Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Dr Who & the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks & The Dalek Generation (featuring Rod Brown, Gareth Bowley, Dan Pinn & David Gillespie-Pratt)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Dr Who & the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks & The Dalek Generation (featuring Rod Brown, Gareth Bowley, Dan Pinn & David Gillespie-Pratt) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:01
  Suddenly someone, somewhere struck a match.
• 0:06
  I heard it quite clearly, the long scrape of the sofa head
• 0:11
  against the short strip of sandpaper, the brittle flare of
• 0:14
  ignition. I banged my head as I scrambled
• 0:18
  down to get out and away from the lorry and the petrol all
• 0:23
  around me and hearing a ripping of cloth as my coat caught in a
• 0:26
  piece of protruding metal. I felt the girl's hand on my
• 0:30
  arm, steadying me as I hurried to get down.
• 0:34
  Did you hear it? I said breathlessly.
• 0:37
  She stared at me. Somebody's here striking matches
• 0:42
  the petrol. I swallowed and tried to get
• 0:45
  control of myself. You must have imagined it, she
• 0:49
  said quietly. As always, we're to start,
• 0:52
  thought Perry as she walked past endless racks of this and
• 0:55
  countless shelves of that until her eyes settled on a dress of
• 0:59
  such amazing ugliness she thought you might wear it just
• 1:02
  to annoy the Time Lord. Are you in there?
• 1:06
  Called the Doctor? More to the point, are you
• 1:09
  decent? Why am I not?
• 1:12
  Muttered Perry as she crossed to a rail supposedly sporting the
• 1:15
  last known selection of haute couture from the planet V952.
• 1:21
  The disadvantage of this particular range was that it was
• 1:25
  invisible and could only be seen by the inhabitants of that
• 1:28
  planet. Perry wondered if they were
• 1:31
  taking Hans Christian Andersen's Emperor's New Clothes too
• 1:35
  literally. The skimmer bus touching down
• 1:38
  gently jolted Lilian out of her Daydream.
• 1:41
  The railroad official sitting opposite gave her a strange
• 1:43
  look. Lillian could not resist a smirk
• 1:46
  to herself. She realized she had been
• 1:48
  sitting with her face up, eyes closed and twitching at the
• 1:52
  imaginary impacts of those longed for raindrops.
• 1:56
  Something the matter? Asked the official.
• 1:58
  No, she said, still smirking a bit.
• 2:02
  Then she felt guilty again. She glanced around at the grim
• 2:05
  faces of other officials on the bus and remembered there was a
• 2:09
  serious business in hand. She tried to suppress the fact
• 2:13
  that because it was serious and perhaps even a little dangerous,
• 2:16
  she wanted to jump for joy. Everything was so smooth,
• 2:20
  running and happy on Sunlight 349, and that made a
• 2:23
  journalist's job pretty uninteresting.
• 2:26
  At last there was the potential for bad news.
• 2:30
  As she stepped out of the bus, she was only dimly aware of the
• 2:33
  door wearing shut and the soft hiss of the vehicle lifting off
• 2:37
  and flying away. Behind her.
• 2:39
  The concerned mutters of the crowd were also fading for
• 2:42
  Lillian. She was transfixed by the
• 2:45
  disaster site before her. Hello and welcome to the Hamster
• 2:49
  Book Club and I'm joined by 4 fabulous fellows.
• 2:53
  My name is Gareth Boley and with me are David Gillespie, Pratt,
• 2:56
  Rod Brown, Joe Ford and Dan Penn.
• 2:59
  Hello gentlemen and welcome. Hello and we're going.
• 3:02
  To be. Taking through some doozies
• 3:04
  today, aren't we? Doozies.
• 3:06
  Depends on the definition of a doozy.
• 3:09
  Yeah, could be a Doo Doo. Maybe Doo Doo would be more
• 3:13
  accurate. I think that's a little bit
• 3:15
  that's a bit gentle on a couple of these books.
• 3:18
  Oh, oh, tease, a little tease at the top there from everyone.
• 3:22
  So if everyone's strapped in, ready and listening, then we'll
• 3:26
  crack on with our first one. Yes, we've got an offering of
• 3:28
  three books tonight, and the first one up is Doctor Who with
• 3:34
  an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks by David Whitaker.
• 3:39
  And to kick us off on this rollicking ride, let's talk
• 3:43
  generally about how we found this book.
• 3:45
  Did we enjoy it or did we not? Who knows?
• 3:48
  Let's start with David. Let's start with you.
• 3:55
  It's, it's difficult to talk about this one, but not giving
• 3:56
  anything away about one of the books coming up because I really
• 4:02
  enjoyed this book in comparison. This book was really, I really,
• 4:06
  I've always enjoyed this book. This is one of the 1st Doctor
• 4:09
  Who books I read, I think on my top ten list.
• 4:12
  I talked about how I came across this second edition copy and
• 4:17
  I've treasured it and everything.
• 4:19
  I think the first thing I've written here is that it's
• 4:21
  probably one of the most heterosexual Doctor Who books
• 4:23
  I've ever read because you've, you know, the men are men and
• 4:28
  the women are complaining and emotional and the young girls at
• 4:32
  a distance could be 20 years old.
• 4:34
  Which is, you know, I did think by the end of the book I might
• 4:37
  be heterosexual, actually sort of reading all of this stuff
• 4:40
  from Ian's very testosterone view point of view.
• 4:43
  It is. Very 1960s view as well.
• 4:47
  It is. It is also very 60s as well.
• 4:50
  I think that's one of my it's, but it's good.
• 4:54
  But it is definitely a book of its time.
• 4:56
  It's like reading some of the early Bond books or some of the
• 4:59
  Christie books. It's, you know, this is very
• 5:02
  much rooted in the period it's written.
• 5:04
  And even though it was 6465, it has almost a late 50s, early 60s
• 5:11
  vibe to it in terms of the sci-fi in it.
• 5:13
  It's kind of got that kind of. Slightly.
• 5:16
  Flash Gordon esque feel to it. And you know, the sexual
• 5:23
  politics is quite of it's time. And also, as I think I might
• 5:28
  have mentioned a few times in our group chat, Ian does seem to
• 5:31
  like smoke as well. There's a couple of points where
• 5:34
  he's kind of a pining, you know, if he only had a cigarette right
• 5:37
  now. It's like there are certain
• 5:38
  things you just couldn't do in fiction, even probably even by
• 5:41
  the 70s. In the 60s though, isn't it just
• 5:43
  light up and everything would be all right?
• 5:45
  A prototype Fitzcryner, then. So he loves the ladies and he
• 5:48
  likes the smoke. Pretty much.
• 5:51
  I mean, this is he's not the kind of once you take away
• 5:54
  William Russell, it's not the same character.
• 5:58
  He's he's grumpier and has noticed that in a lot of the
• 6:01
  target books as well, Ian is characterized as much grumpier
• 6:04
  than he is on television. I think once you take away the
• 6:06
  charm of performance it it. I always think that the Ian and
• 6:09
  the 1st Doctor are about a few sentences away from lumping each
• 6:13
  other, and I there appears in this book where I think Ian
• 6:16
  clearly wants to ring the Doctor's neck.
• 6:18
  He talks about one point wanting to drop him off the side of a
• 6:21
  mountain on his head. So it's not that subtle, I mean.
• 6:25
  He's a kid of a prick though. Isn't he the 1st?
• 6:27
  Doctor, come on, he is, he is an absolute click in this.
• 6:32
  I really enjoyed it. I, I, I think you accept it as a
• 6:35
  period piece. You accept that, you know, it's
• 6:37
  a book of its time and clearly the first quarter of the book
• 6:41
  has got, you know, pro lawyer standing over David Whitaker's
• 6:44
  shoulder, just making sure that he's not using anything of
• 6:46
  Coburn's script in that first section.
• 6:49
  Because as soon as the TARDIS takes off and lands on
• 6:51
  Scarborough, it's kind pretty true to the TV story.
• 6:56
  But the rewritten introduction, it's kind of like there's so
• 7:01
  little of an Earth, a child in terms of tone or anything.
• 7:05
  It doesn't. I was kind of thinking, is it a
• 7:08
  case of not just rewriting it, but kind of having to rewrite
• 7:12
  it? I mean, now I would think yes,
• 7:15
  definitely then. Definitely.
• 7:17
  Now, definitely. Some lines in there though,
• 7:20
  yeah, are lifted. I would say there are a few
• 7:22
  lines that are directly lifted, but yeah.
• 7:25
  Well, go on Rod, as as you're talking, tell us how you feel
• 7:28
  about this one. I enjoy it.
• 7:32
  I'm not going to compare it to us.
• 7:33
  I nearly fell into that trap and I'm not going to fall into that
• 7:36
  trap. Yeah, I really enjoyed this.
• 7:38
  There's one thing I love about it, one thing I'm about about
• 7:42
  and one thing I really dislike about it.
• 7:45
  So the thing I really like about it, the thing I love about it is
• 7:48
  the opening 20% of the book, which is as, as David was just
• 7:52
  talking about, is he's kind of taking us on a rewritten version
• 7:56
  of Unearthly Child episode 1, completely rewritten.
• 7:59
  But you do get some of those beats there.
• 8:01
  So we see, we see Ian, who we believe is some sort of
• 8:05
  scientist in a car on Barnes Common.
• 8:08
  Barbara runs towards him. She's been in a car crash with
• 8:10
  Susan. They've run into a lorry or a
• 8:12
  lorry's run into them and the lorry driver is dead.
• 8:15
  They fish, they, they, they go to, they fish the driver out
• 8:19
  because they're worried that the lorry's going to explode.
• 8:22
  Susan's disappeared. We don't know where Susan is.
• 8:25
  Then the doctor turns up and then it starts kind of morphing
• 8:27
  into that on earthly chart. But that early section, I just
• 8:30
  think David, you said kind of 50s sixties for the sci-fi.
• 8:34
  That early section, to me, it feels like Brief Encounter feels
• 8:38
  more like 30s forties because the way it's written, I think
• 8:41
  it's very differently written. That 1st 20% from the rest of
• 8:44
  the book, That 1st 20% sounds like one of the voice overs
• 8:47
  you'd get in a black and white film from the 30s.
• 8:50
  But just the dialogue, the choice of language is just so,
• 8:54
  so evocative of that old period. I mean, he talks about when he's
• 8:58
  thinking, says a warm fire in the supper my landlady would
• 9:01
  have waiting for me seemed as far away as New Zealand.
• 9:04
  I mean, it's so as far. Away as that rods.
• 9:07
  Wow. Exotic as well by those.
• 9:09
  Times, absolutely, but you know, my landlady's made my supper for
• 9:13
  me. It just is such of an old era.
• 9:16
  A lovely. Professor Lightfoot.
• 9:18
  Yeah, absolutely. Maybe we're back to Victoria,
• 9:21
  aren't I? That early section I think is so
• 9:23
  evocative and it's new and it's different.
• 9:25
  I absolutely adore that first section.
• 9:27
  The thing I'm a bit near about is because it's written from
• 9:30
  Ian's point of view, so everything is first person.
• 9:33
  He doesn't ever cheat at any point, so we don't see.
• 9:36
  Meanwhile this was going on. He maintains that everything is
• 9:39
  from his point of view, which is great.
• 9:41
  I think that the thing that it does is the detriment of the
• 9:44
  dialects. So we don't see that much of the
• 9:46
  dialects. So in the TV, all those
• 9:48
  cutaways, we get to the Daleks plotting and scheming and, you
• 9:51
  know, talking to Susan and planning the bomb.
• 9:54
  We don't get to see any of that. So the Daleks are, although this
• 9:57
  is billed as an exciting adventure with Daleks, we don't
• 10:00
  have an awful lot of Daleks in here.
• 10:02
  And I kind of miss that kind of Machiavellian plot sitting over
• 10:05
  the top of it. And I think we lose something in
• 10:07
  that by not seeing more of them. And maybe This is why, Joe, when
• 10:12
  you and I did my top ten, I said this hadn't connected with me,
• 10:15
  particularly as a as a 7 year old when I first bought her.
• 10:18
  And maybe that's why because the dialect sounds in it that much
• 10:20
  or as much as you would want. So I'm a bit near about that.
• 10:23
  I like the first person. I'm sorry we lose the dialects.
• 10:27
  But the bit I actively dislike is my God, is it the the
• 10:31
  simmering sexual tension between Barbara and Ian?
• 10:35
  He's just fucking hideous. They they have a row as they're
• 10:39
  escaping the city and then there is just they hate each other.
• 10:44
  Ian actually describes it as repressed hatred.
• 10:47
  They loathe each other I feel like.
• 10:50
  Ian's never spoken to a woman before in.
• 10:52
  His. Life because she clearly wants
• 10:54
  to have it off of him so badly. But even her approach for that
• 10:58
  is just to get really bitchy and argumentative.
• 11:00
  It's just so, so basic. Get them riled up and then get
• 11:05
  them in bed. It's the best sex you can have.
• 11:08
  Does anybody have the illustrated edition?
• 11:11
  Not that version, yes. I do.
• 11:13
  Because there's a great depiction of Barbara in one of
• 11:16
  her moods, and they've just drawn her just looking.
• 11:20
  Absolutely. Glowering, miserable, and.
• 11:22
  Glowering. It's just.
• 11:24
  And then at the end, she has a quiet conversation with one of
• 11:27
  the fowls and kind of lets it slip.
• 11:29
  It's because I fancy his pants. And it's like, oh, really?
• 11:33
  It's just, yeah, it's a bit torturous that 1960s sexual
• 11:37
  politics, as you said, David, at probably its most basic level.
• 11:41
  So we should say good, bad and indifferent.
• 11:43
  We should say to David Whitaker what we want us to always say to
• 11:46
  Stephen Moffett. Just have a wank before writing
• 11:49
  the bloody thing. They didn't do that in the 60s,
• 11:52
  Joe. No, really.
• 11:54
  Far too repressed. What did they do as they'd swap
• 11:56
  handkerchiefs or something? Coach hours, yeah.
• 11:59
  Imagine a nice Imagine a nice ankle.
• 12:02
  Go on then, Joe, as, as as you've dragged us into this
• 12:05
  layer, tell us more about what you felt about this book.
• 12:09
  Well, I don't want to talk about the simbring sexual tension
• 12:11
  between Ian and Barbara. I feel like we've covered that a
• 12:13
  little bit there. I really like this, but sorry
• 12:18
  Rod, I always feel like it's like we're on opposing fences.
• 12:22
  I really didn't like the first section at all because it was
• 12:26
  like an Unearthly Child but done without any warmth at all.
• 12:31
  Everyone was so horrible. By the time they got into the
• 12:34
  TARDIS I was like, I'm not sure why I want to hang out with any
• 12:37
  of you. You're all a bunch of bastards.
• 12:39
  Why do I want to go into time? Whereas in I don't know if your
• 12:41
  child you've got all the warmth of Jacqueline Hill, William
• 12:44
  Russell and Carolyn a little bit and but William Hart was
• 12:48
  charming performance in the junkyard and immediately you can
• 12:51
  see that these are engaging characters you want to spend
• 12:54
  time with. Don't get me wrong, it's very
• 12:55
  evocatively written. I thought the atmosphere was
• 12:58
  that's the folk, you know, the car and fire and all of that.
• 13:01
  Really, really well done. But yeah, what a bunch of
• 13:04
  pricks. However, of the three books
• 13:09
  we've written, it is a relief because David Witter can
• 13:12
  actually string together a fucking sentence, which is
• 13:15
  really nice, but very sophisticatedly as well, like
• 13:20
  really rich use of dialogue throughout the entire book.
• 13:23
  And I wrote down loads of lines, which I'm not going to be able
• 13:25
  to say, but and I kept going. Well, that's gorgeous.
• 13:28
  That is so gorgeous. You know, I was getting sort of
• 13:32
  sort of Jane Austen esque vibes, not, not the tone of the piece,
• 13:36
  but the use of the language, you know, properly sophisticated
• 13:39
  language, not talking down to kids.
• 13:41
  And trust me, by the end of this episode, we are going to be
• 13:44
  talking down to kids. Yeah.
• 13:47
  And I thought especially the sequence where they go on the
• 13:51
  expedition, it was almost like the the anti, the Daleks in
• 13:55
  colour that took away loads of stuff and told the story in
• 14:00
  record time. This did what a book can do.
• 14:02
  It luxuriated in the fact that that was a journey, an
• 14:05
  expedition, lots of dangers. It takes a long time.
• 14:08
  We're all very tired. I mean, a monster coming up out
• 14:11
  of the the the the river was absolutely fucking chilling.
• 14:16
  And that bit where the man cut his rope and fell down into the
• 14:19
  jaws of all the creatures, it was great stuff.
• 14:22
  So I had a great time with this book, but the thing I took away
• 14:26
  most of all, apart from yeah, it is very unlikeable in this, was
• 14:33
  just that Ryan style which I thought was beautiful.
• 14:37
  Yeah, now the IT feels like it's done with economy, doesn't it?
• 14:40
  For the size of what it is like, every word's been considered
• 14:43
  when it's been put on those pages.
• 14:45
  But real, real atmosphere and real suspense throughout the
• 14:48
  entire book, I thought. Thank you, Joe.
• 14:51
  Oh my God, it down there. It's gone.
• 14:53
  How did you find this one? I had a bit of an epiphany with
• 14:57
  this book because I've struggled with an exciting adventure with
• 15:02
  the with the dialects in the past.
• 15:06
  This, this probably about the third, maybe fourth time I've
• 15:11
  read it. Yeah, but but I think I, I also
• 15:16
  struggle with the Zabi and The Crusaders.
• 15:18
  Sorry, sorry, Rod, because I know that you like the Zabi, but
• 15:22
  but I, I struggle with those first 3 original ones from from
• 15:25
  the 60s. And I, I don't I and I'm, I was
• 15:27
  trying to think what is it that that that I didn't like about it
• 15:33
  in in the past. And, and I think it is that the,
• 15:37
  the character of, of Ian is so abrasive.
• 15:40
  And I think because he's the one that's telling the whole story.
• 15:46
  I, I just, I don't know, I, I, I couldn't, I couldn't compare
• 15:51
  this Ian with the, the Ian Chesterton that we know from the
• 15:56
  TV series and even even the, the one from the Dalek movie.
• 16:00
  But you know, Roy Castle, you know, it's it's just so
• 16:04
  different. And I think that but, but
• 16:07
  reading it this time and again, and I think just as as the rest
• 16:12
  of everyone said in in this group, it's really hard not to
• 16:15
  give things things away about the other books because the
• 16:20
  order that we kind of read them in.
