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Hamster Book Club - Father Time by Lance Parkin · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:05
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 0:08
  My name is Joe Ford and I am delighted today to be shaking up
• 0:12
  the formula because you don't know this but we normally have
• 0:15
  four people on this thing. But you're so good.
• 0:17
  I've. I just wanted you to talk to.
• 0:19
  It's Mr. Michael Mills. Hello.
• 0:22
  Hello, absolutely no pressure. Should I say hello four times?
• 0:25
  There can be four of me. I can do that.
• 0:26
  But if the format was hello, 4 different languages please.
• 0:30
  OK, hello, North Star. Yeah, a bit Welshy, Bianvernu
• 0:38
  and Gallack Gallack. Throng Earthlet.
• 0:43
  What the hell was that? 2018, You call yourself a geek?
• 0:46
  Oh, sorry. Actually, I've just been doing
• 0:48
  the Judge Dread audios. You know my Big Finish podcast.
• 0:51
  Have you heard those? Yeah, with the with Toby, Toby
• 0:56
  Longworth. Toby Longworth, The man of a
• 0:59
  million voices. Yes, he's he's great, isn't he?
• 1:02
  I think he could tone his voice. We're already talking about
• 1:05
  audios. Look.
• 1:07
  I am the law. Oh, he's great.
• 1:10
  I'm not sure what Claire Buckfield from 2.4 Children's
• 1:12
  doing in there, but I can skip. The delights of early Big
• 1:16
  Finish. Oh, I love it.
• 1:20
  Michael. Hello.
• 1:20
  Welcome to Hamster. I'm so happy to have you here.
• 1:23
  I heard you on Dylan. Reese's too Hot for TV, and as I
• 1:26
  said to you off Mike, I was 10 minutes into your Rags and
• 1:30
  Combat Rock episode and I was looking up your social media
• 1:33
  profile to get you on this. You were that good.
• 1:35
  Have you done podcasting elsewhere apart from too hot for
• 1:38
  TV? Not not not really.
• 1:41
  Not unless anyone's caught me talking about Economic Research
• 1:46
  on the Imperial College Podcast, no.
• 1:47
  Apart from that, not much at all.
• 1:50
  So thank you for having me. Waste.
• 1:51
  What a waste. I'm hoping this opens the door.
• 1:53
  Then I'd like to ask you what your journey with Doctor Who
• 1:58
  books is, or whether that's sort of a big part of your Doctor Who
• 2:02
  experience. Oh yeah, it's a huge part of my
• 2:04
  Doctor Who experienced because I was born in the late 80s.
• 2:08
  So put it into context for you. The first Doctor Who I ever saw
• 2:12
  was the TV movie in 1996, which and I should have been the
• 2:16
  perfect age for it. But unfortunately for all its
• 2:19
  many great things, the TV movie is not made for 8 year old
• 2:21
  children, unlike most Doctor Who.
• 2:24
  So I saw that. But then I was aware of Doctor
• 2:27
  Who or something on UK gold and documentaries for a few years.
• 2:30
  But then for some reason 1/2 term I'd seen a trailer for B
• 2:34
  for BBCBBC websites. Why not find out more about
• 2:37
  classic programs? All that stuff?
• 2:39
  So looked on it and yeah. Really got into it through that
• 2:43
  playing the Top Trump's game that you could print out.
• 2:45
  And no, it's a giant maggot. I'm never gonna beat anything
• 2:49
  with that. But the only ongoing Doctor Who
• 2:52
  at that point was the books, so that was the ongoing Doctor Who
• 2:57
  for me. So I got into it.
• 2:57
  My first Doctor Who book was Storm Harvest.
• 3:01
  By Robert Yeah. Thank you.
• 3:05
  Thank you. I feel I I I feel like I am
• 3:09
  validated all these years later because when I I got it because
• 3:14
  WH Smith's in Shrewsbury had a surprising amount of Doctor Who.
• 3:18
  Books on the shelf for a program that hadn't been on air for 13
• 3:21
  years at this point and but that was the one that didn't look
• 3:24
  like scary and grown up and a bit proper sci-fi.
• 3:27
  It had a monster that hadn't seen and it had Sylvester McCoy
• 3:30
  and he seemed excitingly modern at the time.
• 3:33
  So I read it and I loved it. It's great.
• 3:34
  You know, widescreen Doctor Who And do you know, looking back at
• 3:37
  the time, I think because. They were, you know, the Virgin
• 3:41
  New Adventures had finished and obviously they'd taken those
• 3:43
  characters. The 7th Doctor, Nathan done so
• 3:46
  much that a lot of people, I think, just didn't like that
• 3:48
  kind of return to basic formula of it.
• 3:51
  But I didn't know about any of that and I was 12 or whatever or
• 3:54
  13. So I was like, yay.
• 3:57
  But I know, I thought it was great, but you go online as you
• 4:00
  did then on the message boards and start talking.
• 4:01
  And I was going, oh, it's a load of trash.
• 4:03
  Oh, it's rubbish. But all these years later you
• 4:05
  look back at them, they're they're brilliant.
• 4:07
  They're like, they're like new series adventures before the new
• 4:10
  series adventures were written. So yeah, that was my first
• 4:13
  Doctor Who book, and then for a few best part of the year
• 4:17
  afterwards, just played it safe for the past Doctor adventures
• 4:20
  and then. What we're going to be
• 4:22
  discussing finally got into the 8th Doctor Adventures with Mad
• 4:25
  Dogs and Englishmen by Paul Miles.
• 4:27
  Because without cover. Is that what tempted you to it,
• 4:32
  that cover? Well, I think weirdly, I think
• 4:36
  it was that it said it was also that it was the 100th Doctor Who
• 4:39
  book from the ends of all the books I could have chosen to
• 4:42
  emblazon that. I I I love it.
• 4:47
  I mean how much was it? Oh, it's a it's a great book.
• 4:50
  I mean you know Paul Mars is not octopus but other Doctor Who
• 4:54
  writers. But you know, he's a proper
• 4:55
  writer. You know what I mean?
• 4:56
  He and. It's it's it's magical realism.
• 5:02
  It's it's high camp. It's Star Wars and the Lord of
• 5:05
  the Rings. You know what?
• 5:06
  And Iris World Time as played by Shirley Bassey, I think in that
• 5:10
  one, isn't it? I've read it recently for the
• 5:12
  club. We haven't recorded it yet.
• 5:14
  And I was just like Ray, Harry House and George Lucas Jr. told,
• 5:17
  I mean, he's literally ripping everybody in this book.
• 5:21
  I think he's a genius because it's very clever, it's
• 5:24
  brilliantly structured, but it's a smooth read.
• 5:26
  It's such an easy read and it's so funny.
• 5:29
  He makes it look easy and it's not.
• 5:31
  It's not easy to write a book that's more.
• 5:33
  All all that full of stuff. Because you think about how many
• 5:36
  not just Doctor Who books, but you read any type in novels and
• 5:38
  how many of them is just plod, plod, plod, plod, plod, plod,
• 5:42
  plod. And every single day I've just
• 5:45
  had a memory and not to preempt your your later episode, but
• 5:47
  isn't there a character in that called George Fuckas?
• 5:50
  Yeah, there is. I think it's Fuchsia.
• 5:55
  Fuchsia. Sorry.
• 5:56
  I'm so sorry. I do apologise.
• 5:59
  Of course, George. Fuckers, yeah.
• 6:02
  It's my. It's my 20 year old memory
• 6:04
  failing me. It's just fact that they had
• 6:05
  adventures of Henrietta St. immediately before this, which
• 6:09
  is probably the more prestige novel, you know, as written as a
• 6:13
  historical document by possibly Bernie Summerfield, Riversong,
• 6:16
  whoever you want it to be written by Laura's mod.
• 6:19
  Oh, they could have stuck the 100 at the top of that.
• 6:21
  But no, the pink poodle smoking a cigarillo.
• 6:24
  That's the way we're going. Come on, the gold foil looked
• 6:27
  fantastic and the fans were in uproar, weren't they?
• 6:31
  Do you remember when that book won the pole that year?
• 6:34
  Oh God, there was a letter writing campaign.
• 6:36
  How dare you let this win the pole?
• 6:39
  And it and people like it's. OK, maybe you don't like garish
• 6:44
  stuff, you know, Maybe it wasn't your favorite cover.
• 6:47
  Some of the others are classy, obviously, but some people get
• 6:50
  properly, properly angry. No, this isn't Doctor Who is a
• 6:54
  serious programme, not watch much Doctor Who.
• 6:58
  If you think I'm not sure we're immune today, you know either.
• 7:01
  We haven't got, we haven't improved since then.
• 7:04
  No, this is very true. I Although, having said that,
• 7:08
  you know Star Wars people are worse.
• 7:11
  Yeah. So if you're firmly interested
• 7:12
  in style, what are they like then?
• 7:14
  Because I've never dipped my toes in Star Wars.
• 7:16
  I'm not entrenched in the Phantom there, not that
• 7:18
  necessarily cause myself been trenched the Phantom here, but
• 7:20
  I'm not appearing on Star Wars podcasts.
• 7:23
  Oh, they're scary. Like, you have to remember, it's
• 7:25
  a predominantly American. Fandom as well.
• 7:28
  So you know, it's a it's a gun owning country.
• 7:31
  So you take it all a bit more, it's a bit more gently.
• 7:35
  So these conversations can end in a very dramatic way then?
• 7:38
  I think there's a reason they pioneered remote recording for
• 7:41
  podcasts. Put it this way, you have, you
• 7:43
  have people in, you have people in Star Wars who who argue that
• 7:47
  the bit in the films that doesn't make sense is when one
• 7:50
  of the ships run Rams another ship, right?
• 7:54
  Oh, sounds a bit like Star Wars Star Trek fandom as well.
• 7:56
  Sorry. You know, I watched that film.
• 7:59
  What was the second film in the third trilogy?
• 8:04
  The Last Jedi. And that came out.
• 8:06
  And I've seen all of these YouTube videos popping up of
• 8:08
  people going, this is the worst bit of Tribe ever, the most
• 8:12
  toxic Star Wars film. You know, destroying the fandom.
• 8:15
  I watched the film. I thought that was bloody
• 8:17
  incredible. What are they talking about?
• 8:19
  Oh, it's because people they're. I mean there are, there are a
• 8:22
  lot of people and there are lots of phantoms who feel that the
• 8:25
  most important thing that their that their program, their film
• 8:30
  can do for them is to validate all of their insecurities and
• 8:34
  make them feel very important and very protected by it.
• 8:38
  So the moment anything begins to look a bit reflective or frankly
• 8:41
  not just like a cartoon that's been filmed with real actors,
• 8:44
  they get a bit scared about it. Terrifying isn't.
• 8:48
  It But if Doctor Who fans were like that, imagine so circling
• 8:52
  background to the books, did you then go and explore the Virgin
• 8:57
  output as well, or have you literally just explored the BBC
• 9:00
  books? No, go back and explore the
• 9:01
  versions in very kind of haphazard form.
• 9:04
  You know what turns up in in second hand book shops and stuff
• 9:07
  like that. But again, weirdly, just to top
• 9:09
  it off, my first virgin new adventure was Sky Pirates by
• 9:11
  Dave Stone, your first. My first virgin adventure was
• 9:15
  Sky Pirates. Which is, Which sets a probably
• 9:21
  inaccurate expectation of what the Virgin New Adventures are
• 9:23
  going to be like. But again, it's a heck of a lot
• 9:25
  of fun of a book. I wrote a review for that one of
• 9:28
  my blog and I that was where I coined the term.
• 9:31
  It's too, too. That book is too, too.
• 9:33
  It's too funny. It's too wacky.
• 9:36
  It's too serious. It's too graphic.
• 9:37
  It's too everything. You know, like it.
• 9:39
  Just rein it in a bit, Dave. And he does, actually.
• 9:41
  He does get there, I think eventually.
• 9:43
  But you know, he's trying hard on his first, isn't he?
• 9:47
  Oh, absolutely. The bit that stays with me is
• 9:49
  when they crash a spaceship onto a planet that look that looks
• 9:53
  like a snowman. And that's not even that's not
• 9:55
  even the peak of where it gets as a book.
• 9:58
  There's never a sentence more I've heard of, you know, a new
• 10:02
  writer, a fresh writer to Doctor Who universe.
• 10:05
  And it's a bit of a scary place to be, isn't it, with virgin
• 10:08
  writers, especially in the virgin range.
• 10:11
  All right, if I was to ask you, what was your favorite and your
• 10:14
  least favorite of Virgin's output?
• 10:17
  Oh God, that's a good question. Favorite of Virgin's output?
• 10:21
  Not best, not best favorite. Favorite.
• 10:23
  Well, fittingly for today's discussion, I think it's the
• 10:27
  dying days by Lance Park in the last one.
• 10:31
  Well. The last one chronologically,
• 10:33
  not the last one published. That must have been weird.
• 10:35
  They skipped so violas in and then they went back and
• 10:37
  published it afterwards. And it's the one where Ros dies,
• 10:40
  spoils there a hard drive crash or something along those lines.
• 10:44
  I'm sure I remember Benaronovitch admitting years
• 10:47
  later in Doctor Who Magazine that that was just a cover
• 10:49
  story, that he just hasn't written it.
• 10:51
  He he got like absolutely epic writer's block to the point of
• 10:56
  like just, you know, actually being quite a bad place about it
• 10:59
  because he done the also people which.
• 11:02
  It's another classic. Yes.
• 11:04
  I'll put. Yeah, exactly.
• 11:05
  He's like, well how on earth do I follow that up.
• 11:07
  And he just he just hit a absolute brick wall and
• 11:10
  eventually, you know to get the thing written Kate Orman came in
• 11:13
  and took it over and and finished it all.
• 11:17
  But but yeah, the The Dying Days, which is which is more
• 11:20
  like new series Doctor Who than anything else that was produced
• 11:23
  in the wilderness years, bar none.
• 11:25
  It's a fantastic book. It's you, sort of.
• 11:28
  Sort of wish they'd done more of that in The Virginia Adventures.
• 11:31
  It feels like a little bit of a, you know, at the very the dying
• 11:34
  days of the range of them going, oh, actually, do you know what?
• 11:38
  We never, I don't know if one's complaining about the TV movie
• 11:40
  and the fact that it didn't have monsters and alien invasions and
• 11:44
  the Doctor, but we never really did that, did we?
• 11:47
  No. Too busy torturing everybody for
• 11:50
  300 pages. Did you ever do force the shadow
• 11:54
  and parasite back-to-back? That is interminable, I thought.
• 11:58
  You don't. Don't bother.
• 11:59
  No. Worst one or that's a tougher
• 12:03
  question, I think. What are the ones I don't
• 12:06
  remember? I I remember being quite bored
• 12:11
  by Saint Anthony's fire and that's the only the only thing I
• 12:14
  remember about it is being quite bored.
• 12:15
  Mark Gatiss. His second one.
• 12:16
  Thank you. I couldn't even remember who
• 12:18
  wrote that one. Yeah.
• 12:20
  It's you. I cannot.
• 12:22
  I can remember very, very little about it other than just that.
• 12:26
  That was some Doctor Who. There we go then.
• 12:29
  Do you know when I watched The Christmas Invasion, I got huge
• 12:33
  dying days vibes from that, with the spaceship coming over London
• 12:37
  and just that sort of very contemporary alien invasion
• 12:40
  story? And do you remember the bit
• 12:42
  where Benny grabs hold of Paul McGann and, sorry, the Doctor
• 12:44
  and snogs him on the beds? I think they do a bit more than
• 12:48
  snog. Oh, do I?
• 12:49
  Oh, I've forgotten that. Well, it's it's implied, but I
• 12:52
  think, I think it's. I think it ends with her pushing
• 12:55
  him down onto the bed, OK. Which is strange because when
• 13:00
  we're in a position where the 8th Doctor could possibly have a
• 13:03
  romance when he's got no memories at all.
• 13:06
  In fact, he's rather chased during this 100 years of his
• 13:09
  life that we're going to talk about today.
• 13:12
  He is, bless him, feel a bit sorry, really.
• 13:14
  I mean, there must have been a moment, wasn't there?
• 13:16
  I hope so. What he had.
• 13:18
  Did you read? Casualties from War?
• 13:19
  The second one. No.
• 13:21
  So that that had a almost romance with a character called
• 13:25
  Mary Minute which like it was unrequited.
• 13:30
  But they had a they had a moment on the stairs where we're all
• 13:33
  sort of going. And then obviously there's
• 13:37
  Debbie Castle Stroke, Deborah Gordon in this.
• 13:41
  Well, I'll tell you what. Shall we Shall we move on to
• 13:44
  Father Time then? But let's actually start talking
• 13:54
  about it. This is typical of this podcast
• 13:58
  we never love about a bloody thing.
• 13:59
  But the book is so good, of course we're going to have to
• 14:02
  give it a lot of attention. When did you first come to this
• 14:06
  one then? Came to this one probably about
• 14:09
  a year or so after it came out, so I I just got into it with Mad
• 14:13
  Dogs and Englishmen and was then sort of.
