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Hamster Book Club - The Androids of Tara by David Fisher (featuring David Gillespie-Pratt) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:02
  That's all over, Grandma. That's sardicate.
• 0:04
  And listen, you might as well surrender now.
• 0:18
  Surrender. You forget, doctor.
• 0:21
  I'm a garage. We never surrender.
• 0:29
  Next time I shall not be so lenient.
• 1:10
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 1:12
  My name is Joe Ford. And with me today as real as
• 1:18
  himself and as deadly as the plague.
• 1:20
  If only he was real, I'd marry him.
• 1:23
  David Gillespie Pratt. Hello.
• 1:26
  Good evening, Count Grindle or I?
• 1:29
  Or are you one of his many Android duplicates?
• 1:33
  I'm planning on marrying you and then murdering you and taking
• 1:36
  all your lands and chattels. That's all right.
• 1:39
  I mean, that's something to do on the wedding night.
• 1:42
  It'll be a memorable night, I promise you that.
• 1:44
  Also your last. But after that pleasure, you
• 1:50
  won't want to live anymore. All right, I'm.
• 1:53
  Not quite sure how to respond to that.
• 1:55
  What on earth could we possibly be talking about today?
• 2:00
  I think we're talking about one of the androids of Tara.
• 2:03
  One off. Yes Sir.
• 2:04
  Will you please explain that? Well, so there's, there's, I
• 2:09
  suppose in a way you could argue there's three because you've got
• 2:12
  obviously broadcast version went out on television.
• 2:15
  Everybody loves it. And then Terrance Dicks, Dear
• 2:18
  Uncle Terence novelized it at some point in the 70s to ask me
• 2:20
  for a date in a pamphlet. I was going to say pamphletised
• 2:23
  it is more like. It's I think it's like 100 and
• 2:27
  128 pages. His late Williams are they?
• 2:32
  Are and it's quite chunky font as well.
• 2:35
  Chunky font as well. So it's not, it's brief.
• 2:37
  I didn't read that because what we have read is David Fisher
• 2:41
  adaptation because it was so good that they had another go
• 2:46
  and that was for an audio only version which they then adapted
• 2:49
  again for the paperback which came out in 2016 I think it was.
• 2:55
  So there are multiple versions because I didn't know this until
• 2:58
  I got the paperback that the audio version, which is the one
• 3:01
  I listened to, and the paperback have got some subtle
• 3:04
  differences. I read the book so I think our
• 3:08
  notes could be quite different then.
• 3:10
  I think it in the in the back, they do kind of explain some of
• 3:14
  them, but we'll get on to that because.
• 3:17
  There's other other Taras catching up with the sharders
• 3:21
  with the many versions of it. It's getting, I mean, I don't
• 3:24
  think anything will catch up with the vote number of versions
• 3:26
  of Sharder. Would you another one at some
• 3:28
  point, but that's. A sort of interpretive dance
• 3:30
  version. Don't give them ideas.
• 3:33
  I mean, they're putting out anything these days, so.
• 3:35
  I can do it look. My fabulous hats, I am skagra.
• 3:39
  You know. That that's what the new shop
• 3:41
  needs is, is they could do Scagger's hat, literally the hat
• 3:44
  that he wears. I can see a good number of
• 3:47
  people who've appeared on Hamster buying a Scagger hat.
• 3:50
  I'm going to perform it for you, David.
• 3:51
  All right. You're the only one that's
• 3:53
  bought a ticket. So this is me as the sphere.
• 3:58
  You can't see this, but I'm sort of doing a ball floating.
• 4:01
  Yeah, I think it could be good. I think maybe an opera, you
• 4:06
  know, there could, there could be something quite operatic
• 4:08
  about it. I mean, there's, there's
• 4:10
  something operatic about androids of Tara because it's
• 4:12
  got romance, it's got marriage, it's got murder potentially.
• 4:16
  Would be wonderful as an operetta, wouldn't it?
• 4:19
  But even most of the the the David Fisher book version
• 4:22
  because say, Terence Dixon's version, only it arrived late.
• 4:27
  I was hoping to try and read it, didn't get a chance but I'm sort
• 4:31
  of thinking if. You could have done it in an
• 4:32
  hour, David. And it is most a lot of, he
• 4:35
  said, she said. A bit of description, what David
• 4:38
  Fisher does, it's got pretty much 8090% of the script.
• 4:43
  It does miss out some of my favorite lines.
• 4:46
  Well, yes. Including one which we'll get to
• 4:49
  no blood pen knives in this book.
• 4:52
  In either book, which was quite disappointing it.
• 4:55
  Must be an Anthony Reed line, right?
• 4:56
  They've both gone Nah. Either that was it, it's a Tom
• 5:00
  adlib on filming and it's just not because I think they just
• 5:04
  they just pick up the script and they just put the stuff around
• 5:06
  it. You're right, it's Tom, isn't
• 5:08
  it? It's such a Tom line and what
• 5:12
  Dude Fisher does is he the script is there, the stories are
• 5:16
  he he doesn't do a cave monsters with it.
• 5:18
  He doesn't do a restructure. He doesn't bring in any really
• 5:21
  any new characters proper, but he adds so much depth to the
• 5:27
  world where this is set and it's brilliant.
• 5:31
  With such economy, like with every character, every single
• 5:36
  character in this book, from all the main characters like Count
• 5:39
  Grendel and Swordmaster Farah and the King and people like
• 5:44
  that and Princess Strella and all that, right down to what's
• 5:47
  his name tell, you know, Curster, all of those Lamia, all
• 5:53
  of those sort of secondary characters as well.
• 5:54
  Everyone gets a couple of paragraphs of back story, really
• 5:59
  interesting back story, but it's never told his exposition.
• 6:02
  It's always told with gags. So I was just laughing my head
• 6:06
  off throughout this book. And I think the star of this
• 6:09
  book is Count Grendel. This is Count Grendel's book.
• 6:12
  Because we don't just get him as the villain.
• 6:14
  We get his back story. We get his family's back story.
• 6:18
  What I I'm assuming it's just a coincidence and not the work of
• 6:23
  the editor, The fact that the first Grendel who took what
• 6:27
  became Castle Gracht, it's called, it's called Zagreus.
• 6:33
  And it's like, is that a real name?
• 6:37
  Is that something that's from mythology or something?
• 6:39
  I think. It is no, no, it is because
• 6:40
  Michael Mills contacted me recently and he it's something
• 6:44
  from mythology and but it's, it's pronounced Zagreus.
• 6:48
  So he goes. I've been mispronouncing it over
• 6:50
  a big finish for years. I'm not well, I'm not surprised
• 6:54
  the. Thing is, we're still going to
• 6:55
  call it that. I mean, when I was when I was at
• 6:58
  school, we had, we did a school play called The Children of
• 7:01
  Leur. It's an Irish thing.
• 7:02
  It was terrible. I remember my best friend
• 7:05
  through it, but I was talking to, I was talking to one of my
• 7:08
  friends who's from Ireland and he was like, what did you call
• 7:10
  it? And I was like, no, you're
• 7:12
  mispronouncing it. It's like that's what the school
• 7:14
  told us. And it's like, I'm not changing
• 7:15
  it. What's it called then?
• 7:17
  It's the children of Lear. Oh, it it, it's it's spelled
• 7:20
  LIR. But you know, I read it.
• 7:22
  It's in. Leila Zacarias.
• 7:24
  Zacarias I. Mean exactly.
• 7:26
  That was a. That was a tangent, you know.
• 7:27
  What's a pronunciation between friends?
• 7:29
  Exactly. And we were looking for, I think
• 7:34
  something fun. We we're a tongue recording.
• 7:37
  Why? Your choice could not have come
• 7:40
  at a better time. We've.
• 7:42
  Not long done Parasite, which was go listen to our podcast on
• 7:46
  parasite. I'll plug it there.
• 7:47
  But that pain and more pain, we did series.
• 7:53
  Fetch the drill. And find and find and find
• 7:57
  something to bite onto. You're going to need the fact
• 8:01
  that the drill need a punch line.
• 8:03
  There was no drill. Actually, there was a drill in
• 8:06
  this. It was, but it wasn't used to
• 8:07
  drill into anyone's skull. Now it was just trying to drill
• 8:11
  into a piece of the key to time and it failed, unlike in the
• 8:15
  broadcast version where you can see where she's scratched it
• 8:18
  because she's pressed just a little bit too hard.
• 8:20
  I am currently struggling my way through Peter Darver Evans to
• 8:24
  see a 300 page tome searching for a plot.
• 8:29
  But a romance between Apples and Dak and Ace is emerging, and
• 8:33
  that's as. Glorious, as you can imagine.
• 8:37
  What's the other one? I was reading it.
• 8:38
  Oh, Christopher. Beulis as well.
• 8:40
  So when you said can we do the Android Satara, I was like, oh,
• 8:43
  I love you so. Much And the you messaged me
• 8:48
  saying should we do a quick book club?
• 8:49
  And my instinct was, oh, what as everything is with me, go 60s,
• 8:54
  go 60s. It's like, no, no, you've got to
• 8:56
  do something. Different weird kink about the
• 8:57
  60s Dave I. Do it's my, it's my absolute
• 8:59
  sort of comfort who it's like you've got a branch out.
• 9:02
  So I went to the 70s because, you know, I don't want to stray
• 9:05
  too far, but I, I, and I just thought I want something fun.
• 9:10
  I want something light. And I've had the audio book for
• 9:12
  this for years, never listened to it.
• 9:14
  And I said, there we go. And I know, I think I assumed
• 9:17
  that you're a big fan of Androids of Tara.
• 9:19
  So I thought, can't go wrong with that.
• 9:22
  And you can have a bit of fun with it and.
• 9:25
  I did the day you suggested it, I read the first chapter that
• 9:29
  and I figured I was just going to get a he said she said even
• 9:31
  the David Fisher version. I figured it was and I thought,
• 9:34
  well, this is the answers of Tara, so who cares because it's
• 9:36
  a great story. And then I started reading that
• 9:39
  first chapter. I was learning all about the
• 9:40
  great plague and all this stuff about Tara that I had no clue
• 9:43
  about, but great gags and this robot Tara and beast and all
• 9:47
  this stuff. And I was just like, right
• 9:49
  here's what I'm going to do right?
• 9:51
  I'm going to do 3 chapters of Beulis.
• 9:55
  I'm going to do 3 chapters of deceit and then the reward will
• 9:59
  be two. Chapters on the Adros of Tahara.
• 10:02
  So this became like, you know, my reward for getting through
• 10:05
  all of that dirge. And, and I think it's well
• 10:07
  deserved. I've I've only been deceit.
• 10:09
  I don't know much about it. And I look forward to listening
• 10:12
  because it will remind me why I'll probably never read it.
• 10:14
  Again on Hamster that's gone too broad and too deep of
• 10:18
  intriguingly titled podcast. I should keep an eye out for
• 10:22
  that. But yeah, I, I And what I loved
• 10:25
  about the first chapter is it's all new.
• 10:29
  That's I, I just said he doesn't add much, but he does add a sort
• 10:33
  of prologue to it and sets up Tara, sets up the society.
• 10:37
  But he does it so irreverently. It's like if you watch the TV
• 10:42
  story, so much about Tara, society doesn't make any sense.
• 10:47
  And some authors could be tempted to go, right, we're
• 10:50
  going to join the dots. And so it wouldn't be logical.
• 10:52
  Mixer, He kind of rips the piss out of himself and.
• 10:56
  He really wants to explore the world though as well, doesn't
• 10:58
  he? And he builds a world that at
• 11:00
  one, at certain point still doesn't make any sense, but it's
• 11:03
  not meant to. So you've got all these things
• 11:05
  about the peasant, the peasants who invented the equipment to
• 11:10
  farming, and then that's how they became the Android makers.
