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

Transcript

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

• 0:00
  Wait a minute. Perry was frowning.
• 0:02
  What do you mean? Perry can call up.
• 0:04
  Help. The doctor looked around, wide
• 0:07
  eyed with surprise. I don't know who else you think
• 0:10
  could do it. So Anthony and Sheldon are
• 0:12
  obviously out of it. Janet would only be able to tell
• 0:15
  them that everything here is hunky Dory, thank you very much.
• 0:18
  And I, as you are so fond of pointing out, Perry, I have a
• 0:23
  statuesque and well toned physique which is sadly just a
• 0:27
  little too ample to fit through that hole up there.
• 0:30
  Which leaves. OK Porky, point taken.
• 0:35
  You just want me to crawl up that chute, get out of the top,
• 0:38
  avoid the roaming zombies, get a boat back to the other island,
• 0:42
  find Sir Anthony's phone and hope I can get a signal.
• 0:45
  Then I can call some people who have no idea who I am and hope
• 0:49
  they'll agree to send some sort of help.
• 0:51
  But we don't know what Is that it?
• 0:54
  You seem to have the general idea, Perry.
• 1:03
  At first she thought they were bats, black shapes swooping
• 1:06
  through the misty night sky, screeching at the pale shape of
• 1:10
  the moon. But as one dipped lower over
• 1:12
  her, Perry saw it was an owl. The creature's sharp clawed feet
• 1:16
  were extended downwards as it flew, ripping at the air.
• 1:20
  Instinctively, Perry duct and a claw ripped through the top
• 1:23
  strands of her hair. She screamed in fright, surprise
• 1:26
  and pain. She assumed it was an accident,
• 1:30
  that the owl had simply not seen her.
• 1:32
  But then it came round for another try, and others joined
• 1:35
  it. She ran on desperately waving
• 1:37
  her arms above her head, thrashing at the owls.
• 1:40
  They screeched and howled as she hurled herself along the narrow
• 1:43
  path through the trees. Claws tore at her hair, whipped
• 1:46
  at her cheeks. Then suddenly they were gone.
• 1:50
  The night air was empty again. Perry did not stop to wonder
• 1:55
  where they had gone. She simply gave silent thanks
• 1:57
  that they were no longer after her.
• 1:59
  Perhaps she had blundered through some territorial area or
• 2:02
  disturbed them while feeding. Her mind struggled to
• 2:05
  rationalize the attack as she neared the jetty.
• 2:08
  Then she saw the fox. It was crouched down at the near
• 2:13
  end of the jetty, as if guarding it.
• 2:15
  As Perry approached, the Fox's head snapped upwards and it
• 2:18
  stared directly at her. Saliva dripped from the side of
• 2:21
  his jaws as it opened its mouth slightly at the sight of the
• 2:24
  girl. Its pallid eyes gleamed through
• 2:27
  the mist and at that moment Perry realised what she faced.
• 2:31
  They talked about the inspection spreading into the food chain,
• 2:34
  the fox. The hours too were infected, but
• 2:37
  they were out to stop Perry. Reaching the main island of
• 2:39
  Dorsal, she dumped back into the shadows of the trees.
• 2:43
  She almost left it too late. The fox snapped at her heels as
• 2:47
  Perry leapt over it. Almost.
• 2:50
  Then she landed at the edge of the jetty, already running,
• 2:52
  sprinting for the nearest boat. No, not the nearest, the next
• 2:57
  one, the one with the motor. You can see now.
• 3:00
  Even as the moon receded behind the mist again.
• 3:03
  Perry skipped the rope from around the stumpy pole of the
• 3:05
  jetty and jumped down into the boat, feeling it lurched beneath
• 3:09
  her as she landed, as she rocked with it and almost fell, The fox
• 3:13
  was racing towards her. This tree of war was running
• 3:16
  too, Dave Maston. Stumbling after her, Perry
• 3:19
  grabbed the motor starter and pulled.
• 3:22
  She pulled so hard she'd almost lost her balance.
• 3:25
  The fox jumped was in the air as the motor caught.
• 3:28
  The blades of the propeller were in the water already and they
• 3:31
  bit immediately into the water. The boat lurched, tipping
• 3:34
  backwards as the prow lifted and the whole boat shot forwards.
• 3:38
  The Fox's front paws scrabbled on the stern and the boat
• 3:40
  scuffling, desperate to gain purchase.
• 3:43
  It managed to pull itself up onto the edge of the boat, eyes
• 3:45
  glinting cruel and pale with anticipation.
• 3:48
  It's jaws open wide just as Perry slammed the blade of the
• 3:52
  oar into it, sending the fox howling into the water.
• 3:56
  There was precious little moonlight, and what there was
• 3:59
  served mainly to illuminate the swirls of mist that clung to the
• 4:02
  surface of the water. But beneath the smoky texture of
• 4:06
  the night, Perry could make out a dark shape circling in the
• 4:09
  water. Barely more than a long shadow.
• 4:12
  It undulated through the sea, coming round in a wide arc
• 4:15
  before hurtling towards the boat.
• 4:17
  A long, thin tail became visible, thrashing it through
• 4:20
  the water as the creature attacked again.
• 4:23
  Then a triangular fin sliced from the mist, and Perry
• 4:27
  realized it was a shark. There was water in the bottom of
• 4:31
  the boat now, sloshing over the side as the whole thing shook
• 4:34
  and trembled beneath the onslaught.
• 4:36
  One of the planks that made-up the floor of the boat was loose,
• 4:39
  shaken out of place, and more water was pushing up through the
• 4:42
  gap, washing around Perry's feet.
• 4:44
  She watched for the shark to be at the furthest point away and
• 4:46
  then jumped. Perry hoped, prayed, that the
• 4:49
  motor would distract the shark from any noise.
• 4:53
  She broke the ice cold surface, spitting and coughing water,
• 4:57
  checked her bearings and struck out towards the dark mass in the
• 5:00
  distance. Then, suddenly, it seemed she
• 5:03
  was there. She stepped out into the hall.
• 5:06
  A light was burning somewhere upstairs, so there was a pale
• 5:09
  glow of illumination in the hall.
• 5:11
  Enough to make out the door to the room where the phone was.
• 5:14
  Enough to make out the shape of the figure coming down the
• 5:17
  stairs, Enough to see it was Liz Trefill, her hair glowing like
• 5:21
  fire in the dim light. Enough lied to that when Perry
• 5:26
  turned, she could see Dave Mazdan's bloodied head was all
• 5:29
  but healed, the bone at the back of his skull knitted together in
• 5:32
  jagged binding of white that zigzagged through his matted
• 5:36
  hair. He stepped towards her.
• 5:39
  Perry did not stop to think. She slammed the door to the bar
• 5:42
  shut, felt it connect with Mazdan on the other side, heard
• 5:45
  him stumble backwards and fall against the table or chairs.
• 5:49
  Liz was coming down the stairs fast, racing Perry for the door
• 5:52
  to the private room. She got there first, turning in
• 5:55
  triumph, smiling. Her teeth caught the light,
• 5:58
  almost glowing as Perry put her head down and barged into her.
• 6:02
  Perry's shoulder hit Liz in the stomach.
• 6:04
  The wind went out of her in an explosion of breath, and Liz
• 6:07
  sacked. Perry pulled away from the door,
• 6:10
  scrabbling for the handle as Liz slumped to the floor.
• 6:13
  Perry opened the door, but Liz had a hand on her ankle,
• 6:16
  squeezing, pulling, dragging. Her smile was fixed on her face.
• 6:21
  Her eyes were wide ovals of white, staring blankly at Perry.
• 6:25
  Perry slipped, her leg pulled under her.
• 6:27
  She was face down, head and shoulders through the doorway,
• 6:29
  struggling to crawl forwards towards the phone.
• 6:32
  She could see the phone. Her hands scrambled for the
• 6:35
  stone flags, her nails clattered on the floor.
• 6:38
  Liz was crawling over her, dragging herself up Perry's leg,
• 6:42
  nails biting into the flesh through her clothing.
• 6:45
  With an effort Perry managed to roll onto her back.
• 6:47
  She could see the woman clawing her way up towards her face.
• 6:50
  She shook her leg, trying to break free, but without success,
• 6:54
  and behind lit she could see the door to the bar opening up again
• 6:57
  as Mazdan came to help the young woman.
• 6:59
  Desperate, frightened, and with a renewed sense of urgency,
• 7:03
  Perry pulled back her free leg. Then she kicked violently,
• 7:07
  viciously, at Lizzie's face. The smile broke, blackened holes
• 7:11
  appearing in it as Perry kicked again and again.
• 7:14
  The grip on her leg loosened and Perry rolled clear, her leg
• 7:18
  bloodied from the nails and from the cuts and gashes in Lizzie's
• 7:22
  freckled face. The pain in her leg had
• 7:24
  subsided, The bleeding stopped. She could feel the muscles
• 7:27
  knitting back together and shuddered.
• 7:29
  So she thought about how Mast and Skull had also knitted back
• 7:32
  together, but with no brain inside, just a cavity, a hold.
• 7:38
  But she could not wait for her nails.
• 7:39
  Scroll back, she thought as she tore back at the paper.
• 7:42
  Diamonds have gone slide. Through the.
• 7:45
  Air in a tortured wrenching of leading.
• 7:47
  Several of the tiny pains exploded as they hit the floor.
• 7:51
  Perry screamed. The woman was shouting down the
• 7:54
  phone asking what was going on. The hands were reaching in down
• 7:58
  for the phone. The handset was ripped from
• 8:01
  Perry's hand as she tried to shout back, the cold wire
• 8:04
  connecting it to the box to house the main body of the phone
• 8:07
  ripped free, dangling by Perry's face as the hands reached in at
• 8:10
  her. Mazda's face loomed close to
• 8:14
  hers, upside down, lopsided as he leaned through the shattered
• 8:18
  remains of the window. As his clammy hands grabbed for
• 8:21
  her through the shattered window, Perry sprang away, half
• 8:24
  rolling and half crawling across the room.
• 8:27
  She kept going, a bundle of frantic movement, until she
• 8:29
  collided with one of the uprights of the fireplace.
• 8:32
  She sat with her back to the fireplace, watching in shock and
• 8:35
  horror as Mazda leaved himself with the remains of the window.
• 8:39
  Slowly, she pushed herself upright, her back pressed
• 8:42
  against the fireplace. Mazda's head and shoulders were
• 8:45
  inside the room now as he fed himself through negotiating the
• 8:48
  mass of tangled leading that clung like a fisherman's net to
• 8:52
  the window. As she stood upright, Perry's
• 8:55
  shoulder connected with the Mantel shelf.
• 8:57
  She gave a cry of surprise and slight pain.
• 9:00
  Something fell to the floor, landing at her feet with a thud.
• 9:03
  At the same moment Mazda finally flopped forwards into the room.
• 9:07
  He made no effort to break his foot, mirroring the cardboard
• 9:11
  boxes. It fell, the box at her feet,
• 9:14
  the lid off, the flare pistol inside, dull metal lit by the
• 9:19
  flicker of a distant oil lamp. Perry grabbed the pistol as she
• 9:22
  ran for the door and dragged the table away.
• 9:25
  She had no idea if it was loaded.
• 9:27
  She had no idea how it worked. She had no idea if she could or
• 9:31
  would use it. Behind her, Mazdan's footsteps
• 9:35
  were heavy on the bare boards of the floor.
• 9:37
  As she dragged the table clear. Perry turned.
• 9:40
  She found Mazdan close behind her, reaching out, leaning
• 9:43
  towards her. The lamplight washed around his
• 9:46
  image so that he shimmered, almost unreal when she brought
• 9:50
  the flare pistol up. That was unreal, too, as unreal
• 9:54
  as the pressure of her finger on the trigger, as the click of the
• 9:57
  hammer, as the whoosh as the gun fired, as the thudding jolt of
• 10:01
  the recoil. The flare hit Mazdam full in the
• 10:05
  chest from just feet away, knocking him backwards, hurling
• 10:09
  him across the room in a staggering, stumbling backward
• 10:12
  run, collapsed in a heap, hands battering at his chest as the
• 10:16
  orange yellow tail of the flare poured into his clothing.
• 10:21
  Then, abruptly, his whole torso erupted into a red fireball that
• 10:25
  burned into Fairy's retina. She closed her eyes tight as she
• 10:29
  turned away, but she could see the imprint of the last image,
• 10:32
  could still see Mazdan's flailing body, engulfed by the
• 10:35
  waves of fire that rippled and ran across and around his body.
• 10:47
  Welcome back to Hamster Book Club.
• 10:49
  I'm John John Arnold, and with me, as ever, I have three Titans
• 10:54
  of Doctor Who literary podcasting.
• 10:57
  I have the world's foremost authority on Doctor Who covers.
• 11:01
  Mr. Andrew Batty. Hello.
• 11:04
  Hello. I have a man so brave, so
• 11:09
  without fear, that he will tackle Freddie Mercury at
• 11:12
  karaoke. Mr. Luke Sims Jenkins.
• 11:18
  Hello. As long as he's go.
• 11:19
  For it, Luke, sing it. There you go.
• 11:25
  And battling to plague to be with us tonight.
• 11:29
  Rising from his sick bed like Lazarus, I have the chief
• 11:34
  hamster himself, Mr. Joe Ford. I crawled out of my grave with
• 11:39
  half my skull missing just to be here with you guys.
• 11:44
  You're looking very good now, I have to say.
• 11:46
  I feel like shit but. Thank you.
• 11:49
  Well, we're we're going to cheer Joe up tonight because we've
• 11:54
  gone to a selection that he might love being a Colin
• 11:57
  Connoisseur. Andrew, why don't you tell the
• 12:01
  listening audience what we are doing tonight?
• 12:04
  We are doing the creepy and gothic and quite violent grave
• 12:14
  matter from looking at the publishing page.
• 12:19
  The year 2000, the turn of the Millennium.
• 12:24
  Vintage year, Yes, by then, future range editor Justin
• 12:29
  Richards. And I think again a man who is
• 12:33
  quite under discussed on these podcasts probably given he's
• 12:36
  consistent, filled in loaded books, etcetera and basically
• 12:42
  every writer I've talked to work with him reigns back to him.
• 12:45
  So it'll be an interesting call on that.
• 12:47
  Do you know? Right, there's only been one of
• 12:50
  given how many Justin Richard books there are.
• 12:52
  There's only been 1 Justin Richard books discussed on this
• 12:56
  part, and it was with Andrew and Luke we did the same time.
• 13:00
  That's it. That's this one.
• 13:02
  So there's plenty more to come. Oh there's plenty of interesting
• 13:05
  ones I think, particularly the the arc heavy books that he
• 13:08
  won't. Oh, John, before you take us
• 13:11
  into the next question, can I reveal something to all three of
• 13:15
  you, please? Oh, it's nothing too exciting.
• 13:20
  It's not. It's safe for work then, yeah.
• 13:22
  Guess what the most listened to Hamster Book Club episode has
• 13:27
  been in the last six months? Go on, have a guess.
• 13:32
  Has it been the ghost of en space?
• 13:33
  What? Kidding me?
• 13:38
  Sorry, Luke. So more people than ever got to
• 13:40
  feel my pain. That's all right.
• 13:42
  It was popular, I know. In the words of Andrew, people
• 13:45
  love hot trash. They also love Grumpy Luke.
• 13:50
  Let's face it, it's. What we're here for.
• 13:55
  Totally. So yeah, with the nature of this
• 13:59
  book, when when we were talking about it and coming up with a
• 14:02
  nice break question, Joe came up with an idea about about it.
• 14:06
  It's essentially this is a violent, a fairly violent book
• 14:11
  in places. So the question that Joe posed
• 14:15
  us was how far can you go with violence in Doctor Who?
• 14:20
  And is there such a thing as too violent?
• 14:23
  So. Luke.
• 14:25
  Why don't you take us away? Kind of.
• 14:29
  Kind of this is going to sound weird.
• 14:31
  I don't like violence that much, I don't like it all in real
• 14:33
  life, but I feel like a lot of more recent books that I read
• 14:39
  aren't violent enough. Or at least there's that vibe in
• 14:46
  my head of this is fine, but this doesn't have any balls, I
• 14:51
  guess is what is more what I mean.
• 14:55
  So I don't I don't need every Doctor Who book I read to
• 14:58
  feature violence or something like that.
• 15:00
  But it can keep you on your toes and and things like that.
• 15:03
  And if you're going to write a horror novel and Miss Cook put
• 15:09
  horror in it, you know, that's you got to do that.
• 15:14
  That's like, otherwise it's not going to work.
• 15:17
  I think the books, they pushed everything too far, at least in
• 15:22
  some degrees. Like they probably pushed
• 15:24
  sexiness too far on, on like on occasion.
• 15:27
  Yeah, violence. They they definitely went to
• 15:30
  places that they probably shouldn't have gone as well.
• 15:33
  But I'm I'm kind of that's the thing about these books.
• 15:36
  You didn't, you were either going to get something
• 15:39
  traditional as hell or something that was going to push things a
• 15:41
  bit. And maybe that's what I miss
• 15:43
  about the books today. None of them really push things
• 15:48
  a little bit, not even a tad, because we've got a they're all
• 15:53
  aimed all the books now, all of them seem to be aimed at this
• 15:56
  general audience being younger people for some reason.
• 16:01
  And I don't are younger people. No one's paying $36 for shooty
• 16:07
  gala books. I, I did it because of the book
• 16:11
  club. But if I didn't, I would have
• 16:13
  seen that on the shelf and been like, you know what?
• 16:17
  I can wait until I maybe see one of those at an op shop or
• 16:19
  something, you know? Or wait for the paperback
• 16:21
  version because $36, I don't see any kid wanting that.
• 16:26
  Are you saying oh if the front cover of say Ruby red had been
• 16:29
  dripped with viscera then you would have been straight to the
• 16:32
  shop buying it? Well, I have to.
• 16:35
  You have to think like, I know you like season 22 where this
• 16:38
  book set Joe, and that's a pretty violent season.
