Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Shadow in the Glass by Stephen Cole and Justin Richards (featuring Jon Arnold, Andrew Batty & Luke Sims-Jenkins)

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Hamster Book Club - Shadow in the Glass by Stephen Cole and Justin Richards (featuring Jon Arnold, Andrew Batty & Luke Sims-Jenkins) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  Claire stood in the shadow of the TARDIS, the key heart
• 0:03
  inserted in the lock. She paused and took in a final
• 0:07
  impression of the bombed out Berlin, staring around stupidly
• 0:11
  aware this view would have to last her almost 60 years.
• 0:15
  From where she was standing. She had a good view of the water
• 0:18
  tower where the body of Hitler's double would been, or rather
• 0:21
  would be found. As she gazed across it,
• 0:25
  wondering where she'd stood, would stand.
• 0:28
  Years later, when she visited the site, she saw a figure
• 0:32
  making its way from the bunker towards the water tower.
• 0:35
  It was a big man, carrying a body over his shoulders.
• 0:39
  She recognized Martin Borman as he turned towards her, for a
• 0:42
  moment, adjusting the weight of the body.
• 0:45
  This was a dream, an impossibility.
• 0:48
  She stared. Transfix.
• 0:50
  The corpse swung slightly as Borman continued his progress.
• 0:54
  For a moment the face was visible and Claire felt a jolt
• 0:57
  of shock. Adolf Hitler.
• 1:00
  Then she realized it was the double and who the double was.
• 1:09
  If the distant clock was correct.
• 1:11
  If this was April the 30th, 1945, then Hitler, the real
• 1:15
  Adolf Hitler, would soon be saying his final farewells.
• 1:19
  In the corridor outside his room.
• 1:21
  Claire blew out a long breath and shuffled her feet, still
• 1:24
  taking it all in outside the doors of the magic police box.
• 1:28
  She was getting cold, but she knew an experience like this to
• 1:32
  be back in time almost 60 years and here now, the moment would
• 1:38
  never come again. Just across the torn up ground
• 1:42
  in front of her, between the TARDIS and the bunker.
• 1:45
  That was where the photograph showed the shell crater where
• 1:48
  the bodies had been unearthed. But there was no crater.
• 1:52
  The ground was churned up, the grass patchy and broken with
• 1:55
  mud, but there was no crater. How could that be?
• 2:00
  Instinctively, she walked across the shattered garden, towards
• 2:03
  where the crater should be. She dug the toe of her shoe into
• 2:07
  a lonely, dying tuft of grass. She looked up, startled.
• 2:11
  Some reason she could not immediately place.
• 2:14
  Maybe it was movement. Borman was returning across the
• 2:17
  garden, making for the bunker exit.
• 2:20
  He seemed to be hurrying, glancing back and up at the sky.
• 2:24
  Then she heard the noise. It was a whining, whistling
• 2:27
  sound. She had not been aware of it
• 2:29
  until now, but it was growing louder and louder by the moment.
• 2:33
  From above her, it took Claire only a split second to connect
• 2:36
  the sound in the sky with the crater that was not yet there.
• 2:40
  Then she was running, running for all she was worth.
• 2:43
  The entrance to the bunker was closer than the TARDIS, and she
• 2:46
  sprinted towards it. Ballman was standing in the
• 2:49
  doorway now, looking back at her, encouraging her, and with a
• 2:53
  cry of relief she threw herself forwards, stumbling and falling
• 2:56
  into the huge man's arms. For a moment he held her
• 3:01
  perfect, he breathed. Then he was dragging her outside
• 3:05
  again, even as she struggled against this short, powerful
• 3:08
  form, even as the whistling grew louder to a piercing shriek.
• 3:12
  He pushed her away from him, hurled her across the muddy
• 3:15
  remains of the garden into the blast, the explosion from mud
• 3:20
  and debris high into the ash and sky.
• 3:23
  It caught her across the chest as she screamed, covering her
• 3:26
  face. Boorman had turned away, mud
• 3:28
  splattering across his back. She was sinking, falling,
• 3:32
  clutching at the edge of the crater, alive.
• 3:36
  The smoke was settling like mist over a newly formed shell
• 3:39
  crater. Claire's body had been thrown
• 3:41
  against the edge of it, one hand clutching upwards as if to pull
• 3:45
  herself up and out. Through her tears and through
• 3:47
  the pain and through the drifting smoke, she could see
• 3:50
  Borman walking slowly towards her, fumbling in his jacket
• 3:54
  pocket. But already her vision was
• 3:56
  misting over. Through a blur she saw him reach
• 3:59
  down to her and breathe a racking, wretching sigh of
• 4:02
  relief. She felt his hand under her
• 4:05
  head, lifting it slightly. Then through the red of her
• 4:10
  tears, she saw his fingers groping towards her face, saw
• 4:14
  the glass ampule that caught the shadowy light filtering through
• 4:17
  the smoke and the blood. Felt the hard, cold glass in her
• 4:21
  mouth and the savage thrust of his fist under her jaw.
• 4:26
  And she felt the crunch and the fire as the glass broke in her
• 4:30
  mouth. Welcome back to the Hamster Book
• 4:36
  Club. My name is Joe Ford and a lot
• 4:39
  feeling a lot better than the last time we spoke when I was
• 4:43
  very ill. But two of this call have been
• 4:45
  ill since then. So we've been like plague city
• 4:48
  in the Hamster Book Club. I think 3 recordings dates
• 4:54
  later, we're here to talk about The Shadow in the Glass by
• 4:58
  Justin Richards and Stephen Cole.
• 5:02
  We're going to be talking Nazis, shock twists and Colin Baker or
• 5:08
  the 6th Doctor meeting the Brigadier.
• 5:10
  It's a very exciting episode ahead.
• 5:12
  Hitler. And Hitler.
• 5:13
  Let's not forget Hitler. Well, that mellifluous voice
• 5:20
  popping up there was the gorgeous Andrew Batty.
• 5:23
  Hello, Andrew. Hello.
• 5:25
  How are you doing? Today.
• 5:26
  All right, I'm less naughty than I was last weekend, so I'm
• 5:29
  raring to go. Very unusual to be talking in
• 5:31
  the morning, isn't it? It is.
• 5:33
  It's such a novelty. We also have, you know,
• 5:38
  expressing no nasty sympathies whatsoever, Mr. John Arnold.
• 5:42
  Hello, John. Hello, No, no fascist read this
• 5:45
  house. This this this machine kills
• 5:47
  fascists, and I've pulled up the book here.
• 5:49
  As a machine. How many times are we going to
• 5:52
  insult the Nazis today? A lot.
• 5:54
  Oh. Once a minute I think we can go
• 5:57
  for. Yeah, let's do it.
• 5:59
  And oh, that gorgeous voice just there is the lovely.
• 6:04
  Yes, you can look behind you all you want.
• 6:06
  Mr. Luke Sims Jenkins. Hello.
• 6:08
  Luke hi. Hello Nazis.
• 6:13
  I got no jokes. Fuck, they suck.
• 6:15
  What does that say? I really hate Nazis.
• 6:18
  Isn't that what she says in gold?
• 6:20
  That's the Indiana Jones lines as well, yeah.
• 6:23
  Luke, what's it like to be recording in the night time?
• 6:27
  It's it's good. I'm I'm pretty well awake and
• 6:31
  you know, I didn't have to, you know, need need now to wake up
• 6:34
  or anything like that. So it's great.
• 6:36
  I've had dinner. I'm arrested on me.
• 6:38
  Hey, I'm Brian, I'm bushy tailed.
• 6:40
  We're just rubbing the sleep out of our eyes and drawing.
• 6:45
  We'll look before we talk about the shadow in the glass.
• 6:49
  Let's do our I don't want to call.
• 6:50
  Can someone give these another name?
• 6:52
  That icebreaker question. We don't need to break ice.
• 6:54
  Anymore insetters? Oh, thank you very much.
• 6:57
  What's that insetters? Scene setter.
• 6:59
  Oh. Scene setters.
• 7:01
  Scene setters. Luke, I've already forgotten
• 7:05
  what it is. Will you please tell everybody
• 7:07
  what what our our scene setting question is please?
• 7:10
  Sure, I can absolutely do that. Andrew, could you please tell us
• 7:13
  what our scene setter? Is I think it was Nazi sent up
• 7:20
  to who? How do we feel?
• 7:23
  Should this subject be approached or not?
• 7:27
  Because we've had a few examples and we Let's kill Hitler.
• 7:30
  Obviously this book cold. It's the Doctor Who audio.
• 7:36
  Just war now, John, who loves its Nazis.
• 7:40
  John, I couldn't help but notice.
• 7:41
  You know you have met a couple of episodes recently, right?
• 7:44
  And you're very kind in, you know, asking for our opinion.
• 7:47
  And then once we've said anything, you barely get an
• 7:49
  opinion out yourself. So let's go straight to you
• 7:52
  first. What's the first story with
• 7:58
  Nazis in it in Doctor Who? Fenrick.
• 8:01
  Dalek invasion of Earth. Yeah, that's not proper Nazis.
• 8:04
  That's an analogy. The analogies.
• 8:10
  It's, yeah, it's Silk Nemesis. There are no Nazis in Doctor Who
• 8:15
  until you get to the kind of generation writers who were born
• 8:18
  after World War 2. So it's kind of these people who
• 8:21
  grew up with, so to speak, the Nazis with the horrors of World
• 8:24
  War 2, seeing it in the aftermath.
• 8:26
  They don't write it. They can only deal with it by
• 8:28
  analogy in the obvious, you know, it's Genesis, it's Dalek
• 8:31
  Invasion of Earth, it's the Daleks.
• 8:33
  So certainly I think up till that kind of generation who
• 8:39
  don't actually have direct experience, they they can't deal
• 8:43
  with it or the BBC will have Doctor Who avoid, you know,
• 8:47
  because Doctor Who is really, really bad at dealing with kind
• 8:50
  of real life horror. So at that point I can
• 8:54
  understand it. But you know, the first piece,
• 8:57
  so, you know, you get maybe you can say the fascist in
• 9:01
  remembrance. So it's again, I think Andrew
• 9:08
  said something about this behind the scenes Sulkin and Nick is
• 9:12
  like a lot of it is context and how you use it.
• 9:15
  So I can see why people would get upset with something like
• 9:19
  let's Kill Hitler, which basically uses, you know, the
• 9:22
  Nazis for screwball comedy. But equally, what's different
• 9:26
  about, say, Uncle Terence in Timer Max is just using it as
• 9:29
  pulp science fiction or this using it as pulp science
• 9:32
  fiction. And, you know, particularly with
• 9:36
  the way the right wing has a resurgence today, you know,
• 9:40
  you've got the far right, particularly in Germany, which
• 9:42
  of all places we're just worrying which is coming back.
• 9:45
  Did you be dealing with that? It's very, very difficult.
• 9:48
  I think the answer is you should only use me if you're using
• 9:52
  delicately. I think, you know, the ideal for
• 9:54
  me is something like just war, for instance, that use it very,
• 9:58
  very thoughtfully. So with care would be my answer
• 10:02
  on this one. Just War has an extraordinary
• 10:07
  sequence where the Nazi commander, I can't remember his
• 10:10
  name, has three pages, a three page monologue where he gets to
• 10:15
  express why the Nazis feel the way they do.
• 10:20
  And House and Lance Wagon doesn't criticize that
• 10:25
  character. He he just has that character
• 10:28
  stating their aims. And I was just like, wowzers
• 10:31
  that that was. Yeah.
• 10:34
  But then it's what they put Benny through in that book, so
• 10:39
  that's the critique. Luke with care or with a
• 10:44
  sledgehammer. I'm not sure I'd want a
• 10:49
  sledgehammer, but I think World War 2 is like a it's like one of
• 10:53
  those fascinating settings, I guess for our generations and
• 10:57
  stuff, not the ones that were a part of it, but it's always TV,
• 11:01
  movies, things, everything. Every, every kind of every year
• 11:06
  there's something from World War 2.
• 11:08
  But even if it doesn't include Nazis or the war in itself, it's
• 11:12
  just a setting that just fascinates us, I think.
• 11:15
  So I kind of like story setting World War 2 or have that kind of
• 11:20
  stuff. I don't know.
• 11:22
  I've got a problem with the use of Nazis in in Doctor Who.
• 11:25
  As long as it's done done kind of well, I can't remember let's
• 11:28
  kill Hitler because it's a Matt Smith that I've seen the era
• 11:31
  once thinking of doing a rewatch, but I don't know.
• 11:34
  So I I can't really talk to that.
• 11:35
  But mine, they didn't really have a bunch of a problem with
• 11:39
  shadow in the glass because not only did they publish it, they
• 11:42
  published it twice and then they got India Fisher to read it.
• 11:45
  So, so it's, it's, I think it's if this is if the story's good,
• 11:52
  it's it's, it's fine. I oh shit, there's a cockroach.
• 11:55
  Good fuck. Oh, no, sorry.
• 11:58
  Is it a Nazi cockroach? If it is, it's just, it's just,
• 12:02
  it's, it's death sentence right there.
• 12:04
  I'm just going to squish the damn thing.
• 12:05
  Sorry about that. Now I've got no problems with
• 12:07
  it. It's, it's all on how you use
• 12:09
  it, because Klein could have been a character that didn't
• 12:14
  work in if, if the writers weren't really good at at using
• 12:18
  her. That's Steve Lyons, by the way.
• 12:21
  So, so yeah, I don't mind. I don't mind the subject matter,
• 12:25
  but it's weird because I like Doctor Who to have a bit sense
• 12:28
  of adventure and a bit of fun. And it's weird to kind of have
• 12:33
  Nazis involved in the story. That's kind of more fun, you
• 12:38
  know, because hey, as long as they fucking all lose in the
• 12:41
  end, I'm I'm up for it. Let's go.
