Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - City of the Dead by Lloyd Rose (featuring Anthony Carroll)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - City of the Dead by Lloyd Rose (featuring Anthony Carroll) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  The doctor didn't know he was dreaming.
• 0:02
  He thought he was lying on his back with his eyes shut, trying
• 0:05
  to figure out why he was awake. He felt as if he'd been lying
• 0:08
  here for hours, heavy limbed yet restless, his mind skittering
• 0:12
  from 1 trivial thought to another.
• 0:15
  He decided to focus on something relaxing by turning his force
• 0:19
  into music. Mozart.
• 0:21
  One of the horn concertos, He said out loud.
• 0:25
  Why am I afraid to open my eyes? His words bewildered him.
• 0:30
  Then he realized they were true. Perhaps afraid was too strong a
• 0:34
  word. But he definitely did not want
• 0:36
  to open his eyes. Why not?
• 0:39
  He extended his other senses out into his bedroom.
• 0:41
  In the TARDIS. Everything was in order.
• 0:45
  There were no strange smells or unusual noises.
• 0:48
  The sheet lay raspily light against his skin.
• 0:51
  The room temperature was the same as always.
• 0:54
  Open your eyes, he thought. But he didn't, his hearts
• 0:59
  continued to be at the usual rate.
• 1:01
  His breathing didn't change, he wasn't showing any of the
• 1:05
  symptoms of fear, but that didn't matter, he didn't want to
• 1:09
  open his eyes. Oh for heaven's sakes.
• 1:12
  He muttered, and just as he spoke, muffled under the sound
• 1:15
  of his voice, there was a noise not nearby, far away in the
• 1:21
  corridors of the TARDIS. It was sudden and if not loud
• 1:26
  carrying, but he hadn't heard it clearly.
• 1:29
  He wasn't sure what came. Again.
• 1:32
  He sounded like a stick breaking, only it echoed.
• 1:37
  He opened his eyes. Blackness.
• 1:40
  He shifted his. Vision up and down the spectrum
• 1:43
  into what human beings called the non visual wavelengths.
• 1:47
  But all he saw was the usual pulse and flow of the TARDIS
• 1:50
  energy running its engines, maintaining the environment in
• 1:54
  the normal spectrum. Everything was black.
• 1:58
  Nothing, nothing and silence. He listened to the reassuring
• 2:04
  sound of his own breathing, still regular and calm.
• 2:08
  He listened to the deep double thump of his hearts.
• 2:13
  He entailed sharply. It was nearer, and the sound
• 2:16
  wasn't a breaking stick. No, something else.
• 2:20
  A grinding snap, like a bone cracking.
• 2:23
  How could it be so loud when it was still so far away?
• 2:27
  No, no, it wasn't loud so much as penetrating.
• 2:32
  He had felt the vibration of that splintering bone in his own
• 2:36
  marrow. He lay quietly listening.
• 2:40
  He wondered why he wanted so badly to keep his eyes shut.
• 2:43
  The darkness was gentle. It was his ears he wished he
• 2:47
  could close at the same time as he wanted to hear more, hear
• 2:51
  better, hear something identifiable.
• 2:54
  I should get up, he thought. Go into the hall.
• 2:58
  More options for escape there, assuming whatever it was was
• 3:01
  after. Him.
• 3:03
  That didn't necessarily follow. Perhaps it was merely taking a
• 3:06
  stroll through the TARDIS. Something patent.
• 3:10
  At the door, the Doctor stopped breathing.
• 3:13
  He lay still, a stone, staring at the ceiling.
• 3:16
  He couldn't see the the patting came again, tentative,
• 3:21
  exploratory, like a palm place flat against the door, but very
• 3:26
  softly, very, very softly. The Doctor found he couldn't
• 3:30
  move. His limbs felt like clay.
• 3:34
  How had he got past the TARDIS defences?
• 3:37
  Nothing can get in, he whispered, But then he realized
• 3:42
  that nothing had. Welcome back to the Hamster Book
• 3:52
  club. My name is Joe Ford and I've got
• 3:56
  a question to ask you Anthony, before we even start talking
• 3:59
  about doctor Yes. Is that OK?
• 4:02
  Yes Wayan, before I even introduce you as well.
• 4:05
  I believe there are two Anthony Carrolls who fandom and I get
• 4:10
  very confused now how do we? Differentiate the two of you.
• 4:14
  Yes, this is this is a everlasting issue.
• 4:18
  You know, there's another Anthony Carroll.
• 4:20
  Yes. Down South.
• 4:21
  He's a journalist, a lovely man. I've met him.
• 4:23
  The Times Dreams, Dead Cross. Nothing exploded like the
• 4:28
  Brigadier and modern undead. You know, we he's a nice chap.
• 4:33
  I don't know how the best way to do it.
• 4:37
  He likes to speak old sometimes, Tony.
• 4:39
  So maybe if he's Tony Carroll, I can be the Anthony Carroll.
• 4:43
  The definitive article you might see.
• 4:45
  I thought I could call you the handsome Anthony Carroll.
• 4:49
  I mean, I can't. I don't know what he looks like,
• 4:51
  but you're looking me right in the face right now, so.
• 4:53
  Thank you very much. Of reliability.
• 4:58
  OK, Anthony. Yeah, yes.
• 5:00
  Well, Anthony, please, will you tell everybody listening to this
• 5:03
  thing where on earth people can find you?
• 5:06
  How might they have heard your voice before?
• 5:08
  Well, hello everyone, I'm Anthony Carroll and I help host
• 5:12
  the two. I can't even speak It can't even
• 5:15
  see the classic clanger that is on the back of every single one
• 5:19
  of these books. It's the Two Broad and Two Deep
• 5:21
  podcast, which naturally covers the Doctor Who Virgin New
• 5:25
  adventure novels. Wow, such a great As soon as I
• 5:28
  saw that title as well I thought, oh, we're taking a piss
• 5:30
  already. Yeah, the title.
• 5:34
  Yeah, it's quite credulous, call it that.
• 5:35
  And then hammered in every time how little that can happen or
• 5:39
  how Zeddy it's or two over the board it can be when it does go
• 5:44
  to too broad and too deep. Well, you're reading transit
• 5:47
  right now, aren't you? And let's be honest, that's
• 5:50
  quite broad and people go quite deep in that as well.
• 5:53
  Yeah, quite deep into certain stuff certainly from my here.
• 5:57
  So yeah, I'm very much, I don't know, looking forward as the
• 6:00
  freeze for it, but as on the horizon.
• 6:04
  Are you enjoying the journey? It's certainly been different
• 6:07
  because, you know, I've had some experiences with some of the
• 6:11
  books in the past, but like going through from the beginning
• 6:14
  and just has seen through this chartered expedition into where
• 6:20
  the 7th Doctor kind of expose. And not just him, like Ace as
• 6:24
  well. And how, you know, people deal
• 6:26
  with writing other characters that aren't, you know, their
• 6:31
  hero in that way. Because essentially a lot of
• 6:34
  these writers are are fans and like having to be on the same
• 6:39
  level as your heroes in writing form at least.
• 6:43
  It's interesting seeing people try to flesh out and actually do
• 6:48
  practically a Doctor Who story that they want to have been
• 6:51
  telling since they were kids. So yeah, it's an interesting.
• 6:55
  It's an interesting journey. I wondered if, you know, if you
• 6:58
  just looked at your shelf one day and well, I'll call those
• 7:00
  fucking books. I might as well read them and do
• 7:01
  a podcast about them. Otherwise I'm never going to
• 7:04
  pick them up. Well, yeah, I mean, I didn't
• 7:07
  have them all back in the in the day.
• 7:10
  There were some smatterings of them and some smatterings of 8th
• 7:13
  Doctor and past Doctor books that I had.
• 7:16
  And I just was like, well, what, what, what was that all about?
• 7:22
  Because I remember some of them and your watch out beforehand.
• 7:26
  And one of them I remember was bad therapy.
• 7:29
  There was conundrum I am as well and head games that I remember
• 7:36
  like picking up and kind of enjoying.
• 7:39
  But it was such a smattering of all over the place.
• 7:42
  Like suddenly there was, you know, Benny and then there was
• 7:45
  Chris and Roz and I was like, who are these people?
• 7:47
  I just, I need to find out and let's go on that journey.
• 7:50
  And so essentially the podcast is forcing me to make that
• 7:53
  journey because otherwise I don't think I would ever do
• 7:56
  that. But you're quite a few steps
• 7:58
  into the journey now. Like, are you still thinking,
• 8:00
  well, what the hell is this all about?
• 8:02
  You know, like. Yeah.
• 8:03
  I mean, we've gone for just over a year now.
• 8:05
  And I do actually, I do enjoy it because it's it's it's it's not
• 8:11
  just, you know, setting to read it in vain.
• 8:13
  We want the next one. I've ever like getting to hear
• 8:15
  from other people about it. It's been really, you know,
• 8:18
  interesting as well from fans who remember at the time, like
• 8:21
  my coast Alistair does to like newer fans who've came back to
• 8:27
  the range and or maybe missed out at the time and folk like
• 8:33
  myself, like I wasn't alive for the majority of of the voting
• 8:36
  adventures. Like I think I was born.
• 8:40
  I'm trying to I think I was born on long Battle was published.
• 8:44
  Don't tell me. That please, I feel so old right
• 8:47
  now. So that's roughly where I, you
• 8:50
  know, I was never on my. Have you no chance of getting
• 8:53
  that on 1st publication then if? You were all absolutely not.
• 8:57
  I find the very lucky EB auction I have indeed.
• 9:02
  I got Oh God. Well, to be fair, like long
• 9:06
  barrel I got years ago and a very lucky auction on eBay and
• 9:11
  it was only like 4050 quids. So that that's that's anyone's
• 9:17
  mortgage covered now for anyone who's listening to this someone.
• 9:21
  Gifted me long Barrow that does the book club, yeah and was
• 9:25
  like, Oh well I've got 2 copies and you know, I really love
• 9:28
  doing. It.
• 9:30
  Please you don't have to or I was actually thinking no please
• 9:33
  send it to me so. Yes, honestly, like, but yeah,
• 9:37
  like, I mean, I've, I've kind of drew that collection and yeah,
• 9:43
  it did cost a wee bit to finish it off because it was, it was a
• 9:46
  lot. There was a dying days.
• 9:47
  That was the big the Big Crunch, please.
• 9:50
  Tell us, what did you part with for the dying days?
• 9:54
  It it it breached into the triple figures for that.
• 9:59
  Just just oh, OK, that's not too.
• 10:01
  Bad. I mean, I've seen some of these
• 10:03
  books on live, like £500 and things like that.
• 10:06
  Oh yeah, yeah. Behind them.
• 10:09
  Like, yeah, it's I felt like because I had majority of them
• 10:13
  at that point, I was like, well, that would be the last big blow
• 10:16
  to me if and getting that one. Yeah, still quite how far away
• 10:23
  from me, at least in this journey.
• 10:25
  But that's great though, right? I mean, I like it when you're in
• 10:28
  the early stages and you've got the whole, I mean, as well.
• 10:31
  I think you've got the better half of the new adventures to
• 10:33
  come as well. You know, are you going to keep
• 10:35
  going into the 8th Doctor books or are you just going?
• 10:39
  To stop there, I have thought about it.
• 10:41
  I think I probably will stop on the last like doctor LED verdict
• 10:47
  new adventure, probably with the dandies.
• 10:51
  I don't know. I've not even read or touched
• 10:53
  any of the the Betty ones. I don't know if that's maybe
• 10:56
  something to kind of test neither the time, but.
• 11:01
  Yeah, you know, ones I want you to do on this book club now as
• 11:03
  we go along, you know, as we talk.
• 11:05
  I've got the small list here. Now, can I ask you a question?
• 11:08
  Can I ask you what was your very first Doctor Who book you read?
• 11:13
  Well, the very first Doctor Who book I did read was the one
• 11:16
  we're covering today. City of the Date, yes.
• 11:21
  So I was on holiday when was this got like 2000 and six 2007
• 11:28
  I think, and I think Scarborough and when I campsite and I've got
• 11:35
  this really vivid memory of reading it in this campsite and
• 11:38
  the sun was blazing down and stuff, which was quite ironic
• 11:41
  for a book that's got sent a very grey and decrepit tone.
• 11:47
  But yeah, I bought City of the dead and world game and the
• 11:52
  past, the 2nd doctor past Doctor adventure.
