Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Managra by Stephen Marley (featuring Jon Arnold, Andrew Batty & Luke Sims-Jenkins)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Managra by Stephen Marley (featuring Jon Arnold, Andrew Batty & Luke Sims-Jenkins) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:01
  Beatrice besides soulfully. He had glimpsed her first as he
• 0:06
  stood on the Ponte Vecchio over the river Arno that wound
• 0:09
  through Florence's glorious cityscape.
• 0:12
  In that one look he had become her worshipper, her idolater.
• 0:17
  For a time he worshipped his goddess from afar.
• 0:21
  Then he made his reckless move, made mad by all consuming
• 0:24
  adoration. A rose gripped between his
• 0:28
  teeth. He swung in through her open
• 0:30
  window in the depths of Florentine Knight, and
• 0:34
  discovered it was the wrong window.
• 0:36
  He landed on top of Beatrice's mother, where she slept in bed.
• 0:40
  There followed a session of screens and gunshots and
• 0:43
  unseemly language, culminating in his expulsion from the villa.
• 0:47
  With the tidying ringing in his ears that the divine Beatrice
• 0:50
  had fled her home on the very eve of his importunate entrance,
• 0:55
  he set off in quest of his Queen of Heaven.
• 0:57
  Scouring the numerous dominions of Europa, he found her at last
• 1:02
  in the demimonde area West of the Wall in Franco Berlin.
• 1:06
  She had grown very fat and exceedingly common in that
• 1:09
  brothel in the demimonde. No longer the radiant idol of
• 1:13
  his youth, well of nine months earlier, she stubbornly refused
• 1:17
  to leave the House of ill repute, speaking in the foul
• 1:20
  mouthed manner of good money and liking him rough.
• 1:25
  Oftimes he beseeched the fallen lady to turn from her sorry
• 1:28
  state and take up residence with him in a small but serviceable
• 1:32
  castle in one of Bohemia's black forests.
• 1:35
  But ever she spurned him with unladylike scorn until he
• 1:38
  desisted and rode away on his mechanical horse, racked with
• 1:42
  sorrow and steeped in irredeemable gloom.
• 1:46
  A sad tale, but mine own. He sighed mournfully to the
• 1:50
  wind. Then slowly the importance of
• 1:53
  his mission dawned on him. Enough of past regrets.
• 1:56
  And Triestes, no matter how deeply lodged in his wounded
• 1:59
  heart, he had a duty to fulfill, and a gentleman always did his
• 2:04
  duty. Miles Dashing's obligation now
• 2:07
  was to Byron. Wherever he may be.
• 2:10
  The poetic Lord was involved in some kind of deal with the Pope
• 2:13
  that would advance the cause of the dominoes and diminish the
• 2:16
  flourishing power of the Inquisition.
• 2:19
  A high, noble ambition. If only I could play my part,
• 2:23
  Miles muttered, brow troubled with a frown.
• 2:26
  I hope Byron's in Venice, at least.
• 2:29
  There's a good chance that Casanova will be there.
• 2:38
  What up? Casanova flung back the sheets
• 2:41
  and blankets and rubbed his pounding head.
• 2:43
  His vision gradually focused on the tall, aristocratic figure
• 2:46
  standing by the bed. Taking in the heroic posture,
• 2:50
  the tragic aura, the flowing blonde hair, and the
• 2:53
  outrageously good looking features, he gave a low groan.
• 2:58
  Oh, it's you, Miles Dashing of Dashwood.
• 3:03
  That's your service. Hamster Book Club, The Doctor
• 3:16
  Who Novel Review Podcast with Jo Ford, John Arnold, Andrew Batty,
• 3:23
  and Luke Sims Jenkins Niagara by Stephen Marley.
• 3:46
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 3:49
  My name is Joe Ford and clearly I cannot count to three.
• 3:55
  I am here today with three fabulous friends.
• 3:58
  Now we've we've formed a foursome again.
• 4:01
  I'm here with the delightful Andrew Bassey, the delirious
• 4:07
  Luke Sims Jenkins and the I need another D word, delectable John
• 4:12
  Arnold. Hello, John.
• 4:14
  Hello. Hello.
• 4:15
  How are we all? I'm pretty good.
• 4:19
  Midland. Is that because you read
• 4:22
  Monagra? I couldn't possibly comment yet.
• 4:27
  There is a faint possibility that there will be some
• 4:30
  disagreements on this call today, and that's not just in
• 4:32
  our middle bit where we talk about Monagra because we're also
• 4:35
  covering history of Doctor Who and the world's shittiest Doctor
• 4:39
  Who book companions. I mean, you get your bang for
• 4:43
  your buck with Hamster Book Club.
• 4:45
  I am going to hand this straight over to the fabulous John Arnold
• 4:48
  now to get us going. Thank you very much.
• 4:51
  Well, Joe here came up with a cracking ice break question.
• 4:55
  And what he actually wanted to know was, do historical working
• 5:00
  historical settings work in Doctor Who novels?
• 5:04
  So as he posts a question, I'm going to go straight to Joe
• 5:07
  first. Oh fuck, I couldn't even
• 5:09
  remember what the question was. That's why I handed it to you.
• 5:12
  Does history work in Doctor Who books?
• 5:14
  Yes, I think depending on what author is right in the books.
• 5:18
  And I know that's a really obvious question, but like I
• 5:20
  think my favorite is The Witch Hunters by Steve Lyons.
• 5:24
  I think that is a superb historical book 1, which I knew
• 5:28
  sort of scant details about, but he really manages to put you
• 5:32
  there in Salem. When is it 16?
• 5:36
  Oh, 90s is it I think. The 1690s in a very sticky
• 5:40
  situation for poor Susan, who's been accused of being a witch.
• 5:45
  And another favorite of mine is History One O 1 by Max L
• 5:49
  Halladay. I think that's a really about a
• 5:51
  period of history I knew nothing about at all.
• 5:54
  I'm trying to think of a historical novel that didn't
• 5:56
  work for me because Sanctuary worked for me is quite well.
• 6:01
  That's a good historical novel by David A McKinsey.
• 6:04
  Yeah. The only problem I have with
• 6:06
  David A McKinney doing that is he has this tendency to show all
• 6:11
  his research. It's that kind of that kind of
• 6:15
  it doesn't let the author of God, Luke.
• 6:17
  You're saying Byzantium is by far a bad example of a
• 6:24
  historical novel. I like ancient Rome stuff.
• 6:27
  I like the Romans. I opened up Byzantium and I
• 6:31
  think after about 50 pages, Yeah, this, that was a big case
• 6:38
  of like, here's all the research I did for this book.
• 6:40
  Oh, I guess I got to put the doctor and everyone in it too,
• 6:44
  either. Here they are.
• 6:45
  And. I just think you have the time
• 6:48
  though. You have the time in a book to
• 6:50
  sort of show your history, and I think David A Mckinty gets
• 6:53
  better at it because by the time you get to something like The
• 6:55
  11th Tiger, I think he's got the balance right between telling an
• 6:58
  entertaining story and immersing you into that culture or
• 7:01
  historical period. But I will be honest, it isn't
• 7:06
  really the historical books that they get me excited, you know,
• 7:11
  like when I was reading the books as they were coming out,
• 7:13
  it was the sort of Arc stuff that that really fired me up.
• 7:17
  Whereas, oh, isn't a bit of history all right then.
• 7:19
  And usually And then you read it and actually it's it's really
• 7:22
  quite interesting. Camera Obscure is another good
• 7:25
  one. Lloyd Rose takes us to Crystal
• 7:27
  Palace and and that's a properly immersive experience there.
• 7:33
  So yes, I do think it does work extremely well, but it isn't my
• 7:37
  go to genre for Doctor Who books.
• 7:41
  Yeah, that's fair, Andrew. Yeah, I think you definitely
• 7:49
  with a novel get that time to like fully immerse yourself in a
• 7:53
  place. And because some sometimes
• 7:57
  Doctor Who will will pull history from like real history.
• 8:01
  And sometimes it will be more of a kind of like pulling on a, a
• 8:05
  genre or a, or a setting or a kind of fictionalised version of
• 8:09
  an era. And the books can obviously do
• 8:11
  do both. And yeah, when you're sort of
• 8:15
  you've got 250 pages to play with, you can really kind of
• 8:18
  invest in that atmosphere and those period details and give
• 8:21
  you a sense of wherever you are. So yeah, I think usually it does
• 8:25
  work really well. And even even for a book that's
• 8:28
  kind of flitting between different settings, like The
• 8:31
  Sands of Time that we did in a previous episode, even though
• 8:36
  you're kind of like going from era to era with a skilled
• 8:41
  writer, you can kind of play with that and create that
• 8:44
  atmosphere, but also kind of play on the contrast between
• 8:47
  different different eras and mix things up within the same book.
• 8:50
  So yeah, I mean, it's about time travel.
• 8:52
  Close History is going to work in a Doctor Who book.
• 8:54
  But like, show us the event, right?
• 8:55
  Do you remember our one criticism of Ruby Red was like
• 8:59
  that's amazing battles just on the horizon.
• 9:01
  Well, see you everybody, the battles coming.
• 9:03
  We don't want to see that. Are we going to get?
• 9:05
  Another bit. It's.
• 9:07
  Very bizarre. Well, what do you think then?
• 9:11
  Luke hasn't gone yet. I'll come here.
• 9:13
  Yeah. I was going to say that's Doctor
• 9:15
  Who's bloody job. Teach me something.
• 9:19
  And the good way to do that is set things into in a historical
• 9:24
  setting. So yeah, I've always liked the
• 9:26
  historicals. I don't know why I've always
• 9:30
  kind of been drawn to them. I think Sanctuary is probably
• 9:34
  still my favorite Mckinty novel. I have not got a top copy of The
• 9:38
  11th Tiger so. Something else just.
• 9:42
  To I think a lot of those just got burned, but that's all
• 9:44
  right. Andrew yes.
• 9:49
  Yeah, I was going to say that. The thing about a book as well
• 9:53
  is you're not limited to ABBC budget.
• 9:55
  So the type of history that the books can explore is often more
• 10:01
  varied, more wide-ranging in terms of era and also location
• 10:07
  in the world. So you've got things like the
• 10:08
  Left-handed Hummingbird, which is sort of delving into Aztec
• 10:12
  history in a way that is maybe a bit more detailed than you can
• 10:17
  do in a 90 minute TV drama. And yeah, I think that that's
• 10:23
  definitely one of those kind of the settings of the books.
• 10:27
  I think when you look at the New Adventures and and the the BBC
• 10:31
  books, often they were going to different places in the world
• 10:33
  and exploring maybe like unfamiliar parts of history,
• 10:36
  which you can't do sort of within a 2020 mile radius of
• 10:40
  London or Cardiff. Bunker soldiers is another one,
• 10:44
  isn't it? Bunker soldiers, big battle in
• 10:46
  it that you'd never see on the screen.
• 10:48
  I remember when you did your top bottom 10, Andrew, and one of
• 10:51
  your bottom 10s was the Roundheads.
• 10:54
  And I think the Roundheads is telling a historical Doctor Who
• 10:57
  book, but with a with a budget, right?
• 11:00
  It's telling a sort of story that you would have on the TV
• 11:02
  and why, why are you doing that? It's what Mark Gatiss does.
• 11:07
  That's true. Yes, OK, that's true.
• 11:10
  Yeah. And I mean, for me it's is the
• 11:13
  second interesting. Does it, does it justify the
• 11:16
  story being set there? You have to have a story that
• 11:20
  either fits or contrasts with it.
• 11:23
  What I think what I'm saying is, well, about you, basically what
• 11:25
  I'm saying is absolutely right. It's something the Hartmill Lira
• 11:27
  did. Because if you look at those
• 11:28
  Hartmill stories, the historical ones aren't the actual UK
• 11:33
  historical stories. They're trying to teach you
• 11:35
  about the rest of the world. You know, Marco Polo, the
• 11:39
  Aztecs, the Crusade, different areas, different parts of it.
• 11:42
  Even the Massacre who, you know, who thinks about, you know, the
• 11:45
  Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Eve, for instance.
• 11:48
  I'd never know anything about that if it wasn't for Doctor
• 11:50
  Who. It's the sort of thing, like
• 11:52
  when it came up at university, you'd be like, yeah, I know the
• 11:54
  know about the Huguenots. Yeah, I know.
• 11:57
  Yeah. You're good.
• 11:58
  Don't. You.
• 12:00
  It's cool. I'll tell you everything.
• 12:01
  You. Need to know about the Aztecs?
• 12:03
  So. So yeah, I didn't know about the
• 12:06
  wheel, Sir. Yeah, And you know, something
• 12:11
  dramatically Joe bought at the ideal is history, one O one,
• 12:13
  that idea of messing with history.
• 12:15
  And it's absolutely integrated into that Spanish civil wars,
• 12:18
  acting, the art of the time, the culture of the time, what's
• 12:22
  going on. And it's beautifully done.
• 12:24
  But fusing that with the science fiction idea of the it's like
• 12:27
  the cataloguer, isn't it the sort of splintered.
• 12:30
  And so all these different versions of history are sort of
• 12:32
  very it's really, really interesting.
• 12:35
  I, I do, I, I mean, I think I do prefer a pseudo historical on
• 12:39
  TV, so as a historical setting with some science fiction in it.
• 12:44
  But actually now that with the new series, I just wish they'd
• 12:46
  do a straight historical just one time just to prove they
• 12:49
  could do it. I want to do a Donald Cotton
• 12:51
  style historical funny ones. It just goes to shit at the end.
• 12:56
  It's gorgeous. Because something like the
• 12:58
  plotters, I mean, that's a very funny comedy historical romp.
• 13:03
  It's it's Doctor Who's a genre again.
• 13:05
  It's it's the the last few historicals they did the
• 13:07
  Smugglers and the Highlanders. They they're running on
• 13:10
  historical novels rather than actual history.
• 13:12
  And you can really do that well, even better arguably on in a
• 13:16
  book than you can on the TV screen.
• 13:18
  I. Mean I haven't done.
• 13:19
  Something that something that kind of annoys me about the
• 13:24
  about the celebrity historicals and the and the pseudo
• 13:27
  historicals is like it's always fucking aliens that have done
• 13:30
  like it's always aliens. And it like there's it's often
• 13:35
  like. Historical figures have met
• 13:36
  aliens. How's that possible?
• 13:37
  Yeah, and their achievements are connected to aliens and somewhat
• 13:40
  like Mary Shelley isn't just like an incredible author who
• 13:43
  like created the sci-fi genre. No, she met a cyber man and she
• 13:47
  based it on that. So it sometimes they sort of
• 13:49
  like take away from human achievement, I think because
• 13:52
  it's always about some sort of like alien influence or aliens
• 13:56
  did it or we humans didn't create that that amazing like
• 14:01
  work of art or building. It was it was aliens.
• 14:04
  So yeah, sometimes. Sometimes, yeah, I do hanker for
• 14:08
  that. Pure historical.
• 14:09
  You can take it even further than that, you know, because if
• 14:11
  you take the entire body of comic strips, novels, TV and
• 14:15
  audios, yeah, the Doctor has literally done every historical
• 14:19
  event ever. We have achieved nothing as the
• 14:22
  human race whatsoever because the Doctor's been there and
• 14:25
  there's been aliens there all the time.
• 14:26
  They're pushing us along. It's not just history, it goes
• 14:28
  right up into our future all the way to the end.
