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Hamster Book Club - Damaged Goods · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:05
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 0:07
  My name is Joe Ford and I have once again kidnapped the
• 0:13
  magnificent Michael Mills live from his in law's house.
• 0:17
  Hello Michael. How you doing?
• 0:19
  Please listen to the whole episode.
• 0:21
  He has my child. I'm doing other other than the
• 0:24
  whole kidnap scenario I'm doing very well Joe, showing your rest
• 0:28
  between Christmas and New Year. I don't.
• 0:31
  Know what that's all about, If I'm honest?
• 0:32
  Resting between Christmas and New Year.
• 0:35
  Did you have a nice Christmas? I.
• 0:36
  Had a lovely Christmas, thank you very much.
• 0:39
  Wasn't wasn't shooty great. Oh, but some of us will have
• 0:41
  seen it before Christmas days. Yeah, In fact he was only about
• 0:45
  a metre away from me in the cinema as well.
• 0:47
  He's very handsome in real life, but quite short, shorter than I
• 0:50
  thought. He was he.
• 0:51
  He strikes me as someone who is very well deodorized.
• 0:54
  Did he smell nice? Russell T Davis is that
• 0:59
  behemoth. I mean, talk about an end form.
• 1:01
  He was enormous. He's huge, isn't he?
• 1:04
  I I went to a signing he was doing the years ago the the
• 1:09
  script book for Doctor Who series one.
• 1:12
  When it came back and even sat down, it was like having your
• 1:16
  book signed by the Abominable Snowman or something like that.
• 1:20
  He complimented my hair. Oh, we oh, we here for a
• 1:23
  compliment where he's he. First of all, he thanked us for
• 1:25
  being kind. They have to wait because he was
• 1:27
  talking to somebody and we didn't interrupt.
• 1:29
  We waited like 5 minutes to talk to him and then we asked him.
• 1:33
  He said, oh, who are you thinking?
• 1:34
  I was some media person, you know, because it was a media
• 1:36
  event. And I went, oh, a podcaster.
• 1:38
  I can immediately see his face full.
• 1:41
  And he went, you want a selfie, didn't you?
• 1:43
  I was like, let's go, come on. I just threw my arms around him
• 1:45
  and he was, he went, oh, we're doing this, are we?
• 1:48
  And he threw his arms around me. So I had my I had my, you know,
• 1:53
  Ross. Hugh Davis is quite pertinent to
• 1:55
  the episode with the thing we're talking about today, isn't it?
• 1:58
  It's almost like we're professionals, Joe.
• 2:01
  Seamless. I've been out there for some
• 2:03
  time now. How you don't have your own
• 2:05
  podcast baffles me. I'm I'm far too lazy.
• 2:09
  I can't be dealing with all that what?
• 2:12
  Why do you think I have Rod do with my scheduling on the other
• 2:15
  one? It it, it was, it really gave.
• 2:20
  If anyone's listened to the first episode of Strictly Come
• 2:23
  Hams if you haven't, why not? It's only 2 1/2 hours.
• 2:28
  Only and. It's possibly out of season by
• 2:30
  the time you hear this, but other than that, we had a great
• 2:32
  time. But I I very much liked the
• 2:34
  dynamic of being around the the relatives that you've not met
• 2:37
  before for Christmas. You know, Rod's there, bustling
• 2:40
  around getting, you know, getting everything ready.
• 2:41
  Make sure we've got a drink and sat down.
• 2:43
  Joe, Joe's just in the corner asking.
• 2:45
  Well, obviously this new Doctor who on you like that, don't you?
• 2:50
  Yeah, like ridiculous comments. And then you and Toby Hale are
• 2:52
  being incredibly smart. Yeah.
• 2:55
  Too kind. We are here to talk about
• 2:59
  Damaged Goods by Rusty Davies. I think it's the very first
• 3:03
  thing he wrote for Doctor Who. Although correct me if I'm
• 3:05
  wrong, I think he is. No, I think you're right.
• 3:08
  Certainly like official and published.
• 3:11
  You know, and we'll get into whether it's all downhill from
• 3:16
  here or all uphill from here. But before we do talk about
• 3:20
  damaged goods and there's a lot to say, I would like to ask you
• 3:23
  a question about Doctor Who authors.
• 3:27
  I asked you in the first episode what your favorite Doctor Who
• 3:30
  book is, And because I've given you no prep time, I'm so sorry.
• 3:35
  What is your favorite Doctor Who author and why?
• 3:39
  Oh well unhelpfully given the last time I was on we talked
• 3:43
  about Father Time. I am going to say Lance Parkin.
• 3:46
  He wrote Father Time. He wrote a number of Doctor Who
• 3:50
  books between oh probably around the same time as this one.
• 3:53
  Damaged goods. So 1995 he was he was a very
• 3:56
  late member of the Virgin novels era but then really went on to
• 4:01
  to do a lot more in the BBC days I think wrote a new series
• 4:04
  adventure as well. But he no, I I I think he's a
• 4:07
  fantastic writer and Doctor Who writer as well.
• 4:10
  He covered a lot of this in the farther time episode.
• 4:13
  But he is able to write a version of Doctor Who that is,
• 4:17
  that is, that is that is true in the most fundamental forms to
• 4:23
  what Doctor Who should be and not necessarily even in terms
• 4:26
  of, you know, settings or characters or certainly plot
• 4:30
  structures, but understanding the essential elements of of
• 4:33
  that character and that world. But bringing in a lot of
• 4:40
  influences and a lot of ideas where you can take it that you
• 4:45
  wouldn't always see at the time. I think I read an interview with
• 4:47
  him somewhere. He said he's, you know,
• 4:49
  something we don't always consider when we're talking
• 4:50
  about these things now is that the authors had to get, had to
• 4:54
  pitch and get commissioned to write.
• 4:55
  Something that's probably their main concern is getting
• 4:57
  commissioned to write because a lot of them were quite young
• 4:58
  when they were doing all these things as well.
• 4:59
  So they really needed the money. And he said one of his ways of
• 5:03
  getting, of getting commissioned was to pitch exactly the
• 5:07
  opposite of what he thought anyone else was pitching at that
• 5:09
  time. So, you know, that could be as
• 5:12
  simple as something like saying, oh, I'll, you know, I'll do a
• 5:14
  Davison book. A time when no one wanted to
• 5:16
  write Davison in the In the Missing Adventures or saying,
• 5:20
  oh, I'll do a pure historical when no one was interested in
• 5:23
  writing pure historicals. Or it's pitching one where Jodie
• 5:28
  Foster hugs the 8th doctor and says I'll always love you dad,
• 5:32
  you know, it's that, it's that sort of thing.
• 5:34
  His books are are always very layered, you know, they're multi
• 5:38
  layered as again we discussed about the time.
• 5:40
  But true is other books as well, as always, so much more to
• 5:43
  discover, so much more to reward you in your your close reading.
• 5:46
  But also that brings stories that really fit within Doctor
• 5:50
  Who but are often not what you'd expect and in some ways feel
• 5:53
  like things Doctor Who should do.
• 5:55
  Like he is pushing it off into different into different
• 5:58
  directions and telling different types of stories.
• 6:02
  I'm sort of reminded of, I think it was Ursa K Le Guin, Left Hand
• 6:06
  of Darkness with diversity, all that lot, she said of science
• 6:09
  fiction in general. She said you can't write good
• 6:11
  science fiction if you've only ever read science fiction, he
• 6:14
  said. But also you can't write good
• 6:16
  science fiction if you've only ever read science fiction.
• 6:18
  And I think Lance Park is probably the Doctor Who author
• 6:20
  where that works the most in the sense of he really, really,
• 6:23
  really gets Doctor Who. But he's also read a lot of
• 6:26
  other stuff and he wants to bring some of that into Doctor
• 6:29
  Who to show what it can do as well.
• 6:31
  So I mean anything with his name on it is worth reading sung the
• 6:35
  praise of Father Time so many times I think The Eyeless is
• 6:37
  still available. The Eyeless is an incredible new
• 6:43
  series adventure. I want to cover that one day
• 6:45
  because it's almost dialogue free.
• 6:48
  Like it's almost, it's all descriptive and it's a lot of
• 6:51
  the Doctor on his own walking around this, this old ancient
• 6:55
  weapon from the time it really is.
• 6:59
  I mean, that's him saying I'm not going to do a fluffy pirate
• 7:02
  adventure like the Kitty Winks. I'm going to give them a bit of,
• 7:06
  you know, solid science fiction to read.
• 7:08
  Yeah, I think he did a whole blog in the run up to that as
• 7:12
  well, to sort of promote it. Yeah, it was really good, wasn't
• 7:15
  it? It was I I just learnt so much
• 7:17
  about storytelling in in just from this, just from this blog
• 7:22
  explaining how things work and why things don't, you know, the
• 7:24
  narrative W and all the rest of it.
• 7:26
  But one of the things he said with The Eyeless was again
• 7:29
  pitching exactly what people aren't was.
• 7:31
  There's that joke that every Doctor Who book from the
• 7:35
  naughties the blurb ends with, but they soon discover that not
• 7:39
  everything is exactly what it seems.
• 7:42
  So he said he wants to write a book in which the the plot, the
• 7:45
  threat and the mission was was stated right from the outset.
• 7:50
  Has been changed. But but that you can still tell
• 7:53
  a really good story like, you know, I think you call like the
• 7:55
  guns of Navarone approach. We've got to destroy those guns
• 7:58
  and the story is going to be about us trying to destroy those
• 8:00
  guns. As you say it it it really
• 8:04
  brings you a very different Doctor Who story.
• 8:07
  But yeah, look at where we started, Just War.
• 8:10
  That is an incredible debut novel, I think.
• 8:14
  Oh, I only read that. I read that in lockdown, having
• 8:17
  never managed to get around to it previously.
• 8:18
  Oh, it's it's astonishing. And I'm sure I didn't ask.
• 8:21
  I need to go back to it at some point, because that's another
• 8:24
  one of those books where you think there's something more
• 8:26
  going on in what's being described here, isn't there?
• 8:28
  And. Sequence where he has the Nazi
• 8:33
  to describe, but it just basically This is why I'm not
• 8:36
  the villain of pics and it's paragraphs and paragraphs.
• 8:39
  I don't think he really thought about this like he he he's not
• 8:43
  judging that character. No, no.
• 8:47
  Which is, which is fantastic. It's a because you know, the
• 8:52
  title just war is a joke, right? It's you know it all that it has
• 8:57
  a double meaning which is you know, obviously, you know if you
• 9:03
  were brought up in one of the allied power countries, you
• 9:07
  know, you are taught about the Second World War as being as
• 9:09
  being a just war which which of course it was you know to defeat
• 9:12
  Nazism and fascism in Europe. No, I'm not about to give you an
• 9:14
  alternative reading ministry on that one.
• 9:16
  Don't worry. It's not that sort of podcast
• 9:21
  but but the idea that also the other side thought they were
• 9:24
  fighting a just war that was what made that's what makes
• 9:27
  Nazism make Nazism terrifying was these people thought they
• 9:31
  were on the right side of history and in doing this that
• 9:34
  they were bringing about the future.
• 9:35
  Tomorrow belongs to me and all the rest of it.
• 9:37
  As well as also being a gag on the fact that you know
• 9:40
  ultimately is any war just and we're going to display that
• 9:43
  through the horrible things that are going to happen to people in
• 9:46
  in in the execution of a war across this novel.
• 9:49
  And I think just even that is sort of, you know, emblematic of
• 9:53
  how much there is going on in Lance Perkins writing.
• 9:56
  And what was after that dying days after which we talked a
• 9:58
  little bit about last time we did coal fusion.
• 10:03
  Yeah, of course. And then there's even like the
• 10:04
  lesson like, and I say Leicester as not, they're not not good.
• 10:09
  They're just considered less important than some of the
• 10:13
  others, like trading futures, which I think is a really great
• 10:16
  bond prestige. Oh, it's fantastic.
• 10:18
  It's. But with some like astonishing
• 10:21
  well building in it, like the detail in the well building.
• 10:24
  Yeah I think you can. It's a near future novel that
• 10:28
  that doesn't you know the old gag about Black Mirror What if
• 10:30
  iPads but too much you know it isn't that it's it's a
• 10:34
  believable certainly from the time these things will always
• 10:37
  date. You know it's a believable
• 10:41
  projection of the world 50 years head and you know but he also
• 10:47
  does that thing which he does in lots of the other books as well
• 10:49
  which is also gesturing to much bigger worlds that are having an
• 10:53
  effect on this but we're not seeing any part of.
• 10:55
  So, you know, he brings in some of the stuff about the time
• 10:58
  agents and Sabbath, who was the recurring baddie at the time.
• 11:03
  And also I also love, bless them, the I do love the 8th
• 11:09
  Doctor novels, but their lack of editorial alignment in their
• 11:13
  later years is means they are. It might be partly why they are
• 11:18
  so, so easy to appreciate individually now, because
• 11:21
  they're individually fantastic and very, very novels, but I
• 11:23
  think. They're as a range, as a range.
• 11:28
  Their reach at their reach exceeded their grasp.
• 11:31
  You know, the whole destruction of Gallifrey and the Time Lords
• 11:33
  and actually the whole Sabbath arc, which this is a trading
• 11:36
  futures, was a very small part of, is actually a fantastic
• 11:39
  idea. And it's one that I'm surprised
• 11:40
  that Russell T Davis never did when he blew up Gallifrey of
• 11:46
  funny comic fans listening basically doing Doctor Who's
• 11:48
  version of Batman Nightfall, which is what happens when
• 11:51
  Batman can no longer be Batman. You know what it Who?
• 11:54
  Who? Who else wants to be Batman?
• 11:56
  Or what does that mean? There is a version of that if
• 11:58
  when the Doctor can no longer be the Doctor, Who is the person
• 12:01
  who feels they have the capacity and the entitlement to step in
• 12:05
  and become become an even better Lord of Time, Defender of the
• 12:10
  cosmos and the universe. And what if that person's
• 12:12
  confidence level makes them a slightly blind Because Sabbat is
• 12:14
  a great character and that that idea is brilliant.
• 12:18
  It maybe doesn't quite come before.
• 12:21
  And it certainly was inconsistent from author to
• 12:24
  author as well. He was just the master in some
• 12:27
  of them by any other. Yeah, and in others like Camera
• 12:30
  Obscura, where it's just incredible.
• 12:31
  You know, yeah, it was. Hit, hit or miss this happen.
• 12:35
  Yeah, but the trading futures were but on a much smaller
• 12:38
  example of a lack of maybe editorial joined up is the fact
• 12:40
  that in trading futures, the one little, the one little ticket
• 12:45
  that Lance Parkin just lays down for the range to consider going
• 12:48
  on is that is that the TARDIS, since being regrown, is now much
• 12:51
  smaller. And so Fix walks to the very
• 12:54
  back of the TARDIS in its inside because there's something that's
• 12:57
  been troubling him and it's that on this wall at the very back
• 13:01
  there's a scratching and and he's and it's just an aside and
• 13:06
  he's like and then he and then he walks off and then no one
• 13:10
  else picked it up until three years later.
