seven lot and it's gone out of my head.
• 52:21
  Not. Villa.
• 52:22
  Oh yeah, Villa. Oh, do you know who I saw?
• 52:25
  I saw somebody much hotter, but then obviously that's where my
• 52:28
  mind goes. It's Matt D'Angelo, who played
• 52:30
  him in the Big Finish audio. And I know he's a bit too
• 52:33
  pretty, but I like thinking about pretty men, so I just
• 52:35
  thought of Matt D'Angelo roughed up.
• 52:38
  Well, Big Finish, they really tried to distance themselves
• 52:41
  from the books to the point where.
• 52:43
  The 8th Doctor books. Yeah, I.
• 52:47
  Think that was a mistake because there is room for them all to
• 52:51
  rub along, but they really wanted to get away from it and
• 52:54
  then bang 120 releases in we'll have fits in there, so.
• 53:00
  There's space them all, but I I don't think it's going to
• 53:03
  happen. I think you appointed us to the
• 53:05
  scene in the pub where you where he sings the two Beatles songs
• 53:09
  from an alternative universe. Is that the intimate moment you
• 53:12
  were talking about? No, it was where they get to New
• 53:16
  York, I think, or it might even be before that.
• 53:18
  But they go shopping and they go for a meal with Angie and Greg,
• 53:23
  and Fitz has just sat there thinking, is this it?
• 53:26
  Then there's no aliens or planets to save this.
• 53:30
  This is it. Real life's kicking in now, and
• 53:32
  I'm not really sure I like it that much.
• 53:34
  I want my, I want my space-time adventures back.
• 53:38
  And he's really wrestling with the fact that this is his life
• 53:42
  now. I think that needed to happen
• 53:44
  though, because he'd been a companion for so long.
• 53:47
  If he had just left it would have felt really anticlimactic.
• 53:51
  And he realises he's outgrown the Doctor by this point, that
• 53:54
  he knows he's got to move on and grow up and and build himself
• 53:57
  alive. And he's got this fabulous woman
• 53:59
  who turns out to be completely rich as well.
• 54:02
  So he's got the perfect way of doing it.
• 54:04
  But he loves the Doctor and he loves the adventuring, so he's
• 54:07
  sort of torn between the two. So the fact that that happens in
• 54:10
  stages in this book and it is that bit, the bit where he's in
• 54:13
  the pub strumming his guitar to a crowd of about 20 people, and
• 54:17
  he says at the end of the passage, it's the happiest he's
• 54:20
  ever been in his life. That simple, sort of mundane,
• 54:24
  intimate moment. So it's actually packed full of
• 54:27
  them, This book. The Epic and the intimate.
• 54:31
  Yeah, and I like the way, even though I wasn't overly fond of
• 54:38
  Angie or tricks because I just couldn't get a handle on it.
• 54:41
  Angie was sort of the new version of Tegan She.
• 54:44
  She was up on a bitch. Be there.
• 54:47
  I loved her. What a cow she was.
• 54:51
  She was horrible to everyone. I was like, I love you.
• 54:56
  Well, the the last run of companions, you had compassion,
• 54:59
  who I always had at the time as Nicole Kidman.
• 55:02
  Yeah, me too. Me too.
• 55:04
  Yeah, and Angie again, Doctor Who Magazine.
• 55:08
  I've got to thank for this, but it never shifted.
• 55:09
  Connie Huck. One of the women.
• 55:11
  No, one of the women from this life.
• 55:14
  Oh yeah, that's the. Other one I always hear as well,
• 55:17
  yeah. Or the hot Indian woman from
• 55:19
  this life. I wonder where she is now.
• 55:21
  But. Do you know Angie had a
• 55:23
  brilliant run? As in she joins the Doctor, her
• 55:27
  partner dies, and we have a series of books dealing with the
• 55:30
  grief. Then we have a series of books
• 55:32
  where she's sort of adjusting to being in the Sardis.
• 55:35
  Then you get to the point where she's actually enjoying being in
• 55:38
  the Sardis. Then he loses his heart and
• 55:41
  everything gets a bit scary and she she, she can't really decide
• 55:45
  whether she wants to stay or not.
• 55:46
  And then the alternative universe stuff happens, so she
• 55:48
  can't leave, and then she gets to leave and be happy.
• 55:52
  And it is actually for a book companion.
• 55:55
  It's a proper thought through run, sort of whether you like
• 55:59
  her or not. I think it's quite well done.
• 56:03
  I don't have any major problems with what they did.
• 56:06
  I just couldn't get invested in her and I can't pin down why.
• 56:10
  I think it's probably because she was initially so reluctant.
• 56:15
  And if you've got a character that's just constantly, yeah,
• 56:18
  whatevs, yeah, you can't really can't really immediately invest
• 56:24
  in that. I agree it was something
• 56:25
  different. But you've only got so many
• 56:28
  companion tropes to go through, so I feel sorry for them.
• 56:34
  When they have to create new companions, they've got to find
• 56:38
  now more and more contrived ways of getting the companion on
• 56:41
  board the tardies. Can't be plucky young girl who
• 56:45
  happens to be in an adventure. Would you like to come with me,
• 56:49
  my dear? Oh yes, Doctor.
• 56:51
  Just. Seems to have all.
• 56:52
  Been done now doesn't it? Like it's all it's all been
• 56:55
  done. I mean, I'm just waiting for the
• 56:57
  the major plot twist with Ruby that actually she's some
• 57:01
  construct from that's been conjured into existence.
• 57:06
  That's why her life doesn't make any sense.
• 57:08
  And it can't just be some orphan girl that's been adopted.
• 57:13
  They'll have to be some twist at the end.
• 57:16
  Well, we'll see. We'll see.
• 57:18
  We'll see. Although I did love I what?
• 57:20
  I love that. And she got a happy ending in
• 57:22
  the end. She gets, you know, she married
• 57:23
  somebody and then she's got this deal going on with Twix tricks,
• 57:27
  hasn't she, where tricks is on the adventures in the future.
• 57:30
  And then she comes back to the present and she divvies out all
• 57:33
  of the papers. So she's in the stocks trade and
• 57:36
  she's like, right, we're going to put money on this knowing
• 57:38
  that that's what's going to happen.
• 57:39
  And so they're both rich. As a result, she's got this
• 57:42
  high-powered job and and Fitz sits there in the pub, in Sorry,
• 57:47
  in the restaurant and goes to Angie.
• 57:49
  So what did you How did you adjust?
• 57:52
  To life after travelling the universe and going to all those
• 57:55
  planets. And she's been so embarrassed by
• 57:57
  her time, she hasn't told her other half about it.
• 58:00
  Well, they've been together a year or something.
• 58:01
  She's not. Imagine that conversation.
• 58:05
  Oh yeah, he's mad. Ignore him.
• 58:07
  But I like the way that they tied them all together.
• 58:09
  So at the end of the range, the companions, they've all got this
• 58:14
  little support network once the adventures are finished.
• 58:18
  And I think Angie and tricks are like Fitz says at some point,
• 58:23
  you know, do you think the Doctor would approve of this?
• 58:25
  And Angie, as cool as you like, says he knows, don't think we're
• 58:32
  pulling the wool over his eyes. He knows.
• 58:34
  He just doesn't care. Well, you want to talk about
• 58:37
  cool as a cucumber? What about when the Doctor
• 58:41
  discovers that the reason why he's got amnesia is because he
• 58:44
  destroyed his entire planet and all of his people and he
• 58:47
  basically shrugs his shoulders and goes and well.
• 58:51
  There must have been a good reason for it, yeah?
• 58:53
  Where's the context? And Marnold literally can't
• 58:56
  believe his ears, can he? He's like, are you kidding me
• 58:59
  right now? And the Doctor's like, look,
• 59:00
  let's just work together to figure out what's happened when
• 59:04
  Gallifrey was destroyed, because we've lost sort of four or five
• 59:07
  minutes, haven't we? At the end of that, we don't
• 59:09
  know what happened. There's a mystery there.