• 14:31
  No. Didn't the Council of Eight seed
• 14:33
  the beginning of the universe with a load of crystals?
• 14:35
  I mean, we didn't even create our own universe.
• 14:38
  No, but then again, you know what the Demons, their Fender
• 14:42
  had us, you know. The Jagger off.
• 14:45
  Jagger off along a bit, didn't they?
• 14:47
  Yeah. Suddenly it feels all worthless,
• 14:50
  doesn't it? You got the Jagger off doing
• 14:53
  deals with the sirens to decide like what to do about the humans
• 14:56
  and things as well. That wasn't nice little nugget
• 14:59
  in the centre of time. But yeah, I.
• 15:00
  Think the only you know thing of worth that has been achieved by
• 15:03
  the entire human race is this book club.
• 15:09
  Although there'll be A twist at the end of this episode.
• 15:11
  There's some bloody alien. One of us is an alien.
• 15:18
  Well, I mean, yes, I'm going to have Luke's pointing at.
• 15:22
  Himself. I mean, me.
• 15:23
  Me is in like I'm the alien, but never mind.
• 15:25
  I was. I wasn't trying to be rude.
• 15:27
  Mr. Joe, How dare you? We knew that the second you
• 15:30
  started talking about wrestling, we knew you was the alien.
• 15:36
  Smoothly talk about history. The thing about history for me
• 15:38
  as well, it's exploring the world and I think Liv might be
• 15:42
  able to introduce it to a book which is really good about
• 15:45
  exploring historical worlds. That was seamless.
• 15:47
  Thank you, John, that. Was yes, so we're going to talk
• 15:52
  about a book that on I wanted to talk to to you guys about
• 15:57
  fucking a year ago and because because I didn't get to talk
• 16:01
  about it, we did the sands of time instead.
• 16:03
  And I appreciate that Mister John Arnold, because that book
• 16:07
  was awesome and I like talking about Davidson for an hour and a
• 16:11
  half. It's never trouble for me.
• 16:13
  But the book we're supposed to I originally recommended was
• 16:16
  Managra and I kept bugging Joe Where's managra?
• 16:20
  Where's Managra? I want Managra.
• 16:23
  Someone else wanted to do it. Oh wait, he's joined Albert club
• 16:26
  Hurrah. That's right.
• 16:28
  I don't know if you guys have the same version all right,
• 16:30
  Maybe it's just because of how I read books, but mine's got one
• 16:33
  of those glue spines that you just like.
• 16:35
  And back a bit, yeah. You can, yeah.
• 16:38
  Yeah mine mine hasn't split but I did have to crack the spine
• 16:41
  when I read this and I felt. Felt.
• 16:44
  Disgusting. Oh wow, I'm mortified you guys
• 16:47
  as how I read books. So we won't go into that.
• 16:49
  But yes, we we have Redmanagra by Mr. Stephen Marley.
• 16:53
  It's a book I've read a few Times Now.
• 16:55
  I've always really, really enjoyed it.
• 16:58
  Where is this set off? The Planet of Evil, I think in
• 17:02
  between there and Pyramids of Mars.
• 17:05
  So, you know, you go out, you finish the uninspired wank that
• 17:10
  is Planet of Evil, even though I kind of like it.
• 17:12
  And then you've got this, which is a different kind of wank, I
• 17:16
  guess. Very inspired 1.
• 17:18
  So I don't know. How do we start this?
• 17:20
  Mr. Joe, let's say, let's go to you.
• 17:22
  What did you think of this book? Is everyone going to just throw
• 17:26
  it to me? Yeah, you put us on the spot all
• 17:29
  the time, so now you've given us control when it's like.
• 17:31
  Right, it's your turn. I was just wondering why
• 17:34
  Andrew's copy looked like it had score marks from a knife in it.
• 17:37
  You know I'm joking. I'm joking.
• 17:40
  It's because Luke's been at it. He's the only one drinking wine
• 17:45
  while he's got to talk about it though I've noticed I.
• 17:49
  Do it properly. I feel like it sets the tone.
• 17:51
  It does. It's a wine bird, yes.
• 17:54
  Yeah. So I'm with I who?
• 17:56
  It's a fag book because, jeez, I wanted to smoke 20 after reading
• 17:59
  this book. Do you know, I've got to be
• 18:02
  honest, Yeah. I've said this in my top ten
• 18:04
  with Stephen B the other day. I read as a palette Spencer,
• 18:09
  after this book, Christopher Beulis's Palace of the Red Sun,
• 18:14
  just because this was so dense and so full of substance.
• 18:17
  I just needed like, the sorbet after the main course.
• 18:20
  You know, I did really enjoy this.
• 18:24
  It took me a little while to get into it because those opening
• 18:28
  chapters throw a lot at you, a lot of characters, a lot of
• 18:33
  settings, a lot of scenarios. The Doctor and Sarah take a
• 18:36
  while to arrive. So you're just with all these
• 18:38
  characters you don't really know, and there isn't much
• 18:41
  explanation for the 1st 100 pages.
• 18:44
  What the hell is going on? So you're asked to be patient
• 18:48
  with the book. And I thought when the
• 18:51
  explanations came, they were very satisfying.
• 18:54
  And I really loved how funny the book was.
• 18:58
  It had a a sharp wit running through it all the way.
• 19:02
  And yeah, and I was very satisfied by the ending as well.
• 19:07
  I've got a couple of issues, but I will say overall I thought
• 19:10
  this was a very impressive debut novel and I can't wait to see
• 19:15
  what Stephen Marley comes up with next.
• 19:18
  Oh, wait. Oh.
• 19:18
  No, that's that's that's the sad thing about it, isn't it?
• 19:22
  Oh, I mean, except for Mr. Andrew, Who?
• 19:26
  Let's go to you, Andrew. What?
• 19:27
  What? And I was actually, I was
• 19:31
  really, really looking forward to reading this book.
• 19:34
  And I have kind of, I was so like captivated by this book
• 19:39
  when I was a kid, but could never really get into it because
• 19:42
  it was it always just that opening is really dense and
• 19:47
  definitely not something that you sort of average 10 year old
• 19:49
  can can get into. And yeah, just like the cover of
• 19:53
  this book I loved as a kid, like that image of the guy pulling
• 19:58
  the masks off his off of his face.
• 20:01
  You've got the doctor and Sarah. It's got this orange hue to it.
• 20:04
  It was just like. So 4th doctor and Sarah season
• 20:08
  13 like that's that's my favorite classic who like that's
• 20:12
  my era. And so this one always like
• 20:15
  stood out to me and it's always one that I think I've tried to
• 20:18
  read a few times and just haven't really gotten into.
• 20:20
  So I was like, yes, we're doing it for book club.
• 20:22
  This is finally it. I'm finally going to read it to
• 20:25
  cover to cover. I'm going to love it.
• 20:26
  Everyone said how great it is and I didn't, I didn't
• 20:32
  absolutely test it. I don't want like, I don't want
• 20:34
  to bury it. Like there was lots in it that
• 20:37
  was good, but it was just, it was just too much for me.
• 20:41
  Like there are too many ideas, there's too many characters, too
• 20:45
  much stuff going on. You never kind of focus on one
• 20:48
  element of plot for long enough to get into it.
• 20:53
  The opening few chapters, the language is so like fruity and
• 20:58
  it is so dense and like the little section where the TARDIS
• 21:02
  arrived, I was like fucking hell, have I got to read 300
• 21:07
  plus pages of this prose? Yes, with the lightning fizzled
• 21:13
  out and the luminosity dimmed as a blue object intruded itself
• 21:17
  into the candlelit expanse with a noise like an asthmatic Tank
• 21:21
  Engine affiliated afflicted by grating gears.
• 21:24
  It's like Jesus. So you've got that.
• 21:28
  And then you've got all the dense stuff of like the Vatican
• 21:33
  Cardinals vying for superiority. And I was, I don't care.
• 21:37
  I don't care about the Vatican. I don't care about Catholicism.
• 21:41
  I'm getting nothing out of this. Then we kind of got into the the
• 21:46
  sort of the first half of the book where there's a lot of
• 21:50
  incident. It's quite exciting.
• 21:52
  Doctor and Sarah trying to escape the Vatican.
• 21:53
  And I was like, yeah, I'm getting into this.
• 21:54
  Like we're getting the characters in the plots going
• 21:57
  somewhere, but then it just went on and it went on and it went on
• 22:04
  and you've got Casanova, you've got Byron, you've got Mary shit.
• 22:08
  Like there's just so many people, so many plots,
• 22:11
  antichrists. And then it all kind of wraps up
• 22:15
  by being in linked to Gallifrey in Law, which most people always
• 22:21
  hate. So I don't understand why you
• 22:22
  guys are like, oh, I love the ending.
• 22:25
  Like it's all like dense Gallifrey in Law that normally
• 22:27
  people are like, oh, I hate when the new adventures do that.
• 22:31
  So yeah. And we'll get into the
• 22:33
  characters later because I found the Doctor and Sarah really out
• 22:37
  of character in this book. And yeah, it just didn't didn't
• 22:41
  do it for me. And I feel, I feel like I've
• 22:47
  failed the book because I was so looking forward to it.
• 22:51
  And that's. How I felt when we did goth
• 22:53
  opera, you know? Yeah, I wanted to have a love in
• 22:56
  and talk about how how great this book was, but it didn't do
• 22:59
  it for me. You're all right with weird
• 23:01
  shit. You'll get chapters to start off
• 23:03
  with, like the carriages and wagons of the Rite of Passage
• 23:06
  swept down from the Phantom. But phantasmagoria of the
• 23:09
  passing strange and into the realm of the ordinary.
• 23:13
  That's chapter 20 and you're just like, and by then I'm like,
• 23:16
  Oh yeah, cool. But you know, you get chapters
• 23:18
  that start like that at like 3 or 4 and you're like, what the
• 23:20
  fuck is it? Well, I could have been it's
• 23:22
  come chapter 20, I was so like used.
• 23:26
  I had I had adjusted to the Florida prostyle and I was just
• 23:30
  flying for it. But the you're right, Andrew,
• 23:32
  those first few chapters I was like, where the hell is
• 23:34
  Martheosaurus? I don't understand what arthy
• 23:36
  sentences mean. It it does calm down after the
• 23:39
  first two few chapters. He definitely like front loads
• 23:42
  it with like his his creative writing thesaurus.
• 23:48
  But then, yeah, the the prose does come become more readable
• 23:51
  as it goes on with a few sort of embellishments.
• 23:53
  But it's a it's a bold start to yeah.
• 24:00
  Literary career, yeah. But then I would argue it's
• 24:05
  thematically, yeah, absolutely spot on.
• 24:08
  Because this is about a world designed by an absolutely shit
• 24:11
  writer. Yeah.
• 24:15
  Absolutely. What about you, John?
• 24:17
  I first read this, I think it was to start my second year
• 24:20
  university, so you know, 21 pretentious.
• 24:23
  And my first year had been all Byron, all Shelley, both of
• 24:28
  them, all the Romantic poets. So this, I knew nothing about it
• 24:33
  going in, I don't think. I think I bought it before the
• 24:36
  reviews came out in DWM, in DWB. So I didn't know what to expect
• 24:41
  from it. Actually.
• 24:42
  The one question I've got for everyone, when did you realise
• 24:45
  what the title was? Because I didn't twig it until I
• 24:51
  was halfway through the book and I went, oh God, of course.
• 24:53
  I figured it out before they told me in the book, and I was
• 24:56
  very happy about that. But I just thought I was
• 24:58
  spectacularly clever. Then I then when I said to you
• 25:00
  or you were like, yeah, it's all a bit obvious.
• 25:02
  I was like, oh, yeah, sorry, I'll go away.
• 25:05
  I. I was an avid reader of I Who
• 25:09
  and the Doctor Who Reference Guide when I was a kid, so I
• 25:11
  think I'd already committed that to memory and it was not a
• 25:14
  surprise to me. I think right about the time
• 25:17
  we're vampire Byron's, you know, trying to smack some sense into
• 25:26
  Miles dashing by going like slime slime.
• 25:30
  What can you? Just get it.
• 25:33
  Like I feel like I feel like that version of Byron wanted to
• 25:36
  shake Miles dashing like it was a baby and just go.
• 25:41
  But then it did come to a bit, you know, because that's what I
• 25:43
  got a lot with anagrams in this book.
• 25:45
  And as soon as Spirano and Persona and whatever the other
• 25:50
  person, I was going, well, that's clearly the same person.
• 25:54
  I'm looking out for anagrams now.
• 25:56
  And I thought, well, there's no point where they're going to
• 25:58
  have to spell it out to me because they've, they've gone on
• 26:00
  about anagrams quite a bit. And there was still a scene
• 26:02
  where someone went, he must be the evil Spirano.
• 26:07
  Yeah, OK. But yeah, this book just, it
• 26:11
  came out at absolutely the perfect time because I devoured
• 26:16
  it back then because I was reading all these old English
• 26:18
  books. So, you know, this, you know,
• 26:21
  I'm talking late 17, late 18th, early 19th century.
• 26:25
  So it didn't feel too dense. But I just, you know, I just
• 26:29
  absorbed that richness of the prose.
• 26:31
  It I was just, oh, you could bathe in the prose, you know,
• 26:34
  like, like they bathe in blood in the book.
• 26:39
  It was just. There's lots of things you
• 26:41
  convey then. They're not all right.
• 26:44
  You can bathe in piss as well, can't you?
• 26:47
  And we do. And you do on Page 3.
• 26:52
  How else would you want to start Doctor Who novel?
• 26:56
  And I, I just love the world of the book that the book created
• 27:00
  this cut, this real feature epic, that Europe as a theme
• 27:05
  park, as they say in the novel, It's just good.
• 27:07
  It's and it mixes literature with history and it admits that,
• 27:11
  you know, the creator of the world doesn't give a shit about
• 27:15
  any sort of accuracy. He's just there to have a bit of
• 27:17
  fun. What's in the box?
• 27:21
  Shall I open a box? What's in the box?
• 27:23
  It's the best play ever. Glorious.
• 27:27
  I would have read this maybe a year or two, maybe after it came
• 27:31
  out, I don't know. So it must have been like
• 27:36
  teenage or something like that. What I knew then was that I
• 27:41
  really liked it, but I didn't get a lot of the literary
• 27:45
  references and historical references and things like that.
• 27:48
  So when I had my mad read of it because of you, John Arnold, how
• 27:52
  dare you know why? That was my second time reading
• 27:56
  it, and I got to, well, it's like when you don't get a
• 28:00
  Simpsons gag when you're watching it as a kid.
• 28:02
  And now you suddenly you've lived 20 years and you see that
• 28:05
  same episode. You're like, oh, OK, they're
• 28:08
  doing everything from Citizen Kane in this episode, or that's
• 28:11
  a Hitchcock reference or something like that.
• 28:14
  So, but I'm only halfway there. Like, I reckon I still don't get
• 28:18
  a lot of the references and things that are in this book.
• 28:20
  And I'm pretty sure that's going to be like that for the rest of
• 28:24
  my life. There's going to be things I
• 28:26
  understand things I don't. I also feel like for me,
• 28:31
  gentleman has ADHD. This is this is a kitchen sink
• 28:37
  book for me. And I kind of love just like the
• 28:39
  energy of it. So like if someone asked me what
• 28:42
  I wanted in a who story, he'd probably respond with like, you
• 28:46
  know, so let me get this straight.
• 28:47
  You want a Doctor Who story that teaches you something like in a
• 28:50
  historical but set a crazy futuristic world.
