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Hamster Book Club - Fear Itself · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:01
  He could see the strain within her, on her face, the way she
• 0:05
  held the violin, the grip on the bow.
• 0:09
  She'd trusted him. I'd thought he trusted her.
• 0:12
  If this was going to work, he needed to break that trust.
• 0:16
  He needed her angry. Did he do it?
• 0:19
  He snapped. That overload was no accident.
• 0:23
  No. She turned her head, the violin
• 0:26
  back under her chin, starting to play once more.
• 0:30
  The doctor paced around the room, reaching out as he passed
• 0:33
  the selection of instruments and snatched up a violin.
• 0:37
  She looked at him, uncertain, unsure, as he glared at her.
• 0:42
  His right hand grasped the bow, his mouth tightened, and he
• 0:46
  angled the bow down on the strings, dragging it sharp
• 0:49
  across them, a first discordant note cutting into Valletti's
• 0:53
  melody. She flinched at the sound, but
• 0:56
  played on. Jason Mccrae, he said.
• 1:00
  What happened to him? He took a step closer, feeling
• 1:04
  the tension. Still, she played.
• 1:07
  He drew again and again, a hard rhythm breaking against
• 1:10
  Valletti's long, graceful movement.
• 1:13
  She turned away, bending into the music.
• 1:16
  The doctor stepped after her, twisting his wrist, dragging the
• 1:19
  note out. His lobotomy, Terence's work
• 1:23
  with Sarah's. Still no answer.
• 1:27
  He stepped closer, finally working the bow into a steady
• 1:30
  figure of eight movement, delivering not one note but
• 1:33
  several, a counterpoint to her melody, a tune of his own, hard
• 1:38
  and cold, alien. Is it worth the price?
• 1:45
  And Valletti dropped the violin span round.
• 1:48
  Yes, it's worth it. Why?
• 1:51
  He said. What's so important?
• 1:53
  What's so special the Avatar is our best option for?
• 1:57
  He cut her off with a final savage twist, then let the bow
• 2:01
  drop. He pushed her far enough.
• 2:05
  The best defence, she said. No alternatives, no options.
• 2:09
  This is it. They are our best defence, our
• 2:11
  only choice. The Doctor stroked the bow over
• 2:14
  the strings again. Really, he said.
• 2:18
  Slowly at first. Starting low, he began drawing
• 2:21
  the figure of eight, the dark corner revealed in music.
• 2:27
  That's the best Earth can do. She was still, but he could see
• 2:31
  it building inside her. War games with no value.
• 2:35
  Faster still, stepping closer to Viletti, unflinching.
• 2:38
  It just needed one more push. The right opposition would show
• 2:43
  that project up for the facade it is.
• 2:47
  And finally she broke, snapping. What opposition?
• 2:51
  You, you wouldn't last five minutes.
• 2:54
  The doctor twisted his arm, one last note cutting the air,
• 2:58
  signalling full stop. Challenge accepted.
• 3:15
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 3:18
  My name is Joe Ford and as ever, I am here with my esteemed
• 3:22
  colleagues. As we agreed in the last
• 3:24
  episode, Mrs. Emma Peel and Miss Tara King.
• 3:28
  How are you both? Spiffing.
• 3:31
  I don't know what's an Avengers way of saying.
• 3:35
  You just sort of go hi. Yeah.
• 3:39
  Attacking me. No, no, no.
• 3:40
  It's Luke Sims Jenkins. And oh, Andrew.
• 3:44
  What's your surname? That's my surname.
• 3:46
  Oh, thank you very much. And Andrew Batty, how are you
• 3:50
  boys? I'm good, thanks.
• 3:52
  Luke Now Luke, I believe you may have muted yourself.
• 3:58
  What a great start. It's the podcast that we write
• 4:00
  in I. Feel like that was that's our
• 4:02
  first muting incident. I'm like however many episodes
• 4:06
  without a a mute. What is this now?
• 4:09
  7th. 8th. How many books have we read?
• 4:11
  This is. The 7th, I think I'm a bloody
• 4:14
  professional, aren't I? I'm good though.
• 4:15
  But yeah, hello. Hello, I've got to take you guys
• 4:18
  to Virgin soon. We've done so much BBC now.
• 4:20
  Although I think we're doing one next as well, aren't we?
• 4:22
  Oh well, never mind the BBC. And Virgin today.
• 4:27
  We are here to talk about Fear Itself by Nick Wallace, which is
• 4:32
  one of the last good books that BBC books ever brought out.
• 4:36
  That I'm joking, but it is bizarrely a past Doctor
• 4:39
  adventure set during the 8th Doctor adventures in the style
• 4:44
  of a new adventure. So it's sort of covering all the
• 4:47
  bases. But before we even get there,
• 4:50
  before we talk about that, Luke has fought up our brainstorm
• 4:56
  question for this episode. What have you got for us?
• 4:59
  I. Did I've been I've been missing
• 5:02
  these books this week, I guess, because straight after we read
• 5:04
  that, well, I read that I read a different one and I was like,
• 5:08
  well, what would be the 74th 8th Doctor adventure?
• 5:12
  What would you like to see see it be?
• 5:14
  And I had my thought was the most boring, easy answer there
• 5:19
  is. And I'm like, I never got to see
• 5:21
  fits against the Daleks or the Cyberman.
• 5:26
  Hell, Ice Warriors, something I would like to see a book with.
• 5:30
  It's just to go up against like one of the big beds with the
• 5:33
  Doctor and stuff. I thought that I thought that
• 5:36
  that would be pretty, pretty cool.
• 5:38
  Hey, what about you then, Andrew?
• 5:41
  So I think this is difficult because I I know that Luke
• 5:44
  hasn't read the Gallivray Chronicles.
• 5:46
  No, it's. All right, I'm for.
• 5:47
  Dropping spoilery stuff, yeah, but the The Gallivray Chronicles
• 5:52
  kind of like nicely draws a line under a lot of the long running
• 5:57
  story arcs and characters. So I kind of feel like if you're
• 6:01
  the book coming after that, you kind of need to go in a new
• 6:05
  direction. So I think something more like
• 6:09
  Blood of the Daleks on Big Finish, you know, kind of a new
• 6:14
  beginning, a new companion. You know, we can now have like
• 6:20
  Time Lordy stuff coming back in the edges of the story.
• 6:24
  I wouldn't want things to kind of pick up directly after the
• 6:26
  Gallifrey Chronicles and kind of see, you know, how it wraps up
• 6:30
  that Gallifrey storyline. I think it very deliberately
• 6:32
  doesn't show that in the Gallifrey Chronicles and kind of
• 6:34
  leaves it up to your imagination.
• 6:36
  So I think the next one I'd want like a big time gap, new
• 6:40
  companion, new start for the for the 8th Doctor.
• 6:42
  But then maybe he starts like revisiting old friends as he
• 6:45
  goes through his adventures. Was your your new line of 8th
• 6:51
  Doctor books? Would they have a lot of
• 6:54
  continuity in them? Now you know we're doing that
• 6:56
  again. I I think yes, but only to the
• 7:02
  other read the Doctor books. I think, you know, they should
• 7:04
  be their own thing. I think it'd be nice to kind of,
• 7:07
  yeah, revisit some of the themes and characters from those.
• 7:10
  But it kind of like the new New Adventures did, even when they
• 7:13
  continued without the Doctor, it was like their own universe.
• 7:16
  So I think that's what I would like.
• 7:19
  And I was actually thinking, there's a character, the
• 7:23
  character from Timeless, the little girl who Angie.
• 7:28
  Chloe. Chloe, I can't, I can't quite
• 7:30
  remember what happens to her storyline, but I thought, you
• 7:32
  know, that might be an interesting angle to kind of
• 7:35
  reintroduce that character. What's happening with with her
• 7:38
  when she's a bit more grown up. I.
• 7:41
  Think Angie and she and she adopts her I think at the end of
• 7:44
  Timeless and then and then she gets her mention in the
• 7:47
  Gallifrey Chronicles as well. Yeah, I could.
• 7:49
  I remember that she adopted her. I couldn't remember if they did
• 7:52
  something else with her in the Garde Break Chronicles.
• 7:53
  But it's a kind of, I think that's one of those interesting
• 7:56
  like hanging threads. And you'd kind of have the what
• 7:59
  happened with Miranda sort of hanging over the Doctor as well.
• 8:02
  So maybe kind of having a younger character in it would
• 8:07
  would be an interesting thing to explore.
• 8:09
  Well, what about you though, Lou?
• 8:10
  What would be your sort of, I think you said what your story
• 8:13
  would be, but what would your sort of post the 8th Doctor
• 8:16
  adventures, 8th Doctor Adventures be like?
• 8:20
  See, I was thinking short term because I was like this 74.
• 8:24
  You know, you know we will always take these things to an
• 8:26
  extreme when you. Bring them up here.
• 8:29
  Of course we can extreme it up for 73.
• 8:32
  So yeah. So after Ground three
• 8:34
  Chronicles, I'd I'd have, yeah. I'd like to see Fitzu get battle
• 8:38
  one of the traditional monsters and then for the 75 he's got to
• 8:43
  go. I love Fitz, but he's been
• 8:45
  around for ages. Oh, you You really haven't read
• 8:48
  the Gallifrey Protocols, have you?
• 8:52
  I got I got 3A soccer adventures left everyone.
• 8:55
  And is it because you don't want Fitz to go?
• 8:57
  Is that why I don't want? I don't want the series to end
• 9:00
  really. And if I don't finish those
• 9:01
  three books, then it used to be five.
• 9:03
  I have the last five, but I've I've read tomorrow Windows and
• 9:09
  the Martin Day one, which is a sleeper reason.
• 9:11
  So I've got three left and a short story in the in the this
• 9:19
  target storybook. I my idea is I always feel like
• 9:25
  the Age Doctor adventures were at their best when they did
• 9:28
  standalones rather than when they did arcs.
• 9:31
  And I did really like the arcs, but I sometimes felt they were a
• 9:35
  bit too. Their ambition outweighed the
• 9:38
  execution sometimes. So I'd I would want a series of
• 9:42
  stand alone stories. And if you will forgive me, I've
• 9:45
  got an idea in the back of my head for a story that I've been
• 9:48
  trying to. I've been, you know, wanting to
• 9:51
  get down on paper for ages. But here's just the start of the
• 9:54
  story. OK, so Doctor and new companion,
• 9:57
  because because of reasons in the Gallifrey Chronicles I won't
• 10:01
  tell Luke about the Doctor and the new companion are on a
• 10:04
  planet and there's a horrible disaster and, and they've got to
• 10:07
  get everyone off the planet in a hurry, right?
• 10:11
  So, and there's no, they're, they're literally, they're not
• 10:14
  space worthy. And so he's like quick, everyone
• 10:17
  into the TARDIS and he ushers them all in.
• 10:20
  But this whole colony of people, I don't know, two 2000 people
• 10:25
  all in, there's a big TARDIS, whatever.
• 10:27
  And then, you know, the companion's in terrible peril.
• 10:31
  I don't know, the planet's starting to be destroyed, the
• 10:33
  Doctor runs over to her, and the TARDIS vanishes without him,
• 10:36
  with these 2000 people inside. But then the TARDIS re
• 10:40
  materialises 5 minutes later. The Doctor dashes in and alas,
• 10:45
  it is about 50 generations later for the people inside, and they
• 10:50
  have built an entire civilization inside the TARDIS
• 10:55
  and effectively have claimed it as the place where they exist
• 11:00
  now. And the dilemma of the story is,
• 11:02
  well, how the fuck do we get them out of there?
• 11:05
  What do we do? And who, you know, technically
• 11:08
  they've been in there longer than the Doctor.
• 11:10
  Now, who does the TARDIS actually belong to?
• 11:13
  That's just, that's your start. Pretend that's like chapter one,
• 11:15
  you know? See, just like oops, I opened
• 11:17
  the door and the vortex. Yeah, like Enemy of the World,
• 11:23
  50,000 people accidentally fell out.
• 11:26
  Flying 2000 people flying out, all like little salamanders.
• 11:29
  And so, you know, like a big concept like that.
• 11:31
  So lots of adventures with sort of nice big ideas like that and
• 11:35
  just shying away from arcs just for a little bit.
• 11:38
  But I suppose that's the new series of ventures really, isn't
• 11:40
  it? Hi Ho Well, look, talking of
• 11:51
  books with big ideas, Fear Itself by Nick Wallace.
• 11:58
  I believe it's the only book he's ever written, certainly the
• 12:02
  only Doctor Who book he's ever written.
• 12:04
  The only Doctor Who book one. At least, Yeah, I'm going to
• 12:06
  throw it out to both of you for your sort of initial overall
• 12:10
  thoughts. And then somehow we are going to
• 12:13
  try and unpick this extremely complicated plot if we can.
• 12:18
  So let's go across to Luke 1st. And what do you think of this,
• 12:22
  Luke? This is this.
• 12:25
  I guess this goes down for itself as one of the few Doctor
• 12:28
  Who books I've read thrice, so this is my third time reading
• 12:32
  it. So I read it when it came out,
• 12:34
  really enjoyed it and then disappointed that the range was
• 12:38
  ending and so Mr. Nick Wallace couldn't write a second one.
• 12:42
  And then like I sold all my books because I moved into a new
• 12:47
  place by now wife and all that kind of stuff.
• 12:50
  But I I picked it back up and it was some of the first books I
• 12:53
  bought when I started getting them, collecting them again.
• 12:57
  And then I read it again and I loved it.
• 13:01
  And I've had the same experience this time.
• 13:03
  And I've had, there's some things that I remember this,
• 13:07
  this book's a little like Web of Fear to me in that every time I
• 13:12
  watch the Web of Fear, I forget it's the soldier with the
• 13:15
  moustache that's the traitor that's working with the great
• 13:17
  intelligence. Every time.
• 13:19
  If I'm not watching it, like now, I can tell you guys, it's
• 13:22
  the dude with the moustache. Are you serious looking at him?
• 13:24
  It's him. Get him.
