Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Remembrance of the Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch (featuring Jason Thompson, James Lark & Ian Winterton)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Remembrance of the Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch (featuring Jason Thompson, James Lark & Ian Winterton) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:02
  He remembered being a man, the blue white sun that burned over
• 0:06
  the mountains on the long summer evenings, a childhood
• 0:11
  adolescence among the debris of college encampments, games of
• 0:15
  hunt Befal played with sticks and mutant beetles.
• 0:19
  His indoctrination and training, a glittering career, The elite
• 0:23
  cadre lovers. Adrenaline, blood, bone, sinew,
• 0:30
  feelings ended by the war, ended by a foul shell and A rush of
• 0:36
  radioactivity. He remembered the smell of his
• 0:45
  own blood pulsing slowly from severed arteries, the taste of
• 0:49
  concrete dust in his mouth, and the crackling of his own skin.
• 0:54
  He hurtled blindly Into Darkness and then resurrection, an age of
• 1:06
  pain and humiliation. He was reconstructed with Chrome
• 1:10
  and plastic held together with tungsten wire.
• 1:14
  They drilled sockets through his skull and threaded fibre optics
• 1:18
  into his forebrain. He screamed when he saw himself
• 1:21
  for the first time. The Med takes smashed him Into
• 1:27
  Darkness with anaesthetic. Questions were raised among the
• 1:31
  carved elite. For all his brilliance, should
• 1:35
  such an abomination be allowed to live?
• 1:38
  The psych tech said there was an 86% probability ±10% that he
• 1:43
  would commit suicide within an hour of waking.
• 1:46
  A. Decision was made, let the
• 1:49
  creature prove his function or die.
• 1:53
  They allowed him awareness once more, and he looked at himself
• 1:56
  again. The Elite gave him a trigger
• 1:58
  linked to a lethal dose of poison, and then they left him.
• 2:05
  He spent a long time examining the monstrosity he had become,
• 2:09
  searching for some reason to live.
• 2:12
  His remaining hand trembled on the switch that would kill him.
• 2:16
  With a convulsive effort, he twisted himself into his new
• 2:19
  shape. I am but the idea, the seed, the
• 2:26
  dream. He saw a purity, not in what he
• 2:30
  was, but in what he might become.
• 2:33
  A being unbound by flesh and the stupidities that flesh brings.
• 2:38
  A creature fit to hold dominion. Carefully, he put the trigger
• 2:43
  down as a thought. His chair turned, a door opened,
• 2:49
  and he slid out to face the elite.
• 2:53
  Give me. What I want and I will give you
• 2:57
  victory. Hamster Book Club, The Doctor
• 3:07
  Who Novel Review Podcast with Joe Ford, James Lark, Jason
• 3:12
  Thompson, and Ian Winterton. Remembrance of the Dialects by
• 3:44
  Ben Eronovich. Welcome back to the Hamster Book
• 3:57
  Club. My name is Joe Ford and the
• 3:59
  stars have aligned once again with the destruction of the Hand
• 4:04
  of Omega to bring together 3 devastatingly intelligent
• 4:09
  gentlemen we have with us. Excuse me, sorry.
• 4:14
  On call, Joe. They weren't available, so I
• 4:20
  bought this bunch in instead. Jason Thompson.
• 4:24
  Say hello, Jason. Hello, Jason.
• 4:26
  Oh, well done, James Lark. Say hello, James.
• 4:30
  Hello, James. And Ian, are you going to do the
• 4:33
  predictable and say hello, Ian? No, I'm not, because I'm not a,
• 4:38
  I'm not a number. But yes, hello, I'm Ian.
• 4:44
  Gentlemen, please, why are we assembling today?
• 4:47
  What have we all read for this week's book club?
• 4:49
  I'm going to throw it straight to James because I think this
• 4:52
  may have been his doing. What's it?
• 4:55
  What's it my doing? I'll just blame you for
• 4:57
  everything. Keep blaming that every time we
• 4:58
  do a podcast, you're like James Lark.
• 5:00
  He's it's his fault. It's his fault we had to read
• 5:03
  Transit and now it's his fault we had to read Remembrance of
• 5:06
  the Daleks. I don't think that was a
• 5:07
  hardship for many people here. I, I agreed, I I totally agree
• 5:11
  with Victoria. So I think it was my choice.
• 5:13
  I think I was suggesting the righteous tale and then when and
• 5:17
  then when this got mentioned and I think the whole thing, so
• 5:22
  obviously I've not read it before, but the whole thing that
• 5:23
  intrigued me was I suddenly realized, I think we said on an
• 5:27
  earlier part, I suddenly realized that I'd been an avid
• 5:30
  target book reader, but then I hadn't been because I was old.
• 5:36
  I hadn't read them while it was the Colin and Sylvester years.
• 5:42
  And so I just realized, do you know what?
• 5:44
  There's, there's dozens of books out there, Doctor Who books I
• 5:48
  haven't read because I wasn't consuming Doctor Who books when
• 5:53
  in the last two years of the show.
• 5:54
  And so it's been my first Sylvester McCoy target.
• 5:59
  I'd, I'd like to, I'd like to defend Mr. Lark here from the
• 6:02
  accusation that was held in his direction in that it was in fact
• 6:07
  my recommendation at the end of the last podcast when you did
• 6:11
  the usual end of podcast recommendations.
• 6:13
  I did remembrance or I mentioned remembrance.
• 6:16
  It was either that or at the beginning you were talking about
• 6:18
  favorite books or something, and that's where it came from.
• 6:21
  So I think. And Ian said he hadn't read it,
• 6:23
  so it'll be interesting. And I think James is probably
• 6:25
  the only person here who's entirely blameless so.
• 6:29
  I'm just it was Joe who made us read Transit.
• 6:33
  Oh yeah, that's true, and I am responsible for the next book
• 6:35
  we're going to read. But I will still blame James at
• 6:38
  the beginning of the call. Excellent.
• 6:39
  I look forward to. We'll have, we'll have our own
• 6:42
  running jokes here, shall we? But before we start talking
• 6:45
  about the start of Ben Eronovich's glittering literary
• 6:49
  career, I would like to ask you all a question.
• 6:53
  And my question is this, because we are doing a target today,
• 6:56
  what is your preference of the following sort of targets that
• 7:01
  I'm going to mention? Do you prefer a script to page?
• 7:06
  So I'm talking about something like robots of Death, you know.
• 7:09
  Do you like a scripted page with some innovations?
• 7:14
  Like someone give you a good example of that?
• 7:18
  Well, the giggle there. You go.
• 7:20
  That's another good example. Or do you like I'm I'm going to
• 7:24
  completely revolutionize the TV story that you saw like some of
• 7:28
  those latter day Sylvester McCoy ones like the Dark Cottons.
• 7:32
  Yeah, they're like those ones. What's what's your preference
• 7:35
  with the targets, Jason? I I don't actually have one
• 7:42
  because I've read a variety of them and I think they're all
• 7:45
  done with varying degrees of success.
• 7:48
  You can do a script to screen very well or you can do a script
• 7:53
  to screen very badly. You can do the innovations
• 7:56
  brilliantly or badly. So I mean, in some respects I'm
• 8:00
  I'm in the middle currently and I will blame James for this one
• 8:03
  because he recommended it on one of our earlier podcasts.
• 8:05
  I'm currently, I've managed to get hold of a copy of the myth
• 8:08
  Makers target novelization, which kind of falls between two
• 8:13
  stools in some respects because in terms of the dialogue that's
• 8:16
  included, it's pretty faithful to what was on the screen.
• 8:20
  But it's got an interesting framing device of having Homer
• 8:23
  as an observer and I'm in really enjoying it.
• 8:25
  So it's, you know, they I, I, I don't necessarily think the line
• 8:29
  is all that firm between them, to be honest, but they've all
• 8:33
  been excellent. But there are some absolutely
• 8:36
  shocking ones. I mean, I've also just read the
• 8:38
  Space Museum by Glyn Jones, which did not resonate with me
• 8:41
  at all because he's tried to do something similar by giving us
• 8:45
  back story when some of the characters and giving us more
• 8:49
  focus on one of the one of the one of the Morock guards.
• 8:54
  And it's an attempt at humour and back story and it just falls
• 8:57
  completely flat for me. So I mean, my preference is to
• 9:02
  do something a little bit different from just a
• 9:05
  straightforward script to screen.
• 9:09
  So yeah, I think something like Donald Cotton's myth makers is
• 9:11
  is brilliant and the Romans I really enjoyed as well.
• 9:14
  So we'll. Get there with Remembrance of
• 9:15
  the Daleks because it is doing lots of experimental, innovative
• 9:20
  things with that story, but it is still the story that was
• 9:23
  transmitted. I hope that was very impressive.
• 9:27
  Ian, what's your preference with the targets?
• 9:30
  I, I guess the era I really grew up with was when it was all the
• 9:35
  1st 4 doctors. And when you look back at those,
• 9:39
  they're not as script to screening as you'd expect.
• 9:42
  And I think one thing they especially did was they're more
• 9:45
  enjoyable often than watching the TV show because they expand
• 9:50
  it a bit. They keep it the same story most
• 9:52
  of the time. But I guess a bit like
• 9:55
  Remembrance, they they add the the best thing is almost a
• 9:59
  balance, isn't it between they add new stuff, but they still,
• 10:02
  they still, they still pretty much show what was happening on
• 10:07
  the screen. They just show you what's going
• 10:09
  on inside people's heads and a bit of back story as well.
• 10:13
  And I think one of the things that's really egregious is when
• 10:17
  it really is like God, this is like reading a script.
• 10:19
  It's like it's just that all they've done is change the
• 10:22
  tense. Into the plus tense.
• 10:26
  Yeah, like, like, and I think that's why it was so nice, you
• 10:30
  know, friend of the pod and friendly cuts away Steve
• 10:32
  Gallagher when we got to actually hear read his proper
• 10:35
  novelization of of his script, because it's much, much better
• 10:41
  than the very perfunctory thing that ended up getting put out as
• 10:44
  Warriors Gate originally. And that was J&T's obsession
• 10:48
  with not having added bonus content.
• 10:51
  You just had to have what was on the screen.
• 10:53
  And I never quite understood that as a surely that, you know,
• 10:58
  suppresses sales rather than encourages them.
• 11:01
  It's a. Particularly great hamster book
• 11:04
  club episode you know on warriors gate and beyond where
• 11:07
  there were some divisive opinions about that new version
• 11:10
  of warriors game I. Don't think I've heard that one.
• 11:12
  I'll definitely go and have a listen.
• 11:14
  You know me, I'll plug anything. And can you just give me very
• 11:16
  quickly like a really good example of a great target and a
• 11:19
  bad target like Jason did in your opinion?
• 11:22
  Who me? The one that just always jumps
• 11:26
  out, especially because the I've got the a print of the cover on
• 11:29
  the wall, is the Mutants for somebody.
• 11:31
  And I don't know if it's well written or anything.
• 11:33
  I just know I read that over and over again as a kid and I was
• 11:36
  totally absorbed by the story. I can still remember all the
• 11:40
  characters, I can still remember the atmosphere.
• 11:43
  And then when I finally watched the TV show, I was like, this
• 11:46
  isn't anywhere near as good as the experience of reading
• 11:51
  Terrence Sticks. I think it was Terrence Sticks
• 11:53
  wasn't it? Reading the Mutants, so that one
• 11:56
  always jumps in my head and the same with same with Horror of
• 11:59
  Frank Rock, although that doesn't disappoint when you
• 12:01
  watch it live over. But a bad one I guess.
• 12:05
  I can't really think of any off the top of my head, but I just
• 12:08
  remember reading just quite flimsy ones and maybe it's
• 12:11
  because they just had a photo of Peter Davidson on the cover
• 12:14
  rather than a nice painting as well.
• 12:16
  So you just go in. This is all a bit cheap so I'd
• 12:20
  have to reassess whether they were actually, but I just
• 12:22
  remember being a bit disinterested in the really thin
• 12:25
  ones with a photo on the front. Like God did I read the King's
• 12:29
  Demons? Is that a novel or am I just Am
• 12:32
  I just imagining the disappointment of the watching
• 12:35
  the episode as well Someone. Recently recommended Peter
• 12:39
  Grenway's Mordred Undead on one of the book clubs, but the cover
• 12:43
  of it is just Davison at the console.
• 12:45
  Looking a bit bored, isn't it? Doesn't really sum up the story
• 12:49
  very well. Yeah, they were just, they were
• 12:51
  just on a, you know, let's save money at every possible corner.
• 12:54
  We can't. Let's not bother with paintings.
• 12:57
  I don't know. I was thinking we'll get that
• 12:59
  dishy Peter Davidson on the cover that will sell some
• 13:01
  copies. How do you think?
• 13:04
  How about you then, James? What's your preference when it
• 13:07
  comes to targets? Pretty hard to give an objective
• 13:10
  answer to this question. I was thinking about this
• 13:13
  earlier. I've been listening to one of
• 13:14
  your many wonderful chats with Michael Mills about various
• 13:20
  texts. And in one of them, you, you
• 13:21
  asked him to put in order the different types of Doctor Who
• 13:26
  novel. And Target was quite low in his
• 13:29
  list. It was #5 it wasn't very low,
• 13:31
  but it was #5 because, and he said he was just too young to
• 13:33
  have connected to it in the way that a lot of older fans did
• 13:38
  because it was the only way of consuming Doctor Who.
• 13:40
  And I, for all that I think he's perhaps not that much younger
• 13:44
  than I am. I, I thought actually, no, they
• 13:47
  really do resonate me because I think I was at this, this tiny
• 13:52
  window where they were re releasing all the targets.
• 13:55
  Do you remember the blue spine ones?
• 13:57
  They had new, newly designed, often very attractively drawn
• 14:01
  covers with the McCoy logo, which I'll defend to my dying
• 14:08
  day, and, and these very sexy blue spines, which, which looked
• 14:13
  much more uniform than what we were used to.
• 14:15
  And, and this was in the early 90s when I, when videos were
• 14:19
  still just too expensive. They hadn't dropped in price to
• 14:21
  the point that I, it was ever going to be something that I
• 14:23
  could contemplate spending pocket money on.
• 14:26
  And I certainly bought a lot of books.
• 14:27
  I got given a lot of books and I read a lot of books in the Bath
• 14:30
  branch of Waterstones while my parents were doing book
• 14:34
  shopping. I I would put my grubby fingers
• 14:37
  all over a copy of Destiny of the Daleks and, and read it in
• 14:39
  the shop without buying it. And, and that way I consumed a
• 14:42
  lot of Doctor Who and it was the first way I consumed a lot of
• 14:45
  Doctor Who stories. So I do kind of get the JNT
• 14:48
  thing that it should be as faithful to the TV story as
• 14:51
  possible because just about at that time that it was still
• 14:54
  fulfilling that function where the book was an alternative to
• 14:56
  watching it again because, because most Doctor Who stories
• 15:00
  weren't being watched again. Yeah, if you had your, if you
• 15:02
  had a dealer of, you know, an Australian copy, maybe you're
• 15:07
  going to be lucky enough to see it.
• 15:09
  And, and don't think I wouldn't have hacked up a limb to, to, to
• 15:12
  get a video of any one of the stories I'd read in the book.
• 15:14
  But in the absence of available videos, I consumed a lot of
• 15:19
  Target novels and if anything, it was the the slimmer ones that
• 15:23
  I gravitated towards. Particularly if you're in a
• 15:26
  Waterstones, you, I mean you could get through about 6
• 15:28
  chapters in a shopping trip and that that way you could, you
• 15:31
  could get through one novel in about two.
• 15:33
  Days you mentioned destiny that I think that's only.
• 15:35
  Pages or something? You know, once.
• 15:37
  I read it more, so sorry if you ended up buying that copy.
• 15:42
  So I I do. I have a fondness for the
• 15:45
  simplicity of the script to page ones for all that, and I've got
• 15:48
  a shelf full of the things. I'm pretty unlikely to go back
• 15:52
  to any of the really kind of rudimentary ones for pleasure.
• 15:58
  Whereas I have found myself going back to some of the, you
• 16:00
  know, the McCoy ones and, and some of the slightly less
• 16:05
  predictable novelisations, the the Don Coston ones being the,
• 16:09
  the, the epitome to my mind of those where for all of the myth
• 16:13
  makers is the same story and the dialogue is the same.
• 16:15
  Tonally, it's such a different experience.
• 16:19
  It's just a different way of delivering that story.
• 16:21
  Even more so with the Gunfighters where you could
• 16:23
  argue that's what the gunfighters was aiming for, but
• 16:25
  reading the Gunfighters is, is like, it's like a version of
• 16:30
  what you saw in television, but on speed.
• 16:33
  And you know, and the Romans is just such a totally different
• 16:37
  experienced that even though the story, it basically follows the
• 16:39
  same beats, you come away from it with a completely different
• 16:43
  reading of it. So I I guess that is my
• 16:47
  ultimately my preference, but for all that I see the point of
• 16:51
  all of them. What's an example of a
• 16:53
  particularly good and a particularly bad target for you
• 16:56
  then? Well, OK, steering clear of the
• 16:58
  the kind of the late target novels that I've already wax
• 17:04
  lyrical about and and indeed the Donald Cotton ones about which
• 17:08
  I've spoken many times, I was thinking, do you know, I think
• 17:11
  the Christopher H Bid Mead ones are a pretty good example of
• 17:14
  really successful novelizations where actually, arguably the
• 17:17
  concepts work quite a lot better on the page than they do on
• 17:21
  television. Certainly Castrovelva just, it's
• 17:26
  such an intellectual idea that cannot be translated visually in
• 17:32
  the way that it needed to be to work made total sense on the
• 17:37
  page. And, and even the kind of
• 17:38
  unevenness, the fact that the first episode takes place in the
• 17:41
  TARDIS and, and, and the strangeness of that story makes
• 17:45
  much more sense when you read it.
• 17:46
  Lagopolis, I think works really, really well.
• 17:48
  Again, it's, it's conceptual and therefore as a reading
• 17:51
  experience, it's really satisfying.
• 17:55
  I I can't think of many target books that that have really
• 18:01
  disappointed, but OK, the nightmare fair that you know,
• 18:06
  one of the the missing Colin season and it's novelized by
• 18:11
  Graham Williams and I came out of that, but just thinking,
• 18:14
  well, thank God they never made this because it is nothing about
• 18:19
  it works nothing. I felt that way after I listened
• 18:23
  to the Big Finish Audio version as.
• 18:25
  Well, just as bad, but. Completely.
• 18:26
  This is so boring. It tried to change things,
• 18:29
  they've tried to mix it up a bit, they've tried to bring it
• 18:31
  up to date and it's still really, really dull.