• 28:53
  You want it to be funny and scary.
• 28:55
  You want it to feel like a 90s ministic adventure but also like
• 28:59
  a cave straight out of season 13.
• 29:01
  You want the story to have its head up its own ass, also not
• 29:04
  taking yourself too seriously. And you want some awesome world
• 29:07
  building and great characters, twists and turns that makes
• 29:09
  sense and an awesome villain and can't be baddie.
• 29:12
  Yes, I want all of those things and I want.
• 29:15
  It all amazing in that book. Oh, that's what you're talking
• 29:17
  about, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
• 29:19
  So. It's it's got.
• 29:22
  Everything I can't get for me, I can't get bored reading this
• 29:27
  because it's not staying in one spot for too long it's moving
• 29:30
  around it's juggling lots of different things.
• 29:32
  There's lots for me to keep track of kind of this is like
• 29:36
  the opposite of this is what I want to first book.
• 29:39
  This is this is the kitchen seem like let's see what stakes let's
• 29:42
  go for it. Let's just.
• 29:43
  Fucking go, Let's go. And the previous book we did on
• 29:47
  the book club is the opposite of this book, the complete
• 29:50
  opposite. We never get going.
• 29:53
  Where I don't think it took any chances whatsoever.
• 29:56
  Whereas I think you don't know whether you liked it or not.
• 30:01
  Steve Marley, I think he goes for it.
• 30:03
  I think he really goes for it. I do think Andrew is right
• 30:06
  though. There are far too many
• 30:08
  characters in this book. And in the second-half, the only
• 30:12
  way the plot can possibly cohere in the climax is just to have a
• 30:16
  whole group of goodies and a whole group of baddies.
• 30:20
  And they're sort of a collective group because you cannot follow
• 30:24
  all those, all those like, you know, I was, I had a bit of a
• 30:27
  headache reading certain section, like, who's that?
• 30:29
  What are they doing? What's their plot?
• 30:31
  I was going back to my notes half the time I was on Google
• 30:34
  going, is Richard a real person? Oh, good God, he was in a big
• 30:37
  finish. Oh, how excited, you know, And
• 30:40
  so I was trying to keep so much in my head.
• 30:42
  That's why I read that Beulus afterwards, because you don't
• 30:45
  need a brain to read those, you know, switch your brain off and
• 30:47
  do it. And I think the conclusion I
• 30:52
  came to was that Stephen Marley was really trying to impress.
• 30:56
  And I think if he did a second book, it would be as
• 31:00
  intelligent, as funny as this. But I think he would dial back
• 31:04
  the amount of people in IT and the amount of incident I.
• 31:09
  Don't know about that because I have read another Stephen Marley
• 31:12
  book, which is one one of his Judge Dreds, Dredd Dominion, I
• 31:15
  think, which is Judge Dredd with an alternative university.
• 31:20
  And I think it's got if there's a mild thought of nigra, you
• 31:23
  know, if you can say it's feature, not a bug or the other
• 31:25
  way around. It's that he is more most
• 31:28
  interested in exploring this world he's created, not
• 31:32
  necessarily the characters, not necessarily the story, but he
• 31:35
  wants to show you this whole world.
• 31:38
  And it's you know, it's genuinely, I think as Luke said,
• 31:42
  it can it's so good in season 13 because it's actually going for
• 31:47
  a genuine Gothic feel from the, you know, from the original
• 31:50
  Gothic right back to Shelley, right back to Byron, right back
• 31:53
  to Mary Shelley. So he's he's come up with
• 31:57
  something. There's a perfect literary fit
• 32:01
  in that season. But I think the same problem is
• 32:04
  here as in like many series 12 Chris Chibner episode, Yeah,
• 32:09
  where you bring it, you've got the regulars, and then you bring
• 32:12
  in a whole gang of characters. And as a result, the 4th Doctor
• 32:16
  and Sarah have to disappear for huge chunks of this book
• 32:20
  because, and we sort of come back to them every now and
• 32:22
  again. The Doctor probably more than
• 32:25
  Sarah. Sort of halfway through the
• 32:26
  book, Sarah vanishes completely. She's hypnotized, which is very
• 32:30
  in theme with the Hinch Cliff era.
• 32:31
  You know, Sarah being hypnotized, do terrible things
• 32:34
  with sharp objects. But I was like, OK, so then
• 32:38
  whose story am I following? And I realized sort of halfway
• 32:41
  through, I'm following 25 stories.
• 32:45
  Yeah, I think quite a few of the characters, they just didn't
• 32:49
  find for them to be mentioned. I think we didn't necessarily
• 32:52
  need to see them and and have the whole sections devoted to
• 32:56
  them. Like, I don't think we needed
• 32:57
  Casanova. I don't think we needed the
• 32:59
  whole Faust and Crowley plots. We probably didn't need the
• 33:04
  multiple Byrons. Like if we just kept it tighter
• 33:08
  and kind of referenced these other characters, like they
• 33:10
  referenced this sort of Three Musketeers.
• 33:13
  Character The Poldark. And the whole cast of Poldark, I
• 33:17
  felt feel like if he just reined it in a bit and focused on those
• 33:21
  core characters and then we could have had more time with
• 33:26
  the characters who did really sing, like Miles dashing.
• 33:29
  Like I did really enjoy his bits.
• 33:30
  I thought they were the best bits of the book.
• 33:33
  Lots of fun, very funny. So he's a vampire hunter who is
• 33:39
  actually natural born into this universe.
• 33:42
  He's not a fictional character or historical character who's
• 33:44
  been created. Well then, can I say Andrew?
• 33:46
  I did embarrassingly Google Miles Dashing.
• 33:50
  Is he a real person? And then all it led me to was
• 33:54
  Tardis Wiki. We were a Doctor Who.
• 33:56
  Character. Yeah.
• 33:59
  So what is he? He's this sort of like an
• 34:02
  innocent aristocrat who was born into this debauched family but
• 34:07
  can't see that they're wicked in reality.
• 34:10
  And he's going around the world trying to slay vampires and be a
• 34:15
  jolly good dashing knight, saving, saving good people.
• 34:21
  And in the in the process of pursuing that, he takes on a
• 34:26
  takes on a henchman, Squadron Esquire, who was also a good
• 34:32
  character. So yeah, I really liked their
• 34:35
  their scenes. And then it kind of felt like
• 34:39
  once they met up with the other characters, they sort of took a
• 34:41
  back seat a little bit because it became this sort of huge cast
• 34:47
  of characters. And they, yeah, they're all
• 34:49
  vying for attention also with the Doctor Who regulars.
• 34:51
  So yeah, it it was a little bit disappointing on that front.
• 34:55
  But you know, like my my criticism, there was there was
• 34:58
  too many characters. I don't think one of them was
• 35:00
  badly written and there wasn't 1 character that I wasn't invested
• 35:04
  in and I didn't I think Marley writes his characters with a ton
• 35:07
  of spunk right They. As long as they're not women.
• 35:10
  Well, well, that's very Hinchcliff though, isn't it?
• 35:13
  Let's be honest, that's very season 13.
• 35:16
  There's a lot that's very season 13.
• 35:18
  I do think this would slip into with a few changes or maybe not
• 35:23
  bathving in blood and things like that, but or maybe not
• 35:26
  Robert Holmes. But heaps from season 13 in
• 35:30
  this, yeah. Well, it's the sort of the
• 35:33
  mixture of literary references, movie references and all of
• 35:38
  that, all done in a very Gothic style.
• 35:40
  Yeah, I just think it felt very authentic.
• 35:42
  And I think the other thing to see is the characters are all
• 35:46
  big. They're almost grotesque.
• 35:49
  And I think this is something you said, Joe, is that where the
• 35:51
  Doctor and Sarah get lost in it? It's because the cat.
• 35:54
  It's because all the characters so vivid, you're always so
• 35:58
  everything's always turned up to 11 here.
• 36:01
  I think, I think that's another reason why it didn't quite work
• 36:04
  for me. It's that it's a bit like ghost
• 36:06
  light on TV for me. It's that when your cat, when
• 36:09
  your guest cart is pitched to like sort of just such
• 36:13
  heightened levels and everyone is giving this bizarre
• 36:17
  performance, I feel like you just can't really latch onto
• 36:20
  them as people. So, and given that the Doctor
• 36:23
  and Sarah aren't really in the book that much, like there
• 36:26
  weren't, they were all these over the tops of wacky
• 36:30
  eccentrics and I just couldn't really latch onto them as real
• 36:33
  people. And and half of them weren't
• 36:35
  real people. So I guess that's kind of the
• 36:36
  point, but. Ghost likes Ghost likes a really
• 36:40
  good comparison because I think that these characters are
• 36:43
  written with the same sort of intelligence and wit as the
• 36:47
  characters are. I love Ghost Light, but I can
• 36:49
  imagine, yeah, if you didn't like that tone, this would be
• 36:52
  wearying indeed. But I, I, I realized I was
• 36:54
  reading this in short chunks, even though I read it quite
• 36:57
  quickly. I was sort of putting it down
• 36:59
  and picking it up quite a lot, and it was a lot more digestible
• 37:03
  that way. The one time I sort of read 50
• 37:05
  pages, I was like, oh Jesus, you know, like, so yeah, it's like,
• 37:10
  like little short stories I was reading rather than like, you
• 37:13
  know, a whole book. But you've got this season 13
• 37:18
  thing, maybe I'm reaching some of these, I don't care.
• 37:20
  But you've got like, you've got mythical monsters like you do in
• 37:23
  Zygons. You know, there's a lot more
• 37:25
  mythical monsters in this one. And the other one's just like
• 37:27
  the Loch Ness Monster. That's OK.
• 37:30
  You've got like a desperate sad man becoming possessed, like a
• 37:34
  implanted of evil. You've got traps and puzzles and
• 37:37
  then ancient evil from the dawn of time or something like that,
• 37:39
  and Pyramids of Mars. There's things being meet remade
• 37:43
  in grotesque ways and a Gallifrey in horror like in
• 37:47
  Morbius, and there's trees in Seeds of Doom and Managra.
• 37:55
  I didn't have one for Seeds of Doom, so I was like, I know I'm
• 37:57
  reaching for this, but I'm like, there's.
• 38:00
  A plant in there somewhere, isn't there?
• 38:02
  Yeah. There's living trees.
• 38:03
  Living plants? Yes.
• 38:06
  Yes. Unusual.
• 38:07
  Of my back. Tick, tick, tick.
• 38:10
  Yeah, and Tom Baker walking around being ominous and Moody
• 38:14
  all the way. Yeah, I because this book
• 38:18
  alludes to all right, so I do this every time.
• 38:22
  But there's a power of three episode where they interview
• 38:24
  Stephen Marley and he was saying if he was to have written
• 38:30
  another Doctor Who book, he would have done the prequel to
• 38:33
  this, which is the Countess Bathory story.
• 38:37
  That's so I knew who a lot of these historical figures were
• 38:40
  going into this book, but the one I didn't really know was
• 38:44
  Lady Dracula or any of that kind of stuff.
• 38:46
  So that was new to me. So he he wanted to write, write
• 38:51
  that next. I can't remember what what point
• 38:54
  was, but Oh yeah, he was he's on the power of three.
• 38:59
  Just just talking about he was asked if he wanted to write 1.
• 39:03
  He just kind of kitchen sinked and just went absolutely bananas
• 39:08
  with it. So, So yeah, no man, I did lose
• 39:15
  what I was going to say. That's a very professional
• 39:17
  podcast. Wow, I'm just going to say like
• 39:19
  I I got a real sort of land of fiction vibe from the world
• 39:25
  building in this because you're in a situation where it's sort
• 39:27
  of any historical figure can appear.
• 39:31
  I just, after a while, I just went with the sort of flow of
• 39:35
  insane creativity and this sort of random improvisational nature
• 39:40
  of the book because I just felt as if he was writing this and
• 39:43
  went, oh, wouldn't it be great if or wouldn't it be great if,
• 39:45
  like in the mind robber, you know, reducer the mind at all,
• 39:49
  you know, And after a while I stopped being bothered.
• 39:52
  I do find myself researching some of these people and what
• 39:58
  they did back in history. And he does apply them to the
• 40:02
  plot. In a way that they behaved in
• 40:05
  real life. So there's there's a lot of fact
• 40:09
  in here as well with the fiction.
• 40:14
  Yeah, there's also really cool little creations as well to kind
• 40:18
  of go in with that you've got like the the these Draco things
• 40:22
  so they can all ride on these sweet looking renaissance
• 40:26
  looking dragon Flyers, all sorts of technology like that that
• 40:29
  kind of matches up with it. And they all know how to use it
• 40:32
  and stuff, which is weird, but I really, I really like that.
• 40:35
  Like I knew some of the church people.
• 40:39
  I didn't know all all of them when I first read this.
• 40:41
  I was like, I knew who told Camara was funnily enough,
• 40:44
  because of Monty Bloody Python. You know, nobody expects the
• 40:48
  Spanish Inquisition, but this is my intro to Richelieu.
• 40:53
  So when I heard Church in the Crown, I was like, oh, oh, is he
• 40:56
  going to be like this really scheming schema type like he was
• 41:00
  in Niagara? Yes, apparently that's what he's
• 41:02
  always like in fiction and things like that.
• 41:05
  So. You know, you know what we did
• 41:07
  take little aliens. I know it was sort of the the
• 41:09
  Agatha Christie who's behind it. All right?
• 41:11
  He does a bit of that in this, doesn't he?
• 41:12
  Which of the Cardinals is in league with Sperano?
• 41:17
  Why are you not shaking your head, Andrew?
• 41:19
  I could not give less of a shit about which cardinal was.
• 41:23
  A bad. Guy, they're all Catholic
• 41:25
  priests. They're all fucking evil.
• 41:27
  Like, like, I don't care who killed the Pope.
• 41:31
  Who cares? But did you guess or you just
• 41:33
  didn't care to guess? No, I couldn't tell which one
• 41:36
  was which. They were all just a bunch of
• 41:37
  boring men who took on chapters of it at a time, talking about
• 41:41
  like Catholic intrigue. Like I just don't care.
• 41:45
  Has. Marley taken the piss.
• 41:47
  I thought I took it as Marley taking the piss because a lot of
• 41:49
  those moments, like I was just. It's on Gallifrey, isn't it?
• 41:54
  That Oh, it's. Not like Gallifrey, yes, Yeah.
• 41:57
  Shit when it happens on Gallifrey as well, I just want
• 41:59
  to read more of that. But like, listen to this.
• 42:03
  Yeah, because I, I thought the visual, well, building in this
• 42:07
  book was staggeringly good. Like, like he has an eye for
• 42:10
  detail in describing what the places look like.
• 42:14
  And he says, viewed at this distance, Vatican City was a
• 42:17
  stupendous though disturbing spectacle.
• 42:20
  Gargantuan domes and collidal pillars, a deranged meld of
• 42:23
  Baroque and Gothic, an architectural wonder and
• 42:27
  monstrosity, a nightmare of epic proportions.
• 42:30
  And I think this is what the Virgin writers do at their
• 42:34
  absolute best, is conjure up big, big setting ideas, sort of
• 42:41
  future setting ideas, and put it down on the page in a way that
• 42:45
  utterly wounds me. And I did.
• 42:47
  I thought, I thought he's well building throughout this, even
• 42:51
  though I had to wait for the explanations for the politics
• 42:54
  and what it all meant and what the reprises were and all of
• 42:57
  this stuff, I did think the well building was exceptionally good.