• 11:12
  And that's why the peasants of the Android makers are not
• 11:15
  scientists. And that that makes complete
• 11:16
  sense. It's.
• 11:17
  All that stuff that when you're telling a romp like it is on the
• 11:20
  TV and you're dashing about on horses and doing rapier fights
• 11:23
  and things, you don't have time really to do all of this.
• 11:26
  So this is the perfect Ave. and I see why Terrorist Dicks didn't
• 11:29
  do it because he was knocking him out one a month.
• 11:32
  But Fisher sat down with this and gone, right?
• 11:34
  Let's look at all these characters.
• 11:35
  Let's look at the setting, the back story, the history, the
• 11:38
  mythology of this world. And and teasing it, he teases
• 11:42
  out things that are kind of there in the TV version, but it
• 11:45
  expands on. So the plague is briefly
• 11:47
  mentioned. Lamia, her part is really built
• 11:52
  up and and she, you know, she's in love with Grendel and that's
• 11:57
  kind of there, but they talk too much.
• 11:59
  It's a real proper subplot. Listen to this, right, Because
• 12:02
  I've got, I mean, I don't know if you've got any bits to read
• 12:04
  out, but I've got loads. She's the best man I have, he
• 12:08
  often said of her. Inevitably he took her to his
• 12:11
  bed. I mean, that's great.
• 12:12
  There's a bit of kink in this as well.
• 12:14
  She fell in love with him, a hopeless passion given the huge
• 12:18
  social gulf between peasant and Lord.
• 12:22
  I mean, that it's just on its own.
• 12:23
  There's a story there. There is and he there's a point
• 12:27
  where he keeps whacking her on the arse.
• 12:30
  Later on, you know, he, he, he sometimes you wonder, does he
• 12:34
  see his property? But then, because this is
• 12:37
  Grendel's book and they don't try and make him sympathetic,
• 12:40
  you know, they they'd be that temptation to let's tell his
• 12:43
  tragic story. Let's we do hear his story from
• 12:46
  when he was a child. As a child, he was he was a
• 12:48
  little shit. He's a.
• 12:49
  Bastard. And he he's.
• 12:51
  Tying up Strela and. And torturing her and the maid,
• 12:55
  the nanny as well. Who stopped working with
• 12:58
  children as a result because she was so traumatised and oh.
• 13:00
  It's so great. And the only bit that they've
• 13:04
  added, and I thought is obviously Madame Lanier gets
• 13:09
  killed and he reacts a little bit in the TV version.
• 13:13
  But here he's clearly upset about it.
• 13:18
  And that's a nice little leg because he does, he reacts in a
• 13:21
  way that only Grendel does, which is he executes the person
• 13:24
  responsible because. He waits a few scenes as well,
• 13:26
  doesn't he? And then has him killed.
• 13:28
  I think he thinks he's got a reprieve and then he dies.
• 13:30
  And then he does, and it's like, yeah, that's how he probably
• 13:33
  would react is that there's no kind of, oh, I loved her.
• 13:37
  And there's an interesting thing that peasants don't understand
• 13:39
  love as well. So there's a lot of stuff about
• 13:41
  Tara and class and yeah, building.
• 13:44
  That I'd love to read out as well.
• 13:46
  I mean, there's a bit here. She could be displaced in a
• 13:49
  moment by any pretty young female robotics engineer who
• 13:52
  happened to excite her lover's interest.
• 13:55
  She therefore regarded any alternative women who were
• 13:58
  brought into the castle as a potential rival.
• 14:02
  Enter. Ramona, immediate suspense.
• 14:05
  Enter Romana, looking like Mary Tam.
• 14:08
  And there's another one down in the cellar.
• 14:10
  Yeah, so no, no wonder she's got a bit of a strap on.
• 14:14
  But just all of the irreverent detail, all of listen.
• 14:18
  Amongst other things, the counts of Grant were notorious for
• 14:22
  their steadfast refusal to accept divorce as a civilized.
• 14:25
  Ending of marriage within living memory.
• 14:28
  They were still walling up their wives and mistresses in the
• 14:31
  castle catacombs whenever they began to tire of their
• 14:34
  attractions. I mean, there, there's a,
• 14:37
  there's a huge commentary on sexism here as well.
• 14:41
  But the women of Tara and I quote, in fact the female of the
• 14:49
  species were even more dangerous than the male graft.
• 14:52
  Women were astonishingly beautiful.
• 14:54
  And so we're never short of suitors.
• 14:56
  In spite of the fact that their husbands enjoyed a high
• 14:59
  mortality rate. There is definitely a high
• 15:02
  mortality rate on Tara because there was a bit where they talk
• 15:05
  about the swordsman and clearly is like, yes, Zadak and Farrah
• 15:10
  are a bit crap. And it's like he writes that in
• 15:13
  he's like basically the old, the older swordsman, the longer they
• 15:15
  live, the slightly more crap that they are.
• 15:18
  And it's like perfect. It's it's like just adding those
• 15:22
  little bits of detail in. Do you see?
• 15:24
  Even like this. Sorry I I'm sorry to keep
• 15:27
  reading things out but I just want to like show to people just
• 15:30
  how well thought through this is.
• 15:32
  Every Royal Musketeer knew that death in battle against
• 15:34
  overwhelming odds was something to be desired.
• 15:37
  The great crime for a Musketeer was to die in bed of old age.
• 15:40
  Hence the shortage of elderly Musketeers, which, though
• 15:43
  guarantee in quick promotion, meant that those who did achieve
• 15:47
  rank tended to lack experience and common sense.
• 15:51
  Well, that's all you need to know about Farrah now.
• 15:53
  Exactly. And he's a bit useless and you
• 15:57
  can tell that in T on the TV version and certainly in this
• 16:00
  version, he hasn't got a lot of interest of time for Farrah.
• 16:03
  You know, he's they don't even get a goodbye at the end.
• 16:06
  You know, they could have given them a big farewell or whatever.
• 16:08
  Now they as soon as they stormed the castle, Zatic and Farrah
• 16:12
  have both forgotten about quite quickly.
• 16:13
  Pretty much everybody's forgotten about quite quickly.
• 16:16
  But this is Grendel's story and I love it for that.
• 16:19
  I mean, you can hear Peter Jeffries voice when you're
• 16:23
  reading it it. He's one of those performances
• 16:27
  that is so good and he's kind of picked it up and he's kind of
• 16:31
  built on it and he's expanded it.
• 16:33
  And I say he doesn't make him sympathetic.
• 16:34
  He doesn't make. No, he's a total I love.
• 16:37
  Him, he's made him worse. He's made him more because
• 16:42
  there's a, there's a recurring thing where they're going.
• 16:44
  Basically he's like, oh, he's promised that gold pieces
• 16:47
  because they're saying, yeah, you're not going to get it.
• 16:49
  Because he's never true to his word.
• 16:50
  He's never sticks by his word. He's completely untrustworthy.
• 16:53
  I mean Fisher writes great new lines for him as well.
• 16:56
  That I was like, oh I would kill to hear Peter Jeffrey say that.
• 17:00
  Good fortune seems to be flight smiling on the House of Graft.
• 17:04
  Currently our dungeon is hosting the Prince and two princesses.
• 17:08
  All I need now is the Ace and the King, and I shall have the
• 17:11
  complete set, you know? You can hear you can hear him
• 17:14
  saying that it just captures it perfect.
• 17:17
  But do you know who else he captures perfectly?
• 17:19
  He captures Tom. And I think I I, I think, and we
• 17:24
  watched it this weekend because it's like it's a good excuse to
• 17:27
  watch Andrew Zatara again. And it's like Tom's at his most
• 17:30
  flippant pretty much in this season.
• 17:33
  But it doesn't stand out in a script like this and in a book
• 17:36
  like this, because the whole thing's quite heightened.
• 17:38
  It's a comedy. It's quite broad in places.
• 17:41
  And so his irreverence for things works and it really works
• 17:46
  in the book. And you know, when they they
• 17:49
  offer him the money and it's one of the things I did notice that
• 17:52
  they changed for the book or certainly David Fisher did.
• 17:54
  Oh, he takes it down in the TV. Story in the TV version, he
• 17:57
  takes it from 1000 down to 500. That's right.
• 18:00
  And this he double s it. How serious are you?
• 18:05
  And it's like, OK, but when you sometimes go inside the doctor's
• 18:08
  head and his addict says I can see only, I can see 2 problems
• 18:12
  with your plan and the doctor's like only two.
• 18:15
  And it's like spot on. And just because sometimes he
• 18:19
  hasn't taken all the dines, he kind of covers them with a
• 18:22
  doctor's thought. And it's like, yeah, that just
• 18:25
  works. I thought Fisher captured Tom
• 18:27
  Baker in six words. Are you ready?
• 18:30
  Yeah, I, I've read this and I was like, my God, that is season
• 18:34
  16, Tom. I don't need any more.
• 18:36
  With an air of nonchalant absent mindedness.
• 18:40
  Comma I was. Like yes, that is him.
• 18:43
  That is definitely him. Oh, there was another bit when,
• 18:48
  oh, I've completely forgot, but there was a bit where it was
• 18:50
  just like, you've summed up the 4th Doctor perfectly.
• 18:55
  And that happened more than a few times actually.
• 18:57
  That's why I don't remember it, because it's like.
• 19:00
  How's this 4 words? His shrug was eloquent.
• 19:04
  Brilliant. I I, you just wondered, did he
• 19:07
  watch it? And he's like, how can I
• 19:08
  describe this performance? Because there's definitely a
• 19:12
  couple of points, I think. And he's been watching Tom do
• 19:14
  this. Terence when he was doing it was
• 19:16
  just probably had a camera script and just annotating it.
• 19:19
  But I just wondered, it's like, has he sat and gone through
• 19:21
  going right? Why is he doing this?
• 19:22
  What's going through his head here?
• 19:25
  Has he watched City of Death as well?
• 19:27
  Because he has Tom saying this. I know punctuality is the
• 19:30
  politeness of kings, but it's not something one associates
• 19:34
  with beautiful. Probably women.
• 19:39
  Or was that his line in the original version of City of
• 19:42
  Death? The problem is because these are
• 19:44
  all being edited by fans and brilliantly is whether or not
• 19:49
  there's been a couple of times reading these where you think is
• 19:53
  that the author or has that is that an editor going?
• 19:56
  This will be a good because we had two.
• 20:00
  Romana is appalled. I was like, that is the editor
• 20:02
  because that's from Sharda. That's the VHS version of Sharda
• 20:05
  where Romana is appalled and that has definitely appeared in
• 20:08
  one of the Douglas Adams books because I think it was on the
• 20:10
  cover. So it's like the fact that it's
• 20:12
  been used again, it's like that's not David Fitt unless no,
• 20:17
  David Fisher didn't do Sharda. I was getting mixed up with City
• 20:19
  of Death. But that's that's that feels
• 20:21
  like an edge to put something in.
• 20:23
  It's been. Cold Carl was a huge fan of this
• 20:26
  and he does have afterwards in the book.
• 20:29
  I don't know if it was on the audio, but it was certainly in
• 20:31
  the book where he describes that scene that you just said about
• 20:34
  the money being that the scene and all the different changes
• 20:37
  that Fisher wanted to make and just how he was trying to push
• 20:40
  Fisher. No, no, just really relax and
• 20:42
  explore. You don't have to just tell the
• 20:44
  story on screen. And moving away from some of
• 20:48
  that sort of standard Terrace Dicks style that I sometimes
• 20:52
  have picked up on is that if you look at a sort of standard 4
• 20:57
  parter in a Terrace Dicks adaptation, probably a huge
• 21:01
  amount of page count is for Part 1.
