Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Oh No It Isn't by Paul Cornell (featuring Michael Mills)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Oh No It Isn't by Paul Cornell (featuring Michael Mills) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:08
  Once Upon a time, in the land of Hamstonia, Mills and Ford
• 0:13
  entered a panto dystopia. The prose of a lackadaisical
• 0:18
  Cornell was their quest. It was to prove for our heroes a
• 0:23
  wearisome test. They joined forces with the
• 0:27
  heroin archaeologist Benny, but her nature amiss and writing
• 0:32
  flaws many no longer the foil but now the main star.
• 0:37
  Yet the new adventures felt like a mere echo afar.
• 0:42
  Rude jokes, meta references and yawn.
• 0:45
  Some fiction awaited. Character assassination of an
• 0:48
  icon was fated. Mills and Ford read on, wishing
• 0:53
  this had been better, but pondered if it was meant as just
• 0:57
  an appetite wetter. So come one, come all.
• 1:02
  But beware all the sweeties, for these saccharine pages may give
• 1:06
  you gastro mycetes. The story begins like nothing
• 1:10
  that's gone before and will leave you wondering if you
• 1:14
  really want an encore. Hamster Book Club, The Doctor
• 1:26
  Who Novel Review Podcast with Joe Ford and Michael Mills.
• 1:33
  Bernice Summerfield. Oh no, it isn't by Paul Cornell.
• 1:43
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 1:46
  My name is Joe Ford. Oh, Michael, What the Hell's
• 1:50
  that? He's behind you or something
• 1:56
  like that. Hello Joe, Are we doing?
• 1:58
  Are we doing an amusing pantomime intro?
• 2:00
  I was. Trying to and then I forgot you
• 2:03
  don't like fun. Boys and girls.
• 2:09
  I was going to sing a song. Actually, you should can't
• 2:11
  consider yourself lucky. In the Oh no, it isn't.
• 2:14
  Hang on. Is that what it's called?
• 2:16
  Yes. In the Oh no, it isn't Bernice
• 2:19
  Audio, she sings row, row, row your boat.
• 2:22
  Do you remember? I've not listened to that or the
• 2:25
  audio version in about 10 years now and have successfully
• 2:30
  managed to exclude much of it from my memory.
• 2:32
  Then may I ask you a question before we even talk about
• 2:35
  anything to do with the book we're talking about today, How
• 2:38
  is it that when we do normal hamster book clubs, you
• 2:42
  frequently choose the audio book versions of the stories?
• 2:47
  And I'm assuming this one time when there is an actual audio
• 2:50
  book available, you've chosen to read the book.
• 2:54
  That's because you've misunderstood the difference
• 2:56
  between an audio book and an audio dramatisation, Joe.
• 3:00
  Well, thank you. I know my education will start
• 3:02
  sometime early in the episode. Michael, what are we here to
• 3:06
  talk about today? We're here to talk about the New
• 3:10
  Adventures. Oh no, it isn't.
• 3:11
  By Paul Cornell, the first of the Benny Solo New Adventures
• 3:18
  that ran from 1997 until 2000. It's starting to think, you
• 3:24
  know, that you and I are charting a particular period of
• 3:30
  Doctor Who literature in a way no other podcast or book has
• 3:34
  ever done before. Because we've covered what have
• 3:39
  we covered The dying days at the tail end of Version New
• 3:43
  Adventures? We've covered the 8 Doctors and
• 3:45
  Vampire Science at the start of the 8th Doctor run and now we're
• 3:50
  doing the very beginning. So these are all were sort of
• 3:52
  coming out within months of each other, right?
• 3:56
  Yes. So while it has been 2024 in the
• 3:58
  real world here on the Hamster Book Club, this year it has been
• 4:01
  1997. And as you say, maybe this is
• 4:04
  just putting a little bow on this, this transitional year for
• 4:08
  Doctor Who where even though Doctor Who was very much off
• 4:10
  air, everything else about it was changing.
• 4:13
  And the fans of Virgin are apoplectic right now.
• 4:18
  The BBC have got their grubby paws on Doctor Who.
• 4:22
  Sylvester McCoy is out, Paul McGann is in, and a, let's say,
• 4:27
  opening salvo of inconsistent quality sees our our Journey
• 4:33
  into the 8th Doctor books. What about the Bernie's New
• 4:38
  adventures? What's going on here?
• 4:40
  Yeah, well, it's, it's fair to say, I think as you've intimated
• 4:43
  and certainly as we've discussed in previous episodes, it was
• 4:46
  doesn't seem to have been the most good-natured handover of
• 4:50
  power as the BBC took back the license to Doctor Who books to
• 4:54
  be published by BBC Books rather than Virgin, who'd been
• 4:57
  publishing them since 1990. Two 93 Although of course it was
• 5:01
  an extension of the target license, wasn't it, which had
• 5:04
  been running for for so much longer than that.
• 5:08
  And so the the Virgin New Adventure books with the Doctor
• 5:12
  Who logo on the front had been, as I understand it, if not
• 5:15
  amazing sellers, then very consistent sellers.
• 5:17
  And that's almost in some ways more important in publishing,
• 5:20
  which is often so much of A gamble with putting things out
• 5:22
  to have a series of books that would sell near enough the same
• 5:27
  the same volumes every single month.
• 5:29
  I have no idea of the actual numbers.
• 5:32
  I from what I understand, the opening sort of eight new
• 5:38
  adventures sold extremely well because that was the first fresh
• 5:42
  Doctor Who that these people were getting.
• 5:45
  And then I think it's sort of halved, but the half that kept
• 5:49
  going kept going till the end. Yes.
• 5:53
  And that's, I think my understanding is that that's how
• 5:55
  it often works with a successful series.
• 5:57
  You know, with any, any detective series, you might care
• 6:00
  to mention any fantasies, right? There's certainly one that is
• 6:02
  ongoing rather than time limited that yeah, you will lose a
• 6:04
  number of people, but it's kind of where do you, where do you
• 6:07
  level out? What's your core audience?
• 6:08
  And the Virgin New Adventures had a very strong core audience
• 6:11
  of people. A.
• 6:12
  Very vocal. Oh indeed.
• 6:16
  The only sort of similarity I can see that I found out there
• 6:19
  are Babylon 5 fans. You know that the same sort of
• 6:22
  people that very touchly. If you suggest that there was a
• 6:26
  flaw to the grand plan of Babylon 5 stroke the New
• 6:29
  Adventures, then you will receive an essay in the post by
• 6:33
  First Class Delivery telling you precisely how you're wrong.
• 6:37
  Oh yes, it's very interesting. In the same way that, you know,
• 6:40
  Once Upon a time, if you ever dared suggest that not every
• 6:47
  story in the John Pirtley era was a bonafide classic and that
• 6:50
  he was, he and Elizabeth Slayden between them were robbed of
• 6:53
  their Oscars. You are.
• 6:55
  Not a true fan. Exactly this.
• 6:58
  And you needed to understand that anything post 1978 was
• 7:04
  probably worthless. In the same way, though, yes,
• 7:08
  there are many people at all. There are many people who who
• 7:10
  hold the Virginia adventures in very high regard.
• 7:12
  And I suspect some of that, some of that is that dreaded word
• 7:17
  nostalgia. Some of that is probably a
• 7:20
  defensiveness, you know, fear that this is the period when
• 7:23
  people weren't paying attention, right?
• 7:24
  Like I'm sure there are people whose favorite Bowie album them
• 7:27
  is heathen for the same reason, right.
• 7:32
  But it's interesting because when I first became start to get
• 7:34
  involved in sort of Doctor Who found them a little bit, you
• 7:36
  know, just sort of posting on forums after school, that type
• 7:39
  of thing. They were not not relatively
• 7:44
  long five years maybe since they since they'd finished and the
• 7:47
  BBC books still very much in full swing.
• 7:49
  And the view of them at the time was much more mixed is my
• 7:52
  memory. I think there were people who
• 7:54
  liked them, but I think there are a lot of people who very
• 7:58
  much viewed them as being a bit adolescent of being a, a
• 8:03
  continuation of the things that at that time and in that mindset
• 8:07
  had led to the downfall of Doctor Who.
• 8:09
  There are a lot of people who believed that, you know, this
• 8:10
  was this was the period when you could you couldn't say a good
• 8:12
  thing about the Sylvester McCoy era in public because you would
• 8:15
  be you'd be danced. That was what killed it was
• 8:18
  it's. Changed a lot now.
• 8:22
  Oh, I'm hard pressed to find somebody to do a Sylvester McCoy
• 8:25
  commentary that has anything bad to say about that era.
• 8:28
  It's really. Even even for stories that
• 8:31
  actually are bad. But but you know, it's time in
• 8:35
  the Ronnie alone, all right? Did you know the one?
• 8:39
  The one genuinely bad. Hider Holder in high esteem.
• 8:45
  Although I do think I do think the new series came along and
• 8:48
  obviously New Adventures writers worked on the new series and
• 8:52
  suddenly they were a massive voice in the actual creation of
• 8:56
  actual televised Doctor Who. And so suddenly a new narrative
• 9:02
  started to emerge. What I'm discovering is perhaps
• 9:07
  I was a little too hard on the New Adventures, but they are
• 9:11
  very adolescent and they are very inconsistent.
• 9:14
  And I think you've kind of discovered that as well, that
• 9:17
  there's, there's absolute innovation there, a real attempt
• 9:21
  to push the show in a myriad of directions.
• 9:27
  But you know the the quality is up and down.
• 9:32
  Yeah, and of course, this is the way all such things work, right?
• 9:34
  You have thesis, you have counter thesis, and then you
• 9:36
  have synthesis. And hopefully that's where we've
• 9:39
  we have arrived at the Virgin New Adventures.
• 9:41
  Opinion, Michael. But yeah, it's our synthesis.
• 9:45
  It's our synthesis, but I think fandom in general, right.
• 9:47
  But you're absolutely right. But the the connection of
• 9:50
  creatives to the new series undoubtedly was where the
• 9:52
  beginning of that narrative as this is being a sort of, you
• 9:55
  know, you know, unalloyed, pure classic Doctor Who, more radical
• 10:01
  and more different. Like the way some people think
• 10:03
  you you think that every you think that Sleepy was written by
• 10:06
  Charles Bukowski or something like that in terms of its
• 10:09
  innovation. And it it it, it isn't.
• 10:11
  I mean, I'm not read Sleepy, so that's unfair.
• 10:13
  I just thought of which one I could name first.
• 10:14
  Terms of cyberpunk, you know, transit is high art, I'm telling
• 10:18
  you. Oh, but I heard Andrew Cartmel
• 10:21
  being interviewed on We're All Stories in the end.
• 10:23
  There are other Doctor Who book podcasts.
• 10:25
  We don't need to worry about that.
• 10:26
  Marvelous Ian Martin. And he, he was very, he's
• 10:31
  gloriously scathing of his own work about anything.
• 10:34
  Before his final detective books picked out, he said I was just
• 10:38
  right. You know, I needed money.
• 10:39
  There was money in writing one of these.
• 10:40
  So I wrote one of these. And you know, the fact that it's
• 10:43
  incredibly derivative, I think. What was he talking about?
• 10:45
  His new adventures, Yeah, Wonderful.
• 10:48
  I must listen to that. You know, along with everything
• 10:52
  else, because, you know, we, we, we, we complained before about
• 10:55
  ourselves not least and but you know, the fans in general being
• 10:59
  a bit myopic in terms of only really regarding the the series
• 11:03
  they're talking about itself. But I think he was also bringing
• 11:06
  in, he wrote a lot of stuff for other franchises.
• 11:08
  He wrote, he wrote Judge Dredd stuff, he wrote.
• 11:10
  I read his Strontium Dog book earlier this year and that is
• 11:13
  genuine garbage. In a fun way, No.
• 11:19
  Oh, OK. Well, look, I'm going to ask you
• 11:23
  now then, because we're we're very briefly going to talk about
• 11:26
  Paul Cornell, who, who starts this range in a second.
• 11:30
  But so just to give this sort of a timeline and a narrative, the
• 11:35
  Doctor Who logo was ripped from the front covers of the new
• 11:39
  Adventures, Right. They knew the end was coming.
• 11:42
  I mean I think they deleted that layer in Photoshop, but ripped
• 11:46
  if you prefer. Allow me a moment of melodrama,
• 11:49
  please. One or two.
• 11:52
  But, you know, obviously, like they couldn't use the name
• 11:55
  anymore, so they were just sort of paving the way.
• 11:57
  But they did have a plan to extend these series of books the
• 12:02
  New Adventures, because, and I think wisely, they thought that
• 12:08
  they had created a cast of strong characters across the New
• 12:13
  Adventures that could continue the narrative.
• 12:19
  Yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the the structure and the
• 12:23
  approach of the new adventures which they've been praised and
• 12:24
  which they've been criticized was often to make the Doctor
• 12:29
  what not the viewpoint character.
• 12:30
  So often these stories were told through the companions or some
• 12:33
  new supporting character for that series.
• 12:38
  I mean some of them for that story, rather, I mean some of
• 12:41
  them, you know, Birthright, for example, the Doctor's barely in
• 12:44
  it, right? We'd call it a Doctor Light
• 12:46
  episode these days. And, and some of the others he
• 12:49
  has a very small role in as well.
• 12:51
  I. Mean, you just mentioned Andrew
• 12:53
  Carmel there. Did you ever read War Child?
• 12:56
  I mean, I think he's in about 10% of that book.
• 12:59
  It just pops up at the beginning and the end.
• 13:02
  Yeah, so it wasn't it wasn't going to need to be at least in
• 13:06
  terms of, you know, the text, in terms of the stories that were
• 13:09
  being told necessarily that huge a difference from the stories to
• 13:14
  be told. At least I guess in their heads
• 13:15
  that's what they would have thought and they'd also have
• 13:17
  known that at the time. We've discussed on our our
• 13:21
  episodes about the 8 doctors and vampire science.
• 13:22
  Do check them out if you've not already.
• 13:24
  They're they're great. I promise about the way in which
• 13:28
  it's early days, the BBC books didn't have much of AA very
• 13:32
  clear idea about what their approach was or what they wanted
• 13:35
  to do with it. Which is fair enough because
• 13:37
  when we interviewed Lance Parkin, he said that actually
• 13:41
  the BBC books were working as much more typical but in
• 13:43
  publishing than Virgin. So it's more that Virgin were
• 13:45
  unusual rather than the BBC failed.
• 13:47
  But certainly the impression was that they were going to be much
• 13:49
  more friendly to a wider demographic and a younger
• 13:53
  demographic certainly from the Virgin New Adventures had been.
• 13:57
  And so they there would also, I guess, have been a thinking of
• 13:59
  well, you know, we're probably going to get some readers who
• 14:01
  don't want to go and write or read, quote UN quote, kids
• 14:05
  books. So let's carry on doing things
• 14:07
  that have got let's. Give them more of this.
• 14:09
  Let's give them more boobs and violence.
• 14:11
  Yeah, absolutely. And within, but within the sort
• 14:16
  of future history as well that they have, I would say quite
• 14:20
  expertly with some bumps carved out in especially in maybe the
• 14:25
  mid to end of the new adventures.
• 14:29
  That's, that's sort of what is it sort of 25th century onwards.
• 14:33
  It's a, it's a very well defined period of Earth history in the
• 14:36
  new adventures where they plunk Bernie Summerfield in these new
• 14:40
  run of new adventures. And basically the sort of the,
• 14:44
  the background is all there, isn't it?
• 14:46
  It's all sort of painted in already.
• 14:48
  They've just got to tell stories.
• 14:51
  Yeah, absolutely. I think the year is it's 2590.
• 14:57
  Three. Yes, 2593 is the year that the
• 15:01
  series, which has always annoyed me.
• 15:03
  Why not make it 2597? It's 1997.
• 15:06
  Make it 2597, then it's nice, then it works.
• 15:10
  It's just all the things you could possibly complain about.
• 15:13
  It's just annoying. It feels like they wanted to go,
• 15:16
  oh, it's it's 600 years in the future, but they thought it was
• 15:19
  a bit too neat. Well, instantly when big finish
• 15:22
  took over, they had a little time jump and they did make it
• 15:24
  match up. So it's all like twenty 602-2603
• 15:28
  that's. Really.
