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Hamster Book Club - Shakedown by Terrance Dicks (featuring Michael Mills and Dylan Rees) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:05
  Is he dead? They're all dead, all the
• 0:11
  Sontarans and most of my crew. I take it that Mari and the real
• 0:17
  Zarel are dead as well. Death is inevitable in war.
• 0:23
  Do not try to harm me unless you wish to die also.
• 0:33
  I shouldn't dream of it, I could kill you both with ease.
• 0:39
  But we share a common enemy. I go now in my enemy ship with
• 0:47
  secrets that will save my people and in my natural.
• 0:52
  Form. Destructive.
• 1:21
  Bomb tunnel I win.
• 1:46
  Rutan, I win. Come on, quick.
• 1:56
  OK. OK, welcome.
• 2:28
  Back to the Hamster Book Club. My name is Joe Ford and we are
• 2:34
  merging today. We're having a bit of a merger
• 2:37
  of two podcasts with a themed series of conversations.
• 2:42
  I am here with a voice that you'll be very familiar to
• 2:46
  hearing on this podcast, Mr. Michael Mills.
• 2:48
  Hello. Hello great news kids, all your
• 2:52
  favorite stories in one weekly comic book.
• 2:57
  All your favorite podcasts, fuck all the others.
• 3:00
  And of course, the magnificent Mr. Dylan Reece.
• 3:03
  Hello, Dylan. Hello, I'm very happy to be here
• 3:05
  losing my book club virginity. You almost did before, didn't
• 3:10
  you? And we didn't record the
• 3:11
  episode. We didn't record the episode
• 3:13
  because the book was so bad and you didn't want to be.
• 3:16
  You didn't want to upset the author who was also coming up.
• 3:19
  In fact, it wasn't bad. I just hated it.
• 3:22
  I can say now, I won't say what it was, but it was not a bad
• 3:25
  book. I just did not like it.
• 3:27
  Can you imagine someone not liking a Paul Mars book?
• 3:31
  I honestly, it's just unthinkable, isn't it?
• 3:34
  And yet Dylan recent Luke Malloy came out in.
• 3:37
  Hives, we did. Tolerate them.
• 3:41
  Today we are here to talk about Shake Down, the novel by Terence
• 3:47
  Dicks, which started its life I think as a novelization of the
• 3:53
  straight to video Dreamwatch production and then was beefed
• 3:58
  up to become a Doctor Who story. Before we get into that, I've
• 4:03
  got a question for you 2 gentlemen, if you will allow me.
• 4:07
  Get me? No, no, I don't know enough of
• 4:11
  your questions. No questions.
• 4:14
  Well, I'll see you later guys. That was a fun episode.
• 4:16
  Now I would like to ask you because we sort of got in
• 4:19
  Terence Dix theme today, you know, the grandfather of Doctor
• 4:22
  Who literature or the uncle or. We love Dicks.
• 4:25
  We do love Dicks. Whatever cuddly description you
• 4:28
  want to give him, What do you think Terence Dix brings to
• 4:34
  original Doctor Who fiction? Is it a good match?
• 4:39
  And I'd like to throw it across to our virgin book lover, Dylan,
• 4:45
  I think. Terrence Dix is the base level
• 4:48
  of Doctor Who. It is everything you need and
• 4:52
  want Doctor Who to be, but at a very sort of it's not going to
• 4:56
  offend anybody. It's not going to do anything
• 4:58
  wild. He can be funny, he can do
• 5:00
  action, he can do scares, he can do danger, but it's all that
• 5:04
  safe level of sort of meat and potatoes.
• 5:07
  Doctor Who. But with a slight, you know,
• 5:10
  there's a, there is a sense of humor there.
• 5:11
  There's a slight knowing wink. And I think you're never going
• 5:15
  to get from him a game changer. But you will always have a good
• 5:19
  time going from A to B. What about the attempted rape of
• 5:23
  Ace in Blood Harvest? And that might upset a few
• 5:27
  people. I mean, everyone was doing it in
• 5:28
  the 90s, weren't they? True.
• 5:31
  I don't think there's anything shakedown.
• 5:33
  That that was him trying to play to a range and going for me like
• 5:39
  they're going, this is the adult Doctor Who and he's trying to
• 5:41
  make it slightly more adult and I don't think that's his comfort
• 5:44
  zone. Can you understand why they kept
• 5:47
  going back to Terrance? Like some people would say,
• 5:50
  putting terror sticks in the new adventures is a bit of an old
• 5:52
  fit in this range that's trying to be innovative and ambitious
• 5:56
  and too big and too broad for the small screen.
• 5:59
  And then you've got Terrance, who's absolutely perfect at
• 6:01
  being, you know, on the small screen, writing those books.
• 6:06
  Is that a good fit? I don't know whether it's a good
• 6:08
  fit, but I would be really interested to know if there was
• 6:11
  a spike for the Terence Dix ones, like because there were
• 6:13
  certain group of fans at the time who were perhaps slightly
• 6:17
  older and were just like, this isn't for me.
• 6:19
  I wonder whether those Terence Dix novels, they would jump in
• 6:21
  every day and then go, oh, a new Terence Dix.
• 6:23
  I love the junior giant robot. I'll check that out.
• 6:26
  Do you think there was a reason then why Dicks came in for the
• 6:29
  beginning of the 8th Doctor range?
• 6:31
  But that was prestige casting there.
• 6:34
  It it, it's also that weird thing of I think they're trying
• 6:37
  to launch it to a younger audience.
• 6:39
  So Terrence Dicks is absolutely the perfect person to do it.
• 6:42
  Although why you would start with the most continuity heavy
• 6:45
  book there is I don't know. But I think he has a safe pair
• 6:48
  of hands if you're trying to get back to basics.
• 6:51
  Doctor Who, even if the 8 Doctors isn't quite that.
• 6:54
  Should you wish to explore the 8 Doctors in any more depth, there
• 6:57
  is both are too hot for TV and the Hamster Birth Club episode
• 7:00
  out there discussing that. Well Michael, come on now.
• 7:04
  This is the longest I've been on a call where you haven't been
• 7:06
  talking Terrance. All right, I'm just over here in
• 7:10
  the corner. Don't worry.
• 7:12
  Terrance ticks. No, I mean, Dylan's all right.
• 7:14
  You know, what can you say? He is base of looked.
• 7:16
  It's all all Doctor Who, if left alone long enough, will reach
• 7:20
  the point of being Terrance ticks.
• 7:21
  Right? Because I think he understands
• 7:24
  he's just got a grasp of the the mechanics of Doctor Who, of the
• 7:27
  story in a way that I think few other writers ever actually
• 7:30
  achieved. And you know, that does mean you
• 7:34
  don't get the new breakaway novels up you, but it means you
• 7:37
  have it in every era. Something that just feels quite
• 7:40
  fundamentally like Doctor Who. Like almost it's Terrance is
• 7:43
  probably the closest you get to the Platonic idea of Doctor Who.
• 7:45
  Certainly before the new series came back, if you'd asked
• 7:47
  someone to describe a Doctor Who's a generic Doctor Who
• 7:51
  story, it probably would have sounded a bit like something
• 7:53
  Terence Dix had come up with. But that's a good thing.
• 7:56
  That's a good thing because there's lots of people who tried
• 7:58
  to do Doctor Who tried to do basic level.
• 8:00
  Doctor Who just comes out as quite boring.
• 8:03
  Whereas he understood how to how to have an exciting, engaging
• 8:06
  story. He knew the types of villains he
• 8:08
  needed. He knew the type of things that
• 8:11
  they needed to be doing that characters need to get involved
• 8:13
  in which and I think also understood the because he was
• 8:16
  sitting he was Cambridge educated, wasn't he?
• 8:18
  Oxford educated? Oxbridge certainly, yes, and he
• 8:21
  was producer of the BBC classic serial for for donkeys years
• 8:27
  after Doctor Who, wasn't he? So you know, he was an
• 8:29
  incredibly well read and erudite man, I think never forgot and
• 8:34
  was quite open. I think a lot of his writing
• 8:36
  about the the debt that Doctor Who owed owned its place in sort
• 8:40
  of especially classic British literature and adventure
• 8:43
  literature. And as always, Terrence Dicks
• 8:44
  always feels to me like he's part of a continuity with like
• 8:47
  Robert Louis Stevenson or someone or someone like that.
• 8:50
  You know, it's that sort of he sits somewhere between boys own
• 8:54
  in the past and young adults of the present day.
• 8:57
  And to me, even in the 90s, he was still writing stuff.
• 8:59
  So we tend to talk quite understandably about all his
• 9:01
  Doctor Who stuff, but he wrote tons of non Doctor Who stuff as
• 9:04
  well. I remember we had.
• 9:05
  Wealth of like young kid books. Like on one of the DVD special
• 9:11
  features, he's talking with his publisher and she talks about
• 9:14
  all of these ranges he did away from Doctor Who that were going
• 9:17
  out all over the world. Yeah, we had some of them in our
• 9:21
  school library, which got Mella didn't read them.
• 9:23
  They weren't up to, but it was nice that they were there.
• 9:27
  Were they? Did they all have a Target logo
• 9:28
  on them or were they a different publisher?
• 9:31
  Well, this was, I mean, this would have been somewhere around
• 9:34
  the Millennium and it wasn't an old edition.
• 9:36
  So it may originally have been a Target possibly republished by
• 9:39
  look it up. Because I was wondering if by
• 9:41
  the time he did the 8 doctors, whether, you know, he was just
• 9:44
  doing Doctor Who by that point. But he wasn't.
• 9:46
  And he had loads of other stuff coming out at that time as well.
• 9:49
  So, you know, that can't have been Target in 1997 because that
• 9:53
  got folded into Virgin in the early 90s, didn't it?
• 9:57
  That sort of when Virgin and BBC were publishing a lot of books
• 10:01
  that they kept coming back to Terence and he sort of adopted
• 10:04
  himself to all their styles. Then when the new series came
• 10:07
  back, I know he flirted with it a little bit with like Maiden
• 10:10
  Steel and I can't remember the other one.
• 10:12
  He did 2 quick reads but the NS as right?
• 10:15
  Surely that's the perfect ground for Terence Sticks.
• 10:19
  I think he'd largely retired by that point.
• 10:21
  I seem to recall and I've I've got a feeling it might have even
• 10:24
  doing them might have been a little bit of sort of coming out
• 10:26
  of retirement for the fans type job.
• 10:29
  I could be wrong there, but that was certainly the impression I
• 10:31
  got. I know that's why he he only
• 10:33
  ever did one and if did a couple of scripts for Big Finish
• 10:37
  adapting his stage play stuff and then the first Sarah Jane
• 10:41
  Smith audio. And he was asked about that and
• 10:45
  he said, you know, it's it's for another generation now.
• 10:47
  They don't they don't need me hanging about anymore.
• 10:50
  And I think, you know, that was probably spoke quite well to the
• 10:52
  man. Did he?
• 10:53
  Probably. Barry Letts had, you know,
• 10:55
  reached the same conclusion in the 90s.
• 10:58
  Did he do the Ultimate Adventure sequel for the Companion
• 11:01
  Chronicle? Beyond the ultimate adventure,
• 11:05
  you know, very smartly titled. His his so that would have been
• 11:08
  his one original Doctor Who script for Big Finish.
• 11:11
  That's. Right, Jason and Crystal go on a
• 11:15
  series of little vignettes around the universe with Colin
• 11:18
  Baker. Even I have to draw the line
• 11:21
  somewhere and apparently that's it.
• 11:23
  And you do probe when to die come.
• 11:25
  On that is true. But, like, OK, here's another
• 11:29
  question then, before we go into Shakedown, because Shakedown
• 11:33
  itself appears in the range sort of around the time of damaged
• 11:38
  goods. Yeah.
• 11:39
  So imagine those two books back-to-back.
• 11:42
  Yeah. And you're kind of new to the
• 11:44
  Range. I mean, what the hell do you
• 11:45
  think this range is about? Is it unpretentious space
• 11:48
  adventure or gritty urban? You know, cocaine heads
• 11:53
  exploding? It's fair.