• 11:56
  And it was like this bookshop and Scarborough and I just saw
• 12:01
  the Doctor Who title and I was like, that's probably some some
• 12:05
  Echosten or Ted book because it was or not not for the world
• 12:09
  game one, but at least for the the blue covered one I saw.
• 12:12
  I was like, that might be some interesting adventure.
• 12:16
  And this was, yeah, my first folly into into Doctor Who
• 12:20
  books. You'd.
• 12:20
  Have been like, what's this Christopher Akinson's first
• 12:22
  foray into sex magic and all this.
• 12:26
  And so, so so did you then start like sort of cherry picking
• 12:30
  books? Did you read some targets?
• 12:32
  Did you just buy new adventures? Yeah, I I, I did pick up like
• 12:38
  the odds Virgin new adventure as well.
• 12:42
  Like. Mainly at first, not, not so
• 12:44
  much of them, but I did pick up some other eight Doctor books.
• 12:48
  My dog's an Englishman for sort of.
• 12:51
  I can't imagine what drew you to that.
• 12:53
  Oh yeah, that was a choice as a as a child to to be doing that.
• 12:57
  Book over, you know, over the counter.
• 12:59
  I mean, this is how naive I was back then.
• 13:01
  I had no clue that I was just screaming, you know, I'm a queen
• 13:05
  handing over that. Yeah, it was probably a sign for
• 13:08
  me as well by that, but yeah, I, yeah, I but I kind of was drawn
• 13:15
  just to like I'm after reading it and realizing naturally it's
• 13:18
  not a current doctor adventure. I quite liked kind of packing
• 13:24
  and choosing bits here and there.
• 13:25
  And so, yeah, the Virginia adventures were things like bad
• 13:29
  therapy and I won't say time Maxitus as well.
• 13:32
  Actually, I'm just having the kind of smattering of these
• 13:37
  studies that second and 4th Doctor, perhaps Doctor
• 13:41
  Adventures. Well, I can't even remember his
• 13:42
  name, but I remember reading that within that first kind of
• 13:47
  flourish of of getting into it. But yeah, what?
• 13:51
  So then the other question I want to ask you then is
• 13:53
  obviously you watch the TV series.
• 13:56
  Do they feel like a different world?
• 13:57
  The books like, feel like, oh, do they all feel like part of.
• 14:02
  The same thing. I mean, my journey into Doctor
• 14:05
  Who was a bit odd in the first instance because for me, like
• 14:09
  everyone was in school talking about this new show on air.
• 14:12
  You know, that was in 2005 and I didn't watch it at the time
• 14:17
  because it's just from timing stuff and whatever.
• 14:20
  But that summer we're visiting our aunt, my aunt down in Leeds
• 14:26
  and who's a nun and we've so we've stayed in this convent for
• 14:31
  like 2 weeks and to get out of the house we would go to the
• 14:36
  nearby shops just because I didn't want to stick around the
• 14:38
  convent for my summer holidays. And I saw a copy of something
• 14:44
  that said Doctor Who on it. And in that charity shop I had
• 14:48
  Doctor Who dragon fire on it. And it being a convent and old
• 14:53
  fashioned, I had Avhs player and with the TV's in the rooms.
• 14:58
  And so I sat and watched that and was thinking this was what
• 15:00
  everyone was talking about in school and was like, what is
• 15:07
  why? Why are people so vexed about
• 15:09
  this new thing and love loving it.
• 15:11
  Like also I went, I went back after that holiday.
• 15:16
  Like is this, is this what you've been all talking about?
• 15:19
  This we guy like hanging off cliffs and like skidding about
• 15:24
  the floor and, and they were like, no, it's this guy.
• 15:28
  And and one of them gave me a loan of a DVD of the the new
• 15:31
  series. And that's and that's and I was
• 15:34
  like, Oh, this is the TV show that.
• 15:37
  And so as much as that got me into like you, you who the, the,
• 15:42
  the new the all 2 stuff was always there because that was my
• 15:45
  first venture was with the VHS. And so the same when I was
• 15:49
  picking up books in a year or two later, I felt the same about
• 15:54
  the books because like, well, I can get it.
• 15:56
  I can get this being a kind of weird divergent of, you know,
• 16:02
  this universe. So it wasn't as kind of alien to
• 16:05
  me going into the books, really. It's crazy that you for a 1987
• 16:11
  made program was being broadcast in 2005.
• 16:17
  Well, yeah, it was also just like it was the only piece of
• 16:20
  paraphernalia I was seen around like that had that.
• 16:23
  Springs on the spaceship. I mean, what's going on?
• 16:26
  Haven't they got CGI? I mean, it still got me.
• 16:31
  I still actually enjoyed it really at the time.
• 16:34
  But yeah, when they gave me a proper DVD of what they were
• 16:38
  bringing, it was like, oh, this, this is what we're talking
• 16:41
  about, right? But have you now?
• 16:43
  I realise I'm doing your live history of Doctor Who now.
• 16:45
  It's so interesting, I don't care.
• 16:48
  Did you then watch all of the new series and all of the
• 16:54
  classic series? Yes, so about the DVD they gave
• 16:58
  me was the volume 3 of season 1. So that was like Father's Day,
• 17:04
  Empty Child I want to see and maybe Dalek before that.
• 17:09
  I can't remember now. Yeah, I think long game as well.
• 17:12
  Yeah, but that was the DVD they gave me.
• 17:16
  The meanwhile remember was Father's Day really, because I
• 17:20
  remember balling that Isaac on that episode quite a bit.
• 17:24
  But you know, after that, after that and then getting the other
• 17:29
  ones for that season, I was like, well, you know, I've got
• 17:32
  this feature so dragon fire like.
• 17:33
  And so I would, I would skate about different charity shops
• 17:36
  and find whenever I could anything with Doctor Who on it.
• 17:42
  So the next one I think was a cast of Fenrick VHS and
• 17:46
  Clydebank. It was Elf Shock and the Time
• 17:52
  Warrior I found in Salt Coats. And it was just, yeah, it was
• 17:56
  just like proper stuff was like coming out there and on
• 18:00
  different formats. The Web Planet and the Chase.
• 18:02
  Otherwise, you may have watched it again.
• 18:06
  Yeah, I would. I would not even be able to
• 18:08
  enjoy the Web Planet and ironically or ironically at any
• 18:12
  stage at that age. So yeah, very thankful for the
• 18:17
  charity shop. God's given me the good options
• 18:20
  when trying to find out more about the show.
• 18:23
  The reason I asked all these questions, right, is I sort of
• 18:25
  pitched the conversation to wherever somebody's knowledge of
• 18:28
  the show is, right? So the impression I'm getting is
• 18:31
  classic. Who done knew who done the
• 18:34
  books? Sort of doing and done some.
• 18:41
  Yeah, like, I mean, yeah, I'd like my thing is always kind of
• 18:45
  with the actual TV show. Like that was where I got mostly
• 18:49
  into it and it's mostly where I'm and the big finishes.
• 18:54
  I've tried to to go into that realm, but it didn't do it for
• 19:00
  me as much like I've I did enjoy some of the earlier 8th Doctor
• 19:04
  not ones. And that's been about it really.
• 19:07
  I am in the books, yeah. Those kind of smattering of ones
• 19:11
  I might pick up here and there. And you know, it wasn't, it
• 19:16
  wasn't that things like Set in the Days and World game put me
• 19:18
  off it just, it just was like, there's so many DVDs to find and
• 19:22
  watch of actual moving pictures of Doctor Who rather than just,
• 19:26
  you know, words on a piece. No coincidence, you know,
• 19:29
  Anthony, that I literally talked about practically every
• 19:32
  television story before I started the Hamster Book Club.
• 19:35
  You know, it's like talked about everything.
• 19:37
  Now, what else am I going to talk about?
• 19:38
  Oh, there's the books. And the great thing about the
• 19:41
  books is there are so many of them and they are so varied.
• 19:44
  Like, we did Love and War on your podcasts, and now we're
• 19:48
  doing Sitting to Death. I know you're going to find some
• 19:51
  interesting thematic links between the two, but they are
• 19:55
  two very different books in what they're doing.
• 19:58
  Yeah, yeah, Like it's, it's been interesting reading this when
• 20:03
  going through the the Virgin your adventures.
• 20:05
  Like not just in terms of it being actually an Eighth Doctor
• 20:09
  stood in 7th, but like the writing style.
• 20:14
  What? They're kind of trying to do
• 20:17
  with a book as well, like the concept.
• 20:19
  Because back then, a lot of kind of particularly earlier ones for
• 20:24
  Virginia Adventures was like fan writers trying to prove
• 20:27
  themselves as a like, I am a writer and I'm going to be doing
• 20:30
  this thing while this is like, it's more confident.
• 20:33
  It's a different world, I think, to go into than what we were
• 20:40
  trying to do at the beginning of Virginia Adventures for, you
• 20:42
  know, original Doctor Who fiction.
• 20:44
  The lessons have been learned, haven't they?
• 20:46
  Like that, you know, I mean, this is, yeah, there's 70 odd
• 20:49
  new adventures and then there's 80 odd 8 Doctor books.
• 20:52
  Well, we're somewhere around 120 right now.
• 20:56
  So they haven't learned a few lessons, I do think.
• 20:59
  I do think there's a maturity in the writing here that I didn't
• 21:05
  see as much of it. But then I think Cornell was a
• 21:09
  young writer writing love and war, so the fact that he's
• 21:12
  writing adolescent prose, that's not a surprise.
• 21:15
  Whereas I think I get the impression Lloyd Rose is a bit
• 21:18
  older, a bit more world weary, and I don't believe it.
• 21:23
  Her name is Serotonin. I think she's taking the piss
• 21:25
  out of me. Did you read that?
• 21:27
  Yeah, yeah, I I don't think she loves it.
• 21:29
  What was that trickle? Well, she's back in the book.
• 21:34
  What's her sister's name again? Penicillin.
• 21:38
  Yeah, It's our two sisters. Penicillin.
• 21:40
  No. It's not, hang on.
• 21:42
  It's not penicillin, No. What are they called?
• 21:45
  No nona nona, penaphrin and dopamine.
• 21:51
  Noropenophine and dopamine are antidepressants in America.
• 21:54
  Yeah, she's an American writer. And obviously serotonin is what
• 21:57
  they raise. So, Lloyd Rose, whatever your
• 22:00
  name is. What's astonished media?
• 22:04
  The first Lloyd Rose I've done and I think I think the
• 22:07
  strongest writers of the 8th Doctor books, I mean showing
• 22:09
  people free but. Yeah, well, that's the thing.
• 22:13
  I mean, I tried to find anything about Lloyd Rose online and
• 22:17
  she's just like, not there. And like some people say that
• 22:21
  she's a Washington Post writer, but when I've read some of the
• 22:25
  articles, they were referring to a man.
• 22:27
  So I'm unsure if people have picked up wrong or if it is her
• 22:30
  or not for that. But she did a big finish I
• 22:35
  think. Yeah.
• 22:36
  And. Royer and I can tell you why.
• 22:38
  I know that is because of my Big Finish podcast.
• 22:41
  I've just we, I was listening to it this week.
• 22:43
  So I was reading the City of the Dead and I was listening to Care
• 22:46
  Troyer. I'll tell you what, City of the
• 22:48
  Dead is a lot better than Care Troyer.
• 22:51
  But yes, I mean, she's like, I think she's she did something.
• 22:56
  The last thing I could find that she did was this kind of episode
• 23:00
  review of a show called Khaki The Night Stalker.
• 23:07
  Oh, Jackie, the Night Stalker. Yeah, but not Kojak, but a
• 23:11
  Kochaki. Is it COLCHAK?
• 23:17
  COCHAKI yes, this thing in the 70s apparently, which was like a
• 23:24
  kind of proved to X5 was the sort of thing in the 70s.
• 23:28
  She must have a bit of age on her then.
• 23:30
  Oh, no, no. Like she just wrote it there
• 23:32
  like maybe two or three years ago.
• 23:35
  So it's been kind of. Yeah, that's the last thing I
• 23:38
  could see that she's done. But we want to know.
• 23:41
  Yes. Wherever she is.
• 23:41
  Please. You're very.
• 23:43
  You have good skills. It'd be lovely to to hear more
• 23:46
  about about her. You're in your.
• 23:48
  Investigation just there. I'm going to have to pipe in the
• 23:50
  the murder She Wrote theme tune, you know, because great
• 23:54
  investigate. So so literally just that
• 23:56
  nothing else. The Big Finish and Cole Chucky.
• 23:59
  Between. Between.
• 24:00
  Like, yeah, that big finish was what, like 2004 about the same
• 24:05
  time as I think they have a book she did.
