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Hamster Book Club - Goth Opera (featuring Luke Sims-Jenkins & Andrew Swann) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:01
  It began during a dream tree mass.
• 0:04
  Her father was telling her that she must get out of the house,
• 0:08
  that there was no longer any place for her at his hearth.
• 0:11
  He'd found a new wife and she was going to have a baby, Mr.
• 0:16
  Protested. She'd always been a loving
• 0:18
  daughter to him. It was wonderful that he was
• 0:21
  alive and himself. Could she not stay?
• 0:25
  No tree. Mass waved a finger.
• 0:27
  She must go and sleep in the Hut on the hills with only a rough
• 0:30
  blanket to cover her at night. And it was night now.
• 0:35
  Nyssa would creep up to the window of her father's house and
• 0:39
  staring at him and his new bride slowly dancing by the fire.
• 0:44
  Something was moving across the wooden floor.
• 0:47
  A naked baby. It looked up at the window.
• 0:52
  It could see her. The baby rushed across the room,
• 0:56
  its tiny limbs working like an insect.
• 0:59
  With one leap, it was atop the chair.
• 1:01
  It had its palms and giant face against the window.
• 1:05
  Let me in, he said. Nisa wants to know what the
• 1:09
  baby's name was, so she carefully under the window,
• 1:12
  catch and let it inside. The cold air woke her up.
• 1:19
  She was standing by the window in her nightdress and the baby
• 1:22
  was holding her hand. Nisa stifled her urge to jump
• 1:26
  back. It was a little naked blue eyed
• 1:29
  boy, about a year old. It was standing on the window
• 1:33
  frame, swaying. Only it's grip on her finger was
• 1:36
  keeping it upright. Nisa knew enough about Earth
• 1:40
  Children to realise that the baby couldn't possibly have got
• 1:43
  here on its own. She picked the baby up.
• 1:46
  Come on then, let's go and see the Doctor.
• 1:49
  He'll know what to do with you. She reached for the dressing
• 1:52
  gown that hung from the wardrobe door and in doing so exposed the
• 1:56
  mirror on the front of the cabinet.
• 1:58
  In the mirror. She wasn't carrying anything.
• 2:03
  Nisa looked down at the weight in her arms.
• 2:05
  The baby opened his mouth out of his pink smooth upper gums. 2
• 2:10
  elongated fangs emerged with a convulsive jerk of her arms.
• 2:16
  She threw the thing onto the bed.
• 2:18
  It bounced immediately back at her.
• 2:21
  It spun onto her throat, it's little hands pulling the
• 2:23
  material around her collarbone. Terrified, she ran at the wall,
• 2:28
  all instinct not to heard the baby gone.
• 2:31
  It's head hit the plaster and rebounded uninjured.
• 2:35
  Nyssa grabbed the infant with both hands trying to pull it off
• 2:37
  her, but it had enormous strength.
• 2:41
  The baby's warm mouth descended to the flesh of her neck, 2
• 2:45
  injections into the jugular vein.
• 2:47
  Then the baby began to suck on. An awful calm descended on her
• 2:53
  and she realized that the baby wasn't just taking her blood
• 2:55
  out, it was putting something in.
• 2:59
  A calming agent, a pre Med. The animal had to be calm.
• 3:16
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 3:18
  My name is Joe Ford and once again, The Avengers.
• 3:22
  Avengers. The Avengers have assembled.
• 3:26
  I am here with the marvellous Luke.
• 3:29
  Hello, Luke. Hello, I'm Emma Peel.
• 3:33
  Very sexy with it. And Andrew.
• 3:36
  Hello, Andrew. Hello.
• 3:37
  I guess that makes me Tara King. Underrated.
• 3:44
  Underrated and a bit of shit do you like?
• 3:46
  That season of Do you like that season of The Avengers?
• 3:49
  I like that season. I do like that.
• 3:51
  I do like Tara. Yeah, it does sort of be between
• 3:53
  genius and total shit, doesn't it, That?
• 3:56
  Idea I. Feel bad for mentioning it now?
• 3:58
  I've never seen Classic Avengers.
• 4:00
  It's like one of my blind spots. Oh really?
• 4:02
  It's coming soon to hamster near you.
• 4:06
  Luke discovers The Avengers, but for right now we are embarking
• 4:13
  on a I can't say past Doctor adventure.
• 4:16
  It's not, is it? It's a missing adventure book.
• 4:19
  The first missing adventure. Golf the original, you might
• 4:23
  say. Oh.
• 4:23
  Well done. But before we go there, a huge
• 4:29
  responsibility has been bestowed upon Andrew today.
• 4:32
  Luke, it's your turn next time. So get thinking.
• 4:35
  Andrew, what is our icebreaker question this time?
• 4:39
  Right. Well, because we are doing Goth
• 4:41
  opera today, which is soon to be a Big Finish drama, I'd like to
• 4:45
  ask you guys what should be Big Finish's next novel adaptation?
• 4:52
  Oak. All right, so can we all stop
• 4:57
  with the Virgin Love Fest for once?
• 5:00
  Don't worry, I like Virgin books.
• 5:02
  Come on, give me some. Give me some EDA, some.
• 5:05
  I was going to do the easy one but I did mention the burning
• 5:08
  last episode. That's just feels like a great
• 5:12
  place to start. But I thought, let's go
• 5:15
  something else. Hope by Mark Clapham set in a
• 5:20
  far future. It's Cybermen, but not Cybermen.
• 5:23
  But it's got cybernetic ish things involved in it.
• 5:26
  It's got this really cool kind of futuristic thing.
• 5:28
  Mark Clapper mainly ever wrote one EDA, and I always thought
• 5:31
  this one was actually pretty decent.
• 5:33
  It's all right. It's not City of the Dead, but
• 5:37
  it's got this fun kind of futuristic setting in Vibe.
• 5:40
  I like Angie. It fits in it and I think it'd
• 5:43
  be a good time. I think it's got references of
• 5:45
  things that happened in the past, but the 8th docket doesn't
• 5:49
  really know any of that stuff either.
• 5:50
  So it's him kind of figuring it all that too.
• 5:52
  I remember it being great. Doesn't it have that huge robot
• 5:55
  silver in it? Like part man, part Cyborg with
• 5:58
  an enormous silver fist. That's right.
• 6:02
  Now that you mentioned him currently reminds me of the the
• 6:07
  Cyberman guy from the Jody era. Who's that guy?
• 6:09
  Oh. Ashat.
• 6:10
  Yeah, that's it, you say, Ashat. I remember they had, they had a
• 6:16
  little picture of Silver on the Doctor Who website when Hope
• 6:20
  came out because they didn't often have like little extra
• 6:23
  visuals, but they did like a little sort of, yeah, painting
• 6:27
  of what he looked like. Wasn't that book the one where
• 6:31
  Angie betrays the Doctor And that basically the first half of
• 6:35
  the book is all about setting that up, and then the
• 6:38
  second-half of the book is dealing with the consequences of
• 6:41
  that? I'm pretty sure, yeah, maybe it
• 6:44
  might be. Maybe it shouldn't be the first
• 6:46
  Angie audio that they do, but. What a cow.
• 6:50
  Mind you. Any any book you choose, people
• 6:52
  might come away thinking that everyone is.
• 6:55
  Oh, I don't know. I like.
• 6:55
  I love Angie. Is there a Dave clone in it?
• 6:59
  Is that how they? Why does it look like a big gay
• 7:03
  disco on the cover, like three men standing?
• 7:07
  In this sort. Of purple.
• 7:10
  Mix a mid teleportation or something, Yeah, yeah.
• 7:13
  It does look a bit like a club flyer from like 2002, doesn't
• 7:16
  it? And there's like a city on
• 7:19
  stilts or something. I'm like black sheep.
• 7:21
  You're having an off day. That was easy.
• 7:25
  Oh, I don't want to choose that. I've talked to book now because
• 7:27
  it's too obvious. But unfortunately I am going to
• 7:30
  do that. And I am going to choose one
• 7:32
  from the Earth arc and I am going to choose one which has
• 7:35
  already been covered on the book club.
• 7:37
  But Father Time, I think. I think they often go with like
• 7:41
  the biggies, don't they? They're big hitters.
• 7:44
  They did love and war didn't they?
• 7:45
  Nightshade damaged goods actually surprised me.
• 7:49
  They haven't done dying days or Lung Barrow, if I'm honest.
• 7:53
  Do the expensive books big finishes what the answer is they
• 7:57
  did the well mannered war, now just do the rest of them.
• 7:59
  Yeah, and confusion. But I think Father Time would be
• 8:02
  really interesting because it would like I'd do it in three,
• 8:05
  maybe 3-1 hour parts and do it across the 80s, like the
• 8:10
  bookies, early mid and late cast.
• 8:13
  Someone truly amazing as Miranda Paul McGann would just knock it
• 8:18
  out of the park and you could just go crazy on like 80s
• 8:21
  soundtracks and things like that.
• 8:23
  I just think it will be a wonderful, wonderful day and
• 8:25
  it's a brilliant story, so. Yeah.
• 8:29
  Don't think you're getting away with this, Andrew.
• 8:30
  What's your choice? Well, as a massive shock to both
• 8:35
  of you, I've also chosen an Eighth Doctor, also from the
• 8:40
  Earth arc, also one that Luke mentioned.
• 8:45
  I went for the Burning, but so my rationale was that I kind of
• 8:52
  I was thinking about what story I would like to hear performed
• 8:56
  by actors rather than just a sort of audio book.
• 8:59
  Because actually my experience, I've been a bit hit and miss
• 9:02
  with the with the audio adaptations that Big Finish have
• 9:05
  done. And some of them, I just feel
• 9:07
  like they're really long. They're not very like they
• 9:12
  haven't kind of taken a knife to it in a way that I would and
• 9:16
  kind of cut it right back to the bare bones that they're a little
• 9:18
  bit indulgent sometimes. So I was thinking like what
• 9:21
  would I want to hear that wouldn't just be an audio book
• 9:23
  reading because that's probably what I prefer and and I thought
• 9:26
  that Paul McGann would absolutely bloody love the Earth
• 9:30
  arc and especially the Burning. There's so much for him to get
• 9:33
  his teeth into, to play this kind of darker different version
• 9:36
  of the Doctor, which you kind of get like that's the Doctor that
• 9:40
  he's kind of a bit more drawn to.
• 9:41
  Like you feel like he wants to play that Doctor rather than the
• 9:44
  kind of tiggerish Dr. if that's the I prefer like the lighter,
• 9:48
  tiggerish 8th Doctor. But you can tell that eight that
• 9:51
  McGann kind of likes playing The Darkness and the character.
• 9:54
  So I think yeah, the burning and then doing the entire earth arc
• 9:59
  if I can, if I can in this imaginary world, decide on that
• 10:03
  and I actually. Can we rewrite escape velocity
• 10:06
  to be a just a completely? Different.
• 10:07
  Oh yeah. Like I actually have like a
• 10:09
  grand plan, but if they did go. On.
• 10:11
  If they did like a McGann spin off show to differentiate it
• 10:15
  from the main show, do the Earth arc because it's a different
• 10:19
  take on Doctor Who. So it doesn't feel like it's
• 10:21
  competing with the main show. And what I would do is I would
• 10:24
  call it Doctor Who century and there'd be 10 episodes, each
• 10:29
  one's a different decade. So you get more than the Earth
• 10:31
  arc. You change the ending because
• 10:33
  escape velocity wasn't very good.
• 10:35
  And there you have it, like you're kind of McGann mini
• 10:38
  season that like wins all the awards and everyone says wow,
• 10:41
  Doctor Who's this amazing, powerful show.
• 10:45
  It would be amazing. I love the fact that in the last
• 10:47
  episode that you dropped, you know that fabulous bits of paper
• 10:52
  that you've got in your books and now you've upgraded to in
• 10:55
  your head where you're creating a whole TV.
• 10:57
  Series. Wow, these books.
• 11:00
  That sounds amazing. Can I ask, would there be after
• 11:03
  hours The stranger episode of the Earth arc?
• 11:08
  Do you know what this book is? You do.
• 11:11
  Yes, the the Doctor Who erotica that Lance Parkin wrote.
• 11:16
  Luke looks shocked. Luke, I'm assuming you're not
• 11:18
  aware of this. Yeah, I think there was.
• 11:21
  I think virgin. Books.
• 11:24
  Virgin books as long as well as having the new adventures, they
• 11:27
  also had this line of erotica. So kind of like Mills and Boon,
• 11:32
  but like Sexier and. Some of the sex, yeah.
• 11:38
  So twice the Fabio. Some of the Doctor Who writers,
• 11:43
  because it was all the same office, they ended up writing
• 11:44
  for that line as well, usually under pen names.
• 11:47
  And Lance Parkin, wrote one called The Stranger, which was
• 11:51
  about this lady who meets this mysterious, amnesiac, beautiful
• 11:57
  man who has long flowing hair, doesn't know who he is, and
• 12:01
  sweeps her off her feet. And your imagination.
• 12:05
  Have you read it, Andrew? I haven't read it.
• 12:07
  I have it. You have it?
• 12:09
  Yes. One of my friends came round.
• 12:11
  We're having a movie night, right?
• 12:12
  And she said, what's this, the stranger?
• 12:14
  Because I've got my bookshelf right next to the sofa, and she
• 12:17
  picked it up and she started flicking through it well.
• 12:21
  And Luke is explicit from page one, all right.
• 12:25
  Not in a way that I I particularly like reading about,
• 12:28
  but it is very. Explicit.
• 12:29
  She goes to me, Can I borrow this?
• 12:31
  I went, yeah, if you like. And then it was about three
• 12:34
  months ago I said to her, you done with that book yet?
• 12:36
  She went. No, not yet.
• 12:39
  It's absolute filth. So how did we get here?
• 12:42
  Yeah, you need to see which which which bits of the spine
• 12:45
  are broken when she gives it. Back Oh my.
• 12:48
  God. It's well thumbed, does it?
• 12:51
  It's more interesting than what I was going to say.
• 12:53
  My copy of The Burning for some reason.
• 12:56
  It has this. It is Doctor Who, The Burning,
• 13:00
  and it has it's BBC Worldwide on it, a mysterious Fisher.
• 13:04
  And yeah, it's just like this press release for The Burning in
• 13:07
  my copy. I I sold all my books.
• 13:09
  Many, a few years ago, everyone. Sorry, everyone who's just upset
• 13:14
  hearing that. But I did and I did get the
• 13:16
  burning back and it came up with this little thing.
• 13:18
  So I was like, really? That's kind of nice.
• 13:21
  Well, there you go. That was an extra page that I
• 13:22
  could burn in that furnace all. The books were open.
• 13:26
  If they all got one, do you know we all did go for BBC Book
• 13:30
  Center, but I suppose it's because like you said, Virgin,
• 13:34
  they've all been Virgin books that.