• 16:23
  But reading this, it was a it was an absolute pleasure.
• 16:28
  And those bits that irritated me when I've read it in the past,
• 16:34
  they were no longer blockers. And, and I think like, like Joe
• 16:38
  was saying the, the, the descriptive language that David
• 16:45
  Whitaker uses, it's just, it's just beautiful.
• 16:49
  And, and it really conjures up those sort of pictures in your
• 16:55
  mind. You, you, I mean, even if you
• 16:57
  hadn't seen the TV version or the movie, you could see that
• 17:03
  petrified Forest. You could you the Dalek city, it
• 17:06
  was, it was all conjured up because of the use of the
• 17:09
  language that he was using to describe, describe things.
• 17:14
  And you know, and I think like I'm probably going to be
• 17:18
  repeating what what David said that that it is very much a
• 17:22
  product of its time because it it is very much it's kind of
• 17:28
  littered with things where it's women know your place kind of
• 17:31
  thing. Because because it and I was
• 17:34
  reading it and thinking about it kept reminding me of that those
• 17:38
  Harry Enfield sketches where he the Mr. Chumley Warner.
• 17:41
  Mr. Chumley. Warner and and it was sort of
• 17:43
  like that, you know, and it because it was very much like,
• 17:46
  you know, they haven't got an opinion that's worth discussing.
• 17:52
  They're shut down in flames whenever they put that opinion
• 17:55
  forward and all that sort of stuff.
• 17:57
  So so it is problematic in some ways, but but that is because of
• 18:00
  the time that it was kind of written in but but the he keeps.
• 18:03
  Perfect on Susan. What's that all about?
• 18:06
  Yeah, he calls her vivacious. And.
• 18:08
  So I've written that down. He keeps saying, oh, she knows
• 18:11
  he's, he knows she's 15. But then it says suddenly, oh,
• 18:15
  when she's silhouetted, she looked like a young woman in her
• 18:18
  20s, very attractive and vivacious.
• 18:21
  I thought I was reading about the 11th Doctor all over again,
• 18:24
  you know? I was wondering whether not that
• 18:26
  was meant to some sort of meta joke in terms of like she's 15
• 18:29
  but being played by someone in her 20s or something like that.
• 18:32
  But then I. Just read.
• 18:33
  It just read like a dirty old man.
• 18:35
  Or which is which is? Probably more likely, but I'm
• 18:39
  trying to give it the benefit of the debt, you know, Did it?
• 18:41
  Has David Whitaker come up with the first meta reference in a
• 18:43
  Doctor Who? But because it wasn't.
• 18:45
  The last, I mean, there wasn't, you know, long luxurious
• 18:48
  descriptions of Ganatus's package, was there?
• 18:51
  No. But Susan, yes, absolutely.
• 18:53
  I don't know. Allerton's described as
• 18:55
  perfectly proportioned, and Susan and Barbara wants to go
• 18:59
  off and have a secret conversation about them.
• 19:02
  Have been not having thou trousers even put into
• 19:05
  literature had enough problems with it on the.
• 19:08
  Screen start. Go about those bloody trousers.
• 19:10
  Not those trousers. And you like describe, he liked
• 19:13
  describing Christus as being this kind of big hulking brute
• 19:17
  as well. You know, it came out more, more
• 19:20
  than once, he dwelled on Christus's.
• 19:22
  Size maybe I I'm Tony. Didn't you have to have a cold
• 19:24
  shower afterwards? You can't have any of those
• 19:25
  bits. Joe, you're missing out.
• 19:29
  I'm sorry. And also with sabotage.
• 19:31
  Dan's reading. Off you go down.
• 19:35
  Yeah, I mean like, you know, going back to like that bit of
• 19:40
  sort of like that misogynistic kind of attitude towards women
• 19:44
  and it, and it's sort of like I, I, I, I noted down like page 88,
• 19:49
  I think it was where Ian's about to go off and warn the the the
• 19:55
  files that it's that it's a trap.
• 19:57
  So. But Barbara's kind of
• 19:58
  protesting, you know, that she wants to, to go with him and,
• 20:02
  and, and then so Ian says. You do as you're told, He said
• 20:06
  roughly. He didn't like being rude to
• 20:08
  her, but it was the way that the only way he could think of
• 20:11
  shortening the conversation. And that is basically all the
• 20:16
  way through the book. No, you're white woman.
• 20:19
  But Yeah. But.
• 20:21
  But it kind of made it perversely entertain.
• 20:25
  Entertaining in a way, you know, But yeah, but no, I, I really, I
• 20:31
  really enjoyed this book. All that stuff's really
• 20:33
  problematic. Yeah, that is really
• 20:35
  problematic. But the two other books that
• 20:37
  we're covering, right, were written in the last five years
• 20:41
  and are more problematic than a book written in the 1960s.
• 20:45
  I mean, it's madness. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 20:49
  But but yeah, but, but I think it it, it, it was weird that
• 20:53
  despite those sort of things, it just kind of clipped this time.
• 20:58
  And I don't know whether that's because what I've read before,
• 21:02
  what I and what I read afterwards.
• 21:04
  But you know, this, this, this was was a really, really
• 21:09
  enjoyable book to read. And and I know why.
• 21:13
  And and I can tell that it was enjoyable because basically I
• 21:16
  flew through it in in next to no time.
• 21:18
  And I know I I've enjoyed it when it goes by that quick.
• 21:24
  It it's the ones that that take forever to kind of that I know
• 21:28
  I'm really not enjoying this, you know, so so yeah, see how.
• 21:31
  Quick, you got through the other two.
• 21:34
  Then you're not alone on the speed read because I went to
• 21:37
  look at my notes today, readiness for this evening, only
• 21:40
  to discover that my notes were very sparse on this particular
• 21:42
  book because I had rattled through it at such a pace.
• 21:45
  Enjoyed it, put it down for a few days, came to look at my
• 21:47
  notes today and went oh goody God I need to get something down
• 21:49
  here. What can?
• 21:51
  What can I remember? Like from the point of view with
• 21:54
  notes, it's it feels like it's easier to to take notes about
• 21:58
  the ones that you're hating on and it's the ones that you that
• 22:01
  you're, you sort. Of get on that ride, don't you?
• 22:03
  Once, once you're in that molding, you're on that vein,
• 22:05
  you're kind of getting through it.
• 22:06
  And and this was very much a page Turner for me.
• 22:09
  Yourself an angry red pen and do loads of exclamation marks as
• 22:12
  well. You know, I end up with question
• 22:15
  marks on mine. Have they done this?
• 22:17
  Well, that doesn't make sense. Why?
• 22:18
  Why? Why?
• 22:19
  That that feels like defacing a Doctor Who book.
• 22:23
  I could never. Do Oh no no the action.
• 22:25
  On the book. I'm not a monster, I meant on a
• 22:30
  hat. I'm one of these people that
• 22:32
  that reads through like that. So I.
• 22:35
  Don't. You give the cover a slight
• 22:39
  bend. If you put your fingers is my,
• 22:41
  my, my skull. Put put your fingers on the
• 22:43
  spine so you can feel where it's going to bend and then you hold
• 22:46
  kind of between your fingers like that.
• 22:48
  I do feel the pressure on the spine.
• 22:51
  All I can, all I can say to you gentlemen is if you can see the
• 22:56
  spine of that that's 51 years old.
• 22:59
  That book, I bought it in 1973 and there is not a single.
• 23:03
  Christine. Is that the little hardback
• 23:04
  edition? No, that's that's the first
• 23:06
  paperback. It's 73.
• 23:08
  Bent spine there, do you see it? Books are for reading.
• 23:13
  Books are for treasuring. Yes, but you can still preserved
• 23:16
  them with a bent spine. Anyway, we're off topic.
• 23:21
  Oh, yes, sorry. I'll, I'll, is there anything
• 23:24
  more you wanted to add to your initial readings on it, Dan?
• 23:27
  No, no, no. I'd be interested to find out
• 23:29
  what what what you thought about it.
• 23:30
  I'm. I'll I'll try and be succinct
• 23:34
  because I'm not million miles off everyone else.
• 23:37
  I read this once initially. It was my fifth ever Doctor Who
• 23:39
  book. I have the small 1970s hardback
• 23:44
  which I rather like, so no bent spines on that.
• 23:46
  It's absolutely brilliant to hold.
• 23:48
  It's the same size as a paperback but it's in hardback
• 23:50
  format. It's great.
• 23:51
  Why they didn't do the rest of the BBC listen out for the
• 23:54
  hardbacks would be a great idea. I really hated the first person
• 23:58
  when I first read this. I struggled with it and
• 24:01
  obviously my yearbook of Doctor Who did not say that.
• 24:03
  This was the first adventure with the Embarber and the Doctor
• 24:06
  and so I got up on the wrong foot with it like you wouldn't
• 24:08
  believe. The second time round I've
• 24:10
  accepted it for what it is, which is that retelling, and I
• 24:14
  really enjoyed it. Yes, I agree, Ian is a faceless
• 24:18
  person to me in this. It isn't William Russell at all.
• 24:21
  It is just a blank 1960s person. The sexism is there.
• 24:28
  The point of view is really noticeable to me for when the
• 24:31
  Daleks first turn up, because it's not Barbara and the sink
• 24:34
  plunger we're getting. It's Ian on the floor describing
• 24:37
  the Daleks in little clunky manner.
• 24:40
  It's got to be said, but on the whole I enjoyed.
• 24:44
  It it's not an offer, so it's not going to be using colourful
• 24:47
  metaphors and things. No, no, that's true.
• 24:50
  It is really prosaic, the way that he describes them.
• 24:54
  I struggled and they mentioned the three prongs.
• 24:55
  I was like 3 prongs. I'm a Dalek.
• 24:57
  What? Three prongs?
• 24:58
  Where Where is he looking? I'm, I'm, I should I be looking
• 25:01
  that? Oh, God, no.
• 25:02
  You know, he was trying to figure all that bit out.
• 25:04
  But I mean, I I enjoyed it. Yeah.
• 25:06
  Like, like everyone else has alluded to it, it was a good
• 25:10
  ride. It took me along with it.
• 25:12
  There are problems with it. The Daleks do not appear that
• 25:15
  much. They are very, very limited in
• 25:17
  their appearance. And if, like Rod and myself,
• 25:19
  you've got this version with the illustrations, and I don't know
• 25:21
  if they put them in the later Virgin ones, it really irritated
• 25:24
  me the fact that there are two illustrations that don't match
• 25:26
  the chapters that are aligned to.
• 25:28
  I think there's one where they're going through the
• 25:30
  tunnels and it's got the pictures of the Daleks on it.
• 25:32
  The Daleks aren't in that chapter.
• 25:33
  And then there's a later one where they're breaking into the
• 25:36
  city and it's a picture of Ian and Susan.
• 25:39
  I think it is. Was it the Doctor and Susan in
• 25:41
  the jail cell with the Dalek bringing the food tray in, which
• 25:44
  is a lot earlier in the book? They're just trying to tease
• 25:46
  you, to remind you the Daleks are still actually in it.
• 25:49
  Yeah, page 137. But you're absolutely.
• 25:52
  Right, yeah, the problem I have is I'm reading that fast through
• 25:54
  it. I'm suddenly stopping now going,
• 25:55
  oh hang on, crap, have I got in the wrong bit?
• 25:57
  Have I got to go back again and just check where I've gone to?
• 25:59
  So they did throw me, but they're little sidebars.
• 26:02
  Like I say on on the whole, I enjoyed this myself.
• 26:07
  The first person I think is is the biggest thing to come up to,
• 26:11
  but I managed to get through it this time without a without a
• 26:15
  problem. Am I the only person who doesn't
• 26:17
  mind that the Daleks are in this less?
• 26:19
  Because, you know, my biggest problem with Daleks is they're
• 26:22
  such boring conversationalists. And even in the Daleks, they're
• 26:26
  very boring conversationalists. You know, listen to these two
• 26:29
  staccato voices talking about nuclear war.
• 26:32
  You know, I like Doctor Who. I like the characters in Doctor
• 26:35
  Who. So the fact that this is
• 26:36
  entirely character focused and the Daleks are a background
• 26:39
  menace that sort of keep coming in and out in a very suspenseful
• 26:42
  way. I really like that.
• 26:43
  I. Think the.
• 26:44
  Problem is Briggs talking and more.
• 26:47
  William Russell, thank you very much.
• 26:48
  I think the problem is it doesn't establish the threat and
• 26:52
  the menace as well as it could do because.
• 26:54
  He's shot, Rod, he's shot and they're suffering from radiation
• 26:57
  poisoning. Well, they remember the
• 26:58
  radiation, don't they? It's not radiation.
• 27:01
  Haluted air I think is what it routes to poorly.
• 27:06
  They I don't think they use the word radiation.
• 27:07
  They don't. They don't.
• 27:08
  And you know, because it's all for me as point of view, we're
• 27:11
  spared those ridiculous scenes of Caroline Ford running on the
• 27:14
  spot as people whip lead. Slap her face.
• 27:18
  With slapped in the face. Lovely.
• 27:20
  Although of course then we have to hear it always like a
• 27:22
  flashback, don't we? Well, this is what happened to
• 27:24
  me whilst I was away, you know. So what I'll do is I'll go round
• 27:31
  everyone as we're at this time to see if anyone wants to add
• 27:34
  anything further to what we've covered already or if there's
• 27:37
  anything we want to explore. So I'll start with David.
• 27:39
  Is David, is there anything else you want to cover on this
• 27:41
  particular one? I'll give you 2 because it's not
• 27:45
  cheap, but because I basically did the audio books for these
• 27:48
  three. So the weirdest incongruity is
• 27:50
  when you've got William Russell, who is just a fantastic reader,
• 27:54
  reading some of this stuff in his lovely charming tones, and
• 27:58
  he's reading Ian, who's basically a Dick on the page.
• 28:00
  So it's like there are times where it just doesn't, his voice
• 28:04
  doesn't match what he's saying for Ian.
• 28:05
  So that bit where he basically threatens Barbara to go, you
• 28:08
  know, going back to the TARDIS, leave the he's like, he's too
• 28:11
  charming for this version of Ian.
• 28:13
  It just doesn't quite sit right. Other thing, question for you,
• 28:20
  how tall is a Dalek? I think didn't they describe it
• 28:24
  as 5 foot in this? It is because the version I got
• 28:29
  is the second, the second edition, it was originally 3 and
• 28:33
  it was and it was originally 3 foot in the first, the earliest
• 28:36
  versions, they were described as 3 foot high.
• 28:38
  And that's been, and that's been changed.
• 28:40
  That's I think in the, all the reprints since that's been
• 28:42
  changed. So we reading this back through
• 28:46
  the the few times they mentioned the Dalek's height, it's like
• 28:49
  they're three feet. They're tiny.
• 28:53
  Doesn't even match the illustrations.
• 28:55
  Suddenly, you know, those fat licks and victory of the Daleks
• 28:57
  seem like a good idea. Maybe Ian's just not very good
• 29:01
  on his measurements when he's eyeballing something.
• 29:02
  Well, it's no wonder he didn't get that job then.
• 29:04
  Yeah, he. Wants to be a scientist.
• 29:06
  He doesn't know the difference between 3:00 and 5:00 I.
• 29:09
  Mean that that that just doesn't work close is it because how
• 29:12
  would Ian be able to get inside the Daleks so that they can
• 29:15
  speak from the brilliance now because.
• 29:16
  Daleks would take over the universe because everyone would
• 29:18
  have such a bad neck looking down at them.
• 29:20
  Yeah. Is there any description of how
• 29:22
  tall who Ian is? Maybe he's a dwarf.
• 29:24
  Maybe. Yeah.
• 29:27
  Maybe not quite. Angry it's little man syndrome,
• 29:30
  isn't? It all them cigarettes, yeah.
• 29:36
  See, I mean smoking. Smoking is bad for your health.
• 29:38
  It just makes you short and grumpy.
• 29:41
  That was talking about like sort of Ian being grumpy because that
• 29:44
  was, that was the thing. Who, who were you?
• 29:46
  Who were you guys picturing? Because because it wasn't, it
• 29:50
  wasn't really William Russell. It wasn't Roy Castle.
• 29:54
  I this was really weird. I was thinking of a young John
• 29:57
  Fall sort of Sweeney Regan kind because of the smoking, angry
• 30:05
  putting women down. That was that was who I had in
• 30:07
  my head, but I was it was just interesting to see what you
• 30:10
  guys. I was seeing a young David
• 30:12
  Warner, you know at his all time most arrogant, right?
• 30:18
  OK. Anyone else?
• 30:21
  I was. Go on, go on, Roger I.
• 30:23
  Was going to say, because it's in the first person, I wasn't
• 30:25
  really picturing Ian. I was in Ian's place and looking
• 30:28
  at everybody else. So interestingly, I wasn't
• 30:30
  actually picturing Ian in my head.
• 30:35
  I'd I'd got the James Bond from the newspaper comic strips in
• 30:39
  mind. Like I said, sort of bland 60s
• 30:41
  superhero esque. You know, every every angle kind
• 30:44
  of accounted for. It's really annoying though, you
• 30:47
  are right. Every time we see one of these
• 30:51
  books is written from his point of view, when he's writing those
• 30:54
  letters in the Romans, he's a total prick there as well, isn't
• 30:57
  he? Like, like really?
• 30:59
  Our reporter, the doctor and quite sarcastic about the
• 31:02
  headmaster. He's writing to a book as well.
• 31:04
  So I'm like, yeah, no one's seen William Russell's charm.
• 31:09
  I just wonder if they're just working off scripts and they're
• 31:11
  kind of what they half remember of the first structure's a bit
• 31:14
  grumpy and a bit I'll tempered. And it is this relationship with
• 31:19
  Ian was a bit combative because at this it's in quite a few of
• 31:22
  the books, First Doctor books that I've read is they don't
• 31:25
  like each other on the page. But I did notice there was a few
• 31:28
  moments in the middle of the book where they're in the city
• 31:31
  where they're working together really well in a way that they
• 31:34
  weren't on the TV version. You know, there was almost like
• 31:38
  a intuitive, OK, we've got to do this to get out of here, which I
• 31:42
  really quite like. But then, you know, the second
• 31:44
  they were out with the thouse and that rarest of Jules Dione,
• 31:52
  I have no opinion on the matter if.
