Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Eye of Heaven by Jim Mortimore (featuring Dr Philip Boyes)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Eye of Heaven by Jim Mortimore (featuring Dr Philip Boyes) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:01
  Leela help. Royston was thrashing in the
• 0:05
  water, gulping and spitting salt water in gobbards trying to stay
• 0:10
  on the surface. I can't really well swim.
• 0:14
  I came alongside Royston. Be still, be calm.
• 0:19
  You are making more waves than those two together.
• 0:23
  But I can't. I have watched 3 sharks.
• 0:27
  They hunt movement and blood. We are not bleeding so they
• 0:30
  cannot scent us. Be still or I will kill you
• 0:33
  myself. If they attack us, we are dead.
• 0:37
  A huge wave smashed into us. At that moment we broke surface
• 0:42
  among a Whirlpool of fins. Their continued attention
• 0:46
  suggested they fed like hoarder whenever and wherever they
• 0:50
  could. I drew my dagger.
• 0:53
  It wasn't much, but it would stop at least one of these
• 0:55
  beasts. When the next shark approached,
• 0:58
  it did so much faster than the others, and from below I grabbed
• 1:03
  the fin as the animal surged by, held on tightly, and repeatedly
• 1:07
  stabbed it as deeply as I could. Blood pumped out into the water,
• 1:12
  yet the animal did not seem to want to die.
• 1:16
  Acting almost without thought, I struck out at the head and was
• 1:20
  lucky enough to feel my knife plunge into the creature's
• 1:23
  unblinking eye. The shark jerked immediately,
• 1:27
  thrashing, dying. Other sharks were arrowing
• 1:30
  downward, homing in on the wounded creature.
• 1:34
  I broke surface, looked around for Royston.
• 1:38
  I found him clinging feebly to the shattered remains of the
• 1:40
  deck rail. The moon had moved further
• 1:44
  across the sky. How much time had passed?
• 1:47
  Where was the ship? Had anyone noticed we were
• 1:50
  missing? Then I saw a sail, black against
• 1:53
  the horizon. Tweed was too far away to help
• 1:57
  us. We were on our own at that
• 2:00
  moment. A wave larger than most hurled
• 2:02
  us through the air. A black wall rose nearby,
• 2:06
  cutting off my view of Tweed. Blood cake tentacles rose like a
• 2:10
  writhing forest against the moon, slapping toothed suckers
• 2:13
  against the black wall that was the whale's flank.
• 2:17
  I slapped Royston. I needed him awake.
• 2:20
  Leela. What?
• 2:23
  Shut up. Listen to me, we have to swim to
• 2:26
  the whale. Can you do that?
• 2:28
  I can't swim. It's that or die.
• 2:31
  Now go. I pulled Royston away from the
• 2:34
  deck rail, looped a life boy around his shoulders and pushed
• 2:38
  him towards the whale. I dived towards the head of the
• 2:42
  whale. I would need to separate these
• 2:45
  giants. I needed the whale, so it was
• 2:48
  the squid I planned to kill. I grabbed a tentacle, pulling my
• 2:52
  way along it towards the head. Without thinking, I pushed my
• 2:56
  knife repeatedly into the eyes. The animal convulsed.
• 3:01
  Fresh jets of black fluid skirted from the animal,
• 3:04
  mingling with the blood. I felt myself sinking, then
• 3:08
  rising. I shot into the air.
• 3:11
  The squid had died, and the whale had sounded briefly, then
• 3:15
  had risen to the surface. I was safe.
• 3:23
  With the fight between the giants over the sea calmed
• 3:25
  considerably, I called out to Royston.
• 3:29
  Throw me the rope, I will pull you out.
• 3:33
  I looped the rope round the fin for safety and pulled him from
• 3:36
  the water. Then together we slumped against
• 3:39
  the whale's wetback, and the three of us together drew breath
• 3:43
  while the moon sailed across the sky and Tweed sailed even
• 3:47
  further away from us, across the black ocean.
• 4:19
  The. Welcome back to the Hamster Book
• 4:35
  Club. My name is Joe Ford and it is my
• 4:39
  pleasure to introduce today Mr. Philip Boys.
• 4:43
  Hello, Philip. Hello, nice to be here.
• 4:46
  Have you done this before, Philip?
• 4:48
  No, this will be my first podcast.
• 4:50
  You're not nervous, are you? Not too much.
• 4:54
  When's the last time you talked about Doctor Who books?
• 5:00
  Ten years ago, maybe I wasn't boring my wife on them.
• 5:03
  Mr. Why? I've just ordered another one.
• 5:06
  Do you know what? Right.
• 5:07
  We we've been messaging about the book that we're going to be
• 5:09
  talking about today. And your messages were coming
• 5:12
  through packed full of substance.
• 5:13
  And I thought, this man has got something to say about Doctor
• 5:17
  Who books. Yeah.
• 5:18
  That's something to say about this one.
• 5:21
  I've got a lot of dots of e-books I cannot remember a
• 5:23
  single thing about, but yeah. Well, if it isn't too miserable
• 5:27
  for you, this experience, then I'm hoping I'm going to entice
• 5:30
  you back to read another and maybe we'll get those memories
• 5:33
  stimulated a bit. Philip, what are we talking
• 5:35
  about today? We're going to talk about Eye of
• 5:40
  Heaven by Jim Mortimer. If I'm pronouncing his name
• 5:43
  right, is it Mortimer? Or is it Mortimer?
• 5:46
  I think it's Mortimer and he's stopped now, isn't he?
• 5:49
  He doesn't write. Yeah, I haven't seen it.
• 5:52
  I I did a search for him the other day to see if he'd done
• 5:54
  anything but doesn't seem to have done.
• 5:57
  He he may have gone sort of the way of Lawrence Miles, a bit
• 6:00
  Gaga in his advanced years, but a talented man.
• 6:05
  I think we can agree. Can I ask you before we talk
• 6:08
  about the book, what is your Doctor Who book journey?
• 6:13
  So what's the 1st Doctor Who book you picked up and read and
• 6:16
  then sort of where did it go from there and collecting them?
• 6:20
  OK, I, so I was trying to think about this the other day.
• 6:23
  I think the first one I got was probably the target novelization
• 6:28
  of the Space Museum. So I mean, that's a really
• 6:32
  random place to start. So I, I got into Doctor Who with
• 6:35
  the 30th anniversary repeats and didn't know anything about it.
• 6:41
  And not long after I've been watching Planet of the Daleks.
• 6:44
  I think I saw the target novelization of the Space Museum
• 6:48
  on a market stall, and it's got Daleks on the front cover, which
• 6:54
  is a clever marketing point. So I picked it up and yeah, I
• 7:01
  can't remember what I made of it, but I was a bit disappointed
• 7:04
  by the lack of Daleks so. How would you have been, what,
• 7:06
  10? Yeah, night.
• 7:08
  Like very late. 9, maybe 10. I certainly haven't seen any
• 7:13
  First Doctor stuff. I bare.
• 7:15
  I mean I probably haven't seen anything except for Planet of
• 7:18
  the Daleks and maybe Gent like the Green Death or something.
• 7:21
  But did this like spark something in you?
• 7:23
  Like did you collect more targets after that?
• 7:26
  Yeah, so I mean, the Space Museum didn't really spark much
• 7:31
  except for confusion. But yeah, I spent like the next
• 7:39
  I don't know how many years like collecting targets.
• 7:42
  And then so I was as a kind of 10 year old Doctor Who fan, I
• 7:50
  had one of these. Like I had a copy of the
• 7:52
  programme guide like the Jean Marc Officiae is that?
• 7:55
  Oh yeah, yeah. Like the old one that had had
• 8:00
  all the TV stories, but then it kept going into the new
• 8:03
  adventures. So I had like a guide to the
• 8:06
  first I don't know how many new adventures.
• 8:08
  I mean, I probably got it somewhere, but it was literally
• 8:11
  held together with Sellotape by the time I was about 12.
• 8:15
  And so like being a 10 year old who didn't know much about
• 8:21
  Doctor Who, like the obvious thing you do is you you fixate
• 8:24
  on the monsters you've heard of. So like Daleks and Cybermen and
• 8:27
  Time Lords and whatever. So that was really what I was
• 8:30
  like going for was like the stories that had the returning
• 8:33
  monsters in like so the the invasion of my the invasion of
• 8:37
  time was like my Holy Grail as a a child.
• 8:41
  I knew nothing about whether it was meant to be any good or not,
• 8:43
  but it sounded amazing from the programme and I gradually
• 8:49
  realised this book was actually quite rare.
• 8:52
  I eventually, I eventually found like a pound in a Manchester
• 8:55
  bookshop, like second hand bookshop.
• 8:57
  But anyway. So yeah, invading Gallifrey,
• 9:01
  right? Like, no wonder that was your
• 9:03
  Holy Grail. Oh yeah.
• 9:04
  Like it should be so good. Like I keep rewriting it in my
• 9:08
  head. Like there is an amazing version
• 9:10
  of The Invasion of Time that you could do just some really small
• 9:13
  tweaks and then. After a budget, Yeah, yeah.
• 9:17
  But anyway, like so when I got started on the kind of like the
• 9:21
  grown up novels, the new adventures, the missing
• 9:23
  adventures was basically going through the program guide and
• 9:26
  like, oh, this one has the Cybermen in this one has the the
• 9:31
  Silorians. So like the first new adventures
• 9:36
  I got were Blood heats and Iceberg, which I mean iceberg in
• 9:43
  particular is not necessarily the book you would give to like
• 9:45
  a a 10 year old. But I.
• 9:49
  Don't. Know how many times that word is
• 9:50
  used in Iceberg? But it's quite a lot.
• 9:53
  Yeah, it's also like, very. I mean, it's not a bad book, but
• 9:58
  like, there's not many Cybermen in it.
• 9:59
  So like, probably about the halfway mark and the doctor's
• 10:02
  not really in it. That's written by the cyber
• 10:05
  leader himself. That's a stranger mission,
• 10:08
  right? Yeah, I, I should read that
• 10:10
  again. I, I, I think it's actually
• 10:12
  quite good. But but yeah, that was where I
• 10:15
  started with the New Adventures. And then, but mostly I was like
• 10:19
  a, a missing adventures person because I, you know, I didn't
• 10:23
  know the 7th Doctor at all. And I'd read these two new
• 10:27
  adventures and they were like, well, these are kind of a bit
• 10:29
  grown up and weird. And I just wanted stuff that was
• 10:32
  like what I'd seen on the TV and have like, I mean, I hadn't seen
• 10:36
  much of it. I was still trying to collect
• 10:38
  the videos and fill in the gaps. But but yeah, so I, I got
• 10:42
  started on the The Missing Adventures probably with like, I
• 10:46
  don't know, loads of the storm or something.
• 10:48
  And I would have picked up Shakedown as well.
• 10:51
  And actually I had Shakedown on the video.
• 10:53
  I remember my dad got that for me.
• 10:55
  But but yeah. And then so I kind of had the
• 11:01
  odd one, like towards the end of The Missing Adventures, I was
• 11:03
  picking up most of them probably as they came out.
• 11:09
  Like not all of them, but like I'd say, yeah, most of them I
• 11:14
  did get as they came out. And then when the BBC books came
• 11:17
  out, I kind of I started collecting both of those ranges
• 11:24
  as they came out. So I have a full set of BBC
• 11:28
  books. I was like still there at the
• 11:29
  bitter end when when the new series had come out.
• 11:35
  And I was one of these people who was, I was.
• 11:39
  Still sad for them. I'm still sad to this day that
• 11:42
  the Gallifrey Chronicles was the last 8th Doctor book.
• 11:46
  That was fear itself, wasn't that.
• 11:48
  That was. A banger as well.
• 11:50
  Yeah, I, I don't know, they, they promised it was going to
• 11:53
  keep going and then it didn't. But like, yeah, I was, I was
• 11:57
  really into the, the BBC book like like particularly the sort
• 12:02
  of between alien bodies and the ancestor cell, that run of them.
• 12:06
  I know that's not like the most beloved patch of novels, but for
• 12:10
  me, I was like just the right age for that.
• 12:12
  And that was really great stuff for me.
• 12:16
  I was so into the whole like faction Paradox and you know, I
• 12:20
  used to get the faction Paradox novels, like the the spin offs
• 12:23
  and yeah, I mean, it was really good stuff.
• 12:27
  And then I. Still think it's some of the
• 12:29
  most ambitious? Oh yeah, there's no.
• 12:31
  Question like stuff? Stuff like interference.
• 12:34
  Interference is amazing. Adventurous of Henrietta St. as
• 12:39
  well. Yeah.
• 12:41
  I mean, I was a bit old. I was at university by the time
• 12:43
  that one came out. Used to reading dissertations at
• 12:46
  that point, then yeah, that's basically what adventurous is,
• 12:49
  right? Yeah.
• 12:51
  I mean, he kind of, he struggles.
• 12:52
  I mean, I haven't met this for years, but he struggles a bit
• 12:55
  where he wants to kind of the dialogue and can't.
• 12:58
  So it's like if someone had been there, then maybe this is what
• 13:01
  it would have been like. This is what they would have
• 13:03
  said. All right, OK.
• 13:06
  But the imagery though the. Imagery is yeah, that's a
• 13:08
  fantastic book I need to reread. So I didn't get that for ages
• 13:12
  because I misread the cover. I misread it as Adventures of
• 13:15
  Henrietta St. And I thought, I don't know who
• 13:17
  Henrietta Street is and I'm not that interested in her
• 13:20
  adventures. Philip, never judge a book by
• 13:24
  its cover. All right, a good.
• 13:25
  Cover, though, is the BBC. Right.
• 13:27
  Yeah, very. Do you know what?
• 13:29
  Right. You enticed me.
• 13:30
  Should you come back for a second episode?
• 13:32
  We may have to look at that period between alien bodies and
• 13:35
  the ancestor sale because there's some stuff to talk about
• 13:38
  there. Oh yeah, I.
• 13:41
  Mean so so OK, so you sort of cherry pick the new adventures
• 13:45
  and then you bought So did you watch the TV movie then?
• 13:47
  So you kind of. Knew yeah, now that was the
• 13:49
  first Doctor Who I actually watched as it went out like most
• 13:53
  exciting thing for the thought. I mean, 1996, quite an exciting
• 13:58
  year anyway, there was a lot of good stuff came out in 96, but
• 14:01
  like for me, like 12 years old Doctor Who was back.