• 14:17
  You know, carrying on with them from there and dipping back into
• 14:20
  the more recent ones and saw this on a shelf in Smith's and
• 14:24
  knew that people had said it was good.
• 14:27
  So picked it up and I think I read it in about 3 days, which
• 14:34
  was very quick for me at the time.
• 14:37
  It's a, it's a it's a phenomenal book.
• 14:40
  It is. I mean, how much you want to say
• 14:42
  about it in terms of setting it up for people go, go on, go
• 14:46
  away. Sorry.
• 14:51
  Yeah. So it's it's a phenomenal book.
• 14:53
  It's it is it is so broad. It is so deep.
• 14:58
  It is for the small screen. As he used to say in the Virgin
• 15:02
  New Adventures, we stop saying that now.
• 15:04
  And we. We stop saying that now.
• 15:06
  We just say it features the 8th Doctors, played by Paul McGann.
• 15:09
  Because that was the kids. It's.
• 15:11
  It is. It's a proper grown up book as
• 15:16
  well as being an excellent Doctor Who book for those who
• 15:19
  haven't read it. Brief overview of the plot falls
• 15:24
  in the middle of the Stuck on Earth range.
• 15:26
  The Doctor's lost his memory because he's blown up Gallifrey.
• 15:29
  Imagine doing that and he's. Left on earth with the TARDIS
• 15:34
  regrowing building itself and he can't remember who he is and he
• 15:37
  has to live through the 20th century on earth or the TARDIS
• 15:40
  repairs itself and all he has is a note in his pocket saying meet
• 15:45
  the in Saint Louis on a certain date in 2001.
• 15:48
  It's it's brilliant idea isn't it?
• 15:51
  I think as a as a reboot for the range which had got too
• 15:54
  entangled in its own arcs and people were sort of losing
• 15:59
  interest with to take away everything that is Doctor Who,
• 16:03
  the TARDIS, the time travel, the anywhere in time and space, the
• 16:08
  Doctor's memories, the companion dropping him on Earth and having
• 16:12
  a series of six books as he slowly regains all those things.
• 16:16
  And the burning's almost like the perfect jumping on point,
• 16:18
  because there we're introduced to the Doctor for the first
• 16:21
  time, it's effectively like Unearthly Child.
• 16:25
  And this is what's this the 5th of 6th Isn't it father time?
• 16:29
  Yes, there's there's only one more after this.
• 16:32
  Yeah, it's a shame it ended with that one, you know, because it's
• 16:34
  almost perfect until that point. Well, should we take this
• 16:38
  section by section? Because this book is split into
• 16:42
  3 sections, the early 80s, the mid 80s and the late 80s.
• 16:47
  So the first section then I want you to OK as we go through E
• 16:54
  session, I want you to pull out a character.
• 16:57
  Yeah, that really impressed you. Yeah, Section.
• 17:00
  So. So looking at that first
• 17:01
  section. Can I begin talking about a
• 17:05
  third section with a short reading from please, A short
• 17:09
  reading from Doctor Who, Father Time by Lance Parkin.
• 17:12
  And this is This is from the start of chapter One.
• 17:15
  And it goes. There comes a time when the fall
• 17:17
  of snow is no longer the start of a marvellous adventure.
• 17:20
  There comes a time when it means scraping your windscreen and
• 17:22
  hoping your car starts. It means aching joints and
• 17:24
  throbbing sinuses and cold hands and feet.
• 17:27
  It means taking longer to get to work and spending all day
• 17:29
  sitting at an office where the heating isn't on grey slush and
• 17:32
  cracked pipes cancel trains and influenza.
• 17:34
  That's what's no means. You'll wake up feeling like that
• 17:37
  one day, and it will mean you're grown up.
• 17:39
  I hope that day doesn't come soon.
• 17:43
  That's good, isn't it? That's good writing.
• 17:45
  It reads so much differently as an adult now, I said.
• 17:48
  When I read it as a when I was as a child, I was like, I'll
• 17:51
  never be that person reading it As an adult, I'm like, Oh dear,
• 17:54
  what happens? I've become Debbie Castle.
• 17:59
  It's heartbreaking, isn't it? So we meet, so we open in the
• 18:02
  early 8, the early 80s in the Derbyshire Hills where the
• 18:05
  doctors. Living a recluse, you sort of
• 18:08
  get the pressure and he's maybe just a bit rolled to a stop,
• 18:10
  having been here for 100 years and is is found by Debbie Castle
• 18:16
  the the unhappy school teacher. The local primary school.
• 18:21
  Because there's something weird going on in these hills and.
• 18:26
  One of the things he does with this.
• 18:28
  So we follow through those sections.
• 18:29
  The character of Miranda, who I'm sure will come on to discuss
• 18:31
  more her growing up across the 1980s, to use a literary term.
• 18:35
  It's a buildings Roman I think, isn't it?
• 18:37
  Is that the right word you know of coming of age novel?
• 18:39
  Definitely it's starting in the middle section.
• 18:42
  Yeah, yeah. Hundred.
• 18:43
  Yeah. Well, yeah, I couldn't believe I
• 18:47
  was reading Doctor Who at some points.
• 18:51
  But we'll talk about childhood at the moment, and it's.
• 18:54
  It's this beautiful thing of this first section is almost
• 18:58
  there's an element of the fairy tale to it, but there's but even
• 19:02
  more so, there's the feeling of a story told to a child about
• 19:06
  something that's about some things that are incredibly adult
• 19:09
  and they're incredibly grown up. There's a great quote from
• 19:11
  someone, so I forget who it was. You said that childhood only
• 19:14
  exists in the minds of adults because when you're a child,
• 19:17
  it's just existence. You don't know anything about
• 19:19
  it. It's only when, years later, you
• 19:22
  look back. And you, you have this image of
• 19:24
  yourself as someone who's who was so was relatively free of
• 19:28
  considerations. If you were, if you were lucky
• 19:30
  in your childhood of a, you know, a very emotional time and
• 19:34
  one of experience and where there was still magic in the
• 19:36
  world away, you didn't understand things, but you
• 19:38
  accepted it. You didn't understand them.
• 19:39
  And that is something that he captures utterly beautifully
• 19:42
  here. That's why we read books like
• 19:45
  Father Times. That's why we watch shows like
• 19:46
  Stranger Things, that aching longing for when you were a
• 19:50
  child and life was a lot simpler than it is now.
• 19:54
  What you said there about the setting that the snowy hills of
• 19:57
  Derbyshire, it it is literally, It feels like a fairy tale
• 20:01
  setting. It's so beautifully described.
• 20:04
  You can. You can see it, can't you?
• 20:06
  You can see that opening shot of, you know, camera panning
• 20:10
  across just thick, thick falling snow and at night and then a
• 20:15
  car's headlights just pulling their way through the darkness.
• 20:19
  It's. As you think beyond sort of his
• 20:21
  amazing. Grasp of character.
• 20:24
  The visual nature of his prose throughout was really because
• 20:27
  the whole thing, I was just watching like a movie in my
• 20:29
  head, and sometimes with Doctor Who pros, it's a bit
• 20:32
  impenetrable. And I'm like, what are they
• 20:34
  getting out here? I knew exactly what I was seeing
• 20:36
  in this. Oh absolutely.
• 20:38
  I mean he he, he passes the absolute like acid test of that,
• 20:41
  which is that there's towards the end of this first section,
• 20:44
  there's a car chase and it's really exciting and can you
• 20:46
  think of anything harder to make exciting?
• 20:49
  I know. In the pro the car chase oh, he
• 20:52
  looked in the mirror. She looked in the mirror.
• 20:53
  Oh he went a bit fast but it's it's utterly yeah, it's
• 20:56
  brilliant. And it's not just it's not just
• 20:58
  his ability to to describe it and way that exciting it's that
• 21:02
  he's also really imaginative in his in his action and I guess
• 21:06
  what you know they call action choreography.
• 21:07
  If this was television or cinema.
• 21:10
  There's a sequence towards the end of this where there's
• 21:13
  basically a car. There's car chase as we've said.
• 21:16
  And one of the cars is just, you know your sort of standards not
• 21:20
  suburban but you know family 1980s car.
• 21:23
  And the other one is a transformer described this guys
• 21:26
  as evil Herbie. And it's so and he this came out
• 21:30
  before the Transformers movies did which are terrible, but they
• 21:35
  have a very strong visual imagination around that idea of
• 21:37
  you know, things transforming and the kineticism of what's
• 21:40
  going on. And he anticipates all of that.
• 21:42
  Like this car is going from car to transformer to grabbing you
• 21:46
  to firing a rocket you to running after you to scream
• 21:49
  around the corner and all of that is captured perfectly.
• 21:51
  It's oh God, I was reading for some reason.
• 21:55
  I was reading one of those Marvel comic tie in like prose
• 21:57
  novels not not long ago. I don't know why I tried to not
• 22:01
  do these things and there's so many attempts to describe action
• 22:05
  in that. But it's all all he grabbed her
• 22:07
  and she grabbed her and then he twisted her like this and you
• 22:10
  can't follow what's happening and it doesn't mean anything and
• 22:12
  it's just boring. This was this was really stuff.
• 22:16
  He's same thing in the dying days.
• 22:18
  You know he somehow manages to. He's like, he's Doctor Who's Ian
• 22:21
  Fleming in that regard, you know, it's utterly thrilling
• 22:25
  prose. I mean, leaping ahead, so
• 22:27
  spoilers everybody to the last one.
• 22:29
  There's a fist fight between the Doctor and Ferran that was
• 22:33
  visceral. I could feel every punch the way
• 22:35
  it was described, you know, noses being smashed in and.
• 22:40
  There is a real skill to write, and that's not, but just to
• 22:42
  remind us all that it's still Doctor Who.
• 22:44
  You know, because this is an incredible sequence with this
• 22:46
  transport and what screams more the 80s than Transformers in
• 22:50
  disguise. It's AVW Beetle, so it's the
• 22:53
  most mundane car imaginable that's turning into this
• 22:56
  impressive robot. Oh, 100% and and he doesn't.
• 22:59
  He doesn't just do Transformers, he does.
• 23:01
  He does Transformers. But he does it for scares.
• 23:04
  So one of the bits that really stuck with me since first
• 23:09
  reading this book, and every time I've gone back to it, it's
• 23:10
  a bit I've been waiting for, is there's a little scene where two
• 23:14
  of the other characters, the hunters, Thelash and Rum, who
• 23:17
  are a pair of hunters from the future who've been sent back in
• 23:19
  time to find the last one. Who is?
• 23:23
  Who is Miranda, this little girl who is the last remaining member
• 23:26
  of the Imperial family that rules the whole universe in the
• 23:29
  far future and have since been overthrown.
• 23:33
  The way you're introduced to this character, Mr. Gibson is
• 23:35
  his name because he want, because he want, because he
• 23:37
  wants to blend in. I think he's the quote.
• 23:39
  So he calls himself Mr. Gibson and you only find out that he's
• 23:45
  a Transformer when the effing car that they've been driving
• 23:49
  around in turns there's a but the scene that stuck with me was
• 23:52
  where they're talking to Mr. Gibson and it's the first time
• 23:54
  you've met him, but because it's a book, he's again.
• 23:58
  Lance Park is such a clever writer.
• 24:00
  You're not told who Mr. Gibson is.
• 24:02
  You know, they're sat in the VW Beetle and they're talking to
• 24:04
  this very ominous voice. And in my head the idea was
• 24:07
  someone in the back seat in the shadows, right?
• 24:10
  And when you and and I think he's deliberate, you know,
• 24:13
  that's the deliberate game he's playing on you.
• 24:14
  And then it's just you're left with this God, who is?
• 24:16
  Who is Mr. Gibson? What could he be?
• 24:18
  And then when you read it again, knowing he's the car, it's so
• 24:22
  perfect because he he, he, he has a laugh, like the revving of
• 24:26
  a motorbike. Engine Oh, he's a bit
• 24:30
  unimpressed by everything as well.
• 24:32
  He's got a proper personality. He's so grumpy.
• 24:36
  Another thing I really got from these early scenes.
• 24:38
  Well, like you, you remember those fantastic Spielberg movies
• 24:41
  of the games. I think he was leaning into that
• 24:43
  as well. You know, sort of finding
• 24:44
  something mysterious and magical out in the woods.
• 24:48
  I really got that sense that I was watching a bloody good
• 24:51
  Spielberg movie, but the thing that impressed me most of all
• 24:54
  was Debbie Castle stumbling across the doctor and the
• 24:58
  romance around that, how she's living this life with this brute
• 25:03
  of a man called Barry. Of course he's called Barry.
• 25:07
  Apologies for all Barry's out there.
• 25:08
  I'm sure you're very charming, who basically sort of talks with
• 25:12
  his face, plays snooker to impress people, sleeps around,
• 25:16
  is a is a horrible. But she's found herself with
• 25:19
  this guy, and she's sort of just accepted it.
• 25:22
  But she's miserable. And then she stumbles into the
• 25:25
  doctor's log cabin and the adventure begins.
• 25:28
  Oh, it is. This first section is it's it's
• 25:33
  romantic, but romantic with both a big R and a little R you know,
• 25:37
  before she and before she stumbles upon the doctor in her
• 25:40
  car, she's been listening to Wuthering Heights and Prince
• 25:42
  Charming, which is, again, that's not flagged up.
• 25:45
  It's for you there, there for you to pick up on and.
• 25:48
  They're on the last page though, isn't it?
• 25:50
  With the album, There's the there's the set, the sound.
• 25:52
  Yes, the final page of the book has a soundtrack album, which is
• 25:55
  a cracker of an album. It is.
• 25:57
  I listened to it afterwards. Oh, it's brilliant.
• 26:01
  Spoilers. Ends.
• 26:02
  Ends by crashing into I Want It All by Queen.
• 26:05
  Oh yes. But I think what Lance Parkin
• 26:11
  remembers with this book is that Paul Mcgann's a very good
• 26:15
  looking man. That he is.
• 26:18
  He's the fancyable Dr. right? Not so.
• 26:20
  Well, I'm not saying the others aren't, but he's the most
• 26:21
  classically handsome character he's.
• 26:24
  And he he sort of portrays him as a as a Mr. D'Arcy figure or
• 26:28
  maybe a bit Heathcliff or even a bit Mr. Mr. Rochester with that,
• 26:30
  you know sort of hidden hidden secrets that he doesn't know
• 26:34
  about that you can totally see why why Debbie would fancy him
• 26:37
  the moment he turns up because that's the great thing about
• 26:39
  this can see of him not knowing who he is, is, is we can be
• 26:43
  introduced to this character that we've known for almost 40
• 26:47
  years by this point and and meet him anew because there's there's
• 26:50
  nothing there about him. We we think we know everything
• 26:53
  about the Doctor, but now he can behave in genuinely
• 26:56
  unpredictable ways, and that continues right until the end of
• 26:59
  the range, until he gets his memories back.
• 27:01
  There's there's moments throughout where I'm like.
• 27:04
  The Doctor wouldn't do that. Great.
• 27:05
  The doctor's doing that. You know.
• 27:07
  Yeah he's because I think he's he's portrayed as a as a a sort
• 27:11
  of kind but tragic figure that there is.
• 27:14
  You get the sense that he's he's someone who at the base of it
• 27:18
  all is, is, is a decent man, is a good man and wants to be kind
• 27:21
  and want and sees an awful lot of beauty in the world.
• 27:23
  But there's maybe also a bit of disappointment in that as well
• 27:27
  that they make the point in this book.
• 27:29
  But by this point in the arc, he has now been on the Earth for
• 27:32
  about 100 years, and he's now realized that he's never felt at
• 27:36
  home there. That there's but that's not a
• 27:38
  deliberate thing on his part, and it's not even necessarily
• 27:40
  because he's lived so long. He's just recognized about
• 27:43
  himself. There's something about me that
• 27:44
  doesn't make sense. And it's not just that I've got
• 27:46
  two hearts. There's a passage, isn't it,
• 27:48
  where he see he meets up with Betty Stubbold from the burning.
• 27:52
  Yes. And she's an old woman now who's
• 27:55
  lived her life and had a family and made an impact on the Earth.
• 27:59
  And I think it specifically says doesn't it explicitly says.
• 28:03
  He didn't do that. He played it safe.
• 28:05
  He kept himself hidden because he knew he was different.
• 28:08
  Yeah. Yeah, it's.
• 28:12
  It makes such a fascinating thing because there's a version
• 28:14
  of this story where it's just, you know, serialized.
• 28:18
  Oh, the Doctor has an adventure in the 80s.
• 28:20
  This time, the Doctor has an adventure in the 70s.
• 28:22
  But, and maybe if you were doing something that was, that was
• 28:26
  necessarily much more tied to the the range, like you couldn't
• 28:29
  really do it now because obviously his arc is going to be
• 28:31
  led by or her arc is going to be led by whatever's happening on
• 28:35
  the TV series. But this, this is probably the
• 28:39
  biggest step that the novels in the Virgin or the BBC eras ever
• 28:43
  took in. Actually just going, no, do you
• 28:44
  know what 'cause this point 2001, Doctor Who wasn't coming
• 28:47
  back. You know, who knew if the book
• 28:49
  range was going to last another three years, So why not just go?
