Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - The Sleep of Reason by Martin Day (featuring Michael Mills & Dylan Rees)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - The Sleep of Reason by Martin Day (featuring Michael Mills & Dylan Rees) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  Caroline was 15 when she'd first taken a blade to her arm.
• 0:05
  It had never even occurred to her before, but suddenly and
• 0:09
  without warning the idea, the intents were there.
• 0:14
  It wasn't some nascent feeling, either, a dreamlike suggestion
• 0:18
  that recedes the more tightly it is grasped.
• 0:22
  It was fully formed, reasoned and complete, as if somebody had
• 0:26
  slotted a report straight into her mind, complete with headings
• 0:31
  and page numbers and a summary of pros and cons.
• 0:35
  For a moment Caroline had been tempted to turn around to see if
• 0:39
  anyone was there, whispering silently at her ear, but she was
• 0:44
  alone in the too bright bathroom, save for her mirrored
• 0:47
  self, staring back from the medicine cupboard door and the
• 0:51
  bright, clean blade between her fingers.
• 0:54
  She brought the blade before her eyes and for an instant it
• 0:58
  seemed to be the most magical thing she had ever seen.
• 1:02
  Somehow, more than a simple slice of metal, it throbbed with
• 1:05
  possibility, with the potential to change her life from top to
• 1:09
  bottom, from centre to circumference.
• 1:12
  She knew she was standing on the threshold of something new and
• 1:16
  terrible, and once she chose that path, she would always
• 1:19
  think in terms of before and after.
• 1:22
  It would be like being born again into a different and more
• 1:25
  adult world. The blade was one of her dad's
• 1:29
  spares, as anachronistic as man who persisted in a one man stand
• 1:35
  against packaging and all things cellophane.
• 1:38
  She remembered the first time she'd stumble upon him, shaving
• 1:41
  his face blown up and frothy, gracefully pulling the ivory
• 1:45
  handle down his cheek and then back up towards his Adam's
• 1:48
  apple. The room smelled of soap and
• 1:50
  masculinity. The bristle would brush on the
• 1:53
  edge of the sink, still foaming gently.
• 1:57
  Dad, what are you doing? Caroline had asked in a six year
• 2:01
  old sing song voice hopping from foot to foot as if dying for a
• 2:05
  pee. Her dad chuckled, running the
• 2:08
  blade under the tap. She noticed a tiny red spot on
• 2:11
  his cheek, pinhead briar against his pale skin.
• 2:16
  I'm shaving, he said, pausing before adding, not unreasonably.
• 2:22
  You hate it when Daddy's prickly, don't you?
• 2:24
  This is how I get rid of my hedgehog face.
• 2:27
  Hedge Pig. Hedge Pig.
• 2:29
  She exclaimed happily. She snorted and snuffled, though
• 2:32
  she knew the hedgehogs didn't sound like pigs, really, but
• 2:36
  moved noiselessly in gardens and got squished flat on the car
• 2:40
  wheels. Silent and streak, she watched
• 2:43
  as the blade went into the water again.
• 2:46
  Where do all the prickles go? She asked down the train.
• 2:51
  She reached for one of the blades.
• 2:52
  No, no, no, you mustn't, darling, you might hurt
• 2:55
  yourself. That's why Daddy keeps them in
• 2:57
  the cupboard. And she had barely thought about
• 3:00
  the blades again until the day when the idea formed in her
• 3:03
  head, when she stood with one of the mythical naked blades in her
• 3:07
  hand. True, her dad had bought
• 3:09
  Caroline a woman's shaving kit for her 16th birthday, a silent
• 3:14
  and unexplained gift, like the book on puberty on her first
• 3:17
  bra. It was the antithesis of her
• 3:20
  dad's razor, all girly coloured and with its many blades safely
• 3:24
  sheathed behind cages. A few days later, over
• 3:28
  breakfast, he commented that there's nothing really like a
• 3:31
  close shave, rubbing his own cheeks and grinning as if they
• 3:34
  explained everything. Those battery things are all
• 3:37
  very well. But his words trailed away,
• 3:41
  leaving her to put two and two together as usual.
• 3:45
  As she looks at the blade, Caroline noticed a white mark
• 3:47
  across the back of her index finger.
• 3:49
  Her dad had said that when she was four or five, she sneaked
• 3:52
  into the kitchen, pulled the bread knife from the block, and
• 3:55
  had turned an uncut loaf into a sandwich.
• 3:58
  He had found her moments later, a big flap of skin hanging from
• 4:02
  the top of her finger, trying desperately to keep the blood
• 4:05
  from staining the bread. Caroline still kept a memento of
• 4:08
  that precocity, shaped like a tiny archway, A doorway back to
• 4:13
  childhood. As the blade rested on her arm,
• 4:16
  gently testing the strength of her skin, she wondered how much
• 4:20
  pressure she would have to exert.
• 4:22
  She knew at that moment, with shocking clarity, that the path
• 4:25
  that lay invitingly before her was an internal one.
• 4:29
  It would have outward manifestations, but the journey
• 4:32
  was about her mind, her thoughts and feelings.
• 4:36
  She remembered getting her ears pierced at 14, the sensation of
• 4:39
  pressure as if between great fingers and thumbs, and then
• 4:43
  numbness as the blade came down. For the first time, Carolina
• 4:48
  prayed that numbness would follow.
• 4:53
  Caroline remembered all the time she'd cut herself, from the
• 4:56
  first exploration in the bathroom to the inadvertent
• 4:59
  fencing injury. She stared at her body, framed
• 5:02
  in the medicine cabinet mirror. It sliced off her face and thick
• 5:06
  neck and clumsy feet and swollen her ankles, leaving the sexless
• 5:11
  pornography of chest, groin and legs.
• 5:16
  Not that there was much here to get a man aroused.
• 5:19
  There was too much fat just over her hips.
• 5:21
  Her lower arms seemed huge, making her look unbalanced.
• 5:25
  Pendulous tits hung either side of the chest that freckled the
• 5:28
  merest hint of sunlight. Pubic head bristled in all
• 5:31
  directions despite every attempt to keep the black, vile jungle
• 5:35
  under control. She glanced at the shaver
• 5:39
  balanced on the edge of the sink.
• 5:41
  No, you mustn't touch, darling. You might hurt yourself.
• 5:45
  If only it were that simple. She extended her arms, saw the
• 5:49
  crisscross of scars towards her wrists, mostly lateral.
• 5:53
  Her cries for help, the psychologist has said, but
• 5:55
  occasionally down to the artery, from those moments when she was
• 5:58
  ill enough to really want something serious to happen.
• 6:02
  Her fencing scar, less pronounced than the others, a
• 6:05
  reminder of the power of spite and jealousy and the Half Moon
• 6:09
  on her finger, a memento of what life had once offered.
• 6:14
  The deep ache washed over her again, throbbing outwards from
• 6:17
  her womb, her guts. She tried to knead the pain away
• 6:21
  with her skinny fingers, but the pain kept growing.
• 6:25
  If it was merely a physical wake, she could have taken
• 6:28
  something for it. But this was a truly
• 6:30
  internalized pain. Emotional, psychological,
• 6:34
  sexual, spiritual. Some other memory washed over
• 6:39
  her without warning. The first time we didn't Make
• 6:44
  Love, she reminded herself. She hadn't even lost her
• 6:47
  virginity, not really. She'd just let him screw her.
• 6:52
  If you loved me, you would. This has got nothing to do with
• 6:56
  love. All the other girls, I don't
• 6:57
  care about them. I've seen you looking at me.
• 7:01
  That look in your eyes, I know you'd like it.
• 7:05
  Then, when her resolve was crumbled, when she couldn't even
• 7:08
  remember all the arguments she'd rehearsed, all the things she'd
• 7:11
  said so many times before, he lumbered on top of her like she
• 7:15
  was an assault course to be conquered.
• 7:18
  Tell me how much you like it. And then afterwards, I love your
• 7:22
  bum. It gives me something to hold
• 7:24
  onto. He had tried to make light of
• 7:27
  what just happened, as if perhaps he dimly recognized the
• 7:30
  importance of the event in her life.
• 7:32
  At least to him. It was little more than an
• 7:35
  unusually complicated wack, an explosion of hormonal, mind
• 7:39
  bending crap that will sort him out for a few hours at least.
• 7:44
  But for her? For her.
• 7:49
  She rubbed her stomach again, feeling sick.
• 7:52
  Then she made herself turn around, looking over her
• 7:54
  shoulder, her buttocks. Were they really?
• 7:59
  She'd always wanted to control her body, to show it who was
• 8:01
  boss. The minute her dad ceded
• 8:04
  authority, she had rings put through her nose, her eyebrow,
• 8:07
  her tongue, both nipples, trying desperately to force this lump
• 8:11
  of matter, this mass of biological stuff, to do her
• 8:15
  will. She thought she was in control,
• 8:18
  but all the time she'd been a victim.
• 8:20
  She remembered that the day after she lost her fortunity,
• 8:24
  she started to make herself sick.
• 8:28
  Caroline stood in the bathroom again, remembering.
• 8:31
  Remembering the first time she cut herself, the first time she
• 8:34
  tried to kill herself, the first time she'd made herself puke.
• 8:38
  She remembered the scars, both inside and out, and the stories
• 8:41
  each one told. Tomorrow she would be 19 for the
• 8:46
  first time. Her father wouldn't be there to
• 8:48
  wake her with baking and toast on a tray and a car full of
• 8:51
  record tokens and money. He was so crap at choosing, but
• 8:55
  he loved her so much and she said it didn't matter.
• 8:59
  But he wouldn't listen. There was no one to pull back
• 9:02
  the curtains, no one to ask her brightly how the world looked
• 9:05
  through slightly older eyes. If he'd been around, he'd
• 9:08
  probably remind her that some of the family were coming over to
• 9:11
  see her that afternoon, that then she'd be free to go out
• 9:13
  with her mates, maybe go for a meal up with that nice Italian
• 9:17
  and think about hitting the clubs.
