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Hamster Book Club - Rod Brown's Top and Bottom Ten Doctor Who Books · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

0:00
Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
0:03
My name is Joe Ford and this is going to be the easiest top and
0:08
bottom 10 list I've ever done because it's with somebody I
0:12
know very well these days. My Co host of Strictly Come
0:16
hamster. I mean maybe I should say the
0:18
host of Strictly Come Hamster and I am the Co host the Doctor
0:22
Who Championship podcast. Fantastic you you said it but on
0:26
the wrong podcast. Mr. Rod Brown.
0:30
Hello, Rod. Hey Joe, I'm really looking
0:32
forward to this. Yeah, me too.
0:34
Well, we're sort of like I've sort of explored many corners of
0:39
you, haven't I? You.
0:40
Have but this is probed. This is one corner of you, you
0:44
know, I've not really looked into too much, so I.
0:46
Don't know, you've looked into a few crevices here and there.
0:49
Enough to know that your opinions are as mad on books as
0:52
they are on everything. Else now I've got bone to pick
0:55
with you before we start. I've listened to enough of these
0:58
top and bottom 10s and at the end of everyone you always say
1:02
good choice, good choice. So I'm expecting that today.
1:05
I don't want any of you usual. What the fuck are you putting
1:08
that in for? I want lots of good choices at
1:11
least. Well, the joy of this is is kind
1:13
of like, obviously, you know, I'll have an opinion, but this
1:17
is your list that ain't mine. So every list is a good list
1:20
because that's each person's list.
1:21
And that's the joy of this. Can I ask you a question before
1:24
we even go into your list there, please?
1:27
And that is, what's your Doctor Who book journey?
1:32
Was it a target? A new adventure, The War of the
1:35
Daleks. The very first Doctor Who I was
1:39
would be 1972's Piccolo, The Making of Doctor Who.
1:45
Do you know, I just found that the other day, Rod in a second
1:48
hand bookshop. I didn't pick it up.
1:50
No, it's still on the shelf. There it is.
1:54
It's crowning glory. Obviously my original version
1:57
from 1972. An odd book for a six year old
2:00
to read because it's it's pretty dense.
2:02
It's pretty heavy. It's pretty dry.
2:04
But yeah, that was my first. I don't think I've got any of
2:06
the annuals before that, even though I was obsessed with
2:08
Doctor Who by the age of 3. Can you imagine after reading
2:12
that as six years old, you could have made a Doctor Who story?
2:15
Without a Shadow of a Dale, I had plenty of ideas.
2:19
Most of them were like War of the Daleks, but.
2:21
Tell me you had exercise books as you.
2:23
Know. Oh, God, yeah.
2:24
You had stories. Every story was Doctor Who
2:27
story. I used to draw Daleks at school.
2:29
I got the kids in the playground to play Doctor Who even though
2:31
they had no idea what they were doing.
2:33
Did you keep them? Dirty boys.
2:36
Oh, the exercise books. No, I'd love to have seen them
2:39
now. We could have published them.
2:41
Now you're a famous podcaster. I did get.
2:43
I do remember being encouraged by my teacher to can you write
2:46
something other than Doctor Who plays?
2:49
Because yeah, no bit of a recurrent.
2:51
Thing, yeah. Yeah, pretty much.
2:54
You're sitting there writing something else going.
2:57
I'm so bored like. Food and then from there it was
3:02
obviously straight into target. So it's pretty linear but pretty
3:05
linear journey to be honest. So I got the first 3 targets
3:08
when they were republished in 73 and just never looked back.
3:12
Which. Was the doll.
3:12
It's your first one you read. I can't remember which ones on 7
3:16
so I had the three. They're quite.
3:19
Dense, those books. They are quite dense, but yeah,
3:22
we might we might get to them during the course.
3:24
Of this conversation. I don't want to give out any
3:27
spoilers. Well, that's the interesting
3:30
question. But yeah, so then it was
3:32
straight through. I collected all the tags and I'm
3:34
proud to say I still have every single Target book that I bought
3:38
on the shelf. So yeah, straight through the
3:40
Targets, then straight through to the virgins, the mist thing,
3:43
all the reference books in between.
3:45
Yeah, pretty much the whole the whole log.
3:47
Oh yeah. It was very linear.
3:48
I've not had to scour second hand shops fortunately.
3:51
So are you like Psyche Hot? Do you have every collection of
3:53
every type of Doctor Who book? I, When we moved last year, I
4:00
realised I needed to streamline a bit and my husband kept
4:05
looking at all these, but particularly the targets.
4:07
And do you really need those? It's like yes, yes I do, they're
4:11
coming into my coffin with me. Yes I do.
4:14
But at that stage I did. And again, probably a spoiler
4:17
for later, I did give to charity at that point the new series
4:21
adventures. Yeah, a few people have said
4:24
that like, these aren't really for me, These are exactly for
4:27
younger people and it's not an essential keep.
4:31
Yeah, I'd, I'd read most of them.
4:33
They were just a bit like, well, they said they're not that I'm
4:35
not the target audience. So but everything else I kept.
4:38
Yes, I've got all the reference books.
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I mean, I jumped one or two that were really bad, like the
4:43
illustrated data said, which just why am I keeping this?
4:46
Although I've kept the cookbook. So you know, who knows?
4:50
Did you have the companions by, you know, that that sort of
4:54
picture book that they brought out?
4:55
Yes. Unbelievable.
4:57
That wasn't it, that first page with Nicola Bryan on it.
5:02
Interesting. Yeah, well, that's when you and
5:04
me knew, right? Yeah, we knew.
5:06
We went to me. Something wrong here?
5:09
I just turned the page. I don't like that picture very
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much. Dan Pin was there staring at it
5:14
for an hour, you know. Pages were stuck together by the
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end. He did mention it fondly in his
5:20
in his top and bottom turn. Can I ask you a question about
5:24
assembling your list? Yeah.
5:26
Because I haven't actually asked this to anybody, but I'm really
5:29
curious, like how did you go about?
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Did you literally just write down 10 of each, or did you look
5:35
at the entire ranges and go, right, there's fifty of those,
5:38
There's fifty of those. I'll whittle it down.
5:41
Pretty much the latter, to be honest.
5:43
So yeah, I found it really hard to pick, certainly hard to pick
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the top 10. So my top and bottom are not the
5:51
best. They're not what I would class
5:53
as the best written Doctor Who books.
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They're not the most erudite, the most literal.
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They're just the books that probably meant most to me at a
6:02
certain point. So the ones I've got the fondest
6:04
or the least fond memories of. So yeah, I mean, because we
6:07
could also that we'd probably keep naming the same books if we
6:10
just did what we thought were the best.
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So these are just the ones that for whatever reason just clicked
6:15
or didn't click with me. When it isn't best and worse,
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and when it's favorite or least favorite, it's far more
6:23
interesting. Because that's a much different.
6:25
They're two different things, aren't they?
6:27
Completely complete. We'd end up just picking the
6:29
long Smiles and the Paul Miles every single time and it would
6:32
get very dull. Possibly the Cornells, the Lars
6:35
Parkins, you know, the Kate Orman's.
6:38
We've recently talked about Kate Orman, haven't we?
6:40
You did manage to assemble a bottom 3K almond.
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List. Yeah, it was quite difficult to
6:45
do that, I've got to admit. Mike, I don't think she appears
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on either of these lists. Oh my God, really?
6:50
So a lot of those people you've just mentioned don't appear on
6:53
either of these lists. Can I ask you as well?
6:56
Because I I know this because you've told me before, but other
7:00
people don't know this, that may not have heard you elsewhere.
7:04
I know the Virgin New Adventures mean an awful lot to you.
7:08
They. Do they do?
7:10
Tell me why. OK, so they started coming out
7:14
in mid 1991. So the 90s and particularly the
7:19
first five years, the 90s were just a really dark place for me.
7:23
I'm going to go into huge details because people had
7:27
possibly heard me say this before, but I had very severe
7:30
clinical depression. Very bad.
7:34
It wasn't because she was reading the new adventures, was
7:36
it they? Kept me going.
7:37
They kept me going. And I listened to you saying, Oh
7:40
my God, they're so oblique, they're so dark.
7:43
But maybe it's because I was in a very dark and bleak place.
7:46
They just resonated for me. But that is absolutely fair
7:49
enough. Yeah, they.
7:50
They, they, you know, no joking aside, they kind of saved my
7:53
life to be honest, because they gave me something to look
7:57
towards. I had a date in the diary every
7:59
month when they were coming out and I would go and get them
8:02
pretty much the day or the day after publication.
8:04
And yeah, they were just, they were a cornerstone of my life
8:06
for that period when everything else was just had gone to shit
8:09
and I was quite happy not to be here.
8:11
They were about the only thing that gave me a little bit of
8:14
glimmer of light. So there's a bit of Doctor Who
8:16
coming out and I wanted to know what happens next.
8:18
That's kind of incredible. It really is, isn't it?
8:20
So the new adventures are always going to be really high on my
8:25
list. As you then take a critical eye
8:28
to those books, though, and say whether they're good or bad as a
8:32
piece of writing divorced from your emotional connection.
8:36
Absolutely. Probably now, yes, I can.
8:38
So I've started rereading them. I've started the great journey
8:41
of life again, going through the books.
8:43
So yeah, I'm sure I can. But the love that you've got in
8:46
your heart, that's never going to go, even if you can read it
8:49
and say, I think like the Pit or Deceit S or Parasite.
8:54
Oh my God, what were they doing here?
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Actually, you're never going to scrape that love for those books
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away from me just because they saved my life.
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So, you know, I'm forever grateful to.
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I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for those books.
9:05
And it sounds ridiculous and tried to say that about a range
9:08
of time, but yeah, they they were there for me.
9:12
When I can't remember precisely how old it was, late 20s I I
9:17
mean. I've detailed this as well.
9:18
I had a something of a depressive period.
9:22
You'd probably call it a nervous breakdown.
9:24
And I was reading the 8th Doctor books at the time and the same
9:28
thing I would be at Waterstones the day those two books came
9:32
out. The 8th Doctor in the past
9:33
Doctor book, they'd be like, oh God, that geeks at the door
9:36
again, Jesus Christ. And I'll take them home And I
9:39
would devour them on the day. Like I would read the 8th Doctor
9:42
one first, the puzzle. But I would and and it was
9:46
absolutely something to get because it wasn't working,
9:48
something to Get Me Out of the house.
9:50
I think it sounds ridiculous at all.
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I would save them. I wouldn't read them on the day
9:54
because I wanted that because I had a month till the next one.
9:57
So I kind of wanted to eke them out a little bit just to give me
10:00
that little bit of Doctor Who joy on a regular.
10:04
Basis What's a joy is somehow we managed to assemble a list on
10:08
our book club group of about 50 odd books now, enough to last us
10:12
for years. And it's sort of cross range,
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isn't it? There's some from every range.
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So we really do going to do a lot of examination of different
10:20
authors in different ranges and it'll be really interesting to
10:24
sort of comparisons of the periods they were being written
10:27
because I think the new events just can tend to be very 90s
10:30
because they were. 90s books. Oh my God, the references.
10:34
Yeah, a bit laddish at times. Got they're.
10:37
Not the only ones, as we might come to later.
10:39
On. That's very true, Very true.
10:42
And then of course you're like Arcs were all the rage sort of
10:44
late 90s. So some of the 8 Doctor books
10:46
are doing these scattershot, insane and probably unsuccessful
10:51
Arcs. But you know, but you can
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absolutely see the influences on the books, can't you?
10:55
As. You absolutely.
10:56
They they change and they often they weave in line well, usually
11:00
about 10 years behind the rest of culture.
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What's fascinating, what's fascinating is the targets which
11:06
have weaved from the start to now, and you just watch the
11:10
different versions of those as we go through the decades.
11:14
The. Targets, Yeah, Well, welcome,
11:16
welcome. OK.
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Well, I'm going to ask you to rank the ranges at the end.
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So that's going to be. Really.
11:21
Probably I've already, I've already shot my load on what my
11:24
favourites going to be. I don't.
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Know you more than say the targets, so it's true.
11:27
That is true. Well look, let's get going with
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your top and bottom 10 list. Can I ask you what was your
11:34
favourite list to assemble top? Favorite Tops?
11:39
Oh really? Oh my favorite Sundays are
11:41
always the bottoms. Maybe that says something about
11:44
us. Oh really?
11:47
Oh, we really are getting to know each other today.
11:49
Oh. Well, who's been swiftly on?
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Would you like to start with a top?
11:54
Would you like to start by topping?
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I I'm not going to put my books in any order.
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I can't be like Dampen. Unfortunately my brain doesn't
12:02
quite work that way. I can't say this is number 1 to
12:04
#10. So they are just ten of my
12:07
favourites or 10 of my least favourites.
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But before we start, I always have to do this.
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I always have to squeeze some extra ones in.
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I'm going to name two books that are would have been my number
12:17
one top probably and my number one bottom, but I'm not putting
12:21
them on the list. Because they're in all the other
12:24
people's lists. Well, the first one, my what
12:27
would probably be my favorite will be Bad Therapy by Matt
12:31
Jones. And I'm not talking about that
12:33
today because we're doing that on book club in a couple of.
12:34
Months, and it's turning up on a lot of lists as well.
12:37
I'm really heartened the number of lists that's book starts to
12:41
turn up because I've not seen anyone talk about it.
12:43
I know when you and I started first talking about this and I
12:45
said I want to do bad therapy, and I think at the time you
12:48
said, oh, that's a good choice, No one's done that so far.
12:50
But now you're absolutely right. There's a bit of a resurgence of
12:53
I've loved that book, which is marvellous, but we'll get that.
12:56
But that would probably be my number one and then my least
12:59
favourite. It's coming of the Terra Files
13:02
by Michael Mork. Oh, isn't it ghastly?
13:05
It is the only, and I think this is genuinely true, it's the only
13:09
Doctor Who book I've given up reading partway through.
13:12
I think I've slugged through everything else that's got a
13:15
Doctor Who label. I just could not get into that.
13:17
What's? It all about Rod.
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I have absolutely no idea. And they're probably these big
13:21
named authors that came in like Stephen Baxter and Alistair
13:24
Reynolds. They turned in good books.
13:26
But what are you being asked to do?
13:27
It's such an odd choice to do. You're giving a well
13:30
established, well known author who's got a certain style and
13:33
and following. You're asking them to do a
13:35
Doctor Who book and kind of come to the Doctor Who audience.
13:39
So it's a bit of a weird hybrid and I think the other two
13:42
manager, I don't think Michael Moorcock does.
13:44
I think that book is 99.9% a Moorcock book and probably no
13:48
.1% of Doctor Who bought. What the rest of his Hoover is
13:51
like then? Yeah, I.
13:52
Want to read them? No, I wouldn't bother.
13:55
I really. The sentences were so long and
13:58
full of ridiculously overwritten language.
14:01
I was. It was like reading an essay by
14:03
Elizabeth Sandifer, you know? I was like, you get to the end
14:06
of the sentence and you wondered where you started and what on
14:09
earth what happened in the middle.
14:10
That's. Just I'm the comedy again.
14:13
Nothing about that book worth for me.
14:15
So and an 11. Must be.
14:17
Absolutely. How dare they.
14:19
So yeah, that that is definitely my least favorite book, but it's
14:22
been covered and I didn't actually read it, so I can't
14:24
give justice to it apart from the fact that I think it's a
14:27
pile of dog shit. I.
14:28
Think that's pretty damning? The only book you ever didn't
14:31
finish? I know it was that bad.
14:34
So should we get positive? You know who's doing that one?
14:38
Michael Mills, of course. He's, he's read other more.
14:41
Well, you know, he has read, you know, the Iliads, he has read,
14:45
you know, all these other books he talks about in the book
14:47
clubs. So coming at the Terrafiles will
14:50
be no trouble for him. He'll love it, probably, right?
14:55
Yes. Let's get topping.
14:57
Let's get topping. So I am going to start.
14:59
I've already teased it. I am going to start with Doctor
15:02
Who and the Zabi by Bill. Stratton Oh, nobody's mentioned
15:08
this. So 3 books came out in 1973.
15:12
You've got The Crusaders. Look, I'm a 7 year old.
15:15
It's got history, there's no monsters.
15:18
It's a little bit dull for a 7 year old.
15:20
A very odd choice to start with. Then you've got exciting
15:23
adventure with the Daleks. I don't know why that just
15:26
didn't click with me. I love the Daleks.
15:28
I'd seen the Dalek movies come round in the cinema again, so
15:32
I'd seen them when I was about 5 or 6.
15:34
I think one of them had been on TV in 72.
15:37
I obviously seen Day of the Daleks.
15:39
I love the Daleks. The book just left me cold.
15:42
It just didn't resonate with me. Don't tell me what you think of
15:45
it now because we're covering that so.
15:47
We're covering that next time, Zabe.
15:50
I love Doctor Who and the Zabe. Lots and lots of reasons.
15:54
First of all, I think Stephen B mentioned these when he did his
15:57
top ten. But the internal illustrations,
16:00
they just don't get called out enough.
16:02
And as a kid I say I was 7. Those illustrations, along with
16:06
the book itself, just fired my imagination.
16:08
So it's one of the illustrations.
16:09
I can see it in my mind's eye, as Mary Whitehouse would say of
16:13
the the hair dryer coming down onto Hartnell's head throughout
16:17
my childhood, and I didn't ever quite make the obvious
16:20
connection in my head then as I do now.
16:22
Throughout my childhood, when I had an action man playing Doctor
16:25
Who, I would always get the inside of a toilet roll and
16:29
lower it down onto his head as there's some mice on the mind
16:31
control. I think.
16:32
I thought in my head this is a really original idea.
16:35
I was calling back to that illustration that's in that
16:37
book. So that book now, those
16:39
illustrations were so evolved. It's.
16:41
Lovely pictures of the zombies, isn't there?
16:43
There are no grubs. What they called the ground the
16:47
Optera. The Optera.
16:48
Yeah. The other thing was I had the if
16:52
a show projector slides, they came out in 65, so I think I
16:56
can't remember where I got for somebody to give them to me.
16:58
I know. You weren't around in 60.
17:00
Five, I was not around in 65, but they had kind of very basic
17:03
illustrations of the wet plants as well.
17:05
So some visual link back to the story.
17:08
But apart from that, the book just worked for me.
17:11
I think the language really worked.
17:13
The alienness of the story really worked.
17:15
I could put up with the Doctor being called Doctor Who and the
17:18
Ship because I've seen the movies, so that worked for me.
17:21
How? Was the TV version when you saw
17:23
it eventually? I don't want to spoil it because
17:26
we haven't done it yet. I think it's a masterpiece.
17:32
I love that. I think the book's really clever
17:34
revisit. Revisiting it again for this,
17:37
What Stratton does is he uses loads of similarism metaphors
17:40
that are recognisable to kids. So he talks about Vortis being
17:44
as as quiet and ghostly as a cemetery.
17:47
He says that Zabi's eyes are shining out like large torch
17:50
bulbs and they sound like a cricket.
