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Hamster Book Club - Time and the Rani by Pip and Jane Baker (featuring James Lark) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:02
  Against a backcloth of infinite Ebony, the TARDIS was being
• 0:06
  bombarded. Bolts of multicoloured energy, a
• 0:10
  fragmented rainbow strafed the Navy blue police box, tossing it
• 0:15
  hit her and thither an inharmonious cacophony of sound
• 0:19
  underscored each salvo. Mel's slim frame was pitched
• 0:23
  from the wall to the console. The Doctor, frantically trying
• 0:27
  to get to his feet, was cast down again by the sickening,
• 0:31
  unpredictable lurches. The whole interior of the TARDIS
• 0:35
  began undulating and distorting, assaulted by the desolate
• 0:40
  bedlam, propelled violently from side to side by the giddy
• 0:43
  oscillations. Mel collapsed near her
• 0:46
  overturned exercise bike shortly before the Doctor spun, reeling
• 0:50
  head first into the plinth of the console.
• 0:54
  Both remained unmoving, as almost indiscernible through the
• 0:58
  jarring discord of sound. The materialization bellow
• 1:01
  began. The TARDIS had been forced into
• 1:12
  a landing, but where and by whom?
• 1:16
  Someone had obviously overridden the Tardis's sophisticated
• 1:19
  mechanism and abducted it, for wherever the Doctor had intended
• 1:23
  visiting, it was certainly not this barren planet.
• 1:30
  Inside the TARDIS all was still. The soul sound now was the
• 1:35
  regular breathing of the two unconscious travellers.
• 1:39
  Mel, at full stretch, lay against the wall.
• 1:42
  The Doctor lying on his front was partly concealed by the
• 1:46
  console. Only his yellow and black
• 1:49
  striped trousers, flamboyant coat and familiar spats and
• 1:52
  sneakers were in evidence. The outside door opened.
• 1:58
  Poised on the threshold, clutching what appeared to be a
• 2:01
  futuristic harpoon gun was a vision in scarlet tight trues
• 2:07
  hugs felt hips before tapering into knee length boots.
• 2:11
  A shimmering brocade jacket, its stiff edged epaulettes trimmed
• 2:16
  with gold, was belted into a slender waist before flaring
• 2:20
  into a peplum. Long brunette tresses framed a
• 2:24
  beautifully sculptured face. This was the Rani leave the
• 2:30
  girl. From the corner of her eye she
• 2:33
  had seen a hair sheathed, scrawny, oily limb extending
• 2:36
  towards Mel. That's the man I want.
• 2:40
  Take him to my laboratory. The three talent poor tugged
• 2:46
  roughly at the Doctor's shoulder, rolling him onto his
• 2:50
  back so that he was face up. But these were not the rotund
• 3:03
  features of the Doctor. This face was small and
• 3:06
  delicately pointed. And the clothes, they were the
• 3:10
  Doctors, certainly. And his multicoloured fold
• 3:13
  umbrella hungover his shoulders, yet the erstwhile tightly
• 3:16
  buttoned Plaid waistcoat hung in folds.
• 3:19
  The spotted cravat sagged about a thin neck with its bow
• 3:22
  drooping over a narrow chest, and the sleeves of the exotic
• 3:26
  coat now flopped beyond the end of his short arms.
• 3:31
  Could this be the endearing 6th Time Lord?
• 3:34
  The Rani had no doubt this was indeed the Doctor.
• 3:39
  Regeneration had been triggered by the tumultuous buffeting.
• 3:44
  In consequence, the 7th Doctor was now in the clutches of the
• 3:48
  Rani and her obscene collaborator,
• 4:05
  Hamster Book Club. The Doctor Who Novel Review
• 4:08
  Podcast with Joe Ford and James Lark.
• 4:39
  Time and the Running by Pippin Jane Baker.
• 4:51
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 4:55
  My name is Joe Ford and I am very ho ho ho.
• 4:59
  Happy to be welcoming you on Christmas Eve.
• 5:02
  This is going out, not being recorded mind with my delicious
• 5:07
  friend Mr. James Lark. Hello, James.
• 5:09
  Salutations, venerable luminary, and may I submit homogeneous
• 5:15
  deference to my Krisina D kinsfolk and the pertinent
• 5:18
  auspicious aspirations befitting this Yuletide juncture.
• 5:22
  I didn't realise I'd invited Jane Baker along to this call,
• 5:26
  but she's here. How many of these have you
• 5:30
  prepared? Or is it just that one?
• 5:33
  Oh goodness me. I'm just, I'm, I'm.
• 5:35
  I've actually just got AI running the whole time running
• 5:39
  everything I think through a thesaurus and spitting out kind
• 5:44
  of where where 3 words will do. I will be using 78.
• 5:49
  You know, right, if you ran something through AI and said
• 5:52
  make it sound like Pip and Jane Baker, yeah.
• 5:54
  And here's the scripts. Then the AI would obviously, you
• 5:58
  know, goes to the the most complex thesaurus it could
• 6:01
  possibly find and and and give you a linguistically insane but
• 6:07
  accurate speech. Yeah, if you did it and said
• 6:10
  right, listen to it all over hamster a blump and knife.
• 6:13
  And now do the same speech in the style of Joe Ford.
• 6:16
  It will be boiled down for the it's possible thing it could
• 6:19
  possibly be. I don't think AI could.
• 6:22
  I don't think AI could imitate the way that Pip and Jane Baker
• 6:26
  right. But it's so defying any kind of
• 6:29
  logic. The sentence construction is so
• 6:32
  chaotic. I actually think this is where
• 6:34
  AI the the the the limited intelligence of AI would be
• 6:38
  shown up for what it is. I mean, sort of.
• 6:41
  We'll discuss the pros, absolutely.
• 6:43
  I'm starting to think in those sort of terms, though.
• 6:46
  These might be the great innovators of Doctor Who in
• 6:49
  prose terms, Pippen, Jane Baker. What do you reckon?
• 6:54
  I don't, I'm, I'm, I'm not sure I can entirely get behind that.
• 6:59
  No, I don't think they are innovators as such, though the
• 7:05
  way they use the English language certainly is
• 7:08
  innovative. I mean, can I say this at least
• 7:11
  that I either side of time in the Ronnie.
• 7:15
  Yeah, I read a book by Nick Walters and I read a book by
• 7:20
  Paul Cornell, Right. And both of those were far more
• 7:24
  elegantly written than this one. And they were nowhere near as
• 7:28
  fun. I mean, I didn't have as much
• 7:31
  fun as I did reading. And I better say it 5 minutes
• 7:34
  into this call time and the Rani by Pip and Jane Baker.
• 7:37
  Time and the Rani. It is fun.
• 7:39
  It's a. It's a yeah.
• 7:42
  It's a weird kind of fun though, isn't it?
• 7:44
  You wouldn't want every book you read to take this form.
• 7:48
  How many words you can, I mean, Pip and Jane would be able to
• 7:51
  tell me that you could describe a trans sort of transportative
• 7:55
  read, you know? Yeah, I was thinking, I've, I've
• 7:58
  just been watching the, the repeat of the 1984, you know,
• 8:04
  the Peter Cushing, Oh, rather the, the Rudolph Cartier version
• 8:11
  and I'm busy. Oh, it's still on there.
• 8:14
  It's still on they repeat on BBC Four.
• 8:15
  So it's still on on the iPlayer. And I was thinking about how
• 8:19
  that's got new speak in it, where the whole idea is to
• 8:21
  remove any kind of emotion or, or ambiguity from language and
• 8:27
  to reduce the number of words they're always talking proudly
• 8:29
  about how they've, they've managed to boil the words the
• 8:32
  English language down to the the fewest number of words.
• 8:35
  This is the, this is the opposite of new speak, isn't it?
• 8:37
  Yes. And when they handed this script
• 8:40
  to Bonnie Langford to read as a. Target novelisation, I promise
• 8:44
  you this. Yeah, you know, obviously the
• 8:46
  the abuse of the exclamation mark in this novel she made
• 8:50
  though every single one count. Interesting.
• 8:53
  Yeah. OK, I I found that quite
• 8:55
  stressful that the excellent. Well, we'll come to this, but.
• 8:58
  But even just even the act of trying to read it in my head and
• 9:03
  find ways of interpreting what was on the page in a way that
• 9:05
  was suitably dramatic. I mean, usually when I'm doing
• 9:09
  notes for a book for the book club, it's usually sort of like
• 9:12
  about the book itself, you know, this is just basically a ton of
• 9:17
  quotes from the book that's. All I've written down, I just
• 9:21
  want to say them all. But look, before we head into
• 9:24
  the at the impressive tone itself.
• 9:28
  Tone actually pamphlet. It's very thin.
• 9:31
  James, can I ask you a question, please?
• 9:34
  Go ahead. Oh, thank you.
• 9:36
  I can grant you 3 Christmas wishes, presumably on this.
• 9:39
  Three. OK, Right.
• 9:41
  One is that you do at least 10 recordings with me next year.
• 9:46
  Granted. Oh, great. 2 is that at least
• 9:50
  five of them will be books. Yeah, OK.
• 9:54
  And the last one is, oh, of course, the you and I will meet
• 9:59
  up and go on that cheese expedition I promised us earlier
• 10:03
  this year. Well, that's not, I mean that's
• 10:06
  you can have that as a bonus wish.
• 10:09
  Amazing. Well then, my last wish is that
• 10:12
  the time in the Ronnie Book Club goes out on Christmas Eve this
• 10:14
  year. Fingers crossed, it's looking
• 10:16
  good so far. Well, my question is this,
• 10:20
  because you are a huge advocate for the Sebastian McCoy or the
• 10:24
  Andrew Cartmel era, let's call it.
• 10:28
  Perhaps Andrew Cartmel may not have chosen for Time and the
• 10:32
  Rani to open his innovative new era of Doctor Who.
• 10:40
  Had you been in charge of Doctor Who at the time?
• 10:44
  Yeah, and you weren't handed a last minute desperate script by
• 10:47
  Pippen Jane Baker, what would you choose to have put in there?
• 10:50
  How would you have kicked the 7th Doctor off given the same
• 10:53
  problems that were there? So Colin's not involved.
• 10:56
  So. Technically there's no
• 10:58
  regeneration and you've got very.
• 11:00
  Few writers this. This thing is, I can answer this
• 11:05
  question. I can say what I would do if I
• 11:07
  was doing it now, but a lot of my response to that is kind of
• 11:11
  anachronistically 21st century. I think we, we would be
• 11:15
  approaching, OK, no, I'll do that.
• 11:17
  But I, I do feel like I know that Andrew Carmel is very
• 11:21
  dismissive of this story and had a frustrating experience working
• 11:24
  on it. And I think he's, I think fair
• 11:26
  enough. It's it's not the way to launch
• 11:30
  what he's trying to do. But I think that a lot of the
• 11:35
  things that would occur to us now just wouldn't have been like
• 11:37
  he might have suggested it himself, but I think the BBC,
• 11:40
  but I think John Nathan Turner would have said absolutely not.
• 11:42
  So the first thing I would say is you've not got Colin.
• 11:45
  I just wouldn't put the regeneration into it at all.
• 11:47
  I'd hit the ground running with a new Doctor if possible.
• 11:51
  I'd hit the ground running with a new Doctor and a new companion
• 11:54
  and haven't and just completely cut all ties from the previous
• 11:58
  series. Start with a deliberate air of
• 12:01
  mystery. Where have these people come
• 12:02
  from now? JNT would never have had that,
• 12:04
  but that would be the most exciting way of going into it in
• 12:07
  terms of story. It's an interesting, isn't it?
• 12:10
  Because we know where the Cardinal era ended up and it was
• 12:14
  kind of on an urban landscape and with historical settings.
• 12:18
  And we think very much of the the final season being made-up
• 12:26
  of a couple of really well realized historical settings.
