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Hamster Book Club - Sick Building · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:02
  Martha take things off her fingers.
• 0:05
  They wouldn't let many of the lifts.
• 0:07
  He set light to the grounds of the mansion.
• 0:09
  Because the Shields are failing. Some of the technology inside
• 0:11
  the house is breaking down too. Oh, and as you know, the
• 0:15
  monsters are getting in from outside anyway.
• 0:17
  Sounds like you've been having a pretty exciting time of it.
• 0:19
  The Doctor grinned. Meanwhile, I met some new
• 0:22
  friends. I met the domivoy.
• 0:25
  The what? Martha asked.
• 0:27
  Tierman's head whipped around. He was in the corner, letting
• 0:31
  Walter pour him a stiff drink. You met what?
• 0:35
  He thundered, and stalked across the plush rug to confront the
• 0:39
  Doctor. Yes, I thought that would make
• 0:41
  you listen, said the Doctor coolly.
• 0:44
  My new friends took me even deeper into the house, and I met
• 0:47
  the Dome of Oi, face to face the Central Intelligence that
• 0:50
  controls this entire dream house.
• 0:52
  Must say, Tearman, Though she's an impressive piece of work.
• 0:56
  Tearman's voice was dangerously low.
• 0:59
  No one sees her. No one goes down there.
• 1:02
  Only me. There was something besides
• 1:06
  anger in his voice, Martha realized.
• 1:08
  What was it now? She narrowed her eyes.
• 1:12
  Fear. Was that it?
• 1:14
  She saw that it was in Tierman's ash and face and his bulging
• 1:18
  eyes. Tierman was frightened of his
• 1:21
  own creation. I talked with her, the doctor
• 1:24
  told him breezily. He took the glass out of
• 1:27
  Tierman's hand, sniffed its contents, and tossed it away
• 1:31
  into the part of a nearby rubber plant.
• 1:33
  Awful synthetic stuff, Yes. We're quite a nice chat, really.
• 1:36
  I mean, she's terribly distracted and a bit miffed by
• 1:39
  everything that's going on. Of course she's not.
• 1:41
  At her most hospitable, Tierman was grinding his teeth and
• 1:45
  pushing his grizzled face up close to the doctors.
• 1:48
  Barbara was hovering behind, trying to warn the Doctor to
• 1:51
  stop winding him up. The Doctor whirled away and
• 1:54
  started to stride about the rooms, hands thrust deep into
• 1:57
  his pockets. She's a fascinating invention,
• 2:00
  Martha. You wouldn't believe it.
• 2:02
  A super intelligent computer, seemingly made out of green
• 2:04
  fire. Green fire, Martha said.
• 2:08
  Well, that's how she looked on the outside anyway.
• 2:10
  Impressive. Gave me a bit of a turn when I
• 2:11
  first walked in. Anyway, the point is, she's
• 2:14
  absolutely livid. And what are you?
• 2:18
  He turned on his heel to point a finger right in Tierman's
• 2:20
  affronted face. Going.
• 2:22
  To do about it. Welcome back to the Hamster Book
• 2:43
  Club. My name is Joe Ford and it is a
• 2:46
  delight to welcome back mainstay of this podcast, now Mr. Michael
• 2:53
  Mills. Hello, Michael.
• 2:54
  Hello Joe. Thank you for having me back.
• 2:56
  I've never been a mainstay of anything in my entire life
• 2:58
  before. This is quite the achievement.
• 3:00
  Your greatest life situation. I don't know where you've got
• 3:02
  kids. Your second greatest life
• 3:04
  achievement, Michael, what book are we talking about today?
• 3:09
  Oh, well, I was going to say I was going to thank Thank you for
• 3:11
  welcoming in you take your shoes off in here, go through the
• 3:14
  living room, shall we? Because it's a very homely
• 3:17
  evening this week on This Week on the Hamster Book Club,
• 3:21
  because we're going to be talking about Doctor Who
• 3:24
  visiting some friends in their house in Sick Building by Paul
• 3:28
  Mars. So much to unpick in this very
• 3:32
  thin book that took me about four hours to read because I
• 3:37
  haven't covered the new series adventures yet and I'm desperate
• 3:40
  to hear what you think about Paul Miles.
• 3:43
  But before we get on to all of those fabulous topics, the
• 3:48
  question that you and I have been pondering over this week is
• 3:52
  new series adventure based and we'll kick start some
• 3:55
  conversation in that direction. What is the best and what?
• 3:59
  What is your favorite and least favorite 3 new series adventures
• 4:05
  Let's do your favorite. First I'll do my favorite, then
• 4:07
  your least favorite, then my least favorite.
• 4:10
  Yes, let's do it that way. That way I can say all the
• 4:12
  obvious ones and you can panic and come up with some other
• 4:14
  answers. So.
• 4:15
  I've got options, don't you worry about me, all right.
• 4:18
  My I think for my top three number one, well, in no
• 4:22
  particular order, the first one, The Eyeless.
• 4:26
  We are Lance Parkin fans on this podcast.
• 4:29
  We've made that very clear in the past and this is his one new
• 4:32
  series adventure. I wish he'd do more.
• 4:34
  This is Doctor Who and The Hidden Fortress.
• 4:37
  This is a brilliant epic sci-fi with the David Tennant Doctor on
• 4:43
  his own. It was released right around the
• 4:45
  time of the End of Time I think. Actually, without double
• 4:47
  checking, I think maybe it was between the two halfs.
• 4:49
  It's certainly very late period 10, with him going off on a sort
• 4:54
  of Guns of Naparone style mission to deactivate a leftover
• 4:59
  weapon from well, it might be The Last Great Time War, or
• 5:04
  older readers may suspect it's actually from the War in Heaven
• 5:08
  from the 8th Doctor adventures. Because this is a Lance park in
• 5:10
  book, nothing is quite what it seems It it's it's a one.
• 5:14
  It's a wonderful book. As with so much of his writing
• 5:17
  you can take it at service level and have a great time with Big
• 5:19
  old RIP roaring doctor adventure.
• 5:21
  But if you begin to look under the surface a bit, pay a bit
• 5:24
  more attention, slightly closer reading, you start to notice
• 5:26
  that actually there's a lot, a lot darker stories going on
• 5:30
  there. And without want to spoil
• 5:31
  anything, it gets into some very dark places, that book, but in a
• 5:34
  way that I think only the adult readers will pick up on.
• 5:38
  Whereas the kids reading it will have a much more straightforward
• 5:43
  fun time. It's it's a wonderful, very
• 5:44
  clever bit of dichotomy that even within this very popular
• 5:48
  range, a very successful range, that's parking still there still
• 5:51
  thinking away giving you fun stuff.
• 5:53
  What I love about that one is how he refuses to go down.
• 5:57
  That I'm just going to do. David Tennant on screen, wiped
• 6:01
  up to 11, which so many of these books do, and, you know, on the
• 6:05
  page and we'll get into it later with sick building.
• 6:07
  That can be pretty fucking annoying, if I'm honest, worse
• 6:11
  than when David Tennant's playing it.
• 6:13
  Whereas I just thought that he's channelling that more subdued
• 6:17
  sort of, you know, in pain. 10th Doctor post Time War and I
• 6:22
  really loved his to be every time.
• 6:25
  Lars parking rights for the Doctor.
• 6:26
  It's wonderful, but it's a particularly interesting take on
• 6:29
  the 10th Doctor in that book. Because it's when he's
• 6:32
  travelling. What's your #2?
• 6:35
  #2 is Touched by an Angel by Jonathan Morris.
• 6:41
  I should have predicted that one.
• 6:44
  Yes, I think. Don't listen to Hamster Book
• 6:46
  Club episode where you went into a lot of depth about that
• 6:50
  though, going off you go. Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:52
  Well, this is I've. I've sung the praises of this
• 6:54
  book before on previous episodes.
• 6:56
  I think it's one that often comes up when people talk about
• 6:58
  best new series adventures as well, and rightly and
• 7:02
  delightfully so. I think some of the new series
• 7:05
  adventures are at least as arranged.
• 7:06
  They've sometimes been criticised for being much more
• 7:09
  simplistic than other ages, you know, much more straightforward,
• 7:12
  much more a younger, wider, broader audience, and frankly,
• 7:16
  quite rightly so. That's their job.
• 7:17
  That's what they're meant to be. But in touch by an Angel,
• 7:20
  Jonathan Morris brilliantly shows that you can do all that
• 7:25
  while also telling a deep story that is gripping and also
• 7:29
  incredibly touching. I don't think this one would
• 7:31
  feel out of place in the in the virginal BBC books, eras and of
• 7:37
  the wilderness years. I mean that as high praise it
• 7:39
  is, I mean I I, I, I, I don't know Jonathan Morris.
• 7:43
  But it comes across as a very personal tale, certainly one
• 7:45
  that is very in touch and aware of human feelings and does that
• 7:52
  wonderful thing that I love in science fiction of looking at
• 7:56
  time and travel within the span of someone's life.
• 8:00
  The that we are all, you know, we are travellers in the 4th
• 8:03
  dimension, but we're stuck going one way at 1 pace.
• 8:06
  But what if you really could travel backwards and forwards?
• 8:09
  There's been so many great and successful stories and films and
• 8:13
  books on that premise. Back to the Future, The Time
• 8:16
  Traveller's Wife, But Doctor Who itself relatively rarely
• 8:21
  actually engages with that, and it's an incredibly mature and
• 8:25
  bittersweet exercise. And again, it's.
• 8:31
  Do you remember when I think it was on your episode of Strictly
• 8:36
  was when we talked about A Christmas Carol and going
• 8:40
  through somebody's timeline, and that huge issue I had with that
• 8:42
  would be Doctor meddling in somebody's timeline in order to
• 8:46
  make them a better person? Because, you know, I just hate
• 8:48
  that sort of thing happening. I feel like everyone should be a
• 8:51
  bastard. This does that, but it's a
• 8:55
  relationship we're talking about, and it's 1/2 of the
• 8:59
  relationship wanting to change their lives.
• 9:03
  And that just gets rid of all of my problems with that, changing
• 9:07
  somebody's history. That's not history.
• 9:09
  What if you could do it again? Is such a big question, isn't
• 9:14
  it? And I.
• 9:16
  Feel that way about most podcasts I do, if I'm honest.
• 9:21
  This is actually the third time we've done this section.
• 9:23
  Sorry, Michael. You don't want to hear versions
• 9:26
  version two and and version one was really just unacceptable.
• 9:29
  He's very patient with. Me and my third, just to show
• 9:34
  that I can have fun in the kids adventure series.
• 9:37
  Go on. Prisoner of the Daleks?
• 9:40
  Prisoner of the Daleks is really dark.
• 9:42
  What are you talking about? But it's also fun, OK?
• 9:47
  I mean it. The torture.
• 9:48
  Why adult in places? Oh yeah, but the torture is
• 9:51
  genuine torture, not not emotional regret.
• 9:53
  Non we that's. True.
• 9:57
  I seem to remember there was a scene in Prisoner of the Daleks
• 9:59
  which blew my mind, where it said that the Daleks when they
• 10:05
  exterminate somebody. It was oh man, man, edit this
• 10:09
  joke. Do you remember this scene?
• 10:10
  He won't have edited this. Hello listeners.
• 10:11
  No, no, I will. It's it's something the Daleks,
• 10:15
  when they exterminate people, they basically they do it
• 10:20
  enough. Oh, fuck me, Michael.
• 10:22
  I cannot remember what I'm talking about.
• 10:25
  Do they deliberately hurt people when they get?
• 10:27
  Yes, that's what I'm trying to get to.
• 10:28
  Will you help me out with this please?
• 10:30
  Yeah, OK. I particularly like the bit
• 10:33
  where it explains that the Daleks.
• 10:35
  Yeah. Deliberately hurt people when
• 10:37
  they kill them. I love that bit as well, do you
• 10:41
  know? Funny you should mention it.
• 10:44
  No, it's a don't edit them that bit like I'm just an absolute
• 10:48
  sadist. Why do you like Prisoner and the
• 10:52
  Dalek so much? I love it because it fulfils the
• 10:56
  promise that so many Dalek stories have had on screen and
• 11:00
  on audio, I guess, but have very rarely tried to deliver and
• 11:04
  efforts have not in that direction.