17:52
The really obvious things that a kid can relate to.
17:54
I think that's really good and creepy.
17:56
Isn't. It it is really creepy and you
18:00
know, you get really good characterizations for the Meltra
18:03
because they're no longer just men in the same suit.
18:06
They come across quite well. He even captures Billyisms.
18:10
I'm not sure whether he was trying to do it, but this, he
18:12
puts little stumbles into the doctor's dialogue.
18:15
So all that this line, he said, we seem to have been imprisoned
18:18
by some sort of force. Something somewhere is pulling
18:22
us, plucking us down. You can imagine that's Billy
18:25
stumbling over shit. I was supposed to say plucking.
18:28
I said pulling. So you even get those Billyisms
18:30
in there. And there's a little bit, I put
18:32
some page references. I'm not going to read too much
18:34
because we've got a wonderful Ken Moss who reads on book club
18:39
and I can't beat him. But think about this.
18:41
So this is the end when Barbara goes to destroy the animus.
18:46
Barbara kept the Destructor pointed at the heart of the
18:48
monstrous shape and breathed a prayer, blinking against the
18:52
light, steadying her hand to keep the Destructor on its
18:55
target. Was it because she was dazzled,
18:57
or was this monstrous creature changing its shape?
19:00
Was she imagining it that his breathing was growing ragged,
19:03
it's steady, pulsing light changing into an irregular
19:07
staccatopartum, first bright, then darkening to a dull glow?
19:12
She was not dreaming. She held the trigger level of
19:15
the Destructor, grimly pressed it's squat muzzle pointing
19:18
unwaveringly towards the searingly bright ellipse, and
19:21
the voice rose to a whining scream.
19:24
I mean, what a great dialogue, a great narrative.
19:27
I don't know what I did to you as seven years old, but it's
19:29
just giving me the willies. I'll tell you.
19:31
Do you know what put that on the list?
19:35
You know, that would be a good one to revisit as a group.
19:38
We might do that a few Times Now.
19:39
I would be awful for revisiting yourself because I think it's
19:43
really sadly overlooked. But yeah, brilliant book.
19:46
What can I say it because you said I have to.
19:49
What a great choice. Great.
19:51
Choice What A. Great choice.
19:52
Yes, I'm going to say it every time now, but in varying ways of
19:55
Saga. No, I won't.
19:57
I won't. Come on, let's jump to my
19:59
favorite list, the bottom 10. The bottom.
20:02
OK, you asked how I assembled the list.
20:05
I thought I've got to put one target onto the bottom list.
20:08
I just thought it was just fair. Did.
20:12
I know when you did it. Not when I picked the one I've
20:15
picked. So I was going to go for Seeds
20:18
of Doom by Philip Hinchcliffe. Oh, the pamphlet you mean?
20:22
The pamphlet, 128 pages of large print.
20:25
Now the reason I was going to go for this is not because Amelia
20:28
Ducat is horribly excised from the book, but as a 10 year old I
20:34
hated this book and that memory of being a 10 year old hating
20:38
this book stuck with me and I went back to the book to check
20:41
whether I was in fact correct. Because I've had this memory for
20:44
48 years, I thought, I've got to check, was I right?
20:47
And I am. So there's a section where the
20:50
Doctor and Sarah are out in the Antarctic wastelands looking for
20:53
the chronoid but stalking across the wasteland.
20:57
And Philip Hinchcliffe says, and I quote a small metal building
21:01
lay half buried in the snow several 100 yards distance.
21:05
Only the Doctors superhuman eyesight could have picked it
21:09
out from such a range. A10.
21:12
I read that and the use of the word superhuman sent me into
21:16
such a rage. Show was collapsed into
21:19
laughter. Because I confess something to
21:21
you. Go on.
21:23
I just see you and Toby Haddock as one because you both keep
21:28
confessing various points in your childhood where you were
21:32
incandescent with rage about creative choices made in Doctor
21:37
Who. And I don't know if I was ever
21:39
that much you know about it when I was younger.
21:42
But I love the fact of you reading this, you know?
21:45
I was absolutely storming at 10 years.
21:48
Superhuman. How?
21:49
Anything. Just that line it's.
21:51
Just a no, just that one word, Superhuman.
21:53
That was enough. That tipped me over the edge.
21:55
He's not. Super.
21:58
Oh yeah, absolutely furious so but I'm not going to put seeds
22:02
have been through. I have a book.
22:04
I have a book that's far worse enough for my.
22:06
Teaser me honestly. We're going to go to 1990, going
22:10
to the very end of the range Mission to Magnus by Philip
22:15
Martin. So of all the missing
22:20
adventures. So what do we get from season
22:21
23? We get Nightmare Fair, we get
22:23
Ultimate Evil, and we get this. This for me, takes the prize.
22:28
That's extra disappointing because we put Mindwarp through
22:31
as our best Colin Baker story from or Strictly.
22:35
Can we start? First of all, which is possibly
22:37
my least favorite sequence in any medium of whoever.
22:42
And it's the the sequence that completely stinks this book for
22:45
me. So we're in a typical season 22
22:48
TARDIS scene. Perry and the Doctor of
22:50
bickering. Surprise, surprise, they're
22:52
interrupted by a mysterious figure on the screen.
22:55
Who is it? The doctor's school?
22:58
Only if that's not bad enough. What does the doctor do?
23:03
He falls to his knees and is described as trembling and
23:07
sweating with fear. He thrusts his fingers into his
23:10
ears in panic and closes his eyes as if he was a frightened
23:13
child. Is this the doctor?
23:16
Is this really our doctor? It's just.
23:19
You don't stop coming after Colin Baker's Doctor.
23:21
I shall get my galvanized stick out all right and give you a
23:24
couple of good blasts. So then you'll be under the
23:26
console as well. I love Colin's Doctor, but how
23:29
dare he be made to like this? I think Martin's guy in mind.
23:32
That scene in The Twin Dilemma when the Doctor falls to his
23:35
knees and hides behind Perry when he seats the gastropods.
23:38
Yeah, he was in a regenerative. Crisis.
23:40
Why would you take that as inspiration?
23:42
Exactly, it's just a school buddy.
23:46
Sale and the Ice Warriors and the Planet of the Women.
23:49
I don't like anything about Sir So.
23:52
Also, the dialogue is pretty terrible.
23:53
So in that same scene with Ansel, the school bully, Perry
23:56
says, I'm not going to do the accent.
23:58
He's a dunce as well as a bully. What a jerk.
24:02
Why didn't you stand up to him, doctor?
24:04
And the doctor says, easy for you, Perry, you're a girl.
24:08
Oh, there's plenty of lies like. That oh, there is, there is.
24:11
I mean, the gender politics here is terrible.
24:14
And we had to flick through the book to find lines like you're
24:16
reacting like any woman with panic and his here we are.
24:20
It's brilliant. And so it lands on the planet of
24:24
the women after I get what is called Magnus.
24:26
Yeah. He's.
24:27
So fucking patronising to Lady Rana, isn't it?
24:32
Yeah, that's it, Yeah. And she, quite amusingly, she
24:35
does run rings around him, you know, because he is such an
24:38
arrogant prick. But.
24:39
Then he disappears. Yeah, he.
24:42
Just was about quarter of the way.
24:43
And why was he even there in the first place?
24:45
We got the Ice Warriors that they're trying to terraform the
24:47
planet it. Would have been nice to see them
24:49
in the 80s wouldn't it? Just to see how they would have
24:51
done them. Yeah, we we were expecting them
24:53
to turn up in Terminus, and they never did.
24:56
But yeah, it's why they're terraforming a planet Sil wants
24:59
to sell woolly jumpers and heaters to.
25:02
It's like, Oh no, please don't. You couldn't make it up, could
25:05
you? The sun's running around in this
25:07
book. The men from Magnus then
25:09
emerged, then often the sorry the neighbouring planet.
25:12
The breeding program. Say yes, you will be excellent
25:14
breeders for us. And that's how the book ends.
25:16
Everyone's going ha ha ha I. Know like better than that SIL
25:20
says the Indies going to set up a new business to sell baby
25:22
goods to them so it's even more hilarious but what's the plot
25:28
about so they want to change the climate of the planet they want
25:30
to change its orbit so the ice warriors set off a load of bombs
25:33
which blows the planet out of its orbit so the doctor sets off
25:37
some more bombs that blows the planet back into its orbit now
25:40
I'm not Jason Thompson but even I can tell you that science is
25:44
bobbins it's just. Probably a good thing we're not
25:48
covering now strictly come hamster, isn't it?
25:49
Otherwise, the tweets may be catastrophic.
25:54
I don't think it's scientifically accurate somehow.
25:56
So it's just, it's cartoony, it's childish, it's.
26:00
Just it's taking inspiration from the Twin Dilemma again,
26:02
isn't it? With the, well, exactly, you
26:04
know. Exactly.
26:05
Yeah. Oh, no.
26:06
It's a terrible, terrible, terrible bull.
26:08
I mean, the nightmare fare was also quite dull, wasn't it?
26:11
And the other one, the ultimate evil, The.
26:13
Ultimate evil. Why would you do the ultimate
26:14
evil where you've got a small dwarf creature like Sill who's a
26:19
mercenary businessman like Sill? And there was supposed to be in
26:23
two adventures back-to-back. It's that season.
26:26
I'm very glad in retrospect, it was called.
26:28
It was heading up to be. Anger Ray.
26:31
That makes the doctor pick up a piece of glass and chase.
26:34
I mean, were they really going? To probably Eric Sabel,
26:37
probably, yeah, 5:10 on a Saturday afternoon.
26:40
It's just bizarre. But we.
26:42
Should say a superb first choice.
26:45
Thank you and I genuinely mean that.
26:47
It's truly ghastly, although I did have a lot of fun with a big
26:50
finish audio. I've got to say, well, come on
26:54
in, let's be positive again. OK so I am I'm hesitant on this
27:00
one, but I'm going to put through 1 of the Time Worm books
27:04
right from the beginning of the new adventures.
27:08
I don't know if you want to answer to guess which one I'm
27:09
going to put through as a type. I'm certainly hoping it isn't
27:12
Genesis or Apocalypse. You would be wrong in that I am
27:18
going to put through Genesis by John Pale.
27:22
In your top ten list. In my top ten list.
27:25
I must hear this. Go on.
27:28
I am not going to pretend this is the best book ever written,
27:30
or even the best Doctor Who book ever.
27:35
I've heard the number of times that Mister Peel has cropped up
27:38
on people's bottom lists. But this book is responsible.
27:44
It's being asked to carve out a new approach to Doctor Who and I
27:48
think it's got to get you dos for doing what it's doing.
27:51
And I think there are a number of reasons or a number of things
27:54
that it does that makes it a success for me.
27:58
So the first one is it's not a continuity fest.
28:02
It doesn't take the obvious route of going down.
28:04
Let's bring in some old monsters, old traditions.
28:07
It's not War of the Daleks. Imagine we'd started with War of
28:09
the Daleks. I think it would have sunk the
28:11
rings. They started with the 8 doctors
28:13
that had a little bit of continuity in.
28:14
It yeah, we'll come back to that.
28:16
This is brave enough to do something new.
28:19
So yes, there is continuity in here.
28:20
We get the 3rd Doctor, the 4th Doctor in flashes and glimpses,
28:24
but ostensibly this is an original story, so kudos to
28:28
doing that. Secondly, it starts to carve out
28:30
a new continuity that's unique to the books.
28:32
So I think that's a definite plus.
28:35
It's telling a story on a scale and scope that you couldn't have
28:38
done on TV. So, you know, we're flitting
28:40
around ancient Mesopotamia across the plains and the courts
28:43
and the lands couldn't have achieved that on TV.
28:46
Kudos for that. The Doctor and Ace are totally
28:49
recognizable here as the TV counterparts.
28:51
So again, big tick. He is starting to push the
28:54
parameters of what they can do. But I know we're now knickers in
28:58
season 26. Well, unfortunately, oh, we a
29:00
little bit when she's climbing down that ladder in or is that
29:03
the stunt double? But oh.
29:05
Maybe it is ace though. It is Ace, yeah, So we can
29:08
forgive that. And he creates his new
29:09
characters. I actually quite like Gillamash
29:11
and his Neanderthal companion, like the Time Worms.
29:14
She's a typical Doctor Who can't fill an S But he is creating new
29:18
characters again, so I think he's got a lot going for it.
29:22
There are, of course, some missteps, and I would be foolish
29:25
to avoid them. The prostitution and the nudity,
29:28
maybe a little bit odd for the first part, but then do you know
29:33
what the prostitution is kind of relevant in that That was a
29:38
thing in the time that this book is set.
29:41
So it's not entirely gratuitous, even though it is a little bit
29:44
gratuitous, but I can forgive it for that.
29:46
The Doctor Who raises some of his memories, which I think is a
29:50
little bit, since obviously in the out Doctor, he gets rid of
29:52
his memory altogether. And they're trying to wipe the
29:55
slate clean. And they're trying to do a
29:56
little bit of that here by him removing some of his memories.
30:00
But it doesn't really work. And look, the plot is not going
30:03
to burn the house down, is it? It's a lot of running round, but
30:07
I think because of all the new things it's doing and creating
30:11
this new universe, it's given us hope for the future.
30:13
Doctor Who's been off TV for two years, they're showing us there
30:17
is a new way forward. We've got the VHS's, they're
30:20
looking back. This is looking forward.
30:22
I give it a pass and I think good on you John Peel for
30:25
starting a new trend. You know, there's a very funny
30:28
moment in the Gallifrey Chronicles by Lars Parkin where
30:32
he does a callback to Genesis where because John Peel gets a
30:36
continuity moment wrong, doesn't he, where he remembers Ace in
30:39
Paradise Towers and in Gallifrey Chronicles is sort of talking
30:44
about Doctor Who as a whole. And he goes, who cares if Ace
30:46
was in Paradise Towers or male, it don't matter.
30:49
It's just a story, you know, and they're all real.
30:53
Are you saying to me that's your favorite of those four?
30:59
Again, it comes back to this, what are we saying?
31:00
Is it the best, is the favorite? I want to put it through because
31:04
I think John Peel gets knocked. I'm probably quite rightly so,
31:07
for a lot of decisions he makes later on and a lot of the later
31:10
books. But being there at the time,
31:13
putting it into context because it meant this is this is doing
31:18
something different. I picked that up and didn't
31:19
think, oh, it's just a cardboard cut out of what we've seen
31:22
before. It felt exciting and brave and
31:24
new to me. So yeah, I'm putting it through
31:26
for those reasons. Well, I won't say a good choice.
31:29
I'll say a fascinating choice this time round.
31:33
And you'll probably make a similar comment about the next
31:36
one on my bottom list. Oh, brilliant.
31:38
Let's go. We've just done the 1st.
31:40
I'm going for another first and I don't care.
31:43
I'm going for the sacred cow. Terrance Dicks.
31:46
It's got to be the 8 doctors, doesn't it?
31:48
Oh, isn't it wonderful? Isn't it terrible?
31:54
Now again, I'm putting this. I'm taking this out rather than
31:58
putting this through. Sorry.
31:59
It's the strictly language coming back.
32:01
This is on my bottom list, and again, it's mostly because of
32:04
context. I'd loved, as we'd already
32:06
touched upon, the new Adventures Missing adventures.
32:09
They were there for me when life was bleak.
32:11
I cherished them. I love them despite their many
32:13
flaws. Then Virgin loses his license in
32:16
96, but we're told it's OK. BBC are coming along, They've
32:19
got these new books and it's BBC, they can't go wrong, can
32:22
they? You.
32:22
Still see the names in the schedule.
32:24
Kate Orman. OK.
32:26
Lawrence Miles. All right.
32:27
Good. John Peel.
32:28
Yeah. I'm getting excited, but by now
32:30
I am used to barely intense, challenging, dark, provocative
32:35
sometimes. Yeah, Grimace held books, but
32:37
what do I get? I get the 8 fucking doctors.
32:40
And it's paired with the Devil Goblins from Neptune, which also
32:44
deserves billing. Just the title alone, but you're
32:47
right, it's Terrence Dix. Let's give it.
32:49
It's it's due. He's done Exodus, hasn't he?
32:51
He's done Blood Harvest. He did Shakedown, thoroughly
32:53
enjoyed all of them. So let's give it a go.
32:57
Sit down to read it. What did I say about Mission to
33:01
Magnus? Childish, cartoony, All of those
33:04
apply to this boy. It's the biggest example of fan
33:07
wankery I think I've ever come across.
33:09
We go back to unearthly child, war games, sea devils, state of
33:13
decay 5, doctors trial. I don't know how you like this
33:17
jokes. To me this is like Splinter
33:19
Clara going off into the Doctor's timeline.
33:21
That's exactly what the Gans Doctor is doing here.
33:23
He's going off and revisiting all these events and just
33:26
tweaking them. I know you found lots of
33:29
positives when you did this on the book club, but I just can't
33:32
bring myself to reread this. It's just terrible.
33:35
And it's not, it's not just about the context.
33:37
It's not just about the disappointment coming after
33:40
Virgin. This is also devoid of plot.
33:43
It's just set pieces. And the characters, most of the,
33:46
I mean a massive, long list of characters in this book, they're
33:49
all lifted from the TV. Apart from Sam Jones, our
33:53
saviour here, she comes to save us all.
33:57
How is she described? She's unusually pretty cool.
34:01
What the fuck does that mean, Terence?
34:05
I think Terence might be showing his agents.
34:06
He's so down with the kids, Terrance, I'll tell you what.
34:10
And we got lucky. We could have ended up with Baz
34:12
the drug dealer. All right.
34:14
I think I'd rather have had Baz. We were.
34:16
Interested. We did end up with Sam the
34:18
druggie, didn't we? Oh yeah?
34:19
Well, we did. Fair enough.
34:20
Yeah, once she's rewritten and the Doctor says the end of the
34:23
book, he said. I've had a lot of human
34:26
companions over the years, but never 1.
34:28
Like you, I think they must be breeding a new kind of human
34:31
female. Is he suddenly a Sontarum?
34:36
He is right though, she has been sculpted and put in his lap
34:39
hasn't. She not at that point, she
34:40
hasn't been. Foreshadowing for the twists to
34:43
come. That they hadn't even thought of
34:45
at this stage, Yeah. Like, like, I get why people
34:48
don't like the eight doctors. It is thoroughly indulgent.
34:51
It is utterly humiliating in places.
34:55
It's ridiculous. It's absolutely how you
34:57
shouldn't start a range of books.
34:59
Correct. I just understand that.
35:01
Terence is having the best time writing it in his life, and
35:04
Terence's having fun. I'm there for it.
35:06
Who's he aiming at? This he's obviously aiming at.
35:08
Everyone, he's aiming it at the fans and the people that have
35:12
never seen Doctor Who before, so the fans couldn't enjoy the trip
35:15
back to the past and the people that I don't know, that's maybe
35:18
the problem is he is aiming at everyone and so he's hitting no.