• 11:56
  Is Terrance 6 just a weird fear for the new adventures?
• 12:03
  No. Terroristics isn't a weird fit
• 12:06
  for anything. How dare you?
• 12:09
  I don't know, I suppose. I suppose it's there's a bit of
• 12:13
  it that is he he was writing before this term really came
• 12:18
  back. But you know, a lot of the stuff
• 12:20
  would fall into young adult fiction these days.
• 12:21
  And you forget young adult fiction if you read a lot of it,
• 12:24
  especially not the best stuff does get weirdly adult points as
• 12:27
  well because they know the kids want that sort of stuff.
• 12:29
  So, you know, dipped in out of this stuff every now and again.
• 12:32
  But you read something like don't know, Anthony Horovitz or
• 12:36
  Charlie Higson's young Bond books.
• 12:38
  I know that's some of the better stuff.
• 12:39
  But even then you will have bits where randomly someone's face
• 12:42
  gets sliced off because the kids like it and or or suddenly
• 12:46
  someone's implied to have been forced into prostitution.
• 12:50
  And in that context, Terence Dicks doesn't seem too out of
• 12:54
  place. Well, no, I mean, there's sort
• 12:55
  of a scene in Shakedown, preempted as as the conversation
• 12:58
  of the book here, where a Rutan sort of slices up a load of
• 13:01
  people and there's arms and heads and things flying all over
• 13:04
  the place. But for some reason it just
• 13:06
  doesn't feel as visceral as all those heads blowing up with the
• 13:09
  cocaine in Damaged Goods. There is a difference in tone.
• 13:13
  I think the memory cheats slightly and we remember from
• 13:16
  the New Adventures the more extreme books, but there are
• 13:19
  plenty of more pedestrians like Return of the Living Dad we did
• 13:22
  on Too Hot for TV about a year ago.
• 13:24
  And love it or loathe it, it's not exactly taking Doctor Who to
• 13:28
  the extremes in terms of. Gentle, isn't it?
• 13:30
  Yeah, and I think, you know, earlier on there's things like
• 13:33
  Nightshade and stuff like that, but even stuff like Original Sin
• 13:36
  and stuff, it's all there is a lot of trad Doctor Who in there
• 13:40
  that we forget because it's more exciting to talk about monsters
• 13:45
  that stalk gay cruising grounds and exploding heads from cocaine
• 13:49
  because Doctor Who doesn't do that very often.
• 13:50
  And for a few years in the 90s it was allowed to.
• 13:55
  I wonder if because what did he do?
• 13:58
  Exodus, Blood Harvest and Shakedown.
• 14:00
  Yeah. And then mean streets for the
• 14:02
  Bernese, right? So he did 4 in the, in the sort
• 14:05
  of Nas. I'm wondering if, you know,
• 14:07
  they're bringing out all this stuff and half the poll in
• 14:10
  Doctor Who magazine is saying, I don't know, don't read them
• 14:13
  anymore. That, you know, that was, that
• 14:14
  was definitely one of the options in the poll.
• 14:17
  And so for those people, they throw in Terrance every now and
• 14:20
  then. Oh, thank God.
• 14:21
  This one's going to read like a Doctor Who book.
• 14:22
  Happy days. Yeah.
• 14:23
  Absolutely, I I bet you you can find people that have only read
• 14:26
  a handful of new adventures because they didn't like the
• 14:29
  content and it's the Terrance sticks ones they have read.
• 14:32
  So then final question is, when did that reputation from the
• 14:38
  grandfather of the Target novels, the man who all got us
• 14:41
  into reading, when did that suddenly start to turn into, oh
• 14:46
  shit, he's doing the rest on Warrior Robot again?
• 14:49
  He is out of ideas because that did happen and they came to a
• 14:52
  point where where his original books were being greeted with
• 14:55
  he's just going to churn out the old stuff again.
• 14:58
  When did that start to happen? I mean again, I think the memory
• 15:02
  cheats because you say that, but everyone likes world game, don't
• 15:04
  they? I love world games, yeah.
• 15:08
  That was it. And that was his apart from, you
• 15:10
  know, the ones he came back to do for the the the couple of
• 15:13
  quick reads he came back to do. That was his last, you know,
• 15:15
  full proper Doctor Who novel. But you know what I mean, I, I
• 15:21
  don't think his books were being greeted entirely positively
• 15:26
  towards the end of the sort of the BBC line.
• 15:29
  That's kind of a shame. That's kind of shame because
• 15:30
  during the target run he was, you know, he was considered the
• 15:35
  target range. Well, it's interesting though,
• 15:38
  isn't it? Because I'm going to be a bad
• 15:39
  fan here and admit I can't remember how many writing
• 15:42
  credits does Terence Dicks actually have on TV?
• 15:45
  Doctor Who? It's like four or five.
• 15:47
  It's not many at all. Yeah, exactly.
• 15:50
  So his thing was that he was an excellent script editor and,
• 15:54
  and, and then producer and then his writing work, the stuff that
• 15:58
  we all know best of all is him adapting other people's work.
• 16:01
  So I think he was a absolutely superb.
• 16:04
  I think like he understood how a story should work.
• 16:07
  He could look at other people's things, the targets, if you pay
• 16:09
  attention, absolutely full of him fixing little plot holes or,
• 16:13
  you know, doing proper endings and and and tying things up in
• 16:15
  ways that were missed on screen. It's only actually, you know,
• 16:19
  relatively late on that he starts writing original stuff.
• 16:21
  So I wonder, is the distinction really that when he is writing
• 16:25
  off his own back from scratch, maybe that's the stuff that's a
• 16:28
  bit more disappointing because that's not where he's, for want
• 16:31
  of a better word, exceptional talents lay?
• 16:34
  Possibly. I mean, that's we'll never quite
• 16:37
  know how much of the Pertwee era he actually wrote.
• 16:40
  But as you say, it's very much him fixing other people's
• 16:44
  scripts. And you know, he's he's on
• 16:45
  record because he's a gentleman. He wouldn't he wouldn't name
• 16:48
  names to say. And sometimes it was grammatical
• 16:51
  errors and sometimes it was a Page 1 rewrite.
• 16:53
  And he but I think we all know that we're talking about the
• 16:56
  monster of Peloton, right? Which is not something I'd put
• 17:00
  my name to personally, but. Yeah, and I do wonder as well
• 17:06
  that even at the point where he did start cobbling together
• 17:09
  books out of our stories, like the 8 Doctors, you know, he did
• 17:13
  players three times with End Game and a World Game, and you
• 17:18
  can still turn a sentence, right?
• 17:20
  Those books are still really entertaining to read, even if
• 17:23
  they're perhaps not Terrance at his best.
• 17:26
  I did End Game for We're All Stories in the End, and while
• 17:29
  it's not a fantastic book, I read it so quickly because
• 17:32
  there's just something about his prose style that is so easy to
• 17:36
  consume without being boring. So even if you come to the end
• 17:39
  of it and go, that wasn't very good.
• 17:40
  It's just that there's a childlike simplification, which
• 17:45
  is a hard thing to do, that just really makes you.
• 17:48
  Go. I've done, I've read 200 pages
• 17:51
  of a book and I didn't think I was going to do that.
• 17:53
  Whereas like, I'm reading another book for this very
• 17:56
  podcast at the moment and it's taking me months because it's
• 17:59
  just shit it. Was your choice right?
• 18:02
  It was my choice as well, yeah. You've already got yourself.
• 18:05
  I was like, that was shakedown though, right?
• 18:07
  I picked it up the next day. I put it down and I was like, my
• 18:09
  God, I've read 200 pages in a day.
• 18:12
  Wonderful. But I wonder if there we've sort
• 18:15
  of actually hit on to go back to the original question, why keep
• 18:18
  coming back to Terence Sticks? You know, we're, we're sad men
• 18:22
  on the Doctor Who podcast. So of course we're thinking
• 18:24
  about things in Doctor Who terms, right?
• 18:25
  But publishers think about things in publishing terms.
• 18:27
  And Terence Sticks was reliable, readable and presumably sold.
• 18:32
  And so of course you would have him do this.
• 18:35
  You're going to launch a new range.
• 18:36
  What it's it's it's a cliche to say safe pair of hands.
• 18:39
  But like safe pair of hands means a professional who can do
• 18:42
  the job right? Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:45
  And I think we definitely underestimate, like, how many
• 18:48
  times do we hear about this writer and that writer being
• 18:51
  late? I bet Terence would have 200
• 18:54
  pages on your desk by Monday morning as promised.
• 18:57
  The only time it happened that I know of is End Game where
• 19:02
  whatever happened, Justin Richards had to write like 50
• 19:05
  pages of that book for what he. Writes.
• 19:07
  He writes about it in the intro though, doesn't he?
• 19:09
  Goes thank you. I know this never normally
• 19:11
  happens, but I didn't finish this.
• 19:15
  Well, whilst we're talking about safe, professional and
• 19:18
  entertaining reads, should we talk about Shakedown?
• 19:21
  The novel, or as I like to think of it, Shakedown.
• 19:24
  The return of Shakedown. The return of the Sontarans.
• 19:28
  How long have you been sitting on that for?
• 19:30
  Literally, I thought about it when we came on the call.
• 19:33
  Write it down. You're.
• 19:34
  Supposed to say 25 years. Now, Dylan, I realise that we're
• 19:38
  heading off to your podcast next to talk about the movie
• 19:41
  Shakedown. And it is a.
• 19:43
  Movie a bit grandiose an. Adventure not too broad or too
• 19:49
  deep. As deep as a puddle, yeah.
• 19:57
  Dylan, do you know much about the background of the book
• 19:59
  though? I probably should, shouldn't I?
• 20:02
  But I don't. I think it was literally a case
• 20:04
  of he wrote, he did the script for the drama, which turned
• 20:08
  around very quickly. And you know, Peter Darwell
• 20:12
  Evans or whoever said could you novelize it?
• 20:14
  And he went, well, there isn't enough plot there to do a book,
• 20:17
  so I'll make it the middle bit. And that's what he does.
• 20:19
  And he sort of builds this whole world around to the the video.
• 20:23
  And perhaps it's a telling sign that you know, the actual video
• 20:26
  makes up about four chapters of a it's.
• 20:29
  It's literally 30 pages. It's less than one.
• 20:35
  The tip of the book, the wartime novelization, is longer.
• 20:38
  Than that if this came out as a novel, it would be a pamphlet.
• 20:43
  Just the story. Yeah, just the film.
• 20:46
  And whoa, how do you think he did?
• 20:49
  I think. He did fine like Shakedown is
• 20:53
  something as a video production that has been with me since 1995
• 20:58
  or 1994, whenever I first got it.
• 21:01
  And it it's very special to me in many in many ways.
• 21:05
  So I'm also a bit weird about it being tampered with.
• 21:10
  But it it does make for a better story when you throw the doctor
• 21:14
  in and you go, actually, that is just a a small section of it,
• 21:18
  but there's some my nostalgia for the video slightly clouds
• 21:23
  it. I listen to the audio version
• 21:24
  and even hearing Dan Starkey get the voices wrong was like put me
• 21:28
  on edge a little bit. It's like.
• 21:30
  Call yourself a fan. Dan Starkey Is Dan Starkey a
• 21:32
  fan? Would you like me to record all
• 21:34
  of Vaughan's lines and then you could insert them into your
• 21:37
  audio? Fun fact, I got a message from
• 21:40
  my partner Daisy the other day and she said you're.
• 21:43
  Not talking personally anymore then.
• 21:44
  No, no, absolutely. I'm too busy podcasting.
• 21:47
  So she just messages me in here and she goes, Oh, my friend
• 21:50
  Lily, she goes to yoga at this place and there's a man there
• 21:55
  who says he regularly plays a little troll man in Doctor Who.
• 21:59
  And I was like, that is Dan Starkey.
• 22:01
  There is nobody else that can be.
• 22:04
  You know a little troll man. Well, that's how you describe
• 22:07
  it, I guess, to somebody who wasn't a fan.
• 22:10
  So, Dan? Starkey very, very flexible, but
• 22:13
  not when it comes to getting Kurt's accent right.