• 11:06
  Have not always been the best story.
• 11:07
  So I'm thinking things like War of the Daleks, which is the big
• 11:10
  epic Daleks story. They have an empire that we
• 11:13
  usually just told about. No, here is the empire.
• 11:15
  Here is the war between humanity and the dialects on a on a
• 11:19
  galactic scale. The scale of the book is huge.
• 11:23
  I mean there are images, I've not read it in years, but there
• 11:25
  are images from it that have stayed with me including robber
• 11:28
  Star Wars, George Lucas style. Bam.
• 11:31
  Hit them with something that's make going to make me go what
• 11:34
  there is a one of the locations is a planet that has literally
• 11:39
  been torn in half, which is where they have to go.
• 11:41
  And the the way in which he gets across the scale of this idea of
• 11:46
  the level of destruction, of the danger that the characters are
• 11:50
  in going into it is huge. This is so.
• 11:53
  This is George Lucas's Doctor Who.
• 11:54
  It's magnificent. And it uses the same font for
• 11:58
  the dialogue of the dialects as the TV comics.
• 12:02
  And doesn't that work brilliantly?
• 12:03
  It's great. You could just hear and it
• 12:05
  doesn't, you know, it contracts the words as well.
• 12:08
  So oh man, you can just hear Nicholas Briggs saying every
• 12:12
  single line. So those are my top three.
• 12:15
  How many of those did I knock off for you, Joe?
• 12:18
  One, but I have 4:00, so thank God, because I did want to
• 12:22
  choose the Eyeless, but I didn't want to be obvious.
• 12:23
  Sorry, I did have Prisoner of the Daleks on there.
• 12:28
  I want to nominate The Doctor Trap by Simon Messingham, which
• 12:32
  is a really fun, labyrinthine plot about this fellow called
• 12:38
  Sebastian, a brilliant take on the Doctor and Donna when they
• 12:42
  were at their absolute high. And it's Simon Messingham at his
• 12:46
  sort of creative best. It's full of twists and turns.
• 12:50
  I don't want to ruin any of those twists and turns because I
• 12:52
  want. I'm doing a book club on it soon
• 12:55
  and people should read that book because it's really, really fun.
• 12:58
  I just remember there's a reversal in chapter one that is
• 13:02
  so brilliant. I was like, this book's going to
• 13:05
  be good. I knew from the off this book
• 13:07
  was going to be great. So The Doctor Trap is my first
• 13:10
  one. Controversially, Only Human is
• 13:14
  my second one. I've recently had this
• 13:18
  conversation about Gareth Roberts and I shall only discuss
• 13:21
  the work. Only Human is such a fun book,
• 13:24
  and so successful it got Gareth Roberts a gig writing Doctor Who
• 13:28
  on the television because he captured the knife, Doctor and
• 13:31
  Rose so authentically on the page.
• 13:34
  When Russ T Davis read it, he snapped him up for Series 3 and
• 13:38
  it's got also controversially, a wonderful Captain Jack subplot
• 13:44
  where he's in a flat share with a Neanderthal.
• 13:48
  And we keep cutting back to these moments and it is like the
• 13:51
  the ultimate Doctor Who sitcom. You can kick the Lodger right
• 13:55
  out of business that it's absolutely hilarious.
• 13:58
  Captain Jack and this Neanderthal living together.
• 14:00
  It's it's very, very funny book and it just flew by.
• 14:05
  It's Gareth Roberts at his absolute best.
• 14:08
  It's a shame you can't write anymore if I'm honest.
• 14:10
  But there we go. And my third choice is I realise
• 14:14
  I haven't read a bulk of the Latter Day ones, the Capaldi
• 14:17
  ones and things like that. And I know there's some by James
• 14:20
  Goss there, which I'm sure are brilliant.
• 14:22
  Dead of Winter by James Goss. The one that was all done
• 14:25
  through letters was really great.
• 14:26
  Yes, that's got a great joke where the Doctor's worried that
• 14:30
  he's lost the TARDIS and he says I'll have to learn English.
• 14:36
  Jones Cross is a genius. That's the way.
• 14:38
  He's the only person that could write a a Douglas Adams book
• 14:41
  and. Get away with it, yeah.
• 14:43
  Or maybe Moffett could have done that.
• 14:45
  I think Moffett probably could have done that.
• 14:47
  He basically did when he wrote Day at the Doctor.
• 14:49
  I felt as if I was reading a Douglas Adams book at times, but
• 14:54
  my third choice is one that nobody will really remember very
• 14:58
  much. But I just happened to love
• 15:00
  every second of it and it appealed to me as a 8 year old
• 15:05
  boy. And that is Doctor Who's answer
• 15:08
  to Treasure Planet, The Resurrection Casket by Justin
• 15:12
  Richards, which is just a joy from beginning to end and
• 15:17
  perfect what Justin Richards does perfectly, which is provide
• 15:20
  a brilliant romp with loads of great twists, wonderful
• 15:24
  characters, a great role for the Doctor and Rose.
• 15:27
  It's full of like robot pirates and things, and they're all
• 15:30
  described in weird and wacky ways.
• 15:33
  There's wonderful action sequences, isn't it?
• 15:35
  I think he's sort of visualizing the whole thing as a Disney
• 15:38
  movie because it's got enormous visual ambition, that book.
• 15:42
  Yes, I I suspect he had seen Disney's Treasure Planet.
• 15:45
  But I agree with you. It's a it's a magnificent
• 15:47
  because they're all isn't. They're also all steampunk space
• 15:50
  pirates as well. It's wonderful visual
• 15:54
  imagination. I I wish Doctor Who and its spin
• 15:56
  offs especially, did more of this of taking us to strange,
• 15:59
  weird worlds not just and anyone can do.
• 16:02
  Knock off Star Trek. Come on, this machine here,
• 16:05
  anywhere in time and space. Take us to places that are
• 16:07
  weird. You don't have to worry about
• 16:09
  explaining it. It's Doctor Who.
• 16:11
  Just on the cusp of those two was two of the Jekyll and Rayden
• 16:15
  ones, The Last Dodo and The Stone Rose, which are both.
• 16:19
  I think both of those books are brilliant, slight, but brilliant
• 16:23
  in their own ways in what they're trying to do.
• 16:24
  But no, The Resurrection Casket. Just because I think it's a
• 16:27
  great a genuinely great kids book.
• 16:30
  Yes, and Justin Richards has, he's written tons of those
• 16:33
  already. So he knows how to do this.
• 16:35
  You know he's the perfect choice unfortunately later down the
• 16:37
  line and one of my bottom three is a Justin Richards as well.
• 16:41
  I think he somewhat he sells out a little bit in the end and just
• 16:44
  starts knocking him out because he knows they're going to make a
• 16:46
  lot of money. What's your least favorite then?
• 16:50
  Well, I put three of them together and I'll I'll give them
• 16:54
  as one because. Are they all by Stephen Cole?
• 16:58
  I'm not sure if any of them are by Stephen Cole.
• 17:00
  Actually, OK, two of mine are, three were going to be, and then
• 17:03
  I changed my mind. I mean Stephen Cole's written so
• 17:06
  much stuff that I think he can probably comfortably appear in
• 17:09
  any list of any graduation of Doctor Who book.
• 17:13
  So my three and they've changed together.
• 17:15
  And I I I don't like, I don't I I don't necessarily always like
• 17:19
  just slagging things off especially old books that no
• 17:21
  one's reading anymore and people put effort into.
• 17:23
  But so on a these are these are a selected key for the the all
• 17:27
  of the the new series adventures that I don't enjoy and the three
• 17:32
  I chose were Wet World, Price of Paradise, and Wooden Heart.
• 17:38
  I nearly chose the price of paradise only because I don't
• 17:40
  remember I think about it. This is my problem.
• 17:43
  These are three books that I remember nothing about.
• 17:46
  I remember being bored by while reading them.
• 17:49
  There isn't. There's nothing, as far as I
• 17:52
  recall, objectionable in any of them.
• 17:54
  There is no failed promise in any of them.
• 17:57
  I thought about Sting of the putting sting of the Zygons in
• 18:00
  there, but I thought, well no, because I can actually remember
• 18:02
  a couple of things that happened, this thing of the
• 18:04
  Zygons and at least the idea of Edwardian Zygons was fun, even
• 18:08
  if I was disappointed by it. Wet World, I can remember the
• 18:12
  cover. I don't think I can even say
• 18:14
  that much for the other two. I've got a feeling that Wooden
• 18:18
  Heart is another one of those ones of where they're just
• 18:21
  ripping off non-stop by Brian Aldis, where it's just, oh the
• 18:25
  the people on the spaceship descended into a feudal society
• 18:30
  and they're still on the spaceship type business that we
• 18:32
  seem to do repeatedly. Well, I really like Wooden
• 18:36
  Heart. I'm so sorry.
• 18:39
  Well, if you wish to save that one Sinner from damnation, then
• 18:43
  please. Go ahead, go ahead.
• 18:46
  Price of Paradise? I can't tell you a single thing
• 18:47
  about it. I.
• 18:48
  Think break is it? Pollen break, I cannot tell you
• 18:51
  anything that happens in price of anything.
• 18:54
  I can't tell you about anything that happens in any of Colin
• 18:56
  Bragg's books, if I'm honest. Didn't he do Colony of lies?
• 19:02
  Didn't tell you a thing about it.
• 19:04
  He did escape philosophy and she joins.
• 19:06
  That's all I remember about that book.
• 19:09
  And there's a bit set in Belgium.
• 19:12
  I think he did Colony of Lies, which was a 2nd Doctor sci-fi
• 19:17
  western way of cameo appearances by the 7th Doctor.
• 19:20
  And I remember thinking it was not terribly good, but at least
• 19:25
  they had a lot of ideas and it there was a certain degree of
• 19:27
  fun and it wanted to be fun in that there was a lot of flaws.
• 19:29
  But you know, I can enjoy books that are, I can enjoy books that
• 19:34
  are a bit rubbish, you know, that are trying and they slip up
• 19:37
  and they fall and they go head head first down the stairs
• 19:39
  because you know the stuff going on.
• 19:40
  People are trying things. These three, maybe it's me,
• 19:45
  maybe it's my failing memory at 35.
• 19:46
  But I don't think 10 years ago I could have told you anything
• 19:49
  about these books either. I'm not even sure.
• 19:51
  But I could have told you by the time I got to the last chapter,
• 19:53
  what happened at the start of the book either.
• 19:55
  And they're not the only ones, They're just in fact, they're
• 19:57
  probably three of the better ones, because I could remember
• 19:59
  the titles without looking at a list of them.
• 20:02
  Well, The thing is as well is, I think I can never say his name.
• 20:05
  Is it Mark? Mark Mowalski is how you say it.
• 20:08
  Mike Kalalski. Yes.
• 20:10
  He he wrote Shining Darkness, which was, and that was really
• 20:17
  fun. And he wrote Relative
• 20:19
  Dimensions, which was above average sent to PDA Half Life
• 20:25
  for the 8th Doctor range, which was really fun and painted a
• 20:30
  world as sort of fantasy world, as good as Paul Mars does in The
• 20:36
  Scarlet Empress, I think. I think, I think Half Life also
• 20:39
  shows up these because these are what I have told you, you've
• 20:42
  told them the Pascals before. Now all three of these are what
• 20:45
  I call Colony under Threats books.
• 20:50
  They land on an Earth colony where not everything is as it
• 20:53
  seems, but but but Half Life is that and it's really good.
• 20:58
  So actually it shows me up and it shows these books up because
• 21:01
  it shows there's nothing wrong with that premise.
• 21:03
  It's just you're getting into generic TNG.
• 21:07
  Season four, episode 19. And as someone who does the Star
• 21:12
  Trek podcast, I can absolutely say that is true.
• 21:15
  Half Life has a scene I can I'll never forget.
• 21:18
  And that's the dream that Fitz has of him and the Doctor
• 21:20
  touching bums for some reason I can't.
