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Hamster Book Club - The Eight Doctors (with Michael Mills) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:08
  The Doctor closed The Time Machine with a sigh.
• 0:11
  Dear old HG, he murmured. Such an optimist, such an
• 0:16
  enthusiast, especially for the ladies.
• 0:19
  The Doctor smiled briefly, as if it's unpleasant memory, but then
• 0:24
  he frowned as the recent, well, subjectively recent events at
• 0:28
  the Millennium celebrations in San Francisco flashed through
• 0:31
  his mind in a jumble of outrageous images.
• 0:35
  It had been a weird, fantastic adventure full of improbable,
• 0:39
  illogical events. He scowled at the memory of the
• 0:43
  Master treating his precious TARDIS as if it were his own.
• 0:47
  How had he got in in the 1st place?
• 0:49
  Where had he acquired those mysterious morphotic powers he
• 0:52
  had made use of, so freely useless to speculate, decided
• 0:57
  the Doctor. He would probably never know the
• 0:59
  answers now. He looked around, the vastness
• 1:03
  of the reconfigured tardies control room with its Redwood
• 1:06
  panelled walls and complicated console.
• 1:08
  He had been so pleased with it once, now it seemed to carry the
• 1:13
  lingering Tate of the Masters presence.
• 1:16
  The Doctor stood up abruptly, suddenly troubled.
• 1:20
  Better make one final check, just to make sure that none of
• 1:23
  the Masters malignant influence remained.
• 1:27
  Leaving the TARDIS control room, the Doctor made his way to the
• 1:30
  cloister room. He paced slowly along the
• 1:34
  pillared walkways and crossed the stone flag floor, entering
• 1:37
  the massive central structure that held the Eye of Harmony.
• 1:43
  He stood gazing down at the flat granite sculpture in the shape
• 1:47
  of a great closed eye. It wasn't the Eye of Harmony.
• 1:50
  It's all, of course, not really, just a symbolic manifestation,
• 1:54
  an aspect of the Great Eye of Harmony.
• 1:56
  On Gallifrey, created by Omega, stabilised by Rasolon, the Eye
• 2:02
  held a trapped black hole. It's inexhaustible energy
• 2:06
  powered the whole of Gallifrey, including all the Tardises with
• 2:10
  which the Time Lords voyage through time and space.
• 2:13
  Even an antiquated Type 40 like this one was directly linked to
• 2:16
  it. The Doctor studied the Eye for a
• 2:19
  moment longer it was closed, as it should be.
• 2:23
  Everything was in order, except in the stone corner of the
• 2:28
  closed eye. Something gleamed like a tear.
• 2:31
  The Doctor leaned forward to study it more closely.
• 2:34
  It was solid, like a tiny, gleaming diamond.
• 2:38
  Surely it must irritate the eye for the Doctor, like those
• 2:41
  gritty fragments children call sleep that they sometimes find
• 2:44
  in their eyes. Upon awakening, he leaned closer
• 2:47
  still. The little diamond started to
• 2:50
  blaze even more brightly. It glowed and burned and spun
• 2:54
  itself into a bolt of pure energy that lashed out and
• 2:58
  upwards and flashed into the Doctor's eyes.
• 3:00
  Searing across his brain, the Doctor staggered back, his hands
• 3:07
  to his eyes and crashed to the ground.
• 3:11
  As he fell, he heard a mocking voice, Always one last trap.
• 3:17
  Doctor. All's I'll that ends I'll.
• 3:39
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 3:42
  My name is Joe Ford and once again I am with the magnificent
• 3:47
  Mr. Michael Mills. Hello, Michael.
• 3:51
  No star Joseph parks it or he oh.
• 3:53
  You're literally going to do it in Welsh.
• 3:56
  You asked me to Welsh it, you asked me to Welsh it up a bit
• 3:59
  and I I I don't give you half Welsh it.
• 4:01
  How are you, Joe? I thought I was going to get an
• 4:04
  accent not actual Welsh People will understand half of this
• 4:08
  podcast. Are you just like, it's Celtic?
• 4:12
  Not on the front cover of the book we're discussing, so.
• 4:14
  Exactly. Is.
• 4:15
  Yeah. Well, why don't you tell
• 4:17
  everyone what we are going to be discussing today?
• 4:20
  Well, we're going to be going all the way back to the very
• 4:23
  start of the BBC books 8 Doctor Adventure Ages With.
• 4:26
  I think it's fair to describe it as the undisputed classic, the
• 4:31
  landmark piece of Doctor Who fiction from one of its greatest
• 4:36
  uncles. We are doing Doctor Who and the
• 4:40
  Eight Doctors by Terence Dicks. Undisputed by you, me, Mark
• 4:45
  Donaldson and Dylan Reece, but nobody else.
• 4:48
  Because I forget it's beautiful and we will get to the A
• 4:56
  doctors. And trust me, everybody, there
• 4:58
  is a lot to unpick in this book. We're about to take a whirlwind
• 5:02
  tour around 30 years of Doctor Who.
• 5:05
  But before we get there, I don't even know why I need an ice
• 5:08
  breaker question with you. Because you've done this, what,
• 5:11
  five Times Now? Oh.
• 5:13
  Something like that. But I do like to start these
• 5:18
  episodes with a bit of a rando question.
• 5:20
  So 35 minutes ago I messaged you and asked you to recall a moment
• 5:27
  in a Doctor Who book that you absolutely love.
• 5:30
  I think I said favorite, but let's go with one you absolutely
• 5:33
  love. And then I'm going to require
• 5:35
  you to explain yourself, Sir, as well.
• 5:38
  Yes, you did. And I would like to put forward
• 5:41
  a moment, and it is a moment. It's a moment that encapsulates
• 5:45
  a whole book. So spoilers ahead for the book.
• 5:49
  Touched by an Angel by Jonathan Morris.
• 5:52
  Yes, new series, adventure. I would probably go so far as to
• 5:56
  say one of the best new series adventures there has.
• 5:59
  There has been. And the moment is one that we
• 6:04
  revisit and the book opens with a woman in a car on a country
• 6:11
  lane that then crashes and she is, I believe, thrown three of
• 6:18
  the car. And in in her last moments, the
• 6:20
  last thing she sees coming towards her through the
• 6:22
  flickering light of the flames is a figure advancing on her.
• 6:26
  And you've seen the front of the book, you've read the title you
• 6:28
  like. It's a weep, an Angel, that is.
• 6:30
  It's a weep, an Angel. And then the the main part of
• 6:33
  the book is concerned with with her husband, her grieving
• 6:37
  husband who's very much struggling to come to terms with
• 6:39
  her death, who was sent back in time by a weeping Angel and has
• 6:44
  to live through. I think it's the 90s through to,
• 6:48
  you know, through to, through to the early naughties.
• 6:52
  And it's a book really about about regrets, about what one
• 6:56
  would do if one had a chance to do things over again, and about
• 6:59
  grief because he realises, look, I'm going to live long enough to
• 7:02
  reach the point where my wife died.
• 7:05
  I can make, I can make this right.
• 7:08
  I can stop it happening and sort of the denim more of the book.
• 7:11
  This is what the spoilers come in, is when we get back to this
• 7:13
  point where the story started and in the nature of these
• 7:17
  things he realises he can't do it, that he can't save her for
• 7:21
  for whatever reasons we're going to details.
• 7:23
  And that it's about accepting that you know in life we are in
• 7:27
  it's death. And we come back to that moment
• 7:29
  of her lying in her last moment seeing a figure coming towards
• 7:33
  her and we realise it's not one of the weeping angels that is
• 7:37
  there. It's her husband walking towards
• 7:39
  her through the flames and she dies in his arms.
• 7:42
  And it is utterly wonderful and I think, I think beautiful is
• 7:48
  playing in the backframes as well during from the car stereo
• 7:51
  and it's it's it's a it's a fantastic moment and it is one
• 7:56
  that often comes back to me when I think about Doctor Who books
• 8:01
  and fantastic moments from Doctor Who that weren't on TVI.
• 8:07
  Don't remember a lot of details about many of the new series
• 8:10
  adventures because a lot of them are quite generic and I know a
• 8:16
  lot of them are quite speedwritten.
• 8:17
  I remember everything about Touched by an Angel.
• 8:21
  Intriguingly, Jonathan Morris sent me 3 copies of that for my
• 8:24
  eBay auction for charity that I'm doing at the moment.
• 8:27
  Right? And one of them is in German,
• 8:30
  Arthur Tomarov. Who's going to want to buy that?
• 8:34
  A German copy of Touched by an Angel?
• 8:36
  Well, bugger me if it hasn't got one bid on it already.
• 8:41
  There's a German reader out there that wants to read it.
• 8:44
  Also gloriously, at one point, the Amazon URL for the product
• 8:47
  page for that book shorted the title to Doctor Who touched
• 8:50
  Jonathan Morris. Oh, I do remember being really
• 8:57
  moved by that book. You know, I think it takes quite
• 8:59
  a bit for Doctor Who pros to move me and just how that book
• 9:05
  was structured to that point to get to that point.
• 9:08
  It was just so beautifully done. I don't want to divvy out faint
• 9:14
  praise to the 8 doctors to say that my moment comes from the
• 9:18
  second book in the 8th, Doctor Rage, and that is vampire
• 9:22
  science. And a little spoiler for what
• 9:26
  we're going to talk about later. Sam Jones is utterly generic in
• 9:29
  this first novel. Like there is no distinctive
• 9:32
  features about this character whatsoever.
• 9:35
  She is spunky girl. That's about it, you know.
• 9:39
  Oh, sorry, Spunky don't do drug skill and.
• 9:43
  Girl wasn't the word that anyone had a problem with in that
• 9:45
  description. I'm so sorry.
• 9:47
  Yeah. But I don't think on that level
• 9:49
  I forgot. But in vampire science Kate
• 9:54
  Orman takes what is or Kate Orman and Jonathan Blunt take
• 9:58
  what is a very very generic character and in a spectacular
• 10:03
  scene in a nightclub have Sam Jones set upon.
• 10:08
  And she's all she's exactly written in the same in the first
• 10:10
  part of the book she's all bolster to go ready for the
• 10:13
  adventure. You know, I'm Sam Jones and I'm
• 10:16
  here to slay. And then she gets slayed in this
• 10:18
  nightclub when a vampire sinks his teeth into her neck and
• 10:22
  almost drains the life out of her.
• 10:24
  And the way the scene is written with that, they put in like the
• 10:27
  the thump of the the music in the nightclub and in the same
• 10:32
  bit, they've got the thumping of her, her heart as the blood is
• 10:37
  literally being drawn out of her body and she's almost killed.
• 10:40
  And it literally takes her character on a completely
• 10:43
  different trajectory after that, where she's very unsure about
• 10:47
  this lifestyle and she almost has to be coaxed, backed into it
• 10:50
  for the rest of the book. It's a it's a brilliantly
• 10:54
  written scene, but it's a scene where literally a character that
• 10:59
  is nothing is turned into something.
• 11:02
  And I I think Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum, especially Kate
• 11:07
  Orman, they were one of the best character writers in the Doctor
• 11:10
  Who line. But that is just such a
• 11:12
  memorable moment for making something of Sam Jones.
• 11:19
  It's an incredible thing, isn't it, When you are, when a writer
• 11:22
  or writers are able to make music work and a part of a scene
• 11:26
  in in a in a book. Because to stay at the obvious,
• 11:30
  you can't hear it and they're not going to just write out the
• 11:32
  score down in the margins. We didn't mention it when we did
• 11:35
  the Damaged Goods episode, but there's an incredible moment in
• 11:37
  that honourable mention for the scene where there's a a guy
• 11:43
  who's gone out, you know, looking for other guys in a
• 11:46
  graveyard and the guy that he comes upon is is inhabited by
• 11:52
  the end form, by the creature. And there's a description of
• 11:55
  like them behind the tombstones where this thing is playing his
• 11:58
  skin off like he is, he is being disintegrated by this alien
• 12:01
  monster. Well, I think it's Small Town
• 12:03
  Boy by Bronski Beat blowers out in the background and you can
• 12:06
  see it and hear it and so you know it.
• 12:09
  Also works like that, doesn't he?
• 12:10
  Because he plays a lot of music over pertinent points in his TV
• 12:13
  shows as well with Doctor Who as well.
• 12:15
  Do you remember the beginning of the year of Intelligent Tigers?
• 12:18
  Have you read that one? I haven't, I just, it's one of
• 12:21
  the ones that I've been sort of been saving to go back to.
• 12:23
  It is. It's a beautifully rendered
• 12:26
  alien city, but it's a city of musicians.
• 12:29
  So she just writes that there's music coming from every
• 12:33
  direction. And I always play the Amelie
• 12:36
  soundtrack when I because that's got a beautiful orchestral
• 12:39
  source to it. And I just imagined Angie Kapoor
• 12:42
  walking through the city of Tigers and there's violins and
• 12:45
  guitars and everything playing. I think it's a real skill to.
• 12:48
  I think writing about music is very difficult like you said, so
• 12:52
  to be able to conjure it on the pages.
• 12:56
  It's as Elvis as Elvis, Costello said.
• 12:58
  Writing about music is like dancing about sculpture.
• 13:09
  Indeed, writing about Doctor Who is like dancing about sculpture
• 13:13
  when it comes to Terran sticks and the eight Doctors as well.
• 13:15
  No, I'm joking. I'm joking.
• 13:16
  Back on track, back on track, anybody?
• 13:18
  Here we go then. So I've got to have an opening
• 13:21
  question for you. Why?
• 13:24
  Because. Well, yes, not really.
• 13:27
  Why I wait, it kind of is why, Yeah.
• 13:30
  What? What was the mission statement
• 13:32
  with this book? Well, will you give us a bit of
• 13:34
  context please about sort of Virgin ending and BBC starting?
• 13:39
  Yes. So the TV movie happened in
• 13:44
  1996. I think one of the things that's
• 13:46
  often missed or not understood is the speed with which the TV
• 13:49
  movie actually happened, because there had been pretty much since
• 13:53
  Doctor Who had gone off there, if not a little bit before.
• 13:55
  There'd been all sorts of back and forth and discussions and
• 13:57
  different versions. And people have written books
• 13:59
  about this, go and meet them, about the ways in which Doctor
• 14:02
  Who might be brought back as an American Co production or maybe
• 14:05
  as an entirely American production, but such that when
• 14:08
  when finally everything, everything got into place, this
• 14:11
  TV movie happened in a in a matter of months.
• 14:13
  I think like the story's about like Doctor Who Magazine having
• 14:16
  to like sort of really, you know, knock on doors and stuff
• 14:18
  to make sure they got over there to get some coverage of it
• 14:20
  before it all finished. It was literally right seven
• 14:23
  years to actually get it to where it needed to be.
• 14:26
  So from the idea being pitched to it being made.
• 14:29
  And then you're right. Yeah, a few months to make it
• 14:31
  and it was done. Exactly.
• 14:33
  But what that meant was that suddenly, suddenly on this side
• 14:35
  of the Atlantic, the BBC was like, oh God, Doctor Who's back,
• 14:38
  still one of our biggest brands. We need to get everything
• 14:40
  sorted. We need to get all the licenses
• 14:43
  sorted out and back in house and make sure we've actually got
• 14:44
  some brand alignment going on with this thing that we've just
• 14:47
  let sprawl off. Interestingly, similar things
• 14:49
  would happen years later when when it came back to TV.
• 14:53
  And one of the more controversial elements of that
• 14:55
  was them bringing the book license back in house, which had
• 14:59
  sat with Virgin. And I think as as unfortunate
• 15:02
  luck would have it, I think Virgin's license was coming up
• 15:04
  for you right around the time that the TV movie was happening.
• 15:09
  There have been many and bloody conflicts, 1414 words as to the
• 15:15
  rights and wrongs of all that, all of this.
• 15:18
  But I think from the BB CS perspective how they would say
• 15:20
  is we've potentially got this massive new relaunch of this
• 15:23
  brand that needs to be something that we have control over.
• 15:28
  I think the way that some people on should I say Team Virgin
• 15:32
  maybe saw it was the BBC same version of have had a very made
• 15:36
  a great success out of Doctor Who books which they had
• 15:40
  certainly commercially. You know what why are we paying
• 15:45
  someone else to do? Why are we letting someone else
• 15:47
  do that? Why don't we have the money for
• 15:48
  ourselves. Whatever you think think
• 15:52
  happened what that meant was that Virgin lost the licence.
• 15:58
  That didn't happen immediately but they had about a year left
• 16:01
  on it so about a year after TV movie had aired.
• 16:07
  Weirdly, point by the point at which everyone knew, the TV
• 16:10
  movie had long since not LED to A to a new TV series.
• 16:14
  Shame, Michael. Shame.
• 16:18
  Shame, certainly I was. I was disappointed as it was a
• 16:20
  young lad. Did you not see that picture
• 16:23
  that they drew in Doctor Who magazine?
• 16:25
  That illustration of Autons walking through the streets of
• 16:29
  New York firing their gums with the Paul McGann at the in the
• 16:32
  background with Grace Holloway? It would have been gorgeous.
• 16:35
  That was that. No, that was fantastic.
• 16:38
  Oh, it would have been good. Oh, wouldn't it have been good?
• 16:41
  Or potentially terrible, but it would have been expensive and
• 16:44
  looked amazing. Yeah, we'd have all been very
• 16:46
  happy about it at the time. I'm sure this led to this, but
• 16:51
  the what? The version having, you know,
• 16:54
  these 12 months left on their licence led to this really weird
• 16:57
  situation where the BB CS big relaunch tie into the TV movie
• 17:01
  of its range happened in June 1997 with the 8 Doctors by
• 17:07
  tearing sticks. Oh, beautifully done.
• 17:10
  Thank you. So OK, so the question here is
• 17:15
  what is the mission statement with this book?
• 17:19
  The mission statement of this book is to summarise and explain
• 17:24
  the history of Doctor Who as of 1997 to the vast young adult
• 17:29
  audience who had been brought to the range brought to the
• 17:32
  franchise by the wild success of the BBC Fox Co production TV
• 17:38
  movie. So do you think they were
• 17:40
  genuinely trying to capture a brand new audience to read these
• 17:44
  books at this point? Brand new generation, same old
• 17:48
  audience, so I think. Do you think that was a success?
• 17:54
  Well, this is a data point of one, but I was 8 years old, Nine
• 18:04
  years old when this book came out, and I didn't have the
• 18:07
  foggiest inclination that existed.