• 14:05
  It's just yeah, so. Excited Planet of the Daleks was
• 14:09
  your first, right? So nice. 93, isn't it?
• 14:12
  So was Did you miss Dimensions in time or were you?
• 14:15
  There. No, I watched it.
• 14:17
  I don't think I saw the second one.
• 14:20
  I I. They're only 10 minutes long,
• 14:22
  Philip. No, I know, but I think we
• 14:25
  couldn't. But I, I can't remember why, but
• 14:27
  you know, we just missed it. No, I, I've seen it since, but
• 14:31
  like like we didn't catch it on CV and we saw the first one.
• 14:35
  I was confused because I didn't watch EastEnders and I didn't
• 14:37
  know who any of these doctors or companions were.
• 14:40
  I mean, I'm I'm sure if you do know who they are, it's still
• 14:42
  confusing, right? But.
• 14:44
  Oh boy, that script, honestly, it doesn't make a lick of sense,
• 14:47
  does it? So, OK, so if I was to say to
• 14:51
  you then, because that means you've read a a big whack of
• 14:55
  these Doctor Who books. Oh yeah, like.
• 14:58
  What which authors do you sort of air towards?
• 15:01
  Which ones would you say? OK, that's if I, if I see that
• 15:05
  name on the schedules, I'm going to read a good book or an
• 15:07
  interesting book. Yeah, so I probably Lawrence
• 15:11
  Miles, Lance Parkin, Kate Orman. I'm struggling to remember the
• 15:21
  names of the authors now. Like, so I'm better on the
• 15:24
  earlier like the New Adventures authors.
• 15:26
  Like I know I can feel those off, but the like there was
• 15:29
  obviously there's a lot more of the BBC ones.
• 15:31
  So. So like Jim Mortimer is Mortimer
• 15:35
  is kind of hit and miss, but when he's good, he's really
• 15:38
  good. Kind of the same as like Steve
• 15:41
  Lyons. Yeah.
• 15:46
  I mean, those are the ones that I'd get really like excited.
• 15:49
  I know like people love Lloyd Rose's books and they never, I
• 15:53
  mean, they're not bad, but they never quite clicked for me.
• 15:56
  But. Two of my favourites.
• 15:58
  Come on, put them up. I I've got nothing against them.
• 16:02
  I I just read algebra revised, It's it's good, right?
• 16:05
  But. It's oddly sort of distant and
• 16:07
  cold, isn't it? Compared to the other two?
• 16:09
  I mean, I know it's supposed to be cold, right?
• 16:11
  It's about. Yeah, I'll take your word for it
• 16:14
  because I haven't read the other two in donkey's years, but but
• 16:18
  yeah, I I have. I don't love them as much as
• 16:21
  other people seem to. Circling around to Jim Mortimer,
• 16:25
  then what would if you were to sort of pull out two hits and
• 16:31
  two misses that are on Eye of Heaven, if you remember all the
• 16:35
  names of the books, what would you say?
• 16:38
  I will do my best. So Lucifer Rising, I know that's
• 16:43
  Co written with Andy Lane and I don't know what the balance is
• 16:46
  between those two authors, but that's mostly really good.
• 16:50
  I I like that some really nice world building and kind of hard
• 16:56
  sci-fi stuff. And I like a bit hard sci-fi
• 17:00
  sometimes. I'm trying to remember what are
• 17:03
  the books he did so like. Blood heat.
• 17:07
  Oh, Blood Heat's really good. Yeah, I I should remember that
• 17:10
  because it's probably the first one I read, but no, Blood Heat's
• 17:14
  really good missus. I read Belt and Pist again
• 17:20
  recently and that is and that came out the same year as Eye of
• 17:24
  Heaven. And the they'll the same author
• 17:27
  in the same year is mind boggling because they could not
• 17:31
  be more different, OK. I've got a theory that he's
• 17:34
  putting all of this effort into this book and just walked off
• 17:37
  belt. Oh, there you go.
• 17:38
  Sorry for the ache, Dr. I don't know.
• 17:40
  I don't he doesn't seem to get the 8th.
• 17:43
  Like we'll talk about character for Eye of Heaven, but like his
• 17:47
  Eighth Doctor and Sam kind of like he doesn't seem to know who
• 17:52
  they are. And I know a lot of authors had
• 17:54
  that problem at that time, but but yeah, it didn't do.
• 17:58
  It was a slog. You know what he suffers from?
• 18:01
  Jim Walsmer. He suffers from that thing that
• 18:04
  was prevalent in both the New Adventures and the 8th Doctor
• 18:07
  books of that they they think making it making the, the, the
• 18:13
  scale and the scope of the book so big.
• 18:16
  So in Bell Tempest, this whole planet is being destroyed,
• 18:19
  right? Yeah.
• 18:20
  What are you supposed to think about that?
• 18:22
  How are you supposed to millions of people?
• 18:24
  You can do it, but you need strong characters to anchor it
• 18:27
  right. Otherwise you need to care
• 18:30
  through the characters. And because the two main
• 18:32
  characters, and like all the secondary characters, really,
• 18:35
  none of them ring true or really spark anything.
• 18:40
  So it's just like another planet's gone, another planet's
• 18:44
  gone. Eternity weeps offers from the
• 18:46
  same thing in the He decides somewhere in the middle of the
• 18:49
  book I'm going to wipe out 80% of the Earth's population
• 18:52
  because, and I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about that.
• 18:56
  But why would you do that? It's got a really nice cover
• 18:58
  though. It's got a great cover.
• 19:01
  A lot of those new inventions did though.
• 19:03
  But like Kevin's, the opposite of that, isn't it?
• 19:05
  It's so focused and intimate. Yeah, no, yeah.
• 19:10
  It's like really small scale. Most of it's just in a single
• 19:13
  plate line. Well, sort of it does weird
• 19:16
  things with the structure, so you're not just sitting in a
• 19:19
  single place for half the book. But.
• 19:22
  But yeah, it's, it's completely different.
• 19:24
  Like it's, I think Jim Mortimer's one of those authors
• 19:27
  who just has this really strong desire to just look and then
• 19:30
  everything goes. It's like a drum solo that you
• 19:32
  just won't end and when he reigns it in, he's really good.
• 19:37
  You thought that was bad, right? You wait till you read the next
• 19:40
  chapter. Boom boom.
• 19:41
  Yeah, the other Did he write Parasite?
• 19:45
  Oh boy, yes he did. Because like Parasite is another
• 19:48
  of those. I cannot remember a single thing
• 19:50
  about it except that I've read it and it was difficult.
• 19:55
  I mean, Philip, I've already decided I like you a lot, so I
• 19:58
  would never ask you to read Parasite again.
• 20:00
  All right? OK.
• 20:01
  Why would you put yourself through that?
• 20:03
  I can't think of many others now actually after that.
• 20:05
  Because he didn't. He only did the 2 didn't he?
• 20:08
  For BBC he only did I of Heaven and Belt M Best.
• 20:12
  I think so. Oh, he wrote.
• 20:15
  He wrote one called Campaign. Yeah, I was going to ask if
• 20:18
  you'd read Campaign. I've got a campaign, it is a a
• 20:21
  mind fuck of a book. I love campaign.
• 20:24
  I mean, I did when I last read it.
• 20:26
  A bit where it all becomes panels that start shattering in
• 20:31
  the pages. I'm like, what's going on here?
• 20:34
  I mean, I haven't read. I don't think this is a
• 20:37
  recurring theme. I buy a lot of Doctor Who books
• 20:39
  and I read them. I think I have read Campaign
• 20:41
  twice, but not for over 10 years.
• 20:47
  But I, I think I was at that kind of pretentious in my 20s
• 20:51
  age and it just, yeah, I really liked Campaign.
• 20:55
  It was around. Have you read House of Leaves?
• 20:58
  No. What's that?
• 20:59
  So it's not a Doctor Who book that's an actual like.
• 21:02
  Chances are I haven't read it then I'm afraid.
• 21:04
  Go on, tell, educate me. OK, House of Leaves is AI don't
• 21:10
  even know how to describe it. It's sort of a horror novel
• 21:15
  about a haunted house, but not so it's it's told through kind
• 21:27
  of succession of layers of unreliable narrators.
• 21:30
  So somebody has found a transcription of a videotape of
• 21:36
  a like a trip into this haunted house that's is bigger on the
• 21:41
  inside than it is on the outside and just keeps oh, you could
• 21:45
  totally read it as a Doctor Who book like it.
• 21:48
  It's it could be a faction paradox enough.
• 21:53
  Is it? Is it everybody trying to figure
• 21:56
  out the trans transcript? So, so sort of it's got a
• 22:02
  framing narrative about this, this character who's found these
• 22:08
  transcripts or videotapes. I can't remember whether I, I, I
• 22:11
  mean, I'm probably getting this wrong.
• 22:13
  I can't remember the details. But it's also got like footnotes
• 22:15
  and then footnotes on the footnotes.
• 22:17
  But what it also does a bit like Campaign is this weird kind of
• 22:24
  narrative collapse stuff. So like, things change fonts,
• 22:29
  and things are done in slightly different fonts.
• 22:30
  And there's like a deluxe version where certain words are
• 22:33
  in different colours. And then they're like, the
• 22:37
  latter half of the book is just like, you know, like a massive
• 22:40
  square of black and. I mean, I love all of that.
• 22:44
  That's and we, I thought this was mind blowing when I first
• 22:47
  read it and I, I read it again, not that long, like I don't
• 22:50
  know, like four years ago or something.
• 22:52
  So that's why I'm hazy on the details, but I still liked it.
• 22:55
  But I thought, actually, this is a little bit pretentious and I
• 22:59
  was probably being a little bit pretentious for loving it so
• 23:01
  much. Most of those Doctor Who books
• 23:04
  in the wilderness years are a bit pretentious, you know.
• 23:06
  Oh, yeah. So, I mean, this is I, I, I
• 23:08
  can't, I don't know the timeline, whether this had come
• 23:11
  out before campaign or what, but they do very similar things in
• 23:14
  this kind of complete collapse of the form and the the
• 23:20
  narrative in the second-half. I came out of it reading
• 23:23
  campaign like feeling as if my mind had been turned inside out
• 23:27
  and back to front and I wasn't actually sure of ours
• 23:30
  functioning as a human being anymore.
• 23:32
  But I was like, well, it was an experience, you know, it was
• 23:35
  like a religious experience reading that book.
• 23:38
  I. Loved it when Doctor Who could
• 23:39
  do this. And this is one of like, I know
• 23:42
  that you can't do this at tea time on a Saturday for a mass
• 23:45
  audience, but I loved it when you could.
• 23:47
  Yeah. Me too.
• 23:49
  And do you know what? Sometimes I cross the line, I
• 23:51
  think, with these books, you know, like with the swearing
• 23:55
  and. Sometimes.
• 23:55
  Oh yeah, like. Stuff like that.
• 23:57
  But but when they played with narrative and things like that,
• 24:01
  it's some, it is some of the most ambitious Doctor Who, I
• 24:03
  think. And like, a lot of these authors
• 24:05
  were so young when they were writing as well, like first time
• 24:08
  wrote authors and people in their 20s.
• 24:11
  And like, they knew they were just writing for a small
• 24:14
  audience of hardcore Doctor Who fans, half of whom they knew
• 24:17
  personally. So yes, it can be really cleaky
• 24:22
  and it can be really pretentious.
• 24:24
  But it's also, it is really, I mean, a lot of them are really
• 24:28
  tedious, but a lot of them are really exciting in ways that you
• 24:31
  just can't do when you've got bigger audiences and have to
• 24:34
  make things actually appeal to people who have different brains
• 24:38
  to you. When you are writing for that
• 24:41
  small audience, though, it is almost like you've got carte
• 24:44
  blanche to experiment, isn't it? Yeah.
• 24:46
  And and and be bold in a way that you're right now they have
• 24:50
  to tick boxes, you know, if you're.
• 24:52
  Doing but also, if you might. Have a monster you know?
• 24:55
  You're 20 and this is the, you know, this could be the only
• 24:58
  novel you ever write. Like, because it is a, you know,
• 25:02
  it's got an open submission thing, a slush pile, and they're
• 25:06
  accepting people who've never written anything before.
• 25:09
  And you can write and you just want to put in all your ideas
• 25:12
  and like, you know, you've read all these other novels.
• 25:14
  You want to do this. You want to do that.
• 25:16
  Oh, yeah, I'm going to have unreliable narrators and I'm
• 25:18
  going to do stuff inside the doctor's head.
• 25:21
  And they're just throwing everything at it.
• 25:24
  And yeah, a lot of them are overcooked and a lot of them
• 25:27
  don't work. And a lot of them would have
• 25:29
  been better if they'd been written by people with more
• 25:31
  experience. But I mean.
• 25:33
  It's a joy though, isn't it? Right.
• 25:34
  Oh, yeah, so many first time writers in those ranges that it
• 25:39
  goes one or two ways. You've even got like, yeah,
• 25:41
  Lawrence Miles, who's got a million ideas, but there's
• 25:44
  absolutely the skill to construct a narrative to hold
• 25:48
  them in. And then, oh, I'm going to be
• 25:50
  mean about somebody now, Simon Butcher Jones, say the Death of
• 25:54
  Art, where he's got a million and one ideas and he just puts
• 25:58
  1,000,001 ideas in 1500 locations with 900 characters.
• 26:02
  And by the end of it, you're just exhausted.
• 26:04
  Go well, I never want to read that bloody book again.
• 26:06
  But, you know, and going from one sort of author to another, I
• 26:11
  thought that's quite exhilarating.
• 26:13
  Yeah, I mean, this is Doctor Who, isn't it?
• 26:15
  Like it's people who are reaching beyond their grasp.
• 26:19
  And like, this is what I miss in the modern series.
• 26:21
  It's also competent, mostly. I'm not going to ask you to go
• 26:27
  any further there, but I understand.
• 26:29
  Legend of the Sea Devils and. What is that the most competent
• 26:34
  or incompetent? I know, I know.
• 26:38
  Let's just leave that. But you know, it's so
• 26:41
  unpolished. Like you look at Doctor Who
• 26:44
  stuff and you, I don't maybe this is just me, but even with a
• 26:47
  bad story, you think, well, how would I fix that?