• 43:02
  And it's all very sensual. As I said, there's all types of
• 43:06
  bodily fluids in here, for a start.
• 43:07
  Of that. You've already said it's.
• 43:11
  Yeah, it's everything you can. You know, I could go to this
• 43:13
  world. I could tell you what this world
• 43:15
  smells like, what it what the food tastes like.
• 43:18
  Exactly. You know how horrific it is, why
• 43:20
  it's so thrilling to live there. It's.
• 43:23
  Just I want a steak gun. Yeah, I I want the Crocker to go
• 43:28
  round with me. Just maybe that's it then,
• 43:31
  right? Maybe you guys love it because
• 43:33
  this is somewhere where you guys would want to hang out.
• 43:35
  You know, I'm sort of, I'm on the fence and I don't think
• 43:38
  Andrew wants to visit here at all.
• 43:40
  I want to visit all the Mediterraneans.
• 43:42
  Yeah, yeah. I've dodged Transylvania and
• 43:47
  maybe the Vatican too. Yeah, absolutely.
• 43:51
  But. Sorry, you know what, I keep
• 43:55
  going to jump in. I will wait at this, but don't
• 43:57
  worry, sorry, it's all yours. I reckon, I reckon my theory is
• 44:03
  Andrew's doing all right. He's he's reading this book,
• 44:05
  he's fine, and then he gets to the point where he feels,
• 44:08
  figures, finds out what happens to Jake and Maddie from Goth
• 44:12
  Opera. Of.
• 44:15
  Course, yes, now it makes sense. Lovely.
• 44:19
  Luscious. That's what I love about Molly.
• 44:23
  He's not just doing history and literature and Doctor Who season
• 44:30
  13. He's also read the books that
• 44:33
  are that he's contributing to. So there's little references in
• 44:39
  here to to a couple of books and other things like that as well.
• 44:43
  The most one that pops out at me, maybe because Goth Opera is
• 44:46
  pretty fresh, is the fact that in the 24th century, Jake and
• 44:49
  Maddie get ganked and they're dead.
• 44:52
  So yeah, there there is that which I thought was was a nice
• 44:57
  little, you know, I would have read that at the time and maybe
• 45:00
  even the second time I read it because Goth Opera wasn't fresh
• 45:02
  and that I'm like, who's Jake and Maddie?
• 45:04
  That's a weird name for vampires.
• 45:05
  Anyway, moving on. I never would have connected
• 45:08
  those things. So you.
• 45:09
  Wouldn't expect that sort of interrelational continuity with
• 45:12
  the missing of a New Adventures. Yeah, but not with the missing
• 45:15
  adventures. No, that's why I.
• 45:17
  Liked it because it's more ambitious than a lot of new
• 45:21
  adventures. The Missing adventures because
• 45:23
  the the missing adventures, a lot of it was almost trying to
• 45:27
  replicate what was on television.
• 45:30
  I said the GAT. Let's call it the Gatus
• 45:31
  principle. And I just think that's just a
• 45:35
  waste. I saw those stories.
• 45:37
  Those stories are largely there, and even if they're not, the
• 45:41
  targets are there. I can read them all.
• 45:43
  They're fine, they're great. Jack them in your ear holes.
• 45:46
  Absolutely. And but what can you do with the
• 45:49
  characters in a literary setting and the and you know, something
• 45:53
  like this Empire of Glass or something?
• 45:56
  The plotters, you know, even what Gareth Roberts don't
• 45:59
  because most of his is pastiche, but he does look to what how he
• 46:04
  can get away with that as a novel rather than a book.
• 46:07
  He's doing, you know, woodhacks in the English way of death, for
• 46:10
  instance, or that ending of the well mounted war.
• 46:14
  It's a, you know, an ending that wouldn't work on screen.
• 46:17
  So yeah, it it's just ambition, I think is always a key to my
• 46:21
  Doctor Who books. And this really is why I
• 46:24
  absolutely adore the book. Did anyone else read this as
• 46:28
  like a really snarky commentary on the redundancy of the missing
• 46:32
  adventures? I love that.
• 46:36
  Angle. The whole kind of premise of
• 46:39
  this is that this world has been created, which is kind of taking
• 46:44
  characters from the past and smashing them together into new
• 46:47
  outrageous scenarios that they never would have been in.
• 46:51
  And then the antagonist of this is somebody who has all of this
• 46:56
  power to do this, but can't create anything new.
• 47:00
  All he does is pull from the past.
• 47:02
  And that's kind of exactly what the missing Adventures are at
• 47:06
  their worst. And it feels like reading this,
• 47:10
  like I, I felt like that that's exactly what this book is
• 47:13
  saying. But it also is that so I don't
• 47:19
  know, it just it felt like a sort of self hating.
• 47:23
  Even worse and true, the the conclusion of the story says
• 47:27
  that these new, you know, new adventures being written with
• 47:31
  old characters are being written by a hack, talentless writer.
• 47:36
  Exactly, exactly. It's quite it's quite funny, but
• 47:40
  also made it quite mean to the to the other writers.
• 47:44
  That's a great reading though. At one point I, well, I think I,
• 47:47
  I added, I added this to the group because I, I think I was
• 47:51
  overthinking it. And I thought, are the Doctor
• 47:55
  and Sarah going to be reprisals? Is that, are they part of this
• 47:59
  world? And at the end of the book,
• 48:02
  we're going to find out that actually, you know, the Doctor
• 48:04
  and Sarah visited 200 years ago, and then they got turned into
• 48:08
  these characters and they've just been stuck in this loop of,
• 48:11
  of landing and meeting people and thinking they're part of
• 48:13
  this world. Especially when the, when the
• 48:16
  Cardinals broke into the TARDIS, I was like, oh, OK, that doesn't
• 48:19
  feel like something that would usually happen in Doctor Who's
• 48:21
  story of just humans running amok in the TARDIS.
• 48:25
  Is this the TARDIS? Is this the fake TARDIS?
• 48:28
  But I was. I was reaching.
• 48:30
  That would explain why I behaved so out of character as well.
• 48:33
  You know, that's what I was thinking.
• 48:35
  Misremembered them yeah, Sarah in particular in this book, I
• 48:40
  agree with that. It's really a character.
• 48:43
  And yeah, she she feels more like the Barry let's 90s version
• 48:49
  of Sarah than actual Sarah. And I found all that kind of
• 48:54
  sort of 70s feminist dialogue that they gave her with them
• 49:01
  with the Byron. It felt like maybe, maybe season
• 49:04
  11 Sarah would have come out with that like male chauvinist
• 49:07
  pig stuff. But season 13 Sarah, I think
• 49:10
  they would they changed the character by that point.
• 49:13
  She wasn't really sort of on her soapbox in that way.
• 49:16
  And when they did it for? Feminism in season 13.
• 49:20
  Well, when they did address it, so we're in in Seeds of Doom,
• 49:25
  her scenes with Scorby where they do that stuff, it's
• 49:28
  actually done with like real subtlety and nuance.
• 49:30
  And she's not just like saying, Oh, you, you male chauvinist
• 49:36
  women's Lib. She's actually, you know, it's
• 49:38
  done with like it's all done with the characters and the, and
• 49:40
  the dialogue and the expression and the performance.
• 49:43
  But then you get to this and it's like, what's she doing?
• 49:46
  And why is she running around the Vatican in a bikini?
• 49:49
  There is no plot reason for that to happen other than all these
• 49:54
  masturbational fantasies. You've seen Death to the Daleks,
• 49:57
  right? Well, yeah, even then it wasn't
• 50:00
  a tiny black bikini, and she didn't RIP off dresses like to
• 50:05
  just walk around in her bikini for no no apparent reason.
• 50:08
  And there's not a link to the sea to doom Luke because she
• 50:11
  ends in a bikini there. One for the dads in in a book my
• 50:18
  issue was. Sarah.
• 50:19
  Was is that Byron describes her? Byron really hates her, doesn't
• 50:22
  he? Like, and I thought we were
• 50:24
  going to go on this sort of redemption journey where he
• 50:26
  learns to love her, but no, he really can't stand her all the
• 50:29
  way through. He calls her a spoilt,
• 50:31
  loudmouth, graceless brat who's always complaining.
• 50:34
  And I thought, well, that's a bit harsh.
• 50:36
  But then in the second-half of the book, all she did was
• 50:39
  fucking complain. I was like, he's right.
• 50:41
  She's awful. Complain and play with knives.
• 50:44
  Well, and then she's written out completely and we get Shara
• 50:48
  instead of Sarah, so she's not in a huge chunk of the last
• 50:52
  third. So I thought that was a bit of
• 50:54
  an issue as well. And I didn't think the Doctor
• 50:57
  was badly characterized, but I thought the Doctor's usually the
• 51:01
  most eccentric person in any story, right?
• 51:03
  Tom Baker's Doctor, he's just mad as a box of rocks.
• 51:06
  But unfortunately, in this story, he's surrounded by an
• 51:09
  army of eccentric characters that even Tom Baker can't well
• 51:14
  imagine. Tom Baker can't, you know, act
• 51:16
  his way above. So I was like, does he get a bit
• 51:18
  lost amongst all of this mad eccentricity that's on display
• 51:22
  everywhere else? I I think he does, yeah.
• 51:25
  I, I, it's Tom Baker. They did doctors to re effect
• 51:29
  what he's just said. He's just there in the
• 51:31
  background there to add a bit of tension, a bit of I know what's
• 51:35
  going on, it's terrible, etcetera.
• 51:37
  Just that, you know, almost like in a bad horror novel, he's in
• 51:41
  the background. Who knows what's going on since
• 51:45
  the friggin like as soon as he sees the hand in the Sistine
• 51:48
  Chapel, he's like, I've got this all sorted.
• 51:52
  But I'm not telling you for another 200 pages.
• 51:56
  Would you know what right me and Andrew have been a bit mean
• 51:58
  about this book? So what are you 2 tell us about
• 52:02
  characters and scenarios and things that you love about it?
• 52:06
  Where do you want to start? Though, All right, I actually do
• 52:11
  want to start with the doctor. So you got all these weird,
• 52:14
  crazy, zany people. So in this one, I feel because
• 52:20
  he's kind of tweaked on something that's, you know, put
• 52:23
  him in a dark place, it's put him in a mood, right, More than
• 52:28
  say, I don't know. He doesn't hold that mood
• 52:31
  usually for a whole story, just bits and pieces.
• 52:34
  But he's got this mood. It's pretty much the seeds of
• 52:38
  doom mood really, isn't it? Like where he's kind of figured
• 52:42
  it out. He knows he suspects about
• 52:45
  Pearson and the Globe Theatre and there might be some battery
• 52:50
  elements involved in this. And it's all regarding this
• 52:54
  adventure that we we don't know anything about.
• 52:57
  But he's tried to save a girl who died in in that house back
• 53:02
  back in the day, something involving Pierce and literally
• 53:05
  getting his cat, his cat, his heart licked by a cat and all
• 53:09
  sorts of creepy shit. So he's put in a mood.
• 53:12
  He's like me with that coffee in the morning, but like alien.
• 53:15
  So he's he's he's he's in a bit of a mood.
• 53:17
  He does struck me as a bit charming and funny in certain
• 53:20
  areas, but but it's mostly he's distant.
• 53:24
  He knows what he has to do and stuff, but he's kind of keeping
• 53:27
  and he keeps his cars close to his chest too.
• 53:30
  So I didn't really mind his betrayal in this.
• 53:34
  I felt like if you're going to have everyone else be sort of
• 53:37
  crazy, maybe. I like that he delves more into
• 53:40
  his a he's more alien side. It does actually fit.
• 53:44
  In Because the first scene after this book, if it goes to the TV
• 53:47
  store, is that first scene in Pyramids of Mars where he is
• 53:50
  absolutely that distant alien figure.
• 53:54
  So. I already thought that worked.
• 53:57
  I'm not too bothered by the Sarah Jane stuff.
• 54:01
  I don't know, I feel like season 13 could have done with some
• 54:04
  more women's live just or maybe just women now in in good roles.
• 54:10
  I guess. Not bad ones, but I think.
• 54:12
  This one's got two more roles for women than my God.
• 54:16
  And Mary Shelley and there's some prostitutes.
• 54:20
  But let's be scales are still like this.
• 54:23
  Man, Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 54:25
  Nuns and prostitutes, the two types of women who inhabits.
• 54:30
  Although those nuns that had to carry them around all over the
• 54:34
  place, that revolted in the end. They were bitching.
• 54:37
  They. Were crazy.
• 54:39
  You got all sorts of funny moments like Crowley just
• 54:42
  thinking like, oh, I'm going to get away with this, jumps out
• 54:44
  the window and falls right to his death because the Draco's
• 54:47
  not waiting there for him anymore.
• 54:49
  Recently betrayed. Me.
• 54:51
  Oh God. And Mary Shelley again is cable
• 54:54
  character. The fate of Miles's girlfriend.
• 54:58
  Oh. So funny, Beatrice.
• 55:04
  He tracks her. Dang, where is she in a brothel?
• 55:08
  Why are you a brothel? Because I love it.
• 55:10
  That's right. What is it?
• 55:12
  She likes some rough or something like that?
• 55:16
  And the story about him swinging into her bedroom, it turns out
• 55:19
  to be her mother's. I thought that was hilarious.
• 55:24
  Again, the book seems when Miles is on the page, doesn't it?
• 55:28
  It's and his mate, what's his name?
• 55:29
  Crocker. Crocker Boy.
• 55:31
  It's a comedy, it says. Miles is this he's he's this
• 55:35
  really highly skilled but ineffective aristocrats how how
• 55:38
  the British like to think of the aristocracy.
• 55:40
  Let's face it. And then you've got.
• 55:43
  Working class. Yeah, they're working.
• 55:47
  He's go. He's so we exploded and going
• 55:50
  yeah, I paid £300 for that governor, He's pocketed 200 of
• 55:53
  it. I love the fact that Crocker was
• 55:56
  really very smart, but I have to play dumb throughout the entire
• 56:00
  book and he's very aware of the dangers that he's in all the
• 56:03
  time and is ready to make a very quick exit, but somehow always
• 56:07
  manages to do the right thing. And Miles is on the always on
• 56:10
  the verge of finding him out. And the crock is there.
• 56:12
  No, not Miko. You'll get your bonus for this.
• 56:18
  What was it? Ignorance and desperation, An
• 56:21
  ideal combination in a manservant.
• 56:23
  You're hired, the wages are a penny a day with a bonus for
• 56:27
  exceptionally hazardous enterprises, and you also get to
• 56:30
  eat my leftovers. What a job he.
• 56:35
  Dismissed too, because you're too far in.
• 56:39
  You're old. You're you're diseased.
• 56:44
  I guess it's just you. Yep, you.
• 56:45
  Yep. Let's go.
• 56:46
  Do you remember the clincher as well?
• 56:48
  And of course, I will supply you with a mechanical pony.
• 56:51
  Thank you very much. Which he has to go buy himself a
• 56:55
  job because. There's cool swashbuckling
• 56:58
  things like the, they have these like ropes that they can use
• 57:04
  like whips or something like that.
• 57:05
  They could use them to like throw them in the air and
• 57:07
  they'll loop around a pillow or something like that and you got
• 57:10
  people swinging around. Oh, the Byron duel.
• 57:14
  Rapiers and you don't know if. The smart dagger that decides
• 57:19
  whether the act of killing somebody is morally justifiable
• 57:23
  or not. So there's all kinds of little
• 57:32
  interesting bits of technology stuff.