• 59:11
  If I'm guilty, then fine, sentence me, execute me,
• 59:15
  whatever. But let's figure it out.
• 59:18
  There's a real maturity to those scenes.
• 59:22
  The reason there's a lovely scene where because the Doctor
• 59:26
  escapes his bones because he's he's I've been tied up by lots
• 59:29
  of people over the years and then he just hands them the
• 59:32
  rope. So then they Weld him to the
• 59:37
  chair and he manages eventually to get out of that and he's just
• 59:42
  walks upstairs and confronts Marno and Rachel.
• 59:44
  Do you? Remember, Rachel's on the bed,
• 59:46
  isn't it? He just walks in and goes.
• 59:47
  Oh, this is awkward, sorry. But there's just this.
• 59:54
  Look, I'll tell you what you want.
• 59:56
  We don't need to do all this. And he just shakes hands with
• 59:58
  Marno and let's have a chat. I'll be a prisoner, no worries.
• 1:00:03
  But stop with the guns and manacles and it's so Paul
• 1:00:07
  McGann. Yeah, it really, really is.
• 1:00:12
  OK, well then let's let's deal with the big revelation because
• 1:00:19
  essentially the reason why, and I think this is genius because
• 1:00:23
  it kind of gives an explanation as to why the Doctor hasn't gone
• 1:00:27
  looking for those memories is because the entire body of the
• 1:00:33
  Matrix, all of those Time Lord brains are super compressed and
• 1:00:38
  inside his head. And that's why he's lost all of
• 1:00:41
  his memories because there's no space for anything else
• 1:00:43
  essentially. And and he's got like this pre
• 1:00:46
  programmed thing in there that if he goes looking for it, it's
• 1:00:49
  going to kick out all of these Time Lord memories and they'll
• 1:00:52
  be gone forever. I just thought that was such a
• 1:00:54
  clever way of Lars barking going, well why the hell haven't
• 1:00:58
  he? Hasn't he gone looking for the
• 1:00:59
  past? Why the hell you know, haven't
• 1:01:01
  we given him his memories back? He actually does give a proper
• 1:01:05
  reason for it. He does, and he's very cleverly
• 1:01:09
  done. I think my only beef with it
• 1:01:11
  this book is it doesn't quite resolve everything.
• 1:01:15
  So we get the reasons why he's where he is, like The Matrix is
• 1:01:19
  super condensed and every time he tries to think about it,
• 1:01:22
  there's this big sort of no entry sign in his head.
• 1:01:25
  It's McCoy, isn't it? It's McCoy in his head.
• 1:01:29
  Yeah, behind the iron gate. Going go away and get out of it.
• 1:01:32
  And you know that that first comes in camera obscura when we
• 1:01:36
  go inside his head and he says in camera obscura, which shows
• 1:01:40
  you how well fought through these are, he says, the number
• 1:01:42
  of Time Lord brains in camera obscura.
• 1:01:45
  And he goes, just remember, subtract the five from the end,
• 1:01:48
  which is the five Time Lords that we've been told previously
• 1:01:51
  still exist. So they've they have put some
• 1:01:53
  thought into this sort of Arc. This is what I like about the
• 1:01:57
  range it was peppered through. There was a continuity.
• 1:02:01
  It wasn't just a scribble with crayons.
• 1:02:05
  This is my idea of Doctor Who From each writer.
• 1:02:08
  There was an actual range editor doing some background work.
• 1:02:13
  Not shall I always pull it off, but the the ambition is there, I
• 1:02:17
  think. Oh, there was a definite
• 1:02:19
  ambition. And I mean, it's like the TV
• 1:02:21
  series doesn't always manage it, even though there's.
• 1:02:23
  So I'm not going to criticize too hard for that because, but
• 1:02:27
  at least there was somebody behind the scenes with a vision
• 1:02:31
  for the series so well, there were two range editors, weren't
• 1:02:35
  there? Yeah, there was Steve Cole for
• 1:02:37
  the first half, Justin Riches for the second-half.
• 1:02:40
  So, and they both had their own vision for things, and I can get
• 1:02:43
  on board with that. But with the Super compressed
• 1:02:47
  memories thing, it was there and the whole setup was there to go
• 1:02:51
  off and get these things out. He couldn't just remember them
• 1:02:54
  because it'd kill him. The TARDIS didn't have the
• 1:02:57
  machinery to be able to download the memories, his portion of
• 1:03:01
  memories that have been deleted using the telepathic circuits.
• 1:03:07
  They were gone but he didn't know where they were.
• 1:03:10
  So it's all semi resolved but it's left there.
• 1:03:15
  That's it. So he's still at the end of the
• 1:03:17
  book, not got his memories back. The matrix isn't restored.
• 1:03:22
  And Gallifrey, can they say, don't they?
• 1:03:24
  Oh, model goes, we're going to build the new Gallifrey, you
• 1:03:27
  know, and you're going to be at the heart of it, Doctor.
• 1:03:29
  And we unfortunately it's bad timing because Gallifrey is
• 1:03:33
  about to be destroyed again in the new series, which is due
• 1:03:36
  next year. Well, I think if I remember
• 1:03:40
  rightly, Gallifrey Chronicles was actually published after
• 1:03:43
  Christopher Eccleston series it aired.
• 1:03:46
  Bad timing, isn't it? Yeah, because they knew.
• 1:03:49
  I mean, it wasn't like it was a surprise.
• 1:03:51
  They'd had two years to prepare for it.
• 1:03:53
  My only beef is that they didn't finish the story.
• 1:04:02
  I think the idea was that like the comics did you know the
• 1:04:06
  comics had the Doctor going over the hill into the sunshine with
• 1:04:09
  destry at the end of the that run and this ends with the
• 1:04:13
  Doctor jumping into the the vole mountain to go and defeat them.
• 1:04:18
  I think the idea is like the adventures go on, this isn't the
• 1:04:21
  end of the 8th Doctor run and a lot more will come afterwards
• 1:04:26
  and I do kind of like that. But yeah, I get what you mean.
• 1:04:29
  You kind of almost want a complete reset for to pass the
• 1:04:32
  baton over to the series again, don't you?
• 1:04:34
  But it's all implied rather than shown.
• 1:04:38
  Yeah, and to be honest, all that vorbit which because more than
• 1:04:44
  halfway into the book. About 2/3 you know, I think.
• 1:04:47
  Yeah, you get this alien protagonist, alien antagonist
• 1:04:53
  rather just this swarm of flies invade Earth.
• 1:05:00
  It doesn't entirely fit, it's just sort of there to give the
• 1:05:03
  companion something to do. Do you know why he did that?
• 1:05:07
  So I interviewed Lance Marking recently and they basically
• 1:05:10
  realised they hadn't done in the 8th Doctor line a proper aliens
• 1:05:14
  invade Earth story. So he was like and he did the
• 1:05:17
  same thing in the dying days because he was like, well we
• 1:05:19
  haven't done one in the new adventures either.
• 1:05:21
  So he he ended both ranges and he threw in an alien invasion.
• 1:05:26
  I. Think part of the idea was that,
• 1:05:29
  Because I do think those the scenes of, do you remember when
• 1:05:31
  the flies swarm on the High Street and there's someone
• 1:05:34
  coming out of HMV with a bag and it's a floor, the the war just
• 1:05:37
  flies down and chops his head off and eats him.
• 1:05:40
  I was like, oh, that could be me.
• 1:05:41
  I used to go on HMV all the time.
• 1:05:44
  I have notes on this, and it's specifically that all these
• 1:05:52
  alien invasions, and particularly in prose or in
• 1:05:56
  audio, you left your own imagination.
• 1:05:58
  Oh, the coming out of the sky, this oh Pew Pew bang, bang.