• 12:43
  As long as they lose, I'm into it.
• 12:47
  Well, Andrew, when we initially started this, a Nazi adventure
• 12:52
  that we're going on, we initially said, oh, well, let's
• 12:54
  do all of them. We'll do all three.
• 12:56
  And you said maybe we'll just dip our toes in with one.
• 12:59
  Let's see how we go. So I'm deeply intrigued to know
• 13:02
  what you think about this. Yeah, I think I was feeling like
• 13:06
  given current events in the world, I was not sure I wanted
• 13:09
  to send spend like 3 months in the world of Doctor Who Nazis.
• 13:14
  But yeah, I feel like the World War 2 setting kind of really
• 13:18
  suits Doctor Who. I think because it's such a sort
• 13:20
  of world changing event that shapes the whole of the
• 13:25
  second-half of the the 20th century when Doctor Who was
• 13:29
  being made. Like it kind of Doctor Who set
• 13:32
  in that era just really kind of works because it's part of the
• 13:35
  whole culture, I guess. But yeah, I think there's there
• 13:41
  is sort of a fine line when it comes to to Nazis.
• 13:45
  But yeah, I mean, I'm not too concerned about adventurous
• 13:50
  theories using Nazis as villains or making fun of Nazis because,
• 13:54
  you know, anything that's bad that's happening to Nazis is
• 13:56
  good in my books. I think where I where I feel
• 14:03
  like it's, it's kind of crosses that line into not so great is
• 14:08
  when I prefer the Nazis to be a true historical horror and like
• 14:14
  very human, like the their motivations and their actions
• 14:18
  were all humored. So when you start bringing sort
• 14:20
  of aliens and mysticism and magic into it, it's a bit like,
• 14:26
  yeah, I don't want to be sort of putting those motivations of
• 14:30
  what made them Nazis and what they did into a sort of
• 14:34
  whimsical, magical, metaphorical setting.
• 14:37
  I I want it to be grounded in reality.
• 14:41
  But at the same time, I think they're quite a useful, they're
• 14:44
  quite useful in sort of adventure fiction because
• 14:47
  they're quite because they're. So you've got a clear black and
• 14:51
  white morality to it. Like no, you can gun down a
• 14:54
  whole troop of Nazis and no one cares like they're they're Eve
• 14:58
  like. So I think when you've got
• 15:00
  things like Indiana Jones or like even like tin tin and stuff
• 15:04
  like that, I guess, which sometimes does tin tin deal with
• 15:06
  Nazis. I.
• 15:07
  Can't does, I think. Yeah.
• 15:08
  Yeah. So you kind of even though
• 15:10
  they're kids, which are, even though they're things which are
• 15:12
  aimed at a younger audience and they're dealing with a really
• 15:15
  dark part of history because you've got this, yeah, this
• 15:20
  black and white morality to. I mean, I know it's not as
• 15:23
  simple as it's good, good guys, bad guys.
• 15:25
  But when, you know, when you, when you're dealing with Nazis,
• 15:27
  like you can, you can do that and you can kill them and they
• 15:30
  can be pure evil. And that works very well in in
• 15:34
  in adventure stories for a younger audience, I think.
• 15:38
  Yeah, I'm, I'm. Oh God, I don't want to pick it.
• 15:42
  A scab. Does that mean you can't have a
• 15:43
  sympathetic Nazi in a story? I think, I think it depends, it
• 15:49
  depends what you do with it. Like, like, you know, why, why
• 15:53
  do you have that sympathetic Nazi character and what's your
• 15:57
  intention with with the book? And, you know, if you have
• 16:01
  something that's written with sophistication and nuance and
• 16:07
  intelligent interrogation of that historical period, then,
• 16:10
  you know, do what you want with those, you know, like, you know
• 16:14
  what I'm saying? Like you're not.
• 16:15
  Going to do that in a Doctor Who book though.
• 16:16
  I yeah, yeah. It's like, is Doctor right place
• 16:20
  to be doing that or do you need, you know, literary fiction or,
• 16:26
  you know, like a a Schindler's List or something like that to
• 16:28
  be doing to be dealing with those kind of themes?
• 16:31
  Probably, probably Doctor Who's not, I don't know.
• 16:34
  I don't know. It's it's tricky.
• 16:36
  We're covering a lot of tricky scene setters at the moment,
• 16:39
  aren't we? Yeah, I think, I mean, we'll
• 16:43
  probably get into this as well, but obviously Doctor Who was in
• 16:45
  a very different place in the 90s, and history and culture and
• 16:50
  pop culture was in a very different place in the 90s and
• 16:52
  early 2000s. So I feel like using the Nazis
• 16:56
  in that way was maybe more mainstream and more sort of
• 17:00
  accepted and easier for creators to do than it is now with where
• 17:07
  culture, history, world events have moved to in 2025.
• 17:11
  And maybe, you know, having a sort of sort of comedy or sci-fi
• 17:15
  Nazi thing is, you know, less less what audiences want now
• 17:21
  when you're looking at that sort of history.
• 17:22
  They want something with a bit more weight to it.
• 17:25
  I think it would seem so pony if they did a Doctor Who episode
• 17:28
  now with, you know, evil noses and magic scrying glasses and
• 17:33
  people would go, oh, this is so, you know, they were doing that
• 17:35
  in the New Adventures back in the 70s, weren't they?
• 17:37
  Wasn't that the first episode of New Adventures?
• 17:39
  A. Bit like the new Avengers.
• 17:41
  Oh, the New Avengers. That's what I mean, wasn't,
• 17:44
  wasn't it Hitler being brought back to life and.
• 17:48
  Something you've got, you've got the boys from Brazil as well,
• 17:51
  marathon man, all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:54
  I mean, I'm a total hypocrite when it comes to this stuff
• 17:57
  because I have no issues with the Nazis being in Doctor Who in
• 18:00
  any way, shape or form. And I think it's because it's
• 18:03
  not something that's prevalent in my lifetime and something
• 18:08
  that has touched me. Whereas I watched Doctor Who
• 18:11
  this Christmas and COVID was in it and I took great exception to
• 18:15
  that because I lived through that.
• 18:17
  So I can kind of see why it took until Silver Nemesis.
• 18:20
  Like you said, John, that the people that went through that
• 18:23
  stuff, they don't want to write about it.
• 18:25
  They don't want to take the piss out of it.
• 18:27
  They don't want to turn it into a big adventure.
• 18:29
  When the new wave of kids come in, in the Carmel era, they're
• 18:32
  like, well, that's actually some juicy stuff to play about with
• 18:35
  there, some some morality to put.
• 18:38
  They'd seen a lower low and. Then oh God, funny Nazis old
• 18:43
  dear. That goes down well in Germany.
• 18:46
  Yeah. I mean, one thing I would say is
• 18:49
  if they're going to be in here, I want this educational
• 18:52
  approach. I knew nothing about what
• 18:55
  happened in the last days of the bunker, absolutely nothing at
• 18:57
  all. And I feel as if Justin Richards
• 18:59
  and Stephen Cole probably researched this extremely well
• 19:02
  for this book. And I know they do because
• 19:05
  there's a forward about it. So I learned a lot about what
• 19:09
  happened at the end of the war. Whereas when we popped off to
• 19:12
  the Second World War and let's kill Hitler and shoved Hitler in
• 19:14
  the cupboard, I'm like, why are we doing this?
• 19:17
  Just for a bit of colour, you know?
• 19:19
  Like, I know, I know they're hideous and they should be
• 19:23
  mocked. This just would never have
• 19:26
  happened in a million years, you know?
• 19:29
  So if you're going to do it, I think you've got to treat it
• 19:32
  seriously. And I think for the most part,
• 19:35
  when Doctor Who does Nazis, it does treat you seriously.
• 19:41
  Yeah. Well, should we go into the book
• 19:43
  then and and see and see, Well, where on earth should we start
• 19:47
  with this book? Do you want to start with 60
• 19:51
  Meet in the Brig? Do you want to start with Claire
• 19:53
  Oldwitch, the journalist? Or should we just seek straight
• 19:56
  into the Nazis in this book? Well.
• 20:00
  We don't get to the Doctor for quite a long time in this book,
• 20:02
  do we? It's sort of like, yeah, so it
• 20:06
  feels wrong to start with the Doctor and the Brig.
• 20:08
  OK, well let's since we're talking about Nazis, let's
• 20:12
  continue talking about Nazis. How did you feel Carl and
• 20:18
  Richard's dealt with this thought?
• 20:20
  Because you know it's right at the heart of this book, right at
• 20:23
  the end. The climax to this book is in
• 20:25
  the bunker with Hitler and Eva Broad in the last days of the
• 20:28
  Second World War. Discuss, John.
• 20:34
  Well, because I basically did a lot of this history in up to
• 20:39
  university level. So I kind of knew.
• 20:42
  I knew I wrote, Brian knew that kind of stuff.
• 20:45
  I knew generally the outline of what was going on.
• 20:49
  I think it's, it's not really, I think about Nazis, Nazis, a
• 20:53
  really kind of a convenient point to hang it on here because
• 20:57
  the one of the plot twists in the book does depend on 56 years
• 21:03
  having passed. So this is kind of as much about
• 21:08
  that cultural time when The X-Files was big, when conspiracy
• 21:11
  theories were huge. So it's going into Nazi
• 21:15
  conspiracy theories and what it is, it's a really kind of fun
• 21:20
  exercise in how would you fit a Doctor Who story into the the
• 21:26
  gaps of history, almost into the little bits we don't quite know
• 21:30
  about or where there might be doubts.
• 21:33
  So I think on that front, this is really, really skilfully done
• 21:39
  as a historical and it treads this really fine line of being
• 21:47
  as pulpit as Doctor Who gets, but using the Nazi using Hitler
• 21:55
  and I really we we don't mind about ruining kind of the twist
• 22:00
  of the story here, do we? It's.
• 22:01
  An old book. Exactly, it's 20. 20 now.
• 22:04
  Tough shit. Yeah.
• 22:06
  And, you know, I think the smartest thing is, you know,
• 22:08
  you've got the misdirection where, you know, there's a
• 22:10
  device in here which gives, you know, whoever has it, long life.
• 22:15
  And you, you're directed to think, you know, well, this was
• 22:18
  this one guy's got on heads, got on one side, and you're drawn to
• 22:22
  think that Hitler's got it. And the twist that it's his son
• 22:26
  isn't that. Right.
• 22:27
  Can I say I have read this book three times, all right, And on
• 22:34
  this read, the first read, I read it and I listened to it.
• 22:37
  I forgot again, it was Hitler's son.
• 22:40
  I still thought it was Hitler. I mean, to me, that's a big
• 22:44
  strike. This book is that the twists are
• 22:46
  so beautifully carried out, you don't see them coming again.
• 22:51
  You've forgot it, Joe, didn't you, when you see it.
• 22:53
  Oh shit. Yeah though.
• 22:55
  But please bear that in mind. Get out of here.
• 23:00
  That's your one bad opinion of the episode.
• 23:06
  Sorry. But yeah, it's an absolutely
• 23:10
  terrifically well done on the actual conspiracy theories
• 23:14
  without denigrating how basically bad Nazis are.
• 23:21
  Andrew. Yeah, I think it does.
• 23:27
  It does tread a fine line in terms of like what's good taste,
• 23:33
  which I think was maybe less of a concern at the time the book
• 23:36
  was written. But I feel I feel there were
• 23:40
  bits. I'm not sure that I like that
• 23:44
  approach of Doctor Who filling in the gaps of history when it's
• 23:49
  like Hitler. Like I think if it's like, you
• 23:54
  know, the Maori Celeste or something like one of those
• 23:56
  historical mysteries that I don't know, just I think to me,
• 24:00
  it's like when I think of, you know, the last days in the in
• 24:03
  the bunker, like it's I don't want there to be like sci-fi
• 24:11
  shit happening there. Like it's just a sordid horrible
• 24:14
  part of history, the downfall of of the worst person.
• 24:18
  And, you know, just like I don't, I don't really want like
• 24:21
  aliens in the background and magic shit happening.
• 24:25
  Like I just want that. I don't really like the sort of
• 24:29
  Doctor Who encroaching into that.
• 24:31
  And I felt like, so yeah, I mean, it's quite nice that the
• 24:36
  book, you know, Hitler did die in the bunker in the book.
• 24:39
  He didn't survive. I think if he had survived, I
• 24:42
  would have disliked it more. But I also didn't really like
• 24:47
  that it's Hitler's son twist. Like that was very schlocky,
• 24:50
  very pulp and just a bit bit of a shit twist for me.
• 24:53
  I didn't really like that. And yeah, like it's, I enjoyed
• 25:00
  learning about the history. Like this is sort of doctrine,
• 25:03
  like a pulp historical thriller mode.
• 25:05
  So you know, it's a bit like it's a bit Dan Brown or like
• 25:09
  Robert Harris, I guess that that kind of where you've got the
• 25:12
  characters in the modern day discovering stuff about history
• 25:17
  and trying to prove a theory. But then also you've got time
• 25:20
  travel. So you can kind of combine that
• 25:21
  with then them going back into the actual history.
• 25:24
  And like with all books like that, again, that is a little
• 25:28
  bit silly. Like the bit where they've where
• 25:31
  the Brigadier manages to steal blood samples from the Russian
• 25:35
  archive by just sort of being left in a room on by himself.
• 25:38
  And he's just like, oh, I'll just whip a little blood sample
• 25:41
  out of this vial. No one will notice.
