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Hamster Book Club - The Chimes of Midnight (featuring James Lark & Michael Mills) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:01
  Every night when the work was done, Mr. Shaughnessy went to
• 0:04
  his pantry and allowed himself to rest.
• 0:09
  As soon as the chimes of the grandfather clock struck at
• 0:12
  midnight, he felt a relief steal over him.
• 0:16
  His day would not end at midnight, of course.
• 0:18
  There might be any number of instructions still to give the
• 0:21
  household staff entire itineraries to be arranged for
• 0:25
  the next morning. But soon it would all be over
• 0:29
  soon, and the tight grasp of the day would loosen, and
• 0:33
  Shaughnessy could retreat to his own private room, close the
• 0:37
  door, and breathe. He would sit on his hard but
• 0:42
  adequately comfortable chair behind his plane but perfectly
• 0:46
  practical desk. He would smoke his pipe.
• 0:49
  Just one bowl, mind. He was very strict about that,
• 0:52
  and he'd read from his pocket Bible.
• 0:56
  He carried his Bible with him everywhere.
• 0:58
  Shaughnessy did not consider himself an especially religious
• 1:01
  man, but he firmly approved of the Bible.
• 1:05
  It was an instruction manual, and he liked sifting through the
• 1:08
  pages and rereading any of his favorite bits.
• 1:13
  Just recently he had been unable to find any verses that appealed
• 1:18
  to him. They seemed too vague, too
• 1:21
  elusive. The instructions seemed to have
• 1:24
  nothing to do with his own needs, and the taste of his
• 1:28
  tobacco had been off. He didn't know what was wrong
• 1:32
  with it. It could only be Christmas, Mr.
• 1:36
  Shaughnessy decided. The particular pressure of
• 1:40
  Christmas. Things would get better in the
• 1:43
  new. Year.
• 1:44
  His pipe would find its flavour once more and the Bible verses
• 1:48
  would sing Mr. Shaughnessy sat behind his desk and waited for
• 1:54
  the doctor to come and interview him, as he was sure he soon
• 1:57
  would. How he would have liked to light
• 2:01
  his pipe or peruse his Bible in the meantime, but he would not.
• 2:06
  On Christmas Eve, of all days, he must not give in to his
• 2:11
  fancies. He had enjoyed Christmas well
• 2:14
  enough once, but now it was a time of bad memories.
• 2:20
  Of late he had been musing upon that Christmas of yesteryear.
• 2:24
  Now, when was it? It seemed such a long time ago,
• 2:28
  but it couldn't have been, surely.
• 2:30
  He and his wife Elspeth had been together at home, and they've
• 2:34
  been at church, hadn't they? Yes, at the Carol service, he
• 2:37
  was sure of it. Hark the Herald, angels sing God
• 2:42
  and singers reconciled. And now they were back home and
• 2:46
  they were decorating the tree and Shaughnessy was putting a
• 2:48
  star upon the very top because Elspeth couldn't reach, she was
• 2:51
  just too short. They had been laughing, he was
• 2:55
  certain. There had been laughter, just
• 2:59
  the two of them that year, because their son was away
• 3:02
  somewhere in Europe, fighting for king and country, for honour
• 3:05
  and for pride, fighting for them.
• 3:09
  There had been a knock at the door.
• 3:10
  They'd been surprised, a visitor this late, and Shaughnessy had
• 3:14
  joked that it was Santa Claus lost in the snow, and he'd
• 3:17
  surprised himself at that, because he'd never been one for
• 3:19
  making jokes. He couldn't see the sense in
• 3:21
  them. And Elspeth had answered the
• 3:23
  door, and there was a soldier there, and he had in his hands a
• 3:27
  telegram. He looked so serious, and at
• 3:31
  once Shaughnessy felt his stomach clench.
• 3:35
  He looked at Elspeth and she was frowning in confusion.
• 3:38
  She hadn't realised yet. Dear God, if he could only keep
• 3:41
  the soldier from speaking. If only she need never have to
• 3:44
  find out. Their son wouldn't be coming
• 3:49
  home again, not for Christmas this year, nor any Christmas to
• 3:53
  come. Elspeth struggled to take it in,
• 3:58
  but it was quick. She murmured.
• 4:01
  He didn't suffer so quiet and yet so insistent.
• 4:07
  The soldier told them their son had drowned in a shell hole and
• 4:10
  that he was very sorry indeed. It was a bad business,
• 4:14
  especially at Christmas time, Shaughnessy said.
• 4:18
  There's a mercy to that. At least he wasn't shot or or
• 4:22
  blown up or bayoneted. And Elspeth shot him a look of
• 4:28
  pure hatred. Things had never been right
• 4:32
  between them since, had they? Not since their son had died.
• 4:38
  It was a dreadful memory, but the more sureness he thought
• 4:41
  about it, there were aspects to it that didn't quite make sense,
• 4:47
  for a start. Which war was this?
• 4:50
  There hadn't. Been a war in Europe.
• 4:52
  This was 19 O 6. Yes, there have been some
• 4:55
  tensions on the continent, but Shaughnessy was reliably
• 4:57
  informed by the newspapers that they wouldn't come to anything.
• 5:01
  Great War, The phrase popped into his head.
• 5:04
  What was great about it? And secondly, and much more
• 5:09
  pertinently, he didn't know anyone called Elspeth.
• 5:15
  He had never married an Elspeth, or married anyone at all for
• 5:21
  that matter. Shaughnessy didn't like women
• 5:26
  very much. Oh, he knew how to speak to
• 5:28
  ladies of the Gentry of his role as Butler demanded it, and he
• 5:31
  could dispense orders to the cook and to the maid without a
• 5:33
  single qualm. But still they unnerved him.
• 5:39
  He preferred the company of men, and he refused to think of
• 5:43
  either sex in a romantic way. And whenever he did, he
• 5:45
  retreated into his pocket Bible for guidance and succour.
• 5:50
  There'd been no wife, and consequently there'd been no
• 5:55
  dead son. He should know those weren't the
• 5:59
  sort of details one could easily forget.
• 6:03
  And yet still, still he remembered that awful Christmas.
• 6:15
  Hark the Herald, angels sing glory to the newborn King.
• 6:24
  I. Trust all will be ready for your
• 6:26
  festive podcast, Mr. Ford. Oh yes, Mr. Lark, I assure you
• 6:31
  it'll be a veritable Christmas feast.
• 6:33
  Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without one of my festive
• 6:36
  podcasts. Such a big number of podcasts
• 6:38
  I've done this year. Oh indeed you wouldn't.
• 6:42
  Believe the size of it. Oh indeed.
• 6:45
  Indeed, indeed, indeed. Indeed.
• 6:48
  So big it just popped out. Indeed, it took all of my
• 6:53
  strength and dexterity. I think that's enough now.
• 6:56
  And blow me. I said that's enough.
• 6:58
  You'll have his Lordship down here with all those innuendos.
• 7:02
  I keep trying to surpass my innuendos, I really do.
• 7:06
  If anyone were given a little help, Michael.
• 7:08
  Michael. I'm working on an episode of Too
• 7:11
  Hot for TV Mr. Ford. You're no good to me or too hot
• 7:15
  for TVI want you in a hamster with a blunt penknife.
• 7:19
  I'm just dusting off a review of an obscure spin off, just as Mr.
• 7:22
  Reese said. Don't answer me back.
• 7:24
  Don't ask. You'll have to put a cut in
• 7:28
  there. Don't answer Mr. Ford back,
• 7:31
  Michael. And the cut's never going to
• 7:33
  happen, is it? Don't answer, Mr. Ford.
• 7:34
  Why have I gone Welsh? Don't answer Mr. Ford back,
• 7:37
  Michael. No, sirs.
• 7:39
  Sorry sirs. We're ready to record another
• 7:41
  hamster podcast now. Oh, I love your podcast, Mr.
• 7:46
  Ford. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas
• 7:47
  without your festive podcast. That's not a very original
• 7:51
  observation, Michael. Everyone says that about my
• 7:53
  podcast. Yes, Sir.
• 7:55
  I'm sorry, Sir. What is it I always tell you,
• 7:58
  Michael? That I'm wrong about deep space
• 8:00
  9? What's the other thing I always
• 8:02
  tell you? I'm nothing.
• 8:04
  I'm nobody. No, that's what I tell Fraser,
• 8:07
  Gregory, spelled with an S. So what is it you always tell
• 8:12
  me? Mr. Ford?
• 8:14
  Mr. Ford? Good.
• 8:16
  Lord. He's.
• 8:17
  Dead. Stuffed with his own microphone.
• 8:21
  Oh my goodness that such a thing could happen on his own podcast.
• 8:25
  But he's died on this podcast before.
• 8:28
  We all have. And we'll keep doing it.
• 8:32
  Again and again and. Again.
• 8:37
  After all. Christmas wouldn't.
• 8:41
  Be. Christmas.
• 8:43
  Without that. Happens.
• 8:45
  With a. Blunt pen life.
• 8:48
  Festive. Oh cast.
• 8:51
  Oh, we did terribly good. Seamless.
• 8:57
  Hello chaps. Hello.
• 8:59
  Hark the Herald, angels sing. Are you feeling festive?
• 9:04
  Little bit. Yeah, not only felon if he.
• 9:08
  What does that mean? Merry Christmas.
• 9:10
  Happy Christmas. Oh, thank you, thank you.
• 9:13
  I like the fact you're bright embracing your inner Welshness
• 9:16
  now on this podcast. My inner Welshness.
• 9:18
  My my outer Welshness. I just all stamped it down a
• 9:22
  little bit, but it's coming out slowly but surely.
• 9:25
  Hello Chucks. I would now.
• 9:27
  I'm a bit, I have to say I'm a bit of a traditionalist myself.
• 9:30
  I'm not celebrating Christmas just yet because it's the season
• 9:33
  of Advent. What does that mean?
• 9:38
  Well, technically it's a it's a completely different season.
• 9:41
  Christmas, of course, begins on December the 25th and we
• 9:44
  celebrate it then. For a good 12 days, as per the
• 9:47
  song Adventist, the season of preparation and anticipation and
• 9:53
  having grown up, I was telling Michael the other day when I was
• 9:56
  a when I was a lad, my first ever advent calendar.
• 10:00
  That was one of the cardboard ones, and behind every window
• 10:03
  was a picture of a bauble, and the only surprise was what
• 10:08
  colour the bauble was. So these kids with their
• 10:12
  chocolates and their Lego and their aftershave advent
• 10:15
  calendars. They don't know they're born
• 10:17
  coffee. Boom, one, right?
• 10:20
  Boo Boo, let's kill him with mince pies.
• 10:22
  Merry Christmas everybody. I mean, I've got a very sad
• 10:25
  story about an advent calendar that involves a workhouse in
• 10:28
  China. So I went online and I thought
• 10:31
  I'm going to kick Mark a really idiosyncratic advent calendar
• 10:34
  this year. And he loves capybara's.
• 10:37
  So I thought, right, a capybara Advent, Canada 2025, there must
• 10:40
  be something. And quite a few came up, but one
• 10:43
  came up with photographs of like these fabulous ones that you
• 10:46
  hang on a tree, right? Spaceman, librarian, all sorts
• 10:50
  of different ones. I thought, I love that 999.
• 10:53
  That's pretty cheap. All right, I'll go for it.
• 10:55
  And then when it didn't turn up for 3 1/2 weeks, and then I
• 10:58
  looked at Amazon and it was like international shipping, I was
• 11:02
  like, oh, this does not bode well.
• 11:04
  Anyway, it it turned up and disappointing would be an
• 11:09
  understatement. It was about about this big,
• 11:13
  about 5 inches tall. And when Mark started opening
• 11:17
  the doors, the capybaras inside, they were not lovely figurines
• 11:23
  with it came with a bag of strings that you could hang the
• 11:26
  minuscule 2D plastic capybara figurines that came out of it.
• 11:32
  I mean it it was vacuum. Formed for fuck's sake.
• 11:35
  The numbers are in order, 1 to 25 rather.
• 11:39
  Than. Mixed about and then when I got
• 11:41
  an invite to write a review, forget this generic advent
• 11:47
  calendar in brackets, I was like I have been cons.
• 11:51
  Yeah, so be careful, all right? That was definitely made in a
• 11:54
  sweatshop. That one was still bigger than
• 11:56
  the cardboard ball ball calendar that I grew up with did.
• 12:00
  Did you ever have a Doctor Who advent calendar?
• 12:03
  I don't think I have. When it came back in 2000.
• 12:05
  And five for a few years they did Advent calendars and I was
• 12:08
  bought, I think would have been the first one.
• 12:11
  And my God, that was exciting. It was mostly chocolates, but
• 12:16
  they were in the they the chocolates were in in Doctor Who
• 12:19
  E shapes. So there was a that, I mean,
• 12:21
  they were Dalek shaped and, and all sorts TARDIS shaped, but,
• 12:24
  but in a couple of the windows, there was a, there were pencil
• 12:29
  toppers. There was a Dalek pencil Topper.
• 12:32
  Yeah, beautiful little plastic Dalek pencil Topper and a TARDIS
• 12:35
  pencil Topper. Yeah.
• 12:37
  And there was a little notebook in one of them that was.
• 12:39
  Really one sort of around day of the Doctor time where it was
• 12:43
  like £100 or something like that.
• 12:45
  Yeah, it was actual proper big expensive gifts.
• 12:49
  Inside, but I don't I I'm not sure I approve of these ones
• 12:52
  that cost hundreds of pounds. Why not?
• 12:56
  But well, I'll tell you why, because again, it's because of
• 12:58
  my poverty stricken background. It's the for the same reason
• 13:01
  that when I see. Oliver Twist sort of feels your
• 13:04
  background very much, but. You, you know when you get an,
• 13:06
  an advert, you know when social media, the algorithm finds you
• 13:10
  and says here's a, here's a, a stocking filler for you to buy
• 13:14
  and it'll advertise A stocking filler costing 37 lbs or
• 13:17
  something. And that that what that is.
• 13:20
  That is what what I call a main present, not a stocking filler.
