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Hamster Book Club - The Ancestor Cell by Peter Anghelides & Stephen Cole (featuring Mark Donaldson) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:02
  Back behind the TARDIS, Romana yelled, lobbing a grenade into
• 0:06
  the advancing faction troops. No, yelled Fitz, you'll hit
• 0:10
  Compassion. The grenade went off,
• 0:13
  obliterating the men who were hiding behind her.
• 0:16
  Compassion dropped to the ground, her eyes tightly closed,
• 0:20
  but she was picked up again by more scurrying soldiers.
• 0:23
  She's a TARDIS, you idiot. Romana snap.
• 0:27
  Indestructible, so let's use my TARDIS in the same way.
• 0:31
  Fitz remembered the ships he'd seen torn apart in the enemy's
• 0:34
  first attack, and discovered a moment later he could squeeze
• 0:37
  the trigger on the proton gun with cross fingers.
• 0:40
  Suddenly, a dark shadow fell across Fitz and the others, as
• 0:44
  if the Ravens from the transfigured council chamber
• 0:47
  were flying overhead as one. What's happening?
• 0:51
  Marley yelled. Fitz blinks.
• 0:53
  The light had changed, it was murkier, a sickly yellow, and
• 0:58
  then the corridor started pouring with blood around him
• 1:01
  and the floor started giving way.
• 1:03
  He turned around in shock, saw something grab the guard beside
• 1:07
  him and haul him into the blackness that was closing in.
• 1:10
  He backed away into something cold, gasped, turned, and found
• 1:15
  that the crystal of Ramana's TARDIS was looking more like an
• 1:18
  ice cube, smooth surfaces dribbling and melting.
• 1:22
  The marble floor dissolved as if acid were flooding in, revealing
• 1:26
  rusting grills beneath. Through the mesh, Fits saw
• 1:31
  hundreds of people crushed in together, the blood flowing from
• 1:35
  the walls, soaking them stickily.
• 1:38
  They pressed their hands up against the grating, screaming
• 1:41
  for help. He felt thousands of eyes
• 1:44
  burning into him, but was still too shocked, too bewildered by
• 1:48
  the onslaught to react. A tiny voice inside him was
• 1:52
  telling him that was probably the idea, when he felt something
• 1:55
  squeeze his arm. He cried out, pictured the
• 1:58
  vanishing guard, snatched his arm away, opened his eyes.
• 2:03
  Jesus, Molly, he said. What's happened?
• 2:05
  Who are these people? How did they get here?
• 2:08
  We still have Fitz, Madam President, Marley reported.
• 2:12
  He's real. Real.
• 2:13
  Confused you mean? He said.
• 2:15
  What's going? Romana was suddenly beside him,
• 2:18
  a pale spectre. The Matrix has stabilized.
• 2:22
  Her voice was hollow. The faction influence has been
• 2:25
  woven into its databanks. Fitz shut his eyes from the
• 2:29
  terrible sights around him, but could still feel blood pooling
• 2:33
  at his feet. Bad, right?
• 2:36
  Grandfather Paradox is using the Matrix to project his perverted
• 2:39
  reality into ours. But I fits could see now that
• 2:43
  the tears were welling in Romano's eyes.
• 2:46
  You were right, you stupid idiot Primitive.
• 2:50
  You were right. I was.
• 2:53
  Ripples back through. Time from this moment, the
• 2:56
  moment of capitulation, rewriting history, diminishing
• 3:00
  us, weakening us. She grabbed hold of Fitz's shirt
• 3:03
  with both hands, a broken nail scratching into his chest.
• 3:07
  How many sides does the panopticon have?
• 3:10
  She said quietly, mouth twisting as she fall back the tears. 6
• 3:16
  Whispered Fitz. It's circular.
• 3:18
  Ramana screamed to him, One Great Wall capturing the unity
• 3:23
  of 1 Great Gallifrey. There were annoying Gallifreys.
• 3:27
  Fitz yelled back into her face, bumping her little snub nose
• 3:31
  with his own. She jerked her head back and the
• 3:33
  hot tears cascaded down both China cheeks. 9 no, Marley said,
• 3:40
  her voice unnervingly calm. There isn't even one.
• 3:45
  Romana slumped to the ground. The people trapped under the
• 3:48
  grill jostled and shouted beneath her feet, reaching out
• 3:52
  for her, begging her to deliver them from this evil.
• 3:55
  She held her head in both hands, sniveling like a child.
• 3:59
  Look. Breathe, Marley, look there.
• 4:01
  He knew it was a bad idea, but he couldn't stop himself.
• 4:04
  Fitz opened one eye and saw the image of a small boy in the
• 4:07
  spotlight ahead of them. He was screaming as dark figures
• 4:11
  held him down. By their feet were big black
• 4:14
  medicine bags bulging open with strange angular instruments.
• 4:19
  The figures held what looked like blowtorches to his face,
• 4:23
  ignoring his cries of pain, searing away the flesh and
• 4:27
  boiling the blood until the hard white bone poked through
• 4:30
  beneath. Behind the boy, a long line of
• 4:33
  shivering, terrified people waited their turn.
• 4:36
  Why? Marley whispered in outrage.
• 4:39
  Why do this? It's an illusion, right?
• 4:42
  Fitz said desperately. Just to scare us, right?
• 4:45
  No, Romana said, her voice Husky and flat.
• 4:49
  It's what they're doing to us now.
• 4:52
  It's what they're going to do to us now.
• 4:54
  The Grandfather and Faction Paradox are finally one.
• 4:58
  Fitz stared at her, stumped. Then he felt something pulling
• 5:01
  at his leg, pulling him in. He screamed at Ramana and Mali,
• 5:05
  first for help, then for mercy. But his cries meant nothing,
• 5:09
  with so many already echoing in the bloody darkness.
• 5:13
  His body was being eaten away by the shadows.
• 5:16
  At least it was painless, he thought.
• 5:19
  At least it was quick. Welcome back to the Hamster Book
• 5:33
  Club. I am a slightly snotty and
• 5:36
  grotty Joe Ford recovering from illness appropriate for this
• 5:41
  particular book we're in today where the entirety of time and
• 5:44
  space is suffering from a terrible illness on Gallifrey.
• 5:49
  Little spoiler there. I am here today with a first
• 5:54
  time book clubber. I'm hoping not lost.
• 5:57
  I'm hoping he's got some other gaps that he wants to find some
• 5:59
  point. Mr. Mark Donaldson.
• 6:03
  Hello, Mark. Hello.
• 6:06
  Hello, Joe. Thank you for having me on to
• 6:07
  the book club. And I've got one question to ask
• 6:12
  you. Go on, stone or bone?
• 6:16
  What do you prefer? What dildos Well.
• 6:23
  You could insert for that question anywhere you like.
• 6:26
  Stone ones are usually free, you know.
• 6:28
  Bone ones are very ivory. Dildos are very expensive.
• 6:33
  I'd say bone rather than stone if you are talking of the
• 6:36
  edifice. Well, yes, let's let's go with
• 6:39
  that. I mean, that's a big clue as to
• 6:43
  what we're talking about today. And I've got a question for you
• 6:46
  now. Yeah, Is, you know, the step
• 6:49
  into the book club. And I know you've done a few
• 6:50
  books on Too Hot for TV, but you know, it's not nice frothy books
• 6:54
  like The 8 Doctors and things like that, you know?
• 6:56
  Yes, yeah, yeah. Easy to digest.
• 6:58
  So I figured you come over here and you do just a light past
• 7:02
  doctor adventure. You know, 6th Doctor and Perry
• 7:05
  and zombies or something like that.
• 7:07
  What have you have you chosen to read and talk about tonight?
• 7:10
  What have I chosen? It was your choice.
• 7:11
  Is it my fault? Oh, OK, I do seem to recall you
• 7:15
  said, Oh, I haven't read that one.
• 7:17
  Yes, I, I was, I was up for it. But yeah, it was, it was your,
• 7:20
  it was your idea to begin with. And we're doing the Ancestor
• 7:24
  Cell by Peter Angelides and Stephen.
• 7:27
  Cole, those are the right. Yes.
• 7:30
  I, I have no idea if it's accurate at all.
• 7:35
  I mean, of all the places to start here, right?
• 7:37
  That's the, the end of the first half of the 8th Doctor book.
• 7:41
  So the culmination of 35 books. As long as that it gets OK.
• 7:49
  Interesting. Well, certainly.
• 7:51
  Certainly the culmination of the Ark that started in
• 7:54
  interference, which was about 12 or 13 books before this.
• 8:01
  So I mean, it's still the end of of of a lot of plot points.
• 8:06
  Yeah, and it's interesting. So I because I remember reading
• 8:10
  interference at the time, definitely remember that because
• 8:15
  that was like I remember it was my only other Doctor Who friend
• 8:19
  at school was that there's this book out and like they kill the
• 8:24
  3rd doctor and not where, not where you're supposed.
• 8:26
  To. But that but that was in the
• 8:30
  days where you're like, oh, man, that sounds really exciting.
• 8:32
  I've got to read that. I don't care that that's you
• 8:34
  know, that I know that that's going to happen.
• 8:36
  That sounds like what does that look like?
• 8:38
  How does that, you know, work? So I, I thankfully, I kind of,
• 8:42
  that was still kind of banked in the back of my memory for this
• 8:45
  because obviously it's quite an important part of this book.
• 8:50
  But also the books, the ancestor cell spend so much time sort of
• 8:56
  rising everything up to that point that actually, on the one
• 9:01
  hand, I was quite grateful for somebody who had kind of ducked
• 9:03
  out of the books before the ancestor cell came out.
• 9:07
  And also somebody hasn't really read an Eighth Doctor book since
• 9:10
  then. I was quite grateful for it on
• 9:13
  that side. But as a reading experience, in
• 9:16
  the back of my head, I was like, this is quite clunky.
• 9:18
  If you're if you're kind of taking this, you know, in the
• 9:22
  order that it that it would have come out.
• 9:24
  There's a lot of kind of, I presume repeating stuff.
• 9:27
  And because I guess them every time they're kind of angling
• 9:31
  these as maybe like, oh, there might be new readers who might
• 9:33
  have got new readers on board. So I guess we're going to have
• 9:36
  to, you know, Oh. No bloody hope, no new readers
• 9:38
  are picking up this one for the first time.
• 9:41
  It's dense, yeah. Yeah, and and it absolutely does
• 9:45
  bring all of those plot points to a hell of a climax, the first
• 9:51
  time that something's been done, but certainly not the last in
• 9:55
  Doctor Who history. No.
• 9:57
  But we will get there. I mean, I'm assuming that much
• 10:00
  like, and I never do this, I never have a series of
• 10:03
  discussion points going into a book club because you just talk
• 10:07
  about the plot and the characters and whatever.
• 10:09
  But much like I'm sure Peter Angelides and Stephen Cole, I
• 10:13
  bet they had a list of things as well where they would go, right?
• 10:16
  And we covered that. The faction paradox, right?
• 10:19
  Father crying, not done. The grandfather paradox?
• 10:21
  Yep. The Time War?
• 10:23
  OK. Who are the enemy?
• 10:24
  Yep. OK, we've got.
• 10:25
  OK. Well, I suppose you and I have
• 10:28
  got to decide whether 1, they did a good job of pulling all
• 10:31
  that stuff together, and, two, whether they turned it into a
• 10:37
  good read. And from the messages that
• 10:40
  you've been sending me, I'm getting the impression that your
• 10:43
  answer to that question at the end of this call is going to be
• 10:48
  yes and no. Yes, I was going to just go yes
• 10:53
  and or yes, but but yes, that's that is about right.
• 10:57
  I think there's a lot of good stuff in here, and then there's
• 11:00
  a lot of kind of missteps and sort of flaws, but that makes
• 11:04
  for a good discussion. It's far, far better than I was
• 11:07
  just going. Oh, it was amazing.
• 11:08
  Oh, wasn't that great. You know, we can at least go
• 11:12
  well, wasn't the pros fucking shocking.
• 11:14
  Actually, I quite well, I've got one question before we start
• 11:20
  going into the discussion points then and that question is well,
• 11:24
  you said this reminded you of ideas and sort of Arc climaxes,
• 11:31
  if you'll forgive me that you have seen elsewhere possibly
• 11:35
  read elsewhere, maybe listen to it where certainly watched
• 11:39
  elsewhere do. So I mean, yeah, there's,
• 11:43
  there's various things. So obviously the I think the
• 11:46
  most obvious thing is the revelation that the edifice is
• 11:50
  the Doctor's TARDIS. And when when that starts to
• 11:54
  kind of become apparent, I was like, hang on a minute, this is
• 11:57
  just cat's cradle, isn't it? The marked Platt but from like
• 12:00
  10:15 years earlier where the make.
• 12:02
  The connection. The TARDIS explodes and it
• 12:04
  becomes a planet. I mean, that's a big city.
• 12:07
  Isn't it? Yeah.
• 12:08
  It's. Weird sort of city and there's
• 12:11
  like Time Lords from the Doctors far past are there and it's all
• 12:17
  kind of tied in into very dense Time Lord mythology.
• 12:23
  I wasn't never I was never a fan of it.