• 25:43
  But you know, the books like that are full of that sort of
• 25:46
  stuff. And then there's a secret Nazi
• 25:48
  basin, Antarctica. Yes, yes.
• 25:53
  In the shape of a swastika in. The shape of a swastika.
• 25:57
  But it, I think that silly Nazi stuff, it's kind of I think
• 26:01
  it's, it's that it's doing both it's kind of it's dealing with
• 26:04
  the real history and then it's doing like schlocky silly puppy
• 26:07
  stuff, which I think if it had just been a group of like mad
• 26:10
  Nazis in the present, kind of like, I can't think of a good
• 26:16
  example now, but like silver Nemesis or something I, I don't
• 26:20
  know, maybe I would have felt more OK with it.
• 26:22
  But it's the fact that it kind of goes between the real history
• 26:25
  and the fake, the fake stuff as well.
• 26:27
  Like just yeah, my dog is going mad about it as well.
• 26:33
  You think Silver Nemesis is a more responsible take on the.
• 26:36
  Nazis. I'm not.
• 26:38
  Saying that, gentlemen, the 4th Reich.
• 26:43
  You know, you know, like that that film that was out like 10
• 26:46
  years ago where it was like Nazis on the moon or whatever.
• 26:49
  Like it's so silly that you can't really take offence to it.
• 26:54
  Like it's just a stupid concept, and you know, the Nazis are bad
• 26:57
  and they're on the moon and it's just stupid.
• 26:59
  Tell the moon. So yeah, like a kind of, I mean,
• 27:08
  it's it's a page Turner. It's kind of gripping and it's
• 27:13
  got loads of plot twists in it. I wouldn't say it's the best
• 27:16
  doctor whoever. And I think you can sort of tell
• 27:19
  that it was written in a hurry. I feel like the alien plot and
• 27:23
  all the stuff in the kind of British village doesn't really
• 27:27
  feel like it fully sits with the other parts of the book.
• 27:30
  And it's kind of, it's like we've got lots of moving parts.
• 27:32
  We've got to connect them all together.
• 27:34
  And I'm not sure that they always kind of do.
• 27:37
  It's kind of a fun ride, I guess.
• 27:39
  I figured that. I mean, I was very baffled as to
• 27:42
  why they that spaceship lands in that English village.
• 27:46
  I figured they just needed to pad out 280 pages so 50 pages of
• 27:50
  Facebook could be the scrying glass going from England to
• 27:53
  Germany and passing through the hands of several people.
• 27:57
  Luke, how did you feel about the Nazis in The Shadow in the
• 27:59
  Glass? I enjoyed it.
• 28:03
  I don't know, don't enjoy Nazis, but I like this kind of pulp
• 28:07
  kind of storytelling. I don't know any shortcomings.
• 28:12
  I guess I I can brush away with the IT.
• 28:15
  It took them three weeks to write this.
• 28:16
  Did it take them three weeks or did they do about two weeks
• 28:19
  worth of research for this eroded in a week?
• 28:22
  Because there's a lot of reason. Forward in the reissued version
• 28:26
  where they said it was only three weeks and they did it over
• 28:29
  Christmas and they abandoned their families for Christmas to
• 28:32
  write this bloody book. Bloody hell.
• 28:36
  And this was because Instruments of Darkness was late.
• 28:38
  If, if that, if that serves me right, I think that's the book
• 28:42
  that this replay, this button replays you.
• 28:44
  Notice that in the in the climax of the book, somebody says it is
• 28:48
  an instrument of darkness. Like they got it in the book
• 28:51
  because they'd already advertised the Instruments of
• 28:54
  Darkness was coming out. You've got to put it in.
• 28:56
  But yeah, this gave me AX files, more like The X-Files with the
• 29:00
  lone gunman kind of vibe with some of the things with like the
• 29:04
  videotape and kind of, you know, using that, those old computers
• 29:08
  and things like that. I know there wasn't a lone
• 29:11
  gunman crew, but it just kind of gave me that vibe.
• 29:15
  And I like that. The we get to, by the way, the
• 29:20
  Brigadier finally gets to go back in time in the TARDIS and
• 29:22
  where's he go? Oh great, in Nazi Germany.
• 29:26
  Sausage roll. Have a sausage roll?
• 29:29
  Yeah. That's right.
• 29:31
  But I kind of, I kind of like it.
• 29:33
  It's it's really cheesy with some of the twists like you've
• 29:35
  got. Yeah, it's not Hitler.
• 29:36
  It's Hitler's son. I'm like, all right, That's that
• 29:39
  is really pulpy and cheesy and silly, but I'm going.
• 29:42
  To go with that. Just like him, Luke.
• 29:44
  The spit of him, you know? I don't think the aliens take
• 29:50
  over too much of the story as well.
• 29:53
  Like they're there, they're kind of in the background and stuff.
• 29:55
  But I feel like a lot of the evil that the Nazis do in this
• 29:59
  are very kind of it's very Nazi ish and it's it's what they do.
• 30:03
  So it's not really them being too controlled by alien
• 30:08
  influences and things like that. It's still them being complete
• 30:11
  assholes and things like that, you know, even to each other
• 30:14
  like that, that chain of where this where one this one of these
• 30:17
  items goes and stuff like that. Like Himmler is like quite rude
• 30:23
  to this Sergeant or whatever who's picked up this piece.
• 30:26
  And then, you know, passing it on and kind of stuff.
• 30:28
  There's like there's layers of kind of terrifying these these
• 30:31
  Nazis and things. It's kind of weird to read a
• 30:35
  Doctor Who book and read long accounts with the names of like
• 30:39
  Himmler and, and Bowman and all these kinds of people that I I
• 30:45
  get then seeing the Doctor interact with these people as
• 30:48
  well. And he's got to keep his shit
• 30:50
  together because and, and the Brigadier as well.
• 30:53
  I think it's harder for him as well.
• 30:54
  So like it is that fine line, but it's got that right mix for
• 31:00
  me of just pulp cheesiness and kind of 90s conspiracy, lone
• 31:06
  gunman kind of sci-fi, that kind of kind of gel for me by the by
• 31:10
  the end of it. And the twists are just awesome,
• 31:12
  especially that Ava Braun twist like near the end.
• 31:14
  So we'll get, I guess we'll get to that later.
• 31:18
  What really surprised me in the first half of the book was like
• 31:21
  the first quarter where the doctor's not even there.
• 31:25
  That all feels like setup, right?
• 31:27
  It's setting up the spaceship going down and and what happened
• 31:31
  to the equipment and there's a scene of the Russians on the
• 31:36
  last days of the war and it's just all a lot of stuff
• 31:39
  happening but no real reason for it.
• 31:41
  And then the second quarter, it's all like research is the
• 31:47
  Brigadier and Claire doing research and with some truly
• 31:50
  wonderful lines dropped in from Claire of like, I think history
• 31:54
  has some some other uses for me of and things like this that on
• 31:58
  the second, when I listened to this after reading it, I was
• 32:00
  like, man, they dropped in some good hints that of her fate.
• 32:04
  But look, and I really loved all of the research.
• 32:06
  I thought I'm I'm literally just reading somebody researching the
• 32:10
  Second World War here. And this shouldn't really be
• 32:13
  interesting, but because it was with great characters, I really
• 32:15
  liked it. But then I liked how all of the
• 32:18
  stuff that they were researching then plays out in the last
• 32:24
  quarter in surprising ways with all the Doctor Who stuff thrown
• 32:28
  in as well, gearing towards interesting twists.
• 32:32
  It's a really unusual way to do a Doctor Who story than to sort
• 32:34
  of lay out, OK, this is what happened.
• 32:37
  And then in the second-half, go, actually this is what happened.
• 32:40
  And it involved those characters that were researching what
• 32:43
  happened in the first half of the book.
• 32:45
  Well, that was really, really clever.
• 32:47
  And actually I did like the fact that the Nazis really didn't
• 32:50
  kick into the book until the second-half.
• 32:53
  Like they're there a bit and in the shadows and doing their
• 32:55
  ceremonies and all of this. But actually we're not really
• 32:58
  going to, you know, part parties with Hitler in it and you know,
• 33:03
  the bunker and all of that to the second-half of the book.
• 33:06
  I did think like maybe, maybe I'm totally misled here, but I,
• 33:11
  I thought this was a lot darker than I thought the Nazis were
• 33:14
  actually portrayed as as quite a scary for and I know the twist
• 33:21
  is silly and soapy and ridiculous, but sort of
• 33:27
  importantly, I think at the right moment the Doctor and it's
• 33:31
  Colin as well. So he could just hear Colin
• 33:33
  saying the words. He just condemns everything that
• 33:37
  they stand for, doesn't he? Whilst rather unnervingly
• 33:42
  frosting his hand out Hitler at other points and being charming
• 33:46
  as hell. Yeah.
• 33:49
  So I thought, I thought it was really well done.
• 33:51
  I think the educational aspect will impress me the most.
• 33:53
  It's just that afterwards I watched a documentary on the
• 33:57
  second, the Last Days of the Second World War and I was
• 33:59
  going, yeah, tick, tick, tick, tick.
• 34:01
  They really did do their research.
• 34:03
  So yeah, there's there's so much in it as well where you think
• 34:05
  like that can't have happened. That's ludicrous.
• 34:08
  Like the thing with the the double being found, that double
• 34:13
  of Hitler body of a double of Hitler being found near the
• 34:16
  bunker. And I was like, oh, that that's
• 34:18
  just part of this story. That's going to be like
• 34:21
  something. But no like that was that
• 34:23
  happened. If your brain is sufficiently
• 34:26
  mad enough, you could make the leap.
• 34:29
  Like, OK, it's a double of Hitler.
• 34:31
  Oh, OK, it's his son. That's who's there.
• 34:34
  But I mean, you have, I mean, they have to use the TARDIS
• 34:37
  twice in this. The story can't just play out.
• 34:40
  They have to sort of cheat a couple of times to get you from
• 34:44
  A to B to to figure out certain parts of the plot, including
• 34:47
  taking Hitler junior to no hang on, hit the seat.
• 34:53
  Oh God, hit the junior. Hit the scene, yeah.
• 34:55
  To me, the story, fuck it. All right, Yeah, this is trash.
• 35:00
  I'm I'm wrong? But I do love the kind of the
• 35:04
  the meeting between them with where it's just like, no, you
• 35:07
  can't be who you say you are. I don't believe any of this
• 35:09
  shit. So it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's
• 35:13
  showing how the Nazi kind of ideology mutated with the
• 35:18
  mysticism over the years where, you know, where is.
• 35:20
  That true though. I believe so, yeah.
• 35:25
  Hitler was definitely had a bent towards the, the Mystic stuff,
• 35:30
  the the relics, the legends and that.
• 35:33
  And I I do believe that Hitler was more sceptical about it, but
• 35:37
  I it's been a long time since I've read that stuff, so I'd
• 35:40
  need to check. That one.
• 35:42
  So what Andrew said about like giving that edge to the Nazis,
• 35:48
  so taking a ways from the sort of human horror and giving it a
• 35:52
  Mystic sort of Sheen and almost softening the evil of the Nazis,
• 35:58
  I do think that's true. And you shouldn't do that.
• 36:01
  What I did like was that Hitler just was not impressed at all.
• 36:04
  Even at the end where he's like, I'm your son, look into the
• 36:07
  scrying glass and Hitler's like, no, I don't believe in any of
• 36:11
  that shit. Or I feel like.
• 36:13
  So I at least the man. Yeah.
• 36:21
  Well, OK, let's, let's talk about the three records in this
• 36:27
  book. Let's talk about the 6th Order,
• 36:29
  the Brigadier and Claire Aldridge.
• 36:32
  And let's what? Each of you take one of these
• 36:36
  each. Who would like to take Sixy?
• 36:41
  Can I have the Brigadier? OK.
• 36:43
  Who would you like? Who was that to?
• 36:48
  Who would you like, Andrew? I'd prefer Claire, but I feel
• 36:51
  like we're all going to talk about Claire because.
• 36:53
  She's very. Sorry, John, I don't mind.
• 36:58
  I think the point with this is that, yeah, as I said, it's a
• 37:02
  long time before the doctor comes into this story, and I
• 37:04
  think it's possibly a function of the story being written at a
• 37:08
  late juncture. So you, you know, for it to be a
• 37:11
  Doctor Who story, the Doctor H powerful character, you have to
• 37:14
  always leave him out with almost the entire setup.
• 37:18
  But I I think it's a great, great take on Colin because he's
• 37:23
  the one Doctor Who you can imagine doing kind of what's
• 37:26
  necessary to fit in to get to where he wants with the Nazis.
• 37:31
  You know, he at one point he's on, you know, he uses his
• 37:35
  connections with Churchill to go undercover with the Nazis.
• 37:38
  He's happy to kind of talk to the monsters of history to get
• 37:44
  where he wants to and, you know, be as outwardly charming as
• 37:47
  possible on it. And Colin would have that Colin
• 37:50
  stuff has that front. But equally throughout, I think,
• 37:56
  you know, there is the the sarcasm, the kind of that
• 37:59
  bombastic thing. I do think they're kind.
• 38:02
  It's kind of a generic doctor. He's almost enabling the plot
• 38:06
  rather than driving it, if you know what I mean.
• 38:08
  It's it's the use of the TARDIS as it's that kind of, it needs
• 38:12
  to get you to 1945, in this case in 1932.
• 38:17
  And I do. I do adore the bits where you
• 38:20
  go, where you just go to clear. Yeah, I'm just nipping out for a
• 38:23
  cup of tea or whatever and she just goes back.
• 38:25
  Yeah. Don't they go to the party and
• 38:28
  then come back here? Here's the Brigadier and she
• 38:31
  goes. You were a long time making that
• 38:33
  cup of tea. Come.