• 1:06:03
  When you boil it down to HMV and I've all been in HMV.
• 1:06:09
  So immediately you're pinpointing very vividly in your
• 1:06:13
  own head, that scene, because it's something you can lock
• 1:06:17
  onto. And that the HMV scene
• 1:06:21
  completely crystallized that invasion, because you can see it
• 1:06:25
  more vividly than just a record shop or something like that.
• 1:06:30
  Well, I've got to be honest with you as well.
• 1:06:31
  I fucking hate flies. You know, blue bottles.
• 1:06:36
  I really hate them because of the vomit and the shit and the
• 1:06:39
  fact that they eat it. There's just something so gross
• 1:06:42
  about flies. I hate the sound of them as
• 1:06:44
  well. So the thought of enormous flies
• 1:06:48
  coming down and attacking me and vomiting on me, which is what
• 1:06:52
  they do, everybody on this, is really gross.
• 1:06:55
  It's some of the most. Horrific imagery, I think, in
• 1:06:58
  the entire realm, but the point I was getting out there was I
• 1:07:02
  think the idea of the war is because them attacking
• 1:07:06
  everybody. It's not what's happening, is
• 1:07:09
  it? It's a it's a the hallucination.
• 1:07:13
  Everybody's in fact still alive, but they make you think that
• 1:07:16
  they're dead, so they can collect everybody up as food.
• 1:07:20
  It allows the Doctor to bring everybody back to life at the
• 1:07:24
  end of the story. Technically, so fits.
• 1:07:27
  The plane that fits is on gets attacked by the flies in a
• 1:07:29
  brilliant sequence. It goes down onto the tarmac,
• 1:07:32
  flames everywhere, and he's killed by the war and tricks, is
• 1:07:36
  absolutely devastated. And then, in a spectacular
• 1:07:40
  flourish in a way that you can only imagine Paul Mcgahn doing,
• 1:07:44
  he brings fix back to life at the end of the story, exactly
• 1:07:47
  the same way you did with Grace and Chang Lee in the TV movie.
• 1:07:51
  And he even has the line. On my first day on the job, I
• 1:07:55
  brought someone back to life. I got The Tingle with that
• 1:07:58
  because there's so much in this that loops back to the TV movie.
• 1:08:02
  He goes into what on in the TV movies referred to as the
• 1:08:07
  Cloister Room, and everybody ever since has tried to distance
• 1:08:11
  themselves from calling it the Cloister Room.
• 1:08:13
  This is identified as the Power Room and the Eye of Harmony is
• 1:08:19
  in fact this 30 foot iron ball that just happens to have a
• 1:08:23
  crack in it that makes it look like an eye.
• 1:08:25
  And he's installed the lever to open the eye in the intervening
• 1:08:29
  God knows how many adventures. But it is described exactly the
• 1:08:32
  same way as the TV movie, isn't it?
• 1:08:34
  That right? It is exactly how it looks.
• 1:08:36
  And isn't the crack in the ball what brings the vore to the to
• 1:08:39
  earth? That's the thing that attracts
• 1:08:41
  them, isn't it? Well, basically the whole when
• 1:08:44
  he opens it, open this. When the Master opens, it opens
• 1:08:47
  that blue hologram of the doctor eating Jelly babies in it.
• 1:08:50
  When he's talking to Chang Li, that's basically a million times
• 1:08:54
  brighter. It attracts the vore.
• 1:08:57
  The entire Vore Moon is then super condensed over that and
• 1:09:02
  sucked into the Eye of Harmony, and you've got the master in
• 1:09:06
  there. Yes, yeah, he he appears,
• 1:09:08
  doesn't he? He talks to the Doctor and says,
• 1:09:10
  I'm going to show you this. That's when you find out that it
• 1:09:13
  was Marno's TARDIS, because he shows him Marno and actually
• 1:09:17
  going on missions in the Doctors TARDIS.
• 1:09:20
  Yes, but I noticed that because in the earlier books, The Master
• 1:09:26
  from the TV movie he's he appears on screen, and I'm never
• 1:09:32
  entirely sure because they were very nebulous about it.
• 1:09:35
  He appears on a screen in one of the tiredest rooms that the
• 1:09:38
  Doctor periodically will nip off and have a chat with, and all
• 1:09:42
  he's describing is wearing a suit with a blue rosette on it.
• 1:09:46
  Did you have a conversation in one of the books where the
• 1:09:49
  Masters not got to go see, but the Doctor does?
• 1:09:54
  That's the fellow with the blue rosette turns up in and it is
• 1:09:58
  the master it's implied to be in adventurous in Henry registry as
• 1:10:01
  well. Again, all these things are
• 1:10:03
  seeking into this. This I love.
• 1:10:07
  This The one question I was going to write, Well, there's
• 1:10:09
  two questions, actually. Well, that's fresh in my mind.
• 1:10:11
  One Who do you think the because the the time laws are implied to
• 1:10:17
  be the Doctor, Romana, the Master?
• 1:10:20
  And who's the one with the bent nose and the dice?
• 1:10:24
  No idea, no idea. But the other one's supposed to
• 1:10:27
  be Iris, isn't it? Because she's a mad dogs and
• 1:10:29
  Englishman. Or is that the one with the long
• 1:10:32
  hair? That I think it's supposed to
• 1:10:34
  be, yeah. Because she, she in that at the
• 1:10:36
  end the doctor goes, I'm not on my own anymore.
• 1:10:39
  I've met one of the five you know.
• 1:10:42
  Right, right. Well, I've I've missed cast
• 1:10:45
  Romana Lala Ward. But the other thing is,
• 1:10:49
  throughout the sort of the middle, middle to towards the
• 1:10:52
  end range of the 8th Doctor Sabbath was the main antagonist.
• 1:10:57
  He cropped up a lot. Now in my head I know I've cast
• 1:11:02
  him as. Who was he in your head?
• 1:11:03
  Did you have anybody in mind? I just saw like a big brute of a
• 1:11:07
  bloke, like sort of Brian Glover, you know?
• 1:11:10
  That's all man. With fists for hands?
• 1:11:13
  No, sorry. Hands for fists.
• 1:11:15
  That's hands. Described doesn't.
• 1:11:16
  It. Yeah.
• 1:11:16
  Fists for hands. And he was in several of the
• 1:11:19
  books he was described with a shaved head, but the shaved head
• 1:11:24
  bit I don't remember being his initial description.
• 1:11:27
  So for a very long time I had him.
• 1:11:31
  John Rhys Davies from Sliders. Oh, good choice.
• 1:11:35
  Yeah. He's a big, bulky bloke, isn't
• 1:11:37
  he? Yeah.
• 1:11:39
  So it was that Arturo character. He was Sabbath for for me in my
• 1:11:43
  head, for most of the books. And I'm pleased he got a
• 1:11:46
  reference in this as well because that is a good sort of
• 1:11:49
  15 book run that he appears in so, so he gets a tick as well.
• 1:11:55
  Lars Pocket is genuinely he's he's not only bringing the 8th
• 1:11:59
  Doctor books to an end and celebrating and criticizing the
• 1:12:03
  entire run, he is also setting up the show for the new series
• 1:12:10
  coming along. Because there's a sequence where
• 1:12:12
  the bottle that Marno's created to look at the the Doctor's
• 1:12:17
  past, that's nuclear power, isn't it?
• 1:12:19
  And he throws it into the TARDIS.
• 1:12:22
  And then there's this incredible sequence where it tears through
• 1:12:26
  every corridor in the TARDIS and basically obliterates
• 1:12:30
  everything. All of the 8th Doctor adventures
• 1:12:32
  are torn away, everything is taken fits his room, everybody's
• 1:12:37
  room, and it's just left as this twisted sort of crunchy smoking
• 1:12:43
  shell inside. Ready.
• 1:12:46
  Basically. Ready for Christopher Eccleston.