• 9:18
  Caroline wondered if he'd have bought her another dress like he
• 9:22
  had last year. It was still in the wardrobe,
• 9:25
  elegant and sleeveless. Happy Birthday.
• 9:30
  Caroline said and slashed out her arm with the blade.
• 9:43
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 9:46
  My name is Joe Ford and preparing for a fight to the
• 9:50
  death. I have got 2 podcasting giants
• 9:54
  with me, The man who cost me £25 for a cameo on my thousandth
• 10:00
  episode, Mr. Michael Mills. Hello.
• 10:04
  Hello, Joe, is that you? I'm sorry, I I do so many of
• 10:09
  them these days that you just sort of forget.
• 10:11
  Were you the proposal? He goes this Michael Mills here
• 10:16
  book club personality. Thank you so much for all your
• 10:19
  support over the years. What a cunt.
• 10:22
  Honesty cunt. And also of course, too hot for
• 10:27
  TV. Too hot for any damn thing these
• 10:30
  days, Mr. Dylan Reese. Hello.
• 10:32
  Hello, it's wonderful to be here.
• 10:34
  I didn't know I could charge you £25 for my message for the
• 10:37
  thousandth hamster. And I called you a loser, Right
• 10:40
  I. Know.
• 10:40
  Yeah, yeah. Michael charged and prayed.
• 10:42
  Michael and Sophie Aldridge, they were the only two people
• 10:44
  that charged me. On My Only Fans, I call people
• 10:47
  losers all the time and they pay me a lot of money.
• 10:50
  Is that right? Only fans?
• 10:52
  Okay, I'll investigate that later fellas, we're here to talk
• 10:56
  about the sleep of reason because because today we are
• 10:59
  doing our crossover event. Hamster book club too hot for TV
• 11:03
  crossover events. They're proving very popular.
• 11:06
  We've covered Sontarans, we've covered Quarks, and now we're
• 11:10
  covering mental asylums because, you know, that feels like a
• 11:13
  natural progression from. Those things, nothing, nothing
• 11:17
  says oh, we've just done a Quark's comic from the 60s.
• 11:21
  Like a book about self harm. I felt as if I was in a mental
• 11:25
  asylum when I was reading those Quark comics.
• 11:27
  All right, those were wacky. Yes, we are here today to talk
• 11:31
  about The Sleep of Reason by Martin Day, an Eighth Doctor
• 11:34
  book towards the end of the range.
• 11:37
  And we're in a bit of an unusual position today in the I think
• 11:41
  this is the first time ever there's been a three-way on
• 11:44
  hamster where we've got a lover and a hater and someone who just
• 11:50
  can't make up his fucking mind. So let's get into exploring
• 11:55
  who's who on this call. I think people might know and
• 11:59
  just like, can I ask you a question very quickly before we
• 12:01
  go in to the book, and that is should Doctor Who go here?
• 12:08
  Mental health, depression, asylums, they're all factors in
• 12:13
  the stories that we're talking about today.
• 12:15
  Should Doctor Whoever go here and can it do it justice,
• 12:19
  Michael? I think it can go here.
• 12:23
  I mean, to separate those ones out.
• 12:26
  Asylum from the start is a problematic phrase, right?
• 12:29
  I think that's something that's going to come up a lot, a lot
• 12:31
  here. Will you tell me what I'm
• 12:33
  allowed to say in this call? All right.
• 12:35
  Nut House. Nut house, all right?
• 12:38
  Yeah. Madhouse, Loony Bin.
• 12:42
  Well, it's not problematic that you use it.
• 12:43
  It's arguably problematic that I think all of the stories we're
• 12:47
  going to be talking about here and on Too Hot for TV all use
• 12:51
  it. And I think all of them, not to
• 12:55
  spoil things, but I think something we're going to come
• 12:57
  back to is the way in which they all deliberately, non
• 13:01
  deliberately, consciously, unconsciously, are much more
• 13:05
  interested in historical views of quote UN quote madness than I
• 13:11
  think addressing more modern views on mental health.
• 13:17
  And I think that the sleep of reason, which we're talking
• 13:22
  about now in terms of whether that happens on whether Doctor
• 13:25
  Who can ever approach those ideas.
• 13:27
  I mean, it can approach those ideas, right.
• 13:29
  And it mental health and especially it's done it very
• 13:31
  well in Vincent and the Doctor. You know, that was the first
• 13:34
  time ever that the BBC had to put up the action line number
• 13:37
  after, after Doctor Who. And I think there's, I think
• 13:40
  that was a very well judged and, and sympathetic and I think
• 13:48
  realistic and I always want to say pragmatic approach to mental
• 13:50
  health as as as well. It's the picture of Vincent van
• 13:53
  Gogh. They sort of, it manages to
• 13:55
  skirt a very fine line of not going into the madness of genius
• 13:59
  and the rest of it. And oh, how the otherworldly are
• 14:02
  speaking. It's talking about the way in
• 14:03
  which that those same forces that that that allow have his
• 14:07
  brain running 1,000,000 miles an hour, the same things that cause
• 14:09
  him sadness. I'll.
• 14:11
  Be in our club with you, isn't it?
• 14:15
  Thank you. I am AI am a tragic figure A.
• 14:19
  Bit of a genius as well, let's be honest. 25 I mean, come on.
• 14:24
  Talking I and I if I if I am a genius.
• 14:27
  And that's not for me to say, I think.
• 14:31
  You know. I think the world is probably
• 14:35
  better off that I'm using it, talking about Doctor Who books
• 14:38
  from 21 years ago than applying it to, I don't know, world
• 14:42
  politics. I.
• 14:43
  Mean your potential is frightening, Michael.
• 14:47
  Terrifying. Is that like a million Suns all
• 14:49
  burning up at once? But but but I'm sure I also hear
• 14:58
  they they did it in the the Chris Chibnall era.
• 15:02
  Maybe Dylan can talk about that. I don't.
• 15:04
  Know well I'll go across to Dylan then come on.
• 15:06
  Yes, I think Doctor Who can do this and should do this.
• 15:11
  I think it's sometimes it treads the the fine line of oh, look at
• 15:17
  these mad people. Aren't they mad?
• 15:19
  Which is a very sort of basic bitch view on you've.
• 15:23
  Seen the Shakespeare code then, have you?
• 15:27
  But yeah, like, yeah, the prime example for me would be Vincent
• 15:32
  and the Doctor, or Can You Hear Me, which looks at, you know,
• 15:35
  mental health really well. I think people sometimes that
• 15:38
  story's got a lot in it and it seems to change what story it's
• 15:41
  telling about every 10 minutes. So I'm not going to sit here and
• 15:44
  go, it's perfect. But I think the way it handles
• 15:46
  mental health is spot on and sort of realistic depictions of
• 15:50
  it. And I think it's something
• 15:52
  that's, you know, people don't talk about that story enough,
• 15:55
  but I think it does similar work to Vincent and the doctor.
• 15:58
  I think there was a number after that as well, wasn't there?
• 16:01
  And I think there was one after the time as children as well,
• 16:03
  for all the man babies to cry and I.
• 16:05
  Definitely saw one after Legend of the Sea Devils went out which
• 16:09
  was quite rude really. I don't remember mental health
• 16:14
  issues in that but apparently it caused a lot of them.
• 16:17
  I think, I think, I think the director had one.
• 16:20
  Sorry, sorry if the director's listening.
• 16:23
  It is a particular purview of the new series though, right?
• 16:25
  I think if you are going to look back at the classic series, I, I
• 16:29
  don't think you're ever going to find any kind of a nuanced
• 16:32
  reading on mental health. Or do you think Dylan, you look
• 16:36
  unconvinced. No, no, I think you're
• 16:38
  absolutely right. I think depression and mental
• 16:41
  health and all these things and not things that was talked about
• 16:43
  much on television in the Sixties, 70s and 80s.
• 16:47
  And if it there, there was there was still a stigma around it.
• 16:50
  And I'm sure occasionally there was the odd drama that got it
• 16:53
  right, but it was very much, you know, not, not a bit like when
• 16:58
  we talk about sex in Doctor Who. It's one of those things of the
• 17:02
  classic series didn't do relationships and sex because
• 17:04
  television around then certainly aimed at kids and aimed at
• 17:08
  families didn't do it. So they're certainly not going
• 17:11
  to do mental health. So it's so interesting then the
• 17:14
  the three stories we're talking about today are between those
• 17:16
  two things. The the book is in what, 2000
• 17:19
  and two 2003 somewhere around that time.
• 17:23
  Thank you very much. I think I'm regenerates 2004 as
• 17:26
  well. Might might be 2005.
• 17:29
  Thank you. And Minuet in hell is is a bit
• 17:31
  earlier than that, but they're all in the wilderness years.
• 17:33
  So fan writers are thinking along these lines, aren't they,
• 17:38
  in that we're like, we're going to go a bit deeper.
• 17:40
  Oh well, let's find out how well they did there.
• 17:43
  Unregenerate technically comes out after the series is back,
• 17:46
  but I imagine it was recorded and written well before it was,
• 17:49
  so yeah anyway. To open our discussion on the
• 17:53
  sleep of reason, then I and this isn't me stirring up a fight,
• 17:57
  all right. I genuinely want to know why we
• 18:00
  all three of us read the first chapter of this book, which is
• 18:04
  an explicit, very intimate, quite disturbing mindset of a
• 18:12
  young woman who is about to slit her wrists.
• 18:16
  And I had a message from Michael saying that this is just
• 18:20
  embarrassingly bad. And I had a message from Dylan
• 18:24
  saying this is the best bit of Doctor Who writing I've seen in
• 18:26
  a while. Now, that's two very different
• 18:29
  reactions to that chapter. I want to go to Michael 1st and
• 18:33
  ask why was your reading that? Yeah, I don't know if I don't
• 18:39
  know if I would call that part of the book embarrassingly, but
• 18:42
  I think it is worth talking about the first chapter almost
• 18:45
  separately to the rest of the book for reasons we'll go and
• 18:47
  get into. In terms of whether Doctor Who
• 18:51
  can approach these things. I absolutely think it can.
