Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Interference Book Two: The Hour of the Geek by Lawrence Miles (featuring Andrew Batty, Jon Arnold & Luke Sims-Jenkins)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Interference Book Two: The Hour of the Geek by Lawrence Miles (featuring Andrew Batty, Jon Arnold & Luke Sims-Jenkins) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:03
  The Doctor stood in the square for some time after #13
• 0:07
  vanished, just to make sure it didn't come back again.
• 0:11
  It didn't. The lure of the biosphere had
• 0:13
  been too much for it. Just as I am.
• 0:15
  Foreman had predicted. The Doctor knelt down and ran
• 0:20
  his fingers through the dust. It could have been his
• 0:23
  imagination, but even the dust felt different now, as if it no
• 0:27
  longer wanted to cling to everything it touched.
• 0:31
  This time tomorrow, thought the doctor, this town's going to be
• 0:34
  covered in grass. Grass or something very much
• 0:37
  like it. One of the many plant species
• 0:39
  that I am Foreman had ingested into his body over the years,
• 0:43
  and that had been stored in the biology of #13 It wasn't such a
• 0:48
  bad sort, really, the doctor told the dust.
• 0:50
  It didn't want to hurt anybody. It just wanted to be everybody,
• 0:55
  and it got what it wanted. How many people can say that,
• 0:58
  eh? Then he stood and clapped the
• 1:01
  dust off his hands. There was someone standing in
• 1:05
  the square when he turned round, and at first he thought it was
• 1:08
  Sarah disobeying instructions as usual.
• 1:11
  But Sarah didn't carry a gun, and he'd never known her to wear
• 1:14
  a hat either. Magdalena stepped out into the
• 1:18
  square and stopped a few yards in front of the doctor.
• 1:21
  She still had both hands clamped around that shotgun of hers.
• 1:25
  Her face was as taut as ever with the ever present grey dust
• 1:29
  ground into the wrinkles around her mouth.
• 1:32
  The doctor smiled at her. Magdalena didn't smile back.
• 1:36
  It's over, he said. Magdalena's expression didn't
• 1:40
  change. Over.
• 1:43
  She repeated. The Doctor nodded.
• 1:46
  The remote won't be bothering you again, Magdalena, and I
• 1:49
  think you'll find that this planet's a much more hopeful
• 1:51
  place to live after today. He glanced around the square,
• 1:56
  seeing blank MTI staring out from the boarded up buildings.
• 2:00
  Could they feel it, he wondered. Could they feel the change in
• 2:04
  the dust yet? You might want to think about
• 2:06
  changing the name of the place. The doctor added.
• 2:09
  I don't think dust is going to be very appropriate from now on.
• 2:13
  This is Number 13's world now. Foreman's world.
• 2:17
  He turned back to Magdalena, but Magdalena was still just
• 2:21
  standing there, staring at him. You're a time traveller, aren't
• 2:25
  you? The Doctor found himself
• 2:28
  scratching the back of his neck. Yes, well, that's going to be
• 2:32
  rather hard to explain, I'm afraid.
• 2:35
  That's why you came here, to show people we're all time
• 2:38
  travellers. More time travellers there are
• 2:40
  in a place, the more turn up. Like you, like the remote, like
• 2:44
  those two grey things that got nailed up in the desert.
• 2:47
  Something of a simplification, but essentially true, yes.
• 2:52
  Magdalena stopped staring at him then, and swept her eyes across
• 2:55
  the sky. It didn't seem quite as yellow
• 2:58
  as it had done, the doctor noted, which made him wonder
• 3:01
  what Number 13 was doing to the atmosphere.
• 3:03
  It was a quick worker, no doubt about it.
• 3:07
  Remote are gone. The show's gone.
• 3:10
  Yes, they're all dead. No, no, not dead.
• 3:16
  I suppose you could say they've all gone underground.
• 3:20
  Magdalena nodded. Being buried, that's what you're
• 3:23
  saying. It wasn't hard to work out what
• 3:25
  she meant by that. On dust.
• 3:28
  Buried must have been the word they used to mean gone for good.
• 3:32
  Well, I suppose so, yes. The doctor agreed.
• 3:35
  I told you, didn't I? Said Magdalena.
• 3:39
  There was a tone in her voice the doctor couldn't quite place,
• 3:42
  something that didn't sound as tired as everything else on this
• 3:45
  planet. Anyone tries to hurt this town,
• 3:47
  I have to take it out. That's what I said, remember?
• 3:51
  The Doctor followed his brow. I'm sorry, I don't understand.
• 3:56
  You people, you time travellers, you bring things here, bad
• 4:00
  things. Just you being in this town
• 4:02
  that's putting us in danger. The Doctor started shaking his
• 4:06
  head, then realised he was lying.
• 4:10
  All those species that want me dead, he thought.
• 4:13
  All those enemies who want to bring me down at any cost.
• 4:16
  The Master would never have thought about going to Earth if
• 4:18
  I hadn't been there. And how many people did he
• 4:21
  murder once he got there? How many people died just
• 4:24
  because I happened to be in the vicinity?
• 4:27
  The Doctor attracted things just like the travelling show had
• 4:30
  attracted him back in 1963. Yes, he admitted.
• 4:35
  Yes, I'm afraid you're right. But I'm leaving now.
• 4:39
  I've just got to make sure the biosphere is stable and then we
• 4:42
  can know, said Magdalena. Sorry.
• 4:46
  The Doctor felt somewhat taken aback by that.
• 4:49
  No, Buried, said Magdalena. Got to see you.
• 4:53
  Buried Can't leave any trace of you here, or they'll be more,
• 4:58
  more like you, or more like the remote.
• 5:01
  Can't take the chance, like I said.
• 5:05
  Sorry. The doctor sighed.
• 5:09
  I really don't want to 'cause you people any trouble, he said.
• 5:12
  I know, said Magdalena. Then she raised the shotgun,
• 5:17
  aimed it at the doctor's chest, and fired.
• 5:37
  Hamster book club, The Doctor Who Novel Review podcast with Jo
• 5:42
  Ford, Andrew bassie, Luke Sims Jenkins, and John Arnold.
• 5:54
  Interference by Lawrence Miles, Book 2.
• 6:04
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 6:07
  My name is Joe Ford and good grief, the smarts, intelligence
• 6:12
  and charisma in my room today is absolutely dazzling.
• 6:17
  I've got with me to talk about the second part of Lawrence
• 6:21
  Miles is magnum opus interference, the fabulous Mr.
• 6:26
  Andrew Batty. Hello, Andrew.
• 6:27
  Hello. Are you feeling depressed after
• 6:29
  reading this book? Well, it was like 2 weeks ago
• 6:32
  that I finished it, so I've bounced back.
• 6:34
  You're over it now. I've got also got here the
• 6:38
  delicious Mr. John Arnold. Hello, John.
• 6:41
  Hello. How are you, Joe?
• 6:43
  How are you feeling? Sort of post interference.
• 6:46
  Like I need a big cigarette or something, you know?
• 6:49
  It's. Being rogered by a great
• 6:51
  intellect. Do you feel like sort of
• 6:55
  resurrecting the dynamic rankings, you know, and trying
• 6:57
  to beef it up to position? So are we topping or bottoming?
• 7:04
  I don't know which. One neither of those today.
• 7:06
  Well, we'll see how it goes, you know, depends on how depressed
• 7:08
  we get talking about fits. And also, last but never least,
• 7:14
  the Tegan lover himself, Luke Sims Jenkins.
• 7:17
  Hello. Luke hello, it's it's an entry
• 7:20
  coder. Hi, it's.
• 7:22
  Also a reasonable hour for you today.
• 7:24
  Isn't it? It is.
• 7:25
  It's like it's just past 7:00 AM.
• 7:27
  So it's nice. Love this half of the year.
• 7:30
  It's it's, it's pretty good. But I think interference made me
• 7:34
  feel Book 2. It made me feel like a man with
• 7:37
  a horse on him. You're starting to get a
• 7:43
  reputation for this, all right. If you get strange, if you get
• 7:46
  strange books for Christmas, don't knock on me all.
• 7:48
  Right. Bestiality Weekly or something
• 7:51
  like that. Do you treat your horses like
• 7:54
  Angie treats hers? Yes.
• 7:56
  Do you ride bareback whilst dragging up the mate?
• 8:00
  Absolutely. Well look, before we start, I've
• 8:07
  completely forgotten what our icebreaker question is today.
• 8:10
  Not that we need one, but sometimes it's nice to just get
• 8:12
  the conversation flowing. Does anyone remember what it is?
• 8:16
  Yes. It was multi multi doctor
• 8:19
  stories. Oh.
• 8:20
  Yeah. Are you fed up of multi doctor
• 8:23
  stories or are you well up for them whenever they come up?
• 8:27
  Well, since you're the smart ass who remembered, you can go
• 8:30
  first. I think it's pretty much the
• 8:34
  same as every sort. You know, the adventure Big
• 8:36
  Finish has been a bit, how should I say, soul destroying
• 8:40
  for multi doc stories because there's always much fun in
• 8:43
  seeing how they play off each other.
• 8:45
  But they will put the doctors together any old opportunity,
• 8:50
  whether the story merits it or not.
• 8:52
  There's less importance to them these days.
• 8:55
  You know, it's not like something like Day of the Doctor
• 8:58
  or Power of the Doctor where you get all those multi docs on
• 9:01
  screen where it's there for big special occasions.
• 9:05
  But if the story merits it, I'm I'm up for it.
• 9:09
  Or even if the actors are just playing off each other with a
• 9:12
  few sparks, if they can find something in material, you know,
• 9:15
  as Tregton and Perk we used to, if they can do that, I am very
• 9:20
  much up for it. Because, you know, there's
• 9:21
  doctors and the best things. The new series done Power of the
• 9:26
  Doctor again, brilliant stuff. The Giggle finds something
• 9:31
  slightly different to do with it as well.
• 9:33
  So if they can find something we haven't seen before to do with
• 9:37
  it, then yeah, I'm there for it. It's only if it's just, oh,
• 9:42
  here's 2 doctors to boost an ordinary, very ordinary story.
• 9:46
  That's the only time I kind of, well, I won't name any names on
• 9:50
  that. Did you hear about all the sort
• 9:52
  of hushing up they did about, you know, three kid families
• 9:55
  where the two older kids were trying to tear apart the younger
• 9:58
  one? Just like in the giggle?
• 9:59
  And there's a lot of children that have been torn in pieces.
• 10:04
  I know. Russell T Davis has so much to
• 10:06
  ask for. Now Andrews looking confused as
• 10:09
  if I'm saying an actual factual fact there.
• 10:12
  It was a very bad joke. I'm so confused.
• 10:17
  Kids copying what happened in, in, you know, mail.
• 10:20
  And Donna grabbed hold of his arms and pulled him apart.
• 10:23
  Remember. Yeah.
• 10:24
  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
• 10:27
  Crazy. Then for a second I.
• 10:28
  Don't know about you guys but there are so many shoot gap was
• 10:31
  running around my neighbourhood. Oh really?
• 10:33
  Is that really Where are you live again?
• 10:36
  Of Newport, yeah. He comes down occasionally.
• 10:38
  Shoot me for a bit of filming so.
• 10:43
  Well, Andrew, multi doctor stories now I've got a feeling
• 10:47
  you've got something to say here.
• 10:48
  Go on. No, no, I think I think pretty
• 10:53
  similar to John. I think, you know, if you've got
• 10:55
  something interesting to do with it, like I'm not averse to the
• 10:58
  concept of doing it, but I think Big Finish were wise in the past
• 11:04
  sort of pre the light at the end where it was sort of reserved
• 11:08
  for special occasions or if somebody had a really
• 11:11
  interesting idea to do with it, kind of like the project to not
• 11:18
  project Lazarus, Project Lazarus.
• 11:20
  So yeah, that was kind of an interesting take on a on a multi
• 11:23
  doctor story. And they can do good ones like
• 11:26
  like Daughter of the Gods. That was really good second
• 11:30
  doctor one. But yeah, I think, yeah, I've
• 11:35
  got no problem with it if someone's doing something
• 11:36
  interesting with it. And I think the issue is that
• 11:39
  maybe rather than people coming to them with a I've got a really
• 11:42
  good idea for a multi doctor story.
• 11:44
  It's a we've got a 12 part epic. Each story is a multi doctor or
• 11:49
  we've got a box set and we need to have two doctors in this box
• 11:52
  set. I guess because light at the end
• 11:55
  sold sold really well. They started breaking that rule
• 11:58
  of doing multi doctor stories and then just sort of, you know,
• 12:00
  rolled them out for, you know, any any excuse clearly because
• 12:06
  it sells sells copies. But I think you kind of need
• 12:09
  that like editorial eye on it and restrictions of we've done
• 12:15
  this too much, we need to make it feel special again.
• 12:18
  So we only, we only do it if there's a reason to do it or if
• 12:21
  it's for a celebration because yeah, it's just gone a little
• 12:24
  bit too far the other way now, I think.
• 12:27
  Luke. Well, the Out of Time series
• 12:31
  have no reason to exist, but I like all three of those and
• 12:36
  they're all You listen to those stories and you'll come away
• 12:39
  with them going like, yeah, the story was pretty slight, but I
• 12:42
  got an hour of, well, for me it's skates of hell with, you
• 12:46
  know, Peter Davis and David Tennant.
• 12:47
  I got to hear the just chit chat and hang out for an hour
• 12:51
  fighting Cybermen. At the end of it, I was like,
• 12:54
  son of a bitch. If Big Finish had a box set of
• 12:57
  just this, I wouldn't buy it. So I think I'm the problem.
• 13:03
  You are the problem. We're sitting through all these
• 13:07
  recycled multi doctor. Stories.
• 13:10
  You see him up there on his throne with all of his copies of
• 13:13
  Was the Future. I haven't heard, I haven't heard
• 13:18
  those those ones yet or or what was the one after light at the
• 13:23
  end like there was? Legacy of Time or something like
• 13:27
  that. Yeah, I haven't heard that one.
• 13:29
  What was that? Was that the six Part 1?
• 13:31
  I don't know. They're not, but they just blow
• 13:37
  into a mix of doctors. I mean, I'm just so bored of it
• 13:42
  now, especially from Big Finish. I just, I'm like, Oh my God.
• 13:46
  Colin Baker and Peter Davidson and Sylvester McCoy.
• 13:48
  And that's been done about 15 Times Now.
• 13:51
  Colin Baker and David Tennant, he was listening to the other
• 13:54
  week and then I heard, I mean, just it's just every other week.
• 13:56
  When Once In Future came out, it was like that was every single
• 14:00
  story with doctors just merging into other doctors all the time.
• 14:03
  So the whole thing, the whole story was just multi doctor all
• 14:07
  the way through and none of it's felt special because they've
• 14:09
  just spent the last five years doing this exact thing.
• 14:12
  So how you can market that as something special?
• 14:14
  I don't know. I.
• 14:16
  Think I quite like the. Multi Doctor stories that they
• 14:18
  do when it's that it's not necessarily the Doctors
• 14:20
  interacting, but sort of like the the consequences of one
• 14:24
  story running into another sort of like interference that we're
• 14:26
  doing today. But also like Wolfsbane where
• 14:29
  that has the 8th Doctor and the 4th Doctor in it.
• 14:30
  And it's not like a meet up and fight a werewolf together story.
• 14:34
  It's something's happened in the Doctor's future that's been
• 14:37
  affecting his past, kind of like interference.
• 14:41
  But yeah, I think there's interesting ways of doing it
• 14:43
  that aren't just the sort of standard stand around Dandy and
• 14:47
  a clown in all of those. The story justifies the premise,
• 14:50
  doesn't it? Whereas half the time it's just
• 14:53
  like, wouldn't it be cool if David Tennant and Colin Baker
• 14:55
  had an hour together and some voice?
• 14:58
  And I think the last time Big Finish did it, that really
• 15:00
  excited me, was what's the one where the two Colin Baker's met
• 15:04
  the two versions of Colin? It was the TV Colin Baker and
• 15:06
  the Big Finish, Colin Baker and the home one.
• 15:09
  No, no. No.
• 15:11
  Yeah, Matt Fitton 1. Yeah.
• 15:14
  Good grief. It will come to all of us later.
• 15:16
  Wrong doctors. Thank you.
• 15:18
  Yeah. But the whole point of that was
• 15:20
  to just show how far he'd come, you know, and contrast the two
• 15:23
  and get some humor out of that. And that made sense.
• 15:25
  Yeah. With the books I mean I don't
• 15:27
  really do multi tops. What's hard of TARDIS like?
• 15:30
  I've never read it. I've.
• 15:31
  Never read it, I don't. Think.
• 15:32
  I mean, I think I. Think, I think, the doctor's.
• 15:36
  Hiding in the TARDIS or something?
• 15:38
  Yes, he doctors TARDIS at one point.
• 15:39
  I think he hides behind the consul doesn't he?
• 15:41
  If I remember actually the cold fusion as well.
• 15:45
  Well, it was sort of like great one.
• 15:47
  This question was sort of like a back alleyway of asking you
• 15:50
  guys. Do you think there was an
• 15:53
  expectation in Interference Book 2 with A2 book series with two
• 15:58
  doctors on the covers, whichever way you put them around, that
• 16:01
  those two doctors would meet and have a significant plot
• 16:05
  together? Was that your expectation and
• 16:10
  were you disappointed? And who on earth can I point at
• 16:15
  Luke? I didn't really.
• 16:20
  I think they had the one interaction in the middle, like
• 16:23
  when I don't remember when that was with the blood and
• 16:27
  mathematics. I that was awesome.
• 16:30
  That was that's awesome. Like you don't even need to
• 16:33
  explain like how any of the maths works.
• 16:36
  He just describes the just the process of it.
• 16:39
  And that's, that's good science fiction to me, like bad science
• 16:42
  fiction is just like, I'm going to give you a fucking physics
• 16:44
  lesson while I teach you about this fictional spaceship.
• 16:47
  And I'm like, I don't want that. Like I don't know how a
• 16:49
  microwave works, but I don't know how to use a microwave.
• 16:51
  Like that's the that's all I need.
• 16:53
  So he's really. Good at time 0 then.
• 16:56
  All right, there's a lot of physics in that.
• 16:59
  Yeah, Doctor Who Physics. So.
• 17:01
  So I don't know. I like that book anyway.
• 17:03
  So what am I? What am I saying?
• 17:04
  So no, I didn't think they'd really me.
• 17:07
  At least I knew it this time around.
• 17:10
  I don't remember what my expectation was when I was a
• 17:13
  teenager, so it's been too long. But this time I, I was surprised
• 17:18
  when they did kind of meet in that special place area.
• 17:23
  And then I would have been if they had.
• 17:26
  So you hadn't. So yeah, I don't know.
• 17:27
  That was a surprising moment for me.
• 17:29
  I didn't. I didn't expect it.
• 17:32
  Andrew yeah. It's difficult to answer because
• 17:36
  I didn't read it at the time, so I kind of came to it having read
• 17:40
  I Who and kind of knowing what to expect.
• 17:43
  So yeah, I don't think I really came to.
• 17:46
  I didn't come to it with an expectation of anything because
• 17:49
  I kind of had spoiled it entirely for myself before I
• 17:52
  ever read the book. Were you quite happy for those
• 17:55
  two stories to be a part though, and just for one to influence
• 17:58
  the other? Yeah.
• 17:59
  I mean, like I was saying, like I, I quite like that approach to
• 18:04
  to multi doctor stories. And there were like a few new
• 18:08
  adventures, weren't there, where there were sort of other doctors
• 18:11
  having little cameos and doing stuff in the background.