• 1:12:50
  That whole sequence is so vivid about the TARDIS getting a reset
• 1:12:56
  that you he's left just with this bare TARDIS with a console
• 1:12:59
  in it. All the buttons and switches are
• 1:13:02
  melted, the Ward's all burnt and charred, not Nothing really
• 1:13:06
  works. While it RE heals itself, and it
• 1:13:09
  doesn't go as far as showing how it's RE healing itself.
• 1:13:13
  There's no hint at all that it's turning into the Ward, Octus,
• 1:13:16
  TARDIS or anything like that. That you love as well, the way
• 1:13:20
  he sort of Pats the TARDIS as he throws it in and says, oh.
• 1:13:23
  Prepare. Yourself.
• 1:13:24
  Oh girl, yeah, this is going to hurt.
• 1:13:26
  It's so lovingly done that. Sort of brace yourself on go.
• 1:13:32
  Circling, circling back to the war for a second.
• 1:13:35
  The other reason I think they're in there as well, because I
• 1:13:37
  don't think those things harm the book.
• 1:13:40
  But you're right, it is distant from the other stuff that it's
• 1:13:43
  doing. I think it's sort of there as
• 1:13:45
  like business goes on, you know, as the Doctor's going through,
• 1:13:49
  he's discovering all this about his past and what he's done and
• 1:13:53
  his people and and his companions are leaving him and
• 1:13:56
  all that's going on. But these alien invasions and
• 1:13:59
  the, you know, the daily business still goes on.
• 1:14:02
  So that's what I think the ending's about.
• 1:14:04
  When he jumps into the volcano, it's like, OK, I've got all this
• 1:14:07
  stuff to deal with, but do you know what?
• 1:14:09
  Our usual adventures don't stop because I've got all this stuff
• 1:14:12
  to do with And he leaps into the volcano, coattails flying.
• 1:14:16
  It's fabulous. Well, that Tricks does have a
• 1:14:19
  throwaway line. Because Fitz, you know he's not
• 1:14:22
  going to die. And even if he does, he'll just
• 1:14:23
  come back better than ever before.
• 1:14:26
  And Tricks tosses in there. Hope he's got better dress sense
• 1:14:29
  next time. You know that little throwaway
• 1:14:33
  kiss to Eccleston's leather jacket?
• 1:14:37
  I don't know if you remember when the 8th Doctor looked into
• 1:14:40
  the Tomorrow windows the mirror. It gives you a a sort of
• 1:14:46
  possible possible future, right? So it goes through all the
• 1:14:50
  prospective you see the Richard E Grant Doctor in the Mirror,
• 1:14:52
  you see the Rowan, Axis and Doctor in the Mirror.
• 1:14:54
  And actually, because he'd already been been cast, Johnny
• 1:14:58
  Morris describes the Christopher Ackerson Dr. Technically, that's
• 1:15:02
  his first appearance in Doctor Who Isn't The Tomorrow.
• 1:15:04
  It is. It is.
• 1:15:06
  It was. You see, again, there was a
• 1:15:08
  really lovely set of writers at that time, and I'm glad that
• 1:15:12
  they gave it to because they did the same with The New Adventures
• 1:15:15
  they gave Longbow to Mark Platt. So it was a big hitter.
• 1:15:18
  It wasn't just some fan that was baffing off a continuity heavy
• 1:15:23
  novel, It was a proper writer doing it properly because a lot
• 1:15:27
  of the New Adventures writers were fans that somehow.
• 1:15:32
  I mean, you listen to interviews with Peter Darville Evans and
• 1:15:35
  he's been very diplomatic about it, but you can read through the
• 1:15:39
  lines that a lot of what would landed on his desk was utter
• 1:15:43
  shite that he had to basically rewrite from the ground up.
• 1:15:46
  He found a stable, didn't he? Paul Cornell.
• 1:15:48
  Kate Orman, Lars Park. And he's like, can will you
• 1:15:52
  please write me some more? Please.
• 1:15:53
  So I've got some good stuff to put out as.
• 1:15:57
  Well, oh so it was such a shame because again, he's no different
• 1:16:01
  though really to the TV series. You listen to Terence Dix, you
• 1:16:06
  know, rewrite after rewrite after rewrite, and they just get
• 1:16:09
  worse and worse. So the form was employer,
• 1:16:12
  writer, send back a a draft with notes, get him to redraft it and
• 1:16:16
  after that pay him off and whatever needs doing you write,
• 1:16:19
  rewrite it. And and I he's always stuck with
• 1:16:23
  me as probably the best way of rescuing a script that's in a
• 1:16:27
  lot of trouble to just do it yourself.
• 1:16:30
  What I've learned by talking to some of the authors is that the
• 1:16:34
  Virgin books, it was a much more collaborative process with the
• 1:16:37
  editors, so there was a lot of editorial involvement, whereas
• 1:16:40
  the BBC books it was essentially this is what we want you to
• 1:16:43
  write some notes and and it was left to the writer.
• 1:16:48
  So I think that's why the BBC books sort of the best writers
• 1:16:51
  shine through, because it's it's entirely their vision.
• 1:16:56
  Yeah, I think that's probably true.
• 1:16:57
  I mean, I from what I've seen, what did I read Shadow Mind by?
• 1:17:03
  Oh, Christopher Beulis. Fabulous that that had a lot of
• 1:17:06
  problems. They often do, you know.
• 1:17:10
  The norm that leads to mind from him actually because did he do
• 1:17:12
  crystal bucephalus? He.
• 1:17:14
  Did he wrote for every single doctor?
• 1:17:17
  I think he wrote about 14 books in total and some of them are
• 1:17:21
  quite like, but none of them are exceptional.
• 1:17:23
  He's a he's a meat and potatoes Doctor Who writer.
• 1:17:26
  But but sometimes you fancy meat and potatoes, you know?
• 1:17:30
  I'm just going through the rest of my notes on some of the
• 1:17:32
  little golden Nuggets that were peppered through this thing.
• 1:17:35
  I mean, this whole book is just one.
• 1:17:38
  It's, you know, 280 pages of of little Easter eggs.
• 1:17:43
  You've nailed that down. I mean the, you mentioned
• 1:17:46
  earlier, the argument between fits and the Doctor about his
• 1:17:48
  memories, but he spits, backs it's with two hearts and no
• 1:17:53
  balls. Is that how it works?
• 1:17:55
  Oh, it's a great line, isn't it? Only in the books.
• 1:18:00
  One of the other bits, which I really loved, was Minal Minal's
• 1:18:04
  gum, the Serious Indifference Gun, where he fires this staser
• 1:18:09
  at people and they just don't care and wander off.
• 1:18:12
  So whatever. There's a lot of police officers
• 1:18:14
  outside his house. He shoots them and they just
• 1:18:17
  lose interest in arresting wander off.
• 1:18:20
  Oh. No, man, I'd love that gun.
• 1:18:22
  Wouldn't you? Well, it's like Eddie Izzard set
• 1:18:24
  the phases on Limp captain. I've got another Easter egg.
• 1:18:30
  At one point there's the the exchange.
• 1:18:33
  Freud had a word for that. Oh yes, which is?
• 1:18:37
  From the TV movie. And then Rachel corrects him.
• 1:18:40
  Because it's not, it's something completely different.
• 1:18:42
  But yeah, the the little lines in there that we've got.
• 1:18:46
  Another one, Lance. Actually has one of the
• 1:18:49
  characters to go I've tried to. Put his adventures in the
• 1:18:52
  chronological order, But it's impossible.
• 1:18:55
  And this is the man who wrote Doctor Who, a history who
• 1:18:59
  literally tried to put all of the Doctor Who adventures in
• 1:19:01
  order. I've never read that book.
• 1:19:05
  I wanted to get a hold of it. That's the one with it's I can
• 1:19:08
  picture it. It's sort of blue with Sylvester
• 1:19:10
  Mccoy's eye on the front cover, isn't it?