• 26:50
  Because it's not irredeemable. It's like it's a a nest.
• 26:53
  But I could see what they were going for and what they were
• 26:55
  going for was good. And if you just tweaked this and
• 26:59
  did that, and if you shot it like that, it would.
• 27:02
  And you know, This is why so many people who grew up on
• 27:06
  Doctor Who end up in TV or end up as writers because it
• 27:09
  stimulates the brain. It makes you fill in the gaps.
• 27:12
  And you can look at the early new adventures and say, well,
• 27:15
  tonally, these are really different from the TV series.
• 27:18
  But in that way, they're not. They're still a bunch of excited
• 27:23
  young people. Like, particularly if you
• 27:25
  compare it to the end of the Sylvester McCoy, these these
• 27:28
  writers who have suddenly been let loose on their favorite toy
• 27:31
  and they've got all these ideas and all these things they want
• 27:34
  to do with it and they're just going for it.
• 27:37
  And OK, it's, it's mad and it's inconsistent and sometimes it's
• 27:42
  completely inappropriate, but you know.
• 27:46
  Bring it on, I learned. So much reading these books.
• 27:50
  Like seriously. You do gentle of the weird joy
• 27:53
  of doctors, so many of them now, right?
• 27:56
  If you start with Genesis and then I go right to the end of a
• 27:59
  new series of ventures. Yeah, by the time you get to the
• 28:02
  end, you could go back to the start.
• 28:03
  You've forgotten what Genesis is all about.
• 28:06
  Although, you know, really, may I advise everybody that you
• 28:08
  don't just read Doctor Who boos because that way leads to
• 28:11
  madness. Yeah, I know.
• 28:12
  That's what I did in my teens. And then I sort of slightly
• 28:15
  drifted away from them. I didn't drift away from them in
• 28:19
  my 20s, but they weren't publishing as many of them, so I
• 28:21
  had to go and read other things and Oh yeah, they got that idea
• 28:25
  from there. That's.
• 28:26
  OK, image of you there, of you just reading up your first non
• 28:29
  Doctor Who book and going, oh, that's how good a book can be.
• 28:33
  Oh dear, what have I been doing the last decade of my life?
• 28:36
  Well, I mean, I'm not that that's not an entirely unfair
• 28:39
  characterization. I didn't only read Doctor Who
• 28:43
  books, but I did read a lot of Doctor.
• 28:46
  I mean, I'm basically just reading Doctor Who books now
• 28:48
  because like, for my job, I do a lot of reading.
• 28:51
  And if you just want something that's like low stakes, familiar
• 28:55
  but interesting, right? Plus I've got like hundreds of
• 28:59
  these things and I can't remember what happens in any of
• 29:01
  them. You really you need to justify
• 29:03
  the shelf space, don't you? Yeah, exactly.
• 29:06
  I've had these books sitting on a shelf for 20 years.
• 29:09
  I might as well go back and read them again.
• 29:11
  I mean I'm looking to ask what your wife is like but my ex
• 29:14
  partner was like if you don't pick that up in a year it's
• 29:17
  going to the charity shop. Oh no, I say that to her.
• 29:20
  She's got some. People, a little insight into
• 29:23
  your domestic life there. Well, look, let's swing around
• 29:27
  and talk about Eye of Heaven by Jim Mortimer.
• 29:30
  So, OK, you're saying these these writers come in and
• 29:33
  they're hugely stimulated and they've got huge ambitions.
• 29:37
  So what? What's Jim Mortimer's starting
• 29:39
  point with this book? I guess like what if you told a
• 29:45
  First Doctor style story, like a Marco Polo story but with the
• 29:52
  4th Doctor in Lila. But mainly just Lila because the
• 29:55
  4th Doctor is hardly in it, and when Ian is is in it, the
• 29:58
  characterisation's not quite right.
• 30:00
  Like it's mostly OK, but it's not quite there, but who cares
• 30:04
  because it's mostly a book about Lila.
• 30:07
  Which is great because as far as I remember there hadn't actually
• 30:10
  been any the original novels that had Leela in at this.
• 30:13
  Point. They didn't touch her.
• 30:14
  The diversion didn't touch her at all.
• 30:16
  Apart from Lungbarrow, that was it.
• 30:18
  Oh yes, she is in Lungbarrow. I'm I hadn't read Lumbarrow at
• 30:21
  the time this came out. But even there, she's basically
• 30:24
  cameo in, you know, she's not gone.
• 30:26
  Yeah, not like she does in in this book.
• 30:30
  No, no, this is very much like classic Leela, and she is the
• 30:34
  star of the book. Are you are you a fan of Leela
• 30:37
  as a character? Yes, I am now.
• 30:40
  So I think Leela was probably the last companion I ever
• 30:43
  actually saw. Like just based on like what was
• 30:48
  repeated on TV and the order I managed to get hold of videos,
• 30:54
  probably like the DVD release schedule.
• 30:55
  I didn't see anything with Leela in until quite late.
• 31:02
  I mean, she has all this because I came at Doctor Who in the
• 31:06
  wilderness years and a lot of it was I was learning it from the
• 31:09
  reference books. Like I knew about all the, you
• 31:12
  know, the stuff about Lilo. She's a kind of noble savage and
• 31:16
  she has this skimpy costume and that's, I mean, that's not a
• 31:21
  particularly stimulating picture of a character.
• 31:28
  It it, it's just like, really, That's a you were.
• 31:31
  Pitching that, you know, yeah, she's in a loincloth and she's a
• 31:34
  savage. She'd be like, what are we going
• 31:36
  to do with that character? I mean Eve like, I mean,
• 31:38
  obviously they wouldn't touch it at all now and she carries a
• 31:42
  knife and they consider blacking her up.
• 31:45
  At first that was the line, and then they anyway.
• 31:50
  I think Louise Jameson wishes that those photographs were.
• 31:54
  That was the only evidence of that, wasn't it?
• 31:55
  That was publicity. But but then you have that
• 31:58
  character to Louise Jameson. She's.
• 32:00
  Amazing why she's so good. I remember like probably one of
• 32:06
  the earliest books with Leela and I read was Underworld in the
• 32:09
  which they had in my primary school library.
• 32:12
  And like I haven't seen the TV version but I remember finding
• 32:19
  the the the target novelization of Underworld hilarious.
• 32:23
  Mostly for Leela. I can't.
• 32:28
  Like probably the scenes where she's shot by whatever Ray that
• 32:32
  is and she's in in love with that character.
• 32:35
  I don't know, but it was really good.
• 32:37
  I remember getting that out of the library multiple times
• 32:39
  because I thought it was really funny and it's like one of the
• 32:42
  only Doctor books they had, but I think.
• 32:44
  Oh my God when I watch this, the actual TV version, this is going
• 32:47
  to be an absolute riot. Well, I again, I didn't see
• 32:51
  Underworld for for years. It was one of the last ones I
• 32:53
  ever saw, so I knew full well what its reputation was by then.
• 32:59
  That that Jean Mark Lotfer book did you some good, didn't it?
• 33:02
  I mean it really did give you a lot of info.
• 33:05
  Yeah, like I knew, I knew I like had had like the the David Howe
• 33:14
  books, like the 60's, the 70's, the 80s.
• 33:16
  And there I had time frame as well, the the one that had all
• 33:20
  the big target covers in. So I I quite quickly had a lot
• 33:24
  of reference material, but it took me ages to actually see or
• 33:28
  read all this stuff because I was having to find it in second
• 33:30
  hand book shops and and things like that.
• 33:32
  But. I'm deviating from what I've
• 33:34
  haven't for a second, but I've got to ask you this question
• 33:37
  like, you know, the 60s to 70's, the G Mark Lofferburg, the
• 33:41
  programme guide that the archaeology are putting it all
• 33:44
  together. That period, you know, as it's
• 33:47
  all sort of coming together. Doctor Who, man, it's exciting,
• 33:51
  isn't it, that period of your life.
• 33:53
  Yeah, and like I said, like some of the stories that the fan
• 33:57
  opinion says are terrible, I was just absolutely hungry to see
• 34:01
  because I had no idea what fan opinion was.
• 34:04
  I just had the descriptions in these books and I was like, the
• 34:07
  Invasion of Time sounds amazing. I want to.
• 34:10
  I desperately wanted to see the invasion.
• 34:12
  Of time. I'll tell you whether that's
• 34:13
  terrible or not, all right? Yeah, but I actually did.
• 34:17
  Manage to get the VHS of that there was an error on the tape.
• 34:20
  It must be even visible, but the whole thing was blank and I had
• 34:24
  to take it back and get a replacement.
• 34:25
  Some people will say you got off lucky there.
• 34:29
  I'd quite like the invasion at Time.
• 34:31
  Throw. It away I haven't I haven't
• 34:33
  started my my Collection season 15 yet, so I might revise my
• 34:38
  opinion and we've seen it again. But anyway, good some.
• 34:41
  Good times coming ahead of you? Well, let.
• 34:43
  I want to hear something really sad.
• 34:45
  Go on. So the so I did a PhD like 10
• 34:52
  something years ago and I saved Planet of the Giants, which was
• 34:56
  the very last Doctor Who of what existed at the time.
• 35:00
  The very last one I hadn't seen for the day I became a Doctor,
• 35:03
  so that when I became the Doctor, I could watch the last
• 35:08
  Doctor Who and fill in that final piece.
• 35:11
  I mean, you know, you'd reached that point in your life.
• 35:13
  Your career was ahead of you, and you'd saved.
• 35:16
  A true intellectual treat to watch.
• 35:19
  I know it's the only one I have left.
• 35:22
  It's. Not the one where they're all
• 35:23
  going. Can you hear me into?
• 35:27
  The telephone probably. I've only seen it the once and I
• 35:29
  was really tired because I've done a load of other stuff that
• 35:33
  day. I mean, I don't think that's
• 35:34
  sad. I think that's desperately cute.
• 35:36
  The fact that you you saved yourself a tree for once you
• 35:38
  were done. Yeah, but then they went and
• 35:40
  found Web of Fear and Enemy of the World later that year, so it
• 35:43
  didn't even look. Please don't say that like it's
• 35:46
  a bad thing. No, no.
• 35:49
  Can you not find these things please?
• 35:51
  I thought I was dumb. Anyway, where was we?
• 35:54
  Good grief. Do you know what with these
• 35:56
  conversations I always end up going on down these crazy
• 35:59
  alleys. I'm.
• 35:59
  Going to try and take it back. No, don't you dare apologise.
• 36:04
  It's fabulous stuff. I have heaven.
• 36:07
  So we were talking about Leela. How does Jim Mortimer do in
• 36:12
  getting us a first person narration that to me strikes of
• 36:17
  dangerous territory? Because this could be very bad
• 36:20
  indeed. Yeah, he does amazingly.
• 36:25
  Like, I mean, he captures Leela better than anyone I think has
• 36:31
  captured Leela before or since. And I include Chris Boucher, who
• 36:36
  invented Leela in that. Like it's a while since I've
• 36:39
  read his his novels, but I don't remember them being particularly
• 36:45
  anything special. And I don't remember much about
• 36:48
  his characterisation of Leela, but I remembered Jim Mortimer's
• 36:51
  characterisation of Leela. Even when I haven't read this
• 36:53
  novel for 1520 years. It's really good.
• 36:58
  Leela is, I mean, everything she does is Louise Jameson like
• 37:04
  that. Not just the kind of fierceness,
• 37:06
  but the the delight she has in everything.
• 37:09
  You know, for me, like one of the kind of the key Leela
• 37:15
  scenes, like the one that I love the most is, is in horror fan
• 37:19
  rock when she's operating the foghorn and you just see the the
• 37:23
  absolute delights on her face. She's making this noise.
• 37:27
  That's Leela. It's like the contrast of that
• 37:30
  with someone who will literally slit your throat And and that's
• 37:35
  like getting that joy, that kind of childlike, not even
• 37:39
  innocence, but I mean, the the intelligence as well, all of
• 37:42
  that that's in there in a way that isn't patronising and isn't
• 37:48
  offensive or isn't, isn't anything.
• 37:52
  I mean, it's just she's so good in this novel.
• 37:56
  It's, it's obviously she's not intelligent, as in she doesn't
• 37:59
  have, she doesn't understand anything.
• 38:02
  She doesn't. She understands everything, she
• 38:04
  just doesn't have knowledge. But she's very but her.
• 38:07
  Instincts are just on point, aren't they?
• 38:09
  Like and impertinent points of the book.
• 38:12
  The characters that do understand the world that
• 38:14
  they're in are absolutely hopeless.
• 38:16
  I mean, we must talk about the sequence where Leila and Royson
• 38:21
  are thrown overseas overboard into the water, and it looks
• 38:26
  like it's curtains for the two of them.
• 38:28
  Until Ligula goes. I've got a great idea.
• 38:31
  I'm going to lasso that whale over there, and that whale was
• 38:34
  going to take us to safety. And that should be absurd,
• 38:37
  right? It should.
• 38:38
  Like you describe that this is ridiculous.
• 38:41
  Like how convenient is it that a whale and a giant squid just
• 38:45
  happened to be there and she manages so how she can steer a
• 38:51
  whale by like what? Like covering the eyes?
• 38:53
  None of this makes any sense, but.
• 38:56
  That's the reason with it, she goes up to it and goes, you
• 38:58
  know, please, I'll protect you from the squid.
• 39:00
  Take us to a place of safety and.
• 39:04
  Then it gets. Then there's a tornado and this
• 39:07
  whale gets sucked at the water spout.
• 39:10
  It's insane. You know, you ever had a day
• 39:12
  like that? You know, like you're first of
• 39:14
  all you're thrown overboard, then you're tethered to a whale,
• 39:16
  then a tornado here. Yeah, that's the life of we
• 39:21
  should say. Actually, a lot of this book
• 39:22
  takes place on a ship. Yeah, yes, we will get there,
• 39:26
  don't worry. Yeah, but because you're right,
• 39:31
  because she is so childlike, because there isn't an innocence
• 39:34
  to her, but her instincts are so sharp in every scene.
• 39:41
  I don't know, She just seems like the brightest person in the
• 39:44
  book. Yeah, and, and the things that
• 39:47
  don't make any sense, like it doesn't matter because it's just
• 39:50
  so much fun to be an allele, a bit like she's so much fun as a
• 39:54
  narrator that you're not sitting there thinking this is
• 39:58
  ridiculous. Oh, what?