• 16:42
  Kids love that shit. I remember seeing, I remember
• 16:45
  being 10 when I saw Earth Shock and I thought it was the most
• 16:47
  awesome thing I've ever seen. And yes, it was also that age
• 16:52
  when I saw Warriors of the Deep. So I was like, this is also
• 16:54
  really awesome. I know it's it's pretty shit,
• 16:56
  but kids love that stuff. They love a bit of horror.
• 17:00
  They love a bit of things. And maybe I was, I was reading a
• 17:04
  lot of these when I was, you know, teenager to a young adult.
• 17:09
  I mean, I'm still reading them now, but when I was a kid, those
• 17:12
  books had this thing of like, wow, they've put this these in
• 17:15
  Doctor Who book. So now that I'm older, I can see
• 17:19
  what they're doing a little bit more.
• 17:20
  I'm not, maybe I'm not. The titillation doesn't work for
• 17:24
  me as much anymore. Now it's like, all right.
• 17:25
  Does it work in the book itself? I think a lot of the times it
• 17:28
  does. I think this book being tried as
• 17:30
  hell maybe pushes things maybe a tiny bit too far.
• 17:34
  But I'm glad, I'm glad it went there.
• 17:37
  I'm glad it did something because it's a very traditional
• 17:39
  book, and what you want with something that's traditional was
• 17:43
  maybe maybe mix it up a bit, maybe have a few clever little
• 17:47
  twists or something or do something quite shocking that
• 17:51
  might take you out of your brain going, oh, grave matter.
• 17:54
  Yeah, that's traditional style. No, you're not going to think
• 17:56
  like that. You're going to see grave
• 17:57
  matter. Oh, that's the scene where the
• 17:58
  dude does the. Oh shit.
• 18:01
  Yeah, you were, you know, so sometimes.
• 18:04
  We both said something in the chat.
• 18:06
  That scene stayed with us after watching this book, and I'll bet
• 18:11
  we've all got a moment in this book where we're like, Oh no, I
• 18:14
  won't forget that in a hurry. So I, I think violence can be
• 18:19
  used quite well to, to make a book even more memorable or
• 18:24
  shocking and things like that. And maybe we need a little more
• 18:28
  of it. Maybe that's what that's.
• 18:31
  Yeah. What you're saying is you resent
• 18:32
  those Australian senses from so many years ago.
• 18:35
  I'm denying you with all that lovely, lovely who ridings
• 18:38
  that's. Right.
• 18:40
  Thank God they took it out though, right?
• 18:41
  Otherwise we wouldn't have anything from some of those
• 18:43
  stories. Thank God they're a bunch of
• 18:45
  pansies. Andrew, where do you stand on
• 18:51
  this? I think it's a bit of a tricky.
• 18:54
  Bomb because, well, I think I think firstly, you can go
• 18:58
  further with violence in a book than you can on screen, even for
• 19:03
  books that are for kids, because it's kind of, you know, it's in
• 19:06
  the it's in the imagination of of the reader.
• 19:09
  So I think you can push things a little bit further.
• 19:12
  And I think, I think I agree with Luke that some of the sort
• 19:15
  of Doctor Who that's been very kind of like brand neutered over
• 19:20
  the over the past few decades could push things a little bit
• 19:24
  further. And I think sometimes the TV
• 19:26
  show feels like it's more daring in some ways than the books and
• 19:29
  the spin offs sometimes are because obviously they are
• 19:34
  controlled more in that in that way.
• 19:36
  So they can't take risks in the same way that the TV show can.
• 19:40
  I think with with the 90s eras book, it's like this weird thing
• 19:43
  of like Doctor Who's obviously a children's slash family
• 19:48
  property. And then you've got these books
• 19:51
  which are aimed at a an adult audience, which is a weird thing
• 19:55
  to start with. So they're they're going to be
• 19:58
  pitching things for to a more mature audience.
• 20:00
  But I think they probably did go too far sometimes.
• 20:03
  And it's the thing of a lot of. The new audience to talk to who
• 20:10
  at that time would have been kids who were watching it on UK
• 20:13
  Gold or VHS, which is what I was.
• 20:17
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:18
  And then the books, you kind of get to them and I think I think
• 20:21
  kind of the length of the books kind of keeps the the child
• 20:24
  audience away because they're just a little bit daunting for a
• 20:27
  kid. But when you look at some of the
• 20:29
  stuff that was in there and you think like, you know, a kid,
• 20:32
  right? I remember in our library when I
• 20:34
  was a kid, they had a copy of Lucifer Rising in the
• 20:38
  children's, which I got out like quite a few times, but just
• 20:43
  never could read it because it was just not at my reading
• 20:46
  level. So I mean, I think I feel like
• 20:51
  the level of violence and the spin off should kind of match
• 20:55
  what the actual ethos of the program is.
• 20:57
  But then having said that, if you did it in that way, you
• 21:01
  wouldn't get books like interference, which the violence
• 21:04
  is integral to that story. So if you said like all the
• 21:08
  violence has to be sort of like 12A rating, you'd never get
• 21:12
  that. But I don't know, maybe maybe
• 21:13
  they just needed a more happy medium where it was like, keep
• 21:17
  it sort of 12A unless you've got a really valid artistic reason
• 21:21
  reason that you're going to push it further.
• 21:24
  And yeah, I think I agree with Luke that in Grave Matter there
• 21:28
  is some stuff that I don't think needed to be as explicit as it
• 21:33
  is thinking about, you know, a 10 year old could have picked
• 21:37
  this up. There's some stuff in there
• 21:39
  that, you know, like you wouldn't want your 10 year old
• 21:41
  reading. So I don't know, it's a bit of a
• 21:43
  weird thorny issue. And it's the stuff that always
• 21:45
  comes up with these 90s books of like 90s slash 2000 books of
• 21:50
  Yeah, like it's yeah, yeah, complex.
• 21:54
  That's my answer. And Joe, as the resident
• 22:00
  connoisseur of violence and gore of Season 22, how do you stand
• 22:05
  on it? Connoisseur of violence What and
• 22:07
  it's. All a bit about nasty.
• 22:09
  Litton's hands come. On look, Andrew has been to my
• 22:12
  house. I have no dungeon of pain here.
• 22:16
  That I saw. That's right.
• 22:17
  I was. Just thinking there now.
• 22:19
  Is what's in the basement. You didn't come upstairs, did
• 22:21
  you? You know, I would have loved
• 22:24
  this age 10. I absolutely would have lapped
• 22:28
  this up because age 10, I was watching like season 22 and all
• 22:32
  that hand crushing and cannibals and nappies and all of that
• 22:36
  nonsense. What's going on in that season
• 22:38
  now? I think they absolutely crossed
• 22:40
  the line. But age 10, God, I would have
• 22:42
  loved this. I think I'm a bit of a
• 22:44
  contradiction in terms because I do think the books did push it,
• 22:50
  but I do love that they pushed it because I don't think there's
• 22:53
  other periods of doctors who where we went this far.
• 22:55
  And I started sort of thinking about books that really went too
• 23:00
  far. And I think in the New
• 23:02
  Adventures, the the climax of Damaged Goods is really
• 23:09
  horrifically, explicitly violent at the tail end of a book full
• 23:14
  of miserable, unhappy people. And the ending that the most of
• 23:19
  them get is that their heads are turned inside out and they're
• 23:22
  basically, you know, murdered horribly via alien cocaine,
• 23:26
  which is, you know, maybe a bit too much for Doctor Who.
• 23:30
  And then and I read. Red cans.
• 23:37
  How did we get from there to there?
• 23:39
  I don't know. Russell T Davis, obviously so.
• 23:43
  And I think that's far, far too far.
• 23:45
  And I don't, I think it actually stops being Doctor Who damaged
• 23:48
  goods. And it's, it's something uglier
• 23:51
  and, and a bit more depressing. And then I thought about the BBC
• 23:55
  books and I think maybe Combat Rock is about as far as they
• 23:59
  pushed it even more. And I think it's not long after
• 24:02
  this, isn't it? It's not too far after this.
• 24:08
  Isn't. It, that literally is there's
• 24:11
  visa on the cover of that of a skelet, a bloody skeleton draped
• 24:14
  across a tree and it's full of, you know, rapists and people
• 24:20
  being eaten, horrible people being ripped apart and all that.
• 24:25
  And oddly, I don't object to that, even though that's in a, a
• 24:28
  second Doctor Jamie and Victoria book, you know, obviously where
• 24:32
  they're at home. And it is brutal.
• 24:36
  And, and for some reason, maybe maybe that was just so
• 24:39
  ridiculously violent that I was like, OK, just go with it.
• 24:43
  It's absurd, but here we are. And then something like
• 24:46
  Adventurous on Henrietta St. which has scenes at the
• 24:49
  beginning where like a big fat politician is having sex with a
• 24:55
  woman, a whore, and then a ape comes into the room and tears
• 25:01
  him apart. And I'm like, what's happening
• 25:03
  is this Doctor Who? But I don't love that they did
• 25:07
  it. Like, I don't like it half the
• 25:09
  time, but I'm really pleased they went there.
• 25:13
  And then I'm pleased the TV show came back and they stopped
• 25:15
  because like, I don't think some writers, Lawrence Miles,
• 25:19
  obviously, Mick Lewis and a few others, Justin Richards clearly
• 25:23
  had a lot of fun in this, doing that sort of playful horror.
• 25:27
  So yeah, I agree with Andrew. It's a really complex question
• 25:31
  that I pose and I can't answer in any way, shape or form.
• 25:35
  I really like it. And as a kid I loved it.
• 25:40
  Now when I want a 10 year old reading some of this shit, no
• 25:44
  way. It's horrible.
• 25:46
  But I don't know, it's all part of that wilderness experience,
• 25:50
  isn't it? The same islands and the
• 25:52
  swearing and the fake swearing and all of that.
• 25:56
  It sort of speaks to how little anyone gave a shit about doctor
• 25:59
  at the time that, you know, there was that furore around
• 26:02
  time Worm Genesis where there's like that Sun article and stuff,
• 26:06
  but it's like that's nothing on what came later.
• 26:09
  And like it just passed with no no controversy whatsoever.
• 26:13
  Like, you know, if the Daily Mail wanted to like put the boot
• 26:16
  into the BBC at the time, they could have just picked up
• 26:19
  damaged goods or interference or count combat rock.
• 26:22
  But yeah, just no, nobody cared. And like, no kids were act like
• 26:27
  apart from like a few weird kids like me, like no kids were
• 26:31
  picking these up. No parents were like reading
• 26:33
  them at bedtime and it's never really became an issue.
• 26:36
  So why, why would you sort of yeah, like set it to a child
• 26:41
  level when they're that child audience doesn't really exist.
• 26:44
  You're our kind of weird kid though, Andrew, And actually one
• 26:48
  of one of the books in your top 10 was Anachrophobia, and that
• 26:52
  is brutal in places. There's a scene in that where
• 26:55
  Ken did a reading of someone sort of slashing open their
• 26:58
  wrists and all cogs and words and things coming out.
• 27:01
  And it's, it is really like explicitly graphic.
• 27:05
  So yeah, I love it. I absolutely love it.
• 27:08
  And I especially loved it in this book.
• 27:11
  Or. Horribly violent it got the more
• 27:15
  I was running, you know, racing through the pages.
• 27:18
  In fact, I read the last three chapters again and I was like,
• 27:20
  yeah, I love it even more a second time.
• 27:22
  So yeah, more brutal, horrible murders in Doctor Who, please.
• 27:26
  I, I listened to a power of three where Paul Mars was
• 27:30
  talking about sick building, but he also talked about like Doctor
• 27:34
  Who books as a whole. And he said something that I've,
• 27:39
  I've felt for ages, which is all right, You've got these books,
• 27:43
  the new series adventures that get into this audience.
• 27:45
  You've got the path from books that again to this audience and
• 27:48
  you've got he goes, why can't we do the books like we did in the
• 27:53
  Wilderness Hero as well? And I'm like, yeah, if you've
• 27:58
  got a family audience, does everything have to be aimed at
• 28:01
  the family? Because I feel like a lot of
• 28:03
  Doctor Who merch can be skewed to this mythical family
• 28:08
  audience, whereas. Yeah.
• 28:10
  I mean they did a run of Torch with books didn't they
• 28:12
  alongside? The Doctor Who.
• 28:14
  Books written by, you know, Andy and the people like that.
• 28:17
  And they, they were really violent and they weren't afraid
• 28:20
  that the Doctor Who kids might not pick.
• 28:23
  Yeah. And.
• 28:24
  Also. I really don't think.
• 28:26
  Violence. It could be humour as well, like
• 28:28
  you've got Paul Mars, like if he was to do another one of these
• 28:31
  books, that's right. There might be some violence in
• 28:34
  it, but it would be some kind of really fun, magical, high camp
• 28:38
  kind of book. It's it's unfiltered in that
• 28:40
  way. And I don't think that doing
• 28:43
  doing books for adults means it has to be full of violence and
• 28:47
  sex. It's just about the complexity
• 28:48
  of the storytelling and the urity of the book and what some
• 28:51
  what you're dealing with it doesn't.
• 28:53
  And there's loads of of these, these era books, the the 90s and
• 28:58
  naughties ones, which are mature in terms of their storytelling,
• 29:02
  but you know, could still be and have been reprinted during this
• 29:06
  era. So I think there's definitely
• 29:08
  this market for longer, more complex storytelling, which
• 29:14
  doesn't need to be sort of going against the brand of Doctor.
• 29:18
  Who surprisingly, given the tone of his like 8th Doctor books,
• 29:26
  Paul Mars's new series adventure was really quite violent.
• 29:31
  Especially like there was a bit where a console exploded and the
• 29:36
  glass literally shattered somebody's face and there was
• 29:39
  blood running and there was a fight for the death.
• 29:41
  And it was, I was like, ah, but the kids love this.
• 29:45
  They give a shit about the last dodo.
• 29:47
  They want this, you know. Yeah, I love it too.
• 29:50
  It was like The Shining, that book, but like The Shining mixed
• 29:52
  with Hal from 2001 or. It's a disaster movie.
• 29:57
  You need that violence in there. And I think the important thing
• 30:01
  is. And the Doomsday Machine.
• 30:02
  It's a type of story you're telling, I think in, you know,
• 30:04
  in a normal Paul Mars book, in that kind of the high fantasy
• 30:07
  camp thing that he wrote for, you know, Scarlet Empress, Blue
• 30:11
  Angel, etcetera. Some something like the vantage.
• 30:14
  It would be so out of place it with jar.
• 30:15
  It would be horrible. It wouldn't work.
• 30:18
  But if you're, you know, if you're doing this season 22
• 30:21
  story, if you're doing a Hinchcliffe story, you're a
• 30:23
  story. It fits.
• 30:26
  You know, it's yeah, Pyramids of Mars has that poacher being
• 30:30
  crushed on screen. That's quite that's horrible.
• 30:34
  Buy 2 pairs of tits. Yeah, yeah.
• 30:38
  Mummy boobs. Yeah, he he's obviously kept
• 30:41
  sexual so it was the way he'd have wanted to go.
• 30:47
  Say, mummy boobs that honestly, you're so straight, Luke.
• 30:50
  Mummy boobs. But.
• 30:55
  I'm very mature. The problem with kind of
• 30:57
  violence in the modern Who books is that yes, the ranges are
• 31:01
  delineated. And I know for instance, our
• 31:03
  local war zone stops some in the children's section and some in
• 31:07
  the adult section. But it doesn't want the kind of
• 31:11
  headlines, you know, like my kid read a Doctor Who book and was
• 31:14
  traumatized for life. Whereas, you know, if you go
• 31:18
  into torture with, you know, what you're getting.
• 31:19
  It's a more deliberately adult focused range anyway, but yeah,
• 31:25
  it's. And you can read books.
• 31:27
  Behind the sofa too, damn it. Did you want you as a big fan of
• 31:32
  the new Adventures as they were covered?
• 31:34
  You must love a bit of this, really.
• 31:36
  What? Well, the thing was Virgin were
• 31:39
  always trying to get the stocked in the science fiction section
• 31:43
  rather than the kids section where the targets had been.
• 31:45
  So they were where they wanted to push things more than it's
• 31:48
  you know, you know, if there's a Jim boy from a novel coming,
• 31:51
  lots of nasty things are going to happen.
• 31:53
  My God, parasites, you know, that loose from rising and
• 31:57
  invention. When that space corridor
• 31:59
  snapped, it's like Jesus. But yeah, it was again, these
• 32:05
  are the wiltness books are written for this kind of fan
• 32:09
  audience generally, you know, mid teens and upwards.
• 32:12
  They're not. They don't want that child
• 32:15
  audience except for the weird kids, or as I like to call them,
• 32:19
  the cool kids. I like to call them me and
• 32:22
  Andrew. Exactly.
• 32:24
  You see, So yeah, I think it's a matter of knowing your audience.
• 32:30
  And I do like that they would push it as far as they went.
• 32:33
  I do think something like Combat Rock does push it a little too
• 32:38
  far, which I didn't kind of mind in ranks, but I did possibly
• 32:42
  because it's the second Doctor, Victoria, Jamie.
• 32:45
  I don't mind the, you know, characters being dumped in
• 32:48
  different wills because you can get an interesting kind of clash
• 32:51
  of tone and the team there. But that it was just like, no,
• 32:56
  this is just wrong. It's, you know, do you?
• 32:58
  Remember that bit in rags when Joe pukes up all the maggots at
• 33:02
  the wrong? I'll just keep reading that
• 33:04
  going. What happened to you, Mick
• 33:06
  Lewis? Like who hurt you?
• 33:08
  Why would you do? That to Joe Brown.
• 33:11
  Sounds awesome. Coming to a book club near you?
• 33:17
  That is on the list, Yeah. I, I got a copy of it not long
• 33:24
  ago and I've been, I've been saving it from when we
• 33:26
  eventually cover it. Combat rocks a little tricky to
• 33:29
  get, but Rags was very fairly easy.
• 33:32
  So yeah, basically context of story would be my idea.
• 33:35
  And maybe you know, if you're pushing it, but not if you're
• 33:39
  pushing it right throughout a novel like Mick Lewis does,
• 33:42
  deliberately kind of run your faces.