• 1:19:12
  Yeah, well there's about 15 versions of it now, so make sure
• 1:19:16
  you get the latest one if you do.
• 1:19:18
  But I remember seeing that advertised at the time, because
• 1:19:21
  it's been that was a long time ago.
• 1:19:23
  The first volume of that and you just think you you must be awake
• 1:19:29
  all night every night trying to your marked chronology moment
• 1:19:33
  you. That's impossible.
• 1:19:36
  Let's you know. I don't worry about that stuff,
• 1:19:38
  Ken. I've got a life.
• 1:19:40
  I mean, he sits there organising the shelves every day and I'm
• 1:19:42
  like, well, you have fun and I'll be up here recording the
• 1:19:44
  podcast. You know, some people really
• 1:19:47
  care about that stuff and, well, I don't, but I did like the
• 1:19:50
  joke. I used to.
• 1:19:53
  In recent years, I've just sort of let it go because
• 1:19:56
  particularly with the advent of the Steven Moffat era, the whole
• 1:19:59
  wibbly, wobbly timey Wimey did really made an effort to try and
• 1:20:04
  get continuity and and Canon ironed out a little bit and fit
• 1:20:09
  things together. And then Steven Moffat came
• 1:20:11
  along. It was like, yeah, I don't care
• 1:20:12
  about any of that wibbly, wobly timey.
• 1:20:14
  Wimeyoming explains everything away.
• 1:20:15
  And ever since then, it's been just forget about it, Yeah, just
• 1:20:19
  just don't worry about it, because none of this makes sense
• 1:20:22
  now. I'm just going to throw random
• 1:20:24
  things in the air now because I've got loads of notes right
• 1:20:27
  and I just want to just some fun bits.
• 1:20:29
  There's a sequence in the Roman orgy bit where they're trying to
• 1:20:33
  pretend that they're not time travellers to this alien, and
• 1:20:35
  Fitz goes. Christ on a bike.
• 1:20:37
  So the alien goes. So you're time travellers?
• 1:20:39
  He goes. No.
• 1:20:40
  Well then, how can you? Explain to me how you know the
• 1:20:43
  name of a deity who is not yet born, and a mode of transport as
• 1:20:46
  you get to be invented. He writes brilliant dialogue.
• 1:20:51
  Well, that same alien is all about because they say, you
• 1:20:53
  know, yeah, you've come to stop the eruption at Pompeii says
• 1:20:58
  right. That's 40 years in the future
• 1:21:00
  and then he gets no, I've come to stop some obscure person from
• 1:21:04
  marrying some other obscure person who'll give birth to
• 1:21:07
  someone who'll write something that will destroy my entire
• 1:21:09
  thing. And it's just this miniscule
• 1:21:11
  thing in history that does no bearing on.
• 1:21:14
  Humanity really. Crap villain is it?
• 1:21:16
  I think Lance is making a point there.
• 1:21:18
  In fact, the Doctor even does the Rebus operation thing.
• 1:21:21
  Where? Where?
• 1:21:21
  He sleight of hands the bomb back to him and turns him into
• 1:21:24
  mincemeat. Oh, it's wonderful.
• 1:21:26
  Those little mini mini adventures just between
• 1:21:30
  chapters. I mean, how gorgeous is the
• 1:21:32
  flashback to Miranda? And it's sort of again leading
• 1:21:36
  into the snow from Father Time, and it's an alien invasion
• 1:21:39
  through emojis and texts. Yes.
• 1:21:42
  Which I feel. I wish that had been a bigger
• 1:21:44
  book, if I'm honest, but I'm grateful for the chapter.
• 1:21:49
  Well, one of the other things just left to mind.
• 1:21:50
  We have touched on it, but the cut scene, there's a few
• 1:21:54
  interludes in between chapters here and there, but one of them
• 1:21:57
  is and they're never explicitly said, but we know this from Law,
• 1:22:02
  the doctor's mum and dad. Yes, and.
• 1:22:05
  Ladies is. It Ulysses and Penelope.
• 1:22:08
  Yeah, Penelope's explicitly said to be human in this and.
• 1:22:13
  On his mother's side. On his mother's side, yeah.
• 1:22:16
  So, I mean, that was something that it was heavily hinted at in
• 1:22:19
  the books, and you probably know more about the virgin range than
• 1:22:22
  I do. Well, you do.
• 1:22:23
  You do the Doctor's parentage. Was that ever hinted at in the
• 1:22:30
  end? Hinted but not explicitly
• 1:22:32
  stated. I remember Penelope Gate
• 1:22:34
  featured in The Room With No Doors, which is the penultimate
• 1:22:38
  new adventure. I'm not as heavily into those as
• 1:22:41
  the Ape Dr. books, so I don't know all of the details, but it
• 1:22:44
  is implied rather than explicitly stated.
• 1:22:47
  But you know, he he says it here, doesn't he?
• 1:22:50
  Basically. And Lion is the one the Doctor
• 1:22:53
  was knocking off in The Infinity Doctor.
• 1:22:55
  Isn't that's the one? Yes.
• 1:22:57
  Yeah. So again, it's all just tied
• 1:22:59
  into this massive web. What do you think about this
• 1:23:02
  then? We had adventures together.
• 1:23:06
  The Doctor was rather cheered by the thought affirmative.
• 1:23:09
  Its tail wagged. Oh, that whole sequence.
• 1:23:18
  The Doctor had read all the books he'd brought with him.
• 1:23:22
  He knew a little more about his home planet now, but what he
• 1:23:25
  knew was hardly comprehensive. If he'd grabbed an armful of
• 1:23:28
  random novels from a London library, would he have a full
• 1:23:32
  understanding of the history and culture of Earth?
• 1:23:34
  He'd have to try it sometime as an exercise.
• 1:23:37
  For now, he'd got something else to do.
• 1:23:39
  The back wall. The Doctor had found a cutting
• 1:23:44
  torch in one of the store rooms. He had gone to the back wall and
• 1:23:47
  was burning his way through it. He'd cut a line up from the
• 1:23:51
  floor to the ceiling. Now he began cutting a
• 1:23:53
  horizontal line, even though the wall was damaged.
• 1:23:57
  It was slow work, but it gave him time to think about what
• 1:24:00
  he'd read. Gallifrey was a contradiction, A
• 1:24:04
  world of futuristic control rooms manned by dusty old men in
• 1:24:07
  ornate collars, monks walking on stone floors, underneath which
• 1:24:12
  sat a black hole. Although Minal's narration
• 1:24:15
  revelled in the ritual, the repetition, the routine, the
• 1:24:18
  Doctor found himself unmoved. It was no way to live a life.
• 1:24:23
  He moved the cutting beam down. Finally, he reached a long crack
• 1:24:28
  in the floor. The rough oblong he'd cut in the
• 1:24:31
  wall hung there for a moment until the Doctor pushed it over.
• 1:24:38
  Through the new doorway was more corridor.
• 1:24:43
  It was with. A distinct sense of anti climax
• 1:24:45
  that the Doctor stepped over the threshold into the uncharted
• 1:24:48
  regions of his TARDIS, 50 yards down the corridor and his mood
• 1:24:53
  hadn't improved. There's nothing.
• 1:24:56
  Here, he complained. But he'd heard scratching at the
• 1:24:59
  wall many times, so this couldn't be true.
• 1:25:03
  The Doctor knelt down and examined the floor.
• 1:25:06
  Nothing. At the end of the far corridor,
• 1:25:10
  round the first corner, he heard a whirring noise, like servo
• 1:25:13
  motors. It was heading this way.
• 1:25:16
  The Doctor stood ready for the new arrival.
• 1:25:21
  It was a. Robot.
• 1:25:23
  It moved smoothly, hovering a little off the ground.