• 12:30
  And then ending with this, what turns out to be the the future
• 12:35
  as well, which is this recognizable urban landscape.
• 12:37
  But that's not how he starts. And it's not where most of
• 12:41
  season 24 is either. It that's much more it's
• 12:43
  occupies much more of a a comic booky landscape, which was of
• 12:47
  course, his his original thought and in terms of finding a story
• 12:51
  to hit the ground running, because I was thinking, could
• 12:54
  you start with Paradise Towers? I'm not sure that's a great way
• 12:56
  to start a series either. Dell from the bannerman, which I
• 13:00
  love, isn't your your season opener.
• 13:04
  So, so I think we probably want something based on one of these
• 13:11
  slightly heightened colony settings.
• 13:17
  So I, I know Paradise Styles maybe does fall into that, but
• 13:20
  certainly Happiness Patrol as more of a model for that.
• 13:25
  I got me thinking actually. You know, my theory that
• 13:29
  Sylvester Mccoy's first season is actually much closer to
• 13:32
  Troughton's first few stories than people would ever like to
• 13:36
  admit? Right, I didn't.
• 13:39
  Know I must have done. You've never told me that.
• 13:42
  No, I would remember that. OK, so the is it?
• 13:48
  Because there's 2 holiday camps, the macro terror are dealt with
• 13:50
  the banner. Oh yes.
• 13:51
  Well, no, it goes goes into more depth than that.
• 13:53
  So they both they are both periods that see a kind of
• 13:56
  radically different actor cast to the doctor and they are but
• 13:58
  and but they are, I think Charlton is the most similar to
• 14:03
  McCoy. They are both short and they are
• 14:07
  both playing a kind of trickster character with wit, and
• 14:12
  certainly the way they both start off playing the Doctor is
• 14:14
  much more overtly comical. They are both keen on props
• 14:18
  business. They both start with a kind of
• 14:21
  catch phrase thing going on that nobody seemed to like.
• 14:27
  So Time of the Rani is analogous to the underwater menace.
• 14:33
  Both of them ambitious production to mimic B movie
• 14:38
  productions of ambitious but shonky scripts with an over the
• 14:41
  top villain and amphibious aliens.
• 14:47
  And they and they both end up being basically a template for
• 14:49
  what the series shouldn't be doing.
• 14:52
  The Macrotera is is actually closer to Paradise Towers I
• 14:55
  would say, because they are both kind of utopia settings,
• 14:59
  boasting spa facilities with chintzy music, but they both end
• 15:04
  up being in the grip of a beast in the cellar.
• 15:06
  Delta and the Bannerman is closest to the Highlanders, a
• 15:08
  historical Celtic yarn full of dodgy accents which tries an
• 15:13
  occasionally uneasy line between comedy and nasty stuff, and with
• 15:17
  and with a character showing loads of potential as a new
• 15:19
  companion. Yeah.
• 15:21
  Ray or or indeed Kirsty, but somebody else gets somebody else
• 15:25
  gets somebody else gets the pass in the end.
• 15:27
  And finally, dragon fire is like the moon base.
• 15:30
  It's the only thing that looks even remotely like science
• 15:32
  fiction. And they're both stories about
• 15:34
  the weather. So the where what doesn't fit
• 15:37
  into that is power of the Daleks, which, as I think I
• 15:42
  wrote to you when you recently did it for strictly actually
• 15:45
  stands out a mile because it's so unbelievably well handled and
• 15:50
  unbelievably competent given a lot of what surrounds it.
• 15:55
  And you know, you can hardly believe that the same production
• 15:57
  team is behind power of the Daleks and the underwater
• 16:01
  menace. It does it makes sense still.
• 16:04
  But I also think the power of the Daleks is is really your
• 16:07
  model regeneration first first new Doctor story.
• 16:12
  And if you think about what how McCoy is playing the Doctor in
• 16:17
  time in the Rani and I think we both feel that he he's the
• 16:21
  doctor straight away. And yes, there are things that
• 16:24
  he tones down. There are things that he
• 16:25
  realizes he can do slightly more subtly and differently, but but
• 16:28
  he has a a presence from the off, much like Troughton.
• 16:33
  And I was just thinking if you were to do a kind of Power of
• 16:36
  the Daleks style colony with a threat, you could you could
• 16:40
  probably make it slightly more comic book than Power of the
• 16:42
  Daleks, little bit more heightened, little bit more
• 16:44
  surreal. But the point would be if we
• 16:48
  hadn't seen the regeneration, we wouldn't know whether we could
• 16:51
  trust the Doctor. And the reason that works in
• 16:53
  Power of the Daleks is because Charlton is so immediately
• 16:57
  likeable. Well, I think McCoy has that.
• 16:59
  So you could actually do something a little bit dangerous
• 17:01
  with him. You could have the audience
• 17:04
  come, you know, coming back to see is it the Doctor, what is
• 17:08
  going on? You established that mystery.
• 17:10
  You have something going on. And of course he ends up being
• 17:13
  the most doctor ish doctor because he's the madman at the
• 17:19
  centre of what seems to be a sane society who turns out to be
• 17:23
  telling the truth all along and it's society that's collapsing.
• 17:26
  I'd do that kind of story. Does that answer your question
• 17:28
  it? Absolutely answers my question.
• 17:30
  Yes. I mean, I do want to see that
• 17:31
  story now because it sounds pretty amazing.
• 17:33
  Will you rise to it, please? Yeah, OK.
• 17:35
  OK, and I'll do a pretty mean Sylvester McCoy, you know,
• 17:38
  unfortunately he doesn't do a incredibly good Sylvester McCoy
• 17:41
  anymore, so I'll play the part of a big finish.
• 17:44
  OK. And we can.
• 17:45
  That's her own companion. Yeah.
• 17:47
  Julius Walia, can we have her in there last?
• 17:49
  Yeah. Totally.
• 17:50
  So a big finish will be up for this one.
• 17:52
  She. Might be too big for us now, you
• 17:54
  know, we'll end up with Beth Chalmers or something like that,
• 17:56
  but we'll. Do I mean I had a very simple
• 17:59
  answer. Unfortunately, compared to your
• 18:01
  wonderful answer, my answer is Remembrance of the Daleks.
• 18:05
  I literally started with a contemporary setting.
• 18:10
  Maybe a bit of history, an amazing old monster story,
• 18:14
  enough to hook in the Kitty winks like you said without the
• 18:18
  regeneration, a new companion coming in and just had a really
• 18:23
  confident story and just hope people just get on board with
• 18:26
  it. Yeah, which of course is the the
• 18:28
  effect that Remembrance of the Daleks had.
• 18:29
  It really did have people talking about Doctor Who again
• 18:32
  and it it had that kind of impact.
• 18:33
  I wonder if that's Cartmel going well.
• 18:35
  This is what we should have done last year, but we're.
• 18:37
  I always think I, you know, I think it's certainly is, yeah.
• 18:40
  And it's Cartmel, after a year of trying to do comic book
• 18:44
  visuals on ABBC budget and realising that that's not really
• 18:48
  possible, it doesn't really look right.
• 18:50
  After they go there though. Oh yeah, I remember when we were
• 18:52
  talking about that purple alien going through the transmogrifier
• 18:56
  and. But I think that's in the
• 18:59
  context because he's watched, he's watched Delta and he's
• 19:01
  gone. That's in terms of realisation,
• 19:04
  the most successful one we've done because it takes a
• 19:08
  recognisable and easily achieved historical backdrop.
• 19:12
  So if we can do that and then put the purple aliens on top,
• 19:15
  that somehow looks more expensive and impressive than
• 19:21
  trying to build an alien hotel or a whole alien ice planet
• 19:26
  which just ultimately looks a bit crap.
• 19:29
  I mean, I am going to go into where I don't think Pip and
• 19:32
  James instincts are entirely wrong with time in the Riley
• 19:36
  when we talk about the book. They don't.
• 19:40
  I mean, The funny thing about that, The funny thing about the
• 19:43
  making of when they talk about it is that they blame it all on
• 19:46
  Cartmel. Clearly they were being
• 19:47
  completely uncooperative, not doing anything that he wanted.
• 19:51
  But you can at the end, Jane sort of concludes well.
• 19:55
  They again, James, you said they.
• 19:56
  It's Jane the Royal They. That's right.
• 20:00
  Jane says, oh, well, what? We rather preferred writing a
• 20:03
  serious story for Eric than than a comedy for Andrew.
• 20:07
  And like Andrew, Carmel didn't want any of the he didn't want
• 20:10
  any of what you've done here. The comedy is entirely your Rd.
• 20:13
  I think they just didn't understand what he was asking
• 20:15
  for Ashley. They must.
• 20:17
  Know they're writing a comedy they they give paquet O'Mara.
• 20:22
  Bonnie Langford's role and have her stare at the camera and go.
• 20:25
  I'm overwhelmed. They they're right in a comedy.
• 20:29
  I think they, I think they do, but they are blaming Andrew
• 20:31
  Carmel for that. And I think that maybe he's just
• 20:34
  said comic book to them and they've gone, oh, comedy, comic
• 20:38
  book like comic book, like the Beano.
• 20:42
  We're Sophie ordered again. I wonder if maybe the
• 20:47
  relationship between writer and script editor should be this
• 20:49
  fractious all the time. It's something as joyous as
• 20:52
  time, and Irani is birthed in all of this thought chaos.
• 20:57
  Or maybe, you know, maybe we've had a very different Sylvester
• 21:00
  McCoy era. You know, had Pip and Jane Baker
• 21:03
  been the script editor for the entire run?
• 21:06
  Now I think I think reading the book as well highlights moments
• 21:10
  where they didn't know what doctor they were writing for.
• 21:14
  There are bits where if you didn't know that it was
• 21:17
  Sylvester McCoy in the role, it could be Colin Baker's Doctor.
• 21:20
  Absolutely. And and I think they are still
• 21:23
  kind of. Writing it was supposed to be
• 21:24
  Colin. Though this was.
• 21:25
  Written for Colin. I think that kind of shows.
• 21:29
  Well. Shall we start talking about
• 21:31
  this this book then? Oh, just before we start
• 21:34
  talking, this occurred to me. Speaking of remembrance of the
• 21:37
  Daleks and and season openers, has has it occurred to you that
• 21:41
  both season openers are about a time manipulator?
• 21:46
  They are aren't they? And they both have a pre title.
• 21:49
  Sequence as well. In space they're basically the
• 21:53
  same. They both have.
• 21:55
  Aliens where we see POV shots on the screen.
• 21:59
  Yeah. My God, we've laser bit.
• 22:03
  Oh my God. I mean as we go along.
• 22:05
  They don't both have an enormous pulsating brain in them though,
• 22:08
  do they? One's got a sort of roll on mum
• 22:11
  deodorant in the middle of a spaceship.
• 22:14
  Yeah, though if you think of the the Emperor Dalek casing, that's
• 22:18
  that's in the shape of a big pulsating brain, isn't it?
• 22:21
  Oh my God. And they both have a romance
• 22:24
  that cannot be obviously ace and a Nazi and Mel and Icona in time
• 22:29
  and the Rani, you know, because. He hates her guts from the
• 22:32
  start. The book makes that very clear.
• 22:35
  Well, where? Where on earth can we begin?
• 22:37
  Where do we begin? With this book, can I ask you
• 22:41
  when you first read it? And when did I first read?
• 22:44
  It is it for this? For this a week ago.
• 22:46
  No. OK, right.
• 22:48
  So you've read. Hang on, you've read and Lord
• 22:52
  these McCoy era Target books and yet you skip?
• 22:55
  This one. Why James?
• 22:59
  Why? That's a good question, isn't
• 23:01
  it? Have you read all the others
• 23:03
  until that? Point.
• 23:04
  No, I haven't. What other ones have?
• 23:07
  I think When I I think so I read Let's Go through them.