• 18:12
  And I. Prolific reader at the time.
• 18:15
  Were you? Prolific reader at the time,
• 18:17
  Very much so, but I was still, you know, it was very much still
• 18:20
  Roald Dahl and Demon Headmaster for me.
• 18:22
  Because I don't know where these SAT.
• 18:24
  I know sort of. Later on when I was collecting
• 18:26
  these books, sometimes they were in the science fiction section
• 18:31
  of Dylan's, and other times I'd find them in the kids section.
• 18:34
  You know, that's a bit worrying when you find The Sleep of
• 18:37
  Reason alongside Rodal, you know, about a woman slitting her
• 18:41
  wrist. So I'm like OK.
• 18:42
  Well, I mean, some of these did turn up in my in my school
• 18:45
  library. Like I've got a memory of, I
• 18:47
  think the ultimate treasure was it was in there.
• 18:50
  So, you know, that didn't seem unreasonable because I think, do
• 18:56
  I know where he's SAT? The answer is no.
• 18:59
  But I also don't think the people making them knew where
• 19:01
  they sat either. Possibly that was the problem.
• 19:05
  That was the problem. And if you look at these early
• 19:07
  books talking about 8 doctors, you've mentioned vampire
• 19:10
  science, but you go further, War of the Daleks, Alien bodies.
• 19:14
  It's very, very inconsistent in terms of who these books are
• 19:17
  actually being aimed at. Vampire.
• 19:19
  Some of them are literally shallow pot boilers that you can
• 19:23
  get, and others are dense science fiction novels.
• 19:27
  Yeah, that you really, you know, have to focus on, like from
• 19:30
  month to month. If you were a 7 year old, these
• 19:33
  books, I think you'd be very confused.
• 19:36
  I mean, I think if you picked up The Eight Doctors as a 7 year
• 19:38
  old, you'd be very confused. Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:41
  But I mean, that doesn't mean each book didn't have its own
• 19:44
  conception of who it was being written for.
• 19:46
  So I think vampire science was being written for people who'd
• 19:49
  been reading The New Adventures a few months before.
• 19:52
  I think. I think The Eight Doctors was
• 19:56
  being written for, you know, 810 eleven year olds who were just
• 20:00
  getting into Doctor Who and really wanted a fun way of
• 20:02
  finding out more about it. I think War of the Daleks was
• 20:04
  written for people who were still angry about 1980s Doctor
• 20:08
  Who and wanted A reckoning. But I.
• 20:11
  Think Skyrim remembers of the Daleks.
• 20:13
  No, you didn't. Oh, you'll have to do War of the
• 20:17
  Daleks at some point. Oh, actually, that's booked in.
• 20:19
  You know, that's somebody's favorite.
• 20:23
  What? I'm not.
• 20:24
  I'm not joking. I'm being serious.
• 20:27
  Well, I shan't. I shan't spoil that episode by
• 20:29
  saying anything more about it. But what I will say.
• 20:33
  Shit. You can say that much.
• 20:39
  Getting back to the 8 doctors, you know if you're go because
• 20:44
  also they they pretty much this pretty much picked up I think
• 20:47
  the month after the final new event adventure was published.
• 20:49
  I don't think there was a gap, I think.
• 20:51
  You so you're talking about the the Doctor Who new adventures,
• 20:54
  because obviously there was a period of Bernis new adventures
• 20:56
  as. Well, there was, yes, no
• 20:57
  apologies the the canonical new Adventures.
• 21:03
  Not, not the not the Separatists denying Rome.
• 21:08
  Can I just say a quick moment for that?
• 21:10
  Because I don't think they helped this range of books at
• 21:13
  all, because those books were the mature sort of future
• 21:18
  history, new adventures, stories that you'd come to expect from
• 21:22
  Virgin. And so those people that were
• 21:25
  satisfied with the direction that Doctor Who had been taken
• 21:28
  in were actually getting everything they needed from
• 21:31
  those Bernice books. And it was the same authors they
• 21:33
  were using again. So it was sort of reliable, good
• 21:36
  authors and I think some of them really pushed against this
• 21:41
  approach, this sort of child friendly.
• 21:43
  Let's try and explain everything approach.
• 21:46
  Yeah, yeah, there was. You know, there was a definite
• 21:49
  schism. You know when when when Peter
• 21:54
  Darvell Evans nailed the licence agreement to the church door he
• 21:58
  may not have known what he was setting in motion but there was
• 22:01
  no there was definitely, I think it was even you know, I've heard
• 22:03
  it referred to the this is the the Virgin Bernice New
• 22:06
  Adventures. You know as a as a spoiler
• 22:07
  series because there was definitely some animosity going
• 22:10
  on there as well I think. But the the.
• 22:13
  Truth of the fact is, is they took Doctor Who out of the new
• 22:15
  adventures and they died of death.
• 22:17
  You know, it took a couple of years, but the sales went down
• 22:20
  and down and down to a point where they said we've got to
• 22:21
  stop, we can't afford to do this anymore.
• 22:24
  In fact, I think there's isn't there something like three of
• 22:27
  the different Bernice New Adventures were written to be
• 22:30
  the last new adventure, but there'd just just be enough that
• 22:33
  they'd commissioned a few more. So I think like Where Angels
• 22:36
  Fear Is was meant to be the last one.
• 22:39
  You had like tears of the Oracle, didn't you?
• 22:41
  Which was really climaxic and all that's an Oscar's stuff
• 22:44
  going on. And then all of a sudden you had
• 22:46
  the Joy device, which was like a jolly romp towards the end
• 22:49
  because I just had a few extra slots I had to fill in and
• 22:51
  Justin Richards, you know, wrote it in a week.
• 22:55
  Yeah, and then Twilight to the content of it being the last. 10
• 22:57
  My word Yes. But it may not have been, you
• 23:00
  know, if it sold a few more copies.
• 23:04
  Meanwhile back on back on the BBC.
• 23:08
  But I think what's points to I do I do get some of that
• 23:11
  frustration. Because you know if you'd gone
• 23:13
  from Longbarrow, the dying days and so violence in to this, I
• 23:20
  can see why, why people would have been frustrated because it
• 23:22
  might have been acceptable. It might be acceptable if it
• 23:25
  were in service to a sort of you know a new popularity for the
• 23:28
  show with a new younger audience.
• 23:31
  You know this this that's essentially what happens when
• 23:34
  the new series adventures killed off the past Doctor adventures
• 23:38
  right. And no one was particularly
• 23:40
  angry because everyone understood why that was
• 23:41
  happening. But but the CV movie hadn't
• 23:46
  created this, this new audience and in fact it it failed to do
• 23:49
  that about a year beforehand. So any kids?
• 23:53
  Again, I take myself as a data point here.
• 23:55
  Who had enjoyed Doctor Who in May 1996 And for consider about
• 23:59
  it June 1997. Star Wars special editions were
• 24:02
  coming out. Come on, we've got Tazzos to put
• 24:04
  in books. Well, it doesn't.
• 24:07
  It doesn't help as well that on the first page of this book,
• 24:10
  Terrance sticks, sticks his finger up at the TV movie and
• 24:13
  goes. It was a series of illogical and
• 24:15
  probable events. What the hell was going on
• 24:17
  there? Right back to the original
• 24:19
  console room. Let's go.
• 24:21
  I I knew I'd heard that, that Terence had his say about the TV
• 24:26
  movie in this book, but I did not realise it was on the first
• 24:29
  page. And frankly, the fact that they
• 24:30
  let him get away with that probably gives you a sense of
• 24:33
  how much editorial oversight there was.
• 24:36
  Yeah, I think they they. Steve Cole wasn't in yet, was
• 24:38
  he? I don't think he came in till
• 24:40
  about seven or eight books in and there was somebody whose
• 24:44
  name because because of an N whose name completely Nefuti,
• 24:49
  that was her surname. Anyway, She was sort of casually
• 24:52
  overseeing the books, but I think essentially people were
• 24:54
  just writing what they wanted at the start.
• 24:57
  Yeah, I think so. I think you're right.
• 25:01
  But, but you know, it's not. It's not Terence Dixie's fault,
• 25:06
  and it's not this book's fault that the audience that it was
• 25:09
  aiming at wasn't there. And frankly, if you're hiring
• 25:12
  Terence Dicks to kick off your new range of Doctor Who books,
• 25:15
  this is the sort of book you're going to get and know to expect.
• 25:17
  And he's going to think to to put forward.
• 25:20
  I just not say he can't do other things, but I think this is the
• 25:24
  book you'd expect Terence Dicks to write in 1990.
• 25:26
  Seven turn to Terence at the beginning of the New Adventures
• 25:28
  as well, didn't it? Not right in the beginning, but
• 25:30
  the second book and that was massively popular at the time.
• 25:33
  Yeah. I don't know how fandom
• 25:35
  considers that now, but I remember that being like
• 25:38
  revelation was sort of the the one that really stood out.
• 25:42
  But I remember Ecstas was the one that was massively popular
• 25:45
  and. I I I believe still stands up.
• 25:48
  I've not read it, but it's certainly when people still talk
• 25:50
  about enjoying when they go back to.
• 25:52
  It doesn't using Terrance just come with his own prestige
• 25:54
  anyway, though, Like, you know, the grandfather of Doctor Who
• 25:57
  fiction. Yes, I think there's definitely
• 26:00
  an element of of No, no. Look, this is proper.
• 26:03
  We're doing it properly. We're doing it properly.
• 26:05
  Don't worry, we're not handing it over to other people.
• 26:07
  Never. Mind your Lance Parkins.
• 26:09
  You know, Justin Richards and Paul Connells.
• 26:12
  Your Mark Gatiss is with their ideas.
• 26:16
  No, what we want is someone who is going to do what Doctor Who
• 26:20
  periodically does, which is to summarise itself for the benefit
• 26:24
  of its new and younger audience. Right I.
• 26:26
  Don't think it's ever been done quite like this before though.
• 26:28
  I mean, the amount of detail in this book, and I know we're
• 26:31
  going to cover a lot of it. I mean, Terrace apparently was
• 26:34
  appalled at how there was so much sort of continuity vomit in
• 26:40
  the TV movie. Are you kidding me right now?
• 26:44
  The last scene of this book, Michael, the last scene of this
• 26:47
  book features the Doctor explaining to Sam literally
• 26:51
  everything about the TARDIS himself, the Time Lords.
• 26:54
  And I'm like, so the end of this book is doing exactly what the
• 26:57
  beginning of the TV movie did, a movie that you hated.
• 27:02
  Well, maybe he's earned it by that point.
• 27:05
  Has he, Joe? Should we find out, Let's.
• 27:07
  Find out where do you want to start.
• 27:12
  Can I ask you something for first before we before we start
• 27:14
  going into the nitty gritty? Did you enjoy this?
• 27:18
  Yeah, I did actually for the most part, we get on to that.
• 27:22
  Sound slightly apologetic there. Because it's not got a good
• 27:26
  reputation, as I think we've hinted at, I think it is viewed
• 27:32
  by a lot of people as a bit juvenile, as a little bit up its
• 27:37
  own bum, and not indicative of the heights that the 8th Doctor
• 27:45
  Adventures would achieve. And I think all of those things
• 27:50
  are true. But I think 1 needs to have a
• 27:56
  better understanding of what it's trying to do and to meet it
• 27:58
  on its own terms, because it arrived at a really interesting
• 28:04
  point, I think anyway, in terms of children's publishing, and
• 28:10
  actually within Britain more broadly, the 90s were quite an
• 28:16
  interesting transitional period for children's media.
• 28:20
  There was a real shift in children's programming in terms
• 28:23
  of where different focuses lay, partly because of challenges
• 28:26
  from new media, not least computer games, becoming a
• 28:29
  bigger thing. I was watching a documentary
• 28:32
  about Nightmare and they said one of the reasons that the ITV
• 28:36
  show love. Nightmare.
• 28:38
  You're in A room. Sidestep to the left.
• 28:45
  And they said one of the reasons that Nightmare got cancelled
• 28:48
  when it did was because a children's CIT VS audience had
• 28:53
  shifted. So it'd gone from being about, I
• 28:56
  think they said 8 to 16 year olds to being 8 to 12 year olds.
• 29:00
  It was much narrower gap. Older kids were going off and
• 29:02
  doing other things and that doesn't actually mean they're
• 29:05
  going and consuming adult media. But it meant that you were
• 29:08
  getting the emergence of a distinct group of teenagers,
• 29:16
  early teenagers through to mid teenage years who were distinct
• 29:20
  media consuming group who wanted something that was more than
• 29:25
  the, you know sort of children's telly.
• 29:27
  But obviously it was going to be palatable and giving giving them
• 29:30
  incidents and talking to them in things that in ways that were
• 29:35
  intelligible to them and understandable to them.
• 29:36
  And this is a really this is a key demographic for Doctor Who
• 29:40
  because when Doctor Who came back that's the group that it
• 29:43
  really it really hit home with that it really did very
• 29:45
  successfully with. And that group that that age it
• 29:49
  became known as young adult as YAI don't think that term
• 29:52
  existed yet not but you can see its emergence there were writers
• 29:56
  like Gillian Cross Jacqueline Wilson who who Dick King Smith
• 30:03
  to a lesser extent maybe Anthony Horovitz certainly was getting
• 30:06
  his was was was already there who were very popular who have
• 30:11
  been read by kids who are my age other people's age and would
• 30:13
  have been exactly the group who would have been who should have
• 30:18
  in a better world a better truer history have been into Doctor
• 30:22
  Who and reading these Doctor Who books at the time.
• 30:25
  And I think the Eight Doctors is possibly a little peek into that
• 30:29
  alternative world in which Doctor Who did have a resurgence
• 30:32
  in 1997. And I tell you what, not only
• 30:35
  was that group there, that group was there and ready for
• 30:38
  something to come along and to grab them in a way and to take
• 30:41
  them off on flights of adventure.
• 30:43
  Because this book came out in June 1997.
• 30:46
  And do you know what else came out in June 1997?
• 30:49
  Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
• 30:50
  Oh. OK, OK, exactly conclusively.
• 30:55
  The exact same month. But you know what as well,
• 30:58
  right? My into Doctor Who was when my
• 31:02
  mate Paul, he used to read me the Doctor Who Program guide,
• 31:05
  right? He had the program guide and he
• 31:07
  used to read me. That's just two speeds.
• 31:10
  He used to read me the synopsis right of of the stories, and I
• 31:13
  just suddenly became aware that there was this just this vast
• 31:17
  sort of of storytelling that I could explore.
• 31:21
  So it wasn't just watching one thing.
• 31:24
  I was immediately aware there was lots of it, right?
• 31:27
  So if I'd have got this then this would have had the same
• 31:32
  effect because it's doing the same thing as the program guide.
• 31:34
  It's filling you in on lots of gaps, you know, the different
• 31:37
  doctors snapshots of their adventures, but doing it in a
• 31:41
  exciting and witty way, you know, colourful way.
• 31:45
  It is exactly that. It is a book that is there to
• 31:48
  show you, to give you the briefest glimpses into the
• 31:50
  breadth of Doctor Who kids you. You think you enjoy this?
• 31:55
  Well, have I got good? News for you.
• 31:57
  This is huge. There's another 68 coming after
• 32:00
  this, so don't worry, all right? And some of them might even be
• 32:04
  good. Some of them will be terrible,
• 32:06
  but some of them will be good. I mean, you say brief.
• 32:09
  There are sections of this book that are longer than others.
• 32:13
  There is this, yeah. There's a distinct lack of
• 32:15
  editing in terms of keeping any coherency to how long we spend
• 32:19
  with each doctor. I think it's, I think it's quite
• 32:22
  perceptively based on Terence's interest.
• 32:25
  Absolutely. For some reason he's absolutely
• 32:27
  obsessed with John Purley's doctor.
• 32:30
  I wonder why. But then he's also got a bit of
• 32:32
  an obsession with Colin. That's for some reason and you
• 32:37
  wait till we get to the pit where he talks, describes him in
• 32:40
  an entire page description, sensual and full lipped.
• 32:45
  I don't know what's going on there.
• 32:47
  Oh dear, but shall we, shall we take the TARDIS to 1997 Totters
• 32:57
  Lane Junkyard? Let's do it and meet well.
• 33:02
  Who will? Who will we be meeting there?
• 33:05
  We will be meeting a schoolgirl and her two teachers and their
• 33:12
  names are Sam Trevon Vicky. I think you've been watching
• 33:18
  Biker Grove at the time. So it's fair to say Terence is
• 33:23
  not impressed with the state of the world in State of Britain,
• 33:26
  certainly in 1997. Well.
• 33:28
  He seems to think it's full of knife, crime and drugs.
• 33:31
  Wasn't it? Well, actually, I'm from Crawley
• 33:34
  and I'm. I'm kidding you.
• 33:35
  There were knife fires outside my school.
• 33:37
  So he weren't too wrong, actually.
• 33:39
  Yeah, you've got soft drugs being peddled routinely in
• 33:42
  schools. With the move to hard underway,
• 33:45
  there's a bit where the doctor's mistaken for for a victim of
• 33:47
  care in the community. A policeman says more out than
• 33:51
  in these days. I just think, I mean, I hope
• 33:55
  Tony Blair's election victory made him happy.
• 33:56
  That's all I can say. No, you don't have to worry,
• 33:59
  though, because we've got Sam Jones there, right?
• 34:02
  And you know, she doesn't smoke, She doesn't even drink coke, and
• 34:07
  she's a vegetarian. She is our heroine.
• 34:11
  How do you get? I mean that yes, there is a
• 34:16
  degree of of old man, writes the teenagers about.
• 34:20
  A degree. That's some of this.
• 34:24
  It's how he's describing the drugs.
• 34:26
  He's clearly someone who's never, you know, imbibed in his
• 34:29
  life. Oh yeah so so Baz, the local
• 34:33
  drug dealer who is who whose drug dealing ways.
• 34:38
  Sam is trying to stop inveigling their way into into Coal Hill
• 34:43
  School and the Doctor sort of lands amidst this lost.
• 34:46
  He's lost all his memories. He's he's consciously,
• 34:49
  unconsciously, with the help of the TARDIS, trying to find his
• 34:51
  way back to himself. So of course it brings him to
• 34:53
  Totter's Lane Junkyard and Coal Hill School.
• 34:56
  It just. Lands in my school, where it all
• 34:58
  began. Where it all began, Which is
• 35:01
  always a slightly weird bit when you think about it from the
• 35:03
  Doctor's perspective, because he's already left Gallifrey by
• 35:05
  that point. You know, this is just a bit
• 35:07
  where he stopped for a bit. Imagine.