• 21:03
  And then gradually as you go through, by the time you get to
• 21:05
  the equivalent of episode 4, it's usually the shortest bit.
• 21:08
  Because sometimes I feel like they just kind of skip it
• 21:10
  because he's drip feeding that back story.
• 21:14
  The the chapters are quite nicely spread out because it's
• 21:18
  in the final chapter that we get the history of Strella and Kraut
• 21:21
  Grendel, how they knew each other as children, and how the.
• 21:23
  11th hour, isn't it? Yeah, and.
• 21:26
  They tell her back story and that's adding a bit more because
• 21:30
  basically on screen, you know, you might as well have just had
• 21:32
  a photograph of every time for half the time that Strella's
• 21:34
  actually got anything to do and just continue adding all those
• 21:39
  bits. So it wasn't just race to the
• 21:40
  finish. She's just loathed him her
• 21:42
  entire life. Hasn't.
• 21:44
  She and and adding to that loathing because that's I think
• 21:47
  that's their in the original, he comes in, he look, you know,
• 21:50
  he's kidnapped. Does she look?
• 21:51
  But it's like, no, this is a relationship that goes back
• 21:53
  decades and she's loathed him that whole time.
• 21:56
  I think there's this. I got the feeling of she
• 21:59
  probably maybe fancied him a little bit because they do say
• 22:01
  he's quite handsome. Yeah, I mean, Jeffrey is quite
• 22:05
  handsome bloke, you know, sort of romantically.
• 22:07
  I know he's got the sort of point he knows on that birth.
• 22:11
  When we watched, he took his helmet off.
• 22:13
  Chris just said to me he's like, there's no mistake in that nose.
• 22:16
  It's true, It's true. Or I'll tell you who else has
• 22:20
  been around for a few centuries, the pole of the post of the
• 22:24
  Arkham, and Wright, who has the most fabulous heart in all of
• 22:27
  Doctor Who. Well, all the back story about
• 22:29
  him. I mean, I knew it.
• 22:31
  So Sylveschatz plays it in the TV show like he sort of
• 22:34
  understands exactly what's going on with Count Grendor and his
• 22:37
  machinations, but you're never quite sure.
• 22:39
  The book confirms that Will. Here it is.
• 22:42
  The post of Archie Mandrite was as much political as religious.
• 22:47
  If you possess the brains and ability, the world of diplomacy
• 22:50
  was open to you in a land where armed conflict always seem to be
• 22:53
  in progress somewhere or another, priestly powers brokers
• 22:57
  go betweens and negotiators were in demand.
• 23:00
  So that's what he is. He's just basically there
• 23:02
  pushing the political aim. As for all the bastards of Tara?
• 23:07
  The one thing with the our command right that I was
• 23:09
  disappointed with was I was like get into a description,
• 23:12
  description of the costume. He's not, I don't think he's
• 23:14
  he's wearing a coroner, he's wearing a crown something.
• 23:16
  He's not wearing his hat. He's not wearing his hat.
• 23:18
  Oh no, maybe David Fisher didn't approve for some.
• 23:21
  Reason maybe he thought, you know the tea cozy sort of look
• 23:24
  just wasn't right he was sending it up he wants something a bit
• 23:27
  more serious but there are omissions.
• 23:31
  I think we, you know, there are certain bits and the, the
• 23:35
  dropping of a hamster, bull and pen knife, considering why we're
• 23:38
  here, everything like that, it's just disgraceful.
• 23:40
  I mean, it's his book, right? I mean, like, I mean, I do take
• 23:43
  personal umbrage to that that line.
• 23:45
  Isn't it just because I I it's my favorite line of the thing.
• 23:48
  That's why the podcast has called it.
• 23:49
  But like, this is like his vision of Android of Tara that
• 23:53
  that that didn't hit the screen, you know?
• 23:56
  And he gets rid of the other great line, which is Grendel's
• 23:59
  last line, which is, and I'd love it, which is next time I
• 24:03
  shall not be so lenient. It's gone, It's gone.
• 24:07
  He leaps out the window and swims, and he he escapes.
• 24:11
  But he does get a good a good part in line where it says what
• 24:15
  is it his last line in prose is. Once he'd won back his
• 24:21
  patrimony, he'd settled the score with Rhiner and Princess
• 24:24
  Striller and their followers. Nothing was as satisfying as a
• 24:28
  good massacre of your enemies. And there you go, he's a bastard
• 24:33
  to the end. And yeah, we both books, I
• 24:36
  noticed do away with the canine joke at the end, you know?
• 24:41
  Well, it's a visual joke though, isn't it?
• 24:42
  It's a very visual joke and you and to be honest, they don't
• 24:45
  even, they sort of when the Doctor gets off the boat, they
• 24:49
  both say basically he's forgotten to tether the boat and
• 24:51
  he sails off. But in the Terrence Dix version,
• 24:54
  they like the key and they go and they they rescue canine from
• 24:58
  the boat and then they go into the TARDIS and it's kind of
• 25:00
  like, it feels a bit like Troy should have ended a couple of
• 25:03
  pages ago. But in the Fisher version, it
• 25:07
  brings it right back to the start of the Doctor's story,
• 25:10
  which is his only reward. Is he what he wants to?
• 25:13
  He wants a fishing license so he can go fishing and he can catch
• 25:17
  something. And it's like, that's, that's
• 25:20
  cool. I was beaming at that line.
• 25:22
  Now he's got a license. And that's all he wanted.
• 25:26
  He wanted a holiday. He wanted the day off.
• 25:28
  Couldn't even have that. He's going to have a, he's going
• 25:31
  to fish. He's happy gorgeous.
• 25:34
  As sunny an ending as you could hope for.
• 25:37
  Yeah, I've got something to read out as you hear, and I want to
• 25:39
  know your opinion on it because I was like, wow, that's kind of
• 25:43
  that's he's commenting there on how women have been treated by
• 25:47
  the church over the years, right.
• 25:49
  Quite a long power up. I want to read the law, if
• 25:51
  that's alright. According to Tara and myth as
• 25:54
  related in the holy books, Kong the creator first made man and
• 25:59
  then the animals. Finally, as an afterthought, he
• 26:02
  create. As an afterthought, David, he
• 26:04
  created woman. At first she couldn't talk and
• 26:07
  was forced to communicate with her mate by sign language.
• 26:10
  But he soon grew bored of this and in any case never bothered
• 26:13
  how to learn how to sign properly.
• 26:16
  So one day, finding Kong asleep in the garden, Man stole him
• 26:20
  from him, his power of speech. Then he gave it to his wife, who
• 26:23
  was so pleased with the gift that she never stopped talking.
• 26:27
  The result was that some strict and antiquated tar and sex
• 26:31
  required all women of marriageable age to wear a
• 26:35
  harness which kept their mouths closed.
• 26:38
  The harness was hung with small bells during the marriage
• 26:42
  ceremony. Once they had confirmed their
• 26:44
  agreement to the wedding, usually by a nod of the head and
• 26:47
  a tintibulation of bells, the harness was removed.
• 26:52
  Wow. Well.
• 26:54
  What can you say to that? I mean, it's unbelievable.
• 26:59
  It's just it's sending it up and it's 1 is very believable in
• 27:03
  that society that they would behave.
• 27:06
  Like that weeper witches remember they've got too big for
• 27:10
  their books. He's just adding so much colour
• 27:14
  and flavour. He's also kind of being a bit
• 27:17
  naughty with it as well, because there are times you wouldn't
• 27:20
  have got away with stuff like that in a Doctor Who book.
• 27:22
  The other bit and I, I did find a bit I wanted to read out,
• 27:24
  which is from the start of Chapter 1.
• 27:27
  This is so the doctrine K9 are playing chess.
• 27:31
  And so the doctor continued showing off his intimate
• 27:33
  knowledge of the players. You see, K9 Kappa only had two
• 27:36
  weaknesses, cigars and beautiful women.
• 27:38
  The scars didn't interfere with his game, but the women did.
• 27:41
  He lost to he lost to Alekan because he spent more time being
• 27:45
  distracted by a Baroness than preparing for his match.
• 27:47
  When he lost the championship, he wasn't worried because he
• 27:49
  thought he'd win it back the next day, the next time they
• 27:53
  met. And so did Alakai, apparently,
• 27:55
  because he always refused to give Capablanca A rematch.
• 27:57
  And it's just that little bit, he adds in the Terence Dix
• 28:02
  version. The more I talk about it does
• 28:04
  sound like I've actually read it.
• 28:05
  I just flicked through for key parts.
• 28:06
  But was it? Did it match the dialogue on the
• 28:08
  screen? It just matched the dialogue and
• 28:10
  it's kind of just they go straight on, but there it's
• 28:12
  like, no, I'm going to because I think that's, I'd love to know
• 28:16
  that. I'm guessing that's a genuine
• 28:17
  match. And that's Fisher kind of saying
• 28:20
  this is what I was referring to. And I'm going to add in that bit
• 28:22
  of colour, that back story, and that sets the tone because it's
• 28:25
  all about being distracted by women.
• 28:28
  There's known to sex to it. There's quite a lot of implied
• 28:32
  sex going on in this book. Well, listen.
• 28:35
  So what became of your transvestite fencing master Gren
• 28:38
  de Last, hoping to distract his opponent?
• 28:41
  He died in bed of old age, replied the doctor.
• 28:44
  With someone else's wife. I'd love to hear Tom say that.
• 28:50
  And I think that the sword fight, because sword fights on
• 28:54
  television can go be terminably long.
• 28:56
  This one, it's a little bit, probably it's a good.
• 28:58
  Fight, though, isn't. It and Tom's doing a lot of it
• 29:01
  for real, but it's simplified. But what's quite nice is that
• 29:06
  obviously some of those visual jokes just won't work in prose.
• 29:09
  So he's like, you know what, we're not going to have a whole
• 29:11
  thing like the Doctor not getting a sword.
• 29:12
  And he's like, he's got the sword on him.
• 29:14
  He's going in knowing he's going to do the jewel, but he knows he
• 29:16
  can win. And it that's the little changes
• 29:19
  that kind of works. It's it's the Doctor's going in,
• 29:21
  knows what he has to do. He's already been ringing the
• 29:23
  giant bell to kind of disrupt the wedding.
• 29:27
  So there's. It's the bell that they ring
• 29:29
  when a graft has been killed. He's deliberately ringing that
• 29:33
  bell to put crap credit. Off.
• 29:37
  And it's just that little. You know what I think he's got
• 29:42
  and and it might be why Sick Your death is such a gem.
• 29:45
  You know, I do wonder if there's some of fish are still in sick
• 29:48
  Your death because this book is full of grey comic asides,
• 29:53
  alluding to other things that have happened in the past that
• 29:57
  are so funny. And I'm just like, oh God, I
• 30:00
  just want to see that story. Listen to this now.
• 30:04
  That had been a memorable occasion, he reflected.
• 30:08
  Count Odo had not that one. Count Odo had left strict
• 30:12
  instructions that he was to be interned along with his pack of
• 30:15
  hounds, which were noted for their ferocity.
• 30:18
  The Archimandrite still remembered the chaos that had
• 30:21
  been caused when the terrifying hounds escaped from their
• 30:24
  kennels while the staff were being put.
• 30:26
  Down The deaths of the first hounds had spooked the others,
• 30:30
  which immediately sought safety elsewhere.
• 30:33
  And what had started out as a solemn funeral descended quickly
• 30:37
  into a slapstick, with over excited hounds biting chunks out
• 30:41
  of the fleeing mourners. I.
• 30:43
  Mean, come on. He's not taking it seriously,
• 30:46
  but he is taking it seriously. But he's it's, it's the
• 30:49
  temptation to try and put layers of drama and everything.