• 28:52
  Do you know what will cut it all off?
• 28:56
  And we'll do something big and different with it.
• 28:58
  And so they can really get into the idea of I've lived 100 years
• 29:02
  not knowing who I am. This is the book where he This
• 29:04
  is the book where he finds out he's a time traveller and he
• 29:07
  only finds that out second hand because there's loads of people
• 29:09
  turning up, going you're a time. Traveller These myths about you
• 29:12
  in the universe. Yeah.
• 29:13
  Oh, really good grade. Yeah.
• 29:16
  And it's it's so wonderful because it allows you to really
• 29:21
  boil it back to basics of Doctor Who and I don't mean that in the
• 29:25
  sense of jollying around the universe having four part
• 29:29
  adventures. It's really going back to that
• 29:31
  the central idea of you know all the way back to the William Hart
• 29:34
  with his Unearthly Child. All we know about this man is he
• 29:37
  could he travels around and no one knows who he is.
• 29:40
  Maybe not even him you know freeing himself from all of
• 29:43
  that. It's and of the Earth art books
• 29:47
  I've read, this is the one that really seems to really get that
• 29:51
  idea and run with it to quite quite emotional and wistful and
• 29:57
  melancholy extent. It's, you know, it's it's not a
• 30:01
  coincidence that we open on these windswept mountains in the
• 30:04
  snow because he's all alone and it is a really interesting place
• 30:09
  to find him actually, genuinely, emotionally alone.
• 30:14
  You know when this child is dropped into his lap, suddenly
• 30:17
  he's got a purpose? Yeah.
• 30:18
  Although I've got to say, go back to the romantic part for a
• 30:21
  second. He's got absolutely no clue the
• 30:24
  powerful effects that he has on the women stroke men around him,
• 30:28
  does he? He's completely oblivious to it.
• 30:31
  It's no, it's it's it's utterly it's utterly wonderful to
• 30:34
  extend. There's a bit where he's he goes
• 30:36
  to the he goes to the hospital to try and get to Miranda's
• 30:40
  medical records to try and find out a bit more about her.
• 30:43
  And he's got no clue the reason the nurse on duty is giving him
• 30:47
  all this stuff is because. She's so hot, she fancies the
• 30:50
  pants off him. He's just like, Oh well well,
• 30:53
  I'll go along with this I guess. And he's.
• 30:55
  So funny as well. I think one of the first
• 30:58
  exchanges between Debbie and the.
• 31:00
  Doctor is oh, I've run over a UFO spotter and he just goes,
• 31:04
  why? And I just.
• 31:07
  I kept laughing out loud throughout this book with some
• 31:09
  of the dialogue I love the bit where.
• 31:12
  So although he's oblivious to this Debbie's husband, Barry,
• 31:16
  Barry Barry, it realizes that this very this very attractive,
• 31:23
  sophisticated man is apparently taking interest in his wife or
• 31:26
  he's his wife taking just in. So he challenges him to a game
• 31:29
  of snooker, to just his masculinity.
• 31:32
  He says to him like, you're going to make this interesting,
• 31:34
  and the doctor says, is that possible?
• 31:38
  And then he pots, doesn't he the doctor.
• 31:41
  And he gets every fucking ball in every hole.
• 31:44
  But he was told at the beginning, you can't pot the
• 31:46
  white. So Barry still takes the wind
• 31:48
  and he's that man that's always got to take the win.
• 31:51
  He's always, yeah, he's always got to have an edge.
• 31:53
  There's no, there's no ants of security in Barry, is there?
• 31:57
  And just, you know, there's so much of this going on in the
• 32:00
  book. The like the.
• 32:03
  Way that Barry is sleeping around, but the second someone
• 32:07
  sniffing around, his wife is angry.
• 32:10
  And there's a lot of that going on in the book of sort of double
• 32:13
  standards and things like that. Even with the characters we
• 32:15
  like, even with Debbie in the second section and I'll say
• 32:18
  Miranda in the third after she's killed somebody.
• 32:20
  I like that. I like that there's there's no
• 32:23
  sort of black and white with these people.
• 32:25
  No. Because indeed.
• 32:26
  And then he flips it around as well because the the sort of
• 32:30
  denim more what the car chase league is.
• 32:32
  Part of of this first section is, is the hunters is the the
• 32:36
  baddies from the future have finally caught up with with
• 32:39
  Miranda and sort of Debbie's there and the doctor's there and
• 32:43
  Barry sort of ends up getting sucked into it just through
• 32:47
  circumstance. He happens to be you know in the
• 32:49
  car when it's happening. But he's the one person who's
• 32:52
  like when they're debate, they're like, what do we do?
• 32:54
  We need to keep them away from the senses population he's like
• 32:56
  there are people here who are trying to kill a 10 year old
• 32:58
  girl we need to we need to sort them out they can't deal with it
• 33:02
  and you think but but it makes sense because he is you know
• 33:05
  it's he's not just a caricature there is a there's a there's a
• 33:09
  model within this man of who he's meant to be that is that is
• 33:13
  all about masculinity and although you may not like him
• 33:17
  that can that can have some virtues to it.
• 33:19
  You know, not everything about masculinity is is bad.
• 33:22
  And in that moment, no, he he would.
• 33:25
  It would be easy to make him run away or be scared or like, oh,
• 33:28
  it's isn't ideal. But you know it feels
• 33:29
  emotionally honest to everything we've learned about that man and
• 33:32
  his sense of right and wrong. As as egocentric as it might be
• 33:36
  that he's going to be the one who is.
• 33:38
  You know there's it's a bit where.
• 33:39
  So Zevron, who is the the main villain?
• 33:43
  Who's leading? What a.
• 33:43
  Space name. He's got AZ and AV in his name,
• 33:47
  none more Spacey. Where's Zevron?
• 33:51
  But equally that you feel like Sparky is he's playing with that
• 33:54
  because also Zevron's quite a good made-up space if you if you
• 33:58
  want a deliberately space in him.
• 33:59
  It's not like my name is tan or something boring.
• 34:02
  You could see Brian Bessen blessed, bellowing it out.
• 34:05
  Couldn't you Zevron? And Salak is and Salak.
• 34:11
  Oh, such an evil. These are such evil good names.
• 34:15
  Zevron is is going for Miranda and Zevron.
• 34:18
  We should touch on himself. He is the he's the son of the
• 34:22
  the the woman who led the revolt against the Imperial family.
• 34:24
  And it is a blood. It's it's a, it's a it's a blood
• 34:29
  legacy that he has to kill the last member of the Imperial
• 34:31
  family. But you get the sense that he he
• 34:33
  views that as a duty and not a duty he likes.
• 34:35
  He doesn't take any pleasure in it.
• 34:37
  It's something he needs to do. And so you have Barry and Debbie
• 34:41
  with Miranda killed up between them.
• 34:44
  And he says to them, leave. This isn't your fight.
• 34:48
  I'm not here to kill you. This isn't about killing Pete.
• 34:51
  This isn't about death and destruction.
• 34:53
  This is about ending something that has to be ended.
• 34:55
  And Debbie runs away. Debbie says I'm sorry, FS off
• 35:00
  because she's like, I, you know, this is too much.
• 35:02
  And again, although we like Debbie, we get that she's a
• 35:05
  school teacher and she's in the middle.
• 35:07
  She's she's at the denim war of the Galactic War.
• 35:10
  Of course she's going to run away.
• 35:11
  And it's Barry. You come.
• 35:12
  Because I was like, I was like, that's what a terrible thing
• 35:15
  you've done. And I was like, Oh no, that's
• 35:16
  exactly what I would do. But it's a believably terrible
• 35:20
  thing, right? It's because people do terrible
• 35:22
  things. People fail.
• 35:24
  And to to. To shine, sight, sight, give
• 35:28
  good moments to the evil characters, and then to give
• 35:32
  moments where you question the good characters in this.
• 35:36
  That's part of what makes this such a good book.
• 35:39
  Oh, it's it's a it's it's a great book.
• 35:42
  I mean, there's so many things we can say about it, but.
• 35:44
  Can we can we turn it to the the the chess match sequence?
• 35:50
  Oh, I I didn't think that sequence will be better.
• 35:52
  But the the book did continually get better as it went along.
• 35:56
  Go on, off you go. So the chess sequence.
• 35:58
  So we should touch on this when the doctor meets Miranda for the
• 36:01
  first time and Miranda is just this little girl in Debbie's
• 36:03
  class who seems quite quiet and Debbie meets the doctor and she
• 36:09
  invites him. She realises he likes chess and
• 36:12
  as a way to sort of set up another meeting, she invites him
• 36:15
  to come along because the primary school is going to chess
• 36:17
  club, is going to be playing against the chess club of
• 36:20
  another school that week and when you come along and watch
• 36:23
  please, and of course only he gets them because of the snow.
• 36:27
  The other team haven't turned up and Debbie's called away.
• 36:31
  I think it's by Barry on the phone and she comes back and the
• 36:35
  doctor has set it up such that he is playing chess against
• 36:39
  every every member of the school chess club at the same time and
• 36:43
  he set 1 up to go against Debbie as well.
• 36:45
  He's so blase about it as well, isn't he?
• 36:48
  He's just sitting down at everyone and he's slowly winning
• 36:51
  every single match. Yeah, he's Lance Parkin does
• 36:55
  this a few times with the 8th Doctor and I I love his Eighth
• 36:59
  Doctor and I feel like no one else has ever quite done it the
• 37:02
  same way, which is he. He picks up on that thing from
• 37:05
  the the TV movie that have been overlooked about the 8th Doctor,
• 37:09
  which is that he has this. He is supremely capable like,
• 37:13
  but he's but he's so wide eyed and kind of innocent about the
• 37:16
  world and the universe to such extent, or at least so not
• 37:18
  innocent, but he's so unprepossessing about it that he
• 37:21
  gets away with having just being able to do anything.
• 37:24
  That's the whole thing about knowing where people are going
• 37:26
  to go in the future. I don't think it's it's not
• 37:28
  precognition. It's just, I know that, you
• 37:30
  know, and it's the same thing. That moment later in the book
• 37:33
  where he goes, oh, yeah, we're going to steal a space shuttle.
• 37:35
  I was like, yeah, well, of course you are.
• 37:36
  Yeah. You know you can do anything.
• 37:39
  But he's not a super. He's, you know he is quite a
• 37:40
  British character. He's not he's not Iron Man or
• 37:43
  you know Mr. Fantastic who's like do, do, do, do, do.
• 37:45
  I can sort this out. Don't worry.
• 37:47
  He's just. In fact, you know what we he
• 37:49
  makes a point of that. Keep going to the last third.
• 37:52
  I'm so sorry. That makes the point out the
• 37:53
  last third, where he's standing up to Ferran in the climax and
• 37:56
  says I'm standing on your ship, I haven't got a gun, I've got
• 38:00
  nothing that and and I'm going to win.
• 38:03
  You know like it's it's it's a it's a version of the Doctor
• 38:07
  that's actually Steven Moffat did quite a lot of on TV as well
• 38:12
  with with Matt Smith especially, which is understanding that real
• 38:17
  really focusing on that tension between who the Doctor thinks he
• 38:21
  is and in the world, which is I'm just, I'm just a very I'm,
• 38:26
  I'm just a guy. I've just gone out to do stuff.
• 38:28
  I just want to experience the world and the universe.
• 38:32
  I've got questions about myself, but I don't, you know, I don't
• 38:36
  necessarily have any prepossession but the the
• 38:38
  effect. He therefore has a sort of
• 38:39
  cumulative effect in the world, which is he is the guy who
• 38:42
  topples empires, he is the guy that everyone should be scared
• 38:46
  of. And to an extent his his
• 38:50
  reputation can overtake him and he can then almost use his
• 38:55
  reputation and his influence as another tool but without ever
• 38:59
  coming across here at least as overly arrogant.
• 39:02
  It's just as you say it's a it's a statement of fact.
• 39:05
  It's the well I it's you know the he has the.
• 39:09
  Line. He has the line, doesn't he
• 39:10
  goes, what is it? The gun is loaded and it's
• 39:14
  useless. Or something like that in the
• 39:15
  last third. Yeah, I thought that makes the
• 39:18
  point beautifully. Yeah.
• 39:20
  And it's, you know it, you have to be a really good writer and
• 39:24
  have a really good understanding of your characters and the
• 39:27
  characters that you're picking out of the toy box to make that
• 39:29
  work. Because where it doesn't work,
• 39:31
  it does just become, and I'm, I'm a Steven Moffitt fan, but I
• 39:34
  can ignite. There are some points in some of
• 39:36
  these episodes where it does just become grandstanding and,
• 39:39
  you know, verging on the Willy waving.
• 39:41
  But here is the man Goes to War, I believe it's called is Your
• 39:46
  Words, Not mine. But here it just feels like a
• 39:52
  statement of fact. You know, you can build to that
• 39:54
  point and just go it because it's true.
• 39:57
  Because we've seen this. We've seen these characters
• 39:58
  interact. We know how they all behave.
• 40:00
  We know what the situation is. You know he.
• 40:04
  It's it's the chess moves, isn't it?
• 40:05
  It's about seeing all those steps ahead.
• 40:08
  It's about understanding that it's all about the situations
• 40:11
  and where your pieces are and how they work until it reaches a
• 40:15
  point where when he eventually beats Debbie, he says he just
• 40:18
  moves a piece and he says something like.
• 40:21
  Check in 32 and like the the kid who's the best to the chess
• 40:24
  club, you can't do that actually.
• 40:27
  And they're all round the table going on.
• 40:29
  And they all, oh, what? And then, like, Debbie works it
• 40:32
  through. Like in each situation she's
• 40:34
  only got one move. And in 32 moves, he knocked her
• 40:36
  out. But the joy of that scene is he
• 40:39
  totally underrates Miranda and he goes, yeah, she's not as good
• 40:43
  as she thinks she is. Yeah, and then she's the last
• 40:46
  one standing. And he realizes that she's
• 40:49
  letting him win. He goes, you let me win.
• 40:52
  And she goes, yeah, well, you go.
• 40:53
  It wouldn't be much of A victory if you won 10 and lost one and
• 40:57
  you're just like they're made for each other.
• 41:00
  It is. It is perfect.
• 41:01
  And in that moment you because because it takes, although it's
• 41:05
  not a very long book, there's a heck of a lot of story in it.
• 41:08
  So it feels like you've spent quite a while with these
• 41:10
  characters before you actually focus on Miranda for the first
• 41:14
  time. Because I think she just
• 41:15
  introduced US1 of the other kids and one of the kids in the room.
• 41:18
  It's exactly what. Justin Richards did with the
• 41:20
  Doctor in The Burning. I don't know if you read The
• 41:23
  Burning. Not yet.
• 41:24
  They keep. So this is his first book as the
• 41:26
  amnesiac. So you're waiting for him to
• 41:28
  appear. And chapter after chapter,
• 41:30
  Justin Richard keeps introducing an eccentric fellow of one kind
• 41:33
  or another. And you're going, oh, that's the
• 41:35
  Doctor, that's the. And it's like you got you do it
• 41:37
  about three or four times and then there's a dinner scene
• 41:40
  where everyone comes together. And the Doctor's just there at
• 41:43
  the same one says something and it takes you about 3 pages to
• 41:46
  realise that he's been there talking this whole entire time.
• 41:49
  It's a very clever thing to do and she she does seem just very
• 41:52
  innocuous until you realise she's not.
• 41:55
  She does. And in that moment you ask,
• 41:56
  because you've spent this time with the doctor, you've got to
• 41:59
  know this version of the doctor, this man who is who is alone and
• 42:01
  doesn't really understand himself, that it's so
• 42:04
  significant and carries such weight when he suddenly clocks
• 42:07
  that there's someone here who might actually be a bit like
• 42:12
  him. And then there's a again, just
• 42:15
  another beautiful scene that I can see.
• 42:17
  I can see it as how you, you direct it with the the vast
• 42:21
  black, white, vast black sky above them, with all the stars
• 42:24
  above and the snow falling down, and then the white below them,
• 42:27
  which is just the pair of them on the playground outside the
• 42:31
  fronts of the school while she's he's waiting for Debbie.
• 42:34
  And she's waiting for her parents to come pick her up.
• 42:36
  And they have this discussion about space.
• 42:39
  They're just looking up at stars.
• 42:40
  And they discussed the solar system.
• 42:42
  And I mean, it's Lance Park is very good at doing two things at
• 42:46
  once. So on the one hand, it's
• 42:48
  charming because it's just this beautiful little moment where
• 42:50
  two people are kind of trying to nicely up one up each other and
• 42:54
  show how much they want know. They want the doctor's trying to
• 42:57
  tell her all these information, all these facts about space to
• 43:00
  kind of encourage her. And he says, oh, well, Jupiter
• 43:02
  has 13 moons. And you know there's the we've
• 43:05
  got the asteroid belt which is the remains of a planet that was
• 43:08
  torn apart and she says no, that your your your understanding of
• 43:12
  space is completely is completely.