• 39:59
  Oh, now the whales going up a waterspout.
• 40:01
  OK, it's. I mean people take the piss out
• 40:04
  of Indiana Jones in his fridge and the nuke but hiding inside?
• 40:09
  They hide inside the sperm whales mouth or something.
• 40:11
  That's right. Yeah.
• 40:12
  They get it. Oh, because the whale dies.
• 40:15
  That's right. And she goes, well, we, you
• 40:17
  know, we need a place of safety from the tornado.
• 40:20
  Let's get in his gob. OK.
• 40:24
  It's right, though. I mean, that was my favorite
• 40:26
  part of the book as well. I was so convinced by what was
• 40:28
  going. And that's so outside of the
• 40:31
  scope of Doctor Who, as I know it as well.
• 40:34
  Yeah. And like just the tonality of
• 40:37
  the book, it's not like that makes you sound like it's this
• 40:39
  kind of goofy, wacky, over the top romp, which it's not at all
• 40:46
  like it's quite a sort of somber book.
• 40:48
  But then you actually like look closely at the events that
• 40:52
  happen in the book and they're mad like.
• 40:56
  There was there was one sequence where this is where I knew he
• 40:59
  was really on to something more smart with, with Leela's POV
• 41:03
  where she wakes up and I think it's in Stockwood's house,
• 41:06
  right? And it's just somebody waking up
• 41:08
  in someone's house but not knowing where they are.
• 41:10
  And any normal person, you tell that third person and be like,
• 41:13
  right, fine, OK, I'll go and find somebody.
• 41:16
  No, Leela doesn't know where she is.
• 41:17
  She doesn't know what town she's in.
• 41:19
  She doesn't understand anything around her.
• 41:21
  So the whole place feels like it's a trap or dangerous and
• 41:25
  suspenseful. And I was like, wow, you've
• 41:27
  managed to make something that mundane.
• 41:29
  It seemed that suspendful just through her, her perception.
• 41:35
  Yeah, no, it's really, really good.
• 41:37
  And the, the flashback, well, not really flashbacks, but the
• 41:40
  kind of memory sequences of her life before she met the Doctor,
• 41:45
  her early life. That's the sort of thing they
• 41:47
  put into these novels. And you're like, oh, another
• 41:48
  flashback to this character's childhood.
• 41:51
  I don't really care. But it's mostly really good.
• 41:53
  Like it really fleshes her out and fits really well with what
• 41:57
  we see on screen without being kind of gratuitous.
• 42:01
  You know, they're sort of giving names to the gods and things
• 42:04
  like this. Cry uni and cry uni.
• 42:07
  Yeah. And I was going, oh, what's it
• 42:08
  going to be? Hang on, Cryogenic, because I'm
• 42:10
  trying to think in sort of face of evil terms, you know?
• 42:13
  Yeah, I think I've got it for most of them.
• 42:15
  But yeah, I wasn't too sure. Well, OK, so I sort of took a
• 42:21
  sort of middle of the book there, but like, this whole
• 42:24
  thing starts from the point of view of Horace Stockwood, this
• 42:31
  explorer who's off to what's the name of the island?
• 42:35
  Easter Island. Are Rapa Nui there you?
• 42:38
  Go rap it. That's what I was trying to
• 42:39
  think of Easter Island. I should have remembered.
• 42:41
  That's a bit embarrassing. And it's sort of it starts
• 42:45
  running, doesn't it? Because he there, he's being
• 42:47
  pursued by Islanders. Yeah.
• 42:50
  And he's got a tablet called the Rongo Rongo.
• 42:55
  Yeah, so Rongo Rongo is a So in my day job, I work on ancient
• 43:00
  writing. Rongo Rongo is an actual thing.
• 43:04
  It's a there's some debate about whether it counts as writing,
• 43:09
  but it's a kind of script notation system that does
• 43:11
  genuinely exist on Rapinui and is undeciphered.
• 43:17
  So it's an actual thing and I've forgotten it was in this book.
• 43:21
  And that, I mean, at the end of the book we find out that's part
• 43:25
  of some massive science fiction lash up because this is Doctor
• 43:29
  Who and we'll get there. But basically he leaves his
• 43:32
  friend on the island that he's gone exploring with and
• 43:36
  basically desperate to get back to the ship gets away and then
• 43:41
  we cut almost immediately to what is it 1020 years later as.
• 43:45
  He's 30I. Think O30, he's going back to
• 43:48
  Easter Island but he can't afford to do it.
• 43:53
  So who steps into the breach with them?
• 43:55
  All the money? That'll be the Doctor, but
• 43:58
  actually if I'm right it doesn't it?
• 44:00
  It skips straight to them being on the ship, doesn't it?
• 44:03
  And then you. Get.
• 44:05
  So we're doing all this sort of non, non.
• 44:07
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got the book here and the
• 44:10
  first chap it jumps straight from that kind of pre title
• 44:13
  sequence to 30 years later and it's first person narration of
• 44:18
  Leela on the ship. And essentially, right.
• 44:22
  Tell me I'm wrong. Essentially the the bulk of the
• 44:24
  book is the journey on the ship, right.
• 44:27
  And and learning in via flashback how what led up to
• 44:31
  them going onto the ship to go back to Easter, Ireland.
• 44:34
  And really the the sequence where they're back on the island
• 44:37
  is what, maybe the last 50 pages?
• 44:39
  It's not March. Yeah.
• 44:41
  It's maybe it's a bit longer than that, I don't know.
• 44:44
  But it it's so in my memory, it's the ship stuff that stands
• 44:49
  out. And then to a lesser extent
• 44:50
  stuff in England. And then the sci-fi stuff at the
• 44:53
  end is kind of a bit of a code. But there's actually there's
• 44:56
  quite a lot of stuff on the island with like pirates and
• 44:59
  then there's sci-fi stuff on another planet.
• 45:01
  There is, there's a fair bit there.
• 45:03
  Book. I do hope you were paying
• 45:05
  attention to that sci-fi stuff, you know, because I didn't have
• 45:07
  a clue what was going on there. No, I slightly drift out there.
• 45:13
  Well, if the ship stuff was sort of your favorite segment or the
• 45:16
  ones that stick out the most, let's go there then.
• 45:19
  And what did you like about that stuff?
• 45:22
  Again, a lot of it's Lila like, so this is one of the things
• 45:26
  that's slight. Leela understands ships really
• 45:28
  well. It turns out she's very good at
• 45:31
  remembering bits of ships when it's important for narrating
• 45:35
  them without having to constantly say the bits at the
• 45:37
  front of the ship. Anyway, there's lots of it.
• 45:41
  It's kind of, it's sort of a bit Marco Polo, a bit kind of early
• 45:49
  20th century travelogue story. So when I was a kid, I used to
• 45:53
  read like Swallows and Amazon's books.
• 45:56
  I don't know if you ever came across those like, so these were
• 46:00
  who wrote those? Arthur Ransom.
• 46:03
  They were written in the 20s and 30s and they're all about
• 46:08
  sailing. Like they start off on a little
• 46:10
  boat in Windermere and then the later books they go on these big
• 46:14
  like sea voyages. I mean, they're, they're,
• 46:18
  they're quite dated now by standards, but they're really
• 46:22
  charming and really good fun. Did they did they face whales
• 46:29
  and squids fighting and. They're Knights.
• 46:31
  Statues that turned into portals to another world.
• 46:34
  Not, not so much the sci-fi stuff, but but yeah, they're,
• 46:40
  they're fun, kind of like sea voyage stories.
• 46:43
  And then you've got, you know, you've got things like 20,000
• 46:45
  Leagues under the Sea where you do have your squids and whatnot.
• 46:49
  So it's, it's kind of in that tradition, a kind of sea voyage
• 46:53
  adventure story. And that's the kind of the core
• 46:58
  of the book. And then it jumps back in time
• 47:01
  to to England to find out what the Doctor and Leela are doing
• 47:04
  on the ship. And to be honest, like you don't
• 47:09
  really need to do that because you could have explained in a
• 47:11
  paragraph what Leela and the Doctor are doing on this ship.
• 47:14
  And nothing in these chapters really sheds a great deal of
• 47:18
  extra light on what's happening with the with the ship stuff,
• 47:21
  except it's a kind of pad out the word count, which makes it
• 47:24
  sound really like it's not worth being there.
• 47:27
  It's all really good fun. Again, it's.
• 47:28
  Mostly from Leela's point of view, right?
• 47:31
  So. Yeah, I mean, there's some good
• 47:33
  stuff from the Doctor's point of view as well, but.
• 47:35
  Yeah. But yeah, it's.
• 47:38
  Just there for this the. Fact that it's fun to have it
• 47:40
  there, there's a. Hint that there's a traitor but
• 47:43
  they're trying to sniff out that's trying to sabotage the
• 47:45
  trip before they even go. I yeah, I found a lot of this
• 47:49
  kind of the traitor stuff and the Richard's the woman who's on
• 47:53
  the ship that you basically don't see till right near the
• 47:55
  end of the book. This is, I mean, none of this is
• 47:58
  even necessary. It didn't really work for me,
• 48:01
  any of this kind of attempt to have the the peril of of actual
• 48:05
  baddies in this book. I I agree.
• 48:08
  And you know, when she did turn up, I was like, who's this?
• 48:11
  Oh, right. She's the sister.
• 48:12
  OK, She's the sister out for vengeance.
• 48:16
  But but it's such an unimportant part of the book that you don't
• 48:20
  even really need it. Like this isn't a book that
• 48:23
  relies on Jeopardy or like good versus evil or anything like
• 48:28
  that. It's just a character piece.
• 48:31
  One of the things that Mortimer does so well, I think as a
• 48:34
  writer, even in his less successful books, is he can
• 48:38
  really put you in the scene, right?
• 48:39
  He'll, he'll the the, the sights, the smells, the danger
• 48:44
  of what's happening around people.
• 48:45
  You feel like you're, you're looking through their eyes.
• 48:47
  So those scenes on the boat where that the storm hits and
• 48:52
  later on when there's the siege and things like that, I was
• 48:55
  flicking. I was exhilarated reading those.
• 48:57
  Yeah. Awesome.
• 48:58
  I was in. I was in that situation, yeah.
• 49:03
  And none of none of those exciting things revolve around
• 49:06
  any kind of like stakes. It's not none of it's based
• 49:09
  around the villains are the sci-fi stuff are the mystery.
• 49:16
  It's just the the events of this journey happening to characters
• 49:20
  you care about and that are well written.
• 49:24
  I. I I was very aware about 2/3
• 49:27
  into the book. I was like, OK, this is going to
• 49:30
  be a pure historical. There's no science fiction in
• 49:33
  this. Yeah, whatsoever.
• 49:34
  And I was like, how refreshing. And then they got to the island.
• 49:37
  It was like, oh, by the way, huge planets being destroyed and
• 49:41
  super weapons. And I was like, oh God, what's
• 49:43
  happening now, like. Yeah, I don't like, I don't.
• 49:47
  Yeah, we probably shouldn't move on to that stuff just yet, but
• 49:51
  it doesn't need, does it? I don't know if it'd be a less
• 49:54
  interesting, a more predictable book if it didn't have it.
• 49:57
  Be a shorter book, that's for sure.
• 49:59
  I. I I think you could have done
• 50:01
  this as a novella like you could do just the the sea voyage stuff
• 50:06
  with Leela as a novella and it would be a really good novella
• 50:09
  do. You remember those Tellos
• 50:11
  novellas that they did? They were.
• 50:12
  Sort of, yeah. I didn't have many of those, but
• 50:14
  you could have done it as one. 2000 and 30 pages.
• 50:17
  Take out all the stuff that happened before the voyage.
• 50:20
  Take out the planets being destroyed at the end of the
• 50:23
  book. Yeah, and just have those
• 50:25
  gripping scenes. I mean, it would be a perfect
• 50:28
  book for me then. Yeah, and like you could also
• 50:32
  bits of it kind of read to me, like they were the kind of
• 50:35
  edited highlights of the much longer book, like one of these
• 50:37
  big door stop science fiction novels that has, you know, the
• 50:41
  stuff in the 19th century and the stuff on another planet.
• 50:43
  And how does this all mesh together?
• 50:46
  And you have to read 400 pages until it eventually does come
• 50:50
  together. But then it's so satisfying.
• 50:53
  It it could have been that with the sci-fi ending stuff more
• 50:58
  fleshed out and more involving, but you'd need, you couldn't do
• 51:03
  that really in a A280 page BBC book.
• 51:07
  If like I don't know you and I don't know if Jim Waterman could
• 51:11
  do it at at all. Like, I mean, maybe he could.
• 51:15
  Maybe he had this this big doorstop novel in him.
• 51:18
  I've had a sneaky suspicion that his passion was those middle
• 51:22
  sections as well, because they're the longest parts of the
• 51:25
  book and really rush it. He dashes out that ending really
• 51:29
  quickly to a point where I was sort of going, Is that it?
• 51:33
  What? Like and he mentions Marco Polo
• 51:35
  in his afterword as well, doesn't he he?
• 51:37
  Does Yeah, his inspirations are are quite clear.
• 51:42
  What what did you think of Stockwood then?
• 51:44
  Because we we do see 3 or 4 passages from Stockwood's point
• 51:48
  of view. Yeah, I mean, it's OK, isn't he?
• 51:51
  He feels to me very much. So I got a lot, particularly
• 51:55
  with the England sections of this book.
• 51:56
  It felt like he Jim Mortimer rewatched talents of Wenchai and
• 52:02
  he just wanted to do that again. So Stockwood is very much like
• 52:06
  light thoughts. It's that same kind of
• 52:08
  relationship. He's this, you know, well to do
• 52:13
  gentleman in Victorian England who had these these younger days
• 52:17
  when he travelled the world and has, you know, things that he's
• 52:21
  ashamed of. But and then he has this very
• 52:24
  kind of charming relationship with Leela, and in a lot of
• 52:28
  scenes like he's the Doctor tells Leela that Stockwood is
• 52:31
  her best friend. And Leela takes that absolutely
• 52:34
  to heart. It's really lovely.
• 52:37
  So yes, it feels particularly because this is supposed to take
• 52:40
  place directly after the talents of Wenchuang, it feels very much
• 52:43
  like kind of that again, but that's not necessarily a
• 52:47
  problem. Like it, it's really nice.