• 18:34
  My trouble with the targets is, is I did original Doctor Who
• 18:38
  fiction 1st and then the target 2nd.
• 18:43
  And so and I by the time I got round to sort of actually
• 18:46
  reading the targets, I'd watched a lot of those stories again.
• 18:49
  So I knew the stories of this and out and back to front.
• 18:51
  So reading the targets of the script to page, I was like,
• 18:55
  well, I know all this. There's just, there's no
• 18:57
  surprises here. So for me, I really gravitated
• 19:00
  towards the late McCoy ones. I mean, I love the Pip and Jane
• 19:03
  Baker ones, but that's only because I was learning a lot of
• 19:06
  vocabulary and I was reading those ones because boy oh boy
• 19:09
  did they have a Theosaurus hand. Yeah.
• 19:12
  And so I've never really had that huge love of the targets
• 19:17
  that a lot of people that are slightly older than me have had,
• 19:21
  because a lot of the videos and everything was available when I
• 19:24
  was younger, and that was always my preference.
• 19:27
  Saying that, after reading this, it's really clear for me that my
• 19:33
  preference is anything that's veering towards original Doctor
• 19:38
  Who novels, because I, I think this secretly might be the very
• 19:41
  first virgin new adventure. We'll get into that later.
• 19:45
  So that's my preference. I think a really great example
• 19:48
  of a target is I read Survival recently and that blew my mind
• 19:54
  in that Rowan Monroe took what hit the screen but made it
• 20:00
  really vicious and nasty. And that the last episode, the
• 20:05
  televised last episode in the book, it's got Patterson being
• 20:08
  kicked to death. It's got bodies being thrown on
• 20:10
  funeral pyres. It's it's a really visceral
• 20:13
  experience. Again, like you said, in a way
• 20:16
  that they never could really realize on the screen no matter
• 20:19
  how much they tried. In that story.
• 20:21
  So I think that's a really great example.
• 20:23
  And I think the Robots of Death may be my least favorite target
• 20:27
  novel of all time because it is literally a pamphlet.
• 20:30
  And if there was ever a story where there was a a cast of
• 20:33
  characters or a setting that could be enhanced by a target
• 20:37
  novel, I just didn't do it. It is, I think it's 100 pages
• 20:42
  long or something like that. It is.
• 20:43
  You'd sneeze and it would, I think.
• 20:45
  There's a gap in the market there for someone to do because
• 20:48
  it is like a Agatha Christie. So all the back stories
• 20:53
  colliding in this one event is a whodunit.
• 20:55
  Well, look at the pirate planet, the James Goss pirate Planet.
• 20:58
  There's, I think there is a market to revisit those stories
• 21:02
  and add extra debt. I'm halfway through that for one
• 21:05
  of these book clubs at the moment and it's bloody
• 21:06
  brilliant. Well, let's push our target
• 21:11
  conversation towards Remembrance of the Daleks then, And I've got
• 21:16
  a question for all of you because I don't really know the
• 21:17
  answer to this. Were these coming out
• 21:20
  sequentially at the time, or were they still sort of
• 21:22
  intersped with lots of earlier stories?
• 21:26
  They were not coming out sequentially at all.
• 21:30
  Even the McCoy ones didn't come out sequentially.
• 21:34
  But they have cut like mostly run out of earlier stories by
• 21:38
  the time these ones came out. So they weren't coming out in
• 21:41
  order. And there might have been a few
• 21:43
  leftovers sprinkled in there. But I think by the time season
• 21:47
  25 was was was on telly, they they pretty much run their
• 21:51
  court. Maybe that it was around then
• 21:53
  that they were experimenting with kind of spin offs and Harry
• 21:55
  Sullivan's war. I can't remember exactly how
• 21:57
  that fits into the chronology. The reason I ask is does anybody
• 22:01
  have a list of hand? Does anyone know what came out
• 22:03
  the month before this? I'm just looking it up actually.
• 22:07
  Because basically my big question is, what on earth did
• 22:10
  people think if it was something like a Terence Dix script page?
• 22:13
  What did people think when this came out?
• 22:15
  Because it really isn't playing by the rules of the usual
• 22:19
  target. I don't think it was the first
• 22:22
  one of these kind of expansive ones to come out, but.
• 22:30
  Publication date is 1990. So.
• 22:33
  Yeah, so before we knew the show wasn't coming back.
• 22:36
  They were mopping up the the Mccoys and they were, they all
• 22:39
  sort of came out if you look at the numbering system on the
• 22:41
  spines. This used to really bother me
• 22:42
  when I was buying the late they didn't go in the right order.
• 22:47
  Yeah, I can't find the blasted list.
• 22:50
  I had it just before and now I've lost it.
• 22:55
  You know I've got I've got a target book in front of me,
• 22:57
  surely that will have a list inside it.
• 22:59
  Oh wow. You would think so.
• 23:00
  Well, the version I've got, one thing to say is the version I've
• 23:04
  got, the cover is so nice. My wife, who's not particularly
• 23:09
  bothered about Doctor Who, things just went, Oh my
• 23:11
  goodness, what's that? Oh, it's Doctor Who.
• 23:14
  Like she loved the she's a bookophile and reads constantly
• 23:18
  and she was attracted to the cover.
• 23:20
  I went, oh, it's Doctor Who, but.
• 23:23
  Ian's reprint, The recent reprint does have a very kind of
• 23:28
  fairly minimalist and stylish cover.
• 23:31
  I can't. Stand that cover.
• 23:33
  I really can't. Which one?
• 23:36
  Which one? Can't stand Jason because I'm
• 23:37
  now holding up the original. The the reprint The reprint the
• 23:41
  original the the cover illustration by Alastair Pearson
• 23:43
  is absolutely gorgeous. The reprint is just Sylvester
• 23:46
  McCoy looking over his shoulder and a tiny Dalek off in the
• 23:50
  back. But you know what?
• 23:51
  It's I think it also when we say recent, it was for the 50th
• 23:56
  anniversary, but. Which was 10 years.
• 23:59
  Ago. OK, I'm just going to crumble to
• 24:01
  dust in the corner. Because it's in the list, It's
• 24:04
  in the list with it's the only TV one, I think that's in the
• 24:09
  list of the 50th anniversary collection.
• 24:11
  So we have 10 Little Aliens by Stephen Cole, Dreams of Empire,
• 24:14
  Justin Richards, Last of the Gathering or However You Say
• 24:18
  That by Gatiss, Best of a Death, Jonathan Morris, Fear of the
• 24:22
  Dark Players, Terrence Dicks, Earth Well by Jacqueline Rayner,
• 24:27
  something by Gareth Roberts, and Beautiful Chaos by Gary Russell
• 24:33
  and the Dan and Dan Abner. So that's quite a list of
• 24:36
  amazing writers there. I'll say.
• 24:37
  One thing though, for those 50th anniversary, because that's what
• 24:40
  I read as well, man. And man, they put some real care
• 24:43
  into just the binding and the the layout of those because they
• 24:46
  read so much better than your average target where everything.
• 24:50
  'S yeah, but this? A tiny book.
• 24:51
  This this this cover, which the the listeners is a very stylish
• 24:57
  You'd almost think you were looking at a John Le Carre or
• 24:59
  something because it is very Moody.
• 25:02
  But for some reason I just think it really suits the pros.
• 25:07
  The pros isn't normal Doctor Who it's and I do like the TV
• 25:13
  version, but I think I prefer the I think I generally prefer
• 25:16
  it in novel form because I it's not my era Doctor Who.
• 25:21
  So even when it went out live, I was about this is quite good,
• 25:24
  apart from all the shonky special effects and Ace saying
• 25:28
  he's a dirty, stinking grass and things like that, which is still
• 25:32
  in the book. But it's a, it's like you say,
• 25:35
  it is a bridge between between targets aimed at children and
• 25:42
  new adventures aimed at supposed adults.
• 25:46
  And I think I actually in tone, I think I like where this is
• 25:50
  heading and I don't massively like the destination of the new,
• 25:53
  especially transit from the same author.
• 25:56
  I think that's like you need a course correction there, come
• 25:59
  back, you've gone too far, but. I mean, that is well, thank you,
• 26:03
  Ian, because of my I was going to ask you all sort of what your
• 26:06
  opening thoughts were about the book.
• 26:07
  Can I just answer your question? I've found a chronology.
• 26:11
  Oh yes, so am I. Quite surprising.
• 26:14
  It's not what I was expecting. So I'm I have remembered
• 26:18
  correctly that the, the last batch to be the the last four to
• 26:21
  be published were remembrance, ghost light survival and the
• 26:26
  curse of Henrik. And I remember, I pretty much
• 26:29
  remember those hitting the shelves.
• 26:30
  But before remembrance, we have the space pirates.
• 26:34
  Before that the happiness patrol, before that planet,
• 26:37
  planet of giants. So you see what I mean?
• 26:39
  They had a few leftover. Then you've got all the the
• 26:42
  nightmare fare and the ultimate evil.
• 26:44
  So the the The Lost Stories and the Greatest show in the Galaxy,
• 26:49
  Silver Nemesis. And then you've got the two
• 26:51
  novelizations of the Daleks Master Plan printed in two
• 26:55
  volumes and The Chase. So it is.
• 26:57
  It's a real mixed bag. Chase was pretty good actually.
• 27:00
  I seem to recall that was John Peel wasn't.
• 27:03
  It yeah, and he did the the the master plan stories as well.
• 27:08
  Well, how about you, Jason? What's, what's like your opening
• 27:12
  thoughts? I remember to say the Daleks.
• 27:13
  Do you love it? I absolutely love it.
• 27:17
  It was, it was one of the earliest ones that I got and I
• 27:20
  got it because I loved the cover.
• 27:23
  Partly. I remember getting it from, I
• 27:26
  think it was WH Smith or John Menzies.
• 27:28
  No, John Menzies in Eastbourne. That's where I bought it from.
• 27:33
  And it was, yeah. So it was.
• 27:34
  A club that was shopping in Eastbourne back in the day.
• 27:37
  Indeed. And yeah, I, I had, I had a
• 27:43
  couple of target novelizations at that time, but this is one of
• 27:48
  the earlier ones. And I think I started quite well
• 27:50
  because my first ones that I read were things like the Arc in
• 27:54
  Space by Ian Marta and Earth Shock, also by Ian Marta.
• 27:59
  Nigel Robinson's novelization of the Sensorites is absolutely
• 28:01
  gorgeous as well. So, you know, that was
• 28:04
  marvelous. And then this.
• 28:06
  And even now I still love it. It's one of the only two of my
• 28:10
  original Target collection that I still have.
• 28:12
  I kept it because it was such a great read, because of all the
• 28:17
  depth and detail on extra stuff that it chucks in there.
• 28:22
  And it's really easy to read as well.
• 28:24
  It's, you know, it's not impenetrably dense.
• 28:27
  All the added stuff hasn't extended the page count too far,
• 28:32
  and it hasn't made it harder to read.
• 28:35
  You know exactly what's going on, where everybody is, what's
• 28:37
  happening. You can, when you've seen the
• 28:39
  story on Telly and you read this, you can picture the things
• 28:43
  happening because he does basically tell the same story.
• 28:48
  And yeah, I absolutely love it. The only bit I could have done
• 28:51
  without now at the time I thought it was new and cool and
• 28:57
  interesting, is all that ancient Gallifrey stuff around the
• 29:00
  actual creation of the Hand of Omega.
• 29:04
  I, I think they, I think you could lift that out of this book
• 29:06
  without any detrimental effect whatsoever and in fact possibly
• 29:12
  to positive effect in everything that came afterwards, because so
• 29:15
  much of what came afterwards drew from this.
• 29:19
  All those new adventure writers were taking no while they were
• 29:22
  reading. Yeah, exactly.
• 29:24
  So I absolutely. Love it at all?
• 29:27
  No, no. Well, James, hello.
• 29:30
  Remembrance of the diet. Now, I know this is your era, so
• 29:33
  I've got a feeling that you may love this, but you may.
• 29:36
  You do have a habit of surprising me sometimes.
• 29:38
  Oh, I love it. OK.
• 29:41
  Yeah, I knew that was coming. So a story I've I've told on
• 29:46
  this podcast before. Remembrance was my first proper
• 29:51
  Doctor Who after being shown the Dalek invasion Cushing film and
• 29:58
  my best friend from primary school showed me episodes 2-3
• 30:01
  and four fell in love with Doctor Who for the rest of my
• 30:04
  life. I think I went back to his house
• 30:07
  and episode 2 had been wiped over by that point.
• 30:10
  But I watched 3 and 4 again and I'm a little bit, so I hadn't
• 30:15
  realized it was 1990 that the book came out.
• 30:17
  So kind of three years later I picked this up and it's the
• 30:21
  first Doctor Who book I bought because I recognized the title.
• 30:25
  All of the others, I mean, I'd read, I'd read targets that had
• 30:28
  been in school libraries or, or public libraries or in the bath
• 30:32
  section of Austin's while my parents were shopping.
• 30:36
  I, I saw this and it was, I have to have that.
• 30:39
  I have to have it now. And I possibly even, which is
• 30:44
  unlike me, but I possibly did, without even deliberating, take
• 30:47
  it straight to the counter and buy it that day.
• 30:50
  Such was the, the, the memory I had of remembrance of the
• 30:52
  dialects. And then, of course, what
• 30:53
  happened was I, I read this book again and again and again at a,
• 30:58
  at a point when the idea of owning the, the the story to
• 31:02
  watch again was as fanciful as anything could could seem.
• 31:09
  So in a, in a funny way, this is certainly the first way that I
• 31:12
  experienced episode 1. But this is also kind of where
• 31:15
  the memories of this story really kind of bedded in because
• 31:18
  I read this so many times and I when I picked this up for this
• 31:22
  podcast, you know, open the open the book and the first thing you
• 31:26
  get is a dedication to Andrew, who opened the door and Anna who
• 31:31
  pushed me through it. Andrew, I presume, is Andrew
• 31:34
  Cartmel Anna a wife or girlfriend, I don't know.
• 31:39
  But, you know, I didn't know who Andrew was when I first bought
• 31:43
  this book, but that it just seemed like such a poetical way
• 31:46
  to open. And then you open the next page
• 31:48
  and there's a quote from Richard the 3rd and my young mind is
• 31:52
  going, this is the most epic book ever.
• 31:56
  It begins with a, a, a beautifully written dedication
• 32:00
  and then a quote from Richard the 3rd and then you get a
• 32:02
  prologue and it's the first doctor in a junkyard.
• 32:06
  I mean, it, it, it just ticks all the boxes to fire my just my
• 32:10
  at a point where I was just getting into kind of the history
• 32:14
  of Doctor Who and without knowing that much about it, this
• 32:19
  was just dropping hints left, right and center and rereading
• 32:23
  it. I realized, and I've always said
• 32:25
  that remembrance when I finally got it on video, that prized
• 32:29
  purchase of the Dalek tin, it didn't disappoint.
• 32:32
  But there's a caveat, which is I do remember feeling that the
• 32:39
  this is such a stupid thing to say, but I'm going to say it
• 32:42
  anyway. I do remember feeling that the
• 32:45
  televised version was a lot more televisual than I had remembered
• 32:49
  it, because what you get in the book is not televisual.
• 32:54
  It's cinematic. And it's at that slight shift in
• 32:58
  tone where he expands the he expands the universe he's
• 33:05
  writing about. He does it in lots of very
• 33:07
  clever ways, but he expands the backstories to all of the
• 33:09
  characters. He populates it with more
• 33:11
  believable people. He also expands the geography of
• 33:15
  that. And this is maybe the point
• 33:16
  where I realized that the, the, the televised version was
• 33:19
  limited in a way that my imagination hadn't been.
• 33:22
  In my head, that final kind of battle between the two Dalek
• 33:26
  factions had taken place over a much bigger area.
• 33:30
  And what you see on television, of course, takes place on 2
• 33:32
  streets. And I, I visited them because
• 33:35
  that's the kind of person I am. And it's a really, really tiny
• 33:38
  area. Of course it is, because that's
• 33:40
  how you choose locations. You, you don't move your cameras
• 33:43
  around to get half of London into it, You film it on 2
• 33:47
  streets. But in my head that I'd been
• 33:50
  much more of a journey with many more kind of locations
• 33:53
  incorporated and much more of a sense of the journey between
• 33:57
  Ratliff's Yard and Cull Hill School.
• 34:00
  And that's what he gives you in the book.
• 34:02
  And he gives you a real sense of scale, both in terms of the
• 34:06
  space it's taking over and the number of Daleks involved in
• 34:09
  this battle and the complexity of the kind of the game that's
• 34:13
  being played there. Which kind of sums up my feeling
• 34:17
  about the book, which is that actually it's telling the story,
• 34:19
  but in a way that very subtly and very elegantly without
• 34:23
  actually out saying it's welcome.
• 34:26
  It's not overwritten. It's very, very efficient, just
• 34:31
  expands the the remit of this story.
• 34:34
  So that and and invites, I think, the readers to to employ
• 34:37
  their imagination in a way that is unusual for for novelization.
• 34:42
  Yeah, that. That's in my notes.
• 34:44
  The battle scene I just remembered, I felt a sense of
• 34:48
  real peril and claustrophobia, like the enemies at the gate,
• 34:52
  which I didn't get watching. You know, much as I'd like the
• 34:54
  TV episode I never got, it was like, oh, here's a few dialects
• 34:58
  trundling down the street. It's.
• 34:59
  Like it's it's. Great.
• 35:01
  And in this one, it's really is like, Oh my God, there's a war.
• 35:03
  Climactic, yeah. Yeah, it really, really thrilled
• 35:06
  me. You know, I'm 52 years old and
• 35:08
  I'm being thrilled by a Target Doctor Who.
• 35:10
  That's, that's pretty good ride thing.
• 35:13
  When I first saw Remembrance of the Daleks VHS, in that fabulous
• 35:17
  scene that James was just talking about, those battle
• 35:20
  scenes, it's kind of my door. I think I've got a ghost.
• 35:24
  Those those scenes of the dialects exploding in the
• 35:26
  streets was the most exciting thing I'd ever seen in my entire
• 35:29
  life, and I'd watch movies and all sorts.
• 35:31
  I still think it holds up pretty well today.
• 35:33
  Oh, yeah, yeah, because I had a similar thing with Destiny of
• 35:35
  the dialects. And now I see gaffer tape and,
• 35:39
  and, and scuff Marks and, and all manner of things.
• 35:43
  But yeah, so that's, that's the sort of magic of watching it
• 35:46
  when you were a kid, isn't it? But.