• 13:35
  They've. Done so far.
• 13:45
  I got a bit of sad news for you because I was listening to an
• 13:49
  interview with Lizbeth Miles and with Nicholas Briggs and well,
• 13:56
  like we all thought maybe this was like the first of a new wave
• 13:59
  of audio adaptations. It's not.
• 14:03
  Basically, this was recorded years ago and it was supposed to
• 14:08
  come out with all the others, and for whatever reason it
• 14:12
  didn't come out then. So this has just been hanging
• 14:14
  about Goth opera for a long time.
• 14:17
  Now those audios really didn't fucking sell, did they?
• 14:20
  Oh shit. And now And now, yeah, now
• 14:22
  they've decided to bring it out. And Nicholas Breeze
• 14:24
  categorically said we are not doing any more of these, This
• 14:27
  is, we just want to release this.
• 14:29
  Unless they sell a lot. Well, let's hope so.
• 14:32
  I've read the book so I'm not sure if it will, but.
• 14:36
  I don't know, like there seems to be quite a buzz about it.
• 14:39
  You don't really see with Big Finish stuff these days.
• 14:41
  People seem really excited for it.
• 14:43
  And, you know, generally speaking, now, I don't know if
• 14:46
  this is your experience of it, but when Big Finish announced
• 14:49
  things like Dark Gala Frame, it's like there's people are
• 14:52
  sort of going, oh really, are we doing this?
• 14:56
  As a side note, I listened to the first one this week.
• 14:58
  It was bloody brilliant. But my initial reaction was
• 15:02
  Morbius the Master. Oh, how Riversing, actually,
• 15:06
  that seeks quite well into the Goth opera, because they're all
• 15:10
  mentioned in this. Well, where on earth do we begin
• 15:16
  with this book, Luke, actually. Yes.
• 15:20
  Now this is more of a this is far more of a flat team
• 15:23
  structure than it used to be. All right, we've been doing this
• 15:25
  a long time now. So what?
• 15:26
  The 6th book. Why don't you kick us off?
• 15:30
  All right, so yes, everyone, we're doing goth opera.
• 15:33
  It is 1/5 Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan story.
• 15:37
  It's another story that is the first story of her just coming
• 15:41
  back onto the TARDIS from Ark of Infinity.
• 15:45
  It seems to be a lot of those. Or if there's a story set close
• 15:47
  to there, they got to mention that, oh, I've just come back
• 15:50
  from Amsterdam. I'm like, yes, we know
• 15:52
  Psychedric's death, they've got to mention that.
• 15:54
  And she just had a holiday and a haircut.
• 15:56
  So it's set there in that timeline.
• 16:01
  And it's also one of the very few stories that is set at least
• 16:05
  partly in Australia. The only ones I could think of
• 16:07
  off the top of my head were Enemy of the World, Spyfall and
• 16:12
  Dreamtime. But that audio is kind of shit,
• 16:14
  so don't worry about Dreamtime. So yeah, this is a book that I
• 16:21
  think the first half I was like, right, let's do it.
• 16:27
  And then I got to Chapter 6 and I'm like Crusty the Clown.
• 16:30
  Like, what the fuck was that? And it was the second-half
• 16:35
  wasn't bad. I was just like, I feel like I
• 16:37
  just someone shoved a chapter of Terry Terry's book in the middle
• 16:42
  of Goth Opera and now I'm reading Goth opera again.
• 16:45
  It was. It was.
• 16:47
  Are we sure Tara Sticks didn't write?
• 16:49
  OK, can we cover Chapter 6 to start off with?
• 16:51
  Let's get it out. Of all right.
• 16:52
  Because it does feel as if Tara Sticks just came in and just
• 16:55
  wrote a chapter of this book and then walk on.
• 16:58
  He'll take over again. Because we we go to Gallifrey,
• 17:01
  right? And we're trying to set up how
• 17:04
  I'm going to call her Ruth. Is that right?
• 17:07
  I'm going to say Ruth, we'll find out.
• 17:10
  When the audio comes. Out and why she thinks the great
• 17:13
  vampire, the sorry the Brazil on was bitten by the great vampire
• 17:17
  and all this stuff. But then in the meantime she
• 17:20
  seems to send Romana off to a marsh to be eaten by drashings
• 17:25
  and glitz and Dipper turn up. Well, what was that all about,
• 17:28
  Andrew? Wow, there is.
• 17:31
  Do you know the back story to chapter chapter 6?
• 17:33
  Please enlighten. Me so apparently in that in that
• 17:36
  book I recommended last time the The Who Adventures, it says that
• 17:40
  chapter six was deliberately written to kind of mash loads of
• 17:44
  stuff together. Because that's sort of it was
• 17:47
  like a sort of a guide for how to use the Doctor Who mythology
• 17:51
  in a In a Missing Adventure. It feels like a pretty terrible
• 17:56
  guy for how to do that. Just sort of throw together a
• 18:00
  load of disparate elements and hope for the best do.
• 18:03
  You know what, right? I feel as if Gary Russell break
• 18:06
  into the David A Mckinty took that as a blueprint.
• 18:09
  Yeah, right. We're going to plug every gap in
• 18:11
  continuity going. Yeah, I mean it.
• 18:14
  It feels very kind of modern Big Finish.
• 18:17
  It feels like, you know the the kind of names out of a hat
• 18:20
  approach to storytelling. It's like, why the fuck is glitz
• 18:23
  there? Like it makes.
• 18:25
  No, I think the the problem I have with that sort of
• 18:28
  storytelling is that it makes the Doctor universe feel
• 18:30
  smaller, not bigger. Like, of all the places in time
• 18:36
  and space, Ramona ends up in the mini scope.
• 18:40
  Possibly the same mini scope from from Carnival of Monsters,
• 18:45
  which is now owned by Glitz and Dipper, who then talk about
• 18:50
  metal because she's just gone home and then Flavia turns.
• 18:54
  It's like it's it's it's not good, but it's kind of it's kind
• 19:00
  of fun. I guess it's silly.
• 19:02
  Do you think Terrorist Dix read that chapter?
• 19:05
  Oh wow, mate. Paul Cornell.
• 19:07
  He's written this fabulous book. I'm going to read it.
• 19:09
  And he read that chapter, and then he started writing The
• 19:11
  Eight Doctors after that. Because it's basically that,
• 19:14
  isn't it? Yeah, I mean it's it's possible.
• 19:18
  Right. It's so weird.
• 19:20
  And I I was reading this book in bed, right?
• 19:23
  And I've started going through it going OK, vampire stuff and
• 19:27
  gaseous things, turning people into vampire.
• 19:29
  Wait, what's this like? Hey, what?
• 19:33
  I know. I was getting more and more
• 19:34
  hysterical in bed. Martha was going to be Are you
• 19:37
  all right? I'm like, I don't know what's
• 19:40
  going on with this book, but it's gone completely off the
• 19:42
  rails. Yeah, I wonder if that chapter
• 19:46
  is going to make it into the audio adaptation.
• 19:48
  Oh please. Oh, please bring in Lala Ward.
• 19:52
  Just for that and the terrible Tony Selby impersonator.
• 19:59
  All right, have. They used the Tony Selby
• 20:00
  impersonator. Oh, I guess that's.
• 20:02
  They've done, they've done Garen from Rebus Operation, but they
• 20:06
  haven't. Done.
• 20:06
  They have two of her dance. Which is a shame, because Tony
• 20:09
  Selby was Is he still with us? No.
• 20:12
  Didn't you always say no? Is that the real death?
• 20:15
  Or was he retired? Fake death from before that.
• 20:18
  I think he's really dead. OK, OK, well, let's come away
• 20:22
  from Chapter 6 then, which is a bizarre anomaly in this book.
• 20:28
  Andrew, I think you rather like this.
• 20:31
  I love this back. OK, please tell me why.
• 20:37
  Well, like half half. It's because it's just a really
• 20:42
  nostalgic read for me, because this was one of the first kind
• 20:47
  of grown up Doctor Who books that I read.
• 20:51
  I think I read it maybe when I was like 12 and then maybe again
• 20:54
  when I was. I definitely read it twice, like
• 20:56
  in quite quick succession because I love that and because
• 21:00
  you know, I was a lonely teenager and like vampires, you
• 21:05
  know, just kind of did it for me.
• 21:08
  And like I think this was, this was sort of just before Buffy
• 21:11
  came out as well. So reading this like it, I think
• 21:14
  that Paul Paul Cornell does some quite interesting things with
• 21:18
  vampires and kind of vampire mythology and sort of takes what
• 21:23
  you've got from State of Decay and Blood Harvest, but then to
• 21:26
  kind of makes it into something new and a bit more modern and
• 21:30
  put some new bits into the kind of rules of vampires in Doctor
• 21:34
  Who. So yeah, I loved all that and
• 21:39
  you know, it's like it's dark and violent and kind of sexy.
• 21:45
  Like, yeah, I was, I was into it as a teenager and like coming
• 21:48
  back to it now, like I think it still holds up.
• 21:50
  I think it's still like the characters are really well
• 21:53
  written. The plot I think is really good
• 21:56
  and until the end it kind of gets a bit techno badly.
• 22:00
  I think the the Manchester setting works really well.
• 22:03
  The kind of the religious stuff is a bit strange, but like the
• 22:08
  thing that works as a as as a kind of strand to it and what
• 22:12
  he's doing there is quite interesting with the kind of
• 22:15
  faith aspect of vampires that we came across in Curse of Fenrick
• 22:19
  and kind of, yeah, doing the kind of evangelist stuff with it
• 22:23
  is interesting. So yeah, I'm, I'm a I'm a goth
• 22:26
  opera fan. So many things to unpick from
• 22:29
  what you said that we'll. Get to it all.
• 22:31
  Sorry for the babbles not. At all.
• 22:33
  Not at all, Luke. So what's your overall
• 22:36
  impression of this book? Well, I I read this back in the
• 22:40
  day, quite enjoyed it. Yeah, I think this was even
• 22:44
  before. So a lot of these missing
• 22:47
  adventures I'd even read before I'd even seen, like, most of the
• 22:53
  bloody TV show at this point, so I hadn't even heard.
• 22:55
  I hadn't even seen Arkham Infinity or any of the stories
• 22:58
  surrounding it yet. No, I tell Phillips, I had.
• 23:01
  So this might be my excitement level, I guess, because I hadn't
• 23:04
  seen all of Sylvie Sylvester. But I'd seen all the Davis
• 23:07
  because of the 5:30 in the morning repeat.
• 23:10
  So there's a few other Aussies on these podcasts.
• 23:13
  Davidson on the repeat in the morning.
• 23:15
  Coming after Ark of Infinity, this can only be a better story,
• 23:19
  right? Well, yeah.
• 23:22
  But even though the story's not great, I I don't like.
• 23:25
  I don't dislike any Davidson TV stories.
• 23:27
  I'm sorry. I'm weird.
• 23:28
  I'm like that. But as if one day, you know the
• 23:31
  three of us should come together and we'll do ATV Davidson story.
• 23:37
  Two's on TV reading again. This time I was like, oh, I
• 23:45
  forgot that we're absolutely in Australia.
• 23:47
  And Tegan's cracking tinnies, which is a can of beer.
• 23:52
  David Boone's playing the cricket.
• 23:54
  David Boone's famous in cricket for two things.
• 23:57
  It's not his batting, even though it was pretty good.
• 24:00
  This is all I remember from David Boone.
• 24:03
  He would stand so close to the freaking batsman that even just
• 24:07
  watching him on the pitch, he'd wear his cricket helmet for
• 24:10
  fielding because he was still standing that close to the
• 24:13
  bloody batsman. So there's that.
• 24:15
  And he's also got the record for sinking the most tinnies on the
• 24:18
  flight from Australia to England for the Ashes.
• 24:21
  So there, there he's oh, and he's in golf goth opera as well.
• 24:26
  So I was excited. I was like, yay, Australia,
• 24:28
  let's go. Then we went to Manchester and
• 24:30
  I'm like, he's never been there, but I I did like that he was
• 24:37
  pretty good. Like I can only imagine he would
• 24:41
  have had Kate Allman on record, Doctor Who going like what's
• 24:44
  some of this slang and all that kind of stuff.
• 24:46
  I think he nailed Tegan. In fact I could hear in some
• 24:50
  ways audio Tegan rather than TV one.
• 24:53
  He gives her a bit more attitude.
• 24:56
  Let's just say things like bloody as well because a lot of
• 24:59
  Aussie say that and she doesn't really on the TV or on the
• 25:03
  audio. And for some reason I thought,
• 25:08
  Oh yeah, I know this is a vampire.
• 25:10
  Yes, I know. I thought in my head I I thought
• 25:13
  it was going to do a sands of time and kind of ride her out
• 25:15
  for most of the book. No.
• 25:17
  We get to experience her as a vampire and I think like her
• 25:22
  struggle mentally and all that as she goes through this is is
• 25:25
  really awesome and actually I'm excited kinda to hear Sarah
• 25:30
  something kind of play off that a bit on the audio version.
• 25:33
  So yeah. She's so polite.
• 25:35
  Can you imagine her as a vampire?
• 25:37
  The. Nicest vampire ever.
• 25:39
  Very. Excuse me, can you turn your
• 25:40
  neck, please? Oh.
• 25:41
  Thank you, Tegan. No, I can't resist anymore.
• 25:48
  I think you've nailed it. I think that's going to sound
• 25:49
  like that. Thank.
• 25:50
  You finish. Give me a call.
• 25:52
  All right. But there were some things like
• 25:55
  for some reason I had my audio head on, like, what are they
• 26:00
  keeping and what are they probably going to get rid of?
• 26:03
  And it was probably going to be more Chapter 6 that's too
• 26:07
  expensive. You're out.
• 26:11
  But also, I'm not sure they're probably not going to do Lang.
• 26:15
  That's a bit too much and maybe they might might not be a
• 26:19
  vampire babies, or if they do do a few sneaky goo goo gagas in
• 26:23
  the background, that's that might that might work.
• 26:26
  They surely can't take lying out of the audience.
• 26:28
  I mean, he is pivotal to many parts of this book.
• 26:32
  Yeah, I guess they might. They might dial bats.
• 26:36
  Yeah. His sort of motivation?
• 26:41
  They might change it a bit, like, yeah, so.
• 26:43
  My my impression of this book is I'm completely baffled by it,
• 26:48
  and that's mostly because it's got Paul Cornell's name.
• 26:52
  On. Cover and I have no idea why
• 26:55
  Cornell was writing a missing adventure and Terrorist Dicks is
• 26:58
  writing a new adventure. Because if you just swap the two
• 27:02
  of them around, I think they'd both be more comfortable.