• 33:44
  Well, I'll tell you what was the thing, but the one that was
• 33:46
  stuck to my mind was in the body snatches you're going on.
• 33:50
  You think it's the 8th Doctor vampire silence, which aren't
• 33:52
  too violent, aren't too bad. And then it was just like it was
• 33:56
  just a normal budget. It was just someone had glass
• 33:58
  ground in their face and that always struck to yeah, that
• 34:02
  feels out of place. Lovely.
• 34:05
  I know, I know. Morris is a horror, right?
• 34:06
  About his child. Yeah.
• 34:07
  He's just just maybe turn that one down in this kind of book.
• 34:10
  Take me if, you know, it's those Noila Buffini commissioned early
• 34:13
  books. I think so.
• 34:15
  When he did a newest Tears adventure when he did Forever
• 34:18
  Autumn, that had that lovely sort of goosebumpsy horror feel
• 34:21
  to it, didn't it? Oh, it's good.
• 34:23
  The the Jack O Lantern, the pumpkins on the cover that was.
• 34:26
  Gorgeous. Yeah.
• 34:27
  Real nice atmosphere to that. So yes, it's terrible to be
• 34:32
  sitting on the fence to go, but it's all context, isn't it?
• 34:37
  No one's got an answer to this question.
• 34:41
  Thorny is the answer. I'm glad I'm not the editors.
• 34:44
  Well, actually you. Know the other one I was
• 34:47
  thinking about which is super violent is Belle Tempest, where
• 34:51
  there's tons and tons of scenes of planets being destroyed and
• 34:56
  huge crowds. You know, thousands of people
• 34:59
  panicked and being murdered horribly.
• 35:01
  And I remember reading that thinking, I just don't feel
• 35:05
  anything for you, Pete. It was on such a scale, the
• 35:07
  murder and the horror was on such a scale.
• 35:09
  I was like, yeah, you know, and yeah, I'll read something like
• 35:13
  the Deadstone Memorial, which is 1 family going through really
• 35:16
  horrific things and I really feel for them.
• 35:19
  So sometimes I think scale is key as well.
• 35:22
  Trevor Back Tondale reads those horror stories well at the back
• 35:25
  end of the EDA's. Really.
• 35:27
  Some kind of puking up worms? What is he about puking up
• 35:30
  insects? And he?
• 35:32
  Didn't eat as well. He's like, there's like this
• 35:34
  insect mouth thing happening with the BBC books.
• 35:39
  Did anyone puke up anything in grave matter?
• 35:41
  I can't remember. Back to somewhere.
• 35:45
  I think it was the only thing that didn't happen in Grave.
• 35:47
  Matter. Or returned.
• 35:49
  No, it's it's more about material going into the body in
• 35:52
  one way or another, I think. I take your pardon.
• 35:57
  I think we should explain this the listener.
• 35:59
  Anyway, Eddie, does anyone want to read the back of a blurb or
• 36:03
  should I do it? I don't mind.
• 36:07
  He's got the old boyfriend. All righty not.
• 36:10
  Well. Dorsal, a group of islands
• 36:14
  surrounded in fog, the community facing economic ruin and
• 36:19
  struggling to survive. Don't worry about Kenya job
• 36:22
  sake. By the way.
• 36:27
  When Christopher Sheldon buys the islands outright, the locals
• 36:30
  owe him a debt of thanks. They don't ask too many
• 36:33
  questions about what Sheldon and his friends are up to.
• 36:35
  They don't care that he seldom benches into the one small
• 36:38
  village. They don't ask why he's so fit
• 36:40
  to spend such a large amount of money, or where he got it from.
• 36:45
  It's. Tommy was.
• 36:48
  There, even when the first few people died, there's an
• 36:50
  assumption that it's down to natural causes, allergic
• 36:52
  reactions, and especially variant strain of strain of flu,
• 36:56
  a tragic fishing accident. And if the sheep and chickens
• 36:59
  are behaving oddly, that's hardly a worry.
• 37:03
  No, if there's anything to Reg suspicion, it's the arrival of
• 37:05
  retired civil servant Sir Edward Baddesley.
• 37:08
  But generally life goes on with his little triumphs and
• 37:11
  upsetting tragedies until the two strangers.
• 37:15
  Arrive, look on the cover. It looks like they've got a pair
• 37:19
  of ghosts. Doesn't it does.
• 37:22
  Yeah. Yes.
• 37:24
  Have they treated that or is it just?
• 37:27
  Too sure, you know. But you know, given how
• 37:29
  colourful they were in season 22, it's quite pleasingly muted,
• 37:33
  isn't it? Yeah.
• 37:34
  It's interesting. Well, where are we going to
• 37:38
  start? So I'm going to going to ask
• 37:40
  what's everyone's kind of history with this book?
• 37:42
  Had you read it before and what were your thoughts on it?
• 37:46
  Show you've given us on this one.
• 37:48
  Me, yeah. Oh hello, well I've read my
• 37:50
  review for this because unfortunately my phone broke
• 37:53
  yesterday or the day before yesterday and I've got no notes.
• 37:56
  I took reams of notes on this fucking book and now I'm
• 37:59
  literally doing it all from memory.
• 38:00
  So I read my review and I was going, hey, I still agree with
• 38:03
  all of that. So fortunately I had some
• 38:04
  reference material. I loved it.
• 38:07
  I really liked it back in the day.
• 38:08
  Mind you, I was a big fan of Justin Richards like even his
• 38:12
  like pot boilers, even his mediocre books.
• 38:16
  He's such a reliable writer. We said this isn't we when we
• 38:19
  did what's it called? Sansa time.
• 38:22
  He he he sort of delivers an average book or a great book.
• 38:27
  I don't think he really delivers a poor book.
• 38:29
  And I think this is edging towards, it's not like the best
• 38:34
  that he's ever produced, but it's certainly very, very good
• 38:38
  and efficient at like, in the plotting in the way that I think
• 38:43
  only Justin Richards can is that sort of clean plotting the
• 38:46
  Terran Sticks does. And as the book was going on, I
• 38:50
  was like, yes, he's take that off.
• 38:51
  Yeah, he does. He does loads of mysteries in
• 38:53
  the first half and then he answers them all in a very
• 38:57
  satisfying way in the second-half via series of
• 39:00
  gruesome and grizzly set pieces, which got more absurd as it went
• 39:05
  along. Especially that chapter where
• 39:07
  Perry's in the boat. But we'll get there.
• 39:09
  I love it. I loved it then and I love it
• 39:13
  now. I've I've raced through this in
• 39:15
  no time at all. It's.
• 39:17
  Why not here, Andrew? Well, this was my first time
• 39:21
  reading Grave Matter. I think at the time these PDAs
• 39:26
  just didn't really interest me because I was, I was into the
• 39:29
  Edas and I was just like, oh, you know, PDAs fine, nice
• 39:32
  enough, just not really interested unless there was like
• 39:34
  an author who really sort of like stood out to me or an
• 39:37
  interesting sort of theme to it. So I came to it not really
• 39:41
  knowing anything about it, just sort of thinking, you know, just
• 39:43
  another EDAPDA. And yeah, I was really enjoyed
• 39:47
  it. Like the first half of it,
• 39:51
  thought it was a really strong just piece of just generic
• 39:55
  Doctor Who, but in a really good way.
• 39:58
  And I think writing generically good Doctor Who is actually a
• 40:02
  really difficult thing to do. And Justin Richardson is really
• 40:04
  skilled at it and delivers, you know, reliably good Doctor Who
• 40:09
  that doesn't do anything radical, but just tells a really
• 40:12
  good story and compelling story. I felt in the second-half, once
• 40:17
  you knew this, what was what was going on, what the solution to
• 40:20
  the mystery was, it sort of plotted a little bit of the sort
• 40:23
  of wrapping everything up and sort of we've moved from like
• 40:28
  creepy horror to like fussing about in a, in a scientific lab
• 40:33
  to the doctor for the doctor to kind of find the solution.
• 40:35
  So I felt like it lost a bit of momentum and it was a bit more
• 40:38
  sort of standard. So I kind of, and I sort of
• 40:44
  disagree a little bit with Joe about the plotting because I
• 40:47
  felt that there were bits that didn't really connect and that
• 40:52
  felt like they were sort of in there, but then didn't resolve
• 40:57
  or go the place that I've kind of wanted them to go to.
• 41:00
  I'm talking in vague terms because we'll get into it later,
• 41:02
  but mainly that the sort of fake out beginning of like that.
• 41:07
  You think that it's set in Victorian times to start with
• 41:10
  and then you find out that it's not.
• 41:11
  I thought that the that it would do more with that and it didn't.
• 41:16
  So I was just a bit confused by it and thought maybe this was
• 41:17
  written in a hurry and it just A&B weren't quite tied up.
• 41:22
  The way this one was written in a Yeah.
• 41:24
  And to say if it was written in a hurry, like it's very, very
• 41:27
  impressive because it's a a super tight story and very
• 41:31
  atmospheric and really well characterised.
• 41:33
  I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why I prefer the
• 41:35
  second-half to the first half because I it was just ticking
• 41:38
  off all of my fuck. I wish to see if Doctor and
• 41:41
  Perry had stuff like this in their era.
• 41:43
  One thing after another, Perry on the boat, the animals
• 41:46
  attacking her, the fight in the bar, the Doctor in the
• 41:49
  helicopter, like being playful in the climax, just all of that
• 41:52
  stuff where they're so proactive.
• 41:55
  I kind of felt like that was just treading water a little bit
• 41:57
  of like, oh shit, I've got another 50 pages to fill, got to
• 42:01
  get to that 240 mark. Oh, Perry's in a boat now.
• 42:05
  Oh, like now she's got to crawl up a sheet now.
• 42:07
  Oh, there's another zombie to get break in.
• 42:09
  Her boat being attacked by zombies?
• 42:11
  Come on. It was good fella, but I felt
• 42:13
  like, oh, we're just, we're just like playing for time here until
• 42:17
  Doctor. The Doctor makes the magic.
• 42:21
  I take a zombie shark every time.
• 42:23
  Zombie shark is do those. Sharks come from zombie sharks,
• 42:30
  my God. It's glorious.
• 42:32
  And Liv did this sake your pawn shop for violence in books.
• 42:37
  Now I'm reading something that's set like after vengeance on
• 42:40
  Varos sitting season 22. I have a certain expectation
• 42:45
  that there will be some violence in this, and it's true to the
• 42:49
  era. And yeah, I was, I was quite
• 42:51
  satisfied. In fact, some of the scenes have
• 42:53
  stayed with me. I I also feel like this was a
• 42:58
  replacement book because it's Justin's shortest novel.
• 43:02
  He usually hits the 282 page count or he goes over all three
• 43:08
  of his Virgin books are close to 300 pages and some of his BBC
• 43:14
  books have smaller print. Obviously it's because he's
• 43:17
  written a 400 bloody pages and they've crammed it into 282
• 43:22
  pages again because they've got to put the same amount of books
• 43:25
  in the same boxes every time for some reason.
• 43:28
  So it does have that element of it was written written quickly.
• 43:33
  I don't mean that in a bad way. I quite enjoyed this and I quite
• 43:38
  I kind of when I that thought wouldn't leave my brain like
• 43:42
  that he read. He must have written this really
• 43:45
  quick but this so yeah that's probably why it feels like maybe
• 43:50
  it's most traditional feeling Doctor Who book of of all of
• 43:53
  them that it that I think of his that I've read but the
• 43:56
  characterizations awesome it takes from certain different.
• 44:01
  Sorry it sounds like a bloody Alfred Hitchcock movie down
• 44:04
  here. I'm in the garage and the
• 44:05
  mornings of the birds of freaking.
• 44:08
  I got a Beagle dog and you think the dog would be outside chasing
• 44:10
  the birds away, no? Are they zombie birds?
• 44:15
  Or zombie dogs. Talk about a book that All
• 44:18
  right, we're going to get possession and zombies.
• 44:21
  Cool. Are we going to are they going?
• 44:24
  Is he going to take these ideas and do something with them?
• 44:26
  Yeah, he does because I messaged you guys and said this is Ruby
• 44:32
  red, but done good because there's there's a possession
• 44:37
  angle involved in it and and you're like, oh, oh, what's
• 44:41
  going to happen if it takes over Perry?
• 44:44
  If well, you find out, whereas in the other book, what happens
• 44:47
  if it takes over Ruby? It never it doesn't happen and
• 44:51
  you never get to the fireworks factory and stuff.
• 44:53
  They piss off beforehand and solve all everything.
• 44:55
  So and there's also these nice little twists that happen
• 45:00
  throughout the book of funny little lines that how to
• 45:04
  sprinkle throughout that kind of mix mix up the traditional
• 45:07
  formula enough for me to go yeah.
• 45:11
  And I I think this book benefits from having such some some of
• 45:15
  those extreme violent scenes in it because otherwise I might be
• 45:19
  coming away going Yeah, it's good, really traditional.
• 45:21
  Instead, I'm going to like it is trad, but then it does sprinkle.
• 45:26
  Like it does feel like a season 22 book written for a modern
• 45:32
  audience, I guess in 2000, because it's got that those
• 45:34
  sensibilities. And two, I liked it.
• 45:36
  I thought it was really good. And me, I read at a time, and to
• 45:41
  be honest, I couldn't remember a damn thing about it because I
• 45:45
  read everything at a time. So I read that many Doctor Who
• 45:47
  books. It needed to be really, really
• 45:51
  good to stand out in my memory. It needed to be a Lawrence
• 45:54
  Miles, Paul Mars, something with a bit of star, something with a
• 45:56
  hook to it. So something that was kind of as
• 45:59
  traditional is this didn't really sound memory.
• 46:03
  And yeah, I wasn't particularly big on this PDA range at the
• 46:06
  time because I always preferred the Doctor Who books that were
• 46:09
  pushing the story forward rather than the ones that were kind of
• 46:12
  looking backwards unless they were doing something interesting
• 46:15
  with it. And, you know, something like
• 46:17
  Johnny Morris says with something like Festival of
• 46:19
  Death, that kind of thing. But yeah, a return, you know,
• 46:24
  returning to it now. I did really enjoy it.
• 46:28
  It's yeah, it's it's not going to go on, I don't think on many
• 46:31
  people's list of their top ten Doctor Who books.
• 46:33
  You know, I don't think if you do any more top 10 show this is
• 46:36
  going to appear much. But it's not trying to do that.
• 46:39
  However, isn't. It not at all.
• 46:40
  It's just trying to be though a good, solid, entertaining read
• 46:44
  for a month and that's what it does.
• 46:47
  It does. It's, you know, it's Colin and
• 46:50
  Nicola don't re characterize really nicely actually I would
• 46:54
  say. I love their characterization in
• 46:56
  this year. We'll come on to that,
• 46:58
  obviously. Of. 60s and 22.
• 47:01
  Yeah, Justin Richards, a script editor, didn't it?
• 47:04
  Yeah, again, a a terrible fact, Terry, something with structure
• 47:07
  because Eric struct, Eric say with structure on these 22 is
• 47:09
  terrible generally. You know, it's that OK, Part 1,
• 47:13
  we've just elongated it to, you know, half the story so Doctor
• 47:16
  and Perry don't get to the action for 45 minutes.
• 47:21
  What is this? You know, it's.
• 47:22
  This uses that to its benefit. With that, you know, because it
• 47:26
  takes time to build up all those supporting characters.
• 47:29
  But just that sort of like that cosiness and them getting to
• 47:32
  know the villagers and going to the pub and just all of that
• 47:36
  stuff that we just didn't get with the Zip doctor and Perry on
• 47:39
  telly getting getting to know people, you know, So when people
• 47:43
  die in this thing, their their deaths actually here because
• 47:46
  they've got relationships with them at that point.
• 47:48
  I just loved all of that. Yeah, it's a commute.
• 47:51
  The community, the sense of community of it that he sets up
• 47:54
  and it, you know, it's a, it's a nice little world he draws up
• 47:57
  here. You know, there's a reason for
• 47:59
  it being isolated. He plays with that.
• 48:01
  I know Andrew did mention that Victoria things.
• 48:04
  I think that's Justin Richard's being self aware because so many
• 48:07
  of Justin Richard's novels set in that kind of late Victorian
• 48:10
  period. So he's playing games.
• 48:13
  He knows what he's doing. You're telling me why it annoyed
• 48:16
  me? Not not annoyed me, just sort of
• 48:19
  didn't go where I wanted it to go.
• 48:21
  So yeah, the Doctor and Perry arrive.
• 48:26
  They meet this community of people.
• 48:28
  Everyone's dressed like Victorians.
• 48:30
  So they're and they don't know what time they've they've
• 48:33
  arrived in. So there's this whole subplot of
• 48:35
  like, they're trying to find out what year it is, so they assume
• 48:37
  it's Victorian times. Then there's this like big twist
• 48:41
  where a helicopter goes over the island and all the the Doctor
• 48:45
  and Perry are like, oh, what is this strange flying beast?
• 48:48
  And then all the Islanders are like, we know what a helicopter
• 48:50
  is made like we're not stupid. And it turns out they're this
• 48:54
  sort of like separatist community who want to live in an
• 48:56
  old fashioned way. Like all great, like fun, fun,
• 48:59
  silly twist. But it doesn't really play into
• 49:03
  the I thought, OK, so he's done this and there's there's going
• 49:06
  to be a plot solution, reason why they're these Victorians.
• 49:10
  And after the point that it's that it's shown that they're not
• 49:13
  Victorians. It never really goes back to
• 49:15
  that. So I was thinking the solution
• 49:18
  to the plot, and the reason that the alien possessing thing has
• 49:21
  decided to come to this island is because it has like an
• 49:24
  aversion to electricity or something like that.
• 49:26
  And it needs to be somewhere where it's away from modern
• 49:29
  technology. And the solution is going to be
• 49:30
  something like the generator in the guy's house where he has an
• 49:33
  electricity generator and nobody knows about it.
• 49:35
  It's going to play into the So it just felt like that piece of
• 49:39
  the plot after like 80 pages of it, of it faking you out doesn't
• 49:44
  then lead into anything later. And it's like, well, it was a
• 49:48
  fun, like, atmospheric thing, but why it didn't really, Yeah,
• 49:54
  didn't lead. And it felt like Justin Richards
• 49:56
  is usually really good at that sort of plotting stuff.