• 35:48
  But it both end up because because they've clearly thrown
• 35:51
  quite a lot of budgets at it. And you know, it's ironically,
• 35:55
  it's one of the one of the Doctor Who's stories where I'm
• 35:57
  not sure we need a special edition, but we're going to get
• 35:59
  one anyway, which I shall watch with with interest.
• 36:03
  I, I approach this this time because I don't have the great
• 36:07
  nostalgic love for this book that I think some of you have.
• 36:11
  And I did come away with three issues, not massive ones, but
• 36:14
  three, like, oh, OK, first time writer.
• 36:18
  I could have done without that. But in terms of
• 36:21
  characterization, the the the little bits he adds to the
• 36:25
  characters with just like a, a little liner, a couple of words
• 36:29
  in every single scene. I couldn't believe how he
• 36:32
  fleshed them out beyond what we saw on the screen.
• 36:34
  All the stuff he does with Gilmore and Rachel with that
• 36:38
  relationship, which is barely there on the screen, you know,
• 36:41
  because the story is moving all the time.
• 36:43
  But we get flashbacks to the past and what they really mean
• 36:46
  to each other. And that wonderful bit Jason
• 36:48
  that you talked about before where he says her name and she
• 36:52
  she realizes for the first time that's the first time he's ever
• 36:55
  just all of that stuff. And it's in every scene with
• 36:58
  every single character. I understood about Ratcliffe
• 37:01
  Moore, I understood about Mike Moore, I understood about Davros
• 37:04
  Moore. I understood what the special
• 37:07
  weapons Dalek was thinking at the end of this story.
• 37:11
  You know, I just I think in terms of characterization, this
• 37:13
  is possibly cursor Fenrick aside, the best target book.
• 37:19
  I'm. Looking forward to reading
• 37:20
  cursor Fenrick in a similar way to this, but I'd I'd agree I
• 37:24
  think we could probably. I have a whole little section on
• 37:26
  the abomination and if that's a step too far because that's that
• 37:31
  feels like a step too far to me. Because the problem is with the
• 37:33
  with famously the Daleks can be written in a way that is pretty
• 37:39
  boring and just about works on television because there's the
• 37:43
  visual. But actually in a in a book,
• 37:45
  you're you're left with cannon fodder and and and weaponry.
• 37:50
  And what he does in this is really, and this is, this is
• 37:55
  skilled writing. And I think it's this is where
• 37:59
  kind of the the writer of transit comes in.
• 38:01
  I think it's a writer who who has absorbed a lot of stuff that
• 38:05
  he's reading as well. Because it seems to me like
• 38:06
  someone quite well versed in in sci-fi.
• 38:09
  He characterizes the Daleks. He makes the other Daleks afraid
• 38:12
  of the abomination. He has a hierarchy, he has
• 38:14
  relationships, he has some thinking stuff, which is exactly
• 38:18
  what you need if they're going to be at all interesting to read
• 38:20
  about. But he just changes the way he
• 38:22
  writes about them. And he uses the language of
• 38:26
  computers and neurons and he he describes their interactions as
• 38:34
  as if he is describing the way that a not quite living half
• 38:41
  computer. I'd messed up kind of amalgam of
• 38:44
  machine and and BLOB would think.
• 38:48
  And I think those passages are really beautifully written and
• 38:51
  they again, they don't out say they're welcome.
• 38:53
  You wouldn't want pages and pages of it, but there's enough
• 38:55
  of it that you never kind of think that he's just humanized
• 39:00
  the dialects for the sake of making them interesting.
• 39:02
  Yeah, I think that's brilliant. And I, you know, little bits
• 39:06
  like when he talks about how the shuffle commanders was so
• 39:11
  incensed by the order to use the abomination, the special weapons
• 39:15
  that it's gun stick twitched involuntarily and it considered
• 39:18
  questioning the order, but that was not appropriate.
• 39:20
  You know, little things like that that, as you say, make the
• 39:23
  Daleks much more interesting to read about rather than just
• 39:26
  descriptions of phalanxes of Daleks being blown up on the
• 39:30
  street. I like.
• 39:31
  The simplicity order. I like the fact that he says
• 39:34
  what the mark of its insanity was that of all the Daleks and
• 39:38
  the great race of Daleks, it had a name.
• 39:41
  And that's how that's how you mark it out, you know, because
• 39:44
  all the. Residents talking, talking of
• 39:46
  names, the one bit, and I think this is, I mean, my version
• 39:50
  starts not with it starts. It doesn't start with the
• 39:54
  dedication. It starts with a forward from
• 39:56
  Ben Aranovic written in 2012, where he sort of says.
• 40:00
  Invaluable that, I think. Oh yeah, it's brilliant.
• 40:02
  But but it's but so I think he'd probably agree himself that it's
• 40:05
  it's he basically wrote it at a clip and it's Oh my God, I'm
• 40:08
  getting to write a book. So it's an amazingly well
• 40:10
  written thing for a young man. But then I would say I could
• 40:15
  probably have done about the, the silly, the silly Venkatri,
• 40:19
  Daverett and all that sort of stuff for the, for the names of
• 40:22
  Daleks ships and. Is he the first person that did
• 40:26
  that? The the the kind of.
• 40:28
  Well, no. Well, in a weird way, Terry
• 40:29
  Nation did it in the comics. He, he tried, he tried to get
• 40:34
  the Daleks going with a glossary of stupid names and, and and
• 40:39
  their language and everything. I think Lord of the Rings or
• 40:42
  something was sort of in his head, people liking so, but all
• 40:46
  that stuff didn't catch on. So it's weird when it comes
• 40:48
  back. So is this the same kind of?
• 40:51
  Is this using the same linguistic device?
• 40:53
  Because it seems kind of like Cod Latin has informed this.
• 40:57
  Yeah, it's it's not. They're not.
• 40:59
  As far as I know, they don't seem to.
• 41:00
  None of the none of the words make me think, oh this is what
• 41:03
  he did in the TV 21 comics. I didn't recognise it from them
• 41:06
  and. And but it but it but it but it
• 41:08
  has a similar John Carter from Mars kind of bollocks to it.
• 41:14
  I think that that is. His thought?
• 41:16
  Because we said in transit, you know that glossary of terms that
• 41:19
  he was using sort of interesting language to explain to you.
• 41:23
  And then he does the same thing again in the also people where
• 41:26
  he brings in the people and all of their names are are in
• 41:29
  pronounceable and featuring a load of punching I.
• 41:32
  I think, I think it's a sign of him being a sign of a youthful
• 41:34
  writer. And I think the the young, the
• 41:36
  new adventures are full of these tips from all of them, which is
• 41:42
  like going back to the you've got Richard the 3rd at the
• 41:45
  beginning. Oh, I knew clever.
• 41:47
  But you know, you don't need that stuff unless it's really,
• 41:49
  really clever and you know, if, if it's there for a reason.
• 41:53
  And, and, and I, I mean that, Richard, the third quote is
• 41:57
  maybe it's just just finished reading it, but is it, is it, is
• 41:59
  it the whole thing about the abomination?
• 42:01
  Because it's too pretentious. I don't deny that now, but.
• 42:04
  Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. It's it's it's so pretentious.
• 42:07
  It's so a young man writing and no one.
• 42:09
  You don't need that one. Yeah, you.
• 42:11
  Love that stuff as a kid, don't you?
• 42:12
  And. The Dalek language, I have to
• 42:15
  say, I mean, is it? It's the first use, I think, of
• 42:17
  the Khafarat Ghatri, which is the the, the name that the
• 42:21
  Daleks have for the Doctor, that as a child the Daleks have for
• 42:26
  the Doctor, that it's so evocative.
• 42:28
  And it does seem that the kind of Ben Aronovich is the kind of
• 42:31
  guy who would have spent a day working out the Dalek language
• 42:34
  and the logic behind it. So terms wanky though they may
• 42:38
  come across, they are at least consistent.
• 42:40
  It's not Pip and Jane just making up some bullshit, it's
• 42:43
  and a Rodovich coming up with the language briefly.
• 42:47
  Leave Pip and Jane Baker alone, all right?
• 42:49
  Another aspect of his use of that language is that on the TV
• 42:55
  version of Remembrance of the Daleks, when the Emperor Dalek
• 42:59
  Dome cracks open to reveal Davros, that's a complete shock.
• 43:04
  But with Eronovich's use of the Dalek language and his getting
• 43:11
  into the head of the Emperor, he seeds the idea that it's Davros
• 43:14
  before the thing opens. Because in the book, there's no
• 43:18
  need to wait for that. So when he when he when?
• 43:22
  They're they're clues so that the intelligent young reader can
• 43:25
  go, I've worked this out myself and.
• 43:27
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 43:29
  It's always interesting when the writers novelize their own works
• 43:32
  well, because it does give them a chance to have another pass
• 43:35
  and if something perhaps didn't come across as well as they
• 43:38
  would have liked in the TV version.
• 43:40
  I wondered if the race aspects of Remembrance of the Dallas,
• 43:43
  because with all the stuff where he was writing about Mike and
• 43:48
  Radcliffe, a lot of that is far more explicit in the prose, I
• 43:52
  thought, and far more obvious before the twist hits that it
• 43:55
  that it was in the TV story. Yeah.
• 43:58
  It's weird Mike doesn't come across it's.
• 44:02
  Quite unlikeable in past. Yeah, you're there because
• 44:04
  you're inside his head going, God, he's a horrible little
• 44:06
  fascist right from the beginning.
• 44:08
  You're not just seeing the outside of him.
• 44:09
  So it's a totally different. And I don't think it's bad at
• 44:12
  all. I think it's brilliant.
• 44:13
  But you really? Interesting for it.
• 44:16
  You know that Ace has fallen for a wrong and.
• 44:19
  Can I say? All the way through, which works
• 44:21
  brilliantly on a totally different way from the TV.
• 44:23
  And the other thing I think that was interesting about Mike's
• 44:25
  racism in the book version is how it relates to the other
• 44:32
  characters who are present. So for example, this isn't
• 44:36
  mentioned at all on screen in or even hinted at, but Rachel is
• 44:41
  Jewish in the novelisation. Yeah, very, very yeah.
• 44:44
  And she is working with and apparently good friends with
• 44:47
  basically a Nazi. But it's also made clear that
• 44:52
  you've got someone who is a racist serving in the British
• 44:55
  Army, which is, you know, this is not what we want to think
• 44:59
  about. We want to think about the
• 44:59
  British Army as being against all that.
• 45:02
  She knows so Jason she and there's a.
• 45:04
  Very quick exchange. Between Rachel and Mike, where
• 45:07
  she explicitly says something about Ace being British.
• 45:11
  That's exactly what I was going to say.
• 45:13
  Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah.
• 45:14
  Yeah. And they say, yeah, I wouldn't
• 45:15
  want her to be foreign. And they laugh it off rather
• 45:18
  than anything else. And of course, it's not clear on
• 45:22
  the screen. But if you think about it, every
• 45:23
  one of them must have seen that sign in Mrs. Smith's window.
• 45:27
  And yet they're still happy to sit in her living room and, you
• 45:31
  know, eat their eat their breakfast with her.
• 45:33
  So it's an interesting aspect, that is.
• 45:37
  And it's, as you say, it's far more explicit.
• 45:40
  They, you know, they go through Ratcliffe and his views, the way
• 45:44
  he groomed Mike from a young age to be.
• 45:46
  Where he gives him the chocolate.
• 45:48
  As a kid, and that's the start. Of the grooming, essentially.
• 45:52
  Yeah, exactly. He's a groomer.
• 45:53
  He's he's, he's, you know, he's grooming people to his cause
• 45:56
  and. But I don't think, I don't think
• 45:59
  other writers were writing Doctor Who books like this, you
• 46:02
  know, No, I don't think where, where that's a possibility.
• 46:04
  Where the bit where Mike goes into Ace's room and she's
• 46:07
  clearly flashing a bit of flesh, that wasn't in other Doctor Who
• 46:11
  books either. This was a completely new way of
• 46:13
  writing Doctor Who. Books.
• 46:14
  Yeah, I'm going to mention that one as well.
• 46:16
  They they draw attention to it. On the theme of fascism though,
• 46:19
  which obviously runs here and and it's embedded in the story,
• 46:22
  like a lot of it, it's very intelligently gone.
• 46:24
  The Daleks are put some actual kind of Nazis in in my story and
• 46:28
  draw parallels. And I think it's rather
• 46:31
  ungenerously been written off by some people.
• 46:33
  More recently, the television version has been written off as
• 46:36
  a slightly on the nose and, you know, not a terribly
• 46:39
  sophisticated examination of that theme.
• 46:43
  I disagree with that, but I do think that even though it's more
• 46:46
  explicit in the book, it's really well informed and he and
• 46:50
  he contextualises all of these characters within a his
• 46:55
  historical context that makes absolute sense.
• 47:00
  And that the the parallels are not just between the Daleks and
• 47:05
  Ratcliffe and his his thugs. There's a whole parallel going
• 47:09
  on between Mike and Ace about radicalization, and within pages
• 47:16
  of the grooming paragraph where it tells in a way that is, I
• 47:20
  found disturbingly plausible how Mike as a young man had been,
• 47:28
  you know, deliberately groomed. And what?
• 47:31
  What? Is it it's I am.
• 47:34
  Actually. Going to read the passage
• 47:35
  because it's. Because it's a it's a really
• 47:37
  incisive bit of writing. I found it.
• 47:46
  I've got it. It's it's it's great.
• 47:49
  Podcasting this, so this is going to be Ken Moss.
• 47:57
  No, he's already done his reading for this, don't worry.
• 47:59
  It's great. It's where I've got it.
• 48:10
  Sorry listeners. No, no, don't worry, I'll take
• 48:12
  that bit out. I'll sound like I.
• 48:15
  Was much better prepared. Than I was got posted notes and
• 48:18
  everything. The chocolate had been rich and
• 48:20
  dark. Mike made it last a long time.
• 48:23
  As Mike grew up, Bradcliffe was talk to him.
• 48:25
  He told Mike about the world, how the bankers and communists
• 48:29
  were all in league together. How the government planned to
• 48:32
  ship in Negroes from abroad to keep wages down and force decent
• 48:35
  white people out of their jobs. Mike had absorbed it all just.
• 48:41
  Pages before. That you've got the sequence
• 48:44
  where, again, I think it's been unfairly maligned as not a
• 48:47
  terribly subtle examination, examination of racism.
• 48:51
  But you've got the passage where Ace, or as she's described in
• 48:55
  this paragraph, Dorothy's friend Manisha's house is firebombed
• 48:59
  and she experiences racism. And her response to that is,
• 49:04
  well, as as I said, it was Dorothy who stared at the burnt
• 49:06
  house, the burnt face, the burnt life, the racist graffiti.
• 49:10
  And it was Dorothy who stared at the words Paki's out on the wall
• 49:13
  of the playground. It was Ace who blew away the
• 49:16
  wall with 2 1/2 kilograms of nitronine.
• 49:19
  That I think they're deliberately placed in that way.
• 49:22
  And they are both different types of radicalization in that
• 49:26
  way. You could one is seen as a a
• 49:29
  negative and 1 is a positive. I'm not sure the author is as
• 49:34
  foolish as to make that pronouncement.
• 49:36
  He leaves the readers to make up their mind.
• 49:38
  But it's really interesting. Those two characters are sort of
• 49:42
  counterparts to each other as well.
• 49:44
  I suppose that's good to say. Where it's it's good that this
• 49:47
  was published in 1990, right? So we've had season 26 come out
• 49:52
  at this point. And he does add in, you know,
• 49:54
  layers of ghost light and, and other stories as well and seeds
• 49:58
  it into this it it does all feel like it's embedded in the whole
• 50:02
  era, doesn't it? But you say that I I was.
• 50:04
  Reading this during the Southport riots and I got to
• 50:10
  this bit about Ratcliffe. They had called him a traitor.
• 50:15
  Men. That had stood shoulder to
• 50:16
  shoulder with him in the 1930s, good men who had marched down
• 50:19
  Cable St. proud to be English, proud to fight against the Jew
• 50:23
  in the Bolshevik, proud to stand up for their race.
• 50:26
  Even they had rejected him, blinded by the Zionist
• 50:28
  propaganda. I was reading this on the tube,
• 50:31
  you know, at the same time as reading news reports of rioting
• 50:34
  and thinking, my God, you know, this is, this is as relevant now
• 50:38
  as it was in the 80s, as, you know, as it was in the 60s, as
• 50:44
  it was in the 30s. References to Cable St.
• 50:46
  You know, we, we, we just experienced a, a modern
• 50:49
  equivalent to Cable St. And it just seemed to me that
• 50:51
  kind of the, the way he'd written about it actually was
• 50:54
  really intelligent because none of these characters are
• 50:56
  cardboard cut outs. He doesn't let Ratcliffe and
• 51:02
  Mike off with being stereotypes. He absolutely digs deep into
• 51:07
  their characters. He shows them as damaged.
• 51:09
  I mean, there's a sense that Mike is has experienced
• 51:12
  certainly the aftermath of war and and has experienced some
• 51:15
  kind of trauma. But certainly, as you say, he's
• 51:18
  also been groomed. And I thought that was really,
• 51:20
  really interesting and, and, and intelligent.
• 51:22
  And I love that it's that close to the, the surface.
• 51:24
  Yeah. And Mike, Mike is?
• 51:27
  Sorry, I just was going to say that.
• 51:32
  Go, Jason. I was just going to say I don't
• 51:37
  as you were. Saying, James, that people have
• 51:39
  written it off as a not terribly sophisticated in look at racism
• 51:44
  and everything. And I get so annoyed when I see
• 51:47
  people doing that for two reasons. 1 is this is a target
• 51:51
  novelisation of a family entertainment show.
• 51:54
  It's not supposed to be deep and sophisticated.
• 51:56
  And two, racism is not a deep and sophisticated subject.
• 52:00
  You don't need to be subtle when you're including it in your work
• 52:04
  and examining it because it's just awful and it should be
• 52:08
  treated as such. You shouldn't be putting in tiny
• 52:10
  little subtle things into that scene where she turns around the
• 52:14
  no. Colour side in the TV version is
• 52:16
  as relevant today as it was in 1988 and it would have been the
• 52:22
  same. In 1960.
• 52:23
  Three, and this is yeah. And especially when, as is made
• 52:28
  very clear, because Ben Eronovich gives most of his
• 52:31
  characters or half his characters references to prior
• 52:35
  conflicts. 1963 was very much within living memory of the end
• 52:39
  of World War 2, which was a massive battle against fascism
• 52:44
  and. You know most of the.
• 52:46
  People there lived through it, and even the older characters
• 52:49
  are given World War One backgrounds.
• 52:50
  The vicar, for example, is a World War 1 veteran.