• 22:16
  What I love about that is the fact that you got little troll
• 22:19
  man and you immediately made the link to Dan Starkey.
• 22:22
  Look, look, I'm that guy, you know, I'm a, I'm a Shakedown
• 22:25
  fan, what can I say? But no, back to the question.
• 22:29
  It was, it was fun to read. I did try and read it as a kid,
• 22:33
  but it didn't work for me for some reason.
• 22:37
  I, I can't remember whether I finished or not, but I think I
• 22:39
  owned the book at least twice in before, like selling it again.
• 22:45
  So yeah, it was an easy, fun, enjoyable read and seeing
• 22:50
  something that I know very well sort of bashed out of shape was
• 22:53
  was was quite interesting. Let's swing around to Michael,
• 22:58
  then, who are no After perusing his Goodreads account, he gave
• 23:02
  Shakedown three stars out of five, but no review.
• 23:06
  So bring on the review. Yeah, well, I'm, I mean, it's
• 23:11
  it, it works better as a novel than it does on TV.
• 23:15
  Fuck you, get off. Who is this guy?
• 23:21
  Where did we find him? Oh.
• 23:25
  You shouldn't trust people you meet on Twitter.
• 23:28
  Listeners, it's steady. Listeners won't be able to see
• 23:30
  this. But Dylan, for all of his, well,
• 23:32
  you know, I should know this has been with me for a while and I
• 23:35
  should know a bit about it. He has the original artwork for
• 23:37
  the cover of this book hanging behind him, that is.
• 23:41
  True, I bought. How much is that worth?
• 23:45
  No comment but but actually pounds.
• 23:49
  I got it for a decent price, but I was told what I I should
• 23:51
  insure it for and I was shocked, but I picked that.
• 23:57
  I've always wanted a Doctor Who book cover, like a real 1.
• 24:00
  And during lockdown I was very fortunate to be working but not
• 24:03
  spending any money because you couldn't.
• 24:06
  And somebody on Twitter had just bought 1 and I messaged them and
• 24:09
  I was like, where did you get that from?
• 24:10
  It's like that particular artist Peter Ellison, I think it is.
• 24:15
  His wife is like, he's dead, but his widow is selling them off.
• 24:19
  And I messaged her and there was a couple left and I was like,
• 24:21
  well I am Mr. Spin Off so it's got to be the Shakedown 1 and
• 24:25
  that's how I ended up with it. I was stuck reading the 50th
• 24:28
  anniversary version and a monsters version with Dan
• 24:31
  Starkey on the cover and every time I picked it up I hated
• 24:35
  myself a little bit more that it wasn't the correct design of
• 24:38
  Sontaran on the front cover of that book.
• 24:40
  I mean you say that but on the new adventures one, well how do
• 24:43
  you show the Sontaran from? Behind.
• 24:50
  What is their back? Honestly, their back is their.
• 24:54
  Back. Sorry Michael, you was in the
• 24:58
  middle of giving us an opinion. Oh no, that's fine, don't worry.
• 25:02
  I mean, you know, do hop over to Too Hot for TV to hear my full
• 25:06
  thoughts on the the TV movie version of Shakedown Return of
• 25:10
  the Sontaran. TV movie, that's what it is.
• 25:12
  Come on, it's not even. It was not on TV.
• 25:16
  Corporate video. That's what we'll call the.
• 25:18
  Corporate video. Same sort of budget.
• 25:21
  I mean, I tried to do some research, but the problem with
• 25:23
  trying to do research on shakedown, Return of the
• 25:25
  Sontarans is that every anything Wikipedia page you go on, it's
• 25:28
  got this guy Dylan Reece popping up having sourced original
• 25:33
  quotes. Every bit of trivia I've got
• 25:35
  from it is it from Dylan's book, you know?
• 25:38
  This is when I do too hot for TVI go on TARDIS wiki or
• 25:41
  whatever and look and I'm like, oh that's interesting, I didn't
• 25:44
  know that. And then it goes source and it's
• 25:45
  me. And I'm like, I should really
• 25:46
  reread that book at some point. You're sourcing yourself.
• 25:53
  So I mean, I think, I think the thing about the book is it goes
• 25:55
  back to what we're saying about Terence Dix was he understands
• 25:58
  story structure on quite a, a, a basic level and how to get
• 26:02
  something that kicks along, tells a story, keeps intriguing.
• 26:06
  And I think that idea of before I read the book, I'd read that
• 26:10
  the novelisation is essentially the middle axis.
• 26:13
  That's going to be a bit weird, isn't it?
• 26:14
  What we're going to duck out for a minute and have some try and
• 26:17
  forget some poor performances as we read, But actually it works
• 26:21
  surprisingly well because he just what he does being Mr.
• 26:25
  Mechanics is he just breaks the book down into a three act
• 26:27
  structure. And so we're moving to a new
• 26:29
  location and more or less a new set of characters in the foot
• 26:31
  from the first bit to the second bit.
• 26:32
  And then the third bit. You sort of have them all come
• 26:34
  together in a third new location.
• 26:36
  So he knows, you know, he can see how you can see his brain.
• 26:38
  This is this is easy for Terence, right Work and all this
• 26:40
  stuff. You see how we split it up as
• 26:42
  well. It was like 2 chapters with the
• 26:44
  Doctor, 2 chapters with Chris and Ross, two chapters with
• 26:47
  Benny, 1 chapter with the Doctor, 1 chapter with Chris and
• 26:50
  Ross. I mean, it was all very
• 26:51
  structured. Yeah, I mean, like if you get if
• 26:55
  you get a leak in the roof of your house, there are some
• 26:57
  people who do it cheap, there are some people who do it fancy.
• 27:00
  And there are some people who, you know that leak's not going
• 27:01
  to come back for 25 years. And terrible sticks, terrible
• 27:06
  sticks is going to is going to give you a story that is going
• 27:09
  to sell to hormonal 20 some 20 somethings in 1995 and is still
• 27:14
  going to sell to kids with Dan Starkey slapped on the front in
• 27:18
  2013. And God bless him.
• 27:20
  You could republish Shakedown in any ear of Doctor Who and it
• 27:23
  would not be inappropriate and it would sell because do you
• 27:26
  know what? He's a professional.
• 27:28
  That sell was a bloody audio for podcasting geeks like us.
• 27:31
  I think that's a very good point.
• 27:33
  And I think a lot of the way he writes novels, if you went
• 27:37
  through and just sort of changed the description of the Doctor
• 27:40
  and the companions, you would you they would sort of make
• 27:43
  sense if you suddenly did shake down with Tom Baker, Oregon,
• 27:46
  Matt Smith, you know it. He's he's just got the format
• 27:50
  down to a base level. He's got the Doctor and the
• 27:53
  companion down to a base level. And they're never going to be
• 27:55
  the most interesting things that those characters do.
• 27:58
  But it is it goes back to what we were saying earlier.
• 28:00
  It is just the fundamentals of Doctor Who boiled down to.
• 28:03
  That is, that is so true because I wrote down the characteristics
• 28:07
  he prescribed to the four regulars in this, and this is as
• 28:10
  deep as it got you ready, the manipulator, the academic, the
• 28:14
  tough cop and the dopey cop, and that's it.
• 28:17
  And you could basically just make those any doctors and
• 28:20
  companions I think. He's very much the Chris
• 28:22
  Chibnall of his day. Yeah.
• 28:25
  But I will say it was nice to read a new adventure by someone
• 28:30
  who was just having fun writing Chris and Ros Terence Terence
• 28:34
  was loving being given a buddy cop duo to tell half the story
• 28:37
  through. And I, I, as I get older, I, I
• 28:40
  actually enjoy Chris and Ros more as companions, especially
• 28:42
  alongside the virgin new adventures manipulative docs.
• 28:45
  They fit a lot better than I mean, you have Benny, who's the
• 28:48
  who's the Foyle, right? And you have Ace who's sort of
• 28:51
  they're beyond her time, but they're the companions who that
• 28:55
  doctor would select because there's a bit in this where Ros
• 28:57
  even refers to themselves as employees and says like, you
• 29:00
  know, you should fire us for this job.
• 29:02
  I think yes, we have an arch manipulator who needs a couple
• 29:04
  of capable people. Oh, but every time Chris is the
• 29:07
  Chris is the idiot. Ros is the one who knows what
• 29:09
  they're doing. I, I, I haven't read any of
• 29:11
  these Chris Quedge books that people are writing, but I can
• 29:13
  only Oh, there's a zooming there's.
• 29:16
  A limit in this book club. I'm assuming they're delightful
• 29:19
  buddy cop ROMs. Are they? No, they want to make the
• 29:23
  character very serious and earnest.
• 29:25
  No, to be fair, I've got the first volume, which is bigger
• 29:29
  than the Yellow Pages, and I read a couple of stories and
• 29:33
  there was a good mix of different stories in there.
• 29:35
  I'm not saying I'm going to be like, guys, we need to cover all
• 29:39
  9000 pages of it, but it I didn't feel like I'd wasted my
• 29:44
  money. No, fair enough.
• 29:46
  And in fact, you don't you don't have to do Chris and Ross, like
• 29:49
  this guy really enjoyed them in damaged goods as well, which is,
• 29:51
  you know, okay, the setup similar.
• 29:52
  But again, this is that setup of of them, the hard nuts, the the
• 29:58
  funny one working for the doctor.
• 29:59
  That is the setup for for Chris and for Christian roles.
• 30:02
  But Terence just boils it back down to the basics and the
• 30:04
  entertaining basics. Like there's a reason these
• 30:06
  archetypes work and I'm going to give them to you and you can
• 30:08
  have fun in that way. I agree with you and I disagree
• 30:12
  with you, I think. Oh good, I think that makes an
• 30:14
  excellent podcasting. That Ross Forrester has huge
• 30:17
  potential and it is often there. I just think Chris is a nothing
• 30:21
  character. Like, tell me something, some
• 30:25
  characteristic that Chris had in this book It.
• 30:29
  Might be that I didn't. Tell me one characteristic he
• 30:31
  had in damaged goods. Apart from giving someone a
• 30:33
  blowy, there's just nothing to the guy.
• 30:38
  Oh no, he's a nice guy. He's a, he's a wide eyed.
• 30:41
  He's a wide eyed ingenue. There you go.
• 30:44
  So throw some French at you. And in typical new adventure
• 30:48
  style, they take this bright eyed man who wants to see the
• 30:51
  universe murder his best friend and then leave him grief
• 30:54
  stricken and utterly miserable by the end of the range.
• 30:58
  Well, except, yeah, I mean, I think Lungbarrow tries to undo
• 31:01
  some of that by what the story of what the what the payoff for
• 31:04
  that should be at the end. And this is what they do in the
• 31:06
  last minute is he's the one who survives and he's the one who
• 31:10
  gets his confidence and goes off and has the bright new
• 31:12
  adventures by himself. Doesn't mean we need to see him.
• 31:14
  In Longbarrow. No.
• 31:17
  Isn't that in the? That's in the, that's in the
• 31:19
  Benny. He's brought into the Benny
• 31:20
  range so. Popular at that point.
• 31:22
  Well, it means you don't have to say the word Time Lord, which is
• 31:25
  quite handy from a copyright perspective when you've not got
• 31:27
  the license. Turned him into like a short
• 31:29
  ugly man for some reason at one point as well.
• 31:32
  OK, this is this is Doctor Who fans at their worst.
• 31:34
  This is in the Book of the War, because he turned in the Book of
• 31:37
  the War, which launched the faction Paradox range and is
• 31:39
  sort of a faux reference book. And there's a bit in that about
• 31:42
  the Quedjin, which is as, but The thing is, it's it's Lawrence
• 31:48
  Miles, right? Or derivative of Lawrence Miles.
• 31:50
  And what people miss about Lawrence Miles most of the time
• 31:54
  is that he's joking. Like you get lots of people who
• 31:56
  take it all very seriously and very earnestly.
• 31:58
  But most of his stuff is darkly comic.
• 32:00
  And the Chris Quedge question, a whole army of Chris Quedges.