• 13:26
  But if I'm watching it, I've no idea.
• 13:29
  So I knew the professional stuff that when it came to Angie and
• 13:35
  what the actual far side station problem was, I was like.
• 13:40
  I mean, there's so many red herrings.
• 13:42
  I was messaging you whilst I was reading this guy.
• 13:44
  Oh, so is this what's going on? And Andrew comes back with,
• 13:47
  well, that's one of the ideas he suggested is going on.
• 13:50
  There's so many red herrings and so many twists.
• 13:51
  I'd forgotten off of them and I've read this three or four
• 13:54
  times. Yeah, it's, it's crazy.
• 13:58
  There's red herrings, but those red herrings like if you think
• 14:02
  of it like the singularity bomb, it might not be what the cause
• 14:05
  of of everything is, but it plays a factor in the story as
• 14:10
  well. So if that hadn't have gone off
• 14:12
  to create this bubble, well, it wouldn't have been taken four
• 14:16
  years. Things would would have been
• 14:18
  very differently. So it's very different.
• 14:20
  So all of the things had to kind of be.
• 14:22
  There's a lot of moving plates with Mr. Nicholas in this one,
• 14:25
  but. Very precisely plotted.
• 14:28
  Oh, my God. This could be Steven Moffett.
• 14:30
  Ryan, this, you know, it's so precisely plotted.
• 14:33
  Well, Andrew, what did you think?
• 14:35
  Yeah, it's, it's, it's brilliant, this book.
• 14:38
  It's it's one of the best Doctor Who books, I think.
• 14:42
  Wow, that is a bold claim. Yeah, and I think in some ways
• 14:47
  it doesn't. It feels too good to be a
• 14:49
  doctor. Who?
• 14:51
  But that's what I thought. Why is he wasting all of these
• 14:56
  great ideas on a shitty Doctor Who books?
• 14:58
  I mean, I, I love, I love Doctor Who books, but this is a
• 15:02
  complex, intelligent sci-fi novel.
• 15:07
  And yeah, it's, you can't, you don't often get a book of this
• 15:11
  complexity in Doctor Who One. Yeah.
• 15:13
  One thing I did want to say was if you're listening to this
• 15:17
  podcast, you haven't read Fear Itself and you think you're
• 15:20
  going to read Fear Itself, stop listening to the podcast.
• 15:23
  I thought that as well, yeah. Yeah, it's you.
• 15:27
  There's so many twists and turns in this book and it's it's one
• 15:31
  of those ones it's really good to to come to completely cold.
• 15:35
  I knew hardly anything about this book.
• 15:38
  And I think because it came out at the end of the line, there
• 15:40
  wasn't really that much buzz about it when it came out.
• 15:43
  I think it got good review, but it's not like those kind of
• 15:47
  virgin novels that or the kind of mid BBC ones that like really
• 15:51
  garnered a huge reputation and topped the polls and stuff like
• 15:55
  that. So I think, you know, I knew
• 15:58
  this one was well regarded, but I didn't think it was going to
• 16:00
  be this kind of, yeah, as as great as it is.
• 16:05
  I don't think there's another past Doctor adventure as
• 16:09
  sophisticated as this as a science fiction novel.
• 16:13
  I think it's better than about 98% of the 8th Doctor range.
• 16:18
  And there's a couple of new adventures which I would
• 16:21
  probably put on par with this and sort of similar themes like
• 16:24
  Lucifer Rising and things like that.
• 16:26
  You know, big science fiction novels, ambitious, carving out a
• 16:31
  big corner of the Galaxy. This leans into New Adventures
• 16:36
  continuity, doesn't it? Yes, I think so.
• 16:40
  I think. I think it uses especially for
• 16:42
  some of the Martian stuff or Mars itself.
• 16:45
  I think it uses some of the continuity.
• 16:47
  What's that God injuring? It's, it's, yeah.
• 16:50
  And there's bits of that sort of post Dalek War, Dalek Invasion
• 16:53
  of Earth stuff that the New Adventures played around with as
• 16:56
  well. Which effectively sort of powers
• 16:58
  this whole book, doesn't it? It's it's post a huge war that
• 17:03
  humanity wasn't prepared for and as a result they're sort of
• 17:08
  licking their wounds and paranoid and extremely sort of
• 17:12
  xenophobic. And that's the reason why lots
• 17:18
  of very dodgy things are occurring on Far Side stationed.
• 17:24
  It's the Dalek invasion of Earth, isn't it?
• 17:26
  Yeah. Oh, was it the Dalek Invasion?
• 17:28
  Oh, why wasn't it I I OK, I didn't, I didn't pick that up.
• 17:32
  Yes, I think this is meant to be like 1520 years after the Dalek
• 17:35
  invasion of Earth. Did they mention the Daleks?
• 17:37
  I didn't think they were. Allowed to do that, they never
• 17:39
  mentioned the Daleks, but there's kind of little hints
• 17:42
  and. There's a there's a robomin in
• 17:44
  my but mind control. They don't say Robomin, but
• 17:46
  yeah. Yeah, and Daultinium, I noticed
• 17:49
  that. Daultinium.
• 17:51
  Yeah, It's where they're talking about like cranial implants
• 17:55
  being banned. It's because of the robo man.
• 17:59
  I mean, this is a a very serious book.
• 18:01
  Like, I didn't think there was a lot of laughs in it.
• 18:03
  There's not much there. You're right, it is very
• 18:08
  serious. Well, mostly I laughed sort of
• 18:10
  during the Fitz scenes, Fitz and his mate and all those sort of
• 18:14
  scenes and the, and the romance scenes between Caroline Arquette
• 18:18
  and Robertson and all of that that was going on in in one of
• 18:22
  the time periods. But effectively, OK, here's how
• 18:25
  we'll break it down. Effectively, there's three time
• 18:27
  periods in this book, isn't there?
• 18:29
  There's four years ago, which is just after Angie has been
• 18:35
  attacked in a cafe on Mars and the Doctor and Fitz are heading
• 18:42
  to Far Side Station because the person that attacked her had
• 18:46
  recently been there. So they're trying to trace his
• 18:48
  steps and figure out what on earth made this man go
• 18:51
  completely psychotic. So they end up on Far Side
• 18:54
  Station and a huge investigation goes down there.
• 18:57
  So that's one time period. Then the second time period is
• 19:02
  Angie's, which is the four years that happened after Far Side
• 19:08
  Station plummets down into Jupiter's atmosphere.
• 19:11
  And we follow Angie's story, having lost the Doctor and Fitz
• 19:14
  there and her building a life. And then the third time period
• 19:20
  that we did say it was complex is four years later or now, as
• 19:24
  the book says, as it goes there. And that is the station which
• 19:29
  has tumbled into the atmosphere, fallen to wreck and ruin.
• 19:33
  The survivors have built sort of makeshift shelter there and are
• 19:37
  living on the edge of extreme anxiety, under attack by aliens
• 19:43
  by all accounts, and Angie and a mysterious fellow called The
• 19:49
  Professional. I have dived from a spaceship
• 19:53
  into the atmosphere of Jupiter to for purposes unknown, but
• 19:57
  they're heading into the damaged Far side station for reasons
• 20:02
  unknown. Is that right?
• 20:03
  Did I get all that right there? Yes, absolutely.
• 20:06
  And that's. Just where it starts.
• 20:08
  Yeah. Jesus Christ, that's like
• 20:11
  chapter three or something. Well, I'll tell you what we'll
• 20:14
  do then, right? We'll take, we'll take a time
• 20:16
  period each and lead a conversation.
• 20:19
  So Andrew, what would you like to take?
• 20:24
  Oh, what would I like to take? I think I'd like to take the
• 20:29
  what would I like to take? The sort of the the latest
• 20:31
  spirit, the the present. So you're now in the
• 20:34
  professional, Luke. What do you want to take?
• 20:36
  Because we should take it in order, really.
• 20:39
  Well, I could take the easy route and be like Angie's live
• 20:42
  and I'm over in 2 minutes, but because that's the shortest part
• 20:45
  of the whole level, I'll take the pass.
• 20:47
  You'll take the pass, so I'll do Angie.
• 20:48
  So we're starting with you then, Luke four years ago.
• 20:53
  All right, so four years ago, as you said, there's an event where
• 20:59
  Angie gets it just beat up and a whole bunch of people do.
• 21:03
  So the Doctor and Fitz, it sounds easy.
• 21:06
  They just go to fascination. It's not they don't like aliens
• 21:10
  or alien infiltrators. It's very paranoid kind of
• 21:14
  thing. You get like this just this vibe
• 21:18
  of I mean, Fitz describes it in a way he'll he'll understand,
• 21:23
  which is Reds under the bed, you know, that kind of 50s McCarthy
• 21:26
  McCarthyism and shit like that. But for me reading this, this is
• 21:30
  like a 2000 and four 2005 novel and it's like a post 911 thing
• 21:36
  isn't it's like we're Western countries are all kind of afraid
• 21:41
  of Muslims and you know, all this kind of stuff.
• 21:46
  So there's all this kind of paranoia and profiling and all
• 21:50
  this kind of stuff going on. So it's not a matter of just the
• 21:54
  Doctors zipping over there in the TARDIS.
• 21:56
  He's he's new to being the Doctor because this is this is
• 22:01
  set just After Earth World and he doesn't have all this
• 22:05
  experience of going here, there and everywhere and saving the
• 22:10
  day as he normally does or having control of the Tartar.
• 22:12
  So he goes with Fitz, the far side station and this this fun
• 22:19
  moments. But for me, there's this very
• 22:22
  growing, creeping kind of dread of, especially if you've read it
• 22:26
  before, of knowing that this whole portion of this this this
• 22:31
  book in the past will lead with the doctor strapped down to a
• 22:35
  Gurney and then forced to do some horrible things.
• 22:38
  So reading that and the anticipation of it is just
• 22:43
  that's some of the hardest parts of book to read because what the
• 22:47
  8th doctor, I don't want all that.
• 22:49
  You just know what's going to happen.
• 22:50
  So but then you've also got people that fits interacts with,
• 22:57
  like Robertson and Arquette, Carolina Arquette, who are who
• 23:02
  eventually get together because Fitz hooks them up.
• 23:06
  You've got all sorts of other characters.
• 23:07
  You've got one of the McRae brothers, I can't remember which
• 23:11
  one. I think it was his name was
• 23:12
  Jason, who used to be one of these ex military guys who just
• 23:17
  writes like poetry and stuff. Like now he's like a Flowers of
• 23:19
  Algernon kind of guy sort of if that make if that makes sense.
• 23:23
  And it's oh, by the way, the doctor in this book decides to
• 23:29
  solve his problems, I guess the same way most people in 2024 do
• 23:35
  pay ChatGPT solve solve all my problems for me.
• 23:41
  So he sets up this awesome like AI or doc man that that whole or
• 23:47
  doc seems even our doc a a you doc.
• 23:50
  It seems even cooler now in 2024, that whole idea because of
• 23:54
  everything that's come to pass. So.
• 23:56
  Although don't you love, don't you love that?
• 23:59
  Valletti says to him. The second that ODOC was
• 24:02
  released, it tripped the security system and we were
• 24:05
  watching you from that point on. So now the second he sets it
• 24:08
  loose, he thinks he's running rings around over there already
• 24:11
  watching him. And, and then it's just him
• 24:16
  trying to figure out him and Fitz trying to figure out what's
• 24:19
  going on. The Doctor does it with ODOC and
• 24:22
  doing some like sciency things. Fitz does it by well, I'm just
• 24:26
  going to go talk to all the blue collar workers and things like
• 24:29
  that, which is awesome because it doesn't make fits look like
• 24:33
  to be this big doofus. He's obviously not as smart as
• 24:37
  the Doctor and he's not written that way.
• 24:40
  He's. Stupid, yeah.
• 24:42
  He's like, if the 8th Doctor can't quite get someone's
• 24:48
  emotions or, or the vibe they they're putting in because he's
• 24:51
  a bit of an alien, that's, that's fits, that's where he
• 24:54
  steps in. That's where he's got it.
• 24:56
  So they they thinking it might be a singularity bomb.
• 24:59
  They're thinking it might be something soldiers.
• 25:01
  They think it might be a handful of different things.
• 25:05
  And they were all kind of related to what happens
• 25:09
  eventually, but but also red herrings that are supposed to
• 25:12
  kind of make you think we're going this way, but we're going
• 25:15
  this way. The trouble is, is I'll take
• 25:17
  everything very literally. So when he says to me, oh, yeah,
• 25:20
  it's this, I'll go, oh, OK, right.
• 25:21
  Yeah, no, no, no, it's this. Oh, OK, right.
• 25:25
  Yeah. And every single time I'm just
• 25:26
  believing him. And you're right.
• 25:27
  It all, sort of all of it comes together in the end.
• 25:30
  Every single idea that he's dropped.
• 25:33
  Yeah. So all right, so it doesn't end
• 25:37
  up being the singularity bomb that caused all the problems,
• 25:39
  but it's part of what's happened to Far Side Station because Fitz
• 25:45
  and certain other people, the Letty and others will be get
• 25:48
  like just trapped in a in this like time bubble for like four
• 25:52
  years or a stasis fluid or something like that.
• 25:55
  It's it's crazy. I think I've just scratched the
• 25:58
  surface of all of some of the things in the the kind of fence
• 26:01
  that happened. It's.
• 26:02
  Just wrap some of those things you just said then, Andrew,
• 26:06
  because there's a lot of characters on Far Side Station
• 26:10
  when it's at it's high. So what?
• 26:13
  And I think a lot of the character work in this book is
• 26:16
  exceptional. So what was your favorite in
• 26:19
  this section? I think probably the Letty the
• 26:25
  the captain who is this? So she's the captain of the of
• 26:32
  the space station. She's a very confident, assured,
• 26:35
  capable character and she is hot for the doctor.
• 26:41
  So there's this kind of really interesting interplay between
• 26:46
  the two characters. This this sort of power game
• 26:48
  that's going on between them where they both respect each
• 26:51
  other, don't necessarily trust each other.
