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Hamster Book Club - Gareth Bowley Top and Bottom Ten Books · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 0:03
  My name is Joe Ford and it. Now listen here.
• 0:06
  We've got to get this sorted out.
• 0:07
  Between you and me, we even start and do anything.
• 0:10
  OK? OK.
• 0:11
  It's come to my attention that I have been mispronouncing your
• 0:15
  surname for the last year and a half every time I've read out a
• 0:19
  comment or anything that you have made.
• 0:21
  Yeah. So why don't you introduce
• 0:22
  yourself, educate me, and then I'll get it right in the future.
• 0:27
  My name's Gareth Boli. Boneley yeah, I've got it, I've
• 0:31
  got it. Cool bow.
• 0:32
  Ties. Oh, you're very cool.
• 0:34
  Very cool. Mr. Gareth Boneley, How are you
• 0:37
  this evening? I'm very well, thank you.
• 0:40
  How are yourself? Where we've both been to work,
• 0:42
  haven't we? So the only thing we could
• 0:44
  possibly do to get over that misery is to talk about Doctor
• 0:46
  Who books. Immerse ourselves in words.
• 0:50
  The best, actually. Honestly and genuinely, it has
• 0:53
  been the best therapy for me this year.
• 0:56
  Jumping into a book. I believe Patrick Stewart has
• 0:59
  been extolling the virtues of reading for half an hour a day
• 1:04
  as part of his continued longevity.
• 1:06
  And who are we to argue with Sir Patrick?
• 1:10
  Well, Gareth, before we go into your top and more importantly,
• 1:15
  awesome 10 list of Doctor Who books, I truly hope you're going
• 1:19
  to be really savage. But we'll see.
• 1:22
  I need to ask you an important question.
• 1:24
  I've I've done a book club episode with you, but I've not
• 1:27
  had the chance to ask you what your Doctor Who book journey is.
• 1:32
  So what was the first book you've got and sort of what you
• 1:36
  know, how did you explore it further from there?
• 1:38
  Yeah, no, no, no, it's, it's very easy, he says, reaching
• 1:41
  over to the shelf where he has his first two ever Doctor Who
• 1:47
  books which were bought at the same time, which is The
• 1:50
  Invisible Enemy and The Romans. A diverse bunch.
• 1:55
  So I think it must have been 1990 in a in a little seaside
• 2:03
  village called Mablethorpe where I was on holiday with my family
• 2:07
  and we were coming to the end of this particular holiday and me
• 2:10
  and my brother had spent all our pocket money going into a local
• 2:13
  cash and carry there. There was a box of Doctor Who
• 2:17
  books. Now I've seen Doctor Who at this
• 2:20
  point I'd I'd watched the and the Baker McCoy, so I knew of
• 2:25
  it. I wasn't a fan at this point or
• 2:26
  stress, but there was this box of books and my dad turned
• 2:30
  around to me and my brother and said, look, I'll buy you a book
• 2:33
  each if you if you want a book, I will pay for the book for you.
• 2:37
  So I turned around to my brother and went well would be deaf not
• 2:40
  to do it. It's a free book from our
• 2:41
  perspective and there were four books in there.
• 2:46
  There was two of the Cybermen possible enemy, the Romans and
• 2:51
  State of Decay. And you guys didn't choose to
• 2:54
  the Cyberman in the State of decay?
• 2:56
  Well, there's that little happy ending to this mini tale because
• 3:01
  being the elder brother, I turned around to my brother and
• 3:04
  said we should buy two different ones each so we get all four of
• 3:09
  them so then we can swap them between us.
• 3:11
  Oh, that's clever. I said if you, you, because
• 3:14
  obviously I was aware of the Cybermen, heard of them.
• 3:17
  I said, you have the Cybermen because it's got that big old
• 3:20
  invasion Cyberman face on the front of it.
• 3:24
  I said, and then I get to pick the next one.
• 3:25
  You pick the next one and I'll take the one that's left.
• 3:28
  So it went, he went to the Cybermen.
• 3:30
  I then went to Invisible Enemy because Tom Baker was on the
• 3:32
  cover. He took State of Decay and I got
• 3:35
  the Romans. And I think those books then
• 3:41
  remained unread for a few years. And I'm like, oh, now what?
• 3:44
  I can tell you, dear listeners, is that I now have those copies
• 3:48
  of Tomb of the Cybermen and State of Decay.
• 3:51
  So I have the original four books that we bought on that
• 3:53
  day. They're in here somewhere, but
• 3:56
  my brother gave them to me. The day moved out my mom and
• 3:58
  dad, so I went yeah, I've I've all these doctor books.
• 4:01
  Yes, please. I'll, yeah, no, I'll take that.
• 4:03
  And and I and I have returned him the favour.
• 4:06
  I've got a nephew who's into Doctor Who's.
• 4:08
  When we moved out of the old house, I went.
• 4:10
  Here is some Doctor Who books, but not the ones you gave me.
• 4:12
  These ones I've already got duplicates of, so that those
• 4:16
  were the starters. And I think once I got into
• 4:19
  Doctor Who for the repeat season, Time Meddler, Mind
• 4:22
  Robber and Sea Devils, I went, well, I've got some Doctor Who
• 4:25
  books, I'll read them. So I started reading them and I
• 4:29
  got into them and I demolished them.
• 4:32
  And you know, the Romans is unique in the way it's
• 4:36
  presented. Which one did you pick up first?
• 4:40
  It was the invisible enemy first.
• 4:41
  It is the slightly shorter of the two.
• 4:43
  And so I thought, if I bear in mind I hadn't really started,
• 4:47
  wouldn't say I was a voracious reader at this point in my life.
• 4:49
  I think the only novel I'd ever read by this point was
• 4:51
  Frankenstein when I was about 9:00.
• 4:53
  That's quite a hard book for a nine year old.
• 4:57
  It's it's a great book and I think that was part of my
• 4:59
  problem. Although I ended up doing like
• 5:01
  English literature at school. None of them quite or everything
• 5:05
  was then compared to well, Frankenstein was quite a a good
• 5:08
  read. I really got into that and I
• 5:09
  never quite quite quite found anything up to that level again.
• 5:12
  It's. Annoying, isn't it?
• 5:13
  I did it with Christie. I read Murder Roger Ackroyd,
• 5:16
  which just blew my mind, and then I never read another
• 5:19
  Christie that blew my mind like that one again.
• 5:21
  It was all downhill from there. On and I'm enjoying the Voyage
• 5:25
  of Christie at the moment, but that's probably for another
• 5:28
  time, I'll say. Coming to Hamster, top ten and
• 5:31
  bottom 10 Agatha Christie's Gareth Boli.
• 5:36
  I'm only through the first half of the Poirot set.
• 5:38
  I'm literally buying them at the moment because thank.
• 5:40
  You when you're done. All right, yeah.
• 5:43
  Podcast episode into anything all right.
• 5:46
  Well, my son's reading them as well at the same time as me.
• 5:48
  So between us, he, I think he's about two books ahead of me at
• 5:51
  the moment. So we're kind of, we're kind of
• 5:53
  then talking about them afterwards.
• 5:55
  And yeah, it's, it's been a nice thing.
• 5:57
  So you devoured. You devoured the invisible enemy
• 6:00
  and the Romans. Yep.
• 6:02
  And well, this is where things start to get interesting.
• 6:07
  So at this point I had a another Doctor Who book that opened up
• 6:12
  the world of Doctor Who to me. Everything that is there, the
• 6:15
  archaeology of the show, shall we say.
• 6:17
  And that sort of became my Bible because then I wanted to, you
• 6:22
  know, videos weren't really readily available back then.
• 6:26
  So it's like, well, then the only way I can get into the back
• 6:28
  of history of this show is through reading the books.
• 6:31
  I'd seen some in the local library where I used to be.
• 6:33
  So I started going in and taking out different target books every
• 6:37
  so often. We were going back.
• 6:39
  And eventually that got to a point whereby the librarians got
• 6:42
  to know me really well. And they said one year, look,
• 6:46
  we, we want to buy some new books.
• 6:50
  Would you be interested in looking at what books are
• 6:52
  available to buy? Because you're coming in and
• 6:53
  reading so many Doctor Who books?
• 6:55
  I had to go walk around the other side of the librarian's
• 6:58
  counter and, you know, pluck through the old acorn keypad
• 7:02
  and. Doctors, right?
• 7:04
  What have you got? Well, yeah, they originally let
• 7:08
  me go through the whole Rotherham catalogue that existed
• 7:13
  to see what there any I could order in from different places.
• 7:15
  And then it was, you know, we've got these other ones.
• 7:17
  And by that point, I'm like, white darkness, yes.
• 7:21
  All. New Adventures.
• 7:22
  Are slipping in now. Also at the same time, a similar
• 7:26
  thing happened at school, in the school library, they got to know
• 7:30
  me quite well because I was going in the library quite a
• 7:32
  lot. And I think, I think then I was
• 7:34
  getting they had a smattering the targets, not much, but I was
• 7:38
  then getting some of the more thicker Star Trek books, pawns
• 7:41
  and symbols is that pawn was that that was a bit of a lengthy
• 7:45
  1 to get through. And they got to know me and my
• 7:48
  one of my teachers was the head of English as well.
• 7:51
  Who you run the library and said, look, we're ordering some
• 7:53
  stuff. What would you recommend?
• 7:54
  And I went well, new adventures and missing adventures are
• 7:58
  coming in at the moment. It'd be nice to nice to read.
• 8:01
  Them if you were determining what books the entire population
• 8:05
  of your town were reading. Well, if if there are people.
• 8:08
  That are that are in the Rotherham library system and
• 8:11
  you're reading a Doctor Who book.
• 8:12
  Chances are it's one of the ones that I picked.
• 8:15
  You've got him to blame all right if it's a terrible target.
• 8:18
  I hold my hands up for that and I was just trying to fill gaps
• 8:21
  I'd not got at that. Point as well.
• 8:22
  I I'd know now I do have to take you to South.
• 8:24
  Are you trying to tell me that because of you that innocent
• 8:29
  children going to the library of that school were picking up
• 8:33
  transit and other such explicit volumes?
• 8:36
  Now then transit was in one of the libraries, but you know all.
• 8:41
  Honestly, I couldn't tell you which.
• 8:44
  I bet they didn't read it first to just the vet it did they.
• 8:47
  But this was the interesting thing.
• 8:49
  So like the targets, the new adventures and missing
• 8:52
  adventures I was kind of hopping in and out of.
• 8:54
  Yeah. So I'm literally picking up the
• 8:56
  odd ones here and there. There's no long continuation.
• 8:58
  It's just me popping in and out of these stories, and for a long
• 9:03
  time, that's how a lot of my experience, a Doctor Who was,
• 9:06
  because by this point in the early 90s, we're getting what a
• 9:09
  smattering of repeats on the TV. Roundabout 93 is when I start
• 9:15
  buying the videos, so they start to trickle in as well, but I'm
• 9:18
  still following the books. 93, I think, is where I pick my first
• 9:23
  new adventure. I buy myself when I'm on work
• 9:26
  experience going down to the Space Center and go iceberg yoke
• 9:32
  and then you get to the late 90s.
• 9:37
  So I'm heading off to university at this time and I when I got to
• 9:43
  the digs there, I didn't have ATV for the first year.
• 9:47
  I didn't have time for TV and like David mentioned on his top
• 9:52
  ten, nor did I have time to socialise.
• 9:55
  You were given an assignment a week, and so you literally got
• 9:59
  it on a Monday. You'd go off and research it for
• 10:02
  two days, you'd write it and then.
• 10:03
  But basically this churn happened all year, but I didn't
• 10:06
  have much. Time to read?
• 10:07
  Then no. Yeah, because I make a rule of
• 10:11
  trying to read at least 50 pages a day minimum, isn't?
• 10:14
  That just what you're doing now, isn't it?
• 10:16
  Yeah. That's what.
• 10:16
  That's what it all stands. For.
• 10:19
  Which keeps me honest on it, even if it's a book I really
• 10:21
  hate. There is a year of darkness in
• 10:23
  my history where I read Wilkie Collins Moonstone at the
• 10:26
  recommendation of my English Literature teacher, and I didn't
• 10:29
  read another book for a year. The darkest literary year of
• 10:33
  your life. Yeah, she went.
• 10:35
  You should tell me phrases. Oh, you'll love this, Gareth.
• 10:37
  You, you like stuff like this. You love it.
• 10:38
  All right, read it. Yeah, it didn't go down well.
• 10:43
  That's how I feel about being forced to read the Dalek
• 10:45
  Generation, you know, even though it was my choice.
• 10:50
  We'll get there, We'll get there.
• 10:54
  Yeah, so, so when when I went to university, there was the
• 10:57
  opportunity then to read the books, more books.
• 11:01
  And Virgin had finished at that point, so they were out the
• 11:05
  window. But Doctor Who magazine had an
• 11:09
  advert on the back of one of them.
• 11:10
  And I must admit I haven't had time to find out which issue or
• 11:12
  when it was, but they basically went, we are pulping the New
• 11:16
  Adventures. And these are what are available
• 11:19
  to buy before they're pulped. It's one advert on the back of
• 11:23
  one Doctor Room magazine, and I basically went through and
• 11:26
  ordered everything. I'd not got they.
• 11:28
  Pulped them What the remainders? Yeah, so.
• 11:33
  I just hate the idea of books being destroyed.
• 11:36
  I know. And so so I got a load of those
• 11:38
  so that then I meant I could finish off all the new
• 11:41
  adventures while I was at university.
• 11:43
  That was my reading in that first year at university.
• 11:46
  Also a nice nest egg there Gareth as well.
• 11:49
  Yeah, well, this is it. I mean, I didn't get my copy of
• 11:52
  Dying Days there. A friend of mine gave me that
• 11:57
  for my 21st birthday. It was his copy.
• 12:00
  It was the only book he had. And he basically went ego
• 12:02
  Gareth, that's yours. And I was like, Are you sure?
• 12:05
  You may not know this, but that's worth £700.
• 12:07
  Thank you very much. But.
• 12:11
  Yeah, it's the EDASI was determined not to get as caught
• 12:17
  out as I had with the New Adventures.
• 12:19
  So I've tried to pre-order Devil Goblins and eight doctors from
• 12:23
  AWH Smiths in Sheffield thinking that was a savvy thing to do.
• 12:26
  No, they never got them. So I think for for almost a year
• 12:31
  or two, and I want to say it was a year, not two years, but for
• 12:34
  at least a year they never bothered getting them.
• 12:37
  So what I got at that time was my brother who worked in a
• 12:40
  speciality shop in Meadowhall to buy me discounted EDAS and PDAs.
• 12:47
  But I made a promise to myself which was I would not start
• 12:51
  hopping about on the Ed as as I had done with the new
• 12:55
  adventures, kind of just grabbing them as I can when I've
• 12:57
  seen them or I'm at a library fair and go, oh, that's a copy
• 13:00
  of mine. Well, I'll have that now and
• 13:01
  I'll go read. When read that it was like, no,
• 13:03
  I will read them sequentially. So I won't progress from 8
• 13:06
  doctors till I get vampire science and I won't progress
• 13:08
  from vampire science to get bodies.
• 13:09
  And I was, so I would experience that narrative that way around
• 13:14
  and where I was studying at the time, which for enough is where
• 13:18
  I live now. They used to have a market on a
• 13:22
  Tuesday, a second hand market. A second hand bookshop in the
• 13:26
  market, yes, Yeah. So we're having cruelly as well.
• 13:29
  So I used to peruse that every Tuesday that would be my my go.
• 13:34
  And I was picking up videos back then as well of various TV
• 13:37
  shows. So I like stacks of videos there
• 13:39
  because I eventually got ATV in my second year.
• 13:42
  You had that? Feeling in your gut of
• 13:43
  excitement as you would approach the market stall like I did,
• 13:47
  thinking what have they got this time?
• 13:48
  Especially because they'd have them out where they've got the
• 13:50
  spines facing. So you'd get the you'd have to
• 13:53
  get really up close and personal to see the little image and go.
• 13:58
  But then from there that then progressed into so I sort of cut
• 14:01
  my brother off and went, I'm not, I'm not getting them from
• 14:03
  you anymore because I know I can get them from here.
• 14:05
  SO1 keeps bringing their collection and putting them on
• 14:07
  this stall. And then eventually there was
• 14:09
  another book shop that opened up around the corner.
• 14:12
  So my Tuesdays before going off to the theatre for the lectures
• 14:17
  was to go around the second hand market, scan every individual
• 14:20
  store which you jump in all around the place, go to this
• 14:24
  bookshop and the bookshop eventually started getting the
• 14:26
  BBC novels and doing it for like 3 for a fiver.
• 14:30
  Oh great. And so, well, that's where I
• 14:34
  started sort of like buying about six of them are walking
• 14:37
  out. That's where the Sex and the
• 14:39
  City book came from that I mentioned in our chat to the
• 14:41
  other day, because I went, I went in at the end of one of
• 14:44
  these little jaunts, picked up five books and went, well,
• 14:48
  that's five Doctor O books. I need a six, I need a six.
• 14:52
  Picked up a copy of Sex and the City and went oh God that was a
• 14:56
  book. That'll turn.
• 14:58
  No, no. I picked up a copy of Judge Red,
• 15:00
  a Judge Red novel, and went great.
• 15:02
  And then at that point I clocked me watch.
• 15:04
  I went, oh God, I've got 10 minutes to get to the lecture.
• 15:07
  I can remember putting a book down.
• 15:09
  I can. Remember.
• 15:10
  Taking. All the six bucks to.
• 15:11
  The counter I can remember buying.
• 15:14
  Them bringing them in my. Bag lecture happens, go home and
• 15:18
  the the digs I was living at the time, it was all girls that
• 15:21
  lived there as well. I walked downstairs and went,
• 15:26
  you won't believe what I've just done.
• 15:28
  And they're like, what? What have you done?
• 15:29
  I'm like, I picked up Sex in the City by accident and they're
• 15:35
  like, oh, well, we can read it. We can.
• 15:36
  I was. Going to say did you read it?
• 15:39
  Yeah, if I bought it, I read it. 50 pages a day.
• 15:44
  Yeah. Oh my God, how was it?
• 15:46
  Please enlighten us. I think I was a bit disappointed
• 15:50
  because by that point everyone was beginning at the TV show.
• 15:52
  It just come out round about then.
• 15:54
  So everyone was going, oh, this is the greatest.
• 15:55
  And I just read it and went, yeah, this isn't for me.
• 15:58
  Any Daleks, sidemen, autons in it?
• 16:00
  I'm afraid not. I'm afraid not.
• 16:02
  Tiny wimey paradoxes. Alien spaceships over America.
• 16:07
  No, Oh no, it wouldn't. Interest me at all?
• 16:09
  Now it, it didn't last long in, in my own collection, let's put
• 16:13
  it that way. But yeah, it's but this is this
• 16:16
  is the point to make as well about any book that I get.
• 16:18
  If I buy the book then I will read it.
• 16:20
  I'm pretty much the same, maybe not straight away but I will.
• 16:23
  Always get around. Oh God no.
• 16:25
  I mean, I've got, I've got a stash of books at the other end
• 16:28
  here though. That's my reading pile.
• 16:30
  And then obviously there's some of my wife stuff I want to go
• 16:32
  through that I keep seeing every so often, like Life of Pi and
• 16:35
  stuff like that where I'm like, Oh yeah, I will get the answer
• 16:37
  reading that I've been looking forward to doing.
• 16:41
  That an easy read as well. You'll get through that the day
• 16:43
  the the read you read. Yeah, no, no, it's there's only
• 16:46
  a handful of books that I've ever got through in a day, but
• 16:51
  I've I've got, I'm really engrossed in it.
• 16:54
  The one that I really refused to leave the coffee shop for one
• 16:57
  morning was Ben Elton's Time and Time Again.
• 17:02
  If you want a time travel story, read that it is worth.
• 17:08
  It is right now. Just place it is.
• 17:10
  Worth getting to the end for that revelation, and I wish I
• 17:14
  could. I would extol the virtues of
• 17:16
  that revelation because on that book, it's a slightly different
• 17:20
  book to all his other Hoover. I think it's all some of them a
• 17:24
  bit more edgy, a bit more comedic and he just got a bit
• 17:26
  more serious part way through his runs.
• 17:28
  But this book, there's no comedy in it.
• 17:31
  You'd be forgiven for the kid might be along the the Stephen
• 17:34
  King line, but it is a shocking revelation at the end.
• 17:38
  I found when I read it to the point of I didn't see it coming
• 17:42
  and that surprised me. But you know, it's heist me.
• 17:46
  You interest me, Gareth. I I've I've skipped me on time
• 17:49
  tracks and gone on to something else so.
• 17:51
  No, I mean, it's a book club. We're talking about a book, you
• 17:54
  know. And I can in.
• 17:55
  The city Bennelton. Who gives a fuck about Doctor
• 17:58
  Who? If everyone hasn't realized my
• 18:00
  eating is somewhat esoteric, you know it's an.
• 18:04
  Idiosyncratic. I was going for but you know I.
• 18:07
  Like to try my hand at everything.
• 18:09
  Oh, really? Well, well, so well, hang on.
• 18:12
  Wait, you've got, So you are, you've got this shopper that's
• 18:15
  available now and you're buying all the BBC books and you're
• 18:19
  going to read them in order. So did you do that?
• 18:22
  Yes I did OK and all the way through to pre ordering at the
• 18:26
  very end of it the Gallifrey Chronicles.
• 18:28
  So I literally got to enjoy that entire run of the BBC range of
• 18:34
  release, which was. An all.
• 18:36
  It's an experience, you know, in in a century other than the big
• 18:40
  finished stuff that was coming out, that was the ongoing
• 18:43
  doctoral narrative that never seemed to stop.
• 18:45
  It was absolutely mine. That was my first original
• 18:48
  ongoing Doctor Who narrative, which is why it held such a
• 18:51
  place in my heart. Yeah, and I and I can totally
• 18:54
  understand that because the way the new adventures do it not
• 19:00
  quite the same way as the Edas. They are very separate entities
• 19:03
  with virtues on both sides. Absolutely.
• 19:07
  Virtues and vices on both sides. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:10
  But you can see the development of the Doctor a bit more in the
• 19:15
  Edas because he's you're only a book character.
• 19:19
  I think by the time you get into him, you have that one
• 19:21
  appearance in the TV movie. I think you get a lot of people
• 19:23
  in the early part of the EDA from what I remember.
• 19:26
  All those years ago, 20 odd years ago when I last read those
• 19:29
  books. They were.
• 19:32
  They did the repetition thing. That no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 19:35
  No, no, that's about the TV movie Sam.
• 19:37
  Sam, Sam, we got a lot, didn't we?
• 19:40
  But even to this day, I think there's there is one line in the
• 19:43
  books that still sticks in my head and I think is he trading
• 19:47
  futures where he's got the iguana on him and he just turns
• 19:50
  around to Sam just because won't have an iguana.
• 19:53
  Don't know why that sticks in my head all this time later it.
• 19:57
  Happens to me as well, just rando lines from nowhere.
• 20:00
  But yeah, so the books literally carried me through that entire
• 20:04
  wilderness years. And those were Doctor Who to me
• 20:07
  when this thing I was learning about the series I was going
• 20:09
  through, but as a time I was coming to the series, by the
• 20:12
  time I'd read the book, probably most of them.
• 20:16
  So the books primarily are what built my Doctor Who world out.
• 20:20
  That's amazing. So they've been quite a bit to
• 20:22
  you then? And so you can imagine my
• 20:25
  disappointment then when we get to 2005 and you get the new
• 20:30
  series books. Yes, I'm hearing this a lot.
• 20:33
  Yeah, now. Yeah, it was a marketing choice,
• 20:39
  wasn't it, and a successful one at that.
• 20:42
  It is. And the the nice thing about
• 20:45
  this last year, and I'm trying to keep me powder a little bit
• 20:48
  dry for some of the stuff I've got in here, is that I, I think
• 20:53
  we were talking about beforehand.
• 20:54
  I like to understand why I don't like something.
