Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Party Like Its 1998! (featuring Andrew Batty, Luke Sims-Jenkins & Jon Arnold)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Party Like Its 1998! (featuring Andrew Batty, Luke Sims-Jenkins & Jon Arnold) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  Arthur avoided the rematch for a while after that night.
• 0:03
  He told himself that he needed a few days to get his head back in
• 0:06
  order and that he wasn't going to beat the doctor until the fog
• 0:09
  of trying to sleep with the sun high in the sky and left him.
• 0:13
  He knew he was lying to himself, that was all right.
• 0:17
  He'd been doing that for a long time and he saw no reason to
• 0:20
  change that anytime soon. The doctor seemed to know what
• 0:24
  was going on and didn't mention it.
• 0:27
  Some of the prisoners jeered and jostled when Wes was handed his
• 0:30
  paper and pencil, but they even seemed to pick up on the mood
• 0:34
  and soon fell quiet again. They knew things would be much
• 0:37
  worse in here if he really wanted them to be.
• 0:41
  Sometimes he heard the mutter about some of the things the
• 0:44
  night jailer did, but they still haven't played another game when
• 0:48
  dark. As guards brought him a new
• 0:50
  charge, hands chained and bound, a gag tied up across his face.
• 0:55
  He could see from the way the boy's chest rose and fell that
• 0:58
  he was having trouble breathing through the thick gag, but when
• 1:01
  he automatically reached out to remove it, the guard gently
• 1:04
  stayed his hand and shook his head.
• 1:07
  Got quite a mouth on him. The guard shook his head.
• 1:11
  I wouldn't, if you like peace and quiet.
• 1:13
  The boy looked at Arthur. His eyes were wide as a rabbit.
• 1:17
  'S. He couldn't have been older than
• 1:18
  Charlie was. What did he do?
• 1:22
  Arthur asked. The guard looked at him
• 1:24
  strangely, and Arthur realized he had never asked that question
• 1:28
  before. His job was just to accept the
• 1:30
  delivery, keep it safe until Dark had decided what he wanted
• 1:34
  to do with it if that day ever came.
• 1:37
  He could see out the corner of his eye the doctor watching him,
• 1:40
  hands folded across his chest. Does it matter?
• 1:44
  The guard laughed. The boy's rabbit eyes went from
• 1:47
  the guard to Arthur, trying to understand what was going on.
• 1:50
  The guard pushed him towards the cell.
• 1:53
  The dungeon had awoken to the strange tension in the air.
• 1:57
  Arthur could feel everybody's eyes on him now.
• 2:00
  He put himself between the boy and the guard.
• 2:03
  The guard looked surprised, his hand falling automatically to
• 2:06
  his sword. It matters.
• 2:10
  Arthur said. The guard noticed the anger in
• 2:13
  his voice now. So did he.
• 2:15
  Where did that come from? Steady dungeon master.
• 2:19
  The guard growled, the sword came clearly out of his scabbard
• 2:23
  with a noise that made Arthur think of sharpening knives.
• 2:27
  It would carve him, sliced for his flesh with ease.
• 2:30
  And who would save the boy then? Two arms snaked through the bars
• 2:34
  the guard was standing in front of.
• 2:36
  Harry stood behind him, pinning the guard's arms high above his
• 2:39
  head, the sword unable to move. Harry looked at Arthur and
• 2:42
  nodded, 2 men recognizing each other as they went about their
• 2:46
  business. It matters.
• 2:50
  Arthur repeated, the guard in the cell hunched in the corner,
• 2:55
  arms around his knees. Arthur had his sword and his
• 2:58
  helmet, both plucked from the guards by Harry's hands and
• 3:02
  calmly handed over. He didn't know what to do with
• 3:06
  them, or with Harry and the others.
• 3:08
  For now, they were still in their cells, not saying a word.
• 3:12
  All of them watched him, waiting for some sign of just what this
• 3:16
  was, just what was going to happen.
• 3:19
  The boy too, the newcomer, Arthur had bound his hands and
• 3:23
  removed his gag and sat him down by the chesset just to put him
• 3:27
  somewhere. They were all waiting to see
• 3:29
  what happened next. So was Arthur.
• 3:32
  He had no idea why he'd done it. And now the future opened up in
• 3:35
  front of him like a yawning abyss.
• 3:38
  There was no good ending to this.
• 3:40
  He had to give the guard his sword back, let him out of his
• 3:43
  cell and surrender, take the punishment that was surely
• 3:46
  coming. He felt the doctor's eyes on
• 3:49
  him. This is your fault, Arthur
• 3:52
  snapped at him. The doctor didn't answer.
• 3:55
  No, said Harry. He sat quietly in his cell,
• 3:59
  hunched in the ball on the floor.
• 4:01
  He hadn't moved since disarming the guard, and now Arthur
• 4:04
  realized he was having all the same thoughts that he was.
• 4:08
  This is my fault. Tell them it was me.
• 4:11
  I'm never getting out of here anyway.
• 4:13
  It'll be our word against his, all our words.
• 4:17
  Wes chipped him, and the others murmured agreement.
• 4:20
  Maybe they'll even let you stay. Steve had piped up hopefully.
• 4:23
  It's my turn next. Arthur looked at them, these
• 4:27
  men, before the doctor had arrived.
• 4:30
  He didn't even know their names, hadn't said more than two words
• 4:33
  to any of them. The guard sat in his cell, fear
• 4:36
  on his face. He didn't know what was going on
• 4:39
  here, but he knew he was severely outnumbered and didn't
• 4:42
  even have his thought. But there was no way he wasn't
• 4:45
  going to tell the first soldier he saw exactly what happened
• 4:47
  here, exactly who was to blame. His sword was still in Arthur's
• 4:52
  hand, glinting. It looked sharp enough to slice
• 4:56
  through stone. There was one thing you could
• 4:57
  always count on with Darker. He kept his soldiers well
• 5:00
  equipped, well trained. The doctor looked at him, his
• 5:04
  face expressionless, but his eyes.
• 5:09
  Arthur put the sword down on the table, rested the helmet
• 5:12
  unsteadily on top of it. He slowly started picking up the
• 5:15
  pieces from his grandfather's chess set, packing them away in
• 5:18
  their little box. They would all fit, but only if
• 5:21
  you were careful about the way you tried to pack them in.
• 5:24
  He was always careful. Soon they were all inside.
• 5:28
  Kings, Queens, Knights, pawns. He closed the lid on them all
• 5:33
  and closed the clasp and kept it shut.
• 5:36
  Nobody spoke. They all watched to see what he
• 5:38
  would do next. He reached for his key and one
• 5:42
  by one started unlocking the cells.
• 5:45
  For a moment they didn't know what to do.
• 5:47
  They stayed in their cells, these men, as if the door still
• 5:51
  held them. Then slowly, Harry got to his
• 5:54
  feet and crossed the threshold, looking around as if he had
• 5:57
  never before seen the dungeon from this side.
• 6:00
  He smiled, a most genuine, warm smile that reached all the way
• 6:04
  to the tips of his toes. The guards eyes were wide and
• 6:08
  frightened, but that was all right.
• 6:10
  His was the one cell Arthur kept locked.
• 6:14
  Harry held out his hand to Arthur and Arthur took it, shook
• 6:17
  it. No.
• 6:20
  Harry laughed. Keys.
• 6:24
  Arthur laughed and took some of the keys from the chain, pushing
• 6:27
  them into Harry's hand. The giant of a man moved to the
• 6:31
  other cells and started unlocking them.
• 6:34
  All around the dungeon cell doors opened, and people who
• 6:37
  thought they might die behind those heavy iron bars started
• 6:40
  stepping out into the light, stretching and smiling.
• 6:44
  And somewhere deep inside Harry, another door opened.
• 6:52
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 6:56
  Luke Simpschenkin has just stuck his finger up at me, but he's
• 7:00
  applied with a small amount of alcohol because we today are
• 7:05
  partying like it's 1998. Yes, we're foregoing all the
• 7:10
  usual Hamster Book Club bullshit of top threes and icebreaker
• 7:14
  questions. I mean, we've all been making
• 7:16
  love now for about two years. It's fine.
• 7:18
  We don't need icebreakers. The fabulous 8th.
• 7:22
  Doctor. Straight to the 6th.
• 7:25
  See Arthur he was drunk. 8th Doctor celebratory charity
• 7:31
  anthology short story series. Did I get that right?
• 7:36
  Yes, that's a lot of words and to to to discuss this, I have
• 7:42
  assembled 2 of the greatest 8th Doctor adventure lovers you're
• 7:48
  ever to meet. Doctor Who call Andrew Batty.
• 7:51
  Hello. Hello.
• 7:53
  Hello. You're having a good morning,
• 7:54
  Andrew. Disastrous morning with various
• 7:58
  small injuries, but I'm here. We're so pleased you're here,
• 8:03
  Luke Simps Jenkins. Oh, hello, Luke.
• 8:06
  How are you doing today? It's good.
• 8:10
  An awkward night turned out not to be very awkward, and I'm nice
• 8:13
  and toasty and now I get to talk about niche Doctor Who books.
• 8:17
  I'm very happy. When you say the awkward night,
• 8:20
  what is it? You picked out the right keys
• 8:22
  from the bowl. Yeah, you were worried you were
• 8:27
  going to get those keys, but you got you got Juno Bakers keys
• 8:30
  from canine and companies and the man who, you know, I think
• 8:37
  came into this book club thinking, you know, yeah, the
• 8:41
  new adventures, those head USAF doctor books, I'm gonna shit all
• 8:44
  over those and then got stuck in a group with three people that
• 8:48
  don't stop going on about how great these books are and has
• 8:51
  now been slightly seduced, I think by.
• 8:55
  You will be like. Mr. John Arnold, Hello.
• 9:02
  Good morning. How are you?
• 9:04
  Me I'm. Fine.
• 9:05
  I mean, I'll set an alarm, didn't wake up.
• 9:07
  So we've had all kinds of disasters getting to this call.
• 9:10
  Extra sleep, it's all good. That makes you feel like.
• 9:13
  Trying to stop at times not happening.
• 9:15
  Sometimes I get up at ungodly hours of the morning to do
• 9:18
  these, but poor Quinn's a night owl so he's able to do them when
• 9:22
  like my my like 8 or 9. You think the 5:00 things I wake
• 9:28
  up for? Yep, perfect.
• 9:29
  Yeah, I missed one of his. You're always putting yourself
• 9:36
  out for us. I mean, come on, it's quite nice
• 9:37
  that for once you know it's your evening, right?
• 9:41
  Yes, yes, at 10:00 PM, it's nice on Saturday night, pretty good.
• 9:46
  Party like it's 1998. I am going to ask a very quick
• 9:50
  question before we go in. Is this something that you ever
• 9:54
  imagined a few years ago would be in your hands and that you
• 9:58
  could read a celebration of the EDA?
• 10:01
  Andrew No. That's a very concise answer.
• 10:06
  Are you happy that you did? Get it, though.
• 10:08
  Yeah, absolutely delighted. I mean, it feels like the this
• 10:11
  era that we're so obsessed with is so niche.
• 10:13
  And when Big Finish and people start revisiting eras like this
• 10:18
  one never really gets to look in, They've done like one with
• 10:21
  fits and evidently didn't want to do anymore.
• 10:24
  So yeah, to have this era revisited feels like a really
• 10:27
  special thing. And I don't know if maybe
• 10:29
  there's just like a bit of a shift in general fan opinion,
• 10:35
  maybe because we keep. We're doing the law of work
• 10:38
  here. How much we love the 8th Doctor
• 10:40
  novels. But yes, it's really nice that
• 10:43
  we've got this and not just like a little one off big Big Finish,
• 10:46
  60 minutes something or other. It's a big chunky whole era
• 10:53
  revisit to the whole series. So yeah, it's like the best
• 10:57
  situation we ever could have wished for.
• 11:00
  Next year is going to be so Darwin comparison is it Luke?
• 11:05
  Did you imagine that you'd be reading this?
• 11:06
  You know compassion, Angie. At least 10 stories for Sam
• 11:12
  Jones, your favorite. Can I just make my one complaint
• 11:17
  right now, Paul, mate, it's got to be 282 pages.
• 11:24
  This is an authentic buddy. So I held off what, finishing
• 11:30
  the 8th Doctor novels because I never wanted them to end.
• 11:33
  And then because of this book club, I was motivated and I got
• 11:37
  to read the last one with you guys.
• 11:40
  And then that's it. And then not long after we did
• 11:42
  that, this was announced and I was just like, wow, yes, yes,
• 11:48
  please. I want to go to there.
• 11:50
  It's like the year I finally finished the bloody things I
• 11:53
  like. It's funny, I never finished the
• 11:55
  era, but I've reread so many of those books from from that era.
• 12:00
  I just, but I didn't want them to be over over.
• 12:03
  And then I read them and they're over.
• 12:06
  I love how they ended. So that's even better.
• 12:08
  That's a bonus. Thank God we was all a baited
• 12:11
  breath you. Know when you.
• 12:12
  Read the Counter Freight Chronicles.
• 12:14
  There was 3 of you who were hanging on baited breath and
• 12:17
  maybe a listener or two that maybe that's better.
• 12:20
  But no, this is just like a gift.
• 12:23
  Thank you Luke for finishing our books.
• 12:25
  Now here's here's the short story collection I love.
• 12:28
  You're talking about this today, Luke, which means obviously by
• 12:31
  the end of the day today, the next 8th Doctor compilation will
• 12:34
  be announced, because there's always got to be more for you to
• 12:36
  read. Oh good.
• 12:38
  We got to get to party like it's 2004 so we can get some some
• 12:43
  tricks action up in here. Come on.
• 12:44
  Let's go. Oh, yeah.
• 12:45
  Yeah. We'll get there.
• 12:46
  We will get there. John, did you ever imagine?
• 12:50
  That you would be reading this compilation.
• 12:53
  No, but if there's anything I've learned to expect of you, it's
• 12:56
  never to underestimate what kind of the passion, the enthusiasm
• 13:00
  of Stuart and Paul, of others will do with these things
• 13:04
  because they, you know, used to make us just them and they'd
• 13:07
  like it. They run with it.
• 13:09
  They run with it like, and Stuart, I should say, behind the
• 13:12
  scenes has always been an Eighth Doctor guy, way above the new
• 13:16
  adventures. So I would, I would have
• 13:19
  expected this of them when if they were going for a particular
• 13:23
  range to revisit. And yeah, it was, it's fabulous.
• 13:27
  And obviously we got to see him at at Whoville and have a chat
• 13:32
  about it and find out what's next as well.
• 13:35
  So let me live it. And I'm looking forward to watch
• 13:39
  next as well already. I had the torturous experience
• 13:43
  of watching all three of you fuckers get this book before me
• 13:48
  and. Josh.
• 13:49
  About how fucking good it was. And so 2 of you off.
• 13:54
  But Mr. Andrew, thank you. Thank you for hooking me up with
• 14:01
  with a certain something, something around the time of my
• 14:04
  birthday that. Was.
• 14:06
  The birthday lion. That's right, I.
• 14:11
  I ended up with two copies, so I ended up mine also hasn't.
• 14:16
  I've been spreading the gospel. It's your fault, so it's fine
• 14:19
  something. I have absolutely no idea what
• 14:22
  was coming out in Doctor Who fiction in two, 2026, but 2025
• 14:26
  has been very kind, I think, to this book club.
• 14:29
  We've had a lot of Paul Mars. Yeah, a lot of really
• 14:32
  imaginative stuff. The thing that surprised me
• 14:34
  about this book? Which I just found really
• 14:38
  delightful. Was it?
• 14:38
  It didn't just celebrate the 8th Doctor books, but it expanded it
• 14:42
  as well and gave us a whole like we even within short stories, a
• 14:46
  whole wealth of other stories being being mentioned.
• 14:48
  I was like, Oh my. God, there was so much happening
• 14:50
  that we didn't even read about. And in some cases, it really
• 14:54
  subverts it. And Andrew, you and I talked to
• 14:56
  Paul Mars about this collection and just how it leans into some
• 15:00
  of the stuff that was there tentatively perhaps back in the
• 15:04
  day, but just allows it to flourish.
• 15:06
  So there's a, and I'm sure we'll get there with some of these
• 15:09
  stories. There's a.
• 15:11
  A high queer reading on a lot of these stories, which is just so
• 15:16
  wonderful. I mean, Paul's there
• 15:18
  masterminding this thing. Of course there is, yeah.
• 15:21
  The subtext has become text. But in no way he exploits it.
• 15:25
  But I didn't think, no, just just really imaginatively done.
• 15:28
  Well, fellas, let's get into this, shall we?
• 15:31
  Now we're starting right back at the beginning, Harmony Pines,
• 15:37
  which as far as I can tell is sort of just post the TV movie
• 15:41
  or certainly dealing with the TV movie.
• 15:43
  John, would you like to take how many pints?
• 15:46
  Yeah, it's, it's basically almost a fan fiction, isn't it?
• 15:50
  It's Doctor Who meets Twin Peaks, essentially, which, you
• 15:54
  know, I love both those. So, you know, that's right up my
• 15:56
  street to start with. So I was kind of, is this going
• 16:01
  to go well, is it going to go bad?
• 16:02
  Because if you're too reverent about either of the kind of
• 16:07
  programmes that it's based on, you just end up with something
• 16:10
  flat, which is something that's lovely and passionate from the
• 16:13
  author, but something that's not engaging to either.
• 16:15
  But I thought it was fine. It's just this lovely thing.
• 16:18
  It's the TARDIS going slightly wrong and it's it's just the
• 16:22
  Doctor on his own, which it, which is quite a nice way to
• 16:24
  start things, I think, because we're all obviously waiting to
• 16:28
  get to Fitz and Angie and Sam and tricks.
• 16:33
  But the Doctor on his own, it's nice.
• 16:35
  It's damn say. It's a really kind of nice way
• 16:38
  to start, I thought. I should also add, sorry, I'll
• 16:41
  mention all the authors. Johnstone J Mcguckian Is that
• 16:44
  how you say it? We'll.
• 16:48
  Go with that. We'll go with that.
• 16:49
  I mean, I detected a little bit of X-Files in there as well.
• 16:52
  Everybody's positions is sort of everybody's names is their
• 16:55
  positions rather than a name. A little bit of chimes at
• 16:58
  midnight and they're repeated murders.
• 17:00
  Definitely the Twin Peaks stuff. I mean, how many Pines?
• 17:03
  I don't know why I didn't get that just right in the tile.
• 17:06
  I mean also the train murder, the pie references.
• 17:09
  The prom queen. Dale Coopers right there.
• 17:11
  Like, yeah, yeah. Totally.
• 17:14
  Do you think it's quite nice then, that these stories are
• 17:16
  leaning into the pop culture of the time?
• 17:19
  Like, does that take you back to the 90s, Andrew?
• 17:22
  Yeah, I, I was initially like, why Twin Peaks?
• 17:24
  Why are we doing this? Twin Peaks was before the 8th
• 17:26
  Doctor stuff and I got like got on my high horse with it and was
• 17:29
  like, why, why are we doing that nostalgia instead of 8th Doctor?
• 17:32
  And then like I sat with it. Then I was like, oh, it's
• 17:35
  because the Doctor's revisiting a piece of lovely pop culture
• 17:40
  from the 90s, which is exactly what this book is.
• 17:42
  So it's starting this collection with a sort of like, metaphor
• 17:46
  for what the collection is itself.
• 17:48
  And that's actually, yeah, really nice and a nice little
• 17:52
  sort of soft way into the book. And I think because I'm a bit of
• 17:58
  a Twin Peaks nerd as well, I was a bit like, why aren't they
• 18:00
  doing this? Why aren't they doing that?
• 18:02
  Why aren't they exploring like the the cycles of abuse of Laura
• 18:06
  Palmer? Why isn't the doctor like it?
• 18:08
  And then I was like, that's not what the story's about.
• 18:10
  It's about nostalgia. And it's sort of about the way
• 18:14
  that like this thing is over and dead, but we can enjoy it a
• 18:20
  little bit longer for a little while.
• 18:22
  And that's how how the story kind of ends, like the the Twin
• 18:27
  Peaks town has been created by the master and it's fading into
• 18:31
  nothing, but it can it can last a little bit longer.
• 18:34
  So yeah, I just thought that was a really kind of lovely little
• 18:37
  parallel to what we're doing with this book.
• 18:40
  A line that really moved me was the Doctor saying its previous
• 18:43
  owner all but destroyed it and never wanting to waste an
• 18:48
  opportunity, turns the remains into a constant eternal torture
• 18:52
  for the vessel that failed him. God, the Master's a bastard,
• 18:56
  isn't he blessed? He had two in his coordinates
• 19:00
  and he blamed the TARDIS like poor.
• 19:02
  Old TARDIS breaking down and some really haunting imagery as
• 19:06
  well in this, I thought, yeah, Luke, did you like this one?
• 19:10
  Yeah, I did. I I really like to impede at
• 19:14
  least the first two seasons. All right, I'm not going to
• 19:17
  start that fight right now, but. It's a big fight.
• 19:20
  I hated the return. Thank you.
• 19:22
  Oh my God, it's fine. But it is still I.
• 19:25
  Mean I will start if I. Watched it, if that makes sense.
• 19:27
  Like I, I guess I don't know, maybe I'll feel differently in a
• 19:31
  decade, but I part of me wanted the doctor to get creeped out by
• 19:37
  Bob. That would have been really
• 19:39
  cool, but I didn't get that. But I did get all the like the
• 19:44
  the train murder scene. It's not very like explicit in
• 19:49
  terms of like what you see because it's early 90s TV, but
• 19:52
  it's really creepy and putting the 8th Doctor in that kind of,
• 19:55
  I didn't even have to write anything.
• 20:00
  I could just picture it straight away in my head, what that whole
• 20:03
  scene looked like etched in my memory when I was like, Dad, I
• 20:07
  can't sleep, can I stay? Up and watch this.
• 20:09
  Yeah, OK. It's the Twin Peaks episode
• 20:12
  where they're like investigating that crime scene and stuff.
• 20:14
  Did you hear the music, Luke? So this day Alice can go fuck
• 20:21
  themselves. But but yeah, let's put a smile
• 20:26
  on my face because Toon Peaks, the return was and we've had
• 20:30
  this for lots of franchise, haven't we?