• 35:09
  Imagine if, like, you know, someone took you back through
• 35:12
  your own personal history and went Joe, we're going to where
• 35:15
  it all started for you on that holiday to Cornwall in 1995.
• 35:20
  But. It is where it is, where we
• 35:24
  began. So I can see what that's what
• 35:26
  he's trying to do. He's taken us right back to the
• 35:29
  beginning or they're not at the beginning in 1997.
• 35:33
  In 1997. And there's, you know, there's
• 35:35
  some nice bits there where he's trying to, you know, mirror an
• 35:41
  Unearthly child with certain extent with, as they say, that
• 35:43
  bit of the schoolgirl and her teachers.
• 35:45
  But it does feel like every comparison that he's drawing is
• 35:47
  really, really unflattering to the 1990s.
• 35:51
  But you know what? He's trying that really hard in
• 35:53
  this segment, But I've recently read The Gallifrey Chronicles
• 35:56
  right, which features a very short story set during the
• 35:59
  period of Father Time that starts with an Unearthly Child
• 36:03
  walking through the the darkened streets, the snowy streets of of
• 36:07
  London. And in two sentences, Lance
• 36:11
  Parkin captures the first episode of An Unearthly Child
• 36:15
  better than the poor Alterra's does here, with about four
• 36:18
  chapters. Oh, bless him.
• 36:20
  I mean he is he is trying. I think he's, you know it is a
• 36:24
  bit grumpy old man at times, not helped by the fact that when
• 36:28
  he's talking about Baz and the drug dealers pass.
• 36:34
  But it's, you know, it's not, it's not The Wire in terms of
• 36:39
  its depiction of this, of this world, he says.
• 36:42
  Baz gets his gear from quote Machete Charlie's mob up West.
• 36:48
  And the trouble is, right, you've got Machete's, Charlie's
• 36:50
  Mob, right? You've got desk sergeants in the
• 36:52
  police station, you've got a renter mob, and then you've even
• 36:56
  got somebody who's described as using a Kosh.
• 37:00
  So I feel like he's trying to be hard and edgy, but in the same
• 37:04
  breath he's doing Dixon of Doc Bloody Green.
• 37:08
  This is this is the point and you do see this and this is not
• 37:12
  unusual in children's literature certainly of of you know this
• 37:16
  period and earlier of people who've been writing for for
• 37:19
  decades and their their baseline view of how the world operates
• 37:22
  hasn't changed. The only differences they see
• 37:25
  are the bad things that have covered like like no one uses a
• 37:27
  computer in this but was waiting for the moment when someone like
• 37:30
  boots up ACD ROM or something to.
• 37:33
  Help somebody uses the temper graph.
• 37:35
  Quite a lot, actually. That's on Gallifrey though.
• 37:40
  Oh yeah, sorry, that's in the future.
• 37:43
  But I feel like he feels the need to be edgy because the new
• 37:46
  adventures were edgy. So he's trying.
• 37:48
  He's trying to make. Yeah, I'll give you edgy.
• 37:51
  I'll give you edgy. Here we go, little Mikey, Peter,
• 37:55
  MO looks at each other despairingly.
• 37:57
  So what do we do now? Asked Pete.
• 38:00
  Go and get it back. Of course.
• 38:01
  It's our property in it. MO expressed everyone's thoughts
• 38:05
  when he said we can't do that. We'll get nicked if we do.
• 38:09
  We'll get murdered if we don't, said Baz.
• 38:11
  You know where I got that gear? Machete.
• 38:13
  Charlie's mob up. WI convinced him there was a
• 38:16
  market down here. I persuaded him to let me have
• 38:19
  the stuff on credit. I was to sell it on.
• 38:22
  Keep a percentage. My percentage is worth
• 38:25
  thousands, so you can imagine what the gear itself is worth.
• 38:29
  This is hard hitting stuff Joe. It's not Dixon or Doc Green.
• 38:32
  It's the bill. That's what he's been watching,
• 38:34
  isn't he? For inspiration.
• 38:36
  I mean, there was a sequence where Baz was attempting to
• 38:39
  force Sam Jones to take crack cocaine.
• 38:43
  I was like, what are we doing at the beginning?
• 38:44
  What's? This happening?
• 38:45
  What's this this is? Supposed to be for the new
• 38:47
  generation of kids, What's happening?
• 38:50
  There's also a bit where where is it?
• 38:52
  It's a tread the the, the, the male teacher.
• 38:55
  I think it's Trev. Yeah, Trev, the male teacher who
• 38:58
  we're meant to like, he's, he's talking to Sam, Sam, one of his
• 39:01
  pupils. He says, she says, you know,
• 39:04
  Marilyn Sims in Year 5, Trev says the one with the
• 39:07
  outstanding personality. Oh dear, Terence.
• 39:12
  Oh dear. I put in my notes a teacher
• 39:14
  admiring a student's ass. Terrance.
• 39:17
  Stop. Exclamation mark.
• 39:19
  Although he can't help it, he he fills his book full of
• 39:22
  chauvinist remarks. Blavia gets them.
• 39:25
  Sam Jones gets it. Romana gets it in that section.
• 39:29
  Like, you know, as much as I do think Terrance can write very
• 39:34
  well for women like leader in horror fan Rob, things like
• 39:36
  that. Unfortunately he still does have
• 39:39
  this slight desire to strap them to the railroad tracks and make
• 39:42
  them scream, doesn't he? I mean, he's also showing his
• 39:46
  age as much as anything because because I'm pretty sure year
• 39:49
  five had been year 11 since about 1990.
• 39:52
  Yeah. What I will say about these
• 39:54
  opening segments is our mostly cringe my way through them.
• 39:58
  But really for me it was the weak point of an otherwise
• 40:04
  really fun read. So I feel, I feel these were the
• 40:07
  weakest segments of the book, the beginning and certainly the
• 40:09
  end. When it just pops up again, it
• 40:10
  goes right. Sam, come on.
• 40:14
  Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce my companion for the
• 40:16
  range of the range, haven't I? It's so funny, once all the sort
• 40:18
  of continuity pours over and done with, let's play.
• 40:21
  If you just go to him. What?
• 40:22
  I know it's wrestle on so soon, doesn't he?
• 40:24
  You leave your friend in the situation of extreme peril.
• 40:27
  Oh yeah, God's funny. What you meant to be
• 40:30
  establishing a new range? You know what?
• 40:33
  The confidence you have to have to sort of brush over this sort
• 40:37
  of stuff. I admire him.
• 40:39
  I'll do I'll. Tell you what, though.
• 40:43
  Terence Dixon, Russell T Davis both wrote about cocaine dealers
• 40:46
  in Doctor Who a mere year apart. And we talked about both of them
• 40:49
  in the same year. We did.
• 40:51
  Well done us. I know we did.
• 40:53
  That said, these things aren't links.
• 40:55
  OK, finding. Themes, finding themes.
• 40:57
  So, well, let's move away slightly from 1997 Cow Hill
• 41:01
  School then and what's occurring on Gallifrey then.
• 41:04
  So. So I feel like political
• 41:06
  shenanigans are afoot. Yes.
• 41:09
  So we we heard Gallifrey referred to in the TV movie
• 41:13
  quite evocatively in the way that all Doctor Who pitches in
• 41:18
  the 90s seemed to want to make quite a big thing of Gallifrey.
• 41:21
  Gallifrey. Meteor Storm.
• 41:23
  The little sky above us was dancing with lights.
• 41:26
  The shoes, They fit perfectly. Oh, that's a brilliant scene,
• 41:29
  Gallifrey. Where is that?
• 41:31
  Oh, that's the stage. We're wasted elsewhere.
• 41:34
  Anyway, we get to go to Gallifrey here.
• 41:37
  Oh God, it's boring. It's.
• 41:41
  Well, it's just sort of the deadly assassin.
• 41:44
  It's not the Deadly assassin, it's the Arc of Infinity.
• 41:46
  Oh yeah, they OK. All right, fair dudes.
• 41:49
  Is that? Definitely.
• 41:50
  Yeah, tell you what, I've got a note here.
• 41:52
  I've written for myself, page 43 for some truly boring Time Lord
• 41:56
  dialogue. So you want you want to hear
• 41:58
  what he throws at us? Yeah, go on.
• 42:02
  Flavia. Flavia.
• 42:04
  Flavia. You say, Flavia, I see.
• 42:07
  Chancellor Flavia, that's our. Flavia.
• 42:10
  That's our team, he says it. Flavia looked thoughtfully up at
• 42:14
  him. I must advise you to moderate
• 42:15
  your language, Councillor Ryoth. The doctor is not a criminal,
• 42:18
  though he has often been adopted with the High Council.
• 42:20
  He has on occasion served, however briefly, as its
• 42:23
  president. Not everyone on the High Council
• 42:25
  takes such an indulgent view. Madam President, There are those
• 42:28
  who feels I do myself, that the Doctors is dangerous, renegade.
• 42:31
  The Doctor is dangerous only to the enemies of Canafrace, snaps
• 42:33
  Flavia. His activities have
• 42:35
  unconventional useful. Do recall asking you the
• 42:38
  question on a text How do we get from lovely President Flavia and
• 42:42
  an impotent quorum of time laws monitoring the Doctor?
• 42:46
  You know, asking about with continuity to the evil black
• 42:49
  haired President Romana fighting a time war with the Faction
• 42:52
  Paradox and the planet being torn from existence in the space
• 42:56
  of 30 books. Narrative.
• 43:00
  Drift. That's a big question.
• 43:02
  Narrative drift So and I think I think my response to quote that
• 43:05
  great thinker myself, I think I've said to you you are that
• 43:10
  that it's because one of the things that gets a bit lost in
• 43:14
  the EA is even as you're reading them is that in so Alien Bodies
• 43:17
  is only a few books after this and I it introduces the idea of
• 43:27
  the war in heaven. But Gallifrey is going to be
• 43:29
  going up against this in this great conflict against an
• 43:32
  unnamed enemy in a huge time war.
• 43:35
  But in alien Bodies that's presented as something that is
• 43:36
  in in the future. You know that is the that's the
• 43:39
  conflict that the Doctor dies in for heaven's sake.
• 43:41
  You know, that is some way off and he is just, it's bouncing
• 43:45
  here, somehow drifted into his own future.
• 43:49
  But it's such a great idea that obviously the books kept
• 43:52
  returning to it and it became the sort of underlying narrative
• 43:54
  and something that sort of happens, obviously not paying
• 43:57
  attention is that that timeline gets Constantina down and
• 43:59
  actually the war becomes much more imminent throughout it.
• 44:02
  So it goes from being something in the far future, something
• 44:04
  that's just around the corner, through books like Shadows,
• 44:07
  Shadows of Avalon, until you get to the Ancestors and it's
• 44:10
  literally about to happen. Do you know what the moment I
• 44:13
  was going to choose at the Star was going to be that bit in the
• 44:17
  Banquo legacy when they realised that a Time Lord agent was there
• 44:22
  in that house in the past all along.
• 44:25
  And that is the point, basically, where the time laws
• 44:28
  have caught up with him. The war is here now, he's being
• 44:31
  dragged back to Gallifrey. So it's literally where it
• 44:34
  becomes the present at that point there.
• 44:36
  It's a wonderful moment because you feel like it's like a
• 44:38
  drawing room mystery with zombies, you know, up until that
• 44:42
  point, sort of archetypal Doctor Who story.
• 44:44
  And then two furs into it, bam, we're back in the war and the
• 44:48
  arc takes over. It's fantastic, but it's a far
• 44:52
  cry from this, you know, I could almost make the leap though,
• 44:54
  because this is so sort of play school Gallifrey in comparison.
• 44:59
  I think it's almost useful to have this at the beginning of
• 45:03
  the run because the enemy's coming and you ain't ready.
• 45:08
  You are not ready to face this all conquering enemy that is
• 45:11
  literally going to destroy time. If this is the Gallifrey that's
• 45:14
  going to go up against it, almost like this childish
• 45:17
  depiction, it's terrifying to think that they are, you know,
• 45:21
  the the the last line of defence for the entire universe.
• 45:26
  You think there's an element of ETA Greens about having this?
• 45:28
  I think it's all by mistake, but I'm trying.
• 45:31
  I'm trying. But I mean it it it is boring.
• 45:38
  So we cut back to Gallifrey throughout the books, or between
• 45:42
  the Doctor's visits to to his other selves, and it's there to
• 45:47
  provide an arc. Really, that's the point,
• 45:49
  because it's a very by its nature, the structure of the
• 45:52
  book, the 8th Doctor travelling back through his lives, meeting
• 45:55
  each of his previous selves in turn, is it's picaresque, right?
• 45:59
  It's it's all little segments. The Gallifrey bit is there to
• 46:04
  provide some sort of peril, and also because the Doctor gets a
• 46:08
  bit more of his memories back, becomes more himself with each
• 46:11
  one. It's sort of prevents the story
• 46:14
  becoming one in which the Doctor just slowly climbs out of
• 46:17
  trouble. And he's, he's sort of leaning
• 46:19
  into the five doctors. You know how the Five doctors
• 46:22
  had Barusa at the chess board moving the pieces and then we
• 46:26
  cut to another doctor, then back.
• 46:28
  And do you know what I mean? Like you say, it is an umbrella
• 46:32
  structure to this thing that holds it all together.
• 46:35
  Although it does contain this, the segments on Gallifi do
• 46:38
  contain one of my favorite moments in the whole book.
• 46:42
  And that is when Charles Mr. Ryoff reaches his untimely end.
• 46:46
  Would you care to read that out for me please and explain what
• 46:48
  occurs to him? Royoth, screamed the Dresher
• 46:52
  Gatim. It's.
• 46:54
  So funny, no one can say that Terrors is not succinct, can
• 46:58
  they? That's it's it's almost it's
• 47:03
  almost James Ellroy in terms of it's.
• 47:06
  I'm not sure if it's lazy or it's just brilliantly to the
• 47:10
  point, like it's all I need. I could see it, you know?
• 47:14
  I know. It's, it's.
• 47:17
  It's it's his credit that we both made a separate note about
• 47:21
  of those lungs. And I I I was in bed, howling
• 47:25
  with laughter. Just the sheer cheek of it.
• 47:30
  Well, we're going to be diving into the Doctor's past, and the
• 47:36
  reason he's doing that. This is.
• 47:37
  I was a bit confused. Something happens in the TARDIS.
• 47:40
  I believe it's the Master from the TV movies, still inside the
• 47:44
  TARDIS, His belly that does something.
• 47:47
  So the so the Doctor goes to check on the Eye of Harmony to
• 47:51
  make sure that it's all working fine after the Master messed
• 47:54
  about with it. It wasn't really the Eye of
• 47:56
  Harmony, You know, Terrance goes to great lengths.
• 47:59
  Oh, no, no, no, no. That's on Gallifrey.
• 48:01
  This is just sort of like a tear duct.
• 48:03
  Very important that we understand this, and so he gets
• 48:08
  there. He finds that the Master has
• 48:09
  left a booby trap at some point for some reason that wipes the
• 48:14
  Doctor's memories and he can't remember who he is anymore.
• 48:19
  And so the TARDIS starts taking him back through his previous
• 48:23
  lives to meet each of his previous selves, and with each
• 48:28
  one he regains the memories of up to that point in his life.
• 48:35
  Now, some listeners may already have spotted the floor to this
• 48:39
  plan, which is why doesn't it just take him to the Sylvester
• 48:42
  McCoy Doctor straight away and get it done with?
• 48:44
  And the answer is because we need to have a story, people.
• 48:47
  OK, I think he doesn't know how to control the TARDIS, so the
• 48:49
  TARDIS is doing the work for him.
• 48:51
  So it's basically saying, look, you're going to get him a bit at
• 48:53
  a time because it's overwhelming to have it all in one go.
• 48:57
  That's the kind of reason. It's not in the book, but I've
• 49:00
  just made that up. As Rascal on says on the back
• 49:03
  cover. Trust the TARDIS.
• 49:07
  That is, that is absolutely, literally the back cover quote,
• 49:10
  which is don't just don't worry about it too much, all right?
• 49:13
  No. They they didn't do this very
• 49:15
  often, did they? A picture on the back cover.
• 49:18
  I wasn't. It didn't.
• 49:20
  They ain't going to look at what else is on my shelf.
• 49:22
  Well, Van der Decker's children had like a wrap around cover
• 49:25
  that was fabulous at this big spaceship, and the Gallifrey
• 49:28
  Chronicles had one of those horrible war flies on the back
• 49:32
  cover. Yeah, I think what's unusual is
• 49:34
  that it's so it's it's, it's Razzalon.
• 49:36
  Razzalon From the Five Doctors The rubbish Razzalon.
• 49:39
  Oh, you should Razzalon there. The way that Don Warrington says
• 49:42
  it in Segreias Razzalon. We're both cool, that's why.
• 49:47
  You are called. I think what's unusual is that
• 49:49
  it's an image that isn't on the front cover.
• 49:51
  So I'm just comparing Contrasting with The Face of the
• 49:54
  Enemy by David A McKinsey, which has Roger Delgado on the front,
• 49:57
  Roger Delgado on the spine and Roger Delgado on the.
• 49:59
  Back got some good, good leverage out of that image.
• 50:05
  Look, we own the image, right? We're not paying any rights for
• 50:08
  this. So listen, let's just go with
• 50:10
  it. We're trusting the TARDIS, and
• 50:12
  we're going to be popping back to various Doctor Who stories,
• 50:16
  usually written by Terrance Dicks, but not always.
• 50:20
  Sometimes they're written by his busy mate Mack Hulk, and
• 50:24
  sometimes they're written by, you know, his favorite writer,
• 50:26
  Robert Holmes. But first of all, we We're going
• 50:29
  back to an Unearthly Child, that ghastly situation with the
• 50:33
  Cavemen. Yes, a scene that's I seem to
• 50:37
  call Terence being a big fan of. I think he mentioned it in more
• 50:40
  than one interview. The scene where the Doctor walks
• 50:44
  towards camera and realises that they could just brain the dying
• 50:48
  caveman and only in this retelling time freezes and Paul
• 50:54
  McGann walks in and tells William Hartnell, hey, I don't
• 50:58
  think you need to killed that innocent man, why don't you just
• 51:02
  go? And thus entirely removes the
• 51:04
  character moment for Ian Jesterton.