• 43:14
  I don't know. They're always finding more
• 43:16
  moons of Jupiter and the asteroid belt's just what's
• 43:18
  leftover from the planets forming and what's what's that's
• 43:22
  just such a lovely little exchange.
• 43:23
  But also he's also kind of there's also the Easter, a
• 43:26
  tickly Dr. U fan element of in real terms she's absolutely
• 43:29
  right. And in Doctor Who terms he's
• 43:31
  completely right as well. Absolutely.
• 43:33
  He doesn't forget that scene as well, does he?
• 43:36
  Because he plays that same scene again.
• 43:38
  With the Doctor looking out of stars, but at the end of the
• 43:41
  book up in space, where he comes to the conclusion, this is my
• 43:45
  home, this is where I belong. So he returns to that, yeah,
• 43:49
  because within the arc, it's the it's the penultimate book and
• 43:53
  the. And it's really interesting I
• 43:55
  think, I think from some interviews of everything
• 43:57
  elsewhere. He's a Star Wars fan and he
• 44:00
  understands. He understands why The Empire
• 44:02
  Strikes Back really works, which is that it's it shows you how
• 44:04
  you can perfectly do a penultimate story of setting
• 44:08
  everything up, putting people in motion points in the right
• 44:10
  direction. And part of the Doctor's arc is
• 44:14
  this is the book where he understands a little bit more
• 44:17
  about himself, but also recognizes the reason I've never
• 44:21
  felt at home on Earth is because I don't belong on Earth.
• 44:25
  And it's yeah, It's a Wonderful Life that he's set up here, the
• 44:28
  playground. And it works.
• 44:29
  So brilliant because we kind of want him back in the TARDIS and
• 44:31
  back off having adventures again, you know?
• 44:33
  So this is the the biggest step toward, mind you, there's that
• 44:36
  brilliant Jesus. I'm going to go back to the last
• 44:38
  third again, I'm so sorry. We're talking about the first
• 44:40
  third, but where he sees into the future and suddenly there's
• 44:44
  glimpses of, I don't know, books as far as anacrophobia.
• 44:47
  Grim reality. Mad dogs and Englishmen all
• 44:50
  sorts he get. He even gets a glimpse of the of
• 44:55
  a Dalek in that moment because. Before the copyright.
• 44:59
  No, no, no, sorry Joe. It's a reference to the Time
• 45:04
  War. You know that it's he sees new
• 45:07
  series Doctor Who happening. It was always supposed to be the
• 45:10
  Council of Eight in sometime never yes.
• 45:13
  That was that was the plan. Those skeleton people playing
• 45:16
  chess. That's why.
• 45:18
  That's that's why he plays chess here, Joe.
• 45:20
  Actually, I think you'll find, yeah.
• 45:22
  Well, there you go. Actually, the chess motif has
• 45:24
  been running ever since Cursive Fenrick, hasn't it?
• 45:27
  So yeah, cuz that's how you. Also, I remembered when Debbie
• 45:31
  first meets him in his house, he's got a chess board set up
• 45:34
  and there's a piece on it that isn't meant to be there.
• 45:36
  It's just from another box. And she's like, that's not good
• 45:39
  to be there. And he's like, isn't it?
• 45:40
  And you're like, that's the that's the doctor.
• 45:43
  The doctor's a chess piece that's not meant to be there.
• 45:45
  I got, I got it. I'm smart.
• 45:47
  I feel like you and me have been bewitched by this book.
• 45:49
  You know it's a really good book.
• 45:51
  It's a very, very in fact it's and we'll sort of we'll come to
• 45:54
  a conclusion towards the end. But it's a book, like you said,
• 45:57
  it's not a. Tie in writer just knocking out
• 46:01
  a book at his computer. He's writing the best book he
• 46:03
  could possibly write. It just happens to have Doctor
• 46:05
  Who slapped on the cover. Yeah, but also it's a it's also
• 46:11
  an incredibly good Doctor Who book.
• 46:13
  This isn't this. I know there's some other books
• 46:17
  in this range where, you know, the authors have been quite
• 46:18
  open. This was an idea I had for a
• 46:20
  book. It wasn't commissioned as that I
• 46:22
  reworked as Doctor Who. I did.
• 46:23
  This is an idea embedded in Doctor Who in Who.
• 46:26
  The doctor could be in what that setup could allow you to do, but
• 46:31
  managing to tell a story that we haven't seen that any other
• 46:35
  time. But with only the vaguest of
• 46:38
  continuity references. And that's what makes this work
• 46:41
  brilliant, and this run brilliant with it is that is
• 46:43
  that they kind of ditched the past and they're telling
• 46:45
  original stories. And you're right, this is like a
• 46:48
  quintessential Doctor Who story, where he's up there in space at
• 46:51
  the end, toppling empires, you know, brilliant, sorting a
• 46:56
  revolution for the slaves and all of this.
• 46:58
  It's all Doctor Who stables, but there's no dice, no segment, no
• 47:02
  mass, and none of that nonsense. Well, are there no Daleks?
• 47:06
  Is there a Dalek in this well? Have you have you tried
• 47:10
  rearranging the letters in the name clade so?
• 47:15
  No, Yes, So are you. Serious.
• 47:18
  Oh God, I've got to now again. Now we're getting into it.
• 47:21
  OK, in. How did I miss that?
• 47:26
  OK, so here we go. So there's an idea in The
• 47:28
  Ancestor Cell, the middle section of the 8th Doctor
• 47:32
  adventures, the one where they blow up Gallifrey and you for
• 47:36
  the remainder of the range. There is no Gallifrey.
• 47:38
  There is a thread dipped in here and there, the suggestion that
• 47:42
  the Doctor is not the only Time Lord who has survived In The
• 47:45
  Adventures of Henrietta St. There's a character who might be
• 47:47
  the Master in I think it's in the Gallifrey Chronic in
• 47:51
  Timeless as well. We need a couple of other
• 47:52
  characters who are similar. Time they're in.
• 47:55
  Yeah. Dogs and Englishmen, exactly.
• 47:57
  And in the Gallifrey Chronicles, at the end, he sort of has these
• 47:59
  visions of these other people who were important to him.
• 48:02
  And this was the sort of thread that ran underneath the exotic
• 48:05
  adventures but was never properly realized because of the
• 48:08
  end of when they did, which is the idea that there's.
• 48:11
  I think it's for surviving time laws.
• 48:13
  Yes, they they they explicitly mentioned that, don't they?
• 48:17
  A couple of times and they And so it's sitting in between the
• 48:23
  first section of this novel. See this is good.
• 48:26
  At the second section of this novel Lance Parker wrote Lance
• 48:28
  Parker wrote a short story for a fancy called the School of Doom
• 48:32
  which is just after the doctor has adopted Miranda because her
• 48:36
  parents, who've brought her back in time, who are not really her
• 48:38
  parents, are killed saving her. And in this short story, it's
• 48:44
  it's it's Miranda's first day at school just after she's been
• 48:46
  adopted by the doctor, her new school.
• 48:49
  And there they meet the headmaster, who is a man who
• 48:53
  seems to know more about the Doctor than the Doctor does.
• 48:55
  And it does. Does he have a beard?
• 48:57
  Is he sinister eyebrows? I can't remember now, but I just
• 49:02
  saw the Demon Head Master so and he explained he basically
• 49:08
  basically Long story short, Lance Parkins idea here was that
• 49:12
  where all of this is heading is that those four surviving Time
• 49:15
  Lords will eventually unite, be brought together by the Master
• 49:19
  who is one of the surviving ones who says the Time Lords are no
• 49:21
  more. We have a universe that is in
• 49:23
  chaos because there's no one looking over it.
• 49:24
  We need to bring that order because we're the only ones
• 49:27
  capable of it. Those four Time Lords do so in
• 49:31
  the far future and become the Imperial family and the the
• 49:36
  Emperor. So Miranda's father in the
• 49:39
  future, who was overthrown and murdered and whose daughter was
• 49:42
  sent back in time and adopted by the Doctor, is the Doctor.
• 49:45
  That's why there's a reference, there's references throughout it
• 49:47
  to people saying, Oh yes, I can see the resemblance between the
• 49:50
  Doctor and Miranda. He is, there's this.
• 49:53
  Once you once, you have to go back and reread it now, because
• 49:56
  once you know. This is a revelation to me.
• 49:58
  Yeah. So the Doctor is.
• 50:00
  There's so many references to it.
• 50:01
  Like there's so many perfect bits.
• 50:02
  Like there's a bit where Miranda recalls visiting a like $5
• 50:07
  sidekick and she gave him her some rubbish advice, which is in
• 50:10
  a cave in Greece a a Mystic had told her for $5 that she was her
• 50:15
  father's daughter, and the answers lay within her.
• 50:17
  And there's a bit where one of the characters from the future
• 50:21
  like, mistakes the doctor for someone has.
• 50:25
  He thinks someone is suggesting the Doctor is the Emperor, and
• 50:28
  he goes that's not the Emperor. I met the emperor.
• 50:30
  The emperor was and then gets cut off and you're going to say
• 50:33
  much older or something like that.
• 50:36
  Do you know, I do remember initially when they did have the
• 50:39
  Daleks and they were going to bring this all to a conclusion
• 50:43
  with the Daleks. Lance Parkin was going to write
• 50:45
  that book. Was that going to be this one?
• 50:47
  I well, it might would have been a bit late in this, but this
• 50:50
  would presumably have tied it all up and so yeah, the clade.
• 50:53
  So the people Zevron Salack not Salack isn't the clay, but
• 50:57
  separate point Zevron Ferran, who we've mentioned who come
• 50:59
  back are the clay. They are the faction underneath
• 51:03
  the Imperial Family who overthrown, who murdered the
• 51:05
  Imperial family and have now come back to murder Miranda to
• 51:09
  cement their rule in the future. And they're also the ones who
• 51:12
  keep telling you that the Imperial family were awful.
• 51:14
  We only have their word for that, and in fact there's a few
• 51:18
  points throughout the book where you're specifically told to
• 51:20
  question their presentation of other people because they
• 51:22
  describe the Doctor as being a war criminal who turns his
• 51:25
  companions into terrorists. But the clade, yeah, Clade is
• 51:31
  the clade are the descendants of the Daleks that they are.
• 51:34
  The Daleks went full circle in their evolution, just like the
• 51:38
  Thales and ended up as Aryan Superman in the future.
• 51:41
  And that's that's who they are. That's where the dykes end up at
• 51:44
  this point millions of years in the future being ruled over the
• 51:46
  Imperial family. That's why they that's why they
• 51:48
  did it. And again when you know that I
• 51:50
  did, I I sort of the first time I read it I cottoned on a couple
• 51:54
  of points like oh what it was. Only afterwards I realized going
• 51:56
  back now he's such a apart from the house.
• 51:59
  He's such a a bloody cheeky writer.
• 52:01
  So here we go. So Clay is an anagram of Dalek
• 52:03
  and Khalid, right? What else we got?
• 52:05
  Because I started keeping notes to him.
• 52:06
  So I was like, you bastard. So yeah, Clade.
• 52:11
  The word itself is a group of organisms believed to comprise
• 52:14
  all the evolutionary descendants of a common ancestor.
• 52:16
  The opening description of their world at the start is basically
• 52:19
  a description of Skyro at the start of Genesis and the Daleks.
• 52:22
  They fly around in sources, and they have hover disks.
• 52:26
  When Ferran and his guards are wearing helmets, their voices
• 52:30
  are electronic barks. And the best one when he shows
• 52:35
  Miranda the ceremonial knife that he's meant to kill her
• 52:37
  with, he says it's been sanctified by the gods of war
• 52:41
  and legacy and the two 8th Doctor Adventure Dalek books.
• 52:44
  Oh. Come on, it's it.
• 52:49
  I look. Look at this.
• 52:50
  I've just opened the the book on the first page, Chapter 0,
• 52:55
  Cheeky Planet of Death. It was a planet shrouded in fog.
• 52:58
  That's the beginning of Genesis of the Daleks.
• 53:00
  Yes, goodness, there's there's even a bit like his final last,
• 53:04
  most cheek. Oh, is everyone?
• 53:06
  One of them says they're going to exterminate Miranda at one
• 53:10
  point. And the final, most cheeky bit
• 53:11
  again in the third section, there's a bit where they're
• 53:13
  trying to cut through a a bulkhead.
• 53:16
  Oh no, you'll love, you'll like this one.
• 53:18
  The decorations on the saucer are the decorations from the
• 53:21
  Peter Cushing Dalek City, and there's a reference to an
• 53:26
  electronic heartbeat all the way through.
• 53:28
  I shall start re reading it tomorrow.
• 53:31
  Yes. And there's a reference to a
• 53:32
  door right at the very end. A door on their ship.
• 53:34
  They go. You can't copy that.
• 53:35
  It's it's solid claydenium. Oh, I did did all of this pass
• 53:41
  by me. Oh, it's it's it's absolutely
• 53:43
  perfect. So yeah, the clay did the
• 53:45
  dialect. So I now rescind my statement
• 53:48
  that there was no continuity in this book.
• 53:51
  There was in fact a lot, but it's a he very cleverly
• 53:54
  disguised. He wears there's There is deep,
• 53:58
  deep law in this book, but it is worn so likely that you can
• 54:01
  absolutely just skim over the top of it.
• 54:04
  The thing is, is the characters are so engaging and so great to
• 54:09
  be. I don't really think you give a
• 54:11
  lot of that detail unless you're that way focused, because the
• 54:15
  focus is on the people, isn't it?
• 54:17
  Throughout the book, yeah. If if the characters were not so
• 54:21
  well realised and so as you say engaging you you you would
• 54:26
  necessarily that stuff would stand out more because it would
• 54:29
  just feel like you know fan wank.
• 54:31
  But but it it isn't that it's something much.
• 54:34
  It's something much cleverer and richer but also also cheeky.
• 54:38
  You know he's doing. He's going yeah go on the the
• 54:40
  dark solid. Yeah, and.
• 54:41
  I mean. Cheeky.
• 54:43
  He's got a Sonic suitcase, for goodness sakes.
• 54:45
  You know, Debbie gets the line, even the Sonic suitcase and.
• 54:50
  I swear at one point he said I'm going to reverse the polarity of
• 54:53
  the neutron flow. Oh, he said something like he
• 54:55
  says yes, don't worry, I'm just there's something about someone
• 54:58
  makes a point about neutrons and he goes, I'll just be reversing
• 55:00
  the polarity. But again, it's all part of him
• 55:03
  becoming the Doctor, isn't it? There's a glorious moment where
• 55:06
  I go, what's the line he's he's telling Miranda's stories.
• 55:09
  And she says there's a planet where moths and ants are at war,
• 55:13
  places where Ant hills were the size of mountains, there were
• 55:16
  men made of licorice, all sorts. And there was an Empress who
• 55:19
  lived in a big jam jar, which is a mixture of TV and books, and
• 55:24
  there's a reference to it. He says all he's asked what he
• 55:27
  can Remember Remember about himself and he's just saying not
• 55:30
  much that not. I don't think I was originally
• 55:32
  from here. It's I think I was from a large
• 55:34
  family. I see you Lance barking.
• 55:36
  I've read Longborough. I know what you're doing.
• 55:39
  Don't think you got that one past.
• 55:40
  Oh, well, let's not get into the looms, All right.
• 55:44
  Maybe we'll cover that another time.
• 55:48
  OK, So let's, I mean, you did almost provide a perfect segue
• 55:51
  into the second segment there. Is there anything else you
• 55:54
  wanted to cover in the first? Oh, I mean, we could just go on
• 55:58
  for so long, but it's let's let's move on.
• 56:02
  You can't stay in childhood forever.
• 56:05
  No, we're heading into the the mid 80s and Thatcher's Britain
• 56:09
  never more gruesomely realised. Now can I read a passage to you?
• 56:13
  Please? Please do.
• 56:15
  There's a paragraph here which which I feel sums up my opinion
• 56:19
  of Thatcher's Britain perfectly. The employees had once
• 56:23
  flourished here. Had retreated, leaving behind
• 56:26
  burnt out and boarded out shops. The people who eat out living on
• 56:30
  this estate did so by exploiting the system state welfare
• 56:33
  payments. The deputy couldn't help but
• 56:35
  think that the system was exploiting them, removing all
• 56:38
  forms of income, police coverage and public transport.
• 56:41
  Failing to maintain communal property and facilities.
• 56:44
  Closing every factory, car plant, car plant, shipyard, coal
• 56:48
  mine, steelworks and textile mill for 100 miles around.
• 56:52
  And offering nothing in its place.
• 56:55
  Sometimes it's just really hard to get a sense of what an
• 56:58
  author's politics are when you're.
• 57:00
  Not there though. No, it is.
• 57:05
  He is. He is red in tooth and claw in
• 57:08
  his because in the first section as well he's he's sort of.
• 57:11
  There's all these little references to, oh, the town
• 57:13
  still had a hospital in those days.
• 57:16
  In this middle section, there are some scathing criticisms.
• 57:19
  And in fact it it reminds me of Rusty Davis.