• 31:54
  She doesn't say that subtly. They were fighting again by
• 31:57
  then. Although did anyone pick up on
• 31:58
  the line when the doctor said about Barbara asking questions?
• 32:01
  You know, no, no, she's not wrong to have an opinion.
• 32:04
  No, no, no, she's just asking questions.
• 32:06
  It's the right thing to do. Oh my God, like really?
• 32:09
  A few women asking questions? Whatever next?
• 32:12
  How dare they? You, Peter Capaldi in the in the
• 32:15
  background going no, no, don't do that, don't do that.
• 32:19
  Did you say you got a second thing, David?
• 32:21
  No, that was my I was just because listening to the audio
• 32:24
  book. But the one thing I'll add with
• 32:25
  the audio book is these the first 3 they did, which was the
• 32:28
  first 3 novels, is there's no Briggs doing Dalek voices.
• 32:33
  Oh, how? It's just William Russell with a
• 32:35
  little bit of treatment on his voice and it just works so much
• 32:39
  better because it I, I found any of those books where they've got
• 32:42
  Briggs or John leasing in doing dubbing in voices.
• 32:45
  It's just like, it's not an audio drama.
• 32:47
  Stop it. It's an audio book.
• 32:50
  Just treat it like an audio book.
• 32:52
  You know I mean this kindly, but the day he retires from doing
• 32:55
  Dalek Voices, you know we're all going to have a party, right?
• 32:58
  You mean that kindly? Surely he'll start training his
• 33:02
  apprentice and we'll have Apprentice of the Daleks.
• 33:06
  Oh yeah, he's going to find a successor, right?
• 33:09
  Mini me. No, no good.
• 33:12
  I'll have to keep going. Has.
• 33:15
  He got children because it may maybe one of those is going.
• 33:17
  To be. Oh God, yes, yeah.
• 33:18
  Yeah, Big finishes, yeah. Now, Empire of the Daleks, Like
• 33:24
  I've got to stop putting labels on things.
• 33:27
  Empire of the Rigs. Rod, let's come to you.
• 33:29
  Anything more you want to add than what?
• 33:31
  We just some little bits. So we were talking about sexism.
• 33:34
  One of the bits I absolutely adored early on is when Ian
• 33:37
  first encounters Barbara. She's battered and brewed.
• 33:40
  She's bloody. She's actually covered in blood
• 33:42
  from this car crash. What does Ian think?
• 33:45
  Oh, it's very strange that she's not got a handbag.
• 33:48
  It's just a matter of bizarre. But hey, there you go.
• 33:57
  Oh I fucking love the 60s. Another very, very 60s bed that
• 34:02
  really jumped out is obviously we haven't got to Galaxy 4 yet
• 34:05
  because the Doctor has one bed that just struck me as so
• 34:09
  undoctor. So when they extract the the
• 34:11
  mutant from the Dalek casing, the Doctor says Chesterton.
• 34:15
  If I had any doubt at all about what we were contemplating, the
• 34:19
  sight of that disgusting thing has totally dispelled them.
• 34:22
  And they call the 1000 mutants. I mean, clearly he's judging by
• 34:26
  appearances on this stage. But yeah, that really jumped out
• 34:30
  at me. That was a bit uncomfortable.
• 34:32
  Oh, they are Haiti ghosts. Come on now.
• 34:34
  One eyed monsters. I thought you would have quite
• 34:36
  liked them, Joe. And the other thing I wanted to
• 34:41
  point out, we've talked about this being of the period, but
• 34:43
  there are quite a few little lines in here that show you that
• 34:48
  David Whitaker writing it is a man who went through World War
• 34:51
  2. So when he talks about being Ian
• 34:54
  in the Dalek, he talks about, oh, he must have known how men
• 34:57
  in the Tank Corps would have suffered when they saw an enemy
• 35:00
  bazooka. And they talk about poisonous
• 35:02
  gas in the air. There's lots and lots of little
• 35:05
  World War 2 references that again, a writer writing today
• 35:08
  just wouldn't litter this with, but it does.
• 35:10
  It really flavours this book as well, which again, puts it very
• 35:14
  much in that period. But yeah, that's those are my
• 35:16
  main points. And Joe, how about you?
• 35:20
  What have you got for us? The only thing I really want to
• 35:23
  stress was how much I like the first person narrative in the
• 35:26
  same way that I like The Companion Chronicles over at Big
• 35:30
  Finish. It's such an intimate way of
• 35:32
  viewing the story for a viewpoint character.
• 35:35
  I'm surprised I don't do this more often in the books.
• 35:38
  You know, there is some of it in the NASEDAS and new series
• 35:42
  adventures, but not nearly enough.
• 35:44
  And I really just felt like it was a full sort of experience.
• 35:50
  Going to an alien planet, getting sick, escaping the city,
• 35:56
  the arguments they had before they went off through the
• 35:59
  jungle, getting into the city. It just really felt like it was
• 36:02
  an arduous, painful, you know, personal experience.
• 36:07
  And I think if it was written in the third person or sort of
• 36:10
  omniscient narrator, I wouldn't have felt that.
• 36:14
  I felt as if I went on this journey and I really, really
• 36:17
  like that. Joseph find as well that you got
• 36:20
  a lot of more, a little more mystery and irritation with the
• 36:22
  doctor when he first turns up as well.
• 36:25
  You know, you kind of get a sense of it from an earthly
• 36:27
  child. But because you're literally in
• 36:28
  Ian's shoes as the narrator, he's the one that's really
• 36:32
  painting this picture of what's in front of him.
• 36:34
  My brain just can't handle those rewrites, you know?
• 36:37
  It's the same with the doomsday weapon novelization.
• 36:39
  Fuck those first two chapters where Joe's going into the
• 36:43
  TARDIS and meeting the Doctor for the first time.
• 36:46
  What are you doing this for? Like it was never like this.
• 36:49
  The line must be drawn here. There's been some alteration to
• 36:53
  the timelines. Who did this?
• 36:54
  Oh. Steven Buffet, He must be
• 36:56
  involved somewhere. There we go.
• 36:58
  That's the first Moffett klaxon. Of the day we've got one in.
• 37:01
  I don't know. I think we'd already had a
• 37:02
  couple. There's a sort of.
• 37:03
  It's going to be a few later. I really I genuinely love this.
• 37:10
  Problematic bits aside, I thought this was a very striking
• 37:14
  book and A and a really good read.
• 37:18
  How about you, Dan? Anything else for yourself?
• 37:23
  I've got, I've got, I've got 2 little things, little quick,
• 37:25
  quick ones. Hit us.
• 37:26
  Go for it. We've, we've already, we've
• 37:28
  already touched upon the, the illustrations.
• 37:31
  So the, I think like the illustrations continued in the,
• 37:34
  the early batches of targets, didn't it for a while.
• 37:37
  And, and it was a real shame that we've kind of lost those.
• 37:40
  But the, the illustration that we've got, I've got like the,
• 37:44
  the, the hardback reissue that that came out like about, I
• 37:48
  don't know, 10 years ago, perhaps.
• 37:50
  And on page 100, there's this beautiful picture of rehearsal
• 37:57
  Ian's Susan and the Doctor. But it I, I, I think that's
• 38:03
  taken from one of the rehearsal stuff, isn't it?
• 38:05
  Yeah. Because the Doctor's in a lovely
• 38:08
  pullover rather, and, and shirt rather than his, his, his Doctor
• 38:12
  costume, which I thought was really, really funny.
• 38:14
  It made me laugh. And then also I, I know like the
• 38:21
  E and in this he isn't like a a science teacher in this is he's,
• 38:25
  he's a scientist because he mentions not getting the job at
• 38:28
  the big rocket company. But it was really quite
• 38:33
  interesting how from the moment that they escaped from the
• 38:37
  Daleks, he becomes obsessed with them not having any weapons to
• 38:43
  fight the Daleks with. Both.
• 38:47
  Both the fact that that the fouls haven't got anything to
• 38:50
  defend themselves with because they're fundamentally pacifists.
• 38:54
  And also because I think Susan grabs like a walking stick
• 39:00
  because it's the only thing she could find to defend herself
• 39:03
  when when she's in the TARDIS on her own.
• 39:05
  And he was like going, I can't believe that the Doctor hasn't
• 39:07
  got any weapons in there. So it's, it's really funny how a
• 39:12
  man of science, yeah, was, was so worried, preoccupied by the
• 39:19
  fact that they hadn't got anything to to defend themselves
• 39:21
  with against the dialects. It's.
• 39:23
  Not Ian, is it? It's.
• 39:24
  Just no. Like they may have just called
• 39:27
  him Steve or something, you know, Danny or something.
• 39:32
  Like, it's not Ian, is it? Oh, hero of the 60s Ian.
• 39:36
  It's not him. Now I, I my my my my last
• 39:40
  comment on this was going to be around the fact of he seems very
• 39:43
  adept dealing with the dead body in the in the car crash, almost
• 39:48
  suspiciously so. Yeah, he's got, I'm afraid.
• 39:51
  You've done it. Because of course.
• 39:52
  It's behind him. Yet he nearly loses the contents
• 39:55
  of his stomach when they're pulling the Dalek out of the the
• 39:58
  case. Yeah.
• 39:59
  Yeah, which was, which was which restraint.
• 40:01
  It's like, has he? Has he done this before?
• 40:04
  Wandering around, moving bodies around.
• 40:07
  Second nature to him. You know they never saw Barbara,
• 40:10
  Susan and Doctor Who ever again after this book.
• 40:15
  If I'd have been really clever, I should have asked us to score
• 40:17
  this out of five rels. But I'm not that clever.
• 40:20
  Oh, come on, let's do it. All right, then.
• 40:22
  Go on then. Well.
• 40:23
  You know my question, how big is a rel?
• 40:27
  Two points, so it's technically. Hang on, it's easy in narrating
• 40:30
  the story and and doing the measurement based on what we've
• 40:33
  known. That's right.
• 40:36
  So underestimate slightly. Yes, I would give this 4 rails
• 40:41
  out of five. Oh, Dan, how about yourself?
• 40:46
  Yeah, I will match what Joe just said.
• 40:48
  I I was thinking 4 myself. It's not quite perfect, but it's
• 40:51
  very, very good. Rod.
• 40:54
  I'm going to stick with four. Bore from you.
• 40:56
  And how about you, David? I'm going to say 4 1/2, but
• 41:00
  that's because I've got a big nostalgia for this book.
• 41:02
  It was my first Doctor Who book so it gets a half a point.
• 41:05
  Half a nostalgia is a good thing, a very good thing, and I
• 41:08
  I will join this erstwhile crew on for myself.
• 41:12
  So that's 4 reals. For an exciting adventure with
• 41:15
  the Daleks. I think you always.
• 41:17
  Give your first of everything 1/2 extra, you know?
• 41:21
  Yeah. What did you give your first
• 41:22
  shag? Was that 3 1/2?
• 41:25
  Are always worth it. 5 or 10/5 shall.
• 41:34
  We move so if we are. Quite high for the burning.
• 41:42
  Our next foray into the wild and wacky world of the Daleks is
• 41:47
  Revelation of the Daleks by Eric Saywood Saward.
• 41:51
  Saward. His name say Wood.
• 41:53
  Say Wood, can I ask a question? Hang on, you're trying to get me
• 41:56
  to say wood or say wood? Well, Joe's very good at saying
• 42:00
  wood. Right.
• 42:01
  Say wood well. No, I always say same wood and
• 42:03
  it's sworn, isn't it? No, it's say wood.
• 42:05
  You always say sworn no. It's sworn not say wood, it's
• 42:09
  say. Wood, Let's call the whole thing
• 42:10
  out. Let's.
• 42:11
  Just call him that red. Yeah, Red.
• 42:13
  Yeah, it's easier that way all. Right.
• 42:15
  You say say Wood, I say say Ward.
• 42:17
  Oh, whose bloody idea was it to read this bit of trash?
• 42:22
  Well, as as as you you're talking at the moment, Joe,
• 42:24
  perhaps you'd like to tell us how you felt about Revelation of
• 42:27
  the Daleks. Absolute fucking garbage
• 42:31
  honestly. I could feel my IQ slipping away
• 42:35
  with every page that I read it. Was pretty damn low to start
• 42:39
  with and do. You know, it was worse, worse
• 42:42
  than what I've just said. It ain't even the worst book of
• 42:45
  the three, you know. Like, yes.
• 42:50
  Did anybody need to know the surnames of the characters of
• 42:53
  Tranquil Repose, Joshua, Joe Bell, Lancelot, Tarkis, Cara,
• 42:58
  Sedel, and their riveting back stories?
• 43:01
  No, neither did I. We didn't learn too much about
• 43:04
  them, did we? Joe, Joe, Joe, you've missed the
• 43:07
  best one. Oh no, what did I miss?
• 43:09
  Oh. Oh.
• 43:11
  Derek. Who's Derek?
• 43:13
  Derek Johnson. The DJ DJ.
• 43:17
  Terrible, obviously, although he did like mention in Team Clavic,
• 43:21
  Tereleptils, the third zone box, Nick every all those twin die
• 43:25
  are favourites. Yeah.
• 43:27
  Oh, it was just terrible. He described a wood.
• 43:31
  Yeah, that would look as verdantly challenged.
• 43:35
  Like, bless him, he cannot write prose, can he?
• 43:40
  I don't know if he could back in the day, because I quite like
• 43:43
  the Twin Dilemma novelization. It's going for Douglas Adams and
• 43:45
  failing miserably, but it is quite funny.
• 43:48
  But boy, he can't string a sentence together anymore, you
• 43:51
  know? And he's concentrating on all
• 43:53
  the wrong things. He's so utterly focused on the
• 43:56
  costumes that everybody's wearing in this book that he
• 43:59
  doesn't bother to get into their heads in any way, shapes or
• 44:02
  form. We never learn what anyone's
• 44:04
  thinking because he's luxuriously describing every
• 44:07
  costume that the DJ is wearing in every scene.
• 44:09
  Like, you had a character in this book that was rhymed for
• 44:14
  exploration. Yeah.
• 44:15
  And that is Tassim Beaker, divorced of Jenny Thomason's
• 44:19
  idiosyncratic performance, and he does nothing with it at all.
• 44:24
  You don't know why she's obsessed with him.
• 44:26
  It's just taken as written. And then she kills him, and then
• 44:30
  she's killed. And it's like, there's so much
• 44:32
  to explore here. He carves out such an
• 44:34
  interesting corner of the universe in Revelation of the
• 44:37
  Daleks and fails to exploit that at all in this novel.
• 44:42
  It is a baffling approach to novelizing his own script.
• 44:47
  Yeah, I thought this was, this was extremely bad on a level.
• 44:52
  I mean, I've read a lot of Doctor Who books this year and
• 44:54
  this is the second worst I've read this year.
• 44:58
  The last worst is coming up like, but no, absolutely
• 45:02
  appalling. In this book did did I?
• 45:05
  I was going to ask you guys this anyway but did did Was there a
• 45:08
  back story for Tasman Beaker in this?
• 45:10
  No, no, right. She didn't get his name.
• 45:13
  Everyone else has one now. Do you think he's done that on
• 45:17
  No. Not.
• 45:18
  Not everyone has it, no. A lot of them are missing it,
• 45:21
  but Tassam Baker is absolutely missing it.
• 45:25
  Just one other side note, Yeah, before you move in somebody
• 45:27
  else. More disgusting sexual
• 45:31
  references, really unpleasant sexual.
• 45:34
  Davros at one point is perving on Perry.
• 45:37
  Like, if that's happening in your book, take a good look at
• 45:40
  yourself as the author of this book.
• 45:42
  Yeah. And just put your pen down.
• 45:45
  All right. You say pen.
• 45:49
  Yeah, go on then. Dan, how did you feel about the
• 45:53
  revelation? This book made me feel something
• 45:59
  that I have never ever felt while reading a book.
• 46:04
  Should we just leave it and cut it there?
• 46:09
  This book actually made me feel angry.
• 46:12
  And, and the the deeper I went into the book, the more the more
• 46:18
  angry I became. And yeah, so it was.
• 46:25
  It was bizarre because somehow Eric Saywood has taken, I
• 46:31
  suppose, one of the most highly regarded Doctor Who stories of
• 46:40
  the 1980s in Revelation of Daleks.
• 46:43
  One one that I, I personally, I, I, I really, really enjoy.
• 46:50
  But he's turned it into this dirge.
• 46:54
  He, he's made this brilliant story on the TV into a chore to
• 47:02
  read. And, and yes, I just, I just
• 47:05
  felt I'm so angry, but because of this, just reading this book
• 47:12
  and yeah, yes. So it's, it's safe to say I did
• 47:18
  not enjoy this one at all. I'll leave it there and we can
• 47:24
  you can move on. Go on then, David, give us your
• 47:28
  take on Revelation. Oh.
• 47:30
  It's a dog of a book. It really is.
• 47:33
  I think I because I read this last year and I think it was on
• 47:38
  my bottom 10 list for a while. Then we we added it to this.
• 47:41
  I'm not I'm it really deserved to be as near the bottom as
• 47:44
  possible. It is just, it's hard to say how
• 47:50
  the, the bits I just annoyed me the most, but the one, and this
• 47:54
  is where we're going to we're going to throw it back because
• 47:56
  in in our in our little group chat.
• 47:59
  So Eric, dear Eric, clearly he's trying to think of different
• 48:04
  ways of describing the doctor and he's obviously he doesn't
• 48:06
  want to just say the doctor said.
• 48:08
  So he starts referring to him as the Time Lord.
• 48:13
  And I set a bit of a challenge, which was, and unfortunately I
• 48:16
  didn't write the numbers down, but we'll just we'll wing it of
• 48:19
  how many times in this book does he refer?
• 48:23
  There's only, it's not a long book.
• 48:24
  How many times does he refer to the Doctor as the Time Lord?
• 48:30
  He does it 98 times and I think most because I sent a screenshot
• 48:36
  earlier. It's like there's in like 2 or 3
• 48:38
  pages. That's about 8 times.
• 48:40
  So instead of the doctor said, the Time Lord bristled, the Time
• 48:43
  Lord said. And when especially listening to
• 48:45
  Terry Malloy doing the reading, it's just you could almost kind
• 48:48
  of take a drink every single time he was doing it because it
• 48:50
  just kept coming. He.
• 48:51
  Still got paid, don't worry I. Wish I got paid.
• 48:56
  Sorry, I can't register a salary I'm afraid.