• 21:23
  He must have been very horny when he wrote that bit.
• 21:25
  That's all I'm thinking. I think that's the third time
• 21:27
  you've mentioned that scene on this podcast.
• 21:31
  There's very little of representation for me in these
• 21:33
  books. All right.
• 21:35
  And you know, in my head Fitz is played by Matt D'Angelo, so I
• 21:38
  lot of thinking about him a lot. Well, my 3 for my least favorite
• 21:45
  new series of benches are The Art of Destruction by Stephen
• 21:49
  Cole. Oh.
• 21:50
  Sting of the Zygons by Stephen Cole and Martha in the Mirror by
• 21:57
  Justin Richards for exactly the same reason you gave me.
• 22:01
  Oh, I cannot remember a single detail about any of them.
• 22:06
  Like I was looking at the list and I was like, I know I've read
• 22:08
  this, I wrote reviews about these books, so I know I've read
• 22:11
  them and I've taken down notes and everything.
• 22:13
  Nothing is in here at all. It is art of destruction, the
• 22:17
  one that's got some evil alien worms.
• 22:21
  You tell me it's got dummies without heads on the front cover
• 22:26
  in a cave for some reason. Oh, I can't remember.
• 22:30
  Art of destruction. Art.
• 22:31
  Destruction is the one about hiding away works of art during
• 22:33
  times of war or something like that.
• 22:35
  And then there's even evil alien worms who've come for the art.
• 22:39
  I don't know. This is.
• 22:40
  I've run off the edge of the Cliff.
• 22:41
  I think, I think at the worst, they're so generic, these books,
• 22:47
  and it's just a series of Doctor Who cliches or even like Doctor
• 22:51
  Who novel cliches mushed together in a very sort of ABCD
• 22:57
  plot with very stereotypical characters.
• 23:02
  No zest to the dialogue. And it's just like reading
• 23:07
  wallpaper, you know? Yeah, you know, you know, I
• 23:10
  think we've chosen our. Although we've chosen different
• 23:12
  books, I think we've chosen 3 books for the same reasons.
• 23:17
  When we spoke to Lance Parkin for this podcast a little while
• 23:20
  ago, he said of the Virgin books versus the BBC books.
• 23:24
  This is during the wilderness years that he felt that the
• 23:27
  highs of the BBC books were every bit as high as those a
• 23:29
  virgin. The low is every bit as low.
• 23:31
  He thought the real sin of the BBC books was that a lot of them
• 23:34
  were just fine. It was just.
• 23:38
  Do you agree with that statement?
• 23:42
  Because I think I I think that the highs, the highest of the
• 23:49
  new new adventures in the Ed as are as high as each other.
• 23:53
  I think the lows of the new adventures are lower because
• 23:58
  there is so many first time authors in there and it just
• 24:01
  goes one or two ways. And I think he's right about the
• 24:05
  mid range stuff. I think the EDA mid range stuff
• 24:07
  is very boring, whereas the mid range new adventures are at
• 24:12
  least interesting or trying to do interesting things.
• 24:15
  It's not generic runarounds that they're trying to do something,
• 24:18
  but it's like Zampa, you know it's not quite there, it's
• 24:21
  trying to do something interesting, but you know he
• 24:24
  didn't have enough time or whatever.
• 24:26
  Yes, whereas the BBC books maybe have a lot more things, like the
• 24:30
  Infinity race. Oh yes, I don't read much about
• 24:34
  that about selling Art Yacht Race, wasn't it something like?
• 24:37
  That yeah yeah it's about an around planet yacht race which
• 24:40
  seems fun but I don't know it gets much beyond the premise.
• 24:44
  Again it's another earth colony book but to bring that to the
• 24:47
  NSA I I new series of inches I I think there's something similar
• 24:51
  going on here. I think when they're at their
• 24:52
  worst, it's that they they fail to escape what the series
• 24:58
  actually so often she has managed to escape, which is
• 25:02
  being a hugely successful, very commercially successful tie in
• 25:07
  range for one of the biggest family shows on TV.
• 25:10
  They could very easily all sort of be like this.
• 25:13
  They could be absolutely fine and they would sell buckets
• 25:17
  because Doctor Who is huge for an age range who are a big
• 25:21
  publishing market. So I think the fact that we got
• 25:24
  some of these is to be expected. The fact that they are a
• 25:27
  disappointment is really just a testament to actually how strong
• 25:30
  that range was so much of the time and so much stronger than
• 25:33
  it needed to be. I think the areas of the NSA
• 25:38
  that I haven't explored are probably where the more
• 25:41
  interesting books are. I've heard good things about
• 25:43
  Borrowed Time by Is it Naomi Alderman?
• 25:47
  Who? Who now very successful, much
• 25:50
  celebrated author for her book The Power.
• 25:53
  I've heard great things about or good things about the three
• 25:57
  Capaldi ones. I had really good things about
• 26:01
  one of the Jodi ones that was based on religion, the good
• 26:07
  Doctor Dawson. I heard really good things about
• 26:10
  that. I've not read that, but I did
• 26:12
  read. I've only read one of the Jodi
• 26:15
  new series Adventures, and that was combat magics and that was a
• 26:19
  lot of fun. That was about Romans and Gauls,
• 26:21
  sort of a Roman version of Torchwood, which was actually a
• 26:24
  lot of fun as an idea. I mean little sneak peek into
• 26:28
  the behind the scenes of this podcast.
• 26:30
  Markle and I have a very long list of books to get through.
• 26:34
  We will be doing this till scenicity, but maybe we should
• 26:37
  do one of those latter day ones and neither one of us has read
• 26:40
  in the. Oh yeah, definitely.
• 26:41
  Well, to get into. We can make that as a promise.
• 26:44
  Now to the listeners. OK, so Sick Building by Paul
• 26:58
  Mars. My first question to you is this
• 27:03
  is one. Are you a fan of Paul Mars's
• 27:08
  idiosyncratic style, and who do you think he is a good match for
• 27:14
  this range? I'm a big fan of Paul Mars.
• 27:18
  I think he is. The antithesis of everything I
• 27:21
  just said is sometimes the problem with Doctor Who tie and
• 27:24
  stuff. His books are never just more
• 27:28
  Doctor Who. His books are always bursting at
• 27:32
  the seams with ideas. It's a cliche, but it's true.
• 27:34
  I think maybe even more importantly than that, they are
• 27:37
  so richly into textual they're they're drawing on ideas and
• 27:44
  influences and genres and trends that most other Doctor Who
• 27:49
  authors aren't, and yet manages to weave them into into
• 27:52
  fantastic, evocative Doctor Who stories, I think, Russell T
• 27:55
  Davis said of the Scarlet Empress.
• 27:57
  He said, I realized I hadn't just been reading a Doctor Who
• 27:59
  book. I've been reading a proper book
• 28:01
  as well. You know it's it's it's a
• 28:03
  wonderful bit of of magical realism you know in the Angela
• 28:06
  Carter and the Arabian Nights Mall.
• 28:08
  It's it's wonderful. It's no surprise to see it that
• 28:11
  Mars has had a successful career before he touched Doctor Who and
• 28:15
  since he has touched Doctor Who. Exactly.
• 28:18
  And the lines between his Doctor Who work and his non Doctor Who
• 28:24
  work are are actually quite permeable, though this he isn't
• 28:29
  one of those authors who this is not.
• 28:30
  This is not a criticism of any authors do this at all.
• 28:32
  But there are many authors who do their for me works and who do
• 28:36
  their commercial works and often Doctor stuff is the more
• 28:38
  commercial stuff. That's fine, that's great,
• 28:40
  brilliant. But Paul Miles it feels like
• 28:42
  it's all part of the same launch like it's all influencing.
• 28:45
  It's all drawing each other and even in terms of characters
• 28:47
  turning up the Blue Angel, you get that Doctor Who fans, and
• 28:51
  count myself among them, really puzzled over what's going on in
• 28:53
  that book. But at least part of it is that
• 28:55
  half of it is a Doctor Who book and half of it is a non Doctor
• 28:58
  Who Paul Miles book that he has recast Doctor Who characters
• 29:02
  into. And half of it is a Star Trek
• 29:05
  book. It's got three halves.
• 29:08
  Fittingly fittingly for Paul Mars book does he?
• 29:12
  Is he a good fit for the new series adventure?
• 29:13
  And yes, he's magnificent. He's a magnificent fit because.
• 29:17
  Baffling. It didn't happen earlier in
• 29:18
  this, if I'm honest. But he said in the interview.
• 29:21
  Did you listen to that interview?
• 29:22
  He said on my interview that they actually said to him, we
• 29:27
  had we need to get the safe writers to bash them out first.
• 29:32
  And even then, when they said, you know, you can have your
• 29:35
  shot, they said, but don't be too poor, Miles, all right?
• 29:41
  Oh, that's wonderful. Don't be too.
• 29:43
  Imaginative. What the hell?
• 29:46
  Don't be too you about the whole thing.
• 29:49
  What a bit of feedback. No, I think he's brilliant here
• 29:53
  because he he's a he's a he's a did list that to you because
• 29:57
  he's someone who was always fascinating to listen to and to
• 29:59
  read about his thoughts about writing and other people's
• 30:01
  writing because you know, he's he's got, he's got very well
• 30:07
  thought out, very informed opinions.
• 30:10
  He has got impressively and admirably broad tastes and is
• 30:17
  willing to draw on all of them. And it seems to me, at least
• 30:21
  from from what I've read of him and what I've heard of him
• 30:23
  talking. But I I admire him for his
• 30:27
  unwillingness to draw clear lines between those things.
• 30:29
  So you can get a book like The Scarlet Empress, which is every
• 30:32
  bit as inspired by the works of Angela Carter as it is by Star
• 30:36
  Wars from the 1970s. Or as you say, the Blue Angel,
• 30:40
  which is being both, you know, L GB TQIA plus fantasy, magical
• 30:48
  realist fiction at the same time as also being an homage to Star
• 30:51
  Trek TIE in books of the 1980s. Mad dogs and Englishmen wants to
• 30:54
  fuse together Tolkien and George Lucas and Shirley Bassey.
• 31:00
  Yeah, in a talk about pink poodles having a revolution.
• 31:07
  And and and it all works. It is he manages, he manages to
• 31:11
  cast it all into the same villa and the same world.
• 31:14
  You know what I think binds it? I think it's his sense of humour
• 31:18
  that binds it. And he tells his enormous,
• 31:21
  ambitious stories. You know, Mad Dogs and
• 31:24
  Englishmen is told on a huge scale, on different planets, on
• 31:27
  different time periods and all of this.
• 31:29
  I think what binds it together is that beautiful working class
• 31:34
  humour that you bring to it all that that we can all buy into.
• 31:39
  Yeah, no, absolutely. They are sometimes very darkly,
• 31:43
  often very darkly comic, but there is a sense of humor in it.
• 31:46
  And doesn't mean they're silly, and it doesn't mean they're
• 31:48
  sending themselves up, because they often aren't.
• 31:50
  A lot of it is very serious and very, very honestly meant in
• 31:53
  terms of its emotions, but it does have a a sense of irony
• 31:58
  about itself. And in amongst all of that,
• 32:02
  though, is is is, I think a real deep love.
• 32:05
  And and and perceptible influence of children's
• 32:10
  literature from the classics all the way through to the modern
• 32:13
  era. And I think you can see in his
• 32:16
  writings things like the owl service, I think is definitely
• 32:21
  in there at times. Books like the Word Stone of
• 32:25
  prisoner, is that how you pronounce it?
• 32:27
  These sort of fantasy books that seem to exist on the edge of of
• 32:31
  reality, of mundane reality, as you say, that very working class
• 32:33
  sense of humour, those those sorts of books of you can sort
• 32:37
  of it always feels like they should exist in sort of cheap
• 32:40
  1970s watercolour paperback editions that are quite
• 32:44
  battered. The only way I can describe it
• 32:46
  visually is, I don't know, you've got a Griffin being
• 32:49
  birthed and raining fire on a city, but just over there you've
• 32:53
  got Iris Wildtime having a fag, watching the whole thing, you
• 32:56
  know, like it always just grounds it a little bit.