• 23:13
  I read Paradise Towers definitely, but I never read
• 23:16
  Delta. I never read Dragon Fire, never
• 23:21
  read Silver Nemesis, and I never read The Happiness Patrol.
• 23:26
  When I was when I was getting into Doctor Who, I think I was
• 23:30
  much closer to those fans who were immediately suspicious of a
• 23:34
  story called The Happiness Patrol, and having been
• 23:39
  introduced to it by remembrance of the dialects, I kind of felt
• 23:42
  that that was the template. It ought to be some kind of
• 23:45
  alien incursion. I.
• 23:47
  Mean some people would say just reading Remembrance, Greatest
• 23:51
  show, Battlefield Ghost Light, Curse of Fenrik and Survival is
• 23:55
  probably the most sensible. Actually, I'm here to tell you
• 24:00
  now, the rest of those books are pretty good, OK?
• 24:04
  And obviously they're on the page without a budget.
• 24:09
  I remember doing paradise towers.
• 24:11
  Lest you forget how the centre of leisure is described in time
• 24:15
  in the Rani. You know this enormous the size
• 24:17
  of a football pitch. You know, fabulous huge pools
• 24:21
  everywhere. Yeah, although for the most
• 24:24
  part, don't you think that this is a novel that doesn't set out
• 24:32
  in any way to improve on the special effects in the story?
• 24:35
  It mostly describes exactly what you get on on screen.
• 24:40
  James the special effects of the story are incredible.
• 24:42
  Why would you need to improve upon them?
• 24:44
  What's it? Bolts of multi coloured energy,
• 24:47
  A fragmented rainbow. Strafed the Navy blue police box
• 24:50
  That that's what we see on screen, isn't it strafed James?
• 24:54
  Yeah, we see some strafing on screen tossing.
• 24:57
  It hit her and Viva in a harmonious cacophony of sound
• 25:02
  underscored each salvo whilst that was occurring.
• 25:06
  And the sets certainly of the the Rani's operations are
• 25:11
  described as we get them on screen or the pyramids and
• 25:15
  stuff. I think there was a bit of a,
• 25:19
  there was AJ and T did one what was on the screen on the page.
• 25:25
  And I know he relaxes as the era goes on in those latest books,
• 25:30
  but I think at this point he was still saying, you know, let's
• 25:32
  give them on the page what they got on the screen.
• 25:35
  It certainly reads like that, and they keep in everything down
• 25:39
  to Sylvester Mccoy's pratfalls almost slavishly described.
• 25:44
  So I have got I've listed a few things where it it tries to
• 25:48
  improve on what's on screen, but for the most part this is not
• 25:52
  only faithful, it's a a a by the book attempt to put into writing
• 25:58
  the exact story as we see it. I mean, since I adore the story
• 26:04
  as we see it, I pretty much adored.
• 26:08
  The fact that they did that. However, I realized that my
• 26:11
  opinion is the outlier there, so people reading this book that
• 26:15
  slavishly is linked to the TV series, I could see how it could
• 26:19
  be a problem. So I should mention that Jeff
• 26:24
  Richardson, one of the Ham fam and who has had me on his
• 26:29
  podcast recently, I mentioned this to him.
• 26:31
  He's obviously John often read it and I got this message from
• 26:35
  him this morning. Oh my God, dude, you weren't
• 26:38
  kidding. Ernest Hemingway would spit out
• 26:40
  his cigar and drown himself in the Gulf.
• 26:43
  Great story but annoying read so far.
• 26:46
  Oh, what extreme language from Jeff there, honestly.
• 26:51
  I mean, you said that you, you had, you had written down where
• 26:56
  they've improved upon things. Come on here, give me some
• 26:59
  examples. OK, so we guess a 6th Doctor
• 27:01
  scene at the start. So we do get Colin in it.
• 27:04
  Although interestingly, we're denied the actual regeneration
• 27:07
  itself. It's already happened by the
• 27:09
  time the Rani enters. The they do fat shaming, you
• 27:12
  know, on line 3. On line 3 they're talking about
• 27:16
  how chubby is. Do constantly I've got, I've
• 27:18
  got, I've got a list of ways they describe characters and
• 27:21
  they've they've really got it in for Mel as well.
• 27:24
  But we'll come to that. OK What else?
• 27:28
  Oh, we find out how the Rani escapes the T Rex in TARDIS.
• 27:32
  He. Plays Regalos.
• 27:35
  Well, let's find it. Sent hurtling at ultra warp
• 27:43
  speed to the remote regions of the Milky Way, she and that
• 27:46
  other exiled Time Lord, the Master, have been caged in her
• 27:49
  TARDIS at the mercy of a carnivorous Tyrannosaurus Rex.
• 27:53
  And it describes what happened, what we didn't quite see on the
• 27:56
  screen, which was meant to be apparently hungry, lacerating
• 27:59
  jaws just looking at the two puppet.
• 28:02
  Yes, of our recall. Gaping up the two tasty morsels
• 28:05
  flattened by centrifugal force against the walls, it seemed
• 28:07
  nothing would prevent the pair of Renegades from becoming a
• 28:10
  dinosaur snack. Exclamation mark, however.
• 28:14
  This sounds riveting. Keep going this.
• 28:15
  Is what happens. However, the time spillage that
• 28:18
  accelerated the Tyrannosaurus from babyhood into virile It's a
• 28:22
  virile dinosaur. Excuse me, have you not seen K
• 28:26
  Omar as one of those tasty morsels?
• 28:27
  All right. That's true.
• 28:30
  Also accelerate it into full size.
• 28:32
  It's spine snapped against the ceiling of the TARDIS.
• 28:35
  No. Something got me thinking.
• 28:38
  How many Tyrannosaurus Rexes have been killed for Doctor Who?
• 28:43
  There's too many now. So that's one invasion of the
• 28:46
  dinosaurs has AT Rex death, doesn't it?
• 28:49
  Yeah, Deep Breath obviously has AT Rex.
• 28:51
  Very, very sad dinosaur. I mean if we count the ending of
• 28:55
  Earth Shock. Many there it's a joy to the
• 28:58
  Weld is about to have AT Rex we don't know what's going through
• 29:01
  him Yeah he's in one of the. Clips Odds are that it's not
• 29:05
  going to have a happy ending, but we'll watch out.
• 29:07
  That's quite. Grind snap.
• 29:09
  That's really horrid, isn't it? Yeah.
• 29:11
  Although I would like to have seen that as realised by a 1985
• 29:16
  Doctor Who budget, it would have been a bit like the War Games,
• 29:20
  you know, when the wolves are coming in and they're also just
• 29:22
  like that you. Know I've got one as well.
• 29:26
  You know that they, I think I'd say quite eloquently, there's
• 29:32
  nothing eloquent about this book.
• 29:33
  They quite interestingly write scenes from Urak's point of
• 29:39
  view. Oh, yeah.
• 29:39
  Where you have the four things that he's seeing from all of his
• 29:43
  different eyes, one after the other.
• 29:45
  And I quite like that. Yes, they even explain how he's
• 29:50
  able to see in in four different ways at once.
• 29:52
  And they give it a a term which is the quad view.
• 29:56
  Quad view, yes. Right.
• 29:57
  Fabulous. There's another horrible death.
• 29:59
  A tetrap gets nasty knocked off. I mean, they're not afraid to
• 30:06
  bump. People off.
• 30:07
  It's a container of the verbal. It's.
• 30:09
  The tetrap at the end gets gets poisoned by.
• 30:11
  This is clearly an idea that that maybe just was rejected for
• 30:15
  being impractical or something that they just didn't have time
• 30:19
  to do in the end. But it's when they're escaping
• 30:21
  the Irani's base and the tetrap treads on the file of poison.
• 30:27
  That's right. And it says luminous green
• 30:29
  fungus coated the hairy foot. The contamination spread swiftly
• 30:33
  over its haunches and torso. The Irani's concoction from the
• 30:36
  file into bred with the oily skins, abundant microbes bloomed
• 30:40
  into spontaneous fungal growth that smothered its victim,
• 30:44
  infiltrating mouth and nostrils to block the trachea and lungs.
• 30:48
  That sounds absolutely ghastly. What a fight.
• 30:52
  Well, that's just what random tetrap #4 that steps on that.
• 30:56
  There's also quite a lot of oily skin shaming in this book, and
• 30:59
  it's implied that that Tetrap is particularly vulnerable to the
• 31:02
  Ronnie's file because it's so dirty.
• 31:05
  What? But they do also loud, lest we
• 31:08
  accuse. I keep saying lest, as if I am
• 31:10
  Pip and Jane Baker, lest we accuse Pip and Jane of being,
• 31:14
  you know, racist to alien beings.
• 31:16
  They also describe the the tumescent.
• 31:19
  No, that's not the right word. The luminescent.
• 31:21
  Luminescent. Mother of Pearl scales that are
• 31:25
  around Icona's beautiful face. They do, and we'll definitely
• 31:31
  touch on that again. There are a few other things
• 31:34
  that the climax, I thought made it much clearer that what the
• 31:37
  doctor's presence does is not just he's not just interrupting
• 31:42
  the discussion of the different brain voices.
• 31:45
  He's actually creating schizophrenia.
• 31:49
  And we get a really clear sense that he's his presence is making
• 31:53
  all of the scientists revert to character, which is really fun
• 31:56
  because then they are arguing with each other because some of
• 31:59
  them believe in God and some don't.
• 32:00
  And that's a really nice detail, I think.
• 32:03
  Did you notice how much fun the people deciding the font in the
• 32:06
  book were having at that point as well?
• 32:08
  Yes. All the crazy capitals
• 32:10
  everywhere. Mind you, we did lose Sylvester
• 32:14
  Mccoy's reading of. Blessed are the pie makers, for
• 32:17
  they shall make like. This which is very funny.
• 32:23
  Yeah, that's can I. Ask you another question with
• 32:25
  that, yes. Can I ask you, has any
• 32:30
  tumultuous buffeting triggered anything in you in the past,
• 32:34
  James? That's a very personal question.
• 32:36
  Well, I'm a very personal sort of fellow.
• 32:38
  Yeah, never, never a complete regeneration.
• 32:43
  And that's another thing that they don't attempt to make any
• 32:46
  sense of. There's no, we could, we could
• 32:49
  just explain why the Doctor regenerates and Mel is able to
• 32:52
  just get up off the floor. They just say it.
• 32:56
  Regeneration, they quote. Regeneration had been triggered
• 33:00
  by the tumultuous buffeting. And that's that's all we get.
• 33:07
  Indeed, indeed. Well, I'll tell you something.
• 33:11
  Yeah, they do love writing for the Ronnie.
• 33:14
  They do? Oh yes.
• 33:16
  There's a line here. Humouring the fractuous dupe,
• 33:20
  she decided, was the best means of coaxing him to work.
• 33:24
  And there's a line that honestly made me how with laughter when I
• 33:29
  read it. It's so simple.
• 33:31
  It's the most simplest joke they could possibly do.
• 33:34
  It's the bit where she goes, where she slaps him and she
• 33:36
  goes, I'm sorry. You seem to be losing.
• 33:38
  Control, but they just write, I'm sorry.
• 33:41
  And then next week they write She wasn't.
• 33:46
  I was like, well, it's to the point, but yes.
• 33:49
  Should we talk about the writing style then?
• 33:52
  Style, you say? Yes.
• 33:53
  Go ahead. I tried to.
• 33:54
  I actually tried to. I started making a list of
• 33:57
  habits things because I also realised about halfway through
• 34:01
  that it was reminding me of something and it suddenly
• 34:05
  clicked. This reminds me in so many ways,
• 34:09
  Yeah, absolutely. Of the very greatest writers,
• 34:11
  Shakespeare, Dickens, Hemingway, No Blyton, Enid Blyton, whose
• 34:19
  books I loved when I was a wee Baron.