• 18:55
  I think you always have to be careful though, when you're
• 18:57
  addressing this and not just in Doctor Who, but arguably in any
• 19:00
  form of, you know, art or creative endeavour of what is
• 19:06
  the purpose of talking about this?
• 19:08
  What am I, how am I seeking to bring people into the story and
• 19:12
  to take them along with it and being very careful that am I
• 19:16
  ever just doing this for for once, for better words, shock
• 19:19
  value and and is the way in which it's being discussed
• 19:23
  appropriate? And it's really interesting that
• 19:24
  sleeper reason came out in 2004 because that is right at the end
• 19:27
  of of the wilderness years. And, you know, we remember when
• 19:30
  those new first new series adventures came out and people
• 19:33
  who like us, who who love the BBC books were suddenly like
• 19:36
  whiplash, that Doctor Who was suddenly being written for a
• 19:39
  family audience again. But you've.
• 19:41
  Got some mother going. I've got your two Doctor Who
• 19:44
  books from Waterstones, The Sleep of Reason and The Stone
• 19:46
  Rose. All right.
• 19:47
  I hope you enjoy them. They got very you know, those
• 19:53
  covers would alongside each other and I think what I'm.
• 19:57
  Terrible. What I'm worried about with that
• 20:01
  first. Coming out in 2004, the only
• 20:03
  people reading Doctor Who books in 2004 were people, teenagers,
• 20:08
  people in their 20s, right geeks, quite a small readership
• 20:11
  at that point. So it's not inappropriate that
• 20:13
  you would you would perhapsing talk about it in a way more
• 20:17
  suitable for older people than than you know, Vincent and the
• 20:23
  Doctor would do. But I just worried.
• 20:25
  I just thought going in with no allowance for the fact that this
• 20:32
  is a Doctor Who book, that this is science fiction, going in
• 20:35
  with something quite so extreme is a big statement.
• 20:38
  And I think if you want to go with it, fine.
• 20:41
  But I think I just found it quite a, if want of a better
• 20:43
  word, almost sort of emotionally aggressive way of opening a
• 20:47
  book, right? And I was really concerned that
• 20:51
  this was misjudged. I thought if this is where the
• 20:55
  story is going to take us, then fine.
• 20:59
  But opening a book like that, it just felt very strong and I'm
• 21:03
  not sure you'd yet. It didn't feel to me like you
• 21:06
  had sort of earned the readers trust and engagement enough to
• 21:08
  go to that extreme a piece of imagery.
• 21:11
  Dylan, I think you were as shocked, but I think you're more
• 21:18
  attuned to a brutal style of Doctor Who.
• 21:22
  You know, I've heard your reading on on quiet graphic new
• 21:25
  adventures and things like that. Yeah, I, I just, I, I think
• 21:30
  Doctor Who in the wilderness here can be can be and is
• 21:34
  frequently adults in its themes. It may not always be successful
• 21:38
  at being adults, but, and I think that is exactly where it
• 21:43
  should have been pitched because the people that are buying it
• 21:45
  were 16 plus. The people that were reading
• 21:47
  them were 16 plus. It was for, you know, it was for
• 21:51
  the members of the DWAS, not for it's not like survival airs and
• 21:56
  then you've got under these three exciting Doctor Who
• 21:58
  adventures available for you and it's damaged goods or something
• 22:02
  like that. So it's they know who their
• 22:04
  audience is and they're writing for that audience.
• 22:07
  And it's a it's an audience who are more likely to like 2000 AD
• 22:11
  or something like that, but that deals with sort of adult things.
• 22:14
  And comics had by this point had all got very grown up and gritty
• 22:19
  and things like that as well. So it's it's a niche product for
• 22:22
  a niche audience and it's just not for kids.
• 22:24
  So it can deal with issues and open with an opening chapter
• 22:27
  like this that is graphic. But I think it's a very, I think
• 22:31
  it's a well put together bit of graphicness and it is there to
• 22:35
  shock, but it's not the shock factor.
• 22:37
  And then we never deal with anything again.
• 22:38
  It's not like a, you know, a gore movie or something like
• 22:41
  that where we're just, you know, someone slits their wrist
• 22:44
  because everyone wants to go, isn't that shocking?
• 22:46
  And then we just move on for it and wait for the next like jump
• 22:49
  scare or whatever. I think it's, I think it's
• 22:52
  shocking, but well placed shocking.
• 22:54
  And I thoroughly enjoyed that opening chapter.
• 22:57
  I can. Oh, I enjoyed.
• 22:59
  What a strange word. I mean, the previous book was
• 23:02
  The Tomorrow Windows Dylan, which we've covered before.
• 23:05
  Yeah, I mean that was. A look about comedy.
• 23:07
  So to go from that to this. But that is still tonally very
• 23:12
  much aimed at adults in terms of the the type of comedy it's
• 23:16
  doing, the type of sort of Canon referencing it's doing is it is
• 23:20
  a book for adults, I mean. But I mean I'll make 2
• 23:24
  references here to go from the Mayor of London is going to
• 23:27
  explode in Tate Modern to happy birthday and she slit her
• 23:31
  wrists. That's quite a shift.
• 23:33
  Yeah, but I mean, Doctor Who does that week to week on
• 23:36
  television, maybe not as extreme, but you know, 11 week
• 23:41
  you're beating Robin Hood and the next week you're going, oh,
• 23:44
  look, this is the nature of fear itself.
• 23:46
  So it's like. That was coming in a few years
• 23:49
  time. That was a very good book
• 23:51
  though. Fear Itself by Nick Wallace.
• 23:54
  I mean, for me that that first chapter, it was definitely
• 23:58
  setting the tone for the book. And I think if you don't want to
• 24:02
  read that sort of thing, then your warning bell should
• 24:06
  definitely be going off. I can imagine somebody like Lucy
• 24:08
  McCall picking that up and going.
• 24:09
  I don't think so. I'm putting it down again.
• 24:12
  But I, I saw a lot of me in that first chapter.
• 24:17
  I've had depressive periods. I've suffered from body
• 24:20
  dysmorphia. So there's scenes where she's
• 24:22
  looking at herself in the mirror and seeing, even though she's
• 24:25
  probably not that fat, but she's just seeing this hideous thing
• 24:29
  staring back at her. The the where she's going about
• 24:32
  men climbing on top of her and her letting men use her, you
• 24:35
  know, to feel better about herself.
• 24:37
  God, Oh my. That was my 20s.
• 24:39
  You know, like, so I was reading it and going, wowzers.
• 24:43
  OK, He's tapped into my mental health quite effectively here.
• 24:50
  But I think the three of us, I'm going to turn this into a
• 24:53
  therapy session, I promise. But I think the three of us have
• 24:56
  all struggled in one way or another.
• 24:59
  And I think maybe beyond whether you think the writing is good or
• 25:03
  bad, because I think we're all coming at it from different
• 25:05
  perspectives there. That first chapter is, do you
• 25:08
  see anything of yourself in that chapter?
• 25:10
  And if you don't, and if that's not your mental health journey,
• 25:14
  then I can understand why why you would sort of push against
• 25:18
  it. Am I way off the bat there?
• 25:20
  No. I don't think it makes sense.
• 25:23
  I think reading you engage with any form of art is, is it's a
• 25:27
  two way street, right? And it is always, you know, at
• 25:31
  least 50% of what you get from a book, from a film, from piece of
• 25:36
  music is to a certain extent what you've put there.
• 25:39
  And that's completely legitimate.
• 25:43
  And I think that's sometimes why people just bounce off things.
• 25:45
  You know, people are cold. It's like I didn't, I there was
• 25:48
  nothing that I could put into it.
• 25:49
  And I think sometimes it's probably why you react against
• 25:51
  things as well or why it can't take you on that journey.
• 25:54
  I, I think I would say for, for this, it didn't, you know, for
• 25:58
  whatever reason, I actually feel better for it.
• 26:01
  I always feel better for things knowing other people got
• 26:04
  something from them, if that makes sense.
• 26:05
  Like this didn't work for me, but that doesn't mean it's not
• 26:09
  achieving something. I suppose perhaps the critique I
• 26:11
  might take from that is that a, a better piece of work might
• 26:15
  have taken me along with it. But I think, I think you're
• 26:18
  entirely fair in how you frame that.
• 26:21
  Now, I know for a fact that Martin Days was very honest when
• 26:25
  he wrote this book, that he had a book in him about a character
• 26:30
  called Caroline, who then goes under the name of Laska after
• 26:34
  she self harms, that he wanted to tell that was in no way a
• 26:37
  Doctor Who book. Yeah, but he soon realized no
• 26:41
  one was going to take this. So the what the way he was going
• 26:44
  to tell this story was as a Doctor Who book.
• 26:47
  So I suppose we should talk about how those two things fuse
• 26:51
  together, because this book is deliberately putting a distance
• 26:56
  between the Doctor Who in US, I think, at times.
• 26:59
  Oh, well, I mean, if it weren't for black orchids, you know, it
• 27:02
  can, it can work here. Just just before that.
• 27:07
  I just wanted to jump back to what you were saying about
• 27:09
  people seeing themselves in in that first chapter.
• 27:13
  I didn't see myself, but I did see a lot of people I knew, like
• 27:17
  especially girls I knew in my teens and 20s.
• 27:21
  Like I, there were multiple people, some I haven't thought
• 27:24
  about for years, who flashed through my head while I was
• 27:27
  reading that chapter and going, I remember them going through
• 27:31
  similar things. So it's not, I mean, whether the
• 27:36
  audience of the time were like emotionally sort of switched on
• 27:40
  enough to realize that perhaps they were seeing themselves or
• 27:43
  people they knew. I don't know, or whether anybody
• 27:46
  got anything from this book at the time that went, oh, that's
• 27:48
  how I feel. And this is, you know, a bad
• 27:51
  depression. And maybe maybe it helped them,
• 27:53
  maybe it didn't. I don't know.
