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Hamster Book Club - Tales of Terror (featuring James Lark) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:02
  Over the years there had been other children and some adults
• 0:06
  who had strayed into the woods and made the monsters
• 0:08
  acquaintance. Starman remembered one child in
• 0:12
  particular who had brought him a box full of lead soldiers when
• 0:16
  the Dalek had demanded a supply of metal.
• 0:19
  The little boy had brought his most treasured possessions quite
• 0:22
  willingly and watched as the Dalek had heated them up and
• 0:25
  melted them into a brilliant shining soup, which he then used
• 0:29
  to fix the shielding around his interior shell.
• 0:32
  Yes, that boy 20 years ago had saved his life.
• 0:36
  It had been almost a pity when the time had come to exterminate
• 0:40
  him. Pity.
• 0:44
  The Dalek checked himself. Why was that word even in his
• 0:47
  vocabulary? He was more polluted than he had
• 0:50
  realized. If only his laser weapon still
• 0:53
  worked as it had 60 years ago. Please.
• 0:57
  The human creature they called Ian was whimpering.
• 1:00
  What if they can't find this man?
• 1:02
  What will you do, star man? He noticed that the green light
• 1:06
  was flashing more frenetically. They have located him.
• 1:10
  They have brought him into the woods.
• 1:13
  Who is it? Ian asked.
• 1:16
  He is our greatest. They were interrupted by a great
• 1:19
  burst of laughter. You're hardly the scourge of the
• 1:23
  Galaxy, are you? Came a voice that sounded both
• 1:25
  young and old, loud and soft, confident and yet filled with
• 1:29
  wonder. He was followed by a lady with
• 1:32
  blonde hair, then Ian's brother and sister, Dark Tar.
• 1:38
  Oh dear, dear, you are in a bad way.
• 1:42
  Separated from your fleet, away from your bombs and Arnie's.
• 1:45
  You will obey me. I'll do nothing of the sort, old
• 1:50
  chap. You're far from the time and
• 1:51
  place you're meant to be. You're stuck here, rather like
• 1:55
  myself. Exactly.
• 1:58
  We know about your exile to this time zone.
• 2:02
  You do? News of your shame travelled far
• 2:06
  and wide. Your enemies rejoiced.
• 2:10
  The man in the cloak looked briefly annoyed.
• 2:13
  Why are you involving these children in your undoubtedly
• 2:16
  wicked schemes? They are helping me, as others
• 2:20
  have in the past. Yes, it looks like you've
• 2:25
  patched yourself up with all kinds of bits and pieces of
• 2:27
  junk. I congratulate you on your
• 2:29
  ingenuity, but this can't go on all at once.
• 2:33
  An ice blue glare surrounded the Dalek, rippling along his outer
• 2:37
  shell. What's he doing to Ian?
• 2:40
  Shouted Ange. Make him stop, Doctor.
• 2:43
  Do something. Gasp.
• 2:45
  Joe Dalek. These are hatchlings.
• 2:48
  You're threatening. Juveniles, you will do as I
• 2:52
  command, Doctor, or they will die.
• 2:57
  Very well. My message has been sent into
• 3:01
  the vortex to summon the Dalek fleet.
• 3:05
  If you help me, I will stop them invading this planet.
• 3:11
  Who'd want to invade 1973? Your love are much more
• 3:15
  interested in the future. They would come for you.
• 3:28
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 3:31
  My name is Joe Ford and it is a delight for me to have Mr. James
• 3:37
  log back with me to say hello James.
• 3:39
  Hello, a delight to be here. James, I have posed a question
• 3:44
  to you only about half an hour ago.
• 3:47
  I've given you absolutely no time at all to think about it,
• 3:51
  and I know that you have not read the entire breadth and
• 3:54
  length of Doctor Who fiction. Not even close.
• 3:57
  I I feel intimidated talking to you about this because I know
• 4:01
  that you are very well read when it comes to Doctor Who fiction.
• 4:04
  Oh well then my first impromptu question is this.
• 4:07
  How much have you read? I I read a lot of targets when I
• 4:13
  was back in the back in the kind of primary school days before
• 4:19
  the stuff was kind of so readily available on video.
• 4:24
  Even if it had been we, I mean, we weren't, we only got a video
• 4:27
  recorder in 89. So the, the, the, the options
• 4:32
  were limited, whereas Target books that they were lining the
• 4:35
  shelves of WH Smith. So a lot of typically for, for a
• 4:38
  Doctor Who founded my generation, a lot of it was
• 4:40
  first experience through the Target novelizations.
• 4:45
  I think I've said to you before, I never really got into the the
• 4:48
  new adventures when they first came out because I was sort of
• 4:52
  offended by the idea that they were, they were kind of doing,
• 4:55
  doing continuing the TV series where when what I really wanted
• 4:59
  was ATV series. Also, I didn't like, I didn't
• 5:02
  like the kind of too broad and too deep description on the back
• 5:06
  I had, you know, without reading them at all.
• 5:08
  I totally judged those books by their covers.
• 5:11
  And they looked a little bit grown up and a little bit like,
• 5:13
  I didn't want Doctor Who to be grown up.
• 5:15
  And I want it to be just like it was when Sylvester McCoy was the
• 5:20
  doctor on the television. Excuse me, are you the James
• 5:23
  Lark that came onto my book club episode talking about the
• 5:27
  broadest and deepest and most adult of Doctor Who?
• 5:31
  That was years later, the the first new adventure I read was
• 5:35
  Shakedown, which I mean, that's quite late in the range, isn't
• 5:41
  it? And that was bought for me.
• 5:43
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a nice.
• 5:44
  And it's Terrance Sticks, you know, doing actually it's
• 5:46
  Terrance Sticks doing what he does best because he does the
• 5:49
  the Shakedown spin off in kind of 128 pages in the middle of
• 5:53
  the book. And then he books it.
• 5:54
  The book ends it really, really elegantly, actually with with
• 5:57
  stories either side that fit in with the kind of straight to
• 6:00
  video release so well. And then I read that and I
• 6:02
  thought, well, there's nothing to be scared of here.
• 6:04
  But by then I was what, 1516 probably so that I was more the
• 6:09
  target audience for those books. So then I did pick up quite a
• 6:12
  few of the new adventures and they they maintained a kind of
• 6:16
  mystique. I had a friend at school who he
• 6:18
  arrived in the sixth form and he had all of them on his shelf and
• 6:21
  he talked very knowledgeably about the Carmel master plan and
• 6:25
  the, and you know, all, all the kind of the things leading
• 6:28
  towards Lungbarrow. So I used to borrowed those from
• 6:31
  him. And then when the when that's
• 6:34
  sort of ironically, just as I was getting into those, they
• 6:37
  lost their license and the BBC started putting out these books
• 6:42
  with again, which I judge by their covers in exactly the way
• 6:45
  you're not supposed to. And the covers were pretty butt
• 6:48
  ugly, I thought. And I I stand by that judgement
• 6:51
  really. I don't think the black sheep
• 6:52
  stuff has ever looked particularly good.
• 6:55
  I don't think much of it is aged very well until they until they
• 6:58
  realised that they didn't have to kind of do a big photoshoppy
• 7:02
  graphics much on the front of the cover.
• 7:06
  They they they just looked like a slightly inferior range.
• 7:10
  So I never really kind of got into them.
• 7:12
  And the ones I did read, I was lent the two John Peel Dalek
• 7:16
  ones and I thought they were pants.
• 7:20
  I've got they were they? Well, I've never gone back to
• 7:23
  them, so maybe. I don't don't do it.
• 7:25
  Life is short. I, I bought Illegal Alien, which
• 7:30
  sort of did what I wanted it to, which was, it was sort of McCoy
• 7:33
  era nostalgia, but it didn't do what I really wanted it to
• 7:36
  because by that age I wanted the range to be doing exciting,
• 7:39
  daring stuff like I thought the New Adventures had done.
• 7:43
  And Illegal Alien definitely wasn't doing that.
• 7:46
  So, yeah, so that's why the biggest gap in my knowledge is
• 7:50
  the, the BBC range, which I know you've, you know, I've, I had, I
• 7:55
  do listen to your podcast and I've, I've been impressed by
• 7:59
  kind of your, your eulogising of that era.
• 8:02
  And I'm really excited by the, some of the stuff you've been
• 8:04
  talking about. And the, the, the horrific
• 8:07
  reality is that I don't really get a lot of time to read at the
• 8:10
  moment. And when I do, not everything I
• 8:14
  read is a Doctor Who book. So it does, it does take a while
• 8:17
  to kind of catch up with these things.
• 8:18
  One day, you know, I'll either get a, you know, a serious
• 8:22
  illness that will kind of lay me out for several weeks and I'll
• 8:25
  just work my way through the through, you know, I'll start
• 8:28
  with the burning or something like that.
• 8:29
  And I'll just do that bit of the rain.
• 8:31
  But yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm enjoying those books vicariously
• 8:35
  through your reviews rather than by actually reading them.
• 8:38
  Well, I, I mean, you're getting a bad impression because I'm
• 8:41
  generally doing the best of BBC books.
• 8:44
  But recently a couple of the book club, as I said, can we
• 8:46
  just do some really shit ones, please?
• 8:48
  What we're doing is saying nice things about these books and
• 8:50
  there are some really bad ones out there.
• 8:52
  So you've got a wave of brilliant reviews of terrible
• 8:56
  books coming up as well. So you get a, a more, a broader
• 8:59
  picture of, of what they're like.
• 9:02
  And that that makes it very strange to ask you to dip in
• 9:05
  with the Crooked world when I did.
• 9:08
  Yeah. Well, and, and I think that
• 9:09
  probably came across that this was a a a part of the range I
• 9:13
  had no prior knowledge of and an.
• 9:17
  Utterly unrepresented and a. Really a really odd novel as
• 9:21
  well, but an interesting one, you know, as as a as an advert
• 9:25
  for what it was doing where, you know, if talking about wanting
• 9:28
  the range to be more ambitious, well, the Crooked World
• 9:31
  certainly is ambitious and doing something that you couldn't do
• 9:34
  in any other format. So yeah, that that definitely
• 9:37
  made me want to pick up some more.
• 9:39
  You know, that sort of trad versus rad thing that was the
• 9:42
  BBC books problems was it was the ultimate rad novels when
• 9:45
  they wanted to and boy, oh boy, could they do a lot of trad as
• 9:49
  well, like generic trad. But I do think overall there,
• 9:53
  that's about 40% of Doctor Who fiction output that you've read
• 9:58
  there. So with that in mind, my
• 10:02
  question then is what do you think?
• 10:06
  And you're obviously going to go sort of towards Target and new
• 10:08
  adventures here. Which author do you think isn't
• 10:11
  spoken about enough that you really quite like?
• 10:14
  Well when when you sent the question I had AI had a glance
• 10:20
  down the list of authors who wrote for the new adventures
• 10:21
  because I thought is there anyone in there that has
• 10:24
  slightly UN unsung? And I think the answer is
• 10:27
  probably not. I think the ones that were worth
• 10:30
  picking up and giving more opportunities to got them with
• 10:34
  the BBC range. So I don't think I can really
• 10:38
  pull any of the New Adventures authors out.
• 10:40
  And the ones that that the ones that remain unsung from that
• 10:44
  range probably deserve to be just quietly forgotten.
• 10:49
  So I'll have. I'll have read your review of
• 10:51
  The Pit now since you since you read it out for me.
• 10:54
  I thought I enjoyed it so much I actually wouldn't have found the
• 10:56
  review and read it again. You took great joy in writing.
• 11:02
  There was a lot of fury in that I.
• 11:04
  Know I could say my. Way through that book, but.
• 11:06
  Boy, it was funny as well, that review.
• 11:08
  It was way funnier than the fucking book.
• 11:10
  I'll say yeah. So I'm going to come back to one
• 11:13
  I've mentioned and also you said underappreciated.
• 11:17
  I am saying this in the knowledge that this author has
• 11:20
  been very much appreciated again by you.
• 11:23
  And on this podcast, I just don't know why we don't talk
• 11:26
  more about Don Cotton, whose 3 novelizations are all absolute
• 11:33
  gems. And I think that I, I think that
• 11:36
  the quality of the writing in, in completely different ways.
• 11:43
  Actually. I mean, again, there are three
• 11:44
  very expensive. He only novelized three.
• 11:47
  He did his own two stories, The Myth Makers and the Gunfighters,
• 11:52
  and then he did the Romans. We got no more from him.
• 11:58
  And I just I've all three of those books.
• 12:00
  You look at that and you look at the range and the the absolute
• 12:04
  craftsmanship. I think why on earth and what
• 12:08
  must it have been like for Donald Cotton writing those at a
• 12:12
  time when The Gunfighters was considered the worst Doctor Who
• 12:15
  story ever in which people were pretty vocal about it.
• 12:18
  He must have been aware probably.
• 12:22
  And yet turning out this this stuff, which I think has just
• 12:26
  aged like a wonderful fine wine. The myth makers is poetic and
• 12:31
  the and it the comedy is beautifully handled.
• 12:35
  Then The Gunfighters is written as a kind of hokey Western and
• 12:40
  not that I've read a lot of Western novels, but he gets the
• 12:42
  dialects absolutely right. And you know exactly what he's
• 12:47
  you know where he's coming from. You, you straight away kind of
• 12:49
  go, no, I get this. I can hear the voice.
• 12:51
  I can hear the kind of the the the narration style.
• 12:54
  I can see what it is that he's sending up.
• 12:56
  I love how much grit he was willing to put into the gunfire.
• 12:59
  Just so alcohol, fuel, grungy, awful, violent place.
• 13:04
  Or the type that you can't really see too much in the noise
• 13:07
  and 60s on TV. He just goes to town.
• 13:10
  And with the myth makers. I couldn't believe just how
• 13:14
  beautiful the language was in that book.
• 13:17
  Such A and I'm not I don't think any of the other target book
• 13:20
  writers, you know, they work sort of deliberately writing for
• 13:23
  kids. But I think Donald Cotton was
• 13:26
  writing for intelligent kids. Oh, so he used really sort of
• 13:30
  big words that aged 44. I read this this year, was going
• 13:36
  to the dictionary go, what the hell does that mean?
• 13:37
  You know, like, really. Smart, which is what that range
• 13:42
  was meant to do. I mean, Terrance Dix to some
• 13:45
  extent used, you know, taught us words absolutely the right
• 13:48
  context in which to be doing that, but also the the kind of
• 13:52
  the classical illusions. You know, he's kind of going,
• 13:55
  some people might have studied this stuff.
• 13:57
  Some people will be interested in Greek myths, and I'm going to
• 14:00
  put some stuff in for them. The subtext, the, the fact that
• 14:03
  he makes, you know, sneaky references to, you know, sex and
• 14:07
  sexuality when, you know, in a way that probably flew over even
• 14:10
  John Nathan Turner's head. Yeah, I, I think that.
• 14:20
  I think I said this before. I think that's the the best
• 14:23
  writing in a Doctor Who book ever.
• 14:25
  I can't think of anything comparable.
• 14:27
  What? The myth makers.
