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Hamster Book Club - The Crooked World · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:05
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club With me, your host Joe Ford
• 0:10
  and three distinguished gentlemen hot of the press from
• 0:14
  the very popular doomsday weapon episode.
• 0:16
  Mr. Jason Thompson. Hello.
• 0:18
  Hello, Mr. Ian Winston. Hello.
• 0:22
  Hello and Mr. James Lock Hello. Hello, how you doing guys?
• 0:28
  Yeah, I'm good mate. I'm very well.
• 0:31
  Too busy? Busy.
• 0:33
  Well, OK, Well, we'll take it. Are you happy to be talking
• 0:37
  about Doctor Who books today? Jason Yeah, Always.
• 0:40
  Always happy to be talking about Doctor Who anytime.
• 0:43
  Yeah, I am happy, although my my life has been non-stop.
• 0:46
  Doctor Who from about 5 different angles this past
• 0:50
  month, but always frozen. Plus it's half term and I've
• 0:56
  been watching Doctor Who with the kids, so it's just.
• 0:59
  Well, no, it's all right. You're still with?
• 1:01
  Us. Don't worry.
• 1:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So well, I was talking on my end
• 1:04
  so you can splice it in. I know you like spent a long
• 1:08
  time editing. You can splice my cheeky shit.
• 1:12
  I was just going to say you've been time scooped off somewhere
• 1:15
  or something like that, you know?
• 1:17
  Yeah, yeah. No.
• 1:18
  So what was I saying? Yeah, And it's also been half
• 1:20
  term. So I've literally.
• 1:21
  You know, they said care for what you wish for.
• 1:22
  All I wanted when I was a kid was to do nothing but Doctor
• 1:24
  Who. And I've literally now my life
• 1:26
  is nothing but Doctor Who. It's a massive headache.
• 1:30
  Although I did go and work, I've, I've just been to see Five
• 1:32
  Nights with Freddy's at the cinema, so that was not Doctor
• 1:34
  Who. Well, James, you said that you
• 1:36
  was very busy at the beginning of the call.
• 1:38
  I'm assuming that's not Doctor Who related.
• 1:41
  It's a lot of it is not Doctor Who related though.
• 1:43
  Last night I took a school trip to a musical at Riverside
• 1:47
  Studios which currently has this.
• 1:50
  Really good display of mostly photographs from Doctor Who, but
• 1:54
  they've got a really beautiful replica of the first TARDIS prop
• 1:57
  there and most of the kids I took.
• 2:02
  I would say at the moment that there's not a massive Doctor Who
• 2:05
  contingent in my school, but they were really intrigued.
• 2:09
  And and I was, I suddenly was fielding all these questions.
• 2:12
  What did the first regeneration look like?
• 2:15
  There was ATV showing various kind of classic clips.
• 2:17
  And they're saying, what's that story from, what's that a
• 2:19
  picture of? Well, that's a hemovor and
• 2:22
  explaining what that was. So yeah, I've had many Doctor
• 2:25
  Who related conversations over the last 24 hours.
• 2:29
  You know what? They're all fans in the making.
• 2:31
  Some of them will take Tony much of time, isn't it?
• 2:33
  Well, especially with what's coming up as well in four weeks
• 2:36
  time. They would, they genuinely, some
• 2:39
  of them were very much like so, so can we watch any of these?
• 2:42
  And I said, well, BBC iPlayer is about to drop a whole load of
• 2:45
  this stuff. So yeah, you can.
• 2:48
  Yeah, the school teachers are the best marketers they can
• 2:50
  have, I'm telling you. Well fellas, we are here today
• 2:54
  to talk about The Crooked World by Steve Lyons.
• 2:58
  I just want to say as a disclaimer, I am going to be
• 3:01
  pushing away from the 8th Doctor books eventually.
• 3:04
  I do currently have a target Dalek, a past sorry missing
• 3:10
  adventure, Time of your life and a past Doctor adventure.
• 3:14
  The degree all in the pipeline. Unfortunately it's all down to
• 3:17
  availability that we've just done.
• 3:18
  Alien bodies, Father time and now the crooked world on the
• 3:21
  bounce. But before we talk about the
• 3:26
  Crooked World, I would like to first thought, first time
• 3:29
  around, I asked you what your first Doctor Who book was.
• 3:32
  I'd like to ask all three of you now what your favorite Doctor
• 3:35
  Who writer in prose is. And I'd like to start with
• 3:39
  James. My favorite Doctor Who writer in
• 3:45
  prose I haven't. It's not a very I'm going with
• 3:48
  hearts rather than logic. I think it's Ben Aronovich.
• 3:55
  And that's partly A nostalgia thing.
• 3:58
  That's partly because Remembrance of the Dialects was
• 4:00
  one of the first target books I got and obviously kind of now I
• 4:07
  know that it was one of the books that slightly changed.
• 4:11
  I was sort of pushed towards new adventures, but it changed the
• 4:13
  format of the target novelizations.
• 4:14
  It was one of the first ones to introduce character details,
• 4:19
  subplots, you know, extra information that wasn't in the
• 4:22
  television series, and and. It it remains A cracking good
• 4:26
  read. I'm also going to very familiar
• 4:29
  with Benaron Benaronovich's more recent series of best selling
• 4:34
  Rivers of London novels. So I can't.
• 4:36
  It's very difficult to talk kind of dispassionately about this.
• 4:39
  I just think he's a really entertaining writer.
• 4:42
  And you know, everyone loves the also people, but I also love
• 4:46
  transit. So there we go.
• 4:49
  Maybe a future episode then? Since you've mentioned them, I'm
• 4:54
  going to throw in a recommendation to anyone who's
• 4:56
  read, who's listening, who hasn't read them yet.
• 4:58
  Do go and pick up the Rivers of London series.
• 5:01
  They are absolutely superb. You do kind of have to read them
• 5:05
  in order though, so. You do, but it's but I think it
• 5:08
  pays off as a series in a way that a lot of series feel like
• 5:12
  they're contractual obligations. With Aronovic, you always know
• 5:15
  that you're getting a. Really well researched book,
• 5:18
  every one of the rivers, I mean every one of the rivers of
• 5:20
  London books takes a kind of a focus that the the early ones
• 5:24
  are very much focused around London.
• 5:25
  The first one is based on London's theatres and
• 5:27
  theatreland, the second one is about London's jazz venues and
• 5:33
  it's it, it's really clear that he's a fastidious researcher.
• 5:39
  You never feel that you're being kind of fed a sort of invention
• 5:42
  of his own. Imagination when he goes into so
• 5:46
  so if you're not familiar with the series, Rivers of London is
• 5:49
  the the the idea is that the Met have a much neglected magic
• 5:54
  department and it's basically kind of 1 old man and no one
• 5:58
  takes him very seriously. In the first book, Peter Grant,
• 6:00
  a young police officer, is recruited into this because he
• 6:05
  experiences something supernatural and it's written
• 6:09
  with this very compelling. Sense of what it would actually
• 6:12
  be like if the Met had a slightly embarrassing department
• 6:16
  of two or three people dealing with magic.
• 6:19
  Something they don't really want to acknowledge exists but they
• 6:21
  can't get rid of the department because clearly every now and
• 6:24
  then something completely bonkers happens and it's the
• 6:26
  only department they have to deal with these things.
• 6:28
  But when they do police procedural, you absolutely know
• 6:32
  that they are going through the things in exactly the way the
• 6:34
  Met would go through these things if they encountered
• 6:37
  something without any explanation and.
• 6:40
  The fact that the magic, the magic occurrences all have their
• 6:43
  roots in historical events and characters from history and
• 6:48
  places gives it all, you know, a very similarities.
• 6:52
  That I think is very appealing to well, to to me as someone who
• 6:58
  I'm a little bit impatient with fantasy.
• 7:00
  I'm a little bit impatient when when the rules are not clear in
• 7:03
  a in a piece of writing here I have no I've never had doubt the
• 7:08
  world that we're occupying, never mind the crooked world.
• 7:11
  Let's talk about that instead. That sounds amazing.
• 7:15
  I'm off this week, so I might go out.
• 7:16
  I've just seen a load of them in more service today, so I might
• 7:18
  go and grab one. Yeah, same here, Emma.
• 7:20
  I've been told by so many people to read them and every time I'm
• 7:24
  like one day I'm going to be told and I'll like you, I'll
• 7:27
  just suddenly actually see them for sale and go for it.
• 7:30
  I know quite a few people out of the genre as well that are
• 7:33
  reading those books because they're just really well written
• 7:35
  books. Yeah, they.
• 7:37
  Sound really good and they they. They, as James said, brilliantly
• 7:41
  researched. So you really feel like this is
• 7:43
  properly believable. The landmarks and road even down
• 7:47
  to. I took this route to get there
• 7:49
  because of everything else. Yet you could do that.
• 7:52
  You could do a Rivers of London tour of London because he goes
• 7:55
  to various places and one of them was in A.
• 7:58
  He ended up in a a warehouse in Industrial Estate in Gillingham,
• 8:02
  which I know very well. So you know there's all sorts of
• 8:04
  things like that. But also it excuse a lot of the
• 8:07
  the fantasy tropes is like Peter Grant.
• 8:10
  The the main character isn't some chosen one with magical
• 8:13
  skills that he was born with mysteriously.
• 8:16
  The idea is everyone can do magic, but it's A it's dangerous
• 8:21
  and detrimental to your health if you do too much of it, and B
• 8:23
  you have to actually be taught how to do it properly and though
• 8:27
  so there's all signs, all kinds of.
• 8:29
  Really, really fantastic world building in there.
• 8:31
  And it's hilarious because he also throws in loads of
• 8:34
  references to other sci-fi fantasy tropes.
• 8:37
  There's one book is very heavily based around Hitchhiker's Guide
• 8:40
  to the Galaxy things, for example.
• 8:43
  So because Peter takes an undercover role in A in a in a
• 8:47
  place called the Serious Cybernetics Corporation.
• 8:50
  Oh, nice. And there's a reference to a
• 8:54
  police box being a place where, you know, you can lock up a
• 8:57
  police, you can lock up a prisoner or call the Met or
• 8:59
  maybe get with stopping time and space.
• 9:03
  So there are a few. There are, there are references
• 9:06
  in there that some of them are really obvious and some of them
• 9:09
  if you know, you know, but they don't detract from the rest of
• 9:13
  the story. So yeah.
• 9:14
  But anyway, we're not here to talk about Rivers of London, but
• 9:16
  I was going to say, you know, the Hamster Rivers of London
• 9:19
  Book Club, starring James, Ian and Jason will be coming to
• 9:22
  this, any podcast catcher. Very.
• 9:25
  Soon. I'm going to go and buy them.
• 9:27
  It sounds like it sounds kind of like Never Wear Meets.
• 9:31
  The X-Files or. Very similar to never work, in
• 9:34
  some ways an easier read though he's got such a a natural pro
• 9:38
  style and it is very witty. It's very funny.
• 9:40
  Oh. It's hilarious.
• 9:41
  In place with his. Laughed out loud.
• 9:43
  And so he's. A brilliant, brilliant writer,
• 9:44
  Yeah, with his also people. Because I just adore that book.
• 9:48
  It's such a gentle book. Like, it's not, it's very not
• 9:52
  The New Adventures in a lot of ways and yet it's so gripping I
• 9:56
  I couldn't put it down. I've read it all in one go.
• 9:59
  You're also people, the one with the Dyson sphere, that's.
• 10:02
  Yeah. So yeah, I remember that really
• 10:05
  clearly, which is a sign that I enjoyed it.
• 10:08
  There's a point in the also. People work with all of the new
• 10:11
  adventures. There's there's a point in the
• 10:13
  also people where where the plot suddenly kicks in and you almost
• 10:17
  have a feeling of yeah, oh what a shame.
• 10:19
  Yeah, I. Just enjoying this.
• 10:22
  I just really enjoyed hanging. Out Well, Ian, your favorite
• 10:27
  Doctor Who writer in prose. I mean, it's hard to pick one,
• 10:31
  obviously, but we were just talking off Mike and I I
• 10:33
  actually think Paul Cornell, but is one who I'm going to pick
• 10:39
  today. But I guess it's because I also
• 10:41
  have a sort of personal connection, Ish, in that I went
• 10:44
  to the same uni as him and he came in, he graduated the year I
• 10:50
  arrived the year before I arrived.
• 10:53
  So, because he'd written. New adventures.
• 10:57
  And I did create writing the same course as he'd done.
• 11:00
  And then my tutor who taught him, found out.
• 11:02
  I like Doctor Who said, well, his his.
• 11:05
  And that's how I kind of weirdly found out about the new
• 11:08
  adventures in 91 because Paul Paul Cornell had written them
• 11:12
  and then he came into. I mean, I've said this too many
• 11:16
  times on probably too many podcasts but but it's just a
• 11:20
  weird how Doctor Who comes into life.
• 11:22
  I was 19. Had dreadlocks and smoked weed
• 11:25
  and haven't really thought about Doctor Who in a long time.
• 11:27
  Just as a sort of in a sort of weird.
• 11:30
  It was a kind of weird, weird thing I used to do as a kid and
• 11:34
  secretly liked. We didn't talk to anybody.
• 11:36
  And Paul Cornell came in the day I got an acceptance letter from
• 11:40
  Gary Russell saying my brief encounter had been accepted.
• 11:44
  And so then Paul Corp came in. I said I showed him a letter and
• 11:50
  so. Paul's going, oh, fellow
• 11:52
  traveller, brilliant. So we had a pint afterwards and
• 11:54
  then I sort of said to him, so how do I actually get paid for
• 11:56
  this? And so Paul said, Paul said,
• 11:59
  will you send him an invoice? And I was 19 and I just said
• 12:02
  what's an invoice? That's how naive I was.
• 12:05
  So my first invoice was to Gary Russell who and I work with
• 12:09
  thanks to Paul Cornell who I kind of now know from going to
• 12:13
  cons and stuff as well. So it's just weird, but but just
• 12:16
  as a just as a writer, I think. I think we'll talk about this a
• 12:21
  bit when we talk A Crooked World.
• 12:23
  The tone of Doctor Who as it changed as it became taken over
• 12:27
  by angsty fanboys for The New Adventures.
• 12:30
  I didn't get on with it quite often and I always felt Paul
• 12:33
  understood, which is why, of all the new adventures I've still
• 12:37
  talked about, I didn't Chuck away or didn't send to charity
• 12:39
  shop when I was younger. I've still got love and war
• 12:42
  because I read that over and over again.
• 12:44
  It was serious and dark, but it didn't ever, to me, feel like I
• 12:48
  don't remember ever having stuff in it that.
• 12:50
  I didn't think should be in Doctor Who.
• 12:52
  Like in Crooked World, there's a few bits, much as I enjoyed it,
• 12:56
  which we'll get onto, I think tone in Doctor Who.
• 12:59
  I'm the same with Torchwood, you know, Torchwood is, you know by
• 13:04
  itself a good thing, but as part of the universe I think it goes
• 13:09
  too far. I don't think it's accessible to
• 13:11
  its core audience, so therefore it is wrong.
• 13:14
  And naughty in my eyes, there's only one question I want to ask
• 13:18
  you about your personal connection with Paul Cornell is
• 13:21
  Has he always had that unnaturally deep voice?
• 13:25
  Yes, as far as I can remember. Sounded like Paul Cornell.
• 13:28
  He's been trying hard to best him, but I can't get there, you
• 13:31
  know? Yeah, I mean, I've got quite a
• 13:34
  deep voice myself, but yes, he has a very deep voice.
• 13:37
  Son of Us is the word. Maybe Jason, what is your
• 13:41
  favorite Doctor Who writer in prose?
• 13:44
  Well, I mean, I can't believe we've got this far and no one's
• 13:46
  mentioned Terence Dixie. I knew someone.
• 13:48
  Was going to pull out Terence Dix.
• 13:50
  But I'm not going to go for Terence Dix because that's
• 13:53
  that's always too obvious. Maybe that's why we none of us
• 13:56
  went for Terence Dix. No, it's just a given, isn't it?
• 13:59
  Well, he was, Terry. He's a man who thought he's not.
• 14:01
  Great. The the, I mean the thing about
• 14:03
  Terence Dixie's work is a lot of it is excellent.
• 14:07
  Some of it is workmanlike because he just has to plow
• 14:10
  through and get these things out, so there's the varying
• 14:13
  degrees of quality. What I'm going to go for is my
• 14:15
  favorite author is Ian Marta. Good choice.
• 14:21
  So Ian Marta novelized 9 classic Doctor Who Serials and I've.
• 14:27
  Got five of them in my collection.
• 14:28
  I'm gradually building up my target collection again.
• 14:32
  He novelized The Ark in Space, which was my first ever Doctor
• 14:35
  Who book, as anyone who was listening to the previous
• 14:38
  podcast will remember. But he also novelized the ones
• 14:43
  I've got here. The The Enemy of the World
• 14:45
  controversially included the word bastard in it.
• 14:49
  The Dominators, the Ark in Space, The Sontaran Experiment.
• 14:52
  Earth Shock. And I can't remember what The
• 14:53
  other four were off the top of my head because I don't have
• 14:55
  them. But what I like about his style
• 14:58
  is that he really goes in, for he sort of unsanitizes a lot of
• 15:06
  what happens in those stories. They're still perfectly
• 15:09
  acceptable for children to read. They were in my school library.
• 15:15
  But he adds layers to them, like for example the descriptions in
• 15:19
  The Arcane Space of Noah being taken over by the WIR and are
• 15:22
  really uncertain. His head split open with a crack
• 15:25
  and things like that, you know, bubbling pus in In Earth Shock,
• 15:30
  He describes the cyber leader and the sidemen as having a kind
• 15:33
  of oily vapour coming out of their chest unit that made them,
• 15:36
  you know, kids love that stuff, don't they?
• 15:40
  Kids love the. Dominators are said to have like
• 15:43
  oily breath and look like cadavers and sunken eyes and
• 15:46
  everything else. So he really goes in for it, and
• 15:49
  he's not shy about when people get shot in Doctor Who, because
• 15:52
  in Doctor Who, people get shot. Someone points a gun at you, and
• 15:54
  unless your condo in the brain of Morbius, someone shoots a gun
• 15:59
  at you and you fall over and that's it.
• 16:00
  Whereas I remember vividly in The Enemy of the World, he
• 16:03
  describes a line of red dots going up for years back when she
• 16:06
  gets shot. Enemy of the World is brutal
• 16:09
  that I remember reading that I was at a airport cafe and I was
• 16:15
  really, I just kept saying to my Rob, this is I'm not sure if
• 16:18
  this is appropriate for kids, that it's brutal and it's
• 16:21
  visceral, that book. Yeah, well, that's his style.
• 16:25
  It's what he does with all of the books he makes them, you
• 16:28
  know, because, I mean, Doctor Who deals with situations which
• 16:31
  are brutal, but it's in a sanitized Saturday tea time
• 16:37
  fashion, so you know, there's not a lot of blood and there's
• 16:40
  not a lot of actual. So we need you, Ian.
• 16:43
  Marta will talk about, you know, crunching bones and things when
• 16:46
  people are being you know, the the bit in Earth shock where the
• 16:50
  Doctor puts Adric's badge into the Cyber Leader's chest.