• 57:34
  I like the visuals near the end of Persona is like, all right,
• 57:40
  he's done act one. I won't go into it, but it's all
• 57:43
  about what's in a box. What's in a box?
• 57:45
  Do you want me to open the box? Let's open the box.
• 57:47
  What's in the box? Oh, you want me to open the box?
• 57:49
  Yes. You sure?
• 57:51
  Opening. You are wasted.
• 57:52
  You should be on the stage, Luke.
• 57:54
  Oh my God, I want to do the. I want to do Macbeth's head.
• 57:58
  That, that, that. That'd be amazing.
• 58:00
  I reckon I can crush that. What?
• 58:02
  The whole first act? What's in the box?
• 58:04
  I got it. Again though, something you
• 58:06
  couldn't do on screen that that revelation.
• 58:10
  Yeah, but you've also, yeah, exactly.
• 58:12
  And you've also got like this, this really weird trippy visual
• 58:16
  of apparently all of Europa can see, can be seen and see this at
• 58:20
  the same time. So I mean, I'm imagining some
• 58:23
  kind of weird kind of theatrical Mobius strip kind of thing
• 58:27
  happening. Where?
• 58:29
  Where he's just showing everyone the box, everyone's watching and
• 58:32
  just kind of enthralled by it. Almost in in it reminded me of
• 58:38
  like, yeah, right before everyone melts in at the end of
• 58:42
  Raiders, the Lost Ark or something like that.
• 58:44
  But but just with this all really weird kind of Tommy, it's
• 58:50
  like all of Europa and it's all kind of layered upon each other
• 58:54
  and like because it's is time or technology in this whole thing.
• 58:59
  So there's like dimensions extraordinary.
• 59:01
  So you've got like 3 metal Serranians on top of each other
• 59:03
  once where? The TARDIS isn't it?
• 59:04
  Isn't the whole thing a rudimentary TARDIS?
• 59:07
  It's a rudimentary TARDIS. It's dimensionally
• 59:09
  transcendental. Yeah.
• 59:11
  It's the that ocean where he takes the obviously he got some
• 59:14
  gondolier to take him right across the the ocean, doesn't
• 59:17
  he? It's glorious.
• 59:18
  And the company is they go. I mean, I will be honest, I was
• 59:23
  I I agree with Andrew when he says about all of this time,
• 59:25
  Lord law coming in at the end, I'm like, what was the thing
• 59:28
  that spiral? Yeah.
• 59:32
  What was that all about? So what happens is it's like, it
• 59:39
  isn't this Gallifrey, barely. I think it's a copy of it.
• 59:44
  It's a, it's a copy of that. So this Managra was this kind of
• 59:49
  being like, could it come create stuff?
• 59:51
  Could only copy them and make copies and things like that.
• 59:54
  And it went to Gallifrey, and Ruslan was just like, Nah, we
• 59:59
  can't have this because, you know, Ruslan's the only Time
• 1:00:02
  Lord who could ever defeat anything before the Doctor
• 1:00:04
  arrived ever, for some reason. Hey, we need someone to defeat
• 1:00:08
  this thing in ancient Gallifrey. Raslon did it.
• 1:00:10
  I mean, how many things did he do?
• 1:00:12
  How many things did the Doctor do?
• 1:00:13
  Really. OK, that's.
• 1:00:14
  Why it justifies the Doctor being in the story?
• 1:00:17
  It's because it's this ancient time of technology and my Mises,
• 1:00:21
  it's basically representing the real world in the theatre.
• 1:00:26
  So that essentially the story is doing it's, it's a bad idea of
• 1:00:32
  the real world in the theatre because, you know, Pearson is a
• 1:00:36
  shit, shit playwright. Everything he does is, you know,
• 1:00:39
  a third rate knocker for Shakespeare.
• 1:00:40
  It's there in the titles of the stuff.
• 1:00:42
  It's there in his prose. But this is, you know, the, the
• 1:00:47
  Mike I, I just love that idea of the Gallifreian kind of culture.
• 1:00:51
  It expands Gallifreian culture because normally Gallifreian law
• 1:00:55
  is OK. It's about the legend of
• 1:00:57
  Gallifrey. It's about wrestle, and it's
• 1:00:58
  about, Oh my God, it's about the other and it's about, you know,
• 1:01:03
  writing dusty history books. But this is kind of making it
• 1:01:08
  living. What would the Time Lords do for
• 1:01:10
  entertainment? And, you know, this kind of
• 1:01:13
  theatre is a perfect example. And it fits in with kind of that
• 1:01:17
  brutality that brings back the death zone, I think.
• 1:01:21
  But the the, the actual, the mimic.
• 1:01:23
  Yeah, that's what it's called, isn't it?
• 1:01:24
  The mimic. So it's basically like a a
• 1:01:29
  secrets absorber? Yeah.
• 1:01:31
  It it, it sucks up ideas and technology and all of this.
• 1:01:36
  Yeah. And then this thing is sort of
• 1:01:37
  drifting through space. It has no intelligence.
• 1:01:42
  It has no capacity to put those ideas to good use and it's like
• 1:01:46
  when it comes into contact with Pearson Sperano persona,
• 1:01:52
  whatever his name is today, and then he then uses the technology
• 1:01:57
  and the secrets that it has to create Europa, put in the
• 1:02:01
  reprises and have some grand stage for his truly dreadful
• 1:02:06
  place. Yes.
• 1:02:07
  And I think overtime. Oh.
• 1:02:08
  I got it right. Yeah, and I think overtime
• 1:02:11
  Pearson, he's he's been fully taken over I guess overtime by
• 1:02:18
  by the actual menagra itself. But yeah, so I don't know even
• 1:02:25
  from the dawn of time that kind of fits the Holmes and
• 1:02:28
  Hinchcliffe here again, there's like another little tick there
• 1:02:32
  and I kind of liked it had little copies of of Tardises.
• 1:02:37
  It made copies of people. Everything was just like an
• 1:02:42
  anagram or a copy of a copy and things like that.
• 1:02:46
  I just. But is that not a problem as
• 1:02:49
  well if you've already got an enormous cast?
• 1:02:52
  And then some of them can turn out to be copies and clones and
• 1:02:55
  wearing masks? It's like, Jesus, how many
• 1:02:58
  versions of the already overly expanded cast can we possibly
• 1:03:03
  have? I did remember sort of towards
• 1:03:05
  the end when you know, in can dine or whatever her name was,
• 1:03:07
  were like, aha, I'm Beatrix, your lover and I'm fuck me.
• 1:03:11
  It's anyone who I thought they was in this book, you know.
• 1:03:14
  But I will reiterate that I was totally on board by this point
• 1:03:19
  and I was just vibing with it. I was vibing with the the pace
• 1:03:23
  of it, the invention of it, the wit of it.
• 1:03:25
  So whilst I might be making some complaints here, the second-half
• 1:03:29
  of this book I just shot through.
• 1:03:31
  I really did read fast. Yeah, I mean, that is setting
• 1:03:35
  that whole world that it wants you to export.
• 1:03:37
  It wants that world to be that vivid, sensuous experience at at
• 1:03:42
  time. I I was, let's say I'll take on
• 1:03:44
  board. It is.
• 1:03:46
  The writer is often more interested in the world he's
• 1:03:49
  created than he is in the Doctor Who story.
• 1:03:51
  Which is a great Wales? Why not?
• 1:03:53
  Yeah. I feel like a lot of Doctor Who
• 1:03:55
  writers, and maybe that's a not necessarily a bad thing, they
• 1:04:01
  want to focus more on I guess being writing a Doctor Who book
• 1:04:05
  and stuff rather than kind of stuffing lots of lots of super
• 1:04:09
  original ideas in it. I guess because maybe you want
• 1:04:11
  to write that in your own book or something like that.
• 1:04:13
  He I just think and maybe you want to hold half of these ideas
• 1:04:18
  for book 2, like at least half of them.
• 1:04:21
  Instead, Molly's like, you know what?
• 1:04:23
  I might not never write one of these again, might not be asked
• 1:04:26
  to whatever. What's it Steven Moffat said?
• 1:04:29
  Was it he said you need basically your big movie idea
• 1:04:33
  for every single episode of Doctor Who.
• 1:04:36
  And again, this is what Stephen Marley brings to it.
• 1:04:39
  This is his big idea. What can I do here?
• 1:04:43
  And does the Doctor fit into it? He can jam it, the Doctor into
• 1:04:47
  it in whichever way he wants. And he, I think he does it
• 1:04:51
  perfectly because. I'd rather have a book like what
• 1:04:54
  Marley's writing here, which is trying very hard and you know,
• 1:05:00
  he, he's doing this sort of extraordinary world building and
• 1:05:02
  trying to do something unique than God.
• 1:05:05
  What else in the missing adventures I know what's the
• 1:05:07
  return to the Web Planet 1, Twilight of the Gods, where we
• 1:05:10
  just do the web planet again. You know, it's a planet that has
• 1:05:13
  already been defined. We're not going to add any
• 1:05:15
  layers to it. We're going to go through all
• 1:05:17
  the motions. I'd rather read.
• 1:05:20
  I'd rather read something where somebody is trying, and I mean
• 1:05:23
  trying in the positive sense, not, you know, wearisome.
• 1:05:29
  Yeah. Coming.
• 1:05:32
  I was just going to say, yeah, I like you also got the Doctor
• 1:05:38
  Payne stabbed by Sarah, which? Was stuck by Shelley, wasn't he
• 1:05:47
  at one point? It was.
• 1:05:48
  It was both. It was Sarah.
• 1:05:50
  Yeah, it was both at the same time.
• 1:05:51
  With the mimic by Mimicus Shara who was possessing Mary Shelley
• 1:05:58
  who stabbed the doctor. I said it got confusing, didn't
• 1:06:01
  I? Oh yes, so.
• 1:06:04
  Can't just have a stabbing. You've got to have layers in
• 1:06:06
  that stabbing as well. You know, that's that's the
• 1:06:09
  thing about this book. That was a bit too quick cut.
• 1:06:12
  Let's add a layer. Yep, actually, we'll do another
• 1:06:15
  layer. I mean, if I could, we'll do
• 1:06:17
  another layer. What what Joe says, the one that
• 1:06:20
  I'll come back to, is Divisive Death, which is set a few
• 1:06:23
  stories earlier and is just the most tedious read possible.
• 1:06:28
  Who wrote that one? Christopher Bulis.
• 1:06:30
  Yeah, it's yeah, it's him ticking off the Tom Baker on his
• 1:06:37
  I want to write every Doctor list.
• 1:06:39
  Have we got a beulis on the list?
• 1:06:41
  I don't think we have. We should do one one day.
• 1:06:44
  As long as it's not a shadow mind, I'm fine OK?
• 1:06:47
  As long as it's not Twilight of the Gods, I'm fine.
• 1:06:49
  There you go. We're narrowing this thing.
• 1:06:52
  Narrows it down. Narrows it down.
• 1:06:54
  Andrew, what was your favorite thing about this?
• 1:06:59
  Oh, Oh dear. That wasn't supposed to be a
• 1:07:02
  stamp. It ended.
• 1:07:05
  The last page. I I I'd like the mild dashing
• 1:07:09
  dashing thing. I, I think I did enjoy the
• 1:07:13
  settings. So I enjoyed the stuff at the
• 1:07:15
  Globe Theatre and all the the weird ghost stuff that happens
• 1:07:20
  there. And so there's lots of like nice
• 1:07:23
  set pieces. There's the weird villa, dear
• 1:07:27
  Darty bear, there's the excellent vampire fighting scene
• 1:07:31
  in the graveyard and the crypt. So I think he does do those
• 1:07:35
  little those little set pieces really well, but it just didn't
• 1:07:42
  come together for me. So I'm telling you asked me my
• 1:07:45
  favorite thing and I'm still coming do.
• 1:07:49
  You think this is a sort of book that could be beaten into a
• 1:07:52
  shape that you would like, or this just isn't?
• 1:07:54
  The sort. Yeah.
• 1:07:55
  I think it just needed stripping right back and simplifying.
• 1:07:59
  And it's like, that's all the stuff about the Elizabeth
• 1:08:02
  Bathory thing that could just go like, you don't need this to be
• 1:08:06
  a sequel to an adventure we haven't seen.
• 1:08:09
  It just adds another layer of complexity to this stuff that's
• 1:08:13
  already really complicated, I think.
• 1:08:15
  Yeah, it just needed like the plot simplifying and to be
• 1:08:21
  structured in a less sort of disrupted way.
• 1:08:26
  I feel like the the the opening few, few chapters are quite
• 1:08:31
  disrupted and and flipped about between lots of different
• 1:08:33
  perspectives. Then he moves to having 1
• 1:08:35
  chapter focused on a particular group of characters and that's
• 1:08:39
  when it felt like it worked for me.
• 1:08:41
  But then later in the book he abandons that and it goes back
• 1:08:44
  to the kind of scattershot and lots of different perspectives
• 1:08:46
  in the same chapter. So it was like the moment I
• 1:08:50
  started getting into something, we were off doing something
• 1:08:52
  else. And it was usually something
• 1:08:54
  that I found quite boring, like people scheming in the Vatican.
• 1:08:58
  So and kept coming back to think to bits where I was like, oh,
• 1:09:01
  it's now it's time for like another 12 pages of the boring
• 1:09:05
  bit. So yeah, like there's, there's
• 1:09:09
  lots. And I I absolutely adore like
• 1:09:11
  genre smashing stuff and like love the land of fiction stuff.
• 1:09:17
  I love Conundrum, love the crooked world.
• 1:09:21
  So this is absolutely like my wheelhouse of stuff that I
• 1:09:23
  really love. But in this instance it just it
• 1:09:28
  didn't work for me. Was this a case of oh God, I've
• 1:09:33
  got to pick up that book again, I've got to finish it?
• 1:09:38
  I think if I wasn't reading this book group, I would not.
• 1:09:41
  I wouldn't have finished it. Gosh.
• 1:09:44
  Well then let's throw it. Sorry, Luke, I've totally taken
• 1:09:46
  over. I just can't do it, can I?
• 1:09:48
  It's all right then. It's all good, go for it.
• 1:09:50
  But you guys, was it like, was it like, I can't wait to get
• 1:09:54
  back to it? Oh, yeah, I, I get it's, I've
• 1:09:58
  read this. I think it's, it's got to be 5th
• 1:10:01
  or 6th reading of it. You know, I said I've read it in
• 1:10:07
  university. I read just after university.
• 1:10:09
  I've gone back to it at least once every decade since.
• 1:10:13
  And you don't do that make Doctor Who books because the
• 1:10:15
  volume of them that's there is always something you to come
• 1:10:19
  back to. But it's it's something that,
• 1:10:21
  again, it's one of the books that I can kind of age myself
• 1:10:24
  with because I thought Luke, I got a lot of the references
• 1:10:27
  because I was just in the university.
• 1:10:29
  But the older I get, the more I get out to the book because I
• 1:10:32
  understand more of the references.
• 1:10:34
  I understand more of the kind of the meta commentary of the bad
• 1:10:37
  writer creating that world. And again, Andrew's reading is
• 1:10:41
  good again. I'm going to go back to it next
• 1:10:42
  time. I'm going to go with Andrew's
• 1:10:44
  reading because that's glorious. Luke, I For me, this is I don't
• 1:10:55
  know, I'm reading messages of the of you guys going like, man,
• 1:10:59
  I'm so exhausted. I need to read something like
• 1:11:01
  this or something like this. I'm like, oh, I could go another
• 1:11:06
  one of these. Is there any more like this?