• 26:54
  And it's all very sexy. It's very, it's very 8th Doctor
• 26:57
  It's. Very.
• 26:58
  Did you think about that pit where they were playing violins
• 27:01
  together and it was the equivalent of the pair of them
• 27:03
  fucking? It's getting more violent as
• 27:05
  they're playing the violins. And then he just drops the cord
• 27:08
  and he goes challenge accepted. At the end of the I was like, Oh
• 27:11
  my God, man, I was so hot I had to go and have a whack.
• 27:14
  No, I didn't. I didn't.
• 27:15
  I didn't. Well, it's it's great.
• 27:17
  It's a great relationship. It's a good dynamic, isn't it?
• 27:20
  Yeah. Joe, we both took photos of page
• 27:23
  150 and posted it into the group chat going like holy shit, this
• 27:27
  page. So good.
• 27:28
  Well, it's really hard to write music.
• 27:30
  And yet that scene, it just felt like it was.
• 27:32
  I could see it playing out, you know, with Paul McGann going
• 27:35
  crazy on the fiddle. Yeah.
• 27:38
  And I think, like you said, the character work is really good.
• 27:41
  And I think at the start we said, oh, this is a great
• 27:44
  science fiction novel, but it's got all the parts that it needs
• 27:46
  because it's got great science fiction themes.
• 27:49
  It's got great characters, but it's also got great themes that
• 27:55
  aren't necessarily science fiction themes about, you know,
• 27:58
  people and characters and the relationships between them.
• 28:01
  So yeah, it's just a very. Accomplished novel.
• 28:06
  It's gotta be about people, right?
• 28:07
  Like, take something like the taking of Planet 5, which was
• 28:11
  way back in the 8th Doctor Red, which is full of huge science
• 28:14
  fiction ideas. I ain't give a shit about any of
• 28:16
  it because I don't care about any of the people in it.
• 28:18
  I mean, none of them. That didn't bother the
• 28:20
  characterized half of them. Whereas he just all felt like
• 28:22
  fully rounded people going through emotions that I could
• 28:26
  understand if I was in that situation.
• 28:28
  You've got someone like Robertson who's just sort of
• 28:31
  technical grunt, isn't he? You know, absolutely in love,
• 28:36
  absolutely bewitched by this woman, Caroline Arquette, who's
• 28:41
  relaxed on the dance floor, you know, and he's watching every
• 28:43
  little detail of what she does. And actually, that relationship
• 28:47
  is so vital because it's there in both four years previously
• 28:52
  and now. And you, you see the difference
• 28:56
  of four years of hardship on that station because in the four
• 28:59
  years previously, they're sexy and in love and relax with each
• 29:03
  other. There's very complex things
• 29:06
  happening four years in the future where she's lived on the
• 29:10
  edge. You know, she's been anxious for
• 29:13
  the last four years and she's just ready to snap at anything.
• 29:16
  And their relationship just goes over a precipice at one point
• 29:19
  and they they split up where she basically pushes him away and
• 29:24
  betrays him to the professional that's there and then leads to
• 29:28
  some very touching scenes at the end when they reconcile.
• 29:31
  So all of that stuff, I think it's vital in in a book with
• 29:33
  big, big ideas like this, the emotions are important.
• 29:39
  Agreed. You've also got the the the fits
• 29:44
  as well. Like thinking like, all right,
• 29:46
  it's kind of crazy that we've travelled all this way to
• 29:48
  Farside Station, like then then there's a fire or something like
• 29:52
  that. And the Doctor just improvises
• 29:54
  like instantly, just like I've got this goes and fits is
• 29:58
  freaking out. Did you know you could do that?
• 30:00
  Did you know like what you were doing?
• 30:02
  Do you know who you are? We've got to have a chat.
• 30:04
  He keeps saying that throughout the book.
• 30:06
  We've, we've got to have a chat, you and I well.
• 30:08
  Who was it? Who was it that said in the chat
• 30:10
  about the the motive for writing this book was because fits of
• 30:16
  the Doctor never had the fucking conversation after the Earth arc
• 30:20
  about his memories? Was it you Andrew?
• 30:24
  I think someone someone. Yeah, I, I think, I think
• 30:27
  that's, that's the case because then it's addressed a little, a
• 30:32
  little bit in Earth world, but then there's sort of bits also
• 30:37
  gets a dose of amnesia in, in Earth world and then they don't
• 30:43
  really come back to it until maybe half life like the the
• 30:47
  very last few books of the series.
• 30:49
  And even then it just, they don't really sit down and talk
• 30:54
  about it. And this book gives the reason
• 30:58
  for that, and it gives a rationale to why the 8th Doctor
• 31:01
  doesn't want to delve into that past history with fits in a
• 31:05
  really kind of compelling way that feels authentic and and
• 31:11
  real. Throughout the book, isn't it,
• 31:13
  Fitz is is thinking to himself like he looks like the Doctor.
• 31:16
  He sounds like the Doctor, but there's a hardness to him that I
• 31:19
  don't recognise before. If he hasn't got those memories,
• 31:24
  is he the same person that I normally trust my life with?
• 31:27
  So he's asking all those questions.
• 31:28
  At the time I kept thinking why is no one asking these
• 31:32
  questions? Those are the questions you're
• 31:33
  asking as a reader. And those are it's also really
• 31:36
  good drama. It's like, why did the book
• 31:38
  series not want to do this? Like, it's great to see the
• 31:41
  characters interacting in this way and all the stuff that that
• 31:44
  sets stirs up because, you know, Fitz knows the Doctor.
• 31:48
  The Doctor doesn't know Fitz. There's this massive tension
• 31:53
  there, like Fitz can unlock a huge part of his life, but they
• 31:57
  never do. So yeah, it's.
• 32:01
  That's the one way of doing this though, isn't it?
• 32:03
  Of being able to slot in a book is to go.
• 32:05
  Where's a good position where I can actually do something useful
• 32:09
  for this range? And it, it works much better as
• 32:13
  a past Doctor book than it would if it was just one of a
• 32:16
  sequence, because the whole novel is kind of predicated on
• 32:19
  it being a past Doctor adventure.
• 32:21
  That's where the mystery comes from.
• 32:22
  Because we know that Angie R Angie did not spend 4 years
• 32:29
  having a completely different life, having a different
• 32:31
  husband, living out this completely different life, and
• 32:34
  then just go back into the TARDIS.
• 32:35
  That didn't happen. She spent all that time
• 32:38
  processing the death of Dave. So we know that this is an
• 32:42
  impossibility. So that's where the kind of
• 32:43
  central mystery of of the story comes from.
• 32:47
  And whilst whilst we're watching that life play out, we're like,
• 32:50
  well how is this possible? Yeah.
• 32:52
  And that the genre that it kind of makes me think of the most
• 32:55
  is, is is mystery fiction. It's it's like a kind of classic
• 32:59
  Agatha Christie and that you've got this central mystery of how
• 33:03
  is this possible? And then, as you're saying,
• 33:05
  there's so many red herrings. There's so many theories that it
• 33:09
  posits and it could be any of them to solve this solution.
• 33:13
  Like there's the whole thing about this sort of virtual
• 33:17
  reality that the soldiers enter into.
• 33:19
  So it seems that's just one example of one of the things
• 33:22
  that seems really plausible because you kind of think, OK,
• 33:25
  so is this Angie that we're seeing four years later actually
• 33:28
  in a simulation? Is this is she going to wake up?
• 33:31
  And this has all been a kind of dreamscape thing where she's
• 33:34
  that they're putting her into a scenario to find out how she
• 33:37
  reacts. Is it the time distortion thing
• 33:40
  from this singularity bomb? Is it?
• 33:45
  Yeah. What it actually turns out to
• 33:47
  be. They even say don't know with
• 33:49
  with the the training for the military.
• 33:51
  One of the things they're doing there is putting memories in
• 33:55
  people's heads so they are better soldiers.
• 33:58
  I'm ready for the next war. Basically training up soldiers
• 34:00
  in in virtual reality like you said.
• 34:03
  So is is everything Angie's experiencing, is that someone
• 34:06
  else's memories? And like, like the best mystery
• 34:10
  fiction, you, you can't guess how it's going to end up like.
• 34:15
  And it's still satisfying. It's like we've got all these
• 34:21
  distractions and all these multiple different ways that it
• 34:24
  could have turned out. It could have been all the
• 34:26
  killer, could have been anyone, but actually it's this person
• 34:29
  and it all locks together and makes sense and all of those.
• 34:33
  It's on the fucking cover, the killers on the I'm like, what
• 34:38
  the hell is that whilst I'm reading this book?
• 34:40
  And then at the end I went, oh, right, yeah, OK.
• 34:44
  And it's not a Slovene. What's great as well, you know,
• 34:47
  is that Nick Wallace and Lance Parkin were talking because he
• 34:52
  acknowledges that in the in the back of the book and says thank
• 34:55
  you for letting me proofread the Gallifrey Chronicles because he
• 34:59
  says at the end of this book, Angie would marry again.
• 35:02
  And we meet that character in the Gallifrey Chronicles, but
• 35:06
  also in the Gallifrey Chronicles, he put in a
• 35:08
  reference to fear itself because somebody the Doctor fits goes to
• 35:12
  the Doctor. We were going to have a talk
• 35:14
  about this, do you remember? And we never did.
• 35:17
  And I'm like, yes, this is the sort of talking Awful should
• 35:20
  have been doing at the fucking time because, you know, it's a
• 35:24
  bit late, but hey, it works. Sorry, Luke.
• 35:28
  Back to four years previously. Right, I've got this little
• 35:32
  night like I think the doctor's trying to figure out fits and
• 35:36
  see if they're still friends as well.
• 35:38
  But one of the things that I really loved is early on where
• 35:40
  they've got a right, they've both got a right accountancy
• 35:42
  statements. So the doctor writes his perfect
• 35:46
  great grammar, absolutely nothing wrong with it.
• 35:49
  And then when he does does fits his report, he decides to put
• 35:52
  spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in it because
• 35:55
  it just. Felt right.
• 35:57
  And I was just like, that's, that's perfect.
• 35:59
  That's that's absolutely, that's absolutely true.
• 36:03
  But Andrew's coming up with ideas I hadn't even thought of
• 36:08
  like with with Angie as as as well.
• 36:11
  Like was she in the simulation and stuff?
• 36:14
  I always thought was just was going all right, are you going
• 36:17
  to do that that Voyager thing? Because this is awesome.
• 36:20
  That's what I thought as well. The reset button you mean?
• 36:23
  Yeah, yeah, like, I know it has to do that somehow, but all
• 36:28
  right, it's all in the, I guess X the execution.
• 36:30
  But the fact that it all ends up like it all happened.
• 36:33
  Michael still married Angie Kapoor and now married for three
• 36:37
  years. These Robertson and Caroline
• 36:42
  were who had to spend 4 horrible years on the thing.
• 36:47
  So everything's in this book still happens.
• 36:49
  It's just, it's just a matter of whether people remember it or
• 36:51
  not. It's just not happening quite in
• 36:54
  the way they think it is while they're going through it.
• 36:58
  Yeah, odd why we're going through it.
• 37:00
  It's not happening quite and the way we think it's happening
• 37:02
  either. No and.
• 37:06
  Devious bastard, that Nick Wallace, isn't he?
• 37:10
  How'd he, how'd he do it? He's got like a board behind him
• 37:15
  with little things that yeah, it's, it's it's complicated
• 37:19
  stuff. So all, all of all of this stuff
• 37:21
  is told intermixed with Angie's relationship with Michael and
• 37:26
  then the future stuff. So it's always like, all right,
• 37:31
  you know, the doctor, are we are we going there yet?
• 37:34
  Go on. All right, so we caught it.
• 37:37
  We will find out late in the book that there are a couple of
• 37:41
  hints that did see them there in the future sections that yeah,
• 37:46
  the doctor is this professional. He's the he's, he's one of those
• 37:50
  army guys that you see a lot of in the past sections of the
• 37:53
  book. And you get to see the doctor go
• 37:55
  into those simulations and they show them like simulations
• 37:59
  aren't going to, aren't going to cut it against the unknown.
• 38:02
  It's not going to, it's not going to work.
• 38:03
  Let me show you. And he just brings his insane
• 38:08
  improv improvisational skills into that VR machine.
• 38:13
  It just destroys them. It's crazy and.
• 38:18
  Did you get, I think you did, I think you mentioned it in the
• 38:22
  chat, a Battlestar Galactica vibe, you know, the new.
• 38:26
  Yeah. Just just from those scenes, I
• 38:27
  could just see very sexy young actors playing those, those
• 38:32
  roles, you know, all in tank tops, a bit sweated up,
• 38:35
  absolutely gorgeous. And you know that sort of edgy
• 38:39
  handheld camera work as it's all been filmed.
• 38:42
  Yeah, just sort of dark, serious, clever sci-fi as well.
• 38:47
  Yeah, and then you've got all right, so there's two
• 38:51
  characters. They they probably get the least
• 38:53
  amount of exploration in the past, probably because they're
• 38:58
  just like they're they're kind of villains.
• 39:00
  So, you know, it's fine. There's Sarah Macabe and Terence
• 39:04
  Macabe. They're the two people who are
• 39:08
  doing all this mind stuff and they're using a piece of
• 39:12
  Jupiter's, something in Jupiter's atmosphere called and
• 39:15
  they call it nightmare to inject it into the soldiers bodies just
• 39:20
  to make sure that the simulation's more real to them.
• 39:25
  Well, it makes them afraid, doesn't it?
• 39:27
  Yeah, and it's also something that keeps these soldiers sort
• 39:31
  of compliant I think as well, because in the future the Doctor
• 39:35
  will need it and he's thing to keep suppressing stuff.
• 39:39
  So it's then these macabre's are just nasty pieces of work
• 39:44
  because they have no qualms experimenting on people using
• 39:48
  Dalek technology to expand horizons and things like that.