• 38:34
  On yeah, that's brilliant. It's yeah, I just said that
• 38:36
  awful noise to an extreme. Yeah, don't worry about it.
• 38:39
  I love that kind of that comedy bit.
• 38:41
  But so I I do like I I don't particularly like the as a
• 38:49
  Doctor centric book. I don't think it is one
• 38:51
  particularly because I think it's concentrate on doing other
• 38:54
  things. But I do like the way Colin's
• 38:57
  written in any way. I don't quite like the way the
• 39:00
  Brigadier is written at times in it.
• 39:04
  OK, any, any more opinions on that?
• 39:07
  I mean, I, I loved the Doctor just sticking his head out the
• 39:09
  window when the Brigadier driving the car like a Labrador,
• 39:12
  you know, of his, he's just, I don't know, Colin.
• 39:16
  I really think Colin just flies off the page.
• 39:18
  And every line he was given in this, I could hear Colin say it.
• 39:22
  I mean, I could see his facial expressions, the bit where
• 39:24
  Hitler's son is trying to say to Hitler, you know, I'm your son.
• 39:27
  And the Doctor said going, you know, saying that he's mad.
• 39:31
  You can just see Colin doing all of it.
• 39:34
  I think there's two doctors in two books, so it's so easy to
• 39:39
  get right on the patients. Colin and Hartnell, Both of them
• 39:43
  are just almost made for books. Because they're so theatrical,
• 39:46
  aren't they? They're so, yes, you know, their
• 39:48
  quirks are so apparent. Luke, did you like the Six Six
• 39:52
  Doctor in this? I do he gets to be a bit of
• 39:57
  everything. He gets to be a bit of action
• 39:59
  man with the Brigadier and the crater at the start or not the
• 40:01
  start, but you know, towards the start of them being in the, in
• 40:04
  the, in the story he he gets to do a bit of espionage and things
• 40:11
  like that. It builds off other column
• 40:13
  stories like players. Where is that why Terrance
• 40:18
  sticks where he does meet Churchill for the full
• 40:21
  disincarnation Miss Churchill for the first time.
• 40:23
  I know the new series will take it that like he's been a friends
• 40:26
  with Churchill for blah blah blah.
• 40:29
  I guess I wonder where they got that idea from Uncle Terry and
• 40:35
  and this book right here, I guess.
• 40:36
  But but I really like that. And what I do like about it is,
• 40:43
  you know, every step of the way, he doesn't want to do any of the
• 40:46
  stuff with the Nazis. He doesn't want to talk to these
• 40:48
  guys. He doesn't want to feel like
• 40:50
  he's helping them in any way. Like when he has to go
• 40:53
  infiltrate well, where the cradle will be in in in decades
• 40:57
  time to steal something because he knows it, it, it comes back
• 41:01
  to to Germany just to see him go on on that mission and he's
• 41:06
  trying to save lives and things like that.
• 41:08
  And he and you know, every step of the way when he's helping
• 41:12
  them, you know, he just it's anathema to him.
• 41:14
  He doesn't he doesn't like it. And I feel like he would have
• 41:18
  loved this. There's times where he gets to
• 41:21
  with Colin would have gotten to be action man to the scenery,
• 41:25
  Rage Against Nazis, all this kind of stuff that ATV hero
• 41:29
  would love to do, even the TV Doctor Who.
• 41:33
  So I think he would he would love being in the story as well.
• 41:37
  So yeah, I could. I could see Colin having a great
• 41:41
  time with the material here because, I don't know, it's a
• 41:44
  pretty good outing for him. I I do like it.
• 41:47
  Or for his doctor, I thought. When Colin's doctors sort of
• 41:50
  pulled up, like, obviously there's a big sharp shock at the
• 41:54
  end of the book as to what happens to Claire, and he's
• 41:57
  really devastated by it, isn't he?
• 42:00
  And, and his part in this and how he pulls people involved.
• 42:04
  And I wondered if this was post trial of retirement or post
• 42:07
  losing Perry because Claire says that there was like a tinge of
• 42:12
  sadness about him, even though he was so ebullient and, and,
• 42:17
  you know, over the top. I mean, there was a wonderful
• 42:19
  moment where they talked about his coat.
• 42:22
  She looks at his, you know, rainbow colour coat and goes.
• 42:27
  That man, Eva just doesn't care. He looks as ridiculous as he
• 42:31
  does, or he looks as ridiculous as he does because he's looking
• 42:35
  for somewhere to fit in. It was just a really nicely,
• 42:39
  nicely written moment for him. Andrew, are you still with us?
• 42:43
  I just had to get my Power Pack and some dog treats to make
• 42:48
  someone stop barking. Well, we love the contributions.
• 42:53
  Yeah, she has. She has some very extreme
• 42:55
  opinions. Yeah, yeah.
• 42:59
  The Doctor, I think they're two writers who are just, you know,
• 43:03
  really skilled in writing for this range.
• 43:05
  And they can basically turn their hand to any doctor.
• 43:07
  So yeah, they, they capture him really well.
• 43:11
  And he gets some really nice moments in the book.
• 43:14
  And, and, you know, even though the 6th Doctor isn't my
• 43:18
  favorite, I think, you know, it's, it's a good story for him.
• 43:21
  And he's the Doctor Who does that sort of moral outrage
• 43:23
  really well. So he's a good choice for this
• 43:25
  story. And I think you kind of, if
• 43:29
  you're going to have the Doctor paddling around with Hitler, you
• 43:32
  kind of need that moral outrage to be spoken to make it really
• 43:37
  clear to the to the audience, you know, like what's going on
• 43:41
  here and that, you know, it's a means to an end.
• 43:43
  And that's why he's doing this. So yeah, like a good a good
• 43:49
  story for the 6th Doctor, I think, and pairs well with with
• 43:53
  grave matter from half of this writing team.
• 43:57
  So yeah, a good a good era for the 6th Doctor in the books.
• 44:00
  I think these sort of. Good track, I think with Colin
• 44:03
  at this point. Yeah, Last Doctor Adventures,
• 44:05
  mind you, you know, there's some dodgy but spiral scratch.
• 44:07
  What's it called? Spiral.
• 44:09
  Scratch. And things like that.
• 44:12
  Well, OK, let's skip across to Claire Aldridge, then our Sarah
• 44:18
  Jane Smith for this lovely adventure.
• 44:22
  I'm sure she's going to go on to have a great future in
• 44:24
  journalism, Andrew. Yeah, RIP Claire.
• 44:30
  Oh my God. The The big twist of this book
• 44:34
  for anyone who's still with us and didn't switch off and we
• 44:37
  said we were spoiling things, is that there's a big mystery of
• 44:44
  who died in Eva Braun's place, which is kind of planted about
• 44:48
  halfway through the novel. They discovered that the body
• 44:50
  that well, the remains that were discovered in the aftermath of
• 44:53
  the war are not Eva Braun's. And there's a big misdirection
• 44:57
  as there's a there's a another female Nazi character who you're
• 45:01
  misdirected and thinking, oh, it's going to be her body.
• 45:03
  And she does die near the end of the book.
• 45:05
  But the. Big, isn't it?
• 45:06
  When the Brigadier takes her out, you still think that's
• 45:09
  going to be her? Yeah.
• 45:10
  And then the big rug pull is actually, no, it's Claire who
• 45:14
  dies in Eva Braun's place so that Eva Braun can survive and
• 45:18
  give birth to Hitler. Hitler junior.
• 45:23
  Hitler junior. The.
• 45:25
  I think as Joe was saying, the whole book is kind of
• 45:27
  constructed to lead up to that twist and to misdirect you away
• 45:31
  from that twist. And there's lots of moments of
• 45:36
  sort of dramatic irony when you go back, like the bit where
• 45:41
  Claire is basically, I can't remember, she's handling the
• 45:44
  remains. But like, her own jawbone, I
• 45:46
  think is one of the OR, or her own blood samples.
• 45:49
  So, you know, they're doing these tests to discover who it
• 45:51
  is And actually, you know, in quite a morbid way, like, it's
• 45:55
  it's Claire's own body. Oh fuck yeah.
• 46:01
  I'm looking back, I'm like, yeah, yeah, all right.
• 46:04
  Oh shit. Yeah, so it's a, it's a cleverly
• 46:07
  constructed 1. Claire is a character.
• 46:11
  I think she's a little 2 dimensional.
• 46:16
  She's, she has, she has lots of moments of character, but she's
• 46:19
  very much a kind of Bridget Jones as a journalist type
• 46:25
  character of, oh, she stuck her throat, her tongue down the
• 46:28
  throat of this journalist at the Christmas party.
• 46:31
  And so they, they, they're building those bits of
• 46:33
  character, but it's a little bit cliched.
• 46:37
  And she's because she's this, this conspiracy theory
• 46:40
  journalist, she's constantly looking for the, the big story.
• 46:43
  And that's what motivates her to keep going and keep going and
• 46:46
  keep going with the Doctor and the Brigadier, keep putting
• 46:48
  herself in danger that she wants this big break, which again, is
• 46:52
  a bit. She got it.
• 46:53
  She got it. So, yeah.
• 46:57
  And looking back, like, I think I think also the fact that she
• 47:02
  is a bit 2 dimensional kind of softens the blow of the end,
• 47:05
  which is brutal and horrible. And if you did that to Sarah
• 47:09
  Jane or a character like, you know, that we actually cared
• 47:12
  about, not to say that you don't care about Claire, but you know,
• 47:15
  you don't have that that emotional investment that you
• 47:17
  would if she was a longer running character.
• 47:20
  You just couldn't do it for a longer run.
• 47:25
  You the stuff that the that the books did in the 90s and 2000s
• 47:30
  to companions they could have done.
• 47:32
  I mean, I think you're you're you're crossing a bound line in
• 47:39
  the sound of good taste. If you, if you did that to like,
• 47:42
  oh, it wasn't even Braun who died actually, it was Vicky or
• 47:45
  something. Like you can't.
• 47:48
  Well, that's weird. That is what they do to Vicky,
• 47:50
  isn't it? So technically, yeah, it puts
• 47:53
  her into history, into that role, isn't it?
• 47:55
  Oh yeah. So yeah.
• 47:57
  Not. In Scott and Burn is she?
• 48:00
  Not quite, yeah, but yeah, the. Although bullet time does do
• 48:04
  that to Sarah Jane theoretically.
• 48:06
  Yeah. But yeah, the her death is
• 48:12
  fucking brutal. It is and I it's unusually
• 48:16
  violent, I think for the this period of the books and maybe
• 48:18
  the PDA's like so she, she's physically attacked by a real,
• 48:24
  not by Martin Borman that an actual Nazi.
• 48:27
  She's thrown into the path of a shell and then he crushes like a
• 48:30
  cyanide capsule in her mouth, makes her bite it.
• 48:33
  And it's, it's all described really viscerally.
• 48:36
  And I think that that it's really impactful that that part
• 48:41
  of the book and like that sort of butting up against of this
• 48:45
  pulpy story into real history and reminding you that these
• 48:48
  people were monsters. And yeah, it's it's it's AI
• 48:57
  think that's the tone of the book where the kind of reality
• 48:59
  of history kind of hits a bit like it's not silly.
• 49:03
  Hitler, Hitler's son and UFO crashes like yeah, so.
• 49:09
  It's an imp or something like that.
• 49:11
  It's something very real and very, yeah, fucking brutal.
• 49:14
  But that gets to remember. The description, but doesn't
• 49:16
  mean he drags. He drags her through, you know,
• 49:18
  the crater comes down and he drags her through the flames,
• 49:21
  doesn't she? She's described as being dragged
• 49:23
  through the fire. It's really horrible.
• 49:27
  Yeah. It is really horrible and it's a
• 49:32
  little bit unfortunate that she's the only sort of fleshed
• 49:35
  out female character in the book and then that violence is
• 49:37
  enacted upon her, which, you know, is quite common for sort
• 49:41
  of. Stuff and Hannah, but she's also
• 49:44
  makes them crucially end as well.
• 49:46
  I. Mean Hannah.
• 49:47
  Like the women in fridges kind of thing.
• 49:49
  Yeah, but I mean, Hannah, she's not really a character.
• 49:52
  She's a, she's a device in the book.
• 49:53
  She's and she's a bit schlocky. She's a a sexy evil Nazi bitch.
• 49:57
  She gets murdered. Like she, you know, I wouldn't
• 50:01
  really character her as a characterise her as a kind of
• 50:04
  rounded character in the same way that Claire is.
• 50:08
  Yeah. And I did.
• 50:09
  I felt like the that's where the, the, the that's the end of
• 50:14
  the book when Claire dies. But then it kind of carries on
• 50:18
  for like another chapter or so and wrapping up all of the UFO
• 50:21
  nonsense. And it kind of felt like killed.
• 50:24
  We've just ended this on a really kind of sad note with the
• 50:28
  Doctor and Brigadier and not had to go off and do some sci-fi
• 50:30
  shit of like stopping the nuclear bomb or whatever they do
• 50:34
  with the spaceship at the end. It felt like the dramatic end of
• 50:38
  the book has happened now. Like, let's not, let's just end
• 50:43
  it. Here in that last chapter, well,
• 50:45
  the spaceship's gone off and it's not going to use the power
• 50:48
  until it's up into the atmosphere.
• 50:49
  And Doctor, look over there, there's your part in history.
• 50:52
  And it's like, OK, yes, we know you're ticking all the boxes
• 50:56
  here. Mind you, it's Doctor Who fans.
• 50:58
  So if they hadn't done that, there'd be other people going.
• 51:01
  Oh, well, what happened to the spaceship?