• 52:52
  That's why he's blind. So war and conflict and racial
• 52:57
  conflict in particular, is just woven through this story
• 53:01
  throughout, and even more so in the book than it is in the TV
• 53:04
  show. I got the sense that all of the
• 53:06
  characters. Are are touched by war,
• 53:08
  actually. Obviously there's a lot of
• 53:10
  characters who are directly involved in the military, but
• 53:12
  Mrs. Smith is a war widow. All of these.
• 53:17
  Minor characters as well seem. To have been touched by by
• 53:19
  different wars as well. You know, some of some of them
• 53:21
  are Second World War, some of them go further back from that.
• 53:24
  And of course, Davros, the Daleks.
• 53:26
  Are the outcome of war, you know, so the the sense.
• 53:31
  Of time is it's really, really well evoked 1963 and London in
• 53:37
  particular is just, it just feels so real.
• 53:40
  I mean it kind of did in the TV version, but I just think in the
• 53:44
  book it's it's even better. It really feels like that whole
• 53:48
  generation. I mean this is 9 years before I
• 53:51
  was born and so my you know, so my grandparents, my granddad was
• 54:00
  they always. Hinted that he.
• 54:01
  Was very pro Hitler. He was certainly a racist when I
• 54:05
  knew him and he didn't fight, he didn't get interned, but he was
• 54:10
  very much a fan of Enoch and would talk and he would use the
• 54:13
  N word a lot. And he was very posh, kind of
• 54:16
  Masonic, you know, head head Mason and and he was very much
• 54:22
  Ratcliffe kind of person. And then and then my other, you
• 54:28
  know, my my other grandparents fought in the war and, you know,
• 54:31
  and that sort of casual racism of the generation and the and
• 54:36
  the just yeah, but but the privations.
• 54:40
  Of the 40s. And the 50s and everyone knowing
• 54:43
  someone who'd been killed or, you know, or badly wounded or
• 54:47
  everything that people had lost and the whole people growing up
• 54:50
  in the rubble. You know, I've got people in my
• 54:53
  families that, you know, in my family that's, you know, that's
• 54:56
  how their lives, that's how their childhood was evacuation
• 55:00
  or. Rubble.
• 55:00
  Or, you know, it's and he really captures that brilliantly.
• 55:05
  Racism is a depressingly. Timeless theme, isn't it?
• 55:09
  Yeah, there is a bit where it. Talks.
• 55:11
  About how having talked about Radcliffe as a a war prisoner,
• 55:17
  it talks about how his original kind of followers fell away from
• 55:20
  him and actually how the time of, you know, new growth in the
• 55:25
  50s was a harder time. It talks about how half hearted
• 55:29
  fascism was in in a decade where people were finding New Hope and
• 55:33
  new employment. And I thought that was really as
• 55:35
  well, you know, that fascism arises from hardship.
• 55:39
  There was a couple of lines. There was one line.
• 55:41
  Where? He's goes the association rabble
• 55:44
  driven by hatred. The influx of new immigrants
• 55:46
  helped. They were easy targets, more
• 55:49
  obvious than Jews, more different.
• 55:51
  I was like, fuck me, kids were reading this book.
• 55:54
  Oh, yeah. But it's it's brilliant.
• 55:56
  But it just reminded me of, you know, when you read reports of
• 55:58
  Nigel Farage when the young lad was washed up on the beach dead,
• 56:02
  and it was on the front pages. And there's that report from one
• 56:07
  of his aides who sort of had recanted the UKIP way.
• 56:11
  And he was just saying for our just first response was damn,
• 56:15
  and this is going to play badly for us in the referendum and
• 56:19
  things like that because it makes people suddenly see
• 56:23
  immigrants and people on the boats as human again.
• 56:26
  And you know, and that was so he is, you know, these people
• 56:29
  exist. They walk amongst us, they they
• 56:31
  tweet amongst us. And like you're saying, you
• 56:34
  know, we've just had a whole bunch of race riots who are
• 56:39
  exactly the. Same reasons.
• 56:41
  I don't think that sort of fine. Line between US and the Daleks
• 56:45
  has ever been quite as thin as it is here.
• 56:47
  Or more. I also could.
• 56:49
  Imagine that. JNT did not read this book
• 56:52
  before it was published because I could imagine him reading this
• 56:54
  with his red pen going, no, that's got to come out, not
• 56:57
  this. We can't have him in her room
• 56:59
  salivating over her how I think he was.
• 57:03
  He was. Properly.
• 57:06
  But she goes, what is it? She.
• 57:08
  She. Knows what he's looking at or
• 57:10
  something like that. Like, yeah, what's he looking on
• 57:12
  the nose? You know what he's.
• 57:14
  Looking at she. Hikes the sheet a bit higher.
• 57:16
  That's it, yeah. And especially.
• 57:18
  When you remember that. Ace is supposed to be 16 at this
• 57:20
  point. So I will say.
• 57:25
  Within all of this. Sophistication and all of these
• 57:28
  impressive things that Ben Aronovich was doing.
• 57:31
  There was one thing that really irritated me at the start of the
• 57:33
  book, and that is the, you know, he was doing very, very clever
• 57:37
  things, but he didn't bother to describe physically any of his
• 57:42
  characters at the start of the book.
• 57:44
  And I'm like, OK, yeah, we've all seen the TV show.
• 57:47
  We know what these people look like, but this is a book.
• 57:49
  And. And so, you know, even Terence
• 57:51
  would give us an open on his face or just something,
• 57:54
  something. But because all those scenes
• 57:56
  were so brilliantly written from their points of view, I was
• 58:00
  like, well, what do these people look?
• 58:01
  I know. Of course I know.
• 58:02
  But it did annoy me. And that that struck me as a
• 58:05
  first time writer. Yeah.
• 58:06
  Well, I was, I was going to say. One thing I've got down is it's
• 58:09
  transit was horrifically overwritten and I think this is
• 58:13
  occasionally underwritten. Like I was like, oh, this is
• 58:17
  nice economic price. But like you, Joe, I did go if I
• 58:22
  didn't know what these. Characters look like I.
• 58:23
  Wouldn't have a first clue and sometimes they do things like,
• 58:27
  you know, like the ethnicity of the character.
• 58:29
  You wouldn't realise till halfway through the scene, you
• 58:33
  know when it was quite important.
• 58:35
  It's almost like he just assumed we knew the guy who ran the calf
• 58:38
  was a black guy. But but we you don't if you just
• 58:42
  picking up the book, but the bit that except that it.
• 58:46
  Is sort of subtly in there because it's described from his
• 58:49
  point of view and he and he sees the doctor as a white guy and so
• 58:53
  there's a subtle suggestion that the doctor is different than him
• 58:57
  the first person to. Be physically described.
• 58:59
  Is Mike, he does get a description that he's not
• 59:02
  actually that pretty, but he's got lovely eyes or something
• 59:05
  like that. Oh yeah, you can do it.
• 59:07
  But. I think the pay off is if, if
• 59:09
  you're not going to do, he said, she said with, you know, basic
• 59:13
  descriptions. If the pay off is that you get,
• 59:16
  you know, intimate scenes from these characters point of view,
• 59:19
  which flesh out their characters in these incredible ways, then
• 59:22
  maybe the pay off's worth it. Yeah, but I'd say the most
• 59:25
  underwritten. Sections are weirdly the
• 59:27
  sections that are not on the TV at all the Omega and wrestle on
• 59:32
  and the other bits and they're like 5 lines long them Well,
• 59:36
  that's how they feel you're like why did we need these at all?
• 59:40
  They don't. It doesn't really add very much.
• 59:42
  Does it add anything? No, come on, that is.
• 59:45
  That is the stuff aged. How are we James 11?
• 59:48
  That is the stuff where you think, Oh my God, possibly the
• 59:51
  Doctor involved in the Misty dawn, sort of Gallifrey in
• 59:54
  history, Huge experiments with these terrible devices.
• 59:58
  That's the sort of stuff that when you're younger, you love
• 1:00:01
  and when there's my little fan heart.
• 1:00:04
  Racing and I and it still slightly does.
• 1:00:08
  I'm sorry, I know you don't like this joke, but I was reading and
• 1:00:11
  thinking do you know what I quite.
• 1:00:14
  Like the I don't like. The, the Doctor being a
• 1:00:16
  superhero, I don't like the mystery around the Doctor being
• 1:00:21
  kind of brought to the fore, but the occasional paragraph in in
• 1:00:26
  which the Time Lords are written about as mysterious mystical
• 1:00:30
  beings and, and, and yet kind of, it's quite prosaic.
• 1:00:34
  The dialogue is quite prosaic. They're characters with kind of
• 1:00:36
  who argue and you know, they're politicians, bureaucrats,
• 1:00:39
  basically. It it just again, it's part of
• 1:00:43
  making this universe feel bigger.
• 1:00:47
  And. And for me as a, an 11 year old,
• 1:00:50
  it, it was exactly what I wanted from Doctor Who, you know, that
• 1:00:54
  I wanted the the immediacy and down to earthness of the story.
• 1:00:57
  But I loved, I loved the idea that there was this, you know,
• 1:01:02
  this mystery behind the character, these Time Lords,
• 1:01:05
  this mythology. And the book just dips its toe
• 1:01:07
  in and it says, yeah, this is here as well.
• 1:01:09
  But that's the point, you know, if it had a.
• 1:01:11
  Thematic. Link If there'd been a racial
• 1:01:14
  or, you know, a tribal element or something to that little
• 1:01:17
  storyline, but it was so small and it just wasn't.
• 1:01:20
  But the one thing I did that did it did make me certainly
• 1:01:23
  understand why. Again, I'm sorry, I'm plugging
• 1:01:27
  cutaway comics here, but why? Lots of people were like, I
• 1:01:30
  expect nothing. That's Brian Blessed.
• 1:01:32
  That's Brian Blessed. As Omega The Who we got in and
• 1:01:35
  that's all I met this weekend. He was a very charming.
• 1:01:38
  Man, oh, he's a lovely man, isn't he?
• 1:01:39
  But. Yeah, did.
• 1:01:41
  How much did he swear? Oh yeah, he went to me.
• 1:01:44
  You know what? I went up all those bloody
• 1:01:46
  mountains, he said. What I wanted to do was go into
• 1:01:49
  space. That's what he said to me.
• 1:01:50
  Yeah, yeah, but but having. Having.
• 1:01:52
  Our all I could see when I was reading because all the
• 1:01:55
  references is to how he had unconventionally big frame and I
• 1:02:00
  was just like Oh my God it is the Brian blessed Omega and our
• 1:02:04
  Omega is an early Omega. So in people's head cannon it
• 1:02:08
  makes even more sense. But you know, my problem isn't
• 1:02:11
  as it. Isn't as much of a problem as
• 1:02:13
  you might think it is James, because I don't really mind it
• 1:02:16
  too much here, but my issue is the seed is sown here and it
• 1:02:21
  goes on. And this is where we get the
• 1:02:23
  Doctor being the most important figure in Time Lord history
• 1:02:25
  throughout the new adventures. This is where we get the Jesus
• 1:02:28
  Doctor from the new series. This is where we get the
• 1:02:30
  Timeless Children from Chibnall, and it's not the fault of
• 1:02:34
  Remembrance of the Daleks that it's doing something bold and
• 1:02:36
  that everybody else took the ideas and did them in a really
• 1:02:39
  shit way. But I've.
• 1:02:42
  Just had so much. Of it now that just go back to
• 1:02:44
  where this all started I'm like oh gosh I totally.
• 1:02:48
  I know what you're saying. And I've said this before about
• 1:02:50
  the one of the biggest problems with the new adventures,
• 1:02:52
  particularly the early ones, is they've all read Benaronovich's
• 1:02:55
  stuff. They've all worshipped,
• 1:02:57
  worshipped his altar, and they're all trying to write
• 1:02:59
  stuff like him. And the problem is that second
• 1:03:02
  rate Benaronovich's dialogue is, is really second rate.
• 1:03:06
  And it doesn't read like any real that his gift is for
• 1:03:09
  writing this, this very witty stuff.
• 1:03:11
  And we've talked about this like it's a weighty, serious, even.
• 1:03:14
  He can't do it sometimes. Even he but.
• 1:03:18
  This, this sparkles, it leaps off the page and it's fun.
• 1:03:22
  It's fun and it's funny, and that's really hard to do.
• 1:03:25
  And the problem is that his many imitators basically failed to do
• 1:03:29
  that repeatedly and similarly in the same way that he managed to
• 1:03:33
  drop in so much continuity. I mean it's.
• 1:03:36
  Packed full of continuity in a way that is it just, it's like a
• 1:03:41
  little bit of seasoning. It's it's little nods for the
• 1:03:44
  fans. It's so satisfying.
• 1:03:46
  It's nostalgia done right because it doesn't get in the
• 1:03:48
  way, It doesn't interfere. That's really difficult to do as
• 1:03:51
  well. And a load of writers do the
• 1:03:52
  same thing that it becomes this leaden thing dragged down by its
• 1:03:56
  own continuity. Can I stop you there?
• 1:03:58
  Because I do disagree. With that, I don't think it is a
• 1:04:01
  light, frothy thing in this book, because I think there's
• 1:04:04
  enough continuity in the script already, and all that continuity
• 1:04:07
  is still here in this book. All that dialogue is in this
• 1:04:10
  book. What I didn't need then on top
• 1:04:12
  of that, and this was my issue #2 was the Doctor, like thinking
• 1:04:16
  back to the Daleks, the Dalek Invasion of Earth, Planet of the
• 1:04:19
  Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks. And it's sort of going into
• 1:04:23
  detail. Why do we need all of that?
• 1:04:24
  It's all there in the dialogue. It's all there already like
• 1:04:27
  that. That is the sort of that's
• 1:04:29
  continuity overload. And I can also see those new
• 1:04:31
  adventure writers going, oh, fabulous.
• 1:04:34
  Well, we'll have all seen set off in in all the misty dawns of
• 1:04:37
  Doctor Who history. You know, it was a bit much
• 1:04:41
  because I think the the original script, it takes the 1980s
• 1:04:47
  obsession with continuity and it does it perfectly.
• 1:04:53
  Yeah, this is the one that everyone.
• 1:04:55
  Says, and I think is generally agreed, this is the one that
• 1:04:57
  should have been the 25th anniversary story rather than
• 1:05:01
  Silver Nemesis, which was the actual 25th anniversary story.
• 1:05:04
  Because this one, frankly, I mean, I agree.
• 1:05:06
  It feels, oh God. It feels more like a 25th.
• 1:05:11
  Anniversary. Sorry, I've got a cat on me.
• 1:05:15
  It's always this. It's always at this point.
• 1:05:17
  Well, she never gives a toss about him.
• 1:05:19
  Until he's recording and then that's what she she's been
• 1:05:22
  ignoring me, the whole. Time, but because I'm talking to
• 1:05:24
  somebody who isn't her and suddenly she has to be part of
• 1:05:26
  it. I think it's pretty brief, I
• 1:05:30
  mean. I found one of one of the
• 1:05:32
  egregious passages and it's just a paragraph he pops in.
• 1:05:34
  So when the Doctor first explains to Ace who the Daleks
• 1:05:39
  were, then the mutation remains of a race called the Carlids.
• 1:05:43
  Then we have a paragraph in which he remembers Temesis and
• 1:05:46
  he remembers the mining the earth core and he remembers then
• 1:05:50
  the the Time Lords intervention and Davros.
• 1:05:52
  Now those were all nods to things that I knew about when I
• 1:05:58
  read this book, the exception probably being Temesis.
• 1:06:01
  Actually, I'd probably have an experience of no, no, no, I'd
• 1:06:04
  I'd read the the novel. So you there are three little
• 1:06:06
  references there that that as an 11 year old, I'm going yes, yes,
• 1:06:13
  yes. And Davos time was and it's sort
• 1:06:15
  of knitting together this idea and it's and it's a brief
• 1:06:19
  definitely self. Indulgent moment.
• 1:06:21
  But I, I'm prepared to allow it because I apart from anything
• 1:06:27
  else, I really like the idea that the Doctor is the same
• 1:06:31
  person and does have these memories.
• 1:06:33
  And it's nice to be reminded every now and then that the
• 1:06:35
  Doctor is not coming at every Dalek adventure, you know, as we
• 1:06:38
  do kind of a fresh Dalek. Adventure.
• 1:06:42
  He's going back and he's he's retracing his steps and he's
• 1:06:45
  going, you know, he's built up a history with them.
• 1:06:48
  I and and he is trying to tie. This all winters a huge epic
• 1:06:53
  narrative, right The the narrative of doctor and again as
• 1:06:56
  a kid, that's so exciting and I also draw your attention.
• 1:07:01
  To the first word of the title. Oh, yes, thank you, Jason,
• 1:07:05
  which. Is remembrance so I think.
• 1:07:07
  It's entirely appropriate that the Doctor should remember his
• 1:07:09
  past adventures. And also let me remind you that
• 1:07:11
  the reference to Spyrodon is actually right there in the TV
• 1:07:14
  show as well. Thank you, Jason.
• 1:07:18
  Although I will. Say as well the.
• 1:07:19
  Sequences where we see Omega and Rasalon and the other, whoever
• 1:07:23
  that may be, all together, of course.
• 1:07:26
  I mean, I do think they deserve to be there because it's showing
• 1:07:30
  how the Hand of Omega was set off in the 1st place, which is
• 1:07:33
  absolutely relevant to the story because everybody wants it and
• 1:07:36
  it is instrumental in the climax.
• 1:07:38
  So setting up all of that I don't think is an issue.
• 1:07:42
  It's just what came later. But that's not Ironovich's
• 1:07:44
  fault, I would say, in terms of. Yeah, in terms of what came.
• 1:07:48
  Later as well. Maybe, maybe this is just my
• 1:07:51
  slightly, slightly puritan taste towards, you know, towards tone.
• 1:07:56
  I and I always think the new adventures go a bit too far most
• 1:08:00
  of the time, but I think this gets the.
• 1:08:03
  Tone of. Slightly adult but not really
• 1:08:07
  adult. Doctor Who just exactly, almost
• 1:08:11
  exactly right. So it has the sex, but it
• 1:08:13
  doesn't describe the sex. It you know, if you know what's
• 1:08:17
  going on, then you know they've had sex on a beach.
• 1:08:20
  And he said her name, but it didn't.
• 1:08:22
  They don't, they don't go, they don't make them Certificate 15.
• 1:08:26
  And suddenly a whole bunch of the audience goes, what's going
• 1:08:29
  on? Kissing.
• 1:08:30
  There are moments so where he's not.
• 1:08:32
  Using a scalpel where he's using a club.