• 49:59
  And if he was editing this book, I think he'd have been like,
• 50:01
  well, that that doesn't. Why have you done that?
• 50:05
  That's just for aesthetics. And it doesn't really have a
• 50:07
  reason to be here. So gone.
• 50:10
  So yeah, that's why it annoyed me.
• 50:12
  I mean, I just love the fact that, you know, the twist that
• 50:15
  they're not in the past is the helicopter, and then the
• 50:19
  helicopter doesn't get mentioned again throughout the entire
• 50:22
  book. And then, of course, what is the
• 50:24
  solution to the whole thing? The fucking helicopter.
• 50:27
  The end of that gag. I just thought that was really.
• 50:29
  It's almost like he does the same thing in the sense of time
• 50:32
  because you you, you kind of forget that they had that little
• 50:38
  mini revisit with the the people from Black Orchid at the start
• 50:44
  and then they swapped Nyssa out with the Cranley.
• 50:48
  You totally forget that. But I like I find that those
• 50:52
  scenes adorable because Perry is from the 80s and this book is
• 50:58
  set in the year that comes out in apparently. 1000 in the year
• 51:03
  2000. Yeah, so Perry doesn't really
• 51:09
  know late 20th, early 21st century technology.
• 51:13
  So she sees this, sees pieces of this and she thinks, holy shit,
• 51:19
  there's freaking futuristic technology in Victorian times.
• 51:22
  Oh my God. So you, you, you kind of think
• 51:24
  maybe time agents or, or some kind of shenanigans going on
• 51:28
  like that. And it turns out no, she just,
• 51:33
  she she just doesn't know about technology from a couple of
• 51:35
  decades in the future. It's.
• 51:36
  Just got like a Nokia 3310. Yeah, really.
• 51:41
  He's just being cute, isn't he? I mean, it's a long winded joke,
• 51:45
  but he is being cute. Yeah.
• 51:47
  Although my favorite part of that beginning part was when
• 51:49
  Andrew messages on the chat and went I didn't know this was set
• 51:52
  in the Victorian Times. From the blurb, you wouldn't
• 52:00
  think this is going to be Victorian.
• 52:01
  So I think I read the blurb and thought, oh, this is modern day.
• 52:04
  And then you get into it and it's Victorian.
• 52:06
  And I was like, oh, but I don't understand what's going on here.
• 52:09
  So again, that feels like written in a hurry, like because
• 52:13
  they should have kept up the joke for the blurb and it should
• 52:15
  have been like the Doctor and Perry miss arrive on the
• 52:18
  mysterious island shrouded in fog.
• 52:20
  They go to the local pub and you know, like it should have like
• 52:24
  not given away. I think it just gives because it
• 52:27
  gives that modern sense, the blurb, it gives away that sort
• 52:29
  of twist. So it's just a bit like, oh,
• 52:32
  what's going on here? Yeah, so, so we'll move into it
• 52:39
  and I think what Lukalutu was the doctor and Perry, the way
• 52:44
  you know, Perry is characterised as of the time and not knowing
• 52:47
  what was 50 years later, which I thought was beautiful.
• 52:50
  So Colin and Nicola, how did we find their characterisations?
• 52:57
  Joe, do you have anything for a little while?
• 53:00
  I love Colin Baker's Doctor, obviously, but I really loved
• 53:05
  Justin Richard's take on him in this, like funny and playful and
• 53:10
  gentle at times and finding good, you know, that bit where
• 53:14
  he's by the playground and he just says, oh, I love kids, you
• 53:19
  know, and he's just a really sweet, lovely doctor.
• 53:22
  And then and yet, you know, in the second-half of the book,
• 53:25
  he's violent. He's punching people and doing
• 53:28
  his usual sort of sick doctor shtick.
• 53:30
  I think he had a good handle on on how to make him very engaging
• 53:37
  in a way that maybe he wasn't always written in season 22.
• 53:41
  I think he sort of looked at that and thought, yes, I will
• 53:44
  take the the excerptness and the the word play and all of that
• 53:48
  stuff, but I'm also going to make him more fun and more
• 53:52
  likeable and more approachable. I really love that and just his
• 53:56
  relationship with Perry. It wasn't antagonistic like it
• 54:00
  always was on the TV. She was really fucking competent
• 54:03
  and he treated her like she was really competent.
• 54:07
  So he was always saying, can you please go and do this?
• 54:08
  Can you go and do that? Can you save us from this?
• 54:11
  You know, it was great. I just, it was a bit go with me.
• 54:15
  It was a bit sort of Steed and Mrs. Peel.
• 54:18
  But as the sick Doctor and Perry, I just thought they were
• 54:21
  terrific in this. I, I, I would read more Justin
• 54:25
  Richards sick doctor and Perry books.
• 54:26
  Absolutely. This is going to be somewhere
• 54:28
  around time, or he's going to be writing it not long after his
• 54:31
  written whispers of terror, I would have thought.
• 54:34
  Which is terrible. That's that's far more acidic
• 54:37
  than this. Yeah, go and listen to that.
• 54:40
  Yeah. So I, I was just wondering if
• 54:42
  there was kind of any influence on that from, you know, actually
• 54:45
  hearing Colin and back into that big finish, you know, we started
• 54:49
  that kind of revival of his character.
• 54:52
  But like, he's not, he's not entirely.
• 54:54
  He's still a prick, right? He's still holding the pub and
• 54:57
  you know, and arrogant and all of those things that I love
• 54:59
  about him. But I don't know, just more
• 55:02
  rounded, more likeable. He doesn't have the whole time,
• 55:07
  thank you, sorry, but he does have a self-awareness about him
• 55:10
  sometimes as well in this book, which I really like.
• 55:13
  I think Justin's also taken a bit of Colin Baker and put him
• 55:18
  in in this because every piece of footage I see or stories I
• 55:23
  hear, I met Colin Baker when I was a kid and he was absolutely
• 55:29
  fantastic. You know, that kind of thing.
• 55:32
  And then you see him kind of act with not come back, but the 6th
• 55:36
  Doctor around these Village of the Damned kids.
• 55:40
  They might as well be Village of the Damned kids.
• 55:42
  That's the kind of the influence there with those, right?
• 55:46
  And he's absolutely wonderful, like teaching them card tricks
• 55:50
  and things like that. Absolutely adorable.
• 55:53
  And that's what that Doctor is. And then later on, he's going
• 55:56
  to, you know, punch some dudes lights out and then grabs, grab
• 56:00
  Perry's hair and just go dunk her.
• 56:02
  I don't think you can overdose on the antidote and dunk her in
• 56:06
  like that. That's Colin Baker's doctor
• 56:08
  right there. He just.
• 56:09
  Had to get Nicola Bryant wet, didn't he?
• 56:11
  In this gelatinous, I believe it's described as.
• 56:19
  John mentioned this, but it does have that season 22 thing also
• 56:24
  of the Doctor and Perry maybe not being in the thick of it
• 56:26
  until like more in the second-half to the point where
• 56:30
  they almost leave. Oh, there's no time shenanigans
• 56:34
  here. There's nothing weird going on,
• 56:37
  Maybe, but there's little Nuggets that maybe keep them,
• 56:40
  keep them there. But that was, that was kind of
• 56:42
  like this close. The thing.
• 56:43
  Should we just get back in the TARDIS and leave?
• 56:45
  But they decided not to. I I love Perry in this.
• 56:51
  Yeah, she's still got that fear and all that kind of stuff, but
• 56:55
  she's also on the other hand, fearless.
• 56:58
  So she's going to be shit scared of what she's doing, but she's
• 57:01
  she's going to go for it like staking out the, the, the, the
• 57:04
  graveyard, the doctor being like, you're our only hope to
• 57:08
  use this phone, get get in this like little shoot and then just
• 57:12
  do this kind of run. And that's very horror movie
• 57:15
  when you've got like the woman who's got to save the day.
• 57:19
  Because you know, in most, a lot of horror movies, it's like
• 57:22
  that. She's like the last one left and
• 57:25
  she's going to not just fight animals and people attacking
• 57:29
  her, but also this thing in her brain trying to take her over at
• 57:32
  the same time. All of that and she's fighting
• 57:35
  all of that at the same time. It's and then she's got to fight
• 57:37
  at the pub, not. Yeah.
• 57:40
  You love that speech she had, Luke, where she's like, you want
• 57:42
  me to go up the shoot, get past the zombies, go in the boat, get
• 57:47
  across there, get the phone. And he just goes, yes, very
• 57:50
  succinctly put. Perry, off you go.
• 57:54
  Oh, they were great. You can just imagine, Nicholas,
• 57:56
  look at that point, can't you be like, oh God, Andrew.
• 58:04
  Yeah, I. Just echo what these guys have
• 58:07
  said. I think they're both really well
• 58:08
  characterized in this and yeah, sort of taking the best bits of
• 58:12
  their TV personas and not playing into the sort of
• 58:16
  stereotype cliche version of the two characters.
• 58:21
  And yeah, they both get some really nice moments.
• 58:22
  The Doctor's really warm in this.
• 58:25
  I I love the bits of Perry in the pub at the end where she's
• 58:31
  having to fight off Dave, the sort of zombie zombie who's
• 58:36
  like, had his brain shot out, and Liz, who's like the
• 58:40
  possessed landlord's daughter. And that's a bit where she drags
• 58:44
  Liz around by the hair and then she shoots Dave with a flag on.
• 58:48
  And it's amazing. And I think, I think you don't.
• 58:54
  Yeah, I think there might be chunks so involved.
• 58:58
  Oh, and then there's an amazing bit where she's kind of cornered
• 59:02
  by zombie seagulls in an attic. And yeah, it's a very tippy head
• 59:07
  run in the birds moment. And she actually does something
• 59:10
  really smart because she knows that she's infected with this
• 59:14
  zombie virus thing that is rebuilding people.
• 59:17
  So I think she kind of figures out, well, I will hopefully
• 59:21
  recover from this because I'm infected and just throws us out
• 59:24
  through a window. That.
• 59:27
  Stayed with me for weeks and then just.
• 59:29
  I've just imagined jumping out the window and then I thought.
• 59:33
  Private as like a bone crunching FUD or something.
• 59:39
  Perry. Yeah, so she, although she's
• 59:41
  scared a lot of the time, she's also like smart and proactive.
• 59:44
  And it's a really good Perry book.
• 59:47
  And I think in like the big Finnish writers guidelines
• 59:50
  around this time, they they said like Perry is Buffy.
• 59:54
  And I think you kind of get the sense of that in this book and
• 59:56
  that, you know, she's brave and resourceful and smart and, yeah,
• 1:00:00
  throwing herself through play glass windows.
• 1:00:03
  Yeah. And I love that that's playing
• 1:00:05
  with the way, you know, the regular characters, you know,
• 1:00:08
  they're going to make it through.
• 1:00:09
  It's a how do you get out of this one?
• 1:00:11
  It's it's beautifully done. Justin Richards is quietly being
• 1:00:15
  played for all the way through this book.
• 1:00:16
  And that's what I've kind of really endeared it to me that
• 1:00:19
  maybe I missed at the time because I was just, you know,
• 1:00:22
  industrial amounts of Doctor Who every single month.
• 1:00:26
  He knows all the cliches he's playing with, doesn't he in
• 1:00:28
  this. And he's like, you want horror?
• 1:00:31
  Fine, I'm going to give you all the horror you want.
• 1:00:35
  It's got a setting that's like reminiscent of the the wicked
• 1:00:38
  man, you know, with this kind of like cut off community.
• 1:00:42
  It's got like shades of like Village of the Dam, but the
• 1:00:44
  creepy kids and stuff. It's got possession.
• 1:00:47
  That's pretty much most horror movies right there.
• 1:00:51
  Zombies attacking a house that's like neither the living dead or
• 1:00:55
  evil dead or any. Kind of tree isolated animals,
• 1:00:59
  yeah. Yeah, you know, you've got what,
• 1:01:03
  a zombie sharks, you've got little bit of jaws in there as
• 1:01:05
  well. It's, it's, it's lots of things,
• 1:01:07
  lots of horror influences. So impressive was the way he he
• 1:01:12
  writes it. His prose is functional, but it
• 1:01:15
  is sort of you can really see how it would be directed.
• 1:01:20
  That sequence Andrew was talking about in the bar, I could see
• 1:01:24
  how that would be shot with her throwing the glasses over the
• 1:01:27
  bar and then down on the floor with the flare gun.
• 1:01:30
  I mean, there was a bit where she's there watching behind the
• 1:01:33
  grave as the fellas digging up the grave.
• 1:01:36
  And then she sort of comes forward to investigate and all
• 1:01:39
  of a sudden a dead body goes his legs or his arm, sorry, and his
• 1:01:44
  head out of the out of the grave.
• 1:01:46
  And I was like, man, that would be a great jump scare in a
• 1:01:48
  horror movie, you know. Oh.
• 1:01:50
  I could have got away with it on telly, I think, though yeah,
• 1:01:53
  just just the ass flopping over says like it's.
• 1:01:55
  Not too far away from Season 22, is it?
• 1:01:58
  Let's be honest. Not at all, you know, and it's
• 1:02:00
  stuff they probably could have done because it all the night
• 1:02:02
  filming. So it would have been too
• 1:02:03
  expensive, too good. Again, it's kind of what you
• 1:02:06
  couldn't get on screen because of the budget, even though it's
• 1:02:09
  a kind of that this nice tight traditional story.
• 1:02:14
  Did you like 60 then John? I've realised when you take over
• 1:02:17
  you don't really get to say what you like.
• 1:02:19
  So did you like him? See, I I would say it, I don't
• 1:02:23
  hate any doctor. It was my least favorite era for
• 1:02:26
  a long, long time. And not because of Colin.
• 1:02:28
  It's just because I don't think Eric say was a particularly good
• 1:02:32
  person to be script editor. You know, This is why I get on
• 1:02:35
  with Jr. and strangers, the anti civil, the anti Saywood agenda.
• 1:02:41
  So, yeah, but it got to big finish and you're going, yeah,
• 1:02:45
  Colin could put a little more warmth in the performance.
• 1:02:48
  And it's happens in season 23 is what it's there in trial and
• 1:02:51
  time. He's he adds some warmth to it
• 1:02:53
  to that performance. He's sees it so.
• 1:02:57
  Yeah, I, I, I've. Warmed to him over the years.
• 1:03:00
  So it won't be my go to, you know, comfort who, but you know,
• 1:03:04
  listening to you talk about him, this, you know, watching Eddie
• 1:03:07
  watch and he loves the Colin Bakery.
• 1:03:15
  Yeah, yeah. And I, and this is what I liked
• 1:03:17
  about this. It was again, little touches
• 1:03:19
  like Perry's costume is not, you know, the skimpy it's, it's
• 1:03:23
  appropriate to the weather, to the conditions.
• 1:03:26
  It's not playing on, you know, Nicola Bryant's physical
• 1:03:29
  attractiveness. You can't quite see it on the
• 1:03:31
  cover, can you? No, you can't quite see what
• 1:03:34
  she's wearing there. It's it's a big red velvet dress
• 1:03:37
  if I remember right. Something heavy.
• 1:03:39
  Although I did help but notice that that hand did seem to be
• 1:03:42
  going towards her and not Colin the grave.
• 1:03:47
  No, you guys have. Questioned about the 6th Doctor
• 1:03:49
  on print, because obviously we haven't covered him yet.
• 1:03:52
  Is I've got a theory that the the more the, the louder the
• 1:03:58
  personality, the more quirks that there were on the TV, sort
• 1:04:03
  of the easier they are to bring to life on the page.
• 1:04:06
  So I think Colin comes to life fairly easily on the page, as
• 1:04:11
  does William Hartnell, who was quite a big character, Pertwee
• 1:04:14
  as well, whereas Trout and he was a bit subtler and Davison
• 1:04:20
  that you kind of have to work a bit harder to to get a vivid
• 1:04:25
  portrayal out of them. Am I bad when I say that?
• 1:04:28
  No. I like it.
• 1:04:29
  I like to think like in my head. The two best doctors served in
• 1:04:35
  print, 7:00 and 8:00. They just are after that for me,
• 1:04:42
  I guess. But after that for me is
• 1:04:44
  probably Colin. There's so many really good
• 1:04:49
  Colin Baker 6 Doctor books. One one of them is my favorite
• 1:04:54
  Doctor Who book period. Really.
• 1:04:56
  You know, I've done my top tenants in there.
• 1:05:00
  It's killing ground, but. I refer you to my top ten.
• 1:05:04
  That's. Right.
• 1:05:05
  That's right, yeah, those views up.
• 1:05:07
  So Morris was in. There too, by the way, but he's
• 1:05:10
  on the other list. But no, I think even when you
• 1:05:16
  just look at his books, you've you've got those right.
• 1:05:21
  There's a lot of really strong books that people want strong
• 1:05:24
  characterization. People want to push him forward
• 1:05:26
  a little bit too, because you've got that gap after Trial of a
• 1:05:29
  Time Lord. But yeah.
• 1:05:30
  He's. I think he's like one of the
• 1:05:34
  best served doctors in print. Like just hands down most of his
• 1:05:39
  books. Just.
• 1:05:41
  Just so happened to be more bangers, really.
• 1:05:45
  Yeah. So I, I don't think I've read my
• 1:05:46
  a Colin Bacon novel that I've thought was absolute shit.
• 1:05:52
  That may be Burning Heart is. It a bit like Colin with Big
• 1:05:55
  Finish in that it was a short era.
• 1:05:58
  There were a lot of mistakes made.
• 1:06:00
  So you know, you can write a great 6th doctor in a horror
• 1:06:04
  book like this that he didn't really get on telly.
• 1:06:07
  You can do Mel's introductory story and business unusual
• 1:06:10
  because we didn't do that on TV. We can do some fun things with
• 1:06:14
  the Valley yard because they didn't really explore that in
• 1:06:16
  the ultimate foe. Like it just feels like there's
• 1:06:18
  a there's a lot there to be unearthed as well.