• 27:54
  I don't know whether 2004 Doctor Who funds and that switched on.
• 27:58
  But I think, I think at the time it was reasonably popular.
• 28:01
  I seem to remember I had a good review in Doctor Who magazine on
• 28:05
  the place like anywhere you can go for a book, book review.
• 28:07
  It it, it was reviewed fairly well.
• 28:10
  But I know for a fact that like Andrew Batty on another one of
• 28:13
  my book clubs absolutely loathed it.
• 28:15
  He hated the Doctor Who went here.
• 28:17
  You know, in the same way that somebody else could look at
• 28:20
  Vincent and the doctor and say, well, that's totally
• 28:21
  irresponsible and that's not my journey.
• 28:23
  And, and I'm truly offended by that.
• 28:25
  So I do think, I do think there are many, many reactions you can
• 28:29
  have. I do think it's brave they went
• 28:31
  here, though, I think, and I am pleased that they had a stab.
• 28:36
  Let's go back to Doctor Who then, because what we have here
• 28:39
  is not Doctor Who, but Doctor Smith and his two companions
• 28:43
  with the hideous names, says Doctor Oldfield.
• 28:45
  Fits and tricks who, you know, barely feature in the book.
• 28:49
  The Doctor has a fairly substantial role, but still not
• 28:52
  the sort of role you would expect him to have.
• 28:55
  How did you think that worked? Let's go round in the same
• 28:59
  direction, Michael. Poorly so here we get so I
• 29:06
  didn't like this book, but I would say upfront it's not for
• 29:09
  its depictions of mental health. Actually, I thought they were.
• 29:11
  I think I I agree with you. I think it's I'm glad Doctor Who
• 29:14
  felt able to go here and I'm glad someone did it who had
• 29:17
  sympathy. I think compare this to the
• 29:19
  audios we're going to speak to speak about over on Too Hot for
• 29:22
  TVI think it is actually interested in discussing mental
• 29:25
  health from a place of understanding and sympathy and
• 29:27
  the modern world. Or at least taking people on a
• 29:29
  journey, right? Some sort of a journey?
• 29:33
  On some some sort of a journey and engagement.
• 29:35
  But you know what, this is something people actually go
• 29:38
  through and it is it can be a part of a life and a part of
• 29:41
  existence. And it's not some horrible
• 29:42
  horrific fate out of a horror film, you know.
• 29:46
  However, the actual writing of the book, the literal putting
• 29:50
  together and prose is quite poor at times.
• 29:54
  I would say, as you mentioned, where it came from, this was so
• 29:57
  I went back and read some interviews with Martin Day from
• 29:59
  when it came out. He originally, this was his
• 30:02
  original pitch for Virgin and Peter Starwell Evans was sort of
• 30:05
  a little bit interested and he got overexcited Martin Day and
• 30:08
  went away and wrote the whole book and then sent it to Peter.
• 30:13
  I've done it. I've written the book that you
• 30:15
  liked and Peter Starwell Evans read it and went do you want to
• 30:18
  do the Menagerie instead? And a number of times
• 30:23
  subsequently Martin Day tried to like it was going to be a Telos
• 30:25
  novella at one point, I think. I think he says he turned it
• 30:28
  into a non Doctor Who project, as you touched on, until
• 30:30
  eventually he was just looking for, he was looking for some
• 30:33
  commissions and he reached out to the editors he knew and
• 30:36
  Justin Richards said, yeah, sure, sure, you can write an
• 30:39
  Eighth Doctor adventure book. And he went, well, this is my
• 30:42
  this is my opportunity to write this book that no one else would
• 30:45
  pick up because I've got an open Commission is my somewhat mean
• 30:48
  reading of it. And I think you can absolutely
• 30:52
  tell that this was not written for the 8th Doctor and it's
• 30:55
  barely been rewritten for the 8th doctorate points that thing
• 30:58
  of him being off in the background.
• 31:00
  He has a very deliberate way of of acting throughout the book
• 31:04
  and he sends his companions off to investigate different things.
• 31:07
  And it's the bloody 7th Doctor. From the Virgin New Adventures
• 31:10
  down to the dialogue like this, I tell you.
• 31:14
  He was doing that in the Tomorrow Windows as well, and he
• 31:16
  was doing that in the Deadstone Memorial as well, so he was
• 31:19
  doing a bit of that. Not with the same elaborate,
• 31:23
  slightly overblown prose as he was.
• 31:26
  Here. He speaks.
• 31:27
  He has that thing that. He has that thing that what
• 31:32
  sometimes happened with, you know how the Virgin New
• 31:34
  Adventures used to say like the Doctor doesn't speak in
• 31:36
  contractions and you can't hear inside his head.
• 31:38
  So it sometimes he'd end up speaking like Data from Star
• 31:41
  Trek TNG. And there's bits of that here.
• 31:44
  There's a bit where there's a bit where Fitz says of of Paul
• 31:47
  Mcgann's 8th Doctor. This is an insane thing for Fitz
• 31:50
  to say of the 8th Doctor. He says he has great power but
• 31:54
  chooses always to turn away from evil like this is not.
• 31:59
  It's not true if the character you are talking about or the
• 32:01
  character who is saying it. It could be a bad Benny line or
• 32:05
  a bad Ros line about the 7th doctor but I don't know where
• 32:09
  it's coming from. It's just.
• 32:10
  He doesn't turn away from evil that last day. 8 doctors.
• 32:13
  A bit of a bastard, really. But not like this.
• 32:17
  Not like this. He doesn't.
• 32:18
  He call, He calls. He calls.
• 32:20
  Laska, my dear, at one point. I do think that, yeah.
• 32:24
  You do. I've noticed though, in the 8th
• 32:27
  Doctor books, and indeed some of like the early Big finishes with
• 32:32
  Paul McGann, that that people still do write the Doctor like
• 32:34
  that because it's like a default classic Doctor thing.
• 32:38
  So I think the 8th Doctor says my dear and similar similar
• 32:43
  lines more often than you think. What's wrong with saying my
• 32:46
  dear? It's very polite.
• 32:47
  But it's what RTD jettison, wasn't it, from all the scripts
• 32:50
  And he, he turned around to Mark Gatiss and said you need to, you
• 32:53
  need to write in like a northern bloke, not like.
• 32:55
  All right, so what's it about? Like John Bob, you cow?
• 32:58
  No. Just like rough mate fam.
• 33:02
  Oh. Boy, buddy, how?
• 33:05
  Yeah, a much better approach. The Big Finish had been doing
• 33:09
  Paul McGann audios for three years at this point.
• 33:11
  You didn't even have the excuse of not knowing what he sounded
• 33:14
  like when he was delivering Doctor Who.
• 33:16
  He also says at one point, I did not mean to imply criticism or
• 33:19
  condemnation. You know, that's the really
• 33:22
  human ache, Dr. But didn't you love, I mean I loved Paul
• 33:27
  Mcgann's I. Don't know what's going to be
• 33:28
  but I. Didn't sorry.
• 33:29
  I mean, I loved this book from the first page to the last.
• 33:32
  Obviously I'm coming of that person.
• 33:34
  We know Dylan's on the fence now then, but I didn't you like, I
• 33:37
  loved him just being like a bit like a Poldi in the school in
• 33:41
  series 10. I loved him being set up in an
• 33:43
  institution, you know, and already into the story.
• 33:46
  Again, it is a bit new adventures, but we have done a
• 33:48
  bit of that in the 8th Doctor books.
• 33:51
  I like him sort of being almost a back a secondary character in
• 33:55
  the book. I think it works really well and
• 33:58
  I'd like by Doctor to be a Doctor Who less.
• 34:01
  I think it's it's a weird thing to say, but sometimes that's the
• 34:05
  interesting stuff when you go. It's not the the Doctor isn't
• 34:08
  the main character in it. It's why the the Doctor Light
• 34:10
  episodes are usually fucking great.
• 34:13
  It's about the influence of the Doctor and he is instrumental
• 34:15
  in, you know, solving the plot ultimately.
• 34:19
  But yeah, but have him in the background.
• 34:21
  This isn't the first time is it that the Rangers adapted a non
• 34:25
  Doctor Who book. There's Is it.
• 34:27
  Andy Lane and Justin Richards do a book.
• 34:31
  The Banquo legacy. Yeah, that they wrote at uni and
• 34:34
  it wasn't a Doctor Who book and then they another book fell
• 34:36
  through or something and they just went, I'm going to turn
• 34:38
  that into a Doctor Who's. A really good banger, that.
• 34:41
  Was it? I'd love to read that.
• 34:43
  Just before the ancestor cell when the shit all hits the fan.
• 34:47
  Yeah, well. Yeah, but you know, I'll tell
• 34:49
  you what I did like about the 8th Doctor fitness book.
• 34:51
  There is a bit of that, my dear. And you're right, it does sound
• 34:54
  weird in his mouth. But I did like the fact that
• 34:57
  they address the ark that is just here and they do it in a
• 35:00
  couple of books and here he says.
• 35:02
  I've been spending so much time lately worrying about fucking
• 35:04
  alternative universes and grand scale master plans.
• 35:08
  He goes and it's time to just focus on people.
• 35:12
  And I just thought after all of that, because people really
• 35:14
  didn't. A lesson Russell T Davis could
• 35:17
  learn as well, and indeed, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• 35:20
  But the fact that, yeah, they're here to solve a mystery and
• 35:22
  they're here to solve the the, the evil of the Sholom loves or
• 35:27
  whatever you say the nonsense monsters this week.
• 35:30
  Sholaramas. If you say so, but they're also
• 35:34
  there to help Laska and you do see him in a number of scenes,
• 35:40
  get through to her, try and help her out and then make sure she's
• 35:43
  a right at the end of the book. And I just think a Doctor Who is
• 35:47
  there to help the people that guest characters.