• 1:11:09
  Because I just like the energy of it.
• 1:11:11
  Just I know it's perfectly all right to be annoyed of a book
• 1:11:17
  that flips around too much. I can be like that too.
• 1:11:20
  Or a book that just stays on one thing for two for too long.
• 1:11:24
  On the flip side, but I don't know to see you have ADHD,
• 1:11:28
  Stephen Marley, it feels like he does because like there's a it
• 1:11:32
  goes bang, bang, bang, bang, everything like and there's so
• 1:11:36
  much for me. I'm like, I'm in sensory over.
• 1:11:40
  So I like you, Joe. I read this in chunks, but for
• 1:11:45
  this particular reading, and I'd finish a chunk and I'll be like,
• 1:11:50
  oh man, I'm going to digest all this is great.
• 1:11:53
  And then I'd come back a few hours, hours later to, to do it
• 1:11:56
  again. But it wasn't, I didn't finish
• 1:11:59
  this book until yesterday. And that's only because I was
• 1:12:02
  like, oh, we don't have a record date for this yet.
• 1:12:04
  And I kind of don't want this book to end.
• 1:12:06
  And this book is set up in four parts, like it's like most
• 1:12:10
  season 13 stories. So I read the first two parts in
• 1:12:15
  two days and then part three last week and then part 4
• 1:12:20
  yesterday. So.
• 1:12:24
  I mean, you say you say you want more of the same next time we're
• 1:12:29
  doing a literary mash up written by an extremely smart and very
• 1:12:34
  funny writer. But I'm telling you that I've
• 1:12:37
  already read that. And spoiler is great.
• 1:12:40
  But also, I didn't crave a cigarette after reading that.
• 1:12:44
  And I didn't need to read a Christopher Beulis.
• 1:12:46
  It was just a very easy read. So there are there are two
• 1:12:52
  approaches. Oh yeah.
• 1:12:53
  But I didn't want that to end either.
• 1:12:55
  I can't even take it all day. Really know over Andrew, I
• 1:12:58
  promise you, if you haven't started it yet, you'll have a
• 1:13:00
  lot easier reading this. Oh, yeah, I thought I sort of
• 1:13:05
  wrote down a positive sentence and a negative sentence for the
• 1:13:10
  book because that's sort of where I was.
• 1:13:11
  I said this does feel very like Holmes and Hinchcliffe, with
• 1:13:14
  literary and historical allusions, film and television
• 1:13:18
  influences, sharp wit, grotesque creations, ambrosial dialogue,
• 1:13:23
  and just a hint of the problematic.
• 1:13:25
  There's some problematic things said here about religion,
• 1:13:29
  feminists and class critiques, I thought as well.
• 1:13:33
  But on the other hand, it was a book so dense with detail and
• 1:13:37
  packed with so many characters, it was a little bit exhausting.
• 1:13:41
  It it is rich with invention, but I don't know if it's a book
• 1:13:45
  I could ever relax into. Like, you've got to put some
• 1:13:48
  work into reading this. And so, yeah, I'm sort of, I'm
• 1:13:52
  sort of around the seven out of 10 mark.
• 1:13:55
  But I really admire what he tried to do.
• 1:13:58
  Like, I really think this isn't somebody just join off a shitty
• 1:14:03
  Doctor Who novel with someone really putting some thought into
• 1:14:06
  what they're trying to put on the page.
• 1:14:08
  You know how like if you ever wondering how this particular a
• 1:14:13
  particular writer got the job to do a Doctor Who book, sometimes
• 1:14:18
  the story is I pitch the shit out of this pitch, pitch, pitch,
• 1:14:20
  pitch, pitch. The other flip side is they
• 1:14:23
  called me up and they were like, Hey, do you want to write a
• 1:14:26
  doctor Google. Well, some of the people have
• 1:14:29
  done that for suck Trump, right? Did Nsas?
• 1:14:33
  Are you serious? Like get out of here, right?
• 1:14:37
  Like he gets multiple calls to do multiple books but now?
• 1:14:41
  I break script edited bugs, how dare you.
• 1:14:47
  Bugs is fine. It doesn't mean you write Doctor
• 1:14:49
  Who books. But no one ever thought like in
• 1:14:51
  that whole area to ever be like, I wonder what Steve Marley's
• 1:14:56
  doing. Wonder if he wants to write a
• 1:14:57
  second book. No one ever had that thought.
• 1:15:00
  No, let's get column break on the board to write Colony of
• 1:15:04
  Lies like did. Write a short story in this
• 1:15:07
  world, though it's in one of the found, I think one of the
• 1:15:09
  perfect timings. It's the second person who said
• 1:15:12
  like I need to get perfect timing.
• 1:15:13
  So is there a grant market story in there?
• 1:15:17
  Yes, I'm going to let let me see about how about getting
• 1:15:22
  something to. I think I've got something that
• 1:15:24
  might interest you at some point.
• 1:15:26
  I'll have to check my hard drive, so to speak.
• 1:15:29
  That's the most ambiguous offer made on habs of a blood pen
• 1:15:32
  knife ever, but. What?
• 1:15:35
  Fiction dealer. It's like one of the drugs in
• 1:15:40
  gridlock alcohol fiction. If it's the stranger, it's
• 1:15:43
  already been done, you know that.
• 1:15:45
  You want dying days? You want dying?
• 1:15:49
  Days. Why did he say something that
• 1:15:50
  Andrew. I'll keep my mouth shut.
• 1:15:55
  Well, does anybody have anything else?
• 1:15:57
  Is there anything in your notes like we do always do this at the
• 1:16:00
  end, you know any, any characters, any events, any
• 1:16:04
  lines of dialogue, any ideas, anything that we've not
• 1:16:08
  mentioned yet? There's so much whatever we
• 1:16:13
  said, we could be on this podcast for another two hours
• 1:16:15
  and we still could find. Certainly, I think what I will
• 1:16:21
  mention it's been partly covered for.
• 1:16:23
  I loved Miles and the Ghost Fizz.
• 1:16:26
  Dad in the Seance. You've had this intense science
• 1:16:29
  scene and his dad comes back, don't you?
• 1:16:32
  Bloody Dingle thing. We don't want you over here.
• 1:16:35
  Come on. They try and put him throughout
• 1:16:38
  the school, genuinely very funny.
• 1:16:40
  They try and put him. They just try and send him to
• 1:16:42
  another school. They make him go for long walks.
• 1:16:44
  They even try and kill him. They just can't get rid of Miles
• 1:16:47
  Dashing. Yeah.
• 1:16:48
  Because there's actually, yeah, accidents used to keep happening
• 1:16:52
  around me and I couldn't tell why.
• 1:16:54
  I was just unlucky. He is a great character, isn't
• 1:16:58
  he? He's.
• 1:16:58
  So good I'd I'd read the books used about him.
• 1:17:01
  I would definitely read another book with Miles dashing in it.
• 1:17:05
  What does he say at one point? Away with you, bumpkin.
• 1:17:08
  I want to say that to somebody at some.
• 1:17:14
  Point Joe Anybody some work that annoy you?
• 1:17:16
  No, but I have started. You know how he departs a scene
• 1:17:19
  by swishing his Cape and going and you?
• 1:17:23
  I have started doing that. That's very.
• 1:17:25
  Thank you. Yeah, well.
• 1:17:27
  Thank you. Don't tell me you don't know
• 1:17:29
  what an anomaly is. Crocker I've got your measure.
• 1:17:34
  That was very heroic. Crocker, you'll have an extra 2
• 1:17:37
  shillings in your. Payment.
• 1:17:40
  Thank you. Sir, it is.
• 1:17:45
  It is worth pointing out this is a very funny book because I know
• 1:17:47
  we say a couple of times, but you know, I think you can, you
• 1:17:51
  can smooth over a lot. If you've written a funny, read
• 1:17:54
  it. It is a very dense book.
• 1:17:56
  It is a very dark book, but it's that again, it's Doctor Who.
• 1:17:59
  It it. I'd love my Doctor Who with a
• 1:18:01
  sense of humour. I think it has to have that to
• 1:18:03
  work for me, and this has it in spades.
• 1:18:08
  Andrew, Luke, anything anything else to say about von Agra?
• 1:18:13
  Do you want? To hear what?
• 1:18:16
  This time, everyone, yeah. Go on, we love fan theories
• 1:18:20
  here. OK, so I my nerdy fan fan theory
• 1:18:26
  was every time I listen to the Stones of Venice, I'm a little
• 1:18:29
  bit confused by it because I'm like, oh, so this is set in the
• 1:18:32
  future, but everyone is sort of acting like it's the past.
• 1:18:37
  What's going on there? Maybe the Venice of the Stones
• 1:18:40
  of Venice is the Venice of Europa rather than and that's
• 1:18:44
  how it can be in the future. But feel like it's the past of
• 1:18:48
  that elegant. Everybody talks in that Florida
• 1:18:51
  star when the Stones of Venice, don't they?
• 1:18:52
  From Managra. I hope rock.
• 1:18:55
  Team popped that on on my dog walk this morning.
• 1:18:57
  Now I put in some stones of Venice.
• 1:18:59
  Oh my God, you just put me in the mood for that.
• 1:19:01
  They can have that one for free for the next edition of About
• 1:19:04
  Time. And since, and I did check, you
• 1:19:08
  know, I put into my podcast Capture Managra to see if any
• 1:19:11
  bugger had talked about at any time apart from that para 3.
• 1:19:15
  Yeah. And nobody had.
• 1:19:16
  So. But now that fan theory is
• 1:19:18
  officially Canon. It'll be on TARDIS wiki before
• 1:19:22
  you know it. Hang on, anyone got the editing
• 1:19:25
  details I'll get on there? Luke, any any last thoughts?
• 1:19:32
  No, I think I've, I've, I've gushed enough.
• 1:19:34
  It was, it was funny. It was sort of, kind of
• 1:19:37
  horrifying. The battery stuff really got to
• 1:19:39
  me. I think I'd strip other things
• 1:19:41
  back because that, that whole battery part is a plot point
• 1:19:45
  that comes up with Pierce and Inspirano because of their
• 1:19:47
  connections together and stuff. But yeah, the.
• 1:19:51
  So, yeah, the border part, it wasn't me.
• 1:19:53
  It wasn't me. And this time everyone's looking
• 1:19:55
  at him. It's like, yeah, we know it was,
• 1:19:57
  but it wasn't. I like, I like the Richelieu
• 1:20:01
  scheming. I like, oh, man, there's just so
• 1:20:04
  many, so many things. I think the the first time I
• 1:20:07
  read this book, the Vatican stuff might have been my least
• 1:20:10
  favorite. Yeah, it must say it's my
• 1:20:11
  favorite stuff now. But I can say what it is is
• 1:20:15
  taking the piss out of all this kind of stuff.
• 1:20:16
  And. He's making it at least trying
• 1:20:19
  to make it make it funny. I had a few laughs.
• 1:20:23
  OK, that world building as well, the where the vampires say, I
• 1:20:26
  think it's a vampire say cat lick your heart 1st and then
• 1:20:30
  you're going, that's a weird phrase but really spooky.
• 1:20:32
  And then you find out where it came from right at the end.
• 1:20:34
  Like, it's little things cooking into place like that.
• 1:20:38
  It's really spooky, isn't it, Cat?
• 1:20:40
  Lick your heart. Yes, Andrew just did a little
• 1:20:45
  lick there. Did you notice?
• 1:20:49
  Well, that's that is actually a nice way to sort of hand it over
• 1:20:52
  to you there, Andrew, licking at your way at us because you're
• 1:20:55
  you're doing the last segment of this book club episode lick
• 1:20:59
  away. Well, the question is, which
• 1:21:04
  novel companion would you most like to lick?
• 1:21:10
  No, it is not. It is Part 2 of the discussion
• 1:21:12
  that we started last episode where we decided which of the
• 1:21:17
  companions we were going to send to the Eye of Orion because they
• 1:21:20
  were our top favorite companions.
• 1:21:23
  But today we are banishing 3 companions to the Death Zone
• 1:21:28
  where they're going to fight drashigs and drown in excrement.
• 1:21:36
  I am going to hand over to Luke for his top three worst novel
• 1:21:42
  companions. Well, three is new ice.
• 1:21:49
  I understand what I'm going for with her, but you didn't really
• 1:21:52
  need her. She's gone bye.
• 1:21:54
  She she left on heaven. There she is off in the sunset.
• 1:21:57
  I mean I don't mind. No, we get set piece and I
• 1:21:59
  really love that book, but we didn't she didn't need to come
• 1:22:03
  back, especially since you've already got like you've got a
• 1:22:07
  better companion, like right there in in beneath Summerfield.
• 1:22:10
  You could have her be the mainstay companion and then
• 1:22:14
  bring in a couple more like they eventually do with original sin
• 1:22:17
  after they get rid of new new ice.
• 1:22:20
  I don't know. I feel like new ice is just too
• 1:22:24
  much. It's like two 90s.
• 1:22:27
  That's just like way two 90s and she's aged like fine milk over
• 1:22:33
  the years, I think. I don't think that's a concept
• 1:22:35
  or character. A new Ace that has aged
• 1:22:37
  particularly well. It's and they really tried hard
• 1:22:42
  to make that work, but no one wants that.
• 1:22:45
  Everyone when everyone thinks of Ace, they think of Ace for the
• 1:22:47
  TV show and they don't want to. Even me, I don't want to think
• 1:22:51
  of it. Think of Ace all the time as
• 1:22:54
  this gun toting. It would be fine if that's what
• 1:22:57
  she was, but she's a bitch too. I don't know, get out of here.
• 1:23:03
  Like not not an endearing kind of bitchy person like Tegan,
• 1:23:08
  Tegan is, but I mean like a full on bitch, like get out of here,
• 1:23:11
  go away. Why are you travelling on this
• 1:23:14
  thing? Like there's no point off.
• 1:23:17
  And then then set piece happens. I'm like, oh wow, I really like
• 1:23:20
  that book. So there is that.
• 1:23:23
  That's that's what I put there. Oh man, this is this is really
• 1:23:30
  tough because I kind of like most of the novel companions and
• 1:23:34
  I can't really think of any that I dislike except for, well, new
• 1:23:42
  Ice and maybe my number one. But I guess like he's got to go
• 1:23:45
  somewhere and I got to put him in there.
• 1:23:47
  And his mission statement for writing this companion was let's
• 1:23:51
  take a companion and make him a bit shit, Andy, and mission
• 1:23:56
  accomplished in both time of your life and killing ground.
• 1:24:00
  I'm going to go for Grant Markham I.
• 1:24:02
  Thought you loved Grant. I thought you were.
• 1:24:05
  Granted, put on fan. Yeah, I am.
• 1:24:07
  But you've got to put 3 companions on this and this.
• 1:24:10
  Is like Andrew put Sam Jones on there.
• 1:24:12
  I know. But I got I got him.
• 1:24:15
  I got him on there because mission accomplished you.
• 1:24:18
  I like him. He's a really interesting
• 1:24:20
  character. But when you read, read him as a
• 1:24:24
  like he's a companion. Like you read him, you're like,
• 1:24:27
  oh, he's a good character, but that doesn't work.
• 1:24:28
  He shouldn't be in the Titus, but he is.