• 51:06
  And also tries to give an explanation as to why the Doctor
• 51:11
  starts softening up as well. Because the age Doctor says to
• 51:14
  him you cannot fight evil with evil methods.
• 51:17
  Chill out you I'll get like and and we do start seeing a
• 51:21
  softening, maybe not straight away, because in the Daleks he's
• 51:24
  a bit of a prick as well, but after after Edge of Destruction,
• 51:27
  you know he does start to smooth it out.
• 51:29
  And you know what I admire Terrence for?
• 51:33
  If he's going to go back and do this, he is trying to make
• 51:36
  connections, tie things up. He he goes too far with the
• 51:41
  trial of the terminal segment. But for the most part, it's sort
• 51:45
  of quite smooth what he's trying to do.
• 51:47
  And there is a kind of motive for going to those stories and
• 51:53
  those moments. Yes.
• 51:54
  No in fair in fantasy is it? This isn't just clip show in
• 52:01
  pros in pros form. There is a nice sort of
• 52:05
  narrative that I don't know if it why comes fully into focus.
• 52:11
  But there is this nice way that there is a reciprocity to the
• 52:15
  doctor's visits and he almost sort of becomes a spirit guide
• 52:18
  to himself at different points. And there's a really interesting
• 52:21
  where the doctors remember him turning up the last time they
• 52:26
  met him. So like the 3rd, 3rd doctor
• 52:28
  remembers meeting him twice before and all the rest of it.
• 52:31
  And yes they are sort of like he just tried to make it for the
• 52:34
  most part, not always but he just count in some way that
• 52:39
  there is something and it's it's an it's a nice idea this sort of
• 52:43
  the self reflective because it's it's easy to forget in multi
• 52:46
  doctor stories in an actual fully meaningful way that
• 52:51
  they're all the same man. No, they actually are the same
• 52:54
  guy. I think we do forget that.
• 52:57
  We just see all the different actors coming together.
• 52:59
  They're different actors, so they just feel like different
• 53:01
  characters. Yeah.
• 53:03
  And I mean, you know, let's face it, on TV, the the Day of the
• 53:06
  Doctor is the only one that actually tries to engage with
• 53:09
  that to any sort of real extent. Maybe twice upon a time, yeah,
• 53:13
  but you know. That bit in the cell where the
• 53:15
  idea goes from one to another to another, yeah, Where they're
• 53:19
  working on resonating the concrete.
• 53:21
  And then in the end, Clara just walks in and goes.
• 53:23
  The door was opened. It's fucking hilarious, isn't?
• 53:27
  It was it. What is it?
• 53:27
  The same programme, different case or something.
• 53:29
  I've probably got it's. Glorious.
• 53:31
  And yet. And yet, you know, you can see
• 53:34
  Uncle Terence because he was, you know, he's a.
• 53:38
  It's redundant to say it, but it's worth remembering, for
• 53:40
  we've taken the make out of some of his dialogue.
• 53:42
  He's a clever writer. He anticipates that here.
• 53:45
  There's a bit here. First, you know, straight off
• 53:46
  the bat. First doctor, 8th doctor.
• 53:49
  Don't interfere in what doesn't concern you, young man.
• 53:51
  That's the first Doctor says could anything concern me more?
• 53:54
  Don't forget, I shall eventually bear the guilt of your crime.
• 53:57
  I mean, that's basically that's straight out of The Day of the
• 53:59
  Doctor, even if it does demonstrate Terence's somewhat
• 54:02
  stilted generic Doctor dialogue. Do you know, what do you think?
• 54:06
  He writes with Weird. And I've got lines throughout
• 54:09
  this in other sections where I was just laughing myself silly.
• 54:13
  And I was like, yeah, this is the Terrance Dix who wrote very
• 54:17
  sayable words in the War games, in The State of Decay and the
• 54:20
  Five Doctors, that when you put them in the mouths of
• 54:23
  charismatic actors, they just sing on the screen.
• 54:27
  Yes, yes, I think. And he said this himself.
• 54:30
  I guess the the criticism more there is that he often wrote the
• 54:33
  doctors the same. I don't know.
• 54:35
  He admits as much. Yeah, exactly, he says.
• 54:37
  Basically the doctors never call, never call, never cowardly
• 54:41
  and and all of that, you know, they're sort of who Who started
• 54:44
  that off? Was that him?
• 54:46
  I think it was. Isn't that yes, Isn't it from
• 54:50
  like it's from the making of Doctor Who, isn't it?
• 54:52
  Or something like that. One of those books he wrote a
• 54:54
  character's description and then it slowly worked its way into.
• 54:57
  That's embedded enough into the show that when that is said in
• 55:00
  the Day of the Doctor, it means something.
• 55:03
  Yeah, yeah, and indeed in the curse of fatal death.
• 55:08
  Oh fabulous I. Love the curse of fatal death.
• 55:12
  25 years old this year, everybody, if he wants.
• 55:14
  What's it called again? The sewer of Eternal Stench or
• 55:17
  something. This or the sofa of reasonable
• 55:22
  comfort? Yeah, no, no, but, but, but he
• 55:26
  does. I I do think that thing of
• 55:27
  writing The Doctor is the same, though does.
• 55:29
  It's just more obvious in prose when you've got two of them
• 55:31
  talking to each other. Hang on though, he definitely
• 55:34
  differentiates the Doctor in this, but the 6th Doctor doesn't
• 55:37
  read anything like the 2nd Doctor.
• 55:39
  The 6th Doctor is all sort of verbose dialogue and, you know,
• 55:44
  unearned arrogance, whereas the 2nd Doctor's all sort of, you
• 55:48
  know, snippy and nervous. And he can't, he can't do that,
• 55:51
  I think. Yeah, but I think he's right in
• 55:53
  the actors. I don't think he's really right
• 55:54
  in the characters. No I think.
• 55:57
  I think maybe the the the complaint is more that the 8th
• 55:59
  Doctor is very generic but they'll, you know, the wasn't
• 56:01
  huge to make the go on you had to be you had to be Lance Parkin
• 56:04
  or Kate Orman to, you know really work that.
• 56:07
  One out oh, there's anything to the 8th Doctor in this at all.
• 56:10
  The 8th doctor starts at the beginning of vampire science,
• 56:14
  when he turns up in Carolyn's life.
• 56:17
  You know, when she back when she was a nurse at university and
• 56:21
  turns her life upside down? And he's that insanely
• 56:25
  attractive romantic figure that we got from the TV movie?
• 56:28
  And that's where the end here. He's just nothing, is he?
• 56:32
  Well, he's literally nothing. He's lost his memories.
• 56:35
  Yeah, there. There was a bit of a tendency at
• 56:36
  the time sometimes to write the 8th Doctor as the generic Doctor
• 56:43
  Who because he had, he seemed to have bits of so you didn't have
• 56:46
  much to go on and he had so many other bits that seemed to be
• 56:50
  similar to other Doctors. So we just did a bit Victorian
• 56:54
  like William Hartnell did always young like Peter Davidson was
• 56:58
  always got the Jelly baby bit like Tom Baker.
• 57:00
  So let's just sort of, which is a really interesting sort of
• 57:04
  summarizing thing that was also happening around this time.
• 57:06
  Because I know I've seen similar stuff accusing the way Pierce
• 57:08
  Brosnan was sometimes written as James Bond of being the same
• 57:10
  thing. But it's sort of generic James
• 57:12
  Bond and maybe, I don't know, maybe that's whole thing to
• 57:15
  seekler turn of the Millennium thing.
• 57:17
  It's a funny old thing. You know, whenever they get fed
• 57:19
  up with the 8th Doctor, they do just take away his memories,
• 57:22
  don't they? They did it again in At the end
• 57:24
  of The Ancestors. Well, they did it again in Half
• 57:26
  Life. He's very unfortunate for losing
• 57:28
  all of his memories. Happens in fear itself as well.
• 57:31
  Yeah, Jesus Christ. What happens in the audios as
• 57:34
  well happens in Orbis. I think actually some of the
• 57:36
  best depictions of the 8th doctrine is run are when we push
• 57:39
  away from the TV movie all together.
• 57:43
  You know that figure pushing nay path under the water in the
• 57:46
  burning or with the beard set up in the whole house in
• 57:49
  adventurous and Henrietta St. about as far away from the TV
• 57:52
  movie as you can get, but compelling?
• 57:55
  Yeah, or or remember the scene in the dying days where he jumps
• 57:59
  out of the exploding Martian spaceship without a plan, but in
• 58:03
  in but knowing that he'll come up with something before he hits
• 58:06
  the ground. Well, he does it again, doesn't
• 58:07
  he, in the Gallifrey Chronicles when he jumps into that Vol
• 58:10
  Mountain right at the very end and the woman, what, Rachel
• 58:13
  goes, well, you've got no plan. What are you going to do?
• 58:15
  How are you going to get in there?
• 58:16
  And Fitz goes, haven't you been paying attention as the Doctor?
• 58:19
  And then he just leaps in hotels flying.
• 58:22
  Oh, it's wonderful. He's.
• 58:25
  I think two of my favorite doctors are probably the 8th and
• 58:28
  the 11th and they both have that thing of seat of their pants.
• 58:31
  No plan worth a damn. Great improvisers.
• 58:36
  Because they're clever, to quote another doctor.
• 58:41
  Back to the 8 doctors. It does.
• 58:42
  Also, in this First Doctor segment, Terrance does throw out
• 58:46
  some massive insights into the Doctor's past with the likeness
• 58:49
  that you know only a script editor for the 70s.
• 58:51
  Good. He suggests that the Doctor was
• 58:54
  a member of the High Council of the Time Lords and left after
• 58:56
  some altercation which I'm I'm sorry, we had Lungborough a few
• 59:01
  a few months ago but went to quite, quite seriously.
• 59:04
  Terror has never read Lung Barrow.
• 59:07
  Oh, no, but I mean the weight with which exploring the
• 59:10
  Doctor's past is addressed. This is exposition, not even put
• 59:13
  into dialogue. Don't you remember in the 7th
• 59:15
  Doctor segment, say, segment, Scene, paragraph?
• 59:19
  It felt like he goes, oh, you remembered all the appalling
• 59:23
  things he did over the last couple of years.
• 59:26
  And yeah, he tries to put him out of his mind.
• 59:27
  He's depressed by the whole thing.
• 59:29
  It's it's very funny. Sorry.
• 59:31
  We'll get there. Well, look, we skip from An
• 59:34
  Unearthly Child to an absolute classic of Doctor Who, The War
• 59:39
  Games. Yes, this is fantastic.
• 59:43
  So this is really clever actually.
• 59:44
  So the 8th Doctor lands in the war games but it's during the
• 59:48
  sort of denim more of the war games.
• 59:52
  So it's while all of the stuff is going on in central control,
• 59:57
  the warlords of being overthrown and and when he when he finally
• 1:00:03
  get, when the 8th Doctor finally gets there, the big moment here
• 1:00:06
  is him convincing the 2nd Doctor to call in the Time Lords, which
• 1:00:09
  is something that the 2nd Doctor is vacillating over.
• 1:00:12
  But. And the Doctor lands way back at
• 1:00:15
  the start of the whole story. So this is it all.
• 1:00:18
  All rather geographically he he he lands in.
• 1:00:22
  It's the it's the Rome or the First World War zone isn't it?
• 1:00:24
  The first one from the first couple of.
• 1:00:25
  Just down the road from me, yeah.
• 1:00:27
  Yeah, and it's it's, but it's a brilliant idea because there's
• 1:00:30
  he's just meeting all these characters who everyone else met
• 1:00:33
  at the start of the story, 8 episodes prior or what have you,
• 1:00:37
  and they're all still I. Did sense a little bit of
• 1:00:39
  terrors. Just love those characters, so
• 1:00:41
  they had to be in this. Yeah, but there's also just a
• 1:00:44
  really interesting idea of what happens after the the centre of
• 1:00:46
  the narrative has moved on. But all these characters are
• 1:00:49
  left behind because there is The War Games is a story that leaves
• 1:00:51
  behind, introduces a leaves behind a number of characters
• 1:00:54
  and they're all sort of going through the motions still of
• 1:00:56
  this idea of going around in circles and just, you know, from
• 1:01:00
  a narrative point of view. It's a really interesting idea.
• 1:01:03
  Let's stick someone back at the where this story started, while
• 1:01:06
  the story is happening somewhere else and it really ties into, I
• 1:01:10
  think often, you know, there's been any number of lesser Big
• 1:01:15
  Finish stories and other things that have tried to and novels
• 1:01:18
  that have tried to recapture something of the war games.
• 1:01:21
  Because you know, after the Dalek's master plan it's
• 1:01:24
  probably only the the series seconds genuine epic.
• 1:01:29
  But so they often tend to go for like scale and Gallifrey and
• 1:01:33
  cross time and we will, we will conquer the universe.
• 1:01:37
  But actually what really brilliant about the War games is
• 1:01:39
  how weird it is. It's a really weird story in so
• 1:01:44
  many ways from, you know, people wandering into and out of the
• 1:01:49
  mist and being in different conflicts all the way through to
• 1:01:51
  it's depiction of Gallifrey and the Time Lords in the last
• 1:01:54
  episode, which is the best they have ever been done.
• 1:01:56
  Don't. That's me.
• 1:01:59
  I want to say too broad and too deep for the small screen, but
• 1:02:02
  it was on the small screen. Yeah, but you know, it's a very
• 1:02:05
  60s vibe. It's very The Prisoner.
• 1:02:08
  It's very much all part of that, sort of.
• 1:02:10
  Especially those swirly sets. Yeah, it's it's amazing.
• 1:02:14
  And that's that really. He gets that here he he leans
• 1:02:19
  into the weirdness of this story.
• 1:02:21
  And I really, really like that. I think the War Games is
• 1:02:24
  brilliant and I really liked and This is why tonally he gets
• 1:02:29
  obviously he, you know, he Co wrote it so he would, but
• 1:02:31
  tonally he captures the tone of that story.
• 1:02:33
  So it does feel like not just that you're being represented
• 1:02:36
  with events from that story, but you feel like you are back in
• 1:02:39
  the world in a milieu of that story.
• 1:02:41
  Doctor Who is the, I think, the only franchise where the writer
• 1:02:47
  of a 1969 televised Dr. Who story can return to that in a
• 1:02:52
  1997 novel and just take us back there as well as he does.
• 1:02:59
  I thought this was the best example of the Doctor helping
• 1:03:04
  his younger self make a decision as well.
• 1:03:08
  Yes, in this section they do get into the idea of Austin Powers
• 1:03:15
  Basil Exposition. But wait a minute, if I go back
• 1:03:17
  in time and meet myself in 1969, then how can I exist here in
• 1:03:21
  1999? I don't know.
• 1:03:22
  I've gone cross eyed love fantasy and in full.
• 1:03:27
  I shouldn't worry about that. If I were you, I'd just sit back
• 1:03:29
  and enjoy the ride mode. So it's easy enough for you to
• 1:03:35
  say that this is you that will suffer their anger, says the 2nd
• 1:03:38
  Doctor. You forget, said the, said the
• 1:03:40
  8th Doctor. Generically, whatever happens to
• 1:03:42
  you has already happened to me. Even if neither of us knows what
• 1:03:45
  it is yet, whatever it is, I'm sure you'll survive.
• 1:03:47
  I admire your confidence, said the 2nd Doctor.
• 1:03:49
  Suppose they condemned me to temporal dissolution.
• 1:03:52
  I wouldn't be here, would I? They can't have.
• 1:03:54
  Don't be too sure, said the 2nd Doctor Brimley.
• 1:03:57
  Timelines can alter, you know. And if something terminal does
• 1:04:00
  happen to me, maybe you won't be here.
• 1:04:04
  Your certain doctor is absolutely sublime.
• 1:04:07
  That's it. Yeah.
• 1:04:09
  Yes, good. Michael Trout and you're out.
• 1:04:11
  Michael Mills is coming to Big Finish.
• 1:04:15
  I'm pretty sure that's the same voice I do when I'm reading
• 1:04:18
  Winnie the Pooh to my daughter so.
• 1:04:20
  Chancellor Flavier earlier in the episode, if I'm honest, you
• 1:04:22
  know, But I I like the fact that a pivotal point in his life, and
• 1:04:27
  I suppose you could say the same thing about An Unearthly Child.
• 1:04:29
  There's a pivotal character point in his life, but this is a
• 1:04:32
  pivotal point that takes him in a massive new direction.
• 1:04:37
  The 8th Doctor is there to basically give him a push and
• 1:04:40
  say you've got to do this. Yeah, yeah, it's Doctor Who.
• 1:04:45
  For a show that's all about time travel, doesn't really think
• 1:04:49
  about time travel often enough, or at least in the way that it
• 1:04:53
  can be used narratively, rather than as a sort of protagonist
• 1:04:56
  delivery device. I mean there is one period,
• 1:04:58
  Michael, that does think about time travel quite a lot.
• 1:05:02
  Well, yes, the the the Moffett era side, but even even then
• 1:05:06
  it's, you know it's. Sort of makes up the rules as he
• 1:05:09
  goes along. He makes up the rules and it is
• 1:05:11
  very much one idea of what time travel can be, which is that
• 1:05:14
  sort of puzzle box you're seeing all the all the right parts in
• 1:05:17
  the wrong order type of thing, whereas.
• 1:05:19
  I get it, though I do get it you.
• 1:05:21
  Know it works? No, no.
• 1:05:22
  Moffett Moffett's saying time travel is what I want it to be
• 1:05:24
  because I'm in charge of Doctor Who.
• 1:05:26
  Absolutely. It's what Terence Stinks used to
• 1:05:29
  say about continuity, he goes. You, you fans, might remember
• 1:05:32
  all of this, but I'm writing this story and continuity is
• 1:05:35
  what I choose to remember. Thank you very much.
• 1:05:38
  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm a Moffett fan, so,
• 1:05:39
  you know, there's no hate here, but.
• 1:05:42
  Oh God, I can't believe I was the one being kind.
• 1:05:45
  Sorry. Please continue.
• 1:05:47
  We will win you and join us. Join us, Joe.
• 1:05:51
  Never. But, but you know, from a sort
• 1:05:56
  of dramatic narrative point of view, just this goes beyond
• 1:05:59
  Doctor Who. This is drama more generally.
• 1:06:01
  Time travel is a huge concept in terms of what it can allow you
• 1:06:06
  to do with narrative, because it literally allows you to break so
• 1:06:09
  many rules in terms of how you approach things.
