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Hamster Book Club - The Adventuress of Henrietta Street by Lawrence Miles (featuring Elemental Mark Donaldson) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:04
  At the palace itself, things were not proceeding well for
• 0:08
  Scarlett and her army. It might have been folly which
• 0:11
  drove her anyway, the belief that if she held the apes off
• 0:14
  for long enough then the Doctor would find some miracle
• 0:17
  solution. By the time Fitz and Angie
• 0:20
  reached the central chamber, the humours have been driven back
• 0:23
  into the ground hallways of the palace.
• 0:26
  They continued to fire on the horde, though ammunition was
• 0:29
  obviously scarce and despite the enemy thinning out there, there
• 0:33
  was no end insight. An increasingly large number of
• 0:37
  human bodies were starting to Lister the Blackstone floors.
• 0:41
  Ultimately, Scarlett gave one final order to her followers.
• 0:44
  She told the remaining Mason servicemen and maroons to fend
• 0:48
  off the apes for as long as they had ammunition.
• 0:51
  When their weapons were exhausted, they were to scatter
• 0:54
  in different directions and attempt to find some way back
• 0:57
  home to Earth. They'd done all they could, and
• 1:00
  only the Doctor could possibly help them now.
• 1:03
  With that, Scarlett reholstered her empty guns and began the
• 1:07
  March for the echoing hallways of the palace, perhaps in the
• 1:10
  hope that she could assist whatever ritual the Doctor had
• 1:13
  devised to end this nightmare. So it was that Scarlet, too,
• 1:19
  arrived in the central chamber and saw the Doctor dying in the
• 1:23
  centre of the great eye. So it was that she joined Fitz
• 1:27
  and Angie and Katya and Mrs. Gallagher and a handful of other
• 1:31
  ritualists who'd retreated to the palace, all of them hovering
• 1:35
  at the Doctor's side. Those assembled cleared the way
• 1:38
  when they saw her hurrying across the great floor of the
• 1:41
  chamber in her riding boots, and made space for her at his head.
• 1:45
  The Doctor was still staring up at the ceiling, eyes dark with
• 1:49
  cage rising and falling far more slowly now anyone could see that
• 1:53
  his death was mere minutes away. Then Scarlett, under the gaze of
• 1:58
  Fitz and Angie, put her hand under his neck and slowly lifted
• 2:02
  his head. He didn't respond, and there
• 2:05
  wasn't any change to the rate of his breathing.
• 2:08
  All present watched as Scarlett lowered her face to his ear and
• 2:11
  began to whisper Myth claims that she spoke of all the world
• 2:18
  she's seen while she'd been here in the Kingdom of Beast.
• 2:22
  She allegedly told him that she's seen untold alien cities
• 2:26
  like dwellings on the moon. The notion of life on Mars
• 2:29
  hadn't occurred to anyone of importance other than Voltaire.
• 2:32
  She told him that if he should die here, then it wasn't just
• 2:36
  Earth that would be in peril. Hadn't the apes taken this
• 2:39
  place, this once magnificent palace from the Doctor's own
• 2:43
  world? Weren't they prepared to ravage
• 2:46
  any world in the form of apes or reptiles or bats or whatever
• 2:50
  else? Wasn't the universe itself at
• 2:53
  stake here? How anyone else heard her words
• 2:56
  remains untold. The effect of them, however, is
• 2:59
  clear. The effect was absolutely nil.
• 3:04
  When she'd finished her speech, Scarlett looked into his eyes
• 3:08
  and saw that nothing was there. Finally, she had to concede
• 3:13
  defeat. Slowly, very slowly, she lowered
• 3:16
  his head again. She looked up at Fitz, and Fitz
• 3:19
  could only shake his head, though Angie glanced at him as
• 3:22
  if to say, So what do we do now? There was a noise from outside
• 3:28
  the chamber. At that point, the humans in the
• 3:30
  halls of the palace were falling back, crying out, some of them
• 3:33
  screaming as if the animals had already fallen on them.
• 3:37
  Those gathered around the doctor became more anxious still as
• 3:39
  news reached the chamber that the apes had ceased their random
• 3:42
  assaults on the human defenders. Instead, the animals seemed to
• 3:46
  have adopted fire as their weapon of choice.
• 3:50
  The front of the buildings of the cries had been set aflame.
• 3:53
  The Rogue 8 the shamans of the ape race had given their
• 3:57
  blessing to the king himself, had approached the palace
• 4:00
  bearing lighted sticks and branches.
• 4:03
  The whole beyond the gateway had been torched, and now the blaze
• 4:06
  was spreading inwards, helped by the dry breeze from outside.
• 4:10
  The floor may have been stoned, but they were untold pipes and
• 4:13
  conduits, possibly rub up beneath those flagstones which
• 4:16
  were all too ready to burn. The humans had fallen back, and
• 4:20
  some of the apes had advanced to minus to understand the threat
• 4:24
  of fire to their own persons. Even now it was burning, the
• 4:28
  apes as well, a handful of the creatures already rolling over
• 4:32
  and over in the hallways, an attempt to put out their pelts.
• 4:35
  When she heard this, Scarlett is said to have glanced once more
• 4:39
  at the fallen doctor once more, and for the last time she seems
• 4:44
  to have been looking at him for guidance, hoping against hope
• 4:47
  they'd supply an escape room. Even now, of course, the doctor
• 4:52
  said nothing. So Scarlett stood, taking a deep
• 4:56
  breath, and turned to face those warriors who'd assembled here in
• 4:59
  the chamber. She opened her mouth, ready to
• 5:02
  deliver what must have been intended to be her last and most
• 5:05
  impressive speech. It had to be.
• 5:08
  It could only have been a mass for the dead and dying.
• 5:12
  It's impossible to guess what Scarlett might have told her
• 5:15
  audience, because as things turned out, her jaw froze as
• 5:19
  soon as it had opened, and her attention stayed on one of the
• 5:22
  many great archways which ringed this most magnificent, if
• 5:26
  broken, of chambers. The attention of the others soon
• 5:31
  followed. It's not known how Sabbath
• 5:34
  entered the palace. The memoir suggests he didn't
• 5:37
  enter the chamber by the same route as the others, so possibly
• 5:40
  he'd worked out some path into the heart of the palace, which
• 5:43
  circumvented the gateway, the apes and the flames.
• 5:47
  He stood there in the high archway, his great coat flapping
• 5:51
  around him in the hot breeze from the entrance, his shaved
• 5:54
  head lowered so that he faced the chamber like a ball about to
• 5:57
  charge. Juliet stood at his shoulder,
• 6:00
  attentive and alert, so neatly turned out in her black dress
• 6:04
  that she might have been mistaken for a soldier.
• 6:08
  It was the first time that Scarlett and Sabbath have come
• 6:11
  face to face since the horrors of 1780.
• 6:15
  They regarded each other for a while, it said Scarlett with her
• 6:19
  head held high in her jawset, firm.
• 6:22
  According to one source, she actually hissed when she saw
• 6:25
  him, like a feral animal protecting its territory.
• 6:29
  It's possible that the territory in question was the doctor.
• 6:33
  As for Juliet, Scarlett refused to even acknowledge her.
• 6:38
  Without a word, Sabbath stepped forward.
• 6:41
  Even the most hardened warriors in the chamber, even elementals
• 6:44
  like Fitz and Angie, couldn't help but take a step back.
• 6:48
  Only Scarlet stood her ground, especially when it became clear
• 6:52
  that Sabbath was walking towards the doctor.
• 6:54
  Yet all he said when he was a mere 3 meters away from the
• 6:58
  prone body was. I know what's wrong.
• 7:02
  If he'd said anything else, if he'd greeted her, or called her
• 7:06
  by name, or made any attempt to talk himself into her favour,
• 7:09
  then things might have been different.
• 7:11
  But when he spoke those words, Scarlett paused for only the
• 7:14
  briefest of moments before she stood aside.
• 7:18
  Surely Fitz and Angie must have tensed their muscles or felt
• 7:21
  like crying out when Sabaf moved the stand over the Doctor's
• 7:24
  body. In the silence which followed,
• 7:26
  Scarlett glanced at Juliet, still standing in the archway.
• 7:30
  Just the once. If anything passed between him,
• 7:34
  then it isn't recorded, and what Sabbath did next isn't recorded
• 7:38
  either, at least not accurately. It's unthinkable that those
• 7:43
  presents might have left the room at this point, with the
• 7:45
  fire and the apes bearing down on them.
• 7:48
  So there's no real explanation for the fact that nobody, not
• 7:51
  even Scarlet herself, ever wrote a Sabbath's actions in full.
• 7:56
  The only account that could be called an account came from
• 7:59
  Lucian, who'd been one of the last Maroons to enter the
• 8:03
  chamber. Lucian had a punch on for
• 8:06
  exaggeration and metaphysical imagery.
• 8:09
  What follows is his testimony, but it must not be taken
• 8:12
  literally. Though it's unquestionably based
• 8:15
  on real events, it's a fairy tale version of the story,
• 8:18
  drenched in the symbolism. That Sabbath performed some form
• 8:22
  of operation is clear, but even the Sabbath himself wouldn't
• 8:25
  have claimed the supernatural powers invested in him.
• 8:28
  By this account, the reader should make his or her own mind
• 8:32
  up about the true nature of the procedure.
• 8:36
  The man's Sabbath stepped to the fore so that his shadow fell
• 8:39
  across the body of the doctor. The doctor was so sick by this
• 8:43
  time that his eyes were black as pitch, and all knew that soon he
• 8:47
  would be dead. The Man's Sabbath had no feeling
• 8:50
  or sentiment on this. He knelt to one side of the
• 8:54
  doctor's body without hesitating, and he lifted up his
• 8:57
  arm, which we saw was sheathed in a glove of black, up to his
• 9:02
  elbow. What I saw next was an act which
• 9:06
  the spirits themselves would be proud.
• 9:09
  He had no charm to protect him but the Man Sabbath plunged his
• 9:13
  arm into the chest of the doctor until his hand had all but gone.
• 9:18
  Whether he cut the flesh first I cannot say, although the woman
• 9:22
  there was struck by the horror. While he worked in the
• 9:26
  unfortunate chest. He spoke, and I was put to mind
• 9:30
  of those lessons taught here, when a doctor will obstruct his
• 9:33
  students as he cuts into a body. The matters he spoke were
• 9:37
  matters of the doctor, his patient, and also the ways of
• 9:41
  the doctor's lodge. Lucian's account is garbled
• 9:46
  here, full of West Indian mysticism, so it's best to
• 9:49
  preciate. Sabbath explained to all those
• 9:53
  presents that each elemental, when it left its own world to
• 9:56
  visit places such as Earth, had to be rooted to its natured
• 9:59
  soil. The Doctor's ruminations suggest
• 10:02
  as much, and the implication is that his rooting was in some way
• 10:06
  related to the process of the TARDIS.
• 10:09
  Yet this faculty was taken so for granted by the Doctor's kind
• 10:13
  that they never even considered its exact workings.
• 10:17
  Buried deep in the body of each elemental, said Sabbath, was a
• 10:21
  link, a blood tie, the women of Henriette St. might have called
• 10:24
  it, which anchored the elemental to his own realm, which ensured
• 10:29
  his survival and integrity when he left his world of origin.
• 10:34
  Sabbath, perhaps inspired by the servicemen's training, called
• 10:37
  this link the Great Eye. But in the Doctor's case there
• 10:42
  was a problem. Legend had it that a doctor's
• 10:44
  home had been lost many years previously.
• 10:48
  As a result, that part of this doctor which rooted him to his
• 10:51
  home had become poisoned to him. The organ through which he was
• 10:55
  watched by the grey eye by which the powers of the elemental
• 10:59
  world were passed to him, had grown sick and corrupt.
• 11:03
  It tried to grant him the privileges of a world long since
• 11:06
  dead, and so it pumped into his body all the disease and
• 11:10
  darkness of a Kingdom reduced to black nothingness.
• 11:16
  Nobody could seriously be asked to believe that Sabbath
• 11:19
  literally opened up the doctor's right hand side of his chest, at
• 11:22
  least not without some instruments of cutting.
• 11:25
  Yet when they allude to the event at all, the other
• 11:27
  witnesses acknowledged that some operation was performed, even if
• 11:32
  it was far more complex than Lucian suggests.
• 11:35
  But at the end of it all, his hand removed from the doctor's
• 11:38
  chest, Sabath turned around to face all those gathered in the
• 11:42
  chamber. There must have been looks of
• 11:44
  horror on the faces of everyone there, from Juliet to Fitz, from
• 11:49
  Scarlett to Angie, from the Maroons to the Masons.
• 11:53
  If Lucian's tale is the least bit true.
• 11:56
  If Sabath really did face them with his glove hand held out
• 11:59
  before him, a still beating heart in its palm, a heart which
• 12:05
  was as cancerous and as sick as the doctor himself has been.
• 12:09
  A heart as black as pitch and pulsing with the same bile which
• 12:13
  had apparently often been seen flecking in the doctor's beard.
• 12:18
  Or, as Emily puts it in in a letter to one of her
• 12:22
  acquaintances, Mr. S had acquired the device which he
• 12:27
  believed rooted the elemental to his home and allowed him safe
• 12:31
  passage between worlds. Finally, he had found the black
• 12:37
  heart. It was then, notes Lucian, that
• 12:41
  the doctor's eyes cleared of their black vapour.
• 12:44
  It was then that he opened his mouth and began the longest of
• 12:49
  all screams. Mark, I have a proposal for you
• 13:06
  of the very literal kind. A great absence is being felt.
• 13:14
  A hamster with a blunt pen knife has been erased from the Doctor
• 13:19
  Who podcast universe. And in order to anchor got to go
• 13:25
  with this, in order to anchor the, the, the podcast worth that
• 13:30
  that brought, I need to marry another Doctor Who podcaster in
• 13:36
  order to, to bridge the gap and be the protector of all Doctor
• 13:40
  Who podcasts. I was going to marry Dylan Reece
• 13:44
  and I was getting him prepared, you know, to, to get married.
• 13:49
  And suddenly he's like going off in the middle of the night and
• 13:52
  doing strange. I don't know what he was up to,
• 13:54
  if I'm honest with you. The next thing I know, he's
• 13:56
  defected off to my bitter enemy, Jr.
• 14:00
  Southall of strangers in Spain. Oh, that's who they save the day
• 14:04
  cards for, is it? That's the one, yes.
• 14:08
  So basically just to sum up all of this rather over long start
• 14:14
  to the episode Will you marry me?
• 14:18
  Oh, go on then. You're about the fifth person
• 14:22
  that said yes on this. Hooray.
• 14:24
  Hello. Hello, how are you?
• 14:27
  Yeah, sorry about all that. That was just absurd.
• 14:29
  Yeah, I'm fine, thank you. I'm absolutely fine.