• 39:53
  In fact, it's it's it because far side stations that you know,
• 39:58
  hush hush. So hush hush that if it ever got
• 40:01
  out what they were doing, I think it'd be a lot of like
• 40:04
  death penalty executions. I think like working with that
• 40:06
  kind of tech. It's revealed, isn't it, that
• 40:08
  Sara Mukabe is the reason that the station was moved to
• 40:12
  Jupiter's atmosphere because she knew she needed that thing.
• 40:16
  But also, it's far enough away that they can, and this is the
• 40:19
  big clincher, get all of those aliens.
• 40:23
  And I don't know what you were seeing.
• 40:24
  I saw an ice warrior there, a darling mutant and all sorts.
• 40:28
  And they've got these and they're basically on the verge
• 40:30
  of death, but they're in these vats and they use them in these
• 40:35
  simulations. They sort of use them to to
• 40:37
  stimulate the so they're torturing these creatures in
• 40:40
  order to make super soldiers. It's really disturbing.
• 40:45
  Yeah, it really is this extra level of danger for the Doctor
• 40:48
  because he's trying to kind of conceal the fact that he's an
• 40:51
  alien and he gets wounded quite early in the book and can't see
• 40:56
  a doctor or get any medical treatment because that he
• 40:58
  doesn't want them to find out that he's an alien.
• 41:01
  And then you kind of you get that sense of xenophobia
• 41:04
  throughout the book, and then it kind of crystallises into that
• 41:08
  horrible scene with all the kind of, yeah, aliens and suspension
• 41:13
  being used in these experiments. And that could be the Doctor as
• 41:16
  well. And he's been tortured as well.
• 41:18
  It's like you said before, it's the sort of stuff that Paul
• 41:20
  McGann loves to play, isn't it? Screaming his head off as he's
• 41:23
  been tortured. But what a great way to
• 41:25
  introduce the Doctor and fixing this as well in that shuttle out
• 41:29
  of control in Jupiter's atmosphere with the Doctor being
• 41:32
  harpooned in the side. If I talk about getting your
• 41:35
  attention from the off. Yeah, action-packed beginning.
• 41:40
  It's it's I think because the pilot himself gets is got the
• 41:44
  same affliction on him that we'll find out eventually near
• 41:46
  the end what it is that the people who beat up Angie did.
• 41:50
  And yeah, so this is all just the start.
• 41:55
  This is not the start. This is all just the past, it's
• 41:57
  taking place alongside all the other bits.
• 42:00
  But yeah, how he juggles all the balls is is stellar.
• 42:06
  So this is, this is me. Just like I've read this three
• 42:09
  times and I've just, I've only got one section to talk about
• 42:12
  and I'm like, fuck, I think I need an extra hour.
• 42:17
  There's just so much in here. Great in there, those ways, all
• 42:20
  the little details. I like the bit where they're
• 42:21
  drinking the wine and then they're talking about simulating
• 42:25
  day and night, but needing home comforts as well to really make
• 42:29
  a human being comforted in space.
• 42:32
  And there's just lots of details like that.
• 42:34
  How how the, the, the rankings are set up, you know, the
• 42:38
  different areas of the station. I just feel like I knew that
• 42:42
  place. It felt like a living anything
• 42:44
  working environment. I think it, it feels we talked
• 42:47
  about Battlestar Galactica, Galactica, there's also like
• 42:50
  bits of Star Trek and bits of Alien and that kind of thing.
• 42:54
  But although it, I wouldn't probably like Event Horizon,
• 42:57
  that terrible film, but although it kind of has those influences,
• 43:02
  like it's also very much it's own thing.
• 43:04
  Like like you're saying those things about the world and the,
• 43:07
  the way the station's been created.
• 43:09
  That feels all like it's very Nick Wallace, and he's got a lot
• 43:13
  of interesting new ideas to kind of fuse into this Doctor Who
• 43:18
  mythology, but also kind of carve out his own, his own
• 43:21
  little chunk of time to add into that that post Dalek Invasion
• 43:27
  era. But you feel like you've been
• 43:28
  there. You know, I feel as if I've had
• 43:30
  a couple of days in this, you know, frankly terrifying,
• 43:34
  paranoid version of the future. Yeah, it's probably the most
• 43:37
  sort of immersive book that we've had since his borough, I
• 43:41
  guess in the Scarlet Empress, where, you know, the the the
• 43:45
  city that they visit at the beginning, they're very
• 43:48
  different to this, but it's still that kind of very
• 43:50
  evocative sense that you've been to the place.
• 43:53
  I I was going to say far more simply than that.
• 43:55
  That's all of you are there feeling, you know, you've got
• 43:58
  AVR help me on your head and you're actually there around
• 44:01
  these people and he does a lot, you know, he does a lot with
• 44:03
  smells and and so it's you know, and things that touches and
• 44:07
  things like that. So it really posh into the
• 44:09
  scene. I think that's important to kind
• 44:11
  of make the distinctions between the different time periods as
• 44:14
  well, because the the station of the Doctor of Fitz scenes is the
• 44:19
  kind of lush, beautiful, but clean version of the station.
• 44:25
  It's all running efficiently, but then by Angie's time, it's
• 44:27
  rusty, it's dirty, it's covered in filth.
• 44:31
  People are eking out a living by having to do horrible things.
• 44:36
  So yeah, you're going to get that contrast in the very feel
• 44:39
  of the of the setting. How he paces it as well.
• 44:43
  I think he's masterful. I just can't believe he's a
• 44:45
  first time author because there's a bit where Fitz is down
• 44:49
  in the mess with Carolina, Marquette and Robertson and
• 44:53
  there's a duck. They moved all the tables side.
• 44:54
  They're on the dance for down a great time.
• 44:56
  Everyone's pissed as houses the doctors in the mess quarters
• 45:00
  with the officers and he's awkwardly dancing with Valletti,
• 45:04
  you know, and she's sort of leading him round the room and
• 45:07
  everyone's relaxed. And then boom, the station
• 45:11
  lurches and it's high alert and I you really feel it, don't you?
• 45:15
  Like almost like, Oh my God. And then suddenly everyone's
• 45:18
  like, are we under attack? What's going on?
• 45:20
  Everyone's, you know, panicking really great.
• 45:25
  I think a smart move the book does too is all right.
• 45:29
  So the bubble is in the the middle of the station like we're
• 45:33
  we're all the higher ups and scientists and should the more
• 45:38
  blue collar workers. They're all they're all out in
• 45:43
  in. Yeah.
• 45:44
  So that it's mostly the white collar workers that has the
• 45:47
  survivors on the outer rings. One of the the doctor isn't
• 45:50
  there is with them because he was trying to save someone.
• 45:54
  And it makes the the smart move of only really having Robertson
• 45:59
  and Caroline. I can't be the two that are in
• 46:02
  the four years later, in the four years previously rather
• 46:06
  than have the doctor and like the five or six characters you
• 46:12
  get in the future also being big parts of the past as well.
• 46:16
  It saves it for being muddied up with too many characters because
• 46:19
  this book has a lot of characters to juggle.
• 46:21
  So just keeping those two as the main like kind of emotional
• 46:24
  focal points, like the here's their budding relationship.
• 46:27
  It's all wonderful and happy. And then here four years later
• 46:31
  and they're just like, feels like they've been married for
• 46:35
  like 50 years or something like that by that point, right?
• 46:39
  We've never had nothing but hardships.
• 46:40
  So it was a good move not to overcomplicate things, even
• 46:44
  though he does overcomplicate things.
• 46:46
  Let me skip to the intervening years, then, and prove you
• 46:50
  wrong, Luke, because I think there's a lot to say about those
• 46:54
  middle sections of Angie. Because one, you said, Andrew,
• 46:58
  this was a great mystery book. And so the big mystery that
• 47:01
  Angie's trying to solve, she's getting on with her life.
• 47:03
  She's got a job. She's found a fellow who's cute.
• 47:06
  And you see a cameraman. I can't remember now, but he's
• 47:09
  he's, you know, she's leading a happy life.
• 47:12
  But there's just something in the back of her head that's
• 47:14
  saying she needs to find out what happened to the doctor and
• 47:18
  Fitch. She goes to the funeral of the
• 47:20
  228 that were lost on the station when it fell into the
• 47:23
  atmosphere. And in a wonderful scene I'd
• 47:25
  love to see active, the war widow comes up to her and goes,
• 47:28
  you know, they never told you about the one that was missing
• 47:32
  and all of this. And then she, you know, while
• 47:34
  she's getting on with her work and her marriage and her life
• 47:36
  and all this, she is investigating as she goes along.
• 47:39
  So that's a great mystery that's taken place because the doctrine
• 47:43
  of Fitz on in the four years later scenes.
• 47:46
  So you're like, well, what the hell happened to them?
• 47:49
  Because if that's now, that's where we're leaving this book.
• 47:52
  So where the hell are the doctrine fierce?
• 47:54
  And obviously Andrew's going to deal with that later.
• 47:57
  But at the same time as we skip from one, it's not like four
• 48:02
  page scenes aren't there. They're not very long.
• 48:04
  There's a wonderful bit where it seems like she's on the run from
• 48:09
  somebody and she's she's in a space suit and she's having all
• 48:12
  this cool stuff happening and it turns out she's in the Olympics
• 48:15
  and she's sprinting on. Is it on Mars?
• 48:18
  She's sat on on another planet, literally sprinting through the
• 48:21
  atmosphere, which is great. There's a 1A brilliant scene
• 48:25
  that really exposes the the sort of xenophobia in the future,
• 48:29
  which is takes place at her work where Ice Warriors have a day to
• 48:35
  take over and it's a hostage scenario.
• 48:37
  And they're basically saying we want our planet back.
• 48:40
  You know, you've taken it off us.
• 48:43
  And they're like gunned down in the most horrific way that takes
• 48:47
  place as well. So I think those scenes are
• 48:50
  really useful one in terms of world building.
• 48:52
  And 2:00 just because, and I will say this sort of I'm blue
• 48:57
  in the face even even if nobody ever believes me.
• 48:59
  I think Angie Kapoor is a fantastic character and I think
• 49:04
  half the time she's not characterised as well as she
• 49:08
  could be. People go down the sort of Tegan
• 49:10
  route and just make her a grumpy bitch.
• 49:13
  But when she's written intelligently, I think she's the
• 49:18
  best Doctor Who book companion. And these scenes that just show
• 49:21
  why. And I think the thing about
• 49:24
  setting it at this point in the EDA is so it's just After Earth
• 49:30
  world. So that which was her first kind
• 49:32
  of adventure post joining the Doctor, is she's not really a
• 49:37
  Doctor Who companion at this point.
• 49:38
  She's just somebody who has sort of been abducted from her life
• 49:43
  by the Doctor and Fitz. So when they go missing, she
• 49:48
  cares about them. But she's also, she's only known
• 49:51
  them a couple of weeks. So it's a mystery and she's
• 49:54
  concerned about what happened, but she's got her own life to
• 49:58
  live and the people she's thinking about more are her
• 50:01
  family. And we have that nice scene at
• 50:03
  the beginning where her brother's looking through a
• 50:05
  telescope at Mar at Mars, which kind of, you know, frames that
• 50:10
  the fact that this is early Angie, this is Angie who's just
• 50:13
  fresh from Earth. She's not a super capable Doctor
• 50:17
  Who companion who's been through 50 adventures.
• 50:20
  So it's it's sort of taking a normal person and putting her
• 50:23
  into this extreme situation and being like, deal with it.
• 50:27
  But just being so utterly competent that she manages to,
• 50:31
  even if she's 200 years out of date, she secures a job, she
• 50:35
  bewitches a man you know, and she builds a life for herself.
• 50:39
  Her job did make me look. That was one bit in the book
• 50:41
  that didn't quite ring true. What was she doing again?
• 50:45
  She's like she appears on ATV programme on Mars to be an
• 50:50
  expert in like 20th century finance as how many people are
• 50:55
  watching that show. Like, oh, I'm a regular
• 50:58
  subscriber. Yeah.
• 51:00
  How many, how many TV shows do we have about like the stock
• 51:04
  market in 1800 or if it had been existed then?
• 51:07
  Yeah, it's. But there was just lots of
• 51:10
  little details like that bit you said about where she the
• 51:12
  flashback to her brother with the telescope and she's having a
• 51:16
  sneaky fag beyond her parents backs.
• 51:19
  You know, little details like that, which Andrew didn't get a
• 51:22
  law, you know, that just makes her a real person that she talks
• 51:26
  about going to football matches with her parents when she was
• 51:28
  younger, you know what and what that meant to her.
• 51:30
  And then later on she goes, they go, well, did you enjoy them?
• 51:33
  She goes, well, I'll still check the scores now and think it's
• 51:37
  just little details like that where I was like, she's a fully
• 51:39
  rounded person here. I was actually a little bit
• 51:43
  disappointed at the end when it turns out she is under the
• 51:46
  control of this virus all along. And actually, this stuff, she
• 51:51
  she forgets all this stuff, all this development that she has
• 51:53
  over these four years. But I know you've got some
• 51:56
  things to say about that, and we'll get there in a minute.
• 52:00
  But I think it was a good move to have those middle sections.
• 52:07
  So we don't just have four years previously and four years later
• 52:11
  that we show the intervening years.
• 52:13
  And it just helps to build up the mystery more and more.
• 52:16
  So, yeah, I think those things are right.
• 52:18
  What do you think about those, Luke?
• 52:21
  Those ice warriors seems like we're they've tried to storm the
• 52:24
  television channel and then they just like then a group of
• 52:28
  professionals kind of come in and just butcher them that that
• 52:32
  kind of gave me maybe not. It's not God engine that book
• 52:37
  don't read God engine everyone. It's bad and I've liked to Craig
• 52:41
  hinge and book or two that's that's not one of the good ones.
• 52:43
  Don't worry about it. But it it felt very much like
• 52:47
  the way humanity would treat aliens in original scene, like
• 52:50
  people like powerless, friendless, you know, all those
• 52:52
  kinds of of alien beings just treated like absolute well,
• 52:58
  garbage. And it's and it's and it's
• 53:00
  people who look like legit lane back and stuff.