• 12:25
  No, I. Just can't work it out.
• 12:27
  It's because it's full of all of that they love doing all the
• 12:29
  sort of cyberspace imagery and bizarre things occurring every 5
• 12:33
  minutes. And I was like, OK, will you
• 12:34
  please? I mean, one thing I will say for
• 12:36
  the ancestor cell is it's very clear about what's going on.
• 12:39
  You know, possibly too clear. At times it almost reads like
• 12:42
  script directions. But I'd rather that in a book
• 12:46
  this complicated than all of that.
• 12:48
  Sort of, well, interpret it yourself.
• 12:51
  Yeah, I think that the thing I always find Mark Platts always
• 12:55
  quite impenetrable, it's and it's partly the mythology stuff.
• 13:00
  And particularly in Catch Cradle, I think the the problem
• 13:03
  I had with it was I don't think it ever really knitted together.
• 13:06
  The, the sort of old Gallifrey, the kind of curse, all that kind
• 13:12
  of stuff with the sort of general story that was kind of
• 13:15
  going on with the exploded TARDIS and the weird Quicksilver
• 13:18
  cat thing and the like. None of it kind of came together
• 13:23
  very well, I thought. What the hell was that curse all
• 13:25
  about? Did somebody?
• 13:27
  I'm not barren or something. Yeah, that's something.
• 13:29
  They had to start knitting people into looms.
• 13:32
  Yeah, there's a witch, isn't there, that that basically,
• 13:37
  like, puts a curse and Rasta on and all the Time Lords so that
• 13:40
  they can no longer have children, so they make looms.
• 13:45
  I mean, the lengths Doctor Who fans will go to to avoid sex.
• 13:49
  I knew you were going there, don't you?
• 13:53
  I've had quite a lot of sex and I'm fairly certain you are too,
• 13:56
  you know, All right, so I don't know who they're writing these
• 13:58
  books for. Well, indeed, no way we've.
• 14:02
  Been a few conventions as well. We've seen them.
• 14:04
  Yeah, yeah. There's a definite whiff.
• 14:09
  So that element of it I was really reminded of.
• 14:12
  The other thing is, is the idea of the the Time War in this,
• 14:17
  this idea that the Time Lords are kind of preparing for a war
• 14:20
  that they've kind of foreseen that they know is coming because
• 14:24
  they're Time Lords, but that it's kind of always off in the
• 14:28
  distance and they're constantly making plans.
• 14:31
  That's in Alan Moore's sort of Black Sun trilogy, I think it
• 14:35
  is, which is the three sort of like one shot comic strips and
• 14:40
  Doctor you monthly or weekly, I can't remember exactly when, but
• 14:44
  there's a he does a kind of three sort of Time Lord stories,
• 14:47
  which is effectively about the same thing.
• 14:50
  And there's a Lawrence Miles wrote a blog about this called
• 14:54
  1979 where I think he talked about the kind of influence of
• 14:58
  that on the, well, not this, but his, you know, kind of take on
• 15:04
  Gallifrey and Faction Paradox and the, the future Time War and
• 15:06
  all that kind of all that kind of stuff.
• 15:08
  The the other, the the big sort of Doctor Who influence I got
• 15:11
  from this was Neverland, which I said to you just before we
• 15:15
  started recording where this starts with the Doctor in
• 15:20
  compassion. And trust me, we will talk about
• 15:22
  compassion that the the lady TARDIS and God knows how he gets
• 15:26
  inside of her. I don't want to know some path
• 15:29
  her opens up and he steps inside.
• 15:31
  That's all I know. I think they just describe it as
• 15:33
  a lie. Isn't it like a?
• 15:34
  It's. Just yeah, it kind of just yeah,
• 15:37
  yeah. Who knows?
• 15:38
  I think her tits sort of open up or something like that anyway.
• 15:42
  And they're surrounded by war Tardices and Romanos voices.
• 15:47
  They're going come back to Gallifrey.
• 15:48
  We will have compassion. You know, They're being dragged
• 15:51
  back. There's terrible things
• 15:53
  happening with time and space that they want the Doctor's help
• 15:56
  with. And that is very, very
• 15:58
  Neverland. Yeah, I looked at the dates
• 16:01
  because I wanted to know who's nicking from who.
• 16:04
  Well, it turns out that Alan Barnes is nicking from Peter
• 16:08
  Angeles and Stephen Cole. This was 2. 1000, that might be
• 16:11
  the case, yeah. This is July 2000 and Neverland
• 16:15
  came out in July 2002, so 2 years later they probably read
• 16:20
  this and thought, well those were good ideas you know?
• 16:22
  But what a shit book. I'm sure we can do that a lot
• 16:25
  better on audio plus Paul McGann and India Fisher.
• 16:28
  And they do. I mean, that gets bogged down a
• 16:32
  bit as well, but we'll do that in another episode.
• 16:36
  Well, OK, discussion .1 yeah, yeah.
• 16:40
  Voodoo Gallifrey, I'm calling it because it's, it's not really
• 16:45
  the Gallifrey. It's sort of the Gothic
• 16:47
  Gallifrey from the Hinchcliffe years.
• 16:49
  But it's a bit darker than that, isn't it?
• 16:53
  It is like you say, it's got, it's got those elements of
• 16:59
  Hinscliffe in sort of like how sort of fusty and sort of
• 17:05
  corrupt it is. But yeah, it is a lot darker.
• 17:10
  There's a lot in terms of like what they want to do in terms of
• 17:15
  like, particularly with compassion, which is this idea
• 17:18
  that we're going to force breeds this sentient lady Tardis.
• 17:26
  In a book full of dark ideas, Mark, that might be the darkest
• 17:29
  idea. It is because I don't quite
• 17:32
  because the doctor kind of keeps saying throughout it, well, I
• 17:34
  can synthesize the DNA, it's fine.
• 17:37
  You know, you don't have to. And they're like, no, no, we
• 17:40
  must for. And it's like force breeder with
• 17:41
  what I don't, I don't even understand.
• 17:44
  I don't even want to know. I don't want to know they're
• 17:47
  going to plug a TARDIS into her. Who knows?
• 17:49
  It's like it would be horrifying enough if it was literally just,
• 17:52
  oh, they're going to like, strap her to a thing, take her DNA and
• 17:54
  like, try and clone her against her will.
• 17:56
  Fine, that's horrible and you can say that.
• 17:59
  But the use of the term force breeds, Yeah, it's incredibly.
• 18:03
  Basically they want to force her against her will to procreate.
• 18:07
  Yeah, something else to create a race of similar TARDIS to her.
• 18:13
  Which will be super powered and can fight the enemy.
• 18:16
  And so you get this kind of version of the Time Lords on a
• 18:20
  war footing. So they're no longer kind of
• 18:23
  worried about intervention. They're all about intervention
• 18:27
  and all about kind of like figuring out how they can be the
• 18:31
  ones that win. And, I suppose Russell T Davis.
• 18:33
  Selfish intervention, isn't it? It's not for the benefit of the
• 18:36
  universe. It's so we survive this conflict
• 18:39
  that's coming. And that's all, that's all they
• 18:40
  care about. And I think Russell T Davis and
• 18:42
  Steven Moffat really draw on that in the new series.
• 18:46
  Like in The End of Time, that's that's exactly the Gallifrey you
• 18:49
  see. It's not, it's not in terms of
• 18:51
  the imagery, it's not as dark and not as kind of grizzly, but
• 18:54
  in terms of like what Raslon's up to, that's very much and the
• 19:00
  sort of the war, the not the war room, but they're kind of
• 19:03
  weapons storage facility that the the War Doctor breaks into.
• 19:07
  You don't see it in Day of the Doctor, but again, there's a
• 19:10
  sequence in this where Romana and Fitz go down into this
• 19:14
  collection of Time Lord weapons. What's it called again?
• 19:17
  It's a big dark space, isn't it? Full of these fuck off weapons
• 19:20
  that can erase people from existence and do terrible
• 19:24
  things? You know, sort of rewrite your
• 19:26
  timeline. I can't remember what it you
• 19:31
  had. A dreadfully melodramatic name.
• 19:33
  And I was going, Oh yes, that sounds amazing, but various, do
• 19:37
  you know, can I ask you another question then?
• 19:39
  Because the Time War in the Ancestor Cell and the Time War
• 19:44
  in the new series, the consequences are exactly the
• 19:49
  same, right? Yeah, basically.
• 19:52
  Why didn't they just run with it?
• 19:54
  I know, I know they wanted to use a Daleks and I know they
• 19:57
  wanted the consequences of having that lone Dalek and then
• 19:59
  the Dalek army and all of that. But you could just just thrown
• 20:02
  in a line saying when it was rewritten, the Daleks were the
• 20:05
  enemy all along. I.
• 20:08
  Mean. Who's to say it wasn't?
• 20:11
  Well, indeed, yes, you can always cover these things with a
• 20:14
  line, but Rusty Davis said it wasn't because there was a
• 20:17
  specific issue of Doctor Who magazine.
• 20:20
  You know, that sort of article we did at the front And he said,
• 20:23
  I know you're all getting very excited.
• 20:24
  You ate Doctor book fans about the Time War.
• 20:27
  I'm here to categorically tell you this is a very different
• 20:30
  Time War. Yeah, because basically, which
• 20:33
  kind of makes it. But I mean, but I mean,
• 20:35
  obviously he does it because he's doing it for populist
• 20:39
  audiences and he doesn't. And also it's the BBC and I
• 20:43
  think they're quite funny about that whole thing of like, people
• 20:46
  have to pay money to be part of the story, you know, so like.
• 20:52
  Determination for the Daleks. All right, Yeah.
• 20:56
  You don't pay that because we don't have to pay that, but
• 20:59
  anything else. So I think that's one of the
• 21:01
  reasons that it's just like, oh, let's not do it.
• 21:05
  But yes, as fans, it is very silly that at some point after
• 21:11
  the Gallifrey Chronicles, Gallifrey is restored and then
• 21:16
  blowing up again. It's such a funny line in the
• 21:18
  Gallifrey Chronicles when I mean, God, this is constantly
• 21:21
  way in the future when you realize at the end of this book,
• 21:25
  the Doctor has stored all of the memories and technology, the
• 21:28
  Matrix in his brain, which means every time he's been in danger
• 21:32
  between this point and that point, all of that in relation
• 21:36
  might have been lost. There's a new perspective in the
• 21:39
  second-half of the 8th Doctor books.
• 21:41
  He goes, we will build the new Gallifrey.
• 21:43
  And then we're like, well, that's no good.
• 21:45
  That's going to be destroyed as well.
• 21:47
  Did the Gallifrey Chronicles after after the new series as.
• 21:51
  Well, yes, he did. Yeah, it all gets a bit thorny,
• 21:55
  but it does show that they were on to something here, doesn't
• 21:57
  it? Yeah, it's interesting, isn't
• 22:00
  it, that in the 90s there's clearly a bunch of Doctor Who
• 22:04
  fans and obviously it comes from Alan Moore in the 70s and the
• 22:06
  80s. But in the 90s they're kind of
• 22:10
  looking at what is Doctor Who now, I guess they're looking at
• 22:14
  stuff like Star Trek Deep Space 9 and Babylon 5:00 and all these
• 22:18
  kind of sort of sci-fi shows which are dealing with the
• 22:21
  consequences of war. And so they go, well, what's
• 22:24
  Doctor Who's version of that? And so we get something like
• 22:29
  that in in this book and then eventually we get in the TV.
• 22:31
  So it's. Swinging it back round to
• 22:34
  Gallifrey again, I just have to ask you about these rich
• 22:38
  entitled kids doing the because the first half of the book it's
• 22:43
  fits falling in with these rich kids that are doing quite
• 22:47
  disturbing ceremonies with love and stuff.
• 22:52
  You know, they're literally tearing parts of their body off,
• 22:55
  creating this big BLOB of biomass, and then taking the
• 23:01
  memories of a former president of Gallifrey from the Matrix and
• 23:05
  reforming them out of all of these bits of flesh that
• 23:08
  they've, I mean, it's, it's all a bit weird and a bit dark, but
• 23:11
  the kids themselves, man, they were fucking annoying, weren't
• 23:14
  they? They are quite annoying.
• 23:17
  It is, it is funny or is it funny or is it just quite lazy
• 23:21
  that one of the rich kids is called Eaton?
• 23:23
  Is that all right? I see what you're doing.
• 23:27
  Yeah, but you also messaged me with one of the other names as
• 23:29
  well. Oh yeah, was it Rasad Rasad
• 23:32
  Rianne? I mean, I could even say it
• 23:33
  aloud. Well done for trying I.
• 23:36
  Think it's that. And like time on isn't one
• 23:40
  called time on or something like I was like.
• 23:42
  Yeah, I think no, he's the sort of chancellor, isn't he?
• 23:45
  Or the vice president. Something is time on.
• 23:47
  There's so many Time Lords in there.
• 23:48
  There's so many Time Lord names, so many times.
• 23:52
  I was like, I do, I do like the idea of like the slums of
• 23:57
  Gallifrey, which is sort of where they're hanging out and
• 23:59
  doing these ceremonies, yeah, sort of where the poor people
• 24:02
  live. And it's the rich kids from the
• 24:04
  city coming into the slums and play with the devil effectively.