• 34:24
  I particularly loved the Faraway Tree series, was quite into the
• 34:28
  wishing chair. When I was a little older, I was
• 34:30
  into the famous 5 and a lot of the things that they do are kind
• 34:34
  of that very dated way of writing for children, which is
• 34:42
  full of exclamation marks, full of kind of rapid fire delivery
• 34:48
  of information, and yet also full of quite long words, quite
• 34:52
  archaic. I mean the IT is archaically
• 34:55
  written. It's and it's closer to
• 34:56
  Shakespeare than Blighton in that sense, to have writers
• 35:01
  write something like it's namesake eased forth.
• 35:04
  That's, you know, that's not the 20th century way of talking.
• 35:07
  There's a couple of moments where I honestly felt as if I
• 35:10
  was back in, you know, studying Shakespeare, her erst while
• 35:13
  kidnapper, fearful lest another trap should be sprung.
• 35:18
  You know, to be or not to be. I was waiting for that to come
• 35:21
  next. And you're, and you're right,
• 35:23
  you've got a lot of these short paragraphs.
• 35:25
  I mean, I just, I started keeping a list and then I gave
• 35:27
  up because there were too many of them.
• 35:28
  You basically would have written out the whole book.
• 35:30
  Basically yeah and they love doing a thing where they just
• 35:33
  they skipped a paragraph and it's too late Exclamation mark
• 35:36
  next power or but where and by whom stunned a click.
• 35:42
  She turned my my favorite 00 or so he thought.
• 35:46
  There's an awful. Who is having that thought?
• 35:51
  The writers. Best of all, best of all, there
• 35:54
  are moments of action where they can't be bothered to write the
• 35:57
  whole thing out. So there's a bit where the
• 35:59
  Doctor, Mel and Bayes hear Rani returning and they just write
• 36:03
  Stampede. Oh, I've written that down.
• 36:05
  Or I actually wrote next to that.
• 36:07
  My God, sometimes they're so economic.
• 36:10
  For, for, for wordy writers, they are.
• 36:11
  Yeah. When the when the, the the
• 36:14
  poisonous bees are released from the from the glitter ball of
• 36:17
  doom, they just write panic exclamation mark.
• 36:22
  So you've got that. They use a million words where
• 36:26
  they could have used said like, you know, you know, that's a
• 36:29
  kind of a teachers exercise for an English lesson.
• 36:32
  Let's write a story, and then let's find a different way of
• 36:35
  saying said, which is a great exercise because of course you
• 36:38
  shouldn't use said all the time. But if you only ever use
• 36:42
  something like cajoled or snapped or demanded or
• 36:45
  speculated or declared or rallied, it starts to read like
• 36:50
  it's been written for an English teacher to prove that you know a
• 36:52
  lot of different words for said. It's exhausting.
• 36:55
  Does feel like that, James, Let's be honest.
• 36:58
  It's the sort of book I would have written when I was 12.
• 37:01
  And I said please, you know, show me what you can do with.
• 37:03
  Language, I think that's absolutely right.
• 37:05
  It reads, it reads like the most amateurish writing because it's
• 37:10
  reads like writers who are trying to prove what good
• 37:13
  writers they are in a way that in a way that no real writer
• 37:17
  would. I was constantly reading
• 37:20
  sentences, Yeah. And then having to reread them.
• 37:23
  So reading them, sort of getting the gist because they were
• 37:26
  constructed in such a eccentric way.
• 37:30
  I was having, you know, with so many commas.
• 37:32
  There's so many commas in this. So many commas and they love the
• 37:35
  ellipsis as well. Don't.
• 37:36
  You. I was having to go back, sort of
• 37:38
  reread it. And figure out what the fuck
• 37:40
  they were trying to tell me. It's like it was like a puzzle
• 37:43
  book. Yeah, yeah.
• 37:44
  Do you do you know, do you know the Victor?
• 37:46
  Victor Borg? Borg monologue where he makes
• 37:51
  noises for the punctuation. No, I don't.
• 37:55
  I don't. He you could have an absolute
• 37:57
  field day with this, but yeah, so for example, pluck comma, not
• 38:02
  self pity comma was Mel's style. She resumed the arduous climb,
• 38:05
  maybe over the next horizon. dot dot dot question mark.
• 38:08
  A slight scuffling. She turned dot dot dot looked
• 38:10
  towards a clutter of boulders. dot dot dot, nothing
• 38:13
  imagination. Again she clambered on dot dot,
• 38:15
  dot. The sound of her scrunching
• 38:16
  footsteps carried to the boulders. dot dot dot.
• 38:18
  A tawny membrane clown crept over the craggy, craggy rim dot
• 38:22
  dot dot. Craggy rim.
• 38:25
  Craggy rim and. There wasn't actually.
• 38:29
  I did notice there wasn't as many double entendres in this as
• 38:31
  Mark of the Rani. I think maybe JNT gave that a
• 38:34
  read and went just tone that down.
• 38:35
  All right, I know what you're doing.
• 38:37
  There was a few moments. Well, there was a.
• 38:39
  Few, but not as many as time mark of the Rani.
• 38:42
  Sorry. Let's come back to that.
• 38:43
  I mean, I've got another comma one here, flight comma.
• 38:48
  The fugitive Dr. Decided comma should not be a rash skedaddle
• 38:53
  exclamation mark. And then of course, the
• 38:57
  exclamation marks, which are, it's like there's a, it's like
• 39:01
  the question Marks and the doctors pull over, but worse.
• 39:03
  So every time Bonnie's reading out one of those sentences, she
• 39:06
  just goes well, Pell Mell for it, if I'm honest.
• 39:10
  So I started to hear it in Andrew Neil's voice.
• 39:15
  You know that Dead Ringers have this sketch where Andrew Neil,
• 39:18
  Andrew Neil's voice rises through a crescendo at the end
• 39:20
  of a sentence and usually ends with Diane Abbott and I just
• 39:24
  every time there was an exclamation mark, that's what I
• 39:27
  felt they were telling me to do. Please take the compliment when
• 39:30
  I say, because I've listened to so much of Neurotic Literature,
• 39:34
  your fabulous podcast. There you go.
• 39:36
  There's my plug today. But I actually started reading
• 39:39
  some of this in your voice, I thought.
• 39:40
  Oh, wonderful. His rich, beautiful voice
• 39:43
  reading this Pip and Jane prose would be absolutely delightful.
• 39:46
  Well, I was hearing it more like this.
• 39:48
  I should leave quotes to the expert.
• 39:50
  Advise the doctor designating himself the expert.
• 39:55
  A rare moment the doctor's resilience stayed in neutral.
• 39:59
  Oh God, I didn't know you could go so high.
• 40:00
  You know you were reading this on the train, weren't you?
• 40:04
  Yes, was. You laughing your head off.
• 40:06
  Just like everyone else in silence.
• 40:08
  Just. Did you notice as well, within
• 40:10
  all this sort of idiosyncratic prose, that there were several
• 40:13
  lines of dialogue, you know, that didn't hit the screen?
• 40:16
  And I'm wondering if they were just sort of like, oh God, we
• 40:18
  can get that line in. And there was one quite early on
• 40:21
  that I thought was very amusing. Where is it?
• 40:30
  I Oh, here we go. Complete indifference to the
• 40:38
  welfare of others is your hallmark.
• 40:43
  I can imagine that on the screen as well.
• 40:46
  Yeah, I I also think there are lines that are better in the
• 40:51
  broadcast version than in the book.
• 40:53
  And I wondered whether we actually have examples of the
• 40:56
  actors quietly improving. So what is it, McCoy?
• 41:02
  The line in the book is the more I know me, the less I know,
• 41:07
  McCoy says. The more I know me, the the less
• 41:09
  I like me, which is a lovely line.
• 41:11
  And it's, and it trips off the tongue.
• 41:14
  In the book, it's something much more prosaic.
• 41:19
  The more I know about me, the less I like, he said.
• 41:22
  Yeah, it doesn't doesn't work in the same way.
• 41:24
  It doesn't have the same rhythm to it so.
• 41:26
  I I feel as if I knew when they were enjoying writing as well.
• 41:30
  Like I said earlier, they just love writing for the Rani,
• 41:33
  right? Their creation, poised on the
• 41:35
  threshold, clutching what appeared to be a futuristic
• 41:38
  harpoon gun, was a vision in scarlet.
• 41:42
  Yes, they also describe her as having an imperious flounce.
• 41:48
  Oh, I have been my whole life. I've been trying to work up to
• 41:51
  having an imperious flounce. I can't believe you haven't had
• 41:55
  it. One or two imperious flounces.
• 41:58
  We'll ask a few people that have met me.
• 42:01
  What else have I written about writing style?
• 42:03
  Oh, tautology almost as an art form.
• 42:06
  Again, another insult to the 6th Doctor.
• 42:08
  Here, the trimmings. The trimmings of the 6th Doctor
• 42:12
  were being discarded. Trimmings.
• 42:16
  Colin, don't read this book, whatever you do.
• 42:19
  And then there's absolute adjectival diarrhoea.
• 42:21
  They can't have a thing without an adjective, even if it is
• 42:26
  tautologist. You have to have a dissonant
• 42:29
  bedlam or giddy oscillations. Well, yeah, of course you don't
• 42:33
  just have oscillations, you know.
• 42:36
  I just it so it it is fun. It reads like I was.
• 42:40
  There was a point where I thought it reads like it's been
• 42:42
  written either by by the Rani herself or by the 6th Doctor.
• 42:46
  No, that's definitely the 6th Doctor.
• 42:48
  Do you know who I was getting? Go with me here for a second.
• 42:51
  I was getting Michael Moorcock because, Oh yeah, last time I
• 42:55
  read a Doctor Who book where I couldn't decipher the pros quite
• 42:59
  to this extent, it was coming at the Terrafiles by Michael
• 43:02
  Moorcock, and it was for similar reasons.
• 43:04
  It was sort of complicated words thrown together in a
• 43:09
  indecipherable method. Yeah, and also quite haughty.
• 43:13
  The prose is. The prose is a bit kind of know
• 43:15
  it all. You can imagine the 6th Doctor
• 43:17
  sitting there reading. Icona knew the thunderclap from
• 43:20
  the trap he had set off would have alerted the enemy.
• 43:23
  A perceptive deduction. The quintessence of the
• 43:28
  crusading maverick was unimpaired.
• 43:32
  Sorry, I said that a bit like, hey Omara then, didn't I?
• 43:37
  I mean, I already read to you the the the description of Urak
• 43:40
  sticking his tongue down Mel's throat.
• 43:42
  Yep, Yep. Like some what is it some savage
• 43:45
  lover or? Something.
• 43:46
  It's just. It's perverse though, isn't it?
• 43:52
  What the pros or? The pros, yeah, to write things
• 43:56
  like the project robbed Mel of her propensity to verbalize her
• 43:59
  reactions when you could just say she was lost for words.
• 44:03
  Interestingly, you know after time in the Ronnie, I read The
• 44:11
  Year of Intelligent Target by Kate Orman.
• 44:12
  OK. I came from the ridiculous.
• 44:15
  Of the sublime, but, and she writes very essential prose in
• 44:20
  that book, but simple, really simple sentences of just well
• 44:25
  chosen words that absolutely put you in the scene.
• 44:28
  This is the opposite. Of that.
• 44:30
  Isn't it? It's so complicated in how it's
• 44:34
  constructed, but they're in no way can you visualise what's
• 44:37
  happening around you. Not at all.
• 44:39
  No. It's, I mean, it's not, it's not
• 44:40
  evocative writing obdurately ensconced on the bench doesn't
• 44:45
  doesn't help you picture someone sitting down.
• 44:48
  James, I don't know if you've ever had such a big mouth or all
• 44:51
  your life, but. Again, obviously.
• 44:53
  Objurately ensconced on the bench.
• 44:58
  Like, I I one of doing this book club, right?