• 16:54
  He goes on about how agonizing it is for the Doctor because
• 16:57
  he's having his arms crushed by the Cyberman at the same time,
• 17:00
  but he's still hanging on, desperately trying to get this
• 17:03
  to to work. So, yeah, so that Ian Marta for
• 17:07
  for taking these stories, novelizing them.
• 17:10
  Brilliantly fleshing them out in some cases.
• 17:12
  His novelization of the Sontaran experiment is much different
• 17:17
  from how it looks on screen. So yeah, really, really good
• 17:21
  stuff. So he's my favorite.
• 17:22
  I hadn't. Realized that he novelized Earth
• 17:24
  Shock. Yes, which makes.
• 17:26
  Total sense. What a great match of story and
• 17:29
  writer. I mean it's.
• 17:30
  Brilliant. I found it's one of my one of my
• 17:32
  early Doctor Who novelizations from my school library, and then
• 17:35
  when I saw it on my first VHS as well.
• 17:37
  I think this is actually really, really good.
• 17:40
  And that he managed to take a hold of The Rescue and the
• 17:42
  Dominators and turn both of those into gripping novels.
• 17:45
  Oh, the dominant. Is Astonishing is a superb
• 17:48
  novel? Yes, I think the rescue is as
• 17:49
  well. And it doesn't skim the page
• 17:51
  count either. It just gives you a lot of back
• 17:53
  story, doesn't it? Yeah, I was torn between two
• 17:57
  very subversive writers. Lawrence Miles, who is, yeah, a
• 18:02
  bit of a nut case these days, but he, I think he's the writer
• 18:06
  that got closest to writing genuine sort of science fiction
• 18:08
  novels in Doctor Who and did things with Massive.
• 18:11
  I just remember reading his books when I was younger and I
• 18:15
  could feel my mind expanding with the the amount of ideas
• 18:18
  that he put in Doctor Who. But also Paul Mars as well, who
• 18:23
  I think is subversive in a really different way and a camp
• 18:25
  funny, very clever. But he makes it seem very
• 18:30
  effortless. You read one of his books and
• 18:31
  it's such an easy read, but you pull it apart and he's doing a
• 18:36
  lot of work, sort of under the surface.
• 18:38
  So I I couldn't choose between the two of them.
• 18:40
  I I don't think I've read a book by either of them that I didn't
• 18:43
  love, which is why I've sort of covered a few of those already
• 18:45
  on here. But yeah, well, I think we've
• 18:47
  got some. Am I right in?
• 18:49
  Thinking they are both, they both of those authors were very
• 18:52
  much associated with the the 8th Doctor adventures.
• 18:56
  Which is my type, I think Laura Smiles came in with Christmas on
• 18:59
  a Rational Planet with the new adventure, yes.
• 19:03
  Which is like the only Doctor Who book where the TARDIS saves
• 19:06
  the day of his own volition. It was a wonderful book.
• 19:09
  Then he did a Benny book called Down and then he he did Alien
• 19:13
  Bodies and stuck with the ape doctors after that.
• 19:17
  So I ought to. Fess up and say that I, I I'm
• 19:20
  not very familiar with the EDA's.
• 19:24
  I've been very. I've been very much enjoying
• 19:25
  your podcasts on them, and it's made me want to to read more of
• 19:28
  them. But my, my, my history with
• 19:32
  Doctor Who fiction is that when the new adventure started coming
• 19:35
  out, all I wanted was a new series on television.
• 19:38
  The last thing I wanted, the last thing I.
• 19:40
  Wanted as a young teenager was that was stories that were too
• 19:43
  broad and sexy for the screen or whatever it was.
• 19:46
  So it took me a while. It was a long time before I got
• 19:49
  on board with those but when I did I I think it was Shakedown
• 19:52
  was the first one I read. I thought these are brilliant
• 19:55
  and then they discontinued the series and started bringing out
• 19:58
  these new BBC books with butt ugly covers and I and I just
• 20:02
  couldn't get on board with them. And I wasn't a massive fan of
• 20:05
  the TV movie for again, like obvious teenager reasons.
• 20:10
  It didn't do what I was wanted Doctor Who to do.
• 20:12
  So I I I wasn't invested in getting into these books about.
• 20:16
  Paul Mcgann's doctor. I was sort of kind of catching
• 20:20
  up on the new adventures at the time.
• 20:21
  And I do. I mean, I maintained that.
• 20:23
  I think kind of the To this day, if you see a new adventure in a
• 20:27
  charity shop, you have to buy it, Even if it's The Pit by Neil
• 20:31
  Pennswick. You'll feel dirty.
• 20:35
  Yeah, I know that. I know that objectively, a lot
• 20:38
  of the new adventures actually don't quite live up to that
• 20:41
  Sheen. But they're very, you know, it's
• 20:42
  the white spines and the the hand, the hand drawn covers.
• 20:46
  And I think that they were going through a phase in the mid 90s
• 20:48
  of just they discovered Photoshop or whatever kind of
• 20:51
  professional equivalent there was.
• 20:52
  You know, they did it with the VHS range as well.
• 20:54
  Suddenly they're bringing out these just messes of kind of
• 20:57
  colour and someone's, you know, found a new setting and they
• 21:00
  can. Yeah and and smudged Tom Baker's
• 21:03
  face into it. Everything looked awful for a
• 21:05
  while. What's Been Lovely 80?
• 21:06
  Seven they. Got the company called Black
• 21:09
  Sheep to do the. The covers.
• 21:11
  And to get uniformity across the range, they got them to do the
• 21:14
  books, The Missing, the The Past Doctor Adventures, The 8th
• 21:17
  Doctor Adventures, and the VHS. And for a period there was like,
• 21:22
  right, We stick a swirly pattern on the front and then we
• 21:25
  Photoshop some characters in the front of it.
• 21:28
  And some of them are absolutely dire.
• 21:31
  Yeah, absolutely grotesque with this, with this awful version of
• 21:34
  the logo which you know we're we're looking at a book now
• 21:37
  which has got the the later version where they made it look
• 21:40
  better, but it was a sort of ham drawn, swishy thing which didn't
• 21:43
  match the Photoshop. They went back to the when they
• 21:46
  when they got that and turned it into the one that looks like it
• 21:48
  did on the screen rather than the.
• 21:51
  Weird thing. About the black sheep covers is
• 21:52
  you're right, they did start off really ugly and they were hit
• 21:55
  and miss. When they hit with stuff like
• 21:58
  Year of Intelligent Tigers, which is a picture of a Tiger's
• 22:01
  eye with Paul Mcgann's face reflected into it and things
• 22:04
  like that, they were amazing, but it was just like.
• 22:06
  I just felt like they didn't have enough time and every now
• 22:08
  and again, accidentally, they created a fantastic cover.
• 22:12
  Yeah, I. Think they took them a while to
• 22:13
  find their to to hit their stride, but do you remember the?
• 22:16
  Drift where? It's just the TARDIS in the snow
• 22:18
  with the foot footprints going towards.
• 22:20
  Oh yeah, that's a lovely, beautiful cover.
• 22:23
  Or or Father Time with the little girl in the snow.
• 22:25
  And it's just, yeah, that's cool.
• 22:27
  I really enjoy. I must listen.
• 22:28
  To the Father Time one, actually, because I really
• 22:30
  enjoyed that book when I read it.
• 22:31
  Yeah, but back. To just mentioning Paul Paul
• 22:34
  Mars, because I know him vaguely from Manchester, but his his,
• 22:41
  his sort of, his sort of 8th Doctor stuff, he's he did some
• 22:44
  brilliant stuff for Big Finish as well as you'll know, Joe
• 22:47
  being a bit finishing, but his McGann was on stage in
• 22:51
  Manchester. A column we had here just before
• 22:55
  about a year before COVID and somebody said what's your, you
• 22:59
  know all your of all your big finish what's your favorite.
• 23:02
  And he went, oh, I would definitely say Paul Mars is
• 23:06
  horror of glam rock. And Paul Mars was in the
• 23:09
  audience so they got him up to and he was just that wonderful.
• 23:12
  So I mean, it's just a. Wonderful thing.
• 23:14
  To say. He he sort of.
• 23:16
  Stepped into a relatively safe period of books and wrote The
• 23:20
  Scarlet Empress. That was his first, which was
• 23:23
  today. The most sort of fantasy novel
• 23:26
  of Doctor you're ever going to find is absolutely gorgeous.
• 23:29
  It's. He's left.
• 23:31
  Left field. Doesn't do Paul's right.
• 23:33
  Injustice really does it. It's it's left field.
• 23:36
  Then he had the. Nerve to do.
• 23:37
  The Blue Angel with Jeremy Hode, where he got to the climax of
• 23:42
  that book. And he likes playing about with
• 23:45
  narrative. So instead of giving you a
• 23:46
  climax to that book, Iris Wildtime pulls the Doctor out of
• 23:50
  the climax, and the last page is 20 Questions, where you make up
• 23:54
  your own climax. So it's it's basically.
• 23:56
  You you figure it all out yourself.
• 23:58
  Then he went on to do Mad Dogs and Englishmen, which is the one
• 24:01
  with the big pink poodle on the cover, which is a. 1.
• 24:04
  We talked. About that, haven't we?
• 24:07
  I think Jason's having a terrible fight with his cat
• 24:10
  head. You're right, Jason.
• 24:13
  Yeah, fine. She picks her moments.
• 24:17
  Well. Guys, thank you very much.
• 24:18
  Lots of great authors there and loads for people to go out and
• 24:21
  explore if they haven't already. So.
• 24:33
  The Crooked World by Steve Lyons I I was wondering how on earth
• 24:38
  we could start talking about this unique.
• 24:42
  Doctor Who story, and I think I'm going to throw it out to one
• 24:47
  person and say tell me how you would describe the crooked
• 24:51
  world. And we'll go.
• 24:54
  From there. Last time, you guys just picked
• 24:56
  it up and just ran with a conversation.
• 24:57
  So let's ask Ian, Describe the crooked world for us, please.
• 25:04
  Well, I was going to. Say before that.
• 25:07
  This is my introduction, almost almost to X doctor this range.
• 25:12
  So I'll talk more about what it's like reading this as one of
• 25:16
  the first ones, because it's it's an unusual book, but it is
• 25:19
  a. Standalone, isn't it?
• 25:20
  Which is it's supposed. To be a standalone, but we can
• 25:22
  talk about how well that it maybe works as a standalone, as
• 25:26
  an actual adventure, it works as a standalone.
• 25:28
  Maybe with the companions, not so much.
• 25:32
  But but yeah, so the TARDIS materializes on a world which
• 25:36
  is. Basically we soon discover
• 25:38
  populated with Saturday Saturday morning American American
• 25:43
  animation. So we have the Scooby gang.
• 25:46
  We have Porky Pig all, all with, all without their real names but
• 25:50
  with close approximation, so you know who you see and and it kind
• 25:55
  of goes from there. And one of the brilliant things
• 25:58
  at the beginning is you have the Porky big character who's called
• 26:01
  streaky Bacon and he opens fire on the Doctor and.
• 26:06
  He's absolutely gobsmacked that his blunderbuss works and the
• 26:09
  doctor is peppered with shot and bleeding and drops to the floor,
• 26:13
  apparently dead. But obviously he's the Doctor,
• 26:15
  so he's not dead. Spoiler of alert, it'd be a
• 26:19
  great. Pretty Little sequence, that,
• 26:20
  wouldn't it? With the Doctor being sure the
• 26:22
  end Q Music. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:23
  Yeah, no, no, no. It's brilliant.
• 26:25
  It's brilliant. But that's that's his basic.
• 26:27
  That's it's basic thing and I was one of the first things I
• 26:30
  was going to say Joe as as our adjudicator is, is when can we
• 26:35
  start talking about spoilers because it's almost impossible
• 26:37
  to talk about this at length. I think this book has been.
• 26:40
  Out for 20 years now. But but like with some of your
• 26:45
  podcasts, I I find myself going. Actually, I want to.
• 26:48
  I do want to read that book. So trouble is.
• 26:51
  How do you discuss a book? Without discussing a book.
• 26:54
  So you just have to say. Spoiler You just have to say
• 26:56
  spoiler alert. Let's be honest, this book has
• 26:58
  already been this book has already been slightly spoiled by
• 27:01
  its cover, something which I think we will discuss more.
• 27:06
  Yeah. Well, I I don't, I don't think,
• 27:08
  I don't think it's a spoiler to say where the TARDIS lands, but
• 27:11
  no, no, no. Off you go, go on we.
• 27:13
  Go on, but yeah, well then. If you want to say it.
• 27:16
  I will say it. For you I just spoiler alert
• 27:18
  everybody, I just don't when you.
• 27:19
  Get in the complaints, Joe. You know what?
• 27:21
  Don't. Don't.
• 27:22
  Worry I can't. Believe it, Joe Ford spoiled the
• 27:27
  frickin world for me only 20 years after it was written that.
• 27:30
  Would just make my enjoyment of this book just a little bit
• 27:33
  greater, if I'm honest. Yeah, but.
• 27:37
  But yeah, but but but well, as a as an actual thing, I've never
• 27:45
  been. It's almost like I want to skip
• 27:46
  right to the end first to say. So this really is a spoiler
• 27:51
  alert to say I've never been more glad that it turned out to
• 27:54
  be not just a cartoon world. The Doctor's explanation near
• 27:59
  the beginning made me go oh, don't put my teeth on edge as a
• 28:03
  as a no no, they can't really just be a cartoon world.
• 28:07
  I don't like that. That was that was my initial
• 28:10
  thing. I've never been more glad for
• 28:11
  the destination his book ends up at.
• 28:14
  In in my life. And it is.
• 28:16
  Literally right at the end of the book as well, isn't it?
• 28:18
  It is. It is.
• 28:19
  It is and and I'd say much as I much as I I have to do Full
• 28:23
  disclosure I'm Steve Lyons. I've recently discovered he's
• 28:29
  actually a cutaway writer as well he's writing a happiness
• 28:31
  patrol strip. So but I'm not just saying that
• 28:34
  because of that. But he's a brilliant writer and
• 28:36
  I do like this book but I but it's a book from 20 years ago
• 28:40
  and there are we're here to discuss it's.
• 28:42
  Insurance and outs. And I and I I like it a lot.
• 28:44
  But there were there were things I would maybe it's weird you
• 28:48
  have your editor's head on. I'll go.
• 28:49
  All those things I'd maybe have just seeded in a bit earlier or
• 28:53
  because to me I was like, Oh my God, they really are just on a
• 28:57
  cartoon world planet and that's doing my head in person.
• 29:00
  I don't know what you guys felt. Did you were you distressed by
• 29:03
  that idea or was it just me? I really struggled with that.
• 29:06
  I'm not entirely sure that we're not on a cartoon world.
• 29:09
  The ending is pretty ambiguous and and we're on a cartoon.
• 29:14
  World for a reason, though. Yeah, Yeah, He does give us
• 29:16
  Amy's Amy. 'S crack.
• 29:18
  I'm not denying that the but the reality the rules of the world,
• 29:22
  there's there's never really an explanation given for for the
• 29:25
  way the rules of this world work which is very much like the
• 29:29
  rules in a Saturday morning cartoon.
• 29:32
  If you run off a Cliff, as long as you don't notice that you run
• 29:34
  off a Cliff, you continue to pedal the air, for example.
• 29:38
  Rules that we all understand because we've all seen those
• 29:40
  shows. I I was really questioning
• 29:43
  myself a lot over this. I've just finished watching
• 29:46
  Enlightenment, which which I think is a high point of the
• 29:50
  Davidson era. And at no point does it bother
• 29:52
  me that there are eternal beings flying around space in sailing
• 29:56
  boats, which is as ridiculous a reality as a cartoon world.
• 30:01
  So I'm not entirely sure why I can deal with that, but I can't
• 30:05
  deal with a reality being the two-dimensional reality of a
• 30:09
  Saturday morning cartoon show. Except that, and I think this is
• 30:12
  the the, the reason that I struggled with it, it's a it's a
• 30:17
  very referential reality. It's a reality that based, that
• 30:21
  is based in rules and figures that we know from cartoon shows
• 30:30
  that we've seen. And as you say, short of using
• 30:34
  the actual names Porky Pig and, you know, the Scooby Gang, they
• 30:37
  are recognizable characters from that, I think That's I think for
• 30:40
  me, it seemed to me that when you've got a world that is
• 30:43
  referencing all these things that we already recognize, when
• 30:47
  you've got jokes like the animation cells, which are, you
• 30:51
  know, places where people are held, it's so referential.
• 30:54
  We're in kind of Roger Rabbit territory.
• 30:57
  And Roger Rabbit of course works because it embraces, you know,
• 31:00
  it treats those cartoon characters as real.
• 31:02
  And the joke is those cartoon characters are all kind of film
• 31:05
  stars who actually film the cartoons, but they have a real
• 31:07
  life beyond that. This doesn't quite give us that
• 31:12
  dimension. We are supposed to take
• 31:14
  basically at face value the fact that they have walked into a
• 31:16
  cartoon and the rules of of gravity and physics are
• 31:22
  therefore completely different. Yeah, it's I I found it
• 31:28
  interesting because I think it's it goes, it goes to some lengths
• 31:32
  to tell you that you're not in A2 dimensional world.
• 31:35
  This isn't, you know, suddenly we're not in a cartoon as such.
• 31:40
  Everything acts as if it's in a cartoon, but it's still very
• 31:43
  solid, very real, and there's kind of no, it's.
• 31:49
  It. Kind of falls back on the thing
• 31:53
  that the new series has done a couple of times, which is in an
• 31:55
  infinite universe, impossible things just happen.
• 31:58
  And it's like it's just it happens that this planet that
• 32:01
  they've landed on, this world that they've landed on, it's.
• 32:05
  It's never really explicitly spelled out, but it seems
• 32:08
  there's some kind of world that's very susceptible to
• 32:13
  outside influence, and a child arrives and the child is full of
• 32:19
  cartoon ideas, and so they shape the world around them into what
• 32:24
  the Doctor and Angie and Fitz arrive in, and then the adults
• 32:28
  turn up and everything goes to shit, basically.
• 32:33
  Because suddenly and I it's it's kind of a it's almost like these
• 32:39
  characters will grow up because they start off with a child's
• 32:42
  interpretation of the world. People don't fall off cliffs
• 32:46
  automatically, And I love the fact that the characters begin
• 32:49
  to use the physics of the world to their advantage.
• 32:53
  Spoiler alert, There's an escape at one point where the doctor
• 32:56
  tells Fitz to close his eyes and just run in that direction.
• 32:59
  And when they open their eyes, they find they've run over a
• 33:01
  ravine. But because they didn't know it
• 33:03
  was a ravine, they got straight over it.
• 33:07
  And then the adults come in and start with their concepts of
• 33:11
  death and sex, which I could have.
• 33:16
  I could have done without that. That's.
• 33:18
  A whole section. Yeah, I fucking.
• 33:21
  Love that. Bit.
• 33:23
  I love that bit. I'd say I I I thought that was
• 33:25
  really, really funny, I thought. That was Doctor Who rejecting
• 33:29
  the new adventure sort of sex having or have no sex anyway.
• 33:33
  Go on. So they bring.