• 20:56
  It helps me understand me a bit more, helps me understand how I
• 21:01
  interact with something. And so those new series
• 21:05
  adventures, I wanted to get to the bottom of them.
• 21:07
  So, you know, I, I bought the 1st 9:00 because, you know, I've
• 21:12
  been buying the BBC range up to that point.
• 21:14
  And there is a little part of me that was like, I don't like the
• 21:17
  hardback format because it takes up an extra bit of shell space.
• 21:21
  For every two hardbacks, you can get three paperbacks on your
• 21:24
  shelf. Surely BBC, you're doing
• 21:26
  yourself out of people buying them because of the job.
• 21:28
  I've got nowhere to put them on. What, how long?
• 21:30
  How am I going to fit them on the shelves?
• 21:32
  Trust. Me, Gareth, people bought those
• 21:34
  books. Well, this is it.
• 21:37
  Even when I've, I'm getting ahead of myself now, so I'll,
• 21:41
  I'll bring, bring it back to where we were.
• 21:43
  So, so I read those nine books and I basically said to myself,
• 21:45
  well, I'm not going to buy any more now that that's, that's me
• 21:47
  done. I I haven't particularly enjoyed
• 21:50
  them. Not that there's anything wrong
• 21:51
  with those particular authors. The books just weren't the style
• 21:55
  I've been used to, but I saw as the more adult style.
• 22:00
  The EDASPDAS New Adventures missing, but it felt like a bit
• 22:03
  of a backward step. But they were.
• 22:05
  Never going to pair up the TV series with Transit and Times
• 22:10
  Crucible and and books like that because the kids watching the TV
• 22:14
  show were always going to read the books, right?
• 22:17
  Absolutely, absolutely. They were.
• 22:19
  And you know, there is, there is that point as well about the
• 22:23
  price hike on them all. When you think that the original
• 22:27
  New Adventures were what, £3.00 when they first came out and
• 22:30
  they now you're looking at 1599 for the current hardbacks, I
• 22:33
  believe. Yeah.
• 22:36
  And I believe the BBC said when they first released the EDA they
• 22:39
  will be cheaper than the Virgin range.
• 22:41
  That never happened, did it? There we go.
• 22:44
  But I basically said to myself I'll only buy them if I see them
• 22:48
  cheap and buy cheap. It was charity shops.
• 22:51
  Oh well. You won't be disappointed now
• 22:54
  they're always in charity shops. Well, this is where this gets
• 22:56
  interesting, because I picked the odd one or two up and I did
• 22:59
  read them and every so often my reaction was pretty much the
• 23:03
  same. It's like, yeah, OK.
• 23:05
  I. Get it?
• 23:05
  I don't get it. And then a couple of years ago I
• 23:10
  came across something and I'm we'll be covering it when we
• 23:15
  talk about it. But basically that opened my
• 23:18
  eyes and went, I think I get it now why I'm not liking this
• 23:21
  series. And then last year I started
• 23:26
  listening to the hamster book clubs.
• 23:29
  Oh, bless you, you were sane before then.
• 23:33
  Well, I was, I was probably a bit more financially sound,
• 23:36
  shall we say, back then because what the hamster book clubs?
• 23:39
  Sorry. What the Hamster book clubs
• 23:41
  ultimately let me do. And actually there are a number
• 23:44
  of these authors that I've liked up of the years, some some we've
• 23:48
  got some great work behind them, some I've never touched on
• 23:50
  before. Why am I denying myself the
• 23:54
  opportunity to read their other works?
• 23:57
  And so basically from last year up to now, I have gone back and
• 24:01
  bought all of the new series books.
• 24:04
  Oh wow. I mean, I've seen some pictures.
• 24:06
  He was reading Martha in the mirror recently.
• 24:09
  I saw that picture up on your social media.
• 24:10
  Not not a bad one actually, especially this time of year
• 24:13
  around Halloween now. In fact, actually recommended
• 24:16
  that one to me, son. I don't think he'll pick me up
• 24:18
  on it because he not really into the sci-fi fantasy thing, but I
• 24:21
  So at the moment as I sit here, I currently have a stack of
• 24:25
  books over there that I've not read from In the blood onwards.
• 24:30
  OK, so I've got. Goodies.
• 24:33
  I've got the three Capaldi ones. That blood cell and it's the bus
• 24:38
  or the James Goss one. That's a brilliant book.
• 24:41
  Yeah, so I've got, I've got a whole row.
• 24:42
  I've got all the Jodie Whittaker ones to go through.
• 24:46
  The good doctor is a banger, yeah.
• 24:48
  I've got the Tardis Diaries. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:52
  I don't like that. Secret Vault 13, Maze of Doom,
• 24:57
  and then I've got the literary crossovers still to do.
• 25:02
  The only ones I've not gone out and picked up is the novellas
• 25:05
  I've got. I've, I've bought a couple of
• 25:07
  them, but that is mainly because like a lot of people have said
• 25:10
  on this podcast, I did try the Telus novellas.
• 25:12
  I think I've got about half of them and the timing relative was
• 25:16
  great, kind of drops off after that for me to the point where I
• 25:21
  think some of them I couldn't even tell you what happened in.
• 25:23
  I know, I've read them. Well, weren't they?
• 25:25
  They were very pricey. Yeah, well, I, it's funny, we
• 25:28
  should talk about this because I was trying to follow someone on
• 25:30
  eBay the other day because I thought, you know, is it worth
• 25:33
  me trying to pick the others up? And there was some very nice
• 25:35
  signature ones going on eBay and they went for about £35 a pop by
• 25:41
  the time we got to the end of it.
• 25:45
  I've got a limit I won't pay more than £30 for one of these
• 25:48
  books. So I scour off of these new
• 25:50
  adventures and things. I won't, I won't tip £30.
• 25:53
  Well my bargain of this year and will probably the last bargain
• 25:56
  of my days is the well mannered war for £20 do.
• 26:00
  You know I got blood heat the other day.
• 26:03
  Abebooks for 7 lbs and 2 lbs postage from America.
• 26:09
  That's amazing. It turned up yesterday coming to
• 26:13
  a book club near. You guys are very.
• 26:15
  Well, add it to the list. It's a great book.
• 26:17
  Yeah. Yeah, no.
• 26:19
  And, and I love, I love the way that Doctor Who magazine used to
• 26:21
  run the comic strips to coincide with them.
• 26:23
  So think about that time there was a Silorian strip that they
• 26:26
  ran with. Oh, it was a good one as well.
• 26:29
  Yeah, what was the? Artist name, because that's when
• 26:30
  I got into the magazine round that time.
• 26:32
  So this was like, whoa, this whole world connects up somehow.
• 26:35
  So there was and that. Preludes.
• 26:37
  They used to do as well, didn't they?
• 26:38
  With a little a little couple of pages just to guide you into
• 26:42
  that with the tone of the feel of the book.
• 26:44
  So this was the other thing, Doctor Who magazine was
• 26:46
  funnelling me towards the books as well.
• 26:48
  So there were in some ways there was no way I wasn't going to end
• 26:51
  up in this. And you know, when I was at uni,
• 26:53
  I used to frequent another bookshop that I used to talk to
• 26:57
  someone that worked in there every so often and say, like,
• 26:59
  what new books have you got in? But because of that, there is a
• 27:02
  shelf down here you can't see that's full of Star Trek books
• 27:05
  and an entire two boxes full of Star Trek books that still
• 27:08
  stacked out behind me. Oh my good God, You're never
• 27:11
  going to have any kind of a life, you know, reading all
• 27:12
  these science fiction books. Well, I've read them all.
• 27:15
  I've been. Read.
• 27:18
  When when I think I messaged you last year when you did damaged
• 27:20
  goods. Go on.
• 27:23
  Because I said to you at the time, you know, I actually
• 27:26
  picked up damaged goods again following your book club episode
• 27:29
  because I've been looking for a way to get back into rereading
• 27:32
  some of these because I've read them and I put them down.
• 27:35
  Most of these are like over 25 years ago that I read them.
• 27:39
  God now said that out loud. I think I've actually depressed
• 27:41
  myself 25 years ago. It's a long time.
• 27:43
  Like a heartbeat, Gareth. Honestly.
• 27:45
  Yeah, but because of that, it's like I wanted an excuse to come
• 27:50
  back to them. I'm very rarely gone back to a
• 27:52
  book, I think. I think I read Casino Royale,
• 27:57
  was it last year or the year before?
• 27:58
  And that was the first book I'd gone back to read from like 25
• 28:02
  years ago when I first read it. So pleasing because we've got a
• 28:05
  whole list of books that you're going to be rereading and.
• 28:09
  Well, like I said, when you send something out, I think you'll
• 28:12
  find on the first one that goes, Yep, Yep, right.
• 28:14
  I'm on it. Because we've got Rod in our
• 28:16
  book club, you know, Gareth, it means we've got, this is the
• 28:19
  only book club that's got a spreadsheet because Rod loves a
• 28:21
  spreadsheet. And I mean when you see that
• 28:24
  list of books, it's almost daunting, isn't it?
• 28:26
  There's loads on there. The latest 1 is a tome in
• 28:29
  itself. The latest is 3 in one.
• 28:34
  I, I, I can't wait. I tell you we're going to need
• 28:36
  look ups and count ifs before we're done on this spreadsheet.
• 28:39
  And plus, it'll be another 25 years, but we're bloody down as
• 28:43
  well. I look forward to the adventure,
• 28:46
  you know. Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
• 28:48
  The the nice thing about this, and we kind of touched now a
• 28:52
  little bit, I think when we're doing C and I, is that
• 28:54
  everyone's got their own view on it.
• 28:56
  Yeah. And I, and I am fascinated to
• 28:58
  hear those views, the stories behind the stories.
• 29:01
  I like the opposing views, you know.
• 29:03
  Yeah. And because there's four of us,
• 29:05
  there's such a mix, isn't there? Oh, yeah.
• 29:08
  And everyone's sort of started the books at different times and
• 29:11
  has different loves of different ranges.
• 29:13
  And you also get a wider experience because there's some
• 29:15
  stuff you might just gloss over when you're reading it and
• 29:17
  someone else has talked and gone, Oh no, this happened.
• 29:19
  You're like, Oh my God. You start seeing.
• 29:22
  That how did I miss? That or, or sometimes you've
• 29:25
  lost in the patterns that we all thought were there and actually
• 29:28
  it's done very badly indeed, you know?
• 29:30
  Yeah, yeah, it just turned out to be Sam Jones all along.
• 29:33
  Oh well, all roads lead to Sam Jones.
• 29:35
  You know, they certainly didn't offer this episode.
• 29:38
  Any yes, yes it did. OK, well, I mean, I've got a I'm
• 29:42
  going to make an assumption now then that you're something of an
• 29:45
  Oracle on Doctor Who books because, you know, of all the
• 29:48
  people I've spoken to, I think you may have read the most of
• 29:50
  all. I.
• 29:52
  Don't know about that. I'm I'm sure there's there's
• 29:54
  going to be other people that's read more than me.
• 29:55
  They've probably finished everything.
• 29:58
  I mean, I haven't got the Dark Smith legacy.
• 30:00
  Oh, I've got that as well, but I've not read it yet.
• 30:02
  Not bad. I'm quite surprised actually at
• 30:04
  how many I've picked up over the last sort of 10 years.
• 30:06
  I haven't read, but that's great.
• 30:08
  Every book I look at I go, oh, that's another book club
• 30:10
  episode. How exciting.
• 30:11
  You know, I kept to talk to my mates reading that one.
• 30:15
  Well look, shall we attack this list then of yours and I'm going
• 30:21
  to ask you, would you rather start off positively or
• 30:24
  negatively? Because wherever you start, of
• 30:26
  course, the opposite is where you're going to end.
• 30:29
  Well, just because I like a nice crescendo, I'm starting.
• 30:33
  Negatively. Oh, I want to start positively.
• 30:37
  My reason for this is because my top negative book was actually
• 30:43
  only decided upon this week. Exciting.
• 30:47
  And it even surprised me when I picked it because I hadn't had
• 30:51
  this originally in my list at all.
• 30:55
  Oh. You just suddenly thought, yeah,
• 30:57
  that one. Yeah, literally, literally
• 31:02
  happens. I mean, I love an improvised
• 31:04
  list, especially what mine was. I think I've written 3 reviews
• 31:09
  and Goodreads in my time and and this is one of them and I and I
• 31:14
  really wanted to Chuck this one out of the window when I read
• 31:17
  it. No, I'm not going to check good
• 31:18
  praise, because the joy of doing these episodes is the madness
• 31:23
  that is thrown at me throughout the list.
• 31:25
  Oh yeah, yeah. Wow.
• 31:27
  Not to give it away. So and have you done these
• 31:30
  sequentially? Are you going 12:50 or is it
• 31:32
  just any order? 12:50 So right here just off to
• 31:35
  my right gentle folks, I have my 2 piles.
• 31:42
  Oh, how amazing. Are you going to pick them up as
• 31:44
  you go or Yep? Yep, they are literally primed
• 31:47
  and ready in order. OK, I can't wait.
• 31:52
  Well come on then, phrase a book phrase B2.
• 31:57
  Let's go for it. So I referenced this one when we
• 32:00
  were talking about some sort of Bible that clued me in on how I
• 32:08
  got into Doctor Who. So the funniest thing about this
• 32:11
  book, because I do like a little little story to go with it go
• 32:14
  on, is my when I was a kid, I used to get 65 PA week comic
• 32:21
  money. That's a fortune.
• 32:23
  That is a. Fortune, Gareth, you were
• 32:25
  spoiled. That meant, like I said to my
• 32:26
  mom, oh, there was 11 comic one year at 45 P.
• 32:30
  She did not let me do that. You'll never look after it.
• 32:33
  You'll never look after it. Yeah, I still have it to this
• 32:35
  day. I was laughing now, he says,
• 32:38
  looking at the comic books that are all out of shop.
• 32:40
  But anyway, she's racist glasses.
• 32:42
  There, you know. Throwing shade at his mother.
• 32:45
  Oh don't worry, I'd I'd do it to her if she was here, she knows
• 32:48
  that. So anyway, admittedly she boxed
• 32:51
  me around the air for it, but the my mum this particular trip
• 32:57
  took it upon herself to use our pocket money, not at the behest
• 33:01
  of us. So normally I would say to him,
• 33:02
  well, I want Transformers, want Thundercats or all this has come
• 33:06
  out to get me that oh. Yeah.
• 33:07
  Yeah, oh God, if they reprinted them I'd be all over that.
• 33:10
  Especially when they did the remapping of Third Earth and all
• 33:14
  the Thundercats had to split up and go and look at remapping the
• 33:17
  whole land to rebuild the planet.
• 33:19
  Gareth, I just loved Mum rather than ever living, you know?
• 33:22
  I mean, he was the character I always wanted to win.
• 33:25
  Yeah. Oh, I tell you what then if you
• 33:28
  if you want to giggle, there is a Masses of the Universe versus
• 33:32
  Thunder catch you can get where Mumrah is powdered down and
• 33:36
  drunk by skeletal Oh. Please.
• 33:39
  Oh, OK, I shall. Look into that gorgeous artwork,
• 33:43
  William. Oh God, what's the chap's name?
• 33:46
  Surname. But it's a good read anyway.
• 33:48
  There we go it. Was a great villain though.
• 33:50
  Yeah, sorry, back to the Bible. To the list that we're talking
• 33:53
  about. So anyway, so my mom took this
• 33:55
  money and she bought a copy of this book or 49P.
• 34:01
  So we got change. She bought one for me, she
• 34:04
  bought one for my brother. My brother took one look at this
• 34:07
  and threw it at her. Oh.
• 34:09
  Threw it at her What? Literally.
• 34:11
  Yeah, because he wanted to, rather.
• 34:13
  Have I'd have thrown it back at him.
• 34:15
  He'd have rather have had the money at the time.
• 34:18
  What is it? I'm scared.
• 34:21
  No. Well, it has made an appearance
• 34:23
  on one of these before. Oh, OK.
• 34:26
  It is the 1992 Doctor Who Yearbook.
• 34:30
  Oh, hail the yearbook with the sea devil on the cover.
• 34:34
  Yeah, and absolutely gorgeous Pearson.
• 34:37
  Oh, I know. Artwork, OH.
• 34:41
  Can you please turn it to the middle bit please where the
• 34:44
  episode guide is? Now this is this is the Bible I
• 34:47
  was referring. To I mean, I'm already hot in
• 34:48
  this room so I'm damp now. If you if you recall, there were
• 34:52
  these little symbols which I'm you probably won't be able to
• 34:55
  see here. There was a diamond symbol.
• 34:57
  I can't remember what that was. The little circle denoted when
• 35:00
  there was a novel, which is where this feature is there in
• 35:04
  my tail. Go on.
• 35:06
  So you know that there's four of them that haven't got the little
• 35:09
  circles on which is Shard, Pirate Planet, City of Death,
• 35:13
  Revelation, Resurrection, and all the rest of them.
• 35:16
  And there were books. So this is what I went through
• 35:20
  to find out what books I had to go through to discover the
• 35:23
  entirety of the saga that is Doctor Who.
• 35:28
  This particular copy is my second copy of this.
• 35:33
  Oh OK, that's not your original. My original I still have it is
• 35:37
  in this one of these boxes just here off to the left of me, but
• 35:40
  the pages have fallen out in the middle.
• 35:42
  Yeah, my mine. Is yeah.
• 35:44
  So I got, I bought myself a replacement one a few years ago
• 35:48
  because I couldn't bear not seeing it again.
• 35:51
  And the other thing that's quite nice about this is there the
• 35:55
  Brief Encounters. Oh yes.
• 35:58
  One of which I didn't realize till I popped this in my pile
• 36:01
  the other day. In My Best Pile is written by
• 36:03
  Colin Baker. Oh, is it really?
• 36:06
  Yeah, there is a 2 page. You know a.
• 36:09
  Two page spread called the deal and it's actually written by him
• 36:13
  and when you read it blooming sounds like him or not, it's
• 36:17
  it's it's it's wonderfully the vote.
• 36:20
  I'll. Bet.
• 36:21
  The comic strip's great in this. There is just so much to love
• 36:25
  about this book that, well, I bought a second copy.
• 36:30
  Just when you pick it up, I mean, I've got it down on the
• 36:32
  shelf and whenever it just gives me the tingles of back then,
• 36:36
  when I what was that? I was 12.
• 36:38
  Yeah, you know. I know and it's it's perfect.
• 36:40
  I mean, because I didn't want this to get lonely on the shelf.
• 36:43
  I even went and found the other yearbooks as well.
• 36:45
  I think I got one of them at the time and then went went back and
• 36:48
  got the others. But it was just whenever I
• 36:51
  picture, I think even David said this on his when you picture the
• 36:56
  series of what the episodes are you?
• 36:58
  See that guide. I see this guide.
• 37:00
  He's burned into my brain because I spent that in the
• 37:03
  picture of Sil that sits in the middle of season 22 and 23.
• 37:08
  I've just got him sat there and you know you can see the images.
• 37:11
  There's a box out, isn't there? With the power of the Daleks,
• 37:15
  the woman holding the baby with the Daleks coming down the
• 37:18
  corridor. Somewhere in that episode guide
• 37:21
  tell me I'm wrong. I am flipping through now it's.
• 37:24
  Like a big. Box and the woman's holding the
• 37:27
  baby, and the Daleks are coming up behind her.
• 37:29
  It's somewhere in that episode, Guy.
• 37:32
  Yes, I knew it. I knew it.
• 37:34
  At the start of the Tom Baker page.
• 37:35
  Oh, it's. Enticing, isn't it?
• 37:37
  Yeah, it, it, it is a work of of beauty, these yearbooks.
• 37:42
  But this is the one that cements it because there's a nice little
• 37:45
  intro at the beginning about all the doctors.
• 37:47
  So even by this point when I got this, I don't think I'd see any
• 37:52
  Tom or Peter by that point, I don't think, because obviously
• 37:56
  I've seen Colin on TV and Sylvester and obviously
• 37:58
  experienced the first 3. So this was my first intro to
• 38:01
  them in some ways, and it was just it was just astounding.
• 38:03
  But this most people talk about the program guy.
• 38:06
  Don't there's been there thing that gets them through this.
• 38:10
  This was mine. So this is your index.
• 38:14
  Terrestrial Index was for the comic side of things, but this
• 38:17
  was my program guide and like I say, is indelibly burned into my
• 38:22
  brain today. In the beginning was the word,
• 38:25
  and the word was the 1992 Doctor Who Yearbook.
• 38:29
  Works for me. Oh, what a great way to start.
• 38:33
  I mean, that's where David ended.
• 38:35
  That's where you're start. Whoa, come on in.
• 38:37
  You're being too positive. Now let's let's let's take the
• 38:41
  first book off your second pile of books.
• 38:44
  Right. So this one at #10 is a little
• 38:53
  disappointing. I generally I.
• 38:56
  Was on your bottom saying. Well, only because I'm caveating
• 39:01
  this one and the fact that I quite like the other works from
• 39:04
  these authors and I think you're lukewarm on them.
• 39:09
  Memory serves me right. OK.
• 39:11
  Or don't you have enough time to listen to me?
• 39:13
  Jesus. But this is one book that I
• 39:17
  recall getting at the time, and I recall nearly flinging across
• 39:22
  the room and feeling very uncomfortable about it, and it
• 39:25
  is one of the ones I've reread recently.
• 39:28
  Uncomfortable. And now?
• 39:29
  I have in trees. It is matrix.
• 39:35
  Oh, Perry and. Robert Perry and Mike Tucker.
• 39:39
  No, isn't it? It's extremely dark,
• 39:44
  uncomfortably so if I find, and I think that's my problem with
• 39:47
  this one. So I think the start start of
• 39:52
  A10 on these books is these guys obviously came in and wrote the
• 39:55
  7th doctor. Really the first PDA for the 7th
• 39:58
  doctor be wasn't part of the missing adventures range.
• 40:01
  So I think when I read illegal alien, I kind of booked against
• 40:04
  it a little bit because I want the 7th doctor, the time
• 40:08
  champion that I've seen doing doing stuff.
• 40:10
  I, I, I don't want to go back to this sort of post survival more
• 40:16
  towards ATV show than than I'd grown up with watching him.
• 40:19
  And. You know, the all illegal alien
• 40:23
  fly and the rest of the books thereafter I think kind of prime
• 40:27
  time and storm harness. Yeah.
• 40:31
  That they kind of, they kind of felt a bit more right in the era
• 40:34
  it was because then what I suddenly realized was, well
• 40:36
  actually what they've done is they've written their own year
• 40:38
  post survival. However, Matrix doesn't fit that
• 40:43
  mould. So one of the things I found out
• 40:46
  when when I want to pick this one up, this is actually the one
• 40:47
  that started me deciding, dear listener, that I was going to
• 40:50
  reread some of these that I've not read 25 that I had read 25
• 40:54
  years ago and revisit them just to see if my memory was still
• 40:58
  accurate. Because one of the things I used
• 41:00
  to do was score percentages on everything that I read.
• 41:02
  I had a little book that I wrote everything in and I gave them
• 41:04
  percentages. And about a couple of years ago
• 41:07
  when Goodreads came out, I transferred all those
• 41:09
  percentages into stars in the hope that I could get
• 41:12
  recommendations out of Goodreads.
• 41:14
  So I've actually gone back into Goodreads to see every star
• 41:17
  rating I've given every blooming Doctor Who book ever.
• 41:20
  And this is one of them that's at the bottom.
• 41:23
  And I can remember thinking, well, why, why?
• 41:26
  And my brain suddenly went, well, Jack the Ripper.
• 41:29
  It's the Jack the Ripper story that's that's a bit too not
• 41:32
  putting tended close to the bone.
• 41:35
  So I did a bit of research online because I thought maybe
• 41:40
  it's maybe it's me, you know, first and foremost.
• 41:43
  And then imagine my surprise when I then read the word the
• 41:46
  Valyard online and I'm going hang on a minute.
• 41:50
  I have no memory of the Valyard in this.