• 57:22
  That is best when he takes some political stabs in the new
• 57:26
  series. Yeah.
• 57:28
  And, you know, let's not let you know.
• 57:30
  We should, we should get on to it.
• 57:31
  The, the most satirical element of that is that the Doctor has.
• 57:35
  We find the Doctor in a very different place that he is.
• 57:37
  He has engaged with society because he needs to provide for
• 57:40
  Miranda. Now He's adopted who and he
• 57:42
  wants. He says, you know, I don't want
• 57:43
  her to miss out on any opportunities.
• 57:45
  And the weight of that is to have lots of money, which is a
• 57:47
  kind of critique in of itself. And he's described as
• 57:51
  Thatcherism personifies at one point.
• 57:54
  Yeah is the is the one of times people of the decade or
• 57:56
  something. And he's done it because he's
• 57:58
  become a management consultant and he does it where it's it's
• 58:03
  it's such a great, again, it's such a great idea of how you do
• 58:06
  Doctor Who in this because he sort of takes Doctor Who at face
• 58:10
  value but then puts it into the real world.
• 58:12
  And you know, he can make those two gears mesh.
• 58:15
  And so the Doctor has kind of infiltrated Thatcherite Britain
• 58:19
  in the same way that if it were like some alien or authoritarian
• 58:22
  society. And he basically goes into these
• 58:25
  companies sorts, goes into these companies that are all working
• 58:28
  sorts, everything else, give, make, give speeches that make
• 58:32
  all the workers feel empowered and leaves the world having been
• 58:35
  set a better place. He's still saving the world.
• 58:38
  If he can't remember why he's doing it, do you know there's
• 58:40
  one great bit as well, isn't it, where they go?
• 58:43
  How many layoffs are there going to be?
• 58:44
  And he goes, why would we ever do that?
• 58:46
  Yeah, yeah boy. And oh there's a quick bit as
• 58:49
  well. So he he through circumstance he
• 58:52
  meets Debbie and he come back into each other's lives and
• 58:55
  she's like what how have you done that?
• 58:57
  And he does the it's the best ever.
• 58:59
  They, he literally says. I'll explain later, but it's
• 59:01
  about how you make millions out of management consultancy.
• 59:05
  Lars, couldn't you have added that bit, please?
• 59:07
  I could have done with the tips, you know.
• 59:10
  Do you know what I've written here about this middle section I
• 59:13
  just wrote? I put teen drama, genocide
• 59:15
  hormones. Ferran and Miranda.
• 59:18
  Potent stuff. Oh.
• 59:21
  There's a There's a lot of emotion in this section, isn't
• 59:23
  it? Now there's a lot.
• 59:24
  It's raw. Oh, it is.
• 59:26
  Yeah. It really is.
• 59:27
  I mean, I so when I first read this book, I was probably of a
• 59:30
  comparable age to the age that the characters are in it.
• 59:34
  And I remember it was the point at which I really began to
• 59:40
  emotionally engage with it as well.
• 59:41
  I've I've recognized a lot of what they were talking about, a
• 59:44
  lot of their feelings, the awkwardness, the fear, the, you
• 59:48
  know, self criticism. There's a lot of someone said of
• 59:50
  this bit that there's a lot of teenage angst, but teenagers are
• 59:53
  full of angst. So of course there's of course
• 59:55
  there's going to be and it's wonderful.
• 59:59
  And he Miranda becomes much more of a viewpoint person here, and
• 1:00:03
  she's worried that she's always like.
• 1:00:06
  It just feels like, oh, I'm just taking everything too, too
• 1:00:08
  seriously. I need to loosen up.
• 1:00:10
  I need to engage with stuff a bit more.
• 1:00:11
  And like, you know, what teenager hasn't felt like that
• 1:00:14
  at some point? But also, she doesn't know it.
• 1:00:16
  It's because she's she's the daughter of the emperor of the
• 1:00:19
  universe from the far future. She says she's sort of exact.
• 1:00:22
  She's seeing herself from the outsider.
• 1:00:24
  She's examining things too much rather than just experiencing
• 1:00:26
  things. So when she's kissing Bob, of
• 1:00:29
  course he's called Bob Bob. That's right.
• 1:00:32
  You did the Blackadder one. Sorry.
• 1:00:34
  Which he? Which he's He likes Miranda
• 1:00:36
  because she's the one person who says his name without doing it.
• 1:00:39
  Rowan Atkinson. Oh, can we talk about Bob for a
• 1:00:41
  moment? Bob, Bob.
• 1:00:43
  Bob. But what an idiot.
• 1:00:45
  Oh, he is. And again, it's such a he's so
• 1:00:48
  he's Miranda's not quite boyfriend.
• 1:00:51
  A man who who? Who?
• 1:00:52
  Who fails to become Miranda's boyfriend.
• 1:00:55
  She. Sort of effectively decides to
• 1:00:57
  go out with him just because it will get.
• 1:00:59
  Her best friend off her back like, oh, you should have one.
• 1:01:02
  All right, I'll him. He'll do, yeah.
• 1:01:05
  And he he's sort of. And it's and it's such a
• 1:01:07
  wonderfully, tenderly realised sort of relationship between the
• 1:01:15
  two of them because she's got this.
• 1:01:16
  All right, go on. And he's kind of like, oh, OK
• 1:01:18
  And that sense of, you know, when you're that age, you're
• 1:01:21
  very aware that you're that age and that that you are heading
• 1:01:24
  towards adulthood and that so much of what you do at that age
• 1:01:27
  is kind of a performance of what you should be doing at that age.
• 1:01:33
  Which, yeah, that first awkward, fumbly kiss.
• 1:01:36
  And he, she's explained to him that she has two hearts.
• 1:01:40
  And so she, she says, put your hands up to my top on my rib and
• 1:01:44
  there's a reference. He's like, he's like, well, he's
• 1:01:48
  just a lovely little reference to him chancing it by just
• 1:01:51
  brushing the bottom of the bra. And it's all of this stuff.
• 1:01:54
  When you say this is a Doctor Who book, it sounds like it
• 1:01:56
  should be really awkward and really kind of cool girls,
• 1:02:00
  right? I was absorbed in these
• 1:02:03
  sequences like I I don't know if it's because the characters were
• 1:02:06
  so potent. The dialogue was so good.
• 1:02:07
  I don't know what it was. And it was only when I ended one
• 1:02:10
  chapter and I was explaining it to my other half and I went,
• 1:02:14
  this doesn't sound like a Doctor Who book at all, does it?
• 1:02:16
  It's like Doctor Who 9 O 21 OI get I remember thinking of it
• 1:02:19
  that it was that it felt, or at least when I look back on it,
• 1:02:22
  that it felt like one of the first grown up books I'd I'd
• 1:02:27
  actually read. And I think actually, you know,
• 1:02:29
  would fit really well with a lot of modern doctor audiences.
• 1:02:33
  Certainly, you know, when they're trying to get back that
• 1:02:35
  younger audience as they seem to be doing into RTD two, maybe not
• 1:02:40
  the child audience, but, you know, teenage, late, teenage and
• 1:02:44
  into, you know, early young adulthood.
• 1:02:46
  This is exactly the sort of stuff that should go into it.
• 1:02:49
  It's baffling. This hasn't had a reprint, isn't
• 1:02:51
  it? Given that they have selected
• 1:02:52
  Virgin and BBC books like some of the some of the more prestige
• 1:02:55
  ones and reprinted them, that is.
• 1:02:58
  You're right, this is so in tune with the new series.
• 1:03:00
  Oh, it's perfect. It's it is it is available on
• 1:03:04
  Kindle legally. They did do a brief thing where
• 1:03:07
  they made a few of the BBC books available as Print on Demand and
• 1:03:10
  Kindle and it is still up. So if you want to, I think it's
• 1:03:12
  only 299 on Amazon. God, it's the best when you
• 1:03:15
  think of some of the crap you could spend a tenor on these
• 1:03:18
  days. After listening to this episode,
• 1:03:20
  the sales are going to Spike. You know Lars Parkin is going to
• 1:03:22
  be made. Oh, I hope so.
• 1:03:24
  He deserves it while we're talking about Bob.
• 1:03:27
  What Bob I don't want. To leave the bit where he's
• 1:03:31
  talking about his comic books, this is, this is exactly the bit
• 1:03:35
  I was going to talk. About so so he again God I
• 1:03:40
  identify. I never did this, but I could so
• 1:03:42
  easily have done this at this age.
• 1:03:45
  They've been out and he realises that he's not going to be able
• 1:03:47
  to get the comic book shop before it shuts.
• 1:03:50
  If if if he goes home, if he he takes all the way home then goes
• 1:03:54
  back out. So she ends up going to the
• 1:03:56
  comic book shop which is called LV4O26 or something after the
• 1:04:01
  the planet an alien which is just perfect.
• 1:04:03
  So he ends up on their first date, taking her to a comic book
• 1:04:05
  shop and clearly, like realising what he's done but also not
• 1:04:09
  wanting to, not wanting to miss the new issue of Teen Titans.
• 1:04:15
  And she she's asking questions and she says she she smiles at
• 1:04:20
  him. No, having knowledge and
• 1:04:22
  enthusiasm is never a bad thing. Bob decided not to demonstrate
• 1:04:25
  quite how much knowledge you really had about comics.
• 1:04:28
  That line made me die. I was like, oh, how many dates
• 1:04:32
  have I had when I've been there? I, I, I, I, I I cannot look at
• 1:04:37
  anyone right now. I oh God, oh, the memories.
• 1:04:40
  Oh God. It's, I get it now sometimes,
• 1:04:44
  you know, I say I'll run to doctor, I'm sorry, I run a
• 1:04:46
  podcast and they go, oh, what about?
• 1:04:48
  And I go Doctor Who? And I usually just get the
• 1:04:51
  answer why. I love it.
• 1:04:55
  All right. Oh, but you know it's you know
• 1:04:58
  it's it's such a such a wonderful tribute to our to our
• 1:05:01
  other half's right. There's still moments where my
• 1:05:03
  my wife, bless you again and she will be maintaining eye contact
• 1:05:07
  and she will be giving every appearance of listening as I'm
• 1:05:10
  explaining that actually the Imperial family of the last many
• 1:05:12
  times, you know. She'll do like the mum thing,
• 1:05:16
  sort of tap your knees and said, all right dear, let's have
• 1:05:18
  dinner. Come on.
• 1:05:19
  Yes, yeah, exactly. Although I've got to confess my
• 1:05:22
  other half is a Doctrary fan. I'll.
• 1:05:23
  I'll. Him for podcasting.
• 1:05:25
  So I'm in the very dangerous position that one sort of false
• 1:05:28
  conversation or opinion and we'll never know the
• 1:05:31
  relationship again. You could you could end up like
• 1:05:34
  the Doctor and the Master, you know?
• 1:05:35
  If it's just, if it's just the two of you, then you'll just
• 1:05:37
  keep going and going until the universe burns.
• 1:05:39
  He's such a. Relentlessly optimistic person,
• 1:05:42
  Mike, you know and you know, he loves all of it.
• 1:05:44
  And so he's turned me around on battlefield keys and all of it,
• 1:05:48
  You know? I love it all now because of
• 1:05:50
  him. Or something.
• 1:05:53
  Going back to Bob a second, because, you know, genuinely I'm
• 1:05:57
  not taking a piece when I say it's the tensest sequences in
• 1:06:01
  this book were at that party where all those emotions are in
• 1:06:07
  play. Ferran is there, ready to strike
• 1:06:10
  at any minute. Diana's there trying to cop off
• 1:06:13
  with anyone she can find. They kiss.
• 1:06:17
  He says the very unfortunate thing of was that your first
• 1:06:20
  kiss? You never say that after you've
• 1:06:23
  kissed somebody. The inference is not flattering.
• 1:06:26
  Then they all go to bed and the most tensest moment was where
• 1:06:31
  and I'd forgotten. I forgot where this was ending.
• 1:06:35
  She wakes up and she's like, Oh no, I should have given him a
• 1:06:38
  chance. I'm going to do it.
• 1:06:39
  I'm going to lose my virginity to Bob tonight.
• 1:06:42
  And so she creeps through the hall and she becomes very aware
• 1:06:45
  that he's not in his bedroom. Of course he's having it off
• 1:06:48
  with Diana in the other room. And just just how Lars Parkin
• 1:06:54
  managed to portray those feelings, the anger which he
• 1:06:58
  punches him the next day. I remember going through all
• 1:07:01
  this as a teenager. It's it, your your heart breaks,
• 1:07:07
  doesn't it? That moment when she she sort of
• 1:07:10
  knows where where? The way he captures it, it's not
• 1:07:12
  like she sees he's not there and goes oh, but that, that dawning
• 1:07:17
  realisation of, Oh well, Dinah's room and opens the door.
• 1:07:22
  And we know we're just screaming.
• 1:07:24
  Don't look, please. Oh, and and then to cap it all
• 1:07:28
  off, oh, wait, Bob tries to go and make it up the next day to
• 1:07:32
  because. And it's such a wonderfully
• 1:07:34
  twisted thing because at that point she has rejected Bob and
• 1:07:37
  so Bobby obviously hurt. So Bob obviously makes a
• 1:07:40
  hideously bad decision. But you, you sort of, you then
• 1:07:43
  catch up with him the next day and you sort of see how he's got
• 1:07:47
  there in his head and he's like, oh God, why?
• 1:07:49
  Why? Did I would have just stayed in
• 1:07:51
  bed, if only I just stayed in bed and he but of.
• 1:07:55
  Course, he's a young man. Of course he didn't.
• 1:07:58
  Oh but it's perfect because he then he turns up at the he turns
• 1:08:00
  up at the house and the doctor at this point knows that the
• 1:08:02
  clade are back and are coming after Miranda.
• 1:08:05
  So he thinks he basically thinks that Bob is Feron, who's
• 1:08:08
  everyone's younger brother come to killer.
• 1:08:10
  And so he goes and confronts him and he's the doctor is so is so
• 1:08:14
  happy when it's when Bob says I'm Miranda's boyfriend and
• 1:08:17
  there's a line about oh I'm just about to take a perspective
• 1:08:20
  driving around to to school do you want to lift?
• 1:08:22
  I was like OK, I'm not there's a like that he he got in the front
• 1:08:26
  round. He got in the back, He could, he
• 1:08:27
  could feel the the hatred drilling through the back of the
• 1:08:31
  car seat. Oh great.
• 1:08:32
  Do you know what it did? It reminded me of Buffy the
• 1:08:34
  Vampire Slayer at its best, the way that sort of series one to
• 1:08:37
  three of Buffy captured the pain of maturing and hitting puberty.
• 1:08:44
  I was just like, that might have been my favorite section of the
• 1:08:47
  book. You know, it's really good,
• 1:08:49
  isn't it? It's, it's as you say, it's the
• 1:08:51
  bit that when you describe it sounds the oddest, like you do
• 1:08:54
  send Doctor Who, but really, but again, it's a testament to his
• 1:08:57
  ability as a writer that this is engagement with all of these
• 1:09:00
  things really capably. You know, this that whole
• 1:09:03
  section could be a book, a book separate to all of this.
• 1:09:08
  You know that that is just about that.
• 1:09:10
  And it's just sold to a, you know, Aya or a young young adult
• 1:09:15
  audience and. I did feel there was a series of
• 1:09:19
  books in this, like he obviously he has to skip huge periods of
• 1:09:23
  the 80s to tell his story across the decade.
• 1:09:26
  And like you said, there's a short story there.
• 1:09:29
  There's a short story in the Gallifrey Chronicles as well
• 1:09:31
  where we go back to this and I'm like, God, there's a hundred
• 1:09:34
  stories to tell her that we're not seeing.
• 1:09:37
  It's again it's yeah he's really because it's not just that it's
• 1:09:42
  this can be read separately to the rest of the Earth arc.
• 1:09:44
  Everything that you need to know in terms of the ongoing arc is
• 1:09:47
  is given to you in a really you know really nice way that you
• 1:09:51
  won't notice. But it's also really, you know,
• 1:09:56
  making use of that arc to tell this story because, you know, I
• 1:10:00
  would love to see a version of this done on TV.
• 1:10:03
  And actually it's all feels like he's writing it in a way that's
• 1:10:06
  sort of, it's quietly demonstrating you could do this
• 1:10:08
  on a, you know, decent TV budget.
• 1:10:10
  Certainly the 1st 2 sections and the second section in
• 1:10:13
  particular, You know, you sort of have to remind yourself
• 1:10:15
  because because you're so aware of the context of all of this
• 1:10:18
  that, you know, it's it's sort of the final battle of this, of
• 1:10:21
  this galactic war. You know, it takes place in a, a
• 1:10:24
  big section, takes place in a leisure centre.
• 1:10:26
  You know, the the bit where Ferran first catches up and
• 1:10:28
  almost kills her. It's just in a legend.
• 1:10:30
  The showers isn't that tense, that bit.
• 1:10:33
  I had to go to bed at that point.