• 18:13
  But this one kind of like does something more than that than
• 18:16
  just sort of like tickling that fan need.
• 18:21
  So yeah, I, I, I like this approach and I think it's a book
• 18:25
  that it's, it's not, it's not really about that, is it?
• 18:28
  It's not, it's not trying to be a multi doctor story and it's
• 18:31
  not interested in doing that. It's doing something entirely
• 18:34
  different. So I'm kind of just happy to go
• 18:36
  where the book wants me to go. Kind of refreshing, isn't it?
• 18:39
  Even though it is sort of presenting it, the fact that it
• 18:42
  rejects it, what we're saying in the first episode about sort of
• 18:45
  how uncomfortable this is making us feel.
• 18:47
  And you know how it's not sort of ticking our usual Doctor Who
• 18:50
  boxes. I think actually having said at
• 18:52
  the time, oh, I didn't didn't have much expectation of it.
• 18:56
  I think I've got a memory of it being announced at some point as
• 18:59
  sort of like a two-part novel where one would be a past Doctor
• 19:03
  adventure and one would be an Eighth Doctor adventure.
• 19:04
  And they'd be like interlinked, but not necessarily like multi
• 19:08
  Doctor. And maybe that was the plan at
• 19:12
  one point and they announced it that way and then it wasn't
• 19:13
  delivered in that way. So I don't, I don't know.
• 19:16
  But in my head, like there was maybe like a Gallifrey Guardian
• 19:19
  or a Gallifrey base story or something, which sort of
• 19:23
  announced it in that way. I do wonder if there's another
• 19:26
  reason why it lingered at the bottom of that pole, though, is
• 19:28
  that people were expecting, you know, the great Paul Mcgahn,
• 19:31
  John Pearl, we meet up and this did not deliver that at all,
• 19:36
  John. I was kind of interested to see
• 19:39
  how they the stories have to intersect in.
• 19:42
  So if they're in the same page, you know, if same books is
• 19:45
  actually you, you can't you know, you have they have to
• 19:49
  comment on the other one. Same way the blue Angel next
• 19:52
  book along the stuff in the office comments on the Doctor
• 19:56
  Who story. And I I don't think I was
• 20:00
  particularly expecting this grand great team up of the
• 20:03
  doctors go and defeat Faction Paradox.
• 20:06
  Because that's not the way Lawrence Miles ever worked.
• 20:08
  It's not what he'd done in Alien Bodies.
• 20:11
  You know, it's he's looking for something much more interesting.
• 20:14
  It's the I think it was originally pitched by Lawrence's
• 20:19
  one volume. So I think the story, I don't
• 20:24
  think it was ever intended to be a or start to start to be an
• 20:28
  Eighth Doctor and a past Doctor, but that's how we end up having
• 20:31
  to split it out. That's how it's rationalised.
• 20:33
  I'm sure it made Steve Cole's life easier to go right.
• 20:35
  I can fill 2 slots with one book.
• 20:38
  How small can we make this film? No, it's going to be Yeah, it.
• 20:44
  Oh. Microscopy.
• 20:46
  But yeah, so I was kind of expecting them to intersect in
• 20:52
  some way, but I wasn't sure how, particularly after the first
• 20:56
  book, because you're looking at the first book and you say it's
• 20:59
  unsettling, it's wrong, it's doing different things.
• 21:02
  Lawrence is not interested in just another simple,
• 21:06
  straightforward Doctor Who story.
• 21:09
  I, I thought it was less the two doctors coming together and more
• 21:14
  the two ranges coming together and playing with those
• 21:18
  expectations because you think the past doctor Avengers on the
• 21:20
  whole are going to be quite cozy, quite nostalgic.
• 21:23
  We've talked about it before, Luke and Andrew about sort of
• 21:25
  what, where our expectations are with the PDAs and then with the
• 21:28
  EDA. That's the original 1.
• 21:30
  So that sort of shocking and, and takes the risks.
• 21:34
  And here you get the the, the horrible, violent old EDA
• 21:39
  intruded on the lovely comfy parts Doctor adventures in a
• 21:43
  very sort of violating way. And it's kind of a bit horrible.
• 21:48
  And we'll get there when we get to the end of the book because
• 21:49
  boy, there is a, a, a big event coming up which we don't need to
• 21:53
  talk about before we do just for the listeners that may not.
• 21:58
  And if you haven't, please go and listen to Part 1 of this
• 22:01
  episode. It's full of fabulous opinions.
• 22:06
  Let's do our very own Don Warrington previously.
• 22:09
  On. Doctor Who So I'm going to point
• 22:13
  to each one of you, and I'm going to say, where did we leave
• 22:15
  this character? All right, Luke, where did we
• 22:20
  leave Sam? Sam's on anathema, isn't she?
• 22:28
  That's right. They might need a bit more than
• 22:29
  that. And it's about to be plugged
• 22:32
  into a giant medium machine. Where?
• 22:36
  Yeah, where she's going to go through all sorts of colourful
• 22:41
  TV scenarios, I guess. Andrew, where did we leave the
• 22:44
  doctor? So the doctor is still trapped
• 22:50
  in a Saudi Arabian prison cell. He briefly sort of, how do you
• 22:59
  describe it? He sort of like went to the
• 23:04
  What's the word to describe it like the?
• 23:07
  Astral plane or something? Astral plane.
• 23:08
  That was exactly the guy that I'm looking for He did some he
• 23:11
  did some blood maths. He wrote some blood maths on the
• 23:14
  on the although Keith, if you're listening, please don't try
• 23:17
  that, OK? It doesn't work.
• 23:19
  So it all went a bit Lugopolis, and he managed to sort of magic
• 23:22
  himself out of the prison cell for a few minutes, interacted
• 23:25
  with Sarah Jane, accidentally broke into the 3rd Doctor's
• 23:29
  timeline, but then had to go back to the prison cell because
• 23:34
  this was just a temporary solution.
• 23:35
  So he's still back in this cell, his cellmate's been executed.
• 23:40
  So yeah, not in a good place. What about the one with the
• 23:44
  lisp? The 3rd Doctor?
• 23:48
  Oh, oh, that Doctor. I'm doing both Doctors.
• 23:51
  The 3rd Doctor is on the Planet Dust where the TARDIS has
• 23:57
  materialized, and it shouldn't be there 'cause it should be on
• 24:00
  its way. I I think they're on their way
• 24:02
  back from Peloton, so it should be heading towards Planet of the
• 24:05
  Spiders. But because of the Doctor's
• 24:08
  intervention, it's broken something in the timeline.
• 24:11
  Something's gone wrong with the TARDIS, and it's arrived on this
• 24:13
  horrible planet full of desperate vestiges of humanity
• 24:19
  who are trying to survive in this horrible situation.
• 24:22
  The The Faction Paradox have arrived.
• 24:27
  A. A.
• 24:27
  A. Mad Circus has arrived in town
• 24:30
  and everything is is going to hell.
• 24:33
  That sounds so exciting. Shame we don't go back there for
• 24:36
  another 200 pages, eh? And John, where have we left our
• 24:40
  lovely our favorite Fitz Kreiner?
• 24:42
  Oh, blessed poor Fitz. He's been kidnapped by by the
• 24:47
  remote. Is that it's the remote?
• 24:48
  Yes, he's been kidnapped by the remote and he's in the I think
• 24:52
  we've left him in the 26th century, somewhere like 2596,
• 24:57
  where he is trying to essentially find his way back to
• 25:01
  the Doctor somehow, which might involve a better time travel.
• 25:05
  One way or the other, he's been remembered come through the the
• 25:10
  cold. And whether this is the fits we
• 25:13
  know and love, or a slightly different fits because you've
• 25:15
  been remembered differently, we don't quite know yet.
• 25:19
  And because she's definitely like a Co lead in this, I'll
• 25:23
  touch on Sarah Jane Smith very quickly, who brilliantly is
• 25:26
  trying to take down the sort of arms fair and expose government
• 25:30
  politics in all of this, has joined forces with Sam Jones for
• 25:35
  a little while. I think at the end of the book,
• 25:38
  I mean, what she's up to is she she's met Lost Boy, the Ogron.
• 25:42
  She's back with K9 and the three of them, that's right.
• 25:45
  They're going to go off and try and save the Doctor, aren't
• 25:47
  they? They're, they're on the hunt for
• 25:49
  the Doctor and other Sarah Jane, as somebody said, wonderful in
• 25:54
  our first episode in, you know, ridiculous clothes from season
• 25:57
  11 has tripped into this appalling 8th Doctor's planet
• 26:01
  dust and is currently just watching cups of coffee being
• 26:04
  thrown in John Perry's face and having a terrible time of it,
• 26:07
  you know, but our older Sarah can't quite remember whether
• 26:11
  she's been there or not. It's all a bit in flux at the
• 26:13
  moment. Is that about right?
• 26:16
  Yeah, absolutely. Who the fuck leads Don
• 26:18
  Warrington? Hey, sorry, Don.
• 26:22
  Well, where the hell do we pick up with this book?
• 26:25
  Because I've written an essay. I don't know how you guys.
• 26:28
  I've got I've got a question. Compared to the first book, did
• 26:33
  you guys read this one faster? Is it what?
• 26:36
  Did you read it slower? Because for me, I think it might
• 26:39
  be the outlier here. Book two took me longer to read
• 26:43
  than first book because, as I alluded to, I felt like a man
• 26:49
  with a horse. I'm actually because I always
• 26:53
  just wanted Lauren Smiles to stop beating me with the stick
• 26:56
  and kind of move on. At certain points in this book,
• 27:00
  I was like, Yep, I get it. And it's really dark and I feel
• 27:05
  really kind of exhausted. So I found it's not a bad novel,
• 27:10
  but I found it very exhausting. And yeah.
• 27:16
  I tore through book two. Book one took me a couple of
• 27:20
  days. I read book two in a day.
• 27:23
  I couldn't put it down. I, and especially the
• 27:25
  second-half of book two, once the doctor was back in the
• 27:28
  action, once all the stuff with the cold was when you realize
• 27:31
  what anathema was. All of that when that was all
• 27:34
  coming to a big climax, I just couldn't put this down.
• 27:37
  I had to go and do the shopping. I had to go and work.
• 27:39
  I honestly was thinking about throwing a sickie just so I
• 27:42
  could get through this book and and then and then the last
• 27:45
  section I just thought was amazingly good for all of the
• 27:50
  naughty reasons that we'll discuss later.
• 27:52
  So yeah, for me, the second book of interference is one of my
• 27:56
  favourites I've read for the entire book club so far.
• 27:59
  Like it is up there. What about you, Andrew?
• 28:05
  And so I, yeah, similar to Joe, I, I tore through this one, I
• 28:11
  think. I think it's the Doctor, because
• 28:15
  the Doctor gets involved in the plot in this book.
• 28:17
  It feels more like a standard Doctor Who book.
• 28:20
  So, and I feel when he gets back into it, some of the tension
• 28:24
  that you've been holding from the first book sort of
• 28:26
  dissipates a little bit because you're like, OK, the Doctor's
• 28:29
  out of that awful situation that he was in and things are moving
• 28:33
  more like a conventional Doctor Who story.
• 28:36
  So it's not as much sort of breaking things as the first one
• 28:39
  is, apart from the massive thing that it does in the second-half.
• 28:44
  So yeah, it feels a bit more reassuringly Doctor Who, but I
• 28:46
  do prefer the first book because it's so because it's doing so
• 28:53
  much to break Doctor Who and push it to its limits, whereas
• 28:55
  this one is slightly sort of putting the toys back in the
• 28:58
  box, I think. It's setting the toys up so
• 29:01
  everyone else can play with them I guess, and that's something
• 29:04
  Boris would like to do. But they've been soiled.
• 29:09
  John, did you rush through this or did you stutter?
• 29:12
  I, I went through as quickly because that first book as
• 29:17
  Andrew, as Andrew said, it's, it's trying to break down to
• 29:20
  you. It's giving you so many ideas.
• 29:21
  It's throwing it, you know, an idea at you on every single
• 29:25
  page, Neely. And, you know, particularly I
• 29:27
  think the dust section took me a fair while to go through, even
• 29:32
  though it's fairly short. But this one, I don't know if it
• 29:36
  is that we're in kind of Lawrence Miles's mindset here or
• 29:39
  whether it's that it's just the ideas being paid off.
• 29:43
  It's it's more story than the the first book, for instance,
• 29:47
  where, you know, the doctor starts in the cell and he ends
• 29:50
  in the cell, for instance. So yeah, I taught her and
• 29:55
  because I wanted to know what happened to the characters as
• 29:57
  well, in particular one who will come to, I'm sure.
• 30:02
  And yeah, we'll sort of cover how every plot ends, but for
• 30:04
  once, in a Doctor Who book, especially a big book like this,
• 30:08
  I was really satisfied where every single person ended in
• 30:12
  this book. I thought everyone got great pay
• 30:14
  off. And sort of despite the
• 30:16
  reputation, there's quite a lot of hope in the way that it ends
• 30:22
  in, in the way that some of the storylines resolve themselves,
• 30:26
  which I wasn't expecting. I was expecting it to be like
• 30:29
  fully a fully bleak, horrible, horrifying ending.
• 30:34
  But so, yeah, it was quite unexpected.
• 30:37
  I went, I suppose the way that some of those, particularly the
• 30:40
  way that the dust as a planet, the way that that storyline ends
• 30:44
  was, yeah, unexpected years later.
• 30:46
  There was there was a bit where I realised that even though the
• 30:50
  Third Doctor was utterly unequipped to deal with what was
• 30:54
  taking place around him, he still went out and faced it with
• 30:57
  absolute dignity. And then started to think like
• 31:02
  smarter strategies than than the people, like father crying and
• 31:06
  the people he was facing. And I was like, yeah, he's
• 31:08
  really saying something about, you know, classic coup.
• 31:10
  Don't underestimate it. All right.
• 31:13
  Sorry, John, you were going to. Say, yeah, it's what Andrew was
• 31:16
  saying about it there being hope at the end, because again, this
• 31:19
  is Miles drawing very much on Cox, particularly Grant Morrison
• 31:23
  and The Invisibles and the Invisibles, and deliberately
• 31:26
  ends on a note of hope, too. It puts its characters through
• 31:28
  hell for how many issues? It was 7 graphic novels that
• 31:32
  I've got back at there. But it's always some it always
• 31:37
  leaves a reader in a good place. You know, it's, it will put you
• 31:41
  through hell for how you know, 600 pages here, but it will
• 31:45
  reward you for it. And it you will not in the sense
• 31:49
  of you'll be a better person morally for it, but you'll be a
• 31:52
  you'll probably be smarter if you get through this and what
• 31:55
  it's saying and work with it. I mean.
• 31:57
  Something this book has got to do is it has to write out Sam
• 32:00
  Jones. It has to introduce compassion
• 32:03
  and it has to reintroduce fits after taking into a very dark
• 32:08
  place. And I shall ask you at the end
• 32:10
  of the episode how well you think all of those things went
• 32:13
  down, you know, as a sort of moving into the Blue Angel.
• 32:17
  But how do you want to approach this?
• 32:18
  Because this is our big book, We can either go sort of character
• 32:21
  by character or idea by idea. What do you reckon?
• 32:26
  It's enough of ideas, isn't it? So let's go with the ideas.
• 32:28
  Oh. Choose an idea, then John.
• 32:30
  Oh, which one? Wait.
• 32:31
  Oh, you don't want to start with the big one, do you?
• 32:38
  What about what about the remote tower and Sam Jones infecting it
• 32:43
  with ideas of rebellion? This is it and it causes
• 32:47
  absolute chaos. It's I love that idea because
• 32:50
  the remote aren't. Evil.
• 32:53
  They're anarchists. That's it's such a big thing.
• 32:56
  They, they're chaos. They are, you can see where
• 32:59
  their agents of Batch and Paradox actually, because Batch
• 33:01
  and Paradox is completely anarchistic.
• 33:02
  They're not particularly, you know, evil.
• 33:05
  They're not badly minded. They just want to have a bit of
• 33:07
  fun and screw the universe up. These people are just entirely
• 33:10
  shaped by the signals. They're just entirely dependent
• 33:13
  on the signals they receive. There's no great plan, you know,
• 33:16
  they, they, they're going to Earth and trying to sell the
• 33:19
  weapon just to see what happens. It's it's just a kind of a
• 33:24
  brilliant idea for an adversary because.
• 33:26
  It's almost pointless, isn't it? Yeah.
• 33:29
  That that's it. It's almost common I think on
• 33:31
  Doctor Who villains plot it's. It's what's the point?
• 33:35
  They're motiveless, Yeah. Yeah, they're completely
• 33:38
  motiveless. They're just there to see what
• 33:40
  happens. So that idea where that, you
• 33:44
  know, Sam gets to essentially defeat the remote by just broke
• 33:50
  being herself by broadcasting her thoughts, her perspectives,
• 33:54
  her ideas out there. And this is where I think it's
• 33:59
  such a good exit for her as well.
• 34:01
  She does that and she realises the power of her ideas, the
• 34:04
  power of what one person can do. And she is, she realises the way
• 34:11
  the Doctor interferes in the universe isn't for her, but she
• 34:15
  has, she can by herself by affecting, affecting others.
• 34:21
  And I think we meet future Sam as well, which is an interesting
• 34:24
  section. She can change the world and by
• 34:28
  direct action rather than just by running around and and facing
• 34:33
  the evil aliens. So, yeah, the, the idea, the way
• 34:37
  this gives Sam an exit, the way the idea that one person can
• 34:40
  make a difference demonstrably in the real world.
• 34:43
  I love that. Because that's kind of what
• 34:45
  Sam's about, right? That's always what Sam's been
• 34:48
  about. But there was a section here,
• 34:50
  and I really, really loved it, where again, he was
• 34:53
  deconstructing Sam's sort of constituent parts that she's a
• 34:57
  vegan, that she's a moral do gooder and all of this.
• 35:01
  And the suggestion is that they were just poor signals, creating
• 35:06
  a less than convincing person. There's that sort of critique.
• 35:09
  And I was like, Lawrence Miles, are you critiquing the writing
• 35:13
  of the early EDA writes otherwise, suggesting the
• 35:17
  influences that created Sam were just bad signals?
• 35:21
  Because that's what I was saying from that.
• 35:23
  And I was like, but. And So what he's doing, he's
• 35:24
  sort of pulling her apart and then putting her back together
• 35:27
  again and going, here's this amazing competent person off you
• 35:30
  go out into the world and be amazing.
• 35:32
  It's it's almost like reversing the 8 doctors, isn't it?
• 35:35
  As I said last time he told yeah, it's stuck.
• 35:38
  He he wants to go back to 96 to almost raise the influence.
• 35:43
  It's just there is a Sam. If this has been the Sam we
• 35:47
  started with, my God, she'd be brilliantly remembered because
• 35:52
  it's such a strong character. You know what you, even if
• 35:55
  you've hated it of, you know, however many books it is 30 odd
• 35:58
  books by the end of this. Yeah, you get to know it.
• 36:02
  You get to like her. You get a sense of what she is.
• 36:05
  Annoying, though, I've realized to hang around with you now.
• 36:08
  Oh well, I'm off fine. Yeah, see ya.
• 36:12
  Sarah and Sam adventures or something.
• 36:14
  Yeah, that'd. Be great I'd I'd read it.
• 36:16
  No, we nearly got that we'd be finished, didn't we?
• 36:18
  Because they were going to do Sam Jones and Sarah Jane and Liz
• 36:21
  Slayton for a hissy fit and said I don't want no other Doctor Who
• 36:24
  companions in this references to K9 is bad enough.