• 33:00
  Yeah, so I know. I think.
• 33:02
  I think he's a he's a wonderful fit for the new series
• 33:05
  Adventures and slightly jealous of kids who got Paul Miles books
• 33:10
  when they were young. Did you hear the story he told
• 33:14
  about the little girl that came along with the copy of The Stone
• 33:17
  Rose, the bastard copy that she'd read over and over again,
• 33:21
  and she was so excited to meet the writer of this book that she
• 33:24
  loved so much. Incidentally, I think it's the
• 33:27
  most sold Doctor Who book ever, isn't it?
• 33:29
  The Stone Rose. That's my understanding, yeah.
• 33:31
  Yeah, that she couldn't talk. You know, she just handed over
• 33:34
  the book, shaking. That's that's how much these
• 33:37
  books meant to some kids, you know, I mean, that's wonderful.
• 33:40
  And I think it is, I think it did capture that that market in
• 33:46
  a way that the BBC books and the Virgin books never had a hope of
• 33:50
  doing. No.
• 33:52
  And you know, in fairness to them, Doctor Who was actually on
• 33:55
  telly at the time. These were big, which which as
• 33:58
  we discussed when we talked about The Eight Doctors, sadly
• 34:01
  was not the case for For the Virgin or the BBC books on those
• 34:03
  part. But it is, it is wonderful
• 34:07
  testament to how much they've managed to to capture that
• 34:10
  readership and an awareness of what Doctor Who is or where it
• 34:13
  SAT and who it should be for. We'd had 15 years of Doctor Who
• 34:19
  for grown-ups, which let's be honest, you know, we can't.
• 34:22
  This podcast, we talk about them all.
• 34:23
  We love these books. We love Father Time.
• 34:25
  We love all the ones you do with the people who aren't me.
• 34:29
  I know you read around, don't like Joe, we love all that.
• 34:33
  But, you know, we had 15 years of, let's be honest, Doctor Who
• 34:36
  books that were being written for the people they shouldn't be
• 34:39
  written for now. They were back.
• 34:41
  They'll be written for kids. And it was glorious.
• 34:43
  And that is such a wonderful story that not only were these
• 34:46
  just, you know, easy Christmas presents, they meant things to
• 34:49
  kids. And again, it's a test that it's
• 34:51
  a wonderful testament to what these books achieve.
• 34:54
  I do love the idea though, of you know, you've got a young
• 34:58
  kid. I love the idea of a, you know,
• 35:01
  a 6-7 year old picking up the church on Ruby Robe that's just
• 35:05
  come out in heartland reading that and going, oh, that was so
• 35:08
  fun, And then their dad having all of the past Dr. EDASNSAS on
• 35:14
  the shelf and just tearing through the whole collection.
• 35:18
  I hope that happens somewhere. Here, here, darling.
• 35:22
  This is this is combat rock. We're not talking about Little
• 35:27
  Girl Who, Right? OK, right.
• 35:31
  Well, sick building, then let's focus on sick building.
• 35:34
  And I'd like to open with a criticism of a book I thoroughly
• 35:39
  enjoyed, I have to say. And that is The Doctor and
• 35:45
  Martha. But my criticism is not of Paul
• 35:48
  Mars, who I think captures the two characters brilliantly on
• 35:52
  the page. I can hear David Tennant and
• 35:54
  Free Rajaman saying every single word he gives them, and I think
• 35:58
  they both get a couple of moments as well where he gives
• 36:01
  them more depth than they usually get in prose.
• 36:05
  But I was quite surprised at just how irritating the Doctor
• 36:09
  could be on the page when he's leaping around the console room
• 36:13
  and Alan Zi ING and all of this. Like, was this your experience
• 36:16
  of these two characters in this book?
• 36:20
  Of the 10th Doctor. Definitely.
• 36:22
  Definitely at the start. I know what you mean.
• 36:23
  It's very sugar rush. 10th Doctor.
• 36:27
  It's very sort of wow. Yeah.
• 36:28
  Now come on off and they'll go, Oh well, so yeah, Glasses on,
• 36:34
  glasses off. Wow.
• 36:35
  Yeah. Rubbing the back of the neck
• 36:36
  type thing, grabbing the coat and running off.
• 36:39
  Yeah, there's a lot of that. And Martha?
• 36:40
  Just sort of there going, what's going on?
• 36:42
  Where are we, you know? Oh yeah dude, asking all the
• 36:45
  questions. Oh, 100%.
• 36:47
  What I will say is that nothing that he writes of the 10th
• 36:52
  Doctor is untrue to what we are showing the 10th Doctor and I.
• 36:56
  And I think it's probably fair that there's more about the
• 36:58
  start of the book where you sort of need to get the you need to
• 37:02
  tune the reader in to who they're hearing into hearing
• 37:05
  that character's voice. So leaning into the more
• 37:07
  caricatured bits, the bigger bits it's it's probably fair.
• 37:10
  And I suspect for a lot of kids they're the bits that they love
• 37:13
  of that doctor as well because you know it's just demonstrated
• 37:15
  you can do them in a playground sort of way and have a bit of
• 37:17
  fun with it. And it it it doesn't stay at
• 37:20
  that level he gets. I think it it it comes down for
• 37:23
  most of the book and I think you get a much more even keel that's
• 37:28
  still true to the character on the on the screen version of the
• 37:30
  temp doctor. I think.
• 37:32
  Martha oh, go. On no go on.
• 37:37
  This is not Paul Mars fault at all.
• 37:39
  He does. He does quite well by her, but
• 37:42
  without Freema Rajaman's performance, this really does
• 37:46
  show up a. Problem with every book she's
• 37:49
  in. And she's in a lot of them.
• 37:51
  Yeah, she is. There's only like $4.00 books
• 37:54
  and there's about 30 Martha's. I don't know how that happens,
• 37:57
  but yeah, you said Freema. Rajaman brings so much charisma
• 38:00
  to the screen. I I sent you a message Shane.
• 38:02
  When she smiles, you know, I light up.
• 38:05
  It's just wonderful. You love being around her and
• 38:07
  she's got lots of energy, you know, and drives the stories in
• 38:10
  interesting ways, especially emotionally on the page.
• 38:14
  There isn't much to her, is there?
• 38:16
  No, the Doctor doesn't. The Doctor doesn't fancy me.
• 38:19
  He's not over, Rose. He's about as far as you get.
• 38:22
  And you know, even with someone like Donna or Rose, you can
• 38:28
  always fall back on a little bit of of the caricature at times as
• 38:31
  well. You know, you can just do, oh
• 38:32
  Donna, even if you're not going to do anything else and you go,
• 38:35
  oh great, Donna's here with Martha.
• 38:41
  You know it it it does just really show up.
• 38:42
  The the lack of depth that character has, certainly outside
• 38:46
  of the arc. That's the other thing.
• 38:47
  A lot of a lot of what happens with Martha on T on the TV show,
• 38:50
  even compared to the others, is very tied to her emotional
• 38:53
  journey across that series. There was a rose mentioned in
• 38:58
  this, though wasn't. There it was, Yeah, there was.
• 39:01
  I mean that's just I think. She just thinks, doesn't she?
• 39:03
  Well, Rose isn't here, and I am, so let's just get on with it,
• 39:06
  you know? The Doctor's mourning over loss
• 39:09
  and she's like, oh, Rose. I mean, there was a one, there
• 39:13
  was a great bit, I thought, where she was comparing Ernest
• 39:17
  Tierman to the, you know, the bullshit doctors that she's had
• 39:21
  to deal with, these very arrogant doctors that push her
• 39:23
  around that led into that. But apart from that, I can't
• 39:27
  really remember anything that goes into our back story.
• 39:31
  No, and maybe some of that is is a necessary limit that you're
• 39:38
  going to have on something on new series Adventures, which
• 39:40
  runs in parallel with the TV show.
• 39:43
  So although this came out in September 2007, so we'd already
• 39:46
  seen Martha's departure by this point, they were still the
• 39:50
  current line up as far as branding was concerned.
• 39:55
  You're not going to be given the freedom to change things with
• 40:00
  the character because their arc has been already and will be led
• 40:07
  by the TV show. Equally, they are characters
• 40:11
  that the TV show is not done with yet.
• 40:13
  So it's not a missing adventures thing where you know 15 years
• 40:16
  after Nyssa joins or have you can come along and you know.
• 40:23
  Postulate over who she fancied or didn't.
• 40:25
  You know you can't reinvent the characters as well, so so there
• 40:29
  is that problem. There is there are certain
• 40:31
  limits on these books in terms of where they can go with the
• 40:33
  characters that that books whether he was, have much more.
• 40:37
  I suspect even now, if you went back into the 10th Doctor and
• 40:40
  Martha book now you'd probably be allowed to do more with her.
• 40:43
  But they don't want to. They don't want to close.
• 40:45
  They don't want to close out. He's off himself.
• 40:47
  In fact, Lance Parkin said he even had a line removed from the
• 40:50
  Eyeless where he gave a bit too much detail on how the Sonic
• 40:52
  screwdriver worked. So if they're not going to let
• 40:54
  you say how the Sonic screwdriver works, they're not
• 40:55
  going to let you reinvent Martha's back story.
• 40:57
  I can't remember what it was, but the title of this book
• 41:00
  changed when Russell T Davis saw it in Gallifrey Guardian on DWM
• 41:05
  and went no, it's bloody not going to be called that.
• 41:08
  It was originally going to be called Originally announced has
• 41:10
  been called The Wicked Bungalow. And it's great.
• 41:15
  It's great. It's like a kids Fable doesn't.
• 41:18
  It it does. Ross Davis did did defend his
• 41:20
  his, his, his decision to veto that title, which was he said
• 41:24
  that, you know, there's so much Doctor Who merchandise out there
• 41:27
  now and they really did make efforts to make sure it was of a
• 41:32
  higher quality. But always knew that he always
• 41:36
  had at the back of his mind that there was a Daily Mail article,
• 41:39
  some such, waiting to be written about.
• 41:41
  Oh, look at what kid the BB CS ripping kids off for their
• 41:44
  pocket money. And he just thought that if you
• 41:47
  see a book called The Wicked Bungalow, does that sound a bit,
• 41:52
  Does that sound a bit cheap? Does that sound a little bit.
• 41:55
  No effort because he's. He knows, we know Paul Mars is a
• 41:57
  wonderful, ironic writer. So we see Paul Mars has written
• 42:00
  a book called The Wicked Bungalow.
• 42:01
  We're like, oh wow, that's going to be brilliant.
• 42:05
  But if you don't know who Paul Mars is and you just see Doctor
• 42:07
  Who in that title, you may take it at face value.
• 42:10
  But. It's got the same sort of
• 42:12
  potency to it as his Big Finish story, The Wishing Beast.
• 42:15
  You know, it's just it. It promises, you know, gold
• 42:19
  locks and the Free Bears. All those sort of old Grimm's
• 42:21
  Fairy Tales, sick building. It's OK.
• 42:25
  I I don't think it's a necessarily better title.
• 42:28
  Well, it's they're both wonderful plays on the kids
• 42:32
  slang, of course. Oh, of course.
• 42:34
  Yeah. Wicked sick.
• 42:36
  Wicked sick. Do the children still say sick?
• 42:39
  No, I doubt it. I mean, I was.
• 42:42
  Now see to any younger listeners, when when Joe and I
• 42:46
  were young, if you thought that something was really bad, and by
• 42:50
  bad I of course mean good, you would sometimes describe it as
• 42:53
  being sick. So you see what what is the mass
• 42:56
  is doing here? Quite ironically, students, is
• 42:59
  he suggesting that the building is both sick insofar as being
• 43:03
  problematic and troubled, but also please, please, I can see
• 43:06
  some of you are ahead of me. He's also suggesting that it's
• 43:09
  really bad. You see what he did there?
• 43:11
  If you could turn your exercise books to page 43.
• 43:14
  Sir, Sir, could I have that again, please?
• 43:18
  Thank you for that. Slang 101 Michael.