• 51:03
  You know I. Feel like that's a bit where you
• 51:05
  can see the written in the hurry part of it.
• 51:07
  Because I think they should have found a way to wrap all of that
• 51:14
  stuff up before the sort of dramatic climatics of the book.
• 51:18
  And I think maybe if they'd hadn't got to write it, it would
• 51:21
  have ended, you know, in Germany and not have that sort of
• 51:25
  postscript bit where they have to go back to to London.
• 51:27
  And then they do all that shit and then they feel a bit sad in
• 51:29
  the end and then the book finishes it.
• 51:31
  Yeah, it was a little bit, Yeah. Not the best plotting the
• 51:36
  ending. Do you know what would have
• 51:39
  helped with Claire is if this was ATV story rather than the
• 51:43
  book? You would have had a just
• 51:45
  brought in a great character actress and all of those things
• 51:48
  between her and the Brigadiers and Nicholas Courtney.
• 51:51
  I think they would have sung all the research scenes and taking
• 51:54
  the piss that he's old and he doesn't understand the
• 51:56
  technology and all of that. You're right on the page.
• 51:59
  It's quite functional, but I think actors, it's like
• 52:02
  Elizabeth Sladen could take hold of that stuff.
• 52:04
  Yeah, definitely. Really bring it to life.
• 52:06
  I think maybe on the screen that death would really hit if you
• 52:10
  had a great actress in that role.
• 52:14
  So I did like there was one reference.
• 52:16
  She's do you know Sarah Jane Smith?
• 52:19
  And she looks up to that's that's a really kind of lovely
• 52:21
  character. No, I think there's some really
• 52:23
  kind of beautiful little character.
• 52:25
  No, spent her life built right through the novel.
• 52:28
  So you do get to care a little bit.
• 52:30
  You know she's not just this balls to the wall female
• 52:34
  journalist struggling to get by. It's there.
• 52:37
  There is an attempt they make at character to make you care to
• 52:41
  make that ending hit harder. I also like that little thing of
• 52:47
  planting a a camera on the Brigadier just before he's
• 52:50
  supposed to go see the Russians so she can listen in on it.
• 52:53
  I was like, oh. And then she phones him.
• 52:56
  Like, do you really think this phone will not be bugged?
• 52:59
  Miss Aldridge, come on now. Yeah, he's just might have to
• 53:03
  bug the Brigadier, but yeah. Bit like.
• 53:06
  Sarah in season 11, I did like that Claire was our way into the
• 53:11
  story though, that she knew the fella that was investigating the
• 53:15
  Nazi. She had done the research before
• 53:17
  on the last days of the bunker, so she was integrated into the
• 53:21
  story really, really well. By the end she was very well
• 53:24
  into. I feel like also maybe I'm being
• 53:28
  a bit harsh on Claire because I came into this book knowing the
• 53:32
  twist and where it was going, so maybe I was trying.
• 53:33
  To damn it, I who or something you fucking read when you were a
• 53:36
  kid. Yeah, I'm going to get your
• 53:39
  memory from remembering all of them.
• 53:41
  Going to go back in time and steal the time traveller's wife
• 53:44
  from Steven Moffett and I Who. History would be very different.
• 53:50
  As long as like as well as all the entries.
• 53:52
  I think it used to have like little top five of like the top
• 53:56
  five most violent moments of and I think this was on like quite a
• 53:59
  lot of those lists. So yeah, it kind of and you
• 54:02
  know, it is, it's a really well constructed twist and like it is
• 54:08
  still remembered by people who were reading these books all
• 54:10
  these years later. It does feel like the whole book
• 54:13
  is, like you said, has been built around killing Claire,
• 54:16
  doesn't it? I can imagine some people
• 54:19
  reading this. I'm really hating that ending
• 54:22
  though as well. I loved it and I loved the shock
• 54:24
  of it and I'm glad they went there because I don't think the
• 54:26
  past Doctor Avengers really shocked like this.
• 54:29
  Which sounds like a companions asleep.
• 54:31
  Well, apart from building time and heritage and every time they
• 54:35
  murder somebody, I've got to say within the climax of the book,
• 54:39
  which I've really loved, all that stuff in the bunker, all
• 54:43
  all that poppy stuff, it's like it was Claire's bits where I was
• 54:46
  just in a cold sweat going, oh, Claire, just go back to the
• 54:49
  TARDIS. He's told you to go back to the
• 54:51
  TARDIS. She's like, oh, just one
• 54:52
  picture, you know, where's the home?
• 54:56
  And then she, she. Goes.
• 54:57
  You know, I could have sworn this is where that crater was.
• 55:00
  Claire, just. Get out there.
• 55:02
  You know, it's like the dramatic irony of no, the second time you
• 55:06
  read it, it's better than the first time because yeah.
• 55:09
  Oh, poor Claire. Sense of dread about her.
• 55:13
  Yeah, yeah, That's. It's a gnarly way to go.
• 55:20
  It's something you don't really forget.
• 55:23
  That's probably one of the few things I remembered was going to
• 55:25
  happen on my reread, even though I didn't particularly.
• 55:29
  I didn't remember Hitler Junior and so many things I didn't
• 55:31
  remember about I didn't remember oh, that reporter lady gets
• 55:36
  brutally murdered at the end of it.
• 55:38
  Forget Hitler, junior Luke, I mean.
• 55:41
  I know we'll see. Every time I watch The Web of
• 55:43
  Fear, I forget it's the soldier dude with the mustache.
• 55:47
  That's the guy that the intelligence is controlling.
• 55:50
  But when I'm watching that story, I don't know.
• 55:53
  I don't know who it is. This could be.
• 55:54
  Any he's got my he's got my surname so I'm not saying I'm a
• 55:57
  traitor here but I'd be voted off 1st.
• 56:03
  Well that's fucking truly that annoying for.
• 56:05
  Luke, what about the brick? Oh, dude.
• 56:09
  So I'm enjoying the setup, but as soon as the Brigadier comes
• 56:13
  into it, the book gets better for me.
• 56:16
  And, and then when he's paired up with the 6th Doctor, it gets,
• 56:22
  well, great. Because, you know, I like the
• 56:24
  setup and all, but I'm here to read.
• 56:26
  I'm here to read a Doctor Who book, not a, a new, a new
• 56:29
  adventure where Mccoy's in seven pages or something.
• 56:32
  But I really like him here. He he's the TARDIS and his
• 56:37
  excitement, not only his excitement of oh, I wonder which
• 56:41
  one it will be. I like his reaction of when it
• 56:44
  opens. There's no disappointment there.
• 56:46
  It's like, oh, which one is it? Oh, it's oh, it's this one.
• 56:50
  I don't know this one that well. OK, so it's not their first
• 56:52
  meeting then. So this is the first meeting
• 56:55
  between these two. So makes me feel like it's after
• 56:59
  the specter of Lennon Moore then.
• 57:00
  So it's between. Is that Canon?
• 57:06
  Get it out of here. So yeah, there's a bit of, and
• 57:12
  this is set bloody dog barking near me.
• 57:14
  This is set around the time of Battlefield, isn't it?
• 57:17
  Like 2000? That's in the late 90s, isn't
• 57:20
  it? So he's already met the 7th
• 57:21
  Doctor here as well. So yeah, there's a bit of Tommy
• 57:25
  wimeiness of the order after, after the Pertwee Unit days, I
• 57:29
  guess, and after Tom Baker, there's might be a bit of a mix
• 57:31
  up in the order of how he meets them and how he interacts with
• 57:34
  them. I guess after that.
• 57:36
  Oh, maybe from the five Doctors onwards.
• 57:38
  I don't know. But I like his excitement and
• 57:41
  I'll, I'll, I really like how Claire kind of interacts with
• 57:46
  him. Like she sees that all right,
• 57:48
  he's got a bit of old fashionedness about him, but
• 57:51
  also sees that he's, he's underneath that he's, he's not a
• 57:55
  big chauvinist or anything like that.
• 57:58
  He's just kind of old fashioned and maybe a little set in his
• 58:01
  ways in that respect. But he doesn't mean anything
• 58:04
  like negative by it. And she sees that and kind of
• 58:07
  interacts with him in, in ways that I thought was really cool.
• 58:10
  Like she even needles him about some of his like old, old ways,
• 58:14
  which I kind of liked. I liked him in Nazi Germany and
• 58:21
  it was him just trying to hold it together because he's he
• 58:24
  would have lit like like a lot of the people who made Doctor
• 58:26
  Who at the time, like, well, the Brigadier.
• 58:29
  I don't know if he was immortal to how old is the Brig?
• 58:32
  I don't know. But that would have been man.
• 58:36
  That would have been such an anathema for him to be around
• 58:39
  these people that he just despises and things like that.
• 58:43
  And just how he. Folded Together did not queue
• 58:46
  because you know what we're queuing up for?
• 58:49
  Go and see Hitler. Oh, yeah, And he doesn't say
• 58:54
  much at all. So like, yeah, I really like it.
• 58:57
  He's written with a bit of intelligence as well.
• 58:59
  Like, I know some. This is like, this is the book I
• 59:02
  really needed to read after reading Ghost Event Space.
• 59:09
  I don't know, Like the brigade is like, I'm the only one
• 59:11
  trained with a gun. You know what I'll do?
• 59:13
  I'll go up this tower and watch. No, you're the one with the
• 59:17
  military. Just get down there.
• 59:19
  You know, like I said, that in end space where there's none of
• 59:21
  that here. He he, he tells Claire, get
• 59:24
  behind me or all that kind of stuff.
• 59:26
  When when stuff's going down, he's he's, he's very great.
• 59:31
  I like how he bounces off with the 6th doctor as well.
• 59:33
  So they they don't know each other well, but there's still
• 59:36
  that kind of camaraderie and all that.
• 59:38
  I thought the brigade deal was might be one of my highlights
• 59:43
  for for this book. Actually, I, I, I kind of really
• 59:46
  loved their characterization of of him.
• 59:49
  And maybe it's because I read some characterization of him
• 59:53
  that I didn't like so much recently that made this kind of
• 59:56
  sparkle just that little bit more for me.
• 59:58
  Yeah, I love it. I want to mention a scene that I
• 1:00:03
  really loved because I'm wondering if anyone else
• 1:00:05
  absolutely hated it. And it's a possibility.
• 1:00:08
  And it's the bit where the Brigadier quite brutally murders
• 1:00:14
  Hannah at the end of the book to have her as like the double
• 1:00:19
  broad. Like it's savage.
• 1:00:22
  But I was like, no, no, he's like an army man.
• 1:00:25
  She's a Nazi. It's.
• 1:00:28
  He's a soldier. And he's a soldier man.
• 1:00:31
  Yep. Yeah, I was like, oh, he can
• 1:00:34
  really get like, we didn't see much of that in in the, you
• 1:00:37
  know, we did. We saw him with a gun and things
• 1:00:39
  like that, but not making really tough calls, not being brutal
• 1:00:43
  like that. I don't know because it's he
• 1:00:45
  makes it's it's like a battlefield.
• 1:00:47
  You know, can this says do no better than you.
• 1:00:49
  Probably I'll just do the best I can Bang.
• 1:00:51
  Oh. That's true.
• 1:00:54
  It is a Big Blue demon though. But it's basically it was the
• 1:00:58
  suicide mission. Yeah, I just, I love that sort
• 1:01:02
  of that edge to him in that scene.
• 1:01:04
  I see. I don't mind that.
• 1:01:05
  What bothered me mildly is there is a couple of lines there where
• 1:01:09
  it just went. No, that's not the Brigadier,
• 1:01:11
  which is, I'm sorry, I think there's a where he goes, you
• 1:01:16
  know, how would you like your brain splattered all over the
• 1:01:18
  wall? And then he describes Hannah as
• 1:01:20
  a Nazi bitch. And no, the Brigadier is like a
• 1:01:24
  perfect gentleman. There are other characters I can
• 1:01:26
  imagine doing that, but it's not a Brig line.
• 1:01:29
  The Brig would always kind of be.
• 1:01:33
  I would love to hear Nicholas. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:01:39
  You Nazi bitch. Oh boy.
• 1:01:43
  I think you're allowed to lose your shit a little bit if you're
• 1:01:46
  going out and attacking Nazis, man.
• 1:01:47
  Like, I'm, I'm all right with that.
• 1:01:50
  Oh my, I'll let it pass. Yeah.
• 1:01:52
  I think again, it's that it's that way of like if it's Nazis,
• 1:01:57
  it kind of just gets a pass, like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:01
  It's just, it was just that out of character for me on the
• 1:02:03
  Brigadier we know. So that was just where I had a
• 1:02:06
  little bit of an issue. But maybe I agree with it.
• 1:02:09
  I'd love the way he bakes up Colony.
• 1:02:11
  It's perfect. It's just that it's that old
• 1:02:14
  Doctor Brig relationship, but nicely written.
• 1:02:19
  The actual Doctor to bank to just bounce off him quite
• 1:02:23
  beautifully. Even if the Brig I'd like the
• 1:02:26
  Brigadier doesn't know this doctor quite as well.
• 1:02:29
  And that's kind of made sure in the in the book.
• 1:02:31
  So Doctors bounce off him easy, but the Brigadier's got this
• 1:02:33
  kind of little reservate reserve for a while, I think.
• 1:02:37
  What's this one going to do next?
• 1:02:39
  I don't have a handle on this particular doctor.
• 1:02:42
  What is he capable of? And that's a really nice
• 1:02:45
  characterization of a military man as well.
• 1:02:47
  They're always thinking about, you know, to try to take two
• 1:02:51
  steps ahead. Isn't it great as well?
• 1:02:54
  I think how they lead into his age, how he's an older man now.