• 49:01
  He's clearly still not a fan of Colin because there are a number
• 49:07
  of times where the Doctor has described, we've got his
• 49:11
  ninostic belt that is holding his girth together at one point,
• 49:16
  as there's a bit of description on on his sartorial choice and
• 49:20
  his size already mentioned the ridiculous names that he invents
• 49:26
  for everybody. But there's two bits.
• 49:29
  There's one which is the most quoted part of the book.
• 49:31
  When this book came out, there was a particular part that was
• 49:34
  doing the rounds because it is so horrifically bad and I don't
• 49:40
  know if anybody fancies reading it, I've got it here to hand.
• 49:43
  But if anybody else wants to read it out.
• 49:46
  Go for it. Go.
• 49:47
  For it, go for it. So this is when the Doctor
• 49:50
  encounters Natasha and Gregory in the catacombs.
• 49:54
  This is where I was forced to shoot Dad, said Natasha, turning
• 49:57
  away from the Dalek remains on the floor.
• 49:59
  It's so sad. He was a super father and one of
• 50:02
  the greatest agronomists in the Galaxy.
• 50:06
  That's the second worst bit of writing in this book.
• 50:10
  There is another and it's one I just cannot get my head around.
• 50:13
  And in fact, it's something that Saber does three times in this
• 50:16
  book. So I'm going to going to read
• 50:18
  another segment on the on screen, Davros watched the DJs
• 50:23
  antics 1 voyeur watching another.
• 50:25
  Suddenly everyone sees and knows too much as those to emphasize
• 50:29
  his anger. His head swung wildly in a 360°
• 50:33
  turn. Now it's been a while since I've
• 50:37
  done maths at school, but what he's just described and I'm
• 50:41
  going to, I'm going to perform this for the for the group.
• 50:43
  Please do need. To do, which works really well
• 50:45
  on the podcast. So.
• 50:47
  So David has just swiveled around, having taken his
• 50:49
  earphones off his head in his chair.
• 50:52
  He does a full turn bit bit like what Tom Baker does in Seeds of
• 50:56
  Doom. That's right, he does it three
• 50:58
  times. Maybe.
• 50:59
  Who isn't it? Maybe he thought he was the old
• 51:01
  Davros who was going to do like a Saturday Night Fever with his
• 51:03
  arm at the end of it, then realized he was just a head in a
• 51:05
  jar still. Don't even that bit where Davros
• 51:08
  turns up the real 1 and he goes this was the old Davros.
• 51:12
  I'm like well how does anyone read this book?
• 51:13
  No, the fuck who the old Davros is.
• 51:18
  So basically I think we've got another book potentially with a
• 51:20
  writer who doesn't know maths. So I think he probably meant 180
• 51:25
  or 90. But no, no, we've got Davros on
• 51:27
  three occasions doing a full Exorcist style head spin.
• 51:31
  You're very kind, David. I'll suggest maths and English.
• 51:35
  Yeah, and the other bit is the random introduction of Alex the
• 51:41
  mutant, which there's a whole section later on where there's a
• 51:47
  new character is just the Ronin. And the one, one thing that is
• 51:53
  good about that part, it does feel like he's actually given
• 51:55
  the Doctor something to do in the story.
• 51:59
  Because in on television, as I think we've all probably said at
• 52:01
  some point, the Doctor doesn't do a lot.
• 52:04
  So at least it feels like he's, despite the fact that, you know,
• 52:07
  his potential animosity towards Colin Baker, at least he's kind
• 52:10
  of the Doctor's got. He's crawling around sabotaging
• 52:14
  stuff, I seem to remember. But yeah.
• 52:15
  He ain't got his trousers on, has he?
• 52:18
  No and. Take my trousers down.
• 52:23
  I think he's a line. What about?
• 52:23
  Colin Baker taking his trousers off.
• 52:25
  I mean, really. Let's just say for a long time,
• 52:29
  this was one of the worst Doctor Who books I've ever read.
• 52:32
  Until recently. Well.
• 52:37
  What else is on our list I wonder?
• 52:39
  Go on then Rod, did Collins trousers do it for you?
• 52:41
  Collins trousers on this occasion did not do it for me.
• 52:44
  No, this is, this is an odd little book, isn't it?
• 52:48
  So I'm going to sound like I'm contradicting myself here.
• 52:52
  For the most part he sticks slavishly to the dialogue and
• 52:57
  the set and even the scene cutting, which is just so
• 53:00
  bizarre. He's cutting it like it would be
• 53:02
  cut on TV, which just does not work in in prose form.
• 53:07
  Having said that, there are some little bits he adds.
• 53:09
  So at the beginning he goes back to what he's the the well he's
• 53:14
  drunk from before, which is trying to pretend that he's
• 53:17
  Douglas Adams. So right at the beginning when
• 53:19
  he introduces characters, he tries to give them a bit of, he
• 53:23
  doesn't give them any motivation or characterisation, he just
• 53:26
  gives them this little bit of biography.
• 53:29
  So Tarkis and Lilt, for example, they worked together in the
• 53:31
  Peninsula Wars, they became friends.
• 53:34
  Fine, I'm happy with that. But they also performed Laurel
• 53:37
  and Hardy sketches together to amuse the troops.
• 53:41
  What the fuck, Lauren Hardy? Where does that come from?
• 53:45
  Say they're like Lauren Hardy because one's fat and one's
• 53:47
  thin. But fuck me, Eric, you don't
• 53:49
  need to explain visual jokes that Graham Harper put on the
• 53:53
  screen. But then the DJ, we learned the
• 53:56
  DJ was previously captured by space pirates.
• 53:58
  And we find out these space pirates, they love glam rock and
• 54:03
  Vera Lynn. I mean, what are we?
• 54:06
  Are we supposed to find this funny?
• 54:07
  I mean, I'm laughing now, but I'm laughing at it rather than
• 54:10
  with it. Rod, can we call them?
• 54:12
  From now on, please. It's just so odd.
• 54:16
  All his planets, every plan's got a fucking number.
• 54:19
  It's planet V952 Sifton 31, Sigma 18.
• 54:25
  Why? And then he drops all of that as
• 54:26
  we get into the story. Tassin Baker, by the way, does
• 54:29
  have a surname, and it's very, very original.
• 54:32
  She's Tassin Becca Brown, following Perry Brown.
• 54:35
  Wouldn't even think of a different bloody name.
• 54:39
  But he also does some really odd things, like early on, Mr. Joe
• 54:42
  Bell, he starts, the author, Eric Sibled, starts calling him
• 54:45
  Mr. J, which is really weird because none of the characters
• 54:49
  call Joe Bell Mr. J, It's just the author calls him, which is
• 54:52
  just really disconcerting. But apart from that, it is
• 54:56
  generally, as I said, the story just as we saw it on TV.
• 55:01
  David, you're right. There's this one extended
• 55:03
  sequence in the second episode where the Doctor goes to kind of
• 55:06
  destroy a Dalek farm, which obviously is added to accounts
• 55:09
  the criticism that Colin gets fuck all to do in this story.
• 55:12
  But what's he do? He vibrates the walls so Daleks
• 55:16
  fall off a load of shelving every character.
• 55:21
  Options fans nightmare. It's just bizarre, isn't it?
• 55:24
  Yeah, it's better than MFI construction going on.
• 55:27
  It's not overly heroic. So that's a little bit odd.
• 55:30
  It's just very, very empty, isn't it?
• 55:32
  And if you know the story, like I do so well, and I know that
• 55:35
  dialogue, listening to him repeating it so badly, it's just
• 55:39
  it doesn't really add anything. I will.
• 55:41
  I will take Exception Joe to one thing.
• 55:44
  I do think that is the odd line of prose that I think works
• 55:49
  quite nicely. I've written a couple down which
• 55:51
  I actually thought probably because they stood out.
• 55:53
  They stood out as the only things there were, and I'm being
• 55:56
  serious, that I quite liked. So he said all or seen he ever
• 56:00
  carried was a walking stick, a huge burden of pride and a
• 56:04
  massive chunk of dignity. I thought, OK, I'll give you
• 56:07
  that one, Eric, it is, but in comparison to everything else, I
• 56:11
  would give that a say. And then when Bostock goes to to
• 56:15
  kiss Cara's hand, he says without warning, a grubby paw,
• 56:18
  like an eagle diving onto its prey, snatched Cara's soft white
• 56:22
  hand and dragged it to a pair of the wettest, sloppiest lips ever
• 56:26
  to grace a human face. Joe is wincing, but that's the
• 56:30
  idea. You're supposed to wince, but so
• 56:32
  this is odd little touch and I thought, OK, I'll give you that.
• 56:35
  But they're so buried in so much shite, it's difficult to kind of
• 56:40
  find it and forgive it. The the cutting between scenes
• 56:45
  is just excruciating. He forgets he's writing a book
• 56:49
  and not just transcribing the dialogue.
• 56:51
  So there's the scene in episode 2 where all scene he destroys
• 56:55
  the white Dalek when they're when they're outside before they
• 56:58
  come into the catacombs. So they destroy the that destroy
• 57:02
  the Dalek. We then cut in the book to a
• 57:05
  scene of Vogel and Kara watching the president ship in space.
• 57:08
  And then we cut again to a scene of the dialects reacting to the
• 57:12
  dialect that was cut that was blown up two paragraphs ago.
• 57:16
  It is just beside prose form. It's just so stilted and so bad.
• 57:21
  So yeah, I would not say that I was a fan of this particular
• 57:24
  book, but I will say I read this originally after I'd read
• 57:29
  Resurrection, and by Christ's Resurrection is a million times
• 57:32
  worse. Than this really.
• 57:34
  This is This is Shakespeare in comparison to to.
• 57:38
  As an example of how lazy the writing is in this book, Yeah,
• 57:41
  he can't even be bothered to write a metaphor or a simile in
• 57:44
  this particular sentence. OK, he just writes.
• 57:47
  With Tassen Baker. Gazing longingly after Joe Bell,
• 57:51
  Lilt could not help but recognize the look of love in
• 57:55
  inverted commas on her face. I'm like, fuck me.
• 58:00
  Just one metaphor. Come on.
• 58:05
  Oh, terrible. Well, it's good to know that I'm
• 58:09
  not alone in my loathing of this book.
• 58:12
  I was really looking forward to it coming out, being one of the
• 58:15
  ones we've not got novelized. I was absolutely ecstatic for
• 58:18
  this, another calling book to fill that gap.
• 58:20
  And then when I read it last year I was so disappointed and
• 58:24
  when I've read it again this time I didn't need a red pen
• 58:27
  because my book is in scrolled with question marks on
• 58:30
  everything that happens in this story and the point of it.
• 58:33
  Like how does Davros know what the 6th Doctor looks like and
• 58:36
  then has time to build this giant edifice of him that he
• 58:41
  tries to crush him underneath? It doesn't make sense.
• 58:44
  How do they have the dialects on speed dial at the end so they
• 58:47
  can just call him to come and pick Davros up?
• 58:49
  They clearly know what the Daleks are like.
• 58:51
  Did they really think they were just going to walk away with him
• 58:53
  and everything would be fine? You know, And especially when
• 58:55
  these guys have got more background as well.
• 58:57
  Like all these questions, you could point at the TV show as
• 59:00
  well, but you had the opportunity in the book to
• 59:01
  explain all those. Which is again, whether even
• 59:04
  more egregious for me in this. I was really hoping I'd get more
• 59:07
  on the nights of Oberon in this, if I was honest, a little bit of
• 59:09
  background about them. I was, I thought that's, that's,
• 59:11
  that's the way and that's the way to get and we didn't get it.
• 59:14
  Instead, what we got was was Eric Sayward talking about,
• 59:19
  well, I, I just don't, don't, I don't like calling, do I?
• 59:21
  So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to write a story.
• 59:25
  I, I don't think he should have been in that coat.
• 59:27
  So I'm going to point that out and I'm and I'm going to write
• 59:30
  about all my own characters. And I think Davros is a, is a
• 59:33
  much more interesting character than everything else, even
• 59:36
  though actually it doesn't make sense that he set himself up as
• 59:39
  just a head in a jar because no one really cares about him, even
• 59:42
  though he, you know, he, he is an escaped criminal really from
• 59:45
  a, from a previous story which no one knew about.
• 59:48
  But you know, Cara knows about who he is.
• 59:50
  They know he's Davros, so they must be aware of his background.
• 59:54
  Just none of it hangs together. And like you say, this could
• 59:58
  have been righted a little bit. They they did go some way, as
• 1:00:01
  much as it pains me to say it, in involving the 6th Doctor in
• 1:00:05
  some resolution of this. But again, it was at the point
• 1:00:09
  of the costume and the belts, which is again pointing to
• 1:00:14
  Colin's weight, which we know was something that Saywood
• 1:00:16
  didn't like. So yeah, I was I very little
• 1:00:21
  redeeming about it. I detested Joe Bell being called
• 1:00:24
  Mr. J. And also I hated Tranquil Repose
• 1:00:28
  being shortened to TR at different times.
• 1:00:30
  It's like you came up with the bloody names.
• 1:00:33
  Why are you not writing them? Is oh is it too much for you to
• 1:00:36
  do it? After all this time of holding
• 1:00:38
  out for this book being done and and it just made I got more and
• 1:00:42
  more angry. I find the DJ superfluous
• 1:00:44
  character anyway, never mind giving me DJ the next generation
• 1:00:48
  that pops out at the end from nowhere.
• 1:00:50
  Oh, that was a good idea, wasn't it?
• 1:00:53
  I could rant, I really, really could.
• 1:00:57
  But it's just it's going to feature in my next question as
• 1:01:02
  we go back round again, which is.
• 1:01:04
  Can I just say very quickly, I've got a theory about
• 1:01:06
  Revelation of the Daleks, and reading the books kind of
• 1:01:10
  confirms the theory. I think that Robert Holmes took
• 1:01:14
  a pass at this script because Eric, say, Woods Award, whatever
• 1:01:18
  you want to call him, didn't write anything like this before.
• 1:01:22
  Yeah, not with dialogue as sharp as it is in Revelation of the
• 1:01:26
  dialects. His dialogue is utterly
• 1:01:27
  functional in all of his scripts before this.
• 1:01:30
  Not with that lace of sort of sarcastic humor that's in this.
• 1:01:35
  Not with the, well, building that's in this.
• 1:01:37
  Like, that script is so polished in a way that no other Eric's
• 1:01:41
  award script is. Yeah.
• 1:01:43
  And reading this book, divorced of Robert Holmes.
• 1:01:46
  Yeah. He's written down.
• 1:01:48
  He don't have a clue who these characters are.
• 1:01:50
  He doesn't understand what their back stories are.
• 1:01:52
  He doesn't understand the functions of the narrative.
• 1:01:55
  I am more convinced than ever that this is more Holmes than it
• 1:01:59
  is because I would know they met in case of Anjani, I know they
• 1:02:03
  built a good friendship and I know they were looking at each
• 1:02:06
  other's work at this point. And I I do wonder if the script
• 1:02:09
  was more Holmes than it was Sir Ward, because he doesn't write
• 1:02:13
  anything as polished as that elsewhere, and certainly this
• 1:02:16
  book isn't. Well, no good theory.
• 1:02:21
  It is littered with double acts, isn't it?
• 1:02:24
  Because like we always talk about the, the, the Robert
• 1:02:26
  Holmes double acts and there's, there's quite a few of them
• 1:02:29
  through this, isn't there? So it's just.
• 1:02:33
  Cynicism as well, you know, and that black humour.
• 1:02:37
  Black humour, yeah. Very homes, not very sword.
• 1:02:41
  You know, before his black humour and resurrection and
• 1:02:43
  adults was just limp, wasn't it? You know it.
• 1:02:47
  Does feel like it belongs in the same universe as Andrazani now.
• 1:02:49
  It's not just the Graham Harper thing.
• 1:02:52
  Well, you've pointed that out going.
• 1:02:54
  It's not just they're similar productions, they're similar
• 1:02:57
  scripts in terms of tone, in terms of the comedy.
• 1:03:01
  Maybe secretly Holmes had a passer.
• 1:03:04
  You know, as you do sometimes with your homework, you said,
• 1:03:06
  you know, you might get some to have a look at it, maybe get
• 1:03:08
  some notes, rewritten it. Maybe they went on that holiday
• 1:03:12
  together, you know? Now then, that could start a
• 1:03:15
  whole new rumour. Well, question I was going to
• 1:03:19
  ask everyone was because, you know, this particular show isn't
• 1:03:24
  going to be a covering. The Daleks is Is this actually a
• 1:03:27
  Dalek book? Again, no, no, again, they,
• 1:03:32
  they're barely in it. They're not driving the story.
• 1:03:35
  They the, you know, there's more of them on the cover than I
• 1:03:38
  think there are huge chunks of the book.
• 1:03:41
  Oh God, that's an uninspiring cover too.
• 1:03:43
  Can I just say yeah? Yeah.
• 1:03:45
  What about that one? That that's even worse.
• 1:03:47
  That's hard back. What's?
• 1:03:49
  In the middle. Just such a matter of interest.
• 1:03:52
  Is the hardback the same number of pages as the paperback?
• 1:03:55
  Sorry, I like to cross reference while I've got opportunity to as
• 1:03:58
  we leaf through. I did wonder whether or not the
• 1:04:01
  the paperback. 29 a. 179, yeah. Yeah, also it is the same bar
• 1:04:06
  the cover itself. I can't believe I've actually
• 1:04:09
  got in hardback and paperback. That is so tragic.
• 1:04:12
  I bought the kidney. Oh, Rod, it was such high
• 1:04:14
  esteem. I.
• 1:04:15
  Wasn't going to pay more than 3 lbs for this book.
• 1:04:18
  No, this is a Davros stories. Well, it's even a Davros
• 1:04:21
  probably. Davros is probably the if
• 1:04:23
  anyone's the lead in it. What insight do we get into
• 1:04:26
  Davros in? This all true?
• 1:04:27
  No, but in terms of who's the lead, it's certainly not the
• 1:04:29
  Doctor, it's not the Daleks. So if anybody it's Davros is
• 1:04:33
  probably the lead. Go listen to the Big Finish
• 1:04:38
  audio Davros. The amount of insight packed
• 1:04:40
  into his character in that script, you can do it.