• 32:04
  They're all identical. But then he regenerates and he
• 32:06
  loses his one distinctive feature, which is that he's
• 32:08
  attractive. And then there's a third one
• 32:10
  who's a robot, and it's a gag. But then people take this and
• 32:14
  they take it at face value, and they're like, oh, yeah, yes,
• 32:17
  Chris Quedge, very serious. Oh, and he has a different life
• 32:20
  now. Yes.
• 32:21
  No, don't do that. Take it back.
• 32:23
  They didn't make him, you know, just grief stricken a miserable.
• 32:25
  They made him grief stricken, miserable and ugly.
• 32:29
  And then a robot. And then a robot.
• 32:32
  When the Quedge book came out, I interviewed a couple of the
• 32:37
  authors of it for a Too Hot for TV that never came out for
• 32:41
  reasons. And are they in prison now?
• 32:45
  No, one of them was cancelled and the but they all insisted
• 32:51
  that it was pronounced Shrey, not Quedge.
• 32:53
  And then years later I interviewed Andy Lane and he
• 32:57
  said it's Quedge. And I was just like, well, if
• 32:59
  Andy Lane says it's Quedge, it's fucking Quedge, guys.
• 33:02
  How do you get Chevy from CWEJ? But the books make this point.
• 33:09
  This is a point that is made repeatedly in the original
• 33:11
  Virgin Adventures. It's a gag, which is that his
• 33:13
  name is meant to be Polish or something.
• 33:14
  So it's meant to be, oh, it's meant to be Faye, but call me
• 33:16
  Quedge because it's too much bother.
• 33:18
  But then Doctor Who fans being Doctor Who fans.
• 33:21
  No, no, please don't make, don't make that outer space police box
• 33:24
  programme silly. It's Faye.
• 33:26
  Please respect the text it. Is Polly Lopez all right?
• 33:30
  OK, we'll go to war over that. Sorry.
• 33:34
  Back to the book. I don't know how we got here.
• 33:39
  Oh, what? If Dylan was doing this, if
• 33:42
  Dylan was doing this, I'd be confident this bit would be cut
• 33:44
  out. But it's Joe for no.
• 33:45
  Let's be on it. It's all going in.
• 33:48
  I I could admit to doing a crime on this podcast and say don't
• 33:52
  put it in and Joe would still keep it in there.
• 33:55
  And Dylan knows that to be true, Do.
• 33:58
  You know what just sort of struck me reading this was a lot
• 34:03
  of the New Adventures authors have something to prove.
• 34:06
  Dixter just doesn't. He is, he will write the story
• 34:10
  he wants to write. He knows how to do it.
• 34:12
  It's a job, a job that he obviously enjoys doing that
• 34:14
  enjoys telling stories with these characters.
• 34:17
  I'm not suggesting he's churning it out necessarily, but
• 34:20
  everybody else, they're Doctor Who fans who are now Doctor Who
• 34:23
  authors and this is their chance.
• 34:25
  Whether it's their first book or their 5th book, they are trying
• 34:28
  to push the boundaries. And he has nothing to prove
• 34:31
  because he's got checks coming in from a million different
• 34:33
  books and television shows and things like that.
• 34:36
  He's he's at the tail end of his career and not in a negative
• 34:39
  way, just like he is older and he's just like, I can have fun
• 34:43
  and he he doesn't need to be as serious and as as the rest of
• 34:48
  these that a lot of these authors can be.
• 34:49
  So he hasn't. Got to build a career.
• 34:51
  He's had it already, yeah. Exactly like he probably hasn't
• 34:54
  got a mortgage to pay either. You know, this is by an Amish
• 34:57
  Chinese take away with Barry Letts on a Friday and, you know,
• 35:00
  a couple of glasses of red wine and he's happy with that.
• 35:02
  Even the books you identified earlier as being a bit lighter
• 35:05
  in the New Adventures range. Return of the Living Dead, Happy
• 35:08
  Endings, books like that, they do all have a point, right?
• 35:10
  They are All authors trying to make their mark, and they do
• 35:14
  have a point. I don't think Terroristics has
• 35:15
  got any point at all to make in this book.
• 35:18
  It's just an unpretentious, rollicking adventure, and fuck
• 35:22
  me, that's so refreshing in this range.
• 35:25
  I just tore through this book having the best time and I I
• 35:29
  think maybe I might have enjoyed this the most out of the three
• 35:32
  of us because this is like a an 8 1/2 out of 10 for me.
• 35:35
  I just loved it. I thought it was very funny.
• 35:38
  I thought his graphic moments were utterly delightful.
• 35:41
  He gets a bit nasty during the actual novelization of the
• 35:46
  Shakedown movie. He loves describing that Santara
• 35:50
  and going into the thing and melting into some horrible
• 35:53
  amorphous BLOB. It's wonderful.
• 35:56
  And and I just think they are all stereotypes.
• 36:01
  All all the characters are stereotypes in this book, but he
• 36:03
  just positions them all brilliantly.
• 36:06
  And you're not with anyone long enough for any of that to really
• 36:09
  it's it's like a brilliant magic trick for you to realize just
• 36:13
  how little effort he's put into characterizing these people
• 36:16
  because it just rollocks along. Michael, you want to say
• 36:20
  something right now? No, I I think you're right.
• 36:23
  And to come back to that point about me giving it three out of
• 36:26
  five, maybe I'll stop giving public ratings to things.
• 36:29
  This is like when. Well, maybe do.
• 36:30
  It after the recording, you know, do you?
• 36:32
  Remember, not that I'm at all comparing myself to him, but do
• 36:35
  you remember when to that Salman Rushdie didn't know that his
• 36:38
  Goodreads ratings were public? Someone found out a regarding
• 36:41
  article about it. What did they list?
• 36:45
  All of his one to five star books.
• 36:48
  Yeah, I think pretty much so. He's just been I think he just
• 36:50
  thought it was for his own reference, you know.
• 36:52
  Oh, what do I think of that? So he can refer you know, good
• 36:53
  reads is actually for but like anyone what what did?
• 36:56
  Salman Rushdie Think of shakedown.
• 36:58
  How many out of four? He.
• 36:59
  Gave me 4. Yeah, it's amazingly.
• 37:01
  Yeah, yeah, interesting. But that three out three out of
• 37:04
  five. I, I, no, I think this is there
• 37:06
  were different types of three out of five, right.
• 37:07
  Three out of five in my head is good and there's a lot to be
• 37:11
  said for good. But just something that is, as
• 37:13
  you say, Dylan doesn't have anything to prove.
• 37:16
  He is absolutely capable of doing this.
• 37:18
  He's going to tell you a story. And Uncle Terence is here to
• 37:20
  give us another Doctor Who adventure.
• 37:22
  Isn't it fun? There are there are four stars.
• 37:24
  There are five stars out there. But this is, you know, normally
• 37:28
  we like to say pseudo intellectually, but I'd much
• 37:30
  rather see something that fails than that doesn't try.
• 37:35
  But sometimes actually it's, it's kind of fun to have
• 37:38
  something that tries enough, you know, it's.
• 37:42
  You. Know sometimes you just want to
• 37:43
  is that how you're? Monitizing all of Terence Dix's
• 37:46
  work. Yeah, you've only published that
• 37:51
  many don't work. Yeah, the Terence Dix story.
• 37:56
  Work smart, not hard. Lawrence Miles publishes about,
• 38:02
  you know, seven books, but they're all, you know, huge
• 38:05
  amounts of effort. Terence Dix publishes 350.
• 38:10
  Exactly, exactly exactly that. And I you know, sometimes you
• 38:14
  don't want a deconstructed meat Pate with cheese juice.
• 38:18
  Sometimes you just want a bloody burger, right?
• 38:22
  Terence is very good at having fun.
• 38:24
  And I've said this on another podcast before, but I can hear
• 38:28
  Terence chuckling away in this little attic room as he's
• 38:30
  writing a horrible death or a silly little gag or, you know,
• 38:34
  making one of the characters do something they wouldn't do.
• 38:37
  He's like, let's see what I can get away with, but it's not
• 38:39
  getting away with like fucking an Ice Warrior or something like
• 38:42
  that. It's just he wants to be nastier
• 38:45
  and funnier, but it's still in like a family friendly way.
• 38:49
  I mean, it's only perfect example here, you know, where
• 38:51
  Roz goes to the Ogron man, tell him that I want him.
• 38:55
  And then he throws the man off the roof and you hear the scream
• 38:57
  and then you cut back to Roz alive.
• 39:00
  And then she, Oh, well, it's full of bits like that, that
• 39:04
  little, that Ogron. Man is a is quite.
• 39:06
  I was Gar Shack. Yeah.
• 39:08
  And it's that thing of I was like, yes, he forgot on the
• 39:11
  characteristics of the Ogrons. And then right at the end he
• 39:13
  goes, I was augmented. And you go, of course, Terrence
• 39:15
  Dicks isn't going to let that lie.
• 39:16
  He's not an idiot. He's the guy that fixes
• 39:18
  everybody else's plot holes. But he'll know that everybody
• 39:21
  reading this book is going. He's forgotten what the Ogrons
• 39:24
  are like, but he's just, he's poking fun at the audience at
• 39:26
  the same time. And I have to say, I did enjoy
• 39:29
  this, and I'm not as big a fan of an Ogron as many Doctor Who
• 39:32
  fans are, but I did enjoy a funny Ogron before it was a
• 39:37
  deathless Twitter joke. You leave him alone.
• 39:43
  He's the person that I'm going to cast, you know, in the new
• 39:46
  version of Shakedown with the added Doctor Who bits, directed
• 39:49
  by Ian Levine. Now what's that 8th doctor thing
• 39:53
  where they turn the 8th doctor into an Ogran or an Ogran turns
• 39:56
  into the 8th doctor or something?
• 39:58
  Can big finish? Oh, it's, it's probably, it's
• 40:01
  probably Bloods Alliance, fine, rather.
• 40:07
  The 42. Still ravenous.
• 40:10
  Do you know he doesn't forget? Any ideas?
• 40:12
  Because Garshak the Oberon returns in Mean Streets, the
• 40:15
  Bernice new adventure and he has an entire novel about him.
• 40:19
  Really. That in a few months.
• 40:22
  That's right. Because that's what we said
• 40:24
  about Terence, you know, being quite open about his about his
• 40:26
  sources. It's a hamster book club.
• 40:28
  So we're going to do some influences people.
• 40:30
  He's quite open that there's a bit of, you know, he's basically
• 40:33
  doing Raymond Chandler right in the in the 1st, 3rd of this.
• 40:38
  It is, you know, megacity is. I thought it was.
• 40:42
  Yeah, we've been doing this too long.
• 40:48
  But you know, I I do you think I can't imagine Terence Dicks
• 40:52
  reading Judge Dredd just on like a basic level just doesn't seem
• 40:56
  right anyway. But it's.
• 40:59
  I didn't see it. As read I.
• 41:01
  Didn't see it in those, that documentary where you went into
• 41:03
  his little attic room that I couldn't see any 2000 AD in
• 41:06
  there, could you? It's.
• 41:07
  A shame? No, It's a shame because I think
• 41:09
  he'd have had a lot of fun writing Judge Dredd, actually.
• 41:12
  Possible. But didn't you think those
• 41:13
  sections, that mega city section, sort of future history
• 41:17
  cityscape? I just felt so new adventures,
• 41:20
  that whole bit. I feel like every other new
• 41:22
  adventure was set in some, you know, future Earth history or
• 41:26
  colony or some fabulous Star Wars's space city.
• 41:31
  And there is something there isn't there about the the
• 41:32
  confidence of Terence compared to the other new adventures
• 41:34
  authors at this point. You know, they've got all of
• 41:36
  these word documents and all of these for like Terence wasn't on
• 41:39
  bolt dot wreck dot Doctor Who was he, you know, working or
• 41:42
  working all of this out. And then they Oh yes, the the
• 41:46
  space fleets and then the Earth empire broke down and from the
• 41:49
  remnants of that, that's where the Galactic federation came
• 41:51
  from. And then and then Mavic Chen
• 41:53
  took over that in a sort of authority and Terence Sticks
• 41:55
  goes. You've read Original Sin, have
• 41:57
  you? Then Terence comes along and
• 41:59
  goes, Oh yeah, do Blade Runner. Are we OK?