• 20:31
  They come back after a huge gap and you mileage may vary whether
• 20:36
  you like it or it doesn't matter.
• 20:37
  But this is something from at least around about that era, at
• 20:42
  least part of that that we absorbed too.
• 20:45
  So and it's coming back in in book form.
• 20:47
  So yeah, no, it was nice. It was, it was a nice mash up.
• 20:50
  I liked it. I'm going to do a highly
• 20:53
  scientific scale for us to judge these stories on, which I'm
• 20:57
  calling the yay or nay scale. I'll say your name and for each
• 21:01
  story just say yay or nay. OK, Andrew.
• 21:04
  Yay. Luke.
• 21:06
  After this one, how many points? Yay.
• 21:08
  John. Yay.
• 21:11
  I just say yay for a bit. That's for Yays.
• 21:13
  Let's see how we get on with this ridiculous system.
• 21:16
  Well, let's approach with caution, then.
• 21:19
  Trespassers will be executed by your friend and mine.
• 21:23
  Mr. John. Peel him of the fabulous mutton
• 21:26
  chops. I don't know if you've seen a
• 21:27
  picture of him lately. Luke, off you go.
• 21:31
  I I don't hate this story. I found it fun, in fact, this
• 21:37
  story by Mr. John Peel, whose 2 Eighth Doctor novels are
• 21:41
  complete garbage but kind of fun to read in a kind of like it's a
• 21:48
  flip book for a train wreck. It almost right if you if you
• 21:50
  did it like that. So there's at least three
• 21:54
  authors whose stories I expected I wasn't looking forward to, and
• 21:58
  all three of them entertain me when John Peel is the first of
• 22:03
  those 3 authors. Very slight story, but like a
• 22:05
  really fun one where the Doctor saves this Kingdom by fixing a
• 22:09
  cloning machine and also clones a cute little Kitty cat as well.
• 22:14
  And it's kind of like a nice little side adventure the
• 22:16
  Doctor's on when he's looking for Sam, so maybe.
• 22:19
  He just needs to be brief. John Peel, you know Andrew.
• 22:24
  Yeah, it was fine. It's just a gentle little story
• 22:28
  of, yeah, the Doctor sort of saving this young girl queen.
• 22:34
  It felt a little bit like fluff. It didn't really like add a lot
• 22:38
  for me. I think also we'll get into this
• 22:40
  later as we go through the collection.
• 22:42
  But I think the stories, whether it's like the 8th Doctor solo, I
• 22:46
  think there's a few too many of those here because to me they
• 22:50
  don't feel like the 8th Doctor adventures because most of them
• 22:53
  who was with a companion apart from the Earth arc.
• 22:55
  So I think there I just wanted more of the companions more
• 22:59
  quickly. But you know, like each author's
• 23:02
  kind of come to this and taken what they want from the 8th
• 23:05
  Doctor books. And yeah, it was it was fine.
• 23:08
  It felt like something that could have been in one of those
• 23:10
  short trips. Yeah, at the time of the 8th
• 23:13
  Doctor, but. I will say though, at least John
• 23:15
  Peel kind of did a solo 8th Doctor story in this collection
• 23:20
  and you know where it's set. So it actually is set yeah, in
• 23:24
  the in the thing. So there's.
• 23:26
  We have a nice little info dump on like page 2 of exactly where
• 23:30
  it is. The sort of legacy there's Alex.
• 23:31
  Time is it when you're still looking for?
• 23:33
  That come from legacy Alex. There's like Stuart, he's
• 23:36
  thinking of Susan or something. Oh.
• 23:37
  So if you're doing news and order guys, you get to do a John
• 23:40
  Peel and then a John Peel all right before you.
• 23:42
  Get. To the next one.
• 23:44
  John. Yeah, It's, it's, it's a solid
• 23:47
  idea. It's a solid story.
• 23:49
  It's you know, it's it's John Peel doing kind of a really nice
• 23:55
  thing where he's when he's constrained, I think is the
• 23:58
  thing by that length. It's and there's no continuity
• 24:01
  to it either. That was that was kind of what I
• 24:04
  was. It reminded me a little of.
• 24:07
  I think it's the glass Queen, which is in one of the big
• 24:09
  finish short trip stories. It's Justin Richards did that.
• 24:13
  That's kind of more got a sadder tone to it.
• 24:16
  This is kind of lighter version of that really.
• 24:18
  So it was it was fine. I I, I was fine.
• 24:21
  I didn't hate it. It kind of in the middle for me,
• 24:24
  but if it was anything so. I'm going to redefine the scale
• 24:27
  in a minute, all right, Don't worry.
• 24:29
  Yeah, there you go. That's fine.
• 24:30
  Great. But yeah, it, it was fine.
• 24:33
  Didn't hate it, which is more than I expected to be honest.
• 24:37
  It wasn't irritating, wasn't it? Those two Dalek books are so
• 24:40
  irritating, and it wasn't irritating.
• 24:41
  So I considered that a win. I think that this is John Peel
• 24:45
  as edited by Paul Mars. So, you know, that's like a win.
• 24:49
  I mean, I just got one quote. Really.
• 24:50
  Doesn't it like to be tickled very much?
• 24:52
  So Then why doesn't it fight you?
• 24:54
  Cats are very contrary. They can love you one minute and
• 24:57
  turn and scratch you the next. It's in their nature.
• 25:00
  I thought that was the most profound Things story.
• 25:04
  So we'll redefine the scale then.
• 25:06
  It's yay A. Banger A banger or a?
• 25:09
  No, I can't step on his toes. Yay, meh.
• 25:13
  Or or nay, Andrew. It's a meh.
• 25:18
  Luke, Yay. I expected not to like it and I
• 25:24
  didn't. And I liked it, So yeah.
• 25:26
  Yeah. John.
• 25:27
  I'll go with Andrew. It's it's a meh and.
• 25:30
  I'm saying meh as well. So we're free mehs and 1 yay.
• 25:34
  OK. So we know where we are with
• 25:35
  that one. Great.
• 25:37
  I'm the one peel lover. Great, Awesome.
• 25:39
  Thanks. I've just I've just sat on a
• 25:41
  you're. Drunk it's fine, but you've got
• 25:43
  an example. I've just sat on a cushion
• 25:46
  that's made a flatulent noise. Whoops.
• 25:48
  By Gary Russell, Andrew. Yeah, so this is Gary Russell
• 25:54
  picking up after his book The Placebo Effect.
• 25:56
  So it's sort of the Doctor and Sam muddling about in the
• 26:00
  TARDIS, then they interrupt Stacy and Sogs that honeymoon
• 26:06
  and save them from a spaceship that's going to blow up.
• 26:10
  It's kind of pure fan wank of like Gary Russell doing Gary
• 26:16
  Russell with Gary Russell characters.
• 26:19
  Yeah, it's sort of, again, it's a little, it's a bit of fluff
• 26:23
  really. I guess it's a nice little coder
• 26:25
  to the placebo effect. It's kind of nice to see Stacey
• 26:28
  and Sog again. We don't see very much of them.
• 26:31
  So it's nice to kind of have a little bit of an extra thing
• 26:35
  with them. But that, I mean, there's not
• 26:37
  really much to it. It's sort of a a few pages of
• 26:41
  yeah, shouting at explosions and running around in the in a
• 26:44
  spaceship. So yeah.
• 26:46
  Did you not like the second you started reading, you know, bio
• 26:49
  data modules, time, vector generation, symbiotic nuclei,
• 26:53
  cradles, you're like, oh, yes, Gary's back.
• 26:56
  I mean, the one thing I really took from this was it's like a
• 26:59
  little period where the doctor's happy with a sort of small
• 27:02
  family around him. And there aren't that many, many
• 27:05
  times in the ADA's when he's happy.
• 27:08
  So I think he really let it into that.
• 27:10
  Yeah. I thought this was sweet as
• 27:13
  well, you know, like, it couldn't be expanded.
• 27:15
  It couldn't be any more than it is, but it was nice, you know,
• 27:20
  John. Yeah, I, I mean, I, I liked it
• 27:23
  from the opening, like, you know, with with a how many Rs it
• 27:26
  weren't I, you know where you are then it's a it's a properly
• 27:30
  good gag And and you're absolutely right.
• 27:33
  I I thought Gary wrote the doctor really well in this.
• 27:36
  It's the puppy dog early 8th doctor before faction paradox.
• 27:40
  Get hold of him before you know, he loses memories however many
• 27:43
  times. So yeah, it, you know, it, it is
• 27:46
  slight, but but it's fun. And I I don't mind that that
• 27:51
  that was what I was taking from. Like it lent into the fun as
• 27:54
  much as the serious bits of the books.
• 27:57
  Yeah, it's just quite nice to sort of just spend a few pages
• 28:00
  with some of these characters, isn't?
• 28:02
  It is it. It just means everyone's ticked
• 28:04
  as well, doesn't it? Like, like you said to Paul,
• 28:06
  we're sort of going across the whole era and everyone gets
• 28:09
  their little moment in the sun. Of tricks.
• 28:12
  Yeah, well. I reckon tricks wouldn't have it
• 28:15
  any other way. Someone could have written that
• 28:18
  fucking story we wanted to explain.
• 28:21
  International woman of mystery for life.
• 28:24
  Which character in each story is tricks in disguise?
• 28:28
  No, there's a, there's a short story with someone called
• 28:31
  Patricia. I was like, oh, it's no, it's
• 28:34
  not. Oh.
• 28:35
  I missed it. Should we just write it, the
• 28:37
  four of us? Do we just write that back story
• 28:40
  story? Is it like?
• 28:40
  Consequences I. Mean.
• 28:44
  Luke. Whoops.
• 28:46
  This was a fan wank quickie. You know, it's like, you know,
• 28:52
  it's sometimes you don't want to get too steeped in it.
• 28:56
  You don't want to go to the full quantum Archangel.
• 28:58
  You just want like maybe 5 or 10 pages and Whoops by Gary Russell
• 29:04
  does that a lot. I think this might be the 1st
• 29:11
  for a compilation that has a few multi doctor stories.
• 29:14
  This still might have the most fan wink in it than any other
• 29:19
  story in The Thing, and I don't think Gary Russell would have it
• 29:22
  any other way really. What piece of Doctor Who
• 29:26
  continuity connects Sam Jones, Donna Noble and Sharon?
• 29:36
  They've all met the MEAP. Or at least Gary Russell tells
• 29:39
  us Sam Jones for the MEAP. I can Only Connect. *.
• 29:46
  Beast. But it was fine until I said
• 29:48
  Sharon Lev was like, oh, what? Sharon from Black Castle.
• 29:52
  That's the one. To give her a full name, I.
• 29:54
  Hate you. You're a bad meap.
• 29:56
  Yeah, that one. OK, well, there's only one.
• 29:59
  Oh, sorry, yay, nay or may Luke. Yeah.
• 30:05
  Oh, John. Yeah, I'll go with the yay
• 30:08
  because you cannot really do a tribute volume to, you know, the
• 30:13
  book ranges without a some fan wank in there some way.
• 30:17
  And Andrew? I guess a gentle yay.
• 30:20
  Yeah, I would say gentle. How can I just ask, are Stacey
• 30:23
  and Sod a human and an ice Warrior?
• 30:26
  Yeah, and the fucking. How does that work?
• 30:30
  Well, Craig Kingston should have a book all about that, right?
• 30:32
  No, because if Craig, he's. The engine, he literally
• 30:36
  describes what an ice warrior penis looks like and it's
• 30:40
  serrated. How does that work?
• 30:42
  Maybe they find other ways to enjoy it.
• 30:44
  OK. Maybe they have smooth condoms,
• 30:47
  smooth for his, for her pleasure.
• 30:49
  This is one of those times. Where discretion is the better
• 30:52
  part of valor and we leave this to our imagination.
• 30:54
  Do you reckon one of their condoms are the same material as
• 30:56
  the Ice Warrior gauntlet gloves or something like?
• 30:59
  Moving on the. Ghost keeps in different ways.
• 31:02
  No no, keep shaming here guys. There's only one person this one
• 31:06
  can go to The Ghost by Steve Lyons.
• 31:10
  Birthday boy Luke Simps Jenkins. Yes, off you go.
• 31:14
  I I did receive a paid copy of this Mr. Mr. Paul, Paul Mars and
• 31:18
  Steve Lyons so I hope you don't feel mad that on my birthday
• 31:22
  because I was planning for this novel, Andrew sent photos of the
• 31:29
  lovely short story by Steve Lyons could.
• 31:31
  You ever had a better present look than that?
• 31:34
  Ever. No, I think.
• 31:43
  You know the answer is no. This is one of two stories, the
• 31:50
  other one being by John Blum, who who have a similar idea but
• 31:54
  approach it in two completely different ways.
• 31:58
  And that is all right. It's it's the, it's, I think
• 32:03
  that what the ghost does, it does what maybe a lot of new
• 32:06
  adventures readers might have been thinking in 97 and 98.
• 32:11
  The fuck is this? I miss the new adventures.
• 32:14
  And it's just this nice little story of like, you know, sure,
• 32:20
  you know that those those books are there, they're good, they've
• 32:23
  had their time and stuff, but you know, things, things change
• 32:26
  things and all that kind of stuff.
• 32:28
  So that's, that's those are the feelings that kind of made me
• 32:30
  think of. It also made me think of the end
• 32:34
  of confusion, funnily enough, because the 5th Doctor's like,
• 32:38
  all right, that's what that incarnation does, the 7th, but
• 32:42
  not all my incarnations aren't going to be like that.
• 32:45
  They might change or grow and, and become better and things
• 32:48
  like that. So I don't know.
• 32:50
  It was just, it was a short and sweet story about the 8th Doctor
• 32:57
  kind of empathizing with the 7th Doctor in a way, which I felt
• 33:00
  was really lovely. Yeah, I loved it.
• 33:02
  I loved the fact that it was the two there was the John Blum one
• 33:06
  there as well because this really is like therapy for the
• 33:09
  7th and 8th Doctors. And then the John Blum 1 is
• 33:12
  basically the two companions, New Ace and Sam Jones and Boy
• 33:15
  Will. We get there.
• 33:17
  But the the like one quote that really sort of jumps out at me
• 33:20
  from this one was where the 8th Doctor says the 7th doctor Ace,
• 33:23
  Benny, Chris Ross, you turn them into to soldiers.
• 33:26
  You manipulated them like pieces on a chess board, use them to
• 33:29
  fight your wars. They were supposed to make it so
• 33:33
  we were supposed to make them. They were supposed to make us
• 33:35
  more like them, not the other way around.
• 33:38
  And so the 8th Doctor is quite condemning of the 7th Doctor's
• 33:43
  approach. I think he even says at one
• 33:44
  point, you know what? I was you for a long time.
• 33:46
  I'm quite pleased to not be you now, which I felt at the time
• 33:51
  when the books went to the 8th Doctor range.
• 33:53
  So I was sort of like, yeah, yeah, I can get behind that.
• 33:55
  But so much is said here on about what, 5 or 6 pages?
• 33:59
  Yeah, it's very it's one of the shortest stories in it, but it
• 34:04
  felt nice and chunky as well. I don't know it just.
• 34:06
  Can be short but satisfying. Luke, you know.
• 34:09
  Yes, like a like a fan went quickie.
• 34:13
  John, what did you think of this one?
• 34:17
  I loved it. It's it's just a character
• 34:19
  piece, isn't it? It's a character piece about the
• 34:20
  Doctor. It's nothing.
• 34:22
  There's nothing else there. And it it's done at the work by
• 34:27
  kind of one, one of the mainstays of both the New
• 34:30
  Avengers and the 8th Doctor book.
• 34:31
  So it's one of the guy who was absolutely steeped in both.
• 34:34
  You know, there's nothing like he's not going to commit it from
• 34:36
  the new war war from the new advanced side or the 8th Doctor
• 34:40
  side. So it's a really kind of nicely
• 34:42
  balanced, clearly kind of loves both eras and it's it's kind of
• 34:47
  exploring the philosophy behind both the doctors and the way
• 34:50
  they were written, which is I, I can't really appreciate it on
• 34:54
  that one. He gets both of them, doesn't.
• 34:57
  He he actually does. Nails and it's perfect.
• 34:59
  Steve Lyons is again, as liberal said, he's probably one of the
• 35:02
  most underrated rights in the whole thing because he he just,
• 35:05
  he'd always try something interesting.
• 35:06
  So even when it's something like space age, which doesn't quite
• 35:10
  work for me, it's still some, there's still some interesting
• 35:14
  fun ideas in that. And yeah, it, it's what Nick
• 35:18
  says. It says so much in a short time.
• 35:22
  And yeah, I said what I love the the way that, you know, it gets
• 35:26
  resolved at the end. It's it's what elsewhere, no
• 35:29
  doubt there was danger, injustice and cooling tea,
• 35:32
  riffing off that kind of seventh thing, repurposing it for the
• 35:35
  8th Doctor. It's just such a it's sure, but
• 35:40
  it, it's one of the smartest things here.
• 35:42
  And it's a smart collection generally as well.
• 35:44
  So yeah, you can probably guess which one I'm going to go.
• 35:48
  Andrew. Controversially, I didn't really
• 35:52
  like this 10. Come on.
• 35:56
  I think, I hope. I love it went out first the
• 35:58
  outlier, it's the best. Fucking Managra all over again.
• 36:02
  I mean, I'll, I'll always like Steve Lyons.
• 36:04
  He's a good writer. It's well written.
• 36:06
  I think for me it's just, I feel like this 7th Doctor versus the
• 36:10
  8th Doctor stuff. Like we've just done it so much.
• 36:12
  Like we didn't do it as sort of explicitly as this at the time
• 36:16
  with the 2 characters actually meeting and like there ethos is
• 36:19
  being pitted against each other. But I feel like for a lot of the
• 36:22
  8th Doctors early run there was this whole like how is he
• 36:24
  different to the 7th doctor? Why is and he had the bits of
• 36:29
  him like meeting the 7th doctor in the garden and stuff in
• 36:33
  Camera obscure and time and City of the Dead.
• 36:36
  So yeah, I felt like we were just treading over old ground
• 36:41
  again. But I mean, I guess what that's
• 36:43
  what this collection is about. I think maybe it's just like, I
• 36:45
  just wanted the 7th Doctor. God, it's like I want my 8th
• 36:48
  Doctor. We know.
• 36:50
  We know why we love the 8th. You go already.
• 36:55
  So yeah, I think maybe maybe also because I love Steve
• 36:57
  Lorenz's other writing. I think I was just hoping for
• 37:00
  something that was a bit more like original 8th Doctor stuff
• 37:03
  from him and just maybe more of a simple adventure than like
• 37:07
  this sort of re. For me, it felt like a fan
• 37:11
  debate sort of playing out on the page, whereas I was looking
• 37:15
  for more of a story. But you know, like they don't
• 37:19
  all have to be witness. The the one of the last quotes
• 37:23
  from the book is one day you'll have to stop.
• 37:25
  One day you can run no further. One day you'll be forced to make
• 37:28
  a stand. Should that day come, I only
• 37:31
  hope I will remember. The lesser of the lesser of two
• 37:33
  evils is evil all the same. I wondered if that was pointing
• 37:37
  forward to like the Earth arc and stuff like that.
• 37:39
  I don't know. It felt like there was sort of
• 37:42
  importance of the future in there, too.
• 37:44
  It's a yay from me, John. I'm going with a yay.
• 37:49
  Luke. Yay, Andrew.
• 37:53
  Don't think I can nay it. I'm just going to give it a meh
• 37:59
  I. Fucking love it when you're the
• 38:00
  outlier, OK? Pointed Star by Stefan Allen.
• 38:08
  I hope I'm saying your name right.
• 38:11
  Sam Jones becoming a member of S Club 7.
• 38:14
  I know it's oh. OK, I know it's not S Club 7 but
• 38:18
  that's all I was seeing was Sam Joe.
• 38:20
  I took out the blonde one, what's her name from S Club?
• 38:23
  Hannah. Hannah and I'll put in that
• 38:26
  woman from the copying of Office from the DWM picture.
• 38:29
  That's basically all I was seeing there, her in the line
• 38:31
  up. So it's basically Sam Jones has
• 38:34
  to join a pop group for a year in order to save the entire
• 38:38
  universe. I mean, it's mad, isn't it?
• 38:41
  But it's the sort of high jinks I think maybe we should have
• 38:46
  seen a bit more of during Sam Jones's run.
• 38:50
  And she gets to have relationships with women and
• 38:53
  with men, and she's seduced a bit by the celebrity lifestyle.
• 38:57
  In the meantime, the poor old Doctor is bored senseless
• 39:01
  without his best friend and standing around in the TARDIS
• 39:04
  talking away to Ben and Polly who haven't been there for
• 39:06
  years, and having a wonderful time with Joe Grant and just
• 39:11
  trying to kill the time. This was just a really fun,
• 39:15
  fizzy, witty, silly, the sort of books that man, they should have
• 39:21
  written books like this. In that early 8th Doctor run,
• 39:24
  you had your Izzy type companion in Sam Jones.
• 39:29
  Why the hell wouldn't you give her fun things like this to do?
• 39:32
  I just thought this was an absolute joy.
• 39:34
  I was messaging you guys, all those I'm reading this going,
• 39:37
  why didn't Sam Jones get to have fun like this?
• 39:40
  Is it just me, Andrew? Yeah, I loved this one.
• 39:44
  And I think the thing about Sam is like, she's the character.
• 39:49
  She's a teenage character from the 90s, and yet they never did
• 39:52
  any like, pop culture stuff. She never really spouted pop
• 39:55
  culture references and stuff like that.
• 39:57
  Maybe she did a couple in when Paul Miles was writing her.
• 40:01
  So yeah, this feels like the sort of story we should have
• 40:05
  had. It feels like it's kind of
• 40:06
  straight out of that, like Live and Kicking and like top 90s,
• 40:11
  Top of the Pops. Wasn't she on live and kicking
• 40:13
  in this? She is, yeah.
• 40:17
  And yeah, it also has like a fun twist at the end with bringing
• 40:21
  Dark Sam into it. So Sam our Sam misses out on the
• 40:26
  Christmas #1 because Dark Sam. Is the number one.