• 24:11
  Yeah. And I think what's I like it as
• 24:14
  a concept, I don't think it's I, I don't think it's particularly
• 24:21
  well realized, but I do like the idea of like we've never really
• 24:26
  seen sort of young people on Gallifrey.
• 24:29
  We just. Life on the streets, you know.
• 24:31
  Yeah, we, we don't know like what's going on there.
• 24:36
  So I think to kind of bring in these kind of spoil because of
• 24:40
  course they would be, you know, you look at the Gallifrey of
• 24:42
  dead deadly assassin, of course the kids of those guys are going
• 24:48
  to be entitled uppity little shits.
• 24:52
  So that's. What we get Shit, that was in
• 24:54
  the president's office this week, picking his nose and sort
• 24:58
  of doing books down the desk. Yeah, he absolutely is going to
• 25:02
  be doing voodoo summer ceremonies in the slums of
• 25:05
  America at some point. Exactly in the ruins of
• 25:09
  Washington, DC. Yeah, sounds like it, yeah.
• 25:14
  Well, so, yeah, I, I think it's a good concept.
• 25:16
  I think it just gets a bit bogged down in that I'm trying
• 25:22
  to say this in a way that isn't insulting to the writers, but
• 25:25
  there's a kind of like, there's, I don't know, there's a kind of
• 25:30
  like these, like they're kind of, I don't know, scoring points
• 25:33
  against the cool kids at their university that wouldn't let
• 25:36
  them play along. Do you know what I mean?
• 25:38
  There's a there's a weird kind of like all the women are really
• 25:43
  sexy, but distant and cold and all the guys are really like,
• 25:47
  you know, up themselves and you know, they and Fitz is there in
• 25:50
  the middle as this kind of like they need him, but then also he
• 25:55
  they kind of look down on him because he's a he's just a human
• 25:57
  being. He's not a Time Lord.
• 25:59
  I don't know but. Fitz is there going, oh, you
• 26:02
  bunch of losers, what are you doing the whole time?
• 26:05
  He's he's very unimpressed with everything that they're doing.
• 26:08
  And, and it feels like, yeah, it does feel a little bit like, I
• 26:12
  mean, I don't know what Peter Angeles and Stephen Cole's
• 26:15
  higher education was like, but it does feel like written by
• 26:18
  people who have been in that, in that kind of university
• 26:21
  environment where you've got like the the young rich kids
• 26:26
  holding core and you're going, oh, you guys are Dicks.
• 26:31
  You know, the things I did like about that whole angle was when
• 26:34
  you realise, fuck me, they've summoned up this terrible
• 26:38
  president, Father Cryinger, some real dodgy types, and suddenly
• 26:43
  people start dying. Someone's heads smashed into a
• 26:46
  time and space visualiser. I'm sure William Harnell didn't
• 26:48
  see that coming in the chase, you know, loud all over the
• 26:51
  screen. And they all start dying in sort
• 26:55
  of spectacularly horrible ways as the book goes on.
• 26:58
  Yeah, because it kind of become, well, I mean, I suppose they're
• 27:00
  playing on that kind of horror movie, that kind of Evil Dead
• 27:04
  kind of thing where, you know, it's a bunch of kids messing
• 27:07
  around. Definitely got that vibe of
• 27:10
  like, Oh my God, something is eventually going to come from
• 27:13
  this and you're not ready. Yeah, exactly.
• 27:16
  So that's all kind of fun, I don't think.
• 27:19
  And you are kind of, I think evil.
• 27:22
  I love the Evil Dead films because you actually like those
• 27:24
  characters. But I think most other most
• 27:26
  other films like that, you're right, you are kind of willing
• 27:29
  them to get killed off. So of course they're kind of
• 27:31
  horrible. And again, it's Gallifrey, so of
• 27:33
  course they're horrible. Those people say, you know, in
• 27:36
  that knock, knock in Serious 10, you know, oh, those kids that
• 27:39
  Bill's hanging out with, they're so fun.
• 27:41
  I couldn't stand one of them. When they started getting bumped
• 27:44
  off I was going yes go on, suck them into the walls.
• 27:48
  I generally I find sort of kids and teenagers quite annoying and
• 27:51
  things mind. That's fair.
• 27:53
  And this bunch especially like the the side of Gallifrey I
• 27:56
  really loved in this and we'll, we'll talk about this a bit more
• 28:00
  later when we talk about like the arc and how it all ends.
• 28:03
  Is that sort of nightmarish Gallifrey you get in the last
• 28:06
  third of the book where where the walls of the Panopticon are
• 28:10
  going from six sides to five sides to four sides to three
• 28:13
  sides? I love all that stuff.
• 28:16
  And, you know, great are appearing in the Panopticon and
• 28:20
  there's Time Lords underneath them, covered in blood,
• 28:22
  screaming the Reds often, all that sort of nightmare.
• 28:25
  That's the sort of Time War and Gallifrey I knew I would never
• 28:29
  get in the new series. I knew I was going to get Daleks
• 28:32
  and time was going Pew, Pew Pew because that's basically a
• 28:36
  family. It's, you know, Star Wars.
• 28:38
  It's a family audience war. But this sort of fuck me time
• 28:43
  has gone wrong and Gallifrey is corrupted.
• 28:47
  I really like all of that. That that is really, that is
• 28:51
  quite a striking climax. That idea of like, it's not like
• 28:56
  they've just set a bomb off on Gallifrey.
• 28:58
  They've they've set something off that kind of warped the
• 29:02
  planet into this kind of horrific, well, kind of horrific
• 29:06
  past horrific future kind of horrific.
• 29:08
  It kind of all just gets kind of muddled into one where you've
• 29:11
  got like faction Paradox slicing the faces off children.
• 29:15
  And it's kind of hinted that the child might have been the doctor
• 29:17
  at one point as well. And.
• 29:19
  Wasn't a child have a blowtorch taken to his face?
• 29:22
  That's it. It's not a slice, it's a
• 29:23
  blowtorch. Yeah, you're right.
• 29:25
  Like what am I reading? I mean, I know I also don't want
• 29:29
  to see kids being murdered horribly, but please not like
• 29:31
  this. But it's almost like Hellraiser
• 29:35
  at some point, you know? And it is genuinely nightmare is
• 29:40
  just the word I keep thinking about like hallucinogenic, you
• 29:43
  know, It's like horrors everywhere, you know, and
• 29:45
  sprites and people from times past and future and bloody
• 29:50
  voodoo faction paradox people. And it's just chaos.
• 29:54
  And I think if you're going to do a time war, do chaos, you
• 29:57
  know? Yeah, absolutely.
• 30:00
  I think I think the problem with the Time War on Big and Big
• 30:04
  Finish could have done it. You could have done and it does.
• 30:06
  There's a few where they try and do like the first couple of
• 30:08
  McGann ones have some interesting episodes where like
• 30:11
  he's got like 3 different companions, but they keep
• 30:14
  changing over the course of like the 1st 20 minutes because the
• 30:18
  Time War is kind of changing his past as it kind of goes.
• 30:21
  But generally it is just Pew Pew Pew.
• 30:23
  So for this to kind of have that that really great motif where
• 30:29
  how many sides of the panopticon, Well, it was 9,
• 30:32
  right? It's like, well, no, now it's 6.
• 30:35
  And now it's and they can't see it.
• 30:36
  Only Fitz can see. When it's a circle at the end,
• 30:42
  because what they say is what is it?
• 30:43
  For every single side, there's a statue representing one of the
• 30:47
  houses or the. Houses, yeah, and also there's
• 30:50
  the yeah, the 9 Gallifreys and. Then the last one, when it's a
• 30:54
  circle, when it's just one statue in the middle, because
• 30:57
  yes, it represents the one great College of Gallifrey.
• 31:01
  Hey, I'm fierce is like, what are you going to do when there's
• 31:04
  no wolves left? Wonderful.
• 31:08
  I mean, it's crazy, right? And it is confusing.
• 31:13
  Why do you think that's the point?
• 31:15
  Yeah, I think, I think it is the point because I think if you are
• 31:19
  going to start weaponizing time, I think it has to make a certain
• 31:25
  logical sense. And I think it, well, not logic,
• 31:27
  sorry, an internal logic within the the fiction.
• 31:31
  And I think it largely does. But I think, yeah, it's quite
• 31:33
  hard sometimes to because the first time they did it where
• 31:36
  it's like 6 size, 5 size, I did have that thing of good.
• 31:40
  Wait, did I misread something a couple of pages back?
• 31:42
  And I was like, oh, no, I didn't.
• 31:44
  And I see what they're doing. That's that's very clever.
• 31:46
  I like. I bet the first time I read it I
• 31:48
  was there taking notes. They can't even get their own
• 31:50
  fucking cats right. Oh yeah, I'm always slow to the
• 31:55
  party. Me.
• 31:57
  Well, all right, let me let me pull us away from Gallifrey,
• 31:59
  because we'll talk about that more as we go.
• 32:01
  What do you think of Lawrence Miles and his extreme influence
• 32:10
  over this series of books? This is all of these ideas have
• 32:14
  come from Miles. Yeah, so I like I say, I
• 32:18
  vaguely, I definitely read Alien bodies, but I can barely
• 32:21
  remember any of it. And I vaguely remember like bits
• 32:25
  of of interference you. Know you'll be astonished.
• 32:29
  You know, if you go back and read Alien Bodies and
• 32:31
  Interference, you'll be like, fuck me, Steven Moffitt was
• 32:34
  taking notes in these books. Yeah, that's probably why he
• 32:37
  hates him so much. Well, he hated this book as
• 32:40
  well, but we'll get there all right.
• 32:43
  Yeah, it's, it's interesting, isn't it?
• 32:46
  Like to have a writer so heavily influenced the arc of the books
• 32:52
  and then you have the guy in charge of the range and another
• 32:54
  writer kind of tie them all together to kind of re sort of
• 33:00
  reboot the range really don't. That's kind of that was what
• 33:04
  this was set out to do as much as it's the season finale.
• 33:09
  Steve Cole was going at the end of this book, and Justin
• 33:11
  Richards has taken over, and I don't know who suggested it, but
• 33:14
  I'm almost willing to bet it was Justin going.
• 33:16
  I don't want none of that bullshit.
• 33:18
  All right? Can we just start again it?
• 33:20
  Was yeah, I think it was because I remember Dave, so Dave Owens,
• 33:23
  who used to review for Doctor Magazine.
• 33:25
  I know him quite well through the Edinburgh Dr. Group and I
• 33:27
  remember chatting to him recently actually about this.
• 33:31
  And he was one of the people that I think it was Justin
• 33:33
  Richards brought in. It should be as like a sounding
• 33:37
  board as a kind of like, what do I need to do with a book?
• 33:40
  Should I, you know, do a kind of hard reset?
• 33:43
  And Dave was like, yeah, maybe it might, might be wise to kind
• 33:47
  of give it a bit of a refresh. I mean, it's as a reset as you
• 33:51
  could possibly get, right? But this book, the Doctor has no
• 33:55
  memory of the events in this. His home planet where all this
• 33:58
  trouble has come from is completely destroyed and he
• 34:00
  hasn't got the TARDIS anymore. As a reset it's basically 0 and
• 34:05
  then let's go again. Yeah, and his companion is sent
• 34:08
  off packing to maybe come back, which obviously he does.
• 34:12
  And then Compassion goes off and has a nice life and that's,
• 34:16
  that's it, the end. When you read those Earth All
• 34:18
  books, especially the first two or three, it is like you can
• 34:22
  suddenly read again and they're just telling like character
• 34:26
  tales, atmospheric horror stories, stuff that Doctor Who
• 34:29
  books do really well. I need to go back to those
• 34:32
  actually, because I read the first.
• 34:35
  I think it is the Turing test, the third one.
• 34:37
  The Yeah, the burning casualties of war and the Turing test all.
• 34:40
  So yes, I've read those first three.
• 34:42
  I need to go back and do the I've read Father Time before
• 34:45
  because I remember that when that came out was like, that
• 34:48
  sounds like a really interesting idea for Doctor.
• 34:49
  I'm going to jump back on board for a bit, but it's like so it
• 34:52
  looks. Like, this is so traumatic.
• 34:53
  All of this stuff that's happening in this book is so
• 34:57
  traumatic. The doctrine is 100 years,
• 35:00
  fucking chill out and get over it and get his memory back and
• 35:03
  figure out who he is again and and for the series to do the
• 35:06
  same that that a whole series of books needs to do that too.
• 35:09
  Yeah, so I don't know much about Lawrence Miles, but I get the
• 35:12
  impression, I do get the impression that he's quite
• 35:16
  different. Like he would he would not be a
• 35:19
  Co writer on the book that do you know what I mean?
• 35:22
  So I, I guess it's, it's born out of necessity, I guess,
• 35:26
  because because Steve Cole's leaving, they have to kind of
• 35:30
  wrap up this mythology. And I think as a result, maybe
• 35:34
  it doesn't kind of go the way that Miles would have wanted it.
• 35:37
  And there's probably a lot of like concessions made to the
• 35:41
  fact that you've kind of got to do all this quite quickly and.