• 43:22
  This could become an item. We could get a Jingle for a
• 43:24
  minute. What I will say about the
• 43:25
  characterization of the Doctor is I think it's indicative of
• 43:29
  the first third of the book, which whilst being written by
• 43:33
  Paul Mars and has lovely prose, actually felt to me very NSA,
• 43:39
  not box standard NSA. But just like they land, there's
• 43:41
  danger. They go through the forest, they
• 43:43
  find the house. And actually, I feel as if Paul
• 43:46
  Mars truly stepped into the book when the doctors thrown
• 43:50
  underground. And then we meet Brenda and
• 43:52
  Toaster and suddenly these crazy characters are being introduced.
• 43:56
  And from that point on, it's game on for the rest of the
• 43:59
  book. Yeah, there's always a part of
• 44:01
  view that wonders if he's on his best behaviour until the until
• 44:05
  the corporate readers have got far enough into Santa.
• 44:07
  By themselves. They read, they read the 1st 50
• 44:10
  pages and went, all right, yeah, let's do it.
• 44:14
  But there's a there's a bit where Tierman accuses the Doctor
• 44:20
  of not losing anything in his life, and he's described as
• 44:23
  having a lethal pause afterwards.
• 44:26
  You can actually see tenant's face, can't you?
• 44:29
  You know, with eyes that are going to murder him.
• 44:31
  So there was some lovely bits with the Doctor later on, and
• 44:34
  his relationship with the machines in this is a delight.
• 44:39
  Oh yeah, absolutely. He, he, he, he, I think he also
• 44:45
  remembers all the way through the the Doctor is a hero
• 44:47
  character for children, so he gets wonderful bits.
• 44:51
  Like the Doctor needs breakfast from a vending machine and ends
• 44:54
  up having crisps and pop for his breakfast.
• 44:56
  You know, just just like just like a high schooler at the
• 44:59
  vending machine with £2 in their pocket, Right?
• 45:01
  It's, it's. Lucky.
• 45:02
  I mean, we'll come to it later, but how the pop is, we're
• 45:05
  constantly reminded of it throughout the book and then
• 45:08
  it's vital to the climax I thought was great.
• 45:11
  So, Paul Ross. Chekhov's Panda Pop.
• 45:14
  That's right. An enormous burp.
• 45:17
  OK, well then why don't you tell everybody that may not have read
• 45:20
  Sick Building what the terrifying threat of this book
• 45:25
  is? Well, ostensibly, the terrifying
• 45:29
  threat of this book is the voracious crawl that.
• 45:33
  Sounds great. That's a proper Roald Dahl name,
• 45:36
  isn't it? Oh, it's wonderful.
• 45:39
  Although I'm not sure the fella who did the front cover got the
• 45:42
  no. It's described as having no
• 45:44
  teeth and it's clearly got a lot of teeth on the cover.
• 45:47
  Yes, but that side is a lovely cover.
• 45:50
  Oh, it's great. Yeah.
• 45:51
  You know, Photoshop had only come so far in 2007.
• 45:56
  The Voracious got imagine one of the sandworms from Dune, but
• 45:59
  more so big enough to devour entire planet.
• 46:04
  I think it's described as having a math the size of whales.
• 46:07
  That bit me die, especially when I knew I was going to be talking
• 46:11
  to you. Well, Wales's proudest legacy to
• 46:15
  the world is being the international metric for how
• 46:19
  very big big things are. How big is Wales?
• 46:23
  Oh, it's the size of Wales. Do you want, do you want to hear
• 46:26
  a description? You're ready.
• 46:27
  It was the size of a vast spacecraft.
• 46:30
  It was hovering low over the valley, a pale putrid green grey
• 46:34
  colour, and it's mouth was big enough to swallow a town centre
• 46:38
  in one go. I mean, talk about bringing it
• 46:40
  down to something kids can understand.
• 46:42
  Oh, and that's the sort of thing that kids just love.
• 46:45
  That sort of huge, bold imagery. I remember, you know, when you
• 46:52
  read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the first time.
• 46:54
  And ideally, you should read that when you're about 12,
• 46:58
  because it's all of that imagery about we've got a factory that
• 47:01
  builds planets, that maximalist sensibility that kids have and
• 47:06
  understand is just cool because you need to be putting ideas in
• 47:10
  the heads, You need to be putting images.
• 47:12
  Because you know, when when you're 12, you're my imagination
• 47:17
  is limitless. You can picture this stuff and
• 47:19
  it runs off at 100 million ways all miles.
• 47:22
  One of the reasons he's perfect for this Frenchness, the
• 47:23
  children's author as well, is because he's so generous with
• 47:25
  ideas. He's doing this story.
• 47:27
  He's going think of that. Think of that.
• 47:29
  God, imagine that. Where are you going to go with
• 47:30
  that? It's that thing about Velvet
• 47:32
  undergrad, you know, the famous quote about 12 people listen to
• 47:34
  them and they all started a band.
• 47:36
  There's a little bit of that. I bet every kid who read sick
• 47:38
  building, had notebooks, had stories, had pictures, had
• 47:42
  images, had running around the playground, had telling their
• 47:44
  mates about, Oh my God. And there's there's there's
• 47:46
  there's this worm that can eat whole planets and it's coming
• 47:52
  for them and the Doctor and Martha lands because they have
• 47:55
  to rescue the one family who are on this planet before the worm.
• 47:59
  So vivid, isn't it? Oh, it's what and what?
• 48:02
  And that's that's like page one, but this is where the story
• 48:05
  begins. The The crawl apparently turns
• 48:09
  all animal and vegetable life into the nastiest smoothie in
• 48:13
  the universe. Oh.
• 48:15
  It's it's great, isn't. It so it effectively eats entire
• 48:19
  wells, doesn't it? Not whole.
• 48:20
  It just travels around the surface turning it everything
• 48:24
  into mulch, including houses and people and animals and
• 48:28
  everything, and swallows it down whole and.
• 48:33
  If one of these ends up on your planet, the only thing you can
• 48:36
  do is evacuate. And so there's A and.
• 48:38
  Then getting a spaceship and leave a.
• 48:40
  Ticking time bomb though, isn't it?
• 48:41
  From the first page it's like it's coming.
• 48:45
  Yeah, yeah. This is one of those.
• 48:46
  This is one of those stories where it's a very ostensible
• 48:51
  threat that it is. This is the thing that's going
• 48:54
  to come and end everything, and it's coming towards you, burning
• 48:56
  towards you, burning towards you.
• 48:57
  But the actual narrative then becomes the threats that we pose
• 49:01
  to each other in being unable to escape from this very escapable
• 49:05
  threat. I remember when I it was very
• 49:10
  young when I realized I was shown like a book of astronomy
• 49:14
  and I realized that the Earth was so small compared to the
• 49:19
  rest of the universe, right? And my tiny mind was blown
• 49:23
  because, you know, I thought my street was the whole universe.
• 49:26
  So to learn that that was this tiny little pink prick in the
• 49:29
  whole of the universe. And I think he really leans into
• 49:33
  that the idea, you know, of the the, the CRO is such a massive
• 49:37
  threat. And I think that's the sort of
• 49:38
  thing kids love, right? Yeah, yeah.
• 49:41
  Yeah, absolutely. It's.
• 49:43
  So big you can barely conceive it.
• 49:47
  Yeah, it it's, it's wonderful. But then he contrasts that with
• 49:52
  a literally domestic setting. So.
• 49:55
  Which is very new series. Which is very new series, which
• 49:59
  is where the majority of this book takes place, is in one
• 50:01
  house, the one house on this planet inhabited by one family.
• 50:05
  And all the Doctor needs to do is to get them to leave, which
• 50:10
  itself has has, you know, quite interesting echoes of Russell D
• 50:13
  Davis's original ideas for the the final 10th Doctor story,
• 50:15
  which is that it would be about him just trying to save one
• 50:17
  family on a spaceship. Yeah, so it's a huge.
• 50:20
  It's huge threat but the Doctor's aim is quite small, so
• 50:25
  this family of the Tiermans. To quote that woman you know who
• 50:28
  you broke with, your view of her book all is not as it seems.
• 50:34
  Oh no, indeed we have the Tiermans, Mummy daddy and little
• 50:41
  boy Tierman who have been living on this planet for 15 years.
• 50:46
  The dad is a is a genius inventor.
• 50:48
  But who fell out with the the universe and so took his family
• 50:54
  away, bought this planet and built it, built a dream home for
• 50:58
  them where they could be happy forever away from everyone.
• 51:00
  But of course the problem with wherever you go, you go with
• 51:04
  you. And in this very domestic
• 51:07
  setting, the real threat of the book, as I think we find, is
• 51:16
  familial inability to get on with one another.
• 51:20
  I mean, I was going to say in a book full of threats, the
• 51:22
  biggest threat in this book is Ernest Tierman.
• 51:25
  Is Ernest Tierman, who is an overbearing patriarch.
• 51:29
  Who is who? The reason he has created this
• 51:33
  home is because he needs to control the world around him
• 51:36
  because he's that big of an egotist.
• 51:39
  His His wife is, His wife is constantly just trying to keep
• 51:47
  him happy. His son is at his command.
• 51:53
  Essentially because he's been brought up by this, he cannot,
• 51:55
  he cannot turn against his father, although across the the
• 51:57
  book we begin to see him question that to his father.
• 52:02
  So again, he's doing that thing that you said, Paul Miles of
• 52:04
  contrasting the fantastic and the science fiction of the huge
• 52:09
  with quite dark domestic. Very dark in places.
• 52:16
  I mean that that, you know, that old thing of you find somebody,
• 52:19
  you fall in love with them and then you want to change them.
• 52:23
  Well, Ernest Tierman literally did that with his wife.
• 52:27
  And and I think from the start you get a sense that she's not
• 52:31
  quite what she seems, right. She's got a robot eating for her
• 52:36
  and things like this. And so things are going off in
• 52:38
  your head. He, you know, he's the greatest
• 52:40
  robotist. How would you describe him?
• 52:43
  Robotic scientist. Roboticist.
• 52:46
  Roboticist. Thank you very much in the
• 52:48
  Galaxy. So I was like, oh, my word.
• 52:51
  OK, so she's a robot. Something terrible has happened.
• 52:53
  It's like that TNG episode The Survivors, and he's replaced her
• 52:56
  with a robot. No, no, no, no.
• 52:58
  It's a lot darker than that when we get there.
• 53:02
  Yeah, she's still there. Parts of her are robotic.
• 53:07
  Yeah, it's. It's he's it.
• 53:11
  It is it is really dark. He is a villain, and yet he's a
• 53:14
  villain on a very domestic, and I hate to say it, recognizable
• 53:20
  way of the the way in which people do dominate each other,
• 53:23
  the way in which people do do set the limits on other people's
• 53:27
  realities and abilities. This is not a happy domestic
• 53:29
  life. Here when when I was on street
• 53:34
  and we were talking about the wild blue Yonder and there we
• 53:36
  touched on that Freudian idea in horror of of the uncanny.
• 53:42
  In Germany it's the unheindlich, which translates literally as
• 53:44
  the unhomely. It's not a phrase that really
• 53:47
  works in English, but what is meant by that is the idea that
• 53:51
  it is the homely changed, the idea that things that we find
• 53:57
  very unsettling are things that are almost but not quite
• 54:00
  recognizable. So Uncanny Valley is another
• 54:02
  example of that in robotics. But that if we have the domestic
• 54:06
  disturbed that we are frightened by that because it sits at the
• 54:11
  interchange between the knowable and the unknowable to us.
• 54:14
  Why? Why is your own home so
• 54:17
  terrifying at night? Because it's a little bit
• 54:22
  different, because everything you know and you take for
• 54:25
  granted is not quite what it normally is.
• 54:28
  And that is fairly explicitly the centre of the whole of the
• 54:32
  whole of the book here. So we have the family turned
• 54:37
  into a a trap essentially for for everyone in it.