• 14:28
  Yeah. It blew my mind.
• 14:29
  Really. Yeah.
• 14:30
  I I'd never read another Doctor Who book quite like it.
• 14:33
  Mind you, I've never read a Doctor Who book quite like the
• 14:36
  Romans either. Oh.
• 14:37
  Yeah, the the Romans is conceptually also, I mean, it's
• 14:45
  again, he's doing kind of what great authors have done since
• 14:50
  Michael Frayn, famously David Mitchell, where they take
• 14:53
  different voices. And it takes real expertise to
• 14:56
  be able to channel different characters into into prose.
• 15:02
  But also it's a really funny idea that all the characters in
• 15:06
  the Romans are narrating their story in different contexts.
• 15:10
  And, you know, Ian Chesterton is writing letters back to the
• 15:13
  headmaster of Cole Hill School to try and explain his absence.
• 15:17
  The the the character who is it who is keeping a diary?
• 15:21
  Is it Nero's wife? It's, you know, I, I can't
• 15:25
  remember. Do you know what I I listened to
• 15:26
  the audio, but recently, which they brought out with lots of
• 15:30
  different narrators doing the different letters.
• 15:35
  Yeah, I think it might have been.
• 15:38
  What, but what the the image that it comes just is, is also
• 15:43
  while this is all going on, while they're all kind of going
• 15:46
  through their various different adventures, is that they are
• 15:48
  pausing at various points to write a letter or to take a
• 15:51
  diary entry, which gets increasingly absurd to picture
• 15:54
  because of the situations they're in.
• 15:56
  So it's slightly more of a kind of a, a comedy romp, that one,
• 15:59
  but it's very skillfully done. Well, and it is telling the
• 16:02
  story that you saw on the screen, but in no way in the way
• 16:06
  you saw it on the screen. And the only comparable book I
• 16:09
  can think of in modern days is Dalek.
• 16:13
  Did you read Dalek By No. No, no, no, no.
• 16:16
  It's on my shelf. Oh.
• 16:17
  I cannot use the ones. I haven't done it enough because
• 16:20
  it also tells the story that's in Dalek, but from the point of
• 16:24
  view of all the secondary characters and giving them huge
• 16:28
  sort of back stories and things like that.
• 16:30
  And the actual what's on the screen is about 20% of the book,
• 16:34
  and the rest of the book is just telling you all about these
• 16:37
  characters in such interesting and very dark ways as well.
• 16:41
  I have heard that I'm really excited actually, by the way
• 16:43
  that writers seem to have engaged with the the new target
• 16:47
  novelizations and found the most exciting, interesting ways of of
• 16:51
  writing. Again, you know, engaging kids
• 16:53
  with writing and and say this is what you can do with a a book in
• 16:57
  the knowledge that these target books are not doing what the old
• 17:01
  ones had to do. The old ones were filling in
• 17:02
  stories that, as far as the Rice were aware, the kids were never
• 17:06
  going to watch again. Whereas the the people writing
• 17:10
  target novelizations now know that the kids they're writing
• 17:13
  for have probably seen these stories several times and will
• 17:16
  carry on going back to them so that you know they're doing
• 17:19
  exactly the right thing. Which is saying, OK, but here's
• 17:22
  a different way to experience this story.
• 17:23
  Here's what you can do with pros.
• 17:26
  Prioritize the giggle as well. That's another very imaginative
• 17:30
  take on on ATV story. I've just asked our school
• 17:33
  librarian to to to lay in a whole set of target books for
• 17:39
  for the for the school library. So, so they're sitting there
• 17:41
  now, so I should probably borrow them before any of the pupils in
• 17:44
  my school get to. My God, I'd love to have that
• 17:47
  sort of power, you know, to tell the librarian to get in certain
• 17:50
  books. I'm not Lamish, not sure it's
• 17:55
  power if there was an element of bribery in there, an element of
• 17:58
  me doing her job for her as well, so.
• 18:00
  Well, to answer that question for myself, I want to talk about
• 18:05
  an author that he is talked about because he's written so
• 18:09
  many bloody Doctor Who books that he couldn't not be talked
• 18:13
  about at some point. But I just don't think the
• 18:16
  consistency of his books. So I'm talking about Justin
• 18:21
  Richards, who has. Written.
• 18:23
  Tons of Doctor Who books for Virgin, for BBC, for the new
• 18:27
  series of Ventures and beyond. You know he must have written
• 18:30
  5050 Doctor Who books easily. But just like and to say solid
• 18:36
  meat and potatoes Doctor Who. I do not mean that as an insult
• 18:39
  because I know if I pick up a Justin Richards books, it's
• 18:41
  going to at least be a good read.
• 18:43
  You know, sometimes it's going to be a great read, but it's
• 18:46
  always going to be to a certain standard.
• 18:48
  He'll always capture the regulars.
• 18:50
  Well, they'll always be two or three twists towards the end of
• 18:54
  the book that. Well, some that you do see
• 18:55
  coming, some that you don't see coming, because he's a he's a
• 18:58
  very good plotter as well. Yeah.
• 19:03
  And I just like I feel like everybody Lords, especially on
• 19:07
  this book club, thanks to me, you know, the Lance Parkins of
• 19:10
  this world, the Steve Lyons, the Paul Cornells, you know, but
• 19:14
  you've got you do have certain levels of writers in there as
• 19:18
  well, which I think are just producing consistently good work
• 19:22
  like Justin Richards, but he. Was, I mean, he was considered
• 19:25
  clearly a safe pair of hands. And again, that's not meant to
• 19:28
  denigrate him. It's.
• 19:29
  Hard not to sound like a backhanded compliment it.
• 19:31
  Is but like back in the new adventure states, I'm not sure
• 19:34
  there were many safe pairs of hands and you know, theatre of
• 19:37
  wars are. Oh a really a really solid.
• 19:40
  That's his first. I think it's yeah.
• 19:42
  I think theatre but. Then he did.
• 19:43
  You know, System Shock, sounds of time sounds.
• 19:45
  Of time was wonderful. The burning's great, I.
• 19:47
  Did read the burning. I remember the burning and and I
• 19:50
  saw them. I it it doesn't quite, pun
• 19:55
  intended, it didn't quite set the world alight in the way that
• 19:59
  maybe a Lance Parkin does. But they're, they're really well
• 20:03
  written, aren't they? Yeah, and I think, I think he he
• 20:07
  writes a trap Doctor Who book. So like jumping into that
• 20:11
  particular era. So System Shock, you've got Tom
• 20:14
  Baker fabulously roaming around deserted London in an enormous
• 20:18
  tank or engrave matter. You've got Colin Baker and Perry
• 20:22
  on a deserted island in Altney surrounded by horrible zombie
• 20:25
  people trying to kill them. You know, he knows how to write
• 20:29
  a pot boiler that makes you turn the pages.
• 20:31
  You know, and a bit like Terrace Dix, that is a skill.
• 20:35
  Absolutely, Definitely. Yes, Yeah.
• 20:37
  Well, the one thing that he did not do, which is astonishing
• 20:40
  really because you usually find him in short story collections
• 20:44
  that that have done the rounds, he has no part at all in Tales
• 20:49
  of Terror. Which terror you?
• 21:00
  Chose for our book club episode today so why was that was that
• 21:04
  just because it was on your shelf it.
• 21:05
  Was on my shelf. This was bought for me.
• 21:09
  Well, I think it was bought for me when it was new.
• 21:11
  It was a Christmas present. And this goes back quite some
• 21:14
  time because this is when there were 12 doctors on the
• 21:17
  television. And I remember at the time
• 21:22
  thinking this is a very beautiful book to look at.
• 21:24
  And I flicked through and I enjoyed the line drawings and,
• 21:26
  and it's a sat there ever since waiting for an opportunity.
• 21:29
  And, and, and you gave me the opportunity and actually having
• 21:33
  picked it up and read it, I thought, why on earth didn't I
• 21:34
  do that sooner? They're not.
• 21:35
  It's not a very difficult read. It's, it's really not.
• 21:39
  I've got a couple of questions before we talk about the
• 21:42
  individual stories themselves and that is, do you like short
• 21:45
  story collections? Is it?
• 21:46
  Do you have a lot too? Well, don't think I'm not going
• 21:49
  to take the opportunity to. Oh.
• 21:50
  You've been had. My podcast at every possible
• 21:53
  opportunity. Yeah.
• 21:54
  So I, I, I write short stories and some of them I record and I
• 22:00
  put them on a podcast called Neurotic Literature.
• 22:04
  I, I'm not holding my own short stories up as any kind of bar of
• 22:09
  quality or, you know, a gesture of what should be wonderful.
• 22:12
  Nice of you to say, but you know that I, I feel sometimes like
• 22:15
  I'm just imitating better and greater writers.
• 22:20
  The, the reason I write them is, is not out of, I write, I, I
• 22:25
  kind of write them as a palette cleanser, actually between
• 22:28
  bigger projects. I, you know, I, I'm a composer.
• 22:31
  I I'm often writing music and I have just found that a short
• 22:34
  story is a really good way of sort of resetting after after
• 22:38
  the the kind of brain mist that comes at the end of a a really
• 22:42
  huge project and the reason why short.
• 22:45
  Story that you write then informed by the music you've
• 22:48
  been writing, No. Not at all.
• 22:49
  Not remote, no. God knows what they're informed
• 22:51
  by because there's some pretty strange ideas, increasingly
• 22:56
  actually, but they they seem to be going down darker and darker
• 23:01
  corridors. Yeah, I listened to one just
• 23:03
  this week. All right, that broke my heart
• 23:05
  about this boy who's been encouraged to go back into his
• 23:07
  school and and it looks like he's going to have a wonderful
• 23:10
  time. And then by the end of that, I
• 23:12
  was in a very dark place. Thank you very much.
• 23:14
  Yeah. And it starts off as as this,
• 23:16
  you know, it starts off almost as a sketch.
• 23:18
  It's, you know, the joke is that he doesn't want to go back to
• 23:20
  school and he's going to go, you know, it's, it's what's being
• 23:23
  promised. Yeah.
• 23:25
  When suddenly, suddenly went to a very sad place.
• 23:28
  I mean, I love it when a story does that.
• 23:30
  And I love playing with tone and I love playing with style.
• 23:33
  But that, yeah, there is something about writing in the
• 23:38
  short form especially, it may be, I think it's, I think short
• 23:44
  stories are incredibly difficult and we'll talk more about this.
• 23:47
  I don't think everyone pulls them off.
• 23:49
  And writing a short story certainly isn't just a matter of
• 23:53
  writing a long story, but truncating it where?
• 23:57
  There, and there is a bit of that in this book.
• 24:00
  Yeah. And, and writing a short story
• 24:01
  is therefore a really time consuming process for for the
• 24:05
  number of words, you actually have to go through an awful lot
• 24:07
  of work to get there. However, I do think the the
• 24:11
  shortness of the form lends itself to a more kind of stream
• 24:15
  of consciousness initial approach, even though you're
• 24:19
  going to have to kind of tame it.
• 24:20
  You're going to have to kind of some kind of structure onto it
• 24:26
  eventually. A lot of these stories have
• 24:28
  started off as me going, well, what happens if I write this?
• 24:30
  And, and, and, and unlike if you, I mean, if you set out
• 24:33
  writing a novel like that, you, you're kind of become a cropper
• 24:38
  or you're going to write something that looks like it was
• 24:41
  written in the 60s by someone on LSD because yeah, that's what
• 24:46
  Kerouac did. And I find his stuff unreadable.
• 24:49
  So there you go. But you can't, you can't handle
• 24:54
  kind of 80,000 words like that. But with a short story, you can,
• 24:57
  you can see where your, your ideas take you and sometimes
• 25:00
  they take you down dead ends. But my, I think my best short
• 25:02
  stories have taken me to some really interesting and funny and
• 25:06
  weird and dark places that I hadn't begun to imagine when I
• 25:11
  actually started writing. Because the, the, the, the word
• 25:17
  count just enables you to kind of go there and see what
• 25:20
  happens. And if you go there and it
• 25:22
  doesn't happen, it's it's no great shame because it's, you
• 25:25
  know, you've not wasted a huge amount of time working that out.
• 25:28
  So I can't remember what the question was and, and I just
• 25:31
  answered it by talking about myself.
• 25:32
  It's your relationship, your short.
• 25:33
  Stories, which is absolutely what I wanted to hear.
• 25:36
  Well, I, you know, I also read a lot of short stories.
• 25:40
  It would be insanity to try and write short stories without sort
• 25:47
  of at least knowing kind of some of the best examples of of of
• 25:50
  the form and the only reason I. If you read a lot of short
• 25:53
  stories, pushing away from Doctor Who for a second, who's a
• 25:56
  particularly good example of somebody that can write a great
• 25:59
  short story? Right.
• 26:02
  Depends a little bit on what you want from a short story, because
• 26:11
  it's what's really interesting about short stories is that they
• 26:14
  can be totally linear. They can be, they can be a
• 26:16
  traditional story with the beginning, middle and end.
• 26:18
  They work like that. They don't, as I said, that it's
• 26:22
  not just a matter of truncating what you would put into a, you
• 26:24
  know, into a novel, but you can tell a traditional story with a
• 26:27
  traditional structure. But you can also do some very
• 26:30
  unexpected things. You can play with form, you can
• 26:32
  play with pace, you can play with structure.
• 26:39
  So, for example, I think one of the great short story writers of
• 26:44
  the early 20th century is HH Monroe, or Sake as he's better
• 26:50
  known, who writes short stories more like vignettes.
• 26:55
  Some of them follow a, a, a kind of traditional structure, but
• 26:59
  they're very, very short. And some of them, some of them
• 27:01
  are just snapshots. And he captures the sort of the
• 27:06
  end of an era, really, this kind of decadent society, pre First
• 27:10
  World War, almost kind of eating itself.
• 27:13
  And they're and they're very whimsical, but there's a real
• 27:17
  darkness at the heart of them. And when and when he writes
• 27:19
  something, some of some of sake's short stories are utterly
• 27:22
  disposable. But when he writes, when he
• 27:25
  comes out with a Shredney Vashta or Tobermory, they are
• 27:31
  absolutely scintillating. And and they're only a few pages
• 27:35
  long. There's one that I read as a
• 27:36
  bedtime story to to the older pupils in my school, which is
• 27:39
  the lumber room. And it's and it's simply a a boy
• 27:42
  doesn't get to go out on a day trip because he's been naughty.
• 27:45
  And it's his explorations of the house while while his family are
• 27:48
  away and he sort of takes revenge on his aunt over the
• 27:53
  course of the day. But it's not about what happens.
• 27:54
  It's about how it happens. George Louis Bochett, I think
• 28:01
  would be an approximation of the of the pronunciation.
• 28:04
  It's another one where just the, the strangeness about the ideas,
• 28:08
  it's about what he, you know, the, the mind boggling concepts
• 28:12
  that he's able to, to explore with his, with his short
• 28:16
  stories, that there's one about an infinite library and the, and
• 28:21
  because it's infinite there, there will be a copy of every
• 28:25
  single book on the shelves. But the librarians job is to
• 28:29
  pour through every volume and and they're just looking for
• 28:32
  single words and look, and what you're imagining is, yeah, OK,
• 28:36
  so it's an infinite library. So in every now and then they're
• 28:41
  going to come across just a randomly a word printed.