• 1:06:12
  One of the bits that I actually liked about Flux was the episode
• 1:06:19
  where it's revealed that the entire continuity of Unit over
• 1:06:23
  the past 50 years has been the work of what the work of 1
• 1:06:28
  villain over an afternoon. And that's just great And.
• 1:06:32
  I think you were the only person that enjoyed that, but I.
• 1:06:34
  Really liked that idea. I liked the cheekiness of it.
• 1:06:37
  I liked the fact that it said, like, if time travel exists,
• 1:06:40
  then you know, let's own that. Let's actually demonstrate that.
• 1:06:43
  Let's show that these things can happen across entirely different
• 1:06:45
  scales, not just different orders or people from different
• 1:06:48
  times. You know, this time is relative,
• 1:06:53
  as I believe someone once said. And there's a bit of that going
• 1:06:58
  on here with this idea that the whole history of Doctor Who up
• 1:07:01
  to this point, being summarized in one book and being turned
• 1:07:04
  into a single narrative is quite an interest, is quite an
• 1:07:09
  interesting idea. And it's not.
• 1:07:11
  I can't decide, because this book is a bit paradoxical and
• 1:07:14
  it's easy to hate on it, but I suspect it's also probably too
• 1:07:17
  easy. It's easy to give it a bit too
• 1:07:19
  much credit at times as well. I can't work out if that idea
• 1:07:22
  it's just not quite in focus or if it's not developed enough.
• 1:07:26
  I think the I think it's a massively ambitious idea to even
• 1:07:30
  attempt to do what he's trying to do in this book and to to
• 1:07:34
  have the the nerve to skip from one thing to another and just
• 1:07:39
  wave things aside as he goes like he's got balls, terror
• 1:07:43
  sticks. Yeah, and the way he does it is
• 1:07:45
  just to give you glimpses, Glimpses of these bigger
• 1:07:47
  adventures as well. So that thing of, you know,
• 1:07:49
  Ping, you know, setting the kids up, well going.
• 1:07:52
  On I want to see more of this, you know.
• 1:07:54
  Finds out that he's not even telling you the rest of the war
• 1:07:56
  games, he's just letting you know the tone of it and the
• 1:07:58
  excitement of it and the game. Uncertain as to whether many
• 1:08:01
  kids would want to watch Trial of a Time Lord after reading the
• 1:08:03
  sections in this book, although there are bits about that I
• 1:08:06
  liked a lot. But we'll get there.
• 1:08:10
  But yes, but should we? I'll tell you what.
• 1:08:12
  Should we move to the to the 1970s?
• 1:08:15
  Let's move on into colour. Now I think this is where
• 1:08:19
  Terrance is at his most comfortable in this book,
• 1:08:22
  naturally, because this is the era that he, you know, sculpted
• 1:08:27
  out himself. But I thought this was some of
• 1:08:29
  the funniest stuff as well. The way he characterizes the 3rd
• 1:08:33
  Doctor makes me how there's a sequence where my dear Captain,
• 1:08:38
  don't be misled by all the argy bargy on the telephone that
• 1:08:41
  Brigadier and I are the best of friends.
• 1:08:43
  We get on a house, we get on like a house on fire, don't we,
• 1:08:45
  Joe? She just goes more like a
• 1:08:48
  fireworks factory on fire. This is sort of that early, very
• 1:08:52
  argumentative, arrogant, the 3rd Doctor that I absolutely love.
• 1:08:57
  Yeah, it's good, isn't it? It's, I mean, I'd written down
• 1:08:59
  the word comfortable as well Here, this is, this whole
• 1:09:03
  section is a bit of a warm bath, really.
• 1:09:05
  We, we, I love a warm bath. We pick up from the final scene
• 1:09:10
  of the Sea Devils with the Master escaping and it is just
• 1:09:14
  as if the novelisation of the Sea Devils carried on for a few
• 1:09:16
  more chapters. And you know, he does indulge
• 1:09:19
  himself a bit because it this this bit is several chapters
• 1:09:22
  long and the 8th Doctor was barely in it at all.
• 1:09:26
  But. He wants to indulge in his era,
• 1:09:29
  doesn't he? Just just for a little bit.
• 1:09:31
  Do you know the bit that made me howl with laughter was when the
• 1:09:34
  Master uses his kiss, you compress an eliminator and the
• 1:09:39
  fella go, the policeman goes to him because he's stolen the car
• 1:09:42
  off somebody and shrunk him. And the policeman goes, can I
• 1:09:45
  see your driving licence, Sir? And the master truck also goes
• 1:09:48
  not without a magnifying glass, I fancy.
• 1:09:51
  I mean, he writes dialogue like that, just beautifully.
• 1:09:54
  And so in character, like all of these, all of these unique
• 1:09:58
  characters are just, well, beautifully done.
• 1:10:01
  He yeah, he knows exactly what he's doing with everyone, with
• 1:10:04
  everyone here. And it is, it's, it's it's a
• 1:10:08
  real highlight of the book, I think, even though there is so
• 1:10:12
  little discipline to what is being done.
• 1:10:15
  But then he also carries on that really interesting idea of the
• 1:10:18
  key moments of the Doctor's life.
• 1:10:19
  And I think this is probably one of the most interesting ones.
• 1:10:22
  I did love the 2nd Doctor, but I think this is the one that works
• 1:10:24
  best for me, which is when the 8th Doctor eventually does turn
• 1:10:28
  up, which is in essentially an epilogue to what's being the the
• 1:10:31
  Doctor's story. We get really nice stuff about
• 1:10:36
  the 8th the 3rd Doctor really wrestling with the fact that
• 1:10:39
  there's another TARDIS sat in the grounds of, you know, HQ,
• 1:10:41
  that his future self is just buggering off back to to fly
• 1:10:45
  off. And the turning point is the is
• 1:10:48
  the Third Doctor having to sort of learn to because he he has
• 1:10:52
  the evidence that he is going to escape one day.
• 1:10:54
  You know his future self, although he can't remember how
• 1:10:57
  Is is is the proof that he will not be trapped on Earth forever.
• 1:11:00
  He goes, oh, some consolation. That is when the goes.
• 1:11:03
  Well, I'm out in space now, so clearly it happens.
• 1:11:07
  But the 3rd Doctor then has to learn to accept that and to live
• 1:11:09
  with that, and I think that does reflect that slight mellowing of
• 1:11:14
  the character across the purple year of someone becoming more
• 1:11:18
  comfortable in where he is, rather than desperately trying
• 1:11:21
  to take any any possibility to escape.
• 1:11:24
  Weirdly enough, you know there's so the moment that I absolutely
• 1:11:27
  adored in this section is where the 3rd Doctor, in a moment of
• 1:11:32
  total bastardy raps to TCe, points it at the Doctor and
• 1:11:36
  says, I'm taking your TARDIS. I'm leaving it now.
• 1:11:39
  I mean, when I watch I read this when I was younger, I really
• 1:11:41
  hated that saying I'm like the Doctor wouldn't behave like
• 1:11:43
  that. Then I've gone back and watched
• 1:11:45
  a bit more of the Jon Perry era and you get that sequence at the
• 1:11:48
  end, the Clause of Axos, where it looks like he's sold out
• 1:11:51
  everybody to to go back into space with the Master and you
• 1:11:55
  know just how much of an arsehole he can generally be
• 1:11:57
  when he tries to steal the key in the spearhead and space.
• 1:12:00
  And there's a wonderful night here where the 3rd Doctor says,
• 1:12:04
  Oh yeah, it's very comfortable. As prisons go, when he's talking
• 1:12:08
  about his exile on Earth. And I it it shows like a
• 1:12:11
  desperate man who is just so bored on Earth, desperate to get
• 1:12:15
  away. I just really like that.
• 1:12:17
  I thought that was that was a moment where I was sort of a bit
• 1:12:19
  on edge in a book where I didn't spend a lot of time feeling very
• 1:12:22
  tense. Yeah, I mean he is.
• 1:12:25
  He can be a bit, he can be a bit of a git.
• 1:12:27
  And I've gone up and down in my estimations of the 3rd Doctor at
• 1:12:32
  different times. But I think some of that has to
• 1:12:35
  do with my tolerance of I think he gets a bit of a a free ride
• 1:12:39
  where Colin Baker's Doctor gets very heavily criticized.
• 1:12:44
  And I think that's probably to do with the quality of the
• 1:12:46
  writing, in fairness. But you know, the 3rd Doctor
• 1:12:49
  does all of the things you've described.
• 1:12:50
  He also merrily guns down ogrons with a laser gun.
• 1:12:53
  It's not. The 2nd Doctor walks around in
• 1:12:55
  the seeds of death, literally murdering ice for his left,
• 1:12:58
  right and centre. But he does it with a smile.
• 1:13:02
  He looks so cute anyway, that lash out.
• 1:13:04
  It's the Matt Smith effect, You know, if you do it and they're
• 1:13:07
  really sort of adorable, they get away with it.
• 1:13:11
  But but yeah, it is I I don't think Terence is the because he
• 1:13:16
  wrote in a lot in that era. He's not.
• 1:13:19
  Sometimes when other authors come back, they want to
• 1:13:21
  rehabilitate or deny things about some of these characters
• 1:13:24
  where it says like, no, no, that's Doctor Who does that
• 1:13:26
  stuff. Yeah, it was.
• 1:13:29
  You know what? It was during this section that
• 1:13:32
  I realized that I had read this book at such a pace.
• 1:13:37
  I think it was like I've read 1/3 of the book in like, I don't
• 1:13:41
  know, an hour or something like that.
• 1:13:42
  I I had flown for it. Now some of these books that I
• 1:13:46
  have read for the book club. Yeah, transit, you know, two
• 1:13:50
  chapters took me nearly three weeks to get through.
• 1:13:54
  And so whatever we're saying about this book, I was flying
• 1:13:58
  through it and I was enjoying it.
• 1:14:00
  There's something to be said about that, about just enjoying
• 1:14:04
  it page for page and and, you know, it being a page Turner.
• 1:14:09
  Yeah, 100%. And you know Terence Dix can
• 1:14:12
  write and did and this is the this is the evidence this this
• 1:14:16
  is just someone who who knows how to do this, who knows how to
• 1:14:20
  get you reading how to get that was, you know, it was amazing
• 1:14:22
  when when, you know when he died, there were so many
• 1:14:24
  tributes to him and so much of that focused on the target
• 1:14:27
  novels. That's because that was, that
• 1:14:28
  was. It's true it's a gateway to
• 1:14:30
  reading for so many young kids and but you can't underestimate
• 1:14:34
  the importance of that because there's any number of people who
• 1:14:36
  try to get kids reading and failed conspicuously.
• 1:14:40
  But he was able to do it in such magnificent and easy and
• 1:14:44
  unprepossessing fashion. That is a genuine skill, and
• 1:14:47
  it's worth picking up because it's different to Lawrence Miles
• 1:14:51
  Worlds in Your Mind, which is fantastic, but it's much more
• 1:14:54
  obvious and it's. On the shelf though, there's
• 1:14:56
  space for both, isn't it? Everything in between as well.
• 1:15:00
  And Doctor Who of all series should have that.
• 1:15:03
  You know, it's about someone who can change, change their face,
• 1:15:06
  change their companion, go anywhere in time and space.
• 1:15:09
  There has to be variety. Well, let's skip on unless
• 1:15:13
  there's anything else you've got to say about the 3rd Doctor.
• 1:15:16
  I think indulgent but thoroughly enjoyable.
• 1:15:19
  Covers it to State of Decay then where?
• 1:15:25
  Because another thing Terrorist Dix does in this book is I feel
• 1:15:28
  as if he's certainly an old school sometimes and there's a
• 1:15:32
  wonderful bit in this where someone goes, didn't someone
• 1:15:35
  describe it as a technikovica? And the character goes, oh what
• 1:15:40
  sort of a word is that? That is a made-up word.
• 1:15:42
  If ever I've heard one that is totally a pop up, bid me, didn't
• 1:15:45
  it? Oh yeah, I've got this.
• 1:15:47
  Yeah, I've got this down here, he.
• 1:15:50
  So we land in this time during State of Decay, during a sort of
• 1:15:56
  between the story proper and the epilogue, where I think there's
• 1:15:59
  a sort of nights that passes and during this night reminder.
• 1:16:03
  A lot happens. A lot happens.
• 1:16:04
  Turns out it was quite busy. Reminder is called away to
• 1:16:09
  another village where there's also vampires, despite the fact
• 1:16:11
  they said there weren't any villages with any other vampires
• 1:16:13
  in the TV story. Let's not worry about that and
• 1:16:16
  get and Terrance takes the opportunity to reinsert all of
• 1:16:20
  the gothic stuff that Christopher H Bidmead took out
• 1:16:24
  of State and Decay. It's worth mentioning.
• 1:16:25
  By his own estimation on Twitter, Bidmead himself said
• 1:16:29
  that the conversations that he had with Dicks over the story
• 1:16:33
  ended up according to Christopher H Bidmead, ended up
• 1:16:35
  with Dicks in tears. So, you know, this was fair.
• 1:16:39
  Yeah, this was fairly acrimonious stuff by, you know,
• 1:16:43
  by the testament of one of the people involved.
• 1:16:46
  Whatever I think of Peter Moffett as a creative, I think
• 1:16:50
  he made the right choice to say no, this isn't the script I I
• 1:16:53
  originally got. I don't want to do this boring
• 1:16:55
  science fiction story about eggs.
• 1:16:57
  I want you to do that gothic horror that I was given
• 1:16:59
  originally. State of Decay is a really fun
• 1:17:01
  Rob, and it's got a lot of atmosphere.
• 1:17:03
  But what this has got as a lot of gore and I really loved it.
• 1:17:08
  Yeah, there is. There is a lot of love for
• 1:17:10
  season 18 and none of it coming from me, and I was very happy to
• 1:17:16
  see or to see frankly, some fun put back into it.
• 1:17:21
  This is all of the gothic stuff. This is you.
• 1:17:25
  You end up with the 8th Doctor and Romana back-to-back whipping
• 1:17:29
  away. Stakes are ready plugging away
• 1:17:32
  at that. He says.
• 1:17:34
  Right, He goes just like golf, really, all in the swing as he
• 1:17:38
  swings and axe around his head and decapitates a vampire.
• 1:17:43
  This is, this is that early 8th Doctor Who was sort of conceived
• 1:17:48
  by a lot of writers at the time in direct contrast to the 7th
• 1:17:51
  Doctor as depicting it in the new adventures that this is the
• 1:17:55
  Doctor Who goes toe to toe with the enemy.
• 1:17:58
  And also it's really quite violent at times.
• 1:18:01
  And you know, we've talked about this as young adult fiction, but
• 1:18:04
  then I was thinking, well, do you know what you can get away
• 1:18:07
  with quite a lot in a lot more in in young adult fiction?
• 1:18:10
  And you think you can because you're not displaying it.
• 1:18:12
  Like I I remember reading Charlie Higson's young James
• 1:18:16
  Bond books when they came out, and there's a bit in that where
• 1:18:20
  one of them opens with a man literally getting caught and
• 1:18:23
  hung up on cheese wire. Yeah, and Terry Sticks isn't
• 1:18:27
  isn't short far short of some of that in this, this, this bit.
• 1:18:31
  There's a sequence where our short Tom Baker would not have
• 1:18:34
  complained had it been in the script where a gaggle with this
• 1:18:37
  harem of vampire girls set upon him and start just sucking the
• 1:18:42
  life out of him, don't they? And I mean his blood and to the
• 1:18:45
  point where he's almost dead. And the, you know, a very
• 1:18:49
  bizarre twist. The 8th Doctor has to give him a
• 1:18:52
  blood transfusion in order for him to survive.
• 1:18:55
  So there's a there's blood flying all over the place in
• 1:18:58
  this section. But that again, that blood
• 1:19:01
  transfusion is just a lovely little Terence Dicks moment,
• 1:19:03
  isn't it? Of, you know, just a lovely
• 1:19:04
  little character moment of realising, oh hang on a minute,
• 1:19:07
  what if you give yourself a blood transfusion between them?
• 1:19:09
  It's just it's just a little moment, but it's just sort of
• 1:19:11
  that's neat. Oh no.
• 1:19:12
  It's the same blood. Yeah.
• 1:19:15
  There's a barn on fire. There's Zahn has a spike that
• 1:19:19
  literally bursts through his chest when he dies, you know?
• 1:19:23
  And then you've got vampires being hurled into the flames and
• 1:19:26
  their, you know, deaths described in agonising detail.
• 1:19:31
  I thought this was a great section.
• 1:19:33
  Yeah, I really loved it. Also, cheeky.
• 1:19:36
  Chapter 11 is called The Vampire Mutation.
• 1:19:38
  Oh yes, which was the original title of State of Decay.
• 1:19:42
  Cheeky. And he's doing, you know, there
• 1:19:44
  are some funny lines near again as well.
• 1:19:46
  They want us to be the new king and queen.
• 1:19:48
  How very flattering. Still, I suppose we did create a
• 1:19:51
  couple of job vacancies. You know, he's he's still right.
• 1:19:55
  A funny line, was it? You should have a stakeholder's
• 1:19:59
  economy. I was like, oh.
• 1:20:02
  I mean, I mean, maybe it's right that we eventually he does put
• 1:20:07
  an end to this and move on. But this bit I this all of them
• 1:20:12
  was probably the most heck a lot of fun I'd say, of all of them.
• 1:20:16
  And also also made me realise that he's he's showing off not
• 1:20:20
  just different stories in different areas, but the rich
• 1:20:22
  diversity of stories across Doctor Who, right?
• 1:20:27
  And he does come. He starts coming to a bit of a
• 1:20:30
  conclusion about what the book is about as well during this
• 1:20:33
  section. And there's a very simple
• 1:20:35
  sentence where the doctor says when he walks away from this
• 1:20:37
  story, yeah, he's starting to realise that he has no reason to
• 1:20:41
  be ashamed of himself. So he's learning that he's a
• 1:20:44
  good man. And actually we take that to a
• 1:20:48
  conclusion in the very last chapter of this book, which
• 1:20:52
  which we will get to. But first we're off to the Eye
• 1:20:56
  of Orion with the 5th Doctor, Tegan and Turlock.
• 1:21:01
  Oh, I can see the pain in your face already.
• 1:21:06
  The Eye of Orion is not interesting.
• 1:21:09
  Why do we keep going back there? Do.
• 1:21:12
  You say that as a Welshman, all right.