• 35:49
  And I just think that's a really nice, responsible, mature
• 35:52
  approach. It's fine for the doctor to be a
• 35:57
  secondary character or in the background.
• 35:59
  And there's plenty of stories that I love where he is.
• 36:02
  And we just got someone this book club, you know, he's he he
• 36:05
  definitely the secondary character in Father Time, where
• 36:08
  Miranda is the, you know, the main character, the dying days.
• 36:12
  He's dead for a big bit of it. Damaged goods.
• 36:14
  He's not in a huge amount either, but I think whenever he
• 36:17
  is in it, he has he still has to influence the narrative some way
• 36:20
  because he is still the protagonist.
• 36:23
  I think when he turns up in this, perhaps it's just because
• 36:25
  the dialogue is so and the behaviour is so unrecognizably
• 36:29
  the 8th Doctor as we have the conception of him or as I as I
• 36:32
  have the conception of him, that he just doesn't influence it.
• 36:36
  He's just not. But he's just another character
• 36:38
  who's like, well, who's this actually not quite interesting
• 36:41
  person, Because the one thing the Doctor should be in some
• 36:43
  form is charismatic. And that doesn't mean you have
• 36:45
  to be shooting out where cool guy energy.
• 36:47
  But all of the Doctors written well, have a form of charisma.
• 36:50
  You know, the bit to take the caretaker, the bit where the
• 36:52
  Doctor, the Doctor turns around and it's astonished that Clara
• 36:56
  saw through his disguise of dressing up as a caretaker.
• 36:59
  You know, there's no, there's no moment.
• 37:01
  That's nice. Let's not use the caretaker as a
• 37:03
  comparison as to why this is bad, all right?
• 37:07
  But there's just no there's. What about?
• 37:09
  This line then, do you know the other day he said I'm everyone's
• 37:13
  doctor. And now I can hear McGann saying
• 37:15
  that. And then she thinks, well, that
• 37:16
  was Smith all over. Brilliant one moment, almost
• 37:19
  idiot savant the next. Oh yeah, There's a lot of that
• 37:22
  in this book too. There's a lot of us being told
• 37:25
  what to think so that we don't have to do the thinking
• 37:27
  ourselves. There are pages and pages of
• 37:31
  characters just pontificating on each other and themselves and
• 37:36
  what things mean rather than us each other.
• 37:38
  It's it makes complete sense that this is adapted from a
• 37:40
  manuscript by a young first time writer because there are so many
• 37:44
  sins that that a more experienced writer would have
• 37:49
  got out of. I mean, just some of the
• 37:50
  dialogue is just some of the dialogue is straight out of
• 37:52
  Garth Meringue dark place. I'm sorry to say it, but it
• 37:55
  genuinely is. If old Fields ends up in charge
• 37:57
  of this place. Well, let me put it this way,
• 38:00
  I'll be at the front of the queue to resign.
• 38:03
  Let me put it, that's not a metaphor, That's not a similar.
• 38:05
  You've just literally said I'm going let me put this way, I
• 38:08
  will quit. What are you talking about?
• 38:10
  What about this then? Of course, I believe in truth,
• 38:13
  good and evil, justice and prejudice, freedom and slavery.
• 38:16
  You cannot help but yearn for objective objectivity in such
• 38:20
  areas. But here in this world that we
• 38:21
  know, we have only subjectivity. We just muddle through the best
• 38:26
  we can. Which is, which is a crap
• 38:29
  version of what the Brigadier just said.
• 38:31
  Probably. I just do the best I can in
• 38:33
  Battlefield. Like a better writer would have
• 38:35
  got that down to the actual nub of the thing that was memorable.
• 38:38
  It. This is quite overwritten.
• 38:40
  Oldfield looked up, and his face cracked like an ashen egg into a
• 38:45
  sickly approximation of a smile. Thank you for leading me all the
• 38:50
  way around that description, Martin.
• 38:54
  I mean, I will say now, I didn't have any issues with how this
• 39:00
  book was written at all, so maybe my gauge on prose is just
• 39:05
  completely different to. Yours.
• 39:06
  You know I was with the Dalek generation though, didn't you?
• 39:09
  I could. Not Jelly blobs and fucking
• 39:12
  twist toys. Yeah, no, no, I was absolutely
• 39:16
  absorbed. I loved the intimate scenes from
• 39:19
  people's points of view. I loved hearing what what was
• 39:21
  going through their heads. I liked getting close to these
• 39:24
  people because I like the characters.
• 39:26
  I like the fruity dialogue because hey, go listen to have
• 39:29
  some blood pen knife. That's what I sound like all the
• 39:31
  time. I was in the book on every other
• 39:33
  line. But more than that, I, I, I
• 39:36
  liked the atmosphere that he brewed up.
• 39:38
  He brewed up an, an asylum of secrets, you know, where people
• 39:42
  were having affairs and people were lying and people were
• 39:46
  paranoid and, and the, the dangerous thing was when those
• 39:51
  things snap, you know, and, and people act, that's when the
• 39:56
  aliens come in. That's when the bodies start
• 39:58
  burning. That's when the wolf comes out
• 40:00
  and starts killing people. I just found it.
• 40:03
  It was a really great slow burn horror.
• 40:06
  Yeah, I, I have to say, for me, it was the, I loved all the
• 40:11
  present day stuff. I loved the fact that the
• 40:14
  references that you weren't used to getting in Doctor Who about
• 40:17
  affairs and The Simpsons and all these, these other things that
• 40:20
  just made it feel like a real world.
• 40:22
  When we got the diary entries from the past, I was a little
• 40:26
  less interested. It felt a little bit more
• 40:28
  standard issue. Doctor Who for me, they weren't
• 40:29
  particularly bad, but I that that slowed it down for me a
• 40:33
  little bit. Whereas I just wanted to get
• 40:35
  back to Alaska and everybody in the present day and what was
• 40:39
  going. On the trouble is it's already
• 40:41
  like I said, slow burn and it is a slow burn, right?
• 40:43
  It's quick. It's sorry, it's slow to get to
• 40:45
  action. This book and those diary
• 40:48
  extracts means it's a slower burn because you're constantly
• 40:51
  going back and waiting another 20 pages for the present day one
• 40:55
  to move on. But I don't know who said it
• 40:57
  earlier in the call. I do think those were the
• 40:59
  sections where we were talking about how they treated mentally
• 41:03
  ill people in the past, and I found some of those scenes
• 41:07
  really disturbing and quite horrific.
• 41:10
  The conditions that they were put in, how they would be
• 41:12
  treated by the warders, Some of those things really made me feel
• 41:17
  icky, and I don't feel icky a lot in Doctor Who books.
• 41:20
  Yeah, I mean, and that's an uncomfortable truth of like,
• 41:23
  mental health and, well, not just this country, but all over
• 41:26
  the world, unfortunately, that especially the Victorian era,
• 41:30
  they really treated people badly in the ways they try to treat
• 41:33
  them and how they thought they were helping them.
• 41:36
  It was just, it was, you know, people LED horrible lives as a
• 41:39
  result of it. I mean, that character Fern,
• 41:43
  that nasty guard that was going into that poor woman's cell and
• 41:47
  saying, oh, I'll love you if you, you know, if you put out
• 41:49
  for me and then beating her up. And it's just so unpleasantly
• 41:54
  graphic at times. But I believe that stuff might
• 41:58
  have happened. Yeah, absolutely.
• 42:03
  And it probably happened. It was probably still going on
• 42:05
  in the early naughties and to a lesser extent probably happens
• 42:08
  today. But like, I mean, there's that,
• 42:10
  there's a there's a moment in Terminator 2 just at the
• 42:14
  beginning when Sarah Connors in her room and they sedate her,
• 42:19
  tie her to the bed, and then the creepy guard just licks her.
• 42:23
  And it's it's one of the most disturbing moments in
• 42:27
  essentially what's a big blockbuster action film.
• 42:29
  It's just like, and that's more horrific than when someone gets
• 42:33
  a spike through their heads by a liquid metal machine.
• 42:37
  And that's another mental health facility.
• 42:39
  So like these things do happen. There's all sorts of sort of
• 42:42
  horror stories of what happened in mental health facilities, in
• 42:45
  prisons, in care homes, all these things.
• 42:47
  So yeah, I think it is something that you can explore and it's
• 42:52
  probably best explored through the present of the past than
• 42:54
  trying to do something too up to date on those sort of things.
• 42:57
  I mean, Michael, I will throw you a bone ear.
• 42:59
  Those present day sequences, it was like a bit of a soap opera.
• 43:02
  I mean, I'm watching neighbors at the moment and the amount of
• 43:04
  things that go on in that one street.
• 43:06
  So it within this No, not asylum institute.
• 43:10
  Let's say you've got a patient that's sleeping with one of the
• 43:15
  nurses, and you've got. I believe that's frowned upon.
• 43:19
  Well, I understand. So yes, that one of the doctors
• 43:26
  saw out that patient's father when when he when he died.
• 43:32
  And so there's all this stuff that connects these people that
• 43:34
  none of them really sort of know about at the start of the book.
• 43:38
  And I'm like, well, that's a lot of stuff happening amongst a
• 43:40
  very small group of people. But I suppose, you know, if
• 43:43
  you're going to tell this story, then things need to happen.
• 43:47
  Yeah. I mean, I want to make it very
• 43:49
  clear my objections to this book are not its subject matter and
• 43:53
  especially compared to, as we will see, other attempts by
• 43:57
  Doctor Who to address this. It is trying to be sympathetic
• 44:00
  and I think its intentions are in the right place whether it
• 44:02
  sees or not. It's the literal, the craft of
• 44:06
  of the book that that I object to.
• 44:08
  I mean, I don't know that the prolixity of it.
• 44:11
  It is so overwritten in places it takes.
• 44:14
  It's not just that nothing happens.
• 44:15
  It takes so long to not happen. Another quote.
• 44:18
  I believe that one. You, shy of our private lives,
• 44:20
  say a lot about our leadership, our authority, our common sense.