35:23
One, so I'm exactly, I was going to read out the passage because
35:26
I thought, let's go back to one of these revisits.
35:28
So I went back to the State of Decay one just as an example, I
35:31
thought I'm going to read out a paragraph to show how he re
35:34
tells you the story. It went on for three pages
35:38
telling you exactly what happened in State of Decay.
35:42
This is an original novel. This isn't.
35:44
The beast is the. Doctor Who program guide.
35:46
Andy Frank Kamala now, because he does that for 280 pages.
35:50
That's probably why I've avoided those.
35:53
So I'm sorry. Has to go.
35:55
It's a fair choice and I think more people than not would have
35:59
that on their bottom 10 list. I just prefer to be a lover than
36:03
a hater, all right? Yeah, but you love all the
36:06
bottoms, so there we go. Yeah, well, yes, well, let's,
36:12
let's be kind. Let's be kind and positive.
36:14
If any authors are listening, because I know some of them do
36:16
listen to these episodes, You know someone's going to sort of
36:19
puff out their chest now as they appear 8th on your top ten list.
36:23
They do. So we're coming for The Star
36:25
Beast by Pat Mills and John Waking Up, illustrated by Dave
36:29
Gibbons. I thought you could sort of say
36:30
by Gary Russell then for a second, no.
36:32
No, no, the original, the original comic strip collected
36:35
now into book form, so I think it counts.
36:38
So this was the third of the Doctor Who monthly comic strip.
36:41
So we'd had Iron Legion Star with them, we'd had City of
36:43
Damned, we were about to get Dogs of Doom.
36:46
So those first four stories, which are by this creative team
36:50
I think are fucking magical. So this one, So Star Beast comes
36:54
out in January 1980. Horns of Nine Months on TVI
36:59
loved these when they came out, so obviously I'm watching Doctor
37:03
Who on TV. I'm loving that.
37:04
By now I'm recording Doctor Who off the TV, so I've got it in
37:07
audio format too. I've got the books, so I've got
37:10
another format and another medium.
37:12
And now here's another one to add to that list.
37:15
I've got comic strips now. Yeah.
37:17
I had read a lot of Doctor Who comic strips over the years.
37:20
My sister had got, was it TV Countdown wasn't it?
37:24
With the Jerry Haylock poetry strips, which were magnificent.
37:28
Since then we've had TV comic, which is very it's a miss.
37:31
Sometimes it just felt like The Avengers with Tom Baker's face
37:35
and I don't know who they're supposed to be as a companion
37:37
drawn over the top of Steed and Peele.
37:40
So they were rather hit and miss.
37:42
This feels like full blooded Doctor Who in comic strip.
37:45
The other reason I really loved this at the time was I loved
37:49
comics as a kid, particularly British comics.
37:52
So by 1979 and 80 when this is coming out, I was a couple of
37:56
years into reading 2000 AD. I've got it right from SU-1.
37:59
I absolutely love that. And this is used in the same
38:01
creative team, same writers did, Judge Dredd, Dave Gibbons,
38:05
who've done Dundair, Harlem Heroes, Robusters.
38:08
So this team are now bringing all that energy and imagination
38:12
and spark and creativity to Doctor Who.
38:14
And it feels Doctor Who, but it also feels 2000 AD.
38:18
So I've got a foot in both camps.
38:19
And so for that reason, I love it alone.
38:21
These 4, particularly star beast, I think is probably the
38:25
most successful because we're in a recognizable earth setting.
38:28
So it could have been made on TV.
38:31
Oh, I wonder if it ever will be. We had the Yeti.
38:34
It kind of like Yeti on the loo in Tooting back kind of idea.
38:37
You know, the threat is coming to our world.
38:40
We finally got canine in the strip.
38:42
Hurrah. That's one few sigh hearts.
38:44
We introduced Sharon. She's a breath of fresh air to
38:47
me. She's even a person of colour.
38:49
Who knew in Doctor? Who but I was dangerous?
38:52
70s What's? Going on, what were they
38:54
thinking? I really loved Sharon and Sharon
38:57
and canine and Tom. What a fantastic trio.
39:00
Yeah, I I don't remember too much about the script, the
39:03
strip, but I do remember the bit where she goes, I hate you.
39:07
You're a bad meep. Doesn't she at one point point
39:10
straight out of the out of the paddle?
39:12
It's brilliant. I think the twist still works
39:15
really well of the the meaps not all.
39:17
Still works really well. Do you know what?
39:19
It still does. So when we obviously knew it was
39:21
coming to TVI didn't tell my husband anything about the
39:24
story. Kept saying I said, oh, they've
39:26
done that before in comic strip, but I think that possibly went
39:29
over his head. No, we didn't actually did
39:31
remember that, but I didn't tell anything about it.
39:33
And we sat down to watch the TV show and I have a slight, I
39:37
won't say unwritten rule because it's probably a written rule
39:40
somewhere. There is no talking when Doctor
39:42
Who is on TV A. Punishment.
39:45
None. I think we'll keep that.
39:47
I'll tell you that's offline. None for a week.
39:52
But we got to the twist and the meep shows evil.
39:54
And Chase was genuinely shocked and he sit around to me and
39:57
said, Oh my God, did you know that?
39:58
And I was like, yeah, kind of did, yeah, for like 40 years
40:02
I've known that. But so that it proves the twist
40:04
still. Works and it's hugely
40:05
influential that big character, absolutely big finish audios,
40:09
you know, like I mean, it's on my wall right now.
40:13
I can see like on every fucking zoom call it's on my shoulder
40:17
like an evil Sprite. You know what I want to jump out
40:20
palace. Look at you there left.
40:23
But you know what? The artwork in this is
40:25
spectacular is that a full page opening frame of the spaceship
40:29
crashing to earth and it's you know, it's above a row of
40:31
ordinary terrace houses. You can hear Angela Rippon's
40:34
voice doing the voice over and then have.
40:38
They even got her in for the picture.
40:41
Of course they do. There's a big finish and there's
40:44
one page later on which is again a full page opening from
40:47
whichever episode 4 or five I would have it framed on my wall.
40:51
So you got the Doctor and Sharon rushing to catch a bus with the
40:55
Wraith Warriors coming to attack them.
40:57
You've got the Meep turned away from the Doctor and Sharon
41:00
facing the warriors so you can see that he's evil, firing his
41:03
gun at them and the Doctor's scarves flailing and they're
41:05
jumping on a bus. I bloody brilliant.
41:08
So yeah, I absolutely adore this.
41:10
I'm glad I've got it in collected form.
41:12
I love it when people put in the comics or the graphic novels,
41:16
you know, like, because it's something I've explored, but
41:18
I've sort of only dipped my toes in.
41:21
So maybe there's some more for the list.
41:23
Yeah, right. Fine.
41:25
If we've puffed up Pat Mills Chest, then let's send a writer
41:30
into therapy, shall we? He might be listening.
41:33
OK, go on. It's Gary Russell.
41:36
He may be listening, but I mean, I've made no, I've made no
41:40
secret. I think he's a a fine producer,
41:42
a fine director. I am not a massive fan of his
41:45
writing and that's OK. I like some of his books.
41:48
I even considered putting Scales of Injustice into my top ten.
41:51
I think it's a really good book and I like things like
41:53
Instruments of Darkness with Evelyn.
41:55
I think there's he's done some really good books I am having to
41:58
put in though Divided Loyalties so he does have an interesting
42:04
take on the Celestial toy maker. He meets 5th Doctor, Aunt Egan
42:08
and Miss Aunt Adrick. There's some very odd personal
42:11
jibes Adrick in this when he keeps on about how unpopular he
42:14
is in his sweaty armpits. I'm not sure whether that's
42:17
personally having a go at Matthew Walter so.
42:19
He's got like pyjamas or something.
42:21
He's. Got It's some very odd comments.
42:23
Yeah, but my biggest problem with this book is the huge
42:28
detour into the stories of a young Doctor Who.
42:32
So we've got Beverly Hills 9121 O, or probably Gallifrey Hills
42:37
9121 O. So who have we got here in their
42:41
young form? We've got the young Doctor Who
42:43
who's presumably a young heart and all now.
42:46
I love the gorgeous heart for playing him, obviously.
42:49
Obviously, yeah, I like The Young Doctor.
42:52
And listen, I'm not sure if that episode of Strictly has come out
42:55
yet, but I think that works well.
42:57
I don't want to see any more than that.
42:59
That is enough for me, a glimpse.
43:00
Don't see the face? Fine.
43:02
I do not want to get the story of it's like some sort of
43:05
hideous Enid Blyton book about youth.
43:09
So who have we got with the doctor?
43:10
We've got Koshai, who's the young master, got Magnus, who's
43:15
the young war chief. We've got Ushas, who's a young
43:18
Rani Mortimus, who's a young meddling monk.
43:22
Can you see where we're going with this?
43:24
We've got young as male. Oh, funnily enough's as male.
43:27
We've got Tracks. We've got Van SEL who then pops
43:30
up over Big Finish. We've got Gel Packs.
43:32
I didn't know who gel packs was. Apparently he's the Time Lord at
43:35
the beginning of Genesis. The Daleks.
43:37
We've got Runce Ball from Deadly Assassin, we've got Badger from
43:40
Longborough, we've got Deluxe who comes up in Gallifrey
43:43
series, we've got Barusa. And then we've got a load of
43:46
other teenage Time Lords. Why?
43:49
We have 60 pages spent with these hideous cringe worthy
43:54
characters doing that. I could say sub Mallory Towers
43:57
investigation and there's all these hideous shoehorned little
44:02
jokes like Koshai mentions the president's cat and then says,
44:06
oh, Usher's little experiment pay to that.
44:10
Oh, are you making reference to Mark of the Ronnie by any
44:12
chance? Or doctor says to Drax, don't
44:15
call me Theta Theta or Theta Sigma or anything else.
44:19
I mean it's so I talked about fan wanker in the 8 doctors but
44:23
this this just takes there. It needs to be a whole new
44:26
categorization of famine Kree for this.
44:30
I've always said about this, there's two types of Doctor Who
44:32
author. There's the Doctor Who author
44:34
that will assemble a book partly from Doctor Who continuity or
44:41
Doctor Who building blocks and then do something utterly
44:44
original with it, and those that will only assemble Doctor Who
44:48
books from Doctor Who contingency.
44:50
This is a particularly interminable example of that,
44:54
isn't it? It's just, I just, it was the
44:58
chapter I never thought we would say, and I never want to say,
45:01
and I never want to see it again.
45:03
It's just such a bizarre decision to have this extended
45:07
sequence. And the whole point of it is
45:09
just to show that someone from the Doctor's youth was taken off
45:12
by the Celestial toy Mega. They could have done that in one
45:15
line of throwaway dialogue. Why do we need 60-70 pages of
45:19
it? I caught, I caught Mortimus
45:22
wanking behind the bike sheds over pictures of the Ronnie.
45:26
Oh my God, written. I mean, no, that didn't happen
45:28
in the book. I will just probably, but I
45:31
think there was some sort of idea of rivalry between two of
45:35
these male Renegades and the Ronnie.
45:37
It's really odd that we get some of them by name, like as male
45:40
and Drax, and then we get all these other odd names that you
45:43
begin to forget. Well, who's Mortimus or the
45:45
medley? Magnus.
45:46
I kept thinking, oh, Magnus is the master.
45:48
No, Magnus is the wall Chief Koscheiser.
45:51
It's just why. Doctor, right?
45:54
He didn't hang out with a load of blokes.
45:56
That is. Why?
45:57
He's a whole group of girls around him at the Gallifrey
45:59
Academy. Exactly.
46:01
But he's part of this elite group called the Decker because
46:04
there's ten of them. It's like, why?
46:06
It's just idiots. This book even includes Gaylord
46:09
Lefevre, who's in the celestial toy market.
46:13
Doctor Who weekly backup strip. The greatest gamble.
46:17
I mean, if that isn't, as you said, continuity gone fucking
46:20
crazy, then I don't know what is.
46:23
Thank you not to take the Mickey out of Gaylord, please.
46:25
All right. He's had a lot.
46:26
Of a bit of Gaylord. Looking due to that name.
46:29
He's been in therapy ever since. So I'm sorry, Gary, but for that
46:34
reason, that book, I can't even talk about the Celestial
46:37
Toymaker plot because it it just pales into instigations.
46:41
Said the beats. I remember the Adrix Bo and the
46:44
9021 O sequence. It is terrible.
46:48
Absolutely. What a great choice.
46:50
Thank you. Last week out.
46:53
There. OK, well let's let's be nice
46:56
again. So we'll reach down, sorry, from
46:58
the bookshelf that's going to fill your heart with Glee.
47:01
It is Theatre of War by Justin Richards.
47:05
I love this book. So this is Justin Richards.
47:08
I'd forgotten this. This was actually his first
47:10
book. Obviously he becomes really
47:11
important later on. He's range consultant I think
47:14
for BBC Worldwide. This is his first novel.
47:17
Who would know? Because it is such a bold,
47:19
confident, well written book. Start with this real Benny feel
47:24
to it. And again, that's looking back
47:25
now. That's looking back in hindsight
47:27
because it's largely set in an archaeological dig, but it's
47:30
like those early new adventures like Night Shy Shade, where they
47:34
kind of forget about the, you know, the cyberpunk stuff and
47:38
the complicated tech and the 90s references, and they just tell a
47:41
fucking good story. And this is one of them.
47:44
So we're free from angst. We've got the Doctor, Benny and
47:47
Ace when they're absolutely at the height of their powers.
47:50
This book is also out by the fact that I loved English
47:53
literature and I love the theatre, I love Hamlet, I love
47:56
Shakespeare. So this is ticking all my boxes
47:59
because it's set around the world of the theatre.
48:02
The scene early on where the Doctor and Ace behind him,
48:05
behind the arrows, where Polonius is, where he's about to
48:07
get stabbed was just absolutely tickling my Shakespeare balls
48:11
because it just, it was hitting all my sweet spots.
48:14
Love it. And every chapter starts with an
48:16
extract from documents pertaining to theatre.
48:19
Yes, they're all fictional Titans, this novel.
48:21
Love that. It's also surprisingly got a lot
48:24
in common with Stephen Moffatt. So they're chased by statues
48:27
which seemed to come to life. OK, They're animated by mud.
48:30
In that case, there's loads and loads of questions and all the
48:34
answers are hidden in plain sight that get revealed to us
48:37
one at a time. This is a trap within a trap
48:39
within a trap within a trap. So again, very kind of that
48:43
Steven Moffett Jigsaw way of storytelling.
48:46
This all pays off. I'm not saying that every single
48:49
Steven Moffett story pays off. This one he does.
48:54
But above all of that, and I love all those reasons, and it
48:57
would go through probably for those reasons alone.
49:00
But there is one crowning glory for this book, and that would
49:03
get introduced to Irving Braxley, ET al, who I think
49:07
along with he's one of the best characters this era, but he just
49:11
rarely gets talked about. So we talk about.
49:13
We really features. That's the trouble.
49:15
Yeah, and, and we know him mostly, don't we, from Big
49:17
Finish, where Miles Richardson plays him and what an amazing
49:20
performance he gives. But I think Brexitel is such an
49:24
interesting character and he's so he hits the ground running in
49:27
this book. He's a spectator, you know,
49:30
right from the start we see most of his interactions are with
49:34
Benny. So starting that relationship
49:36
straight away that again, in hindsight, this is really sowing
49:39
the seeds. I don't know how much they've
49:40
planned, but I love. I think, I think they just look
49:43
back on where that really worked.
49:45
Let's come. By God it does.
49:47
We know that he knows the Doctor, but we're not quite sure
49:50
how. That starts a long debate about
49:52
their relationship. But then at the very end we find
49:55
out that actually it's Brax who's been out manipulating the
49:57
Doctor, who's manipulating events.
50:00
So again, it's just such. A such a great rug for it isn't.
50:04
I was like someone has got to out do this fucking master
50:08
manipulator at some point and then when it came I was like
50:11
yes. And it's not.
50:12
It's not the Master, it's not some grand scheme.
50:15
It's this Arch of Bane. Smooth, super intelligent,
50:20
highly charismatic character. Director Irving Brexit.
50:24
Also, thank God Irving was brought to the books.
50:27
I think people forget because he's not one of the big hitters,
50:32
just what a brilliant plotter of books Justin Richards is.
50:37
Oh great. And I could name a couple
50:39
Theatre Wars, definitely one. The Medusa Effect from the
50:42
Bernese range is a beautifully plotted book.
50:45
Sometime Never from the 8th Doctor range is a really well
50:48
plotted book at his peak. It's the way he assembles a
50:53
narrative. It is.
50:55
It's like clockwork. It's useful.
50:57
There's only one complaint I'd make about that book.
50:59
Oh, girlfriend. Just one.
51:01
And I've just, yeah, an amazing choice is every time I pick it
51:07
up, I've got to look at Sophie Aldridge's mucky fingers coming
51:10
at me out of the cover. They're rather sticky, aren't
51:13
they? It's a very, yeah, very dirty
51:15
cover is. That supposed to be?
51:17
Well, if it's supposed to be, but it definitely looks more
51:20
like something a little bit. Some of those new adventurous
51:23
covers, right? I think some of them are pieces
51:25
of art. They're absolutely beautiful.
51:28
And others, no future, are so hideous.
51:34
And there is no consistency. It veers from 1:00 to another,
51:37
from book to book. But you know why I'd use?
51:40
I'd love that cover. I think Theatre of War is such a
51:43
bold, strong cover. I take your point about future
51:47
and large. I knew no future is terrible.
51:50
Denise Summerfield. Yeah, no.
51:52
Awful, awful. A theatre of war.
51:54
Love, love, love never get to. Talk.
51:57
No, not enough, right? Let's add it to the list.
52:00
We're gonna have a big list by the end of this episode.
52:01
That go on the list too. OK, then let's let's go back to
52:07
my favourites. OK, let me tell you a story,
52:10
Joe. So as a kid I bought all my
52:14
Doctor Who books from WH Smith's.
52:16
But in 1975 we went to a local Menzies store and I found the
52:22
Doctor Who Monster book, which I still have here.
52:24
My original there it is Doctor Who Monster.
52:30
Book pull out poster inside it. Still hasn't got the poster.
52:33
I did put it on my wall as a kid, but it was just basically
52:37
look at my glorious picture. Oh, Sarah Jane and Azaxia from
52:41
Monster Pelodon. So it's lots of very picture, a
52:45
lot of pictures of target covers as well.
52:48
Sensorites and macanoids. Who doesn't want all of that?
52:50
It's a What a wonderful book in 1975, when there was no kind of
52:53
pictorial reference big. Finish could just pick that up
52:56
you know and do theirs. They have they do they just open
52:58
a page at random the blindfolded yes.
53:02
Why have we not thought of this before?
53:05
So that came out in 1975. I found that in men's is not in
53:08
Smith's in men's is So I realized even that young age
53:12
I've got to start going to men's is regular.