• 52:50
  Like I wouldn't necessarily want to watch Talons and then
• 52:53
  immediately read this, but it works.
• 52:56
  And that's a character. He's got this dark side.
• 52:58
  Like he is haunted by these these kind of memories of the
• 53:03
  past. And Leela picks up on that like
• 53:05
  immediately, like she's she's very attuned.
• 53:08
  So like, what's going on in his head?
• 53:10
  And like that this is a kind of man who's who's tormented and
• 53:15
  like fated to die. And I mean, he, he doesn't end
• 53:18
  up dying, not for ages. But this sense that there's
• 53:21
  like, death hanging over him is, is something that Leela's really
• 53:25
  in tune with. I thought they had lovely scenes
• 53:28
  throughout the whole world. You are right in Talons, it's so
• 53:30
  charming. Why wouldn't you take that model
• 53:32
  and use it again? But there's moments where she
• 53:35
  tries to comfort him and, you know, tells him how stupid it is
• 53:40
  for him to exist in his past. Because that's his past, and now
• 53:44
  he's in the present. Just the way she thinks, so
• 53:48
  clear, so literally about. She's always in the now, isn't
• 53:51
  she? She's always in the present.
• 53:53
  Yeah. Yeah, I thought that
• 53:55
  relationship was really nice and I was really sad at the end that
• 53:58
  they didn't really get any kind of a, a coda, you know, there
• 54:01
  was no. Yeah, they just kind of.
• 54:03
  He just says, oh, they went, they left.
• 54:05
  Oh. Well, thanks.
• 54:07
  Yeah, I suppose it was the journey rather than the
• 54:10
  destination. Yeah.
• 54:11
  Yeah, the real, the real excitement was the friends.
• 54:14
  We I didn't bother saying goodbye to it.
• 54:16
  Yeah. Yeah, well, mind you go to back
• 54:19
  to invasion of time again, you know, But we do say goodbye to
• 54:22
  people sometimes. It's a bit awkward.
• 54:24
  Yeah. What about when?
• 54:27
  Oh, sorry. Sorry, no.
• 54:28
  Go on. No.
• 54:28
  Go on, I'm. Not sure what I was going to
• 54:31
  say. Well.
• 54:32
  I. Was going to ask you about the
• 54:33
  Doctor because Virgin had an an absolute role that you were not
• 54:38
  allowed to do first person scenes.
• 54:40
  From the Doctor's point of view you were, he was the alien, so
• 54:43
  you were always to see him from other characters, POV's and for
• 54:47
  once this has gone completely out the window.
• 54:50
  BBC Books have come in and Steve Cole said to Jim Mortimer, go
• 54:53
  on, go for it. Yeah, like it's just a couple of
• 54:57
  chapters and they're not one chapters, but they're really
• 55:00
  interesting, like. It is kind of homesian, isn't
• 55:03
  he? Yeah, it's just all this stuff
• 55:07
  going on in his brain, like the way he sees the world is really
• 55:11
  different. I mean, particularly coming from
• 55:13
  Leela, it's it's really interesting.
• 55:16
  I mean, there's a bit where he's kind of like, and then he
• 55:18
  dialled his sense. I I dialled my senses down to
• 55:21
  human normal just for a a challenge.
• 55:25
  It's just like I want. To stay.
• 55:27
  Yeah, I mean, I like the fact that he walks out out into like
• 55:30
  the dogs and there's about 15 different smells that he can
• 55:34
  smell and he immediately identifies all of them and then
• 55:37
  pieces together what's going on everywhere around him just by
• 55:42
  the various smells and. That's what you meant by
• 55:44
  Holmesian? Sorry, I was thinking like
• 55:45
  Robert. Oh no.
• 55:48
  Yeah, still. Stuck on towns of Wang Chai
• 55:50
  anger. Indubitably Sherlock Holmesian,
• 55:52
  yeah. Yeah.
• 55:54
  No, no, you're right. Yeah, There.
• 55:57
  It's it again. It's very much this kind of
• 55:59
  towns of Wen Chai, Ang Doctor Who's Who's in his like.
• 56:02
  I mean, he's not literally in his dear stalkers, but.
• 56:05
  I kind of was seeing that though, you know?
• 56:06
  Yeah, the way. You.
• 56:11
  Yeah, I mean, you get these like, I think it's just two
• 56:14
  chapters from the doctor's point of view, which are really
• 56:17
  interesting and kind of short. But then for the rest of the
• 56:19
  novel, he's not really in it, right?
• 56:21
  He pops up every now and again and he has a few really nice
• 56:24
  scenes. Like there's there's a bit where
• 56:27
  he's leading the crew of the ship in these sea shanties, but
• 56:32
  they're not sea shanties. They're all Beatles songs that
• 56:35
  he's got them singing. Which I don't know if I can see
• 56:38
  Tom Baker doing that. I can see Shitty Gap.
• 56:41
  We're doing that. I mean, not the Doctor, but I
• 56:43
  can imagine Tom Baker. Down.
• 56:45
  Oh yeah, like Tom Baker with a beer and yeah, oh.
• 56:51
  Man. But yeah, I think a lot.
• 56:53
  Sorry. Well, I was going to say, do you
• 56:55
  think we have to have scenes from Stockwood and the doctor's
• 57:00
  point of view? Because there are certain
• 57:02
  sections of this book where an understanding of science and
• 57:06
  geography has to be there in order for the narrative to
• 57:11
  progress. Because if you had all that, all
• 57:13
  that science fiction at the end, from Leland's point of view,
• 57:15
  what the hell she'll be like? Oh.
• 57:18
  Yeah, sort of. But I also felt like you get
• 57:21
  some of this from Stockwood's point of view, but he shouldn't
• 57:22
  understand it either, right? Like there's a lot of it where
• 57:26
  the doctors saying stuff and Stockwood clearly has.
• 57:28
  No, I like, I mean, he should have no idea what this means,
• 57:31
  but he's just repeating it as the first person narrator and
• 57:34
  like, I don't know, like Einstein, Rosen, Bridges and I'm
• 57:39
  trying to remember. What was that all about?
• 57:42
  Well. I I think it's a real thing, but
• 57:43
  I don't think it would mean anything to stock wood.
• 57:45
  So like I think those bits didn't quite ring true to me.
• 57:52
  I don't know they would work in ATV story, but they don't feel
• 57:56
  like they worked. There's a bit of a nympho dump
• 57:59
  at the end, like a lot this sort of like the doctors watched a
• 58:02
  video and now he's going to explain to them what the science
• 58:05
  bit is and then you're getting this filtered through a 19th
• 58:08
  century explorers first person narrative.
• 58:12
  I don't think it quite nails it. There was a whole, like there
• 58:16
  was 2 massive paragraphs where he was explaining the threat and
• 58:20
  the science behind it, right? And I've gotten quite good now
• 58:22
  with these books of picking out these pertinent plot points,
• 58:25
  write down notes on my phone, and then reading them back later
• 58:28
  before coming on the call and talking about them.
• 58:30
  Well, I'll tell you now that I read those notes before coming
• 58:33
  on this call and I couldn't understand a word of what I'd
• 58:36
  written down. I was going, OK, well, maybe
• 58:39
  he'll be able to explain it to me.
• 58:41
  No, because I I finished this a couple of weeks ago, so I can
• 58:45
  remember the the broad thrust of it, but I can't remember the
• 58:49
  sciency spiel at the end. Do you know, there was something
• 58:53
  I absolutely loved about this book and that is that Leela is
• 58:58
  utterly suspicious of Is it Royston or Royston Royston?
• 59:02
  I think it is I. Think it's Royston Royston?
• 59:06
  She thinks he's the tracer, she attacks him at one point, she's
• 59:10
  suspicious of I'm on the ship, and then they're thrust into a
• 59:14
  situation of massive peril. She saves his life.
• 59:18
  And then like this, respect starts.
• 59:20
  And I just like the way that relationship developed.
• 59:23
  Yeah, now that's a lot of fun. Like I think because Leela's
• 59:27
  instincts like so on point for most of the book, it really
• 59:31
  makes you think that Royston is dodgy because she so believes
• 59:36
  that he's a traitor and she like she's not.
• 59:40
  Like because you're seeing this from her point of view.
• 59:42
  Like it makes perfect sense for her to think that he's the
• 59:44
  traitor, like totally would. And you don't don't lose respect
• 59:50
  for either of them when it turns out he's not by the end.
• 59:53
  Of the book, they're working together, aren't they?
• 59:55
  There's that Siege ownership and they're they're like a team at
• 59:57
  that point. I feel like maybe Royston as a
• 1:00:00
  character, like I don't feel like I really.
• 1:00:03
  Knew him as a a character, like a rounded character by the end.
• 1:00:08
  He's a sort of. Another 19th century gent who's
• 1:00:11
  there But is that because we. Didn't have any scenes in his
• 1:00:14
  head though. Everyone else I.
• 1:00:15
  Think you know there are a few in his head.
• 1:00:16
  I think they're quite late on. But it gets a bit confusing,
• 1:00:21
  right? Because it doesn't tell you.
• 1:00:22
  It's not like the chapter title tells you who you're getting it
• 1:00:26
  from. So towards the end of the book
• 1:00:29
  you get a few extra narrators. In quick position as well, isn't
• 1:00:33
  it? Yeah.
• 1:00:34
  So it can get a little bit disorientating to figure out
• 1:00:37
  exactly who you're you're with. And I don't it feels like a
• 1:00:41
  little bit too little too late to quite get a handle on, on
• 1:00:45
  those characters personalities. I think there's one by Royston.
• 1:00:48
  They may not be now. I might just be misremembering.
• 1:00:50
  I was sort of trying to keep track of like, OK, is there a
• 1:00:53
  pattern to these, the points of view?
• 1:00:56
  Sorry. It was like Stockwood Leela.
• 1:00:58
  Leela. Leela, the Doctor, Stockwood
• 1:01:02
  Lela. And then it just was.
• 1:01:03
  Then it just did. The pattern didn't work at all.
• 1:01:05
  It was just sort of, Yeah, but but mostly Leela.
• 1:01:09
  Yeah, well, I was trying to work out.
• 1:01:11
  So you know, like I don't know if you've watched Lost, like
• 1:01:14
  when it used to be the flashbacks and they were sort of
• 1:01:16
  thematically linked with what was going on in the the present
• 1:01:19
  thing. I was trying to work out if
• 1:01:21
  there was like, is this flashback now trying to shed
• 1:01:24
  light on what's going on here. And mostly it doesn't seem to be
• 1:01:28
  like sometimes it picks up on something, but it's mostly just
• 1:01:33
  used so that you're not spending like 150 pages on a boat all in
• 1:01:39
  one go. And then in in some cases to
• 1:01:42
  kind of differ and like who is the villain and, and make you
• 1:01:46
  keep waiting for that information.
• 1:01:47
  So if you really care, but I, I don't think it's a problem, but
• 1:01:52
  it's, I, I feel like I probably an, a writer with a bit more
• 1:02:00
  experience or a bit more, I don't want to say a bit more
• 1:02:02
  skill because that sounds really patronising.
• 1:02:05
  And I do really like this book. But another writer might have
• 1:02:08
  been able to kind of have more thematic resonances between
• 1:02:12
  these these structural changes that it does, rather than them
• 1:02:16
  just being fun to do. He just had a like a
• 1:02:19
  straightforward Lillian narrative.
• 1:02:22
  You know, starts off in the pub or wherever the Doctor gets the
• 1:02:26
  money from. Then he pulls together the crew
• 1:02:29
  and gets the boat. They go through the whole
• 1:02:31
  business of the traitor. Then you're on the ship, and
• 1:02:34
  then you're on the island and he's gone, Right.
• 1:02:37
  I'm going to tell that narrative, but I'm just going to
• 1:02:39
  do it like you there, you there, you there, you there, you there,
• 1:02:42
  you very sort of Stephen Moffett, you know, I'm going to
• 1:02:44
  sort of do it a bit just to keep you interested.
• 1:02:47
  Yeah, but there's like there's no reason to do that.
• 1:02:49
  It's not. It's not in themes of the book
• 1:02:52
  for it to be fragmented like this, or it it doesn't.
• 1:02:57
  It doesn't have a purpose except that it's fun and different.
• 1:03:02
  I mean, I was starting each chapter going OK, where am I
• 1:03:05
  now? Am I in the past?
• 1:03:07
  Am I in the future? Yeah.
• 1:03:09
  And like when I read this when I was 14, I was real and I wasn't
• 1:03:13
  confused like, but I was, I hadn't read anything like this
• 1:03:17
  before. And I was like, why is it doing
• 1:03:18
  this? I kind of wish this was just a
• 1:03:20
  linear thing in third person from beginning to end.
• 1:03:23
  But I can guarantee if it had been that I wouldn't have still
• 1:03:26
  remembered it 15 years later. Because for what is essentially
• 1:03:31
  an uncomplicated story of somebody feeling massively
• 1:03:34
  guilty and going back to right or wrong, yeah, it is told in a
• 1:03:39
  very complicated way. Yeah.
• 1:03:43
  Which, yeah, it is very Steven Moffat, isn't it?
• 1:03:46
  Like. It's not that sort of thing.
• 1:03:48
  So you know. I I do like that sort of thing.
• 1:03:51
  If you, if you're going to tell a simple story, why not tell it
• 1:03:54
  in a way that's interesting to. And then that like, yeah, I
• 1:03:59
  guess in with Steven Moffat a lot of the time, particularly
• 1:04:02
  like his comedy work, like that's to set up a punchline.
• 1:04:06
  It's like there is an actual reason within the structure of
• 1:04:09
  the story why it has to be told in this way to kind of like to
• 1:04:15
  give you the pay off. Whereas this doesn't really have
• 1:04:18
  a pay off. It doesn't really have a a
• 1:04:19
  reason for this structure other than the fact that Jim Mortimer
• 1:04:22
  wanted to do it like this. And that's that's fine.
• 1:04:26
  It's just. Maybe you needed a strong editor
• 1:04:28
  though to go right. OK, great, you do it that way.
• 1:04:31
  But why? Yeah.
• 1:04:34
  Like, give me a reason and we ain't going to do it.