• 54:40
  And it's turning to use this, this, this, this group that
• 54:44
  should be built around love and shared affection into a means of
• 54:47
  control. But also literally the house
• 54:51
  itself is terrifying. So mentioned earlier on the Paul
• 54:56
  Miles is incredibly well read and draws on so many different
• 55:03
  influences in his book. And this is very much tapping
• 55:05
  into that really, really, really rich scene of literature, of
• 55:12
  cinema, of plays, of art, of the home turns bad, right, All the
• 55:17
  way, everything from, I mean, so we discover that the house is
• 55:22
  being run by a computer who was turned against Furnace Tierman
• 55:27
  because because he's is abusive towards the computer as he is
• 55:31
  towards everybody else. So there's a little bit of, you
• 55:33
  know, demon seed in there with your smart home is going to come
• 55:36
  and get you. That itself probably owes quite
• 55:38
  a bit. It's 2001, a Space Odyssey.
• 55:40
  But even though it's, you know, it's all the haunted houses, you
• 55:43
  can begin to see echoes of things like everything from,
• 55:46
  say, I don't know, The Shining and Sunset Blvd.
• 55:50
  All the way through to things like Beauty and the Beast, with
• 55:54
  all of the appliances and all of the trappings of the home come
• 56:00
  alive. And it's a wonderful melange of
• 56:04
  all of these things, of this idea that you know, if you said
• 56:08
  relating it back to what the kids know, what can we know more
• 56:11
  than home? Your home here now is the
• 56:13
  setting for this entire adventure.
• 56:14
  Literally. We've come out the other side of
• 56:16
  the TV screen by having adventure in your house, kids.
• 56:19
  The fridge is alive. The tanning bed is alive.
• 56:23
  There's, there's even the Butler robot is called Steer Pike,
• 56:27
  which makes me think of Mervin Peak or Steer Peak.
• 56:30
  He's described, like Eddie Butler, as being a bit sniffy
• 56:33
  doesn't. He.
• 56:33
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 56:34
  He looks down on the tanning robot, You know.
• 56:36
  Oh, you. But even then, it's all a bit
• 56:39
  you know, it's a name. It's all a bit Gorman Ghast.
• 56:41
  And you've got all of that as well, because we also discovered
• 56:44
  this house, as the original title implies, is a bungalow.
• 56:46
  It's just one layer above one floor above ground, but then
• 56:50
  there's about 41 floors below the ground.
• 56:52
  It's a brilliant description of it as being like a rotting tooth
• 56:54
  set into the. Plant Quote Here you ready?
• 56:56
  The strange, sophisticated house being like a giant tooth, with
• 57:00
  its root reaching deep underground where the rot sets
• 57:03
  in. And that's evocative because
• 57:06
  there's only three people who live in this house.
• 57:07
  And again, Sunset Blvd. Beauty and the Beast.
• 57:11
  Wuthering Heights, A a Citizen Kane, a classic image that we
• 57:17
  that we have and we understand which is of people in a home
• 57:22
  that is too big for them and how alienating that is and how alone
• 57:25
  that is, How strange that is. We have this space that is built
• 57:29
  for people and no one is in it and why and what can be
• 57:31
  happening there. It makes it makes the homely
• 57:34
  seem lonely. This family seem very lonely.
• 57:38
  They don't. They don't seem alone because of
• 57:40
  the tundra and the forests that spread off through the valleys
• 57:45
  beyond that house, because we're told that's full of life.
• 57:47
  It's because they've built. Beautiful, evocative as well,
• 57:49
  but we'll get there. Yeah, they've built these walls
• 57:52
  around themselves and they're the only people in it and they
• 57:55
  don't. They've created robot friends
• 57:57
  and they don't even like most of them because most of them are
• 57:59
  thrown into the basement. The the, the real threat is the
• 58:04
  one that is inside the walls, not outside it.
• 58:06
  It's wonderfully evocative stuff.
• 58:08
  I loved how Martha stepped into the dream home and was thrilled
• 58:14
  by the luxury. She's got this beautiful room
• 58:17
  and a bath that talks to her and says do you want to top up?
• 58:19
  You know, I'll I'll make it hotter, I'll make it colder if
• 58:22
  you like, and a drinks cabinet that comes over and caters to
• 58:24
  every whim. And then by the 2nd morning, the
• 58:28
  perfection of the dream home is irritating her already.
• 58:33
  Yeah, that it's, it's two steps away from launching it to be our
• 58:37
  guest at the very start. Why not?
• 58:43
  Yeah, but she says it because says it's like something out of
• 58:46
  the 1950s, Martha said. Like what people always thought
• 58:49
  the future was going to look like.
• 58:51
  I think she explicitly compares it to Lost in Space as well that
• 58:54
  that whole retrofuturist idea of a future from from the past.
• 58:59
  That's a perfect way to all those sources that you brought
• 59:03
  in there, you know, to to the influences for this.
• 59:07
  It's a perfect demonstration of the two levels This is working
• 59:10
  on, isn't it? Yeah.
• 59:12
  As an adult you've read a lot of books and you can see all the
• 59:15
  influences and how exciting that he's throwing it all in into
• 59:18
  this, you know, big wash up of a book.
• 59:21
  But for a kid, it's like, my God, it's a killer house.
• 59:24
  And that's all you need, you know?
• 59:26
  Yeah, because one of at no point does it just feel like a
• 59:29
  collection of references. These have been synthesized.
• 59:32
  These have gone through Paul Ma's head and come out into a
• 59:33
  coherent vision, which is Which is wonderful.
• 59:35
  This isn't JJ Abrams, you know, there's that terrible bit.
• 59:40
  I don't ever seen this in the the art of or the making of
• 59:43
  books for two of the Star Wars films.
• 59:45
  And for The Last Jedi, there was a quote from Rian Johnson.
• 59:50
  Rian Johnson, who'd been asked why?
• 59:52
  Why does Snokes, Why does Snoke's throne room look the way
• 59:55
  it does in that film? And he said, he said, oh, well,
• 59:58
  because we wanted it to be operatic.
• 1:00:00
  We wanted it to be huge. He's a, he's a diminutive
• 1:00:02
  figure, so his environment should be loud and impressive.
• 1:00:05
  I also wanted to evoke things like the Wizard of Oz with the
• 1:00:07
  idea of things being hidden behind curtains and they're not
• 1:00:10
  seeing everything you could. And then there's a quote from JJ
• 1:00:12
  Abrams with The Rise of Skywalker, and they say, why
• 1:00:14
  does Kylo Ren's throne room look the way it does?
• 1:00:17
  JJ Abrams says. Because that's what it looked
• 1:00:20
  like in 2001 Space Odyssey, and it looked really cool.
• 1:00:25
  The difference between someone who's still thinking about
• 1:00:27
  things and someone who's sold out.
• 1:00:30
  So or someone who is just dealing in service and reference
• 1:00:33
  and so although I think you can see and explore and speculate
• 1:00:36
  all of these these influences with Paul Mars he is he's using
• 1:00:43
  they are fuel for a new narrative a new story that's
• 1:00:46
  building on them. It's never just oh, and here's
• 1:00:49
  here's a robot that's a bit like the one in Wallace and Gromit.
• 1:00:52
  So what it means is as well, is in the style of tearing sticks
• 1:00:56
  in the style of Terry Nation. There's a danger around every
• 1:01:02
  corner. You barely go another page
• 1:01:04
  without something else popping up.
• 1:01:05
  There's wild animals that are trying to get in that are
• 1:01:08
  frightened and desperate and hungry and they're going to eat
• 1:01:11
  you. There's a wall of fire around
• 1:01:13
  the bloody building that's going to roast you alive, you know.
• 1:01:17
  All the robots inside the building are trying to kill you.
• 1:01:20
  You know the lying hoovers are coming at you, trying to pick
• 1:01:23
  you up and throw you in the in the the dust room, which is
• 1:01:27
  described as this enormous mountain of dust that will yeah,
• 1:01:30
  you won't be able to breathe in there.
• 1:01:31
  You're dead in seconds. There's lit wherever you turn,
• 1:01:34
  there's dangerous. So I don't think there's any
• 1:01:36
  chance to get bored in this book.
• 1:01:38
  Oh no, it is. It is absolutely full of
• 1:01:41
  incident. The whole way, the whole way
• 1:01:43
  through. There's a there's a brilliant
• 1:01:46
  quote as well to the Doctor being trying to find the exact
• 1:01:49
  quote, but the Doctor he gets thrown into a cellar, which he
• 1:01:53
  describes as something being like your junk room at the
• 1:01:56
  centre of the world. And that is such a fantastic
• 1:02:00
  quote that the the, the contrast of the incredibly domestic and
• 1:02:03
  yet the the fantastic scale this is operating on.
• 1:02:06
  There's a There's another quote from the Doctor Who you know is
• 1:02:11
  a bit ramshackle or messy. So he absolutely loathes this
• 1:02:15
  House of perfection. He calls it a temple of
• 1:02:19
  soporific charms and chock, a block full of minimalism, which
• 1:02:24
  to him is just horrific. Yeah.
• 1:02:26
  But again, that was making me think like, it's a bit like, I
• 1:02:29
  think the general impression you get for this of this house is
• 1:02:32
  it's a bit Frank Lloyd Wright, you know, but it's beautiful and
• 1:02:36
  it's architectural and aesthetically interesting.
• 1:02:39
  And yet the other thing that you also find out about Frank Lloyd
• 1:02:42
  Wright homes is that they're impossible to live in.
• 1:02:44
  It's just that was designed around aesthetics, that all
• 1:02:47
  designed around show. If a handle breaks off the draw,
• 1:02:50
  you have to get that the handle specifically made that goes back
• 1:02:53
  on it. You can't just pop down the
• 1:02:54
  shops. And there is that idea here as
• 1:02:56
  well of the domestic can be hostile.
• 1:02:59
  We've all been in people whose houses are beautiful and
• 1:03:02
  beautifully designed and laid out.
• 1:03:04
  But you think you know you can't just leave a pack of crisps on
• 1:03:06
  the side because you've spoiled the whole thing.
• 1:03:08
  It's a hostile environment. In a way, it's sort of like what
• 1:03:13
  happens over time in Paradise Towers just happening in real
• 1:03:17
  time in this book, isn't it? It's beautiful Shining palace go
• 1:03:21
  into rack and ruin in 230 pages. Oh, there's a yeah.
• 1:03:26
  And there's a fantastic bit in the Dengue Mall where they've
• 1:03:28
  managed to you know, I hear they managed to get back to the
• 1:03:30
  TARDIS and in the great tradition they have to go back
• 1:03:32
  to try and you know, give Ernest an opportunity to to to survive
• 1:03:36
  and come with them and lands, lands back in the lands, back in
• 1:03:43
  the home. And the line is something like a
• 1:03:45
  lot had happened in the time they've been away, a lot had
• 1:03:49
  happened to the house in the time they've been away.
• 1:03:51
  Most have been violent, something like that.
• 1:03:53
  And it's anymore plays out in the wreckage of this home.
• 1:03:56
  And I do want to talk about the violence, because this, this
• 1:03:59
  isn't just sort of domestically dark, it's actually viscerally
• 1:04:02
  quite dark in places as well, especially towards, again,
• 1:04:05
  there's a lot of blood talked about, which is unusual for a
• 1:04:09
  new series of adventures. And actually thinking about it,
• 1:04:12
  it's unusual for a Paul Miles book.
• 1:04:15
  I can't think of scenes as viscerally violent as some of
• 1:04:20
  the ones at the end of this book.
• 1:04:21
  In any of his, he usually goes for fantasy violence.
• 1:04:24
  By the end of this, it's a fight for survival and people blood is
• 1:04:30
  running down their faces. They're in tatters.
• 1:04:32
  People are described as being burnt to a crisp like it.
• 1:04:36
  It's brutal in places. I was quite surprised.
• 1:04:39
  I I was as well. I mean there's a scene where the
• 1:04:42
  mother Amanda Tierman, who who as you say she's the initially
• 1:04:47
  presented as being a sort of quote UN quote trophy wife but
• 1:04:51
  you serious Actually something a bit more Stepford wives going on
• 1:04:54
  here that he has he has improved his wife as well and that she
• 1:04:59
  has all of these Cyborg implants and stuff to make her into the
• 1:05:03
  perfect wife and and she gets killed in the process of it.