• 1:04:44
  Oh God, yeah, and. Then again, there was the
• 1:04:46
  opportunity here. I think again, that's that that
• 1:04:49
  what we've all vocalized at some point in this is that it's not
• 1:04:53
  very clear from its narrative structure at all who we're
• 1:04:56
  following. The doctors sidelined for a lot
• 1:04:58
  of it. Davros feels like he should be
• 1:05:00
  in the driving seat, but we're not as invested in him as we
• 1:05:03
  seem to be in some of the other characters.
• 1:05:04
  That's knocking around and and just seems to come off a bit
• 1:05:08
  muddled. It's just overstuffed.
• 1:05:10
  I know I had a big rant about this one when we did on strictly
• 1:05:13
  because it is just a series of events rather than a plot that
• 1:05:17
  leads from A to B. But Gareth, like you, I just
• 1:05:20
  noticed. I noticed new things reading
• 1:05:22
  this book that irritated me that again, Joe and Gareth, you both,
• 1:05:26
  well, everybody said it. He had the opportunity to expand
• 1:05:29
  here and explain. But just new things came to me
• 1:05:32
  as I was reading this. So if Avros is the Grey healer,
• 1:05:35
  he's known across the universe as the grey healer because he's
• 1:05:38
  healing people. But the people that are cured
• 1:05:41
  are either, sorry, the bit, the people coming at him to be cured
• 1:05:44
  are either turned into food or become a Dalek.
• 1:05:48
  So therefore there are no people that go out into the world
• 1:05:51
  having been cured. So how does he have this
• 1:05:54
  reputation of being the Grey healer?
• 1:05:56
  Because there's no one going out there, maybe.
• 1:05:57
  That's a few, you know, just a cup, but.
• 1:05:59
  Again, it's not not explained. There's no motive.
• 1:06:01
  And the other thing is really odd.
• 1:06:03
  This is a Funeral Home and Netcross has always been a
• 1:06:06
  funeral planet, but now they're also offering cryosleep
• 1:06:11
  facilities. If you're I'll, you're going to
• 1:06:13
  cryosleep waiting to be cured. That's very odd to be in the
• 1:06:16
  same facility as a Funeral Home. And again, it's just what is the
• 1:06:21
  purpose of this? And they even muddle it up
• 1:06:23
  because the doctor comes to talk about his funeral and TASS and
• 1:06:26
  Baker's selling him the DJ service, which is if you're in
• 1:06:29
  cryosleep. So I think even Saywood is
• 1:06:31
  confused about actually what is this facility doing?
• 1:06:35
  It's just, it's just a muddle and a mess.
• 1:06:38
  It does go to show just how much is papered over with Graham
• 1:06:42
  Harper's direction and that superb cast.
• 1:06:49
  So as we're nearing the end of our discussion on revelation and
• 1:06:53
  what revelation it's been, how many rels would we give this
• 1:06:57
  everyone? Gerge your loins, David.
• 1:07:00
  We'll come to you first for a real count.
• 1:07:02
  I'm going to be generous and give it 2 because it's terrible,
• 1:07:07
  but I kind of enjoyed it. You know, it's one of those
• 1:07:11
  almost so bad it's good. It wasn't good, but it was
• 1:07:16
  almost. I enjoyed how terrible it was.
• 1:07:20
  Rod, how about yourself? I will say one line to you,
• 1:07:22
  Gareth. It was though his brain had
• 1:07:24
  split from his skull and grown into a throbbing mass of awful.
• 1:07:29
  How does your brain grow into a throbbing mass of awful?
• 1:07:32
  I was going. To say, was that was that quote
• 1:07:33
  from the book or was that just your opinion on the book?
• 1:07:36
  This book is a throbbing mass of awful.
• 1:07:40
  On that basis, it's a one from me one row.
• 1:07:43
  Thank you, Rod. Joe, how about you?
• 1:07:45
  I'm. Going to read a line as well.
• 1:07:48
  I love a woman who plays hard to get.
• 1:07:50
  Oh, and you'll love me to death. Joe Bell went all curly at the
• 1:07:55
  thought. What does that mean?
• 1:08:00
  I go curly every time I'm about to come on a call with you,
• 1:08:03
  Ford. You know, take about what you.
• 1:08:06
  Will. Oh, it's.
• 1:08:09
  Dismal isn't it? I did not enjoy reading this.
• 1:08:12
  I really sort of stuttered working my way through it.
• 1:08:16
  I stopped for about two weeks and then forced myself to finish
• 1:08:20
  it. 11 rail from me. Thank you, Joe.
• 1:08:24
  And how about you, Dan? Yeah, it's it's, it's one from
• 1:08:28
  me. There are a couple of things.
• 1:08:31
  I just want to before we move on to the next book.
• 1:08:35
  So you've got Cara, who's like this galactic businesswoman, so
• 1:08:40
  you would think that, you know, professional and successful and
• 1:08:43
  all this sort of thing. So what do you think her
• 1:08:45
  company's called? It's called Cara's Kitchen.
• 1:08:50
  It sounds it. Sounds like a burger van in a
• 1:08:53
  lay by not not a, you know, a corporation or anything like
• 1:08:58
  that. How does that doesn't?
• 1:08:59
  Describe it as the title Would eat burgers.
• 1:09:04
  And I just thought, Oh my gosh, that is just, that is just so
• 1:09:07
  bad. And then also the description of
• 1:09:12
  Vogel on on. So he's Cara's secretary.
• 1:09:18
  So he goes, Vogel was fluttering next to her.
• 1:09:23
  That's Cara like a demented ostrich.
• 1:09:27
  What the hell does that mean? It I, I just, it's just like I
• 1:09:33
  I. Is he trying to stick his head
• 1:09:35
  constantly in the floor and failing every time?
• 1:09:37
  I don't know. I don't know.
• 1:09:38
  But and then and then it really bugged me also that he would
• 1:09:42
  always describe the Daleks as the goat spear Dalek.
• 1:09:46
  It was. It was almost as much of a catch
• 1:09:50
  phrase as the Time Lord and and, and, and for most of the book,
• 1:09:55
  they're the only livery of of Daleks present.
• 1:09:58
  So why does he feel that he's got, he's got an underline that
• 1:10:01
  every time the Daleks are present.
• 1:10:04
  Yeah. So I'm going to give it a one.
• 1:10:06
  I'm not. On the basis of Dan's appraisal,
• 1:10:09
  can I move mine up to A5 please? Because damn.
• 1:10:15
  Damn, you missed the brilliant brilliance of Eric Saywood
• 1:10:19
  there. So Vogel, it's a German word
• 1:10:23
  that means bird. So he says, fluttering around.
• 1:10:27
  Like a stretch because. Vogel is Bird.
• 1:10:30
  It's just fucking brilliant. You don't get that kind of
• 1:10:34
  incisiveness from any other author.
• 1:10:36
  It's a 5 from me. I may ask you to revise your
• 1:10:39
  opinion when I I just read out the one the one bit of insight
• 1:10:45
  we get into Cara Seedel and it is said that her only true
• 1:10:49
  weakness was an obsession with eating chocolate covered locusts
• 1:10:53
  while soaking in a warm bath of Lindosian milk.
• 1:10:58
  OK, back to all one. Oh, that sounds horrible.
• 1:11:01
  Didn't. It chocolate covered.
• 1:11:03
  Locusts. I'm not sure I can follow
• 1:11:06
  Locusts, but I'm going to. It's going to be a one from me
• 1:11:11
  just for disappointment alone. I, I just, I, I have so many
• 1:11:14
  questions about it. I don't particularly like the
• 1:11:16
  story. I don't like the TV episode.
• 1:11:18
  The novel does nothing more for me.
• 1:11:20
  I think we should move beyond the revelation.
• 1:11:22
  How do you feel about that? 66 out of 25?
• 1:11:25
  That's pretty pitiful. Oh wait, so can I read one last
• 1:11:29
  thing? I'm so sorry.
• 1:11:30
  Go on then finish yourself. Right, I started problematically
• 1:11:34
  with Eric Saywood sexual references and I shall end there
• 1:11:37
  too. Although gradually thinking
• 1:11:40
  himself as a great lover, he lacked charm, charisma and
• 1:11:43
  indeed looks. I think Eric was talking about
• 1:11:46
  himself here. Rather than wooing the available
• 1:11:49
  young single women at Tranquil Repose, he preferred to pursue
• 1:11:52
  the married ones. This not only gave him an extra
• 1:11:55
  thrill, but it meant there was no commitment You.
• 1:11:58
  Perv Eric Saywood's mission statement right there.
• 1:12:03
  Dreadful. OK, so let's go to our final
• 1:12:08
  book of the evening. Deep breath, everyone.
• 1:12:12
  No, it's it's not the novelization of Deep Breath.
• 1:12:14
  You've got a different book to me have.
• 1:12:16
  I read the wrong. One you wish, now that.
• 1:12:20
  'D be a book called Fresh Air, surely?
• 1:12:22
  So we are going to now be covering The Dalek Generation by
• 1:12:25
  Nicholas Briggs. So as I've started them all off
• 1:12:29
  on the same way, let's continue the format, shall we?
• 1:12:31
  If everyone's happy and let's go for how did we feel about this
• 1:12:34
  book? And let's start with Rod to kick
• 1:12:36
  us off this time. Well.
• 1:12:40
  It's a shame you've picked me first because I think my views
• 1:12:42
  on this book are different to everybody else, judging by the
• 1:12:46
  chat that we've had in the chat. So my impression, and I don't
• 1:12:50
  want to give anything away or spoil it, although I think
• 1:12:53
  probably listeners are probably already clear, the majority of
• 1:12:57
  my colleagues on this chart, I'm not overly impressed by The
• 1:13:01
  Dalek Generation by Nick Briggs. I on the other hand, I'm going
• 1:13:05
  to take a completely opposite view.
• 1:13:09
  So madness. What Nick Briggs is doing here,
• 1:13:14
  I think is he's he's looking at what's been done recently on TV
• 1:13:19
  by Sir Stephen of Moffett and he's thinking, hang on, Doctor
• 1:13:23
  the Widow and the wardrobe. So basically what was done there
• 1:13:26
  was they took a famous work of children's fiction and put a
• 1:13:30
  Doctor Who spin on that. So Nick Briggs thinks I know
• 1:13:34
  what I'm going to do. I'm going to take the Railway
• 1:13:37
  Children and I'm going to put a Doctor Who spin on that.
• 1:13:40
  So what's the Railway Children about?
• 1:13:42
  It's about three children who get separated from their father.
• 1:13:45
  They befriend an old man who helps them and eventually brings
• 1:13:49
  their father back home to them. What is that if not a
• 1:13:53
  description of the Dalek generation?
• 1:13:55
  So I think this is a brilliantly clever pastiche of that book in
• 1:14:00
  the vein oh, what the fuck am I talking about?
• 1:14:02
  It's. Terrible.
• 1:14:03
  Oh thank God. Oh, I was getting.
• 1:14:07
  Suckered into that, I'm right back to written down.
• 1:14:09
  I must read the Railway Children.
• 1:14:11
  This is not strictly come up I'm.
• 1:14:15
  Fervently writing notes off the corner Going must read Railway
• 1:14:18
  Children. Well, the problem is about two
• 1:14:19
  weeks ago you were all moaning about this book so much in the
• 1:14:22
  chat I just thought I'd be a be an awkward so and so and said,
• 1:14:25
  oh, I really like it. I didn't, but then you all
• 1:14:27
  believed and said I can't wait to hear a positive reading so
• 1:14:31
  I'm going to have to keep this up for a while.
• 1:14:33
  Well played, Rod, well played. I I wasn't sure because you've
• 1:14:36
  done this before, you've done a fake out and it's just, I was
• 1:14:39
  like, but then it was your mind is that could Yeah.
• 1:14:42
  Actually, could you be that mad? No.
• 1:14:45
  I was hoping maybe he was explaining.
• 1:14:47
  So shine after neck cross. This is absolutely terrible.
• 1:14:51
  He does. So the bit of truth that was in
• 1:14:54
  there is I, I can't actually see there are children in this.
• 1:14:57
  What he is doing is he is aping Stephen Moffat.
• 1:15:01
  What he fails to do is understand what Stephen Moffat
• 1:15:04
  does really well. So Joe, you and I have recently
• 1:15:07
  talked about The Big Bang and that episode's gone out.
• 1:15:10
  So I can talk about that now as we talked about them strictly.
• 1:15:13
  And this has got a very similar vibe to to The Big Bang in that
• 1:15:17
  everything gets reset at the end and it's all done by memory.
• 1:15:22
  The trouble is, Ricks, I don't think understands what makes
• 1:15:26
  that episode so bloody good, in my opinion.
• 1:15:28
  And it's all about character because the characters in this
• 1:15:31
  are the most drab, nondescript. It's basically the Doctor
• 1:15:35
  running around with three kids literally hanging off him.
• 1:15:39
  It's just it's just pointless. So just a few things.
• 1:15:43
  We go across loads of different planets.
• 1:15:45
  There's so many different styles in this book.
• 1:15:47
  We go to to one planet, which is where the children are from and
• 1:15:51
  it kind of turns into this weird pastiche of Charles Dickens
• 1:15:54
  Bleak House because we suddenly got this judiciary and they keep
• 1:15:58
  talking about giving me Victorian Dickensian and there's
• 1:16:01
  orphanages and then we suddenly forget all of that and we go off
• 1:16:03
  somewhere else. It's also scattergun.
• 1:16:06
  None of it's satisfactory. We get plot threads that come
• 1:16:09
  along and then the left hanging. There's bits at the end that I'm
• 1:16:12
  not sure we'll get to them. I've no idea what the resolution
• 1:16:15
  actually is. We introduce characters, so
• 1:16:17
  right at the beginning of the book we get introduced to a
• 1:16:19
  female characters journalist. We think she's going to be our
• 1:16:22
  lead in. She then disappears for 150
• 1:16:25
  pages and at the end we don't know what happens to her.
• 1:16:28
  And there's so much running around, getting shot at, running
• 1:16:31
  around, getting shot at. Daleks are coming.
• 1:16:33
  Run around, get shot at, jumping the TARDIS, fly away, land, get
• 1:16:37
  shot at by Daleks, run away. It's just tedious, tedious,
• 1:16:41
  tedious. But it gets us to the grand
• 1:16:43
  resolution and the conclusion, which is reset.
• 1:16:48
  But probably the worst and most egregious use of a reset button
• 1:16:52
  I've ever read. I think I'll probably leave it
• 1:16:55
  there for the time being. But I certainly will be coming
• 1:16:58
  back to this because this is just, it's, it's a mix of just
• 1:17:03
  shit. He's taking the worst bits of
• 1:17:05
  everything. There's bits of Terry Nation in
• 1:17:07
  there like Terry Blakely. If that's not, if that is not a
• 1:17:11
  Terry Nation name, I don't know what is.
• 1:17:14
  Terry Blakely on his spaceship. It's like if AI was asked to
• 1:17:19
  create a Terry Nation character. You've got bits of Terry Nation,
• 1:17:23
  you've got bits of Briggs's own Dalek Empire.
• 1:17:26
  Then I say you've got heaps of mafia.
• 1:17:28
  But he doesn't understand what makes nation or mafia good.
• 1:17:31
  And it just comes across as this awful, sad, empty pastiche and I
• 1:17:38
  really don't like it. Yeah, it.
• 1:17:39
  Was more egregious than him not realizing what works with mafia.
• 1:17:44
  He doesn't realise what works with Dalek Empire and he
• 1:17:47
  fucking. That's true.
• 1:17:49
  You know he can't even ape his own work well.
• 1:17:53
  I forgot to say Rod's telling of the tale means no one has to
• 1:17:56
  listen to the audio, but they can sell themselves 4 hours of
• 1:17:59
  their lives by just listening to that.
• 1:18:00
  Minutes worth there. Well done, Rod.
• 1:18:02
  This one. Thank you, Ross.
• 1:18:04
  Sergeant. Who reads this one?
• 1:18:06
  He does. Oh.
• 1:18:09
  You're. Joking.
• 1:18:09
  Oh, that's right, David. You did it, didn't you, David?
• 1:18:11
  Sent us some little clips of him sounding intensely bored.
• 1:18:16
  Not Nick, not David. Nick sounding extremely bad.
• 1:18:19
  Oh, what does it give right to you?
• 1:18:20
  I. Mean no, David, that audio book
• 1:18:25
  is I mean, the book is terrible. The book is a it's it's one of
• 1:18:29
  the worst books I have ever read.
• 1:18:33
  But the audio book is even makes it worse because it's Nick
• 1:18:38
  Briggs reading his own material. Whenever the 11th doctor speaks
• 1:18:43
  he is doing this really bad impression of him.
• 1:18:47
  Does he sound? A bit embarrassed David by by
• 1:18:50
  the material. It sounds a bit and and he does
• 1:18:54
  the he does the voices for the children, but he does them as
• 1:18:57
  children's voices. And Doctor, I need a wee, which
• 1:19:01
  is a almost direct quote from the dog.
• 1:19:04
  It's a recurring theme. It is a recurring theme.
• 1:19:07
  There are, there's quite a lot of, there's a fair amount of we
• 1:19:09
  in going on. There's an awful lot of shit in
• 1:19:11
  there to be fat and. So let's be fair for a minute.
• 1:19:19
  Can Nick Briggs write prose? No, he can't because when he,
• 1:19:25
  with the, the bit where he introduces the Doctor for the
• 1:19:29
  first time and it's this weird thing and it's a, it's a, it's a
• 1:19:32
  good conversation starter in terms of when you're writing a
• 1:19:34
  Doctor Who book, how much time should you devote to introducing
• 1:19:38
  the Doctor and the TARDIS and the companions?
• 1:19:39
  Because surely as readers of Doctor Who book, you must know
• 1:19:43
  some of this stuff. Basically he takes certainly on
• 1:19:46
  the Kindle version, I think about 3 or 4 pages to tell about
• 1:19:49
  the Doctor and the TARDIS and the Time Lords and how he ran
• 1:19:51
  away. But he does these in these one
• 1:19:54
  sentence paragraphs that just never fucking end.
• 1:20:00
  And he, it's that classic thing of I think he thinks he's being
• 1:20:05
  clever and being descriptive. I'm going to find one of these
• 1:20:08
  because it's just absolutely. Read out that bit where the
• 1:20:15
  TARDIS materializes. That is just terrible, but.
• 1:20:19
  It's this is this is from the start of chapter 1, whirling
• 1:20:23
  through the vortex, dwarfed by the infinite eternity of a
• 1:20:26
  limitless universe, a small blue cuboid object with a glowing
• 1:20:30
  light atop and windows like white squarish and I, squinting
• 1:20:33
  into a dizzying kaleidoscopic tunnel, propelled itself ever
• 1:20:36
  almost That is a paragraph, and it is one sentence I.