• 42:00
  Here we go. And he does it in a line, right?
• 42:07
  He comes just up that whole city in a line.
• 42:10
  It's a, it's a real skill to write with that economy, the,
• 42:14
  the, the place that Bernice is at this fabulous Crystal
• 42:17
  University. And I think he does it in like 2
• 42:19
  paragraphs. And I absolutely could see how
• 42:22
  that would be realized. It was.
• 42:23
  It was quite beautiful, actually.
• 42:28
  Yeah, it feels like, I mean, I'd hate to roll out the cliche of
• 42:31
  all. There's no budget, but nobody
• 42:34
  feels that more perhaps than Terence Dicks, who wrote Doctor
• 42:38
  Who for television where it was, you know, it was green screen
• 42:42
  and hand puppets and things like that.
• 42:44
  And but he's not the one going. I'm going to make this
• 42:47
  impossible world like a lot of Doctor Who fans are.
• 42:50
  He, his worlds are still grounded in reality.
• 42:53
  They're just that big, that bigger budget version.
• 42:55
  And he sells it to you in two or three sentences and you go, I
• 42:58
  can completely picture it. It's completely there.
• 43:01
  But it's not, Oh my God, look at this amazing, beautiful City
• 43:04
  made of clouds and oh, everybody's made of Jelly and
• 43:08
  isn't it wonderful? We couldn't possibly do this on
• 43:10
  TV. It's just you're in the future.
• 43:12
  It's fucking ace. Let's go.
• 43:14
  Although you got to wonder if he was reacting to the budget of
• 43:18
  the Dreamwatch productions of Shakedown.
• 43:20
  Which has no limitations at all. We'll get there.
• 43:23
  We will get there. Sorry, Michael.
• 43:26
  I was going to say, but you, it's the classic thing of you
• 43:28
  again, another cliche. You need to know the rules to
• 43:30
  break them effectively, right? And no one understands the rules
• 43:33
  like Terence. So he understands that like, oh,
• 43:34
  if I'm able to tell this story but without worrying about a
• 43:36
  budget, he understands what the budget was actually stopping him
• 43:39
  doing in the 1st place and what actually could be left the same
• 43:42
  alone. And the character work doesn't
• 43:43
  have to change, but I can have characters go outside in a
• 43:47
  futuristic city. Audacious.
• 43:52
  What about what about the insertion of the movie then?
• 43:56
  Because OK, as I was reading this, I was really getting into
• 43:59
  the Doctor, Chris Ross and Benny's little mini adventures.
• 44:02
  And it was all leading up to them getting to the Tiger Moth.
• 44:04
  And I was like, my God, we're going to do the the cold fusion
• 44:08
  thing. We're going to have the Doctor
• 44:09
  and the companions hidden away on the Tiger Moth somewhere.
• 44:12
  And now we got to that point and and the Suntaras hold the doctor
• 44:17
  up. Now be going for God's sakes.
• 44:19
  I can't get on that ship. And that's how the chapter ends.
• 44:21
  And then the movie starts. And it did feel rather like a
• 44:25
  short story shoved into the middle of a much larger novel.
• 44:31
  Yeah, I I think Terence recognizes that.
• 44:34
  Like he got the brief for shake Down, which was and it was
• 44:37
  something like 10 or 12 weeks from Commission to them actually
• 44:40
  making it. It was a real short turn.
• 44:42
  Around doesn't show at all. And he as a result of that, he
• 44:48
  turns around the script very quickly.
• 44:49
  That is a very functional script and he's writing to a brief, you
• 44:53
  know, it's a shopping list of X amount of characters, one
• 44:55
  location. These are the bad guys go and
• 44:59
  this is him going. I can expand on that.
• 45:01
  And like I'm not saying if they've had three million quids
• 45:04
  to make shakedown the video, it would look like this new
• 45:08
  adventures, just without the doctor.
• 45:09
  But he's he's thinking about how does this fit into the larger
• 45:13
  universe? What bigger story is there to
• 45:15
  tell? And it's, it's quite clever
• 45:16
  because you sort of, when you watch the video, you don't go,
• 45:19
  Oh, I wonder how long that routine's been on the run and
• 45:23
  all that. Because it just works as its own
• 45:25
  story. But it's quite weird to see it
• 45:27
  also functioning as part of a larger story and sort of being
• 45:31
  the most insignificant bit at the same time.
• 45:35
  It did work, though. I thought, yeah, I thought, you
• 45:38
  know, it's just basically all the route on the soda board.
• 45:41
  And, you know, in another book you would, you wouldn't even
• 45:44
  show that part of the book, would you?
• 45:45
  You'd say you got from that station to that station and then
• 45:48
  the book keeps going, but. It does lose something not
• 45:51
  having Caroline Ford's performance in it,
• 45:53
  unfortunately. Most things do, though.
• 45:56
  And Sophie Aldridge, but we'll get there.
• 45:59
  I love the moment at the end of book one when they say where's
• 46:03
  he going? He's going to station Alpha
• 46:10
  children. Yeah, Book 2.
• 46:12
  This is what you're paying your money for.
• 46:13
  All the wilderness kids like me are getting cummy pants at that
• 46:16
  point. But like when?
• 46:17
  We're landing. It's a it's a very the thing
• 46:23
  that got me having watched the film for the first time and then
• 46:27
  come straight to this is it's a really close adaptation, but he
• 46:30
  he because, which presumably didn't need to be.
• 46:32
  He could have easily, as you say, rewired it introduced
• 46:35
  characters. That's sort of what I was
• 46:36
  expecting to happen. But no, it is it is the script
• 46:40
  adapted even down to, you know, he has Kurt still have The
• 46:44
  Alchemist dentist line because because oh, like he can't
• 46:47
  remember the name of the doctor, but he just inserts a bit of a
• 46:50
  bit of internal. Thought did mention the hobo.
• 46:52
  Michael, did you know this? Oh God yes, sorry regular
• 46:57
  listeners there should be the content warning here for someone
• 47:01
  does refer to the Doctor as a hobo, which for everyone who's
• 47:04
  read Beast of Fang Rock, may be quite triggering.
• 47:09
  Does does anybody outside of Doctor Who fans use the term
• 47:13
  hobo? Anymore I get the impression
• 47:15
  it's probably slightly offensive, isn't it?
• 47:17
  Is it? I don't know, it doesn't feel
• 47:19
  like a kind thing to refer to someone else a.
• 47:22
  Cosmic Hobo. A tramp, basically.
• 47:27
  Yeah, you can imagine on BBC Lunch he.
• 47:30
  Said the probic vent. Get in there.
• 47:32
  The doctor looks like someone who's pissed himself a lot and
• 47:35
  lives and sleeps on the. Screen, you have seen it's the
• 47:37
  best of McCoy, right? How did you leave him alone?
• 47:40
  It was the ferrets that pissed in this trousers, not him.
• 47:43
  I can imagine the BBC London reports and you know, and they
• 47:46
  say the highlighted text on the screen saying in reports the
• 47:50
  officers under investigation are allegedly referred to the man as
• 47:53
  a cosmic hobo. What I will say is I think in
• 47:59
  terms of having this book in the monster collection of the 50th
• 48:03
  anniversary to highlight the Sontarans, the book, it does
• 48:08
  show their distinctive characteristics really well.
• 48:11
  It does tentatively explore the Sontaran Rutan conflict and it
• 48:18
  does introduce us some interesting Sontaran characters
• 48:20
  with personality because we're covering Silent Warrior on the
• 48:24
  two more TV and boy, there's a devoid of personality there.
• 48:28
  So, Terry, what's that? Prick.
• 48:32
  Hang on. However, I what I would say is
• 48:36
  this is this is like skirting the edges of exploring the
• 48:40
  Sontarans. And if you wanted a deeper, a
• 48:44
  more interesting look at their conflict and motives, check out
• 48:48
  The Infinity Doctors by Lance Parkin, because it's far more
• 48:52
  adeptly done there. But I thought as a showcase for
• 48:54
  the Sontarans, this absolutely shows you what they're all
• 48:58
  about. The extended media has a habit
• 49:01
  of exploring Sontaran culture a lot more than the television
• 49:04
  shows ever interested in doing. The television show just goes
• 49:07
  they're slightly silly, they're warriors, they're a threat,
• 49:10
  let's go. But books a lot of the BB VS Big
• 49:14
  Finish. They're really interested in
• 49:16
  going let's explore this cultural.
• 49:18
  And I think Terence Dix, being a television writer, understands
• 49:22
  that actually that's not the most interesting thing to do.
• 49:25
  It's just like they are, they're a great villain because they're,
• 49:29
  you know, they're really good at war apparently, and they will
• 49:33
  kill anybody and they don't care about dying.
• 49:36
  He just recognizes they're a good threat and they're also
• 49:38
  good cannon fodder at the same time, in the same way as a
• 49:41
  stormtrooper is. They look cool.
• 49:43
  You can have loads of them and they get shot well.
• 49:46
  You remember when Flux was going to be on and some fans were
• 49:49
  like, oh, they're finally making the Sontarans threatening again?
• 49:53
  Again. They they were literally based
• 49:57
  on the the funny thoughts of what if an alien took his helmet
• 50:00
  off and his head was the same shape.
• 50:03
  And the joy was Chris Chipnall got the note right.
• 50:05
  They're really funny and he made them funny.
• 50:09
  So that first scene where he's like, you know, you're looking
• 50:11
  really disgusting. You know, it's crazy.
• 50:14
  You were like, yes, he's got it. He's got it.
• 50:17
  Yeah, but but but you're right, he he, he remembers what the top
• 50:20
  line is here because there's a difference between subverting
• 50:23
  the premise and missing the point, right.
• 50:24
  And I think a lot of spin off media, not just in Doctor Who,
• 50:27
  often confuses the two things. And so you enter.
• 50:30
  So they're a they're a parody of militaristic thinking.
• 50:36
  But you know, Terence, Terence loved old war books and Old Navy
• 50:39
  books and stuff didn't need by all accounts.
• 50:40
  And so he gets what you're actually aping there, the actual
• 50:43
  structures and behaviour of the army and soldiers, whereas you
• 50:46
  get bloody BF, the big finish audios.
• 50:48
  Would it take like that line from is it the poison sky about
• 50:51
  the time war? They go the greatest, the
• 50:54
  greatest. This is my Sewest McCoy voice as
• 50:55
  well. The.
• 50:58
  Sontaran Welshman Yeah, the. Sontaran Welshman said the Welsh
• 51:01
  Sontaran said the greatest conflict in history and the
• 51:03
  Sontarans weren't allowed to be a part of it.
• 51:08
  And I'm willing to put rubber on my face for a for a couple of
• 51:12
  weeks if they're coming back in. That's the third series that
• 51:15
  shooters filming next year. He's the only one.
• 51:20
  Him and him and him and what's his name with the car from the
• 51:23
  90s? David Burton.
• 51:26
  David Burton. Him and David Burton are doing
• 51:28
  the two. Times the car from the 90s.
• 51:31
  I've got, I've got the reference, yeah.
• 51:32
  Thank you. Good words.
• 51:35
  The proton. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 51:37
  Joe, you filthy casual. It's been a while since I've had
• 51:40
  calls to. Say that and podcast really.
• 51:43
  But you end up with stuff like in the Big Finish audios where
• 51:45
  they take that line about, you know, not being allowed to take
• 51:47
  part of the top one and they take it literally.
• 51:49
  Like, like, like what the Sontarans actually like doing is
• 51:52
  just getting involved in a war rather than there being any sort
• 51:55
  of idea of like, no military mindset is, is about war as
• 51:58
  being a solution, not to being part of it.
• 52:00
  And it's, it's very, they just become, they're meant to be
• 52:02
  ridiculous. But there's difference between
• 52:03
  having a, a ridiculous character who is funny and character is
• 52:07
  ridiculous because you don't understand what made them work
• 52:08
  in the 1st place. And so we get all the stuff
• 52:10
  about like the operational stuff of the Sontaran Empire.