• 13:12
  That's why I. Went right I.
• 13:13
  Basically went right. Well, if no one else, no one
• 13:17
  else has explained that up to Earth.
• 13:19
  So I guess it's my job. It's canine.
• 13:21
  Answer was yeah, it was canine. Oh, it was so fun.
• 13:24
  He's like what on earth is that little metal dog doing it?
• 13:28
  I. I, I The line I remember from
• 13:31
  Training Futures is when Fitz gets mistaken for the Doctor and
• 13:35
  gets kidnapped by some aliens who think he's the Doctor.
• 13:37
  And so you have to play being the Doctor.
• 13:39
  And he and they they do. We have done a biological scan.
• 13:44
  He has he is the Doctor. He has only one heart.
• 13:46
  And Fitz goes, Oh no, the Doctor's got two.
• 13:48
  Oh, no. Hey, a minute.
• 13:48
  You're God. You keep your records up to
• 13:50
  date, don't you? The Doctor has.
• 13:52
  Lost one of his hearts like 2 books earlier.
• 13:54
  The biggest thing I took away from the Gallifrey Chronicles,
• 13:57
  or the most impressive thing, I do think it is a brilliant
• 14:00
  celebration of the 8th Doctor books as a whole, and he was
• 14:04
  definitely the right person to give it to.
• 14:06
  It's quite it's quite a light read as well.
• 14:08
  I was quite surprised, so I skipped through.
• 14:10
  It was that he brought in that carrot of Marnell who is a Time
• 14:15
  Lord but doesn't know he's a Time Lord to start off with.
• 14:18
  Then he finds out, and he's basically the audience.
• 14:20
  Then absolutely condemning the 8th Doctor for that entire run
• 14:26
  of books where he's amnesiac and he never went looking for the
• 14:29
  memories and he never, and then provided the most perfect answer
• 14:34
  as to why that never could happen.
• 14:36
  Yeah. Yeah, And so basically saying to
• 14:39
  all those fans, there you go, that's why we've had this run of
• 14:41
  books. That's why he could never have
• 14:43
  got this back, because we would have lost all those memories and
• 14:46
  Simon wouldn't have been anymore.
• 14:47
  It was so clever. Yeah.
• 14:49
  And you've touched on something that, you know, to put a bow on
• 14:51
  it. It there is, there is this great
• 14:54
  depth and pleatheredness for once, for a better word to his
• 14:58
  writing. So these books are just so deep
• 15:02
  and they, you know, they justify such such deep examination but
• 15:06
  but they're all really light reads.
• 15:07
  They're not. It's not Lawrence Miles who we
• 15:09
  also love, but it's not something that is you're aware
• 15:11
  of being complex as you read it. You absolutely skate over the
• 15:15
  top of them and go wow, that was that was great.
• 15:18
  And that's only when you go back and you think about it a bit
• 15:20
  more. You go, hang on a minute.
• 15:22
  Oh, hang on. Oh, hang on.
• 15:25
  Yeah. When I did Father's Time with
• 15:27
  you, yeah. And that entire region about the
• 15:29
  bloody darlings being in there that I hadn't read, and I've
• 15:31
  read that book about 10 times. I'll give you another one,
• 15:33
  Marnil in the Gallifrey Chronicles.
• 15:35
  Oh, sorry, Dad. How do you know that?
• 15:39
  Because there's a bit where in the 1970s, his son, his son came
• 15:42
  to visit him while he was on the run from the military.
• 15:45
  Oh you bastard, you can do this once an episode now.
• 15:51
  Have you got some some some reading of damaged goods that's
• 15:55
  going to blow my mind? Just like those 11,000 people
• 15:58
  that are taking cocaine. Winnie Tyler's Winnie Tyler's
• 16:01
  sister is called Jackie. No.
• 16:03
  You. Know what I like the I like the
• 16:07
  idea that all those Tylers are in some way related across all
• 16:10
  the series that he did. And all the cosmos.
• 16:13
  Sam Tyler from Life on Miles. He's in there as well.
• 16:15
  Absolutely. Well, OK, so we have covered
• 16:19
  Lance Parkin already in A Lot of Death in the previous episode,
• 16:21
  but excellent choice on to damaged goods.
• 16:35
  And I've got a question I want to ask you before we start
• 16:37
  talking about the book, because this book threw me into a bit of
• 16:42
  a quandary about with Doctor Who and where my line is with Doctor
• 16:48
  Who, What is OK for Doctor Who and what isn't OK And when does
• 16:53
  it suddenly start not feeling like Doctor Who anymore?
• 16:58
  And this definitely crosses that line for me because I think this
• 17:02
  book kind of excludes kids. And I don't think Doctor Who
• 17:05
  should really do that, you know? Otherwise, you're sort of asking
• 17:10
  it to die out a little bit if you're not invited in The Next
• 17:12
  Generation, but also as well, I don't think, certainly don't
• 17:16
  think this is a book that would be published now under Rusty
• 17:19
  Davis's, you know, in any way. And I think that the the content
• 17:26
  inside is fairly disgusting and miserable.
• 17:34
  And it it it's not a very nice book.
• 17:38
  This is it in a lot of ways. Not nice is the is the quote for
• 17:44
  the cover? I think.
• 17:46
  So I think the question you're getting at is.
• 17:48
  What's your line? What's my line on this?
• 17:51
  I really liked it, and probably for all the reasons that you
• 17:54
  just described as being as being the problems.
• 17:58
  I So, as you know as touched on that I earlier, I came to Doctor
• 18:03
  Who being the Giant, when there actually wasn't really much
• 18:06
  Doctor Who on telly, at least not any new Doctor Who.
• 18:07
  Still plenty of Doctor Who on TVI had UK gold.
• 18:09
  I was middle class. Come on.
• 18:11
  But there wasn't, you know, the TVM aside, and the curse of
• 18:14
  fatal death, you know, there wasn't anything new coming
• 18:17
  through. So, you know, I could watch
• 18:19
  those repeats. I could save up my pocket money
• 18:22
  and get the VHS or the DVD later on.
• 18:25
  But I if I wanted new Doctor Who, that was well, chiefly the
• 18:31
  books which would be the 8th Doctor adventures by that point.
• 18:35
  Because big Finnish audience were far too expensive for
• 18:37
  pocket money. They were like, you know, they
• 18:39
  were they were like birthdays in the grayest.
• 18:42
  You splashed out for them. And as we've mentioned, they had
• 18:47
  a very dynamic style if you, you know, month to month, some very
• 18:52
  different types of storytelling. So I think I've always, I've had
• 18:55
  it in my mind that Doctor Who spinoffs should be, and Doctor
• 18:59
  Who novels especially should really push the envelope, should
• 19:03
  take it in all the different directions.
• 19:05
  And I think that's because I associate them with Doctor Who
• 19:08
  when it's just being done for people who are really clinging
• 19:11
  on to Doctor Who, which, let's face it, if you're buying the
• 19:13
  novels every month in 1996, you probably were.
• 19:19
  And so. Let's call those those people
• 19:21
  Dylan Reece, shall we? Let's go with people.
• 19:24
  Dylan Reese he. Celebrates those people in a
• 19:26
  great way. Exactly.
• 19:28
  He, he, he, he is the king across the water of Doctor Who
• 19:33
  fans of the wilderness years. And so I think I sort of what I
• 19:39
  respect about it in that regard is you say it wasn't trying to
• 19:41
  bring in children the TV, it was the TV movies job to try and
• 19:46
  bring in children. If that was going to be done,
• 19:48
  it's not the new version, new adventures, not enough.
• 19:50
  I think they are talking to the people who watch Doctor Who at
• 19:53
  the latest in 1989 and then have continued to grow up with it
• 19:58
  since. So it's now writing to an
• 20:00
  audience primarily in their 20s, let's say.
• 20:02
  And I, I I I respect it for doing that.
• 20:06
  I respect it for taking it a different direction of saying
• 20:08
  like. Because to contrast it with a
• 20:10
  problem that I sometimes have with the Big Finish audios, and
• 20:13
  especially in their early years, although there really is a very
• 20:16
  good rightly held in high regard, there is a lot in the
• 20:19
  early Big Finish of, look, we know it isn't Doctor Who back on
• 20:23
  TV, but we sort of want it to be the closest thing there could be
• 20:27
  to Doctor Who coming back on TV. So what we're going to do is
• 20:30
  we're going to make everything about the production and the
• 20:33
  plotting and the sound effects as close to it being like Doctor
• 20:38
  Who on TV. We're still we've.
• 20:39
  Heard Fantasmagoria have you? We're still going to do it in
• 20:43
  four parts, even though that makes no sense.
• 20:46
  No, look at when, Excuse me, Look at when Lars Parkin came in
• 20:50
  and wrote Davros. He went, oh look, they're in a
• 20:52
  four part. I'm going to do a two-part and
• 20:54
  they're going to be 75 minutes long each.
• 20:57
  Exactly. You know 4 parters what your
• 20:59
  classic three act structure. So you've got, you've got set
• 21:03
  up, you've got plot, you've got resolution and padding where we.
• 21:09
  You've still got the third episode where everyone's running
• 21:11
  around doing nothing. Oh, but Doctor.
• 21:15
  Vanessa, have you betrayed me? No, of course she hasn't.
• 21:19
  That's the land of the dead for anyone who's wondering.
• 21:23
  But they do literally run around in a snowstorm for.
• 21:25
  But you know, like sorry we are tangent already.
• 21:28
  Yes, it's great. Big Finish then did start doing
• 21:32
  some experimental things, things like The Holy Terror by Rob
• 21:36
  Sheerman, Davril Spy, you know, And those are the ones that
• 21:39
  really stood out, where suddenly felt like we were sort of
• 21:42
  pushing the boundaries a bit. Yeah.
• 21:44
  And I you know I certainly don't mean to to to bat Matt Big
• 21:47
  Finish to write off the whole stuff.
• 21:48
  I you know I think that that that first fifty is is is really
• 21:51
  got quite a high hit rate but yeah you're right.
• 21:52
  There's a reason that we remember the Holy Terror.
• 21:55
  There's a reason that we remember Dave Ross or master.
• 21:58
  I know natural is your fear and sket so we're a little bit late
• 22:00
  but only just. But you know as you say there's
• 22:03
  also a lot of winter for the adept there's there's a lot of
• 22:09
  just doing Doctor Who. But to bring that back here,
• 22:12
  what I always liked about the novels more was their
• 22:16
  willingness to say perhaps because they're in a novel form.
• 22:19
  So there isn't really, there's not even the pretence of like,
• 22:21
  oh, you just can't see you just can't see it of being.
• 22:24
  Look let's push. Let's let's see what we can do.
• 22:27
  We've talked about Father Time last time a terrific example.
• 22:29
  Let's see what Doctor Who can be while still remaining Doctor
• 22:34
  Who. It's jazz Doctor Who.
• 22:35
  How far can you deviate from the from from the from the score,
• 22:40
  while still recognisably being Doctor Who in some?
• 22:44
  Damage goods. That's how you could go and know
• 22:47
  so far. Yeah, no, I I, I'm, I'm a big
• 22:54
  fan of it. I've got a question for you.
• 22:56
  If you you said if you've intimated, I think ever so
• 23:01
  gently, that you know, you're not the biggest fan of this
• 23:03
  book, at least as Doctor Who. Oh.
• 23:05
  No, you you completely misunderstand me.
• 23:08
  I love this book. I think this is an incredible
• 23:11
  book. I think.
• 23:13
  I think in terms of character, this is the best Doctor Who book
• 23:18
  I've ever read. It's raw and passionate and I
• 23:23
  felt every single place. I think his prose is
• 23:26
  exceptional. I think his dialogue is great.
• 23:29
  He explains everything as he's going along with nothing, No
• 23:32
  boxes left unticked by the end of the book.
• 23:35
  I think those people are so real it hurts.
• 23:40
  I think it's an amazing horror stroke, fantasy stroke soap
• 23:46
  book. I just don't think it's a great
• 23:49
  Doctor Who book because I think it does really terrible things
• 23:54
  to his character. I I know these books were wine,
• 23:56
  they were in the children's sections of the book shops and I
• 23:59
  do, yeah, they absolutely win Smiths and places like that.
• 24:03
  I found new adventures. So I know you know a 7 year old
• 24:07
  pick up a book where in the climax of the story the Doctor
• 24:11
  Smith's cocaine shoots a woman in the face and then forces her
• 24:15
  dead stone baby to basically rip her apart.
• 24:19
  And I kind of have a bit of an issue with that, but.
• 24:22
  I have almost exactly the same note on that moment.
• 24:25
  As as a as a book in his own right, I think it I think it
• 24:29
  might be the best thing, Rusty Davis written.
• 24:32
  I mean that's a strong, that's a strong statement.
• 24:34
  It is a as his. So the background him writing
• 24:38
  this book Frenna who's not aware is that he he'd got his he'd
• 24:43
  sort of got started got his you know knees under the table a bit
• 24:45
  shall we say as a as a television writer by this point
• 24:48
  he was not yet Russell television Davis.
• 24:51
  But I, you know, I think by this point obviously this was quite
• 24:53
  some time since since why don't you?
• 24:55
  And I think, I think I'm hoping getting my timelines right here
• 24:58
  he'd just finished the Grand. And so, oh, he's done.
• 25:01
  Why don't you at this point? Pardon.
• 25:03
  He's done. Why don't you at this point?
• 25:06
  Yes, so I think he's. Sneakily put in a reference
• 25:08
  about the theme shoot when he was in it, I think.
• 25:11
  Yeah, I think you're right. I think yeah.
• 25:12
  One of the characters watches Why don't you?
• 25:13
  Because it's set in 1987 but published in in 1996 and I think
• 25:18
  he'd just come off the ground. And I think the story is that he
• 25:22
  he had a few months sort of free in his calendar in his schedule
• 25:27
  and and accounts vary but basically been set up with was
• 25:32
  it Rebecca Levine at Virgin and said oh I'd love to write a
• 25:36
  Doctor Who book. I've got some time spare to
• 25:38
  focus on that so that'd be great.
• 25:40
  Then got commissioned to do some to do something else by Granada
• 25:44
  and found that he had to write this really quickly at a point
• 25:47
  where I he he would never say this, but I always wonder if
• 25:50
  he'd got that commissioned first.
• 25:51
  We wouldn't have got damaged goods both because he wouldn't
• 25:53
  have had the time. But I think it's the projects
• 25:55
  that he then went on to do in the late 90s that really
• 25:57
  established himself that led to queer folk happening.
• 26:00
  So you know we wouldn't have seen Russell T Davis in Doctor
• 26:03
  Who again, which we didn't until the 2005 series.