• 36:27
  And then they made it. Ellie Martin.
• 36:30
  Who the hell is Ellie Martin? And it's sad that we don't get
• 36:36
  to see Sam again in the books. And she kind of leaves on a on
• 36:39
  good terms and on a promise that we might see her again.
• 36:43
  It's like specifically set up in the book that that we're going
• 36:47
  to see her again. And then it doesn't happen.
• 36:51
  I guess, you know, we had that big editorial change and she
• 36:54
  doesn't come back. But I think it's a shame given
• 36:57
  how how strong she is in this final book.
• 37:00
  And then when she is referred to, I don't want to give any
• 37:04
  spoiler spoilers to Luke, But you know what, the way the the
• 37:08
  series does wrap up the character, I think kind of goes
• 37:11
  back on the development that they they gave her here was was
• 37:14
  like, well, you didn't like that character, Fine, you're going to
• 37:16
  love this. Exactly.
• 37:18
  Spoiler for the Gallifrey Chronicles without being a
• 37:21
  spoiler, Luke. Yeah.
• 37:23
  Well, I did. I did like the fact that the
• 37:25
  idea she introduced to the remote was sacrifice.
• 37:28
  And then that just started manifesting itself in all those
• 37:30
  different ways, and suddenly they were all fine each other
• 37:33
  and nobody knew. Why did they?
• 37:35
  Yeah, it's it's it was interesting how much time she
• 37:37
  spends with Compassion in the book, given that compassion is
• 37:42
  her successor. And she's then been influenced
• 37:44
  by all these signals from Sam, not only through meeting Sam,
• 37:47
  but through Sam interfacing with the remote sort of intelligence.
• 37:54
  And I can't remember if that is, if that is explored with
• 37:57
  compassion later on, if there are references back to how Sam
• 38:01
  has kind of influenced her 'cause obviously she'd later
• 38:04
  becomes influenced by the signals from the TARDIS.
• 38:06
  But it feels here like that is being set up, that one companion
• 38:10
  has kind of imprinted onto another.
• 38:14
  But then I don't think that anything is done with that
• 38:16
  later, which would have been nice.
• 38:18
  But so I guess they were trying to.
• 38:19
  He did that run of books, Andrew, didn't he?
• 38:21
  He needed that run of books, Lauren.
• 38:22
  Smiles. He did.
• 38:25
  Luke, Sam, anything to add? I love her final scenes, I love
• 38:32
  the implication of the set up with her and Sarah.
• 38:36
  I thought that was fantastic. But I'm reading the book and I'm
• 38:42
  like, oh, man, all right, cool. Turn the page.
• 38:45
  Fuck me. Another screenplay.
• 38:47
  Oh. I love the screenplay.
• 38:51
  I was over it. I was just like, all right, I
• 38:53
  get what you're doing. I get it and I go.
• 38:56
  Without this would have been a 900 page book if he'd had to do
• 38:59
  all that in prose, all that expeditions.
• 39:02
  At some point I was hoping I was going on for so long.
• 39:08
  I like the ideas, I like the signals, I like the ideas he's
• 39:12
  pulling from it. But the format I was just like,
• 39:15
  can we get this? Can we make this as short as the
• 39:18
  travels with Fitz parts, please? Like I felt like I got the point
• 39:23
  of what he was trying to do and I was just I was ready to move
• 39:27
  on before he was. I think I.
• 39:29
  Think that's. Someone might.
• 39:31
  Usually agree with you. I think he overuses that that
• 39:34
  device a little bit. And for me, the worst bit was
• 39:36
  the the whole chapter. That's like Sarah Jane's
• 39:39
  documentary. Yeah, like the script of the
• 39:43
  documentary that she's put out on the BBC.
• 39:45
  And I also, I just don't really like the idea of a companion
• 39:48
  being a public figure. I know it's very important to
• 39:52
  this book, but it just or yeah, I'm, I don't like it.
• 39:56
  Like they're, I'm really outlier now because I love, I love the
• 40:00
  documentary script as well, because I was like, that's sort
• 40:02
  of the payoff to that plot is that that documentary happened
• 40:06
  and we're so we're sort of seeing it in the only way that
• 40:08
  we could possibly see it because we can't see it.
• 40:11
  So I really like that. I think it just went on a bit
• 40:13
  too long. Yeah, no, I, I, I get that too.
• 40:18
  I always thought Sarah was more of a print journalist anyway
• 40:22
  than ATV journalist. But, you know, but we could have
• 40:26
  gotten excerpts from a book. Maybe that would have worked
• 40:28
  better than just describing a Tele show for for chapters.
• 40:32
  But I like what he does with Sam is like the end result.
• 40:36
  I'm satisfied. And so I I can't really complain
• 40:40
  too much. I just wish he got there a
• 40:42
  little sooner because I was just, that's part of my my
• 40:46
  exhaustion, I guess. Like, here's my idea.
• 40:49
  Yep. And I'm going to be on that
• 40:51
  idea. OK.
• 40:52
  And I'm going to be on this idea.
• 40:53
  OK. And then I'm going to put all
• 40:55
  those ideas together into one and then build on that with
• 40:58
  another idea. I'm like, oh, I couldn't stop
• 41:02
  it. Feel like you're beating me with
• 41:03
  the idea stick and I've had enough ideas.
• 41:05
  Please. Yeah.
• 41:07
  Go and read a book by Colin Brake.
• 41:09
  There's no idea in. That if I am the brakes.
• 41:13
  Although, though saying that all of the all of that stuff that
• 41:17
  she was seeing via the remote tower, there was a brilliant
• 41:20
  payoff of that at the climax where you think the Doctor's
• 41:23
  going to save the day. And then Sam goes, no, you can't
• 41:26
  communicate with him that way. This is how you do it.
• 41:29
  And she starts talking via images with him.
• 41:32
  And that's how we saved the day. So Sam gets to save the entire
• 41:36
  unit or the Earth at the end of the story via the way, you know,
• 41:39
  by doing her own investigations along the way.
• 41:42
  Maybe it isn't a little long, I don't know.
• 41:45
  Maybe I was just reading it so fast.
• 41:46
  It felt really quick to me. I do like the the visual visuals
• 41:52
  of Anathema. I can't remember if it's just
• 41:54
  from the Sam's perspective or in general that it has colours that
• 41:59
  I don't know if you described it like that or just how it was in
• 42:02
  my head. It reminded me of like the kind
• 42:04
  of vibrancy and colours you would see in 60 Star Trek.
• 42:06
  Or something like that. Red sky.
• 42:07
  Wasn't it a red sky and then lots?
• 42:09
  Of yeah, And they don't have like interesting uniforms and
• 42:12
  things like that. That it just felt very retro
• 42:16
  sci-fi, which I'm trying to appreciate.
• 42:18
  However, it thought it was cool. Look, you almost beautifully
• 42:21
  Segway does say it to another idea, thank you very much,
• 42:24
  Anathema. Well, what's that all about
• 42:26
  then? Who would care to take Anathema?
• 42:30
  Silence. It's a what is it?
• 42:34
  It's a it's a floating, it's a city kind of ship thing that is
• 42:41
  not on a planet. It's revealed later that it is
• 42:46
  actually a it's sitting on a well.
• 42:49
  Have you got the cover of Interference?
• 42:51
  It's a book one or book 2. It's book one.
• 42:54
  That's that. It's a.
• 42:56
  That that whole that get that symbol right there.
• 42:59
  I think it's just a, it's just a tiny speck, isn't it?
• 43:02
  Of that on the side of the Time Lord worship?
• 43:05
  I mean, it's a fucking cool idea though.
• 43:07
  Isn't it? It's really cool and then you've
• 43:09
  got all these interesting things on there.
• 43:12
  I think I like the way Lawrence uses continuity some a lot of
• 43:17
  the time because it like he's got like little Draven warships
• 43:22
  that have crashed on it and stuff.
• 43:24
  And if you haven't seen Galaxy four, well, well done.
• 43:29
  Don't. But if you have, you know,
• 43:32
  you're just like, oh, that's A and he likes to pull little
• 43:36
  references from stories that aren't necessarily like, well
• 43:40
  loved. Like he's got the guy from the
• 43:42
  Highlanders as one of the characters in Alien bodies.
• 43:45
  He's got the Crotons in that bloody book.
• 43:48
  And he'll just put in little Nuggets like the Ogrons.
• 43:50
  I think we're in some successful stories, but they're they're
• 43:53
  overlooked as being these big dumb idiot.
• 43:56
  He kind of uses that to flesh up, flesh them out.
• 43:58
  And then he'll just add in just little things that make it feel
• 44:02
  like a big wider world, like, oh, it's just a little Draven
• 44:06
  ship here that we've kind of repurposed and stuff.
• 44:10
  It was so mentioned, you know, that the voids were early remote
• 44:14
  in this book, or at least I've certainly made a note of it.
• 44:17
  I don't know why I would make that up.
• 44:20
  They don't think they. Look like the big masks, don't
• 44:22
  they I? Think we talked about that last
• 44:24
  episode. Yeah, I love, I love that little
• 44:27
  reference to the the keys of Mariners.
• 44:29
  It's brilliant. And obviously they, the board
• 44:31
  have have remotes in their heads.
• 44:34
  Teletubbies, do you know what? Now tell me if I've got this
• 44:38
  right, because I could be wrong. I sort of was writing all this
• 44:43
  down, but I was reading very fast, as I keep saying.
• 44:45
  So that Time Lord warship, yes, has been heading towards Earth
• 44:51
  for what, 3 million? A long time, a very long time.
• 44:55
  And anathema is this enormous, enormous city, which is a speck
• 45:00
  on this, on the branding, on the spaceship.
• 45:03
  Yeah. And it's heading to Earth
• 45:06
  because the Time Lords know that the enemy from the future war is
• 45:12
  from Earth. So that ship destroys the Earth.
• 45:16
  It will create some sort of causal Nexus or Star Trek
• 45:19
  technobabble, and the enemy will not be able to threaten the Time
• 45:23
  Lords and the war won't happen. How did I do?
• 45:27
  Yes, yeah, that's pretty accurate.
• 45:29
  Yeah. Thank you very much.
• 45:30
  OK. Good.
• 45:32
  I mean, they're big ideas, aren't they?
• 45:34
  Have. You got a flow chart there.
• 45:35
  No, no, no, I just sort of was writing down bullet points
• 45:38
  going, well, they'll put me right if I'm wrong.
• 45:41
  I mean, that's massive, right? So again, he's alluding to this
• 45:44
  future war. We're sort of seeing all of the
• 45:47
  consequences of this war without ever seeing the war.
• 45:52
  Did we ever see the war? Yeah, the ancestor cell, isn't
• 45:56
  it the ancestors, the end of the war, but the idea.
• 46:00
  But Lawrence always wanted, as far as I remember that war to be
• 46:03
  in the background. He never wanted it to be seen.
• 46:06
  He wanted to just kind of inform the universe, that kind of big
• 46:09
  dangerous whole background. So so where you could tell
• 46:14
  interesting Doctor Who stories and that but.
• 46:17
  Lauren smiles is very smart because Lauren Smiles is like I
• 46:22
  come up with the time war, but here's what you do.
• 46:24
  Don't mention the time war. There is now now we've had a
• 46:29
  time war and what are we doing? It's like coming soon from Big
• 46:33
  Finish Time War 90. Yeah, Dodo's Time War, starring
• 46:42
  Lauren Cornelius as the War Dodo.
• 46:47
  But did you guys like this? Stuff do.
• 46:50
  You like all of these illusions to sort of bigger games that are
• 46:53
  being played that we're not seeing.
• 46:55
  Is it tantalising or is it irritating?
• 46:59
  An era ago, the Doctor would be part of those games.
• 47:04
  That's true. And that's how he was written
• 47:07
  now. Now he's kind of caught up in
• 47:09
  them instead, which is I guess a little approach I like a little
• 47:14
  more because it means the 8th Doctor is in his books more
• 47:17
  often. I like the New Adventures, but
• 47:20
  one of my common complaints was it's like I'm reading a Doctor
• 47:23
  Who book. I want to see him in more than
• 47:26
  20 pages please. That'd be that'd be lovely.
• 47:29
  Thanks. I shall arrange a conversation
• 47:31
  between you and Andrew Cartmel, and you can have it out with him
• 47:33
  all right. I'll be talking about him later.
• 47:36
  Oh, have you seen the interview on the on the Season 25 set with
• 47:39
  Cartmel? Yeah.
• 47:40
  No, yeah. No.
• 47:41
  Why? Oh, no, he says back, writing
• 47:43
  Warhead in there. How you doing?
• 47:46
  What he's doing? Yeah.
• 47:47
  Oh great, right. Well, coming to a book club near
• 47:50
  you, Andrew, are you titillated or are you irritated?
• 47:55
  I like it. I like, I think, yeah, the
• 48:00
  Doctor being sort of on the edge of this war is more interesting
• 48:03
  than him being in it. And the Doctor's not really a
• 48:07
  sort of pick up a gun and go fight in a war type character.
• 48:10
  So I think, you know, having him playing around the edges of this
• 48:14
  is more interesting. And as it was set up in in alien
• 48:19
  bodies, this is a war from the far future of the Time Lords.
• 48:23
  It's not meant to be the 8th Doctors, Time Lords who were
• 48:26
  involved in war. So it's kind of it's just
• 48:30
  playing with time and cause and effect in an interesting way.
• 48:34
  And just, yeah, doing an idea really interestingly of that
• 48:39
  kind of it's not something from the past or the present.
• 48:42
  It's the future. And I think it's, I think it's
• 48:45
  rare that we kind of have that sort of like focus on the future
• 48:50
  of the Time Lords and, and things coming back from there,
• 48:52
  rather than it being something like with Russell on or with
• 48:55
  Barusa and the characters we know.
• 48:57
  It's, it's, it's all unknown. And that's really interesting
• 49:00
  because it's, when you think about the Time Lords we have
• 49:03
  now, they're already super advanced.
• 49:04
  And then if you've got these ones from the future, like what
• 49:07
  are they like? And I think it's one of those
• 49:09
  things where it's it's more, it's more satisfying to leave it
• 49:13
  in the mind of the reader as as to what that is and what's going
• 49:16
  on and those events of the war than actually depicting them as,
• 49:20
  as the series learned with the Time War.
• 49:23
  It's more interesting to kind of have it as this unknowable thing
• 49:29
  than to actually show Daleks with big guns, which you alluded
• 49:34
  to Day of the Doctor earlier, John.
• 49:36
  And there are many five things about Day of the Doctor.
• 49:40
  But the presentation of the Time War is about as mundanely Star
• 49:45
  Wars as it could possibly be. And the climax of that, whereas
• 49:47
  they're just all round the planet and blow each other up.
• 49:51
  I was like, really? That's how the Time War ended.
• 49:54
  I'd rather have Gallup. Oh, well, Gallifroy was
• 49:55
  destroyed, wasn't it? They were just stealing from the
• 49:58
  books, you know? Yeah, I mean, the trouble was if
• 50:01
  you come to a time war, it's better done as kind of Russell T
• 50:05
  Davis, you know that that could have been the never was either
• 50:09
  reduced cascade, all those kind of evocative references that
• 50:12
  kind of Robert Holmes will building with one line.
• 50:16
  As soon as you show it, you're taking your imagination out of
• 50:20
  it. And, you know, particularly big
• 50:21
  finishes Time War, but it it is almost like they treated the
• 50:25
  Time War as a standard kind of war story.
• 50:28
  And it's not that there's so much more there.
• 50:31
  Big Finish certainly did, yeah. It's just, you know, they've
• 50:34
  gotten that time bed at the start.
• 50:36
  It's just, Oh yeah, if we stick, the time rolls in.
• 50:38
  It's a time. What?
• 50:38
  And it's it's a duller thing. Can't get the other way though
• 50:41
  because you skip forward to the taking of Planet 5.
• 50:44
  And I mean it is set in the Time War isn't it?
• 50:47
  And there's lots of mad stuff going on I couldn't understand
• 50:50
  if I had a word of. It is it creatures that eat
• 50:54
  universes? If I remember I've written 20
• 50:57
  odd years. Incomprehensible, in a way, over
• 50:59
  Simon Butcher Jones can possibly be.
• 51:01
  It's a creature that's created to eat the Fender.
• 51:04
  If my memory serves. But I suppose there's more big
• 51:08
  ideas. Yeah, but but The thing is, it's
• 51:14
  like edging. Eventually there needs to be a
• 51:16
  pay. Off well and.
• 51:18
  I suppose like and given like Andrew put the ancestor cell in
• 51:21
  his top ten books and I know the reaction at the time because you
• 51:24
  were saying about records, Doctor Who, that the reaction to
• 51:28
  the ancestor cell was perhaps not as kind as people could have
• 51:31
  been. But actually that ending had its
• 51:35
  lovers and its haters, you know. So I I suppose, was it a
• 51:40
  success? I, I think it was everyone was
• 51:46
  so kind of in love with Lawrence's work and his big
• 51:49
  ideas and, and look, Lawrence never what if.
• 51:51
  I remember he never wanted it to pay off.
• 51:53
  But it has to at some point, because the readers were so
• 51:58
  focused on the ideas, on this background, they, you know, they
• 52:01
  were fascinated by the war in heaven stuff.
• 52:04
  They, they, they want to find out.
• 52:06
  You, you can't just tease the reader forever.
• 52:09
  You need them to actually have a reward.
• 52:12
  Because, you know, if you, if you're going through a monthly
• 52:14
  book, so you're just talking, I think it was, yeah, 11 books a
• 52:17
  year at this point. You can't just go, no, we're
• 52:20
  never going to show you anything.
• 52:21
  And I think the ancestor cell, I again, I'd need to go back to it
• 52:26
  and see what it was like. But it was necessary.
• 52:28
  You needed that new start. You needed a new idea.
• 52:31
  You needed to move the series forward.
• 52:34
  It needed that you know, the move to move on to the burning,
• 52:36
  to some new impetus for the series.
• 52:39
  Because otherwise you get stuck in.
• 52:41
  Doctor Who did worst when it gets stuck with one idea.
• 52:44
  Can I just go around and do a quick votes with you all please?
• 52:48
  Who do you imagine had the idea to destroy Gallifrey?
• 52:51
  Was it outgoing Steve Carr who went well it's the only possible
• 52:54
  way we can bring all this madness to an end?
• 52:56
  Or was it the incoming Justin Richards who said please get rid
• 53:00
  of that bloody Gallifrey? I just don't want to touch it
• 53:03
  anymore, Luke. Oh, Steve Carr.
• 53:08
  Oh, Andrew, Yeah, I, I think probably Steve Cole, but I don't
• 53:13
  know, maybe they just had a chat together.
• 53:15
  And yes, can someone please listen to all the pieces of
• 53:18
  Eight and find out? For us, please, John.
• 53:20
  Who do you think it was? I'm I'm go with Justin
• 53:22
  Richardson because I think he wanted that.
• 53:25
  So to have a completely fresh slate for the burning.
• 53:28
  Pieces of eight are only up to like cold Heart or Yeah could
• 53:31
  Tain at the moment, so they'll get to ancestor cell.
• 53:34
  Well, hurry up, Kenny Smith. I'm bringing out three a week.
• 53:36
  Come on. OK, well, that's that is sort of
• 53:43
  the time war touched upon. Now, can somebody please explain
• 53:46
  to me what the cold is all about?
• 53:47
  This, this great weapon. But was there right at the start
• 53:52
  of the book? That's what they were trying to
• 53:53
  sell. The remote was trying to sell at
• 53:55
  the arms fair. What on earth was it?