• 41:53
  And I'm pretty shrewd when the Valyard turns up because you'll
• 41:57
  hear me give the Valyard clack. So when that happens, because I
• 42:00
  quite like the Valyard and it just, it goes very dark, this
• 42:06
  book. So I think there's a couple of
• 42:08
  inherent problems with it #1 the Doctrine Ace are barely in it
• 42:12
  together. Now what made that combination
• 42:15
  of the 7th Doctrine Ace really work in the TV show was the fact
• 42:20
  that they were together. They they, they're very rarely
• 42:23
  apart for a long period of time, and it is a long period of time
• 42:28
  that are part in this book. I had big trouble visualizing.
• 42:34
  There's a moment when the 7th Doctor is circling Ace and he's
• 42:39
  swishing a long black cloak around him and he's got a piece
• 42:41
  of glass in his hand and he basically stabs her and it's
• 42:45
  like, what? Are you doing?
• 42:48
  I tend to visualize a lot of books, especially if it's ATV
• 42:53
  Titan, based on what I know from the TV.
• 42:58
  And so to me, all of Mccoy's stuff is shot on videotape.
• 43:02
  I see as videotape in my head. It is all done on on cameras.
• 43:07
  So multi camera. So I, I, this one doesn't seem
• 43:12
  to fit that mole and any jars. So the closest I can think of
• 43:16
  McCoy in this, if he was to do this is he did, he was the
• 43:20
  killer Michael Sands for that Channel 5 film he did in the
• 43:24
  early 90s with Channel 5's opening week.
• 43:28
  And he's he's he's more bumbling in that, but it's the most
• 43:30
  sinister he ever gets. And trying to equate that than
• 43:34
  with this very visceral 7th Doctor that starts appearing.
• 43:37
  He's like, now it don't it don't work for me.
• 43:40
  And then, you know, you work your way through the rest of the
• 43:43
  book and it's it's Ace getting used to life in Victorian
• 43:47
  London. And it doesn't really seem to go
• 43:50
  anywhere because she seems to just hop from the police to this
• 43:52
  Manor house. She's working into this whatever
• 43:55
  that hotel is, where she's stopping with the bloke who
• 43:57
  tries it home with her. And it ultimately culminates in
• 44:00
  a showdown where the Valeard turns up and actually he's got
• 44:04
  control of the Dark Matrix and he's making the Doctor do all
• 44:07
  these crazy things and you know you then it will will, is it the
• 44:10
  Doctor? That's the Ripper?
• 44:11
  Is it the Valeard, that's the Ripper.
• 44:13
  The book starts to refer to the Valeard as the Ripper when you
• 44:16
  get to the end of it. I just went.
• 44:17
  There is no wonder I hated this book when I was younger because
• 44:21
  I really don't like it now. It's too dark, it doesn't feel
• 44:27
  feel right and that is my problem with this book.
• 44:30
  It's like Perry and Tucker looked at the worst excesses of
• 44:34
  the 7th Doctor in the New Adventures and went, you know
• 44:36
  what? We can, we can do better than
• 44:38
  that. We can make it even darker than
• 44:40
  that. But it but.
• 44:42
  We I think if you put another doctor in there it might work.
• 44:45
  If you put colony. Of.
• 44:47
  Terrible with. A big bit of glass.
• 44:50
  That that could work though, because you've got a precedent
• 44:52
  for that with the twin dilemma. You know, you could, you could
• 44:55
  not accept that that's the wrong, wrong word to say, but
• 44:57
  you you could feel a bit easier with it doesn't even work.
• 45:00
  But he's saying it's a little more to see a man who
• 45:04
  predominantly plays the spoons and how thinks his enemy
• 45:07
  suddenly start walking around with a keep.
• 45:09
  Around and he's going round and I'm going to stab you back off.
• 45:14
  And he's gurning as well. McShane Dive.
• 45:17
  He's he's gurning in my face. He's also got the doing the
• 45:20
  eyebrow thing when he's got the Cape round his mouth here.
• 45:24
  Just yeah. I think they're trying to do
• 45:27
  this sort of labyrinthine, almost twin Peaksian style book,
• 45:32
  but they don't have the chops unfortunately.
• 45:36
  Like I I think Mike Tucker did write a couple of good Nsas,
• 45:41
  horror books for kids he was quite good at, but they just
• 45:45
  don't have the chops to to to form that world and to write the
• 45:50
  horror in a comfortable enough What?
• 45:52
  Yeah, it is messy. The Victorians just good the
• 45:56
  actor Victorians of the ace gets involved in.
• 45:58
  I think it probably needed the valley are taken out of it, but
• 46:01
  that doesn't add anything. You could have generic alien
• 46:04
  intelligence of the day involved.
• 46:07
  I think make insinuating or even actually making the doctor the
• 46:10
  Ripper is a big problem. Yes, of course.
• 46:14
  And, and you can't get away from that.
• 46:16
  Even the doctor's not sure he can get away from that by the
• 46:18
  time you finish the book. It's really unsettling.
• 46:21
  If we close the book down and go, what did we do good at the
• 46:23
  end of this one? What?
• 46:24
  What, what percentage did you give this book?
• 46:27
  Gareth, do you remember? I can't because again, my little
• 46:29
  book I. Have 100.
• 46:31
  Yeah, my little books that I had for this were all stashed in the
• 46:35
  loft. So every book that's in my the
• 46:38
  bottom 10 are A1 star Uncle Read.
• 46:41
  OK. So, so somewhere between 5:00 or
• 46:44
  10% that maybe this would have got.
• 46:46
  Well, it could be up to 20 because I've equated, I've
• 46:49
  equated the stars to the percentages based on, you know,
• 46:52
  split A5I. Mean your last book and your
• 46:54
  bottom list I'm assuming got about 2% or something like that,
• 46:57
  you know? Yeah, no, it's like I said, it's
• 47:00
  a shame to have it in there because as a read it's not bad.
• 47:05
  It's not a Doctor Who book in my opinion.
• 47:07
  That is fair. And I've, I've thought it the
• 47:09
  Doctor Who books, mostly New adventures where I've said
• 47:13
  that's not a Doctor Who book in my opinion, you know, like
• 47:16
  Damaged Goods, I think is a fantastic book.
• 47:19
  I just don't think the subject matter is at all for a Doctor
• 47:22
  Who. But anyway, this is not my list.
• 47:26
  Let's go back to your top 10, so #9. #9 So again, I alluded to
• 47:32
  this one when we were talking earlier, as in a couple of years
• 47:35
  ago I read a book that changed my mind on the new series
• 47:38
  Adventures. Oh yeah, I'm in trees.
• 47:43
  Back in the day when I said I was getting any ran, I'm getting
• 47:46
  cheap new series books. Doctor Who Adventures came out
• 47:51
  and gave a free book away with itself.
• 47:55
  And the book that's in question is The Death Riders by Justin
• 48:01
  Richards. Oh.
• 48:02
  I've never read it. Oh, this is a little treasure.
• 48:07
  And the whole range. Educate me.
• 48:09
  There's a range here that's an absolute treasure.
• 48:11
  Oh. He's stroking the book.
• 48:14
  It's very good it. Looks very hot.
• 48:18
  It's essentially the length of a target.
• 48:21
  And again, that's where this kind of worked.
• 48:24
  It started to click what the new series books were about because
• 48:27
  what I was doing is then going, well, actually I'm just in, my
• 48:29
  brain's going to equate this to a target and I will read it and
• 48:31
  enjoy it as a target. Oh wow, I really enjoyed that.
• 48:34
  I wasn't trying to think this great world building and great
• 48:37
  situation to get out of. And it's an 11th Doctor book.
• 48:42
  Oh. The horror.
• 48:43
  Yeah, yeah. I, I, I, I am not the biggest
• 48:47
  fan of the 11th Doctor. What's it about?
• 48:52
  So the story of this is there is a planetoid and a company have
• 48:58
  basically bought the the light, the rights of the land and the
• 49:02
  building a funfair on it and the building a roller coaster.
• 49:06
  But the roller coaster goes awfully near to a place where
• 49:10
  some killer creatures are being kept at Bay, shall we say, and
• 49:14
  locked up. And there's an individual who's
• 49:17
  trying to keep said funfair from building their roller coaster
• 49:20
  away from them. And the Doctor, Amy and Rory,
• 49:22
  come on, excuse me, Basically get involved in this funfair and
• 49:27
  aid the individual in order to try and ensure that these
• 49:31
  creatures, because one of them gets out and obviously starts
• 49:33
  going around and being a bit villainous.
• 49:35
  And it, it, it works. They, they basically lock the
• 49:38
  creature up. We're using music.
• 49:41
  Oh, that's a lovely idea. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's
• 49:44
  a brilliant thing. Now this is this is I said the a
• 49:48
  singular edition. So this is from the two in one
• 49:52
  range because what I found out was this actually come you can
• 49:55
  actually buy this as a book. It's a flip book.
• 49:57
  So it's this on one side and another book on the other side.
• 49:59
  But when they gave them away, we got true adventures.
• 50:01
  They need two of them. They did this and system wipe
• 50:04
  and they came out in this singular format.
• 50:07
  Now over on the shelf here, we've got the rest of the two in
• 50:12
  one range because they are absolutely brilliant, reads you.
• 50:18
  Choose one of those and we'll put them on our list, because I
• 50:21
  didn't even know they existed. No, and and this is the beauty
• 50:24
  of them. So you can get these wonderful
• 50:26
  ones here. So this one I think came with
• 50:29
  Heart of Stone if you get the two set, but you can get these
• 50:34
  ones from America where you can get the individual versions of
• 50:38
  the ones that went with these. So in America, rather than
• 50:41
  playing it was 2 to one, they just released them as thin
• 50:43
  books. And they're not bad reads do.
• 50:45
  You know, I have got a couple of those actually, now I've seen
• 50:48
  that cover. I've got a handful of those, but
• 50:51
  I've never picked them up. No, no.
• 50:53
  And it's, it's weird because unless you know, because when
• 50:55
  you look at the the ultimate, the way that the two in one
• 50:58
  range looks with this sort of shadowy, somewhat sinister 11th
• 51:03
  Doctor figure and the massive DW.
• 51:06
  Oh come on, that's a beautiful cover though.
• 51:08
  Yeah, well, the latter 4 came out like that, but the first
• 51:10
  four come out similar to this, so.
• 51:13
  It it, Yeah. You wouldn't necessarily know
• 51:15
  it. You could in theory why all of
• 51:18
  them and buy them again in these forms.
• 51:21
  If you've got a lot of money to hand, yeah.
• 51:24
  Well, yeah, this is. The horror on your face.
• 51:28
  Well, I won't. I won't tell you how much it
• 51:30
  cost me to track down the Heart of Stone and the Good and the
• 51:32
  Bad and the Alien. But as a Segway into
• 51:35
  understanding or feeling your way into the new series
• 51:39
  adventures, what a great choice. Yeah, no, I thought, I thought
• 51:42
  it would be the quick readings that would get me into it.
• 51:44
  But the the quick reads good though they were never quite hit
• 51:47
  it for me. I kind of wanted a bit more
• 51:49
  they. Were very basic, weren't they?
• 51:51
  And I mean death riders for those who are interested and you
• 51:54
  might find yourselves it a little bit.
• 51:55
  It's only 155 page story. Oh, that's my sort of length,
• 51:59
  you know. But if you get the two in one
• 52:01
  book, you get 2 stories out of that length.
• 52:04
  So that's. Longer than a new adventure, So,
• 52:06
  yeah. But yeah, OK.
• 52:11
  Well, you've, you have really intrigued me with that because
• 52:13
  basically it's a range I knew nothing about.
• 52:15
  So we will be exploring more of that later, I hope.
• 52:19
  Yeah, and plenty of authors in there.
• 52:20
  Mike Tucker, Gary Russell does one.
• 52:22
  Oh wow. Justin Richards, Jacqueline
• 52:26
  Rayner, OH. I love Jack Rayner.
• 52:29
  Oh, I remember that one. Steve Lyons.
• 52:32
  Oh, Steve Lyons, Lukes and Jenkins will be delighted.
• 52:34
  Yeah, it's a good range and I would heartily recommend them to
• 52:38
  anyone because you can lose yourself in and and join for the
• 52:41
  ride like a roller coaster. What a wonderful choice.
• 52:45
  That's a great choice. Well, OK, I mean, positivity is
• 52:50
  all very well, but it's good to be a total bitch as well, so off
• 52:54
  you go. Yes, we must now balance it out
• 52:58
  with our next one, which is one I've read recently.
• 53:04
  And I've got to admit this one is extremely disappointing.
• 53:11
  And it is. I'll just come out with it
• 53:13
  because I can't. I can't give it a better intro.
• 53:16
  The Drosten Curse by AL Kennedy. It's.
• 53:20
  Another one I've never read. So this one is actually one of
• 53:24
  the last ones of the classic doctors that they brought out in
• 53:28
  the big format that consisted of Wheel of Ice and Harvest of
• 53:32
  Time. This was the next one and on the
• 53:36
  cover it looks quite nice, doesn't it?
• 53:39
  It's a really intriguing that and it's the 4th doctor one.
• 53:42
  What's not to like? But I'll tell you.
• 53:44
  Everything. The chapters are really short in
• 53:47
  it. I mean, really.
• 53:49
  I don't mind that as long as it's not like a package.
• 53:52
  Well, the the problem I had was that I'd I'd lost any momentum
• 53:56
  in the story. So the basic premise is there's
• 53:59
  a golf course somewhere, there's a monster underneath it, the 4th
• 54:02
  Doctor's Zero and his own, and basically gets involved in it,
• 54:04
  starts psychic and came up with the alien and that's it.
• 54:08
  On his own way, he got companion.
• 54:09
  No, and and that's again coming back to what I mentioned before
• 54:13
  with Matrix. One of my problems with this one
• 54:15
  because I can't conceive Tom Baker going around without a
• 54:21
  busy mate with him. Yes, so I know, I know before
• 54:23
  anyone starts jumping up and down we had Deadly Assassin.
• 54:25
  I accept that, but those were unique circumstances.
• 54:29
  But he needs someone else in tow, otherwise he just doesn't
• 54:34
  feel right. And this is a prime example of
• 54:37
  that. Because I'll be honest, by the
• 54:40
  time I'd read this, I didn't care about any of the other
• 54:42
  characters. I couldn't even tell you their
• 54:43
  names right now. I think one begins with B, like
• 54:46
  just I, I, I was. I was hoping for something a lot
• 54:49
  better because I really liked Harvest of Time, which I read
• 54:51
  just before this. I thought I was a Corky novel
• 54:55
  called the Era of the UNI era. Brilliant.
• 54:59
  I love wheel of ice, Steven Baxter was great.
• 55:01
  Yeah, yeah. And so then to fit it to find
• 55:04
  out this is the last one in that range and it to be disappointing
• 55:09
  as it is. And like I said, the the short
• 55:11
  chapters, they're just. And then even number.
• 55:13
  L Kennedy. I don't know.
• 55:14
  I believe from what I've read online, I mean so so the
• 55:18
  chapters aren't numbered, but you get bits like this, he says,
• 55:21
  showing the pages to the camera. Oh God, it's like half no about
• 55:24
  1/3 of a page of text right in the middle.
• 55:27
  And there's odd bits like that. So it doesn't to to me, I lost
• 55:30
  the momentum in reading this because I could never find a
• 55:32
  point where I go, yeah, I'll stop that now because that I can
• 55:35
  see a definite break in the read.
• 55:37
  And I was just so unenthused by the end of it.
• 55:40
  And like I said, I love the cover.
• 55:42
  Love the cover? You.
• 55:44
  Could never judge a book buyers cover.
• 55:45
  Gareth and and this is 11 again, you know that I think they're
• 55:49
  getting better with it. The BBC now which is embracing
• 55:51
  the past Doctors range in print. We've seen some of them trickle
• 55:55
  through. Especially the puffins.
• 55:58
  Yeah, Puffin Classics. Yeah, yeah.
• 56:00
  Oh God dot coms are beautiful. Oh, those books are beautiful.
• 56:03
  I just love those. I've just thought Doctor
• 56:05
  Wonderland. It was fabulous.
• 56:08
  I. So want to read that one, but
• 56:10
  because of my rule I've got it. It's in that stash, but because
• 56:13
  of my rule of now, I'm reading them in the order that they were
• 56:16
  released in for exactly the same reason.
• 56:19
  I want to see the authors progress through because it's
• 56:23
  not just about the story for me, it's also about those authors
• 56:25
  and their works and going through that.
• 56:27
  So I will not progress any further.
• 56:30
  Till I found yourself in rules and regulations, Gareth.
• 56:33
  The play play the rules or the game is nothing that's.
• 56:37
  Fair Well, not coming to a book club near you.
• 56:41
  The Drosson's Curse. And I apologise if I butchered
• 56:44
  that for anybody who doesn't know the correct pronunciation
• 56:46
  of it. Well, don't you don't even give
• 56:50
  it another fault, that book. It's just out of my hands.
• 56:53
  Toss it aside as if it never existed, even though you have
• 56:57
  paid for it, so the fellas got your money anyway.
• 56:59
  Yeah, what are you going to praise next?
• 57:04
  Next up to praise is again, I believe this has appeared on the
• 57:08
  previous one. OK.
• 57:12
  And it is The Killing Ground by Stephen Lyons.
• 57:16
  Right. OK, another dark book.
• 57:20
  Very much so, but anyone who's listened to me before will know
• 57:26
  how much I adore the 6th Doctor. I knew you were a.
• 57:30
  Man of taste. Some of my own sartorial
• 57:33
  elegance is probably based. I can.
• 57:34
  See it basically, Joe, All right, If you and me merged into
• 57:38
  one person, we'd basically be calling Baker, I think.
• 57:41
  Yeah, I can only hope and dream of that would happen.
• 57:46
  You're filthy. Talk about killing grounds.
• 57:49
  So time time of your life was the first missing adventure I
• 57:54
  got and I I love the fact that, you know, we have the EDA
• 57:59
  because we don't have a poem again season really, you know,
• 58:01
  they were the continuation of the TV movie.
• 58:03
  We have the new adventures post survival because we don't have a
• 58:07
  continuation of McCoy after that point.
• 58:10
  But there's obviously another other point that we've got that
• 58:12
  never ever gets finished properly, which is post trial,
• 58:16
  pre time and the Rani, you know, we never know what happens in
• 58:19
  that time. And there's huge scope there,
• 58:22
  isn't there? You could tell a million stories
• 58:25
  within that period. And I kind of hoped because
• 58:28
  obviously we got to, we did Time of Your Life and then that runs
• 58:31
  directly into Killing Ground. And I kind of hoped beyond hope
• 58:35
  that we would get more 6 Doctor in Grant Markham stories
• 58:39
  onwards. Alas, it was not to be.
• 58:44
  Although there is actually another Grant Markham book in a
• 58:50
  in a charity anthology, The Names, which eludes me.
• 58:53
  Like, you know, someone did say it in a previous top ten list
• 58:56
  because Lucy and Jenkins is a massive fan of these Steve Lyons
• 59:01
  books and the missing Adventures.
• 59:02
  Yeah. But but, but kind of there's,
• 59:05
  there's two stories in there with Grant marker, one of which
• 59:07
  is by Steve Lyons, but there's another one I want to say it's
• 59:09
  Craig Hinton. Well, possibly.
• 59:11
  Where he writes out Grant Markham and it's a final Grant
• 59:14
  Markham story. But that's not what I'm talking
• 59:16
  about. What I'm talking about is
• 59:17
  Killing Ground. The reason why I love this story
• 59:21
  is because for the first half the 6th Doctor is locked up,
• 59:28
  which might not sound that interesting, but the fact that
• 59:32
  he turns around to a person he's locked up with and says oh don't
• 59:35
  worry, I'll be out of here soon. I've got someone new travelling
• 59:38
  with me. They're new to it so they'll get
• 59:40
  here eventually. I think just sums up the
• 59:42
  relationship quite well with them too, because he's they're
• 59:44
  still trying to find each other out.
• 59:47
  The story is great because you've got the Cybermen in it
• 59:51
  and you've got these bronze Knights, them being built anti
• 59:55
  Cybermen that are essentially Cybermen by another name.
• 1:00:00
  And there is an archivist in there who wants to be converted.
• 1:00:04
  And the love for the conversion. It's it is dark.
• 1:00:09
  It is a dark book. But again, you know, coming back
• 1:00:12
  to the whole Matrix thing we talked about earlier, I think
• 1:00:15
  it's a better sell with this doctor.
• 1:00:17
  Because of the nature of the subject material so it becomes a
• 1:00:20
  much better read and if if anyone could get hold of this
• 1:00:24
  one I I would heartily recommend it out of the missing adventures
• 1:00:28
  range because you won't be disappointed.
• 1:00:30
  Tsai Hao had this on his top ten list, and he said that there was
• 1:00:34
  a sequence in there where you experienced the conversion from
• 1:00:39
  the point of the converti, and it was it it.
• 1:00:43
  He read it young and it just stuck in his mind as one of the
• 1:00:46
  most horrific things he'd ever read.
• 1:00:49
  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's it's it's an amazing
• 1:00:53
  book. Because I was surprised when I
• 1:00:55
  reread it again because this is one of the ones I reread
• 1:00:57
  recently. How much of it had stuck in my
• 1:01:00
  head from when I'd read it all those years ago?
• 1:01:03
  And it held up the second time, yeah.
• 1:01:04
  Very much so, very much so. I was not disappointed with it
• 1:01:08
  at all. I and I mean the.
• 1:01:11
  Even the cover. The cover.
• 1:01:12
  House I'm looking, I'm still trying to stare at it now out of
• 1:01:15
  my core, at the core of my ideal listener.
• 1:01:17
  But it's an absolutely gorgeous cover.
• 1:01:19
  In fact, even the 6th doctor, if you look at him on it, he says,
• 1:01:22
  holding it up to the camera. His eyes look so haunted on the
• 1:01:25
  front of it. So you know you're in for for a
• 1:01:29
  treat because if anyone can take a bit of a pummeling or
• 1:01:32
  punishment, it's the 6th doctor out of all the doctors.
• 1:01:36
  You expect him to have a bad time of it?
• 1:01:39
  Some reason? How often does he get thrown
• 1:01:42
  about, knocked over, punched, gripped by the shoulders and
• 1:01:46
  stuff like that? And his reaction to it is quite
• 1:01:49
  visceral on TV. So again, I don't have a problem
• 1:01:52
  with with visualizing this world in my head because it makes
• 1:01:56
  perfect sense. And him being in the centre of
• 1:01:58
  that, absolutely. I'm duo rereading that one, I
• 1:02:02
  think. I've not read that one for years
• 1:02:04
  and years. I do remember enjoying it.
• 1:02:06
  But you know, it's like, you read so much Doctor Who, right?
• 1:02:09
  Some of it just gets fouled away.
• 1:02:11
  So, you know, But yeah, I do need to reread that one.
• 1:02:14
  Yeah, no, I'm looking forward to to revisiting time of your life
• 1:02:18
  as well because we're doing that on a future book club, I
• 1:02:21
  believe. So having having read that one
• 1:02:24
  recently and going to Hammyville just there it it, it'll be
• 1:02:29
  fascinating to see how it compares up all these years
• 1:02:33
  later. Well, that is a brilliant choice
• 1:02:37
  and a popular choice as well. Steve Lyons is a popular author,
• 1:02:41
  as I'm learning and. Yeah, never seems to be this
• 1:02:43
  have. Experienced no space age, I
• 1:02:45
  think that was the only one I wasn't that keen on.
• 1:02:47
  But apart from that. But well, let's talk about a
• 1:02:51
  less glorious author now then. Yeah.
• 1:02:59
  Oh, you look so sad every time you go to your second pile.
• 1:03:02
  I try. That's because I'm playing for
• 1:03:04
  time and thinking about how I might intro this one.
• 1:03:07
  Well done. Just look like I know what I'm
• 1:03:10
  doing. Yeah, you do.
• 1:03:12
  So this one is one of the new series adventures.
• 1:03:18
  I think I mentioned. One of the things that annoys me
• 1:03:20
  about them is the size of them and so I've been trying to get
• 1:03:23
  them all in paperback, which has been.