• 33:35
  In their ideas. And so the world has to adapt to
• 33:40
  a new situation. But in doing so, there are some
• 33:43
  really shockingly dark moments. But it's not really.
• 33:47
  It's kind of just. This is this world that exists
• 33:51
  and is just heavily influenced by whatever happens to land on
• 33:54
  it. First it was a child, now it's
• 33:56
  the Doctor, Angie and Fitz, and they've brought their concepts
• 33:58
  to the world and they've had to work them into their society and
• 34:02
  move on. But you do kind of get the
• 34:04
  impression, well, what happens when the next spaceship lands on
• 34:09
  that. World, because that is just
• 34:11
  going to be disastrous. That person's been.
• 34:13
  Watching all series of Breaking Bad or something like that, what
• 34:16
  on earth is going to be going on in that world after that?
• 34:19
  Yeah. So it's but I like the idea.
• 34:21
  It's kind of, I did think about, you know, Roger Rabbit.
• 34:25
  Roger Rabbit is the obvious connection here, because the the
• 34:28
  tunes are real and also the element of Roger Rabbit.
• 34:31
  When Eddie Valiant goes into Toontown, the physics of
• 34:34
  Toontown apply to him. There's a sequence where he gets
• 34:37
  squished like a pancake when an elevator shoots up really
• 34:40
  quickly. He falls from a great height,
• 34:42
  but because it's a cartoon, he gets caught at the bottom and
• 34:45
  he's absolutely fine. He doesn't go splat on the
• 34:47
  ground or anything like that. So, and again he is able to use
• 34:52
  the rules of the cartoons against the characters like when
• 34:55
  he's being chased he he rips up the white line on the road and.
• 34:59
  Directs it into the wall and the character follows the white line
• 35:02
  on the road instead, so that the the influences are all very
• 35:05
  heavily here. But as James says, the fact that
• 35:07
  they are so recognisable immediately at the beginning
• 35:11
  you've got a cross between Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd, very
• 35:15
  obviously the Roadrunner Wacky Races.
• 35:19
  Gang. You've got Wacky Races, Penelope
• 35:21
  Pitt, Stop and Tom and Jerry, Tom and.
• 35:24
  Jerry And so the fact that it is so obviously these recognizable
• 35:28
  characters, I think kind of makes it a little harder to get
• 35:33
  into, like you say. That though, when when then
• 35:36
  things start to change, The fact that I could visualize Tom and
• 35:40
  Jerry so the sequence where Squeak is killed.
• 35:43
  I could see poor old Jerry in his hand with his head being
• 35:46
  bitten off. I could absolutely visualize
• 35:49
  that. It was horrible.
• 35:51
  Yeah, I didn't. Mind I didn't mind it.
• 35:54
  I didn't have a block on them being the characters that we
• 35:57
  could visualize. I kind of like I was I was like
• 36:00
  you, Joe, with that. The bit I I would if I, you know
• 36:05
  if we could go back in time and just and maybe have a little few
• 36:08
  notes to the thing. I would say what comes up at the
• 36:12
  end feels very much like bang, this is what's been happening
• 36:17
  all along. It was woke up and it was all a
• 36:18
  dream, kind of. It's it's more like.
• 36:21
  Sort of like, oh, Doctor Who fans are going to need an
• 36:23
  explanation and put this in at the end and the thing.
• 36:26
  Is they're not wrong because you know all three of us were there
• 36:28
  going what? No, no, I'm.
• 36:31
  So sorry, I'm going to contradict all of you because I
• 36:33
  had no issues at all. No, she was stepping.
• 36:35
  Into a cartoon world. But that's because I'm still a
• 36:37
  child now. So but but but for me.
• 36:40
  What what worried me reading it. I always for me it's like it was
• 36:44
  like sleeping with one eye open. I was like and I'm enjoying this
• 36:46
  bit about and not turn out to just be a world full of cartoons
• 36:51
  and I didn't like the fact that the Doctor said, well there's an
• 36:54
  infinite universe anything is possible because that made it.
• 36:58
  That's that was almost like the the author saying this is what's
• 37:02
  happened because we're not discussing it again.
• 37:03
  Well, Angie. Says at some point in the book
• 37:05
  she goes, we've just been on a play because a few books back we
• 37:09
  had grim reality, which was Grimm's Fairy Tales come to life
• 37:12
  on a planet called Alpha. And she goes, well, we keep
• 37:14
  going to these weird planets and yeah, that's just what Justin
• 37:17
  Richard Fancy is doing this week, that's why.
• 37:19
  Sorry, cool James, you're trying to say something.
• 37:21
  Well, I was. I was going to.
• 37:22
  I just wanted to clarify, I didn't have a problem with the
• 37:25
  the characters clearly referencing cartoon characters
• 37:30
  that we recognize. I think that's probably a
• 37:32
  strength because as Joe says, you can visualize it very, very
• 37:35
  easily. I think that carries over into
• 37:39
  the discussion about how easily we accept this world because
• 37:41
  they're recognizable characters. We're being asked to accept the
• 37:45
  Doctor Who has stepped into a newer, recognizable cartoon
• 37:47
  world of Hanna, Barbara and and Looney Tunes.
• 37:55
  It's also, I mean, given that we, I think, you know, there's a
• 37:59
  town in this book called Zany Town, which, you know, it's so
• 38:02
  close to Toontown, it's asking for comparisons.
• 38:05
  I mean, I think knowingly, I have to say one of the strengths
• 38:08
  of this book is it's utterly fearless.
• 38:10
  I think Steve Lyons absolutely knows that when he writes Zany
• 38:13
  Town, you know, everyone's going to think, oh, that's like
• 38:16
  Toontown and Roger Rabbit, he's not afraid of those comparisons.
• 38:19
  He's not afraid of us kind of seeing these these things.
• 38:21
  And everything about this book is sort of gung ho and fearless
• 38:25
  in that way. But Roger Rabbit does get to
• 38:29
  kind of have his cake and eat it in that it gets to call those
• 38:33
  characters by name and treat those characters like they're
• 38:36
  real, but also then real beyond those cartoons With this, we're
• 38:41
  sort of starting from scratch. We have to build up this world
• 38:43
  and and they don't have that extra dimension.
• 38:45
  I mean, Roger Rabbit is is one of its strengths is that it's
• 38:48
  not a cartoon world, it's a film noir world with cartoon
• 38:53
  characters in it. Whereas this is Doctor Who
• 38:55
  stepping into a cartoon world, which I think is quite a
• 38:57
  different proposition. Yeah, I I think.
• 38:59
  Tone wise, and this is a I've got problems with the tone of
• 39:02
  this book in another way as well, which we've come on to.
• 39:04
  But I think tone wise, Doctor Who is not Hitchhikers go to the
• 39:09
  Galaxy, so if it steps into anything is possible.
• 39:12
  We can have talking sofas and stuff.
• 39:14
  There's a talking sofa in Doctor Who I.
• 39:17
  I'd do my nut, whereas if it's in Hitchhiker's Go to the
• 39:20
  Galaxy, I'm absolutely fine because.
• 39:22
  Ian When? Did you grow up?
• 39:23
  What a shame, I know. But Douglas Adams would have
• 39:26
  found a way to explain all of this.
• 39:28
  He would have been. Way of anything.
• 39:29
  Absolutely kind of. Everything would have been
• 39:31
  explained. I love the.
• 39:32
  Idea of a talking so far. I I'm.
• 39:35
  Just I just forever glad I love Douglas Adams.
• 39:37
  I'm forever glad we got to see the cricket men plot.
• 39:41
  As a hitchhiker's. Book.
• 39:42
  Not as a Doctor Who story as it was.
• 39:44
  It's a talking mattress, isn't it?
• 39:46
  Is it talking? Mattress.
• 39:47
  Yeah, no, yeah, you're right. It's talking mattress and A and
• 39:49
  A and a disappearing sofa. Yeah, and and a bit.
• 39:51
  Yeah, yeah, I'm getting my, getting my, you know, you've all
• 39:54
  mixed up. You've all referenced.
• 39:56
  Roger Rabbit. The film this most reminded me
• 40:00
  of was Pleasantville. I don't know if any of you have
• 40:02
  seen that, but that's a film about a.
• 40:06
  Came out at the same time as Truman Show, So it kind of got
• 40:08
  lost in the in The Truman Show, it's a.
• 40:12
  Phenomenal film. It's a 1950s sitcom.
• 40:14
  Which two? Modern day teens get beamed into
• 40:18
  and throughout start infecting the innocence of this sitcom
• 40:23
  world with sex and violence and all of that.
• 40:26
  And it all accumulates in a massive court case scene where
• 40:29
  they're railing up against the deviants that are trying to
• 40:32
  change the world. And if that exact scene happens
• 40:35
  in this book, So I thought I used to.
• 40:37
  I'm not sure which one came out first.
• 40:40
  If I read this, Truman Shows 90s.
• 40:45
  Truman Show was before Truman Show was before Big Brother.
• 40:48
  Because I remember reviewing it, Truman Show and going well, it
• 40:51
  seems a bit far fetched because because people are literally
• 40:54
  watching them on, watching them sleep and things like that on
• 40:57
  the green thing. And then I remember, just go.
• 41:00
  Watch and the Truman Show. When Big Brother was like on my
• 41:03
  laptop in the corner of my room at a party and we couldn't turn
• 41:07
  Big Brother and we were watching, we were basically
• 41:09
  watching somebody sleeping on the green, you know, the night,
• 41:12
  the night vision, just like in Truman Show and Truman.
• 41:16
  So Truman Show knew humans better than we knew ourselves.
• 41:19
  Pleasantville. Was.
• 41:20
  Mid 90s because it's Reese Witherspoon and Tobey Maguire
• 41:23
  before I remember. So I'm old.
• 41:25
  I'm, I'm, I'm old enough to. I went to see Pleasantville at
• 41:28
  the cinema and I went to see Truman Show.
• 41:30
  So they're around the same time, Jason, now it looks like.
• 41:33
  You're trying to say something. Off you go.
• 41:35
  I'm going to say. Pleasantville was 1998 and the
• 41:37
  Crooked world was 2002. So, yeah, So Steve.
• 41:40
  Lyers went to the cinema. We can.
• 41:41
  We've established that enough to actually the.
• 41:45
  Court case. Scene was the one was one that
• 41:48
  in when I was reading it, it didn't really grab me.
• 41:50
  I know it's supposed to be a sort of pivotal moment, but it's
• 41:53
  basically. Reminded me of the.
• 41:54
  Reaction Kill A Mockingbird as well, which is.
• 41:57
  Well, OK, let's ask Jason, why didn't it?
• 41:59
  And James, why did it? Because.
• 42:04
  I mean, for me, it was just the Doctor going, yeah, here's how
• 42:09
  the world should be, and it's just kind of a.
• 42:14
  Stream of. Characters talking about what
• 42:16
  their life is and the Doctor going, well actually it should
• 42:18
  be something. So it came across to me a bit
• 42:20
  like, I mean, I know the Doctor is trying to undo some of the
• 42:23
  damage or minimize the damage that they've done by
• 42:25
  accidentally arriving there. But it.
• 42:28
  For me, it seemed to stretch a little bit too much into the
• 42:32
  Doctor insinuating himself into the society and how it works and
• 42:36
  basically essentially directing it by saying, yeah, but you've
• 42:42
  always told Jasper to take care of the mouse and now you're
• 42:45
  criticizing him because he actually succeeded in the thing
• 42:47
  you wanted him to do. And and it's kind of.
• 42:51
  I think the Doctor was a bit too.
• 42:55
  This is how you should be rather than.
• 43:00
  Directing sort of more subtly, or dealing with obvious
• 43:04
  injustices in certain ways. So it it seemed to me to be a
• 43:08
  bit, I think, I think the characterization of the Doctor
• 43:11
  was, you know, that would be my main note would be.
• 43:16
  Would be he. He seems he's if if if he kind
• 43:21
  of knows early on, Oh my God, this is my fault.
• 43:23
  But basically what what he shouldn't have done is realise
• 43:25
  where he was and he should have gone.
• 43:26
  We need to leave now because the Doctor, I mean, I guess that's
• 43:30
  why he got shot at the beginning, so that because
• 43:32
  otherwise that would happen. But I I still think he should
• 43:35
  have been going well. This is obviously a computer
• 43:37
  programme or somebody's psychic projection.
• 43:39
  This can't possibly be. Well, I think it is.
• 43:41
  Well, he was shot at the beginning.
• 43:43
  So we saw the world through the eyes of his companions, Yeah,
• 43:46
  Which? Is where a lot of the.
• 43:47
  Comedy was at the beginning of the book.
• 43:49
  Yeah, but but but but but what what you were just saying Jason
• 43:53
  sort of made me think of the quote I wrote down from near the
• 43:56
  end which is when they get it was right at the end but they
• 43:59
  you know, Angie says so we didn't mess up this world after
• 44:02
  all. And the doctor says we rescued
• 44:04
  it from a repetitive unfulfilled existence.
• 44:06
  We taught it's people to think for themselves to make their own
• 44:09
  choices. We changed things forever.
• 44:11
  We gave them ambition but perhaps we took their innocence
• 44:13
  in return. What do you think?
• 44:16
  And I think it's it's weird one because that's kind of the
• 44:20
  doctor in nearly every story. You know, we have this thing at
• 44:23
  Cutaway Comics when we, you know, because we take IP, you
• 44:27
  know, Paradise Towers and all and the and the like and we go
• 44:31
  and one thing Gareth, who runs Cutaway, he's always saying is
• 44:34
  that the Doctor lands basically for mental revolution and then
• 44:39
  leaves. And so it's almost like what
• 44:42
  happened next is our sort of thing.
• 44:44
  But it's you know, makes me think of the sun makers where a
• 44:46
  man's getting thrown off a roof on Pluto and and all those sort
• 44:50
  of things. And it's, you know, the Doctor
• 44:51
  comes and he he's like he's got non interference, as you think.
• 44:56
  You know you mustn't change history.
• 44:58
  Not this time. It's inadvertent because they
• 45:00
  just arrived. That was the very acts that
• 45:02
  caused the revolution or the maturing of this society.
• 45:06
  And and he can't leave straight away because he's injured.
• 45:10
  And by the time he's woken up, people are starting to think for
• 45:13
  themselves. Yeah, James.
• 45:15
  Why did you like the courtroom scene for me?
• 45:17
  The. Courtroom scene really does work
• 45:19
  as a pivotal scene and. It's partly because the Doctor
• 45:23
  is not very present for a loss of this book, that it's a book
• 45:27
  with a lot of characters. You might argue too many.
• 45:32
  I certainly, you know, without the, without the kind of hooks
• 45:36
  of, it feels like it's exploring a lot of different worlds.
• 45:39
  He obviously wants to do scooby-doo.
• 45:41
  He wants to do Tom and Jerry. He wants to do all of the he
• 45:43
  wants to give you all of these things.
• 45:44
  And he's populating the world in a way that's joyous on.
• 45:47
  On one hand, but it does give you a lot of threads to keep up
• 45:49
  with. In the meantime.
• 45:50
  The Doctor has been shot and is unconscious, and the first third
• 45:53
  of the book is a bit like one of William Hartnell's week off
• 45:56
  episodes where he's just having a lie down in the hotel room.
• 46:00
  And I don't feel like the Doctor is very present in a loss of the
• 46:03
  narrative. In the courtroom scene, he
• 46:04
  suddenly takes centre stage in a way that I think is.
• 46:08
  I think it's better written than than Jason portrayed it.
• 46:11
  Just then I think it's quite subtly he nudges.
• 46:16
  He nudges the characters in a certain direction.
• 46:19
  He asks questions, and I just got a sense I could really hear
• 46:24
  Paul Mcgann's voice in that I could hear also the what you can
• 46:28
  see in that dialogue is the Doctor enjoying himself.
• 46:31
  It's like, OK, I'm faced with a room full of people who are
• 46:34
  incensed because one of them has stepped over a line.
• 46:38
  I'm going to have some fun with this, and for a chapter, the
• 46:41
  Doctor suddenly is just. Asking them all to question what
• 46:45
  they actually really think and he turns a mob into a into an
• 46:48
  intelligent debate. It seemed like the most Doctor
• 46:51
  Ish moment for me, and more more Doctor Who than a lot of what's
• 46:56
  around it, which is necessarily kind of slapstick and cartoony.
• 47:01
  Yeah. I wondered if I wondered if the
• 47:03
  original germ germ of an idea of this book wasn't a Doctor Who
• 47:07
  book is what I kept thinking because it fails a we mentioned
• 47:12
  hitchhikers. It may almost felt like it could
• 47:13
  maybe be a stand alone book that our heroes crash land on the
• 47:18
  planet got. Enough going on and I also
• 47:21
  coming in to this, not being familiar with the EDA's, I don't
• 47:27
  know that it's a great introduction to Fitz and Angie
• 47:30
  either. That's one of my main notes as
• 47:32
  well. I have no, I don't get very much
• 47:35
  impression of who they are. And I'd like to ask about Fitz,
• 47:38
  because we got the the sex element.
• 47:42
  Is he a sleaze? Oh.
• 47:44
  Completely so, so so he is a sort of, I don't know Captain
• 47:48
  Jack style when I. When it's Doctor Who books in
• 47:52
  the mid 90s. So when I was writing these
• 47:54
  reviews, I was actually doing a tally of how many people he
• 47:56
  slept with in in his run of stories and it went up into the
• 48:00
  hundreds. I mean, it was absurd.
• 48:02
  Because he seems really unpleasant.
• 48:03
  I mean the fact that he's not he's.
• 48:05
  Not only it's the. Only point that we learn about.
• 48:08
  Him is that. He's just all in his.
• 48:10
  It's like his his entire mantra throughout is how to get this
• 48:15
  cartoon babe into bed. Yeah, to find when he.
• 48:18
  Finally does that. Yeah, it pays off.
• 48:22
  I I quite like it because it because it's that sleaziness
• 48:28
  hits collides head on with the world so innocent.
• 48:31
  That even when they're introduced to sex, they don't
• 48:33
  really understand it. That made me really get what
• 48:35
  it's quite uncomfortable in that he's he's just going, I thought
• 48:39
  it was going to be that he'd been taken over, like he was
• 48:43
  being influenced by by the world and he basically went, oh,
• 48:47
  there's there's Penelope pit stop.
• 48:50
  Kids cartoon. It's a kids cartoon.
• 48:52
  It's fact it's a kids cartoon and he wants to bang it.
• 48:55
  He's effectively. Like the the EDA's Bernice.
• 48:58
  And let's not forget that she could be a bit sex mad at times
• 49:01
  during the new adventures and I think that gets a bit of a pass.
• 49:05
  Maybe because she's a strong woman in the 90s who's who's
• 49:09
  that way. I think it'd be all right if he
• 49:10
  was he. He just felt a bit like, I don't
• 49:12
  know, a bit reductive and a bit but again with tone.
• 49:15
  I I'm, I struggle with. I struggle with Doctor Who doing
• 49:20
  bedroom stuff too. Bernice is.
• 49:22
  Really funny though. I think that she is.
• 49:25
  She is a very well realized character in in the way she
• 49:31
  speaks. We don't get that from Fitz and
• 49:33
  I was really bothered at the start by how both Fitz and Angie
• 49:36
  sort of take the world in their stride.
• 49:39
  I wanted to see them freaking out more.