• 35:44
  He comes on and does the Mad Norwegian series of fashion
• 35:49
  paradox books. Yes, Right.
• 35:50
  Yeah. He's not willing to let it go.
• 35:52
  He, he thinks there's a future in this.
• 35:53
  And basically what he does is he rewrites all of this by setting
• 35:57
  the whole series of books in heaven where everything that was
• 36:00
  in this range is renamed for copyright purposes.
• 36:05
  So Compassion is now Laura Tobin and and basically sets the stage
• 36:11
  again and then takes it from here.
• 36:14
  Right, OK. Because I mean, he wrote a
• 36:17
  review and I meant to send it to you.
• 36:19
  I wish I had. Yeah, I forgot to.
• 36:20
  Have you the most vitriolic, hate filled review of anything
• 36:25
  I've ever read in my life? And these are people that he was
• 36:27
  working alongside Peter Angelides and Stephen Carl.
• 36:30
  But and he basically goes, you know, Long story short, it's not
• 36:34
  it's a bad book. It's not that it's not doing
• 36:37
  what I would want to do with it because who am I?
• 36:40
  But it's just so fucking boring. I mean, it's they've boiled it
• 36:44
  down to the most boring possible way they could tell this story.
• 36:49
  And I was like, wow. And it's proper God complex of
• 36:52
  like you were a guest writer in a series of books and someone
• 36:58
  has pampered your ego to a point where you think you're the
• 37:02
  showrunner of these books and you ain't.
• 37:06
  Yeah, but then, so why does that happen?
• 37:08
  Why? Why do they take on so much?
• 37:12
  Like was it just that this is all really because I mean, the,
• 37:14
  the ideas you have, I think fashion paradox is a decent
• 37:18
  idea. You know, it's and I love the
• 37:21
  idea of like Doctor Who's not coming back at any point is what
• 37:24
  everybody's thinking at this stage.
• 37:26
  So why not do a series of like A2 parter in terms of the books
• 37:32
  where you completely mess up the Doctor's personal timeline and
• 37:36
  you play around with the the consequences of that and, and
• 37:39
  how that basically infects him with this.
• 37:43
  I love that idea of like infecting the Doctor with a
• 37:46
  paradox that will eventually explode on Gallifrey and sort of
• 37:51
  bring about this war and and destroy the Time Lords.
• 37:53
  It's a there's a lot of good ideas Miles brings.
• 37:57
  Big ideas. I think Steve Cole knew that
• 38:00
  interference, but one and two was the most ambitious thing
• 38:02
  that anyone had handed him. And there was such.
• 38:06
  But Andrew, another one of the book club, as he basically said
• 38:09
  what they should have done was because Miles has clearly got
• 38:11
  the talent and he his prose is great as well.
• 38:14
  He's a funny writer, so he can he can do huge ideas and he can
• 38:18
  sell it to you in a really engaging way.
• 38:20
  Why don't they just give him six books and say, right, do your
• 38:23
  arc, do your Doctor Who arc in six books and then we'll go back
• 38:27
  to doing standard. Instead, they try to do
• 38:30
  standalones, regular Doctor Who sort of anthology books in the
• 38:35
  midst of all of this. And it touches all of it.
• 38:37
  And some of them it completely sort of corrupts and others it
• 38:42
  really lifts. Like the Shadows of Avalon where
• 38:45
  like that's where the TARDIS explodes, that's where
• 38:48
  Compassion turns into the TARDIS.
• 38:50
  And that feels like a mid season, like a good man goes to
• 38:52
  war, you know, the big mid season climax.
• 38:56
  And then there's other ones where like compassion is fitted
• 38:59
  and there's a whole sort of rape analogy.
• 39:02
  She's fitted with a randomizer by the Doctor against her will
• 39:05
  because he wants to be able to escape the Time Lords in an
• 39:09
  otherwise sort of generic science fiction book.
• 39:11
  There's this rape analogy going on, and it's like, yeah, that's
• 39:14
  sort of spoiling that book. And so they didn't quite get the
• 39:19
  balance right somewhere. And I wonder again, though, if
• 39:23
  that's like, because we're at this stage like this is your I
• 39:27
  mean, for me, the 8th doc rear is really the comic strip in
• 39:30
  DWM. But for a lot of people it's
• 39:33
  it's these books and I suppose the idea of kind of doing arc
• 39:39
  heavy mythology stuff, throwaway adventure with a little bit of
• 39:43
  mythology in it. That is what telly was going to
• 39:45
  do at that point. So I guess they're kind of like
• 39:47
  Steve Coles maybe looking at that range as a kind of well,
• 39:50
  how do we do that in books? And I suppose that's what we get
• 39:54
  and it, and I think for a book range, actually the better thing
• 39:58
  to do would have been to actually maybe just dedicate.
• 40:02
  The next few books to that arc and sort of bring that to a nice
• 40:05
  conclusion. Because then when they did the
• 40:07
  Earth arc, which is immediately after this, they did six books
• 40:11
  where the Doctor on Earth for a century with an absolute climax
• 40:15
  at the end where he gets the TARDIS back and goes back off
• 40:17
  into space. And that's all left behind after
• 40:20
  that. So they.
• 40:21
  Did. Learn, but I guess they had to
• 40:23
  go for all of this complication to get.
• 40:25
  There. And I'm sure there was like
• 40:27
  other kind of stuff going on sort of behind the scenes as
• 40:31
  well, I guess like, you know, corporate interests and kind of
• 40:35
  just like, you know, just sheer kind of cash I guess as well,
• 40:39
  thinking about it. But.
• 40:40
  Given how grisly some of this is, I just wonder if anyone was
• 40:43
  apart from the people you know, Steve Cole, Peter Angelucci's
• 40:46
  and possibly Lawrence Miles, if anyone from the BBC was actually
• 40:49
  reading these fucking things. Well, I know it's like it.
• 40:53
  It does get quite for a long. There's a lot like, there's a
• 40:57
  lot of stuff in it which which is like Jesus Christ, like the
• 41:00
  death had given up on the idea that kids might have got into
• 41:03
  the McGann movie and sort of stayed with it because.
• 41:06
  Luke Malloy, right, You know, Luke Malloy came to the TV
• 41:10
  series to doctor via the TV series and he heard about this
• 41:13
  book. The ancestor said, Oh my God,
• 41:15
  this was the first time they blew up Gallifrey.
• 41:17
  So aged nipper, I don't know, 1213 got a copy of this and read
• 41:22
  it and he said to me, I never fucking clue what any of it was
• 41:25
  about. South confused.
• 41:28
  Well, I just put it down and never thought about it ever
• 41:30
  again. So yeah, I thought, they're
• 41:33
  definitely aiming for the nerds, right?
• 41:35
  They were. And I mean, but there is some
• 41:37
  horrible stuff in it. Like I've got, I got like a
• 41:40
  little passage here. A bubbling, hissing, gurgling
• 41:44
  sound echoed off the hard surfaces of The Cave, and then a
• 41:48
  torrent of noise and objects hurtled out of the space where
• 41:51
  Compassion's head had been. Like the imagery of that is just
• 41:57
  horrendous. She's.
• 41:58
  Vomiting up like furniture, isn't she?
• 42:00
  Yeah, it's basically just like furniture, bits of the TARDIS.
• 42:04
  And then there's, I mean to be fair then as this blackly comic
• 42:07
  pay off, which is bloody hell, said fit, which seemed
• 42:10
  inappropriately mild under the circumstances.
• 42:13
  I mean, I've got another one here if you're prepared for this
• 42:16
  imagery. Okay, I'll steal myself.
• 42:18
  The monsters jaws were clacking as they advanced, eyes vacant
• 42:22
  and dull. There was no intelligence behind
• 42:24
  those eyes, no sentience distinguishing the castellan
• 42:26
  from any other piece of meat. The spider caught his legs,
• 42:31
  pulled him under him, and crunched down.
• 42:33
  He felt the bone snap, and he knew he'd never stand again.
• 42:37
  The spider tugged savagely, and the castellan was rolling over
• 42:41
  and over through the wet bracken, mud and filth, choking
• 42:45
  off his screams. Yummy.
• 42:51
  I was there sort of rub my hands going, Oh yes, I love.
• 42:54
  It he's a properly horrible castle and isn't he that guy did
• 42:57
  deserve. It didn't he?
• 42:59
  Yeah. Well, look, you just mentioned
• 43:00
  Fitz there. I'm going to pull us around to
• 43:02
  the regulars, who we haven't at all.
• 43:04
  I mean, there's so much here, but we haven't touched upon the
• 43:07
  Doctor, Fitz and compassion. Who would you like to start
• 43:11
  with, Fitz? Yeah, let's go, Fitz.
• 43:13
  Oh, he's wonderful, isn't he? Yeah, I, I really like Fitz.
• 43:17
  I like the idea of we don't get it all that often in Doctor Who
• 43:21
  of, of the Doctor with just a male friends.
• 43:25
  I was, I was quite, I mean, I know it would have been the
• 43:27
  obvious thing to do, but I, I do hold this kind of like, oh,
• 43:31
  would it be nice if it was just Jodie Whittaker and Bradley
• 43:33
  Walsh, You know, in that first series?
• 43:37
  I get that. I don't know.
• 43:38
  I would have liked that dynamic. But I think here it's, it works
• 43:42
  quite well because like, Fitz is this kind of chancellor, you
• 43:47
  know, he's like, he's kind of like a failed musician.
• 43:50
  He kind of just gets by and like, through this friendship
• 43:53
  with the Doctor, he kind of becomes a better person.
• 43:55
  But he's still got this kind of slightly scuzzy heart term,
• 43:59
  which and there's something. Yeah.
• 44:01
  And there's something quite compelling about that.
• 44:04
  There was an accidental. Cigarette smell on his jacket
• 44:08
  isn't it? His hair is a mess and everyone
• 44:10
  always just says he looks dodgy, you know, like even though he's
• 44:13
  the most heroic bloke, you know the stuff.
• 44:18
  But I'd love that. I think, I think there's
• 44:19
  actually, you could argue there's nothing more Doctor Who
• 44:22
  than that. The the idea of this kind of guy
• 44:24
  who you'd look at him and just like think he'd, he'd sort of
• 44:28
  RIP you off in a in a pub. But actually he's like, under
• 44:32
  the most extreme circumstances, he's a hero.
• 44:34
  That's, that's the doctor, isn't it really like a slightly
• 44:38
  shambolic guy who is actually, you know, the greatest hero
• 44:42
  you've ever got? That's them learning again
• 44:44
  because they started the range with our Sam Jones activist.
• 44:48
  You know, beautiful blonde Aryan, Greenpeace, fucking
• 44:53
  tedious, you know, and they went, oh, this isn't working at
• 44:56
  all. She's dictatorial, She's so
• 44:59
  boring. And then they bring in fits as
• 45:01
  the counterpoint and obviously fucking her in every book.
• 45:04
  Of course he is because she's pretty long.
• 45:07
  But you know, he's a sloucher and a bit useless.
• 45:10
  He smokes and he's unhealthy. And it's just the complete
• 45:13
  reverse and Kelsey Prize that works like ambassadors.
• 45:17
  Yeah, Yeah, it does. It's it's real.
• 45:20
  And I think like he he can get a bit wearing.
• 45:24
  They're kind of like he's constantly just trying to shag
• 45:28
  whichever female character enters the page with him.
• 45:31
  I just think that's what you're all like.
• 45:34
  Maybe, maybe. But yeah, the bit where he's
• 45:37
  like looking up Romana's skirt flying through the of.
• 45:40
  Course, but do you know? I'll tell you all right, I'll
• 45:44
  tell you why he's brilliant in this book is because this book
• 45:47
  is so complicated. It there's so much happening and
• 45:51
  Fitz is so simple and seeing this book through his eyes means
• 45:56
  we're having a simple person explain complicated things to
• 45:59
  us. And to the Time Lords, as it as
• 46:02
  it goes on, he, he's the one who can see like what's happening
• 46:06
  and can boil it down for the reader, but then also kind of
• 46:09
  make it plain to the time was about it.
• 46:12
  Yeah. He's a really great sort of
• 46:15
  narrative device as well as a kind of really compelling
• 46:17
  character. Now, interestingly, this is the
• 46:20
  point where I think the blander version of the 8th Doctor
• 46:26
  departs. I really love the amnesiac
• 46:29
  Doctor Who steps in at the end of this because he's a bit
• 46:32
  edgier and a bit more. Especially the burning when he
• 46:35
  kicks that boy into there. Oh.
• 46:37
  He does loads of things like that.
• 46:40
  There's one wonderful book where a man's been beating up women
• 46:43
  and he goes called the police and then he smacks him in the
• 46:46
  face and breaks his jaw and he goes oh wait, call an ambulance.
• 46:51
  Always nasty at times. I love him, I did quite like him
• 46:56
  in this, but I didn't feel like he was in the first half of the
• 46:58
  book very much. I think it's because there's a
• 47:02
  lot going on and he's kind of just he's kind of been sort of
• 47:06
  like shepherded around, isn't he in?