53:14
OK, it's a bus strip away. I've got to start going there as
53:17
well as Smith's, just to double check.
53:19
So I do start making regular trips there as well.
53:22
In 1977, I got the 2nd Doctor Who Monster book, which is
53:26
equally glorious, I know to think about putting both those
53:30
on my top ten. But 1976, midway between the
53:34
two, I go to men's's. I find a book and it's got the
53:37
same format and the same style as the Doctor Who Monster book
53:41
and I'm absolutely excited as hell.
53:43
It's got Tom Baker's face on the front.
53:46
It's Doctor Who. Oh my God, I'm going to pick it
53:49
up. It's the Doctor Who dinosaur
53:51
book. Oh.
53:51
I've never heard of it, what's that now?
53:53
Usually I would linger, oh I wouldn't linger over a book.
53:57
So I'm not like naughty James Lark who stood reading books in
54:02
disgraceful behaviour. You've had no disgraceful,
54:06
disgraceful James Lark. Go and put yourself on the
54:08
naughty stat. But because on this one occasion
54:12
I knew Dinosaur Invasion was with John Purway and I'm
54:15
thinking, hang on, Tom Baker's face is smiling out at me.
54:18
What is this SWA? Flick through it.
54:21
It's an educational book. It's telling you all about
54:24
dinosaurs and the different breeds of dinosaurs.
54:26
Was there Daleks in it? And dinosaurs.
54:29
No, and there aren't any spacious there's no ball.
54:32
I did put it back on the shelf. But you know what?
54:35
At age what, 8 or 9, my world is shuttered.
54:37
I've suddenly realised these marketing people, they're
54:40
complete bastards. It's.
54:42
Just another moment where you were in candescent.
54:44
With I was in candescent with rancher.
54:46
How dare they take doctor and exploiter to try to sell me
54:50
this, but I didn't buy it. But yeah, how?
54:53
Old was you again? Eight or nine at the stage.
54:56
How savvy of you to beat the marketers of that age.
54:59
They were not going to get their hands on my monthly.
55:02
But you know what? Then in 1977, there are five
55:06
more of them. Go on.
55:08
Doctor Who discovers early man, Doctor Who discovers prehistoric
55:12
monsters, Doctor Who discovers space, Doctor Who discovers
55:16
stranger mysterious creatures, and Doctor Who discovers the
55:20
conquerors. Stranger mysterious creature
55:23
sounds quite good. Yeah, but then that's just it's
55:26
all education. Is it?
55:27
Is it myths and legends or? I can't remember Joe.
55:30
I looked at them. Have you read them since?
55:33
No, every time I pick these books up, I got a boner.
55:36
Thank you. It's a new Doctor Who book.
55:38
And every time it's like, fucking hell, they're doing that
55:40
again. It's another RIP off title.
55:42
He was. Getting boners at 7 years old a.
55:46
Metaphorical 1. So.
55:50
So you're saying you've held off for all these decades later I
55:53
held, you still haven't read them?
55:55
I have not. I can't.
55:56
It's the only book we're talking about, or series of books that I
55:59
cannot flush them from the camera.
56:00
I didn't buy any of. Them and you still haven't got
56:03
them. No.
56:04
Why should I? Come into a Christmas tree near
56:06
you. And do you know what they
56:10
planned? Only because I researched for
56:11
this. They planned to make 24 of these
56:14
books. They had to stop because sales
56:16
was so poor. Yeah, they.
56:17
Would have to get a bit desperate with some of the
56:18
subject maths I. Wouldn't.
56:19
Yeah, well, the next one was Doctor Who in the Pirates, which
56:21
I think a fan group brought out a couple of years ago.
56:24
I'm not the discovered. Bugs in the garden?
56:30
What? Horrible.
56:31
So yeah. Who does the washing?
56:36
Doctor Who does DIY? Yeah.
56:37
Oh. Boy, I can't believe I'm going
56:39
to go here. Doctor Who explains sex
56:41
education. OK, so I don't want to know
56:44
that. Let's move swiftly on.
56:46
What's those creatures called from Time Lash again?
56:48
The bit phallic bad. The bundle.
56:50
Not this bad. The bundles, the little state
56:52
puppets, the Moorox. You've got this Morlocks, right?
56:57
And then you put this sort of Cara bag.
57:00
Oh no, I can't. Let's stop there.
57:04
It's like we're teaching down what the top and bottom is all
57:06
over again. Oh Jesus Christ, please take us
57:09
back to your top list immediately and get us out of
57:11
this hole. Let's go up a garden.
57:13
Let's go back to the top list. OK, this is probably going to be
57:18
my most obvious choice, but I would not being be I would not
57:22
be being honest to myself if I didn't include Damaged Goods by
57:26
Russell T Davis. So comes out in October 1996.
57:32
So I kind of knew Russell's name by now because he'd written Dark
57:36
Season and Century Falls. And even though they were kids
57:39
TV, all the kind of magazines at the time, SFX TV Zone, were plug
57:43
in this saying this is great TV. So I had watched them and
57:46
thoroughly enjoyed them. And you could definitely tell
57:49
that Russell T Davis, whoever this person was, was a big fan
57:52
of Doctor Who because they're really heavily Doctor Who
57:54
influenced. So I came to Damaged Goods.
57:57
I'll be honest with expectations because I've read interviews
58:00
with them and I was not disappointed.
58:03
One, I owe to buy this book. It just felt like such a big
58:07
step up from what's gone before in terms of it felt addled to
58:10
mature, but not just in its content, although we'll get
58:13
there, but also in his prose and storytelling.
58:16
And I think reading it now, there are so many parallels with
58:20
what Russell's Doctor Who has become.
58:22
Most obvious. Obvious is the domesticity.
58:24
But you also got this cast of brilliantly drawn, well
58:27
developed characters you come to care about really quickly.
58:30
Does this sound familiar from talking about Russell strictly?
58:34
So it's largely set in the quadrant, which is a council
58:37
estate very much like the Powell estate that we get later on.
58:40
You've got to Taylor family at the heart of this.
58:43
You've got two brothers who are sons of Winnie Tyler.
58:46
She keeps one of the boys Gabriel.
58:48
She sells the other boy to Mrs. Jericho.
58:50
So you've got themes of abandonment and adoption like
58:53
Ruby Sunday. You've got strong female
58:56
characters who are fully 3 dimensional.
58:58
So Eva Jericho, who's kind of ostensibly the villain of the
59:01
piece, you really feel empathy for her.
59:03
She's had this unborn child that's palsified stuck to her
59:06
body. I know, but you feel so she's
59:08
been driven mad by her psychic son animating this dead,
59:13
falsified child. It's quite horrific.
59:16
But yeah, you you can't hate her.
59:18
Hate her particularly. She wants to sell some back
59:21
because he's damaged goods. And it's the title of the.
59:24
I mean she murders her husband by putting a lot of rat poison
59:27
in his. Dinner.
59:27
Oh, she's she's not the nicest person.
59:30
She's not going to get win any awards for mother or wife of the
59:32
year. It just made me think though,
59:35
you know, when I read it last year, well, if I ever want to
59:37
get rid of him. OK.
59:38
Thanks, Russell. That's a few hints there, but
59:41
yeah, there's some strong gay sentiments in here as well.
59:44
So Chris has gay sex with David, who's also quite a damaged
59:47
character. You've definitely got a big Deus
59:50
Ex machina at the end with a big battle and everyone in the
59:53
quadrant getting killed. So you could say a little bit
59:55
like the Cyber King in the next Doctor.
59:57
Why did nobody notice this? But hey, let's move on.
1:00:00
I just think this is a brilliant, brilliant book.
1:00:02
I can see so much of Russell's Doctor Who.
1:00:05
It's got warmth but it's got coldness at the same time.
1:00:08
It's got colour, it's got bombast.
1:00:10
It's really clever, it's brave, it's daring and this does wear
1:00:14
it's musical theatre basis on its sleeves.
1:00:17
Russell said it's inspired by Blood Brothers, I think you
1:00:20
could possibly tell that. So there's so much of Russell in
1:00:23
here, but at the same time there isn't because it's possibly, I
1:00:26
know Russell can be a duck bastard when he wants to be, but
1:00:28
this is probably as bleak and as cold as Doctor Who can possibly
1:00:32
get with all the drugs and the drug use.
1:00:35
Even the doctors takes cocaine so they can communicate with the
1:00:38
end form. But you know, I just love this
1:00:41
part. I think this will be up there
1:00:43
with bad therapy. It's probably my favorite Doctor
1:00:45
Who book. And that would be even if we'd
1:00:47
never heard from Russell T Davis ever again.
1:00:49
I think this book was astonishing.
1:00:52
I think it's a stunning book. Like stunningly written book in
1:00:57
the Doctor Who line. I mean, I've said my piece
1:00:59
elsewhere. I just don't think it's a Doctor
1:01:01
Who book like it. It touches on things I don't
1:01:04
think Doctor Who should touch, but that doesn't mean it isn't a
1:01:08
stunningly written book. It is head and shoulders above
1:01:14
the bulk of the new adventures in terms of its characterization
1:01:18
and it's prose and boy, it's horror like.
1:01:21
It truly is skin crawling. Cover alone is quite horrific.
1:01:25
It's probably one of the most horrific covers they do.
1:01:26
When the cocaine activates and people's heads are turning
1:01:29
inside out and things like that, it is absolutely grizzly as
1:01:32
hell, but it. Doesn't feel challenged for some
1:01:34
of the others. No, no, it's, it's not, Yeah,
1:01:38
it's not doing it for the sake of it.
1:01:39
It's, it's truly trying to get under your skin and it will.
1:01:43
Yeah, because we'll come to some very childish horror later on in
1:01:46
this list. But but like.
1:01:48
Like, like all of Russell's work, I just think it's
1:01:50
characters first. Absolutely.
1:01:52
Characters are so vivid. Yeah, they live with you for
1:01:55
years afterwards. And I say even if Russell had
1:01:57
never dipped his toe in Doctor again, this would have been so
1:02:01
high up on my list. I.
1:02:02
Was going to say something, Facetious said, but let's move
1:02:04
on because I for once I don't want to step on your parade.
1:02:09
OK, so let's go to the bottom 10 list.
1:02:12
OK, if that was predictable, this is predictable.
1:02:16
I've got to put Christopher Beulis in the bottom list,
1:02:18
haven't I? Well, I mean, everyone does at
1:02:21
least once. So I'm going to go for one that
1:02:23
I don't think's been picked so far because I loathe it with a
1:02:26
passion and it's Eye of the Giant with 3rd Doctor Liz Rig
1:02:31
Benton and Mike Yates. You're looking much.
1:02:34
No, I don't know much about this one.
1:02:35
I do have it, but I've never read it.
1:02:37
It's. Probably you read it yesterday
1:02:38
and you would have already forgotten it because it is that
1:02:40
forgettable. It's a terrible book.
1:02:43
So my biggest problem with this is that it it's there's such an
1:02:47
odd dichotomy with this book for a couple of reasons.
1:02:49
The first one is it's kind of spoofing 1930s Forties B movies,
1:02:55
but then it's also embracing that genre to tell the story.
1:02:59
I'm lying, isn't it? And he, of course, he misses
1:03:02
every time. So are you loving it or you're
1:03:04
hating it? I'm not quite sure what.
1:03:06
So we've got this 1930s movie producer with his stars on a
1:03:09
Pacific island and they've got giant crabs and giant snakes and
1:03:13
giant bats and giant rats. And you know, you can imagine
1:03:16
Harry Harry House and going overboard or possibly even glove
1:03:19
puppets from nation dinosaurs. On top of that, you've got 2
1:03:22
alien races. You've got the rolled who are
1:03:25
these like 18 foot tall humanoids.
1:03:27
And then you've got the seaquest, which are sea
1:03:30
creatures. Surprise surprise, the clues in
1:03:31
the name. They look like an octopus and a
1:03:33
jellyfish. It's.
1:03:34
Just Anglican names in these versions.
1:03:37
Oh boy. But the weird.
1:03:39
Thing is, all this shit bee movies nonsense, we kind of
1:03:43
resolve all of that pretty much halfway through the book.
1:03:46
But the big twist, because no one will see this coming, is
1:03:49
that by resolving that it changes the Earth's future.
1:03:52
So it's pretty much like Beulis did in State of Change where we
1:03:55
had the Rani helping the Romans to change the future.
1:03:59
He does that again here. So the doctrine, Liz, then go
1:04:02
back to 1970s London and it's like 1930 Hollywood
1:04:06
interpretation of 1970s London and you've got lots of just
1:04:10
interminable chasing around with soldiers and precious rubies and
1:04:16
you've got time bubbles, time phase oscillators, photon
1:04:20
accelerator coils, tachyon beam collimators, whatever the fuck
1:04:25
they are. It's just there's.
1:04:27
A lot going on there, isn't there?
1:04:29
Yeah, but a whole lot of nonsense over 300 pages.
1:04:33
I I assume one of the inspirations for that is Inferno
1:04:36
by having the kind of story split over 2 locations but they
1:04:40
just don't gel. It's just horrible.
1:04:42
The characters are waffle thing. There's just no war.
1:04:46
I just don't feel any warmth for characters in beulis work it.
1:04:50
Was me halfway through the ghost event space thinking I'd hit
1:04:53
them. The deer of missing adventures.
1:04:55
No, no, no, no, no. Not at all.
1:04:58
I mean, I think I think he can do it because I quite like the
1:05:02
source of his apprentice and I quite like city at Wells end.
1:05:06
I think they're both really fun books with some good twists in
1:05:09
them, but it's fully like his sort of medium is below average.
1:05:13
Well below average, yeah. Yeah, I've had so many.
1:05:17
Yeah. Well, yeah, he was reliable.
1:05:19
That was the trouble. Yeah.
1:05:21
And cheap, probably. We'll give you a third of the
1:05:25
money if you can have it. Last week up there.
1:05:28
Don't worry, I've already written it.
1:05:30
I want to do every doctor and companion.
1:05:33
I got one thing possible. Yes.
1:05:35
Let's be nice. OK, a non fiction book.
1:05:38
We are Going for The Life and Scandalous Times of John Nathan
1:05:41
Turner by Richard Marsth. This is glorious, isn't it?
1:05:45
I love that. Well, probably Joe, you're a bit
1:05:47
lying. Me.
1:05:47
We both love behind the scenes information.
1:05:49
We both love gossip, let's be honest.
1:05:52
And it's been a both, isn't it? Don't you sit there, pretend.
1:05:55
To me it's the behind the scenes information.
1:05:57
It's the gossip, isn't it? Those anecdotes are gold.
1:06:00
It's a page. It's like News of the World, all
1:06:04
condensed into one book. And it's.
1:06:06
Spat in my face. What?
1:06:08
I don't feel like Oh my God. Bear in mind though, I was
1:06:12
around on the fringes of fandom in the late 80s when a lot of
1:06:14
this is being covered. So I I'll be honest, I heard
1:06:17
some pretty crazy stories about what John Nathan Turner was up
1:06:20
to, and I used to always write them off and say you're talking
1:06:23
bullshit. This is just so exaggerated, so
1:06:26
extreme, I begin to wonder now. Here's a copy of Time Lash
1:06:29
Episode 2 on, you know, just in case.
1:06:31
Yeah, I should do. Shouldn't, but yeah.
1:06:36
So this is a warts and all, isn't it?
1:06:37
Biography of JNT. But the thing I like about it,
1:06:41
because he knows he's selling this to a Doctor Who audience.
1:06:43
So he skewers a it is a, it is a biography, but he does skew it
1:06:47
towards Doctor Who. There's a bet on the rest of his
1:06:49
life, but we are heavily biased towards Doctor We.
1:06:51
Get it's not negative though it's a huge no that's.
1:06:55
Why? It's clever, that is why it's
1:06:56
very good. He doesn't necessarily pick a
1:06:58
side. He he tells you the facts, most
1:07:02
of it from first hand interviews, but he doesn't
1:07:05
judge. In fact, he kind of goes out of
1:07:07
his way to excuse me, goes out of his way to say the JNC wasn't
1:07:12
predatory, whether Gary Downley's partner was.
1:07:15
I think the, you know, the jury is out on that one, but I think
1:07:19
it's very fair. It shows all the trials and
1:07:21
tribulations that he goes through.
1:07:22
You realise how much JNT did for the show, how much he loved the
1:07:26
show, how much he was prepared to fight for it despite the BBC
1:07:30
hating it, being very hostile. So I think all that comes
1:07:34
across. But yeah, you're right, the the
1:07:36
kind of doable barkers where M and Gary are just shagging their
1:07:40
way around every convention they can is very uncomfortable.
1:07:44
Really it's, I mean it's absolutely cancelable behaviour
1:07:47
now. I worryingly, it wasn't then,
1:07:52
and in fact, I think it was almost just sort of accepted
1:07:55
behavior in conventions and things that there was not, you
1:07:58
know, I don't, I think he says in the book he never went
1:08:00
underage, like, and there was always consent and all of that.
1:08:04
But it's still highly, but it's called, it's contained to a
1:08:08
single chapter. And then the rest of the book
1:08:11
details the the rise of his career with loads of people
1:08:15
saying all these wonderful things about him as a creative
1:08:18
and you know, as an assistant director and all of this stuff.
1:08:22
And then heartbreakingly, how during Doctor Who, his career
1:08:27
went off a Cliff and it just kept going.
1:08:30
And it's so sad, it. Is it's it's actually a tragedy.
1:08:33
It's like a Shakespeare and tragic character, isn't it?
1:08:35
He loved the show, but he couldn't get away from it.
1:08:37
He did every he as early as season 20, he's saying he wants
1:08:41
to go. He did two series.
1:08:43
He wanted to do 2 and out and you just can't escape it year
1:08:47
after year after year. It's round his neck like a
1:08:50
millstone, isn't it? And he did the worst thing
1:08:52
imaginable. He opened the door to the fans.
1:08:55
Yes. And, and they're like children.
1:08:57
You give them a little bit and they want more and more.
1:08:59
More than you say no and then they're going to bite back.
1:09:02
Boy, they bit back. But isn't it weird because
1:09:05
you've got you've got the complete kind of polar
1:09:07
opposites. It's like a seesaw.
1:09:08
You got the fan love going up, but you've got the BBC love
1:09:12
absolutely going down at the same time.
1:09:14
It's just such an odd, I mean, why he was hated so much by the
1:09:18
BBC at that time, I don't know. And JNT is absolutely fighting
1:09:21
for him. So nice now that he has been re
1:09:24
evaluated in so many different ways, for good and for bad.
1:09:27
But a lot of people see the good in the 80s.
1:09:30
Doctor Who now, And I'm so pleased because there was a time
1:09:33
where it was just the era that killed off Doctor Who, right?
1:09:36
Oh. Absolutely, absolutely.
1:09:38
I kind of recommend another book at the same time to go alongside
1:09:40
this. If anyone hasn't got this, the
1:09:43
John Nathan Turner Production Diary by Richard Molesworth,
1:09:46
which is kind of a blow by blow accounts of memos and
1:09:49
correspondents. Drier, isn't it?