• 14:32
  Mark, we we gather today to talk about one of the the biggies.
• 14:39
  I'm going to suggest certainly one of the most well known,
• 14:44
  memorable and I'll probably say boldest of the original Doctor
• 14:50
  Who novels, and that is. The adventurous of Henrietta St.
• 14:55
  although I keep seeing Henrietta St.
• 14:57
  As if Henrietta Street is a person rather than Henrietta
• 15:00
  St., which is where the The House of Ill Reputes is is
• 15:05
  based. I'll put that into Google
• 15:07
  earlier. You know, I didn't realize it
• 15:08
  was a genuine place. It was telling me all the sort
• 15:11
  of news that was happening in and around there right now.
• 15:13
  There's so much in this book that I was like, oh, that?
• 15:17
  Is that real? And you?
• 15:19
  I would go off and Google things like when I was supposed to be
• 15:21
  reading the book to kind of find out.
• 15:23
  I said oh God, I've never heard about that before. 85% of it is
• 15:27
  real isn't it? Right.
• 15:28
  I was doing exactly the Gordon riots and all of the historical
• 15:31
  details. I was thinking, fuck, he's
• 15:33
  weaved a lot into this. Yes, yeah.
• 15:37
  Well, because obviously the Hellfire club's a good start.
• 15:39
  Like that's that's something. Well, I knew that was a thing.
• 15:41
  And I think what that does with this in this book is is really
• 15:44
  interesting actually. But yeah, it's it's.
• 15:46
  Political uprising that was going on with the wigs and stuff
• 15:49
  like that. I was like, I didn't know
• 15:50
  anything about any of that. Yeah, interesting stuff.
• 15:54
  The book what was it? Ano 7. 16.
• 16:00
  Yeah, the first book to mention time travel, and I was like, oh,
• 16:03
  Lawrence, please, as if anyone would have called it that.
• 16:05
  And then I googled it. I was like, oh, egg on my face.
• 16:09
  I found APDF of it, but it was all in the original Danish.
• 16:13
  It's a Danish, I can't remember now A.
• 16:15
  Smart man, you could read a Danish book.
• 16:20
  Unfortunately not, no. There, there we go.
• 16:22
  Ano 7. Oh no, it's ANO 76-O3.
• 16:25
  That's, I mean your devotion to this.
• 16:27
  You went looking for that? I just googled it.
• 16:31
  Yes, it wasn't. And it wasn't Danish.
• 16:34
  There we go. Yeah, I've got a whole.
• 16:35
  I've got a full e-book of it, but it's all in Danish.
• 16:38
  I mean, I would sort of, I'm going to suggest that that this
• 16:42
  book could be summed up as a rich, heady brew of sex,
• 16:46
  political detail, history, unknowable slavering horror,
• 16:51
  gothic atmosphere, and a universe corrupted by the
• 16:55
  destruction of Gallifrey. How's that?
• 16:58
  Yeah, yeah, I think you nailed it.
• 16:59
  Yeah, now it's quite good actually, because you did the
• 17:01
  ancestor sell on this, didn't you?
• 17:02
  So you're now seeing the consequences of the end of that
• 17:05
  book. Yes, yes, I did.
• 17:07
  Yeah. It's interesting to kind of
• 17:10
  because I think the ancestor sell for me at the time was I
• 17:15
  think kind of when I started to kind of fall away from the books
• 17:17
  because I think the burning, but then I must have kind of start.
• 17:21
  I was, I remember reading The Burning and all that because of
• 17:24
  much later, like in a hearing, I think when Father Time came out,
• 17:27
  I'd read a review of it in Doctor Who magazine going, that
• 17:30
  sounds amazing. I'm kind of going back and I
• 17:33
  knew Dave Owen at the time who was one of the people who had
• 17:37
  sort of talked to Justin Richards about Gordon.
• 17:39
  You need to kind of set it back. I remember being vaguely
• 17:42
  interested, but I think it was just, it felt like I was kind of
• 17:46
  taking a bit of a break from Doctor Who at that point as a
• 17:48
  sort of teenager. I was getting more interested in
• 17:51
  booze and girls and all that kind of thing.
• 17:54
  I. Mean completely naturally.
• 17:55
  I do understand that maybe not the.
• 17:57
  But boozing girls feature quite heavily in this book, so they.
• 18:00
  Certainly do. The girls do.
• 18:03
  Yeah. For once, I can talk about sex
• 18:05
  on this podcast. And it's not me crowbarring,
• 18:07
  actually. In context, yes.
• 18:09
  Bloody whorehouse, actually. Can we just decide what we're
• 18:12
  going to call the House of Ill Repute?
• 18:15
  In this, I think, no, it is. You can't really say whorehouse,
• 18:18
  can you? For a good for a good reason.
• 18:20
  Correct for a good reason. I don't know, should we call it
• 18:24
  a brothel? Is brothel still OK?
• 18:25
  What did I say? So, so, so, so Galio.
• 18:29
  What's it? Oh so.
• 18:31
  Yeah, suraggly. Suraggly, yeah.
• 18:33
  Not one of us. Yeah.
• 18:36
  Maybe we'll say brothel, yeah. Brothel's fine sex worker
• 18:40
  Cortisan. Well, you know, whatever.
• 18:44
  There's a couple of questions. Yeah, let's call it admin.
• 18:46
  Before we even go into the content of the book that I
• 18:49
  simply have to ask you because I know anyone listening to this
• 18:52
  will want to know if your eyes have in fact started bleeding
• 18:58
  reading the Adventure S on Henriette Street, or whether
• 19:01
  you've managed to somehow find an electronic copy Where.
• 19:04
  You can. Turn the pros into a, you know,
• 19:06
  the font into a bigger size. I I sourced a very readable PDF.
• 19:13
  I'm pleased to hear it. Version of it.
• 19:15
  And yeah, it's because, yeah, I remember you warning me that
• 19:18
  obviously it kind of compresses a lot because it's a very dense
• 19:21
  book. So yeah, I mean, I guess
• 19:25
  compressing that into the kind of page limit that they must
• 19:28
  have had with those BBC books requires a shrinking of the font
• 19:32
  size. It comes in, I think, you know,
• 19:35
  the regular size font. I think it comes in at the a
• 19:38
  book and 1/2 in length, right, Which is why that font is so
• 19:44
  tiny because he knows exactly he's got to fill 280 pages in
• 19:48
  the usual size font. And being Lawrence Miles, who
• 19:51
  went, well, fuck that. You know, I mean, he didn't even
• 19:53
  tell Justin Richards this is the style he was going to write in.
• 19:56
  Justin Richards thought he was getting a he said, she said and
• 19:59
  then got this in the post. So I was like, what the Hell's
• 20:01
  this like? Dissertation And the other
• 20:05
  question I had for you is, is that now that does seem to be
• 20:11
  either the sticking point or the celebratory angle that people
• 20:17
  take with Adventurous Home Registry in that it very boldly
• 20:21
  excuse the usual novel format and presents the entire book as
• 20:28
  an academic dissertation. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 20:33
  I, I didn't necessarily struggle with it to begin with, but I
• 20:40
  think it was one of those things where I was, I was struggling to
• 20:45
  read it on the commute to and from work, whereas normally with
• 20:47
  a doctor, but he can just get on power through it because because
• 20:51
  it was sort of quite academic. You like actually, no, I need to
• 20:55
  kind of give myself over to this and give myself the time to kind
• 20:58
  of concentrate on it. I'm not kind of bleary eyed on
• 21:03
  the train training in the morning.
• 21:06
  So yeah, but once I've kind of got once I've kind of got into
• 21:08
  the rhythm with it, I think it's great.
• 21:10
  I think it's so mental in a way to kind of it's ATV tie in book.
• 21:16
  You don't have to go to this much effort, but it really
• 21:21
  works. I think it's such an interesting
• 21:23
  way to tell a doctor story because like, the Doctor by this
• 21:27
  point, you know, has been sort of interfering in Earth history
• 21:33
  for like almost 40 years when this book comes out.
• 21:37
  So why not tell the story of one of his adventures through
• 21:42
  historical documents and sort of like people writing about him at
• 21:46
  the time? I think it's such a brilliant
• 21:49
  way, like a kind of art oral history part, you know,
• 21:52
  contextualizing it within actual real life history.
• 21:57
  It's really smart. Not only do you have to really,
• 22:02
  I mean, I was the same. Fortunately, I was reading The
• 22:05
  Paradise of Death alongside the adventurous Henrietta Street, so
• 22:09
  I had moments in the week where I could just switch my brain off
• 22:12
  completely and just glance across the page at Barry Let's
• 22:15
  his prose. That's a bit like, you know, you
• 22:17
  go for like a six course tasting meal in a fancy restaurant and
• 22:21
  then on the way home you nip it at McDonald's.
• 22:23
  That's kind of like that's that must be what it's like to read
• 22:26
  the adventures of Henry. The McDonald's is not always UN
• 22:29
  enjoyable though, you know? Right.
• 22:30
  Sometimes there's space for McDonald's.
• 22:34
  Yeah. I usually find when I read a
• 22:36
  very dense book, I follow it up with reading something by
• 22:38
  Christopher Beulis, you know, and then suddenly my palette is
• 22:41
  refreshed. But look, yes, Sir.
• 22:44
  Not only is it a lot of effort that you have to go to to absorb
• 22:49
  all of the details, because they're big old paragraphs as
• 22:53
  well, packed with detail, but the amount of effort he must
• 22:58
  have had to have put into deciding which documents build
• 23:04
  up this story. Yeah.
• 23:06
  I mean, it's, it's hard enough, and I say this as somebody who's
• 23:11
  trying to do it at the moment, like it's, it's hard enough to
• 23:15
  kind of put a sort of history together when it's an actual
• 23:18
  history into something readable and into something entertaining
• 23:23
  and something. And so for this to kind of take
• 23:26
  all that history, tie it round the, the fate historical events
• 23:32
  and tie that round the Doctor Who story and then translate
• 23:36
  that into like an academic text. That's a hell.
• 23:39
  Like I, I do not know how long we pulled it off.
• 23:42
  I mean, I just can't imagine writing a book this long without
• 23:45
  dialogue. Yeah, it's all just like, you
• 23:48
  know, oh, they were, you know, so and so said this perhaps, but
• 23:53
  then other there's like a lot of like, lovely unreliable narrator
• 23:55
  stuff where you get different perspectives on the same event
• 23:59
  through different records that he's kind of using.
• 24:02
  And that's, yeah. It's just such an incredible
• 24:05
  piece of work, really, for a Doctor Who, but for ABBC book to
• 24:09
  tie into a bloody telly show that's, you know, not even on
• 24:13
  the air. Do you know the motivation
• 24:15
  behind Loris Mars right in this book?
• 24:18
  I don't enlighten me, he. Was done.
• 24:20
  He was all done with interference, he said.
• 24:22
  I've thought that's my magnum opus and I've I've done Doctor
• 24:26
  Who and now I'm going to go off and write the Faction Paradox
• 24:29
  books and have a jolly time with that.
• 24:30
  But of course that won't pay in too well because those are even
• 24:33
  more niche than the BBC Doctor Who books.
• 24:37
  And suddenly there was all these Lego sets coming out.
• 24:39
  This is absolutely genuine. And he decided he wanted or a
• 24:42
  load of Lego sets and the only way he was going to get them was
• 24:46
  to write one more Doctor Who book.
• 24:49
  So somebody. Who missed out on the Lego
• 24:51
  Starship Enterprise? I can relate to that.
• 24:53
  Oh, you missed out on it. Yeah, I still have the money on
• 24:57
  time. And I was like, Oh well, never
• 24:58
  mind. Ah.
• 24:59
  God damn it. We'll see what we can do.
• 25:00
  All right, come on, everybody. Club round for Mark.
• 25:04
  We need him start a Kickstarter for that.
• 25:07
  So what's on earth was I saying there?
• 25:10
  So he. Basically needed the money
• 25:12
  essentially. He wanted the money for the load
• 25:14
  of Lego, but he said to Justin Richards, And while I'm at it,
• 25:19
  I'm going to write you the best Doctor Who book that's ever been
• 25:22
  written. And irritatingly, because that's
• 25:25
  a really smug, arrogant thing to say, irritatingly, I think he
• 25:30
  might have achieved it. It is really annoying.
• 25:33
  There we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:38
  I think he might have done because it's because it, I think
• 25:42
  that's the that's the crucial thing.
• 25:44
  It feels like a doctor book, you know, for all it's kind of
• 25:49
  invention and and all that kind of thing, at its heart it is a
• 25:54
  Doctor Who story and a really good Doctor Who story of kind of
• 25:58
  gods and monsters and and all that kind of thing.
• 26:01
  Yeah, it's, it's incredible. Do you think that, sorry, I ran
• 26:06
  off when you've got into the content?
• 26:07
  Yeah. Do you think that the academic
• 26:11
  style of the prose was necessary because this is a really brutal
• 26:18
  graphic book? You think that maybe that was
• 26:22
  needed to provide a little bit of distance between the reader
• 26:27
  and the content? Because I think if you were
• 26:29
  reading about a lot of that stuff in a, in a, in sort of
• 26:34
  third person, I think I wonder if it would be too much.
• 26:38
  I mean, it's really very graphic, this book.
• 26:41
  There is a lot of gore in it, isn't there?
• 26:44
  And sex. And I think, yeah, I think
• 26:46
  you're right. I think there is a degree to
• 26:48
  which it's better to have it as because there's a kind of
• 26:51
  clinic. It's why everybody loves true
• 26:53
  crime documentaries. But if he actually read like a
• 26:56
  graphic description, you know, when it's when it's a police
• 26:59
  officer or a forensic psychologist talking you through
• 27:02
  what happened, it's a bit less upsetting than if you were to
• 27:07
  actually visualize it or, you know, or to be there or to have
• 27:12
  it kind of related back to you by the killer, you know, that
• 27:16
  that kind of thing. So yeah, I think I think it is a
• 27:19
  partly A distancing method. And I think also kind of, I
• 27:24
  think the Doctor in this is quite, he's kind of like almost
• 27:28
  like McCoy esque, the sort of 7th Doctor esque and the kind of
• 27:31
  the the machinations that are kind of going on to the point
• 27:35
  that you're not really actually sure if the Doctor is like a
• 27:38
  good guy or not. And so I think that academic
• 27:42
  thing helps that as well. It distances you from the Doctor
• 27:46
  to tell quite a complex story. You're not too sure?
• 27:50
  Whether to trust him? We saw a ditch Times champion
• 27:53
  now it's Earth's champion now, isn't it?
• 27:56
  Yes, yeah, yeah. And that's quite an interesting
• 27:59
  kind of point of like it's kind of he's the last of the time
• 28:03
  laws, but what does that mean? But then also who is taking the
• 28:07
  place of the Time Lords and that kind of power struggle?