• 44:23
  I'm not the sort of person, for example, who thinks there was no
• 44:26
  correlation between Clinton's Becca Dillos and the nature of
• 44:28
  his presidency. That's like everyone I work
• 44:31
  with. They all talk like that.
• 44:33
  Who are you working with, Michael?
• 44:35
  Very underwritten people, obviously.
• 44:39
  I work in comms where we know how to get messages out.
• 44:42
  Oh, OK, right. Well, I wish you every success.
• 44:47
  But that's but, but that's it though, right?
• 44:50
  And once you know that this was written by a first time author
• 44:53
  who then the editor went, can you write something else?
• 44:56
  It makes complete. It makes complete sense.
• 44:58
  It wasn't, although we're getting worked up talking about
• 45:01
  it now. I wasn't angry about this book
• 45:04
  once I put it away, and it wasn't like I think I'm trying
• 45:07
  to think of other books that we've not enjoyed on the
• 45:09
  podcast. Something like the Beast of Fang
• 45:11
  Rock, for example, which I think I objected to on many more
• 45:15
  levels because I thought there were many more things wrong with
• 45:17
  it. Narrative to start off with.
• 45:22
  Well, and unlike the sleeper reason, it didn't really have
• 45:24
  anything to say other than I like horror.
• 45:27
  Horror fan rocks good, yeah. Horror fan rocks good, and also
• 45:31
  I've worked out quite a lot of the law of the Lethbridge,
• 45:33
  Stewart and Travers families and I'd like to get that down
• 45:35
  somewhere where it can make it onto the wiki.
• 45:40
  That's riveting. I don't wear a watch anymore.
• 45:45
  Sometimes I'd rather go with my instincts than do something just
• 45:49
  because a piece of silicon tells me to.
• 45:51
  It's so edgy. This book, isn't it, That
• 45:53
  dialogue. It's, it's so.
• 45:56
  It's so Gen. X in the worst possible way.
• 45:59
  But in the same way you're saying, like, you know, you
• 46:01
  weren't angry and you just didn't want to go back to it.
• 46:04
  I was waking up. I mean, I'm insomniac, so I wake
• 46:06
  up at absurd times of the night. Yeah.
• 46:08
  This will fix that. When I was, no quite the
• 46:11
  reverse, I couldn't wait to get up and get the the blanket
• 46:14
  around my shoulders and I was opening the door and just
• 46:17
  reading it sort of the half light and going into this creepy
• 46:21
  brooding world of horror and I was just absorbed.
• 46:26
  Yeah, I think it is something that, like I was reading it
• 46:30
  quite late at night a lot of the time and it it works in that
• 46:33
  environment. It worked weirdly.
• 46:35
  It worked less like if you sat on a beach somewhere having a
• 46:37
  cocktail. It's it feels like a winter
• 46:42
  book. And I know that's a weird thing
• 46:43
  to say, but you kind of like it should be enjoyed in the
• 46:47
  darkness late at night, in the cold or it's cold outside.
• 46:52
  You don't have to turn your heating off just to read this
• 46:54
  book. I, I did struggle with it took
• 47:00
  me a long time to read this book.
• 47:04
  I mean, if I'm being really honest, it took me about six
• 47:06
  months. It took me two days.
• 47:11
  I, I there were lots of things I enjoyed about it, but I can't
• 47:15
  decide if I'm just over Doctor Who books.
• 47:18
  Not over Doctor Who, but. Well, we won't have your back
• 47:21
  then, you bastard. I've already got two other ones
• 47:24
  booked in with your mates. I think I, I really wanted this
• 47:31
  to be something like certain Doctor Who books just grabbed me
• 47:36
  and I don't know whether this is quite my sort of Doctor Who book
• 47:40
  and rags and what's it called? Cannibal Rock.
• 47:47
  Combat rock. That's it.
• 47:49
  I read both of those in about two days.
• 47:52
  You read Tomorrow Windows pretty quick, didn't you?
• 47:54
  Yeah, again, those things. There's something about, I think
• 47:57
  I like my Doctor Who books quite extreme, and this wasn't extreme
• 48:01
  enough, and it can be extremely different ways.
• 48:04
  No, it wasn't like after that was a chat.
• 48:06
  Fucking burning bodies alive. What do you want in a race, Pat?
• 48:12
  Combat Rock has has multiple people shot in the genitals.
• 48:17
  Not a gauge of violence. We should be going for a Doctor
• 48:21
  Who book. It's.
• 48:21
  It's not about the violence because Tomorrow Windows is a
• 48:24
  very violent, but what it is is an extreme.
• 48:27
  Like, I think for me to engage with the Doctor Who book, it has
• 48:30
  to not just be the doctor goes on a adventure that doesn't
• 48:35
  really change anything about the character or doesn't do
• 48:38
  something really extreme with the show.
• 48:40
  And I, I've read a quite a few fine Doctor Who books recently
• 48:45
  and I think I'm just a little bit over those type of books.
• 48:49
  I think I I need I need some game changers and.
• 48:53
  Well, I think about that. Then the next time what we're
• 48:55
  doing next. I've forgotten now.
• 48:56
  Human nature. That's that's quite a game
• 48:59
  changer. Yeah, and I've never read it, so
• 49:02
  you know, I'll be and we're doing Kabalam.
• 49:04
  But both Human Nature and Kabalam are audio books, and I'd
• 49:07
  much rather listen to the audio. Oh, you just can't be asked to
• 49:11
  read. That's your.
• 49:12
  Problem I can I've just got a bookshelf full of other books
• 49:15
  and I'm going. I've got nothing to do with
• 49:17
  Doctor Who is. He chowing down on BBV bollocks.
• 49:22
  No time to read books. Welfare.
• 49:24
  I've got plenty of time to read books, I just I think I might
• 49:28
  need to put my time into some non Doctor Who books, no?
• 49:31
  Jesus, so do I. Hello.
• 49:34
  Other books are available. I've got two things I absolutely
• 49:38
  where where we're on a time limit.
• 49:39
  I've got two things I absolutely want us to talk about before we
• 49:42
  sort of round up and sleep everything, because I think we
• 49:45
  all know where we're all coming from.
• 49:47
  I adored it, Michael loathed it. And Dylan, you're somewhere in
• 49:50
  the middle. Doctor Who?
• 49:53
  I have started get that impression actually, yeah.
• 49:57
  I don't think you could say Dylan's in the middle when it
• 49:59
  took him six months to read it. Now he doesn't want to read any
• 50:01
  other Doctor Who books. Actually, that's a That's a
• 50:04
  damning indication, isn't? It he wanted more wrist slicing,
• 50:08
  didn't he? That first chapter was your
• 50:10
  favorite bit. I mean, yeah, in a way.
• 50:13
  And I did like the end with all the the burning bodies and
• 50:15
  things like that, but in between the character stuff.
• 50:19
  Of course, see him next week, you know, I've got to see.
• 50:22
  I've got to be in a room with this man soon.
• 50:24
  I'm not going to set fire to you.
• 50:25
  I'm. Starting to wonder, maybe in the
• 50:29
  sheets, Dylan. No, what I wanted to talk about
• 50:32
  was Laska's journey throughout the book, because I think that's
• 50:35
  the story he wants to tell here and where that ends up.
• 50:39
  And just quickly the the toothy wolfy brushing in on the time
• 50:47
  wins mental health, attracting Shodam lost creatures.
• 50:51
  So let's do let's go with Laska and let's go with Dylan.
• 50:55
  She I think, I think she's a fully formed character.
• 50:58
  Like she's the most interesting thing in here.
• 51:01
  And I said I I quite like the Doctor not being that integral
• 51:06
  to the story and sort of popping in and out, but she's a more
• 51:09
  interesting character than the Doctor is in this.
• 51:12
  She's a more interesting character than anybody else.
• 51:14
  I like I think it is a it's an interesting journey and if this
• 51:20
  was a novella just about her and it was 100 odd pages, I think I
• 51:24
  probably would have had a great time.
• 51:26
  But it's sort of. Basically, you want to suck all
• 51:28
  the Doctor Who out of it. Yeah, it's kind of Hanford by
• 51:30
  it's hooeyness a little bit because that I think it's also
• 51:35
  quite sensitively written. And you know, Michael's pointed
• 51:39
  out some of the less fantastic prose in there.
• 51:43
  But she, you know, her, the way she kept, she acts and talks
• 51:47
  feels honest and real. So I'm sort of drawn to her over
• 51:51
  some of the other two D characters in the in the story.
• 51:55
  What about where we leave her, though?
• 51:57
  Obviously she goes for all of this.
• 51:58
  She finds out about her dad and Doctor Bartholomew's, you know,
• 52:05
  the person that killed him and all of this.
• 52:07
  And then at the end of the last line is literally almost a year
• 52:10
  ago, Laska arrived at the retreat.
• 52:12
  Now, at last, Laska was leaving. I mean, so the journey is she
• 52:15
  goes in and she comes out, but is it a positive journey?
• 52:19
  Yeah, I mean, yes, it is. But obviously she, there's sort
• 52:24
  of a grand manipulation within her journey.
• 52:26
  So she's, she's suffered all this torment for, I mean, some
• 52:29
  of it's real, but she's suffered a lot of this needlessly, which
• 52:33
  is quite tragic. But yeah, I like her journey.
• 52:36
  Like I'm I'm glad that she gets a sort of happy ending and it's
• 52:39
  not the case that she walks out and you think everything's going
• 52:41
  to be fine in her life now, which is a realistic thing.
• 52:45
  It would be terrible if she was just cured of any mental health
• 52:48
  issues at the end of the story. So I think, I think that's sort
• 52:52
  of handled well. No worry.
• 52:53
  We'll get there by the end of this call, all right?
• 52:55
  With people that are cured of their mental illnesses by the
• 52:58
  end of the story. Michael Laska.