• 49:41
  The thing I liked. About Angie was the fact that
• 49:43
  she's always, she's like a a banker from London and she's got
• 49:47
  a very logical mind and she's been dumped in this world with
• 49:50
  zero logic. So in those sort of early
• 49:53
  scenes, she's really trying to make sense of what's going on
• 49:56
  around her and there's no sense to be made of it.
• 49:58
  And just at the point in the book where she starts to make
• 50:02
  sense of the rules of the crooked world, things have
• 50:05
  started to change. I I liked.
• 50:07
  All of that, Yeah. Yeah, there's a.
• 50:10
  Lot There's a lot of good stuff with with them trying to figure
• 50:13
  out what's going on in the in the world and then how they've
• 50:16
  inadvertently influenced it. How they've influenced it
• 50:20
  without thinking about it and without realizing exact trying
• 50:24
  to influence it without realizing exactly how it was
• 50:26
  going to work. So it's kind of a when you've
• 50:28
  got a little bit. Of an idea?
• 50:31
  But you don't know the full thing.
• 50:32
  You have unintended consequences.
• 50:34
  And then the bits where they actually, right now we've
• 50:36
  figured it out. We can use this to our
• 50:38
  advantage, like the escape over the ravine and so on and so
• 50:42
  forth. Custard pie gun.
• 50:44
  Custard pie gun that the Doctor has is just brilliant.
• 50:48
  And let's tell you what ours. Into a face full of dairy
• 50:51
  products. You better let them go.
• 50:52
  Sorry, go on, but one of the things that.
• 50:54
  One of the things that seemed off.
• 50:58
  For me, and I don't know how it all works in the fictional
• 51:00
  universe of Doctor Who, is that these characters are so
• 51:04
  recognizable to us as the readers.
• 51:09
  But. Not to the characters who are,
• 51:12
  yeah. And I don't know when Fitz comes
• 51:16
  from exactly and where he's the but Angie is definitely a This
• 51:19
  is 19 40s, isn't he? This is 19. 40s So the height of
• 51:24
  all these cartoons from the 60s? OK, so the.
• 51:27
  Height of these cartoons Angie is from, you know, the 90s.
• 51:31
  They would have seen cartoons like this and it doesn't.
• 51:34
  They don't seem to realise it doesn't seem to click with them,
• 51:36
  that there's a huge world, a huge.
• 51:39
  Blunder editorially because two books back in The Book of the
• 51:42
  Steel, Angie's being particularly valve to somebody.
• 51:46
  And says oh now, yeah, she's very specky, just like Velma
• 51:48
  from scooby-doo. And then she has a story with
• 51:51
  the Scooby gang and she doesn't recognise any gang and doesn't.
• 51:54
  Recognise me? But having said all that, the
• 51:57
  sequences that the one, the scene that really did work, the
• 52:00
  one that kind of makes you realise, oh actually this isn't
• 52:03
  just going to be the Doctor and everyone having zany fun in a
• 52:06
  cartoon world. And which really got to me was
• 52:10
  when streaky bacon when was sitting contemplating the fact
• 52:13
  that he may have just killed somebody and tries to.
• 52:16
  Kill himself? Yeah.
• 52:18
  Oh good, failed. He just.
• 52:20
  Frazzles his head and he's like, well, I'm going to be fine in a
• 52:23
  minute and cries. And I thought, oh, that is that
• 52:26
  really got to me. Described as him putting his
• 52:29
  hand in his trotters. And on the other side, I really
• 52:33
  felt a sense of peril when when they realised that, you know,
• 52:38
  the TARDIS crew could be harmed, suddenly this place is like
• 52:42
  really dangerous. Yeah.
• 52:43
  Why? You say that they don't.
• 52:47
  They don't. Necessarily react as though
• 52:49
  there's that much that's that was one of the things that
• 52:51
  bothered me about the way they were responding.
• 52:53
  The doctor shot and it is described as though he has
• 52:56
  actually been shot at close range with a blunderbuss.
• 52:58
  For a lot of the first few chapters I was thinking well why
• 53:00
  on earth is he still alive? We do get an explanation for
• 53:03
  that later on, but it just seemed to me like the the
• 53:07
  clearly there was. Terrell had been introduced.
• 53:09
  They could be harmed, and I didn't think that that led to
• 53:13
  any particular sense of jeopardy.
• 53:14
  I. Think I remember.
• 53:17
  I remember feeling so there was, there was some scenes when I do
• 53:21
  remember feeling like, you know, these people, these people don't
• 53:25
  realise how dangerous they are, sort of, you know, they're
• 53:29
  zooming around, blasting people and things.
• 53:34
  So, so, but yeah, maybe a little bit, but I think maybe that's
• 53:37
  just a little bit of like, like characters in Doctor Who tend to
• 53:43
  be a lot cheekier than people would in real life.
• 53:45
  Like, yeah, I don't care. Yeah.
• 53:47
  And it's. And it is.
• 53:49
  It is in the. Nature of this narrative that a
• 53:51
  lot of the scenes mimic the the kind of sequences that you get
• 53:57
  in in those cartoons and and. So it feels like I'm being very
• 54:03
  down on this book, which maybe I'm not being clear.
• 54:07
  I think this is a really well written book and I think it's a
• 54:09
  confident book. And one of the triumphs of this
• 54:13
  book is that Steve Lyons takes what is effectively an entirely
• 54:18
  visual medium and manages to describe it in prose in a way
• 54:23
  that isn't lead and it isn't. Clumsy.
• 54:26
  It's. It's really visual.
• 54:28
  I think that's an astonishing real.
• 54:30
  Energy, absolutely. It's a very business experience.
• 54:34
  But I did. Start to feel like some of these
• 54:35
  scenes when he does the the Roadrunner scene and then we get
• 54:39
  the Wacky Races scene and then we get the scooby-doo scene.
• 54:42
  It starts to feel a little bit repetitive to me, little bit
• 54:44
  relentless in the way that I think I would find Saturday
• 54:47
  morning cartoons were right to watch them.
• 54:50
  Now it's in, it's in the nature of the thing.
• 54:52
  It's very well done. I I enjoyed it more when we when
• 54:54
  he'd got through do that. I think so.
• 54:56
  I wanted more of the psychological stuff.
• 54:58
  I wanted more of the the, the streaky self reflection.
• 55:02
  And that's why kind of by the time we got to the courtroom I
• 55:04
  thought felt like we were much kind of more enjoyable ground.
• 55:07
  Really. Yeah.
• 55:08
  I I preferred the 2nd half even though I was living with the
• 55:11
  dread it might turn out to be a planet of cartoon people with no
• 55:15
  other science fiction explanation, which my which my
• 55:18
  nerdy brain requires. I hate to be that.
• 55:20
  Person. I got to the end of the book and
• 55:21
  I went, oh, was that the explanations for all this?
• 55:24
  It was a lot more fun before that.
• 55:26
  Oh, well, yeah, I mean. Explanation was kind of.
• 55:28
  It almost felt like, well, we need some explanation, but the
• 55:31
  bit the bit that needed explanation, wasn't.
• 55:35
  That it was. A child influencing everything
• 55:37
  going on. The bit that needed explanation
• 55:38
  was how the did this thing come to be in the 1st place even
• 55:41
  before the child. You just sort of have to.
• 55:44
  Accept that this is a doesn't. A blank slate world with blank
• 55:47
  slate people ready to have. Yeah, Well, I think.
• 55:50
  It's suggested that they were sort of wild animals.
• 55:53
  They were like the indigenous fauna and then this.
• 55:56
  I mean, I mean it's a bit like when we were discussing the
• 56:00
  doomsday weapon or whenever you discuss these things you're like
• 56:03
  we are really discussing things that maybe weren't expected to
• 56:06
  be pulled about sort of English literature level.
• 56:09
  But, but, but the fact is we are sitting here and I I think why?
• 56:14
  Why somebody from the future obsessive 70s cartoons.
• 56:20
  Wouldn't their head be full of something else but?
• 56:23
  It's very conceptual. The whole experience is about
• 56:25
  the concept and I think that you know in those terms you have to
• 56:28
  just give things a pass, agreed. You have to kind of just suspend
• 56:32
  disbelief and not worry to do. Yeah.
• 56:34
  I mean, sorry, I'm going. To I'm going to jump in, as you
• 56:38
  know, because I'm because I'm expected to say these things.
• 56:41
  Yes, I was. Waiting for you.
• 56:42
  Come on. In in.
• 56:43
  These podcasts is the the notion that this is an impossible this
• 56:48
  is an infinite universe and anything can happen.
• 56:51
  One of the fundamental tenets of physics as a science is that no,
• 56:54
  it's not that anything can happen.
• 56:57
  It's just certain things do happen and that's the way the
• 57:00
  universe works, whether it's here or somewhere else.
• 57:03
  So you kind of, you know, fit the physics of having the sun
• 57:06
  come up and go down and put his hands.
• 57:09
  Well, hang on, there's still got to be something here that
• 57:11
  creates this life. Yeah, yeah.
• 57:13
  They how do they sustain etcetera.
• 57:16
  And the idea of gravity works by mutual consent is, you know,
• 57:20
  Isaac Newton is it's a. Good joke though, grave and.
• 57:23
  Albert Einstein is also spinning in his grave and everything
• 57:26
  else. So it is.
• 57:28
  Worth remembering that velocity, that the joy.
• 57:31
  Of Doctor Who. The premise of Doctor Who is it
• 57:34
  kind of can go anywhere and do anything.
• 57:36
  And that's why we're still here all these years later.
• 57:39
  Oh yeah, yeah, it can. Absolutely.
• 57:41
  But generally speaking what it does is.
• 57:43
  You know, and I know I've had, I've had this conversation about
• 57:46
  the, you know, the science in Doctor Who.
• 57:47
  And in this instance, it kind of doesn't really apply because my
• 57:51
  big bugbear with science in Doctor Who is when they take an
• 57:53
  actual scientific concept and make it a central part of the
• 57:57
  plot. And then I'll sit up.
• 57:58
  He's talking. About Kill the moon, folks.
• 58:00
  Kill. The moon, The end of creature
• 58:02
  from the pit. Starlets in Manhattan.
• 58:04
  That, Yeah, those things, they really bugged me.
• 58:06
  So this one just basically openly at the beginning, chucks
• 58:09
  all this out the window and goes, anything can happen.
• 58:12
  What the hell, here we are. We're in a cartoon world.
• 58:14
  Let's just go with it. And it does carry you along with
• 58:16
  it. What I really love though, for
• 58:18
  me, the central scene of this book.
• 58:21
  Wasn't the. Courtroom scene where the doctor
• 58:22
  is talking to people. It's the riot scene where Steve
• 58:27
  Lyons basically says look at all these cartoons that we'd love to
• 58:31
  see and think how. Fucking horrific.
• 58:34
  They actually are. You know, with people being
• 58:37
  shot. I mean, I mean, God bloody hell.
• 58:39
  I know, spoiler alert. But Scrapper, the little
• 58:42
  basically scrappy Doo character, well, we all cheered.
• 58:45
  Getting killed by A10 tonne weight, but that that was a that
• 58:49
  was a I mean we all. Wanted that, right?
• 58:51
  Didn't we all want that Scrappy Doo did a little.
• 58:54
  Shit. And you know.
• 58:54
  When you talk about, you know, people firing off their guns and
• 58:57
  blood and bones shooting out of people rather than just being
• 59:00
  charred because the bit that jumped out to me was when they
• 59:03
  set upon a white kitten and tear it to pieces, the bit that
• 59:07
  jumps. Out at me was when in the court
• 59:09
  case, the doctor's pointing out that Jasper's in a cycle of
• 59:12
  abuse of like, well, he can't win and yet you're going to
• 59:16
  punish him if he doesn't win. And I was like, yeah, punish
• 59:19
  him. Yeah, he.
• 59:20
  Punished. For failing to catch the mouse.
• 59:23
  And then he's punished when he actually catches the mouse and
• 59:25
  kills it and you know. It's a bit of a laugh in it.
• 59:29
  It makes you. It makes you.
• 59:29
  Think of the number of times in in cartoons where the characters
• 59:33
  actually don't do those things like Tom and Jerry constantly.
• 59:37
  Tom swallows Jerry whole, I'm sure, in a couple of cartoons.
• 59:40
  But he never bites down on him, bites his head off.
• 59:43
  You know. As he does in the same kind of.
• 59:46
  Certainly never gets. Oh, that was.
• 59:47
  Flector of his blood, yeah. But.
• 59:50
  Unfortunately, the thing I'm going to I'm going to Chuck this
• 59:53
  in as a as a another spoiler. And I think it's it's one thing
• 59:56
  that left me really, really unsatisfied at the end.
• 1:00:04
  Jasper's art. Jasper's story is about his
• 1:00:08
  finally killing Squeak. And then right at the end, with
• 1:00:14
  even less explanation than anything else that has ever
• 1:00:16
  happened in the book, Squeak is back that bothered.
• 1:00:20
  Me. Yeah.
• 1:00:20
  And so the whole point is, you've actually killed this
• 1:00:23
  character. He's gone.
• 1:00:24
  He's dead. And now you have to deal with
• 1:00:26
  the fact that you have now got the ability to take people out
• 1:00:29
  of your world forever. And then at the end, it's like
• 1:00:32
  no squeak's back. Hit him in the face with a
• 1:00:35
  plank, go and chase him again. All is well.
• 1:00:36
  It's like, hang on. It's like having.
• 1:00:38
  Your cake and eating it doesn't. It's a scrapper.
• 1:00:40
  Come back as well? No, everyone come.
• 1:00:41
  Back. Yeah, that's, that's what I
• 1:00:43
  mean. So it kind of, yeah, it's a bit
• 1:00:44
  strange because the whole point is it's because we.
• 1:00:47
  Like Squeak, but we don't like Scrapper, that's why.
• 1:00:49
  Yeah, but. But, but, but the quote I've got
• 1:00:51
  is the crowd panicked and three dogs from the Anti Cat League
• 1:00:54
  took the opportunity to spring upon a small white kitten and
• 1:00:57
  tear it apart. So that white.
• 1:01:00
  Kitten doesn't get to come back. It's a kitten.
• 1:01:02
  Weirdly. Enough.
• 1:01:03
  In that whole sequence where the head is bitten off, the bit that
• 1:01:07
  got me is when the maid comes home and it's she's just
• 1:01:10
  described as she just couldn't stop screaming.
• 1:01:13
  Oh yeah, it's. Horrible.
• 1:01:14
  It's it goes into horror. Proper horror territory.
• 1:01:18
  But that's that's brilliant. That's a lovely anyone who's
• 1:01:20
  actually owned a cat has probably found the head of a
• 1:01:23
  mouse at some point. I know what she.
• 1:01:26
  Described. She's described always as the
• 1:01:27
  fat lady in the kit. Is it the fact that the big the?
• 1:01:30
  Big fat hotel maids, yes. Yeah, yeah, I love that you
• 1:01:33
  never see her head and the. Doctor goes.
• 1:01:35
  I'm so sorry to have to renounce her like this in the courtroom,
• 1:01:38
  but with the big fat hotel. Maid, please come up.
• 1:01:41
  You know. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:43
  But but the the, the, the, the deeper stuff is really
• 1:01:46
  interesting as well. Like it's the existentialism and
• 1:01:49
  the the sort of, you know, notions of free will and
• 1:01:53
  everything. You know as as and it was it was
• 1:01:58
  very much almost like maybe this dead person although because we
• 1:02:02
  don't establish the dead girl till right at the end it's not
• 1:02:06
  really there but but just in general it's a sort of about
• 1:02:09
  it's about growing up and and I started I started looking into
• 1:02:14
  you know a bit of Freud and stuff so infantile narcissism
• 1:02:17
  when you were early on and and religion is a psychic remnant of
• 1:02:22
  of. You know when you're when you
• 1:02:24
  are all ego, because you are the entire world.
• 1:02:28
  And we gradually learn that we're part of a we're just a
• 1:02:31
  tiny speck in a massive universe.
• 1:02:33
  We're not important. But the the religion being a
• 1:02:36
  psychic remnant of it kind of fits in with the with the Scooby
• 1:02:40
  gang going well, there must be a God.
• 1:02:42
  We must be here for a reason, kind of thing.
• 1:02:47
  It is very much about growing up and the idea that as as we all
• 1:02:51
  do, as as kids, we we run around.
• 1:02:53
  And at some point in your childhood you have to learn the
• 1:02:58
  lesson that your actions have consequences.
• 1:03:00
  And that's what this entire world is coming to terms with
• 1:03:03
  now because they've been running around shooting each other,
• 1:03:06
  beating each other up with planks, catching each other,
• 1:03:09
  etcetera and constantly just going through the same cycle of
• 1:03:12
  everything. And there are no consequences to
• 1:03:13
  anything they do. And now there are and they have
• 1:03:16
  to find a way to deal with that. And that's what we all have to
• 1:03:18
  do. As we, as we grow up, we learn
• 1:03:21
  that actually what we do does have consequences and we have to
• 1:03:24
  deal with those consequences. We have to own those
• 1:03:27
  consequences. We have to be aware that what we
• 1:03:31
  do has consequences and then hopefully maybe in some cases
• 1:03:33
  not do the things that lead to those consequences because
• 1:03:36
  they're not good. And so this, this whole world is
• 1:03:38
  now coming, is growing up basically because it was a child
• 1:03:41
  and now it's the adults who are influencing it.
• 1:03:43
  So yeah, so I don't. Think that the sex is
• 1:03:46
  inconsistent with that. And I I totally take Ian's
• 1:03:49
  discomfort with a character basically falling in love with
• 1:03:53
  a, you know, a children's cartoon character.
• 1:03:56
  Though I think they're, I think people do, in an odd way, fall
• 1:03:59
  in love with cartoon characters. I I may maybe?
• 1:04:02
  I'm maybe. I'm maybe I'm just feeling very
• 1:04:04
  guilty because I did have a crush on Penelope.
• 1:04:08
  For me it was Aladdin and and. The Teen Angels from Captain
• 1:04:12
  Caveman But but. I think that there's the the
• 1:04:15
  thing that's really fun for me about that is that actually
• 1:04:19
  fits. Although he's seen as this kind
• 1:04:20
  of grown up and and you know. Constantly horny, actually, his
• 1:04:25
  crush is pretty immature and it's based on time about him as
• 1:04:29
  a. Character Yeah, No.
• 1:04:31
  I didn't warm to him as a character, but I but I but one
• 1:04:33
  of the things that I thought worked really well was that by
• 1:04:35
  the end we had his his, his desire had been.
• 1:04:41
  Exposed as this childish thing as this, you know, basically
• 1:04:45
  infantile crush and Angel. The character the object of his
• 1:04:49
  affections had been shown to be the more mature and actually
• 1:04:52
  developed some more mature approach to to love than he
• 1:04:56
  does. I I I I think that that for me,
• 1:05:01
  you know, Once Upon a time I was, you know, just aghast that
• 1:05:05
  the Doctor would. Kiss a lady.