• 47:08
  So like he's first tied up to a chair getting beaten up by the
• 47:12
  the chancellor regard. Then he's in a room of Romana
• 47:15
  kind of trying to trying to get and then he's kind of on the end
• 47:18
  of this. Like he's kind of just tinkering
• 47:20
  around and kind of in the background.
• 47:21
  Isn't he kind of making sure? However, I think like a lot of
• 47:25
  the dialogue for the Doctor throughout the book, I can hear
• 47:28
  Mcgann's voice. Like, I think it really captures
• 47:32
  like, the cadence, the, like, it definitely feels like that.
• 47:37
  Yeah. That's Paul McGann.
• 47:38
  That's like Paul McGann if he'd been given a couple of years as
• 47:41
  the Doctor and then given a chance to kind of go into like
• 47:44
  sort of darker territory. Worried love was his impatience
• 47:48
  with everybody and he's just like to the Thomas what the fuck
• 47:50
  has happened to you people? How could you possibly think
• 47:53
  this is the answer to everything?
• 47:55
  Like what happens? And whenever things get too
• 48:00
  serious, he's always taking the piss happens as well.
• 48:03
  Yeah, I really like. My favorite bit is when what is
• 48:08
  it? It's one of the one of the many
• 48:10
  time odd characters is like I must consult the Black book of
• 48:13
  Gallifrey for further guidance at the doctors.
• 48:16
  The doctors like that's right. Don't rely on your own skill or
• 48:18
  judgement. Make a decision by looking it up
• 48:20
  in an index. Check out in the Little Red Book
• 48:24
  of Gallifrey. Consult the bones of the dead
• 48:26
  and the scrolls of antiquity and the ruins of Rasalon.
• 48:29
  Don't rely on the sense of common or the patently obvious.
• 48:32
  Scurry off and see whatever toys and trinkets are left in your
• 48:35
  musty cupboards. That's brilliant.
• 48:38
  That's such a brilliant, like, doctarish takedown of of
• 48:41
  Gallifrey and the kind of stuffiness of the Time Lords.
• 48:45
  In no part of this book does he endorse the situation that's
• 48:48
  occurring, the way that they're dealing with it, you know?
• 48:51
  And he is improvising a lot as well.
• 48:53
  All that stuff on the edifice. And he is, he is constantly sort
• 48:56
  of improvising at his best. So it's not like it's the
• 48:59
  second-half of the book where I thought he was really great
• 49:02
  because he gets, yeah, great confrontations.
• 49:05
  He gets the confrontation with Father Kriner and we'll get
• 49:09
  there and he then he gets the confrontation with Grandfather
• 49:12
  Paradox at the end, which was a very, very divisive conclusion
• 49:17
  to this book at the time, because that turns out to be a
• 49:20
  very a dark version of the Doctor's possible future.
• 49:24
  Yeah, again. But they're big, climactic like
• 49:30
  confrontations, aren't they? Of the sort you'd have on TV.
• 49:33
  You know, it's the The Master at the end of Sound of Drums, Last
• 49:37
  Time Lords, or you know, Missy and the Doctor in the end of
• 49:41
  well enough time and the Doctor falls.
• 49:43
  You know, big, big moments and he's great in those moments.
• 49:47
  He is great and also he gets that whole thing where like he
• 49:51
  kind of pretends that he's been taken over by faction Paradox
• 49:55
  and all that kind of stuff as well is really good.
• 49:58
  Like you can see, you can picture McGann doing that on
• 50:01
  telly that kind of like sort of dead eyed, kind of like I'm now
• 50:07
  sort of like a faction paradox cadaver, but not really.
• 50:11
  I'm just going to get getting in there.
• 50:13
  And Kleiner doesn't buy it for a second.
• 50:15
  So there's that kind of tension where like, when's it all going
• 50:18
  to come out? And it's, yeah, there's a lot of
• 50:20
  really good stuff for doctors doing that, which of course
• 50:23
  there is, because I suppose you're building to the big
• 50:27
  climax, which is then going to completely reset the range for a
• 50:30
  bit. And he does have like a couple
• 50:33
  of great moments with Romana as well.
• 50:36
  And it's not the Romana we're used to.
• 50:39
  We even Romana at our haughtiest in the TV series, is not
• 50:43
  attempting to force breed TARDIS and, you know, go to war.
• 50:48
  No, Romana is so interesting in this because I, I think I said
• 50:52
  this one in Martin's podcast when we talked about genocides,
• 50:58
  the I, I don't like sort of the Joe Jones in that because it's
• 51:05
  miserable. It's just like, oh, she's
• 51:07
  divorced and then she kills all those horses by accident, but on
• 51:10
  purpose just so she can go home. Is not Joe.
• 51:15
  And then they kill like David A Mckinty kills off Sarah Jane.
• 51:19
  And you know, there's this kind of trend in a lot of the the
• 51:22
  sort of 90s and 2000s books of just making the companions lives
• 51:26
  absolutely fucking miserable. I mean you think it's bad in the
• 51:29
  8th doctor books? Please go back to the new
• 51:31
  adventures. You know they murder.
• 51:33
  Oh yeah. Sure, they turn Ace into a space
• 51:35
  bitch. I mean, no one's happy in the
• 51:37
  new. Get space herpes.
• 51:39
  Yeah, yeah, it's all just like. Oh Dodo, of all people.
• 51:43
  It's yeah, it's all just miserable.
• 51:44
  But this, I thought, was actually quite a smart move to
• 51:49
  make Romana of like, not an out and out villain, but definitely
• 51:53
  a kind of she's not really on the Doctor's side in this.
• 51:56
  Do you remember who it was in the 8 Doctors?
• 51:58
  Who was our president in The 8 Doctors?
• 52:00
  That's Flavia wasn't. It oh, wouldn't that be boring?
• 52:04
  Well, exactly. That one off character from the
• 52:06
  Five Doctors, it's got to be someone he knows, so it feels
• 52:09
  nice to betrayal. Yeah, it does.
• 52:11
  And I think actually it works. It doesn't feel like when I,
• 52:14
  when I was reading that, I didn't feel like, oh, this is
• 52:17
  just another one of these tedious things where you turn
• 52:18
  the companion into like a miserable character.
• 52:21
  It's actually perfect because what does, what does Gallifrey
• 52:24
  do? What have we seen Gallifrey do
• 52:26
  in the TV show? It corrupts people.
• 52:29
  So of course Romana going back to Gallifrey and becoming
• 52:33
  president, of course she's going to just become like a corrupt
• 52:37
  president. It's it's really.
• 52:39
  Smart. And you know, I don't want to
• 52:41
  take anything away from oh God, what's it called?
• 52:44
  Night of the Doctor, which I absolutely love.
• 52:48
  But in the shadows of Avalon, Ramona, our Ramona sees that
• 52:53
  this future war is coming and knows she is not the person to
• 52:56
  fight that war. And so she is to become this
• 53:01
  black haired evil bitch. Ramana the war.
• 53:04
  Ramana, let's go, You know. And so there are parallels.
• 53:08
  I mean, and it's a great idea and I could still see Ramana in
• 53:12
  there, especially as the book was going on and she was so,
• 53:15
  especially when she was so rude to Fitz all the time.
• 53:18
  Yeah, because you can. You can totally imagine, like,
• 53:20
  because Lala Ward was that person.
• 53:22
  She's just always just really rude to people like to Doug and
• 53:27
  to Adric, to, you know, any character you know that isn't
• 53:31
  canine, there is a. Wonderful, wonderful scene,
• 53:35
  right? Which on TVI would just bore me
• 53:37
  senseless. But in the book, I don't know,
• 53:38
  it was just how it was written, where she, she addresses the war
• 53:41
  council and she's like, right, what are we gonna do?
• 53:45
  And she's faced with, you know, 50 men saying to her, well,
• 53:49
  well, maybe we'll have another meeting, you know, maybe we're.
• 53:52
  And she's like, come on, they're here, they're coming.
• 53:55
  We've gotta do something now. And she just flounces out.
• 53:57
  I think by the end of that chapter she's been arrested or
• 53:59
  something. Like, yeah, she's been, she's
• 54:01
  been deposed and then thrown in as well.
• 54:04
  She's like under house arrest, isn't she?
• 54:07
  And then that, I think that's really that's, that comes out
• 54:10
  like a really perfect moment because then it becomes more
• 54:14
  about like she is kind of back on the Doctor's side because she
• 54:18
  needs to get herself back, back to that top position so that she
• 54:22
  can save Gallifrey. So she kind of goes along with
• 54:25
  it. In the climax, she's going to
• 54:26
  get a hold of compassion. She's straight there saying,
• 54:30
  yeah, I'm going to do what I originally said I was going to
• 54:32
  do. Yeah.
• 54:34
  I love the power in the climax that when I realized that shit
• 54:37
  had genuinely hit the fan, it wasn't, you know, ghosts and
• 54:40
  Spooks from the future in the past and time laws covered in
• 54:44
  blood and floors melting and all this.
• 54:46
  It was when Ramana finally lost her shit, her composure drops
• 54:50
  and she goes to fix, you know, you stupid fucking savage.
• 54:53
  I got it wrong. Or I mean that that's not the
• 54:56
  exact line, but yeah, it's of that nature.
• 54:59
  I thought, oh fuck me, if Ramana is sweating now then we are in
• 55:02
  trouble. Yeah, and again, that's a really
• 55:05
  interesting thing to do. Like, yeah, what?
• 55:08
  What does Romana look like when she's?
• 55:11
  Because you don't see that in ATV show.
• 55:13
  You don't see her properly. Like maybe she gets a bit
• 55:16
  flustered and annoyed, but you don't see her going shit.
• 55:21
  Like, I have no idea how to fix this.
• 55:23
  I don't know what, like I got it wrong.
• 55:26
  We're doomed. We're all doomed.
• 55:27
  Sorry, it's come to a point where all the wolves have gone
• 55:31
  now. Yeah, we're literally in a
• 55:33
  circle. We can't lose any more wolves,
• 55:36
  otherwise we'll lose the planet. Yeah.
• 55:41
  Can I ask you a question about this time war please?
• 55:44
  Yes. Who the fuck are the enemy?
• 55:48
  I'm not sure so when it started off.
• 55:51
  That's not a great answer. So when it starts off the enemy
• 55:56
  is are kind of, it's just, it's just a kind of they, they're not
• 56:00
  sure who or what it is, but they know it's coming.
• 56:05
  But and then there's that bit where faction power like grade
• 56:10
  the, the sort of dead president has brought back Grade John is
• 56:13
  like faction Paradox are the only ones that can defeat the
• 56:16
  enemy. But then Faction Paradox just
• 56:19
  wage war on Gallifrey. So are they the enemy?
• 56:23
  Is actually would they the enemy all along?
• 56:25
  I've got an answer for you. All right.
• 56:27
  I was explained at one point, but it was so anticlimactic.
• 56:31
  I can see why it left when in one ear and out the other.
• 56:34
  Yeah. Really.
• 56:35
  So effectively a Klein bottle, which is like an alternative
• 56:38
  universe in a bottle. Yeah.
• 56:41
  So that is in interference. So we're taking ideas from
• 56:44
  interference again. There's a whole section set
• 56:46
  inside this alternative universe where they're smuggling other
• 56:48
  Gallifreys and they're trying to find ways of escaping this
• 56:52
  universe should things get a bit hairy.
• 56:54
  OK, so they've managed to get a hold of this universe in a
• 56:58
  bottle where where they might go to as a butt hole in the future,
• 57:01
  and they've hidden it in the time vortex away from anybody.
• 57:04
  Unfortunately it starts leaking as as they do and then that's
• 57:10
  sort of the mixture of what's inside the bottle and the time
• 57:14
  vortex creates the enemy, which is this life form which is
• 57:20
  utterly inimicable to life. Yeah, that's I remember.
• 57:24
  Yeah, sorry, right. Yes, and there's.
• 57:26
  Basically a making bottle mark. The ancestor cell of the title.
• 57:32
  That's the one. It's basically the Star Trek
• 57:34
  Next Generation the chase. Isn't it just this idea that
• 57:36
  there's like the all life in the universe, presumably with the
• 57:40
  exception of the Time Lords, has this sort of ancestor cell and
• 57:45
  therefore is the enemy is what is it the universe essentially
• 57:48
  rebelling against the manipulation of time,
• 57:52
  essentially? Now it's really shit and nobody
• 57:56
  liked the answer because everyone was expecting the enemy
• 57:58
  to be the Daleks. Or, you know, it's just
• 58:01
  something massive. It's.
• 58:02
  More of a kind of thematic. The elder gods if the herself or
• 58:06
  some bullshit that we've already had in the past.
• 58:09
  Something huge and no one was expecting a leaking bottle.
• 58:11
  Obviously. The one thing I like about that,
• 58:14
  the only thing I like about that?
• 58:16
  I do like the irony of the Time Lords, in their haste and their
• 58:21
  cowardice attempting to flee the universe, end up creating the
• 58:26
  very thing that is going to destroy their universe.
• 58:29
  Yeah, it's that self fulfilling prophecy thing, isn't it?
• 58:32
  It's yeah. And I do like, I like the idea
• 58:36
  and they touching it a little bit in Night at the Doctor where
• 58:42
  that idea of like the like the idea that the rest of the
• 58:46
  universe despises the Time Lords because of like what, what the
• 58:52
  Time War has done to their reality.