• 1:21:15
  I mean, I've never been. It looks very idyllic to me.
• 1:21:19
  It looks idyllic. Giorgio Zyllic isn't interesting
• 1:21:22
  or dramatic. I mean, I expect something from
• 1:21:24
  Nicholas Briggs. But come on, terrace Dicks.
• 1:21:28
  Yes. So we land back on the Eye of
• 1:21:31
  Orion because immediately after the Five Doctors, because
• 1:21:38
  they've decided to restart their holiday that was so rudely
• 1:21:40
  interrupted, which is the sort of thing that people do in 1980s
• 1:21:42
  Doctor Who. They have, they have a holiday,
• 1:21:45
  they have a massive adventure and then go, oh wait a minute,
• 1:21:47
  we were having a holiday, let's go back to that.
• 1:21:50
  I I find all of this quite tedious and quite trying to be
• 1:21:53
  honest. Why are you a Doctor Who fan?
• 1:21:58
  Doctor Who fans who don't like chunks of Doctor Who.
• 1:22:02
  Most of it is tedious and annoying.
• 1:22:04
  Yeah, we've just happened to have read the few good books
• 1:22:10
  between us. But what I did like, I did like
• 1:22:13
  the I liked the fun idea that the 5th Doctor might have just
• 1:22:16
  come off the back of an adventure in which he is the the
• 1:22:20
  latest incarnation, and so then you get Tegan to ask him.
• 1:22:23
  So is it possible that you could meet future versions of yourself
• 1:22:26
  as well? And the 5th Doctor's like, no.
• 1:22:29
  I suppose maybe. And then here comes Paul McGann.
• 1:22:37
  So basically the 5th Doctor section is not set during the
• 1:22:41
  Five Doctors, but it's more or less a rerun of sections of the
• 1:22:44
  Five Doctors. And the Five Doctors and the
• 1:22:47
  Invasion of Time. It's not.
• 1:22:50
  Just because there's some some torrents in it doesn't mean it's
• 1:22:53
  the invasion of time. Oh, it's Santara's on Gallifrey.
• 1:22:56
  Oh, no. So Gallifrey's.
• 1:22:57
  It's the I have a Ryan. There we go.
• 1:22:58
  You see, they couldn't even be asked to go to a different
• 1:23:01
  filming location. Terrance is obsessed with the
• 1:23:03
  rest of the warrior robot. It turns up twice again in two
• 1:23:07
  different BBC books for the last time in World Game, which was
• 1:23:11
  the 2nd Doctor novel towards the end.
• 1:23:13
  And yeah, you know, let's not forget the rest of Warrior Robot
• 1:23:16
  was a last minute addition to the five Doctors that Eric
• 1:23:19
  Saywood insisted was added. He said we haven't quite got
• 1:23:22
  enough for the Third Doctor and Sarah to do.
• 1:23:24
  Do you want to add something else?
• 1:23:25
  And then he came up with it sort of at the last minute.
• 1:23:28
  And I think most of it works because of the design and the
• 1:23:30
  shooting of it's so great. Like JMT took care of the
• 1:23:32
  shooting there and it is a brilliant idea.
• 1:23:35
  But you know, the rest on Warrior Robot interrupts the
• 1:23:39
  Doctor, Tegan and Turlo playing cricket.
• 1:23:42
  Very bizarre adventure. Yes, the the Time Lord's
• 1:23:45
  plotting away on Gallifrey sends the use the time scoop to send
• 1:23:49
  the rest on rest on Warrior Robot after the 5th Doctor to
• 1:23:53
  try and take him out. And you know we do get a couple
• 1:23:58
  of nice bits for the rest of it is basically a rerun of the
• 1:24:01
  Cyberman massacre. It's just that you've got some
• 1:24:04
  tyrants, not Cybermen this time. I would love to see it still.
• 1:24:09
  In fact, there's even a bit where it's even a bit where one
• 1:24:12
  of the Doctors said things it was not unlike the battle with
• 1:24:14
  the Cybermen his other self had witnessed in the desert.
• 1:24:16
  Yes, we know Terrance, oddly enough.
• 1:24:19
  He's got no short of nerve, has he?
• 1:24:22
  I actually wrote him my notes when the drashing finally
• 1:24:25
  appeared. I wrote he's just throwing any
• 1:24:28
  old figure at the doctors now to to try and assassinate him like
• 1:24:33
  he's literally just drank. But then with that obviously
• 1:24:35
  does lead to that wonderful sequence where boring old
• 1:24:38
  counsellor Rayoff is eaten. He's building does something
• 1:24:44
  with it as well. I did like the little bit of
• 1:24:47
  internal monologue we get for the rest on Warrior Robot,
• 1:24:49
  though, which is the enemy would come.
• 1:24:52
  It always did. The enemy, of course, was anyone
• 1:24:55
  who came. I actually thought for once,
• 1:24:58
  he's trying to think outside the box of how he's writing a scene.
• 1:25:01
  It's not just doing his usual sort of omnipresent prose that
• 1:25:04
  he does. Yeah, yeah, but it's half a
• 1:25:08
  page. It's yeah, it's not much, and we
• 1:25:11
  do get the rest on Warrior Robot is eventually defeated with a
• 1:25:15
  logic trap, which is that the two doctors, both being the same
• 1:25:23
  person, converge on it from opposite and opposite sides and
• 1:25:27
  it can't decide between the target and.
• 1:25:30
  Hardly the most effective killing machine in the Galaxy
• 1:25:33
  that gives it a headache enough to blow up it.
• 1:25:35
  Can't deal with two targets. But I mean again as being being,
• 1:25:43
  you know, we shouldn't get to on our high horses here as grown
• 1:25:48
  men critiquing a children's, but because I do think.
• 1:25:54
  That's how I spend my life. How dare you?
• 1:25:57
  What I do is travel from podcast to podcast, undermining the
• 1:26:00
  conceit, yeah. I'd rather be critiquing The
• 1:26:02
  Eight Doctors on that turgid novel you were telling me about
• 1:26:05
  on the last episode. Revelation of the Daleks.
• 1:26:10
  No. Oh, you Ulysses budget.
• 1:26:12
  Choice. No, no, no, no.
• 1:26:14
  When you were writing for that paper.
• 1:26:16
  Oh, God. Oh, yes.
• 1:26:17
  That. Yeah, let's, let's bring that up
• 1:26:18
  again. There are lower points than the
• 1:26:20
  8 doctors, all right. Oh, Terence Dix can actually put
• 1:26:23
  sentences together in a way that is amusing and thrilling.
• 1:26:26
  Which not all local writers. Can.
• 1:26:29
  I don't believe we should turn this into a running joke in the
• 1:26:32
  hope that one day she discovers the podcast and then gets to
• 1:26:36
  write another essay online about, you know, how you're
• 1:26:40
  systematically destroying her reputation.
• 1:26:42
  I mean, she's unnamed. 00 And she will remain so.
• 1:26:46
  But I discovered one that I've been pursuing a silent vendetta
• 1:26:51
  against her such such of my time was wasted reading that novel.
• 1:26:56
  But so this is this is all action again, yeah, but it's
• 1:27:00
  sort of action we've seen before, whereas in stated decay,
• 1:27:04
  it was action we should have seen in that story.
• 1:27:07
  Absolutely 100% that I can. Occasionally make a point.
• 1:27:12
  Not often. Yeah, but you know, you you get
• 1:27:14
  the rest of us in to help you along, so that's all right.
• 1:27:16
  Thank you. Fact fans, the Sontaran
• 1:27:22
  homeworld is here. Sontara, not Sontar.
• 1:27:26
  Not Sontar. Or indeed Sontarion, which I
• 1:27:28
  believe. It came from terrorist Dicks
• 1:27:29
  first, so it's true. It is a fact.
• 1:27:31
  You've all had it wrong. Please update your spreadsheets
• 1:27:34
  accordingly. Well, should we skip on to the
• 1:27:38
  the largest section of this book, even longer than the 3rd
• 1:27:41
  Doctor section? You know, containing an entire
• 1:27:44
  page description of Colin Baker's Doctor in the most
• 1:27:48
  luxurious and slightly sexual way.
• 1:27:52
  I think terrorist Dick sort of sees the the Six Doctors a bit
• 1:27:55
  of an avatar, slightly overweight, rambunctious, a bit
• 1:27:58
  arrogant, a bit cheeky, verbose. You know, I think maybe Terrance
• 1:28:02
  can see a bit of himself in him, Colin Baker's Doctor, and that's
• 1:28:06
  why he gets that, that huge page full of description.
• 1:28:11
  He he he definitely he definitely get you get a sense
• 1:28:16
  of a warmth towards the the sick doctor that isn't always obvious
• 1:28:19
  in books of this era. I think even the writers who
• 1:28:23
  find this, because you have to remember in the 90s this was
• 1:28:26
  still before the Big Finish renaissance.
• 1:28:28
  I think the 6th Doctor was still quite looked down upon and not
• 1:28:32
  necessarily reflection on Colin Baker's performance in any way.
• 1:28:34
  But as a, you know, as a symbolic of a period that of of
• 1:28:38
  Doctor Who where it may be, you know, sort of gone down some
• 1:28:40
  wrong corners. And even when people, some
• 1:28:43
  writers I'm thinking of like Steve Lyons or The Missing
• 1:28:45
  Adventures did do interesting things with him, it tended to be
• 1:28:48
  sort of buying into that darkness and trying to do
• 1:28:51
  something. OK, well, you know what, if this
• 1:28:54
  was the sort of slightly unpredictable, slightly unhinged
• 1:28:58
  Dr., let's say that's interesting.
• 1:29:00
  But I do think that's very different, as you say, to what
• 1:29:02
  Terence is doing here. Where he hasn't, He sees, I
• 1:29:04
  think a bit more of where of what Big Finish saw with Connor
• 1:29:08
  Baker's. Maybe some of that comes from
• 1:29:10
  knowing Connor Baker as an individual.
• 1:29:11
  You know, I don't know, perhaps that's it.
• 1:29:13
  But that warmth, That, as you say that, that rambunctiousness
• 1:29:17
  that the person who wants to talk about boom out to tell
• 1:29:20
  explain what's going on in the opera while you're sat next to
• 1:29:23
  them. There is literally a bit where
• 1:29:25
  he storms into the president's rooms.
• 1:29:28
  Yeah. And just announces himself and
• 1:29:30
  says I'm not having this, I'm the president.
• 1:29:33
  And I was like, yeah, that's Colin's doctor all right.
• 1:29:36
  Yeah, yeah. And so the sick Doctor segment
• 1:29:39
  is is essentially the denimal of the book in every meaningful
• 1:29:42
  sense. It's where the Doctor is back.
• 1:29:44
  The 8th Doctor arrives on Gallifrey sort of in his own
• 1:29:47
  time, sort of in an alternative timeline.
• 1:29:49
  Apparently the 6th Doctor is one who was split off from his main
• 1:29:53
  self during the events of the trial of the Time Ward.
• 1:29:55
  It's very confusing. I didn't follow it.
• 1:29:57
  I don't think a nine year old. Would follow.
• 1:29:59
  No, I don't. I don't think you're really
• 1:30:00
  supposed to either. You're just supposed to accept
• 1:30:02
  that he's still in the trial and the story you watch at the time
• 1:30:04
  is still valid. And this is valid as well
• 1:30:08
  because. To once again quote Austin
• 1:30:10
  Powers, I wouldn't worry about that.
• 1:30:12
  If I were you, I'd just sit back and enjoy the ride and.
• 1:30:15
  Do you know what I kind of did? And the thing I liked about this
• 1:30:18
  section, apart from 60 and eight just being a great pairing
• 1:30:23
  together, sort of doing all this political machinations, was how
• 1:30:28
  it tied in the trial of a Time Lord with the sort of Gallifrey
• 1:30:35
  at large. So explaining what what happened
• 1:30:38
  elsewhere when that was going on on.
• 1:30:40
  Those are very geeky approach and I don't usually really care
• 1:30:43
  about where things fall into place, but I was like, OK,
• 1:30:46
  Flavia has still did ousted enough say, collection.
• 1:30:50
  The space station was purchased that was moved to an isolated
• 1:30:53
  location which was Operation Rabelox.
• 1:30:56
  The Doctor was put on trial because he landed there purely
• 1:30:58
  by chance. And the Matrix secrets were
• 1:31:00
  there. I was like, OK, I understand
• 1:31:03
  it's far better here than I ever did watching Trial of a Time on.
• 1:31:07
  It's all sort of put in context. And I'm like, right, I get it.
• 1:31:10
  It's all part of this big, you know, this big plot to keep
• 1:31:13
  their secrets. And yeah, I I understood.
• 1:31:18
  But that is the height of indulgence.
• 1:31:22
  Yes. And.
• 1:31:24
  The way you have described all of that is far more thrilling
• 1:31:27
  and engaging than the way it actually perhaps plays out in
• 1:31:29
  the book. Where in a In an incredible
• 1:31:31
  moments of drama, the 6th and 8th Doctors set up an inquiry
• 1:31:35
  and I'll give them an office. No, I think they get 5 people,
• 1:31:43
  don't they? Including engines.
• 1:31:45
  I think they get, they get a small, they get a small private
• 1:31:48
  office of civil servants to help them with their investigation
• 1:31:52
  into the accusations against the Celestial Intervention Agency.
• 1:31:55
  I mean, I wasn't. I wasn't racing through these
• 1:31:59
  pages. Oh, see, now I kind of did.
• 1:32:02
  But I think it's because, you know, my love affair with the
• 1:32:05
  6th Doctor knows no bounds. So just being in his company, I
• 1:32:08
  really enjoy it. But by the end of this, I was
• 1:32:11
  going, yeah, this has been going on a long time.
• 1:32:13
  And I was aware that there was only like 25 pages left in the
• 1:32:17
  book. I'm like, well, hang on, we've
• 1:32:19
  got to pick up Sam Jones because I know she's there at the
• 1:32:21
  beginning of vampire science. And we haven't done a segment
• 1:32:23
  for Sylvester McCoy. And thrown into all of this, we
• 1:32:27
  also get the Master claiming that the High Council brought
• 1:32:30
  the Valley Yard into existence as part of their conspiracy to
• 1:32:32
  cover up the theft of the Falls from the Matrix.
• 1:32:34
  I think. Sure, why not?
• 1:32:35
  Why not? We found out why the Doctor left
• 1:32:37
  Gallopray at the start of the book.
• 1:32:38
  You remember at the end of the Android Invasion novelisation,
• 1:32:42
  You probably won't, but Tara Sticks very often would take
• 1:32:48
  these scripts that he hadn't written or script edited and go,
• 1:32:51
  Oh no, no, no, no, no, none of this makes any sense and we're
• 1:32:55
  going to make it make sense. So at the end of the Android
• 1:32:57
  invasion, he literally writes a paragraph where, you know, the
• 1:33:00
  events weren't quite over yet. The deactivated androids had to
• 1:33:04
  be rounded up and destroyed and put under unit protection.
• 1:33:07
  And he does this whole paragraph where basically all the things
• 1:33:09
  that Robert Holmes forgot, he sorted out and then ended it
• 1:33:13
  with the Android invasion was over.
• 1:33:15
  Well, I feel like he's taken a long look at the trial of a time
• 1:33:18
  laws and gone. Do you know what?
• 1:33:21
  None of this makes any bloody sense.
• 1:33:23
  I'm going to make it make sense. But in doing so, he's kind of
• 1:33:28
  sucked the fun out of it a little bit.
• 1:33:31
  Yes, I think the reason a lot of that is lot of what is explained
• 1:33:35
  here isn't explained to the trial.
• 1:33:36
  The Time Lord is because it's quite boring.
• 1:33:42
  The Trial just does the pertinent points.
• 1:33:45
  It's been moved off course. He's a dark version of the
• 1:33:48
  Doctor. You know The Matrix is trying to
• 1:33:50
  kill him. It's all the dramatic points
• 1:33:52
  without any of the explanations. Lovely.
• 1:33:54
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly that.
• 1:33:56
  And So what we get here is all the explanations, all of their.
• 1:34:00
  Amazing points. It's like if Rosencrantz and
• 1:34:03
  Guildenstern were much more just concerned with like, you know,
• 1:34:07
  who keeps Elsin or Tidy? Yeah, I don't want to see that,
• 1:34:14
  mind you. I will see it anyway.
• 1:34:15
  So although my mate has just appeared in it.
• 1:34:18
  Oh, very good. Yeah, he's a better actor than
• 1:34:20
  me. Anything else on this 6th Doctor
• 1:34:25
  segment? I mean, any more?
• 1:34:27
  Any more issues? I mean, I didn't enjoy.
• 1:34:29
  I think up to this point it's worth saying, you know, we have,
• 1:34:33
  you know, made some jokes at Terrance and the books expense,
• 1:34:36
  but this is, this was a really, really nippy read, really fun,
• 1:34:42
  good for the kids, you know, very full of the excitement of
• 1:34:45
  of Doctor Who and all it could be in the possibilities.
• 1:34:47
  I got to the 6th doc section and it felt like I'd run into a
• 1:34:50
  battered treacle. I think it probably took me as
• 1:34:52
  long, half as long to read that as it had taken me to read the
• 1:34:55
  whole of the rest of the book up.
• 1:34:56
  To this point, it does feel like the brakes are on, doesn't it?
• 1:34:59
  Yeah, for a bit. Like like this book has got to
• 1:35:01
  be 280 pages. We're only a page 200.
• 1:35:05
  I've got, I feel, 60 pages with this bump.
• 1:35:08
  And it is it. It is a problem.
• 1:35:10
  And I I I hate to mark it down because I really I, I, I I want
• 1:35:15
  to be a champion of the eight doctors.
• 1:35:16
  It's got such a bad reputation and it's so undeserved on so
• 1:35:18
  many things. But undoubtedly the single
• 1:35:20
  biggest problem with it is that this, as its climax, is not
• 1:35:24
  climactic. It is very dull.
• 1:35:27
  It doesn't really make sense. It doesn't really tie up any of
• 1:35:31
  the threads that he's been trying to lay down, and I think
• 1:35:40
  to the point where we come out the other side of it onto the
• 1:35:42
  7th Doctor section, which is almost more of a little epilogue
• 1:35:45
  more than anything else. I almost felt like I missed
• 1:35:48
  something. It should be the climax, the 7th
• 1:35:50
  Doctor section, right? Isn't that what we're leading
• 1:35:52
  to, the the incarnation before this one?