• 30:53
  He's just adding layers of wit. I get the impression, I get the
• 30:58
  impression he just wasn't hurried to write this, that Cole
• 31:00
  just said, you know what? Have a drink every night, sit
• 31:03
  down. You've got six months and just
• 31:06
  have the best time writing this. I'm sure it wasn't like that,
• 31:09
  but that's how it feels. I feel as if he's he's enjoying
• 31:13
  writing this. And I think I get the feeling he
• 31:16
  always enjoy writing it, but it's almost like he's trying to
• 31:19
  right it wrong with it. Because it's like the previous
• 31:23
  novelisation appears to be quite bare.
• 31:25
  It's quite straightforward. It's like this is part of stuff
• 31:27
  that may well have been in his head when he was writing it.
• 31:29
  And I said I want to express some of these things.
• 31:33
  And he did novelise Leisure Hive, I seem to remember.
• 31:37
  So I'm quite interested to know whether not did he put some of
• 31:39
  the his wit, because he's a very witty writer.
• 31:43
  What was funnier wasn't it the original with leisure Hive and
• 31:45
  and bid me took out? All the all the funny stuff and.
• 31:50
  We're not having fun with Doctor Who.
• 31:51
  We'll do tachyonics. Thank you.
• 31:54
  I mean. Leisure hive is is.
• 31:56
  It's fine. Leisure hive is fine.
• 31:58
  But I. I heart it's just like a
• 32:00
  conniption fit. I I don't want to upset him.
• 32:03
  I don't want to upset him. That's like, yeah.
• 32:05
  I know it's like kicking a puppy.
• 32:06
  It's. The kicking, that's what I say.
• 32:07
  It's like kicking a puppy, but I don't.
• 32:08
  Want to put in a teddy bear on fire?
• 32:10
  You know it's. The sort of thing Grendel would
• 32:12
  do. I'm surprised there's not a
• 32:13
  side. About him.
• 32:14
  There's a lot about it. David, listen.
• 32:16
  And now tell me if you agree with this or not.
• 32:18
  Yeah. Plotting the downfall of your
• 32:20
  enemy is one of life's greatest pleasures in life.
• 32:23
  He fought. Was there a nicer way to pass
• 32:26
  the time? I don't think so.
• 32:29
  It's it's upping his bastardness but still keeping him charming
• 32:34
  isn't. It Yeah.
• 32:37
  And the one thing that obviously, because he's sticking
• 32:41
  relatively quite slavish to the script in terms of the structure
• 32:43
  and everything, the one problem which the TV version has this
• 32:46
  does Romana is locked up for pretty much the whole story and
• 32:52
  doesn't, even though she's got this 4 merry times in this
• 32:56
  story. But none of them really get much
• 32:58
  to do. And it's not massively built on.
• 33:00
  And there's a bit that Stephen Cole explains in the the
• 33:03
  afterword where he goes through some of the changes between the
• 33:06
  TV version, the Dick's version, the audio version.
• 33:09
  Look is basically the end of episode 3 where they get back to
• 33:15
  the prince's shed and Romana just gets pushed through a door
• 33:21
  and then she's kidnapped and it's like, well, that's a bit
• 33:25
  weird. And then I think in in one
• 33:28
  version, they kind of she's kind of all take her out to the
• 33:32
  balcony to protect her and then they change the.
• 33:34
  That's the Dicks version, isn't it?
• 33:35
  He says. It's very patriarchal and.
• 33:37
  I think, and there's one version where she's just in the room but
• 33:40
  doesn't say anything. They're just trying to find
• 33:43
  something for Romana to do. And I think because the audio
• 33:47
  version I think is where they may have her too often.
• 33:49
  Just I think in the prose version is when they've actually
• 33:52
  tried to give a part, but still not much.
• 33:55
  And I thought that's kind of summed up that although the
• 33:59
  story is about Romana and Strela and their Android duplicates,
• 34:03
  they don't do a lot, and that's a bit of a shame.
• 34:07
  It's about Grendel. Let's be.
• 34:08
  Honest, it is great. This is this is Grendel story.
• 34:10
  This is Lamia's story. It's a shame that she gets
• 34:13
  killed off 3/4 of the way in. They built her up as well, and
• 34:18
  she's got this sort of tragedy to her, which is great.
• 34:21
  I think also, when you go in, you know where it's going, you
• 34:23
  know she's going to get bumped off and it's like it's making
• 34:26
  you really feel sympathetic. You know, she loves him, but
• 34:29
  she's abused by him. Yeah, well, there's.
• 34:31
  A bit where? Where you said like where he
• 34:33
  slaps her on the arse, Yeah, or on the rump.
• 34:36
  I. Believe on the rump.
• 34:37
  And she sort of shivers with pleasure that he's touched her.
• 34:41
  So any little thing that he gives her, she'll take it, you
• 34:46
  know she'll. Take any attention and it's
• 34:47
  hinted at in the TV version, but here it's like it's.
• 34:50
  Really. It's it's definitely there in
• 34:52
  the TV version. It's there because they, I think
• 34:54
  they do mention it kind of not long before she gets off that
• 34:58
  Romana picks up that she's got feelings for him.
• 35:01
  But the the book is completely explicit and how he explicit it,
• 35:04
  not in any other way. This is still a book for, you
• 35:07
  know, the Doctor Who fans. We can't have explicit sex and
• 35:09
  violence in Doctor Who books. I still love throw away
• 35:12
  reference to nookie though in Targets.
• 35:14
  There's some in the Donald Cotton books as well.
• 35:17
  And, and he's got quite a lot of it in here as well.
• 35:20
  We had obviously Capablanca having it off with the the
• 35:23
  Baroness. You've got the Grendels and.
• 35:27
  The man in in bed with another man's wife, Yeah.
• 35:32
  You know, there's definitely a lot of sex, although it's, it's
• 35:35
  not. Any so don't.
• 35:36
  Object to that sort of thing on this podcast, you know?
• 35:39
  Well, you know you. We want to give the wrong
• 35:41
  impression. This is a You've read this.
• 35:43
  Stranger, David by Portia Lacosta I I.
• 35:47
  Listened to your podcast on the Stranger and, and, and I think
• 35:50
  that was, I think that was enough.
• 35:52
  You're asked was going to be like, what the hell are you
• 35:54
  reading there with that hunky man on the cover?
• 35:57
  Well, too fair, he does say that with most of the things it's
• 35:59
  like what? What are you reading?
• 36:00
  Now, it'd probably be more understanding if you're reading
• 36:04
  that, wouldn't he? What's that on the cover?
• 36:06
  Who's that supposed to be? Is that that's supposed to be
• 36:09
  Bernice? What was it, Shadow mind?
• 36:13
  Oh no, parasite. Parasite, what's, what's going
• 36:15
  on with her hand? But yeah, I mean.
• 36:18
  David, do you know about Theodora of the Golden Locks?
• 36:22
  May I tell you about her? You may.
• 36:25
  The. Pavilion so he gives every
• 36:26
  location a bit of back story as well which I really liked.
• 36:30
  The pavilion had been built by 1 of Grendel's ancestors for his
• 36:33
  mistress more sex Theodora of the Golden Locks.
• 36:38
  That's there's an image she used to entertain her friends there
• 36:41
  until the ancestor wearying of the Lady drowned her in a barrel
• 36:47
  of local Brandy. This preserved her remains for
• 36:50
  the best part of a century until Count Gregor of Gracht, a great
• 36:54
  grandson of the pickling Count, struck a match to his light
• 36:59
  cigar too close to the Lady and accidentally incinerated her.
• 37:04
  Poor Theodora, come on. I don't know how you could.
• 37:10
  I don't know how you can follow that.
• 37:12
  I will. I'll talk about the tar and wood
• 37:13
  beast which. Does.
• 37:14
  Oh no. Go on.
• 37:15
  Please do. The right is it the rhino bear
• 37:19
  that they make, they make Android red and I think the one
• 37:23
  that turns up and it's meant to be the one on TV is actually a
• 37:26
  real one. But the idea because they have
• 37:29
  Android animals as well, because that comes up a few times.
• 37:31
  So it's not just Android servants.
• 37:34
  There's Android hunting and everything, and Grendel is
• 37:38
  hunting an Android tar and wood beast and he, he's.
• 37:45
  Got a hunt but he doesn't want to be killed.
• 37:47
  Of course not. And there's always the
• 37:50
  suggestion that he's also a bit of a coward at times as well,
• 37:52
  which I quite like. But yeah, the fact that how are
• 37:56
  they going to deal with the tar and wood beast?
• 37:58
  And and as you read through the prologue going it's not an
• 38:01
  Android, is it? Because that would just be like,
• 38:03
  that's why it probably looks a bit shit.
• 38:05
  Is there? It's an Android.
• 38:06
  It's not. So that was a bit disappointed
• 38:07
  there because it was like, oh, that would have been could.
• 38:10
  You sort of retroactively rewrite the TV version, say it
• 38:13
  is an Android. We could say it now you know,
• 38:16
  there's nothing in there to say that it but.
• 38:17
  Lastly, I wasn't very good with the finer details.
• 38:20
  I also like the fact the androids are a bit shit as well
• 38:24
  because there are things that he does clear up because when
• 38:28
  you're watching the TV version and I hadn't finished the book
• 38:31
  at that point. And obviously Android Strela
• 38:35
  turns up and it's like, so was she going to kill him?
• 38:39
  Because that would have exposed that would have ruined the plan.
• 38:42
  And it's like, no, he clears it up in the final chapter that the
• 38:44
  Android was going to go through with the wedding and then kill
• 38:48
  him on the wedding night because she had the knife concealed.
• 38:51
  So he kind of, there's a couple of parts where it does feel like
• 38:55
  he's gone. Now.
• 38:55
  I'm going to I'm going to straighten this out a little
• 38:58
  bit. And the other one is the doors
• 39:00
  to the the throne room. The tiny throne room are on a
• 39:05
  timer and they were only open at the pointed hour because people
• 39:09
  are going in and out and you can and then also they don't go in
• 39:12
  for a few minutes while the rest smuggled themselves in and you
• 39:15
  come fortunate they managed to smuggle themselves in while
• 39:18
  inside. Nope.
• 39:19
  Doors locked. That's why, and it just tidies
• 39:21
  things up, makes a bit neater, but it works in the context of
• 39:26
  the story, the society and the culture that he's.
• 39:28
  Described that clock in the room.
• 39:30
  Huge detail, it's ornate, you know, with the most fabulous
• 39:34
  gold braiding. Not that cheap thing that's.
• 39:36
  On the. TV with the wobbly hair.
• 39:39
  The very wobbly, very kind of, you know, it moves very
• 39:43
  statically as well. It's, it's, it's a wonderful it
• 39:47
  look. I quite like the look of it
• 39:48
  until it moves and then it's like.
• 39:51
  Do you know the moment I realised that David Fisher was
• 39:55
  one? I mean, I've, I've said it on
• 39:57
  many a hamster that I think he's as witty in his scripts as
• 40:01
  Douglas Adams is. You know, I'm Robert Holmes.
• 40:03
  I think he tells wonderful jokes in his scripts and when he's
• 40:06
  paired with Anthony Reed with Stones of Blood and Andrew
• 40:09
  Zatara, it's almost as witty as Doctor Who gets.
• 40:12
  I read this line. I was on the tube in London and
• 40:17
  I just went. I've just screamed with laughter
• 40:20
  and I was like, will you shut up?
• 40:23
  Listen to this. The doctor was finding politics
• 40:26
  of Tara incomprehensible, but then he found a lot of politics
• 40:30
  incomprehensible, or at best unsavoury.
• 40:33
  It was, he reflected, the only professor for which no
• 40:37
  preparation was ever thought necessary.
• 40:41
  It's true. He's he's, he's right.