• 13:24
  That's 37 quids worth of stuff. I'm not sticking that in a
• 13:27
  stocking. And if what you miss about
• 13:30
  Christmas Day is 2 grumpy middle-aged men arguing in the
• 13:33
  corner, welcome to the festive episode of the Hamster Book
• 13:36
  Club. We're talking about the chimes
• 13:38
  of midnights. I'm not even you not included in
• 13:41
  this advent calendar conversation here.
• 13:43
  Now I believe you, like me, have a coffee advent calendar this
• 13:46
  year. I have a coffee advent calendar.
• 13:49
  My daughter has a Lego advent calendar to make to make up for
• 13:54
  to make up for having a December birthday.
• 13:55
  She gets a better Advent. Calendar.
• 13:57
  Does it make like one big thing, the Lego one, or do you get lots
• 14:00
  of little things to make little little ones?
• 14:02
  Lots of little things that sort of add up to a festive scene
• 14:05
  over time. But she's also but she's also
• 14:08
  then had an advent calendar of her grandparents and she's
• 14:10
  rediscovered from somewhere. The Home Alone advent calendars
• 14:14
  I bought my wife some years ago, so we have fully four or five
• 14:18
  advent calendars on the day. It's quite a bit of admin to
• 14:20
  open them all in the morning. Just as the cherry have kind of
• 14:23
  got a different thing to maim an adult behind every window.
• 14:27
  It's more, more or less. It's the crazy old bird lady
• 14:31
  from Home Alone 2 and beyond one of the windows.
• 14:33
  Oh no. This is Home Alone One.
• 14:34
  Can you imagine Home Alone 2? Which one's going to have Donald
• 14:37
  Trump behind it? No Home Alone it has it has a
• 14:40
  lovely little sort of you assemble at the start a sort of
• 14:43
  cardboard Christmas tree and then each day you get a little
• 14:46
  thing to hang on it, which is a there an item or a prop from
• 14:51
  from the film. It's it's delightful.
• 14:53
  Just to find out how truly middle class your coffee advent
• 14:56
  calendar is. I mean, it may be, may not be.
• 14:58
  What's been your favorite coffee so far?
• 15:00
  You know, we're in that sort of day, Day 8 now.
• 15:04
  I quite like there was 1 today that was very nice.
• 15:06
  It had it told me it had hints of of BlackBerry and I believed
• 15:10
  it. BlackBerry.
• 15:12
  BlackBerry. I had amaretto today, it was
• 15:15
  very nice. Anyway, thanks.
• 15:19
  Thanks for tuning into the book podcast.
• 15:22
  Are we going to become one of? Those I should say.
• 15:25
  Yeah, we're doing the thing we're doing.
• 15:27
  The thing What's everyone think about Shooty Gatwell?
• 15:29
  I was literally complaining about this to Michael just the
• 15:32
  other day about another podcast that took 10 minutes to get to
• 15:35
  the fucking point and it was only a 40 minute podcast.
• 15:39
  When have we ever got to the point in 10 minutes?
• 15:41
  Come on, Manuel. We've got a good half an hour to
• 15:43
  fill before we get to the book. I mean, I've got to say, do you
• 15:46
  imagine you'll get a Christmas present more exciting,
• 15:49
  thrilling, terrifying and hilarious than a read of The
• 15:53
  Charms of Midnight by Rob Shearman?
• 15:55
  I. Mean.
• 15:57
  That's it. It's a tough bar, isn't it?
• 15:59
  Maybe if you get Jubilee by Rob Shearman you might, but that's
• 16:02
  about it. Well, like I got to read both at
• 16:05
  pretty much at the same time, so that was all.
• 16:07
  My Christmases come at once. James and I, please go and check
• 16:11
  out the Rob Shearman interview because you don't have to listen
• 16:13
  to us talk very much because Rob did most of the talking for that
• 16:16
  three hour running time or whatever it was and, and
• 16:18
  absolutely superb. He was fascinating.
• 16:20
  Boy, we crammed that reading in quick, didn't we?
• 16:24
  I was sat next to Rob Shearman on the tube the other day and
• 16:28
  despite you 2 knowing him and other people I know knowing him
• 16:33
  I didn't I could it's he can't turn to someone on the tube and
• 16:36
  go hello Rob Shearman. Yes you can.
• 16:39
  You. I mean, it has to be Rob
• 16:41
  Shearman for you to say that. Otherwise it really is a non
• 16:43
  sequitur. But I couldn't say hello.
• 16:45
  You don't know me, but you know many people who do.
• 16:50
  And then we discover Rob Shearman's a Russian spy.
• 16:53
  I don't know. He hands everything over.
• 16:54
  He completes the code phrase. You have discreetly have got out
• 16:57
  your copy of The Chance of Midnight.
• 16:59
  I've been reading it right in front of him.
• 17:01
  I mean, I I read it on Kindle so I think really going to be
• 17:05
  angling it towards. This go what's wrong with this
• 17:07
  Kindle and turn it around, you know, so you can see it.
• 17:10
  I would like a Rob Shearman advent calendar with a different
• 17:13
  short story behind every window. Don't give him ideas.
• 17:17
  Oh no, a different murder behind each one, as long as they've got
• 17:20
  the murder of the dwarf who gets his arm cut off in Jubilee
• 17:23
  behind door #12. What the bits he cut from the
• 17:26
  novelization? But he did have a few more
• 17:30
  deaths as well. Well fellas, I've got an opening
• 17:32
  question 10 minutes into this podcast that we're recording,
• 17:36
  and that is obviously Chance of Midnight is a book, a
• 17:39
  novelization of a big Finnish audio?
• 17:42
  What is your opinion of rewriting or transporting story
• 17:49
  from 1 medium to another? Does it generally happen
• 17:53
  successfully? And what are your favorite
• 17:56
  examples that are not this? Book.
• 17:59
  We're about to talk about because we're about to talk
• 18:01
  about it, Michael. No, I don't think they should do
• 18:05
  it. I think they should leave well
• 18:07
  enough alone. No, I think I think it's good
• 18:09
  fun. And it happens enough in Doctor
• 18:11
  Who, right? There's you can't come on a
• 18:13
  Doctor Who book club and say the idea of turning television into
• 18:18
  books. That sounds a bit silly, doesn't
• 18:20
  it? I there's a rich history of it
• 18:23
  in Doctor Who. I think we've actually done some
• 18:25
  really good. We've done some very good
• 18:27
  examples of it on this very podcast before now.
• 18:29
  If you've not listened to them, I'd recommend checking out our
• 18:33
  episodes on the Gunfighters and Battlefields for a couple of
• 18:36
  really good examples, and Shakedown and Shakedown if you
• 18:42
  wanted something. Michael's Freestar example.
• 18:47
  The only corporate video ever to receive a novelisation.
• 18:51
  You bitch. Good novelisation with.
• 18:55
  It's a good corporate video as well, yeah.
• 18:58
  I didn't say it was bad you. Said three stars.
• 19:01
  Joe said. Three stars.
• 19:03
  It sort of described it as a tasty burger.
• 19:05
  That was where it. Was what was with that, you
• 19:07
  know? I said it was a good three star.
• 19:08
  You know, you know this James, there's three stars and there's
• 19:11
  three stars. You know the fans will like it.
• 19:15
  I. Just think, three stars is
• 19:16
  always three stars. I know certain writers that
• 19:20
  never, ever get my three stars. They're looking at every review
• 19:24
  going. Come on, Just four?
• 19:25
  Just once. I can think of writers who
• 19:28
  aspire to three stars. I can think of a few podcasts
• 19:32
  mine that aspires to three stars.
• 19:35
  Sorry Michael, I'm doing at the moment posting along.
• 19:44
  I like it as an endeavour. I think I was saying this to
• 19:47
  James only the other day, which was I've always remember when
• 19:50
  they did the Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho in 1998 and everybody
• 19:56
  hated it. Everybody said it was pointless
• 19:58
  because it's it's almost exactly the same film just with
• 20:00
  different actors and and shot for the modern day.
• 20:02
  Apart from that bit where Vince Vaughn has a wank.
• 20:06
  But the one person who did like it was Robert Block, who wrote.
• 20:10
  Psycho. Because he said if I'd written
• 20:13
  Psycho for the stage, I'd have seen 20 Norman Bates's by now.
• 20:17
  But as it is, this is only the second person I get to see play
• 20:20
  that part. And I just think it's stories
• 20:23
  were not and were never meant to be static.
• 20:24
  You know, Socrates hated the idea of things being written
• 20:27
  down because he felt ideas should be interrogated and they
• 20:30
  should be alive. And I think, you know, almost
• 20:33
  any story can benefit from going over a second time.
• 20:35
  Even something that is quite small, unassuming, seemingly
• 20:42
  minor in the grand scheme of things, like the gun fighters
• 20:44
  can, you can discover there's a lot of wit and a lot of mirth
• 20:47
  and some interesting ideas about the nature of reality and
• 20:51
  fiction in their in their own sort of humble and unassuming
• 20:53
  way. And not just that that's what's
• 20:55
  happening with The Times of Midnight, but I think it's good
• 20:58
  stories. Stories should live.
• 21:00
  What about Nicholas Briggs writing Planet of the Daleks for
• 21:04
  the 900th time? You know, the conquest of FAR
• 21:06
  and all this, all these versions of Death to the Daleks as well
• 21:10
  that we've seen the excellence and things like that.
• 21:13
  Well, I mean, that's a different endeavour, isn't it?
• 21:14
  Where you go, I'm going to write a story.
• 21:16
  Oh no, it's the same story again.
• 21:17
  You should tell the same story again in different ways.
• 21:20
  Not different stories in the same way, but.
• 21:22
  It has history and Doctor Who ride you better gift.
• 21:24
  Well done. Use that as the quote where
• 21:29
  terrorist Dicks and Barry let's both said to Terry Nation, No,
• 21:32
  no, we've had this before. All right, go back and try
• 21:34
  again. And here's the title Genesis of
• 21:35
  the Daleks. Let's have something original,
• 21:37
  please. Can someone please say that to
• 21:39
  Nicholas Briggs? Anyway, James, what's your
• 21:41
  opinion? I mean, I, I think it's the most
• 21:44
  natural thing to turn television stories into a different medium.
• 21:48
  But bearing in mind that the history of television is, is
• 21:51
  basically grounded in, I mean, the history of all visual media
• 21:58
  cinema as well is, is turning novels into, into a different
• 22:03
  format. You know, the, the earliest
• 22:05
  British TV drama was based in an Italian play.
• 22:08
  If you go back to the early cinema, you've got adaptations
• 22:10
  of Shakespeare plays, A Christmas Carol, The Wizard of
• 22:14
  Oz, Dracula, the, the, the visual media have plundered
• 22:21
  literature for, for, for their story.
• 22:24
  So it makes complete sense that they, it would make good
• 22:28
  literature itself. And, and I think Doctor Who from
• 22:33
  very early on has has proved highly flexible in a variety of
• 22:39
  media. So I mean, thinking of
• 22:42
  successful examples of stories that have been translated into
• 22:45
  different media. David Whitaker is a name to
• 22:47
  conjure with. Consider, I mean, his
• 22:50
  novelization of the first Dalek story.
• 22:52
  It really turns it into something different.
• 22:54
  And it goes back to the original script.
• 22:56
  It throws things in that you couldn't have had on TV.
• 23:00
  They weren't able to achieve. It completely rewrites the the
• 23:04
  opening so that we get a a whole different back story for Ian
• 23:08
  Chesterton and Barbara Wright and.
• 23:09
  Did he know? Did he know this Anthony Coburn
• 23:11
  thing was coming? Maybe is that I mean that that
• 23:16
  will be the the ultimate thing when they have to bring out the
• 23:20
  the the first season collection Blu-ray with an an AI produced
• 23:27
  Chapter 1 of David Whitaker's the Daleks because they can't do
• 23:30
  an earthly child. But but equally, David
• 23:33
  Whitaker's translation of that story into a cinematic medium is
• 23:38
  hugely successful. Arguably the Daleks and even
• 23:42
  more arguably the Dalek Invasion Earth 2150 AD are more
• 23:46
  successful realized as films for all of the limitations of the
• 23:53
  retooling it as a as a more conventional sci-fi without the
• 23:57
  mysterious Dr. character as stories.
• 24:01
  I think they're highly successful in that truncated,
• 24:05
  dare I say it, omnibus form. So I'm not surprised that we
• 24:08
  keep seeing things being reinvented and and I mean, let's
• 24:13
  take another more recent example, the star beast.
• 24:15
  There we've got a story which started off as a graphic novel.
• 24:18
  We've now seen it as a a television episode, which was a
• 24:24
  a brilliant realization, but but reinterpretation of a story that
• 24:29
  seems to have a kind of already slightly lawish existence
• 24:35
  because of its reputation and because it exists outside of
• 24:39
  Canon. Really exciting to see it in a
• 24:41
  different form. And we've got the Big Finish
• 24:43
  version of that as well. And Speaking of Big Finish,
• 24:45
  we've got Big Finish doing the new adventures, which I think on
• 24:49
  the whole we would probably agree are improvements on the
• 24:53
  original stories because of the context of the original stories,
• 24:57
  because of the time that has passed.
• 25:00
  Because they've been able to go back and they've been able to
• 25:02
  tweak things and improve things and jettison things that didn't
• 25:05
  work. And with the benefit of
• 25:07
  hindsight and a bit more experience, produce something
• 25:09
  that's generally kind of more palatable and successful.
• 25:12
  They managed to be sort of substantially better quality,
• 25:16
  certainly in how they're written, than your standard Big
• 25:19
  Finish, because they've at least had two drafts.
• 25:21
  One was as a book and the second was as an audio.