• 24:08
  And there's no there's been no other kind of original stuff
• 24:11
  that's been mainly kind of review things.
• 24:12
  So she might well be actually that Washington Post person as
• 24:15
  well, given that. But yeah, there's scuttle out
• 24:19
  there. Like as you go through the new
• 24:22
  Adventures, obviously you're going to come across a ton of
• 24:25
  first time writers, right? Most of the writers writing for
• 24:29
  the Vnas are first time writers when they do their first VNA.
• 24:34
  And it's going to be like Eva, wow, this is a great first time
• 24:38
  writer. Or Jesus, you don't ever need to
• 24:41
  write a book ever again. You haven't done The Pit yet,
• 24:43
  have you? I think that's half the transom.
• 24:48
  It's quite, quite the quite literal proverbial pit, I think,
• 24:52
  from what I hear. But yeah.
• 24:54
  I think this is a great example though of a first time writer
• 24:58
  coming in and really impressing with just their prose, their
• 25:03
  characterization, how they structure a mystery, just
• 25:06
  everything. Like, I mean, how did you find
• 25:10
  her as a as a first time writer? I think she's genuinely it's,
• 25:15
  it's so refreshing, not just in terms of, you know, like we were
• 25:20
  sitting, I think having more women writers and, and their
• 25:23
  perspective, but also an American perspective.
• 25:27
  It feels so like different in terms of sometimes the, the
• 25:31
  style of the writing and even the language, like the some
• 25:33
  Americanisms within there in a way that it's, it's just
• 25:38
  refreshing to have that compared to, you know, the usual sort of,
• 25:43
  you know, some, some bloke like he's a big fan in his 30s down
• 25:48
  in the southeast of England, right.
• 25:49
  And like, it's, it's, it's, it's part of you know what, you know,
• 25:53
  I think sometimes Roger TV's has been trying to do recently of
• 25:56
  getting short on like people to write episodes who are from
• 25:59
  other perspectives and even parts of the world.
• 26:02
  And I think that's that's how you can create and sustain
• 26:05
  something like this show because you get just something that you
• 26:10
  wouldn't expect. And, you know, I don't know if
• 26:12
  when starting this, Justin Richards might have thought
• 26:14
  about having a setting in New Orleans about magic.
• 26:18
  But here we are with really kind of vivid, wild building in a way
• 26:24
  that, you know, Lloyd roads really can do, especially for a
• 26:28
  city like New Orleans. What if I'd been there after I
• 26:31
  had finished the book? I felt as if I had been to New
• 26:34
  Orleans. I'd been to the bars, I'd been
• 26:36
  out a day. I'd been to the graveyards, I'd
• 26:39
  been to the tombs, I'd been to the magic shops and sort of,
• 26:43
  yeah, really lives and breathes the saying, doesn't it?
• 26:47
  Yeah, it's it's so like, you know, she, I don't, I generally
• 26:52
  don't know if she's from like has experiences with New Orleans
• 26:55
  or has been there or whatever. But it feels certainly like
• 26:59
  every aspect of the history of it because it's feels like an
• 27:03
  old city in terms of, you know, talking about the decay, about,
• 27:07
  you know, the architecture. I'm the dying jazz scene, things
• 27:12
  like this. There's so much like sprinkles
• 27:15
  of the culture of the physical buildings that it's just in the
• 27:18
  background. But then sometimes kind of seeps
• 27:21
  into the foreground in a way that, yeah, makes makes it feel
• 27:26
  like such a ironically kind of living city for us to kind of
• 27:30
  read about that's. What?
• 27:33
  I took it off my to go to list. I was like, well, I've been
• 27:35
  there, now I don't need to go, you know?
• 27:39
  Yeah, no, I really find, like New Orleans, like really
• 27:43
  interesting. And not just like the physical
• 27:45
  buildings, the culture, whatever, but like the people in
• 27:48
  it. There's a particular part in the
• 27:51
  book that where the doctor just really has had enough of this, a
• 27:55
  certain type of people in New Orleans.
• 27:58
  I think he's talking to, I think Jack attractively.
• 28:03
  Yeah. And he's he's he goes off about
• 28:06
  like the privilege of the like, kind of middle class, like
• 28:10
  magicians and Goths who kind of revel in that, the key.
• 28:14
  And he's like comparing it to Budapest and Hungary, where, you
• 28:19
  know, post war that the key is also there.
• 28:22
  They've got beautiful buildings and such, but that the key is
• 28:24
  there and they don't have a choice but to live in it.
• 28:28
  And he's, he's just like. Pointed, isn't it?
• 28:30
  And here you are. You're doing it on purpose and
• 28:33
  you love it. You know, like.
• 28:35
  Yeah. And so stuff like that felt
• 28:36
  like, no, she really has like like an and with life and New
• 28:41
  Orleans to kind of, you know, display stuff like that, because
• 28:44
  I've always like that stuff wouldn't would pass you by if
• 28:47
  you were just writing about a random city that you didn't
• 28:50
  know. But for her to kind of, you
• 28:52
  know, lampoon those sort of people who live there as well as
• 28:55
  it's really, I thought, quite nice.
• 28:58
  Although in the same breath, she is of course exploiting all of
• 29:02
  the atmosphere and. Oh yeah.
• 29:05
  Of the city of the dead, you know, the, the, the Spooks and
• 29:09
  the, the Halloween parties and the yeah yeah the ghost tours
• 29:14
  and oh man, I loved it I love I, I, I really love it when Doctor
• 29:20
  Who goes somewhere away from England for a bit yes and I just
• 29:24
  felt like automatically it feels more.
• 29:26
  Exotic. Well, yeah, the fact one thing
• 29:30
  that keep coming back to my head was like, how?
• 29:34
  Like, almost. Yeah, she does use all those,
• 29:37
  like, tropes about, like, the mystery and gothicness of the
• 29:41
  city, but it's played almost in the kind of like, a metal way
• 29:45
  sometimes of how lame it is, Especially with Jack Dupree at
• 29:49
  the beginning with his, like, really lame magic tools and his,
• 29:53
  like, really shy attempts to be suave and stuff like this.
• 30:00
  Yeah. And it feels like something like
• 30:05
  like Buffy at that time as well. I think quite influence really,
• 30:10
  and how that sort of like not taking itself too seriously with
• 30:14
  how the the world treats things like this and how, yeah, people
• 30:20
  can reflect on how hammy the situation is and whatever.
• 30:23
  When the doctor is chained up by Dupree.
• 30:28
  Which which team well? Yeah, it's pretty nude and
• 30:31
  chained up. God, he's, yeah, look up times,
• 30:34
  you know, and say it's stripped down and and chained up and he's
• 30:38
  having runes scratched into him and some weird woman's doing a
• 30:41
  sex dance over there and they're trying, you know, summon the
• 30:45
  elements and elementals. And he's just there going, oh,
• 30:48
  brother, it's like Jesus Christ, that that is important though,
• 30:53
  right? Because I think the reader's
• 30:54
  going, Oh dear God, you know. Yeah, like there's a, there's
• 30:59
  always whoever it is, whether it's a doctor, whether it's
• 31:02
  Angie, like the sense of like, are we really doing this?
• 31:06
  Is it this is this is just like some corny old like magic, like
• 31:12
  tourism for folk. It's not really happening,
• 31:14
  surely. But yeah, like that's it was a
• 31:18
  really nice way to kind of not take itself too seriously.
• 31:22
  And again, like the like the maturity in the right.
• 31:25
  And I think because, yeah, you can imagine like an early virgin
• 31:30
  new adventure writer being really unironic and writing this
• 31:33
  is like, whoa, what could have a steamy sexy.
• 31:36
  Magician party. There is a moment where, forgive
• 31:39
  me, where Dupree is described as, you know, disrobing, and
• 31:45
  he's standing there like a wreck.
• 31:46
  And then he jumps on this woman and they're, you know, and
• 31:49
  they're all of them around, you know, doing their spells and
• 31:52
  things. And the doctor just goes enough
• 31:55
  and he just gets up, tears him off him and takes the girl home,
• 31:58
  doesn't he? And says, you know, yeah, I'm
• 32:00
  taking you away from all this. There isn't awareness, I think,
• 32:04
  that we didn't have in love and war.
• 32:07
  Yes, yes, there's very much an awareness about the but there's
• 32:11
  still that care for us about it as well.
• 32:13
  Like as much as he's just he has enough in that scene, like about
• 32:17
  the sexy magic parties, whatever he still like cares about the
• 32:22
  people in it, like the woman who was, you know, in that bad male
• 32:27
  corset, you know, makes he makes sure she's got a shower and he
• 32:31
  even drops a hope and stuff. And it's like he cares still
• 32:35
  about the people in it. He just doesn't want them to be
• 32:38
  and this ridiculous ridiculous like hammy like like showpiece
• 32:44
  basically for magic and. There were so many moments.
• 32:47
  There were so many little character moments for all the
• 32:50
  side characters as well. And when she gets dropped home,
• 32:53
  he's like, he goes for it, Oh, don't worry, it'll be OK.
• 32:56
  And then he sees the mother, like, drunk on the sofa,
• 33:00
  screaming at her at the last line of the chapter was, yeah,
• 33:03
  it probably wasn't going to be OK.
• 33:05
  I was like, Oh my God, Jesus Christ, we never see that
• 33:08
  character again or don't think. No, that's, that's the last of
• 33:11
  her. It's just she goes back to
• 33:13
  depressing life with a drunken mother.
• 33:16
  And there's so many things like that where you just.
• 33:18
  Yeah, you see peeps behind closed doors essentially, or
• 33:23
  like, yeah, small things that just give you that atmosphere of
• 33:27
  what the city is really about. Do you object to magic being a
• 33:34
  thing in this story? Because the TV series always
• 33:38
  said magic isn't real, the supernatural isn't real.
• 33:41
  There's always a. Science with Hawthorn Science.
• 33:46
  But this one absolutely froze that out, doesn't it?
• 33:48
  And the first line is the magician, you know, Yes.
• 33:52
  And he's invading the doctor's dreams and, and sending this,
• 33:56
  you know, awful darkness after him and all of this.
• 33:59
  And there are spells and there's water boggles and all sorts of
• 34:03
  weird magical stuff happening. Do you object to any of that, or
• 34:06
  do you like it? Not at all like this, but in
• 34:10
  this context, I think like this is the early 2000s, Buffy is at
• 34:15
  its prime. I think Angel is also on as
• 34:18
  well. Charmed might be around the
• 34:20
  corner. Like this was in the cultural
• 34:23
  zeitgeist. It feels like this is something
• 34:27
  that was happening within those spaces in TV and in popular
• 34:31
  culture. And for Doctor Who to do it, why
• 34:34
  not? Why not go into that into that
• 34:36
  arena and just try to bring a Doctor Who context to that that
• 34:45
  world. And I really.
• 34:46
  Yeah, I was totally fine with it.
• 34:49
  And this I wouldn't want it all the time in exactly the same way
• 34:55
  that. I think it's.
• 34:57
  Great, exactly like I mean in the same way that you know,
• 35:00
  we've been touching in that in the new series after the salt,
• 35:04
  like basically everything's made it a bit more fantasy and and
• 35:09
  magical. I don't like how doing that all
• 35:13
  the time, and that's what the series is unfortunately waiting
• 35:16
  towards these days, but it. Seems to be snowing all around
• 35:20
  you right now. Give me the Mrs. Flood of this
• 35:26
  book any day. Nicely.
• 35:29
  Done. I did have it.
• 35:32
  Had you said you do object. I did have like a rational
• 35:35
  explanation as to why magic now works in Doctor because I don't
• 35:39
  know how much of the 8th Doctor run, you know, But at the end of
• 35:41
  the ancestor cell, that's the first time Gallifrey was
• 35:44
  destroyed, right? OK, so we're now in a Gallifrey
• 35:47
  less universe where the Doctor's completely lost his memories.
• 35:51
  So the suggestion is that sort of all the rules that the time
• 35:54
  laws kept in place are all gone now.
• 35:58
  So that's why I figure that Magic is is a go.
• 36:03
  I mean, I'm yeah, I'm totally fine for any reason to be
• 36:07
  covered on but like it's you know, as a as a one off thing.
• 36:11
  I in this yeah, I'm happy for it to be kind of and and this
• 36:16
  universe like it's not it's not as if the doctor can exactly
• 36:20
  like oppose it or think that this might not be a thing
• 36:23
  because yeah, this is a this is part of I don't know what
• 36:29
  amnesia ark, but on unless I don't know about the amnesia
• 36:31
  ark, people just tell me, oh, there's an amnesia ark.