• 26:06
  But we might even this is like this, this like sneak through,
• 26:08
  because he also tells a fantastic story in the Imagine
• 26:11
  documentary, which was on recently, that when he started
• 26:14
  writing for television, the two programs he wanted to write for
• 26:17
  were Crossroads and Doctor Who, and they both got cancelled just
• 26:21
  before he could write for. Them.
• 26:23
  And weirdly enough, he somehow has managed to achieve both.
• 26:26
  It's it's you know, that's what you should do with power.
• 26:30
  But just like those metal fingers, you know, seeping into
• 26:33
  people's brains as they sniff the cocaine containing the N 40,
• 26:37
  they're doing this quite a lot, you know, You can see the
• 26:41
  influence of William. What's to come in this, the rap
• 26:46
  wisdom from the Second Coming going into the meal.
• 26:50
  Certainly queer as folk with Chris Quedge getting a blowy
• 26:53
  down a back alley from David Daniels.
• 26:55
  Like there a lot. A lot of the stuff he's going to
• 26:57
  focus on. You can see it's it's sort of
• 27:00
  Inception here. Yeah.
• 27:02
  And I think it's, you know, it's it's really hard not to not to
• 27:06
  almost play that game when you're reading Damaged Goods,
• 27:09
  Right. And I've got, oh, there's that
• 27:09
  bit. There's that bit.
• 27:10
  I mean, and I've done it. I've got the, you know, I've got
• 27:12
  the list here. You know, there's the whole
• 27:14
  thing about the end forms, thoughts about the war, which in
• 27:16
  this case is, you know, the ancient time war against the
• 27:19
  vampires. But you know well.
• 27:21
  We're on that later. But that, you know, that does
• 27:24
  kind of anticipate the last Great Time War and the way he
• 27:28
  writes about that then. And you know, there's also
• 27:32
  things like the terrifying monster in the cupboard from
• 27:37
  Fear Her. There's, you know, there's some
• 27:40
  of the names, yeah, he's a he's a writer who he uses his name.
• 27:42
  So that's not specifically, but you know, we have a family of
• 27:44
  tylers. There's also a a d'souza in
• 27:46
  them. There's a law firm called
• 27:47
  Bannerman and Crewe. I believe the Christmas special
• 27:51
  we just watched had a baby being delivered at Christmas.
• 27:54
  Exactly. Exactly has the almost exactly
• 27:57
  the same opening scene of a child being handed over in the
• 28:00
  snow which I think there's an interview with him where he
• 28:03
  talked about that this was our post RTD one and saying he he.
• 28:08
  What a great idea or so. What a great, and sure enough he
• 28:12
  has, but you know, but there's even stuff like there are some
• 28:16
  monsters that turn up at one point who are basically the top
• 28:18
  Clefane. And you know, I said this on
• 28:22
  strictly Club Hamster. I'll say it again here,
• 28:25
  middle-aged women in a Mecca is a surprising reoccurring theme
• 28:29
  in the work of Russell T Davis. Because it happens here, it
• 28:33
  happens in dark season, and it happens again in the next
• 28:35
  Doctor. Do you know when you said that?
• 28:37
  And I hadn't finished the book yet and I kept thinking, who's
• 28:40
  it going to be? And then of course, the second I
• 28:42
  started reading about Evie Jericho, I was like, of course.
• 28:46
  Sorry, I. Mean.
• 28:47
  I mean, we need to talk about it later, because the most
• 28:50
  terrifying character I've ever written a book.
• 28:54
  I'm I'm but you know so there is all of that element.
• 28:57
  But then I suppose you know to be to give a good analysis we
• 29:01
  should go one step further and say you know what why do those
• 29:03
  ideas reoccur? You know why is he returning to
• 29:07
  some of these same ideas in different in his different works
• 29:10
  what is it he sees? Sometimes it might just be a
• 29:12
  good image, but I think there's often a lot more to it there.
• 29:16
  You know, to to take that example of of of middle-aged
• 29:21
  women in Mecca suits, you know, it's because it's because there
• 29:24
  is a lot in his writing and this is, this is not capital letters
• 29:28
  an original insight. There is a lot in his writing
• 29:32
  about gender obviously and and women and men's relationships to
• 29:36
  each other and themselves and particularly, you know
• 29:40
  patriarchal attitudes towards women and women operating within
• 29:42
  a patriarchy. It is a very, you know, visible
• 29:46
  idea of what if you could give the what if you could give the
• 29:52
  maligned person power? What if you could take revenge?
• 29:57
  You know, revenge is an idea that reoccurs throughout his
• 29:59
  work and as often. Sometimes he's portrayed as
• 30:02
  being sympathetic, something grid, sometimes it isn't, but
• 30:05
  but also a very dark thing at all times.
• 30:09
  And as stupid as it sounds, when you know you're talking about a
• 30:12
  big cyber man walking across, walking across Victoria and
• 30:16
  London, he directly ties that section.
• 30:18
  That's. This done for Doctor Who, you
• 30:20
  know. Yeah, exactly.
• 30:22
  But even in that, even in that story he directly ties that to
• 30:26
  to sexual violence, you know, the the woman who is there is
• 30:29
  has been a victim of of of abuse, you know.
• 30:33
  The things that men do, isn't that what they say?
• 30:35
  Exactly, you know, exactly, he says.
• 30:37
  You know, and it's not that. Idea of it's a lot more explicit
• 30:40
  in this. Book.
• 30:42
  It's It's a lot, A lot more. A lot more.
• 30:46
  No, You know, no stone is left unturned and what's underneath
• 30:50
  is ugly. Yeah, but there's also, but
• 30:53
  there's also that idea of, I think he's wanting to, wanting
• 30:56
  to highlight the violence that exists in the world.
• 31:00
  Yeah. Because because he's saying this
• 31:02
  is the you know this is someone who has been.
• 31:05
  I think Mrs. Jericho is a more complex character possibly miss
• 31:09
  asking certainly in terms of how we're meant to feel towards her.
• 31:12
  But you know of saying this is this is an inversion of the
• 31:16
  abuse of physical strength that already exists.
• 31:18
  You know what? You know what if the what if the
• 31:22
  victim so filled with anger and rage could unleash that upon her
• 31:27
  abusers. So I think you know there is.
• 31:28
  He is a deeply satirical writer in all his forms, and it is
• 31:31
  interesting that middle-aged women in robot suits being a
• 31:35
  reoccurring theme is actually. I don't think something funny.
• 31:39
  You've got Jacqueline Pierce popping up out of the ground in
• 31:42
  dark season. Dark season as well, yeah, yeah.
• 31:45
  But I think he does have a recurring theme of showing the
• 31:50
  true, like, inner strength of women.
• 31:52
  And he does it a lot of Doctor Who.
• 31:54
  And he does it here several times in this book because
• 31:58
  there's that wonderful bit at the end where Willie Tyler, who
• 32:01
  is just about giving up and effectively dead in Evie
• 32:06
  Jericho's clutches. And then Bev Tyler is friend,
• 32:10
  and that's her daughter. And she literally tears herself
• 32:14
  free to protect her daughter. And then at the end of the book,
• 32:18
  where the doctor is talking about Eva Jericho, he calls a
• 32:21
  remarkable woman and says how strong she must have been for
• 32:25
  the process that she was going for inside of her.
• 32:28
  So. And, you know, he does that a
• 32:29
  lot as well. Jackie Tyler, a lot of the
• 32:32
  mothers get incredibly strong movers of sort of being
• 32:35
  protected from their daughters as well.
• 32:38
  Yeah, there's there's a lot of what's to come here.
• 32:43
  Yeah, absolutely. And and I completely agree with
• 32:45
  you on all those points. I think there, you know there
• 32:49
  are there are a lot of female characters in this book as well,
• 32:53
  which is worth remarking upon because really wasn't the case
• 32:57
  in classic Doctor Who and not always the case of a lot of new
• 32:59
  adventures. I don't think in the new
• 33:01
  adventures at all, if I'm honest.
• 33:02
  No, no. I think you had Bernice there
• 33:05
  and she was your strong female character and she was often
• 33:08
  surrounded by a lot of likes. Yeah.
• 33:10
  Whereas here and and again we we take it for granted now but a
• 33:15
  lot of a lot of very strong female characters in a
• 33:19
  explicitly domestic setting and so this is the setting for the
• 33:23
  book is the quadrant which is a block of council facts in an an
• 33:28
  unnamed city somewhere in England.
• 33:31
  It's. Basically the power state, but
• 33:34
  sort of covered in shit. Yeah, if the if the power.
• 33:38
  If the powerless state was a much less nice place to spend
• 33:40
  the time, that would be the quadrant.
• 33:42
  Because effectively you've got. I mean, you've got a fellow
• 33:45
  there that's pimping out girls, you've got the Kappa there who's
• 33:48
  doing these cocaine deals. Like sort of every festering,
• 33:51
  miserable part of humanity exists within the quadrant.
• 33:55
  And and and a lot of a lot of unhappy people trying to lead
• 33:58
  their lives around it. But that's something that, but
• 34:03
  that domestic setting of Doctor Who, we now think of it as as
• 34:07
  being a part of Doctor Who. You know, we've already been
• 34:10
  back there with with RTD too. It was a part of Stephen
• 34:14
  Moffitt's and Chris Chibnall's Heurist to varying extent.
• 34:17
  But that was really something that only came in in with
• 34:21
  Russell T Davis the first time in 2005.
• 34:23
  Here in 1996. It's still a very alien
• 34:27
  environment. And actually one of the central
• 34:29
  sort of central premise of this is that he has put the Doctor
• 34:36
  and his two companions from the future into a truly alien
• 34:39
  environment. And that's just a council
• 34:40
  estate, because that was somewhere that we didn't really
• 34:43
  see them up today. You know, what have you got in
• 34:45
  the classic series? You've got survival.
• 34:47
  Yeah, that's about it. It was all sort of country homes
• 34:52
  before that and things that, you know, we were hobnobbing it with
• 34:55
  upper classes rather than, yeah, I.
• 34:59
  Mean. Yeah.
• 35:00
  I mean, what else? There, there's the briefest
• 35:01
  glimpse of it. And Susan going to a going to a
• 35:03
  London secondary school in the very first episode, the 1st and
• 35:07
  the. Last.
• 35:08
  Yeah, yeah. And but yet between that, for
• 35:11
  all that we spend time on present day Earth, we don't
• 35:14
  really ever very often see something that feels domestic in
• 35:20
  the present day at all. You know, even sort of like
• 35:22
  attack of the Cybermen where you land in mid 1980s London.
• 35:25
  But you're dealing with, you know, bank robbers and alien
• 35:30
  policemen, You're not actually spending any time in the 1980s.
• 35:34
  And he makes this, you know, he makes these ideas quite, he
• 35:38
  makes the idea quite explicit and in fact even the idea of the
• 35:40
  quadrant. So it's so named the quadrant
• 35:42
  because the blocks of flats are shaped like a square around a
• 35:45
  central courtyard. I lived in a book of facts face
• 35:49
  similar to that when I first moved to London, by the way.
• 35:51
  So it gave me flashbacks, but it was nicer by then.
• 35:53
  It was all right. Property prices had gone up, but
• 35:56
  the idea being that it is somewhere that doesn't have a
• 35:58
  centre. And you know, he makes a point
• 36:00
  that that's how the Doctor operates.
• 36:01
  He infiltrates the centre of power worked out from there.
• 36:04
  There's a whole sequence there, isn't there?
• 36:06
  Where he talks about that, where he goes, I don't understand
• 36:09
  these people. And he effectively sends Chris
• 36:11
  out, who is like who can play nice and can invade his way,
• 36:16
  charm his way into people's houses and and sort of unearth
• 36:20
  their secrets. Yeah, he's he's a bit impotent,
• 36:22
  isn't he? Right up to the climax of the
• 36:24
  book, I'd say. Yeah, he he does.
• 36:27
  This is not a situation that he knows how to operate with him.
• 36:31
  He thinks he does and yet he feels, and it is interesting
• 36:36
  that, you know, Ross and Chris are the companions for this who
• 36:38
  are not from this era either. You know, they're from sort of
• 36:42
  30th century and so they are all kind of a bit out of out of
• 36:49
  their normal context and area of understanding, although I think
• 36:52
  they do. And sometimes that's a bit of a
• 36:53
  gag, like there's a there's a brilliant bit where the Doctor
• 36:56
  describes something as wicked. I could have sworn people said
• 37:01
  that in 1987. All right, Grandad.
• 37:08
  But then, you know, there's also those things like there's a bit
• 37:11
  where it Ros can't work out why Winnie has injection marks under
• 37:15
  her arms and she thinks that's maybe got something to do with
• 37:21
  what's going on here. And obviously the Doctor can't
• 37:23
  really explain to her why why that's there.
• 37:26
  And you know, I do like, I do like his his use of her origins
• 37:31
  in the future there to sort of treat the recent past like it's
• 37:34
  the distant past. You know details of of modern
• 37:37
  life are as obscure to her as those of like the 10th century
• 37:40
  would be to us And you know it doesn't it.
• 37:43
  But it isn't one of those sort of sort of annoying gag ones
• 37:47
  where someone's going around saying what are the Pet Shop
• 37:49
  Boys. It's more that you know Ros is
• 37:52
  able to deal better with the universe universalities.
• 37:54
  You know those those motivators that have persisted.
• 37:57
  So she. She does, she does get the idea
• 38:00
  of familial love quite well, which runs that, you know, it's
• 38:03
  a very strong theme through all this to one form or another is
• 38:05
  love of family and one's children.
• 38:09
  And and even though he then sort of brings A twist into that.
• 38:14
  So she understands that. But she also thinks that a
• 38:16
  mother would sacrifice one of her children to save the others
• 38:20
  because she thinks, well, that's what you do.
• 38:22
  That's, you know, because it's also, you know, she's an
• 38:23
  aristocrat from the feudal society, albeit one that makes
• 38:27
  claims towards, I don't know, utilitarianism.
• 38:30
  And I, I feel like that idea of companions being from ending up
• 38:35
  in different times, from where they're from, it doesn't play as
• 38:39
  big a part in Doctor Who as it often should do, I think.
• 38:42
  You know, companions tend to be, whether they're from the present
• 38:45
  day or the past or the future, they tend to be audience
• 38:47
  surrogates. And so they interact with
• 38:49
  everything as audiences would. You go, you go into the future
• 38:51
  and they're all like, wow. And you go into the past.
• 38:54
  And they're like, I'd read about this in a history book.
• 38:56
  I think that's always, doesn't it?
• 38:57
  He always looks at a scene from that carrot's point of view.
• 39:03
  It's not really omnipresent. He's all, yeah.