• 25:23
  Yeah. In a way, one of the, I mean
• 25:25
  would have been so interesting. I, I'd have, I hated the idea at
• 25:30
  the time, but the, the John Leakley idea of taking old
• 25:33
  Doctor Who stories and remaking them, which I'm not sure to what
• 25:37
  extent that was the actual idea, because the John Leakey Bible
• 25:39
  is, is sort of giving them as examples of stories that could
• 25:43
  be told. Not necessarily stories that
• 25:45
  would be told, but other series plundered their past quite
• 25:50
  openly. I mean, one of the interesting
• 25:52
  things about The Avengers is that you get Brian Clemons goes
• 25:55
  back to stories that he wrote for the early series that were
• 25:59
  filmed live, which presumably he assumed would never be watched
• 26:03
  again, and remade them on film in color three or four years
• 26:06
  later. And they are really interesting
• 26:09
  to watch because you get a sense of how the series and how
• 26:12
  culture around it has evolved. In a way, it's a bit of a shame
• 26:15
  that we don't have that in Doctor Who.
• 26:17
  The closest we have is Terry Nation retelling the same story
• 26:20
  every. Couple he literally did it on
• 26:22
  those spy shows. I was listening to a really
• 26:24
  interesting podcast the other day which was detailing the plot
• 26:26
  points in several episodes of those 60s and 70s spy shows that
• 26:30
  Terry Nation wrote for, and he just transposed the plot from
• 26:33
  one series to another and just changed the characters and got
• 26:37
  away with it. I guess that was accepted
• 26:39
  practice. Did you know the story about
• 26:41
  porridge towards the end the the sitcom there the obviously
• 26:45
  Ronnie Barker, Richard Beckinsale sitcom classic.
• 26:51
  Absolute classic. That was.
• 26:52
  So that was only the UK with them in prison.
• 26:54
  Then they did AUS remake of it. But of course, sitcom series in
• 26:59
  the US have far more episodes per season than British ones do,
• 27:04
  so they very quickly ran out of British episodes to adapt, so
• 27:08
  they had to write some extra episodes for the American
• 27:11
  version. Then when they came back and did
• 27:13
  season 3 of Porridge in the UK, they adapted the extra scripts
• 27:18
  that they've done for America back into the parent show again,
• 27:23
  which is interesting. What about something like
• 27:26
  Mission to Magnus, which obviously was written as half a
• 27:30
  script, then turned into a target novel, then turned into a
• 27:34
  Big Finish audio, and then turned into a evil Annie AI
• 27:38
  monstrosity? It's amazing that we can see how
• 27:40
  that story just doesn't work in any.
• 27:44
  Or even more shadow, right, The lost.
• 27:46
  Doctor Who story. Which I at this stage know by
• 27:49
  book because I've seen it's, read it and heard it's 1000 more
• 27:53
  times than City of Death. You know that cover of the last
• 27:56
  Resort of all those Tardises on it?
• 27:58
  You could do a similar one with the various versions of Sharda,
• 28:01
  couldn't you? Stretching off into Infinity.
• 28:03
  Will we ever see the interpretive daft James?
• 28:06
  Will you create it for us, please?
• 28:08
  What? Shard of the Ballet?
• 28:09
  Why not? Yes, Sharda, for the stage, I
• 28:13
  mean, look at human nature, right?
• 28:15
  There's a good example of how you can take something that is
• 28:19
  already very successful and transpose it to another medium
• 28:22
  and make it just as, if not more successful.
• 28:27
  I mean, I think the idea of taking, I very often criticize
• 28:31
  Stephen Moffett cherry picking Lawrence Miles ideas on this
• 28:34
  podcast. But I, I do think that taking
• 28:37
  ideas and stories that had maybe a readership of 2 to 5000
• 28:45
  people, if you're lucky, and putting them into stories that
• 28:49
  are being watched by 7 or 8 million people and they're great
• 28:53
  ideas. Absolutely.
• 28:54
  We should do that. Yeah.
• 28:55
  Get, get those ideas spread as widely as possible.
• 28:58
  Well, what about something like Dalek then?
• 29:00
  Which obviously, you know, starts to life as Jubilee, then
• 29:04
  becomes Dalek the TV episode, then becomes Dalek the Book, and
• 29:09
  then becomes Jubilee the Book. Well, but that's sort of how
• 29:14
  stories work, isn't it? That's the thing when we talk of
• 29:18
  content and franchise, it's, it's a sort of sterilisation and
• 29:22
  packaging up of, of this, this tradition that goes back as long
• 29:27
  as humanity of, of telling a story, telling it differently,
• 29:31
  reinterpreting it in different ways.
• 29:32
  You know, all the greatest legends have different stories.
• 29:35
  You know, that's how it happened the last time.
• 29:37
  This is how it happened the next time it'll go around again.
• 29:39
  And the the cyclical nature of that and the the way that there
• 29:44
  was mycelial network of, of stories interlinked through
• 29:49
  theme and form and convention and action is, is really
• 29:53
  important and quite deep, which is a lot to say about
• 29:56
  novelisation of any TV show. But I do think it's, it's a sort
• 30:01
  of fight back towards something that is true about what story
• 30:05
  should be. And for the love of stories, we
• 30:09
  need to get back to that and the way from.
• 30:12
  Oh no, that's perfect. You can have the new tagline for
• 30:15
  the love of sterilisation, Big Finish.
• 30:19
  But you mentioned human nature, the different versions there and
• 30:21
  the thing about Doctor Who, that's that one of the things
• 30:24
  that I, I, I really enjoy about Doctor Who compared to even
• 30:26
  other franchises that I like. I'm not going to hate on Star
• 30:30
  Trek, but but Star Trek because it has that sort of slightly
• 30:33
  more earnest, deliberate nature about its storytelling.
• 30:37
  And it's, it's more feels a greater sense towards continuity
• 30:40
  and everything fitting together. Doctor Who's is free to be a bit
• 30:44
  looser because it's about a character who is on some level
• 30:47
  mythical is not really the Doctor isn't really making any
• 30:49
  claim to be a a real character who could exist in the way that
• 30:54
  Star Trek and so much other science fiction at least does.
• 30:57
  Theoretically, this is who we will be in 500 years time.
• 31:01
  The the, so much of it is essentially science fantasy in
• 31:06
  that it has no claim to a rational basis and therefore it
• 31:09
  can tap into ideas of mythology, of law in and of itself.
• 31:13
  Paul Mars does this sort of thing the whole time.
• 31:15
  This is why we love Paul Mars, because he brings magical
• 31:17
  realism and other unexpected and unusual elements to Doctor Who
• 31:21
  and they make complete sense here.
• 31:23
  And Paul Cornell, those short stories that were published
• 31:27
  during lockdown, he did a trilogy where he revisited human
• 31:30
  nature and there's a brilliant, brilliant short story.
• 31:33
  It's in the Adventures in Lockdown collection called The
• 31:36
  Shadow in the Mirror, and it's about Benny Summerfield, or
• 31:39
  someone who is very heavily implied to be Benny Summerfield,
• 31:42
  not least because she's voiced by Lisa Bowerman in the audio
• 31:47
  version, who on a on a dead planet, on a distant world,
• 31:51
  finds a mirror. And in the mirror she finds the
• 31:54
  little girl from human nature. But it's the little girl from
• 31:57
  the TV version of Human Nature, and she realises speaking to
• 32:01
  this girl, that they have both lived through the same story,
• 32:05
  but it was a different story each time.
• 32:07
  And it is then implied that actually that story has happened
• 32:11
  so many times. The little girl remembers all
• 32:14
  the doctors who came to see her, remembers the 10th Doctor coming
• 32:17
  to see her. Remembers the 7th Doctor coming
• 32:19
  to see her, remembers the 1st, 5th, 4th, 5th members, the
• 32:22
  Shalka Dr. coming to see her. Remembers one who's implied to
• 32:25
  be the Merlin Doctor coming to see her.
• 32:27
  That this, that's the nature of tragedy is that you can't
• 32:31
  prevent event it happening. And that's why so many tragedies
• 32:33
  are historical. And that's about the nature of
• 32:35
  storytelling. And I forgot where how we got
• 32:37
  here from the novelization. Darling, so interesting.
• 32:39
  Who cares? But.
• 32:41
  What I mean that just reminds me that whenever anyone blows the
• 32:48
  trumpet for Marvel and how exciting the multiverse idea is
• 32:51
  is. That I think Doctor Who.
• 32:54
  We did that a while ago. We've we've had multiverses for
• 32:57
  a very, I mean the three doctors is, is nothing if not a
• 33:01
  multiverse story. So I, I feel like the, the
• 33:05
  franchise has always embraced that I this idea, or at least
• 33:10
  the the franchise has, the fans haven't necessarily, but the
• 33:12
  idea that not everything has to match up, that you can have two
• 33:15
  different versions of human nature, that you can in fact
• 33:18
  have any in two different versions of just war and, and it
• 33:23
  doesn't matter. It's fine because telling the
• 33:26
  story is what matters. At one of its high points, the
• 33:32
  the latest series of Doctor Who actually went there and, and
• 33:35
  implied that storytelling was a big part of the Doctor's
• 33:38
  character and the Doctor's history and that that was an
• 33:40
  important thing. And I thought it was a really
• 33:42
  interesting idea that kind of Anansi became a, a character in
• 33:46
  Doctor Who. This, this this figure of
• 33:48
  storytelling, this mythic symbol of the power of telling stories.
• 33:55
  And if you if you read we we, we try to plug it as often as we
• 33:59
  can. John Higgs's excellent book from
• 34:01
  still this calendar yet exterminate regenerate.
• 34:03
  The story of Doctor Who talks about the Doctor as as a
• 34:07
  trickster character. I like a Nancy like Loki, like
• 34:10
  those ones that are discussed in the story in the engine.
• 34:12
  But his argument is that the Doctor is a trickster because he
• 34:15
  is this much stranger folk character who plays the part of
• 34:19
  a protagonist the the the hishi. They don't actually fit
• 34:25
  naturally into being a hero in the way that, say, Captain Kirk
• 34:27
  does or Indiana Jones does, but that they are this sort of
• 34:30
  emergent folk hero for the television age who sort of fits
• 34:35
  into being the mould of a protagonist.
• 34:38
  But that's not really what the character is at their heart.
• 34:45
  I think we've gone about as long as any other podcast has without
• 34:49
  actually discussing the topic that we're here to discuss now.
• 34:52
  So chaps, I suppose we should say, how do you think Chimes at
• 34:57
  Midnight transferred from an audio drama to the printed page?
• 35:02
  Let's go to James. I suppose the first thing to say
• 35:05
  is that unlike some of the recent target novelisations,
• 35:09
  which have been very conscious of the fact that they are
• 35:14
  novelising stories, not as Taryn Sticks was in the 1970s when
• 35:19
  they've been broadcast and may never be seen again as far as he
• 35:22
  was aware. But but now everyone who writes
• 35:24
  a target novelisation knows that The thing is on iPlayer, that
• 35:29
  people have probably watched it 17 times already and can stream
• 35:32
  it whenever they like. So they feel a, a responsibility
• 35:40
  maybe, or certainly a compulsion to make their novelisation
• 35:46
  somehow stand apart. And that's resulted in some very
• 35:51
  exciting writing. But what's interesting about
• 35:56
  both of Robert Sherman's new novelisations is, but
• 36:00
  particularly The Times of Midnight is that he takes a
• 36:04
  story that he is aware, he knows that people are going to be
• 36:07
  familiar with. And probably, let's be honest,
• 36:09
  if you're buying The Times of Midnight, there's a there's a
• 36:11
  high chance that you've heard the audio.
• 36:13
  I'm not sure this is going to be a a big seller with with
• 36:17
  newcomers. And I think he's quite
• 36:21
  restrained about changes he makes.
• 36:23
  There are some and and, and finding a different perspective.
• 36:28
  It it does occasionally have that, but it's actually a pretty
• 36:32
  faithful novelisation and a very simple retelling as well.
• 36:36
  There, there's no hiding his story behind or clever language
• 36:42
  or clever storytelling or gimmicks.
• 36:45
  It is just, let's tell this story in the clearest way that I
• 36:50
  can. And what's amazing about it is
• 36:52
  just how incredibly fresh that makes this familiar story feel.
• 36:59
  Without feeling at all radical, and without in any way
• 37:06
  challenging or cheapening the memory of of an audio which is
• 37:10
  absolutely and rightly beloved, it gives you an entirely new way
• 37:14
  of experiencing it. All the best jokes, all the best
• 37:19
  scares, all the best twists and turns are still in this book.
• 37:23
  And OK, a memory has hit me from the interview we gave.
• 37:26
  Now the changes that he made primarily are the characters,
• 37:33
  right, giving giving the characters more back story.
• 37:36
  A character like Mary that he said he he sort of wasted back
• 37:40
  in the audio script and didn't give her enough to do.
• 37:42
  He gives her a more interesting story on the page.
• 37:46
  I'm sure we'll get into the stuff where Charlie says I love
• 37:48
  you to the doctor. None of that's in the audio as
• 37:50
  well. So a lot.
• 37:52
  And the other sort of massive change that I saw was the the
• 37:56
  the short stories within the story, the ghost stories that he
• 37:59
  tells about the Chrysler, about the house.
• 38:03
  And that's the most ostentatious example of him going, this is a
• 38:06
  literary medium. I, I can do something really
• 38:07
  literary with this. One of the things he did tell us
• 38:10
  was that he would go, he would rewrite scenes having listened
• 38:13
  to it, but without referring to the script and, and see what new
• 38:17
  came out of it and, and see what he missed from, you know, then
• 38:21
  he'd make the comparison. But that being the case, I I can
• 38:24
  only imagine that his dialogue is so good and has stuck with
• 38:30
  him so solidly that even if he wasn't checking the script at
• 38:35
  the time, he reproduced an awful lot of the dialogue, pretty much
• 38:37
  word for word. And the dialogue's still.
• 38:39
  Great dialogue, though, isn't really good.
• 38:42
  It's Sparkles. Yeah, like Jubilee is far more
• 38:45
  of a rewrite than this. Right.
• 38:47
  And he said that as well in in in many ways.
• 38:50
  Sorry, Michael, you were going to jump in then.