• 1:05:07
  But I, I sort of. I've come to the point where I
• 1:05:10
  think that Doctor Who can handle sex and I think it's quite well
• 1:05:13
  handled here. And you know if there are some
• 1:05:16
  quite filthy innuendos in it, which I sort of didn't mind
• 1:05:20
  because they always play off this world of innocence, I'd
• 1:05:25
  love this bit. The stalk delivers them a baby
• 1:05:29
  and they're they're absolutely appalled because they they don't
• 1:05:33
  believe that anyone's ordered a baby.
• 1:05:35
  Too late, said the Green ghost. You've ordered it.
• 1:05:37
  You can't send it back now. You should have used a French
• 1:05:40
  letter, said the weasel. Everybody looked at him.
• 1:05:43
  It's something I heard once. He said with a shrug.
• 1:05:46
  If you write to this talk in French, it won't understand you,
• 1:05:48
  so it won't bring you anything. Oh, that's good.
• 1:05:50
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The, the, the, the quote I got,
• 1:05:52
  I wrote down was from Chapter 16, which is just, you know,
• 1:05:57
  it's just a bit a bit cringe as the kids say, but.
• 1:06:00
  Angel leaned over him, using a dropper to apply a mental
• 1:06:03
  centred solution to the claw marks on his cheek.
• 1:06:06
  He winced of each touch of the stinging liquid, but her gentle
• 1:06:09
  hands and the close proximity of her breasts to his face almost
• 1:06:13
  made the pain worthwhile. Just makes me and it's.
• 1:06:17
  This would be fine if. But is Fitz an absolute Dick?
• 1:06:21
  Is Why is he travelling with the Doctor?
• 1:06:23
  He. He's.
• 1:06:23
  Basically. Horrible.
• 1:06:25
  He No, no. He the, the Prince of the
• 1:06:27
  character was he was a bit of a douche bag in the 60s he worked
• 1:06:30
  in a garden centre who had pretensions of being James Bond
• 1:06:34
  and he steps out into the universe and he wants to be a
• 1:06:38
  hero, but he knows he's not. That's basically, that's
• 1:06:42
  basically his character. But what happens?
• 1:06:44
  And this isn't probably the best showing for him, but.
• 1:06:47
  At his. Best.
• 1:06:50
  Is. I mean, I love Fitz.
• 1:06:52
  I think he's great, but at his best he does get to be the hero,
• 1:06:55
  almost inadvertently and almost against his better nature and
• 1:06:59
  with sort of the best risers, that works.
• 1:07:02
  Brilliantly. I'm just not sure, yeah.
• 1:07:05
  If this is your introduction to Fitz and he's trying to fuck
• 1:07:07
  Penelope pins or whatever name is, that's not a great
• 1:07:10
  introduction to the character. What disturbed me about the sex
• 1:07:13
  was once that that idea had been introduced to the crooked world,
• 1:07:17
  we then have Angie discovering Mike and Harmony from the Scooby
• 1:07:20
  Gang in the cupboard. Rubbing their non bits up
• 1:07:24
  against each other. I was going oh where are we
• 1:07:25
  going now? She's.
• 1:07:28
  Going don't look, don't look. And she checks that.
• 1:07:31
  She checks out whether Porky Pig's got any junk.
• 1:07:33
  And it's just it's just like, I love that.
• 1:07:36
  They're in there in that cupboard, but they've no idea
• 1:07:38
  why they they've gone there again.
• 1:07:40
  It's a book about growing up that is charming.
• 1:07:43
  Can. I ask you all.
• 1:07:45
  A question then, and I'm going to start with James.
• 1:07:50
  Is this a funny? Book.
• 1:07:52
  Yeah. Oh yeah.
• 1:07:53
  It's a fun. I think it's a really witty
• 1:07:55
  book. I, as I say, I found some of it
• 1:07:58
  a bit relentless. I think Steve Lyons is clearly
• 1:08:02
  an absolute devotee of the source material, and I think
• 1:08:06
  maybe that's maybe that required a little bit more discipline.
• 1:08:12
  I don't know. He's having such a good time.
• 1:08:14
  I find it kind of hard to hold it against him when when it's
• 1:08:17
  all so well written. And and he does maintain this
• 1:08:24
  constant stream of visual inventiveness.
• 1:08:29
  Weird enough, you. Know the funniest line in this?
• 1:08:31
  I wrote it down was. Meanwhile, A spokesperson for
• 1:08:34
  the Crooked World Electric Company announced that due to a
• 1:08:37
  large increase in the number of ideas, that supply of light
• 1:08:40
  bulbs have been exhausted. It was 4.
• 1:08:42
  O'clock in the morning I. Was reading that and I burst out
• 1:08:45
  laughing. No, no, you know, I mean it's
• 1:08:47
  it's, it's, it's got its flaws and I guess.
• 1:08:50
  One of the things about these is you tend to discuss flaws
• 1:08:52
  because they're they're easier to.
• 1:08:54
  I think you learn a lot about writing when you discuss what
• 1:08:58
  would you do or just. I just think if you just just
• 1:09:03
  the the idea that it's coming psychically from a from a young
• 1:09:06
  girl needs to not just be slapped at the end because
• 1:09:10
  there's a lot of people maybe who are like me maybe stop
• 1:09:13
  reading it because who knows but it but but it is a funny book.
• 1:09:18
  It is. I mean, my brilliant.
• 1:09:20
  Brilliant, brilliant. Was in the Energetic, yeah, my
• 1:09:23
  favorite line was right at the end.
• 1:09:24
  Was near with Boss Dog who's just been unmasked as the the
• 1:09:27
  fake God. And I would have gotten away
• 1:09:29
  with it too, if it hadn't been for you, you complete and total
• 1:09:34
  bastards. His.
• 1:09:37
  Swearing had become incrementally.
• 1:09:39
  Worse, right I. Just love a bit where he?
• 1:09:40
  Stood up and went, oh, sod off. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:44
  No, it's it's. But it's yeah, I think what this
• 1:09:47
  book, what this book does is what a lot of the best Doctor
• 1:09:51
  Who does. And I've said in, I'm sure I've
• 1:09:54
  said it in other podcasts. And it's a point against some
• 1:09:57
  stories. Doctor Who works so well because
• 1:10:01
  of its sense of humor. The best stories maintain humor
• 1:10:06
  alongside the really dark stuff. And this stuff, this book
• 1:10:09
  balances that brilliantly. I mean, this is a cartoon world
• 1:10:13
  with people saying funny things, having these, you know, the
• 1:10:17
  light bulbs, gag and everything else.
• 1:10:19
  But it's also a cartoon world where one of them is so
• 1:10:22
  despairing at what he's done that he tries to kill himself
• 1:10:25
  and, you know, one of the hero characters loses his nephew in
• 1:10:31
  horrible, horrible circumstances.
• 1:10:34
  That doesn't stop the book being funny, but it does make those
• 1:10:37
  moments hit much harder, I think.
• 1:10:40
  And I think that's where, you know, that's why, you know, we
• 1:10:42
  we talk about, you know, for example, a story like Warriors
• 1:10:44
  of the Deep, which I think has a lot to recommend it, but it has
• 1:10:49
  completely misplaced its sense of humour.
• 1:10:51
  There is one line where the doctor says, what have you been
• 1:10:54
  eating when he gets into the guy's isolation suit and
• 1:10:57
  apparently piece of data. Yeah, I find that.
• 1:10:59
  A little bit unpleasant in because the rest of the story is
• 1:11:02
  so flaming PO faced that it really hurts it, I think.
• 1:11:06
  And then this one, this book is is really funny, but also really
• 1:11:10
  dark and really dealing with some really quite deep important
• 1:11:14
  material. So yeah, you're talking of a
• 1:11:15
  lack of. Humour you know I've just I've
• 1:11:17
  just rewatched Castro Valva for another podcast and and that's
• 1:11:22
  got big similar ideas to this crooked world but it's been me
• 1:11:25
  being quite unfunny and taking himself quite seriously and and
• 1:11:30
  I still like it but it's it's. There's a yeah, I don't.
• 1:11:35
  It would benefit. From.
• 1:11:36
  A few years ago, honestly. Ian, I know very little about
• 1:11:39
  Telebiogenesis, so we better move on from that one.
• 1:11:42
  Can I ask you all then to pick out a character that goes on a
• 1:11:46
  journey in this book that you really liked?
• 1:11:50
  And obviously I'm going to choose somebody first.
• 1:11:51
  So if everyone's thinking the same person, well, I'm so sorry
• 1:11:54
  about that. I'm going to throw that out to
• 1:11:57
  James. Oh.
• 1:12:01
  I. It's a it's a difficult one to
• 1:12:04
  answer because as I as I've said, I think there are maybe
• 1:12:07
  too many characters in this and I could maybe have done with
• 1:12:09
  just giving a smaller number of characters a bit more attention.
• 1:12:16
  I found it was quite a way through the book before I
• 1:12:18
  started to invest in any of them.
• 1:12:20
  So as I've said, by the end I really thought that Angel had
• 1:12:23
  been an interesting journey. But but it took me a long time
• 1:12:26
  to get on board with that Jasper, I suppose that the cat.
• 1:12:30
  Is is the one that because he doesn't talk, we always see him
• 1:12:35
  through his own thoughts. We experience his kind of
• 1:12:38
  slapstick cycle of agony through his eyes.
• 1:12:43
  So I guess Jasper the cat is probably the one who most
• 1:12:49
  immediately kind of seemed to me to be going on on on an
• 1:12:52
  interesting journey and. The point, you know, when when
• 1:12:56
  he hands himself in, you know, he realized he's done something
• 1:12:59
  absolutely dreadful that's that's really well described.
• 1:13:02
  And the fact that the his guilt is, is, is really palpable.
• 1:13:06
  And the fact that he kind of feels like he deserves the
• 1:13:08
  worst. And then the court seemed where
• 1:13:10
  he suddenly hears what the doctor saying and starts to
• 1:13:13
  question that and he starts to go, Oh yeah, no, I am in a cycle
• 1:13:16
  of abuse. Yeah.
• 1:13:18
  So I think, I think probably he's the one that stands out to
• 1:13:22
  me. That that is, yeah, that's
• 1:13:25
  really good. His journey is is excellent.
• 1:13:27
  And as much as I criticize the final bit where Squeak is back
• 1:13:31
  because you have gone through that journey with him, you
• 1:13:34
  really do feel his joy at the end that he has this, you know,
• 1:13:39
  he has this thing back in his life and he can well.
• 1:13:43
  I'm but I don't. I still think it's.
• 1:13:46
  I still, I still think it's a bit kind of, well, that's a bit
• 1:13:49
  odd, you know how? At the End of Mary Poppins Mr.
• 1:13:52
  Banks. Having lost his job and realised
• 1:13:55
  there's something better in life than being a banker is given his
• 1:13:59
  job back and it's meant to be this great moment of oh you can
• 1:14:03
  be a partner and and I think it's a massive cop out because
• 1:14:06
  Mr. Banks has been on a journey and he doesn't need the bank
• 1:14:09
  anymore. He's learned that his family is
• 1:14:10
  more important. It's had a little bit like that
• 1:14:13
  and I just sort of see Jasper going back to his old life and
• 1:14:16
  and with relish going back into the cycle of abuse.
• 1:14:22
  If I ever, if I. Do speak to Steve Lyons.
• 1:14:24
  The first question I'm going to ask is why on earth did you
• 1:14:26
  bring Squeak back to life? We want answers.
• 1:14:30
  How about you, Ian? We seem to have lost Ian in the
• 1:14:34
  time scoop again. No, he's back.
• 1:14:36
  Are you here with us? Yeah.
• 1:14:38
  Yeah. Yeah, No.
• 1:14:39
  You started going strange from my point of view, but.
• 1:14:45
  Which? Which?
• 1:14:46
  Sort of character journey did you like best?
• 1:14:49
  Well I'm known as streaky Bacon yet so he he he's sort of set up
• 1:14:55
  he's he's on the first page and he is set up he's got quite a
• 1:14:58
  clear journey from he could almost be the hero you could
• 1:15:05
  almost if this wasn't a Doctor Who story and it was some
• 1:15:07
  crashed people it could all be from the point of view of
• 1:15:10
  Streaky Bacon which and and then you meet some aliens who come to
• 1:15:14
  the planet or some Earthlings and realizes what he is.
• 1:15:18
  Because he he goes, he goes on a really well delineated arc
• 1:15:23
  because he, you know, from, you know, from shooting a doctor,
• 1:15:28
  feeling guilty to contemplating suicide out of his guilt all the
• 1:15:35
  way through to becoming a deputy and then at the end he's the
• 1:15:37
  sheriff. So he has the hero's journey of
• 1:15:40
  everyone in the book a lot more than the.
• 1:15:43
  Companions and the Doctor? Yeah, I did.
• 1:15:45
  I. Stepped back at the end and I
• 1:15:46
  thought, hey, do you know what? He was a lot more likable than
• 1:15:48
  Fitz and Angie and it strengthened me back.
• 1:15:50
  Yeah, very much. So yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:52
  I did. I didn't really.
• 1:15:53
  It was it kept reminding me of, you know, Joe Grant in The
• 1:15:56
  Doomsday Weapon. There's a bit like if you if
• 1:15:58
  your only impression of Joe Grant was the Doomsday weapon,
• 1:16:02
  who is she like? And I felt a bit like that for
• 1:16:05
  me, it might seem. Because characters are a funny
• 1:16:08
  thing, aren't they? If you're reading every EDA, as
• 1:16:10
  it comes out, it's Angie and Fritz.
• 1:16:12
  But to me, you'd never read an Angie and Fritz.
• 1:16:16
  I went on TARDIS Wiki today just to sort of go, who are these
• 1:16:19
  people? And what was there was like,
• 1:16:21
  well, I didn't get much of that. I just all I got was that Fritz
• 1:16:24
  was a bit of a Dick. When this is a reign of a 13
• 1:16:29
  year old boy, what I did? Quite like there was a sequence
• 1:16:31
  where Angie and the Doctor were talking about what they'd done
• 1:16:34
  to the world, and they they talk about religion for a bit as
• 1:16:38
  well, don't they? And what on earth?
• 1:16:40
  How do we sculpt these people? Is it our responsibility?
• 1:16:44
  I like, I did like all of that, but it was one scene in the and
• 1:16:47
  that's really late. On in the book as well at the
• 1:16:50
  start Angie is separated from the Doctor and Fitz and the
• 1:16:52
  Doctor's unconscious. So we don't see those characters
• 1:16:54
  interact with the Doctor at all for the for a lot of the book
• 1:16:58
  and and that I think that really colours our ability to
• 1:17:02
  understand who they are because they're not interacting with
• 1:17:04
  each other. They're straight away.
• 1:17:06
  Our there are in into this this world.
• 1:17:09
  The other problem I think with that is that they don't.
• 1:17:12
  They're there are into this world, but they are also the
• 1:17:15
  only human characters in this world.
• 1:17:17
  They haven't got anyone they can talk to with a common point of
• 1:17:20
  reference. So you don't kind of get them
• 1:17:24
  having a conversation with somebody about anything that we
• 1:17:27
  could really recognize apart from the bizarreness of this
• 1:17:30
  cartoon world, so. I'm.
• 1:17:33
  I'm I you may have spotted me going when Ian said streaky
• 1:17:38
  bacon because that's what I was going to say.
• 1:17:40
  So and the only other character really who went on a decent
• 1:17:43
  journey I think was as, as James said, Angel Falls, who began to
• 1:17:48
  question the reality of her world when Angie started going,
• 1:17:51
  well, why on earth are you waiting for somebody to do
• 1:17:53
  what's going on And people pointing out, you know, that
• 1:17:56
  that that's the same guy that's recognizably Penelope Pitt stop
• 1:18:01
  on the Hooded Claw. You know, so and and then she, I
• 1:18:07
  mean I did get the I did like the sequence where she's in the
• 1:18:11
  room with Fitz and the Doctor and they're talking about what's
• 1:18:14
  going on and Fitz and the Doctor having a conversation almost
• 1:18:16
  forget that she's there until she bursts into tears on
• 1:18:19
  realizing that actually all of this is changing and all of this
• 1:18:22
  crap is happening because of you.
• 1:18:24
  Why on earth did you come here? I had to punch the air moment
• 1:18:28
  with her, you know, the end of the chapter where she says I
• 1:18:30
  want to take control of my life because we've had half the book.
• 1:18:33
  And throughout that half of the book she's gone on that cycle
• 1:18:35
  of, oh, it's Mr. Weasley, oh, it's the mask weasel, you know,
• 1:18:38
  and not knowing who's who. And then finally she started
• 1:18:41
  sort of starting to take control.
• 1:18:43
  She's the one that surprised me this time.
• 1:18:45
  I I was quite invested in her. But like you said, James, it
• 1:18:49
  took me a while. There is a.
• 1:18:51
  Wonderful moment isn't there where she it's so obvious that
• 1:18:54
  that Mister Weasley and the master is the same person and
• 1:18:58
  it's like it's almost as if she she knew all along, but she's
• 1:19:01
  just been pretending to herself and that's a lovely moment when
• 1:19:05
  she decides, come on, this is ridiculous, she needs to
• 1:19:09
  confront reality. Yeah, I think Angie.
• 1:19:11
  Goes through at one point. Is she no Angel, remember?
• 1:19:14
  You know, although Angie does a lot of that.
• 1:19:16
  I did like the bit where she pulled the sheet off the ghost.
• 1:19:19
  They're all like, well, what have you.
• 1:19:22
  Done. Yeah.
• 1:19:23
  Yeah. One.
• 1:19:23
  Thing I was going to say about this is it makes you it was just
• 1:19:27
  brilliant in that it makes you realise quite how many tropes
• 1:19:31
  there are in animated stuff. Like you're there going surely
• 1:19:35
  there's Oh yeah there's that with thing with the plates and
• 1:19:38
  there's people running around with plates.
• 1:19:40
  There's the running across ravines.
• 1:19:42
  There's the ghosts. You know so many just like an
• 1:19:45
  endless it is I mean. A bit like James sort of maybe
• 1:19:50
  alluded to, maybe there's too much, maybe they're too much to
• 1:19:52
  choose from and he fitted it all in.
• 1:19:54
  It's, it's. It's pulling from Looney Tunes
• 1:19:57
  and Hannah Barbera, which I in my head are quite two quite
• 1:20:00
  different visual languages, so, so I know.
• 1:20:03
  It's almost like, is he going to have Disney as well and just go
• 1:20:06
  for the full thing? So yeah, So maybe maybe that's
• 1:20:10
  an element he went for, I think, yeah.
• 1:20:12
  You're saying about it being almost too much, is that we
• 1:20:15
  start the book with just. Sequence after sequence of
• 1:20:19
  cartoon, reality, cartoon things going on.
• 1:20:22
  We then end the book in much the same way, only this time the
• 1:20:25
  characters have got the hang of the physics of the world.
• 1:20:27
  Yeah, but I think at the end of the book it chucks in so much.
• 1:20:30
  I was reading through it and it's like we're going into the
• 1:20:32
  volcano and we're going in and scary manner and all this stuff
• 1:20:35
  is happening and Oh my God, we've only got about 15 pages
• 1:20:38
  left. Are we actually going to get to
• 1:20:40
  an ending? And he uses.
• 1:20:42
  Page count does it because it's two. 100 really wraps up.
• 1:20:44
  Very, very swiftly. And then it's.