• 53:03
  I'm not sure I'm a white the right person to talk about.
• 53:06
  So there's a white man in Australia, but it's, it's, it's
• 53:12
  that kind of stuff is all there. It's just like that one scene.
• 53:15
  It's very like that's, that's that's the thing.
• 53:20
  Sometimes he'll build up on something and it just kind of
• 53:24
  sets you, sets you going or just this one small part that just
• 53:27
  feels really powerful. Like the professional or slash
• 53:32
  doctor just constantly towards the end, just thinking about
• 53:36
  that alien creature in the water or on fire coming after him.
• 53:41
  Just like there's so there's so many kind of distinct visual
• 53:46
  moments like, yeah, I thought Angie was being chased, but
• 53:49
  that's the virus going. Oh, you need to get fit and you
• 53:52
  need to prepare for your your spaceship to far side station
• 53:56
  Jupiter thing, right. So that's the virus going.
• 53:59
  You need to train for this. So it's and it's this great
• 54:02
  visual moment of her not putting the harness on straight away
• 54:06
  because people will catch up. And then so yeah, it just so
• 54:13
  many moments that things that sticking into your head from and
• 54:17
  then from there just kind of balloons outward it it's
• 54:20
  incredible. It's well, it's just rich, which
• 54:24
  I think whatever you kind of want in a Doctor Who book, you
• 54:27
  want really good characters. You got it.
• 54:29
  Would you prefer a really good sci-fi story instead?
• 54:32
  It's there. Do you want lots of set pieces?
• 54:36
  Because there's plenty in this, I'll tell you.
• 54:39
  Bombs going off in people's quarters, people free falling
• 54:42
  into Jupiter's atmosphere, you know, hostage situations with
• 54:46
  Martians. It's all going on.
• 54:48
  Well, coming in, Andrew. Take us to the future, then,
• 54:50
  where all of this is resolved. Yeah.
• 54:56
  So in the in the now sections, we sort of start with Angie's
• 55:01
  stowed away on this sort of shuttle craft which is going to
• 55:05
  find far side station which has sort of resurfaced in the
• 55:08
  atmosphere. So she's stowed away on this
• 55:11
  mission where a professional has been sent to the sparse
• 55:16
  legislation to investigate who is this kind of sinister,
• 55:20
  emotionless soldier who jumps into the atmosphere from the
• 55:27
  shuttle onto the spaceship. And then Angie follows him.
• 55:31
  And then from that point on, it's they're the kind of two
• 55:34
  characters with differing approaches who arrive on this
• 55:37
  station and find these sort of the survivors in these horrible
• 55:42
  conditions, including like half of the crew who have just sort
• 55:48
  of descended into madness and living in cages, have torn all
• 55:53
  their clothes off, which is a really haunting, horrible image
• 55:57
  in this. In those things, he's always
• 55:59
  going on about how it smells dank and like piss and it just
• 56:03
  sounds. They're all in cages, aren't
• 56:06
  they? Yeah.
• 56:07
  And Angie starts off in in one of the cages where she wakes up
• 56:10
  where the professional has kind of dumped her.
• 56:14
  So yeah, you kind of get Angie is sort of because she wants,
• 56:19
  because we think she's there to find out what happened to the
• 56:22
  doctor and Fitz. She makes herself complicit in
• 56:24
  some of the dodgy activity that the professional does to
• 56:28
  manipulate the the crew to kind of do what he wants.
• 56:33
  So there's all these kind of moral dilemmas of should she go
• 56:37
  along with him or not? But eventually as the story goes
• 56:42
  on, we discover that all is not as it seems.
• 56:47
  And he does it very subtly. I mean, this was my first read
• 56:51
  of the book, so I didn't know any of this plotting was
• 56:54
  happening. And there are just towards the
• 56:59
  end of this section, there are bits where Angie is just a bit
• 57:02
  off and where some things happen which sort of contradict what we
• 57:07
  think is happening. So there's the whole bit with
• 57:09
  her space, with her space suits. And the two of them have these,
• 57:12
  these complicated space suits, suits which that I think that's
• 57:16
  kind of the, the space suits do do a lot of things for them.
• 57:23
  They're quite sophisticated. So it means that they have
• 57:24
  enhanced strength and all of this these things, which means
• 57:29
  he can kind of cover for the fact that Angie is maybe a bit
• 57:33
  more capable than she should be. So there's these sort of
• 57:36
  sleights of hands to kind of keep the mystery going and make
• 57:39
  us not suspect Angie. But it turns out that actually
• 57:43
  Angie is basically the villain in this plot.
• 57:47
  And she's been infected by the virus at the start.
• 57:50
  And the virus has been manipulating her to return to
• 57:54
  the station because it wants to destroy its counterpart virus,
• 58:00
  which is also in the system of Jupiter.
• 58:03
  And some of the crew have been infected with the fear virus and
• 58:06
  some of the crew have been infected with the Loathing virus
• 58:10
  and some. Well done.
• 58:12
  Well. Done.
• 58:15
  It sounds a bit lame. It works though I think.
• 58:20
  Yeah. And but yeah, she so along with
• 58:25
  that twist, so the the stuff that happens with the space
• 58:28
  suit, like Angie tells us that one, one set of things has
• 58:31
  happened, another set of characters tell us another thing
• 58:34
  has happened. So eventually it transpires that
• 58:38
  Angie was lying and you know, she's she's been working against
• 58:43
  some of the other characters and we didn't know that.
• 58:46
  But then there's another another twist.
• 58:49
  So we were wondering all this time where the doctor and Fitz
• 58:53
  are. And we eventually come to the
• 58:56
  conclusion in parallel with what's happening in the four
• 58:59
  years previously section, that the professional who's there
• 59:04
  with Angie, we've already said this in this episode, but I'm
• 59:07
  just like. Drum roll, please.
• 59:10
  The professional is the. Professional This evil soldier
• 59:14
  is the Doctor Who has been mentally conditioned by this
• 59:20
  process in the four years previously section to become
• 59:25
  this sort of super soldier and Angie recognised him from the
• 59:30
  start, but obviously she was hiding that because she didn't
• 59:34
  want him to know that that she knew that he was him and I'm
• 59:40
  very impressed with myself I. Was that was superb, well done,
• 59:43
  but. I was keeping notes throughout
• 59:45
  and about halfway through the book I had lots and lots of
• 59:48
  theories. But I did write down it's the
• 59:50
  professional, the doctor. The first time I read it I went
• 59:56
  what the fuck that was. Me.
• 1:00:00
  That was just one of the things that I thought might be going on
• 1:00:02
  because there's so many red herrings, as you're saying.
• 1:00:04
  So I'm not, I'm not that smart. Were you having fun then with
• 1:00:07
  theories and? I was like, is Angie a clone?
• 1:00:10
  Is she like, is that how this is playing out?
• 1:00:13
  Is it? Yeah.
• 1:00:14
  But I think the thing that tipped me off to the
• 1:00:17
  professional being the doctor is when I think it's when Angie
• 1:00:21
  first meets him, she talks about like the deep grooves, like in
• 1:00:25
  around his mouth. And I was like, that sounds a
• 1:00:27
  bit like Paul McGann. Wait a minute.
• 1:00:30
  So. Shaved head.
• 1:00:32
  You've just got to think of him from Alien Three, don't you?
• 1:00:34
  Yeah, yeah. That's right, Do.
• 1:00:36
  You know what the the two twists you said there just very
• 1:00:39
  quickly. The way those two twists were
• 1:00:42
  executed, though, awful, perfect, regardless of sort of
• 1:00:47
  whether you think the twist themselves work because we have
• 1:00:49
  the Angie one. It's Easter that the the the
• 1:00:53
  fellow who was in charge, but the professionals taken over.
• 1:00:56
  He's he's looking at data that suddenly doesn't make sense.
• 1:00:59
  Clearly she's been lying for her teeth and then you can see it
• 1:01:02
  directed. She's coming up behind him with
• 1:01:05
  a bit of rubble and smashes him around the end.
• 1:01:07
  I was like, what's going on? Why is Angie attacking people?
• 1:01:10
  Oh, OK. But the doctor one, you have him
• 1:01:15
  in four years in the past being tortured, strapped down the
• 1:01:19
  implant in his head. And the the chapter ends with a
• 1:01:23
  dot dot dot. Then we get a bit in between
• 1:01:28
  where it's 2 characters talking about a professional being
• 1:01:31
  conditioned. And then we go to four years in
• 1:01:34
  the future where we start a chapter with dot dot dot, and
• 1:01:36
  that's when the doctor wakes up in the future.
• 1:01:38
  It's so well done. Yeah.
• 1:01:40
  And and so after that's happened, we still then have the
• 1:01:44
  mystery of what's happened to Fitz.
• 1:01:46
  So it then kind of there's still more that needs to unravel to to
• 1:01:50
  find out where Fitz fits, where Fitz fits in all of this.
• 1:01:55
  And there's the yeah. So we find that the the middle
• 1:01:58
  section of the station has been kind of kept in this stasis
• 1:02:01
  fluid that that kind of exploded from those alien cells.
• 1:02:08
  So for all of the characters apart from the ones who are in
• 1:02:11
  the outer ring and the Doctor Who was kind of like blasted out
• 1:02:14
  of a down up corridor while his body was on fire, it's rough for
• 1:02:20
  the Doctor. Well, the 8th Doctor folks in
• 1:02:23
  general are pretty rough on you. Yeah, and the Doctor.
• 1:02:26
  So they fight the the survivors have found the Doctor's burnt
• 1:02:30
  body, concluded that he has some kind of infection, and they
• 1:02:34
  blasted him out of space, out into space where he was then
• 1:02:37
  picked up by the government who've trained him up to be the
• 1:02:40
  Super soldier. So yeah, it's all very
• 1:02:43
  complicated, but it works really well.
• 1:02:47
  And yeah, the, we then kind of once we find out that the the
• 1:02:53
  doctor is the professional, that's where the kind of
• 1:02:55
  thematic stuff comes in and about memory and guilt and the
• 1:03:02
  kind of justification for why the doctor doesn't want to
• 1:03:04
  recover his past memories. Because he kind of the the time
• 1:03:10
  period that he spent as the professional, he's done some
• 1:03:12
  horrible things and he has this kind of recurrent vision of
• 1:03:16
  where he's killed another, killed another soldier.
• 1:03:20
  I think it is in one of these battles and it's not clear if
• 1:03:24
  it's a battle scenario or if it was real.
• 1:03:25
  I think it was real that one. So that's when he's actually
• 1:03:28
  been probably on the mission. So he knows that he's killed,
• 1:03:31
  and he also remembers in the burning that he's killed before,
• 1:03:35
  so. Drowning me on the air.
• 1:03:37
  That's kind of the justification for I don't want to know who I
• 1:03:40
  was before. I don't want bits to tell me who
• 1:03:42
  I was before because I might have done awful things.
• 1:03:44
  I just want to be who I am right now, which kind of it's, it's a
• 1:03:52
  little bit of my problem with this book is the kind of where
• 1:03:54
  it comes for the 8th Doctor in that it's after the 8th arc, the
• 1:03:58
  Earth arc, where, you know, there's been so much
• 1:04:00
  introspection and who am I? And then Earth World kind of
• 1:04:04
  sets up a new era of, you know, it's quite joyous.
• 1:04:07
  Like they're going off. It's a new team.
• 1:04:09
  You know, that angst is in the past.
• 1:04:11
  And then we get this past Doctor novel, which, you know, puts in
• 1:04:15
  through a whole load more trauma, but it does end quite
• 1:04:19
  sort of triumphantly, I guess, for the doctrine that he's made
• 1:04:22
  this decision that he's going to the the end TARDIS scene in this
• 1:04:26
  book is really lovely, where he kind of returns to the TARDIS
• 1:04:32
  and feels the connection with the TARDIS and that he's wants
• 1:04:35
  to go off into the. I've got the line here, Andrew,
• 1:04:37
  if you want to hear. He goes.
• 1:04:38
  He remembers Fitz as his friend, and you can trust him with his
• 1:04:40
  life. He remembers his ship, the
• 1:04:43
  comforting hub of the engine, the feed of the switches, the
• 1:04:46
  potential behind those controls, the ability to travel anywhere,
• 1:04:50
  the wide open space of possibility before him.
• 1:04:54
  Which is where we head off into Vanishing Point.
• 1:04:58
  But it's also the last, so it's kind of a nice, a nice end note
• 1:05:04
  on the series. And, and he's taken the kind of
• 1:05:06
  three best characters in in the 8th Doctor book and just given
• 1:05:10
  them loads to do and and yeah, loads, loads of sort of pathos
• 1:05:18
  and yeah, that's great. How did you find all of this
• 1:05:23
  then, Luke? You know, two viruses, far side
• 1:05:27
  space station being used as a Petri dish to create this rust
• 1:05:32
  that one side of the virus is going to use to attack the other
• 1:05:35
  side of the virus. Like, was all this satisfying to
• 1:05:39
  you or were you just sort of scratching your head going, Is
• 1:05:43
  this what this was all about? We haven't even mentioned the
• 1:05:47
  fucking cyber version of one of the viruses that contacts the
• 1:05:52
  real version of the virus so they can both beat up the other
• 1:05:55
  virus. I didn't lose it.
• 1:06:01
  I didn't lose myself. I was like, I know where I am in
• 1:06:03
  this book, you know? It it did work for me because,
• 1:06:08
  yeah, I know I've read this three times, but I was still
• 1:06:11
  like, man, they're not doing a Voyager thing with Angie, are
• 1:06:14
  they? Because if they did, well, none
• 1:06:17
  of that ever would have happened ever.
• 1:06:19
  But they didn't because, you know, Michael still has those
• 1:06:22
  memories and it all it all happened.
• 1:06:25
  So I was kind of glad that it wasn't the singularity bomb.
• 1:06:28
  I was kind of glad it wasn't all these other things.