• 1:35:55
  Yeah, but I mean, I don't mind the idea that it could be
• 1:35:59
  quieter, that it could be a sort of.
• 1:36:02
  And here we are at Journey's end, because the clever thing
• 1:36:05
  with the 7th Doctor section is he saw is it's implied to be
• 1:36:08
  very shortly before the TV movie.
• 1:36:10
  So he really is bringing it background full circle to, you
• 1:36:14
  know, presumably just a few hours before the story started.
• 1:36:18
  So I don't mind that. But for that to work, I need to
• 1:36:21
  have had a sense that we've actually sort of achieved
• 1:36:23
  everything, and I didn't. And you know the the end of this
• 1:36:27
  is all the time law sort of million about the Panopticon.
• 1:36:30
  Yeah. You know, and it's all getting a
• 1:36:32
  bit apocalyptic. And then and then it's not.
• 1:36:35
  I mean that just stops happening.
• 1:36:38
  No doctor does. That's fine.
• 1:36:41
  You can go on your way. Pretty much, but but the other
• 1:36:46
  version of you Mr. 6th Doctor is still in the trial, so
• 1:36:49
  continuity is fine. Yeah, don't worry about that.
• 1:36:52
  It's fine. Honestly, don't worry.
• 1:36:54
  I'm sorry if you worried there was any jeopardy here, but I
• 1:36:57
  assure you there isn't. But then like you say about the
• 1:37:01
  the 7th Doctor section, right? It's OK for that to be
• 1:37:05
  reflective, which he's trying to be.
• 1:37:07
  That's not Terrance's Forte. So unfortunately he's just
• 1:37:10
  making loads of digs at the new adventures and going, you know,
• 1:37:13
  God won that a depressing period in my life, you know, And that
• 1:37:16
  it needs to go and see some sort of time therapist to get out of
• 1:37:21
  this stupor that is actually in there.
• 1:37:24
  But then suddenly he's on Metabellius 3 and up in a
• 1:37:27
  spider's web. I mean, I'd love to see Semester
• 1:37:30
  McCoy in that situation, but it's like suddenly we're doing
• 1:37:33
  action again. But that's dealt with within a
• 1:37:35
  page because the Ancient just comes along and goes and cuts
• 1:37:38
  him down. I quite.
• 1:37:41
  I mean, I I really enjoyed that. I just quite liked the I the
• 1:37:46
  image of the 7th Doctor, the master manipulator just happened
• 1:37:50
  to be cut down from a spider's web by his much more sort of
• 1:37:54
  easygoing and romantic success. I just.
• 1:37:57
  I was. For all that, it's clear that
• 1:37:59
  Terence has got very little time for the Sylvester McCoy Doctor,
• 1:38:01
  because it is, I think, easily the shortest section, and about
• 1:38:05
  half of it is more dealt with explaining how, the how and why
• 1:38:08
  the Master turned into a snake. Excuse me.
• 1:38:10
  Well, you need to get there, because that was one of my
• 1:38:12
  favorite bits of the whole book. Oh, go on then.
• 1:38:15
  Well, no. It's only the fact that all of
• 1:38:17
  this sort of nipping and tucking and putting things together and
• 1:38:20
  explaining things and, you know, giving a motive for pivotal
• 1:38:24
  points in the Doctor's life. My favorite of all was the
• 1:38:28
  Master doing this dodgy deal to get the morphin snake that he's
• 1:38:32
  going to turn into in the TV movie.
• 1:38:34
  And if you swallow this snake down and get killed, you'll turn
• 1:38:38
  into that snake, right? And this is Terrance going.
• 1:38:41
  How the fuck did the Master become that snake?
• 1:38:44
  I'm going to give an explanation for this.
• 1:38:46
  So he does. But, but that.
• 1:38:48
  But that is all shit but the pay off where it just materializes
• 1:38:53
  in front of a load of Daleks and goes, oh, it's me, your old
• 1:38:57
  ally, the master. What have you got to say for
• 1:38:59
  yourself, you stupid tin boxes? And that's where we start the TV
• 1:39:03
  movie where they put him on trial.
• 1:39:04
  And I was like, do you know what, For the sheer nuts of it.
• 1:39:08
  Oh, I mean, I was. I was howling with laughter.
• 1:39:12
  Yeah, I I I I really like that I was.
• 1:39:15
  I was quite charmed by this little bit.
• 1:39:19
  I did enjoy that. The only I felt the only tricky
• 1:39:22
  missed was, wouldn't it have been perfect if we'd had the
• 1:39:24
  Master set, the trap that the Doctor sets off at the start of
• 1:39:27
  the book? Wouldn't that have been neat?
• 1:39:30
  That would have been very neat, but Steven Moffitt was
• 1:39:33
  unfortunately not right. In this novel, there's Terrence
• 1:39:39
  trying to make all these connections and he can't even
• 1:39:41
  connect his own fucking book for the sake.
• 1:39:45
  No, this whole book is just basically him going, oh,
• 1:39:47
  wouldn't it be fun if? No, absolutely.
• 1:39:51
  But there is a joy to it. I think again here we have a bit
• 1:39:54
  of we end well, we don't quite end, but we almost end on going
• 1:39:59
  back. To Baz in a minute.
• 1:40:01
  On a reminder of the joy of Doctor Who and it's it's
• 1:40:05
  inherent silliness. And I think Doctor Who at its
• 1:40:08
  best, has had an awareness of the silliness of its own, and an
• 1:40:16
  acceptance of the some of its own silliness of its, of its
• 1:40:18
  premise, in a way that a lot of other science fiction and
• 1:40:21
  fantasy failed to do. They take themselves far too
• 1:40:24
  seriously. I think that that is literally
• 1:40:27
  the unique thing about Doctor Who is.
• 1:40:29
  It is as funny as it is and I think that is why kids love it
• 1:40:32
  and that's why adults love it And that is why a certain breed
• 1:40:35
  of person like Star Trek is because it tries to be funny
• 1:40:38
  occasionally and fails miserably, but very often it's
• 1:40:41
  very serious, so it attracts a very serious sort of person.
• 1:40:45
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And and the note of this book is
• 1:40:52
  Doctor Who is a lot of fun and there's a lot of it for you to
• 1:40:57
  enjoy. And you know, I've got another
• 1:40:59
  question for you then. Well, why do people reject this
• 1:41:02
  then? Don't Doctor Who fans like
• 1:41:05
  Doctor Who being fun? I think they do.
• 1:41:08
  I think the issue is, as we talked about at the start of the
• 1:41:15
  the episode, this wasn't a book that was written for Doctor Who,
• 1:41:20
  Doctor Who fans, but it's a book that was only read by Doctor Who
• 1:41:23
  fans. It was meant to be read by
• 1:41:25
  people who didn't know much about Doctor Who, Who, only just
• 1:41:28
  first time sketching. It would have made a lot of
• 1:41:30
  sense as a new series adventure around about 2013.
• 1:41:33
  So it came out the same year as the video game Destiny of the
• 1:41:39
  Doctors, which was also scripted by Terence Dix and totally feels
• 1:41:43
  of a piece with that. That sort of summarization of
• 1:41:46
  Doctor Who bring everyone in for a bit of a party and explaining
• 1:41:50
  itself in a, you know, in a way that is a bit more compelling
• 1:41:55
  than a a reference book necessarily is.
• 1:41:58
  So I think that's the issue. I think it's it was written for
• 1:42:02
  a different and better world where Doctor Who was taking off
• 1:42:06
  again in 1997, where kids were getting into it, where they
• 1:42:09
  wanted to know about all of this, where it would presumably
• 1:42:12
  lead to a or hopefully lead to a boost in sales of the War games
• 1:42:17
  and State of Decay VHS box sets. Imagine that.
• 1:42:20
  Imagine imagine if you'd read this in 1997 and then gone and
• 1:42:25
  you know bothered your parents for to get you the Sea Devils on
• 1:42:30
  video from from HMV or Virgin Megastore.
• 1:42:33
  Right when when Cole came in, when Steve Cole came in, he
• 1:42:36
  deliberately married the video releases with what they were
• 1:42:39
  doing in the books. So the books were an enticement.
• 1:42:42
  And then the video released was the pay off.
• 1:42:44
  There was some four in the brand.
• 1:42:47
  Yeah, it wasn't there quite yet. Exactly.
• 1:42:51
  But the issue there is that the audience that that strategy was
• 1:42:58
  aimed at just didn't exist because the TV movie hadn't led
• 1:43:02
  on to big stuff. I mean, Doctor Who was still
• 1:43:04
  around, you know, because I again use myself as the example
• 1:43:06
  here because I was a kid at this age.
• 1:43:08
  I was a kid who should have had Doctor Who at this age.
• 1:43:11
  It wasn't. I didn't know about Doctor Who
• 1:43:12
  was still on UK Gold, You know, remember watching some of Doctor
• 1:43:17
  Who and I remember watching ATV movie.
• 1:43:19
  This first time there was really two young, young for men pulling
• 1:43:22
  heart probes at their chests. So it was around, and I would
• 1:43:26
  have loved it had it been on, but I mean, none of this was
• 1:43:29
  anywhere near my consciousness because it would have had to
• 1:43:31
  have a much more current and visible brand within culture.
• 1:43:38
  It would have needed to have been on Saturday night or at
• 1:43:40
  worst it would have needed to have been on, you know, the 5:00
• 1:43:44
  slot, the CBBC. You know, we weren't thinking
• 1:43:46
  about Doctor Who in 1997. We were thinking about the demon
• 1:43:49
  headmaster, right. And that's where it needed to
• 1:43:52
  be. So in I can't.
• 1:43:54
  I I really love this book. I think ultimately I love love
• 1:43:58
  in a kind way, not love in the way that I love Father Time or
• 1:44:01
  something. It's a genuinely great piece of
• 1:44:03
  of Dog Who. Literally.
• 1:44:04
  Most of this is pretty terrible, yeah.
• 1:44:07
  But it's a great ride. And I love what it represents.
• 1:44:11
  I love that there was someone really.
• 1:44:14
  There were people at this point trying who hadn't forgotten to
• 1:44:18
  get Doctor Who aimed at kids. It wasn't going to work.
• 1:44:23
  That wasn't the audience. That audience didn't exist.
• 1:44:25
  The New Adventures damaged goods, which we've discussed
• 1:44:28
  were not wrong in writing Doctor Who for people in their 20s,
• 1:44:32
  because that's the people who were reading it.
• 1:44:33
  But this is a little glimpse into another world, right?
• 1:44:36
  This is another little peek through the door of where it had
• 1:44:39
  worked, where it had, where it actually paid off.
• 1:44:43
  And we did have Doctor Who, and maybe it looked more like never
• 1:44:46
  were than The X-Files. And for that I do love it.
• 1:44:51
  And it makes me a little bit. It's bittersweet.
• 1:44:56
  But I I do think the criticism of it maybe misses that point
• 1:45:01
  slightly. And inevitably, it only ended up
• 1:45:05
  being read by the people who didn't need it.
• 1:45:09
  Which was the New Adventures fans.
• 1:45:12
  I think they skipped from that range to this range because this
• 1:45:15
  was the next series of Doctor Who books and this just wasn't
• 1:45:19
  for them. There were some bits and bobs
• 1:45:21
  coming up. There kind of was, you know, and
• 1:45:23
  I think the 8th Doctor books did generate some interest within
• 1:45:26
  that fandom, the New Adventures fandom over time.
• 1:45:30
  And as you and I have discussed, as inconsistent as it may be,
• 1:45:34
  there are some bloody good reads in this run.
• 1:45:38
  Oh, and it is right. It is right that the series
• 1:45:42
  corrected its course and the vampire science and alien bodies
• 1:45:46
  very much became the exemplars for the range rather than this
• 1:45:50
  and War of the Daleks. How could you do this again?
• 1:45:53
  I mean. He goes back and lose the eight
• 1:45:58
  doctors, lost his memories again.
• 1:46:00
  He's going to have to go back and meet all of the other
• 1:46:01
  Doctors during a oh, now I've landed in the Keys of Mariners
• 1:46:04
  and. I, I, I listen to on the 1515
• 1:46:10
  Blu-ray, I watched this week the Terrance Dix documentary.
• 1:46:12
  It's a gorgeous thing where he's talking about his whole career
• 1:46:14
  in and out of Doctor Who. And there's a little segment on
• 1:46:17
  the Five Doctors where he says he absolutely loved the
• 1:46:19
  challenge of putting together that jigsaw of whichever actors
• 1:46:23
  were available and trying to make them fit in some kind of
• 1:46:26
  narrative. And I think he's doing the same
• 1:46:29
  thing again here. You know, it's like my challenge
• 1:46:32
  is to expose this new audience, inverted commas to as much
• 1:46:36
  Doctor Who as possible. How can I do that?
• 1:46:39
  And you know, along the way you meet some of the best
• 1:46:42
  characters, Ian and Barbara, Jamie and Zoe, Joe Grant, Romana
• 1:46:47
  Taken and tell like maybe not the the Valley or fabulous
• 1:46:51
  character. You know, like you said you you
• 1:46:54
  duck and dive into all those genres, The cosiness of the
• 1:46:57
  Pertwee Era, Gothic horror in State of Decay.
• 1:47:01
  You know, the mad sort of action version of the show that started
• 1:47:05
  to creep in in the mid 80s. He does cover all the ground.
• 1:47:11
  Whether it ever should have existed in the 1st place, I
• 1:47:14
  don't know, but I'm really pleased it does because I've
• 1:47:18
  managed to get over myself and go from the person that wrote a
• 1:47:20
  review on my blog that gave this book one out of 10.
• 1:47:25
  It's still online to the person that read it this week and laugh
• 1:47:31
  myself silly and have the best possible time.
• 1:47:34
  So maybe maybe the the best advice is for all those new
• 1:47:37
  Adventures fans out there. Just get over yourselves a
• 1:47:40
  little bit and start having some fun with Doctor Who here, here,
• 1:47:46
  You know who. Knows how to make you know who
• 1:47:48
  knows how to make Doctor Who fun.
• 1:47:50
  Come on, Terrance. Well, look, let's.
• 1:47:53
  Do you have any more points about the eight doctors?
• 1:47:57
  Oh, just as an afterthought, the Doctor gets a new companion at
• 1:48:00
  the end of the book. Oh, of course.
• 1:48:03
  Yes, yes, Jones. Everyone's favorite Doctor Who
• 1:48:06
  companion. Having had the climax in the 6th
• 1:48:08
  Doctor section, having had the epilogue in the 7th Doctor
• 1:48:11
  section, we don't get a we don't get an extra code.
• 1:48:15
  Well, a coder. The Doctor APPS.
• 1:48:19
  The Doctor goes back to Cole, his school in 1997, and picks up
• 1:48:22
  Sam. And that's basically it.
• 1:48:25
  Yes, and she does that irritating thing that, you know,
• 1:48:28
  all the Clara Oswald's in the universe did, and that is walk
• 1:48:31
  into the TARDIS and go, oh, it's bigger, The insider now.
• 1:48:33
  Well, great, Let's go on an adventure.
• 1:48:36
  You know, because that's exactly what you do if you were exposed
• 1:48:39
  to the wonders of the universe. I mean, it's a it's a nice idea
• 1:48:42
  to have a 90s companion who's seen a million science fiction
• 1:48:46
  movies on video and is constantly excited by the
• 1:48:50
  realisation of those fantasies. But it's rushed through and the
• 1:48:55
  speed with which accepts it all with is ridiculous.
• 1:48:58
  And frankly, DWM was doing that idea much better with Izzy at
• 1:49:03
  the same time. Just about to say that, yeah,
• 1:49:05
  beautifully. Sam Jones and Izzy side by
• 1:49:19
  She's really fun in books like The Scarlet Empress and books
• 1:49:22
  like that, but as a whole, that sort of generic companion, it
• 1:49:27
  ain't enough, is it? And it certainly shows that
• 1:49:29
  there wasn't much of an idea of what to do with her at the
• 1:49:32
  start, that that really was people writers working it out
• 1:49:37
  further down the line, which is a little bit not good enough, is
• 1:49:40
  it? Hence the course correction,
• 1:49:42
  which I talked about at the start of this very episode in
• 1:49:46
  Vampire Science. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:49:56
  Well, Michael, may we move on then to my favorite section of
• 1:50:02
  when the bit will be discussed? The book really should be my
• 1:50:05
  favorite section, but I've never know what's coming with the
• 1:50:07
  recommends. So what have you got for me this
• 1:50:10
  time? Well, I'm aware that on this
• 1:50:13
  book podcast you occasionally also cover graphic novels.
• 1:50:17
  Yeah, we do. Yeah, so I have a comic book
• 1:50:20
  recommendation taking us across universes.
• 1:50:25
  I would like to recommend Star Trek colon, The Next Generation
• 1:50:31
  hyphen, Doctor Who and dash assimilation superscript
• 1:50:35
  squared. I had a podcast on this
• 1:50:37
  recently. Go on.
• 1:50:39
  So this is the Yes, this was Star Trek Next Generation,
• 1:50:44
  Doctor Who assimilation squared this.
• 1:50:47
  It was a comic book crossover done by IDW back when they had
• 1:50:52
  the comic book licenses for both Doctor Who and Star Trek in
• 1:50:55
  2012. What a time.
• 1:50:58
  What a time to be alive. I cannot explain how excited I
• 1:51:04
  was when when I saw this announced online with the
• 1:51:08
  artwork of the 11th Doctor. Amy and Rory sat on the bridge
• 1:51:12
  of the Enterprise. My God, it's actually happening.
• 1:51:17
  Can. I ask you, are you both a Doctor
• 1:51:18
  Who fan and a Star Trek fan? I'm I'm a Doctor Who fan.
• 1:51:24
  I feel I could disclose at this stage of my fifth appearance on
• 1:51:27
  the podcast. And you do some deep diving.
• 1:51:30
  You're a Doctor Who fan? A Star Trek fan.
• 1:51:34
  I I I feel like I'm nowhere near enough having enough
• 1:51:37
  understanding or knowledge of of Star Trek to lay claim to that
• 1:51:42
  because obviously some people are very deep.
• 1:51:44
  I I I like Star Trek. I can watch Star Trek, my
• 1:51:49
  tolerance, slashing geography, it goes up and down wildly from
• 1:51:52
  this is amazing. I want to read spin off books
• 1:51:55
  about this and other things too. This is the tedious crap that
• 1:52:00
  gives sci-fi a bad name. But TNG.