• 54:00
  Silence. Again, it's a thing that's just
• 54:03
  under the skin of the universe, isn't it?
• 54:05
  It's it's kind of the skin of the substance act.
• 54:07
  I do remember again, this is so from the Invisibles, because
• 54:10
  they have substance, they're called magic mirror, which is
• 54:13
  the fluid that the universe is suspended in.
• 54:17
  So, but it's yeah. But essentially it's, it does
• 54:20
  that and it eats through the universe, really.
• 54:23
  It. Did you see the reference to
• 54:24
  Silver Nemesis though about the cult?
• 54:27
  He says it was possibly validium based which is what Lady made
• 54:31
  from stature was made out of. Is the weapon the weapon?
• 54:38
  So when the weapon activates it will spew something out of it
• 54:42
  which is like the cold which will eat the earth.
• 54:47
  Am I getting that right? Because the cold is the cold is
• 54:49
  like the skin of it's not the actual thing.
• 54:52
  It's like the skin of the thing inside the weapon.
• 54:55
  Is that right? Yes.
• 54:57
  It. Literally punches a hole in
• 54:58
  reality and then will shove the planet through into the next
• 55:03
  universe. So the poor elder or I don't
• 55:06
  know where we'd end up. Somewhere ghastly, I imagine.
• 55:09
  The domino. Effect huge ideas again though,
• 55:11
  isn't it? I could feel my brain reforming
• 55:14
  with every idea that was coming out of coming out of this book.
• 55:18
  So what do you guys think then about how that plot rolled
• 55:22
  along? Because essentially when the
• 55:24
  Doctor joins the action, we realized quite quickly why the
• 55:28
  Doctor couldn't join the action for the 1st 500 pages.
• 55:31
  Because the second he does the basically that plots over with
• 55:34
  within 50 pages because he just hops about in the TARDIS and
• 55:37
  goes ha ha. You know, like but obviously at
• 55:42
  the end of 1 chapter, I mean, I practically came in my knickers
• 55:46
  when the cold was activated by guessed and it looked as if the
• 55:53
  poor old Earth was good was for a Burton.
• 55:55
  I was so excited. I mean, I've never messaged the
• 55:58
  three of you so fast in my entire.
• 55:59
  Have you read this bit yet? I've had to put the book down.
• 56:03
  I mean, did you think it was climactic enough, Andrew?
• 56:07
  Yeah, I mean, it, it really like dials up and up and up.
• 56:11
  And then, yeah, guest sort of gets into the weapon and he's
• 56:17
  sort of interfacing with it and he's absorbed by the weapon.
• 56:20
  And then you've got to work out. Yeah, things escalate and
• 56:23
  escalate and escalate. And then it's like that.
• 56:25
  How is this going to be solved? And as we've already touched
• 56:29
  upon it, it's Sam who manages to to diffuse the situation and
• 56:33
  kind of through her interaction with the signals.
• 56:38
  Because she comes from a human culture, She knows how to
• 56:41
  interface with that system and, and get through to guest and,
• 56:44
  and show him that what he's trying to do is not that he's
• 56:48
  basically been fooled into doing what he's doing.
• 56:51
  And the, the remote through their, their, the process in
• 56:55
  which they're copied, they've kind of lost the meaning of
• 56:59
  their mission. Guest is going through the
• 57:02
  motions of this mission that he thinks he needs to complete
• 57:05
  because that's sort of his function.
• 57:07
  But he's been duplicated so many times that he doesn't know why
• 57:10
  he's doing it and to what purpose.
• 57:14
  So eventually, yes, Sam manages to get through to him with that
• 57:17
  message. And yeah, Guest survives, which
• 57:21
  I think was was surprising. So all three members of the
• 57:24
  remote survive. So Guest is still there on an
• 57:28
  Anathema at the end of it. And yeah, who knows what's going
• 57:31
  to happen to him next. Didn't even that filler from the
• 57:33
  Arms Fair going on about Peter bloody Morgan?
• 57:36
  He survived well, didn't he? That was a good twist.
• 57:39
  He's become a faction. Paradox came back in Paradox.
• 57:42
  And he's back on Earth, isn't he?
• 57:44
  Because he he cooperates with the documentary.
• 57:46
  I think he did better than Peter bloody Morgan.
• 57:52
  He has one of my favorite little bits in in the book.
• 57:54
  It's so Mr. Lewis is talking about how he needs transmissions
• 58:00
  to fall asleep and that's me. I've got my headphones on
• 58:03
  charity like silence. I do not headphones on fall
• 58:07
  asleep to usually these days. It's a one of those old black
• 58:10
  and white narrated soundtracks, I guess.
• 58:12
  But yeah, I really like this this sections in here,
• 58:16
  especially when it comes to signals and things like that.
• 58:19
  I have ADHD. I like lots of stimuli.
• 58:23
  I guess it's not enough for me sometimes to have conversation.
• 58:27
  I'll be like, I'll talk to charity about something and I'm
• 58:32
  having a great time. I'm like, do you mind if I put
• 58:34
  it some music on something like that?
• 58:38
  So, and it's not because I don't, I, I, you know, it's just
• 58:42
  something a little extra to help me kind of concentrate, if that
• 58:45
  makes sense. So there's a lot of things in
• 58:47
  there though. You could say what you're saying
• 58:48
  is so profound. I need a soundtrack, you know?
• 58:51
  That's right. Yeah, I'm killed.
• 58:53
  Lots of fucking stealing that, mate.
• 58:55
  Thank you. That's smooth.
• 58:56
  That's very good. But there's there's a lot of
• 58:59
  things in there about signals and how they used or how they
• 59:04
  affect people and stuff that I kind of really related to.
• 59:08
  There was tons about that, wasn't it?
• 59:09
  There was. He used that idea of how things
• 59:12
  influence just everything about our lives.
• 59:16
  He used that idea in so many ways and how that can be
• 59:19
  interfered with and manipulated. Yeah, it really made me think
• 59:23
  about sort of algorithms on social media and how I basically
• 59:28
  only bloody see the things that I look at all the time, which is
• 59:31
  constantly reinforcing the opinions I already have.
• 59:34
  Which is why it's so nice to talk to you people, because none
• 59:37
  of you care what I think. And you all tell me conflicting
• 59:40
  ideas, you know? Yeah, See the cult, the one
• 59:44
  thing I see as as a metaphor, the cult, they've got all these
• 59:47
  millions of little faces, right? They're eating it, and they're
• 59:50
  the ones that remember for that. I think the cult is a metaphor
• 59:53
  for for the audience because they're how you remember
• 59:57
  everything and they consume the media and, you know, put it back
• 1:00:03
  out there, so to speak. You know, there's not many
• 1:00:06
  Doctor Who books where you could say the cold is a metaphor for
• 1:00:09
  the audience. You know, I do think he's
• 1:00:11
  working on levels. Oh, at least.
• 1:00:13
  In a way where you can give something readings.
• 1:00:15
  Well, Andrew just said something there brilliantly that segues
• 1:00:18
  into the the cancerous stick smoker elephant in the room that
• 1:00:25
  we're all avoiding. I talked about remembrance tanks
• 1:00:29
  and how people can be remembered.
• 1:00:31
  The first question I shall ask before asking you what you think
• 1:00:34
  about the poor experience that Fitzcarrana goes through in this
• 1:00:38
  book is at what point did you realize code was Fitz
• 1:00:47
  remembered? Like, is it as soon as you
• 1:00:49
  realize that compassion is, what's her name?
• 1:00:53
  Laura Tobin. Laura Tobin.
• 1:00:54
  Yeah. Is it?
• 1:00:55
  Is it, Is it at that point or. I mean, for me, like, I kind of
• 1:00:59
  went in with Anne, like the same way Andrew did.
• 1:01:01
  I'd read I Who and all that. So I knew were the twists.
• 1:01:04
  And that's a shame because they are great twists.
• 1:01:07
  But yeah. OK.
• 1:01:09
  Well, let's just discuss this as a whole and let's go across to
• 1:01:13
  Luke. I want you to get this off your
• 1:01:15
  chest. All right, look, the things that
• 1:01:23
  happened to this character are kind of cool and interesting.
• 1:01:27
  I just don't wish they happened to this character.
• 1:01:35
  There's lots of clever stuff in here, but I kind of hate what he
• 1:01:38
  does to Fitz and borderline ruins him.
• 1:01:44
  And it's only with hindsight and having read lots of books ahead
• 1:01:48
  that I know that that doesn't come to pass.
• 1:01:51
  He isn't quite ruined and they'll eventually build off
• 1:01:54
  stuff that happens on this now. Is what happened to him in this
• 1:01:58
  book? Is that not addressed again
• 1:01:59
  until Earth World is that? Well, there's a shit in the
• 1:02:03
  ancestor cell because Father Chronic comes back in the
• 1:02:06
  ancestor cell in that book, yeah.
• 1:02:09
  Yeah. I think it's had made it often.
• 1:02:14
  So there's code slash fits like the normal.
• 1:02:17
  I can't remember because I haven't read Blue Angel to
• 1:02:20
  Ancestors in a very long. Time.
• 1:02:21
  Yeah, I can't. Remember if he was just.
• 1:02:24
  Paid from now on. Yeah, The Doctor.
• 1:02:26
  The Doctor basically says to the TARDIS, Please remember him as
• 1:02:31
  the Fitz who left the TARDIS at the start of this adventure.
• 1:02:34
  So it's it's a massive reset whilst being able to put the
• 1:02:39
  original Fitz through hell. But yeah, but how much of them
• 1:02:44
  is original now? How much does the TARDIS
• 1:02:45
  remember? Well, that's what you're sort of
• 1:02:47
  going for in Earth world, isn't it?
• 1:02:48
  Is Who am I? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:51
  So but that's a, that's a huge gap.
• 1:02:53
  That's something I feel like you should be playing with during
• 1:02:56
  this arc because he's kind of set it up like Fitz isn't normal
• 1:03:00
  Fitz and instead we get normal Fitz after this.
• 1:03:05
  So I finally I just said he borderline ruins the character
• 1:03:08
  and no one talks about it to Earth.
• 1:03:10
  Well maybe they should have addressed it sooner, but maybe
• 1:03:12
  I'm maybe at home. So I'm a little happier that
• 1:03:14
  they kind of kept him being a bit more normal and then
• 1:03:18
  addressed it later on. Yeah.
• 1:03:19
  It's one of those things where it's sort of it's too big to not
• 1:03:23
  be addressed, what they did to him, but it isn't addressed.
• 1:03:27
  And the way that he sort of gives the character back kind of
• 1:03:30
  means that they don't have to address it because you get the
• 1:03:34
  sense, like the brief of this book, as you know, Fitz is the
• 1:03:39
  companion. He's going to run beyond this
• 1:03:41
  book. So he needs to be in the next
• 1:03:43
  few books. So whatever you do to him, he
• 1:03:45
  needs to come back by the end of it.
• 1:03:47
  But having done all that interesting stuff to the
• 1:03:51
  character here, it did need wrapping up or moving beyond.
• 1:03:56
  And it's there's a little bit of it in in earth world, but not
• 1:04:01
  much. And then it's not really until
• 1:04:05
  fear itself, which we which we did, which is the last day it's
• 1:04:09
  doctor book that it's ever really spoken about again.
• 1:04:12
  And I just think it's it's a shame because it's such a big
• 1:04:16
  deal to that character and it's kind of messed up what the
• 1:04:20
  Doctor does in remembering him and creating this sort of fake
• 1:04:24
  fits at the end of it like that. Can you imagine if it was
• 1:04:27
  trouting? Yeah.
• 1:04:31
  You'd end up with the fucking mind Robert and have some other
• 1:04:33
  guy playing Jamie for a week, you know?
• 1:04:37
  So effectively it is a new character though from this point
• 1:04:39
  on, isn't it? Yeah.
• 1:04:40
  Fitz turns into Father cry now, becomes twisted, starts
• 1:04:44
  decapitating Time Lords because he's so angry that the Doctor
• 1:04:47
  never came back for him and miserable life with no arm.
• 1:04:51
  And new Fitz is born out of code, out of the remembrance,
• 1:04:54
  tanks out of the TARDIS effectively.
• 1:04:56
  Yeah, this is our Fitz's first story.
• 1:05:00
  Yeah. And I I think it does feel as
• 1:05:03
  you're reading the book when you're thinking about, oh, who's
• 1:05:05
  going to be the companion, what's happened with this
• 1:05:07
  etcetera. And when it looks like Fitz has
• 1:05:09
  killed himself at one point and it's like code, Code as he is
• 1:05:15
  before he's remembered, kind of feels more like he's going to be
• 1:05:18
  the companion than compassion does.
• 1:05:20
  Because Code kind of has this sort of like it feels like he's
• 1:05:25
  becoming a bit more human. There's the bits where he's like
• 1:05:28
  smoking the cigarettes and stuff, where he's trying, which
• 1:05:30
  is the way you kind of start twigging that he's fits.
• 1:05:34
  So I don't know if I was reading this with no spoilers.
• 1:05:38
  If I was, if I would think like, oh, maybe just, you know, Fitz,
• 1:05:42
  sorry, code, because he has no sort of place in the world after
• 1:05:44
  the book feels like he makes more sense as a companion.
• 1:05:48
  But then obviously we kind of revert to Fitz and then we get
• 1:05:52
  compassion as the companion. So yeah, it's very it's all very
• 1:05:54
  unexpected. I think my the feeling in my
• 1:05:57
  stomach started the second Sam Jones went why early in Book 1.
• 1:06:01
  You remind me of someone I know. It is, but there's something
• 1:06:04
  about you. And then the doctor does it in
• 1:06:06
  Book 2, and then he realizes what is happening and doesn't
• 1:06:12
  tell anybody. And then we find out at the end
• 1:06:14
  that he does what he does for the tarnish.
• 1:06:16
  And it is, it is cleverly structured in that we don't know
• 1:06:19
  about the remembering of the remote until basically at the
• 1:06:24
  point that we find out that fits at the point where we find out
• 1:06:29
  what's happened to Fitz, We then sort of get that history of the
• 1:06:32
  the remote and how remember remembering works.
• 1:06:35
  So that's where that all kind of locks into place.
• 1:06:38
  So I guess you'd have that sense that there's something going on
• 1:06:41
  with Fitz, there's something going on with code, but not
• 1:06:43
  really knowing that it's that kind of that sort of carbon copy
• 1:06:47
  thing is happening until you get to that point in this book.
• 1:06:51
  So yeah, it's all those kind of like interlocking cards being
• 1:06:55
  laid on the table. Yeah, I think it for me it was
• 1:06:57
  when compassion Laura called him Code Boy.
• 1:07:02
  Yeah, right. Yes, I know what's going on now.
• 1:07:05
  So that's did. You object to.
• 1:07:07
  That John, or did you like that part of the plot?
• 1:07:13
  Again, there's there's something different between liking it and
• 1:07:18
  absolutely what liking what it did.
• 1:07:22
  You know, I I wouldn't say and experience is entertaining or
• 1:07:27
  they're to be loved, but it's what it's doing.
• 1:07:32
  I absolutely kind of love that. It's such a big swing.
• 1:07:36
  It's quite like the most horrifying thing that happens to
• 1:07:40
  any companion in any novel because of how long he takes to
• 1:07:44
  go through this. All the years and the
• 1:07:46
  desperation of it. You know, there's the scenes
• 1:07:49
  where he's stood on the edge. That's grim.
• 1:07:53
  How the hell do you you know that's the?
• 1:07:55
  Deal things, they might come for him at that point.
• 1:07:58
  Yeah, it's the hope at the. End when he's on dust and he's
• 1:08:02
  beyond all hope and he sees the TARDIS, he still wants to run to
• 1:08:07
  the TARDIS, no matter that yeah, he's a total evil motherfucker,
• 1:08:10
  but there's a still a part of his brain that wants to be that
• 1:08:13
  fits. He was way back.
• 1:08:14
  And it's heartbreaking, isn't it?
• 1:08:16
  It's absolute beautiful. Such a good better.
• 1:08:18
  I fucking love it. I love it.
• 1:08:21
  I think it's the way the twisted things he does.
• 1:08:24
  And in fact, the kindest thing Lawrence Miles could have done
• 1:08:27
  was would have been to have had him jump from that tower and
• 1:08:29
  commit suicide, because we still would have got the ending with
• 1:08:32
  code that we had anyway. But no, he goes, no, I'm going
• 1:08:35
  to take him to the point of suicide and then I'm going to
• 1:08:38
  twist him into this. I mean, that bit where he goes
• 1:08:40
  into the faction paradox area and is initiated, it's in the
• 1:08:45
  dark, isn't it? And things are touching him and
• 1:08:47
  it's just horrible. And then what he becomes at the
• 1:08:51
  end just so angry and twisted and horrible.
• 1:08:55
  I know he's a lovely character. I know he's a character we love.
• 1:09:00
  Can you think of a more interesting thing that's done
• 1:09:02
  with Fitz after this point? This is the most interesting
• 1:09:05
  thing that happens to Fitz in his entire run.
• 1:09:08
  I'm so pleased they went here. I think it might have been
• 1:09:11
  stronger as well if they if they ended the character sooner than
• 1:09:16
  they did. I think the fact that he runs
• 1:09:18
  the longer, I mean, I I love Fitz and he's a great companion,
• 1:09:21
  but I think the stuff that they do with him here kind of takes
• 1:09:25
  him to a point of it's just so big to then not address it and
• 1:09:31
  just sort of ignore it like they do with the with the amnesia
• 1:09:33
  stuff. It's just, it's it's just
• 1:09:37
  frustrating as a reader. So I think if they'd, if he'd
• 1:09:40
  like gone off with compassion at the end of Ancestor Cell rather
• 1:09:45
  than the Time Lord that she went off with.
• 1:09:47
  Or I think someone suggested that maybe he could have died in
• 1:09:52
  Escape Velocity and then Angie and Dave would have been the
• 1:09:55
  companions. I think, you know, like Luke is
• 1:10:01
  absolutely horrified. I wouldn't lose Fitz from one
• 1:10:05
  book. I fucking adore Fitz.
• 1:10:08
  I just think just for once. It's just.
• 1:10:11
  Really great to do very nasty things to him, but I think it's
• 1:10:15
  just, it's too much. It's.
• 1:10:17
  And it needed it needed something to kind of finish off.
• 1:10:22
  And, yeah. Wrap up that is.
• 1:10:24
  You ever watched Buffy? Yes.
• 1:10:27
  It's like Dawn Summers hanging around for series six and seven
• 1:10:30
  after the end of series 5. And, you know, I've gone to
• 1:10:32
  that. Yeah.
• 1:10:33
  She wasn't supposed to exist. Buffy saved her life.
• 1:10:36
  And then Buffy's back from the dead.
• 1:10:38
  Oh, Dawn's still here, though. You know, it's just sort of
• 1:10:40
  hangs around being angsty and mopey for two years.
• 1:10:42
  Obviously now Fitz comes back and we absolutely love him, you
• 1:10:45
  know, shaking off the universe and being very funny while he's
• 1:10:48
  doing it. Yeah, boy, it's Dog.
• 1:10:51
  It's it's the darkest thing in this book, isn't it?
• 1:10:54
  I kept asking myself, why now the Doctor's back in the action,
• 1:10:58
  Why doesn't he just go and get him?
• 1:11:00
  And it wasn't until I finished the book and you guys were all
• 1:11:03
  talking about it on the chat that I was like, oh, duh.
• 1:11:07
  It's because the 3rd Doctor's met Father Kriner and he knows
• 1:11:10
  he ends up there, so he knows he can't do anything about it.