• 39:06
  So when when it's Jeff Ross and Quinn, I like both of them, I
• 39:10
  like both the characters, and I do think they're really well
• 39:14
  written in this book. They don't do enough in this
• 39:18
  book. And the the guest characters are
• 39:20
  so vivid. I feel as if it's not a great
• 39:24
  showing for them for that reason, that I was just so
• 39:27
  desperate to get back to read about Winnie and Eva and those
• 39:32
  characters, Bev and they were sort of, they were sort of
• 39:35
  ducking in and out. Chris is not really doing much
• 39:38
  in the middle. Ros isn't really doing much.
• 39:40
  At the end, Chris just comes in with the cocaine.
• 39:42
  That's his one bit in sort of the climax of the book.
• 39:45
  So I think again, as a Doctor Who story with the Doctor and
• 39:49
  his companions there to save the debt, they're not really doing
• 39:52
  much as as these sort of dramas unfold around them.
• 39:59
  Yeah. And I suppose there is.
• 40:01
  I I mean that. This would not be the first or
• 40:04
  last time this happened in Doctor Who novels of the
• 40:07
  wilderness years. That you know that the Doctor
• 40:10
  companions ended up being sidelined a bit doesn't
• 40:12
  necessarily mean it's OK. I do think here there's a some
• 40:15
  of that is deliberate of that idea of the Doctor just not
• 40:18
  being able to get get into things.
• 40:19
  Everything is too spaced out. Everything that's happening is
• 40:22
  too disparate. So much of the story, like the
• 40:24
  whole Mrs. Jericho storyline, stays very distant for quite a
• 40:27
  long time. And we're we, as we as the
• 40:29
  readers, don't really understand how any of it connects.
• 40:32
  And so there is a degree to which the story is the story of
• 40:36
  the doctor trying to knit everything together to
• 40:39
  understand how does all of where is the centre in this, in this
• 40:42
  place that has no centre, where does it connect?
• 40:45
  Remember that line in I can't remember which TV story it is
• 40:48
  because even I can't play this many games at once.
• 40:50
  Like he has a moment like that in this where it's like I just
• 40:53
  cannot put this together. Yeah, and it and it gets that
• 40:56
  idea of if you put him into a truly alien domestic setting,
• 41:01
  domestic being alien to him, he doesn't get it because it
• 41:04
  doesn't follow the rules that he's used to follow him.
• 41:08
  Yeah, which I loved was when he went round to Mrs. Hern's house
• 41:11
  and she started like for the first time in years, she finds
• 41:15
  herself flirting with a man. I was like, I want to see
• 41:18
  Sylvester McCoy playing those scenes, but I bet he can be
• 41:20
  charming as hell. Oh yeah, there's there is.
• 41:27
  Yeah. No, it's fantastic.
• 41:29
  I I really enjoy that. I think that's very clever.
• 41:31
  So I think to get your point about them not having much to do
• 41:33
  with it, I think that is at least semi deliberate within the
• 41:37
  story and what the story the story that's trying to be told.
• 41:41
  But I but equally you know at what point does that just not
• 41:47
  become entertaining to read. At least as Doctor Deuser, I see
• 41:50
  where you're coming from. But, and in the same breath, I'm
• 41:53
  sort of going to keep coming back to this is this doctor or
• 41:56
  not? Like he's a doctor.
• 41:58
  He's got doctor or other colour, but he's a doctor or not For me,
• 42:01
  because this is a very clinical relationship between the three
• 42:05
  of them. There's not an enormous amount
• 42:07
  of warfare. He sort of sends them out as
• 42:10
  employees rather than friends on sort of missions and at the end
• 42:15
  they sort of go, Ros goes, I can't.
• 42:18
  What's the actual line? Ross sort of turns around and
• 42:21
  goes, well, you know, we saved the day second.
• 42:29
  Oh, she goes, the world's been saved, but it doesn't feel like
• 42:32
  it. What a mess.
• 42:34
  And that's the effect that they've had.
• 42:35
  All those people have died, the conscious destroyed, you know,
• 42:39
  devastation everywhere. And the Doctor goes, welcome on
• 42:42
  let's get off to the M4 now We've got a jolly adventure in
• 42:46
  the future. I mean, if this was anyone else,
• 42:49
  but like coppers from the future, I think they probably
• 42:52
  look around like Tegan and go, yeah, I don't want any artists
• 42:56
  anymore. Yeah, I think it's interesting
• 42:59
  isn't it? Because you mentioned you
• 43:02
  mentioned Benny earlier and the 7th Doctor does does undergo
• 43:07
  quite a journey into terms of his character across the new
• 43:10
  adventures. You know, starts off with Ace in
• 43:13
  the mould of of the TV series where there was all, you know,
• 43:16
  obviously there was already some movement towards making him more
• 43:18
  alien, more I was going to say Machiavellian, but that's such a
• 43:23
  such a cliche term. But that idea of him, him
• 43:26
  playing chess on the cosmic chess board and all the rest of
• 43:29
  it, but then having that human connection in Ace.
• 43:32
  Then you know when Ace departs, he starts to move ever further
• 43:35
  away and you always have Benny there as the sort of choric role
• 43:39
  of going, yeah, but come on and being the human side of it, you
• 43:41
  know, that was the dynamic there.
• 43:42
  That's one of the reasons Benny was.
• 43:44
  Anchored, didn't she? Yeah, and they they became a
• 43:46
  really good double act. She was the human and he was the
• 43:48
  alien and that allowed him to be more alien and it gave so much
• 43:51
  space for for Benny to flourish. Now by this point Benny has left
• 43:57
  and now it is the 7th Doctor and Chris and Ros.
• 44:00
  So there is he's left being quite alien and the human
• 44:04
  element is shared between you know the the hard bitten copper
• 44:07
  in Ros and the sort of for once for a better word puppy dog.
• 44:12
  Puppy dog. Naive Chris.
• 44:14
  But they're two people said they are.
• 44:16
  They are you know they're cops from the future.
• 44:18
  They are much more willing than any of his other character
• 44:21
  companions were to to operate in that way.
• 44:24
  As you know, I'm the Doctor Who's going out.
• 44:26
  This is the version of the Doctor Who goes out to keep an
• 44:28
  eye on the universe, to look after things.
• 44:30
  When people talk about the new adventure Doctor, I think this
• 44:33
  is the sort of one sort of book they're talking about.
• 44:36
  He's very deliberate in what he does.
• 44:38
  He he likes to understand things to, you know, walk across time
• 44:44
  and to see the connections and all the rest of it.
• 44:46
  And he does, you know, at points treat his companions like
• 44:48
  employees, like this is a mission.
• 44:50
  He's setting out to see the spit where the quote, the Doctor
• 44:53
  shoved the phone into Rodney's hand, muttering.
• 44:54
  I'm not saving the world over the phone.
• 44:56
  Monica, have you got a car? It's that something?
• 44:59
  And there's one bit where the scene just ended and he went,
• 45:02
  Chris, get me some cocaine and I'm like, how is this Doctor
• 45:06
  Hope? I mean, people's mileage varies
• 45:11
  enormously when it comes to the new adventures.
• 45:13
  Doctor, I think 7th Doctor. I think as time has gone on,
• 45:18
  I've come to like him a lot more.
• 45:21
  I I think as a version of the Doctor.
• 45:23
  That's not how I'm saying I always want to see the Doctor,
• 45:25
  but I like that we have that version of him the the very
• 45:29
  alien, the very looking above it.
• 45:33
  Or Grandmaster, deliberate version of the Doctor.
• 45:36
  Trouble with that mouldy is I think if you are a writer that
• 45:41
  can contain that, it can be really effective.
• 45:46
  But you've got a lot of first type writers in there that just
• 45:49
  go wild with it and take it to complete extremes where it just
• 45:53
  seems utterly unlike the Doctor in any way.
• 45:58
  Yeah, we've got you've got Blood Heat, for example, where he
• 46:01
  condemns an entire universe to death at the end.
• 46:04
  And you think, what what What on earth did Jon Hurt do that was
• 46:07
  so bad that they stopped talking about him?
• 46:10
  But we're still happy to remember the 7th Doctrine or
• 46:13
  their flashbacks. I would probably put what he
• 46:15
  does at the end of this book in the same bracket as well,
• 46:19
  because I know, I know, he's got to save as many people as
• 46:22
  possible, and I know it's an extreme situation, but it's
• 46:26
  ghastly. Yeah, I mean he, I think you.
• 46:34
  The question I was going to ask you earlier on is outside of
• 46:38
  Doctor Who, are you a horror fan?
• 46:41
  I used to be I I like watching a lot of horror and I like
• 46:46
  watching horror films. I've seen far too many bloody
• 46:49
  movies where, you know, found footage movies walking around
• 46:51
  the same asylums done on the cheap.
• 46:54
  And I used to read a lot of sort of my obvious horror writers
• 46:57
  like James, However, Stephen King, people like that.
• 47:01
  So I do. I do like horrors and I like the
• 47:03
  horror. Horrific aspects of this book.
• 47:05
  What interested me with my reaction to the horror is I
• 47:09
  really like Rags and I think Rags is a really great Doctor
• 47:14
  Who horror. And I think it's because Rags is
• 47:16
  very fantastic. And I think what the difference
• 47:21
  between that and this is, is it's so real.
• 47:24
  The characters are so vivid in Rags they were.
• 47:28
  I didn't really get who any of those people were, That band
• 47:31
  going about the place, Joe Brown puking up maggots all It was
• 47:34
  just mad. But in this I recognise these
• 47:37
  people. I was brought up by a woman very
• 47:40
  like Winnie Tyler. I I'm and so the the horrific
• 47:44
  aspects happening to people that I can envisage really disturb
• 47:50
  me. Whilst I found it compulsive, it
• 47:54
  was there was like I was having my own battle happening with
• 47:59
  him, like the Kappa with the N 4, you know?
• 48:02
  Well, yeah. The reason I ask that is because
• 48:05
  so you mentioned Rags by Mick Lewis earlier this year, didn't
• 48:09
  recently previously mentioned and I was and I was on his
• 48:12
  podcast and we talked about Mick Lewis's 22 past Doctor adventure
• 48:17
  books, Combat Rock and Rags, which have a reputation for
• 48:21
  being very violent and very extreme.
• 48:23
  And as part of that, we spoke to Mick, we interviewed him and he
• 48:28
  said that he didn't write those books as sci-fi novels, that I
• 48:31
  can't, you know, I can't write sci-fi in my head just doesn't
• 48:33
  work in that way. What I write is horror.
• 48:35
  And so those two books are horror 2 horror novels, as you
• 48:38
  say. And I think this book is to a
• 48:42
  very large extent a horror novel.
• 48:44
  Certainly sci-fi horror. I think James Herbert, in terms
• 48:46
  of, you know, being fantastic and putting it into domestic, I
• 48:49
  think that's, you know, that's a really good reference.
• 48:51
  There's also things like I guess Hellraiser, you know similar
• 48:54
  thing similar you know era to to when this is setting.
• 48:59
  I think you also get very strong elements in there of Stephen
• 49:04
  King and Russell T Davis has said in a number of places, not
• 49:07
  least his Instagram, what a big fan he is of of Stephen King.
• 49:11
  And I think there is a lot of King in here.
• 49:14
  And I think Stephen King is so successful as a horror author
• 49:16
  that people also forget what a very good horror author he is.
• 49:20
  You know, that idea of the intrusion of, you know, the
• 49:22
  monstrous, the supernatural and the and the horrific into the
• 49:26
  mundane is a very Stephen King idea.
• 49:29
  The idea is, you know. Sitting on the loo and Tooting
• 49:31
  back, you mean? Or a or.
• 49:33
  Or a clown luring a small child into a storm drain.
• 49:36
  Yes, I cannot watch that. The new one.
• 49:39
  I was where I went. But the old oh, Jesus Christ.
• 49:43
  But you know he he, he, he does that same thing that King does
• 49:46
  of you know, that that perversion of I guess what we
• 49:50
  call recognisable reality by the profane and the malign King
• 49:55
  would Stephen King would call that the Eve would evil.
• 49:57
  I think he's very he's very happy or comfortable with with
• 50:00
  suggesting that evil exists as a force.
• 50:04
  Russell T Davis I think is is maybe a bit different to that
• 50:06
  because he's he is, he is an atheistic writer.
• 50:09
  He's an atheist. And I think that comes through
• 50:11
  in his worldview a lot and a lot of the writing he does and how
• 50:13
  he portrays things. You know, there's that line from
• 50:16
  the end of the episode of Cucumber where Lance is killed
• 50:22
  and the studies direction at the end is is and in the end there
• 50:29
  is love and then there is nothing and that is you know
• 50:32
  that's Russell T Davis in a in a nutshell, right?
• 50:35
  That's he does he thinks this world is all we have.
• 50:38
  That doesn't mean that there isn't much and that happens
• 50:42
  within it. In some ways, maybe that
• 50:43
  heightens the sense of horror that we have this one life and
• 50:46
  this is what people do with it being horrible, But that love is
• 50:49
  a very powerful countervailing force in in that as well.
• 50:53
  Interestingly though, when Eva Jericho was murdering everybody
• 50:58
  at the end or saving their souls, so she thought she was,
• 51:01
  he kept using the word heaven, didn't he?
• 51:03
  She was. She was ascending them to heaven
• 51:06
  I think. I think.
• 51:09
  As I say, I think, I think he is very, I think he is a very
• 51:11
  critical of religion. You know in that moment the idea
• 51:14
  that she believes she is saviour.
• 51:16
  I was like, no, you are. It is evident here you are just
• 51:18
  killing people that that actually you.
• 51:23
  You know you can get high on your own product.
• 51:25
  To use a drugs reference that would probably work here of
• 51:30
  religion runs the risk of giving people a literally
• 51:37
  transcendental view of purpose that's you know removes them
• 51:41
  from what is going on here. And yet, because this is sci-fi
• 51:43
  horror, that thing of bringing the fantastical and the malign
• 51:47
  into the mundane means that actually you have recognisable
• 51:51
  characters, very well drawn characters with very relatable
• 51:54
  motivations and relationships, who suddenly are connected quite
• 51:58
  literally to the fantastic and the transcendence.
• 52:01
  It isn't God, but it is something that is, that is
• 52:04
  beyond our comprehension. And that's actually going back
• 52:06
  to, you know, ideas that would recur throughout Russell T
• 52:09
  Davis. I back in the days of like, you
• 52:12
  know, the latter days of RTD one I didn't.
• 52:15
  I remember saying to someone, I don't think you can write
• 52:17
  horror. And I was very rock because what
• 52:20
  I was thinking of was the Steven Moffat style horror of stuff
• 52:22
  that will scare kids. And that's not to malign that.
• 52:25
  You know, Steve Moffat has a brilliant eye for a scary image
• 52:27
  or a scary concept. But Rosa T Davis is a horror
• 52:31
  writer on on a very, I think a very deep level.
• 52:34
  You know, there is a that he writes about.
• 52:38
  It's about truly horrific things that happen to ordinary people,
• 52:41
  existential threats and that can be a Time Lord weapon from the
• 52:45
  distant path or that can be the a pandemic.