• 1:03:26
  It'll be too. Expensive in some cases because
• 1:03:30
  for some reason the paperbacks are a lot more expensive second
• 1:03:32
  hand. Yeah, it's battling, isn't it?
• 1:03:33
  I've noticed that. But there's at least three of
• 1:03:36
  them I've not managed to secure as paperbacks.
• 1:03:41
  So already this is one of those I couldn't secure as a
• 1:03:44
  paperback. Mark one against you.
• 1:03:46
  Oh. OK.
• 1:03:49
  And this was in my reading pile, and I believe you've covered
• 1:03:54
  this one on the Hamster Book Club before.
• 1:03:56
  Oh, and. Not the doctor trap, is it?
• 1:04:04
  Oh man, we slammed it. Well, this is where I'm going to
• 1:04:08
  pick a bone with you because what I ended up doing was it
• 1:04:13
  you. Well, I think you're aware of
• 1:04:14
  this. I am doing a back catalogue jump
• 1:04:16
  at the moment through Hamster. I'm currently doing episode one
• 1:04:20
  of two doctors with Usi and Fraser.
• 1:04:23
  That is way back when. Yeah, that's how far back I've
• 1:04:27
  gone. Jesus.
• 1:04:28
  I'm working my way from the front to the back.
• 1:04:32
  Did everyone? You won't see this, dear
• 1:04:33
  listener, but Joe has just tried to take a drink of water just
• 1:04:36
  then and has nearly given himself a shower at the same
• 1:04:39
  time. I'll bring this a position I'm
• 1:04:41
  quite often in. But when you covered this one,
• 1:04:46
  because I had it in my pile, I went, I'm not going to listen to
• 1:04:50
  the. Oh, that's a good idea, wouldn't
• 1:04:52
  you? Read.
• 1:04:52
  This absolutely and. I already tested this.
• 1:04:59
  It's terrible. And then when I listened to your
• 1:05:01
  episode, I went, well, if I had listened to this before, I might
• 1:05:04
  have. Already bought it, it's
• 1:05:08
  dreadful. Yeah, really confused.
• 1:05:11
  I I. The the the the the the doctor
• 1:05:13
  and that or the chap is it bait begins with B doesn't and
• 1:05:16
  someone else giving him with BI can't remember the name and by
• 1:05:19
  the end of it I was just like I don't.
• 1:05:20
  Care. Kill him.
• 1:05:22
  Kill all of them. I I the villains don't get.
• 1:05:24
  Sebastian Oh my God, it was so annoying.
• 1:05:27
  But there was no there wasn't much variety in it.
• 1:05:29
  So you. Were you were like just being?
• 1:05:31
  Stuck in a room with these people permanently in this book,
• 1:05:34
  it didn't have any variety to it.
• 1:05:35
  There was no other level than it's like, like a sort of French
• 1:05:41
  farce, isn't it? Oh no, Vickers walked in now.
• 1:05:43
  It's trying to be, yeah. Yeah, and it's like this isn't
• 1:05:47
  really following into the mould, if you like, of the new series
• 1:05:53
  adventures, certainly a lot of the ones that I've read, this is
• 1:05:57
  trying to be something different and not quite pulling it off.
• 1:06:00
  I think it thinks it's cleverer than it is.
• 1:06:05
  I think it thinks it's full of sleight of hands and reversals
• 1:06:08
  and things, and none of them pay off, none of them work, you
• 1:06:12
  know? And if it, when it tries to be
• 1:06:13
  funny, it's just a bomb and a ball.
• 1:06:16
  It's so unfunny. It needed more incident in it.
• 1:06:19
  I think with with these guys, there needed to be more cat and
• 1:06:22
  mouse than just well. It.
• 1:06:26
  Could be it might not be the guy that he thinks is the guy that
• 1:06:28
  he's talking about. I I couldn't figure out who the
• 1:06:32
  book was about either because you just went from 1 viewpoint
• 1:06:35
  to another and there was about 20 characters and I'm like whose
• 1:06:38
  story am I following? I'm sure at some point I have
• 1:06:41
  read the Doctor and the other guy as the other other character
• 1:06:45
  and I've gone, I've gone you. Mean.
• 1:06:46
  Embarrassed. Yeah, I'm going.
• 1:06:48
  I'm not going back now. Yeah, this is one.
• 1:06:50
  This is 1. I did not go back and read.
• 1:06:52
  Oh well done. Well, you don't need to.
• 1:06:54
  We can't be covering that on the book club.
• 1:06:56
  It's already been done. Hey, I'll get another 25 years
• 1:07:01
  after that one yet before I pick it back up again.
• 1:07:02
  Well. Not recommended there.
• 1:07:07
  That's been on someone else's bottom 10 list as well.
• 1:07:10
  If you get twice on two bottom 10 lists, then that's a doubly
• 1:07:13
  bad book. Oh, I know there's at least
• 1:07:16
  another one. I Yes.
• 1:07:20
  But. Not not straight away, though,
• 1:07:23
  straight. Now we're going back to being
• 1:07:24
  positive again, you know, And should any authors be listening,
• 1:07:28
  if the author of the next book is listening, will prepare to
• 1:07:31
  have the hair on your arms stand up on end.
• 1:07:34
  Well, my complete fluke and I hadn't actually realized the
• 1:07:37
  synchronicity of this since I put it together.
• 1:07:39
  It's another new series book. I've never known so many new
• 1:07:43
  series books beyond these lists. Go.
• 1:07:46
  On it's sick building by oh. Yes, wonderful.
• 1:07:51
  Please tell me why it? Is it is absolutely stunning?
• 1:07:58
  Absolutely. If you're going to do small
• 1:08:00
  drama with characters, this is the way to do it.
• 1:08:06
  The the, the stuff that jumps out at me is that lad who
• 1:08:10
  basically thinks Martha Rose in the world and should date him.
• 1:08:13
  And it's like, no. No, no, no, no.
• 1:08:15
  Because he's basically cut off. It's about a family that's cut
• 1:08:17
  off from nowhere. This guy's self-made everything
• 1:08:20
  around him. I think it looks like it's all
• 1:08:22
  going to get destroyed and the Doctor and Martha get left
• 1:08:24
  there. And there is another good book
• 1:08:27
  club episode on this one. That's right, yeah.
• 1:08:29
  But I've actually read this, I think only a few weeks before
• 1:08:32
  I'd heard yours, and I was grinning from ear to ear
• 1:08:35
  listening to the book club episode because everything about
• 1:08:37
  this book was covered that I liked about it.
• 1:08:41
  The even even again, it's the the imagery.
• 1:08:44
  That's it. The one thing I did find funny
• 1:08:47
  was all those characters that are in the basement, the sun
• 1:08:49
  lounger and the drinks machine. Is it?
• 1:08:52
  Barbara and Toaster, Yeah. In my head they were unfinished
• 1:08:56
  animatics. Oh.
• 1:08:58
  Great. So so they.
• 1:08:59
  They weren't even CGI D into my it was like someone had put
• 1:09:02
  sharder in my head. They.
• 1:09:03
  Really do visualize these books, don't you?
• 1:09:05
  I I. I I have a very very.
• 1:09:08
  I do quite a bit of drawing freehand, and so I do visualize
• 1:09:14
  stuff quite well. And so I have to see them.
• 1:09:17
  And I couldn't conceptualize of these characters.
• 1:09:20
  The only way my brain could make sense it was they're going to be
• 1:09:22
  animated like Beauty and the Beast.
• 1:09:26
  Or, like Roger Rabbit, you know, Live Action Plus.
• 1:09:28
  Animation and and it gave them more expressive character and
• 1:09:31
  that that license to have more expressive character.
• 1:09:34
  Could you believe that? A massacre that nearly that
• 1:09:37
  whole family by the end of the book?
• 1:09:39
  I mean, he just knows what kids want to read, right?
• 1:09:41
  The the end bit where where he's in the fire and it's.
• 1:09:44
  Bruce. Or.
• 1:09:46
  There's blood flowing everywhere.
• 1:09:48
  It's absolutely brutal. I thought by.
• 1:09:50
  By the end of it, I'd, I'd go into an anime style in my head,
• 1:09:54
  you know, like where he's just stood there and his, his, his,
• 1:09:56
  his clothes are billowing around him from flames and dancing and.
• 1:10:00
  What's his name? Tierman, the mad scientist you
• 1:10:02
  know, that owns the house. He takes the ship up, doesn't
• 1:10:04
  he? And then it just literally dive
• 1:10:06
  bombs down into the house and then he's dead.
• 1:10:09
  It's just, it is a massacre. Look.
• 1:10:13
  But the the. Characters in it are are drawn
• 1:10:15
  out so well. That is the beauty of it,
• 1:10:17
  primarily, and I think that's probably the difference between
• 1:10:19
  that and the Doctor trap. This one knows exactly what the
• 1:10:24
  characters are, what they're going to be doing, and what
• 1:10:26
  their comeuppance is going to be.
• 1:10:28
  Even the appliances, they're all characters that you love and you
• 1:10:31
  want them to get out, you know? You know the bit where the sun
• 1:10:34
  lounger and the bats attack them and he's on his last legs as a
• 1:10:38
  sun lounger? He's like, oh, finally I get to
• 1:10:40
  be the hero. And he starts zapping them with
• 1:10:42
  his. Rails.
• 1:10:43
  Yeah. Oh, it's fab.
• 1:10:47
  It's brilliant if if if anyone says they don't like the new
• 1:10:51
  series adventures then this is the one I would point them
• 1:10:56
  towards if if they they don't want to the two in one range.
• 1:10:59
  This is without doubt fantastic as a book.
• 1:11:04
  I'll be honest, I'm surprised I've not put it higher.
• 1:11:07
  It's been the competition's become very high at the top, but
• 1:11:13
  this was a was a thoroughly enjoyed.
• 1:11:15
  I think this was one I demolished in a day.
• 1:11:17
  I'm so pleased to see so many do serious adventures on both sides
• 1:11:21
  of your list, but just just to get some representation, you
• 1:11:24
  know? Well, yeah.
• 1:11:25
  But again, this is what This is why I've dived into them because
• 1:11:27
  I wanted to understand what some of these authors went on to.
• 1:11:30
  You know, I've grown up with some of these people from being
• 1:11:32
  younger. It's like, well, I'm just going
• 1:11:33
  to cut them off because I don't want to read some of the books.
• 1:11:36
  I can close me off to it. I did a book club yesterday on
• 1:11:40
  Touched by an Angel, another stunning new series adventure,
• 1:11:44
  and you know, they're not all as good as Sick Building and
• 1:11:47
  Touched by Nature or Borrowed Time.
• 1:11:49
  Borrowed Time, is it? Yeah, they're all brilliant.
• 1:11:51
  Yeah, and there are very average ones as well.
• 1:11:54
  Pirate loop. They oh I love the pirate.
• 1:11:56
  Pirate loop. I think I messaged you on the
• 1:11:58
  end when I read the end of that one because I was just like.
• 1:12:01
  It's so moving, isn't it? The ending, yeah.
• 1:12:04
  Did not expect it to go that. Way you hear Ken's reading on
• 1:12:07
  that, it's great. Oh, something to look forward
• 1:12:09
  to. Oh, it is the ending of the
• 1:12:11
  book. Yeah, it's fabulous.
• 1:12:13
  OK well, OK. I mean, I've not seen, have I
• 1:12:17
  seen a single new adventure yet? What's going on?
• 1:12:19
  I thought your top ten this was going to be absolutely teeming
• 1:12:22
  with them. Well, I've tried to tried to
• 1:12:24
  give you an even spread. I'm very pleased.
• 1:12:27
  Well, let's, let's go back to the bottom 10 list then.
• 1:12:30
  We're going to now we've sort of pumped up also now we'll send
• 1:12:33
  one to therapy, should we? Yeah.
• 1:12:36
  So this is one that I read very, very recently.
• 1:12:40
  It was a reread. I don't know what this is, but
• 1:12:44
  go on. I can remember reading it at the
• 1:12:46
  time and putting it down, taking it back up, putting it down
• 1:12:53
  again and just not getting it at all.
• 1:12:57
  It is Falls The Shadow by Daniel O Mahoney.
• 1:13:02
  Oh yes, 300 pages of torture porn.
• 1:13:05
  Well, this time round at least, I got to the last 100 pages and
• 1:13:08
  went, oh story. Well, they go off to that.
• 1:13:12
  What's it called? Not the cathedral, is it?
• 1:13:14
  Yeah, I think you're right. It's cathedral.
• 1:13:16
  Yeah, Yeah. Sorry, I've actually my mind
• 1:13:18
  suddenly gone to another book in in the list and I've gone.
• 1:13:20
  Oh no, it's the wrong one. But yeah, when it gets to the
• 1:13:23
  cathedral, it's like, oh, it's something to work towards here.
• 1:13:25
  We're bringing Benny back. We're trying to sort everything
• 1:13:27
  out. We're trying to get it out.
• 1:13:28
  And I was like, yeah, I'm invested in it.
• 1:13:30
  But the rest of it beforehand, I was just like, hang on a minute.
• 1:13:33
  Are we smashing together Ghost Light and the two characters
• 1:13:35
  from The Power of the Doctor? Yes, because.
• 1:13:40
  It's all sadistic sapphire and steel, isn't it?
• 1:13:42
  Well. And this again, because I, I
• 1:13:46
  felt like that and because I knew I was going to be talking
• 1:13:48
  about this. That is what I've, I've been
• 1:13:49
  often researched of trying to find out.
• 1:13:51
  Am I missing something on this? That's Safran Steel is not in my
• 1:13:54
  lexicon. I'm aware of them, but I know
• 1:13:57
  nothing about them. So those an element.
• 1:13:59
  Is all about suspense rather than gratuitous violence, and
• 1:14:04
  that's what Daniel Armani goes for in that book.
• 1:14:08
  And, and I think that's that's certainly not something that
• 1:14:10
  wouldn't been on my radar back then, which is why I probably
• 1:14:14
  struggled with this one when I got it.
• 1:14:16
  And I've struggled with it again reading it for the same reason
• 1:14:20
  I've just. Gone. 350 pages I believe.
• 1:14:24
  It's one of the bigger books. I'll make a liar of myself 356.
• 1:14:29
  It doesn't need to be that long though, it could be half that
• 1:14:32
  length. I just Benny, I think she goes
• 1:14:35
  for it in that period of the new adventures.
• 1:14:38
  Well, I just, I wish I had something positive to say on
• 1:14:43
  this because this book was a lot higher.
• 1:14:45
  So one of the things that's been happening over the last couple
• 1:14:46
  of weeks over here is I have been filtering in and out my top
• 1:14:49
  ten pals just off the left of me and moving them around every
• 1:14:52
  day. I've walked into the study and
• 1:14:53
  gone, Nope, not that one, that one, right?
• 1:14:55
  Go away again. And so this one has moved up and
• 1:15:00
  down. But my gut reaction to it is
• 1:15:04
  just like, why did I have to read all that just to get to the
• 1:15:11
  end of it and just go what, what, what, what, what was the
• 1:15:14
  point to it all that the the two alien characters themselves are
• 1:15:18
  the Eternals or the I just don't know.
• 1:15:20
  You. Know when you think about them
• 1:15:24
  often come back to the IT was the uninvited guest comic strip
• 1:15:28
  with the 7th doctors in that party.
• 1:15:30
  And that's an eternal story where he basically goes, well,
• 1:15:33
  you've outlived your usefulness and you you really need to get
• 1:15:36
  back into the real world There you don't ever so subtly, but
• 1:15:40
  this you're nothing. Subtle about falls to shadow and
• 1:15:44
  you know I I ask her why when I read that question as well, it's
• 1:15:47
  mostly why are you people still travelling with the Doctor?
• 1:15:49
  Because this is really like that and parasite back-to-back, it's
• 1:15:53
  just really unpleasant from the. Characters Parasite nearly made
• 1:15:58
  it into my bottom list. Yeah, it was a strange period.
• 1:16:02
  Like there's a just after this is where you get, you know, set
• 1:16:06
  piece hits, Ace is written out, and then you get sanctuary, you
• 1:16:10
  get human nature, original Sin, and suddenly you're on a bit of
• 1:16:13
  a run right to the end with a few a few duds.
• 1:16:17
  But yeah, it's like they finally figured out what they should be
• 1:16:20
  doing. Yeah, it's true.
• 1:16:22
  I think Ace is is literally the yeah thing that breaks their
• 1:16:26
  back. But the interesting thing I
• 1:16:27
  found reading the recent new adventures that I have read,
• 1:16:32
  because obviously I think I said when we we talked before, I'd
• 1:16:34
  read a couple for the Seeing Eye and then I've read some for
• 1:16:36
  this, is the difference in Aces character.
• 1:16:40
  I think at the time when I read them, I just took that as read.
• 1:16:44
  To me. That's the way that she's
• 1:16:46
  developed. That's how she's gone.
• 1:16:47
  However, when I come back to these, I've struggled a little
• 1:16:52
  bit with that characterization more than I did originally,
• 1:16:55
  which is really surprised me. I've still enjoyed the books,
• 1:16:59
  but I've I've really struggled with the Ace relationship.
• 1:17:01
  It's like, why are you travelling with the Doctor if
• 1:17:04
  you really don't want to be there?
• 1:17:05
  But then in the back of my mind I'm also thinking, has he got a
• 1:17:08
  plan for Ace ultimately? Is that why he's is it not about
• 1:17:13
  how angry she is and travelling with her for once?
• 1:17:15
  It was about him needing her in place to do something to push
• 1:17:18
  that button when the time comes. Trouble is, I've just read set
• 1:17:21
  piece and unfortunately the answer to that question is no.
• 1:17:24
  Yeah, and she is a psychotic in Foster Shadow.
• 1:17:28
  I mean, she's inflicting as much pain on people as Gabriel and
• 1:17:31
  Tanitha. Yeah.
• 1:17:33
  I don't. I was like, how did we get here
• 1:17:36
  with Axe? How did we turn her into this
• 1:17:39
  psychotic? I've, I think you asked us that
• 1:17:42
  question when we were talking before and I had to think about
• 1:17:44
  it afterwards. And part of me did wonder what
• 1:17:48
  other female characters or even in fact, not even female
• 1:17:52
  characters, male mainstream sci-fi action heroes.
• 1:17:58
  What were we looking at back then?
• 1:18:00
  And have they literally just taken that character, those bits
• 1:18:03
  of those characters like you, Arnold Schwarzenegger and
• 1:18:06
  Predator, you know, all the characters from Aliens and gone.
• 1:18:11
  Oh, we'll just make a a female version of that.
• 1:18:14
  I think what they thought was pouring her into that leather
• 1:18:18
  costume, giving her a gun and making her violent would turn on
• 1:18:24
  the audience that they thought they were attracting, which was
• 1:18:27
  sort of 1415 year old horny nerds.
• 1:18:32
  Unfortunately, when you then read those books as an adult,
• 1:18:35
  you're no longer a 14 year old horny nerd and you're just
• 1:18:38
  going, oh God, it's so exploiting, it's horrible, you
• 1:18:42
  know? All right, yeah, No, it was not
• 1:18:46
  a happy end. But yeah, falls the shadow and
• 1:18:51
  I'll never get back. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:18:52
  Literally pick the that breeze book of a book up straight
• 1:18:56
  across to the other pole. OK, well, let's go back to the
• 1:19:00
  top ten there. So where are we now?
• 1:19:01
  Six No 76. 123456. I always lose count, you know
• 1:19:09
  right? So the 6th best Doctor Who book
• 1:19:11
  of all time is. Well, 6th Doctor Who book of all
• 1:19:16
  time is Who Graphica. Oh, this is gorgeous, isn't it?
• 1:19:22
  By Simon Gary, Steve O'Brien and Ben Morris.
• 1:19:26
  Just just so pretty. Sumptuous is the word absolutely
• 1:19:32
  sumptuous. So who?
• 1:19:34
  Graphica is an infographic guide to space and time.
• 1:19:38
  Anything you wanted to know about the Doctor's adventures?
• 1:19:40
  I can't remember if it's up to mid Capaldi if memory serves me
• 1:19:44
  right is represented in graphics form.
• 1:19:48
  So there is for example an infographic on Venn diagrams for
• 1:19:54
  the Doctors who wore glasses, hats and bow ties.
• 1:19:57
  And each Doctor is represented by little facepiece to show you
• 1:20:01
  where the feature in there. There's bits on Daleks
• 1:20:05
  appearances represented by little Daleks.
• 1:20:08
  It is wonderfully colourful. It is I.
• 1:20:10
  Didn't know there was so many diagrams that you could draw,
• 1:20:13
  you know? And because we're doing
• 1:20:15
  obviously a a book club, you can see all the targets, targets on
• 1:20:22
  one double page, I'm feeling. A bit fake with you showing me
• 1:20:26
  that, yeah. Yes, when I say you can pour
• 1:20:31
  over this book, yes, it's it's it's it is a wonderful,
• 1:20:37
  wonderful slice of Doctor Who and I was in fact there's even
• 1:20:43
  because I you know, as we know, I like the 6th doctor.
• 1:20:46
  A little infographic on the cat Badgers, the different cat
• 1:20:49
  Badgers that he went so. I mean, the the great thing
• 1:20:53
  about it is it's a bit like the book of List, isn't it?
• 1:20:55
  It's putting together patterns of things across Doctor Who, but
• 1:20:58
  just doing it in such a visually stimulating way.
• 1:21:01
  I was absolutely gutted when I think Simon Gary announced that
• 1:21:05
  they were leaving because they've been.
• 1:21:07
  Then when that book came out, they then did some more for
• 1:21:09
  Doctor Who Magazine. Oh, really?
• 1:21:12
  So there was a Backpage where they were putting them in and
• 1:21:14
  then Simon Gary announced that he wasn't doing them anymore
• 1:21:17
  because he they just didn't have the time to do them.
• 1:21:19
  And I had to send him a message on Twitter and say, oh, well,
• 1:21:22
  thank you. Really appreciate.
• 1:21:24
  It better paid job all right. Yeah, well, I get it, I get it.
• 1:21:27
  But this, I mean, this was actually a present from a wife
• 1:21:30
  for Christmas. Wasn't something I'd asked for.
• 1:21:32
  I think she knew I'd be interested in it because I
• 1:21:36
  liking for graphics. I picked it up in the works,
• 1:21:39
  Ryan. I was like, oh, what's this?
• 1:21:41
  Oh, well, it's Doctor Who. I'll buy it and I'll take it
• 1:21:44
  home. And honest to God, I was
• 1:21:45
  obsessed with it for about a week.
• 1:21:47
  Yeah, Now if, if anyone who's listening and not sure about it,
• 1:21:50
  go to Amazon, see if they've got one of those pages you can
• 1:21:52
  sample and have a look. You won't be disappointed.
• 1:21:56
  The Book of List is a very, very good book.
• 1:21:58
  I do have a copy of that. Yeah, that was a pages list,
• 1:22:00
  wasn't it? Yeah.
• 1:22:01
  Yeah, Yeah, it is yes, because he he mentioned it in the chat
• 1:22:04
  on our book club and I and I did go back to him and that is an
• 1:22:07
  excellent choice because that is that was one of the books I got
• 1:22:10
  from that bookshop in my student days in the 63 fiber I'll.
• 1:22:17
  Tell you what though, Gareth Simon Gurrier for me is the
• 1:22:21
  stamp of quality, whether he's writing a big Finish audio, a
• 1:22:26
  book, for example, The Time Travellers, a non fiction book.
• 1:22:31
  He did The Wit and Wisdom 1. He did The Daily Doctor, he did
• 1:22:34
  this one. Everything he touches, I just
• 1:22:37
  think it has. It just sings of quality.
• 1:22:40
  Yeah, it's an absolutely wonderful book and it's all
• 1:22:44
  wonderfully coloured. Colours are stunning in it.
• 1:22:47
  There's even a page dedicated to other incarnations of the
• 1:22:50
  Doctor. So yes, there's a little Valley
• 1:22:52
  Yard infographic. In there as well.
• 1:22:56
  Did I mention I like the Valley Yard?