• 1:08:34
  And I loved it. I love the fact that 11 year old
• 1:08:36
  James was reading a line. Like the word sterilised reminds
• 1:08:40
  Rachel of Hiroshima. Absolutely.
• 1:08:42
  Oh yeah, yeah, that's. That stuff's fine for 11 year
• 1:08:47
  olds. That's exactly what you get.
• 1:08:48
  That's that's the tone that you know, I grew up with the
• 1:08:51
  Apocalypse war in Judge Dredd. I grew up, I mean, God, I grew
• 1:08:54
  up watching threads at school, but that's the I wouldn't have
• 1:08:57
  known though at 11. And I'd have gone looking.
• 1:08:59
  I would have been absolutely horrified.
• 1:09:01
  No, I mean, maybe I. Don't know, maybe, maybe we're
• 1:09:04
  slightly too sanitized now, but that, that to me, tone wise is
• 1:09:07
  exactly right. That that is we all.
• 1:09:11
  I don't know. We all knew what harassment was
• 1:09:12
  when I was a kid. We all knew what the Holocaust
• 1:09:14
  was when I was a kid. We all knew what the blitz was.
• 1:09:19
  We all, you know, all of those, all the references in this would
• 1:09:21
  have been totally me at age 9 or 10 would know what they are.
• 1:09:27
  And I mean, I think the thing that you probably wouldn't put
• 1:09:30
  in now is the word hacky because that's like that's.
• 1:09:35
  That no. But that's that that.
• 1:09:39
  That's the sort of certificate 18, same as the N word, kind of.
• 1:09:43
  We heard it every day. In the play in.
• 1:09:45
  Those days. Oh, I know, I know.
• 1:09:46
  Yeah. I mean, yeah.
• 1:09:47
  I did people, that's how people refer to shops when I was
• 1:09:49
  growing up. And we had a, you know, I'm, we
• 1:09:53
  had an old lady who had a black Labrador and he was called the N
• 1:09:56
  word when I was a kid. That's, that's some of my
• 1:10:00
  earliest memories. You know, that's the, that's the
• 1:10:03
  late 70s, early 80s in Yorkshire and then.
• 1:10:08
  Everywhere. Probably, you know, the same as
• 1:10:09
  the heroes of the Dambusters had a duck name.
• 1:10:12
  The same thing. But I'm going to pull us.
• 1:10:16
  For a second, away from politics and just say what a remarkably
• 1:10:22
  brilliant Doctor Who book this is and what a great adventure
• 1:10:26
  story it is. And because I don't get to say
• 1:10:29
  this very often, what a brilliant ace book this is.
• 1:10:33
  Oh yes, and that's another. Thing that was ruined by.
• 1:10:36
  The new adventures. So let's celebrate her.
• 1:10:38
  Yeah. And there's a line here where
• 1:10:40
  Ace is in action. Where I was just like, man, that
• 1:10:42
  is the Ace I want to read about where there was fear, but mixed
• 1:10:47
  in with that was anger, exhilaration and the absolute
• 1:10:50
  conviction of the young that they will live forever.
• 1:10:54
  That's right, gets. Aged.
• 1:10:56
  Perfectly. And that's why I think I
• 1:10:58
  mentioned it right at the top. That's why I if if I'd wanted
• 1:11:01
  anything that was in the TV show that to be taken out of the
• 1:11:04
  book. It's the it's the sort of sub
• 1:11:07
  Grange Hill and Grange Hill had better dialogue.
• 1:11:09
  But the Sub Grange Hill, he's a stinking grass you toe rag and
• 1:11:14
  all that stuff. We could probably have done with
• 1:11:15
  done with him coming up with some different dialogue.
• 1:11:19
  I mean, Grange, I didn't always have better.
• 1:11:20
  Dialogue and it is quite annoying here compared.
• 1:11:23
  To some other semester Mccoury stories, yes.
• 1:11:26
  But but it still. Jumped out at me as Oh my God,
• 1:11:29
  it you know it felt it feels really real and I love you know,
• 1:11:33
  I love most I love like nearly everything about this book
• 1:11:37
  abomination back story aside, which I think is too much.
• 1:11:41
  I just don't think that's to me, that silly Dalek that wobbles
• 1:11:44
  with a big gun having a really epic back story just seems
• 1:11:47
  silly. Just seems too much.
• 1:11:50
  But. I suppose my question to all of
• 1:11:52
  you is, is. How do you think this works as a
• 1:11:55
  as a Doctor Who book in prose and what do you think of the
• 1:11:57
  regulars? Jason, I think it works
• 1:12:01
  brilliantly as a. Doctor Who book and yeah, I
• 1:12:04
  think Ace is characterized brilliantly throughout and the
• 1:12:07
  doctor is is also and you know the.
• 1:12:12
  Later again. What came afterwards?
• 1:12:15
  The the 7th Doctor, the master manipulator in everything else.
• 1:12:18
  I mean, here he's got a plan, but he's not, he's having to
• 1:12:21
  improvise all the way through because things haven't gone the
• 1:12:24
  way he planned. He didn't expect to be stuck in
• 1:12:27
  the middle of two Dalek factions.
• 1:12:29
  And so he's kind of flying by the seat of his pants.
• 1:12:31
  Whereas in the books that came later, the idea is that he's got
• 1:12:34
  a handle on everything somehow. And that's just that's not
• 1:12:38
  really, you know, he's not the master chess player or, you
• 1:12:42
  know, the the manipulator of all, all things.
• 1:12:45
  He's just like, well, this is what I think should happen.
• 1:12:48
  Oh, crap, it's not quite working out.
• 1:12:49
  And I've still got to improvise my way out of this and hope that
• 1:12:52
  not too many people die in the process.
• 1:12:55
  That was an aspect I really liked of the story as well in
• 1:12:58
  from even on the TV that the whole business with what he was
• 1:13:02
  telling the military to do was basically just keep them
• 1:13:04
  occupied and out of the way of the Daleks.
• 1:13:08
  And I think that's brilliant. I mean, obviously with the
• 1:13:11
  characterization, you can't ignore the fact that he
• 1:13:13
  characterizes every other character, but he even gives
• 1:13:16
  back stories to unnamed extras of like Avery and Belos, 2
• 1:13:21
  soldiers. And the the the scene that I
• 1:13:24
  remember very distinctly is where after the battle at the
• 1:13:28
  school when the Daleks have retreated because the Imperial
• 1:13:30
  Daleks have landed there. Shuffle Craft.
• 1:13:35
  I think it's Avery takes a cigarette.
• 1:13:37
  Looks over at the body of another soldier who's been
• 1:13:40
  killed, who's missing his head, and unexpectedly starts to cry
• 1:13:44
  because that's a trauma reaction.
• 1:13:45
  He's just been through absolute shit.
• 1:13:47
  He's seen his friends killed and cut down in front of him, and
• 1:13:50
  now he's sitting in the quiet dealing with that and that.
• 1:13:54
  That's great. And none of that gets across on
• 1:13:56
  the story because people get blown up and then that's it.
• 1:13:59
  And we don't see those soldiers in the sandbags that we saw
• 1:14:03
  getting blown up again, ever. We don't see bodies.
• 1:14:06
  We just see more space for those sort of little.
• 1:14:08
  Moments gone. So all those little moments are.
• 1:14:10
  Absolutely the excess. Back story I did.
• 1:14:15
  There was occasionally a time when I thought and I think it
• 1:14:18
  was with some of the soldiers and it reminded me of that
• 1:14:20
  Charlie Brooke a bit when he's talking about.
• 1:14:23
  I like to play Call of Duty and invent elaborate, elaborate
• 1:14:26
  backstories for the Germans that I'm gunning down and feel a bit
• 1:14:31
  like every bit parts got a damn back story and the and the
• 1:14:35
  special weapons dialect. As I've said, I thought that was
• 1:14:38
  that just made me chortle. Do you know what I loved about
• 1:14:41
  the? Doctor's characterization in the
• 1:14:43
  original script, but even more in the book and it's when you
• 1:14:47
  compare how the 7th Doctor is with the countermeasures group
• 1:14:52
  with how the 3rd Doctor was with UNIT and the 3rd Doctor was like
• 1:14:55
  an open book, wasn't it? And, you know, would spout his
• 1:14:59
  morals and, and, and you know, a very four square fellow, whereas
• 1:15:03
  the 7th Doctor is so mysterious. He keeps them at arm's length
• 1:15:07
  all the time whilst commanding them all and giving them all
• 1:15:10
  instructions at the same time. I just love the fact that he's
• 1:15:12
  just this sort of effortlessly mysterious figure in the book
• 1:15:16
  that nobody can quite get a handle on.
• 1:15:19
  I love that. I do like that there's the.
• 1:15:22
  Little. Bit where which isn't in the
• 1:15:25
  book and it actually shifts a line from earlier on to a bit
• 1:15:29
  later where the Doctor. Takes a moment.
• 1:15:33
  To thank Gilmore for cooperating with him because he knows that
• 1:15:36
  he's asking a lot of this guy. And that's when Gilmore in the
• 1:15:40
  book says only a fool argues with his doctor in the story.
• 1:15:43
  In the TV version it's a bit earlier on when he's in the
• 1:15:45
  cafe, but I I quite like little moments like that that are
• 1:15:48
  taken. That was.
• 1:15:51
  Good. James talk about the 7th.
• 1:15:53
  Doctor an ace. I think it's so well
• 1:15:56
  characterized. And, and individually, but even
• 1:15:59
  more so, their relationship is really well characterized.
• 1:16:03
  And it's very simple the way he does it.
• 1:16:04
  I mean, the dialogue I think has an awful lot of it in there
• 1:16:07
  already. So he doesn't need to add much
• 1:16:08
  to that. Though there are some nice, I
• 1:16:11
  guess we'd call them now kind of deleted scenes or Easter eggs
• 1:16:13
  where we see kind of the ends of conversations.
• 1:16:16
  But most of it is as it is on TV.
• 1:16:18
  But he allows them both to have thoughts of their own.
• 1:16:22
  So, for example, the scene where the Doctor won't take Ace with
• 1:16:26
  him and she she argues with him. You know, when I get back, I'll
• 1:16:31
  explain everything. Tell me now, I don't have time,
• 1:16:34
  Ace thinks. Growing up against child again,
• 1:16:36
  even with the Doctor, it always comes down to that.
• 1:16:38
  But a nagging voice told her this time she deserved it.
• 1:16:42
  Trust me. So she did.
• 1:16:44
  All the way we're we're allowed these little glimpse into what
• 1:16:47
  they're thinking. There's another wonderful moment
• 1:16:50
  where she's confronted Mike and he's been taken away and the
• 1:16:55
  Doctor finds her moping and he thinks she's no good to me like
• 1:16:58
  this. Ace, He said.
• 1:17:00
  Her head turned slowly, a lost look in her eyes.
• 1:17:04
  I don't suppose you're interested in a misguided attack
• 1:17:06
  on the Daleks shuttle? Ace merely stares at his face.
• 1:17:10
  Suicidal, of course. There a flicker of interest.
• 1:17:14
  No, I'll just have to do it myself.
• 1:17:16
  The Doctor walked away just slowly enough.
• 1:17:19
  Oy, Ace was suddenly on this side.
• 1:17:20
  Wait a minute, the Doctor smiled.
• 1:17:23
  Inside, where it wouldn't show just slowly enough, is the.
• 1:17:27
  Clincher there isn't it, although there was a wonderful
• 1:17:30
  bit where the. Doctor.
• 1:17:31
  Placates a dog and then you get a thought from us going the dog
• 1:17:34
  don't worry about. It dog thought I.
• 1:17:36
  He has the same effect on me and the doctor think.
• 1:17:39
  The doctor looks at the dog. And thinks, who do you remind me
• 1:17:43
  of? Yeah.
• 1:17:48
  Yeah, I mean, I think generally I love the melancholy of it.
• 1:17:52
  It's a very melancholy, very melancholy book because it is.
• 1:17:58
  It is all the everyone's traumatized by conflict, every
• 1:18:02
  single person from Ace to the Doctor to all the other
• 1:18:06
  characters. And I just love some of the, I
• 1:18:10
  love particularly Rachel and everything that's going on and
• 1:18:14
  Gilmore and the whole sort of stiff upper lip repressed sexual
• 1:18:19
  feelings and, and the hint that they get married afterwards in
• 1:18:23
  that little excerpt at the top when they sort of drop out of
• 1:18:27
  history. But I just love the bit at the
• 1:18:29
  end. The in the end, that's all we
• 1:18:32
  have. Our memories, electrochemical
• 1:18:34
  impulses stored in 8 lbs of tissue, the consistency of cold
• 1:18:38
  porridge. In the end, they define our
• 1:18:40
  lives. Obviously that's a call back to,
• 1:18:42
  I think it's Turing, isn't it? She works with who points out
• 1:18:45
  that, you know, all this is just going on in something that looks
• 1:18:49
  a bit like porridge in our schools.
• 1:18:51
  And and it's it's it's got a lot of things going on at once.
• 1:18:55
  It's for a doctor. It's a Doctor Who book.
• 1:18:58
  And it works as a rattling adventure, but it's also quite
• 1:19:02
  melancholy. And it doesn't.
• 1:19:04
  But it doesn't lay it on two the the the it's not.
• 1:19:07
  As it's. Not as aching the adolescents as
• 1:19:10
  most of the new new adventures are where they just go.
• 1:19:14
  I've been grown up now look boobs.
• 1:19:18
  And this for me is like the tone for if you're going to do Doctor
• 1:19:21
  Who and you're going to make it work on lots of levels.
• 1:19:25
  So a grown up can pick it up and a 10 year old, you know, 8 year
• 1:19:28
  old can pick it up. This is the tone Doctor Who
• 1:19:31
  should never go beyond the 12 certificate.
• 1:19:33
  And I will keep saying that sentence till the day I die.
• 1:19:36
  I totally agree totally. Agree, and the fact that I
• 1:19:39
  enjoyed this book just as much now at 44 as I did when I first
• 1:19:42
  read it at 12. And I remember reading those.
• 1:19:47
  Those wonderful scenes from the age of 12.
• 1:19:50
  I remember the bit about, you know.
• 1:19:53
  It was only later that Rachel realised he'd used her first
• 1:19:55
  name. I remember.
• 1:19:56
  Trust me, she did all the way. I remember they stuck in my mind
• 1:20:00
  in a way that most other target novelisations just didn't
• 1:20:03
  because I read quite a few. And yeah, some of them are just
• 1:20:07
  basic script to screen adaptations.
• 1:20:09
  There's nothing to anchor your imagination beyond.
• 1:20:13
  When you put the. Book down.
• 1:20:14
  When you put the book down, it's finished because it's basically
• 1:20:16
  just told you what happened on the screen and there's no deeper
• 1:20:20
  stuff there for you to get your mind around.
• 1:20:21
  Whereas with this you've got the back story you've got wow, what
• 1:20:26
  have these people been through? You almost want to learn a bit
• 1:20:28
  more about the history that's being.
• 1:20:31
  Described here. Because it is a fascinating and
• 1:20:34
  terrible part of history. Who was it that?
• 1:20:39
  Said in one. Of the book clubs I it was
• 1:20:41
  either James or Jason. I think that the line of hate
• 1:20:44
  would keep him warm and it stayed in your head.
• 1:20:47
  No wonder. Because that as a parting
• 1:20:49
  flourished that for us. That was just brilliant.
• 1:20:52
  That was brilliant. I do also.
• 1:20:54
  Wonder if? Aronovic may have read the odd
• 1:20:57
  issue of DWB with, you know, ungrateful Doctor Who fans
• 1:21:01
  pointing out the the glaring plot holes in his story.
• 1:21:04
  So I was howling with laughter at the explanation he gave as to
• 1:21:10
  why those Daleks didn't shoot Ace at the end of Episode 2 that
• 1:21:13
  the yeah, basically they've been given.
• 1:21:15
  Orders just. To intimidate her to surrender
• 1:21:18
  and that was it. Well, except that I mean that
• 1:21:20
  it's. It's suggested that.
• 1:21:21
  Her behaviour is so irrational. They don't know what they're
• 1:21:23
  dealing with. It's great.
• 1:21:24
  It's I really like. I do this.
• 1:21:28
  Sorry, Jason. I said there's a few.
• 1:21:29
  There's a few bits that I was. Thinking of about me, and maybe
• 1:21:32
  he's taking the opportunity to retcon some of the things that
• 1:21:35
  got on screen, like why do they just surround Ace and not kill
• 1:21:39
  her? But he does it really well
• 1:21:40
  because it all ties back to we've got a human.
• 1:21:43
  Hang on, how is a human doing serious damage to a Dalek?
• 1:21:47
  What's going on? We need to investigate this,
• 1:21:49
  which is why they need to intimidate her into surrender,
• 1:21:52
  because they want to know what the Hell's going on.
• 1:21:54
  They've got something new. Does that kind of make sense?
• 1:21:57
  The other thing that he retcons quite heavily is why the Daleks
• 1:22:00
  can't hit a barn door at 10 paces.
• 1:22:03
  Hits several of the battle sequences when he talks about
• 1:22:06
  the the electronic countermeasures pods.
• 1:22:08
  And I want to I want to read a bit out of this as well with
• 1:22:12
  it's during. Episode.
• 1:22:13
  Four with the Daleks when they have that first encounter with
• 1:22:16
  the Renegades under the bridge and on screen one of them gets
• 1:22:21
  shot, and then two renegade Daleks stand completely
• 1:22:26
  stationary under a bridge and The Imperials are raining fire
• 1:22:29
  down and completely missing them.
• 1:22:32
  Four times they managed to thread the needle between that
• 1:22:35
  gap between the two of them to have the explosions on the wall
• 1:22:38
  behind. Not a single renegade Daleks
• 1:22:40
  gets hit by any of these and The Imperials are picked off and
• 1:22:43
  have to retreat. So what he says here?
• 1:22:48
  The attack? Came as a Blizzard.
• 1:22:50
  Of electromagnetic static electronic countermeasures.
• 1:22:53
  Pods twinned with the remote sensors attacked Scout 7 through
• 1:22:57
  its sensor pods. The wave of static crashed over
• 1:23:00
  the sensitive instruments, causing feedback to lash up the
• 1:23:03
  databus and into the Dalek proper.
• 1:23:05
  Scout 7 went blind in a microsecond.
• 1:23:08
  At the same time machine code instructions hidden inside the
• 1:23:11
  random noise laid siege to the processors that regulated the
• 1:23:14
  Daleks life support. The internal systems fought
• 1:23:17
  back. Defence subroutines attempted to
• 1:23:19
  locate the Intruder program and eliminate it.
• 1:23:22
  They failed. The program was in.
• 1:23:24
  From that moment on, Scout 7 began to die.