• 1:20:46
  Exactly what we said about. The Doomsday weapon wasn't it,
• 1:20:48
  but it. But you know, and it but it is
• 1:20:50
  kind of a conceit that you do get from cartoons where randomly
• 1:20:53
  people end up in the same place at the same time because that
• 1:20:57
  just what the plot needs and it's a cartoon, it's a 5 minute
• 1:20:59
  cartoon and so it's got to happen.
• 1:21:01
  And in this case it kind of did the same thing.
• 1:21:03
  But at the end I felt there was almost too much going on with
• 1:21:06
  all the Super volcano stuff and Angie and the scary man are
• 1:21:09
  doing the Scooby gang. There's so much of it going on.
• 1:21:12
  The couple of bits that I really did like about it was the.
• 1:21:17
  It was a moment where Fitz was being held prisoner and somebody
• 1:21:21
  banged on the door and he noticed that the sound seemed to
• 1:21:26
  radiate from the door in little white lines of energy, which is
• 1:21:28
  the kind of thing you see a lot of in cartoons.
• 1:21:31
  And the other bit was when they make a throwaway comment about
• 1:21:34
  Godfits, you've taught them how to build a super volcano and a
• 1:21:37
  laser and a hologram and all that.
• 1:21:38
  What's next? Teach them how to build an A
• 1:21:40
  bomb. And then you find that they've
• 1:21:42
  built an A bomb, and it's just a bomb explodes with loads of
• 1:21:44
  letter A's. He told them.
• 1:21:47
  What an A. Bomb actually is there was so.
• 1:21:50
  Chilling though. It was quite chilling though,
• 1:21:51
  wasn't it? I was like, oh, I felt a little.
• 1:21:54
  There's so many. Great visual gags like that.
• 1:21:56
  I like the bit where someone shades their eyes from the sun
• 1:21:59
  and the sun goes oh fine and it just buggers off.
• 1:22:03
  Or he's told. Them the countdown starts stops
• 1:22:05
  at A1 and so when it gets to the end of the countdown it just
• 1:22:08
  keeps going recycling the one because they don't understand
• 1:22:11
  what the countdown is actually for.
• 1:22:13
  Beautiful. We haven't we we mustn't forget
• 1:22:16
  the So I think you pointed this out on on Twitter now called X
• 1:22:21
  is I believe this is called this they call this a Twitter, he
• 1:22:25
  said a tiny avian creature drawn to pain and suffering.
• 1:22:28
  Oh what so is it isn't it So the little circle of birds which I I
• 1:22:32
  had a look. I had a look online to see if is
• 1:22:34
  that why they're called Twitters?
• 1:22:36
  I don't think they are, but but I found out it's it's in that
• 1:22:39
  you know the the Book of Tropes which is sort of online and one
• 1:22:44
  of them is the Circle of Birds, it's called.
• 1:22:47
  Well, that's the. That's the the beginning of
• 1:22:49
  Roger Rabbit. It is the beginning.
• 1:22:51
  Of Roger is Yeah, Roger. Is almost fired because he can't
• 1:22:53
  produce stars. He's like birds and other
• 1:22:56
  things. Oh, really?
• 1:22:57
  Yeah. Stars you need.
• 1:22:58
  Stars when I hit you on the head and it's like I can do stars.
• 1:23:01
  I've not seen Roger Rabbit for like, I've only seen it once.
• 1:23:04
  It's aged. Very, very well.
• 1:23:06
  It's fantastic. Remember not liking you very
• 1:23:09
  much when it came out, But I'm not.
• 1:23:11
  Superb. It's still one of, for me, it's
• 1:23:12
  one of the best movies that was ever made.
• 1:23:14
  It's totally, absolutely brilliant characters.
• 1:23:17
  That people were lust after Jessica Rabbit.
• 1:23:20
  Yeah. It's well I.
• 1:23:23
  And it's dark because you get, you know, we get the cartoons
• 1:23:26
  are real. And of course, OK, A corollary
• 1:23:28
  of that is if cartoons are real characters in a real world, we
• 1:23:32
  can kill them. And the.
• 1:23:35
  Sequence where Judge Doom dissolves an innocent little
• 1:23:37
  shoe that. Little.
• 1:23:39
  Shoe. Is horrific, especially if you
• 1:23:41
  consider shoes come in pairs. Yeah, I just remember I just not
• 1:23:45
  liking it as a kid. But I'll I have been.
• 1:23:48
  Considered that so usually thank you for the nightmares.
• 1:23:51
  So there you go, there's. One little shoe running around
• 1:23:53
  2:00. I remember his.
• 1:23:54
  Brother, yeah. The big wear the he's.
• 1:23:58
  Up there with Jerry Ave. dead, bitten off by Tom.
• 1:24:01
  So it's a bit. Where Christopher Lloyd is
• 1:24:03
  flattened at the end of Who Killed Roger Rabbit and then
• 1:24:05
  peels his way off the floor, and then he's got that manic cartoon
• 1:24:10
  face with that horrible. Laugh that chilled.
• 1:24:13
  Me to the bone as a kid it. Was that's brilliant.
• 1:24:16
  I love that film. So yeah, and revisit it as an
• 1:24:19
  adult. I must do.
• 1:24:21
  I'll I'll watch it with my kids. See.
• 1:24:23
  See what a modern day 8 year old thinks of it.
• 1:24:25
  But you I mean. You would think the rabbit
• 1:24:27
  merges with Cameron Diaz, the sort of real life version.
• 1:24:31
  In Mask you would. Think he's there with his swing
• 1:24:34
  and firm as described in The Crooked World and his eyes going
• 1:24:40
  the wolf, The wolf in the 1930s, Sort of.
• 1:24:47
  What gets me about Roger Rabbit, and I know we're not going to
• 1:24:49
  hear to talk about Roger Rabbit and I will stop eventually, is
• 1:24:53
  that considering that it was made in the 1980s and they did
• 1:24:57
  it with the old fashioned paint on.
• 1:24:59
  Anime on the film cells. They didn't, you know, there's
• 1:25:01
  no computer generated stuff. The actors had nothing there to
• 1:25:05
  work off. They had to move in specific
• 1:25:07
  ways. They had all sorts of weird and
• 1:25:09
  wonderful technical things going on to make the sets move and
• 1:25:12
  interact with the cartoons. You would think that coming to
• 1:25:15
  it 30 years later, you look at it and go, Oh yeah, it looks a
• 1:25:18
  bit Duff now. It looks superb.
• 1:25:21
  It still looks in some respects better than a lot of.
• 1:25:24
  Newer things. I think it holds up brilliantly,
• 1:25:27
  so I believe it did. Almost drive Bob Hoskins
• 1:25:30
  completely mad, but. He is 1.
• 1:25:32
  Of its secret weapons, though. Because if you watch footage of
• 1:25:35
  Roger Rabbit without the special effects on, you realize what an
• 1:25:38
  absolutely brilliant mind what he's doing.
• 1:25:41
  Yeah, and how much the? The heavy lifting he's actually
• 1:25:44
  doing for those effects to look convincing?
• 1:25:46
  We almost. Got him as iron grown in the
• 1:25:47
  Time Warrior. You know, he just wasn't
• 1:25:49
  available at the time. It would have been quite
• 1:25:52
  interesting. Well look fellas.
• 1:25:54
  We can. Discuss.
• 1:25:55
  We ought to talk about the cover because I said earlier that I
• 1:25:59
  think the cover is a spoiler. Obviously it's a it's a spoiler
• 1:26:03
  of something that we find out fairly early on in the book.
• 1:26:05
  But I would love to have read that first chapter, not
• 1:26:11
  picturing a cartoon world, and and I'm not sure I don't think
• 1:26:16
  the cover's terribly successful. Anyway, but I'm not sure it's
• 1:26:19
  helpful that we are picturing the Doctor as a cartoon
• 1:26:22
  character. I'm not sure we're meant to be
• 1:26:24
  picturing the Doctor as a cartoon character from the
• 1:26:26
  beginning. And and I just wonder if we'd
• 1:26:29
  been given the opportunity as readers to come to this to to
• 1:26:31
  work out for ourselves what was going on, whether it would have
• 1:26:34
  been a more satisfying entry into the world.
• 1:26:37
  And maybe we'd have spent less time kind of questioning whether
• 1:26:40
  this was going to be explained at all.
• 1:26:42
  I kind of pictured them throughout.
• 1:26:45
  I mean, I agree, the the cover's fairly dreadful apologies to
• 1:26:48
  whoever the artist was, but it's it was like a it was me.
• 1:26:53
  Couple of hours on Earth, it wasn't me.
• 1:26:55
  On some dodgy yeah, I I agree the.
• 1:26:59
  Cover is is Because the thing about this is yes, it's it's can
• 1:27:03
  I ask Steve about that cartoon? It's described as a cartoon
• 1:27:08
  world. But as you read it, you realise
• 1:27:13
  it's not a cartoon world, It's a world where everyone behaves
• 1:27:17
  like cartoons and they experiences things as cartoons,
• 1:27:20
  but they're not cartoons. They haven't materialized.
• 1:27:23
  You know, I saw them a bit like Roger Rabbit in three 3D hand
• 1:27:27
  draw. Yeah, I.
• 1:27:28
  Saw the our, our heroes, the ducks and companions, and then
• 1:27:32
  the cartoon. World around them, Yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:34
  So yeah, I think I agree. I think the cover doesn't
• 1:27:36
  actually really tell. The right story or set you up on
• 1:27:41
  the right. It.
• 1:27:43
  Kind of wrong foots. You and I think they'd have been
• 1:27:46
  better off with the cover that showed everybody is kind of
• 1:27:49
  three-dimensional properly. But we've cartoon things like
• 1:27:51
  the sticks of dynamite and the city blunderbuss and things like
• 1:27:54
  that, but yeah. It's certainly not the first
• 1:27:57
  black sheep cover that completely ignores the text as
• 1:28:01
  well, so that happened quite a bit.
• 1:28:03
  But also as well. I think the problem with this is
• 1:28:04
  back to couldn't should again. This was the only time they
• 1:28:07
  could do a cartoon cover on the front cover of an Eighth Doctor
• 1:28:11
  book. So they did, and I kind of get
• 1:28:13
  it, but I don't like it either. I think it's a really ugly
• 1:28:16
  drawing, so. If you're going to do it.
• 1:28:19
  Do it better than this, I think yeah.
• 1:28:20
  But I'm not sure it's well, I I I think it's downright unhelpful
• 1:28:24
  as as a way into the I don't think it sells it anyway.
• 1:28:27
  Do you think people looked at this and thought that looks like
• 1:28:29
  a book I want to buy? No, no.
• 1:28:32
  No only me, James only. What I.
• 1:28:35
  What I thought Steve, is that you?
• 1:28:40
  Know we keep losing your Wi-Fi. William, Paul, Mark.
• 1:28:44
  Paul Mars gets the amazing pink poodle like Azimov, Azimov, Boot
• 1:28:50
  Camp, Amazingness. And Steve, Poor Steve gets this
• 1:28:53
  thing. But I'm sure he had over covers
• 1:28:56
  that were good. He had that.
• 1:28:57
  So I'm, I'm curious. I was going to read Conundrum,
• 1:29:01
  but I didn't have time. But that's but to have two
• 1:29:03
  cartoon covers, That one. Was terrible as well.
• 1:29:07
  I mean, at least this time they do ace as sort of photorealistic
• 1:29:11
  or as well as they can, but with a very obvious sort of cartoon
• 1:29:15
  background. So it's it's more sort of
• 1:29:17
  relevant to the text, but it's still an ugly cover.
• 1:29:22
  Yeah, Doctor Who book covers. It is very hit or miss with the
• 1:29:25
  emphasis on the miss. I think what what I was going
• 1:29:29
  to. What I was.
• 1:29:31
  Going to. Ask the three of you is because
• 1:29:33
  I know I've taken a lot of notes.
• 1:29:35
  I'm sure you guys have as well. Please do not scrimp on this.
• 1:29:38
  When I ask you this, is there anything we haven't covered that
• 1:29:41
  you'd like to cover? And my big question to you is
• 1:29:46
  going into this, what did you expect coming out of it or did
• 1:29:50
  you take away? And I'm going to start with
• 1:29:52
  Jason going into. This I was expecting the cartoon
• 1:30:00
  Nizani stuff to be happening. I kind of was wondering whether
• 1:30:06
  it was going to prove to be an offshoot of the land of fiction
• 1:30:09
  or something like that. He's done that.
• 1:30:11
  Already. Yeah.
• 1:30:13
  What? I took away from it was that
• 1:30:14
  this was actually obviously far more than that and it was using.
• 1:30:18
  The cartoon framework to tell a story about, as we've said,
• 1:30:21
  growing up and taking responsibility for your actions
• 1:30:24
  and how you. How you interact with with other
• 1:30:28
  people around you in the world and things like that and
• 1:30:30
  maturing and so on and so forth. I did find the explanation a bit
• 1:30:34
  lacking. It was just kind of we can do
• 1:30:37
  it, so we will. Yeah, I was what was the
• 1:30:42
  question again going in? Coming out and anything else not
• 1:30:46
  coming out. Jesus Christ and what anything
• 1:30:50
  else you wanted to cover. I mean the only.
• 1:30:52
  Thing I was going to say was that about the, you know, we've
• 1:30:55
  discussed the the inclusion of sex and there's also the
• 1:30:58
  inclusion of Angie popping to the toilet because she didn't
• 1:31:01
  know if there were bathrooms in. Things like that, And checking
• 1:31:04
  out streaky bacon who wasn't wearing any trousers to see,
• 1:31:06
  etcetera, etcetera, what was. That all about I mean my.
• 1:31:10
  My thing, my thing on that is that it's it's nice, it's well
• 1:31:13
  enough done and it is humorous in its intent.
• 1:31:17
  But I've always found the inclusion of sex and romance in
• 1:31:23
  Doctor Who to be a little bit off putting on the basis that.
• 1:31:28
  And I've said this before, and I'll say it again, I'm sure.
• 1:31:31
  On a show that can do anything, literally and as this book
• 1:31:35
  proves anything because you go to a cartoon world to keep
• 1:31:39
  bringing it back to romance and sex is the most mundane thing
• 1:31:43
  you can do in Doctor Who. We've got whole genres of books
• 1:31:47
  and TV and movies that deal with that.
• 1:31:50
  It doesn't need to be in Doctor Who, and it's one of the reasons
• 1:31:52
  I actually enjoyed Doctor Who in the 1st place as a kid, because
• 1:31:55
  it was one of the few things that didn't constantly throw
• 1:31:58
  romance and sex at you. It was just.
• 1:32:00
  A story about something totally different.
• 1:32:03
  And I think that also, although in some respects the nature of
• 1:32:07
  this book is investigating and looking at what we look at as
• 1:32:11
  entertainment and what is deliberately left out of it,
• 1:32:14
  because it would be horrific if you actually included it.
• 1:32:18
  I think that sometimes a story like this, you have to leave out
• 1:32:24
  bits like that. Because if you do think about
• 1:32:26
  it, yeah, it's not going to. We've never seen anybody in
• 1:32:29
  Doctor Who. Go to the toilet, except for one
• 1:32:32
  sequence in, I think in The Impossible Astronaut where Amy
• 1:32:36
  meets somebody in a toilet. That's like the only time in
• 1:32:39
  Doctor Who's history that we've gone to a toilet, because we
• 1:32:42
  don't care from all the dialects in The Magician's No, let's.
• 1:32:47
  Talk about Don't even. Don't even the sewers.
• 1:32:50
  Revolt. In we don't need to think about
• 1:32:54
  that, so to put it in I think. I I sort of read it and went,
• 1:32:58
  oh, yeah, OK, but we didn't need that.
• 1:33:00
  Let's move on. So that's all.
• 1:33:02
  That's all I wanted to say about that is just I don't need it to
• 1:33:05
  be in Doctor Who at all. Can I cancel that though and say
• 1:33:10
  that if this is a coming of age story, that is one of the most
• 1:33:13
  important chapters in coming of age, so maybe this is the one
• 1:33:17
  point where it is relevant in the story.
• 1:33:21
  Just that Ian. Yeah, yeah I was going to say,
• 1:33:26
  I'd kind of agree with you Joe, maybe the execution is slightly
• 1:33:31
  off but but yeah but but it like going into adolescence, everyone
• 1:33:37
  bumping uglies in the cupboard and stuff and or or no non
• 1:33:41
  uglies because they haven't got any.
• 1:33:42
  I mean, it reminded me a lot of. The thing I'd maybe want to talk
• 1:33:47
  about is hey reminded me of The Lego Movie a hell of a lot with
• 1:33:52
  the whole existential Why are we here very much?
• 1:33:56
  Yeah, and you know the repetitive where we're all just
• 1:34:00
  doing our jobs because they're toys and there's still a few
• 1:34:05
  futile existence. They all live at the beginning.
• 1:34:09
  So you know with the futile existence, they all live sort of
• 1:34:13
  in that and they sort of have a very futile existence in this.
• 1:34:18
  But, but, but it also reminded me, even you never know Doctor
• 1:34:23
  Who fiction. Like how much it sort of
• 1:34:26
  influenced the showrunners of the new show.
• 1:34:28
  Like it reminded me of Amy with the Romans and the Stonehenge
• 1:34:33
  episode and all that. Her childhood coming out and and
• 1:34:39
  a little bit of the Silence in the library.
• 1:34:41
  Being a little girl. Yeah, I.
• 1:34:42
  Got that as well. So you just never quite know
• 1:34:47
  when we accused Steve Lyons of of a little bit of naughty
• 1:34:51
  nicking from Pleasantville. And maybe it's maybe it's been.
• 1:34:57
  The torch has been passed on to Stephen, my friend.
• 1:35:00
  What about? Expectations going in and what
• 1:35:04
  you took when you finished the last page.
• 1:35:09
  Who, Me. You.
• 1:35:10
  Yes, you, Yeah. Yeah, I I, I kind of guess I
• 1:35:14
  thought it was going to be quite like this because I just just
• 1:35:18
  from the back I thought it was going to be here's all the rules
• 1:35:21
  of cartoons and then that's what I got.
• 1:35:25
  And then they started realizing they weren't you know, that they
• 1:35:30
  they they got free will. So I kind of guess this is kind
• 1:35:34
  of it played out quite like I thought.
• 1:35:37
  And like I said, I was just there for the whole thing,
• 1:35:39
  praying that it wasn't going to turn out to be a, you know, that
• 1:35:42
  it was going to have a proper Doctor Who explanation as I
• 1:35:46
  would see it. And my main criticism of it is
• 1:35:49
  that probably could have had that upfront or or early on, so
• 1:35:53
  we didn't need to worry about and it didn't actually have a it
• 1:35:57
  weirdly didn't have a big threat, did it?
• 1:35:59
  It kind of had oh we've we've made a bit of a mess here And
• 1:36:05
  then the Doctor just came and went.
• 1:36:07
  It's up to you how your lives oh wait, what?
• 1:36:09
  You're going to hang him? No, no, no, don't do it like
• 1:36:12
  that. I'm going to come in and
• 1:36:14
  moralise and tell you how you are going to set exercise your
• 1:36:18
  free will. So, so it didn't massively hang
• 1:36:22
  together as a story in a weird way like some of the arcs did,
• 1:36:27
  but but maybe if it had a big threat.