• 38:52
  Well, no, I was going to say it's interesting because in
• 38:54
  reading, in reading it myself, you, you both seem very familiar
• 38:58
  with the, with the audio drama. I've listened to it a good few
• 39:01
  times, but not for a good few years.
• 39:03
  And very deliberately in reading the book did not go back to the
• 39:07
  audio drama. Because I think when you're
• 39:09
  adapting stories, the, the most obvious thing they need to do is
• 39:14
  to work on their their own merits.
• 39:16
  And so I wanted to experience it as a book and and not be
• 39:21
  considering it in that what in, you know, sort of doing the
• 39:24
  TARDIS wiki thing that we all have in our fans head of saying,
• 39:27
  Oh, there we go. The end of Part 1 is moved to be
• 39:31
  the middle of the chapter of part.
• 39:32
  But you know, you start to sound like a factor fiction article.
• 39:34
  I don't care when they do that big.
• 39:36
  People. Should do that with his targets
• 39:38
  quite a bit. And but, but it really did it.
• 39:44
  It works as a story in the election depth in its own right.
• 39:47
  I mean, I think in practical terms, you're probably right,
• 39:49
  James, that most people who have bought this, certainly who
• 39:51
  rushed out and and bought it all already or quickly were already
• 39:56
  fans of the audio. But I, I think this one even
• 40:00
  more so than Jubilee, although Jubilee's got a Dalek, so will
• 40:02
  presumably sell well. And I imagine Dalek novelization
• 40:06
  is all well, but I hope this does find a broader audience of
• 40:09
  at least. You know, less long in the
• 40:11
  tooth, Doctor Who fans, because I think it's got an angle of a
• 40:14
  commercial angle of a Doctor Who ghost story for Christmas.
• 40:18
  I. Wholeheartedly agree.
• 40:19
  I definitely hope that's the. Case yeah, and I and it was in
• 40:23
  in reading it in that way I I agree with you the the the
• 40:26
  transition does work really well.
• 40:27
  There are moments where even with my vague memories of the
• 40:31
  original audio version and maybe something is just knowing it was
• 40:35
  an audio version, there are bits where I I can sort of feel it.
• 40:37
  Some of those early scenes are very dialogue heavy in a way
• 40:40
  that one might not write if they're writing it straight A.
• 40:43
  Little descriptive at Oh my God, the hands on that clock are
• 40:46
  moving round. You know, it was in that sort of
• 40:48
  period, a big finish. But yes, but at the same time
• 40:52
  not, none of that was overpowering and I suspect I
• 40:56
  noticed that because I knew that's that's what it was.
• 41:00
  But his his prostyle is wonderful and it was the same in
• 41:05
  Dalek and it's the same in his non Doctor Who stuff.
• 41:08
  I've read as well. You know, we all hear stories in
• 41:09
  the dark and love songs for the shy and cynical, which is a a
• 41:15
  devastating book of short stories.
• 41:19
  I mean, it was it utterly wonderful, but I remember
• 41:23
  reading some of it in a McDonald's in Shrewsbury, it's
• 41:26
  10:00 at night for some for some reason, and really having to put
• 41:29
  it down and take a breather to the end of, of one of the
• 41:32
  stories. But he has he has this this
• 41:34
  conversational, slightly wide eyed prose style where that
• 41:40
  allows him to just sort of describe incredibly horrendous
• 41:43
  and heartbreaking things in this almost slightly separate way
• 41:49
  that that thing of and here's the thing that happened then.
• 41:52
  And it was really like this. And that's actually what
• 41:54
  happened. Don't.
• 41:55
  You think he's prose? He doesn't use complicated words
• 41:58
  at all, just brilliantly chosen words that impact in every
• 42:03
  sentence. When we said this to him, didn't
• 42:05
  we in the interview, James? Like, I don't think there's
• 42:08
  anything too complicated for a child to read this.
• 42:10
  I mean, I wouldn't. Suggest a child read something.
• 42:12
  Well, maybe actually be scared to kill them.
• 42:16
  The fair bit simpler his his style in in this than in his
• 42:21
  short stories as well. And that I don't think that's
• 42:24
  necessarily a choice that he's made to make the book more
• 42:27
  accessible for younger readers. I think that is just him as a
• 42:29
  writer refining his craft. So interesting that this comes
• 42:35
  after us reading White Darkness where you couldn't possibly say
• 42:39
  simple, you know, to the point, concise prose was an affliction
• 42:44
  of David A Mckinty's. But I mean, listen to this.
• 42:46
  Yeah, this is the one of the introduction passages for Edith,
• 42:50
  right? And he just gets to the knob of
• 42:52
  the sympathetic nature of that character in like 2 sentences.
• 42:56
  She thought she would get them out of her head by writing them
• 42:59
  out of her. She could turn them into stories
• 43:01
  and that way she can set them free.
• 43:02
  But Edith had never been taught to read or write, so all of her
• 43:06
  stories were locked up inside of her forever.
• 43:08
  And immediately you feel for that character.
• 43:12
  And I think one thing that I I got from this version much more
• 43:15
  than I remember getting from the audio, and I do love the audio.
• 43:18
  This may just be my own, my own political awakening is it's an
• 43:23
  incredibly angry book. It's a it is a tragedy.
• 43:27
  It's an angry book. It's a hard book.
• 43:29
  That as much as anything you know, pick Upstairs Downstairs
• 43:32
  is deliberately referenced there quite a quite a bit, not least
• 43:36
  in the names of some of the characters.
• 43:38
  But really, again, I don't know about you, but I kept thinking
• 43:42
  of JB Priestley an inspector calls which uses the the form
• 43:47
  and the structure of a whodunit to to capture the the violence
• 43:52
  of the complicity of the rich in in social violence and the ways
• 43:56
  in which the the privileged and the elite and the monied are
• 44:01
  invisible are blind, just not even cognizant of the effects
• 44:05
  that that their privilege relies on the just selling away of the
• 44:12
  lives of the lesser classes and selling it in awarding times is
• 44:15
  not is not in Charlie's childhood is not an accident.
• 44:19
  Anyway. That's a time of revolution.
• 44:20
  There's the point made in storm warning that when she leaves
• 44:23
  it's Britain's got its first Labour Prime Minister here.
• 44:27
  And I think like like Priestly, he he's Sherman is repeatedly
• 44:35
  making this points and this argument about the the response
• 44:44
  Edith committed suicide, but so many people are responsible for
• 44:47
  her deaths. And actually, Charlie's probably
• 44:50
  not the most of it, but then that Charlie herself is.
• 44:53
  Charlie never even considered that her survival might affect
• 44:57
  someone like Edith in any other way.
• 45:00
  You worry about that whole series, the arc that this fits
• 45:03
  within. In the audios in which it should
• 45:05
  be mentioned, he does an excellent job of explaining
• 45:07
  everything you need to know about that arc to enjoy the book
• 45:09
  on its own terms, which is that Charlie has been saved and she
• 45:12
  shouldn't have been saved. And it turns out that one life
• 45:14
  surviving is a really big problem.
• 45:16
  But make but shows that point to the effects on one woman that
• 45:19
  Charlie doesn't even really really remember.
• 45:23
  And there's a line that the rich and the powerful would have used
• 45:26
  up their lives just as surely as the as the events of this story
• 45:31
  have done. But they are going around in
• 45:32
  circles with no meaning, with no purpose, with no space for
• 45:35
  themselves to have any sort of life.
• 45:38
  And that seems like a horrific and is a horrific thing that is
• 45:40
  going on within this house. But the supernatural elements
• 45:44
  are a metaphor for what would really have happened anyway.
• 45:47
  And one thing that has changed in the 20 years, at least in my
• 45:50
  reading it is. I remember when chimes came out
• 45:52
  and there's the DW and previews and everyone talking about it.
• 45:54
  And everyone was referring back to upstairs, downstairs.
• 45:56
  And OK, the country house staple is.
• 45:59
  Sapphire and steel, Michael. And sapphire, Sapphire and steel
• 46:02
  clacks and everybody. It's an actually quite sapphire
• 46:05
  and steely this time the but but at the time it felt like looking
• 46:10
  back on something. But since, you know, we've had
• 46:13
  in the 20 years since we've had Downton Abbey, like there's that
• 46:16
  line from Alan Partridge about you should watch Downton Abbey.
• 46:20
  It's wonderful. It's set in a make believe past
• 46:23
  where rich people were nice to poor people.
• 46:25
  And you suddenly realise, no, no, this isn't just a searing
• 46:29
  indictment of of British social classes between the walls.
• 46:34
  This is a live virus within our system, especially when it's
• 46:37
  coming out alongside Jubilee. This is every bit as political
• 46:40
  as Jubilee and I think in some ways more tragic and more
• 46:44
  damning. You watched Upstairs,
• 46:45
  Downstairs, the old 70s version. It's far more scathing about
• 46:49
  that relationship between the Gentry and Downstairs.
• 46:52
  Well. It's an Abbey's.
• 46:54
  Yeah, or bits of it. I mean, even, I think even when
• 46:56
  they brought it back with Keely Halls, it was never as bad as as
• 47:00
  upstairs as Downton Abbey, but there were still bits of it.
• 47:02
  I remember a God awful scene with Keely Hawes as the mistress
• 47:05
  of the house sitting downstairs in the kitchen saying we're all
• 47:09
  residents of this house together here.
• 47:11
  You think? Fuck.
• 47:11
  Off. Oh shit.
• 47:14
  I mean, very early in the book there's there's a moment between
• 47:18
  the doctor and Charlie where Charlie literally says, Oh yes,
• 47:21
  I'd forgotten about her. Yes, there'll be one of those
• 47:23
  meaning a scullery made she does all sorts nothing in particular.
• 47:26
  She's nobody important. And you know, Charlie's the one
• 47:30
  person that cared enough. I mean, it's changed in this
• 47:33
  book to save Edith's job back in the day as a child.
• 47:37
  And she she's nobody important. And what do they keep repeating
• 47:41
  over and over again? We are nothing.
• 47:43
  We are nobody. And it's.
• 47:45
  Damning. And it's encapsulated, and
• 47:47
  there's a wonderful moment that some of this is really, you
• 47:49
  know, made a point of angrily, you know, shouting at the
• 47:52
  audience in a stage play and almost Brechtian.
• 47:55
  But it's also just encapsulated in these two little moments that
• 47:58
  aren't particularly flagged up, where Edith laments very early
• 48:03
  on that the servants Christmas pudding is so much smaller than
• 48:07
  the one that's been made for those upstairs.
• 48:09
  And then Charlie Chapter 2 later remembers, oh, cook always made
• 48:13
  too much Christmas pudding. We were still picking through it
• 48:16
  at New Year's Eve. And it's a it's a sort of joke,
• 48:18
  but it's also really fucking horrible.
• 48:21
  And all of those like little weird power games between all
• 48:25
  the people downstairs where you try and make yourself feel
• 48:29
  important somehow. There's a really telling line
• 48:31
  where Missus Basley goes. What she she had a purpose.
• 48:34
  She made the best plum pudding in the entire world.
• 48:37
  I mean, imagine if that was your purpose in life.
• 48:40
  There's something about, I mean, that every character gets, as
• 48:44
  you've, as you've said, Joe, a back story.
• 48:46
  And because of the nature of the ghost story that is being told,
• 48:51
  which is this, this loop that they are stuck in where whatever
• 48:55
  happens, they are all going to be alive again.
• 48:57
  And they're going to have to relive the same things again and
• 49:00
  again and again. And by fleshing out the back
• 49:02
  story of these characters, characters who it turns out are
• 49:05
  living out not just their own back story, but other people's
• 49:10
  There's there's the the whole story around Shaughnessy the
• 49:20
  Butler and this dreadful story about the Christmas where his
• 49:26
  his it turns out his son has been killed in what is implied
• 49:30
  to be the First World War. But then it becomes clear that
• 49:32
  this can't possibly have happened because it's nineteen O
• 49:34
  6. There hasn't been a First World
• 49:36
  War And and he's hazy on the details, but he knows that he
• 49:39
  never had a wife. It's implied that he probably is
• 49:43
  gay and yet he clearly remembers the Christmas where he and his
• 49:47
  wife found out that their son was dead.
• 49:52
  But there's something about that these hauntings and, and he
• 49:55
  rather, he sort of relishes the, the Dickensian potential for
• 49:59
  this. And, and he has five hauntings
• 50:01
  through the story, which are, you know, deliberate and in some
• 50:04
  cases explicit references to A Christmas Carol and, and, and
• 50:09
  each of these stories is an opportunity to show the world
• 50:13
  that each of these in, in most cases, minor characters are, are
• 50:18
  trapped in. And yet the circularity of their
• 50:21
  life is, is shown to have been kind of laid down by their
• 50:26
  background. And with these characters who
• 50:28
  never had a chance of breaking out of the, the social loop that
• 50:31
  they are stuck in. So it it hardly matters that
• 50:34
  they are going to keep waking up and doing the same thing again
• 50:37
  and again and again, because that is all that they have ever
• 50:39
  been doing. Because there is no hope that
• 50:41
  they will ever aspire to anything else.
• 50:44
  Oh, how miserable. Wow.
• 50:45
  Merry Christmas everybody. But it's, but it's also it's,
• 50:50
  it's very cleverly plotted. One of the things that the book
• 50:54
  does incredibly well is it has events that don't make sense,
• 50:59
  but they don't make sense to you.
• 51:01
  They have an internal logic, which is something that I often
• 51:04
  feel this type of story sometimes not just in Doctor Who
• 51:09
  either, but can sometimes slightly lose track of that.
• 51:11
  There still needs to be a meaning behind the surreal.
• 51:14
  You know, when you're watching, when you're watching David
• 51:16
  Lynch, you sort of or Twin Peaks, you sort of get the
• 51:19
  feeling of of, well, I'm only seeing every fifth word in the
• 51:24
  sentence that he's writing down. And there is a bit of.
• 51:28
  That Michael Moorcock book? Yeah, you're only understanding
• 51:31
  every fifth word. And there is a bit of that here
• 51:34
  and how it all sort of comes into shape over time.