• 1:23:28
  Rogue commands from the Intruder program voided food and waste
• 1:23:31
  tanks into the life chamber. The creature inside drowned.
• 1:23:35
  The blaster bolt that blew away it's top half was little more
• 1:23:38
  than a coup de grasse. That was so brilliant.
• 1:23:41
  Wasn't it whilst? I was writing.
• 1:23:45
  Out every word. In my notes, yeah, that's the
• 1:23:47
  thing. He, you know, on screen.
• 1:23:48
  A Dalek gets its top half blown up and all you think about is it
• 1:23:51
  got blown up here. He makes you vividly imagine the
• 1:23:55
  creature inside dying before it gets blown up.
• 1:23:58
  And I think that's brilliant. But again, because he went
• 1:24:00
  blind, he's been attacked by these things.
• 1:24:03
  That's why he can't hit anything because they they are just
• 1:24:05
  firing blind. Well, I was going to say I I
• 1:24:08
  think it's worth. Noting that even when he does
• 1:24:10
  do, there are passages where he has to describe just basically
• 1:24:13
  what the script said and and what found its way in one way or
• 1:24:17
  another onto the screen. He's really good at that as
• 1:24:19
  well. And he finds constantly
• 1:24:21
  inventive ways of describing things happening and never going
• 1:24:25
  to get stuck in the, in the rut of just saying and then this and
• 1:24:31
  then this. He's, he's changing perspective,
• 1:24:35
  he's moving, he's he's pacing his his prose in different ways.
• 1:24:41
  He's allowing characters to think something.
• 1:24:43
  He's constantly like, it's like he's editorially constantly.
• 1:24:47
  Cutting from 1:00. One camera to another, from one
• 1:24:49
  perspective to another, to keep it interesting, to keep it
• 1:24:51
  bouncing along. I think that the I think that
• 1:24:54
  the sheer description of the action sequences, I think, I
• 1:24:57
  think that the episode 2 cliffhanger, the the whole
• 1:24:59
  dialects pursuing Ace is an absolute master class in turning
• 1:25:03
  something from screen to prose. Yeah, I really, I really.
• 1:25:08
  Like, I'm sorry. But I was just going to say I
• 1:25:10
  really like the fact that he doesn't he doesn't do the ending
• 1:25:13
  a chapter on a cliffhanger bit as well, which is really
• 1:25:17
  effective. You know, it really is a novel
• 1:25:20
  and he ends he ends a sequence where it feels like it should
• 1:25:24
  end. Not it's the this is how it
• 1:25:26
  ended on the TV. And that really irritated me.
• 1:25:30
  I couldn't believe how he skipped over the Dalek going up
• 1:25:32
  the stairs and it's almost like an afterthought.
• 1:25:36
  I mean, he liked that paragraph I.
• 1:25:38
  Think it's no no, it's will be soon, but I'm like.
• 1:25:40
  That is a moment. That is an end of chapter
• 1:25:42
  moment. No, but no.
• 1:25:43
  But I love that the doctors. Written that rather than making
• 1:25:46
  it an end of chapter moment the doctor's response is Oh well so
• 1:25:49
  that's how they do it that's how they do it and then I think it
• 1:25:53
  suits the tone of the piece it. Really does, yeah.
• 1:25:57
  What you were saying? There about characters.
• 1:25:59
  Going from A to B and how it isn't, you know, described like,
• 1:26:02
  you know, script directions like he had a moment where the little
• 1:26:06
  girl is going from one location to the other.
• 1:26:09
  And the end of that passage. I just love this was the girl
• 1:26:13
  was having fun for one ventigious moment, the Dalek
• 1:26:16
  Supreme wanted to skip. Oh, just like and every single
• 1:26:20
  passage just had those little flourishes all the time.
• 1:26:24
  Yeah, I love the. The the description.
• 1:26:26
  Of the way the Dalek Supreme and the girl were interlinked.
• 1:26:30
  Yeah. And again, that was it.
• 1:26:31
  It made a bit more sense of the final sequence with the black
• 1:26:34
  Dalek. Exactly.
• 1:26:36
  Yeah. With two.
• 1:26:38
  Earth. Vehicles and the the Doctor
• 1:26:40
  walking towards it doesn't attempt to shoot any of them.
• 1:26:43
  Well, in the book it's because he's absolutely exhausted.
• 1:26:46
  His power's low, the business with the girl is confusing him,
• 1:26:50
  and it's just well, even it with this low power, these earth
• 1:26:54
  weapons would be enough to finish me off.
• 1:26:57
  So let's see what? Happens and he.
• 1:27:00
  Gets and that's how the doctor gets his in to talk him to
• 1:27:03
  death. Can I can I bring up my last?
• 1:27:07
  Complaint about this book because I did love it but I just
• 1:27:09
  want to see what you guys think. And that is in the last third of
• 1:27:13
  the book, there were just too many scenes from Daleks points
• 1:27:17
  of view, and Daleks are not interesting.
• 1:27:20
  And it came to a point where there was one after another
• 1:27:23
  after another with scant scenes with the actual very interesting
• 1:27:26
  characters in the book. And I'm like, well, why do I
• 1:27:29
  care? This is a bunch of suicidal
• 1:27:31
  blobs that are fighting each other.
• 1:27:33
  They don't give a shit about their fate, so why do I?
• 1:27:36
  And it is all written in this very sort of new adventures, the
• 1:27:39
  science fictiony sort of a way, which is clever and a new way of
• 1:27:43
  looking at things. But it was a lot.
• 1:27:46
  It was a lot. And I kept wishing I was seeing
• 1:27:49
  more of these scenes from characters, maybe a little bit,
• 1:27:51
  maybe I. Maybe I did go I'd get the gist
• 1:27:55
  skin food a little bit. I love that because there are.
• 1:27:58
  Lots of scenes in episode 4 that are just Daleks.
• 1:28:01
  There are no other characters around to witness what is going
• 1:28:04
  on, or none that would be reliable narrators.
• 1:28:07
  Daleks are boring, but. They're not, though.
• 1:28:10
  That's the point. He.
• 1:28:10
  Makes them UN boring. This is they could be boring.
• 1:28:14
  No, they they could be boring. If he just described 6 Daleks
• 1:28:19
  trundled down the street, 2 renegade Daleks attacked them
• 1:28:22
  and two of them got blown up and then they retreated, that would
• 1:28:25
  be boring. But to actually include things
• 1:28:27
  like the passage I read out about the ECM effects on the
• 1:28:30
  creature inside the casing, the thoughts the Daleks are have.
• 1:28:34
  Really, that passage is only really interesting when you got.
• 1:28:36
  To the point about them being drowned in their own tanks all
• 1:28:39
  that bit at the start. Well that techno Babble was
• 1:28:41
  boring as shit. No, I don't think it as I don't.
• 1:28:44
  I think the techno Babble is is tempered by characterization.
• 1:28:47
  These are the Daleks of the 60s. These are the Daleks of Daleks.
• 1:28:50
  Master plan who scheme and whisper and argue and there's a
• 1:28:54
  stupid one. It feels like that that's why
• 1:28:56
  they're Daleks who who are freaked out by Ace managing to,
• 1:29:00
  you know, knock an ice talk of one of them and don't know what
• 1:29:02
  to do with her. These are what these are Daleks
• 1:29:05
  who actually conceivably could fight each other and it not be a
• 1:29:08
  foregone conclusion. I know, but when?
• 1:29:10
  When you have. Built up a cast of nuanced
• 1:29:14
  characters that are really interesting.
• 1:29:16
  Why on earth am I enduring scene after scene of faceless Daleks?
• 1:29:23
  Because that's what's on the. Screen in the.
• 1:29:24
  Story I know, but they don't have any personality.
• 1:29:27
  Beyond the hierarchy, I'm like, well, what do I care about?
• 1:29:30
  People does. Yeah.
• 1:29:32
  He does he. Does yeah link?
• 1:29:34
  Link to that. The the much as the Gilmore and
• 1:29:39
  Rachel and Alison are brilliantly, you know, their
• 1:29:42
  interior lives are brilliant. It did make me think there's
• 1:29:46
  there's probably. Another version of.
• 1:29:47
  This which is because. Because on the TV.
• 1:29:51
  Screen, that stuff happens and they're in the moment, but they
• 1:29:55
  don't have massive arcs or story or character development.
• 1:30:00
  They're just going fuck doctors in charge.
• 1:30:02
  I hope they're just hanging on. And that kind of works.
• 1:30:05
  It's fine. But but when you've then got
• 1:30:07
  interior stuff, it still works fine and it's nice.
• 1:30:11
  But people don't go on huge journeys, I suppose.
• 1:30:14
  And I suppose maybe I'm talking myself into that.
• 1:30:16
  But that's maybe why I like the Rachel and Gilmore bit, because
• 1:30:19
  it's almost like, you know, maybe that is that is an arc
• 1:30:23
  that the fact that they do then admit that.
• 1:30:26
  They like each other. By the end of all this horror,
• 1:30:30
  isn't it? Pardon.
• 1:30:32
  Dalek Supreme has a journey though.
• 1:30:34
  Oh yeah, yeah. But I'm just.
• 1:30:36
  Saying the I'm just saying the humans, you've got a Dalek who's
• 1:30:39
  troubled. By the fact that it's been
• 1:30:41
  dreaming and the fact that it's been plugged into this human
• 1:30:45
  child has actually really messed with it.
• 1:30:47
  And it goes on quite a journey. You've got the you've got the
• 1:30:50
  Dalek contemplating asking him permission to commit suicide.
• 1:30:54
  Yeah. Yeah, now.
• 1:30:56
  We've got. Yeah, I mean, things like that.
• 1:30:58
  Now it would be, I guess in the modern era, it's it's it's a bit
• 1:31:03
  like Into the Dalek a bit before it becomes really silly and
• 1:31:06
  becomes rusty. But he's better.
• 1:31:11
  Oh yeah, yeah. I'm not saying I'm not.
• 1:31:13
  I'm not saying I'm not saying it's into the Dalek is in any
• 1:31:16
  way superior, but I'm just saying if it was done in the
• 1:31:17
  modern era, you might give space to an idea like that and
• 1:31:20
  actually put it out there and have a Dalek that's insane and
• 1:31:24
  give it some dialogue. Like the best bits of Dalek when
• 1:31:27
  he's contemplating watching a star, when he's drifting in
• 1:31:31
  space and things like that. Or the Dalek in wrote in.
• 1:31:34
  Dalek, that absolutely shows his personality and is then twisted.
• 1:31:39
  I mean, everyone's like, oh, this is this is a fun new thing.
• 1:31:42
  It's like, actually Ben Aronovich did it 15 years prior
• 1:31:45
  in in his novelization of Remembrance.
• 1:31:47
  So yeah, I know exactly. Yeah.
• 1:31:50
  And when? When?
• 1:31:51
  The characters are characterized as superbly as this.
• 1:31:55
  I'm not too fussed that the guest characters don't go on
• 1:31:58
  like a huge arc because I don't think TV was really doing that
• 1:32:02
  at the time anymore. No, no, I'm not.
• 1:32:04
  I'm I'm saying. That's why I give it AI give it
• 1:32:05
  a total pass, but I'm just saying it then makes you go if
• 1:32:08
  you were to like pull it apart and start it from the beginning.
• 1:32:11
  And that's not what we're dealing with.
• 1:32:12
  It doesn't make you go. This could be even better if if
• 1:32:15
  he'd written it as a novel to start with.
• 1:32:18
  And maybe that's what we get later when he does write
• 1:32:20
  amazing, when he, well, you know, transit aside, when he
• 1:32:24
  does write one of the characters.
• 1:32:26
  That that does. Go on an arc which gets cruelly
• 1:32:29
  cut short. Is Mark Is Mike?
• 1:32:31
  Yeah. Because he has his his racism,
• 1:32:34
  his grooming with Ratcliffe before the story.
• 1:32:36
  He has his interactions with Ace that make him really confront
• 1:32:41
  what he's been going on. He's, you know, in I, I thought
• 1:32:44
  it was a bit overdone. It's one of the bits where I
• 1:32:46
  think Benorovich overdid. It was when he said, when he had
• 1:32:49
  Mike say to Ratcliffe, I came here to kill you.
• 1:32:51
  And so that suddenly that didn't quite gel for me as part of the
• 1:32:55
  natural narrative, but he's now realized what he's done and he's
• 1:33:00
  in some way trying to make, you get the feeling he's trying to
• 1:33:03
  make amends at that point. But then he gets sat by the girl
• 1:33:06
  and he's dead. So but I but.
• 1:33:09
  Also I kind of liked. That in a way, because like his.
• 1:33:15
  Poor old. Mum, who we know is a horrible
• 1:33:17
  racist but we still feel really sorry for her.
• 1:33:20
  She's like a broken woman who's lost her son and her husband now
• 1:33:24
  because of violence she knows nothing about or she doesn't
• 1:33:27
  understand. I also thought it was
• 1:33:30
  interesting that they. That he draws specific attention
• 1:33:32
  to the fact that hardly anybody goes to Mike's funeral, which
• 1:33:35
  kind of gives the impression that Mike, his racism or
• 1:33:38
  whatever, rather like Ratcliffe, he has lost a lot of people, a
• 1:33:41
  lot of friends because of his views.
• 1:33:43
  And the only people who turn up to his funeral are his mum and
• 1:33:47
  his commanding officer. And yeah, well, I think Allison.
• 1:33:51
  That made me. Think of how like.
• 1:33:53
  You know, we've probably all known people since 2016 and
• 1:33:58
  who've been gone down the rabbit hole online and you know that
• 1:34:03
  online radicalization that has affected so many people all over
• 1:34:06
  the world and that. But maybe, you know, it's not a
• 1:34:09
  new thing. Like everything, it's not a new
• 1:34:11
  thing. It's people getting slightly
• 1:34:13
  brainwashed by Batshit's ideas and you get when you get
• 1:34:18
  groomed, you get cut off from you get cut off from your
• 1:34:21
  support network of normal people.
• 1:34:23
  Yeah, it's definitely not a new thing.
• 1:34:25
  Loads of people want to paint it as a new thing.
• 1:34:27
  It's social media, it's this. It's like, no, it's not this.
• 1:34:29
  This is just a different tool for the same.
• 1:34:32
  Thing that we've been. Going through for the whole of
• 1:34:35
  human history basically, but I won't stop saying this.
• 1:34:39
  It is. Astonishing that that passage is
• 1:34:41
  in a Doctor Who book written in 88 that's going out for kids.
• 1:34:46
  It's it's remarkably mature. I thought I could have done with
• 1:34:49
  a few more scenes from Rachel's point of view.
• 1:34:51
  I thought she was so consistently characterized by
• 1:34:55
  this. And I was really aware that
• 1:34:56
  during the whole sequence in the junkyard, men are dying all
• 1:35:00
  around her. Every time we come back to
• 1:35:02
  Rachel, she's, she's not even acknowledging the fact that
• 1:35:05
  she's constantly trying to figure out the science of the,
• 1:35:08
  you know, she's kind of cold. And clinical.
• 1:35:11
  I love the bit where she really. Argues that she's got to go onto
• 1:35:14
  the ship because it's better not to know you know it's better
• 1:35:18
  than dying. Would be better than not knowing
• 1:35:21
  or whatever the even if you don't know, I don't know
• 1:35:23
  something. Unscientific to your face, she
• 1:35:25
  says. Yeah, yeah, that's brilliant as
• 1:35:27
  well. Is that is that is that in the
• 1:35:29
  is that's not in the TV series? That's not in the TV show.
• 1:35:32
  It might be in a deleted. Scene, but it's not in the Yeah,
• 1:35:35
  because that's when on screen. There's a bit where she gets.
• 1:35:37
  Too close to. Something she starts to work
• 1:35:39
  something out and the doctor kind of wipes her mind, you
• 1:35:42
  know, it wipes the thought from her mind.
• 1:35:43
  He just, yeah, there's a couple of moments.
• 1:35:46
  Where she starts to to get close to the idea of fibre optic
• 1:35:50
  cables, which of course now we use all the time.
• 1:35:51
  And in 1980s they were quite new.
• 1:35:54
  In 1988 they were, you know, because obviously the Dalek
• 1:35:57
  ships on screen are absolutely full of fibre optic cables,
• 1:36:00
  which is one of my little niggles with it.
• 1:36:03
  With the transmitted version where he shorts out a Dalek by
• 1:36:06
  touching 2 fibre optic cables together.
• 1:36:08
  It's like that's not how they work.
• 1:36:09
  Even better, Jason, is that. Ball, you know, with a lightning
• 1:36:12
  in it because we had one at home.
• 1:36:14
  So I don't. I pretend to be the girl going.
• 1:36:16
  The time. Controller has been disabled.
• 1:36:18
  Yeah, that, that's an unfortunate.
• 1:36:20
  Bit of reality overtaking because when they put you when
• 1:36:23
  they were when they were in production, these things were
• 1:36:25
  quite new and exciting and by the time it got transmitted,
• 1:36:28
  they were the new executive toy and everyone had one.
• 1:36:30
  So you pulled out. Oh, it's the time controller
• 1:36:32
  That's not you. Might as you might as well have
• 1:36:33
  used the lava lamp. You know, it's just.
• 1:36:38
  Like James, you look like you was.
• 1:36:39
  Going to do a. Reading then.
• 1:36:40
  A second ago. Oh, no, checking because.
• 1:36:43
  Because as Jason's pointed out that there's the lovely bit
• 1:36:46
  where she realises that Gilmore has called her Rachel.
• 1:36:51
  And sure enough, kind of later on in the book, she as as
• 1:36:55
  they're doing their bit of piracy, she can't find where
• 1:36:58
  she's going and she calls out his name, Ian.
• 1:37:00
  So the the the moment supplicated, I would like to
• 1:37:04
  read something. Out to you now that you can only
• 1:37:06
  do in a book that they never could have done in the TV series
• 1:37:10
  and I thought made for a far better experience.
• 1:37:13
  So first of all, you get a scene from the Doctor's point of view
• 1:37:15
  where you get a slight motive for what he does at the end of
• 1:37:19
  the book, where he goes, he's thinking about the Daleks and
• 1:37:22
  their terrible ways, and he goes, you eradicated such
• 1:37:25
  worthless little pleasure centuries ago.
• 1:37:27
  The Doctor held on to that, thought it would make what he
• 1:37:30
  had to do easier. So we know something terrible is
• 1:37:33
  coming. But then the bit at the end with
• 1:37:35
  the hand of Omega clenched the heart of a star and a fist of
• 1:37:38
  pure energy. Then the hand of Omega let go.
• 1:37:42
  The star died. And this is a bit I love.