• 28:11
  It's a really like you could do that as a really, I'm I'm sure
• 28:15
  very exciting book, but it would be a fairly traditionalist
• 28:19
  Doctor Who's sci-fi adventure book.
• 28:21
  But this we get something much different here, talking about
• 28:24
  that kind of thing. I mean, it turns the Time Lords
• 28:27
  into elementals, doesn't it? You know, it's not.
• 28:29
  It just feels like, you know, gods, it's on another plane to
• 28:33
  how it's sort of how they're presented in the war games right
• 28:37
  before we got to terror the Autons, and it was a man in a
• 28:40
  bowl of hat and it was all bureaucracy.
• 28:42
  Yeah, yeah, definitely before Robert Holmes comes in.
• 28:46
  Before Robert, Yeah, but probably wisely.
• 28:49
  But I think we're never going to be able to do God's sort of
• 28:52
  Doctor Who budget for too long, will they?
• 28:55
  So a challenge, and I think there are quite a few Doctor Who
• 29:01
  books I'm going to name like Simon Butcher Jones, people like
• 29:04
  that that write challenging Doctor Who books.
• 29:09
  And you know, sometimes, most of the time, I don't know, it's
• 29:12
  worth the effort of facing the challenge of writing that book.
• 29:16
  I'd say this is one of the rare occasions where put the effort
• 29:20
  in and you'll get a lot out. Yeah, yeah, I, I think so to
• 29:26
  the, well, you know, to the point where spoiler alert for
• 29:29
  the end of this podcast, I want to read more of the.
• 29:32
  I want to read the rest of the arc, you know?
• 29:34
  He signed up, he signed a contract now so many books.
• 29:39
  Well, OK, so I'm going to read something to you now, and I want
• 29:45
  to see what you think about this.
• 29:48
  The difficulty with such stability is that it goes
• 29:50
  against the grain of all of all other life in the universe.
• 29:54
  Even if such a race were not entirely unchanging, their lack
• 29:58
  of motion might cause them to become as a solid rock in the
• 30:02
  middle of a river. All other life would flow around
• 30:05
  them until the universe itself accepted their presence as part
• 30:10
  of its function. Terrible to imagine the
• 30:13
  consequence of such a race suddenly being removed from the
• 30:17
  universe. So we're talking about the time
• 30:21
  Lozere. Yes, and that's a very lovely
• 30:24
  Star Trek style description of something incredibly complex but
• 30:29
  using incredibly simple terms. Yeah, it's great.
• 30:34
  It's that kind of idea of like the the floodgates are open now,
• 30:38
  you know, because the time mods were kind of managing the flow
• 30:42
  of time, but now that they're out there, it's kind of it's
• 30:46
  all, it's just all spilling out and it's all for the taking.
• 30:49
  Yeah, it's it's a lovely bit writing.
• 30:51
  Miles reaches the same conclusion as Russell, doesn't
• 30:54
  he? It's like the Time Lords are not
• 30:56
  interesting. The absence of the Time Lords is
• 31:00
  super interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 31:04
  So which angle do you prefer then?
• 31:05
  Do you prefer the OK, the heavens don't have any gods
• 31:10
  anymore and other people want to take their place?
• 31:12
  That's the Miles approach. Or the heavens don't have any
• 31:16
  gods anymore and the Doctor's going to cry about it a lot.
• 31:25
  The miles approach, I think, because I'm always I'm always
• 31:28
  fascinated by, you know, like stories about power vacuums or
• 31:35
  stories might like sort of faith.
• 31:38
  And So what happens when that faith is gone and the idea of
• 31:43
  the kind of there's no more gods left in heaven.
• 31:46
  What do you do with your your faith?
• 31:47
  And what does the Doctor do with that?
• 31:51
  Not so much his faith in time, because he's never really had
• 31:53
  much faith in his people, but his own kind of connection with
• 31:57
  with his people. Because now he's passed out on
• 32:00
  his own and he's not just sitting there going making big
• 32:03
  long speeches about being lost. The Time Lords to a stirring
• 32:06
  Murray Gold score. What's so interesting is the
• 32:10
  books just have rejected discussing the the absence of
• 32:16
  Gallifrey, right. They did that six book Earth Ark
• 32:20
  and then they got him out into space and the whole time the
• 32:22
  doctors amnesiac. So he can't remember any of it.
• 32:25
  Where Fitz what Fitz remembers or not is is a bit up in the air
• 32:29
  at this point because time's been fucked and Angie's a new
• 32:34
  companion that comes in after the Earth ark.
• 32:35
  So there's been a complete absence of any kind of
• 32:40
  consequence to the end of the ancestor sale beyond the
• 32:43
  Doctor's memory. Miles comes in and goes, no, we
• 32:46
  aren't doing that, I'm sorry. No, by the end of this book, I'm
• 32:49
  going to have the the Kingdom of Beasts as a huge sort of
• 32:53
  corrupted version of the Panopticon with the lying dead
• 32:57
  right in the middle of it. And like, and, and just for one
• 33:01
  book, it's really genuinely just taking all, all of the potential
• 33:06
  consequences of the ancestor cell and going right.
• 33:09
  Let's see where that leaves us. Yeah, but I think the, it's,
• 33:13
  it's not just even the fact that because the, the, the babawins
• 33:18
  are, they're not just a bastardization of the Time
• 33:21
  Lords, they're a bastardization of humans.
• 33:23
  They're, there's, it's just this idea of kind of, they're the
• 33:27
  corporeal form of all of our own animalistic instincts.
• 33:33
  And ignorance. And that's what they are, Yeah.
• 33:35
  And the old manifest as big apes.
• 33:38
  Yeah, there's. Something wonderful image, do
• 33:39
  you remember, of the Babe Winds tearing out books, tearing out
• 33:43
  pages from a book and wiping their arses with it?
• 33:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That says everything you need to
• 33:48
  know. It's yeah, it's so it's so base
• 33:52
  and I love that as yeah, that's the kind of contrast.
• 33:54
  It's like the Time Lords are gone and it's not some other
• 33:58
  race of gods that kind of come up in their place.
• 34:01
  It's just primal and grubby and beastial and the Doctor kind of
• 34:06
  has to go down to that level. The long as the book goes on,
• 34:10
  it's basically survival, I suppose, but it's, you know, but
• 34:15
  to a much bigger scale. Survival with the Doctor had
• 34:18
  torn the Master's head off at the end.
• 34:21
  Of it with a broken Sonic screw. Oh my God, it's so great.
• 34:25
  Oh, it's yeah, it's a Jesus. Could have put it on the TV,
• 34:29
  could you? No, we're definitely wilderness
• 34:31
  here. Yes.
• 34:33
  Well, what do you think? Right.
• 34:36
  What do you think of this? The part of the doctor that
• 34:40
  routed him to his home had begun to poison him.
• 34:43
  The organ through which he he was watched by the great eye by
• 34:47
  which the powers of the elemental world were passed to
• 34:49
  him, had grown sick and corrupt. It tried to grant him privilege
• 34:54
  of a world long since dead. And so it pumped into his body
• 34:57
  all of the disease and the darkness of a Kingdom reduced to
• 35:01
  a black nothingness. I think that's so powerful, that
• 35:04
  idea. Yeah, it is.
• 35:07
  Now I don't know what happens next, but I was a bit like, Oh,
• 35:12
  but does it though, like because obviously we're getting told
• 35:14
  that through through the villain of the piece, you know, Sabbath.
• 35:20
  So like, is that true? But it's such a beautiful,
• 35:23
  poetic kind of idea. And it once again, like Miles, I
• 35:27
  think it's kind of Holmes and Miles, I think are the two
• 35:30
  writers that I think give us the most interesting takes on the
• 35:35
  Time Lords. So like, I think Miles is really
• 35:37
  good at kind of giving you that kind of like they're ancient
• 35:42
  gods. So how does that work kind of
• 35:44
  biologically? How does that work societally?
• 35:46
  And and he kind of rather than kind of Holmes his thing where
• 35:51
  he kind of narrows them down into kind of fusty academics and
• 35:54
  politicians and they're just they've grown because they're
• 35:58
  immortal. They're they just stagnate.
• 36:02
  Miles has a similar kind of take, but there's there's a lot
• 36:05
  more kind of like out there thinking.
• 36:07
  And I think that idea of the this this sort of the two
• 36:11
  hearts, the second heart is kind of where where your home is
• 36:16
  essentially. And so when when that
• 36:17
  connection's cut off, it kind of shrivels and dies.
• 36:20
  Yeah. So yeah, very poetic.
• 36:22
  I like how as well throughout the book he's just a little bit
• 36:25
  I'll at the start, isn't it? He's been stopped touching his
• 36:27
  chest and then by the end of the book he is dying and he figures
• 36:31
  that by wedding himself to the earth.
• 36:34
  I'm not sure how these sort of elemental procedures work, but
• 36:37
  he figures a wedding himself to the earth means that he won't be
• 36:44
  sick anymore and he'll be able to go in.
• 36:46
  Second Heart will somehow find that connection to Earth and
• 36:49
  will therefore, yeah, kind of cure him.
• 36:52
  And that doesn't happen at all. He's literally on his deathbed
• 36:55
  after the wedding. Where?
• 36:57
  And then, I mean, we'll get to the end of Jesus Christ.
• 37:00
  One of the most visceral endings to a Doctor Who story ever.
• 37:06
  Yeah, I think. That's really, that's a really
• 37:08
  good, great take on the Doctor as well, though.
• 37:11
  Like what happens to the Doctor if Gallifrey's gone?
• 37:16
  And so I think the new series does it a little bit.
• 37:18
  It's like particularly when he gets it back and he said, well,
• 37:22
  go back now and then remembers why he didn't, why maybe he
• 37:26
  didn't miss it all that much after all.
• 37:27
  But it's that kind of thing of like, So what the Doctor does
• 37:30
  instead of pining for Gallifrey is go, well, I'm on Earth all
• 37:36
  the time. Most of my best friends, humans,
• 37:40
  maybe I root myself to this planet and I become this
• 37:42
  planet's defender. Yeah, it makes it.
• 37:46
  It all kind of makes a lovely kind of sense.
• 37:49
  Even more interesting than that, I think is the man who would be
• 37:55
  God who thinks I want a piece of that.
• 38:00
  I, I've got a taste that there's something out there to control.
• 38:07
  And obviously this is the first book that features Sabbath.
• 38:11
  Well, should we, should we talk about Sabbath and and what, how
• 38:14
  on earth did you find this character?
• 38:17
  Fascinating because it's he's not.
• 38:19
  I think what's really interested about him is he's not, he's kind
• 38:23
  of, he's already talked about when you, when you first meet
• 38:26
  him and kind of hushed tones. He's a bit like Rasputin in the
• 38:30
  sense that, you know, they try to kill him.
• 38:33
  He didn't die. You know, he came out of the
• 38:35
  came out of the River Thames. They put 13 chains around him,
• 38:39
  threw him in the Thames. And he was down there for ages
• 38:43
  and he kind of store it. He stared into the abyss.
• 38:45
  The abyss stared back. And then he he kind of came back
• 38:48
  to the surface of changed man. And he's decided that in, I
• 38:53
  think there's a really interesting reading it now on
• 38:56
  this kind of where we are in terms of nationalism and all
• 38:59
  this kind of thing. I think there's something really
• 39:01
  good. It's about halfway through the
• 39:04
  book where he talks about kind of he's kind of England's
• 39:08
  champion at the start of it. It's like he's got to protect
• 39:11
  England from from all the kind of forces that are unleashed by
• 39:15
  the sort of ball of the Time Lords.
• 39:17
  But then as the book kind of continues, it's kind of a bit
• 39:20
  more like, no, he's not just he's not just focused on
• 39:23
  England, but he's got bigger, he's got bigger kind of
• 39:26
  ambitions. That's that's really
• 39:28
  interesting. As well and he wants the ability
• 39:30
  that the Doctor has to be able to travel through time, bar he
• 39:34
  knows that he can't do that. Yeah.
• 39:38
  Until he obtains a very important biological component.
• 39:43
  Indeed. But yeah, and he want, he kind
• 39:45
  of wants to be the Doctor. Like everybody kind of looks at
• 39:48
  the the Doctor and Master relationship and we'll get to
• 39:51
  that. Oh.
• 39:52
  Boy, we'll say what a lovely rosette you've got on there,
• 39:56
  Mark. But so like in power the Doctor,
• 40:01
  for example, you've got that idea that the the Master kind of
• 40:04
  what kind of wants to be. The Doctor wants to be goats,
• 40:08
  kind of wants to kind of be. Praised by the universe, but I
• 40:12
  don't really think that really comes out.
• 40:13
  The Master is to the Doctor what the Joker is to Batman and
• 40:18
  Rossetti Davis's hero maybe takes a bit too far, but that is
• 40:20
  ultimately the thing. He's chaos to the Doctor's kind
• 40:23
  of order. That's kind of what it is.
• 40:26
  Whereas Sabbath is very much like, well, I could do that.
• 40:30
  I could do that. May I could be Doctor Who, no
• 40:32
  problem. And I'd do it a lot better than
• 40:34
  than Doctor Who does. So he gets Juliet.
• 40:37
  He kind of takes the Doctor's intended wife and makes her his
• 40:42
  companion. He's got his own ship.
• 40:45
  Then insidiously takes her away from him.
• 40:49
  Indeed, Yeah. And yeah, he's got his own ship
• 40:52
  and he's, yeah, it's, he is basically sort of setting
• 40:55
  himself up as the Doctor as a like a tribute act.
• 41:01
  I really like as well that and I think you'll see as we go
• 41:05
  through spoiler alert, Mark and I are going to do the Sabbath
• 41:09
  Runner books to see how this plays out.
• 41:12
  And the better writers remember this, that he's not just a James
• 41:17
  Bond villain, you know, although there is a wonderful moment in
• 41:21
  this where they first go on to the Jonah and he's there in
• 41:25
  front of this enormous map. And I can't remember the line.
• 41:28
  Something about, you know, oh, I'd find the title Doctor
• 41:30
  impressive if it wasn't just purveyors of pornography or
• 41:34
  something like that. Is a is a great and it's
• 41:37
  described as well as like a very melodramatic performance that he
• 41:41
  gives them. Yes.
• 41:42
  Now the worst writers just see that and and portray him as, you
• 41:47
  know, the master, but the best writers, and Miles really
• 41:51
  injects it here is he is not just that he isn't just a
• 41:54
  villain. Him and the doctor work together
• 41:56
  throughout most of this book. And he's also very avuncular and
• 42:00
  witty, you know, and a Bane and very smart and and just a very
• 42:06
  rounded character. I much prefer that in a villain
• 42:09
  than than, you know, black. And white, definitely,
• 42:12
  definitely. And that's it.