1:09:51
It is a bit drier, but you read those two side by side and my
1:09:53
God, you've got a really cohesive total view of what was
1:09:58
going on in that production office at the time.
1:10:00
Yeah, it's not the great page tunnel like this because it's
1:10:02
not salacious, but it's just fascinating to see what was
1:10:06
going on. And you see how many times J And
1:10:08
he's flying off to America. That was what stood out to me.
1:10:11
And then the point where the show was cancelled, that just
1:10:13
stopped. He realized I've taken my eye
1:10:16
off the show. And then from 23 onwards, he
1:10:20
just stopped doing that. And he only went over on his
1:10:22
downtime. And the other times he was in
1:10:24
the office or in the studio working on the show.
1:10:27
Yeah, it's. What a horrible way to get a
1:10:29
kick up the bum. But yeah, but it's a
1:10:31
fascinating, fascinating, fascinating book.
1:10:35
I think he's also, he's such a complex figure.
1:10:38
So the one that struck me, you've mentioned about spitting
1:10:40
in the face, which is obviously the Nicola Bryant story. 1 I
1:10:43
think was really interesting about JNT.
1:10:47
So Colin Baker, who I have no reason to believe is anything
1:10:52
other than a lovely human being and totally genuine.
1:10:56
Obviously he and Nicola are very good friends.
1:10:58
JNT treated Nicola abominably. I know there's no getting around
1:11:02
there. Whatever the truth and you know,
1:11:04
the truth may lie between, you know, his story, her story,
1:11:07
etcetera, but he still treated Nicola very badly.
1:11:11
I think there's plenty of evidence for that.
1:11:13
So yet Collins still manages to stay friendly with both Nicola
1:11:16
and John because he can recognize qualities in in JNT
1:11:20
that he admires. And I don't think that's.
1:11:22
A smart the fact he was the man that fired him.
1:11:25
Exactly. Exactly.
1:11:26
But he stays loyal to him. So JNT has clearly got some
1:11:29
really great, admirable qualities that people stick to,
1:11:34
even though there is some darkness in there and there's
1:11:39
definitely some stuff fashionability.
1:11:42
The the thing about JNT is like Doctor Who podcasting.
1:11:47
Yeah. It's all very fun to talk about
1:11:50
the stuff that's all amazing and we love, but, you know, that can
1:11:52
get a bit boring. It's all very well talking about
1:11:55
the stuff that we hate, but you know, that can get a bit dreary.
1:11:58
The stuff in the middle with the good and the bad, that is the
1:12:01
most. That's where a lot of the
1:12:03
interest lies, right? Where you sift out the And JNT
1:12:05
was that person, exactly. And a lot of good and a lot of
1:12:08
bad. And that's why that book is so
1:12:10
great. And yeah, and I think Mars and
1:12:13
absolutely gets so many kudos points for not kind of steering
1:12:17
you in One Direction. He does let you make up your own
1:12:19
mind. He gives you the evidence, he
1:12:20
tells the stories, but he's non judgmental.
1:12:23
I think if he'd have only gone for like 5 or 10 mouthpieces it
1:12:27
might have felt skewed. But there's like about 100
1:12:30
people, yes, putting quotes into that book in both directions, so
1:12:34
you really get a spread of opinions about him.
1:12:37
He's such a diversive characterism.
1:12:39
What a great choice. Yay.
1:12:41
Fantastic. Well, look, we've been far too
1:12:45
positive. Now please bring the negativity.
1:12:49
So right at the beginning of this, I talked about the Michael
1:12:52
Moorcocks and the Baxters of this world that were brought in
1:12:55
as big names. But what we started to do in
1:12:58
more recent times is bring in celebrity names to write books.
1:13:02
So Tom Baker writes Scratch and OK James Goss, John Barrowman
1:13:07
and his sister write Tortured Exter's code.
1:13:09
Sophie Aldred writes a children's end.
1:13:13
She does get help by Mike Tucker and Stephen Cole, who also join
1:13:16
up with Fraser to do his evil of the dialects.
1:13:19
None of these. Then it's none of these.
1:13:21
We've got Alex Kingston doing Ruby's curse.
1:13:24
Was it Alex Kingston? Was it her?
1:13:26
With Jack Rayner. Oh, OK, I.
1:13:29
Think Jack Rayner's doing a lot of heavy lifting of.
1:13:31
Course, none of this is new because David Banks gave us
1:13:34
Iceberg back in the day and that that fluttered on and off my
1:13:38
bottom list for a while. But I want to talk about Death
1:13:43
in the Stars by Bonnie Lungford. Oh, you were so excited for
1:13:46
this. Rod Joe, you're right.
1:13:48
I was so excited for this book. I can't say I love Bonnie, I
1:13:52
love Mel. I loved Mel back in the day,
1:13:54
love Mel now. This is the most up to date
1:13:57
entrant on anyone's lists. He was pitched kind of as a
1:14:02
murder mystery. And I've kind of got this vision
1:14:04
of Mel as Miss Marple. They actually call her Miss
1:14:06
Marple a few times in this book. It just seems such delicious
1:14:10
idea. And Jack Rayner's Co writing it.
1:14:12
So again, massive, massive expectations, but Jesus Christ
1:14:16
is terrible. My main issue is it doesn't have
1:14:20
a clue what it wants to do. It's very much a book of two
1:14:23
halves, pretty much like I as the giant we were just talking
1:14:26
about on the bottom list as well.
1:14:27
So the first 100 plus page of the book is kind of this weird
1:14:32
Paradise Tower Press as pastiche, which got so many
1:14:35
references to Paradise Towers, both implicit and explicit.
1:14:39
It just feels empty and cliched. I'm not quite sure what the
1:14:43
story actually is. It's very empty.
1:14:46
It doesn't help by the fact that we've got glitz there.
1:14:48
Who is so cardboard in this? I think pretty much every bit of
1:14:51
dialogue is either lifting a line or a phrase from his TV, so
1:14:55
he doesn't appear as a well-rounded character at all.
1:15:00
The whole point of this beginning there, I think, is
1:15:02
just to bring along this third character who comes to the
1:15:04
second-half of the book when we move to a completely different
1:15:07
location with a different style and a different tone completely.
1:15:11
Because in the second-half of the book, we do go to a murder
1:15:14
mystery, which got a large set of characters, as you would
1:15:17
expect from any typical kind of Agatha Christie style pastiche.
1:15:21
But the trouble is, we've got so little time left now because
1:15:23
we've wasted half the book doing that early nonsense.
1:15:26
We can't explore any of these new characters in any depth, so
1:15:30
the fact they start getting killed off very quickly just
1:15:33
feels very empty. And we've got some absolutely
1:15:37
excruciating comedy in this. And, and the purpose of it is to
1:15:41
make reference to Bonnie Langford's every TV appearance,
1:15:45
whatever guy she's made. So best exemplified is the fact
1:15:49
this spaceship, there's an AI interface.
1:15:51
So the Doctor hopes that's going to bring forward an image of the
1:15:53
Doctor that she can talk to. But no, it brings forward this
1:15:57
character called Barry Day. And he was the lead guitarist of
1:16:01
a band called Dutch Elm Disease who hosted a Saturday morning
1:16:06
show in the 90s called Spaceship Saturday, which he hosted with a
1:16:10
little glove puppet called Squixy the Squirrel.
1:16:15
So that means that for most the rest of the book we get all
1:16:17
these squirrel based jokes, which let me give you an
1:16:21
example. Where does a pirate squirrel
1:16:24
keep his nuts in a chestnut? Oh, I'm sorry, that was.
1:16:30
Funny. We have about 100 of these
1:16:34
fucking terrible jokes and this Barry Day character that
1:16:37
Mellie's kind of getting excited about because she liked him when
1:16:40
she had posters on his wall. It's like, what's this got to do
1:16:43
with a futuristic spaceship murder mystery?
1:16:47
We get to the end of the murder mystery and because you rightly
1:16:49
say it's a newish book, so I will not spoil the ending for
1:16:52
you. However, if you've watched
1:16:54
series 10 with Peter Capaldi, you will know exactly what the
1:16:57
ending is going to be because they.
1:16:59
Don't blow, I will e-mail, do they?
1:17:01
With only it's an absolute RIP, a complete and utter RIP off of
1:17:06
it. Hold the episode.
1:17:07
Do you want me to spoil it for you?
1:17:08
No. No, no, no, because the more you
1:17:10
talk about this book, the more I want to.
1:17:13
Read it, it's terrible. I know my wrath is currently
1:17:17
reading it as we speak and I hate to tell you this, but
1:17:19
rather enjoying it and it keeps going.
1:17:23
Listen to this. It starts reading out male's
1:17:26
language going, you know, Oh, glitz made it.
1:17:29
We have to respond. So I was like, oh, can you read
1:17:33
me the whole book please? Maybe if Mark had been here
1:17:35
reading it, I might have enjoyed it more, but it's just horrible.
1:17:39
It's it doesn't know what it wants to be and then you're
1:17:41
constantly thinking this first half has got to pay off in the
1:17:44
second-half, but it doesn't. Is it for kids?
1:17:49
I'm not sure it knows who it wants to be for because there's
1:17:52
too many. It's too much wrapped up in
1:17:57
Doctor Who law to be for kids. It's it's, you know, it's a
1:18:00
what, 17991899 hardcover book. So it's not an affordable book
1:18:05
for young kids. I'm not sure who it's for.
1:18:07
I would imagine it would disappoint everybody apart from
1:18:10
Mark, clearly, who's loving it. Well, he is a child though,
1:18:12
you've got to remember that. Just a child that can afford
1:18:15
1790. 9 It's a horrible book I would not recommend anyone buys.
1:18:20
It I mean, it is coming soon to the book club.
1:18:23
So everybody keep your eye out for that episode.
1:18:26
All right, enjoy your quick. See the squirrel.
1:18:28
Thank God no, it's not my list. OK, back to the back to the top
1:18:33
ten then. I don't know where we are in
1:18:35
this list. We're on number.
1:18:37
Well, they're not in any order, but this is the 7th one on our
1:18:39
positivity. OK.
1:18:41
So I've just done a non fiction. I'm going to do another non
1:18:45
fiction, if you don't mind. I I said I love stories about
1:18:48
the production of Doctor Who and we picked previously on the
1:18:52
contribution of a controversial producer.
1:18:55
Going to do the same again here. And I'd go for the Writer's tale
1:18:59
by Russell T Davis and Benjamin. I'm not going to apologize for
1:19:04
having Russell on my list twice because obviously this is just a
1:19:07
little bit different to his novel.
1:19:09
Although how much fiction is included in this I will leave up
1:19:12
to you to decide. I'm sure most listeners to this
1:19:17
podcast have read this book or certainly got it all like me,
1:19:19
have got both versions of it. The original one that goes up to
1:19:22
Journey's end or the paperback version that came out after that
1:19:24
goes up to the end of the specials.
1:19:27
But if you haven't, basically it's pretty much a blow by blow
1:19:31
account of the production of Doctor Who, certainly during
1:19:34
Series 4 and the specials. And I absolutely love it.
1:19:37
It's mostly a series of emails or other correspondence between
1:19:41
Ben Cook from DWM and Russell, usually at like two 3:00 in the
1:19:45
morning when Russell's going out of his mind about the production
1:19:49
'cause. He's emailing this hot young
1:19:51
Doctor Who fan. I mean, Benjamin Cook's well in
1:19:58
his 20s at this point. It's OK.
1:20:00
Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, although.
1:20:02
He was very pretty back when he was 20.
1:20:04
The flop. It was the floppy hair, wasn't
1:20:06
it? I just, I just love this.
1:20:09
But it's got Russell's trademark humour, obviously in the emails.
1:20:12
They're chatty, they're informal, they've obviously.
1:20:14
You're trying to. Yeah.
1:20:16
When you're trying to impress a young thing, you're as smart and
1:20:20
as funny as you've ever been, even if you're just tapping off
1:20:23
an e-mail, right? If you're trying to impress
1:20:24
somebody. I don't think these were
1:20:26
adopted. I think this was just him
1:20:28
delivering his best to Ben. I'm sure, I'm sure they've taken
1:20:32
out some of the more salacious details or some of the gossipy
1:20:35
details there's. Some stuff in there.
1:20:36
Well, there is. A lie in there.
1:20:38
Some people are going to read this and go, excuse me, is.
1:20:41
That really what you thought, But it's also got Russell's
1:20:45
brilliant cartoons in here as well.
1:20:46
We've got loads of script extracts, some of which weren't
1:20:49
used. You see Russell's creative
1:20:51
processes, so he talks about the creation of Penny, who was
1:20:54
obviously the character before. They've managed to get Catherine
1:20:57
Tate back, so yeah. And it is one man's opinion of
1:21:00
the production, so he's very, very biased.
1:21:03
But the man at the top? The man at.
1:21:05
The top, the most intimate look at new Who?
1:21:07
Yeah, that you will ever have. Yeah, you can, chuckle.
1:21:11
Your Doctor Who Monthly. You've got nothing from Moffett
1:21:13
or Chippel that suggests what's going on behind the scenes as
1:21:17
much as Russell juggling these three bloody empires.
1:21:20
And he's not afraid to show when he's, you know, desperate and
1:21:23
run out of ideas and frustrated and pissed off.
1:21:26
You know, he's he's very open in these book, I think.
1:21:29
So it does show again, you know, every side of it.
1:21:31
So it's not just a glossy. Everything's marvellous like he
1:21:34
usually likes to do. This is very candid.
1:21:37
Let's be serious, though, for a second.
1:21:38
Yeah, just how long did you linger on that pencil drawing of
1:21:42
Midshipman framing his underpants?
1:21:47
Probably a little bit too lost a.
1:21:48
Wonderful picture, isn't it? Only Russell could do that.
1:21:55
Wonderful. Choice, the great choice and a
1:21:57
unique book. A totally unique book like the
1:21:59
JNT 1. I mean we love these gay
1:22:01
producers right? Having all their secrets.
1:22:06
I can only imagine the Tell All Philip Hinchgliff book would be
1:22:09
very boring indeed. There's no sequins, sequins or
1:22:12
secrets all. Right.
1:22:15
Come on then, let's go back to the bottom.
1:22:18
Can I ask you a question, Joe? I'm.
1:22:20
Here for it. What happened to the magic of
1:22:24
Barry Letts so. Barry I mean, this could be any
1:22:29
one of those books. Uncle Barry, he brought us what
1:22:32
was probably one of the most consistent eras of Who.
1:22:35
He oversaw Season 18. He Co wrote classics back in the
1:22:39
day. My God, when he does all those
1:22:41
interviews and even in his autobiography, he shows such
1:22:45
innate understanding of Doctor Who.
1:22:47
It's audience how it works. You think he is absolutely.
1:22:52
He's the RTD of his day. But then post who he gives us
1:22:57
four of the worst Doctor Who and I, I use the word Doctor Who
1:23:01
advisedly because I'm not sure they are Doctor Who stories and
1:23:04
I think they get progressively worse.
1:23:06
So we start with the two radio plays Paradise of Death.
1:23:09
It's vulnerable even though it introduces to Jeremy.
1:23:13
I mean how can you put Jeremy, Fitz, Oliver next to a Harry or
1:23:17
even Gates or Benson and he's just terrible.
1:23:21
Oh, locks, then ghosts of N space gets worse, then we go to.
1:23:26
It right now. There's.
1:23:28
So many mentions of tits, tits, tits, tits everywhere and even
1:23:34
Sarah Jane. Asked the Doctor.
1:23:36
What's a catamoid Dr. I was like oh please but.
1:23:40
This was deeply religious man, I know it's just very at odds with
1:23:43
them. But then we gazed 2 novels dead
1:23:45
in a reunion if Uncle Terrence and then the Island of Death.
1:23:50
And I am picking the Island of Death by his last Doctor Who
1:23:54
contribution. So sad isn't it?
1:23:57
What a terrible like I said. So hang on, Jeremy Fitz Oliver
1:24:01
going off to join a, you know, a sex cult out in the Caribbean.
1:24:04
What's not to love? This book, that's what's not to
1:24:07
love. So we've got the new UNIT
1:24:10
family. So we've got the third Doctor,
1:24:12
Brig and Sarah, Jeremy as you so right, so he's got his mother
1:24:15
along this time. Hurrah, Lorinda.
1:24:18
Fucking hell. So Sarah's boss from the
1:24:21
Metropolitan, They're just a hideous.
1:24:23
What a hideous. Start this set up.
1:24:26
We start with a dead body on hamster teeth.
1:24:28
Does that remind that was the paradise of death?
1:24:30
Yes, because it's exactly the fucking same.
1:24:32
So we've got some alien miscreants who don't mind
1:24:34
littering the heath with dead bodies.
1:24:37
I used to think other things went on on hamster teeth, but
1:24:39
clearly it's just where aliens dump dead bodies.
1:24:42
We've got another trope from Paradise of death.
1:24:44
So people instead of this time being taken over by virtual
1:24:48
reality mind control, this time they're being taken over by some
1:24:51
drink which causes hallucinations and then they can
1:24:54
be manipulated. Then later on a mist does the
1:24:57
same. So you drink it, you ingest it.
1:24:59
People think they're on a Paradise Island when they're on
1:25:01
this barren rock. So a bit of Keys of Marinus.
1:25:04
But my main problems with this let's let's I pone it down.
1:25:07
What are my main problems with this?
1:25:09
Firstly, none of the characters here feel like they're 1970s
1:25:12
counterparts. We start Pertwee, he's talking
1:25:16
to Gary the goldfish at the beginning of this book, who with
1:25:19
whom he can now communicate. Apparently Sarah is this just
1:25:23
horribly jolly hockey sticks type character.
1:25:26
She says things like I'm a silly ungrateful mare.
1:25:31
I don't think she does. I say that all the time.
1:25:34
The Brig doesn't trust the doctor.
1:25:37
We don't need to mention Jeremy again because lesser the buy him
1:25:40
the better. So if I'm being charitable, I
1:25:43
would say they remind me of their radio counterparts, that
1:25:47
Barry Rowe, but they do not remind me of their TV
1:25:50
counterparts. So that's one reason.
1:25:52
Second one, like go spend space. We're suddenly on a foreign
1:25:55
island or foreign stores anyway. We start in Bombay, then we're
1:25:59
on a ship for God knows how long, then we get to the island
1:26:02
itself. So none of that, it doesn't feel
1:26:04
like about the UNIT era, but it doesn't feel like a trip that
1:26:07
the UNIT era would have taken. So it's so inconsistent with the
1:26:10
era. Then what's the plot?
1:26:12
Oh, we got alien insects coming to Earth to take people over for
1:26:16
a mass invasion with grief that's never been done before.
1:26:20
There's so much padding. The stuff on the ship just goes
1:26:22
on and on forever. And then we end up with the
1:26:25
Doctor trapping the baddies in a time loop like Clause of Axos.
1:26:30
But but the best sequence in the book, and I use the word best
1:26:35
advisedly, has definitely got air quotes around there.