• 52:48
  You know, it's a sin. Is is there's a certain degree.
• 52:51
  I I would argue you could, you could maybe do an interesting
• 52:53
  reading of that as as a Horror Story of, you know, just what
• 52:55
  happens to these wonderful people.
• 52:57
  How? How he anchors Eva Jericho's
• 53:01
  character in that need to be a mother.
• 53:05
  It's such a recognisable thing. I mean, I'm a bloke reading this
• 53:08
  book. I can't imagine how a woman
• 53:10
  would respond to this. Like Russell Davis is a writer
• 53:14
  of people more than anything else.
• 53:16
  Science fiction, horror, whatever.
• 53:18
  He's a writer of people and I think it's the psychological
• 53:21
  horror in this that really impressed me and really scared
• 53:25
  me and really made this. Not the Doctor Who I recognise.
• 53:30
  Yeah, I think you're right. That's what's tariff.
• 53:32
  That is part of the the terrorists that because those
• 53:34
  people are recognisable, you know to go back to that point of
• 53:37
  you. You give someone who wants
• 53:40
  revenge immense power. Think what they can do with it.
• 53:43
  You know what What are we able to justify to ourselves in in
• 53:46
  what we do? But.
• 53:48
  But those things are terrifying because you say we recognize
• 53:50
  those things. I think when Eva Jericho is is
• 53:54
  murdering people on mass there are the the thought processes
• 53:58
  are maybe relatable to the wrong word, but but you could
• 54:02
  definitely empathize with it. You understand how someone ends
• 54:06
  up thinking how someone can carry a lifetime of festering
• 54:09
  resentment inside themselves that have have all these issues
• 54:12
  within themselves that are unresolved and that so clearly
• 54:15
  do harm to themselves and others and yet they just can't let go.
• 54:20
  I think, I think that's why in the sort of Towards the End, the
• 54:25
  Last book, I think the best chapter in this entire book is
• 54:29
  Chapter 9, which tells the story of the Jericho throughout her
• 54:33
  life leading up to the murder of her husband and tells the story
• 54:37
  of Winnie Tyler, why she gave away the baby, what she was
• 54:41
  going to use the money for and leading up to what looks like is
• 54:44
  going to be her suicide. And the whole chapter is just
• 54:47
  the two of them, and it's utterly compelling to rigged
• 54:51
  beautifully. Utterly.
• 54:53
  It's utterly compelling. I mean in many ways, you know,
• 54:56
  while I think our our mileage may vary in terms of whether we
• 54:59
  think this works as Doctor Who, I will say that I think it feels
• 55:04
  this book of all of Russell T Davis's Doctor Who reads more
• 55:09
  like it was written by the Russell T Davis who has written
• 55:12
  everything except Doctor Who. You know this.
• 55:15
  This feels like it comes from the writer of Dark Season, of
• 55:19
  the second coming of It's a sin. Because there's there's like
• 55:24
  there's an anger and a rawness to it, isn't it that he, he
• 55:27
  can't put in his TV? Doctor.
• 55:29
  Occasion, but sort of gentler for the kids.
• 55:34
  Yeah, I think anger is right. He is angry in all of those
• 55:37
  things that, you know, that's, and he can be joyful and what
• 55:42
  have you. But he's also got a real life of
• 55:43
  cruelty as well, people's capacity for cruelty towards one
• 55:47
  another. When and as well in the climax,
• 55:50
  the key kind of acts of it, when the end form emerges, when the
• 55:53
  cocaine's activates it, he starts picking off the
• 55:57
  characters that we've been close to in like quick succession over
• 56:00
  about two pages. And I was going with every
• 56:03
  single one. I was like, no, I know these
• 56:05
  people, I like these people. I want these people to have a
• 56:07
  good life And they were just dead, dead, dead, dead.
• 56:11
  Yeah, quote across the quadrant. Carl banged his head to Bon Jovi
• 56:16
  and his head fell off. Yeah, I know.
• 56:18
  And there's a there's a line about Eva Jericho being sorry
• 56:23
  when he's Tyler being shredded. Yeah it's it's, it is it is
• 56:29
  utterly Briefful. I mean Stephen Moffitt said this
• 56:31
  of of Russell T Davis. I think the the quote was he
• 56:35
  said he creates these well-rounded, recognisable,
• 56:39
  lovable characters and then he melts them and quite literally
• 56:44
  in damaged goods, you know. But I I heard your interview
• 56:50
  with with Jonathan Morris a a few weeks ago, who did the did
• 56:55
  the audio adaptation of this book for For Big Finish.
• 56:58
  And I think he said in that interview that he went back and
• 57:00
  re watched Queer as Folk and the Second Coming in preparation for
• 57:03
  this because he thought it would be more instructive in trying to
• 57:05
  capture also T Davis's voice than watching his Doctor Who.
• 57:11
  For those reasons, you know, it is as a book.
• 57:12
  It is angry, it's confrontational.
• 57:14
  It is scathingly satirical and ultimately really quite brutal.
• 57:19
  There is that feeling it it's a cliche to say like you feel like
• 57:23
  you've been punched in the guts, but I got that same feeling here
• 57:26
  that I got from so many of those pieces, you know, Cucumber as
• 57:28
  well to mention there, you know, there's bits where he just like
• 57:31
  A and really buries his, buries his fist in in in your
• 57:36
  diaphragm. It's a It's a compliment to
• 57:39
  Rusty Davis that when I was reading this book, I was there
• 57:43
  with those people because they were so vivid and I didn't feel
• 57:47
  safe. Am I going to make out of this
• 57:50
  book alive? It's nobody else's.
• 57:53
  No. And he's there's there's a line
• 57:56
  in it as well about hymns have been sung to honour the wonders
• 57:59
  and glories of the human mind. But that same mind can be a
• 58:02
  small and stupid thing and you think that is again, you know
• 58:06
  that's that's Russell T Davis in a nutshell.
• 58:08
  I think that gets to the philosophy of what he's saying
• 58:10
  here. You know that that in the end
• 58:13
  there is in the end there is nothing that that we make our
• 58:18
  world and it exists in in our minds of what we do with it.
• 58:21
  I think that's that's a lot of the heart of of his anger
• 58:25
  especially when you see him and satirizing people like
• 58:26
  politicians and things like that is you know you're the people
• 58:29
  who want to be charged for this is this is what you want to do
• 58:31
  with that power. Yeah he.
• 58:32
  Yeah, he he definitely squirrels away or latches onto things that
• 58:40
  he has been told or read about would have happened to him.
• 58:42
  Well, he's watched a lot of soaps as well, hasn't he?
• 58:45
  I think he knows the language, I mean, but he and he refuses to
• 58:49
  criticize soaps. He says he learnt a ton about
• 58:52
  sort of human behaviour and interaction and relationships
• 58:55
  from them. As well as yeah you know as well
• 59:00
  as as as produce frankly producing story because you know
• 59:03
  soap soap operas just gobbled up stories so being able to tell
• 59:07
  tell story of a story but you're right there is I I've got a note
• 59:10
  here you know his love of soap opera also shows through and and
• 59:16
  you're right you know where do you see that storytelling that's
• 59:18
  that's the soap opera Doctor Who has landed in a particularly
• 59:22
  grim episode of EastEnders to a certain extent here.
• 59:26
  I mean we should also mention the Kappa who is who is the
• 59:30
  Simon Jenkins. Simon Jenkins the Kappa the
• 59:35
  state's local drug dealer who as the story begins has just
• 59:39
  committed suicide by setting himself on fire because he needs
• 59:42
  to get rid of the voice that's inside him.
• 59:44
  Your. Typical episode one Doctor Who
• 59:47
  event, of course. Do do do Sarah Jane Smith.
• 59:57
  We talked about far time, and there was a sequence in the
• 1:00:00
  middle that was particularly scathing about Thatcher's
• 1:00:04
  Britain in the 80s, and I didn't actually get a lot of that from
• 1:00:08
  this book. Certainly it didn't come across
• 1:00:11
  as as overt as it did in far time.
• 1:00:14
  But I felt like when we were talking about the Kappa, a lot
• 1:00:16
  of it was there in the sort of the the festering underbelly of
• 1:00:21
  what was going on. Yeah, I don't.
• 1:00:24
  I don't think he's as avert about it.
• 1:00:26
  And that's partly because of the way they're telling the story.
• 1:00:28
  You know, Father Time returns to this starts off like a fairy
• 1:00:32
  tale or a story told to a young child and occasionally returns
• 1:00:36
  to that. And so it is, didn't it is it is
• 1:00:39
  putting history that the reader is expected to know into the
• 1:00:43
  quite simplistic terms of how you explain it to a child.
• 1:00:45
  And in that and in that way revealing the unfairness of it
• 1:00:49
  all he's Ross stiffly isn't doing any of that sort of
• 1:00:52
  narrative trick here. He keeps it much more focused on
• 1:00:55
  on the characters themselves. You know even even when the
• 1:00:57
  character in question is you know Simon Jenkins, the capper
• 1:01:01
  in interstitial space having his consciousness absorbed by a time
• 1:01:05
  lured weapon. We are still in his mind and
• 1:01:07
  that character, but you know but, but but it it it is there
• 1:01:12
  and he says it comes through like he's almost just presenting
• 1:01:14
  it to you and for you to draw the conclusions.
• 1:01:18
  Oh, I think, I think the existence of those people in the
• 1:01:21
  quadrant is criticism enough of what's going on in Britain on
• 1:01:25
  that type. Well.
• 1:01:26
  Because because again, you know there's, in terms of that thing
• 1:01:29
  of making it diffuse as well, you know who is the villain of
• 1:01:32
  this piece. I think by the end it is Mrs.
• 1:01:34
  Jericho for insofar as she is the one who is killing everyone
• 1:01:39
  but you know. But she is much more sympathetic
• 1:01:42
  than some other character. And he almost gives her a get
• 1:01:45
  out as well, doesn't he? That that she was driven mad
• 1:01:48
  because of the glamour of Stephen was reactivating or or
• 1:01:53
  transforming the baby in her stomach, which she said the
• 1:01:57
  doctor says it must have driven her mad.
• 1:01:59
  I kind of preferred it when we didn't have that explanation and
• 1:02:03
  it was just all of those years of, you know, of tests and has
• 1:02:07
  some sort of slowly dying. That thing, if she wanted more
• 1:02:10
  than anything in the whole world, sort of dying away in
• 1:02:14
  front of her, That was the thing that drove her mad.
• 1:02:16
  But you know, I did say he ticked every box and he did.
• 1:02:19
  He gave her a reason for her madness as well.
• 1:02:23
  Yeah, I I know. Yeah, I know what you mean.
• 1:02:26
  There is a slight bit of at the very end.
• 1:02:31
  I need to think maybe there's a slight bit of uncomfortableness
• 1:02:35
  around how we actually feel about Eva Jericho and how we're
• 1:02:42
  meant to feel about her and what Russell Davis thinks about her.
• 1:02:46
  I I do almost wonder if some of that is trying to make up for
• 1:02:49
  her not having been made more obviously sympathetic at points
• 1:02:53
  because she does. Just she she thought that she's
• 1:02:55
  relatable. She's expect probably ultimately
• 1:02:58
  the villain of the piece and. Everything comes back to that
• 1:03:02
  experience where she stole the sweater when she was younger so
• 1:03:06
  that that school bully made her do and we keep coming back to
• 1:03:09
  that person's name, don't we And and what?
• 1:03:15
  No, I can't. I was Sally.
• 1:03:16
  I named Sally. And and how how that blemish on
• 1:03:23
  her character when she was younger.
• 1:03:24
  She thinks that's what's responsible that everything.
• 1:03:27
  And then very cleverly in The Coder he writes a bit that says
• 1:03:30
  no that had nothing to do with the fact that she didn't get
• 1:03:33
  kids. It was Alfred, and the fact that
• 1:03:35
  Alfred came across as that fellow who just hand over money
• 1:03:38
  and buy a child and and and that's why he wouldn't be
• 1:03:41
  adopted. Yeah, we had stuff.
• 1:03:46
  Yeah, and I do, yeah. I I would like to make a mention
• 1:03:52
  for of of the Kappa because in terms of that satire of not
• 1:03:58
  satire may be the wrong word, that depiction of the cruelties
• 1:04:01
  of that area as he sees them. There is a reference to Simon
• 1:04:06
  Jacobs, the capper, the drug dealer who becomes the sort of
• 1:04:09
  first host for the N form. There's a reference that you
• 1:04:13
  know, he was smart enough to lead the world if he'd been able
• 1:04:16
  to leave the estate, but he was never going to be able to leave
• 1:04:19
  the estate. And that idea of people's
• 1:04:23
  potential being squandered by circumstance, you know, while
• 1:04:28
  while privilege elevates the unworthy, that's another idea
• 1:04:32
  that I think comes back in in quite a lot of his writing
• 1:04:34
  beyond Doctor Who but also within Doctor Who and tortured
• 1:04:37
  as well. You know, he is 12.
• 1:04:39
  He's sort of quite scathing of almost anyone in power, right?
• 1:04:42
  Because he's like you can't be the best people to be there.
• 1:04:45
  You're the people who are able to get there and wanted it.
• 1:04:48
  And what does that say about you?
• 1:04:51
  I, I, I, I do think for all that he is willing to talk about
• 1:04:56
  royalty and and unfairness and suffering, I think it's also
• 1:05:02
  quite hard for him to make anyone completely unsympathetic.
• 1:05:05
  I think everyone is the hero of their own story.
• 1:05:07
  He doesn't judge anybody. He, he a lot of writers do.
• 1:05:11
  A lot of new adventures writers do, yeah.
• 1:05:13
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no, there's no.
• 1:05:16
  How do you like that, Thatcher to this at any point, you know?
• 1:05:19
  Do you know? Actually talking about that
• 1:05:22
  about circumstance, it really shocked me when we learned how
• 1:05:26
  much she sold the baby for. It was 30 grand, which just
• 1:05:32
  seems like nothing, but that is enough for her to completely
• 1:05:36
  transform her life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:05:40
  exactly. But but it is, you know, it's
• 1:05:44
  not a small amount of money, but it's not millions and millions
• 1:05:46
  of of pounds for giving away a child.
• 1:05:48
  And that's the point, right? That would be enough to change
• 1:05:52
  everything for her, you know 30 grand and it is, it's it's very
• 1:05:58
  powerful. It's a very good example of show
• 1:06:01
  Don't Tell you know to talk about storytelling techniques as
• 1:06:03
  well. Do you think how the book was
• 1:06:07
  plotted, how the twists are revealed?
• 1:06:12
  So obviously we start with all from in Bev's point of view as
• 1:06:16
  well from the little girl's point of view of the exchange
• 1:06:19
  being made and then how that sort of revealed throughout the
• 1:06:24
  book. Do you think that was sort of
• 1:06:25
  staggered well throughout the book?