• 1:11:14
  It's twisted. It's so twisted.
• 1:11:17
  It's, it's also, it's similar to Bill, isn't it?
• 1:11:20
  It's that where through the Doctor's negligence, something
• 1:11:25
  awful happens to the companion. And then because of the way that
• 1:11:29
  time happens, there's nothing he can do about it.
• 1:11:33
  And he gets there too late. And they're already already the
• 1:11:37
  awful thing has happened to the companion.
• 1:11:39
  So, you know, another, another example of Steven Moffett maybe
• 1:11:44
  taking a few ideas from these books, a few from this.
• 1:11:48
  Are you kidding? I started making a list and I
• 1:11:50
  thought, no, I bet not. I'll get in trouble.
• 1:11:52
  Jesus Christ. Meeting people out of order,
• 1:11:55
  dropping them off six years before they even met the person
• 1:11:58
  in the 1st place. They got to hang around.
• 1:12:00
  But I mean, there was just so much here.
• 1:12:01
  Time, wars, everything. This book, so we've, we've
• 1:12:06
  between the four of us, we've probably read almost everything
• 1:12:10
  that, you know, there's probably gaps in our reading.
• 1:12:13
  Sure. This is a collective therapy
• 1:12:16
  session then, is it? No, because I just forgot what I
• 1:12:22
  was going to say. Sorry.
• 1:12:25
  Oh. Fuck.
• 1:12:27
  We've read all the books. We've read all the books.
• 1:12:29
  Well before that. I don't know what you was going
• 1:12:33
  to say. I'm not you.
• 1:12:34
  Who are we talking about? Fitz, Fitz.
• 1:12:37
  Your favorite? I had a bit of Steven Moffett at
• 1:12:41
  the end there. So actually, first for Fitz, I
• 1:12:46
  can see why the writers had him shag everything that moves.
• 1:12:48
  They felt bad for him after interference, right?
• 1:12:54
  Because we're reading The Crooked World right now.
• 1:12:55
  He's having a terrible old time trying.
• 1:12:57
  To get into. Pants and that.
• 1:13:02
  Oh my goodness. And so, yeah, all right, we've
• 1:13:08
  read lots of books. Sorry.
• 1:13:09
  I've had, I had two ideas just kind of clap crash into my brain
• 1:13:12
  at the same time. I apologize.
• 1:13:14
  But not interference. There's a lot of signals going
• 1:13:17
  around, so we've all read a lot of the books and we've all seen
• 1:13:22
  the new series. This book in particular,
• 1:13:25
  Interference, is the one book that had more ideas jump out at
• 1:13:32
  me that I've seen in the new show than any other original
• 1:13:36
  Doctor Who novel I've read so far or, or reread.
• 1:13:40
  Coming back to it and stuff like that.
• 1:13:42
  This was like, I even saw Mick Lewis getting shit scared of a
• 1:13:45
  of, of little kids in a World War 2 mask.
• 1:13:51
  And I'm like, all right, that's a tiny 1 and that's not a big,
• 1:13:54
  big deal and stuff. But there's little ones, there's
• 1:13:56
  medium sized ones, there's fucking big ones.
• 1:13:59
  And this book in particular is like that, the one that feels
• 1:14:05
  like has been mined the most. So yeah, that that leaps out at
• 1:14:13
  me the most about interference as well.
• 1:14:15
  Like, oh, it's at the bottom of the polls.
• 1:14:18
  Well, you know, it's you're one of the most influential Dr.
• 1:14:23
  there. Is there is that people don't
• 1:14:26
  really talk about this book anymore in the same way that
• 1:14:29
  people talk about like the new adventures or human nature or
• 1:14:32
  damaged goods, those types? Of alien bodies, yeah.
• 1:14:35
  Yeah, I mean, and yeah, I think Alien Bodies gets mentioned more
• 1:14:38
  than this one in terms of Steven Moffett influence, I guess,
• 1:14:41
  because there's more sort of obvious stuff with that sort of
• 1:14:45
  plot wise, like the the the Doctor's body and all of that
• 1:14:50
  stuff and the death of the Doctor.
• 1:14:52
  But yeah, this is where am I going with this?
• 1:14:54
  Yeah. I think Interference just
• 1:14:57
  doesn't get the recognition that it deserves for the Yeah, the
• 1:15:00
  influence that it has had on clearly those writers who came
• 1:15:03
  to the TV show later. I mean, I did start assembling a
• 1:15:07
  list and send it across to Michael Mills because he
• 1:15:10
  absolutely loves Stephen Murphy. So I thought, well, there's a
• 1:15:12
  chance to stir the pot with him a little bit.
• 1:15:13
  And the same has been nicking all the ideas from Interference.
• 1:15:16
  And he goes, you know what, Joe? He goes, that is some of those
• 1:15:19
  are very true. He goes, but you know, I think
• 1:15:21
  maybe you can read too much into some of these ideas and you're
• 1:15:24
  taking from this book, but there are so many in this book that
• 1:15:28
  you can't ignore them all. That's there clearly has been a
• 1:15:32
  little bit of loaning from this library.
• 1:15:35
  Yeah, and and again, I I think Lawrence has loaned and it's
• 1:15:39
  just passing on because that's the way culture works.
• 1:15:41
  It's passing ideas on, again, the Guess Mark thing that is
• 1:15:45
  again explicitly from The Invisibles.
• 1:15:47
  Again, there's an image of a guy who sees this thing and then he
• 1:15:52
  sees the terror. It's a cut to that.
• 1:15:54
  So it's his childhood terror. So it is a borrowing.
• 1:15:58
  There's so much of the borrowing from it on the ideas.
• 1:16:01
  But again, it's part of the theme of the book.
• 1:16:04
  You get away with it because you integrate it into the fabric of
• 1:16:07
  the story. The ideas are there for you to
• 1:16:10
  go and use it. It's, it's almost like a build
• 1:16:13
  your own Doctor Who box, you know?
• 1:16:16
  Trouble is, you're such a well read chap, John, that you know
• 1:16:18
  you obviously can see where Lawrence Miles has borrowed.
• 1:16:20
  Marvelous, gorgeous. I only read Doctor Who and watch
• 1:16:23
  Doctor Who, so it seems more obvious to me that Moffitt's
• 1:16:26
  nicked these ideas because I read you.
• 1:16:28
  Know exactly, but you know. It's thank you for teaching me.
• 1:16:31
  It's. All right, I've got some books
• 1:16:34
  up there I can loan you at some point if you want.
• 1:16:36
  They're quick reads if I. Can I ask you another question
• 1:16:38
  please? I think it is answered, but I
• 1:16:40
  can't remember what the hell did happen to those two Saudi
• 1:16:44
  Arabians that Sarah took down the corridor.
• 1:16:47
  They're still there. What's still wondering around
• 1:16:49
  the TARDIS? Yeah.
• 1:16:51
  Yeah. There's a short trip there
• 1:16:52
  somewhere, I'll tell you. I think it's an in joke because
• 1:16:54
  doesn't one of the Sontarans in invasion of the invasion of
• 1:16:59
  Time, I think maybe one of the suntarans is unaccounted for,
• 1:17:03
  like the number that go into the TARDIS and the number that you
• 1:17:05
  see like die or or come out of the TARDIS.
• 1:17:07
  There's like one that so I think it was maybe based on that.
• 1:17:11
  I think there's a side man from Earth shock as well.
• 1:17:13
  You know, maybe that's what I'm thinking.
• 1:17:15
  They're all hanging out in the TARDIS bar having a drink.
• 1:17:17
  I would yeah. It's very funny just leaving
• 1:17:21
  that like very silly hanging thread.
• 1:17:24
  Well, should we should we quickly discuss Sarah because I
• 1:17:28
  don't think she really impacts this book the way she did the
• 1:17:31
  first one. But rescue is the Doctor.
• 1:17:34
  Well, she does actually, though, you are right.
• 1:17:36
  And I alluded to my sitcom with Sarah, Lost Boy and Canine,
• 1:17:39
  because those scenes are just. But like every time we go back
• 1:17:44
  to Sarah, it just feels like Doctor Who to me, this book
• 1:17:47
  like. Pure.
• 1:17:49
  Distilled Doctor Who, not 8th Doctor books, twisted nasty
• 1:17:53
  Doctor Who. Just a rollicking adventure
• 1:17:57
  despite what's going on around you.
• 1:17:58
  Just because Sarah is just so fun.
• 1:18:02
  Necessary to get she's got, she's the baseline of the book.
• 1:18:06
  Basically she's the ordinary that you can then spin
• 1:18:10
  everything off. It's the bit where the audience
• 1:18:11
  is comfortable with. And I think she, again, it's
• 1:18:16
  like you said last time, she is drawn better here than I think
• 1:18:19
  she is in either the Big Finish audios or in the Sarah Jane
• 1:18:22
  Adventures because she's so smart and people and I, I just
• 1:18:26
  love the way she's contrasted to Sam right through it.
• 1:18:30
  The fate they. It's almost like Sam takes her
• 1:18:33
  on her. They both end up kind of in the
• 1:18:36
  same place kind of a way. They affect the world.
• 1:18:39
  They take action in the way they can.
• 1:18:43
  And she. Yeah.
• 1:18:44
  And it's just lovely to see a character come back and if she's
• 1:18:48
  not there, like David Mckinty only bought her back in built in
• 1:18:51
  time to kill her off, for instance, it's there.
• 1:18:53
  She's there to have something interesting done with her to put
• 1:18:58
  take her to an interesting place extrapolated from where you saw
• 1:19:02
  on television. It's almost like in both
• 1:19:05
  sections, actually, she's this independent, reliable, obviously
• 1:19:11
  feminist, but not in the sense that, you know, kind of that
• 1:19:14
  light 70s way that Barry and Terry got to do.
• 1:19:18
  She is this kind of really fascinating companion and
• 1:19:24
  expanded from what you see on screen.
• 1:19:27
  It's almost like Lawrence is saying, here's what you can do
• 1:19:30
  with the characters. You don't just have to, you
• 1:19:33
  know, imagine it's your writing lines for Fraser Hines or for
• 1:19:37
  Liz Sladen or for anyone else. It's just you could do
• 1:19:41
  interesting things with the characters as they are because
• 1:19:45
  it's it's not actors in this that.
• 1:19:47
  And that I think is where we get wrapped up, particularly post
• 1:19:50
  Big Finish. How do you make a feminist
• 1:19:54
  statement? Just make them bloody capable.
• 1:19:57
  She's so capable in this, you know, she don't need no one.
• 1:20:00
  Or she's got an Ogron and a robot dog, but you know, she's
• 1:20:03
  allowing them to come along with her, you know?
• 1:20:05
  Remember when in school reunion when Sarah says to Rose, find me
• 1:20:11
  when you're done? You know, find me.
• 1:20:14
  I can help you. I just thought back to Sam
• 1:20:17
  immediately. I I, I heard that line and I was
• 1:20:20
  like, yeah, that's a satisfying end for any companion hanging
• 1:20:23
  with Sarah, you know, and this, this like this, the suggestion.
• 1:20:27
  They're going to live together, isn't it?
• 1:20:28
  And they're going to go off and they're going to sort of take on
• 1:20:31
  the world together. Sam kind of has to live with
• 1:20:34
  Sarah, I guess Felice for like 4 or five years because she
• 1:20:39
  doesn't join the TARDIS until later on and she's back in,
• 1:20:44
  well, the same how old, how old's Sam now?
• 1:20:47
  She's in her early 20s and she's 14 in in the time this book's
• 1:20:52
  set. So she she kind of has to stick
• 1:20:55
  around with Sarah. Yeah, I was thinking that that
• 1:20:59
  bit where, yeah, she was saying she was she's going to wait
• 1:21:01
  until Sam goes off with the 8th doctor and then she's going to
• 1:21:04
  like go back home to her mum and dad.
• 1:21:07
  And I was thinking is Sam going to have to like go to school as
• 1:21:11
  like a 2020 223 year old woman, like pretending to be.
• 1:21:15
  She's suddenly acing all her exams.
• 1:21:17
  We don't know what's going on or or not do.
• 1:21:20
  So when I heard her exams, I don't think I'd have been very
• 1:21:22
  good at GCSE maths in my 20s. I just, I felt so if Stephen
• 1:21:28
  Moffett was writing this script, and I would have loved this, I
• 1:21:30
  would have loved for Sam at the end of this book to just go
• 1:21:33
  here. Sarah, Right.
• 1:21:34
  In 5 1/2 years. Yeah.
• 1:21:36
  I want us to go to Coco School. But there's this drug dealer
• 1:21:38
  called Baz who was giving me a terrible time at the start of
• 1:21:42
  the 8 Doctors. And she's going to be there and
• 1:21:44
  she just trips him up or does something terrible to him.
• 1:21:46
  You know, just make the 8 Doctors even more joyous.
• 1:21:51
  Next essay on drug dealing or something like that by Sam and.
• 1:21:55
  Sarah. So Sam's in a nice place.
• 1:21:58
  Sarah's in a nice place. Sam has saved the day.
• 1:22:02
  The Doctor is as satisfied as he can be with his two new
• 1:22:07
  Tagalongs. Code and go sorry fits and
• 1:22:09
  compassion. Would anyone care us to take us
• 1:22:14
  back to Foreman's sorry Dust to dust becomes Foreman's world.
• 1:22:20
  Is that right? Foreman's world becomes dust.
• 1:22:22
  Oh, I'm so confused. Dust.
• 1:22:23
  Dust becomes Foreman's world. Well, I believe Luke's sort of
• 1:22:26
  taken a big idea. Andrew, you took a big idea.
• 1:22:29
  John Foreman's World and the Magical Circus.
• 1:22:33
  Oh, I love this idea of this magical circus the way it's, you
• 1:22:39
  know, it's something that I think it was Paul Cornell's
• 1:22:43
  original conception for human nature was it was going to be
• 1:22:46
  the villain was going to be one Time Lord, 12 bodies.
• 1:22:50
  So it's taking that idea. But I love the way he
• 1:22:54
  degenerates over the course of his incarnations because he's
• 1:23:00
  absorbing new ideas essentially all the time.
• 1:23:04
  And that and the way #13 becomes something so dread, so
• 1:23:09
  terrifying. You know what?
• 1:23:11
  Particularly because it's the way that the whole scene adds a
• 1:23:15
  world destroying idea, you know, form and literally degenerates
• 1:23:21
  into ideas. It's brilliant.
• 1:23:24
  You know that The whole thing about the geek.
• 1:23:26
  And again, talk about double meaning of the title.
• 1:23:30
  The geek is something in the carnival that eats omnivorously.
• 1:23:34
  Eat anything we. Get on now our.
• 1:23:37
  Geeks. Being a fan?
• 1:23:38
  Yeah, totally. We we as geeks eat anything.
• 1:23:42
  So the titles are meta jokers. Brilliant.
• 1:23:45
  You talk about Doctor, or I'll talk about food.
• 1:23:47
  Do you know what? Like 13 versions of the same
• 1:23:51
  time, Lord, all coming together to save the day at the climax of
• 1:23:56
  the story. I've seen that somewhere before.
• 1:24:00
  It's so it's so cleverly written though.
• 1:24:02
  And the bit where they all regenerate into each other, then
• 1:24:08
  get sent back to an early Gallifrey to all meet each other
• 1:24:12
  and go off into this circus. Because I think in my head I was
• 1:24:15
  trying to work out like how? Would that work?
• 1:24:17
  Then he shows you? Yeah.
• 1:24:18
  Yeah, How can this work? How can they all simultaneously
• 1:24:22
  be together at once? And then when he shows you how
• 1:24:25
  it actually happens, I was like, oh, OK, now it all makes sense.
• 1:24:28
  It all dovetails together and just the it's just so well
• 1:24:33
  plotted and the way that the those 13 incarnations interact
• 1:24:42
  with that plot of the remote and faction on Dust and the way that
• 1:24:47
  they then make the planet renew itself through the 13th
• 1:24:53
  incarnation, becoming a planet. That's the kind of the next
• 1:24:58
  stage of the of the evolution. It's just so clever and so
• 1:25:03
  satisfying. And like, even though you've got
• 1:25:06
  this, you've then got the story of the 3rd Doctor being murdered
• 1:25:12
  and that the IM Borman storyline just works so well.
• 1:25:20
  And I think it makes those dust scene dust sections of both
• 1:25:27
  books feel worth it because they're so, like, degrading and
• 1:25:32
  miserable and depressing. Hopeless.
• 1:25:34
  Yeah. Hopeless.
• 1:25:35
  And then he actually ends it on this note of of hope and renewal
• 1:25:41
  in a way that's been so cleverly constructed.
• 1:25:45
  And all of those bits on Foreman's world that you've been
• 1:25:47
  getting from the interludes in the book, then they all make
• 1:25:52
  sense as well. And it's just such a
• 1:25:55
  magnificent, clever piece of plotting.
• 1:25:57
  And I get I didn't know that part of the book.
• 1:26:00
  I think that bit because I was so obsessed with all the Doctor
• 1:26:04
  Who continuity bit like the actual plot that's kind of
• 1:26:07
  unique to this book. I think I had just sort of not
• 1:26:10
  really registered when I read I, Who and all of that stuff.
• 1:26:13
  So to actually get to that bit and understand how it all flowed
• 1:26:16
  into each other and connected, oh so satisfying.
• 1:26:18
  You know, the nerve of Lawrence Miles.
• 1:26:21
  I knew he was cheeky when he wrote all those Croton scenes in
• 1:26:24
  Alien Bodies. To suggest that I am Foreman was
• 1:26:28
  in fact the first person to leave Gallifrey and was waiting
• 1:26:33
  there as that junkyard in 1963. But the junkyard itself was this
• 1:26:40
  bloody all. Is that right?
• 1:26:41
  It was like the whole yeah. I didn't like that bit though.
• 1:26:44
  It's crazy. I think it was trailed before
• 1:26:49
  the book, but I remember it was like, we're going to answer the
• 1:26:51
  oldest unanswered question, Doctor Who, who was I informed?
• 1:26:54
  But think about the Formers world.
• 1:26:56
  He answers the question of what Formers world is in the first
• 1:26:58
  bloody line of the book. It's so.
• 1:27:02
  Although to me that's sort of like a back alley continuity
• 1:27:05
  point, a bit like what's it called thingy.
• 1:27:08
  Bob and Zezan in some time, never going off in the just a
• 1:27:11
  sort of fun. Just yeah, just a lovely loop.
• 1:27:14
  It's. I think I do.
• 1:27:16
  I don't think it needed to be I am foreman.
• 1:27:19
  I think that was one of those, yeah.
• 1:27:22
  It was like that was like a little bit of continuity too far
• 1:27:25
  for me. Like I didn't need it to be I am
• 1:27:28
  Foreman. It could have just been a new
• 1:27:29
  Time Lord that we'd never met before.
• 1:27:31
  And I didn't really need him to be the instigator of the
• 1:27:34
  doctor's journey and the junkyard.
• 1:27:36
  To have been a duplicate of his circuit.
• 1:27:40
  Like that stuff was a little bit too much, I think.
• 1:27:43
  I feel as if there was a short story that he'd written that he
• 1:27:45
  just wanted to. Yeah, you know, yeah, I think.
• 1:27:48
  I was Steve Cole. I'd have got my red pen out on
• 1:27:50
  the iron form, but it's and I didn't like, just call it.
• 1:27:52
  You're pissing off people enough by killing off the 3rd Doctor.
• 1:27:56
  Now you're saying he's not the first person to leave.
• 1:27:58
  GAT. What is your name?
• 1:27:59
  Steven Moffett. Come on now.
• 1:28:00
  See. I was wondering if that's.