• 15:29
  Yes. Well, I think you and I are
• 15:31
  going to do some conversation, a lot of conversation about how
• 15:35
  successful that that sort of opening salvo is, the range
• 15:38
  itself and Benny as the lead. Before we do, I would like to
• 15:44
  ask you, because you and I haven't really touched on Paul
• 15:47
  Connell at all, and I don't think you've read the bulk of
• 15:50
  his books. But I think between us, we've
• 15:52
  read them all. So enough to have a
• 15:54
  conversation. What do you think?
• 15:57
  How do you think Paul Connell fares as a writer of Doctor Who
• 16:00
  books? Yeah, I know.
• 16:02
  I mean, if we had this conversation, I say, actually, I
• 16:04
  don't know if I've read enough Paul Connell to to have much
• 16:06
  opinion on him. But actually looking at it, he's
• 16:08
  not written as many Doctor Who books as you think he wrote.
• 16:13
  So we've got love and war, no time worm revelation, love and
• 16:17
  war, no future human nature. Then that's where he saw after
• 16:24
  human nature. I think he starts to begin to
• 16:26
  step away from it. I think it's that early on that
• 16:27
  he's he's not writing that regular got had goth opera where
• 16:31
  they, you know, he seems to from then on to come in almost for
• 16:35
  special occasions and to help along with things.
• 16:37
  So he helped launch the missing adventures with goth opera.
• 16:39
  He comes in here to do. Oh no it isn't.
• 16:41
  He only wrote 2 BBC books, Shadows of Avalon and.
• 16:49
  Scream in the show cut. Scream The of course scream in
• 16:51
  the show cut the novelisation of that and then vanishes.
• 16:56
  He's got a career then, so. Twice twice upon a time
• 16:59
  novelisation he did years later. We're probably missing something
• 17:01
  and people are screaming in the street if you listen to this
• 17:05
  right now. Nothing is jumping out at me
• 17:07
  though. I think that I think that's his
• 17:09
  Uber there. Yeah, but of course, he wrote
• 17:11
  more like he wrote. He wrote plenty of audios and he
• 17:13
  wrote comic strips and, you know, endless short stories as
• 17:16
  well. So he's sort of always been
• 17:17
  about. There's a tasty little period as
• 17:20
  well over a big finish where he does Life during Wartime and
• 17:25
  Death and the Daleks, a sort of novel, and then a couple of the
• 17:28
  anthologies after that. And it might be some of the best
• 17:32
  work he ever did, actually. But let's skip back, right back
• 17:36
  to the beginning. Time worn Revelation.
• 17:39
  Have you read this one? No.
• 17:41
  OK, I have. I didn't like it at all, but I
• 17:44
  was the problem and not Paul Cornell.
• 17:46
  And I absolutely recognise that. He came in not wanting to tell
• 17:52
  the eaters of Wasps, you know, nice comfortable village,
• 17:56
  someone turning into a monster, all of those boring cliches.
• 18:00
  He's coming in and he wants to get under the surface of the
• 18:04
  regulars, you know, and he really wants to open out what
• 18:08
  the series can do in terms of imagery and I think emotion as
• 18:12
  well. Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:15
  And then Love of War, which I have read is from what I
• 18:21
  understand time when Revelation and what I know of love and war,
• 18:24
  it sort of settles down a bit. I feel like there's less of
• 18:26
  there's less of a sense of young first time author wanting to
• 18:29
  show all the ideas he has and a more considered story with
• 18:34
  themes and ideas. And of course, importantly, it's
• 18:36
  the one that introduces Professor Bernie Summerfield.
• 18:38
  And I do think it's one of those things that if you go back and
• 18:40
  watch it now, it's a bit like, it's a bit like when you go, you
• 18:43
  show someone the Godfather for the first time and they sort of
• 18:47
  go, oh, it's good. But I don't necessarily get the
• 18:50
  fuss. Is is something I've heard or
• 18:52
  similar films. And of course, it's because,
• 18:54
  well, he sort of invented the new adventures with love and
• 18:57
  war. It's very much the mole.
• 18:59
  He gifted us the pretty much Rise of Proof companion, which
• 19:04
  had never happened before. No, which is also so tough to
• 19:08
  do. Yeah, I think we do.
• 19:11
  It's easy to underestimate the difficulty, especially for what
• 19:17
  always remains. Of course, spin offs from ATV
• 19:20
  series, to establish a major character who seems fully
• 19:26
  realized, who is so fully realized is to be written
• 19:30
  consistently by many different authors.
• 19:32
  That's the big that you ask, the single biggest challenge.
• 19:34
  And you only have to think about, you know, how poorly some
• 19:39
  other originally created companions have been treated
• 19:41
  across the book ranges, even ones that are quite successful.
• 19:44
  You know, Fitz is nowhere near as consistent across his
• 19:47
  appearances as as as Bernice is. Chris and Ros I like really
• 19:52
  well. I think.
• 19:53
  I think they're very good. But we've sort of said with
• 19:56
  Chris, people couldn't leave him alone.
• 19:58
  They couldn't just let him be the the happy one.
• 20:01
  Couldn't bothered to sketch him in at all, you know, he's just
• 20:04
  sort of there. I mean, and Angie, her back
• 20:08
  story is wildly inconsistent. I know it's about reading a
• 20:12
  couple of books recently. She has two different religious
• 20:15
  backgrounds from book to book. Yeah, and and and and tricks,
• 20:20
  bless her, I she left, she she came in an enigma and LED to
• 20:26
  read the enigma. She was a puzzle box in the
• 20:30
  Gallifrey Chronicles. We were like, well, who the hell
• 20:32
  was that, you know? Yeah, yeah.
• 20:35
  Which is why, you know, it's one of the reasons we talk about
• 20:36
  Miranda so much, right? Because she's she's probably the
• 20:40
  best eighth daughter adventure companion, and she's in two.
• 20:44
  Appearances, yeah. One, one of which isn't very
• 20:46
  good. And, you know, I mean, I do
• 20:50
  think some writers fail to make the best use of Bernie's.
• 20:56
  I'm going to point that Neil Pensway, Christopher Beulius,
• 20:59
  Bennoronovich as well, interestingly, and translate.
• 21:03
  But on the whole, that character has been rolling now for, what,
• 21:06
  30 years longer? 1990 it was was love and war 93
• 21:14
  or 9493 So yeah, 31 years. Whilst whilst Benny has I think
• 21:22
  gone from the New Adventures depiction of Benny to the Lisa
• 21:26
  Bauman depiction of Benny and I do think there is a difference
• 21:29
  in in the two. Yes.
• 21:32
  I mean, that character has fucking legs, right?
• 21:34
  And they're still driving stories out of her now.
• 21:38
  Yeah, of course, one thing that probably helped as well was that
• 21:42
  poor Kyle gave a fairly clear steer on my the inspiration for
• 21:45
  the character came from. And the difference is that is
• 21:48
  this Bernie Summerfield as played by Lisa Bauerman, or is
• 21:51
  this Bernie Summerfield as played by Emma Thompson?
• 21:54
  Because it's Emma. Thompson until I know it isn't,
• 21:57
  and then it's Lisa Bauerman after that, I think.
• 22:00
  Yeah, maybe. Maybe because.
• 22:03
  I'm talking about the Big finish.
• 22:04
  I don't know. It isn't there.
• 22:05
  Oh, I see. No, yes.
• 22:06
  And of course and, and undoubtedly then the casting of
• 22:10
  these Bowman gave that character, gave that character a
• 22:12
  huge amount of life. But that said, the fact that she
• 22:16
  was so well realised, the character probably made it easy
• 22:20
  is not the right words. But if you know what I mean,
• 22:22
  easier to to cast that character well because you knew what that
• 22:26
  character was and you knew who you needed, what sort of actor
• 22:29
  you need for that part you. Know it comes to something of
• 22:32
  the success of this character when Lisa Bauman first
• 22:36
  auditioned for Oh no it isn't and he told her friend Stephen
• 22:40
  fuel going for this role this archaeologist from the future
• 22:46
  something to do with Doctor Who I think and Stephen Fuel when Oh
• 22:50
  my God, it's Bernie Summerfield. She is an icon.
• 22:53
  You have to do it and also if you're going for the audition if
• 22:58
  they want anyone to play Jason Kane tell them I'm in you know
• 23:01
  like just rando friends that she had were absolutely obsessed
• 23:05
  with this character. She was a huge success and I
• 23:09
  think it is a lot to do with love more.
• 23:11
  I think I love more just but gave her those opening steps
• 23:15
  very confidently. Not yes.
• 23:18
  Not to be overdramatic, because of course other writers and
• 23:22
  editors importantly play the big part in this.
• 23:24
  May How dare you? I was saying myself to be
• 23:27
  overdramatic because I was about to say that love and war is is
• 23:31
  where. It's where the new adventures
• 23:32
  solidify. It's where you have Bernice, you
• 23:34
  have you have the sort of shape of stories we tell.
• 23:37
  We know what works. This is how we can treat the
• 23:38
  doctor. This is what we should do with
• 23:40
  the Doctor. This is where we can take and
• 23:42
  this is how we can do something that feels like it is a
• 23:44
  continuation of the past 30 years of storytelling, but that
• 23:50
  remains new without just, you know, occasionally you get
• 23:52
  people come in and they want to write something that doesn't
• 23:55
  feel like Doctor Who in whatever intangible way that means.
• 23:59
  It's his shortest book as well. You know, it's it's a short
• 24:01
  book, love and War, but I think it might be his best book as
• 24:06
  well. And my big issue now from this
• 24:10
  point on is I feel as if we are downhill from here.
• 24:13
  OK, that's interesting because so the next book you wrote was
• 24:16
  No Future, which I I've not read, but I've not read.
• 24:19
  I've not heard a single person say anything good about it apart
• 24:22
  from Lance Parkin. Well, I've heard a few book
• 24:25
  clubber say nice things about it, but it is a truly ghastly
• 24:28
  wank Festival of continuity in the I mean, it's got Bardans in
• 24:34
  it, the Meddling Monk, the Crone of Oars, Yartack from the Keys
• 24:39
  of Marinus, he just throws absolutely everything in the
• 24:42
  pot. And oh and the what are the
• 24:45
  monsters in Invasion of Time? The Varden's?
• 24:47
  All of them. And none of it works at all.
• 24:50
  It really is self indulgent on a level that few Doctor Who's not.
• 24:55
  Written by Craiginton and Gary Russell Reach.
• 24:58
  That's Yartack, leader of the alien void to you, my boy.
• 25:05
  But then of course, he does Human Nature, which is a
• 25:10
  massively popular book. And controversially, I'm going
• 25:13
  to say now, have you read this one?
• 25:15
  Yes. I do think it is a good book, I
• 25:18
  think it's a better TV story, and I think the innovations that
• 25:22
  Rusty Davis makes to it make it a better story.
• 25:27
  It's interesting, isn't it? I I really like human nature.
• 25:30
  Human Nature is my favorite the the the the tear away iconoclast
• 25:34
  that I am. My favourites Paul Connell book
• 25:37
  is Human Nature. Obvious Michael Mills.
• 25:42
  As Robbie Williams once sang, you can't argue with popularity.
• 25:45
  Well, you could, but you'd be wrong.
• 25:49
  It's the Albert eyes or whatever they're called.
• 25:50
  They, I find them cringe inducingly annoying in human
• 25:55
  nature of the book. But you know, the Time Lords
• 25:56
  villains, they're just so annoying.
• 25:59
  Which do human nature someday because there's a brilliant
• 26:04
  little Easter egg in that, but I don't think I've ever heard or
• 26:09
  read anyone pick up and I'd love to discuss that on episode, but
• 26:12
  put a pin in that one It's. Not the my Co host from Untitled
• 26:16
  Star Trek project. Nathan Bottomley features in it.
• 26:19
  Is it? No.
• 26:21
  Oh. OK.
• 26:22
  Who's he? The can.
• 26:23
  He's the blacksmith who saves beneath at one point.
• 26:27
  Because Paul Cornell knew Nathan back in the day.
• 26:30
  Well, you know, they were all doing this, weren't they?
• 26:32
  Putting their mates in the books.
• 26:33
  Love and War features a character called Paul Mars.
• 26:37
  Yeah, and there's an Ian Monde in blue box that Kate Allman
• 26:42
  knew. I mean, they were all doing it.
• 26:44
  Fair enough, but like I think Human nature is where the sort
• 26:48
  of the gimmicky humour and knowing references, it all just
• 26:52
  starts to get a bit much for me and I whilst I do think it's a
• 26:55
  good book, I think it Mars a good book.
• 26:59
  I I I really like human nature. I think the TV version is
• 27:02
  certainly a, a, a sleeker, more elegant version of the story.
• 27:10
  And not least because I think Paul Connell has told the story
• 27:15
  of Russell T Davis, pointing out to him that it, that it's it's
• 27:18
  Doctor Who doing the Christ story, which almost every long
• 27:21
  running series does in some form at some point.
• 27:23
  If it's not even assuming it's not even baked into it, you
• 27:26
  know, it's he, he, he God becomes man and dies for our
• 27:29
  sins, all the rest of it. And that's much.
• 27:32
  Yeah, you can. Whereas Paul Mars I think
• 27:35
  thought he was writing Superman 2 which is also a Christ story.
• 27:41
  Of a very different kind. Yes, absolutely.
• 27:46
  But no. So I really like human age and
• 27:48
  I, I think if, until it was, I don't think anyone was surprised
• 27:53
  when they said they were doing that one for TV.
• 27:55
  It's like, oh, of course you, of course, of course you do that
• 27:58
  one. Of course.
• 27:59
  It's more of a surprise if they hadn't or said they were doing
• 28:01
  that one. Yes.
• 28:03
  It's just such a tasty premise, isn't it?
• 28:05
  What if the Doctor was human? Yes, yeah, absolutely.
• 28:10
  And you know, there is there is clay there to be that can be
• 28:13
  refined into something, something even more more
• 28:16
  elegant. Because actually this thing,
• 28:17
  Doctor Who, we really focus on it when it happens with things
• 28:20
  like the Star Beast or Human Nature or Blink, I suppose as
• 28:26
  well where it goes and minds its own Dalek, where it goes and
• 28:29
  minds its own spin offering. And yet that is something that a
• 28:35
  lot of other franchises do ahead a heck of a lot more.
• 28:39
  The Marvel Cinematic Universe basically basically does that as
• 28:41
  its premise. I know that's not spin off
• 28:43
  stuff, but Star Wars, you know, with the exception of Andor
• 28:48
  probably, you know, things like Ahsoka, that's almost entire
• 28:52
  just spin off media being remade or reorganized for the screen.
• 28:57
  And I don't know that it's always a good thing.
• 29:00
  I think it can be. Where it works well is when you
• 29:02
  go look, we've basically had people working over these ideas
• 29:06
  for a very long time. What interesting ideas came out
• 29:08
  of that? Let's grab them and put them on
• 29:11
  screen. Where it doesn't work is where
• 29:14
  you're just going, oh, that story was popular, that
• 29:17
  character was popular. Let's just do that.
• 29:19
  Or it just becomes endless references.
• 29:20
  I don't know how a soaker makes sense to anybody who hasn't
• 29:23
  watched any adult, who hasn't watched multiple series of a
• 29:28
  children. I'll let you know.
• 29:30
  All right? I'll give it a try because I'll
• 29:32
  tell you what, I watched that Obi Wan series, and I absolutely
• 29:35
  bloody love that. Yeah.
• 29:38
  But with human nature, Russell G Davies, you know, who had gone
• 29:42
  streamlined Doctor Who in many ways and gone for this more
• 29:45
  emotional approach, could see there was a juicy emotional idea
• 29:50
  at the heart of this story that would translate well to screen.
• 29:53
  So I absolutely can see now there is a book we did forget.
• 29:57
  I've just. Remembered.
• 29:58
  Happy endings. Of course.
• 30:01
  Which actually, so yeah, maybe, maybe we're not going downhill
• 30:04
  yet, because I do think Happy Endings is the one book,
• 30:09
  probably the only book in the New Adventures is Run, which
• 30:12
  tries to be a big celebration of the New adventures.
• 30:17
  I don't think Longbarrow really feels like a celebration, more
• 30:19
  like a wake. Most of the time it's a good
• 30:22
  wake, but it is it has a sort of somber tone to it, whereas Happy
• 30:26
  Endings is a bulls to the walls comedy and everyone's invited.
• 30:30
  I mean, happy endings is a testament to the confidence of
• 30:34
  the range in its own success at that point.