• 27:04
  We wouldn't have horrible rape references in the new adventure
• 27:08
  you know the terrorist Dicks can't handle, and you wouldn't
• 27:11
  have. This was a very good this was an
• 27:15
  OK Doctor Who story set in season 20 with vampires in it.
• 27:22
  What I'd like to see Paul Connell write is a vampire story
• 27:27
  in the new adventures with the Doctor in it.
• 27:31
  And I don't think we got that because.
• 27:32
  And I think there are some really brutal moments in this
• 27:36
  that feel like they've come from the new event.
• 27:38
  So the baby coming in and sucking on this neck.
• 27:41
  Brilliant. The bit where they take out all
• 27:44
  the evangelists en masse. Brilliant, that bit where the
• 27:48
  the fella throws the head, The decapitated head at Tegan.
• 27:52
  Brilliant. Yeah, those were the.
• 27:54
  Percapitated, decapitated head of his mother.
• 27:57
  Yeah. Those are the bits where I
• 27:59
  really perked up and went, oh, but in between there was lots of
• 28:05
  not a lot happening. So it was sort of oddly paced,
• 28:09
  with lots of insight into Tegan doing truly obscene things to
• 28:15
  Nyssa. Like, honestly, sequences of her
• 28:19
  in thinking about just how the swelling of the blood in her
• 28:22
  stomach and the desperate hunger.
• 28:24
  And then he buries her alive. I mean, what did Nyssa do to
• 28:27
  you? Paul Connell, the poor little
• 28:30
  orphan girl from Dragon? So there's all of that weirdness
• 28:34
  going up there, but then there's all of this Galliframe
• 28:36
  mythology, and every time Cornell leans heavy into
• 28:41
  continuity. No future suffers from this as
• 28:43
  well, it's just I just find it interminable.
• 28:47
  So by the end of the book, where we're doing all this mythology
• 28:49
  about Rasolon and the minions of Mignos.
• 28:53
  The other. The what?
• 28:56
  What am I reading? Paul Cornell, you're such a good
• 28:59
  writer. And actually, interestingly,
• 29:02
  Peter Darvowevan says at the beginning of this book, I think
• 29:07
  there's a little passage from him saying this book will be
• 29:10
  simply written like it won't have long, so it won't be
• 29:14
  written in the way of The New Adventures.
• 29:16
  I really miss because Paul Connell's prose, when he's
• 29:19
  writing for adults, it's just some of the best writing you're
• 29:23
  ever going to see. And I actually felt this was
• 29:27
  watered down in its prose as I skipped through really, really
• 29:31
  quickly. And there was some some nice
• 29:33
  passages inside people's minds. But I'm like, this don't feel
• 29:37
  like Paul Cornell to me. This feels like Paul Cornell
• 29:39
  castrated. I was going to say it's.
• 29:43
  Like. I don't know.
• 29:44
  I Now you go, Nick. So this thing, like, I like a
• 29:51
  lot of things in this book, so I'm not, I'm not sitting on a
• 29:54
  bit. It felt to me like Paul Cornell
• 29:58
  didn't send a pitch for this book like a lot of writers of of
• 30:01
  BBC and Virginia would. Instead Peter Davil's like, can
• 30:06
  you start this range for us? You're a really popular writer
• 30:09
  and maybe that's why it might feel like he's not always 100%
• 30:14
  into it. I got that kind of vibe too,
• 30:15
  Joe, that some some aspects of it like for me, I'm like, all
• 30:21
  right, we're halfway through the book.
• 30:22
  Can the Doctor step foot out of the fucking TARDIS, please?
• 30:26
  Because I feel like it's. Just nothing in the book he
• 30:30
  spends. More time do.
• 30:31
  You We really should go after Mr. at some point.
• 30:35
  Like, yeah, she's been a vampire for three days.
• 30:38
  No. Tegan's the one going, Doctor.
• 30:40
  Will you bloody do something already?
• 30:42
  Like, come on. He spends more time in the
• 30:45
  TARDIS than a Colin Baker story. You know, like.
• 30:50
  I mean, he didn't he? He I mean, it's quite authentic.
• 30:53
  I feel like though that's that's kind of deliberate, like that's
• 30:56
  that's like the Doctor is gathering all the evidence and
• 31:00
  he's kind of learning what's going on.
• 31:02
  And then he does come through with the with the goods at the
• 31:05
  end And his his plan is like it's on the hoof, but it's
• 31:08
  really clever and it kind of he gives, he gives the villains a
• 31:13
  chance at the end. Yeah.
• 31:16
  Harry Davidson doesn't. He yeah doesn't.
• 31:18
  It does. And you know like Snake Dance
• 31:20
  like it's kind of the same thing.
• 31:22
  I feel like I mean this book is set directly after Snake Dance
• 31:25
  and you know that also has the Doctor kind of as this little
• 31:29
  bit of an outsider to the plot and then it kind of comes
• 31:31
  together at at the end. So I I didn't really feel that
• 31:35
  kind of that it was out of character for Paul Cornell as a
• 31:39
  as a writer or the OR for the 5th Doctor.
• 31:42
  And I kind of the the introduction from Peter Darver
• 31:46
  evidence is is interesting in that it kind of sets up the
• 31:49
  missing adventures as being very different to the new adventures.
• 31:52
  I don't think they're different from the new adventures at all.
• 31:55
  Like they they're just new adventures with with old
• 31:59
  characters in and it means you can't.
• 32:01
  Like you have to be a bit careful with the with the old
• 32:03
  doctors and the old companions, they can't quite go through the
• 32:07
  things that they put the new adventures characters through
• 32:09
  well. I don't know.
• 32:10
  I don't know. Listen well.
• 32:13
  Have you read Men in the Velvet Mask?
• 32:16
  Well, yes, maybe we stretch that later on.
• 32:18
  But yeah, like the this is still a very adult book.
• 32:22
  It's it's told in a linear way, but it's not it's I don't think
• 32:27
  it's particularly less complex than a new adventure or or that
• 32:30
  it shies away from any of the kind of violence or darkness of
• 32:33
  the new adventures. I thought it was very adult in
• 32:36
  it's sort of horrific moments. I really thought the bit when
• 32:39
  the baby came flowing through the window and the way she
• 32:43
  describes the sort of like is puckering into her neck and she
• 32:48
  sort of slaps it off and then throws this baby into the wall.
• 32:51
  I love all the moments where she does it twice.
• 32:54
  Nyssa smacks the shit out of that baby and it's brilliant.
• 32:59
  Like, Nyssa comes off quite well in this story.
• 33:01
  Like, although she goes with her whole vampire stuff, she's still
• 33:03
  quite strong in it. The only thing I I the whole
• 33:06
  thing about Nyssa being a vampire was like, oh, the person
• 33:10
  who turned you into vampires did.
• 33:12
  You're right. Now I was like really?
• 33:14
  Is that how it? Works well.
• 33:17
  Well to like that is kind of how it works in Dracula.
• 33:21
  That's how it works with Mina. She gets bitten and she's
• 33:24
  turning into a vampire, and then Dracula gets staked at the end
• 33:28
  and then she's not a vampire anymore.
• 33:30
  So that kind of is a legit part of vampire mythology that is
• 33:34
  usually left out of stories. And I think it kind of it means
• 33:38
  that you know Paul Cornell can have his cake and eat it like
• 33:41
  Nyssa can become a vampire fully, but also she can be
• 33:46
  turned back at the end. So it's it's still fits into the
• 33:50
  into the continuity of Doctor Who.
• 33:51
  You can. You can tell that story, but
• 33:53
  then you also kind of have the Geoffrey card at the end.
• 33:57
  What the the where I thought it went really childish was in the
• 34:02
  last third where like the big Plan was revealed as to what
• 34:06
  they were doing. And then they were.
• 34:08
  They were going to send out a load of aerosol gas into
• 34:12
  Manchester and turn everyone into vampires and then somehow
• 34:17
  take them all to Gallifrey and then turn all of Gallifrey into
• 34:21
  vampires and claim they're inherit.
• 34:23
  I was like, yeah, this, this feels like young adult now,
• 34:26
  right? Well, it it feels like
• 34:30
  resurrection of the Daleks. Very young adult?
• 34:34
  Yes, so. Again, I kind of felt like, you
• 34:39
  know, that that is the plot of resurrection of the dialects,
• 34:43
  that they're going to infiltrate Gallifrey with these duplicates.
• 34:46
  So again, it kind of felt of the era to me, that that little
• 34:50
  slice of the story. OK, well, let's let's highlight
• 34:56
  the characters for a little bit, then let's deal with the Doctor.
• 35:01
  Andrew, how do you think he came up up in this book?
• 35:04
  I think that Cornell writes the 5th Doctor really well.
• 35:08
  Like you can really hear the the dialogue sounds like Peter
• 35:13
  Davis. And he's got all his kind of
• 35:15
  mannerisms down. He does the thing where he's
• 35:17
  going to go in One Direction, then goes the other.
• 35:22
  Yeah. And he he does have this kind
• 35:24
  of, I think we have this as well in the sands of time, this thing
• 35:30
  of like not letting the companions in on the story and
• 35:33
  it kind of messing up and he messes things up a bit and and
• 35:39
  you kind of feel like it's this kind of social awkward, this
• 35:42
  thing with the 5th Doctor where it's like if he just sat down
• 35:45
  with Nessa at the beginning and been like you're OK, love.
• 35:48
  Like you seem a little bit like you're turning into a vampire
• 35:51
  rather than just like trying to force feed her a garlic capsule
• 35:54
  and hoping for the best. Although would you all just talk
• 35:56
  about our feelings? He is.
• 35:58
  Portrayed, isn't he? In early in season 19, he can't
• 36:02
  hand, he can't do any of that domestic stuff can.
• 36:05
  He Yeah, that and again, that. Yeah.
• 36:07
  Again, I feel like Paul Cornell's pulling that from the
• 36:10
  5th from from the TV stories and he's doing a really good job of
• 36:13
  it. And you can tell that he kind of
• 36:16
  he really likes the 5th Doctor because you know that he's a key
• 36:19
  part of time, time worm revelation.
• 36:21
  He came back and did circular time for the audios.
• 36:24
  So I feel like he has a real affection for this era and
• 36:28
  writes the 5th Doctor really well.
• 36:32
  Luke. Well, yeah, he's well written,
• 36:37
  but there is that. You might be right for the same
• 36:41
  time too, Andrew, in that it's the NA effect, right?
• 36:46
  The new adventures effect. I guess a little bit of that
• 36:49
  Doctor keeping things under his hat to the last second or just
• 36:53
  not telling his companions things where if he had the book
• 36:56
  might be 100, you know. So it might be that.
• 37:01
  I like how he's characterized. I wish some of his investigation
• 37:04
  work involved him leaving the TARDIS.
• 37:08
  I guess, like, I don't mind if he isn't integral to everything
• 37:12
  happening all at once at the start, but Manchester's out
• 37:17
  there. Why are you out there
• 37:18
  investigating out in Manchester? And maybe you find someone else
• 37:22
  with a lab or something and go there.
• 37:24
  Now he's got to go back. He spends half the book of the
• 37:26
  TARDIS did. Wonder though, you know they
• 37:28
  were keeping him in the TARDIS so.
• 37:32
  Oh, there isn't right. Now he's so like he couldn't
• 37:34
  actually catch up with this because they.
• 37:36
  Were they could sniff him out. Yeah.
• 37:39
  Yeah, that might be a part of it.
• 37:41
  So I guess I shut up. He's real.
• 37:43
  He's well characterized. But I I feel like I liked how he
• 37:49
  did. How Paul did Nisa and Tegan
• 37:52
  more, I think, then I did the 5th Doctor.
• 37:59
  Oh, can you talk about this if you like, All right?
• 38:02
  Wait, wait. Before we Before we move on to
• 38:03
  listen to it, I just really quickly want to say there was
• 38:05
  two moments in the second-half of the book, and one really
• 38:09
  fucking irritated me and another really interested me.
• 38:13
  And so I'm like, OK, so he's doing interesting things.
• 38:15
  And there was a moment where the doctors told something like
• 38:18
  absolutely shocking and we're in his head, so we're totally not
• 38:22
  doing the NA thing of not going in the doctor's head.
• 38:25
  There were absolutely passages inside his head where he goes he
• 38:28
  he thinks that he should be angry about something, but he's
• 38:33
  not. And I'm like, Oh my God, you
• 38:36
  cannot be so fucking Placid that you think about emotions but you
• 38:39
  don't actually experience them. But I suppose that is the 5th
• 38:42
  Doctor. But I was like that.
• 38:44
  And that's my issue with the 5th Doctor is he often doesn't
• 38:48
  behave like a person. He's just very, very calm.
• 38:51
  But there was a wonderful moment towards the end where he has a
• 38:56
  reaction to the humans that had been vampires.
• 39:00
  And he does. He bites.
• 39:01
  He gets really angry, and then he suddenly forces a very polite
• 39:06
  smile on his face, and there seems to be the suggestion that
• 39:09
  underneath that very pleasant surface of his, there's like a
• 39:13
  raging anger waiting to come out.
• 39:16
  And I think actually you do see it in sort of season 21, don't
• 39:19
  you? When the universe gets a bit
• 39:20
  nastier and a bit colder and a bit more violent, he does start
• 39:24
  raging against it. I think Cornell wrote it really
• 39:28
  well. I just wish he'd gave him up to
• 39:29
  do. Was, Yeah, maybe.
• 39:32
  That's my point as well. I wish he had did more things
• 39:34
  but I I kind of like he does have a reaction sort of with
• 39:40
  Lange. So Lange's I guess giving him
• 39:43
  some evangelical spiel and people might need to be saved
• 39:46
  because of these reasons and stuff And the doctors just says
• 39:49
  matter of factly like all this stuff about like faith and the
• 39:53
  bad things of religion and stuff just really kind of blunt and
• 39:57
  open about it And then he's just like moves on like yeah that's a
• 40:00
  that's a thought for you guys I'm I'm up here.
• 40:03
  I don't really think about that stuff that much.
• 40:05
  That's a that's a human foible, not a not mine.
• 40:08
  But yeah, he's aware of the he's it's like even this polite
• 40:12
  doctor is aware of the how, how I guess depraved humanity can
• 40:18
  get. But you know, he's still, he's
• 40:20
  still a fan, so. Interesting.
• 40:22
  Wasn't it when they hired Colin Baker or we were going
• 40:25
  completely the other direction, don't they?
• 40:27
  It's just explosively emotional about everything all the time.
• 40:31
  Like we've done. We've done with being a bit.
• 40:33
  Calm Peter's a sea of calm between 2 boisterous bakers,
• 40:36
  yeah. Well, OK, I agree with you about
• 40:40
  Sega. I think she's beautifully
• 40:42
  captured in this, very protective of Nyssa, even after
• 40:46
  she's tried to suck blood from her neck.