• 1:22:59
  It's an absolutely wonderful book.
• 1:23:00
  Can you turn up on one of our book clubs please?
• 1:23:02
  Dressed up like the Valley Yards.
• 1:23:05
  We started as a mere inquiry into the doctor's activities.
• 1:23:08
  It's just it becomes a trial and if he's found guilty, I strongly
• 1:23:11
  suggest the termination of his life.
• 1:23:14
  Presume. At the end of the episode you
• 1:23:16
  could say finished. I've barely started.
• 1:23:21
  That's how we should have ended the book club episodes.
• 1:23:23
  Finished I. Barely started.
• 1:23:25
  I'll cut that out there and then we'll have it at the end.
• 1:23:30
  OK Well, look now. Yeah, very nice.
• 1:23:32
  It's all very well, you know, pumping up these authors, but
• 1:23:35
  unfortunately we my favorite list, the bottom 10, number six
• 1:23:40
  hit me. Number six is again someone that
• 1:23:43
  has appeared on someone else's list.
• 1:23:46
  And again, this is a with reservation because again, this
• 1:23:50
  is a author whose general books I've enjoyed and this one is a a
• 1:23:59
  very odd, odd choice and and somewhat reluctant to mention.
• 1:24:04
  It's also with regret it's divided loyalties.
• 1:24:08
  Oh boy, yes, OK. I mean, I'll find Gary Russell's
• 1:24:12
  prose more miss than hit, and I love Gary, Gary's friend of
• 1:24:16
  mine, but you know, you've got to be honest on these things.
• 1:24:19
  He has many strengths, including being a fabulous director and
• 1:24:22
  creative consultant and a script editor and etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:24:27
  Well, why divided loyalties of all the ones you could have
• 1:24:29
  chosen from? It's the Gallifrey 9021.
• 1:24:33
  This is one I have read recently because as I said, I've already
• 1:24:41
  read these because I thought I might be unfair with them with
• 1:24:43
  20 year back knowledge of them and it didn't get any better for
• 1:24:48
  me. I, I, I have a problem in
• 1:24:51
  general with storytelling, which is this edict that seems to
• 1:24:56
  exist about the fact that you can only tell a good story if it
• 1:25:01
  means something to the main character.
• 1:25:05
  Well, yes and no. There are good stories out there
• 1:25:10
  that the character will be involved in there.
• 1:25:13
  You will get an extra bonus if he deals with directly with the
• 1:25:17
  character. And I do think that's where some
• 1:25:20
  Doctor Who falls down a little bit when you make the story
• 1:25:23
  about the Doctor, Name of the Doctor.
• 1:25:27
  Sorry I'm off here. Well, listen.
• 1:25:30
  No, no, be good. You weren't going to do it.
• 1:25:32
  Gareth come. On That's Sunday.
• 1:25:34
  Come on. So this is a prime example of
• 1:25:38
  that because basically what it says is divided.
• 1:25:41
  The celestial toy maker is actually a Time Lord that was a
• 1:25:45
  friend of the doctors from school.
• 1:25:49
  OK, yeah, there's nothing to say it's not but.
• 1:25:55
  That's so mundane. No, that's not.
• 1:25:56
  Don't need it to be the answer. Yeah, you don't need it to be.
• 1:26:00
  Scariest this unknowable force in the universe, You know,
• 1:26:04
  playing games. Yeah, you could have done
• 1:26:07
  Celestial Toymaker 2 point O if we ignore Nightmare Fair and
• 1:26:11
  actually just had a series of games involving the 5th Doctor.
• 1:26:15
  Because that's the other weird thing with this.
• 1:26:18
  The companions are all split up in it anyway, so it doesn't feel
• 1:26:21
  like a 5th Doctor with that ensemble around him and you're.
• 1:26:26
  Hat trick of the smelly armpits. Yeah, and you're kind of thrown
• 1:26:30
  in and out between this back story of the life of the Doctor
• 1:26:35
  and these friends of his and them being locked in the toy
• 1:26:38
  makers realm. And sorry, oh, sorry.
• 1:26:43
  You're just going to really dry. Sorry about that.
• 1:26:49
  I apologize. That's the toymaker getting hold
• 1:26:51
  of my larynx. Oh.
• 1:26:53
  No, you won't do it. It just, yeah, I can't.
• 1:26:58
  I also can't picture in my head a young Hartnell.
• 1:27:02
  So I've watched a William Hartnell film recently where
• 1:27:04
  it's quite a young man in it, and I just can't see him in this
• 1:27:09
  on those scenes in between. So those scenes in between the
• 1:27:14
  Doctor that's referenced looks like Peter Davison and that just
• 1:27:19
  feels strange. Then there's it's a younger
• 1:27:22
  Peter Davison in my head. And so it's it's an oddity.
• 1:27:27
  It's the best way I can describe it.
• 1:27:28
  This. Book, OH. 90210 sequence right?
• 1:27:31
  Sometimes you can have a good idea which is executed badly.
• 1:27:36
  Yeah, in Doctor Who books, sometimes you can have a bad
• 1:27:39
  idea which is executed really quite well and you know, whoa,
• 1:27:43
  they got away with it. And then sometimes you have a
• 1:27:45
  bad idea which is executed terribly, and that's that.
• 1:27:50
  You could get the same effect from this book if you'd have
• 1:27:54
  made it Friends of Teagan's. Yeah, in fact, that would be
• 1:28:00
  character building, wouldn't it, at university?
• 1:28:03
  Yeah, you don't need to get to the Doctor.
• 1:28:07
  You could even have generic character of the day.
• 1:28:10
  It'd be relatives that theirs have got stuck in.
• 1:28:11
  The Doctor gets involved in their life.
• 1:28:13
  It didn't need to specifically be the Doctor and their back
• 1:28:18
  story and the cast of thousands. I mean, I don't.
• 1:28:22
  Do you know, I refuse to believe that the Master and the monk and
• 1:28:26
  the Rani and I've got, who else to say, Drax and Asmael and all
• 1:28:33
  that hung together in university?
• 1:28:35
  Oh Bruce must have been a really shit teacher because they all
• 1:28:37
  buggered off the first chance they got.
• 1:28:39
  Didn't. They fucking Renegades, yeah.
• 1:28:42
  It's not this for a game it takes.
• 1:28:44
  And then of course. Well, even Bruce was so bad in
• 1:28:46
  the end, didn't they? Let's be fair.
• 1:28:48
  And then in the back of your mind, you're Rocky and the
• 1:28:49
  timeless child as well with with this knowledge.
• 1:28:52
  And then also that makes you go this really still doesn't see it
• 1:28:55
  right now. So yeah, I just, I don't know
• 1:29:00
  why he needed to do this with the toy maker at all.
• 1:29:02
  The toy maker is an entity in himself.
• 1:29:04
  It's one of those things. Fascinating.
• 1:29:06
  Character. It's one of those things where
• 1:29:07
  you think, oh God, would it be a great idea if and then you have
• 1:29:10
  a sleep and you wake up in the morning and go, oh, what was I
• 1:29:13
  thinking? That never happens.
• 1:29:15
  It could be an absolutely fascinating tale to have the toy
• 1:29:19
  maker come to the Doctor for help, and that's the plan.
• 1:29:24
  That's the way he will entrap him in the end, and he plays on
• 1:29:27
  the Doctor's willingness to help, to make things right.
• 1:29:31
  And that's the game that draws him in.
• 1:29:33
  Doctor doesn't realize that. But that would make a much more
• 1:29:37
  interesting way of bringing the toy maker in, because then you
• 1:29:41
  could just play on the oh, my body's failing me, I'm stuck in
• 1:29:43
  a dimension I shouldn't be. Please, Doctor, you've got to
• 1:29:45
  help me because if you don't, I'm going to go supernova and
• 1:29:48
  take out half a Galaxy. You need to help me to survive,
• 1:29:52
  and that's the game. You know that?
• 1:29:53
  That would have been interesting because then you've still got
• 1:29:56
  the Doctor playing up that dynamic.
• 1:29:58
  But but this for a couple of people that he supposedly had in
• 1:30:03
  the back of his mind in all this time who's never been mentioned
• 1:30:06
  before. They just I don't buy it.
• 1:30:11
  Not all these hundreds of years later.
• 1:30:14
  None of it convinces. Like I say it is with regret
• 1:30:17
  because generally I've I've enjoyed Gary's other books but
• 1:30:20
  this one just let me with a bad taste.
• 1:30:23
  I didn't want to play this game. Well, you don't have to anymore.
• 1:30:27
  All right, that's not on our list to cover, but let's go to a
• 1:30:33
  book that we hopefully will cover at some point.
• 1:30:36
  You're 5th No? But no, it's 5th, but I don't
• 1:30:41
  think you're going to cover it. Oh, why?
• 1:30:45
  Because I know you don't like this one.
• 1:30:48
  That ain't going to stop me covering it.
• 1:30:53
  We're now going to the new adventures.
• 1:30:55
  OK, well I was hoping one of them would.
• 1:30:57
  Oh God no. Oh no, please.
• 1:31:01
  Continue, continue. I do like it when I'm right.
• 1:31:06
  God tell everybody. It is from the pen of Mr. Paul
• 1:31:10
  Cornell. No future.
• 1:31:14
  Of all the Cornells you could have chosen, well, come on.
• 1:31:18
  I mean, I've got to hear this. So this was at the height of
• 1:31:23
  when I was reading The New Adventures, and the key thing
• 1:31:27
  for me with this book I mentioned when I got into Doctor
• 1:31:31
  Who fandom, the time meddler was when I really got into Doctor
• 1:31:35
  Who. Oh OK, well I'm going now.
• 1:31:39
  We've mentioned how bad Ace has been in these books.
• 1:31:44
  Yes. I really, really like all the
• 1:31:48
  bits with the Monk and Ace together because or it just
• 1:31:56
  oozes goodness. The fact that he's trying to get
• 1:32:00
  her on side as a companion because you know she's damaged
• 1:32:05
  and at this point in time when you're reading it, you don't
• 1:32:08
  know that some of this is a bit of a ploy on Ace's part.
• 1:32:11
  Bearing in mind you've been a complete shit up to now.
• 1:32:13
  It's. Been.
• 1:32:14
  Awful. You think she is actually going
• 1:32:17
  to go along with the monk and there are bits in there.
• 1:32:20
  The way he talks to. He's a little bit creepy but
• 1:32:23
  quite dreamy. You can, oh it sings, sings
• 1:32:27
  scenes with them together and I absolutely adore it.
• 1:32:32
  I absolutely adore it for that. It would make sense because
• 1:32:35
  obviously she then does turn the tables eventually.
• 1:32:37
  And, you know, I've been playing it the whole time.
• 1:32:40
  Now, if Ayston had turned a corner and become, you know, a
• 1:32:45
  nice person to be around, it would be like, OK, the end of
• 1:32:48
  that oh character. It makes sense.
• 1:32:49
  It's a turning point. But of course, Force the Shadows
• 1:32:52
  after this book isn't. It yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:54
  And that's, that's literally where it falls off a Cliff edge.
• 1:32:57
  But the the other thing for me as well is.
• 1:33:00
  Big fan of the Vardams as well. I can take or leave them, but I
• 1:33:06
  did feel very comfortable in amongst Sergeant Benton and the
• 1:33:10
  Brigadier from the 1970s, having enjoyed Nicholas Courtney in
• 1:33:14
  Battlefield many years beforehand.
• 1:33:17
  Having him back in it as a redoubtable figure again, and
• 1:33:20
  obviously my continuity brains going crazy at this point, It's
• 1:33:23
  like, but they didn't know the 7th Doctor.
• 1:33:25
  Well, he did kind of know the 7th Doctor because he walked up
• 1:33:27
  to anyway. I just can't take you out of my
• 1:33:30
  sight, can I, Doctor? And it was like, oh, so, so
• 1:33:34
  maybe he did see him, but in the back of my mind, I'm going.
• 1:33:37
  But they've got to sort this out somehow because it needs to be
• 1:33:39
  there. But again, he had that lovely
• 1:33:41
  family feel. And and the, the first part of
• 1:33:43
  the book, the Brigadier almost brushes him off his shoulder.
• 1:33:48
  He doesn't recognise him, doesn't want to know him.
• 1:33:51
  And you're like, oh God, what's happened here?
• 1:33:52
  Are we on another alternate reality like.
• 1:33:55
  Blood heat. Blood heat.
• 1:33:56
  Thank you. Excuse me and I I really like it
• 1:34:02
  that there is enough window dressing in here to keep me
• 1:34:05
  happy. I can see why other people like
• 1:34:08
  his other books, but for me this is like being cradled in a warm
• 1:34:14
  hug, even one that does want to put a knife into my heart and
• 1:34:17
  then throw me out into an Arctic wasteland.
• 1:34:19
  Which from the monks. Perspective, I think is an
• 1:34:22
  absolutely poetic way of getting rid of the Doctor with what it
• 1:34:25
  is to him in the Daleks master plan.
• 1:34:29
  The Monk to me is an untapped potential of the series.
• 1:34:36
  You know, the fact that we've got a character there that only
• 1:34:38
  appeared twice as criminal on screen, It's.
• 1:34:41
  Crazy when all you need is an actor.
• 1:34:43
  Yeah, you know, get get the master in for your teen hours on
• 1:34:47
  end. Can't we get the monk back?
• 1:34:49
  Because the monks never. He's never deadly about it.
• 1:34:53
  And even in even in no future, he's a buffoon.
• 1:34:56
  He's an absolute buffoon. You stop showing me that cover,
• 1:34:59
  please, With Liza Minelli playing Bernie Summerfield.
• 1:35:02
  It it it it is a. Bad cover that I I can't.
• 1:35:07
  I can't sugarcoat the cover up at all.
• 1:35:11
  It's not. It's not one of their best, but
• 1:35:13
  then some of the New Adventures covers are a little bit hit and
• 1:35:16
  miss. I'll tell you what I do.
• 1:35:18
  I understand your reasoning. Obviously I don't agree, but I I
• 1:35:22
  understand your reasoning because it is very wanky.
• 1:35:26
  This book, it's packed full of constituency.
• 1:35:28
  I mean, it's blood of a Mandra war.
• 1:35:31
  Something opens up the Chronovores, which brings us in
• 1:35:34
  the var dams and all of this nonsense.
• 1:35:36
  But it's like, it is like being hugged by a lot of Doctor Who.
• 1:35:41
  And in the desolate universe of the New Adventures, that is
• 1:35:49
  unusual and certainly enough for it to stand out, you know, as
• 1:35:53
  something a bit different. Well, I think, I think by that
• 1:35:55
  point we'd only had, was it Exodus with the War chief as as
• 1:36:00
  a sort of returning character. We had the Cybermen briefly.
• 1:36:03
  We've got the Sailorians, but the monk, I think as well, from
• 1:36:07
  my reading of it, I wasn't expecting him to be in it.
• 1:36:10
  And so the minute he was in it, I was like.
• 1:36:12
  Oh my God. This is going back my program
• 1:36:14
  guide and all the stuff I remember about it and lit your
• 1:36:16
  hot off the press for me for this.
• 1:36:18
  So he captivated me and I'll be honest, I'm really reading it
• 1:36:21
  again. It didn't disappoint.
• 1:36:22
  I got all those chills again and exactly the same points.
• 1:36:27
  Put it on the other pile. Come on.
• 1:36:29
  OK, it's going over. No.
• 1:36:32
  Superb choice. Maybe we will cover it one day
• 1:36:36
  and then we can battle it out on a book club episode.
• 1:36:39
  I look. Forward to it.
• 1:36:40
  OK, well then what's next to not that number 5 #5 on your boss
• 1:36:45
  list? #5 I really don't know how I've
• 1:36:47
  managed to do this, but hey, let's go with it.
• 1:36:50
  I'm seeing some more synchronicity of the piles.
• 1:36:55
  No, no, we're going to a different range we've not
• 1:36:58
  covered before. Oh, go on.
• 1:37:00
  We're going to the realm of the targets.
• 1:37:03
  Oh, OK. I'm always intrigued by when
• 1:37:05
  people pick the targets. It's very diverse, actually.
• 1:37:08
  And this is Logopolis by Christopher H Bidmead.
• 1:37:14
  How interesting. I know somebody who writes
• 1:37:16
  Christopher H Bidmead's targets very highly.
• 1:37:19
  So tell me, why not? It's a pamphlet, there's nothing
• 1:37:24
  to it. So this book again typifies when
• 1:37:28
  I was getting these, and I'm going by the condition of this
• 1:37:32
  one. So I'm guessing I got this
• 1:37:33
  probably from Barnsley Library when they were selling all their
• 1:37:35
  stock off all books. And so I hadn't seen Logopolis
• 1:37:42
  on TV and I read this book and went, I don't, I don't get it.
• 1:37:53
  What? What?
• 1:37:53
  What's happened? Once Upon a time there was a
• 1:37:55
  load of maths and it made everything the end.
• 1:37:59
  Oh, it just doesn't it. It's just, it's I really
• 1:38:05
  struggled after trying to find the bit that that, that.
• 1:38:08
  I hope there was an opening paragraph on it somewhere that
• 1:38:11
  just made me. This is it.
• 1:38:14
  Yeah, this is it. This, this is a this is a
• 1:38:17
  sentence. So they'll give you the intro
• 1:38:21
  sentence and then the rest of it.
• 1:38:22
  Police Constable Donald Seagray was in a jovial mood.
• 1:38:26
  The sun was shining, the bicycle was performing perfectly since
• 1:38:29
  it's overhaul last Saturday afternoon and now that the water
• 1:38:32
  main flooding in Burnley St. was repaired, he was on his way home
• 1:38:34
  for tea. That was all right with the
• 1:38:36
  Super What flood? What a what?
• 1:38:42
  Oh really? But then the rest of it then
• 1:38:46
  falls into pretty much the script thereafter, apart from
• 1:38:50
  omitting Anthony Ailey's. Ladies and gentlemen of the
• 1:38:52
  universe, please attend Criminal, which, Yeah.
• 1:38:56
  And so I just, when you watch Logopolis, I think the visuals
• 1:39:01
  get you through it a lot as a as a conception.
• 1:39:04
  Is great, yeah. As a concept and as a story, I
• 1:39:06
  think the visuals get you through it a lot.
• 1:39:10
  I'm still not so on the Watcher personally, but that's just
• 1:39:13
  personal choice. And so when I read this book and
• 1:39:16
  have reread it again, I found myself very wanting from it.
• 1:39:20
  Even having watched the show. I I just, I kind of want
• 1:39:24
  something more about it because of the nature of what it is and
• 1:39:28
  it just doesn't really deliver. It literally is the script being
• 1:39:31
  phoned in. I when I read Castro Valva a
• 1:39:34
  couple of years ago, that's a really dense book where it's
• 1:39:39
  like prose over scripts and he really clearly is enjoying
• 1:39:45
  exploring the ideas more that I've not read Lacopolis for a
• 1:39:50
  long, long time. So a pamphlet, you say?
• 1:39:54
  Is it very thin? It's it only runs 20 goods go
• 1:39:59
  past 120, it's 100 and 27127. So I might be a bit disingenuous
• 1:40:04
  by calling. That, But it's a story, right?
• 1:40:06
  That could do with some. It just could.
• 1:40:08
  Properly explore a lot at the starting of the Coppolis,
• 1:40:11
  couldn't you? The world, the world of the
• 1:40:12
  Logopolitans, could be better explored or explained because
• 1:40:17
  again, that is a visual really, when you see them walking
• 1:40:20
  through that finite corridor that they've got with all the
• 1:40:23
  people tapping on the keyboards. And there's more, there's more
• 1:40:27
  around them, but it just doesn't, doesn't really give me
• 1:40:30
  anything more. That book leaves me a bit cold.
• 1:40:33
  Well, it's a cold story, and it's a cold entry on your list.
• 1:40:38
  Yes, I'm afraid so. So, Logopolis, the moment has
• 1:40:42
  been prepared for. I feel like you've got a line
• 1:40:46
  for every book. I really wish I'd pre prepared
• 1:40:48
  them, that's the worst thing. Well, if they were improvised
• 1:40:51
  very, very well. OK #4 so the 4th best Doctor Who
• 1:40:58
  book of all time. Before we get to #4 can I give
• 1:41:01
  some honorable mentions that didn't work into my top ten and
• 1:41:04
  they are Doctor Who. The Romans came close, the
• 1:41:10
  imaginary friends. Oh, I've just done a book lab on
• 1:41:14
  it. Isn't it gorgeous?
• 1:41:15
  Beautiful, beautiful story, dear listener.
• 1:41:18
  If you don't get anything else, get yourself a copy of that.
• 1:41:21
  It's a short novella, but it's worth the worth the read.
• 1:41:24
  Thank you, Doctor Bear also. The witch hunters.
• 1:41:30
  Oh God. Terrifying.
• 1:41:31
  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely stunning.
• 1:41:34
  Dreams of Empire. Isn't it great?
• 1:41:37
  It's so underrated. Came very close.
• 1:41:40
  I did reread that one for this and it just got pipped.
• 1:41:43
  When he's got the sandwich stuck to his bottom.
• 1:41:46
  Yeah, I love that bit. Oh, it's it's based on the siege
• 1:41:49
  times 10, you know, absolutely great story and a a personal
• 1:41:54
  target favorite of mine, which is the mind of evil because I
• 1:42:00
  can remember reading that travelling to my parents caravan
• 1:42:02
  and they take all those sorts of windy back roads.
• 1:42:05
  So it's a lot of fields you can drive past.
• 1:42:09
  And I can remember visualizing all the locations reading that
• 1:42:12
  book before it's in the episode of those fields.
• 1:42:15
  Imagine my surprise when I watched it, Especially when you
• 1:42:17
  get to the rocket bit at the end and it's just like those fields
• 1:42:20
  and. Drove.
• 1:42:21
  Past, and that's kind of why this segues into this one,
• 1:42:25
  because this is my only target entry.
• 1:42:29
  In your top ten list. Or in my top ten list.
• 1:42:31
  Yeah, OK. And I bought this book from
• 1:42:37
  Skegness in the WH Smiths, which I don't believe.
• 1:42:41
  I think that shut down about last year.
• 1:42:42
  Actually, it was my third Doctor Who target I ever bought.
• 1:42:50
  So you've got, you've seen the 1st 2.
• 1:42:51
  This is the third one. It's Remembrance of the Daleks.
• 1:42:55
  I've been Aronovitch. Gorgeous book.
• 1:42:59
  I mean, I wonder, you were hooks.
• 1:43:03
  Well, there was. There was a range of them there
• 1:43:07
  when I first went to Skegness and I was a bit spoilt for
• 1:43:11
  choice. It was one of the few that had
• 1:43:12
  quite a few of these targets in stock at the time, and over the
• 1:43:17
  subsequent years, only the Space Pirates ever remained on that
• 1:43:20
  shelf. I I ultimately bought that copy
• 1:43:25
  of the Space Pirates about two years later.
• 1:43:27
  It's because. You felt sorry for it.
• 1:43:29
  Well, I hadn't got it. I hadn't read it and I can tell
• 1:43:32
  you it's the same one because there's a there's a bend all the
• 1:43:34
  way across the back of the spine.
• 1:43:35
  So I I'd seen it and went not buying that it's going to bend
• 1:43:38
  all the way across the back of the spine.
• 1:43:39
  But when you've got through so many of them in like, I haven't
• 1:43:41
  read the Space Pirates, I'll buy it now.
• 1:43:43
  You need a home. Company so so yeah this is so a
• 1:43:47
  lot of the McCoy books are great battlefield it's not just
• 1:43:51
  because there's a ginger hair doctor so I feel like I've got
• 1:43:53
  representation in there but they had that little bit extra.
• 1:43:59
  I quite like the story of Raslon Omega and the other that's
• 1:44:03
  littered throughout this you. Heard the episode then.
• 1:44:06
  Whether the other is the doctor or not.
• 1:44:09
  Oh, it is. Come on now.
• 1:44:13
  Could go either way, but I I think they're lovely little
• 1:44:18
  interludes in this book. It doesn't put a foot wrong.