• 1:36:32
  Because it kind of weirdly didn't, because everything was a
• 1:36:34
  cartoon. Kind of, I suppose it did have a
• 1:36:38
  threat at the end, but do you know what I mean?
• 1:36:40
  If there'd been an outside force that was doing something.
• 1:36:44
  I always thought that the biggest threat was from within
• 1:36:47
  with this, you know it's it's how how far we can possibly go.
• 1:36:51
  How about you then, James? One thing we haven't mentioned
• 1:36:54
  that I think it's worth flagging up is that this book was written
• 1:36:57
  in 2002 and it still feels really fresh.
• 1:36:59
  It hasn't. There's nothing in it that that
• 1:37:02
  really dates it, except except for one thing, which I shall now
• 1:37:06
  generously flag up. Towards the beginning, Angie
• 1:37:10
  explores the TARDIS library and it mentions that the library is
• 1:37:13
  full of e-books. I was trying to picture what
• 1:37:16
  that would actually is that just shelves full of Kindles, I'd got
• 1:37:20
  a different Kindle for every book.
• 1:37:21
  I don't know how the Doctor deals with his ebooks but no, I
• 1:37:26
  think it's. I think it's a really fresh
• 1:37:27
  piece of writing and I think I'm glad it exists in the Doctor Who
• 1:37:33
  universe. I do think that, you know, one
• 1:37:35
  of the reasons I love Doctor Who is it can be anything.
• 1:37:38
  And if I've had a kind of complaint about Doctor Who at
• 1:37:41
  any point in its. In its development it's it's
• 1:37:46
  that it's often not been as inventive and as imaginative as
• 1:37:51
  it was in its first kind of three years and and I I love
• 1:37:55
  that the books range can do something like this.
• 1:37:57
  I think going in I I expected pretty much what I got.
• 1:38:02
  What it didn't deliver that I was expecting by about halfway
• 1:38:05
  through was an explanation and maybe I wasn't.
• 1:38:08
  I wasn't expecting it to sustain this.
• 1:38:10
  This world, for the length of the entire book.
• 1:38:12
  I thought that at some point it would become the land of
• 1:38:14
  fictional or whatever. And in.
• 1:38:17
  And I'm glad it didn't. I'm glad that we actually got a
• 1:38:19
  book that was entirely contained in this world that took us in
• 1:38:22
  fact to I I like that there's not an outside threat.
• 1:38:26
  I like that that that that actually is an existential
• 1:38:28
  threat is. And they're questioning
• 1:38:30
  themselves and and and the, the, the the whole.
• 1:38:35
  Problem So you know it's the problem is not even that the
• 1:38:37
  villains discover you know that they can be even more
• 1:38:40
  villainous. The problem is what are we going
• 1:38:42
  to do now that we now that we've grown up and we've learned this
• 1:38:45
  stuff. I like that the ending doesn't
• 1:38:48
  quite deliver on the kind of the the there's a there's a sense
• 1:38:53
  planted as we approach the end that something really dreadful
• 1:38:58
  has happened and I love that and I love the sense of growing doom
• 1:39:03
  and the fact that boss dog. Has this secret that he he just
• 1:39:07
  can't bear to to share. He's trying to protect them from
• 1:39:10
  this knowledge. I don't think the knowledge,
• 1:39:12
  when it arrives, lives up to that expectation.
• 1:39:16
  And I wish the finale had been more about that and more about
• 1:39:20
  that self realization than another cartoon run around in a
• 1:39:24
  kind of, you know, James Bond's knockoff cavern.
• 1:39:28
  But overall I I just think it's a a really.
• 1:39:31
  It's a Tour de force and a really confident piece of
• 1:39:34
  writing. And as I say, I'm really glad it
• 1:39:36
  exists, and I'm glad I read it. I think, I think the explanation
• 1:39:40
  at the end of it, I I didn't quite buy into it either because
• 1:39:43
  it's kind of. Boss dog.
• 1:39:46
  Finds the girl. The girl starts influencing the
• 1:39:49
  world. It says you know, he realized
• 1:39:50
  there was only one way to stop it happening, which heavily
• 1:39:53
  implies that he killed the girl. But then the doctor says, if
• 1:39:57
  it's any consolation, he probably didn't kill the girl
• 1:39:59
  because he wouldn't have known how.
• 1:40:01
  And I read that and I thought, well, first of all, that seems
• 1:40:04
  to contradict what the whole thing has been building up to.
• 1:40:06
  And secondly, not knowing how to kill somebody is not a guarantee
• 1:40:11
  that you can't kill somebody because, well, as we don't know
• 1:40:15
  how to keep them alive, you will kill them.
• 1:40:17
  So, you know, it's kind of, yeah.
• 1:40:19
  That's the That's the first thing that Streaky Baker
• 1:40:22
  discovers is I didn't think you know.
• 1:40:24
  You didn't, yet you almost killed the Doctor.
• 1:40:28
  The only. Person.
• 1:40:29
  You could do that. Could accept this world on face
• 1:40:32
  value and and was disappointed that that we got an explanation
• 1:40:37
  at the end. I was quite happy just to be
• 1:40:38
  immersed in it because it was such a fun, imaginative, quirky
• 1:40:42
  and ultimately mature place to be, intriguingly.
• 1:40:45
  Though I'm going to say that had we not had an explanation, I
• 1:40:48
  almost would have preferred that I think I.
• 1:40:50
  Agree. Because I think we either needed
• 1:40:53
  no explanation whatsoever. It's just right.
• 1:40:54
  This is an impossible world where everything is influenced
• 1:40:58
  by other people and so things will develop that way.
• 1:41:01
  Or we needed a proper explanation that took up more
• 1:41:04
  than the last like 3 pages of the book.
• 1:41:07
  Yeah, because what we got. Wasn't, I don't think,
• 1:41:10
  sufficient. It was neither fish nor fowl
• 1:41:13
  because. So I kept thinking we needed a
• 1:41:15
  little bit more seeding because I was always as a person is
• 1:41:19
  being reductive. But I was always a bit OK, I was
• 1:41:22
  always, I was always reassured when we were sort of hinted at
• 1:41:26
  that boss dog knew something and I went, OK, there is going to be
• 1:41:29
  an explanation, there better be a bloody explanation.
• 1:41:32
  But then when there was, it was a bit perfunctory.
• 1:41:35
  So that's the main floor of it is it should have you know, just
• 1:41:40
  it could have just had that little bit judged up.
• 1:41:43
  Then I would have admired the. Huts part of just not giving us
• 1:41:46
  one, Yeah. Then.
• 1:41:48
  Then I was. Saying just have a.
• 1:41:49
  Series of 20 questions on the last page, yes.
• 1:41:52
  Make it. Make it up myself.
• 1:41:54
  It would have just made me go This is the Hitchhiker's book,
• 1:41:57
  not a Doctor Who book. And there is a there is a for
• 1:42:00
  me. There is a slight difference.
• 1:42:02
  The only. Thing I'd like to add is I
• 1:42:05
  wouldn't put it past Steve Lyons to be making a comment about
• 1:42:07
  Doctor Who itself and the crooked world being classic
• 1:42:11
  Doctor Who and the Doctor, Fitz and Angie being effectively the
• 1:42:16
  new adventures I guess. And those two worlds colliding
• 1:42:20
  and just how shocking and terrible that could be
• 1:42:23
  sometimes. Have you read Force, The Shadow
• 1:42:24
  Parasite? It's basically 600 pages of
• 1:42:27
  utter torture, literal torture. And you know Steve Lyons row
• 1:42:32
  head games in the New Adventures, which deliberately
• 1:42:36
  brought back Mel Wide Eyed Mel from season 24 to face the New
• 1:42:41
  Adventures. Sylvester McCoy, Doctor.
• 1:42:44
  Ros and Chris, who are, you know, effectively policemen with
• 1:42:47
  guns going around brutalizing people and storms out the
• 1:42:50
  TARDIS. In the end he goes, I don't know
• 1:42:52
  what this is anymore, but it ain't Doctor Who goodbye and
• 1:42:55
  just walks off. I wouldn't be surprised if
• 1:42:57
  something like that is happening in the crooked world.
• 1:42:59
  He's making some sort of comment because then he goes on against
• 1:43:02
  the the Steelers of Dreams in the new series of benches.
• 1:43:06
  Which plays about with similar themes all over again.
• 1:43:09
  I think it's something he's quite interested in.
• 1:43:10
  Doctor Who then? Yeah, Doctor Who.
• 1:43:12
  Now how on earth we got here And the bumps along the way, It's
• 1:43:16
  weird to see what this would have been like 20 years ago.
• 1:43:19
  I bet it annoyed quite a lot of hardcore fans.
• 1:43:21
  And now it's like we've had 11 monsters.
• 1:43:23
  We've had we've had you know someone going oh you know I I
• 1:43:28
  get blow jobs off me off me paving slab, slab.
• 1:43:33
  Yeah, you know so it's they were out that.
• 1:43:37
  Christmas, you know. I love the I love the monsters,
• 1:43:41
  and I guess in a similar way to this, it just shows this is this
• 1:43:45
  is the same show that is genesis of the dialects and Lover
• 1:43:49
  monsters, and I'm in the crooked world, so it can be anything.
• 1:43:54
  Other monsters that paving slab scene I I have a problem.
• 1:43:58
  With that joke, definitely I didn't.
• 1:44:01
  Am I the only one watching it who didn't immediately think of
• 1:44:04
  blowjobs when that that went out?
• 1:44:06
  Because I did that, didn't even. But you think of kissing until I
• 1:44:09
  went on the forum later on and somebody said, oh God, that's
• 1:44:12
  talking about blowjobs in docs. It's even hold.
• 1:44:14
  It's even hold. Holding it in his lap, it
• 1:44:16
  literally looks like they probably just finished.
• 1:44:19
  Talk. About.
• 1:44:19
  Inappropriate sex and Doctor Who So.
• 1:44:22
  Yeah, so the only person who didn't go.
• 1:44:24
  There is my brain just not wired that way.
• 1:44:27
  Is it just you lot being filthy? I don't know.
• 1:44:30
  Ruined Doctor Who doing it. We've ruined Doctor Who.
• 1:44:33
  Do you know? I did.
• 1:44:34
  Wonder before we I came on this call whether we could take this
• 1:44:37
  book with this cover and in any way intellectualise it.
• 1:44:40
  And I think somehow we've managed to achieve that, so well
• 1:44:43
  done well. I think the book.
• 1:44:45
  Itself is. Oh, it's a very interesting
• 1:44:46
  book. You.
• 1:44:47
  You see that cover and you don't, but it doesn't look.
• 1:44:50
  Itself. Is is quite intellectual so.
• 1:45:02
  Well, on to my favorite segment of the show then.
• 1:45:06
  And you guys came up with some great recommendations the first
• 1:45:08
  time around. What are you going to recommend
• 1:45:12
  to people today? Let's go in the reversal then,
• 1:45:15
  James, I am going. To recommend the glorious dead
• 1:45:20
  oh. Yes.
• 1:45:21
  Which is? The second in the four volume
• 1:45:26
  collection of eight Doctor comic strips.
• 1:45:31
  From Doctor Who Magazine. And the reason is, I reckon this
• 1:45:38
  is the most consistently brilliant run of Doctor Who in
• 1:45:43
  any medium ever. Now hang on.
• 1:45:48
  Is it the run from the very first Paul McGann strip to the
• 1:45:50
  last? So this I've.
• 1:45:51
  Chosen the second book because I think it's the best of the of
• 1:45:56
  the bunch, though there's not a lot.
• 1:45:58
  It's incredible. Isn't it?
• 1:46:00
  Yeah, I I I think all four volumes though I I I think that
• 1:46:05
  they give the 8th Doctor a really incredible run with a
• 1:46:10
  story arcs to die for and the the greatest of which to my mind
• 1:46:14
  is the glorious dead which. Acts in many different ways as a
• 1:46:19
  sequel to the TV movie The TV movie which sort of doesn't
• 1:46:25
  really work on its own. It's written as a bit of a pilot
• 1:46:28
  and and goes nowhere. We we we catch up with Grace in
• 1:46:32
  the first of the cartoons in this book and then we find out
• 1:46:35
  what's happened. Sorry, spoilers to the master
• 1:46:38
  and it all ties up beautifully and it ties up in this
• 1:46:43
  constantly inventive and. Absolutely beautiful,
• 1:46:48
  beautifully realized series of stories with brilliant
• 1:46:51
  cliffhanger after brilliant full page spread.
• 1:46:57
  I think that the the work of Martin Geratti the the main
• 1:47:00
  artist in in this time is is just off the scale brilliant and
• 1:47:04
  whilst I totally understand the commercial sense in the comic
• 1:47:08
  strip going colour, which it does after this volume.
• 1:47:12
  There is something about the black and white art that I think
• 1:47:14
  is never matched again, and there is a point where they sort
• 1:47:18
  of go into a multiverse. The Doctors is sent through.
• 1:47:21
  I mean, I remember reading this at the time it was coming out in
• 1:47:23
  Doctoring magazine and every month it was it was the most
• 1:47:27
  thrilling thing to see these, these, to take these unexpected
• 1:47:32
  directions. There's a cliffhanger where the
• 1:47:35
  Doctor wakes up on it and he's human.
• 1:47:38
  And and and he's sitting next. He's sitting in a bed next to
• 1:47:41
  Grace and she's saying honey what's the matter.
• 1:47:44
  It's like he's dreamt the whole thing it it it just constantly
• 1:47:48
  lands gut punch after gut punch and things happen to characters
• 1:47:53
  that are surprising and distressing.
• 1:47:55
  It's it's a just a continuous inventive wealth of really
• 1:48:03
  Doctor Who he stuff but on a scale that only the comic.
• 1:48:06
  Strip could do and and and then sprinkled into them as well.
• 1:48:10
  I mean put towards the end of this volume are are are a couple
• 1:48:13
  of specials as well the Adrian Salmond drawn comics.
• 1:48:17
  Just incredible artwork. It's the.
• 1:48:19
  Autonomy bug somewhere? Yeah, so the.
• 1:48:21
  Autonomy bug, which is. It's one of the.
• 1:48:23
  Ones drawn by Roger. Language Gorgeous illustrates
• 1:48:27
  that. So the other two is in here are
• 1:48:29
  TV action and. Happy Death Day.
• 1:48:36
  They were both anniversary, just one offs, genuinely witty.
• 1:48:40
  I mean the the you, you could spend hours just pouring over
• 1:48:43
  the artwork and the TV action is the one where they run through
• 1:48:46
  the BBC studios and there are characters from Blue Peter and
• 1:48:48
  Grange Hill and Emus there. You could just you could just go
• 1:48:51
  with a magnifying glass through these pages.
• 1:48:53
  But the autonomy bug is, is the same artist doing something
• 1:48:57
  really dark and really serious and very, very moving.
• 1:49:01
  Those different. Robots.
• 1:49:02
  It was amazing. I I I know it's not in this
• 1:49:05
  volume it but it's later in the run.
• 1:49:07
  But one of the most shocking moments in Doctor Who I can ever
• 1:49:10
  remember seeing reading listening to is that bit in it's
• 1:49:15
  it's one with lots of snow. I remember that and at the end
• 1:49:18
  Destry's guardian turns round and claws are in the face.
• 1:49:22
  In the most shocking way, it's. So.
• 1:49:26
  Terrifying. Yeah, I I.
• 1:49:27
  Remember. That I remember what?
• 1:49:29
  Reading the 8th Doctor. Adventures in the comic strips I
• 1:49:34
  actually there's a couple of years back there's a Twitter
• 1:49:36
  thread I did on it. I remember the Glorious Dead.
• 1:49:39
  One of the things that I love about The Glorious Dead is that
• 1:49:41
  as you said, there's cliffhanger after cliffhanger of
• 1:49:43
  cliffhanger. But the cliffhangers don't pick
• 1:49:46
  up the following month. They switch the action to
• 1:49:48
  somebody else for the next month.
• 1:49:50
  And the glorious dead. The end of one of those episodes
• 1:49:55
  of the Glorious Dead. It was the first time that I've
• 1:49:57
  been reading the Doctor Who comic strip, and I actually had
• 1:50:00
  to sit quietly for a few minutes afterwards because I could not
• 1:50:03
  believe what I saw. And it's the bit where Izzy has
• 1:50:07
  been narrating the destruction of paradost, and at the end of
• 1:50:11
  it she confronts Morningstar, who says and says Beat you, he
• 1:50:15
  says Congratulations, pulls out a TCe and there's a shrunken
• 1:50:19
  Izzy at the bottom. And that's what the hell.
• 1:50:22
  And then next month we go to what?
• 1:50:24
  The we don't see, we don't see. Izzy for another two months and
• 1:50:27
  that whole. That whole.
• 1:50:28
  Chapter is a beautiful experimenting style as well.
• 1:50:31
  It's all raised by her, but I mean not afraid to do different
• 1:50:34
  things every week but the 8th. The the biggest, the biggest
• 1:50:37
  impact that it's had on that had on me, that comic strip was at
• 1:50:40
  the end of Oblivion. The plot wraps.
• 1:50:44
  Up with a couple of pages to go, and right at the end of one of
• 1:50:47
  the pages, Izzy says. I'd like to go home now.
• 1:50:52
  And that was. Like, wow.
• 1:50:53
  And they give it 2 pages, two whole pages to her departure.
• 1:50:56
  Doctor Who magazine, the comic strip, because it had to tie in
• 1:51:01
  with what was going on on the television at some point because
• 1:51:04
  they tied in the 7th Doctor ones with the Virgin New Adventures.
• 1:51:07
  And so they couldn't do anything new with the characters for the
• 1:51:10
  first time. It could give you a companion.
• 1:51:13
  I mean, no. They had Sharon with the 4th
• 1:51:14
  Doctor, but they never really gave her a proper departure, I
• 1:51:18
  think. For the first time, you had a
• 1:51:21
  character and a companion who got an introduction.
• 1:51:23
  She got an arc. She went through that whole
• 1:51:25
  business, having her body switch with destry and everything else.
• 1:51:28
  And there's some absolutely beautiful freak.
• 1:51:31
  Is a beautiful. Isn't that just?
• 1:51:33
  A wonderful piece of writing it is.
• 1:51:35
  Gorgeous. I mean, yeah, I know you said
• 1:51:37
  about it. Going to colour being.
• 1:51:40
  A little bit detrimental to the comic strip in some respects,
• 1:51:43
  but that one uses so much black or they do it.
• 1:51:46
  Very well, yeah. No, I'm not knocking the Color
• 1:51:49
  the color episodes either, but I do think there is something in
• 1:51:52
  the in the Glorious Dead. Particularly that that shows
• 1:51:55
  what you can do with that I think the.
• 1:51:56
  Multiverse sequence in the Glorious Dead would have been
• 1:51:59
  inducing had they tried that in colour, but it's the Glorious.
• 1:52:02
  Dead. The One.
• 1:52:02
  That has the full page, one of all the different universes.
• 1:52:05
  Yes, it does a crisscross like that.
• 1:52:07
  Yeah, that's. Amazing.
• 1:52:08
  I think that would have. Been migraine inducing if they'd
• 1:52:10
  tried that in colour so, but yeah, to actually have a
• 1:52:14
  companion who had an entry, an arc and then a departure, and to
• 1:52:18
  devote 2 whole pages of the comic strip to her departure.