• 1:25:27
  It was battleship grey, with what looked like a gun and some
• 1:25:30
  sort of sucker cup. It watched him with a single
• 1:25:34
  electronic eye. You are the doctor, it said in a
• 1:25:38
  metallic voice. Yes, delighted to meet you, he
• 1:25:43
  replied. The machine considered its
• 1:25:46
  response. I must kill the doctor, it
• 1:25:50
  concluded. The gun.
• 1:25:52
  Flared. With Light and the Doctor dived
• 1:25:54
  out of the way. The beam shot past him and was
• 1:25:57
  absorbed harmlessly by the wall. He'd been half expecting a
• 1:26:01
  response like that. The Doctor was on his feet,
• 1:26:04
  running back to the whole hip. Colours killed the Doctor, The
• 1:26:08
  robot repeated, rolling after him.
• 1:26:11
  The Doctor docked left and the energy bolt whizzed past him.
• 1:26:16
  As he raced. Back into the part of the tide,
• 1:26:18
  as he knew, the Doctor had one thought why on earth would
• 1:26:22
  anyone build a robot in the shape of a dog?
• 1:26:27
  Isn't it gorgeous? I mean that's that's basically
• 1:26:30
  the old series coming back now it's it's sort of like claiming
• 1:26:33
  the continuity again by throwing canine in there and it's like,
• 1:26:37
  OK, we're going back to where we were.
• 1:26:39
  We've done what we've done with the A of Doctor books and we're
• 1:26:42
  back into sort of Doctor Who have old now and it does feel
• 1:26:45
  really refreshing. I feel well.
• 1:26:49
  I've kind of spoiled that sequence by recording it, but
• 1:26:52
  it's so beautiful. I mean, the twist, the very last
• 1:26:56
  line of that whole scene, that it's canine.
• 1:27:02
  How fucking clever is that? And canine, obviously is in The
• 1:27:06
  Ancestor Cell. And he does go missing at the
• 1:27:09
  end of the book, and it turns out he's been in the tallest
• 1:27:12
  this whole fucking time on that wall.
• 1:27:14
  And you in the trading futures, which was Lance Parkins Bond
• 1:27:18
  pastiche, there is a scene where the doctor walks along the
• 1:27:22
  corridor and he's scratching behind the wall and goes, oh, I
• 1:27:26
  wonder what that is. Oh, well, I'll find out one
• 1:27:29
  time. One day again, it's it's leading
• 1:27:31
  up to this. And that's about, you know?
• 1:27:34
  15 I was way before. Yeah, it's Lance Park and you
• 1:27:38
  wonderful man. He really got Doctor Who pros.
• 1:27:42
  Well, I've got a I've got a sort of final question for you, and
• 1:27:45
  then I'd like to sort of throw it out to you.
• 1:27:47
  To summarise your thoughts, do you think this book can exist as
• 1:27:53
  a book in its own right, or is this just a book for Doctor Who
• 1:27:57
  fans that would understand all the references?
• 1:28:00
  I don't think you need to get all the references.
• 1:28:04
  You probably could read it as a stand alone, but because the 8th
• 1:28:09
  Doctor is really quite niche and not the best well known and it
• 1:28:17
  is so heavily peppered with little references that are very
• 1:28:20
  clearly references to stuff that's happened in the past and
• 1:28:25
  the whole Gallifrey continuity. If you don't know that he stole
• 1:28:30
  this hardest and ran away and a lot of the scenes wouldn't work
• 1:28:34
  I don't think if you're a Doctor Who fan.
• 1:28:36
  So this is more a book to repay those that have stayed the
• 1:28:40
  course of the book series. So that's not, that's not a
• 1:28:44
  slight on it in any way, but if we're honest with ourselves, all
• 1:28:47
  of the book ranges. Well, certainly The 8th Doctors
• 1:28:51
  and The New Adventures, they were a Doctor Who fans.
• 1:28:55
  They were not for people. And just wandering along a
• 1:28:57
  bookshop. Oh, I used to learn Doctor Who.
• 1:28:59
  I'll read one of those. They just weren't.
• 1:29:01
  And then I don't think it's out of line to say with both of
• 1:29:04
  those ranges. I think the new adventures,
• 1:29:07
  because they pushed so far away from what the TV series did, and
• 1:29:10
  then the 8th Doctor books because it got a bit tangled in
• 1:29:13
  both editors times somewhere in the middle that, you know, a
• 1:29:17
  good portion of the initial readership did drop off.
• 1:29:21
  So as a sort of gift to those people that did cling on to the
• 1:29:24
  end, it's really rewarding. I did feel that I I'd been
• 1:29:30
  rewarded for staying the course. Yeah, because there was so many
• 1:29:34
  Easter eggs and it's, I mean, a lot of them I missed first time
• 1:29:37
  around. And I it's been, what, no bloody
• 1:29:40
  hell 19 years since I read that book and I can still remember
• 1:29:44
  vast chunks of it, clear as day. That's how good it is this book.
• 1:29:48
  What I would say about the Gallivary Chronicles is, yeah, I
• 1:29:51
  I kind of think this is for fans, but it's a shame because
• 1:29:55
  individual passages are so beautifully written.
• 1:29:58
  It's a shame that you know more people aren't going to read this
• 1:30:01
  stuff, but you know that's just an extra gift for those of us
• 1:30:05
  that are right. I think the only Doctor Who
• 1:30:09
  booked from the 8th Doctor range, and it's not even from
• 1:30:11
  the 8th Doctor range that is so beautiful, but it could just be
• 1:30:15
  picked up and read. It's actually the Infinity
• 1:30:17
  Doctors. If you just had The Infinity
• 1:30:20
  Doctors as the only ever Doctor Who novel, anybody could read
• 1:30:25
  that. And it does feel like just a a a
• 1:30:28
  madly ambitious science fiction book, doesn't it?
• 1:30:31
  The Doctor's regeneration isn't even specifically stated, so he
• 1:30:35
  is just a character in the book. It's not like you sort it in in
• 1:30:38
  this period of time. The idea is it's the Doctor on
• 1:30:41
  Gallifrey. You make your choice, but just
• 1:30:44
  read this as a science fiction book.
• 1:30:46
  Well Lance Parkin has said that the casting was poor McGann as a
• 1:30:51
  very young man but it wasn't the 8th Doctor.
• 1:30:55
  But I think somebody. I don't know whether that his
• 1:30:58
  his line has changed on that but I know that it's been tried to
• 1:31:01
  be crowbarred in as a pre first Doctor adventure, a very young
• 1:31:05
  first up. But I don't like that.
• 1:31:06
  I don't. It just it's just a sidestep and
• 1:31:10
  a bloody nice one if you read it like that.
• 1:31:12
  It's the one book that does. You know, vast armies are
• 1:31:15
  massing around Gallifrey, the Sontaras and the Rutans.
• 1:31:19
  It just feels massive. Lars Parkin can do big science
• 1:31:23
  fiction, but he can also, as we've said throughout this
• 1:31:27
  episode, he can do the small, very beautiful moments as well.
• 1:31:32
  He's just an incredibly good writer.
• 1:31:35
  He's probably my favorite WHO writer.
• 1:31:38
  That was going to be my question for the second episode that we
• 1:31:40
  do, We're at the beginning, save that forward.
• 1:31:44
  But would you sort of, if there's anything we haven't
• 1:31:46
  covered, say your piece, but otherwise sort of summarise the
• 1:31:50
  Gallifrey protocols for you? There's any number of ways I
• 1:31:54
  could eulogise about this book for hours, so I'm not going to.
• 1:31:59
  I mean, there's lots of little things peppered through it and I
• 1:32:01
  just, I just got the tingle all the time, over and over and
• 1:32:04
  over, just lots of little things like fits and tricks getting
• 1:32:07
  together. I thought that was a nice way of
• 1:32:08
  wrapping up their story, bringing Angie in, really nice,
• 1:32:12
  tying in with the books own continuity.