• 1:20:40
  Thought we were reading if thesaurus.
• 1:20:42
  Can I? Can I be?
• 1:20:44
  Can I be? Glowing light atop.
• 1:20:46
  Can I be really rude and just jump in a minute?
• 1:20:48
  Sorry, David. There was one thing I really
• 1:20:51
  want to write and you've just LED perfectly into it.
• 1:20:53
  Once you've seen this, you will not stop singing this in the
• 1:20:57
  book. Nick Briggs has has, I think,
• 1:20:59
  read How to write a book book. What he's told is if you've got
• 1:21:04
  a noun, what's at least two or three adjectives between
• 1:21:08
  everyone? I've just written some down.
• 1:21:10
  He handed it to the rather squat, bald, bespectacled
• 1:21:13
  receptionist. A faint sense of disapproval
• 1:21:17
  passed over his small flattish pale face.
• 1:21:21
  Why do we need all that? Like you just said David, it's a
• 1:21:23
  small blue cuboid object. Windows like white squarish
• 1:21:27
  eyes. We don't need all that.
• 1:21:28
  There's a sentence so could just say she made herself a drink.
• 1:21:31
  She then went into a lounge and moved towards the window that
• 1:21:34
  looks out into her garden. Oh no no no, no no.
• 1:21:37
  She made herself a cool refreshing fruit drink, then
• 1:21:41
  went into a lounge and moved towards the wide floor to
• 1:21:44
  ceiling window that looks out onto her small neat garden area.
• 1:21:48
  There's so many fucking adjectives for a single
• 1:21:51
  sentence. You know, two or three.
• 1:21:53
  It drives him insane. I'm.
• 1:21:55
  Not a writer, OK, but my advice to a writer would be read it out
• 1:22:01
  loud. Yeah, just no.
• 1:22:03
  No. That's after he's read read.
• 1:22:06
  The thing? Read it out whilst you're
• 1:22:09
  writing it. Does it flow?
• 1:22:11
  Does it sound like a sentence? Because none of those do.
• 1:22:14
  How did no one say you're just using the same grammatical
• 1:22:17
  structure time after time after time after time?
• 1:22:20
  Stop it because. It's Carl.
• 1:22:23
  We're in too deep on the contract side.
• 1:22:25
  Remember, we'll just publish it as it is.
• 1:22:28
  Sorry, David. There's just a sense of like,
• 1:22:31
  we're going to give him a, give him a book, give him a book,
• 1:22:32
  just give him a book and. This is his only full novel,
• 1:22:36
  isn't? This is his only.
• 1:22:37
  Full novel and really surprised me.
• 1:22:39
  Because everybody read it and it's like, we're not going
• 1:22:41
  through that again. But there's some really
• 1:22:44
  interesting, no, interesting in a bad way, but there's a bit
• 1:22:48
  because obviously on the these worlds of Daleks are seen as
• 1:22:51
  heroes. And if you, you know, Doctor
• 1:22:53
  comes along and he's arrested for incitement and there's a bit
• 1:22:56
  where he's talks about, he says incitement to hatred.
• 1:22:59
  This is ridiculous. Then he thought to himself, I
• 1:23:01
  suppose I was trying to incite hatred of the Daleks.
• 1:23:04
  What's wrong with that? And it's just like, there's just
• 1:23:07
  something about that. I know the doctor hates the
• 1:23:10
  dialects and everything, but when you've kind of got dialogue
• 1:23:13
  talking about inciting hate crimes and then the doctor kind
• 1:23:15
  of going, well, as long as I hate them, that's fine.
• 1:23:19
  There's just something about that that really left quite a,
• 1:23:21
  a, a bitter taste. I mean, the, the, the, the bit
• 1:23:25
  where because I was listening to the audio book, you've got two
• 1:23:28
  of the children, you've got Jenny Bess and Olice.
• 1:23:32
  And every time you talk about Olice, I kept thinking of Mr.
• 1:23:34
  Olice from three doctors and going.
• 1:23:36
  And there's a whole bit where the Hollis who's four years old
• 1:23:42
  flies a spaceship and there's that's the point where it's like
• 1:23:47
  this is just a patronizing mess. I think Joe, you said it more
• 1:23:51
  once in you. I hope you guys steal your
• 1:23:53
  Thunder. But this so talking down to its
• 1:23:55
  audience and I think it's things like that where you've got kids
• 1:24:00
  doing you know, the kid, the four year old's going to fly the
• 1:24:02
  spaceship. Oh, he turns out he's very good
• 1:24:04
  at it. No, it it's very rare to have a
• 1:24:08
  book with almost no redeeming feature.
• 1:24:10
  The idea of a colony that's positive about the dialects,
• 1:24:14
  isn't it? It's a good idea.
• 1:24:16
  Concept is there but. Does nothing interesting with
• 1:24:19
  it. There is one of the thing
• 1:24:22
  because I've mentioned it so many times but it angered way
• 1:24:25
  the more pricks used it. Jelly blobs.
• 1:24:32
  Fucking Jelly blobs. Is it Jelly babies?
• 1:24:35
  I think babies I'm guessing. I'm wondering whether it's meant
• 1:24:38
  to be Jelly babies but someone's come along from legal and said
• 1:24:41
  you can't use that so just call him something else.
• 1:24:44
  So he's crossed up babies and put.
• 1:24:45
  Blobs. I wonder if it was based on the
• 1:24:47
  Carlene mutants because the Daleks were into their society
• 1:24:49
  so much so rather than having babies, they'd be blobs.
• 1:24:52
  Yeah, but the. It's a cute version that's
• 1:24:54
  getting a little bit grizzly. But it would explain.
• 1:24:57
  It takes your fancy. It would.
• 1:24:59
  The the Dalek nanogenes that changed Jenny Beth at the at the
• 1:25:04
  end into a Dalek agent because. It's not.
• 1:25:08
  It's not when she suddenly becomes a ninja at the end, even
• 1:25:10
  though she's about 80 years of age.
• 1:25:12
  That's the one. What the fuck was that?
• 1:25:14
  What? Named Jenny Beth.
• 1:25:16
  I mean I mean I hate kids anyway, but I mean just give
• 1:25:20
  them names where I just don't want them murdered.
• 1:25:23
  I was waiting for out this book for them to be murdered
• 1:25:26
  horribly. But anyway, he kind of got one
• 1:25:29
  that was no they. Were all back at the end.
• 1:25:33
  Everybody lives. But they were killed at one
• 1:25:36
  point. Not for long enough, Gareth.
• 1:25:40
  All right, You promised 10 book. I'll see children dying in this
• 1:25:44
  book. And it wasn't for long.
• 1:25:46
  Enough the the especially when Briggs was reading it in his
• 1:25:52
  child. The child voice as well as Jelly
• 1:25:54
  blobs. The more that he did it, the
• 1:25:57
  more I just involved. Every time I would imagine Jenny
• 1:26:02
  Beth spoke with the list, did she?
• 1:26:04
  Because she just the name Jenny Beth just is given that she's
• 1:26:07
  got up a childhood list it. Probably.
• 1:26:10
  I probably just tuned it out my memory now and what?
• 1:26:13
  Sort of mental state is this book aimed at like I feel like
• 1:26:16
  it's aimed at 4 year olds that have had a lobotomy or
• 1:26:19
  something, you know? Sorry.
• 1:26:26
  Dan, how did you feel about this one?
• 1:26:28
  He. Loved it.
• 1:26:33
  That won't be brave. Be brave.
• 1:26:35
  His facial expression suggests otherwise.
• 1:26:37
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, not wanting to
• 1:26:41
  be unkind, but it's a big old bag of shite, isn't it?
• 1:26:43
  It really is. It's such a magpie of a book.
• 1:26:50
  And I think, I think this is really going to follow on from
• 1:26:52
  what everyone else has said so far that it's, it's almost like
• 1:26:55
  Nick Briggs as as kind of like he's watched the Matt Smith era
• 1:27:02
  and just going, Oh, OK, I'll, I'll nick that from there and
• 1:27:04
  I'll nick that from there. And then just kind of stir it
• 1:27:07
  into this this big, big, you know, cake and, and oh man,
• 1:27:14
  it's, it's just, it's just so bad.
• 1:27:16
  And, and the fact that he he uses.
• 1:27:19
  And I think again, this is, this is going to be treading on
• 1:27:22
  everyone else's toes because, because you've already mentioned
• 1:27:24
  this, but his turn of phrase, it's very reminiscent of like a
• 1:27:33
  GCSE English language student. I, I, I can remember one of one
• 1:27:42
  of the, one of the essays that I was given for, for a GCSE
• 1:27:46
  English language was you had to, you had to describe a snowy day.
• 1:27:53
  And you just, you just really go for it, don't you kind of thing.
• 1:27:56
  And you put pull in all this flowery language and you use 10
• 1:28:01
  words when two would have been enough.
• 1:28:04
  And, and it's really earnest and you're trying really, really
• 1:28:07
  hard sort of thing. And, and, and that's what you're
• 1:28:09
  getting with with this book from Nick Briggs that, you know, he
• 1:28:15
  obviously has talents, but write a writer of a novel isn't,
• 1:28:21
  isn't, isn't one of those talents.
• 1:28:23
  And I think that really kind of shows through.
• 1:28:24
  And, and I, you know, I know, like Joe's kind of mentioned
• 1:28:27
  this on, on sort of several of the hamster book club episodes
• 1:28:31
  that there are a lot of people that have wrote Doctor Who books
• 1:28:35
  not because of their talent, but because of the people that they
• 1:28:39
  know. And if it wasn't a Doctor Who
• 1:28:42
  book, they wouldn't have been given that gig in the 1st place.
• 1:28:45
  And I think this is a classic example of where that's kind of
• 1:28:48
  happened in in the new series range.
• 1:28:53
  Yeah. You know, so there's there's so
• 1:28:56
  much in this that just again, just really it it it stops your
• 1:29:02
  flow of of reading it kind of thing.
• 1:29:04
  Whereas with like the David Whizkid exciting adventure with
• 1:29:08
  the Daleks, there was a flow with it and you just went with
• 1:29:12
  that flow. Whereas whereas with this, it's
• 1:29:14
  very stop start and and you, you can't build up any kind of
• 1:29:18
  momentum. And that's because of the way
• 1:29:19
  that it's written and and the fact that everything's so
• 1:29:23
  obviously signposted because the, the little toy that Alice
• 1:29:29
  has to play with. I mean, that's kind of probably
• 1:29:33
  mentioned from the beginning of the book all the way through.
• 1:29:37
  And you think that toy is, is going to have some sort of
• 1:29:42
  impact on this, this, this story.
• 1:29:44
  It's, it's just, it's just there, it's just sort of
• 1:29:47
  signposted and and, you know, it turns out that's where the, the
• 1:29:51
  parents that that committed suicide rather than giving this
• 1:29:56
  information to the darlings. It was 5.
• 1:29:59
  Times, wouldn't you? A clever writer would mention it
• 1:30:01
  a couple of times, subtly, like Agatha Christie would.
• 1:30:06
  Well, Stephen Moffatt, look at. The joy and.
• 1:30:09
  In plain sight, not run down your throat.
• 1:30:12
  You know, I think that's the thing, isn't it?
• 1:30:13
  So that those that are kind of paying attention would go, yeah,
• 1:30:17
  I've seen that. Whereas I don't think you had to
• 1:30:19
  pay attention to this because it was like, it's there.
• 1:30:24
  That 4 year old with the lobotomy might have struggled to
• 1:30:27
  notice, but apart from them, yeah maybe, maybe.
• 1:30:30
  That's how I felt with the Jelly blobs because I think I said I
• 1:30:32
  was halfway through and I said this is going to have this is
• 1:30:34
  going somewhere because he keeps coming back to them.
• 1:30:36
  He keeps mentioning Jelly. It's like this isn't just a
• 1:30:39
  throwaway thing. This is going somewhere.
• 1:30:42
  And I know because I think, Joe, you said the the resolution was
• 1:30:47
  it's so bad and I thought it's going to have something to do
• 1:30:49
  with Jelly blobs, isn't it? Because they they they mention
• 1:30:52
  them so many bloody times. I think I said it's got they're
• 1:30:55
  not going to do Jelly blobs at the ending.
• 1:30:57
  And I think it was just wait and see and they do.
• 1:31:02
  Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the thing
• 1:31:05
  that there's nothing original in this book neither, you know,
• 1:31:09
  it's just a recycle, a recycle of, of things that we've seen
• 1:31:14
  before. Yeah.
• 1:31:17
  So it's, it's really not, not very good at all, unfortunately.
• 1:31:21
  So yeah, I'll let someone else take over now.
• 1:31:27
  No. And then, Joe, let's see what
• 1:31:29
  you've got to say. Where to start with this?
• 1:31:34
  I mean, I'm going to read out a sentence.
• 1:31:35
  Yeah. Squat.
• 1:31:37
  Brutal. In their outward appearance,
• 1:31:39
  these ambassadors of charity and philanthropy always seem to
• 1:31:43
  tease at a sense of dichotomy in human minds.
• 1:31:49
  What the fuck does that mean? What does that mean it?
• 1:31:53
  Means he's got a thesaurus. This is the book angry, right?
• 1:31:57
  Because this book is specifically being aimed at
• 1:32:01
  children. Yeah.
• 1:32:02
  And I think children deserve the best, right?
• 1:32:06
  Don't talk down to kids and don't teach them illiteracy.
• 1:32:11
  Because that's the the the metaphors that he uses are
• 1:32:16
  ridiculous. Yeah.
• 1:32:17
  The characterisation is baseless.
• 1:32:20
  The narrative is as mundane as it could possibly be.
• 1:32:24
  Every single character. Yeah, he describes what they're
• 1:32:28
  thinking before they say it, and then before they do it, you get
• 1:32:32
  3 versions of everything everyone's doing.
• 1:32:35
  And it's just to slow down the plot on every level.
• 1:32:39
  It's the garish prose is it's some of the most hideous
• 1:32:43
  constructions of sentences I have ever read in my life.
• 1:32:47
  And I'm currently reading Time and the Rani by Pip and Jane
• 1:32:50
  Baker. All right.
• 1:32:52
  And I'm starting to think that maybe they're underwriting a
• 1:32:54
  little bit and they should take Briggs inspiration.
• 1:33:00
  Yeah. Just awful cliche, the whole
• 1:33:02
  book driven by the worst kinds of Doctor Who tradition.
• 1:33:06
  Functional, uninspired dialogue, tired characters.
• 1:33:11
  It's just hideous. This book.
• 1:33:14
  I I am a GOG that this was published, that even if a
• 1:33:20
  contract was signed, someone read this manuscript and said we
• 1:33:24
  are going to deliver this bullshit to children.
• 1:33:29
  This is comfortably the worst Doctor Who book I have ever read
• 1:33:32
  in my life. I cannot believe it exists.
• 1:33:36
  It is baffling to me. How many people would have
• 1:33:39
  signed this off? That ending, that ending where
• 1:33:42
  he waves the magic wand and does the everybody lives with those
• 1:33:46
  hideous children. It is one.
• 1:33:50
  It doesn't make any sense yet. And this whole bullshit about
• 1:33:53
  the Daleks trying to create billions of scaros out of 600
• 1:33:59
  planets. I was like, what's what?
• 1:34:01
  Are you talking? About none of that was set up.
• 1:34:04
  None of this has been established.
• 1:34:06
  You're just making up words to suggest that there's drama and
• 1:34:10
  then at the end you just go well, we've reached the, you
• 1:34:13
  know, the end of the page count Wizzy busy.
• 1:34:15
  Let's get Wizzy. Everyone's back alive.
• 1:34:18
  Go off in the TARDIS. The end.
• 1:34:20
  Oh man, it is unbelievably bad. The the end, the end reads to me
• 1:34:25
  as though he hadn't got an end. And then suddenly someone phoned
• 1:34:29
  him up and said you've only got a day and it's got to be in
• 1:34:32
  tomorrow because the end is just so Russian.
• 1:34:35
  Everything just comes out of nowhere.
• 1:34:37
  So we've had this Dalek litigator who suddenly turns out
• 1:34:40
  to be the time controller from Nick Briggs's Audio fucking
• 1:34:43
  Adventures. Then Joe, like you say, suddenly
• 1:34:45
  there is a formula that's going to turn 400 worlds into a
• 1:34:50
  billion scarrows. What How?
• 1:34:53
  How's that work? I referred before about selling.
• 1:34:56
  The pensioner becomes a ninja. The.
• 1:34:58
  Scale of that? What?
• 1:34:59
  How? What are we supposed to think
• 1:35:00
  about that? A billion scarrows?
• 1:35:02
  I know, right? OK, So what does that mean?
• 1:35:05
  Because we've got this Deus EC machina called the Cradle of the
• 1:35:08
  Gods. That's not explained.
• 1:35:09
  We don't know what it is. We don't know what it does.
• 1:35:11
  It's just a magic thing that's there to suddenly, or is it
• 1:35:14
  magic or it's just everything is just.
• 1:35:17
  I kept writing. What the fuck?
• 1:35:18
  Maybe he's overcompensating for the loss of scarrowing and
• 1:35:20
  remembrance. Maybe it hit him somewhere.
• 1:35:24
  He's got a book here. Yeah, he's got a book he can
• 1:35:26
  write, right? But he just can't get out of the
• 1:35:29
  classic Who mindset of setting it in a few rooms with brutal
• 1:35:34
  officials, courtrooms and prison cells.
• 1:35:36
  You know that's where this book is set.
• 1:35:39
  That's all just padding. That's a huge section of just
• 1:35:41
  padding. I know there's 50 pages in the
• 1:35:44
  middle, right where the doctor says the dialects are evil, the
• 1:35:47
  kids are taken away, and then the doctor gets the kids back
• 1:35:52
  and so 50 pages take place and the plot doesn't move on at all.
• 1:35:56
  I'm like this is only 250 pages long.
• 1:35:59
  Yeah, but in that in that 50 pages as well.
• 1:36:01
  Sorry, this book really annoyed me.
• 1:36:03
  In that 50 pages, he uses the Sonic screwdriver to explode St.
• 1:36:09
  lamps and he gets a tram to crash into a load of cars.
• 1:36:13
  And they said, oh, it's a good job no one was injured.