• 40:44
  He is very, he's a writer who's wittier than I think people talk
• 40:49
  because he's sharing the season with Douglas Adams.
• 40:52
  And so it's like all the attention goes on to Douglas
• 40:54
  Adams. I think I love Stones of Blood.
• 40:57
  I think some of the direction lets it down.
• 40:59
  I think some of the wit is lost. I think Michael Hayes is better
• 41:04
  is best story City of Death. He gets the timing, everything
• 41:07
  right. There are points in the
• 41:09
  broadcast version where the timing is not 100%.
• 41:12
  There's a couple of awkward pauses here or there, and you to
• 41:15
  do a funny script and do it properly, you need somebody who
• 41:20
  knows how to time comedy. You've got Tom, you've got Peter
• 41:22
  Jeffrey, you've got the other actors.
• 41:25
  And I think they make that wit come alive.
• 41:28
  And then to be able to take that, put that into prose and
• 41:31
  make it work better. It's like this is somebody who
• 41:35
  had they, you know, had the style of Doctor Who not changed
• 41:38
  in 1980, probably would have continued to write for it
• 41:42
  because Shard of the Shard of City of Death, the base of City
• 41:47
  of Death is his creature from the Pit is a funny script let
• 41:50
  down in realisation. So I think he's a really strong
• 41:55
  author. It's just maybe some of his
• 41:56
  ideas were a bit too big for. A hell of find, I think.
• 42:02
  And, and, and it's unusual for someone to come in and just
• 42:04
  understand Doctor Who straight away.
• 42:07
  Do 2 stories on the truck. I think Chris Barrett should did
• 42:10
  it a couple of years earlier. He did.
• 42:13
  He does it twice, although he loses city of death, but he was
• 42:16
  down to do 2 the following year. This is someone who gets Doctor
• 42:21
  Who and the wild things you can do with it.
• 42:23
  He understands how to build a world and make it believable,
• 42:26
  make it interesting and Add all these layers to it, but also
• 42:30
  knows how to write well for the Doctor.
• 42:33
  And I think he he captures the 4th Doctor so well on screen in
• 42:39
  this as well. One you can hear is what any we,
• 42:43
  I think we said this reading is a bad therapy going.
• 42:45
  If you've captured the, the actor's voice and you can hear
• 42:48
  it back, that's an author who's got something right.
• 42:52
  I'm hearing Tom Baker in this. I'm hearing Peter Jeffrey in
• 42:54
  this. I probably can't.
• 42:56
  Even though there's dialogue they don't have in this.
• 42:59
  You can just hear them saying it because it's got, it's got that
• 43:01
  cadence, it's got that rhythm. He's replicated David, even K9,
• 43:05
  man, he personifies that tin dog.
• 43:08
  Miles away from the TARDIS, K9 lifted his head in response to
• 43:11
  his Master's call and prepared to make his entrance into the
• 43:14
  world of Tara. In response to an impulse from
• 43:17
  his antenna, the doors of the ship swung open and he trundled
• 43:21
  out into the sunshine. I mean, it's just wonderful.
• 43:25
  I mean, the thing with the audio book version is because it's
• 43:27
  John Leeson doing the reading. I'm not sure how I feel when
• 43:31
  they do this good, but we're going to have all the canine
• 43:33
  lines done with the sound effects and everything.
• 43:37
  I'm I'm not so old. It's like when you're listening
• 43:39
  to a darker Cypman story and it's like, oh, there's Briggs.
• 43:42
  Or it's like when they do all of the Hartnell fluffs in his
• 43:46
  books, you know, it's just like, yeah, we, we get it, maybe put
• 43:49
  one in. But you don't need one per page,
• 43:52
  you know. But my favorite thing and I and
• 43:56
  I sent this to you the weekend. So I was listening and there was
• 43:59
  a sound effect and it was actually on the exact bit you
• 44:01
  just read, which is canine and the TARDIS.
• 44:03
  And it's like he lifts his head. Everything has a sound effect.
• 44:05
  In some of these books, they do go to town on the sound effects.
• 44:08
  And I thought that sound effect feels familiar.
• 44:11
  I've heard that probably another Doctor Who books.
• 44:13
  I said, no, that's not from that.
• 44:16
  In the 90s, I played Star Trek Generations on the PC.
• 44:19
  I was like, I think they you. So I played it to Chris because
• 44:23
  he played it as well. And I said, am I going mad?
• 44:25
  And he was like, yes. And he, he remembered which bit
• 44:28
  and he says, right, so we're going to YouTube.
• 44:29
  We get the bit of the game up. And he said, yes, it's the same
• 44:32
  bloody sound effect that they use repeatedly.
• 44:35
  It's. Been a library or something?
• 44:37
  It's probably a library one, but then when I was finishing
• 44:39
  listening to it saying I can't not hear it now.
• 44:43
  But it it's just that dashing because it was originally meant
• 44:46
  as audio only, because again, they took like the changes they
• 44:50
  had to try and make things that worked on audio.
• 44:52
  They did it in print though because it just skips off the
• 44:55
  page. It does, and it's a lovely book.
• 44:59
  And so whatever, there was another bit that they changed
• 45:02
  and it was, it was. I mean, you want to hear another
• 45:03
  sound? Then the man was humming a tune
• 45:06
  to himself, which quite suddenly ended with an unmelodious gurgle
• 45:11
  and the smell of scorched cloth. I mean, whenever you get too
• 45:20
  relaxed with this book, somebody dies.
• 45:22
  La Mia guards, you know, like somebody or you're told of, you
• 45:27
  know, the the way that political uprisings happen are usually a
• 45:32
  massacre in one way or another, Sex and death.
• 45:35
  That's basically Tara. And then at the wed, at the
• 45:38
  coronation, all the nobles are there, but they've got the
• 45:40
  lawyers with them as well, because, you know.
• 45:44
  Just in case somebody upset somebody, we've gossip.
• 45:48
  It's just adding the and obviously things that you can't
• 45:51
  do in the TV version. You've got the wedding, you got
• 45:53
  Rendel's castle, the three guards that fight the other
• 45:57
  three guards, you know, you've got proper storming of the
• 45:59
  castle. You've got a sense that this is
• 46:01
  a castle full of people. He's got no budget now, isn't
• 46:04
  he? And he's he's just going for it,
• 46:06
  but it's to say he's not rushing the end.
• 46:08
  He's skipping it. He's going to take it.
• 46:11
  And the thing that took took me by surprise because the
• 46:14
  temptation must always be when you're writing these adaptations
• 46:17
  of Oh, well, I'll end a chapter point that we get to the end of
• 46:20
  an episode. And and he doesn't, he changes
• 46:23
  the cliffhangers between the chapters and the one which
• 46:26
  actually makes more sense is they all get knocked unconscious
• 46:29
  at the end of chapter 2, Part 1. And the the cliffhanger is
• 46:33
  Grendel's there. And you kind of think, so
• 46:37
  Grendel's gone to do the kid. And it's like, Nope, they just
• 46:40
  all get knocked out. Chapter 2 Chapter 3 starts and
• 46:43
  it and it's like that just makes more sense that.
• 46:45
  I mean, I get why he's there in the story.
• 46:48
  Because you want to end on Peter Jeffrey going ha ha, you know.
• 46:52
  You need that, and they change the end of episode 3, they move
• 46:56
  it further down because the cliffhanger on TV is a bit naff
• 47:01
  and I think you probably recognise that he's a bit more
• 47:03
  of a dramatic high slightly later.
• 47:05
  So it's only little tweaks, but it just takes you.
• 47:07
  Takes you. Takes you.
• 47:09
  It's actually it's, it's, it's, I think the assignment is, it
• 47:12
  has to be a novelisation, it has to match up with the TV story,
• 47:17
  but it's the. Same sort of basic shape of the.
• 47:19
  Basic shape there's, you know, like I said, 80% of the dialogue
• 47:23
  is there. Most of the stuff that isn't is
• 47:25
  through prose instead of dialogue and it's some of the
• 47:27
  things are simplified, but it's the same basic story.
• 47:32
  But I think when you've got such a good strong basic story, just
• 47:35
  it just sings off the page. I, I just think he's got a good
• 47:39
  understanding of the planet as well.
• 47:40
  Like, and I think it, you know, like we said, it's charming and
• 47:44
  it's funny and it's light, but he does add in some striking
• 47:52
  elements of class and, and the element of sexism as well,
• 47:56
  because he doesn't approve of that.
• 47:58
  It's clearly there in the pros that he's saying this stuff
• 48:01
  happens to women. But I can tell Fisher that's,
• 48:05
  you know, Fisher talks very eloquently about the women in
• 48:07
  his life. He calls them the mad aunts.
• 48:10
  He does. And clearly has huge.
• 48:14
  Respect for them, even though they were absolute terrors to
• 48:16
  him. So it's those sort of elements,
• 48:18
  the sexism and the classism, I think that just gives it a bit
• 48:21
  of nuance. It also gives it a bit of
• 48:24
  maturity as well. And I think we've we've talked,
• 48:27
  we've talked to us strictly about the finger wagging and
• 48:30
  everything. And you read that project, you
• 48:33
  read those descriptions of the women with the chastity belts on
• 48:36
  their faces and the way he talks about Lamy, the way he treats
• 48:38
  Lamy. And it doesn't go out of its way
• 48:41
  to say this it how horrendous it is.
• 48:43
  Nobody it trusts you as the reader to pick up that this is
• 48:49
  wrong because it and and I think that's that's the difference.
• 48:53
  It was one of those things where two days after we did that
• 48:55
  recording going. That's what I should have said
• 48:57
  on that is that you have to trust your audience.
• 49:01
  You have to have a bit of faith in your audience.
• 49:02
  They're going to pick up on the messages that you're putting out
• 49:05
  there. You don't need to spell it out.
• 49:07
  This is wrong. This is bad.
• 49:08
  They will read it. They will understand and they'll
• 49:11
  they'll come away going have. You watched Orphan 55 lately,
• 49:14
  David? Not unless I had to, and the
• 49:17
  last time I watched it was because you made me do it.
• 49:19
  Trust you. Oh yes, sorry Andy.
• 49:22
  Just tell us on contest. That was a bit muddy, actually,
• 49:24
  what it was trying to say to you.
• 49:26
  But like, like alone like this, which again, is irreverent.
• 49:29
  It's all irreverent built to the passages underneath, you know,
• 49:33
  that they go into to get into the coronation.
• 49:35
  Built so the king could escape in the event of an uprising
• 49:39
  among the peasants. Quite unnecessary, as it turned
• 49:42
  out, because so many peasants died in the plague and the rest
• 49:45
  were too weak from hunger to hurt a family.
• 49:49
  Yeah, it's just a little detail, but it's lovely about why those
• 49:52
  tunnels are there. I think the word that you're
• 49:54
  right, it's a reverence because there's no reverence for
• 49:56
  anything. He doesn't put anything on a
• 49:58
  pedestal. He doesn't.
• 49:59
  It's that everything is either mocked or challenged or
• 50:03
  presented in a way that encourages you as the reader to
• 50:07
  go. Ease of shit.
• 50:10
  I mean, they'll call him all sorts of things anyway, but he
• 50:14
  also makes him likable. And I think that's away from the
• 50:18
  TV version. That's Peter Jeffrey adding that
• 50:20
  degree of charm. The charm comes through on the
• 50:23
  page. You could see why people would
• 50:25
  fall for somebody like Grendel. He's devilishly handsome but
• 50:28
  with a sort of swarthy darkness to him.