• 30:37
  And as we've said that it really at this point it was selling to
• 30:39
  a fairly regular core audience. The idea that you would
• 30:42
  Commission happy endings and just put it on the shelf for
• 30:44
  anybody to pick up as a as a random book is insane.
• 30:49
  You know, if you compare the big celebration in Virgin Happy
• 30:54
  Endings and the big celebration in BBC, which effectively is Mad
• 30:59
  Dogs and Englishmen, or at least they stamped it all over the
• 31:01
  cover, it does sort of show you the two different approaches to
• 31:05
  the ranges, doesn't it? One is absolutely obsessed with
• 31:08
  its own continuity, but confident in presenting it in a
• 31:12
  really fun way, and the other is just fucking somewhere out
• 31:15
  there, somewhere totally nuts and idiosyncratic and, well,
• 31:20
  taking the Mickey out of pretty much every other range of genre
• 31:24
  TV going. Yeah, but contrasting them is is
• 31:30
  interesting. Yeah, so happy endings then we
• 31:34
  have. Goth Opera.
• 31:37
  Goth opera, which I've not read. I have read recently and it was
• 31:42
  a very competent missing adventure, but Paul Cornell
• 31:48
  should be writing new adventures because he was on the leash
• 31:52
  right in that book. And he was forced in a position
• 31:55
  where he had to add in tons of Time Lords continuity and a
• 32:00
  chapter in the mini scope with glitz and all of this stuff.
• 32:03
  Because suddenly we're delving into the continuity of Doctor
• 32:06
  Who in a massive way. Because this is what the range
• 32:09
  is all about and it just feels like Paul Cornell light now.
• 32:15
  And then we have Oh no, it isn't well.
• 32:19
  With Oh no it isn't. Then can I ask you an opening
• 32:22
  question? Yes.
• 32:24
  Is this how you, Michael Mills, would introduce a new range of
• 32:31
  It's never been as fun as this before science fiction novels?
• 32:38
  Oh no, it doesn't. Well done.
• 32:45
  Do you know what? Well done.
• 32:50
  Oh yes, it is. I know you don't believe that,
• 32:53
  Joe. Yeah.
• 32:56
  So. So Paul can I came back, I
• 32:57
  think. But at this point he was off
• 32:58
  writing for telly and doing other exciting things, wasn't
• 33:00
  he? So.
• 33:01
  Career now, yeah. Your career, he can't be doing
• 33:03
  this sort of thing anymore, this nonsense, but.
• 33:06
  They were like, Paul, you know, we need your help.
• 33:09
  Betty's going alone and we need you to start the range.
• 33:13
  And I guess as well from a commercial point of view, right,
• 33:16
  If you want people to carry on, if you want people to, it's one
• 33:19
  thing to ask people to put their hands in their pocket and pay
• 33:21
  for a Doctor Who book each month.
• 33:23
  But now, for the first time, you're asking them to put their
• 33:25
  hands in their pocket and pay for a book that isn't Doctor
• 33:27
  Who. Yes, I think maybe possibly the
• 33:31
  audience halved again here. So you've got the Virgin
• 33:34
  audience and then you've got those that have gone over to the
• 33:37
  BBC, to Doctor Who, actual real Doctor Who, and then those that
• 33:41
  stuck with with the Virgin New Adventures.
• 33:44
  Yes. I mean, this was due to
• 33:47
  scheduling issues with the Doctor Who books.
• 33:49
  This was published the same month as Sovio Lesin and I can't
• 33:51
  imagine for a moment that it sold as many copies so far.
• 33:56
  Lesin but. Yes, anticipated so allesin as.
• 33:59
  Well, to be fair, yes, indeed, but if you wanted people to read
• 34:04
  the next one, I guess bringing back the ranges most popular
• 34:07
  author to write it is entirely sensible.
• 34:10
  You know, that's why Russell T Davis wrote the first episode of
• 34:12
  the Sarah Jane adventures and there barely any others, right,
• 34:16
  So, so so it make it makes sense and it's a real it's a really
• 34:20
  tough gig. I think we should start off by
• 34:22
  saying, because you have take for all that's the Virgin, New
• 34:28
  Adventures had built up their own continuity for all they had
• 34:31
  established these characters that version could continue to
• 34:34
  have access to, for all that they had developed this future
• 34:37
  history in which to set it. You can't get around the fact
• 34:40
  that you've lost the central, the core, the temple around
• 34:44
  which all of that was was hanging was constructed, which
• 34:47
  is Doctor Who. And it's a really hard job to
• 34:52
  establish any new series, any series of books to establish
• 34:58
  what it's about. It's especially hard to do that
• 35:02
  if it's going to be a series written by many different
• 35:06
  authors. That's that's quite difficult.
• 35:12
  And it's thirdly difficult if it's a version of a series that
• 35:16
  has lost its central purpose, right?
• 35:18
  It's like, do you remember, did you ever watch Bally Kiss Angel?
• 35:22
  That would have been the right era for this.
• 35:24
  Yes, you lost the main actress, didn't you?
• 35:27
  Is that what you're talking about?
• 35:28
  You. Didn't just lose the main
• 35:29
  actress, they got to the end of like whatever it was one series
• 35:32
  series, 3 Series for whatever. And clearly I don't know what
• 35:35
  the what the truth of the matter is but it would seem to move me
• 35:38
  outside. But everyone's contracts were up
• 35:40
  and nobody wanted to renew, so they lost almost the entire cast
• 35:44
  between series and they had to have the the beginning.
• 35:48
  I remember it even as a child. It was sort of incredible.
• 35:51
  A See opening episode in which pretty much everyone leaves.
• 35:55
  An entire new cast of characters move in.
• 35:58
  I mean, several shows that have been running a long time, like
• 36:01
  Scrubs and things like that, you know, Grey's Anatomy do that
• 36:04
  every now and again. Doctor Who does that, Joe?
• 36:07
  Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, the The One Show I know
• 36:09
  something about. Yeah, yes.
• 36:12
  But it's very hard to then establish this as a series of
• 36:15
  novel that doesn't feel like it's missing something.
• 36:20
  Yes, exactly, and I guess what they, although it has the name,
• 36:24
  incidentally, we should mention the title's a joke, right,
• 36:28
  because it's it says on the front cover or on the title page
• 36:31
  the new adventures. Oh no, it isn't right.
• 36:35
  That's. My God the levels that this
• 36:37
  title works on being in tight modern, I swear.
• 36:42
  So I guess what what they will have been the tricky job they
• 36:45
  have for this is both continuing the the range because of the
• 36:51
  brand loyalty to that, while also not wanting it to feel like
• 36:56
  that range missing its character.
• 36:58
  So essentially you're sort of doing a spin off under a under
• 37:01
  the same title is really what's happening, which is.
• 37:04
  Is it Angel to Buffy? I don't understand your nerdy
• 37:08
  references. It's basically Buffy without
• 37:10
  Buffy. That in fact, yes, I'm obliged
• 37:14
  to my learner colleague so. Learner, do you find stop
• 37:22
  yourself before you say what you're about to say?
• 37:29
  So it's a it's a really tricky job, and we should talk a little
• 37:33
  about Bernie Summerfield as a protagonist.
• 37:35
  And she has been certainly the view.
• 37:39
  There are differences between protagonists, between primary,
• 37:42
  secondary characters and viewpoint characters and all the
• 37:44
  rest of it. Doctor Watson is not the hero of
• 37:48
  the Sherlock Holmes books, but he is the viewpoint character
• 37:51
  and the narrator. Right?
• 37:54
  But you know, she did lead a lot of the actions.
• 37:55
  That makes your job easier. You know, how she can be, she
• 37:58
  can have how she can be the lead.
• 38:00
  It's not just like you have to write the Doctor Watson
• 38:02
  adventures anymore. There are 1/2 of books on it,
• 38:04
  Birthright, Human Nature, Sanctuary, Happy Endings, Return
• 38:09
  of the Living Dead where she is almost the viewpoint character
• 38:13
  throughout. So she sort of has.
• 38:15
  They have hung books on just Benny before.
• 38:18
  Yes, but one of the reasons Benny works so well within the
• 38:23
  New Adventures is because she's such magnificent foil for the
• 38:28
  New Adventures. Doctor Who, when written well,
• 38:30
  was this increasingly aloof. Increasingly unknowable
• 38:36
  character who you only ever saw from the outside.
• 38:39
  And I think in the Virginia adventures they say you were not
• 38:42
  allowed to tell anything from the doctor's perspective.
• 38:43
  That was one of the sort of house rules, which was a was a
• 38:46
  smart idea because it allowed them to construct this character
• 38:48
  who you were aware that you were only ever observing him, which I
• 38:53
  think I think worked really well.
• 38:55
  But Benny works in part because she's a foil to that.
• 39:00
  She is the viewpoint character. She brings the humanity to this
• 39:04
  aloof alien character who is increasingly unhuman.
• 39:09
  I mean, that's one of the key differences between the book
• 39:11
  version of human nature and the TV version of human nature is
• 39:15
  that the in the in the book, the Doctor explicitly becomes John
• 39:19
  Smith so he can experience what it's like to be human, to
• 39:21
  understand the human experience like Jesus in the TV version,
• 39:28
  they have to give the 10th Doctor a different reason for
• 39:31
  becoming human. A because I think that's just
• 39:33
  better plotting in a quick moving story, but also because
• 39:36
  the 10th Doctor, I don't, I think you can believe he knows
• 39:39
  what it is to be human. He's still a he doesn't
• 39:41
  necessarily care. He's still a bit of a prick a
• 39:42
  lot of the time, but fundamentally he humans are not
• 39:46
  unknowable to him. What happens?
• 39:50
  What happens when she's no longer the foil and she is the
• 39:54
  protagonist? Exactly, and that's exactly the
• 39:57
  problem, right is that you then go, oh, so we have a character
• 40:01
  who's USP within the series was that they were the normal human
• 40:05
  person and they were identifiable and we now want to
• 40:09
  build a series around them. Our hook for our new series is
• 40:14
  identifiable human protagonist. Now, I'm not saying, I'm not
• 40:19
  saying that is bad, but it's. Not an obvious it's not a pitch,
• 40:28
  right? You don't, you can't jump into
• 40:29
  an elevator or someone go, Oh my God, read this series.
• 40:33
  It's it's the bit of the Met that deals with magic, right?
• 40:37
  It's not, it's not the same thing.
• 40:39
  I think part of the problem there with the books having an
• 40:42
  identity with Benny in charge is that she doesn't have a foil
• 40:46
  like a long running foil. There's people that dip in and
• 40:48
  out, but there's there's no central relationship like that.
• 40:52
  There's no contrast. So it's sort of them improvising
• 40:56
  from book to book. Yeah, and, and of course, by
• 40:59
  this point, and, and you know, this is a recurrent point in the
• 41:02
  book. She is now divorced from Jason.
• 41:05
  You should marry happy endings. Every now and again.
• 41:07
  Pops up every now and again. Chris H.
• 41:10
  Pops up every now and again. Indeed, indeed.
• 41:13
  And I suspect I don't know, but it would make complete sense if
• 41:16
  the reason they had to split up with Jason was to quote UN
• 41:19
  quote, free her to become a protagonist.
• 41:22
  Because that's that's one of the central issues with a lot of
• 41:24
  fiction. So a lot of adventure fiction is
• 41:27
  a lot of I'm not going to say it's the reason we're not all
• 41:30
  space archaeologist adventurers, but so I don't know.
• 41:35
  But I imagine one of the reasons or it certainly would make sense
• 41:38
  if the reason they had Benny split up from Jason was to kind
• 41:42
  of quote UN quote, free her to become the protagonist of her
• 41:45
  own series. Because there is an issue in
• 41:47
  adventure fiction, especially of things that happen to people in
• 41:51
  real life. And I'm not saying this isn't
• 41:53
  this is what we're not all Spacey archaeologist
• 41:54
  adventurers, but a lot of the things that happen in life are
• 41:59
  really quite burdensome for someone who needs to have agency
• 42:03
  and adventure would be free to go out and to care about any of
• 42:05
  this enough. But if you get married and
• 42:07
  you've got to, you know, you've got to, you've got to cook
• 42:09
  dinner, you've got, you've got to share dinner.
• 42:10
  You've got you've got to think about, oh, well, you are you
• 42:12
  going to be in when the electrician comes?
• 42:14
  Doesn't necessarily work well an adventure unless that's the
• 42:16
  premise. Even more so having kids so.
• 42:20
  That is the premise. So when she skips over to Big
• 42:22
  Finish, right, they give her a family effectively of the person
• 42:26
  who you know who father's her child, Jason, who also looks
• 42:30
  after a child and a child. And it works like gangbusters.
• 42:35
  I don't think those things have to be shackles as long as you
• 42:39
  write good enough stories around them.
• 42:41
  Exactly that. And I think obviously the big
• 42:43
  Finnish era had the advantage of of working off the back of of
• 42:48
  what had been done here. But I think one of the reasons
• 42:50
  they certainly seem to be more spoken about these days and not
• 42:53
  just because they are more easily commercially available,
• 42:56
  but certainly better remembered a more fondly remembered sort of
• 42:59
  that era from let's say 2001 through to around 2000 and five,
• 43:04
  2006 you. Mean the collection period.
• 43:07
  The collection period. The Braxiatel collection.
• 43:11
  Good days. Happy days.
• 43:16
  One of the things they did is they realised all of that is
• 43:18
  that's your story. Like then it's, it's, it's this
• 43:21
  weird reflexive thing in a lot of series and a lot of franchise
• 43:25
  work to to ignore what your story is, to try and get back to
• 43:32
  some more generic form of it. And I do not doubt for a minute
• 43:35
  that anyone here thought that they were trying to create
• 43:37
  something that was generic. But that thing, if you're trying
• 43:41
  to be you're someone who gets, who gets wrapped up in
• 43:44
  intergalactic cosmic wars and ancient histories, and you've
• 43:48
  got a kid and a husband and an ex-husband.
• 43:50
  That's your story. And you know, they do, I mean
• 43:53
  wonderful things here. Later the Dave Stone won green
• 43:56
  eyed monsters where the baby is left with Adrian and Jason
• 43:59
  whilst Bernice goes off for an adventure and Dave Stone just
• 44:02
  realises, well, there's a sitcom episode.
• 44:04
  Let's go, you know, like that's really funny.
• 44:08
  I think. Then where that leaves the
• 44:10
  Virgin, the Benny Virgin New Adventures is whilst they are
• 44:14
  improvising from book to book, whilst they don't have a format,
• 44:17
  you know, a set group of regular characters like Big Finished is
• 44:22
  it's hit and miss, like it is inconsistent as to whether it
• 44:26
  works or not. And sometimes that's down to the
• 44:29
  the skill of the writer and sometimes that's down to the
• 44:33
  fact that she is just going off on another adventure, you know,
• 44:38
  and. What is only very slowly worked
• 44:41
  out with Bernie Summerfield is if your issue is that you have,
• 44:45
  as your protagonist, identifiable human person, then
• 44:51
  you need to lean into that. That's your story.
• 44:57
  Right at the centre of everything that's happening on
• 44:58
  there is someone who is at heart trying to navigate the
• 45:03
  complexities and the issues of real life, of getting older.
• 45:06
  The best thing about Bernie Summerfield is that she ages,
• 45:12
  that she's human, that she's she isn't.
• 45:14
  Yeah, I think there's a bit where they de age a little bit
• 45:16
  and we all sort of pretend that didn't happen because it's
• 45:18
  silly. But when she's introduced in
• 45:22
  Love and War, it's the more she's hungover because it's the
• 45:24
  morning after her 30th birthday, right?
• 45:26
  She's just turned 30 and here in oh, no, it isn't as a little
• 45:29
  benchmark. She's turning, she's turned 35
• 45:32
  and she's going to think, ah, 35.
• 45:35
  I'm one of the one thing the book does very nicely about that
• 45:39
  is that she has a complexity about the fact that 35, I say
• 45:43
  this is a 35 year old is a slightly awkward age.
• 45:45
  Not the same way that like 15 is an awkward age or 17 is an
• 45:48
  awkward age. But it's a little bit awkward in
• 45:50
  the sense that you are conscious of not being young in the sense
• 45:53
  that people mean young anymore, but you're also not old.
• 45:57
  And there's some really nice bits here where are.
• 45:59
  You looking at me when you say that?
• 46:02
  How old? I mean, you're looking very
• 46:04
  spry. I'm 44.