• 1:10:35
  It was getting very late and I was like, I'm desperate to know
• 1:10:38
  if he's going to even cop off with her or kill her with that
• 1:10:40
  knife. But you think how little drama
• 1:10:43
  some writers managed to get out of.
• 1:10:44
  You know what you watch some of the work, some of the less good
• 1:10:47
  Star Wars series that are about at the moment, entire battle
• 1:10:50
  fleets, you know, drilling down. I'll make a comparison.
• 1:10:54
  Look at Jim Mortimer's Bell Tempest earlier in the run where
• 1:10:58
  he is destroying planets at a rate of knots and mass murdering
• 1:11:03
  people. Like in on every single page.
• 1:11:06
  And none of it impacts at all. None of it means anything.
• 1:11:08
  It's not one, it's just too big scale.
• 1:11:10
  And two, Oh no, I just couldn't engage with any of it.
• 1:11:13
  And yet a a teenage girl walking across a dark hallway to her
• 1:11:20
  boyfriend's bedroom. Yeah, I was absolutely grips.
• 1:11:24
  Oh, and he he, he demonstrates that ability in the big things.
• 1:11:27
  But in the tiny little moments as well, Like just genuinely in
• 1:11:32
  catching you off guard with things because he knows what
• 1:11:34
  he's doing. And he know, you know, he he
• 1:11:36
  he's confident in his ability to have these effects on you that
• 1:11:38
  he's then so confident that you can then cut across it in a way
• 1:11:41
  that really works. So the bit where after Miranda
• 1:11:44
  has walked in on Bob and Bob and Dinah in bed together and she
• 1:11:50
  storms out and you know that Ferran has been waiting outside
• 1:11:54
  her to come out the whole time and finds us, you know, Oh no,
• 1:11:58
  this is it. This is what's going to happen,
• 1:11:59
  isn't it? Because because of Bob shagging
• 1:12:03
  about, Miranda is going to get killed by Ferren, or he's going
• 1:12:06
  to capture her and he walks out and Ferren is moving in for the
• 1:12:09
  kill. And then she turns around, sees
• 1:12:12
  him, and just goes, oh thank God, and you, you're so thrown
• 1:12:18
  off by that that he's, you were there with Faron all of a
• 1:12:21
  sudden, who is so thrown off by that that he finds himself just
• 1:12:24
  having to escort her home because he's like, I can't, I
• 1:12:27
  can't kill her. This would be so anti climactic.
• 1:12:29
  I cannot do it like this. In fact we have several moments
• 1:12:33
  like that where it's like, no, this isn't the myth a lot, you
• 1:12:36
  know, the the great death of the last one that I envisaged in my
• 1:12:40
  head. If he'd just done it, the book
• 1:12:42
  might have had a very different ending.
• 1:12:44
  Yeah, there's exactly that. There's the it's the yeah, it's
• 1:12:47
  the scene where they're in the showers together and he thinks
• 1:12:49
  he, he he'd picture them battling in robot armour on a
• 1:12:53
  desert planet or something. And then the teacher catches
• 1:12:56
  them and he goes, Oh no, I can't do it now.
• 1:12:58
  This is too embarrassing. How can I tell this story in
• 1:13:01
  years to come? Speaking of so in years to come
• 1:13:05
  when just to tell off this bit when Baranza, you know Bob and
• 1:13:09
  Miranda dropped off in front of school and he tries to say, he
• 1:13:13
  tries to say something to and Miranda very calmly listens to
• 1:13:16
  everything he said and then punches him in the face, right.
• 1:13:19
  And there's a line about in years to come because this is
• 1:13:22
  where Bob X, it's the story. It's a lot like in years to
• 1:13:25
  come, Bob would tell people that he'd said I'll take that as a no
• 1:13:29
  then. Or has anyone there just heard
• 1:13:32
  you've given a little Yelp? And you know what?
• 1:13:35
  That line resonated with me more than anything.
• 1:13:37
  I think back to. I'll think back to all the
• 1:13:39
  mistakes in my life where I've given it like a heroic spin in
• 1:13:43
  my favour over the years. I was like, oh, I am Bob Jesus.
• 1:13:48
  Although actually, alongside all of this, you've got the doctor
• 1:13:52
  rescuing Debbie. From the ultimate symbol of
• 1:13:56
  Thatcher's Britain, this dreadful, broken down tower
• 1:13:59
  block that you know the other two have been torn down.
• 1:14:03
  This one's just been left to rot because they didn't have the
• 1:14:06
  money to tear it down. It is scathing, isn't it?
• 1:14:10
  And in a beautiful moment of visual poetry, he turns it into
• 1:14:16
  an enormous tower of roses. Oh, it's got the way that's
• 1:14:20
  written as well. Them all just sort of exploding
• 1:14:22
  from the top down and all of the all of the guards.
• 1:14:25
  There's a reference to a one of the clay guards trying to jump
• 1:14:29
  out of a window to escape it, and he turns into roses on the
• 1:14:32
  way down and sort of he and his all his weapons explode into
• 1:14:35
  petals as they hit the ground. See it?
• 1:14:37
  Can't you? It's perfect, I can see.
• 1:14:40
  It just in CGI though. It's just an explosion of red.
• 1:14:43
  And then and then the scene cuts back to the party with Miranda
• 1:14:46
  saying do you like Guns N' Roses?
• 1:14:50
  Boom. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
• 1:14:52
  It's great. So like in the first section,
• 1:14:54
  we've done sort of Spielberg. In the middle section we've
• 1:14:57
  condemned Thatcher. It's John Hughes in the middle
• 1:15:00
  section as well, I think quite a bit, yeah.
• 1:15:03
  Yeah, yeah. Well, what about the last
• 1:15:05
  section then? The last section?
• 1:15:08
  Nicely done is is where it goes. Full blooded, late 90s, the late
• 1:15:16
  80s, early 90s. James Cameron sci-fi epic.
• 1:15:21
  I kept hearing the music from close Encounters of the Third
• 1:15:23
  Kind. You know, in the back of my
• 1:15:25
  heads, yeah, I'll tell you what I thought of.
• 1:15:28
  I thought of those films like I said James Cameron, because I
• 1:15:30
  was thinking of films like The Abyss and like Terminator 2,
• 1:15:33
  Judgement Day where they you know, or Aliens to a lesser
• 1:15:37
  extent where you know model work was it's absolute zenith and
• 1:15:42
  direction and it was big meaty sci-fi all of a sudden because
• 1:15:46
  he captures the tones of the different areas.
• 1:15:47
  That's that's why it's quite generically referred.
• 1:15:49
  The sections are are not, I think you can work out the
• 1:15:51
  years, but they are just called the early 80s, the mid 80s and
• 1:15:55
  the late 80s and he's trying to capture the sense the memory of
• 1:15:59
  those of those times through the cultural references.
• 1:16:03
  This section opens with the fall of the Berlin Wall, doesn't it?
• 1:16:06
  So it's very specifically dated there, very specifically.
• 1:16:09
  And there's references to things like Miranda's got a Batman
• 1:16:13
  T-shirt because the the Batman logo was, you know, everywhere.
• 1:16:18
  You know, that stuff just knocked around for years
• 1:16:20
  afterwards because there was so much of it.
• 1:16:22
  You know, it's it's like you can see this is just when they're
• 1:16:24
  beginning to realize that CGI is a thing.
• 1:16:26
  There's a bit where like she gets, she gets so fair and comes
• 1:16:31
  back for her. And it's been, it's been decades
• 1:16:34
  for him, but it's only been about three years for her.
• 1:16:37
  And it's because they've taken all this time in the far future
• 1:16:41
  to dig through the records to try and find another time where
• 1:16:45
  Miranda turns up so they can go. Back and adopt and the only
• 1:16:50
  reference they could find to her was a movie, wasn't it?
• 1:16:53
  Yes, it's something like. So the first Yeah, it's for the
• 1:16:57
  Berlin Wall. And she has finally lost her
• 1:16:59
  virginity to A. Amateur filmmaker or something
• 1:17:02
  who goes on to he's a student filmmaker or something like
• 1:17:05
  that. And it's yeah, he wins the Best
• 1:17:08
  Foreign language picture Oscar in 2017, and it's based on his
• 1:17:12
  life and you're in It, played by Jodie Foster's daughter.
• 1:17:17
  Of course, it's Jodie Foster's daughter.
• 1:17:20
  Perfect. Yeah.
• 1:17:22
  And there's a bit where she gets abducted.
• 1:17:23
  And the way it's described, maybe it's just because I was
• 1:17:26
  so, you know, in in my head for thinking as well, but I was
• 1:17:29
  thinking, that feels like we've got CGI now, you know?
• 1:17:34
  So he's even writing it as if the special effects are
• 1:17:37
  progressing as we do. Please, I'm.
• 1:17:40
  A moment for the for the doctor on the plane, riding on the
• 1:17:45
  napkins, How to steal a space shuttle.
• 1:17:50
  I was in our bath, laughing my head off, Marvin.
• 1:17:52
  I was like, what's going on? So you don't want to know.
• 1:17:54
  And he's just, he's just handing napkins to Debbie, who's next
• 1:17:57
  time he's trying to work the wall out?
• 1:17:58
  Oh. Gosh, it's gorgeous.
• 1:18:01
  It's, it's it's beautiful. And so Ferren's turned up and
• 1:18:05
  he's now he's now middle-aged. And there's also this other
• 1:18:09
  thing, you know, we've touched on the stuff about who the
• 1:18:11
  Imperial family actually are and who the clay actually are.
• 1:18:14
  Lance Barkley does this in a few of his books.
• 1:18:15
  It's really there in cold fusion, which is this thing of
• 1:18:19
  of like hidden narratives. So that there are there are kind
• 1:18:22
  of stories or subplots going on alongside the story that he's
• 1:18:26
  aware of. But maybe the the reader is only
• 1:18:30
  semi semi cognizant of in some ways but they they they they do
• 1:18:35
  impact what we're seeing. They have an effect on it.
• 1:18:37
  So part of that is who you know the identity of the Imperial
• 1:18:39
  family and how that's all playing in.
• 1:18:42
  But it's also what's going on with the clades in the future
• 1:18:45
  because we only meet them as they come back.
• 1:18:48
  But if you follow it, you can clearly tell You know at the
• 1:18:50
  start when Zevron comes back, they are, when we first meet
• 1:18:53
  them at the in the prologue, a bit on Scaro, they are
• 1:18:57
  triumphant. They are a mighty empire.
• 1:19:00
  And then in the middle section, as a reference to he's come back
• 1:19:03
  because the it's all beginning to, like fall apart a little
• 1:19:09
  bit. They're beginning to sense that
• 1:19:13
  maybe the factions aren't underneath them, aren't really
• 1:19:15
  lining up anymore. And then by this time, at the
• 1:19:17
  end of the late 80s, he's come back not to kill her, but to
• 1:19:20
  marry her, because it's all going to shit and he needs to
• 1:19:24
  keep his claim by marrying the Empress of the Universe.
• 1:19:28
  He wants access to the and this was giving me massive labyrinth
• 1:19:33
  vibes. The librarianth.
• 1:19:34
  The library. It's it's a library stroke
• 1:19:37
  labyrinth, yes. So that automatically just
• 1:19:41
  sounds fabulous. And it was it.
• 1:19:45
  Only her family have access to the knowledge of what that is.
• 1:19:49
  Well, yes, I and I'm beginning to think that they're they're
• 1:19:52
  Time Lords. You need you need access.
• 1:19:55
  I'm going. Are you are you doing the Eye of
• 1:19:58
  Harmony from the TV movie here? Do you need her?
• 1:20:01
  Do you need her to look at this is the thing.
• 1:20:04
  Because Lance Parkin does so much of his hiding stuff from
• 1:20:06
  you, you begin to, like, theorize for yourself whether.
• 1:20:10
  You've got to remember, you know Mike, that he has written, you
• 1:20:13
  know, 5 versions of the Complete History of Doctor Who.
• 1:20:16
  Have you seen those books? He knows it all.
• 1:20:19
  So if anyone could pull together a ton of continuity and sort of
• 1:20:23
  discreetly slip it into a book, it's last parking.
• 1:20:26
  Well Speaking of if if you do read a history Lance Parkins
• 1:20:32
  History of the Doctor Universe you if you read up on the the
• 1:20:35
  bit about this. So the spaceship that fairing
• 1:20:38
  comes back in, we should mention because it's a character in its
• 1:20:40
  own right. It's called the The Supremacy,
• 1:20:43
  and it is. It's the best spaceship ever.
• 1:20:47
  It's a city in space. It's so ahead of it's time that
• 1:20:50
  it's it's beyond state-of-the-art for the far
• 1:20:52
  future. And they say, you know, it was
• 1:20:56
  built by people, by race, long dead, who may never even have,
• 1:20:59
  who may never even have existed or something like that.
• 1:21:01
  Now in I'm making lots of 80s references and went out of the
• 1:21:05
  80s mode. It's the culture from E&M banks.
• 1:21:08
  It's a culture ship, right? In Doctor Who terms, in a
• 1:21:11
  History of the universe, he goes, yeah, it's the people from
• 1:21:14
  the also people who built it. And you go, yes, again, you
• 1:21:18
  don't need to know that, but once you do, you're like, oh,
• 1:21:20
  but what's what's great about that sort of continuity
• 1:21:22
  reference and the stuff with the clay as well is when you're
• 1:21:25
  given the answer, when you're told what that's really a
• 1:21:27
  reference to. It's not like, ah, there we go,
• 1:21:30
  I've got the gag and solve the crossword.
• 1:21:32
  It makes it. It adds another layer.
• 1:21:34
  Oh God, so the the people are gone in this future and like
• 1:21:37
  effect. It's it's exactly if you're I'm
• 1:21:40
  starting to think you know there's a ton of Easter eggs in
• 1:21:42
  this book that I didn't notice at.
• 1:21:45
  All I you know, I'm sure I didn't catch them all.
• 1:21:47
  Because one thing that I only caught this time through, and
• 1:21:49
  it's been reading the last section, I think Ferron
• 1:21:55
  listeners of a sensitive disposition may wish to cover.
• 1:21:57
  There he is now. I think Ferron is a product of
• 1:21:59
  incest that is implied because there's references because of
• 1:22:05
  Zevron, his brother who turns up in the first.
• 1:22:07
  And there's so many references made to the age gap between
• 1:22:10
  Zevron and Pharaon that Zevron is already like basically
• 1:22:13
  middle-aged at the start and he's and Pharaon is an infant.
• 1:22:17
  And there's lots of references made that and there's sorts of
• 1:22:19
  weird allusions made by Zevron to his mother who led the
• 1:22:21
  revolution and that he's doing this for her.
• 1:22:23
  And of course there's the whole kind of, there's the whole Aryan
• 1:22:26
  element that is made about them and their genetic purity because
• 1:22:29
  they're Daleks. And then in the last bit,
• 1:22:31
  there's a bit where one of the minor characters who's the pilot
• 1:22:34
  of the Supremacy. Who's really worried about going
• 1:22:36
  against the Doctor? And he recalls all the reasons
• 1:22:38
  he's scared of the Doctor. And there's a reference to he
• 1:22:42
  killed Farron's father. And we've never heard up to this
• 1:22:46
  point that he killed Farron's father, as far as I recall.
• 1:22:49
  But the But then he says even Salak never came back from that
• 1:22:52
  one. And Salak was the guy who went
• 1:22:54
  back with Zevron and was also killed.
• 1:22:57
  So. Oh God.
• 1:22:58
  So that again adds another leg. So of course they are.
• 1:23:01
  Of course, the Daleks are going to end up.
• 1:23:03
  Shagging each other because who else would?
• 1:23:05
  Who else would they sleep with if they think of the best things
• 1:23:07
  in the universe? Jesus Christ?
• 1:23:09
  Even that bit where they're talking about Miranda and Ferran
• 1:23:12
  together, and about how they're both blonde and how Aryan that
• 1:23:16
  is. Why was I not picking up any of
• 1:23:18
  these dialect references? Oh, it's.
• 1:23:20
  I know, I'm sure. I'm sure I missed some of them
• 1:23:22
  as well. Also, they mentioned very early
• 1:23:25
  on when the doctor meets first Miranda, you know, it's The
• 1:23:27
  Tempest as well. A lot of this is The Tempest,
• 1:23:29
  you know, they mentioned that, first of all, that Miranda is.
• 1:23:32
  Like a girl from The Tempest and Ferron.
• 1:23:34
  He, you know, is a play on Ferdinand who's the who's the
• 1:23:38
  love interest slash enemy who comes to the islands.
• 1:23:40
  And he even calls himself Ferdie.
• 1:23:42
  Yeah. He calls himself Ferdie.
• 1:23:44
  He's a smart writer, isn't he? He's just this.
• 1:23:47
  How do you, how do you even start writing something that's
• 1:23:50
  this this sort? I can say effortlessly deep,
• 1:23:52
  because of course it will be very high on effort, I'm sure.
• 1:23:56
  But you know, how do you even it's such a perfect?
• 1:23:59
  Sphere of It's like a ball bearing.
• 1:24:01
  It's like, where does this even begin?