• 40:49
  I mean, I'd love to see that scene.
• 40:51
  Oh that. Oh, in season 20?
• 40:52
  Wouldn't that be glorious? How did you guys find Tegan
• 40:56
  overall then, Andrew? Yeah, I thought.
• 40:59
  I thought Tegan was really well written as well.
• 41:02
  I think one of you said when we did Sands of Time, The way that
• 41:07
  you make Tegan work is by making her funny, and I think he does
• 41:10
  that well in here. She gets some great lines.
• 41:13
  I love. I've written one to him.
• 41:15
  Where they're talking about how to fight vampires and the and
• 41:19
  the doctor tells her to stuff garlic into the mouth of a
• 41:24
  vampire. We'll kill it.
• 41:25
  And she says, who told you that? Delia Smith.
• 41:31
  Like yes, I wish we had more of this Tegan on TV.
• 41:34
  It's brilliant. And yeah, she's really, she's
• 41:37
  pretty ballsy and oh, there there's, she has another really
• 41:42
  great moment with the when the vampire tries to get her in the
• 41:46
  in the hotel room quite near the beginning, where she she faces
• 41:51
  off with him. And there's the the bit where
• 41:53
  she uses her faith in the book written written by Primo Levy,
• 41:57
  which is a little bit silly. But then the way she, she
• 42:02
  properly fights off this vampire is through her just force of
• 42:08
  will and she's like, I've got a snake in my brain.
• 42:13
  So it's. The full line is I've got a
• 42:16
  dirty great snake in my brain, so back off or I'll bite your
• 42:20
  head off. Exactly, Yeah.
• 42:21
  And I love that. I love that continuity.
• 42:24
  But where it's like rooted in the character and it's it's
• 42:28
  yeah, showing us where Tegan's strength comes from and this
• 42:31
  kind of trauma that's happened to her in the last book.
• 42:35
  And also she gets to have a have a normal set of clothes in this
• 42:41
  book. She's wearing like a jumper and
• 42:43
  a pair of jeans. She ditches the boob tube when
• 42:46
  they get to Manchester. Doesn't last long, but you.
• 42:49
  Know it's like, good for you, Tegan.
• 42:52
  You finally get to work I. Think Cornell feels like he's
• 42:55
  right in a wrong there? Yeah.
• 42:59
  Well, come on in. Luke Tegan, an Australian.
• 43:02
  Yes. No I I thought she was great the
• 43:05
  the parts actually set in Australia were pretty good.
• 43:07
  I was. I was sitting there going, all
• 43:08
  right is this going to sound like someone from another
• 43:12
  country from writing about Australia?
• 43:13
  But no. I was.
• 43:14
  I was like nothing feels too forced or shoehorn.
• 43:16
  Dinner for he's. Spent, I've got friends in
• 43:18
  Australia, Cornell's been out there enough times all right,
• 43:21
  he's basically. Made Allman, Kate.
• 43:22
  Allman Yeah, exactly. See, that's another thing.
• 43:24
  Like, wouldn't they have been to pretty good choices that would
• 43:28
  have bounced off each other? Well, I can't imagine tearing
• 43:31
  sticks and Paul Cannell on records Doctor Who having an
• 43:34
  e-mail chain. I can't even imagine tearing
• 43:36
  sticks doing emails, actually. So, but it was.
• 43:40
  Also, he's definitely our phone bloke.
• 43:43
  Yeah, yeah, it was good to see Tegan actually at home, sort of.
• 43:47
  I mean, like Queensland's right on top of the country in
• 43:49
  Tasmania's not even on the mainland, it's right down the
• 43:51
  bottom. But it was good to see a bit of
• 43:53
  Australia and Tegan interact with it.
• 43:55
  She's got a bit more of a a mouthy attitude.
• 43:58
  But the book also highlights her, you know, her her strength,
• 44:03
  her willpower in her heart I guess as well.
• 44:05
  So I I like that kind of when they get that balance right of
• 44:08
  her being like really mouthy and then that switch where she's
• 44:14
  like, look, that's me something a lot of the times before coffee
• 44:18
  like, yeah. There are things I would love to
• 44:22
  see a little bit when they start tearing up the hat stand to make
• 44:25
  snakes and then they just land like in Castro Valve.
• 44:29
  We're out in the countryside somewhere and they're literally
• 44:32
  going across all these fields with these stakes.
• 44:35
  Once the jet in playing these heading towards the great castle
• 44:41
  which was the TARDIS. Now that was a great twist, I
• 44:43
  thought. I like that.
• 44:45
  OK. Well, before we sort of move on
• 44:47
  to the pertinent aspects of the plot, I suppose Nyssa is, for
• 44:51
  once, fucking hell for once. Nyssa is the most important
• 44:56
  character here. Who wants to take this, Andrew?
• 45:01
  Yeah, I think it's it's interesting that they choose
• 45:05
  Nyssa to be the vampire, because you could also have done that
• 45:09
  with Tegan, but then I guess you'd be retreading the same
• 45:11
  ground as a snake dance. We've seen an eagle Teagan so
• 45:15
  and. She's already a monster, let's
• 45:18
  be honest. She's already a monster.
• 45:20
  And she's beaten people. And we both we all know it.
• 45:25
  By going with Nyssa, I guess it's also that kind of
• 45:27
  traditional vampire story of sort of innocence corrupted.
• 45:32
  She's this kind of virginal character who comes from this
• 45:37
  very kind of sedate world. So having Nyssa kind of
• 45:41
  corrupted and create, you know, she she's now acting on instinct
• 45:47
  and someone who's so gentle has to think about how they live
• 45:50
  life as a vampire. So you get her trying to
• 45:52
  synthesize blood, trying to drink animal blood.
• 45:57
  You could just see her in the TARDIS with her test tubes,
• 46:00
  can't you? Like, come on now, we can do
• 46:03
  this. I know so little about Tili
• 46:04
  Biogenesis. Yeah, but yeah, she's she's
• 46:12
  she's great in this, I think. And she also gets, she's not
• 46:14
  just a victim. She kind of gets to play her own
• 46:16
  part in the plot. She's instrumental to to all the
• 46:20
  stuff that goes on in the castle.
• 46:23
  She smacks the shit out of the vampire baby, which is great.
• 46:28
  And yeah, like just going back to that thing about the sort of
• 46:30
  innocence corrupted things. So normally in a kind of vampire
• 46:34
  story there'd be a massive sexual elements of that.
• 46:37
  But with it being Nyssa and a classic Doctor Who companion
• 46:40
  that you don't really get that side of it.
• 46:42
  There's a little hint of it at the end where yav and where I
• 46:47
  think somebody speculates like, oh, Nyssa would have been his
• 46:50
  next consort after he ditches Roof.
• 46:54
  But they kind of, yeah, they don't really do that.
• 46:56
  So, and I think it's actually to the to the books, it's it's a
• 47:02
  plus for the book because it means that it kind of focuses on
• 47:06
  her kind of internal struggle with the violence rather than it
• 47:10
  being a kind of, yeah sort of free piece seduction story.
• 47:17
  He's already done enough terrible things for this, you
• 47:19
  know? I mean, wasn't that preacher
• 47:22
  guy? Was he an abuser?
• 47:24
  Did I misread? That no, you did not.
• 47:26
  I mean, what the hell was that doing in a missing adventure?
• 47:30
  I he's a he's a I'm pretty sure he's a religious gentleman.
• 47:36
  I'm not. So I I didn't quite gel with a
• 47:38
  lot of the evangelical stuff, as maybe.
• 47:41
  Well, I've definitely felt it was a very negative spin.
• 47:45
  Oh yeah, I I think it might have been maybe a little angry at
• 47:48
  religion at the time. Maybe.
• 47:49
  But. Paul Cornell is Christian, so I
• 47:52
  think it was kind of his his take on like the bads.
• 47:56
  There's the faith stuff in this book is really interesting in
• 48:01
  that it's not something that we usually get anywhere near to in
• 48:05
  a Doctor Who story. So it's kind of yes.
• 48:10
  In he's taken that bit of of cursive Fenrik about faith
• 48:15
  repelling vampires and then applying it to to not hemavores
• 48:19
  but actual vampires here. And then he's also kind of put
• 48:23
  this evangelical Christian into this story who is actually a
• 48:30
  dark, manipulative, sexual abuser who's been abusing his
• 48:36
  own daughter. I just can't see that playing
• 48:39
  out in season 20 though you. Know no.
• 48:41
  But then the the missing adventures never bothered doing
• 48:45
  that. I couldn't, I.
• 48:45
  Couldn't see Dodo getting syphilis in season.
• 48:47
  Three, mind you, either. Yeah.
• 48:51
  So yeah, it's all those kind of new adventures themes, but put
• 48:55
  into a 5th Doctor story, which maybe fit sits a little bit
• 48:58
  uncomfortably. But that was the missing
• 49:00
  adventures really, Apart from a handful of them.
• 49:03
  They didn't really go out of their way to feel like they were
• 49:05
  TV Doctor Who. I thought the only certainly
• 49:10
  back to this, I thought the only Duff note with that entire
• 49:13
  point. I thought those were the best
• 49:14
  scenes in the whole book. He wrote her really well.
• 49:17
  He wrote that plight really well.
• 49:19
  By the time we got to the point where she was being buried
• 49:21
  alive, I was like, oh this is too much now Please stop.
• 49:25
  Stop hurting Nyssa in this way. But then I don't know if either
• 49:27
  of you have read Zeta Major where she becomes evil blood
• 49:31
  sucking zombie in that. I mean.
• 49:33
  The torture continues. Or listen to creatures of
• 49:37
  beauty. I mean, people have really got
• 49:38
  something against Sarah Fulton. They felt she didn't get enough
• 49:42
  drama. The only Duff no I thought was
• 49:44
  where y'all that basically, you know, give me what I want and
• 49:49
  all the information and then it will be reversed and you won't
• 49:52
  be a vampire anymore. She's like, oh really?
• 49:55
  Oh, thank you, you know. So naive.
• 49:58
  So, fucking naive Ness, I come on, aren't you?
• 50:01
  There was a bit of that going on, because then at the climax
• 50:03
  of the book, The Doctors does that.
• 50:06
  Oh yes, perhaps your plan is the right plan after all.
• 50:10
  And Roof goes. Oh, really, Doctor?
• 50:13
  A bit like that fella into the assignment, you know, if only
• 50:16
  I'd have known you were such a visionary, but you could have
• 50:18
  been part of our plan all alone. I was like, yeah, we're back in
• 50:21
  classic here again now. I like that.
• 50:24
  That's funny to me because she's like, I've got the the time
• 50:28
  scoop. Who do I want to face?
• 50:30
  Not Kafirak Gatry, because you've got a name.
• 50:33
  Drop that. It's a new adventure.
• 50:35
  Who do I want to face? I want to face the the plus and
• 50:38
  one. Oh, I can beat him just fine.
• 50:41
  Then he just switches it on right near the end and she's
• 50:45
  like, oh really? I thought that that stuff with
• 50:49
  the time scoop actually was really interesting, because I
• 50:52
  think that I think that's chapter 6 or later chapter, but
• 50:58
  it there's a when she's kind of fiddling around with the time
• 51:01
  scoop, there's this whole kind of suggestion that this story is
• 51:05
  only happening because of Ruath fiddling with the time scheme.
• 51:08
  So Ruath is a contemporary of the 7th Doctor, so she shouldn't
• 51:12
  be. So this story has kind of been
• 51:14
  inserted into the Doctor's time stream by Ruath's meddling, and
• 51:20
  it's a missing adventure which has been inserted into the
• 51:22
  Doctor. Oh, it's got this kind of
• 51:24
  interesting meta thing. And I when I was reading it, I
• 51:27
  was like, are they going to do something here where they kind
• 51:29
  of say that the whole of the missing adventures has been
• 51:31
  caused by this, which they don't quite go that go that far, but.
• 51:34
  I thought it was a great idea though.
• 51:36
  Yeah, I thought it was an interesting little.
• 51:40
  Little. Every single story, you'd have
• 51:43
  to have someone with the time scoop going right now, I'm going
• 51:45
  to go to the 7th Doctor's time. Now I'm going to go to the 1st
• 51:48
  Doctor's time. How did you find Nyssa, Luke?
• 51:54
  Poor little Nyssa. Isn't it nice, like when you get
• 51:57
  a story that actually does something with Nyssa rather than
• 52:01
  like, oh, she's asleep? Like I love the sands of time.
• 52:04
  Maybe more than this book, It's just.
• 52:08
  It's. Just this faster pace and the
• 52:10
  Doctor does stuff. And no offence Nyssorth Tegan, I
• 52:13
  like the Doctor more and I want to read him more.
• 52:15
  But it was so nice to get this kind of different side.
• 52:19
  It was the only weird thing is I could hear all some audio,
• 52:23
  Janet, in this book, but this has been for a lot by the in the
• 52:29
  audio verse by the time she picks up here.
• 52:31
  So I had to kind of compartmentalize that part of my
• 52:33
  brain. I mean like those those stories
• 52:35
  haven't happened yet. This is more the young naive
• 52:38
  Nyssa and that that's that version who's going to go
• 52:41
  through all this kind of vampire stuff.
• 52:43
  Also, Tegan's never met vampires before and she has in salty's
• 52:48
  but they won't. They might reference that I know
• 52:51
  anyway, but Nisa. You're not one of those people
• 52:53
  that tries to shove it all into one big timeline, are you?
• 52:56
  That's why I don't write Doctor Who stories.
• 52:58
  It's just a be a lot of wank, really put.
• 53:03
  It'll be like a modern big day, Big Finish cover all the faces
• 53:06
  of the shit I like. Boom.
• 53:07
  Right there. And me and Andrea will be the
• 53:09
  first to reviewing it on this podcast.
• 53:12
  Right. And shit.
• 53:15
  If Luke could make a bit more a bit more effort with his
• 53:18
  depiction of the 5th Doctor, you know.
• 53:20
  Yeah, that's right. But some of the things Nisa
• 53:23
  Caesar just gnarly, like, she's walking through the castle at
• 53:26
  one point and they're all having this party, and he's describing
• 53:29
  the vampires as if they're having the most normal party of
• 53:32
  all time. And then but on the table is the
• 53:37
  food, and it's people who are still alive and just screaming
• 53:42
  while they're in pieces and getting Chomps chomped.
• 53:44
  I was like, no, just like the idea of NIST is kind of seeing
• 53:48
  some of this crazy shit. It was, Yeah, do.
• 53:52
  You think that's why she was quite happy to stay on Terminus
• 53:54
  at the end, that miserable bolt hole.
• 53:56
  She's like, anything's better than what I've been through a.
• 54:00
  Bunch of sick people. I can handle that.
• 54:02
  Vampires and all this stuff. Now I'm out.