• 46:07
  Good Lord. Oh.
• 46:10
  They hurt a lot. Thank.
• 46:12
  You. Please continue.
• 46:14
  Well, there's a there's a there's a lovely bit in here.
• 46:16
  She's reflecting on the fact that she, she's, she's feels
• 46:19
  like she's coping with being with not being young anymore,
• 46:21
  But the way that she's trying to cope with that is by acting old.
• 46:26
  And I want. To come back to this, because
• 46:28
  there's some very icky things going on with her trying to feel
• 46:31
  young in this book that don't sit well with me now.
• 46:35
  But yeah, well, yes, we'll come back to that.
• 46:39
  But I suppose the idea is that if she was 30 in Love and War,
• 46:41
  and that was, as we've said, establishing sort of, it's the
• 46:45
  point at which the new adventures begin to coalesce in
• 46:47
  terms of what their tonal, what they're trying to do.
• 46:49
  And I think there's probably something trying to happen here
• 46:51
  with, oh, no, it isn't as well, she's turning 35.
• 46:53
  Here's what, here's what these stories are going to look like
• 46:55
  now. And the problem is #1 as a 35
• 47:06
  year old, I recognised some of what was being said about
• 47:08
  Bernie's here. I didn't recognise other things
• 47:11
  that were being said about her here.
• 47:13
  And I think maybe that's because Paul Canal was, was quite a bit
• 47:16
  younger than she was. I think he was about, I looked
• 47:18
  it up, I think he's about 29 when this came out.
• 47:19
  And there are important differences that happen in that
• 47:22
  age. Wrong thing.
• 47:23
  Right this brilliantly now. Oh, oh, yeah, no, I think, I
• 47:27
  think you would. But you know, it feels, it feels
• 47:31
  like I don't know that I bought into her being that age.
• 47:38
  And if that's what it wants to make as a sort of thread, it's a
• 47:41
  starting point for this that she is 35.
• 47:44
  One random example. It's sort of felt like a 25 year
• 47:47
  old complaining that they were 35.
• 47:50
  Yeah, because there's some huge, there's, there's some quite
• 47:52
  conspicuous absences here in terms of things she's thinking
• 47:56
  about. Like there's there's no
• 47:57
  reference to children. There's no now this doesn't mean
• 48:00
  that of course 35 of women are are not bound to have children
• 48:03
  doesn't mean it has to be part of their thinking of what they
• 48:05
  want to do with their life. But I but if you're writing a
• 48:07
  story about 35 year old who is getting older, who is concerned
• 48:13
  about their youth, about where they're going, about what
• 48:15
  they're going to do, whether they're getting old, that it
• 48:17
  doesn't even enter their minds at some point about, well, what
• 48:20
  about what about a family? What happens to the next week?
• 48:23
  It feels like a really conspicuous absence.
• 48:26
  It's more about her marriage failing and her lack of, you
• 48:33
  know, sexual prowess now, of being able to catch the eye of
• 48:38
  the right people. Those are the two things I
• 48:40
  really took from those opening passages.
• 48:42
  And I was like, well, that's the walk, right?
• 48:44
  I was about. No, and it it no indeed.
• 48:48
  And I mean the yeah. And the kids is only kids is
• 48:51
  only one example. There's other things about like,
• 48:53
  yeah, she conspicuously has a successful career here.
• 48:56
  You know, she's she's a she's a full professor at 35, which is
• 49:00
  which is good going. So there's doesn't really feel
• 49:05
  there's any concern about, you know, well, what's my role?
• 49:06
  What do I want to achieve? What's happened?
• 49:08
  Maybe part of the problem there is that, you know, when you when
• 49:12
  you save the universe once a month, career goals are somewhat
• 49:16
  lessened. But then that could be part of
• 49:17
  it as well, right? I've seen all of these things
• 49:19
  and I've got to settle back down.
• 49:20
  What's going to happen? I have.
• 49:22
  I have read the bulk of the Bernie Snow adventures, yeah,
• 49:26
  and I've read a couple of them recently as well.
• 49:28
  And none of them really are doing that level of
• 49:32
  introspection that you're talking about.
• 49:34
  They're using Benny as a focal character to as a catalyst to
• 49:40
  tell the stories, to get the story to a certain place or to
• 49:45
  bring in other characters that Benny knows.
• 49:49
  When we do go over to Big Finish, there is something more
• 49:52
  personal about having an actress saying the lines.
• 49:56
  And I think once they realized the rhythms of Lisa Bauman,
• 49:59
  suddenly they started studying the character and giving her a
• 50:03
  lot of introspection about being a mother, about being a
• 50:06
  girlfriend, about where she is in her life.
• 50:09
  It is more interesting as a result.
• 50:12
  She's a more interesting character as a result.
• 50:14
  Yeah, yeah, it feels like in the they've stripped away so many of
• 50:20
  her supporting characters. As I said, they would return for
• 50:22
  like guest starring roles, but they've stripped away so much of
• 50:26
  her supporting cast, for want of a better word in this, the
• 50:31
  people she already knows. As I say, I imagine to quote UN
• 50:33
  quote, free things up a bit. But again, when you're when you
• 50:38
  want to make a theme of the fact that she's now getting older,
• 50:40
  that, you know, Middle Ages within sight, you're not dealing
• 50:45
  with either. You keep those characters in.
• 50:48
  And this is where Big Finish was long was brilliant.
• 50:50
  That thing of getting older of the sort of increasing
• 50:52
  complexity of the people you bring along with you and the
• 50:55
  people that you end up with obligations towards or the
• 50:58
  people you end up linked to for one reason or other, for better
• 51:01
  or for worse. And the intricate way.
• 51:03
  So it's not, it's not just that Jason's back in it more, it's
• 51:05
  also that then there's the whole difficult situation with, with
• 51:09
  a, with Adrian as well. And then she has a son.
• 51:11
  And then there's and there's Brax, who's who's, you know, her
• 51:14
  employer, who she has the complex relationship with there.
• 51:17
  If Tarrant comes in Miss Jones, all these people inform their
• 51:20
  lives in different ways. Exactly.
• 51:23
  So you can go that way or you can say we're not going to do
• 51:25
  that. When you realize then when you
• 51:26
  realize they're not doing and that you think, well, Benny must
• 51:28
  be a very lonely person, right? Or there must be some concern
• 51:31
  about loneliness. They shouldn't have those.
• 51:32
  She doesn't have that, that group of people around them.
• 51:35
  You could do a story where she's like, I'm 35 and it's all
• 51:38
  starting again. That's really exciting.
• 51:41
  But it's also a bit, you know, is there also some concern there
• 51:44
  about that? And again, it was just absence.
• 51:46
  It mainly seemed to come down to, and I think this is what you
• 51:50
  wanted to talk about, whether it's ethical for her to shag her
• 51:52
  students. It's very awkward, it's very big
• 51:56
  and there is a a seam of laddishness to this book that
• 52:03
  felt very mid 90s. You know, we're in sort of men
• 52:08
  behaving badly territory, aren't we?
• 52:10
  Two parts of lager and a packet of crisps.
• 52:13
  And there's a, there's jokes in this.
• 52:14
  Some I thought were a bit racist.
• 52:18
  Should we be doing this? Is this, is this the tone that
• 52:21
  we're setting for this series? And then you tie those things
• 52:25
  with what is effectively not an exploration, and we'll get to
• 52:31
  that, but a handling of a family entertainment genre as an uneasy
• 52:38
  mix. Yeah.
• 52:41
  And I don't know, given that they would have known the
• 52:42
  audience for this was, yes, it does feel a bit dated in that
• 52:46
  way. It's it, you know, it's, it's
• 52:48
  far from the only text in that from, from the 90s now that is,
• 52:52
  or even into the early 90s that as some of these attitudes that
• 52:55
  now feel a bit sort of like, oh, well, we still doing that then?
• 53:01
  I don't. And it, it does feel awkward.
• 53:04
  So there's the thing with, with one of her students here where
• 53:07
  she, she's, she's sort of she thinks he has a crush on her.
• 53:10
  And so she's wondering about, oh, well, should I do that?
• 53:13
  Shouldn't I do that? I mean, you know, friends did a
• 53:15
  whole storyline about that as well, but.
• 53:18
  It was the 90s. It was the 90s, it was this, it
• 53:22
  was that. The thing is, like I said to
• 53:24
  you, how long ago was the 90s whilst I was reading this?
• 53:28
  Because it feels like a long way away.
• 53:32
  Oh, I, I mean, there are, and there are so many, there are so
• 53:35
  many instances of that. When you go back to stuff from
• 53:37
  the 90s, I mean, a lot of stuff that was, you know, very well
• 53:39
  considered ahead of its time, a lot of stuff that is now deeply
• 53:43
  problematic and a lot of stuff that is a bit of both.
• 53:45
  That is because there was this very messy, unrefined,
• 53:51
  undelineated hinterland between, you know, what is us being open
• 53:55
  about sex about, about having female characters who are, who
• 53:59
  are sexually confident and sexually independent, Who, who
• 54:02
  that's great. That's, you know, no, there's no
• 54:04
  problem there with that. But that bleeds over into, as
• 54:08
  you say, things that maybe come across as a bit laddish at times
• 54:12
  as well. Like one we recently did
• 54:17
  Necromantea on Doctor Who too hot for TV, the big Finnish
• 54:21
  audio and there's a lot of male writer writing young female
• 54:28
  characters in that in which they just self sexualized a lot.
• 54:31
  This, I think is wanting to be a bit more cerebral than that to
• 54:35
  give it to give it its credit. But I don't think it notices the
• 54:41
  main ethical concern now, right. So I think I think it recognises
• 54:46
  that if I'm 35 and I'm I'm contemplating sleeping with my
• 54:51
  however old he's meant to be 20 year old student or what he's
• 54:54
  post grad. Isn't he so early 20 students
• 54:58
  and it goes well my IA bit too old is this a bit pathetic blah
• 55:01
  blah blah blah OK fine but it doesn't look at the power
• 55:04
  dynamics of that relationship at all She.
• 55:07
  Says at one point it's in the pros.
• 55:09
  She goes, oh, what the hell, I deserve this.
• 55:12
  Yes, and I almost like recorded from the page.
• 55:15
  I was like, that's not, that's not nice.
• 55:18
  No. And I think others, someone said
• 55:20
  this much better than me who said that one of the issues in
• 55:26
  this era of, you know, in the night of the 90s and sort of
• 55:30
  post 80s stuff is there was a sort of assumption that because
• 55:35
  we recognized that sexism and racism and homophobia were
• 55:43
  wrong, because we'd recognize that, that we sort of thought
• 55:46
  that was the same as having solved it when it wasn't.
• 55:50
  And so there's a lot of examples where people just say.
• 55:52
  Gentle fun. We're not.
• 55:54
  Trying to be offensive, but now 30 years on it just looks
• 55:59
  offensive. Yeah.
• 56:01
  And and it it is, it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a problem in
• 56:05
  this book, both in itself. Those sections are always a bit
• 56:09
  whenever we get back to that and also feel like they are
• 56:16
  emblematic of the book missing the real human truths that it
• 56:22
  wants to bring in. I can remember, right?
• 56:25
  I can remember in the 90s a wave of chaos going through creative
• 56:32
  endeavours. Yeah.
• 56:34
  Things like maybe it might be the early naughties like the
• 56:36
  Mighty Boosh and things like that.
• 56:38
  Things that were that were absolutely pushing the norms.
• 56:41
  And suddenly TV was being a bit more violent, bottom a bit more
• 56:45
  grotesque, you know, a bit more in your face and absolutely
• 56:50
  crossing the line in a million ways half the time, but sort of
• 56:53
  pushing the boundaries. Yeah.
• 56:55
  And I think some of that is filtering down into Doctor Who
• 57:00
  and it's spit off media, you know, that sort of what can we
• 57:03
  get away with? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:08
  Because it was so that sort of thing was so pervasive at the
• 57:11
  time. It was kind of post politically
• 57:14
  correct, you know, you know, lads, lads, lads, we, you know,
• 57:18
  we all understand women are our equals, right?
• 57:20
  But at the same time, that doesn't mean we're not allowed
• 57:22
  to like boobs. You think?
• 57:23
  Well, no it doesn't. But how are you there for
• 57:27
  portraying the women when you do that?
• 57:31
  You know what's interesting though, is that a lot of this
• 57:34
  stuff on the page, yeah, a lot of it is in the audio, right?
• 57:38
  And I'll listen to the audio and I'll listen to the audio a
• 57:40
  couple of years ago for finish big and no issues whatsoever,
• 57:45
  right? The the, the awkward racist
• 57:49
  jokes that the vizier has later on in the book.
• 57:53
  Bernie's going after Duran at the beginning of the book.
• 57:56
  And there's just something about it being explicitly there on the
• 58:00
  page that's different from actors bringing it to life.
• 58:03
  I don't know why, but I had no issue.
• 58:06
  And I was laughing at some of those jokes and the awkwardness
• 58:09
  of her trying to seduce her student.
• 58:11
  And I think they sort of cast it age appropriate, which helped.
• 58:15
  Whereas in the book they sort of stress he's cherubic, you know,
• 58:20
  and all these other things. Yeah.
• 58:23
  But I just thought that was super interesting that this
• 58:25
  reading of it where sort of I'm doing the work rather than the
• 58:29
  actors. It was all a bit more
• 58:32
  problematic. Yeah, it's really interesting.
• 58:36
  Just, you know, the issue is far from solved, of course, but it
• 58:40
  is interesting just how recent that broader and deeper and more
• 58:48
  honest understanding of the problem has become.
• 58:50
  And that goes back to the problem of Ladism, right?
• 58:52
  And the way it was, which was originally sort of post BC
• 58:55
  unapologetic. Oh, let's, let's talk to people
• 58:58
  about stuff they like. People like football.
• 58:59
  It's fine to talk about football.
• 59:00
  Of course it's fine to talk about football.
• 59:02
  Of course it's fine for young men's going to go and have some
• 59:04
  beers. Of course, that's fine.
• 59:06
  Of course it's fine for your women to go and have lots of
• 59:08
  beers as well and get drunk and have sex if they want to.
• 59:11
  But what are you legitimising through that and how far can you
• 59:15
  take that? And in that effort to be more
• 59:17
  shocking and more deeper into it, to always go further than
• 59:22
  the others for commercial reasons or whatever, how what
• 59:27
  does that actually lead to? I'm not saying, Oh no it isn't.
• 59:31
  It is an epitome of lads culture.
• 59:32
  It absolutely isn't. And it is far from the worst
• 59:35
  thing that you will find and it should still be.
• 59:37
  We should not lose eyes to the fact that it has a female.
• 59:40
  I absolutely read this as a book that was written in 97, right?
• 59:45
  Yes, it is a product of its time.
• 59:48
  As you say, the point of all this is we're seeing the
• 59:52
  elements of it here in this book because it was so pervasive at
• 59:56
  the time and it was so much a way of thinking that we are
• 59:58
  still unpacking now and going back and actually realising how
• 1:00:02
  it had even permeated down to something as, on the face of it,
• 1:00:06
  seemingly inoffensive as Oh no, it isn't.
• 1:00:08
  Well, let's, let's skip along from any awkwardness there
• 1:00:13
  because I think we'll cover that pretty well because in, in the
• 1:00:16
  1st chapter, which we haven't really reached yet.
• 1:00:20
  I, I do believe there is a bit of setting up of this series
• 1:00:23
  going on because Bernie spends a good sort of 30 pages wandering
• 1:00:28
  around St. Oscars University on Della
• 1:00:31
  meeting a vast array of teachers and students and everybody that
• 1:00:36
  I'm assuming is going to pop up at various points because this
• 1:00:39
  is where she's set now, isn't it?
• 1:00:40
  St. Oscars University on the planet
• 1:00:43
  Della and and there is a running narrative there because it does
• 1:00:48
  all culminate later on in the line in where Angels fear I
• 1:00:52
  believe by Rebecca Levine. Big huge sort of art things
• 1:00:56
  occurring there. But absolutely this first
• 1:00:59
  chapter is entirely divorced from the rest of the book.