• 45:01
  Yeah. The worst writers.
• 45:03
  I just want to shake them. And I can't shake Pip and Jane
• 45:06
  Bacon now because they're both in the ground.
• 45:07
  But I want to shake them and say read it aloud.
• 45:11
  Just read it aloud. And you were mad.
• 45:13
  I mean, God bless Bonnie Langford for for giving this
• 45:17
  one. I go.
• 45:18
  That must have been that must have required at least a fair
• 45:20
  bit of homework. Can you imagine if they give it
• 45:22
  to McCoy? No, do you know there was 1
• 45:28
  description though that reminded me of a time in my when I was
• 45:31
  sort of younger and, you know, on the scene.
• 45:35
  As its nauseous smell wafted to the rafters, a more excited
• 45:40
  rustling disturbed the rancid darkness.
• 45:43
  Well, that was basically me in a club back in the day.
• 45:49
  There were some I was in Crawley, remember There were
• 45:52
  some rancid. Clubs do you?
• 45:54
  Want to play a? Do you want to play a game?
• 45:56
  Yes. I do.
• 45:57
  OK, little Christmas game, everyone can join.
• 45:59
  You can all join in at home. So I've got some sentences here,
• 46:04
  OK, and some of them are from this book and some of them are
• 46:07
  not, and I want you to see if you can guess whether they are
• 46:10
  genuine. Pip and Jane Baker.
• 46:13
  I should have come up with a witty title.
• 46:15
  Or if they're James Larkins, is that what you're?
• 46:17
  Saying, yeah, something like that.
• 46:21
  What kind of? Yeah, We'll call this Jane
• 46:23
  Baker, Oregon Plain Faker. Here's the first one.
• 46:29
  I'd have come up with a better cycle if I hadn't just come up
• 46:31
  with it. It's off my.
• 46:32
  Head, I think you might catch on.
• 46:34
  OK. His voice, muffled by the
• 46:37
  enveloping Busby, made the bland statement even more ludicrous.
• 46:41
  No, that's a fake because I would have remembered the word
• 46:44
  Bosby for sure. That is real.
• 46:48
  That is from the book. No.
• 46:50
  One point to James. Bucker it go on.
• 46:54
  Her antiquity and proceeding and surviving succeeding Tellurian
• 46:58
  generations. I mean, it sounds like them, but
• 47:04
  that sounds like James Lark being a clever Dick and trying
• 47:07
  to sound like them. That's a fake.
• 47:09
  That is a fake, although that is actually James James Joyce being
• 47:13
  a clever Dick. Another famed writer.
• 47:18
  OK, what? Talent.
• 47:19
  It is James Lark, I'm afraid. This buffoonery had to be
• 47:24
  brought to a peremptory finale. That is definitely Pippen Jane
• 47:27
  Baker. Absolutely right.
• 47:29
  Yeah, that is. That has the Baker hallmark
• 47:32
  stamped all over it. The alternative courses of
• 47:37
  action might, in certain circumstances, be susceptible of
• 47:40
  discrete modification. Oh, that's quite ambiguous, that
• 47:46
  one. Sort of.
• 47:50
  It's not Dickens, is it? Not Dickens.
• 47:53
  No. OK, I think that's a fake.
• 47:55
  That is a fake. That is actually a quote from
• 47:58
  Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister. Oh, but you know what I mean.
• 48:03
  They're quite similar, aren't they?
• 48:04
  Sir Humphrey and the Ronnie are coming from the same sort of
• 48:08
  pen. Evocation of her lush and
• 48:11
  verdant birthplace also brought home her predicament.
• 48:15
  Oh, that's definitely Pippen. Jay Baker talking about who's
• 48:18
  right? You're doing very, very well.
• 48:20
  Is that before or after we learn about what was the play that she
• 48:23
  did? She was in Macbeth, wasn't she?
• 48:26
  She was one of the witches the. 3rd witch that's.
• 48:29
  Right. Yeah.
• 48:31
  Oh God, hail to glom. Sorry.
• 48:35
  It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though
• 48:37
  confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it.
• 48:40
  It's deplorable. Peculiarity was that it was the
• 48:42
  faintness of solitude. No, that that sounds like like
• 48:47
  it's come from a classic. Your house, That is.
• 48:50
  Charles Dickens, actually. Oh, you know your Pip and Jane
• 48:53
  very well. How about this one?
• 48:55
  The catalyst cracked like a demented howitzer.
• 48:59
  Definitely Pip and Jane. It is definitely a different
• 49:03
  Jane. The cackle is crackled like a
• 49:05
  demented howitzer, only that can only come from the demented mind
• 49:11
  of Jane Baker. Final one, acquiescence, became
• 49:15
  a requirement of survival as the implacable Icona United a rope
• 49:20
  from his waist. Well, Icona, how many other
• 49:26
  books is he in? That's that's Pip and Jane.
• 49:29
  That is Pip and Jane. Yeah, Well, you've done very
• 49:30
  well. Set seven points to you out of a
• 49:33
  possible 8. That's.
• 49:34
  Essentially, if you've got to start a sentence with
• 49:35
  acquiescence, that is a Pip and Jane's Baker.
• 49:40
  I don't want to say they're not having any fun at all, though.
• 49:43
  Right in this because do you think what one thing I did take
• 49:46
  from this was I think they think that Mel was very capable you
• 49:51
  know Mel oh in this she manages to talk around Icona she manages
• 49:56
  to beat up the doctor. You know, she manages to rail
• 50:00
  against the Ronnie, you know, get in and out of the base.
• 50:04
  She's she's. And yet they're really rude
• 50:07
  about her. The one OK, so we we have male.
• 50:12
  Oh, oh, this sentence contritely man obeyed.
• 50:15
  An unusual occurrence. What a bit you are Jane Baker.
• 50:23
  OK, well, then, so I'm sure you'll at least agree with this
• 50:25
  line. They are.
• 50:28
  They're having a lot of fun. Are you ready?
• 50:31
  But you must have the same sweet nature.
• 50:34
  The Rani almost gagged as she uttered the last three words,
• 50:39
  but desperation beckoned. I did like that.
• 50:45
  I like the the idea of the Rani almost gagging on.
• 50:49
  Her Pip and Jane dialogue, yeah. Oh gosh.
• 50:55
  They, I don't think they love Bonnie Langford's performance
• 50:59
  because, and, and rightly so in, although I would say it's their
• 51:04
  words of the the problem. But there's the exchange with
• 51:06
  the Rani where Mel says he's got something you'll never have,
• 51:09
  such as something I'd call humanity.
• 51:13
  And then they write. Even to Mel, the answer sounded
• 51:16
  lame. Which is?
• 51:18
  Is that when they write lame? Yeah.
• 51:22
  It's quite modern than that. They later they say she's
• 51:27
  screeched. No, so we've got screeching as
• 51:31
  one of her character flaws. When they talk about her playing
• 51:34
  the third witch in Macbeth, they say, I don't know if this is a
• 51:38
  judgement of Bonnie Langford. During school days in Peace
• 51:42
  Passage, Sussex, England, she'd hammed her way through the role
• 51:46
  of the third witch. If Jane is in charge, she's got
• 51:53
  an acid tongue. But also, this is bizarre.
• 51:57
  They describe her as a fitness buff, and it's a little bit
• 51:59
  snarky, like she's always going on about fitness, but they also
• 52:03
  describe her as a nutritionist. Yeah.
• 52:07
  Well, of course she knows that all the constituent elements of
• 52:10
  carrot juice. You can't be a nutritionist
• 52:13
  unless you're it's a qualification, isn't it?
• 52:15
  It's a job. James, she has four PhDs.
• 52:19
  You know how smart male? Is and one of them is in
• 52:21
  nutrition. One of them now is in computer
• 52:24
  language or whatever she's doing in the new series.
• 52:26
  That's true. That's well, given the the given
• 52:29
  the computer language in this book, we shouldn't be too
• 52:32
  surprised. Actually, while we're on the
• 52:33
  subject of bitchiness, listen to this.
• 52:36
  This is male, right? Talking about Colin Baker's
• 52:39
  Doctor. She goes the Doctor's no oil
• 52:41
  painting, but you'd frighten the cat.
• 52:46
  Oh, poor Colin. They describe his doctor as
• 52:49
  rotund. Well, people describe me that
• 52:52
  way. Don't worry about it, Colin,
• 52:55
  we're to one of the same. Oh, there it is.
• 52:58
  With the tenderness of an obscene lover, Urac's lips drew
• 53:03
  closer to Mel's face. It's almost erotic, isn't it?
• 53:08
  Well, so you think that there are not as many Dublin entendres
• 53:12
  as in the mark of the role? You know.
• 53:15
  I really, you're going to correct me.
• 53:17
  I just started to think, I wonder if you could take
• 53:21
  sentences in this book and string them together to form
• 53:24
  actual erotica and and so I did. Oh, James, wait, as you read
• 53:31
  this, I'm going to put on some pony music over the top, just so
• 53:34
  you know people can get the full extent of your efforts here.
• 53:37
  OK, at the risk of making members of the ham fam choke on
• 53:41
  their mince pies or put 1/2. Cushion in their lap.
• 53:45
  One or the other go on. Make sure you're sitting
• 53:47
  comfortably, folks. Erotic Literature by Pip and
• 53:51
  Jane Baker Baker This story Rendezvous with a tetrap Yorak
• 54:00
  drooled as he contemplated the lobe of Mel's ear.
• 54:04
  The veined bloodshot orb had an enlarged pupil, the pulsating
• 54:08
  reproduction palpitating magenta light.
• 54:11
  Yorak's veiny eyelids fluttered. Slimy rodent lips dribbled in
• 54:16
  anticipation. He hugged his leather thonged
• 54:19
  legs to his chest with the tenderness of an obscene lover.
• 54:24
  Yorak's lips drew closer to Mel's face.
• 54:28
  With the dexterity of an eel, Mel squirmed from behind.
• 54:32
  He crushed her into his downy arms, the darting forked tongue
• 54:36
  almost licking her ear. Enveloped into the embrace, she
• 54:39
  was almost bent AA jerk, and it was free.
• 54:44
  Dumbfounded by the prodigious spectacle, Mel falteringly
• 54:46
  ventured further in. They floundered together
• 54:49
  drunkenly every which way. Already their rancid odour was
• 54:53
  impregnating the clinical furnishings.
• 54:56
  Another fierce jerk. Cuspids bared and forked, ton
• 54:59
  darting, the breathless duo slithered, attuned to the
• 55:02
  pulsations. Throbbing undulations rippled
• 55:05
  the purple furrows and grooves, and the sheath of nerves
• 55:08
  quivered. The insensible Mel humped over
• 55:11
  his shoulder, experienced spasms of agitation.
• 55:15
  In a whirl of windmilling limbs, splayed moist nostrils and thin
• 55:19
  sucking lips, they penetrated to BAE us sculpting air.
• 55:24
  Icona shuffled to the rim, spurting upwards.
• 55:26
  Together they stuffed the squirming Rani.
• 55:29
  Bulky haunches that exuded a sinewy power thrust through our
• 55:33
  rent that violated the dangling brunette.
• 55:36
  The exuberant cavorting and splashing of the loutish
• 55:39
  creatures was filled with the celebratory flapping of oily,
• 55:43
  pervading throbbing. The buzzing climaxed.
• 55:47
  Her obscene collaborator spurted from its underside and flopped
• 55:50
  ecstatically from the rafters. I don't think you would ever top
• 55:57
  your Power of the Dark Star strictly come hamster, but here
• 56:01
  we are. That is without a doubt the most
• 56:04
  obscene material that's ever been read out on a handsome of a
• 56:08
  blumpy knife. Congratulations.
• 56:09
  Every one of those clauses lifted directly from Time and
• 56:13
  the Rani by Pip and Jane Baker. I mean, it was sort of like,
• 56:17
  yeah, I mean, it was filth, wasn't it?