• 1:28:02
  A metacometry again, because it making an iron form of that time
• 1:28:07
  world. It's a way we impose our ideas
• 1:28:09
  on that original bit of Doctor Who because that Doctor Who is
• 1:28:12
  nothing. But I think, again, it's
• 1:28:14
  Lawrence working on another level.
• 1:28:16
  Whether it's satisfying or not, entirely different story.
• 1:28:18
  And I can understand why Andrew didn't because I was just saying
• 1:28:21
  I was like, why? I don't care.
• 1:28:23
  John, nobody else is working on Laura's miles level.
• 1:28:26
  No, I. Mean intellectually, creatively,
• 1:28:30
  psychologically. God, yes.
• 1:28:35
  Well, I mean, I suppose we should really address it's a
• 1:28:39
  huge continuity shift at the end of the story and the impact that
• 1:28:45
  it has afterwards. Andrew is coming towards us now
• 1:28:47
  with a large rifle looking particularly menacing.
• 1:28:53
  Luke, since the 3rd Doctor is, you know, one of your all time
• 1:28:57
  favorite doctors. I say with some sarcasm after
• 1:29:01
  reading your Strictly Come Hamster season 10 comments.
• 1:29:05
  How did you feel about him being shot dead on the planet Dust?
• 1:29:11
  Terrible. No, I I feel like I said it a
• 1:29:16
  bit in the last episode. Yeah, he's not one of my
• 1:29:18
  favourites, but everything that was happening to him in the in
• 1:29:23
  book one just made me be like, hey, I'm not his number one
• 1:29:26
  supporter, but can you leave him the fuck alone?
• 1:29:28
  Like. Hey.
• 1:29:31
  It's not that bad. Like leave him alone.
• 1:29:33
  I can't believe I was thinking that like reading this and then
• 1:29:36
  in. Booked.
• 1:29:39
  One, I still I love this. I think a lot of it is because
• 1:29:45
  of the I'm Foreman regeneration ideas and Foreman's world
• 1:29:50
  blooming and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:29:54
  But I do think he's made. I know he can be like this in
• 1:29:58
  ATV show, but he's man. He makes him sound like a bit of
• 1:30:03
  a judge, mental arrogant prick in this and then these short
• 1:30:08
  scenes like some of his or maybe that's just the way some of the
• 1:30:11
  characters react to him just feeling like this guy is just so
• 1:30:18
  arrogant and and know all or something like that.
• 1:30:20
  So I I feel like he highlighted that a little bit, maybe too
• 1:30:24
  much for me, but. Are you suggesting you would
• 1:30:26
  have shot him too then? Yeah, maybe.
• 1:30:32
  Season 8 you would, wouldn't you?
• 1:30:33
  The way he talks to Joe surprised you?
• 1:30:37
  The Brigadier's revolver. Would have shot Brigadier next.
• 1:30:40
  I'm like where's where's Shaw? Bring her back.
• 1:30:45
  When he's steals his sandwiches in in the the.
• 1:30:50
  Devil. Just a warning, guys, all right?
• 1:30:52
  If you ever did that to me, OK, you wouldn't be on another call,
• 1:30:56
  all right? You'd be dead, OK.
• 1:30:59
  You nipped the display Luke Sims Jenkins right it?
• 1:31:03
  Was me and yeah, there's. A I'll be there, isn't there?
• 1:31:07
  Luke SIM Jenkins investigates. I'd be writing myself as the the
• 1:31:12
  Master's companion or something like that.
• 1:31:14
  That's amazing. There you go.
• 1:31:18
  I so I'm exhausted. I've finished most of the book.
• 1:31:24
  I'm up to this part now and I'm like, all right.
• 1:31:28
  And I've I've because for me, I've just read the 8th Doctor
• 1:31:32
  and I like him significantly more than third.
• 1:31:34
  So I'm like, I'm exhausted. And now I've got this.
• 1:31:37
  And I was left with, yeah, this is darkness and stuff to it.
• 1:31:42
  But like what Andrew said and John does, it's like, this is
• 1:31:46
  hopefulness because of what happens with Foreman's world.
• 1:31:50
  I'm also thinking, how the fuck do these generations work?
• 1:31:53
  Then. We're shown how it all happens,
• 1:31:56
  the first meeting or whatever of Foreman meeting himself with
• 1:32:01
  themselves and regenerating and how and how they become the
• 1:32:06
  planet and things like that. I feel like for me, those ideas
• 1:32:12
  were just like that hadn't been beaten in my head yet.
• 1:32:16
  These were kind of, this is a new idea.
• 1:32:18
  We delayed seeds for it, but this is like a new idea now and
• 1:32:21
  it's coming near the end of the book and we've got some darkness
• 1:32:24
  over here, but it's all right. We're going to blow your mind
• 1:32:26
  like right here. So I feel like he distracted me,
• 1:32:29
  but I was like, Oh yeah, he's going to get shot in a minute.
• 1:32:32
  Oh, OK. I didn't bother me as much as I
• 1:32:36
  didn't bother me. But I don't know, I can see why
• 1:32:39
  people would have been angry about it, but I was too busy
• 1:32:43
  having my mind blown really to to be too, I don't know, mad or
• 1:32:50
  or anything about the actual regeneration moment.
• 1:32:54
  As a as a piece of writing, the like you said, the the
• 1:32:57
  regeneration of every single I am.
• 1:33:01
  It's just staggering, isn't it? I was reading it going, Oh my,
• 1:33:04
  my God, take this anymore. This is weird and brilliant and
• 1:33:08
  funny and twisted and. It's such a complex scene to
• 1:33:13
  write. Yeah, I wouldn't know where to
• 1:33:15
  start. John.
• 1:33:17
  Do you believe that Paul John Pertwee deserves an early
• 1:33:20
  execution? Of course, I'll say the Third
• 1:33:23
  Doctor. Well.
• 1:33:26
  I I think didn't we end up putting everything through on
• 1:33:28
  strip in Season 10? Yes.
• 1:33:32
  Sorry, I tried. What I I loved was that this is
• 1:33:41
  that whole thing I've done. It's a it's wrong he's out of
• 1:33:44
  because there's the point. There's a great line about
• 1:33:48
  TARDIS takes him somewhere. He can make a difference.
• 1:33:52
  You know it takes and does this somewhere he can't make a
• 1:33:56
  difference, so he is in an awkwardly difficult place.
• 1:34:05
  Sarah found him eventually. It had taken her a lot longer
• 1:34:09
  than usual to ignore his instructions to leave the TARDIS
• 1:34:12
  and come looking for him. Which was ironic under the
• 1:34:15
  circumstances, to be honest. He had no idea how long he'd
• 1:34:20
  been lying there, with the sky getting darker over his head and
• 1:34:24
  the blood making bigger and bigger smudges across his shirt.
• 1:34:28
  Every now and then he'd sense the townspeople moving close to
• 1:34:31
  him, crawling from the rotting woodwork at their homes and
• 1:34:34
  watching him die from their doorsteps, but none of them had
• 1:34:38
  tried to help him. Whenever any of them had passed
• 1:34:41
  by the part of the square where he'd fallen, they'd seem to move
• 1:34:44
  very, very slowly. Which was only to be expected,
• 1:34:48
  the Doctor supposed, seeing as how he'd slowed down every part
• 1:34:52
  of his body that he still had some degree of control over.
• 1:34:56
  On the plus side, he brought his pulse down to a crawl, so he
• 1:34:59
  hadn't suffered as much blood loss as he might have done.
• 1:35:02
  On the minus side, this had stretched out his final moments
• 1:35:06
  until he couldn't exactly remember what it felt like to be
• 1:35:08
  alive. The real irony was that he could
• 1:35:12
  feel the life in the dirt underneath him as #13 went about
• 1:35:16
  its work and rebuilt the planet from the inside.
• 1:35:19
  If he didn't get back to the TARDIS in time, his body would
• 1:35:22
  probably be feeding the grass in a week or so.
• 1:35:25
  It seemed odd, somehow, that he was going to be the very last
• 1:35:28
  casualty of the planet dust. He felt himself being pulled
• 1:35:32
  upright. Sarah was kneeling by his side
• 1:35:35
  now, trying to rest his head in her lap, gasping into his ear
• 1:35:39
  while she stroked his hair. He wasn't sure what she was
• 1:35:42
  saying, but he doubted she knew either.
• 1:35:46
  Random words of consolation, probably.
• 1:35:48
  She sounded like a six year old doing her best not to burst out
• 1:35:52
  crying. Poor girl.
• 1:35:55
  He felt every cell in his body go into spasm, then relax again,
• 1:35:59
  giving up the last of his energy.
• 1:36:01
  The cells didn't have the strength to keep them together
• 1:36:04
  anymore. He remembered feeling the same
• 1:36:07
  thing just before his first regeneration, that moment of
• 1:36:11
  weakness when your body tried to tell you that being solid was
• 1:36:14
  overrated anyway, that it had been much easier to let yourself
• 1:36:17
  melt back into primordial soup. Back at the Academy, the
• 1:36:22
  students like to say that a Time Lord who died his final death
• 1:36:25
  would degenerate into a sticky puddle, leaving nothing behind
• 1:36:29
  but an ugly stain and the memories in the Matrix.
• 1:36:32
  It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea whether this was
• 1:36:35
  actually true. It's all right, Sarah was
• 1:36:39
  saying, finally managing to put proper sentences together.
• 1:36:43
  She didn't sound as though she believed a word of it.
• 1:36:47
  You're going to be all right. I'm going to get you back to the
• 1:36:49
  TARDIS. The Doctor shook his head.
• 1:36:53
  Too late. He said, and his voice was as
• 1:36:56
  dry as the dust, as quiet as the desert.
• 1:37:00
  This is the end, I'm afraid. Not quite how I imagined it, but
• 1:37:07
  he felt the cracks in his throat and heard the sand sticking to
• 1:37:10
  his words. Sarah held him tighter so he
• 1:37:14
  could feel his biofield rubbing against hers.
• 1:37:18
  You can't die, she told him. He could imagine her saying the
• 1:37:22
  same thing to her first pet hamster moments before it passed
• 1:37:26
  out of a life for good. You can't, not now, not like
• 1:37:30
  this, please. But the Doctor couldn't see her
• 1:37:34
  at all now, not through the cocoon of pure life force.
• 1:37:37
  His body was building around itself, keeping him safe and
• 1:37:40
  warm during the time of crisis. This was what the TARDIS had
• 1:37:44
  been trying to warn him about then.
• 1:37:47
  The old girl had known it'd end this way.
• 1:37:50
  Still, how could he have understood?
• 1:37:53
  The rules were different here. Dust wasn't the kind of place he
• 1:37:57
  would ever have chosen to go. He had a funny feeling that all
• 1:38:00
  that was to change. Soon, the Doctor felt his hand
• 1:38:04
  brush against something. Sarah was squeezing it, he
• 1:38:07
  realised, pressing his fingers against her face.
• 1:38:11
  He thought he felt a spot of liquid there, warm and sticky
• 1:38:14
  against her cheek. One of those little details that
• 1:38:17
  made the pain of existence worthwhile.
• 1:38:19
  Really. A tear.
• 1:38:22
  Sarah Jane. It'd be nice to record that.
• 1:38:26
  Those were the last words he said to her before the change
• 1:38:29
  began in earnest and the 3rd Doctor effectively cease to
• 1:38:32
  exist. However, there was one more
• 1:38:36
  thing he managed to say, one more message he felt he had to
• 1:38:39
  pass on to the world before he slipped away.
• 1:38:43
  This is wrong. Then he died in the dust.
• 1:39:12
  And you know, Joe Bencher put that that scene with the the
• 1:39:17
  coffee in the first one is so visceral almost it's making
• 1:39:21
  impact because it's perkyo has always had this kind of sang
• 1:39:24
  fois this this unruffled exterior, except on his shirt,
• 1:39:28
  obviously, that was ruffled. But.
• 1:39:32
  He yeah, but he found a way to make it work.
• 1:39:38
  He, you know, he fought. He forced himself to work
• 1:39:41
  harder, as Joe said earlier, to work harder, to work smarter.
• 1:39:45
  And he found a way to save the day.
• 1:39:48
  And this and his the end where he gets shot, It's it's almost
• 1:39:53
  throwaway. It's it's like I've sorted
• 1:39:55
  everything. You just waiting for that kind
• 1:39:58
  of lovely tag scene on the end with Doctor and companion.
• 1:40:00
  Have a laugh. Go off in the TARDIS.
• 1:40:03
  And though it's someone whose job is to keep the world safe,
• 1:40:06
  more Delena, I think is. I'm not sure.
• 1:40:10
  Yeah. She, you know, she basically she
• 1:40:13
  wants to keep the world safe, don't want you coming back.
• 1:40:18
  And it's shocking because it's a meaningless death.
• 1:40:22
  It's not, you know, the doctor. It's not heroic death.
• 1:40:25
  It's just you've said today you're supposed, you know, this
• 1:40:29
  world is supposed to be grateful to you.
• 1:40:31
  No, this world says go away and don't come back and the real
• 1:40:37
  thing about it is it's only literally the only thing that's
• 1:40:41
  affected is the doctor dies just before planet of the spiders.
• 1:40:45
  It's an utterly meaningless death in every possible way.
• 1:40:50
  Everything else you know, planet of the spiders impose slightly
• 1:40:53
  differently. Robot he probably sorts out in
• 1:40:56
  10 seconds flat given me he's OK, but it's it's it's
• 1:41:01
  essentially it it's it feels big, but it just doesn't mean
• 1:41:06
  anything and it's beauty the because the the shock.
• 1:41:11
  It's supposed to be a shock that the the doctor dies here, but
• 1:41:14
  it's it's not really. It's just doesn't mean a thing.
• 1:41:20
  Yeah, something that surprised me as well was that it's not
• 1:41:26
  even planned by Faction Paradox. It's actually their plan goes
• 1:41:31
  wrong. Their plan was to infect I am
• 1:41:35
  Foreman with this virus. When I am Foreman becomes the
• 1:41:38
  planet and that goes wrong and the Doctor is infected with the
• 1:41:42
  faction, that Faction Paradox virus.
• 1:41:48
  And then that is what's led to him losing his shadow and all
• 1:41:52
  this stuff in our Natural History.
• 1:41:54
  So again, it's so much in this book is just accidental and
• 1:41:59
  because the doctor doesn't think things through and he's not the
• 1:42:02
  the planner and the the chess player like the 7th Doctor.
• 1:42:06
  And So what happens to the to the Doctor in Saudi Arabia?
• 1:42:11
  What happens to him affecting the 3rd doctor in the TARDIS and
• 1:42:14
  creating this timeline? So the doctor being infected
• 1:42:18
  with the virus is all the Doctors fault.
• 1:42:20
  What happens to Fitz is all the Doctors fault.
• 1:42:22
  And it's, yeah, it's like, how do we?
• 1:42:25
  It's just carelessness, isn't it?
• 1:42:27
  Yeah. I mean, he does get his
• 1:42:29
  reckoning because that virus does go into him and eventually
• 1:42:32
  we get grandfather paradox in the form of the 8th Doctor.
• 1:42:37
  And that's the big climactic moment in the ancestor cell.
• 1:42:40
  So eventually he's he's forced to sort of make a big call and
• 1:42:46
  well, if we ever cover the ancestor cell, we'll just debate
• 1:42:49
  the rights and wrongs of that decision.
• 1:42:51
  Put it on the list. It's long, but we could make it
• 1:42:55
  longer. One thing I will say about I
• 1:42:59
  found the coffee in the face more shocking than the bullet,
• 1:43:04
  but I did think the way it was described.
• 1:43:07
  The 3rd Doctor bleeding to death, lying down on a planet
• 1:43:11
  that's being rebirthed. He's dying on a planet that's
• 1:43:15
  coming to life. Just really beautiful, really
• 1:43:19
  beautifully written. Somehow the death feels worth
• 1:43:23
  it. I don't know it.
• 1:43:24
  I was like, I was like, I don't know, I should be really
• 1:43:26
  shocked. But actually it's a bit poetic.
• 1:43:29
  Like, I don't know, something goes and something starts
• 1:43:33
  beautiful. It's really nice.
• 1:43:36
  And you get to see this sort of paradise planet in the IM
• 1:43:40
  Foreman 8th Doctor scenes as well.
• 1:43:41
  So you you kind of get the sense that you know something has come
• 1:43:45
  of this and wherever the 8th Doctor's going next, like that
• 1:43:50
  wasn't the end for him that that horrible death.
• 1:43:53
  So yeah, it's it's such a great sort of setup to make you
• 1:43:58
  excited for what's happening, what's going to come next.
• 1:44:02
  And then the entire readership hated it.
• 1:44:04
  So although it doesn't make you wonder, you know, that very
• 1:44:06
  first scene where he goes to at the very start of the book, if I
• 1:44:10
  am foreman of God, do you know what, right.
• 1:44:12
  I used to be these 13 people on this planet does it became me.
• 1:44:16
  I am Foreman's world. You know, you was there, Doctor,
• 1:44:18
  you remember in your third in color.
• 1:44:20
  You know that about that conversation, right?
• 1:44:22
  We wouldn't have had to read the whole 600 pages.
• 1:44:25
  That would have been the chip, the Chris Chipnall version
• 1:44:29
  contract is key, right? Well, look, we have over about
• 1:44:35
  four hours now discussed ideas and characters and great
• 1:44:40
  moments. Mostly things we laughed and
• 1:44:42
  some things we really didn't. Scour your notes, people.
• 1:44:46
  This is your last chance to say anything about interference.
• 1:44:50
  Books one and two, or mostly books.
• 1:44:52
  I like the jokes about the Doctor's library.
• 1:44:54
  I can't remember who's working walking through it but they
• 1:44:58
  noticed that the Doctor will have multiple formats of the
• 1:45:01
  same story and Lawrence makes. I can't remember the exact line
• 1:45:05
  but he makes a joke about people who buy VH S S even though
• 1:45:09
  they've got the program taped already off the.
• 1:45:12
  TV, Yeah. Which made me laugh even more.
• 1:45:15
  Which made me fucking laugh even more in 2024 when I think I
• 1:45:19
  don't know for sure but I'm going to guess all four of us
• 1:45:21
  are guilty of this off the TVVHSSDVDS Blu rays.
• 1:45:29
  Yes, and I've kept every novels. Oh, hang on a minute.
• 1:45:36
  Is he saying something about that with the remembering then
• 1:45:39
  that we're doing the same material and over and over again
• 1:45:41
  and we're sort of manipulating it each time?
• 1:45:44
  Pretty. Much.
• 1:45:46
  Maybe I might be. I might be a bit tenuous, that
• 1:45:48
  one. Did anyone notice I did like
• 1:45:51
  Lawrence? Seeing patterns in things that
• 1:45:53
  aren't there. So the last four stories have
• 1:45:56
  all been set on Earth, the last four books.
• 1:45:58
  And he says at the start of this that the TARDIS has detected
• 1:46:03
  something big coming up on the Earth, so keeps coming back to
• 1:46:06
  the Earth, and he's sort of trying to figure out what's
• 1:46:09
  going on without the Doctor knowing about it.
• 1:46:11
  But then because Sam said to the Doctor in Orton Mist, the next
• 1:46:15
  time we land on Earth, I'm getting off.
• 1:46:18
  Ever since then, the TARDIS hasn't landed on Earth because,
• 1:46:21
  well, basically she doesn't want the Doctor to be very unhappy.
• 1:46:23
  I liked all of that. Yeah, it's nice.
• 1:46:29
  And I quite liked the the two cameos in this book.