• 42:15
  I'd like the I think that's actually the thing that that
• 42:20
  most interestingly about Sabbath was actually how him and the
• 42:24
  Doctor are kind of, but I suppose might say Doctor, the
• 42:29
  Master, but there is a different aspect to it.
• 42:31
  But the archive, they do work together that they do.
• 42:34
  There is a kind of they can see what the other can do for them
• 42:38
  sort of thing. There's.
• 42:40
  A wonderful moment on the Doctor's deathbed, isn't there,
• 42:42
  where he confesses, but this, this universe is.
• 42:46
  He's much more suited to this universe than me.
• 42:48
  Now, you know, he deserves this rather than me, which I thought
• 42:53
  was really interesting. And in a terrific moment, the
• 42:56
  man with the rosettes who you know, maybe you can identify at
• 43:01
  some point on this call. The clean shaven man with the
• 43:04
  rosette. That's very deliberate because
• 43:06
  the doctor's got a beard right in.
• 43:08
  This one. Wait till you see the art that
• 43:11
  Dan Pin's done for us. Good grief.
• 43:12
  I came over all hot when I saw that is the he goes.
• 43:17
  What is it? This is not our playing field
• 43:19
  anymore. You know, Maybe I'll.
• 43:21
  I'll come back when there's a universe worthy of me.
• 43:25
  It's the Master, the man with the rosette.
• 43:27
  It's absolutely. Yeah, it's great.
• 43:30
  It's it's it's really because when he first turned up, I was
• 43:32
  like, no, it's it. And yeah, it's, it's, it is the
• 43:36
  Master. And I think I love that he's
• 43:39
  kind of, he's the Doctor's family because the whole thing
• 43:42
  is that the, the Master turns up at the wedding as the kind of
• 43:46
  the, the family member and he kind of spends the, spends time
• 43:51
  with the guests. He leaves before, before all the
• 43:54
  shit hits the fan because that's what the Master does.
• 43:57
  But he has some really interesting conversations with
• 43:59
  with the Doctor and Scarlett, Yeah, that kind of give you a
• 44:05
  real sense of like, oh, it's definitely the Master and the
• 44:07
  idea of him being clean shaven because the Doctor's got a
• 44:12
  beard. And maybe he would go out and
• 44:15
  save the universe if the Doctor was starting to chip away and
• 44:19
  destroy it. That's a wonderful line, isn't
• 44:21
  it? Maybe you'll force me into the
• 44:24
  position of having to save the universe.
• 44:26
  Yeah. I mean, there's no ambiguity
• 44:28
  there, right? It's clearly even though
• 44:31
  obviously no one ever says the master.
• 44:33
  It's just all of the Yeah, I was.
• 44:34
  Wondering, I was wondering about that.
• 44:36
  I mean, I suppose, but partly, I guess it wouldn't quite fit in
• 44:39
  with the academic tone. I suppose that's probably why
• 44:42
  why it's not. But yeah, I was like, oh, is it,
• 44:46
  is it a rights thing? But it's like, no, of course,
• 44:47
  it's just, it would be a bit silly if, oh, he called himself
• 44:50
  the master. Oh, oh, we will get to rights
• 44:54
  issues before the end of this call, all right, because
• 44:56
  there'll be some. Oh, yes, right.
• 44:58
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, can I swing those around
• 45:00
  then, to the very idea of the doctor setting up in the
• 45:06
  basement of a brothel? Yes, it's an interesting
• 45:12
  concept, isn't it? Yeah, it's it's.
• 45:20
  Part of me is it shouldn't work. What is it?
• 45:22
  What? It shouldn't work, but it kind
• 45:24
  of works. But what I find incredibly funny
• 45:26
  is that the minute the doctor turns up in these people's
• 45:29
  lives, the less and less sex they start to have.
• 45:33
  Which? Which feels like.
• 45:35
  Which feels like a meta commentary on on being a Doctor
• 45:39
  Who fan. This is Doctor.
• 45:41
  Yeah, prolonged exposure to the doctor robs you of most sexual
• 45:47
  interaction with their any women or or men do.
• 45:49
  You like, oh, I didn't read it like that.
• 45:51
  Good grief. I mean, I figured it's a Doctor
• 45:54
  Who book. So, you know, the, the, the
• 45:56
  this, this cannot be allowed. J&T's there with his red pen go
• 45:59
  no, no, no, no, no. I mean, there's a one before the
• 46:03
  book goes from the house to is it Africa overseas, you know,
• 46:09
  for the wedding. For the wedding, yeah, yeah.
• 46:10
  Yeah, there's a very potent moment where they walk around
• 46:14
  the house and they've literally no one's doing business anymore.
• 46:18
  There's no furniture left in the house.
• 46:20
  All that's there is an empty house and the TARDIS in it.
• 46:22
  It's almost as if because the Doctors come to the house, we
• 46:26
  can't have it off anymore. You.
• 46:27
  Know. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:30
  But. Yeah.
• 46:32
  It's very funny. There is.
• 46:33
  I mean, the opening scene is a prostitute with a large bellied
• 46:42
  Conservative MP. Yeah, literally having it off.
• 46:46
  And, you know, he explicitly puts or whatever the noises of
• 46:50
  the bed going up against the wall and it becomes a sort of
• 46:55
  massive tantric sex moment where she summons the the monkeys
• 47:00
  through and threatens to tear this man apart.
• 47:03
  I think it is explicit. Yeah, it is.
• 47:06
  It's quite a it's a hell of a. You couldn't.
• 47:09
  You couldn't imagine what I'm telling as the pre title
• 47:12
  sequence, could you? Who would you cast as catcher
• 47:17
  for the opening scene of the adventure S of Henry at the
• 47:19
  Street? Yeah, just and cue titles just
• 47:24
  over the top, full of blood and body parts that's left behind.
• 47:29
  But the idea isn't it. Wouldn't go away with it.
• 47:31
  The idea is it's not actually the sex that is important, it's
• 47:37
  the idea of how time changes when you're having sex.
• 47:43
  So they had so the people that summoned the Is it Babe winds,
• 47:48
  Baba winds? The monkeys, The apes, Let's
• 47:51
  call them the monkeys. The monkeys.
• 47:55
  I feel like that's not like disgusting enough that's
• 47:57
  described in such. Yeah.
• 47:59
  Obsolete detail. They're horrible highs and shit
• 48:04
  safe mouth anyway. Yeah, it's it's the fact that
• 48:08
  you comprehend time in a way like the Time Lords, right?
• 48:14
  That's what takes you to the to the Kingdom of the beasts.
• 48:19
  Your your understanding of time changes.
• 48:22
  Is that right? Yeah, I think so, Yeah.
• 48:26
  No, because it's the whole thing isn't there where Angie sees
• 48:29
  London and like, she's gone for hours, but actually she's only
• 48:33
  gone for minutes. Or is it the other way?
• 48:35
  But yeah, So that. Yeah, the the time changes.
• 48:40
  Yeah, it's it's, yeah. It's an interesting thing
• 48:43
  because that opening sex scene, I think I sent you, I think I
• 48:47
  sort of messaged you with kind of some of the text from it.
• 48:49
  I was just like, this is either the most pretentious sex scene
• 48:52
  I've ever read or one of the best because, yeah, it's all
• 48:54
  about that idea of like when you're in the moment, you're
• 48:58
  kind of concept of time changes. That's like a really interesting
• 49:03
  idea. And then and then some monkeys
• 49:05
  turn up and tear a guy limb from them and Oh yeah, it's because.
• 49:09
  Because it's daughter who? Let's get into that mark, shall
• 49:11
  we? So when you are having it off,
• 49:13
  yeah, does it, does it become one long A?
• 49:15
  Monkey has never walked into the room.
• 49:17
  Stretched into Infinity? Or does it feel like you know it
• 49:20
  just happened in 2 minutes? I mean the older I get.
• 49:26
  Yeah, indeed, Yeah, I feel your. Pain.
• 49:28
  The more whiskey I drink, you know, it's just that.
• 49:30
  But I suppose the idea is a prostitute really doesn't want
• 49:36
  to be having sex, but they're earning a living, no.
• 49:38
  And so you take yourself off somewhere else and that she's,
• 49:42
  she's done all of these sort of rituals and, and has all this
• 49:45
  knowledge of, of tantric sex, which just takes her to another
• 49:49
  plane. And that the knowledge attracts
• 49:53
  the apes to basically come along and and just destroy it and
• 49:57
  murder the people that are are expressing that knowledge.
• 50:01
  Yeah, yeah, and kind of run rampant.
• 50:03
  Let's run riots through London. I mean, these ideas are mad,
• 50:07
  aren't they? Like.
• 50:08
  They are. I mean, it's because he is quite
• 50:13
  interest in the occult and sort of magic and things and folklore
• 50:17
  and all that kind of thing is. Faction paradox is all voodoo,
• 50:19
  isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
• 50:22
  And I think that's really interesting.
• 50:23
  I think what this says, although I think what this I think that
• 50:27
  the time this is set is really interesting and the the idea of
• 50:31
  the the babe winds as these kind of like primal creatures, like
• 50:37
  we're kind of like society is on the cusp of the Enlightenment.
• 50:41
  So you know, they come from the Gordon Riots where like we let
• 50:45
  our primal nature go and there was heads on Pikes and they
• 50:48
  trashed and sent to London. That was all made-up and then I
• 50:52
  read it up, but I was like, it was one of the most brutal
• 50:55
  moments in London ever. Yeah.
• 51:00
  So, yeah. So there's that and there's,
• 51:03
  they're on the cusp of the industrial revolution where
• 51:06
  where things, yeah, better in some respects, but then also
• 51:10
  where things get commodified. So like the idea of the, and I
• 51:15
  mean, you know, it's a man writing this, so I suppose we,
• 51:17
  we should maybe take him with a grain of salt.
• 51:18
  But the idea that at this point being a sex worker, running a
• 51:23
  brothel, things like that, it was a it was kind of, there was
• 51:27
  an ownership in it as a woman. There was a it was a business
• 51:30
  that you ran and there was a lot more like agency in in that
• 51:36
  profession. Whereas, you know, as as history
• 51:39
  progresses, it becomes more what is it the pimpage he calls.
• 51:42
  It he says it, and he says even the prostitutes become part of
• 51:46
  the machine. Yeah, yeah.
• 51:49
  So it's, it's really interesting, like how like not
• 51:54
  like Miles doesn't do anything just to add some historical
• 51:58
  colour. It's all part of the themes of
• 52:00
  the story he's telling. It's like an interference.
• 52:02
  Like I, I said this on Ian's podcast.
• 52:05
  Like the reason that it's the third Doctor that Lawrence Miles
• 52:11
  chooses to kind of regenerate early and throw everything off
• 52:15
  is because the story he's telling is about the military
• 52:17
  industrial complex. So of course you choose the
• 52:20
  Doctor Who was kind of working with units throughout most of
• 52:24
  his tenure to kind of to tell that story.
• 52:26
  Like he always all of the choices he makes in these books,
• 52:29
  they're all part of like a much bigger.
• 52:32
  Whole sorry, I mean I never thought about that.
• 52:34
  I had another take on that, which was, you know, because
• 52:37
  that is a past Doctor book and an Eighth Doctor book colliding
• 52:41
  in interference. I was like, well, if you want to
• 52:44
  show the impact of the, you know, the evil, horrendous 8th
• 52:48
  Doctor books, you know, you go to the cosiest period ever
• 52:51
  Season 11 per. There's that as well.
• 52:53
  And you throw a cup of coffee straight in his face and see how
• 52:56
  he reacts, you know? Yeah.
• 52:58
  Oh boy. Oh yeah, definitely that's
• 53:00
  that's also part of it. But I think there's there is
• 53:02
  definitely like a. Yeah, that's super.
• 53:05
  He was the unit guy, wasn't he? He was the unit guy.
• 53:06
  And and we all kind of were like, yeah, yeah, the military
• 53:09
  are just just our pals. They're just nice cosy guys
• 53:13
  making Coco with a Bunsen burner.
• 53:16
  Yeah, we know you've got people in their cells as well, you
• 53:19
  know. For a long time.
• 53:21
  Anyway, sorry, enough of it. No, but so, yeah.
• 53:23
  So this so that idea of kind of setting it now and the Hellfire
• 53:28
  Club having sort of disbanded by this point that like I think he
• 53:34
  kind of is kind of positing the idea that that was kind of the
• 53:38
  end of the age of kind of magic and superstition as a kind of
• 53:42
  mainstream thing rather than a kind of fringe interest.
• 53:46
  So this is like. Perfectly chosen this time
• 53:48
  period. It's a transition between that
• 53:51
  and that, but you get the the atmosphere and the details of
• 53:55
  both in it. And it's another vacuum as well.
• 53:58
  It's like it's another vacuum that needs to be filled.
• 54:00
  So like it's, it's so rich and so dense.
• 54:04
  I just think as well the brothel is it never felt salacious in
• 54:09
  the way that the worst new adventures can, you know, where
• 54:12
  the sex just feels like it's there to titillate.
• 54:14
  I don't think it's ever here to titillate because the the
• 54:17
  results of the sex are always so horrific.
• 54:19
  You know, you have sex in this book, you probably die.
• 54:23
  You know, there's some. Great bits with There's some
• 54:25
  great bits with fits as well where you would think there
• 54:28
  would be some writers writing fits in a brothel that would
• 54:31
  luxuriate in the sex of it. He does have it off at one point
• 54:36
  just because he's bored, yeah. And that's it.
• 54:39
  That's such a like, that's brilliant.
• 54:41
  Like that idea that that sex happens because just out of
• 54:45
  boredom and because, well. She was bored and she suggested
• 54:49
  it and they were like, OK, you know.
• 54:52
  Yeah. And it's like that's like it's,
• 54:55
  it's so matter of fact. And so like you say, it's not
• 54:59
  titillating, it's just the. Young part the the.
• 55:03
  Background. I was presented right.
• 55:05
  I was like, they were vivid enough that I didn't need to see
• 55:09
  I I wouldn't need to see them on the screen because it was always
• 55:12
  all there in my mind. It was.
• 55:13
  But there was 1 moment where I was like, I need to see that on
• 55:17
  TV and I never will. And it's the bit where Fitz is
• 55:21
  surrounded by a gang of rival prostitutes when they go.
• 55:25
  Is that when they go to Manchester?
• 55:27
  And they literally beat the shit.
• 55:30
  And I was like, man, I want to see him trying to negotiate with
• 55:34
  a gang of savage prostitutes just to say what on earth he
• 55:39
  would say, bless him. Yeah.
• 55:42
  So. So it is, It is it's sort of
• 55:45
  mixing together the sex. It's mixed together the
• 55:47
  violence. It's misting, mixing together
• 55:49
  the mysticism. It's it reminded me a bit and go
• 55:53
  with it of sort of talents of Wing Chai Yang.