• 28:44
  But because it's infinite, there will also be a copy of Great
• 28:49
  Expectations somewhere. They'll be and and every and
• 28:53
  again, just a few pages. But he takes you to these
• 28:55
  incredible places. He also does a thing where if he
• 29:00
  has an idea for a novel and you get the impression that if he'd
• 29:02
  written novels, they would have been incredibly clever, but
• 29:05
  rather than writing the novel, he just writes a review of the
• 29:08
  novel, so he doesn't actually have to put the effort into
• 29:10
  writing it. So they're great.
• 29:12
  I mean, in a more traditional sense, I think James Joyce
• 29:14
  writes beautiful short stories. I love Daphne du Maurier and I
• 29:19
  think her short stories are brilliant and they've got some
• 29:22
  killer twists and some of them are the some of the scariest
• 29:26
  stuff. But I used to, I grew up reading
• 29:27
  a lot of John Wyndham and his short stories.
• 29:30
  There's a collection called The Seeds of Time, and I remember
• 29:31
  that left a big impression on me when I was a a teenager.
• 29:36
  A few names there. So.
• 29:39
  When it comes to writing Doctor Who short stories, I'd say most
• 29:45
  of these, all of these actually were linear tails, right?
• 29:49
  Very. Very linear tails.
• 29:51
  Because they're writing for kids so I can I can see why they're
• 29:55
  taking a simpler approach. Like what do you want, then
• 29:58
  what? Or what can you do with a A
• 30:00
  Doctor Who's short story I. Think you can do loads?
• 30:02
  I think Doctor Who lends itself to the short story format
• 30:05
  really, really well, as has been proved with with now We've had.
• 30:08
  Loads short trips. Yeah, well, short trips before
• 30:11
  that we there was the the virgin collections of Decalogues you.
• 30:17
  You probably never read this. Maybe you have, or making an
• 30:21
  assumption, there's a Beneath Sommerfield short story
• 30:25
  collection called Live During War Time that was edited by Paul
• 30:28
  Cornell and it's got an overarching story.
• 30:32
  And then it's just, and it's all the best Doctor Who writers, you
• 30:35
  know, Cornell, Rob Shearman, he pulled in all the best in this
• 30:39
  obscure range that nobody's reading at all, you know?
• 30:43
  And it's just absolutely great the way it explores.
• 30:47
  This is sort of Nazi army that takes over Benny's home.
• 30:51
  And it's telling basically a Second World War.
• 30:54
  So a bit bit just warish at the places it goes to the depths of
• 30:59
  characterization, the different styles of stories you can tell
• 31:03
  within that narrative. It just blew my mind that that's
• 31:07
  sort of opened my eyes as to what you could really do with a
• 31:09
  short story collection. Yeah.
• 31:11
  And I remember the the Decalogues were very uneven in
• 31:13
  in terms of quality. But what you got in those
• 31:16
  collections were a really interesting set of different
• 31:22
  writers going, OK, what can I do with a short story?
• 31:24
  And some of them were traps, some of them were linear, some
• 31:28
  of them definitely were not. I mean, a famous example of one
• 31:31
  of those is continuity errors by Steven Moffat, which in a way is
• 31:34
  is almost like. That was his first.
• 31:36
  May well be and certainly a mission statement if ever there
• 31:39
  was one and left an impression at the time.
• 31:43
  You know, it's a brilliant, brilliant short story.
• 31:47
  So I, I guess I feel like Doctor Who can can do all of those
• 31:53
  things. We know that, we know that one
• 31:54
  of the strengths of Doctor Who is that in terms of narrative,
• 31:57
  it's the most flexible format. And that can be in terms of
• 32:04
  style, but it can also be in terms of narrative approach.
• 32:07
  And I suppose that I feel like with Tales of Terror, it's it
• 32:11
  it's obviously written for young children.
• 32:14
  I would say. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:16
  At times it sort of resembles the kind of stories that you'd
• 32:20
  used to get in Doctor Who annuals, that kind of level of
• 32:23
  simplicity, you know, very simple kind of beginning, middle
• 32:27
  and end. Here's a, a little, a little
• 32:30
  yarn involving the Doctor. I think it's a bit of a shame
• 32:34
  that a book aimed at young children isn't a little bit more
• 32:38
  ambitious with style and with structure, because I think that
• 32:44
  it does kind of do one kind of short story and it does it well
• 32:50
  and it does it not so well, but it it's not really I, I think in
• 32:56
  a collection of 12 stories, I would like to go a little bit
• 32:59
  further with what the short story can actually do.
• 33:02
  As I was going through the book that I figured I was going to
• 33:04
  take lots of notice on these short stories.
• 33:06
  And then I realized I wasn't really.
• 33:08
  I was either just writing down an image that was quite good
• 33:13
  within the story or A twist that was OK, or a quirk of
• 33:18
  characterization of that set of regulars that was working quite
• 33:21
  well. Yeah.
• 33:22
  I. Mean imagery is generally quite
• 33:24
  strong in these, and it feels sometimes as though it's imagery
• 33:28
  has been prioritized over. Story.
• 33:30
  Everything else, yeah. And I, and I think it is
• 33:33
  possible. I mean, as I say, these these
• 33:35
  seem to be written for very young readers, though I have
• 33:39
  questions about who the target audience actually is, because if
• 33:43
  they're for very young readers, then there are some odd
• 33:46
  decisions made by some of these writers.
• 33:49
  But I used to love Nicholas Fisk when I was very much in primary
• 33:55
  school. And again, a collection of short
• 33:58
  stories, which was called Sweets from a Stranger Left.
• 34:02
  They were and they were in some cases they were kind of horror
• 34:07
  stories for kids. And I think that what Fisk
• 34:12
  showed was how far you can go with either with sci-fi or with
• 34:15
  horror for a younger audience. Conceptually, you can do some
• 34:20
  quite dark stuff and kids will get that it's dark and
• 34:23
  absolutely relish. I mean, I just, I love these
• 34:26
  stories and some of them still kind of have left an impression
• 34:31
  that, that, you know, I, I haven't gone back to that book
• 34:33
  for, for 30 years, but I can still remember some of them,
• 34:39
  which is, you know, that's a writer who's left a, a mark,
• 34:43
  that's a writer who's absolutely done his job.
• 34:45
  I don't know that many of these are working at that kind of
• 34:48
  level. I well, I don't think any of
• 34:50
  these stories are particularly scary.
• 34:52
  I thought a lot of them had exciting images in them that are
• 34:56
  so, you know, big, big all Tom dollies and Weeping angels
• 35:00
  surrounding a car and a great big snake version of Tegan.
• 35:04
  I was like, OK, these are fun ideas.
• 35:05
  These are all, you know, things that I can visualize really
• 35:07
  well. But sort of like getting under
• 35:09
  your. I read Sick Building by Paul
• 35:11
  Mars recently and that is way darker than this.
• 35:16
  And that's not even trying to be a Horror Story.
• 35:18
  Yeah, I don't, I don't think any of these stories achieve any
• 35:23
  real tension because the doctors always there is a kind of
• 35:27
  reassuring. Yeah.
• 35:28
  Bigger, and in fact one of the problems with many of these
• 35:31
  stories is the doctor comes along and sorts out a problem in
• 35:33
  a way that's completely unprepared in the story itself
• 35:37
  so well. And very often as well, I found
• 35:39
  the resolutions where there's one story in it which we'll get
• 35:41
  to, where there's, there's two things in it.
• 35:44
  There's, oh, good grief, I can't even remember now.
• 35:48
  There's the Carianites and the Reapers.
• 35:51
  I thought there's there's two elements in it and you're like,
• 35:54
  well, one of them is going to cancel out the other.
• 35:56
  I don't know which way he's going to do it, but one's going
• 35:57
  to cancel out the other by the end of the book.
• 35:59
  And guess what? That's exactly what happened at
• 36:01
  the end of that story. I was like OK so I can't sort of
• 36:03
  figure that out in the first 2 pages.
• 36:05
  Although at least there's something in the 1st 2 pages of
• 36:07
  that one where you can figure it out.
• 36:08
  Because in quite a lot of these a dreadful thing is happening.
• 36:11
  And then the Doctor turns up and saves them like, well, OK, I've
• 36:14
  got this. Fabulous gadget that just
• 36:16
  happens to, you know. Yeah, what?
• 36:18
  I'll tell you what. Let's, let's get into the
• 36:20
  individual stories then. Well, I will say there was one
• 36:23
  writer that I thought was trying to be a little more ambitious
• 36:26
  than the others, and that's Jacqueline.
• 36:30
  Rayner Well, so I, I, I suspected you were going to say
• 36:33
  that. And I, I, I mean, of all of the
• 36:35
  stories here, I think hers are her two of the strongest.
• 36:38
  I think hers and Paul Mars are the strongest.
• 36:41
  Oh, certainly, Paul Mars, his first one.
• 36:45
  Yeah, I have thoughts about Paul Mars.
• 36:47
  He's a clearly a very accomplished writer.
• 36:49
  I'm not sure how successful either of his are, but we'll.
• 36:52
  Come to war. Let's get into it.
• 36:53
  OK, well, let's start with Murder in the Dark by Jacqueline
• 36:56
  Rayner, The Doctor, Stephen and Dodo heading off to a Halloween
• 37:01
  party. What did you think of this one?
• 37:03
  So it's very simple and straight away we're getting the celestial
• 37:10
  toymaker. But as we know, the Celestial
• 37:14
  Toymaker lens himself as a character to things that are a
• 37:19
  bit creepy to good images. And this is a set of the
• 37:25
  Halloween party, and it's a party full of slightly scary
• 37:28
  children. Parties are a great setting.
• 37:30
  Did you ever? Oh, Speaking of great short
• 37:33
  stories, I mean, if you want five absolute killer short
• 37:35
  stories, go to your Key to Time box set and watch those late
• 37:40
  night stories presented by Tom Baker, because every single one
• 37:44
  of those is is an absolute gem and.
• 37:47
  Scary. Oh yeah.
• 37:48
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and the and the one by
• 37:50
  Graham Greene, which is set at a a children's party, is kind of
• 37:54
  the scariest of all. And it's got a final sentence
• 37:57
  that just lives with you for for hours afterwards.
• 38:01
  Yes, kids. Are creepy, right?
• 38:02
  Kids are very creepy, yeah. So I would, but I was then I was
• 38:05
  reading this thinking, well, it's not actually that creepy
• 38:07
  and it's a little bit like the the characterization is
• 38:09
  absolutely spot on. Oh.
• 38:11
  Dodo's enthusiasm, Steven Steadfastness, the Doctor's
• 38:15
  amusement by it all, I thought. But.
• 38:17
  You've said, you've said it, Dodo's enthusiasm.
• 38:20
  So any possibility of tension is erased by the fact that Dodo
• 38:24
  walks around exactly as she would have done.
• 38:27
  Oh, we said this jolly exactly as she does in the Celestial Toy
• 38:30
  Maker. Well.
• 38:31
  Yeah, but until the apples with teeth try and bite her, then
• 38:35
  she's not quite as amused. There's a twist like at the
• 38:39
  start there's a scare and then oh, it's only a lamb.
• 38:42
  It's only a a pumpkin lamb Lantern.
• 38:45
  And then there's a thing where it's oh, no, it's a scary
• 38:47
  figure. It's oh, it's only a mask.
• 38:49
  And then oh, another scary things happening.
• 38:50
  It's oh, it's only a game. And I wasn't sure whether this
• 38:53
  was trying to kind of lull us into a false sense of security,
• 38:57
  but there is a point where you're like, OK, now, I, I get
• 39:00
  it that things have not always what they seem.
• 39:03
  And then, but, but I also suspect that because this is a
• 39:06
  story in a book called Tales of Terror, that eventually one of
• 39:09
  these things is going to turn out to be a bad thing.
• 39:10
  So maybe we can just cut to the chase, get to one of those.
• 39:13
  And I also feel like there's an idea near the beginning where
• 39:15
  they're all wearing fancy dress costumes and there are hints of
• 39:17
  other things They see costumes that sort of resemble characters
• 39:23
  they've seen in the in the past. Although I was thinking like one
• 39:26
  of them is described as a character with a single eye.
• 39:29
  And I was like, well, is that a monoid or is it scaroff?
• 39:32
  Are we getting hints of things from the future as well?
• 39:34
  There was something there that didn't really go anywhere.
• 39:37
  And ultimately this story doesn't really go in anywhere.
• 39:43
  It's a series of vignettes. And the problem is, Stephen does
• 39:46
  one thing and Dodo does another thing, and the Doctor does
• 39:48
  another thing, and it's a little bit like the Celestial Toy
• 39:51
  Maker, but truncated until with a heck of a lot more atmosphere.
• 39:54
  Wow. And a lot more pace, I felt.
• 39:56
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:57
  It had quite a hallucinary effect on me because the games
• 40:01
  just came fast, you know, it was one thing after another after
• 40:03
  another, and it was a bit gross and it was a bit weird.
• 40:07
  So I I thought this was a bit more effective than the
• 40:09
  Celestial toy Maker, which laboriously goes from one set
• 40:13
  piece to another. I mean, that's quite a low bar
• 40:17
  that's. Very true, yes.
• 40:18
  It, it, it works. I mean, there's a reveal where
• 40:21
  it turns out to be the toy maker and you kind of go, yeah, I, I
• 40:25
  did see that coming, but. The ending was so simple and.
• 40:28
  And then when I read the 6th Doctor book later I was like oh
• 40:31
  OK, maybe the ending of this was this simple.
• 40:34
  So it could be that actually he'd never got away at all.
• 40:38
  I. Mean this is a theme that we
• 40:39
  will come back to, but quite often there's a lot of effort
• 40:43
  put into the setup of these stories and the actual Zero
• 40:46
  feels very, very rushed. I don't think I would be quite
• 40:50
  that damning of this ending, but it is resolved a little too
• 40:55
  easily. But then it leaves on it on this
• 40:57
  kind of cliffhanger. I thought, oh, is that just a
• 40:59
  tease? And later on in the book, we
• 41:01
  discovered that the 6th Doctor story is a sequel to this one.
• 41:03
  And it makes and it works. And that's why I think these are
• 41:07
  two of the most successful ones because they actually do kind of
• 41:09
  set things up and then resolve them.
• 41:11
  The. Book could have done with a bit
• 41:13
  more of that, couldn't it? Oh.
• 41:14
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a bit more communication
• 41:16
  between writers, maybe I, I don't think it necessarily
• 41:19
  works. The deck logs always had the
• 41:22
  gimmick, which was that they were, there was a theme running
• 41:24
  through them and that never, ever worked because clearly the
• 41:26
  writers, you know, had a, a couple of emails between each
• 41:30
  other or maybe not even that. But and and and generally things
• 41:34
  with a running theme, unless you've got someone you know,
• 41:37
  unless you've got a showrunner actually guiding everything in
• 41:39
  script, everything, everything, it doesn't.