• 58:55
  So like it, it touches on it. But yeah, it's so I like it as a
• 58:58
  concept. But yeah, as a as a big
• 59:00
  revelation at the end of like 13 books, it's a bit what?
• 59:07
  The conclusion the right has come to is actually the Faction
• 59:10
  Paradox are much more effective villain.
• 59:14
  Let's just throw away some any old bullshit about the enemy and
• 59:18
  let's have Faction Paradox invade Gallifrey.
• 59:20
  And that's how we do the climax. And I think that I do like that
• 59:24
  is another idea because, you know, if you take the idea that
• 59:27
  the timers have created their own enemy by trying to escape
• 59:33
  the enemy, I like. Pansies, yeah.
• 59:36
  It makes sense that you know, one Time Lord would also let
• 59:40
  Faction Paradox in to defeat that enemy and then ultimately
• 59:45
  destroy their own planet. So like, it's kind of like self
• 59:49
  fulfilling prophecies within self fulfilling prophecies.
• 59:52
  Oh, I'm. Going both eyed.
• 59:54
  I need Basil's position here, you know, to try and figure all
• 59:57
  this out for me. Otherwise known as Fitzcryner.
• 1:00:02
  Yes, well, let's just say the enemy is, it's a bit of a poor
• 1:00:05
  sort of show, but really they're not the enemy in this.
• 1:00:09
  And the actual enemy that we get, well, you know, these
• 1:00:12
  fabulous bone ships and these horrible voodoo masks and all of
• 1:00:17
  this can shoot people out of existence.
• 1:00:20
  So that's much more interesting. Oh, definitely, yeah.
• 1:00:23
  Well, OK, so then let's talk about two representatives of
• 1:00:30
  Faction Paradox. Oh boy, oh boy.
• 1:00:33
  And I thought things were complicated enough.
• 1:00:36
  Father. Kriner.
• 1:00:39
  Yes. What do you know of Father
• 1:00:41
  Kriner? So Father Kriner is fit, is the
• 1:00:45
  original fit, is that right? And he was left behind in.
• 1:00:49
  Interference. In interference and has become
• 1:00:52
  this sort of monstrous character who after talking to the doctor
• 1:00:59
  for 5 minutes, is back to being fixed again, but just inside.
• 1:01:04
  This is my Lawrence Marvel best because he goes to great pains
• 1:01:07
  and interference. He just keeps having these very
• 1:01:11
  short chapters called Travels with Fits throughout the entire
• 1:01:14
  600 page two-part book. Where we see his journey from
• 1:01:19
  our fits being left by the Doctor at the start, to then
• 1:01:22
  being on this planet, to then having his life prolonged, to
• 1:01:26
  then being offered a chance to go into Faction paradox, to then
• 1:01:30
  being this twisted and embittered version of fits with
• 1:01:34
  hydraulic arms, a bit Borg like. And then at the end of the book,
• 1:01:38
  he's the one that goes to dust that meets the 3rd Doctor when
• 1:01:44
  the 3rd Doctor is killed. And so the 8th Doctor knows that
• 1:01:49
  the 3rd Doctor met Father Cryner, so he can't go back and
• 1:01:54
  rescue him from that fate because that is set into his own
• 1:01:57
  history. And that would be another
• 1:01:59
  paradox. And fuck me am I making any
• 1:02:01
  sense. Yeah.
• 1:02:02
  No, that makes sense. OK.
• 1:02:04
  Thank you as much as any of this makes sense.
• 1:02:08
  So basically he's an evil, horrible, twisted faction
• 1:02:11
  paradox version of Fitz. Yes, and then the doctor
• 1:02:15
  explains all that to him and he goes alright, fine, sorry,
• 1:02:17
  sorry, sorry I kicked your teeth in 5 minutes ago but.
• 1:02:22
  What a. Did like about their scenes is
• 1:02:26
  when father crying out in this pitiful state begs the doctor,
• 1:02:32
  please look where time is. Please go back and stop me from
• 1:02:36
  ever going with you in the 1st place.
• 1:02:38
  I do not want to become this monster.
• 1:02:41
  And you know, like amongst all of the fireworks that are going
• 1:02:44
  on at that point, that's an emotion I can grab hold of and
• 1:02:47
  really understand. So that seemed really stood out
• 1:02:50
  to me as like, yeah, that's probably what I would say in
• 1:02:52
  that situation. Like, I don't even ever want to
• 1:02:55
  have known you. Look what's become of me, you
• 1:02:57
  know? Yeah, yeah, It that's like that
• 1:03:01
  is quite powerful. And also just the idea of like
• 1:03:04
  the the evil companion, you know, we get it sometimes, you
• 1:03:09
  know, terrible, terrible idea. But this this is is a much
• 1:03:12
  better realized version of that the idea of the doc like sort of
• 1:03:16
  the companion that the Doctor failed, but that lived to tell
• 1:03:19
  the tale and get really fucking angry about it.
• 1:03:23
  You know that's. It's like we love it's.
• 1:03:26
  Yeah. How would you do this to fence?
• 1:03:28
  He's so nice, you know, and then say take some weird duplicate
• 1:03:32
  copy away with you at the end. Yeah.
• 1:03:36
  So when they're at each other. It's really he basically says to
• 1:03:39
  him, you know you are a pathetic duplicate.
• 1:03:42
  You've never even had that conversation, have you?
• 1:03:44
  You just picked up my life where I left off while I became this
• 1:03:48
  and like whilst I the mechanics of it is like, well how the hell
• 1:03:51
  are you supposed to react in that situation?
• 1:03:52
  Is so bizarre but I get it. I get why he's angry.
• 1:03:56
  Yeah. Well, yeah.
• 1:03:58
  I mean, I don't think it because it doesn't have time to, I don't
• 1:04:02
  think it kind of goes into that as well as it could do that idea
• 1:04:08
  of like, well, if you're the sum of your own, if you're the sum
• 1:04:10
  of your memories, surely that is Fitz because he's got all those
• 1:04:14
  memories that, you know, but have they been edited because
• 1:04:18
  the doctors kind of created him from a sort of remembered
• 1:04:22
  version of, you know, and kind of properly kind of delve into
• 1:04:25
  that. I mean, like 2 minds, one part
• 1:04:28
  of me is like, you know, this should have been the penultimate
• 1:04:30
  book, the father crying, a book where he had a whole book and
• 1:04:33
  they could explore all of this and then him coming good at the
• 1:04:36
  end would make sense because we've had time for them to
• 1:04:39
  develop relationships again. So I'm like, yeah, it is rushed
• 1:04:42
  and it's amongst all of this other stuff in the same breath.
• 1:04:47
  I'm like the second he turned up I went, oh fuck, it's going to
• 1:04:50
  get good now. Father crying is here and he's
• 1:04:54
  pissed. Yeah.
• 1:04:57
  I mean, it is good. I mean, it's an added, it's a,
• 1:05:00
  it's a real sort of shot in the arm, which is ironic because
• 1:05:04
  he's only got 1, but it is a real shot in the arm for the
• 1:05:09
  book. Because I think it does kind of,
• 1:05:11
  it does give it that more emotional hook.
• 1:05:15
  I think like the the, the sort of betrayal and the kind of the,
• 1:05:21
  the vengeance and all of that stuff.
• 1:05:23
  And you love to think, well, when the Doctor playing evil and
• 1:05:26
  he takes him to one side and goes, I know you're pretending,
• 1:05:28
  all right? I know you well enough.
• 1:05:31
  You are not under the influence all right.
• 1:05:34
  Yeah, it's great. And it's kind of.
• 1:05:36
  It is less often. Give you and it is more.
• 1:05:39
  I'll forgive you if you prevent this from ever happening to me.
• 1:05:42
  Yeah. And I yeah, true.
• 1:05:44
  For that as well but it still fits right even though he's he's
• 1:05:48
  terrible it's. It still fits, and I suppose it
• 1:05:50
  is in terms of forgiveness and things like that, but he does
• 1:05:53
  kind of turn on facts to paradise.
• 1:05:55
  But I think that's more about redeeming himself than helping
• 1:05:57
  the Doctor, isn't it? That kind of one last heroic act
• 1:06:01
  can maybe, you know, put aside all the all the terrible stuff
• 1:06:05
  he's had to do as a member of Faction Paradox.
• 1:06:08
  I mean, he was gone very quickly.
• 1:06:10
  I know. Like you just had his neck snap
• 1:06:12
  or something. I was like.
• 1:06:13
  Yeah, Grandfather paradox is basically just snaps his neck
• 1:06:16
  when he comes out of the thing that.
• 1:06:17
  'D be lovely and like if this was televised, wouldn't it?
• 1:06:20
  You know, a proper Jenny calendar moment and.
• 1:06:23
  Go, Yes, yes, I did think of, I did.
• 1:06:26
  I did think of Jenny Calendar when that happens, yeah.
• 1:06:29
  Why does she turn into an evil future time travelling?
• 1:06:33
  No, just the neck snapping in a in a generally family friendly
• 1:06:36
  TV show. I don't.
• 1:06:38
  Know if we're family friendly anymore?
• 1:06:40
  OK, well what about what about grandfather paradox M?
• 1:06:44
  So what about this big conclusion at the end?
• 1:06:46
  And essentially, let's use that as a way into how does how is
• 1:06:50
  this arc concluded? Yeah, and Grandfather paradox is
• 1:06:55
  quite an interesting idea in the sense that it's a kind of
• 1:07:00
  conceptual, like they all look up to this thing that might not
• 1:07:05
  even exist. Like the and the idea that he's
• 1:07:08
  the guy that killed his own granddads, you know, like I love
• 1:07:11
  that is. That a Doctor Who thing?
• 1:07:13
  Or is that just? The grandfather No.
• 1:07:15
  The grandfather paradox is the idea that if you went back in
• 1:07:18
  time and killed your own grandfather, you couldn't have
• 1:07:22
  done surely, because then you wouldn't exist to go back in
• 1:07:25
  time and kill your own grandfather.
• 1:07:27
  So. Creates a paradox which creates
• 1:07:29
  a problem. Exactly.
• 1:07:31
  So it's basically taking that central idea like and going,
• 1:07:35
  well, he's the guy that did it. So therefore he exists, but
• 1:07:39
  doesn't exist. And and so they're all kind of
• 1:07:41
  looking up to this because that's, I guess the great
• 1:07:45
  paradox of science fiction. And I guess what I don't know,
• 1:07:51
  theoretical physics, I don't know, I don't know where this
• 1:07:53
  this comes from. But so then to kind of have him
• 1:07:57
  manifest as an evil verse to the Doctor, I guess it does make it
• 1:08:03
  a bit more sad and a bit less interesting in a way.
• 1:08:11
  You'll be pleased then, because when Lance Parkin wrote the
• 1:08:15
  Gallifrey Chronicles at the end of the range and he's
• 1:08:17
  celebrating the whole of Doctor Who and obviously the end events
• 1:08:21
  of this book as well. So a whole chapter of that is
• 1:08:24
  him writing the climax of this book, but in much better prose
• 1:08:30
  because it's Lance Parkin and he makes it even more time like
• 1:08:33
  fucking weird. There's ghosts and spectres and
• 1:08:37
  all sorts going on, but he he hates the idea that Grandfather
• 1:08:42
  Paradox is the Doctor. So he rewrites the whole thing
• 1:08:45
  in a way that he can rewrite it, and he says no, no, no, it's not
• 1:08:49
  that he is the Doctor is that grandfather paradox reflects the
• 1:08:52
  person that they are. But the Doctor sees the Doctor
• 1:08:56
  because it's the Doctor talking to him.
• 1:08:58
  So you would see you, I would see me, and I'd love to see the
• 1:09:01
  evil, twisted versions of ourselves.
• 1:09:04
  Yeah, I'd probably just have slightly shorter hair because
• 1:09:08
  that's what the doctor gets, isn't it?
• 1:09:09
  He's just. He's a shaved.
• 1:09:11
  Head. Strangely, it's a.
• 1:09:12
  Few people with no arms in this book isn't.
• 1:09:16
  It it's a lot of. You just made one on this call,
• 1:09:19
  so let's let's not but. But about a bunch of evil time
• 1:09:25
  meddling space fascists? Come on.
• 1:09:27
  I'm not actually making jokes about people who want to.
• 1:09:30
  What I will say about the confrontation is I think it's
• 1:09:35
  pretty fucking epic. Like they have a properly nasty,
• 1:09:40
  it's like a seriously violent fight, don't they like?
• 1:09:44
  And if there is, you know, again, there's bones cracking as
• 1:09:46
  they're punching each other, They're stepping on each other's
• 1:09:49
  arms and hands and it's violent. And it's all coming to a head
• 1:09:54
  where we realise that that lever over there, you pull that lever,
• 1:09:59
  yes, the whole of Gallifrey will be destroyed and all of our
• 1:10:04
  problems will be over. Yeah.
• 1:10:07
  And I think that's a really like, I do like, I do think when
• 1:10:11
  Doctor Who does kind of one of the reasons that I mean, we
• 1:10:14
  talked about this when we did it on hamster with a Von Penn knife
• 1:10:18
  was the like, the thing I like about survival is the way that
• 1:10:22
  it, it, it unlike most Doctor Who stories, it culminates in
• 1:10:26
  just a big punch up. You never really do that.