• 1:01:02
  And it's pretty much here's what we're doing now, here's where we
• 1:01:05
  are, and here's our cast. Yes, we are introduced to many
• 1:01:10
  of the senior faculty of Saint Oscar's University on Della, all
• 1:01:14
  of whom jump aboard a merry spaceship to go off and have an
• 1:01:18
  explore of the planet Perfecton. They are introduced in great
• 1:01:22
  detail. Literally it's it's like the
• 1:01:24
  opening of Broadway musical or something like everyone's
• 1:01:26
  walking across the stage, Everyone gets everyone gets a
• 1:01:29
  line. They're all here.
• 1:01:30
  They all spend a lot of they all get a bit to do in the plot.
• 1:01:34
  They barely ever appear again in the series.
• 1:01:36
  I think I looked up on TARDIS wiki, which should not always be
• 1:01:39
  trusted of course, but they all do.
• 1:01:42
  They all do get name checked in ghost devices, which just
• 1:01:45
  suggests to me that Simon Booker Jones was the only person who
• 1:01:47
  had read the series Bible. Well, I thought they was in it a
• 1:01:50
  lot. Are they not then?
• 1:01:52
  I mean, maybe I'm not, I've not read as many of them as you, but
• 1:01:54
  certainly no. Maybe I'm wrong.
• 1:01:56
  I think Men Love Stokes turns up again.
• 1:01:57
  So Men love Stokes is in here from the Virgin Missing
• 1:02:00
  Adventures. You might remember the end of
• 1:02:01
  the Well Mannered war. He gets dropped off on Della as
• 1:02:03
  well. Absolutely.
• 1:02:04
  Another invitation, isn't it? You like the missing adventures?
• 1:02:07
  This character's coming over. Come with us.
• 1:02:10
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. But there's a lot of very
• 1:02:13
  conspicuous setting up of people in this and it probably leads to
• 1:02:18
  the story having too many characters as they land on the
• 1:02:23
  planet Perfecton through various plot intricacies and
• 1:02:29
  contrivances that we will find out.
• 1:02:32
  The academics are all mostly down on the planet.
• 1:02:36
  Bernice and a few others are up on the spaceship in orbit.
• 1:02:39
  The spaceship gets hit by a missiles launched from the
• 1:02:41
  seemingly dead planet Perfecton and she wake is destroyed
• 1:02:45
  seemingly and she wakes up in a pantomime.
• 1:02:48
  And all of this leads to my one line review of the book, which
• 1:02:54
  is it's a holodeck episode written by Terry Pratchett.
• 1:02:57
  Oh. I mean it is, it is, but also as
• 1:03:02
  well. My one line review of this is
• 1:03:06
  chapter 1. It's the best chapter in the
• 1:03:07
  book. I really like chapter 1, and I
• 1:03:11
  really liked the set up of the new characters.
• 1:03:13
  I didn't think that any of them were as interesting as the ones
• 1:03:15
  they ditched in The Virgin New Adventures.
• 1:03:17
  But I thought he handled that swiftly, economically, with
• 1:03:22
  enough depth so I could understand who those people
• 1:03:24
  were. He set up the situation well.
• 1:03:27
  He put them in a situation of peril, and that was all in one
• 1:03:30
  chapter. And I thought, Oh my God, I'm in
• 1:03:33
  for a good reading. This is going to be good.
• 1:03:36
  Then my problems started. We entered panto land and
• 1:03:40
  Michael, I love a panto. I go every year.
• 1:03:44
  Would you believe I love a panto?
• 1:03:46
  That seems off brand. Yeah, well, you know, where do
• 1:03:50
  you think I get all my double entendres?
• 1:03:51
  Well, I take a pad and I'm there and that's me for the year for
• 1:03:54
  podcasts. You're always happy to whip them
• 1:03:57
  out. No, we're not starting this.
• 1:04:03
  How many of you got written down?
• 1:04:05
  None that was that was off the cuff.
• 1:04:07
  Oh, well done. Well, look, we are, we are
• 1:04:12
  entering a panto. And so I can only imagine in
• 1:04:15
  these books, too big and too broad for the small screen, that
• 1:04:19
  we are going to interrogate the genre of panto in a truly
• 1:04:24
  sophisticated way. You'd hope, wouldn't you?
• 1:04:27
  Alas, we don't. And what follows from much of
• 1:04:30
  the book is Benny running around not realising she's in a panto
• 1:04:35
  with the reader going, you're in a panto, not really
• 1:04:40
  interrogating any of that, as a result introducing lots of lot
• 1:04:45
  even more characters. There are so many characters in
• 1:04:47
  this book. The thing you don't, you don't
• 1:04:50
  really. 250 pages long as well. It made me realise the problem.
• 1:04:54
  The thing with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is there's
• 1:04:56
  barely any other characters because you've got 8 characters
• 1:04:58
  just in the title. Yeah, but she's got the dwarfs
• 1:05:02
  plus the vizier plus the king plus the suitors, you know?
• 1:05:06
  Yeah, so you've got Prince Charming, Robin Hood's and all,
• 1:05:09
  all the rest of them. You've also got Wolsey Can Talk
• 1:05:12
  now. You've also got, oh, you've also
• 1:05:14
  got Professor Arthur Candy from The Wedding of River Song.
• 1:05:18
  He's in there as well. Steven Moffitt's academic
• 1:05:20
  character, there are so many characters in this.
• 1:05:25
  And I said, I described it as a as a holiday episode written by
• 1:05:29
  Terry Pratchett. Now Terry Pratchett, I know the
• 1:05:35
  sorts of people who listen to this podcast.
• 1:05:36
  So I know there will be a lot of Terry Pratchett fans here
• 1:05:39
  listening. And I'm I'm, I'm not about to
• 1:05:42
  come and, you know, offer you an alternative reading.
• 1:05:46
  But I do think when they were trying to work out what should
• 1:05:50
  this series be and what should it be like?
• 1:05:53
  And it can't be Doctor Who anymore.
• 1:05:54
  And we don't want it just to be Doctor Who with a doctor
• 1:05:56
  substitute. We'll let BBV do that.
• 1:06:00
  If you to look around and say, OK, well, what are the other?
• 1:06:02
  What are the other? What in British sci-fi fantasy
• 1:06:06
  is successful in 1997? Northridge Dwarf before you say
• 1:06:09
  it. What what what forms are that?
• 1:06:13
  Harry Potter would be published the next month, so you can't go
• 1:06:17
  to that. Terry Pratchett isn't a bad
• 1:06:19
  place to go. This wasn't the great line at
• 1:06:21
  the time that he was the most shoplifted author in the UK for
• 1:06:25
  so long. And, you know, the best sellers
• 1:06:27
  year year after year after year, much beloved remain remain.
• 1:06:29
  So now you're actually going. OK, maybe there's something in
• 1:06:32
  that. My take of Terry Pratchett has
• 1:06:35
  always been that in every one of his books you will have some
• 1:06:39
  absolutely wonderful writing, some wonderful in some wonderful
• 1:06:45
  human insights, wonderful contrivances, a a wonderfully
• 1:06:52
  realized fantastical world, but at the same time can still be
• 1:06:55
  parodic, was still thing believable and coherent.
• 1:07:00
  You will also very much feel the lack of an editor.
• 1:07:03
  And if you take for an example, Reaper Man, Reaper Man, Reaper
• 1:07:08
  man, Oh God, if I, if I, if I sit here and think about Reaper
• 1:07:11
  Man by Terry Pratchett, one of his death books, I think, my
• 1:07:14
  God, that's such a fantastic book.
• 1:07:15
  When am I going to read that again?
• 1:07:16
  It's a book in which death comes to term with it's a book in
• 1:07:20
  which death comes to terms with mortality.
• 1:07:24
  That's amazing. I can't hear.
• 1:07:27
  I can't hear. Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue
• 1:07:30
  All Easter Colt without thinking of some of the wonderful imagery
• 1:07:33
  from that book. Why do I feel like there's a
• 1:07:35
  buck coming though? Because there is.
• 1:07:38
  But the problem is that's only half the book.
• 1:07:40
  And the other half of the book, as in almost every other
• 1:07:43
  Discworld book, is a load of wizarding bollocks.
• 1:07:45
  So you'll have a load of scenes that are about all that, that
• 1:07:48
  are beautiful and tender and witty and funny.
• 1:07:50
  And then you'll have the Arts Duke and the Professor of
• 1:07:55
  Bollocksy bollocks running around making jokes about how
• 1:07:59
  they've invented the mangle and isn't that funny?
• 1:08:01
  And that's his official title. Michael, probably.
• 1:08:04
  And there's so much of that every single time we go no, no,
• 1:08:08
  stop doing this, Terry, Terry, Terry.
• 1:08:10
  And then? Terry Fry and Novella Terry,
• 1:08:12
  Just the Death. Part write a young adult book,
• 1:08:15
  you have some of your best work every single time or then he'll
• 1:08:19
  then he'll tell a joke and you go that's a funny line and then
• 1:08:21
  he will explain it and reiterate it for.
• 1:08:23
  The next page. There was plenty of that on this
• 1:08:25
  as well. And the problem with Oh no, it
• 1:08:28
  isn't is that it looked at Terry Pratchett as a model, and it's
• 1:08:33
  treated Terry Pratchett's every flaw as conspicuous successes
• 1:08:38
  that should be imitated and built upon.
• 1:08:40
  So we have the parody that doesn't go anywhere, and we have
• 1:08:46
  the but which is drawn out to death.
• 1:08:48
  So we have all of the seven dwarfs who all have witty,
• 1:08:52
  witty, witty 1997. No, they all.
• 1:08:55
  Have laddish names. One is called Laddish.
• 1:08:59
  One is called Laddish. Others include bitchy, gushy,
• 1:09:02
  liberal, cute, Moody and lazy. And one of them has a one of
• 1:09:08
  them has a T-shirt for Dwarf Pride again.
• 1:09:11
  It's. It's just a joke that doesn't go
• 1:09:13
  anywhere. And I think part of the problem
• 1:09:14
  is that of course, you know, one of the one of the funny things,
• 1:09:17
  one of the lovely things, one of the audience interaction things
• 1:09:20
  about panto is the way in which you tell these same stories over
• 1:09:22
  and over again, but you update them and you throw in the new
• 1:09:25
  references. And so you have gag like I'm I'm
• 1:09:28
  sure there's going to be there isn't going to be a single panto
• 1:09:31
  put on this year that doesn't have some version of I'm just
• 1:09:34
  Kent in it, right? All of this, all of this stuff,
• 1:09:38
  or a Trump joke or something else?
• 1:09:40
  But, you know, the jokes were so bad.
• 1:09:44
  Yes. Like, yeah, do you know what?
• 1:09:46
  And I really realised, yeah, I, I said I love a panto.
• 1:09:50
  But divorced from performance and the aesthetic of what they
• 1:09:54
  put on the stage, the crudeness and the single track tone and
• 1:10:00
  the dreadful jokes of panto are laid bare.
• 1:10:05
  And as a text, you realize just how much weight the actors are
• 1:10:11
  picking up. Because as an audio, it's very
• 1:10:14
  funny. You get Nicholas Courtney in to
• 1:10:16
  play Wolsey the cat. You got Lisa Bauman doing the
• 1:10:19
  jokes. It's hilarious.
• 1:10:21
  They're quick. They're quick one liners.
• 1:10:22
  They add layers of personality to it.
• 1:10:25
  It's brilliant. On the page, man, they clang at
• 1:10:30
  one point. At one point he literally
• 1:10:32
  describes a joke and then a tumbleweed rolling by.
• 1:10:37
  Yeah, they say, They say in comedy that a groan's as good as
• 1:10:40
  a laugh. This didn't get a laugh or a
• 1:10:43
  groan, anatomy. This just got a tired
• 1:10:46
  exhalation. The actually one of the
• 1:10:48
  enjoyments I was getting was thinking about you reading the
• 1:10:52
  same jokes and just your groans of despair.
• 1:10:57
  Such as? I've just returned from the
• 1:10:58
  Enchanted Land. Is that yet another dimension?
• 1:11:02
  No, it's a nightclub in Camden, you know.
• 1:11:06
  Because you don't. Because it it seems to miss
• 1:11:10
  that, or if it does, it doesn't do anything to alleviate the
• 1:11:13
  problem that that you don't have the actors delivering, that you
• 1:11:16
  don't have the charisma of a pantodame or.
• 1:11:20
  Just delivered that. Excuse me.
• 1:11:21
  Oh yeah, sorry. The problem that the listeners
• 1:11:26
  had, the problem that the listeners had, of course, is
• 1:11:28
  that Joe will have done. You had Joe reading that for
• 1:11:30
  you. Just one reading it out is going
• 1:11:32
  to make it 1% funnier. I mean I've got a few more if
• 1:11:37
  you will bear with me. Rumple phobia.
• 1:11:40
  There's a lot of post dwarf and anti dwarf feeling.
• 1:11:43
  Oh boy, Prince Charming turns up in his ridiculous gear.
• 1:11:47
  Ridicule is nothing to be scared of, said Bernice.
• 1:11:51
  I mean, it's just one clanger. I've almost said banger, then
• 1:11:55
  one clanger after another. There's a bit where they're
• 1:11:59
  deciding which way to go in the desert, towards the towards the
• 1:12:03
  water with the palm trees or towards the hazy bit in the
• 1:12:05
  distance and someone says I always preferred blur to Oasis.
• 1:12:10
  Oh Jesus, the Spice Girls are carrying huge jars from which
• 1:12:13
  they offer exotic spices. Please, the transvestite wolf
• 1:12:19
  who was expressing himself as a predator.
• 1:12:22
  Oh God, at that point I was like, how many pages are left of
• 1:12:26
  this book? But The thing is, of course he's
• 1:12:29
  doing panto and this is a part of panto, so none of this would
• 1:12:33
  be a problem if the. If it was a panto or.
• 1:12:38
  If the book were doing anything with that about the panto, but
• 1:12:42
  the entire story is Benny doesn't realise she's in a
• 1:12:45
  panto, the audience will know she's in a panto.
• 1:12:49
  Then she finds out she's in a panto and nothing.
• 1:12:53
  Then it becomes a sci-fi plot. It becomes the holodeck episode.
• 1:12:56
  It becomes, Oh my God, the start, the neutron star's going
• 1:12:58
  to explode. And if we don't escape from this
• 1:13:00
  fantasy world by following its rules before the end, then we're
• 1:13:03
  all going to die. But the problem is, if you're
• 1:13:05
  not doing anything with that, if you're not subverting those
• 1:13:08
  ideas, if not interrogating those ideas or doing them well,
• 1:13:13
  what is the point? You're just going through
• 1:13:15
  someone describing stuff that it doesn't work on the page.
• 1:13:18
  I recently covered The Crooked World for the second time on the
• 1:13:21
  book club. Yeah, another book club was so
• 1:13:23
  desperate to do it, even though it had already been done, they
• 1:13:25
  asked do it again. And we actually took that apart
• 1:13:29
  cartoon by cartoon as they were aping it in the book and showing
• 1:13:34
  how they were subverting the cartoon basics, turning it
• 1:13:38
  inside out and then turning the whole thing into a coming of age
• 1:13:42
  story. It was such a clever reading of
• 1:13:45
  cartoons. This is not doing any of that.
• 1:13:49
  It is just putting a panto on the page.
• 1:13:52
  The trouble with a panto on the pages, it's a bit embarrassing.
• 1:13:56
  Yeah, it doesn't it, It doesn't signify anything more, right?
• 1:14:01
  And so it just becomes, it's not from parody, it's pastiche.
• 1:14:06
  And at times it just starts, it's that really weak form of
• 1:14:11
  comedy that thinks that a cultural reference is the same
• 1:14:15
  as a joke. You know, it's, it's only one up
• 1:14:17
  from those, you know, posts epic movie sort of efforts from, you
• 1:14:24
  know, the late naughties where they'd literally just go 2 girls
• 1:14:27
  1 cup and expect a laugh for it. You know, just because they'd
• 1:14:31
  mentioned a thing that people knew about.
• 1:14:33
  But the other thing this is doing the apes, Terry Pratchett,
• 1:14:37
  as you said earlier, what was the title of the book you said
• 1:14:39
  with the two plots? Reaperman.
• 1:14:41
  Reaperman is that there are two plots here as well, and I'll
• 1:14:45
  tell you, I've been to a lot of pantos.
• 1:14:47
  And in none of those pantos every 5 minutes do I cut to an
• 1:14:52
  extremely tedious Star Trek The Next Generation episode.
• 1:14:55
  We have a load of academics being chased around by sentient
• 1:14:58
  squid with axes and they're so tedious.