• 41:41
  It doesn't come together. So Mill says that when he did
• 41:43
  live during wartime that it was so hard.
• 41:46
  He had to communicate with the writers all the time because
• 41:48
  it's a running narrative for all the short stories, that details
• 41:52
  had to be there in every single story.
• 41:54
  And is that successful? It's beautiful Jamie, it is so
• 41:58
  well done and it all builds up to the huge climax, the shock
• 42:02
  twist ending which our shunt tells anyone who wants to go
• 42:04
  into play, which then leads into the next Bernice Audio.
• 42:08
  But. I'm glad that Cornell said that
• 42:09
  was hard because it because writing a short story is hard on
• 42:12
  its own without having to tie it into something else, so it
• 42:14
  should be hard. But I did think as a a first
• 42:19
  story, it was fun. It was energetic, it captured
• 42:23
  its regular as well. I was like, OK, all right, if
• 42:26
  they're all like this, good. Enjoyable play if they're all
• 42:28
  like blow. My mind, it's going to be, it's
• 42:30
  going to be fun. Unfortunately, we're not all as
• 42:33
  good as this. No.
• 42:35
  And talking of that, let's move on to Something at the Door by
• 42:38
  Mike Tucker, who I I'm not incredibly fond of.
• 42:44
  You mentioned a legal alien earlier.
• 42:46
  He wrote a number of 7th Doctor past Doctor adventures, all of
• 42:50
  which I find. Fine, aren't they bit?
• 42:52
  Forgettable. Yeah, a little bit generic, and
• 42:56
  this short story falls into that bracket as well.
• 43:00
  Yeah, it captures. It does sort of capture the era.
• 43:09
  It begins with a a really intriguing image, which is Ben,
• 43:14
  Polly and Jamie discovering the secondary control room, which I
• 43:18
  like because that takes me out. Suddenly I'm not picturing a a
• 43:21
  black and white episode. I'm picturing that gorgeous set
• 43:24
  from the Hinchcliffe era with these three characters who are
• 43:28
  incongruous in it. So having got them there, why on
• 43:33
  earth do you have them discover a thing in it and then leave it
• 43:37
  and not come back to it and they go back to the main control
• 43:39
  room? Why, Yeah.
• 43:40
  Yeah. Just being cute, I think.
• 43:42
  I don't think it's no part of the.
• 43:44
  Space of a short story yeah, but in terms of atmosphere, just
• 43:46
  leave them there you've not got space in a short story to go
• 43:49
  from one place to another and you know particularly if there's
• 43:51
  not a reason to just a kind of a waste of location well if
• 43:54
  you're. Going to do a Ouija board in the
• 43:56
  TARDIS. It's way more coaty in that.
• 43:58
  Absolutely you can. Come from the control room?
• 44:00
  Definitely. And I think it would have.
• 44:02
  I think this is a story where this is and this is where
• 44:05
  writing a short story isn't as easy as you might think it would
• 44:08
  be. Because this is where probably a
• 44:10
  single focused scene and doing as a, you know, a continuous
• 44:16
  scene of action in one location would have been far more
• 44:18
  effective. Might have been harder to write,
• 44:20
  might have required more discipline than this kind of
• 44:22
  than let snow go to another place in the TARDIS, which is
• 44:25
  what might have happened on television.
• 44:26
  Because one of the ways that episodes were able to last 25
• 44:30
  minutes was that there was moving from one set to another
• 44:33
  for all kinds of reasons. But a short story needs to have
• 44:37
  discipline needs to have, I mean, focus is the is the key to
• 44:40
  any successful short story, whatever age you're writing for.
• 44:42
  And this I I. Don't think Tucker had any end
• 44:45
  game with this story. He didn't want to say anything
• 44:47
  about these. The the most characterisation we
• 44:49
  get here is Polly knows that the two boys won't look scared in
• 44:53
  front of her, so she kind of manipulates them to go ahead and
• 44:56
  do this Ouija board. But that's all we find out about
• 44:58
  these people. Then what?
• 45:00
  She does it, Jamie gets possessed, somebody bangs at the
• 45:02
  door, and then it's gone. The end.
• 45:04
  Would you? Believe the doctor.
• 45:06
  The doctor gets rid of it. Well, I would, yes.
• 45:10
  In in about half a page as well. I just, I wasn't quite sure what
• 45:14
  the point of it was. No, and, and and.
• 45:18
  There seems to be kind of lots of ideas, none of them really
• 45:21
  fleshed out. Doesn't Jamie gets taken over
• 45:23
  briefly? Because.
• 45:26
  Because something's. Banging at the door.
• 45:30
  I think the characterization is is is good again.
• 45:32
  You know, it does. It's a little bit slightly more
• 45:35
  by numbers. Oh, I don't believe it then.
• 45:40
  But it you know you can picture them but but as you say, what's
• 45:44
  the point? We, the Doctor says, let's just
• 45:45
  say that we're really alone in our travel through the time
• 45:48
  vortex, and some of our fellow travellers are things that we do
• 45:51
  not wish to become too closely acquainted with.
• 45:54
  Well, that's very ambiguous. Thank you very much.
• 45:58
  I mean, I, yeah, I just sort of skipped through this and just
• 46:01
  went, well, I'll never really. I mean, I'm looking at my notes,
• 46:03
  so that's why I'm remembering it now.
• 46:05
  But the none, none of that story will ever remain in my head, I
• 46:08
  don't think. No, I've not.
• 46:09
  I mean, nothing much more to say about that one.
• 46:11
  But a story that will and I, it's possibly my favorite in the
• 46:16
  book, so fight me on this one. And that is The Monster in the
• 46:19
  Woods by Paul Mars. Well.
• 46:22
  I will fight you on this one on the basis that's for all that it
• 46:27
  is beautifully written and I would expect nothing less for
• 46:33
  all that it has a a, a beautiful, quirky image in it,
• 46:39
  which is a Dalek that's been reading rebuilding itself out of
• 46:42
  kitchen utensils and kids toys and kids toys.
• 46:47
  Structurally it it's a cop out because it begins a story from
• 46:53
  the point of view of two children or three children.
• 46:56
  It's all about the children, all about the peril that they are
• 46:59
  in. Their youngest brother is in
• 47:02
  serious danger. What happens is the doctor turns
• 47:05
  up, dispatches the children and suddenly we're back in the
• 47:08
  doctor's lab and it's like a a scene at the end of a Pertwee
• 47:11
  serial where you know that it needs bookending.
• 47:14
  It's like, why are we here? Why are we not in the the
• 47:16
  children's house? Why are we not beginning and
• 47:18
  ending with the same people? Why are the children?
• 47:20
  Why don't the children in this story have any agency in their
• 47:23
  own rescue? That is a very very good point.
• 47:29
  His characterization of the 3rd Doctor and Joe is so great I
• 47:33
  can't really complain too much. I, I've, I'm, I just again, it's
• 47:37
  about discipline. I, I mean, the description of
• 47:41
  the 3rd doctor. I'm going to read this out
• 47:43
  because the prose is gorgeous. It.
• 47:44
  Is really great. It's so beautifully written,
• 47:46
  this. I've got to say, I've got a a a
• 47:48
  long sequence I want to read out, but gone.
• 47:50
  Off you go this. Is the kind again?
• 47:52
  This is the sort of sentence, and a writer later on in the
• 47:54
  book will attempt to write a sentence like this and fall
• 47:57
  horribly on his face. It's the sort of thing Terence
• 48:01
  Dixie used to do and get slightly mocked for, but it's
• 48:03
  actually really hard to do well. They were interrupted by a great
• 48:07
  burst of laughter. You're hardly the scourge of the
• 48:09
  Galaxy, are you? Came a voice that sounded both
• 48:12
  young and old, loud and soft, confident and yet filled with
• 48:16
  wonder. Ian stared as the stranger
• 48:19
  crouched to enter the tiny den. He was followed by a lady with
• 48:22
  blonde hair and Ian's brother and sister.
• 48:25
  And it's simple writing, but it straight away you can, you can
• 48:31
  see them, can't you? And you can see Jon Pertwee and
• 48:34
  it captures the child's eye view of the doctor.
• 48:37
  Well, it leans into that whole thing as well with the 3rd
• 48:40
  Doctor that he does actually want to get off Earth, and he
• 48:42
  thinks he can, you know? Yeah.
• 48:43
  But no, no, no, no, no. This is where this.
• 48:45
  Yeah. So Paul Ma thinks he's writing
• 48:47
  about the 3rd doctor. He's not.
• 48:48
  He's writing a story about three kids.
• 48:50
  And. And I really do think that.
• 48:52
  So I all the way through this, I was thinking, are there bedtime
• 48:55
  stories in this? Because I work in a boarding
• 48:57
  school, I sometimes read bedtime stories to kids who are sort of
• 49:01
  nine, 10-11 years old. And I'm thinking, well, they
• 49:04
  like a scary story. Are any of these going to be
• 49:06
  suitable? And with the sort of sinking
• 49:08
  feeling, I thought, you know, I don't think any of these, maybe
• 49:13
  a couple of them. But I I began to kind of feel
• 49:15
  like too many of these would just lose them at the point at
• 49:18
  which they needed to be invested in the fact that the Doctor was
• 49:20
  exiled on Earth, rather than in these children who should have
• 49:25
  been the focus of the story. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that.
• 49:30
  I don't know. I just really enjoyed reading
• 49:33
  this one on on sort of every level.
• 49:35
  The image of the Dalek in the the being the monster in the
• 49:39
  woods. Yeah.
• 49:40
  The fact that it was, you know, a sequel today of the Daleks,
• 49:44
  that one of the time ships that was going back to the 22nd
• 49:47
  century crash down that he'd been luring in all of these
• 49:50
  children. I mean, there's one wonderful
• 49:53
  package where it talks about a little boy that he got, got to
• 49:55
  bring all of his toy soldiers in and then liquefied them to
• 50:00
  create, you know, to, to repair his shell.
• 50:03
  And then he says at the end, it was a pity to exterminate him
• 50:06
  after that. But I was like, I mean, that's a
• 50:09
  lovely idea, really. Lovely.
• 50:11
  And, and that's why I say that a lot of these stories are much
• 50:14
  stronger on imagery than anything else.
• 50:17
  And Speaking of imagery, I ought to say a word about the, the
• 50:22
  illustrations, which are by Rohan Eason.
• 50:24
  And they are really good and they capture the level of this
• 50:27
  book just perfectly because they're slightly chunky in that
• 50:31
  way that children's book illustrations are.
• 50:33
  So they're not literal drawings. They're not photorealistic
• 50:39
  images of the doctors or the, or the monsters.
• 50:42
  They have this slightly crooked look, which in our way, I I
• 50:48
  think arrives at a more consistent style and A and A and
• 50:54
  a more kind of certain idea of what this book is for, who this
• 50:58
  book is for, than most of the writers managed to.
• 51:01
  Almost a shame it's not a graphic novel.
• 51:03
  Yeah. Yeah, because those pictures are
• 51:05
  great. I also did like as well.
• 51:07
  It does all the Paul Mars things that I love.
• 51:09
  It brought in contemporary like pop culture references, and he
• 51:16
  does that really well. There's a a hint that there's
• 51:19
  domestic violence going on in these kids houses that's very
• 51:22
  subtly done, but clearly there. So yeah.
• 51:25
  Again. So the doctor sends them home.
• 51:27
  The doctor sends them home to the.
• 51:28
  Quiet. He doesn't know.
• 51:31
  About that, if you're going to lay that, then then then resolve
• 51:34
  it. Finish off your ideas.
• 51:38
  Well, OK, we'll let let's move on from that one then.
• 51:41
  I mean, I I adore that one, but I do see your point where the
• 51:44
  story ends and where the story begins.
• 51:46
  It's two very different places. And actually maybe it would have
• 51:50
  been more mirable had it the entire thing been from the kids
• 51:53
  point of view, I think. So what about Toil and Trouble
• 51:58
  by Richard Dunworth? Now that's a name I don't
• 52:00
  recognize. No, I don't recognize it.
• 52:03
  I feel like this one is pretty workmanlike.
• 52:07
  Yes, although I didn't I I did quite like the repeated joke of
• 52:11
  Harry not being allowed near the console because he twisted the
• 52:15
  helmet regulator in Arc in Space, but when that's the only
• 52:17
  thing you can focus on with these characters, you're in a
• 52:19
  bit of trouble. But even unusually in this one,
• 52:22
  the characterisation feels a bit off.
• 52:24
  The Doctor says at one point, the Doctor talks like Jon
• 52:28
  Pertwee. It feels like, you know, when
• 52:29
  Tom Baker's written by the outgoing production team and
• 52:32
  sort of comes out with, with sentences that he, he basically
• 52:37
  won't come out with again. Oh, he said.
• 52:38
  Quite a bit of techno bubble and I was like, oh, I remember Tom
• 52:41
  Baker talking. I love.
• 52:42
  That there's a bit where he says Anacron is a man.
• 52:45
  Like, yeah, yeah, poetry calls people man.
• 52:48
  I'm not sure. I'm not sure the 4th Doctor
• 52:50
  does, but. Should we not be aspiring to a
• 52:53
  bit more than a sequel to The Shakespeare Code and a prequel
• 52:56
  to Father's Day? And how is this?
• 52:59
  I don't know. Where no How is the?
• 53:00
  Karenite Ball in the 4th Doctor's TARDIS.
• 53:05
  Right. I mean, at this stage I'm also
• 53:07
  starting to think this book is rather reliant on monsters that
• 53:13
  have been on television and given the brief.
• 53:16
  Disappointed going ahead then. Give give given the brief which
• 53:21
  is to write Horror Story. I mean actually describes it as
• 53:25
  12 chilling horror stories. There's absolutely no need to to
• 53:29
  involve carrier nights from the television series.
• 53:32
  You know, the problem is whenever, like whenever it
• 53:36
  happens, and in some cases more than others, and this is one of
• 53:38
  the cases where it's pretty egregious, there's a load of
• 53:42
  exposition. So who is this book written for?
• 53:45
  Is it written for children who have watched it and wants a
• 53:47
  little sequel to to the Shakespeare code?
• 53:49
  Or is it written for people who are coming to Doctor Who Knew,
• 53:52
  in which case they need these three witches giving like 3 1/2
• 53:55
  pages of exposition. At the moment it feels like it's
• 53:58
  doing the exposition just, you know, hedging its bet a little
• 54:02
  bit. And do you know what it felt to
• 54:04
  me like it was relying on a degree of even though it gives
• 54:07
  you all the exposition, it feels like it's relying on you
• 54:10
  remembering stuff about this story that I'm not sure I could.
• 54:13
  So you know the. Carrionites and the Reapers were
• 54:15
  in the TV show almost 20 years ago.
• 54:18
  The kids reading this now probably will have no memory of
• 54:20
  that at all. Well, it wouldn't have been
• 54:23
  alive, kids. Kids reading this.
• 54:24
  So when when this book came out, it would have been, you know,
• 54:26
  it's a generation has passed and I don't.