• 1:44:21
  And a gorgeous Alice Pearson cover.
• 1:44:23
  Beautiful, yeah. That I just, Yeah, yeah.
• 1:44:28
  I think I can't think of a good way to sum this book up other
• 1:44:31
  than bloody brilliant. The additional character insight
• 1:44:34
  alone makes it one of the best Doctor Who books of all time.
• 1:44:39
  But you know, I derided that there were too many scenes from
• 1:44:44
  Dalek's point of view, but just for having the balls to do that,
• 1:44:47
  I think it's incredible. He's just got ambition, hasn't
• 1:44:50
  he, beyond writing a target? And unfortunately that led to
• 1:44:53
  transit, but then that led to the also people.
• 1:44:56
  So happy days. Yes, and all rivers lead to
• 1:44:59
  London, but it's sorry. Well done.
• 1:45:02
  No, no. But but no, it's, it's, it's a
• 1:45:07
  great book. I mean, do you remember watching
• 1:45:09
  this one on TV? So I was obviously gravitating
• 1:45:11
  towards it at the time to see what it was like.
• 1:45:15
  And yeah, it just didn't disappoint.
• 1:45:17
  It actually worked a little bit better as a book I think.
• 1:45:20
  I think so too. Because you can visualize
• 1:45:22
  everything yourself when you when you watch it on TV, it's
• 1:45:25
  kind of pared down a little bit, but it's just an absolute page
• 1:45:29
  Turner from start to end in 160 pages.
• 1:45:31
  One of the longer target books. It's surprising, though, because
• 1:45:34
  there's a lot packed into those 160 pages.
• 1:45:38
  Yeah, no, absolutely wonderful read.
• 1:45:40
  Wonderful. I cannot rereading it.
• 1:45:43
  Argue with that choice at all, because nothing.
• 1:45:46
  If I was doing my top ten list again, that might feature on it
• 1:45:49
  now, but I did it when I did it and that's that.
• 1:45:53
  Well, so #4. On your.
• 1:45:57
  Boss from 10? Do you have an outside list for
• 1:45:59
  bottoms as well? No.
• 1:46:01
  No, no, no, I was. I was quite quite strict on the
• 1:46:05
  bottoms. OK, the best way to be Gareth.
• 1:46:09
  I'm honest, so this one which I will be careful what I say the
• 1:46:17
  Dalek generation. Good grief, are you telling me
• 1:46:21
  that Nicholas Briggs cannot write prose?
• 1:46:26
  Shock horror. Where do I start, dear listener?
• 1:46:29
  So the problem I have with this book is I think this was not
• 1:46:37
  written at the time that I don't believe in false advertising.
• 1:46:42
  The book cover here denotes the Doctor in the 11th Doctor in his
• 1:46:47
  purple garb, IE his last series with two Daleks.
• 1:46:51
  Frankly either side of him. Very exciting.
• 1:46:54
  I don't know about you, but that sounds like an absolutely rocky
• 1:46:57
  idea. However, it's not that version
• 1:47:01
  of the dot that's in it. Oh.
• 1:47:03
  Dear, which one is it? Season 6.
• 1:47:05
  Oh, that's and the reason, the old costume, the reason why I
• 1:47:09
  know that is because we talk about spherical balls in the
• 1:47:11
  time rotor going up and down. Oh.
• 1:47:14
  It's the old console room. Steps going up to the console.
• 1:47:19
  Oh yeah, definitely. I'm even referred to the tweed
• 1:47:21
  jacket. Oh no.
• 1:47:23
  So already I'm like, oh, that's not.
• 1:47:25
  I mean, is that Briggs's fault or is that the covers, you know,
• 1:47:28
  the artist's fault? Yeah, it's probably the artist's
• 1:47:33
  fault. I I think that they probably
• 1:47:34
  wrote this book. Who did the cover?
• 1:47:37
  Gareth, Name and shame. Why don't you?
• 1:47:39
  I don't know. Come on, who?
• 1:47:41
  Is this? Have a look.
• 1:47:42
  They maybe say they're blushes because there is a library
• 1:47:46
  sticker over the bottom end of the thing so I can't read it.
• 1:47:52
  We'll never know, but we'll find out, you know, and we're coming
• 1:47:57
  for you. But to be fair to whoever did
• 1:47:59
  this cover, the three books that get released here because you've
• 1:48:02
  got Plague of Cybermen and Shroud of Sorrow are all from
• 1:48:06
  that version of the Doctor. This this cover design is only
• 1:48:09
  ever used for these three books and then that's it.
• 1:48:12
  So they were obviously brought out uniform, but I think this
• 1:48:14
  was probably written around about the time of the Doctor,
• 1:48:17
  the Widow and the Wardrobe, because what this story
• 1:48:20
  predominantly has is a tale of the doctor going around with a
• 1:48:23
  bunch of kids. Oh, hideous.
• 1:48:26
  Yeah, and that's predominantly the story.
• 1:48:31
  Do they all get murdered by Daleks, Gareth?
• 1:48:36
  I certainly hope so. Well, I've got to be careful
• 1:48:40
  because you've not read this one yet and I believe it is on our
• 1:48:43
  book club, so I'm being a choice if.
• 1:48:45
  You tell me, somebody's kiddie wings.
• 1:48:46
  These Moffat era kiddie wings actually end up being massacred?
• 1:48:49
  Well then, I might be excited to pick it up.
• 1:48:53
  How can I How can I best phrase this?
• 1:48:56
  Briggs does a moth app. Oh no, he brings them back to
• 1:49:00
  life again. Oh Jesus Christ Almighty.
• 1:49:04
  What no one can hear outside listen land, is I've just moved
• 1:49:07
  the glasses to my end of the nose and look down them.
• 1:49:11
  Very mournfully, yeah. Oh, good grief.
• 1:49:15
  Well, there we go. Is he a good writer, though?
• 1:49:18
  Can he write? I mean.
• 1:49:20
  It's a story. Yeah, but anyone can write a
• 1:49:23
  story. I could write a story.
• 1:49:24
  It'll be shit, but I could write a story that's.
• 1:49:28
  My as much praise as I can give it, the the other element I've
• 1:49:33
  got is I think there is a better story in here.
• 1:49:38
  So the setup is that the Doctor's trying to tell everyone
• 1:49:43
  he's got these kids in tow with him because their parents have
• 1:49:45
  been killed. And he goes to the planet and
• 1:49:49
  basically everyone loves the Daleks there.
• 1:49:52
  The Daleks are great. We like him.
• 1:49:54
  They're not a problem with him. And he's going, Oh no, the
• 1:49:56
  Doctor, the Daleks are bad. Oh, we got all going to run away
• 1:49:58
  and hide. They're vicious.
• 1:49:59
  Vicious. You probably have a big finish.
• 1:50:04
  Yeah, you probably only get about 20-25 pages of the Daleks
• 1:50:08
  in totality of this book. Again, reasons why I don't like
• 1:50:11
  the cover. The title itself does not, I
• 1:50:15
  think, denote these Daleks, but the people themselves.
• 1:50:18
  I think there's a better story about a society where the Daleks
• 1:50:22
  help them, because obviously by the end of it, it turns into a
• 1:50:25
  massive Dalek plot and there's a big old time Dalek in it.
• 1:50:29
  Whatever is dark. Oh, he's the one.
• 1:50:31
  From Big Finish. Yeah, it's advertising its own
• 1:50:34
  creations. There is a line in there that
• 1:50:36
  really rubbed me up the wrong way, which summits the effect of
• 1:50:40
  and I wish I'd written it down. It's like this Dalek time
• 1:50:43
  controller. I don't have to tell you about
• 1:50:44
  that. We can talk about that later.
• 1:50:47
  It's. The only bloody Dalek that sings
• 1:50:49
  so much, I mean. You're going to tell me you, you
• 1:50:53
  I've got to go look for this thing.
• 1:50:54
  You you're wouldn't hold the whole.
• 1:50:58
  Oh dear Gareth, it's a good thing you know.
• 1:51:00
  We're also reading Revelation of the Dialects by Eric Saywood in
• 1:51:03
  that episode of The Book Club, so fortunately you can read
• 1:51:07
  something good alongside the Dalek Generation.
• 1:51:10
  Do you know what? I've broken my own rule today
• 1:51:11
  reading that. So this is Revelation of the
• 1:51:14
  Daleks here just off to my right.
• 1:51:16
  And I said I read 50 pages a day.
• 1:51:19
  Made a liar of me 44, wouldn't take any more.
• 1:51:23
  Very telling, yeah. For for those who are
• 1:51:26
  interested, I got fed up of reading this morning about a
• 1:51:31
  egotistic old man with a very bad wig like hair boy.
• 1:51:34
  Don't remind me. Yeah.
• 1:51:36
  And then I read about the American election.
• 1:51:38
  Oh, well done. So, yeah, well.
• 1:51:43
  Just a Dalek generation in the bin.
• 1:51:46
  Yeah, it's not great. I mean, I'm very excited because
• 1:51:50
  I do love reading terrible Doctor Who books, so.
• 1:51:53
  You, you and the other chaps. You know, I'll be honest, you
• 1:51:57
  may enjoy it. I I just found it very
• 1:51:59
  derivative of a lot of the stuff going off at the time on the TV
• 1:52:03
  show. This is the third time that's
• 1:52:05
  turned up on someone's bottom 10 list.
• 1:52:07
  That's the most anything's turned up on anyone's list. 3
• 1:52:11
  times. Well, just so you know, I've
• 1:52:13
  I've been fair. I read it originally back in
• 1:52:15
  August and I reread it again about two days ago.
• 1:52:17
  OK. Well then, that I've never
• 1:52:20
  thought you know your research for this.
• 1:52:23
  No, no, but I like to. Be thorough because I like to
• 1:52:26
  make sure it's not me on a knee jerk reaction was read it the
• 1:52:28
  first time round and. Gone terrible.
• 1:52:31
  Yeah, well, you're top three now.
• 1:52:34
  Top three. That's right, so #3 now, if
• 1:52:39
  anyone's recognized my dilted tunes from before on another
• 1:52:43
  podcast, I've extolled the virtues of this book as being my
• 1:52:46
  favorite book of all time in Doctor Who.
• 1:52:50
  And in this particular instance, because of my recent rereads of
• 1:52:54
  stuff that I've read in the past, this was now dropped.
• 1:52:56
  To #3. It is the biography of Patrick
• 1:53:01
  Troughton. Now, these biographies can go
• 1:53:06
  one or two ways. They can be either absolutely
• 1:53:08
  thrilling or very dry. This is absolutely fascinating.
• 1:53:16
  So it's written by Michael Troughton and it gives a a view
• 1:53:22
  of Patrick Troughton's life and it does give some insight to his
• 1:53:29
  military career, his becoming Doctor Who, which was a very,
• 1:53:38
  very hard choice for him. And at the end of the day, just
• 1:53:40
  to put his kids through education.
• 1:53:44
  And obviously it's one of the more salacious things that
• 1:53:47
  people probably don't or do know about him is the relationships
• 1:53:52
  then with the women in his life. Now I can be at this and this is
• 1:53:56
  all through from Michael Troutman's point of view.
• 1:53:59
  And I think that gives it a very interesting read because.
• 1:54:04
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:54:05
  Well, he is part of the when. So basically Troughton's first
• 1:54:10
  wife is a childhood sweeter. And that's who he has three kids
• 1:54:17
  with David and Michael being the second and third one.
• 1:54:20
  And there's a there's an elder daughter.
• 1:54:24
  And basically they start to drift as things happen.
• 1:54:28
  But Troughton seems to have this feeling of I saw that I'm
• 1:54:36
  looking for, he basically pays for the house they're in,
• 1:54:40
  everything to keep the house over their heads while he's got
• 1:54:44
  having a relationship with another woman at this point.
• 1:54:47
  And to the point where even like Michael saying they end up
• 1:54:50
  having meals together where he will bring his partner over to
• 1:54:55
  his first wife and the kids are all there and that's just how
• 1:55:00
  life is for them. But Patrick is essentially
• 1:55:03
  paying for stuff for them. It is almost as if he was still
• 1:55:08
  there. Strikes.
• 1:55:10
  Me as the act of a good man. Quite, quite and and probably
• 1:55:14
  not as salacious as everyone thinks.
• 1:55:16
  But again, caveat this with this is Michael Crouton's beauty.
• 1:55:20
  He's the youngest of the three during this period.
• 1:55:23
  And you get the impression from reading this book that none of
• 1:55:25
  this has kind of been endorsed by David because the ultimately
• 1:55:30
  what happens as we get further and further into the book is
• 1:55:34
  Cratton has to cut him off at one point a lot later on.
• 1:55:37
  And they end up in a completely different house and different
• 1:55:41
  circumstances. And it gets a little bit dark.
• 1:55:44
  And there is a fast, I can't remember.
• 1:55:47
  I think it's after that particular incident about the
• 1:55:50
  fact that his daughter never speaks to him again, even even
• 1:55:57
  to the point where he dies. They never reconcile and like I
• 1:56:01
  said, the the little bits in it that are absolutely fascinating,
• 1:56:06
  so such. An elusive fellow.
• 1:56:08
  Isn't he? I was never big on biographies.
• 1:56:10
  In fact, I went out of my way to to not do them.
• 1:56:13
  The first biography I really got into was Who on Earth is Tom
• 1:56:15
  Baker? And I always remember the
• 1:56:18
  opening and closing story he tells about being in the
• 1:56:21
  Australian restaurant. And, you know, he orders the
• 1:56:25
  meal and someone calls and goes on.
• 1:56:26
  I'm going to have to go and talk to this person who's bought a
• 1:56:28
  bloody meal now. And he goes over and it's his
• 1:56:30
  own son. Sorry if anyone's not read the
• 1:56:33
  book. That's kind of the book end of
• 1:56:34
  it. But that really got me thinking.
• 1:56:37
  I want to know more about these particular actors.
• 1:56:40
  And so I thought out, who cares? Is it, who cares?
• 1:56:44
  What's the Who's there? The Jessica Carney one, yeah.
• 1:56:51
  And that is again another fascinating read.
• 1:56:54
  Anika Wills is one naked. The two-part that by
• 1:56:58
  autobiography that she did is absolutely riveting.
• 1:57:02
  Yeah, there's some, there's some brilliant needs.
• 1:57:04
  It's sort of installed. I've been interested in sort of
• 1:57:07
  things like I like to find stuff out about people.
• 1:57:12
  I kind of hope Colin Baker will do.
• 1:57:14
  Yeah, I mean, I think we got as close to that with the Big
• 1:57:18
  Finish interview he did with Nick Briggs.
• 1:57:20
  Big massive 2 hour one all. Of this is Colin Baker, yeah.
• 1:57:24
  And he was, he was quite personal about his life.
• 1:57:28
  That was actually the first Big Finish thing I listened to in
• 1:57:30
  this house when we moved in. I actually had, I actually got
• 1:57:32
  the download for that one. Oh, you can see why they picked
• 1:57:37
  him out at the party. Did you remember the Mary Tam
• 1:57:39
  one? No.
• 1:57:41
  Oh, God, When she tells the story of the convention on the
• 1:57:43
  ship and there's a storm coming and they tell them all, well,
• 1:57:47
  you can't go to the mainland, there's a storm coming, your
• 1:57:50
  ship will be capsized. So they go and run to tell
• 1:57:54
  Debbie Watling, though she's already on the other boat going
• 1:57:56
  to the mainland. And they they quickly turn that
• 1:58:00
  boat around, but sort of in the eye of the storm.
• 1:58:02
  And she comes back on the ship absolutely sodden.
• 1:58:06
  Oh my God. I mean, that's the sort of story
• 1:58:08
  I love. Oh yeah, but you know, keeping.
• 1:58:11
  With the nautical theme, you find out what his nickname was
• 1:58:16
  because I didn't. I knew he had a military career.
• 1:58:19
  I didn't realize it was a rescue boat that he operated.
• 1:58:23
  OK, so he wasn't out at sea permanently, but he went out at
• 1:58:26
  sea. But he couldn't afford a hat, so
• 1:58:27
  he put Tea Cosy on his head. So everyone called him Cosy.
• 1:58:31
  Cosy was his nickname. He's like a great nickname for
• 1:58:34
  Badger Trown. Yeah, I'm just like this.
• 1:58:37
  Little bits like so yeah, it's, it's an absolutely wonderful
• 1:58:40
  book. I don't think it's still in
• 1:58:41
  print anymore. I've not read that, but on your
• 1:58:44
  recommendation I will grab that tomorrow.
• 1:58:46
  If if, if you can get a hold of it, I would heartily recommend
• 1:58:51
  it. And I mean, there is another
• 1:58:53
  thing about this book for me that kind of all the special
• 1:58:55
  place in my heart because this is one of the few books I ever
• 1:58:58
  fell upon and was like, if you pre-order it, you get your name
• 1:59:01
  in the back of the book. Oh, wow.
• 1:59:03
  Yeah. But I'm not alone in here.
• 1:59:06
  I think there's a Mr. Cy Heart and Rod Brown in the back of
• 1:59:08
  this as well. Oh, is there?
• 1:59:10
  They're usually linking into. Nasty places of books.
• 1:59:13
  There's a number of people in the back of this book and and
• 1:59:16
  it's. Anyone else you recognize Fraser
• 1:59:17
  Gregory? There is it I.
• 1:59:19
  Think there's one Phil Collinson as well.
• 1:59:22
  Yeah. So this is.
• 1:59:25
  It's quite a joke forward that I was there, no?
• 1:59:27
  No, there's about 200 people named in the back that
• 1:59:29
  pre-ordered the book and all their names are printed in the
• 1:59:32
  back of it. And.
• 1:59:32
  Wonderful. I didn't realize till I read
• 1:59:35
  this, and I only read this this year when we moved into this
• 1:59:38
  house. I've got all my books out this
• 1:59:40
  year. They've all been boxed up from
• 1:59:42
  the move. Is that it's personalized by
• 1:59:44
  Michael Troughton to me. Oh.
• 1:59:46
  How lovely. And I didn't even know about
• 1:59:48
  that. So it was it is it is, it is a
• 1:59:51
  wonderful, wonderful book. And if none of my other books I
• 1:59:56
  ever keep, and this is one that will be kept probably long after
• 2:00:03
  I'm gone. Yeah.
• 2:00:04
  I'm, I'm, I'm going to buy that one, I think.
• 2:00:07
  Well, OK, so we're heading into the top three bottom.
• 2:00:12
  Yes. What's heading It's the
• 2:00:16
  doldrums. Well.
• 2:00:20
  It's actually an author we've already had in the bottom.
• 2:00:22
  Oh, go on. Yes, we're going back to the
• 2:00:26
  land of Daniel O Mahoney. Not the man in the velvet mask.
• 2:00:31
  The one on the bed is saying. Dodo.
• 2:00:33
  I know. I mean, I love Dodo.
• 2:00:36
  What on earth? Why would you do this to her?
• 2:00:39
  So this typifies, again what we talked about with Matrix in that
• 2:00:44
  here is a story that ain't a First Doctor story.
• 2:00:47
  Definitely. That is my dominant overriding
• 2:00:52
  problem with this. I should feel like one, right?
• 2:00:56
  Even if you're being ambitious. I think Empire of Glass, from
• 2:00:59
  what I remember, wasn't particularly great, but you
• 2:01:02
  could visualize that happening. But this is so visceral almost
• 2:01:11
  in terms of what what's in there that I just don't.
• 2:01:14
  I can't. Imagine.
• 2:01:16
  Cuddly William Hartnell dodering about in this at all.
• 2:01:22
  I don't know if there's there's a piece of it that doesn't know
• 2:01:24
  in a French history as well to to sort of get into that, that
• 2:01:27
  aspect of it. Funnily enough, Alexander Dumas
• 2:01:32
  has Three Musketeers and all that history element that he
• 2:01:34
  wrote is something that's on my list.
• 2:01:36
  And funnily enough, I do have a copy of Three Musketeers.
• 2:01:39
  I found out in my box of books that sat behind me from my ante
• 2:01:44
  that were in my dad's loft that that was sort of.
• 2:01:48
  So there isn't something there for me to read but I just this
• 2:01:51
  one it just now I. And I still don't get the whole.
• 2:01:56
  Dodo thing the fact that she shacked up with these players
• 2:02:00
  and. Dirty mare?
• 2:02:04
  Quite. I mean, she is dirty by the end
• 2:02:07
  of the book, isn't she? Yeah.
• 2:02:10
  And again, you're like, really? That's what we're going to do
• 2:02:14
  with this character because. I mean, at some point, whether
• 2:02:17
  it's Darvil Evans or Rebecca Levine, whoever is editing these
• 2:02:21
  books at this point should have taken one look at that synopsis
• 2:02:24
  and just put a big red pen through it.
• 2:02:27
  I just yeah. And.
• 2:02:29
  The thing is, I think. I'm only I'm Omahony.
• 2:02:33
  However you say that. I think he can write prose.
• 2:02:35
  I think, I think he can put a sentence together.
• 2:02:39
  I just think his approach is so badly badly considered it.
• 2:02:44
  Feels like this, though it's a book of two halves.
• 2:02:46
  Again, very similar to Falls of Shadow in the fact that you have
• 2:02:49
  all this incident happening somewhere and then there's
• 2:02:52
  another place where something else needs to happen where the
• 2:02:54
  doctor needs to get to to sort things out.
• 2:02:56
  Feels like there's not enough story so.
• 2:02:58
  He's yeah. Shift off somewhere else.
• 2:03:01
  Yeah. So it's, it is thoroughly
• 2:03:04
  disappointing. And I, I, I don't have a good
• 2:03:08
  word to say about it, if I'm honest.
• 2:03:11
  So that was sorry, I've lost the floor on that bottom.
• 2:03:14
  Three, that was top. No, that was bottom 3.
• 2:03:17
  Was it? That was bottom 32, so it's top
• 2:03:19
  2. Well, surprised me.
• 2:03:23
  I think you'll be as as much as you were down on no future.
• 2:03:27
  I think I'm going to pick you right back up again.
• 2:03:29
  Oh. Please.
• 2:03:31
  With Ether of Wasps by Trevor Baxendale.
• 2:03:34
  Oh my God, do you know this is the book that got me into
• 2:03:37
  reading Doctor Who books properly?
• 2:03:40
  It is aureus. I think that cover is absolutely
• 2:03:45
  awesome, isn't it? When I, when I pick this one out
• 2:03:47
  to reread it, because again, one of the rereads I've done
• 2:03:49
  recently, I poured over that cover just trying to take it all
• 2:03:54
  in. It's just, it's, it's the colour
• 2:03:57
  of it, the Wasps, the the mottled flesh that's on there.
• 2:04:01
  Yeah, I mean, he likes an orifice, doesn't he?
• 2:04:04
  Trevor backs him down with a cold heart.
• 2:04:06
  That a massive hole on the front as well.
• 2:04:10
  Yeah. No, it's.
• 2:04:12
  I wasn't. Quite sure how to say that
• 2:04:13
  really. Well, I think that's how most of
• 2:04:16
  the black sheep covers are though, aren't they?
• 2:04:18
  Because they're very that very circular image that's.
• 2:04:20
  The whole of them. Yes.
• 2:04:23
  Some people will say yeah, devoid of talent, but that I
• 2:04:25
  would not be one of those people.
• 2:04:27
  Well, tell me why. Well the best way I can describe
• 2:04:31
  this book is Delta and the Bannerman makes Terror of the
• 2:04:35
  Zygons and that was how I wrote this one up many years ago when
• 2:04:42
  I first read it and it's exactly the same.
• 2:04:45
  Coming back to it. There is no ongoing narrative
• 2:04:49
  really in this one. It is very stand alone so it is
• 2:04:52
  very easy to get into. Not like, you know, seeing eye.
• 2:04:57
  Good book though it is, you kind of have to place it in that
• 2:05:00
  chronology to get the full impact for it.
• 2:05:03
  This. You could pick it up tomorrow
• 2:05:05
  and not have read another 8th Doctor book.
• 2:05:07
  I think was why that was a good in for me.