• 1:15:03
  Those scenes, like I just, after a while, I don't do this very
• 1:15:08
  often. I stopped reading those bits and
• 1:15:10
  just went back to the panto because I was like, that entire
• 1:15:14
  plot was excised from the audio, that entire plot.
• 1:15:19
  Menlo Stokes all those characters.
• 1:15:21
  The story didn't lose a thing. No, it no.
• 1:15:25
  And again, I'm sorry to say it, that is also quite Terry
• 1:15:28
  Pratchett, that is. Meanwhile, back at the Unseen
• 1:15:30
  University, all all, all of the rugs are coming alive.
• 1:15:37
  But if those characters on regulars, yeah, on Star Trek The
• 1:15:42
  Next Generation regulars for the rest of the series, why are we
• 1:15:45
  buffering? I, I kind of wonder if there's
• 1:15:47
  also an idea in here of they set you on, they set you at Della
• 1:15:53
  and they dropped off at Saint Oscars University.
• 1:15:55
  And I, I wonder if they're also kind of messing around with the
• 1:15:59
  idea that, Oh well, maybe these books could also have a bit of
• 1:16:01
  the sort of campus comedy in them.
• 1:16:03
  You know, the sort of dry, dry wits of the observation of
• 1:16:05
  academics talking about things and all the rest of it.
• 1:16:09
  But the problem is that it's those again.
• 1:16:13
  Those types of comedy often rely on mundanity, on minutiae, on
• 1:16:25
  interpersonal interactions. There's too many characters
• 1:16:28
  here. There are too many characters
• 1:16:29
  for us to have any view of any single one of them.
• 1:16:32
  They're not well enough differentiated.
• 1:16:35
  But surely if you're going to do that, yeah, if you're going to
• 1:16:37
  have dry, dusty academics, you know, talking very wryly about
• 1:16:41
  the genre, you need to put them in the genre.
• 1:16:44
  And they don't touch the panto. None of them.
• 1:16:47
  No, and and neither are they on the university.
• 1:16:49
  So they're just running around. I mean, if even if the idea was
• 1:16:51
  that all of these people would become regulars and we'd see
• 1:16:53
  much more of them in their adventures in the future, I
• 1:16:55
  wouldn't want to. I don't think that I'm I didn't,
• 1:16:59
  I didn't end this book thinking, oh God, I can't wait to see that
• 1:17:02
  lot again. No, I finished it and thought,
• 1:17:05
  oh thank God, that's over with, right?
• 1:17:07
  What's next? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:09
  I was very happy when the book ended.
• 1:17:11
  But that's. A very odd way to start a range,
• 1:17:14
  no? It is so, yes.
• 1:17:16
  So apart from anything else, this this is an odd book to
• 1:17:18
  begin the range with. I would kind of get it if it was
• 1:17:22
  Book 9, you know, and people are starting to get bored and do
• 1:17:25
  something. Differently it's your It's your
• 1:17:27
  holiday episode in the middle of the season.
• 1:17:29
  We all know, and we all know the reason the holodeck episodes
• 1:17:32
  exist is because the regulars are getting bored and they want
• 1:17:34
  to do something, but they want to play a French Resistance
• 1:17:38
  fighter. For two weeks, casino sure not.
• 1:17:41
  Exactly, exactly. But the character is Paul
• 1:17:45
  Cornell Board. It feels a little bit like he's.
• 1:17:48
  I think there could be something in that, you know?
• 1:17:51
  It does feel like he's bailed on his own premise, doesn't it?
• 1:17:53
  Because the book after this is Dragon's Wrath.
• 1:17:56
  Now, Dragon's Wrath isn't isn't a classic by any means, but it's
• 1:18:00
  much more. It's a very competent book,
• 1:18:03
  brilliantly structured in a way that only Justin Richards can,
• 1:18:07
  and it absolutely sells the range for what it's going to be
• 1:18:12
  in a way that this does not. Yeah, 100%.
• 1:18:15
  And what that the thing that Bernie Summerfield can default
• 1:18:19
  to being it's sort of default state as a range that now run in
• 1:18:22
  various forms for you know the better part of 30 years in its
• 1:18:25
  own right, which is remarkable. Remarkable is is space
• 1:18:29
  archaeologist adventurer. And I almost wonder, I almost
• 1:18:34
  wonder if there was a concern at the start that that was too
• 1:18:38
  generic an idea, that it needed to be something more than that,
• 1:18:41
  that it needs to be something more complex than that, that it
• 1:18:45
  needs to be something more British than that.
• 1:18:49
  But The thing is that works if you just do a space
• 1:18:52
  archaeologist adventure adventurer that that that that
• 1:18:56
  does well, that's fun. I'll read that.
• 1:18:58
  That's that's pulp sci-fi. If you can't, you know, if you
• 1:19:01
  can't be anything more than pulp sci-fi, pulp sci-fi.
• 1:19:03
  Still, not a bad thing to be use that as your base and then build
• 1:19:07
  around it. But you know, after that, yeah,
• 1:19:09
  I've got to read out every single Benny book.
• 1:19:12
  After that you get Walk. No, not walk into Babylon.
• 1:19:17
  Is it Shipper Falls? Shipper Falls is a certainly
• 1:19:19
  very early one, yeah. Literally a Terry Pratchett
• 1:19:21
  book, you know and absolutely and the Dave Stone writes 5
• 1:19:26
  Benny new adventures. So he is the the, you know, the
• 1:19:29
  most prolific writer for this range.
• 1:19:32
  So he could have set the tone. Well.
• 1:19:34
  Walk into Babylon comes from Kate Orman and that is a a
• 1:19:38
  beautifully written book which could stand proudly as the first
• 1:19:42
  book of this of this range of books.
• 1:19:46
  So there's just a lot of other better choices.
• 1:19:50
  I think they thought Cornell was a catch at the start and then he
• 1:19:56
  delivered this. I, I mean, I, I don't know, but
• 1:20:01
  you know, Dave, Dave Stone, you're right, Wrote, wrote.
• 1:20:04
  Ship of Fools is a comic. It is a comic novel as well.
• 1:20:08
  And you know it. It has plenty of its own faults,
• 1:20:10
  but it's much more exciting. And it's much more it's it's
• 1:20:13
  gotten a mad number of ideas. This the problem, this is what
• 1:20:15
  is this too few is there's at the same time too much happening
• 1:20:18
  and too little. There are too many characters.
• 1:20:20
  Was it? There is much too not enough
• 1:20:22
  substance. Exactly.
• 1:20:24
  Exactly. So Benny spends most of the book
• 1:20:26
  not knowing she's in a panto. Everyone going, you're in a
• 1:20:28
  panto, but not in a fun panto way of shouting at shouting at
• 1:20:32
  the characters and then you wanted.
• 1:20:34
  This out to me because I hadn't got to that big alpha.
• 1:20:38
  There's no way. No, he's misread this.
• 1:20:40
  No go and say it. You are absolutely right.
• 1:20:44
  She goes from not from being completely oblivious to the fact
• 1:20:47
  that she's in a panto to the moment someone pointed out she
• 1:20:50
  suddenly knows everything about pantos.
• 1:20:53
  For a whole page she explains the history of pantos from their
• 1:20:57
  very formation to the current day.
• 1:21:01
  You get in. In which case, why didn't she
• 1:21:03
  recognise any of this sooner? Like, it would be fine to have
• 1:21:05
  her go. Oh, yeah, actually.
• 1:21:07
  And again, she's not a character.
• 1:21:09
  She that, you know, the fun conceit, one of the fun conceits
• 1:21:12
  of Benny is that she's from the future, but her specialism is
• 1:21:15
  the 20th century. That's a great gag.
• 1:21:17
  Let's keep doing that. That will always work.
• 1:21:21
  But you know, panto is, you know, has its origins a bit
• 1:21:23
  earlier than that, so 20th century tradition.
• 1:21:25
  So you could have a version where she goes, oh, actually I
• 1:21:28
  do know a bit about this. And you could even have a bit of
• 1:21:30
  fun of her, of her working things out just after they
• 1:21:33
  happen of going, oh, yeah, that is something that happens or
• 1:21:35
  just before. And that's where the jeopardy
• 1:21:37
  comes in. Make the panto a bit more subtle
• 1:21:41
  so she's figuring it out as she goes.
• 1:21:43
  Don't have it as such a ridiculously obvious panto.
• 1:21:47
  But when she realizes she seems don't make Benny stupid of all
• 1:21:51
  things, Don't make her stupid because suddenly after that
• 1:21:56
  potted history of panto, yeah, she's so well honed on panto.
• 1:22:00
  She's rhyming things. She's using double entendres.
• 1:22:03
  She's literally using this world's rules against it.
• 1:22:07
  And I'm like, so you're, you're an absolute expert in this
• 1:22:10
  field, so why were you so stupid in the first half of the book?
• 1:22:15
  Yeah, it it, it, it something that it is very hard to forgive
• 1:22:19
  any story for is not playing by its own rules and not being
• 1:22:23
  internally consistent. But.
• 1:22:24
  Why didn't it Carnell realise that?
• 1:22:27
  I don't know, I don't, I don't know.
• 1:22:29
  It feels like on paper it feels like a good idea and as a
• 1:22:33
  performed piece, I mean, I remember I it's been a long time
• 1:22:36
  since I listened to the audio version, but I remember enjoying
• 1:22:38
  it more than this it, or at least not as annoyed it's.
• 1:22:42
  A very polished production. Oh, no, it is for their first,
• 1:22:46
  you know, the basic sound effects, all of that.
• 1:22:48
  But also as well, Jack Rayner, she's looked at this book and
• 1:22:52
  she's gone, right. Well, we'll take out half the
• 1:22:54
  book because we don't need that. And then she's added dialogue
• 1:22:58
  where Bernice is figuring things out and we're going on that
• 1:23:01
  journey with her. So it's not just a sudden wrench
• 1:23:04
  when she realises what it is. Yeah.
• 1:23:07
  And also one of the issues here, of course, is that it's one of
• 1:23:10
  the things that, you know, Paul Connell did very well in the New
• 1:23:14
  Adventures was to show how you do Doctor Who that not only
• 1:23:18
  isn't on telly, but isn't reliant on aping a television
• 1:23:23
  form. So you know, you do you do get
• 1:23:25
  books that that that try to ape Dr. and telly and do and do it
• 1:23:30
  well. I think well mannered war was
• 1:23:32
  written as scripts and then basically novelised.
• 1:23:34
  And it's it's a book I remember enjoying, but he showed that you
• 1:23:39
  don't you don't need to be referring to that.
• 1:23:41
  You can take these characters and these ideas and and this
• 1:23:43
  format and make it work in as a novel.
• 1:23:46
  Too broad and too deep for the small screen.
• 1:23:49
  The problem with the treatment of panto here is he doesn't find
• 1:23:51
  any way to translate that to the page in a way that isn't just
• 1:23:55
  describing. There's so much description of
• 1:23:59
  visual stuff here in a quite painful way, and it's such a
• 1:24:03
  visual novel, but it's not evocative.
• 1:24:06
  He's just trying to he's trying to get across.
• 1:24:08
  It's a bit reminded me a bit of you know, when, when you'd be
• 1:24:12
  writing at school. I'm not suggesting he's writing
• 1:24:14
  at a school level here. He absolutely isn't.
• 1:24:16
  I'm not going to insult him. But that issue you have, if you
• 1:24:19
  were the type of child I was, that when you were given a
• 1:24:22
  creative writing assignment, you'd want to write a big
• 1:24:24
  exciting adventure, fantasy, sci-fi thing.
• 1:24:28
  But what you'd end up doing is just describing a lot of set
• 1:24:32
  pieces. Oh, and then, and then the
• 1:24:34
  speedboat. And then the speedboat goes over
• 1:24:35
  the other boat and it does a big jump and he jumps out the side
• 1:24:38
  and it exploded behind it. But he hit the ground and rolled
• 1:24:40
  and picked up his gun and shot the other guy and.
• 1:24:42
  What mine was Michael, well, the prison in space, but it was
• 1:24:46
  literally the script of Vengeance of Varos and I've got
• 1:24:51
  AB Plus for it as well. Very imaginative.
• 1:24:54
  My English teacher said thank you very much.
• 1:24:57
  I should pass my regards on to Philip Martin.
• 1:24:59
  I think that's more than many a fan would give Vengeance and
• 1:25:01
  Varos these days. But but but there's this use one
• 1:25:06
  you think, can this really be from the same guy who wrote Love
• 1:25:11
  and more? Because it just it doesn't.
• 1:25:13
  It really seems to be struggling with turning its idea into a
• 1:25:17
  book. And I don't think it ever does
• 1:25:21
  because then at the end of the book, it is trying to tie in the
• 1:25:27
  the imagery of the panto and the nuts and bolts of the science
• 1:25:32
  fiction plot. And so suddenly in the middle of
• 1:25:35
  this panto, we've got scenes where they're explaining about a
• 1:25:40
  race of people that have turned themselves into missiles.
• 1:25:45
  That what I, I please explain this to me.
• 1:25:49
  I I really was like, hang on, what is it biological material?
• 1:25:53
  Is it race bank memory? Is it everything?
• 1:25:56
  It's in a missile, it's going to strike something and then what?
• 1:26:00
  Like, I don't know. It was very confusing.
• 1:26:04
  So I think what happens is that the perfect ONS on their planet,
• 1:26:12
  who I was trying to think describe sounding a lot like
• 1:26:15
  Smurfs it must be said, were. Bags.
• 1:26:20
  When I read them now, I'm going to hear those squeaky voices.
• 1:26:23
  Realise that their planet was going to be destroyed at some
• 1:26:26
  point, but they've never mastered space travel.
• 1:26:30
  So the way that they decided to save themselves was both
• 1:26:33
  basically uploading their minds, their consciousness into a
• 1:26:36
  virtual reality that was then placed within a missile.
• 1:26:39
  This was, of course, they call it the green or something like
• 1:26:42
  that, and it's essentially virtual reality.
• 1:26:44
  Biological material in there as well, isn't there?
• 1:26:47
  Is there? Yeah, they they said to say
• 1:26:49
  that. Yeah, it was.
• 1:26:51
  It was both their memories and biological material.
• 1:26:55
  I swear to God I didn't. I'm not making that up.
• 1:26:59
  That's probably just to cover how people can go from being
• 1:27:01
  physical beings to existing within this without leaving
• 1:27:04
  their bodies behind. But anyway, oh.
• 1:27:07
  Here because the perfectionist preserved their entire culture
• 1:27:09
  as a computer matrix, downloaded all their secrets, technology,
• 1:27:13
  and finally their good selves into a single their good selves
• 1:27:18
  into a single missile programmed to launch any suitable spaceship
• 1:27:21
  that came near the planet. Planning to re actualize into a
• 1:27:26
  vessel for the whole perfecton culture.
• 1:27:31
  So I think the yeah, so I think the idea is that they can
• 1:27:33
  basically put their put themselves into this virtual
• 1:27:36
  reality. I'm going to say it again, have
• 1:27:39
  that stored above basically a missile and then fire that off
• 1:27:43
  to be found and they can be reconstructed from this at some
• 1:27:45
  point in the future, but it collides with the spaceship and
• 1:27:48
  interacts with the spaceship's computer.
• 1:27:50
  It's a holodeck episode and it's got all of the bollocks to make
• 1:27:54
  something that happens on a holodeck matter.
• 1:27:56
  It's exactly that's a bit more long winded.
• 1:27:59
  Usually it's just the holodeck broke, you know?
• 1:28:02
  Yes, yeah, exactly that. And it's just it, you know,
• 1:28:09
  holodeck episodes are a cliche and tiresome within Star Trek.
• 1:28:13
  So why? Why?
• 1:28:15
  Who's looking at anger? We should export that to Doctor
• 1:28:17
  Who. Well, Rebecca Levine, obviously.
• 1:28:21
  Yeah, I mean, you know, the new adventures, learnt some, learnt
• 1:28:24
  some good lessons from, you know how TNG reinvented Star Trek.
• 1:28:28
  Don't get me wrong. They sent David a McKinsey over
• 1:28:31
  the BBC books. It's all right.
• 1:28:32
  We don't need any more Star Trek books.
• 1:28:34
  Thank you. There was a can I just though
• 1:28:38
  not so it's all bad. There was one.
• 1:28:40
  There were a couple of self referential jokes that I liked
• 1:28:43
  in this one. A small.
• 1:28:45
  A small one was when Benny says bugger.