• 55:56
  It's a very heady brew of a lot of the cliches, but here a lot
• 56:03
  of stuff that's just really vivid, but I didn't know about
• 56:08
  as well, you know, but sort of all of it in a big sort of
• 56:12
  portmanteau of of violence and sex and and and nastiness and
• 56:18
  arcane knowledge and all of that stuff.
• 56:20
  It's it's it's kind of seductive Mark.
• 56:23
  I don't know. It just had an atmosphere to it.
• 56:27
  It is it's it's really, it's a really addictive book for given
• 56:31
  this, given the style it's written, it's very readable
• 56:35
  because I think there's you want to learn more and you want to
• 56:39
  peel away the the layers of it. Yeah, it's just, and there's
• 56:45
  just so many lovely little he manages to sort of seed in some
• 56:48
  lovely little character moments within this kind of academic
• 56:52
  text, like the the story of the Doctor stagnate where it's just
• 56:57
  him and fit him like Fitz Wheeling him around in a
• 56:59
  wheelchair and they kind of watch the sun come up and all
• 57:01
  that kind of thing. A.
• 57:02
  Bottle of champagne. They got just the 2.
• 57:04
  Yeah, they got a bottle of champagne.
• 57:05
  Yeah, it's just like, yeah, because he is the Doctor's
• 57:08
  longest serving companion. Well, for the 8th Doctor in the
• 57:12
  in the books of me so. I love the bit where Angie,
• 57:15
  furious goes back to the house and tears into Juliet like,
• 57:20
  yeah, you whore, you know? Oh boy.
• 57:24
  Now I'll let you just on a little secret.
• 57:26
  You might know this already. Loris Miles was not keen on
• 57:30
  Angie Kapoor in any way, shape or form.
• 57:32
  He thought the idea he gave an interview, the idea that we are
• 57:37
  attempting to relate to anchors in Doctor Who.
• 57:42
  Is this how low we've come? You know, we're we're, we're
• 57:45
  aspiring to be 9 to 5 workers now, are we?
• 57:50
  So he does keep her off off stage quite a bit in the book,
• 57:54
  but she still gets great moments.
• 57:55
  She's the one that goes to the Kingdom of the beast first of of
• 57:58
  the heroes. She's the one that's following
• 58:01
  Juliet around at night, wondering what on earth is she
• 58:04
  up to in the shadows, you know, in Covent Garden and all of that
• 58:08
  stuff. Yeah, she definitely gets a lot
• 58:09
  to do. It's not like he's kind of, I
• 58:12
  don't like her because he could have done, because obviously
• 58:14
  they're not in it for the first chunk of the book.
• 58:17
  It's just the Doctor's shown up and he needs to kind of summon
• 58:21
  his fellow elementals who will then be able to help them summon
• 58:25
  the TARDIS and. It's not tenacious.
• 58:28
  They turn up naked, don't they? They do, but in a kind of Matt
• 58:31
  Smith on Christmas Day rather than a, you know, Matt Smith and
• 58:34
  Bonnie Monroe. Ian Martins are quite keen on
• 58:37
  Andrew Kapoor. You know, I think he might have
• 58:38
  a stiffie right now here. And I was talking about this.
• 58:41
  She's walking out of flames nude.
• 58:43
  My God. Well, can I ask you then about
• 58:49
  Juliet and Scarlet, who I think are the two big characters from
• 58:55
  the brothel? I remembered the twist about
• 59:02
  Juliet defecting to Sabbath on this read and I.
• 59:06
  Thought Miles was. Really clever because he spends
• 59:10
  the first third of the book constantly reminding you how
• 59:14
  devoted Juliet is to the Doctor. Yeah, yeah.
• 59:18
  It feels like because as it went up, as it went on and the idea
• 59:23
  of the doctors kind of setting her up because she's, she's
• 59:26
  pretty young, isn't she? She's like she's 16 or something
• 59:30
  like. That yeah, she's very. 16
• 59:32
  something so I I the idea that he's kind of setting her up for
• 59:36
  this marriage ceremony that she's not necessarily prepared
• 59:39
  for. Like it did feel like a kind of
• 59:42
  like commentary, like a kind of twenty 20th 21st century
• 59:47
  commentary on like, well, what is the Doctor and the companions
• 59:51
  relationship and classic Doctor Who.
• 59:53
  Like the Doctor expects quite a lot of these women, you know,
• 59:57
  and puts them through a lot like it felt like quite an
• 59:59
  interesting sort of picking a part of of that idea when it
• 1:00:04
  when it comes to Julia. And then obviously she then
• 1:00:06
  meets somebody who's even more manipulative and even worse.
• 1:00:11
  And yeah, it was really interesting reading that kind of
• 1:00:13
  relationship and how she's kind of in the Doctor's thrall until.
• 1:00:19
  Somebody else kind of comes along.
• 1:00:21
  I mean, I'll say this, we know Juliet is alive at the end of
• 1:00:29
  this book. You'll never see Juliet in
• 1:00:31
  enough Doctor Who book again, but that's a really important
• 1:00:35
  point that you'll never see her again.
• 1:00:39
  OK. That's for books to explore
• 1:00:41
  later, you know, whereas Scarlett, I just thought was a
• 1:00:46
  brilliant, brilliant character, the head of of the brothel, very
• 1:00:53
  flawed, huge personality, clearly in love with the Doctor
• 1:00:59
  and a bit pissed that he's chosen somebody else to marry
• 1:01:03
  is. She a redhead?
• 1:01:04
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and she's always in
• 1:01:06
  beautiful red dresses, isn't she?
• 1:01:09
  Yeah, she's River Song. Basically.
• 1:01:12
  Like, you know, I just sent a screenshot of the bit where
• 1:01:20
  Fitz, it talks about the TARDIS to something old, something
• 1:01:24
  borrowed or something blue, and I was just like Marfa.
• 1:01:27
  I know. There's he loves Miles like and
• 1:01:31
  do you know what? Fair enough, Nick from The Best.
• 1:01:33
  Terence Dix did it unapologetically.
• 1:01:36
  And I, I absolutely don't hold it against Moffett that he took
• 1:01:40
  some of the ideas from Bodies Interference and The Adventurous
• 1:01:44
  and Henry at the Street and said, you know what?
• 1:01:45
  Those were books read by 2000 people.
• 1:01:48
  Let's now give those to 9 million people on TV.
• 1:01:51
  Yeah. Because the idea of giving the
• 1:01:53
  Doctor love interest, that's way more complicated than just they
• 1:01:59
  fancy each other. There's a kind of there's a
• 1:02:02
  shared spirit, but there's also a kind of they're also kind of
• 1:02:06
  opposites as well that it's really, it's a really
• 1:02:11
  interesting story to tell. So of course you're going to
• 1:02:13
  tell that to like a like you say a 7 million viewership.
• 1:02:18
  But yeah, that bit at the end where she sort of fakes, I mean
• 1:02:21
  spoiler with that where she kind of got a quite a.
• 1:02:24
  Few spoilers now, don't worry, yeah.
• 1:02:26
  I know where she basically fakes her death.
• 1:02:28
  The Doctor figures out, chases after her.
• 1:02:30
  Like it's so romantic. So as romantic as Doctor Who
• 1:02:34
  fiction can get, I suppose. But it's also very River Song.
• 1:02:38
  It's like that idea of like, well, no, I had to let you
• 1:02:40
  believe that I was dead because it's that it's somebody taking
• 1:02:46
  the the sort of doc, the doctor out of the situation and going,
• 1:02:49
  no, this is what's best for you. I'm the person that tells you
• 1:02:52
  what you tell the universe, tell your companions what's best for
• 1:02:56
  them, but I'm going to tell you what's best for you.
• 1:02:58
  That's, yeah, that's what a great character.
• 1:03:00
  She's such a powerful woman. That's the most River Song thing
• 1:03:03
  I can think of of her in this. Because we're not doing any of
• 1:03:06
  that sort of time travellers wife stuff here.
• 1:03:09
  Yeah, it's a very linear story in that sense.
• 1:03:12
  But man, she's vivid. I love the fact that she gets,
• 1:03:15
  you know, pissed as houses when they go to the island and she's
• 1:03:19
  so angry that Juliet has defected and betrayed her.
• 1:03:23
  And so they literally on on the hen night.
• 1:03:27
  You know, they do like a selling off all the halls for one night.
• 1:03:32
  Oh, sorry, the prostitutes. Sorry.
• 1:03:35
  And she comes up with a dummy with a red wig of Juliet with
• 1:03:40
  all makeup smeared all over the dummy.
• 1:03:43
  And, you know, calls are the most horrible names.
• 1:03:45
  And actually, in that moment, I felt so sorry for Juliet.
• 1:03:49
  And I'm like, no, you'd try to force her into this terrible
• 1:03:52
  position. Yeah.
• 1:03:53
  What do you think was going to happen?
• 1:03:55
  But she, yeah, but she's, you know, so she's deeply flawed as
• 1:03:59
  a person. And, yeah, so capable.
• 1:04:01
  She realizes that all of the factions that have come to the
• 1:04:05
  wedding, they need something to focus on because the doctor's
• 1:04:08
  dying and Juliet's not there, and it looks like the wedding
• 1:04:11
  isn't going to happen. And so she then goes, right,
• 1:04:14
  we're going to form a hunting party.
• 1:04:16
  We're going to turn this into a sport.
• 1:04:17
  We're going to go after those bloody apes and murder the lot
• 1:04:20
  of them. And it works.
• 1:04:23
  Yeah, it does. And I think that that's a great
• 1:04:27
  the 8 when you first hear about the 8 punts that the sort of the
• 1:04:29
  upper the English upper class results.
• 1:04:32
  Do you like? Well, yeah, of course they would
• 1:04:34
  do that. Of course they would do that.
• 1:04:35
  I love Miles is kind of like sort of thing of kind of go,
• 1:04:38
  well, what would happen if this did actually happen?
• 1:04:40
  Oh, yeah. Well, the the upper class would
• 1:04:42
  probably hunt them, wouldn't they?
• 1:04:43
  They put that that's probably what they'd say.
• 1:04:45
  But also, I mean, I think Scarlett is like really
• 1:04:48
  interesting character because like I love all just the little
• 1:04:51
  scenes where it's not about the plotting.
• 1:04:52
  It's not about it's her and the doctor just lying on the floor.
• 1:04:56
  Yes, laughing. And or like her and the doctor
• 1:04:59
  fencing, you know, just. That's the introduction, isn't
• 1:05:02
  it? They're fencing.
• 1:05:03
  Yeah. You can see how that would be
• 1:05:04
  filmed, can't you? Yeah, and it's just it's such a
• 1:05:08
  brilliant dynamic that you can absolutely you just really buy
• 1:05:13
  it. You know, you it's with the
• 1:05:15
  modern series, like there's a lot of times like I don't really
• 1:05:18
  buy that the Doctors in love with Rose Tyler.
• 1:05:20
  I never really have, but I buy the connection between the
• 1:05:27
  doctor and Scarlett and his book.
• 1:05:28
  And yeah, probably because it's a novel and you can get a bit
• 1:05:31
  more. I never even got the sense it
• 1:05:33
  was love. I never even got the sense that
• 1:05:35
  it, I mean, it's romantically presented, but I I got the sense
• 1:05:39
  that there was a connection between.
• 1:05:41
  Yeah, it's a connection between the two of them.
• 1:05:43
  But like when they kiss when they get married, that's not
• 1:05:47
  described as a, you know, no one mentioned it was romantic.
• 1:05:51
  Just say it was a powerful moment where the whole of the
• 1:05:54
  the world shattered and we were shoved into the Kingdom of
• 1:05:57
  beasts. I was a hell of a kiss.
• 1:05:59
  Yeah, which again is that I met a comment on the on the doctor
• 1:06:03
  kissing Grace and the subsequent.
• 1:06:05
  I don't know. You could say.
• 1:06:06
  You could say any geek. Having their first kiss, the
• 1:06:09
  whole world shattered. Jesus Christ.
• 1:06:14
  But yeah, just a, a wonderful character.
• 1:06:17
  Like, I mean that she's, she's the book writer that's named
• 1:06:20
  after her. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:22
  It's all, it's all, it's all for her, isn't it?
• 1:06:27
  Did she come back? No, we never see her again
• 1:06:30
  either. I know, I know it does feel like
• 1:06:32
  this is all kicking off and we're going to keep coming back
• 1:06:34
  to this whole house, but basically Sabbath, the ship and
• 1:06:39
  the apes, that's what we take away from the book.
• 1:06:42
  And of course, the fact that there's a power vacuum in the
• 1:06:46
  heavens and. There's a big eye, right?
• 1:06:50
  Watching over everybody. Oh, well, Todd, Mark, you've
• 1:06:52
  brought us around to the great blazing sun, the black sun in
• 1:06:56
  the sky, staring down over everything.
• 1:06:59
  What we just say we was going to talk about rights issues, didn't
• 1:07:02
  we? So Justin Richard absolutely has
• 1:07:05
  said in interview since even an interview I did with him, that
• 1:07:10
  the whole Sabbath arc was leading up to a massive reveal
• 1:07:14
  that the black sun. And it's not just in this in the
• 1:07:17
  Slow Empire, there's a black sun in the sky, the year of
• 1:07:20
  intelligent tigers, there's a black sun in the sky.
• 1:07:22
  I think going forward when we read History 101, there's a
• 1:07:27
  reference to a black sun in the sky there.
• 1:07:28
  So something is looking over all of the events that's happening
• 1:07:32
  that it was the Daleks and it was going to be an epic two book
• 1:07:37
  conclusion to the Sabbath ark written.
• 1:07:41
  The Dalek story was going to be written by Lance Parkin.
• 1:07:44
  Oh, nice. Fucking hell, man.
• 1:07:46
  That's my what if if the books. Yeah.
• 1:07:49
  And then at the 11th hour, the Terry Nation, the state said no,
• 1:07:52
  sorry. We remember what you did with
• 1:07:54
  John Peel and War of the Daleks and we ain't having that again.
• 1:07:57
  No, I don't think that was the reason, but they just said no.
• 1:08:00
  They said no for whatever reason, and they had to
• 1:08:03
  improvise an ending. And I'll leave you to determine
• 1:08:07
  how well they did with that ending.
• 1:08:12
  But yeah. It's a vivid.
• 1:08:13
  Image though, isn't it? It is, yeah.
• 1:08:16
  Just that that sort of black eye watching over everything, isn't
• 1:08:22
  it? Yeah, just it is quite because
• 1:08:24
  it's not just one eye, is it? Is there not like a bit where
• 1:08:26
  like it's it lots? Of eyes.