• 1:02:57
  He's not as fit and as active as he used to be, but he still
• 1:03:02
  wants to. So you've got these scenes of
• 1:03:03
  Colin, Oh God, stop saying Colin the 6th Doctor, you know,
• 1:03:07
  bounding into dangerous. And he's there like huffing and
• 1:03:10
  muffing behind him, trying to keep up, but then the same
• 1:03:13
  breath. He can do the research.
• 1:03:14
  He's a really smart bloke, you know, he can make the tough
• 1:03:18
  calls at the end, at the end of the book.
• 1:03:20
  And I think his relationship with Claire, if Claire is a bit
• 1:03:24
  2 dimensional, then their interactions in the first half
• 1:03:29
  of the book means that the stat twist at the end does have an
• 1:03:32
  emotional impact because it has an impact on him and he's got to
• 1:03:36
  know her really well and they've had some fun interactions.
• 1:03:38
  So like, there are places where you can see this.
• 1:03:41
  This has been written in a hurry for a book written in three
• 1:03:45
  weeks. I think this is an exceptional
• 1:03:47
  piece of work. Like I could not churn out a
• 1:03:50
  book that's good in three weeks. Again, you know, the writers we
• 1:03:53
  kind of value the guys who do something unusual.
• 1:03:56
  You poor Mars does it, Lawrence Miles does it, Lance does it.
• 1:04:02
  But these guys are basically the terrace sticks of the rate of
• 1:04:05
  the wilderness years. They can.
• 1:04:08
  They know how to construct a good solid Doctor Who story to
• 1:04:12
  fill a gap, you know, within a couple of weeks.
• 1:04:15
  That's no mean feat. You know, if you've even if
• 1:04:17
  you've tried to write any kind of novel, you know how difficult
• 1:04:20
  this is. And these guys, they can put a
• 1:04:22
  structure in, they can do it. And it's it's a genuinely decent
• 1:04:28
  it's, it doesn't read like filler unless you're looking for
• 1:04:32
  it. Well, Andrew, he just wants to
• 1:04:34
  be involved. No, she's going to go to the
• 1:04:38
  back door and start barking again.
• 1:04:40
  Andrew, I don't know if you remember, you know, you, you
• 1:04:43
  said in our Grave Matter episode about, you know, the sort of,
• 1:04:46
  you know, that was written in a hurry as well.
• 1:04:48
  And the aliens were called the DNA Reans.
• 1:04:54
  I can't even remember. The Denarius.
• 1:04:55
  Bloody life stories. Also written in a hurry, I can't
• 1:05:00
  even remember. Is it the?
• 1:05:01
  Vormac I think. Oh, Vormac.
• 1:05:03
  Vormac. Yeah, double B with a double B.
• 1:05:07
  So funny was in the in the audio reading that India Fisher did
• 1:05:12
  they only have like 2 lines at the end of the book.
• 1:05:14
  Haven't they gave her this ethereal voice?
• 1:05:19
  My God, she weren't doing that throughout the whole bloody
• 1:05:21
  thing. So they really make an impact.
• 1:05:25
  I mean, I think they're sort of like a flickering in the shadows
• 1:05:28
  demonic. Yeah, the the they are pretty
• 1:05:33
  creepy the I think. So there's like the aliens and
• 1:05:37
  then there's like their sort of familias, which are like the
• 1:05:39
  shadow creatures which are sort of attaching themselves to
• 1:05:43
  people. And that's pretty creepy when
• 1:05:45
  you when and makes for some good imagery early in the book when
• 1:05:49
  characters are sort of spotting sort of that there's something
• 1:05:53
  wrong with people's shadows and they've got these two shadows
• 1:05:56
  and this this sort of demonic presence in it.
• 1:06:00
  See, I like that. And I think again, there's a lot
• 1:06:03
  of misdirection because you're thinking like, are the aliens
• 1:06:05
  trying to do something here? Are they working with the knot?
• 1:06:09
  Like what's what's going on with the aliens?
• 1:06:11
  So there's sort of like a a means to an ends in in the book.
• 1:06:16
  It's not about them. It's about how they connect with
• 1:06:18
  the rest of the story. But yeah, they're not.
• 1:06:24
  I think the shadow creatures are quite memorable.
• 1:06:25
  I think the other aliens are not so much like the ones who are
• 1:06:28
  just like in their in their spaceship coffins.
• 1:06:32
  No, at this being audio, you can't see that.
• 1:06:34
  My dog is, she's come right up to the camera and she's she's
• 1:06:37
  wanting to get involved. The Imps are just an excuse for
• 1:06:40
  awesome imagery when you got scenes of people researching
• 1:06:43
  like oh we're doing boring research for another chapter
• 1:06:46
  guys, oh great. But if we freeze frame this VCR
• 1:06:49
  tape and this scene right here, look, Oh my God, this.
• 1:06:53
  Look at that right there. Look at that right there.
• 1:06:55
  Look at that right there. It's like that kind of imagery.
• 1:06:57
  That's all they need to do. That's all very X-Files, isn't
• 1:07:00
  it? That sort of like frame?
• 1:07:02
  What of what can we see going on in the weird background up
• 1:07:04
  there? All this sort of going to widows
• 1:07:07
  houses, the military, turning all of that.
• 1:07:09
  So X-Files, isn't it? Like the imagery is straight out
• 1:07:12
  of those early seasons. The sort of abandoned village
• 1:07:16
  with the military present and trying to sneak around and all
• 1:07:19
  that stuff. Yeah, very X-Files I.
• 1:07:22
  Think Carl and Richards, you know, just been just a couple of
• 1:07:25
  seasons and a bit of this. Yeah, you can see Claire's tape
• 1:07:29
  like landing on Molder's desk and.
• 1:07:33
  Oh, why are we going to England, Molder?
• 1:07:38
  Well, anything else then, guys? Anything we haven't covered in
• 1:07:41
  the book at all. We've done the major players,
• 1:07:44
  the twists. We've covered the Nazis.
• 1:07:48
  Or any overall thoughts on The Shadow in the Glass?
• 1:07:50
  I mean, I'll say to myself, I thought the first half was very
• 1:07:54
  readable. I thought the second-half was
• 1:07:56
  absolutely gripping. And I, I was ill at the time and
• 1:07:59
  tore through that second-half. And then when India Fisher read
• 1:08:03
  it out, to me, it felt like a different book.
• 1:08:06
  Like she does a great dramatic reading except for her voice for
• 1:08:09
  the Brigadier. Which is me.
• 1:08:11
  Sort of fruity, you know, mix of academia pulp and then that
• 1:08:17
  killer ending I think is flawed, but I think it stands out in the
• 1:08:24
  past doctor range for doing something a bit different and
• 1:08:28
  and just having a really bold ending.
• 1:08:30
  They don't often surprise me. Yeah, Colin.
• 1:08:35
  I was going to say, you can see why they chose.
• 1:08:38
  This one for the reprint, given that the theme of that series
• 1:08:42
  was was history, and that this one has such a kind of big
• 1:08:45
  memorable twist in it, and it's all about the sort of butting of
• 1:08:49
  Doctor Who against history, it makes perfect sense for that
• 1:08:52
  reprint, but also kind of surprising like.
• 1:08:57
  Again given like tone. And subject matter and like,
• 1:09:00
  there's a few ships in this book as well that it was reprinted in
• 1:09:04
  2016 and that that all made it into the audio book as well.
• 1:09:09
  I was like, oh, here's here's India Fisher saying shit.
• 1:09:13
  It is. We're there for it, are we?
• 1:09:15
  Oh, there are loads of MasterChef fans who pay for
• 1:09:17
  that. I'm.
• 1:09:18
  Sure, I'm so annoyed. Like I I heard.
• 1:09:22
  I'm listening to this with India and I'm loving it.
• 1:09:24
  I'm like, oh wow. And and it's not that.
• 1:09:27
  Long either it's the whole. Book too.
• 1:09:29
  I'm like, this is great. Wait, they did sands a time for
• 1:09:34
  the 50th? Do we have one?
• 1:09:36
  Oh no. How many of those 50th?
• 1:09:39
  Ones did they? Do of the reprints of Old
• 1:09:42
  PDASEDAS did they? How many of them got readings?
• 1:09:46
  I know last the Gathering gets Yeats Richard Fred about the
• 1:09:51
  readers amorality. Tale and it was shakedown.
• 1:09:55
  Getzman doesn't it shakedown human.
• 1:09:57
  Nature alien, Yes. Yes.
• 1:10:00
  Yeah, so oops, marker. Oh, I'm sure.
• 1:10:05
  I'm not sure. Oh, David.
• 1:10:05
  Collins, I think. Read that, I think you might.
• 1:10:07
  Be right, Oh, the witch hunters, because I'm listening to that,
• 1:10:10
  right? Now David Collins does that one,
• 1:10:13
  so yeah. If you're not, why you just want
• 1:10:19
  audios of these BBC books? Don't you?
• 1:10:21
  So badly? Yeah, why not?
• 1:10:24
  It's a. Like.
• 1:10:25
  Well, that some of these are hard to get.
• 1:10:27
  Can we? Can we have Lisa Bauman read me
• 1:10:29
  the fucking dying days please? For God's sakes, it feels like.
• 1:10:35
  Big Finish could be churning these out as well if they got a
• 1:10:37
  license to do audiobooks. Because it feels like that audio
• 1:10:41
  novel series, it's not really taking off.
• 1:10:44
  Like it doesn't feel like that's the range that people really
• 1:10:46
  talk about, which is sad because it's, it's one it's a outlet for
• 1:10:51
  for new writing. But you know, like people would
• 1:10:54
  buy these, they'd be really cheap to make.
• 1:10:56
  Like just get India Fisher in a room with a book.
• 1:10:59
  And did you know it's like the just the sound effects and the.
• 1:11:01
  Music were very subtle, but sort of ominous and really creepy as
• 1:11:06
  well. It wasn't like a Big Finish
• 1:11:08
  score, which is, you know, ever present and guiding you all the
• 1:11:11
  time. I just thought it was really
• 1:11:14
  well done. Maybe when they finish doing all
• 1:11:16
  the targets. BBC.
• 1:11:17
  Audio will start casting their eyes onto their big back catalog
• 1:11:21
  of The Who could possibly read the eight doctors to us?
• 1:11:26
  Paul began. Obviously.
• 1:11:27
  Yeah. But there's this little gems.
• 1:11:32
  Of interesting kind of writing that kind of one bit that stuck
• 1:11:35
  with me was this this guy Spinney, who I guess was an
• 1:11:39
  English soldier who had one of the items.
• 1:11:43
  And when when the doctor and everyone leave after talking to
• 1:11:47
  him, just something like Spinney didn't remove the glasses
• 1:11:52
  because it reminded him that people had actually visited him.
• 1:11:55
  I was like, fuck, that is that's sad.
• 1:11:58
  But it kind of just stayed with me.
• 1:11:59
  Just he doesn't clean up because it's like a reminder that like
• 1:12:03
  for like an afternoon he had a life or something like wow.
• 1:12:07
  So yeah, it's not the most 3 dimensional in terms of
• 1:12:11
  characterization across the board, but there's little
• 1:12:14
  Nuggets here. So like if I had had a few
• 1:12:17
  months maybe instead of three weeks, you probably would have
• 1:12:19
  got a lot more of that. But you still get little Nuggets
• 1:12:22
  of it here and there. So I don't know, there's little
• 1:12:24
  bits and pieces that kind of stick with me like that.
• 1:12:28
  Tempted Luke to give it another turn.
• 1:12:30
  You know when they. When it came out again.
• 1:12:32
  Oh, let's just rewrite a couple of bits and tidy up.
• 1:12:37
  Yeah, I mean. Well, I would love that if they
• 1:12:43
  like, oh, we're gonna. Do a reprint audio book version
• 1:12:46
  of your of your thing to see. Then they'd take out the shits
• 1:12:49
  and things like that. Then they'd make the murder at
• 1:12:52
  the end. Maybe not so.
• 1:12:53
  Brutal. And stuff like that.
• 1:12:55
  Nazi bitch, wouldn't they? Yeah, fuck.
• 1:12:58
  Fuck it, just give. It the warts and all approach.
• 1:13:00
  Otherwise you, you might be tempted to maybe you sure add
• 1:13:04
  stuff that's always great, but you might be also tempted to do
• 1:13:06
  the George Lucas thing of like, yeah, I added stuff.
• 1:13:10
  Yeah. Also I took some things out too.
• 1:13:11
  So like, you know, like why, why?
• 1:13:15
  And then then make sure you can never actually buy copies of the
• 1:13:19
  original trilogy, you know, as I originally were.
• 1:13:22
  So no, I don't know. I wow.
• 1:13:25
  I yeah, that was. A bit surprised.
• 1:13:27
  To read India Fisher in my head saying Nazi bitch like that.
• 1:13:34
  But it was. Such a it's.
• 1:13:36
  Such a great. Novelty to have.
• 1:13:39
  PD just one of. The wilderness era books in my
• 1:13:42
  head. They won't reprint the damn
• 1:13:45
  things. Can we get?
• 1:13:46
  These OH. I would I would devour them.
• 1:13:49
  I'm going to devour some of the other ones.
• 1:13:51
  I've got a question for you all. John, I still want to hear your
• 1:13:54
  closing thoughts, but I've got a question for you all because we
• 1:13:57
  haven't really addressed that. This is to writers.
• 1:14:01
  And I thought it was kind of seamless.
• 1:14:03
  I couldn't really tell where Richard's ended and Cole began.
• 1:14:09
  Like the plotting felt like Richard's and the dialogue heavy
• 1:14:13
  sections possibly felt like Cole.