• 1:24:31
  And and and then, but rather than it not working, Steve Lyons
• 1:24:36
  kind of uses that concept and kind of make something awesome
• 1:24:40
  out of it. You know what?
• 1:24:40
  I'm going to swap him around. I'll make him third.
• 1:24:43
  And because I had to put someone in last first place, I guess
• 1:24:47
  then we'll put a new ace right there.
• 1:24:49
  And then we'll go with the sort of companion that makes me oh so
• 1:24:54
  bored. And and it's Sam because I find
• 1:25:01
  modern day modern companions like Rose, Martha, Amy Pond,
• 1:25:09
  Clara and who? Millie Gibson.
• 1:25:14
  I can't remember Ruby Sunday. We just read it, but we've read
• 1:25:17
  it. Yeah, called Ruby Red.
• 1:25:20
  I don't particularly like any of those characters.
• 1:25:23
  They all feel like variations of the same thing.
• 1:25:27
  And that's I wouldn't mind so much.
• 1:25:29
  Like. I know, but Luke, what about
• 1:25:31
  Sarah Jane? Yeah, but like after Sarah
• 1:25:33
  Jane's just like little savage lady before Sarah Jane.
• 1:25:36
  Yeah. Modern as well.
• 1:25:37
  But it totally, I don't know, the old series kind of varied up
• 1:25:42
  the kinds of companions that we got.
• 1:25:44
  So do the books for the most part, rather than making them
• 1:25:48
  all modern day women. And hey, I'm a straight dude.
• 1:25:52
  I don't mind some one of these women are very beautiful and I
• 1:25:57
  don't mind that they cast the roles that they are that they
• 1:26:01
  cast. That's fine.
• 1:26:02
  Everyone likes a bit of eye candy and stuff, but I just oh,
• 1:26:06
  what year are you from today? Oh my God, fuck off.
• 1:26:11
  You know, like Sam James, like couldn't she be from like 100
• 1:26:17
  years ago, 100 years in the future?
• 1:26:18
  Something like, I don't know, I, I'm just a little tired of the
• 1:26:23
  present. As I said in the last book club
• 1:26:25
  episode, We, we ever did, we ever did.
• 1:26:28
  We're doing that now. The last book club episode.
• 1:26:31
  You know, if I was, if I was on a desert, if you're doing a
• 1:26:35
  desert planet things, Mr. Joe, you know what my least favorite
• 1:26:39
  planet is fucking this one right now because so many Doctor Who
• 1:26:44
  stories just sit on there and I'm like, you really only pick.
• 1:26:48
  How does that work in storyline when you only pick people up
• 1:26:50
  from like a certain period? Like, I don't know.
• 1:26:52
  Is he timest? Is that is that the thing?
• 1:26:55
  Like, yeah. So Sam Jones is the archetype of
• 1:26:59
  my least favorite kind of companion and that's why I put
• 1:27:03
  her in the bottom spot. Yeah, a little winded, but there
• 1:27:05
  you go. Oh, Sam.
• 1:27:08
  Well, John, who are you going to slice and dice on the chess
• 1:27:12
  board of Wrestle on? Well, well, it was easy as pie.
• 1:27:19
  These choices let me. Tell you it.
• 1:27:23
  Was easy as pie. No, easy as pie, that's what he.
• 1:27:29
  Said. It's an entry coder.
• 1:27:33
  Oh, you've got the accent. I mean, I am going to have a
• 1:27:41
  couple of choices here which have I am in common with Luke
• 1:27:44
  on. I will start with Sam and in 3rd
• 1:27:48
  place because she really rises above a template.
• 1:27:56
  There's so few writers who actually work out what to do
• 1:28:01
  with her, how to make her interesting, you know?
• 1:28:03
  Laura smiles, turns her into Dark Sam, which is an easy move
• 1:28:07
  from someone. He's a comic reader in the 90s.
• 1:28:09
  You go, oh, what can I do if I turn into Mirror Universe Sam,
• 1:28:13
  You know, she's got the mustache, you know, and
• 1:28:14
  whatever. But it's, you know, it's, you
• 1:28:19
  know, part of the Uncle Terry. God bless him.
• 1:28:22
  He cannot write a modern young girl like that.
• 1:28:26
  I see it as you know, I'm middle-aged here now that I
• 1:28:30
  would hesitate to try and write a a 17 year old girl without a
• 1:28:35
  ton of research because it it's so gig doctor is a gig doctor is
• 1:28:40
  a terrible introduction for her. She you just get her.
• 1:28:44
  I think she's at the start and the end and that's it.
• 1:28:46
  And you get no details. You get no idea who is she, What
• 1:28:50
  does she want? I would rarely find that out in
• 1:28:54
  any of the books. I think she picked out Kate
• 1:28:58
  Norman and John Bloom are one of the very few who do have an idea
• 1:29:02
  what to do with her. And and that's kind of
• 1:29:05
  frustrating to me because in a range of this, you do need a
• 1:29:10
  slightly generic kind of companion.
• 1:29:13
  Just you give them a little, you know, when when you read Benny
• 1:29:15
  in. OK, yeah, she's, she's really a
• 1:29:20
  20th century character transported, you know, five
• 1:29:23
  centuries up the road because her interests very conveniently
• 1:29:26
  are 20th century. But, you know, you, you've got
• 1:29:30
  the character, but she's, you know, she's sarcastic.
• 1:29:33
  She's got that cutting Wick. All you need is that kind of one
• 1:29:36
  defining character. And Sam Jones just doesn't get
• 1:29:39
  that to me. And then second place, I'd go
• 1:29:44
  more general than Luke. I'd go just Ace as a whole in
• 1:29:48
  the way she's been written right across the board because she's
• 1:29:52
  the first few books, you know? Oh, my God, she it's, it's OK.
• 1:29:58
  Which virgin writer is feeling horny today?
• 1:30:00
  Let's have a look. It's, you know, oh, John Peel
• 1:30:05
  when he brings her in. Andrew Cartmel.
• 1:30:08
  I wonder if he had a covert conversation with Sophia.
• 1:30:10
  Would have to read it. Watch that one, you know Andrew.
• 1:30:15
  Do you? Believe they made her get
• 1:30:17
  dressed up in that skin tight black costume for a photo shoot.
• 1:30:22
  I mean, I can believe she'd do it.
• 1:30:24
  She'd do anything for a bit of money.
• 1:30:25
  David Mckinty. Very.
• 1:30:26
  Morning. Oh boy oh boy.
• 1:30:29
  Wank fantasies. Yeah, again.
• 1:30:32
  And Andrew. And look, here he is absolutely
• 1:30:35
  right. There's not much need to bring
• 1:30:37
  it back. You could do, you know, I think
• 1:30:39
  beyond Lucifer Rising where you get the revenge plot in there.
• 1:30:43
  Now that's a nice and interesting idea, but there's no
• 1:30:48
  reason for her to be in the books apart from they just want
• 1:30:51
  to keep Ace hanging around. I I love Ace on screen.
• 1:30:55
  You know, she yeah, I'd say like Katie Manning, Sophie over maybe
• 1:30:59
  isn't the best actress, but she has presents, she has a tenner
• 1:31:03
  charisma and she's a lot of fun. And this new ace just isn't any
• 1:31:09
  fun to be, you know, why would she hang?
• 1:31:11
  Why would anyone hang around with it?
• 1:31:13
  Because she goes to both be teenage mode all the bloody
• 1:31:16
  time. It's just, it's just no.
• 1:31:19
  Why are you in? This place.
• 1:31:22
  Yeah, it it's what Part 1 makes that kind of run around falls a
• 1:31:26
  shadow parasite. She's Part 1 makes it such a
• 1:31:30
  bloody chore. You need someone with a bit of
• 1:31:33
  wet, a bit sparkle to get you through those books and it's
• 1:31:36
  just not there because you've always got ace dragging you
• 1:31:39
  back. So kind of me in the middle of
• 1:31:41
  what I think is the best kind of period in your events.
• 1:31:44
  You've got that little run and there's it's almost an endurable
• 1:31:47
  and it picks up again. One kind of Ace goes away a
• 1:31:50
  little number one. Then I'm going to put again, I
• 1:31:56
  think mainly because I think this character is compassion.
• 1:32:05
  I, I really want to love compassion.
• 1:32:09
  It's because Lawrence, it's, it's Lawrence Miles has, has an
• 1:32:14
  idea for compassion. Oh, no, it wasn't a good idea.
• 1:32:17
  You know, he wanted her to be a broodmare for a new, new species
• 1:32:22
  of TARDIS. But he doesn't play well with
• 1:32:25
  other people. He he kind of wants the whole
• 1:32:28
  Sam pit to himself to be kind of the king of Sam pit.
• 1:32:31
  I don't think consciously, but he wants to be this driving
• 1:32:35
  force. I think that his ideas are so
• 1:32:37
  strong. You can see why Steve Cole went
• 1:32:40
  along with it because they're so strong.
• 1:32:45
  But compassion, OK. I've read Frontier World's for
• 1:32:49
  Ian Martin's podcast and she's so well written in that.
• 1:32:53
  And it's frustrating because she's she's got a present.
• 1:32:55
  She's got this like sarcastic line.
• 1:32:57
  She's bringing everything down and you go, this is kind of a
• 1:33:00
  really app for the time. But again, so often people don't
• 1:33:05
  know what to do with her. And even when she becomes the
• 1:33:08
  TARDIS, it's AII think again because you're you have Doctor
• 1:33:13
  Who books who aren't you know, I'm I'm not saying they're not
• 1:33:15
  strong writers, but they're not the type of writers who
• 1:33:18
  necessarily have they. They have almost too much
• 1:33:21
  reverence for Doctor Who to do anything really daring and
• 1:33:25
  fascinating with the idea. And they'll be hemmed in by the
• 1:33:27
  rank. So I think compassion is almost
• 1:33:30
  too big by the range. It's almost too good or too big
• 1:33:35
  an idea. I'm desperate to do a compassion
• 1:33:39
  book with this book club now because I want to tell you how
• 1:33:42
  wrong you are. Well, Joe, what's that coming
• 1:33:51
  over The hell? Is it a Rustom Warrior robot
• 1:33:55
  who's going to get filled with his arrows of death?
• 1:33:59
  Oh, glorious. Oh, the thought, the thought of
• 1:34:02
  these three being speared by those arrows fills me with joy.
• 1:34:06
  I. Am not.
• 1:34:08
  I refuse to put Sam Jones on my list because I have had a bit of
• 1:34:12
  a revelation with the character reading Seeing Eye recently and
• 1:34:16
  I actually think Sam Jones doesn't work in a lot of ways.
• 1:34:22
  And they do the new ace thing with her and then she works a
• 1:34:26
  lot better than she did. They fix a lot of the mistakes
• 1:34:30
  so I'm not adding Sam Jones. And just off my list as well is
• 1:34:33
  Dodo. Poor Dodo who just suffers from
• 1:34:37
  so many indignities in the books.
• 1:34:40
  Like she didn't do anything wrong but she gets space
• 1:34:43
  syphilis and shot in the head. Like I do feel very sorry for
• 1:34:46
  it, but I can't add her either because my first number three is
• 1:34:52
  not really a companion of the Doctor, more a companion of
• 1:34:55
  Sarah Jane Smith. But he only appears in two
• 1:34:58
  stories. I did nearly have him.
• 1:35:00
  It's Jeremy Fitz Oliver himself, just agonizingly terrible PG
• 1:35:07
  Wodehouse character that pops up in the Ghost of N Space.
• 1:35:11
  And what's the other one? Paradise of Death?
• 1:35:14
  Oh. Boy, I think he's.
• 1:35:15
  In the Island of Death as well. I think he's supposed to be
• 1:35:19
  funny, but he's uninsurably annoying.
• 1:35:23
  Isn't he as well? Oh, is he might be.
• 1:35:27
  Oh. Yes.
• 1:35:28
  No, Yes, Sarah talks about him. Yeah.
• 1:35:30
  Yeah. So the weather fits.
• 1:35:32
  Oliver. And an island of death.
• 1:35:34
  That's right. Paradise be on the island, and
• 1:35:37
  they're both of death. Unfortunately it doesn't die in
• 1:35:40
  either of them though, so. Annoying the death The 40th
• 1:35:44
  anniversary story. Like the second, I said a
• 1:35:46
  companion of Sarah Day and you all knew what I was talking
• 1:35:48
  about so you know it must have been a.
• 1:35:51
  Run up on you. I have a soft spot for for
• 1:35:53
  Jeremy just because I did, because I had ghost event space
• 1:35:58
  taped off the radio when I was a kid.
• 1:35:59
  So yeah, it's one of those ones I've just got a blind spot for.
• 1:36:03
  I just I had this. Oh, Sarah, wait for me, Sarah.
• 1:36:07
  Well, we're doing just event space on this book club, aren't
• 1:36:10
  we? So I can't wait to come on that
• 1:36:13
  tourist. It's so terrible.
• 1:36:19
  My number two choice is oh, just one of the most miserably boring
• 1:36:24
  characters I can imagine, and that is Chris Quedge or Cheve or
• 1:36:29
  however you want to say his name.
• 1:36:32
  But me, he's so boring, like, oh, you know, I should love him
• 1:36:36
  because he's a big blonde hunk teddy bear, right?
• 1:36:38
  I should absolutely adore him, but he just trails around after
• 1:36:42
  Ross like a lost puppy dog until the point where she dies and
• 1:36:45
  then he's got a run of stories where he's miserably, you know,
• 1:36:49
  missing her all the time. I just don't think many writers
• 1:36:53
  get a handle on that character. I think Ross is hit a miss from
• 1:36:57
  book to book, but I think she can be amazingly good.
• 1:37:01
  But every Chris Quedge book I have read for this book club, he
• 1:37:05
  has just been hedious in the extreme.
• 1:37:08
  I just don't think there's much to him.
• 1:37:10
  I don't. I don't think he's a strong
• 1:37:12
  enough personality to drive stories, and I think the only
• 1:37:16
  way they could possibly make him interesting is by making his
• 1:37:19
  life utterly miserable, which is what they do in that last run of
• 1:37:22
  new adventures. I was going to say we need to
• 1:37:25
  read the the the the room with No doors, because that's a
• 1:37:28
  really good Chris book, but then you just said the other thing.
• 1:37:30
  I'm like, yeah, yeah, he's not having fun in that either.
• 1:37:33
  There's. No one allowed to be happy in
• 1:37:35
  that last run of new adventures. Betty gets divorced.
• 1:37:38
  Ross dies. Chris is miserable.
• 1:37:41
  This sure dies horribly. Bless them.
• 1:37:46
  Yeah. So Chris Quedge.
• 1:37:47
  I even give someone a blowie one story that should make me perk
• 1:37:51
  up a little bit. But no, I just don't think
• 1:37:55
  anyone quite gets a handle on who he is, what he's doing and
• 1:38:00
  why he wants to be there. So, yeah, Chris Quedge is my
• 1:38:03
  second choice. And of course, of course it's
• 1:38:06
  new Ace. I mean, I don't, I'm a bit
• 1:38:09
  indifferent about normal Ace anyway.
• 1:38:11
  And you know, thank God she's divorced from Sophie Aldred in
• 1:38:14
  the book. So we haven't got to put up with
• 1:38:16
  that because in Big Finish it's oh, it's terrible.
• 1:38:19
  But I said it in a recent episode.
• 1:38:22
  I just think there are genuinely good books like Conundrum, where
• 1:38:26
  Ace literally makes a almost flawless book a great book.
• 1:38:33
  You know she will bring it down a few rungs.