• 1:08:28
  Yeah, pupils like in this sort of one big bowl kind of looking
• 1:08:31
  down on on all of us and on the and the apes kind of worship it,
• 1:08:36
  but are also kind of fearful of it.
• 1:08:37
  And yeah, it's really kind of 2001, a Space Odyssey kind of
• 1:08:41
  shit. Well, I was thinking like Daleks
• 1:08:44
  and Ogroms with the gods I. Was.
• 1:08:47
  Like, is he doing that there Because Miles knew?
• 1:08:50
  Miles knew it was going to be like, that's why he put all of
• 1:08:52
  this in. Yeah, maybe then.
• 1:08:56
  Isn't there a moment where somebody has a vision of like
• 1:09:01
  deaf metallic deaf machines as well one of one of the
• 1:09:04
  prostitutes? Yes, there is.
• 1:09:07
  Yeah, I think it's around the time Sabbath builds his ship,
• 1:09:10
  isn't it? It's talking about sort of
• 1:09:12
  machines of the future, Bias clearly talking about an army of
• 1:09:15
  Daleks. Yeah, God, yeah, of course it
• 1:09:19
  is. Yeah, because I should get on
• 1:09:20
  there. Well, yeah, it's about the
• 1:09:21
  industrial revolution and the war machine.
• 1:09:23
  But yeah, you're right. Of course.
• 1:09:25
  The if that, if he knew that they were going to build to the
• 1:09:28
  Daleks, then yeah, of course that's in there.
• 1:09:30
  Like. I think it's.
• 1:09:32
  Really clever because this book has tons of continuity in it.
• 1:09:37
  It literally takes us to Gallifrey in the climax, or a
• 1:09:41
  sort of diseased version of Gallifrey.
• 1:09:43
  It's got the Master in it. It's it's building up to the
• 1:09:46
  return of the Daleks. And yet I don't know if it's
• 1:09:52
  because of how it's written. I don't know if if it's because
• 1:09:54
  it's couched in sort of metaphors and imagery and things
• 1:09:57
  like that, or because he, he just turns those base elements
• 1:10:01
  of Doctor Who into something really epic, you know, and, and
• 1:10:05
  elemental. But it doesn't feel fan wanky.
• 1:10:09
  No, not at all. It feels like something brand
• 1:10:11
  new. Like when the Master shows up,
• 1:10:14
  you're like, hey, it feels it feels earned.
• 1:10:18
  And it it feels like a logical part of this story.
• 1:10:22
  Like the doc, the doctor needs his family at his on his wedding
• 1:10:26
  day and they're not around. Like I love the whole thing with
• 1:10:29
  the Doctor's grandfather and it's just a guy he's painted and
• 1:10:34
  made-up, but it provides him comfort as he gets sicker and
• 1:10:38
  sicker. This this fictional grandfather,
• 1:10:40
  like watching over him. That's a really lovely element
• 1:10:43
  of it. And you really get the doctor's
• 1:10:45
  kind of homesickness, this kind of this great loss that he's
• 1:10:50
  kind of suffer it. It's never specifically stated
• 1:10:54
  in the book, I mean it's there on wiki, but anyone could have
• 1:10:58
  written that. But when they go to Saint Ced's
• 1:11:00
  University in Cambridge, you know.
• 1:11:03
  And the description does sound like Professor Cronotis, and it
• 1:11:07
  is somebody affiliated to the doctor.
• 1:11:09
  So I was like, OK, there's another little bit of continuity
• 1:11:12
  there if you want it to be. Or you could just say, well,
• 1:11:15
  there's an unreliable dissertation this, you know,
• 1:11:18
  pulled together from various accounts.
• 1:11:21
  I mean, do you know who wrote this and not Lawrence Miles?
• 1:11:24
  I mean the actual dissertation. Well, is it, is it because I
• 1:11:28
  think he told me this is not supposed to be Bernie
• 1:11:30
  Summerfield? Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:11:31
  But I was looking for clues. I was looking for clues as to as
• 1:11:34
  to is that just, is that just what Lawrence Miles said or was
• 1:11:38
  it? So he said he wrote this that
• 1:11:41
  with that in mind and but he never wrote it within the text.
• 1:11:45
  Yeah, that's, that was the thing because I was like looking for
• 1:11:47
  clues as to like, oh, you know, but.
• 1:11:50
  That could be the last page, right?
• 1:11:52
  Just put B Summerfield at the end.
• 1:11:54
  Of it, I suppose the way that it talks about the Doctor at times
• 1:12:00
  it isn't talking about the doctor as a historical figure is
• 1:12:04
  talking it there's a there's a tone of like this person who's
• 1:12:09
  writing this book maybe knows the doctor personally, if you
• 1:12:12
  know what I mean. I can't think of any exact
• 1:12:15
  examples, but I do remember, I don't know if it's because I had
• 1:12:18
  the idea of burning some my head, but I was like, oh, would
• 1:12:20
  you say that in an academic text or would you say that about a
• 1:12:24
  friend? You know, like there's.
• 1:12:26
  A. Few bits like that, yes,
• 1:12:29
  probably. Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:12:32
  I don't know why it wasn't in there.
• 1:12:34
  Is that, is that absolutely what he was intending to do?
• 1:12:38
  What can I now take us towards the end of the book then?
• 1:12:42
  And so we, the doctor and Scarlett, get married.
• 1:12:47
  She's a surrogate for Juliet, who's gone off with Sabbath.
• 1:12:50
  And just a moment to say that the imagery of the Jonah, the
• 1:12:55
  ship coming in towards the island with Juliet in a noose,
• 1:13:01
  that is so powerful, that image. I put the book down at that
• 1:13:04
  point when I think I'll come back to this tomorrow.
• 1:13:07
  Yeah, it's grim, isn't it? Yeah.
• 1:13:10
  So we go, when they get married, they are shifted to the Kingdom
• 1:13:15
  of the Beast. And we've already said she's
• 1:13:17
  created these sort of hunting games on Earth.
• 1:13:21
  And the exact description in the text is, I think they realize
• 1:13:25
  now that they've got a hunting party that they can go to the
• 1:13:28
  Kingdom of the Beasts and they can kill the apes, protect the
• 1:13:32
  Doctor, and hopefully he can take out the king of the beasts,
• 1:13:38
  this great slavering ape. Yeah, who sits on a throne of
• 1:13:43
  shit and bone who doesn't say shit?
• 1:13:45
  But that is basically what it says, isn't it?
• 1:13:48
  Yeah. I don't want to see that.
• 1:13:51
  That's enough in my head. It's kind of apocalyptic, that
• 1:13:55
  ending, isn't it? Like it's big.
• 1:13:59
  It is. It's really big and it's really
• 1:14:03
  like quite grubby. I mean, I suppose the whole book
• 1:14:05
  kind of has a kind of grubbiness to it because of what it's kind
• 1:14:08
  of talking about. But yeah, it's proper.
• 1:14:12
  The doctor get in his hands dirty like he is in this kind of
• 1:14:17
  like this Kingdom where everything like nothing really
• 1:14:21
  makes sense. There's no rat, there's no sort
• 1:14:22
  of rationality. It's all just primal rage and
• 1:14:28
  just disgusting. Just disgusting.
• 1:14:31
  UN unwashed apes. There's only one way he can
• 1:14:34
  defeat the king. Isn't it is to kill him like?
• 1:14:37
  Yeah, it's hand to hand combat, isn't it?
• 1:14:39
  Yeah, and if. We fight like animals.
• 1:14:41
  We die. Yeah.
• 1:14:46
  And there is something quite, I think that that's another
• 1:14:50
  interest. I don't think it's, I don't know
• 1:14:52
  if it's deliberate or not, but like the idea of like the the
• 1:14:54
  Doctor removed, either the Doctor no longer being at Time
• 1:14:58
  Lodge because there's no more Time Lords.
• 1:15:02
  Does that give him license to kind of be this more bestial,
• 1:15:06
  more brutal hero that does? Or I mean, the book's basically
• 1:15:13
  saying, well, that's the only way you can defeat the apes is
• 1:15:17
  to become bestial yourself. But then what do you lose, you
• 1:15:21
  know, by doing that? And it also doesn't seem to lose
• 1:15:24
  too much. It still seems to be the Doctor
• 1:15:26
  at the end, but it does feel like it takes a toll.
• 1:15:29
  I mean, if I was Angie, after watching all this take place,
• 1:15:32
  you know, I'm there with a weapon trying to fight all these
• 1:15:35
  apes. Then I'm watching the Doctor
• 1:15:36
  with his shattered Sonic screwdriver beheading an
• 1:15:39
  enormous. I might go.
• 1:15:40
  Can you Take Me Home after this, please?
• 1:15:42
  Like, this is a bit much. I don't wanna hang out with you
• 1:15:45
  anymore. But it is interesting that since
• 1:15:47
  the burning, Like the burning, the climax of the burning.
• 1:15:51
  Yeah. Because that's Doctor murdering
• 1:15:52
  somebody. And throughout this second-half
• 1:15:55
  of the run, the Doctor's morality is questionable at
• 1:16:00
  times and he can be very violent at times, so I quite like.
• 1:16:05
  More interesting, I think that's way more interesting, isn't it?
• 1:16:08
  Because like, I think what people love about Tom Baker as
• 1:16:12
  the Doctor is the, it's not, it's not the, the sort of Tom,
• 1:16:19
  the convention Tom Baker. I think the reason he made such
• 1:16:22
  an impression on kids in the 70s is that he was a kind of
• 1:16:24
  unknowable, kind of scary alien, and you were just absolutely
• 1:16:31
  fascinated by him. So yeah, I think, I think in the
• 1:16:35
  2000s where there's no show anymore, the BBC have kind of
• 1:16:39
  taken their eye off the ball. They'll just let you do whatever
• 1:16:42
  the hell you want. Why not tell stories like this
• 1:16:45
  where you do kind of question the the morality of the Doctor
• 1:16:49
  and kind of go, well, he's an alien, He doesn't think that we
• 1:16:52
  do. Do you think slightly
• 1:16:53
  differently? I can remember watching The
• 1:16:56
  Seeds of Doom when it came out on video.
• 1:16:58
  And so I would have been in my early teens, I think, and being
• 1:17:03
  both thrilled by Tom in that and a bit scared of him as well now
• 1:17:07
  where he's screaming like Scar back and the Berry twist his
• 1:17:11
  neck. And he was really unpredictable,
• 1:17:13
  you know. But I like, and I love that
• 1:17:15
  about Colin as well. The Colin was cyanide someone to
• 1:17:19
  death. And I'll be going, oh, God, what
• 1:17:20
  you doing? Like, Jesus Christ, that's a
• 1:17:23
  very violent way of dealing with things.
• 1:17:24
  But I mean, I'm quite like a Pogue when he's an asshole as
• 1:17:27
  well. So maybe this is a sort of thing
• 1:17:29
  for nasty men. Yeah.
• 1:17:31
  Yeah, maybe, maybe. But I think, I think there is
• 1:17:34
  something like, I think Eccleson was really good at that, that
• 1:17:37
  kind of distancing, you know, like this, like I don't have the
• 1:17:43
  same morality as you do. I have a slightly more
• 1:17:46
  heightened version. And then obviously it gets kind
• 1:17:49
  of proved wrong. But like, that's a more
• 1:17:50
  interesting version of the Doctor to me.
• 1:17:53
  She didn't get enough moments like this Jodie, but that bit
• 1:17:56
  and spy for where she reveals the Masters skin colour and I
• 1:18:02
  remember going, wow, I don't like you right now and I
• 1:18:07
  normally really like you and it was such an interesting place to
• 1:18:10
  be for a second. Yeah, and everybody kicking off
• 1:18:12
  about it. And it's just like, can we like,
• 1:18:15
  wouldn't it be nice to have some characters with depth?
• 1:18:17
  But why do we all take against that, you know?
• 1:18:21
  Well, I can't watch that. I don't like the characters.
• 1:18:23
  That's why I'm. Watching this mark, you know the
• 1:18:26
  the king of the beasts having his head ripped off.
• 1:18:30
  His heart ripped out his chest. That's not covered that yet.
• 1:18:33
  Doctor Who? Last night he married a
• 1:18:36
  prostitute and tore somebody's head off.
• 1:18:38
  Like what's happened to the magic of Doctor Who?
• 1:18:42
  I mean, to be honest, though, that is an interesting question
• 1:18:46
  to ask you. Like, have we come so far away
• 1:18:49
  from a Terry Nation Part 1? Like, this is about as far as
• 1:18:55
  you can get, isn't it? Can you go much further in this
• 1:18:59
  and still be Doctor Who? Like, it does feel like Doctor
• 1:19:02
  Who, you're right. It does.
• 1:19:04
  It does. But it's, you know, it's Doctor
• 1:19:06
  Who pushing the kind of 9:00 PM on Channel 4 rather than
• 1:19:09
  Saturday time and. Fashion does like an
• 1:19:13
  intellectual exercise rather than escapist.
• 1:19:16
  Television. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:19:19
  It's maybe kind of more like a kind of prestige drama version
• 1:19:22
  and Doctor, but it's if it is Doctor Who, it's got the kind of
• 1:19:27
  it still has the tone. There's still it's still funny.
• 1:19:32
  It's it's not like a kind of for all the grimness in it, for all
• 1:19:37
  the sex, for all the death, for all the gore, like it's still it
• 1:19:42
  doesn't it doesn't lose. It doesn't lose like a sense of
• 1:19:47
  whimsy and A and a sense of humour.
• 1:19:50
  Like I think that's, that's because there's a lot of books
• 1:19:53
  which I'm sure you've read and, and I've tried to read the do
• 1:19:58
  that for Doctor Who and forget the sense of humour, forget the
• 1:20:02
  whimsy. And I think Lawrence Miles is
• 1:20:04
  one of those those rare Doctor Who novelists that remembers you
• 1:20:08
  can do both. Because I feel like, I feel like
• 1:20:11
  there's, there's a, there's a thing where like you'll either
• 1:20:13
  write just a really, really good Doctor Who book.
• 1:20:17
  Right. Or you're right, a really dark,
• 1:20:19
  challenging, gritty book that just so happens to have the
• 1:20:23
  doctor in it. And I think Lawrence Miles is
• 1:20:25
  really good at taking both of those things and giving you
• 1:20:28
  something like really interesting.
• 1:20:30
  Like, I mean, I'm Moffett has the Moffett and Miles, there are
• 1:20:35
  a lot of similarities. I mean, I think they're both
• 1:20:37
  incredible writers at the best. And Moffett, like Miles, can
• 1:20:43
  take a really serious idea and spin comedy gold out of it.