• 1:04:37
  You could do some, I mean, maybe this book doesn't need more
• 1:04:40
  ideas right in the science fiction section, but maybe you
• 1:04:43
  could have done something in there that like not even
• 1:04:45
  explicit, just something in the themes that would make you think
• 1:04:49
  there's like that's why this book is so fragmented.
• 1:04:52
  And maybe it's there. I missed it but I don't think
• 1:04:56
  it's there. What I would say, and correct me
• 1:04:59
  if you think I'm wrong, I don't think this is a book to read.
• 1:05:04
  I think this is a book to experience because those point
• 1:05:08
  of view scenes are so like I was.
• 1:05:13
  I was there in those scenes. Really the narrative I didn't
• 1:05:17
  really care about, to be honest with you, the poem I didn't
• 1:05:20
  really care about. I was just, I just cared about
• 1:05:22
  the moment I was in at that point.
• 1:05:24
  Yeah, exactly. It's not, it's not AI mean.
• 1:05:27
  It's a story. There's a story there, but you
• 1:05:29
  don't care about the story. And again, that makes it sound
• 1:05:31
  like a bad book. It's not.
• 1:05:33
  It's a really good book. It's just not about the story.
• 1:05:37
  It's a character study about Leela.
• 1:05:40
  And so the bit and when it's doing the character study of
• 1:05:45
  Leela, you are there, you are in Leela's head and it is
• 1:05:49
  wonderful. It's really, really nails
• 1:05:52
  everything. And it doesn't matter that the
• 1:05:55
  story is slight and that it's told in a slightly pretentious
• 1:05:59
  way that it doesn't need to be, or that some of the stuff
• 1:06:03
  doesn't make a whole lot of sense because that's not the
• 1:06:06
  point of the book. The point of the book is to get
• 1:06:08
  inside Leela's head, and he absolutely nails that Perfectly
• 1:06:11
  do. You know, interestingly, all
• 1:06:13
  those things you said there about where it doesn't matter,
• 1:06:15
  this doesn't make sense and all of that.
• 1:06:17
  In any other book that would be an issue for me.
• 1:06:19
  Well, no, that ain't good enough.
• 1:06:21
  All right. The science at the end is
• 1:06:22
  wobbly. It ends too quickly.
• 1:06:25
  It's got a non linear narrative that makes no sense.
• 1:06:28
  But because I was enjoying the those individual scenes so much,
• 1:06:31
  I was like, yeah, Oh well. Yeah, you don't care.
• 1:06:34
  Because something didn't he? Something.
• 1:06:35
  Something in the writing style. Yeah, it's a really well written
• 1:06:41
  book. Like a lot of, you know, with a
• 1:06:45
  Doctor Who's book, you can, you can tell a really good story and
• 1:06:48
  quite in a really kind of imaginative and and kind of
• 1:06:54
  punchy way. Or more often you get like a a
• 1:06:57
  pretty good story with perfectly serviceable writing.
• 1:07:03
  And this one just happens to be, you know, it's a really good
• 1:07:06
  character piece with, I mean, it's not like it's not going to
• 1:07:09
  win any literary awards, but by the standards of Doctor Who
• 1:07:12
  books, it's really well written. But you're there, you, you know,
• 1:07:16
  you're not losing interest for the most part.
• 1:07:18
  You, you are there in those scenes.
• 1:07:21
  You're enjoying it. It's written really nicely.
• 1:07:23
  I mean, even in Doctor Who times, I'm not sure if we're in
• 1:07:25
  Booker Prize territory, but you know, maybe, you know, maybe an
• 1:07:29
  A+ if you were a scholar, but. It's memorable, it keeps you
• 1:07:33
  engaged. There's some some really nice
• 1:07:37
  scenes. There's not necessarily some
• 1:07:39
  like striking turns a phrase or anything like that, but it it
• 1:07:43
  does what it has to do for the kind of book that it is.
• 1:07:48
  I want to ask you now then about something that you suggested
• 1:07:51
  that we talk about. And I thought this is really
• 1:07:54
  interesting because people don't usually ask me to talk about
• 1:07:58
  controversial subjects, but there is a depiction of an
• 1:08:04
  indigenous population on Easter Island which could, viewed
• 1:08:10
  through the lens of the modern day, be considered problematic.
• 1:08:15
  Yeah. And I want to start by saying
• 1:08:18
  that I don't think this is malicious and I, I don't think
• 1:08:23
  it's necessarily particularly out of step with general kind of
• 1:08:31
  attitudes of like 1998. If anything, it just shows maybe
• 1:08:35
  like how much more attuned we are to this sort of thing now
• 1:08:39
  than we were then. It also probably shows, I mean,
• 1:08:43
  just from my background because I work on, I mean, I'm an
• 1:08:47
  archaeologist, so I work on like different cultures and and
• 1:08:52
  things like that, that personally I'm more attuned to
• 1:08:55
  that sort of thing. But it is a little bit, it did
• 1:08:59
  kind of make me go, oh, I don't think I kind of wish it wasn't
• 1:09:03
  like that. So I think we should say what it
• 1:09:05
  actually is, which is that for a start, you've got these this
• 1:09:09
  kind of native population on Easter Island, Rapanui.
• 1:09:12
  And mostly, I mean, so for a start, you don't really see much
• 1:09:18
  from their points of view. Like the book moves between
• 1:09:22
  different first person narratives, none of which are an
• 1:09:26
  indigenous population. And that, I mean, maybe that's
• 1:09:31
  not what they would do now, but for the story it's telling, that
• 1:09:35
  doesn't seem particularly egregious.
• 1:09:37
  The trouble is you then start getting into this kind of
• 1:09:40
  ancient aliens territory, which is not unknown ground for Doctor
• 1:09:46
  Who. It's absolutely threaded through
• 1:09:48
  Doctor Who, but it is a little bit of a problem.
• 1:09:50
  There's there's a lot of so there's a lot of scholars out
• 1:09:57
  there, archaeologists who do kind of fight against this kind
• 1:10:00
  of stuff in popular media because by saying, oh, you know,
• 1:10:04
  like this indigenous cultures achievements, actually it was
• 1:10:08
  aliens. It's a little bit, you know,
• 1:10:11
  it's quite it's a problem and it in some places it does kind of
• 1:10:15
  feed into kind of like far right talking points, narratives and
• 1:10:19
  stuff that is a bit unsavoury. And you know, most of the people
• 1:10:23
  who were playing with these stories are not doing that.
• 1:10:25
  I do want to be clear, like I don't think that's what's going
• 1:10:28
  on here. But as a kind of feature like,
• 1:10:32
  oh, these their island heads are actually Felix of an an alien
• 1:10:37
  civilization. Partly is that's a little bit
• 1:10:40
  problematic, but it's also kind of a bit obvious.
• 1:10:42
  And I don't, I don't know what what actually I think is the
• 1:10:46
  problem with this, this book or I mean, it's it is a yeah.
• 1:10:51
  The thing that kind of makes you wince is that it's not about the
• 1:10:55
  Easter Island heads particularly.
• 1:10:57
  It's that the population on this island that kind of carries for
• 1:11:01
  alien DNA. So you've got sort of actually
• 1:11:05
  the indigenous population on this island, they're not really
• 1:11:09
  human properly. They're sort of not quite human.
• 1:11:14
  Yeah. And it's, and again, it's not
• 1:11:17
  malicious, it's not done in a way that is offensive.
• 1:11:22
  It doesn't really make these sort of connections, but you
• 1:11:26
  know it just. You could tell the story without
• 1:11:28
  that being the case. It doesn't need to be there like
• 1:11:31
  it. It doesn't and it's.
• 1:11:34
  Still problematic if the statues were just portals.
• 1:11:36
  Just that. Yeah.
• 1:11:38
  And the danger is something to do with that.
• 1:11:41
  It's still taking. Away.
• 1:11:42
  Yeah, there is still an issue, but it's not.
• 1:11:44
  It's less. It's no worse than any other
• 1:11:48
  Doctor Who story that has the that sort of thing.
• 1:11:51
  And, you know, I don't want to be like prudish, not prudish,
• 1:11:56
  but you know what I mean? It's just, it's just a bit of
• 1:11:58
  fun at the end of the day. But these things do have
• 1:12:01
  consequences. And I'm not saying, oh, we
• 1:12:04
  should go out and burn this book.
• 1:12:05
  We shouldn't enjoy this book. I really like this book.
• 1:12:07
  I just feel that that's a little bit unfortunate.
• 1:12:11
  And they probably, you know, they wouldn't do it that way
• 1:12:13
  now, and that's probably a good thing.
• 1:12:16
  At the start of the book where he is running away, obviously
• 1:12:21
  the statues are moving, aren't they?
• 1:12:22
  They're, they're a bit like ogre in the Stones of Blood, you
• 1:12:25
  know? They're Yeah, exactly.
• 1:12:26
  You know, flying across the the Cliff top watching him and it's
• 1:12:30
  an arresting image. Of yeah.
• 1:12:32
  How do you say it? Is it?
• 1:12:34
  Moai. I mean, that's how I would say
• 1:12:37
  it, but I I don't have any inside information on the actual
• 1:12:40
  Polynesian pronunciation. He's barely got away with his
• 1:12:42
  life. He's on the ship and it's
• 1:12:44
  leaving the island and the statues are just watching
• 1:12:47
  silently on the Clifford. That's really an arresting
• 1:12:49
  image, and there's no hint at that point that the populace
• 1:12:53
  there are aliens or, you know, I.
• 1:12:58
  Mean they're not aliens, they're they're sort of like.
• 1:13:01
  They've taken on the. Human carriers for aliens.
• 1:13:04
  It's a bit weird. It doesn't need to.
• 1:13:06
  Doesn't need to be there. It doesn't.
• 1:13:08
  Really. So they're to be feared as well,
• 1:13:10
  aren't they? They're, they're, they're
• 1:13:12
  different. They're I don't know, it is a
• 1:13:15
  bit, yes. But a lot of that is coming from
• 1:13:17
  the point of like the first person narration of 19th century
• 1:13:20
  explorers. So in that sense I have less of
• 1:13:24
  a problem with that because the attitudes of the day were like
• 1:13:27
  that so. You know, I've heard that said
• 1:13:29
  about Taliswan Chang as well, though, that that unfortunate
• 1:13:33
  view of the Chinese in that is filtered through so many 19th
• 1:13:37
  century characters that that's OK.
• 1:13:40
  No, no, that's not OK. You.
• 1:13:42
  Know no, I mean not when it comes out of the doctor as.
• 1:13:44
  Well, well, exactly. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:13:47
  But yeah, I don't want to. I mean, I'm not trying to bang a
• 1:13:49
  drum and say like. It's worth talking about though.
• 1:13:53
  It is. It's one of the the things in
• 1:13:56
  the book that doesn't quite work.
• 1:13:57
  And I feel like at the end of the book it slightly unravels in
• 1:14:03
  in various ways. And this is.
• 1:14:05
  I agree. One of them.
• 1:14:08
  I, I said to you that I thought that Doctor Who came along at
• 1:14:11
  the end of the book and sort of spoiled the book.
• 1:14:14
  I was having so much fun on the ship, you know, Leela catching
• 1:14:17
  fish and riding whales and you know the is it the Peruvian
• 1:14:23
  pirates attacking and all that stuff.
• 1:14:26
  I was loving all of that, all the historical stuff.
• 1:14:29
  Then when all the techno Babble came, I felt as if I was in sort
• 1:14:32
  of Star Trek territory. Yeah, it felt very first doctor
• 1:14:38
  to me. Again, I've said this about the
• 1:14:39
  kind of the journey narrative, but I also thought the science
• 1:14:41
  stuff. I don't know quite I can't put
• 1:14:43
  my finger on exactly what it is about it that felt first
• 1:14:47
  Doctorate, but the sort of they they go to this alien world and
• 1:14:50
  there's no one around and are sort of wandering through the
• 1:14:53
  remains of this this dead civilisation.
• 1:14:59
  It feels a bit kind of Narnier as well, actually.
• 1:15:01
  Like like the Magician's Nephew, I think.
• 1:15:06
  The one I don't know if you've threatened, but.
• 1:15:09
  That I have read but when I was younger.
• 1:15:11
  Yeah, yeah, me too. I haven't read it recently, but
• 1:15:13
  you know, when they they go through a portal and they end up
• 1:15:15
  in this kind of dead world and there's no one around it, It's
• 1:15:18
  sort of a bit like that. It's not bad stuff.
• 1:15:21
  It's just it doesn't really gel very well with the rest of the
• 1:15:26
  book. And, you know, sometimes it's
• 1:15:29
  good to have things that that kind of arrest you and and
• 1:15:33
  contrast with what's going on in the book.
• 1:15:34
  I mean, that is kind of what Doctor Who does.
• 1:15:36
  Is it? It throws something incongruous
• 1:15:39
  into these historical or science fictional narratives and says,
• 1:15:42
  well, what happens now? But.
• 1:15:44
  I don't know it's. Just not as interesting.
• 1:15:48
  It's very last minute, like 100% disquire an atmosphere,
• 1:15:51
  absolutely 0% narrative cohesion.
• 1:15:55
  Yeah, it it, This is why I said earlier like there's a a kind of
• 1:15:59
  a 506 hundred page version of this novel that has all of that
• 1:16:03
  sci-fi stuff that really works, but it needs fleshing out in a
• 1:16:08
  way that needs integrating better into what goes before.
• 1:16:14
  It's very much kind of like, here's the journey bit and now
• 1:16:17
  here's the sci-fi bits. Yeah, and and the sci-fi bit
• 1:16:22
  just isn't as interesting. It's fine, but it's not
• 1:16:26
  exciting. I would never deface a book, but
• 1:16:29
  part of me just also RIP out all the Leila bits, you know, every
• 1:16:32
  single Leila bit and then put it in order.
• 1:16:34
  So it's, it's in a linear order and then just read the book as
• 1:16:38
  that. I wonder how it would how it
• 1:16:40
  would feel. Or would I suddenly have lots of
• 1:16:42
  bits and sort of gaps in the narrative?
• 1:16:45
  I think it would be a less interesting book, but it might
• 1:16:49
  be a more satisfying book. Yeah.
• 1:16:52
  I don't know. As a novella, I think this would
• 1:16:55
  this would rock as a as a Leela centered novella.