• 54:03
  Do you know how often Year sleeps?
• 54:06
  I thought she was quite sassy even before she turned into a
• 54:08
  vampire. She has a line at one point
• 54:10
  where she goes. But we worry about you, Tegan.
• 54:13
  It's hard to tell whether you're really suffering or whether
• 54:16
  you're just as you put it, moaning.
• 54:20
  Giving it back to Tegan there as well.
• 54:22
  She should have had a bit more of that on the TV, you know.
• 54:26
  OK. Well, what about if we turn our
• 54:29
  attention to the plot and the big plan that's taken place here
• 54:36
  and the central villains of Yavin and Roof, Andrew choose
• 54:42
  any one of those. Well, Yavin, we talked about a
• 54:48
  bit last time because he's in blood harvest, of course, not
• 54:52
  that you'd record. He's in about 5 minutes.
• 54:57
  So that and you can. Same as roof, yeah.
• 55:01
  But you can feel like Paul Cornell desperately trying to
• 55:04
  like stitch the two stories together and give Joven a bit
• 55:09
  more of a back story. Although there was a really
• 55:12
  weird moment towards the end where Yarvan reveals that he was
• 55:16
  like created by Agonal from Bert Harvis and I was like, what?
• 55:21
  Was the most desperate, He goes. What is it?
• 55:24
  I've written the lieder? Have I ever told you, my dear,
• 55:27
  about my second encounter with the spirit called agonal?
• 55:29
  And I'm like, oh bless you Paul Cnelle, for trying to put them
• 55:33
  together. It's like, but but Agonal wasn't
• 55:35
  a vampire. Like what?
• 55:37
  What? Yeah, I mean Yarvan is just sort
• 55:41
  of like your Gen. he's he's Dracula, like and kind of like a
• 55:45
  sort of very generic Dracula. Like he he's not really
• 55:48
  important. Like the main, the main villain
• 55:51
  here is Ruath, who is a Time Lady who gets a very cool
• 55:56
  regeneration scene early in the sky where she does a sort of
• 56:03
  blood transfusion to Yavan and then like regenerate as a
• 56:08
  vampire. That is really cool.
• 56:12
  Because they they want the baby is supposed to be going after
• 56:15
  the doctor, isn't it? And it gets this above mistake
• 56:18
  and the baby was supposed to extract the blood for that
• 56:20
  purpose. Is that right?
• 56:22
  Yes, yeah, yes. But he needs Time Lord Blood to
• 56:26
  sort of regenerate him. So she gives him her blood and
• 56:29
  then she regenerates into a new roof.
• 56:34
  And she's described as being a bit thatcherish, which I thought
• 56:37
  was quite funny. But yeah, she's she's, yeah,
• 56:46
  she's how to describe Bruat. She's just a bit of a, just a
• 56:50
  bit of a bitch, isn't she? Like she's just.
• 56:53
  I just envisaged some fabulous camp British, you know,
• 56:57
  character actress again, if you'll put a pardon the pun
• 57:00
  teeth into this role, yeah, and having great fun with it.
• 57:04
  Yeah, having great nails, massive hair, probably some sort
• 57:08
  of parity. Collar you.
• 57:11
  Know every half the BBC wardrobe budget just on ruess outfit?
• 57:15
  Yeah, it'd be great. Yeah.
• 57:17
  Betty Bates with the Doctor wasn't.
• 57:19
  She Yeah, I didn't like that. Apparently I didn't like that at
• 57:22
  all. I didn't.
• 57:24
  I wouldn't have minded if it was just sort of hinted at.
• 57:27
  But then he goes to great lengths to sort of spell out,
• 57:30
  oh, and you were in the year above me at the Academy.
• 57:33
  And then think of that prank that we played on the president
• 57:36
  and then you were meant to meet me on the day that I left
• 57:39
  Gallifrey. It's like, no, I don't.
• 57:41
  I don't need this. I.
• 57:43
  Don't use us in the in the yearbook, yeah.
• 57:45
  There was a line, right, that could have come out of Gary
• 57:48
  Russell's divided loyalty. Do you?
• 57:49
  Remember that, I was thinking. That Gallifrey 90210 sequence in
• 57:53
  that where we and I can see them all as teenagers and was it
• 57:57
  because? There is Mortimer.
• 57:59
  That idiot Magnus and you, Doctor, all graduates of
• 58:02
  Barousa's Academy for Scoundrels.
• 58:06
  That also makes the universe a little smaller, doesn't it?
• 58:08
  They were all in the same class, really.
• 58:11
  They're all the same age. She was just a total bitch, you
• 58:14
  know, a Time Lady who's just, you know, what was her motive?
• 58:18
  I didn't get it. I think she was just sort of a
• 58:21
  fanatic, wasn't she? And I know you didn't like the
• 58:24
  sort of information techno Babble dump at the end when the
• 58:29
  you said there were a few examples in our group chat.
• 58:32
  But I I think that was there to demonstrate.
• 58:35
  Like Ruwath is just a fundamentalist and you know,
• 58:40
  she's gone down this, she's a conspiracy theory.
• 58:42
  She's gone down this insane rabbit hole of linking.
• 58:47
  The flat. Vampires.
• 58:49
  Yeah. So I don't think we were meant
• 58:51
  to buy that. I think we were meant to.
• 58:53
  Sort of. We We were meant to be like the
• 58:56
  doctor, sort of noddling, nodding along with the crazy
• 58:58
  lady before she gets her comeuppance.
• 59:02
  I mean, to be fair, this line could come from arc of Infinity,
• 59:06
  so it's totally authentic. You ready?
• 59:09
  Both maintain regenerate information and a bioplasmic
• 59:12
  field around their bodies. Both can recycle the entropic
• 59:15
  process to prolong their lifespan.
• 59:18
  I mean that that sounds like lines that oh Looker says in
• 59:21
  Arkham Infinity. So bravo, Paul Cornell.
• 59:24
  Don't do it again. Is it weird that I kind of get
• 59:29
  the gist of what that means? Like I've experienced way too
• 59:32
  much Doctor Who. My.
• 59:34
  Eyes just robbed off the page of that.
• 59:37
  See, I I can't. I can't handle like needles and
• 59:40
  stuff. So, like the blood transfusion
• 59:42
  bit, I'm just saying, you know what?
• 59:43
  I, I hope Joe Andrew have my back for this bit.
• 59:46
  I'm just going to next paragraph.
• 59:48
  All right, cool. Well, yeah, I was like, but I
• 59:52
  like, I like Rueth. I don't know, I don't know if
• 59:55
  she has like the kind of mileage to to do, to do much else.
• 1:00:01
  That'll be vampire stories or something, wouldn't they?
• 1:00:04
  But it would be interesting if maybe she dabbled in.
• 1:00:08
  Like each time it'd be vampires from different cultures.
• 1:00:10
  So let's give us Draconians, give us Terra Laptoles.
• 1:00:15
  There we go. Doc didn't get a get a new
• 1:00:17
  screwdriver or something, but so that could work.
• 1:00:21
  Yarvin. I was like, wow, this this guy's
• 1:00:26
  got a bit of character. You're right.
• 1:00:27
  He's like Dracula. I remember this guy at all from
• 1:00:31
  blood harvest. What?
• 1:00:33
  And and I was like, Carl's flicking through the end.
• 1:00:35
  I was like I was thinking I'll. Cast Christopher Lee as Yavin,
• 1:00:40
  but he's sort of slumping it, you know, he's like, oh, I'm in
• 1:00:42
  Doctor Who, so he's given 1/2 high performance.
• 1:00:46
  Oh, well, I would have gone. Maybe I like Nando in what we do
• 1:00:53
  in the shadows. Maybe something like that.
• 1:00:55
  It might have worked. He's like this big dumb noble.
• 1:01:01
  So tone down the dumbness up Nandos Intelligence and I think
• 1:01:05
  you've got a pretty decent yarn right there, I mean.
• 1:01:07
  I don't know, I don't know which villain it was, but there was a
• 1:01:11
  what fabulous exchange at the end that I had to write down.
• 1:01:13
  It was either yarn or it was roof.
• 1:01:16
  They were both camping it up towards the end.
• 1:01:19
  So, but the doctor goes, you have a chance to turn your
• 1:01:22
  people into a true culture rather than a race of parasites.
• 1:01:26
  And the responses I say die to commit suicide in the.
• 1:01:33
  Spectacular. I think that's the oven.
• 1:01:35
  Oh my God. I was lost with my head off.
• 1:01:36
  I was like, OK, that's Bob. There is a Is there something
• 1:01:41
  that's picked up in a lot of Doctor Who books or something
• 1:01:43
  that I've just forgotten? And this book just reminded me
• 1:01:46
  that Gallifrey and the Time Wards are in the distant past
• 1:01:49
  and they they know by this point in time, early 90s Manchester,
• 1:01:55
  that culture and time thing is, is all gone and they don't know
• 1:01:58
  how. I I I picked up on that as well.
• 1:02:02
  I thought that was really interesting.
• 1:02:03
  I think that that comes from like the New Adventures writer's
• 1:02:07
  Guide. I think there's like a whole
• 1:02:10
  section in it about like Gallifrey in relation to
• 1:02:14
  contemporary. It's like the Gallifrey's in the
• 1:02:17
  past, so I don't know if they explicitly stated that at this
• 1:02:20
  point. Maybe it's.
• 1:02:21
  Maybe it's part of? Time.
• 1:02:23
  He didn't write that, but he just went copy and paste from
• 1:02:26
  the guide. Very lazy.
• 1:02:30
  I mean, can I ask you both right?
• 1:02:32
  Because this does lean heavily into Galifraim mythology and the
• 1:02:37
  great vampire and wrestle on and all of this.
• 1:02:42
  Like, is this your bag? Because it really ain't mine.
• 1:02:45
  I find it all a bit wearying. When I was young, time loaded
• 1:02:51
  up. Let me go, let me, let me find
• 1:02:53
  all the time stuff. Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme,
• 1:02:54
  Gimme. As I've gotten older, I think
• 1:02:57
  like maybe that's another reason I kind of glommed onto Jody's
• 1:03:00
  era. They put a bit of mystery back
• 1:03:02
  into who the Doctor is. Then don't explain so much, so
• 1:03:06
  much stuff anymore. Because the older I got, the
• 1:03:08
  more I was like, fuck me if they spend 5 more minutes in
• 1:03:10
  Gallifrey, I'm making a coffee. You want me to pause it?
• 1:03:13
  No. So I look, I understand, like,
• 1:03:20
  why if people like all that stuff.
• 1:03:22
  I understand there's some good characters and concepts in
• 1:03:25
  there, but the Doctor ran away from there, so why do you want
• 1:03:29
  to spend time there? So you know, there's a reason he
• 1:03:31
  pissed off. I sort of come to the conclusion
• 1:03:34
  that a Gallifrey is only interesting when either we're
• 1:03:36
  running away from it or. Anything or it's destroyed,
• 1:03:38
  that's. What it's most interesting.
• 1:03:40
  Hey you, Andrew. Yeah, I think.
• 1:03:42
  I think similar to Luke, like when I was a teenager, I lapped
• 1:03:45
  up all of that kind of mythology stuff.
• 1:03:48
  But now it's, yeah, not not so interesting.
• 1:03:53
  I think the interesting thing about Gallifrey is having time,
• 1:03:57
  other Time Lord characters, not necessarily having Gallifrey.
• 1:04:01
  So I think that's a little bit what I miss in the TV series
• 1:04:04
  now, that we can't just have like random, eccentric Time
• 1:04:07
  Lords turning up apart from The Master.
• 1:04:09
  I think that's a bit of a loss from the direction they've taken
• 1:04:12
  it in. But Gallifrey itself, Yeah, I
• 1:04:15
  don't need it. But to defend Paul Cornell in
• 1:04:20
  this book and his like Gallifrey and history stuff that we were
• 1:04:23
  just talking about with it being in the distance past and being
• 1:04:26
  gone in relation to to Earth in this book.
• 1:04:31
  I think that's there to motivate Ruath and kind of for us to
• 1:04:34
  understand why this friend of the Doctor is now this lunatic
• 1:04:37
  fundamentalist, it's because she's like a make Gallifrey
• 1:04:41
  great again person. So she's she's wanting to this
• 1:04:45
  whole vampire scheme is to make Gallifrey, Gallifrey survive
• 1:04:48
  into the present. And so yeah, I kind of forgive
• 1:04:52
  him because he's he's clearly taken this idea from the writers
• 1:04:56
  guide and then applied it to this character and given her
• 1:04:59
  motivation. So I I can kind of forgive it
• 1:05:02
  even though it is a big info dump.
• 1:05:04
  Just want more of the gross vampire stuff and less of the
• 1:05:10
  Barusa and Mignos stuff. Although it's totally my fault,
• 1:05:14
  because listen to this for an unfortunate, you know,
• 1:05:19
  congruence of the stars. I had just done the last Young
• 1:05:24
  War Doctor Sontaras versus Rutans.
• 1:05:28
  Which? Was all set on Gallifrey.
• 1:05:31
  And then if I finish big, I've also just listened to Omega from
• 1:05:34
  the villains trilogy, which is all about Gallifrey and
• 1:05:37
  mythology. And then there was another one
• 1:05:40
  as well. What was it?
• 1:05:42
  It was like 4 three things that I either listen to or read.
• 1:05:46
  They were all steeped in Gallifrey and then I'll pick
• 1:05:48
  this up and I was like, wait, Vampires?
• 1:05:51
  Manchester. Oh, fuck me, we're on Gallifrey
• 1:05:53
  again. So that's my own fault, really.
• 1:05:58
  What did you think of Maddie and Jake?
• 1:06:02
  Because we haven't spoken about them yet.
• 1:06:05
  I like their ending a lot. Yeah, I wish they had another 60
• 1:06:10
  pages to be honest. And I liked how despite being
• 1:06:16
  blood sucking themed, that they were looking after Nyssa.
• 1:06:20
  Yeah, I think they were the probably the most interesting
• 1:06:23
  characters away from Nyssa and Tegan.
• 1:06:27
  Yeah, I love those characters. And I think that's that's what
• 1:06:30
  drew me in so much when I was a teenager to this book.
• 1:06:33
  The kind of that, you know, I just wanted a hot vampire boy to
• 1:06:37
  sweep down from the sky and take me away from everything, as
• 1:06:41
  happens to Maddie in the first chapter of this book, which,
• 1:06:45
  yeah, I think you can see all that kind of 90s vampire stuff
• 1:06:49
  in this, like those characters, it's very lost boys, like that
• 1:06:54
  first section of when they're in Cornwall and they swoop down
• 1:06:57
  from the sky and they they pick her up.
• 1:06:59
  Like that's straight out of Lost Boys, I really think, Stephen.