• 1:14:16
  There was a lot of italics that he loves an italic Cole, but I'm
• 1:14:21
  assuming they kind of. Divided the plot strands
• 1:14:24
  between. So you write this bit, we'll
• 1:14:25
  write this bit, and then we'll, you know, go over each other's
• 1:14:29
  work just to make sure it's all seamless.
• 1:14:32
  But no, I, I was kind of impressed.
• 1:14:34
  It is kind of really nice unified voice.
• 1:14:38
  I don't know if that's part of it because these guys are all
• 1:14:40
  about structure more than, you know, literary cleverness, say.
• 1:14:46
  So, you know, you wouldn't have a jarring of voice if I don't
• 1:14:49
  know. Again, Paul Mars, Lawrence Miles
• 1:14:52
  was involved, guys. Yeah, I think reading it so.
• 1:14:58
  Soon. After Grave Matter, it feels
• 1:15:02
  like maybe there's more of Steve Cole's hand in this because it
• 1:15:05
  like the I feel like the prose and the dialogue don't feel like
• 1:15:09
  they're quite written in the same way as Grave Matter.
• 1:15:13
  But yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't feel like jarring, but there's
• 1:15:18
  22 hands going on in this book. Yeah, I think it's to.
• 1:15:25
  Say that it was written so. Quickly, it does hold together
• 1:15:29
  pretty well in most places. I think it just, there's just a
• 1:15:31
  few areas where maybe it needed a little bit more of a
• 1:15:35
  tightening up or just making the plot mechanics sort of hit a bit
• 1:15:40
  better. But yeah, it's it's a good read
• 1:15:43
  and it's a good page Turner. I think that we've gone from
• 1:15:45
  like ghost events space. To grave matter to this.
• 1:15:49
  I mean we are on a trash run, aren't we?
• 1:15:55
  I don't know where we're going next.
• 1:15:56
  Anyway, John, sorry your your. Final thoughts on the Shadow
• 1:15:58
  Glass It it is basically a big shaggy.
• 1:16:01
  Dog story with the way it ends in that tweet in the the
• 1:16:04
  conspiracy ending as a oh, it's a real essentially real.
• 1:16:10
  Yeah, it it just is the probably the most of its time book I
• 1:16:15
  think we've covered. Yeah, as I say, it's the X
• 1:16:18
  filed. It's it's a, it's probably the
• 1:16:19
  last point you can get away with doing conspiracy theories
• 1:16:21
  because, you know, the internet's given edible brain
• 1:16:24
  worms on this. So anyway, but yeah, really kind
• 1:16:29
  of just enjoyed it as a good solid Doctor Who story.
• 1:16:35
  You know, it's got paste. It conceals really well that
• 1:16:38
  essentially the first property heart in 3/4 of it is all set up
• 1:16:43
  just to get to that ending. But it but with the, you know,
• 1:16:47
  the use of time travel, the Doctor and the Brigadier, easy
• 1:16:51
  rapport, that kind of thing that it it's just a really well
• 1:16:57
  written pulp Doctor Who story. Have we got a really bad past?
• 1:17:03
  Doctor adventure on the list I feel like.
• 1:17:05
  Oh yes, Oh yes. Oh, of course.
• 1:17:08
  We do. I think we talked about it the
• 1:17:09
  other day. It's it's.
• 1:17:11
  A It's an Uncle Terry book, and that is still to be determined,
• 1:17:15
  fellas. All right.
• 1:17:16
  It's happening. It's happening.
• 1:17:18
  No, not that we're going to do it.
• 1:17:20
  Though it's bad. Remember the ghost men face all
• 1:17:23
  right well to. Twist my arm to read a Davison
• 1:17:28
  novel either. But.
• 1:17:30
  That I I did say on the chat, the only way I was probably
• 1:17:32
  going to read this book is if we did it for book club.
• 1:17:35
  So we might as well. Might as well.
• 1:17:36
  Yeah, for what you wish for, you think?
• 1:17:39
  There's problematic things in this.
• 1:17:40
  Book. Good grief.
• 1:17:41
  Oh my God, yourself. All right, Well, fellas, I mean,
• 1:17:47
  we've already discussed that there is a fabulous twist at the
• 1:17:50
  end of Shadow in the Glass, which leads us into our top
• 1:17:53
  three favorite shock twists. Well, I don't know why not shock
• 1:17:58
  twists, but twists in Doctor Who books.
• 1:18:02
  Let's go round and do 1 apiece. Let's start with Luke.
• 1:18:09
  Well, this might be. Not a shock twist for.
• 1:18:11
  The in terms of story content or anything, but it might be for
• 1:18:15
  the actual book podcast because I've read the Gallifrey
• 1:18:19
  Chronicles everyone waiting for you guys to bring it up.
• 1:18:22
  So I didn't have to take my headphones out and make sure of
• 1:18:25
  it, but no one fucking did that my look just to choose one off
• 1:18:30
  the top of my head. I when you guys ages ago asked
• 1:18:35
  if there was a EDA after this, I kind of said, you know what, I
• 1:18:40
  want to see Fitz in a classic. With classic monsters.
• 1:18:45
  Like a Daleks or a Cyberman. Well, he meets the Daleks and
• 1:18:49
  this, he's fucking bored shitless.
• 1:18:52
  It's the twist for me right now. Finally get what I want and Fitz
• 1:18:55
  is like, these guys fucking suck.
• 1:19:00
  Your biggest shock twist? In that book was when you
• 1:19:02
  thought. Fitz was dead.
• 1:19:04
  Oh dude, I was apoplectic because we were.
• 1:19:08
  All featuring behind. Your back going ha ha, he
• 1:19:11
  doesn't know, no. Yeah, so no.
• 1:19:16
  That the Fitz dying freaked me out.
• 1:19:20
  I was like, how dare you Had I was about to be really nasty,
• 1:19:25
  that Nathan wouldn't have been nasty.
• 1:19:27
  Lance Parker. But yeah, Fitz dying.
• 1:19:30
  But then I kind of just realized like, oh, wait, but his body
• 1:19:33
  disappeared. So OK, there's something going
• 1:19:36
  on there. There we go.
• 1:19:37
  But yeah, I know it was a big major twist and all that kind of
• 1:19:43
  stuff. But yeah, Fitz getting his Dalek
• 1:19:45
  story, who's kind of something I always wanted and didn't realize
• 1:19:48
  I was sitting on for 20 bloody years.
• 1:19:51
  That's a super personal twist. To you.
• 1:19:54
  I love. It John.
• 1:19:57
  Shock us? No, I.
• 1:19:59
  I've got three kind of different types of twists.
• 1:20:01
  I think here and it was just I was going through the box and
• 1:20:04
  going, do I remember them? So the first one, I'm going to
• 1:20:07
  go really obvious. It's alien bodies.
• 1:20:10
  It's the nature of the relic. Are you kidding me?
• 1:20:13
  That's my first one. Hey, OK, go on.
• 1:20:18
  Yeah, it's, you know, it's twist.
• 1:20:20
  It's the twist. Is a big idea.
• 1:20:21
  It's like one of those things. How would an author think of it
• 1:20:26
  and how would it change your story?
• 1:20:28
  And you get to the point you realise where it's going.
• 1:20:30
  You go, it can't be, it can't be.
• 1:20:33
  And it's, I don't think it's ever quite confirmed, but it's
• 1:20:36
  it's, it's essentially everyone thinks it is.
• 1:20:38
  So it does count really. And you just go.
• 1:20:42
  Wow, it's a big idea. It's a big twist.
• 1:20:44
  Where the hell is this story going to go from here?
• 1:20:47
  How does the Doctor react to this?
• 1:20:49
  And you're into a point. You don't know where it's going
• 1:20:52
  to go. And obviously alien bodies as
• 1:20:54
  well. OK, alien bodies.
• 1:20:56
  Well, it's the it's the the twist in there as well.
• 1:21:00
  The Dalekship comes down and it's the bloody croutons and it
• 1:21:03
  makes a croutons into the best villains you have ever seen in
• 1:21:06
  your life. So it's a book of twists, but
• 1:21:09
  it's yeah, alien bodies, the nature of the doctors be body
• 1:21:12
  being the relic. I had a twist on the sub bench.
• 1:21:16
  You know, so I'm going to have to use that now.
• 1:21:18
  Now you've stolen that one. Thank you very much, Andrew.
• 1:21:22
  Yeah, I was trying to. I was trying to rack my brains
• 1:21:24
  for like sort of plotty twists in books, but all of my picks
• 1:21:30
  are actually like big like arc moments because they're the ones
• 1:21:33
  that that stick. But my first one was Fitz
• 1:21:38
  leaving in Camera Obscura, which, you know, at the time was
• 1:21:43
  just like, oh, like Fitz is gone.
• 1:21:47
  And then I because I because I was reading the books regularly
• 1:21:49
  at that point, and the way that like Sam's departure hadn't
• 1:21:53
  really been signposted. Compassion's arrival hadn't been
• 1:21:57
  signposted. So when Fitz decides that he's
• 1:22:01
  leaving the Doctor and going off of this expedition at the end of
• 1:22:03
  camera obscurer, it's kind, I was kind of like, oh, OK, that
• 1:22:07
  could actually be the end of this character.
• 1:22:12
  So, yeah, that Fitz leaving and then like the whole mystery of
• 1:22:16
  what happened to Fitz in Time 0, that was all like so gripping
• 1:22:21
  for me of that kind of it being an ongoing series and not
• 1:22:25
  knowing where these characters are going and being surprised by
• 1:22:28
  the books. Yeah.
• 1:22:34
  I. Thought he was dead in time 0
• 1:22:35
  You know you know they're. Trying to make you believe.
• 1:22:37
  I thought this is how they're going to arrive out.
• 1:22:38
  This is he's ended. I'm killing my Fitz.
• 1:22:41
  Oh. Yeah, keep trying.
• 1:22:44
  He's like ending you killed. Fitz, you bastards.
• 1:22:49
  Well, so my sub bench one then is going to be the destruction
• 1:22:53
  of Gallifrey in the ancestor cell, which is a pretty big
• 1:22:57
  twist as well. It's.
• 1:22:59
  Been. Stolen many times since by.
• 1:23:02
  Chippers and RTD, but as a solution to clearing the decks,
• 1:23:10
  I think pouring in every idea that Lawrence Miles ever had
• 1:23:15
  into one location and then removing that location was an
• 1:23:19
  absolutely genius way of getting rid of all of that nonsense.
• 1:23:22
  So yeah, the destruction and also pissing off a lot of people
• 1:23:26
  as well at the same time. I think if you're pissing off
• 1:23:29
  Doctor Who fans, you're usually doing something pretty good,
• 1:23:33
  Luke. Tobias.
• 1:23:36
  Vaughn. Is behind everything in original
• 1:23:40
  scene that blew my teenage mind the first time I read that
• 1:23:46
  because it was one of the few times reading those books was
• 1:23:49
  like, wait a minute, I've seen the invasion so I get this
• 1:23:52
  reference also. It was just something I didn't
• 1:23:55
  see coming for quite a while and until, well, it happened.
• 1:23:59
  So yeah, I love original scene by Andy Lane.
• 1:24:03
  It's one of my faves and I love that moment.
• 1:24:07
  In fact, I love that whole sequence with the 7th Doctor and
• 1:24:10
  Tobias Vaughan. I don't care if some of the
• 1:24:12
  explanations for Vaughan probably doesn't is a bit
• 1:24:16
  ridiculous. What?
• 1:24:17
  I don't care. It's so cool.
• 1:24:19
  It's so unexpected. It's kind of earned for me.
• 1:24:22
  Like I kept looking for you on Earth, but you'd always
• 1:24:25
  disappear before I could get to you.
• 1:24:26
  I'm like, it's on Earth. Like every second story.
• 1:24:30
  Like, get out of here. Half his stories are set on on
• 1:24:34
  Earth. What are you talking about?
• 1:24:35
  You couldn't get there in time. He was there for 100 years once.
• 1:24:39
  Like, what are you taught this? So you got to make a you got to
• 1:24:43
  forget, you know, forget, forget a few of those little things.
• 1:24:47
  But in the grand scheme, it was a pretty good idea.
• 1:24:50
  I thought it was well executed as well.
• 1:24:52
  So, yeah. Tobias Warren is the the baddie
• 1:24:55
  in Original Sin. I didn't see that coming in a
• 1:24:58
  million. Years when I was reading that
• 1:25:00
  book I loved. I went through that in a day
• 1:25:03
  when it first. Came out it's like great read,
• 1:25:05
  original saying. John well, what's your second
• 1:25:07
  twist? I'm going to go for a slight
• 1:25:10
  difference which is more. Literary twist, I'm going to go
• 1:25:12
  with the last page of The Blue Angel.
• 1:25:19
  I know why this there's many. Many twists on that last page,
• 1:25:23
  you know. Oh yeah, on who's writing it.
• 1:25:26
  It's that last. It's that beautiful.
• 1:25:28
  Idea of OK, got this point 20 questions.
• 1:25:32
  It flips around to give the reader the power and it's just a
• 1:25:36
  lovely kind of way. But you know the IT because
• 1:25:40
  genuinely, you get the last page.
• 1:25:41
  Like how the hell are they finishing this up in a page?
• 1:25:44
  And it's OK, I love my arse. I am all for Doctor Who nicking
• 1:25:50
  any tricks it can from literary fiction.
• 1:25:54
  And it's exactly what I say. It's exactly what I want at
• 1:25:56
  times, because you're obviously young and pretentious.
• 1:25:59
  I adore that it's flipping the storytelling of Doctor Who on
• 1:26:03
  its head, inviting you to almost interact with the story, giving
• 1:26:09
  you the power. So yeah, it's that last page of
• 1:26:12
  the Blue Angel, the 20 questions.