• 1:37:45
  The sky turned white hot. 1000 million Daleks cried out in
• 1:37:49
  defiance. The seas boiled, the metal
• 1:37:52
  cities of the Daleks ran like wax, and the atmosphere was
• 1:37:55
  blown away into space. So evocative.
• 1:37:59
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:38:01
  And so. Much better than than a light
• 1:38:04
  bulb going on the 80s effect that we had.
• 1:38:10
  Yeah, yeah. But I, I.
• 1:38:13
  One bit, one bit I've got is I really like this sort of Gilmore
• 1:38:16
  being very repressed and everything.
• 1:38:18
  And there's just a brilliant bit at the end where he's sort of
• 1:38:21
  been slightly allowing himself to think back to the beach and
• 1:38:25
  things. But then just as Gilmore pulled
• 1:38:27
  on his peaked cap, the badge was bright from polishing.
• 1:38:30
  And I just thought that just said a life of like a life of
• 1:38:34
  repression polishing his badge. And I just thought he'd really,
• 1:38:39
  really nicely such good writing. He's thrown himself into a
• 1:38:43
  routine and polishing things and ironing uniforms and doing his
• 1:38:47
  duty. I just thought it was, it was
• 1:38:49
  brilliant. 2 lines guys I feel like.
• 1:38:52
  We could probably. Talk about Remembrance of the
• 1:38:54
  Daleks for another five hours to bed at some point tonight.
• 1:38:58
  So can I ask you to scour your notes or your memory?
• 1:39:01
  But anything that we haven't talked about that you would
• 1:39:03
  still like to discuss and everyone's looking a little bit
• 1:39:06
  scared, so I'll throw it straight to Jason.
• 1:39:12
  The only thing I've got in my notes that we.
• 1:39:13
  Haven't discussed and I don't think we need.
• 1:39:15
  To discuss in great length is that I think there's a brief
• 1:39:21
  section at the beginning of one of the.
• 1:39:23
  Chapters, because few of the chapters begin with.
• 1:39:25
  Extracts from something and I believe it's the first mention
• 1:39:29
  of Cadiar to Lethbridge Stewart. Oh yes yes.
• 1:39:33
  Who then goes on to be a major player in.
• 1:39:35
  Transit. But interestingly, the date
• 1:39:37
  means that they've obviously retconned her date some point,
• 1:39:40
  because at this point it's 2006 is the novel is the history of
• 1:39:44
  Unity being it's obviously been in the Lethbridge Stewart family
• 1:39:48
  for a long time. Yes, yeah, that's another thing
• 1:39:51
  that's very new adventures as. Well having like extracts from
• 1:39:54
  future. Encyclopedias and stuff.
• 1:39:56
  I used to love all that, but now it makes me cringe a little bit.
• 1:40:00
  Incident and yes. Oh, I like that though.
• 1:40:03
  Like that? Yeah.
• 1:40:04
  Yeah, yeah. But.
• 1:40:05
  Yeah, the only bit I've got. Is maybe a.
• 1:40:07
  Question to people who know way more who than me is when Ace is
• 1:40:12
  sort of thinking about she's not being born yet and then she gets
• 1:40:16
  taken away and what the doctor called the adjustment, I've
• 1:40:19
  never heard that before, is that you know her being sucked,
• 1:40:22
  sucked through to time to whenever it is glitz and
• 1:40:26
  everyone are I presume so I don't think it's referred to as
• 1:40:30
  that in anything. Else.
• 1:40:31
  No, I just wondered what that was like.
• 1:40:34
  Time you wimey. Is there a time?
• 1:40:37
  You want anything going on? Where it was an adjustment, Is
• 1:40:39
  it? To do with ghost light.
• 1:40:41
  Or something. Well, I don't know if you guys
• 1:40:45
  don't. Know then it.
• 1:40:46
  Must be a weird thing. Oh, interesting actually thing I
• 1:40:51
  was going to. Mention you talk about.
• 1:40:53
  Pulling in bits of Ghost Light with the reference to Manisha's
• 1:40:58
  flat and being firebombed and everything else.
• 1:41:01
  I was reading around that and apparently that was Ben
• 1:41:03
  Eronovich's addition to Ghost Light in the 1st place.
• 1:41:08
  That was his contribution to. Ace's back.
• 1:41:11
  Story. To the to the thing.
• 1:41:14
  So apparently it's it was his notion, the one the one thing I
• 1:41:18
  did get a bit confused by when I was 12.
• 1:41:21
  And to be honest, it still does confuse me a bit.
• 1:41:23
  And it seems it's confused a lot of people because there seems to
• 1:41:25
  be some disagreement about it is whether Manisha actually died or
• 1:41:28
  not in this attack. Because in the book it says ace.
• 1:41:33
  Watched The Life. Drained from her eyes and then
• 1:41:36
  she went to live with her parents in her relatives in
• 1:41:39
  Birmingham. I know in Survival there was
• 1:41:41
  that line about they said you were dead or you'd gone to
• 1:41:43
  Birmingham. And it's so when I was reading
• 1:41:46
  that at 12 was like, is, is Minisha dead?
• 1:41:50
  Is going to Birmingham a euphemism?
• 1:41:52
  For dying. In Ace's world, or is at, did
• 1:41:55
  Minisha actually move out of London and go to Birmingham?
• 1:41:59
  It's not clear, and apparently it seems that there's
• 1:42:02
  disagreement. Some some books and later things
• 1:42:05
  say that Minisha was killed and some say that she wasn't and she
• 1:42:08
  left. So that that confused me
• 1:42:12
  irritated to be a bit. I thought you're ruining a
• 1:42:14
  perfectly good gag from. Survival there.
• 1:42:16
  All right, leave it alone. I think it's quite.
• 1:42:21
  That's, in an odd way I quite like.
• 1:42:24
  The ambiguity I do, I do think it's a beautifully written
• 1:42:27
  sentence and I'd love the I I read it literally and I read it
• 1:42:30
  as her moving away. And I just like the idea that
• 1:42:32
  someone that Ace had watched a friend give up on, you know,
• 1:42:38
  give up on trying, give, give up on, you know, give up and fight.
• 1:42:43
  If you know, can't fight them, move, move to be, you know, with
• 1:42:47
  relatives, presumably in a, in a community of, of, of family and,
• 1:42:53
  you know, and, and, and and of racial security or greater
• 1:42:57
  racial security in Birmingham than than than you would get in
• 1:42:59
  London. I, I, I thought there was
• 1:43:01
  something sad about just the idea that she'd watched.
• 1:43:04
  What she'd watched wasn't a a literal death, but the death of
• 1:43:07
  hope. I wanted to raise Cadia too as
• 1:43:11
  well just because I thought it was worth.
• 1:43:12
  Pointing. Out we talked about kind of how
• 1:43:14
  Aronovic she's like a child in a sweet shop with continuity and
• 1:43:17
  he you know, he gleefully Peppers his prose with things
• 1:43:23
  from Doctor Who's history, but I feel he's as excited about
• 1:43:29
  adding to the mythology and it's and it's sometimes he's adding
• 1:43:33
  with things that clearly he's been discussing with, you know,
• 1:43:37
  Cartmel and the other writers, and that's where the idea of the
• 1:43:40
  other comes from. That's where the the kind of
• 1:43:43
  kind of frame mythology comes from.
• 1:43:45
  But things like cardiac that's just better on a bit kind of
• 1:43:47
  throwing in a name at this stage.
• 1:43:48
  I I presume that he later picks up.
• 1:43:51
  He also references the countermeasures group, which,
• 1:43:54
  you know, first, first reference to that, and now it's a a big
• 1:43:57
  finish spin off and probably a big finish.
• 1:44:01
  Ever run out of ideas? Heaven forfend years ago they
• 1:44:06
  could survive through this book and and and pull out.
• 1:44:09
  Various other things. It feels like he's.
• 1:44:10
  He's constantly building on the the mythos as well.
• 1:44:14
  Yeah. One other thing I wanted to
• 1:44:16
  mention is that every chapter is headed by a day and a time.
• 1:44:21
  And I found this really thrilling because it makes it
• 1:44:23
  clear how all of this takes place in within a basically a 24
• 1:44:28
  hour period. It starts on Friday and it takes
• 1:44:30
  place on Saturday. And I think that's that it gives
• 1:44:33
  it a kind of momentum when you're watching the clock.
• 1:44:37
  The the mention of JFK is. A bit a it's I got the.
• 1:44:45
  Impression the JFK thing had. Happened a little bit longer
• 1:44:48
  ago, did seem a little bit further back, didn't it?
• 1:44:50
  Yeah, so, so, but they don't obviously.
• 1:44:52
  Have the bit where Ace is watching Doctor Who go out.
• 1:44:55
  For the first time but but it did make me Google JFK.
• 1:44:59
  So UK time JFK was shot at 6:31 PM, so 1231 in Dallas and it and
• 1:45:06
  it was reported at 7:05 from Ali Palli on the radio and the TV
• 1:45:12
  our time and then it's 7:27 PM we were all told he was dead our
• 1:45:18
  time. So some of that in the afternoon
• 1:45:21
  he was shot. It wasn't the afternoon our
• 1:45:25
  time, but anyway that it was, it was the evening that that
• 1:45:31
  Kennedy bit actually jumped out at me reading it now.
• 1:45:34
  The notion that Ratcliffe knew about it and it was it's kind of
• 1:45:38
  feeding into the JFK conspiracy theory Cobblers, which, Yeah,
• 1:45:43
  but, but, but but I read that that's because he.
• 1:45:47
  Was in league with some time travellers but yeah we could
• 1:45:53
  probably. Have done with a little bit more
• 1:45:54
  of. That.
• 1:45:54
  But yeah, I just got in that that he'd been Privy to
• 1:45:57
  knowledge of the future because of Davros.
• 1:46:01
  But but it's not. Davros is it?
• 1:46:05
  So it's the other ones. But they're still time.
• 1:46:09
  Travelling. So yeah, it's a weird one.
• 1:46:14
  I yeah, I just wanted to point out as well, this is.
• 1:46:17
  Whilst it's being thoughtful. And whilst it's adding amazing
• 1:46:20
  chase to these characters, and whilst it's telling a great
• 1:46:23
  adventure story, and whilst it's being political and angry and
• 1:46:26
  all of those things, it's a very funny book as well.
• 1:46:29
  He's a very Wissy writer. And we said this in transit and
• 1:46:32
  it's definitely true in the also people.
• 1:46:34
  And there was just lots of lovely asides.
• 1:46:35
  I love the of course she's got herself into danger.
• 1:46:38
  He snapped. They always do.
• 1:46:39
  I could just, I don't know why did they cut that out?
• 1:46:42
  Or there was a wonderful line about Gilmore.
• 1:46:44
  He's a military man, said the doctor.
• 1:46:46
  Lack of action makes his brain seize up.
• 1:46:49
  It's just got lovely cutting asides like that.
• 1:46:52
  Yeah. No, I mean, you can see why
• 1:46:54
  Aranovich is a, you know. It's a he's a proper writer
• 1:46:58
  about everything. I sort of want to circle back to
• 1:47:00
  what I said at the Star and that is.
• 1:47:02
  Just his gift for characterization so
• 1:47:07
  economically, where he can take a character like Reverend
• 1:47:10
  Parkinson and and just say he found God in the trenches amidst
• 1:47:14
  mud, spilled guts and mustard gas and it's all you need to
• 1:47:18
  know, you know, and it's a whole bad story there in a sentence.
• 1:47:21
  Or there's a. Wonderful scene from the
• 1:47:23
  Doctor's point of view. And.
• 1:47:24
  It's just a couple of sentences where he just thinks in a quiet
• 1:47:27
  moment, this planet, it's children, will be flung out into
• 1:47:31
  the stars to conquer, to fight and die on alien planets.
• 1:47:34
  Indomitable, fantastic, brilliant and yet so cruel,
• 1:47:38
  petty and selfish. This is not the He said, she
• 1:47:41
  said prose of Terence Sticks. As good as that can be, as much
• 1:47:45
  as that got kids reading, this is is it's attempting to be
• 1:47:50
  something a lot deeper and a lot more substantial, and it is
• 1:47:54
  kicking Doctor Who. This book, I think, is
• 1:47:57
  responsible for kicking us into the 90s, into the new adventures
• 1:48:01
  and into a completely new way of telling Doctor Who stories.
• 1:48:05
  Yeah, Yeah. And it's interesting to read
• 1:48:07
  knowing it's his. First one, obviously because
• 1:48:09
  we've we've. Mentioned them before the Rivers
• 1:48:11
  of London books. Ben Eronovich's characterisation
• 1:48:13
  and world building is superb and it's all here in his first book.
• 1:48:19
  And the wit and the you know, and the wit and the humour.
• 1:48:22
  Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:48:25
  No, it's a it's. A It's a brilliant book, It
• 1:48:28
  really is. It's.
• 1:48:28
  Such a talent. I I mean, it's astonishing to
• 1:48:30
  think now don't worry, everyone will work in a shop.
• 1:48:32
  I'll do it myself that he was working in a Waterstones for all
• 1:48:35
  those years because honest to God, I'm so pleased whoever
• 1:48:39
  picks up that manuscript for Rivers of London, because he.
• 1:48:43
  Deserved. The success that he had the the
• 1:48:45
  talent was there then you know it can only have matured into
• 1:48:48
  something amazing now. The the amusing aspect of Rivers
• 1:48:52
  of London in some respects, is that he.
• 1:48:54
  Pitched it as ATV show and TV execs basically went.
• 1:48:59
  No, No. No one.
• 1:49:00
  No. One there this will never go no.
• 1:49:02
  So he wrote it as a book and it became a series of books and now
• 1:49:05
  it's a popular series of books that they want to do ATV
• 1:49:08
  adaptation of. So he's gone back to, well, this
• 1:49:11
  is what I wanted to do in the first place.
• 1:49:14
  So. Yeah, so.
• 1:49:15
  But as I said, all of the stuff that you can read in those
• 1:49:18
  books, you can find it in remembrance.
• 1:49:23
  Yeah, brilliant. I think aside from a few minor
• 1:49:28
  issues. We've all had a.
• 1:49:29
  Grand old time with this, gentlemen.
• 1:49:32
  Did you all bring recommend? I mean, you've done enough of
• 1:49:35
  these. Now, did any of you think to do
• 1:49:36
  this? I did.
• 1:49:38
  Oh, Jason, you go first, while Ian has, I think.
• 1:49:41
  Well, I had two. In fact, because I couldn't
• 1:49:43
  decide which one to go for. So.
• 1:49:45
  I'll go to two if I may, but then I may be running out of
• 1:49:48
  books so don't worry I've started a new thing.
• 1:49:51
  This is going to be our last recommend.
• 1:49:53
  So then after this. James, don't look scared.
• 1:49:55
  I know you haven't read as many Doctor Who books as the rest of
• 1:49:57
  us, but we're doing the sort of who ranks thing now.
• 1:50:00
  Top three favorite book companions, top three this,
• 1:50:02
  bottom three that. So we'll have plenty to talk
• 1:50:05
  about, don't you worry. OK, well, I'll give you my
• 1:50:08
  they're they're two very different.
• 1:50:10
  Books that I would like to recommend, and they're both on
• 1:50:15
  the newer end of the spectrum, so 1 is very new.
• 1:50:18
  It's the Doctor Who production diary The Hartnell Years by
• 1:50:22
  David Brunt now. I'm.
• 1:50:26
  Recommending this with a caveat. This is a very.
• 1:50:28
  Very dense book of information about the production of Doctor
• 1:50:33
  Who if you like facts and figures and get to see how it
• 1:50:39
  was produced over the course of time.
• 1:50:41
  This is. Great.
• 1:50:42
  It is not narratively an easy book to read because it is just
• 1:50:46
  a collection of on this day such and such happened.
• 1:50:49
  What raises it above being a very boring production diary is
• 1:50:53
  that it also includes things like responses that Verity
• 1:50:56
  Lambert and David Whitaker wrote to fan letters or letters that
• 1:51:01
  they received from teachers and parents and things like that.
• 1:51:07
  It also includes. So if you read this.
• 1:51:10
  Book you come away with an appreciation of just how seat of
• 1:51:14
  the pants 60s Doctor Who was produced because especially by
• 1:51:18
  the end of it, they are basically producing episodes two
• 1:51:21
  weeks before they're transmitted and the way they had to do rapid
• 1:51:26
  rewrites because William Hartner was ill or injured or something
• 1:51:30
  else had to happen and things like that.
• 1:51:32
  So this is it's it's heavy, it's dense, it's got a lot in it, but
• 1:51:37
  it gives you a real insight into how Doctor Who was made and how
• 1:51:41
  right from the start, basically they were fighting against all
• 1:51:44
  kinds of elements like this TV studio is hot and if it gets too
• 1:51:49
  hot, the sprinklers go off and fuck up the recording and things
• 1:51:54
  like that. And they're constantly saying we
• 1:51:55
  need more money, we need more resource, we need more such and
• 1:51:58
  such and it's got casting notes. It's fascinating.
• 1:52:01
  But the thing I came away from, it really was an appreciation
• 1:52:04
  of, you know, these days they make TV, they record it over
• 1:52:09
  several months, they'll spend another month or so on post
• 1:52:12
  production and then it will go out.
• 1:52:14
  Whereas here they are literally making a 25 minute episode of
• 1:52:17
  Doctor Who which is going to be shown a few weeks later.
• 1:52:20
  And when you consider the length of the stereos in the 1960s,
• 1:52:24
  episode 1 was going out before they'd even made episode 4 in
• 1:52:28
  several cases. So it's amazing to read that
• 1:52:32
  that is how TV production worked in those days.
• 1:52:36
  And my other recommendation is completely different, but I'm
• 1:52:40
  going to Chuck it in. It's the Doctor Who quiz book by
• 1:52:43
  Beth Axford because I had the Doctor Who quiz.
• 1:52:48
  Books that were issued in the 1980s and. 90s and they are very
• 1:52:52
  much just collections of questions and not always
• 1:52:57
  correctly answered either. So they were written in the days
• 1:53:01
  before the enormous. Archive of information.
• 1:53:04
  That we currently have known as the Internet.
• 1:53:06
  There are a lot of misinterpretations of what was
• 1:53:09
  said or done on screen and so on and so forth.
• 1:53:11
  In those books that I remember. This is This is a Doctor Who
• 1:53:16
  quiz book, very clearly written by a fan of.