• 1:28:49
  She threw the broom into a corner and sat down on a barrel,
• 1:28:52
  her head on her chin. At least she could say things
• 1:28:54
  like that now. Well, that's fun.
• 1:28:58
  But then the A bonbon, the most terrifying sugared confectionery
• 1:29:03
  ever developed by mankind. The A is for aniseed is not.
• 1:29:11
  No, indeed, although we should mention as well Cornell Show
• 1:29:16
  some throws some delightful shade around the start of this
• 1:29:20
  book, where Bernice is considering what she wants to do
• 1:29:25
  with her life and including observing that she has done
• 1:29:29
  nothing about her commissioned book so vast a pile and
• 1:29:32
  considers that. And considers that if all else
• 1:29:36
  fails, she can claim a hard drive crash and leave someone
• 1:29:39
  else to finish it. You bitch, Paul Cornell.
• 1:29:43
  Honestly, I bet he's told her on a bitch, she said.
• 1:29:47
  I'm done. I'm going to put this in the
• 1:29:48
  book, all right? Yeah.
• 1:29:49
  Yeah, yeah, I hope. I hope so.
• 1:29:51
  Knowing winks to their mates, that was quite popular at the
• 1:29:54
  time. Yes, yes, yes indeed.
• 1:29:57
  So. Hard drive crashed indeed.
• 1:30:00
  However good fact, The Grail, it's the book that introduces
• 1:30:06
  the Grail. Yes, now.
• 1:30:09
  And yes, that is a good fact. And I thought for a few
• 1:30:13
  passages, this is fun, this is interesting.
• 1:30:16
  He's doing something with narrative.
• 1:30:18
  You know, I particularly like the bit where the Grail decided
• 1:30:21
  to end their extracts because that was the point where they
• 1:30:24
  were at their most triumphant, so they decided that's where the
• 1:30:27
  story ended before they were defeated.
• 1:30:30
  That was fun. Again, though, it becomes a bit
• 1:30:33
  of a joke that wears a bit thin at the end.
• 1:30:36
  And I was going, yeah, I get it, I get it.
• 1:30:39
  Do something new with it now. Better things would be done with
• 1:30:42
  the Grail down the line, and there's a reason.
• 1:30:44
  You know who took it as well? Jacqueline Rayner, of course.
• 1:30:47
  She takes all of his stuff and spins it into gold.
• 1:30:50
  All I was going to say. So this is this is the grail,
• 1:30:52
  the squiddy faced fact obsessed aliens who are on a quest to
• 1:30:57
  amass ever more facts. Good fact, bad fact.
• 1:31:03
  It's very good. I I I I love that.
• 1:31:04
  I still think the grail are funny and.
• 1:31:07
  They are very funny in the audio of this as.
• 1:31:08
  Well, they're very funny in the audience.
• 1:31:10
  When they're chasing around Dame Candy, that's very funny on the
• 1:31:13
  audio. But you know, you know where
• 1:31:16
  else the Grail would turn up, at least in name, or at least their
• 1:31:18
  effects would, is in the Doomwood Curse.
• 1:31:21
  Which BBB? Sorry, Big Finish audio that has
• 1:31:27
  some similar ideas to this, that is about the interaction or that
• 1:31:31
  is about the overlay of fiction and fact.
• 1:31:33
  And it's about characters being drawn into a fiction and how
• 1:31:38
  that is in how that is in contest in with reality and
• 1:31:44
  characters are drawn into playing these new parts and
• 1:31:47
  feels like it's doing the interesting stuff that this book
• 1:31:51
  should have been doing to be more interesting.
• 1:31:53
  Who wrote the Doomwood curse, Michael?
• 1:31:56
  God. It was Jacqueline Rayner I.
• 1:31:58
  Think it might be yes. She has a way of taking, you
• 1:32:01
  know, these ideas and going, Oh yeah, I could do something with
• 1:32:04
  that, you know? She also used them in the
• 1:32:06
  gorilla escape, the glass prison and various other things.
• 1:32:10
  She uses them dramatically and comedically in a very funny way.
• 1:32:14
  Like, yeah, I don't want to be entirely mean about this.
• 1:32:17
  There was 1 character thread in this that I rather liked, and
• 1:32:21
  that's because I like cats and I like Wolsey the cat and I won't,
• 1:32:26
  I sit here and say this is the most stunning character work
• 1:32:28
  I've ever seen done. But I did like Ballsy gaining a
• 1:32:33
  personality, the relationship with Bernice and then the sort
• 1:32:39
  of horror, the realization of what he will be when he's turned
• 1:32:44
  back into a cat. That that stuff, it's, it's
• 1:32:49
  struck a chord in a way that none of the rest of this book
• 1:32:52
  did. I was like, OK, there's
• 1:32:54
  something that's an idea there, but it's got a little bit of
• 1:32:56
  weight to it, a little bit of emotional, you know, bang.
• 1:33:00
  But it's just such a small fraction of the book.
• 1:33:04
  Yeah, I'm, I'm glad you like that because I found it a bit
• 1:33:07
  frustrating as well. Again, I I agree that I think
• 1:33:10
  it's a really good idea. I just don't think enough of it
• 1:33:14
  works because I think for too much of the time he's just the
• 1:33:17
  pan again. Hold on to me, Dick.
• 1:33:20
  Yes, exactly, because it takes so long for them to finally
• 1:33:26
  admit that it's a panto. He is just the panto cat for a
• 1:33:30
  lot of that. And I think there would be a a
• 1:33:34
  book in which one of the the main character thread was was
• 1:33:37
  Ben. You can talk to Wolsey and you
• 1:33:39
  know, if you're a cat lover. I'm, I'm not a pet person, but
• 1:33:42
  if this were to be written by someone who were and that was
• 1:33:46
  made a central thing, I can imagine them extracting some
• 1:33:48
  emotional weight from that about what this this, what if this
• 1:33:52
  they're not a person, they're not a thing.
• 1:33:54
  This sentient, the sentient, this biological Organism that
• 1:33:58
  one spends time with invest in, how would they actually speak to
• 1:34:01
  you? And if they could, you know, I
• 1:34:06
  feel like there's, you're always, you know, I'm not saying
• 1:34:09
  this is going to be Bernice's version of the doctor's wife,
• 1:34:11
  but there is a lot more that you can get out of.
• 1:34:13
  That I'll tell you what. There is a short story in one of
• 1:34:18
  Simon Guria's collections. When he was editing the short
• 1:34:22
  stories, he wrote it. It's the first story.
• 1:34:24
  At the start of that collection, Wolsey dies.
• 1:34:27
  Yes. Yeah, it's so moving.
• 1:34:30
  It's beautifully written. It's very short and it has more
• 1:34:35
  intense character drama in its 8 pages than this manages in 250.
• 1:34:41
  You know it can be done. Well, and I remember that
• 1:34:44
  because the preceding story, and this was at the time when the
• 1:34:50
  books and audience were very much sort of intermingling, but
• 1:34:54
  whichever one it was, the previous story ends with Benny
• 1:34:57
  being called back to the collection because something
• 1:34:59
  terrible has happened. And actually the fact that it's
• 1:35:02
  that Wolsey has died was actually quite affecting because
• 1:35:05
  you're expecting, oh, the Axis have invaded again or something
• 1:35:08
  like that. But it's actually something
• 1:35:09
  really quite human and emotional.
• 1:35:11
  And I again, as somebody who's not really a pet person, I
• 1:35:14
  remember feeling the emotion of that being made to feel that
• 1:35:16
  what it meant for Benny. And it's just not nothing like
• 1:35:19
  that is in this book. And, and it felt as well with
• 1:35:22
  the short story that was like the last cart from Doctor Who as
• 1:35:26
  well. It was like a double morning.
• 1:35:28
  It was really brilliantly done. Yeah.
• 1:35:30
  And I could have done more of that here.
• 1:35:32
  But instead, it's, you know, Michael, the King's balls get
• 1:35:36
  bigger every year. You know, that's what poor
• 1:35:38
  Wolsey's stuck saying for most of the book.
• 1:35:41
  Yeah, I, I'm going to be honest, if I had been reading these
• 1:35:44
  books at the time and I'd just come off the back of Long
• 1:35:46
  Barrow, which I think is Great Dying Days if I no, let me
• 1:35:50
  finish the sentence. So sorry, honestologies.
• 1:35:55
  It's your first podcast if you just come back off the back of
• 1:35:59
  long Barrow, off the back of the dying days and you know, Oh my
• 1:36:02
  God, and they're OK. What's new?
• 1:36:04
  Where are we going next? And dying the dying days does
• 1:36:06
  such a what we talked about. It's a such a admirable job of
• 1:36:12
  not being mourning, of being excited, of going, hey, it's
• 1:36:16
  great. Everything ends and that's sad,
• 1:36:17
  but everything starts again and that's great.
• 1:36:20
  The engine is. So optimistic, isn't it?
• 1:36:23
  It's so uplifting for us to start this book.
• 1:36:27
  Oh, I'm so old, you know, and no one wants to Make Love to me
• 1:36:30
  anymore. It's happened.
• 1:36:32
  What do you know what we've talked about a lot of the books
• 1:36:35
  from this era about, you know, we've sort of done this little
• 1:36:37
  tour of this transitional period and the dying Days ends with the
• 1:36:40
  Doctor and Benny together. Literally not, not that bit,
• 1:36:45
  but, you know, clinking glasses and offering cheers to the
• 1:36:48
  continuing adventure, the continuing adventures of Doctor
• 1:36:51
  Who and Professor Bernie Summerfield.
• 1:36:54
  And if I had then gone and read the first books of each of those
• 1:36:57
  two ranges, I'd have carried on with the EDAS, but I don't know
• 1:37:01
  I'd have carried on with this. I would tend to agree.
• 1:37:05
  Yeah. Yeah, I do.
• 1:37:07
  You know what it reminds me of? The SFX review of Oh, no, it
• 1:37:13
  isn't the audio, Yeah, which was misquoted on the back of the of
• 1:37:19
  the audio release on the CD. It came out on cassette and then
• 1:37:24
  the review came out in SFX and then they brought it out on the
• 1:37:26
  CD and they put a good place to start for this new range.
• 1:37:34
  The actual quote in SFX was, is this a good place to start for
• 1:37:39
  this range? I was like, how did you misread
• 1:37:43
  that and put it on the back? But yeah, it does sort of sum it
• 1:37:46
  up. No, it's not.
• 1:37:49
  It's not a good place to start for this range.
• 1:37:51
  No, I mean there there are, There are as we've said and I
• 1:37:55
  think hopefully made it clear to the listener, there are many
• 1:37:58
  things wrong with this book, but it's it's greatest problem is
• 1:38:02
  that it's not a good start for a range and it doesn't fill me
• 1:38:06
  with any excitement for the conceit.
• 1:38:09
  In a way, the 8 Doctors, for all its flaws, at the end of it, I
• 1:38:12
  thought, bloody love Doctor Who. Warts and all.
• 1:38:17
  Warts and all. Whereas this I just went, well,
• 1:38:21
  that's hey, hey, here's the good news.
• 1:38:23
  There's an there's at least one sci-fi series that I don't need
• 1:38:27
  to be bothered with anymore. I'll go and try out all the
• 1:38:30
  other. I've not finished reading the
• 1:38:31
  Culture. I've not finished reading the
• 1:38:32
  Culture books but Ian M backs it and I'm reading this bollocks.
• 1:38:36
  Will you hurry up please? Because we want to do the also
• 1:38:38
  people at some point. Oh yeah, noted.
• 1:38:41
  Well, I did get an education from this book, though, I will
• 1:38:44
  say that. And but that is how not to do
• 1:38:47
  things. Because I realize that the joy
• 1:38:51
  of a panto is not the script. And I've before I thought it was
• 1:38:56
  the script and the actors. Now I realize that the joy of a
• 1:39:00
  panto is the instinct of the actors.
• 1:39:03
  Yeah. Improvising on the night, you
• 1:39:06
  know, going for the really terrible gags in a very over the
• 1:39:10
  top way and delivering that to the audience with huge charisma.
• 1:39:14
  Yeah. Unfortunately when Joe Ford's
• 1:39:17
  raising the panto jokes, there's no charisma there at all.
• 1:39:20
  So, you know, it's it's unfortunately my own flat
• 1:39:22
  delivery in my head. And as a result.
• 1:39:25
  Oh yes, it is. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:39:28
  It sinks like a rock. It's the most disappointing
• 1:39:31
  climax ever, frankly. Thank you.
• 1:39:36
  I got that one. Was there anything else
• 1:39:40
  positive? Like can you spin any gold from
• 1:39:43
  this? Because I did think, I did think
• 1:39:47
  that like Paul Connell can write prose.
• 1:39:50
  Yeah, you absolutely can write prose.
• 1:39:52
  And there were passages that I was reading, thinking that has
• 1:39:56
  been well realised in my head, you know.
• 1:40:01
  But I'm glad you felt that way. I'm looking, I'm looking through
• 1:40:04
  my notes. But anything I like, oh, I liked
• 1:40:07
  the, I liked the I liked the description of pornography as
• 1:40:12
  quote, the land of one handed entertainment.
• 1:40:15
  What was this line all about, though?
• 1:40:17
  But if you want to go down that route, I'm afraid you'll have to
• 1:40:20
  give up all interest in little Arab boys.
• 1:40:24
  What? That's a line in this.
• 1:40:26
  I didn't understand what on earth that was about.
• 1:40:29
  Let's leave that one on examine, should we?
• 1:40:33
  I'm sorry. I mean, I still love Dame Candy
• 1:40:39
  on the page. You know, I've never seen
• 1:40:41
  anything like that since the last time I went behind the back
• 1:40:44
  of the fishmongers and took a look at his buttered place.
• 1:40:47
  You know, that was all those ones.
• 1:40:49
  They were. They were good panto lines.
• 1:40:52
  Yeah, yeah. And I think there was.
• 1:40:54
  And maybe that's because that's the one place where you get a
• 1:40:57
  character being forced into a panto role and you therefore
• 1:40:59
  have the juxtaposition of that character being forced to do
• 1:41:03
  these things. And we know who that character
• 1:41:05
  is. The the problem is you don't get
• 1:41:09
  enough of that anywhere else because a lot of the people
• 1:41:11
  who've been turned into panto characters aren't people we
• 1:41:13
  know. So there's no, there's it's do
• 1:41:16
  you know what it is? It's the one bit where you go.
• 1:41:18
  Oh, Orph is not a merry man, you know, which is the gag of this
• 1:41:22
  type of thing, right? But the problem is it's you've
• 1:41:23
  either got Wolsey just being a panto cat, or you've got
• 1:41:27
  Bernice, who is just what's going on, what's going on, or
• 1:41:30
  you've got a load of people who we don't know, being turned into
• 1:41:34
  panto characters. So that's that.
• 1:41:36
  If if there had been more of this, if so, the problem is this
• 1:41:39
  is the first book. If this had been the 10th book
• 1:41:41
  and we knew all of these characters and then they were
• 1:41:44
  having to do this and in there as well.
• 1:41:46
  You've got Wolsey is now can now talk and think about things and
• 1:41:49
  let's find out what Wolsey thinks.
• 1:41:51
  Then it could have worked. Well, it didn't help as well
• 1:41:54
  that all of those dwarfs were exceptionally annoying.
• 1:41:59
  Like all of them without exception.
• 1:42:01
  And those were Bernice's foils for this book.
• 1:42:05
  Yeah, you have to be careful when writing annoying characters
• 1:42:07
  that you don't just annoy the reader.
• 1:42:09
  Well, it's the Jeremy Fitz Oliver effect, isn't it?
• 1:42:12
  You know, Yes, but he's meant to be annoying.
• 1:42:14
  I find myself going, why? Why do you want to annoy?
• 1:42:18
  Me, that's not a defence though. That's that's not a if I annoy
• 1:42:23
  you and then go, oh, I'm trying to be annoying.
• 1:42:25
  You don't go. Oh, fair play Michael, fair
• 1:42:27
  play. You got me there.
• 1:42:27
  Michael, I'm meant to be annoying on these podcasts, all
• 1:42:30
  right? Oh, Oh well, intent means never
• 1:42:35
  having to say you're sorry, I guess.