• 36:34
  Be prepared. But going into these books.
• 36:36
  Books ago, and he had 100 years on Earth after he lost his
• 36:40
  memory, and they did that basically over six books so he
• 36:44
  could sort of build himself back up again.
• 36:45
  So when he gets the TARDIS back, he still lost all of his memory,
• 36:50
  but he's found himself as a person and then he's ready to go
• 36:53
  off into the universe. And he's sort of like a bit of
• 36:55
  an edgier, slightly darker, less Tiggerish Ave.
• 37:00
  Doctor, because I think they thought they went a bit too far
• 37:04
  with that sort of TV movie, but essentially essentially the same
• 37:07
  guy just with that matter. Because this book does explore
• 37:10
  that quite a bit, doesn't it? The fact that something's
• 37:13
  missing in his life and and he. Just.
• 37:15
  Can't put a finger on what the hell it is.
• 37:18
  Yeah, like, I mean, I didn't know much about this amnesia
• 37:22
  args, but the book was it making it like a preclusion to to read
• 37:26
  it basically, I kind of picked up right.
• 37:27
  OK, he's something's happened and he's not good memory
• 37:30
  whatever. So yeah, that's fine.
• 37:32
  I can. It's not like something has been
• 37:35
  carried across from those arcs to to bite him.
• 37:39
  And he asked in this book about the amnesia or whatever, but it
• 37:44
  does focus on it quite a bit in terms of like his retrospective
• 37:48
  thoughts about it and like the doctor's reflections.
• 37:51
  Like this is one of the books, I think probably the most
• 37:56
  insightful books of how the Doctor feels about a situation.
• 37:59
  And it's maybe isn't it? Yeah, you know, like it's a lot
• 38:02
  of the Doctor feeling things. The Doctor's seen things and
• 38:07
  what he why his responses are. And it's probably the best book
• 38:10
  to do if you're doing an amnesia arc so that you don't need to,
• 38:14
  you know, peek behind the curtain too much about what the
• 38:16
  Doctor really is because it's just this kind of new flesh ish
• 38:20
  Doctor given his, you know, reactions and feelings to sex
• 38:27
  parties. Super interesting, right, Is
• 38:29
  that this book basically hits, yeah, in the middle of that
• 38:33
  second-half of the 8th Doctor books.
• 38:36
  So the the first half ended with the ancestor cell and then the
• 38:39
  second-half started with the amnesia arc right to the end of
• 38:43
  the 8th Doctor books. And this basically hits in the
• 38:45
  middle. And then what Lance Parkin does
• 38:47
  in the Gallifrey Chronicles at the end is he takes a scene from
• 38:50
  this book, which was the short Scottish man sitting on the bed
• 38:55
  of flowers in the dream sequence and makes that.
• 38:59
  You don't know it in this book, but retroactively he makes that
• 39:02
  one of the most important scenes in the entire way of Doctors
• 39:05
  Run. OK.
• 39:07
  I'm not going to tell you what that is though, because I want
• 39:09
  you to read from the balls one day.
• 39:11
  I I may wear one. DI did quite that.
• 39:14
  Scottish man on the flower, but you'd have did.
• 39:17
  I wasn't sure if it's going to allude to some sort of virgin
• 39:20
  you adventure on hop, because I'm always feeling now that you
• 39:23
  know, that's something they love to do.
• 39:25
  And and at least the very early ones is that there's always a
• 39:28
  past doctor popping up or something as oh, there we go,
• 39:32
  tick box. We've got the, we've got the
• 39:34
  past, Doctor Pians. I ended up did it here with the
• 39:36
  tarot reading, didn't they? Right.
• 39:38
  Were you? Getting Yeah.
• 39:39
  Doctor, the 2nd Doctor, all the different cards that were coming
• 39:41
  up. Yeah, the helmets that yeah,
• 39:44
  there was, there was, that was, that was subtle enough.
• 39:46
  That was like fine, because he just his response was like don't
• 39:50
  know, don't know whether they spoke.
• 39:54
  That was the cars. Describe me.
• 39:55
  Thank you very much. Although there was a line about
• 39:59
  how he had killed himself before or something.
• 40:05
  I think like there was a line about how he killed himself
• 40:08
  before or something. And I was like.
• 40:10
  I throw back to love and war with the the 7th doctor killing
• 40:15
  himself, killing the sex doctor to become himself and such.
• 40:19
  And there was some. Funny bits that bled through
• 40:21
  where he just suddenly goes, yes, Ultron energy.
• 40:23
  Oh wait, I don't know how I remember.
• 40:26
  It's like suddenly another voice just pops up out of me, you
• 40:28
  know? Yeah, like, yeah, there was
• 40:32
  some, there was some little illusions like here and there.
• 40:36
  But yeah, I was quite, I found it quite a refreshing sort of
• 40:43
  way to do the Doctor in terms of it being us getting to see how
• 40:47
  he feels being stuck in a like magic sex party or being
• 40:50
  investigating a murder or, you know, all these different
• 40:53
  scenarios that felt he was really the star character to
• 40:58
  follow and be part of in the book.
• 40:59
  Because sometimes Doctor Who books, it's barely there.
• 41:04
  Well like, OK, OK, I've got, I had like 5 questions pop up at
• 41:09
  me then to ask you. But I mean, how does this work
• 41:12
  as a mystery? So it starts off with the Doctor
• 41:17
  coming to New Orleans with this bone charm that's appeared in
• 41:21
  the TARDIS once he's woken up from a dreadful nightmare of
• 41:25
  some weird nothing and he goes to a magic shop, doesn't he?
• 41:29
  And then finds the owner of the magic shop did, yes.
• 41:36
  Now it starts off well as a murder yesterday, you know,
• 41:42
  having you know, like that sort of scene set the world really
• 41:48
  detective coming in. I'm a really, I really liked
• 41:52
  Rust's detective persona character and this that was
• 41:57
  really well done and having a doctor trying to work out, you
• 42:02
  know, what to do, almost like a weird like buddy cop procedural
• 42:06
  for a wee while. And so it's a really good
• 42:10
  mechanism to get to know these characters like Teddy Akri and
• 42:13
  Jack Dupree. Van Floods all them.
• 42:17
  They were like great suspects as well, weren't they?
• 42:20
  Because they were all kind of vile in different ways.
• 42:24
  Teddy Akri and his like, weird, disgusting, the horror art and
• 42:31
  Vernon Flood who was beating his misses and just like, yeah, all
• 42:35
  horrible. You know when they all started
• 42:37
  getting bumped off, I was like, oh good.
• 42:40
  Well, that was the kind of issue maybe with the the Madam Mystery
• 42:44
  side is that you then bump off everyone who is a suspect and
• 42:49
  you're like, right, who, who here who is not part of the
• 42:52
  TARDIS crew? Could be, could be, you know,
• 42:55
  the, the main badge in here. And it that that's where you're
• 42:59
  like, OK, it's not as much about a mystery now.
• 43:04
  Like there was maybe some diversion you could have done
• 43:07
  with like, you know, Jack Dupree disappearing as it were or
• 43:10
  whatever. But yeah, there was.
• 43:13
  It worked for a while as a good mechanic to get into that world
• 43:17
  via Madam yesterday, but it doesn't quite work and near the
• 43:22
  end do. You like the world?
• 43:25
  You're saying it's not a twist? I forgot again.
• 43:28
  This time we're reading it in the first half of the book that
• 43:30
  Rust was the killer all along. Sorry guys, it's been out 20
• 43:33
  years. Get over it.
• 43:35
  If you haven't read this great book yet, then tough shit.
• 43:39
  And so once again, that end of chapter where it's like where
• 43:42
  Rust reveals himself, I'm like, Oh my God, yes, I've read this
• 43:45
  before, haven't I? What did work was that he had an
• 43:49
  established relationship with the doctor and with Angie, and
• 43:53
  so there was like an emotional impact to the twist.
• 43:57
  Yeah, like having rusts, you know, go from kind of been the
• 44:03
  world where he cop that's helping the doctor snouting a
• 44:06
  ride and things like that to yeah, even the like the dating
• 44:11
  side of Angie and like, yeah, like it was an interesting
• 44:17
  thing. I don't think has, I don't know
• 44:18
  if that's been happening in any of the other.
• 44:20
  They've talked to novels that there might be a flirtation
• 44:23
  between a companion and a character in another book.
• 44:26
  But it was really sensitively kind of done.
• 44:29
  I really find that quite nice. But then to for him to kind of
• 44:34
  devolve into who he really was, it was like, oh, right, yeah,
• 44:37
  this it's done. Well, it's just by the time
• 44:41
  you've only got two people who aren't the Doctor and Jane first
• 44:44
  alive, you're like, right, one of these people is up to
• 44:48
  something and it might be him. So like, it still was OK.
• 44:54
  It was well done in terms of that side, but the surprise or
• 44:56
  twist wasn't really there to be like, Oh my goodness, it's this
• 45:00
  person. But I didn't even think.
• 45:02
  About that, you know, comparing the Rust and Angie dating scenes
• 45:07
  with Jan and Ace from Love and War.
• 45:09
  I mean, it is very subtle to love.
• 45:11
  God, yeah, You know, yeah. There's no kissing of the snake
• 45:17
  or the spreading of the seat. The thing is, is in in Angie's
• 45:22
  first story, her short term boyfriend is killed and so she
• 45:28
  has a little of getting over that.
• 45:30
  And this is the first time she sort of feels comfortable enough
• 45:33
  to go on a day, which is why she's a bit tentative about it
• 45:37
  all. But yeah, did you find Angie?
• 45:39
  Because she's one of my favourites.
• 45:42
  Yes, she I really like Angie. I've so I've read a few books
• 45:48
  with her. I think I've read history 1010.
• 45:55
  Great. I really like history 101 as
• 45:57
  well and like she's she's so reading this as a as a fan of
• 46:04
  who's who's predominantly like was coming through with the new
• 46:07
  series and such. It's a model of a character that
• 46:10
  we can see work well in the new series.
• 46:13
  And it's just, you know, having a like a young woman who is
• 46:18
  walking independently of the doctor because she can't quite
• 46:22
  sometimes trust the doctor enough to to do things, to sort
• 46:25
  the situation out and sometimes it.
• 46:27
  Does say she says a couple of times, Yeah.
• 46:30
  Just tell us what you think we need to know if we're left to
• 46:33
  look out the rest. Like, yeah, it's it's something
• 46:36
  it's like something you like, like people like Bell in a new
• 46:39
  series and such. Like there was there was that
• 46:42
  sort of spirit with fanatic actually do something or advance
• 46:48
  the plot. Even though there wasn't much of
• 46:50
  that in this book, I still got a sense of her character which I
• 46:55
  just found nice and refreshing. And compared to what I'm used to
• 46:59
  cheating the note. You'll get there.
• 47:02
  You will get there all right with those.
• 47:03
  New companions. So like, yeah, she just felt
• 47:08
  like the model of a new serious companion that we we deserve to
• 47:12
  have. And like, yeah, I I've always
• 47:16
  liked her and any of the books I've picked up with her in it.
• 47:19
  So funny the bit that made me how was when her and Fitz go off
• 47:23
  to investigate, you know, the the destruction of this house in
• 47:28
  the past that's been decimated and then they find out the the
• 47:32
  kid that was saved. Oh God, we'll come back to all
• 47:36
  of this. But the kid that was saved by
• 47:38
  the doctor when the house was destroyed because the doctor
• 47:40
  pops back there and as a look couldn't see it happening and
• 47:43
  gets involved. He was then adopted by another
• 47:48
  family who were all killed horribly.
• 47:52
  So they're investigating the the murder of that family and Fitz
• 47:56
  in the middle of the night decides to go grave Robin to see
• 48:00
  if the little boys body is actually in the grave.
• 48:02
  And there's a whole sequence where Angie is walking through
• 48:05
  the woods to the grave site going I'm going to fucking kill
• 48:09
  you, Fitz. And also please don't be dead
• 48:13
  Fitz. Please.
• 48:14
  She's totally conflicted between really want to ring his neck and
• 48:18
  protect him at the same time. No, yeah, exactly.
• 48:21
  I like, I could just really imagine her character, like she
• 48:26
  just felt so kind of realistic as a character within these
• 48:32
  books compared to like the models we've had in the past
• 48:37
  where people try to replicate some stuff from the series or
• 48:39
  whatever and it's a bit stolted. That's just felt like a person
• 48:43
  who we can relate with and really be on side with when the
• 48:49
  doctors being elusive or like contradictory or something.