• 1:06:28
  I thought it was, yes. I I mean, I listened to the
• 1:06:32
  audio adaptation long before I read the book, so I I knew what
• 1:06:35
  it was about. But I thought it.
• 1:06:37
  I did think it worked really well.
• 1:06:39
  And I'm not surprised he returned to that idea or has
• 1:06:43
  returned to that idea in his current run on Doctor Who,
• 1:06:45
  because it is a it's a very simple image, but one that
• 1:06:49
  obviously requires a huge explanation.
• 1:06:52
  And that in in explaining that you're sort of explaining the
• 1:06:59
  story. If you understand why that
• 1:07:01
  moment happened, then you understand so much more about
• 1:07:05
  what's going on with. Your Why Chapter 9's pivotal,
• 1:07:09
  isn't it? Because it really does give you
• 1:07:11
  both of their reasons as to why they're doing what they're
• 1:07:14
  doing. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:07:16
  It's very interesting. It's almost, yeah, that that
• 1:07:19
  chapter is almost like a set piece within the book.
• 1:07:22
  And I thought you could tell that he's, he's growing in
• 1:07:25
  confidence as a television writer at this point, that he's
• 1:07:27
  gaining experience because. You can see it, can't you go
• 1:07:30
  character to character? And it's sort of building up to
• 1:07:33
  the suicide, building up to the murder.
• 1:07:35
  Yeah, yeah, exactly that. And I mean, oh, interestingly
• 1:07:38
  though, when Rusty Davis was interviewed about this book by
• 1:07:42
  Doctor Who Magazine, and I think in 2000 and two 2003, they did a
• 1:07:46
  big feature for 10 years of Virgin New Adventures.
• 1:07:49
  And he was talking about writing this book.
• 1:07:51
  And as mentioned earlier, he then got commissioned to do
• 1:07:54
  something for it was Granada. So he had to sort of write this
• 1:07:58
  book around his television work. But he did, certainly as a
• 1:08:02
  result of that, Granada actually paid for himself a personal
• 1:08:04
  assistant to help with some of the legwork on it.
• 1:08:06
  So I think like research and that sort of thing which then
• 1:08:09
  meant that quite a few people at Granada ended up reading the
• 1:08:13
  draft of this new adventure. And I think they actually, I
• 1:08:18
  think Granada wouldn't actually have bought the TV rights to the
• 1:08:20
  book. So not to make as a Doctor Who
• 1:08:23
  book, but that would never have happened.
• 1:08:25
  Basically to strip all of the sci-fi out and to do damaged
• 1:08:29
  goods as the story of Winnie Tyler and Mrs. Jericho.
• 1:08:33
  And it never happens. But but you know because it
• 1:08:35
  seems like that you absolutely you almost, I can't believe that
• 1:08:38
  wasn't a Russell T Davis TV drama like 1996 nineteen 97,
• 1:08:42
  right. Because it would have been
• 1:08:43
  absolutely right. And that poisoning scene he
• 1:08:46
  reuses in the Second Coming? And it's very I think you could
• 1:08:50
  extract those sci-fi elements and tell that story in a in a
• 1:08:54
  brilliant way. And in the same breath, you can
• 1:08:58
  take away some of the more gratuitous moments of this book
• 1:09:00
  and tell it as an audio story, and happily put the Doctor Who
• 1:09:04
  logo on the front as well. Yeah, well there's a story that
• 1:09:08
  when when they did the e-books on the BBC site back in the
• 1:09:12
  noughties and they, you know, they they were enjoyed by many
• 1:09:17
  people, myself included they. And then the TV series came
• 1:09:21
  back. They did approach Russell today
• 1:09:23
  of seek his permission to do damaged goods as one of them.
• 1:09:26
  And he said no, because he thought that he he didn't want
• 1:09:29
  to change it. But at the same time you
• 1:09:33
  couldn't put it out on the official Doctor Who channel as
• 1:09:37
  suitable for consumption because it's obviously not.
• 1:09:40
  But it's interesting then that those years later, he, he did
• 1:09:43
  agree to the audio adaptation, I suppose probably because if
• 1:09:46
  you're adapting something then you have room to change it.
• 1:09:50
  You have to, right? So you can.
• 1:09:51
  I mean the audio, the audio adaptation is still very strong
• 1:09:54
  and. It's still very dark, but it's
• 1:09:57
  and it's still. Very dark, but it's not.
• 1:09:59
  It's not. It's not off the meter.
• 1:10:03
  Which, like you said, is exactly what they're going for here.
• 1:10:06
  I mean, they're trying to push it absolutely as far as they
• 1:10:08
  can. What do you think, then, about
• 1:10:11
  the juxtaposition of Eva Jericho smearing hills into her
• 1:10:17
  husband's bangers and mash and Winnie Tyler with a knife at her
• 1:10:22
  wrist, rubbing shoulders with scenes, talking about, you know,
• 1:10:25
  vampires from the dawn of time in E Space and great like, I
• 1:10:32
  found that a weird mix. You see, I I I sort of went with
• 1:10:38
  it. I quite liked the vibe and maybe
• 1:10:40
  it's because I'm coming to it as a as a horror novel.
• 1:10:42
  It's a sci-fi horror novel and you know that juxtaposition does
• 1:10:45
  often occur in those sorts of things.
• 1:10:49
  He's got a, you know the the 7th Doctor has some great big
• 1:10:51
  speeches about the history of the vampire war and what have
• 1:10:54
  you, which is really great stuff.
• 1:10:55
  And the Virgin Adventures novel, my memory is often got quite
• 1:10:58
  hung up on the whole vampire war stuff.
• 1:11:00
  But this was one of the more interesting versions of it, I
• 1:11:04
  think and you know the the history of the end form that
• 1:11:07
  this is a that this is a weapon designed by people by Time Lords
• 1:11:11
  who treat weaponry as art. And I yeah, I really quite liked
• 1:11:18
  them. I liked that mix up of
• 1:11:20
  registers. I find that sort of thing quite
• 1:11:23
  pleasing When it's done well. You cut between these two
• 1:11:28
  scenes, or maybe not literally cutting between them, but, you
• 1:11:31
  know, you're juxtaposing these scenes, one of which is, you
• 1:11:33
  know, two very domestic stories about two women's suffering and
• 1:11:37
  then a story about, you know, from the deepest history of the
• 1:11:40
  universe and a threat that is going to overwhelm us at all.
• 1:11:44
  I think George Lucas, I think said this about talked about
• 1:11:49
  this in relation to Star Wars. And certainly he'd been credited
• 1:11:52
  with, you know, really being very good at the idea of the
• 1:11:54
  simultaneity of action or drama, which is the idea that you have
• 1:11:57
  two separate things occurring side by side and that they are
• 1:12:02
  ostensibly working on very different levels and very
• 1:12:05
  different registers and degrees of threat.
• 1:12:10
  And yet in putting them alongside each other, you, you
• 1:12:13
  sort of make them equal through the act of drama.
• 1:12:15
  And that's what that's what drama is.
• 1:12:17
  It's all made-up. Right.
• 1:12:19
  But I can tell it, I can tell you this story in such a way
• 1:12:22
  that I will make you believe that they are equally important
• 1:12:26
  and to affect us in different ways.
• 1:12:27
  And then I think those things, those two sides come together in
• 1:12:32
  the climax when the end form takes Mrs. Jericho as his pilot.
• 1:12:37
  And I think the point he's making there, and this again is
• 1:12:39
  when I come back to that idea that I said of of realising how
• 1:12:42
  wrong I was to say Russell Davis can't do horror.
• 1:12:44
  It's because so much of his horror is is existential horror.
• 1:12:49
  So you have these sequences of of the of the N form walking
• 1:12:55
  across the burning city, this huge alien machine that is
• 1:12:58
  building itself. Does it make its way towards the
• 1:13:00
  quadrant just destroying the world in its way?
• 1:13:02
  You know, unit turn up, but you get the very distinct impression
• 1:13:04
  that all they can do is damage control, even though he's.
• 1:13:08
  Describing it, and I do think the prose is really powerful.
• 1:13:11
  He is. It was almost imperceptible,
• 1:13:14
  even though he was describing it quite simply.
• 1:13:17
  I was. I was just seeing this thing
• 1:13:19
  sort of shifting in and out, tentacles everywhere, wire
• 1:13:22
  flying about the place. You said hell raising earlier,
• 1:13:26
  and I was seeing a lot of hell raising the climax.
• 1:13:29
  Yeah, I hadn't made that connection, but no, that that
• 1:13:32
  actually, that's that's a really good point.
• 1:13:33
  It's this, you know, you get amongst that, you get these
• 1:13:39
  spheres that burst out of anyone who's taken the cocaine.
• 1:13:41
  Because the way that the end form emerges into our universe
• 1:13:45
  is through tiny little gaps. Tiny little bits of it to come
• 1:13:47
  through little gaps. And then it reassembles.
• 1:13:49
  Us dimensional vents, or something they're called,
• 1:13:51
  aren't. They dimensional something like
• 1:13:52
  he also uses the phrase does. Someone's head burst.
• 1:13:55
  Hope burst open like a Tulip, he says.
• 1:13:59
  Yeah, genuinely horrific body horror.
• 1:14:03
  Also like cheeky among the victims of the Kappas cocaine
• 1:14:05
  television executives who are particularly numerous.
• 1:14:11
  You know you can see them as he's writing it.
• 1:14:14
  He's not going to name them, but you can see them.
• 1:14:15
  I mean, there is a point there, you know, about the the
• 1:14:19
  pervasiveness of of drugs in society.
• 1:14:21
  Who's making that point? You know, we've been focusing on
• 1:14:23
  the effects of the of, of this cocaine on the state, the
• 1:14:27
  quadrant and the neighbouring estates, and you know, the
• 1:14:29
  deleterious effect it's having on people there and the way it's
• 1:14:31
  making their lives even worse. But the same time in that
• 1:14:34
  sequence, he opens it up and goes no, no, there's people all
• 1:14:36
  across this city who are taking cocaine.
• 1:14:39
  But there's a great line about He would have sold more, but he
• 1:14:43
  sold it so cheap he wouldn't trust it.
• 1:14:45
  Yeah, exactly. They.
• 1:14:46
  Don't. Wouldn't have it.
• 1:14:47
  It was good quality. Yeah, he makes a point.
• 1:14:50
  There's television executives. I think there's references like
• 1:14:52
  isn't there a judge or something in there as well as people
• 1:14:54
  who've taken it. But, but, you know, there is
• 1:14:55
  that point there about, you know, the pervasiveness of drugs
• 1:14:57
  in in society. You know that we have this
• 1:14:59
  collective collective distaste is once again for for those
• 1:15:04
  without the money to collect, you know, to comfortably support
• 1:15:07
  the habit. But he, you know, he makes the
• 1:15:12
  point in that moment that was all these things are bursting
• 1:15:14
  out. This is across the place.
• 1:15:16
  This is not limited to the quadrant.
• 1:15:18
  And then, you know, talking of talking of things that have
• 1:15:23
  turns up elsewhere. You know, a lot of there's a bit
• 1:15:25
  where he focuses on some of the components that that burst out
• 1:15:28
  of people's heads are these spheres.
• 1:15:29
  I think he calls them the extensions and the Doctor says
• 1:15:33
  of them children, why did he now think of them as children?
• 1:15:37
  And they're basically the toppler fame from Sound of
• 1:15:41
  Drums, Last of the Time Lords, these giggling children spent on
• 1:15:45
  a rampage. And it which actually makes
• 1:15:48
  sense that that was an idea he wanted to return to, because I
• 1:15:50
  think Robert Sherman's told the story that when he was writing
• 1:15:53
  Darnik and for Time. He couldn't use them, yeah.
• 1:15:57
  He was going to use the Tokler fame.
• 1:15:58
  That was the idea that Russell, Russell Davis had the Tokler
• 1:16:01
  fame and gave him to, you know, present him to Rob Sherman,
• 1:16:02
  saying here's who's going to be our big bad.
• 1:16:04
  So it sort of makes sense that he he already had that idea as
• 1:16:06
  far back as this in 19. 90 You know, hey, don't tell us a
• 1:16:09
  wonderful story. In that interview I did where
• 1:16:13
  Rob Sherman phoned him up and he went, if I haven't got the
• 1:16:16
  Daleks, I'm going to send you a picture now.
• 1:16:18
  And it was just a ball. And they were like, Oh my God,
• 1:16:22
  what the hell are you going to do with that?
• 1:16:28
  But it is, yeah, it is that idea.
• 1:16:30
  And I suppose that comes back again to the idea of of cruelty,
• 1:16:33
  doesn't it? You know, the child's here and
• 1:16:36
  there. They are described as children,
• 1:16:38
  an idea of, you know, if every, if a child's every impulse and,
• 1:16:43
  you know, pulling wings off flies, if that was just
• 1:16:45
  unleashed again, if, if our worst impulsive is and we're
• 1:16:48
  given our, we're given free reign, how horrific would that
• 1:16:52
  be? How often we are keeping
• 1:16:53
  ourselves in check. Oh, if you don't want to know,
• 1:16:56
  Michael, all right. If I formed a relationship with
• 1:17:02
  an end for the world, we're going to have a hope, I'm
• 1:17:04
  saying. But then.
• 1:17:06
  You don't spare it, You're marvellous.
• 1:17:08
  Oh, thank you, thank you. I'd be one of the people under
• 1:17:11
  the bed. You'd be wrapped into my metal
• 1:17:13
  tentacles, you know. He said I was a nice person, but
• 1:17:21
  you know that that whole image you know of said of this end for
• 1:17:25
  making its way across across the city.
• 1:17:28
  You know that that's that's an image that in Cypher Hall it
• 1:17:30
  goes all the way back to at least the War of the Worlds,
• 1:17:33
  right? With the tripods.
• 1:17:34
  But I think probably more interestingly and more
• 1:17:38
  interestingly, thematic is in discussion.
• 1:17:40
  Horror is is about what ultimately Russell T Davis's
• 1:17:46
  horror writing is about. The horror that he writes about
• 1:17:49
  is existential horror. This idea that he that there has
• 1:17:53
  been unleashed upon humanity, forces of destruction, has to be
• 1:17:59
  almost beyond comprehension, right?
• 1:18:01
  That's that. That's the thing with the end
• 1:18:04
  form. Humanity does not stand a
• 1:18:06
  chance. We are that the Martians.
• 1:18:08
  That was HG Wells. This whole idea with the War of
• 1:18:10
  the Worlds is what if the British Empire, you've gone out
• 1:18:13
  and conquered all these peoples and nations around the world?
• 1:18:16
  What if, what if we became the victim of something at several
• 1:18:24
  stages more technologically capable than us?
• 1:18:25
  You know the the line in World Wars?
• 1:18:28
  You know, it's bows and arrows against the lightning.