• 1:24:04
  It's like, it's clearly so dense with references and it's so
• 1:24:07
  perfectly evokes the era and it is full of constantly evolving,
• 1:24:14
  thrilling characters and a ton of incident.
• 1:24:17
  I mean, yeah, I'm not sure we deserved him.
• 1:24:20
  Do you know? I I know what you mean.
• 1:24:22
  I I saw one. I kept thinking this, which is.
• 1:24:25
  I love that you're doing this as a Doctor Who book.
• 1:24:27
  But you know, why are you? Why are you doing this here?
• 1:24:30
  Why? You know you I mean, I I I think
• 1:24:32
  he did possibly as good with the Infinity Doctors.
• 1:24:36
  I personally think The Gallifrey Chronicles is an extraordinary
• 1:24:40
  book and in the way that it celebrates the era and pays off
• 1:24:45
  a lot of stuff that people had long forgotten in such a
• 1:24:48
  satisfying way. This is his best though.
• 1:24:53
  Yeah, I I think it is. I really think it is.
• 1:24:55
  It's it's it's his best. And then you know, like you're
• 1:24:58
  right. He think about it.
• 1:24:59
  He has probably got one of the best bibliographies of any
• 1:25:03
  Doctor Who author. You look down the list and
• 1:25:05
  there's not a single dud. There are some that, you know
• 1:25:08
  there's things like, so the book he wrote, the next doctor book
• 1:25:10
  of this was Trading Futures, which is a sort of James Bond's
• 1:25:14
  pastiche and it's breezy funny thing.
• 1:25:16
  Of course he wrote something. A breezy action adventure after
• 1:25:19
  this. Because you need to, right?
• 1:25:21
  Isn't that the one where he manages to?
• 1:25:23
  He has like an entire James Bond pre title sequence with the
• 1:25:27
  Doctor Who takes down this entire crime syndicate with a
• 1:25:30
  bouncy ball. I mean, what's not to love?
• 1:25:33
  It's perfect. But you know, he he so he yeah,
• 1:25:36
  he. I don't think Paul Connell had
• 1:25:38
  duds, Ben Aronovich had duds. Mark Gaters, we've discussed and
• 1:25:41
  Anthony Spyer had duds. I don't think Paul Connell's had
• 1:25:44
  a cold fusion. You know, we've barely even
• 1:25:46
  mentioned that. That was one of his books.
• 1:25:49
  It's astonishing. But I'd go further.
• 1:25:51
  I I think this, this is one of, if not the best, one of the best
• 1:25:55
  Doctor Who books ever written. I don't understand why it's not
• 1:25:58
  up. People got some of the Virgin
• 1:26:00
  New Adventures. People talk about as if they're
• 1:26:02
  all, you know, Penguin Classics and they're not.
• 1:26:04
  There are duds in there. But you know, you know what I
• 1:26:07
  think it is though, I think for two reasons.
• 1:26:09
  I think one is because of the Virgin New Adventures or Virgin
• 1:26:13
  writers had such an influence on the new series.
• 1:26:15
  A lot of them were cherry picked for that first season.
• 1:26:18
  Yeah, and a lot of what they introduced to Doctor Who, the
• 1:26:22
  sort of the angst and that very heavy emotion that that was all
• 1:26:25
  there when the series came back. There's that.
• 1:26:28
  But as well, like a book like this, it is in a lot of ways
• 1:26:32
  very gentle, almost traditional in in what it's doing.
• 1:26:37
  You know it is about an uprising and all and and you know, flying
• 1:26:41
  saucers in space and things like that.
• 1:26:43
  It's not got that sort of angry reactionary tone to to a lot of,
• 1:26:48
  you know, Transient and books like that, you know, that are
• 1:26:50
  really trying to make a point that we're not actually doing
• 1:26:53
  Doctor Who anymore, we're doing proper adult science fiction.
• 1:26:57
  I think that that might be a bit of bit of why this isn't
• 1:27:00
  recognised as much as it is. It's also part of an arc.
• 1:27:03
  Which kind of it nestles in there rather than standing on
• 1:27:07
  its own. Yeah, I think.
• 1:27:09
  I think a lot of. I think you're right.
• 1:27:10
  I think a lot of people who. You know, went on to to say, you
• 1:27:15
  know, as you say, set set opinions in many, in many ways.
• 1:27:18
  I think a lot of them had had stopped reading them by this
• 1:27:21
  point. You know, certainly the sales
• 1:27:23
  weren't decline. I think it was this was 2001.
• 1:27:25
  Two was where they cut the BBC books to one a month rather than
• 1:27:28
  two a month to that orphanage overseas.
• 1:27:31
  Weren't they shoveling them into the furnace?
• 1:27:33
  Yep, Yep, absolutely. That's.
• 1:27:35
  God, that breaks your heart, doesn't it really does.
• 1:27:37
  It really does. What we're saying essentially is
• 1:27:41
  that all of the people who are important Doctor Who were
• 1:27:43
  younger and getting laid more often when the virgin new
• 1:27:44
  adventures were coming back. But I one thing I would like to
• 1:27:49
  say about this though, and this is this is really on a personal
• 1:27:53
  note is since reading this the last time.
• 1:27:55
  So I've not read this about 10 years, but I I'm a I'm a dad now
• 1:27:59
  and I read this as the dad of of of a young daughter.
• 1:28:04
  And there was genuinely it's seems stupid to say it it's a
• 1:28:07
  beautiful book about parenthood and fatherhood as well.
• 1:28:11
  There were so many bits this now that I was you know in the same
• 1:28:14
  way that the first time I read it was getting all hung up on
• 1:28:16
  the teenage angst and what have you.
• 1:28:18
  There were so many bits now where I was going.
• 1:28:20
  I I get that I understand why the doctors feeling that because
• 1:28:23
  there is this this thing when you're a parent obviously it's
• 1:28:25
  not you know the love you have for that child.
• 1:28:28
  The fact they become the most important thing you know doesn't
• 1:28:30
  need saying, but even that whole thing of.
• 1:28:33
  As we said right back at the start, he is a character who
• 1:28:35
  doesn't know himself and has spent 100 years not knowing
• 1:28:38
  himself. And now he's found someone who
• 1:28:39
  was like him and who in trying to guide and help as a parent,
• 1:28:45
  you do it can. It can help you in some ways
• 1:28:48
  understand yourself a bit better because you're forced to be
• 1:28:50
  reflective and reflective in those ways.
• 1:28:53
  You know, oh, they're being like that because they've got that
• 1:28:55
  off me. You know, it's for better or
• 1:28:58
  worse, you can see yourself reflected back at quite a lot.
• 1:29:00
  And that's all in this book as well.
• 1:29:02
  It's, it's. You know, when they when they
• 1:29:06
  did The Doctor's Daughter on TV, it's not a particularly good
• 1:29:09
  episode, but but apart from everything else, it's it's not
• 1:29:12
  engaging with its central idea at all.
• 1:29:14
  There's nothing actually there about parenthood that feels to
• 1:29:17
  me is recognizable. Whereas at the end of it all,
• 1:29:21
  Father Time is a really, really good and sensitive book about
• 1:29:25
  the Doctor as a father. And what sort of father would he
• 1:29:30
  be? And you think, well, he would be
• 1:29:31
  a really good because that would be his quest, that would be his
• 1:29:33
  mission, would be caring for this person.
• 1:29:35
  And it's interesting the contrast they have with Debbie
• 1:29:37
  because Debbie carries on through the book and spoiler
• 1:29:40
  alert, Debbie dies. And Debbie dies in quite a
• 1:29:44
  brutal and sudden way. She basically trips a trap that
• 1:29:46
  was intended for the doctor. And he he pauses.
• 1:29:51
  He's sad. And then he just moves on.
• 1:29:54
  Because he, as you say, he's been oblivious.
• 1:29:56
  He he, I think he understands her on like a lot of important
• 1:30:00
  levels, but there's no romantic involvement because he can't
• 1:30:02
  have that connection. But his daughter is the person
• 1:30:04
  who has the connection, for she is the most important thing.
• 1:30:07
  Steven Moffat wrote it in Jekyll.
• 1:30:09
  He said love is a psychopath with a nice name and there's
• 1:30:13
  some of that here. In the end, this is the one
• 1:30:15
  thing in 100 years that the doctor has genuinely cared
• 1:30:17
  about, and through this novel he helped her grow.
• 1:30:21
  She leaves, goes back to the future.
• 1:30:23
  In her time machine, which she re dubs the ship like the Doctor
• 1:30:27
  did in the old days. And at the end of it, you know,
• 1:30:31
  she leaves her, her dad behind because that's the ultimate fate
• 1:30:34
  of any parent is. You know, we've all seen Toy
• 1:30:36
  Story 3 is the ultimate thing is that you get left behind and we
• 1:30:41
  are what they grow beyond, to quote The Last Jedi as well, to
• 1:30:43
  bring it all back in. And at the end of it, I've got
• 1:30:47
  when he's watching her go and she goes, you know, do you want
• 1:30:50
  to come with me? And he's like, no, this is, this
• 1:30:52
  is your thing now I've this is your life, your thing to follow.
• 1:30:57
  I got a bit choked up, if I'm honest.
• 1:31:00
  It feels like we've experienced A massively important chapter in
• 1:31:05
  his life in these 100 years. And then once he says goodbye to
• 1:31:10
  her, he's out there in space and he realizes this is where he
• 1:31:13
  needs to be. And he's just got away another,
• 1:31:15
  I can't remember, 13 years or something like that, 1111 years
• 1:31:19
  to see Fitz at Saint Louis in 2001.
• 1:31:23
  And he knows that's all coming. He's got the TARDIS and he said
• 1:31:26
  that all the bits are in place for that to happen.
• 1:31:29
  Yeah, it's good. Do you know, like you said that
• 1:31:31
  you saw yourself in this book or it taught you things about your
• 1:31:35
  life? There was a lot of bits in this
• 1:31:38
  book that I was like, that really reminds me of me.
• 1:31:43
  And I don't know what it says about me, but it was those
• 1:31:45
  moments where the characters we like, because I I think I'm
• 1:31:50
  quite a likable bloke I do have. Sorry, sorry.
• 1:31:53
  Yes, you are. Yeah.
• 1:31:53
  Yeah. Thank you very.
• 1:31:55
  Much. Well, I do have some dark
• 1:31:57
  moments and some thoughts I probably shouldn't have, and
• 1:31:59
  Lars Barking taps into that beautifully.
• 1:32:02
  So the bit where Debbie goes to visit Barry when he's comatose
• 1:32:05
  in hospital and she says that she's pleased that he is, but
• 1:32:08
  he's still alive and she's happy, but suddenly she's got
• 1:32:11
  control over the situation. Yeah, I was like, Oh yeah, I've
• 1:32:15
  been there before. Not in that exact scenario, but
• 1:32:18
  like that. And there's a bit later on where
• 1:32:21
  with Miranda where she's talking, where she's thinking
• 1:32:23
  about the fact that she murdered the fellow in Part 2.
• 1:32:27
  And she sort of, she managed to rationalize it and
• 1:32:30
  compartmentalize it. But the one thing she couldn't
• 1:32:34
  rationalize was the fact that she enjoyed it.
• 1:32:37
  And that there is that sort of. And I've had moments in my life
• 1:32:40
  where I'm like, oh God almighty, that was a terrible thing to do.
• 1:32:43
  But Jason, I enjoyed it. Well, just so.
• 1:32:46
  I just feel like he's tapping into some very raw emotions that
• 1:32:49
  I could see with myself. And I'll tell you what, this
• 1:32:51
  does not happen often in Doctor Who books.
• 1:32:53
  Oh no. It's like even sat here saying
• 1:32:56
  this. It feels faintly ridiculous that
• 1:32:58
  we can you actually go oh, do you know what?
• 1:33:00
  Do you know what? I read this Star Wars book on
• 1:33:02
  the daily, made me cry about being a dad, but that's a
• 1:33:05
  testament to how good this is. Are they?
• 1:33:09
  It's yeah, it it is wonderful. I I I love it.
• 1:33:14
  I wish. I wish it were better recognised
• 1:33:16
  and better understood. If you're listening to this.
• 1:33:18
  And you've not read it. Or you've not read it recently?
• 1:33:21
  Spoilers, everybody. Spoilers.
• 1:33:23
  First of all, I'm so sorry. There's no surprises left for
• 1:33:27
  you now. Debbie's fine.
• 1:33:29
  She's living on a farm somewhere.
• 1:33:30
  Miranda did not kill her soul in this.
• 1:33:34
  No, no, it's all fine. It's all fine.
• 1:33:35
  Don't worry. Don't, don't.
• 1:33:36
  It's fine. It's fine.
• 1:33:36
  Maybe he doesn't even have a daughter.
• 1:33:37
  Who knows? 30 years old now, isn't it?
• 1:33:40
  They've had a chance to read it. There has to be a statute of
• 1:33:42
  limitations on this. Oh, do you know the terrifying
• 1:33:44
  thing? If you wrote Father Time now, it
• 1:33:45
  would be set in the naughties. And it would end in 2012.
• 1:33:48
  Oh, let's see. Will you stop?
• 1:33:50
  Please, I said. At the beginning of this, I
• 1:33:52
  felt, oh, now. I felt ancient.
• 1:33:55
  It reminds me of those kids, you know, that come out and say, Oh
• 1:33:57
  yeah, Do you remember when Doctor Who started back with
• 1:34:00
  Rose and Christopher Eccleston are like, Oh dear.
• 1:34:03
  Oh, I I yes. I had a nephew who once told me
• 1:34:06
  that he'd seen the 1st Doctor. First Doctor.
• 1:34:10
  He wasn't talking about William Hart.
• 1:34:13
  He was talking about Jodie Whittaker.
• 1:34:16
  Oh, my nephew. Did he did used to refer to,
• 1:34:18
  Yeah, Doctor One was David Tennant because because Doctor
• 1:34:22
  Two was Matt Smith. Would I get it if that's your
• 1:34:24
  first doctor? No, of course it's but that's,
• 1:34:26
  you know, that's the wonderful thing, right?
• 1:34:28
  You know, I said way back to start, the first bit of Doctor
• 1:34:30
  Who I saw was the TV movie. And I remember seeing all the
• 1:34:32
  adverts for all the tie in merch in Quiz kids or whatever it was
• 1:34:37
  reading because bless them, they hoped there'd be a child
• 1:34:39
  audience. And I remember seeing all of,
• 1:34:43
  you know, they had the Paul McGann that all of the old
• 1:34:45
  doctors behind it. And it was just, you know,
• 1:34:48
  that's the stuff that sucks you in that there is this, this
• 1:34:50
  issue, you know this presumably at the time of recording this
• 1:34:53
  almost. Of old Doctor Who is about to go
• 1:34:57
  up on iPlayer. And you know, all almost,
• 1:35:00
  almost. And I know I've got to say it's
• 1:35:05
  almost worth losing it from the iPlayer for the operatic spat
• 1:35:11
  between Steph Coburn and Ian Levine online, which has been
• 1:35:15
  more entertaining than anything I've read in years.
• 1:35:19
  Oh, you sort of hanging on a street corner, like dragging on
• 1:35:22
  a fan going, yeah, mate, you want to see some Cavemen?
• 1:35:25
  We must find her daughter. We will make something.
• 1:35:28
  Her sister will make her understand 10 minutes later.
• 1:35:33
  Oh, she's dead. I was like, oh Christ, like.
• 1:35:36
  Oh God. Get us back on track.
• 1:35:38
  Sorry, at the top with with a book.
• 1:35:44
  Like the best books can be political.
• 1:35:48
  They can have an astonishing plots that take you in
• 1:35:51
  surprising directions. They can have great characters
• 1:35:54
  in them. But for me, the best books are
• 1:35:56
  the ones that make me feel things and a lot of books I read
• 1:36:01
  and it is just a bit of ephemera and I kick for it.
• 1:36:03
  You know End game that came Before this by Terence Dicks.
• 1:36:06
  It's fun as the Doctor, as a spy in the 1940s, but I don't think
• 1:36:12
  I felt a single emotion reading it, apart from oh, that's over
• 1:36:15
  with at the end. Throughout this, my heart was a
• 1:36:18
  flutter. And there's nothing wrong with
• 1:36:21
  that. You know, it's not that the
• 1:36:23
  people who did that understood the assignment.
• 1:36:25
  It's what, to be honest, we don't.
• 1:36:26
  We don't pick up Doctor Who books expecting this.
• 1:36:30
  That's what we want. But the fact that there is this,
• 1:36:32
  oh, it just feels, it feels so wonderful.
• 1:36:35
  As you said, it didn't need to be done.
• 1:36:37
  He didn't. That's why he didn't need to
• 1:36:39
  have put this much consideration and this much thought and this
• 1:36:42
  much beauty for want of a better word, into into a Doctor Who
• 1:36:47
  book. So, and I'll be honest with you,
• 1:36:49
  although I want it to be more read because there's a bit of me
• 1:36:52
  that hopes to do it on TV if that were the case.
• 1:36:55
  There's also a little bit of me that quite likes that not many
• 1:36:58
  people know about Father Time. It's our.