• 40:29
  And Dark Sam is basically in like garbage or hole or
• 40:33
  something like that. So she's like the cool pop star
• 40:35
  and Sam is like. She looks nothing like you.
• 40:38
  It's. Almost like like I hate using
• 40:41
  that term, but like when a pop star has that more risque phase,
• 40:46
  I guess that's how I'll phrase it.
• 40:47
  Yeah, you know, and and the clean cut pop star loses out to
• 40:53
  the the one that's showing that a little bit more skin or looks
• 40:56
  at the. Racquetball.
• 40:57
  Things like that. Yeah, exactly.
• 40:59
  There you go. Yes.
• 41:02
  I think you're just. There in the 90s right with this
• 41:04
  stuff. I mean, 2025 can fuck off while
• 41:07
  I'm reading this book. If Doctor Who was ATV show at
• 41:11
  this time with Paul McGann. In it, this would have been by
• 41:15
  Paul Mars, Luke. This story I easily could have
• 41:19
  seen being a fun 40 minutes in 199798.
• 41:25
  Absolutely for sure. It might not have had the span
• 41:28
  of a year because of you know what it would have been I guess,
• 41:32
  but this is the kind of bonker shit that would have been in a
• 41:37
  single stand alone goofier season of 90s Doctor Who if they
• 41:41
  had made it. How they started, Luke it would
• 41:44
  be. That that children's BBC I did
• 41:49
  it goes straight into we're introducing new Pop Bar member
• 41:52
  Sam Jones. Yeah, and, and they'd have
• 41:55
  learned it leaned into that, wouldn't they?
• 41:57
  You could have had them actually do the appearance.
• 41:59
  Oh. Did you like this one, John?
• 42:03
  Yeah, I loved it. It's it's because it's leaning
• 42:06
  as much into the 1998 part of it as much as the Doctor Who part
• 42:10
  of it. And you know, Stefan, he doesn't
• 42:12
  know where I live, but he lives in he lives down the road.
• 42:15
  So. So I've got to say nice things
• 42:17
  here, but. Will you tell him we loved it,
• 42:20
  please? Absolutely.
• 42:22
  It you know, it's you can tell he's a stand up comedian because
• 42:25
  it it's so many funny lines, but it's not over the top.
• 42:28
  He doesn't go for the funny line automatically.
• 42:32
  And I, I think it's one of my favourite see in the whole book
• 42:35
  is between Sam and Katie in the end there.
• 42:38
  Oh yeah. Gorgeous scene.
• 42:40
  Take me with you, she says at the end.
• 42:42
  Doesn't she? Yeah, you should stay, said Sam.
• 42:45
  Sam, you write your songs, tell your stories.
• 42:48
  You won't be happy unless you're doing that.
• 42:50
  Then let me be unhappy. Oh, that's a heartbreaker.
• 42:54
  That is a gorgeous night. Yeah, it's so again, it's Paul
• 43:01
  appalled editing it. It's leaning into the fun.
• 43:05
  It's it's just an absolute joy. It's it's a kind of story.
• 43:09
  You know, it won't get a huge discussion.
• 43:11
  It wouldn't have got a huge discussion on message boards now
• 43:14
  because it's liked and because it's deliberately being liked
• 43:17
  and it's not going for this arch heavy stuff, but it's a type of
• 43:21
  thing that keeps the range going, that gives you a basic
• 43:25
  idea of a quality level almost. So yeah, I adored it, really.
• 43:29
  How can you not love a a story that has this line in it?
• 43:33
  The ripples in time means that Joe goes from single to married
• 43:36
  to divorced in the span of a single cup of tea.
• 43:38
  I mean. I was just like, there's a story
• 43:41
  in that, right? Luke?
• 43:44
  Did you love this one? Yeah, I, I, I did.
• 43:47
  I'm not a huge pop star fan but just hearing old Steve Sam
• 43:51
  Jones. Fan either.
• 43:53
  No, but I think a good portion of this book writes a Sam Jones
• 44:00
  that I wish we should have gotten more often like a
• 44:05
  Lawrence. I wouldn't say take they're
• 44:08
  taking a leave out of his book or it's that some of the
• 44:13
  characterization of Sam is that good, Like that kind of
• 44:18
  interference. Scarlet Empress, you know, John
• 44:22
  Allman, Kate Blum kind of level. Like, yeah, let's rather than
• 44:27
  shoot on this character, all right?
• 44:28
  We're doing a celebration. So let's make her sparkle.
• 44:31
  Let's make her pop a little bit like she didn't back then.
• 44:34
  So she. She popped.
• 44:35
  She's the companion. For me.
• 44:37
  That's celebrating the most in this, isn't she?
• 44:40
  Like she gets the most amount of individual stories and then she
• 44:42
  turns up in 2 hours down the line.
• 44:45
  Yeah. There's a lot of.
• 44:48
  It's infamous. It's infamous that Terence
• 44:50
  basically gave her almost a generic outline for the
• 44:52
  companion and there wasn't much more to it than that.
• 44:54
  I think we talked with Steve Colbeck when we were talking to
• 44:57
  him the other week and this, this is what this collection
• 45:00
  does and this particular sort of ticket, it gives her depth, it
• 45:03
  gives her texture. That's and that's what I
• 45:06
  absolutely loved about. And it is, it is a sort of
• 45:09
  looking back and saying this is what we could have done.
• 45:13
  Maybe we didn't do enough of this.
• 45:15
  Well fellas, bring it all back to me.
• 45:18
  Yay, nay or mare Andrew. Yay Luke 1000 times.
• 45:23
  Yay. Luke.
• 45:28
  Yay, John. Yay.
• 45:33
  And this might be my second biggest theory.
• 45:35
  Of the collection. I just thought this was
• 45:37
  wonderful. Oh, can you fellas hear that?
• 45:41
  It's knocking 9 Doors by Ian Hales?
• 45:44
  John, do you want to take this one?
• 45:45
  It's bloody kids on the. Door again.
• 45:51
  I thought this probably was a little bit too long, I think.
• 45:54
  Is it the one? Is it the longest story in the
• 45:56
  collection? It's pretty long, this one,
• 45:58
  yeah. Yeah, it's, it's got some nice
• 46:02
  ideas. It's got that nice kind of old
• 46:04
  ones and versus young ones and it's always cocoon.
• 46:09
  I think that kind of thing that oh, that, you know, the old ones
• 46:12
  want to be young again. So it's it's quite small and
• 46:15
  that I did end up kind of enjoying it a lot.
• 46:19
  It's got a nice, nice kind of basic science fiction idea.
• 46:24
  It didn't rock rock my yeah, I I think it surfaced from coming
• 46:27
  straight after five points start because I absolutely love that
• 46:32
  it it was fine. It was yeah, it yeah.
• 46:36
  I'd love that opening. It's kind of got that horror
• 46:39
  opening and it and it then it kind of brings it down and it's
• 46:42
  quite not. It's a cosy horror stuff in a.
• 46:45
  Lot of ways, yeah. Yeah, I, I, yeah.
• 46:51
  So I, I think it does exactly what it was.
• 46:53
  It does exactly what it needs to do.
• 46:56
  So yeah, I, I quite liked it, yeah.
• 47:00
  Luke. Now, I thought I could tell
• 47:06
  sometimes which ones have been kind of edited by Paul Mars a
• 47:13
  bit, and it's maybe some of the more kind of magical, kind of
• 47:15
  whimsical ones, because this is what this felt like to me.
• 47:18
  By the way, I need to know. Ian Hales relational.
• 47:22
  No, I need, I need to know. I.
• 47:25
  Don't think so. No, but yeah, I liked it.
• 47:32
  This is it's going to sound bad because I don't mean in a bad
• 47:35
  way. I took my time with this one,
• 47:37
  but I wanted to it was it was kind of like a a really nice
• 47:42
  because I savored this. You guys have been getting
• 47:46
  messages, I guess intermittent for me since we started since I
• 47:49
  got the the book. I finished it today.
• 47:51
  I just want to not because it was bad, but I just wanted to
• 47:55
  kind of save savor it. I guess I didn't want to do a
• 47:58
  thing of leave this on my shelf for 10 years because I don't
• 48:01
  want the EDA's to be over. But I also knew I had a bit of
• 48:05
  time with this because the schedules and I was going to
• 48:09
  take my time with some of these and because this was one of the
• 48:11
  longer ones I I could, I really could.
• 48:14
  I could. I just kind of read half one
• 48:16
  day, half the half the other day and it was nice.
• 48:19
  So I didn't I didn't get it. That was too long.
• 48:21
  I don't know. I just kind of got caught up in
• 48:22
  in the magic of it. And I didn't put Cocoon and this
• 48:26
  story together until John said it.
• 48:28
  And now I can't Unsee it. But I like that movie anyway, so
• 48:32
  maybe that's another reason I like this book, this story
• 48:35
  knocking 9 doors. True.
• 48:38
  Yeah, I I liked this one as well.
• 48:40
  I think it's less trying to say anything about the era or the
• 48:44
  Doctor or Sam in this one. It's just sort of being a, a
• 48:48
  good Doctor Who's story in like atmospheric.
• 48:51
  And I think it being that little bit longer, it just felt like,
• 48:54
  oh, this, this could just be, you know, like a a short story
• 48:58
  from the era. And it's kind of nice to spend
• 49:00
  time with the Doctor and Sam running around this street and
• 49:05
  meeting all these lovely old ladies and these those children.
• 49:13
  So yeah, it just kind of felt like a solid nice Doctor Who
• 49:17
  story with them. I felt that the ending was a
• 49:20
  little bit strange, the sort of like the the older people get
• 49:25
  like their eternal youth and there's like no catch.
• 49:29
  I feel like in a lot of these stories, it's kind of like, oh,
• 49:32
  eternal youth, like you can't. The Five doctors are like, you
• 49:34
  know, immortality is a curse. So yeah, it was kind of unusual
• 49:43
  that they just had like a happy ending and they went off into
• 49:45
  sort of space heaven together. But yeah, that was kind of nice.
• 49:50
  And yeah, like quite a creepy atmosphere throughout.
• 49:53
  It keeps you guessing as to what's actually going on.
• 49:57
  I mean, actually it felt a little bit like in tone the the
• 50:02
  first one of the new 9th Doctor and Rose stories, the sort of
• 50:06
  that quite domestic with like weird alien plants and meeting
• 50:13
  all these sort of day-to-day characters and the Doctor and
• 50:17
  Sam being this weird interjection into their lives.
• 50:20
  So yes, I did. I did enjoy this one.
• 50:24
  Big Finish should you require a Richard Herndel in the future,
• 50:28
  Andrew is available. And Andrew, you've got your CV
• 50:31
  to hand. And my wig.
• 50:34
  I've got I've just as. Very quickly I I love Doctor Who
• 50:38
  and I'll women like it's just one of my favorite things.
• 50:41
  It's whenever Tom was given an old woman, when 6th Doctor was
• 50:44
  given Evelyn. I wonder when they they all know
• 50:46
  how to make good fruitcake or something like that.
• 50:48
  I love to have seen Paul McGowan running around with a load of
• 50:52
  old deers. I mean, one of them goes, Oh my
• 50:54
  God, I'm being eaten by a bloody hydrangea Doris at one point,
• 50:58
  which that sounds like a Paul Mars line to me.
• 51:00
  Yeah. I did like about the ending.
• 51:02
  As well, it sort of goes quite mature and starts asking the
• 51:06
  questions. Are you happy with your life?
• 51:09
  Would you want to go again? What would you do if one person
• 51:12
  chooses to stay old, but you get younger?
• 51:15
  You know someone you you're in a relationship with.
• 51:17
  So it started asking really mature questions.
• 51:19
  I was like, there's some mileage in this, but it's the end of the
• 51:22
  story so never mind. Just some thoughtful questions
• 51:24
  to end on. Well, yay, nay or meh, Andrew.
• 51:29
  Yay. Luke.
• 51:32
  Yay. John.
• 51:34
  Yay. And it's a yay from me right
• 51:39
  now. We're moving on to do I do I
• 51:41
  have to do this all over again by Jonathan Blum and Andrew,
• 51:45
  would you care to take this one He.
• 51:49
  Didn't like it. I know he didn't.
• 51:52
  If only you can see Andrew's face.
• 51:57
  I know that you guys all loved it because the group chat was
• 52:01
  kicking off with how much you all.
• 52:03
  I enjoyed this one. I think for me, it's like I
• 52:07
  don't really love like very on the nose satirical stuff.
• 52:12
  Like it wasn't particularly subtle.
• 52:14
  It's it's Doctor Who versus Trump and then you've got the
• 52:19
  8th Doctor versus the 7th Doctor again and again.
• 52:23
  That kind of felt like digging up old ground for me again, I
• 52:27
  did like the interplay between Sam and Ace in this story where
• 52:31
  Sam just wants to jump her bones.
• 52:33
  When? She wants to fuck her so.
• 52:35
  Badly, doesn't she? And yeah, like when I was
• 52:38
  reading this book, like I, I hadn't ever really thought of
• 52:41
  Sam as like a queer character. And I was like reading through
• 52:44
  her, her TARDIS wiki entry. And it was said said that she'd
• 52:49
  had like a relationship with a woman in seeing eye.
• 52:52
  And I haven't read that. So it was like, again, it's nice
• 52:55
  for people to be going back to that character and if that I
• 53:00
  mean, that element was there so, you know, do actually doing
• 53:02
  something it's. Very subtle in seeing eye Andrew
• 53:05
  but but you you see the start of the relationship and you see the
• 53:09
  end of the relationship. So but it's almost blinking.
• 53:11
  You'll miss it. Yeah, but basically in this
• 53:14
  book, Sam is like hot for every woman she meets, and I'm here
• 53:18
  for it. And seeing that, that interplay
• 53:22
  with Ace, like it's just quite fun.
• 53:23
  So that part of the book, look, I really liked out of this
• 53:26
  story. But the rest of it, yeah, Not
• 53:30
  for me, Luke. Isn't it lucky that she wasn't
• 53:36
  written like this when Fitz was in the TARDIS?
• 53:37
  The poor bastard wouldn't have anywhere because holy shit Sam
• 53:43
  Jones was smooth. Oh my goodness.
• 53:47
  I liked having the two characters who had a three-year
• 53:51
  holiday from the TARDIS. Having an adventure together and
• 53:54
  then getting along would actually get along.
• 53:58
  Oh, I guess like. Yeah, they kind of are, and
• 54:01
  they're floating, and it's kind of very new, serious ish almost,
• 54:05
  but it, it works. No, I, I really liked it.
• 54:08
  I really like that. Well, all this awesome stuff is
• 54:11
  going on. Fitz misses the whole thing.
• 54:14
  You know, he doesn't see the other Doctor.
• 54:16
  He doesn't meet Ace really that much.
• 54:19
  He's just down there as a distraction and then soaking up
• 54:22
  the vibes before, you know, the protests starts going bad.
• 54:26
  I don't know if if this was on the nose, it's about as on the
• 54:29
  nose as Happiness Patrol is really, you know, So I don't
• 54:34
  know, there's this kind of precedent there.
• 54:36
  I do like how maybe the Lions won the 8th Doctor is a bit
• 54:40
  negative towards 7th Doctor, but here they want the same things.
• 54:46
  They believe in the same things, but they just have different
• 54:51
  personalities and want to achieve those goals in different
• 54:53
  ways. I kind of, I kind of really
• 54:55
  liked that this was, this wasn't more of a, this wasn't more of
• 55:00
  a, I'm a better doctor than you. It's just like, no, no, I've got
• 55:03
  AI just got a different school skill set.
• 55:05
  And that's what worked for me with that as well.
• 55:09
  But yeah, John, it was on the nose.
• 55:13
  John Blum, he's written one of the great 8 dark short stories,
• 55:16
  I think Model Train Set, which is I think, first one in short
• 55:19
  trips. It's a gorgeous character piece,
• 55:22
  but he's got some issues to work through here, hasn't he?
• 55:25
  Really does. This is like a therapy session,
• 55:30
  isn't it? More than a story in the love
• 55:32
  places. So yeah, it's like, yeah, I'd
• 55:37
  like the idea of what can this era say about the modern day,
• 55:43
  but I don't need to be reminded of the modern day like this,
• 55:46
  particularly the worst part of it.
• 55:49
  So I I just didn't get on with this story at all.
• 55:53
  It's like, yeah, the character saw it and find it's it's a fine
• 55:58
  kind of do this quick adventure story inside 30 pages.
• 56:03
  But yeah, the truth, it's the Saturn elements just just kind
• 56:07
  of fell flat for me. So, yeah, so this was one I
• 56:12
  just, it's, it's not a bad story.
• 56:14
  It's not badly written, it's not badly plotted or anything like
• 56:16
  that. I just did not get on with it
• 56:19
  because of where it's going or what it's trying to do.
• 56:22
  It's the only one looking forward, isn't it?
• 56:24
  It's not. Yes.
• 56:26
  Looking back, it's the only one really commenting on.
• 56:28
  Well, there's one that kind of does later on, but will come to.
• 56:32
  I mean, I, I love this one, but I, I just like the idea of the
• 56:36
  8th Doctor and Sam and Fitz blundering in on one of the 7th
• 56:41
  Doctor's grand schemes. He's like, I've spent three
• 56:43
  months setting this up and you've just walked in and ruined
• 56:46
  the whole bloody thing. And I think John Blunt did have
• 56:50
  things to say about both Doctors.
• 56:51
  I loved the idea that the 7th doctor can't handle failure, but
• 56:56
  the 8th doctor is much more willing to work with it.
• 56:58
  That's a. You know the 8th Doctor
• 57:00
  improvises and the 7th Doctor plans and bringing the two of
• 57:03
  them together. How?
• 57:04
  Fuck me, those scenes between Sam and New Ace.
• 57:07
  I mean, the two least loved book companions of all time coming
• 57:11
  together. And she, it's all she can do.
• 57:15
  Then unzip that bloody PVC suit and climb in with her.
• 57:19
  I was going, my God. And I'm gay.
• 57:21
  I'm not a lesbian. And yet this has made me a bit
• 57:23
  hot reading this stuff, You know?
• 57:25
  I mean, you said he had some things to work through.
• 57:27
  Yeah. I think he did, Yeah.
• 57:29
  Jesus. So so, Joe, the question is, is
• 57:32
  it as hot as the stranger? Nothing's as hot as a stranger,
• 57:35
  let's be honest. The bit that made me how,
• 57:38
  though, right? And I just thought it's such a
• 57:40
  little dig in the new adventures.
• 57:42
  The professor never lets me swear.
• 57:44
  It always comes out as crock. Yeah, like I feel her on her.
• 57:51
  At the opening line as well. Oh, the one thing that the one.
• 57:56
  I mentioned forward I did like was When the doctor goes and
• 57:59
  kept her away from Brexit because Sam would probably set
• 58:03
  something on fire. I don't know, I thought this was
• 58:07
  really. Funny, I mean Sam gets Oh my
• 58:09
  God, I could have hooked up with the head of Charitable Earth
• 58:12
  after my internship. I was going to interview with
• 58:15
  him when I graduated. I mean if she fucks her ear she
• 58:17
  was just shooing for that job. Well, yeah, depends.
• 58:23
  Depends on how good she was. And there's a bit where the yay
• 58:27
  doctor says the same. I don't, I know you don't want
• 58:29
  to tell me everything about the future.
• 58:31
  And he says, because I don't want to break your heart.
• 58:34
  I just think he had a really good handle on the characters
• 58:36
  and saying something about the characters when you bring them
• 58:39
  all together. I think if you're going to do it
• 58:40
  just for kicks, that's not good enough.
• 58:43
  But if you're actually going to come away learning something
• 58:46
  about them, I think it's probably worth doing.
• 58:49
  Well, it's a yay from me, Andrew.
• 58:53
  A nay from me. John.
• 58:55
  And they from me, sadly. Luke.
• 58:59
  Yay. OK.
• 59:01
  That's our first 5050 split. OK.
• 59:04
  Sorry I ruined Andrew being the outlier, sorry.
• 59:08
  I hope I'm I'm going to say this correctly, the best Sharer bash
• 59:13
  by Nick Walters. Because this is sort of a bit of
• 59:16
  a party with the 8th Doctor and Fitz.
• 59:18
  I feel this one should go to Luke.
• 59:24
  I like the Fitz is is kind of tortured by being forced to be a
• 59:31
  servant for this kind of queen lady who's really wearing just
• 59:35
  like a kind of really skimpy. It's like what you'd imagine
• 59:41
  kind of 90s women wanted hunks to wear that kind of outfit.
• 59:45
  Kind of a Chippendale is kind of outfit.
• 59:48
  What might you know, waiter outfit that he's got, he's got
• 59:51
  on and he's made to do? We turned.
• 59:56
  Luke No, he's kicking it away there, thinking about him in his
• 1:00:03
  costume. I just thought that was funny.
• 1:00:09
  But he's he's forced to do things you really, really,
• 1:00:11
  really don't want to know. This is I so I had I had a lot
• 1:00:18
  of fun with this. Look, there's some, there's a
• 1:00:21
  sci-fi trope I get really annoyed by, You know, I'm
• 1:00:24
  watching sci-fi. Look, just give me the shorthand
• 1:00:27
  of Universal Translator. Cool, done.
• 1:00:31
  TARDIS translates for everyone. Cool.
• 1:00:33
  Done. Well, even though I'm a Star
• 1:00:35
  Wars fan, it drives me up the wall that we hear made-up
• 1:00:40
  gibberish. And that's what it is, the alien
• 1:00:42
  languages that don't exist. So it is.
• 1:00:44
  And then Han Solo is like, Oh yeah, I understand all of that.
• 1:00:48
  There's one character in there that is totally like that.
• 1:00:51
  I find it fucking annoying because that's a trope I don't
• 1:00:54
  like that much. Apart from that, this was just a
• 1:00:58
  really fun kind of buddy cop story with Fitz and the Doctor
• 1:01:06
  joining that weird alien who used to be some kind of buoy but
• 1:01:11
  is now something else and helping him take down this kind
• 1:01:15
  of evil queen. That great tentacle monster made
• 1:01:20
  me how a couple of times the doctors hugging this great
• 1:01:23
  tentacle monster and they go please.