• 1:20:49
  And like I know the Moffett's. He said that in an interview
• 1:20:54
  that his favorite Doctor Who cliffhanger of all time is the
• 1:20:57
  moment in Alien Bodies where Drax, I think it's supposed to
• 1:21:02
  be Drax. Mr. Kyoto reveals that the
• 1:21:06
  artifact at the it's the Doctor's body that they're all
• 1:21:10
  about to start bidding on. And the joke is, well, fine, you
• 1:21:15
  can still bid. I'll give you 20% off though,
• 1:21:17
  you know? And then the Doctor just punches
• 1:21:19
  him in the face. And that's the end of the end of
• 1:21:22
  the episode. It was like, that's the best
• 1:21:23
  Cliff we've ever ran. Whose body is it?
• 1:21:26
  You're sorry? Because because he plays with
• 1:21:31
  Doctor Who in very, very similar ways.
• 1:21:33
  I mean, this probably isn't as whimsical as Alien Bodies and
• 1:21:38
  Interference simply because of how it's written, but there's
• 1:21:42
  charming moments here, certainly.
• 1:21:44
  Oh yeah. Definitely, definitely.
• 1:21:47
  But very serious, I think. And I think also like Moffat,
• 1:21:50
  he's really interested in the Doctor as a character, not as a
• 1:21:55
  kind of icon, you know, Whereas Davies is absolutely.
• 1:22:03
  He's interested in the Doctor as an icon, not as a character.
• 1:22:07
  And that's why some actors have, I think I say some actors, Chris
• 1:22:11
  Freaksons, Shooty Gatwa have issues perhaps kind of with that
• 1:22:16
  style because Eccleston wanted a writer who could give him a bit
• 1:22:19
  more character detail. I don't know what Gatwa wanted,
• 1:22:23
  but I can feel, I feel like, I feel like something similar was
• 1:22:25
  going on there in terms of the performance, like.
• 1:22:28
  If he wanted to rung up the ladder for his career, I don't
• 1:22:31
  know how that went. I think both Moffett and Miles
• 1:22:34
  has made me say all these lovely things about Stephen Moffett.
• 1:22:37
  God, you. You've beguiled me now.
• 1:22:41
  All this Moffett love. No, I think they both use
• 1:22:45
  continuity as well, in really sophisticated ways to inform the
• 1:22:51
  characters and tell you something about them.
• 1:22:54
  And that's really important. That's the difference between
• 1:22:57
  this and Doctor Who Warmonger, where Terrence Dicks, you know,
• 1:23:02
  turns the 5th Doctor and Perry into guerrilla war bastards and
• 1:23:07
  pulls together an army of Cybermen, Draconians and
• 1:23:11
  Sontarans to take on the evil Rambusi.
• 1:23:14
  Which is Morbius as an anagram, right?
• 1:23:18
  And it's just a load of hideous continuity for continuity.
• 1:23:24
  If I read that as a 12 year old, no, I've, I haven't.
• 1:23:26
  I've never read it. I've never.
• 1:23:28
  Read it. But I bet you if I read that as
• 1:23:30
  a 12 year old, I'm like, yes, this is the best Doctor Who book
• 1:23:33
  I've ever read. Whereas actually this is
• 1:23:37
  probably the best Doctor book I've ever read.
• 1:23:39
  What's so interesting to write? And I made this comparison to
• 1:23:42
  John Arnold. I said adventurous and
• 1:23:44
  warmonger. Yeah.
• 1:23:45
  They've got more in common than you think.
• 1:23:47
  Neither one of them feels like your typical Doctor Who story.
• 1:23:51
  You know, the Doctor isn't a gorilla.
• 1:23:53
  He doesn't pull together massive armies of people to take on
• 1:23:55
  Morbius and huge space operas. That's not your standard Doctor
• 1:23:58
  Who story. And the adventurist of Henry the
• 1:24:02
  Doctor generally doesn't hang out in a brothel, marry a
• 1:24:07
  prostitute and, you know, murder his way through the the climax
• 1:24:12
  of a storm be hitting. People, that's not usually,
• 1:24:14
  that's not usually the format. I mean, Arc of Infinity might
• 1:24:17
  have been a bit more fun if he'd rocked up to one of those
• 1:24:20
  windows, you know, and done something similar.
• 1:24:24
  Anything to liven it up. Jesus Christ, If there'd been a
• 1:24:28
  brothel on Gallifrey, that might have livened up a bit actually,
• 1:24:31
  wouldn't it? I think Damon would have been a
• 1:24:33
  regular user. Or the sauna, you know?
• 1:24:37
  And they both have huge amounts of sex references in them.
• 1:24:40
  Obviously this is set in a brothel, so there's time to say
• 1:24:42
  it, but warm. Up for the course.
• 1:24:44
  More insidiously, has a rape reference.
• 1:24:48
  Perry is threatened with rape on practically every other page.
• 1:24:52
  It is deeply disturbing. It's, I mean, to be fair to
• 1:24:56
  Terrence Dicks, I mean, wasn't that the 80s?
• 1:24:59
  It's like that old Nicola Bryant's whole career in Doctor
• 1:25:03
  Who has been threatened with violence by some villain of the
• 1:25:06
  week. You were going to say, to be
• 1:25:08
  fair to Terrence Dicks, have you seen Nicola Bryant?
• 1:25:10
  Then I'm glad No yo-yo, your reading on that was far less
• 1:25:17
  cancellable. But I feel like we've, I feel
• 1:25:20
  we've walked the line here. I was worried going into this, I
• 1:25:24
  was like, I'm going to get myself cancelled.
• 1:25:26
  Talking about Doctor Who in a brothel.
• 1:25:30
  I could take anything out, don't worry.
• 1:25:31
  I've got the I've got that book that he mentions.
• 1:25:34
  So, you know, there's still time.
• 1:25:36
  You know, the book that he mentions about the hang on, I'll
• 1:25:40
  get it. So again, I was like, I bet that
• 1:25:46
  is a real thing. So there's a bet in the book.
• 1:25:48
  I can't remember exactly how it comes up, but he mentions
• 1:25:51
  Harris's list of Covent Garden ladies, which was a book.
• 1:25:56
  So the idea is that at the time, visiting a brothel was kind of
• 1:26:01
  the not the done thing, but kind of there was a kind of
• 1:26:04
  excitement about it. There was a, it wasn't frowned
• 1:26:08
  upon in the way that it is today to the point that this guy had
• 1:26:13
  published a basically a book called Harris's List of Common
• 1:26:17
  Cards and Ladies or Man of Pleasures calendar for the year
• 1:26:21
  1793. So it was a kind of you know
• 1:26:24
  who's who that thing. It was a who's who of all the.
• 1:26:28
  Like a hotel guide for prostitutes.
• 1:26:31
  Yeah, in London in the 18th century and it's all, it's all
• 1:26:35
  true. And I've got APDF of it here.
• 1:26:37
  I was trying to see if there was, if there was indeed anybody
• 1:26:40
  on Henrietta Street, but not that I could see.
• 1:26:43
  No catchers. No.
• 1:26:44
  Lisa Beths. No.
• 1:26:46
  Well, they're all they're all. There was a there was a scar.
• 1:26:50
  Hang on. Yes.
• 1:26:52
  Here we go. Page 15 now.
• 1:26:54
  What's that There? Sorry, Vamp, while I found it.
• 1:27:02
  Yes. Here we go.
• 1:27:03
  So there is a Miss SC that hyphen TT.
• 1:27:08
  So we we could say that scar, that scarlet number located at
• 1:27:13
  #44 Margaret St. Cavendish Square, adds Bob's.
• 1:27:18
  She's wondrous pretty. Her looks are almost jetty.
• 1:27:21
  She's a finer Winston Betty, and lo, her eyes are blue.
• 1:27:26
  We cannot call this lady a beauty of the first rate.
• 1:27:28
  She's what may be determined pretty, but nothing
• 1:27:31
  extraordinary, and though she cannot boast of all those
• 1:27:33
  external graces which distinguish the beauties of some
• 1:27:36
  ladies, Yes, I've heard when she is engaged in her business,
• 1:27:40
  there are very few who are her superiors.
• 1:27:45
  Where are we now? She is amorous to the greatest
• 1:27:49
  degree, and has courage enough not to be afraid of the largest
• 1:27:52
  and the strongest man, the ever true weapon, the ever true
• 1:27:56
  weapon in the cause of love. She has had a number of admirers
• 1:28:00
  in her time, all of which she had the satisfaction of pleasing
• 1:28:03
  during their temporary residence with her.
• 1:28:05
  She is now in keeping by 1. Mr. B, who is not not a little
• 1:28:09
  enamoured of her. Her person is of the middling
• 1:28:12
  fine little black eyes, black hair, very fine teeth, and is
• 1:28:16
  altogether very agreeable. So this is the whole book.
• 1:28:20
  It's quite incredibly cool. Again, Harris's list of Covent
• 1:28:25
  Garden ladies, 84 pages. I'm going to do Joe's Book of
• 1:28:34
  male Doctor Who podcast Beauties.
• 1:28:37
  How about that? I can't.
• 1:28:40
  I can't wait to read it. I'll give you all a score out of
• 1:28:44
  10 as well. Obviously Fair of face radiant
• 1:28:48
  on the screen. Mark Donaldson of On the Time
• 1:28:51
  Lash. You'll get you'll you'll.
• 1:28:55
  Yeah. I'll write you all in Doctor Who
• 1:28:56
  books. Yeah.
• 1:28:57
  Yeah. Dylan Reece.
• 1:28:58
  He'd be a warmonger. You'll be an adventurous on
• 1:29:00
  Henry St. All right.
• 1:29:02
  Sorry, Dylan. You are very pretty.
• 1:29:03
  So much. I mean, they've got.
• 1:29:05
  Wow, the research you've done for this.
• 1:29:08
  Well, I was. I was just so interested.
• 1:29:10
  Like this stuff that was coming up in the book was just so
• 1:29:13
  interesting. Just from a historic point of
• 1:29:16
  view. Isn't that actually how the
• 1:29:17
  Gordon bias isn't extraordinary in history?
• 1:29:21
  Look it up, ladies and gentlemen, if you, if you've
• 1:29:23
  never heard of it, because I hadn't, there was.
• 1:29:26
  Loads. I mean, I was taking notes of
• 1:29:28
  all these and I was like, I'm never going to bring all these
• 1:29:30
  up on the cold, but I was like, I'm taking the notes because I
• 1:29:33
  want to read up on them later. And nine times out of 10, it was
• 1:29:36
  all there in history. And I wonder if I, I do wonder
• 1:29:40
  if that's actually how he we talked to the star.
• 1:29:43
  But like, how, how do you approach write the book like
• 1:29:45
  this? And I guess he probably decided,
• 1:29:48
  like I said, on this kind of time period as like a good point
• 1:29:53
  to talk about, so that he's probably had the idea that
• 1:29:56
  Doctor Who goes to the horizon, which is this point at which
• 1:30:00
  kind of the beastial nature and the kind of more rational nature
• 1:30:03
  kind of meet. And it's this kind of like
• 1:30:05
  heightened idea. So he's probably thought about
• 1:30:07
  that and he goes, well, when in history could I, could I choose
• 1:30:11
  that? Would that would maybe fit that
• 1:30:13
  he chooses the kind of sort of tail end of the 18th century and
• 1:30:18
  then I guess just does all the research you would do if you
• 1:30:20
  were to write a dissertation about London at that point.
• 1:30:25
  I guess that must have been, that's why this comes up.
• 1:30:30
  Yeah. Like he must have been wherever
• 1:30:32
  he went, you know? He earned those Lego sets.
• 1:30:36
  You know, Lawrence, I hope you're still enjoying the.
• 1:30:39
  He earned that £300. Well, the, the other, the last
• 1:30:44
  sort of big thing I wanted to talk about was the the climax to
• 1:30:51
  the doctor's sickness in the book, which I just think that's
• 1:30:55
  the the scene I always remember from this because I remember
• 1:30:58
  reading it as a or say as a nipper.
• 1:31:01
  I was there getting in my mid teens.
• 1:31:02
  But it just was so striking of and it's great because it's one
• 1:31:07
  of those moments where it's like no one gave a specific account.
• 1:31:10
  So here's what we'll assume. What happened that slapath
• 1:31:13
  literally plunges his hand into the Doctor's chest and rips out
• 1:31:19
  the toxic black heart. We keep getting references to
• 1:31:23
  the black heart throughout the book.
• 1:31:25
  So he's pointing to this moment and holds it aloft, you know,
• 1:31:29
  and basically saves the Doctor, but gives himself the ability to
• 1:31:33
  travel in time as well. Yes, Indiana Jones, the Temple
• 1:31:37
  Doom, isn't it? It's that whole reaching the
• 1:31:39
  hands into the chest and pulling out, which I suppose fits the
• 1:31:42
  the voodoo and the the black magic that's kind of going on
• 1:31:45
  elsewhere. But yeah, that's a really
• 1:31:47
  striking image. And and as you say, yeah, that
• 1:31:50
  final bit when you see Sabbath at the end of the book and he's
• 1:31:54
  on the deck of his ship and it was like a little patch of blood
• 1:31:58
  on his chest and you're like, oh, God.
• 1:32:00
  Right. OK, interesting.
• 1:32:04
  Where's this going to go? So I mean, it's not really a
• 1:32:08
  spoiler. It's in a book coming up that so
• 1:32:10
  you know, you're going to read a list of books coming up.
• 1:32:13
  But this, I think it's the second best Sabbath book of the
• 1:32:17
  run. I think Camera Obscura by Lloyd
• 1:32:21
  Rose, just an amazing, amazing writer of Doctor Who.
• 1:32:28
  That's a a Victorian melodrama, but it deals with basically what
• 1:32:32
  happens with that heart and all the consequences.
• 1:32:35
  And it's the closest examination of the two of them as
• 1:32:38
  adversaries, sometimes allies, Right?
• 1:32:43
  Yeah. Really, really interesting.
• 1:32:44
  But man, just just holding the heart aloft.
• 1:32:48
  Of the Doctor, yeah. The still beating heart of the
• 1:32:51
  Doctor. Fucking hell.
• 1:32:55
  I love that as again, that's a proper mic drop, isn't it?
• 1:32:57
  It's like, right, I'm not writing another Doctor Who book.
• 1:33:00
  I've ripped the doctor's heart out.
• 1:33:03
  Peace out. Good luck.
• 1:33:05
  Good luck everybody. But it does definitively tie up
• 1:33:11
  the ancestor sale because Fitz recognises the towers and the
• 1:33:17
  Spires, doesn't he? Of Gallifrey.
• 1:33:20
  So the Doctor is is said, it's like the last bit of Gallifrey
• 1:33:24
  is the Doctor's sort of memory of it.
• 1:33:27
  And it's created within the Kingdom of beasts.