• 2:05:10
  You know, I was just like brilliant stand alone, lots of
• 2:05:13
  horror, lots of excitement. It's got.
• 2:05:16
  It's got. Exactly what you want.
• 2:05:18
  It's sort of that that village setting the the image of someone
• 2:05:23
  being physically taken over by the Wasps themselves.
• 2:05:26
  And when you get down to it, what it actually is is just,
• 2:05:28
  it's, it's something and nothing at the end of the day, really.
• 2:05:31
  And then you've got the the bounteons that's going, not the
• 2:05:35
  bounteons the other people that come in with the with The
• 2:05:37
  Walking bomb that's coming after the.
• 2:05:42
  It's just so like unpretentiously written as well.
• 2:05:45
  You know how so many of these these original novels are
• 2:05:48
  overwritten and we're very flowery that that is written in
• 2:05:52
  the style of an old fashioned target, but it's double the
• 2:05:55
  length with double the incident and a massive wasp that takes
• 2:05:59
  Aji Kapoor onto the top of a train.
• 2:06:03
  It's got, it's got pace, it's got horror.
• 2:06:06
  Plenty there is there. There is nothing wrong with
• 2:06:10
  sitting down on a cold night like this evening and and
• 2:06:14
  reading this in the dark. Well, reading in the dark
• 2:06:16
  wouldn't really work, would it? You won't be able to see the
• 2:06:17
  page, but with the lights turned low and reading this you you
• 2:06:20
  would be you could be in a very good place with it.
• 2:06:23
  Backs of delracy I've talked to so well as well.
• 2:06:27
  Yeah, I'm, I'm again. You know Baxendale's books.
• 2:06:29
  I've enjoyed all of them. Yeah, me too.
• 2:06:31
  There's not. There's not one, I don't think
• 2:06:33
  even. No.
• 2:06:35
  People round the changes conjunction, I really enjoyed
• 2:06:37
  that. Yeah, I find him a stall.
• 2:06:41
  I'm surprised there's not more of him in in the current range
• 2:06:43
  actually. Did you read Prisoner of the
• 2:06:45
  Daleks from the new series Adventures?
• 2:06:48
  Yes, a while ago. That is a banger.
• 2:06:50
  That is a great new series. Eventually, yeah, you're right.
• 2:06:53
  He's extremely reliable. And he's got one in the the two
• 2:06:57
  in one range, as we mentioned the heart of stone.
• 2:07:00
  Dipping more toes into that, you know.
• 2:07:02
  But no, you, you couldn't go wrong with Eater of Wasps.
• 2:07:06
  And I'm I'm more surprised, I think when I came to my top,
• 2:07:10
  when I came to putting this list together, that Eater Wasps never
• 2:07:13
  jumped out at me. And I've always held this one up
• 2:07:16
  as a book. It's not till I've gone through
• 2:07:19
  all the 8th Doctor books and look for is it?
• 2:07:24
  Have I got this? Is it in this book or watch this
• 2:07:27
  make a liar of me now. Oh, now I've got rather new
• 2:07:32
  adventures in here, but I don't think I've put the 8th Doctor
• 2:07:34
  ones in all the ratings. Oh, hang on.
• 2:07:38
  No, that's the new series Adventures.
• 2:07:40
  Where's that? Well, anyway, that's kind of a
• 2:07:42
  bit of a bit of a blind alley. I thought I'd written all the
• 2:07:45
  numbers down that I gave it on Goodreads, but that's when it
• 2:07:48
  jumped out at me. I was like, Oh my God, eat your
• 2:07:50
  Wasps. Why, why, why did he even have
• 2:07:52
  to look that one up? And you are right, it's like it
• 2:07:56
  is the archetypal Doctor Who adventure.
• 2:07:58
  Is it? It's a village, you know,
• 2:08:00
  there's a sequence on a train, it's somebody turning into a
• 2:08:05
  monster. All those sort of cliches, but
• 2:08:07
  just on so well. Yeah.
• 2:08:09
  And again, this comes back to visualization.
• 2:08:12
  Can you, for me, can they imagine in the time it's made?
• 2:08:15
  Now, by the time you get to the 8th Doctor books for me, they're
• 2:08:17
  all shot on 16 millimetre. So there is a certain level of
• 2:08:21
  them. So to me, it's quite easy to
• 2:08:23
  imagine the pace of the making of this in the style of like
• 2:08:26
  something like Poirot on TV. Will it just be great wacky
• 2:08:29
  Wasps in it? Do you know what I mean?
• 2:08:31
  And. Who has to love a chart wasp
• 2:08:33
  come? On why not, Yeah, bastards of
• 2:08:35
  the universe. Rigby.
• 2:08:37
  That's it, isn't it? Rigby gets turned into a wasp,
• 2:08:40
  the lovely old man who's friends with the boy.
• 2:08:42
  Yep. No, it's it's it's an absolute
• 2:08:45
  page Turner. And I think when I've reread
• 2:08:48
  this one, if memory serves me right, this might be wanted in a
• 2:08:51
  day on this time round. Yeah, I.
• 2:08:53
  Could do that one. Because it's it's unpretentious,
• 2:08:57
  it knows exactly what it is, and it delivers exactly what it
• 2:09:00
  needs to. You are right.
• 2:09:03
  It's very pleasing to hear. Yeah, well, from pleasing to
• 2:09:10
  pleasing no one, especially you. Well, up to a few days ago this
• 2:09:17
  was my number one. Oh.
• 2:09:19
  Worst of all time? So your number number one was a
• 2:09:23
  late, late incomer. Yeah.
• 2:09:25
  Oh. Yeah, Oh yes.
• 2:09:29
  But this one? The one thing I can say about
• 2:09:33
  this book is that I got it brand new and I think I paid £0.50 for
• 2:09:39
  it from AWH Smith sale. OK, that's quite cheap.
• 2:09:43
  That's about the only good thing I can say about this book.
• 2:09:47
  That means it's about what sort of 0.25 of a pence per page?
• 2:09:54
  And that is too much for it. I have the.
• 2:09:58
  I have the problem that the other thing I don't like about
• 2:10:00
  this, it's a massive old hardback.
• 2:10:03
  OK. And so it doesn't fit on any of
• 2:10:07
  my shelf Stasher hardbacks up there.
• 2:10:10
  That has to be out of the way. It is the coming of the
• 2:10:12
  terrifying I was. Just going to guess that ghastly
• 2:10:18
  isn't it? Grizzly Book.
• 2:10:19
  It's terrible, and again, I've researched that one to try and
• 2:10:23
  find out why I don't like it. Because it's indecipherable.
• 2:10:27
  Well, I think, I think from what I can gather don't aren't the
• 2:10:29
  characters that are in this from some of his other books and I.
• 2:10:33
  Couldn't tell you either. You know his.
• 2:10:35
  Will or I'm reading that it makes a lot more sense, but it's
• 2:10:38
  like, I mean, let's you know, I've actually, no pun intended,
• 2:10:43
  bookended this in some ways, because you've got this was the
• 2:10:45
  start of these big format books that ultimately ends up with the
• 2:10:48
  Dorstan's curse. So you.
• 2:10:51
  Kind of you kind of go from this and then I think to is it wheel
• 2:10:57
  horizons, black horizons next into it.
• 2:11:00
  That Jenny Colgan. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:11:03
  Genesee Colgan, Sorry, I've just realized I'm very bad form.
• 2:11:06
  I'm turning away from the microphone.
• 2:11:08
  That's very bad of me asking the phone.
• 2:11:11
  Yeah, yeah. So you kind of get the end of
• 2:11:13
  those six big format books that end in the Dawson's curtains.
• 2:11:16
  Start with this, where, you know, they've got a very set
• 2:11:20
  idea. We'll get these famous authors
• 2:11:22
  in and then they kind of dwindle a little bit.
• 2:11:24
  I mean, to be honest, the the Dark Horizons one's actually
• 2:11:27
  quite good. That is one I enjoyed.
• 2:11:30
  And the wheel of ice and the 3rd doctor one.
• 2:11:33
  This one was the worst. So this by a mile.
• 2:11:36
  This was terrible and it doesn't help.
• 2:11:38
  It's the 11th Doctor for me and yeah, enough said.
• 2:11:43
  It it just. Yeah, I just couldn't get into
• 2:11:46
  it. It wanted to be something else
• 2:11:48
  other than a Doctor Who story. And I think that's the problem
• 2:11:51
  you have with this. And like I say, it's just an
• 2:11:54
  unwieldy thing that takes up an awful lot of shell space.
• 2:11:58
  I should not take it nor tail Gareth of a single sentence of
• 2:12:02
  that book. And I got to a point where I
• 2:12:04
  gave up and I don't give up on books.
• 2:12:06
  I got to a point where I was just like, this is just so much
• 2:12:09
  hard work. I I I refused to put in more
• 2:12:12
  hard work than I'm already doing.
• 2:12:14
  I think I finished it, but I'll be honest with you, I think I
• 2:12:16
  didn't take any of it in. No, I couldn't tell you what
• 2:12:19
  it's about on pirates or something rips in the universe
• 2:12:23
  to other universes. And I think the doctor's not in
• 2:12:26
  it that much when, when you when you get through to it.
• 2:12:28
  So it's. Sort of favours his own
• 2:12:30
  characters a bit more. And so for that reason, but it's
• 2:12:35
  been very pleasing listening to all the other folk talk about
• 2:12:38
  this one because I thought it's got to be me.
• 2:12:42
  Unfortunately, that one is being covered in an upcoming book
• 2:12:45
  club, so I do have to reread the bloody thing.
• 2:12:47
  And Michael Mills has reread a load of more cocks as well to go
• 2:12:51
  alongside it. Yeah, he's done.
• 2:12:53
  I presume we're meeting the author and not something else,
• 2:12:55
  no? The Orpha, Yes.
• 2:13:02
  Oh, who knows. But yeah, no, horrible.
• 2:13:06
  Just a miserable experience. A book should not be a chore,
• 2:13:10
  should it? No, like I said, cost me 50 B
• 2:13:13
  brand new. That's as much praise as I can
• 2:13:16
  give it. Well, we're here.
• 2:13:21
  The Zenith, the Creme de la Creme of Doctor Who books, and
• 2:13:26
  I've had some very interesting selections on both.
• 2:13:30
  Both lists don't disappoint me. Now come on.
• 2:13:34
  We are at the top of the temple for this one.
• 2:13:39
  It's one I have mentioned to you in the past, and I am going with
• 2:13:45
  The Left-handed Hummingbird by Kate Orman.
• 2:13:48
  Oh wow. Oh well, let me hear why.
• 2:13:51
  I mean, it's a great book. It felt to me at the time when I
• 2:13:55
  read this, and when I went back to it again, it felt a little
• 2:13:58
  bit traditional as a Doctor Who story in that there's a mystery
• 2:14:01
  that's got to be solved. We're kind of Scooby ganging
• 2:14:04
  around a lot trying to get to the bottom of this mystery that
• 2:14:07
  ultimately involves, admittedly, what is more a modern idea of
• 2:14:11
  jumping through different time zones.
• 2:14:12
  But with, in the end, an ultimate face off with the big
• 2:14:16
  bad on the Titanic, of all things.
• 2:14:18
  And it ain't going to get much more dramatic than that.
• 2:14:22
  And I I. Just love the pace of it.
• 2:14:23
  I think it rattles along really well.
• 2:14:25
  It's a thoroughly engaging read. I don't come up against the LSD
• 2:14:29
  thing that a lot of people have problems with it is.
• 2:14:31
  I that traditional. If it's a means to an end, I
• 2:14:34
  mean, you know, let's not forget, you know, the doctor,
• 2:14:37
  how many times does he hook himself up to other things or
• 2:14:39
  have to do other things to communicate with things?
• 2:14:41
  Teaching machine in the zeig, in the protons.
• 2:14:44
  We're looking at you, you know, he says.
• 2:14:47
  Oh, it's interesting, isn't it? Kind of bumps like a what you
• 2:14:50
  want to do better than what it's doing.
• 2:14:52
  But he's smoking. An unearthly child.
• 2:14:54
  He's drinking wine, Day of the Tall explored.
• 2:14:57
  Would he not experiment with drugs?
• 2:14:58
  He did. He did realise that the smoking
• 2:15:01
  was bad for his health when he got knocked on the back of the
• 2:15:03
  head, didn't he? That's very.
• 2:15:04
  He never does it since. But yeah, so yeah.
• 2:15:07
  You know, it's a means to an end.
• 2:15:08
  I get it. Again, I think Ace does come off
• 2:15:13
  quite crass in this one, and you know, it's got the little fan
• 2:15:19
  service with the exelons being mentioned in it as part of a
• 2:15:23
  part of this. You can't avoid fan service in
• 2:15:26
  the lieu of edge. The other thing I've I've always
• 2:15:29
  liked about this because I I was surprised when I when I looked
• 2:15:32
  at my top ten, I thought I was going to pick something else for
• 2:15:36
  many years. So from 25 years ago, this is
• 2:15:39
  what I said was my favorite book of all time.
• 2:15:42
  So, you know, when sometimes you get asked those questions as ice
• 2:15:44
  break, What's your favorite book of all time by that point?
• 2:15:47
  I mean, I've read James Bond. I've read a lot of Doctor Who.
• 2:15:53
  And you hear people say what their books are and you're like,
• 2:15:55
  well, that's interesting. Yeah, I know that one.
• 2:15:56
  I know that one. God, what the hell am I going to
• 2:15:58
  say? The title of this covers a
• 2:16:01
  multitude of sins. Yeah.
• 2:16:04
  Because once I don't know what. That is, but it sounds great.
• 2:16:06
  Why? Don't you say the left-handed
• 2:16:07
  Hummingbird. They're like, wow, that sounds
• 2:16:09
  really interesting. Yeah, it is.
• 2:16:10
  Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 2:16:12
  No, it's great, great, great. What is it, Doctor Who?
• 2:16:15
  Oh dear. You just, you just sugar.
• 2:16:18
  Coated with everything else, it's going 1960s and drugs and
• 2:16:23
  but yeah, it's, yeah, it has a nice little and it's also one of
• 2:16:26
  the few things that's kind of got Sylvester McCoy on the
• 2:16:29
  cover, which I do think's a big thing for the New Adventures or
• 2:16:34
  about Ken Dodd, depending on which view you're looking at on
• 2:16:37
  that particular cover. I've got a theory about the left
• 2:16:39
  handing Homeburg. I think Kate Allman thought she
• 2:16:42
  was just going to write 1 new adventure one book and she
• 2:16:45
  poured everything she had into that book.
• 2:16:48
  And you can tell the right is crisp.
• 2:16:51
  It has a myriad of locations, a complicated plot, outstanding
• 2:16:56
  character work like it is one of the most striking debut novels
• 2:17:01
  of any original Doctor Who fiction writer.
• 2:17:04
  The trouble was she then went on to write like 12 books after
• 2:17:09
  that or something like that. And I've recently read set piece
• 2:17:12
  and it doesn't hold a candle to the left-handed handed, but it's
• 2:17:15
  it's OK it's good. But boy, she started strong.
• 2:17:21
  Yeah, and it is a cracking reader, I know.
• 2:17:25
  It's part of that series that was going at the time with Blood
• 2:17:30
  Heat and The Dimension Riders, the second one, and that's the
• 2:17:33
  third. Undrum yeah, that was a great
• 2:17:36
  run. Oh, it is.
• 2:17:37
  But I don't think you need to have even read those other ones
• 2:17:40
  to get into this one. I think this one stands on its
• 2:17:43
  own 2 feet. That's the best kind of art
• 2:17:46
  book, isn't it? Yeah.
• 2:17:47
  It's what I'll say about, like, Father Time in the Earth arc.
• 2:17:50
  You don't need the rest. You could just read it on its
• 2:17:53
  own, you know. Pick it straight up and go into
• 2:17:55
  it cold because because you will still have a good time reading
• 2:17:58
  and that and that is what I found this.
• 2:17:59
  And I must admit when because I reread this one and we were
• 2:18:03
  doing seeing eye when you asked what the top three Kate Orman
• 2:18:06
  books were. And I was very trepidatious
• 2:18:09
  coming back to this after all these years going.
• 2:18:12
  I'm not going to like it as much as I did originally.
• 2:18:15
  And again, you know, this is one that I just I just hit the
• 2:18:17
  ground running and I went out. No, I'm along for the ride on
• 2:18:19
  this. Tell me more, tell me more.
• 2:18:21
  I want to get to that. Oh my God, run the Titanic.
• 2:18:23
  Oh my God, she shot in. What the hell, you know.
• 2:18:28
  There are some writers, some Doctor Who writers that I think
• 2:18:32
  started very strong and then wind it a bit later on.
• 2:18:37
  I think Cornell suffers that quite a bit.
• 2:18:42
  I don't think Kate Ormer's never trying.
• 2:18:45
  She's always trying to write something distinctive.
• 2:18:50
  But you know what My favorite of hers is?
• 2:18:52
  Europe Intelligent Tigers, which is one of her.
• 2:18:54
  Very goods, Very, very goods. And that just goes to show if
• 2:18:59
  your favorite of hers is there. And my favorite of hers is
• 2:19:03
  towards the end of her writing Doctor Who books, just how
• 2:19:06
  bloody consistent she was. Oh, When you asked us to pee
• 2:19:12
  originally we were going to pick three top and three bottom for
• 2:19:14
  Kate Orman, and I think I went through my top ones, but I
• 2:19:18
  actually had both. I could do three ball but the
• 2:19:22
  but they're still good books. Yeah, well, that's the that's
• 2:19:25
  the problem I had. I think my my absolute bottom
• 2:19:28
  one from what I remember was the Telus novella just because I
• 2:19:30
  wasn't bothered about novellas. Which is the living dad?
• 2:19:34
  That's hideous. I really don't like that one.
• 2:19:36
  Me, me second one then, and this shows you how much I'm I'm kind
• 2:19:39
  of trying to pull these down. It was blue box but that's
• 2:19:42
  because I'm not so keen on first person.
• 2:19:45
  I love blue box but yeah, I I can.
• 2:19:48
  See, that's one I wouldn't mind. It's very.
• 2:19:50
  Cold for an woman. I wouldn't mind rereading Blue
• 2:19:53
  Box because I do read a lot more.
• 2:19:54
  At the time when I read it, first person narratives really
• 2:19:57
  didn't like. I couldn't get into them.
• 2:20:01
  And, and I can see that's why I scored it, what I did at the
• 2:20:03
  time when I when I originally read it.
• 2:20:06
  And I think that's why when you mentioned it was one of hers and
• 2:20:08
  I was like blue box, blue box. What 8 what 8?
• 2:20:10
  When was that? But that's why I just mixed it
• 2:20:12
  out of my head. It doesn't feel like 1 of hers.
• 2:20:17
  So yeah, so, but again, it's, it's me trying to find a reason
• 2:20:21
  to put something in the bottom when it was hand on heart.
• 2:20:25
  Yeah, I quite happily read any of hers.
• 2:20:27
  But I remember when this came out, I remember the reviews and
• 2:20:30
  I remember people talking about it on the forums.
• 2:20:32
  And fuck, the left-handed Hannibal made an impact.
• 2:20:36
  Yeah, it did. It was, and it was so refreshing
• 2:20:38
  to have a female voice in the only female voice in that male
• 2:20:43
  heavy range. Yeah.
• 2:20:45
  Yeah, what a brilliant choice. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's an
• 2:20:48
  absolute cork. And again, I would, I would, you
• 2:20:52
  know, it's kind of interesting that my top two books, Eater of
• 2:20:55
  Wasps and this are both not ARC heavy.
• 2:21:00
  They're very much stand alone, like a DVD you can just pop on
• 2:21:05
  and watch. And they both not appeared on
• 2:21:07
  anyone else's lists. They are unique unto.
• 2:21:14
  You oh, the most unique is yet to come.
• 2:21:17
  Well, OK, hang on. I'll say my usual prayer.
• 2:21:20
  OK, I'm ready. OK.
• 2:21:23
  How shall I big this one up? Oh, give it a line.
• 2:21:26
  Come on, give it a comedy line. OK.
• 2:21:31
  Well, you know what I don't like about Doctor Who?
• 2:21:37
  Yes, Steven Moffett. We're in a ballpark here.
• 2:21:42
  Oh. Please, I say Diana the doctor.
• 2:21:44
  No, no, the name Doctor Who is not in the title of the book.
• 2:21:48
  So This is why this didn't appear originally in my list.
• 2:21:51
  So when I was compiling these lists, I'd told myself I was
• 2:21:56
  only going to pick Doctor Who books.
• 2:21:58
  They had to have Doctor Who in the title, which is why Patrick
• 2:22:01
  Trouten biography wasn't originally in my list.
• 2:22:04
  And then I went no, I I like that Patrick Trouten book.
• 2:22:07
  It should be in there it. Covers Doctor Who.
• 2:22:09
  So I had it in my pile, looked back in the biography shelf over
• 2:22:13
  Yonder, and then I went back to the biography shelf at the
• 2:22:16
  beginning of the week. And as I was set, because I've
• 2:22:18
  got like double stacked books, so I have like a stack at the
• 2:22:23
  front and a stack behind them. I pull the books forward.
• 2:22:26
  I've come to the Patrick Chamber can like, hang on a minute.
• 2:22:31
  Those are the two worst Doctor Who books I've ever read.
• 2:22:34
  Two. Well, one is worse than the
• 2:22:37
  other. And this is by a lady called
• 2:22:41
  Emily Herbert. Emily Herbert.
• 2:22:45
  Matt Smith, the Biography. Oh no.
• 2:22:50
  Oh, look at that. What a terrible cover that is.
• 2:22:53
  I mean, Max is quite handsome. How do they make him look that
• 2:22:56
  ugly? This is an absolutely terrible
• 2:22:59
  book. Please tell me why?
• 2:23:01
  So at the height of the biography lookins, I got the
• 2:23:06
  pert we one. I got the Hartnell 1 and there
• 2:23:10
  were Amazon at the time had two unofficial ones, one for David
• 2:23:16
  Tennant. So I thought, well, I'll get it
• 2:23:18
  anyway. It is horror.
• 2:23:20
  It's not bad, not great, but it's not bad.
• 2:23:25
  And then there was this Matt Smith one.
• 2:23:28
  Now this comes in round about the time that Matt Smith comes
• 2:23:30
  at the Doctor. I believe this book is dated.
• 2:23:33
  You just make sure I'm not going to make a liar of myself. 2000
• 2:23:36
  and. 10. OK, now I know what you're
• 2:23:40
  thinking because I'm already thinking that when I'm buying
• 2:23:43
  this, which is like, has he had much of A career by 2000?
• 2:23:46
  And 10 and he hasn't been a doctor that long.
• 2:23:49
  No, and you would be right in that, dear listener, if you're
• 2:23:52
  also thinking these thoughts, because what this book, although
• 2:23:56
  it purports to be a biography of Matt Smith, the first half of
• 2:24:00
  the book is actually the apotted history of Doctor Who.
• 2:24:04
  It's entirety. Cash in.
• 2:24:09
  It covers, I think 1 chapter. So I think just remembered, I
• 2:24:15
  believe if I read the chapter headings and bearing about this
• 2:24:20
  is a biography of Matt Smith. So you'll think it's going to
• 2:24:22
  cover his, some of his career. So chapter 1 is Doctor Who
• 2:24:25
  question mark. All right, fair enough.
• 2:24:28
  Chapter 2, the dawn of the legend.
• 2:24:30
  Yeah. All right.
• 2:24:30
  Early life, you know? Yeah.
• 2:24:32
  Chapter 3, Doctor Who regenerates.
• 2:24:36
  It's a bit early on into remember for like chapter 3 and
• 2:24:38
  there's 15 chapters. Chapter 4 Geronimo, we're
• 2:24:42
  sticking with the Doctor Who theme.
• 2:24:44
  Then Chapter 5. Watch out, these girls have
• 2:24:47
  teeth. Vampire in Venice.
• 2:24:49
  What? What?
• 2:24:50
  Are we just chapter on? The finale approaches.
• 2:24:54
  A Time Lord is born that face party animals.