• 51:37
  Do you remember Joe? Lord help us.
• 51:39
  Last year we did Lethbridge Stuart book The Beast of Fang
• 51:43
  Rock, which was similarly about time loops and events occurring
• 51:47
  again in different time periods. We said the one of the problems.
• 51:50
  Hypnotherapy actually, to forget about that book.
• 51:53
  So thank you for reminding me. But one of the problems with the
• 51:56
  way that did it was that there was no sort of ballet to things.
• 51:59
  There was no interest in the stories you weren't being told
• 52:02
  and things. Just nothing graceful about that
• 52:04
  book. Fucking hell.
• 52:07
  But this, but this, this does it wonderfully.
• 52:09
  And all it's there's also a kind of gag in it as well, I think
• 52:13
  anyway, which is that all the way through the the role that
• 52:18
  the doctor and Charlie are given is about of the oh, the
• 52:22
  brilliant detective and his sidekick.
• 52:24
  And again, that's, you know, it's very JB Priestley sort of
• 52:26
  using the idea of the detective of the framework of the
• 52:29
  detective stories tell a story that is actually trying to solve
• 52:32
  a mystery, but not a murder. It's something much stranger and
• 52:36
  broader and to make a point, And yet at the same time it does
• 52:40
  sort of play by the rules of a detective novel of giving you
• 52:44
  all the clues about what's going on.
• 52:46
  You're just not reading the clues in the right way.
• 52:48
  So when when the doctor and Charlie first arrive in the
• 52:51
  house before they've managed to sort of get into the right
• 52:55
  timeline as all of the residents, they they pieced
• 52:58
  together where they've landed from all of the sort of social
• 53:01
  clues in the larder about, Oh, it's it's not that big, but it's
• 53:05
  big enough and it's fairly well stocked.
• 53:07
  So that means, oh, it must be come up to Christmas.
• 53:08
  And you think, Oh yeah, well, they're already investigating
• 53:10
  the class element here. I do think the joke about the
• 53:15
  mystery is, though, that you're basically told what the answer
• 53:18
  is in the very first passage of the house coming alive.
• 53:21
  Like, I think it's kind of clear.
• 53:22
  I think he knows the audience reading this book have heard the
• 53:25
  audio. They know the house is the
• 53:27
  killer. And so he doesn't really build a
• 53:30
  big not like he does in the audio.
• 53:31
  He said, didn't he? But he didn't have a clue who
• 53:34
  Edward Grove was when he was writing the script.
• 53:37
  And then you finally went, oh, yeah, it's the house.
• 53:38
  Of course it is. You know, thank God I called him
• 53:40
  Edward Grove, not. The house, though?
• 53:43
  There's there's this rug pull and this is this is an addition.
• 53:46
  And I think that one of the areas that have has been most
• 53:50
  changed about this is the ending.
• 53:52
  And there's a point kind of you, you're nearing the, the, the day
• 53:54
  new Mon that's been revealed that Edward Grove is the house
• 53:57
  and that he it was him all along.
• 53:59
  And the chapter ends with the doctor saying, well, now I'm
• 54:02
  going to tell you who the murderer really is and basically
• 54:05
  says it's ridiculous. It's a house doesn't come to
• 54:08
  life, just that, that for no reason at all.
• 54:10
  That makes no sense at all. So Rob Sheaman takes the the
• 54:13
  opportunity to deconstruct. His own and and.
• 54:16
  Provide a better one. He wasn't happy with it, was he?
• 54:20
  The audio. No.
• 54:21
  And, and I would say objectively, I mean, I think
• 54:24
  it's a gorgeous audio, but I do think part Part 4 is the weakest
• 54:28
  of the four episodes. I know that Robert Sheaman has
• 54:32
  spoken about that. I mean, he's always spoken about
• 54:34
  his dissatisfaction about his, his final episodes of those
• 54:38
  early audio dramas. And I think it's really
• 54:42
  interesting how the extent to which he he, he certainly does
• 54:45
  rewrite the the ending. And I will say I think it's
• 54:48
  works much better. It does work better, but I think
• 54:51
  like the the as as it's presented on the audio, I think
• 54:55
  as a performance piece that that climax is gold.
• 54:59
  Yeah, but I don't think it's I don't think it stands up
• 55:02
  entirely to scrutiny and and, and one of the things that
• 55:05
  struck me about the the book here is that the suicide makes
• 55:08
  so much more sense. And it's not that he's he's not
• 55:10
  rewritten what happened. He's just filled in some
• 55:13
  background. He's told the story of what
• 55:14
  happened and you go, OK, yeah, I get it now.
• 55:17
  That does make sense. How did he put it?
• 55:19
  He went hang on a minute. So she chose to stay alive just
• 55:22
  so Charlie can remember her on some distant planet in a future
• 55:25
  adventure. That's.
• 55:27
  That's not. That's given her no agency.
• 55:28
  Whatsoever. Yeah, it does.
• 55:30
  It does make better sense. Well, what do you guys think
• 55:33
  about the shifts in the characters in?
• 55:36
  Because one of the things I really noticed in this book was
• 55:39
  that Frederick the chauffeur is a much more brutal character in
• 55:44
  this book. There's no real sense of sort of
• 55:48
  violent impropriety in the audio.
• 55:51
  But how he handles what's, I've forgotten the girl's name now,
• 55:54
  Mary, how he handles her in this.
• 55:56
  I mean, there's lines like what fun it had been to breakthrough
• 55:59
  her defensive, to knock her off her pedestal and drag her down
• 56:03
  to him. He's he's a nasty piece of work
• 56:06
  in this book. Yeah, and I suppose it's it's
• 56:11
  he, he is nasty. And yet he gets his own story,
• 56:14
  his own haunting A. Chrysler isn't it he.
• 56:19
  Can't. Or is it a Daimler?
• 56:21
  Yes, because it doesn't make any sense.
• 56:22
  It can't be a Chrysler. No, you're right, Sir.
• 56:24
  It's. A Daimler Bentley?
• 56:25
  I'm not sure actually. Which is, which is wonderful
• 56:30
  because you do, you know, you know, I don't want to sound too
• 56:34
  much like the message of this story is come, come, see the
• 56:37
  violence inherent in the system. Help.
• 56:39
  Help by being oppressed. Glory to the newborn King.
• 56:45
  But yeah, it's not that it's exterminating people.
• 56:47
  It is the violence inherent in the system that is being enacted
• 56:50
  throughout the times of midnight.
• 56:51
  And so we get the story about, you know, Frederick Frederick's
• 56:54
  back story about being just being this young boy who just
• 56:56
  loved a car that he saw. And then he got the chance to
• 56:59
  have a go in the car and then got a job driving the car for
• 57:02
  this old man. And then when the old man died,
• 57:04
  he was sold along with the car. And the way in which lives just
• 57:09
  get sucked in, in this way where you don't have any, you take
• 57:14
  what little agency you can have and you seek to reduce others
• 57:17
  alongside it. So I think you do you under in
• 57:21
  in making him more horrible. I think you also understand him
• 57:24
  better. Oh yeah, definitely each one of
• 57:28
  these little hauntings. I mean, some, some more than
• 57:31
  others, but certainly the the ones about Mary and the the one
• 57:37
  about Shaughnessy. Oh goodness.
• 57:40
  They're like little perfect short stories in their own
• 57:43
  right. They're beautiful and they're
• 57:46
  they're so sad. And so, I mean, a good ghost
• 57:48
  story is, in my opinion, always as a, as a heart of sadness
• 57:53
  rather than horror. It's it's, it's a tragedy rather
• 57:56
  than a pure horror. And and these stories just have
• 58:00
  sadness running threaded through them.
• 58:03
  Mary's story where she's being haunted basically by herself and
• 58:08
  it's just a little parable about loneliness.
• 58:13
  Mary loved Freddie. She had no choice.
• 58:15
  She wanted to be alone and she was never alone.
• 58:17
  But with Freddie, she was close to alone.
• 58:21
  If there were only some way she could be with Freddie and
• 58:23
  Freddie wouldn't have to be there.
• 58:25
  It would be just perfect. And when they made love on the
• 58:29
  back seat, she was as alone as she could ever.
• 58:31
  Oh, I mean, we've all had that shag, James, haven't we?
• 58:36
  Let's be honest. I had, I, there were moments
• 58:40
  where I had, I mean, I, I had little, little tear at that
• 58:44
  moment and. Well, there was a bit, Michael,
• 58:46
  you said as a quote, didn't you, where you were deeply moved by 1
• 58:49
  Pete? So towards say towards the final
• 58:51
  movement of this, of this, that we've moved on, that I think
• 58:54
  we've touched on already. I happy to admit I was in floods
• 58:58
  of tears. I was in the pub, but I was also
• 59:01
  in floods of tears reading the final movements of this.
• 59:03
  So for anyone who is who is unfamiliar with the book called
• 59:06
  the audio and spoilers, the the revelation is that Edith, the
• 59:12
  scullery maid who's been murdered and, and indeed Mrs.
• 59:15
  Badley the the cook are iterations of and Barry as well.
• 59:19
  We also learn, are all iterations of the same woman and
• 59:24
  various others who filled the same places and roles in her
• 59:27
  life at different times. Who was the cook in the house in
• 59:33
  which Charlie grew up? And that was, and that Charlie,
• 59:39
  the little girl who snuck downstairs on the night before
• 59:42
  Christmas to see the pudding being made and was the one
• 59:45
  friend that she ever had in her whole life and who saved her
• 59:48
  from, as it added to the book has been touched on in one
• 59:50
  moment of kindness, managed to call on her father's love of her
• 59:55
  to prevent Edith the cook being fired.
• 59:58
  And that this was the sort of the one real moment of, of
• 1:00:00
  affection and love and care that she'd ever been given in her
• 1:00:03
  whole life because of the how she was trapped within this,
• 1:00:07
  this cycle of, of, of, of, I guess class oppression and.
• 1:00:12
  And a society that had no place for her and yet recognizes her
• 1:00:16
  own tragedy in in all of this. And there's the line that
• 1:00:21
  absolutely broke my heart is where misses badly.
• 1:00:23
  And it is wonderful that it's misses badly.
• 1:00:24
  It's the older Edith, not the scullery maids, speaking to
• 1:00:28
  Charlie again when she knows who she is.
• 1:00:30
  And there's a line where she says, you were always my best
• 1:00:33
  friend. It didn't mean I had to be
• 1:00:35
  yours. And it is.
• 1:00:38
  Oh, that was a devil. That was a utterly brutal line.
• 1:00:42
  And of course the as has been touched on here, the the reason
• 1:00:45
  that all of this is happening is because if if Charlie.
• 1:00:52
  So when Charlie died on the R1, O1 and the staff were informed
• 1:00:57
  of this eventually led to the committing suicide because the
• 1:01:00
  one person she'd ever known, her best friend, was dead.
• 1:01:03
  And there was no, there was no love and anything left in the
• 1:01:06
  world and no space for her grief either.
• 1:01:09
  But if Charlie didn't die, then she can't have died.
• 1:01:12
  And how can any of this make any sense anymore?
• 1:01:14
  And the impacts that we all have on one another's lives and in
• 1:01:17
  her entire sense of self worth and her whole life is bound up
• 1:01:22
  in this one other person who barely even remembers them.
• 1:01:26
  It's a great magic trick, the the loop itself, the concept,
• 1:01:30
  right, Because Rob said he goes. None of it makes any bloody
• 1:01:32
  sense. You pull it apart.
• 1:01:33
  What, because someone didn't die?
• 1:01:34
  A house came alive and put everyone in a time loop because
• 1:01:37
  everyone gets kept sending me. This is absolute bollocks.
• 1:01:40
  But the magic is, I don't know, it just sounds convincing.
• 1:01:46
  Sense also comes from internal logic, I mean automatically this
• 1:01:49
  is. So that.
• 1:01:51
  That that, that, that that logic of Edith and and the the the
• 1:01:58
  thing propelling the whole story is really beautifully broadened
• 1:02:03
  and becomes a story about Charlie and her relationship
• 1:02:07
  with the doctor. Because this is a story about
• 1:02:09
  self worth and actually is. Does it really matter whether
• 1:02:14
  you live or die if nobody likes you or loves you or would
• 1:02:19
  remember you? That's the whole reason that
• 1:02:23
  Edith is having this this dilemma, because it's a question
• 1:02:26
  of, you know, what is her worth if the one person, whoever
• 1:02:29
  showed her any kind of kindness is, is gone.
• 1:02:32
  But Charlie is confronted with the same sense of doubt over her
• 1:02:37
  relationship with the Doctor. And it's the thing that I don't
• 1:02:39
  think Big Finish got terribly right at all in portrayal of
• 1:02:44
  Charlie and the 8th Doctor's relationship, particularly as
• 1:02:48
  their second season wore on. Charlie's inclination to declare
• 1:02:53
  her love for the Doctor in a way that I think was not terribly
• 1:02:57
  convincingly Edwardian. But.
• 1:03:01
  It happens once at the end of Neverland.
• 1:03:03
  Yeah. But then it goes on into, you
• 1:03:05
  know, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's.
• 1:03:07
  Very awkward after that. Very, very awkward indeed.
• 1:03:11
  Yeah, you can have the Netherlands moment, because
• 1:03:14
  that's a moment of climactic. Yeah, it keeps happening and but
• 1:03:20
  I think you can hear Paul Mcgann's awkwardness when he's
• 1:03:24
  delivering those bits of dialogue because it's not very
• 1:03:26
  doctorate and it's and it's very human and it's Big Finish trying
• 1:03:30
  to do something that hadn't really been done before, which
• 1:03:32
  is to kind of say in as many words what the what the loving
• 1:03:38
  relationship between the doctor and his companion is where a
• 1:03:43
  less sophisticated and although ironically, possibly more
• 1:03:47
  sophisticated age had just had their best friends.
• 1:03:52
  And Charlie in this, it doesn't resort to kind of these
• 1:03:56
  declarations of love, but it is clear that she is aching to be
• 1:03:58
  loved and in the Doctor has found a figure who she who she
• 1:04:01
  wishes to be loved by and who she does love she.