• 1:46:34
  I don't know, I can't remember if we mentioned it in the last
• 1:46:36
  episode, but both Jeremy Fitz Oliver and Iris Wild Time make
• 1:46:43
  little cameos in this book. And yeah, I mean, it's quite
• 1:46:47
  self indulgent, but I did really enjoy it.
• 1:46:50
  It's not you certainly though. Or someone said earlier that
• 1:46:52
  that it doesn't feel like one big universe, doesn't it?
• 1:46:54
  I think some people think that the universe of the 8th Doctor
• 1:46:58
  books is somehow less formed than that of the New Adventures.
• 1:47:03
  But the more I'm digging. I did an Acrophobia recently
• 1:47:05
  which was packed full of continuity in books to come and
• 1:47:08
  books gone. I think there's far more of that
• 1:47:11
  going on than people think. I think maybe it's a bit less
• 1:47:14
  overt. I think a lot of less people
• 1:47:17
  read the EDA's over time. That's what it is.
• 1:47:21
  I think so, and, and a lot of I think there was that vibe from a
• 1:47:25
  lot of New Adventures fans too, that these aren't as good,
• 1:47:28
  they'll never be as good. So I don't know.
• 1:47:31
  Their reputation hasn't been as high standing as say the New
• 1:47:35
  Adventures have. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:47:37
  You know, we'll have Doctor Who magazine, dude, that's it's 25
• 1:47:40
  years of 30 years of New Adventures and all this kind of
• 1:47:42
  stuff. And then like go and do the I
• 1:47:46
  thought the EDA's ones and I'm like, don't really see much, you
• 1:47:51
  know, written about them. I'm hoping that whoever did that
• 1:47:54
  New Adventures coffee table book is going to get his butt around
• 1:47:58
  it doing Yeah, yeah. If anyone will he he would
• 1:48:04
  probably be the guy to do it. Usually we.
• 1:48:07
  Do have some juicy new adventures on our list so you
• 1:48:10
  people can educate me as to where I'm going wrong with
• 1:48:12
  those, especially John. John, anything in your notes?
• 1:48:18
  No, it's just there's so many little diamond lines on there.
• 1:48:21
  I think it's a Foreman. All the show does is remind
• 1:48:24
  people of their potential and the rest is up to them.
• 1:48:27
  It's just like saying about fans, isn't it?
• 1:48:30
  All this is there. What you do with Doctor Who once
• 1:48:33
  you've consumed it, that's up to you.
• 1:48:36
  It's so, it's so much that it's talking to the audience and I've
• 1:48:41
  got that iron foreman lying at the end where he just says you
• 1:48:44
  really are a mess, aren't you? I don't just go.
• 1:48:47
  Increasingly, yes. There was there's a couple of
• 1:48:51
  lines which really sort of tied up the themes.
• 1:48:54
  There's a bit where the Doctor says to Sam, I said it was a
• 1:48:58
  utopia. I didn't say I liked it.
• 1:49:00
  We can't go around the universe dividing people up into good
• 1:49:02
  societies and bad societies. There's no good and bad, there's
• 1:49:06
  just politics. I thought that was a great line.
• 1:49:09
  Yeah, that that's what he's setting out in that forward he
• 1:49:12
  wrote to the book, isn't it? It's all about politics.
• 1:49:15
  Not explicitly party politics either.
• 1:49:17
  Almost as if to tie up the whole thing about the signals, he
• 1:49:20
  says. Iron Foreman says at the end,
• 1:49:22
  that's philosophy, just playing with words.
• 1:49:25
  It's all a question of the message you want to send and the
• 1:49:27
  signals you give out. So he is sort of trying to make
• 1:49:32
  a point, but he's still believing it.
• 1:49:34
  Very open to interpretation. How it's it's how would Doctor
• 1:49:38
  Who work in a complex world, isn't it?
• 1:49:39
  And the answer is massively. It's also one little nugget of
• 1:49:47
  apparently Earth days and Gallifrey days are the exact
• 1:49:51
  same amount of time. Yep, that's a definitely a
• 1:49:57
  useful thing. I had to read and tell.
• 1:49:58
  Everybody. Thanks, Lawrence.
• 1:50:04
  I'm glad you did. But you know what?
• 1:50:05
  I never ever do this. But because this is a two-part
• 1:50:08
  book, I'm going to ask you guys to write this as a whole and
• 1:50:15
  let's let's do it at A10 and let's start with John.
• 1:50:25
  See. I just think it's such a rich
• 1:50:30
  text that it bears its length so beautifully.
• 1:50:35
  I'm I'm good. I might knock a little mark off
• 1:50:38
  because at times it's because everything was so wrong there.
• 1:50:43
  I can see where people would go. I'm not going any further this.
• 1:50:46
  I don't like this. It's the worst doctor book ever.
• 1:50:49
  But just for the ideas, just for everything about, I'll go with a
• 1:50:52
  nine out of 10, but you know, I'll give it 25 out of 10 for
• 1:50:57
  ambition because it's you couldn't have written this book
• 1:51:03
  at any other point. And it's just so much more
• 1:51:06
  ambitious for Doctor Who, for the novels, for what it wants
• 1:51:11
  to, how it wants to interact with the audience.
• 1:51:14
  It's the most ambitious tie in of any.
• 1:51:17
  I've read a lot of Thai novels. There was nothing anywhere on
• 1:51:20
  this level, I don't think. Staying, Andrew.
• 1:51:25
  And yeah, I, I agree with all of that, but I think I'm going to
• 1:51:29
  have to go for a 10 out of 10. I don't think there's enough in
• 1:51:33
  it for me to knock off a mark. And I think for that that scale,
• 1:51:38
  that ambition, the intelligent intelligence, the the ideas that
• 1:51:44
  are in this book and the way that it makes you as a reader
• 1:51:47
  have to confront these ideas, I just think there's nothing else
• 1:51:51
  like it in the whole of Doctor Who.
• 1:51:54
  And it's just a great piece of literary fiction, which is not
• 1:52:00
  really something that you get in Doctor Who and very much if at
• 1:52:05
  all. So yeah, it's it's a 10 out of
• 1:52:08
  10 from me, Luke. I feel like a person who will
• 1:52:15
  understand why people will adore this, and I feel like I'd
• 1:52:19
  understand why people would not not like this that much at all.
• 1:52:23
  But I think it's it's about a 7 for me.
• 1:52:27
  I wouldn't put it as A5. There's nothing average about
• 1:52:30
  this novel in any way, shape or form.
• 1:52:33
  I love it. I love a lot of things in it.
• 1:52:36
  There's just, I just felt a bit exhausted at some point.
• 1:52:42
  And it's the ideas of it. Like this is a case of an
• 1:52:48
  example of Doctor Who I'm glad exists but and glad I reengaged
• 1:52:53
  with it at least another time, but wouldn't be in a rush to
• 1:52:57
  come back to it again. Mostly because it's just, it's
• 1:53:01
  too heavy. Maybe that's why there's no tie
• 1:53:03
  insurance like this. People don't read tie insurance
• 1:53:05
  for shit like this right? They don't.
• 1:53:08
  People read them for the PDAs to be to be honest.
• 1:53:11
  Like that's what that's what original novels in other
• 1:53:15
  franchises feel like a lot of the time.
• 1:53:18
  Mostly PDA ish, right? That people.
• 1:53:23
  There's that then. It's true, you can't give this
• 1:53:26
  any kind of average rating. I think sevens above just above
• 1:53:30
  average. 7.5 is just too much in here.
• 1:53:34
  It's too much influence that this book's had as well.
• 1:53:37
  I had more fun reading it, you know what I mean?
• 1:53:40
  I was more engaged in reading it than I wasn't when I felt like I
• 1:53:44
  was so exhausted and the book would never didn't have anything
• 1:53:48
  left to offer me. Gave me Foreman's world and took
• 1:53:56
  me on that journey of making me feel really tired and like I've
• 1:54:00
  had enough. And then like, hey, it's all
• 1:54:04
  right. There's rainbows on this.
• 1:54:06
  There's good stuff on the horizon.
• 1:54:07
  This, this, this. Hope is there's some joy here.
• 1:54:10
  There's things like that. So I would say this is like
• 1:54:14
  literary like it's a literary book in a tie in series.
• 1:54:20
  And despite my not giving it a perfect score or anything like
• 1:54:24
  that, I might have even been even cheekier at the time and,
• 1:54:29
  and say what would have happened if I had submitted this to some
• 1:54:33
  sci-fi awards. Because there's it's, it's, it's
• 1:54:39
  an important book. It's there's a lot to say that
• 1:54:42
  isn't said. Oh.
• 1:54:43
  I don't know. The impact is huge as well.
• 1:54:47
  It's about as close to a Hugo winner as I think Doctor Who
• 1:54:50
  novels has ever come. I.
• 1:54:54
  Don't think you have to make this much effort for a tie in
• 1:54:59
  Doctor Whoberg, and trust me, most authors don't.
• 1:55:02
  But I really at least for once, somebody did.
• 1:55:08
  It's weird because when you say you were exhausted in book two,
• 1:55:11
  I was so invigorated in book 2. Like just that the the ideas
• 1:55:17
  that were being juggled, that how the furious, the pace got,
• 1:55:20
  the twists and turns. I just was absolutely gripped.
• 1:55:24
  It's a 10 for me as well. I'm with Andrew.
• 1:55:27
  It's sprawling, important, it's ambitious, series shattering,
• 1:55:31
  interrogating, bewildering in places and really, really dark.
• 1:55:36
  This is my sort of Doctor Who, and yeah, I'm kind of sad,
• 1:55:40
  actually. I think we might have peaked for
• 1:55:42
  me. How would I wait?
• 1:55:45
  We're doing The Crooked World next.
• 1:55:46
  That way. Yeah.
• 1:55:48
  Oh, well. Wonderful guys.
• 1:55:49
  Thank you very much. I supposed to round this off.
• 1:55:53
  We were so complimentary about art books in our last book club
• 1:55:57
  episode, and now we've got 3-3 and three of our worst favorite
• 1:56:02
  art books from me, Luke and John and Andrew, because he's much
• 1:56:06
  more satisfied with the art books than we are, has 2.
• 1:56:10
  Andrew, I'm going to ask you at the beginning and the end.
• 1:56:12
  All right. OK, so off you go there.
• 1:56:16
  What's your first one? So my first one is one that
• 1:56:20
  always comes up when you ever ask me to do a list of bottom
• 1:56:23
  10, bottom anything. It is the Infinity race.
• 1:56:31
  That. Fucking Regatta.
• 1:56:35
  Yeah, possibly my least favorite Doctor Who book ever, which
• 1:56:41
  comes off the back of Camera Obscura and Time 0 to
• 1:56:47
  Interlinked books, which is finishing up 1 arc, setting off
• 1:56:52
  a new one at the end of Time Zero.
• 1:56:57
  Time has been split. There are all these different
• 1:56:59
  realities. What's going to happen next?
• 1:57:01
  The Doctor Fitz and Angie are spinning off into new, exciting
• 1:57:04
  adventures. They land on a boat.
• 1:57:09
  There's a race going on. Apparently this is one of the
• 1:57:14
  fractured timelines. No mention of that.
• 1:57:16
  It's just a bog standard boring Doctor Who story, which even if
• 1:57:23
  it wasn't shoved right at the beginning of an arc, would have
• 1:57:26
  been terrible. But the fact that it is in the
• 1:57:28
  place that needs to start moving this story forward completely
• 1:57:35
  ignores it. Despite the fact all of these
• 1:57:37
  earth, these universe shattering events have happened.
• 1:57:39
  It was the most, it was the dampest squib you can imagine
• 1:57:46
  from a reader who was like so excited to see where these books
• 1:57:49
  were going. And nowhere exciting was the
• 1:57:52
  answer that the Infinity Race gave boring cover as well.
• 1:57:56
  Isn't it just that boat boat the boat job?
• 1:58:02
  Well, I'm going to go through one that start.
• 1:58:03
  I'm going to say, and I'm going to say because just me talk
• 1:58:05
  better. As I say, interference isn't a
• 1:58:07
  great ARC book. I think it's a great.
• 1:58:11
  Book 9 out of 10, you say? 9 out of 10.
• 1:58:17
  But Lawrence Miles ideas don't tend to work well when played by
• 1:58:21
  anyone else. And he gets very grumpy back
• 1:58:24
  because no one's on that level, no one's engaged.
• 1:58:26
  They're so big, they're so deep, they're so rich.
• 1:58:31
  You can't deal with them in a tie in range series because
• 1:58:35
  otherwise, you know, every book would be like interference and
• 1:58:39
  you wouldn't want that out. Doctor Who factual parents.
• 1:58:42
  Again, the ideas, that idea that there's time war going on the
• 1:58:45
  background, but you know, it's never wanting to pay that off.
• 1:58:50
  No, you can't cheat your readers like that.
• 1:58:53
  You need the readers to have a payoff, to have something rich,
• 1:58:58
  even if you just pay off in a few lines at the end.
• 1:59:00
  You know that as they eventually had to do with the ancestor
• 1:59:03
  cell. But it makes a mess of the
• 1:59:06
  books. It kind of queers the pitch a
• 1:59:09
  bit for everyone else to follow, because go how do you follow
• 1:59:13
  that? You follow with poor Mars,
• 1:59:15
  obviously, and then Mark Clapham, but it kind of makes
• 1:59:20
  the books that aren't then interlinked a little more
• 1:59:25
  disappointing, through no fault of their own.
• 1:59:28
  So I love the book, I love what it does, but Lawrence Miles
• 1:59:34
  wants that sandpit to himself. As Andrew said, it'll be a
• 1:59:37
  lovely idea to see it. And he doesn't, you know, he
• 1:59:43
  doesn't give too much for everyone to play with.
• 1:59:45
  What, what would you do with compassionate office?
• 1:59:48
  You don't really think about it. Sets.
• 1:59:51
  The bar too high as well. He does the best work with those
• 1:59:54
  ideas. This is it.
• 1:59:55
  It's a but it's too good. Look at what Justin Richards
• 1:59:58
  like. The sort of what Justin Richards
• 1:59:59
  offers is right is right. I've written The Burning, this
• 2:00:02
  nice gentle Horror Story. Now set a book in the next 100
• 2:00:05
  years and do what you want. And that's a really gentle way
• 2:00:08
  to give a book to a riot in an arc to, to stamp their own,
• 2:00:12
  yeah, without having to sort of juggle all these fucking ideas
• 2:00:16
  like rocks while you're doing it at Luke.
• 2:00:22
  Cats cradle times, Crucible It's it's bad.
• 2:00:30
  Can't just say one thing please. Someone told me this week that
• 2:00:32
  was the best Doctor Who book ever.
• 2:00:35
  It wasn't. It wasn't me.
• 2:00:37
  From the asylum, I might add, but.
• 2:00:41
  Wow, coming up. Yeah, yeah, right.
• 2:00:44
  Wow. OK.
• 2:00:46
  It was my first original Doctor Who novel, so I don't know.
• 2:00:49
  I was young and just hungry for Doctor Who.
• 2:00:53
  I thought maybe my young brain thought maybe there's good
• 2:00:55
  Doctor Who out there. How is this the start of an arc?
• 2:00:58
  I don't, I don't know. I mean, stuff from this book
• 2:01:01
  Will pop up throughout the rest of the new adventures,
• 2:01:04
  culminating in Longborough I guess.
• 2:01:06
  But I know the TARDIS has some kind of infection.
• 2:01:09
  There's a cat. What's the story arc?
• 2:01:12
  What is this? What is this?
• 2:01:15
  What is the forget the story arc?
• 2:01:17
  What is this actual story for the actual book itself?
• 2:01:21
  TARDIS is a planet now. And time, old history theory,
• 2:01:26
  vitreous stuff. It's bad.
• 2:01:30
  I've bashed on it before, and yeah, I like a lot of what Mark
• 2:01:35
  Platt does, except this. You remember.
• 2:01:39
  This is space age you. Remember I said last time that,
• 2:01:43
  you know, like, no, they can never get an arc completely
• 2:01:45
  right. You know, the start of either
• 2:01:47
  good or the middle or the end, but never all of it.
• 2:01:51
  And I think this comes at the end of a really good run of
• 2:01:54
  books and a really good arc. Boy, this is a dismal ending.
• 2:02:00
  And that is No Future by Paul Cornell.
• 2:02:04
  A. Fucking miserable wanky
• 2:02:07
  continuity fest. I've made a few notes, if you'll
• 2:02:10
  forgive me. So the Monk, the Monk, the
• 2:02:14
  Varden's, and the Krone of Oars all appear in this book.
• 2:02:18
  The Brigadier Benton and Yates also appear.
• 2:02:21
  It turns out that the monk was technical advisor to Yartek of
• 2:02:25
  the Void and the Morocs. That's that.
• 2:02:28
  You learn that in that book. To summon the Chronovores, he
• 2:02:31
  needs the blood of a minion, a Silurian, a Dalek, a human
• 2:02:36
  mandrel using spheres from the Sisterhood of Khan.
• 2:02:41
  I mean, was Gary Russell creative consultant on this
• 2:02:44
  fucking book? It is just terrible and.
• 2:02:48
  It sounds like a whole book of chapter 6 of Goth Opera.
• 2:02:52
  I think Cornell is hit and miss because I've got another Cornell
• 2:02:55
  on my list, which is another miss.
• 2:02:58
  Why this is a swinging miss. But it has the best joke in the
• 2:03:02
  whole range. Go on.
• 2:03:04
  It OK, everyone knows which band Paul McCartney was in, right?
• 2:03:08
  In the in the in the 70s. Wings.
• 2:03:12
  Wings. The Brigadier has to go in and
• 2:03:15
  shoot Paul McCartney. So what's the line?
• 2:03:18
  I shall put the wings. There 5 brains rapid.
• 2:03:22
  Beat it right, Andrew. I'll come back to you for round
• 2:03:28
  three. All right, John.
• 2:03:32
  I will kind of pick an easiest target.
• 2:03:34
  I'm going to go with the domino effect.
• 2:03:37
  That's a more list. Oh, God, yeah, I believe.
• 2:03:42
  I believe Dave Bishop has, he published his original pitch for
• 2:03:46
  the novel as well, which is apparently different.
• 2:03:49
  I haven't read it, so I'm going to go back to but it's it's got
• 2:03:52
  a solid idea, really solid idea. It's hard, which is essentially
• 2:03:55
  that Sabbath has gone to kill everyone involved with the
• 2:04:00
  creation of the computer. So humanity never develops that
• 2:04:03
  technological level, which is a bit of dodgy premise in itself,
• 2:04:08
  but it's it's just it's so straightforward.
• 2:04:11
  Nothing happens. It doesn't develop the alcohol.
• 2:04:14
  It's just like Sabbath as a moustache twerving villain,
• 2:04:18
  which he very much isn't in again, that Lawrence Mark novel
• 2:04:21
  adventurous of Henry actor St. It's just that last arc.
• 2:04:25
  The only thing I I enjoy. I think it's probably the last
• 2:04:28
  resort. I can't remember tomorrow when
• 2:04:29
  this is part of it, but it's just that dull, that parallel
• 2:04:34
  universe thing it has. It just goes.
• 2:04:37
  What's the dullest idea I can do with it and the most
• 2:04:39
  straightforward story? Because I think it's just a trip
• 2:04:41
  down from Edinburgh to London, so a train ride.
• 2:04:45
  What would you want over that is a God.
• 2:04:47
  It's so dull and God bless. Dave Bishop knows it was
• 2:04:51
  terrible as well because he says it's not his best novel.