• 50:31
  And he's like, yeah, you can see why women would be attracted to
• 50:33
  him, although his men know that he can't be trusted and he's
• 50:37
  completely duplicitous. He's an arrogant fuck as well,
• 50:42
  isn't it? And he absolutely believes in
• 50:45
  the class system. I mean, there's this bit here
• 50:47
  where he goes beside heads. It's a well known fact that
• 50:50
  peasants aren't interested in jewellery.
• 50:52
  All they want out of life is a roof over their heads and food
• 50:56
  in their bellies. And then Fisher has Ramana
• 50:58
  think. Privately, Ramana doubted the
• 51:01
  extent of the prince's knowledge of the peasantry.
• 51:04
  The little she had seen of Tara suggested that there was an
• 51:07
  unbridgeable gulf between the haves and the haves nots.
• 51:11
  And the Prince learns because when she's imprisoned with him
• 51:14
  early on in the book, he's like that saying peasants don't know
• 51:17
  what love is. And then later on he's a bit
• 51:20
  he's, he's obviously evolved and grown slightly.
• 51:23
  I think this is one of the advantages of taking away
• 51:26
  someone's performance, because the king is meant to be a little
• 51:30
  bit thick. And I think he's not played that
• 51:34
  way on television. He's actually played quite
• 51:36
  seriously. He plays it relatively straight,
• 51:39
  but they have lines in there saying he's a bit cleverer than
• 51:42
  usual. It's like, I never picked up
• 51:44
  that he wasn't meant to. It works better in prose.
• 51:47
  He get captures better. This is a king who's a bit
• 51:50
  arrogant. He gets captured, has some time
• 51:52
  in a dungeon. He starts to learn.
• 51:53
  He starts to evolve. But he is also responsible for
• 52:00
  the reason why nothing ever changes on Tara, right?
• 52:04
  Why the peasants don't get a better deal, why women are
• 52:06
  treated how they are. He's a traditionalist as well.
• 52:09
  Because at a point in the book it says the Prince protested
• 52:13
  that such an action would be most irregular.
• 52:17
  No aristocrat could ever demean himself by pardoning peasants.
• 52:21
  The council wouldn't like it. So they're all in on it, the
• 52:25
  good guys and the bad guys, the nobility.
• 52:28
  And the nobility. And this is, there's the the fun
• 52:31
  and the challenge of the this sort of book, which is you
• 52:34
  haven't got the doctor condemning it.
• 52:36
  You haven't got, you know, Romano will comment on it.
• 52:38
  But in other stories they would be bringing the society down.
• 52:43
  Yeah. But here they're definitely.
• 52:45
  Yeah. He gets a fishing licence and
• 52:46
  buggers off. I just want a carp, you know?
• 52:50
  I just want to have a hot day off, I want to fish and I want
• 52:52
  to leave. I really liked as well that you
• 52:55
  got motivations for smaller characters.
• 52:58
  So the, you know, Kirsten, the guy who goes down to kill
• 53:01
  Streller at the end. There's a passage here where it
• 53:04
  says he went on to explain that the Count recruited his staff
• 53:07
  from the prisons of Tara. Anyone who proved unsatisfactory
• 53:10
  was sent back to complete their sentences.
• 53:13
  In the case of Kirsten, the big man had been literally saved
• 53:16
  from the gallows. The rope had been tightening
• 53:18
  around his neck when the Count intervened to spare him.
• 53:21
  Should he betray his master, he would be returned to the
• 53:24
  executioner at once and the verdict carried out.
• 53:27
  So you don't really need to know anything more about him now.
• 53:30
  He just has a way of very succinctly getting to the point
• 53:34
  of those characters. And it's kind of explaining go,
• 53:37
  well, why do these people go along with the character,
• 53:39
  particularly as he's clearly a bastard.
• 53:40
  He's clearly not a man of his word.
• 53:42
  Why do they all go along with it going he's got no choice because
• 53:45
  if he if he doesn't, they'll kill him.
• 53:49
  And that's that's the count true and true.
• 53:51
  You know, he revels in massacres.
• 53:54
  Bear in mind there's a lot of this violence off screen, off
• 53:58
  the page. It's all implied and talked
• 54:00
  about that there's a lot of war and conflict on Tara.
• 54:04
  It's not, it's life expectancy is not terribly high for a lot
• 54:07
  of people, but. Why Romana gets this very simple
• 54:11
  observation? Romana side.
• 54:13
  I shall never understand Tara, she thought.
• 54:17
  You made me chuckle. And I think by the time they get
• 54:20
  to the end, when do they want to leave?
• 54:22
  It's like, you know what? This place doesn't make sense.
• 54:24
  Should we just go? It's like, no, no, we've got
• 54:27
  fish first, then we go. Do.
• 54:29
  You remember the really shocking, I think at the end of
• 54:31
  Episode 2, it's really shocking where Tom goes at the Android of
• 54:34
  Romana and smashes the thing down, and Fisher don't duck away
• 54:39
  from that. He says.
• 54:41
  What is it? Her skull had been split open,
• 54:43
  disgorged. Not blood and bone and brain
• 54:46
  matter, but a shower of electronic components.
• 54:52
  When he when he put brain matter, it's like he's having
• 54:55
  he's having blood and guts, but without actually having any at
• 54:57
  all. He's kind of having his cake and
• 54:59
  eating it there. But yeah, that that's because
• 55:01
  that's a great cliffhanger as well, because Tom give Tom gives
• 55:04
  that a fair whack and he whacks the face in I think as well
• 55:10
  works across the crate. Of a scientist, David Fisher,
• 55:13
  isn't he? What did Mary Tam ever do to
• 55:16
  you? Which of the four Mary Tams as
• 55:20
  well? Yeah, it's, yeah, I, I think
• 55:26
  sometimes I don't think Mary Tam is the best actor at times.
• 55:30
  And I think sometimes I agree with that.
• 55:33
  I think freed of some of that, you know, the the wit and the
• 55:35
  charm comes across just a little bit better.
• 55:37
  I mean, I think this is probably one of her strongest stories as
• 55:40
  well. I mean, she's got that
• 55:41
  statuesque sort of movie Charlotte look.
• 55:44
  She's got presence. She's got absolute presence and
• 55:47
  you can see why, you know, they put it even in that horrendous
• 55:51
  outfit. She can still pull that off, but
• 55:55
  you can tell that she's even in the story that's probably meant
• 55:58
  to be centering her. She's just a little bit bored.
• 56:00
  So sometimes the book benefits from kind of, you know, you get
• 56:04
  in her head she's those views on torrent society and her
• 56:08
  confusion. There's a bit she doesn't know
• 56:10
  what a horse is. And that's I think that's one of
• 56:13
  the bits they changed as well is that you've got Romana's point
• 56:17
  of view and she says horse and they're gone, but she doesn't
• 56:19
  know what a horse is because page later she asks what it is.
• 56:22
  So there's a little that's one of the little changes that they
• 56:25
  made. It's like because I was
• 56:26
  listening, going, she saw the horse, she used the horse, or
• 56:31
  they used her point of view to describe the word horse.
• 56:33
  And no one's pro talked to horses this much on a hamster
• 56:36
  ever, I don't think. Well, no, you know, well, except
• 56:39
  for Luke Sins Jenkins, of course, who's absolutely
• 56:41
  obsessed sexually with horses. But just go and check out some
• 56:45
  of those book clubs, man. There was just one episode where
• 56:48
  there was half man half horse and he made a comment which we
• 56:51
  all jumped on and in in every subsequent episode.
• 56:54
  Now we're asking him if he would like a a man horse in it.
• 56:58
  He could do terrible things. Too that that doesn't sound like
• 57:01
  a hamster book club at all. Leaping.
• 57:03
  On well, you know, you bring on these perverts and this is what
• 57:06
  happens. I mean, our usual group is
• 57:09
  perfectly lovely. I mean, you know.
• 57:11
  Gareth, you know Dan. We're quite normal.
• 57:15
  Yeah, well, you don't know that. There might be, you know,
• 57:17
  torturing kittens in their secret dungeons.
• 57:20
  I can't imagine that of either of them.
• 57:22
  Well, you know, nice people, you know, I do suspect if they're
• 57:25
  too nice online, I think what horrible deeds are you doing?
• 57:29
  Just like Count Grendel, you know.
• 57:31
  Oh yeah. You trust Count Grant?
• 57:33
  Nobody trusts Count Grant? No, No.
• 57:34
  No. There's a big thing of the fact
• 57:38
  nobody trusts him. He makes a dig at Doctor Who.
• 57:41
  Fans in the most wonderful way. Fisher he goes.
• 57:45
  Swordmaster Zadig was in no mood to join the Cow Grendel
• 57:50
  Appreciation Society. Yes, that's a definite yeah and.
• 57:59
  Well, they put they put Andrews of Tara bottom of the season
• 58:02
  pole, didn't they? So it came last by some margin
• 58:07
  there's. Fisher there going right I'm
• 58:09
  going to get my get my revenge I.
• 58:11
  Do find those things very strange that when you've got a
• 58:14
  season with Power of Cruel and Armageddon Factor, which I don't
• 58:16
  mind to be fair. But no, you probably didn't hear
• 58:20
  it, but James Lark read out from the Doctor Who Appreciation
• 58:24
  Society magazine that he had on the season 16 pole.
• 58:27
  And the fella who ran it, Oh my God, he was like, he was mad.
• 58:31
  He was going. Of the 5000 potential applicants
• 58:37
  for this poll, we only received 800 and something.
• 58:42
  And frankly, we don't want your money if you're not going to
• 58:47
  vote in order. But.
• 58:48
  I mean it honestly, it was utter madness, this man starting this.
• 58:53
  Poll with this. Slagging off the whole society.
• 58:56
  Members. Don't you miss those days?
• 58:59
  Well, what do you mean you miss those days?
• 59:02
  For a hard time. That's now online.
• 59:08
  But I mean, a a book that's got politics, it's got sex, it's got
• 59:13
  drama, but it's not critical, it's not leading you somewhere,
• 59:17
  it's letting you. It's trusting you as a reader.
• 59:19
  It's incredibly mature. I've never thought.
• 59:22
  Politics, David. It's got bitter politics in it.
• 59:25
  You know Doctor Who does politics.
• 59:26
  No, I was just saying that so I could read you something.
• 59:29
  It is heart. It is heart warming, remarked
• 59:32
  the Archimandra, fully aware of the irony.
• 59:35
  To see a man put his. Country before his personal
• 59:38
  ambition. For a moment he wondered if he'd
• 59:41
  gone too far, but the Count smiled graciously and
• 59:44
  acknowledged the tribute to his public spiritedness.
• 59:50
  Beth is just having such a good these are great characters.
• 59:53
  The the there's that wonderful bit which he does put in the
• 59:56
  book, which is I shall refuse the crown once time 2-3.
• 1:00:01
  You know, I can't rely on the our commander to offer me a
• 1:00:03
  third time. It's just putting that stuff in.
• 1:00:06
  It's just capturing that character so beautifully.
• 1:00:10
  What about this, then? Were you ready?
• 1:00:12
  You seem to make a habit of interfering in my affairs, Dr.
• 1:00:16
  And then the doctor in the TV version goes, yes, yes I do.
• 1:00:19
  Rather, in the book he goes, It's purely intentional, I
• 1:00:22
  assure you, which is a much better line.
• 1:00:25
  And that's such a Tom line as well.
• 1:00:28
  Again, you can hear him saying it.
• 1:00:30
  And it might well be that was originally what was scripted.
• 1:00:33
  I would give me a camera script. I'd be interested to see what
• 1:00:36
  Tom has changed and that fish has changed back because I can,
• 1:00:41
  I can imagine it'd be like, yeah, I don't like, I like Tom.
• 1:00:43
  Tom's out of the pier. I'll put that in.
• 1:00:46
  Yeah, Shit. I'm going to go back to what I
• 1:00:48
  wrote. But he gets to add new jokes as
• 1:00:50
  well, which is listen to this, Ramana inquires the Doctor.