• 1:01:24
  Excuse my friend, it's my very primitive culture.
• 1:01:27
  It doesn't. And then later on, Fizz goes,
• 1:01:30
  he's working undercover, undercover.
• 1:01:32
  I think that size, I think it's really fits your Anthra for more
• 1:01:36
  centrism can be quite wearying. There was a wittiness between
• 1:01:39
  the doctor and Fizz in this. I thought Nick Walters got a
• 1:01:42
  spot on. John, what do you think of this
• 1:01:45
  one? It's it's that other kind of
• 1:01:47
  half in 1990. It's the loaded laddish half of
• 1:01:50
  it. Yeah.
• 1:01:52
  Men behaving badly. Yeah, that kind of which Fitz is
• 1:01:58
  absolutely perfect for. So Fitz really kind of fits
• 1:02:01
  well. I think it's a really nice story
• 1:02:04
  for him and I'd love the idea of that, that just having a an ex
• 1:02:08
  traffic bar wasn't it? I think he is.
• 1:02:10
  I love that. So it's not nice of it, but it's
• 1:02:15
  it kind of it's it's kind of one note for far too long for me on
• 1:02:20
  that. It's that, it's that whole, it's
• 1:02:22
  the laddish thing. It, it, it's not quite as deftly
• 1:02:26
  constructed as 5 Pointed Star is.
• 1:02:29
  I, I think it's absolutely right that you should kind of honour
• 1:02:32
  the honour that aspect of 1998 in a collection.
• 1:02:36
  But again, I I kind of I kind of got tired about 5 pages in and
• 1:02:43
  kind of checked out for the rest of it.
• 1:02:45
  There was a lot of sort of farts and poo jokes in there, wasn't
• 1:02:49
  there? Which?
• 1:02:49
  Is very men behaving bad, You know, Very.
• 1:02:52
  Yeah. Fitz trying not to shit himself.
• 1:02:55
  The one one note that I took on this this story was Fitz shits
• 1:02:59
  himself, bless him. Andrew obviously would you
• 1:03:07
  weren't too impressed with as well.
• 1:03:09
  Yeah, I mean, I think I felt similar to how John felt about
• 1:03:12
  this. Like it's, it's a very laddish
• 1:03:14
  story, which, yeah, fits, fits with that.
• 1:03:18
  But you know, it's not the sort of stuff I was really into at
• 1:03:21
  the time and not really what I want from Doctor Who.
• 1:03:23
  So yeah, like it was kind of nice to have a, a doctor and fit
• 1:03:28
  sort of banter story. But some of it was just a bit
• 1:03:32
  too on that sort of men behaving badly Red Dwarf side of things,
• 1:03:36
  which is just not really my my step.
• 1:03:40
  All that taller Huey isn't really for me either.
• 1:03:42
  But I do accept there's a lot of people that this kind of would
• 1:03:47
  be for that love that stuff in the 90s.
• 1:03:49
  And I, I think in a collection like this, it shouldn't just all
• 1:03:53
  be for me, you know? It should be different stones
• 1:03:56
  and stones, different styles, sorry, and tones and genres.
• 1:04:00
  And if I'm going to get Sam Jones being a bisexual pop
• 1:04:06
  queen, then I suppose I've also got to put up with Fitz shit in
• 1:04:09
  his pants. That's the really nice thing
• 1:04:13
  about this collection is that if you're not enjoying 1, you know
• 1:04:15
  that there's going to be something you are going to enjoy
• 1:04:18
  if it's the next story or the one after that because it's such
• 1:04:21
  a sort of diverse mix of styles. And yeah, even even the bits
• 1:04:26
  where my love of the story was dropping, it was just like, oh,
• 1:04:30
  you know, I'm still enjoying being in the 8th Doctor world
• 1:04:32
  and I know that there'll be something else in a few pages
• 1:04:34
  time that I'm going to love. While I issue with this.
• 1:04:37
  While I did a collection. Yeah, is that I think there's
• 1:04:40
  another version of what they're trying to do in this story
• 1:04:44
  elsewhere in this collection, which I much more preferred.
• 1:04:47
  Although one small question, gentlemen, of the following what
• 1:04:51
  would you rather drink the most? Are you ready?
• 1:04:53
  Andrazzani ale. Bandragenous.
• 1:04:56
  Best bitter Jo Condon. Jolly juice.
• 1:05:00
  Oh, I see Andrew's eyes sort of lighten up.
• 1:05:02
  No, no, He looks appalled. OK.
• 1:05:05
  Pelidolian pilsner or Sconon Stella.
• 1:05:10
  I'll go with the scar on Stella, it'll give me the horns.
• 1:05:15
  Please, I'll go for the chicken and jolly juice.
• 1:05:18
  That sounds quite fun, although I'm scared that there's slug
• 1:05:22
  slug drippings in there somewhere.
• 1:05:25
  I'm going for the Andrew Zani Ale.
• 1:05:27
  Of course you are so 5th Doctor Everen.
• 1:05:31
  That's intense. I'll go for the Peladon one
• 1:05:34
  because it probably has quite a nice label with Agador on it.
• 1:05:36
  You get an Alpha Centauri straw in the top as well a.
• 1:05:40
  Deck. Straw.
• 1:05:43
  Well, that's who is there. So yay, nay or meh?
• 1:05:47
  I'm going to say I'm the positive side of meh here.
• 1:05:53
  Yay. OK Luke, Andrew.
• 1:05:57
  Nay, John. And they from beyond.
• 1:06:01
  OK, so a bit of a mixed response to to the men behaving badly
• 1:06:05
  version of Doctor Who. Check out The Dark Husband if
• 1:06:08
  you want more of this sort of thing from Big Face.
• 1:06:11
  Well, not. No, don't.
• 1:06:15
  It's truly terrible. And God, please cut down on all
• 1:06:20
  the fart jokes. Nick Wallace.
• 1:06:22
  Thank you. Nick Wallace.
• 1:06:22
  Sorry, Nick's Walters. There's too many Nick WS around
• 1:06:26
  the place. OK, well what about the heart of
• 1:06:29
  Cheryl's? Is that what?
• 1:06:31
  He's missed 10. You're missing.
• 1:06:32
  God, what have I missed, Doctor? Who in?
• 1:06:35
  The clash of. Cultures.
• 1:06:36
  Oh, I wonder why. It was very short by Simon
• 1:06:39
  Butcher Jones, the man with more ideas per page than Douglas
• 1:06:42
  Adams. John yeah, I think he's sending
• 1:06:47
  himself up here, which I quite like because he's got quite an
• 1:06:49
  underrated sense of humour sometimes very, very kind of
• 1:06:53
  quirky. Yeah, it, it's brief.
• 1:06:55
  It's, it's basically, I think he, you know, he does what he's
• 1:06:58
  got that big artifact story, which again, I think is one of
• 1:07:03
  his stocks in trade. And yeah, it, it's nice, it's
• 1:07:07
  fun. It's short.
• 1:07:08
  You get a bit of drafts, you get a lot of continuity on there
• 1:07:12
  that you have the driving choir. I like that idea.
• 1:07:17
  What would I say? Oh, he, he.
• 1:07:20
  We are chumbles. I have.
• 1:07:26
  All my robots with me. So yeah, I, I, I quite like
• 1:07:33
  this. It's, it's just short.
• 1:07:34
  It's fun. And yeah.
• 1:07:37
  So yeah, I like it. Luke.
• 1:07:41
  Nay. Oh.
• 1:07:46
  I don't know this I got the I got the kind of right mix of
• 1:07:52
  short story fan wank from Gary Russell and this is like this is
• 1:08:00
  like the I don't know, it was too much.
• 1:08:03
  I felt like you've got a story that's short and there's so much
• 1:08:10
  wank in it. I don't know.
• 1:08:11
  I just isn't a short a story on the whole thing.
• 1:08:14
  Maybe about the same length as Steve Lyons, but it left about
• 1:08:19
  it left the opposite impact on me.
• 1:08:21
  The Steam clients one did, and it's the first one with
• 1:08:25
  compassion in it too, so that's a shame.
• 1:08:26
  So yeah, now I wasn't grabbed by this one.
• 1:08:30
  I just thought it was just like too much.
• 1:08:34
  I mean I figured when I read this line when the Time Lords
• 1:08:37
  put these markers in to stabilize the local vortex
• 1:08:40
  between galaxies they didn't grasp, but 9 sided monolith a
• 1:08:43
  few 100 meters high given off a relaxing hum might influence
• 1:08:46
  nearby cultures. I'm definitely reading a Simon
• 1:08:49
  Butcher Jones the story, but I think I laughed the loudest in
• 1:08:54
  the entire collection when I read this.
• 1:08:57
  Bessie wouldn't have liked being the centre of attention of 19
• 1:09:00
  different car mechanics. Fitz had no idea who Bessie was,
• 1:09:05
  that the Bessie was the Doctor's beloved yellow car, and
• 1:09:07
  consequently had the wrong mental picture of the Doctor's
• 1:09:10
  metaphor. Which I thought that was a
• 1:09:12
  loudest show that really worked for me.
• 1:09:15
  Yeah, like it was, it was so short that I was like, it's not
• 1:09:19
  offensive and there was a lot of fun ideas.
• 1:09:22
  And I do like the idea of all of these bloody choirs and
• 1:09:25
  festivals. All.
• 1:09:26
  Come in. Together at the end and it's
• 1:09:28
  what is it draconian Sontaran driving demons.
• 1:09:32
  I mean the demons. What the fuck are they singing?
• 1:09:34
  It was. They're singing the soundtrack
• 1:09:37
  to The Omen for sure. It was too short to annoy me,
• 1:09:40
  but any longer than this I think I would have.
• 1:09:42
  That's so. Beautiful.
• 1:09:43
  Thank you, Luke, Andrew. Yeah, I didn't like this one.
• 1:09:49
  I think. Yeah, it just felt like 4 pages
• 1:09:52
  of continuous continuity references.
• 1:09:55
  I think it was maybe shooting for sort of like a Douglas
• 1:09:57
  Adams, the tone, but it just didn't really land for me.
• 1:10:01
  And like all of the sort of punch lines are just like more
• 1:10:05
  continuity references. So yeah, I Nah, but I was glad
• 1:10:11
  it was over quickly. So it's it's clearly a nay from
• 1:10:14
  Andrew Luke. Nay.
• 1:10:19
  John. Nay, yeah, sorry, I think so.
• 1:10:23
  And I'm going to say yeah as well, so.
• 1:10:25
  I'd have a 5050. It was.
• 1:10:28
  The collection is probably a bit more contentious.
• 1:10:31
  Oh, come on, this one's gotta go to Luke again, hasn't it?
• 1:10:34
  The heart of of. Is it the heart of Cheryl's?
• 1:10:37
  Why have I written Cheryl's IS? That what?
• 1:10:40
  It's called. It must have been an awesome so
• 1:10:43
  correct on my phone. But The Heart of Cherise by
• 1:10:46
  Reecey Pontiff. Now Luke, we would all love to
• 1:10:50
  sing you a song which where we can express our love to you.
• 1:10:55
  But what did you think of when Fitz had to do it as a Doctor?
• 1:11:00
  I I'd liked it because he's always looking to the doctor to
• 1:11:05
  save the day and get him out of a tricky situation.
• 1:11:07
  But this time he called for a song and the song in his back
• 1:11:11
  pocket, ready to go. I I equate this story in to to
• 1:11:19
  Beavis and Bot head. Really.
• 1:11:20
  Like, I mean, what I mean is when I watch that, they they set
• 1:11:26
  up the episode and I close my eyes.
• 1:11:29
  Yeah, I know exactly what that's going to happen.
• 1:11:31
  Now. They're going to get their asses
• 1:11:32
  kicked. They would never score.
• 1:11:34
  And that's kind of how it goes. So Rosie Pontiff sets this up.
• 1:11:39
  You've got to be your true loves, otherwise this monster is
• 1:11:42
  going to just like, eat you up. You're dead done.
• 1:11:46
  It's like Godzilla sized or something.
• 1:11:48
  It's going to eat you. And then the doctor goes down to
• 1:11:53
  save two people who aren't a compatible match because of like
• 1:11:57
  an affair or something like that.
• 1:11:59
  And you're just like, well, Fitz is going to go down there and
• 1:12:02
  save him. They're going to get in a
• 1:12:04
  situation where they have to express their love to each
• 1:12:07
  other. And the monster's going to be
• 1:12:08
  like, and I knew exactly how that was going to play out as
• 1:12:15
  soon as like this kind of setup was done.
• 1:12:17
  And I still, I loved it. It was like, sometimes you
• 1:12:22
  something is you can imagine how it plays out.
• 1:12:26
  And you know, like, you know what?
• 1:12:27
  I like how my imagination played this out.
• 1:12:30
  Can it play out like that, please?
• 1:12:32
  And it did. So I just thought it was really
• 1:12:35
  sweet. And I also thought it was very
• 1:12:37
  kind of 90s slash guy from 60s being written in the 90s.
• 1:12:43
  Attitudes towards the, like, kind of awkwardness of showing
• 1:12:47
  male affection to people, you know what I mean?
• 1:12:49
  And like, yeah, though I would communicate something towards
• 1:12:54
  each other, but not quite exactly what they wanted at the
• 1:12:57
  same time, I don't know, it was kind of blokey, I guess.
• 1:13:02
  I don't know. Felt a bit real, I guess.
• 1:13:06
  Yeah, I like yeah, I like that a lot.
• 1:13:08
  So yeah, it's it's a yay for me. We.
• 1:13:11
  All know that Fitz loves the Doctor, right?
• 1:13:13
  That's the one thing that they got really right in the EDA
• 1:13:17
  throughout his entire run, is that he loves the Doctor and all
• 1:13:20
  of those women that are joining him in the TARDIS, say at one
• 1:13:24
  point or another, you're mad. Why do you leap over mountains
• 1:13:27
  for him? You do anything for And of
• 1:13:29
  course he would. He would do absolutely anything
• 1:13:32
  for the Doctor. So to have one story in this
• 1:13:34
  where he gets to romantically externalize that in a way that
• 1:13:39
  only he can by singing that song.
• 1:13:41
  I had tears in my eyes at the end of this, and books don't
• 1:13:44
  make me cry, but it was a sort of a a culmination of something
• 1:13:48
  that I always knew. But when it was written this
• 1:13:52
  beautifully, that song was so beautiful.
• 1:13:54
  I started. Singing it out loud like a
• 1:13:56
  lunatic. At 4:00 in the morning.
• 1:13:59
  Yeah, I fucking love this so much.
• 1:14:01
  Andrew, what did you think of this one?
• 1:14:03
  Yeah, I absolutely love this one.
• 1:14:04
  And yeah, it's just, it feels like it's filling in a little
• 1:14:08
  bit of a gap in the characterisation in the books.
• 1:14:12
  And I think we've sort of talked about that subtext with with
• 1:14:17
  fits, particularly in camera obscure at time Zero, that whole
• 1:14:21
  sequence and his relationship with the Doctor.
• 1:14:24
  And yeah, it's nice that it's done in such a sweet way, but
• 1:14:29
  also in a way that it, it fits into what happened in the books
• 1:14:32
  in that, you know, it's sort of they both sort of brush it under
• 1:14:35
  the carpet in the end, which feels real and very, very 8th
• 1:14:40
  Doctor as well. Like what he does with, with
• 1:14:46
  cheering in the in the eighth in the Earth arc and also with, you
• 1:14:50
  know, various female characters as well.
• 1:14:53
  When sort of emotions come up, the Doctor will just sort of
• 1:14:56
  like push it down so it's not there and just ignore it.
• 1:15:01
  So, yeah, I thought it was a really lovely story and just
• 1:15:05
  sort of didn't there's there's other stories in this collection
• 1:15:11
  which which do the same sort of thing with fits, but I think in
• 1:15:19
  not as subtle a way as this one is doing in a way that feels as
• 1:15:23
  true to the era and the characters.
• 1:15:26
  So, yeah, I really love this one.
• 1:15:28
  And I feel like there's a you know, when we talk about like,
• 1:15:30
  oh, there should have been another tricks book, like about
• 1:15:33
  tricks, tricks, his back story. There should have been a book
• 1:15:37
  about Fitz being bi and like Fitz like, and not in like a
• 1:15:41
  jokey way, but in like an actual character development way
• 1:15:45
  because that's that's something that is sort of intimated
• 1:15:48
  throughout the book. And there's lots of those close
• 1:15:50
  male relationships with fits and something going on with fits and
• 1:15:54
  that dream that he has about the Doctor.
• 1:15:56
  And it just feels like a little bit of a dangling thread that
• 1:15:58
  was never sort of. Sasha in History One O 1.
• 1:16:02
  One O 1 George in time 0 the Doctor constantly.
• 1:16:07
  And it's just something that it would have been nice if that had
• 1:16:11
  become something. Even if like, he decides not to
• 1:16:15
  go down that route just to sort of explore it a little more.
• 1:16:18
  Yeah. So, yeah, it's it's just really
• 1:16:21
  good that this book is not just about like, oh, what if it's not
• 1:16:25
  about those like filling nerdy gaps of like, or what if Faction
• 1:16:29
  Paradox did something? It's it's about the a lot of the
• 1:16:32
  writers have chosen to develop elements of the characters,
• 1:16:36
  which is, yeah, what I wanted from this book and what it gives
• 1:16:40
  me. It is sort of doing, it's not
• 1:16:42
  laddish, but it is doing that sort of two lads on an adventure
• 1:16:45
  thing. This story as well.
• 1:16:47
  And you've got the 8th Doctor Who's so smooth he grabs hold of
• 1:16:51
  a vine and just slides down. And then Fitz tries to do the
• 1:16:54
  same thing so it compares the two of them and he just falls
• 1:16:57
  and lands on the Doctor in a great comedy sequence.
• 1:17:02
  I mean, at one point the doctor grabs up.
• 1:17:05
  The Doctor grabbed Fitz by the hand, making a beeline for his
• 1:17:07
  raffle legs. Raffle legs?
• 1:17:10
  Are you out of your gauze? He says.
• 1:17:13
  I. Was like, oh, this would have
• 1:17:14
  been a great comedy as well. So the tones, the shift of tones
• 1:17:17
  is, is wonderful too, John. Yeah, I thought for the first
• 1:17:21
  time, y'all thinking it? It's kind of maybe a little.
• 1:17:24
  I find the plot maybe a little contrite.
• 1:17:26
  It's a short story, so I can forgive all that, but it's
• 1:17:29
  absolutely worth it where it goes in those last five pages
• 1:17:32
  from where it gets the Doctor and fits in the pit has that
• 1:17:36
  sound good. I know.
• 1:17:36
  I think Steve Cole wrote the lyrics for that, so he.
• 1:17:40
  So it's absolutely steeped in that Doctor I know recently
• 1:17:43
  knows her stuff on the 8th Doctor stuff.
• 1:17:46
  And yeah, not only the song, but that epilogue as well is really
• 1:17:51
  very, very eloquent on the Doctor and fitted relationship,
• 1:17:56
  particularly the end. You know, it's it's like, you
• 1:17:58
  know what Fitz can't say to him but this but they're still
• 1:18:02
  having such a good time. Why do they say it?
• 1:18:05
  It's kind of like the precursor to the Doctor and Yaz later on.
• 1:18:09
  But I, I think maybe you know, 20 years time, we'll get a
• 1:18:13
  similar book of stories like this about them, about their
• 1:18:15
  relationship deepening that hopefully.
• 1:18:18
  Fingers crossed, yeah. Well, let's.
• 1:18:22
  Oh, sorry, yay, nay or. May I mean I'm getting a sense
• 1:18:25
  but it's a yay from me. Yay.
• 1:18:29
  Yay. OK, four way yay.
• 1:18:32
  Great other half by Philip Purser Hallard, who I only ever
• 1:18:37
  know from the faction Paradox range.
• 1:18:40
  So interesting to see him join in here and Andrew, it was
• 1:18:44
  really interesting. It wasn't when Paul said he was
• 1:18:46
  determined to bring in new names as well.
• 1:18:48
  So it wasn't just bringing back all the old writers.
• 1:18:51
  But let's see what other people can bring to this range, you
• 1:18:55
  know, sort of 20-30 years down the line, John, and I'm sure
• 1:18:59
  you've explored some of Faction Paradox.
• 1:19:02
  So how did you find the other half?
• 1:19:05
  Phillips, one of the editors of the Black Art Coverage.
• 1:19:07
  I've worked with him as well. Oh, you better be nice then.
• 1:19:09
  I've watched You might not get another kick.
• 1:19:13
  Oh, no, feels lovely. He he's quite a particular
• 1:19:16
  reason. But thematically it's when the
• 1:19:18
  strongest ones with the other half.
• 1:19:20
  I was going, OK, the first thing you get, you know, this woman
• 1:19:23
  comes into the cell with fits and it's a blonde that you're
• 1:19:27
  going, oh, is it is it Jodie? And and then you go, no, it's
• 1:19:30
  not quite Jodie. And then you work out, Gee, it's
• 1:19:33
  the curse of the fatal death Doctor.
• 1:19:35
  How do you get the curse of the fatal death Doctor into this
• 1:19:40
  serious Doctor universe? And it is very smart and it has
• 1:19:44
  my favorite line in the book. I think you know the doc.
• 1:19:48
  You know I've got a written down you go.
• 1:19:55
  So the doctor's a beautiful blonde now.
• 1:19:57
  Compassion automatically. What were your other two wishes?
• 1:20:03
  Oh, it's a gorgeous line. And yeah, and you know, the
• 1:20:07
  alien race. I think it's something Bill does
• 1:20:09
  very well in his original fiction.
• 1:20:12
  See, he does a he does a short Christmas story every year.
• 1:20:16
  They're fantastic. So yeah, this, this one, you
• 1:20:20
  know, it's about reconciling your other halves and it's just
• 1:20:25
  absolutely, it's just absolutely fun.
• 1:20:28
  So I'm quite glad that I don't have to say anything that's not
• 1:20:32
  nice about Bill. So I thoroughly enjoyed it and
• 1:20:34
  it absolutely nails that Doctor, that master, that kind of humour
• 1:20:38
  of the curse of fatal death as well, even though, you know,
• 1:20:41
  that's parting like it's 1999 technically.