• 1:52:04
  See, I know it's called TNG. Is, you know, one of my you're.
• 1:52:07
  Teetering on the edge, then. A teetering I'm teetering.
• 1:52:10
  That's what we'll that's what we'll call it.
• 1:52:11
  I'm a teacher. Star Trek teeterer is one of my
• 1:52:15
  more favorite versions this this this crossover.
• 1:52:20
  I talked about it I think you alluded to did an episode of
• 1:52:23
  it's for Doctor Who 2 opt for TV with with Dylan Reece.
• 1:52:26
  I want to spread the word because I remember it coming out
• 1:52:29
  in 2012 and I got each issue every month as it came out and
• 1:52:33
  enjoyed it. But going back to cover it for
• 1:52:35
  that, for that show and reading it as a whole was really struck
• 1:52:40
  by what what a brilliant story to is.
• 1:52:43
  The story is Doctor Who crossing over things like Star Trek is
• 1:52:46
  the sort of thing that I'm sure general public thing has
• 1:52:49
  happened a million times but actually and for Star Trek it
• 1:52:52
  has. Star Trek has done tons of them.
• 1:52:54
  But Doctor Who? Barely ever This and the sleaze
• 1:52:57
  brothers in Doctor Who Magazine, right?
• 1:53:01
  And but which is weird, because it's got one of the conceits
• 1:53:06
  that should make it easiest to do crossovers, right?
• 1:53:08
  You can literally go to anyone else's universe and land there.
• 1:53:11
  Why hasn't he done Star Trek before?
• 1:53:13
  Why hasn't he met Judge Dredd? Why isn't he off having
• 1:53:16
  adventures with Laura? They're right, so I'm assuming.
• 1:53:18
  Oh yeah, no legalities entirely. Legalities beat the hybrid.
• 1:53:22
  It feels like every cross I I'm, I'm a I've got soft spot for
• 1:53:26
  crossovers. I love the ridiculousness of
• 1:53:27
  them. I love the getting to eat all of
• 1:53:29
  the chocolates, nature of seeing Green Lantern meet the
• 1:53:33
  Terminator or whatever. I don't know.
• 1:53:36
  You must have loved the Stony, the stolen earth, and journey's
• 1:53:39
  end then. Yeah, very much so.
• 1:53:41
  Love all that sort of thing. I I just love the expansion of
• 1:53:44
  the sandbox, you know? And I I like the idea of having
• 1:53:48
  characters from different worlds interact and allowing you at
• 1:53:51
  their best crossovers allow you to get a story that is true to
• 1:53:57
  both, but which would never be possible in any one of them
• 1:54:00
  individually. When crossovers are bad, it's
• 1:54:02
  just we meet up, we think we're enemies, we have a fight, we
• 1:54:06
  realize we're good guys, we team up and fight, our enemies have
• 1:54:08
  also teams up. Rubbish Simulation Squared is
• 1:54:11
  brilliant because it is a really developed quite long it was 8
• 1:54:16
  issues as a as a series was originally published.
• 1:54:19
  It's quite long for this sort of thing, so multi chapter
• 1:54:22
  exploration of Doctor Who and Star Trek.
• 1:54:27
  The crew of the Enterprise D teaching that I know the I know
• 1:54:32
  the correct classification. You might have gone over the
• 1:54:34
  edge. Now.
• 1:54:35
  Oh, that's it. I've gotta give myself.
• 1:54:37
  I've shown myself up. Picard ET al.
• 1:54:44
  Meeting up, exploring, and having.
• 1:54:45
  Having an adventure that is not not just a great big adventure
• 1:54:49
  between all of them, not just one that's that combines
• 1:54:54
  elements of both series. We'll go into all the plot
• 1:54:57
  details here, but but that's a lot of fun as well.
• 1:55:00
  But also finds the time to allow the shows and the characters to
• 1:55:04
  comment on each other in different ways.
• 1:55:06
  You know how What? Not just not not just.
• 1:55:08
  Let's have Captain Picard in the same panel as Doctor Who.
• 1:55:12
  What would Captain Picard think of Doctor Who?
• 1:55:14
  And actually, we know enough about Captain Picard because
• 1:55:17
  we've seen him like episodes, that we can start to make
• 1:55:20
  judgments about that. So.
• 1:55:21
  I imagine Captain Picard was a bit appalled, actually, and the
• 1:55:24
  Doctor sort of freewheeling nature, how he improvises this
• 1:55:27
  thing and doesn't stick to the rules.
• 1:55:29
  Well, all of that. But also he doesn't trust him
• 1:55:31
  because you know, he's met Q, he's met, so.
• 1:55:34
  Many, of course. No, Doctor Who is what they
• 1:55:39
  realized brilliantly, because for these crossovers, you have
• 1:55:41
  to find the ways in which they are different to make it
• 1:55:45
  interesting, but also the points at which they mesh.
• 1:55:48
  And Doctor Who is exactly the sort of character who turns up
• 1:55:50
  on the bridge of the Enterprise and causes all sorts of issues
• 1:55:52
  for them, and that works perfectly.
• 1:55:55
  And there's some beautiful scenes in there where the a big,
• 1:55:57
  a big subplot of it is the Doctor trying to win Picard's
• 1:56:00
  confidence. And that's that's not just this
• 1:56:04
  sort of empty conflict for conflict sake.
• 1:56:06
  It is true to the depictions of both of those characters, which
• 1:56:09
  is the Doctor isn't necessarily good at winning people over all
• 1:56:13
  the time because he is quite arrogant.
• 1:56:14
  He is mysterious. He does tend to walk in and take
• 1:56:16
  control of situations, and Picard is someone who is, who
• 1:56:20
  is, who is, you know, who is an intellectual.
• 1:56:24
  He is a thinker. He is cautious because he has
• 1:56:26
  met too many people like this, too many forces and individuals
• 1:56:29
  beyond his control. There is an episode of The Next
• 1:56:32
  Generation where a time traveller from the future, it
• 1:56:35
  turns out to be the past from the future appears on the bridge
• 1:56:38
  of the Enterprise. Literally this.
• 1:56:41
  So he has met people like this before.
• 1:56:43
  Absolutely no good. And it is a it is a book that
• 1:56:46
  it's a story a graphic novel that understands all that, that
• 1:56:49
  brings, that brings the weight of both an understanding of both
• 1:56:53
  series with it to these characters in the conflict so
• 1:56:55
  part and and does all that quite intelligently as well.
• 1:56:58
  So it's it it's it's top line. Conceit is the side men and the
• 1:57:02
  Borg have united. No.
• 1:57:05
  Because it's based on the fan idea that they're the same,
• 1:57:08
  right? Yeah, they're.
• 1:57:09
  The same thing. I mean, you you had to, didn't.
• 1:57:12
  You. Yeah.
• 1:57:13
  But then the book after having done you know, gives you a
• 1:57:15
  couple of chapters of that but then goes, but they're not the
• 1:57:19
  same and they don't operate in the same way and that introduces
• 1:57:22
  really interesting conflict and suddenly what you think is just
• 1:57:25
  going to be the sort of you know badly teamed up to fight the
• 1:57:28
  teamed up goodies is not that story at all.
• 1:57:30
  It's it's a much more interesting story about about
• 1:57:36
  dynamics and trust and how alliances need to be formed
• 1:57:40
  against different things, but also joyously melds, these sorts
• 1:57:45
  of law and operating procedures of the different story of the
• 1:57:51
  different series. So like, there's there's a bit
• 1:57:53
  where they do a bit of Star Trek techno Babble about creating a
• 1:57:57
  beam to fight the sidemen, but it's a beam that can fire
• 1:57:59
  particle gold, because the Doctor Who bollocks is that gold
• 1:58:02
  kills Cyberman. And there's a bit where they use
• 1:58:06
  time travel. There's a glorious sequence
• 1:58:09
  spoiling everything. If you're not everything,
• 1:58:11
  there's plenty more to find. But there is a glorious sequence
• 1:58:14
  where they base the Doctor basically does Pyramids of Mars
• 1:58:18
  with Jean Luc Picard. So in order to convince him that
• 1:58:23
  he needs to work with the ball to defeat the Cybermen, he takes
• 1:58:26
  him into the future to show him the future of the Federation
• 1:58:29
  where the side men have conquered it.
• 1:58:31
  And it's it's you think you couldn't do that in Doctor Who,
• 1:58:34
  You couldn't do that in Star Trek.
• 1:58:36
  But if you're doing Doctor Who in Star Trek at the same time,
• 1:58:38
  here's an incredible sequence that you can.
• 1:58:41
  I bet the art was amazing in that sequence.
• 1:58:44
  It's it's beautiful. The art has been controversial.
• 1:58:46
  Is the art school, JK Woodward, who is overall, I'm a big fan of
• 1:58:53
  it. Some people, some book does have
• 1:58:55
  a better fish in some areas because people tend to highlight
• 1:58:58
  particular panels where he's not very good when he's doing small.
• 1:59:01
  But there are some for that sequence.
• 1:59:03
  For so many others, there is. Gorgeous artwork.
• 1:59:06
  Is it like a cyber converted federation?
• 1:59:09
  Yeah, yeah. So it takes I'm.
• 1:59:11
  Buying it tomorrow, you entice me?
• 1:59:14
  Well, do you know what it's out of?
• 1:59:15
  It's out of print. But it's surprisingly easy to
• 1:59:17
  get hold of because it was a big old seller when it came out.
• 1:59:21
  It was a big, big big old seller.
• 1:59:24
  So there's still plenty of copies of it to be snapped up
• 1:59:27
  for for not ridiculous prices, in fact.
• 1:59:30
  Fat fans, such a big hit that IDW wanted to do a sequel.
• 1:59:35
  The only reason the sequel didn't happen was because they
• 1:59:38
  lost the license to do Doctor Who.
• 1:59:41
  But Tony Lee, who was their regular Doctor Who writer at the
• 1:59:45
  time and he's credited on the first few issues of the
• 1:59:47
  simulation. Squared had submitted a plot
• 1:59:52
  outline for the sequel, which he's made available online.
• 1:59:55
  I think you can still find it, which was going to be a
• 1:59:58
  crossover between Doctor Who and Deep Space 9.
• 2:00:02
  Oh, stop. Them are two favorite shows.
• 2:00:06
  No, and it never. Came to.
• 2:00:07
  Be no, look it up. It was going to be 11th Doctor
• 2:00:11
  and Clara turning up in the middle of the.
• 2:00:15
  Oh, you had to spoil it by making it the 11th Doctor and
• 2:00:17
  Clara, didn't you? I loved them.
• 2:00:20
  Come on, it's just ejaculated my pants a little bit then.
• 2:00:23
  Thank you. This is as excited as I've ever
• 2:00:26
  been on a podcast. Yes, turning up in the middle of
• 2:00:29
  the Dominion War, where the Sontarans were going to align
• 2:00:33
  with the Gem Hadar. Stop, please.
• 2:00:35
  I can't handle it. Well, it didn't happen so.
• 2:00:38
  No, I know, but Jesus Christ. Just that one line pitch.
• 2:00:41
  Oh, I measured the artwork. The Gemadar ships, The Sontaran
• 2:00:45
  balls. Oh my.
• 2:00:47
  God. Well, in the words of Jonathan
• 2:00:50
  Frakes, never happened. I'm exhausted just thinking
• 2:00:54
  about it. I love the idea that I love the
• 2:00:57
  idea of what you're saying of bringing together the two
• 2:00:59
  franchises and not only doing the very funny thing of just
• 2:01:03
  having them together, but examining the strengths of both
• 2:01:06
  of them and the contrast. Because one of the things Star
• 2:01:09
  Trek does really well is it takes two races.
• 2:01:13
  Very different, sort of ideologically opposed races.
• 2:01:16
  Contrast them in lots of episodes and those are usually
• 2:01:18
  the best ones where you're learning something from each
• 2:01:21
  other. So the idea of doing that with
• 2:01:23
  Star Trek and Doctor Who 2, very different sorts of shows.
• 2:01:27
  Like we said, one that's a lot more sort of funnier and sort of
• 2:01:31
  freewheeling and another one which is very structured and
• 2:01:34
  philosophical. Yeah, I might just try and find
• 2:01:38
  it somehow. Well done.
• 2:01:40
  That's the first pitch where I've actually probably I am
• 2:01:42
  going to go out and buy something.
• 2:01:44
  Screw the rest of you. Well, no, I had those books
• 2:01:47
  already. Well, what I'm going to
• 2:01:50
  recommend to you, I'm sure you've already read, but I don't
• 2:01:54
  know whether to recommend either the book or the audio version,
• 2:01:57
  but it is The Myth Makers by Donald Cotton.
• 2:02:02
  You read that one? I I haven't, but I know I need
• 2:02:07
  to. So I did that recently for a
• 2:02:10
  Hamster commentary. I decided as well as doing the
• 2:02:12
  Recon and the soundtrack, I'd read the book as well.
• 2:02:15
  And the book was by a mild the most superior version of that
• 2:02:19
  story. I mean, they're all great, but
• 2:02:22
  Donald Cotton, very smart, very sophisticated.
• 2:02:26
  How he marries the history and the myth and the Doctor Who
• 2:02:30
  story and tells all of that from Homer's point of view.
• 2:02:35
  And how in just a wonderful moment, he makes one of the
• 2:02:40
  characters in the television version of the Myth Makers Homer
• 2:02:45
  without it ever being stated in the original version.
• 2:02:48
  But in a way that makes complete sense in both the television
• 2:02:52
  version and the book it is. It is a sublime piece of of
• 2:02:57
  fiction. It's one of those books where I
• 2:03:00
  wish I could sort of tear it out of the target range and hold it
• 2:03:04
  up as a piece of work in its own right.
• 2:03:07
  Blissfully funny. Every page is packed full of
• 2:03:10
  jokes, exquisitely written, all the regulars beautifully done.
• 2:03:15
  The the plot of the Myth Makers, which is already very clever and
• 2:03:21
  and that sort of way. It switches from being fast to a
• 2:03:25
  tragedy at the end, which feels like it should be a wrench.
• 2:03:29
  But it's done beautifully in both.
• 2:03:31
  It's just really. And then he does something
• 2:03:34
  clever at the end of the book, which serves as a bit of a coder
• 2:03:38
  for the TVR. Don't want to ruin it?
• 2:03:40
  Go and read it. It's on every level.
• 2:03:43
  It is a brilliant book. It's well written, it's well
• 2:03:46
  characterized, it plays games with the original version, it
• 2:03:52
  offers a new reading on the original version and it's just
• 2:03:57
  hilarious. Go and read it.
• 2:03:59
  It's it's absolutely brilliant. Anyone listen to this?
• 2:04:03
  Get reading just Star Trek, Doctor Who comics and then get
• 2:04:06
  reading The Myth Makers by Donald Khan.
• 2:04:08
  Just just brilliant. But I suppose the question I
• 2:04:12
  need to ask you is where are we going next?
• 2:04:15
  Well, anyone who's been paying attention to their social media
• 2:04:19
  feeds will be aware that Big Finish of bringing back their
• 2:04:22
  novel adaptation range later this year with.
• 2:04:27
  The one. With the One the only Goth opera
• 2:04:31
  and never wanting to let a bandwagon pass us by, Joe and I
• 2:04:36
  had decided that we are going to do Goth opera next on the big on
• 2:04:40
  the Hamster Book Club. Oh Michael I've I've got some
• 2:04:44
  bad news for you is. It is it true?
• 2:04:52
  Have you betrayed us? Have you betrayed Mean?
• 2:04:59
  Michael, no, OK. I mean, I don't know if that was
• 2:05:05
  your best Darrow there, if I'm honest, but well done for the
• 2:05:09
  effort. It's true.
• 2:05:11
  My wife has been murdered. It's sort of more Have you
• 2:05:16
  betrayed us? Have you betrayed me?
• 2:05:22
  No, I think that's some sort of Southern belle in Blake 7,
• 2:05:25
  right? There, I think you're right.
• 2:05:27
  I'm honest. I do a better server land, you
• 2:05:30
  know, I do the cosplay as well. I'm afraid the answer is yes.
• 2:05:35
  And apparently I have promised golf opera to two separate book
• 2:05:38
  clubs. So forgoing that, although I did
• 2:05:44
  still offer it to you, you know, as a preference.
• 2:05:46
  So they're going to wear this now.
• 2:05:48
  I said I'll do blood harvest with them, off opera with you,
• 2:05:51
  because I'm definitely doing blood harvest with them, but
• 2:05:53
  apparently I'm doing both of them now, and you and I oh, shut
• 2:05:57
  off, forgotten where? What we doing?
• 2:06:00
  We're going somewhere that I don't think this podcast has
• 2:06:02
  been before, leaving behind your targets and your virgins and
• 2:06:05
  your BBCS. We're going to the Telus novella
• 2:06:08
  range. I think Dylan Reese has ever
• 2:06:11
  been there before either, despite the fact that he's got
• 2:06:13
  the whole collection. We are going to be Doing Time
• 2:06:17
  and Relative by Kim Newman. Have you read that before?
• 2:06:21
  I haven't. It is gorgeous.
• 2:06:25
  Of the entire run of Tellus novellas, sorry, it's all the
• 2:06:29
  other writers that is the probably the only one I would
• 2:06:32
  recommend for people to read. Do you know what the premise of
• 2:06:35
  that is? Yes, yeah.
• 2:06:37
  Yeah, I do. Pre Unearthly Child.
• 2:06:39
  Yes, during the big freeze of 1963.
• 2:06:42
  Yes. Well, I'm not going to say
• 2:06:44
  another word then, except that Kim Newton and why have you not
• 2:06:48
  written any more books for us? I've read a lot of his non
• 2:06:52
  Doctor Who stuff because obviously his with his
• 2:06:55
  anodracular books and the rest of his stock has gone up in the
• 2:06:58
  world as a writer I think. He and he can definitely turn
• 2:07:02
  the phrase, can't he? Well.
• 2:07:05
  I'm looking forward to it. Apologies for the betrayal.
• 2:07:11
  You can beat me up in person next month.
• 2:07:14
  But yes, until we convene next time on a freezing cold St. in
• 2:07:20
  London 1963, thank you very much for your time today and for just
• 2:07:27
  having so much fun with the 8 doctors.
• 2:07:30
  Oh, I had a lot of fun with this, and hopefully we've done a
• 2:07:34
  tiny little bit to make people feel guilty for having been beat
• 2:07:38
  in the past.