• 1:42:38
  Oh, you're on form today. Well, I mean, I don't really
• 1:42:43
  have much more to say about Oh no, it isn't Beyond the fact
• 1:42:46
  that it kind of starts the range on a bit of a porn notes, it
• 1:42:51
  doesn't really suggest what's coming because there are some
• 1:42:56
  very good books in this range. Yes, we want.
• 1:43:00
  We want. Lawrence Miles writes a couple
• 1:43:03
  of bangers. Jim Mortimer writes a great 1.
• 1:43:05
  Lance is in here. Our Lance.
• 1:43:09
  Our Lance of the 2/3 interview. Yes, I would like us to do
• 1:43:14
  walking to Babylon at some point.
• 1:43:16
  We will do Walking to Babylon. It's a fabulous read.
• 1:43:19
  I'll, I think I'll, I think I'll leave it from me on this quote
• 1:43:24
  from Professor Bernie Summerfield herself.
• 1:43:27
  I believe that I remember the moment of my death, so this has
• 1:43:29
  to be an afterlife of some sort. But if it is, where's the
• 1:43:32
  judgement or reward or even punishment?
• 1:43:34
  What's the point to all this? Is that in the book?
• 1:43:38
  Yeah. Wow.
• 1:43:42
  Well, on that note, Michael, I think we should just very
• 1:43:45
  quickly because we we hit Oh no it isn't for an hour and 15
• 1:43:50
  minutes before we were doing our runs through of Paul Connell
• 1:43:54
  books and we've only got 2 left, The Shadows of Avalon and Scream
• 1:43:58
  of the Shouka. We have 3 left.
• 1:44:01
  Oh, what have I missed? Twice upon a time.
• 1:44:04
  Three. I've not read that one, so I'll
• 1:44:05
  leave that one to you. Shadows of Avalon, have you read
• 1:44:09
  that? No, I like the cover.
• 1:44:12
  It's it's a good cover. It's a great cover and it does
• 1:44:16
  the appalling thing of taking all of that triumphant character
• 1:44:21
  work with the Brigadier in the dying days.
• 1:44:24
  Yeah, murders Doris and leaves him a miserable, grieving widow.
• 1:44:31
  It's just hideous. And the the biggest problem with
• 1:44:35
  it is it's the point where Paul Cornell is at sea amongst the
• 1:44:41
  new voices that are in Doctor Who now.
• 1:44:45
  I'm talking about Paul Mars. I'm talking about Lawrence
• 1:44:48
  Miles, I'm talking about Orman and Blum working together.
• 1:44:51
  Yeah. And as a result, I think his
• 1:44:54
  work feels stale and lacking in innovation in comparison.
• 1:45:00
  I think it was you that said to me, you know, the the
• 1:45:04
  unfortunate thing about new ideas is that they eventually
• 1:45:07
  become old ideas and then more new ideas come in.
• 1:45:11
  And this is the point where he is old ideas and the new ideas
• 1:45:15
  are really exciting in a way that his new ideas were really
• 1:45:19
  exciting back in the day. Yeah, Paul Mars actually
• 1:45:22
  mentioned him, said this on his his video blog, not not about
• 1:45:27
  Paul Cannot Leave and Doctor Who books actually, but about
• 1:45:29
  authors in general, where he said you don't owe any loyalty
• 1:45:34
  to authors. And it's OK after a while to
• 1:45:37
  just say, do you know what? There are two or three of their
• 1:45:41
  books that I absolutely love. That doesn't mean I have to read
• 1:45:44
  everything that they do now. If he had a caveat of but please
• 1:45:48
  pick up mine because they're very good.
• 1:45:50
  He doesn't go off the boil. Mars I don't.
• 1:45:52
  Know no, no, he no, that's the thing.
• 1:45:54
  No Paul Paul Mars is that he's he's really good.
• 1:45:57
  So I think he's probably got the freedom to say that, but you
• 1:45:59
  know, because self effacing has won the money charming things.
• 1:46:02
  Recently read Doctor Who in Wonderland.
• 1:46:04
  I mean, it's one of the strongest Doctor Who books he's
• 1:46:06
  ever written, and that's like. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:46:10
  And I suppose you know credits Paul, Paul Cornell as well as
• 1:46:13
  we've said a number of times, love and war time when
• 1:46:16
  Revelation did so much to establish Doctor Who post
• 1:46:21
  cancellation in the wilderness years and that so many people
• 1:46:25
  then took what he did as a model that it's as we, as we said
• 1:46:30
  about the dying days, Rad becomes trad.
• 1:46:32
  And so his, in some ways, you could see it the sign of his
• 1:46:37
  success, that maybe some of his ideas were beginning to look a
• 1:46:39
  bit stale by that point, right? But I think there's a time where
• 1:46:43
  you should stop, because you do look like the old man surrounded
• 1:46:48
  by young faces. And hey, you know, that was
• 1:46:52
  probably the last of and it I think it was a bit of return
• 1:46:55
  anyway. Shadows of Avalon, you know,
• 1:46:56
  he'd been away for a little while, and they came back and
• 1:46:58
  it. Was it's not without merit,
• 1:47:00
  Michael. It's not a good way.
• 1:47:02
  It brings our points to climactic moment and then kicks
• 1:47:08
  them in another direction. But compared to interference
• 1:47:14
  which it is using the ideas of, it is in a dust, you know?
• 1:47:19
  Yeah, OK. But you know, it's also the last
• 1:47:22
  of his, what you almost might think, as was mainline Doctor
• 1:47:26
  Who novels, right? Because the two that come after
• 1:47:28
  this you got are novelisations. So his novelisation of Scream of
• 1:47:31
  the Shelter. Rebooting Doctor Who though.
• 1:47:33
  Rebooting. Innovative new direction for
• 1:47:36
  Doctor Who. I have a great fondness for
• 1:47:40
  Scream of the Shelter. I have to say.
• 1:47:42
  I'm not just not just from it. Well, there's, there's always
• 1:47:44
  something that's slightly evocative about the path not
• 1:47:46
  taken. You know, there's Scream of the
• 1:47:49
  Shelter is one of those the versions of Doctor Who that
• 1:47:54
  didn't happen. That actually actually did
• 1:47:55
  happen. You know, all the weird stories,
• 1:47:57
  like it's the it's the Canadian cartoon series in the early 90s,
• 1:48:01
  right? It's the it's all of those Usus
• 1:48:05
  remakes where, you know, fire up the crystals Cardinal and he's
• 1:48:08
  the master's brother and all the rest of it.
• 1:48:10
  But it actually happens. You can totally imagine it.
• 1:48:12
  You can totally imagine that it would be half a chapter in, you
• 1:48:18
  know, some some history of Doctor Who in the wilderness
• 1:48:20
  years that oh, did you know that at the time it was coming coming
• 1:48:23
  back, Bbci were looking at doing an original story off the back
• 1:48:25
  of the success of Shard and. The rest of the Doctor Who
• 1:48:28
  magazine called Yeah. Oh, and they hoped to get
• 1:48:32
  Richard E Grant. I bet they did.
• 1:48:36
  Trouble is though, trouble is, it does feel like looking
• 1:48:40
  backwards when you compare it to what Rossi Davis did with Series
• 1:48:44
  1, which absolutely is steaming forwards.
• 1:48:49
  Yeah, and I, but I and I, but I, I have an affection for it
• 1:48:52
  because it does feel like the last.
• 1:48:55
  It feels like the natural endpoint, but also the last,
• 1:48:59
  like little signpost of the wilderness years.
• 1:49:02
  Because all, all of Doctor Who becomes such a cottage industry
• 1:49:06
  for those who are still interested.
• 1:49:08
  And they've done so much with it.
• 1:49:09
  So many ridiculous things have been achieved in these years.
• 1:49:12
  Spin off ranges that ran for three years about a character
• 1:49:15
  that hadn't existed four years before, five years before,
• 1:49:20
  entire audio series with their own spin off ranges.
• 1:49:23
  And they've got all of these big actors back.
• 1:49:25
  And of course, the natural endpoints will just bring Doctor
• 1:49:28
  Who back ourselves in whatever way we can do it.
• 1:49:30
  People are still interested. But also at the same time being
• 1:49:34
  reflective of how none of that all of that was still very much
• 1:49:41
  writing in in almost the duration of it's probably too
• 1:49:48
  strong a word of the classic series.
• 1:49:50
  Doctor Who was this whole thing that run from 1963 to 1989 with
• 1:49:54
  a centre point somewhere around 1975, right.
• 1:49:57
  And Scream of the Shelter is someone saying let's do that in
• 1:50:01
  2004 or 2003. Whereas Rose, the Russell T
• 1:50:09
  Davis series that followed, was reinventions and overused words,
• 1:50:13
  but it took that idea and actually did it for 2005.
• 1:50:16
  That actually said no, no. Here's how you make that work
• 1:50:18
  within drama of 2005. Here's how you make Doctor Who
• 1:50:21
  ABBC as ABBC drama in 2005. Here's what you take and here's
• 1:50:25
  what you leave behind. This Scream of the Shelter is
• 1:50:29
  classic Doctor Who, set in 2003. Which I absolutely agree with.
• 1:50:39
  But I watched the TV movie today.
• 1:50:41
  Yeah, just for kicks. And whilst it may be in the
• 1:50:46
  words of Terrence Dick's incoherent crap, it is trying
• 1:50:51
  something new. You know it is trying something
• 1:50:54
  new. And Cream of the is not trying
• 1:50:57
  anything new. You can count the cliches as the
• 1:51:01
  episodes roll on, you know, But it was intended to be.
• 1:51:05
  This is our new iteration of Doctor Who.
• 1:51:06
  Not for long. They soon realised that that,
• 1:51:09
  yeah, their show was coming back, but for a while that that
• 1:51:13
  was going to be the pilot for the Continuing Adventures of
• 1:51:16
  Doctor Who. Yeah, and I.
• 1:51:20
  Just don't know whether you should look back as much as he
• 1:51:23
  does there. There is something about Scream
• 1:51:25
  of the show because at the time the TV movie was so poorly
• 1:51:29
  regarded. I mean it was, it was, it was
• 1:51:32
  held to be a fail. It was held to be a conspicuous
• 1:51:35
  failure because it hadn't led to ATV series.
• 1:51:37
  Let's ignore the fact that actually the viewing figures
• 1:51:39
  were really good in the UK. It's just that it was an
• 1:51:42
  American Co production and it didn't do well in America.
• 1:51:45
  It was held to be a conspicuous failure and everyone who did
• 1:51:47
  everyone who there are a lot of fans who just want it to be
• 1:51:50
  Saturday night tea time in 1976 all over again.
• 1:51:54
  Right. And they took its failure to go
• 1:51:57
  to series as a sign that every attempt to re reproduce it was
• 1:52:01
  to change it was wrong. And I I don't think Paul Cornell
• 1:52:04
  was one of those people at all. But it it has the scream of the
• 1:52:08
  shelter has the shape and the feel of something that is
• 1:52:11
  almost, if it isn't, it feels like something that was burnt by
• 1:52:18
  the TV movies failure. So they go, oh, oh, well, it
• 1:52:20
  didn't have any monsters. Oh, so it wasn't set in the UK.
• 1:52:23
  So it wasn't it wasn't small. So that's what we need to do,
• 1:52:26
  because that's what Doctor Who is Doctor Who's successful and
• 1:52:28
  the TV movie, he kisses girls. What's that all about?
• 1:52:31
  He's half human was actually Rossity Davis bought Rose back
• 1:52:34
  Okay, he didn't do the TV movie, but he.
• 1:52:37
  Borrowed a fair amount from the TV movie.
• 1:52:39
  The quick dialogue. Yeah.
• 1:52:41
  The pacey direction. It looked more stylish.
• 1:52:45
  There was a romance angle. You know, Boomtown looks very
• 1:52:49
  like the TV movie if you squint. The TV movie, yeah.
• 1:52:53
  Oh, absolutely. TV movie has so much quote
• 1:52:56
  quotable dialogue as well. There's so many great lines in
• 1:52:58
  it. Whereas I think Scream of the
• 1:53:00
  Shelf is. As good as me as well as you.
• 1:53:05
  Or me come with you. Me come with you.
• 1:53:10
  It's tempting. It's a great OH.
• 1:53:12
  It's gorgeous, I watched it earlier.
• 1:53:15
  Where Scream of the Shelf Shelter has precisely one good
• 1:53:18
  luck good line, which is the The Doctors, or at least one
• 1:53:21
  quotable line, which is the Doctors one about introducing
• 1:53:24
  the TARDIS to the shelter and saying and that's the Master,
• 1:53:26
  who I notice isn't holding on to anything before he hits the
• 1:53:29
  switch. And that is the most God awful,
• 1:53:33
  boring doctor I've ever experienced in my life.
• 1:53:37
  And I realise Richard E Grant may be responsible for 98% of
• 1:53:41
  that. Well, I would say though, to
• 1:53:44
  bring us back to the this podcast, if you are going to
• 1:53:47
  revisit screen with the shelter, revisit it with the audio book
• 1:53:50
  read by David Collings because David Collings gives a much
• 1:53:53
  better performance in that role than Richard E Grant you.
• 1:53:56
  Entice me, Sir. Well, what about Twice Upon a
• 1:54:00
  Time then? It's very last piece of Doctor
• 1:54:03
  Who fiction. It's very last piece of Doctor
• 1:54:05
  Who fiction and you know, it's, it's, it's nice to have it.
• 1:54:09
  He does it very nicely. All of these writers at some
• 1:54:11
  point want to get to do a Terence and God bless them, I'm
• 1:54:13
  glad they all get to do it. It's not a particularly huge
• 1:54:16
  reinvention, but it's it, it's a nice little book that recognises
• 1:54:20
  what works. I think Paul Connell is very
• 1:54:22
  much on a wavelength with Steven Moffett on a lot of things.
• 1:54:24
  And so I think he he translates that book well to the page.
• 1:54:29
  It's a nice little read at Christmas.
• 1:54:31
  Hasn't you already done a Terence sticks in screaming.
• 1:54:33
  The shower. And that's not a 10 stickstart
• 1:54:36
  novelisation. That's true.
• 1:54:39
  There's a bit more depth to it than that.
• 1:54:41
  Not much, but a bit. Well, look, Michael, we have
• 1:54:46
  studied Paul Cornell in some depth there.
• 1:54:49
  We have unfortunately realised why Odorism is slightly
• 1:54:54
  disappointing debut novel. Now, I am going to forego our
• 1:55:01
  top three books this time because I'm certain you've got
• 1:55:06
  to eat your dinner tonight and so do I.
• 1:55:10
  We've been going for two hours already.
• 1:55:13
  What I am going to say to you is where are we going next?
• 1:55:18
  Where are we going next? Well, forget all this forgotten
• 1:55:22
  spin off series from the 1990s that you can't get anymore.
• 1:55:26
  No, let's do something new. Let's do something up to date.
• 1:55:29
  Let's do something commercially relevant.
• 1:55:31
  We are going to be talking about the first in a new series from
• 1:55:35
  BBC Books, Doctor Who Icons. We are going to be talking about
• 1:55:39
  Freda Carlo and the Skull Children by Sophie McKenzie.
• 1:55:45
  We're heading to the Chipna era, somewhere where I believe you
• 1:55:49
  feel very at home. We've not done, we've not done a
• 1:55:52
  13th Doctor book before. We haven't.
• 1:55:54
  I've just got all three of the actual books as well, so maybe
• 1:55:58
  we should think about that in the future.
• 1:56:00
  Exciting. But yes, brand new now.
• 1:56:03
  I did almost buy this in Waterstones.
• 1:56:05
  I picked it up and realized it was the size of a very thin
• 1:56:09
  pamphlet for 10 lbs. And so then I took to Kindle and
• 1:56:13
  bought it on there instead at half the price.
• 1:56:16
  Because honestly Michael, I think you might read this in a
• 1:56:18
  day. It's very short.
• 1:56:20
  It has an unthreatening page count.
• 1:56:22
  It does, and I've heard good things.
• 1:56:24
  Well, until you and I encounter Frida, Carlo and a 13th Doctor.
• 1:56:29
  An exciting adventure. I will bid you a juicer.
• 1:56:32
  Do you have a panto quote to go out on?
• 1:56:37
  No. So we end our review with a
• 1:56:48
  twinge of remorse, an old novel skewered in a bitchy discourse,
• 1:56:54
  and we head home to snuggle and sleep in our beds with thoughts
• 1:56:59
  of a better book next time in our heads.
• 1:57:04
  Goodnight boys and girls, Merry Christmas.