• 1:20:45
  Avon compassion, right, Because there's a one proper story in
• 1:20:48
  this whole collection. I just thought she was great and
• 1:20:51
  what she didn't really get the point of children.
• 1:20:53
  Finally someone saying it for me.
• 1:20:55
  The remote had avoided the whole infancy business, sensibly in
• 1:20:59
  her view, by building themselves hygienically in tanks.
• 1:21:02
  From what she'd heard, was more or less accepted practice
• 1:21:05
  amongst the Time Lords as well. We're doing a lung barrel.
• 1:21:08
  We're not Who cares? It was such a clever idea that
• 1:21:12
  alien race, wasn't it, bringing together two people that.
• 1:21:17
  And so it is making an absolute comment on relationships, on the
• 1:21:22
  trans community. Yeah, on so many different
• 1:21:25
  things. I love this.
• 1:21:27
  If 2 male kids joined, they became an adult called he, 2
• 1:21:31
  girls would become a she and the all male female pairings were
• 1:21:35
  called they. So it's making an explicit
• 1:21:37
  comment on on a lot of stuff that's happening right now and
• 1:21:42
  that's the looking forward that I think really works.
• 1:21:46
  Although the joke then whatever their actual reproductive
• 1:21:49
  arrangements might be, like compassion wasn't going to
• 1:21:51
  speculate she'd have that sort of thing to fits which.
• 1:21:54
  Was a great joke. Although I mean, I was far more
• 1:21:59
  enamoured with this in the first half of the story than the
• 1:22:02
  second-half. When the blonde doctor came in I
• 1:22:06
  just thought it was so intelligently written I didn't
• 1:22:09
  care. I would have.
• 1:22:10
  I would love to see her full length.
• 1:22:12
  Philip Purse. Howard Hallard.
• 1:22:13
  I've got the book. Of the city of the Saint is
• 1:22:16
  fantastic. Anyway, everyone should go and
• 1:22:18
  read that text. So dense, John.
• 1:22:20
  I mean, I gave up halfway through.
• 1:22:22
  It's so dense. I know, but the world's.
• 1:22:26
  Oh, it's very interesting. Very.
• 1:22:27
  Incredible. Luke, how did you find this from
• 1:22:31
  other half? Well I found it confusing
• 1:22:34
  because I didn't understand who this fucking master was and I
• 1:22:37
  thought it was Jodie the whole time.
• 1:22:38
  So I've seen Curse of Fatal Death once, so that part of the
• 1:22:43
  story was absolutely confusing to me until John said it was the
• 1:22:48
  Curse of fatal Death reference and.
• 1:22:51
  I'm so pleased you admitted that because I was exactly the same
• 1:22:54
  until he just said that. So thank you for being the one
• 1:22:57
  who admitted. And I'm like, oh fuck, I haven't
• 1:23:01
  seen that since it came out. What was the?
• 1:23:03
  Clue that said it was the cast of Fatal Death Doctor.
• 1:23:06
  Like is it the master with him with her?
• 1:23:08
  Must have had 10, yeah. OK, yes.
• 1:23:12
  That's a big clue, OK, And I. Think it's actually inspiring
• 1:23:15
  that that height, waistcoat and all of that stuff.
• 1:23:18
  Oh, apart. From 2 persons as well, which is
• 1:23:21
  where it's at. Having cuts that are obviously
• 1:23:24
  too deep for me or he remembered curse fatal death more than I
• 1:23:28
  did. Other than that, I still enjoyed
• 1:23:32
  the story. I mean, I enjoyed it more and I
• 1:23:34
  thought it was Jodie Whittaker to be honest.
• 1:23:36
  And now I don't like the story as much.
• 1:23:39
  I want to read it again now knowing it's Joanna Lumley.
• 1:23:42
  I've always wanted more than. I guess I'd have to rewatch it
• 1:23:46
  but I don't know. I haven't watched it for quite a
• 1:23:50
  while, but I I love the story. See, now I wish Fitz had met
• 1:23:55
  Jodie, and it's not as fun as this joint.
• 1:23:57
  OK, yeah, all right. But compassion steals the show.
• 1:24:02
  Show with her line. I see.
• 1:24:04
  See it mine thing is just like, yeah, he meets Jodie.
• 1:24:06
  I'm like, oh, he he didn't. Oh, poor fits.
• 1:24:10
  Anyway, I I love the Vanekas, the the race of the two halves
• 1:24:15
  who join all that stuff. So.
• 1:24:17
  All right, some of the continuity in the Doctor Who
• 1:24:20
  niche book went over my head. This guy who likes nerdy Doctor
• 1:24:24
  Who niche shit. But the original stuff in the
• 1:24:28
  book, the alien race and stuff, I could have taken a whole novel
• 1:24:32
  of that. That was a fucking amazing
• 1:24:34
  original race kind of idea. Something kind of like out of
• 1:24:37
  the Ursula Guin novel or something.
• 1:24:39
  I thought it was fucking amazing.
• 1:24:42
  Some of my favorite stuff in the whole book was maybe fits in the
• 1:24:47
  dungeon, maybe not so much the that stuff.
• 1:24:49
  But like when he meets the the the the person who's now half
• 1:24:55
  because one of their torture, because there's, you know, the
• 1:24:58
  doctor's planning a coup on this planet against an evil regime.
• 1:25:01
  It's Doctor Who, of course he is, but you can kind of torture
• 1:25:06
  some of these people by pulling them apart again and stuff and
• 1:25:09
  all that. And that just sounded fucking
• 1:25:12
  like for a race I'd only heard of 10 pages ago to to read all
• 1:25:17
  this stuff. I'm like, holy shit, yeah,
• 1:25:19
  that's really good. Leather as well, to have scenes
• 1:25:22
  from the aliens point of view saying to Fitz, well you've
• 1:25:25
  never been joined with somebody. To me you're like a child that's
• 1:25:28
  never grown up. I just thought that was such a
• 1:25:31
  great explanation. Which is a good and that's how
• 1:25:34
  political. But where where the one leader
• 1:25:37
  had just has one point of view essentially.
• 1:25:39
  Yes, yeah. That's really eloquent bit of
• 1:25:42
  sat, aren't they? Andrew.
• 1:25:45
  Yeah, I love this one. I thought it was a really clever
• 1:25:49
  sci-fi story. And then it kind of when the
• 1:25:53
  Lumley Doctor turns up, it kind of like takes it in a different
• 1:25:56
  direction, which is good. And it also it's another one
• 1:25:59
  which kind of puts the 8th Doctor under the spotlight by
• 1:26:02
  comparing him to another Doctor. But this one I liked and it was
• 1:26:06
  like it was the improvisational sense of the Doctor and the that
• 1:26:10
  whole he's from that era where he's trying to avoid getting
• 1:26:13
  into the involved in the Time Lord war.
• 1:26:15
  And then you've got the Lumley Doctor Who's kind of taking this
• 1:26:18
  longer look at the cycle of history and she's interfering,
• 1:26:21
  but in a different way to the Doctor.
• 1:26:22
  So I thought that it did that really effectively.
• 1:26:27
  And, yeah, just really, like I, I was a kid who was starved of
• 1:26:31
  Doctor Who in the 90s and watched The Curse of Fatal
• 1:26:35
  Death. So I immediately got like, what
• 1:26:39
  the references were. And it, like, brought a big
• 1:26:41
  smile to my face when it did. And I think at the time, if
• 1:26:44
  they'd have put the Lumley Doctor into an Eighth Doctor
• 1:26:46
  book, I would have hated it. And I'd been like, that's a
• 1:26:48
  comedy skit. Don't you dare bring that in as
• 1:26:51
  like, a very serious teenager. But now it's.
• 1:26:53
  The 90s, right? It was the 90s curse of fatal
• 1:26:55
  death. Yeah, 90s.
• 1:26:57
  It fits the brief. But now, like, I love it and I'd
• 1:27:02
  read more of this. Andrew, I've got a ferric.
• 1:27:05
  Beam locators now. Well, it's a yay from me,
• 1:27:10
  Andrew. It's a yay from me.
• 1:27:12
  Luke, Yay I. Wish it was Jodie.
• 1:27:17
  John, Yay. From me.
• 1:27:20
  I mean, you say Fitz didn't meet Jodie.
• 1:27:22
  Fitz has done quite a lot, Luke. All right.
• 1:27:24
  It was around a long time. Yeah, it's.
• 1:27:29
  Another story for us to do. Oh, wonderful.
• 1:27:32
  OK, well, finally we're here. We've reached the Angie section
• 1:27:37
  of the book. Hurrah.
• 1:27:40
  Andrew, would you care to take Firebright by Maxwell Halladay?
• 1:27:44
  Yeah, so this is Doctor Fitz and Angie at a music festival in
• 1:27:49
  space. Yes.
• 1:27:53
  So yeah, it's it's a sort of mini disaster movie of of all of
• 1:28:00
  them kind of using their wits to save people, battle an evil
• 1:28:06
  corporation, all in the space of a few pages.
• 1:28:09
  And I think Magdale Halliday is great at capturing this TARDIS
• 1:28:13
  team. She writes Angie really well and
• 1:28:17
  puts stuff from Angie's like cultural background into it as
• 1:28:21
  well and helped her feel like a real person who has a genuine
• 1:28:26
  history and family, which is something which I think a lot of
• 1:28:29
  the writers struggled with with the 8th Doctor books and just
• 1:28:32
  sort of ignored that part of her character.
• 1:28:36
  So yeah, I think this was another one of those sort of
• 1:28:38
  solid Doctor Who stories, bringing back the TARDIS team
• 1:28:43
  that we love. And yeah, just just like a nice
• 1:28:48
  to be able to spend some time with this TARDIS team.
• 1:28:51
  Nice that it was the first Angie story in the collection in that
• 1:28:54
  it's kind of just doing a sort of conventional Doctor Who
• 1:28:57
  story, really well characterised and having her being really
• 1:29:01
  smart in in the sort of resolution to the to the story.
• 1:29:05
  She told me the other day, because she's doing the Summer
• 1:29:08
  by X-Files podcast, Maxo Halladay and she told me when
• 1:29:11
  she wrote History 101, she really didn't like Angie as a
• 1:29:16
  character. OK.
• 1:29:17
  And then she started writing for her and that she just fell in
• 1:29:20
  love with her. Like when she when she got into
• 1:29:23
  her head and you can see like you've recently read History one
• 1:29:25
  and one like she clearly adores that character with what's on
• 1:29:30
  the page. So I think she was the perfect
• 1:29:32
  choice to write this one. I loved about this one was the
• 1:29:36
  fact that he started off hugging Fitz and Angie at the start of
• 1:29:39
  the book and he ended up hugging Fitz and Angie at the end of
• 1:29:42
  this book. And it's just that lovely team.
• 1:29:44
  It's that lovely warm TARDIS team from that period of the
• 1:29:47
  books. Just love.
• 1:29:49
  And just for this line alone, did you know your festival have
• 1:29:53
  been stolen? I mean literally stolen.
• 1:29:56
  The entire site is in hyperspace and something or someone is
• 1:29:59
  praying on your punters. She's just got a she just has a
• 1:30:03
  nice sense of humour about her. Visually, this was really fun.
• 1:30:06
  I just thought this was a delight, this one.
• 1:30:08
  I really enjoyed it, John. Yeah, I, I'm kind of with Andrew
• 1:30:13
  on it. I thought it's, it's a reef.
• 1:30:14
  And so I love the idea of wombler trance.
• 1:30:17
  Of course the culture is going to have that.
• 1:30:18
  Of course they're going to call them that Again.
• 1:30:23
  It's kind of saying stuff about reasonably contemporary events
• 1:30:26
  because I think the festival is obviously based on the, oh, the
• 1:30:29
  fire festival. The first fire festival.
• 1:30:31
  Yeah. Fire with a wine.
• 1:30:33
  It's. Yeah.
• 1:30:35
  And clearly, you know, Mags has a lot to say about that in the
• 1:30:38
  book, and it's gorgeous and the motivations behind it as well.
• 1:30:42
  So yeah, I just have fun with it.
• 1:30:45
  And again, you get to spend time with that team, with the Doctor,
• 1:30:48
  Fitz and Angie, with a writer who knows them, who's written
• 1:30:52
  for them before, and absolutely kind of gets them perfectly has
• 1:30:56
  that rapport between the three, not just one of them, it's the
• 1:30:59
  three of them and gives them all stuff to do throughout the story
• 1:31:03
  as well, which is a really difficult thing to do in a short
• 1:31:06
  story. So yeah, I just had fun with
• 1:31:09
  this one. Luke, are you going to be the
• 1:31:11
  party pooper at the Far Bride Party?
• 1:31:15
  No, this this kind of reminded me of something else that that
• 1:31:23
  in the same way I mentioned a bit of earlier story the S Club
• 1:31:26
  71 like I could imagine this being episode 18 of a 20 episode
• 1:31:34
  season of McGann Dr. Who? I don't mean that in a bad way,
• 1:31:38
  but 45. Minutes, yeah.
• 1:31:40
  Yeah, we thought we kind of did this or a similar thing with
• 1:31:45
  like the the Song Contest, right, with the with the shooty.
• 1:31:50
  So yeah, like and look, I know music festivals are still a
• 1:31:55
  thing now, but that was felt bigger in the 90s, like they
• 1:31:58
  felt like they were more huge in the 90s.
• 1:32:00
  So having one and. Look, I.
• 1:32:05
  Angie sharing her, her Indian food and culture and stuff like
• 1:32:08
  that. I feel like that's Mag's a
• 1:32:11
  holiday, adding something to a character that maybe a lot of
• 1:32:15
  these writers should have added to the to her character from the
• 1:32:19
  start. But I feel like a lot of
• 1:32:21
  character, a lot of writers did or some writers did not have.
• 1:32:26
  What you said, Joe, that Mag's had was this revelation of I
• 1:32:31
  love this character. And then they maybe like, just
• 1:32:34
  kind of rode around a small part of the book or, you know, or
• 1:32:38
  just made her complete cow sometimes.
• 1:32:41
  That's fun as well, yeah. But you go, you know, she's you
• 1:32:44
  know, but you know what I mean? So like I feel like this was
• 1:32:48
  kind of like it makes sense. Like I can't remember in EDA
• 1:32:52
  where she's kind of passing her food around and stuff like that.
• 1:32:54
  But like, I'm like, man, that'll, I don't know, just
• 1:32:58
  feels like a thing of just like this nice little touch that's
• 1:33:02
  just part of her, her kind of character.
• 1:33:06
  Yeah, it was nice. I liked it.
• 1:33:08
  And it was mostly just having someone from my favorite era of
• 1:33:14
  the books recapturing and those 3 characters, but with a bit
• 1:33:20
  more maturity to them I guess. I'm not saying Magsa Holiday was
• 1:33:23
  immature with History 101 or anything like that, but you're
• 1:33:26
  20 years older now, you're going to be more mature.
• 1:33:28
  That's just how it is, you know. Leon Paul himself, I think that
• 1:33:32
  might be the one, the best example in this book of somebody
• 1:33:36
  writing for a group of characters that they wrote for
• 1:33:39
  back at in the day and getting it spot on and just giving you a
• 1:33:43
  bit more of that, you know. Yeah.
• 1:33:47
  So yeah. More.
• 1:33:50
  Come on, Max, I'm trying to storm.
• 1:33:53
  Yay. Nay.
• 1:33:54
  Or may. I think I know where this one's
• 1:33:56
  going, John. Yay.
• 1:33:58
  Andrew, yay. Luke.
• 1:34:01
  Yay. OK, can I take the memory tide?
• 1:34:05
  Because I fucking loved this story.
• 1:34:09
  I absolutely loved it. Speaking as somebody who has
• 1:34:15
  lost somebody very close to me in the last five years, the idea
• 1:34:19
  of a place where you go where memory is a living thing and you
• 1:34:24
  get to work through your grief in a in a science fiction
• 1:34:28
  setting in a really sort of moving and poetic way.
• 1:34:32
  I just thought the setting was beautiful, but I.
• 1:34:34
  Just. Loved the idea of this character
• 1:34:38
  Cal Talk. Smuggler, orator, renegade with
• 1:34:41
  a poet's heart who joined the Doctor, Fitz and Angie for a
• 1:34:44
  series of adventures. We don't really know how long,
• 1:34:46
  and not too long, you know, and the idea of just inserting in
• 1:34:50
  this character and a whole series of adventures of which we
• 1:34:53
  get all kind of glimpses at, the idea that there was way more to
• 1:34:58
  see in the 8th Doctor books than what we actually got.
• 1:35:02
  I just love that as an idea, and then that you get to experience
• 1:35:07
  how the Doctor, Anne, Fitz and Angie all felt about that
• 1:35:12
  character and it was really different things.
• 1:35:14
  Fitz fancied him, for God's sakes, because he was a romantic
• 1:35:17
  hero and really capable. And we hear about an adventure
• 1:35:21
  that they went on together, and she feared him a little bit
• 1:35:24
  because she watched a little boy die on one of their adventures,
• 1:35:27
  and he didn't really react to it.
• 1:35:30
  And then the doctor has huge regrets about him because he
• 1:35:33
  thought he was capable of so much.
• 1:35:35
  And it that turned out to be his downfall in the end.
• 1:35:38
  I feel as if I knew that character by the end of this
• 1:35:41
  story. It was 10 pages long.
• 1:35:44
  Yeah. So beyond one other story, this
• 1:35:47
  might be my favorite of the collection.
• 1:35:49
  And I I think it might not be for everybody because it is
• 1:35:52
  trying to insert stuff into a rum that was never there in the
• 1:35:55
  1st place, but I thought it did it elegantly and I want more.
• 1:36:01
  I'd love to see a. Series of those adventures.
• 1:36:04
  Let's have the Cow Talk short story collection and, well, it'd
• 1:36:08
  just be a load of stories for the Doctor, Fitz and Angie and I
• 1:36:10
  wouldn't complain about that. I love this one.
• 1:36:13
  But let's see what everybody else thought, John.
• 1:36:18
  I'm with you on it. I just read and it went.
• 1:36:20
  I don't know if Jamie's worked that well from Big Finish.
• 1:36:23
  I know he's written for them for how many years?
• 1:36:25
  But yeah, it what's, what's that line?
• 1:36:27
  It's he's not just a memory, He's grief with a face.
• 1:36:31
  What an idea. It's beautiful.
• 1:36:35
  And this is a really difficult thing to pull off, that there's
• 1:36:39
  a whole bunch of things we've never seen.
• 1:36:42
  But in, you know, 10 pages, we get that a whole new era
• 1:36:48
  suggested to us. And it's an era you can imagine,
• 1:36:51
  you know, cast him as you want. Do what you want with him
• 1:36:54
  because it gives us the emotional impact of that era.
• 1:36:59
  It gives you the feelings of that era rather than going these
• 1:37:03
  just the adventures they've had and give you a list of this is
• 1:37:06
  what they did. It's not just a self.
• 1:37:08
  It's it's gorgeous, It's gorgeously written.
• 1:37:11
  It's got a sense. It's got those great lines.
• 1:37:14
  It's got them doing that kind of the confession as well, each of
• 1:37:18
  them having that confession to make.
• 1:37:20
  I like that this isn't a simple, we're really sad.
• 1:37:24
  This guy, Doug, it's no, he was a complicated person.
• 1:37:29
  He creates this this new kind of companion that we never met in
• 1:37:33
  10 pages and makes him so vivid. So, Steven Moffett, isn't it
• 1:37:37
  putting a character to bed that we only met 10 pages ago?
• 1:37:41
  Yeah. Yeah, So, yeah, absolutely
• 1:37:46
  gorgeous. And again, like you, this is one
• 1:37:49
  of my favourites indication. I loved it in the group chat
• 1:37:51
  when someone else, I won't spoil who said how much they loved it
• 1:37:55
  too. It's yeah, it's really eloquent.
• 1:37:58
  It's it's not nostalgia, it's the power of memory as well.
• 1:38:03
  So it's not looking back nostalgically, it's not looking
• 1:38:05
  back and critically. And yeah, I thought that it's
• 1:38:09
  one of the most eloquent things in this whole collection, and it
• 1:38:12
  is generally, again, a really eloquent collection.
• 1:38:15
  Andrew, you're looking so uncertain about what we're
• 1:38:17
  saying, so I know you didn't like this.
• 1:38:19
  Go on. Well, I feel bad.
• 1:38:21
  I feel like maybe I need to give this one another go because I
• 1:38:26
  didn't like it. And I think I think the things
• 1:38:30
  that worked for you guys are maybe why I didn't like that.
• 1:38:33
  I didn't like a character being inserted.
• 1:38:35
  And that said, we've had a character created just to make
• 1:38:40
  the characters feel bad, basically is what I felt was it.
• 1:38:43
  And it didn't. It just didn't land for me.
• 1:38:45
  I didn't believe it. I didn't believe that there was
• 1:38:47
  this whole character and era that we never saw.
• 1:38:50
  And it didn't do enough to sell that to me.
• 1:38:53
  I kind of felt like it was just there to sort of create this.
• 1:38:58
  Yeah, like a bit fan fictiony of like, make let's make all the
• 1:39:02
  characters feel bad for a few pages and then they'll get over
• 1:39:07
  it. Like I just.
• 1:39:08
  It didn't, it didn't convince, but maybe, maybe I was just too
• 1:39:12
  resistant to the idea of sort of this interruption into the 8th
• 1:39:16
  Doctor books that we never knew about.
• 1:39:17
  So maybe I need to go back at it and reread it.
• 1:39:20
  It's. So polled at what It's opening
• 1:39:23
  doors and saying there's all of this out there that you didn't
• 1:39:26
  see. Yeah, which I mean, I, I do like
• 1:39:29
  the idea of opening up the era and and doing things.
• 1:39:31
  I think it's just that it didn't convince me.
• 1:39:33
  And I think because I love these characters so much, it's just a
• 1:39:36
  bit of an imposition to be like, oh, here's this, here's this
• 1:39:39
  whole other character that I've just created that is so
• 1:39:41
  important to all these characters, but you never know
• 1:39:43
  about. So I feel like to me that feels
• 1:39:45
  a bit like, who are you to tell me what fits?