• 1:06:31
  And it was just this kind of relentless virus.
• 1:06:33
  And I feel like the virus doesn't push Angie in a way that
• 1:06:38
  makes her go hang on a minute. Maybe I should go get some
• 1:06:40
  therapy or something. Like, am I?
• 1:06:44
  She acts a little bit out enough out of character for her to be
• 1:06:47
  like, hey, I'm in a new city away from my family and I'll
• 1:06:50
  never see him again. Let's try some new things where
• 1:06:52
  it's actually like the little slither of this thing going all
• 1:06:56
  right, this might not. This might take a while.
• 1:06:58
  I better not just slowly. She's very strong willed.
• 1:07:01
  I suppose, you know, if you're Lawrence Miles, who absolutely
• 1:07:04
  loathe Angie Kapoor with a passion.
• 1:07:06
  That's why I practically wrote her out of adventurous and
• 1:07:09
  Henrietta St. He really hated her.
• 1:07:11
  You could justify all of this by well, she actually isn't this
• 1:07:14
  competent woman in the future. It was all the virus that made
• 1:07:16
  her very competent. You know, although I choose not
• 1:07:19
  to believe that I. Don't know.
• 1:07:22
  I feel like if you're deciding, I want to pitch for a range of
• 1:07:25
  books. I want to write books for these
• 1:07:27
  characters. Well, then you know what you got
• 1:07:30
  in for Mr. Miles, so it's better to tell him to put a bit of
• 1:07:34
  effort in. But for.
• 1:07:35
  God's sake, just say that it's Bernie Summerfield right in that
• 1:07:38
  book, all right? Please.
• 1:07:41
  Absolutely was. But it's the the the twist of
• 1:07:46
  there, it's raining here, which is it's very nice because
• 1:07:51
  there's this talks like, like there's a little boy in the
• 1:07:54
  future as well, But we haven't even mentioned yet who the poor
• 1:07:57
  thing hasn't seen the sun hasn't heard seen the rain or anything
• 1:08:02
  like that. They had arguments for six
• 1:08:04
  months about whether to give him this like kind of little
• 1:08:06
  computer iPad thing just to teach him and keep him busy.
• 1:08:11
  I mean, Caroline was just like, give me that.
• 1:08:13
  It's yours to the boy. And it just like that's another
• 1:08:17
  little detail there as well, especially since you've got
• 1:08:20
  that, that also that part with Robertson and Caroline where
• 1:08:25
  Robertson keeps saying I saw her face because I think.
• 1:08:30
  Do the baby. Yeah, which, man, that's
• 1:08:37
  heartbreaking as well. This is the kind of book that
• 1:08:40
  make me laugh and also a bit teary.
• 1:08:42
  And like I'm. I'm laughing at one point near
• 1:08:45
  the end where Fit is going to smoke in his mouth.
• 1:08:47
  He's going bloody amateurs and he's got Angie over his
• 1:08:49
  shoulder. Then he stops.
• 1:08:51
  He's like, I better take the smoke out.
• 1:08:53
  That's not going to do me any favours.
• 1:08:54
  I'm trying to carry Angie so he, he, he gets to kind of let us
• 1:09:01
  all have a break and have a bit of a little laugh towards the
• 1:09:04
  end when it's been so serious for so long.
• 1:09:06
  It was. There was some there was some
• 1:09:09
  wonderful, funny and that Fitz had long ago decided that the
• 1:09:12
  Doctor's most annoying habit was turning a pleasant everyday
• 1:09:15
  activity into a life threatening crisis.
• 1:09:18
  Which is true. You know, but also he has a
• 1:09:21
  recurring joke, doesn't he? But if I if I die pretending to
• 1:09:25
  be an accountant, I will never forgive you.
• 1:09:27
  Never. Forgive you, Oh my God.
• 1:09:28
  And how the doctors in that sharp suit, but Fitz is somehow
• 1:09:32
  just ends up looking, you know, rankled and trashy because
• 1:09:36
  that's who Fitz is. Well, what did you think about
• 1:09:40
  the character payouts then? Because there was a nice payoff
• 1:09:44
  with the Doctor and Vanetti in that he has absolutely got under
• 1:09:49
  her skin and at the right point in the climax, she has to choose
• 1:09:53
  to side with him. And then there's a gorgeous
• 1:09:56
  scene at the end where he basically says, this is the chip
• 1:09:59
  of all that research. I'm going to trust you to do the
• 1:10:02
  right thing. And she does.
• 1:10:03
  She sort of throws it in the water, doesn't she?
• 1:10:05
  And then goes home and there's payoff for Arquette and
• 1:10:09
  Robertson because they come together again at the end and
• 1:10:13
  basically say, look, that terrible place where we lived
• 1:10:16
  for four years, that isn't who we are, and we're going to go
• 1:10:20
  off and have a good life. And that's the point where he
• 1:10:22
  turns around and says, do you know what?
• 1:10:24
  I saw a face. So I saw the baby before you
• 1:10:28
  lost it, which is heartbreaking. Angie and Michael.
• 1:10:31
  The pay off there is that Michael still loves Angie and
• 1:10:33
  he's saying to her that please just be with me.
• 1:10:36
  I don't understand what's changed.
• 1:10:37
  Why are you going? That's cold, man.
• 1:10:41
  All of this and then obviously the doctrine Fitz at the end as
• 1:10:44
  well with Fitz saying, are we going to have this conversation?
• 1:10:47
  And the doctor saying Angie said, no, this isn't the time.
• 1:10:52
  Like did you think it paid? It sort of tips all of these off
• 1:10:55
  in a good way, Andrew. Yes, but amnesia?
• 1:11:03
  Go on. I've been waiting for this.
• 1:11:06
  I just don't think that amnesia is ever a satisfying plotline
• 1:11:12
  and the 8th Doctor bookline fucking loves amnesia and it's
• 1:11:18
  just such a lazy way out of things sometimes.
• 1:11:20
  And I feel like the books use it to avoid having to deal with
• 1:11:26
  some of the character fall out of things.
• 1:11:30
  I mean, in this book, it kind of, it kind of has to be, there
• 1:11:34
  has to be a solution to what's happening to Angie and she can't
• 1:11:39
  leave this book by having aged 4 years between two books where
• 1:11:42
  she didn't age 4 years. It's a little bit frustrating
• 1:11:46
  that the solution is amnesia. I mean it's kind of it's kind of
• 1:11:49
  nice that it's like it's a post effect of the virus and the
• 1:11:53
  memories are fading from her mind because she wasn't herself.
• 1:11:57
  But it does mean that you've then got 3 characters who all
• 1:12:01
  have significant amounts of amnesia as your main characters
• 1:12:05
  of the 8th Doctor books. And obviously you've got the 8th
• 1:12:09
  Doctor and them never really dealing with the fallout of him
• 1:12:13
  destroying his home planet, which the TV series then showed
• 1:12:18
  the way you should do that. You've got Angie with her four
• 1:12:21
  years and then you've also got the weird stuff with bits as
• 1:12:24
  well, because it they know They also never really addressed the.
• 1:12:29
  This is more turning into a moment about the gaping up
• 1:12:33
  things with than than this book. This book is brilliant, but with
• 1:12:37
  fits he's a clone of. Yeah.
• 1:12:40
  I realise that halfway through this book.
• 1:12:42
  And they just never bother to do anything with that.
• 1:12:46
  He has about 5 minutes of existential dread about it in
• 1:12:49
  Earth World and and then sort of forgets that he's a clone.
• 1:12:54
  And there's a whole like morally dubious area of that in that
• 1:12:58
  he's this clone who was created by the Doctor and Fitz never
• 1:13:02
  really like processes that or confronts the Doctor about it.
• 1:13:07
  There's never a payoff to that. And I feel like sometimes you've
• 1:13:10
  got these authors who came in with these huge ideas, which
• 1:13:13
  were great, but then they were never they came up with ideas
• 1:13:18
  which didn't necessarily fit with where the range wanted to
• 1:13:20
  go because they clearly wanted to keep fits as this companion.
• 1:13:23
  But then Lawrence Miles came along and did horrible things to
• 1:13:28
  fits. So yeah, it's it's it's this
• 1:13:33
  book is kind of coming along and trying to thematically heal the
• 1:13:38
  eight Doctor books. And it does it really well.
• 1:13:40
  And I think that's also kind of the reason why the I'm talking
• 1:13:43
  myself around to the amnesia thing.
• 1:13:45
  It's like, that's why amnesia is such a key theme to this book,
• 1:13:48
  because it's trying to take that sort of accidental thread of the
• 1:13:52
  eight doctor books and make it make sense and make it feel
• 1:13:55
  intentional and like it has effect for the character.
• 1:13:59
  So Angie's amnesia is still heartbreaking.
• 1:14:02
  It's not it's not just a reset switch.
• 1:14:04
  It's you get this. It's it's quite poignant, those
• 1:14:07
  scenes between her and Michael at the end of it.
• 1:14:09
  So I. Think it's because.
• 1:14:10
  It's drama out of there. It's from his point of view,
• 1:14:13
  isn't it, that scene so. And he's the one longing for her
• 1:14:16
  and she just basically goes this isn't my life, sorry.
• 1:14:19
  Yeah, and walks away from him like you callous bitch.
• 1:14:21
  She's. Just sort of gradually slipping
• 1:14:23
  away from him as she recovers, she's becoming further apart
• 1:14:27
  from this man that she spent four years of her life with as,
• 1:14:30
  Yeah, heartbreaking. It's.
• 1:14:32
  Cold it's it's. Like I love you and she's like I
• 1:14:35
  don't know who the fuck you are. It's a problem, you know, with
• 1:14:39
  any book line or TV show. I mean, you mentioned Star Trek
• 1:14:45
  earlier, Luke, and it's a big problem in Star Trek.
• 1:14:48
  Well, they want to do exciting, surprising things with the
• 1:14:51
  characters. But next week, we've got a
• 1:14:53
  formula to this. So.
• 1:14:54
  So Doctor Who's always going to go off on an adventure next
• 1:14:57
  week, but we want to do really dramatic things like blow up his
• 1:15:00
  planet and murderous companions. But actually, no, well, wait, we
• 1:15:04
  still need them next week. So we'll have a clone there.
• 1:15:06
  And. And yeah, it's like Atrick in
• 1:15:09
  Earthshock, you know, kill him off next week.
• 1:15:12
  Oh God, we need go back and save him.
• 1:15:14
  Well, we can't do that. Come on.
• 1:15:15
  Until the great expedition, we we'll forget all about him in 2
• 1:15:18
  minutes. And it's like emotionally
• 1:15:20
  unsatisfying, but like I get why they can't labour the point, but
• 1:15:25
  it's frustrating as a viewer stroke reader because you're
• 1:15:29
  like, there's so much drama in this I.
• 1:15:30
  Think the thing that's frustrating as well is like,
• 1:15:32
  these are long form books, you've got enough space within
• 1:15:35
  one book here they've explored kind of more emotional depths
• 1:15:39
  than like 68 Doctor books. So I think that's sometimes what
• 1:15:43
  felt really frustrating about this range in that they had the
• 1:15:46
  time and space to do this, but they didn't.
• 1:15:52
  What Nick Wallace did here, though, and I think it's so
• 1:15:55
  clever, is it's not quite in the middle because it's just after
• 1:16:00
  the Earth arc. But you're right.
• 1:16:03
  He is like another temp pole. So this and the Gallifrey
• 1:16:07
  Chronicles, things pay off here. You know that otherwise in the
• 1:16:11
  Gallifrey Chronicles, none of it sort of makes any sense.
• 1:16:14
  Oh, it feels last minute, you know, like, oh, OK, you're
• 1:16:16
  deciding to wrap this all up. As you know, it's all brought up
• 1:16:18
  here, and then they just decide to leave it for a bit.
• 1:16:22
  I think he's done a really clever job of tying up things
• 1:16:28
  that have been unsatisfying before and just telling a really
• 1:16:31
  compelling book at the same time.
• 1:16:34
  Why the hell didn't he write anymore?
• 1:16:37
  I know I don't know if he's got another book in him or I don't
• 1:16:46
  know if maybe he's not interested in audios, but
• 1:16:48
  there's an audio book range, Mr. Nick Wallace.
• 1:16:51
  No Who? He turned up because he wrote a
• 1:16:53
  couple of Bernice audios when Simon Guru was in charge when
• 1:16:58
  they were doing the draconian BIM War, and they were brilliant
• 1:17:02
  audio. So I just think he's a really
• 1:17:04
  good writer that occasionally dips his toes into Doctor Who.
• 1:17:09
  Fair enough. You know more of him.
• 1:17:12
  I kind of wish there was another.
• 1:17:14
  I wish we had as many of these as we did.
• 1:17:16
  I don't know David Mckinty, Doctor Who, you know, and I I
• 1:17:20
  don't mind some of his stuff. Mission Impractical was kind of
• 1:17:22
  kind of fun. This book all is also like, I
• 1:17:27
  think people have seen the Henrietta St. font.
• 1:17:29
  It's not quite that bad, but it's there.
• 1:17:31
  It's it's up there. I think the wildest thing for me
• 1:17:36
  flicking through this PDA is when I get to the back there's
• 1:17:42
  freaking ads. Yeah.
• 1:17:46
  New series adventures in this it's very.
• 1:17:48
  Strange, isn't it? And not the first batch either,
• 1:17:51
  because we've got only human here.
• 1:17:54
  That's like the cancelled Man and Steel is the Dreams by Steve
• 1:17:57
  Lyons and stuff. So this is the. 2nd batch.
• 1:17:59
  Oh, you had to get one in there somewhere, didn't you?
• 1:18:01
  Second. Dreams.
• 1:18:03
  Bring the Steve Lyons klaxon. I mean, we've been talking about
• 1:18:06
  fix all that. So don't we mind you my Avaras
• 1:18:09
  reading War with the Daleks at the moment, right.
• 1:18:11
  And honestly, that's like old man from that is it's about 3
• 1:18:14
  pages. Sorry, 3 words per page.