• 1:36:15
  I mean, what? He then uses it to overpower
• 1:36:17
  guards. He then destroys the wall of a
• 1:36:20
  building to escape using the Sonic.
• 1:36:23
  He then turns the Sonic on the toy spacecraft, which creates a
• 1:36:26
  vision in the sky which distracts Daleks who don't have
• 1:36:30
  sensors to realize it's a hologram.
• 1:36:32
  That doesn't happen once, it happens twice.
• 1:36:34
  I mean, I know the new series is accused of using the Sonic as a
• 1:36:37
  magic tool, but this is going above and beyond.
• 1:36:41
  I did like, though, how he seeded, you know, all the piss
• 1:36:44
  talk. Yeah, so all us needing a piss
• 1:36:48
  did actually lead to them discovering the Daleks are about
• 1:36:51
  to raid the resistance meeting, you know, brilliantly seeded
• 1:36:54
  that was. He's got a weak bladder.
• 1:36:57
  Oh, and he had a he had a good idea, astonishing as that may be
• 1:37:02
  to think about. He did have one great idea,
• 1:37:04
  right? About why is it okay for the
• 1:37:07
  doctor to save the kids parents, but not one of the kids when
• 1:37:10
  they're in danger? Yeah, but then he doesn't go
• 1:37:12
  through with that idea at all because he doesn't force the
• 1:37:16
  doctor to answer that question. He just poses it and then gives
• 1:37:20
  it a limp sort of get out clause.
• 1:37:22
  So that's not drama. Wouldn't it be dangerous if I
• 1:37:27
  was in this situation? Oh, but I'm not so never.
• 1:37:30
  Mind and he runs away and leaves one of the child heroes for use
• 1:37:34
  of better world in the clutch of the Dalek and she lives a
• 1:37:37
  miserable life. OK gets rewritten at the end.
• 1:37:40
  She leaves a child to be captured and live a life in a
• 1:37:43
  cell dreaming of Jelly Bob blobs for bloody 80 years.
• 1:37:47
  She doesn't give a shit. I mean, it's like what?
• 1:37:49
  She deserved it. She was.
• 1:37:52
  She was. And.
• 1:37:54
  There's that whole bit where it's like, I can't change the
• 1:37:56
  laws of time. But then the children looked at
• 1:37:57
  him and they started crying. And the bear in my teeth.
• 1:38:01
  You know, when Donna does it, you can believe it because she
• 1:38:04
  rages at him and, you know, he upholds the laws of.
• 1:38:06
  But these three children start weeping at him and he just got
• 1:38:10
  oh, OK, I'll just change the world.
• 1:38:12
  I'll just go and change history. You know it's.
• 1:38:14
  Remember the end of Enemy of the World, David?
• 1:38:16
  I wanted the Doctor to just accidentally lean on the console
• 1:38:18
  when they all got sucked out. Whoopsie, let's go.
• 1:38:25
  Well, I am also joining the tirade on this one.
• 1:38:28
  Yes, because I didn't like this, as people may have learned when
• 1:38:33
  I did my bottom 10 books, this one featured in there.
• 1:38:37
  And I did read it twice this year just to make sure.
• 1:38:40
  I went already back in August for the first time, which is
• 1:38:43
  where it got into my bottom. And I thought, you know, for
• 1:38:45
  impartiality and to make sure that I've not misread it, I will
• 1:38:48
  read it again. And I found it even more wanting
• 1:38:51
  the second time round. There is, there is a number of
• 1:38:54
  things Rod's already mentioned the reporter at the beginning,
• 1:38:59
  Lillian Bell, who doesn't, who's in the prologue, very meaty
• 1:39:03
  investigation of a train crash. And then suddenly we don't see
• 1:39:06
  her again till page 173. And even then you think she's
• 1:39:11
  going to be useful as a news reporter because she's going to
• 1:39:14
  get a message out to the world, but even turns around at the end
• 1:39:17
  of it all and says, well, nobody watches the news anyway.
• 1:39:20
  But she does. She does get reintroduced with a
• 1:39:22
  brilliant line from the Doctor Who says, well, Ding Dong, hello
• 1:39:26
  Miss Bell. Yeah, yeah, no, it's there's
• 1:39:30
  just something. And I have a problem with the
• 1:39:33
  fact that this is a Dalek book anyway, and there are so little
• 1:39:36
  Daleks in it. Again.
• 1:39:37
  Oh, three of them. But I have a big big problem
• 1:39:42
  with the Dalek time controller. Now, I am not au fait with Dalek
• 1:39:45
  Empire. I have a certain me amount of
• 1:39:48
  means that I will invest into extended merchandise.
• 1:39:51
  So when the Dalek time controller miraculously turns up
• 1:39:54
  at the end and the Doctor goes, oh, it's you, the Dalek time
• 1:39:57
  controller and the Dalek time controller goes you know me.
• 1:39:59
  And he goes, yes, but that'll be for you to find out, No.
• 1:40:03
  No, no, no, you. You need to tell me more about
• 1:40:06
  this character that you've wanted me to be interested
• 1:40:09
  enough to. Buy his audios, Gareth.
• 1:40:11
  There should have been a little asterisk there, shouldn't?
• 1:40:13
  They at the bottom say. Go to bigfinish.com Yeah and buy
• 1:40:18
  75,000 time controllers. You've got the Cradle of the
• 1:40:22
  Gods Mcguffin, which feels like it's just been tucked in for,
• 1:40:26
  for just the sake of having something in and to give us
• 1:40:28
  something different. And we've covered the children
• 1:40:31
  to death so and life again. So I'm not going to cover that
• 1:40:34
  again. But I I come back to and you
• 1:40:37
  know, I think it was David, you said it earlier.
• 1:40:39
  There is a much better interesting story here, which is
• 1:40:43
  the benevolence of the Daleks to these generations and how have
• 1:40:47
  they seeded themselves into people and made things better
• 1:40:51
  for them? How did they do that?
• 1:40:55
  You all know I'm not a big fan of the old timey whammy stuff,
• 1:40:58
  but if it was the Doctor travelling back along that to
• 1:41:00
  find out how that had done and then look to a way to unravel
• 1:41:03
  all of that, that's a much more interesting.
• 1:41:05
  Deal with potential, isn't it? Yeah, it was the title of the
• 1:41:09
  Daleks on an enormous scale. The title itself suggests it is
• 1:41:13
  the generation of people that they have influenced and created
• 1:41:16
  to this point. I actually quite enjoyed a bit
• 1:41:19
  in the courtroom. I quite like that bit in the
• 1:41:22
  courtroom itself as as a piece in itself, as a, as a snippet of
• 1:41:24
  that life. I thought we were going to get
• 1:41:25
  more of that as we went on, But no, we then went on this weird
• 1:41:28
  and wacky adventure that took us to lots of different places with
• 1:41:31
  kids in tow. And we never stayed long enough
• 1:41:34
  with the civilization to analyze it.
• 1:41:36
  We get these little snippets of things, you know, I think they
• 1:41:38
  said they thought that, that all the news is buried amongst
• 1:41:40
  cookery programs and infomercials, you know, but it,
• 1:41:43
  it, it's, it's just disappointing on every level.
• 1:41:48
  This one, I, I don't feel as angry about it possibly as I do
• 1:41:53
  with Saywood's book because my bar is a little bit lower
• 1:41:57
  because I know it's an 11th Doctor book.
• 1:42:00
  So I've already brought myself back down.
• 1:42:02
  But also, this is a 50th anniversary book, Let's not
• 1:42:05
  forget. So that has to bring the bar
• 1:42:07
  back up again. And, you know, you look at the
• 1:42:11
  other books that were published at this time.
• 1:42:13
  Was it plague the side of the men Shroud of sorrow?
• 1:42:17
  And they never use this cover design again either for these
• 1:42:20
  books. It feels almost like they put
• 1:42:21
  these ones out and then forgot about them.
• 1:42:24
  There was. The branding was just all over
• 1:42:26
  the place at the time, wasn't it?
• 1:42:27
  And it did like the books were intermittent as well.
• 1:42:30
  There was just no consistency. With, and as you've all heard me
• 1:42:33
  rant of before, that is not the Doctor that's in this book.
• 1:42:36
  They describe his tween jacket. They describe the glass balls in
• 1:42:39
  the TARDIS console. It is not this one.
• 1:42:42
  I think Rod's got it bang on. I think this story is set around
• 1:42:45
  about the time of the Doctor, the widow on the wardrobe, which
• 1:42:48
  makes this more egregious than that.
• 1:42:50
  It's about the Doctor getting a bunch of kids and going around
• 1:42:53
  places with them. Because it's copying that
• 1:42:55
  format. You stick the Pandorica Big Bang
• 1:42:57
  on the end. What's this book in a nutshell?
• 1:43:01
  And ultimately the whole plot is just victory in the dialects
• 1:43:03
  because it's all a ploy by the dialects to get the doctor to
• 1:43:06
  activate a Deus macula. So actually it's just victory of
• 1:43:10
  the dialects all over again as well.
• 1:43:12
  What would the things you could cherry pick from the Stephen
• 1:43:14
  Moffett era? Yeah, and you know, I like a
• 1:43:17
  good proportion of the Stephen Moffett era, don't get me wrong.
• 1:43:20
  Yeah, there's good stuff there. You wouldn't choose the fucking
• 1:43:24
  kids, would you? That's not the thing you'd
• 1:43:26
  choose to hang your book on. No.
• 1:43:31
  Oh, one of them stinks of piss. I mean, it's just terrible.
• 1:43:36
  There's. There is your tagline review
• 1:43:37
  from Joe Ford for the book. The book stinks of piss and what
• 1:43:42
  so has. Has anyone got anything more
• 1:43:44
  they want to add on the Dalek generation?
• 1:43:46
  Well, I'm going to add though. Oh, let's I.
• 1:43:48
  Thought you might. What type of character?
• 1:43:50
  I'd really rather be this book, you might have guessed.
• 1:43:53
  What character should we introduce?
• 1:43:54
  What profession should we give them?
• 1:43:56
  Oh, hang on, we've got Benny, we've got River.
• 1:43:59
  Let's have an archaeologist. So we bring yet another
• 1:44:02
  archaeology. Why?
• 1:44:04
  We could have had Benny or River.
• 1:44:05
  That could have added a bit. You know, 50th year, you could
• 1:44:09
  have done something with that. But now we introduce some new
• 1:44:11
  blank character. If they bring River in, do you
• 1:44:15
  want me to burn this book? Because I could be pushed to
• 1:44:18
  that point if you put river into.
• 1:44:20
  This. I like river, it's just hideous.
• 1:44:23
  Can I read out one sentence? But before he could set a new
• 1:44:27
  course, something on one of the festooned hexagons opposite
• 1:44:31
  surfaces bleeped. What festooned the festooned
• 1:44:36
  hexagons opposite surfaces bleeped?
• 1:44:39
  I have no idea. And Matt Smith's going around
• 1:44:43
  calling people old chap, which is very pertly.
• 1:44:46
  It's not very Smith. But that but I think the the
• 1:44:49
  characterisation of the 11th Doctor in this is really poor as
• 1:44:53
  well. It's it's very, very bland.
• 1:44:56
  And and he's like, oh, what does the 11th Doctor do?
• 1:44:59
  Oh, he says Geronimo. So he drops a couple of those in
• 1:45:01
  throughout the book. There you've got Matt Smith.
• 1:45:05
  Yes, it's so I think like the the characterisation that you
• 1:45:10
  rarely where you read in it. Go go in.
• 1:45:12
  Oh, yeah, I can see Matt Smith of saying this.
• 1:45:14
  I can. I can see what he's doing with
• 1:45:16
  his hands, how he's, you know, you know, spinning around the
• 1:45:19
  TARDIS console and that sort of thing.
• 1:45:20
  But rarely did you did you think that from what you were actually
• 1:45:23
  reading in this, it reminds. Me of his characterization in in
• 1:45:28
  series 7, where he was basically just a parody of who he was in
• 1:45:32
  series 5, you know, and it was all those sort of lazy ticks.
• 1:45:36
  It's like he had a list, you know, the tawdry quirks, and he
• 1:45:39
  put them all in and Can you believe?
• 1:45:42
  Can you believe, Right. He's gone down this route of
• 1:45:45
  these pissy kids being in this book and.
• 1:45:49
  And he has a scene where they go into the TARDIS.
• 1:45:52
  Yeah. And he tells that scene from the
• 1:45:55
  Doctor's point of view. He has a child going into the
• 1:45:59
  TARDIS, and he tells it from the Doctor's point of view.
• 1:46:02
  I mean, he cannot write this, man.
• 1:46:04
  You are right and he has huge strengths.
• 1:46:07
  Nicholas Briggs, I would never write him off.
• 1:46:09
  I think he is a fine producer. I think he's a fine director.
• 1:46:13
  His sound design and music in big finished audios is second to
• 1:46:17
  none. What he cannot do is write words
• 1:46:21
  and he needs to stop immediately.
• 1:46:24
  That's very nice that actually that that POV of the children
• 1:46:27
  idea, because that nicer than bookends US against an exciting
• 1:46:30
  adventure with the Daleks and Ian going to the TARDIS for the
• 1:46:33
  first time. I like that.
• 1:46:35
  I like how that's kind of fallen into place.
• 1:46:38
  Well, just imagine a a good writer, yeah, a really strong
• 1:46:42
  writer, writing the scene of a child walking into the TARDIS.
• 1:46:46
  It could be beautiful. And instead of the Doctor going,
• 1:46:49
  oh God, these three kids in the TARDIS and they stink a piss.
• 1:46:53
  Oh, dear. You know, it's just not good.
• 1:46:56
  Sorry. I'll stop going.
• 1:46:58
  So if everyone's happy, we will revisit the relometer.
• 1:47:03
  And Joe, what's your opinion for the rails for this one?
• 1:47:06
  I will never give another book no rails at all, but
• 1:47:10
  unfortunately, yeah, in every way I could possibly dissect a
• 1:47:18
  book, this is dire. That's a big fat 0 from Joe Rod.
• 1:47:23
  How about you? It's.
• 1:47:25
  Got to be a 0. Thank you.
• 1:47:27
  And how about you, David? There's a scene towards at the
• 1:47:32
  end of Daleks invasion of Earth in the film where you've got the
• 1:47:36
  real counter and the real counter explodes.
• 1:47:41
  That's kind of how I feel about this book.
• 1:47:43
  It's not even no reals, it's we're blowing up the real
• 1:47:45
  counter because it just does not deserve a score.
• 1:47:48
  It is, I may say. It is not just one of the worst
• 1:47:50
  Doctor Who books, it is just one of the worst books I have ever
• 1:47:54
  read. And whose fucking idea was this?
• 1:47:57
  No, I just. Thought.
• 1:47:59
  I've actually just put an explosion under your name then
• 1:48:02
  for for how that's represented on my on my bit of paper.
• 1:48:04
  We could say it's mercifully sure, at least.
• 1:48:09
  Dan, how about yourself? Yeah, I oddly enough, it didn't
• 1:48:16
  make me feel as angry as Revelation of the Daleks, but
• 1:48:21
  I'm going to give this a lower score because because I think
• 1:48:25
  there were bits that I kind of enjoyed in Revelation of the
• 1:48:29
  Daleks pure from the comedy value, unintentional comedy
• 1:48:32
  value, whereas there wasn't any of that in this at all.
• 1:48:35
  So yeah, I'm going to give this a zero.
• 1:48:38
  And I think it also, it's, it's worth noting that this also was
• 1:48:44
  in John Arnold's bottom 10 and it came, it was his number one
• 1:48:51
  bottom 10. It was also in Michael Mills
• 1:48:54
  bottom 10 as well. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:48:56
  So it's, it's it's one that kind of regularly creeps up on
• 1:48:59
  people's lists. Hopefully I know things.
• 1:49:01
  Don't go in again Dad, it would be in my bottom 10.
• 1:49:04
  Yeah, no, that was, that was what I I think there are two
• 1:49:07
  books tonight that that would have would, would if I had to do
• 1:49:10
  that list again, they would sneak in.
• 1:49:12
  No, no problem. Definitely, definitely.
• 1:49:15
  I mean, I'm charging in on mine. I don't know about sneaking out.
• 1:49:18
  Yeah. I was, I was just being polite.
• 1:49:20
  But yeah, the. People on this call.
• 1:49:22
  I love everybody on this call. I don't know why I keep making
• 1:49:24
  you read these terrible books. I'm so sorry.
• 1:49:29
  Well, the I think like the next three we've got coming up are
• 1:49:31
  crackers though, aren't they? Well.
• 1:49:32
  They're still to be determined though, isn't it?
• 1:49:37
  Got Chris Quedge in it, remember?
• 1:49:39
  My real score will also be 0 because I just don't like this
• 1:49:44
  book. I don't, although I have
• 1:49:48
  questions about some of the plot in and stuff that's in
• 1:49:52
  Revelation. I can get through Revelation.
• 1:49:55
  This one, I had to read it twice in a very short period of time
• 1:49:58
  just to make sure that I convinced myself it was as bad
• 1:50:00
  as I thought it was the first time.
• 1:50:02
  And so I can't justify that. If there was a way to go beyond
• 1:50:05
  the exploded rail count counter, I'd do it.
• 1:50:09
  But here we are. So I think on the basis of that,
• 1:50:13
  for anyone who's listening, get yourself into an exciting
• 1:50:16
  adventure with the Daleks because it's the much better way
• 1:50:19
  to go. You don't need a revelation, and
• 1:50:22
  you certainly don't want to do a generation.
• 1:50:24
  The earliest published, but bizarrely the least problematic
• 1:50:28
  of the three. Thank you very much, gentlemen,
• 1:50:32
  for your opinions, but I couldn't just let you go without
• 1:50:35
  one final question for the evening.
• 1:50:39
  And this is your top three, top or bottom 3 books with returning
• 1:50:45
  foes in them. So David, let's start with you.
• 1:50:50
  What have you got for us? With top one is Illegal Alien
• 1:50:55
  which is 7th Doctor Sideman's story which is one of the first
• 1:50:58
  BBC books I read, and it's World War 2.
• 1:51:01
  It's atmospheric, Cybermen properly quite dangerous,
• 1:51:06
  there's the converting babies at one point.
• 1:51:08
  It's really quite bleak. I just remember really enjoying
• 1:51:12
  that one. After that, you've got a a whole
• 1:51:16
  gaggle of returning characters in Face of the Enemy, which is
• 1:51:20
  the Master. You've also got Ian and Barbara
• 1:51:22
  coming back as well. It's a UNIT story.