• 1:04:04
  Does express it in this though she.
• 1:04:06
  Does. And he says, I don't know what
• 1:04:07
  to do with that. I don't know what to do with
• 1:04:09
  that. This is this I find really like
• 1:04:13
  a beautiful, a beautifully 8th the most 8th Doctor way of
• 1:04:18
  writing this. The Doctor Who kissed Grace but
• 1:04:20
  but but actually becomes this person who doesn't know what to
• 1:04:23
  do with love and doesn't know how to say it.
• 1:04:25
  And the one the only point at which he can say yes, Charlie, I
• 1:04:27
  love you is where he thinks he has to say it to save her life.
• 1:04:31
  So you've got this, this, this, this gulf between them, which I
• 1:04:35
  think is far more interesting than than just, yeah, I love
• 1:04:39
  you. I love you.
• 1:04:40
  You're my best friend, Charlie. I love you.
• 1:04:42
  You must have absolutely adored skirts over there, James,
• 1:04:44
  because I'll tell you what that was like experiencing A breakup
• 1:04:49
  for two hours. You know, it's good.
• 1:04:51
  So is, is, is one that I've never, ever got on with.
• 1:04:54
  And I, and every time I listen to it, I think I'm going to give
• 1:04:57
  this a try. It's by a writer who I respect
• 1:04:59
  enormously. And I just.
• 1:05:00
  I don't get it. It's like breaking up with
• 1:05:03
  somebody but still living in the same house with them, except
• 1:05:05
  it's only the two of them in that universe forever.
• 1:05:09
  I, I, I think that the, the way this leads towards a conclusion
• 1:05:14
  that's not just about Edith and the, and the, you know, even the
• 1:05:16
  final chapter is, is a tear jerker.
• 1:05:19
  Just the, the fact that you finally get hope in this world.
• 1:05:22
  But but the way that it leads Charlie to the realisation that
• 1:05:26
  her own sense of worth doesn't need to be based in what the on
• 1:05:33
  and what not even on what the Doctor thinks of her, but on
• 1:05:36
  what she thinks the Doctor thinks of her, That she actually
• 1:05:38
  comes to the conclusion that that she's in this amazing
• 1:05:42
  adventure. She's found this friend.
• 1:05:44
  And that is actually the point. But Rob does recognize there are
• 1:05:50
  people that like that sort of thing.
• 1:05:52
  So there is this line from the doctor's point of view.
• 1:05:55
  And did he see love there too, or something like love in the
• 1:05:58
  future? He thought he might.
• 1:06:01
  So there's a. Little kernel there for
• 1:06:03
  everybody. Great that.
• 1:06:05
  But that's written with with layers and with mystery and
• 1:06:08
  complexity that that's how. Big Finish.
• 1:06:12
  Take a look back at the day, you know, for God's sakes.
• 1:06:15
  Yeah, because I think these think these addressing the
• 1:06:18
  doctor and the issue of love and how does he feel towards others
• 1:06:22
  is is something that works best when it's problematized in in
• 1:06:26
  some ways, especially in the new series.
• 1:06:28
  And I think you have to, you have to on some level believe
• 1:06:31
  the Doctor might be capable of love and a Doctor Who does it
• 1:06:35
  for the, for the tragedy to work.
• 1:06:36
  You look at this very human 8th Doctor and you think, well, he
• 1:06:40
  seems like he could love someone, but does he actually
• 1:06:42
  know what that means? And what would that mean for
• 1:06:44
  him? And it is sort of, although this
• 1:06:45
  is now calling back in that original way, he's calling
• 1:06:49
  forward to what would be done with the 10th Doctor and Rose.
• 1:06:52
  And, and his execution here is perhaps even, I guess, closer to
• 1:06:55
  the husbands of River Song where, you know, the whole thing
• 1:07:00
  where River basically says, I love him, but he can't love me
• 1:07:03
  back. You know, the sun, the sunset
• 1:07:05
  doesn't love me back, the roots of the sunset and all that.
• 1:07:08
  Whether he sort of dances around it and challenges her and
• 1:07:10
  provokes her without ever actually saying I do love you.
• 1:07:15
  It's it's, it's it's really well done.
• 1:07:18
  And I think in common with a lot of Rob Schumer's, if I, you
• 1:07:21
  know, I talked about that time in the book, Donald Citros be
• 1:07:23
  having to put the book down and have a breath.
• 1:07:26
  I do think that in a lot deep in a lot of his work is actually an
• 1:07:33
  investigation of or depiction of depression and the
• 1:07:36
  externalisation of self worth. And what that can, what that can
• 1:07:39
  bring in And, and that way in which is a loss of self worth
• 1:07:45
  can be both hugely chaotic and fiery.
• 1:07:48
  There's a beautifully a beautiful bit of visual imagery
• 1:07:51
  where we finally go upstairs in the house and, and Edith takes
• 1:07:56
  Charlie out onto the balcony to see the world outside the house.
• 1:08:01
  And what's falling from the sky isn't the snow of Christmas, but
• 1:08:04
  it's the fire of the R1 O1 in which she should have died.
• 1:08:08
  And it's huge and it's operatic and it's grand and it's not
• 1:08:10
  under your control. And at the same time, there's
• 1:08:12
  also a deadness there and there's that within and there's
• 1:08:15
  a, there's a line about what a thing it was to contain
• 1:08:18
  multitudes and still to be so very, very small.
• 1:08:22
  And it really sort of gets in and and and grab something deep
• 1:08:27
  inside. And I, I did listen to the
• 1:08:30
  interview. I, I didn't, I didn't need to be
• 1:08:32
  there. I thought you did.
• 1:08:33
  You did fine. And Rob Sherman worrying, Oh,
• 1:08:38
  Rob Sherman worrying over whether it was a time loop or
• 1:08:42
  not and others talking about does this make any sense?
• 1:08:44
  But I think as, as, as James said, the the meaning comes from
• 1:08:48
  the internal logic of it all. I think we're almost thinking of
• 1:08:51
  it in the wrong being so very fanish, so very Doctor Who ish,
• 1:08:54
  so very sapphire and steel to talk about time loops.
• 1:08:56
  Because what this really is is it's purgatory, right?
• 1:08:59
  That's what's really going on in this book.
• 1:09:01
  It's it's again, quite an ancient idea of people trapped
• 1:09:04
  between life and death, unable to resolve the things that are
• 1:09:07
  letting them move on and losing any sense and that loss of self
• 1:09:11
  in death being a thing. And that's, that's the River
• 1:09:13
  Styx. It's the River Styx all the way
• 1:09:15
  up to ashes to ashes. You know, it's an idea that we
• 1:09:17
  have been through before. And that's really where the
• 1:09:20
  TARDIS has landed this time, in that sort of great uncharted
• 1:09:24
  third way of Doctor Who, of the sideways story is what what if
• 1:09:28
  it were to become trapped between life and death?
• 1:09:30
  Or, or, or just a bad dream. And he sets up very early on at
• 1:09:34
  the in this throwaway paragraph, the Doctors, considering how his
• 1:09:40
  his companions have coped with the adventures that they are
• 1:09:43
  whisked off on in the TARDIS and it says the Doctor got.
• 1:09:47
  It was a lot for them to take in to realise that this was their
• 1:09:49
  new reality and not some insane dream.
• 1:09:52
  He wasn't sure that some of his companions had ever quite
• 1:09:55
  managed it. So in a, in a very subtle way,
• 1:09:59
  he's he's actually giving us the idea that as far as the
• 1:10:04
  companions at least are concerned, it could all be some
• 1:10:06
  insane dream. And an awful lot of what happens
• 1:10:10
  does kind of come across as Charlie's own kind of fever
• 1:10:14
  dream and and her own nightmare. And that's an idea that I think
• 1:10:19
  the 8th Doctor in in the naughties, in that sort of first
• 1:10:24
  run of of 8th Doctor efforts before the show came back was a
• 1:10:30
  sort of idea that people came back to a few times because he
• 1:10:34
  was so young and open and vibrant and charismatic and
• 1:10:38
  someone you would want to run away with.
• 1:10:40
  You know, Paul McGann was was the sort of proto model for the
• 1:10:45
  David Tennants and the Matt Smiths, because the young
• 1:10:47
  oppression would go, OK, grab my hand and run off in a way that,
• 1:10:50
  God bless them, ain't necessarily going to happen with
• 1:10:52
  Patrick Troughton. And.
• 1:10:55
  Well, not. Not outside the rehearsal room.
• 1:10:58
  Not, not not on the screen that within the 8th Doctor audios
• 1:11:06
  with this run, they they directly compare him to Peter
• 1:11:08
  Pan. That's why it's called
• 1:11:09
  Neverland, right? You know, the little boy who
• 1:11:11
  never grew up and they take you away and takes you away to the
• 1:11:14
  first on the right straight on till morning.
• 1:11:16
  The idea that all of this is separate from reality.
• 1:11:18
  And in the DJ, we're on comic books as well.
• 1:11:20
  You know, Izzy has those has those multiple years of stories
• 1:11:24
  in which she grows up and matures and it's one of sort of
• 1:11:26
  buildings Roman story. And then he returns at the
• 1:11:29
  moment they left and she returns to her life a more fully
• 1:11:34
  realised and actualised person. I liked revisiting that early
• 1:11:41
  8th Doctor because that's the 8th Doctor I I really like
• 1:11:44
  before he had to get sad. You're talking about the Time
• 1:11:51
  War. It just ruined everything,
• 1:11:52
  didn't it? I'm talking about whatever Big
• 1:11:57
  Finish box set marks making you listen to tonight.
• 1:12:00
  Death Death Alliance for it's actually Madrigal. 82 romantic
• 1:12:08
  drama starring body Langford. It's rather wonderful.
• 1:12:11
  You've been very dismissive of Sapphire and Steel both in this
• 1:12:15
  episode and on others, but I think it is worth pointing out
• 1:12:20
  that this was the period where Jonathan Morris and Rob Schumann
• 1:12:24
  were exchanging emails to make sure that as Child's Of Midnight
• 1:12:28
  and Anachrophobia were being written that they weren't
• 1:12:31
  nicking the same parts from Sapphire and Steel.
• 1:12:34
  Because I think a lot of the. Imagery and the conceptual
• 1:12:38
  horror, or maybe the temporal horror in this has been torn
• 1:12:41
  straight out of sapphire and steel and like a visual image
• 1:12:45
  like this. And Edith had no face.
• 1:12:47
  Her face was gone. It was a dirty smudge, as if
• 1:12:50
  some enormous finger had prodded down hard upon it and smeared
• 1:12:54
  all the features away. I mean, that's come straight out
• 1:12:57
  of Assignment. For all the stuff with the
• 1:12:59
  clocks. I'm literally watching
• 1:13:00
  Assignment One right now and there are entire moments in this
• 1:13:04
  book that have come out of Assignment 1, so it's definitely
• 1:13:07
  an influence here. Well, you're not a fan of
• 1:13:09
  sapphire. And steel, Michael?
• 1:13:10
  Oh, hang on a minute. I feel, I feel Joe has not
• 1:13:14
  suggest me not for me to suggest that Joe would ever straw man
• 1:13:17
  someone else's argument. But I, I, I, I mean, it's no,
• 1:13:22
  it's no deep space 9. Why my complaints about my
• 1:13:27
  complaint about sapphire and steel?
• 1:13:29
  It's nothing to do with I've always found it a bit of a slow
• 1:13:31
  show and I do always and I do undeniable.
• 1:13:34
  Surely I do slightly wonder, is this what people who don't like
• 1:13:37
  Doctor Who think? Old Doctor Who looks like?
• 1:13:41
  My main complaint with Sapphire and Steel in the book club is
• 1:13:44
  that. God bless three other shows that
• 1:13:47
  Doctor Who fans have watched. Yes, along with Red Dwarf and.
• 1:13:52
  What's the other one, Blake? Star Trek.
• 1:13:53
  Oh, Blake 7 that's. Blake 7 The number of time.
• 1:13:56
  Oh God we need, we need to, we need to RIP the guts out of Red
• 1:13:59
  Dwarf on this at some point as well.
• 1:14:01
  The number of people who could watch anything.
• 1:14:03
  Just a red dwarf in a book. Well, we could actually do it.
• 1:14:07
  Well, I'd. Work in a book.
• 1:14:09
  Yeah, in a top Infinity. Book Infinity.
• 1:14:12
  What's like the closest? I don't.
• 1:14:14
  Think anyone has? Oh well, probably transit.
• 1:14:17
  Yes, although the the real the real issue is is not that the
• 1:14:21
  real issue is that God bless him, Red Dwarf hasn't actually
• 1:14:24
  influenced anything ever. And yet Red Dwarf fans will
• 1:14:27
  swear blinds they Oh, I was watching.
• 1:14:31
  I was watching 28 Years Later the other day and I thought that
• 1:14:35
  bit. It's a bit like polymorph, isn't
• 1:14:37
  it? But the thing that Charlie
• 1:14:40
  Midnight has over Sapphire Steel is, you know, things actually
• 1:14:43
  happen in it and it has a plot. Because generally Mark's getting
• 1:14:46
  so frustrated he's never watched it.
• 1:14:48
  We're about to do the Sapphire Steel audios, which is why we're
• 1:14:50
  watching the TV show, because he's never seen it.
• 1:14:52
  And he's like, when is something going to happen?
• 1:14:54
  This camera has just been going along this corridor for 5
• 1:14:57
  minutes. He warned him about assignment
• 1:14:59
  too. That's my favorite, you know?
• 1:15:02
  I mean, it's it's, it's it's, it's not my favorite, but it's,
• 1:15:05
  it's up there. But it's it nothing happened.
• 1:15:08
  It's I. Have a sneaky love for five, you
• 1:15:10
  know James. 5 is a guilty. Pleasure, Yeah.
• 1:15:13
  It's also this book. This book's also a bit like
• 1:15:15
  Solaris, isn't it? Go on.
• 1:15:18
  I thought that was Embrace the Darkness.