• 1:18:17
  I said look at this, look what I'm reading.
• 1:18:19
  I think this is about it's the same length as war with the
• 1:18:21
  Daleks, but I think in Word count it's about 3 times as
• 1:18:24
  long. They did.
• 1:18:25
  They were. They were doing longer books,
• 1:18:29
  weren't they? But they were having.
• 1:18:30
  The. Same length.
• 1:18:32
  So that did. What about Can I just say, do
• 1:18:36
  you like the cover? No.
• 1:18:45
  Andrew no, I think it there. There are good black sheep
• 1:18:51
  covers for the for the books. This feels like one of their
• 1:18:57
  very early ones. Like it feels a little bit like
• 1:18:59
  they could have just inserted this from like clipart on
• 1:19:02
  Microsoft Word. Yeah, it feels like it needed
• 1:19:07
  something a bit more, a bit more sci-fi ish to kind of bring in
• 1:19:12
  that court sort of audience, like a space station or
• 1:19:15
  something. Maybe a space station with like
• 1:19:17
  a frack down the middle and 1/2 is rusty and 1/2 is.
• 1:19:20
  Van der Decken's children, you know, that wrap around cover,
• 1:19:23
  which is all one big 3D space station.
• 1:19:26
  I actually really love this cover.
• 1:19:28
  Do you know, I like, I like the simplicity of it.
• 1:19:30
  I like the fact that the answer to the whole plot is on the
• 1:19:33
  cover. And I just like the way the
• 1:19:35
  shadow becomes something terribly menacing underneath it.
• 1:19:41
  It's a slug. It doesn't.
• 1:19:42
  Look like a slug. Doesn't it?
• 1:19:44
  Well, look, first we've we've sort of talked about the
• 1:19:47
  characters, we've talked about the plot.
• 1:19:49
  Is there anything about fear itself which we've kind of just
• 1:19:52
  all agreed is superb? Is there anything we haven't
• 1:19:56
  covered? I'm going to throw it across to
• 1:19:58
  whoever looks scaredest, Andrew. Desperately, like looking
• 1:20:05
  through my notes. Yeah, I think we haven't fully
• 1:20:10
  talked about Fitz and the Doctor, like the particularly in
• 1:20:17
  the in the past sections, those those moments between them in
• 1:20:20
  the cabin where they're kind of having this awkward half
• 1:20:25
  conversation where half most of it we're kind of getting what
• 1:20:28
  Fitz wants to say, but he's not saying it.
• 1:20:30
  And they're just really beautifully written and you just
• 1:20:33
  get just the the sense of like love between these two
• 1:20:39
  characters. It just feels like, you know,
• 1:20:41
  Fitz is is the Doctor's best friend and like he's going to do
• 1:20:44
  anything for him and he's kind of it kind of feels like, you
• 1:20:48
  know, Fitz is never going to leave, Like he's always going to
• 1:20:51
  be there for the for the doctor. And I know there's a lots of,
• 1:20:54
  you know, like shipping and that kind of stuff that goes on with
• 1:20:58
  characters where, you know, there's like a romantic element
• 1:21:01
  put into it. But I think with the Doctor of
• 1:21:03
  Fitz, it's just really nice that it's this kind of close male
• 1:21:06
  friendship that's, I don't know, I guess that's really rare for
• 1:21:10
  Doctor Who because you don't don't often get a with the
• 1:21:15
  Doctor with a male companion where the male companion is kind
• 1:21:18
  of like the primary companion. So I think it's, it's unusual, I
• 1:21:22
  think for a book for, for this kind of relationship, this close
• 1:21:26
  friendship in a Doctor Who book like this.
• 1:21:30
  And I think it's really nice. And that's some of the the best
• 1:21:33
  passages in the book. There's there's a quote.
• 1:21:36
  In space. The only other comparison I can
• 1:21:39
  think of is the 2nd Doctor in Jamie.
• 1:21:41
  That's the only other time I can really think of sort of a long
• 1:21:44
  form, two men travelling in the TARDIS together.
• 1:21:49
  There's a quite. Stephen, maybe a little bit.
• 1:21:51
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mind you, Stephen sort of took
• 1:21:53
  over, didn't he? It was more Stephen Who than
• 1:21:55
  Doctor Who in season. Three, I don't mind that I don't
• 1:21:58
  mind. The Doctor says to Fitz more
• 1:22:02
  More than 100 years and I never felt at home there.
• 1:22:06
  From the moment I woke up on the train.
• 1:22:07
  I didn't need memories to tell me I didn't belong.
• 1:22:09
  It took me a long time, decades, to figure out why that was to
• 1:22:13
  understand. And the only hope I had was a
• 1:22:16
  note I promised that if I endured, someone will be waiting
• 1:22:19
  for me. A friend.
• 1:22:21
  And you're right, it just captures why Fitz is so perfect
• 1:22:26
  for the 8th Doctor so beautifully.
• 1:22:29
  Why a passion though? She fucked off, yeah.
• 1:22:34
  Isn't there a suggestion that she's Madame Zing in Half Life?
• 1:22:39
  What she's doing is that fortune teller who?
• 1:22:41
  Knows. I don't think anyone was taking
• 1:22:44
  control of the series at that point.
• 1:22:46
  I actually, I felt as if Nick Wallace almost thought, do you
• 1:22:50
  know what? I think people are giving the
• 1:22:52
  Doctor Fitz and Ansi enough kudos and I'm going to write a
• 1:22:55
  book where all three of them are fucking ace.
• 1:22:59
  So he writes a Fitz who is all of his strengths, isn't it?
• 1:23:03
  It's not that he's smart, but he's great with people and that
• 1:23:06
  and they get he gets to do all the sort of inveigling just as a
• 1:23:10
  people person. The Doctor Who's running rings
• 1:23:13
  around everybody in the in the the four years earlier and
• 1:23:16
  that's fabulous scenes with Belletti.
• 1:23:18
  I mean, they should have just fucked right?
• 1:23:20
  They they were post to it a couple of times and then we've
• 1:23:23
  been. Talking on it, we've watched the
• 1:23:25
  Costa. Talked about Angie and I've done
• 1:23:28
  a couple of books with Fitz and Angie already, The Crooked World
• 1:23:31
  and Mad Dogs and Englishmen with book clubbers that have never
• 1:23:35
  read them before. And in both those cases they
• 1:23:37
  sort of went, yeah, there's not really much to.
• 1:23:40
  And they're like, great. I don't really understand what's
• 1:23:42
  the appeal of fits. Go read Fear Itself, all right,
• 1:23:45
  because I think it's a great showing for him.
• 1:23:49
  What about you, though, Luke? Anything we haven't covered?
• 1:23:53
  I don't think so, no. I think, you know, as soon as
• 1:23:57
  you press the button that says we're not recording anymore,
• 1:24:00
  that's when I'll that's when I've come out with a lot of
• 1:24:04
  things. But yeah, I remember listening
• 1:24:09
  to that that and they're like, I'm glad they liked the the book
• 1:24:13
  the Crooked world. Not they didn't like it as much
• 1:24:15
  as me or you by the the sounds of things, but.
• 1:24:19
  What? What they didn't like the
• 1:24:21
  crooked world. They were irritated.
• 1:24:25
  They were irritated that it took so long for an explanation as to
• 1:24:29
  why the crooked world existed. And I, I was sort of trying to
• 1:24:32
  say to him, no, no, I wish they that the explanation had never
• 1:24:35
  come. I like to think that there's
• 1:24:36
  just a cartoon world out there. And that's what I love about
• 1:24:41
  that era of the 8th Doctor adventures.
• 1:24:43
  Just the All right, we're on a tiger planet for a whole year
• 1:24:47
  now. OK, now, now we're in cartoon
• 1:24:49
  world. Why?
• 1:24:51
  Because the here's the ex, all the explanation I needed.
• 1:24:55
  The TARDIS can go anywhere. Yeah.
• 1:24:59
  So yeah, I didn't really need that.
• 1:25:01
  I was just like, oh, cartoons. It's like, it's really cool.
• 1:25:03
  So yeah, I really like how like I really like how kind of random
• 1:25:08
  it is sometimes. I like, I like some of the arc
• 1:25:10
  stuff too, but sometimes it's can just tonal whiplash and I
• 1:25:14
  feel like Doctor Who, a season of Doctor Who needs a even if
• 1:25:20
  it's got like like season 5. They're all based on the siege
• 1:25:24
  stories, but you need that enemy of the world right there.
• 1:25:27
  Hook you up a bit, doesn't it? Yeah.
• 1:25:30
  So. Well, James James, who was on
• 1:25:33
  the Mad Dogs episode, said that there was too many sort of
• 1:25:36
  quirky, quirky books in a succession.
• 1:25:40
  You know, there was grim reality, Mad Dogs and
• 1:25:42
  Englishmen, the crooked world. I fucking love that though.
• 1:25:46
  That. I mean, I was just like, yeah,
• 1:25:48
  more of this please, not less. Don't make them all.
• 1:25:51
  Don't make them all fear itself. Every now and again.
• 1:25:54
  We want pink poodles, right? That's right.
• 1:25:58
  I mean, it's going. To be one of the best covers
• 1:25:59
  though. The only the sort of the last
• 1:26:01
  thing I want to say about Fear Itself is just how impressive
• 1:26:05
  Nick Wallace is Future world building was.
• 1:26:09
  And it's something that everybody Lords the new
• 1:26:12
  adventures for because they sort of created a 22nd century,
• 1:26:16
  didn't they? And they kept going back to it.
• 1:26:18
  So it expanded. And he sets this in and around
• 1:26:22
  the same sort of time, Tony Lee does something completely
• 1:26:26
  different with it, but just as riveting.
• 1:26:30
  And I was really pleased to see a book of this nature because I
• 1:26:34
  think a lot of people think the new adventures ended and then
• 1:26:37
  all the sophistication left the books.
• 1:26:39
  And I don't think that's true because I think the Ave.
• 1:26:41
  Doctor books, you know, I could name 25, which are highly
• 1:26:46
  sophisticated in lots of different ways.
• 1:26:48
  But I think that there was a taste for that sort of serious
• 1:26:53
  future of, you know, that you're getting Lucifer rising and God.
• 1:26:57
  What's the first one with Chris and Ross?
• 1:27:00
  Original SIM. Original SIM.
• 1:27:01
  You know, and Eternity weeps and books like that and this is
• 1:27:05
  absolutely leaning into that. But given it the EDA stamp in
• 1:27:12
  the PDA range, man, oh man, it's a very incestuous book.
• 1:27:17
  Hey, it's fabulous. Let's just let's come to that
• 1:27:19
  conclusion. Well, thank you very much, guys.
• 1:27:23
  I wasn't going into this. I don't have a single cloak with
• 1:27:25
  how on earth we were going to unpick a book as labyrinthine as
• 1:27:29
  this, but I actually think we've managed to successfully spoil
• 1:27:32
  every single twist in the book. Hopefully there's some listeners
• 1:27:39
  that have Weber fear Syndrome like I do and just we'll just
• 1:27:42
  completely forget the twist. Or yeah, maybe they'll
• 1:27:45
  experience what the 8th Doctor experiences on a regular
• 1:27:48
  occasion. Just total amnesia.
• 1:27:49
  You know, fellas, let's do some recommends this week, then let's
• 1:28:06
  jump straight over to Andrew. What do you got for us?
• 1:28:11
  Well, I couldn't find my physical copy of this book, so
• 1:28:14
  I'm not going to hold it up to camera, but it's a audio format
• 1:28:18
  anyway, so nobody can see me do that.
• 1:28:22
  Anyway, I chose a book. So like we're talking about with
• 1:28:25
  Fear Itself, it's a book which kind of plugs a gap in terms of
• 1:28:29
  like character and emotion and themes in a way that, you know,
• 1:28:33
  it goes back to an earlier point in the books and kind of does
• 1:28:37
  something that that wasn't done at the time.
• 1:28:40
  So I've chosen a book which kind of does a similar thing to that,
• 1:28:42
  but with a recent TV show. I have chosen The Good Doctor by
• 1:28:48
  Juno Dawson which is a 13th Doctor adventure.
• 1:28:54
  Which I. Haven't no twist please.
• 1:28:58
  Well, it does the thing that you were expecting, the new season
• 1:29:02
  of Doctor Who, which now has a female Doctor to do, which is
• 1:29:06
  talk about the fact that the Doctor is now a woman and how
• 1:29:09
  that's different, and how the Doctor now experiences the world
• 1:29:12
  differently and is treated differently by people.
• 1:29:16
  So the concept of it is that the TARDIS arrives on planets, they
• 1:29:20
  leave, and then they arrive back on the same planet 100 or so
• 1:29:24
  years later. Hi, that was my story earlier.
• 1:29:29
  And they remember the Doctor's first visit.
• 1:29:31
  There's sort of like churches built in in honour of the
• 1:29:34
  Doctor's first visit. But they remember the Doctor as
• 1:29:38
  Graham, so they think that Graham is the Doctor because he
• 1:29:42
  was the older man of the group. And.
• 1:29:45
  The, the Jodie Whittaker Doctor is, is just his companion
• 1:29:49
  because it's the history has been rewritten.
• 1:29:52
  And then so it's the Doctor in, in this kind of misogynistic
• 1:29:56
  society where they've deliberately rewritten history
• 1:29:59
  to take her out of it and how she then deals with that.
• 1:30:02
  And it's like, why wasn't this story on TV?
• 1:30:06
  Why wasn't this episode 3 of season whatever it was?
• 1:30:11
  And it felt like that series kind of the TV version wanted to
• 1:30:14
  play around with these things a little bit, but they're not
• 1:30:16
  really addressed them and didn't really want to offend people.
• 1:30:19
  But Juno Dawson goes straight into it and does really smart
• 1:30:23
  things with it. And it's a great book and one
• 1:30:26
  that I think because the books aren't really talked about that
• 1:30:29
  much. It's just not again, a bit like
• 1:30:31
  this book, like it's not one which you hear like, oh, wait,
• 1:30:34
  this is an amazing 10 out of 10 book.