• 1:33:29
  So it's like, imagine that Dome, but all made out of bones and
• 1:33:34
  like, I don't know, just in a really decayed, decrepit and
• 1:33:38
  shit and blood, you know, and apes crawling over all the
• 1:33:42
  remains of it all. But we sort of do go into the
• 1:33:45
  panopticon. It is described like the
• 1:33:47
  panopticon in the Deadly Assassin with that's where the
• 1:33:51
  doctor has his heart surgery at the end of the story.
• 1:33:54
  And when that version of Gallifrey vanishes, it literally
• 1:33:58
  says in the text, that's the last of Gallifrey.
• 1:34:01
  You ain't going to say it again. And now let's move on.
• 1:34:05
  Yeah, yeah. And that's him, I suppose, tying
• 1:34:08
  up the loose ends that he didn't get to tie up what he kind of
• 1:34:12
  said, because obviously, am I right in thinking he wasn't 100%
• 1:34:15
  happy with what the ancestor cell did?
• 1:34:18
  I think that's the reason he said he wasn't writing anymore.
• 1:34:20
  This is what you do with my ideas.
• 1:34:23
  I mean, the hubris of the man, Mark, it's extraordinary.
• 1:34:27
  He's really good. So we'll let him get away with
• 1:34:29
  it. But.
• 1:34:30
  Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 1:34:32
  It's him kind of tying it up, I suppose.
• 1:34:34
  So that, you know, it's like, right, that's it.
• 1:34:36
  Don't, don't be going back there.
• 1:34:38
  I'll be. I'll be really annoyed if you
• 1:34:40
  do. And to be fair, it's not until
• 1:34:44
  the very last book, the Gallifrey Chronicles, where all
• 1:34:48
  the Doctor gets is his memory back.
• 1:34:49
  That's it. He gets his.
• 1:34:50
  Memory back and also they kind of have to do that because the
• 1:34:53
  show's back on the telly by that point, so they've got to.
• 1:34:56
  The very unfortunate thing, Russell's like, oh God, man, I
• 1:35:00
  want to destroy Gallifrey. And those two 1000 people
• 1:35:03
  reading those books are all going to think I'm following,
• 1:35:06
  including me. When I saw that, I was like, Oh
• 1:35:09
  my God, we're following the ancestor cell.
• 1:35:11
  Hooray. And the guy, he literally writes
• 1:35:14
  in one of his Doctor Who magazine things.
• 1:35:16
  No, this is nothing to do with the books.
• 1:35:21
  The annoying thing is he got to use the Daleks.
• 1:35:24
  Yes he did. I was touching girl for a bit,
• 1:35:26
  but he didn't get to use the Daleks.
• 1:35:28
  It could have been a load of floating balls with kids inside,
• 1:35:30
  couldn't it? Oh God, yeah, imagine.
• 1:35:33
  Imagine. Well, I'm going to ask you now.
• 1:35:37
  Yeah, we're we've got good Aaron.
• 1:35:39
  I'll have found this thing. Let's try and summarize the
• 1:35:44
  adventurous of Henry Estry as a reading experience.
• 1:35:47
  OK, it's a thematically dense. I don't know why my camera keeps
• 1:35:58
  doing that. Sorry, I'll.
• 1:35:59
  Keep getting these sort of melodramatic Zoom insurance as
• 1:36:03
  if you're about to reveal you're my dad or something.
• 1:36:06
  You know, I think I'm old, so that would be hard to talk
• 1:36:11
  about. Tiny Wimey.
• 1:36:15
  I've got 2 hearts actually. Hang on, I'm just reaching in
• 1:36:19
  the screen to tear one out. So as a reading experience, it's
• 1:36:24
  so it's, it's, it's a thematically dense book, but it
• 1:36:30
  rewards your like commitment because actually once you get
• 1:36:36
  over that hurdle, it's a genuinely thrilling Doctor Who
• 1:36:41
  adventure that I think does stuff that I think Doctor Who
• 1:36:45
  should have been doing at this point in its life where it can
• 1:36:49
  be a, it's a bit freer to be more creatively inventive.
• 1:36:53
  And we go to some very dark places.
• 1:36:57
  It's, yeah. It's not just another colony
• 1:37:00
  world, is it? You know, as Michael Mills says,
• 1:37:02
  you know, Doctor Who, Yes, it's the colony world.
• 1:37:05
  We love a colony world. I'd I'd say it's a book of very
• 1:37:11
  haunting images. Like I think the imagery is
• 1:37:14
  extremely memorable. And that's the thing I always
• 1:37:16
  take away from it is there's just certain things.
• 1:37:18
  The black, the eye and sky looking over events, the bone
• 1:37:23
  city, the apes, the heart surgery.
• 1:37:26
  You know, there's just things you just never the.
• 1:37:28
  Doctor's beard as well. Just his.
• 1:37:29
  Kind of like just the idea of the doctor with a beard at that
• 1:37:32
  point. He grow it, just see if he can
• 1:37:35
  or something. Yeah.
• 1:37:37
  It's a good sort of visual indication that he's trying
• 1:37:40
  something new though, right? And also the ship, the ship I
• 1:37:45
  think is a really vivid sort of pumping black oil into its veins
• 1:37:51
  and it just feels like a living machine.
• 1:37:52
  And so, yeah, haunting images, visceral violence, lots of sex
• 1:37:58
  and tantric ceremonies, steel ships and open heart surgery.
• 1:38:03
  I mean, it's got a bit of, well, no, it's got nothing you'd
• 1:38:06
  expect from a Doctor Who book and yet somehow manages to weave
• 1:38:10
  itself into a really vivid. I think it's the execution,
• 1:38:14
  though. I genuinely think it's, it's the
• 1:38:16
  execution and the style that he chooses.
• 1:38:18
  It's, it's very brutally, very vividly brought to life by the
• 1:38:23
  style of the piece that I, I didn't argue against the the
• 1:38:29
  tone of it or the content because I felt as if I was being
• 1:38:33
  educated rather than being entertained.
• 1:38:38
  But it didn't stop it being really engaging, though.
• 1:38:43
  I mean, I've never, I've not read that many dissertations
• 1:38:45
  where I've been going. Oh my God, what's coming next,
• 1:38:47
  you know? Like, I mean, to be fair, I've
• 1:38:50
  not read many dissertations that have people's heart pulled out
• 1:38:53
  their chest, but somebody's bare hands or.
• 1:38:55
  Try harder, you and his students are right, you might get a
• 1:38:59
  better grade. I I genuinely think, and I am
• 1:39:03
  capable of hyperbole. I think this is probably my
• 1:39:06
  favorite Doctor Who book just because it is so brave and so
• 1:39:12
  distant. Doctor Who on television.
• 1:39:15
  It is a great example of wilderness years.
• 1:39:18
  Doctor Who taking the nuts and bolts of what the TV gave us and
• 1:39:22
  going right fine, but let's present all of this in a much
• 1:39:26
  more riveting way. Well, it's also, it's also
• 1:39:30
  Doctor Who books not trying to be like a target novelization of
• 1:39:39
  a television story we never had. It's actually a Doctor Who book
• 1:39:43
  being a book and exploring what you can do within the format of
• 1:39:49
  the written word rather than just kind of translate your
• 1:39:52
  television episode you've pictured you picture in your
• 1:39:54
  head. You know what's sad is I think
• 1:39:59
  if he didn't have the unknowing ability to fuck so many people
• 1:40:04
  off by being. Himself, Lawrence Miles had a
• 1:40:11
  career writing non Doctor Who books in him and that's never
• 1:40:17
  going to happen because so too many people said don't work with
• 1:40:20
  this guy like he is. He is.
• 1:40:23
  He's tough to work with. But but he's clearly got a gift
• 1:40:26
  for, well, building a gift for characterization and just a gift
• 1:40:32
  for ideas, right? Like Doctor Who needs ideas.
• 1:40:34
  Yeah. Oh God, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:40:37
  I think, I think, you know, a Ronovich aside, I don't think
• 1:40:40
  anyone's really broken out of Doctor Who have they and become,
• 1:40:44
  but I think Miles had it in him. Yeah, I think he probably did,
• 1:40:52
  but yeah, he didn't. He's Yeah, because he, I guess,
• 1:40:54
  Yeah. Because as you say, he's, he's a
• 1:40:56
  complicated. He's a complicated man.
• 1:40:58
  He's a complicated. Indeed, that's a very diplomatic
• 1:41:01
  way of tying this up. Do you ever read that blog of
• 1:41:03
  his? You know where he tore apart
• 1:41:06
  every I remember. Reading them, yeah.
• 1:41:09
  When the series came back. Oh.
• 1:41:11
  What's he going to say this week?
• 1:41:13
  Do you have any tiny bit of joy in your life?
• 1:41:16
  I think he liked Gridlock, but that was the only episode he
• 1:41:18
  liked in the entire run. And of course, with every idea
• 1:41:22
  that Moffett borrowed, he got angrier and angrier.
• 1:41:28
  It's fair, I suppose, but yeah. Can I ask you one last question
• 1:41:33
  before we end this please? What on earth possessed you to
• 1:41:38
  agree to go on an insane endeavour of at least 8 or 9
• 1:41:44
  Doctor Who books in an ark? I think I was just really taken
• 1:41:49
  with the ideas in this and the idea behind Sabbath that I was
• 1:41:54
  like, I really want to see where this goes and I could do it by
• 1:41:58
  myself, But I know if I'm well, I'll probably just give up the
• 1:42:01
  first time I hit a book that I don't really gel with.
• 1:42:05
  And you will. There'll be something along the
• 1:42:06
  way. There will be.
• 1:42:07
  Something. But if I commit to doing it on a
• 1:42:09
  podcast, it means I'll actually do it.
• 1:42:14
  So yeah. So that's that's that's why
• 1:42:16
  basically. So we're, yeah, we're off to do.
• 1:42:19
  It's an Acrophobia Next by Jonathan Morris.
• 1:42:22
  Then History 101, Camera Obscura, Time 0, the Infinity
• 1:42:27
  Race. Oh God, I can see the fear on
• 1:42:29
  your face as I can reel out more titles.
• 1:42:33
  I don't know if we're going to do the domino effect because
• 1:42:35
  it's an alternative universe Sabbath.
• 1:42:37
  I'll let you decide that one. Is that the one that's set in
• 1:42:40
  Edinburgh though? I kind of do want to do it.
• 1:42:43
  All right, Fair. OK, David Bishop wrote.
• 1:42:46
  That one he gave us who killed Kennedy.
• 1:42:49
  It's not. Oh right though.
• 1:42:50
  I'll be honest, domino effect I'm.
• 1:42:52
  Reading for. Ages the last resort, which I
• 1:42:55
  just can't wait for you to read because everyone hates it and I
• 1:42:59
  love it. So if he during that one, the
• 1:43:03
  last resort, then Timeless, which sees Angie out of the
• 1:43:07
  books and sometime never by just enriches at the end, which ties
• 1:43:12
  up. It literally ties up all of this
• 1:43:15
  stuff, everything that's happened since the burning, and
• 1:43:19
  loads of stuff that's happened in the past Doctor Adventures as
• 1:43:22
  well. Oh yeah.
• 1:43:24
  I was interested in that because I heard something about the
• 1:43:27
  domino effect and I was like, wait, does that impact the past
• 1:43:30
  doctor books as well? So there's a series of past
• 1:43:34
  Doctor books where people where companions are being killed.
• 1:43:38
  Male in one, Sarah in one. Yeah, Harry in one.
• 1:43:44
  And usually like, what are they doing?
• 1:43:45
  Why? Why are you murdering off all
• 1:43:47
  these companions? This isn't what happened.
• 1:43:49
  And then sometimes never, sometimes never asked us all a
• 1:43:52
  laugh. But we will get there.
• 1:43:57
  I I said that about interference, that it's
• 1:44:00
  disappointing that when they do what they do in interface and
• 1:44:04
  sort of regenerate the 3rd Doctor early, you don't have
• 1:44:08
  that reflected in the pack because why not?
• 1:44:10
  Isn't it right? Andrew said the same thing when
• 1:44:13
  we covered it, that you should have had an alternative, just a
• 1:44:16
  couple. Just do a couple and then tie it
• 1:44:18
  up in the ancestor cell. Yeah, because I think there was,
• 1:44:21
  although Miles has said he has no recollection of saying he was
• 1:44:23
  going to do this, but that he was going to do like Planet and
• 1:44:26
  the Spiders, but with Tom Baker in it.
• 1:44:29
  And it would be that that was going to be the thing.
• 1:44:31
  But apparently Miles has said no, I never said that.
• 1:44:35
  So I don't know if this is just something somebody's sort of
• 1:44:37
  thrown in into the ether bear. I don't call him Mad Larry for
• 1:44:41
  nothing, but I'll tell you what, this run excites me.
• 1:44:43
  One, because I don't think I've ever heard on a podcast anyone
• 1:44:47
  do this run. So we're sort of doing it for
• 1:44:49
  the first time and I sort of seek out these book podcasts.
• 1:44:52
  So I I kind of wouldn't know. But also I think there's a
• 1:44:55
  mixture of genuinely very good books and really terrible books
• 1:45:00
  in there. So you've got like the whole
• 1:45:03
  range of quality Doctor Who wise and it's a really intriguing.
• 1:45:09
  Argh. Yeah.
• 1:45:09
  I can't wait to see what you think of all of this.
• 1:45:13
  I, I mean, I think you're, oh, you're frozen.
• 1:45:15
  Yeah, I'm, I'm halfway through an actress.
• 1:45:18
  No, you're back. Don't worry.
• 1:45:19
  I'm. Halfway through an acrophobia?
• 1:45:21
  Yeah, I'm halfway through an acrophobia now.
• 1:45:23
  I'm really enjoying it. I I have no idea how it ties
• 1:45:25
  into the Ark yet. So that's interesting.
• 1:45:27
  Stephen Moffett, Maher, read that one as well.
• 1:45:29
  You know, there's lots of time shenanigans going on in that
• 1:45:31
  there. Is a lot of.
• 1:45:32
  There is a lot of time shenanigans there, yes.
• 1:45:36
  But yes, so until we head to the unnamed planet of the Temporal.
• 1:45:40
  Is he unnamed colony Miles? Yes, that's right.
• 1:45:44
  Yeah. Oh, I can't wait to see how you
• 1:45:46
  think about that ending. Do you know anything about the
• 1:45:48
  end of that book? No, no, nothing, nothing.
• 1:45:51
  Shut up then, Mark. Thank you for visiting the
• 1:45:56
  brothel with me today. I mean, thank you for your
• 1:45:58
  researches as well. I feel as if I know very much
• 1:46:01
  about Mrs. STTE. Indeed, indeed.
• 1:46:06
  No, it's been, it's been a pleasure to to visit this
• 1:46:09
  brothel with you, Joe. Let's never speak of it again.
• 1:46:16
  We saw things that we weren't supposed to say.
• 1:46:18
  We did, We did. Certainly a lot of hairy asses
• 1:46:21
  and well, goodbye.