• 1:00:54
  So go in rate these days for saving planets and solving
• 1:00:57
  national crises. Ramana played along.
• 1:01:00
  Off the top of my head, I couldn't say Doctor, but I do
• 1:01:02
  know we're not cheap. I mean, that would have been
• 1:01:05
  great at. The end of the story.
• 1:01:08
  Just a little bit of, I mean, it's just full of light stuff
• 1:01:12
  anyway, but that would have been quite a nice way to end it.
• 1:01:15
  But then you get the visual gag. We've got canine and a boat, the
• 1:01:18
  old sea dog. You can't go wrong with that.
• 1:01:21
  David, every page of this is just a delight, isn't it?
• 1:01:24
  Like there was no part of this that was a chore to read.
• 1:01:27
  And trust me, I've found a lot of Doctor Who books in the last
• 1:01:30
  two years that I've been a chore to read.
• 1:01:32
  I just sailed through this smiling.
• 1:01:35
  And it's got one of my pet pet hates, which is long chapter.
• 1:01:38
  Longish chapters. I didn't notice it because it
• 1:01:42
  kept you going. There was there was pace to it.
• 1:01:45
  It just sailed by. I mean the I listened, I
• 1:01:48
  listened to it. It's only four hours, but it
• 1:01:51
  just was really quick and easy. And I was actually flicking
• 1:01:54
  between the book and the audiobook once the book turned
• 1:01:55
  up because I was as a follow along and just see what the
• 1:01:59
  changes were and had a great time with it because we did.
• 1:02:03
  We've read Parasite, we've done who reads it?
• 1:02:06
  Sorry, who reads it? John Leeson.
• 1:02:10
  Is it a good reading? It's a good, it's good.
• 1:02:12
  It's yeah, it's not a bad reading.
• 1:02:13
  It's just got the the canine voice.
• 1:02:15
  But luckily there's not a huge amount of canine in the story.
• 1:02:18
  So it's not too bad. But I, I think it was released
• 1:02:21
  to the point where, as I said before, they they really go to
• 1:02:23
  town on the sound effects for like somebody's, somebody's
• 1:02:26
  walking down the path, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch and they
• 1:02:28
  open the door. It's it's just a bit much.
• 1:02:32
  Sometimes they went was that period when they went really a
• 1:02:35
  bit crazy with the the sound effects, but but it was it was
• 1:02:40
  good fun. I mean, it was a freebie on
• 1:02:41
  Audible, which I bought years ago and it's it's been
• 1:02:44
  languishing or stones of blood, which I will be probably doing
• 1:02:46
  next, because if he's done the same with that, that he's done
• 1:02:50
  with this. That's St.
• 1:02:51
  I do love listening to the the audio books.
• 1:02:55
  I actually put them on quiet because they're long.
• 1:02:58
  I put them on when I go to bed and they just play throughout
• 1:03:00
  the night sort of quietly. But and but the ones I really
• 1:03:04
  struggle with are where the narrators choose to just do
• 1:03:08
  loads of silly voices that sound nothing like the characters on
• 1:03:13
  TV and I just find it so. So I thought I was.
• 1:03:15
  I did so recently listening to Tom Baker do the brain Amorbius,
• 1:03:20
  and for some reason I cannot fathom, he chills us to make
• 1:03:24
  Maran this really wise and old woman and he makes Solon.
• 1:03:29
  He gives him the sort of German accent a bit like Triste.
• 1:03:34
  I'm like. I'm sorry answer to Mark turn
• 1:03:36
  this off. I can't listen to any more of
• 1:03:38
  this. I think John Leeson refrains
• 1:03:41
  from doing silly voices. It's a fairly it's a fairly
• 1:03:44
  straight reading. It's I enjoyed.
• 1:03:46
  Those ones. Yeah, they were bad.
• 1:03:48
  I mean, I was listening. I've been recovering from a
• 1:03:51
  cold, so because sometimes I have trouble in the night and I
• 1:03:54
  can't breathe easily because I've got asthma, all sorts of
• 1:03:57
  silly little health things. But I actually was listening to
• 1:03:59
  the audio box saying I'll just put it on and I'll stop it when
• 1:04:02
  I start to fall asleep. I fell asleep within 10 minutes.
• 1:04:04
  I woke up and the book had finished.
• 1:04:07
  OK, I need to work out where I got up to.
• 1:04:09
  I don't need something. But it is really quite soothing
• 1:04:12
  and quite comforting. When I was having proper asthma
• 1:04:16
  problems, I put on, I'm not going to say who's it was.
• 1:04:18
  I did put on a podcast and I was like, that will help me.
• 1:04:20
  Just, you know, don't focus on it.
• 1:04:22
  And I did fall asleep and I was like, you want to keep that
• 1:04:25
  compliment saying, you know, it was nice and relaxing.
• 1:04:27
  It was very kind of wonderful atmosphere.
• 1:04:29
  But you don't want to write to somebody saying.
• 1:04:30
  He's not going to say which one it is, all right, but you, your.
• 1:04:33
  Podcast. Sent.
• 1:04:34
  You know it was yours, all right?
• 1:04:35
  It was so boring. It was definitely yours.
• 1:04:39
  Was it mine? No, no, no, I'm referring to the
• 1:04:41
  listener. Mine's a bit too excitable to
• 1:04:43
  listen to when you're going to. Bed, I think I could not listen
• 1:04:46
  to a strictly trying to sleep because the comments will come
• 1:04:50
  in, somebody will say something, you'll be.
• 1:04:52
  Furious. Oh, what is this?
• 1:04:55
  How, how can you like that? And best of this, but that's the
• 1:05:00
  joy of it, is that you can just shout.
• 1:05:01
  The whole purpose of that bloody one.
• 1:05:04
  You can shout into the ether. You can send your comments in
• 1:05:08
  and maybe you'll read them out and then you'll call them a
• 1:05:10
  cunt. Strictly turns us all into IANS
• 1:05:14
  in one way or another. I mean, have you heard me on
• 1:05:16
  some of them? I'm not far removed.
• 1:05:19
  When I'm talking. About some of these stories.
• 1:05:23
  I, I think sometimes there's a temptation to go on.
• 1:05:25
  There's some sacred cows I'd like to, you know, come along
• 1:05:28
  and, you know, give. A bit.
• 1:05:29
  Look at you, yeah. Yes, I know.
• 1:05:31
  I noticed. That you brought out your inner
• 1:05:34
  Ian a few times. I mean, you know, you were
• 1:05:37
  talking season 26 fan favorite Cursor Fenrick.
• 1:05:40
  Everybody loves it apart from you.
• 1:05:41
  Yeah. Oh.
• 1:05:42
  Yeah. Did you see it?
• 1:05:43
  They looked like they wanted to murder me on that call.
• 1:05:45
  Jesus Christ. I'll say one last thing right
• 1:05:49
  about Andrew Zatara before we sum it up.
• 1:05:50
  I really want to say that, you know, like I What do I say?
• 1:05:55
  I was reading Beulis and Darfur Evans alongside this.
• 1:05:57
  Yeah. Now Beulis I find easy to read.
• 1:05:59
  It's very simple prose that he writes, but it's never ambitious
• 1:06:02
  prose and it's never passionate prose.
• 1:06:05
  It is very functional. And Darfur Evans, man, oh God,
• 1:06:10
  his sentences are so hideous and so full of language where he's
• 1:06:14
  trying to impress, and he winds up doing precisely the opposite.
• 1:06:19
  And paragraphs so long that by the end of them, you wonder
• 1:06:23
  where you started, you know, and how you got there at the end.
• 1:06:26
  Where is this right? It was just a pleasure to read
• 1:06:30
  the words, The sentences were simple but lush and sensual and
• 1:06:35
  full of smells and sounds and history and gags.
• 1:06:39
  And it was the the Doctor Who book equivalent of having the
• 1:06:44
  most wonderful massage you know. It was the ultimate antidote to
• 1:06:48
  all of that horrific prose I've had to read elsewhere.
• 1:06:52
  See, I was wondering where you were going there because it was
• 1:06:54
  equivalent to the most wonderful.
• 1:06:55
  I thought we go are we going naughty on ice?
• 1:06:58
  What's the most wonderful? Well, yeah, it's all up.
• 1:07:01
  Yeah. OK, so we lost me a day and off,
• 1:07:03
  so I'd be edged for a day and a half, you know, Just lovely.
• 1:07:08
  I think that's that they should put that on the cover.
• 1:07:10
  Yeah. I mean that should that should
• 1:07:11
  definitely be the. Show forward.
• 1:07:12
  It's like being edged for two days.
• 1:07:16
  I think the thing I take away from this apart from that is I
• 1:07:20
  think I think David Fisher enjoyed writing this.
• 1:07:24
  And that comes across and like when we talk about, you talk
• 1:07:28
  about people doing audios, doing acting, performing, if the
• 1:07:32
  person's enjoying themselves, generally that comes across,
• 1:07:36
  they have to be quite talented and good at it.
• 1:07:39
  But I think he's had a ball adapting his own script.
• 1:07:43
  I think he's looked at it, he's added layers.
• 1:07:45
  He's had so much more humor to it, so much depth to it, but
• 1:07:50
  still told the same story. And you can just tell.
• 1:07:54
  It's like somebody's, you know, they contacted him saying do you
• 1:07:56
  want to do this? He would have put a bit in the
• 1:07:58
  hand off saying, do you want to basically revisit one of your
• 1:08:01
  most popular stories? He's essentially at the end of
• 1:08:03
  his career, right? He's had his career, Yeah.
• 1:08:06
  He doesn't have to try anymore. He's written for all these
• 1:08:09
  amazing things and that all he has to do, like Darvel Evans
• 1:08:13
  would. Deceit.
• 1:08:13
  Yeah. He's a young man who's editing
• 1:08:16
  Doctor Who books, and he's desperate to make his way in.
• 1:08:19
  I don't want to do Doctor Who books forever because he's got
• 1:08:21
  to write this fabulous sci-fi novel, you know, that's going to
• 1:08:25
  push him out into the world of, you know, real books and try so
• 1:08:29
  hard. He's really, really.
• 1:08:31
  Trying in all the negative connotations of that word with
• 1:08:36
  that book. Where especially he just, he
• 1:08:38
  doesn't need to try. He's done it.
• 1:08:40
  He's just been told to have fun with it.
• 1:08:41
  And he does have fun with it. Yes.
• 1:08:44
  And to find another comparison to another book that we've done
• 1:08:48
  from about the same period, same set up, which was Revelation of
• 1:08:52
  the Daleks, which was obviously Eric Saywood again, probably in
• 1:08:55
  a similar position to David Fisher.
• 1:08:56
  You know, he's had his career, he's imagine he's retired given
• 1:09:00
  this assignment. He wrote an absolute dog.
• 1:09:02
  Hair, But I mean, Sailor's brains turn to bogeys at this
• 1:09:06
  point, isn't it? Like he's not got a brain cell
• 1:09:08
  left anymore? You can tell that by reading the
• 1:09:11
  content of those books. And I think he probably he was
• 1:09:14
  having fun to say I'm going to tell the story I wanted, but
• 1:09:17
  I'll. Tell you a good a good
• 1:09:20
  similarity is Stephen Gallagher writing the New Warriors Gate,
• 1:09:24
  and he just gets the chance to write the version that he wanted
• 1:09:28
  to hit the screen and the scripts that he originally
• 1:09:31
  wrote. And there's some things I like
• 1:09:33
  about the changes and there's some things I don't, but you can
• 1:09:36
  tell he's had a blast putting it on the page.