• 1:16:59
  But I do think that if you are going to have science fiction
• 1:17:02
  and you are going to have to deliver historical information,
• 1:17:05
  you do need other perspectives in order to.
• 1:17:08
  Yeah, it does suffer a bit from like, now we're wandering
• 1:17:11
  through a museum and watching the the exhibits that will
• 1:17:15
  explain the back story to us. And as a reader, you don't
• 1:17:18
  really care about the back story and the characters who are
• 1:17:21
  feeding it to you don't really care about the back story.
• 1:17:26
  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to fix it
• 1:17:28
  really. But just say, for those readers
• 1:17:30
  who go to the end, you go, well, where the hell is the back
• 1:17:32
  story, you know? Yeah, where's the science
• 1:17:34
  fiction in this? That's not you and me though, is
• 1:17:36
  it? I like science fiction.
• 1:17:39
  I do want to say I'd love a bit of science fiction, but.
• 1:17:42
  I've recently read Interferers by Lawrence Miles.
• 1:17:45
  That was astonishing science fiction, but with massive ideas
• 1:17:49
  in it. And like the way interference
• 1:17:53
  kind of mixes between the, the dust story and the Earth story.
• 1:17:59
  You could do that with this. That's the kind of thing I mean,
• 1:18:02
  like where you have these these very different plot strands and
• 1:18:08
  they they kind of switch from 1:00 to the other and back
• 1:18:11
  again. But they come together in a
• 1:18:12
  satisfying way. And thematically they work
• 1:18:15
  together. And there's a version of our Eye
• 1:18:19
  of Heaven that is that, but it isn't the the version that's
• 1:18:26
  published. There's actually, there's a,
• 1:18:28
  there's a thread in interference that explains that perfectly.
• 1:18:31
  It's the whole thing about the remembrance tanks, yeah.
• 1:18:34
  And you're introduced to that character that you don't know
• 1:18:36
  his fits, but everyone's sort of remembering him a little bit.
• 1:18:39
  And you don't find out about the remembrance tanks until after
• 1:18:43
  the reveal of who bit stroke code is in that book, right.
• 1:18:47
  And then it twice thematically into the whole thing about
• 1:18:52
  patterns influencing people and how we remember people.
• 1:18:56
  It's so sophisticatedly done. And I'm not saying there's no
• 1:19:00
  sophistication in this book. Like as we have said a couple of
• 1:19:03
  Times Now, there are some beautiful passages in this book.
• 1:19:06
  Maybe just another pass or a further editorial hands.
• 1:19:11
  Yeah, exactly. It just need there's it's one of
• 1:19:14
  those stories where it's really good, but you it's so good.
• 1:19:18
  You can just see the next level. It's so close and it doesn't
• 1:19:22
  quite get there and that's frustrating.
• 1:19:25
  But but that is, you know, it's really good, but the the
• 1:19:29
  greatness is just. That I said to you, deny that.
• 1:19:33
  I've read quite a few Doctor Who books now in the last year or
• 1:19:36
  two where I could say, oh, do you know what?
• 1:19:40
  That writer was trying, but not very hard.
• 1:19:43
  Mortimer's really trying with this book, especially those
• 1:19:46
  leader things. He's really trying to make those
• 1:19:48
  work and he does, so I would not say he's not putting in the
• 1:19:52
  effort here. No, no, no, no.
• 1:19:53
  I've got a lot of time for him as an author.
• 1:19:55
  And this I think is, if not his best Doctor Who book, it's right
• 1:20:00
  up there. It's a really good book and it
• 1:20:02
  stands out particularly among the early BBC novels.
• 1:20:07
  You know, they took a while to find their feet, and this is a
• 1:20:10
  really good one. Like Mortimer, is is one of the
• 1:20:15
  best authors, and he's showing it here.
• 1:20:18
  But he's not the absolute top tier.
• 1:20:22
  As he can be yeah I mean you had a couple of books come out
• 1:20:26
  didn't you? You had this the witch hunters,
• 1:20:29
  the holler like they when they got it right with the past
• 1:20:32
  doctor adventures, suddenly they were like doing 1 banger after
• 1:20:35
  another. But yeah, right, we did I.
• 1:20:37
  Haven't gone back to those early past Doctor adventures very much
• 1:20:41
  and I should because I remember really enjoying some of them and
• 1:20:44
  maybe it's because I hadn't read that many Doctor Who books back
• 1:20:47
  then. Like I think.
• 1:20:50
  I think the past Doctor adventures were stronger than
• 1:20:52
  the 8th Doctor adventures at the beginning.
• 1:20:55
  I don't disagree with that. I think the 8th Doctor books
• 1:20:58
  found their way. Yeah, they definitely did.
• 1:21:00
  Like I said, like, great. Stuff.
• 1:21:02
  But maybe like the second tranche of them, I'm not very
• 1:21:05
  good on the behind the scenes stuff, but I think when Steve
• 1:21:07
  Cole took over as the editor and you got the kind of the faction
• 1:21:12
  paradox. But that stuff, as I said, I
• 1:21:14
  really enjoyed, but it took a little while to get there.
• 1:21:18
  Whereas I think the past Doctor stuff was stronger out of the
• 1:21:21
  gates, but didn't reach the heights that the 8th Doctor
• 1:21:24
  stuff did later on. It was almost like the missing
• 1:21:27
  adventures, which could be hit and miss, but could really hit.
• 1:21:30
  They thought of like had tried the formula and a lot of those
• 1:21:34
  writers jumped across to the past doctors and they still knew
• 1:21:38
  what they were doing. Now you know they they were in
• 1:21:40
  their flow. Yeah, I think it doesn't help
• 1:21:43
  actually looking back on these books with like 25 years
• 1:21:48
  perspective. The early ones have such
• 1:21:50
  terrible covers though. They're so nondescript, like
• 1:21:53
  trying to like like the Murder Game, for example.
• 1:21:57
  I can't, I remember. I really enjoyed that.
• 1:22:00
  And I don't know whether that's because I haven't read that
• 1:22:04
  much. I genuinely don't know whether
• 1:22:06
  that's a good book. I haven't read it in probably
• 1:22:09
  over 20 years, but there's so little to latch onto.
• 1:22:12
  Like to help stimulate your memory.
• 1:22:15
  It's got a yellow shark on the like.
• 1:22:18
  OK. What have you got against
• 1:22:20
  Swirly? I've got whirlpools.
• 1:22:23
  I I really liked the Alistair person I was.
• 1:22:29
  That's my Doctor Who art style. I love that.
• 1:22:31
  But, and I've got nothing against them, it just doesn't
• 1:22:34
  stimulate a great deal in the the kind of memory they, it
• 1:22:38
  makes them feel, I think more, more nondescripts and more kind
• 1:22:43
  of run-of-the-mill than they actually are.
• 1:22:45
  And they get better, particularly the very early
• 1:22:47
  ones. They all look the same, don't
• 1:22:49
  they? Because they all have Whirlpool.
• 1:22:51
  I mean, when Black Sheep covers here that they could be great.
• 1:22:55
  Like one of my favourites is Year of Intelligent Tigers and
• 1:22:59
  it's just an eye with Paul Mcgahn reflecting in it, but
• 1:23:01
  it's so vivid. Yeah, a picture.
• 1:23:04
  But yeah, the doctor and companion in those Alastair
• 1:23:07
  Pearson artworks. Gorgeous.
• 1:23:12
  Yeah, no. And actually a lot of the the
• 1:23:16
  Colin Howard on the the VHS is as well is really nice towards
• 1:23:19
  the end of that range. I mean before they switched the
• 1:23:22
  black sheep ones. Is that why you haven't thrown
• 1:23:25
  them away? Yeah, also I I still have all
• 1:23:29
  the black sheep ones as well. I just can't bet.
• 1:23:31
  It took me so long to find these things.
• 1:23:34
  I'm not going to part with them. I I know somebody that I've got
• 1:23:38
  rid of the videos, but just put all of those beautiful covers in
• 1:23:41
  a book. Just look at the covers.
• 1:23:45
  I've been tempted actually, a lot of them, the later ones as
• 1:23:47
  well, can be little postcards of just the artwork inside and I've
• 1:23:50
  still got all of those. They'll still be in the boxes.
• 1:23:52
  So maybe we'll have a look is. There anything we haven't
• 1:23:58
  covered with Eye of Heaven? Like I mean, there was one bit
• 1:24:00
  in the climax. I just wanted to say that I just
• 1:24:02
  thought it was hilarious. And it we said a lot about how
• 1:24:06
  Jim Mortimer was looking back to Taliswing Chai Yang, but I think
• 1:24:09
  he was looking forward to horror fan rock a little bit as well.
• 1:24:12
  Because the bit where Leila confronted Miss Richards, he
• 1:24:16
  said, you know, I'm going to cut out your heart.
• 1:24:19
  Oh, I mean, I just, I love all that stuff with Leila,
• 1:24:22
  especially when when you put her up against a weaker woman, you
• 1:24:26
  know, and you just see just the fire in her tummy.
• 1:24:30
  Yeah, no, it's great. Like I, I think we haven't said
• 1:24:33
  much about Richard's probably because there isn't that much to
• 1:24:37
  say, but there's some, there are actually some really nice scenes
• 1:24:40
  with her towards the end. It's just, I don't know, like
• 1:24:44
  she's just a bit of a nothing character.
• 1:24:47
  But I suppose she serves her purpose by giving Leela some
• 1:24:50
  really nice scenes. Like I, I was because I knew I,
• 1:24:55
  I was reading this on a Kindle and I knew that it was coming
• 1:24:58
  towards the end because the percentage was telling me that I
• 1:25:01
  was nearly at the end of the book.
• 1:25:03
  And I was like, hang on, there's so much to wrap up here.
• 1:25:05
  And everyone's got to say goodbye.
• 1:25:06
  And there was just that it was Horace writing a document from
• 1:25:10
  the end of his life basically saying, well, they went, I spent
• 1:25:14
  my whole life here, you know, atoning for my crimes.
• 1:25:18
  And it looks like this is all starting again.
• 1:25:20
  The end. Yeah, but I honestly, I flicked
• 1:25:23
  back. So I was like, have I missed
• 1:25:24
  something here? And maybe I had missed a little
• 1:25:27
  bit, but it does just sort of like they're all on this alien
• 1:25:30
  planet and then it's over, you know?
• 1:25:33
  Yeah, that's it. You're done.
• 1:25:35
  The Doctor's off to India now. I'm sure he had a great time.
• 1:25:37
  Let's have more stuff on the ship with Leela.
• 1:25:40
  Oh. Please.
• 1:25:41
  Yeah, Look, we have the voyage to India.
• 1:25:43
  We don't care about when we get there and if there's science
• 1:25:45
  fiction happening. Just more more of her catching
• 1:25:48
  fish. Yeah, oh, the catching fish just
• 1:25:50
  up. Yeah, that's.
• 1:25:52
  Just all of that stuff, wasn't it?
• 1:25:54
  I mean, hurrying the chocolate pudding and then just throwing
• 1:25:57
  up straight away and say you're trying to poison me.
• 1:26:00
  What is? This The dogs are just like
• 1:26:01
  showing up out of nowhere to tell Leela she's getting a bit
• 1:26:04
  stinky because she hasn't washed.
• 1:26:08
  She's like, why would I get on? 1.1 of the sailors gives her a
• 1:26:11
  look and she goes. She gets out of a knife, of
• 1:26:13
  course, and says I'll decide who I mate with, all right?
• 1:26:17
  None of you lot. Oh man, she's just glorious,
• 1:26:21
  isn't she? Yeah, it's it's probably one of
• 1:26:24
  the best, like companion characterisations in any of the
• 1:26:29
  books, honestly. It's so good.
• 1:26:34
  One thing we haven't really talked about of the pirates,
• 1:26:37
  like what did you make of the pirates?
• 1:26:39
  A bit, sort of. Again, a bit last minute.
• 1:26:43
  They are, but they're pretty effective, aren't?
• 1:26:45
  They the scenes were like properly violent.
• 1:26:47
  I've just watched the film The Revenant.
• 1:26:50
  Have you seen that? The Leo DiCaprio?
• 1:26:52
  I've seen that. Brutally violent.
• 1:26:54
  And as I was reading these scenes in this book, I was
• 1:26:56
  seeing the scenes from that movie.
• 1:26:59
  Yeah, they were. Well, let's just say it's not a
• 1:27:03
  time period I would particularly like to explore myself, you
• 1:27:06
  know? Yeah.
• 1:27:07
  No, they. Yeah, I can't.
• 1:27:09
  They just sort of appeared. They were an issue and then we
• 1:27:12
  were on the alien planet. Yeah, I mean, they're really
• 1:27:15
  nasty as as like, I don't know, cameo villains go as.
• 1:27:21
  Did you like a way of of enticing the Islanders out by
• 1:27:25
  having all of these beautiful wares on the ship, didn't they?
• 1:27:28
  And everyone came out, and then when they were all out in the
• 1:27:31
  open, they nabbed them all as slaves.
• 1:27:34
  I'm pretty sure that's pretty much what happened, I think.
• 1:27:37
  Really. Oh my word, I.
• 1:27:39
  Think I looked at the Wikipedia. I mean, I'm, I'm not an expert
• 1:27:42
  on this time period of this part of the world, but I think it is
• 1:27:45
  pretty much what happened it's. Horrific, isn't it?
• 1:27:49
  Yeah, it's really nasty. But yeah, they're not kind of
• 1:27:55
  like stock pirates. Like there's there's a bit where
• 1:27:57
  they make the doctor walk the plank, but they are a little
• 1:28:01
  bit, they're a bit more than just your stock pirates there.
• 1:28:05
  And they do feel a little bit more grounded I think, and they
• 1:28:08
  are quite effective and brutal. Are you I?
• 1:28:13
  I do agree. I just thought so much of that
• 1:28:16
  last third, I just felt as if a lot was coming at me after a
• 1:28:20
  relatively relaxed middle section.
• 1:28:22
  Or I mean, I'll say relaxed. We're in the water riding a
• 1:28:25
  whale, you know? Yeah, but you know what I mean.
• 1:28:28
  It wasn't too much incident, was there.
• 1:28:30
  No, it's a leisurely character piece and then it's like pirates
• 1:28:34
  and sci-fi intercutting between pirates and.
• 1:28:37
  We're on dead planets and now we're in the future and horror
• 1:28:39
  stock was looking feeling guilty in the end.