• 1:32:16
  The Doctors kissing back to really his very first adventures
• 1:32:19
  TV movie and it just had that circular nature that sort of
• 1:32:25
  bookended the range really nicely.
• 1:32:28
  It was, it was continuously heavy without being wanky.
• 1:32:31
  It was a solid story. There were great characters in
• 1:32:34
  it. The settings were vivid.
• 1:32:36
  The writing was vivid. Even the.
• 1:32:39
  I mean they are attacked in the vore, even that third of the
• 1:32:43
  novel with this alien invasion, even though it's not supposed to
• 1:32:47
  be there, it's really nicely done and self-contained and and
• 1:32:51
  well described. And there's a reason for all
• 1:32:53
  this. Oh this, this is just a a really
• 1:32:56
  great book. I'm so glad you asked me to do
• 1:32:58
  it, because it's. I love hearing you.
• 1:33:01
  Forgive me, but I love hearing you gush, Ken.
• 1:33:04
  Honestly. But if you haven't heard this
• 1:33:06
  podcast, he's normally the grumpy.
• 1:33:08
  No, the grumpy one, but the cynical one.
• 1:33:10
  It's so lovely to hear you just your heart exploded.
• 1:33:14
  I would say as well, just on top of everything you just said
• 1:33:17
  there, which I agree with, I think this is a book that
• 1:33:21
  rewards, every single time you read it, the the rereadability
• 1:33:25
  of this book because there's so many of those Easter eggs in
• 1:33:28
  there and I don't always spot them.
• 1:33:31
  You've given me a reading on something today that I never saw
• 1:33:33
  before. Mike Mills did exactly the same
• 1:33:35
  thing when I did Father Time with him last.
• 1:33:38
  Parking books are just so packed with with treats.
• 1:33:43
  It's like you're constantly unwrapping the present, you
• 1:33:45
  know? And then when you open, unwrap a
• 1:33:47
  present and then it's really quite disappointing, but it
• 1:33:49
  looks so enticing. It does.
• 1:33:51
  Reading a large parking book, you're just always unwrapping,
• 1:33:53
  you know? You never get to the present,
• 1:33:55
  the boring present, because you're constantly.
• 1:33:57
  Discovering new things. It's great on that level as
• 1:34:00
  well. There's one line, a last
• 1:34:02
  thought. There's one line in The Infinity
• 1:34:04
  Doctors where he within the prose, he mentions the page
• 1:34:09
  number of a hypothetical book that you only find out this sort
• 1:34:13
  of thing on page 230, and it's on page 230, and it's just those
• 1:34:18
  little clever writing flourishes that are in every single one of
• 1:34:21
  the man's books. Sadly, I don't know what his
• 1:34:25
  writing career's like outside of Doctor Who, but he really should
• 1:34:28
  have one because. He's in America now.
• 1:34:29
  He he script edited, I think Emmerdale for quite some time.
• 1:34:33
  And so he worked on telly for a while and he's in America and
• 1:34:36
  he's still writing. Yeah, of course.
• 1:34:37
  I mean, he's a talent. Of course.
• 1:34:39
  He's writing. Oh, yes.
• 1:34:41
  Well, look, Ken, I, you know, I thought I wasn't going to have
• 1:34:44
  time, but I've just sent a message to my work and I'm going
• 1:34:46
  to be about 10 minutes later than I thought I was going to
• 1:34:49
  be. So would you care please, for
• 1:34:52
  the very first time on the Hamster Book Club, to hand me
• 1:34:55
  your recommendation to the audience, please?
• 1:34:58
  It's The Harvest of Time by Alistair Reynolds.
• 1:35:02
  This is one of those books that they did they they started when
• 1:35:06
  they got to sort of the Matt Smith era, dropping in the odd
• 1:35:10
  extraneous book to the book range, sort of a hardback, a
• 1:35:13
  serious, solid Doctor Who novel by established authors.
• 1:35:18
  And some of them hit, some of them didn't.
• 1:35:20
  I remember there was the very first one they did.
• 1:35:24
  It got savaged and it was by this really experienced writer
• 1:35:27
  he had no idea how to do. Doctor, you're talking about
• 1:35:29
  Michael Moorcock, aren't you? And the coming of The Terror
• 1:35:32
  Files. Now you're putting words into my
• 1:35:35
  mouth. I chose that book I So I One of
• 1:35:38
  the questions I did once as an icebreaker was what book do you
• 1:35:40
  wish you'd never started? That was Doctor Who, and mine
• 1:35:43
  was Michael Moorcock's The Coming of the Terrified.
• 1:35:45
  Oh, it was impenetrable. Yeah, it was fairly bad, but no
• 1:35:51
  harvest of time. It's so quietly Doctor Who on
• 1:35:55
  the cover because it's on the front cover, but it's not
• 1:35:57
  actually on the spine. So if you saw it in a bookshop,
• 1:35:59
  you'd never know. But that is the Third Doctor and
• 1:36:04
  the Delgado Master, and that is so screwed down.
• 1:36:08
  It's last of the gathering level of good for that era.
• 1:36:12
  Yeah. Did you ever?
• 1:36:14
  Like a nostalgia buzz. Yeah, but with a 21st century
• 1:36:20
  budget, because they've got this prison for the Master and it's
• 1:36:23
  so complex, how they actually lock him away in his cell and
• 1:36:27
  all these cranes and things, pick up his cell and lock it
• 1:36:30
  into a, like a secure compound and then bars come down and just
• 1:36:35
  seal it. It's so complicated.
• 1:36:39
  But you can picture it, David, that I mean, that was a really,
• 1:36:42
  really solid Doctor. I suppose if they're going to
• 1:36:45
  fork out for a, you know, well known author, is that one of
• 1:36:50
  those big chunky hardbacks with an extra page count?
• 1:36:53
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:55
  But. And you know what?
• 1:36:56
  It's it is strange because some pretty prestige writers have had
• 1:36:58
  a go, haven't they? Didn't Stephen Baxter do one?
• 1:37:01
  He did. I can't.
• 1:37:03
  Remember the Wheel of Ice? Was it?
• 1:37:05
  Yeah, the Wheel of Ice Second OPS book.
• 1:37:07
  Yeah, and I started it, but I never finished it.
• 1:37:09
  No, I'm. Exactly the same, do you know?
• 1:37:11
  But then I've never really got on with Baxter, if I'm honest.
• 1:37:15
  But I've got to express my ignorance here.
• 1:37:16
  I don't know who any of these people are.
• 1:37:18
  They're. Not fair enough.
• 1:37:19
  I mean, they're all established sort of science fiction author.
• 1:37:21
  I mean, we've got the ultimate science fiction author, right?
• 1:37:24
  And Doctor Who? Douglas Adams, you know, back in
• 1:37:26
  the day. Yes, yes, and people get on with
• 1:37:31
  his work. Some people don't, but I think
• 1:37:32
  Sharda is a work of art. Oh, me too.
• 1:37:35
  Me too. Well, look, I'm going to
• 1:37:36
  recommend and I'm I I don't ever recommend the new series
• 1:37:42
  adventures, but I feel as if I probably should recommend one,
• 1:37:45
  and it's a Jacqueline Rayner book.
• 1:37:48
  Solid ground. Which I immediately just love
• 1:37:51
  because I love her work, I think.
• 1:37:53
  I don't think she's produced anything that isn't at least
• 1:37:56
  entertaining, but at her best, with Big Finish and with the
• 1:38:01
  novels she's she delivers some of the best work you're going to
• 1:38:05
  see. You know Doctor Who and the
• 1:38:06
  Pirates, stuff like that. I would like to recommend The
• 1:38:10
  Stone Rose which is one of these.
• 1:38:14
  Really. Did you like?
• 1:38:15
  It hang on, hang on. Bear with me because it is a it
• 1:38:23
  is a light, fun read and it Peppers in history and it
• 1:38:27
  Peppers in cultural references. It's not for me, It's it's not
• 1:38:32
  for, you know, a 43 year old bloke.