• 1:15:21
  Are they doing the novelization on that one?
• 1:15:24
  The thing here's the thing that we we should say before anyone
• 1:15:28
  else switches off this podcast, we've made it sound like a very
• 1:15:31
  serious book and it's. It's fucking hilarious.
• 1:15:35
  So much. Oh, can we do some of the jokes?
• 1:15:37
  Come on, let's just do some of. The jokes?
• 1:15:39
  Well, let's talk. I mean, let's talk about the
• 1:15:41
  grotesque, because one of the that is absolutely ironic about
• 1:15:46
  this is that having taken all the grotesque bits out of
• 1:15:48
  Jubilee, he's he's sort of invented new ones and put them
• 1:15:52
  in here. The Chicken James.
• 1:15:54
  The bloody chicken. Running the Turkey running
• 1:15:57
  around the kitchen with the stuff in its guts falling out
• 1:16:01
  all over the place. This, I mean, there's so much
• 1:16:05
  here that's grotesque. There's a bit There's a bit when
• 1:16:09
  Missus Badley's been stuffed with her own plum pudding for
• 1:16:12
  the second time and the and the Doctor needs to taste it, and
• 1:16:16
  she just takes them out of her mouth and props it to.
• 1:16:20
  What was it about that bubble the body gave one?
• 1:16:22
  Final lurch, and then after that a single perfect soap bubble
• 1:16:26
  rose out between the maid's lips, glistened for a moment and
• 1:16:30
  popped. Well, makes the point that after
• 1:16:33
  the first, the first murder of Edith, makes the point that I
• 1:16:36
  think is only sort of implied in the audio, that they are all
• 1:16:38
  just sort of stepping over her body for the remainder of the
• 1:16:41
  scene. And when Mary has to take over
• 1:16:43
  at the sink, she is sort of legs akimbo, sort of a stride to
• 1:16:47
  watch washing up. And just the.
• 1:16:49
  Lines that he's taken from the audio and I can stab you with my
• 1:16:52
  knitting needles. Did your master instruct you to
• 1:16:54
  do that, Mary? Oh, yes, Sir.
• 1:16:56
  It was most particular about what I could do with my needles.
• 1:16:59
  I mean, all of that stuff's great.
• 1:17:00
  All the the lines about. Someone you know driving the car
• 1:17:04
  over. Themselves and then parking it
• 1:17:06
  back in the fucking garage. That's hilarious.
• 1:17:09
  The there's the moment and it's, I'm not sure whether it's funny
• 1:17:16
  or just, I mean, it's, it's painful to read where Charlie's
• 1:17:19
  eyeball gets stuck in the keyhole.
• 1:17:22
  Oh yes, she. Yes, the Doctor.
• 1:17:25
  The doctor tells her to look through the keyhole to see what
• 1:17:28
  she can see outside, and then the keyhole won't let go.
• 1:17:31
  So ridiculous and so Terry. It's so visceral.
• 1:17:37
  And this is this from an author who's who's taken the the the
• 1:17:42
  the dismembered dwarves out of Jubilee because.
• 1:17:46
  Shame. CC cuts her arm, or thinks she
• 1:17:51
  has cut her arm and and looks down at all the blood.
• 1:17:53
  But there was so much of it. How could there be so much of
• 1:17:56
  it? She stared at her arm, stared at
• 1:17:58
  the gash that was so deep. The blood was so thick and dark.
• 1:18:01
  How much blood could there be left in her?
• 1:18:03
  And so much for it was already on the floor and on her dress
• 1:18:06
  and running down her arm, bleeding to death in the dark
• 1:18:09
  because she'd been so clumsy. She felt so stupid.
• 1:18:11
  She felt dizzy and sick. That wasn't too much.
• 1:18:16
  The dwarf was too much. I should inform you, James, I've
• 1:18:20
  got an overriding urge to shoot you in the head coming on.
• 1:18:22
  All right? I mean, this dialogue is great.
• 1:18:25
  No, no, that was a lie. I'm not.
• 1:18:27
  Really. I'll shoot you.
• 1:18:28
  No, I was trying to be funny, but failed.
• 1:18:34
  It's very, very funny though, isn't it?
• 1:18:36
  And and grotesque in the way that only Rob Sheeran can be.
• 1:18:44
  Oh, I'm glad you agree. I've no totally agree.
• 1:18:47
  I'm now suddenly my mind immediately went to some of the
• 1:18:50
  reason for the silence was my mind immediately went to some of
• 1:18:53
  his short stories and I relived a little bit of trauma there,
• 1:18:57
  but. Lots of imagery and twists.
• 1:18:59
  And some of the images once once put in your head.
• 1:19:02
  James, we're coming on our journey with that, aren't we?
• 1:19:05
  A very long journey. 101 Journeys Bible accounts.
• 1:19:11
  I mean, he did have some very dark stuff as well.
• 1:19:14
  And I've already spoken about Frederick, but there's no
• 1:19:17
  mention of the baby that Edith got rid of in the audio, and
• 1:19:21
  that's added here as well, isn't it?
• 1:19:24
  Death runs through this book in a way that I mean, it obviously
• 1:19:27
  runs through the story, the fact that there's multiple murders,
• 1:19:32
  but the imagery surrounding death, the repeated idea of
• 1:19:39
  dust. It's very early on.
• 1:19:40
  It's introduced that that that Edith was once told that that
• 1:19:44
  dust was just dead people in the air.
• 1:19:46
  And he keeps coming back to this idea of dust in the air.
• 1:19:48
  And there's appointment. The doctor has the same thought
• 1:19:52
  and witnesses Dust as he tries to venture outside.
• 1:19:56
  Again, it's this idea that the snow falling becomes something
• 1:19:59
  else. It's a it's a really clever
• 1:20:04
  thing to have planted very early on.
• 1:20:07
  Because it means that this, again, it goes back to this
• 1:20:12
  theme of what's the point of being alive anyway?
• 1:20:14
  I mean, if and, and, and, you know, is, is it all really down
• 1:20:18
  to whether we're remembered or not?
• 1:20:20
  Because at the end of the day, we're all going to end up just
• 1:20:22
  dust swirling around in the air. But doesn't she, like, sweep it
• 1:20:26
  into the air? And there's the it's like the
• 1:20:28
  ghosts of the people that are left behind.
• 1:20:30
  That's just beautiful, I think. What kind of haunting,
• 1:20:33
  Hauntingly beautiful. There was quite there was quite
• 1:20:37
  a lot of moments as well, where I just recoiled from the page at
• 1:20:42
  the unfairness of what was unfolding.
• 1:20:47
  There's one bit that just killed me, the way he described it, and
• 1:20:50
  it's the bit where the news comes in about Shaughnessy's kid
• 1:20:54
  and he looks at Elsbeth was frowning in confusion.
• 1:20:58
  She hadn't realized yet. Dear God, if only he could keep
• 1:21:01
  the soldier from speaking. If only she never had to find
• 1:21:04
  out. Could you imagine being in that
• 1:21:06
  situation? That's just terrifying.
• 1:21:09
  It's that idea is here throughout, isn't it, of of
• 1:21:13
  lives wasted and the the sort of slow motion but but supreme
• 1:21:20
  crime of using up the life of another for no purpose.
• 1:21:25
  So it's not a coincidence that Shaughnessy remembers his son
• 1:21:27
  dying in the trenches like he died in a war.
• 1:21:31
  No good reason, don't know what happened.
• 1:21:33
  In fact, isn't there some suggestion that he died quite
• 1:21:36
  quite didn't didn't have a good death anyway, Not he was not
• 1:21:39
  killed. And that's all of these people,
• 1:21:42
  all of the the characters are portmanteaus of conglomerations
• 1:21:48
  of different people who all served the same role at
• 1:21:51
  different times in different houses.
• 1:21:52
  And that that's all that anyone remembers of them now in their
• 1:21:56
  deaths, that there is nothing else to go on there.
• 1:21:58
  But the fact that, as you say, that the the baby that we find
• 1:22:02
  out she had to get rid of from an unloving affair because she
• 1:22:06
  was worried about losing her job if anyone were to find out and
• 1:22:09
  nothing else. You know, not just literal
• 1:22:11
  death, but ego death as well of of the loss of position, which
• 1:22:17
  is what Mary's utterly terrified about that she had, you know, a
• 1:22:19
  mocker for these pretensions to be towards being one of one of
• 1:22:22
  the house. And and but that is tragic.
• 1:22:24
  But that is awful, you know, because she isn't allowed to be
• 1:22:27
  the equals of these people and that they are just completely
• 1:22:31
  unaware of what they're doing. There's a line I think of is at
• 1:22:34
  the heart of it, you know, because it's Charlie's story at
• 1:22:36
  the heart of it in terms of the doctor and companion, which says
• 1:22:41
  perhaps this will be a lesson for you, Charlotte, that actions
• 1:22:44
  have consequences, which is a line from her father.
• 1:22:47
  Because the cookie's going to be fired because, or let go
• 1:22:51
  because, because Charlie went down to the went down to the
• 1:22:55
  kitchen and broke her tooth on the throppany bits in the
• 1:22:58
  Christmas pudding. And then a page later you get
• 1:23:04
  from Mrs. Badley, the older Edith.
• 1:23:07
  I'm sorry, my puppet, said Mrs. Badley softly.
• 1:23:10
  Truth has consequences too. And it's it's it's utterly
• 1:23:17
  heartbreaking. It's a little bit, I suppose, of
• 1:23:20
  Remains of the Day in there as well.
• 1:23:21
  You know, another famous sort of subversive country house novel
• 1:23:25
  as well of of that fear of just getting to the end of it all and
• 1:23:28
  realising what I did my duty and what a tragedy that is.
• 1:23:35
  Merry Christmas, everybody listening.
• 1:23:38
  I'm wasting people's lives for no purpose.
• 1:23:43
  Did you say I'm sorry? I'll never invite you chaps back
• 1:23:45
  on again, All right? Congratulations on your
• 1:23:48
  Congratulations on your 1000 TH episode again this year, Joe.
• 1:23:52
  Fuck you. So is this.
• 1:23:55
  Is it a hopeful book like usually these Christmas, they
• 1:23:59
  end on a on a moment of hope. Now I know the very last line on
• 1:24:02
  the book is she felt hope, but I don't think she's going to have
• 1:24:06
  a great life going ahead. It's.
• 1:24:08
  A ghost story for Christmas. I don't know how familiar you
• 1:24:11
  are with the with the genre, but they're not always hopeful
• 1:24:15
  stories. I don't think anyone's ever
• 1:24:17
  watched the BBC adaptation of the Signalman and thought, oh,
• 1:24:20
  that's it. I saw her on the stage.
• 1:24:22
  It was fucking terrifying that that train came right out of the
• 1:24:26
  audience. In Whistle and I Come for You,
• 1:24:29
  people forget that what he wanted to do was give him a
• 1:24:31
  present. But I do think there is an
• 1:24:35
  element of hope at the ends of this as well, which is because
• 1:24:39
  it is ultimately a story about self actualization at the end of
• 1:24:43
  it, of people realising that they can, you know, to go back
• 1:24:46
  to that metaphor of it's purgatory that they are
• 1:24:48
  ultimately able to pass on, that they are able to reconcile that,
• 1:24:52
  that Edith is able and time is able to reconcile what happened
• 1:24:55
  to her and the others. I mean, it's almost the sort of
• 1:24:59
  really kind of weirdly metaphysical version of
• 1:25:03
  everybody lives at the end. But maybe it's also everybody
• 1:25:06
  dies but everybody. Lives in cruelty, sadness and
• 1:25:10
  despair. It's there in the last
• 1:25:11
  paragraph. But the way that that you know
• 1:25:15
  it, Rob Schuman the interview was was correct that the final
• 1:25:19
  part of the audio of charms of midnight is a little bit
• 1:25:21
  unsatisfying, which is Edith sappy because she will be
• 1:25:24
  remembered on Mars. But it's, but it's ultimately
• 1:25:32
  the resolution here is that she doesn't need to rely on other
• 1:25:35
  people remembering her, that she was her own person, that she
• 1:25:38
  lived her own life and that she had worth.
• 1:25:41
  And that's, that's happy, right? Well, yes, it's a little moment
• 1:25:47
  of internal happiness in another wise, despairing and miserable
• 1:25:51
  life of servitude. Have you watched it?
• 1:25:54
  Christmas. Have you watched It's a
• 1:25:55
  Wonderful Life any Christmas recently?
• 1:25:57
  Because everyone remembers the last five minutes and they
• 1:26:00
  forget the two hours. You have to get to the terrible
• 1:26:03
  life before you get to the the very short wonderful life.
• 1:26:06
  And we get basically 3 1/2 pages of of optimism in this, in this
• 1:26:12
  200 and 33 page book. So but I but it's a touching
• 1:26:17
  ending it it, it's rather lovely.
• 1:26:19
  And and they find what happens is they finally arrive at
• 1:26:23
  Christmas. The the entire story is about
• 1:26:25
  not making it as far as Christmas and and finally
• 1:26:28
  Christmas Day comes again. And Edith knew that it didn't
• 1:26:32
  change anything. So there's, there's realism
• 1:26:34
  there that there was still cruelty and sadness and despair.
• 1:26:37
  But perhaps just for one day, her heart was lighter.
• 1:26:41
  She felt there was magic to it. She felt hope.
• 1:26:45
  I mean, I'm going to get political again, but at the, you
• 1:26:49
  know, the way things are in the world, isn't that all we can
• 1:26:52
  hope for on Christmas Day? At the moment it's just hope.
• 1:26:56
  Well, that's what we do, these podcasts, James, you know, life
• 1:26:59
  gets a little bit lighter and then we go back to the real
• 1:27:01
  world. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas.
• 1:27:02
  Without your podcast. Shut up.
• 1:27:06
  I kept thinking, what? Just take her with her.
• 1:27:08
  I was like, Oh no, wait, yeah, she's got a future with Charlie
• 1:27:10
  in the other house. They can't actually can.