• 53:01
  Laska 2 things one the sort of the good is I I agree when I say
• 53:08
  that I think the book's intentions are in the right
• 53:11
  place and why I don't bear it any anger.
• 53:13
  I'm glad to hear others enjoyed it or got something from it.
• 53:16
  That's largely because of Laska's story, which I think is
• 53:20
  written sympathetically and with good intent.
• 53:25
  I think the slight issue I have with it is, is that it is a
• 53:27
  slightly flawed depiction, at least in my reading of the
• 53:32
  nature of what mental health is and how, how one, you know,
• 53:38
  deals with deals with that. We're often, you know, she's,
• 53:41
  she's in a was ultimately A therapeutic retreat, right?
• 53:44
  She's she's there to to speak to therapists and to come to terms
• 53:48
  with things and generally with therapy, what therapy would seek
• 53:53
  to do for someone with this, my understanding anyway, my reading
• 53:55
  of this is the person knows what it is that's happened to them,
• 54:00
  but it's getting the understanding of what that
• 54:02
  actually means and coming to understand their own feelings
• 54:08
  and their own place and their own preconceptions and the
• 54:11
  emotions they might have tied to things fairly or unfairly, and
• 54:13
  getting some distance on that. I think this book slightly falls
• 54:17
  into the very common trap of imagining that resolving mental
• 54:20
  health is about resolving the mystery of events, which is not
• 54:23
  what it's about at all. It's sort of, oh, I actually
• 54:25
  found out that my dad did love me and so it's all right and
• 54:28
  it's OK. And it wasn't him.
• 54:29
  And that's, I think when the book so actively wants to tell
• 54:33
  that story, I think it's it's fair to critique it when it's
• 54:36
  sort of misses the mark in terms of what it's actually talking
• 54:39
  about. And so that's why it's sort of,
• 54:40
  again, it's all falls into the trap of thinking that mental
• 54:42
  health is the equivalent of a physical of physical health.
• 54:45
  I've broken my leg. Once it's set, I can begin to
• 54:47
  heal. And I don't think that's quite
• 54:50
  right. That's quite heavy.
• 54:54
  So in terms of what I didn't like, actually didn't like, I'd
• 54:57
  like to mention her name, Laska. I think a terrible cliche in
• 55:00
  Edas and wider books is young women with kooky nicknames and I
• 55:05
  don't believe had a nickname of Alaska which is meant to be some
• 55:09
  obscure reference to a Bob Dylan song.
• 55:11
  It does not work at all. It reminds me of the thing that
• 55:13
  Mark Steele said about Sting. Sting always claims that he's
• 55:17
  called Sting because at school he isn't.
• 55:19
  His grand knitted him a black and yellow knitted jumper and so
• 55:23
  all the kids called him Sting because he looked like a bee.
• 55:26
  Did he? Bollocks.
• 55:28
  If that were the case, his nickname would be Bumble.
• 55:31
  Yes, yeah. Also has that cool nickname.
• 55:35
  I just kept thinking of Professor Lasky from Trial of a
• 55:39
  Time Lord, so you know that I I imagined a completely different
• 55:43
  character. She wasn't a young woman, she
• 55:45
  was an ageing. What?
• 55:48
  Not one event. And who is it?
• 55:50
  Yes, on a black man. On, on a black man, that's it.
• 55:53
  So that's that's who I imagine was playing at the role.
• 55:55
  Well, it's quite a different story then.
• 55:57
  Yeah, plus she's got AY instead of an A, but yeah.
• 56:00
  Yeah, I know, but I said Lasky. I know you did.
• 56:05
  I know for my part, I, I, I loved that story in particular.
• 56:11
  I did love that first chapter because it spoke to me.
• 56:14
  What spoke to me more was the middle sections of the book
• 56:17
  where she was desperately paranoid in every single scene.
• 56:22
  And I remember in periods of severe depression, I had periods
• 56:28
  of paranoia that were outrageous.
• 56:31
  So I was reading that going, yeah, I remember thinking no
• 56:34
  thoughts. I remember needing the loo.
• 56:36
  I remember, you know, and I just feel like he studied it well.
• 56:39
  And you're right. I don't think at the end of the
• 56:41
  book, I don't think it's quite as cut and dry as you're saying.
• 56:44
  I don't think because she finds out about her dad, because she
• 56:47
  says when she's going, yeah, maybe I'll be all right.
• 56:50
  Like, I'm going to give it a try.
• 56:52
  So there's no like. Dysmorphia and stuff isn't gone.
• 56:55
  Like her mental health isn't cured, she's just she's fitted
• 56:58
  one of the pieces together that that might give us some closure
• 57:01
  on things. But mental health issues and
• 57:03
  mental health issues. They just go round and around
• 57:06
  irritatingly, but taking it on to the aliens of the Peace
• 57:10
  Center, and I will say this about the book, because this
• 57:13
  really bugged me, was the fact that, you know, the doctor pops
• 57:16
  up out of that sarcophagus at the climax and that's it.
• 57:19
  The story's over. And then we tell the rest of it
• 57:22
  in flashback. Well, this is what happened.
• 57:24
  I ended up back in time. I don't know.
• 57:26
  I did this and I did that. And I was like, what?
• 57:28
  You can't do that? Take Me Out the climax and then
• 57:30
  just explain what happened. I mean, that's cheating.
• 57:34
  And on top of that, I really, really disliked the very last
• 57:38
  passage of James writing to Doctor Bartholomew going, Oh,
• 57:43
  well, the reason I had the affair was because I had cancer
• 57:47
  and I thought I was going to die.
• 57:48
  And she was a good she was a fitting and I and I don't want
• 57:51
  to die. And it was just like a really
• 57:53
  after that lovely ending for Alaska, going out into the
• 57:56
  sunshine and giving it a try to then sort of shit all over us
• 58:00
  again with that last bit. I was like, oh, OK, well how
• 58:05
  miserable. Yeah, it was that that that part
• 58:10
  of the ending really stuck out to me and I was a little bit
• 58:13
  like, oh, this is saying that. I don't know, it just sort of it
• 58:17
  felt like to me it just get tried to give a bit of credence
• 58:20
  to why this guy was a cunt. Like people have affairs, just
• 58:23
  leave it at that. You know, he wasn't happy and
• 58:25
  for whatever reason, but to try and make us feel sorry for him
• 58:28
  because he doesn't want to die. Like I don't know how I'd react
• 58:31
  if I found out I was terminally ill, but I'm pretty sure I
• 58:34
  wouldn't cheat on my partner. I think I'd more be like, I need
• 58:37
  to spend as much time with my partner as possible because this
• 58:40
  is all I've got. But then not go out and shag
• 58:43
  someone from work I mean. Within that though, within that,
• 58:46
  again, I think he, some of it was well observed because the
• 58:50
  line that James says in that letter, I'm scared of dying.
• 58:54
  I'm scared of what's happening to my body.
• 58:56
  I don't want to die. My mum said all all three of
• 58:59
  those things to me when she was dying of lung cancer.
• 59:01
  So it was well observed. It was just a really shitty way
• 59:04
  to leave the reader at the end of the book.
• 59:07
  Well, I think, I think if you're going to do that as well, that's
• 59:10
  fine, but make that part of the story.
• 59:12
  Don't just like throw it in as a twist ending.
• 59:14
  You know, this guy's having an affair because he's worried
• 59:16
  about dying. That sounds interesting.
• 59:17
  I'd quite like to have read about that, Martin.
• 59:19
  It was like Justin went, excuse me, Martin, you haven't actually
• 59:22
  tied that bit up. You know, you could just put in
• 59:25
  a little passage at the end. Well, what about the aliens
• 59:28
  then? The wolf, You know the the
• 59:30
  people being bitten and going to the dark side and burning
• 59:34
  bodies. I mean, I hate anything that
• 59:36
  feeds on fear as a plot device in in Doctor Who or science
• 59:40
  fiction. I think it's the most base level
• 59:42
  badder you can do. But in terms of how they were
• 59:45
  realized, I thought it was quite effective.
• 59:48
  And there was a couple of really good end of chapter cliffhangers
• 59:50
  that utilize them burning. And I like the wolf and all
• 59:54
  those things. So sort of visually within the
• 59:56
  story they work well. But yeah, feeding on fear can
• 1:00:00
  fuck all the way off. It was a really visceral moment
• 1:00:03
  where somebody goes at the wall of a car and it's described as
• 1:00:08
  like the skulls split open and the jaws hanging off and all of
• 1:00:11
  this. I was like, that's revolting.
• 1:00:13
  Like that's like, you could never put.
• 1:00:15
  You put. You probably could put that in
• 1:00:16
  torture. Actually, you could put it in
• 1:00:17
  torture. Yeah.
• 1:00:19
  Michael, come on. I know you're dying to talk
• 1:00:20
  about these aliens. There is a bit of an early
• 1:00:24
  Torchwood tie in book about this whole thing isn't there actually
• 1:00:27
  that now you've said it before they sort of knew what the show
• 1:00:30
  was. But yeah, so the show them
• 1:00:33
  loves. I officially I think they're
• 1:00:35
  quite striking image these these rotting electric eyed wolves
• 1:00:41
  from across time and I like the idea of their sort of seeds
• 1:00:44
  being spread on the time winds and just these get play like
• 1:00:48
  like a sort of plague almost. That's what they are.
• 1:00:51
  They they land places and it's shit forever.
• 1:00:53
  They land. 100% agree with Dylan.
• 1:00:56
  Monsters who who feed off fear are up there with buried alien
• 1:01:00
  spaceship. Or it turns out God was a
• 1:01:03
  Martian. They should all stop happening.
• 1:01:05
  I'm also always slightly annoyed, and this happens
• 1:01:07
  surprisingly often when it turns out that this the secret to
• 1:01:11
  destroying the alien is to set them on fire.
• 1:01:14
  Like, well, yeah, if. It were for the Brigadier, you
• 1:01:19
  know. Can we start trying that more
• 1:01:21
  often? You know, when we've established
• 1:01:23
  that we can't kill them? You're not coming.