• 48:52
  Like, she's there to kind of set the record straight in a way
• 48:56
  that, to be honest, Fitz doesn't really do in this book.
• 49:01
  Tell. Me like why?
• 49:02
  Because that's an. Unusual I I don't know, because
• 49:05
  because again, the only like few books I've had with Angie and
• 49:09
  Fitz Fetz, I mean, he doesn't he does scuttle in this book
• 49:16
  really. He just kind of like what was
• 49:18
  about goes to different pubs I and digs up a grief and that's
• 49:24
  kind of all he's done. Like he doesn't really have much
• 49:27
  of the the drive that Angie does.
• 49:30
  Like she's the one who's like, right, we're going to be going
• 49:32
  over and talking to Swan. We're going to be the one going
• 49:34
  over to do this, do that, and he's just like.
• 49:37
  She's the one sort of charming everyone as well, wouldn't she?
• 49:40
  Yeah, sort of slouching air up in a a ciggy and a bourbon.
• 49:45
  Yeah, like, like. She's she is trying, he is
• 49:49
  trying just, she is just trying to do anything.
• 49:51
  And this book quotes Fetz is kind of quite passive.
• 49:55
  He's you know, I mean, he's he's probably the one who's got the
• 49:59
  least to do out with the TARDIS team in this.
• 50:03
  And I've I've not really got a sense of fits from this book.
• 50:07
  I've not really got a sense of him in general, I think.
• 50:10
  But like at this book didn't help me get an idea who was
• 50:13
  about compared to what Angie got me, I got from Angie in this
• 50:17
  book. Like, yeah, that's more.
• 50:19
  Accepted opinion there is the complete reverse, right, is that
• 50:22
  everybody tends to love and OK, I really likes Andrea because
• 50:27
  she's a bit bossy and a bit a bit teagony, you know.
• 50:30
  And I mean, I will say there are some great, great fits books and
• 50:36
  I hope you explore some of them eventually, because he does.
• 50:39
  He does get a great run. But like, the one bit that
• 50:43
  really stood out for me was when the doctors, like, stay here,
• 50:47
  you know, don't follow me, I'll be all right.
• 50:49
  And then Fitz is outside waiting.
• 50:50
  And because he just knows that's basically it, will shadow the
• 50:55
  doctor into any crazy situation. But yeah, he doesn't do a great
• 51:00
  deal in this book. No, he's, he's quite like, I
• 51:03
  mean, I've been trying to actually think of anything he he
• 51:05
  did, but. I mean, he did.
• 51:08
  He did dig up the grave. He did.
• 51:10
  He dug up the grave. Good on him for some.
• 51:14
  Angie would have done that. Yeah, probably not, to be
• 51:17
  honest. She might have done eventually.
• 51:20
  Although to be honest, I think that it's it's it's an issue
• 51:25
  with the book. I think the very few issues I
• 51:27
  have is that you could do this book without Angie and Fitz,
• 51:31
  full stop, really. And sending them all up to to
• 51:38
  Vermont, It didn't need to be Vermont really, it was just
• 51:44
  literally. So it takes some longer to get
• 51:46
  back and for them to try and reorientate to a new place.
• 51:51
  And it felt a bit of a. Reason whilst they was away,
• 51:53
  those were the scenes where the doctor was in the most extreme
• 51:55
  danger. So obviously they can't be there
• 51:57
  because they would have got him out of that so that he they had
• 52:00
  been sent out of the action so he can be chained down and
• 52:03
  demons. Exactly.
• 52:05
  But but even like the knowledge that they learned of oh, this
• 52:09
  like foster family also got murdered in the same way his
• 52:14
  family got murdered and such as like, I don't know if we need we
• 52:19
  didn't. It was kind of like additional
• 52:20
  information to help build the case, but it was not like bang,
• 52:23
  we've got them to rights on this now.
• 52:25
  Like it was just. Like the kid had survived, the
• 52:29
  kid had survived the house being destroyed, So what was going on
• 52:33
  in the house and where is the kid now?
• 52:36
  That was enough without. Oh yes, and also later on in his
• 52:39
  life he murdered his foster family as well.
• 52:42
  Yeah, that was basically just to help, you know, like give some
• 52:46
  positive affirmations to Andrew and Fitz when they're talking to
• 52:49
  the Doctor, being like, look, we totally did something in this
• 52:52
  book. Look that like instant.
• 52:55
  Information that should I've had women throwing themselves at me
• 52:58
  all sorts. You know, you've done a bit of
• 53:01
  research. Well done.
• 53:03
  Yeah, like that was literally it.
• 53:04
  Like just hit the liberties. That's all we need used to do,
• 53:08
  yeah. Like the shift in the mystery
• 53:10
  from who who is killing everybody to who is the kid.
• 53:16
  I did like that though and I thought.
• 53:19
  That was a. More because it's not until the
• 53:22
  Doctor steps in as he's watching the house be destroyed from the
• 53:26
  tree, sees the kid run away, and then he steps in and goes, no,
• 53:31
  no matter what the the time rules are, I'm going to go in
• 53:35
  and help that kid. And then some sort of the book
• 53:38
  pivots in another direction. It's less who's keeping these
• 53:41
  people, it's more who the hell did the Doctor save?
• 53:45
  Well, actually, that's the thing I was trying to understand was
• 53:47
  how like did he save, did he save the kid?
• 53:52
  Because when they're showing the projection of the, the ghosts of
• 53:57
  of the house, the kid runs, I think through a past where
• 54:03
  something's collapsing. So the thing does, the walls
• 54:05
  don't collapse on him essentially.
• 54:07
  So like. Suggestion that he rust.
• 54:11
  Who is the kid? He basically destroyed the
• 54:16
  ceremony. That's why the house was
• 54:17
  destroyed, because he ran away. Yeah, but there's like a bit at
• 54:20
  the end of one of the chapters where it's like the Doctor and
• 54:24
  Rust are watching the the projection of the past scene
• 54:29
  together in the house, and it goes differently.
• 54:32
  It's like instead of like, like him being trapped, he seems to
• 54:38
  escape. And the Doctor's realizing he
• 54:41
  did change history, I think. And so I think.
• 54:45
  That so obviously weren't paying attention in that bit.
• 54:48
  I was, I was hoping that you might have helped to solve it
• 54:51
  because I was genuinely like, I did that happen a lot.
• 54:53
  Of the book now I'm going to sound like a total hypocrite
• 54:57
  because I wouldn't let this fly in many books.
• 54:59
  A lot of finer details, right? I didn't really care because I
• 55:04
  was so enchanted by the atmosphere of the book by by the
• 55:07
  setting I was in and by the characters I was hanging out
• 55:11
  with, which would just interesting, weird, funny, yeah,
• 55:14
  worky characters. So like, you know, Russ and then
• 55:19
  and then in the last sort of third, it's like it's less about
• 55:22
  Oh my God, Russ is going to kill the doctor and more like it's
• 55:25
  summoning some weird water boggles and the doctors being
• 55:29
  seduced by Misses flood. And I mean, I'm not entirely
• 55:32
  sure what was happening there. I mean, it's not a phrase.
• 55:37
  It's it's not a phrase you would want to be healing, perhaps for
• 55:40
  the new series of the doctor gets seduced by Mrs. Flood, or
• 55:44
  maybe you would. I think any adoption would.
• 55:47
  Yeah. Like, I think that would be a
• 55:49
  very interesting scene to see any adoption, just playfully,
• 55:55
  probably with the doctor's thigh, with her foot in a wooden
• 55:58
  cabin like we see in this. Yeah, the prose itself and and
• 56:05
  the atmosphere of it, it just, I was just absolutely beguiled by
• 56:10
  it. So like when weird things were
• 56:12
  happening and when plot, I was like, and look at that.
• 56:15
  My God that sentence is fucking amazing.
• 56:18
  Like there, there, there was some really beautiful writing in
• 56:21
  it. And you know, example of that
• 56:23
  was with Mrs. Flood where you know, like Mrs. Flood is a, an
• 56:30
  elemental. She's a she's a wood water
• 56:33
  elemental and she's conjured by Rust's dad in that 80s house.
• 56:42
  And then she, I think she gets trapped by Mr. Floods, Vernon
• 56:49
  Flood. I think I just like can kept as
• 56:53
  like this sort of abusive wife, but the doctors like the first
• 56:59
  person to really kind of talk to her and care about her, which is
• 57:03
  a really nice kind of moment. And she talks to him for the
• 57:08
  first time about what she like why she's got no eyes.
• 57:11
  And she says they fell down my face like rain.
• 57:16
  And it's like you can imagine this sort of scene.
• 57:20
  And it's just before she herself turns into the elemental force
• 57:24
  as as well. And but when we realized that
• 57:27
  she's an element. So like, it was, it was just
• 57:30
  little phrases like this that then sparked this kind of
• 57:33
  cascade of of chaos and, and the book can.
• 57:37
  Yeah, yeah. Like just the first nightmare
• 57:41
  the Doctor has where he actually says that loud.
• 57:43
  Well, nothing can get into the TARDIS, I'm OK.
• 57:46
  And then this. The last one is 2 words nothing
• 57:48
  had and that's it. I was like, oh shit it.
• 57:51
  Was a. Bit you know where I forget what
• 57:55
  the man's name is, that Monsieur Pierre Bao.
• 57:58
  He's the guy at the. End.
• 57:59
  Oh yeah, Yeah. And he's in his study, and the
• 58:03
  doctor is summoned via Rust to go there and kill him.
• 58:08
  Isn't he his spirit? And he's described as entering
• 58:11
  the room like dust falling off a side or something.
• 58:15
  And yeah, that is gorgeous and surrounding him.
• 58:20
  Yeah, it was this, I think the same as well when the magician
• 58:25
  appears at the bottom of a what's his face Teddy Acky's
• 58:31
  beds and which in itself is a really kind of dark image.
• 58:35
  Like what was what was that? There was a book and movie where
• 58:45
  there's a woman chained to a bed for like some hanky panky but
• 58:49
  then the dad the husband like crooks it and she used to stuck
• 58:53
  to a bed and then she starts seeing this figured at the
• 58:57
  bottom of the bed. I can't remember this name.
• 58:59
  Jesus. I've.
• 59:00
  Not seen it, but that's horrifying.
• 59:02
  It's a really I think it's maybe Stephen King, but like it felt
• 59:06
  as versatile as that when seen that sort of scene.
• 59:10
  And the magician then kind of opens, you know, Teddy Kree's
• 59:14
  eyes almost as it were to sense everything.
• 59:16
  And he talks about all the things he's suddenly sensing,
• 59:20
  like the the creaks of the wooden floor and a speck of
• 59:24
  paint that stride off falls to the ground and and small things
• 59:29
  like this. And I just it's really it's
• 59:32
  really rich language. And I think that that's
• 59:35
  something that Lloyd Rose kind of revels in as well, because
• 59:38
  it's, it's quite a, a literally book.
• 59:41
  There's a lot of literally references.
• 59:43
  You know, you've got like go it, you've got nature, you've got
• 59:48
  like Christopher Marlowe. This lists all these things
• 59:51
  thrown in all the time and quite philosophical debates and
• 59:55
  discussions, with characters sometimes mocking such
• 59:59
  philosophical debates and discussions, sometimes more
• 1:00:02
  profound with, like the Doctor, the sense of being despite
• 1:00:06
  forgetting his memories and the impact of that.
• 1:00:09
  On people around them still. And there's.
• 1:00:11
  Yeah, it's, it's, it's a good book to revel in such things
• 1:00:15
  like that when you've got a character like the Doctor having
• 1:00:18
  that identity crisis through the amnesia stuff, I mean.
• 1:00:21
  I think the the plot is good. It's not great, but it is good.
• 1:00:26
  It's very serviceable. But the experience of just being
• 1:00:31
  there, yeah, it's like you said, I don't know, because the pace
• 1:00:35
  is quite slow. The doctor tend to go from one
• 1:00:38
  place to another, get chained up, beat, tortured.
• 1:00:41
  Terrible things happen. And he makes the next weird
• 1:00:43
  eccentric, you know, with a few twists and turns along the way.
• 1:00:47
  But oh man, I just love being in New Orleans in this.
• 1:00:52
  Yeah, like it can be. To see it slow isn't as a
• 1:00:57
  negative, it just takes its time to talk about it.