• 56:19
  Fetid and and rancid and oily and humped.
• 56:24
  Wasn't somebody humped at some point?
• 56:25
  Humped. Humped over his shoulder, yeah.
• 56:27
  Somebody's haunches were squeezed.
• 56:30
  Bulky haunches exceeding a sign, you Impala.
• 56:33
  There's thrusting, There's palpitating.
• 56:36
  James, I mean it as a compliment to your talent that I think
• 56:40
  you've got a future in reading out pornographic novels.
• 56:45
  Oh, great. I wonder if there's.
• 56:47
  I wonder if there's a lot of money in it.
• 56:48
  Should I have a phone? I should have a phone line,
• 56:50
  shouldn't? I think they're probably.
• 56:51
  A naughty Pip and Jane Baker phone.
• 56:53
  Line listen to your voice. Oh yeah, you on the phone.
• 56:56
  People ring up and you can only sit and say Baker Pros down the
• 57:01
  phone. God, you'd be fucking inundated,
• 57:04
  wouldn't you? There's some purpose out there,
• 57:06
  you know? Yeah.
• 57:08
  OK, All right, I'll take it back.
• 57:10
  The Marcus O'Reilly is not the only Pip and Jane book to
• 57:13
  contain the odd double entendre or two.
• 57:17
  I just didn't realise there were that many.
• 57:19
  When you put them all together like that, it's.
• 57:21
  It's quite something, isn't it? Yeah, I, I'm.
• 57:25
  Quite overwhelmed. Like the Ronnie, I'm
• 57:29
  overwhelmed. Well.
• 57:32
  I mean I. Don't even know where to go from
• 57:34
  here. I mean a.
• 57:35
  Cold shower, I'd have thought. Well, I win.
• 57:38
  I would. But you're still on the call.
• 57:41
  What about the? Plot.
• 57:43
  What plot? Oh yeah, I suppose there is.
• 57:46
  AI mean she she, you know, fires a beam at the TARDIS, bring the
• 57:52
  TARDIS down to Lucursia to take away the Doctor's intense
• 57:56
  knowledge of plastics or something to create this machine
• 58:01
  that is going to Oh, and then she sucks out all of his
• 58:03
  knowledge of time travel, you know, to create a time
• 58:07
  manipulator to rewrite the whole of.
• 58:12
  History. Even Mrs. Malatrop Malaprops.
• 58:15
  I can't say it right. Yeah, that plot.
• 58:19
  None of it makes much sense. And one of the problems of
• 58:23
  reading it as a book is that I think rather than being
• 58:26
  confronted by the the scale of the performances and delighting
• 58:30
  in Kate O'Mara and and indeed Sylvester McCoy and indeed
• 58:34
  Bonnie Langford, you're you are sitting there reading it and
• 58:39
  going, yeah, but what, what, why?
• 58:44
  What's the plan? The plan is what?
• 58:45
  And why does it have? Yeah, like technically if they
• 58:50
  just broke down that door, they could have found the brain,
• 58:54
  realise what was going on and the whole thing could have been
• 58:56
  over with a lock. With there are so many things.
• 58:58
  Why has she made a rocket on a fixed trajectory?
• 59:05
  Oh, I don't know. You're going to sort of task
• 59:06
  Star Trek technobabble now. Who knows, but it's sort of nod
• 59:12
  my way through the techno Babble gang that I'm assuming that
• 59:15
  makes sense. So I think that they think it
• 59:18
  makes absolute sense. There's such, there's such
• 59:21
  dedication to that. I'm reminded of the bit where
• 59:23
  they talk about the MB modem in trial of a Time Lord.
• 59:27
  And Jane is very much like, well, we had a friend who worked
• 59:29
  with computers and we asked him and the thing that we refer to
• 59:32
  is absolutely a thing that you have definitely.
• 59:34
  And so here we have MB computers, and they don't
• 59:37
  realize that a MB is actually probably not a very, it's not a
• 59:43
  very good computer. It's not.
• 59:45
  You wouldn't sound good. It sounded good to them though.
• 59:47
  I'm reminded of my first computer which was 64 K.
• 59:51
  You want more than a MB really controlling your your Loy
• 59:55
  Hargill machine, don't you? They think it makes sense in the
• 59:59
  same way that they think they're writing a literary classic.
• 1:00:01
  Yes. Or that they think on TV they're
• 1:00:04
  writing a drama. Yeah, exactly like that.
• 1:00:09
  They talk about the gap of a megavolt catalyst.
• 1:00:11
  They're packing it full of scientific language that's take
• 1:00:16
  a moment to explain what a hologram is, which is very
• 1:00:18
  sweet. It's like we're not sure the
• 1:00:21
  watch the Doctor Who will know what a hologram is.
• 1:00:23
  We'd better take a paragraph out to explain it.
• 1:00:25
  Well, it's as. It's as.
• 1:00:28
  What's the line again? As substantial as the Rani
• 1:00:31
  scruples, that's what, A hologram?
• 1:00:33
  Is. Well what?
• 1:00:36
  What about the the tetraps backwards language then?
• 1:00:39
  You know they're absolutely obsessed about Amsaup, aren't
• 1:00:42
  they? So they call, what do they call
• 1:00:47
  it, Tetrapyroperia Band sounds like a terrible.
• 1:00:52
  Disease, doesn't it? Tetrapyroreum Band.
• 1:00:57
  It's and it's and it's can't talk.
• 1:00:59
  That off somebody once. They write out all the words
• 1:01:02
  backwards, but later on they explain that that's.
• 1:01:05
  What they do? Well, I hadn't figured it out.
• 1:01:10
  Had you? Well, they do translate for you
• 1:01:14
  as well, just in case you don't figure it out.
• 1:01:17
  Yeah, and you get the lengthy description of their ability to
• 1:01:19
  see 360 degrees, that which is followed by a single paragraph,
• 1:01:24
  the quad view exclamation mark. What a shame, because I really
• 1:01:27
  like that. That was one thing I was like,
• 1:01:29
  that's quite fun, just doing the four, the four things that you
• 1:01:32
  can see one after the other. Crazy.
• 1:01:36
  There's also a reference to quarks, which presumably
• 1:01:40
  confused a number of Doctor Who fans at the time.
• 1:01:42
  Especially Fraser, Gregory. Fraser, Gregory.
• 1:01:46
  Read the rest of the book waiting for the quarks to turn
• 1:01:48
  up. I'm deeply disappointed when
• 1:01:50
  they didn't. Imagine Pippin Jane Baker right
• 1:01:52
  in the quarks. Oh boy, that would be gold.
• 1:01:55
  We're in the same world as the Dominators, aren't we?
• 1:01:57
  We're. What this the B movie world?
• 1:02:00
  Definitely yes. Yes.
• 1:02:02
  If a giant pulsating brain and Einstein turned up in the
• 1:02:05
  dominators, I wouldn't be surprised.
• 1:02:07
  No. You know, was there any any
• 1:02:10
  other extras in the book? Was there anything extra?
• 1:02:15
  They fix a couple of things. What if I They explain why the
• 1:02:22
  Rani stands, explaining her plan, which is obviously a
• 1:02:27
  convention that we're used to. But they explain that she's
• 1:02:31
  actually playing for time because she's waiting for the
• 1:02:33
  Tetraps to get back because she knows that they're a distance
• 1:02:36
  away. So that's why she's telling the
• 1:02:38
  doctor exactly what she's doing. The the doctor doesn't use optic
• 1:02:44
  fibres to defuse the Bengals. Even Pip and Jane realized that
• 1:02:49
  that wouldn't have worked, and so they have him ripping a
• 1:02:51
  computer off the wall and using an actual wire.
• 1:02:55
  There's a there's a nice bit of back story here where the Doctor
• 1:02:58
  thinks, well, perhaps the Rani wasn't beyond redemption at
• 1:03:01
  university. In their debates, they had
• 1:03:03
  enjoyed many academic battles of wits.
• 1:03:06
  She even confessed a grudging admiration of his own
• 1:03:10
  versatility. Right, though they also say that
• 1:03:14
  the Doctor thinks the Ronnie is more brilliant than himself.
• 1:03:19
  Outrageous. Outrageous.
• 1:03:21
  Good grief, you know. There's also, oh, sorry, carry
• 1:03:24
  on. What?
• 1:03:25
  I was going to say, they also say that any hopes of salvation
• 1:03:31
  now had to be vested in that unpredictable night.
• 1:03:34
  Errands in a Panama hat. That's the doctor, by the way.
• 1:03:38
  The one, the one with the puckish face, that's.
• 1:03:40
  The one. There's a funeral pyre at the
• 1:03:43
  end. The final scene is done with
• 1:03:45
  Baeus's funeral pyre. And I did think as a visual that
• 1:03:49
  would have been really nice to have, just just to have the sun
• 1:03:54
  going down and a kind of Darth Vader style funeral pyre and
• 1:03:57
  just a bit more atmosphere than shivering extras in a quarry.
• 1:04:02
  What I, I, I am being genuine when I said I had a good time
• 1:04:05
  with this book, but I had a good time with this book, one,
• 1:04:08
  because it was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle and,
• 1:04:11
  and two, it's, it's just so bad. It's wonderful.
• 1:04:17
  Are there any bits that you think are good though?
• 1:04:19
  Did you find anything that you thought?
• 1:04:23
  I mean, occasionally I thought they're insane descriptions.
• 1:04:27
  Sort of conjured up something quite nice, the fetid fugs and
• 1:04:31
  things like this, you know, like a nice sort of macabre
• 1:04:34
  atmosphere you get sometimes when they're describing the
• 1:04:38
  tetraps, all the stuff around the tetras.
• 1:04:40
  They love describing the tetras, but your rice pout the Rani as
• 1:04:42
  well. They they introduce her in this
• 1:04:45
  way. A vision in scarlet tights,
• 1:04:48
  trews, hugs, felt hips before tapering into knee length boots.
• 1:04:52
  A shimmering boucard jacket. It's stiff edged epaulettes
• 1:04:55
  trimmed in gold was belted into a slender waist before flaring
• 1:04:59
  into a peplum. Long brunettes tresses framed a
• 1:05:02
  beautifully sculptured face. This was the Rani.
• 1:05:08
  Well, do you know what right they're they're absolutely
• 1:05:10
  obsessed with kinking up the Ronnie.
• 1:05:11
  You ready for this? He raised his hat to the
• 1:05:14
  spherical panel in a saucy adieu to the imprisoned Ronnie.
• 1:05:20
  A saucy adieu. I don't remember that in the
• 1:05:22
  program. Saucy adieu.
• 1:05:27
  What I would say is, and I said something similar to this
• 1:05:31
  recently when I did. Oh, no, it isn't with Michael
• 1:05:33
  Mills, is a panto on the page. And this is effectively a panto,
• 1:05:39
  right? Yeah.
• 1:05:40
  It's outrageous dialogue being handed to skilled actors who are
• 1:05:46
  absolutely having the best time bringing.
• 1:05:48
  It's alive. Yeah, in an in an insane way.
• 1:05:51
  And on the screen, that's really fun.
• 1:05:54
  There's real energy to it. And I think there's some visual
• 1:05:56
  ambition on the screen as well. Oh yeah, definitely.
• 1:05:58
  It's it's, it's more than competently directed, isn't.
• 1:06:01
  It of the all the stories that year, I think it is the one
• 1:06:04
  which has got the most amount of money.
• 1:06:07
  Yes, agree. But but it's mostly delightful
• 1:06:09
  because of how these wonderful actors, Wanda Ventum, you know,
• 1:06:14
  Mark Green Street, Sylvester McCoy, KMR, Bonnie Langford are
• 1:06:18
  just chewing up this dialogue and vomiting it everywhere, you
• 1:06:23
  know? In in glorious rainbow colours.