• 1:27:12
  They take them with her and then just drop her off where she
• 1:27:14
  needs to be in the house in order for Charlie to remember
• 1:27:17
  her in the future and give her a good life.
• 1:27:20
  Is this some sort of magical xylophone?
• 1:27:26
  I don't know, I just thought I'd go after.
• 1:27:29
  No, the the the. Cruelty in that fairness is that
• 1:27:31
  didn't happen. And these people, maybe you
• 1:27:35
  could write an adventure after Joe.
• 1:27:42
  Rescued. Oh, they'll take her to another
• 1:27:44
  planet. So she can just scream her name
• 1:27:46
  out across a mountainous. Range just like.
• 1:27:48
  Right there you go, I did it right there.
• 1:27:49
  Back to your miserable life. The Charlie and Edith box set in
• 1:27:53
  which they they take on the Byron's.
• 1:27:57
  They'll do it all right. You wait around long enough.
• 1:28:00
  Do you have anything else? From your notes, gentlemen,
• 1:28:03
  anything you haven't? Talked about that you would like
• 1:28:06
  to. I mean, I think we've all come
• 1:28:07
  to the same conclusion. This is something a bit.
• 1:28:09
  Special. I mean, it's there's something
• 1:28:13
  wonderful on every page. And so I could just sit and read
• 1:28:17
  the book from start to finish. But I won't do that.
• 1:28:21
  I'd love to hear you do that. Listen to your beautiful voice.
• 1:28:25
  No. Come on.
• 1:28:25
  Off you go. Yeah.
• 1:28:27
  I'll tell you what. No, I would like to read out the
• 1:28:29
  bit where where. Shaughnessy reads from his Bible
• 1:28:36
  because that's not in the audio and.
• 1:28:38
  I think that it shows there's. The one of the one of the many
• 1:28:42
  pleasures of the the original play is the way things kind of
• 1:28:47
  giddily start to spin out of control and these catch phrases
• 1:28:50
  that have been sown very early on repeat with kind of
• 1:28:54
  increasingly increasing intensity.
• 1:28:56
  What we get here is a, a, a kind of culmination of that and and a
• 1:29:00
  virtuosic bit of writing where Rob Sherman fully commits to the
• 1:29:03
  madness of it after another death, Shaughnessy says
• 1:29:10
  hesitantly. I could say a few words from my
• 1:29:13
  Bible if you think it would be appropriate.
• 1:29:15
  I think it might, said the doctor.
• 1:29:17
  Really. May I?
• 1:29:19
  Shaughnessy's face softened and in an instant lost all its
• 1:29:22
  severity, and the doctor thought he looked like a little boy
• 1:29:25
  given permission to show off his favorite toy.
• 1:29:27
  He took the Bible from his pocket, opened it, cleared his
• 1:29:31
  throat. Everyone listened respectfully
• 1:29:34
  as he began to read. When?
• 1:29:36
  Is a door. Not a door at that, Shaughnessy.
• 1:29:39
  Faltered he. Blinked in what may have been
• 1:29:41
  surprised. Then he continued to read with a
• 1:29:44
  solemn voice and growing confidence.
• 1:29:46
  When is a door not a door? When it is alive, and I am so
• 1:29:50
  alive and I am coming, that such a thing could happen in her
• 1:29:52
  kitchen. There's no need to knock.
• 1:29:54
  A Chief Inspector and an amateur sleuth went into a bar, and the
• 1:29:57
  barman said she was very stupid. She may not have realized it was
• 1:30:00
  impossible when she did it. A cook, a Butler, and a maid
• 1:30:03
  went into a bar. Which of them will die when the
• 1:30:05
  chimes strike next Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without
• 1:30:08
  Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without Christmas.
• 1:30:12
  Amen. Wonderful.
• 1:30:16
  The only thing I. Really want to say is I just
• 1:30:19
  quickly want. To read out the bit with the
• 1:30:20
  bird, because as as serious as we have made all this sound, it
• 1:30:25
  is also remarkably sick and silly as well, and those things
• 1:30:29
  are worth remembering. So here we go.
• 1:30:32
  The Turkey was bronzed and juicy.
• 1:30:34
  It looked ready roasted. It didn't.
• 1:30:36
  Have a head, of course. And yet it twitched the next
• 1:30:38
  stump about as if it could still see through it, or was trying to
• 1:30:41
  remember how it used to. To see when it had eyes to see
• 1:30:44
  with Missus. Badley edged closer towards it,
• 1:30:47
  and that was enough to panic the bird.
• 1:30:49
  It bolted across the floor towards Charlie.
• 1:30:52
  It's drumsticks rotated frantically like oars on a robo,
• 1:30:56
  propelling itself rapidly across the tiled kitchen floor.
• 1:30:59
  In its speed, it's sprayed out a stream of sage and onion
• 1:31:03
  stuffing. I mean, that's just wonderful.
• 1:31:06
  Oh boy. I mean from one page to another.
• 1:31:09
  I was laughing my head off. Or you.
• 1:31:10
  Know on the verge of tears. I mean, that's a gift, right?
• 1:31:14
  I, I, if I may give a reading as well.
• 1:31:16
  I just want to go back to that. That scene between as good as
• 1:31:20
  your trading futures 1 though, right?
• 1:31:22
  Just, you know, you've set the bar high.
• 1:31:24
  This this will be a bit less panicked to go back to that that
• 1:31:28
  climactic. Scene.
• 1:31:28
  That we've already thoroughly spoiled about the the doctor and
• 1:31:32
  Charlie confronting the nature of their relationship and and
• 1:31:34
  and Charlie realizing herself worth as well.
• 1:31:37
  She's when she has had a vision of her death, which is
• 1:31:41
  wonderful. There's a wonderful sequence
• 1:31:42
  where she is back aboard the R1 O 1:00 and basically time is
• 1:31:46
  giving her an opportunity when Edith has given her opportunity
• 1:31:48
  to make it right by dying in in the flames and Charlie just says
• 1:31:55
  help me, she whispered. I'm so scared.
• 1:31:58
  The doctor gazed at her, wouldn't take his eyes off her,
• 1:32:00
  hoped she wouldn't take her eyes off him.
• 1:32:02
  What happens on the R1 O1? If you died then when you died,
• 1:32:07
  it wasn't destiny, it wasn't meaningful, it was bad luck.
• 1:32:10
  You're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• 1:32:12
  A billion to one chance and that billion to one chance is always
• 1:32:15
  coming. It will get us all one day.
• 1:32:17
  That was your day. He paused until it wasn't.
• 1:32:21
  Charlie was still looking at him and he just hoped his words made
• 1:32:23
  sense to her. They felt so silly and
• 1:32:25
  inadequate. But what?
• 1:32:28
  But what you're doing now, this isn't bad luck.
• 1:32:31
  This is a choice you're making. Choose life, Charlie, you have
• 1:32:34
  to choose life. I love you.
• 1:32:37
  She spoke the words so softly, but they seem to hang heavy in
• 1:32:40
  the air for a long time. I need you, Charlie.
• 1:32:44
  Said the doctor. Bravo.
• 1:32:50
  It's just I mean. And.
• 1:32:52
  I didn't get that when. We read the Beast of Fang Rock.
• 1:32:59
  You didn't get anything when we read The Beast of.
• 1:33:01
  Fang Rock. We still got our two hours out
• 1:33:05
  of it though. Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 1:33:07
  I my my. Feeling on this book is it will
• 1:33:09
  never. Happen.
• 1:33:10
  But I want to live in a world in which the BBC make this, put it
• 1:33:14
  on on Christmas Day opposite Downton and say fuck you to the
• 1:33:17
  Daily Mail, James. Oh yeah, I'll. 2nd that
• 1:33:22
  definitely. Oh no, I mean just a little.
• 1:33:25
  Summary. Oh look, I mean this.
• 1:33:28
  It's it's the IT is a. Pretty much perfect book, isn't
• 1:33:32
  it? And a very swift read.
• 1:33:41
  You know, about the same length as A Christmas Carol and a book
• 1:33:46
  which like A Christmas Carol I'd be happy to to get out every
• 1:33:50
  Christmas and and reread. Or better still, if the BBC are
• 1:33:55
  not going to make this, maybe we can have a Muppet version
• 1:34:01
  stuffed full of. Plum pudding.
• 1:34:04
  They could have to. They'd do the Turkey well,
• 1:34:07
  wouldn't. Gonzo with a sink plunger on his
• 1:34:10
  mouth. You know you're.
• 1:34:12
  Always my best friend Charlie OH.
• 1:34:20
  I mean, I will say, and it just feels like damning.
• 1:34:24
  Chimes with fame praise. I did in fact prefer Jubilee.
• 1:34:27
  Because if. This book is angry.
• 1:34:29
  Jubilee is steaming like Jubilee is furious, and I think I
• 1:34:34
  preferred it because. It was more of a rewrite.
• 1:34:38
  And he was doing new and interesting things with it.
• 1:34:41
  So I felt as if I was getting a brand new story with Jubilee,
• 1:34:44
  but on its own terms, as a piece of Doctor Who prose, I mean.
• 1:34:49
  It's pretty much flawless, isn't it?
• 1:34:51
  Oh, as flawless as something we're probably going to read on
• 1:34:54
  this book club. It sets a high bar for whatever.
• 1:35:00
  We do next Christmas. Oh, well done Michael and.
• 1:35:07
  For going Christmas next week, what are we going to talk about?
• 1:35:13
  It's others, Tide Boy and. We'll all be gathering.
• 1:35:19
  Together in a. House where things.
• 1:35:22
  Haven't changed. Bunch of fucking weirdos.
• 1:35:24
  Sorry. The doctor's family rituals.
• 1:35:27
  Persist and where there has been.
• 1:35:29
  A dreadful murder. We're doing Long Barrow.
• 1:35:34
  I mean, that sounds like quite a good Christmassy book as well,
• 1:35:37
  actually. I mean.
• 1:35:38
  The way you just described it sounds like a standard family.
• 1:35:41
  Christmas at my house certainly sounds great and.
• 1:35:46
  How are you doing, chap? So, I mean, are you halfway
• 1:35:48
  through? Have you finished?
• 1:35:49
  It done, finished it. I'm done.
• 1:35:54
  You're done. I'm.
• 1:35:55
  About. I've read the book.
• 1:35:58
  Read the book again. I've read it once before.
• 1:36:00
  And I've read it again. I've all done it twice for the
• 1:36:02
  podcast. This is a.
• 1:36:03
  This is a hobby. I'm still bidding for it on
• 1:36:06
  eBay. You're going to read here the
• 1:36:08
  day. Well, I love how you're both.
• 1:36:11
  Keeping your power to dry there until we head to the House of
• 1:36:15
  Lungbarrow in the constellation of Casterbrus or whatever
• 1:36:19
  bollocks it is. How do we end this episode?
• 1:36:22
  In a Chimes of Midnight sort of a way with a Carol?
• 1:36:27
  Oh, please start. Us off, Michael.
• 1:36:32
  Breathing too much? Hark the rude angels.
• 1:36:37
  Singing. Singing together doesn't work
• 1:36:41
  newborn. King I can't hear James at all.
• 1:36:44
  James have a solo moment. God and sing is reconciled.
• 1:36:57
  I opened up my advent calendar just.
• 1:36:59
  Just just now. By Joe Ford Advent Calendar.
• 1:37:01
  And it said that today's what page did you get today?
• 1:37:05
  It says fun fact. About Nicholas Briggs.
• 1:37:09
  Oh. Yes indeed, my God, what a pure.
• 1:37:13
  Coincidence that happened. To be the day we was recording.
• 1:37:16
  Well, yes, in a delightful moment of honesty, Nicholas
• 1:37:21
  Briggs, you are starting to think Ashley lacks the hubris
• 1:37:24
  that many people accuse him of. Admitted on a podcast that,
• 1:37:27
  yeah, when they were talking about novelising big finished
• 1:37:30
  productions, a couple of these, you know, for the Christmas
• 1:37:33
  schedules, he, his immediate thought was, well, of course
• 1:37:37
  they're going to want to do the sirens of time.
• 1:37:39
  So without even being asked or presented with a contract or
• 1:37:43
  even a promise, you know, even on the back of a napkin, I think
• 1:37:48
  he got about halfway through writing it novelising that, only
• 1:37:51
  to be told that Rob Shearman would be doing it instead.
• 1:37:55
  Not the Sirens of Time, I mean, although I would love to read
• 1:37:58
  that. I enjoyed that.
• 1:38:02
  I'm just peeking under tomorrow's.
• 1:38:04
  Window and it's a. It's another version of Sharda.
• 1:38:08
  I need just so I get some. Of this for the.
• 1:38:12
  Oh, it stopped. Oh good.
• 1:38:14
  I just no no no. It stopped when.
• 1:38:18
  James. Muted himself.
• 1:38:21
  James, shut up. Yes.
• 1:38:23
  Be quiet. Sing again, Michael, come on.
• 1:38:29
  Oh, it stopped, has it? Yes, I'm.
• 1:38:31
  I'm playing with my hang on. Oh, oh, he's unplugged.
• 1:38:34
  His mic. Don't don't play yet.
• 1:38:38
  Oh no. Why?
• 1:38:40
  Is that? Happening then.
• 1:38:54
  What's going? On This is a good Christmas.
• 1:39:00
  Every day, yeah. What's Doctor?
• 1:39:10
  I cross the. Boy beyond the mind space is
• 1:39:17
  that is that make any difference?
• 1:39:19
  Hello. Hello, hello, hello.
• 1:39:22
  The better one. Better 2-3, yeah.
• 1:39:28
  OK, happening. Well, I had original sound for
• 1:39:30
  musicians. On SO.
• 1:39:32
  Clearly, that is the thing that I need to not do.
• 1:39:36
  I can only apologize to both of you then, because if that's what
• 1:39:39
  I sound like on a. Regular occasion.
• 1:39:41
  I'm not listening to your podcast.
• 1:39:45
  Well. Occasionally, but usually don't
• 1:39:47
  listen to me. The.
• 1:40:49
  The. The.