• 54:30
  And and so the conclusion and the explanation all kind of are
• 54:35
  wrapped up in this exposition that we've already had.
• 54:38
  And it's, and it's very inelegant, as you say, you know,
• 54:40
  it's, it's clear that they're going to cancel each other out
• 54:43
  in one way or the other, but it, it feels very nuts and bolts.
• 54:48
  And in the in the in placing it so definitely between the
• 54:58
  Revenge of the Side Men and Tear of the Zygons, it actually
• 55:03
  creates a massive continuity problem if you want to to
• 55:06
  canonize any other missing adventures involving Harry
• 55:09
  Sullivan. Which I think previous books
• 55:12
  have already done. I just thought this was
• 55:14
  strangled by continuity over. Oh really?
• 55:18
  And you know, like the Reapers could be a scary idea, but they
• 55:21
  certainly weren't here. And I don't think the Karanas
• 55:24
  were ever scary in the 1st place.
• 55:26
  He's cackling witches, you know, with word power.
• 55:28
  So I don't know. I think I was on to a loser from
• 55:31
  the first page in this one. I really, so I I want to know, I
• 55:35
  mean, I'm really curious by this stage.
• 55:37
  I'm going, well, what was the brief?
• 55:38
  What age are they writing for? Oh, I.
• 55:41
  Think they just said to people, just write a horror short story,
• 55:44
  please. We'll put it in, we'll do it,
• 55:45
  we'll edit it for the language because.
• 55:47
  Saying, do you think people came back and said, well, I'd like to
• 55:49
  use the Reapers and the Carianites?
• 55:50
  And they were like, Yep, no, that's fine because Jack and
• 55:52
  Ryan has got the celestial toymakers.
• 55:54
  They were ticking off these parts and.
• 55:56
  We've got a Cyberman and we've got the family of Bloods.
• 55:58
  You know, like, I don't think continuity was an issue in this
• 56:01
  book. The issue for me is that there
• 56:04
  are quite a few stories given sequels that that that don't
• 56:08
  benefit from having sequels. But also, I don't think these
• 56:11
  short stories, because they're short stories and short stories
• 56:14
  have to be focused, I don't think they benefit from being
• 56:16
  sequels either. Wow, James.
• 56:18
  Talking of sequels, Mark of the Medusa by Mike Tucker, which
• 56:22
  brings back another element of Doctor Who, continuously, this
• 56:26
  time the OH. At least one of the Mara, but
• 56:28
  you also need to have the pretty clued up on Chameleon.
• 56:32
  As the most popular companion, well, at least you've got
• 56:34
  something to do though, right? Well, than you did on the TV
• 56:36
  show. Always.
• 56:37
  Always lovely to see comedian in a story, and Chameleon works
• 56:41
  much better in prose than he did I.
• 56:42
  Mean I was just grateful to be out of the bloody TARDIS at this
• 56:45
  point. So many of these stories set
• 56:46
  inside the TARDIS. It's odd though, because it says
• 56:49
  it's about the Mara, but it also is about the Medusa.
• 56:52
  So you've got stone figures. And who wrote this one?
• 56:58
  Oh, it's Mike Tucker again. OK, I I thought as much because
• 57:01
  again, it just feels like he's come up with a story with a
• 57:05
  scale that's completely inappropriate for the word
• 57:07
  count. There are points where it starts
• 57:09
  to feel like a synopsis rather than a short story.
• 57:13
  Well, it. Starts like one of his past
• 57:15
  doctor adventures. Oh, hello, doctor.
• 57:17
  Welcome to this fabulous museum. You know where where you come
• 57:21
  and see all of the works of of human history.
• 57:23
  It's. A bit weird, you know, Tegan's
• 57:26
  possessed because she's being nice and cheerful.
• 57:28
  That's. Always, always a good sign,
• 57:30
  yeah. Or a bad sign, rather.
• 57:33
  They're all very cheerful. Actually Turlow's very cheerful
• 57:35
  in this one. It's it's a very jolly crew
• 57:38
  compared to what we saw on television.
• 57:40
  Like, I mean, my biggest take away from this one was that
• 57:42
  fabulous illustration of the snake creature.
• 57:45
  Oh. Lovely.
• 57:46
  But the illustrator. We've said that the
• 57:47
  illustrations are lovely. You'll flick through and look at
• 57:49
  the illustrations. You get more from the
• 57:50
  illustration of this story than you do anything in the story.
• 57:53
  It's. The one story, though, that made
• 57:55
  me shiver at one point because I have such a terrible fear of
• 57:58
  snakes, and he's describing, you know, horrible, wet, slippery
• 58:02
  something going through the darkness.
• 58:04
  And I was like, oh God, please. That starts coiling itself
• 58:07
  around people and things like that.
• 58:08
  I'm not sure I'll be able to handle it.
• 58:10
  But we didn't go there, so I was all right.
• 58:12
  OK, so everything I know about you has has not prepared me for
• 58:15
  the fact that you're intimidated by the wetter, the wet Oh.
• 58:18
  Thank you very much, James Lark. Very much so.
• 58:23
  It's the spiders. I'm fine.
• 58:25
  Snakes. They just.
• 58:27
  Oh, it's just something unknowable, something utterly
• 58:32
  alien. I just, I know.
• 58:33
  I just can't that I can't handle it.
• 58:34
  Don't you feel like, I mean, Mike Tucker of all people is
• 58:37
  taking a bit of a risk writing a sequel to Kinder and Snake
• 58:41
  Dance? You know, surely the.
• 58:44
  Obvious choice, surely? You would at least aspire to
• 58:47
  kind of take not just the snake, but something of the mysticism
• 58:51
  and the and the the richness of those stories as well, rather
• 58:56
  than just, well, it's admirer. But also it turns people to
• 58:58
  stone this time because it's a bit like the Medusa.
• 59:00
  But then Channel 8 through Chameleon means I just don't
• 59:04
  think it it lands. It doesn't.
• 59:06
  It's not scary, you know, It's just Chameleon is the great
• 59:08
  manifestation of this great Tegan Medusa snake creature.
• 59:14
  What? Again, it feels a little bit
• 59:16
  like a kind of a tick list. I've got them all in, but I want
• 59:20
  to do stone figures because the Medusa had snakes on their head.
• 59:23
  Tick. Oh, Chameleon ought to be in it,
• 59:25
  because Chameleon was in all of those stories back then,
• 59:28
  famously. But we've always left the Sardis
• 59:30
  with the crew. But it does, you know, it does.
• 59:32
  One of those endings where it's all a bit ambiguous.
• 59:35
  Once again, the Time Lord had outwitted it.
• 59:37
  Once again it had been banished to the dark places of the
• 59:40
  inside. But it's patience was infinite.
• 59:43
  The will return once more, and one day, one day very soon.
• 59:47
  I don't know why I had to add that beer.
• 59:49
  It would be free again. So.
• 59:53
  That's I mean, and there is also a thing that goes on throughout
• 59:57
  this book, which is that a lot of them are trying to in a way
• 1:00:00
  that I think horror stories at their best do leave it on a a
• 1:00:06
  leave a sting in the tail, A twist, leave something hanging.
• 1:00:10
  And quite often it just feels like really.
• 1:00:15
  And that's. What I mean, I think this story,
• 1:00:17
  most of it felt sort of really. So let's move on, James.
• 1:00:24
  Yes. Trick or Treat by Jacqueline
• 1:00:28
  Rayner. Absolute treat, of course,
• 1:00:30
  because it's by Jacqueline Rayner.
• 1:00:33
  Now this actually might have been my favorite of the whole
• 1:00:35
  collection. I like this one very much and it
• 1:00:38
  and it's and it's all the better for being the sequel that the
• 1:00:42
  first story really needed, because the first story didn't
• 1:00:44
  quite feel complete, as I hinted.
• 1:00:46
  So the fact that we come back to it and we're in this situation
• 1:00:49
  with the Celestials we make it is suggesting that all of the
• 1:00:51
  Doctor's adventures from Dodo all the way through to the sick
• 1:00:55
  Doctor have been his own gains is it's such a delightful idea
• 1:01:00
  can. I quote one of the bits of
• 1:01:02
  dialogue I was howling when I read this.
• 1:01:05
  Did you think it was all real Doctor?
• 1:01:07
  Truly, I'm the 1st to admit I got it wrong.
• 1:01:09
  Sometimes. The reality filters cut out
• 1:01:11
  every now and again, but you never seem to notice the plastic
• 1:01:14
  Daleks or the bendy dinosaurs, or that quite ridiculous giant
• 1:01:19
  plush rat. Did it ever cross your mind to
• 1:01:22
  wonder why that tunnel you you fell through recently was
• 1:01:25
  actually literally decorated with Christmas tinsel?
• 1:01:29
  A total failure on my part. I tried to distract you by
• 1:01:32
  bringing Daleks out again, but now I'm beginning to wonder if
• 1:01:35
  I, if I needed to, have tried so hard.
• 1:01:37
  You are obviously completely oblivious to the whole thing.
• 1:01:40
  I mean, I was reading that. I was howling, James.
• 1:01:43
  I loved it. I loved it.
• 1:01:46
  I to just to slightly be able to killjoy again.
• 1:01:50
  Once again I I sort of found myself going well.
• 1:01:52
  So then who is this for? Because this is this is pushing
• 1:01:55
  a lot of buttons for me, a fan who knows all all these
• 1:01:59
  references are about. But this is aimed surely at
• 1:02:01
  children who wouldn't have a clue what he was talking.
• 1:02:02
  About with do you know what? Now I'm coming to the conclusion
• 1:02:05
  I didn't whilst I was reading it, but given this much
• 1:02:07
  continuity I think this is literally supposed to be aimed
• 1:02:11
  at long term fans in. Which case I think the writing
• 1:02:14
  should have been consider, I think the stories could have
• 1:02:17
  been longer. I think the writing needs to be
• 1:02:18
  more sophisticated and they could have taken much more of a,
• 1:02:21
  you know, ambitious approach to to the whole collection.
• 1:02:25
  But if this particular story is aimed at a seasoned Doctor Who
• 1:02:31
  fan, then I think it it does extremely well.
• 1:02:35
  Yeah, absolutely. And, and the, the that pair of
• 1:02:38
  stories is, is, you know, it's, it's a real delight actually.
• 1:02:44
  I mean, I just like the idea of the the kids knocking on the
• 1:02:47
  TARDIS, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:49
  You know, being trick or treaters and they're wearing all
• 1:02:51
  masks of the old doctors faces. And she starts to drop hints
• 1:02:54
  that they are the the past doctors but doesn't give it away
• 1:02:57
  straight away. So you're allowed to work it out
• 1:02:58
  for yourself and. Then when, when you got used to
• 1:03:01
  the idea, you get a fabulous illustration that's got all the,
• 1:03:04
  the ventriloquist dummies in a box and it's, it's a great, oh,
• 1:03:10
  it's wonderful. And, and I like the resolution
• 1:03:13
  to this one as well. The two lies one truth where the
• 1:03:16
  doctor gives 3 statements and he has to choose one of them.
• 1:03:20
  And all of them are basically, you've created a fiction and I
• 1:03:23
  my adventures were real and he has to choose one of them, but
• 1:03:26
  he can't because then it'd be missing.
• 1:03:28
  It was a clever way to get out of the store it.
• 1:03:30
  Was do you think the three statements are a little bit
• 1:03:33
  wordy? I had to read my way through
• 1:03:35
  them a few times before I worked out what the doctor's actual
• 1:03:38
  trick was. Oh, I just thought I got the
• 1:03:40
  gist of it. I was kind of skipped across
• 1:03:42
  them and went, Oh well, that's quite clever.
• 1:03:45
  Yeah, maybe it wasn't as clever as I thought.
• 1:03:46
  It was big. Maybe I was searching for
• 1:03:49
  something there that wasn't there.
• 1:03:51
  But that that's that's a pair of stories that work individually,
• 1:03:56
  I think, and work as a pair. Yeah, if I'd read it as a
• 1:03:59
  bedtime story, though, AI would have lost them at all.
• 1:04:02
  Those, those references to the past and B, those three
• 1:04:05
  questions, I'd have read them out and they'd have gone.
• 1:04:10
  Well, probably me as well, if I'm honest.
• 1:04:13
  What do you know? The writer I was most looking
• 1:04:15
  forward to reading was Scott Hancock, because I have listened
• 1:04:21
  to plenty of Big Finish audios that Scott Hancock has written,
• 1:04:25
  directed and produced. I think he's a very, I mean,
• 1:04:29
  he's currently script editing the new series of Doctor Who,
• 1:04:32
  which I'm enjoying a great deal. So I don't know.
• 1:04:34
  Which big finishes has he written?
• 1:04:36
  So he was responsible for the the probably the first eighty of
• 1:04:41
  the Tortwood range, of the Dorian Grey range.
• 1:04:44
  He wrote some of the later Peter Davison main range stories,
• 1:04:49
  which were great. He's done a lot He's he's, but
• 1:04:53
  he's it's mostly spin off ranges rather than the main range,
• 1:04:57
  which often where I find the talent lies, if I'm honest.
• 1:05:01
  Yeah, yeah. So I was really intrigued to
• 1:05:03
  see, because I've never read any pros of his, what he would
• 1:05:07
  deliver in this. And actually, I think he's two
• 1:05:09
  of my most disappointing. Yeah, this one is not very good.
• 1:05:16
  The So the Living image, the 7th Doctor story.
• 1:05:21
  I think I thought it, it relied on cliches like Victorian
• 1:05:24
  London, which we've done, you know, and it's really easy to
• 1:05:27
  visualise, but it's not, you know, he mentions Jack the
• 1:05:29
  Ripper. All, all the cliches are in
• 1:05:31
  there, all the. Cliches.
• 1:05:32
  I've written that this one is where it starts to feel like
• 1:05:36
  fanfic. Go on.
• 1:05:40
  Why do people why can't people write for the 7th Doctor and
• 1:05:44
  Ace? I mean, I think some people can,
• 1:05:48
  I think. Some people can, but I think a
• 1:05:49
  lot of people can. And maybe this is this goes back
• 1:05:51
  to the the problem with the new adventures.
• 1:05:53
  Again, I feel like Andrew Carmel employed some really brilliant
• 1:06:00
  writers and also workshopped a lot of ideas.
• 1:06:03
  And when you've got dialogue by Ben Aronovich, it trips off the
• 1:06:06
  tongue. It sounds effortless.
• 1:06:09
  And I feel like a lot of people go through their 7th Doctor
• 1:06:13
  stories basically trying to make it sound like a script by Ben
• 1:06:17
  Aronovich. And so it feels immediately
• 1:06:20
  forced. So it feels like fan fiction.
• 1:06:23
  It feels like if I don't know if you've ever seen any of the kind
• 1:06:25
  of scenes that McCoy and Aldridge did in the wilderness
• 1:06:29
  years for various kind of unofficial spin offs.