• 1:06:27
  On the page you don't have the benefit of the performance
• 1:06:31
  obviously, and so it is just the words.
• 1:06:36
  That's the problem. That is the problem.
• 1:06:38
  There's one bit where Faroon is discovers about San's death.
• 1:06:45
  That's really quite tenderly written.
• 1:06:47
  And I just I suddenly thought, have they been watching this?
• 1:06:50
  And because Wanda Bentham really gives it some in that scene, she
• 1:06:54
  cries, she cries, she underplays it.
• 1:06:57
  And I just wonder whether they're the way they write that
• 1:06:59
  bit is informed by the by the performance.
• 1:07:03
  I also think as well that they do know how to write funny lines
• 1:07:08
  and they do know how to play to the strength of the actors
• 1:07:11
  they've got. So there are really the bit on
• 1:07:15
  In Time of the Ronnie where the Doctor goes to the Ronnie.
• 1:07:21
  Why was the Ronnie dressed like you?
• 1:07:22
  And she just casually goes, oh, perhaps she's fashion conscious.
• 1:07:26
  I mean, it's just. So funny, you know, when she's
• 1:07:30
  watching him in that bloody interminable wardrobe scene
• 1:07:33
  where he's putting on all the clothes every aside that she
• 1:07:36
  gives. You know, pretentious is the
• 1:07:38
  word. Yes, yeah.
• 1:07:39
  It's wonderful. They drag that scene out a bit
• 1:07:43
  more, don't they? What?
• 1:07:44
  On this? Yeah.
• 1:07:45
  Yes, Whereas you know during an action sequence you just get a
• 1:07:49
  single word. Yes.
• 1:07:52
  They got their priorities right, James.
• 1:07:54
  Does it feel, it feels to me like the first episode of the
• 1:07:58
  story takes up half the book. It just feels like they maybe
• 1:08:00
  ran out of time and realized that if they carried on using
• 1:08:03
  this kind of word count, they were going to go well over the
• 1:08:07
  120 a 128 pages that are normally allotted for a target
• 1:08:12
  book. I'll happily say this.
• 1:08:14
  I read the Mark of the Ronnie ahead of our commentary on that.
• 1:08:17
  Yeah, then I've read this. I really then went on and bought
• 1:08:21
  Tara the verb voice after I read this because I was like, look,
• 1:08:24
  this ain't good, but it's so it's.
• 1:08:27
  Glorious. I want more.
• 1:08:30
  And and have have you gone in there?
• 1:08:32
  Is or is that a Christmas treat for you?
• 1:08:34
  No. I'm, I'm dare not.
• 1:08:36
  I mean, it came in the post, right?
• 1:08:37
  And then I looked at that cover and, you know, vaguely sexual
• 1:08:40
  doesn't cover it. Have you seen the cover of that?
• 1:08:42
  No, I haven't. My God, lips pursing, coming at
• 1:08:46
  you. It's absolutely terrifying.
• 1:08:49
  I had a poster of a vervoid once with came with Doctor Who
• 1:08:53
  magazine up on my notice board in my bedroom and my mum coming
• 1:08:56
  in and look and just the her face.
• 1:08:59
  My first thought was what? What obscene pornography have
• 1:09:02
  you stuck up on your wall? And then just this.
• 1:09:04
  Kind of out at this point, were you?
• 1:09:06
  No, OK, so they're well done. I mean I think they post
• 1:09:10
  absolutely disguise post sexuality.
• 1:09:13
  I was going to say that poster set back my coming out by about
• 1:09:16
  3 decades. Yeah, they were like, oh, I'm
• 1:09:19
  sure he doesn't know what it means.
• 1:09:24
  Well, look, any, any last minute quotes, any final thoughts?
• 1:09:27
  Any sort of round up your The Experience of reading Time in
• 1:09:32
  the Round by Peter Jane Baker. The experience is like being
• 1:09:41
  beaten around the face by a dictionary, but in a kind of
• 1:09:46
  slightly playfully sexual way. It's it's.
• 1:09:49
  Offering. You're going to have to phone my
• 1:09:54
  phone line once I've got that set up.
• 1:09:57
  The Yawning Chasm. You're going to do it in the
• 1:10:00
  Jane Baker boys? Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:10:02
  OK. It's a book that just as an
• 1:10:12
  experience, it's, it is exhausting.
• 1:10:14
  And like I said, it's, it is kind of perverse to choose to
• 1:10:16
  write in this way. It's not easy to read.
• 1:10:19
  It's not clear what's going on. It's not evocative.
• 1:10:22
  It's just kind of showing off. But but showing off what it's
• 1:10:28
  not even showing off kind of ability to write 1 is it's
• 1:10:31
  showing off that they've looked up some words because I I refuse
• 1:10:36
  to believe that these are words that they would drop into
• 1:10:38
  conversations either. This is not the work of very
• 1:10:41
  verbose people. This is the work of people who
• 1:10:43
  think that the way to mate, to write, is to get a lot of words
• 1:10:46
  into it. You.
• 1:10:47
  Know I I I of all the Doctor Who books that I've read recently
• 1:10:53
  yeah, of all of them, this is the one I think I'd like A
• 1:10:56
  Doctor Who Confidential 1A behind the scenes look at how
• 1:11:02
  this piece of literature came to be because I just want to see.
• 1:11:07
  Or I've written a great bit here.
• 1:11:09
  Pip read this bit you know Pell Mel running a scree, you know.
• 1:11:14
  Pell Mel running a scree. And as I said to you before,
• 1:11:17
  even using the phrase Pell Mell, which is again archaic, it's not
• 1:11:21
  the kind of thing people would have, would have just dropped
• 1:11:23
  into conversation in a book with a character called Mel.
• 1:11:27
  Shows a kind of ballsiness, definitely.
• 1:11:30
  A scree isn't even a word. I looked it up.
• 1:11:33
  So I literally did go. Looking in the dictionary for
• 1:11:36
  Pip and Jane words, a scree does not exist as a word.
• 1:11:40
  A rash skedaddle. A rash skedaddle.
• 1:11:43
  That's they're taking the piss, are they not?
• 1:11:46
  I mean, I would like to think so, yes, hang on.
• 1:11:50
  I just there's a pre used precis of what I've just said.
• 1:11:56
  Actually that's I quite like that actually a pre used precis.
• 1:11:58
  They do like alliteration as well, don't they?
• 1:12:01
  Yeah, well, quiet. I really Henry Gordon Jago would
• 1:12:04
  be worse. You I mean, that is, that is
• 1:12:09
  exactly it. This is written in the language
• 1:12:12
  of a musical host. It's it's got masters.
• 1:12:18
  No. Well, maybe no.
• 1:12:20
  I'll go on further. A musical host from the
• 1:12:22
  Victorian era with brain damage. Is that fair?
• 1:12:27
  Yes, so that could be the other voice to use to read it is.
• 1:12:34
  I'm not sure if you read this in your pony bit, but did you read
• 1:12:37
  out the bit where a predatory grimace exposed razor sharp
• 1:12:40
  cuspids? You did.
• 1:12:42
  Oh no, I did have some cuspids, but not razor sharp cuspids.
• 1:12:45
  As the repulsive half ape half rat leared at Mel.
• 1:12:53
  Oh, they call Icona an innate dissident.
• 1:12:59
  An innate dissident? I mean, come on, read it out
• 1:13:02
  loud. A homily he was fond of
• 1:13:05
  expounding praised the virtues of simplicity, a cradle to which
• 1:13:09
  he should have adhered. The scheme had been a might too
• 1:13:12
  elaborate. Oh God, I mean, I just love it.
• 1:13:16
  I know it's terrible. I know it's terrible.
• 1:13:20
  Fuck me, I was laughing. I was laughing reading this
• 1:13:23
  book. I'm just trying to think now if
• 1:13:25
  there's any more tossing. Hit her and.
• 1:13:28
  Zither, I think I've done that already.
• 1:13:31
  Oh yeah, I love the facts as well that mate describe they do
• 1:13:34
  like a a little precis of every character that comes into it.
• 1:13:39
  So before like, you know, Einstein does anything in a book
• 1:13:43
  which he doesn't, you get this was.
• 1:13:45
  Professor Albert Einstein. The originator of the theory of.
• 1:13:48
  Relativity and the father of nuclear physics.
• 1:13:52
  Well, thank you. This little this little
• 1:13:58
  background to the the Irani's domination of Lucretia.
• 1:14:02
  It had been achieved with humiliating ease.
• 1:14:05
  His acquiescent countrymen, spoon fed by an indulgent regime
• 1:14:08
  offered little opposition, preferring to believe the
• 1:14:10
  intrusion would be small scale and transient, a monumental
• 1:14:14
  mistake. Anticipating this, Icona tried
• 1:14:17
  to rally by us. The peace loving intellectual
• 1:14:20
  rebuffed him, preaching non aggression.
• 1:14:22
  An innate dissident, Icona then endeavoured to organize
• 1:14:25
  resistance groups. His efforts were fruitless.
• 1:14:28
  Can you imagine a child following what the hell this is
• 1:14:30
  talking about? Already nailing apprehension,
• 1:14:34
  usurping vexation, I'm sure. Already nursing a burdening
• 1:14:38
  sense of disillusionment, he divorced himself from licursion
• 1:14:41
  society and dwelt alone and iconoclast, living a hermit's
• 1:14:44
  existence until Mel's intrusion, her dogged defiance, more
• 1:14:49
  alliteration, rekindled his dormant spirits.
• 1:14:52
  He could not abandon her to the bestial tetraps.
• 1:14:58
  You know there's a Talk like a Pirate day.
• 1:15:00
  Can we have a Talk like a Hip and Jane day?
• 1:15:03
  Oh please it. Should be a Doctor Who fan.
• 1:15:07
  Red letter day. OK, then I'm going to start.
• 1:15:11
  You ready? Well, you're going to start now.
• 1:15:13
  The first sign that Mel may be right had a kindly absurd
• 1:15:18
  manifestation. Dash the goo burps exclamation
• 1:15:25
  mark. How's that?
• 1:15:26
  Quite distinctly, I think it's how that.
• 1:15:30
  Yeah, well, yeah, people do tend to burp quite distinctly.
• 1:15:34
  They usually do, don't they? Yes.
• 1:15:36
  Yeah. Oh, is the Leptonic era a real
• 1:15:39
  thing? They said to reenact the
• 1:15:44
  Leptonic era, a microsecond period.
• 1:15:47
  After The Big Bang. Oh, they've explained what it
• 1:15:48
  is. It must be.
• 1:15:50
  I'm sure it is. I bet they've misunderstood it
• 1:15:52
  though, in the same way that they think a nutritionist is
• 1:15:55
  someone who's into nutrition. James, I believe you were a
• 1:15:59
  psychopath without murderous intent.
• 1:16:01
  I withdraw the qualification. There's a bit where they say the
• 1:16:05
  Rani was finding the idiot a trial and I wondered if that's a
• 1:16:10
  meta reference to trial of a Time Lord or?
• 1:16:14
  Maybe. But then I thought, that's
• 1:16:16
  probably a bit clever for them. I don't think you can really any
• 1:16:21
  sort of reading of intellectual intent.
• 1:16:24
  I also think I can well imagine Jane describing Pip as being a
• 1:16:28
  bit of a trial in their in their home life.
• 1:16:32
  Pip. Pip.
• 1:16:34
  And Andrew Cartmel. Andrew Cartmel was definitely
• 1:16:38
  proving a bit of a trial. I mean, I'm.
• 1:16:40
  Baffled as to why he didn't have them back for season 25, James.
• 1:16:47
  Now, you said this was a chore. Yeah.
• 1:16:48
  So. So is it like a oh God, thank
• 1:16:51
  God that's over book or I mean, because clearly, you know,
• 1:16:55
  you've had some fun assembly in your notes there.