• 1:18:31
  And that occurs here. It's in, you know, Sarah Jane's
• 1:18:36
  terror as the Daleks descend on Earth in the stolen Earth,
• 1:18:38
  right. And she grabs Luke and she's
• 1:18:39
  like, Oh no, they're here. There's I know what they can do.
• 1:18:43
  We don't have a chance. And ultimately that's the thing
• 1:18:45
  in Doctor Who, right? This is almost any alien
• 1:18:48
  invasion story. Should has this in its base
• 1:18:50
  code, but they very rarely express it properly, Which is
• 1:18:52
  humanity doesn't actually stand a chance.
• 1:18:54
  That's what's scary about the idea of aliens.
• 1:18:57
  In Doctor Who. You always have the Doctor.
• 1:18:59
  You know. That's the reason we survive,
• 1:19:01
  because an alien who can operate on that level comes in and does
• 1:19:04
  the job. But you know, Russell G Davis is
• 1:19:06
  is that that is terrifying. You think about it.
• 1:19:08
  You can't do anything. There's no clever switch or
• 1:19:11
  gadget. There's no if we spray them with
• 1:19:12
  water, that'll explode. Again, it is all channelled
• 1:19:16
  through a character, isn't it? In the end, in that and and her
• 1:19:21
  grief and her sadness and her anger and all of that, like he
• 1:19:25
  can't ever let go of the emotions.
• 1:19:27
  He. He.
• 1:19:28
  He'll never not make it. Because that's how that's how
• 1:19:32
  you get that across, that that is what stops it just being, you
• 1:19:36
  know, you know, paper plates firing laser beams at the
• 1:19:41
  Washington Capitol, right? Because when he does it
• 1:19:42
  elsewhere in in Doctor Who and Torchwood, he again, he channels
• 1:19:46
  it through those characters, except it is Sarah Jane crying
• 1:19:49
  and holding her son close. It's in Torchwood when what's
• 1:19:56
  the character's name? Alex Hopkins, the former.
• 1:19:58
  We get that flashback episodes to how Captain Jack came to take
• 1:20:02
  over Torchwood, and on Millennium's Eve he walks into
• 1:20:06
  the hub and the former head of Torchwood has murdered his team
• 1:20:10
  because he has seen what is coming and knows that there's no
• 1:20:15
  hope. So what?
• 1:20:17
  You know what else is there that we can do?
• 1:20:19
  Or it's? It's the four 5-6 in Children of
• 1:20:21
  Earth, right where Betty is just going to hand over his children.
• 1:20:24
  Or I suppose most recently it's, you know, in in the Giggle.
• 1:20:28
  It's the toy maker treating the Earth as a toy, as a toy room.
• 1:20:33
  And it is so unsettling on a just on, as I say, an
• 1:20:40
  existential, transcendental level.
• 1:20:42
  You just don't stand to hope this is so much more powerful
• 1:20:45
  than you and we are small. You feel very small, doesn't it?
• 1:20:49
  Yeah, it does make you feel baseball, but have you?
• 1:20:51
  Revised your opinion now, then, about Rusty Davis and Cora.
• 1:20:54
  Oh, it sounds like you have. I think, I think, as as you
• 1:20:58
  know, you sort of intimated earlier on, I think just
• 1:21:01
  television Doctor Who doesn't always make it clearest to you
• 1:21:05
  that he his his capacity for horror.
• 1:21:07
  Because that is such an adult idea and such a terrifying idea
• 1:21:11
  that you really do have to, you know, put it through several
• 1:21:14
  filters before you can make it suitable for a family audience.
• 1:21:17
  It has to be something like the toy maker turning unit guards
• 1:21:20
  into bouncy balls, which is more horrible, the boy you think
• 1:21:24
  about it. But here, where he is writing
• 1:21:26
  more in the key of something like the Second Coming or Queer
• 1:21:29
  as Folk or It's a Sin, You get that really quite full
• 1:21:34
  bloodedly. I actually find it a little
• 1:21:36
  baffling that they didn't make this as a torch would because
• 1:21:39
  they could have, and I think it would have been pretty
• 1:21:42
  incredible. They could have done a mini
• 1:21:44
  series like Children of Earth around damaged streets.
• 1:21:47
  Yeah, I think you're right. I think you know, you asked
• 1:21:48
  yourself, is this Doctor Who? But is this Torchwood?
• 1:21:52
  It's tonally a lot, A lot. So close to that.
• 1:21:54
  I suppose you have to remember that's the series he created,
• 1:21:56
  right? He didn't create Doctor Who.
• 1:22:01
  I think Chiba's might have had a little story of it as well.
• 1:22:05
  I might be white. It was a bit terrible too.
• 1:22:10
  But but no I think he's you know I think I think he is a
• 1:22:14
  terrific. But do you know, I think he
• 1:22:17
  finds horror in in the lines as well.
• 1:22:20
  I think he does it in Doctor Who.
• 1:22:21
  That line in Utopia where the Master says, oh, now I can see I
• 1:22:28
  was provoked. I mean, it just says a lot and
• 1:22:31
  it's terrifying. And there's a lot of lines.
• 1:22:33
  Oh, there's a there's a line where Eva Jericho says to Mrs.
• 1:22:40
  Tyler, and she's going to take Gabriel away.
• 1:22:42
  If it's any comfort, Mrs. Tyler, people will be sorry for you.
• 1:22:46
  And he does a lot of lines like this stings.
• 1:22:50
  There's there's another one here.
• 1:22:54
  I've done so many Where do I start?
• 1:22:57
  She says. You can't take my child.
• 1:22:59
  Of course I can. I've done it before.
• 1:23:01
  But the purchase was faulty. It's your fault and you're going
• 1:23:04
  to make it right. You damaged the goods.
• 1:23:08
  Again, it's all. It's that line.
• 1:23:10
  It's all about people's exploitation of power over one
• 1:23:14
  other, isn't it? Whether that is physical power
• 1:23:16
  or financial power or political power that is.
• 1:23:21
  Yeah, I think that's something that he comes, he comes back to.
• 1:23:23
  And as you say, it goes both ways, you know, tying the
• 1:23:26
  fantastical into the real, but also the real into the
• 1:23:28
  fantastical. That line from Utopia is great.
• 1:23:31
  And you know, two episodes later, if you look closely,
• 1:23:34
  you'll see that Lucy Saxon has got a black guy.
• 1:23:37
  So you know he reminds you this this villain the Master is not
• 1:23:41
  just some some sort of fantastical going.
• 1:23:43
  No, no. This is someone who hits his
• 1:23:44
  wife. And I think that is one of his
• 1:23:49
  real great talents as a writer to to bridge those gaps and to
• 1:23:56
  understand, you know, because there is another side to that
• 1:23:59
  which is, you know, he he has frequently been accused of his
• 1:24:02
  plotting not always being that tight.
• 1:24:04
  And as. Yes, so as someone said
• 1:24:08
  recently, his plot resolutions tend to rely on vibes.
• 1:24:12
  But I think that's a result of of him putting, you know,
• 1:24:15
  emotional resonance and emotional beats and emotional
• 1:24:17
  truth beyond all of it. And I'm sorry you've not had
• 1:24:20
  more books from him because this, you know, he can do things
• 1:24:24
  in books, just gets different medium he can't do on television
• 1:24:26
  not to say it's a bit better, but you know, we can see what he
• 1:24:28
  can do on television. I would love to see more of what
• 1:24:30
  he does in the written words. You know he's.
• 1:24:32
  This is plotted like a naz arse. This is so this book.
• 1:24:36
  Yeah. And I think you're right.
• 1:24:38
  I think. I think.
• 1:24:39
  I think because T VS such a collaborative process and
• 1:24:43
  there's a lot of other facts as well.
• 1:24:44
  He does go for the fields a lot in his Imaxes rather than like
• 1:24:48
  Stephen Moffitt. It all just comes together like
• 1:24:51
  a perfect device, doesn't it? Yeah, he does tell us
• 1:24:54
  beautifully. And you go, oh, that's clever,
• 1:24:57
  Yeah. And and he can make you feel as
• 1:24:59
  well. But when Russell gets it right
• 1:25:02
  out of climax and he really, really drags the fields out of
• 1:25:05
  you, I I don't think there's other docs who quite like it.
• 1:25:11
  No, I know. I I I think you're right.
• 1:25:12
  I think this is this this book is 1 apart.
• 1:25:17
  I think that's one of the things that makes it so terrific to
• 1:25:19
  talk about. But it's an odd one.
• 1:25:20
  You know, I I was back at my parents not that long ago while
• 1:25:23
  I was reading this and I spotted my old copy of I Who on the on
• 1:25:28
  the shelf. Also looked at I who in
• 1:25:31
  preparation for this. And the thing that struck out to
• 1:25:34
  me wasn't necessarily any of the like trivia or quotes, but it
• 1:25:36
  was in the sort of verdict bit where they said because this was
• 1:25:39
  written, When did I who come out?
• 1:25:41
  Sometime around the Millennium. And they say it was often
• 1:25:45
  forgotten this book. Yeah, I think it's often
• 1:25:48
  forgotten, this book. No, but it's it's.
• 1:25:50
  But I could believe it was at the time because Russell T Davis
• 1:25:53
  didn't have any greater connection.
• 1:25:54
  I mean I remember when it was mentioned like, oh, you know,
• 1:25:57
  the guy who wrote Queer as Folk, you know, he wrote a Doctor Who
• 1:26:00
  book like, oh, really? Oh gosh.
• 1:26:04
  And so yeah, it was interesting to know that there was a period
• 1:26:07
  when this one got lost amidst. You know, there are so many
• 1:26:10
  books around it that are so much more important to the arc.
• 1:26:14
  This does this does very gently tie into the ongoing arc in the
• 1:26:19
  The Virgin new adventures at the time, which were about.
• 1:26:21
  Well, there is. There is a like a five or six
• 1:26:23
  book art taking place here, isn't it?
• 1:26:24
  But is it the Psy Powers arc? Is that what they call it?
• 1:26:27
  Yes, Yeah. All about Mr. Psy Powers.
• 1:26:30
  No. Cheeky.
• 1:26:34
  Shit about about the emergence of psychic powers within
• 1:26:39
  humanity across time and space, and conspiracies around that.
• 1:26:43
  Climax in the next one. Yes, it does.
• 1:26:47
  Yeah. So at the end of this book, they
• 1:26:50
  set off into the future to track down the source of the signal
• 1:26:55
  that awoke the N form, which I believe I've not read so far.
• 1:26:59
  This in I'm not making money A. Bit unfortunate, isn't it, that
• 1:27:03
  Benarolovic's hard drive crashed when it did and they not only
• 1:27:08
  because it came out later, didn't it?
• 1:27:09
  Much later. So far I see it, yeah.
• 1:27:13
  I think bad therapy came out next, which was where they were
• 1:27:15
  dealing with the aftermath of Ros's death and and obviously
• 1:27:20
  the whole side powers arcs been resolved seriously between that
• 1:27:24
  much good and that. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:28
  Survival of CN ended up being the very last Virginia venture
• 1:27:31
  published after the dying days because of that delay, which?
• 1:27:36
  Kind of does. I don't be too critical, but it
• 1:27:39
  does make Ros's lack of appearance in this a little old.
• 1:27:45
  If she's out in the next book, I'd give her a run of, you know,
• 1:27:49
  strong, dominant adventures. Yeah, it's not always clear, is
• 1:27:55
  it? To.
• 1:27:55
  To what? To agree the editorial process
• 1:27:59
  works as regards to the Arc. You know how how much you tie
• 1:28:02
  them together. I definitely know during the
• 1:28:03
  there's been some interviews like Justin Richards and others
• 1:28:06
  during the BBC where they said sometimes they were planned,
• 1:28:09
  sometimes they, you know, they just emerged from the pitches
• 1:28:11
  they got. And I know him relating to this,
• 1:28:14
  Ross Davis is quoted to say. He didn't really understand the
• 1:28:17
  Sai Powers arc, so he just put in a couple of references and
• 1:28:19
  tried to keep it vague if he didn't.
• 1:28:21
  Then he did a bloody good job. No, it felt effortless.
• 1:28:26
  The rings? Yeah.
• 1:28:28
  I understood where we've come from and I understood going.
• 1:28:32
  Yeah. So, you know, maybe that, you
• 1:28:33
  know, maybe that's, maybe, you know, that was testament to him.
• 1:28:36
  But probably also, you know, people only ever seem to have
• 1:28:39
  good things to say about Rebecca Levine as an editor as well.
• 1:28:41
  So I'm sure you know that was her doing, you know her her job
• 1:28:44
  and making sure it all made sense as well.
• 1:28:49
  But you know, and this bit is pure speculation, maybe that
• 1:28:51
  side powers arc emerged because they had had a lot of pitches
• 1:28:56
  relating to that and they thought we could make something
• 1:28:58
  of this. I don't know something
• 1:28:59
  speculation. And I know that's how the
• 1:29:03
  alternate universes arc in the 8th Doctor adventures happened
• 1:29:06
  was they got a lot of pitches for alternatively history
• 1:29:09
  stories and they thought we could do something with this we.
• 1:29:11
  Tend not to talk about that arc. You know, I pretend that doesn't
• 1:29:14
  exist. I like, you know, I I know, I
• 1:29:18
  know I've been a little hard on the tone of this as a Doctor Who
• 1:29:21
  book, but there really is. And I, you know, I think the new
• 1:29:24
  adventures are hit and miss in whatever periods you're talk
• 1:29:27
  you're talking about because of the occasional extremes and
• 1:29:31
  because of, you know, there are a lot of first time offers in
• 1:29:33
  there. So that is always there's a
• 1:29:36
  maturity at this point in the range which is really
• 1:29:40
  impressive. Yeah, this is and there's I
• 1:29:46
  think the version new adventures are often guilty and I'm yeah,
• 1:29:50
  very far from the first person to say this, were often guilty
• 1:29:54
  of thinking that adults was actually stuff that was quite
• 1:29:57
  adolescent. This isn't.
• 1:30:00
  I don't think this is. No, no, no.
• 1:30:03
  And it's and it is to do with how it's handled and how it's
• 1:30:06
  approached. Because if you would just
• 1:30:07
  describe some of the things, there's lots of violence.
• 1:30:09
  People do drugs. The the Doctor uses a gun.
• 1:30:12
  You know, it's it sounds like cliche new adventure stuff,
• 1:30:15
  right? But it is, it is genuinely
• 1:30:17
  approached in a mature manner in, as we've said many times, an
• 1:30:22
  emotionally intelligent manner. And also he's just trying to
• 1:30:27
  write a Horror Story. So there is a difference between
• 1:30:29
  something that sets out to be horror and something that sets
• 1:30:32
  out to be aliens. Yeah.
• 1:30:36
  And and you know and as we said already like always grounded in
• 1:30:39
  people as well. So it is, it is just always so
• 1:30:43
  relatable. Well, look Michael, obviously
• 1:30:46
  there's a million things we can say about the damage because we
• 1:30:49
  probably, we said this in Father Time.