• 1:39:47
  About. Oh fucking hell, you're a
• 1:39:50
  teenager again. I also.
• 1:39:54
  Like, yeah, like it's 1998. Yeah, I need to.
• 1:39:58
  I need to quash my inner teenager and reread this one.
• 1:40:00
  But also the fits. Bisexuality bit in this one
• 1:40:06
  doesn't land for me because he's so open about it with with Angie
• 1:40:10
  and it just feels like that, again, that doesn't ring true to
• 1:40:13
  me with who he was at this point in the books being that open
• 1:40:17
  about himself. It felt like it was something
• 1:40:18
  that he was maybe good, like there were inklings of it and
• 1:40:22
  maybe he was going to discover it over a long period of time.
• 1:40:24
  So again, that didn't land for me and felt like it was just
• 1:40:27
  sort of a creating a scenario for that to be spoken, which
• 1:40:33
  didn't ring true for me. So yeah.
• 1:40:36
  I'm not understand. I can't understand your
• 1:40:39
  reaction. Like I can understand people
• 1:40:42
  that like this sort of thing, stuff being inserted and stuff
• 1:40:47
  not being inserted. You know, I do.
• 1:40:49
  I, I know I do, because I feel that way about a bit about the
• 1:40:52
  fugitive Dr. and the war doctor, you know, just shoving in these
• 1:40:55
  characters that we never knew about and going, Oh yeah, they
• 1:40:57
  were there all along. I think maybe it would have
• 1:41:00
  worked for me if they'd done like a Dawn from Buffy thing of
• 1:41:02
  like, maybe he was fake all along or like, OK, just
• 1:41:06
  something where it was a bit. It gave more of a narrative
• 1:41:09
  justification for that. Lean into it.
• 1:41:12
  Being put imposed into this story.
• 1:41:18
  So you're we're we're literally opposite ends here.
• 1:41:20
  I'm going, I want more. I want to learn more about this
• 1:41:22
  and hear read these things and you're like who the fuck is this
• 1:41:25
  guy? But you mean sometimes that
• 1:41:29
  really works? The Oliver Harper trilogy from
• 1:41:31
  Big Finish I love, and I think that worked really well.
• 1:41:34
  And maybe it's because you got to know that character over a
• 1:41:36
  long period of time. When that short story collection
• 1:41:40
  comes out, we'll revisit this, all right.
• 1:41:43
  Luke. I I was thinking that if you
• 1:41:48
  just watch the TV show and that's it, there's no evil and
• 1:41:52
  Smythe, there's no beneath Summerfield, there's no Mark.
• 1:41:57
  Do you even know who Mark is? Anyone.
• 1:42:00
  It's Mark. He's he's the sort of Roman
• 1:42:03
  Centurion that. Travels.
• 1:42:05
  The 5th Doctor, Tegan and Niso. Gets turned.
• 1:42:08
  Oh no, I won't tell you what happens to him.
• 1:42:10
  Bad things happen. To him.
• 1:42:11
  You got Aramim, all this kind of stuff.
• 1:42:14
  You just watch the TV show. Oh.
• 1:42:16
  We wouldn't have Evelyn, would we?
• 1:42:17
  For fuck. No, you wouldn't have any of
• 1:42:19
  those characters, good or bad, or long lived or or short, short
• 1:42:23
  lived and stuff. So I kind of had that mindset as
• 1:42:28
  I was reading The Memory Titan, so it kind of worked for me.
• 1:42:31
  And Cal Talk, that's the fucking 90s Star Wars name.
• 1:42:36
  Not only is Cal Talk a Star Wars name, the guy is essentially Han
• 1:42:40
  Solo, who is a little bit boy for Han Solo.
• 1:42:45
  Well, come on. I told you we was turning him,
• 1:42:48
  you know. Yeah, just bit by bit.
• 1:42:51
  Oh, sorry, no, Harrison Ford's turning.
• 1:42:53
  It biological fact Harrison Ford 19 He's the best looking human
• 1:42:57
  being there has ever been. Yeah, it's it's that's true.
• 1:43:00
  We're being out gained on this call.
• 1:43:03
  You dial it up a bit please. So I, I really liked it.
• 1:43:07
  I thought it was kind of a sweet, kind of a beautiful
• 1:43:10
  story. And I and I think a story like
• 1:43:12
  this, if it was usually when a story like this is done, you get
• 1:43:18
  to have that artificial sci-fi goodbye.
• 1:43:23
  You know, of the hologram saying hey, it was all good and all
• 1:43:26
  this kind of stuff. But I like that whatever this
• 1:43:30
  planet is or the device or whatever's causing this to see,
• 1:43:34
  it's just like people were people are complex.
• 1:43:39
  They're not just these, these things you see them, they're
• 1:43:43
  also the bad things you see them as as well.
• 1:43:45
  Like I'd, I would absolutely love my mum to room me up and
• 1:43:48
  annoy the fucking shit out of me to take you to the shops on a
• 1:43:52
  day I already told her I'm unable to do that because I'm at
• 1:43:55
  I'm at work. And then she's just, you know,
• 1:43:57
  I'd kill for another call like that.
• 1:44:01
  You know what I mean? And that's, that's not even a
• 1:44:05
  positive thing. But my mum would join me up the
• 1:44:07
  fucking wall. I'd love my mum to say to me,
• 1:44:10
  Luca that fucking Doctor Who theme tune if I have to listen
• 1:44:14
  to it one more time. Exactly.
• 1:44:18
  So I felt like this is a really cool little thing of not just
• 1:44:21
  reminding yourself of who a person is in, in their kind of
• 1:44:26
  nice ways, but also in their kind of less flattering ways as
• 1:44:30
  well. And yeah, I want this kind of
• 1:44:32
  extreme Star Wars E cow talk to to maybe beat a novel or two or
• 1:44:37
  something like that. I I would have read the shit out
• 1:44:40
  of it. Well, it's a huge yay from me,
• 1:44:45
  Andrew. I'm assuming it's a nay from
• 1:44:47
  you. A nay from me.
• 1:44:49
  Luke. Yay.
• 1:44:52
  John. It's a yay.
• 1:44:54
  Well, I mean I've I've got to give the next one with the best
• 1:44:58
  tile or. The entire book.
• 1:45:01
  I'm going to give this one to Andrew again.
• 1:45:03
  You know, it's the last Angie one.
• 1:45:04
  What's it called, Andrew? It is Time and the Angie by
• 1:45:11
  Angies creator Colin Break. One we was all dreading.
• 1:45:18
  So yeah, this is a tiny, whiny Stephen Moffaty type story of
• 1:45:23
  the Doctor, Fitz and Sam meeting Angie before like a couple of
• 1:45:31
  years before they meet properly for the first time in Escape
• 1:45:34
  Velocity. And it's sort of like a
• 1:45:36
  bootstrap paradox, although the book calls it a bootleg paradox,
• 1:45:40
  which I wasn't sure if it was a joke or not, of sort of a heist
• 1:45:46
  of something that's held in the bank vault where Angie's
• 1:45:49
  working. And it's just a lot of fun.
• 1:45:51
  I really loved this one. And you kind of, it starts off
• 1:45:55
  with this sort of faux like journal article about the Doctor
• 1:46:01
  and his companions. So you get these, it's sort of
• 1:46:04
  topped and tailed by these little excerpts about people
• 1:46:07
  meeting the Doctor and stuff. And you know, we get like we get
• 1:46:11
  Angie and we get a bit more of Fitz and Sam as well.
• 1:46:15
  And Angie's her mega bitch phase, which is great.
• 1:46:20
  She hates working in the bank with these like awful racist old
• 1:46:24
  ladies who were coming. Has to deal with customers face
• 1:46:26
  to face or I get it, I get it. Yeah, so like, it's it's it's a
• 1:46:32
  fun little Stephen Muffetty time parador time paradox story.
• 1:46:38
  And then it gives like this little fan wanky explanation at
• 1:46:41
  the end of it as to why this has happened.
• 1:46:45
  And yeah, like it's about the TARDIS, like knowing that it's
• 1:46:52
  going to be damaged later. So it's like put some energy
• 1:46:54
  into Angie so that it heals the TARDIS at the end of the Earth
• 1:46:57
  arc, which I just thought was like a really fun Doctor Who.
• 1:47:01
  He silly and like a nice sort of like justification for why this
• 1:47:05
  story is happening and why they're meeting Angie earlier
• 1:47:08
  and why this time paradox was created.
• 1:47:10
  So yeah, just I thought it was really kind of tightly written
• 1:47:13
  and a smart little story and I really enjoyed it.
• 1:47:16
  The engine was so great because he must know what people think
• 1:47:20
  of escape velocity and the fact that he can.
• 1:47:23
  Write this little prologue to that and give us.
• 1:47:28
  Like this is what Angie was like before her adventures and then
• 1:47:32
  make this character that's a lot of people didn't like in a book,
• 1:47:36
  a lot of people didn't like a really important moment in that
• 1:47:39
  Earth ark. I just thought that was genius
• 1:47:42
  of like saying OK, you don't know this was happening in
• 1:47:44
  Escape for the Lost. Team, but it was.
• 1:47:46
  Angie was basically feeding the TARDIS a load of Archer on
• 1:47:49
  energy because of this. Yeah, I thought as well the the
• 1:47:54
  Sam Jones stuff in this was really good as well.
• 1:47:57
  There's a wonderful bit where Sam gets to see herself because
• 1:48:03
  she pops back in time, what, a couple of hours?
• 1:48:05
  So she gets to see herself back then?
• 1:48:09
  Or is it forward, Oh, I don't know, Tommy Wimey?
• 1:48:11
  Actually, there was a great joke about Tommy Wimey as well, where
• 1:48:13
  the doctor goes. How could you say, reduce
• 1:48:16
  something so poetic to something that juvenile or something like
• 1:48:19
  that? Wonderful, but Sam sees herself
• 1:48:23
  and the group dynamic, the doctor bouncing, excited, keen
• 1:48:26
  to learn fits, cautious, anticipating danger, and herself
• 1:48:32
  younger and prettier than she felt in her own head, a
• 1:48:35
  combination of both of her companions, interested,
• 1:48:37
  thrilled, and yet careful and cautious.
• 1:48:40
  That's really nice characterization of Sam there.
• 1:48:43
  And I said to you guys afterwards, I'm really
• 1:48:45
  interested to reread Escape Velocity and see if there isn't.
• 1:48:49
  But I know the plot is a load of bobbins, but maybe there might
• 1:48:52
  be more in there than we thought, because this was really
• 1:48:57
  nicely written. It was a nice story.
• 1:48:59
  It was well characterized. And Break, I think is a smart
• 1:49:03
  enough writer now to know that writing in the sort of
• 1:49:06
  omnipresent author, because he likes writing a lot of the
• 1:49:09
  sides. That's where his strengths are.
• 1:49:12
  I don't know the word escape velocity because he does a lot
• 1:49:15
  of it there, but it really works here.
• 1:49:18
  Well, his biggest critic, Luke Sims Jenkins, what did you think
• 1:49:22
  of this one? He does things in the story that
• 1:49:25
  I should not like, like the trope of established character
• 1:49:30
  meeting other established characters before it was
• 1:49:35
  established that they met them And it it kind of worked.
• 1:49:41
  She takes one look at fits in the doctor in the in the in the
• 1:49:45
  bank and just doesn't give him another look.
• 1:49:46
  They're they're just like, they just look like weirdos.
• 1:49:49
  And she's got a job to do. Goes back to doing her job.
• 1:49:54
  Her her relationship with Sam's really good as well.
• 1:49:57
  It's I mean, I say relationship. They only know each other for a
• 1:50:00
  couple of hours, but it's a funny couple of hours where Sam
• 1:50:03
  has to wake her up from her having fainted and resting in
• 1:50:07
  the toilet so time can catch up. It has a lot going for in it as
• 1:50:12
  well. So 3 writers of this of in this
• 1:50:17
  story collection I was dreading 2 of them did stories.
• 1:50:21
  I was like, I don't hate that. And one of them kind of bowled
• 1:50:26
  me over and surprised me And it was column break.
• 1:50:29
  And also the guy retconned Tommy Wimey.
• 1:50:34
  So it was Fitz who first said, And I'm like.
• 1:50:41
  He's the greatest. Doctor author of all time.
• 1:50:44
  No, but I really liked that. I don't know why it was silly.
• 1:50:48
  It was kind of dumb. I I can understand if other
• 1:50:51
  people read that and thought I'm rolling my fucking eyes.
• 1:50:54
  But for me, I was just like, I, I don't know how you're doing
• 1:50:58
  this column break, but I I love this story.
• 1:51:03
  I loved it. Yeah.
• 1:51:06
  John. I absolutely think that Colin
• 1:51:10
  Brake is aware of the reaction to escape velocity because some
• 1:51:15
  of this story is to kind of reconcile one of the things that
• 1:51:18
  did come up at the time, which is what is Angie doing with
• 1:51:21
  Dave? And it explicitly goes even said
• 1:51:25
  what she doing it, which is gorgeous.
• 1:51:27
  That gorgeous kind of scene where she champs out and she
• 1:51:30
  tells me, you know, he was cute but not my type, bit of a side
• 1:51:33
  by geek. And then maybe he's a bit cute
• 1:51:35
  and then he comes back in and that's a gorgeous little thing
• 1:51:38
  and you can see. Kind of Sam Jones's fault in it.
• 1:51:41
  Yes. Sam Jones basically set up Angie
• 1:51:44
  being in Doctor Who. Exactly, this is character
• 1:51:48
  Fenway isn't it though? It's based on character.
• 1:51:52
  Like yes, doing something interesting with them rather
• 1:51:54
  than references references. Yeah, he's so cute.
• 1:52:01
  Background soap opera. So he knows he strengthens the
• 1:52:04
  characters. I think it just makes that kind
• 1:52:07
  of the the character stuff in Escape Velocity better.
• 1:52:11
  So I think he's kind of addressing it.
• 1:52:13
  It's kind of there to redeem that a little.
• 1:52:15
  So yeah, yeah, part of that, everything you guys have said
• 1:52:19
  about it's just a he's got the concept.
• 1:52:21
  It's it's a modern kind of Doctor frameworks Team Moppet
• 1:52:25
  era and it's applied to these characters and it's done
• 1:52:28
  beautifully with affection for the old characters.
• 1:52:30
  So yeah. Your your new series events were
• 1:52:34
  so boring. Why didn't you write something
• 1:52:36
  like this? This was I think this might have
• 1:52:40
  been the biggest surprise for me in the whole collection because
• 1:52:43
  I. Was dreading it.
• 1:52:45
  Maybe he's back as a short story rounder.
• 1:52:47
  The thing is, maybe you should try.
• 1:52:48
  Joe could tell me this story was amazing to the cows come home,
• 1:52:52
  but he said from the bed and children was fucking awesome and
• 1:52:56
  I was just. Like I said, I enjoy.
• 1:52:57
  No fucking way. Go back and listen to that
• 1:53:00
  episode. Gentlemen, you're right.
• 1:53:04
  Is it a yay, a nay, or a may? Andrew Yay.
• 1:53:08
  It's a yay from me. Luke's just punched the air,
• 1:53:10
  John. Yay.
• 1:53:13
  We did the mash, we did the hamster mash by Andrew Hunt,
• 1:53:19
  somebody that we were just all dying to come back after.
• 1:53:23
  Cat's Cradle Witch Mark all 900. Years ago or whenever.
• 1:53:27
  That came out. Let's have this one to Luke.
• 1:53:34
  This has been shit. This is Doctor Who Ratatouille
• 1:53:43
  of hamsters. Or something.
• 1:53:45
  There's even a. Ratatouille gag in the in the
• 1:53:48
  episode in the episode in the short story.
• 1:53:51
  I mean, it's not terribly written or anything like that, I
• 1:53:55
  guess, but it didn't really set my world on fire.
• 1:53:58
  And I, I don't know, it's like it's you got the 1-2 punch now
• 1:54:05
  of column Brake and Andrew Hunt. And I was like, OK, here we go.
• 1:54:10
  And Column Brake lifted me up. He's like, Oh my God, who is
• 1:54:15
  this guy? Well, like column accelerate, am
• 1:54:18
  I right? And then so I don't want any
• 1:54:26
  jokes about Andrew Hunt. You be careful, all right?
• 1:54:29
  Oh, no, I can't think of any Andrew Hunt jokes.
• 1:54:32
  I don't know what you're talking about.
• 1:54:33
  I'm not. I'm that clever.
• 1:54:35
  Yeah, it was. It was.
• 1:54:36
  It was. Fine.
• 1:54:37
  It was also another like just story with the doctor or
• 1:54:40
  something, wasn't it as well? Yeah, it was.
• 1:54:43
  Yeah, it wasn't my favorite. I mean, I'll jump in very
• 1:54:48
  quickly because I've got one line on this.
• 1:54:50
  I really don't remember a single thing about it, but all I've
• 1:54:53
  written in my notes is so strange, so silly, and I'm not
• 1:54:57
  sure it's got any points to it beyond the terrible gags at the
• 1:54:59
  end. That's it.
• 1:55:01
  Well, I wrote. You guys are crazy, I really
• 1:55:06
  liked this one. Well, tell us why.
• 1:55:11
  I mean, I didn't see where it was going.
• 1:55:13
  Like it was this interesting story from like this.
• 1:55:17
  It's one of the the one of those sort of devices they use in
• 1:55:20
  short stories where it's like a character you don't know and
• 1:55:22
  it's sort of them coming across the doctor and and fits and
• 1:55:26
  where it's going is vampire hamster.
• 1:55:29
  Like how could you not enjoy that?
• 1:55:31
  Like it was so silly, but also kind of done in quite a, like a
• 1:55:38
  serious way. Like I, yeah, I, I really
• 1:55:40
  enjoyed it and thought. And there was all like the
• 1:55:42
  humour of sort of like the, the hamster also kind of has like a
• 1:55:46
  disciple who's like living next door and stuff.
• 1:55:49
  And like, yeah, it was just, it was just a silly fun, fun
• 1:55:52
  episode that was kind of like a, a mad like X-Files episode or
• 1:55:57
  Buffy or something like that where you have like a sort of
• 1:56:00
  comedy vampire hamster at the end of it.
• 1:56:03
  Yeah. Short and sweet.
• 1:56:04
  And I liked it. The outlier maybe John.
• 1:56:09
  Well, you know, I was going to say, you know, Howard is the
• 1:56:10
  outlier. He's not this time because I
• 1:56:12
  liked it because because it's silly and we undervalue
• 1:56:17
  thinness. And I think it's quite key here
• 1:56:19
  because it's the last point where you can have this really
• 1:56:22
  silly story and the AD as could be really silly.
• 1:56:26
  And that's, you know, Paul and Stu.
• 1:56:28
  They wouldn't want them remembered as just this vast,
• 1:56:31
  monolithic grand entity where, you know, you worship at the
• 1:56:35
  temple. It's no, it reminds you it was
• 1:56:39
  this living, breathing thing which had room for gags, which
• 1:56:42
  had room for seeing this. And I'm really glad that Andrew
• 1:56:45
  Hunt came back because I know he was really scarred by witch
• 1:56:48
  mark, you know, the editing process, the reaction and all
• 1:56:51
  that. He dropped out of writing for
• 1:56:54
  decades so it's so it's really nice for him to get this
• 1:56:57
  opportunity back with another doctor.
• 1:56:59
  And as Andrew said, it's vampire hamsters.
• 1:57:02
  What more do you want? Joe, this is neighborhood for
• 1:57:06
  us. I was like, we've done it,
• 1:57:07
  sorry, we did vampire squirrels in vampire SARS.
• 1:57:10
  I don't need hamsters as well. Yeah, you're getting hamsters
• 1:57:12
  too. Coming through the window, baby.
• 1:57:15
  Do you think? Do you remember when, Andrew, do
• 1:57:18
  you remember when Paul said to us about how some writers didn't
• 1:57:20
  want to come back for this, that you'd approached?
• 1:57:22
  Do you think maybe he then went right?
• 1:57:24
  I'm going to get Andrew Hunt in Colin Break.
• 1:57:26
  I'm going to get John Peel in all those people and get
• 1:57:29
  something good out of them. Yeah, and it works like I'm glad
• 1:57:34
  Andrew Hunt came back for this. And you know, like it's a, it's
• 1:57:37
  a suitably sort of like different story.
• 1:57:40
  I'd, I'd be happy for him to do something else for, you know,
• 1:57:43
  Big Finish or something like that.
• 1:57:45
  Get another voice in and, you know, do something weird like
• 1:57:47
  that's not just your standard Doctor Who story.
• 1:57:50
  I was into it. Well.
• 1:57:52
  Let's move on then to the. We going to write it.
• 1:57:55
  Come on. Oh.
• 1:57:56
  I'm so sorry. Yeah, I've forgotten our own
• 1:57:58
  format. We're getting away with this,
• 1:58:01
  folks. Yay, nay or may Luke.
• 1:58:06
  Nay. Oh, it's a knife for me as well,
• 1:58:10
  Andrew. Yay. 05050 Well.
• 1:58:19
  Next up we have The Man Who Could Not Shiver by Ryland, John
• 1:58:24
  Cavill. There can't be that many Rylands
• 1:58:26
  out there, surely. And this is what?
• 1:58:30
  I'm going to call the rodent sequel now to the previous
• 1:58:34
  story. Sort of Fair, as how Adventure
• 1:58:38
  told from the point of view of a Was it a mouse?
• 1:58:41
  A humanoid mouse. Yeah.
• 1:58:45
  So if one looks confused. I thought it was a little cat.
• 1:58:48
  Like a sort of Guinea pig, maybe?
• 1:58:49
  Oh. Yeah, maybe.
• 1:58:51
  Or a hamster. And that's him.
• 1:58:53
  That's the little little. Picture at the.
• 1:58:55
  Bottom do you know, did anyone else think with that picture at
• 1:58:58
  the front oh, it's going to be illustrated and then.