• 1:06:32
  We had all the dialogue was just this absolutely nauseating where
• 1:06:36
  we're going to kind of pinch 1/2 a sentence from Remembrance of
• 1:06:39
  the Dialects and half from Curse of Fenrick and make it sound
• 1:06:41
  like the 7th Doctors talking and they sort of gamely commit to
• 1:06:44
  it. It's it, it's a mean thing to
• 1:06:48
  say. And I know that you're usually
• 1:06:50
  very, very generous towards Sophie Aldrin on your podcast,
• 1:06:53
  but absolutely when you can hear McCoy and Aldrid saying the
• 1:06:58
  dialogue, it's quite often not a good thing.
• 1:07:03
  And I can hear them speaking these lines and and I was
• 1:07:07
  cringing as I was reading it. I don't know if you've just said
• 1:07:10
  a compliment or an insult. I think we're halfway between
• 1:07:13
  the two. I, I, I, I, I, you know, I love
• 1:07:17
  that era of Doctor Who. I have so much time for
• 1:07:20
  Sylvester McCoy, but I think that he sometimes struggles
• 1:07:25
  legitimately with what people have given him to say.
• 1:07:28
  And it's because they're not Ben Aronovich.
• 1:07:29
  They're not writing these these pithy sentences that that sound
• 1:07:32
  as if he's making them up on the spot.
• 1:07:34
  They're writing these really convoluted things with words
• 1:07:36
  that he literally cannot pronounce.
• 1:07:37
  But I. Also think as well, people grab
• 1:07:41
  sort of the darker stuff they did in the 7th Doctor and that
• 1:07:43
  was the problem with the New Adventures.
• 1:07:45
  A lot of and they don't make him playful enough.
• 1:07:47
  They don't remember that Sylvester McCoy is a comedian.
• 1:07:50
  He's really funny. Or they think, oh, whilst the
• 1:07:53
  he, the way we show him being playful is that he's going to
• 1:07:56
  say something very serious, but he's going to use the word
• 1:07:58
  indubitably. It's that kind of thing, yeah.
• 1:08:01
  But you've also got some ace, some quality ace, last one up to
• 1:08:05
  rack him, she says at one point. Or oi, drop bags, she says.
• 1:08:10
  Now I could absolutely hear Sophie Aldridge saying those
• 1:08:13
  words. That's my point.
• 1:08:14
  There you go. You can totally she and she
• 1:08:16
  would have committed to it with all of the enthusiasm that she
• 1:08:18
  she brings to everything and it would have been misplaced
• 1:08:21
  enthusiasm. Whereas with whereas when Peter
• 1:08:23
  Davidson delivers a bad line, you can sort of hear in his
• 1:08:25
  voice that he knows it's a bad line and it's like he's going
• 1:08:28
  don't worry, I'm I'm a good actor.
• 1:08:29
  Really, I'm just saying this because it's on the script.
• 1:08:32
  Whereas McCoy and Audrey will always give their best but.
• 1:08:35
  Do you know Scott Hancock created the Dorian Gray range
• 1:08:39
  for Big Finish? A really adult, really
• 1:08:42
  sophisticated range of audios about a man who's immortal.
• 1:08:47
  And so they set the stories at different points in time, and
• 1:08:50
  they do just incredibly interesting things with that
• 1:08:53
  character. And he's doing a version of
• 1:08:55
  Dorian Gray here that's so generic in comparison.
• 1:08:58
  Generic. And I'm like looking about this
• 1:09:00
  and you've done it better. Sorry, I just, I feel like we've
• 1:09:04
  now spent kind of 10 minutes slagging off a performance by
• 1:09:08
  Sylvester McCoy that he never actually normally.
• 1:09:11
  Do that anyway, James, don't you worry.
• 1:09:13
  But but it sort of it channels, it almost channels a bad
• 1:09:18
  performance from the two leaders.
• 1:09:20
  Are you saying this brighting is so inept you can see a bad
• 1:09:24
  Sylvester McCoy performance whilst reading that's?
• 1:09:25
  Exactly what I'm saying, yeah. Well, there you go.
• 1:09:29
  There's a whole page of exposition, like, again, too
• 1:09:32
  much story for the for the word count.
• 1:09:34
  The Doctors delivers a whole page of exposition.
• 1:09:36
  There's no real tension because it's all going to be resolved.
• 1:09:39
  And you can, you can. Yeah, you can.
• 1:09:41
  You can imagine the actors struggling their way through
• 1:09:44
  this. But I know.
• 1:09:45
  I do know Scott Hancock can craft good, memorable dialogue.
• 1:09:49
  I've heard it. So I don't know what went wrong
• 1:09:52
  here because I thought the prose was weak as well.
• 1:09:55
  And. Again, writing a short story is
• 1:09:56
  difficult and and maybe I don't know how specific the brief was
• 1:10:00
  about the age for the intended audience, because as I say, I
• 1:10:05
  think the intention is for quite a young crowd.
• 1:10:09
  Maybe, maybe he's struggling to kind of keep keep it as simple
• 1:10:11
  as it needs to be, because this feels not simple, but
• 1:10:15
  simplistic. It feels perfunctory.
• 1:10:18
  It's almost This is one that does at times read like a
• 1:10:21
  synopsis rather than a story. Yeah.
• 1:10:24
  Well, do you know what, I don't think I've one of us is going to
• 1:10:26
  say anything particularly complementary.
• 1:10:29
  So let's move on to Organism 96. So this is the second Paul Mars
• 1:10:34
  and I think the weaker of the two Pauls.
• 1:10:36
  And a title I kept misreading. Oh really?
• 1:10:41
  Oh, I know where your mind was while reading this book.
• 1:10:44
  Well, it was, yeah, but it was there. 96 orgasms by Paul.
• 1:10:52
  No, no, let's not go there. OK, so this is set on a sailing
• 1:10:56
  ship. Now, the one thing I took from
• 1:10:59
  this was all of these Third Doctor references throughout the
• 1:11:02
  book. The ship's called the WH Allen.
• 1:11:05
  You have Colonel Hulk, Captain Les and Doctor Marta.
• 1:11:09
  Was there a Dick's in there as well?
• 1:11:11
  There should have been. There's not a Dick's in there,
• 1:11:13
  OK, And I And so and so why? Why are they well again?
• 1:11:18
  It's supposed to be little, you know, little treats for the long
• 1:11:22
  term fans. I'm convinced now you know.
• 1:11:26
  Yeah, clearly. But but what?
• 1:11:28
  But why? Why have you put a load of
• 1:11:31
  personally references into your Paul McGann story?
• 1:11:35
  It does it it I was reading here.
• 1:11:37
  Is there going to be a clever twist where this turns out to be
• 1:11:39
  kind of a target novelization or something like?
• 1:11:40
  That, that's what I thought. I thought maybe we're in the
• 1:11:42
  land of fiction somehow or something like that.
• 1:11:45
  Something because it's Paul Mars.
• 1:11:47
  So I thought it was going to be something very meta.
• 1:11:49
  And it turns out it's just Paul Mars kind of having a bit of fun
• 1:11:52
  with the names. And one of his characters is
• 1:11:54
  called Blenkinsopp, so he's not really taking any of the names
• 1:11:57
  particularly seriously. I, it almost reads like he, he
• 1:12:00
  was using them as kind of filler names before we thought of
• 1:12:03
  something different and he thought, well, I might as well
• 1:12:05
  leave them in. But if you're going to do that,
• 1:12:07
  you need a, you need a, a, a a major Dicks, don't you?
• 1:12:12
  You need you need to make sure that it's the whole lot of them.
• 1:12:15
  This felt to me more than pretty much any other, like a new
• 1:12:20
  series adventure they run to about oh.
• 1:12:22
  It's very, yeah, yeah, it's two. 150 pages, and it needed that
• 1:12:25
  length in order to tell its story, to establish a Doctor
• 1:12:29
  Who's there right in the first scene, sunbathing on the decade
• 1:12:32
  he's. There in his in his Victorian
• 1:12:34
  bathing suit and it's and it feels about that very
• 1:12:37
  entertaining. It's it's funny and it yeah,
• 1:12:40
  absolutely. It's it's kind of a Russell T
• 1:12:43
  Davis style run around. Well, I wanted to know more
• 1:12:46
  about the Soviet experiment that created this thing.
• 1:12:49
  You know, if this was a new series adventure, you could do
• 1:12:51
  some flashbacks and see this thing actually being created and
• 1:12:54
  why. But.
• 1:12:55
  Also, but also, if it was a longer story, he would have had
• 1:13:00
  to take his characters a bit more seriously.
• 1:13:02
  Instead, he he in the same way that he gives some more silly
• 1:13:05
  names. They behave in a way that's
• 1:13:07
  rather silly. You know, one of the characters
• 1:13:09
  comes back to the doctor and says I'm sorry, I doubted your
• 1:13:11
  sanity and run away, which is a funny line, but it's not a line
• 1:13:14
  you'd give to a real character. That's true.
• 1:13:17
  I did like the idea of the old lady, though, that everybody
• 1:13:19
  thought was this, you know, this, this innocent old woman.
• 1:13:22
  And the doctor kept going. No, it's a horrible monster.
• 1:13:24
  But he said it's quite amusing to read, but it is just so
• 1:13:27
  quick. Yeah, I I also liked the fact
• 1:13:32
  that the monster was partially defeated by the high note in I
• 1:13:37
  Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston.
• 1:13:39
  Oh. That's, that is fun.
• 1:13:40
  I mean, it's all it, it's, it's perfectly well constructed and
• 1:13:43
  the, and the prose is, is delightful because Paul Mars
• 1:13:46
  really writes beautiful prose. But it's, it's also quite
• 1:13:50
  disposable, I, I would say, but. I would take this over, you
• 1:13:55
  know, a well written piece. In, in, in, in a, in a
• 1:13:58
  collection that had some stories being a little bit more
• 1:14:01
  avant-garde, a few stories doing something with the narrative,
• 1:14:05
  you know, the, the linear nature of the narrative, maybe telling
• 1:14:08
  in a different way, maybe one in the first person.
• 1:14:11
  I would totally buy this one as a as, as one of the fun
• 1:14:15
  throwaway pieces. But in a book where this is kind
• 1:14:18
  of one of the standout, this one feels competently written.
• 1:14:23
  Well, that tells you everything you need to know about the book
• 1:14:25
  overall then, doesn't it? Yeah.
• 1:14:26
  I think so. Although I am very forgiving for
• 1:14:29
  any short story that has the line, but at the same time it
• 1:14:32
  seemed to enjoy killing and all that business about eating human
• 1:14:35
  brains. That's not a very forgivable
• 1:14:37
  trait in Nice Old Ladies. Which did make me laugh out
• 1:14:40
  loud. Well, let's skip on to the
• 1:14:43
  second Scott Hancock book then, the title of which I haven't
• 1:14:46
  written down in my notes. The patchwork Piero.
• 1:14:50
  Now this I think was the the ultimate example of I love the
• 1:14:54
  image of of the horror of the story, but I didn't like the
• 1:14:59
  story. And and it's the one where it
• 1:15:03
  feels maybe it's going too far forgiven that given how benign
• 1:15:08
  most of the horror is. It goes properly full on with
• 1:15:13
  the the kind of Cyberman conversion, Frankenstein
• 1:15:19
  pillaging of body parts. It's it's pretty graphic
• 1:15:23
  actually. And it's descriptions of that
• 1:15:24
  which I. Like that though, James.
• 1:15:26
  Yeah, I don't dislike that, but if if I had, you know, flicked
• 1:15:30
  through this book and thought oh, this is going to be a
• 1:15:32
  perfect presence for my 8 year old grandson, I might have been
• 1:15:35
  a bit freaked out if he started reading that out loud to me is.
• 1:15:38
  This the only point in the whole book though where that would be
• 1:15:40
  the case. Yeah, it's the only story that
• 1:15:43
  goes into kind of body horror in a way that just feels
• 1:15:46
  inappropriate given the surroundings.
• 1:15:48
  It's the one point in the book where I was like, oh, I'd really
• 1:15:51
  love to see that. Actually see that on the screen.
• 1:15:53
  I'd love to see because So what we've got here is the image of a
• 1:15:56
  Cyberman that that's literally kind of falling apart and
• 1:15:59
  patching itself up. So it's a Cyberman as a kind of
• 1:16:02
  Piero clown. It's got the, it's got a, an, an
• 1:16:08
  image of a, the Cyberman on a trapeze as well, swinging out of
• 1:16:11
  the darkness and, and just catching someone up.
• 1:16:13
  It's got it. It feels written, to be filmed,
• 1:16:16
  to be honest and. I really love just the image of
• 1:16:19
  the 9th Doctor at a Nebraskan circus as well.
• 1:16:23
  Just the setting I really like as well.
• 1:16:25
  So all all of that I like. It just felt, again, just so
• 1:16:29
  brief. Very brief and then you get your
• 1:16:32
  ending, which is sort of a cross between Dalek and the Happiness
• 1:16:35
  Patrol. Emotions kill side men and the
• 1:16:39
  end. Oh, and then a little thing in
• 1:16:40
  the tale, because the side men may be still looks at you
• 1:16:44
  occasionally in the circus. I don't know.
• 1:16:47
  I put, I put sort of. To sum it up, I put a nice
• 1:16:49
  grotesque short and one that I would like to see expanded. 7
• 1:16:53
  out of 10. Yeah, I'm not sure I'd give it
• 1:16:58
  seven for the for the image. Again, there's some really good
• 1:17:03
  imagery throughout this book and and once again, this one is
• 1:17:08
  illustrated absolutely beautifully by Rohan Eason.
• 1:17:13
  But I I need more from a from a story.
• 1:17:17
  Well, let's move on then, to Blood Will Out by Richard
• 1:17:22
  Dunworth. Now I think this is a bold move
• 1:17:25
  indeed, to dare to write a sequel to Human Nature and the
• 1:17:30
  Family of Blood. I said exactly the same.
• 1:17:33
  And I don't think now there's things about this I did like
• 1:17:38
  but. But you have to say first of
• 1:17:40
  all, why? Why are you writing a sequel to
• 1:17:42
  this Can? You justify this, especially
• 1:17:46
  when at the end of this book you're just throwing three of
• 1:17:48
  them that escape into the fate of one of the others.
• 1:17:52
  So we haven't really gone anywhere with them.
• 1:17:53
  Well, the issue here is the family of bloods get dispatched
• 1:17:57
  with in a way that's really unusual in Doctor Who.
• 1:18:01
  It feels to me like it's not literal.
• 1:18:04
  It's a beautiful piece of writing and you see each of them
• 1:18:07
  locked away in the most surreal ways.
• 1:18:10
  Do we really want to start investigating literally if that
• 1:18:15
  little girl with the balloon is in every mirror?
• 1:18:17
  Because that doesn't make any kind of sense now.
• 1:18:20
  It's a, it's a wonderful, disturbing image and I love that
• 1:18:23
  it finishes that way, but I don't then want a story telling
• 1:18:28
  me that. No, no, she is literally in
• 1:18:29
  every mirror. It's just, it's a, it's a
• 1:18:33
  poetical, mystical way of, of punishing that family of blood.
• 1:18:37
  And we should have left it there.