• 1:38:36
  She's toxic. Reader enforces shadow.
• 1:38:39
  I mean, she's psychotic. The woman.
• 1:38:42
  I don't understand why the doctor still wants her around.
• 1:38:45
  I don't understand why Bernie Summerfield wants to hang out
• 1:38:47
  with her because she's horrible to her.
• 1:38:51
  Yeah. And I don't think it is a it
• 1:38:54
  isn't a natural progression going from loose Lucifer rising
• 1:38:59
  when she comes back to set piece.
• 1:39:01
  I don't see a journey that she's going on.
• 1:39:03
  It's just that she's written out in set piece.
• 1:39:05
  So Kate Allmer goes, Oh my God, I better just make her endurable
• 1:39:08
  just before she goes. And she does it brilliantly.
• 1:39:11
  And it's a great read. And Ace is very maturely
• 1:39:13
  written. But I was reading that thinking,
• 1:39:15
  well, why wasn't she written like this since Loose Verizon?
• 1:39:19
  A very, very odd choice. And Stephen B said in that
• 1:39:23
  episode I brought out this week, the new adventures, once they've
• 1:39:27
  written out Ace, they should have brought in Bernice.
• 1:39:29
  That should have been the new regulars, the doctor in Bernice.
• 1:39:32
  Really fun combo and just plowed ahead and done something
• 1:39:35
  original, you know, with the pair of them.
• 1:39:37
  They bring Ace back in and it just, it weighs it down like an
• 1:39:41
  anchor until she goes. And interestingly, where Ace
• 1:39:43
  does go, what do you get? Sanctuary in human nature
• 1:39:47
  suddenly. In original the.
• 1:39:48
  Range is up here. It's it's literally flying high
• 1:39:52
  because this miserable character isn't weighing us down anymore.
• 1:39:56
  That's my list. Oh, thank you very much.
• 1:39:59
  Well, it's over to me to. We play the game of Andrew.
• 1:40:06
  Yes, I can't. We give you a metaphor.
• 1:40:08
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:40:09
  Who do you want to shove into that that room that the doctors
• 1:40:12
  bricked into in The Impossible Astronaut?
• 1:40:15
  Oh, oh, you've gone outside of the death Zone.
• 1:40:18
  Oh, oh, sorry, who's on that? Who's on that chess board?
• 1:40:22
  Who's on Andrew's Chess? Or or just push them back down a
• 1:40:25
  very small incline. Who do you want to force to into
• 1:40:31
  a long journey with John Perry in a miserable quarry?
• 1:40:35
  Who do you want to eat? A pineapple.
• 1:40:40
  Well, chomping on Herndel's pineapple today would be.
• 1:40:48
  Herndel's Pineapple. In in a move that will surprise
• 1:40:53
  no one, new Ace. Somebody must like her.
• 1:41:00
  Yeah, well, I, I mean, I don't have much more to add than what
• 1:41:04
  you've already said, but the thing that the thing that I feel
• 1:41:09
  find weird about her is that they made her this sort of space
• 1:41:12
  soldier psycho, which doesn't really feel like it fits with
• 1:41:16
  her exit in Love and War at all, where she sort of goes up with
• 1:41:19
  these space hippies. And it's like she's been
• 1:41:22
  disgusted by the violence and what happened to her lover in
• 1:41:26
  that book. So to me, it doesn't really feel
• 1:41:28
  like she's going to she's just like itching to join the
• 1:41:31
  military. So that always felt weird to me.
• 1:41:35
  And the way that they kind of make her adult is like torturing
• 1:41:38
  and murdering people and at which feels really weird and
• 1:41:43
  again, out of character and and actually after they've gotten
• 1:41:46
  rid of her and then they bring her back as a guest character,
• 1:41:49
  she works much better and. She's a little backpack time up
• 1:41:54
  thing. Yeah, I mean that that's a great
• 1:41:56
  exit race. And when they bring her back,
• 1:41:59
  like in in happy Endings, she works really well and they they
• 1:42:07
  lung Lungborough. She works well and she works she
• 1:42:09
  works well with Leela really well in that book.
• 1:42:11
  But with happy endings instead of like that sort of psycho
• 1:42:16
  killer thing causing the friction between her and Bernice
• 1:42:21
  and the doctor. And this is it's a more human
• 1:42:25
  way that they do. She sleeps with Jason or thinks
• 1:42:27
  that she sleeps with Jason. It's not actually Jason.
• 1:42:29
  We find out spoilers, but that's where that kind of interpersonal
• 1:42:34
  tension between the characters come from, from something real
• 1:42:37
  and human, not something space blown psycho killer guns.
• 1:42:45
  So yeah, do. You think they're writing her as
• 1:42:47
  Ripley of the Ripley from the end of Aliens?
• 1:42:50
  You know, get away from her you bitch.
• 1:42:52
  I think that's just the the one scene model for new Ace.
• 1:42:55
  I thought they were writing her as Storm Summers from Buffy You.
• 1:42:58
  Know oh God, it turns out unexpectedly, and the noise of
• 1:43:02
  crap out for the rest of the series.
• 1:43:04
  Just just loads of angst. Although did you ever hear
• 1:43:08
  Shadow of the Scourge where Sophia Walter played New Ice?
• 1:43:13
  Oh God, talk about the worst of both worlds.
• 1:43:17
  Look. You like this show?
• 1:43:19
  But I like that story. I, I, I, I.
• 1:43:22
  That's fine. But whoever like Paul Cornell,
• 1:43:26
  why did you have a scene where Ace has to get her ears fucking
• 1:43:30
  like that? Because now I have to listen to
• 1:43:32
  Sophie Aldridge screaming at the top of the line.
• 1:43:34
  I. Couldn't tell any difference
• 1:43:36
  from her normal acting. Sorry Andrew, we've derailed
• 1:43:40
  your list. Somehow derailed us into
• 1:43:43
  Aldridge hate, which never happens on the.
• 1:43:47
  Best yes muscle Kevin. My, my next choice is another
• 1:43:56
  one. You've already mentioned
• 1:43:59
  compassion. And again, well, with
• 1:44:03
  compassion, it's, it's about that potential that isn't
• 1:44:07
  realized. And it's not necessarily that
• 1:44:10
  she's a bad character, it's just that she's dealt with really
• 1:44:13
  badly in the books. And, you know, you've got a
• 1:44:16
  companion who becomes a living TARDIS and that is so
• 1:44:21
  interesting and something we've never done before.
• 1:44:24
  And then for most, most of her arc, she's just sort of like
• 1:44:28
  ditched or she's accidentally dematerializes for half the
• 1:44:31
  story or she's trapped in a force field or something.
• 1:44:34
  So you never apart from like those sort of tent poles of the
• 1:44:37
  Ark, you never really explore what that means and what it
• 1:44:41
  means to be a human TARDIS. And they bring in that really
• 1:44:47
  sort of creepy breeding and rape metaphors with her, which just,
• 1:44:52
  you know, why do that? That's yeah.
• 1:44:56
  So yeah, I feel like there was a really interesting concept there
• 1:45:01
  and a character who sometimes works, but in the majority of
• 1:45:04
  her arc just isn't really present.
• 1:45:06
  They're just sort of standard Doctor Who stories that you
• 1:45:09
  can't tell with that character in them because she's too
• 1:45:12
  powerful. So they just get rid of her.
• 1:45:14
  And it's like, oh, couldn't we have had like a really
• 1:45:18
  considered arc where you've drawn these writers together and
• 1:45:22
  you're telling a story with that character and tell stories that
• 1:45:25
  can only be told with that character?
• 1:45:27
  Not just a standard based on just Under Siege, run around,
• 1:45:31
  whatever, but with a character who's a human TARDIS, like, why
• 1:45:34
  are we doing that? So that's my frustration with
• 1:45:37
  compassion. I would love to do a
• 1:45:40
  compassionate book though. Let's.
• 1:45:41
  Do it. I've I've never read
• 1:45:44
  interference and I would love to do interference.
• 1:45:47
  Oh. We'll add that to the list.
• 1:45:53
  So #3 yeah, another BBC Books companion and another one again,
• 1:46:01
  who I think didn't have their potential realized, and another
• 1:46:05
  companion who I also think is much worse than Sam Jones Ricks.
• 1:46:15
  So tricks. She just sort of appears in the
• 1:46:18
  end of the books. She doesn't really get a proper
• 1:46:20
  introduction story. I think there's some sort of
• 1:46:23
  behind the scenes reason why there was a novel that fell
• 1:46:27
  through that was meant to properly introduce the character
• 1:46:29
  that came between Timeless and The Last Resort that just felt,
• 1:46:34
  no, I think that was an earlier compassion one.
• 1:46:36
  But I think there was some sort of thing that went on that meant
• 1:46:39
  she just sort of appeared and she's sort of this mysterious
• 1:46:43
  character. But she's the mysterious
• 1:46:45
  character who we just learned nothing about.
• 1:46:47
  And she's so generic. And when you're reading the
• 1:46:50
  books, as I was at the time, as you've seen from the little
• 1:46:53
  notes that I used to write in the, I was so hooked on, like,
• 1:46:58
  what is this mystery going to be?
• 1:46:59
  Who is this mysterious character?
• 1:47:01
  They've just ditched Angie for this character.
• 1:47:03
  So she must be great. Like if we're deciding that that
• 1:47:06
  character doesn't work and we want to bring in someone new to
• 1:47:09
  bring in something different to these books, no, goes nowhere.
• 1:47:13
  She's completely generic. She never again, she never
• 1:47:17
  really gets a story. She she's just a sort of
• 1:47:20
  background character in that last run of books.
• 1:47:23
  We never get like the tricks going home and finding out what
• 1:47:26
  she's running for from. I think there's maybe a little
• 1:47:29
  bit of that in the Gallifrey Chronicles, but there's so many
• 1:47:31
  other plot threads that need to be wrapped up.
• 1:47:33
  It's. Such an old scene.
• 1:47:35
  It's in the middle of that vore invasion and sorry Luke, Luke,
• 1:47:39
  take your hair favours off. He hasn't read it yet.
• 1:47:42
  And the policeman just comes up to him and goes, Patricia Joanne
• 1:47:46
  Pullman, you're under arrest for murdering your father.
• 1:47:49
  And I was like, what? What's going on?
• 1:47:52
  OK. And then that's it.
• 1:47:54
  We don't find out anything else because they go on the run back
• 1:48:00
  in the. Room yeah.
• 1:48:02
  So I feel like, you know, there's such an opportunity
• 1:48:04
  there for someone to pick up that character and do something
• 1:48:07
  with her in a way that often happens with with characters of
• 1:48:14
  the past and has happened with TV characters.
• 1:48:16
  That a writer comes in at a later point and really owns that
• 1:48:20
  character and turns them into something new and fulfills all
• 1:48:23
  that potential. I mean, it's unlikely at this
• 1:48:25
  point that anyone's going to be doing that with tricks,
• 1:48:28
  McMillan. But I can dream that.
• 1:48:31
  I did AI did an interview with Mark Michalowski and I think he
• 1:48:35
  probably wrote the best tricks book in Half Life where she's
• 1:48:40
  taken over by somebody, somebody and it's literally playing on
• 1:48:43
  the fact that she wears masks and in that she's forced to do
• 1:48:46
  it. And he said in an interview he
• 1:48:49
  wanted to write that book and like the new series was coming
• 1:48:53
  back. The slots were full.
• 1:48:55
  And it's so annoying because you've got a Half life, you've
• 1:48:59
  got Tomorrow, Windows, Destiny, Memorial, Sleep of Reason and
• 1:49:04
  what's. The.
• 1:49:06
  Thank you. They're all stand alone, so it
• 1:49:08
  could have been in any one of those slots.
• 1:49:10
  Yeah, there, there were like 5 books that could have been this,
• 1:49:13
  which could have been looking at our core characters that were
• 1:49:16
  meant to feel something for. But no, we're just doing some
• 1:49:19
  monster of the week thing that connects to nothing.
• 1:49:21
  And it was so frustrating to read that at the time.
• 1:49:24
  Yeah, particularly that to the Slaughter slot because to the
• 1:49:26
  slot was a nothing story almost. Yeah, and that's I can't
• 1:49:29
  remember. Anything about it?
• 1:49:31
  There's, there's a chick, is it a chicken with a head, man's
• 1:49:34
  head or something? There's, there's some chickens
• 1:49:36
  in there. That's all I remember is.
• 1:49:38
  It a horse riding a man. Only in Luke's fantasies.
• 1:49:50
  So hang on, let me try and do the numbers there.
• 1:49:52
  So we've got 4 I'm. Sorry someone has to bring that
• 1:49:54
  up every episode from that. Horse riding.
• 1:50:01
  It was so funny because I opened up my Twitter the other day, you
• 1:50:04
  know, and there was a horse doing obscene things and I saw,
• 1:50:07
  I thought of Luke straight away. We had, we had four votes for
• 1:50:15
  New ICE, we had one vote for tricks, two votes for
• 1:50:19
  compassion, one vote for Jeremy Fitz Oliver, one vote for Chris
• 1:50:26
  Quedge. Who am I missing?
• 1:50:29
  Two votes. Oh, and two votes.
• 1:50:31
  I said wow, and I thought Sam was going to be absolutely
• 1:50:34
  blasted. I forgot, Andrew, you quite like
• 1:50:36
  Sam Jones. Well, you.
• 1:50:41
  Never damned. That's all I can say.
• 1:50:43
  Yeah. Raise it.
• 1:50:43
  Get. Out.
• 1:50:44
  He's not here. Exactly Where are we going next?
• 1:50:48
  What are we going to be talking? I alluded to it earlier, but I
• 1:50:51
  didn't actually say what it was. We should go to Wonderland, I
• 1:50:54
  tell you. Oh my.
• 1:50:56
  God, we're. Following that white white
• 1:50:58
  rabbit all the way all the way to.
• 1:51:00
  Look at Luke dancing because it's a 5th.
• 1:51:02
  Doctor booklet it's. Written by Paul Mars as well.
• 1:51:06
  Oh my God. Oh my God.
• 1:51:08
  Yeah. And in my charity, my wife
• 1:51:12
  absolutely loves Alice in Wonderland.
• 1:51:15
  So I'm like, all right, yeah, I kind of, even if we weren't
• 1:51:18
  doing this as a book club. Yeah, this.
• 1:51:19
  This has my name on it. When I went into Waterstone to
• 1:51:22
  get it, there was a kid picked that off the shelf just before
• 1:51:26
  it. And he was going to.
• 1:51:28
  I was going to put it back, put it back.
• 1:51:32
  You should have just kicked him to the ground and nabbed him,
• 1:51:34
  you know? I needed but his mum was
• 1:51:36
  standing next to him so I had no hope.
• 1:51:38
  Kick her. As well, Paul Mars, Alice in
• 1:51:41
  Wonderland, The 5th Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Turlo.
• 1:51:45
  Oh boy, we're into some fun, I think.
• 1:51:50
  I can't wait. Thank you.
• 1:51:52
  Another Davidson story. How?
• 1:51:54
  Are we going to win this thing then?
• 1:51:55
  I'm never quite sure how to do that.
• 1:51:57
  I like how we just like bye. Bye now then.
• 1:52:06
  Reading. It should be.
• 1:52:08
  It should be something grandiose with Monagra Shakespearean.
• 1:52:12
  Farewell. And you.
• 1:52:15
  Oh, and you to. You.
• 1:52:18
  To you and to you.