• 1:01:01
  Like, you know, Rust near the beginning of the book and near
• 1:01:04
  the end as well, talks about the cultural history of like the
• 1:01:08
  Creoles and, you know, the the racial history of the area and
• 1:01:13
  and it goes into yeah, it really it helps paint what his
• 1:01:21
  motivations are in such a way. Like he is, he is the villain of
• 1:01:24
  the piece, but he he is some another doctor almost empathizes
• 1:01:30
  with in in situations about that the the history of his family
• 1:01:35
  and and how the how people were treated.
• 1:01:39
  He still takes him on because of him trying to just seek revenge
• 1:01:44
  on the water element for killing the family rather than the
• 1:01:46
  racial injustice that was driving them to to to despair.
• 1:01:50
  But yeah, it was really nice to just have slow moments like that
• 1:01:54
  to go into that detail. Yeah, that that whole thing
• 1:01:58
  about him saying, you know, my family are people of colour.
• 1:02:01
  You you can't tell. So there was an actual there was
• 1:02:05
  a motive for the reason why they were summoning the water spirit
• 1:02:10
  to somehow get ahead in life you.
• 1:02:12
  Know, yeah. Yeah, it got all of that was.
• 1:02:15
  I mean, I've written down another thing here because some
• 1:02:17
  of my favorite bits in the book was when the Doctor was going
• 1:02:19
  to, you know, these hideous art shows and things, you know, in
• 1:02:22
  the Halloween house describes it as well.
• 1:02:26
  The Doctor describes it. Was it?
• 1:02:27
  This was unselfconsciously vicious and tacky, appalling and
• 1:02:32
  embarrassing at once. The mixture of brutality,
• 1:02:35
  pretension and corniness aroused the feeling in the doctor that
• 1:02:39
  went way beyond disgust. It must be pretty gross.
• 1:02:44
  But then they would describe it, weren't they?
• 1:02:45
  But, you know, fetuses hanging from the ceiling and, yeah,
• 1:02:49
  weird decaying skeletons coming out of coffins and things like
• 1:02:51
  that. I mean, I'd probably love to go,
• 1:02:53
  you know, I like a bit of. Horror.
• 1:02:54
  Oh, yeah, same. Like I could imagine it being,
• 1:02:58
  yeah, like trained trying to paint itself as the macabre
• 1:03:04
  thing. But like, it added that kind of
• 1:03:07
  extra level of, like, horror to it from having things like Jack
• 1:03:14
  Dupree having proper, you know, bits of human flesh and body
• 1:03:20
  parts all around his gaffe as well.
• 1:03:22
  Like there's a there's a sense of things going like beyond the
• 1:03:28
  sort of the stuff that they're parodying in terms of like how
• 1:03:33
  hammy an actor he is when he's like, welcome to New Orleans.
• 1:03:37
  There's like, no, he's also a creep.
• 1:03:39
  He's got a really sadistic side to him with all these bits
• 1:03:42
  hanging off the ceiling and stuff.
• 1:03:45
  It's, it's really like a nice novel to just kind of like,
• 1:03:50
  yeah, not have like the the kind of meta textual jokey side of
• 1:03:56
  stuff, but also like the serious side of these people.
• 1:03:58
  If you don't take it seriously to take on these people for like
• 1:04:02
  folk like the Doctor and such. Like, there's a yeah, there's
• 1:04:05
  still that edge to those characters, even if they
• 1:04:07
  sometimes are a bit heavy in parody.
• 1:04:09
  I'm. Trying to find the line where
• 1:04:11
  it's chained up when you just along the lines of like, oh,
• 1:04:15
  you're not going to kill me wearing something so deeply
• 1:04:18
  embarrassing as that or something like that.
• 1:04:20
  I. Was like, oh, that's just
• 1:04:21
  perfect. You know, and he's like, oh, I'm
• 1:04:24
  enjoying myself. And he goes, yeah, well, you're
• 1:04:26
  just like, sadist, aren't you? You know, there was just lots of
• 1:04:29
  just really. Cussing behinds.
• 1:04:32
  Yeah like there's so much. It's about 3 times he is naked
• 1:04:36
  in this book. However, like I was trying to
• 1:04:38
  count then I did lose it, but I think there's you.
• 1:04:41
  Know when Mrs. Flood had him in that sort of, you know, paradise
• 1:04:46
  at the end there? Yeah, there's a description that
• 1:04:49
  all of his senses were flared alive or something.
• 1:04:53
  Like, I mean, I don't know what she was doing with him, Anthony,
• 1:04:55
  but. Oh, yeah, like I, I noticed that
• 1:04:58
  as well. When how it has been like how
• 1:05:01
  they were together because it like this is what they I think
• 1:05:05
  they say she bent to him and the input of his senses entered into
• 1:05:11
  his bloodstream. She tasted over the ocean.
• 1:05:15
  She never slept. And it's all this sleek.
• 1:05:18
  She's one with him and stuff like it's a really sensual scene
• 1:05:23
  but not a sexual scene. Anthony.
• 1:05:26
  I have, can't say I have, but it just, yeah, it felt sensual
• 1:05:34
  rather than sexual between the two of them in that scene in
• 1:05:37
  particular, which I really kind of liked because she wasn't
• 1:05:41
  doing it out of a motivation or anything.
• 1:05:44
  Like she was just like, this person deserves paradise for
• 1:05:48
  helping me escape. So this is what he gets and
• 1:05:51
  he's. She was trying to seduce him
• 1:05:53
  with the food, wasn't she? She's starting off with, like,
• 1:05:55
  bread and cheese, and then she moved on.
• 1:05:57
  Yeah, Chopped chick ice for me. He's like, oh, that's not plain
• 1:06:00
  fair. Something there's like this
• 1:06:02
  boysenberry someday or something like that.
• 1:06:05
  He's going, oh, please stop. She even she even kisses him and
• 1:06:09
  Venge tries to put a pomegranate seed into his cup when they're
• 1:06:13
  doing that and and he just. He's like, nice try.
• 1:06:20
  But I just yeah, like even yeah, the the the more sexual size
• 1:06:24
  stuff isn't that it's, it's part of motivation for her and just a
• 1:06:29
  sort of sensual thing that they have out of respect and like
• 1:06:34
  almost reward for her helping him.
• 1:06:37
  And he's taken a step back and be like, no, this is I am just
• 1:06:41
  wanting to help people. That's what I do.
• 1:06:43
  And it's a really nice, respectful relationship they
• 1:06:47
  have near the end. I really do like Mrs. Ford and
• 1:06:50
  the doctor that. In contrast to Love and War,
• 1:06:53
  which had a very hysterical, melodramatic ending.
• 1:06:58
  You know, Ace going you. Fake my mother.
• 1:07:01
  Get away from me in all of this. The ending of City of Death is
• 1:07:04
  so gentle in comparison. Like, I know, I know Russ gets
• 1:07:08
  eaten by some dreadful spook that he's conjuring up, but
• 1:07:12
  basically the climax of the book is that bit in paradise with
• 1:07:16
  Mrs. Flood. And it's just like, yeah, the
• 1:07:19
  doctor rejecting that and saying no, no, no.
• 1:07:22
  Like, you know, I've got things to do.
• 1:07:25
  It's such a calm ending, almost like it's just basically like
• 1:07:29
  we're quite literally like him before the storm because like
• 1:07:34
  he's in that sort of relaxed away before going into, you
• 1:07:39
  know, the scenes with feels and, and the storms of in New
• 1:07:42
  Orleans. But it just felt really
• 1:07:47
  different because there's so much of the time it tries to
• 1:07:50
  ramp up and ramp up. It's still building and
• 1:07:52
  building. But this was just like again,
• 1:07:55
  with the slow nature of it, like we're taking it slow.
• 1:07:58
  We're having the doctor just have a like an important scene
• 1:08:02
  with Mrs. Flood because that's what it was.
• 1:08:05
  It was an important part to deal with that, that side of the
• 1:08:10
  story with the elementals. And I find that brilliant.
• 1:08:13
  I've got to say. Right.
• 1:08:14
  So I was like, OK, fine. Mr. Flood is choked to death by
• 1:08:19
  his wife, who turns out to be a water spirit.
• 1:08:22
  OK, I get it. Rust turns out to be the little
• 1:08:25
  boy that was saved. OK.
• 1:08:26
  And he's the one murdering people because he he's sending
• 1:08:29
  the bone charm after the doctor because he wants to summon this
• 1:08:33
  darkness and complete his father's ritual.
• 1:08:36
  OK, I get that Dupree is dead because he tied the doctor down
• 1:08:43
  and summoned up a horrible thing that just eats him, doesn't it?
• 1:08:47
  Doesn't it eat him? Whole it's pretty painless
• 1:08:50
  though. Right, I get that.
• 1:08:51
  So I was like, great, OK, I'm keeping up with all the twists
• 1:08:54
  and turns. And then I was like, and then
• 1:08:57
  there was Mrs. Floods offering the doctor paradise.
• 1:08:58
  I was like, no, that's fine, I'm getting it.
• 1:09:01
  And then fails. I'm like, what?
• 1:09:03
  And I was like, hang on, it fails.
• 1:09:06
  Is the dad. No, what is he?
• 1:09:08
  He's a water spirit. What?
• 1:09:09
  What was Thales? Thales was Mrs. Flood's son.
• 1:09:16
  Or another water spirit? Another water spirit.
• 1:09:20
  I have been trying to think how he was conjured.
• 1:09:24
  I have no idea. I.
• 1:09:27
  Was like, is this one twist too many?
• 1:09:31
  I fear it may have been, but I didn't care because it was
• 1:09:35
  literally the last sentence of the book, so it didn't quite
• 1:09:40
  matter. But yeah, apparently he was
• 1:09:45
  like, yeah, this kind of spirit son.
• 1:09:52
  Yeah, maybe that was one that was conjured by Van floods when
• 1:09:58
  he was trying to, but I don't. Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:10:02
  I. Only had Mrs. Floods in his
• 1:10:06
  power. So to speak, because he had,
• 1:10:08
  because he had Mrs. Flood already.
• 1:10:11
  And I think he was trying to control Mrs. Flood even more so
• 1:10:17
  was trying to do the spell. And maybe he made fails, but I
• 1:10:21
  don't know. Like I genuinely don't know how
• 1:10:24
  he came to be when he came to be.
• 1:10:26
  Who made him? He was another character I
• 1:10:30
  really like, though, even though we had to go back to the museum
• 1:10:32
  a couple of times, he was, and he was useful to the plot as
• 1:10:36
  well. Do you know?
• 1:10:36
  I've just remembered another bit where the Doctor gets naked, you
• 1:10:39
  know. Sorry to keep coming back.
• 1:10:40
  To that but. It is heavy on my mind.
• 1:10:42
  Do you remember the bit where he's in the bath?
• 1:10:44
  In the bath or all? The blood from all the the cuts
• 1:10:48
  he's got, it's all sort of bloody in the water and Angio
• 1:10:51
  Fitz come running in and there he is.
• 1:10:53
  Stark is in the bath. Yeah, that was like, and this
• 1:10:57
  time I don't think Angie couldn't help but have a Swatch
• 1:11:00
  what was in the bath? I mean, you weren't right.
• 1:11:04
  You would. Yeah.
• 1:11:06
  Did he have a tattoo as well actually?
• 1:11:08
  Yes, he got it during his hundred years he was a sailor
• 1:11:12
  for about who did. Lucky and he.
• 1:11:14
  Got a tattoo when he was on the boat.
• 1:11:16
  Right, OK, fair enough. Yeah, I.
• 1:11:19
  Promise you he flirts a bit with flit sometimes, and he's been
• 1:11:22
  promising to show fits where his tattoo is and now he finally
• 1:11:25
  has. Oh.
• 1:11:26
  Yeah, there we go. I don't have this site going on,
• 1:11:28
  but between that pay, you know, they're, they're a bit into
• 1:11:32
  each. Other he'd for out this at least
• 1:11:36
  the doctor seems more open like romantically and feeling just
• 1:11:42
  feelings in general, like to people like whenever he like.
• 1:11:48
  I think he was talking to Mrs. Floods when she was in human
• 1:11:51
  form and such and it was like reiterating to her, like you,
• 1:11:55
  you need to hear this from your not your abusive husbands that
• 1:11:59
  you are beautiful and such. Like the scenes like that and
• 1:12:03
  tip like talking about people's bodies and the sex party.
• 1:12:08
  Like he says that's one of the women looks quite well, well,
• 1:12:12
  kind of formed and such. I am.
• 1:12:16
  And there's it's like we don't hear this from the doctor.