• 1:28:42
  Yeah, take a little while to digest that.
• 1:28:46
  But like, I mean, compared to other pirate Doctor Who books
• 1:28:50
  I've read, I've read a couple of new series adventures, you know,
• 1:28:52
  and it was very much treasure planet, you know?
• 1:28:55
  Yeah, yeah, it's not that. It's you could have had
• 1:29:00
  actually, if you were going to do just a historical version of
• 1:29:03
  this, that pirates would have been absolutely fine as as your
• 1:29:06
  kind of episode 4 villains and and that would have been fine.
• 1:29:13
  It may be, like I said, it would be a less interesting and
• 1:29:16
  memorable book. It might be a more coherent
• 1:29:18
  book, I think. I would prefer that I would
• 1:29:21
  ditch all of the sci-fi. I would have Alexander alive
• 1:29:26
  like he is. And I mean the bit where they
• 1:29:30
  say, well, you've returned to the island, here he is.
• 1:29:33
  And then they slit his throat. I was like, Oh my word, there's
• 1:29:36
  your punishment. It was horrible, but I think I
• 1:29:42
  do think there is a way that, but then I feel that about
• 1:29:44
  pretty much every new series historical where they throw in
• 1:29:48
  an alien. Yeah.
• 1:29:51
  That there's another version of it and you maybe it's pointless
• 1:29:54
  going down that route of, well, if I was doing this, it would be
• 1:29:57
  like this. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:29:59
  And I think this book kind of does have its cake and eat it.
• 1:30:04
  Like as we've said, it's sort of like 90% a pure historical and
• 1:30:11
  and you could just leave it at that.
• 1:30:14
  But I guess that's not the writer that Jim Mortimer is.
• 1:30:18
  He had another idea and he's just going to throw that in.
• 1:30:20
  And and yeah, like I said, maybe being just a pure historical
• 1:30:25
  would be a more more coherent and satisfactory book.
• 1:30:30
  But I'm kind of in a way, I'm glad that it's not a more
• 1:30:33
  coherent and satisfying book. You said that you read Bill
• 1:30:38
  Tempest fairly recently. And you know, when you you use
• 1:30:43
  those two as a comparison, you know, this book could have been
• 1:30:46
  that. Because that's a book chock full
• 1:30:48
  of science fiction, big science fiction ideas and no sort of
• 1:30:52
  intimate character study at all. And as a result, it's a chore.
• 1:30:57
  Yeah, it's borderline unreadable.
• 1:31:01
  I mean, I, yeah, it could have been that.
• 1:31:06
  It isn't that. And I'm, I'm glad.
• 1:31:09
  But I'm also glad that it's not just a by the numbers First
• 1:31:13
  Doctor story. Like we were talking about
• 1:31:18
  Christopher Beulis earlier. Like he could have told a
• 1:31:21
  perfectly serviceable version of this story.
• 1:31:24
  It would have been OK. It wouldn't have been at the
• 1:31:27
  bottom of anyone's list. It wouldn't have been at the top
• 1:31:29
  of anyone's list. It would have had First Doctor
• 1:31:31
  Susan, Ian and Barbara. It would have had the pirates in
• 1:31:35
  the climax. No sci-fi stuff.
• 1:31:38
  It would have been fine, but no one would remember it and it
• 1:31:40
  wouldn't. It wouldn't be something I'd be
• 1:31:42
  keen to talk about. Wouldn't have those scenes of
• 1:31:46
  Leela as a storm hit, you know, grabbing hold of that man and
• 1:31:49
  then being thrust into the. I mean, yeah, it's so gripping.
• 1:31:53
  Beulis would never write anything like that.
• 1:31:57
  Sorry, Chris. Yeah, I don't know anything
• 1:31:59
  about Chris Beulis, but. No deny.
• 1:32:02
  He recently did an interview on another podcast so so we know
• 1:32:05
  he's still about. But yeah, I mean, he's not a
• 1:32:09
  terrible writer, so I have a little soft spot for him because
• 1:32:12
  he's got that novel, Imperial Moon, the sort of steampunk
• 1:32:16
  Victorians on him. Oh yeah, the 5th octoon.
• 1:32:20
  Yeah, yeah, that's, that's OK, I think.
• 1:32:23
  But it's got a character who has the same surname as me, so
• 1:32:26
  there's not many of those about. You guys are very interesting to
• 1:32:30
  hang a lot. But.
• 1:32:33
  Well, look, let's, let's draw Eye of Heaven to a close with I
• 1:32:37
  mean, I think we can sort of comfortably say you said it
• 1:32:39
  there 90%, it's very good indeed.
• 1:32:43
  Yeah. 10% it's a bit more problematic, but when a book is
• 1:32:47
  90% superb, you're all right, you know you're doing.
• 1:32:51
  OK, yeah, I'd recommend it to anyone.
• 1:32:53
  It's not perfect, but it's really good and it stands out
• 1:32:57
  amongst Doctor Who books kind of of the era, but also generally I
• 1:33:01
  think. What I'm going to ask you to do
• 1:33:05
  now, I hope I sent you a message about this and I'm not just
• 1:33:09
  shocking you with this. Now, at the end of the call, do
• 1:33:12
  you have a Doctor Who book to recommend to the audience that
• 1:33:17
  is not Eye of Heaven? Yes, and it's probably as
• 1:33:24
  different a Doctor Who book as you could possibly get.
• 1:33:27
  But I want I mean, I don't think I'm going to shock anyone.
• 1:33:32
  It's not a book that needs re evaluating in the popular
• 1:33:35
  imagination, but I really like the Infinity Doctors and.
• 1:33:43
  Tell me why. Well, like I said, I mean when I
• 1:33:47
  was getting into Doctor Who, I love the the returning monsters
• 1:33:50
  and the Time Lords and all of this sort of thing.
• 1:33:54
  As I discovered, the invasion of Time is not all that Gallifrey
• 1:34:00
  is so often a conference room and some starchy people in who
• 1:34:07
  are wearing curtains and sometimes they wear the strange
• 1:34:10
  collars. And we all know the problems
• 1:34:12
  with Gallifrey's stories. Deadly Assassin's great though.
• 1:34:18
  And this is the only, well, one of the only books I think that
• 1:34:23
  really nails Gallifrey like it. It's so full of like world
• 1:34:30
  building and ideas. It's like a remake of so many,
• 1:34:36
  you know, it's like a remake of the three Doctors, but it's not.
• 1:34:39
  And it, it's, it's, I mean, I can't even, I haven't read this
• 1:34:44
  book for ages, but it's such a fun and interesting, interesting
• 1:34:50
  kind of reflection on the three Doctors.
• 1:34:53
  And that the idea of the Doctor and the idea of Gallifrey.
• 1:34:57
  It's the only time I've felt that like Gallifrey is an actual
• 1:34:59
  place and has stuff beyond the walls of the the kind of the
• 1:35:04
  Citadel and yeah, just little things out of it that just stick
• 1:35:10
  in the memory. Like, is this the one where
• 1:35:11
  Gallifrey has an old port and it just.
• 1:35:15
  Yeah, it's, it's most little things like that.
• 1:35:18
  They just bring it to life and like, like the Doctor going out
• 1:35:22
  drinking in the Shebogans. And.
• 1:35:25
  But then the the stuff we owe which Doctor?
• 1:35:27
  Which? Doctor Philip is that?
• 1:35:30
  I mean, everybody says it's the 8th Doctor, but I never like, I
• 1:35:33
  know it's not specified. I never read it Paul McGann when
• 1:35:37
  I when I read it originally, but I'm I'm, I know that Lance
• 1:35:44
  Parkin thought of it as Paul McGann, but not as the 8th
• 1:35:47
  Doctor. Yeah, it's interesting.
• 1:35:50
  I love the fact it doesn't tell you which Doctor is.
• 1:35:52
  I love the fact it doesn't tell you whether this is before or
• 1:35:54
  after the rest of Doctor Who. This has come from the mind of a
• 1:35:59
  man who knows the Doctor Who found like debating on forums.
• 1:36:03
  Yeah, he knows so much of Doctor Who and he, he's a bit like
• 1:36:10
  Lawrence Mild. He knows the little details, but
• 1:36:12
  he also knows how to use them really effectively.
• 1:36:15
  Like it's full of continuity, but it's not like a, it's not
• 1:36:22
  the quantum Archangel. I mean which is which is.
• 1:36:26
  Certainly is not. I mean, I don't hate it, but
• 1:36:28
  it's mad. Yeah, it's it's.
• 1:36:32
  Like like Lawrence Miles, all of those little continuity
• 1:36:36
  references are used so intelligently and so
• 1:36:38
  effectively. The imagery in it as well, like
• 1:36:42
  the the the stretched out spear thing going into the black.
• 1:36:47
  That's based on a novel, like one of the target novelization
• 1:36:50
  covers. Isn't it like the?
• 1:36:52
  I don't know. He I mean, this is the matter
• 1:36:56
  wrote that history of the universe book, you know where
• 1:36:59
  every. Single.
• 1:37:00
  That was my Bible like after the the programme guide fell apart
• 1:37:04
  that the original history of the universe was my.
• 1:37:07
  You know what's great about that is you pick it up, right?
• 1:37:09
  I mean, I've got the latest edition, which is very thick
• 1:37:11
  indeed. It's got all the.
• 1:37:12
  News Yeah, I think I've got the third edit, the third first 3
• 1:37:16
  editions. Take a date.
• 1:37:17
  Yeah, any day. And you come.
• 1:37:18
  My God, that 8th Doctor book, that past Doctor book, that TV
• 1:37:24
  story, they all took place on the same day, you know?
• 1:37:27
  It's so fun. And particularly the 1st
• 1:37:30
  edition, which is written in a bit more of a immersive way than
• 1:37:36
  the later ones. And they couldn't have kept it
• 1:37:38
  up for those later ones. And I think also because Doctor
• 1:37:41
  was less of Doctor Who back then for that first edition, and the
• 1:37:44
  New Adventures and Missing Adventures were much more
• 1:37:47
  careful about making things line up.
• 1:37:51
  Yeah, I really enjoyed. That in the Infinity Doctors, do
• 1:37:54
  you remember how he depicts the Sontaran and Rutan armies around
• 1:38:00
  Gallifrey, like fingers poised on the bottom?
• 1:38:03
  I don't, but I remember what I remember the Sontaran Rutan
• 1:38:08
  peace treaty, which is hilarious, where they just,
• 1:38:13
  yeah, just lock them in the TARDIS and literally forget
• 1:38:16
  about AT. The end.
• 1:38:20
  Yeah. Look, we've been in there a long
• 1:38:21
  time. We've decided it's all right.
• 1:38:23
  Yeah, it's, it's a terrific book.
• 1:38:26
  I remember I said earlier about what's the Booker, the Booker
• 1:38:29
  Prize for the Doctor. That might be it.
• 1:38:30
  You know, in terms of an ambitious science fiction book,
• 1:38:34
  The Infinity Doctors might be the one.
• 1:38:36
  I think Lauren smiles, edges it for me.
• 1:38:39
  But. Which one though?
• 1:38:43
  Depends which one I read most recently.
• 1:38:46
  I mean most. Probably interference is the
• 1:38:50
  best. Oh OK, we have different answers
• 1:38:53
  there. I love Alien.
• 1:38:56
  Bodies. I just love the structure of
• 1:38:58
  alien bodies. But alien bodies is AI don't
• 1:39:01
  think there's anything wrong. It doesn't put a single foot
• 1:39:04
  wrong. But it's a slightly less
• 1:39:06
  ambitious story than it's I mean, OK, it's a much less
• 1:39:09
  ambitious story than interference.
• 1:39:12
  It's probably one of the most ambitious Doctor Who stories
• 1:39:15
  ever told. But it's a less ambitious story
• 1:39:17
  than interference. It's a less ambitious story than
• 1:39:21
  The Adventurist of Henrietta St. as well, but that's I think like
• 1:39:25
  I mentioned earlier, it doesn't quite work as well.
• 1:39:30
  It's it's an amazing book, but it's also a messier book.
• 1:39:34
  You sort of. You're always getting something
• 1:39:35
  amazing from it, aren't you? Laura smiles.
• 1:39:37
  Yeah, we may have to cover her Miles, you know, if you're I.
• 1:39:42
  Remember. Keen to come back, we may have
• 1:39:44
  to talk about one of these because the ideas are, I mean,
• 1:39:47
  we'd have to do an episode per idea.
• 1:39:49
  There's much one pick there, but thank you very much for one for
• 1:39:56
  reading Eye of Heaven 2 for coming on and talking about it.
• 1:39:59
  I knew we'd have a great conversation.
• 1:40:01
  Where can people find you online if you are happy to give out
• 1:40:06
  your details? I am on Blue Sky.
• 1:40:10
  I can't remember what my username is.
• 1:40:12
  It'd be, I think it's Doctor Philip Boys.
• 1:40:16
  I don't know if you search for Philip Boys, there aren't that
• 1:40:18
  many of me people with that name around.
• 1:40:20
  So you'll find me on Blue Sky, I'm on Twitter but I don't use
• 1:40:25
  it any shit. Jumped into the whale and went
• 1:40:29
  up the waterspins. Yeah, I sort of, I was a bit
• 1:40:33
  late in the game, so I put a rope around that whale and then
• 1:40:36
  just sort of guided me off to safety.
• 1:40:41
  But yeah, apart from that I'm around but mostly for sort of
• 1:40:45
  work related stuff. So blue skies where I tend to
• 1:40:49
  post my personal slash geeky stuff.
• 1:40:53
  My last question before we go is can I entice you back to read
• 1:40:57
  another doctoral book and have another conversation?
• 1:41:00
  I would love to, yeah. Oh, wonderful.
• 1:41:03
  Oh, great. It wasn't too.
• 1:41:04
  It wasn't too. No, I've had a great time.
• 1:41:05
  I love talking about this stuff. Well, I'll tell you what we
• 1:41:08
  won't do the tedious admin of choosing what that book is
• 1:41:11
  during the episode. So I will just take the
• 1:41:13
  opportunity to say thank you very much for your time today.
• 1:41:16
  It has been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:41:18
  Thank you, I've had a great time.
• 1:41:20
  It's been a really interesting chat.
• 1:41:23
  I will cut the episode there.