1:26:38
There is sequence where the Doctor and Sarah are thrown
1:26:40
overboard from the ship, but they get rescued by some killer
1:26:45
whales and these killer whales pick them up and take them along
1:26:49
on their backs and just throw them gaily back onto a unit and.
1:26:54
Communicate with the whales, you know.
1:26:56
Well, that's because he uses the equipment that he was using to
1:26:58
talk to Gary the goldfish. Could you give us a lift please?
1:27:02
I mean, honestly, Can you imagine?
1:27:04
No, but I'd love to see it though.
1:27:05
Pertwyers laden on two killer whales.
1:27:08
It's just, I mean the level. Of is.
1:27:12
Just hideous. Diabolical like he's another one
1:27:16
that does 2 long sentences. I mean I, I, I am absolutely
1:27:19
reading one of his books at the moment and he does paragraph
1:27:22
long sentences full of brackets, right?
1:27:26
So he puts internal thoughts inside a paragraph, which is
1:27:31
internal thoughts. We're doing thoughts within
1:27:33
thoughts here, or asides within thoughts.
1:27:38
Yeah, bless his heart. It is like Stephen B said, like
1:27:42
grave Robin, the past. Is it grave Robin?
1:27:48
It doesn't feel like grave Robin because he's not going back to a
1:27:50
grave that I recognise. He's going to someone else's
1:27:52
grave. It's just, it's just so out of
1:27:55
step with everything. I mean, really listening to any
1:27:57
one of those four could. Have been absolutely but I
1:28:01
thought you know the radio plays get bashing of their own let's
1:28:03
go for Ireland of. That, but at least you could
1:28:05
listen to those and hear the actors by having fun with it
1:28:08
they are having. Fun.
1:28:09
They are having fun, but they don't sound like the Doctor
1:28:11
Sarah and the Brig Oh. No, Paul, you mean to say you've
1:28:14
been interviewing me now? With a very deep voice, I mean,
1:28:19
yeah, not not their finest hour. Should we should we just say
1:28:23
that? Cherish, We can't slingshot to
1:28:25
sort of Barry in your top ten, but who can we slingshot to?
1:28:29
We can slingshot to the fabulous Steve Lyons.
1:28:33
Oh, glorious. Luke Sims Jenkins will be very
1:28:36
pleased, Steve. Lyons, one of the most reliable
1:28:40
and consistent authors. Although I will say, and this
1:28:44
might be heresy, I don't like his past Doctor Troutsome
1:28:48
stories with the salations. Oh, Andrew Battery, we're very
1:28:53
unhappy with you. Yeah, I just find them a bit
1:28:55
childish, those books, which just seems out of kilter with
1:28:57
the rest of his oeuvre, because in the past docs he also does
1:29:01
Salvation, doesn't he? With Harnell and Witch Hunters,
1:29:04
which I think are both great books, the two traits.
1:29:07
Oddly uncelebrated given. Steve Lyons, the.
1:29:10
Quality of his Of his Consistent quality of his.
1:29:13
Books. Yeah, brilliant.
1:29:14
So I am going to go for head games.
1:29:19
I love head games. I've got to wear this.
1:29:24
We've got the 7th Doctor, we've got Benny, we've got Ros, we've
1:29:27
got Chris. Who else have we got along from
1:29:29
the ride? Mel.
1:29:31
Mel, Not Mel from Death in the Stars.
1:29:33
And she's quite appalled at what's going on in the new
1:29:36
adventures. I don't recognize you at all,
1:29:39
Rod. And she's this ace.
1:29:42
Ace comes back. We've got Glitz, we've got
1:29:44
Bambara. You know, I've slagged other
1:29:46
books off being continuity laden and this isn't.
1:29:49
These are nice little cameos apart from Malanese, but this is
1:29:53
sequel to his first book, which is Conundrum.
1:29:55
I think it's a great book in its own right.
1:29:57
So we're still dealing with the land of fiction.
1:29:59
So that's now bleeding through into our universe.
1:30:02
You've got Jason, not Jason Cain from Benny, that's a little bit
1:30:05
confusing. We've got Jason who's the new
1:30:08
master of the land of fiction. He's creates a double of the
1:30:11
Doctor Who is called Doctor Who, who is very similar to the
1:30:14
Hartnell Dr. from the TV comic strips.
1:30:17
We have a breathtaking chase through time and space.
1:30:20
We go to the time of the dinosaurs, we go to the storm in
1:30:23
the Buckingham Palace. It's just great.
1:30:26
But because it's the land of fiction, it's all very comic
1:30:29
strip. So we got stuff like the Acme
1:30:32
lizard monster eradication device.
1:30:35
It's brilliant. But alongside all this silly
1:30:38
nonsense and comic strip, Steve Lance always got something
1:30:41
really poignant and pointed and clever to say.
1:30:45
And one of the biggest things that this book does is really
1:30:48
focusing on the manipulative side of the 7th Doctor.
1:30:51
And we look at it from both sides.
1:30:53
We look at it from kind of the the meta angle in that is, is
1:30:57
this manipulative Dr. Are we right to celebrate him and
1:31:00
champion him, have him, But in narrative terms, they're also
1:31:03
exploring the weather by the fact he's embracing that side of
1:31:06
his character. Is he becoming more and more
1:31:09
like the valley yard? So I'm really interesting.
1:31:11
We look at both sides of it and we look at the fact that the
1:31:14
house and his companions now in particular turns his back on him
1:31:18
in a really kind of blistering scene.
1:31:20
She's appalled with what she sees.
1:31:22
He's. That's the end of the book.
1:31:23
I think that's the point of the book.
1:31:25
I think Steve Lyons is saying these books have gone too far
1:31:30
and I'm going to bring in a character from before all this
1:31:33
began and just have her be utterly appalled by what is
1:31:38
going on. So she says the doctor's
1:31:39
companions gun toting, you know, militaristic employees.
1:31:44
The doctors are mastermilling. Ace is a violent thug.
1:31:47
Like what is going on? And she just walks away at the
1:31:50
end, doesn't she goes I don't recognize you anymore, Screw you
1:31:53
basically even just walks away. Even Benny does.
1:31:55
There's a sequence where Benny's was Benny's talking about
1:31:57
saying, you know who, how do you look at us all?
1:32:00
You know, do you look at Ros and Chris?
1:32:01
Are they just you like your latest soldiers?
1:32:03
And how can you bear to look at Ace becoming?
1:32:05
She's become your private army. Old.
1:32:08
Two very bold. Question the entire range to
1:32:12
that point, but I'm really pleased I went there because
1:32:16
it's sort of thoughts I'd had and I wonder if Mel was chosen
1:32:19
specifically one because she's squeaky clean.
1:32:22
Yeah. And so that is a a sharp
1:32:24
contrast with where the books have gone.
1:32:26
But 2 because she's not a well liked companion.
1:32:30
And so if you like those books, you can sort of write off as
1:32:33
going, well, it's male, you know, of course she's not going
1:32:36
to like all of this gun stuff that's going on.
1:32:38
Well, if it had been Sarah Jane or something like that, I think
1:32:41
it would have been more, maybe more interesting, but less
1:32:47
dramatic. There's got to be Mel, hasn't
1:32:50
it? Because Mel was there with this
1:32:51
Doctor at the start. That's why she doesn't recognize
1:32:53
him. It's this incarnation that she
1:32:55
knows or she thought she knew so well, and she just looks at his
1:32:58
journey. But you're right, all that's
1:33:00
great. But, but, but there's at the end
1:33:03
the confrontation between the 6th Doctor and the 7th Doctor,
1:33:07
and they face off against each other.
1:33:09
And that is really. So I'm going to read up, going
1:33:11
to read 1 paragraph. So this is the 6th Doctor
1:33:14
talking to the 7th Doctor and the six docs said I knew what
1:33:18
Wright was, I travelled, I found injustice, I sided with Wright
1:33:22
and I beat back darkness. But I respected my travelling
1:33:26
partners too. I practice decency and morality.
1:33:29
You lied to them, you trick them, you killed Ace on the
1:33:32
moon, you left Kadiatu to a fate.
1:33:35
You used them time and time again and never even tell them
1:33:38
why doesn't that make you feel guilty?
1:33:41
How great stuff. You're right.
1:33:42
It's absolutely challenging, the core of what these books have
1:33:45
been doing. Yeah.
1:33:46
What a bold way to do it. I.
1:33:48
Thought Conundrum was a good read.
1:33:53
Like fun, imaginative, quirky. I thought this was a better
1:33:57
read. So just because I thought bad,
1:34:00
you are bold, you are bold to make all of the and just to
1:34:03
interrogate these books in the way that you are.
1:34:07
I was surprised they brought it out, but I'm glad they did.
1:34:10
But it's also, it's the iron hand in the velvet glove, isn't
1:34:12
it? Because you've got all this
1:34:13
comic strip nonsense going on with the Queen running away from
1:34:17
Buckingham Palace whilst alien tanks are invading, and then
1:34:21
you've got, you know, this really deep exploration of what
1:34:23
the books are doing. I think it's just the fact he's
1:34:26
got the two of those things side by side and they work and they
1:34:29
meld and they mesh. Absolutely bloody brilliant.
1:34:32
Because I think it does kind of change the way you look at the
1:34:34
Southern Doctor. So yeah, I think Head Games is
1:34:37
again another one that just does not get championed enough.
1:34:40
Definitely want to talk about in the future.
1:34:43
Well, let's let's get the tissues out then for another
1:34:47
author. Who are we upsetting this time?
1:34:49
Well, it's a man we've already talked about it is John Nathan
1:34:53
Turner, and you've referenced these books earlier, Joe, so I
1:34:56
want to put in the TARDIS Inside Out and the Companions by JNC.
1:35:02
So these. I wasn't talking about that
1:35:04
companions, you know. No, I know you weren't.
1:35:08
These were published in 85 and 86, respectively.
1:35:11
So these were these were really trumpeted at the time.
1:35:14
These were supposed to be the inside look of the six actors
1:35:17
who played the Doctor and their characters, and then the same
1:35:20
again for the companions. And look, you know, I'm not
1:35:23
naive. This was the mid 80s J and DS
1:35:26
JNT is still producer, so I don't expect him to do a warts
1:35:30
and all and be slagging people off.
1:35:32
I do expect a bit of behind the scenes information.
1:35:35
I expect a bit of insight in a way that only a producer could
1:35:38
do. You know, by now we're in the
1:35:40
mid 80s. DWM is doing some good
1:35:43
insightful stuff. There's quite a few hardback
1:35:45
books out there. I want something with a bit of
1:35:47
meat in this. So let us turn to page 14 of the
1:35:51
companion's book. John surely has a lot to tell us
1:35:54
about Katie Manning and Joe Grant.
1:35:56
He was, you know, production unit manager during that time on
1:36:00
various stories. What is he going to?
1:36:02
What insight is he going to give us?
1:36:03
I'm waiting. Go on.
1:36:06
Katie now lives in Australia. Is that it?
1:36:10
That's it. I knew that already.
1:36:13
Yeah, that's the total insight. OK, maybe that was an
1:36:16
aberration. Let's go to page 33.
1:36:18
Annika, Wills and Polly. Polly accompanied Ben throughout
1:36:22
her stay in the TARDIS. Oh, the end.
1:36:27
Didn't say Annika joined a sex cult out in wherever it.
1:36:30
Was then probably the worst. Returned to page 46.
1:36:36
Zoe. Lovely Wendy Padre.
1:36:39
Nothing. Not a single word.
1:36:42
Just as Zoe, played by Wendy Padbury.
1:36:44
Nothing. Oh boy.
1:36:47
Sue, you'll love Susan Caroline Ford.
1:36:49
Her entry? Doctor Who.
1:36:52
This is so gianty. Doctor Who has been littered
1:36:55
with lovely ladies and Carol still looks absolutely gorgeous.
1:37:01
I was delighted when she agreed to join us for our 20th
1:37:04
anniversary story. The end.
1:37:07
That's it doesn't tell us what happened.
1:37:10
He's only throwing out compliments of people that have
1:37:12
made him a bit of money. Maybe Wendy Padfri.
1:37:14
Just it. Is bizarre.
1:37:18
You're going to be a footnote, Wendy, and that's.
1:37:20
It I wouldn't even spit in your face, love.
1:37:24
Of course, when it comes to companions these work with,
1:37:26
there is a bit more. You get the old character
1:37:28
synopsis, a couple of paragraphs of very sanitized kind of
1:37:31
conventional anecdotes, and it's all written in JNT.
1:37:35
You can actually, you can completely hear JNT's voice in
1:37:37
this. It's like he's picked up a
1:37:38
dictaphone, just dictated this since someone's typed it out.
1:37:41
Because even though there's supposed to be a biography of
1:37:44
the act and their character, every single sentence has the
1:37:46
word I in it. This is JNT's type, but it's
1:37:50
just so thin. I mean, the Doctor's book, The
1:37:54
Doctor's book goes to 40 pages, even though it's massively
1:37:58
padded with illustrations. 40 pages.
1:38:01
That's it. Is that all it is, 48?
1:38:03
Years. How much was that book?
1:38:05
Let me I do have it. The TARDIS inside out.
1:38:12
It sounds entitled, but it's got a nice cover.
1:38:14
Look how thin it is. Oh, bless him, you know 7.
1:38:17
Pound. 50 we thought the cashing started with the NSA is
1:38:20
honestly. £7.50. That's a lot of pocket money,
1:38:25
you know, Rod, Absolutely. He pads it out by telling us
1:38:29
what his favorite stories are. Oh great.
1:38:32
Which do you think his favorite part?
1:38:33
Childs and Story. Is, oh, the dominators?
1:38:36
Worse. The Crotons.
1:38:39
Worse. The Space Pirates.
1:38:41
Because I worked on it. There's like, oh again.
1:38:47
Exactly. Oh, bless him.
1:38:50
Oh dear. I just pads out.
1:38:51
And so he gives the four qualities they needed Tom
1:38:55
Baker's successor to have. What do you think they could be,
1:38:58
Joe? Blonde, young, hot and popular
1:39:05
with the ladies. Heroicism.
1:39:08
Yeah. Youthfulness.
1:39:10
Oh, I've got one, yeah. Vulnerability.
1:39:13
OK. And my favorite 1A quality you
1:39:15
look for in your doctor? Straight hair.
1:39:20
Oh, look at my hair. I I would have a hope, would I
1:39:23
in that audition. Unbelievable.
1:39:26
So it's just so cheap and exploitative, these books.
1:39:29
So I'm sorry. I was really looking forward to
1:39:32
these when I bought back in the 80s.
1:39:34
Guess he wasn't as savvy about the cynical marketing as our
1:39:37
fault. No, no, no.
1:39:40
But then the covers are nice, so I can see why you were
1:39:42
interested. My true.
1:39:43
Skillet air artwork, so I've got to go.
1:39:47
OK, back to the top 10. OK, hands up, I am a sucker for
1:39:53
any story that says it was a possible contender for season 27
1:39:59
already that any book that says that it's going to hit my sweet
1:40:02
spot. I'm a.
1:40:03
Small contender for season 27. Or that could be any of the
1:40:06
early New adventures. It could be any of the Robert
1:40:10
Perry and Tucker books. It could be Relative Dementias
1:40:13
by Mark Michalowski. It's Illegal Alien by Mike
1:40:18
Tucker and Robert Perry. Wow, on your top ten list?
1:40:21
On my top ten list. Blow me away, let's go do it.
1:40:27
This was the 5th book in the BBC Past Adventures and I think they
1:40:33
that range had certainly been struggling up to that point and
1:40:36
I think this for me brought me back.
1:40:40
I know it's not deep and literate, it's not a Lawrence
1:40:44
Miles, it's not a Paul Mars, but sometimes you just want a
1:40:47
straightforward, well told, well crafted Doctor Who adventure,
1:40:51
and for me, this does that. Plus it's got the plus point of
1:40:54
World War 2 setting, which I always find very evocative
1:40:57
setting because it's kind of simultaneously easy to imagine
1:41:01
but also impossible to imagine kind of fear and horror.
1:41:05
It's got the Cybermen in it, but it's got the Wheel in Space
1:41:08
Cybermen, so it's got bonus full points for bringing back an old
1:41:11
version of Cybermen. It's Sylvester, obviously, but I
1:41:14
just think it makes really good use for Cybermen.
1:41:16
So you've got Cybermen that's gone rogue and acting like this
1:41:19
kind of Jack the Ripper character on Limehouse, tearing
1:41:22
people to bits looking for spare parts to repair itself.
1:41:26
You've got an underground criminal who's selling cyber
1:41:28
technology to both the Germans and the British.
1:41:31
You've got cybermats that are, they've been really updated.
1:41:34
They're much more real threat. They're based on animals, so
1:41:37
they're really unpredictable. They can sniff you down by the
1:41:40
scent, they Burrow into your chest to kill you.
1:41:43
You've got full on cyber conversion.
1:41:44
You've got a baby that's half cybertized with the tail of a
1:41:47
cyber mat and cyber arms. So really quite gruesome.
1:41:52
I just love it. I just really get into this
1:41:54
world, I would say. I know it's not going to win any
1:41:56
prizes for literacy and your look of shock and disbelief on
1:41:59
your face says it all. But I like spending time with
1:42:02
Cody McBride, who's a This American Private Eye.
1:42:05
And George, I can see this in season 27 and they write it as
1:42:09
though it is a A4 part season 20.
1:42:11
Seven, it could absolutely open a season.
1:42:13
Yeah, and it would have been much better than that.
1:42:16
Finn. I sort of big finish brow.
1:42:19
How boring was that, in fact? Oh, man of little faith that you
1:42:23
are there, because then they followed that up with Witch
1:42:27
Hunters, Hollow Men, the Alien Eye of the Eye of Heaven, you
1:42:32
know, some fabulous books. So that was your turning point,
1:42:35
was it? Yes, absolutely.
1:42:38
Well, an intriguing choice. I've had Storm Harvest and I've
1:42:42
had a legal alien on top ten list.
1:42:43
Now maybe I'm underrating these very Tucker books.
1:42:49
Well, it was about this part. I don't want to spoil my final
1:42:52
entry onto my top list, but you might have spotted a bit of a
1:42:55
pattern by now. Which I hadn't until I sat back
1:42:58
and looked at my list. Lots of 7th Doctor.
1:43:02
Lots of 7th doctor I didn't realise.
1:43:05
I'll start back though. Oh my God, yeah, I've got loads
1:43:07
of virgin. You barely touched the 8th in
1:43:09
either direction so far. No, no, that's very true.
1:43:13
Well, let's let's move back to the bottom list, so maybe you
1:43:16
will. No, I don't.
1:43:19
So I am going for The King of Terror by Keith Topping.
1:43:24
So Keith has already popped up on a few of your lists because
1:43:26
of Byzantine or Byzantine, and I've mentioned Devil Goblins
1:43:31
already, but that is nowhere as bad as the King of Terror, which
1:43:35
is hideous. Features 5th Doctor, Tegan,
1:43:38
Turlo and the Brigade. Well, it apparently features the
1:43:41
5th Doctor, Tegan, Turlo, and the Brigadier.