• 1:12:18
  Normally we don't hear this sort of almost human take on people's
• 1:12:23
  bodies or how they look because everyone was like, Oh, the
• 1:12:27
  doctor's always going to be Tom Baker, who's like, Oh, you're a
• 1:12:30
  beautiful woman, probably like in sake of death or something.
• 1:12:32
  But no, this is a different doctor.
• 1:12:34
  He's got a different style and different way to express
• 1:12:37
  himself. He's not full on emotions like
• 1:12:40
  Shooty, but he's he's still got something there.
• 1:12:43
  What's so refreshing about the 8th doctrine in this second-half
• 1:12:45
  is you don't know. He's a Time Lord from the planet
• 1:12:48
  Gallifrey with all these regulations and bullshit and
• 1:12:51
  looms and whatever it is. All he knows is he's an alien
• 1:12:55
  who thinks and feels and he just heads out to the universe and
• 1:12:58
  experiences life, you know, So there's like a book where he has
• 1:13:01
  a daughter, he adopts a little girl, and for a whole decade,
• 1:13:05
  it's called Five Times. It's a beautiful book.
• 1:13:08
  He's a dad for like a decade in the 80s, absolutely gorgeous.
• 1:13:12
  So I really like that. And in the year of Intelligent
• 1:13:15
  Tigers, he has a, a, a bit of a, a flirtation and a, a romance
• 1:13:20
  with a, a man from a, a choir on that planet.
• 1:13:24
  So yeah, they're doing a bit of this.
• 1:13:26
  They're doing. I'll do it a bit.
• 1:13:27
  Of this, I think, yeah, it's certainly something I've had
• 1:13:29
  around like is it the Turing test as well?
• 1:13:31
  He's. Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, there's at
• 1:13:34
  least the. Arse off him.
• 1:13:36
  Yeah. So there's, yeah, there's,
• 1:13:38
  there's, there's more openness of a humane doctor and this form
• 1:13:45
  then can we stay in the books or in general with the doctor?
• 1:13:48
  And I do find that quite a nice sort of change as well,
• 1:13:53
  especially. Is that is that you haven't read
• 1:13:57
  a lot of these? I've read all of these.
• 1:14:00
  We've come to this book from 2 very different where this is in
• 1:14:04
  the run. I know what he went for the last
• 1:14:06
  one. What is going to happen next?
• 1:14:09
  And. And you're just reading this as
• 1:14:10
  a book in its own right. And we've both liked the
• 1:14:13
  interpretation of his character in this.
• 1:14:15
  And coming from those two different directions, it's
• 1:14:18
  almost like therapy for him. This book of like, right.
• 1:14:21
  I know this thing has happened. There's a dark thing in my past.
• 1:14:24
  It's literally chasing him at the start of this book.
• 1:14:26
  And at the end of it, he puts his arms around his friends and
• 1:14:28
  goes, do you know what? Fuck it.
• 1:14:30
  Let's just go and have fun, you know?
• 1:14:33
  Yeah. Like, I mean, this is, you know,
• 1:14:35
  having a doctor like this who just he he I mean, he still can
• 1:14:44
  be quite, you know, reluctant to give information to his friends,
• 1:14:48
  things like that. But overall he is still kind of
• 1:14:52
  striving to like solve the solve the day, help everyone and that
• 1:14:57
  sort of general spirit. He's not got the baggage of of
• 1:15:02
  it. Like he's, he says at one point
• 1:15:03
  near the end about who, like he doesn't know who he is.
• 1:15:07
  He's he's just trying to get along.
• 1:15:11
  But he's aware that there's a world of item that has been
• 1:15:13
  affected by him. And he just goes on and tries to
• 1:15:17
  do his best now. And having a dog without baggage
• 1:15:21
  is such a refreshing thing. New series should be doing that
• 1:15:26
  as well. Yeah, no more man pain, please.
• 1:15:31
  It teaches the continuity as well.
• 1:15:33
  There's no continuity in this writer books.
• 1:15:34
  There's no Daleks, no Five Men, no Master, none of that stuff,
• 1:15:38
  none of those lazy old tropes. They're forced to tell original
• 1:15:41
  stories, which is why books like this emerge, which feel really
• 1:15:45
  unique because they're not going, oh, you know, maybe it
• 1:15:48
  was the master all along. Yeah, no, like, I mean, it was
• 1:15:54
  it was my body because I hadn't read this literally since 2000
• 1:15:59
  and six, 2007, whenever that was slightly nearly 20 years now.
• 1:16:04
  And like it was not concerning, but it was like whenever I was
• 1:16:09
  seeing like French being thrown in of and I was like, oh, is, is
• 1:16:13
  something here going to translate to be the master?
• 1:16:16
  It's like going to do that again.
• 1:16:18
  But no, it just, it's just the way that Lloyd Rose tells
• 1:16:22
  stories by having again the character of New Orleans and the
• 1:16:26
  French history put in. It's not again, an allusion to
• 1:16:31
  to the old tropes of the past, which is.
• 1:16:33
  I think I can say it might have been like, trust me, we've got
• 1:16:37
  some continuity to wave through in those new adventures when you
• 1:16:40
  eventually get to the Vardams working with the Meddling Monk
• 1:16:43
  or I Oh. God, OK.
• 1:16:47
  I think it was a good approach, ditching the continuity and
• 1:16:50
  saying let's just tell some original stories for a bit.
• 1:16:53
  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's that's why I
• 1:16:54
  enjoy most out of Doctor Who. Like even when people talk about
• 1:17:01
  things in the in the new series, for example, like that first
• 1:17:05
  series of Jodie Whittaker for me was a trial and error, but was
• 1:17:10
  refreshing because it was just we're going to try different
• 1:17:13
  things, new things. And I was just like, yes, I
• 1:17:16
  just, I just needed that believer of because it felt
• 1:17:20
  bogged down, bugged down with so much stuff that I would just
• 1:17:24
  like, here's someone who's just fresh, buoyant, having ideas.
• 1:17:27
  And that's where, for me at least, Doctor Who fries best.
• 1:17:31
  Especially after I need to deal with the new.
• 1:17:34
  Avengers like Punjab, Kablam, the Witch Finders, it takes you
• 1:17:41
  away. I was like, yeah, they're really
• 1:17:43
  doing some new things there. I don't know if it's all
• 1:17:46
  working. But yeah, like, I mean, that's
• 1:17:50
  The thing is to me, there's some of them that I didn't think
• 1:17:53
  worked, but I was like, at least this is something different I've
• 1:17:57
  not experienced. You know, I was, I was hoping
• 1:18:02
  for that similar thing again when we were meant to be having
• 1:18:05
  a reboot there last year and was disappointed that it did not go
• 1:18:10
  that way. But the show flows when it has
• 1:18:15
  original ideas, original people making those ideas from places
• 1:18:18
  we don't expect and having an American woman right in the
• 1:18:22
  early 2000s as a way to do that like this book does.
• 1:18:26
  So yeah, that's better is within this book That kind of.
• 1:18:30
  Yeah. Really helps to broaden, as it
• 1:18:34
  were, the Doctor Who universe for us.
• 1:18:36
  Yeah. Even even Chipnall right?
• 1:18:39
  And I do like that era a lot. And I do think it got better as
• 1:18:42
  it went along. Even he by the end, he was just
• 1:18:45
  doing continuity. Like madness wasn't even the
• 1:18:48
  last of the Daleks assignment. Everyone was in there in those
• 1:18:51
  last couple of years was do you think it's to their credit that
• 1:18:55
  for an entire what it was like about 30 books, they just said,
• 1:18:59
  no, we're not doing that. We, we, we'll, we'll build our
• 1:19:02
  own continuity. We'll do our own arcs and things
• 1:19:04
  like that. And trust me, it got complicated
• 1:19:06
  and unsatisfying in places Like, you know, it always starts in a
• 1:19:09
  run of books. But yeah.
• 1:19:11
  Can I tell you a couple of bits about Lloyd Rose?
• 1:19:14
  Because I have read an interview.
• 1:19:16
  With her, yes. Please.
• 1:19:18
  And it's almost a way to ask you a question of something you said
• 1:19:20
  you wanted to talk about sort of, you know, linking this to
• 1:19:24
  Love and War because Lloyd Rose is a enormous fan of the New
• 1:19:29
  Adventures. She loves them.
• 1:19:31
  And she wanted to bring a bit of the New Adventures to the 8th
• 1:19:35
  Doctor books, right? But also, she's a massive fan of
• 1:19:38
  the 8th Doctor, but she's reading these 8th Doctor books
• 1:19:40
  in the first half of the run. She's going, this isn't right.
• 1:19:43
  It's just, I don't know, he's just too bounce around the place
• 1:19:47
  like ticket. I just thought she says in the
• 1:19:49
  interview, I thought, you know what, I got whinge about it.
• 1:19:53
  Or I could just sit down and write a book of the 8th Doctor
• 1:19:56
  that I'd like to read about. And so that's what she did here.
• 1:19:59
  And bravo to her because he, he sort of jumps off the page.
• 1:20:03
  But yeah, she loves a new adventure.
• 1:20:04
  So there is references in this book in various points to 12
• 1:20:10
  separate new adventures. Now, I didn't get them all and I
• 1:20:14
  didn't really say no to them that they're all listed on
• 1:20:16
  TARDIS Wiki where she's talking about imagery and and I think
• 1:20:21
  it's mostly in that dream sequence before he meets McCoy
• 1:20:24
  in his head. Saying go away, come back.
• 1:20:27
  I think it's all around that part.
• 1:20:29
  So did you see some links of love and war then?
• 1:20:32
  I mean, to me that that one about the yeah, like killing
• 1:20:36
  yourself, having killed myself before, sort of like I was
• 1:20:39
  thinking, oh, is this having just done love and war?
• 1:20:42
  And I was thinking about the yeah, the 7th dog in The Cave
• 1:20:45
  doing a deal to kill the sex doctors or whatever.
• 1:20:49
  I mean. There was an owl in there, did
• 1:20:50
  you notice? There was there was is that
• 1:20:57
  could be another 1. And I yeah, I don't know if
• 1:21:02
  there were any of those that I was picking up on.
• 1:21:05
  I mean, I've only I've not got all of them in in my head, but.
• 1:21:08
  I thought, I thought the fact that she was really leaning into
• 1:21:12
  the Doctor having a dark past felt very new adventures because
• 1:21:17
  they didn't after the Doctor lost his memory, they didn't do
• 1:21:20
  that too much. Whereas this whole book is built
• 1:21:23
  around him having a past he doesn't know about, possibly
• 1:21:27
  catching up with him. And that's very McCoy, the new
• 1:21:30
  adventures, you know, the author and all these things he did in
• 1:21:32
  the past. Yeah, I mean, well, to be
• 1:21:35
  honest, I mean, when when I've read the book and probably even
• 1:21:38
  the wee bit now, I wasn't thinking too much on that being
• 1:21:42
  a an exclusive thing to the to the new adventures because,
• 1:21:46
  well, it's a new series. Now in it.
• 1:21:48
  Well, yeah, like at the time with him, you know, that's like
• 1:21:51
  first series Doctor in particular with Eccleston.
• 1:21:54
  Like there's almost a reference to the old coming stone in the
• 1:21:57
  book. It's like a it's when he's in
• 1:21:59
  the cemetery and there's a woman talking to him and there's a
• 1:22:03
  storm coming in and and she says you're a rider on the storm or
• 1:22:06
  something. And it's like it's, there's
• 1:22:09
  allusions to him being this sort of like almost uncoming storm
• 1:22:13
  element. And which again is a reference
• 1:22:16
  maybe to new adventures, because that's where his first reference
• 1:22:19
  does that. Oncoming storms in love and war,
• 1:22:21
  I think. Camera Obscura.
• 1:22:24
  She explicitly names him Times Championed, which is a bit
• 1:22:30
  further in our second one. Yeah.
• 1:22:33
  But yes, so like all that sort of duck past stuff, I was maybe
• 1:22:38
  feeling more connected to that within the new series rather
• 1:22:42
  than the new adventures because of but I guess from when I was
• 1:22:46
  reading it, perhaps that's what was at my forefront when
• 1:22:50
  thinking about the Doctor's Pass in that way.
• 1:22:52
  But. That was the refreshing thing
• 1:22:53
  about Jodie, when it was like, no man pain.
• 1:22:55
  She's just happy to go off and have adventures and then see the
• 1:22:59
  next season. No, you're the timeless child.
• 1:23:02
  All this terrible things. In your butt?
• 1:23:03
  Oh. There we go.
• 1:23:05
  Yeah, yeah, we have to always have some deep lore.