• 1:05:07
  But then the supercomputer that's running the whole house
• 1:05:10
  resurrect her corpse, and it's it's explicitly said that she's
• 1:05:14
  not back from the dead. The robot bits of her are moving
• 1:05:18
  her body and the bits of her that are still human.
• 1:05:20
  I think I mean brutally horrific.
• 1:05:24
  I mean fantastic image. When Tearman finally gets his
• 1:05:28
  just desserts at the end of the book, this is how it's
• 1:05:30
  described. OK, Ernest.
• 1:05:32
  Tearman's charred and smouldering form fell away from
• 1:05:35
  his opponents and clattered to the ground, Thunk it lay
• 1:05:39
  untwitching, unbreathing, utterly dead and smoking.
• 1:05:48
  As as with the description of Amanda, no, no escape from what
• 1:05:52
  is what he is describing here, There's no oh the adults can
• 1:05:56
  read into this. It is.
• 1:05:58
  Here's another one, bloody, embattered, earnestly close to
• 1:06:01
  the screen. The screen shattered and blew
• 1:06:03
  apart, sending the old man spinning backwards across the
• 1:06:06
  burning rubble. He was cut, and the blood flowed
• 1:06:09
  flowed freely from his face. It's not the sort of scenes you
• 1:06:13
  normally get in an essay. No, But then kids love this
• 1:06:16
  stuff. Yeah, you you read Charlie
• 1:06:20
  Hickson books, You read Anthony Horowitz books.
• 1:06:22
  I remember reading the Diamond Brothers books by Anthony
• 1:06:25
  Horowitz, now somewhat overshadowed by his more
• 1:06:27
  successful acts, writer stuff. But I love them back in the 90s.
• 1:06:30
  And the scenes in that of, there's a there's a scene in one
• 1:06:33
  of those books where the villain is literally impaled on a fence,
• 1:06:38
  having had acid thrown in his face.
• 1:06:40
  If I was 12, I would have been all over that shit.
• 1:06:42
  Oh, I thought it was amazing. I thought it was fantastic.
• 1:06:45
  Imagine a 12 year old reading this guy.
• 1:06:47
  Oh yes, Reanimated the zombie courts of Mrs. Tierman.
• 1:06:52
  Wonderful. Yeah.
• 1:06:54
  But you know, some of that is also, I guess, the limiters that
• 1:06:58
  are put on the child's imagination.
• 1:06:59
  You know, hopefully children haven't actually seen as many
• 1:07:01
  horror films as you and I have seen.
• 1:07:03
  So you can describe the horrific with them.
• 1:07:06
  You're not actually seeing it. You wouldn't be able to put any
• 1:07:07
  of this on TV because you'd actually have to show kids what
• 1:07:09
  it looked like. But you with kids, it's almost,
• 1:07:12
  I think, more a kind of sensory experience.
• 1:07:15
  It's more sort of oh, imagine that.
• 1:07:17
  Reading about blood and seeing the red of blood on the screen
• 1:07:20
  as two very different things. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:07:24
  I still record a little bit, though, and I'm an asshole.
• 1:07:29
  Yeah, And you know, we all went, we all went through this.
• 1:07:31
  I'm sure, you know, child psychologists can probably tell
• 1:07:33
  us all how we managed to get through that and didn't end up
• 1:07:36
  being violent nutters. Maybe it's a part of just being
• 1:07:39
  an age where you're beginning to understand that these things
• 1:07:41
  happen. You're, you know, you're
• 1:07:43
  beginning to appreciate the the death and the death and injury
• 1:07:45
  of things, and they're sort of novel, but you don't understand
• 1:07:48
  the the the depth of what that actually means at this stage
• 1:07:51
  yet. What I found so shocking was,
• 1:07:54
  but in a lot of these books there are child characters that
• 1:07:57
  NSA is like doing the Steven Moffat thing, putting in a child
• 1:08:00
  character as an avatar so we can see it through their eyes, OK?
• 1:08:03
  And that that brings in a sort of family feel.
• 1:08:06
  This poor kid Solin, who watches his mother die and his father
• 1:08:11
  not really care about them at all and horrific things happen
• 1:08:15
  to him. That's not like the other NS as
• 1:08:18
  either. A lot of the kid characters go
• 1:08:19
  on jolly adventures, you know and at the end, you know, oh
• 1:08:22
  hurrah, I've had a pirate adventure.
• 1:08:23
  What a great time. I'll I'll do worry about the
• 1:08:26
  therapy bill for Solon at the end of this book after watching
• 1:08:29
  both of his parents die horribly.
• 1:08:32
  Is there an emotional abuse reading in this book?
• 1:08:38
  I think, I think you could definitely read it in that way.
• 1:08:40
  I I think he Ernest Steamer. I think if you were a child you
• 1:08:45
  might read him as a sort of mad inventor and a sort of cruel mad
• 1:08:48
  inventor stereotype and Oh my dad's a mad inventor type type
• 1:08:51
  thing. A bit goosebumps.
• 1:08:54
  But I think reading it as an adult, I think there's
• 1:08:55
  definitely a reading where you would view a lot of what's going
• 1:08:58
  on in here as through the lens of science fiction fantasy of
• 1:09:02
  being about emotional control. And I I think that reads to me
• 1:09:07
  as being very deliberate and I think telling that story within
• 1:09:11
  an explicitly domestic setting is not an accident.
• 1:09:14
  I think like the best Disney movies, like the best Pixar
• 1:09:17
  movies, things like that. You know, sometimes you can find
• 1:09:20
  very dark readings in those movies, but it would totally
• 1:09:24
  wash over the kids. I mean, there's a quote here.
• 1:09:26
  He likes to improve on everything he possibly could.
• 1:09:28
  Nature wasn't good enough for old Tim, and so that's what he
• 1:09:31
  did with his wife. He made her better.
• 1:09:35
  I've known men with with that sort of thinking, not not with
• 1:09:41
  robotics, I I would add. Because that thing of of of
• 1:09:45
  force, of personality of of vision and ability is something
• 1:09:52
  that it is often depicted within fiction as being virtues and of
• 1:10:01
  being strengths. And you know you can take it to
• 1:10:03
  extreme. You can talk about people like
• 1:10:05
  you know writers like aim Rand a bit of an exception that you
• 1:10:08
  know that we need these these supermen, these meta vision and
• 1:10:11
  they always are men who are going to lead us and elevate us.
• 1:10:15
  And it's it's you know the great men reading of history and all
• 1:10:18
  the rest of it. But I think there's a fantastic
• 1:10:21
  tradition within British science fiction fancy especially the
• 1:10:24
  20th century, you know empire in decline and all the rest of it
• 1:10:27
  of being skeptical of these futures and being skeptical of
• 1:10:29
  these promises of of self-proclaimed great men and
• 1:10:36
  seeing the darkness in in that and seeing the problems in that.
• 1:10:40
  And you know the idea of, you know, Ursulin is described I
• 1:10:43
  think as being an inventor and that is itself quite feels like
• 1:10:49
  quite a a dated idea or it's a childish idea of what someone
• 1:10:52
  is. So if you're going to explore
• 1:10:53
  that you need to go beyond that. If you're going to be this as an
• 1:10:55
  adult, you need to go beyond that idea.
• 1:10:57
  And the idea is to be inventing the perfect family.
• 1:11:00
  Yeah, but that's but that's very.
• 1:11:02
  Popular stuff. Yeah.
• 1:11:03
  And and Solon is is touched on him.
• 1:11:05
  You know, he's presented as being a child character, but I
• 1:11:07
  think he's meant to be 15. And that feels again like a very
• 1:11:10
  deliberate choice of someone being on the cusp of, you know,
• 1:11:14
  moving into, you know, away from sort of early teens into later
• 1:11:18
  teens on that path, onwards into adulthood or beginning to
• 1:11:21
  understand your parents and see their parents, which is
• 1:11:23
  interesting. The current idea in some of the
• 1:11:24
  books you've talked about it's it's there in different forms in
• 1:11:26
  father time and time and relative as well.
• 1:11:29
  This idea of of children becoming adults and realizing
• 1:11:35
  things. And you know, that's that's
• 1:11:37
  there in children's literature, a lot of children's literature.
• 1:11:39
  It's very, it's very important in the theme that we return to
• 1:11:42
  because it's one of the major things that happens in our lives
• 1:11:44
  and that the audience will will understand and want to go
• 1:11:47
  through My Neighbor Totoro to pick up another random example.
• 1:11:52
  There's a There's a very awkward moment in the book where that is
• 1:11:56
  expressed, where he effectively comes on to Martha, this 15 year
• 1:12:01
  old boy, quite strong, you know, and she's absolutely and he's
• 1:12:05
  just got no clue of social cues whatsoever, does he?
• 1:12:09
  Because he's been isolated in his house his entire life.
• 1:12:12
  He's never been around people. He's only ever been about around
• 1:12:14
  robots. With and and a father who has
• 1:12:17
  taught him the way to interact the world is to sort of semi
• 1:12:20
  impose your will upon it. And, you know, I don't think for
• 1:12:23
  a moment that means Sony's going to do anything nefarious towards
• 1:12:26
  Martha, but I think there's definitely an element of like,
• 1:12:28
  well, I should just tell you that I, I really like you And
• 1:12:30
  then that'll that'll be the beginning of things, won't it?
• 1:12:33
  And that's that's quite a subtle drawn point.
• 1:12:36
  Risingly ugly, this book. And I don't mean that in a
• 1:12:39
  negative way. No, in an interesting way.
• 1:12:42
  In a way, these books rarely are.
• 1:12:45
  Joe, yes, you could say it is sick.
• 1:12:51
  Yes, it is definitely sick. It's a great book.
• 1:12:54
  Well, what about? OK, let's let's sort of push
• 1:12:57
  away from domestic abuse to towards fabulous religious icons
• 1:13:04
  at the heart of the dream house and of course, gloriously
• 1:13:09
  eccentric robot characters redeemed throughout the book.
• 1:13:14
  What do you want to start with first?
• 1:13:17
  Well, should we start with the supercomputer?
• 1:13:20
  How do you pronounce it? Is it Dom Avoi?
• 1:13:23
  I think it's apologies to anyone who knows better than us.
• 1:13:27
  I think it's Domovo. There will be a correct
• 1:13:29
  pronunciation. Because I I looked into this, it
• 1:13:32
  sounded like something that was from somewhere, if you know.
• 1:13:35
  I mean, it didn't say it didn't read.
• 1:13:36
  Like it was wasn't. It it was actually.
• 1:13:39
  I wondered if it was a play on Welsh and Domovo and stuff, but
• 1:13:45
  no, it turns out it's actually it's from it's Slavic religious
• 1:13:49
  tradition. Wikipedia informs me Dommavoy,
• 1:13:53
  it was literally the one of the households.
• 1:13:55
  It's the household spirit of a given kin.
• 1:13:58
  And interestingly hear the Dommavoy expressed himself as a
• 1:14:01
  number of other spirits of the household in it's different
• 1:14:04
  functions. So just as the Dommavoy here can
• 1:14:07
  take control of the other robots around the house, because Paul
• 1:14:12
  Miles has got has got form on this sort of thing, hasn't he?
• 1:14:14
  Rather Paul Miles. I mean, it just doesn't feel
• 1:14:17
  like other writers, does it? No, no, that is I I believe the
• 1:14:21
  Crotons is actually from inhibit mythology.
• 1:14:26
  Maybe not executed as well. Yeah.
• 1:14:31
  So this idea of the the intelligence the the the the
• 1:14:34
  household's gold the spirit of the home because and and the
• 1:14:39
  robots. This idea that the the fittings
• 1:14:41
  and the furnishings and the actual home itself have spirits
• 1:14:44
  and you know within the sort of sci-fi trappings of Doctor Who
• 1:14:49
  those are explained as being as being robots and being computers
• 1:14:53
  at the heart of it. But again it's it's it's a much
• 1:14:55
  older idea that somewhere that is inhabited for long enough
• 1:14:58
  that is imbued with meaning by people themselves take on take
• 1:15:02
  on meaning and they have that. So that idea of household
• 1:15:04
  spirits, which you know, reappears, as I understand it
• 1:15:08
  appears in a lot folklore as well.