• 1:59:01
  I thought it was waiting for. Another picture to turn up and
• 1:59:03
  it didn't happen. Yeah, I really like this
• 1:59:05
  picture, though I I wish that that it had been in this
• 1:59:09
  illustrator. I'm not sure who did it, but oh,
• 1:59:11
  it's by Rylan Cavill himself. You've just decided that
• 1:59:16
  signature, haven't you? Come on Paul, you've got your
• 1:59:19
  pen going for 1001 Nights in Time and Space.
• 1:59:21
  You could have given us a few pictures for this one.
• 1:59:23
  Well, John, what did you think of this one?
• 1:59:26
  I quite like, I'd love that kind of fairy tale kind of take on on
• 1:59:32
  Doctor Who. And I think again, the fairy
• 1:59:34
  tale Corral was there in the 80s barely brute with the obviously
• 1:59:38
  grim reality being the big one. So this one's kind of just
• 1:59:41
  really felt like it fitted. I don't think it's, you know,
• 1:59:44
  the great story. It's the greatest story in the
• 1:59:46
  collection, but it's just again, it's just fun.
• 1:59:49
  It's it's a nice kind of nostalgic memory for me.
• 1:59:57
  Yeah, I thought it was OK. Like as a child I was quite a
• 2:00:01
  fan of Sylvanian families and this gave me big Sylvanian
• 2:00:05
  Families vibes along with sort of like, I don't know, like The
• 2:00:09
  Dark Crystal or Karma. There was another, there was
• 2:00:12
  another cartoon series when I was little where it was like
• 2:00:14
  these little sort of hamsters and it was sort of fantasy
• 2:00:17
  based, but I can't remember what it was called, but there was.
• 2:00:19
  Was it the dreams? The Chipmunks.
• 2:00:20
  You're not talking about, the chipmunks are.
• 2:00:22
  You what? The chipmunks, it was like a
• 2:00:23
  fantasy thing. It might have been called the
• 2:00:24
  Dreamstone or something like that.
• 2:00:26
  And they were like these sort of like little hamster creatures in
• 2:00:29
  a fantasy world and there were bad things happening.
• 2:00:31
  And this, this reminded me of that.
• 2:00:33
  So yeah, I kind of it was, it was sort of OK for me.
• 2:00:37
  I think it was one of those ones as though when I think I said
• 2:00:42
  this earlier, like there's a few too many stories in the
• 2:00:46
  collection for me that are companionless and this feels
• 2:00:50
  like it could have been a a Doctors story in another medium.
• 2:00:54
  It didn't really didn't really give me like EDA that much.
• 2:00:57
  It was just sort of a nice solo Doctor Who story.
• 2:01:01
  But yeah, it was it was enjoyable.
• 2:01:03
  Is that right? I'll sort of sum this one up as
• 2:01:06
  a charming Halloween fairy tale, but a little bit too long.
• 2:01:09
  And I thought this one maybe could have been half the length
• 2:01:13
  and I would have been OK with it.
• 2:01:15
  But like, I loved stuff like this.
• 2:01:17
  Theoros said one of the things maybe later the doctor said,
• 2:01:21
  let's have some tea 1st and talk like evolved beings.
• 2:01:24
  Hey, it was that sort of level of sort of charm to it all the
• 2:01:27
  way through of the Doctor and this, I'm going to call him a
• 2:01:31
  mouse, little mouse going on a scary adventure.
• 2:01:35
  So it was amiable enough. Well, Luke, did you like this
• 2:01:38
  one? I'm kind of with Andrew at the
• 2:01:44
  when I was at this stage of the book because I'm reading it and
• 2:01:47
  the vibe of of the whole collection is they're all kind
• 2:01:52
  of in order, sort of like we start with Sam's stories and
• 2:01:56
  Fitz is there and it's Fitz compassion, you know, kind of
• 2:01:59
  etcetera, etcetera. So it feels like we got one
• 2:02:04
  we're going on a ride throughout the whole of of the Ed as and
• 2:02:08
  apart from maybe the Earth arc or something.
• 2:02:10
  I like I see. I can't help but sometimes I've
• 2:02:13
  got that stupid nerd fan brain. Where is this set?
• 2:02:16
  Is this later on or something? So which has nothing no bearing
• 2:02:19
  on the story whatsoever. It was it was nice.
• 2:02:22
  I like the the the game playing. I like him, like the Doctor
• 2:02:27
  making this young, you know, child, I guess feel like they're
• 2:02:32
  having an amazing adventure and all that.
• 2:02:36
  But where, where, where's where's Fitz?
• 2:02:40
  So yeah, it it was OK. Where the fuck is tricks for
• 2:02:45
  like it Well. Yay, nay, meh, John, I'll.
• 2:02:51
  I'll go. It's kind of a meta yay.
• 2:02:53
  So just I'll be jealous and just give it a kind of mild yay.
• 2:02:58
  Meta Yay Andrew. I'm going to go for an an
• 2:03:02
  enthusiastic meh. Luke And I'm going to say yay
• 2:03:09
  because I thought it was it was fine enough, you know, like I
• 2:03:12
  didn't it didn't make me go, oh, I've never read that again.
• 2:03:16
  OK, I think this is a biggie. And I think, John, this might be
• 2:03:21
  your favorite of the collection. So let's hand on Acceptance by
• 2:03:24
  Dale Smith to you. Yeah, I absolutely love this
• 2:03:30
  one. I was, I had really high hopes
• 2:03:32
  risk because Dale Smith after Heritage, he'd come back and
• 2:03:35
  he'd written the short story in the Paradise Towers collection
• 2:03:38
  of us did the first one build Hyperion.
• 2:03:41
  And it was just this absolutely terrific horror short story
• 2:03:46
  which did get in my head properly, which is spooky.
• 2:03:49
  It gave you, he had no idea of what he wanted to do with the
• 2:03:51
  whole concept of Paradise Towers, which was something you
• 2:03:55
  you need if you go to reduce those concepts.
• 2:03:58
  And I've been reading his Paradise Taus novel as well,
• 2:04:01
  which is fantastic. So this one, yeah, I would give
• 2:04:05
  this the prize praise. I'll go.
• 2:04:08
  This is to the 8th Doctor what continuity errors is to the 7th
• 2:04:12
  Doctor. It is this Doctor's methodology
• 2:04:19
  and personality, how he operates, how he brings down the
• 2:04:23
  gum. He doesn't bring down the gum
• 2:04:25
  with violence, with guns, with shooting, with anything.
• 2:04:29
  He brings it down with kindness, with compassion, with silliness.
• 2:04:34
  You know, I've let the that chess cut the kind of chess
• 2:04:37
  player analogy in there, you know, kept very much in
• 2:04:40
  deliberate comparison to the 7th Doctor.
• 2:04:43
  And it's just, it's beautiful thing, this jailer who doesn't
• 2:04:47
  know how to handle the doctor. And that's exactly how this kind
• 2:04:51
  of doctor be that mercurial nature of his.
• 2:04:53
  This was just gorgeous. So yeah, absolutely my favorite
• 2:04:57
  of the collection and. He's upside down, isn't he?
• 2:05:00
  Throughout the entire. Field the entire story, yeah.
• 2:05:04
  Luke, how did you find on acceptance?
• 2:05:06
  Are you accepting of this story? Yeah, the doctor's hanging
• 2:05:11
  upside down on a prison cell playing chess.
• 2:05:14
  That's right up my alley. And it's very Doctor Who.
• 2:05:17
  And he, it's, it's like it's upside down.
• 2:05:21
  Can't always see the board or anything like that.
• 2:05:23
  So I, I can't do it because I can't close my eyes and picture
• 2:05:27
  like a chest born where the pieces are.
• 2:05:28
  But I, I always find that impressive when like a
• 2:05:32
  grandmaster can be blindfolded and just like beat 5 different
• 2:05:36
  people at once at chess or something like that.
• 2:05:39
  And I'm like Doctor Who can do that easily and.
• 2:05:45
  His description of him playing. Chess as well is a bit it's not
• 2:05:50
  a strategic doesn't feel as strategic as as the 7th doctor
• 2:05:54
  would might play chess. It's more let's see where the
• 2:05:57
  game goes and kind of improvise on the spot.
• 2:06:00
  John's exactly right. It's it's exactly the difference
• 2:06:03
  between 7th doctor and the 8th doctor.
• 2:06:07
  But just not having not having the other doctor there.
• 2:06:11
  There's a contrast though, but having just playing the simple
• 2:06:16
  game of of chess. So yeah, it was, it was, it was
• 2:06:18
  nice playing, playing chess, playing a chess match, not for
• 2:06:24
  himself, but to get like a nice. Just a a.
• 2:06:29
  Bit of paper so another prisoner can draw or write things or and
• 2:06:33
  things like that. It was really sweet.
• 2:06:35
  I liked it. Yeah.
• 2:06:36
  A lot, yeah. I've just read Dreams of Empire
• 2:06:40
  which is another chess themed Doctor Who story with the second
• 2:06:44
  doctor and he plays a very different game of chess again.
• 2:06:48
  I swear there's a short story in all of the doctors playing chess
• 2:06:52
  against each other. And they all play in very
• 2:06:54
  different ways. Unfortunately, I'm no good at.
• 2:06:58
  You could write that you're a chess player, aren't you?
• 2:07:01
  A bad one, but yes. You're better than me.
• 2:07:07
  I just the idea of the 8th doctor playing the chess to
• 2:07:12
  allow the inmates to tell their stories of the injustices of
• 2:07:16
  them being there. So beautiful isn't it?
• 2:07:18
  Wasn't this beautifully written? Like, just no word was wasted.
• 2:07:23
  And the bit that I just thought was so perfectly timed was where
• 2:07:28
  he's talking about all the doors opening in the prison when
• 2:07:31
  they're being. And then the line after that is.
• 2:07:34
  And then somewhere deep inside Harry, another door opens, which
• 2:07:38
  I was just like, that's just the nub of this story.
• 2:07:41
  Beautifully. Yeah.
• 2:07:42
  This was a highlight for me as well.
• 2:07:45
  Andrew. Was it?
• 2:07:46
  Is it going? To be a four for four.
• 2:07:48
  Yes, yeah, I absolutely love this one.
• 2:07:52
  Yeah, it's one of the best in this collection.
• 2:07:55
  And it's just this really it, it's just like the perfect
• 2:07:59
  length of a, of a short story. It does everything that it needs
• 2:08:03
  to do like so economically. And it's kind of, it reminded me
• 2:08:09
  also of Model train set, which I think we also mentioned earlier,
• 2:08:13
  just that sort of like examination of an aspect of the
• 2:08:16
  Doctor's character done in a in short form and just done really
• 2:08:21
  effectively. And that this is it's sort of a
• 2:08:25
  story about resistance and how the Doctor fosters resistance.
• 2:08:28
  And it's just like a really hopeful story, which, you know,
• 2:08:31
  like there's just a lot of shit going on in the world right now.
• 2:08:35
  And it was just, it was just a really lovely Doctor Who story
• 2:08:40
  about hope really. And I think I always really
• 2:08:45
  enjoyed Heritage and it's just nice to get it.
• 2:08:49
  It feels like we were robbed of an EDA by Dale Smith because he
• 2:08:52
  never, never did 1. So, yeah, it's nice to have his
• 2:08:56
  take on the 8th Doctor because it feels like he would have been
• 2:08:59
  so good at writing for that range and just makes me want to,
• 2:09:03
  yeah, like, read more of his work.
• 2:09:05
  Like, I didn't know that he'd done this Paradise Tower stuff.
• 2:09:07
  So I think I'm going to have a look at that.
• 2:09:08
  No one talks about the many hands either, do they?
• 2:09:11
  And that is a very serious adventure.
• 2:09:13
  Oh. I didn't realise he'd done that
• 2:09:15
  one. Yeah, yeah, maybe.
• 2:09:16
  I want to read that now. But yeah, like, and again, it's
• 2:09:22
  like Big Finish. There are these people out there
• 2:09:26
  who were so good at writing Doctor Who stories and doing it
• 2:09:29
  in an in just like a really skilled way and have interesting
• 2:09:33
  things to say, like snap them up, like get them in that audio
• 2:09:38
  novels series, Like do something interesting, please.
• 2:09:42
  Do something interesting. Big Finish.
• 2:09:47
  But like, like, like he's brought back writers with poor
• 2:09:50
  reputations and given them another shot.
• 2:09:52
  Paul Marzio, hasn't he? He's brought in writers that
• 2:09:55
  have never, ever written Doctor Who books before.
• 2:09:58
  And so let's see what they can do.
• 2:10:00
  Plus he's brought in people that just didn't write EDA's and have
• 2:10:03
  given them a chance to see. And you're right, man, with
• 2:10:06
  characterisation this good, Fucking hell, what would that
• 2:10:08
  book have looked like? Well, never mind.
• 2:10:13
  Well, on acceptance. No, not on acceptance.
• 2:10:15
  What was it called? On acceptance, Yeah.
• 2:10:19
  Oh, it's a game for me. Yay, yay.
• 2:10:27
  OK, sorry. Sorry.
• 2:10:29
  It's terrible hosting. Well, what about Middle 8 by
• 2:10:35
  Mark Griffiths? I may just issue a small apology
• 2:10:38
  to Mark Griffiths, who I was so mean about when I did the
• 2:10:42
  adventures before. A truly dreary short.
• 2:10:46
  Story. Collection that came out last
• 2:10:49
  year because I thought his his short story and that was
• 2:10:52
  terrible. But actually I thought this
• 2:10:54
  which is basically a mini adventure, right?
• 2:10:57
  A gig like a band's gig, which sort of showed that you can have
• 2:11:02
  a Doctor Who adventure anywhere, right?
• 2:11:04
  Even a pause in a song. You can have a Doctor Who story.
• 2:11:09
  I thought this was quite fun. It's like 4 pages like it's not
• 2:11:13
  long. Is it this one?
• 2:11:13
  It's very, very short. I didn't think this was this was
• 2:11:17
  bad at all. Andrew, what did you think of
• 2:11:19
  middle 8? Like it was fine.
• 2:11:23
  I felt like it didn't really go there.
• 2:11:27
  Wasn't really like the doctor turns up and sort of solves the
• 2:11:31
  plot, like, and that's all that happens.
• 2:11:33
  Like it's sort of there's like the little, I suppose the
• 2:11:35
  beginning of it is creepy, like when you've got like the
• 2:11:37
  singer's point of view and there's like weird shit
• 2:11:39
  happening to the audience from his point of view as he's
• 2:11:42
  performing. So that was quite effective.
• 2:11:44
  I felt like it just never really got going.
• 2:11:46
  It kind of wrapped up before it had really gone anywhere.
• 2:11:49
  So yeah, I felt like it had promise, but maybe just needed
• 2:11:54
  in the same way that we were talking about the monster mash
• 2:11:57
  maybe being a bit too. Was it the monster mash?
• 2:11:59
  No, the the the shivering one that that was a bit too long.
• 2:12:02
  Maybe this one was a bit longer. It would have had more of an
• 2:12:07
  impact, but. I said it was quite creepy, sort
• 2:12:10
  of in the gig. Was it as creepy as that gig?
• 2:12:11
  You know, where Joe Grant spewed up all those maggots?
• 2:12:14
  Remember that one? I haven't read that one.
• 2:12:17
  Oh, add it to the list. Fucking hell.
• 2:12:21
  Absolutely. Do you like a?
• 2:12:22
  Do you like a gig? Where the?
• 2:12:25
  Hell is Fitz in this? You don't want a music.
• 2:12:28
  Story where is he like like you even?
• 2:12:36
  Could have covered it with a line like he's like, he's over
• 2:12:39
  up there plugging in sound things or whatever for for the
• 2:12:42
  doctor quickly or just quick fits now.
• 2:12:44
  And Fitz, who was busy watching the music, you know, suddenly
• 2:12:50
  snapped to attention and plugged even Whatever.
• 2:12:53
  Yeah. It was he was noticeable.
• 2:12:57
  By his because I I think like a story in the Ed as that heavily
• 2:13:03
  involves music, you know, I'm like, in some way, shape or
• 2:13:06
  form, Mr. Cronin should should be there.
• 2:13:11
  Yeah. It.
• 2:13:12
  Was fine. It does have a line I absolutely
• 2:13:15
  love though, and it's one of the band members saying of course we
• 2:13:19
  want to live, we're not a grunge band.
• 2:13:23
  That that made me laugh. I thought it.
• 2:13:26
  Was amazing. It's great that they're just
• 2:13:28
  totally unflappable as well, isn't it?
• 2:13:30
  These these bad members? Yeah, We've seen all this sort
• 2:13:33
  of thing before. John, did you like middle 8?
• 2:13:36
  Yeah, it's quite fun. It's it's like a it's like a
• 2:13:39
  punk song. It's basically 3 minutes an
• 2:13:40
  hour. There's there's three course to
• 2:13:42
  this. Yeah, it is.
• 2:13:43
  That's it. Yeah, it was fun.
• 2:13:46
  The the idea of what the what's it the irrefutable Quists were
• 2:13:50
  doing was quite nice. I like that kind of idea.
• 2:13:52
  So that was great. Yeah.
• 2:13:54
  So, yeah, it's basically it's fun.
• 2:13:56
  It did what it needed to, and that was it.
• 2:13:58
  I don't know. There's that much more to say
• 2:14:00
  about it. Was you not seeing that boring
• 2:14:02
  fella from Doomwatch though? Every time they mentioned the
• 2:14:05
  irrefutable quest I was. Well, I wonder what on earth
• 2:14:11
  Jonathan Morris, the man who gave us Oh no wait, yay Nae or
• 2:14:15
  Mir. Sorry, Andrew.
• 2:14:18
  John. Yeah.
• 2:14:21
  Oh, Luke. Yeah.
• 2:14:25
  And I'm meta, yay, so I'll say a tentative.
• 2:14:29
  Yay. There you go.
• 2:14:31
  OK, yeah, the writer that gave us the Tomorrow Windows and
• 2:14:36
  Anachrophobia, Jonathan Morris. Andrew, do you want to take this
• 2:14:40
  one? Yeah, I think, yeah.
• 2:14:45
  From the writer that gave us Anachrophobia and The Tomorrow
• 2:14:49
  Windows, this is a bit of a disappointment.
• 2:14:53
  Like, it was, it was fine. Like it's a it's a good, solid
• 2:14:56
  Doctor Who's. I mean, I don't think that
• 2:14:57
  Jonathan Morris really writes bad Doctor Who, but I feel like
• 2:15:01
  a lot of the other stories in this collection felt like the
• 2:15:05
  writer had a burning desire to write for the 8th Doctor and to
• 2:15:08
  do another 8th Doctor story. This one just kind of feels like
• 2:15:12
  a just it could be in any short story collection.
• 2:15:15
  It could be a Big Finish Short trip.
• 2:15:17
  It could be, you know, like it could be in one of those BBC
• 2:15:21
  collections. It didn't really feel like it
• 2:15:24
  and its place among this sort of 1998 celebratory feel like it
• 2:15:29
  was. It was fine.
• 2:15:30
  Like it was. It was good.
• 2:15:31
  Well written story about the Doctor.
• 2:15:35
  Yeah. Investigating this mystery and
• 2:15:36
  sort of like having sympathy for this planet that's being
• 2:15:40
  exploited and, Yeah, making everyone live together in
• 2:15:44
  harmony and doing some that. I mean, there's some cool
• 2:15:47
  visuals in this one as well. Like there's the Doctor walking
• 2:15:50
  through fire, which is, you know, I guess probably taken
• 2:15:53
  from the cover of the burning. So that, I mean, that was always
• 2:15:55
  one of the coolest covers in the range and.
• 2:15:57
  I was seeing adventurous of Henrietta St.
• 2:16:00
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, the he just loved
• 2:16:02
  walking through fire. So yeah, it's nice that we get
• 2:16:05
  that in here again. And yeah, like really well
• 2:16:09
  written, well characterized with the guest cast as well.
• 2:16:11
  It just didn't really like move me in a way before.
• 2:16:14
  You was going to say light my fire.
• 2:16:17
  It didn't light my fire. You did say, did you have a
• 2:16:20
  burning desire? I thought it's going to stay
• 2:16:22
  with this full of yeah. Sure.
• 2:16:31
  Yeah, I I'm with Andrew on this. I didn't like the idea of those
• 2:16:34
  kind of fire aliens and how that would work.
• 2:16:38
  It's really nicely thought out. And obviously it gives Johnny a
• 2:16:41
  punch sign at the end. I'm smoking people.
• 2:16:47
  So. But yeah, it it's a it it again.
• 2:16:50
  As Anne says, Johnny doesn't write a bad story.
• 2:16:52
  He's got a really good grasp of structure.
• 2:16:55
  He knows what he's doing. I don't think again, there's a
• 2:16:57
  word wasted. It's about it's almost exactly
• 2:16:59
  the length that needs to be and enjoyed it.
• 2:17:01
  Yeah, it's it. I don't think it's particularly
• 2:17:03
  celebratory of, you know, they wouldn't let you put the candles
• 2:17:08
  on the birthday cake, this story.
• 2:17:10
  So yeah, it, it was fine. It did what it needed to have
• 2:17:14
  got off the stage. So yeah.
• 2:17:17
  Oh, maybe I'm the outlaw on this one.
• 2:17:19
  And I really like this. What I thought it was a really
• 2:17:24
  clever take on perspective by putting telling this story
• 2:17:27
  through the point of view of the fireman, then we automatically
• 2:17:31
  felt as if the fire was a threat.
• 2:17:33
  So from the first page, you're supposed to think that the fire.
• 2:17:37
  And so the twist when it came that the fire was a life form
• 2:17:40
  and it was protecting it. I just thought that twist was so
• 2:17:43
  lovely. And so Doctor Who as well, and
• 2:17:46
  the idea? That what was it?
• 2:17:48
  Some quality of this world, which means the fire, every fire
• 2:17:51
  is part of it. It thinks you've been
• 2:17:52
  imprisoning it's children. It's children.
• 2:17:55
  Putting them in cages, forcing them to burn.
• 2:17:57
  Bright but never grow, I mean. They were talking about little
• 2:18:00
  lanterns, aren't they? I just thought it was the, the
• 2:18:03
  last couple of pages of this, I thought the twist was worth
• 2:18:06
  waiting for. And yeah, And everything you
• 2:18:08
  guys have said, just well written, well characterized and
• 2:18:12
  fucking cool images, Andrew. You're right.