• 1:07:03
  That first bird is the best part of the book.
• 1:07:05
  Yeah, it's it's very poor Cornell, isn't it?
• 1:07:07
  It's very like rooted in everyday like life.
• 1:07:13
  And they're so like to say that they're both dead.
• 1:07:15
  Like there's so, so much life in those two characters, Jake and
• 1:07:18
  Maddie. Like they're they're very poor
• 1:07:21
  Cornell characters. And yeah, there's there's also
• 1:07:24
  like bits of Stephen King as well with like the vampire baby
• 1:07:27
  at the window. Like that feels like a straight
• 1:07:30
  out and like the the grating with the with the head throwing
• 1:07:34
  vampire Boy underneath in the drain pipe again, that's that's
• 1:07:39
  very Stephen King. So he's like he's taking, he's
• 1:07:44
  where Blood Harvest was, Hammer Horror, this is like, yeah, Lost
• 1:07:50
  Boys and yeah. But, but up to date?
• 1:07:54
  Like, bang up to date is as well.
• 1:07:56
  Like almost like was had Ultraviolet been out at this
• 1:07:58
  point? Because that whole thing about
• 1:08:00
  using science to turn people into vampires.
• 1:08:03
  Yeah, Ultraviolet. Look like that, isn't it?
• 1:08:05
  Yeah, so I can. I can see what he's doing.
• 1:08:09
  Get rid of all that bloody continuity.
• 1:08:11
  I know it's in season 20 and this is the season where we
• 1:08:14
  bring everything back because it's the big anniversary year.
• 1:08:17
  But Jacob. Maddie, Luke.
• 1:08:20
  I love them. In fact, it's weird.
• 1:08:24
  Maybe maybe my young brain didn't remember this so well
• 1:08:28
  because I'm I'm reading these two.
• 1:08:29
  I'm like, wow, hope they're a big part of this, this novel.
• 1:08:32
  And they sort of are. But this are kind of side
• 1:08:34
  characters and then they turn up again.
• 1:08:36
  I was like, you haven't seen you for 30 pages.
• 1:08:39
  I really liked it. They had a interesting
• 1:08:43
  relationship before. Maddie is turned, which is like
• 1:08:45
  the prologue at the start. And then when she is turned,
• 1:08:49
  what I do like is she's Maddie and Jake still feel like very
• 1:08:55
  much like Maddie and Jake, but now they're vampires.
• 1:08:59
  Whereas a lot of the other characters, we're like, eh,
• 1:09:02
  we'll have to left behind. We just we're just like they
• 1:09:06
  had, they still had maybe maybe it was the the youth or as they
• 1:09:09
  still had this kind of vampiric romanticism about it.
• 1:09:12
  And I think I like a little bit of that or a lot of it sometimes
• 1:09:16
  in a vampire story that kind of that that that sort of like like
• 1:09:22
  a Lost Boys kind of angle to it, you know.
• 1:09:25
  And their relationship I think was always pretty good.
• 1:09:29
  And they say Nyssa being turned and didn't really want it,
• 1:09:31
  whereas they did like she kind of she kind of act like, you
• 1:09:37
  know no one forced, like Maddie was either.
• 1:09:40
  Like they want to eat. And so you know, you might want
• 1:09:42
  to do this. OK.
• 1:09:44
  So I. And they still felt very much
• 1:09:46
  like, like, like people. Yeah.
• 1:09:49
  We eat people, but we try not to do it too much or make it
• 1:09:53
  obvious. Like like it's like one of those
• 1:09:56
  things where you read, you read or watch something.
• 1:09:58
  You're like, I really like these characters, these characters,
• 1:10:02
  What's wrong with them again? And then next thing you, they're
• 1:10:04
  at a party ripping people enough and you're like, Oh yeah, that's
• 1:10:07
  the best, The problem with them, Yeah.
• 1:10:09
  Like, what's it? Producer.
• 1:10:11
  What's her name? Daisy.
• 1:10:12
  Cornwall from Paradise Towers. You know Maddie.
• 1:10:15
  Yes. Yes, we did eat the kangs, but
• 1:10:17
  we only had the unpopular ones. All right, we're not.
• 1:10:20
  There's a tablecloth to get the cleaners.
• 1:10:22
  All right. Yes, like that.
• 1:10:24
  Although it's so poor. Cornell is to take two vampire
• 1:10:28
  characters and make them sympathetic and to take the
• 1:10:31
  religious character and make him so unsympathetic, like he's
• 1:10:35
  always, he always does interesting things with or sort
• 1:10:38
  of defies your expectations like that.
• 1:10:41
  That's a really interesting approach.
• 1:10:44
  Do you know, OK, what was your what was your favorite sort of
• 1:10:49
  moment in this book? Because it is, it is full of
• 1:10:53
  lots of great move that I like I said earlier, I think it is
• 1:10:55
  oddly paced. There's sort of long stretches
• 1:10:57
  of not a lot happening and then and then there's just like a wow
• 1:11:01
  moment. I think mine was possibly the
• 1:11:04
  most Doctor Who moment in the whole book was when Yahoo went
• 1:11:08
  time freeze and the whole Earth stops and 1/2 of the earth will
• 1:11:15
  be a perpetual night and a everlasting home for the
• 1:11:19
  vampires. And I thought it's such a
• 1:11:21
  wonderful idea. So that's how you take a vampire
• 1:11:25
  story. I turn it.
• 1:11:26
  Into a Doctor Who story. You know, there's a Make the
• 1:11:29
  myth science fiction. There's that Simpsons episode
• 1:11:32
  where Mr. Byrne wants to make more money from the from
• 1:11:35
  electricity bills so he puts this giant screen up to blot out
• 1:11:39
  the sun from Springfield. So I'm reading this plan that
• 1:11:42
  Ras having. I'm like this is a really,
• 1:11:45
  really good sci-fi vampire concept, but as I'm reading and
• 1:11:49
  I'm like this is Mr. Burns is going to get shot for this?
• 1:11:52
  It was Maggie Simpson, all right.
• 1:11:56
  That's one of my notes in my in my Ruath is doing a Mr. Burns.
• 1:12:02
  What about you, Nadia? What was your what was like,
• 1:12:05
  your favorite Wow moment? I I really like that prologue
• 1:12:09
  with Maddie and Jake, but I've already spoken about that, so I
• 1:12:13
  just had like a because I really like the character work and I
• 1:12:17
  think he does the TARDIS team really well.
• 1:12:19
  There's a really lovely moment where the Doctor's looking for
• 1:12:21
  Nessa in the castle, and he finds Maddie and Jake asleep in
• 1:12:26
  bed. But he finds he can smell that
• 1:12:30
  Nessa has been there from. He finds like a single one of
• 1:12:33
  Nessa's hair where she's been lying between them.
• 1:12:36
  And he just says he wondered if the two vampires missed her
• 1:12:40
  presence as much as he did. And it's just like this lovely
• 1:12:43
  little moment of seeing how much the companions mean to him,
• 1:12:49
  which you don't You don't really get that in classic Doctor Who
• 1:12:53
  dialogue. And it's it's a it's an internal
• 1:12:55
  monologue bit of the Doctor, which again, you don't really
• 1:12:58
  get in the new adventures. So it was just this nice moment
• 1:13:01
  of humanising the Doctor. And we all know that Nyssa was
• 1:13:05
  was Peter Davidson's favorite, so I just thought it was this
• 1:13:07
  sweet character moment of him showing genuine care about
• 1:13:13
  loveliness. Luke.
• 1:13:17
  Yes, what? Was your favorite moment in this
• 1:13:20
  book. All right, so I'm just going to
• 1:13:23
  if you I hope you asked me my least favorite because I've got.
• 1:13:26
  Just yeah, I'm coming. To one I really I.
• 1:13:28
  Feel as if I'm being far too kind about this, but but it
• 1:13:32
  wilted. Me.
• 1:13:35
  Well, I did have Mr. Burns thought.
• 1:13:37
  But I did like like the plan. I like the gas idea.
• 1:13:40
  I kind of like the him experimenting with also
• 1:13:44
  different ways of making people into vampires.
• 1:13:46
  I still feel like someone should steal the Mr. Burns Paul Cornell
• 1:13:50
  idea and turn a like what happens if there's a permanent
• 1:13:56
  eclipse or something? You've done anything, You'd do
• 1:13:59
  anything. So they haven't made that horror
• 1:14:01
  movie yet. Where?
• 1:14:02
  Eternal Night? Maybe they haven't, Haven't seen
• 1:14:03
  it, but that'd be a concept well worth ripping off.
• 1:14:08
  But my favorite moments, I feel like, 'cause they're very,
• 1:14:13
  they're very Doctor Who, but they're very they're it's too
• 1:14:16
  broad and deep. Because it's the book is like
• 1:14:18
  all those really ghastly Excuse me, this is too.
• 1:14:20
  Broad and deep. Remember, no, it's simply
• 1:14:23
  written. Well, you just get Terroristics
• 1:14:27
  to write both the books and like he would have banged them out in
• 1:14:29
  a couple of weeks. Oh no, please imagine
• 1:14:32
  terroristics writing this. I mean that that terrible
• 1:14:36
  abusing evangelist. I dread to think what I'd be up
• 1:14:39
  to in this book. It was also would have been
• 1:14:43
  maybe little bit more Arabian. Sorry Uncle Terry but hey some
• 1:14:48
  people think adult stuff means involving that kind of thing.
• 1:14:51
  And I'm like no it doesn't. No it doesn't.
• 1:14:55
  So a lot of the gnarly horror thing things that have stuck
• 1:14:58
  with me on this read through is the party.
• 1:15:01
  This has been LED through the party and you leave it.
• 1:15:05
  He doesn't describe it too much. It's just screaming bodies.
• 1:15:08
  And I'm like, I wish you kind of did describe it because now I'm
• 1:15:10
  doing that job myself. It's fucking terrible because
• 1:15:15
  you doesn't describe people's just and also the casual
• 1:15:19
  callousness of like what do you feel like to my Indian food and
• 1:15:22
  stuff like that like so I like the gnarly kind of horror
• 1:15:25
  moments and one of my favorite moments must be.
• 1:15:30
  It's also intertwined with my least favorite.
• 1:15:33
  But I do like the visual of the Doctor's like, hey, what's going
• 1:15:36
  on with this gas? And suddenly he's got like this
• 1:15:38
  face hugger thing, like latched right over his face and there's
• 1:15:41
  no one to save him and he's just rolling outside the tar, the
• 1:15:44
  suffocating. So it's just like those little
• 1:15:47
  kinds of horror touches that they because Doctor Who's done
• 1:15:53
  horror forever. But just to do it so like
• 1:15:56
  gruesome and kind of vampire and bloody, it really stuck with me,
• 1:16:01
  yeah. Just imagine in Season 20 that
• 1:16:04
  baby on a string coming. Oh, and you can see the strings
• 1:16:10
  too. Or even worse, some dreadful
• 1:16:13
  fringing CSO. All right, well then, let's be
• 1:16:19
  slightly less positive. Andrew, you said there was a few
• 1:16:22
  things you didn't like about this.
• 1:16:23
  So what particularly stood out? I'm going back to my notes
• 1:16:30
  again. I've just written who the fuck
• 1:16:32
  is Jeremy Sanders and why is he here?
• 1:16:34
  Like this was another one I've. Forgotten that character existed
• 1:16:38
  if I. Want but this was another
• 1:16:39
  vampire character and every time he appears he's given his full
• 1:16:43
  name and I don't understand why. I thought maybe is it one of
• 1:16:47
  these fan insert things like somebody that he knows?
• 1:16:50
  Cornell, we want answers. He's like this extra vampire
• 1:16:54
  character who turns up quite a lot.
• 1:16:56
  He doesn't really have a character, doesn't like.
• 1:16:59
  It's like why this could have been Jake or Maddie, like
• 1:17:02
  fulfilling his part of the plot. And yeah, I just, it just really
• 1:17:08
  annoyed me every time he turned up, I think.
• 1:17:11
  He's the one, Tegan tells the Rack.
• 1:17:12
  Off as well. Like he is, yes.
• 1:17:16
  But I was just like, why do we have his full name every single
• 1:17:18
  time? We don't get it.
• 1:17:20
  Just don't get it. Answers on a postcard.
• 1:17:23
  Anyone listening to this? I realized that wasn't a
• 1:17:25
  particularly like you are. But like, I get it because you
• 1:17:31
  love this at 15. Like, and I I really think
• 1:17:34
  there's something deep rooted about something you loved as a
• 1:17:37
  kid. And I know, I know you still
• 1:17:39
  appreciate it now as an adult and it's a great read for you.
• 1:17:42
  But like that glow of nostalgia, some books I read, some of them,
• 1:17:46
  some of those 8th Doctor ones you could tell it to, You're
• 1:17:48
  blue in the face of the last resorts.
• 1:17:50
  A load of shit, but I absolutely loved it when I was a kid.
• 1:17:53
  Yeah, absolutely. Like same with like TV Doctor
• 1:17:56
  Who. Like if if there's one that you
• 1:17:58
  like that got you young. OK, come on.
• 1:18:01
  Let's all very quickly just say that one TV story that we know
• 1:18:04
  is terrible, but we watched when we were younger and we loved it.
• 1:18:07
  Death to the Daleks? Death to Doomsday.
• 1:18:10
  Daleks, Destiny, the Daleks and. 4 to Doomsday.
• 1:18:14
  Oh, bless you. I shall be interfering with your
• 1:18:19
  monopticons, don't you worry. Well, what about you then, Luke?
• 1:18:23
  What? What did you not like about this
• 1:18:26
  book? OK, in particular.
• 1:18:28
  So I did ask you guys in the chat about this because I I
• 1:18:32
  don't know, I figured three Doctor Who nerds must have the
• 1:18:35
  answer, and I'm not sure we had the concrete answer, but right,
• 1:18:40
  it's got to do with Chapter 6. I'm sorry, what is the freaking
• 1:18:43
  deal with Time Lord space and time?
• 1:18:47
  Telepathic meditation? Torch.
• 1:18:51
  Like. I've just sent the doctor a few
• 1:18:54
  pertinent plot points from Blood Harvest.
• 1:18:57
  Right. He should be OK now.
• 1:18:59
  Yeah, I'm like, what is that? So I'm messaging you guys.
• 1:19:03
  Is that like some Planet of the Spiders thing?
• 1:19:06
  I I love that as a kid. And that's probably why I
• 1:19:08
  haven't watched it as an adult, because I that's just how I feel
• 1:19:11
  about Planet of the Spiders. I love that.
• 1:19:13
  I just want to hold on to that. So I wasn't.
• 1:19:16
  I was like, is that what they're doing?
• 1:19:18
  Because that is bonkers. And like, why didn't just Romana
• 1:19:22
  and the Doctor just do that every time they got separated?