• 1:23:08
  And as much as loving it, it was always getting to the point
• 1:23:11
  where having the house a long battle, quite literally, I was
• 1:23:15
  like, yeah, it was. A great effect, though, wasn't
• 1:23:17
  it? A great.
• 1:23:18
  Special. Oh yeah, I, I was, I was
• 1:23:20
  whooping with Joyce at what I I'm still thinking of as the,
• 1:23:24
  the House of Longborough. I have.
• 1:23:26
  Not called it the House of Longborough, do they so?
• 1:23:29
  Exactly. Exactly.
• 1:23:31
  Do you have any, any notes that you haven't covered or a sort of
• 1:23:36
  a summary of the city of the dead before we move on to your
• 1:23:39
  recommend? Yeah, I mean, to be honest,
• 1:23:42
  yeah. I think we've gone through kind
• 1:23:44
  of everyone, you know, all the characters, they're so well done
• 1:23:48
  in this book. The element of magic is
• 1:23:52
  something for the time that really feels kind of hit in that
• 1:23:56
  cultural zeitgeist. And New Orleans as a as a
• 1:24:01
  character essentially in its own book, it does bring the city to
• 1:24:06
  life and in in this book. And yeah, I really enjoyed that.
• 1:24:12
  I really enjoyed this experience of the 8th Doctor and his
• 1:24:16
  companions. It's a different take to that
• 1:24:21
  8th Doctor perhaps, but it is still a, a very valid way to
• 1:24:27
  explore the Doctor and, you know, themes that we have
• 1:24:31
  throughout the show really in terms of him having a duck past
• 1:24:35
  or having, you know, that spirit of wanting to do good even if he
• 1:24:40
  doesn't really know where he is or whatever.
• 1:24:42
  So I, yeah, I thought this is a really good piece of, of work.
• 1:24:48
  And yeah, I would absolutely recommend it to anyone because
• 1:24:53
  I've not read it in nearly 20 years and I didn't feel put off
• 1:24:56
  by allusions to any arcs. So if I didn't feel that anyone
• 1:25:02
  wouldn't feel that if they picked it up.
• 1:25:03
  So yeah, recommend. I mean, I'll send a message to
• 1:25:06
  you, didn't I? Maybe with a little bit of
• 1:25:08
  hyperbole in it, which has been going to happen, where I've sort
• 1:25:11
  of summed up. I say it's hallucinogenic and
• 1:25:14
  haunting and spellbinding. I can't put it down.
• 1:25:17
  But that wasn't a lie. Like I tore through it every
• 1:25:20
  days. And if I've sort of picked up
• 1:25:22
  the plot points a little bit, that's nothing.
• 1:25:25
  Just the experience of reading the prose, experiencing those
• 1:25:28
  characters and getting this close to the doctor as well.
• 1:25:31
  I just love that. Yeah, it had.
• 1:25:34
  It had quite literally our actual magical way of weaving
• 1:25:37
  birds together. Like it was genuinely, it was so
• 1:25:41
  smooth and how it was delivered and I yeah, really just you.
• 1:25:45
  Know what I don't wish every Doctor Who was just well written
• 1:25:48
  in every Doctor Who book. Unfortunately, I'm here to tell
• 1:25:50
  you they are. Well, yes, but yeah, so you
• 1:25:54
  mentioned, you know, if I had a recommendation as well and the
• 1:25:58
  one that I actually would recommend is something I
• 1:26:02
  mentioned earlier, which was history one O 1.
• 1:26:04
  Oh, tell me why. So History one O 1 I read during
• 1:26:10
  COVID, I want to say, and it can be a kind of convoluted thing to
• 1:26:17
  read in terms of the mechanics of how the book goes, but it's
• 1:26:21
  such a brilliant novel about kind of playing on the things of
• 1:26:29
  Oh well, and the the civil war in Spain.
• 1:26:34
  But the way that that civil war unfolds and you know, you know,
• 1:26:37
  we have fits in Guernica. We have, you know, the talks are
• 1:26:41
  helping with the resistance like this.
• 1:26:43
  There's such a, it's such a wonderfully woven story and
• 1:26:50
  basically narratives and how our story is told is a key part of,
• 1:26:56
  you know, the, the, the alien threat within it.
• 1:26:59
  And it's a really interesting book to read for that as well as
• 1:27:04
  the historic side of it as well. So it's, it's some, it's, I
• 1:27:09
  think it's maybe slept on. I've not really heard anyone
• 1:27:11
  talk about 101 ever, but I really just, I really loved it
• 1:27:17
  and and how it kind of explored that, that historic, historical
• 1:27:21
  side with the Spanish level war, but also trying to make him a
• 1:27:26
  felon that has a perception and narrative as a kind of felon
• 1:27:34
  almost. Isn't the end to the story that
• 1:27:36
  the Doctor Fitz and Angie goes to and they see that famous
• 1:27:41
  painting battle and they can't. They're not getting any kind of
• 1:27:46
  emotional response from it. So they know that something has
• 1:27:50
  shifted in history that they're not feeling.
• 1:27:53
  Because she remembers having, like, a visceral reaction to
• 1:27:56
  that picture in the past. Yeah.
• 1:27:58
  Just like the perception of the art.
• 1:28:00
  And then I've just got this weird image.
• 1:28:02
  Tell me if I'm going crazy of this sort of cataloguer or this
• 1:28:05
  alien that's in history and he's got like all of these pictures
• 1:28:11
  sort of suspended in the air. Yeah.
• 1:28:14
  Am I making that up? That's, I think that is kind of
• 1:28:18
  the the thrust of yeah, this perception and cataloguing of
• 1:28:25
  narratives of history and things like how the story is told
• 1:28:28
  essentially is one of the key themes of the book.
• 1:28:31
  And that character does that. Yeah.
• 1:28:34
  Like it's, it's a really interesting book to to to read.
• 1:28:38
  It's really different to a lot of Doctor Who novels just in
• 1:28:42
  terms of how it almost takes that quite literal meta way to
• 1:28:46
  deal with a text and and things. It's it can be a bit hard to get
• 1:28:51
  your head around at first, but I I really did enjoy it and
• 1:28:54
  another female very much work. Well, yes, yes, there's there's
• 1:28:59
  a strong it's a strong showing in terms of just, again,
• 1:29:03
  original ideas, having new writers come in and look what
• 1:29:09
  they can come up with. It's genuinely a, you know.
• 1:29:11
  What came after History 101? Oh no, But camera.
• 1:29:15
  Obscura by Lloyd Rose we had two women.
• 1:29:17
  My God, what a true. What a time the.
• 1:29:22
  Reason I think that one, because I do remember that being a
• 1:29:24
  really strong book is the reason I think that one is sort of not
• 1:29:27
  for Gosford, but less talked about is Camera Obscura is
• 1:29:31
  massively popular and the crooked world is the other side,
• 1:29:35
  which is Doctor Who goes to Looney Tunes world, which is
• 1:29:38
  very memorable. I think before that is Johnny
• 1:29:41
  Morris's Anachrophobia, which is like a sapphire and steel horror
• 1:29:44
  book where people turn into horrible clocks and that's
• 1:29:48
  really remember. So it's like it's almost like,
• 1:29:50
  my God, it's such a strong run. You really, really have to stand
• 1:29:53
  out to stand out, you know, but. Yeah, it is a good Yeah, it is.
• 1:29:58
  And it's yeah, I've, I've not had much fault caught on about
• 1:30:01
  it. And but I, I think it's worth,
• 1:30:04
  it's worth putting out there saying give it another read, not
• 1:30:08
  only just for it's really, you know, unique concept with, you
• 1:30:13
  know, narrative and perception. But like the Spanish Civil War,
• 1:30:16
  there's so much stuff there as well that they that they do
• 1:30:19
  actually have. And not to denigrate anything in
• 1:30:24
  this book, but there's so much that everyone is doing, like the
• 1:30:27
  Doctor is doing that Fitz is doing in Gwanika, that Angie's
• 1:30:33
  doing as well. It's like this this proper arcs
• 1:30:38
  and twists for everyone to kind of work with.
• 1:30:41
  So yeah, we'd recommend that. Well, I am going to, I'm going
• 1:30:46
  to be confess something to you now.
• 1:30:48
  I really love talking about Doctor Who books with you.
• 1:30:51
  So we've done it twice now and I would like to do it again.
• 1:30:54
  And now there's no hurry, because I know you got to read a
• 1:30:56
  lot of books. For your own.
• 1:30:59
  But you know, let's try and have some kind of oral commitment, if
• 1:31:03
  you're, pardon the pun, to do another book.
• 1:31:06
  What's a book on your shelf that you've got that you're not going
• 1:31:08
  to do in your run? Right in your run.
• 1:31:12
  So not a not a Virgin new adventure that you fancy
• 1:31:15
  reading. Oh to be honest, I mean like I
• 1:31:21
  said it was it was during COVID that history one O 1.
• 1:31:24
  Oh, can we please? I mean, I was going to suggest
• 1:31:26
  it there. Then I thought, it sounds like
• 1:31:29
  he knows it quite well, but I mean, I'd love to.
• 1:31:31
  Read that one. It has.
• 1:31:32
  It's been maybe probably three years or 3-4 years maybe.
• 1:31:37
  And so, yeah, I think that is maybe deserving of a reread.
• 1:31:41
  There's so much to unpack in that book as well.
• 1:31:45
  Yeah, I'll twist my arms. Talk about the 8th Doctor, Fitz
• 1:31:47
  and Angie. Yes.
• 1:31:50
  So yes, I'll be happy to to come back for that.
• 1:31:53
  Thank you very much. As I may have cried and you
• 1:31:57
  don't want to see a grown man do it.
• 1:32:00
  Can I ask you please to before we go, just tell everybody again
• 1:32:05
  about your podcast. And I kind of said it would be
• 1:32:08
  one or the other, but let's do both.
• 1:32:10
  Recommend one episode please for them to go and watch.
• 1:32:14
  So yeah, I do the Too broad and too deep podcasts so we can be
• 1:32:18
  found on Blue Sky and Instagram mainly.
• 1:32:23
  I do need to post novel and our tag is at too Broad too Deep pod
• 1:32:30
  and Facebook is where we're on my own is Anthony Carroll and
• 1:32:33
  Blue Sky, but I don't Pol post as much as Doctor Who on that.
• 1:32:39
  So anything Doctor Who you'll see on Too Broad, too Deep.
• 1:32:42
  If you do want to hear an entry, maybe a different episode to a
• 1:32:46
  book review, maybe our one on Nightshades because we had Toby
• 1:32:52
  Haydock on and Toby Haydock being Toby Haydock, he can wax
• 1:32:57
  lyrically about anything. And you know.
• 1:33:00
  How long was the recording? How late were you up?
• 1:33:03
  I've been up two in the morning before.
• 1:33:05
  Talking it was, I think it was about two hours or so, but it's
• 1:33:11
  because he's such a good, a good raconteur and you know,
• 1:33:14
  nightshades a book about, you know, nostalgia and, and the the
• 1:33:18
  worries of that. And so him reflecting on
• 1:33:21
  ironically reflecting on nostalgia was a was a really
• 1:33:25
  nice time to talk about and you know, not just about his own
• 1:33:29
  past nostalgia, but also fandom nostalgia, things like that.
• 1:33:33
  And so it's a nice sort of sequiturion to that that
• 1:33:37
  subject, let alone I've had a new adventure.
• 1:33:41
  So yeah. I hate you about quite a mass.
• 1:33:44
  Oh goodness, yeah. I mean, I, I didn't, I didn't
• 1:33:48
  dare try to ever bring it up too much for him because I was like,
• 1:33:51
  well, you know, this has got some quite a massive things and
• 1:33:54
  he's like, here's everything I like so.
• 1:33:59
  Yeah, I think that book, you know, you should have said.
• 1:34:02
  I think he did. I think he did say that, but
• 1:34:05
  yes, it was. It's a good sort of different
• 1:34:10
  episode because it's not just about the book, but about what
• 1:34:13
  nostogia means to someone. So yeah.
• 1:34:16
  Well, that just leads me to say thank you very much for your
• 1:34:21
  time tonight. It is a delight to get to know
• 1:34:23
  you, Anthony. Until we head to I can't say it.
• 1:34:26
  Can you say the name of the place?
• 1:34:28
  Again when Anika. Oh, that's very sexy.
• 1:34:32
  That's yes. I shall just say until next time
• 1:34:35
  and if you follow me, we'll go off now and do the voodoo sex
• 1:34:38
  ceremony to see out the episode. I'll just get my velvet rope.