• 1:06:23
  By the way, can we, can I just complain about one thing?
• 1:06:26
  You've got a book here about possession, including animals,
• 1:06:30
  and at no point did I see a man with a horse on top of.
• 1:06:33
  You well done. It's just in riches.
• 1:06:42
  What were you thinking? Yeah, I think.
• 1:06:45
  Horse might be like the only farmyard animal that's not in
• 1:06:48
  the book, so yeah, you're right. We were robbed.
• 1:06:51
  Many cows and sheep wasn't. There cows, sheep, chickens.
• 1:06:56
  There's a particularly horrific chickens.
• 1:07:00
  Yeah, I love the way that turned round though.
• 1:07:03
  You know, you're just thinking, oh, it's just like an incident
• 1:07:05
  with the chicken cat being quite crap.
• 1:07:08
  No, it's actually just this horrific signal of horrific
• 1:07:12
  things to cat. It's.
• 1:07:13
  Running around with the tent cut off?
• 1:07:14
  Literally, yeah. You know, you said you were
• 1:07:16
  seeing the birds. Yeah, you know, when they're
• 1:07:17
  attacking. But I was seeing that really
• 1:07:19
  dreadful scene in that New Avengers episode, Cat Amongst
• 1:07:22
  the Pigeons, where Purd is holding the thing and someone's
• 1:07:26
  going at it with scissors. But it's supposed to be birds
• 1:07:28
  trying to Peck their way through.
• 1:07:30
  Even even when I'm reading a book, I go to some cheap old bit
• 1:07:33
  of tat instead of a good. Well, I think it's it might be
• 1:07:38
  you kill Toby ran off Doom. Watch it.
• 1:07:39
  Has anyone ever seen that? Yes, yes.
• 1:07:43
  The the chicken with a man's head on it, it's like that was
• 1:07:48
  where I was going. I feel like I need to see that.
• 1:07:51
  Oh, it is what you will laugh your head off.
• 1:07:56
  You need to watch the one with the evil rats that come out the
• 1:07:58
  toilet and because they can't do evil rats, they just sew rats
• 1:08:02
  onto people's trousers pretending like they're going up
• 1:08:04
  their legs. If you've got the talking
• 1:08:09
  Pictures app, it they they've got them all or they've got
• 1:08:12
  starting to get them on there so you can investigate.
• 1:08:15
  Jerry Davis's finest hour, probably.
• 1:08:18
  I'm also thinking of sapphire and steel where they get
• 1:08:21
  attacked by the swan. Oh, adventures, Yeah.
• 1:08:23
  The pillow, Yeah. I think there.
• 1:08:26
  Was a lot of influences in this, you know, at the end of the book
• 1:08:28
  where it was what they call Denarians.
• 1:08:32
  Denarians. Whatever the DNA mutation
• 1:08:36
  creatures, and it's one versus the other.
• 1:08:39
  I was getting The X-Files episode Ice.
• 1:08:41
  You know when they had the two worms?
• 1:08:43
  Yeah, they put one in to fight the other.
• 1:08:46
  I was thinking X-Files as well with all the all the vaccination
• 1:08:50
  stuff, because there's that whole like, oh, the the World
• 1:08:53
  Health Authority are like getting people with vaccinations
• 1:08:57
  and stuff in The X-Files it. Would have all been in the air
• 1:08:59
  at the time, wouldn't it? That wasn't it.
• 1:09:01
  Oh totally, yes. I was just down here at that
• 1:09:03
  point. Oh, the other thing that I that
• 1:09:07
  I've written my little list of the things I thought went into
• 1:09:09
  it, but has anyone seen the Nightmare Man?
• 1:09:12
  Yeah. Bob.
• 1:09:14
  Holmes is yeah, I felt like this very much because it's that's
• 1:09:17
  like in the Hebrides, isn't it? And it's sort of like villagers
• 1:09:20
  being picked off 1 by 1 and isolated community.
• 1:09:24
  Yeah, that's that's sort of like the vibe I was picturing for
• 1:09:26
  this one. And if anyone hasn't seen the
• 1:09:28
  Nightmare Man, it's really good. It's.
• 1:09:31
  So creepy, isn't it? Yeah, and really violent to say
• 1:09:34
  that it was like BBC, BBC sci-fi.
• 1:09:39
  Is it is it 80s like early 1980s or they've?
• 1:09:42
  Done on film, isn't it? It's it's not on video on.
• 1:09:45
  No, sorry, it's all on video, isn't?
• 1:09:46
  It Yeah, yeah, that's. A very So Bob Holmes did stuff
• 1:09:50
  that wasn't Doctor Who or Blake 7.
• 1:09:52
  And Douglas Canfield directed it.
• 1:09:54
  Was it isn't Morris Reeves is in there as well, so you know it's
• 1:09:57
  going to be. And senior Emery.
• 1:10:00
  Oh. Yeah, I don't.
• 1:10:05
  Know it's the book club, the nightmare man coming soon.
• 1:10:08
  It's based on a novel, so we could.
• 1:10:12
  And also, sorry, my other one which didn't influence it but is
• 1:10:16
  very similar the the village, the M Night Shyamalan.
• 1:10:20
  Yes, yeah, very similar concept to this.
• 1:10:23
  So maybe he read. Maybe he read Grave Matter and
• 1:10:26
  ripped it off. Which kind of leads us nicely
• 1:10:30
  into the next bit I would talk about, which was the actual
• 1:10:33
  aliens of cells, the Denarians, which is, I was thinking, quite
• 1:10:37
  an interesting concept for an alien.
• 1:10:41
  Luke, what did you think of the antagonists here?
• 1:10:44
  I heard the name Denarians and I just had Michael Palin in my
• 1:10:48
  hair, my head just going half a Denarii's.
• 1:10:50
  My bloody life story. Looks like Joe's been got by the
• 1:10:57
  Denarians. He's gone dark.
• 1:10:58
  That's right. He's been taken.
• 1:11:01
  I hope he's not going to do what somebody else in this book does.
• 1:11:03
  No, but that'd be terrible. But no, I I like them.
• 1:11:09
  They're they're not a real big bad, big bad like that.
• 1:11:12
  That turns into be like some of the researchers towards the end.
• 1:11:17
  But I like the concept of them and it feels almost ambassadors
• 1:11:21
  of death ish. But instead of like a manned
• 1:11:24
  probe that comes back and you know all the shenanigans, it's
• 1:11:28
  an unmanned probe that can take like samples and things like
• 1:11:32
  that. So there's all sorts of
• 1:11:34
  dangerous shit in this, in this solar system too, right?
• 1:11:36
  You've got Martians on Mars, you've got, you've got what?
• 1:11:41
  Fear itself in the bloody Jupiter you've got.
• 1:11:44
  Venusians are over on Venus. That's right, Yeah.
• 1:11:48
  It's a very full, full solar system.
• 1:11:51
  No one's found silurium bones. When are we going to do that?
• 1:11:54
  Doctor Who story, by the way, Everyone finds dinosaurs.
• 1:11:57
  What if they found like some silent name?
• 1:11:59
  Never mind. But yeah, I like the, I like the
• 1:12:01
  idea of of the Dinarians. They're not, I guess, like a a
• 1:12:07
  big bad monster threat, but in terms of like some kind of
• 1:12:10
  sentient diseased thing with sort of telepathy and helping
• 1:12:15
  coordinate, make everything kind of zombie eyes.
• 1:12:17
  I thought. I thought it was kind of neat.
• 1:12:19
  I like them. I like that concept more than
• 1:12:22
  how it was used in Ruby Red. Get the boot in every time.
• 1:12:32
  What you say is you regret spending those $35.
• 1:12:39
  I've I've bought this book twice now and if I added up the totals
• 1:12:42
  both times they still don't equal 36 dollars.
• 1:12:48
  Andrew, what did you make of the Genarians?
• 1:12:51
  Yeah, I thought they were. They were an interesting
• 1:12:53
  concept. I thought the name was rubbish.
• 1:12:57
  And it's very much oh, what do I call them?
• 1:13:00
  DNARE and like. Yeah, Justin, yeah, you're doing
• 1:13:07
  this in a hurry. But I mean, yeah, they're not.
• 1:13:12
  They're not setting the world on fire.
• 1:13:13
  In terms of Doctor Who antagonists, it was I want
• 1:13:16
  zombies in my book. How do I do zombies in a Doctor
• 1:13:19
  Who way, that mind control, body repairing aliens done.
• 1:13:25
  So yeah, I think it's another one of those like, we need
• 1:13:28
  something to make this book all tied together.
• 1:13:29
  Here's the Doctor Who reason for it.
• 1:13:31
  So I think that's the other thing that made the second-half
• 1:13:36
  of the book less enjoyable for me.
• 1:13:38
  And that when you find out that it's these aliens who have come
• 1:13:41
  from a meteorite, it's just a bit like, I don't give a shit.
• 1:13:45
  Like we're just, we're just at the race to the end to like,
• 1:13:48
  find the solution Now. It's like they might troll
• 1:13:50
  aliens there. We do something with DNA.
• 1:13:54
  We've got a lab. There we go.
• 1:13:57
  So it's like the piece is just being moved into position for
• 1:14:00
  the end by that point. So yeah, donorian's near.
• 1:14:04
  Who cares? So not one of the great Doctor
• 1:14:07
  Who adversaries, is what he's saying here.
• 1:14:09
  No, it's no Merca but. An archaeologist got to find
• 1:14:16
  merca bones. Only ever find dinosaurs.
• 1:14:20
  I thought. There was any man on outside.
• 1:14:22
  He was throwing stones at the window.
• 1:14:24
  I thought we locked the door. What the hell was that noise?
• 1:14:28
  I thought there was something smashing behind me.
• 1:14:30
  He's there. That's why I went to
• 1:14:32
  investigate. I was like, what's going on?
• 1:14:35
  Let me in. I've been outside for 15 minutes
• 1:14:38
  throwing stones at the window. Has he been?
• 1:14:41
  But had he been possessed by the Narians, is what we're saying.
• 1:14:44
  He was looking at my brain and licking his lips.
• 1:14:46
  So I don't know. It's a beautiful mic, So what
• 1:14:50
  can we say? So what?
• 1:14:52
  What did you make of that whole idea of the Denarians job?
• 1:14:55
  Oh, weren't they generic? Good grief.
• 1:14:57
  I mean, they could have been called the Genarians or
• 1:15:00
  something, but like, the aliens themselves were just shit,
• 1:15:03
  weren't they? They had no personality, no
• 1:15:05
  plan, nothing at all. What was great about them was
• 1:15:08
  the fact that the government bought out this this island,
• 1:15:13
  which is such a great idea to test this DNA on.
• 1:15:17
  And I thought the more interesting part was the fact
• 1:15:19
  that the government wanted to use it as a as a cure.
• 1:15:23
  All of that was a really interesting angle, which they
• 1:15:25
  didn't really go anywhere with, but it gives a plausible motive
• 1:15:29
  as to why we now have zombies in this story, because they've been
• 1:15:33
  infected with this stuff. And that led to a couple of nice
• 1:15:36
  twists. You know, the twist with the the
• 1:15:38
  fellow who's in the wheelchair off.
• 1:15:40
  Well, that was great when that came at the end of towards the
• 1:15:43
  end of the book. So yeah, boring aliens, but
• 1:15:47
  great zombies. That's a Doctor Who staple.
• 1:15:50
  They're like, I mean, you guys might know because I guess your
• 1:15:53
  Doctor Who knows like me, but I don't know what the name of the
• 1:15:56
  aliens are. And Doctor, Doctor and Vincent,
• 1:15:59
  Vincent and the Doctor. But I know that story is
• 1:16:01
  freaking. Awesome.
• 1:16:04
  Yeah. But you know, did they come
• 1:16:05
  back? No, no one really cares about
• 1:16:07
  that. But that story is is awesome.
• 1:16:09
  So Doctor Who is littered with generic monster of the week, but
• 1:16:13
  story is good. I mean, we just, we needed
• 1:16:16
  monsters, right? And they were great.
• 1:16:18
  Yeah. It's basically, yeah.
• 1:16:19
  It's what their motive is. It is basically that kind the,
• 1:16:22
  the oil kind of creatures from The X-Files.
• 1:16:24
  It's it's got its own motivation.
• 1:16:25
  It wants to, you know, replicate and that.
• 1:16:28
  Yeah. There you go.
• 1:16:29
  Tasha. Yeah.
• 1:16:30
  Where is she in this nowhere? Oh no, they look like that
• 1:16:34
  dreadful oil slick monster. Good grief, it's terrible.
• 1:16:38
  What's his name? Almus.
• 1:16:40
  I think it is, yeah. I hadn't seen skin of him in
• 1:16:42
  about 30 years, so no, it was terrible.
• 1:16:47
  Particularly the holograph scene at the end.
• 1:16:49
  Oh Jesus, but when? We digress every other genre
• 1:16:55
  show apart from Doctor Who today, haven't we?
• 1:16:59
  What's that? Never seen it, but yeah, I kind
• 1:17:03
  of did like that under contrast and motivation where, you know,
• 1:17:06
  it's used trying to use in a positive way and they think they
• 1:17:09
  control it, they can't. So it was, and I did just go at
• 1:17:14
  the end when it's, you know, oh, those birds looked around with
• 1:17:17
  their eyes in that colour. Oh no, you know what that is?
• 1:17:21
  That's not Twilight Zone. What was the anthology one?
• 1:17:25
  Tales of the Unexpected. They always did that at the end,
• 1:17:27
  didn't. They yeah, the ending, yeah,
• 1:17:31
  it's so goosebumps. There you go, there's another
• 1:17:34
  franchise. Always a little twist at the end
• 1:17:38
  of do. You reckon he's A twist at the
• 1:17:41
  end? Do.
• 1:17:42
  You reckon he might have because all of his books have the same
• 1:17:45
  dedication he's got. Like obviously there's kids or
• 1:17:48
  something. Allison, there's always an.
• 1:17:49
  Allison, there's an Allison, always a Julian, and there's a
• 1:17:53
  Christian in this one. So I, I, I wouldn't be surprised
• 1:17:56
  if he spent a bit of time reading the, reading some
• 1:17:59
  Goosebumps books to his kids or something.
• 1:18:00
  That was a massive temporary at the time that was I mean that
• 1:18:05
  that was young adult books in the 90s.
• 1:18:08
  I feel like that was it Babysitters Club and maybe
• 1:18:11
  Goosebumps and that's it wasn't like this big, you know, thing
• 1:18:16
  that it is now. I think Harry Potter maybe kind
• 1:18:18
  of kick started that for a lot of things, but.
• 1:18:21
  Yeah, for any of our listeners who aren't familiar with
• 1:18:24
  Goosebumps, because I think it's only like a certain age
• 1:18:30
  demographic who would be so older or younger.
• 1:18:32
  You might not know them, but they said they're like horror
• 1:18:35
  books for kids. And then they always have like a
• 1:18:37
  really silly twist ending in the last like couple of pages.
• 1:18:41
  Every single book has one. And it's usually like, oh,
• 1:18:45
  you've defeated the ghost, but did you know you were a ghost?
• 1:18:48
  Or, Or like there's one where it's like, oh, like the whole
• 1:18:54
  story wraps up and it's like, oh, but it was a different
• 1:18:57
  planet all along. The M Night Shyamalan style of
• 1:19:03
  twists. OK, so now I know where his
• 1:19:05
  influences come from now as well.
• 1:19:07
  Everyone's reading Goosebumps to their kids and writing.
• 1:19:10
  Goosebumps completely passed me by.
• 1:19:13
  The ones in my were point horrors and I love them.
• 1:19:17
  They were, well, creepy. Yeah, my cousin used to read
• 1:19:20
  Point horrors. They were too scary for me.
• 1:19:23
  We just also James Herbert, Stephen King.
• 1:19:25
  We had to. The rats.
• 1:19:29
  The Fog. Oh, Sean Hudson slugs.
• 1:19:32
  That was the one, yes. This is Garth Moringa.
• 1:19:35
  Terry I can watch every genre show and read every horror book
• 1:19:40
  except this. All right.
• 1:19:41
  And Jackie? Including this including.
• 1:19:45
  Well, I mean, you know, we could talk about the 6th Doctor and
• 1:19:47
  Perry, we could talk about the guest characters, we can talk
• 1:19:49
  about the aliens. But it's the horror, right?
• 1:19:52
  It's the a horror where this excels.
• 1:19:55
  Yeah, I do want to mention, sorry, this is one line from
• 1:20:00
  Colin. It's so 6th Doctor.
• 1:20:02
  It's so funny because I'm like he he doesn't even he's not even
• 1:20:07
  aware of like the iron you're saying it, but he's talking to
• 1:20:09
  Sir Edward and it pretty much ends with just a coincidence.
• 1:20:14
  Then you know you arriving when all this is going on.
• 1:20:19
  I'm like, dude, that's you every time you leave.
• 1:20:21
  Somewhere every. Single time.
• 1:20:23
  Now. He's saying that to someone
• 1:20:26
  else. There's little things like that
• 1:20:28
  that always kind of bring a smile on my face.
• 1:20:30
  So he knows he's writing something traditional, but he's,
• 1:20:33
  you know, he's going to, he's going to poke it a little bit
• 1:20:35
  and have a bit of fun. I bet it was absolutely absurd
• 1:20:38
  but did make me laugh was when I can't remember the woman's name
• 1:20:43
  but she's been infected by the things.
• 1:20:45
  She's one of the scientists, and she can only.
• 1:20:51
  It's a sarcastic. Thing.
• 1:20:52
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So she's doing everything in a
• 1:20:54
  really sarcastic way to give him the information that he needs.
• 1:20:57
  I thought that was really funny. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:21:02
  I do not know the code. There absolutely is no way out
• 1:21:04
  of this room, right? Yeah, Janet, there's a way out
• 1:21:08
  of this room. Then let's go.
• 1:21:10
  Yeah, it's not over there. Yeah.
• 1:21:14
  And there's a lot of that thing we.
• 1:21:16
  It's and. The human.
• 1:21:18
  Yeah. It's the horror and the humour.
• 1:21:20
  It's just in in one. It's the one that Luke picked
• 1:21:23
  out earlier with the Doctor and the card trick.