• 2:18:14
  Very cool. So I really, really like this
• 2:18:17
  Luke. I remember thinking like, oh,
• 2:18:20
  great, there's a John Peel, there's a Andrew Hunt and Colin
• 2:18:25
  Bragg. Oh, great.
• 2:18:27
  And then being at least kind of happily surprised by at least
• 2:18:30
  two of them. And I and I was like, yes,
• 2:18:35
  Johnny Morris has got a story in this.
• 2:18:37
  Yeah, I didn't. And I'm like is.
• 2:18:39
  That it like maybe that's me, but I I, I read.
• 2:18:43
  It and I was like, oh, listen to the imagery and stuff.
• 2:18:45
  But is is that it? Like you wrote 2 ADAS and it
• 2:18:50
  doesn't feel like this kind of I don't know.
• 2:18:54
  It Yeah, no. I.
• 2:18:56
  It feels I love Johnny. Morris.
• 2:18:59
  And this is the second. Time I've been kind of down
• 2:19:05
  slash critical on on a story that he's he's written the other
• 2:19:08
  one being psychodrome, which I also thought was had a lot of
• 2:19:16
  good things but it was just that in that case that was just
• 2:19:19
  everything in the kitchen sink was just too much stuff.
• 2:19:23
  And then I have the opposite with this.
• 2:19:25
  This is just like, oh, is that it?
• 2:19:27
  Yeah, yeah, I was good. But I'm left slightly
• 2:19:31
  disappointed by it because I was like really hyped and looking
• 2:19:34
  up, looking, looking forward to it.
• 2:19:36
  So I kind of, I was hoping for, I don't know what I wanted, but.
• 2:19:41
  Set his own bonds very high, didn't he?
• 2:19:44
  With those two books like like the Tomorrow Windows is like 15
• 2:19:48
  ideas on a page. You know where and this is just
• 2:19:51
  one idea across 15 pages. I think also like he wrote the
• 2:19:56
  companions really well in those books as well.
• 2:19:59
  So again, to do a companion free just 8th Doctor story, I think
• 2:20:04
  if he'd if because like. Maxwell Halliday's story isn't
• 2:20:10
  like a particularly revelatory, like doing the wacky things
• 2:20:14
  story or like trying to be hugely innovative.
• 2:20:17
  It's just nice to spend time with those characters, with an,
• 2:20:20
  with an author who really knows them and writes them really
• 2:20:23
  well. So I feel like maybe if, if
• 2:20:25
  that's what this story had been, we'd all be sitting here being
• 2:20:28
  like, oh, it's one of our favourites in the in the
• 2:20:29
  collection. So yeah, just more.
• 2:20:32
  More fits, more Angie, more trips.
• 2:20:35
  I mean, I don't, I don't know. I wouldn't say this is one of my
• 2:20:37
  favourites, but I just, I just thought it was very well
• 2:20:39
  written, you know, I just, I don't, you said Andrew.
• 2:20:42
  I don't think Johnny Morris has got a bad story in him, just
• 2:20:47
  less good ones. Well, let's round up this
• 2:20:52
  mammoth collection of stories. Oh, what is wrong with me
• 2:20:57
  tonight? This fucking scale.
• 2:21:01
  Yay, mate. Yeah, Andrew.
• 2:21:04
  Mare, but only because I wanted more.
• 2:21:06
  So yay from me, Luke. So mare.
• 2:21:11
  But yeah, Mare. Met a good.
• 2:21:17
  Oh my God, I don't know what the fuck this game is anymore.
• 2:21:20
  Jobs. Yeah, I tend to.
• 2:21:22
  Yeah, I. Think on this one.
• 2:21:23
  OK, Yeah, there's. Only one possible person I could
• 2:21:27
  have. Things will Change by Paul Mars
• 2:21:30
  too and that is your friend and mine.
• 2:21:33
  I said it in the interview that he is the number one Paul Miles
• 2:21:36
  Stan and I'm just the janitor of the fan club.
• 2:21:39
  Andrew. Oh, I love this so much.
• 2:21:44
  Yeah, it was just back in that world of of the 8th Doctor as
• 2:21:49
  written by Paul Mars and had so many shades of the Blue Angel to
• 2:21:55
  it, including like a a very lovely call back that I think
• 2:21:59
  we've been waiting for for like 26 years.
• 2:22:02
  What? Was that?
• 2:22:04
  The lovely bit where Panda writes He gives the Doctor a
• 2:22:07
  list of 2520 answers. Oh yeah.
• 2:22:10
  Yes. To the 20 questions that are
• 2:22:15
  posed at the end of the Blue Angel rather than it having a
• 2:22:19
  proper ending. So that was a lovely in joke.
• 2:22:21
  But yeah, the Blue Angel has has that lovely sort of Side Story
• 2:22:26
  of the Doctor, Fitz and compassion all kind of living in
• 2:22:28
  this house together. And the Doctor's mother is a
• 2:22:33
  mermaid and like, so there's all those callbacks to that stuff.
• 2:22:36
  So it feels like it's back in that sort of section of the
• 2:22:40
  Doctor's life where he and Fitz are kind of living together in
• 2:22:45
  this terrace house, but they need to be moving on and getting
• 2:22:50
  onto other things. And in crashes Iris Wild time,
• 2:22:54
  but not the Iris Wild time from the EDA's, the Iris Wild time of
• 2:22:57
  Big Finish. So it's this kind of clashing
• 2:22:59
  together of different eras, and it's all about moving on.
• 2:23:03
  So the first story in the collection was all about
• 2:23:06
  nostalgia and looking back and sort of revelling in the past.
• 2:23:10
  And this is Auntie Iris is here to kind of give us all a kick up
• 2:23:13
  the arse and say we've got to move on now guys with a big bag
• 2:23:18
  full of VH. VHS.
• 2:23:23
  Of the doctor's adventures. And yeah, there's also lovely
• 2:23:28
  callbacks to the Scarlet Empress as well.
• 2:23:31
  And sort of what what's going on for Iris at this point in her
• 2:23:34
  life and that sort of intersects with the IRA, I mean, so that
• 2:23:38
  that kind of links in with the Iris novels, the two wild time
• 2:23:42
  Beyond and that section as well. So.
• 2:23:44
  Like all of. Paul Mars's works.
• 2:23:46
  It's talking to all different parts of Doctor Who and
• 2:23:50
  different parts of Paul Mars stuff.
• 2:23:52
  And yeah, it's just lovely. And I just, yeah, being the
• 2:23:58
  nostalgia junkie I am, I just want more, want more of this,
• 2:24:02
  want to spend more time with the Doctor, Pitts and Iris.
• 2:24:06
  But yeah, we can only do that for so long and then we have to
• 2:24:09
  move on. Don't you think?
• 2:24:11
  The idea of like, writing a story about the Doctor hiding
• 2:24:17
  away in the past, that makes him happy.
• 2:24:21
  I mean, that's what we're doing, right?
• 2:24:23
  Reading this book, that's why. This book exists is because we
• 2:24:26
  love nostalgia and basically avoiding.
• 2:24:30
  Avoiding the future, like, well, we don't want him to move on
• 2:24:32
  from this. We want more of this.
• 2:24:34
  We don't want the time war and Christopher Eccleston and all
• 2:24:37
  that nonsense. But it's to come in and we we
• 2:24:40
  can't hold it back. Obviously, properly.
• 2:24:44
  Paul Miles. Very funny, very witty.
• 2:24:47
  Really sort of poignant as well, though with a real air of
• 2:24:51
  melancholy about it too. Yeah.
• 2:24:53
  I thought this was the perfect ending as well because like you
• 2:24:57
  save Paul Mars for last and that's where a lot of our love
• 2:25:00
  is right in in the Edas and you're just left thinking, Oh,
• 2:25:04
  no more, please come on, I've. Only got 2 pages left and that's
• 2:25:09
  the last Paul Mars EDA I'm ever going to read.
• 2:25:12
  But what a gift just to get this little extra.
• 2:25:15
  Yeah, just gorgeous. John, the thing about Paul is
• 2:25:24
  all his work remembers what he loved about Doctor when he first
• 2:25:28
  saw it, you know, But that sense of wonder, it's that sense of
• 2:25:32
  why we're all nostalgic for it. And the and the brilliant thing
• 2:25:38
  he does is he taps into that all the time.
• 2:25:41
  He taps into that sense and keeps it there.
• 2:25:43
  But he never gets stuck in a moment on things.
• 2:25:48
  It's always moving forward. It's relevant to now to to who
• 2:25:53
  he is now rather than going trying to write what he did when
• 2:25:57
  he was 2025 or whatever. And yeah, that's exactly what
• 2:26:01
  it's the perfect ending to the collection.
• 2:26:04
  It really is. And Andrew said I just love my
• 2:26:07
  head up when I read the 20 answers.
• 2:26:10
  It's just absolutely perfect. I was arguing with it, going not
• 2:26:14
  what? No, that's not what the
• 2:26:16
  conclusions I drew. Yeah, it's and it's so panda as
• 2:26:20
  well, isn't it? And it's, it's absolutely
• 2:26:25
  bittersweet, but it's perfect. It's we do need to move on, but
• 2:26:29
  this was a moment. This was a glorious moment and
• 2:26:35
  it will always be here for you. And it's that bittersweetness.
• 2:26:38
  It is. It may have gone, but we can
• 2:26:41
  always revisit it if we want. That's the joy of Doctor.
• 2:26:43
  It's the joy of just being able to lose yourself in these books.
• 2:26:47
  It's the absolute joy of this volume of remember it absolutely
• 2:26:52
  capturing the essence of what the Ed as were so absolutely the
• 2:26:57
  perfect ending from this book from I would argue the Ed as
• 2:27:02
  best writer. I'm not sure I disagree,
• 2:27:07
  actually. I mean, that's the point of this
• 2:27:08
  podcast, right? Prevailing in that happy time
• 2:27:12
  that we had in the past. Well, apart from, obviously, the
• 2:27:15
  four handsome of us all coming together all the time.
• 2:27:18
  That's another jolly reason to come together, Luke.
• 2:27:21
  Things will change, will they? This is my the.
• 2:27:27
  Flame war. I'm like Jolly Marsh.
• 2:27:28
  Yes. Oh, is that it?
• 2:27:32
  Well, this is the yes, this is the more I wanted.
• 2:27:34
  This is the, this is exactly what I was talking about when I
• 2:27:37
  was, you know. Talking about stupid, you know
• 2:27:40
  he put the flame war before this for a reason, yeah.
• 2:27:45
  Yeah, this is the this was what I wanted.
• 2:27:48
  Great characterization. Paul's even talking about things
• 2:27:53
  in in this short story that he. Didn't usually, maybe.
• 2:27:56
  Reference or touch in his books that often like he maybe he
• 2:28:01
  would if he had to. I mean, you you do in the book
• 2:28:04
  after adventure S you probably got to reference, make a couple
• 2:28:06
  references. Maybe it's going to be hard not
• 2:28:09
  to, but he doesn't. And I just kind of push a lot of
• 2:28:18
  that kind of stuff. Like he wanted to be a bit more
• 2:28:20
  magical than kind of time arcs and things like that, but he
• 2:28:25
  incorporates. I.
• 2:28:27
  Think he incorporates things into this story that is warts
• 2:28:31
  and all. It's not just the things he
• 2:28:32
  loves about the Ed as it's just his taste of what all the Ed as
• 2:28:38
  kind of were as a whole. Whether you whether I liked
• 2:28:42
  loved these parts or not, I thought that was I thought was
• 2:28:45
  great. Yeah, this, this.
• 2:28:50
  Also captured my kind of feeling of me not wanting these books to
• 2:28:55
  end. And I'm like, yeah, sure,
• 2:28:59
  there's ATV show coming, but we're still chugging with the
• 2:29:02
  Megane audios, aren't we? Can't we just keep chugging
• 2:29:05
  along with these two? Now we got to move on.
• 2:29:07
  We've been doing something different now.
• 2:29:09
  So yeah, it really. Captured my feeling of that as
• 2:29:13
  well. So yeah, I love this story.
• 2:29:16
  I thought it was amazing. How did you feel about the
• 2:29:18
  moment where Fitz went? You know, am I on any of those
• 2:29:20
  tapes? No, I'm afraid not.
• 2:29:24
  There's no future for you, Fitz, I'm afraid.
• 2:29:29
  Oh, OK, he said. He's sort of.
• 2:29:32
  Sad. It's a bittersweet thing, you
• 2:29:35
  know. Yeah.
• 2:29:36
  He doesn't even get name checked on on telly, but he gets name
• 2:29:39
  checked on the the see Stephen Moffat book, though he had
• 2:29:44
  written, what was it, The Day of the Doctor?
• 2:29:48
  Yes. Yeah.
• 2:29:49
  So, you know, that feels like feels about, right?
• 2:29:53
  Steve said that, didn't he, John, in the interview that he
• 2:29:57
  was. So pissed that Fitz wasn't
• 2:29:59
  mentioned in the episode and then when Moffett wrote the book
• 2:30:03
  he was like you put his name in that book.
• 2:30:07
  As he should. Well, I think I know where this
• 2:30:11
  is going, but I finally remembered the format.
• 2:30:13
  Yay, nay or may, Andrew. Yay 1000 times.
• 2:30:19
  Yay, John. Yay 1000 or one times?
• 2:30:24
  Luke. Yay 1000 percent, 1,000,000
• 2:30:29
  trillion percent. Oh well done.
• 2:30:34
  And it's a I'll do the Pirate Planet crowd.
• 2:30:41
  Well, let's summarise our thoughts on Party like it's
• 2:30:45
  1998. Overall, was this a satisfying
• 2:30:50
  collection for you, Luke? Yeah, yeah, like even the
• 2:30:57
  stories I don't like or didn't gel with as much there's I think
• 2:31:03
  I've found something to enjoy on on all of them.
• 2:31:07
  Like even Andrew Hunt gave me the are they going to make a
• 2:31:11
  Ratatouille reference? Because this is Ratatouille,
• 2:31:13
  right? Yes.
• 2:31:14
  And he's very well aware of that.
• 2:31:15
  I'm like, OK, cool. That, that that amused me.
• 2:31:17
  So there's something to enjoy from all the stories.
• 2:31:22
  There's lots of variety and stuff.
• 2:31:25
  Can we party maybe like it's 2004 as well?
• 2:31:29
  Because that, that that would that would be nice.
• 2:31:35
  Yeah. And there's things in it I know
• 2:31:38
  I also kind of need to read again because I missed the name
• 2:31:42
  Patricia and I totally even though I loved the other half by
• 2:31:46
  person Hallad, I totally did not get which female doctor was in
• 2:31:51
  the story. So that's on me and not being as
• 2:31:55
  nerdy as I think I am, but at. Least you were honest about it.
• 2:31:59
  Loudly. OK.
• 2:32:01
  Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad you also had that that
• 2:32:04
  same. Thing too.
• 2:32:05
  So I was going to jump in and go my God, Jodie.
• 2:32:08
  And there was someone mentioned John.
• 2:32:09
  I was like, oh thank God I didn't go first.
• 2:32:14
  I feel like this was for me. I finished the ADAS this year
• 2:32:18
  because I didn't want them to end.
• 2:32:20
  And now I've got a book which has a short story at the end
• 2:32:23
  that says, hey, they're still there, but it's OK to move
• 2:32:26
  forward and to kind of let it go a bit as well.
• 2:32:28
  I did. Wonder if you was just going to
• 2:32:30
  leave one unread or have you? I was tempted.
• 2:32:33
  Now I've read the whole lot now. Yeah, of course.
• 2:32:35
  Have you? We've talked about, I haven't.
• 2:32:37
  I haven't read the 8th Doctor short story in the Target
• 2:32:40
  Storybook collection at home. Oh.
• 2:32:43
  And that's tricks. She kindly gets another story.
• 2:32:46
  Yeah, that's tricks in that one. And it's another one that ties
• 2:32:50
  up the end of the 8th Doctor range to the Time War in a
• 2:32:53
  really interesting way. Andrew, are you partying like
• 2:32:57
  it's 1998? I am, I am.
• 2:33:00
  And oh God, this book just came on longer, just like the exact
• 2:33:05
  right time. And like I've just I've just had
• 2:33:08
  so much fun revisiting this era of Doctor Who with you guys.
• 2:33:14
  And then to have new old Doctor Who of exactly the right era.
• 2:33:21
  Like this is just it's crack. Like it's brilliant.
• 2:33:28
  And yeah, it's like, and Doctor Who does this thing where it
• 2:33:32
  like revisits the past and like if it's like when they start,
• 2:33:36
  when Big Finish started doing the Companion Chronicles and
• 2:33:38
  it's like, oh, we get we get these doctors now.
• 2:33:40
  This is so exciting. It felt like that, like, because
• 2:33:44
  this is a complete era that doesn't really get revisited.
• 2:33:48
  Like, we don't get new EDA stories in the same way that,
• 2:33:51
  like, new adventures get like, adaptations and like, new box
• 2:33:56
  sets of audio dramas and stuff like that.
• 2:33:59
  So yeah, it's just like, oh, thank you.
• 2:34:01
  Like this was such a gift. We get 25 minutes in circle of
• 2:34:04
  friends and see it. Yeah, with a guy who definitely
• 2:34:09
  wasn't fits. So yeah, just thank, thank you
• 2:34:16
  to to Paul and to all of the writers in this book, even the
• 2:34:19
  ones that I've slagged off. Thank you for contributing on
• 2:34:23
  it. So you know what?
• 2:34:25
  What the fuck do I know? Like.
• 2:34:27
  Especially the ones we slagged off, right?
• 2:34:29
  You know, thank you for your efforts, John.
• 2:34:33
  Oh yeah, I've got the older What's it Steps and Bewitched
• 2:34:36
  soundtrack on here. Oh, say la vee.
• 2:34:40
  Yeah, say La Vee, roller coaster, whatever.
• 2:34:42
  We'll leave a bit of blame on the weather and that's, that's
• 2:34:45
  bringing it down too much. Oh God, yeah.
• 2:34:48
  It was just a joke. It's it's lovely because it's
• 2:34:52
  writers who are clearly writing for the absolute love of the
• 2:34:58
  range and what the range was. And I know that Stu obvious he
• 2:35:04
  has long been of that opinion that the 8th Doctor range is the
• 2:35:08
  superior range. I've been talking about him for
• 2:35:10
  25 years on this on various marriages.
• 2:35:12
  Wife man he is. He is, but don't inflate his
• 2:35:16
  ego, for God's sake. He doesn't need that.
• 2:35:18
  He's he's a lovely chap. Yeah.
• 2:35:21
  And you oversee it with Paul, and Paul is absolutely right.
• 2:35:25
  First to see it isn't it isn't fanish in the worst sense of
• 2:35:31
  that word. It is not an indulgent
• 2:35:33
  collection. It is this is what the range is.
• 2:35:37
  This is what people could have done with it.
• 2:35:39
  This is what people did do with it.
• 2:35:41
  This is why you love the range and you know, here's a chance
• 2:35:45
  for visit your youth, but in a good way, but not you know, it
• 2:35:50
  is. It isn't like you know, you go
• 2:35:52
  back to it. Things were better then whatever
• 2:35:54
  because I think there's been some fabulous talk to over the
• 2:35:57
  years since, but this actually has that essence of what was
• 2:36:03
  great about the range and I just adore.
• 2:36:07
  It's not turning you into a monument.
• 2:36:09
  It is engaging with it, having fun with it.
• 2:36:13
  It is just kind of the perfect trip, even if we slagged a few
• 2:36:18
  of them off, didn't we? And we all snagged a couple of
• 2:36:21
  books off here and there in the 8 Doctors.
• 2:36:23
  It's perfect. Come on.
• 2:36:24
  It's part of the part of the joy of.
• 2:36:26
  It it would have been the 8th Doctor range if it wasn't
• 2:36:29
  flawed, right? Absolutely, and it wouldn't be.
• 2:36:33
  I mean, to me it's like a massive love letter to like my
• 2:36:38
  and I thought, I'm not even exaggerating.
• 2:36:39
  I say it's my personal favorite period of Doctor whoever, like
• 2:36:43
  of, of any medium that that's my favorite Doctor Who, the 8th
• 2:36:46
  Doctor race. So the idea that I was going to
• 2:36:48
  get this gift wrapped in in the post in 2025 was unthinkable.
• 2:36:54
  So I, we love fits, right? And there was loads of great
• 2:36:58
  fits in this and I knew we were going to get loads of great fits
• 2:37:01
  in this and we love Angie and there wasn't probably enough
• 2:37:04
  Angie, but what we did get of Angie was really great.
• 2:37:08
  The big surprise for me was Sam in this collection.
• 2:37:11
  I think some of the best Sam Jones stories ever are in this
• 2:37:14
  collection, and it's a peek into a Sam we might have had.
• 2:37:20
  And yeah, thank you for that. Because I think actually reading
• 2:37:24
  this, if you read this alongside the Sam run, it actually does
• 2:37:30
  enhance her run. So I think he's done a massive
• 2:37:33
  service to Sam Jones in this book, but just bringing in all
• 2:37:35
  those new authors as well, and those authors that everyone's
• 2:37:39
  been slacking off for 30 years and giving them another shot
• 2:37:43
  because I think we were quite kind about most of them in this.
• 2:37:47
  God, it was just great. Packed with imagination and
• 2:37:50
  laughs and great character moments.
• 2:37:53
  Thank you very much. What a joy.
• 2:37:55
  What an absolute joy. Well, fellas, I mean, after this
• 2:37:59
  sort of delights, it can only be downhill from here, right?
• 2:38:04
  Or maybe not. John, where we go next?
• 2:38:08
  Well, let's go to paradise show we are at least the closest
• 2:38:12
  thing we can find. How?
• 2:38:14
  How about we party like it's 1990?
• 2:38:17
  Five 30th anniversary of the also people.
• 2:38:20
  Oh, we're going on holiday, are we?
• 2:38:24
  Oh yes, I think we might all end up taking our clothes off at
• 2:38:27
  some point as well, which is quite exciting.
• 2:38:30
  Every time of year, anyway. Come on.
• 2:38:33
  Can you please just put your clothes on, Joe?