• 1:52:22
  I mean, I I nearly cried. I mean, it's interesting.
• 1:52:25
  You know, because at the at the same point in time, at one point
• 1:52:29
  you had three 8th Doctor runs going on competing Big Finish
• 1:52:33
  audios, the books and the comic strips.
• 1:52:36
  And I think sort of people went in different cams.
• 1:52:39
  I think the smallest Cam was probably yeah maybe that's one
• 1:52:42
  reason why I I because because to me the 8th Doctor is first
• 1:52:47
  and foremost the comics from and then I got the Big Finish later
• 1:52:51
  on. And then and then and then.
• 1:52:53
  That's why I'm enjoying, I'm going to enjoy like, actually
• 1:52:56
  picking up on this parallel universe with the EDAS as well.
• 1:53:00
  But but this is my wheelhouse as if we're including comics as
• 1:53:03
  books, then then that's. I've read a lot more Doctor Who
• 1:53:06
  comics than I have books. But I get to work with Martin
• 1:53:09
  Garrity and talking with his black and white eye.
• 1:53:12
  Oh, look at that. That's that's his that's his art
• 1:53:17
  for my Demons of Eden which he gave me so as a so he, you know
• 1:53:22
  that got coloured but but also there's a black and white
• 1:53:25
  version we printed as well but and also I got to work with
• 1:53:27
  Adrian Salmon on my suit tech that's just come out as well.
• 1:53:31
  So when I got to sort of these people from my childhood I want
• 1:53:33
  to work with and they're amazingly lovely people, I
• 1:53:36
  never. Read the comic strips when they
• 1:53:37
  were coming out in the magazine, I just, they just never
• 1:53:39
  interested me because comics were never my thing.
• 1:53:41
  And then I I'd run out of Doctor Who.
• 1:53:44
  So I was like, OK, I'm going to start buying these collections
• 1:53:47
  and see what it's all about. One, you're right.
• 1:53:49
  These ones in particular just. Transported me.
• 1:53:51
  I just thought that run was incredible storytelling, but.
• 1:53:55
  But the my biggest. Gripe Going in was like, well,
• 1:53:58
  how the hell are you going to do, how are you going to do
• 1:54:00
  action in still images? How does that even work and how
• 1:54:04
  Martin Gerrity, is that how you say his name?
• 1:54:07
  Gerrity. Martin Gerrity Yeah, yeah, How
• 1:54:09
  he. Expresses that with a couple of
• 1:54:11
  panels it just constantly wowed me I was a complete convert by
• 1:54:15
  the time I finished. What's the first one?
• 1:54:18
  What's the very first one? These.
• 1:54:19
  The first end. Game is the first volume.
• 1:54:22
  I was like, bring it on. And I ordered the rest.
• 1:54:25
  And my other half was like, oh Jesus, more expense, but you
• 1:54:27
  know. What a.
• 1:54:29
  Great choice, James. That was a fantastic choice.
• 1:54:32
  The The Doctor comic strip run is absolutely superb,
• 1:54:36
  unfortunately. Jason, you've got to live up to
• 1:54:39
  that now. Off you go.
• 1:54:41
  OK, well I'm not going to do a comic strip, although there is
• 1:54:44
  some. Her excellent artwork in it I'm
• 1:54:47
  Going to do Cybermen by David Bank, yes.
• 1:54:51
  You you challenge accepted and you rose to it.
• 1:54:54
  It has also got. Glorious images in it it's got.
• 1:54:57
  Absolutely stunning artwork by Andrew Skeleton in it, and my
• 1:55:01
  copy has been signed by the Cybermen.
• 1:55:05
  I took it to Utopia last year and got that, but I mean, I
• 1:55:09
  bought this book when I was very early on in my in my fandom, but
• 1:55:13
  so it's, you know, 90. Three.
• 1:55:15
  I think I got this 93 or 94 and it is it's hard to actually
• 1:55:24
  classify what it is because on the one hand it has a whole
• 1:55:28
  section about the concept of Cybermen which talks about
• 1:55:32
  cybernetics and and ancient prosthetics and implicate and
• 1:55:36
  implants and things like that. Cybernetics in fiction is got
• 1:55:40
  it. It really stretches the
• 1:55:42
  boundaries. A bit.
• 1:55:44
  Then it covers the Cybermen in Doctor Who, but it gives you a
• 1:55:51
  history of the cyber race through these archivists that
• 1:55:55
  he's created and basically just gives you the plot of the
• 1:55:59
  stories. But it also ties up how the
• 1:56:01
  different Cybermen that we see on the screen have a timeline.
• 1:56:05
  It kind of creates a history of cyber.
• 1:56:07
  Love a timeline, don't they? Yeah.
• 1:56:09
  And it kind of divides and proliferation, cyber neomorphs,
• 1:56:13
  cyber Mondesians, cyber Telosians, etcetera, Jason,
• 1:56:18
  who's? Doing the art in that, Andrew.
• 1:56:20
  Skillet. No wonder it's so gorgeous,
• 1:56:23
  Yeah. And and yeah, there's some great
• 1:56:26
  stuff. I mean one of the things that
• 1:56:28
  it's easy to forget now it's got some artwork of the sets and the
• 1:56:33
  set design from Tomb of the Cybermen, which at the time.
• 1:56:38
  It was not available when this book was first published.
• 1:56:42
  So you know it's got some really good stuff in it and I spent
• 1:56:47
  ages copying out the schematic pictures it's got of all the
• 1:56:49
  different size of men in it because really appealed to me.
• 1:56:55
  And yeah, it's a brilliant, brilliant book and I love it.
• 1:57:00
  I I read it cover to cover when I got it and I've read it cover
• 1:57:03
  to cover many times since and David Banks just.
• 1:57:08
  Does a brilliant job with it. He really, you know, you you you
• 1:57:11
  you think sometimes these actors, they go in, they do a
• 1:57:14
  job and everything else and that's it.
• 1:57:15
  That's, you know, he's the cyber leader in a few Doctor Who
• 1:57:19
  stories. Well, OK, fine.
• 1:57:20
  But he's really obviously taken this role and run with it and
• 1:57:24
  created this. And that's above and beyond the
• 1:57:28
  Call of Duty. For any actor in any role, it's
• 1:57:32
  the work of an. Obsessive though, isn't it?
• 1:57:34
  It's it. It's got that slightly unhinged
• 1:57:36
  quality that that that we that we love.
• 1:57:39
  In Doctor Who, where he's gone, he's extrapolated so much from
• 1:57:43
  what he's been given and it's thoroughly researched, but then
• 1:57:46
  he's taken it another stage further.
• 1:57:47
  There's plenty of David Banks in there as well.
• 1:57:50
  Oh yeah. Well, David Banks is slightly
• 1:57:51
  unhinged, I'm convinced, having seen him since.
• 1:57:54
  Since that's come out, since the new series came back, we've had
• 1:57:56
  so many of these cash in books now, the monsters and this and
• 1:57:59
  that and it is basically just repeating what you see on the
• 1:58:02
  television to have something like this that delves into the
• 1:58:05
  side men. So, so creatively, I think it's
• 1:58:09
  well, well done. You did manage to at least
• 1:58:12
  match. If not, best, yeah, I don't.
• 1:58:14
  Think we've had any volume since.
• 1:58:16
  I mean we've had, as you say, we've had loads of tie in
• 1:58:18
  volumes with the series, but I don't think we've had anything
• 1:58:20
  with the level of research, factual research plus fictional
• 1:58:24
  creativity that's gone into that book since the Cyber Men.
• 1:58:28
  Volume 2 by Jason Thompson. Coming soon.
• 1:58:32
  I haven't got time for that, if anyone could.
• 1:58:33
  Do it, OK Are you going to get? An all round cheer like the rest
• 1:58:38
  of us. All right.
• 1:58:39
  Well mine is to bring us all the way up to date is Origin Stories
• 1:58:44
  which came out last year. The reason I recommend this is
• 1:58:48
  because for my podcast I just. I just did.
• 1:58:52
  I just did an episode. Well, it's not out yet but just
• 1:58:55
  did just did an interview with Mark Griffiths who's who's I
• 1:58:59
  he's a friend of mine anyway. But he and also one of our
• 1:59:02
  writers at Cutaway. But he he's just at time of
• 1:59:07
  recording, it's just about to come out.
• 1:59:09
  His actual first novel. 4th Doctor and Romana Mark Two novel
• 1:59:15
  which is the ever changing man. If I've remembered his title
• 1:59:17
  right, just a minute. It's.
• 1:59:21
  It is the ever changing man, isn't it?
• 1:59:23
  I will. It's the self-made Man, The ever
• 1:59:26
  changing man. The self-made man is his novel,
• 1:59:29
  which I haven't read yet, but this is a series of short
• 1:59:33
  stories. Have you guys read it?
• 1:59:35
  Origin stories? No, no, no.
• 1:59:38
  It's it's BBC book, obviously, but it's all companions and
• 1:59:42
  monsters. So you've got Davros in it.
• 1:59:43
  You've got Clara, you've got, You've got, but you've got Joe,
• 1:59:49
  You've got you know from old, classic and new.
• 1:59:52
  And you've Sophie Aldridge has written one.
• 1:59:55
  So has Katie Manning and and people, Sarah Daniels, Nikita
• 2:00:02
  Gill and and my friend Mark Griffiths and he he, he, you
• 2:00:07
  know, they were all asked which which sort of period do you want
• 2:00:10
  to write? And he went for Sarah Jane.
• 2:00:13
  And what I love about I mean, I won't spoil it, but what I love
• 2:00:17
  about his story in particular is it starts off with Sarah Jane as
• 2:00:21
  a youngster, listening to John Smith and the Common Men.
• 2:00:26
  You know as a sort of little you know as a as a call back to the
• 2:00:30
  Unearthly child. So it sort of puts her in the
• 2:00:32
  same world as very firmly in the same world as Susan she was a
• 2:00:38
  child at the same time Susan was was you know living in living in
• 2:00:43
  Totters Lane. So it's just it's just, but just
• 2:00:45
  just as a little. Just as a sort of modern modern
• 2:00:48
  bringing Who up to date. It's just a really, really a
• 2:00:54
  bunch of little short stories. I think weirdly it does remind
• 2:00:57
  me of the brief encounters kind of thing from Doctor Who
• 2:01:00
  magazine. I used to really like that kind
• 2:01:03
  of the granular nature of Doctor Who found them that you could go
• 2:01:08
  here's a story that's hardly science fiction, but it's just
• 2:01:11
  got enough in it because we know where these characters are going
• 2:01:14
  to go in the future or where they have been anywhere you meet
• 2:01:18
  them. But it's yeah, I'd recommend it
• 2:01:20
  for all Doctor Who fans. And the last recommendation from
• 2:01:25
  me is going to be Face of the Enemy by David A Mckinty, which
• 2:01:30
  is a very early past Doctor adventure which takes a grain of
• 2:01:35
  an idea from the clause of Axos and that is the master and UNIT
• 2:01:39
  working together and makes a full length book about it.
• 2:01:42
  So the 3rd Doctor and Joe are off on an adventure for the
• 2:01:45
  entirety of the book. And it is unit facing a terrible
• 2:01:49
  disaster where the master, Roger Delgado's master, who's just
• 2:01:53
  fabulous anyway, has to step in and save the day.
• 2:01:56
  And what is great about it is it's like unit porn.
• 2:02:00
  You think about any unit character, past, present or
• 2:02:04
  future. If they've not been in the show
• 2:02:07
  yet, then Brigadier Bambera Suns in there somewhere.
• 2:02:09
  You know, if they've been in, they're all in there somewhere.
• 2:02:13
  Mckinty loves Doctor Who continuity and this is his one
• 2:02:16
  chance to sort of do a third Doctor book and throw everything
• 2:02:20
  in. It's really fun read.
• 2:02:23
  It genuinely feels like a series 7 stroke 8 Doctor Who's story.
• 2:02:29
  It puts Roger Delgado's master front and centre and he's smooth
• 2:02:32
  as hell in it. It's just really, really, really
• 2:02:35
  fun. And in a time when I think the
• 2:02:38
  past Doctor adventures were I'll use that word again very hit or
• 2:02:41
  miss. It's it's a really great real.
• 2:02:43
  I don't know any of you guys have read it but it's really
• 2:02:45
  fun. I haven't, but I.
• 2:02:46
  Rate him as a writer. I think White Darkness is is one
• 2:02:50
  of the stand out new adventures. He actually, he went on to do a
• 2:02:55
  number of really, I thought, really effective BBC books, but
• 2:02:59
  did he do any other virgins? Yeah.
• 2:03:03
  First Frontier and Sanctuary. Oh, that's right.
• 2:03:07
  That was the first Master One, wasn't it?
• 2:03:08
  First Frontier? Oh, spoilers.
• 2:03:10
  Sorry. 30 years ago, yeah. Exactly.
• 2:03:16
  We've gone from 20 to 30. Boys, thank.
• 2:03:19
  You so much. That was again a wonderful
• 2:03:22
  conversation. I'm hoping again I can entice
• 2:03:26
  you back. I fancy taking us into virgin
• 2:03:29
  territory next time, I. Don't know we're talking about.
• 2:03:32
  We're talking. About books or something else,
• 2:03:34
  Joe, Because we never know with you.
• 2:03:35
  No, no, this is the one. Podcast where I get to pretend
• 2:03:38
  to at least be mildly intellectual.
• 2:03:39
  So, Jason, you can be smutty you've.
• 2:03:43
  Got a paving? Slab question, there's a good.
• 2:03:45
  Chance there will be some sex in there somewhere, or someone sort
• 2:03:48
  of wiping some semen out of their mouth or something like
• 2:03:50
  that. You know what?
• 2:03:52
  Book. I'm talking about James.
• 2:03:53
  Know what you're getting with the New.
• 2:03:54
  Adventures. I just to ask you, although do
• 2:03:57
  you all have them or can you no, a little more?
• 2:04:01
  I don't have them, but are we all going to?
• 2:04:05
  Be bidding for the time days on eBay?
• 2:04:07
  Is that yes? Not, not unless you want a
• 2:04:09
  second mortgage. We ain't.
• 2:04:10
  No we'll, we'll. Find.
• 2:04:12
  A way, but thank you again for your time.
• 2:04:14
  It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you, thank you and the joy
• 2:04:18
  as usual. No, no.
• 2:04:19
  Wait. I'm so sorry.
• 2:04:20
  I was going to go then, but I'm very quickly going to throw this
• 2:04:22
  to Ian very quickly to talk about his crowdfunder.
• 2:04:28
  Oh yeah, Well, well, it's not my crowdfunders, technically, but
• 2:04:32
  it's Cutaway Comics as Crowdfunder, so launched by
• 2:04:35
  Gareth. But obviously I was tweeting
• 2:04:38
  like crazy from Cutaway Bunker's account.
• 2:04:44
  But yeah, we we it's it's for a prequel to Inferno written by
• 2:04:49
  Gary Russell with art by John Ridgway.
• 2:04:54
  And so obviously we knew it was going to be quite popular
• 2:04:56
  amongst 2 fans. And we've got a bit of a we've
• 2:04:59
  got a sort of bit of a Rep now so people like what we do.
• 2:05:03
  But just yeah, the idea. I've read the full script
• 2:05:05
  because I'm technically Gary Russell's editor which is just
• 2:05:07
  mad to me because he doesn't really need an editor but that's
• 2:05:12
  technically what I am and he But yeah.
• 2:05:14
  So this first thing is a prequel to to Inferno and it starts in
• 2:05:19
  1940 and it goes all the way up to I think the day before the
• 2:05:22
  Doctor arrives as the world's about to end as as a penetration
• 2:05:29
  0 is almost reached steady on. And also there's there's
• 2:05:35
  ultimately going to be after this there's going to be a three
• 2:05:37
  book, three book thing about after the doctor leaves.
• 2:05:42
  So Gary's Gary's initial idea before he had the idea for the
• 2:05:46
  prequel was the Doctor was right, but he was off by six
• 2:05:50
  weeks. So the Earth's got six weeks and
• 2:05:54
  it's the whole continent spanning thing and it's got
• 2:05:57
  Chinleaf and Mind of Evil in it because we've got permission to
• 2:06:01
  both of Don Horton's things. So Chinle exists in our world,
• 2:06:06
  whatever our world is in the Pertwa universe and so obviously
• 2:06:09
  she exists over there as well in the in the Inferno world.
• 2:06:14
  So it's it's just going to be huge.
• 2:06:16
  But this this particular kick start, it was just really, it's
• 2:06:18
  really gratifying because we had these stretch goals and we
• 2:06:22
  thought well mate, are we going to get to 13?
• 2:06:24
  And suddenly we got to 13 grand. And so the stretch goal was a
• 2:06:28
  666 page extra thing from Gary about Chinley.
• 2:06:33
  And then the next goal just 24 hours away before the end of the
• 2:06:37
  Kickstarter was, was for a novella from Gary again set in
• 2:06:43
  the mind of evil sort of universe.
• 2:06:47
  And somehow through lots of tweeting and just generally
• 2:06:51
  people being awesome, we went sailed past 14 grand as well.
• 2:06:55
  So it's just it was just lovely, but I was just there going, am I
• 2:06:59
  pissing? We're just pissing everyone off.
• 2:07:01
  But every time we do one of these Kickstarters we always get
• 2:07:04
  people going. I didn't see anything.
• 2:07:06
  Ian, if they're throwing their money at you, they're not pissed
• 2:07:08
  off, all right? No, no.
• 2:07:09
  But some people, some people are pissed off because they haven't
• 2:07:11
  been able to. So you always think, you always
• 2:07:14
  think you're over saturating Twitter, but Twitter is so
• 2:07:18
  you're just a drop in the ocean every tweet.
• 2:07:20
  So, so every single time there seems to be somebody saying, oh,
• 2:07:24
  I didn't see that, I would have backed that.
• 2:07:25
  And it's like we just sent out a tweet tweet about every 10
• 2:07:28
  minutes for the last 24 hours, but for some reason see them
• 2:07:32
  saying saying that. David A McKinsey likes
• 2:07:33
  continuity. I know Gary, he loves a bit of
• 2:07:35
  continuity as well. These are going to be an
• 2:07:37
  absolute treat and it's his absolute favorite story, I
• 2:07:43
  think, but definitely his favorite per toy.
• 2:07:45
  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I I I I think it's
• 2:07:48
  probably mine as well. I love Inferno.
• 2:07:50
  I love Inferno so much. It's brilliant.
• 2:07:53
  Congratulations. I saw that.
• 2:07:54
  I saw that that total going up and up and up.
• 2:07:57
  I was, it was an incredible. It was mad.
• 2:07:58
  It was yeah, it was mad. It was just a poor Gary has now
• 2:08:02
  got, oh great. I've got loads of extra.
• 2:08:04
  I've got to work. Now, yeah, you know.
• 2:08:06
  With it, Russell. Come on.
• 2:08:08
  Yeah. Careful what you wish for, Gary.
• 2:08:12
  James. Ian, Jason, thank you very much.
• 2:08:16
  Yeah. Thanks so much.
• 2:08:16
  Thank you for having us. Thank you Been.
• 2:08:18
  Great.