• 1:21:26
  You can see that being a really so effectively darn screen
• 1:21:29
  without with some creepy synth music in the background.
• 1:21:32
  I. Mean don't watch Colin
• 1:21:34
  brandishing those flowers into Terra, the Verve voice.
• 1:21:36
  He could have done it so brilliantly.
• 1:21:38
  He just didn't have the opportunities, did he?
• 1:21:41
  Yeah, I'd love the reference to a Rubik's Cube because it just
• 1:21:44
  said, yeah, the island is out of time.
• 1:21:48
  Because, you know, these are say communities aren't, well, they
• 1:21:52
  aren't where where you've got being in a city.
• 1:21:54
  It's a reference from 1015 years earlier.
• 1:21:57
  It's it's kind of the settings of that.
• 1:22:00
  Justin Richard does think these things through, even if he's
• 1:22:03
  done them in a hurry. So that's, you know, and I think
• 1:22:07
  this is where it itself is that that building of the characters,
• 1:22:11
  you need to get to know the characters to build that horror,
• 1:22:15
  to get to the horror and that you know, the particularly the
• 1:22:18
  scene we we haven't particularly mentioned the Dave Martinson.
• 1:22:21
  Oh please, can we just mention here?
• 1:22:27
  Let's go for it. Come on.
• 1:22:27
  It was the elephant in the room. We needed to talk about it.
• 1:22:29
  So I. Mean it's too much, but yeah, I
• 1:22:34
  fuck it. That's my favorite.
• 1:22:35
  Part agreed that this shouldn't be in here.
• 1:22:38
  Holy fuck. I mean, yeah, the.
• 1:22:40
  Pills and the whiskey trying to kill himself.
• 1:22:44
  And then shooting. Himself in the head.
• 1:22:47
  He loses his What is it? His woman is scratching on the
• 1:22:50
  wound as he comes back to life, but his head's blown off.
• 1:22:54
  He loses his wound. He's guilty with all the stuff
• 1:22:56
  that he's done with the research scientists, It all makes sense.
• 1:23:00
  And you're like, stop going to. He's just going to leave or
• 1:23:03
  something, right? Yeah.
• 1:23:04
  He's going to try and leave, all right?
• 1:23:06
  Trying to kind of try and Kurt Cobain himself out of existence,
• 1:23:09
  That's what he's going to do. Does he try and kill himself
• 1:23:11
  because he knows that Liz is infected?
• 1:23:15
  At that point he comes away from he realises.
• 1:23:18
  He infected her by injecting with the yeah factions and that.
• 1:23:22
  Yeah. So it's all these kind of
• 1:23:24
  factors hitting him all at once that I think it's just too much
• 1:23:28
  for him. And then he he shoots himself
• 1:23:30
  and then he lives sort of. He's like one of the few
• 1:23:35
  characters that is dead dead still by the end, isn't he?
• 1:23:40
  Like for sure because. Yeah, because he's shot his
• 1:23:43
  brain out and you can't come back from.
• 1:23:45
  That yeah I know, but like he couldn't repair his brain and
• 1:23:48
  stuff, but they could keep the kind of body alive as a host
• 1:23:51
  body or something. Put a crimp on your ability to
• 1:23:54
  live. Isn't it?
• 1:23:55
  Yeah. Yeah, I think it was.
• 1:23:59
  It was a really effective chapter, like horror, horror
• 1:24:02
  wise. But it definitely goes too far.
• 1:24:06
  And I think there will be some readers who are just not
• 1:24:10
  expecting from a Doctor Who book to have, like a really detailed
• 1:24:13
  depiction of suicide. And like, as you know, we laugh
• 1:24:18
  on it, but it's like particularly the bit where he's
• 1:24:21
  trying to cut his wrists, like that was just like, yes, I think
• 1:24:25
  we can push violence in Doctor Who.
• 1:24:27
  But when it's depictions of real life stuff that you as a reader
• 1:24:34
  might not necessarily expect that you're going to come across
• 1:24:36
  in this book, it's just it, it feels a bit misguided to me.
• 1:24:41
  And like, that's the thing where they needed a bit of a stronger
• 1:24:44
  steer on what could go into these books and what couldn't,
• 1:24:47
  because that could for the wrong person like that, that could hit
• 1:24:51
  them in a in a really bad way. And it just feels like it's not
• 1:24:54
  necessary for a Doctor Who book. And I think you could have, I'm
• 1:24:58
  not saying that you needed to take out that bit about Dave
• 1:25:00
  trying to kill himself and that's how he becomes the
• 1:25:02
  zombie. But I think you could have done
• 1:25:04
  that without necessarily the the very detailed suicide detail,
• 1:25:10
  which it just doesn't, it doesn't need in order to.
• 1:25:12
  You could have done it in a more subtle way and still had the
• 1:25:16
  same outcome I think. Horror Story.
• 1:25:20
  I've read. This.
• 1:25:22
  I've read Anachrophobia which has someone trying to slit their
• 1:25:27
  wrists and now I've just picked up the sleep of reason and now
• 1:25:31
  with someone trying to sleep what's going on?
• 1:25:33
  Why there's so many people doing this in BBC books?
• 1:25:38
  I think in here particularly it's Steve Coles probably
• 1:25:41
  commissioned Justin Richards because he knows.
• 1:25:43
  Yeah, solid. I mean, I know what I'm going to
• 1:25:44
  get. I don't need to because he was
• 1:25:46
  work. He was working his ass off at
• 1:25:48
  this point. You know, you're trying to edit
• 1:25:50
  and write 2, get 2 books a month back and then he's writing, you
• 1:25:53
  know, two or three a year himself as well.
• 1:25:55
  I suppose he'd go nuts at this point.
• 1:25:58
  So I think maybe he let a few things through the in an ideal
• 1:26:01
  world, either maybe go can you just tone this down, rewrite it
• 1:26:05
  and get it back to me as quickly as you can.
• 1:26:07
  And I think that's right. It's the realism that doesn't
• 1:26:11
  kind of work in doctor. If if the violence has kind of
• 1:26:14
  fantasy element, that's where you can get away with frankly
• 1:26:18
  anything. You know, it's a anachrophobia
• 1:26:21
  where it where it's clockwork. That's such a brilliant image.
• 1:26:26
  But this is just kind of normal bloody whatever horror film you
• 1:26:31
  want. The Slave.
• 1:26:32
  Of things worked me more. Sorry, I think this worked for
• 1:26:35
  me more in the context of it that have of a horrifying moment
• 1:26:39
  in a Horror Story where sorry birds and then outs freaking
• 1:26:43
  rain. It's all happening here, but
• 1:26:48
  it's getting louder. I feel like #6 at the end of the
• 1:26:50
  prisoner trying to give a speech and then they're.
• 1:26:52
  Like. You can't hear any rain.
• 1:26:56
  It's. The zombie seagulls, they've
• 1:26:58
  escaped the island and they're coming from you.
• 1:27:00
  So in the context of a Horror Story, yes, it goes too far.
• 1:27:04
  Lots of good horror stories do. So I'm kind of OK with it in the
• 1:27:09
  context of that. Whereas I'm watching a Christmas
• 1:27:12
  Story on my TV and I don't really want to have to think
• 1:27:15
  about my mum not being here anymore, if that makes sense.
• 1:27:18
  I didn't think so. I thought that was kind of
• 1:27:22
  jarring because I didn't think it fit the kind of tone of the
• 1:27:26
  story. It just kind of, oh, we're going
• 1:27:28
  here now. I was unprepared for that.
• 1:27:30
  Why am I crying so much on fucking Boxing Day?
• 1:27:34
  In in not quite the good way. Whereas I think if you're
• 1:27:37
  telling a Horror Story, all right, that's might be the
• 1:27:41
  moment to put such a thing in like a suicide rather than, you
• 1:27:47
  know, maybe a fun story. It's not as jarring here as it
• 1:27:51
  would be for something of a serious nature to be in for.
• 1:27:55
  Maybe a fun story or something. The in the in the sleep of
• 1:27:59
  Reason, that first chapter with Laska, it's incredibly well
• 1:28:06
  written, like really sensitively written.
• 1:28:10
  This young girl that hates her body, that feels disconnected
• 1:28:15
  from the world, and then one day she picks up a knife and cuts
• 1:28:20
  herself because it's like a release.
• 1:28:23
  It's just brilliantly, brilliantly written and quite
• 1:28:27
  disturbing in a way that I didn't find this as disturbing
• 1:28:31
  because they sort of set up the premise of this, and now they're
• 1:28:36
  demonstrating what it is in a really horrible way.
• 1:28:40
  But yeah, that that was so compellingly authentic.
• 1:28:46
  In the sleep of reason. I think that might be worse than
• 1:28:50
  this, but this is really graphic.
• 1:28:53
  Like I mean, I just I was in a Starbucks reading whilst Mark
• 1:28:58
  was working next to me and I just kept going.
• 1:28:59
  Oh God, out loud. Then when he blew his brains out
• 1:29:03
  and then his hands started moving, I went, Oh no, he's
• 1:29:05
  going to have to live the rest of his life with Arthur face.
• 1:29:09
  You know, it's it's grizzly, isn't it?
• 1:29:12
  But I don't know. I did love it.
• 1:29:15
  Yeah. Yeah, I love that kind of stuff.
• 1:29:19
  It's what the animals kind of thing where they're all looking,
• 1:29:22
  you know, they're all moving in unison as well.
• 1:29:24
  That's lovely. That's a different kind of
• 1:29:27
  horror. It's just it's the creepy stuff,
• 1:29:29
  the stuff that gets in your head.
• 1:29:31
  And I think that's where this is strongest you.
• 1:29:34
  We've, we've had a joke about the zombie sharks, but yeah, I,
• 1:29:39
  I, I love that kind of bizarre idea on it.
• 1:29:42
  It's just like, yeah, how'd you get out of that one?
• 1:29:45
  I think he read Was it vampire size with the zombie squirrels,
• 1:29:48
  The vampire squirrel. I think he read that and went,
• 1:29:51
  now we can go better than that, you know.
• 1:29:52
  One epic do. You know what's more disturbing
• 1:29:56
  than the the Dave suicide scenes?
• 1:29:59
  How Into Milk Perry is 0. My God.
• 1:30:04
  It's just something. There's just something I I just
• 1:30:08
  don't like reading about people drinking milk.
• 1:30:11
  I mean, it was a plot point, wasn't it?
• 1:30:13
  It was an important plot point, but I guess, you know, it's an
• 1:30:16
  American thing as well. They just really loved their
• 1:30:18
  milk. And it was.
• 1:30:19
  Yeah, this film, like the MO called Baby Girl, don't go to
• 1:30:23
  that if you don't like people drinking milk.
• 1:30:26
  Drinking milk it seems. A fury rogue people not like.
• 1:30:33
  So they go. The ultimate horror Drinking.
• 1:30:35
  Milk. Yeah, especially Perry.
• 1:30:41
  There's going to be a book, a book that's going to be released
• 1:30:44
  now with about something with milk and it's going to be like,
• 1:30:47
  just think the cover of Eater of Wasps, except it's just like a
• 1:30:51
  big milk moustache. And drinker of milk.
• 1:30:54
  Oh yeah, you have to scream Moustache.
• 1:31:04
  The ground horrible, but like he could like Justin Richards,
• 1:31:10
  right? He can knock these out in his
• 1:31:11
  sleep, can't he? And eventually he does when he's
• 1:31:14
  doing the new series adventures. But I did get a feeling he was
• 1:31:18
  enjoying writing this like he was.
• 1:31:21
  He just had this whole, like, list of influences from horror
• 1:31:25
  movies and books and things and was just like, let's just go to
• 1:31:28
  town. I've only got a week to write
• 1:31:30
  this. Every horror movie I love is
• 1:31:32
  going to go in this book. It's an idealized kind of, yeah.
• 1:31:36
  I've got to write this in a hurry.
• 1:31:37
  I'm going to have fun with it at the same time, and I think that
• 1:31:40
  shows through. Yeah, it's an idealized version
• 1:31:44
  of season 218, what he'd have done with that season, and I
• 1:31:47
  think that's kind of the best approach to do it almost, you
• 1:31:50
  know what cricket does, Melania write.
• 1:31:53
  He's got this big high camp, you know, with Bonnie, he's got that
• 1:31:57
  ideal version of that. You know, Christopher Boos is
• 1:32:01
  forgettable because it's Christopher Boos.
• 1:32:03
  That's basically he's not thinking about what could be
• 1:32:06
  done with and I think it's it's always that what could be done
• 1:32:10
  which makes the interest in Colin books.
• 1:32:13
  I'll certainly. I certainly didn't regret
• 1:32:16
  rereading this in a way that I have regretted rereading some of
• 1:32:20
  these Doctor Who books that I read back in the day.
• 1:32:23
  But like this, I'm going to win any awards, you know, isn't it,
• 1:32:27
  like you said, it's never going to be a pole top aisle.
• 1:32:30
  But did I have a good time with it?
• 1:32:32
  But yeah, it's. It's under an under 8 skill just
• 1:32:36
  to be able to write this kind of this well structured traditional
• 1:32:39
  Doctor Who story. And it's what a range, which at
• 1:32:41
  this point, I think, I think you're down to 11 bucks a year,
• 1:32:44
  a month, year, a year, 22 bucks a year, bucks a year.
• 1:32:48
  At this point, you need a writer who can do this.
• 1:32:52
  And you know, Justin Richard must be an absolute godsend to
• 1:32:55
  his editors. Well, well, especially when he
• 1:32:58
  was the editor, you know. Oh, thank God, right.
• 1:33:00
  I've got me. Great.
• 1:33:02
  Yeah. Right.
• 1:33:03
  Was this, was this better or worse than the Sands of Time?
• 1:33:05
  This is. This is, Yeah.
• 1:33:06
  I like, yeah, I mean. He had a lot more time to to
• 1:33:12
  write that. I don't know, I'm biased as
• 1:33:14
  well, taking into all over that book like she's awesome.
• 1:33:17
  So sorry speaking to her, but this is Colin so this is better
• 1:33:20
  for. Me.
• 1:33:22
  Absolutely, I think. I can do.
• 1:33:28
  With Sands of Time, I think you can tell that it's a book that
• 1:33:29
  he really. Wanted to write.
• 1:33:31
  So it's got that really intricate plotting.
• 1:33:33
  It's got that really kind of whatever character arc and
• 1:33:37
  everything kind of fits together like clockwork.
• 1:33:39
  This is really solid, but I don't think that he was like I
• 1:33:43
  simply must write great been running through my mind for the
• 1:33:47
  last 20 years where whereas you can tell he has more passion
• 1:33:50
  about some of his other books stepped when he oh, forgive me,
• 1:33:53
  but except when he covered it Perry and.
• 1:33:54
  KY at the end of the book he simply had to put in one for the
• 1:34:01
  heteros there lads. Did we find any?
• 1:34:10
  Of the kind of supporting characters memorable or were
• 1:34:12
  they just kind of generic and plot functional?
• 1:34:18
  Luke, what do you think on that? Yeah, that was a long character.
• 1:34:27
  Yeah, I think the characters. Like it's been a few.
• 1:34:31
  It's been a month since I've I've read it you know, but I
• 1:34:37
  can't remember a lot of the characters by name.
• 1:34:39
  Except maybe Dave and. There's like the document, so I
• 1:34:44
  think the characters are good enough for the story and for to
• 1:34:47
  make that world feel populated and alive.
• 1:34:50
  But it's not going to be like that.
• 1:34:52
  Like there aren't any scenes like with the the violin dude
• 1:34:56
  hitting on the doctor or something.
• 1:34:58
  And there's like heaps of relationshipy stuff.
• 1:35:00
  It's it's more like you get a vibe of this small close knit
• 1:35:04
  community town and it's populated really, really well
• 1:35:08
  with kind of people you'd might expect to see in such a such a
• 1:35:11
  kind of throwback, you know, old time of influence like town and
• 1:35:17
  the scientists enough. Yeah.
• 1:35:20
  So you're not going to win. Rewards with.
• 1:35:23
  The the characters. In this either.
• 1:35:25
  But it does like the world is believable and the characters in
• 1:35:30
  it are as well, even if I can't like list all their names or
• 1:35:36
  something. That's a that's.
• 1:35:37
  One of those things I. Hear all the time in podcasts
• 1:35:40
  like you like that we can't even remember their names.
• 1:35:43
  I'm like there's like 1516 other.
• 1:35:48
  Characters in this you're not going to remember.
• 1:35:49
  All the, all the names and stuff.
• 1:35:50
  But yeah, they, they, they serve the purpose of the story, I'd
• 1:35:53
  say. Yeah, that's to me, it was kind
• 1:35:56
  of the moving scenery in a lot of ways.
• 1:35:58
  It's like they they absolutely fulfilled the roles that you
• 1:36:01
  would want and expect to see in these stories, which kind of
• 1:36:05
  means that names aren't necessarily important.
• 1:36:07
  So just try and give a character.
• 1:36:08
  I think it was Liz had read here.
• 1:36:10
  Dave had his face blown off. You know, distinctive character,
• 1:36:17
  but you make the. Make one of the builds a civil
• 1:36:19
  servant my. God, come on.
• 1:36:23
  From the ministry. Yes.
• 1:36:25
  Which ministry there's? Ministries are there.
• 1:36:30
  He was like Brigadier, wasn't he?
• 1:36:31
  He was a bit. Brigadier like they all
• 1:36:33
  fulfilled their function. Didn't they, you know, like
• 1:36:36
  Dave? Baston was there to infect
• 1:36:39
  everybody. The scientists were there to
• 1:36:41
  give us all the exposition as to how the DNA came in.
• 1:36:45
  Hetty waiting for OP or whatever her name was there because we
• 1:36:50
  needed to get milk to Perry everyone out there.
• 1:36:56
  But yeah, it looked like no one. Really.
• 1:36:59
  Yeah, yeah, you're right. This ain't going to win
• 1:37:01
  literary. Awards for guest.
• 1:37:02
  Characters. No, not at all.
• 1:37:05
  But again, Andrew. No, I don't.