• 1:37:01
  Yeah, it's the really good secret one.
• 1:37:05
  Yeah, read that. Go on, I won't put it out.
• 1:37:08
  Then I won't put the episode at that.
• 1:37:11
  Well, look to to sort of bring the Father Time conversation to
• 1:37:16
  an end. Is there anything we haven't
• 1:37:18
  covered here that you would like to bring out?
• 1:37:21
  I'm I'm almost willing to bet you've got as many notes as as
• 1:37:24
  me. I've read about 10% of my notes
• 1:37:26
  and that's. Oh, oh, God.
• 1:37:28
  I mean, you know what? What?
• 1:37:29
  What can I say? You know, Team Rocket are in it.
• 1:37:33
  Lance Parkin put the the 8th Doctor into an Emmerdale novel.
• 1:37:36
  Should mention that. What else?
• 1:37:38
  Oh, tell you what, I mentioned it.
• 1:37:40
  I'll just finish it. The three set Did You Did You
• 1:37:42
  Clock? The three sections are all named
• 1:37:46
  after 1980s cartoon shows of the correct era.
• 1:37:49
  Oh, I did. Was it?
• 1:37:50
  What is my battle of the planets?
• 1:37:52
  Yeah, it's. I've got.
• 1:37:54
  I've got it, Dad. It is something like it's Battle
• 1:37:56
  of the Planets, Masters of the Universe and Defenders of the
• 1:38:00
  Earth. Defenders of the Earth.
• 1:38:01
  Defenders, do you remember, I love that if you've noticed that
• 1:38:06
  Rs Wildtime came to visit in an off screen adventure and left in
• 1:38:09
  1/2 after a day or two and the doctor caught her in the bath.
• 1:38:13
  That is that. That wonderful.
• 1:38:15
  That line is so cheeky because you know, that's I can't
• 1:38:19
  remember thinking at the time, like, why does he just not bump
• 1:38:21
  into someone who explains who he is to him?
• 1:38:24
  It's like, yes, someone tried and he was just really confused.
• 1:38:27
  What are you talking about? It reminds me of that scene in
• 1:38:30
  The Tomorrow Windows where Ken Livingstone goes up to the
• 1:38:33
  Doctor and goes How do you remember?
• 1:38:35
  You know you you foiled that invasion of dinosaurs back in
• 1:38:38
  the 70s. Did I really?
• 1:38:40
  How marvellous. I don't remember a thing about
• 1:38:42
  it. Oh, it's yeah, it's it's just
• 1:38:45
  wonderful. I've got a note here.
• 1:38:48
  A lot of people talk about Blake Seven in relation to the final
• 1:38:51
  part, but that's mainly because that's one of the few other
• 1:38:53
  shows Doctor Who fans have watched, and it isn't much like
• 1:38:55
  Crown Court. Imagine this realized on a Blake
• 1:39:01
  Seven budget. Oh.
• 1:39:02
  God, I don't want to. I don't want to.
• 1:39:04
  I don't want to spoil it. It would be interminable.
• 1:39:07
  I mean, I didn't think I could enjoy Father Time more, but with
• 1:39:10
  all of these references coming together in some great master
• 1:39:13
  plan, you somehow managed to achieve it.
• 1:39:17
  Well, I, I, I, I am but AI am but a messenger of the glory.
• 1:39:22
  That is for the time. OK, well, let's finish the
• 1:39:27
  episode then with a question. Oh no, We'll go to another
• 1:39:32
  section. The question to you is I think I
• 1:39:34
  know the answer. It's what I ask everybody.
• 1:39:37
  Would you recommend this book to a Doctor Who fan?
• 1:39:40
  Yes. Full stop.
• 1:39:45
  Go listen to the last hour and a half.
• 1:39:47
  Because it's it's the it's the best Doctor Who story you've
• 1:39:51
  never experienced by a country mile.
• 1:39:54
  You know, I put out on Twitter that we were doing this and four
• 1:39:59
  people now have come to me saying they spent an
• 1:40:01
  extortionate amount of money getting hold.
• 1:40:03
  A lot of the Kindles, they've got paper copies and they're
• 1:40:05
  tearing for it. They're absolutely loving it.
• 1:40:08
  It's only 200 and something pages but I in my memory it was
• 1:40:14
  it was a 500 page epic and even having read it I don't know how
• 1:40:17
  he manages to get. And it's not small font size
• 1:40:20
  like adventurous of Henrietta Street.
• 1:40:21
  I don't know how he manages to get through so much, but no,
• 1:40:24
  it's oh, it's. Has your eyesight ever recovered
• 1:40:28
  from reading the adventurous on Henrietta Street?
• 1:40:31
  I still squint a little bit, yeah.
• 1:40:33
  People. People who haven't seen me in
• 1:40:35
  real life. I'm wearing glasses.
• 1:40:36
  I wasn't before. Well, I'm going to ask you now
• 1:40:52
  to, and this is my usually my favorite section, but that far
• 1:40:55
  of a time conversation was so fabulous I'm I'm contradicting
• 1:40:58
  myself. What Doctor Who book would you
• 1:41:01
  care to recommend? To the people at home.
• 1:41:04
  Well, I was gonna recommend you mentioned at the start of being
• 1:41:09
  on Doctor Too Hot for TVI was going to recommend the fabulous
• 1:41:13
  book Downtime The Lost Years of Doctor Who by Dylan Reese.
• 1:41:16
  My Bible that is. Oh, it's wonderful.
• 1:41:19
  It's gossipy, it's scandalous, it's informative and it's well
• 1:41:22
  written. It's about the unlicensed Doctor
• 1:41:25
  Who, not Doctor Who Tie insurance that were produced in
• 1:41:28
  the 90s and the early noughties and especially quite a lot on
• 1:41:31
  BBV. It's glorious.
• 1:41:33
  It's a wonderful book written by Dinner Reese, who runs the
• 1:41:35
  Doctor Too Too Hot for TV podcast.
• 1:41:38
  But then I thought, he's been on this podcast a ton of time so he
• 1:41:40
  can do his own salesman work. So I'm not going to recommend
• 1:41:42
  that. Forget you heard that.
• 1:41:44
  Instead, I'm going to recommend The Sorcerer's Apprentice by
• 1:41:47
  Christopher Beulis. Now I.
• 1:41:49
  Never thought anybody would recommend a Christopher Beulis
• 1:41:52
  novels. I'm ready to hear this.
• 1:41:54
  Off you go. Joseph Beulis wrote a ton of
• 1:41:57
  Doctor Who books back in the day.
• 1:41:58
  I think he did it. Pretty sure he did one.
• 1:42:01
  Every doctor, every doctor. And he had a book I I think
• 1:42:05
  every year between something like 1994 and 2002 and then
• 1:42:09
  disappeared. Sometimes it read like he was
• 1:42:12
  writing a book a year though. Do you know?
• 1:42:14
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know what you mean.
• 1:42:17
  The the the quality goes up and down.
• 1:42:19
  And I am. It's very difficult to recommend
• 1:42:23
  another Doctor Who book after Father Time and especially The
• 1:42:25
  Sorcerer's Apprentice, but it is one of his.
• 1:42:27
  For me, it's one of his better ones.
• 1:42:29
  I read it for the first time last year and the reason I'm
• 1:42:31
  recommending it is it's the original TARDIS team of the
• 1:42:37
  first Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara, and they land on a
• 1:42:39
  world of magic, of Dragons and Knights and people casting
• 1:42:44
  spells. You know, every science fiction
• 1:42:46
  series has to do that story at some point, but it it's really
• 1:42:51
  good. It's really good fun.
• 1:42:53
  And it's a book that I've not really heard talked about much
• 1:42:57
  at all. But there's I was, but I was
• 1:43:00
  really exhausted to read all Doctor Who books at some point,
• 1:43:01
  obviously, because that's what I'm like.
• 1:43:03
  And I was really impressed by some bits of it.
• 1:43:06
  Because there's also an there's a subplot that at the same time
• 1:43:09
  that they're there a battle cruiser of like Starship trooper
• 1:43:13
  types from Earth have turned up because they want to find out
• 1:43:16
  why there's magic so they can use it.
• 1:43:18
  And there's a terrific section of the book that is fantasy
• 1:43:22
  versus sci-fi. So basically the big Star Wars
• 1:43:25
  spaceship is all gunned up. They're all you know ready and
• 1:43:29
  lock and load to go and take out some horses and then the the the
• 1:43:34
  evil warlock just starts using the magic on the spaceship to
• 1:43:37
  basically make all of their sci-fi tech go wrong and.
• 1:43:40
  There's and. I was reading this like what Why
• 1:43:43
  has Doctor Who never. I mean Russell T Davis did
• 1:43:46
  Wizards versus Aliens of course off the back of The Sarah Jane
• 1:43:49
  Adventures. But it's it's really
• 1:43:51
  interesting. I'm not going to pretend it's as
• 1:43:53
  good as Father Time but it's an under considered little book
• 1:43:56
  that that picks up, picks up a fun little idea and has a lot of
• 1:44:00
  fun with it and has quite a well, it's funny.
• 1:44:02
  It has quite a fun little twist as to what's going on as well.
• 1:44:04
  I. Think the closest we got to that
• 1:44:07
  within Doctor Who was that? Dialogue scene between the
• 1:44:10
  Doctor and Miss Hawthorne, wasn't it?
• 1:44:11
  Magic, Science, Magic. That was it.
• 1:44:13
  That's all we had with that premise, man.
• 1:44:16
  That's ripe for a great story. Yeah, I've never read that one
• 1:44:20
  as well. No, it's really good and it
• 1:44:23
  does, it does start off with it being a little bit, you know
• 1:44:27
  Star Trek, the original series of Beam down and oh, what
• 1:44:31
  costumes have we got in the in the wardrobe department that
• 1:44:34
  we've not used yet. But, but then he goes a lot
• 1:44:37
  further with it and has it's just a lot of fun and he gets to
• 1:44:42
  be a knight again. So that's good.
• 1:44:44
  That's the. Older I get, you know, the more
• 1:44:46
  it's just a bit of fun. I appreciate a great deal.
• 1:44:50
  I yeah, I mean, Father Time is a fantastic book that does a lot
• 1:44:53
  of emotional stuff really well, but I would rather have just a
• 1:44:56
  bit of fun than someone trying to do that and doing it badly.
• 1:45:01
  I mean, I think the fun comes in that last section, you know,
• 1:45:04
  where he just turns up and goes, oh, sorry to hijack your space
• 1:45:06
  shuttle, oh, I loved all of that.
• 1:45:11
  I would like to write this is a kind of a predictable choice
• 1:45:14
  because I actually did this on a two off TV.
• 1:45:17
  But I cannot recommend this book enough because I think it's a
• 1:45:21
  near impossible task. It's Jonathan Morris attempting
• 1:45:24
  to write a Douglas Adams novel. The Tomorrow Windows, which
• 1:45:30
  comes towards the end of the 8th Doctor run where everybody said
• 1:45:33
  it had gone off the boil. And this book is fizzing with
• 1:45:36
  ideas, creativity, humour, wonderful characters.
• 1:45:42
  I'm not sure how you would describe the novel because it
• 1:45:45
  goes off to what feels like 100 different worlds.
• 1:45:49
  We go under the water, we go to an astral flower, which is in
• 1:45:53
  fact an old people's home, like it's a whirlwind tour the
• 1:45:56
  universe. All because an estate agent is
• 1:46:02
  attempting to sell planets, and in order to do so, he has to
• 1:46:06
  incite a ton of mass genocides in order to make it happen.
• 1:46:10
  And this is a comedy book. It's very funny that that's a
• 1:46:15
  terrific suggestion. Yeah, I I need to reread that
• 1:46:17
  book. I remember at the time, I I
• 1:46:19
  don't agree that the the 8th Doctor books went off the boil.
• 1:46:23
  I think the last half of the range is better than the first
• 1:46:25
  half, but reading them in order, at the time there had been quite
• 1:46:29
  a run of quite serious, quite dark novels, which are all
• 1:46:33
  fantastic in their own rights. Camera Obscura, History 101 * 0,
• 1:46:38
  all that lot. But oh it it was nice when we
• 1:46:41
  had a bit of fun do. You remember we had like there
• 1:46:43
  was a whole series of books in alternative universes, wasn't
• 1:46:46
  it, where the whole of the multiverse was falling apart?
• 1:46:49
  And then they brought that interminable arc to a close.
• 1:46:53
  And I said right, we've got six or seven books left.
• 1:46:55
  Let's just have some fun. And you had like a Half Life,
• 1:46:58
  which was quite a jolly romp back in outer space tomorrow.
• 1:47:02
  Windows sleep of reason that was setting a mental asylum that
• 1:47:05
  wasn't full of too many laughs. Deadstone memorial.
• 1:47:10
  And I want to say, but they were, they were all very good
• 1:47:12
  books. Towards the end, The Tomorrow
• 1:47:14
  Windows stands out particularly because it is so funny.
• 1:47:18
  And I will once again highlight the sequence in Tate Milton
• 1:47:21
  where the Ken Levinson turns out to be a robot with a bomb in his
• 1:47:26
  head and the Doctor just screams everyone get out, the Mayor of
• 1:47:30
  London is going to explode, which is so.
• 1:47:33
  And that's one of them, and the first appearance of Christopher
• 1:47:37
  Eccleston as TV's Doctor Who. Looks in the in the Tomorrow
• 1:47:41
  window. Yeah, and it's such a great
• 1:47:44
  book. Yeah.
• 1:47:45
  And it. Yeah, of course they blow up.
• 1:47:47
  They blow up. Tate Morton.
• 1:47:49
  Like what's what's Russell T Davis do when he came back a
• 1:47:52
  year later? Smashed up like Ben Do up
• 1:47:55
  Downing St. What would Ross T Davis and
• 1:47:57
  Steven Moffett weren't flicking their way through these books?
• 1:47:59
  You know, taking a few notes? I certainly think Steven Moffett
• 1:48:02
  might have read a Laura Smiles book or two.
• 1:48:05
  Oh yeah. I mean, definitely.
• 1:48:08
  I mean, I'm. I'm pretty sure that's true.
• 1:48:09
  So I'm pretty sure. Lawrence Miles, I read something
• 1:48:11
  years ago. I said Steven Moffat, you know,
• 1:48:13
  was a big fan of alien bodies. And you think?
• 1:48:16
  Yeah. You surprised me.
• 1:48:20
  Oh my. That was glorious.
• 1:48:21
  Thank you so much. Oh, thank you, Noah.
• 1:48:24
  This was great. Thank thank you again for
• 1:48:26
  getting me to reread this wonderful book.
• 1:48:29
  I'm going to attempt to entice you back for a second episode.
• 1:48:34
  Now, you did tell me in a personal message that you were
• 1:48:37
  reading Damaged goods. Is that right?
• 1:48:39
  Yeah. Would you be willing?
• 1:48:41
  Because that's another very important book.
• 1:48:45
  Yes, of course. I'd love to come back and talk
• 1:48:47
  about damaged goods with you, and we can try and unearth what
• 1:48:50
  happened to its author in the years since Christopher Beulis,
• 1:48:54
  Damaged Goods by Christopher Beulis.
• 1:48:57
  That's a terrifying fault and I believe it is another very dark
• 1:49:00
  look at the 80s, You know, if, if anything, it makes Father
• 1:49:03
  Time look look like a happy romp.
• 1:49:09
  Honestly, that that casual estate in damaged goods makes
• 1:49:12
  the power estate look like a palace, doesn't it?
• 1:49:16
  It's it's it's very strange when you've got working class mothers
• 1:49:20
  called Tyler Self harming in the kitchens.
• 1:49:25
  Well, look, we'll save it for the episode.
• 1:49:27
  Yeah, I'm sure it'd be a hell of a listen, but can you very
• 1:49:30
  quickly? I don't know if you want people
• 1:49:31
  following you on the back of this, but would you, would you
• 1:49:34
  care to tell people where you are online?
• 1:49:35
  Absolutely. I'm on x.com.
• 1:49:38
  We've got to call it now, haven't we?
• 1:49:40
  At Call under score Me under score Kenneth, which you can
• 1:49:43
  imagine I came up with when I was not thinking at all about
• 1:49:46
  promoting it to other people. But that's where I am.
• 1:49:50
  And yeah, I've recently been on a couple of episodes of Doctor
• 1:49:54
  22 Hot for TV, another podcast you should check out, and
• 1:49:57
  hopefully going to be back on there fairly soon for the
• 1:49:59
  Christmas special. Oh, what are you talking about?
• 1:50:04
  Doctor Who in The Invasion from Space from 1965, the very first
• 1:50:10
  original Doctor Who tire novel. I know I did combat.
• 1:50:14
  I did combat, yeah. Well, I did Combat Rock last
• 1:50:18
  time I was on Too Hot for TV, so I think.
• 1:50:20
  I think the change in tone might actually kill me.
• 1:50:24
  Yeah, that is a staggeringly different tone, I'm sure.
• 1:50:28
  Mike, thank you so much for your time.
• 1:50:29
  It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you, Joe.
• 1:50:32
  It's been wonderful.