• 1:30:36
  Everyone has to read it. It's a great piece of Doctor Who
• 1:30:38
  and it is. And people should.
• 1:30:41
  Oh my God, you really entice me. I might have to try and twist
• 1:30:44
  both of your arms to do that later on.
• 1:30:47
  That is bit on my radar for ages to read that one.
• 1:30:50
  So now even more so. Well, look, what have you got
• 1:30:54
  for us? I even like the Stephen Cole
• 1:30:57
  Jody book because he introduces a sort of like Roman unit.
• 1:31:03
  Is that combat magics? Yeah.
• 1:31:05
  That was that was Michael Mills recommended on the last episode.
• 1:31:09
  So I'm not recommending that, but that was another one of that
• 1:31:12
  wrote those that Shaney. Shaney got three new series
• 1:31:16
  adventures like. Sucks for that.
• 1:31:19
  Yeah, it it does because I liked all three of them.
• 1:31:21
  But anyway, mine, mine is after I read Fear Itself, I was just
• 1:31:26
  like I wanted. I want another story with Fitz,
• 1:31:29
  Angie and the Doctor. Unfortunately, I chose one with
• 1:31:31
  Fitz and Angie. I don't need it that much, but I
• 1:31:33
  still really enjoyed it. It's Dark Progeny by Steve.
• 1:31:37
  Everyone only talks about his first book, Casualties of War.
• 1:31:40
  So I was a bit worried going into this one.
• 1:31:44
  This is this book I would say is very say would esque, but in
• 1:31:51
  terms of like kind of violence and characters and things like
• 1:31:54
  that. In terms of the doctors, the way
• 1:31:57
  the doctor behaves and everything like that.
• 1:31:58
  It's pitch perfect characterization.
• 1:32:00
  Fitz and Angie are pretty good in it too, but they're relegated
• 1:32:04
  for vast portions. But the the the original
• 1:32:07
  characters are all interestingly evil, I guess, or a little bit
• 1:32:13
  amoral and kind of interesting to kind of to follow and then
• 1:32:17
  see the doctor had the doctor just reacts to them and stuff.
• 1:32:20
  So it's not, I'm about to say it's not bad.
• 1:32:24
  Say what? It's good, say what?
• 1:32:25
  And I know some people might be like what's good say with, but I
• 1:32:29
  don't know. I'd say it's a little more earth
• 1:32:31
  shocky, like that kind of vibe rather than something a bit more
• 1:32:37
  high body count and I don't know, disturbing or something
• 1:32:40
  like it's just it's dark. What am I saying?
• 1:32:44
  It's fucking, it's dark like this.
• 1:32:46
  Baby's being experimented on. Is that right?
• 1:32:51
  Yeah. Alien babies and people calling
• 1:32:57
  creatures and they've got telepathic powers and all this
• 1:32:59
  kind of stuff. So there's all this stuff going
• 1:33:02
  on and a lot of the hench men and all that.
• 1:33:04
  They're straight out of Saywood story as well.
• 1:33:06
  So I don't know. I like the Davison era bit, so
• 1:33:10
  I'm used to a bit of saying it was it was nice, I liked it.
• 1:33:14
  It's pretty safe bet saying is that baby has been experimented
• 1:33:17
  on given the cover as a baby with an alien face and it's
• 1:33:19
  called dark progeny. Yes.
• 1:33:21
  It's right. And what a weird week.
• 1:33:26
  So I read this book and I'm probably going to watch Space
• 1:33:29
  Babies over the weekend. So that's.
• 1:33:30
  Kind of weird. I think totally that might be a
• 1:33:32
  little different. A little different.
• 1:33:34
  Yeah, well, my recommend this week is something a bit
• 1:33:38
  different. It was a gift that someone
• 1:33:40
  sneakily bought for me when we were in Forbidden Planet the
• 1:33:44
  other week. And my dear friend Rod Brown
• 1:33:46
  from Strictly Come Hamster snuck off when I said oh, I really
• 1:33:50
  fancy getting this, but it's a bit pricey for now and bought me
• 1:33:54
  Doctor Who and the Daleks. The official story of the films.
• 1:33:57
  This fabulous lavish coffee table book which basically
• 1:34:02
  doesn't really have it. An enormous amount of trivia
• 1:34:05
  about Doctor Who and the Daleks and Daleks invasion of 2150 AD.
• 1:34:09
  But fuck me, it's full of great pictures and all the whole train
• 1:34:13
  journey home, I was just turning one page after another and
• 1:34:17
  luxuriating in this technicolour.
• 1:34:20
  I mean, the pictures of the because Clayton Hickman's done
• 1:34:23
  some colourisations and there's pictures of the, you know, the
• 1:34:26
  the blasted London set with all the bricks that when they come
• 1:34:31
  out of the TARDIS in the second movie and there's long shots
• 1:34:34
  where you can see, you know, the cyclorama and the studio
• 1:34:37
  lighting and everything watching it.
• 1:34:39
  I swear they're on location. So to be able to sort of see all
• 1:34:43
  that behind the scenes stuff is fantastic.
• 1:34:46
  So if you want the story of the films, don't buy this book, but
• 1:34:50
  if you just want to drink in the visual splendour of 1960s Doctor
• 1:34:57
  Who's spin offs, then it's just gorgeous.
• 1:35:00
  Like, yeah, it's a it's a wonderful book, but a little
• 1:35:05
  light on content, I would say. Who will do me the honour and
• 1:35:11
  tell people where we are heading next?
• 1:35:14
  Go on, Andrew, what are we reading?
• 1:35:16
  Next, yes, we are heading into new territory for for our
• 1:35:22
  section of the book club and we're doing a new series
• 1:35:25
  adventure. We're going to be doing The
• 1:35:27
  Doctor Trap, which is a Doctor Donna adventure which I've never
• 1:35:32
  read before, so I'm pretty excited.
• 1:35:34
  Can I ask, can I ask you both? OK, I'm going to ask you three
• 1:35:37
  questions before we out. You ready?
• 1:35:40
  What do you think of Simon Messingham?
• 1:35:43
  His work sort of roughly how much percentage wise have you
• 1:35:47
  read of the new series of ventures?
• 1:35:50
  And are we going in on safe ground with the Doctor and
• 1:35:54
  Donna? Like, do you like those
• 1:35:55
  characters? Who wants to go first?
• 1:35:59
  All right. I've read maybe five or or or
• 1:36:04
  less and I mean like. Five or less.
• 1:36:08
  Of the new series adventures pre Jody, like like I've read like
• 1:36:12
  so don't I don't know. I just didn't survive with them
• 1:36:16
  as well. And maybe I just was kind of
• 1:36:19
  missing my books. I guess my Rangers ended where's
• 1:36:21
  my books? This is not the same.
• 1:36:24
  I also didn't like Rose or Martha.
• 1:36:27
  So I was like, I don't want to read books with these
• 1:36:29
  companions. They they they are in good
• 1:36:34
  episodes of doctor. So I'm not I'm not inside, but I
• 1:36:38
  like Donna. So she's like the first
• 1:36:40
  companion of the new series. I was like, oh, all right.
• 1:36:44
  So I'm kind of glad it was a it's a Doctor Donna story that
• 1:36:47
  we've chosen Simon messing him. He does a really good Davison
• 1:36:50
  book that's a little nasty as well.
• 1:36:53
  Could see the major. A little nasty.
• 1:36:56
  Oh, it's. Fucking.
• 1:36:59
  That's full, save with that book.
• 1:37:01
  They wouldn't be making that in the new series, I'll say.
• 1:37:03
  Oh, no more. Nisa torture porn.
• 1:37:08
  God, yeah. So I liked leader, Major face
• 1:37:12
  Leader, I remember having a good time with.
• 1:37:14
  So he's he's a guy who did like one virgin novel.
• 1:37:17
  It flopped. And then like it took him ages
• 1:37:21
  to get another book published, I guess.
• 1:37:22
  But I tend to, I tend to like him.
• 1:37:24
  He's got great ideas. He had a third one.
• 1:37:27
  I think I answered 2. How many?
• 1:37:31
  Yeah, You asked all three there. Yeah, Well done.
• 1:37:33
  No, it was Doctor and Donna. Do you like them?
• 1:37:35
  Yes he does. You won't listen to that bit.
• 1:37:40
  I was furiously Googling Simon messing up to see which books he
• 1:37:44
  wrote. And.
• 1:37:46
  I I have read Strange England and I think I might be the only
• 1:37:51
  person who liked that book. I think you are the only person.
• 1:37:55
  And I've read the Infinity Race and hated it.
• 1:37:59
  Yeah, very cool. I think there were there were
• 1:38:02
  quite a few Simons who wrote for the new adventures and and the
• 1:38:06
  BBC books range. So I get them a bit mixed up in
• 1:38:09
  my head. So yeah, it'll be interesting to
• 1:38:12
  see what he's like with the new series adventure and of the new
• 1:38:18
  series adventures. I think similar to Luke, I've
• 1:38:21
  I've maybe read more than five, but I think I dipped my toe in
• 1:38:26
  early with like the clockwise man.
• 1:38:28
  And I was like, oh, this is a nice kids story.
• 1:38:31
  I don't necessarily need to read more of the same came back for
• 1:38:35
  like the Lance Parkin 1, the Eyeless, which is really good.
• 1:38:40
  And then I think some of, I think I have read a few more,
• 1:38:44
  but they're quite forgettable and I have forgotten them.
• 1:38:48
  And some of them, some of them you've got free CDs of with the
• 1:38:52
  Radio Times I think at one point.
• 1:38:55
  So I think I've listened to a couple of them as well, but they
• 1:38:57
  were very abridged versions, the ones that they did for audio.
• 1:39:01
  So yeah, I'm not hugely, hugely experienced with the, with the
• 1:39:06
  new series Adventures and the Doctor and Donna love them.
• 1:39:11
  So yeah, looking forward to A to a Doctor Donna book.
• 1:39:15
  I mean, the 10th box is my favorite new series.
• 1:39:17
  Doctor Donna is my favorite new series companion, so I'm on safe
• 1:39:21
  ground there. I I really, really chipped out
• 1:39:24
  of the new series of benches when I wasn't getting on with
• 1:39:26
  the series. So that's I haven't read any of
• 1:39:28
  the Capaldi ones and I loved Chiba's stuff, but I didn't read
• 1:39:34
  any of the three Jodi ones either.
• 1:39:35
  So it's only towards the end. But the first thirty I've read.
• 1:39:40
  And I actually think I think they're a lot better than people
• 1:39:43
  say they are. They can be very forgettable.
• 1:39:46
  Some of them are really generic books, usually written by Steve
• 1:39:50
  Cole. Sorry, Steve, but the better
• 1:39:53
  ones are really great. I've just done a book club on
• 1:39:56
  the sick building by Paul Mars, and that is a fabulous book.
• 1:40:00
  What's the other question? Oh, Simon Messingham.
• 1:40:04
  Yeah, I've, I've read all of his work.
• 1:40:05
  Strange England. Maybe we'll do that one day.
• 1:40:07
  Andrew. You can tell me where I'm going
• 1:40:10
  wrong. But he he these literally only
• 1:40:14
  in two directions. It's usually really great or
• 1:40:17
  terrible for me. So yeah, Strange England and the
• 1:40:19
  Infinity Race. Tomb of Valdemar is.
• 1:40:25
  Oh, that's. Right past Doctor Adventure,
• 1:40:29
  Zeta Majors, a really fun book. And The Doctor Trap, The first
• 1:40:32
  time I read it, I went and read my review the other day and I
• 1:40:35
  couldn't, I couldn't have lauded its praises anymore.
• 1:40:38
  So I'm truly hoping that the second reading of this I
• 1:40:41
  remember. There's a lot of twists in this
• 1:40:42
  book, isn't it? I don't think it's going to be
• 1:40:44
  as complex as fear itself, but I remember there's there's a lot
• 1:40:47
  of reversals and a lot of surprises.
• 1:40:49
  It's it's about a con man. So there's, you know, keep your
• 1:40:52
  wits about you, is what I'm saying.
• 1:40:55
  It's. Thomas Brewster.
• 1:40:57
  Oh, just when we were having fun.
• 1:40:59
  Luke, why did you have to mention it's Thomas Brewster?
• 1:41:03
  Good grief. Always.
• 1:41:06
  You know, as ever, people probably know where you are
• 1:41:09
  online now. But let's let's very quickly do
• 1:41:11
  it, Luke. At Grumpy Two EB on the Tweety
• 1:41:16
  is where you will find me. Although I have to say recently,
• 1:41:19
  you know, because you've been writing lots of comments on
• 1:41:21
  Strictly Come Hamster, but just as LSJ and some of your comments
• 1:41:25
  have been so controversial, I've been having to say it's Luke
• 1:41:29
  Sims Jenkins. All right, if you want to send
• 1:41:31
  in mail. So you'll get hate mail after
• 1:41:34
  the latest episodes. I do.
• 1:41:35
  Apologise so you've been talking about series season 10 then I.
• 1:41:39
  Couldn't believe you're honest to God.
• 1:41:43
  Wow. Listen to the episode.
• 1:41:44
  Alright, to the episode. Meet me and Middle Pertwee.
• 1:41:48
  But yeah, it's it's fine. And Andrew, yes, you can find me
• 1:41:56
  at I'm Doctor Who cover story on Twitter, DW cover story where I
• 1:42:03
  mainly just retweet lovely pictures of Doctor Who are like
• 1:42:07
  these days and promote this podcast.
• 1:42:10
  Frankly, thank you very much for that.
• 1:42:12
  Frankly, given the sort of discourse that goes on on
• 1:42:15
  Twitter with Doctor Who these days, I think you're doing the
• 1:42:18
  most positive thing you possibly can.
• 1:42:22
  Fellas, thank you for reading this very complicated book.
• 1:42:26
  Thank you for continuing to to explore Doctor Who books with
• 1:42:30
  us, and I will see you next time.
• 1:42:33
  See you next time.