• 52:13
  We get a little bit of that, but it's not like fan law for the
• 52:16
  wiki. It's actually no, this is what
• 52:18
  the military thinks. Like they've got the military
• 52:20
  has to administer place. Maybe it's a generational thing.
• 52:23
  You know, maybe Terence was old enough that like just people
• 52:25
  being in the army, like national service and all the rest of it
• 52:28
  was still something that was much more common and a part of
• 52:30
  the British mindset when he was a kid.
• 52:33
  You know, the empire was still just about around rather than
• 52:37
  just being something that happens on telly.
• 52:38
  So he he, he, he, he builds them out in in that way.
• 52:42
  And all the stuff between Vaughan and I've forgotten the
• 52:46
  other Santorin's name. Steg.
• 52:48
  Steg so Vaughan and Steg is Johnny Vaughan and Zoe Steg that
• 52:55
  that that that speaks to someone who who gets at least the
• 53:02
  archetypes of an officer and A and a non commissioned officer
• 53:05
  talking right. I just think.
• 53:07
  The. Santorin's were made by men who
• 53:09
  were writing TV in the 70s and it comes from their mindset.
• 53:12
  And Terence gets it. But he did do one thing here,
• 53:17
  which I thought was very clever indeed.
• 53:20
  And that is to suggest that because the Sontarans are tied
• 53:24
  up with the Rutans, they are not a bigger threat to the universe.
• 53:27
  Because if that, if the Rutans were defeated, then they would
• 53:31
  come for everybody else. So the Doctor, in true master
• 53:34
  manipulator style, wants to keep them busy with the Rutans so
• 53:38
  they're not a threat to anybody else.
• 53:39
  And I thought that was that. That was a nice idea to hook the
• 53:43
  story onto. I my favorite thing though was
• 53:48
  that Terence gets halfway through after he's on the video
• 53:50
  adaptation. He goes bugger, I've killed
• 53:52
  Steg, he's pretty back to life again.
• 53:55
  He's. A clone.
• 53:59
  There's a there's a story that anyone who who's enjoyed George
• 54:02
  R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books knows that they've
• 54:06
  been adapted, become a hit biggest TV show in the world,
• 54:09
  ended and failed and been forgotten in the time it's taken
• 54:11
  him to write the next book. And some, I don't know who it
• 54:15
  was, it was some other author who said that he had confided in
• 54:18
  the part of the problem is he realized he'd killed off a
• 54:20
  character that he really needed, and so he has to work out how
• 54:23
  the plot works. Terrence Dicks would have no
• 54:25
  such qualms. Cover it with a line.
• 54:28
  Ned start back. We've sewn his head back on.
• 54:32
  It's magic. You can do anything right?
• 54:34
  So after the, you know, frankly, 2 chapters of the movie
• 54:39
  adaptation for the book, what about the ending?
• 54:42
  And what about this this last third where we're all heading to
• 54:45
  Bernice on the crystal planet and some bizarre cult and
• 54:49
  religion taking place and a massive secret that the rooter
• 54:53
  knows, which is why the suntans were after him.
• 54:56
  How did this all culminate? No, this must I have to say this
• 55:00
  is where I lost interest. I I.
• 55:04
  Was expecting when I got to that bit and the doc and the doctor
• 55:07
  and Chris and Ross meet the people from the video I was like
• 55:10
  oh Joe and Dylan are going to be wanking and so silly over.
• 55:13
  There I was more interested as to whether Lisa Duran and Kurt
• 55:17
  were sexually pair bonded at this point, because whenever
• 55:20
  they was in danger, they were sort of looking out for each
• 55:23
  other and didn't give a shit about the Doctor and his
• 55:25
  companions. I quite like that.
• 55:28
  I it's not that I lost interest, I just can't remember a thing
• 55:31
  about it to the point that last night I was sort of going
• 55:33
  through my notes and thinking and everything was on the first
• 55:36
  bit, the video adaptation, and I had to go and reread the
• 55:39
  synopsis of of the thing. You sure you?
• 55:43
  Didn't fall asleep at that point.
• 55:44
  No, no, I definitely didn't. I had to reread it and I was
• 55:49
  like, if you'd asked me whether I'd read a book where that
• 55:51
  happened, I would say no. But then this is I don't.
• 55:54
  The one of the many reasons I'm not on Hamster Book Club,
• 55:57
  besides the fact I'm not asked is that is that I really don't
• 56:02
  remember books very well at all. I would ask you to do anything,
• 56:07
  De la Reese. All right.
• 56:08
  I know you was your dirty bitch. To bring us back to the book, I,
• 56:14
  I, I don't blame you because I was, I was listening to the
• 56:17
  audio book and I had to skip back because I had been
• 56:19
  listening, but I, I had missed the moment where the plot is
• 56:23
  resolved, which is. Secret.
• 56:25
  So the the secret, the secret is that that Khan, the routine
• 56:31
  agent has is. So this is also a double bit of
• 56:33
  this is this doesn't really work.
• 56:34
  And I know this is a sequel to Lord to the Storm, but I've not
• 56:36
  read that in 20 years, so I assume this is him I'll.
• 56:39
  Be back to that in a minute, I'll tell you.
• 56:40
  I don't know neither. So there is a bit of a
• 56:43
  complication here, which is that this so the the the central
• 56:47
  threat is that the routine has a secret that he needs to get back
• 56:52
  to the routine home world, the routine mother queen, what have
• 56:54
  you. And the Sontarans want to stop
• 56:56
  and getting that information back.
• 56:57
  Great again, classic Terrance archetypal storyline.
• 57:00
  The the agent has got the secret that's going to win the war or
• 57:04
  defeat the Germans or what have you.
• 57:06
  Richard Hanate, fantastic stuff. Love it.
• 57:08
  But the secret that the router has is that the Sontarans have
• 57:11
  discovered a secret and that doesn't really work.
• 57:13
  But the secret that they've discovered is isn't it?
• 57:16
  Isn't it that there is a secret? There's a secret worm wall
• 57:21
  straight to the Root and Home world, which is meant to be on
• 57:24
  the Crystal planet, which is meant to be an escape route for
• 57:29
  the Root and Mother Queen. Whatever, When, if the Root and
• 57:34
  Home world should fall, now who's going to use that to get
• 57:37
  there? To tell them that the Sontarans
• 57:40
  know it's there, and then the Sontarans, knowing it's there,
• 57:42
  follow him through it. And then the plot is resolved
• 57:44
  because the Doctor literally, literally reverses the polarity
• 57:48
  and shuts down the wormhole with the suntaris inside it.
• 57:51
  I don't think Terence started at the end and then worked his way
• 57:54
  to it. I think you just read this in
• 57:56
  order. He started at the middle.
• 57:58
  That's what we know. Fuck the end and they'll read
• 58:02
  anything at this point. I've just done Lords of the
• 58:05
  Storm on A2 hot for TV which by the time this is out will be out
• 58:10
  but isn't. Out fine Star Trek novel, isn't
• 58:12
  it? Yes, and I was expecting a big
• 58:16
  prequel to Shake Down. It's not.
• 58:18
  There's like a paragraph at the end where they go, oh, that
• 58:22
  Rutan's got a secret, we better go after it.
• 58:24
  And that's about it. It's completely unrelated pretty
• 58:27
  much. I you know, I was expecting
• 58:29
  Shakedown, but Rogue One, but which which it wasn't.
• 58:33
  It sounds as connected as Blood Harvest and Goth Opera if I'm.
• 58:36
  Honest, which are connected by the fact they're both Doctor Who
• 58:39
  stories. That's right.
• 58:44
  Yeah, And then how did it end? I can't even remember.
• 58:48
  Oh, that's right. He he takes the wormhole and he
• 58:51
  does it in sort of like an Infinity loop, doesn't he?
• 58:53
  And the Sontaran army that's inside the wormhole are just
• 58:56
  going round and around forever. The death wheel is just
• 58:59
  trundling around your circle for all eternity.
• 59:02
  Do we care? No.
• 59:07
  Joe, have you ever had a Sontaran army in your wormhole?
• 59:11
  Only you. But what I did like, what I
• 59:17
  really liked, was the last scene, which is a replay of the
• 59:22
  fabulous bit in the movie where they're all doing the VR and
• 59:26
  you've got the Doctor, Chris, Ross and Bernice as the new crew
• 59:30
  of the Tiger Moth sailing off into the sunset, into the yacht
• 59:34
  race. I could hear the music from from
• 59:36
  the video at that. Sorry.
• 59:42
  I've got that soundtrack on compact disc.
• 59:44
  Somewhere I was listening to it when Michael came on the call.
• 59:47
  Yeah, yeah, it's this very sexy soundtrack.
• 59:51
  It's a fine soundtrack to read this book to actually, if I'm
• 59:53
  honest. I did.
• 59:55
  I did. I did appreciate that.
• 59:58
  So the Doctor meets Durand and Kurt, but happily not anyone he
• 1:00:02
  might recognise. Hey, Susan, what are you doing
• 1:00:07
  here? Susan, why do you look like a
• 1:00:10
  slapper? What's going on?
• 1:00:13
  Definitive proof that Blake 7 and Doctor Who do not happen in
• 1:00:15
  the same universe. Of course, of course, any any
• 1:00:22
  extra characterisation for Kurt and Lisa Duran worthy of note.
• 1:00:27
  Only on the audio book Kurtz Welsh.
• 1:00:29
  Yeah, which nice to have a little bit of representation is
• 1:00:33
  what I'd. Say but but also wrong.
• 1:00:35
  Like come on Dan Starkey, the video exists.
• 1:00:37
  Do your fucking research. Oh God, I cannot imagine.
• 1:00:41
  I think I would have given this two stars if the whole middle
• 1:00:44
  section had been his laborious attempts to capture the delivery
• 1:00:47
  of every line from the video. I mean, they can't be paying
• 1:00:50
  that man enough. They've not got enough studios.
• 1:00:52
  I I do love the fact though, you know, like Terence knows because
• 1:00:55
  he writes the lion in the video that Kurt and the doctor of
• 1:00:59
  Mare, it just gets sat over and done with in the very first
• 1:01:01
  scene, right? That's it.
• 1:01:03
  I can write anything I want now, you know.
• 1:01:06
  Yeah. Well, fellas, I mean, I don't
• 1:01:08
  really think we can flog this to death anymore.
• 1:01:11
  I'm going to ask you to summarize your thoughts or any
• 1:01:14
  notes that you might have on Shakedown, the novel that you
• 1:01:18
  would care to share with the listeners.
• 1:01:21
  I don't. Know whether I have any final
• 1:01:22
  thoughts. I feel like the whole thing's
• 1:01:24
  it's such a it was it was a pleasure to experience it.
• 1:01:28
  I can't say I'd run back and be like, I must, you know,
• 1:01:31
  someone's like, what's a good Doctor Who novel?
• 1:01:33
  Recommend me one. It wouldn't be this.
• 1:01:35
  And I don't think like damaged goods.
• 1:01:37
  I can see myself rereading again at some point, you know, I
• 1:01:41
  could. I don't think I'll ever reread
• 1:01:42
  this. But it was good to experience
• 1:01:44
  something that was both very familiar but also very
• 1:01:47
  unfamiliar. Michael.
• 1:01:50
  I'll just add that I enjoyed the 1995 slap bang up to datedness
• 1:01:56
  of the little white cube from the War game being named as T
• 1:02:01
  Mail. It's got no short of
• 1:02:07
  imagination, I'll tell you. I will usually approach the new
• 1:02:11
  adventures with a bit of trepidation of like, OK, I'm
• 1:02:14
  going to have to put a bit of effort into reading this.
• 1:02:16
  It's going to be either a very dense plot or, you know, lots of
• 1:02:20
  cyberspace sequences where I won't understand a clue what's
• 1:02:23
  going on or some hideous characterization.
• 1:02:26
  I'm not going to enjoy reading. Shakedown is like slipping into
• 1:02:29
  a hot bar for a couple of hours, you know?
• 1:02:33
  It is the smoothest, easiest read.