• 1:53:19
  The show. And it's pitched with different
• 1:53:22
  levels of questions, so it can be enjoyed by kids who are just
• 1:53:27
  getting into Doctor Who, and it can be enjoyed by jaded old
• 1:53:30
  farts like me who've been watching Doctor Who since the
• 1:53:32
  year dot. There's something in it for
• 1:53:35
  everybody. And what really comes across in
• 1:53:38
  this is that it was written with a great deal of affection for
• 1:53:41
  the show and its fans. So I can heartily recommend this
• 1:53:46
  if you haven't already got it and read it for a bit of fun.
• 1:53:49
  It's great and I'm very glad that Beth has been attending
• 1:53:54
  several Doctor Who BFI events and I've been able to tell her
• 1:53:58
  how much I enjoyed this book, so I recommend it.
• 1:54:02
  Sarah bought that book to do to quiz Mark on to watch Who.
• 1:54:06
  And he didn't get a one question right.
• 1:54:09
  It was shameful. Oh dear, Oh dear.
• 1:54:14
  Well, let's give Ian a bit. More time to think, James.
• 1:54:16
  Well, I've got my. I've got my.
• 1:54:18
  Choice, but anyway. James, I thought I would stick
• 1:54:23
  pretty close to Remembrance since.
• 1:54:25
  We were doing that. And if Remembrance Kick started
• 1:54:31
  Doctor Who novelizations as a thing that could be more
• 1:54:36
  ambitious and more prosaic, then to my mind, the the novel that
• 1:54:42
  took the baton and ran with it is Mark Platt's novelization of
• 1:54:46
  Battlefield Genius. I haven't read for a while, but
• 1:54:51
  I. Do recall as a.
• 1:54:53
  Teenager, I felt that it was in some way superior to Remembrance
• 1:54:58
  of the dialects, and it's certainly superior to the
• 1:55:01
  version of Battlefield that went out on television.
• 1:55:03
  And whereas with Remembrance, as I always say it, it didn't
• 1:55:06
  disappoint when I finally saw it.
• 1:55:08
  Battlefield the the most die hard fan of Battlefield who may
• 1:55:13
  in fact be me. It would still have to.
• 1:55:15
  It's slightly disappointing, particularly if you've read the
• 1:55:18
  novelization first, which just effortlessly does the thing that
• 1:55:25
  I think Battlefield really wants to do, which is combine
• 1:55:28
  Arthurian and mythology and sorcery with hard sci-fi and and
• 1:55:36
  have them meet in the middle with Doctor Who and UNIT.
• 1:55:41
  And it it opens with what you believe, a beautifully poetical
• 1:55:45
  dedication, this one says, for Ben, my perfect gentle knight,
• 1:55:50
  to let his humble Squire take over the reins.
• 1:55:54
  I suspect Ben Aronovich couldn't bear to novelize Battlefield
• 1:56:00
  because he was so disappointed by how it had turned out on
• 1:56:02
  television. And bless Mark Platt, he, he
• 1:56:05
  kind of reproduces Ben Aronovich his prose style and he wraps it
• 1:56:09
  up and he, he flits between universes and worlds.
• 1:56:12
  And again, it's like Mark Platt three new adventures before he
• 1:56:16
  became sort of unbearably wanky. I mean, I love, I love a lot of
• 1:56:20
  Mark Platt stuff. I'm, I'm basically a big fan of
• 1:56:21
  his writing, but his early new adventures are quite tough to
• 1:56:25
  read. But this, this is much more
• 1:56:28
  sparing with, with that side of things.
• 1:56:32
  And it's just a beautiful piece of writing, which it's, it's
• 1:56:35
  telling also that it's split into the four episodes.
• 1:56:37
  It's got 4 sections, and by far the thinnest 1 is episode 4,
• 1:56:44
  which maybe shows again how the kind of proportions of the
• 1:56:47
  television story don't quite work.
• 1:56:50
  Whereas as a novel he's able to fix all the things that didn't
• 1:56:53
  work, he's able to write the concepts as Ben Oronovich had
• 1:56:57
  had had imagined them to begin with.
• 1:57:00
  And what you get is a really satisfying blend of fantasy and
• 1:57:03
  science fiction. I'm covering that one soon with
• 1:57:06
  Michael Mills. I think you have been.
• 1:57:08
  Twisting. My arm to read this bloody book
• 1:57:10
  and I'm with Battlefield. Really.
• 1:57:12
  And then he started it in one of the episodes he started telling
• 1:57:15
  me about all the time and why I'm in this in it and how we get
• 1:57:17
  to see merrily enough and and how that's affecting the doctor
• 1:57:21
  and all. It sounds wonderful.
• 1:57:23
  I can't wait. I I just like to fly the flag
• 1:57:26
  for the TV fashion because I. Love Battlefield as.
• 1:57:30
  Well, no, no, no, no. No disrespect to Battlefield on
• 1:57:33
  television. But but I, I, I, I read it
• 1:57:37
  before I watched it. And ISIL, yeah, kind of kind of
• 1:57:43
  fatal, particularly when a book is.
• 1:57:44
  This expands. Again, it's cinematic and you
• 1:57:48
  know the television version is is dogged by just lack of time
• 1:57:51
  and and lack of money or direction.
• 1:57:59
  And so I'm afraid it's going to be a plug because I don't need
• 1:58:03
  as much Doctor Who, you guys. But it has just occurred to me,
• 1:58:07
  did you believe that you would plug anything on a podcast?
• 1:58:09
  Go on now. No, I don't.
• 1:58:10
  It's terrible, but. It has just occurred to me that
• 1:58:13
  I. Was me and Gareth were just that
• 1:58:16
  with Philip Hinchcliff in Leeds for his enjoyable Q&A?
• 1:58:22
  But we were What was that? Sorry, I just had a loud clang.
• 1:58:24
  I think that might have been a name being dropped.
• 1:58:31
  But yeah, but, but basically we've just brought out his.
• 1:58:34
  His DNA of the DNA of Doctor Who, the first in a series, and
• 1:58:38
  it's the Philip Hinchcliffe years.
• 1:58:40
  And yes, I've written one of the essays that's in it, but buy it
• 1:58:44
  for the fact that a Gary Russell has done an amazing job editing
• 1:58:48
  it. It's got an intro by Louise
• 1:58:50
  Jamieson, a bit upfront by Toby Haydock, and then it's got an
• 1:58:55
  essay loosely linked to every single one of the adventures.
• 1:59:01
  And I won't read all the all the authors who've done all the
• 1:59:06
  book, but I've done 1 loosely linked.
• 1:59:09
  To hand of fear. Matthew Sweets done one link to
• 1:59:13
  the arc in space, which is just amazing.
• 1:59:16
  We've got, I mean, everyone's brilliant.
• 1:59:19
  We've got David Howe is in there, Simon Gary is in there.
• 1:59:21
  Kenny Smith's written one, Robin Ince, the you know, the stand up
• 1:59:27
  comedian and broadcaster who's just amazing and his is lovely.
• 1:59:31
  They're all different in tone. Some of them are very academic,
• 1:59:34
  some of them are. Some of them are sort of like
• 1:59:37
  like Robin's is is like all three is like three things at
• 1:59:42
  once. It's got.
• 1:59:43
  Stuff to do with quantum physics.
• 1:59:45
  And it's also talking about his childhood and it's just
• 1:59:49
  brilliant. But yeah, and it's, it's a
• 1:59:51
  really big coffee table book and it's got, it's got some nice
• 1:59:55
  graphics in there and a photo shoot we did on the streets of
• 1:59:59
  Manchester with, with Philip looking very dapper, like he's
• 2:00:05
  like every pictures and album cover.
• 2:00:07
  And it's just a really, really lovely book.
• 2:00:10
  And it's, if you buy the £50 hardback, you get an amazing VAM
• 2:00:14
  disc as well, or the soft pack book is £30.
• 2:00:19
  But it is a really lovely piece and I'm very proud to be a tiny
• 2:00:23
  part of it. So that's me recommending stuff
• 2:00:27
  for you to go and buy. That's you recommending
• 2:00:29
  yourself. But I would expect nothing less
• 2:00:32
  every. Time I feel as if I'm
• 2:00:34
  recommending everybody else You have got the thickest skin of
• 2:00:37
  any man I know I. Could throw anything at you and
• 2:00:39
  it would just bounce. Off every time I feel as if
• 2:00:43
  everything's been said about. Doctor Who stories.
• 2:00:46
  Another book comes out with new. Layers.
• 2:00:50
  And so obviously I'm going to be unpicking Doctor Who for the
• 2:00:52
  rest of my life. Oh gosh, you've all chosen such
• 2:00:56
  smart, intelligent reads. So I'm going to unapologetically
• 2:01:00
  recommend that. A target novelization on theme,
• 2:01:05
  Space Babies by Alison Rumfit. I would like to recommend that
• 2:01:10
  because I I've got a habit at the moment of waking up at about
• 2:01:14
  3:00 in the morning, heading downstairs and reading.
• 2:01:17
  And I was halfway through the Pirate Planet and I was like,
• 2:01:19
  that's a bit, it's a bit full on for 3:00 in the morning.
• 2:01:23
  What the hell shall I read? Oh, I know Mark bought me that
• 2:01:25
  Space Babies novelization and it's very thin and it is very
• 2:01:29
  thin. And I read it in about an hour
• 2:01:31
  and a half. Boy, she does a great, great job
• 2:01:35
  of bringing it to the page like you will get for it very
• 2:01:38
  quickly. A lot of it is told from Ruby
• 2:01:41
  Sunday's point of view. I feel as if I know Ruby Sunday
• 2:01:44
  better for reading that novelization than I did watching
• 2:01:47
  all 8 episodes of the last series because she got into her
• 2:01:51
  head beautifully. Or maybe they just needed a few
• 2:01:54
  more female writers on the staff.
• 2:01:56
  You know, she does wonderful things with the snot monster,
• 2:02:01
  somehow managing to make that ghoulish creation very
• 2:02:05
  sympathetic and really quite tragic.
• 2:02:08
  And and she really leans into that, you know, sort of weird
• 2:02:11
  uncanny valley thing with the babies because I think babies
• 2:02:14
  are creepy as shit anyway. So the fact that she pulls that
• 2:02:17
  off so brilliantly on the page as well, it you realize what a
• 2:02:21
  tight script it is. And you realize sort of
• 2:02:25
  thematically, there are lots of interesting things going on with
• 2:02:28
  the story in prose that I didn't actually feel watching the
• 2:02:32
  episode. So I'm wondering if there's a
• 2:02:33
  direction issue or that just wasn't in the mood.
• 2:02:36
  Who knows? It is a light read.
• 2:02:39
  It is packed full of character. You'll finish it in an hour and
• 2:02:42
  a half. You could do no worse than
• 2:02:46
  reading Space Babies by Alison Rumfit.
• 2:02:48
  And I know none of you are going to, but you should all the same.
• 2:02:53
  I I mean, I think they have chosen some very.
• 2:02:55
  Strange. Episodes to do target
• 2:02:58
  novelizations of 73 yards, like the original novels that they're
• 2:03:04
  doing, you know, the Una McCormack one and the Georgia
• 2:03:07
  Cook one. They're very sort of child
• 2:03:10
  friendly. And then they novelize 73 yards,
• 2:03:13
  which, you know, has very sinister themes in it.
• 2:03:16
  And that whole section with that strange politician and the
• 2:03:19
  things, it's, I'm very confused at the moment as to the books
• 2:03:23
  that are coming out of BBC books.
• 2:03:25
  But this was a very pleasant read that went down very nicely.
• 2:03:31
  Yeah, I can see you all. None of you.
• 2:03:33
  Are going to read it. Gentlemen, I have made a
• 2:03:38
  recommend for our next book club and it's baby No, it's not a
• 2:03:42
  space. Unfortunately, It's not a space
• 2:03:44
  babies, no. It's.
• 2:03:45
  An even. Better book and and can anyone
• 2:03:48
  remember what it is? Yes, it's the oh, what's it
• 2:03:53
  called? Touched by an.
• 2:03:54
  Angel by an Angel Jonathan Morris Jonathan Morris possibly
• 2:03:58
  the. Most time.
• 2:03:59
  Why? Be.
• 2:04:01
  The the the the best ever Steven Moffett script not written by
• 2:04:04
  Steven Moffett. I've got a feeling some of you
• 2:04:07
  are going to love it and some of you are going to hate it.
• 2:04:10
  So it's going to be a brilliant conversation. 11th Doctor book,
• 2:04:14
  11th Doctor Amy and. Rory.
• 2:04:18
  I personally think it's probably the best of the new series
• 2:04:21
  adventures because as long as they don't die, as long as they
• 2:04:24
  don't die and and come back to. Life during it I'll I'll think
• 2:04:28
  I'll be all right well, I'll say this you may think that the.
• 2:04:33
  Very The very visual concept of the Weeping Angels being brought
• 2:04:38
  to the page isn't. As ineffective as you might
• 2:04:41
  think, but I I cannot wait to hear your thoughts because you
• 2:04:44
  guys always, always. Jennifer Morris is a brilliant
• 2:04:47
  writer, so I'm looking forward to that.
• 2:04:49
  It's been on my list. For ages and until then, would
• 2:04:52
  you can you please direct people to your social medias?
• 2:04:55
  Podcasts, whatever it is you do in your lives.
• 2:04:58
  I don't like to talk about myself too much.
• 2:04:59
  So that's true. We'll skip past.
• 2:05:01
  You very quickly then, James. Well, I'd just like.
• 2:05:05
  Ian's new book No are. You fine as well.
• 2:05:09
  I'm James Lark on Twitter and other things.
• 2:05:13
  I can't even remember how many of them I'm I'm signed up to
• 2:05:16
  various things. I don't update.
• 2:05:19
  But if you are into podcasts and you like stories, there's one
• 2:05:22
  called Neurotic Literature, which Joe just threw up his
• 2:05:25
  hands in what could have been a gesture of despair.
• 2:05:27
  No, he's kissing the app he likes.
• 2:05:29
  Oh, I love it. I love it.
• 2:05:33
  And your assignment. Guys, all right is to.
• 2:05:35
  Listen to a Neurotic Literature before the next episode and you
• 2:05:38
  can give a little review of the story you listen to.
• 2:05:40
  All right, I'm going to Google it now on my screen, Jason.
• 2:05:46
  GAIL, you can find me on. Twitter.
• 2:05:49
  I'm Jason. Under score JTT and I'm
• 2:05:52
  currently doing a thread on the rewatch of the tripods that I've
• 2:05:55
  been doing for its 40th anniversary.
• 2:05:57
  Highly recommended. I also.
• 2:06:02
  People seem to quite. Like my doctor.
• 2:06:04
  Who acts as in threads? I love it, which is which is
• 2:06:09
  always entertaining. I am also.
• 2:06:11
  On blue Sky. Jason JTT because it doesn't
• 2:06:13
  like underscores. You can also find me on
• 2:06:17
  Instagram and threads. I am Kurt Avon and those, but
• 2:06:20
  with the with a three and a 0 instead of an E and an R and an
• 2:06:24
  under score there as well. But I'm not as active on those
• 2:06:30
  media sites as I am on Twitter. That's my main hangout at the
• 2:06:33
  moment. If you if you are interested in
• 2:06:42
  podcasts, I still. Have episodes of Robots in your.
• 2:06:45
  Eyes available on various podcasting platforms.
• 2:06:49
  Taking a break from those. I'm hoping to do a third season,
• 2:06:53
  as it were, of Robots in Your Eyes, because there are a few
• 2:06:56
  more things that I've had some interest in revisiting, but I
• 2:07:00
  don't. I love those podcasts, by the
• 2:07:01
  way. I really like them.
• 2:07:03
  Thank you. That's good to know.
• 2:07:05
  I don't know when that next lot will be coming.
• 2:07:07
  Out though, but in the meantime, please do enjoy the ones we
• 2:07:10
  already have available. My favorite thread of yours on
• 2:07:14
  Twitter was when you ranked every.
• 2:07:16
  Doctor Who? Cliffhanger in order.
• 2:07:18
  Do you remember that? Oh, I did think I gave the
• 2:07:21
  cliffhang. There's a rating out of 10,
• 2:07:23
  yeah. I remember that I've never spent
• 2:07:25
  such a prolonged period of time disagreeing with somebody so.
• 2:07:28
  Vehemently, as I did with that. I've got an idea for you,
• 2:07:32
  though. Why don't you do like the
• 2:07:33
  episode ones and rank all of those or the episode fours?
• 2:07:37
  You know, first and last. I could do that.
• 2:07:41
  Yeah, I could do that. Rank all the moustaches in
• 2:07:44
  Doctor. Who?
• 2:07:46
  And do a sub genre you can rank the beards of all.
• 2:07:49
  Doctor Who? Podcasters.
• 2:07:51
  We're all getting beards. Could I?
• 2:07:54
  Could I just actually plug? One last thing on my socials
• 2:07:56
  because I've forgotten I have I have just got an audio drama out
• 2:08:01
  no sci-fi, but it is starring Christopher Eccleston.
• 2:08:04
  So you have my interest. It's it's called scuttled and
• 2:08:09
  it's. Set in the 19th.
• 2:08:11
  Century and it's a beautiful piece, me and me and five of
• 2:08:16
  writers based on based on real archaeology in Rochdale and I'm
• 2:08:22
  really proud of it. And I got to work with
• 2:08:24
  Christopher Eccleston, which was quite exciting and I had to hide
• 2:08:27
  the facts. I was a Doctor Who fan.
• 2:08:30
  When did you finish coming out? The end of 2020.
• 2:08:34
  Bloody 5. Apparently are.
• 2:08:37
  You. Serious.
• 2:08:38
  Yeah. So.
• 2:08:39
  So, yeah. But in the meantime.
• 2:08:41
  I have this audio drama. And because of the funding, it's
• 2:08:44
  free at the point of use, like all the best things.
• 2:08:47
  So just go and listen to it because the more people that
• 2:08:50
  listen, the more chances we will get to do it again.
• 2:08:54
  So it's, it's two and a yeah, 2 1/2 hours nearly of of free
• 2:09:01
  audio concept starring Christopher Eccleston and and
• 2:09:05
  also Doctor Who related. We have Jonathan Cowley's in it
• 2:09:08
  as well, who's actually from Rochdale.
• 2:09:11
  So the War Doctor and and the knife doctor in a together but
• 2:09:16
  don't mention that because Chris doesn't like Doctor Who.
• 2:09:21
  I've got so many recommends and things for people.
• 2:09:23
  To go and do now. For your buck with this podcast.
• 2:09:29
  Guys. Spending an evening with.
• 2:09:30
  You lot is one of the greatest pleasures.
• 2:09:32
  I'll have right now. So thank you very much for your
• 2:09:35
  time. That was a fabulous
• 2:09:36
  conversation. I will just say I never know how
• 2:09:39
  to sign these things off, so I'm just going to say until next
• 2:09:42
  time, yeah.