• 1:10:30
  And this kind of does that as well.
• 1:10:31
  It's like, yes, there's a big shiny lever and you've got all
• 1:10:35
  the sort of the temporal mechanics of, well, if
• 1:10:38
  Gallifrey's removed, the paradox has ended and, and everybody's
• 1:10:41
  safe and it's it's all going to be OK.
• 1:10:42
  I didn't. Understand any of the techno but
• 1:10:44
  like Star Trek I just zoned out all the techno.
• 1:10:47
  I was just like, it's a leave upgrade.
• 1:10:49
  I couldn't leave it. It's fixed.
• 1:10:53
  The seas are boiled and it's out of what Past, present and
• 1:10:56
  future? It never exists, but the problem
• 1:10:59
  was never there in the first place.
• 1:11:00
  Well, because there's that bit in the middle as well, isn't
• 1:11:02
  there? Where the Doctor realises what's
• 1:11:03
  happening and he goes, Oh well, all he'd do is go back, go back,
• 1:11:07
  pick up the third dot, take him to Metabolist to die and then
• 1:11:11
  drop him back off UNIT HQ and everything will be fine.
• 1:11:14
  And then Compassion kicks him out the TARDIS.
• 1:11:15
  Good. And you can.
• 1:11:16
  You're not allowed to do that mate.
• 1:11:17
  Sorry, it's not allowed. Did.
• 1:11:18
  You notice the ghostly John Pertwee that's a spectre over
• 1:11:22
  all the events, laughing away at everybody and going well, you're
• 1:11:25
  never going to make it so don't worry, he's.
• 1:11:27
  Not he's not a spectre. So you know how people thought
• 1:11:31
  really funny about Stephen Moffett turning the Brigadier
• 1:11:34
  into like a Cyberman because they were they were all they
• 1:11:38
  were all the because because it made them think of the corpse of
• 1:11:41
  Nicholas Courtney being reanimated.
• 1:11:43
  And you know, or, you know, people thinking that the master
• 1:11:48
  in the deadly assassin being all burned was a horrible sort of
• 1:11:51
  thing about Roger Delgado dying in a car crash.
• 1:11:54
  And John Purtry has been dead for what, 7, four years by this
• 1:11:58
  by this point. And what is is just He's made
• 1:12:00
  out of dust. I was seeing this sort of dust
• 1:12:06
  shadow in the shape of John Perry, a bit like that spectre
• 1:12:09
  in Mind of Evil. You know who's looping over the
• 1:12:11
  Doctor? The Master, laughing.
• 1:12:14
  Yeah, but it's made out of dust. But he's sort of like,
• 1:12:17
  nightmarish again, isn't it? I mean, John Perl is a scary
• 1:12:20
  face. You know when he's pierced.
• 1:12:21
  He does. He does.
• 1:12:22
  I could imagine, you know, that I could see it to go on Mary
• 1:12:26
  White House for a second. I could see it in my mind's eye,
• 1:12:28
  you know, John, John Pertwee, sort of dusty face and sort of
• 1:12:33
  speaking out. Laughing made of.
• 1:12:37
  Dust. Yeah, I mean, so it's so it's
• 1:12:39
  all going on, right? The doctors fighting grandfather
• 1:12:42
  paradox that the faction of taking over the city and are
• 1:12:46
  murdering the Time Lords on mass.
• 1:12:48
  People are under grills being covered in blood, I mean kids
• 1:12:52
  faces are being burnt off and basically Gareth Gallifrey as we
• 1:12:57
  know it is kind of gone. My question to you is, is the
• 1:13:03
  Doctor justified in pulling that lever?
• 1:13:06
  Because if he didn't, I don't think the Gallifrey we know and
• 1:13:09
  love is ever coming back. I think he is because I think
• 1:13:14
  even if you like that's no life, is it, you know, having your
• 1:13:20
  face burnt off by a blow torch, sort of living in grates covered
• 1:13:24
  in blood. And there's literally like it
• 1:13:28
  gets to a point where that is the only way out.
• 1:13:32
  And then and also the the whole thing.
• 1:13:34
  It's much like the the time or in the TV show, which is that
• 1:13:38
  All right. Well, if you let Gallifrey fall
• 1:13:40
  to Faction Paradox, what does that mean for the rest of time
• 1:13:45
  and space? Oh, they say that, don't they?
• 1:13:47
  As well? They say.
• 1:13:47
  We're literally going to rewrite huge segments of time.
• 1:13:51
  It will be our the Vortex will be our playing field and all
• 1:13:54
  that. Like it's bad news.
• 1:13:57
  So you've got them all on that planet.
• 1:13:59
  Why not just dead, but not nuclear or detonate.
• 1:14:02
  Just remove it, Remove it from time and space altogether.
• 1:14:05
  So it. Yeah, I think he's justified.
• 1:14:07
  I would say it's all a bit rushed.
• 1:14:13
  It it feels like it's kind of just it is.
• 1:14:16
  It is just pull a lever and then the Doctor wakes.
• 1:14:18
  Well, he doesn't wake up. He's the Doctor passed out in
• 1:14:20
  the TARDIS. This has been rescued by
• 1:14:23
  compassion at the very last minute.
• 1:14:26
  And she goes, oh, he needs to he needs to reboot his memory for
• 1:14:30
  100 years. So I'm going to drop him off
• 1:14:31
  here and you'll meet him in 2001.
• 1:14:34
  See you it just all. Felt a bit.
• 1:14:37
  I was like, oh, wait, what? I was, I was expecting knowing
• 1:14:41
  that because I, again, I haven't read the Gallifrey Chronicles
• 1:14:45
  for about 20 years, but remembering that obviously the
• 1:14:49
  revelation is that the Doctor has all the memories of, of the
• 1:14:53
  time I was from the Matrix. I thought that was in this.
• 1:14:55
  So I thought it was going to be like a whole big sequence where
• 1:14:58
  he does that. But obviously that's later.
• 1:15:01
  He was so pissed about the amnesia, right?
• 1:15:05
  And the amnesia was just there to give him a second chance.
• 1:15:08
  Yes, that's why it was there. But but all the fans were going,
• 1:15:11
  when's he going to remember the Daleks?
• 1:15:12
  When are we going to start doing sidemen stories?
• 1:15:14
  When's the master going to turn up and all this?
• 1:15:16
  And they're like, no, we want to tell some original stories free
• 1:15:19
  of all that bullshit, like just let us do it.
• 1:15:22
  But at the end they were like, fine, let's put this on a bow
• 1:15:24
  from TV shows coming back. Let's give a reason as to why
• 1:15:30
  why he couldn't get his memories back.
• 1:15:33
  It's because his brain's full of those fucking matrix memories
• 1:15:35
  and technology. And there's your Gallifrey back.
• 1:15:39
  Then also like, he's been through a traumatic event.
• 1:15:44
  Why wasn't that enough to just go?
• 1:15:47
  Yeah, I mean, I imagined you would have some psychological
• 1:15:49
  effects at memory loss and things like that.
• 1:15:52
  We're. Never happy though, are we?
• 1:15:54
  Right? Fans were reading this arc and
• 1:15:55
  going, oh, it's all too much time laws and factions.
• 1:15:59
  It's just so much. And then they got rid of all of
• 1:16:01
  that and then, oh, where's you know, where's the time laws?
• 1:16:04
  Where's Gallifrey? We're just never happy, are we?
• 1:16:08
  I. Will say, I think they did the
• 1:16:12
  only thing they could possibly do.
• 1:16:14
  Yeah, to bring this to climax. And that is to take every.
• 1:16:19
  No wonder we was pissed. Every idea that Lawrence Miles
• 1:16:22
  has ever invented. Yeah.
• 1:16:24
  Put them all in one location. Gallifrey.
• 1:16:26
  And then yeah, remove Gallifrey. Yeah, it's.
• 1:16:30
  Kind of neat in a way, to get rid of all of that.
• 1:16:34
  It's like cauterizing a wound, isn't it?
• 1:16:37
  Yeah, exactly that. That is exactly what it is.
• 1:16:41
  Yeah. I think it was the only way
• 1:16:43
  because it is so like the, the mythology of it is so complex
• 1:16:49
  that it takes a third of the book to get everybody up to
• 1:16:52
  speed. The How long do you want that
• 1:16:57
  hanging over the range, especially if you've got a new
• 1:17:01
  broom kind of coming in. Funny, Mark was at the end of
• 1:17:05
  the Earth arc, everyone thought, oh OK, he's going to get his
• 1:17:09
  memories back at the end of that.
• 1:17:11
  And everything backed back to normal again.
• 1:17:13
  And they didn't do that and people were so pissed.
• 1:17:17
  But then I don't think you should always give the fans what
• 1:17:19
  they want. No, I don't think you should
• 1:17:21
  ever give the fans with people genuinely.
• 1:17:26
  Tell original stories. What?
• 1:17:29
  Yeah, but no, don't give them what they want that way.
• 1:17:32
  That way lies madness. Well, OK, now I mean an almost
• 1:17:36
  impossible task ahead of you now I'm afraid.
• 1:17:39
  But please summarize your faults.
• 1:17:43
  Oh, wow. OK, so yeah, God, right.
• 1:17:50
  I think, look, I think, I think this is, this is the Doctor Who
• 1:17:54
  season finale that we don't get really into.
• 1:17:59
  Well, I was afraid to say until 2005, but that's not true.
• 1:18:01
  Neverland obviously is, is the next sort of big Doctor Who
• 1:18:05
  season finale. How many pounds?
• 1:18:07
  Neverland. So many.
• 1:18:08
  So many, so they. Go after that sort of never
• 1:18:11
  space. The doctor gets infected by anti
• 1:18:15
  time. Yeah, it's all yeah.
• 1:18:18
  Yeah, Alan Barnes was there going.
• 1:18:21
  Yeah. All right.
• 1:18:22
  Yes. And what you do so after that,
• 1:18:24
  you sort of will not erase his memories, but kind of completely
• 1:18:27
  separate him from the continuity of the show.
• 1:18:30
  Got you. Right.
• 1:18:30
  We'll do that place with. Original stories.
• 1:18:33
  You know, fair. But yeah, I think this is, it's
• 1:18:41
  got some incredible imagery in it.
• 1:18:44
  I think the characterization of the Doctor, Fitz and Romana is
• 1:18:50
  pretty good, which I think really helps with the more kind
• 1:18:55
  of convoluted elements of the sort of mythology and like
• 1:18:58
  what's going on. And it feels suitably epic as a
• 1:19:05
  kind of send off for that first half of the 8th Doctor
• 1:19:09
  adventure. So I enjoy, I really, I did
• 1:19:11
  enjoy this kind of like dipping into this era and kind of seeing
• 1:19:16
  what was kind of going on and kind of remembering bits of
• 1:19:19
  things that I've kind of forgotten about.
• 1:19:23
  But it does have its flaws. Like I think it is quite clunky.
• 1:19:26
  There's a way too many characters, far too many long
• 1:19:30
  Time Lord names that you're never going to remember.
• 1:19:33
  It suffers from a lot of the things that most Time Lord
• 1:19:35
  stories suffer from, which is that a lot of men talking in
• 1:19:39
  rooms, the things like that. But broadly, I enjoyed it
• 1:19:45
  broadly. I'm, I'm in a bit of a paradox
• 1:19:47
  for this book. Enough in that I'm really
• 1:19:52
  pleased they went here. I'm pleased that they did
• 1:19:54
  interference. I'm pleased that they did The
• 1:19:56
  Ancestor Cell because they are massively ambitious.
• 1:20:00
  Yeah, perhaps as ambitious as Doctor Who's ever been in terms
• 1:20:04
  of ideas and pushing the boundaries, just what sort of
• 1:20:09
  science fiction you can do. It also got lost up its own
• 1:20:13
  arse, very complicated. And so I'm also extremely
• 1:20:18
  pleased that they never ever went here again because the next
• 1:20:21
  time they they tried to do a big arc, which was in the latter
• 1:20:24
  half of the 8th Doctor books where they did the Sabbath thing
• 1:20:27
  with you. It is complicated, but it's
• 1:20:30
  nowhere near as complicated as this.
• 1:20:32
  They keep it much simpler than this because I think if you miss
• 1:20:36
  one book, you're like, I don't go buy anymore.
• 1:20:39
  I'm lost. I don't know where I am anymore.
• 1:20:42
  Well, this is it with the books. Like I, when I was reading the
• 1:20:46
  books, it was like after the McGann, well, like a couple
• 1:20:48
  years after the McGann movie, but I don't think really
• 1:20:50
  properly got into Doctor Who then.
• 1:20:52
  So it was like, well, do I spend my money on these books or do I
• 1:20:55
  spend my money on videos and then like early DVDs of stories
• 1:21:00
  I've never seen before? I think I'll, I think I'll go
• 1:21:02
  for the videos, DVDs. Yeah, I mean, I came to these a
• 1:21:06
  lot later as well. I just, I just liked how
• 1:21:09
  involved, how much substance that some of these books could
• 1:21:12
  have, like, in a way the TV series and the audios never
• 1:21:15
  could just because there's more. They've got more words.