1:43:43
I don't think I recognize any of them in this book.
1:43:46
One thing that gets my goat right from the start is this
1:43:49
book also features Johnny Chess. Who, you might ask, is Johnny
1:43:54
Chess? Well, he's not relevant to this
1:43:55
plot, so I don't know why he's here, but he is.
1:43:58
Or that is the stage name of John Hallidon Ganatus
1:44:01
Chesterton, who's the son of Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright.
1:44:05
So we're back. Hallidon.
1:44:06
Is that his middle name? That's his middle name, Ganatus
1:44:09
Hallidon Ganatus. It went wrong.
1:44:11
He is the weird brainchild of Keith Topping and Paul Cornell,
1:44:15
weirdly enough, and he keeps. Coming right to the doctor.
1:44:18
Right weirdo. He later marries and divorces
1:44:21
Teagan. This Johnny Chess, he does so.
1:44:24
So when she was ranting in Power of the Doctor about her ex
1:44:27
husbands. He's Johnny Chess.
1:44:29
Johnny Chess, I mean, why? He's hardly even features in
1:44:34
this book, so why we have to have him?
1:44:36
So we're in Los Angeles in 1999. So we're in, you know, TV movie
1:44:40
territory. But we don't get that.
1:44:42
We get really kind of lightweight version of the
1:44:44
invasion. Got a big bad corporation
1:44:46
intercom working with aliens. What do the aliens want to do?
1:44:50
They want to transform Earth's climate so it's suitable for
1:44:53
them. Have we ever seen that before?
1:44:56
Once or twice, yes. We also get loads of X-Files in
1:45:01
here, so Intercom wants to experiment on Turlo and use his
1:45:05
DNA to create human hybrids. So it's very, very crisp.
1:45:10
He's just written his discontinuity guide.
1:45:13
Exactly. Files but all I can use the
1:45:14
bell. And.
1:45:17
Yeah, by Was this 2002? He's already a little bit late
1:45:20
to the party. So yeah, it's loads of ex
1:45:23
Vasani. Then we got a second alien race
1:45:25
war with the Jacks. I don't really care by their and
1:45:29
the characters are just so badly written.
1:45:31
Does this sound like Turlo and I quote?
1:45:34
And so it was that he found himself in a bar on Sunset
1:45:37
Strip, drinking his eighth beer and surrounded by a plethora of
1:45:41
beautiful, gagging for it women. He did the same thing with Ian
1:45:47
in Byzantium. Ian's just sort of like cockney
1:45:50
bover boy that all the Roman ladies are flinging themselves
1:45:53
at. I think he's sort of putting
1:45:55
himself in the book. I think the male.
1:45:56
Companions. Then later on there's this woman
1:45:59
who kidnaps him, who turns out to be an alien disguise Price
1:46:02
Price. But he kill Turlo kills her by
1:46:05
wrapping his manacles like Princess Leia round her throat,
1:46:09
throttling her. It's particularly I see her eyes
1:46:12
pop out and her eyes go rolling under the sofa before and I
1:46:16
quote Turlo screamed a last scream of defiance and hatred
1:46:20
and head butted the thing that it ain't evil full on the bridge
1:46:23
of the nose. Can you imagine Mark Strixon
1:46:26
doing? That oh Jesus Christ.
1:46:29
So I I dug out an interview with Keith Topping about this.
1:46:33
So apparently he said a friend of his who was a female friend
1:46:36
said that she wanted to see Turlo tortured.
1:46:39
We have some old friends and he said I was.
1:46:41
Like Kay Orman by any chance? He said I thought I was a really
1:46:44
great idea, but then he said one of his best friends and he added
1:46:48
this best friend is gay, Told Topping that he thought the
1:46:52
torture scenes are the best part of the novel.
1:46:54
And he said you've no idea how many teenage fantasies that
1:46:57
fulfilled I I just don't even know where to begin responding
1:47:02
to that. I mean, I'll tell you what, I've
1:47:03
been tied up a few times and I it wasn't entirely
1:47:06
unpleasurable, but I've never had a manacle put round my neck
1:47:09
and the eyes pop out and fall under the sofa and all of this.
1:47:12
Some very odd people out there. Aren't they some very odd people
1:47:15
out? Especially Keep.
1:47:16
Topping for writing it in the first place.
1:47:18
But so you know, the bricks, No batter, Teagan as a brief fling
1:47:21
with a unit operative. It's just everything's just
1:47:24
derivative and nasty and out of character I want.
1:47:29
To say this. Yeah.
1:47:30
Because, you know, you know, sort of how I feel about the New
1:47:32
Avengers. Thank God he didn't write a solo
1:47:35
new adventure. Oh, my God.
1:47:36
I would only imagine how dismal that would have been.
1:47:40
Yeah. Yeah, horrible, Not horrible.
1:47:43
None of his solo book books work.
1:47:45
I think occasionally his joint books are bad.
1:47:49
But yeah, sorry Keith, sorry. That's good.
1:47:53
Let's go and be nice again. Oh, it's our last one.
1:47:58
Is it? Let's go round quick.
1:48:00
And you know me so well by now. You just named it, didn't we?
1:48:05
You did. Relative Dementias by Mark Mike
1:48:08
Mark Michael Zofsky. Now that's another 7th Doctor.
1:48:13
It's another 7th doctor. God I'm so boring and
1:48:16
predictable. I can't believe the number of
1:48:18
times. I can't believe you ever got 1/8
1:48:20
Doctor book on your top ten list.
1:48:22
I'm sorry, I'm going to seduce you with that, right?
1:48:25
Now just some, just you wait so I don't again, I'm not sure why
1:48:31
this struck with me. So it's not one I've revisited
1:48:35
in recent years at all, even though I loved it because my mum
1:48:38
got diagnosed with vascular dementia and Alzheimer's back in
1:48:41
2013. Me and my husband got a move to
1:48:44
a specialist care home near us and we kind of there with her
1:48:47
for five years, through a very traumatic five years, which was
1:48:53
pretty horrible. So I haven't revisited the book
1:48:55
for that reason. But I'm glad to say this book
1:48:57
doesn't kind of try to find magical reasons for dementia or
1:49:03
waving it away. But even back in the day, which
1:49:05
was what, 2002? I think this was published.
1:49:08
Yeah, 2002. It just really resonated with
1:49:12
me, and I don't know why, because that was in my future.
1:49:14
Maybe it's time you. I'm in US again.
1:49:17
This really struck with me again.
1:49:18
This is another first novel. So Mark goes on to write Half
1:49:21
Life for the EDA's, which I don't remember at all.
1:49:24
I have absolutely no memory of that.
1:49:26
Come on now, I'm not going to have to mention it again, am I?
1:49:28
The Doctor and Fitz, naked in the console, were rubbing buns
1:49:31
together. It's that half.
1:49:32
Life. How did you forget?
1:49:33
That shall I add that to our list?
1:49:38
You've got to leave some for the other book lovers.
1:49:40
Come on. He also writes a couple of the
1:49:43
Nsas as well and writes for the comics he writes for Big Finish.
1:49:46
He does a fabulous donor in the Nsas.
1:49:49
As you can imagine, he writes great comedy.
1:49:52
I think he writes great characters, which is probably
1:49:54
why I really like this. And again, bit like illegal
1:49:57
alien and as you rise I can see this happening on TV.
1:50:00
So we're in a secluded setting in Scotland in the 1980s.
1:50:04
Got plenty of opportunity for coastal filming like in Fenrick.
1:50:07
Not the doctrine. Ace absolutely in character.
1:50:09
We've got units turning up, we've got Ace fighting off
1:50:12
people with Nitro 9. We've got a hidden spaceship
1:50:14
under the sea battlefield, loads of tiny Wyman us got two
1:50:18
versions of ice. Do you know what I was thinking
1:50:20
as I was thinking about this? It's quite a little bit like the
1:50:24
baldy. Two parts are under the lake.
1:50:25
Got 2 versions. Face wandering around spaceship
1:50:28
under the sea. Studied the new series closely.
1:50:32
You know, most episodes you'll find a book somewhere.
1:50:35
Yeah, but what this also has is has four alien races and you
1:50:40
think, oh, TV could never have done that, but one of the races
1:50:43
are wearing flesh suits and they look like humans.
1:50:46
Big tick budgeting partner would have loved that.
1:50:49
The Koreans are albino, humanoid, so we can get away
1:50:52
with a lot. Their makeup.
1:50:53
One that wouldn't have been of these creatures called land
1:50:55
dines that are genetically modified, scuttling creatures
1:50:58
with black tendrils. They probably would have been a
1:51:01
little bit difficult. Maybe wrap a dog in something.
1:51:03
Yeah, it's just great inventive. Obviously, as I said before, the
1:51:07
investigation into dementia isn't about dementia.
1:51:11
Another alien race, The Toll have had their memories removed.
1:51:15
They're trying to find a way to restore them.
1:51:17
There's all loads of twists and turns, good characters.
1:51:20
I just think it's the perfect kind of light, enjoyable, non
1:51:24
arc heavy Doctor Who novel can recognize the characters.
1:51:27
It's doing something different that was on TV.
1:51:30
You could kindly imagine it possibly being done with a
1:51:33
larger budget, so it's wider and more expansive.
1:51:37
It's a great novel, so I'm putting that through as my 10th
1:51:41
positive choice. Do you know, I haven't read that
1:51:44
book in over a decade and every single thing you just mentioned,
1:51:46
I remember. I just remember it being really
1:51:51
sort of very poignant in places. That's what really struck me in
1:51:57
the 1st. Time in places but in an
1:52:00
understated way, both of those things not like oh aren't I so
1:52:04
clever because it does do all those things like you said, the
1:52:06
two aces and all those alien races and all of that but never
1:52:11
forgetting the characters and a brilliant ace.
1:52:13
I just remember Ace being really brilliant as she's dealing with
1:52:18
these aliens that that don't have them.
1:52:21
Yeah, what a great choice and. Isn't that amazing?
1:52:24
Now you can get an author like that in a book like that.
1:52:28
Excuse me bringing unit operatives in and it reads
1:52:32
really well. And then you've got the same in
1:52:34
Keith Toppings, King of Terror and it's fucking hideous.
1:52:37
So, so besides such dichotomy, isn't it though?
1:52:39
One writer can bring in kind of that unit military arm and it
1:52:44
just feels natural and organic and and enjoyable and
1:52:48
intriguing. And someone else just reads like
1:52:50
Fan Wang. Your top ten list was absolutely
1:52:54
riveting, I've got to say. And I mean that genuinely,
1:52:57
because there's a lot of stuff there that hasn't been touched
1:52:59
upon at all. But we do have one last book
1:53:02
that has to be highlighted, you know.
1:53:04
And I need to be fair, Joe. I've got to put one virgin New
1:53:07
Adventures in Dancer. Thank God for that.
1:53:11
I mean, it could be half of the range.
1:53:14
It could be anyone of 50. No, no, no, it could.
1:53:19
So reading should be a pleasure, Shouldn't say, shouldn't be a
1:53:22
chore, shouldn't be a slog, Shouldn't be reading something
1:53:25
really pretentious? Just the sake of being
1:53:27
pretentious, Yeah. Well, you like the new
1:53:28
adventures, remember? Which book do you think I've
1:53:32
gone for? Well, it's not going to be an
1:53:33
obvious one because it's you. So it's going to be I'm going to
1:53:37
be the pit or something like that because that's too obvious.
1:53:40
It's not It is The Death of Art by Simon Butcher Jones.
1:53:44
Oh. I don't know anything about that
1:53:46
book. I wouldn't bother.
1:53:48
So it's quite towards the end now he writes, I think you
1:53:50
posted today about like in grim reality that he Co writes we go
1:53:53
so. Far the adventures of.
1:53:56
This is just hideous. I mean, thank God Damaged goods
1:53:59
came after this book because this was this was such a slot.
1:54:03
But it sounds marvellous. You've got an interesting
1:54:06
historical period. Got 1880s in France during the
1:54:09
time of the Third Republic, Got a secret brotherhood, you know,
1:54:12
very Doctor Who, very masked man, dragoner, got shape
1:54:15
shifters, psychic powers, aliens.
1:54:19
I just can't get into it. You can.
1:54:20
Overload a book though, can't you?
1:54:22
But. It's not that, Joe, it's just so
1:54:24
pretentious. So apparently reading up about
1:54:26
this book was inspired by the Dreyfus Affair.
1:54:29
Are you familiar with the Dreyfus Affair?
1:54:34
No, not James Dreyfus. No.
1:54:36
Give me, give me, give me. No, no, no.
1:54:38
This is 1880s case. So this was about a French
1:54:42
Jewish artillery officer who was wrongly convicted for treason
1:54:46
for communicating French military secrets to the Germans.
1:54:50
It was held up in France as one of the biggest misjust
1:54:52
miscarriages of justice. And it's.
1:54:55
A riveting subject for a book. Absolutely, because it was all
1:54:58
about the anti-Semitism that was rife in France at the time.
1:55:02
So of course, what a obvious setting for a Doctor Who novel.
1:55:05
I was really odd because I was flicking through this book just
1:55:07
to kind of get re acquaint myself with the prose style and
1:55:10
one sentence, it must have been karma, jumped out at me.
1:55:13
And he said barely one in a million would pick up the
1:55:16
historical reference. And I thought, no, nobody will
1:55:19
pick up the reference. But this is about the fucking
1:55:21
Dreyfus about because I know nothing about her.
1:55:23
So it just shows this book was so niche.
1:55:26
It's also based on Simon Butcher Jones love apparently of quantum
1:55:30
mechanics, but you know, I'm more of a Tom Tech kind of guy
1:55:35
so I don't know much about. You look so.
1:55:39
I don't know anything about this.
1:55:41
I mean, I do remember reading The Taking of Planet 5, which
1:55:45
just had a wealth of brilliant ideas in it, and none of it was
1:55:49
executed in a way that I could comprehend it.
1:55:52
So I left the book going. What the fuck was that?
1:55:55
What about it's? Just so.
1:55:57
It's also really gruesome and just nasty, so again, I'll flick
1:56:02
through the But I didn't take long to find phrases like He
1:56:05
sizzled into scarlet gouts of flame, squealing like a pig with
1:56:09
its throat cut that. Was me in bed last night but I
1:56:14
remember. Across the room, Henry fell like
1:56:17
a dead man. He's had a bloody mess, his
1:56:19
wrist torn and bleeding in his side, a spare wound.
1:56:23
A psychosomatic Christ. Really.
1:56:26
Is this a Doctor Who book? There's dirty morgues, there's
1:56:29
bloody crucifixions, there's assassinations galore.
1:56:33
It's just the only reason I know this.
1:56:35
Is this is back-to-back with damaged goods, which is pretty
1:56:37
dark as well. Yeah, but this is just, I just
1:56:43
don't like it. And the only reason I know it's
1:56:44
Doctor Who because I've I've flicked through the book, I can
1:56:47
see references to Hexachromite gas, Black Guardians, Silorians,
1:56:52
Arcturians, Joe Grant. It's.
1:56:55
Just too it's too clever by half.
1:56:57
It's dark, it's got a big side order of video nust in us with
1:57:02
it. It's just horrible.
1:57:03
So no. I don't know if.
1:57:05
It's off. Before or after, but one of my
1:57:09
favorite new adventures is Christmas on a Rational Planet
1:57:11
by Lawrence Miles. It's it's around that time,
1:57:14
isn't it? It's very close to it, and that
1:57:16
similarly delves into a really interesting part of history.
1:57:20
It's similarly has a huge science fiction ideas in it.
1:57:24
I know it's got a lot of continuity in it because that's
1:57:26
famously the book where he put in a continuity reference from
1:57:29
every single story if you care to go dig in, and I'm sure some
1:57:33
people did. But it's just so well written.
1:57:37
He's just so talented. So it just goes to show the the
1:57:41
diversity of author you had and I'm not just in the new
1:57:44
Adventures, but across. All of these ranges.
1:57:47
You know, and how much like I don't know.
1:57:51
Case of Androsani seeking into the twin dilemma.
1:57:54
You can go from the death of art to damage goods from 1 heartbeat
1:57:58
to the next. Chalk and cheese.
1:58:01
I think it's a familiar expression.
1:58:03
Wow, what an intriguing load of old fiction that you have just
1:58:09
dragged out of your closet there and in typical Rod style.
1:58:13
Absolutely fascinating, and I like the fact that most of them
1:58:17
come with a great story as well. And readings too.
1:58:21
We get your money's worth. Yeah, we do, We do.
1:58:26
But before we go, we're going to have to do our rank, the ranges.
1:58:30
Now I'm not feeling I know what's coming first, but let's
1:58:34
go from bottom to top as. What are we putting in there?
1:58:40
Obviously the obvious ones. So it's going to be the New
1:58:44
adventures, the Missing adventures, the 8th Doctor
1:58:47
adventures, the past Doctor adventures, the new series
1:58:50
adventures, and the Targets. If you want to throw in the
1:58:54
Telos novellas as well, please do.
1:58:57
OK, well, let's throw them in because I'll go straight to the
1:58:59
bottom. So telos novellas novellas are
1:59:02
right. To the bottom.
1:59:04
They weren't. They never really had time to
1:59:06
find their feet, did they? So yeah, I'm sorry, there was.
1:59:10
A couple of goodies, but not many.
1:59:13
I put it this way. This was another one.
1:59:15
When we were moving, there were only two ranges I mentioned.
1:59:17
I I gave the Nsas to charity. I did give the Telesmovel
1:59:21
novellas which. Shop was it, ARC would have got
1:59:23
in there. Do you know what, Oxfam?
1:59:26
So they, they did very well. They loved me.
1:59:27
They said, oh, every time you bring something in, we've got
1:59:29
Doctor Who fans, we've got telephone numbers of people
1:59:32
waiting for you to bring stuff in.
1:59:33
Oh. Great.
1:59:35
I did. I am denied about it and I
1:59:37
thought I'm only on an arrow about it because I bought the
1:59:40
expensive hardback editions and you kind of want to keep them
1:59:43
for that and then thought is it right just to keep them because
1:59:45
I like the spines? No, I don't think I'll reread
1:59:47
any of. Them it was a keef topping one
1:59:49
there, wasn't it? Yeah, that certainly was.
1:59:50
So that probably made their decision for me.
1:59:53
Yeah. They just didn't feel very
1:59:54
doctor. They just, I said they didn't
1:59:56
get time to really row into what they were trying to do.
1:59:59
It was just too disparate, too bitty.
2:00:01
So sorry. No, they're going to go to the
2:00:03
bottom. OK.
2:00:06
I really struggle because my gut and where I'm SAT now, what
2:00:12
would I rather read? And I'd always put the Targets
2:00:16
as next bottom, but at the time, but at the time obviously I
2:00:21
bought the Targets were my childhood.
2:00:25
Every single Saturday I was running into Smiths.