• 1:37:08
  Think I've got. Much more to add than that, I
• 1:37:10
  mean. The, the sort of the antagonists
• 1:37:14
  as well were quite forgettable too.
• 1:37:15
  So you've got like the what even was he like the the other
• 1:37:20
  scientists who lived in the house.
• 1:37:23
  And then you find out that the civil servant who you think is a
• 1:37:26
  goodie is actually a baddie because he's possessed.
• 1:37:30
  By the. Stuff.
• 1:37:30
  And it's yeah, Andrew, I've got one more, one more genre.
• 1:37:35
  TV show I can add. Oh, yeah, You know, they did the
• 1:37:38
  twist of like, who's the host? Yeah, and then there was the
• 1:37:41
  twist of the guy with the wheelchair, the civil servant,
• 1:37:45
  and that's conspiracy from the from TNG series 1, where they
• 1:37:50
  had the aliens on Earth and who's the host ahead of all.
• 1:37:53
  We've got to kill him. Here we go.
• 1:37:54
  Sorry, just one and another show with an extraordinary.
• 1:37:58
  Violent moment in it. Act of keeping for the series.
• 1:38:02
  Yeah, indeed, that was part of. Season 1.
• 1:38:05
  Of TNG's, one of their few. Good episodes.
• 1:38:07
  In that first. Season I would go as far as say
• 1:38:10
  only. You can't remember a lot of
• 1:38:16
  what's in there, but you might be right.
• 1:38:20
  It's pretty bad. I was going to say, Mr. Patrick.
• 1:38:22
  Just unpacked his bags for two. Years, man that that that was
• 1:38:27
  lucky he. Stuck with it and gave him.
• 1:38:30
  Some great material, but yeah, so I think has.
• 1:38:35
  Anyone got anything? Else they would like to say or
• 1:38:40
  please can we talk about these? Hideous.
• 1:38:42
  Covers. Put them back on the shelf.
• 1:38:45
  They're really making me feel quite I'll my last the last
• 1:38:49
  thing I would say about this book.
• 1:38:51
  Is this is the kind of book that everyone will see on their.
• 1:38:55
  Shelf and they'll be like I. Haven't heard much about this I
• 1:38:58
  and and then you'll read it and hopefully, like me, you'll
• 1:39:01
  discover, Oh, it's a nice little gem.
• 1:39:05
  You know, because not every good Doctor Who book is going to be
• 1:39:09
  talked about like they should be the top ten of Doctor Who
• 1:39:12
  literature. Sometimes we want is a really
• 1:39:16
  good, solid, dependable Doctor Who.
• 1:39:17
  Sorry, that's every Doctor Who book was as competent as this.
• 1:39:22
  We would be in really good shape.
• 1:39:25
  Unfortunately, every Doctor Who book is not as competent as
• 1:39:28
  this. Yeah, I think, you know, it's,
• 1:39:31
  it's just, it's a good read and that's.
• 1:39:33
  What they all should be. This should be like the baseline
• 1:39:36
  of quality and it, you know, it, it's good.
• 1:39:38
  It's like a, it's a 3.5 out of five.
• 1:39:40
  It's a good solid read and doesn't really want to be
• 1:39:44
  anything more than that. And you know, that's a good
• 1:39:46
  thing and it's hard to do because there's a lot of these
• 1:39:49
  sort of villa ish books that are just crap.
• 1:39:53
  So, you know, they should all be as good as so.
• 1:39:56
  So did you just say Christopher Bootless there I.
• 1:40:00
  Didn't take you for an out of five sort of man, Andrew.
• 1:40:05
  Did you think I wanted the nuance?
• 1:40:07
  Of out of ten, well. You know, I'm wondering if you
• 1:40:10
  were going to go sort of a. Plus to D.
• 1:40:12
  Minus I prefer A5, I know. Where I am with a 5 I think.
• 1:40:18
  A magazine used to do out of five, so that's what's lodged in
• 1:40:21
  my in my brain. I'll give it an 8 out of 10 and
• 1:40:24
  it's pushing from A7 to an. 8:00 Just because of those really
• 1:40:28
  grizzly moments, Luke, have you got your own imaginary scoring
• 1:40:32
  system? That you can use.
• 1:40:34
  Here 69 out of 100. Now what?
• 1:40:39
  Yeah, I'd put it up there like around around the seven.
• 1:40:41
  Mark, yeah. I can see it's it's flaws and
• 1:40:44
  most of that stem from it probably being Justin.
• 1:40:47
  I want this book a week ago now. So I think he had to actually go
• 1:40:52
  back in time to have enough time.
• 1:40:54
  He had to borrow time and actually it's actually to get
• 1:40:59
  this. Book out so you can.
• 1:41:01
  I could tell, but I could also tell he tried to put as much fun
• 1:41:05
  little twists and enjoyment into it as possible, and I kind of
• 1:41:08
  respect that. So yeah, 7 do you think when
• 1:41:11
  Justin took the office of Steve Cole?
• 1:41:14
  Then he sat down in the chair and then picks up the phone and
• 1:41:16
  went Hello Steve, I want to book in a week.
• 1:41:24
  I like. To think he did well.
• 1:41:25
  What's your scoring? System then John, let's let's
• 1:41:29
  see what. On a scale of I don't know, the
• 1:41:35
  twin dilemma to let's go revelation of Dalek, shall we?
• 1:41:40
  Because it's you, it's a. Solid time.
• 1:41:42
  Of the Rani, I was going to say. Score it is if we're scoring.
• 1:41:49
  It in sort of Doctor Who monsters, it's sort of second
• 1:41:52
  tier, you know, sort of Sontarans, yeah.
• 1:41:55
  You know what you're going to get from Santo, It's not going
• 1:41:57
  to be a. Terrible.
• 1:41:58
  So it's. Going to be, it's going to be a
• 1:41:59
  bit of fun. Yeah.
• 1:42:00
  I ain't verbal, is it? You know there's some Tara music
• 1:42:03
  from 2. Doctors in my head now I love.
• 1:42:08
  That, well anyway, we appear to have.
• 1:42:13
  Exhausted the possibilities of scoring systems and books and
• 1:42:17
  genre TV shows? Oh, you're going to wear some
• 1:42:20
  scores on book covers? Oh, here.
• 1:42:23
  We go and this is what we'd live for.
• 1:42:25
  Yeah, we all love a favorite, but what we really bloody about
• 1:42:29
  what Joe tells us that EV the hamster audience likes is they
• 1:42:34
  like to slag We they like it when we slag things off.
• 1:42:37
  They like it when we get into what we absolutely hate.
• 1:42:42
  That's right. So today.
• 1:42:46
  We have for you the worst of. Black Sheep.
• 1:42:51
  Everyone here has chosen their three least favorite black sheep
• 1:42:56
  covers. By God, they had.
• 1:43:01
  Such a bad reputation as that I dread.
• 1:43:03
  To think where we are going with this hideous these three, I'll
• 1:43:07
  tell you what. That's what I I guarantee one of
• 1:43:11
  my choices has turned up. At least maybe.
• 1:43:13
  Or at least one, maybe two of your of everybody else's.
• 1:43:16
  But but I think as a. Marker of cover quality, we have
• 1:43:23
  you. Know Mr. Doctor Who cover story
• 1:43:25
  himself, Andrew here. So yeah, that's right.
• 1:43:28
  Would you care to lead us? Off.
• 1:43:31
  Well, I think I'm going to be less vitriolic than I.
• 1:43:34
  Was about the new adventures covers.
• 1:43:36
  I think that the with the black sheep ones, there's sort of more
• 1:43:41
  of a level of consistency to them than the new adventures
• 1:43:43
  ones. You kind of know what you're
• 1:43:45
  getting and when they're bad, it's more that they're boring or
• 1:43:52
  just sort of overreaching themselves.
• 1:43:57
  So, Rod, I've I've kind of cheated a bit like I did last
• 1:44:00
  time, but instead of sort of going for specific covers, I've
• 1:44:03
  gone for like the three sort of approaches that I think don't
• 1:44:07
  work for them. So my first one is just boring.
• 1:44:13
  So my choices for boring are just the Spacey covers of The
• 1:44:18
  Tempest and the Janus conjunction because it's just
• 1:44:24
  some planets. It's sci-fi.
• 1:44:26
  There's some space shit happening.
• 1:44:28
  Like they're just so unambitious.
• 1:44:30
  They're not, they're not like badly composed or anything.
• 1:44:33
  It's just this tells me nothing about what this story is.
• 1:44:37
  It's just here's some sci-fi. You like planets and shit, don't
• 1:44:40
  you? Like, it's a Doctor Who book.
• 1:44:42
  We're pumping out two a month. Here's some planets.
• 1:44:45
  So I just like that as well. Yeah.
• 1:44:47
  Yeah. I just find them very very.
• 1:44:49
  Boring. And it doesn't.
• 1:44:51
  Make me want to pick up either of these books, even if they
• 1:44:53
  might be great. I haven't read these and I'm a
• 1:44:55
  very like shallow visual person and I'm drawn to a cover and
• 1:45:00
  they just say don't bother reading me.
• 1:45:02
  We're generic filler. So, Luke, what's?
• 1:45:07
  Your first choice. All right, well, my first choice
• 1:45:10
  is the murder game. Why did I choose this?
• 1:45:15
  Everyone. Well.
• 1:45:17
  You see this character right here in the middle?
• 1:45:19
  That's fucking Salamander. It is Salamander.
• 1:45:24
  No, I was. Paying attention to that point.
• 1:45:26
  Weren't I? So Nola Buffini, obviously.
• 1:45:31
  Isn't a very big fan of Doctor Who because I have to think that
• 1:45:35
  Stephen Cole or Justin Richards definitely would have picked
• 1:45:38
  that up and been like that's not that's not the second doctor,
• 1:45:41
  that's Salamander. So yes, that's why that's that
• 1:45:44
  gets one of the worst covers of all time.
• 1:45:46
  Plus I feel like the Salacian on the final sanction looks cooler
• 1:45:51
  than the one on the murder game. So yeah, can I speak up in
• 1:45:56
  defence of the OF? The murder game.
• 1:45:59
  Yes. So I think that they knew.
• 1:46:02
  It wasn't a picture. Of the Doctor because they
• 1:46:04
  photoshopped his hair to look like Patrick Troughton's hair
• 1:46:07
  and not Salamander's hair. And it's a picture of the
• 1:46:11
  Doctor, not as the Doctor in a book.
• 1:46:12
  That's about. People wearing costumes.
• 1:46:14
  So I think it was a deliberate choice to pick a picture of the
• 1:46:17
  Doctor that doesn't look like the Doctor.
• 1:46:19
  Make him look a bit more like Patrick Crown by photoshopping
• 1:46:21
  his hair. But maybe I'm giving black
• 1:46:24
  credit back. Black sheep more credit than
• 1:46:26
  they are due. But as you can tell, I think
• 1:46:28
  about this shit a lot. I love that I'm going to leave
• 1:46:33
  Joe Till. Last because.
• 1:46:34
  His ones are, it's going to be a beautiful router I will go with
• 1:46:39
  and I have got to have these in there, the ultimate treasure
• 1:46:44
  because these early covers, they're bloody.
• 1:46:48
  Off you it's OK. You've got big swirl doctors
• 1:46:52
  face and we'll just lamp something some kind of vague
• 1:46:56
  approximation of something that's in the book in the swirl
• 1:47:00
  somewhere and it's the first 3 covers I just freaking dreadful
• 1:47:06
  it's. It's all generic.
• 1:47:10
  It's a weird, you know, with double goblins.
• 1:47:12
  Some like it's a photograph. Of the Doctor and then some
• 1:47:15
  weird drawing of the yeah, it's, it's the corner.
• 1:47:21
  And then, yeah, it's the corner. And then it's.
• 1:47:24
  I think up and to the right of the doctor, it's a Unicorn.
• 1:47:27
  So it's it's basically, yeah, it's basically here's.
• 1:47:30
  A template. Slap everything in.
• 1:47:33
  Yeah, I know it's a lot of work to do things, but it's like
• 1:47:36
  you've just taken the money and run with this, haven't you?
• 1:47:39
  It's terrible. I didn't choose.
• 1:47:44
  Any of those. Swirly covers because I figured
• 1:47:46
  they were. Too easy a target.
• 1:47:48
  So I just went for things that were an assault on my eyes and I
• 1:47:53
  have got a theme and it's in the theme.
• 1:47:55
  Of the episode. That they're all Colin Baker
• 1:47:58
  books. I I think I know what at least
• 1:48:01
  one of these is. I think I.
• 1:48:02
  Know what you hide? You're number one.
• 1:48:04
  I've got a Colin Baker book on mine as well.
• 1:48:07
  Please stop. Putting tits on the cover of.
• 1:48:10
  Doctor. Homework the quantum Archangel.
• 1:48:14
  Now what is? Going on here.
• 1:48:17
  Colin Baker looking very jolly down in the corner.
• 1:48:19
  He's very happy. And then you've got it, man.
• 1:48:22
  Sort of Quicksilver creature which has got clear boobies and
• 1:48:28
  a penis. So I don't know what's going on
• 1:48:30
  on that cover. No.
• 1:48:30
  Look, look, he's got a car. At least if he hasn't got a
• 1:48:35
  cock, it looks. Like he does also Andrew's
• 1:48:40
  favorite there's. A planet in the corner here.
• 1:48:42
  Just. For no reason.
• 1:48:43
  Whatsoever. It's like the moon and bizarre
• 1:48:45
  sort of fun. It's so fucking amateurish,
• 1:48:48
  this. It's like they've just put
• 1:48:50
  together a load of random stuff. It's hideous.
• 1:48:55
  So most hideous though. But yes, poor Craig Hinton.
• 1:48:58
  He doesn't have a great covers on his books.
• 1:49:00
  I've got to be honest. It's pretty good, yeah.
• 1:49:04
  And, you know, buckets. Not too bad.
• 1:49:06
  Stop doing tits. All right.
• 1:49:09
  Rocking. Rocking blue ones as well, like
• 1:49:11
  Shades of the Pit. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:49:12
  I might as well just silk tits and blue tits straight into mine
• 1:49:17
  then. Which is also the Conqueror
• 1:49:18
  changing way. Holding up right here.
• 1:49:21
  Colin Baker looks like he's he's he's baked, definitely.
• 1:49:27
  You've got the moon. There for some reason, but
• 1:49:29
  you've also got the bell Tempest like circles of the solar system
• 1:49:32
  for some reason. It's not a holding Luke or the
• 1:49:35
  lady. What's the androgynous?
• 1:49:38
  Quicksilver person looks like looks like they've been talking
• 1:49:41
  to I am foreman and. Just having to put the Galaxy in
• 1:49:44
  it planet or something like that.
• 1:49:46
  There's a yeah, but there's a Galaxy in.
• 1:49:48
  There and stuff, but the actual. Quantum Archangel looks like
• 1:49:52
  very early kind of this looks like the kind of CGI you'd
• 1:49:55
  expect to see in lawn mower man like it's it's terrible and this
• 1:50:00
  is like almost a. Decade after lawn mower man.
• 1:50:03
  Yeah, this is, this is embarrassingly bad.
• 1:50:07
  This cover, it's too busy and it's it's ugly.
• 1:50:13
  Yeah, it's the opposite, isn't it?
• 1:50:14
  Are those? Swirly ones.
• 1:50:15
  There's just too. Much going on in this?
• 1:50:16
  There's nothing. Happening in those swirly ones,
• 1:50:20
  yeah. Now if if this cover.
• 1:50:22
  Had nothing on it and. Just said Doctor Who, the
• 1:50:24
  quantum Archangel. It would be a more engaging
• 1:50:27
  cover than than that. I'm glad we got 1 the same
• 1:50:32
  Andrew. OK, so I feel.
• 1:50:34
  Like quantum Archangel could. Fit into this category for me.
• 1:50:38
  But it's the ones where they're just trying to mash together
• 1:50:45
  really grainy shit stills that they've got from a really poor
• 1:50:48
  source and then put them into sort of CGI or where they're
• 1:50:53
  just overreaching themselves with what they can achieve.
• 1:50:55
  And you can see they're trying to do things like that.
• 1:50:58
  Modern Big Big Finish covers are doing of sort of, you know,
• 1:51:01
  doing different things with the characters and putting them into
• 1:51:03
  scenes of the book. But I think, yeah, Quantum
• 1:51:05
  Archangel Grave Matter fits into this.
• 1:51:08
  When you've got like a a really sharp image of Colin Baker and
• 1:51:13
  then Perry looks like she's been photographed through a sock and
• 1:51:17
  then sort of mashed together with like a lot of these covers
• 1:51:21
  would just look better if they didn't put the Doctor Who stills
• 1:51:24
  onto them. Like better if it was just the
• 1:51:26
  arm coming out of the grave. See this cross?
• 1:51:29
  It's the same one from Asylum. Someone from City of the Dead
• 1:51:35
  copy and paste, copy and paste you.
• 1:51:37
  Also get that with skulls so if you look.
• 1:51:39
  At genocide with the. Little skulls that also appears
• 1:51:42
  on what little bits of the body snatches cover and others as
• 1:51:45
  well. So banquet like seats on as
• 1:51:47
  possible. Yeah, I think there might be one
• 1:51:49
  for something. Like that for bank?
• 1:51:50
  Well, they probably. Paid for it.
• 1:51:51
  Once and thought we're getting our use out of there.
• 1:51:55
  You're only getting one payment from us.
• 1:51:57
  But yeah, I feel like, you know, like things like Deep Blue where
• 1:52:02
  you've got this beach scene and then you've got this really
• 1:52:04
  badly cut out picture of, of, of Davison slapped onto it with a
• 1:52:10
  bit of a blue filter matching gay.
• 1:52:13
  So they didn't get any. Like it's just, yeah.
• 1:52:18
  Just like. Know your limits in terms of
• 1:52:20
  what? You can do.
• 1:52:21
  With the tools that you've got and you know, if you're going to
• 1:52:25
  include a publicity photo, make sure that they match in terms of
• 1:52:29
  quality. Don't just slap like all these
• 1:52:31
  random pictures together. And if they're not adding things
• 1:52:34
  to it, just leave them off. Oh, I've got another one,
• 1:52:37
  Andrew, the Slow Empire, where they put.