• 1:51:24
  It's a Doctor Light book. It's probably one of the few
• 1:51:27
  Doctor Light books. And it also returns to the world
• 1:51:30
  of Inferno. And just describing that, you'd
• 1:51:33
  think this book shouldn't work. It couldn't work.
• 1:51:35
  It's it's just a hodgepodge of stuff.
• 1:51:38
  But I just remember it being really dictating read so list.
• 1:51:45
  If it isn't, it should be. Oh, we should do that one, yeah.
• 1:51:48
  That was great fun. And.
• 1:51:51
  It's going on. I think we kind of also agreed
• 1:51:54
  that we might cut back on double banking and triple banking books
• 1:51:57
  as well, so. I mean, I'm not sure anyone
• 1:52:02
  could have put up with us ranting more about these books
• 1:52:05
  tonight. I think we actually gauged it
• 1:52:06
  quite well. And I quite enjoyed Millennial
• 1:52:12
  Rights, which brought back a version of the Valley art, and I
• 1:52:16
  think that one is on our list as well.
• 1:52:17
  It's on our. List and so that I remember I
• 1:52:20
  struggled with some of the craking books, but I remember
• 1:52:23
  really enjoying that because I like how some of the missing
• 1:52:26
  adventures toyed and tried to explore some of the stuff with
• 1:52:30
  the valley art. I think there's a little bit of
• 1:52:31
  that in one of the books we've got coming up as well.
• 1:52:33
  So that's my 3. Excellent, Rod, How about
• 1:52:37
  yourself? I thought I would do something a
• 1:52:40
  bit different because I thought if anyone goes for bottoms, it's
• 1:52:42
  pretty obvious that John Peel is going to feature quite
• 1:52:45
  prominently. I don't want to pre empt any of
• 1:52:47
  my my erstwhile colleagues on this call.
• 1:52:49
  So I went for three graphic novels and I went for all Dalek
• 1:52:53
  ones. So the first one I went for is
• 1:52:57
  The Daleks, which is the 1965 to 1967 TV century. 21 strips.
• 1:53:04
  There were 104 strips, 16 stories.
• 1:53:07
  Panini gathered them all together and recolourized them
• 1:53:10
  and remastered them a few years ago into one volume.
• 1:53:12
  If you haven't read it, it's absolutely glorious.
• 1:53:15
  It is 1960s writ large. It tells a completely different
• 1:53:19
  style of the origins, the Daleks, but it's just pure pulpy
• 1:53:24
  sci-fi with dialogue. Emperors, intergalactic wars,
• 1:53:27
  robot spies, sea monsters. It is just glorious.
• 1:53:32
  So I would absolutely urge anyone that hasn't seen that.
• 1:53:34
  I know we got reprinted bits and annuals and bits and other
• 1:53:37
  comics which were I saw little bits of it when I was young, but
• 1:53:41
  it's absolutely glorious. I would definitely hunt that one
• 1:53:43
  down. The second one I would recommend
• 1:53:46
  is when I did my top and bottom 10 I did the original Star Beast
• 1:53:51
  and so I've got to continue that trend.
• 1:53:53
  So I'll do the 4th in the John Wagner and Pat Mills strips, the
• 1:53:56
  Doctor Who weekly, and do Dogs of Doom which was their 4th and
• 1:54:01
  last Dalek of story for for the weekly.
• 1:54:05
  It's probably the least remembered.
• 1:54:06
  I think the other three get more visibility.
• 1:54:09
  Dogs of Doom probably gets the least and plot wise it probably
• 1:54:12
  is the lesser of the of the four I've got to be honest.
• 1:54:15
  But still in 1980 it was armies of Daleks.
• 1:54:19
  It was this race called Warlocks who were kind of like a cross
• 1:54:22
  between O Bronze and werewolves. Again, big intergalactic.
• 1:54:27
  This script was actually written and submitted by Wagner and
• 1:54:30
  Mills to go to the production office in 78 and got thrown out,
• 1:54:33
  obviously because of the cost of it.
• 1:54:35
  It's a great RIP roaring adventure.
• 1:54:37
  It's set in the in the far future, but it's still very
• 1:54:40
  19791980 because you've got CB radio trucker who's driving a
• 1:54:45
  spaceship. But it's just lovely and
• 1:54:47
  glorious. Real pulpy sci-fi stuff.
• 1:54:50
  But you've got the Doctor and you've finally got canine
• 1:54:53
  attacking and beating the Daleks.
• 1:54:54
  So, you know, can't say better than that.
• 1:54:56
  Lovely. And then my last one is going to
• 1:54:59
  be Emperor of the Daleks, which was published in 1993.
• 1:55:04
  Paul Cornell with help from John Freeman, illustrated by Lee
• 1:55:08
  Sullivan. This is just so it, I mean, it
• 1:55:12
  does everything that was happening in the Doctor Who
• 1:55:14
  world in 1993. It's continuity laden because it
• 1:55:18
  fills in the gap between revelation and remembrance.
• 1:55:21
  It's got the 6th Doctor in there.
• 1:55:22
  It's got the 7th Doctor in there.
• 1:55:24
  But it ties up all the old comic strip mythology.
• 1:55:27
  So you've got the Star Tigers in there, got Absalom Dark and the
• 1:55:30
  Ice War and the Draconian. But it's also written in the
• 1:55:34
  vein of A Virgin New Adventure. So the 7th Doctor is travelling
• 1:55:37
  with Benny and they're playing a game on a huge grand scale.
• 1:55:41
  Yes, it is very new adventures. You've got lots of like 1990s
• 1:55:45
  references and that there's Monty Python references, Mary
• 1:55:49
  Whitehouse experience lines. That made me laugh my head off
• 1:55:52
  when I read it again this morning.
• 1:55:55
  It's set on Spirit on as well. Of course it is.
• 1:55:57
  Why not? But it's just glorious.
• 1:56:00
  It's filled with bits that I shouldn't lie because I've
• 1:56:02
  thrown other books out for being continuity laden.
• 1:56:04
  But you got the 6th and 7th Doctor raising a glass together
• 1:56:07
  at the end of the 7th Doctor thanks the 6th Doctor for
• 1:56:10
  leaving a mattress in Perivale when he landed in Survival.
• 1:56:16
  But on top of that, there's a glorious Dalek part.
• 1:56:19
  And as I say, it absolutely fills the gap between Revelation
• 1:56:23
  and Remembrance. And it's just, I think it's the
• 1:56:26
  only thing that they'll put all these worlds together together
• 1:56:29
  and came up with one cohesive whole.
• 1:56:31
  And it's glorious. So Emperor of the Daleks would
• 1:56:33
  be my last choice. It's a very, very good choice
• 1:56:36
  that one as well, Joe, how about yourself?
• 1:56:41
  I My first choice is the Crotons in Alien Bodies, which I think
• 1:56:47
  is one of the most sublime reimaginings of a Doctor Who
• 1:56:50
  monster you will ever read about.
• 1:56:52
  They go from being embarrassing egg boxes to the most chilling
• 1:56:56
  force in the Galaxy. There's a sequence where you
• 1:56:59
  sort of learn the back story of the Crotons and the Time laws
• 1:57:02
  going to take them down, and by the end of it, the time Laws
• 1:57:05
  being skewered to death by the Croton crystal going right
• 1:57:09
  through him. Yeah.
• 1:57:11
  And he tricks you into thinking it's the Daleks coming to the
• 1:57:14
  Doctor's auction. And then the door opens and the
• 1:57:17
  crow on comes wobbling in. It's just sublime.
• 1:57:22
  Face of the Enemy is my second choice, David.
• 1:57:25
  And that was for the master. I just think it is such an
• 1:57:27
  authentic take on Roger Delgado's master and a little
• 1:57:31
  glimpse into what that era could have been like if we chipped off
• 1:57:34
  John Pertwee and just said Roger Delgado with UNIT the whole
• 1:57:37
  time. It's absolutely glorious and my
• 1:57:40
  last choice is the Infinity Doctors and how it treats the
• 1:57:44
  Sontarans and the Rutans in that where for once a Doctor Who book
• 1:57:49
  genuinely feels like a huge science fiction epic.
• 1:57:53
  And there's a chapter that explains how 2 enormous fleets
• 1:57:58
  of Sontaran and Rutan ships come to be either side of each other
• 1:58:02
  on Gallifrey. It's a peace treaty, but it's
• 1:58:05
  also fingers on buttons waiting to push and start a war.
• 1:58:09
  It's a glorious depiction of the two of them together.
• 1:58:12
  I'm still convinced we've never had Sontars and Reuters on the
• 1:58:15
  TV because they thought fuck we can never do it as well as
• 1:58:18
  Lance. Oh well, that's my few choices.
• 1:58:22
  Always feels to me the Infinity Doctor like a big budget epic.
• 1:58:25
  They threw a load of cash in it even though visually it doesn't
• 1:58:28
  exist. I still don't know which bloody
• 1:58:32
  doctor it is either. Indeed, Dan, what's yours?
• 1:58:38
  Right, so, so I've got I've got my top list here Now I was
• 1:58:44
  looking through my my top ten list and and I've got a lot of
• 1:58:47
  returning foes in that. So with this list, I decided
• 1:58:51
  that I wasn't going to recycle those.
• 1:58:53
  So I, this is my alternative top top three.
• 1:58:56
  So we've got a snap, David and Joe.
• 1:59:01
  I've got the face of the enemy as well.
• 1:59:04
  And and I think it I think it's just, it's just brilliant having
• 1:59:08
  that, you know, the doctors off on one of his missions for the
• 1:59:11
  Time Lords. And what does the Brigadier do?
• 1:59:15
  Well, he wheels in the master and and if you think about it, I
• 1:59:18
  think it you could only do this with the Delgado master.
• 1:59:22
  I don't think it would work with any of the other ones, classic
• 1:59:26
  or or or or new series. And yeah, it's just fantastic.
• 1:59:30
  I just love it. The second one is a book that's
• 1:59:37
  hated by most people, but I absolutely love it.
• 1:59:39
  And that is God Engine by Craig Hinson.
• 1:59:44
  I'm a sucker for the ice warriors.
• 1:59:46
  I absolutely love the ice warriors and I don't know why,
• 1:59:48
  because I don't think they've ever been in a decent story
• 1:59:53
  other than perhaps the seeds of death.
• 1:59:56
  Maybe. No, I, I, I don't, I don't
• 2:00:01
  really like the peloton stories. So no.
• 2:00:04
  But anyhow, so, So what I love about this, it kind of really
• 2:00:08
  expands upon their their culture.
• 2:00:10
  You get to to see. Them on their, their, you know,
• 2:00:14
  in their own environment, their, you know, in the catacombs and
• 2:00:17
  Mars, you see all these different cast, the warrior
• 2:00:21
  cast, the, the religious cast. You go through their cities and,
• 2:00:25
  and I, I just think it's really, really good expansion of that
• 2:00:30
  culture of the law of the Ice Warriors.
• 2:00:31
  And I, I just love it to bits. And then #1 I think this was
• 2:00:39
  really very close to going on my top ten list when I, when I
• 2:00:42
  originally made it. And that was this is the The
• 2:00:46
  Killing Ground by by Steve Lyons.
• 2:00:49
  So, you know, what is it that makes the Cyberman scary?
• 2:00:57
  And it's the fact that they want to turn us into them.
• 2:01:01
  They want to, they want to convert us that we like them,
• 2:01:04
  you know, with these cold, heartless computer brain,
• 2:01:08
  emotionless cyborgs. And you actually get part way
• 2:01:13
  through the book, you actually get like a description of the,
• 2:01:15
  the conversion process as well. You know, seeing it from the
• 2:01:19
  point of view of the person that's being being converted.
• 2:01:22
  And, and, you know, and the fact that basically the Cybermen here
• 2:01:27
  have turned humans into their cattle, that they're, they're
• 2:01:31
  farming humans and basically, you know, harvesting off the
• 2:01:36
  strongest and the the the cleverest to become, to become
• 2:01:41
  sort of, you know, Cybermen. And also it's really interesting
• 2:01:47
  that Steve Lyons chose the revenge of the Cybermen,
• 2:01:51
  Cybermen in this because they're not, they're not exact.
• 2:01:54
  They're probably near the bottom of the list of the ones that you
• 2:01:56
  would use. So it's interesting that he went
• 2:01:58
  down that path. But yeah, I really love Getting
• 2:02:00
  Ground by Steve Lyons. Another excellent choice,
• 2:02:04
  featured in my top ten as well. It's a very, very good read.
• 2:02:07
  Very quick read as well when you get into it.
• 2:02:09
  Yeah, what engine is on our list, isn't it?
• 2:02:11
  What engine is Yeah. Oh.
• 2:02:13
  Good. Well, that'll be fun.
• 2:02:16
  We're not planning an Ice Warrior trilogy, are we?
• 2:02:19
  Oh no. He is right, you know, you do
• 2:02:22
  learn all those things about the Ice Warriors in laborious
• 2:02:26
  detail. Don't you worry, I'm I'm, I'm
• 2:02:30
  padding up and coming into that for it so.
• 2:02:32
  Don't you worry. Will there be Greece involved?
• 2:02:39
  So. Top or bottom for you, Gareth,
• 2:02:41
  Talking of Greece being involved?
• 2:02:42
  It is. It is top three for me, but very
• 2:02:45
  similar to Dan because my top 10 featured returning foes.
• 2:02:49
  No future, for example, a personal favorite of a returning
• 2:02:52
  foe. Oh, I saw Joe shake his head
• 2:02:55
  there. Or.
• 2:02:56
  That's on the list. That's on the list as well,
• 2:02:58
  yeah. I was just listening to Joe
• 2:03:00
  rant. About that to me.
• 2:03:01
  On the interference one, but yeah, so I'm gone for like the
• 2:03:06
  next the runners up, if you like about list and in it number one
• 2:03:11
  is David's already touched on it, Millennial writes with the
• 2:03:15
  Valley Yards reappearance. You've got the Valley Yard,
• 2:03:18
  you've got me. Once he's involved up that,
• 2:03:21
  that's going to feature in there for me.
• 2:03:24
  After that, I've got Time Worm, Exodus with the War Chief
• 2:03:28
  reappearing because I never saw that coming.
• 2:03:33
  And I love to be blindsided by someone coming back that I've
• 2:03:35
  never realized either through the cover or through anything
• 2:03:38
  I've read. The fact he suddenly dropped out
• 2:03:40
  of nowhere and they go what? What 8, what, 8?
• 2:03:43
  And you know, he's not really a character we ever really look at
• 2:03:47
  in terms of the Doctor Who fictional world.
• 2:03:50
  He's just there and forgotten about.
• 2:03:53
  And my next one then, is in a similar vein.
• 2:03:56
  It's Original Sin with Tobias Vaughan coming back again, One
• 2:04:02
  that completely took me. I like it when I'm reading
• 2:04:06
  something. I don't see something coming if
• 2:04:08
  you've got me on that. Not like a bloody kid holding a
• 2:04:11
  toy spaceship that's going to solve all your problems.
• 2:04:14
  But if you're hiding something like that and in a clever way,
• 2:04:18
  the consciousness, the satellites.
• 2:04:20
  Sorry if I just bought that for anyone out there who hasn't read
• 2:04:22
  this in over 20 years. But it's just it's just doing
• 2:04:26
  such a good, good way for a character who, for all his
• 2:04:30
  development that you see in the invasion, this feels like the
• 2:04:34
  next step for him to get into and that he's had a plan in, in
• 2:04:37
  up there all the time. Yeah.
• 2:04:40
  So that's my three at the top. Original sin isn't on our list,
• 2:04:43
  is it because I've already done it?
• 2:04:45
  We did it, yeah. Yeah.
• 2:04:46
  Oh, we've done it. We, David.
• 2:04:48
  Yeah. We did it was it was on the 1st
• 2:04:49
  ones. Shame it's one of those rare
• 2:04:51
  good new adventures. Oh well, I'm sorry, I'll say it
• 2:04:55
  just to bite you. There were plenty more.
• 2:04:59
  Gentlemen, thank you very much this evening for your choices.
• 2:05:04
  They've all been excellent. Thank you very much for joining
• 2:05:07
  me with the denizens of Scaro, even if he's been an Endurance
• 2:05:12
  of the Daleks in some cases. They weren't.
• 2:05:15
  We didn't spend too much time with them.
• 2:05:17
  All three of these books. We, we were forthright in what
• 2:05:21
  we needed to be so all the good listeners can listen to all the
• 2:05:24
  Dalek goodness that is out there, or certainly avoid the
• 2:05:27
  ones that you might not want to consume your time with and look
• 2:05:30
  at something else if you want to.
• 2:05:33
  But thank you all very much this evening for your opinions.
• 2:05:36
  They've all been absolutely fascinating.
• 2:05:39
  And as ever, I am looking forward immensely to the rest of
• 2:05:44
  the journeys we're going to go through in terms of looking at
• 2:05:47
  our fiction. So I'd like to round this off by
• 2:05:51
  saying again, thank you all very much.
• 2:05:53
  And that's the end of this chapter.
• 2:06:23
  And just a little coder there for my very good friend Dylan
• 2:06:26
  Race. Fuck you.
• 2:06:31
  Now look, should you wish to hear an alternative view on the
• 2:06:35
  Dalek Generation by two gentlemen I'm not sure have ever
• 2:06:39
  read another book in their lives, or books that aren't
• 2:06:42
  Doctor Who books or books that are good.
• 2:06:46
  Anyway, should you wish to find a positive reading on the Dalek
• 2:06:49
  Generation from 2 Absolute Mad Men, one of whom came onto the
• 2:06:54
  Hamster Book Club and put The Dalek Generation in his bottom
• 2:06:58
  10 books and was far too easily swayed by the charms of Mr.
• 2:07:03
  Dylan Reece, head over to Too Hot for TV where you wait and
• 2:07:08
  read out some five star reviews on Goodreads and Amazon,
• 2:07:13
  probably all written by Nick Briggs, his best mates you know,
• 2:07:17
  and family members. Because I cannot imagine that
• 2:07:20
  any person sane would have given that book five stars, casual
• 2:07:25
  Doctor Who fan or not. Anyway, the alternative is
• 2:07:29
  there. Please head over there.
• 2:07:30
  I mean, it's a fabulous podcast anyway.
• 2:07:32
  But that episode is. Yeah.
• 2:07:36
  Anyway, enjoy.