2:00:27
I still believe it or not, I've dreams now of going into that
2:00:31
Smiths with the store layout that it was back then going to.
2:00:34
Exactly. I can still see it absolutely.
2:00:37
I see it in my dreams. I can see in my minds eye
2:00:39
running over to where their pile of books were and flicking
2:00:41
through hoping to find a new one.
2:00:43
Mine was the Crawley Market store in the Old Town.
2:00:47
We crossed the road and I go run it up to the man's table.
2:00:50
My God. Doctor Who and the Cybermen,
2:00:52
Yes. Oh, now I just, I just don't
2:00:57
revisit the targets. I buy the new ones and I you
2:00:59
know the stories though. Didn't you?
2:01:01
That's the trouble. I do know that's the trouble.
2:01:03
Yeah. And even though people do, you
2:01:05
know, wild, crazy, some successful, some not, it just
2:01:10
doesn't inspire me because, as you say, I know this.
2:01:12
I know the stories weren't made for that medium.
2:01:15
I think at the end of the day, that's it.
2:01:17
The stories for the other books, the novels are written for the
2:01:19
medium of print. These were made for the medium
2:01:22
of television and they've been translated to print.
2:01:25
And so, yeah, I'm sorry. As much as I love them or loved
2:01:29
them, and I still love them, I've still got every single one.
2:01:32
I'd never I say they're going my coffin with me, but.
2:01:35
I will confess Rod, having recently read The Mark of the
2:01:38
Ronnie by Pip and Jane Baker, there are some literary classics
2:01:42
amongst that range. Simon the Rani by Pip and Jane
2:01:45
Baker. Terror of the Voids by Pip and
2:01:48
Jane Baker. Can you abuse an exclamation
2:01:51
mark? Oh, I think they certainly can.
2:01:53
That's pretty much after every sentence, isn't?
2:01:56
It I think the the punctuation points are filing a lawsuit
2:02:00
inappropriate use. Yeah, but at the end of a
2:02:03
sentence uttered by now, what would you do, apart from putting
2:02:05
an exclamation? I love it when.
2:02:06
They do an end of chapter though.
2:02:08
Exclamation mark. Traps.
2:02:12
Exclamation mark I'm. Afraid the targets, yeah,
2:02:15
they're just, they don't inspire me now, but I love them in the
2:02:19
day, so I can't, I can't ever take away from them because they
2:02:23
were amazing. But sorry.
2:02:25
Though you have broken my rule because generally speaking with
2:02:28
these rankings, it's the books that people experience first.
2:02:32
Mine was the age Doctors, you know, someone else's was the
2:02:35
John Arnold's was like the New Adventures, the ones that you
2:02:38
really got into. And unfortunately, you've now
2:02:41
just thrown it all out. I always like to break your
2:02:44
theories. You certainly do.
2:02:47
So Next up the list would be the BBC Past Adventures.
2:02:53
And although I had a couple of them in my book range, I think
2:02:56
generally the hit rate of those was less than any of the other
2:03:01
ranges. So as I mentioned on one of the
2:03:04
earlier books we were talking about, I think they took a
2:03:07
little while to get into their groove, which is a bit odd when
2:03:10
they've had the Templar of the Missing adventures.
2:03:12
But I just think they took a while to find their mark.
2:03:15
And then we get the King of Tempra later on.
2:03:18
There were just, there were too many misses in that range for
2:03:20
me. So I think on average they're
2:03:23
going to have to go next. There's at least 8 Christopher
2:03:26
Beulis in that. Well, that's straight away why
2:03:28
I'm even pondering about silence.
2:03:30
Clear. Did you read that?
2:03:31
Oh God, yes. Great independence.
2:03:35
Yeah. He needs to stop writing books.
2:03:36
Jesus Christ. Go back to editing the new
2:03:40
adventures. Rebecca Levine did all the good.
2:03:42
All the good work, I swear. OK, next one.
2:03:47
Sorry Joe, it's the 8th Doctor. That's fine, some people have
2:03:50
put them lower than this. I enjoyed them, but they just
2:03:55
never fired me in the way that maybe another range did.
2:03:59
I enjoyed them. I enjoyed the Ark.
2:04:01
I think there's a lot of really good stuff in that.
2:04:04
And I am absolutely looking forward to revisiting them.
2:04:07
I want to revisit them. So the fact that I'm hungry to
2:04:10
go back to them and see them now through through fresh eyes says
2:04:14
that I'm intrigued. Because if you said to me, oh,
2:04:16
sit down and do a reread of all the targets, I think I probably
2:04:19
wouldn't. I'm wondering if time, despite
2:04:24
the fact I think they were innovating a lot, there've been
2:04:27
so many books at that point that people were like, I'm sort of
2:04:30
exhausted of Doctor Who books. Like we had the whole virgin new
2:04:33
adventure rate worth the whole Benny range.
2:04:35
We've had, you know, all these past doctors, all these missing
2:04:37
adventures, like are we still doing books?
2:04:40
Like are there more books to read?
2:04:42
We. Didn't have TV this is.
2:04:44
Probably a good time to revisit arrange that perhaps you didn't
2:04:50
have a a a good reaction to it at the start and you may have
2:04:53
the same reaction again. But boy, we're going to have
2:04:55
some fun finding out. I'm looking forward to it.
2:04:57
And again, because you'd only got had Paul, not again, you
2:05:00
know, for like one TV movie. He didn't have the, the pull of
2:05:03
Sale. Sylvester McCoy, who might have
2:05:05
cropped her once or twice on my list.
2:05:07
Once or twice, maybe. So, yeah, the 8th Doctor goes
2:05:11
next. It's still 3rd.
2:05:12
It's not a bad position. It's bronze.
2:05:14
No, I'm assuming the new series of ventures are going to be
2:05:16
first, then at Oh. Gosh, gosh, I missed them.
2:05:18
I didn't miss them now. I know you did.
2:05:20
Oh gosh. Let's come back, come back, come
2:05:22
back. So going back to the bottom of
2:05:25
the range between between the targets and they're not and
2:05:28
they're not forgettable. You say they would come between
2:05:31
the targets and the Talos, so second from bottom.
2:05:36
And as as we said earlier, just because they're just not,
2:05:38
they're not aimed at me, are they?
2:05:40
So no where would something like Death in the Stars go though,
2:05:43
because it's not a new series venture as such.
2:05:46
These these special hybrid weird, we've had quite a few of
2:05:51
them haven't. We celebrity range oh, where
2:05:54
would you put that bottom, including the Stephen Baxter one
2:05:58
and. And I actually quite like the
2:06:01
Sophie Aldridge, the 13th Doctor one.
2:06:03
Well, of course you did. Of course.
2:06:05
You even had Jodie in it. Oh, actually, it was Mark
2:06:07
Tucker, wasn't it? Yeah, he did end up on your top
2:06:10
ten list. It was Jodie not written by
2:06:12
Chris Chibnall, so that was a plus.
2:06:14
Let's move on to your second favorite range, shall we?
2:06:17
So second favorite range, pretty obviously it's going to be the
2:06:21
Missing Adventures. What were the 33 of them?
2:06:25
Yeah, I was very happy with this range.
2:06:27
I thought this was a very yeah, there are some duds in there,
2:06:30
but there's more hits than misses in this one.
2:06:33
I've been very surprised exploring the missing adventures
2:06:37
because I've done the Sands of Time, I've done Magra, I'm doing
2:06:43
the ghost event space and somehow enjoying it, I think.
2:06:47
That doesn't really belong in that range though, does that?
2:06:49
It's a surprisingly forward thinking past doctor range.
2:06:56
I know there's some dogs in there because I've read
2:06:58
Evolution and that returns to the web planet or whatever is
2:07:02
called Twilight. That's on our that's on our
2:07:05
list. Christopher Beulis again.
2:07:07
He's on our reading list. Twilight of the Gods, My God.
2:07:10
In a double bill with Doctor Who and the Zabi.
2:07:11
Oh, there we go. Yeah, there we go.
2:07:14
Do return to the Web planet as an optional extra Excellent.
2:07:18
The the Vortis Trio No. One's ever called them that
2:07:22
before? Dazzle me with what your.
2:07:25
Well, I wonder what could possibly be top of my range.
2:07:29
Of course, it's the Virgin New Adventures.
2:07:32
Yes. They're dark, they're grim.
2:07:35
I don't care. I love them.
2:07:36
And I love them for so many reasons.
2:07:39
John, I know you talk about your love of the 8th Doctor, and
2:07:42
that's absolutely valid, absolutely right.
2:07:44
But I don't think they would have done as many brave, bold
2:07:49
and experimental things that they did if they hadn't had the
2:07:52
template set by them, by the Virgin New Adventures.
2:07:55
I dumped it. I think you've got to take
2:07:57
yourself back in time to when these were first published, back
2:08:00
to 1991, when there was a vacuum of Doctor books.
2:08:04
All we'd had were the Targets and, you know, Mission to Magnus
2:08:07
and the Nightmare Fair and a couple of, you know, Harry
2:08:10
Sullivan's War. This was breaking new ground.
2:08:13
And they tried, yes, they fell on their face a few times and
2:08:16
did some dog turd books. I'm not going to deny it, but
2:08:21
they constantly experimented, they refined, they were
2:08:24
thoughtful, they were bold, they were brave, they learnt as well.
2:08:29
They learnt from their mistakes and they got better and better
2:08:32
and they were heard you say a few times, you know, the last
2:08:34
food at that range are, are bangers, apart from maybe the
2:08:37
death of art, which is a absolute stinker.
2:08:39
But if they hadn't done what they've done back in that day, I
2:08:43
don't think you would have got BBC books picking them up
2:08:46
because a lot of the authors are the same or certainly inspired
2:08:48
by. And so I think the Virgin, and
2:08:51
that's not an excuse, you know, there's not a reason to put a
2:08:53
book range through because it's inspired something else.
2:08:56
But I think it's got to get the kudos and the acclamation for
2:09:00
doing what it did, IE in setting up a new form of Doctor Who
2:09:04
storytelling in a new medium in a way, because original novels
2:09:08
have not been done before. So I think they deserve all the
2:09:11
praise and love that we can give them.
2:09:13
And yeah, there are some poor ones, but I'll take that for
2:09:16
what I got from it. So if I took a look the other
2:09:19
day right at the version new adventures at the 8 Doctor
2:09:21
adventures side by side and I was just going hit miss, hit
2:09:24
miss, hit miss right with them all.
2:09:26
And I sort of came to the conclusion actually the sort of
2:09:29
hit miss rate. It's about the same of two.
2:09:32
And oddly enough, they they're weak in the same places.
2:09:36
I think the version New adventures take a while to get
2:09:38
going on their feet. Absolutely.
2:09:40
The 8th Doctors do the same as well.
2:09:43
Somewhere in the middle you get the Earth arc.
2:09:45
With the 8th Doctor books you get Sanctuary and Human Nature
2:09:48
and all that. With the.
2:09:49
Coming new adventures, yeah. And then in the last third, you
2:09:53
know, you get interesting arcs like the Cy Powers arcs and the
2:09:57
Sabbath arc and things like that happening in the two various
2:09:59
ranges. Both end on a Lance Parkin book,
2:10:03
which are acclaimed. So I was like, Oh my God,
2:10:07
there's more similarities here than I thought.
2:10:12
I think I remember when the DWM pals came out and I remember
2:10:17
there was always AI don't know. I don't read them option right.
2:10:21
And that was usually about half readership.
2:10:24
It would be the the books ranged and then 50%.
2:10:27
I don't think that would be so high if those books weren't
2:10:33
trying as much as they did. And people going, oh, God, you
2:10:39
know, like, what are you doing? This is not Doctor Who Transit.
2:10:43
What the hell is this? Human nature, you know, all the
2:10:47
shadow torture porn. What are you doing?
2:10:50
Like, but I think that 50% don't read them is telling in a
2:10:54
positive way rather than a negative way, you know, And I
2:10:58
think maybe people weren't ready for some of those experiments.
2:11:04
But I absolutely would never, ever refuse to acknowledge the
2:11:10
the inspiration that those books and the knock on effect through
2:11:15
the BBC books, through the new series, you know, and the
2:11:19
careers that it's spawned, you know, and you know, a character
2:11:22
like Benny that has gone from that range to Big Finish and
2:11:28
gone on for 20 years of storytelling via various ways,
2:11:33
comics, books, audios. And we're still interested in
2:11:37
it. We're not bored of.
2:11:38
No, no, no, it's because it's a character that just remolds and
2:11:41
remolds and becomes more interesting.
2:11:43
So I I understand absolutely why people put the Virgin New
2:11:48
Adventures at the top of their list.
2:11:52
I think it just comes down to personal preference for the
2:11:55
books because it's usually those two that are vying for the top.
2:11:59
It's also timing and context, isn't it?
2:12:01
So context, I think is king in this.
2:12:03
They hit you at the right time. Virgin New Adventures were
2:12:06
absolutely there for me at the right time, so I'll take a
2:12:09
guess. Because I know David Gillespie
2:12:11
Pratt was reading the 8th Doctorates when they came out,
2:12:14
and I wonder if these will be this top 2.
2:12:18
But we, I don't know. That's the exciting thing about
2:12:20
these lists. I did know that was going to be
2:12:22
your number one, but it's wonderful to find out why.
2:12:26
And similarly with the 8th Doctor books, which I know
2:12:29
you're going to explore, I'm really happy to delve into some
2:12:32
of these books, good and bad, in the New Adventures range because
2:12:35
we've got both on our list. Oh boy, we do.
2:12:40
And see what this range did at its best and at its worst,
2:12:43
because I think it's all worth discussing.
2:12:46
Absolutely, definitely is. No, it's, it's been a
2:12:49
fascinating journey picking those out and saying it's far
2:12:53
too easy to do the top 10. And it was probably I had to
2:12:56
keep chopping books out of the the list to start with was a
2:12:59
good 30-40 to start with and I just had to keep excising.
2:13:03
Can I just ask you, I am so intrigued, Yeah, because
2:13:06
obviously an eighth of we didn't end up on your top ten list.
2:13:10
What would have been the one? The one that was sort of just
2:13:13
outside? On an eighth docks.
2:13:16
Oh gosh, I'm so. Intrigued.
2:13:20
What would have been my top? That's just, I'm not going to
2:13:23
say genocide. What would be my top?
2:13:29
I'm just, I'm flicking through the list quickly just to really,
2:13:32
I don't know. You see, there are some really
2:13:37
good ones in there. I'm thinking, oh, I should have
2:13:39
put, I should have put that one in.
2:13:42
Do you know one that really probably and I picked ones out
2:13:46
that had kind of an emotional onsat for me.
2:13:49
I am going to say the taint. I've just read the taint I've.
2:13:55
Just read the taint and maybe again it was that.
2:13:58
Rod no wonder you loved it. It was dark, but it was also
2:14:01
that game shifter because suddenly Fitz came along and
2:14:04
suddenly things started to fall into place a little bit because
2:14:09
Sam Jones. Yeah, I just don't feel the love
2:14:11
for Sam. Sorry, whatever.
2:14:13
There were safe. It comes.
2:14:14
You only were doing those scenes where from the the patients
2:14:17
point of view and that scene of the fella that was put away in
2:14:21
the cupboards and then took the baby in the cupboard, I was
2:14:24
like, Oh my. It's dark.
2:14:26
It's dark as well. I do quite, I don't.
2:14:29
I love you. But yeah, probably the taint of
2:14:32
all of that. I mean, there are some great.
2:14:34
Well, even as I look down the list of them, why didn't I put
2:14:36
that one in? Wanted it but I've gone with
2:14:37
what? My, it was a great list.
2:14:40
Well, I'm going to ask you one last question and that is, where
2:14:43
are we going next? Well, you and I, we've already
2:14:46
recorded with our lovely book group consisting of Dan Pin,
2:14:50
David Gillespie Pratt and oh, I need to get his.
2:14:52
Name. It's Bowley.
2:14:53
No Bowley. Is it Boley, Gareth?
2:14:57
Boley No, because I've been saying Bowley all these years.
2:15:00
Gareth I'm doing a public apology here.
2:15:02
He got in touch with me and said will you please get my name
2:15:04
right? Gareth Boley, Yeah, that's
2:15:06
right. As in bow ships?
2:15:08
As in bow ships, Yes. So what's what's our 5 books
2:15:14
that we're covering? First five books tonight.
2:15:16
We've don't. Well, we've only got the next 4
2:15:18
after that. We have got a double bill of
2:15:20
exciting adventure with the Daleks teamed up with the
2:15:24
glorious Revelation of the Daleks.
2:15:26
Wow, wonderful. God help us.
2:15:29
Then we move to Time of Your Life by the lovely, lovely Steve
2:15:33
Lyons. I'm very much looking forward to
2:15:35
getting into that. We're then back to target
2:15:38
territory again, and we've got the double bail of, let me get
2:15:41
this right, Curse of Fenrick with Dragon Fire 2 bricks, an
2:15:46
ace special just for you. Oh.
2:15:49
Great. I'm divorced of Sophie Aldrin.
2:15:51
I'm sure she'll be wonderful. And then we've got my pick as
2:15:54
the final one of the first batch, which I mentioned right
2:15:57
to the top of this podcast. So it's brought us round full
2:16:00
circle, which is bad therapy by match.
2:16:02
Unless you you're starting right at the top, you've only got one
2:16:04
way to go from there. Absolutely.
2:16:07
I don't know. I've already done Revelation the
2:16:09
Daleks by then. Rod, where can people find you
2:16:13
online now? We do.
2:16:14
We don't really do this on Strictly anymore.
2:16:16
We don't people know where we are.
2:16:18
They can't get away from us. They try.
2:16:22
They're laughing. I was like, what are you
2:16:23
talking? About They can find me on
2:16:25
Twitter at Who under Score Rod and obviously you can hear me
2:16:29
every fortnight with the fragrant Joe Ford tripping our
2:16:34
way across the dance floor in Strictly.
2:16:37
Fragrant. I'm sniffing my arm pierced.
2:16:39
What are you talking? About well, you're a long way
2:16:42
away from me at the moment. Can't be an aphrodisiac.
2:16:44
Rod it can be an aphrodisiac, you know.
2:16:49
Now come on, we've had enough of your bondage stories for today.
2:16:51
Thank you very much. Oh yes, I'm sorry.
2:16:53
Well, but until we meet again in the book club to dice our way
2:16:58
through Eric Saywood and David Whittaker.
2:17:01
Sorry, did you just say Saywood? Yeah, as opposed to Saward.
2:17:05
Oh God, I can't get anyone's names right.
2:17:09
I shout every time you say Saward.
2:17:12
Until we do. Oh my God, I just realised those
2:17:14
are not too diametrically opposed writers.
2:17:17
Just a little bit. Anyone would think this was
2:17:20
planned. Until next time, Well, thank you
2:17:24
very much for your OH. It's been an absolute pleasure.
2:17:26
It's been a blast. Thank you, Joe.
2:17:28
Hello. Cut it there.