• 1:52:40
  McGann on it and then they sort of blur half of his face and
• 1:52:43
  then there's just sort of spermy planets above him.
• 1:52:46
  What's going wrong with that cover as well?
• 1:52:48
  Is it also doesn't? It doesn't.
• 1:52:50
  Just look like. Mcgann's blurred out.
• 1:52:52
  It also looked like someone from Black Sheep hissed on half of
• 1:52:56
  his face as well. Yeah, but for me, I.
• 1:53:01
  Feel like the swirly ones like they could.
• 1:53:03
  Do that. Like that's what they could
• 1:53:05
  like, even if people didn't like them.
• 1:53:07
  They kind of they they worked and you could kind of up the
• 1:53:11
  swirl a bit of the photo looked a bit grainy, but when they
• 1:53:14
  started trying to go beyond the swirl, it just, yeah, it didn't
• 1:53:17
  really work because they put it together in an hour.
• 1:53:20
  What is it just as black sheep? We don't know, Like with the
• 1:53:22
  virgin covers. Who's doing what 1 So we could
• 1:53:25
  have, you know, prescribed blame when we did those terrible
• 1:53:28
  covers. Some of these black sheep covers
• 1:53:30
  are so good, and some of. Them.
• 1:53:32
  Are so terrible I like to feel like there's someone in the
• 1:53:35
  office who's just really shit you know the T boys get guessing
• 1:53:41
  I. Think the thing of having talked
• 1:53:43
  to a few of the authors at the time.
• 1:53:46
  The key was an actual specific brief to black sheep.
• 1:53:51
  He said if if you could tell them exactly what you wanted,
• 1:53:55
  exactly how you wanted it, they were really good.
• 1:53:58
  If you left it vague so you know they are basically the early
• 1:54:01
  ChatGPT of their day I won't spend.
• 1:54:08
  Much too much time next week because I think this is going to
• 1:54:10
  come up on. Joe's list and I will.
• 1:54:11
  I'm going to put in second place Spiral Scratch, which is just.
• 1:54:19
  Migrant. Inducing, yeah.
• 1:54:20
  It's it's there to. Induce Vertigo in you.
• 1:54:24
  You look at it and you immediately want to go and puke
• 1:54:27
  because it is just dizzying. It is the part of Colin Baker's
• 1:54:32
  spying on it. It's just the background is
• 1:54:33
  like. It just it is like.
• 1:54:37
  Somebody has vomited on a. Page and put their finger in the
• 1:54:43
  vomit and make patterns out of it.
• 1:54:46
  You think that's what is going on with Colin there?
• 1:54:49
  Like he's, he's, it's like. Someone's pissed all over him as
• 1:54:52
  well. He's so blurry.
• 1:54:54
  Yellow, yellow line coming. It's a frag.
• 1:54:56
  It's a fragile. Yellow arc of fragrance coming
• 1:55:00
  it's I know. They were trying to do the
• 1:55:03
  multiverse, and I guess they're doing.
• 1:55:05
  Something sort of time tunnelly there, but fuck man, you
• 1:55:08
  wouldn't want that on your bed stand.
• 1:55:10
  You wouldn't want that on your wall, would you?
• 1:55:13
  That was horrible. For years it was the.
• 1:55:15
  Last Doctor Who. Book in Smith's in Newport.
• 1:55:18
  It was there for up to like 2000 and 2009.
• 1:55:22
  Yeah, I was looking at going. No, I picked up the pink poodle.
• 1:55:27
  I picked up all of them but I'm not having.
• 1:55:28
  That shit, even you have your limits.
• 1:55:34
  All right, so. Andrew, what is the last of your
• 1:55:37
  approaches that? Doesn't work, so the last one is
• 1:55:42
  yeah. Where?
• 1:55:44
  It's ambitious and it's a really great idea.
• 1:55:47
  They just haven't nailed it. And I think this might be
• 1:55:51
  controversial because they're covers that some people like I
• 1:55:53
  think one of one of your favourites, John.
• 1:55:57
  So like History 101, the crooked World where they're they're
• 1:56:02
  great concepts. So Doctor Who is a Hannah
• 1:56:04
  Barbera cartoon. I talked about this when we did
• 1:56:06
  our SO I won't repeat myself on that Crooked world, but like
• 1:56:10
  with History 101 suicide in that book too.
• 1:56:13
  The con Sorry, there is a suicide.
• 1:56:15
  In there as well. It's not ABBC novel if someone.
• 1:56:20
  Isn't killing themselves. But yeah, the.
• 1:56:25
  So the concept. With this one is like.
• 1:56:26
  The 8th Doctor is like a cubist painting, as like a Picasso
• 1:56:30
  painting. And you think that is such a
• 1:56:32
  great concept and like if you had one of the really skilled
• 1:56:37
  artists who work on Doctor Who covers doing it, you could
• 1:56:41
  really do that concept justice. But here they've just sort of
• 1:56:44
  like cut it up a bit in Photoshop, hated it a bit, put
• 1:56:48
  the Sagrada Familia behind him and it's like it kind of gets
• 1:56:52
  the sort of the idea of what Cubism is, but does a really
• 1:56:56
  piss poor like, oh, that'll do. Like we've done it in half an
• 1:57:00
  hour. We've cut his face up a little
• 1:57:02
  bit. It's just it.
• 1:57:04
  Yeah. It's like if someone described
• 1:57:06
  what the concept was, do you think?
• 1:57:07
  Brilliant. Yeah.
• 1:57:08
  I want to see a Doctor Who Cubist painting.
• 1:57:11
  And then this is what you get. So it just that it's just the
• 1:57:15
  disappointment between idea and execution.
• 1:57:18
  Like that's where I know where to fuck.
• 1:57:20
  I forgive more. If someone's trying to push the
• 1:57:22
  idea so, and that is, and I know it's a shit cartoon, but.
• 1:57:29
  I'm like, oh, at least it's something a bit different, you
• 1:57:32
  know? Absolutely.
• 1:57:33
  So streaky bacon who is. So I hope this author.
• 1:57:39
  Didn't. Do.
• 1:57:40
  The huge. Brief and got what they asked
• 1:57:42
  for because otherwise what they asked for was, I don't know,
• 1:57:48
  what would you like on your cover?
• 1:57:50
  We'll bend over, take a photo of that and then put effects on it.
• 1:57:56
  Can you guess what cover this is?
• 1:57:57
  No, I think Trevor Baxendale's cold yes.
• 1:58:04
  The go down. Doctor Who covers, funnily
• 1:58:06
  enough. I'll cut to it.
• 1:58:07
  That's my. Number one as well.
• 1:58:10
  This looks like. Like, have you ever seen
• 1:58:14
  American Horror Story and one of the witches in that can't have
• 1:58:18
  sex with boys because their vagina just goes, yeah, that
• 1:58:22
  looks like that, but also simultaneously a butt hole.
• 1:58:27
  I thought you need to go and get yourself.
• 1:58:29
  Seen to. Lou.
• 1:58:34
  Got teeth? I was going to say that's both
• 1:58:36
  ends. That's right.
• 1:58:41
  This is. See.
• 1:58:44
  This also makes me feel like sometimes these books were made
• 1:58:48
  in a hurry and not everything could be go back to the drawing
• 1:58:52
  board to be like, hurry up. We need a different.
• 1:58:55
  Oh, by the way, he's got a chapter called Fear of the Dark
• 1:58:57
  here. He'll do that later.
• 1:58:59
  That's a great cover. But yeah, now this looks like a.
• 1:59:02
  This looks dirty and and it's ouchy too because it's all
• 1:59:07
  serrated. Around the edges.
• 1:59:09
  So, you know, like maybe that's around the other side of the
• 1:59:12
  quantum Archangel. Yes, how many things I want to
• 1:59:22
  say about your reading on that cover?
• 1:59:24
  But. I'm just going to upset you all.
• 1:59:26
  So it's like a dirty version of the.
• 1:59:30
  Select PIT and yeah and. It's the colours as well, it
• 1:59:34
  just. Worse than the colours on Spiral
• 1:59:38
  Scratch, yeah. Yeah, of course it's got Colin,
• 1:59:43
  so it's redeeming. Feature on Spiral Scratch,
• 1:59:45
  there's nothing. Redeeming on that cover of Gold
• 1:59:48
  Heart. All righty.
• 1:59:51
  So for the ultimate Joe, what is the single worst cover?
• 1:59:56
  Black Sheep. Ever.
• 1:59:57
  Did someone someone is going to disagree with me or someone is?
• 2:00:02
  Going to think. This is great and like head
• 2:00:05
  games I think but in execution is not too bad but it just
• 2:00:13
  freaks me out so much. I mean I just don't want to look
• 2:00:17
  at it, it's horrible. Smiling almost in dynasty
• 2:00:24
  inside. Thespians and it's so.
• 2:00:26
  Uncanny valley. I just hate it.
• 2:00:30
  So maybe it's effective because it is creepy, but I mean, look
• 2:00:34
  at them. That was exactly what Craig
• 2:00:37
  Hinton wanted. Because I.
• 2:00:39
  Know the guy? Who did the original and the
• 2:00:41
  original black sheep? They did use the dynasty photo
• 2:00:45
  before they realized it had cleared it.
• 2:00:47
  I mean, it's memorable, right? Oh, it's.
• 2:00:50
  Horrible, they wouldn't have been able to use the Daleks
• 2:00:53
  again before they got permission to.
• 2:00:54
  Use a dynasty photo on their. You know, my least favorite.
• 2:00:59
  My creepiest thing is Doctor Who is the.
• 2:01:01
  Facsimile of the human face like like the the clowns in Greatest
• 2:01:06
  Show in the Galaxy, but never has it been epitomized more than
• 2:01:10
  in the cover of signed thespians.
• 2:01:13
  Horrible. Do you reckon I look like this
• 2:01:15
  on the back? I doubt it.
• 2:01:20
  Yes, serrated, serrated approximation of the human rear
• 2:01:23
  end. I mean, as Andrew, I loved your
• 2:01:28
  categories. Of bad covers I see.
• 2:01:31
  Sorry, I cheated. No, I I'm educated by this.
• 2:01:34
  This is. Great, I I'd love to actually.
• 2:01:36
  Someone who knows what you're talking about with the design
• 2:01:38
  work. Because I just go, I don't like,
• 2:01:39
  look at that. It's horrible in an episode
• 2:01:42
  where we have contradictions each other quite a lot though.
• 2:01:44
  I actually found it easier to find bad black sheet covers than
• 2:01:50
  and I do think the best black sheet covers are really vivid,
• 2:01:54
  but I think they are more a bit more mundane than the virgin
• 2:01:59
  covers as a whole. Even though that are in the
• 2:02:02
  virgin covers as we've covered is When they did cheat with the
• 2:02:05
  burning, didn't they just take that still from the?
• 2:02:08
  TV movie or the photo shoot of the TV movie and just slap fire
• 2:02:13
  on it. Almost every time they use Magad
• 2:02:15
  it's terrible demontage. That the blood in parallel 59
• 2:02:20
  the dead stars are no cover ghost it's yeah just let us see
• 2:02:25
  his pretty faith. For Paul John, have you still
• 2:02:29
  got one to go? No that.
• 2:02:31
  No, because I, I just. Cold heart as well.
• 2:02:33
  Oh. You were cold, Hot too?
• 2:02:35
  Yeah. Was it because of vaginal?
• 2:02:38
  Butthole. Issues.
• 2:02:39
  It's no. It's a vagina.
• 2:02:41
  Then tart. It's a.
• 2:02:42
  It's an old. Mythical thing.
• 2:02:44
  Genuinely. Yeah.
• 2:02:46
  Remind it reminded me too. Much of some old girlfriends.
• 2:02:49
  It was terrible. Did you say vagina dentarte?
• 2:02:53
  Yeah. That's dentarte.
• 2:02:54
  That's. What it's called?
• 2:02:56
  Yeah. Have you never seen the movie?
• 2:02:57
  Joe called teeth No. Is it a vagina?
• 2:03:03
  With teeth it. Is I.
• 2:03:06
  Need. To see it.
• 2:03:06
  Now. It it.
• 2:03:08
  You will. They've got the.
• 2:03:09
  Ravs score AV collos guy in it. Hamster Extra.
• 2:03:14
  Four of us all watch. This dreadful vaginal den.
• 2:03:19
  It's one of those ones where your own only really needs to
• 2:03:21
  see one. Scene from it and you'll get it.
• 2:03:24
  Yeah, I'll put it in YouTube and see what.
• 2:03:27
  I get, I don't. Want to watch this?
• 2:03:28
  Nightmare Thing by Bob. Holmes.
• 2:03:32
  Which he couldn't do on TV. I don't even try.
• 2:03:37
  Oh, I'm pretty sad. We've done our best and worst.
• 2:03:39
  Of all the covers now. You know, because that's really
• 2:03:41
  fun to do. We haven't done targets.
• 2:03:47
  OK, let's get a target from the list soon.
• 2:03:51
  We we haven't done. Telus, the Villas.
• 2:03:56
  So it's. Like page is not very exciting.
• 2:04:00
  I've got limited edition. Ones so I can kind of, yeah,
• 2:04:02
  this one's actually. Texted.
• 2:04:03
  It's right now this bit has a potential to be horribly wrong.
• 2:04:08
  Because we I don't think we talked about.
• 2:04:09
  It beforehand and where are we going next?
• 2:04:15
  It's a key. Question, David A Mckinty Book.
• 2:04:18
  We was doing next. Oh.
• 2:04:21
  Didn't you want to do Nazis? Oh, that's right.
• 2:04:24
  OK, David, you'll be next time after.
• 2:04:27
  That let's do Nazis which Nazi though we we chose those free
• 2:04:31
  Nazi books. Well, we just did a Justin
• 2:04:34
  Richards, so. We've never covered any Lance,
• 2:04:39
  but you know I'm, I'm. Happy with?
• 2:04:40
  Either that or. Exodus I don't mind actually.
• 2:04:43
  I need to do a really good new adventure actually after.
• 2:04:46
  Reading that dreadful love and war.
• 2:04:50
  You guys up for just war? I I was edging towards.
• 2:04:54
  Shadow in the glass because there's an audio.
• 2:04:56
  Book Ah, well, no, I mean I don't mind 2 Justin.
• 2:05:00
  And a raw Colin, we did two goal it.
• 2:05:03
  Doesn't mean double Colin and. Double Justin.
• 2:05:06
  Yeah. But I know Steve in there as
• 2:05:08
  well. We can sort of see.
• 2:05:10
  Who's doing what, John? I can swing.
• 2:05:12
  Yeah, I'm a I'm a fan. Do you fancy hanging out?
• 2:05:16
  With Hitler for a. While.
• 2:05:18
  Always. Has everybody read this before?
• 2:05:24
  No. Yes, yes.
• 2:05:26
  Oh, Andrew, I can't wait to. See what you I know the twists.
• 2:05:29
  Oh. Red eye who?
• 2:05:31
  Will you stop spoiling yourself please?
• 2:05:36
  It's such a great ending. You need to.
• 2:05:38
  Go and find my 15 year old self. And just slap that book out of
• 2:05:40
  his hand. I.
• 2:05:42
  Don't remember the ending, so yeah, I'm looking forward.
• 2:05:46
  To it Who reads it? India.
• 2:05:48
  Fisher, OH. Imagine India doing a.
• 2:05:52
  Colin amazing it's going. To sound like a silky.
• 2:05:57
  Smooth reading too. She's right.
• 2:05:59
  Oh, that's. And after that, though, I think,
• 2:06:02
  you know, I mean, this is a bit indulgent.
• 2:06:04
  Now we're doing. The next planning the next book
• 2:06:06
  in this episode, but after that, I think we should do Mcinty and
• 2:06:10
  and celebrate some of his work, yes.
• 2:06:14
  Facing me. Facing me, yeah.
• 2:06:16
  Face of the enemy. Face of the enemy was what we.
• 2:06:19
  Narrowed it down to wasn't. It yeah, yeah, you could all
• 2:06:23
  release the the episodes. In different order as well.
• 2:06:27
  Sometimes I do. Anyway, people get very
• 2:06:29
  confused. Production secret giving away.
• 2:06:35
  The truth, All right. Has anybody?
• 2:06:37
  Got any last words to say before we say farewell and a do last
• 2:06:43
  words? Famous last words.
• 2:06:46
  Oh my God for. Once I'm lost for words.
• 2:06:48
  Oh. Jesus, that's a burst.
• 2:06:50
  Yes, I'll be all right. I have won it life.
• 2:06:54
  People are throwing. Rocks at my.
• 2:06:55
  Windows. I don't know what's happening
• 2:06:56
  tonight. It's all right, the seagulls
• 2:07:00
  will be along in a minute. With the coloured.
• 2:07:03
  Eyes just to take it. You're watching you.
• 2:07:06
  What's that sort of colony way to say goodbye?
• 2:07:09
  Not sorry. Colony Way to say goodbye.
• 2:07:11
  I'm something big theatrical, you know, like, yes.
• 2:07:15
  Fare thee well. And all that stuff.
• 2:07:19
  And well, actually, can somebody?
• 2:07:21
  I've got what's? The opposite of.
• 2:07:22
  Salutations. There'd be something like that.
• 2:07:25
  Can you name me some? Other Doctor Who book club
• 2:07:27
  podcasts. We're all we're all starring.
• 2:07:31
  I see Martin's one. Anymore doctor literature?
• 2:07:34
  Doctor literature anymore trapped ones on Yeah what?
• 2:07:39
  Kenny Smith's. Ones called power.
• 2:07:41
  Oh. Power 3.
• 2:07:43
  OK, here we go. This is how we'll.
• 2:07:44
  End then I'll. Sort of cut around.
• 2:07:48
  We're all stories in the. End the power.
• 2:07:51
  Of free Doctor Who literature, they're still in the nursery
• 2:07:55
  compared to the Hamster Book Club 10 million.
• 2:08:00
  Bullshit readings on. Doctor Who books, that's what.
• 2:08:03
  It takes to be really corrupt.