• 1:30:54
  Let's come at me with anything we haven't covered that you'd
• 1:30:57
  like to cover. Just I'd like to shout out for
• 1:31:01
  there's a very lovely little scene where the Doctor is
• 1:31:05
  talking to Ros and sort of briefing her on things.
• 1:31:07
  And then he's. But he's also sort of building a
• 1:31:12
  gadget that's going to help them detect the end form.
• 1:31:16
  And he suddenly sort of stops and says, oh, you know, realises
• 1:31:20
  that he's been thinking back on old times more and more recently
• 1:31:24
  and that maybe it's a sign of things to come.
• 1:31:27
  And although it's not put in these terms, it's sort of a part
• 1:31:29
  of a lovely scene in which the Doctor reflects on how different
• 1:31:33
  this version of the 7th Doctor is to the one that was seen on
• 1:31:36
  TV. You know, that return of old
• 1:31:38
  memories, of old snacks and habits that are, you know, meta
• 1:31:42
  textually setting up his return to TV.
• 1:31:46
  And therefore, you know, foreseeing that this will mean a
• 1:31:49
  more popular form of the Doctor as a character character in TV.
• 1:31:52
  Because this is one of those books that fell into the odd gap
• 1:31:55
  between the TV movie had come out, but the Virgin New
• 1:32:00
  Adventures hadn't come to an end yet.
• 1:32:03
  So I think Damaged Goods published in October 96, I
• 1:32:08
  think, and the TV movie had obviously been on six months
• 1:32:11
  before. That was something.
• 1:32:13
  And so you end up in this weird situation where the TV movie in
• 1:32:18
  the very last days of the Virgin Two Adventures kind of gave them
• 1:32:20
  an end point that everything they'd been doing was now sort
• 1:32:24
  of retroactively heading towards.
• 1:32:26
  And it's just it's just quite a nice, slightly methotexual way
• 1:32:29
  of the Doctor reflecting on that of I'm not I need to be someone
• 1:32:33
  different again. And that feels again quite
• 1:32:36
  consistent with things that that Russell Davis would later do
• 1:32:39
  with the Doctor as well. And it also means that we get a
• 1:32:42
  a little cameo appearance from the 8th Doctor in the in the
• 1:32:46
  epilogue, as well as a sort of shadowy Ghost of Christmas
• 1:32:48
  future character. I really, I think it's in that
• 1:32:52
  sequence as well where he acknowledges that and he's
• 1:32:55
  talking about the new adventures here, that the universe has
• 1:32:58
  become a dark place, a more unpleasant place.
• 1:33:02
  And I think he says that's got to change as well, like.
• 1:33:05
  Yeah, And there you do see, I think you do see the Russell T
• 1:33:10
  Davis who is writing this Doctor Who book for the 20 Somethings
• 1:33:14
  and the 30 somethings. You you do see the Russell T
• 1:33:19
  Davis who would eventually bring it back to television and saying
• 1:33:23
  if it's going to be on telly, this can't be what?
• 1:33:25
  It's like we need a bit more hope in there than this.
• 1:33:30
  And a bit less cocaine. But there's a lot of cocaine in
• 1:33:33
  this, Yeah. I I wanted to bring us back to
• 1:33:37
  Weaver Jericho for a second, just because I think she's one
• 1:33:40
  of the most vivid characters to appear at the Doctor Who.
• 1:33:42
  But I I just could not wait to get back to her when I was like,
• 1:33:47
  oh, fucking vampires. I don't care.
• 1:33:49
  Back to Eva Jericho. You know, she's terrified.
• 1:33:51
  I was sitting there at 4:00 in the morning reading this in the
• 1:33:54
  dark on my Kindle, like going, oh God, what's she up to?
• 1:33:56
  You know? And there's that whole sequence
• 1:33:58
  where she's talking about her shopping trips where she goes
• 1:34:01
  out, buys the clothes, acts them to pieces like gets damp between
• 1:34:06
  her legs, well as she's doing it, and then goes back to the
• 1:34:09
  shop and then delivers them as damaged goods and dares the shop
• 1:34:13
  girls to contradict her. And I was like, oh, OK, so
• 1:34:17
  that's what damage gets all about.
• 1:34:19
  And then bang, about 3 chapters later, no, the clever song is
• 1:34:25
  always been about that first scene and the baby being given.
• 1:34:28
  And that's the damage goods in this book.
• 1:34:31
  And that's what hit me like a freight train.
• 1:34:33
  One for being so stupid and not realizing it.
• 1:34:35
  And two, just thinking, man, that's a great title for this
• 1:34:37
  book. Oh, it's it's such a clever.
• 1:34:40
  It's such a clever title, isn't it?
• 1:34:41
  I mean, I think I was trying to work out at one point here how
• 1:34:45
  many different things it refers to.
• 1:34:49
  You know, it refers to so many of the characters in it.
• 1:34:54
  It refers quite literally to the cocaine that has been damaged,
• 1:34:58
  has been affected by the end form and and, yeah, and and most
• 1:35:03
  sadly of all, it refers to little Steven Jericho, who is,
• 1:35:07
  you know, the the little boy whose life has been so shortened
• 1:35:15
  and so unhappy because of his brother's psychic powers, who
• 1:35:18
  almost kind of gets lost on it. That's one of the terrifying
• 1:35:20
  things about Eve. Jacquard is also the the way in
• 1:35:22
  which she treats her own son as someone who can be exchanged and
• 1:35:26
  there'll be a new Stephen now. She literally drags the wires
• 1:35:30
  out of it, doesn't she? Yeah.
• 1:35:32
  Throws him over his shoulder and then drags him out of the
• 1:35:35
  hospital as they're all trying to stop her.
• 1:35:36
  I remember the the nurse that she hates because she hates all
• 1:35:40
  women because they all remind her of that Sally girl from back
• 1:35:44
  in her past. You know, she's daring her to
• 1:35:47
  stop her and she's basically saying, you know, I will kill
• 1:35:50
  you. And I know you're pregnant.
• 1:35:52
  Oh, this is so adult this. But Michael.
• 1:35:55
  Yeah, you know, and those those little lines that just make it
• 1:35:59
  so if it can make you realise how much some people are
• 1:36:02
  suffering in that, you know, there's the bit where Gabriel
• 1:36:04
  realises, and he says the quote is his spells and enchantments
• 1:36:08
  and oh, so clever tricks had been extorted from his brother's
• 1:36:11
  soul. You reap you thinking as well.
• 1:36:18
  Oh, thank you. Oh, thank you.
• 1:36:20
  Come on this. Come on this podcast, the ego
• 1:36:22
  boost chance. For the compliments, anything
• 1:36:25
  else you want to cover here? I mean, I will sort of sum this
• 1:36:28
  up. I'll do a summary, You do a
• 1:36:30
  summary. I'll summary this up as Captain
• 1:36:32
  Picard from the film First Contact.
• 1:36:35
  The line must be drawn here this far and no further, because I
• 1:36:40
  think this is a battle as far as you can push it.
• 1:36:43
  I mean just in terms in terms of horror, in terms of existential
• 1:36:48
  horror, in terms of psychological horror, and just
• 1:36:51
  in terms of discomforting reads. I don't think any got two books
• 1:36:56
  should go. Any push past this?
• 1:37:00
  Yeah, I think, I think you get I think right.
• 1:37:03
  I think I I think it works in large part because of Russell T
• 1:37:07
  Davis's ability as a writer, you know, just sort of touched on
• 1:37:10
  this other books that do extreme stuff going different ways and
• 1:37:13
  maybe less successfully. So I think I would sum it up as
• 1:37:18
  a really a really strong book, a very distinctive book within the
• 1:37:22
  range, and Doctor Who books in general.
• 1:37:25
  I would say if you fancy reading a book by the guy who wrote the
• 1:37:30
  Second coming Queer as Folk and it's a sin, well, guess what?
• 1:37:33
  He wrote a Doctor Who book and this is it in some ways much
• 1:37:38
  more than the TV series. He'd like to go on to take such
• 1:37:40
  popular acclaim. This is this is Russell T Davis,
• 1:37:43
  who doesn't have to worry about the kids.
• 1:37:48
  Because the storyline is still gripping, because the characters
• 1:37:52
  still feel relevant, this could absolutely be filmed now.
• 1:37:57
  Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I think you'd still need to dull
• 1:38:00
  some of it down. But I I think there is a version
• 1:38:03
  of this story on elements of it beyond just the the introduction
• 1:38:07
  that I think could could make it onto TV now.
• 1:38:20
  Well, OK, so while we've determined this is an absolute
• 1:38:23
  classic, very different reasons. Do you have a recommendation for
• 1:38:29
  me at the end of this episode? Yes, for another book, because
• 1:38:35
  it is Christmas time. All sort of it's it's what they
• 1:38:40
  call it the Meridian right now. I've been listening to the
• 1:38:44
  audiobook of Doctor Who, The Winter Time Paradox, by David
• 1:38:48
  Rudden. She's a collection of Doctor Who
• 1:38:51
  short stories for for Winter in the festive period, I think
• 1:38:55
  first published in 2020, all by the same chap.
• 1:38:59
  And they've all got a sort of, you know, that's the theme, but
• 1:39:01
  it's many different Doctors, many different types of story in
• 1:39:04
  characters. And it's it's a it's a brilliant
• 1:39:07
  collection. There are stories featuring
• 1:39:11
  Osgood getting lost in the UNIT UNIT archives on Christmas Eve.
• 1:39:15
  There's the 10th Doctor taking Rose to see it, watch a panto
• 1:39:19
  about the Time Lords. It has a fantastic story in it
• 1:39:23
  called Father of the Daleks, which is about the Doctor
• 1:39:26
  visiting Davos every Christmas Eve and trying to get him to
• 1:39:32
  understand both the meaning of Christmas and the meaning of
• 1:39:34
  fatherhood and his relationship with the Daleks.
• 1:39:37
  And it sort of examines Davros and his relationship with Daleks
• 1:39:41
  as one of parental responsibility and loss in a
• 1:39:45
  very fun, very humorous way. And it might.
• 1:39:47
  It's probably up there with the Big Fish audio.
• 1:39:49
  Davros is one of my favourite Davros stories.
• 1:39:50
  Now every story is a delight. Do do read it.
• 1:39:57
  Do listen to it, even if it's one you want to lay down for
• 1:40:00
  next Christmas at this stage. It's on the list.
• 1:40:04
  I'm going to get it tonight. Does it come in a Kindle form?
• 1:40:08
  Yeah. Stuff I would like to recommend
• 1:40:12
  sort of going a bit out there now.
• 1:40:16
  Bernie Summerfield and the Glass Prism by Jacqueline Rayner,
• 1:40:22
  which is the last of the full length novels that they
• 1:40:27
  produced, certainly for a long time because they weren't
• 1:40:31
  selling. They they brought Bernice over
• 1:40:33
  to Big Finish to do audios and books side by side, telling a
• 1:40:37
  running story. And it didn't work at all,
• 1:40:40
  because some people want to read the books and some people wanted
• 1:40:43
  to listen to the audios, and very few people wanted to do
• 1:40:46
  both. And annoyingly, they kept
• 1:40:48
  putting the pertinent arc points in the books and more people
• 1:40:52
  were just buying the audios. So they snuck in that Bernice
• 1:40:56
  felt pregnant in one of the books.
• 1:40:59
  And this is the book where Bernice gives birth to her son
• 1:41:02
  Peter. She's captured by the 5th
• 1:41:07
  Access, which is this nastiest group that Justin Richards
• 1:41:10
  creates, thrown in a glass prison.
• 1:41:12
  So a prison without walls, but they're all transparent so
• 1:41:16
  everybody can see everybody else.
• 1:41:18
  And she has to give birth under these circumstances in prison,
• 1:41:22
  whilst there's a murder mystery taking place.
• 1:41:25
  The entire thing is written in the first person and I think
• 1:41:29
  Jacqueline Brennan is great to do that because she writes
• 1:41:31
  brilliant female characters and the experience of giving birth
• 1:41:38
  to him. I'll never go through that, but
• 1:41:40
  I feel as if I have gone through that reading this book.
• 1:41:44
  It's a brilliant psychological horror, It's a terrific murder
• 1:41:48
  mystery. It's packed full of great sort
• 1:41:51
  of alien characters. But as an insight into Bernie
• 1:41:56
  Sumfield and to see her absolute high is, I think it's one of the
• 1:42:02
  best Doctor Who or Doctor Who's spin off books ever.
• 1:42:06
  Lisa Bowman have recently done a reading of it.
• 1:42:08
  And if you cannot be asked to read it, go seek that out.
• 1:42:12
  Because the only thing that could possibly make it better is
• 1:42:15
  having it. Having Lisa Bowman read it out
• 1:42:17
  loud. It's fantastic.
• 1:42:19
  Look, go and find it. I've not read it, I'm past the
• 1:42:22
  problem, but I shall go and do so now.
• 1:42:25
  I think we're certainly available.
• 1:42:27
  If not, like I send you a copyright.
• 1:42:31
  Sorry, some illegal activity occurring on this recording
• 1:42:33
  tonight. Michael, Where can people find
• 1:42:37
  you online? They can find me on X just about
• 1:42:42
  at Call under score, Me under score, Kenneth.
• 1:42:45
  Or I am now on Blue Sky at the much simpler Michael Mills.
• 1:42:49
  And they can also find you on various too hot the TV podcasts.
• 1:42:55
  Yes, most recently. If it's still Christmas while
• 1:42:58
  you're listening, or even if it's not, who cares?
• 1:42:59
  Remember when it remember when it was Christmas and you're
• 1:43:01
  happy and not January and sad. I'm on the festive edition of
• 1:43:05
  that. Where myself and the host Dylan
• 1:43:09
  look back at some Doctor Who adventures from festive periods
• 1:43:12
  in the 1960s, it's. Wonderful.
• 1:43:15
  Every time I listen to you on that, you know, I go, I post
• 1:43:17
  him, you know, to my Bravo, listen to how good he is.
• 1:43:21
  He's on mine now. All right, Michael, thank you so
• 1:43:24
  much for your time. It's been a bit of a revelation,
• 1:43:28
  this book. I wasn't too sure what to
• 1:43:30
  expect. And I went on a bit of a journey
• 1:43:32
  of what the hell can I handle and why can't I have this Doctor
• 1:43:37
  Who when it's an extraordinary book, but it's been a wonderful
• 1:43:40
  book to talk about. Yeah, no, I I really enjoyed
• 1:43:44
  this as well. It'd been on my to read list for
• 1:43:47
  a really long time and, you know, I was hopeful that it'd be
• 1:43:51
  good because it was Russell T Davis.
• 1:43:52
  But I don't think I was expecting, you know, the depths
• 1:43:55
  and the complexity and how much it would help me understand so
• 1:43:58
  much of his other writing as well.
• 1:44:00
  No, thanks. Give me the chance to talk about
• 1:44:02
  it.