• 1:26:14
  It's gorgeous. It's such a nerve in it.
• 1:26:17
  And you know it's. Going to piss off like half.
• 1:26:20
  The audience. That demand, you know, an ending
• 1:26:23
  and it's going to thrill the other half of the audience that
• 1:26:27
  love the fact that it's so playful.
• 1:26:29
  I'd have loved to see their space when they got.
• 1:26:31
  That in it's those people that wanted all those.
• 1:26:36
  Explanations about the crooked world.
• 1:26:37
  Could you imagine them getting the last page of the Blue Angel?
• 1:26:41
  Oh Andrew, come on, shock us. Well, I did have Gallifrey
• 1:26:45
  blowing up on my. List, but I just thought of
• 1:26:48
  another one instead, which is basically the whole of Fear
• 1:26:52
  Itself, which we did on another episode.
• 1:26:56
  Damn it, I almost don't. Want to?
• 1:27:00
  Have I stolen your one? Yeah.
• 1:27:02
  It's all good. I almost don't want to.
• 1:27:04
  Spoil the twists in it. Because.
• 1:27:05
  The whole novel is kind of constructed around how, what
• 1:27:10
  can, how what is happening could be happening.
• 1:27:14
  And it's, it's just very clever in that it's a, it's an Eighth
• 1:27:17
  Doctor book, but it's also a past Doctor book.
• 1:27:19
  So you come to it with the knowledge of what happens later.
• 1:27:21
  And then you have to try and work out how what's happening in
• 1:27:25
  this book can happen and still fit into the range.
• 1:27:29
  And there's just very clever things with time travel and time
• 1:27:32
  periods and characters and identities.
• 1:27:35
  And I just love Fear Itself. I thought it's one of the best
• 1:27:39
  EDA's, and I was so glad that I got to read it for the first
• 1:27:41
  time for this podcast. And it's a debut novel as well.
• 1:27:45
  Yeah. And.
• 1:27:46
  And you didn't read about the twists in some stupid I Who?
• 1:27:52
  They gave up by that point. Yeah, I.
• 1:27:54
  Don't think I whoever. Got that far.
• 1:27:55
  So yeah, that one. Was all used?
• 1:27:56
  Where did they finish? Was it time?
• 1:27:59
  Zero. I think that's as far as they
• 1:28:01
  go, wasn't it? Maybe, I don't remember, they
• 1:28:04
  definitely do. Don't they don't do like the?
• 1:28:05
  Last. Couple of.
• 1:28:06
  Years or so of the Udas, I don't think.
• 1:28:08
  Do you remember the back cover of I Who Number?
• 1:28:11
  One that man and that woman snogging.
• 1:28:17
  Who knows? I who knows?
• 1:28:21
  Well, my second. Twist, then, is something we've
• 1:28:24
  already covered, but it's such a shock.
• 1:28:28
  That is poor Al Jumper. We dying at the end of
• 1:28:31
  interference because I just don't think in a million years
• 1:28:35
  anyone would think a writer would have the nerve to rewrite
• 1:28:39
  Doctor Who history, especially not our lovely John.
• 1:28:44
  Yeah. And as we said at the time, just
• 1:28:47
  all of those scenes were shocking.
• 1:28:50
  The coffee in his face, sort of how raw the setting was.
• 1:28:55
  And then obviously, the, the, the bullet.
• 1:28:58
  Yeah. God, it was brilliant.
• 1:29:00
  Shocking and had massive consequences.
• 1:29:04
  So yeah, I think from all the choices we're making so far,
• 1:29:08
  we've got obviously going around once more.
• 1:29:10
  It's like the EDA went for schlock twist far more than the
• 1:29:14
  new adventures. Well Luke, what's your last
• 1:29:20
  twist? My honourable mention is.
• 1:29:23
  Dono getting shot in the face, Who killed Kennedy?
• 1:29:26
  Sorry, I'll take it back version.
• 1:29:29
  But. Like young me loved that, but I
• 1:29:33
  hadn't seen the war machines and so I actually done been done
• 1:29:36
  dirty and all that by then. But my my my choice was also
• 1:29:40
  from interference. It's just the origin story
• 1:29:44
  slash. What's the deal with all 13
• 1:29:48
  versions? Of Foreman.
• 1:29:51
  And just how that works and just how that kind of because it was
• 1:29:56
  boggling my mind a bit like how, how, how does this work?
• 1:30:00
  And then Lawrence is like, I've already thought of this.
• 1:30:02
  This is how it works my. Sorry, jaw-dropping in audio
• 1:30:07
  doesn't. Really work?
• 1:30:08
  Does it that? Just blew my mind I I had some
• 1:30:13
  issues. With that book.
• 1:30:14
  But it is a great book. It is.
• 1:30:15
  This is an achievement, but there's some stuff in that that
• 1:30:20
  just blows my mind. And that whole all 13
• 1:30:24
  incarnations of forming and how they regenerate and how they
• 1:30:26
  move and all that kind of stuff. Just just fucking yeah.
• 1:30:31
  I love it. Yeah, that's mine.
• 1:30:33
  Can I ask you all right? When you when you do.
• 1:30:35
  Happen upon A twist that shocks you.
• 1:30:38
  Are you audible about it? I generally go what the fuck?
• 1:30:43
  Yeah, I got to run. I used to run.
• 1:30:47
  And just go charity. Oh my God.
• 1:30:50
  And she's like, what? I don't wait.
• 1:30:53
  Who's fits again? Oh, never mind.
• 1:30:56
  Now. Now these days it's so much
• 1:30:58
  easier. I'm just get on the under the
• 1:31:00
  ground group chat and just be like, Oh my God.
• 1:31:02
  Because when I was, when I was reading Gallifrey Chronicles,
• 1:31:04
  I'm like I I could just write. About the Gallifrey.
• 1:31:09
  Chronicles and know you guys would get it otherwise with
• 1:31:11
  charity I would have been like, oh, it's the last EDI and oh
• 1:31:14
  shit, I've got to tell you about the last fucking all of them
• 1:31:18
  really. So yeah, yeah, I do do what the
• 1:31:22
  fuck and. I have to tell.
• 1:31:24
  Someone straight away. I've just read City of the Dead.
• 1:31:26
  I totally forgot who the killer. Was in that she totally
• 1:31:29
  misdirected me with all of these different suspects.
• 1:31:32
  I didn't realize he was under my nose the whole time I'm in the
• 1:31:35
  bath. Go what?
• 1:31:37
  What the hell? Anyway, sorry John, what's your
• 1:31:40
  last twist? I'm going to go for one that's
• 1:31:43
  it's not. Huge.
• 1:31:44
  It's not big, but again, like theater, it's a debut novel and
• 1:31:50
  it's right at the end. And it's not it's not an author
• 1:31:55
  showing off, but it's a point you go, yeah, this guy is really
• 1:32:00
  good. And it's just war.
• 1:32:03
  And it's the nature of how the Nazis in that in that but
• 1:32:07
  acquired advanced technology. Yeah.
• 1:32:11
  And it. Just you.
• 1:32:12
  You. You've read the book.
• 1:32:14
  It's so, it's so beautiful. And it's, it's one of the best
• 1:32:18
  demonstrations of the consequences of time travel in
• 1:32:21
  that whole, in the whole range, in the whole Doctor.
• 1:32:23
  A little stealth glattery thing. Yeah. 11 line, just one line in
• 1:32:27
  the wrong. Place and it just changes
• 1:32:30
  history and it's and how you see the book and it is so gorgeously
• 1:32:35
  well done so yeah it it's the it's the end of just war for me.
• 1:32:41
  I I can't say too much about it but like, you know absolutely
• 1:32:44
  ruin it for whoever hasn't read it or but it's it's so
• 1:32:47
  skillfully that it's you know as I said, it's an all temptation
• 1:32:51
  to debut novel is to is to run through all your tricks.
• 1:32:55
  It's it's you know it's the class debut mistake.
• 1:32:57
  You show everything you've got because you have to almost.
• 1:33:01
  And though it's an author with the confidence in his ability to
• 1:33:04
  tell a story, in how it affects a story and how to write a story
• 1:33:10
  just perfect, kind of too broad, too deep for the small screen
• 1:33:14
  storytelling. Beautifully done.
• 1:33:16
  So yeah, it's it's just that last chapter of Just war.
• 1:33:21
  It is almost a bit of A twist as well when a.
• 1:33:23
  New writer comes in and that book's that good.
• 1:33:26
  That's a shock, isn't it? Yeah.
• 1:33:27
  Like without like. Christmas on a rational.
• 1:33:31
  Planet like just war. You don't need to use it.
• 1:33:35
  It's not the Crotons. It's not.
• 1:33:37
  The Daleks, It's not anything. It's just an author just going,
• 1:33:40
  yeah, I'm good. I know.
• 1:33:42
  It's fabulous coming on. What was his?
• 1:33:44
  First Shadowmont. Oh, boy.
• 1:33:47
  It's the squirrels. It doesn't always work out.
• 1:33:51
  Art Andrew. Yeah.
• 1:33:55
  So my my last. One is one that we can talk
• 1:33:57
  about. Now that now that Luke's read
• 1:34:00
  the Gallifrey Chronicles, but I have heard of staying in.
• 1:34:05
  It is the twist. Of what happened to Gallifrey
• 1:34:09
  and what happened to the Matrix and the the the the where they
• 1:34:16
  go to with the amnesia plot. So the fact.
• 1:34:19
  That spoilers the Doctor has downloaded the whole of the
• 1:34:24
  Matrix into. His mind.
• 1:34:26
  Before Gallifrey exploded and turns that whole defeat and sort
• 1:34:32
  of him destroying his planet into a victory right at the end
• 1:34:37
  of the range and kind of ends the range on a really kind of
• 1:34:40
  hopeful, powerful moment of he's recovered.
• 1:34:44
  He or he. I mean, we don't see him doing
• 1:34:46
  it, but there's the potential there for Gallifrey to come
• 1:34:48
  back. And actually it was this heroic
• 1:34:51
  moment, not this kind of moment of tragedy.
• 1:34:53
  So yeah, like a real sort of powerful punch the air, yes,
• 1:35:01
  that everything's come together and it all kind, it all makes
• 1:35:04
  sense from something that's had all these many different writers
• 1:35:08
  having input into it and kind of becoming a bit of a tangled
• 1:35:12
  mess. Lance Parkin comes in the end
• 1:35:14
  and it's like, ah, and I'm going to make you feel like this was
• 1:35:17
  always the intention and I'm going to pull this all together
• 1:35:20
  and make it make sense and make it really satisfying right at
• 1:35:22
  the end of the books. So yeah, I think that's my
• 1:35:25
  number one twist. God damn you.
• 1:35:30
  That's my number one. And for the same.
• 1:35:33
  Reason. I literally wrote down turning
• 1:35:35
  of defeat into a victory and I wrote down pulling the range
• 1:35:39
  into a perfectly structured thing.
• 1:35:43
  Yeah, I mean, cool thing is better Doctor getting his
• 1:35:46
  memories back is you don't. Actually see it in the book.
• 1:35:49
  But guess who goes to getting the thing that'll get his
• 1:35:52
  memories back? Canine.
• 1:35:56
  Fuck, that was awesome. Yeah.
• 1:35:59
  And was. Madam Zing.
• 1:36:01
  Compassion. Yeah, of course she.
• 1:36:03
  Was. Well, this almost.
• 1:36:07
  Feels like a good segue into. Talking about what we may be
• 1:36:11
  talking about next. I mean, has a decision been
• 1:36:15
  made? I mean, someone's read it,
• 1:36:17
  someone's reading it. Shall we just do it?
• 1:36:21
  Yes. Tell us, John, well.
• 1:36:26
  Again, this felt like an only speakers Paul Mars was.
• 1:36:29
  Rereading it on his Facebook the other day as well.
• 1:36:31
  I wasn't doing it, he was loving it.
• 1:36:37
  Of course Paul, of course was. So how about?
• 1:36:40
  We might go. For the Gallifrey Chronicles
• 1:36:42
  next Indeed, what does it? Matter.
• 1:36:46
  I've missed out on so many little.
• 1:36:48
  Conversations because. Of me not having read this and
• 1:36:52
  just not wanting them to end and and you not taking your
• 1:36:56
  headphones off right now. Yeah.
• 1:36:59
  And it was just like I steamrolled.
• 1:37:02
  Through the two previous ones, I liked them a lot to, just
• 1:37:07
  thought it was kind of funny, but just.
• 1:37:09
  And then I thought, I'm going to take my time with this now.
• 1:37:12
  I read it in like 2 1/2 days and just fucking loved it.
• 1:37:17
  And I thought, I know Joe's kind of done this book already, but
• 1:37:20
  it'd be nice to be able to kind of why didn't it run on one And
• 1:37:25
  we sort of talked about. The whole.
• 1:37:27
  Range or which we probably will do again, actually, but it's
• 1:37:30
  always different every time. Crooked Weld was totally
• 1:37:32
  different when we covered it, so it'll be a completely different
• 1:37:35
  conversation. And you know, who knows?
• 1:37:37
  Someone may read it this time and utterly loathe it.
• 1:37:41
  I doubt it, but we'll see. What always surprises me about
• 1:37:45
  that book is how light it is. Given all the work it's doing is
• 1:37:49
  just how jam packed you can skip breathe it so quickly.
• 1:37:53
  Well, anyway, sorry. Spoilers.
• 1:37:55
  How are we going to end this? And I please, we can't do a Nazi
• 1:38:00
  salute, so there's always A twist at the end.
• 1:38:06
  I'll cut it there, yeah.