• 2:04:53
  And nothing against any of these authors because you've written
• 2:04:56
  Doctor when I haven't. It's so brutal as well.
• 2:05:00
  It's a really brutal book that sort of thoughtlessly, and I
• 2:05:03
  just thought it lacked any subtlety or any drama, any
• 2:05:08
  nuance at all. Yeah.
• 2:05:09
  It doesn't earn any of that brutality.
• 2:05:11
  I don't mind that the brutality is earned by the story being
• 2:05:15
  told. Interference again.
• 2:05:17
  That totally earns what it's doing.
• 2:05:20
  I. Mean the last resort is brutal.
• 2:05:22
  It murders the 8th. Tops.
• 2:05:25
  About 100 million times. God, yeah.
• 2:05:29
  But it's oh, yeah. It's it's just that parallel
• 2:05:33
  universe. It can I can see why Justin
• 2:05:36
  Richard put in place it's a fascinating idea, but it there's
• 2:05:40
  so little done with it. It's the in this, it's just the
• 2:05:42
  dialects. You should Andrew mentioning the
• 2:05:44
  affinity race. It does absolutely sod all with
• 2:05:48
  it. Well, I think at.
• 2:05:50
  Least the domino effect does something with parallel
• 2:05:53
  universe. A slightly different picture,
• 2:05:55
  yeah. I do think for a reckless
• 2:05:56
  engineering onwards though, that art pulls itself together right
• 2:06:00
  away. Through until sometime.
• 2:06:01
  Never, yeah. Emotional.
• 2:06:02
  Chemistry is in there too. Middle book of an arc.
• 2:06:05
  It just doesn't develop. Story doesn't go anywhere.
• 2:06:08
  It's just, yeah, whatever. Well, the domino effect is also
• 2:06:12
  a MAR lesson. We just talked about that.
• 2:06:14
  So, Luke. Cat's cradle warhead.
• 2:06:20
  I can see where you go with this.
• 2:06:22
  I wonder what it's called? What will be?
• 2:06:28
  Where's this one? Where?
• 2:06:30
  Where are you? Doctor Who?
• 2:06:32
  Where, Where are you? This book is long.
• 2:06:34
  Where where are you? And this is by the guy who
• 2:06:39
  script edited Doctor Who. You should know that when
• 2:06:43
  creating Doctor Who, you put Doctor Who in it.
• 2:06:47
  Also, there's a thing about a cat maybe?
• 2:06:50
  And. What is it about that cat?
• 2:06:56
  I don't think anyone knew they were writing an ARC.
• 2:06:58
  Though to be fair, Luke, they just put them together and
• 2:07:01
  slapped Cat's gradle on it. That's pretty much what I'm for,
• 2:07:04
  Carmel says. Yeah, well, it still technically
• 2:07:08
  counts as an arc because of it, and it sucks.
• 2:07:13
  We cover that one. Can we just call it that?
• 2:07:14
  Where's Doctor Who, Andrew? Well, come on now.
• 2:07:19
  What's your second choice? So my second choice is one that
• 2:07:25
  I haven't actually read because I spoiled it for myself as to
• 2:07:28
  where the storyline was going and was so turned off by it that
• 2:07:33
  I was like, I'm not going to read that.
• 2:07:35
  So I mentioned a book from this arc in the last episode,
• 2:07:40
  Heritage, which is part of the Dead Ace arc.
• 2:07:44
  The book that wraps it up is Loving the Alien, which, yeah, I
• 2:07:50
  haven't read, and I feel bad putting it on this when I
• 2:07:52
  haven't actually read it. But from knowing how that
• 2:07:54
  storyline is resolved, so when you've got like the death of a
• 2:07:58
  beloved character, it's set up that she's definitely dead.
• 2:08:01
  The doctors found the body and how are they going to get out of
• 2:08:04
  this? So it's like, is she dead?
• 2:08:05
  Is she not? How how are they going to
• 2:08:08
  resolve this storyline? How's the Doctor either going to
• 2:08:12
  save her or not save her, you know, tragedy or, you know, et
• 2:08:16
  cetera. But what happens is that Ace
• 2:08:21
  does die in the storyline. So that's where the dead body
• 2:08:25
  has come from. And then the Doctor just nips
• 2:08:26
  into a parallel universe, here's another Ace, and then just goes
• 2:08:30
  off with her instead. And it's like, it's oh, no, it's
• 2:08:33
  so big. Yeah, it's a bits in
• 2:08:38
  interference, but. Yeah, but.
• 2:08:41
  That has like a thematic, like really.
• 2:08:43
  That's got some. This is like, oh, I want to kill
• 2:08:47
  her, but also I want to not kill her.
• 2:08:49
  So let's do it both ways. And yeah, I was very frustrated
• 2:08:53
  to read that. So I didn't read the book and I
• 2:08:56
  thought this is the story that you story that you've been
• 2:08:59
  planning for like 5 years or so in seeding into all these 7th
• 2:09:02
  Doctor books and that's the ending that you're going to do
• 2:09:05
  it with it. It's like, that's the best
• 2:09:07
  ending you can think of. Don't bother telling that story.
• 2:09:10
  It was there to reconcile laces of multiple fates as well, I
• 2:09:13
  think, wasn't it? It was there to reconcile Ground
• 2:09:15
  Zero and the New adventures Ace and it Yeah, again, it's the
• 2:09:21
  anti interference. Is that the Nas then from the
• 2:09:24
  other universe coming into our unit?
• 2:09:27
  Is that why she becomes a space bitch?
• 2:09:30
  No, it's basically it's just, it's just ace.
• 2:09:34
  It's just another ace. So it's like another TV ace.
• 2:09:37
  Very confusing. Yeah.
• 2:09:39
  And then why does anything matter?
• 2:09:41
  Why do companions matter? Because the Doctor can just go,
• 2:09:43
  here you go. Yeah, I feel sorry for Adric
• 2:09:46
  that you didn't go to the next universe.
• 2:09:48
  I'm going to get another ADRIC. Quick to the Great Exhibition.
• 2:09:55
  Childhood, Adric. OK, I'm going to go with the
• 2:09:59
  most obvious choice possible, probably, which is escape
• 2:10:01
  velocity, which is just the most unsatisfying end to an arc.
• 2:10:06
  I think Red God bless it it I will say it's a decent enough
• 2:10:11
  kind of introduction for Angie, but then it's go it's a it's a
• 2:10:17
  reverse preaching. It's like how to motivate a
• 2:10:19
  character kill off their boyfriend and it's just you've
• 2:10:23
  you've had such an imaginative arc there.
• 2:10:26
  You you had the burning set up beautifully.
• 2:10:28
  I like casualties war as well. It's got a really interesting
• 2:10:31
  thing to say about that First World War kind of time.
• 2:10:34
  The Turing Trust is one of the best Doctor Who books ever
• 2:10:36
  written. Father time again, it's too
• 2:10:38
  interesting commentary on the 80s and then this.
• 2:10:43
  It's just ordinary. It's just the there's nothing.
• 2:10:46
  The stakes never feel high. It's just, was this where we're
• 2:10:51
  all working to meet me in Saint Louis?
• 2:10:53
  It's a pub, isn't it? It's like, is that the big
• 2:10:57
  mystery? But God's sake.
• 2:11:00
  I can't even notice you skipped over end game as well there.
• 2:11:05
  God bless Uncle Tara. I can't say a bad word about.
• 2:11:07
  Uncle No, it's fun. Not until we re do warm anger
• 2:11:10
  anyway. Oh yeah, great.
• 2:11:14
  But yeah, it's just it might be OK on its own if you had no
• 2:11:20
  expectations, if it wasn't meant to wrap up all this ongoing
• 2:11:24
  century long story. But it just it's just so small.
• 2:11:32
  And you, you at the end of an arc, if you're going to go
• 2:11:35
  small, you need to kind of justify that.
• 2:11:38
  And it never really does. And and the only good thing I
• 2:11:42
  say is the introduction of Angie, who is one of the best
• 2:11:45
  companions in the books. Don't give it to a new writer.
• 2:11:48
  Don't give the end of an arc a brilliant arc to a new writer.
• 2:11:53
  Yeah, I mean he was, was he script header on EastEnders?
• 2:11:56
  I think so. I can see why.
• 2:11:58
  Yeah, so I can see why he got given the introduced new
• 2:12:02
  character thing, but it needed something stronger on the plot,
• 2:12:06
  was a better stronger story to induce it.
• 2:12:09
  To be fair to him though, like the the payoff from that, like
• 2:12:11
  the stuff in Earth world, the stuff in Hope.
• 2:12:14
  Like I think they do good things with Dave dying, but Dave dying
• 2:12:19
  itself is very anti. Does he just is he under the
• 2:12:22
  rocket or something and it just blasts in his face?
• 2:12:25
  Really anti climax? Yeah, it's, it's nothing like,
• 2:12:30
  you know, two hands meeting and Oh my God.
• 2:12:33
  Are you not gagging for the return appearance of the kulan?
• 2:12:37
  I'll live. They're coming back last.
• 2:12:41
  One and please please say what I.
• 2:12:44
  Said you're going to say. It's Cat's Cradle witch Mark.
• 2:12:54
  No, I'm good for you then. Like the cover is absolutely,
• 2:12:58
  absolutely beautiful. It's one of my favourites.
• 2:13:01
  It's some weird fantasy tale though that doesn't really have
• 2:13:06
  anything to do with warheads or crucibles in time, and there's a
• 2:13:10
  cat or something running around somewhere.
• 2:13:13
  Like what's the deal with this cat?
• 2:13:15
  Who cares about this cat? Does anyone?
• 2:13:18
  Know. And and the the the infection
• 2:13:22
  TARDIS thing, it gets like purged except for like 1 little
• 2:13:28
  slither of it, which I think comes back later on, like a way
• 2:13:33
  later someone decided to pick that up.
• 2:13:35
  I can't remember it might be now I have an absolutely no idea,
• 2:13:39
  but that that thread does get at least picked up.
• 2:13:41
  It's also like the first time, like I feel bad for Andrew Hunt.
• 2:13:47
  I do not the books not not the worst thing I've ever read.
• 2:13:51
  It's fine. It's it's OK, but I feel bad for
• 2:13:55
  him because he just part like, here's Mark Platt.
• 2:13:58
  I wrote two stories for the classic series.
• 2:14:00
  Yeah. Or 1.
• 2:14:04
  And, you know, here's Andrew Carmel.
• 2:14:06
  I'm the freaking. I'm the script editor of the
• 2:14:08
  last era of Doctor Who. Yeah.
• 2:14:10
  And I'm Andrew Hunt and I've not done anything.
• 2:14:15
  And now? Apologies.
• 2:14:17
  This doesn't exist. Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
• 2:14:21
  But a new writer, maybe at the end of an arc, again, that isn't
• 2:14:25
  an arc, and it's just all slapped together and he gets
• 2:14:28
  tarred with a brush. He probably doesn't deserve to
• 2:14:30
  have been because maybe this book would have been better if
• 2:14:32
  just called Witch Mark. Yeah.
• 2:14:35
  Or Warhead or, well, nothing can save time.
• 2:14:38
  Crucial. Does say very much.
• 2:14:41
  He he was pissed off the cat's cradle got put on the front.
• 2:14:43
  He's like, I didn't write this as an art book.
• 2:14:46
  I did. I wanted to just call Warhead.
• 2:14:49
  It's yeah, it's, if I remember ugly Peter Darville Evans just
• 2:14:53
  put Arcs there to make sure people stayed with the books for
• 2:14:57
  the first four. No one drops off off.
• 2:14:59
  As few people drop off as possible.
• 2:15:01
  But why do it twice? Why did he do that, though?
• 2:15:04
  Here's what you need to sell the books.
• 2:15:06
  Peter Darville Evans put Doctor Who logo on front Who the.
• 2:15:12
  Hell is Andrew Hold, does anybody know?
• 2:15:14
  Yeah, he's very nice. He's a really nice guy.
• 2:15:17
  He did. He did the novel convention in
• 2:15:20
  Derby last year. I thought he was in the asylum
• 2:15:24
  with Neil Penswick and Colin Brake.
• 2:15:26
  I wonder. If he he was so nice, he was so
• 2:15:31
  he was so dare about it. You know, he's sitting on stage
• 2:15:33
  with all the the plain New Adventures authors and he's, you
• 2:15:37
  know, he's almost felt a fraud by being there because he's not
• 2:15:41
  done anything with that kind of opportunity and he didn't think
• 2:15:44
  he took advantage of it. Was was Cornell there?
• 2:15:48
  I don't think he was. Huffing out his chest.
• 2:15:51
  No, he no, I don't think he was. He doesn't tend to do that.
• 2:15:54
  He's very. Sure.
• 2:15:57
  Yeah, he's very honest about Doc Tubers, because, you know,
• 2:16:00
  they're very early work in his career, he says.
• 2:16:02
  I'm a much better writer now than I was back then.
• 2:16:05
  He can see all the flaws. I disagree with that actually, I
• 2:16:08
  think. He was difficult.
• 2:16:09
  I think he's a worse writer now than where he's started out, but
• 2:16:12
  that's for another episode. I've been, I think, sort of
• 2:16:17
  shout her onwards. He's been phoning it in a bit.
• 2:16:19
  But anyway, and interestingly enough, my last book is also
• 2:16:22
  written by Paul Connell. And you're all going to say,
• 2:16:25
  well, that isn't an ARC book, Joe, Just like you all did when
• 2:16:27
  I said Happy Endings, which was a Paul Connell book.
• 2:16:31
  Because I do consider those Bernice New Adventures a bit of
• 2:16:34
  an ARC in their own right because they're such a short run
• 2:16:37
  of books and they do have an ongoing story.
• 2:16:40
  And this is where we started. Oh no, it isn't.
• 2:16:43
  You say, Oh yes it is. I say I'm reading it at the
• 2:16:46
  moment and it's a fucking chore and it shouldn't be because it's
• 2:16:50
  about panto and I love panto and panto divorced performance and
• 2:16:56
  aesthetic and music. It's really fucking tedious and
• 2:17:00
  a very odd place to start a run of books, especially when you're
• 2:17:06
  cross cutting it with scene sci-fi scenes on an alien
• 2:17:10
  planet. So you're going from hard SF to
• 2:17:15
  scenes from these bizarre grow aliens point of view to
• 2:17:19
  outrageous pantomime scenes from scene to scene.
• 2:17:22
  So tonally, it's all over the place.
• 2:17:24
  You get like a little bit in Chapter 1, which sets up some
• 2:17:28
  Oscars and that planet and you do a little whirlwind tour of
• 2:17:31
  all the teachers and then none of them are mentioned again for
• 2:17:34
  the rest of the book. So that just feels like a weird
• 2:17:37
  bolt on and it's, it's really boring like, and it's full of
• 2:17:42
  double entendres like it should be built for me.
• 2:17:45
  The King's balls get bigger every year and all this stuff
• 2:17:49
  the the audio. Tellingly, Jack Rayner did an
• 2:17:51
  edit of this for the audio and excised half the book.
• 2:17:56
  All the stuff with Menlo Stokes on the planet, it's all gone and
• 2:18:00
  it's all the panto stuff and then they hand it to actors.
• 2:18:03
  From the romance of crime, right?
• 2:18:05
  Yeah, they hand it to Lisa Baumann and Nicholas Courtney
• 2:18:09
  and a number of fabulous all and they just camp it up like mad
• 2:18:12
  and it's just delightful. But as a book, as a start to
• 2:18:16
  arrange, I don't know what they're trying to say.
• 2:18:19
  I don't know anyone who would pick that up who's not read the
• 2:18:22
  new adventures would think, well, is that what this book's
• 2:18:25
  these books are going to be like this all the way through.
• 2:18:27
  It's very and I think there's some great Bernice new
• 2:18:29
  adventures. Don't get me wrong, there's some
• 2:18:31
  brilliant books in there. Walk into Babylon's great beyond
• 2:18:34
  the Sun's great TC Oracle is great.
• 2:18:38
  The Lawrence Dance 2 books down. Both of them are both great, but
• 2:18:43
  one, I mean there was ever a book that Paul Cornell phoned
• 2:18:47
  in. It was this one and it is very
• 2:18:49
  bad indeed. It's forced, isn't it?
• 2:18:52
  It's the old. All the panto soap is just so
• 2:18:54
  forced in there. And there's some very laddish
• 2:18:58
  and awkward 1997 humour, such as I'm sorry, I'm going to say
• 2:19:03
  this. LA Shay Peshwari Nam, are you
• 2:19:06
  summoning a demon? No, I'm ordering a Curry.
• 2:19:09
  Like, it's all just like, oh, how long ago was 1997?
• 2:19:14
  Because that feels like 60 years ago when I read this book.
• 2:19:18
  Yeah, not. That's a low key underrated
• 2:19:20
  range though it. Is it is.
• 2:19:22
  Kind of made me see why people liked Dave Stone because I love
• 2:19:27
  all his Bernice books. I love them.
• 2:19:29
  Oddly enough the the last one was shit as well.
• 2:19:32
  It's bookended by two absolute stinkers.
• 2:19:36
  So the Mary Sue extrusion or something?
• 2:19:39
  Yeah. Or turn of the fraction planet,
• 2:19:41
  something like that. Yeah, but for his hit rate for
• 2:19:44
  Bernice is is so much better. I don't I don't remember having
• 2:19:49
  a huge it didn't make a huge impression of me.
• 2:19:52
  I know it isn't, but I do remember Dragon's Wrath, Beyond
• 2:19:56
  the Sun Down, all the books around it more than I remember.
• 2:20:03
  The first one. It would have made a great
• 2:20:04
  novella or a really good short story, but at 250 pages it is
• 2:20:09
  just labored and frankly, on 50 pages from the end, I can't wait
• 2:20:14
  to put the fucking thing down and then I've got to talk about
• 2:20:17
  it for two hours. I think talking things we're
• 2:20:20
  going to be talking about two hours soon.
• 2:20:22
  I think what it needs to do is what The Crooked World does,
• 2:20:26
  which is interrogate the genre that it's going into, and it
• 2:20:30
  doesn't critically engage with pantomime in that way.
• 2:20:33
  Well, no. And it commits the worst scene.
• 2:20:36
  It makes Bernice Summerfield stupid and that's unforgivable.
• 2:20:40
  For 150 pages she's going for all these pantomime antics going
• 2:20:44
  well, what's going on? What is this madness?
• 2:20:47
  The second she clicks this, a panto, the next page she gives a
• 2:20:51
  2 paragraph, the description of the tropes, the genre, of the
• 2:20:57
  history of. I'm like, if you fucking knew
• 2:20:59
  that all along, what has it taken you this long to figure it
• 2:21:02
  out? It's very odd.
• 2:21:03
  See if Angie and Fitz had only figured out at page 200.
• 2:21:07
  Direct. Cartoon fucking world.
• 2:21:09
  I would have been like a. It's the bit where Angie goes,
• 2:21:14
  Oh my God, it's ours, isn't it? We've done this.
• 2:21:16
  I was like, well done, Angie. Well, that's sort of a nice
• 2:21:21
  segue. Where we're going next, Andrew?
• 2:21:23
  Where are we going next? We're going to the Crooked
• 2:21:25
  World. We're on our way to Zanytown.
• 2:21:29
  Follow that. What should we call it?
• 2:21:31
  Finally, do a Lion's book. Lions, yes.
• 2:21:36
  It. Won't be our last, I'm sure.
• 2:21:39
  Yeah, I'm. So looking forward to seeing
• 2:21:41
  what Luke's like next time. Can someone please do the
• 2:21:46
  obvious Porky Pig quote? See us out.
• 2:21:50
  That's all folks.