• 1:19:24
  Just close their eyes and be like, are you all right?
• 1:19:26
  Yeah, you're right. Yeah.
• 1:19:27
  Like, no, that seemed it was too much, man.
• 1:19:31
  It was too much. I my biggest complaint is where
• 1:19:36
  it started, where it ended. I don't know if you guys
• 1:19:38
  remember when I started this book.
• 1:19:41
  I've sent you guys a message going, wow, the characterization
• 1:19:45
  of Tegan. This is like, you can tell I've
• 1:19:47
  gone from Terrance Dix to Paul Cornell because suddenly the
• 1:19:50
  characterization just slept up. There was a wonderful
• 1:19:52
  description of the Mara as a snake coiling itself around
• 1:19:58
  Tegan's brain. And I was going, oh, Terrance
• 1:20:00
  Dix would never write a book a line like that.
• 1:20:02
  You know and and. Everything Andrew said.
• 1:20:06
  The the Manchester setting, Maddie and Jake Nesser and the
• 1:20:10
  baby, all of that stuff. At the beginning I was totally
• 1:20:13
  on board for this book and then by the end of it I'm reading
• 1:20:17
  lines like hang on a minute, God, I've lost it now.
• 1:20:25
  And this is 1 moment where I genuinely will edit.
• 1:20:27
  When I say I will edit, well I didn't do that last episode.
• 1:20:32
  I left something in oh man, I'll just let the lion here.
• 1:20:42
  Intimate tree. Oh, tree, actually.
• 1:20:47
  I'm going to make a point about that in a minute.
• 1:20:52
  Now that's so annoying. It's not even a great line.
• 1:21:02
  That's the whole point. I'm just going to make it up.
• 1:21:06
  I got. Give us the gist.
• 1:21:08
  Yeah, So it starts off with all that great stuff and then by the
• 1:21:11
  end of the book I'm reading, you know, first the Earth, then
• 1:21:15
  Gallifrey, then all of time and space.
• 1:21:19
  And I've gone from this brilliant, urban, disturbing
• 1:21:23
  horror movie to this dreadful camp Bit of a Doctor Who
• 1:21:27
  nonsense at the end. How do we get from there to
• 1:21:31
  there? And I think it's the format.
• 1:21:34
  I think it's the format that holds him back from from telling
• 1:21:37
  the the sort of truly graphic and nasty and unforgettable
• 1:21:44
  version of golf opera. But I wish, I kind of wish I
• 1:21:47
  could read just. I just want to ditch all the
• 1:21:49
  continuity and just do. If the threat was just the
• 1:21:54
  aerosol going out into Manchester, I think I would buy
• 1:21:58
  that and be more on board than if it was going out into
• 1:22:01
  Manchester. And then we're all jaunting off
• 1:22:03
  to Gallifrey and then we're not going to swarm through all the
• 1:22:06
  time and space. That's my biggest issue, I
• 1:22:08
  think. Yeah.
• 1:22:08
  Do you? Know what this book reminded me
• 1:22:10
  of and I wonder if it was an influence on it?
• 1:22:14
  Russell T Davies is the second coming, which is also set in
• 1:22:19
  Manchester. I think has this whole like
• 1:22:23
  contemporary sinister religion vibe going on and has like an
• 1:22:28
  important scene set the football ground with like a big crowd.
• 1:22:32
  It's it's it's got that. I mean the plot, the plots are
• 1:22:35
  quite dissimilar, but it's got the Manchester bits have that
• 1:22:38
  vibe of. It.
• 1:22:39
  That vibe of it, yeah. And I mean, Russell T Davies
• 1:22:42
  must have read this. So maybe, maybe there was a seed
• 1:22:45
  of that in. Russell and Stephen were reading
• 1:22:48
  these like. He wrote damaged goods not long
• 1:22:52
  after this. He knew these existed, at least.
• 1:22:54
  Oh yeah, yeah. Mind you, he puts a scene in
• 1:22:57
  Damaged Goods, which he then goes and puts in the second
• 1:23:00
  comment, which is the the woman poisoning, making her husband
• 1:23:04
  dinner and poisoning him. And I've got to say, in the book
• 1:23:06
  and in the TV version, it's absolutely chilling.
• 1:23:09
  Oh. My goodness.
• 1:23:12
  Anything we haven't covered, we've goth opera.
• 1:23:16
  Any any points or notes that you've got that you'd like Say
• 1:23:20
  your piece now Mr. Andrew? Yeah, I've got a couple of bits
• 1:23:26
  still in my notes. So one bit similar to the bits
• 1:23:31
  that you don't like Joe about. Like the sort of mythology
• 1:23:35
  continuity stuff. I don't get eternals.
• 1:23:41
  It's a very ephemeral way of thinking.
• 1:23:46
  I never really understood the stuff in the new adventures
• 1:23:49
  about the Time Lord, gods, about death and time and whoever else,
• 1:23:58
  and I think they were somehow linked to the Eternals.
• 1:24:01
  And then I'm just thinking of Eternal, the girl band now and
• 1:24:07
  then in this star. Singing Don't go.
• 1:24:08
  There they talk about, they say Agonal was an eternal, so I
• 1:24:15
  guess he was part of that gang. And then you've also got the
• 1:24:18
  Guardians in there playing chess.
• 1:24:20
  I think they're also meant to be eternals.
• 1:24:23
  There's this whole Eternals thing going on where it's this
• 1:24:26
  thing to just like do something with God like beings and Doctor
• 1:24:31
  Who. I just, I don't really get it
• 1:24:34
  and it's just a bit of a stretch.
• 1:24:36
  Virgin loves it, don't they? They love great mythic gods from
• 1:24:41
  the dawn of time. Oh, they love their HP Lovecraft
• 1:24:44
  villains as well. Like in the New Adventures
• 1:24:46
  especially, yeah. And some of that can be done
• 1:24:49
  really well, I think sometimes. But yeah, it can be a bit
• 1:24:52
  repetitive. Yeah, I also have a WTF moment
• 1:24:58
  in this book, which I'm surprised that never came up in
• 1:25:02
  our Groove chat. It is the bit where I might I
• 1:25:05
  might just read it out. It's the bit where they're doing
• 1:25:08
  the operation on Lang to put the sort of like canister of vampire
• 1:25:13
  gas in him. So Nyssa is watching them
• 1:25:16
  operate on him, and this is a lovely little piece of prose
• 1:25:20
  from that section. Nyssa swallowed back some bile.
• 1:25:25
  She watched and assisted in some minor ways in operations on
• 1:25:28
  track and and she wouldn't normally expect to feel nauseous
• 1:25:31
  at such a sight. But it was hard to maintain
• 1:25:34
  clinical detachment when you were so hungry, the way Lang's
• 1:25:39
  colon was tantalisingly exposed. Horrified at herself, she
• 1:25:44
  concentrated on the instruments around her.
• 1:25:47
  His colon was tantalisingly exposed.
• 1:25:52
  What the fuck? How did the editor not get the
• 1:25:55
  red pen out on that sentence? Nisa likes that ass blood, this
• 1:25:58
  one. JNT would have been we're not
• 1:26:02
  having colons in Doctor Who. Yeah, I've forgotten about that
• 1:26:07
  bit. Yeah, which also kind of implies
• 1:26:10
  that they yeah, they shove that thing up his ass.
• 1:26:13
  Like, what's? Like what?
• 1:26:17
  You may have thought this through a bit too much, you
• 1:26:19
  know, Luke, Any notes to top that?
• 1:26:25
  Oh my goodness. See if if you if I skip that a
• 1:26:30
  little that blood transfusion a little bit.
• 1:26:32
  Yeah, I skimmed that kind of part as well.
• 1:26:35
  So thanks for reading it to me it.
• 1:26:39
  All allows lovely dreams tonight.
• 1:26:42
  There's I feel like, did he close the gap?
• 1:26:47
  Like, does this take place after Snake dance and then just go
• 1:26:50
  straight into? Because I feel like, like Paul
• 1:26:53
  Cornell has said somewhere that he regrets doing that.
• 1:26:56
  Ignore that and everybody has but the the because there are a
• 1:27:00
  few little drops to the Guardians.
• 1:27:04
  In fact, the Doctor doesn't want to pilot the TARDIS so well
• 1:27:08
  because the Guardian might find him and I'm like, dude, you just
• 1:27:12
  tried to go to Heathrow for like a whole season.
• 1:27:14
  What are you talking about? But that might be part of it as
• 1:27:16
  well. He's getting a bit worried
• 1:27:17
  because he's done all that. To be fair, they do catch up
• 1:27:21
  with him by the end of the season.
• 1:27:22
  Yeah. And then by the end of this
• 1:27:24
  book, there is a much more tangible appearance.
• 1:27:28
  I think Andrew just mentioned that they're playing chess or
• 1:27:29
  some kind of game just in the background watching things, and
• 1:27:34
  then they just kind of disappear.
• 1:27:35
  And they said the information is the black guardians kind of
• 1:27:38
  pissed off because on the board he had the vampires, and on the
• 1:27:41
  board, I think at least that's how I read it.
• 1:27:44
  And on the board, you know the white guardians got all the
• 1:27:46
  goodies and you know that's, yeah, it's it's a bit of family,
• 1:27:51
  but more during around. I'm dead's around the corner.
• 1:27:53
  I don't mind a bit of foreshadowing.
• 1:27:55
  Why not? Well, it's actually directly
• 1:27:57
  next. If you read the back cover of
• 1:27:59
  this book, my WTF moment was, and I did write it down.
• 1:28:06
  There was a sudden cracking sound.
• 1:28:08
  Eric pulled his head from his shoulders and flung it upwards.
• 1:28:12
  It hit the ceiling. Tegan forced Nissan to look
• 1:28:15
  away. I was like, what the hell was
• 1:28:16
  going on? A man decapitates himself.
• 1:28:22
  Oh, that's right. As he was.
• 1:28:24
  That's because his hypnotism didn't work on Tegan.
• 1:28:26
  Yeah. Yeah, I was all right with the
• 1:28:29
  decapitations. I drew my line at at Colon's.
• 1:28:36
  Yeah, to ask you guys about the missing adventures in the past,
• 1:28:40
  talks of adventures as a whole. I I think I may have touched
• 1:28:43
  upon this in the sense of time, but do you prefer when these
• 1:28:48
  books like authentically depict what we would have seen on
• 1:28:54
  screen as a whole? Or do you prefer when they take
• 1:28:59
  risks and they're a bit more experimental?
• 1:29:01
  So I'm thinking sort of, I don't know, combat rock or something
• 1:29:06
  like that. You know the the 2nd Doctor and
• 1:29:09
  Jamie and Victoria. Yeah, Mick Willis.
• 1:29:11
  Cannibals in the in the forest and people being eviscerated and
• 1:29:15
  things. My answer's the most boring.
• 1:29:18
  My answer's the most boring, so I'll go first.
• 1:29:21
  It's Doctor Who. You can't have trad without some
• 1:29:24
  rad, and vice versa, so I like a bit of both.
• 1:29:27
  Sometimes I just want to pick up Davidson story and make it feel
• 1:29:32
  like it was in there, like Sand of Time or something like that.
• 1:29:36
  In other times I I want to see what the Hell's going on with
• 1:29:39
  something like Man of the Velvet Mask.
• 1:29:40
  I'm like that's weird or like a combat rock or oh God just
• 1:29:48
  there's there's heaps of them that I think the missing
• 1:29:52
  Adventures went out of their way to be a bit more unlike the TV
• 1:29:56
  show. But the BBC novels did
• 1:29:58
  experiment quite a lot like it gets towards the end as well.
• 1:30:01
  You got Eye of Heaven, which is like mostly from Leland's
• 1:30:03
  perspective at certain points as well.
• 1:30:05
  They didn't even the Missing Adventures didn't even do a
• 1:30:08
  Leela story. If you can believe that everyone
• 1:30:10
  just want to write Sarah Jane, I guess I'll remind it.
• 1:30:13
  But the BBC books I might go to, especially the PDA's, have won
• 1:30:20
  something that's more on the tread scale than the than the
• 1:30:26
  rad. And I think the older I get I
• 1:30:28
  think that's might be what I want for a book.
• 1:30:30
  Entertainment. It's just stand alone.
• 1:30:33
  So I have to guess be in the mood for something completely
• 1:30:38
  radical. But I don't know, I'm not
• 1:30:40
  against it. I like it.
• 1:30:41
  So it's it's all Doctor Who. My answer's boring.
• 1:30:43
  I told you, trust. You to take my convoluted
• 1:30:46
  sentence and sum it up in trad or rad.
• 1:30:48
  Thank you very much. I don't do frock and gun.
• 1:30:55
  I mean, I like both. Yeah.
• 1:30:57
  Again, a boring answer. I think what I'm looking for in
• 1:31:00
  the in the sort of past Doctor adventures is like, I want, I
• 1:31:07
  want it to feel of that era. I want the characters to feel
• 1:31:10
  authentic, but I want them to be treated with like a level of
• 1:31:14
  maturity and sophistication that wasn't possible in classic era
• 1:31:18
  Doctor Who. So and it still had to feel like
• 1:31:23
  Doctor Who. So books, books where there's
• 1:31:25
  like cannibal holocausts featuring Victoria Waterville
• 1:31:30
  are not really for me. I was hoping.
• 1:31:32
  To add that to the list. I'll happily read it, my
• 1:31:36
  thought. But yeah, I think I want.
• 1:31:39
  I want it to feel like it's. It doesn't necessarily be a need
• 1:31:43
  to be a story that would have gone out on TV in 1968 or
• 1:31:47
  whatever, but I want it to feel like a genuine connection to
• 1:31:51
  that. And I want the characters to
• 1:31:52
  feel like those characters. And I think that the the range
• 1:31:57
  that kind of hits that the best is the companion Chronicles
• 1:32:00
  because you've kind of got the original actors, but you've got
• 1:32:05
  a first person narrative. So there's just like a level of
• 1:32:07
  characterisation and that lifts it.
• 1:32:12
  Like a really good example of that I think is the, what's it
• 1:32:16
  called The Rocket Man, which is on the face of it, the narrative
• 1:32:20
  of it is a very straightforward sci-fi sort of Flash Gordon
• 1:32:26
  style adventure, which is exactly the sort of sci-fi story
• 1:32:29
  they would have done in the Hartnell era.
• 1:32:31
  But the story is not actually about that, It's about Ian being
• 1:32:34
  in love with Barbara. And it's also kind of told a
• 1:32:38
  little bit like it's a missing adventure, like it like there's
• 1:32:40
  missing episodes and you join this story part way through.
• 1:32:43
  So it's very clever. It hits all the kind of like fan
• 1:32:47
  parts of your brain, but it's telling quite a mature story
• 1:32:50
  about relationships between characters with the sci-fi stuff
• 1:32:54
  as a backdrop. So.