• 2:24:56
  Who's that girl? The doctor's assistant, the
• 2:24:58
  doctrine and the women fresh as a Daisy.
• 2:24:59
  Who's in the money? Back to the future, I mean.
• 2:25:02
  It. Literally covers his first year
• 2:25:06
  as a doctor. No, but it's actually.
• 2:25:09
  And the other half? Presented as a biography.
• 2:25:11
  Of Matt Smith. Wow.
• 2:25:15
  So I got this thinking, well, I don't know who this guy is
• 2:25:17
  anyway, and he's the doctor. I want to know more.
• 2:25:20
  Here's a book about him. I will buy that.
• 2:25:23
  And actually, all I'm presented with is a worse, a diluted
• 2:25:29
  version of the 1992 yearbook in the middle, really.
• 2:25:34
  And. But you've got an in depth look
• 2:25:38
  at Series 5. You know your favorite season of
• 2:25:40
  Doctor Who? Oh no, we're going to discover
• 2:25:43
  on Sunday I. Don't need that, I've got the
• 2:25:45
  brilliant book 2011, another present from my mum.
• 2:25:49
  Look at that fat leg on the front there.
• 2:25:51
  Yeah. And is it sort of like Emily?
• 2:25:55
  Is she a big fan? You know, does she sort of
• 2:25:58
  present Matt Smith in a positive light?
• 2:26:01
  In all honesty, I couldn't tell you because I read it.
• 2:26:05
  I mylar bagged it and it's been on the shelf ever since.
• 2:26:09
  It's it's it's not really a biography about him.
• 2:26:12
  It's just someone going what, a Doctor Who history but covered.
• 2:26:17
  It looks like the sort of thing that you would find for 50P in
• 2:26:21
  the # shop, you know, you know, they've got a sort of a
• 2:26:24
  selection of books that looks like a top shelf that you know,
• 2:26:27
  they'll be trying to or maybe 2 for one, something like that.
• 2:26:30
  You look at all the photos that's inside, it's just
• 2:26:32
  pictures of him as the doctor. Yeah, nothing would entice me
• 2:26:38
  less to buy a book, if I'm honest with you.
• 2:26:41
  Oh, and then there's a couple of pictures of girlfriends in
• 2:26:43
  there. Honestly, girlfriends, why do I
• 2:26:47
  want to look at pictures of him? I don't know.
• 2:26:49
  I mean, the back cover's just a picture of him and Karen Gillian
• 2:26:52
  in front of the tiles. It's like, so you're selling
• 2:26:54
  this as? It's not a biography.
• 2:26:57
  It's not a biography. Oh, I almost want to cover it
• 2:27:01
  just to see how hideous it is. But the worst thing is I could
• 2:27:05
  have sat here today and said no. No, Coming of the Terrafiles is
• 2:27:09
  the worst book ever. I mean it, it's the worst
• 2:27:12
  fiction one ever. This is the worst.
• 2:27:18
  Ever. I cannot believe they chose that
• 2:27:20
  photograph of Matt Smith. Like there are so many pictures
• 2:27:24
  of him. Why would they choose that
• 2:27:25
  picture where it looks like he's just got out of bed?
• 2:27:28
  There's a there's a better picture on the inside though.
• 2:27:30
  I mean that one please. Whereas with the football.
• 2:27:32
  Here we go. I thought it was a.
• 2:27:34
  Great picture and the slick screwdriver.
• 2:27:37
  The only thing I could think of is the David Tennant edition.
• 2:27:40
  There's a very similar picture of David Tennant.
• 2:27:42
  Close up his face. Yeah.
• 2:27:44
  So I can think they're going in for that market again.
• 2:27:46
  He actually looks like he's here with me if I hold him about
• 2:27:48
  here, doesn't he? Actually.
• 2:27:50
  Sorry, I'm just holding him below camera.
• 2:27:52
  Level. So you've held him up against
• 2:27:54
  your face so often now? I actually started to feel like
• 2:27:56
  you're in a relationship with Matt Smith.
• 2:27:58
  The horror. Well, do you know what of all
• 2:28:04
  the lists I've done, that's the only one where I've completely
• 2:28:08
  100% agreed with the bottom 10 and certainly the number one.
• 2:28:14
  I just can't imagine ever wanting to read that book.
• 2:28:17
  If anyone has ever read that book and thinks I am completely
• 2:28:21
  wrong then in my act of wanting to understand please let me
• 2:28:24
  know. Write his write in and let us
• 2:28:27
  know what we're missing. Yeah, it could be me.
• 2:28:30
  It could be me. I don't think it is, although
• 2:28:33
  you know, I'm talking to you on Sunday about Series 5, so maybe
• 2:28:37
  it will be you. I'll, I'll come back to you at
• 2:28:39
  the end of that. Episode.
• 2:28:40
  All right, like I say, I'm always questioning myself.
• 2:28:46
  Gareth what a wonderful top ten and bottom 10 list and loads of
• 2:28:50
  stuff that hasn't been explored before which is really great.
• 2:28:53
  And some new non fiction ones in there as well.
• 2:28:56
  Brilliant ones like Hummingbird Annie is a Wasps a cracking list
• 2:29:00
  and we've got it as a wasp on our list.
• 2:29:02
  I hope so. We have actually, yes.
• 2:29:05
  Right, I can't wait to do that. I get to read it again.
• 2:29:07
  If Rod don't like that, you know I will string him up by his
• 2:29:10
  nuts. Set the Wasps on him.
• 2:29:13
  Yeah, I will, don't you worry. But we have one more task to
• 2:29:16
  perform before we go to bed tonight.
• 2:29:19
  That is, you need to rank the ranges.
• 2:29:22
  So you know, you said you haven't done all the Teloses, so
• 2:29:24
  maybe you should keep those out. But it's targets Virgin New
• 2:29:29
  Adventures, Virgin Missing Adventures, BBC Past Doctor
• 2:29:33
  Adventures, BBC eight Doctor Adventures.
• 2:29:36
  You've got 5 to rang there. Well, the Telus ones would have
• 2:29:39
  been in the bottom. Anyway.
• 2:29:42
  Yeah, for reasons mentioned earlier, I never quite got into
• 2:29:44
  them properly. My Next up from the bottom then
• 2:29:47
  is the new series ones. There.
• 2:29:52
  But again, reasons I've mentioned, you know, next one up
• 2:29:55
  from that is the Past Doctor Adventures.
• 2:29:59
  You'll find all these, by the way, are weighted as well to how
• 2:30:02
  I've gone through them in the top ten because the Past Doctor
• 2:30:06
  adventures are serviceable, but there's very few that sort of
• 2:30:10
  jump out at me. I generally end up going to the
• 2:30:12
  missing adventures before I get to them.
• 2:30:14
  Which brings me to the next one, which is the missing adventures
• 2:30:16
  themselves. And then I'm going to be cheeky
• 2:30:21
  and stick in the two in one range next.
• 2:30:24
  Oh, well done. Yeah.
• 2:30:26
  Because that's your. Third favorite?
• 2:30:27
  Amazing. Yeah.
• 2:30:29
  No, no, that would be my 4th. Oh yeah, what's still to come?
• 2:30:35
  The next one is targets. Oh, yes, of course.
• 2:30:38
  The targets, yes, OK, so hang on two in one targets.
• 2:30:42
  So that's third placing, you know, with the targets, you
• 2:30:45
  know, I was so fascinated where they come.
• 2:30:47
  Some people put them bottom, some people put them top, some
• 2:30:49
  people put them right in the middle.
• 2:30:51
  Yeah. And the targets for me, like I
• 2:30:53
  said at the beginning, were serviceable at the time.
• 2:30:56
  And they were the DVDs of the day for me, the VHS of the day
• 2:30:59
  for me, because that's how I learned Doctor Who.
• 2:31:01
  That's how I experienced a lot of the missing episodes before
• 2:31:05
  that. We even had the CD releases many
• 2:31:07
  years later. So they they feature very highly
• 2:31:09
  at the top of that lesson. Yeah, I adore some of the covers
• 2:31:12
  that they got on them as well. But then it's the EDA, second
• 2:31:15
  is. EDA.
• 2:31:18
  Again, comes back to that sprawling 8th Doctor narrative.
• 2:31:22
  And then above that, which my heart's going to always be in,
• 2:31:25
  is the New Adventures, even though I know they're
• 2:31:29
  problematic because it comes into that point where I am out
• 2:31:33
  in the world on me own at university.
• 2:31:36
  I am experiencing all those books for the first time.
• 2:31:38
  I'm hot. I'm discovering another layer in
• 2:31:41
  this archaeology that is Doctor Who, and my love of reading all
• 2:31:46
  flourishes round about this time.
• 2:31:48
  You know, 9 times out of 10, not always, but nine times out of
• 2:31:52
  10, when I'm doing these rankings, it's that original
• 2:31:56
  range that you found first and that is your first.
• 2:31:59
  And of course it is, you know, of course that's where your love
• 2:32:02
  is. And I might play the, the new
• 2:32:05
  adventures are terrible. The EDA's are wonderful.
• 2:32:08
  I am perfectly well aware that there is a large number of very
• 2:32:13
  good new adventures. And they do, they are important.
• 2:32:18
  They're important enough, a big finish to have adapted them.
• 2:32:21
  They're important enough for the writers to write for the new
• 2:32:23
  series. Like I, absolutely, I, I get it.
• 2:32:26
  I do get it. There's an interesting, there's
• 2:32:29
  an interesting thought on it, isn't there?
• 2:32:31
  If, if the new adventures never existed and we went straight to
• 2:32:34
  the so the wilderness years occurred as they did without the
• 2:32:37
  virgin range. You come to the TV movie and you
• 2:32:41
  get the 8th Doctor range. Would the 8th Doctor of range
• 2:32:45
  have gone down some not all, because the some movies very
• 2:32:49
  objective to the doctor, but gone down to some of those
• 2:32:52
  avenues taken by the virgin range and that makes a very
• 2:32:55
  interesting question what that 8th doctor range would have
• 2:32:57
  looked like. Obviously they couldn't do the
• 2:32:59
  manipulating times champion stuff because but.
• 2:33:02
  They did some dying days and that is just about one of the
• 2:33:05
  best 8th Doctor books ever. Yeah, it could have been extra.
• 2:33:08
  I mean, they're Bernie's new adventures, of which I do think
• 2:33:11
  are hit and miss, but fuck there are hits in there if those books
• 2:33:14
  have been written for the 8th Doctor.
• 2:33:17
  I'd only I've only read 1 of them.
• 2:33:20
  There are some great ones. That's where I had to draw a
• 2:33:23
  line on the new adventures somewhere, and that was just
• 2:33:24
  getting the ones with the doctrine in, I think.
• 2:33:26
  I think I've got one with the train on the front, but can't
• 2:33:28
  remember what that's called. Tempest, yes.
• 2:33:32
  Christopher Beulis place to go. So well done.
• 2:33:35
  That's the one I have. Yeah, I mean, obviously I've
• 2:33:40
  just said all that. That won't stop me being
• 2:33:41
  incandescent with rage when I talk about a lot of these new
• 2:33:44
  adventures on our book club episodes.
• 2:33:46
  But of course you'll all be there to temper me and tell me
• 2:33:49
  where I'm going wrong. In some cases I might be
• 2:33:51
  chanting from the sidelines in agreement.
• 2:33:54
  What's the first one we're doing?
• 2:33:56
  New adventures wise. Yeah, well, I mean, everyone
• 2:34:01
  seems absolutely rave about this book, so I can't wait to get
• 2:34:03
  torn into that. Have you read that recently?
• 2:34:07
  But I haven't it's it's so I'm not my I'm currently on
• 2:34:10
  Revelation of the Daleks. Next one's then the exciting
• 2:34:12
  adventure with the Daleks. I'm probably going to have a
• 2:34:13
  little break for a couple of weeks because you need it.
• 2:34:17
  I need to catch up on the Christies with my son.
• 2:34:20
  And then my dad's just give me a stack of about nine books that
• 2:34:24
  he's read for me to have a look at as well.
• 2:34:25
  So I'm going to cuddle off to a couple of arranges and then come
• 2:34:29
  back again. You've got.
• 2:34:29
  Plenty. And it's always good to do that,
• 2:34:31
  isn't it? Just have a little rest and then
• 2:34:34
  you come back to. It generally I always like to do
• 2:34:36
  1 Doctor Who book a book or something else one doctor a book
• 2:34:39
  is. It just keeps me fresh and
• 2:34:40
  bouncing out above the last few weeks.
• 2:34:42
  I used to do that and then I'll start at this bloody book club
• 2:34:45
  and now there's about eight book clubs and the only person who's
• 2:34:48
  on all these bloody episodes is me.
• 2:34:49
  That's why I'm reading all these fucking Doctor Who books all the
• 2:34:52
  time. It's no wonder my mental health
• 2:34:54
  took a knock this year reading all these terrible but I mean,
• 2:34:57
  sorry, wonderful books. Jesus always.
• 2:35:00
  Exciting adventures in time and space.
• 2:35:03
  What is nice though, what is nice is it's been an opportunity
• 2:35:07
  to bring together groups of people that otherwise might not
• 2:35:12
  have spoken in the way that we are doing.
• 2:35:14
  And like certainly our book club man and man, those conversations
• 2:35:17
  are rolling every day now. The, the beauty of it from my
• 2:35:21
  perspective is I've read these books like 25 years ago.
• 2:35:27
  They've only ever existed in my head and on the page.
• 2:35:32
  Even people I've known over the years who have known about
• 2:35:35
  Doctor Who wouldn't know about the books.
• 2:35:39
  Certainly my wife's never read them.
• 2:35:41
  My son's not bothered about them.
• 2:35:43
  So the only person who ever reads these books and then
• 2:35:45
  retains any of that information in there is me.
• 2:35:47
  So they've, it's kind of been well locked in here.
• 2:35:50
  So to experience things like the book club and listen to other
• 2:35:54
  people's views on these is absolutely fascinating because
• 2:35:57
  it suddenly opened up all this accumulation of information
• 2:36:02
  that's in my mind and gone. Oh, right, that's how that could
• 2:36:04
  be looked at. Maybe I need to go back and read
• 2:36:06
  that again, or or that that corresponds with what I thought
• 2:36:08
  I'd get that now. I'm really finding I'm being
• 2:36:12
  challenged. My opinions, which are long
• 2:36:14
  held, are being challenged. Books I hated, people are making
• 2:36:18
  me see layers sort of that I never saw before.
• 2:36:20
  And books I love, people are making me aware of their flaws
• 2:36:23
  and that's good. I like the balance of it.
• 2:36:26
  Yeah, there's no right or wrong answer.
• 2:36:27
  You can read one book one day and you might be having a bad
• 2:36:30
  day and that can influence how you take that book in.
• 2:36:33
  Except the pit, of course. Whatever day you read that or
• 2:36:38
  what, I want to reread The Pit just because I heard an
• 2:36:42
  interview with Neil Penswick on a few months ago.
• 2:36:46
  Put it on the list then. Where he talked about why the
• 2:36:50
  book is the way it is. Oh, was it editorial
• 2:36:54
  intervention? He had to do a very quick
• 2:36:57
  editorial, a severe editorial job on the length of it and in
• 2:37:01
  the time frame he had. I remember which podcast it was
• 2:37:05
  on, I can't remember. It might be pieces of eight.
• 2:37:10
  They usually they usually do the.
• 2:37:12
  See the pieces of eight or power of three.
• 2:37:15
  It's the same people. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:37:17
  But they, they definitely talk to him about it.
• 2:37:18
  And he he mentions that the fact that he had to do a hatchet job
• 2:37:21
  and the only way he could get through it all was literally by
• 2:37:23
  quitting the sentences down to get the word countdown.
• 2:37:27
  And yeah, you're just like, I get it now.
• 2:37:29
  I get it. Heartbreaking to know that
• 2:37:31
  something that you've rushed is going to be savaged by a load of
• 2:37:35
  14 year old geeks. Yeah, well, this is, you know,
• 2:37:39
  it's one of those things, isn't it?
• 2:37:40
  But yeah, it's again, I'm having some context around it.
• 2:37:44
  All these lovely people writing Doctor Who books for us, and
• 2:37:47
  there's so many of them now and there's ours going well, yeah,
• 2:37:50
  it's not very good, is it? Really.
• 2:37:52
  And again, you know, This is why I went back to reread those ones
• 2:37:55
  I've put in my bottom list because, you know, although
• 2:37:57
  there are the some authors in there that I'm surprised I've
• 2:38:01
  put them in myself. But for that one book, it's just
• 2:38:04
  not resonated with me. Not like the rest of their stuff
• 2:38:07
  that they've written. But it's just that one that's
• 2:38:08
  just not. I love that though I love your
• 2:38:11
  approach of this didn't work for me.
• 2:38:13
  I'm going to read it again and find out why because I don't
• 2:38:17
  have that sort of patience. Although I am doing that now and
• 2:38:21
  I'm challenging a lot of my like I read set piece and you know, I
• 2:38:25
  have very strong opinions about new ways.
• 2:38:28
  But there were some great scenes with her in that book and I was
• 2:38:32
  like, OK, so that's one way you could look at her and sort of
• 2:38:36
  how she was written out was really great as well.
• 2:38:38
  So I was like, OK, there are other ways to look at these
• 2:38:41
  characters. It sounds daft but I mean I did
• 2:38:44
  the same similar thing with Sherlock Holmes when I was
• 2:38:46
  younger. I read Sherlock Holmes and
• 2:38:47
  couldn't get into it at all. Didn't like it.
• 2:38:50
  I've got older, I really enjoy, I really get into it.
• 2:38:52
  I reread, I didn't really read, sorry.
• 2:38:54
  I read. My wife's a Stephen King fan and
• 2:38:58
  she's got The Dark Tower. They were just below my shoulder
• 2:39:01
  here and I read The Good Slinger last year.
• 2:39:06
  Didn't like it, didn't like I've not been getting myself up for
• 2:39:10
  years to get to him and just said to him I'm not going to
• 2:39:13
  read the rest. I might come back to this in a
• 2:39:15
  couple of years time and reread it again because it could have
• 2:39:17
  just been because we'd moved house and we were in a new place
• 2:39:19
  and that's what's just put me off of wanting to read it.
• 2:39:22
  I do find that wherever I read, generally I've got to be
• 2:39:27
  somewhere comfortable. Yeah, me too.
• 2:39:30
  You have a duvet around me somewhere.
• 2:39:32
  I'm usually usually in here or in a coffee shop or in the
• 2:39:37
  bedroom, you know, just somewhere we use these.
• 2:39:39
  Places I've ridden in the bar. Oh, I.
• 2:39:42
  Couldn't do that. I'd be frightened to death of
• 2:39:44
  dropping it in. Especially I'm not going to take
• 2:39:46
  my copy of The Well Mannered War in there.
• 2:39:49
  No. It's worth 250 quids.
• 2:39:52
  Pumped it myself. Oh OK, what a lovely time I've
• 2:39:57
  had to lie. And a fabulous list.
• 2:40:01
  And and another complete rearrangement of the ranges.
• 2:40:07
  No, I don't think any 2. Two people have ranked them
• 2:40:11
  exactly the same. I'll guess I'll get there
• 2:40:13
  eventually. Get Rob to do a spreadsheet on
• 2:40:15
  it. There's probably some analysis
• 2:40:17
  there. Honestly, he'd love it.
• 2:40:19
  He'd be listening to this go right.
• 2:40:21
  Yeah, I'm going to listen to all those book club episodes.
• 2:40:24
  He's got enough work to do. You see what he puts together on
• 2:40:26
  those Strictly's. Yes.
• 2:40:28
  God, it's not having your own personal sector.
• 2:40:31
  Though. It is.
• 2:40:32
  It's a good show. Well, look, Gareth, before we
• 2:40:35
  go, please will you tell people where and after listening to
• 2:40:39
  your wonderful choices here are they're going to want to find
• 2:40:42
  you. Where can they find you online?
• 2:40:44
  So I am on Twitter because we're not going to call it X at GJ
• 2:40:49
  Boli, and in the future you'll be hearing me on episodes of the
• 2:40:55
  Hamster Book Club. Many.
• 2:40:57
  I'm strict. I'm hamster as well.
• 2:40:59
  And, and I think at the time we're recording this, I think
• 2:41:03
  I've got pendant audio doing the Henry the 6th Part 2, which I'm
• 2:41:10
  cropping up in several episodes of.
• 2:41:12
  So if you if you're if this is out round about November,
• 2:41:15
  December time, do check out Pendant Audio.
• 2:41:18
  Who are you playing? I'm actually playing a number of
• 2:41:21
  characters. I was John whom in the 1st 2
• 2:41:24
  chat parts of this. Mine's gone blank on the others.
• 2:41:31
  I've had a different character every episode that sent over.
• 2:41:34
  To work, you should pay attention to it, but listen to
• 2:41:38
  your voice, I mean, and I've heard you do voices on Strictly.
• 2:41:42
  You're a master of this sort of thing.
• 2:41:45
  Oh, it's very nice of you to say thank you.
• 2:41:47
  Well, we better go and I better go and get reading.
• 2:41:51
  Darling Generation, you better go get go read in Revelation of
• 2:41:55
  the Dark, Explore. Good luck from ideas.
• 2:41:59
  Look, I say, I promise you, if we both get through those books,
• 2:42:02
  we can come together for collective therapy in a couple
• 2:42:05
  of weeks. Well, I've got that ready.
• 2:42:08
  It's, it's going to be the exciting adventure with the
• 2:42:10
  Daleks after I've done Revelation.
• 2:42:11
  So I've literally tabled them up.
• 2:42:13
  No. No, no, I've got it here.
• 2:42:14
  Look, I've been reading this sign.
• 2:42:16
  This is brilliant. This is so you.
• 2:42:19
  I read this first. Unfortunately, what you should
• 2:42:22
  have done. No, sorry.
• 2:42:23
  You've got made the right choice by reading this last because,
• 2:42:28
  well, unless you really hate it and then I'll be intrigued to
• 2:42:31
  know why. No.
• 2:42:31
  No, no, I mean, my copy was one of the ones.
• 2:42:36
  It was a book that my brother bought, and it's one of the ones
• 2:42:39
  that came to me as with those other two targets he gave me.
• 2:42:42
  So it's a little hardback. It's a tiny little hardback
• 2:42:44
  that's like paperback size. It's a beautiful cover, isn't
• 2:42:47
  it? Yeah, it's absolutely gorgeous.
• 2:42:49
  Cover this one. Well, I'm sorry, before you get
• 2:42:52
  to the reward, you have to read. Read the shit, all right?
• 2:42:56
  Yeah, it's back to tranquil repose, I suppose.
• 2:42:59
  And I'm off to, oh, what's the planet called in dialect
• 2:43:02
  generation? Oh God, hang on, I am actually
• 2:43:08
  leafing through my notes here people.
• 2:43:10
  It's not just me turning pages over.
• 2:43:11
  There's 2, isn't there? Does it begin with GGGGGGGG?
• 2:43:17
  Oh, it's like, is it generic or something like that?
• 2:43:19
  I. Want to say Geffen, but geffen's
• 2:43:22
  not right. Geffen definitely begins with G.
• 2:43:24
  That's the fella from Blue Peter, isn't it?
• 2:43:26
  Yeah. The the words are a similar
• 2:43:29
  shape in my head. I can't think what it's called
• 2:43:31
  off the top of me head or I'll have to rifle through for it.
• 2:43:35
  Well, I'll tell you wherever it is, I'm bound to have a terrible
• 2:43:39
  time. Oh, I hope you don't.
• 2:43:43
  I'll tell you this now, if you're telling me the truth,
• 2:43:46
  yeah, and those kids get murdered by Daleks and brought
• 2:43:50
  back to life, right? I will tear that book in half.
• 2:43:53
  I'm telling you. I really want to tell you what
• 2:43:56
  happens to no. No, I'll read it.
• 2:44:01
  Gareth, thank you very much for your time.
• 2:44:03
  It has been a true pleasure. To oh, thank you.
• 2:44:06
  It's been, it's been wonderful. And I will cut it there.