• 1:09:40
  And as I say, if they're enjoying it and it's good and
• 1:09:42
  it's talking about some Doctor Who books, it's more than
• 1:09:46
  competent. You can have a blast reading it.
• 1:09:49
  And the fact it's short because the the the temptation could
• 1:09:52
  have been to but not short on it's.
• 1:09:55
  Short on jokes, not short on charming characters and great
• 1:10:00
  lines. You've got there's a lot you can
• 1:10:02
  do with brevity. You can tell a story, tell APC
• 1:10:04
  story, tell it in 130. 140 pages To David, Peter, Darvel Evans
• 1:10:10
  and your 308 page new adventure. There's a lot you can do with
• 1:10:14
  brevity. Some of those new adventures
• 1:10:17
  definitely needed an edit. He's.
• 1:10:20
  The editor. It's the fucking editor.
• 1:10:24
  I'm what sort of senior person would say don't touch my words?
• 1:10:30
  I know. Oh boy, we couldn't tie these
• 1:10:33
  jokes sometimes, you know? Yeah, what could they possibly
• 1:10:37
  refer it now, but anything away? So frankly, I'm going to say
• 1:10:44
  thank you again because this was your suggestion that we do this
• 1:10:47
  just like the myth makers. And again, it's been one of my
• 1:10:52
  highlights. The Myth Makers was absolutely
• 1:10:54
  one of my highlights of the commentaries.
• 1:10:56
  This I'd say alongside selected latter day Edas and the Myth
• 1:11:03
  Makers book and a couple of those Paul Mars Puffin classics.
• 1:11:08
  This has been one of my favourites I think.
• 1:11:12
  Yeah, this. I mean, I've done, I've done far
• 1:11:14
  fewer than you have. You've done so many of these
• 1:11:16
  books. I don't know how you do it.
• 1:11:17
  Well, Mark Wayne's turned to bogeys as well, that's why.
• 1:11:21
  I think this is definitely one of the best ones.
• 1:11:23
  There's another one, well, you know what's coming up because
• 1:11:26
  we've read it, but there's one coming up that I really enjoyed
• 1:11:29
  as well. So we've got a run of some very
• 1:11:30
  good books now. David, I would like to make a
• 1:11:33
  suggestion to you, if I may. I mean, do you think the two of
• 1:11:37
  us should do the the stones of blood at some point?
• 1:11:40
  We had so much fun with this one.
• 1:11:41
  We should keep going with these fishes.
• 1:11:44
  Why not? I mean, if it's, if it's, if
• 1:11:47
  it's of the same standard, I'm going to read it up.
• 1:11:50
  It's. Longer than this.
• 1:11:52
  I'm going to read it anyway, so we might as well.
• 1:11:55
  Imagine Amiglia Rumford getting brand new lines.
• 1:11:58
  I mean, she's amazing as she was, but.
• 1:12:00
  I mean, expanding on that would be interesting to see what
• 1:12:03
  layers he adds to their relationship as well, because so
• 1:12:06
  much of that is coded and, and, and whether or not that's us as
• 1:12:10
  fans picking up on stuff, how much would be interesting to see
• 1:12:14
  what he pulls and gives those characters so.
• 1:12:17
  I think I misquote Amiglia Rumford to entice you to read
• 1:12:20
  that book. You can try.
• 1:12:22
  David in The Cause of Hamster. I think it's our duty to read
• 1:12:28
  that novel. I think it is and I and I hope
• 1:12:33
  that you do the whole podcast in the style of Beatrix Lehman.
• 1:12:38
  David, are you from outer space? No, I'm not.
• 1:12:43
  I'm more from what you'd call inner time.
• 1:12:45
  Oh my God, you can do it in the. Style of Tom Baker then.
• 1:12:49
  I can try. I mean, I don't know, if I could
• 1:12:51
  do a whole podcast in the style of Tom Baker, I'd get a
• 1:12:53
  headache. It's so witty though, isn't it?
• 1:12:55
  So. Rather as if something very
• 1:12:57
  nasty is coming after you because something very nasty
• 1:13:00
  will be going. After you.
• 1:13:02
  I think that one would be interesting because the
• 1:13:05
  production at times, I don't think Dal Blake is a great
• 1:13:08
  director. There's some really shocking
• 1:13:10
  moments in that. I mean, it's what I do like
• 1:13:12
  anyway. It'd be interesting to see how
• 1:13:15
  that would work away from the production.
• 1:13:18
  And I think it's Susan Engel reading it as well.
• 1:13:21
  So I think. She.
• 1:13:24
  I think she might throw herself into that part because she
• 1:13:28
  certainly does cheats. She was season 16, knew about
• 1:13:35
  villains and camp. And I mean, you haven't done 16
• 1:13:41
  for Strictly have I think that still to come.
• 1:13:46
  It's that one I'm looking forward to because I think.
• 1:13:47
  We're fucking queuing up to do that one.
• 1:13:52
  It's a good season. I think there's a lot, there's a
• 1:13:54
  lot to like in it, so don't any of you be mean about it.
• 1:13:58
  Otherwise I will write angry comments.
• 1:13:59
  I even love Armageddon Factor, you know?
• 1:14:02
  We watched that recently. We did it in three twos.
• 1:14:05
  It works quite nicely in little chunks.
• 1:14:09
  Some classic who just doesn't. You can't marathon it, you can't
• 1:14:11
  binge it. It doesn't work.
• 1:14:13
  Do it with the war games, everybody.
• 1:14:15
  All right, Five hours is too long.
• 1:14:16
  What? Do you mean the war Games is
• 1:14:18
  only 90 minutes long? Oh yeah, that version it's.
• 1:14:26
  Broadly fine. Well, David, I mean, I don't do
• 1:14:29
  this usually on the book club, but since it's just you and me
• 1:14:31
  here now, where can people find you online?
• 1:14:33
  Let's do a bit of marketing for your fabulous YouTube.
• 1:14:35
  Come on. Oh.
• 1:14:37
  Well, you can find me. You can find me on YouTube if
• 1:14:39
  you search for David Gillespie Pratt.
• 1:14:41
  I am there and I do mostly deep dives into 60s who I've tried
• 1:14:46
  doing other shows but no one seems to be as interested in.
• 1:14:49
  The Noctu stuff is definitely really popular and I.
• 1:14:52
  Love it when you keep retweeting that Avengers golf.
• 1:14:56
  But I don't. I don't because I did that and
• 1:15:00
  then every now and again. Darren Mick Roundels retweets
• 1:15:05
  it. Every now and again, basically
• 1:15:07
  Steve Plightus in The Avengers, not live but nearly live,
• 1:15:12
  forgets his lines, says fuck under his breath and they keep
• 1:15:15
  recording and they have to rescue the scene.
• 1:15:18
  I am looking into doing something about that because in
• 1:15:22
  a previous life I did some work that on, oh, how to describe it,
• 1:15:27
  it was naturalization records of people who moved into the UK and
• 1:15:30
  one of the people's records that I declassified was his.
• 1:15:35
  So I am going to take some time out.
• 1:15:37
  I'm going to go and dig it out. I feel as a means of as an
• 1:15:39
  apology. That's right.
• 1:15:41
  I feel I feel I need to kind of say yes.
• 1:15:43
  I shared this clip. It's gone besmirched the name of
• 1:15:47
  that fine actor I've. Besmirched his name and it's
• 1:15:50
  like, you know what, I'm going to see if I can do just a little
• 1:15:52
  video to say this is just something about who he was,
• 1:15:55
  where he came from and a bit because there are actors who end
• 1:15:57
  up there's nothing much about them other than you go to
• 1:16:00
  Wikipedia, they're in Doctor Who because that's the most
• 1:16:03
  important thing. So there's that.
• 1:16:05
  And I'm working on another 10th Planet video at the minute
• 1:16:08
  because I can't do enough about that for some reason because I
• 1:16:11
  keep finding things to talk about.
• 1:16:12
  But. Recently saw a photograph as
• 1:16:16
  recent as this week of a script one side and a loader steals the
• 1:16:21
  other and then a ton of yellow arrows connecting the two.
• 1:16:26
  And I sent this image to David and I said, I mean, this is just
• 1:16:29
  the inside of your brain, isn't it?
• 1:16:33
  It is absolutely. Terrifying it was.
• 1:16:36
  It's real attention to detail, too much detail.
• 1:16:40
  It's what I do can. You come and sort out.
• 1:16:43
  My life then please, if you've got that much attention to.
• 1:16:46
  Detail. Oh, no, I, I, I do that to avoid
• 1:16:48
  sorting my own out. You know, let's do it.
• 1:16:52
  Let's do it. Let's do a deep dive.
• 1:16:53
  Here's a camera script. Why is that happening?
• 1:16:57
  And I'll be listening to other podcasts and people will be
• 1:16:59
  like, is that a special? Is that a special effect in the
• 1:17:03
  arc? And I'm going, no, I'm going to
• 1:17:04
  check that out. I'm going to check the camera
• 1:17:05
  script on that one. No, it isn't.
• 1:17:07
  I'm going to prove these people and they're going, no, they
• 1:17:09
  don't care that much. Just step away from the
• 1:17:12
  keyboard. It's interesting to me.
• 1:17:15
  It's probably not as interesting to everybody else, but every now
• 1:17:18
  and. Again, and as your life is going
• 1:17:20
  to shit that you're not organizing in any way, shape or
• 1:17:23
  form, but you're very happy, there's a wonderfully detailed,
• 1:17:26
  beautiful YouTube video there to be posted.
• 1:17:29
  You've got your priorities right.
• 1:17:31
  It's the more important work, David.
• 1:17:33
  It's, you know, watching Doctor Who for strictly reading the
• 1:17:37
  books, doing the videos. These are important things.
• 1:17:40
  And you can find me. I'm I'm very easily found
• 1:17:42
  because I have a very unique name.
• 1:17:43
  You'll find out that me and my husband.
• 1:17:45
  So one way or the other, search for Gillespie Pratt.
• 1:17:47
  There's only two of us in the world.
• 1:17:49
  He's one of those, I think, you know, listeners, he may once
• 1:17:53
  have been, you know, lower class.
• 1:17:55
  He just had one surname. Now he's got a hyphen and two
• 1:17:59
  surnames. He's definitely middle class.
• 1:18:02
  David Gillespie Pratt put him in the search.
• 1:18:04
  Engines. We we, we definitely middle
• 1:18:06
  class. We've got a dishwasher.
• 1:18:09
  I am the dishwasher. No, what am I talking about?
• 1:18:12
  There's no way I'm the dishwasher in this.
• 1:18:16
  Well, David, thank you. Thank you for providing the
• 1:18:19
  relief from the the thick syrupy splodge of ineptitude of.
• 1:18:28
  Books I've been reading of late with this lovely ray of sunshine
• 1:18:33
  that's come through it, It's just been a delight.
• 1:18:36
  I am glad to have brought a bit of sunshine, but I will say, you
• 1:18:39
  know, these books are very important to me, so how dare you
• 1:18:43
  criticize them? Yeah, I'm.
• 1:18:44
  So sorry, yeah, I'm being cancelling tomorrow now.
• 1:18:47
  I'm going to, I'm going to just basically cancel all of our we
• 1:18:51
  can't have a difference of opinion.
• 1:18:52
  It's not allowed. Shit, I better get this out
• 1:18:54
  tonight then. Fuck.
• 1:18:56
  Oh, there's going to be complaints for that.
• 1:18:58
  How dare you mock people. Yeah, Oh dear.
• 1:19:01
  Don't go and listen to strictly serious B then.
• 1:19:03
  All right? When?
• 1:19:04
  You do, David, thank you so much for your time.
• 1:19:07
  It's been a delight. I cannot wait to do Stones of
• 1:19:10
  Blood. It's going to be wonderful.
• 1:19:11
  Thank you very much.