• 1:02:35
  It's the most atypical new adventure you could possibly
• 1:02:39
  get, and I can't recommend it higher than just on those
• 1:02:43
  grounds alone. It's just so enjoyable to read
• 1:02:46
  and honestly I wish they'd done a bit more of this.
• 1:02:50
  It makes you it makes me miss Terence a little bit in terms of
• 1:02:54
  like we could do with a bit more of that style of Doctor Who
• 1:02:57
  every now and then. And also given what big finisher
• 1:03:00
  doing these days, Terence would fit right in and do it 10 times
• 1:03:03
  fucking better. You know, like he was made for
• 1:03:05
  that landscape in a way. Obviously he's not around, but
• 1:03:09
  it's it's a crying shame that even when big finish, you know,
• 1:03:13
  he didn't write more big finishes.
• 1:03:14
  I think like it would have would have been great to hear his
• 1:03:17
  take, those Third Doctor box sets they're doing now with Tim
• 1:03:20
  Trelore and stuff like that. I would love a Terrance, Dix
• 1:03:23
  penned one of those. I mean, I would both fear and
• 1:03:26
  salivate for one of those new Jodie Whittaker audios to be
• 1:03:31
  written by Terrance, because I just want to know what he would
• 1:03:34
  do with a female Doctor. Make a very conservative and
• 1:03:37
  doing the washing up, I imagine. Michael Shakedown final
• 1:03:43
  thoughts? Yeah, no, I, I had a lot of fun
• 1:03:46
  with it Was it was a lovely reminder of the degree to which,
• 1:03:49
  you know, Terence Dix was, I'm not going to say master
• 1:03:53
  storyteller, but I mean an, an, an.
• 1:03:56
  Incompetent, you decided earlier.
• 1:03:59
  No, I think he. He was an no, not, not not
• 1:04:04
  trying, trying an appropriate amount.
• 1:04:06
  I think he was a he was here we go wanky.
• 1:04:09
  He was, he was an artisan, artisanal storyteller and not in
• 1:04:13
  the sort of Oval expensive bread way, but in the sense of he was
• 1:04:16
  a creative. He was a professional creative,
• 1:04:19
  right? He knew how to do the job and he
• 1:04:21
  could do the job well for you and give you the product you
• 1:04:24
  wanted. And the burger would taste like
• 1:04:27
  a tasty burger. And Shakedown is a tasty burger
• 1:04:30
  of a book. And he understands the economy
• 1:04:32
  of storytelling. Like he doesn't give you too
• 1:04:34
  much or too little. He gives you exactly what you
• 1:04:36
  need to tell the story. And in 200 pages you've done and
• 1:04:40
  you go, that was 200 pages of some Doctor Who.
• 1:04:44
  Understanding the economy I think is a loss skill, right?
• 1:04:48
  Because I think Doctor Who books are generally for too long or
• 1:04:51
  too short. They're very rarely the perfect
• 1:04:54
  length. One of my issues with Lawrence
• 1:04:57
  Miles, who I think is a brilliant storyteller and has
• 1:05:02
  amazing ideas, but he has to describe how every single thing
• 1:05:06
  in his world works, what it is, what its function is, it's back
• 1:05:10
  story. And I'm like, I don't need that.
• 1:05:11
  I need a line. And then fuck it off and move on
• 1:05:13
  to the next thing. Which is exactly what what
• 1:05:15
  Terence does. You talk about Terence Big
• 1:05:18
  Finish. I don't know that I I miss not
• 1:05:20
  having more big Finished scripts from Terence Dix.
• 1:05:24
  I do miss Terence Dix not getting to give script notes on
• 1:05:27
  a lot of stuff. He takes, you know, takes
• 1:05:29
  something like ravages their first Christopher Eccleston 1.
• 1:05:31
  He would have had absolutely no time for that.
• 1:05:33
  That would have come back covered in red pen going explain
• 1:05:36
  this, set that up, pay that off. Why is this happening?
• 1:05:39
  You don't need this bit. Just make her the same person as
• 1:05:42
  her from earlier and it'll work and.
• 1:05:44
  After the fifth attempt, Michael, we'd say I'll just pay
• 1:05:47
  him off, I'll do it myself. And Christopher Ebstone would
• 1:05:52
  still be working for them. Because it was the scripts.
• 1:05:54
  It was the scripts that that that attracted him there, not
• 1:05:57
  not the divorce. It was the scripts that
• 1:05:59
  attracted Christopher Eccleston. Scripts.
• 1:06:01
  Scripts as good as these is what he said about ravages as good as
• 1:06:06
  these. Bizarrely will end the
• 1:06:09
  discussion on Shakedown, the novelization on an insult thrown
• 1:06:12
  at Nicholas Briggs, and skip into our who ranks for this
• 1:06:16
  episode. But we've got top three or
• 1:06:20
  bottom 3 Terrance textbooks, and I'm going to throw it straight
• 1:06:31
  to Dylan Do. You want me to give you my 3?
• 1:06:41
  Yeah. I'm going to give you my three
• 1:06:43
  and you can decide whether they're top or bottom.
• 1:06:47
  If warmongers on there, we know. The 8 doctors.
• 1:06:51
  Warriors of the deep. Weber Fear.
• 1:06:54
  Top, top. Michael.
• 1:07:00
  I can see your your lift, I saw your little cheeky face and now
• 1:07:03
  I can see disappointment in your eyes.
• 1:07:05
  So I'm also going to say top. It is top, and this is for
• 1:07:09
  several reasons I don't. As I said earlier, I don't
• 1:07:14
  remember a lot of books that I read.
• 1:07:15
  I don't know why, they just don't sit in my mind.
• 1:07:17
  But these, those are three books that I have vivid memories of
• 1:07:20
  reading as a kid. I'm not saying they're
• 1:07:22
  fantastic, in fact, I redid The 8 Doctors and was slightly
• 1:07:25
  appalled in places when I did it for Too Hot for TV, but I had a
• 1:07:29
  fun time. But those are three books that I
• 1:07:31
  can picture where I was when I was reading them and thinking
• 1:07:35
  they're amazing as a kid, particularly Warriors of the
• 1:07:38
  Deep, which I was obsessed with as a kid until the video came
• 1:07:42
  out. But because there was also an
• 1:07:44
  audio reading of his book, a condensed 1 by Peter Davison
• 1:07:48
  that was out on tape that I used to listen to all the time.
• 1:07:50
  And I just remember thinking, God, this is a brilliant Doctor
• 1:07:54
  Who story and the web affair. I remember sitting at my school
• 1:07:57
  desk and reading it during like the reading hour, whatever.
• 1:08:00
  And just being like, this is the most amazing dark Doctor Who
• 1:08:05
  story that an 8 year old can encounter.
• 1:08:08
  And the 8 doctors, when you're 12 years old, thirteen years
• 1:08:11
  old, it's got all the doctors in it.
• 1:08:13
  It's got the current doctor, the new one meeting all the old
• 1:08:17
  doctors. It's got all the things you
• 1:08:18
  recognize. It's brilliant.
• 1:08:21
  Again, you know that the caveat is that none of these reviews
• 1:08:24
  were done by anybody over the age of 13, but.
• 1:08:27
  And neither should they be not to undermine the premise of this
• 1:08:30
  whole podcast. But yeah, no, it's very true.
• 1:08:33
  He writes, as we've said many times, he writes Doctor Who that
• 1:08:37
  kids get, and I loved all of those things as a kid.
• 1:08:40
  You. Know I couldn't argue with a
• 1:08:42
  single word you just said there. And especially Warriors of the
• 1:08:44
  Deep, he takes that shoddy production and makes it the most
• 1:08:47
  dynamic movie you've ever seen. Yeah, it's, it's a lot.
• 1:08:50
  It's, it's a great read. And it was I, I just love the
• 1:08:53
  audio tape. It seems so atmospheric.
• 1:08:55
  They've got bits of music in there and stuff like that.
• 1:08:57
  And I listen to it again and again and again.
• 1:08:59
  And I couldn't wait for that VHS to come out so I could see it in
• 1:09:03
  all its glory. Did you like Davidson's
• 1:09:06
  Australian accent for Tegan? Yes, absolutely.
• 1:09:08
  It's the best thing about it. As good as Colin's American
• 1:09:11
  accent for the Attack of the Sideman 1.
• 1:09:14
  Oh God yeah, I forgot about the attack of the sideman 1 and this
• 1:09:16
  curse of Peloton as well. I need to relisten to those.
• 1:09:19
  That's Pertway, isn't it? Yeah, I'm sure he just made Joe
• 1:09:23
  sound very simple. Michael, your top three or
• 1:09:27
  bottom 3 Terror Sticks books? Well, I'm also going to go for
• 1:09:31
  top three, and I'm going to go with Horror, Fang Rock, Destiny
• 1:09:35
  of the Daleks, and Robots of Death.
• 1:09:38
  Robots of death, I need to hear this.
• 1:09:40
  Off you go. Well, because one of the things
• 1:09:44
  that we take for granted with these novelisations and you
• 1:09:46
  know, people say, oh, Terrance Dicks bread and butter, meaning
• 1:09:49
  that he he quote UN quote, just translates what was on TV onto
• 1:09:53
  the page. But that's actually really hard
• 1:09:55
  to do. And it's hard to do it in a way
• 1:09:57
  that continues to capture some of the tone of the original
• 1:10:02
  piece or in many cases even really improves on it, if I'm,
• 1:10:06
  if I'm being honest. So Horrorfang Rock is a good
• 1:10:08
  example of where your brilliant, brilliant serial on there, but
• 1:10:12
  the atmosphere is done through music, it's done through the
• 1:10:14
  sets, it's done through the performances, not just the
• 1:10:17
  dialogue. And there, you know, there are
• 1:10:19
  there are far more target novelizations that are just
• 1:10:22
  direct translations, what's on screen without any of that extra
• 1:10:25
  work. And they do just read like
• 1:10:26
  someone's put descriptions in between the stage directions,
• 1:10:29
  right. But horrifying rock still feels
• 1:10:32
  eerie, still feels claustrophobic, you know, and
• 1:10:35
  he, you know, scripts again, but he understand.
• 1:10:39
  But he he still carries into that and translates in a
• 1:10:41
  different way for writing all that stuff about, you know, Flan
• 1:10:43
  and Isle and the the everything that wasn't in Beast of Fang
• 1:10:46
  Rock about the scariness of the location, the isolation of the
• 1:10:50
  location, the alienness of this place that is at once both of
• 1:10:53
  the Edwardian worlds and yet seemingly something much more
• 1:10:55
  primeval. And he gets that in again, the
• 1:10:57
  real economy of telling, I think.
• 1:10:59
  I think it's something that really just shows, hey, how we
• 1:11:01
  can do that. Destiny of the Daleks is an
• 1:11:04
  example of where he takes quite a weak television story and
• 1:11:07
  actually really amps up what works.
• 1:11:08
  So I think he maintains the thing that was in the original
• 1:11:10
  script of it all happening at night.
• 1:11:12
  The bit where they're descending into this ruined city underneath
• 1:11:15
  it that feels really scary and claustrophobic.
• 1:11:19
  And, you know, and the idea of the dissent of it all at the
• 1:11:22
  same time is always chugging distance mining machines that
• 1:11:25
  really comes across. He can't do much for the ending,
• 1:11:28
  but you know, he's not one to depart from these things.
• 1:11:31
  And Robots of Death, I know people, you know, lament that
• 1:11:34
  that was what we got for Robots of Death.
• 1:11:35
  I think it's one of the shortest novelization.
• 1:11:37
  It's less than 100 pages. Yeah.
• 1:11:39
  And people, people lament that we didn't get more of that
• 1:11:42
  because it's such an evocative world.
• 1:11:44
  But actually in its own way, he gets everything that's exciting
• 1:11:47
  about what was on screen because these novelizations were written
• 1:11:50
  more so before they had their home video recorders.
• 1:11:52
  It's not a coincidence that in the late 80s, when everyone
• 1:11:54
  started to be able to record things for themselves, the
• 1:11:56
  novelisations got bigger and more different.