• 1:18:39
  The minute you start taking it literally in a sequel that in
• 1:18:43
  any case nobody is asking for, you're destroying the mystery of
• 1:18:48
  that and you're suddenly making anyone with a brain go hang on,
• 1:18:52
  hang on. That doesn't make sense, does
• 1:18:55
  it? But also as well trapped in
• 1:18:57
  every mirror, one of those one of those issues with expanded
• 1:19:02
  media and that is you can you can leave things alone.
• 1:19:06
  You know, you don't have to do a sequel to everything.
• 1:19:08
  You don't have to plug every single gap in continuity.
• 1:19:12
  And yeah, I don't know. I just feel like everything's
• 1:19:15
  open to be to be taken and not ruined.
• 1:19:19
  But what? Kind of ruined.
• 1:19:21
  Kind of ruined for a for a story in what what happens?
• 1:19:24
  The Doctor gets chained up, but he does a Houdini because he can
• 1:19:27
  do that, and then the TARDIS saps them the.
• 1:19:29
  One thing I I absolutely got from this very short story was
• 1:19:34
  there's such shorthand with the 10th Doctor and Donna are so
• 1:19:37
  such big characters. Capturing them on the page is
• 1:19:40
  really easy and I thought they were done really well.
• 1:19:43
  They. Were done really well and it and
• 1:19:44
  very entertainingly. And the sort of the horror of
• 1:19:50
  the family escaping, I thought that was captured quite well,
• 1:19:54
  but then they didn't. Remember, we've seen it before.
• 1:19:55
  We've seen it before. It's it's just like, yeah, OK,
• 1:19:58
  fine. It's it's fine.
• 1:19:59
  But whoever's reading this story is either hasn't seen the Family
• 1:20:03
  of Blood and is therefore going to be mystified about half the
• 1:20:07
  stuff that's going on, or has seen it and has therefore seen
• 1:20:09
  this done better. But if we are going to use the
• 1:20:12
  family, but then you at least want to suggest that they are a
• 1:20:15
  big threat. So and he does manage to achieve
• 1:20:17
  that, but then. No, he doesn't, because they're
• 1:20:20
  just knocked out in a second. They just knocked out.
• 1:20:22
  But also that one of the horrific things about the Family
• 1:20:25
  of Blood is that they are kind of cadavers.
• 1:20:27
  They are people who were people. But he, he, he doesn't even go
• 1:20:30
  there. The little girl in this one.
• 1:20:32
  No, no, it's fine. She's all right.
• 1:20:34
  The Family of Blood are not quite so lethal anymore.
• 1:20:39
  But I did like. I'm trying to be positive here.
• 1:20:42
  I did like the I did like the line.
• 1:20:44
  It's good for the family to spend time together at the end
• 1:20:47
  when they're all thrown down into the collapsing event
• 1:20:49
  horizon or whatever it is. I don't, I, I found this
• 1:20:52
  readable. I I wondered why it existed.
• 1:20:55
  They're all readable. They're all readable.
• 1:20:58
  There's there's nothing about this book that's that's that's
• 1:21:01
  not an easy read and and often an atmospheric read.
• 1:21:06
  But I do think you need to have a reason for writing a story in
• 1:21:09
  the first place. Well, not just because you've
• 1:21:11
  got to fill a a chapter where we've got to do one for the the
• 1:21:14
  10th Doctor. So, well, I.
• 1:21:15
  Think might as well be this one. The reason beyond this one was
• 1:21:17
  they were expecting people to go, Oh yeah, the family of
• 1:21:19
  blood, weren't they Grey, you know, but then sort of doing
• 1:21:23
  nothing with that at all. Yeah, well, and and and and
• 1:21:30
  doing and it's not even like you've got an idea.
• 1:21:33
  I with some of these, I don't think they are particularly
• 1:21:35
  successfully realised, but I can see that they've gone.
• 1:21:37
  OK, here's this is the idea. This is the the the soul of this
• 1:21:40
  story. This one is just what if the
• 1:21:42
  family of blood were to get out? What would happen?
• 1:21:44
  Turns out, not very much. Nothing.
• 1:21:47
  They get knocked out and then thrown down the event horizon.
• 1:21:50
  The end. Yeah.
• 1:21:52
  Well, I I will say to be somewhat positive, I quite like
• 1:21:58
  the last two stories. I felt the same.
• 1:22:01
  I feel like these are two of the strongest, both by Craig
• 1:22:05
  Donaghy. Thank you.
• 1:22:06
  So how you say it, and I, and you know, me and Moffett, not my
• 1:22:11
  favorite era of Doctor Who, but in both cases, I thought the The
• 1:22:15
  Doctors were captured really, really well.
• 1:22:17
  I loved the idea of the family trapped in the car, in the midst
• 1:22:22
  of sorrow, surrounded by the Weeping Angels, with the
• 1:22:25
  Doctor's voice coming out of the radio to try and help them out
• 1:22:29
  of this very sticky situation they're in.
• 1:22:31
  That's a good premise for a short story.
• 1:22:33
  It's a. Great premise and unlike the
• 1:22:35
  Dalek story, we stay with the family, which is makes makes it
• 1:22:39
  a very kind of well-rounded, well structured story.
• 1:22:43
  You you're really invested in the characters like they're all
• 1:22:45
  good characters. They've got good relationships
• 1:22:47
  with each other and. Unlike the Dalek story, it
• 1:22:49
  reaches a conclusion about the family as well.
• 1:22:52
  It doesn't it stay together. It's important you all work
• 1:22:55
  together as a family. And the Doctor is really well
• 1:22:58
  written. Well, you know, it, it captures,
• 1:23:01
  it captures the essence of, of Matt Smith's Doctor in a way
• 1:23:05
  that doesn't kind of ever diminish this, this, this peril
• 1:23:10
  that they're in it. It, it balances comedy and and
• 1:23:14
  tension in a really skillful way, I think.
• 1:23:17
  If Matt Smith had just appeared on the TV show Come as a voice
• 1:23:20
  coming out of a car radio, I probably would have taken to him
• 1:23:23
  a lot more. Actually, there's a description
• 1:23:25
  of him here that I loved. I wrote down, He said he had a
• 1:23:28
  young face but old eyes. He had floppy hair and a
• 1:23:31
  ridiculous bow tie. There was wisdom in his
• 1:23:34
  features, an angry, fierce sense of everything and everyone.
• 1:23:37
  But then he put on a fez and all of that lifted in a second,
• 1:23:42
  which I thought was just a perfect description.
• 1:23:45
  Of really lovely, really lovely. I would say the only weakness in
• 1:23:50
  this one is is that narratively the conclusion is just the
• 1:23:54
  doctor saves them that, you know, literal Deus Ex machina.
• 1:23:57
  But it does what Touched by an Angel did the NSA by Johnny
• 1:24:02
  Morris's. And you'd think it would be
• 1:24:03
  impossible because the Weeping Agents are such a visual idea.
• 1:24:07
  It does them really, really well.
• 1:24:09
  You've got the flickering lights of the car, the Angel sort of
• 1:24:12
  coming up towards them. I thought it captured the the
• 1:24:15
  visual tension. Oh, yeah.
• 1:24:16
  That the angels bring really effectively.
• 1:24:19
  Yeah, it's a, it's a great scenario, isn't it?
• 1:24:21
  A car in the Mist? It's it's pure horror material.
• 1:24:26
  Yeah. So I think it's.
• 1:24:27
  Got a few scares in it I. I was suffering from, well, I
• 1:24:31
  kind of still am, but I was in the in the the depths of man flu
• 1:24:36
  and I was reading this at 3:30 in the morning in the half dark
• 1:24:40
  down in my living room. And this was the one story that
• 1:24:42
  was giving me a bit of chilts. So I say this was one of the
• 1:24:45
  more effective ones of this of the collection.
• 1:24:49
  Yeah, one of my favourite ones. Well.
• 1:24:51
  Actually and then baby sleepy face which is A1 which.
• 1:24:54
  I think is even better actually. It's a really, it's a really fun
• 1:24:59
  story about a factory that's closed and it's a doll factory
• 1:25:04
  likes me here from space. And there's thousands of these
• 1:25:08
  horrible dollies come into life by the nesting consciousness.
• 1:25:14
  And Peter Capaldi's there with two children to try and save the
• 1:25:18
  day. What did you think?
• 1:25:22
  Loved it. I, I, I think that the again,
• 1:25:25
  we're focus, we're focusing on the children.
• 1:25:27
  We're almost seeing all of this from the the kids point of view.
• 1:25:30
  In fact, we pretty much are, aren't we?
• 1:25:33
  And it capitalized on the fact that the 12th Doctor is a
• 1:25:37
  slightly scary character as well, I feel like.
• 1:25:42
  So this is where I I read out the description of the Doctor in
• 1:25:46
  Paul Miles's first story and said that does very skillfully
• 1:25:50
  that thing of describing the Doctor in a simple way that's
• 1:25:53
  immediately evokes him. This is where I think the writer
• 1:25:55
  doesn't quite get it. It doesn't quite feel as
• 1:25:59
  effortless as it needs to. It's working a bit too hard.
• 1:26:01
  A thin man stepped forward from the shadows.
• 1:26:04
  He looks angry, or at least his eyebrows did.
• 1:26:06
  Oh, I. Wrote that down as well.
• 1:26:08
  I quite like his eyebrows. He's.
• 1:26:10
  Typically reassuring as well. At one point he says to the
• 1:26:12
  kids, don't be ridiculous, you're not safe.
• 1:26:15
  But then it says he was smartly dressed in a buttoned up white
• 1:26:18
  shirt and dark jacket. His curly grey hair was both
• 1:26:20
  tidy and unruly, and he looked both terrifying and kind all at
• 1:26:24
  the same time. That's.
• 1:26:26
  A. Lot.
• 1:26:26
  That's a lot. That's a lot.
• 1:26:27
  That's a lot, but he that they get that these kids in
• 1:26:34
  considerable danger and it and it paints a really evocative
• 1:26:38
  image of these these plastic dolls climbing all over them.
• 1:26:42
  And they turn to to a man who is almost as scary for help and who
• 1:26:49
  does nothing but insult them, but somehow.
• 1:26:52
  Perfect 12 Doctor, right? Somehow brings them together
• 1:26:55
  and, and, and I think these kids are, are really well written.
• 1:26:58
  They're twins who are competitive in different ways.
• 1:27:00
  And in the end it sees them playing to their strengths and
• 1:27:03
  it sees the Doctor say now stop being ridiculous and get on with
• 1:27:05
  each other in the future, which I love.
• 1:27:07
  One bit that made me how was when he goes, I'm going to climb
• 1:27:11
  up. There's this enormous behemoth
• 1:27:13
  doll that's come to life and one of the kids goes, but you're an
• 1:27:17
  old man and he goes, you've got no idea.
• 1:27:20
  And then he's climbing up the. But I did feel like I'm
• 1:27:23
  wondering if this riot if he's quite a new writer because
• 1:27:26
  sometimes I thought the writing was really effective and the
• 1:27:29
  imagery was great. So there's a bit here.
• 1:27:32
  The soil beneath their feet started to split.
• 1:27:34
  Lots of grass turned upside down.
• 1:27:36
  Hundreds and thousands of discarded 40 plastic dolls began
• 1:27:40
  breaking through the dirt. And so there was nice
• 1:27:42
  descriptions like that, but then there was bits like the gigantic
• 1:27:47
  Alton creature stumbled around like a baby walking for the
• 1:27:50
  first time, clumsy but determined.
• 1:27:54
  Looming high above them was one gigantic mega doll made of
• 1:27:58
  thousands of smashed up dolls all piled to get.
• 1:28:00
  And I was like, that sounds like somebody that's never written
• 1:28:03
  fiction before. Yeah, it's it's not it's not all
• 1:28:06
  consistent, I think, but I I think generally it moves along
• 1:28:10
  it quite a lick. And also one thing that it does
• 1:28:12
  do is the thing that I suggested a lot of these stories fail to,
• 1:28:16
  which is end it on a genuine twist.
• 1:28:19
  And for those of you who've had the enjoyment of this book
• 1:28:23
  spoiled by all the spoilers we've done, I'm going to spoil
• 1:28:25
  the very final paragraph because at the end, Amber fine.
• 1:28:30
  So she goes into her bedroom and she realizes that she's got one
• 1:28:32
  of these baby sleepy face dolls in her bedroom.
• 1:28:35
  Amber headed downstairs and opened the back door into the
• 1:28:37
  small garden. She threw the doll into the
• 1:28:40
  wheelie bin, then smiled and headed back into her room.
• 1:28:43
  Now it really was time to go to sleep and dream of some more
• 1:28:45
  adventures with the doctor. So for those of you who get
• 1:28:50
  Auton references, that's that's a lovely little way of ending it
• 1:28:53
  off. You know, the fact that we've
• 1:28:56
  got the wheelie bin in there as well and you know the doctors
• 1:28:59
  advised them to move away from plastic and but.
• 1:29:03
  I'm not sure if he's coming on here criticizing all these other
• 1:29:05
  stories for their continuity references.
• 1:29:07
  All right. And then, Oh well.
• 1:29:08
  You know, I was just about to say I want, I wonder how that
• 1:29:12
  would read for for the uninitiated.
• 1:29:14
  And I did. I did.
• 1:29:15
  I did come away from this collection sort of disappointed
• 1:29:17
  that it had been so reliant on past monsters in the main,
• 1:29:22
  without much kind of payback from that except for the
• 1:29:26
  narrative. What's original here?
• 1:29:28
  The Organism one well. Mike Tucker's first one, I
• 1:29:32
  believe, features. Something at the door.
• 1:29:36
  Something. At the door that we haven't seen
• 1:29:37
  before. But unfortunately that's
• 1:29:40
  unfortunately that's the one that you said was so vague that
• 1:29:43
  we there was no point to it. Sally is everything else the.
• 1:29:47
  Only one is not us. Monsters and when you think of,
• 1:29:50
  you know, the Doctor Who has the ability to go anywhere and do
• 1:29:55
  anything, to have that, to be that reliant.
• 1:29:59
  It's a shame, isn't it, on our ideas.
• 1:30:00
  It's making me wonder whether the the something at the door
• 1:30:03
  was something we should have recognised.
• 1:30:05
  Oh yeah, but there's not the. Fartans or.
• 1:30:08
  Something. Let's not read that again.
• 1:30:10
  I well, why don't you suck when we talked about every story?
• 1:30:14
  Why don't you summarise your thoughts on this disappointing
• 1:30:19
  but readable book? Very, very readable, and you'll
• 1:30:22
  read it in no time at all because they're all very, very
• 1:30:24
  short. I don't know who it's aimed at.
• 1:30:29
  It's got a lot of young characters.
• 1:30:31
  The pro style is very simple, but it's full of references for
• 1:30:34
  fans. It's not really bedtime story
• 1:30:37
  material as a result of that, because it spends a lot of time
• 1:30:40
  explaining stuff from television stories.
• 1:30:43
  I'm not sure how appropriate the horror stories idea is, given
• 1:30:46
  that very few of them really do have any horror in them.