• 1:01:25
  This weekend. If we try killing them with
• 1:01:28
  fire, that's not A twist. Most living things people will
• 1:01:32
  die if that's on fire. So let's try that earlier in the
• 1:01:34
  adventure. Doctor Who just comes out of the
• 1:01:36
  TARDIS with a tin of petrol every time, just in case.
• 1:01:39
  Just like, well, you just do. This burn, look at that.
• 1:01:43
  He's on fire. They're evil.
• 1:01:44
  They're evil. Burn them, Michael.
• 1:01:46
  They're loads of. Big Finish Adventure.
• 1:01:49
  Where you the land of the dead? It's exactly the same thing. 4
• 1:01:52
  episodes to realise we can send these buggers on fire.
• 1:01:57
  Yeah, I've had a load of young actors, just that of Rep.
• 1:02:00
  All stands in a pantomime, walked out and say thank you
• 1:02:02
  doctor. You've liberated our people
• 1:02:05
  through this burning, this burning extension flesh.
• 1:02:09
  I mean you can you can visualize those amtran people when reading
• 1:02:12
  this book. Oh, I'm also annoyed about the
• 1:02:15
  sholam laws because I spent far too long and this is my problem.
• 1:02:18
  But this is where it exploited my mental issues spent far too
• 1:02:22
  long trying to work out why they're called the sholam laws
• 1:02:25
  because it sounds like Hebrew or Yiddish.
• 1:02:27
  So I thought, oh, this is going to be there's going to be a
• 1:02:29
  meaning if you start translating this Shalom, Shalom, Shalom
• 1:02:33
  peace. Luz Luz.
• 1:02:34
  Well, that's the original name of Bethel, which is I'm sure you
• 1:02:36
  both know is the location of Jacob's Ladder late, which later
• 1:02:39
  means House of God. So there we go.
• 1:02:41
  Is it something to do with peace?
• 1:02:42
  Is it something to do with is it something to do with reaching
• 1:02:45
  towards the heavens? There's a lot of stuff in in
• 1:02:48
  horror that talks about madness, about it being a link to the
• 1:02:51
  supernatural something. Oh yes, you're getting there,
• 1:02:53
  Michael, you're getting there. Here's a brick wall.
• 1:02:55
  It's just a cool name, isn't it? A bastard.
• 1:02:57
  I wasted far too long. Wikipedia, ChatGPT books book.
• 1:03:02
  I have got on that. I have got on that shelf a
• 1:03:04
  Dictionary of devils and demons that I have owned for six years
• 1:03:08
  and I've wanted next excuse to use it on a podcast.
• 1:03:10
  I was pouring through it. The fuck all in here about show
• 1:03:12
  Lamour loves. I'm so angry.
• 1:03:14
  Serves you right for the satisfaction you derived when I
• 1:03:19
  didn't get the anagram of clade from Father time that you went
• 1:03:23
  down this rabbit hole for nothing.
• 1:03:25
  I'd have been so smug if I'd got it.
• 1:03:28
  If I cracked it I would have been so happy.
• 1:03:30
  I'm hoping my days listen and it's just going to put out a
• 1:03:33
  tweet going, oh, it's this. You'll be like I'll fucking hate
• 1:03:35
  that book even more now. Just call them the fucking scion
• 1:03:39
  of oars because they feed them scion.
• 1:03:41
  I don't know. Well fellas, we've laid our
• 1:03:47
  stalls pretty clearly here. I'm sure there is more we could
• 1:03:50
  talk about, but did. You say we've laid our stalls.
• 1:03:54
  Look, I'll just say words, right?
• 1:03:56
  They come out in an order and I broadcast them.
• 1:03:59
  But he's scented a poo. Is that where we've gone?
• 1:04:03
  This is the man who has just defended Martin Days prostyle
• 1:04:06
  and his novel People. Excuse me?
• 1:04:08
  He didn't object too much. And also we both heard you when
• 1:04:14
  you said, as I'm sure you know, just saying, Michael Mills, you
• 1:04:18
  patronizing GIF. You're well aware that we both
• 1:04:22
  didn't know that niche fact that you just threw at us.
• 1:04:27
  I know you didn't know it, Dylan.
• 1:04:28
  Is. I have heard I listened to that
• 1:04:33
  podcast. I can remember exactly where I
• 1:04:35
  was at the time. I was in a gym in Belgium and I
• 1:04:38
  laughed out loud when you didn't get it.
• 1:04:41
  So. He's almost convincing, Rocket.
• 1:04:43
  Well, fellas, let's round up Sleep of Reason.
• 1:04:46
  Let's do just a quick minute or two each on why you hated it,
• 1:04:50
  why you've given up Doctor Who books, and why I loved it.
• 1:04:53
  Well, let's start with let's start with hate first, Michael.
• 1:05:00
  I think the issue is it has good intentions.
• 1:05:03
  There are a lot of things within the story that I think are
• 1:05:05
  admirable and I have no ill will towards this.
• 1:05:07
  I don't think it's a bad thing that it exists.
• 1:05:10
  It isn't like certain other Doctor Who books where I think
• 1:05:12
  the author needs to be stopped before they do it again, I
• 1:05:15
  think. Nicholas Briggs, are you talking
• 1:05:16
  about there? Actually not, but I think the
• 1:05:22
  main issue is if you said way back at the start that 50% of
• 1:05:27
  what you get out of a book is what you put into it.
• 1:05:29
  And I think the problem is the prose style and the the
• 1:05:32
  realisation of those characters. For me it was it, I just kept
• 1:05:36
  bouncing off it. I couldn't literally read and
• 1:05:39
  get into the flow of the writing enough to actually access the
• 1:05:43
  story there. And I think it's because it's
• 1:05:46
  the rejected novel of a first time novelist.
• 1:05:48
  And I've liked some of the stuff Martin Day has done since Not
• 1:05:51
  Wooden Heart and are willing to forgive it on that basis if I
• 1:05:57
  imagine this was published in 1994 and move on.
• 1:06:03
  Dylan, what to say? I mean, I had a reasonable time.
• 1:06:10
  That is much as I I like. I'm just going to repeat myself.
• 1:06:14
  I like the character of Alaska. I really like the first chapter.
• 1:06:17
  I like the sort of visceral nature of the baddies.
• 1:06:20
  I would never read it again. It's not made me go, oh, I must
• 1:06:24
  read The Menagerie, which I've never read.
• 1:06:29
  But then I I really like No Man's Land, which was one of his
• 1:06:32
  solo audios. I can't remember many of his
• 1:06:36
  other works. But yeah, this was an OK bit of
• 1:06:39
  Doctor Who that I feel probably could have been much better.
• 1:06:44
  Like there is a. There is a really good version
• 1:06:46
  of this that I I would have liked to have read, but this
• 1:06:51
  doesn't quite get there. And for my part, I really just,
• 1:06:57
  I love the fact that the book was risky enough to explore
• 1:07:01
  depression, the history of handling mental health, you
• 1:07:05
  know, secrets and lies, guilt, paranoia, how you navigate life
• 1:07:09
  when everybody thinks you're mad.
• 1:07:11
  And they do. In this.
• 1:07:13
  I think the conclusions it's drawn, it draws are muddy, but
• 1:07:17
  they're satisfying because they're muddy.
• 1:07:20
  You know, it doesn't say it's a positive ending, but it is an
• 1:07:24
  ambiguous ending, especially for Laska.
• 1:07:27
  And it acknowledges people make mistakes, people live with their
• 1:07:30
  demons, people navigate life grappling with their fears.
• 1:07:34
  And people die and you have to keep moving on.
• 1:07:37
  And the thing, you know, losing her dad, that is a big catalyst
• 1:07:40
  in her mental health. I love the character of Alaska.
• 1:07:44
  And yeah, I I did like the prose.
• 1:07:47
  I'm, I'm not going to apologize, but I'm going to say I'm winning
• 1:07:51
  it live because I enjoyed the book and you didn't have.
• 1:07:55
  You have you read any books? Only Doctor Who ones lately if
• 1:08:00
  I'm honest, so my gauge may be a little off.
• 1:08:04
  Nothing that didn't have a colon in the title, no.
• 1:08:08
  I mean, my last book was a Christopher Beulis, you know,
• 1:08:11
  like I'm losing IQ points. Well, fellas, I mean, this was
• 1:08:16
  an intriguing start to our, what we're calling it, mental health
• 1:08:21
  special. There you go.
• 1:08:23
  That might be better than a sign special.
• 1:08:24
  No. OK, what we're calling it then.
• 1:08:27
  We need an umbrella term. Michael, you tell us.
• 1:08:30
  Look in your Dictionary of podcast names or whatever it is.
• 1:08:35
  You with your books and you're learning.
• 1:08:40
  It's your interest in things. I mean literally the only thing
• 1:08:43
  holding up his mic is free volumes of a history of Doctor
• 1:08:47
  Who. So.
• 1:08:48
  Like like it's 3 volumes of Doctor Who history, lunch with
• 1:08:54
  the FTA book about the Cold War and Arnold Schwarzenegger's
• 1:08:57
  autobiography. Thank you, I've got that, I've
• 1:09:01
  never read it. No, no, it's good.
• 1:09:03
  It's a good width for this sort of thing.
• 1:09:06
  Exactly you need we. I use mine to prop up the
• 1:09:08
  projector in the bedroom. I'll say the umbrella term of
• 1:09:13
  Doctor Who approaching mental health.
• 1:09:16
  Thank you very much, gentlemen. Michael, I've never seen you so
• 1:09:19
  passionate. I mean, I always fancy you a
• 1:09:21
  bit, but I fancy you loads today when you get that angry.
• 1:09:25
  I suppose we better all pop over to Too Hot for TV now.
• 1:09:29
  To talk about some proper doctor.
• 1:09:31
  Who 2 dismal audios. Thank you gentlemen, and not
• 1:09:36
  good night. See you on the other side.
• 1:09:40
  Goodbye.