• 1:21:18
  Yeah. As for the writing of the book,
• 1:21:22
  I'm not really sure where. And I don't mean this in a rude
• 1:21:25
  way. Peter Angelides, it starts and
• 1:21:28
  Stephen Cole ends in this book. I think it is sort of uniform in
• 1:21:33
  how it's written. But I also think I think the
• 1:21:37
  majority of the dialogue that the character speak is
• 1:21:40
  excellent, but the majority of the prose is quite functional
• 1:21:46
  just because there's so much incident that they kind of have
• 1:21:49
  to do. It is a bit like stage
• 1:21:51
  directions. He went there, she went there,
• 1:21:53
  you know, and every now and again there's a really gruesome
• 1:21:56
  bit of imagery or a great action set piece, but for a lot of the
• 1:22:00
  time they're having to sort of shuffle the cards all the time.
• 1:22:03
  Yeah, yeah, definitely. I, I think I do, I, I, I do
• 1:22:08
  think they should be credited though for like because although
• 1:22:10
  the, the prose is quite simplistic, I think that helps
• 1:22:14
  as well. I think like because like you
• 1:22:16
  say, there is so much going on that I think actually if if if
• 1:22:20
  the prose was too complicated, it might just become so dense
• 1:22:25
  and impenetrable that you just bringing the thing out the
• 1:22:27
  window. I think the.
• 1:22:30
  Thing they get absolutely spot on.
• 1:22:33
  And you're right, this is hugely flawed.
• 1:22:35
  I mean those fucking kids are so annoying.
• 1:22:37
  And a lot of the time laws as well, whose names I've long
• 1:22:40
  since forgotten. And I only finished it is the
• 1:22:44
  tone of it. I think the tone is perfect.
• 1:22:46
  The first half is ominous and suspenseful, all that stuff on
• 1:22:49
  the edifice, And the second-half is genuinely exciting and
• 1:22:53
  climactic. Yeah.
• 1:22:56
  What do you? Have to do.
• 1:22:58
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, on that level it
• 1:23:01
  succeeds, doesn't it? Really?
• 1:23:03
  Because it doesn't feel. Do you remember that?
• 1:23:06
  Yeah, the Dalek army surrounding Gallifrey.
• 1:23:10
  And there was all sort of shooting each other.
• 1:23:12
  Gallifrey vanished, and then they all sort of blew each other
• 1:23:15
  up. And I always remember thinking,
• 1:23:17
  oh, that's how the Time War ended.
• 1:23:19
  That's so boring. Like, I love that episode, don't
• 1:23:22
  get me wrong, But I was like, OK, all right.
• 1:23:25
  And there was nothing really much else going on, just those
• 1:23:27
  ships around Gallifrey. Whereas at the end of this
• 1:23:31
  fucking all hell has broken out. Literally, literally like it's,
• 1:23:37
  but it's like you say it's, you can do that in a book, even even
• 1:23:41
  on telly, even with like we're going to do it on cinema, in
• 1:23:43
  cinemas, in 3D. There's only so far they can
• 1:23:47
  kind of go with it. And ultimately, that's a bunch
• 1:23:49
  of Dalek sauces around the planet that disappears and then
• 1:23:52
  they all blow up. I mean, I'll just read one last
• 1:23:54
  thing out to you. Yeah, this is how far they can
• 1:23:56
  go here. The marble floor of the
• 1:23:59
  panopticon dissolved as if acid were flooding it, revealing
• 1:24:03
  rusting grates beneath. Through the mesh were hundreds
• 1:24:06
  of people screaming, blood flowing from the walls and
• 1:24:09
  soaking them stickily. Figures held down a child, a
• 1:24:13
  blowtorch to his face, searing away flesh and boiling the blood
• 1:24:17
  until hard white bone poked through underneath.
• 1:24:21
  Lovely stuff. Incredible, isn't it incredible?
• 1:24:26
  You wouldn't. You wouldn't be able to write
• 1:24:27
  this now. Hell, what's going on with BBC
• 1:24:29
  Books and Virgin? I don't know.
• 1:24:31
  Well, look, thank you so much because this was a, this was a
• 1:24:35
  kind of a biggie to talk about and I feel we've covered a lot
• 1:24:38
  there. Yeah, I hope so.
• 1:24:41
  It was really enjoyable. Well, it's enjoyable the way it
• 1:24:44
  was. It was, it was really good to
• 1:24:45
  like, say, dip into this and kind of get a kind of sense of
• 1:24:50
  that the end of that period of of sort of 8th Doctor books.
• 1:24:56
  It's like, yes, we can absolutely see why you had to do
• 1:25:00
  this. Well done.
• 1:25:03
  Yeah. You know, I'm obviously I'm not
• 1:25:05
  going to monopolize your time. You're a busy man, you know,
• 1:25:07
  doing on the time lash and always other things.
• 1:25:10
  But I am going to ask you to read another book if you are
• 1:25:12
  willing. Yeah, of course.
• 1:25:15
  Well now, do you pick such a juicy one here?
• 1:25:17
  Is there anything else in your collection or any other Doctor
• 1:25:20
  Who book, Virgin BBC that you've fought?
• 1:25:23
  God? Yeah, I've wanted to read that
• 1:25:25
  and talk about it. God put me on the spot there.
• 1:25:27
  I no, honestly, I don't. Oh God.
• 1:25:31
  Because I've got an idea all. Right, you have me with the
• 1:25:34
  idea. And you're going to think I'm
• 1:25:37
  mad, but how would you feel about reading Sometime Never by
• 1:25:45
  Justin Richards? Now I'm going to tell you for
• 1:25:48
  why. OK.
• 1:25:51
  In the second-half of the 8th Doctor books, Yeah, they did a
• 1:25:55
  huge arc with all of time and space and the multiverse is
• 1:26:00
  shattering and all of this. And then they did a run of books
• 1:26:04
  leading up to this climactic final book, Sometime Never,
• 1:26:09
  which tied it all up so they could start doing fresh stand
• 1:26:13
  alone adventures again. How do you feel about reading
• 1:26:17
  that one and seeing how with you, how you get along with arc
• 1:26:21
  #2 See. I'm yeah.
• 1:26:26
  OK, Now I know less about the second-half of the the books,
• 1:26:31
  you see. So I don't know if I'm going to
• 1:26:34
  have that same moment of like things popping off in my brain
• 1:26:37
  where I kind of remember because is Sabbath the guy that comes
• 1:26:40
  out of the the ball. No.
• 1:26:42
  So Sabbath, OK, I'm going to sort of fill you in just a
• 1:26:45
  little bit at the end of this episode.
• 1:26:47
  So effectively, because the Time Lords are no longer there, there
• 1:26:52
  is a new force within the vortex that is trying to take control,
• 1:26:58
  and Sabbath is their agent of chaos.
• 1:27:01
  Well, no, actually the reverse. He's their agent of structure
• 1:27:04
  because they are absolutely trying to crystallize time to
• 1:27:08
  their design. I see.
• 1:27:11
  And this is the end of all of that And I, I, I will make you
• 1:27:15
  one promise. It's an easier read than this,
• 1:27:17
  even though it hang up a lot, a huge amount of stuff and even
• 1:27:25
  Jesus Christ, even books from the past Doctor range, because
• 1:27:28
  they started doing books in the past Doctor ranges where classic
• 1:27:32
  companions were murdered. They murdered male, they
• 1:27:35
  murdered Sarah, they murdered Ace Sam Jones, they murdered
• 1:27:42
  loads of people and we will go what the fuck's going on?
• 1:27:45
  And then in this book it explains that that is this force
• 1:27:50
  attempting to remove the doctors influence from all of time by
• 1:27:55
  taking out all of his companions 1 by 1.
• 1:27:57
  It's really clever, but it is a much better standalone book.
• 1:28:01
  I'll say that it is a book in its own right with a plot in its
• 1:28:05
  own right and it's just a richer and he just knows how to plot.
• 1:28:08
  A great book. I'll be really interested to say
• 1:28:10
  fell on with it. All right, let's do it.
• 1:28:12
  You've sold it. Plus, that's that lovely cover,
• 1:28:15
  I don't know if you've seen it, of the crystal skeleton holding
• 1:28:18
  out his hand. And he's got the top.
• 1:28:20
  He's tired of it. Yeah, I have seen that, yeah.
• 1:28:23
  Well, Mark, unfortunately that's an oral promise now so you're
• 1:28:26
  going to have to read it. Can I ask you please, because I
• 1:28:31
  have never done this on a book club before, so why not?
• 1:28:33
  Where can people find you online playing John Benton in versions
• 1:28:40
  of the Great Tea Bag Mystery. Yes, so that is I'll be that's
• 1:28:45
  probably been out by the time this this comes out.
• 1:28:47
  But yeah, so, well, I I played Sergeant John Benton slash John
• 1:28:53
  Mavine brilliantly alongside the wonderful Joe Ford as Nicholas
• 1:28:56
  Courtney slashed the ruggedyer in two.
• 1:28:59
  I don't. Think you'll think you'll smell
• 1:29:01
  that much if I'm on it, You know what I'm going around in that
• 1:29:05
  teapot. I'd forgotten about that bit in
• 1:29:12
  the In Recall Recall unit, which is 2 Hot TV's sort of staged
• 1:29:17
  reading of the Great Teabag Mystery, Richard Franklin's 1984
• 1:29:22
  Edinburgh Fringe production, so people can listen to that on two
• 1:29:25
  hot TV. I've also have recently done a
• 1:29:30
  two-part on the Time Lash about EastEnders and Doctor Who and
• 1:29:35
  the similarities between soap Opera and Doctor Who and some
• 1:29:39
  weird EastEnders Doctor Who crossovers that aren't just
• 1:29:42
  dimensions in time. And I've got Mark Harrison and
• 1:29:46
  Lee from the Polish Box with me on that one.
• 1:29:48
  Which? I've just finished editing and
• 1:29:51
  it's it's quite a lot of fun. There's a lot of clips.
• 1:29:54
  The EastEnders are in Doctor Who.
• 1:29:56
  It's the most clip heavy of the time.
• 1:29:58
  Lash because I was like, because we're talking a lot about
• 1:30:01
  EastEnders, I was like, I'm going to need to put some stuff
• 1:30:03
  in here because I can't rely on people knowing what the hell
• 1:30:07
  we're talking about. Like in the Doctor Who podcast.
• 1:30:10
  So, yeah, so that's how and maybe I'll do some more in the
• 1:30:13
  time. Lashes.
• 1:30:13
  I'm kind of, I don't know, I'm a bit, Yeah, we'll see.
• 1:30:16
  I love hearing what people whinge about and Doctor Who.
• 1:30:19
  I mean, I used to love Room 101, and it's effectively the Doctor
• 1:30:23
  Who version of that, isn't it? So we'll see.
• 1:30:26
  We'll see. I'm yeah, I'm trying to trying
• 1:30:29
  to maintain a podcast hiatus, by which I mean I'm happy to appear
• 1:30:32
  on other people's podcasts, but I can't be bothered to my.
• 1:30:35
  I mean, this is, I'm in the middle of my month off right at
• 1:30:37
  the moment, you know? Yeah, badly.
• 1:30:43
  I mean, surely you know, what does that Mister Day say in all
• 1:30:46
  of this? You know, that man who goes
• 1:30:47
  round a bunch of podcasts giving either 5 or one star reviews
• 1:30:51
  saying surely there are other people in this this sycophantic
• 1:30:55
  pool of Doctor Who guests that appear on everyone else's
• 1:30:58
  podcast. There's still people to come on
• 1:31:00
  in the Time lash. Oh, there's loads, there's just
• 1:31:04
  tired. Mr. Day, you're a prick.
• 1:31:08
  All right. Can I do a quick plug before we
• 1:31:11
  go? Of course.
• 1:31:13
  I don't normally do this sort of thing, but I feel as if it needs
• 1:31:16
  mentioning and that is a please check out the season 4 episode
• 1:31:21
  of strictly come hamster now the single highest listen to episode
• 1:31:27
  no hamster all time now. Oh, Donaldson will try and
• 1:31:31
  pretend that that's because Toby Haddock's on that episode having
• 1:31:34
  there's. There's no pretending required.
• 1:31:36
  Something of a breakdown at the end of it.
• 1:31:38
  I mean Jesus Christ man, just because even little Daleks
• 1:31:42
  didn't win spoiler. But it's a great, fun episode,
• 1:31:45
  and for whatever reason it's just gone to the top of the
• 1:31:50
  tree. So yeah, please, please do
• 1:31:52
  check. That out well thank you very
• 1:31:55
  much how do we? Thank you very much.
• 1:31:58
  Sorry. How do we end this sort of
• 1:32:00
  thing? Should we just just pull this
• 1:32:04
  lever and just like remove the podcast out of time and space
• 1:32:08
  and then put it off on a? Oh my God, that would be
• 1:32:11
  amazing. I'll just pop the podcast out of
• 1:32:13
  existence, you fool. There are no pages left for us
• 1:32:19
  to read. And then and then I'll just do a
• 1:32:22
  sound effect.