• 1:30:52
  Most of them are not horror stories, but the one that the
• 1:30:54
  one that is, which is only the side moment one feels like it's
• 1:30:57
  in the wrong book and and just a very kind of conventional,
• 1:31:02
  unambitious set of stories with, you know, big on atmosphere but
• 1:31:07
  with quite rushed endings. Would this encourage you to read
• 1:31:11
  any more short story collections?
• 1:31:12
  No, it wouldn't. And I think there are better,
• 1:31:15
  there are much better ones out there, but for this age group as
• 1:31:17
  well. You know what on the back of
• 1:31:20
  this I picked up origin stories and then the the Master
• 1:31:23
  collection as well called me Master, I think it's called.
• 1:31:28
  But after reading this, I they may be gathering dust for some
• 1:31:31
  time before I pick them up, which which is tells you
• 1:31:34
  everything you need to know about my reaction to this.
• 1:31:37
  OK, well then let's park short stories and.
• 1:31:41
  Yeah, I mean, I guess if you did want some short stories that
• 1:31:44
  were more satisfying, you should you should search for a podcast
• 1:31:48
  called Neurotic Literature. Oh.
• 1:31:50
  My God, I was going to say that at the end, you know?
• 1:31:52
  Right, God, we can say that at the end as well.
• 1:31:55
  And can I ask, would you recommend one particular story
• 1:31:57
  to start with, you know, as a especially great example of
• 1:32:01
  neurotic literature? They're quite buried in style
• 1:32:06
  and approach. One of the earliest ones is
• 1:32:08
  called The Haughty Corpse, and I feel like that one is right
• 1:32:13
  purely because it has the title The Haughty Corpse, And I wrote
• 1:32:17
  it because I thought there should be a story called The
• 1:32:19
  Haughty Cops and I wanted to write it myself.
• 1:32:22
  That one's, that one's, I mean, that one's quite, quite a light
• 1:32:27
  hearted one, but I think quite an easy listen.
• 1:32:29
  There's also one which is one of my very favorites called I Saw
• 1:32:34
  Your Bottom. And if you think the idea of
• 1:32:36
  bottoms in stories is inherently funny, then that one is
• 1:32:42
  definitely one to listen to. I've got to say as well, and
• 1:32:47
  this is not just because you're here.
• 1:32:48
  You read them brilliantly, like you adapt your voice to, you
• 1:32:53
  know, your style to this tone of the book.
• 1:32:56
  So you do that sort of breathy Stephen Fryish, the one setting
• 1:33:00
  the school, you know, Jenkins, Jenkins.
• 1:33:02
  You know, I was like it's but everyone is different.
• 1:33:05
  You're a natural. Reader, Oh, it's very kind of
• 1:33:07
  you. Maybe I should get you to read
• 1:33:10
  this out Tales of Terror. I might have enjoyed it a bit
• 1:33:13
  more. Yeah, well, I could do this in a
• 1:33:16
  very breathy, relentless way as well.
• 1:33:20
  Maybe. Well, the real challenge would
• 1:33:22
  be the living image, wouldn't it?
• 1:33:23
  I'd see how I whether I can channel McCoy and Aldrin on a
• 1:33:27
  really bad day. No dude, real challenge would be
• 1:33:30
  making these generic bullshit stories sound exciting.
• 1:33:34
  Actually. I would love to hear your take
• 1:33:35
  on some of these regulars though.
• 1:33:37
  Oh, it would be fun. Well, let's move on to our
• 1:33:48
  recommends for this episode. And I would like to hand it to
• 1:33:52
  you first. It's a.
• 1:33:53
  Bit of well, look, I've got, I've got to recommend that.
• 1:33:57
  I don't know, it might be disapproved of by yourself and
• 1:34:00
  by the listeners because it's not really a Doctor Who book,
• 1:34:03
  but it is a collection of short stories.
• 1:34:05
  I thought it was on topic and it's called We All Hear Stories
• 1:34:08
  in the Dark and it's Rob Shearman's three volume
• 1:34:12
  collection of 100 short stories. This is the second time this has
• 1:34:16
  been recommended on this podcast.
• 1:34:18
  Oh. Is it really because it's not
• 1:34:19
  really it's I thought I, I thought I was going to get
• 1:34:21
  shouted down. I thought.
• 1:34:22
  You said you listened to this. Yeah, but.
• 1:34:26
  Clearly I don't listen hard enough.
• 1:34:28
  Who recommended this before? It was Michael Mills, I think.
• 1:34:32
  Oh. Well, you know, there we go.
• 1:34:34
  Intelligent man. It's, for a start, Robert
• 1:34:40
  Sherman writes the most beautiful short stories.
• 1:34:44
  And unless beautiful, they're actually often quite ugly short
• 1:34:46
  stories. They go to places that I don't
• 1:34:49
  know that I would necessarily dare to go in my own short
• 1:34:52
  stories, though it is possible that reading Robert Sherman took
• 1:34:57
  my own writing into a into a weird, darker place.
• 1:35:01
  But they are. There's a hundred of them and
• 1:35:05
  the, and the structure is you, you go in through a story, which
• 1:35:08
  is a sort of umbrella story in which someone finds himself
• 1:35:11
  reading his way through these stories.
• 1:35:15
  I think in the short, in the short story, he's got to read
• 1:35:17
  1000 or 10,000 or something. But but it's you're LED in by
• 1:35:22
  this old lady who is the kind of keeper of the library and like a
• 1:35:25
  choose your own adventure. At the end of every story, you
• 1:35:29
  get to choose which one you're going to read next.
• 1:35:31
  So you'll get a a direction like and the old woman says another
• 1:35:41
  village deals with the aftermath of war in its own unique way.
• 1:35:45
  Turn to memories of cravings long gone or and there are four
• 1:35:49
  other choices. So you choose so and she'll give
• 1:35:51
  you an idea of kind of what it's about or what Tony it is.
• 1:35:54
  So when you're reading, you can go, OK, that one sounds a bit
• 1:35:56
  sad or that one sounds really scary.
• 1:35:59
  And you'll read the the the next story that you want to.
• 1:36:04
  There's a point when you're reading through that it becomes
• 1:36:06
  clear that there's only one path through the books.
• 1:36:08
  And that's a little bit annoying.
• 1:36:10
  And I think that Robert Sherman has deliberately set out to piss
• 1:36:13
  off his readers as well because there's there's also a point
• 1:36:16
  where he starts to drop hints that there is actually a map
• 1:36:18
  somewhere in the book. And about kind of halfway
• 1:36:20
  through the book, I was, you know, rifling through it.
• 1:36:22
  There must be where where is this magazine on these
• 1:36:24
  illustrations? It is on the cover about halfway
• 1:36:27
  through. I just thought that's just a
• 1:36:28
  tease, he's just toying with us. And then imagine my frustration
• 1:36:34
  when 3/4 of the way through I thought, no, there is a bloody
• 1:36:37
  map and I haven't been following it.
• 1:36:39
  And I sort of got kicked out of the book without having read all
• 1:36:41
  of them. And because I'm the kind of
• 1:36:43
  person I am, I now feel I need to start again at the beginning
• 1:36:47
  and read them all over again. But it is a brilliant collection
• 1:36:50
  how he comes up with all these different ideas, you know, the
• 1:36:55
  the man is a little bit mad, but he's brilliant and I can't
• 1:36:58
  recommend it highly enough, you know?
• 1:37:01
  I think this took a decade to put together by Rob Sherman.
• 1:37:06
  Even in a decade, even in a decade to come out with 100
• 1:37:10
  stories, this is kind of sad. Isn't it?
• 1:37:12
  Somebody chose this for the desert island, Desert planet
• 1:37:15
  Pigs, just because they wanted to read something that would be
• 1:37:18
  a different story each time, each time they go through it.
• 1:37:22
  I thought that's kind of cheating, but yeah, you can have
• 1:37:24
  it well. Great.
• 1:37:24
  And it says everything the universe of of of different
• 1:37:27
  styles and genres in there. Can you believe that the Super
• 1:37:31
  brain that is Rob Shearman is coming on to hamster with a
• 1:37:35
  blunt penknife? And the season that he's got to
• 1:37:38
  talk about for Strictly Club Hamster is season 19, so I'm
• 1:37:42
  asking him to talk about four to Doomsday and Time Flight.
• 1:37:46
  Sure, he'll find something interesting to say.
• 1:37:48
  I. Bet he will.
• 1:37:49
  I bet he will, but you know, bless him, he does seem very
• 1:37:52
  infused about well, I think that's a wonderful choice and I
• 1:37:54
  haven't read that, but enough smart people have told me I I
• 1:37:58
  should be given that my time. So I'm I'm going to look into
• 1:38:02
  that. What I would like to recommend
• 1:38:05
  is a book, an annual, a yearbook, sorry, all yearbooks
• 1:38:12
  at this point that I got, I think I was 11 when I got this
• 1:38:17
  and I ward over it again and again and again.
• 1:38:21
  It's the Doctor Who yearbook. It's the. 1st it's the first of
• 1:38:24
  them. It's that 1992.
• 1:38:25
  Yes, with all the doctors on the cover and in particular, right.
• 1:38:30
  It's got this section in the middle, which is a synopsis of
• 1:38:34
  every story, the ratings, the writers.
• 1:38:38
  It's like a condensed version of the program guide.
• 1:38:41
  I was obsessed. Just full of pictures.
• 1:38:44
  It's got a gorgeous Tom Baker comic strip where he faces the
• 1:38:48
  Sea Devils. I think Sylvester Mccoy's in
• 1:38:50
  there somewhere as well. Man, I just adored this when I
• 1:38:54
  first got it. Perfect age to read it and I
• 1:38:57
  lapped it up and I can't even pick it up now without getting
• 1:39:00
  sort of nostalgic tingles. It's falling apart every time
• 1:39:03
  the pages are falling out. The pages.
• 1:39:05
  The pages are not terribly well bound.
• 1:39:07
  I have to say, I my story with with that is that in our WH
• 1:39:12
  Smiths, there was a copy of Peter Hayning's A Celebration,
• 1:39:15
  and I'd gone on and on and on about how I wanted this book.
• 1:39:18
  It was way outside of my pocket money range.
• 1:39:21
  And my dad picked it up for me for Christmas that year.
• 1:39:24
  And the cover was torn. I mean, it must have been in
• 1:39:27
  there for five years. The cover was torn.
• 1:39:29
  So my dad managed to wrangle a discount on the yearbook as
• 1:39:31
  well. So that Christmas I got Peter
• 1:39:34
  Hayning's A Celebration and the Doctor Who yearbook.
• 1:39:36
  I was absolutely in heaven. But I mean, these were a treat
• 1:39:40
  to get, right? Like, like it because it just
• 1:39:43
  felt like the whole history of Doctor Who packaged.
• 1:39:46
  It's all then, of course, in those days that was the whole
• 1:39:48
  history of Doctor Who and it's got a lovely, lovely cartoon
• 1:39:51
  strip in there with the then. Things, things like doctors, the
• 1:39:54
  60s and the 70s and the 80s started coming out their
• 1:39:57
  companions and the great, you know, my great archaeology of
• 1:40:01
  Doctor Who. All the details were filling in
• 1:40:04
  as I absorbed all of these fabulous books.
• 1:40:07
  And of course, that's on topic as well because that yearbook
• 1:40:09
  has short stories in, I mean, they're, they're more, they're
• 1:40:13
  less stories in the traditional sense and more snapshots for the
• 1:40:18
  most part. There's what I think, I think
• 1:40:20
  the one by Colin Baker is in there.
• 1:40:23
  I think the 6th Doctor story in that yearbook is by Colin Baker.
• 1:40:27
  And that's the most that's got the most kind of sense of it
• 1:40:29
  being a, an actual story because.
• 1:40:31
  Colin's a good writer. Yeah, very good.
• 1:40:33
  He's a very smart writer. Well, Oh yeah, Brief Encounters,
• 1:40:37
  the Deal by Colin Baker. There we go.
• 1:40:40
  But yes, an absolute treasure. And I'm very delicately going to
• 1:40:45
  put it back on the shelf because I'm not sure it's lifespan is
• 1:40:49
  much more. James, thank you so much for
• 1:40:52
  coming on. And well, it was your choice.
• 1:40:55
  So I endured this short story collection.
• 1:40:58
  I don't think. We endured it.
• 1:41:00
  I don't you know, it's too it's too light to to have been
• 1:41:03
  endured a little bit disappointing.
• 1:41:05
  I. Just think there's the potential
• 1:41:07
  for great Doctor Who short story collections, especially horror
• 1:41:10
  themes. Definitely it's.
• 1:41:11
  A Doctor Who's a show that's right for horror.
• 1:41:14
  And I'm not sure this sort of got under my skin in in the way
• 1:41:18
  it could have done. Now well, read the the Robert
• 1:41:20
  Shearman stories and you'll maybe realize why he wasn't
• 1:41:22
  trusted to write for this age group or.
• 1:41:25
  Is it really ghoulish? No, because.
• 1:41:26
  No, no, not even that. He's just got some in.
• 1:41:29
  There are very few of those I could read as bedtime stories to
• 1:41:31
  my people, as I tell you. Did you ever read the comic
• 1:41:33
  strip The Cruel Sea that he wrote for the knife Doctor?
• 1:41:36
  You told me. To read this before, No I I
• 1:41:37
  haven't. Jeez, the waste, the imagery
• 1:41:39
  just on the strip was absolutely chilling.
• 1:41:42
  Well, you go and check that out. I'll go and check out Rob
• 1:41:45
  Sherman. James, thank you very much for
• 1:41:48
  coming back to the book club. You, you and I will be back in
• 1:41:51
  our foursome again soon as we are still don't know how we're
• 1:41:55
  going to do this. Somehow we're going to discuss
• 1:41:57
  The Discontinuity Guide, a book with no plot whatsoever.
• 1:42:02
  But but a lot of opinions and a lot of words.
• 1:42:05
  Yes, a lot of things I don't agree with as well.
• 1:42:07
  So it should be quite interesting time, but very.
• 1:42:10
  Interesting, yes, a book. A book that you could say formed
• 1:42:14
  our opinions for us when we were younger.
• 1:42:17
  I think I was old enough when I read that one to be to be sort
• 1:42:20
  of arguing against because I was a massive Colin Baker fan and
• 1:42:24
  they hated Colin Baker, so they. Hated they hated some of Colin
• 1:42:27
  Baker, but I didn't know. I didn't know these stories.
• 1:42:29
  So I was it was the only way I could I knew anything about them
• 1:42:32
  was was through what I was being told.
• 1:42:35
  Took me years to. Took me years to distance my
• 1:42:37
  opinions from theirs. I think that's the first time I
• 1:42:39
  saw the stories deconstructed in such a fun way, you know, with
• 1:42:43
  the goose and the fluffs and the dialogue triumphs.
• 1:42:46
  And if anyone goes to my blog.co reviews, I'll basically crib
• 1:42:50
  that for that. But we'll get to that later.
• 1:42:55
  For now, thank you very much for your time, James.
• 1:42:58
  Thank you very much for having me.