• 1:38:35
  This book is written as a Doctor Who book for the kids that were
• 1:38:39
  watching the new series at the time.
• 1:38:42
  And I think on those terms it delivers.
• 1:38:44
  Yeah, it's simply written, but it does have some complexities
• 1:38:49
  to the plot. It characterizes the Doctor and
• 1:38:51
  Rose really well. It has really fun set pieces in
• 1:38:55
  it. And I'll say again, it's it's
• 1:38:57
  got some some gentle history in there as well, within the remit
• 1:39:02
  of what the new series of adventures are supposed to be
• 1:39:04
  doing. I think it's a solid breed.
• 1:39:07
  Fight me. I I can't.
• 1:39:10
  It's been that long since I've read it.
• 1:39:12
  I I remember there being a statue of Rose in it and some
• 1:39:16
  Greek gardener. Although it's been a long time
• 1:39:19
  since I've read that one. I mean all I will, I will
• 1:39:21
  champion this with you that all of the New adventures books.
• 1:39:25
  They were a very easy read. In fact, I have just recently.
• 1:39:30
  I've been meant to do it for years.
• 1:39:32
  I read that Halloween Forever Autumn by Mark.
• 1:39:35
  Oh, that's that has some lovely prose.
• 1:39:38
  I remember, oh, it was tenant to a tee.
• 1:39:41
  I mean, you could hear him saying every single line.
• 1:39:44
  And I think if a book can really capture the characters and the
• 1:39:50
  way of speaking and the mannerisms and the little things
• 1:39:53
  you're familiar with on screen, you're there.
• 1:39:58
  I mean, Jacqueline Rayner. I'm never going to fight you on
• 1:39:59
  that. My first real exposure to
• 1:40:01
  Jacqueline Rayner was the marrying conspiracy.
• 1:40:04
  Still, one of the best things she ever did.
• 1:40:05
  It's one. Of the best things, Big finish.
• 1:40:08
  Ever did, aren't. I I mean, you're never going to
• 1:40:11
  go wrong for me with even Smythe.
• 1:40:13
  I think an older companion. Bang, you're in there.
• 1:40:16
  Specifically, an older woman companion.
• 1:40:19
  I think once, once she gets going as well, Jacqueline Randy,
• 1:40:21
  she writes The Last Dodo, which is a fabulously fun book with
• 1:40:25
  Martha at the 10th Doctor, where they're going around the
• 1:40:29
  universe and somebody's trying to wipe out species and they're
• 1:40:32
  trying to find the last of each species.
• 1:40:34
  And we do a bit on Earth, so the kids will learn all about sort
• 1:40:38
  of extinct species on Earth. Hence the last dodo.
• 1:40:42
  And of course the final gag of the book is the last of the time
• 1:40:47
  laws. The Doctor and you get points
• 1:40:49
  for every single extinct species that you find and Martha ticks
• 1:40:52
  off at the end 15,000,000 points or something like that because
• 1:40:55
  she found the last of the time laws.
• 1:40:57
  Like at at their best I think when you got Paul Mars is Sick
• 1:41:02
  building Simon Messingham does the Doctor trap?
• 1:41:05
  Lance Parkin does the Eyeless. Simon Guria does the Pirate loop
• 1:41:11
  at their best. I'm not going to say they're the
• 1:41:13
  best of like the 8th Doctor Rage, but they're really good
• 1:41:16
  books. I just think there's a lot of
• 1:41:18
  sort of tie in this mundanity about some of them, but I I
• 1:41:25
  don't think they're a complete write off.
• 1:41:26
  I think there's some good stuff that I want to cover one one
• 1:41:28
  day. I haven't done it yet.
• 1:41:30
  I I don't think they are a write off.
• 1:41:31
  No, they're very consistent. You know what you're going to
• 1:41:33
  get. They're solid, very easy reads
• 1:41:36
  and I've got to say, very beautifully presented.
• 1:41:39
  I quite like the whole mini hardback thing.
• 1:41:41
  I thought they were just pocket sized, really nice.
• 1:41:45
  They look great on the shelf. I started bringing them out as
• 1:41:47
  paperbacks in in sets, didn't I was like, no, that's the whole
• 1:41:51
  point. They're beauty.
• 1:41:52
  I'll tell you what, Ken, I was working for a book distributor
• 1:41:54
  at the time they were coming out.
• 1:41:56
  They were selling in the hundreds of thousands, those
• 1:42:00
  books. That's when Doctor Who was at
• 1:42:02
  its peak. You know the The Last Eight
• 1:42:04
  Doctor Adventures. You'd be lucky to sell 10,000
• 1:42:07
  from from the distributor. But those new series adventures?
• 1:42:10
  Boy oh boy, they were gobbling them up like sweets.
• 1:42:13
  Well, it's like I've said about Harry Potter, which gets a
• 1:42:16
  reference in Gallifrey Chronicles.
• 1:42:19
  There were 9 sequels in in that timeline.
• 1:42:22
  It was. But if there's something I don't
• 1:42:26
  care what it is that gets kids to pick up books voluntarily and
• 1:42:30
  read, I don't care what it is, carry on.
• 1:42:33
  I like to call. It who did that to a generation
• 1:42:35
  of kids? Go Doctor Who I.
• 1:42:37
  Like to call it the Terrence Dicks effect.
• 1:42:40
  Oh, Uncle Terrence. I think that's a lovely way to
• 1:42:44
  round off this episode, and thank you very much because what
• 1:42:47
  a joy it was to read that and talk to you about it.
• 1:42:50
  Would you be down to one return and two to dive into a book
• 1:42:57
  you've already mentioned on this podcast today, War of the
• 1:43:01
  Daleks? Oh, of course I would.
• 1:43:04
  I would love to. Joe, you know, I always love
• 1:43:06
  recording with you. It's a lot of fun.
• 1:43:08
  And this in particular. I haven't read any of these
• 1:43:10
  books. Well, I never reread anything
• 1:43:12
  anyway, because I well, I've not so much got a reading pile as a
• 1:43:17
  reading bookcase. I've put a moratorium on buying
• 1:43:19
  any more books, but War of the Darlings, I would love to do
• 1:43:22
  with you. Yes, of course, of course, of
• 1:43:24
  course. I remember loathing that when it
• 1:43:26
  came out and you loved it, so that should be a much more
• 1:43:28
  balanced conversation next time. I mean, maybe I'll love it this
• 1:43:31
  time. We'll see.
• 1:43:32
  It's John Peel, so chances are I won't, but we'll.
• 1:43:35
  See. Embrace yourself on Boy.
• 1:43:38
  But thank you very much. Would you very quickly just let
• 1:43:40
  everybody know where you are out there in podcast land before we
• 1:43:43
  go? Yes.
• 1:43:45
  And thank you for having me, Joe.
• 1:43:46
  It's been wonderful, as always. You can find me with Doctor
• 1:43:49
  Simon Exton at the Exeter Moss Experiment, the Archive of Audio
• 1:43:52
  Antiquities, Kinky Boots, and the Tonic Screwdriver podcasts,
• 1:43:56
  and also with Paul Isles Rush at 9 Bob Note, which is an LGBT
• 1:44:00
  podcast. Oh, I've not.
• 1:44:02
  I've got to check that. Out.
• 1:44:03
  I'm not. Yeah.
• 1:44:03
  It's basically a gay and a non gay coming at primarily LGBT
• 1:44:12
  issues, but sometimes not. Sometimes we just.
• 1:44:14
  Fancy. Oh man.
• 1:44:15
  I know your opinions could be a little controversial as well, so
• 1:44:18
  I'm going to dive into that now. He's trying to get.
• 1:44:21
  In a long day, I'm sold. But thank you, Joe.
• 1:44:26
  It's been my pleasure mate. Thanks for having me.
• 1:44:27
  I look forward to coming back. Pleasure is all mine.