• 1:32:55
  I haven't heard that story for years and years now.
• 1:32:59
  You you once complimented me on my recall of things and I can
• 1:33:03
  still remember the cliffhanger where he was like I had to go
• 1:33:07
  after Barbara. So I ran up to the platform and
• 1:33:11
  jumped and he just. Literally.
• 1:33:14
  That's amazing. A bit suicide, basically, to go
• 1:33:17
  after her. Oh, it's amazingly good.
• 1:33:21
  It's not quite it's not quite as good, but Return of the Rocket
• 1:33:23
  Man's not bad either. I tend to prefer the radical
• 1:33:29
  past Doctor adventures because I think sometimes things can get a
• 1:33:34
  little bit bland if we are just like I'm trying to pull one out
• 1:33:39
  of a hat. It's been like Colony of Lies by
• 1:33:43
  Colin Brake, which is sort of doing a season six thing where
• 1:33:47
  they go to a place, it's been like the crowd and there's a
• 1:33:49
  lots of things to sort out and it all happens one after another
• 1:33:53
  and it all makes sense. And the characters are kind of
• 1:33:56
  TV forms and it's also boring. And I do have a complete
• 1:34:04
  opposite book to that, but that's my recommend for this
• 1:34:07
  episode, so I'm going to wait there.
• 1:34:17
  It's a perfect segue into our recommends today, which I'm
• 1:34:23
  hoping you both have. I mean, we're going to run out
• 1:34:26
  of books eventually, but. Until we do.
• 1:34:29
  Luke, what do you have for up to date and does it contain the
• 1:34:33
  word fits? No, I I did.
• 1:34:40
  I got the FITS chat at the start and you know it's all good.
• 1:34:44
  It's not all fits all. The time.
• 1:34:45
  It's not saying you're a walking cliche.
• 1:34:51
  No, but I think I'm going to recommend it's going to be Steve
• 1:34:58
  Lyons. I'm sorry, it's.
• 1:35:00
  That's your utter. Cliche.
• 1:35:02
  Well done, yeah. Yeah, so everyone likes to talk
• 1:35:07
  about the witch hunters. Yes, I know, it's good.
• 1:35:10
  It's really good. But I also like his other first
• 1:35:13
  doctor novel called Salvation, which features Stephen and I
• 1:35:19
  think Dodo, and it's set in New York City.
• 1:35:22
  I think it's another one that's about kind of like faith and how
• 1:35:26
  it works and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:35:29
  I just thought it was another really good.
• 1:35:30
  It's all right just to temper expectations.
• 1:35:34
  It's not the Witch Hunters, but it's not the space stage either
• 1:35:38
  if that makes sense. Like this.
• 1:35:40
  It's a really, it's a really good book, doesn't quite hit as
• 1:35:43
  hard or as high as Witch Hunters.
• 1:35:45
  I think that's almost Lightning in a bottle, that kind of that
• 1:35:48
  novel. But it's a pretty decent follow
• 1:35:50
  up it's it's and I love Stephen, he's one of my favourites so he
• 1:35:55
  doesn't get many books. I can only think of maybe 3-4
• 1:35:59
  and that's out of everything from BBC and Virgin.
• 1:36:03
  So I don't get my Stephen Fix that much in prose.
• 1:36:08
  That's why I like the Companion Chronicles as well, Andrew.
• 1:36:10
  Yeah. But yeah, Salvation by Steve
• 1:36:13
  Lyons. That's.
• 1:36:14
  Amazing things with Dojo. That book, it it plugs all of
• 1:36:18
  that back story that we never got on TV.
• 1:36:21
  Yeah, I I read. I read about half of it last
• 1:36:24
  year. I didn't.
• 1:36:25
  I think. I just, I didn't give up on it.
• 1:36:27
  I just like forgot I was reading it, I think.
• 1:36:30
  And yeah, there's loads of really interesting stuff in that
• 1:36:34
  book. I I don't think all of it works,
• 1:36:36
  but it's it's really interesting and what it's trying to do,
• 1:36:41
  yeah. Do you do realize that across
• 1:36:43
  these book clubs I've recommended The Witch Hunters by
• 1:36:46
  Steve Lyons? Andrew, you've recommended the
• 1:36:49
  Final Sanction Sanction. Yeah.
• 1:36:52
  By Steve Lyons and now you've recommended Salvation.
• 1:36:55
  I mean we're we're doing all right by Steve Lyons in this.
• 1:36:59
  Well, what have you got for us and Andrew?
• 1:37:01
  Well, as well as theming the question that you asked for me,
• 1:37:06
  I've also themed the recommendation.
• 1:37:08
  So I have selected The Heralds of Destruction.
• 1:37:13
  So we started with Paul Cornell's earliest past Doctor
• 1:37:19
  story and this is his latest one.
• 1:37:21
  So The Heralds of Destruction is a Titan comic comic book
• 1:37:28
  featuring the 3rd Doctor and Joe Grants and the Master.
• 1:37:32
  And it's kind of, I guess, Paul Cornell's sort of last word on
• 1:37:37
  the 3rd Doctor. So the premise of it is that the
• 1:37:43
  2nd Doctor turns up in the 3rd Doctor's lab and then it kind of
• 1:37:49
  goes from there and it's a kind of a, it's kind of everything
• 1:37:53
  you want from a UNIT story. It's also kind of like a last, a
• 1:37:56
  final story for for Roger Delgado's master and the the
• 1:38:02
  things it does with the 2nd Doctor, perhaps not what you
• 1:38:05
  expect that it's going to do. And yeah, it's it's a really
• 1:38:09
  good, it's a really good sort of action adventure, fun story,
• 1:38:14
  great artwork. And also I got it for 299 in in
• 1:38:20
  Forbidden Planet in their sale. So yeah, it's the Titan comics
• 1:38:26
  are a bit hit and miss, but this one is really good.
• 1:38:28
  I'm going to Forbidden Planet tomorrow.
• 1:38:29
  I'll keep a lookout. Was it the one in London?
• 1:38:32
  Yes, like on the ground floor. I think, because it's.
• 1:38:35
  I think Titan and Forbidden Planet are kind of the same
• 1:38:38
  company so often. A lot of the Titan comics are
• 1:38:41
  like dirt cheap in Forbidden Planet.
• 1:38:43
  What? Was that called again?
• 1:38:45
  It's called the Heralds of Destruction.
• 1:38:47
  Heralds of Destruction. I'll keep a lookout for that
• 1:38:49
  tomorrow. I You guys are going to think
• 1:38:52
  I'm mad because I think this is such a Marmite book and it's a
• 1:38:57
  late past Doctor Adventure and it's a season 6 past Doctor
• 1:39:02
  Adventure. The Indestructible Man by Simon
• 1:39:07
  Messingham. Weirdly enough, I think Tom
• 1:39:10
  Messman goes one or two ways. It's either a complete flop like
• 1:39:15
  the Infinity Race, which I think is such a bland book, always
• 1:39:20
  amazingly good, like The Doctor Trap that he wrote for the new
• 1:39:24
  series Adventures. And the Inter structural man is
• 1:39:27
  basically, what if the world of Gerry Anderson was really real
• 1:39:34
  and all those secret bases and all of that, these people sort
• 1:39:37
  of getting off on missions and insane spaceships.
• 1:39:40
  Why, if that was all really, really real?
• 1:39:43
  And how do you depict that in a book as like a hard science
• 1:39:47
  fiction book with a fully realized society?
• 1:39:52
  So that's his starting point, and it's brilliantly done.
• 1:39:56
  He just packs that setting full of detail.
• 1:39:59
  I must cover it in a book club one day because it's such such a
• 1:40:02
  brilliantly done setting. But then what if a creature or a
• 1:40:09
  being from another universe started tearing holes in the
• 1:40:16
  earth and wiping out entire cities and towns and countries
• 1:40:22
  and nobody can communicate with it?
• 1:40:24
  In any way, shape or form. And I think at one point it's
• 1:40:29
  like, I think it's trying to say hello, it's the end of like a
• 1:40:32
  chapter that this thing, it's so different from anything we
• 1:40:36
  understand. And it's basically how do we
• 1:40:39
  tell them please stop and they can't communicate with it at
• 1:40:43
  all. And along the way it's got some
• 1:40:46
  brutally violent moments. It's got some amazing
• 1:40:50
  characterization of Jamie and Zoe, who both go through really
• 1:40:54
  terrible experiences in this setting.
• 1:40:58
  It's unforgettable. I can imagine someone reading
• 1:41:01
  this who wants to read, I don't know, The Seeds of Death as a
• 1:41:05
  past doctor eventually reading this and going, What are you
• 1:41:08
  doing to Jamie and Zoe? Why?
• 1:41:10
  Who do gives a shit about Jerry Anson?
• 1:41:12
  But it's. Literally, I've been watching
• 1:41:14
  that, too. Good timing I.
• 1:41:17
  Love it. It's the other extreme to the
• 1:41:19
  colony of lies and it come came out not long even before or
• 1:41:22
  after but that's that's the sort of our stop for adventure.
• 1:41:26
  I really like that goes with a a what if that's interesting and
• 1:41:31
  and does it well and then throws in a a hard science fiction idea
• 1:41:37
  and does some interesting things with it.
• 1:41:38
  Yeah, it's. I don't know if you guys have
• 1:41:40
  read that one. No.
• 1:41:42
  I have not, but I have read Z to major.
• 1:41:45
  I'm kind of like it, Yeah. That's a very terrible cover.
• 1:41:49
  They've got Zoe in one of those UFO wigs on the cover.
• 1:41:52
  It's really bad. Yeah, I think when it came out I
• 1:41:55
  was just a bit like, oh, it's Doctor Who meets Captain
• 1:41:59
  Scarlett. Like, I'm not really interested
• 1:42:00
  in that. And then?
• 1:42:02
  What about a book for audio? Jamie Anderson directs for Big
• 1:42:04
  Finish. I mean, do you guys have that
• 1:42:06
  one? No, it's one of the.
• 1:42:09
  It's one of those ones that's really expensive.
• 1:42:11
  God. Damn it.
• 1:42:11
  Oh. We can't.
• 1:42:14
  Not coming to a book club near you?
• 1:42:17
  Unless I find a cheap coffee on on the various places on the
• 1:42:22
  Internet that I stored every day, I'll have.
• 1:42:25
  To read it and then send it to each of you and then we'll just
• 1:42:27
  do it in a year's time. Well, look, I mean, we've
• 1:42:31
  actually got a bit of a dilemma today because originally we were
• 1:42:34
  going to do a trilogy of vampire stories and kick straight into
• 1:42:39
  Kate Ormond's vampire science. Once again, I cannot say no to
• 1:42:44
  anybody, and I promise that to about 15 other people.
• 1:42:47
  And because I gave the preference to golf opera here,
• 1:42:50
  I've given the preference to vampire science there.
• 1:42:53
  So what the hell are we going to read next?
• 1:42:57
  I mean, can I make a suggestion? I feel like just to please Luke,
• 1:43:03
  we should do a book. Finally, Star and Fits, because
• 1:43:09
  I don't think we have yet, right?
• 1:43:11
  No, we haven't. We've done two EDA's and you're
• 1:43:15
  making me read Sam. You almost made me read Sam
• 1:43:17
  Jones three times, though. So somebody suggests something
• 1:43:23
  and don't leave it too long because people are very
• 1:43:25
  impatient. I do think Mr. Andrew had the
• 1:43:31
  idea of fear itself. Yes, a lot back.
• 1:43:35
  Yes, I'd forgotten about that. Yeah, we could do for itself
• 1:43:38
  next. I mean, it's kind of cheating.
• 1:43:40
  It's a past doctor adventure, but you know you don't have to
• 1:43:43
  tell anyone there. Have you always read that
• 1:43:45
  before? I have only read.
• 1:43:48
  I read a bit of it, I think I was at uni when it came out and
• 1:43:52
  I just sort of never finished it, so it's a bit of a blank
• 1:43:55
  slate to me. Spoiler That's one of my ones I
• 1:43:59
  read. Well, I'll say when I was
• 1:44:00
  younger I was about 23, but a lot younger than I am now, and I
• 1:44:05
  remember writing the review 10 out of 10.
• 1:44:08
  This is one of the best Doctor Who books I've ever read.
• 1:44:10
  I was very impressed so I'm prepared to be disappointed.
• 1:44:15
  Going back to it, how exciting. Wow.
• 1:44:18
  Fear itself. Right choice.
• 1:44:21
  Sorry boys, I'm going to do this one last time.
• 1:44:23
  I do it every episode, but you know, we may gain followers from
• 1:44:27
  this. You know, Luke, where are you
• 1:44:29
  online? All right.
• 1:44:31
  If anyone wants to interact with me, I guess I'm at Grumpy Two EB
• 1:44:39
  on the tweety. That's that's where I am.
• 1:44:41
  Well. Not grumpy at all.
• 1:44:42
  Why are you called Grumpy? I used to be.
• 1:44:45
  I got married. Mellie down.
• 1:44:47
  Yeah, it happens. Oh, OK.
• 1:44:50
  I keep grumpy sometimes. Look, it's yeah, it's also hard
• 1:44:55
  to be grumpy when I've just spent, like, well over an hour
• 1:44:58
  talking about Doctor Who, so it's difficult.
• 1:45:00
  Oh, actually, Andrew, before I ask you to say where you are on
• 1:45:03
  social media, I did want to ask you earlier.
• 1:45:05
  Did your dream come true when you were younger?
• 1:45:08
  Did a vampire boy fly in through the window and set your heart
• 1:45:13
  aflame? Unfortunately not, no.
• 1:45:16
  So we're. We're we're quite safe then,
• 1:45:18
  yeah. I didn't have my own goth opera.
• 1:45:22
  Where are you online? So you can find me on Twitter.
• 1:45:30
  I'm at DW Cover Story where I kind of share wonderful Doctor
• 1:45:36
  Who artwork from across the years.
• 1:45:40
  And the very last point I would like to make is at the beginning
• 1:45:44
  of this call, Luke was in danger of the vampires from goth opera
• 1:45:51
  attacking him because it was dark outside and now it's light
• 1:45:55
  and Andrew and I have got me light being dark.
• 1:45:58
  So Andrew, just make sure you check you know, both directions
• 1:46:02
  when you go into the hallway. Right.
• 1:46:04
  Garlic garlic capsules, gentlemen.
• 1:46:07
  Boys, it is always a pleasure to talk to both of you.
• 1:46:11
  Thank you for your continued association with the book club.
• 1:46:14
  Thank you. I will see you the other side of
• 1:46:16
  fear itself. Bye.
• 1:46:19
  Oh. Man, I've got compare of these
• 1:46:24
  fucking. Thank you so much for just going
• 1:46:29
  by.