• 1:16:58
  Oh, yeah, it was, I think it's it's sort of exhaust.
• 1:17:01
  It's exhausting to read because it this it's so full on.
• 1:17:06
  But it is you like time in the Rani as broadcast.
• 1:17:11
  If you check your brain out at the door, you're going to have a
• 1:17:13
  great time. Definitely, Yeah.
• 1:17:16
  You know what this is, right? Right.
• 1:17:17
  The worst. And I, I've mentioned many times
• 1:17:19
  I had some big fan of B movies. Yeah, and I've mentioned the
• 1:17:22
  worst B movie of all time, the Nymphoid Barbarian from Dinosaur
• 1:17:26
  Hell. This is the Nymphoid barbarian
• 1:17:29
  of Dinosaur Hell of the target book range, right?
• 1:17:32
  So unequivocally, utterly terrible, and yet and yet
• 1:17:39
  somehow thoroughly enjoyable to read for me.
• 1:17:44
  Yeah. And I am quite, I'm, I'm.
• 1:17:47
  It's a bit of an obsession of mine, sort of bad writing.
• 1:17:52
  I think the point I'm trying to make is I would rather read this
• 1:17:55
  than a bad new adventure. Oh yeah, definitely, definitely.
• 1:18:01
  Because this at least made me smile rather than something like
• 1:18:03
  the Pit, you know? And like you say, there were
• 1:18:06
  funny exchanges in it, funny lines that even serious things
• 1:18:09
  are written about the funny. Yes, I think that's absolutely
• 1:18:11
  right. This is a book that is either
• 1:18:13
  taking itself completely seriously and falling so far
• 1:18:18
  from the intention. But I don't think they are
• 1:18:21
  taking it that seriously. I think that they know they're
• 1:18:23
  writing a funny book and would much rather rather read that
• 1:18:27
  than an endless ponderous, self obsessed new adventure wanting
• 1:18:33
  wanting to be taken very seriously.
• 1:18:35
  Although, just to entice you for a moment, the thought of Pip and
• 1:18:39
  Jane Baker writing a new adventure as edited by Pete.
• 1:18:43
  Starve Weapons I mean. Well, maybe once I've got my
• 1:18:48
  erotic phone line up and running I could have a go at producing
• 1:18:52
  some Pip and Jane style literature.
• 1:18:55
  We can call this the pilot for your for your phone line.
• 1:18:58
  Yeah, yeah. But I I think we'd like to hear
• 1:19:00
  what Pip and Jane would have made of of a Big Finish script.
• 1:19:04
  Well, Gary Russell said he would never do the Ronnie unless Pip
• 1:19:08
  and Jane Baker wrote it, and that's why they never did the
• 1:19:10
  Ronnie until Nick Briggs came along.
• 1:19:12
  But if someone was able to write in a in in a style that
• 1:19:16
  accurately imitated Pip and Jane.
• 1:19:21
  Can anybody do that? No.
• 1:19:24
  Well, yes, those classic writers that you mentioned earlier.
• 1:19:30
  It's going to have to be Who is it?
• 1:19:31
  James Joyce? Charles Dickens.
• 1:19:33
  I'm not sure James Joyce is available.
• 1:19:37
  Oh, I'm sure we can get him. You know, if nothing else, I'll
• 1:19:41
  ask Sophie Aldred. All right.
• 1:19:45
  Would you? I mean, what if, what if this is
• 1:19:50
  such a good idea I maybe shouldn't say it out loud.
• 1:19:52
  Some someone will nick it. Would you?
• 1:19:54
  Would you go to the theatre and watch a play about the making of
• 1:19:57
  time in the Irani, written in the style of Pip and Jane Baker?
• 1:20:00
  Yes. How could you even ask me that
• 1:20:03
  question? You know, when you know, you
• 1:20:07
  know when these ticket sales go on and everyone's there, fingers
• 1:20:10
  poised? Yeah, I'll duplicate myself so I
• 1:20:14
  can have a million fingers on buttons.
• 1:20:16
  I'll have all the sounds. Joyous.
• 1:20:18
  It's a pantomime of a pantomime. Right.
• 1:20:22
  My God, a meta pantomime. No, wait.
• 1:20:29
  Cliff and Jane doing the phone calls with Andrew Carmel.
• 1:20:34
  They'll keep running in and out of doors, you know?
• 1:20:36
  Is Andrew on the phone? Fuck off.
• 1:20:39
  You'll never see Jane. She's off stage the whole time
• 1:20:41
  just shouting. But it's got to be cast with the
• 1:20:45
  most, you know, most shrill, God awful voice or someone putting
• 1:20:51
  on a great 1, you know, Patricia Routledge or something like
• 1:20:54
  that. She'd be perfect, wouldn't she?
• 1:20:56
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:20:58
  I wonder if. We can get Imelda Staunton
• 1:21:04
  interested. No.
• 1:21:06
  Well, Bill Bags tried with one of his stranger videos but she
• 1:21:08
  weren't having it unfortunately. Was she?
• 1:21:11
  No, her agent came back and said I.
• 1:21:13
  Don't think she'd be interested in this sort of thing, but
• 1:21:15
  thank. You.
• 1:21:16
  What would she have been doing? She'd have been working with
• 1:21:17
  Kenneth Branagh at the time. We've had bill bags on the
• 1:21:21
  phone. Would you like?
• 1:21:23
  I think Colin Baker and David Trouten are in it, you know?
• 1:21:27
  Who? She said.
• 1:21:29
  I've just had the call for Harry Potter.
• 1:21:30
  Leave me alone. How did we end up here?
• 1:21:34
  I mean, I think it was always inevitable we would end up
• 1:21:36
  somewhere in malefulence. Neverland Madness.
• 1:21:40
  I think that our conversation has been more focused and
• 1:21:43
  disciplined than any of the chapters of Time in the Rani.
• 1:21:47
  And yet we have been all over this book.
• 1:21:50
  Invari. It's like Steven Moffitt doing a
• 1:21:52
  review of this book has been the timeiest, wimiest review ever.
• 1:21:56
  Can I ask what what copy you've got?
• 1:21:58
  Which version you? I have got a first edition, you
• 1:22:01
  know. Yeah, me too.
• 1:22:02
  Yeah, I was so excited on the. Cover, except on the cover.
• 1:22:05
  I ordered from a website that had a picture of the the blue
• 1:22:09
  spine edition and I thought well it's a it's a rubbish cover
• 1:22:13
  anyway the 1st edition I didn't really want it and then it
• 1:22:16
  turned up and I was so pleased. It is a rubbish cover but and
• 1:22:19
  yet it's it. It sort of works in AI.
• 1:22:23
  Think it's glorious, that cover. I mean, it's better than those
• 1:22:26
  pictures of Peter Davidson at the.
• 1:22:27
  Oh yes, as photographic covers go, it's vast improvement.
• 1:22:32
  It's just such an odd though. It's such an odd choice of
• 1:22:35
  picture. To survive.
• 1:22:36
  Or, you know, with the cat claws going.
• 1:22:38
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know Alastair Pearson was on
• 1:22:40
  his way. Don't you think it's an odd
• 1:22:42
  choice of picture? What the Tetrap's upside down?
• 1:22:46
  Yeah, I. Think it's.
• 1:22:49
  You've got a brand new Doctor, you've got Kate O'Mara.
• 1:22:52
  Or maybe there there were restrictions.
• 1:22:54
  Maybe they couldn't use pictures of act photos of actors.
• 1:22:57
  But James, you know they create dapple toys of all those things
• 1:23:00
  you just mentioned. It's only the TEP trap I've got.
• 1:23:03
  That was. That was quite highly regarded
• 1:23:05
  though. Wasn't it with his livery wings?
• 1:23:07
  He's on my bookshelf. I see him every time I'm
• 1:23:09
  reading. And have you seen how they
• 1:23:11
  originally printed that cover? The wrong way round.
• 1:23:15
  Yes, the tetrap standing up for like they're growing out of the
• 1:23:19
  ground. It feels almost appropriate for
• 1:23:21
  the for the text inside that it was full of mistakes.
• 1:23:27
  Well, James, thank you so much for, I mean, you know, you must
• 1:23:32
  have had some wonderful train journeys reading that book.
• 1:23:35
  As did my fellow passengers, as I as I read out loud and.
• 1:23:39
  In the Jane Baker porny voice. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:23:43
  I have a request. It's linked into one of the
• 1:23:50
  wishes that you granted at the start of this call.
• 1:23:53
  You knew that was going to come back to bite you in the after.
• 1:23:55
  Yeah. And that is I would like to do
• 1:23:59
  another solo book club with you, obviously after Christmas.
• 1:24:04
  We're heading towards Christmas now, Pell Mell.
• 1:24:09
  I would like to do a Donald Cotton book.
• 1:24:13
  I'd like to do the gunfires that you chose.
• 1:24:17
  In the top 10. Yes.
• 1:24:19
  Now I'm doing the other two as a double bill with another book
• 1:24:23
  club, but I want to do all three.
• 1:24:25
  I want to read all three and just see what he was up to with
• 1:24:29
  those three books. What do you reckon?
• 1:24:31
  It'd been an absolute pleasure. You.
• 1:24:33
  You know how much I love that book.
• 1:24:36
  And imagine the reading that Ken Mussel do with that with
• 1:24:39
  terrible cowboy accents. Weird.
• 1:24:44
  So if a funny companion piece to Time in the Irani, because I
• 1:24:48
  think Time in the Irani is a badly written book.
• 1:24:51
  The Gun Fighters is a deliberate pastiche of a badly written
• 1:24:56
  book. And the skill with which Donald
• 1:25:00
  Cossen employs. Absolutely.
• 1:25:03
  Yeah. No, deliberately it is.
• 1:25:05
  It is written like a writer. It's a little bit like Jane
• 1:25:09
  Baker, but it's like. That kind of.
• 1:25:11
  Words. And every joke lands, whereas if
• 1:25:14
  they if the jokes land in this book, it's sort of accidentally.
• 1:25:19
  Yeah, and, and how would you know it's a joke?
• 1:25:21
  Well, because it's got an exclamation mark at the end of
• 1:25:24
  it, like every other sentence. No, Excuse me?
• 1:25:27
  That's how we know it's a joke. It's a moment of drama, it's a
• 1:25:30
  moment of action. There's a shock twist basically
• 1:25:33
  every sentence in the book. I'm just kind of sorry.
• 1:25:37
  I'm just like, I'm, I'm looking down my list.
• 1:25:38
  I'm, I'm slightly kind of appalled by everything that's
• 1:25:41
  written on the page in front. Yeah, it I, I, I feel like this
• 1:25:47
  is perfect fodder for a Christmas Eve podcast.
• 1:25:51
  And, and I hope that everyone listening to it is either
• 1:25:55
  stuffed full of sweet foods or drunk on mould wine, and that
• 1:26:01
  this therefore makes some sort of sense.
• 1:26:03
  But we can promise you none of you will be as rotund as the 6th
• 1:26:07
  of this book. Well, James, until you and I
• 1:26:12
  head to the Wild West and we may do a detour with Rusty Davis
• 1:26:16
  along the way, depending on the Yeah, I will just say thank you
• 1:26:21
  for reading this eccentric tone. And until next time, what's the
• 1:26:25
  Pip and Jane Baker way of saying?
• 1:26:27
  Until next time, you haven't. Seen the last of me?
• 1:26:30
  No, Come on. Now, oh, that's quite nothing.
• 1:26:32
  You could. You could.
• 1:26:32
  You could see that being. But you got to do it in the
• 1:26:36
  style of Kay Omara. You haven't seen the last of me,
• 1:26:40
  Doctor. Well, I think I will end by just
• 1:26:44
  wishing all of the Ham fam much exuberant cavorting and
• 1:26:48
  splashing, and may your Christmas be full of oily,
• 1:26:53
  pervading throbbing. And I'll cut it there.