• 1:11:59
  And in terms of doing that, capturing everything that worked
• 1:12:01
  on screen and translating it really well, it's a really
• 1:12:05
  decent bit of work. And, and I think if I had seen,
• 1:12:10
  if if I had been there at Saturday Tea Time 1975 the first
• 1:12:14
  time around, like Nicholas Briggs, then I think I would
• 1:12:17
  have absolutely loved that I could relive that exactly
• 1:12:20
  through these, through these pros.
• 1:12:22
  But excitingly, and also had. He fleshed out that world of
• 1:12:28
  robots of death more. We may not have had the Kowdor
• 1:12:31
  City range of audios and books which went on through that
• 1:12:35
  because, you know, I think they felt cheated and they have
• 1:12:38
  stabbed us. I've got 3 as well.
• 1:12:40
  I would like my number 3 to be Deaf to the Daleks, which I
• 1:12:44
  still think is a brilliant script page.
• 1:12:47
  Exciting, violent, full of great ideas, a quick pace and engaging
• 1:12:51
  incident. Everything that Terrorists did
• 1:12:53
  brilliantly with the Targets. My second is Players, which is a
• 1:12:58
  6th Doctor past Doctor adventure and exactly the sort of story
• 1:13:02
  that Colin and Nicola should have had on screen.
• 1:13:04
  Terence loves Colin Baker's Doctor in the 8 Doctors that we
• 1:13:09
  read. Michael, he gave her a whole
• 1:13:11
  page to describing, describing what a fine figure of a man he
• 1:13:14
  was with all luscious lips and all sorts.
• 1:13:17
  You know he loves Colin. Terence loves talking about
• 1:13:20
  Colin. Like in in weird ways.
• 1:13:22
  I think he had a bit. Of a man crush on him.
• 1:13:24
  I think he did. He does it in the 8 doctors as
• 1:13:26
  well doesn't it? In in the players.
• 1:13:28
  He has Colin eating and drinking.
• 1:13:29
  Throughout the entire book, he's diving into high society, you
• 1:13:33
  know, hobnobbing with all the politicians I think Terence Dix
• 1:13:38
  puts a bit of himself onto. Onto the 6th Doctor in books.
• 1:13:41
  J&T did as well. Poor Colin.
• 1:13:45
  But it the 6th Doctor is to Terence.
• 1:13:48
  Dix, as James Bond was to Ian Fleming, loud.
• 1:13:53
  Boisterous. A little bit sexist politically.
• 1:13:56
  Corrupt, but it is it is terrorist eyes best.
• 1:14:00
  I think it's a book it's full of intrigue, twists and turns.
• 1:14:03
  It's got a lot of atmosphere, engaging action in the way that
• 1:14:06
  only Terrence can a chance for the Doctor being really heroic
• 1:14:10
  in the book. Okay, he does have the same
• 1:14:13
  relationship with Winston Churchill as he did in Victory
• 1:14:16
  of the Daleks, and it is just as troubling in this book, but
• 1:14:19
  we'll skip over that. He feels it full of historical
• 1:14:22
  detail and it's got a really fun set of villains.
• 1:14:25
  It's one I want to cover on the book club one day because I
• 1:14:27
  think it's I would love to read that right.
• 1:14:30
  Sign me up. Verbal contracts and my number
• 1:14:33
  one. Is unbelievably the 8 Doctors.
• 1:14:39
  And the reason is I think it's it's conclusive proof that
• 1:14:44
  Terrance can plunder Doctor Who for all of its fun moments.
• 1:14:48
  I do think it's messy and chaotic, but it's also ambitious
• 1:14:53
  and hilarious, and it's also thoughtful and really stupid at
• 1:14:57
  points as well. It's basically everything that
• 1:15:00
  Terrance Sticks does, his greatest hits and his worst
• 1:15:03
  failures, all there in one book. It's the ultimate Terrance
• 1:15:07
  Sticks experience, and I kind of love it.
• 1:15:10
  When we did it, Michael, I kind of just loved reading it, warts
• 1:15:14
  and all. Yeah, like you can.
• 1:15:17
  You can put your hat. On and go your critical hat and
• 1:15:19
  go, Oh, this is really isn't very good.
• 1:15:21
  But I when I did it for my podcast, I just had so much fun
• 1:15:25
  like it is. It is both brilliant and
• 1:15:28
  dreadful at the same time. And not in like an ironic sort
• 1:15:31
  of like, oh, it's so bad, it's good.
• 1:15:33
  It's just like it's everything you want.
• 1:15:35
  As I said before, it's a 13 year old and it's kind of everything
• 1:15:38
  you want as a Doctor Who fan when you turn off your critical
• 1:15:40
  blinkers, a bit like Power of the Doctor, but it's just you.
• 1:15:46
  Just you just come to the end of that book and go, my God, I love
• 1:15:50
  Doctor Who. And then you put your other hat
• 1:15:54
  on and you go, what a load of old shit.
• 1:15:56
  But it has the best death in any Doctor Who.
• 1:15:59
  Book ever. Do you remember the thrashing
• 1:16:01
  look down at Ryoff? It ate him wonderful.
• 1:16:06
  Again, the sounds of. Terence Dix chuckling to himself
• 1:16:09
  in his office as he's writing. That just echoes around the
• 1:16:12
  universe whenever you read it. The economy of that prose, it
• 1:16:15
  ate him. Wonderful.
• 1:16:18
  There's a great story about when they had someone of the meet.
• 1:16:20
  Ups of virgin new adventure authors and Terence Dix.
• 1:16:24
  I think it was Andy Laney tells this story, but it was after
• 1:16:27
  he'd done all consuming Fire and someone introduced him to
• 1:16:29
  Terence, didn't know him and said, oh, this is Andy.
• 1:16:31
  He he wrote all consuming fire, the one and where Doctor Who
• 1:16:35
  meets Sherlock Holmes and Terrence Sticks went Oh, you're
• 1:16:37
  the one who did that then, are you?
• 1:16:39
  And then, like I said, yes, yes, it was and Terrence Sticks we
• 1:16:41
  said, what was the point of that?
• 1:16:45
  And with so. Many things and the 8 doctors as
• 1:16:47
  you. Say Terrence sticks, you know,
• 1:16:50
  understood the assignment as people like say, but he but he
• 1:16:52
  does he understands like no, having all 8 Doctor Who's in
• 1:16:55
  here is very exciting and I'm not going to apologise for that
• 1:16:59
  or write anything else. He is wonderful, is he?
• 1:17:02
  He was the the greatest. Raconteur we ever had that whole
• 1:17:06
  he left the TV movie in a fit of pique, screaming his incoherent
• 1:17:10
  crap. I mean that's wonderful.
• 1:17:14
  And then and then when he had the nerve to have the first page
• 1:17:17
  of the 8 doctors. I know this is a off quoted
• 1:17:19
  thing saying it was a series of weird illogical events that the
• 1:17:23
  Doctor was glad was over and he didn't like the look of this
• 1:17:27
  console room so he turned. It back into the white.
• 1:17:29
  One right, Let's go. There was, there was.
• 1:17:33
  I used to see Terence a lot of conventions when I was a kid,
• 1:17:36
  and it's quite interesting, again, in the way that anecdotes
• 1:17:39
  do of him sort of storming out of the TV movie or whatever that
• 1:17:42
  is such an anecdote that's grown over the time.
• 1:17:44
  Because if you saw him two months after TV movie, he was
• 1:17:47
  he'd be. He was like, well, I thought he
• 1:17:48
  was quite good. And I like the first sort of 40
• 1:17:51
  minutes and then I don't know what was going on with the wires
• 1:17:53
  at the end and all that crap. That's really fun of the story.
• 1:17:56
  Yeah. But then he.
• 1:17:57
  Gets his laughs by. Embellishing and embellishing
• 1:18:00
  and then by the end of it, it's like storming out and beating up
• 1:18:03
  Phillip Siegel or something like that.
• 1:18:07
  Well, on that note, Terra's beating up poor Phillip Siegel.
• 1:18:11
  Michael, where are you and I heading next?
• 1:18:15
  Well, we're heading towards the end of the year as the.
• 1:18:18
  Nights are drawing in, it's all getting a bit chillier.
• 1:18:20
  There's chestnuts being prepared for the open, but it's not
• 1:18:23
  actually Halloween yet. At the at the time we're doing
• 1:18:25
  this, but knowing Dylan's release schedule, it may well be
• 1:18:28
  by the time you listen to this. So coming up next.
• 1:18:31
  It's it's only the. Hamster book club Christmas
• 1:18:34
  episodes. Oh no it isn't.
• 1:18:38
  Oh no, it isn't. Yes, we're.
• 1:18:40
  Doing Dragon's Wrath, But no, we're doing.
• 1:18:43
  Oh no. We're doing oh.
• 1:18:47
  No, it isn't also sort of completing.
• 1:18:49
  A bit of a bit of work that we've been doing over the over
• 1:18:52
  this year, which is sort of mapping the transition from the
• 1:18:55
  Virgin books to the BBC books. So to put a little bow on it,
• 1:18:58
  we're going to be talking about the first Bernie Summerfield new
• 1:19:00
  adventure. Oh no, it isn't by Paul Cornell.
• 1:19:05
  I was trying to think of some dreadful.
• 1:19:06
  Pantomimic double entendre. But unfortunately, for the first
• 1:19:11
  time ever in my podcasting life, it deserves me.
• 1:19:15
  Dylan, where are we going next? How do you feel about being
• 1:19:18
  dominated, Joe? By you, any day.
• 1:19:22
  Of the week or maybe somebody called Asbo?
• 1:19:26
  I don't know, is that their name in it?
• 1:19:29
  Dominator Asbo we're going to be doing from Candy Jar Books,
• 1:19:35
  Lethbridge Stuart Range, Mutually assured domination,
• 1:19:41
  which is not as kinky as it sounds.
• 1:19:43
  And that's in a double bill with what again?
• 1:19:45
  Well, we did. But much like this one, it's
• 1:19:47
  going to. Be paired with a too hot for TV
• 1:19:50
  so we you'll be able to listen to let's talk about mutually
• 1:19:54
  assured domination. Then we're jumping over to Too
• 1:19:56
  Hot for TV, where we're going to talk about the new 4th Doctor,
• 1:20:00
  one with the Quarks and the Dominators in.
• 1:20:01
  I can't remember the name of it either.
• 1:20:03
  And it had. Good reviews though.
• 1:20:05
  Yeah, no it. Has it has.
• 1:20:07
  It's John Dorney. He's, he's a, he's a safe
• 1:20:09
  parent, Terrence, isn't it? You know you're going to get
• 1:20:11
  something good. Exactly.
• 1:20:13
  And we're going to do the TV comic. 60s comic strips
• 1:20:16
  featuring the Quarks. That's just going to be amazing.
• 1:20:19
  Is it the one where they're going around in?
• 1:20:20
  In a in a race? Is it that one?
• 1:20:22
  There's, there's six of them, but they're only like a, you
• 1:20:24
  know, like. Half a page each, so that we
• 1:20:27
  will see many sites, I'm sure, as we go through them.
• 1:20:31
  All of them exactly what you expect from Doctor Who, no
• 1:20:34
  doubt. But all of this sounds
• 1:20:36
  absolutely delightful. It's going to be great fun and
• 1:20:39
  of course the three of us if the.
• 1:20:40
  Stars have aligned. You'll be able to turn this off
• 1:20:44
  and go straight over to Too Hot for TV, where we'll be talking
• 1:20:47
  about Shakedown, Return of the Suntar and the Video, and the
• 1:20:51
  BBV classic Silent Warrior, also featuring the Suntarans, where
• 1:20:56
  the editing will be a lot more sophisticated.
• 1:21:01
  I'll cut it there. I'm going to deal with this
• 1:21:32
  matter myself. Will you coming?
• 1:22:12
  The. Rush one target down.
• 1:22:33
  Search proceeding. 3rd target down, 3rd target
• 1:22:55
  down, Target fall down.
• 1:23:14
  Search proceeding. Who the hell are you?
• 1:23:45
  What are you doing on my ship? I'm Liza Duran, ship's captain,
• 1:23:52
  and I demand an expert. 5 targets down, this ship is now
• 1:24:06
  under some. Power and control.