• 1:15:10
  They did this Guardians of the home and the rest of it, that's
• 1:15:13
  that's a very old idea that we're getting sort of translated
• 1:15:16
  here. And of course you've got the
• 1:15:18
  flip side of that, which is, you know, haunted house.
• 1:15:20
  And there's a lot of haunted house in this, you know,
• 1:15:22
  malevolent spirits. I think it's what the kids would
• 1:15:25
  get from this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:27
  You could see this is the shining for children.
• 1:15:29
  But the idea that this, you know, is it's considered a God,
• 1:15:33
  you know, and the robots of the house Revere the domovoy.
• 1:15:37
  I just thought that was glorious.
• 1:15:38
  And you sort of go down into the inner sanctum and it is like a
• 1:15:41
  temple, isn't it? Yeah, and again, what great is
• 1:15:45
  this for kids that if you kept going down underneath your house
• 1:15:47
  you'd eventually and you know he is completely gloriously willing
• 1:15:51
  to use those trappings of the stone flagged floors and the the
• 1:15:54
  burning braziers it was. Totally Wizard of Oz, right?
• 1:15:58
  Like Return to Oz? Yeah, dark.
• 1:16:00
  There was a lot of dark fantasy in this, which is again very,
• 1:16:04
  very fitting, given by a Doctor Who's heading at the moment.
• 1:16:08
  But it's also reminds me of the thing from Japanese folklore.
• 1:16:11
  And again, apologies for the pronunciation of the Sukumagami,
• 1:16:14
  which is this idea that tools. I think according to some, it's
• 1:16:20
  that any object gains a spirit if it survives for more than 100
• 1:16:24
  years. So that that, that, that could
• 1:16:29
  be anything, you know, I guess it could be a very old umbrella
• 1:16:32
  or a chair or heavy idea that it gets a spirit itself if it has
• 1:16:34
  lived long enough because it's been imbued with that and it
• 1:16:37
  comes alive, you know, Studio Ghibli, we see it a lot there as
• 1:16:43
  Western audiences, you know, I'm sure Japanese audience is much
• 1:16:45
  more familiar with these ideas. And it all feels of a part of
• 1:16:49
  that, you know? It feels like there's a reason
• 1:16:51
  all of these ideas make sense, and it's because they're really
• 1:16:55
  they're they're really old traditions and.
• 1:16:56
  Ideas. Go digging.
• 1:16:57
  It's all there, isn't it? And it's all there, cuz he's
• 1:17:00
  such a smart guy. Do you subscribe to Paul Mars's
• 1:17:03
  YouTube channel, which is just just him talking about books?
• 1:17:08
  He does. He.
• 1:17:09
  Sometimes he does like one a day.
• 1:17:10
  It's wonderful. Yeah, yeah, it's it's glorious.
• 1:17:15
  And he talks about all of this sort of stuff.
• 1:17:17
  The great thing about the Dumber Boy is we've already been
• 1:17:19
  introduced to threats outside the house, which is the animals
• 1:17:22
  and the crawl. We've already been introduced to
• 1:17:25
  threats within the house, which is the robots and Tierman, and
• 1:17:30
  now the house itself is trying to kill us.
• 1:17:32
  And in what would absolutely have been the cliffhanger of
• 1:17:36
  this two-part story, the house goes, it's only logical.
• 1:17:41
  It's only fair. We're just one big happy family
• 1:17:45
  and then locks down the entire house.
• 1:17:48
  Thunk, thunk, every window, every door.
• 1:17:51
  You are trapped inside and I'm going to kill you.
• 1:17:54
  Oh, it's great. Oh, you can see it, can't you?
• 1:17:57
  You know what I mean? This is this is also part from
• 1:18:00
  everything else so incredibly in tune with Doctor Who of this
• 1:18:03
  era. These are so such Russell T
• 1:18:04
  Davis darkly ironic viciousness. Like, well, you know, when I
• 1:18:10
  read the Rose novelization and I realized just how far he wanted
• 1:18:14
  to go with the plastic coming alive and killing people in very
• 1:18:18
  spectacular and dark and creepy ways, boobs exploding and things
• 1:18:22
  like this, you know Mars is just leaning into all of that, isn't
• 1:18:25
  it? Here.
• 1:18:25
  Oh, 100 percent, 100%. But you know, there was also, as
• 1:18:29
  you've sort of maybe implied, there's also a very darkly comic
• 1:18:32
  element to all of this. And we do get some some light as
• 1:18:36
  well in all of this, which is that while Martha's off being a
• 1:18:41
  bit boring, not through any fault of Paul Mars's.
• 1:18:43
  That's just the character. The Doctor does get a couple of
• 1:18:46
  new companions. Oh.
• 1:18:48
  Here we go. Yes, the two best characters in
• 1:18:52
  the book. And they are Barbara and Toaster
• 1:18:57
  and. They are.
• 1:18:58
  Barbara is a vending machine. Barbara is a vending machine who
• 1:19:01
  loves. Dispensing her soggy crisps.
• 1:19:05
  It's been a it's been a long time since a man took an
• 1:19:07
  interest in my comestibles, she told the doctor at one point.
• 1:19:12
  And Toaster, who is a Naca doll Sunbed who Amanda Tim got bored
• 1:19:16
  of, and they've been thrown down in the cellar along with the
• 1:19:19
  doctor. Did you notice?
• 1:19:20
  Sorry I'm taking this to dark places again from the 2nd that
• 1:19:24
  Toaster was introduced. Paul Mars describes bits of
• 1:19:27
  glass rolling around inside of him until he gets to the point
• 1:19:31
  where the domovoy takes over Toaster and he just pulls one of
• 1:19:34
  the bits of glasses out and holds it to someone's throat.
• 1:19:37
  Like, he's really clever at putting in these details like
• 1:19:40
  the pop. Yeah, like like the pops.
• 1:19:43
  And I mean you just with Barbara and Toaster.
• 1:19:46
  The rest of this podcast could just be us reading out bits of
• 1:19:49
  their dialogue because it's glorious.
• 1:19:50
  But if if I'm if I may this is this is just a bit of sense of
• 1:19:53
  what you get from toaster. My prime toaster was waxing
• 1:19:57
  nostalgically. Nobody could tan like me.
• 1:20:00
  I was like flash instant tan. That's you done turn them over.
• 1:20:04
  Flash that size finished easy as grilling sausages.
• 1:20:07
  Brilliant. I was like a supernova.
• 1:20:11
  Tubes gave an over enthusiastic burst of light, almost blinding
• 1:20:13
  the Doctor. Sorry about.
• 1:20:15
  That just one of And later on when those albino bats attack
• 1:20:21
  them, of course it's him flashing, if your pardon the
• 1:20:24
  expression, that saves the day. Oh, it's just, it's just
• 1:20:29
  glorious. The dialogue, the characters,
• 1:20:31
  they're just so it's it's all big as well.
• 1:20:33
  There is a maximalist sensibility to all of this as
• 1:20:36
  well. All of the ideas are huge.
• 1:20:37
  This house is massive. The big worm is a worm that eats
• 1:20:42
  planets. The and the characters the they
• 1:20:45
  aren't. They are big and old and they
• 1:20:49
  just they thump out of the page at you whenever you're reading
• 1:20:51
  them. One, that's very new series to
• 1:20:53
  go big. You know that massive Dalek army
• 1:20:56
  at the end of series one? We can do it now and we're going
• 1:20:58
  to do it because acts like it's. But two is that the worst of
• 1:21:01
  these books are the ones that think like classic TV Doctor Who
• 1:21:05
  and tell these tiny little stories, you know?
• 1:21:08
  Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I think those ones that we
• 1:21:11
  some of those ones that we picked as being our least
• 1:21:13
  favourites. I can almost see the three
• 1:21:16
  cliffhangers in that four part story.
• 1:21:18
  You know that we don't do anymore.
• 1:21:20
  Yeah, you know, sometimes sometimes Doctor Who books have
• 1:21:25
  a fault in which they think that an outside reference is being a
• 1:21:27
  bit Blake 7. Yes, yes, definitely.
• 1:21:33
  Oh, but. We both stopped at the same
• 1:21:37
  time. We'll do an edit.
• 1:21:40
  I promise I'll wait. I'll be looking forward to doing
• 1:21:45
  my toaster voice. It's great, honey.
• 1:21:49
  All those years I spent just giving people some towns and I
• 1:21:52
  could have been a hero. Flash.
• 1:21:57
  He's wonderful. But I think this is what this
• 1:22:00
  is, What Paul masters at his absolute best is.
• 1:22:04
  Take the absurd and and personifies it.
• 1:22:08
  Like by the end of this book I'm emotionally involved with this
• 1:22:12
  vending machine and suntan couch and I think above anyone else.
• 1:22:18
  I want them to get away to what's it called, Satellite 95
• 1:22:21
  or whatever it's called. I just got to say Russell T
• 1:22:24
  Davis name of like of like space station antelope slash night
• 1:22:27
  light. Yeah, I would ask, Desperate for
• 1:22:29
  them to get away. And then at the end, when
• 1:22:31
  Barbara's like, they'll leave me.
• 1:22:32
  You know, I'm cumbersome. I'm old.
• 1:22:35
  I'll only slow you down. I'm like Barbara.
• 1:22:37
  No, come on. Oh, it's great, isn't it?
• 1:22:42
  Oh, it's great stuff. And and and then you know we we
• 1:22:45
  get a bit where we get out into the woods where they're trying
• 1:22:47
  to make it back to the TARDIS. And as you as you said, they're
• 1:22:50
  fighting the bats in the woods and a toaster has to use his,
• 1:22:53
  his, his some back to his phosphorus to scare away.
• 1:22:56
  And there it all gets quite Jim Henson, I think that I was
• 1:22:59
  getting real labyrinth vibes from these what they called
• 1:23:02
  albino bats, babies. That's brilliant as well, it's
• 1:23:06
  just. See them on the strings coming
• 1:23:08
  down, you know? Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic
• 1:23:11
  stuff. It feels like this.
• 1:23:12
  This should have been made in about like 1986.
• 1:23:16
  I I feel like he just, he refuses to let the book slow
• 1:23:19
  down in a second, you know, it just ramps up and up and up and
• 1:23:22
  then the climax is just furious. It's like Waters of Mars.
• 1:23:26
  It's like utopia, you know? Starts off building slow
• 1:23:30
  suspense and then second-half it just runs.
• 1:23:32
  It sprints to the end. It it, it, it, it's brilliant.
• 1:23:36
  And then and then the tell you more itself, as in you know the
• 1:23:41
  best tradition of all these things.
• 1:23:42
  You of course have to eventually have settled the the local, the
• 1:23:47
  local threat, the thing that stopped me getting away.
• 1:23:49
  So the dumb avoidance team is disgusted, dealt with them, but
• 1:23:53
  Oh no, now the crew is here. We've wasted this time, we've
• 1:23:56
  not got away, we don't have time to escape before the worm is
• 1:23:58
  going to eat us all. Whatever can we possibly do?
• 1:24:03
  Well, as Joe said, we've been told about Pop an awful lot
• 1:24:06
  throughout this book. The one.
• 1:24:10
  The Doctor's brilliant plan is that they empty Barbara, all of
• 1:24:15
  her pops, and they drink them all down and they've wired up
• 1:24:19
  the sound system for the house and they do the biggest burps in
• 1:24:24
  the universe. And this is the sort of thing
• 1:24:27
  that I've said this. I know there will be people
• 1:24:28
  listening to this. I see you.
• 1:24:31
  I see you go. That sounds a bit childish,
• 1:24:33
  doesn't it? Well, yes, because this book is
• 1:24:35
  for children and it. Doesn't sound a little like
• 1:24:37
  Aliens of London to you with, you know, Flatulence.
• 1:24:41
  Does it sound to you a bit like Rose with the burping bit?
• 1:24:43
  Does it sound to you a bit like Fury from the Deep by amplifying
• 1:24:48
  a noise and scaring away the monster?
• 1:24:53
  Well, yes, it is. Doctor Who has a fine tradition
• 1:24:56
  of this sort of silly stuff, but also, kids will love it.
• 1:25:01
  It's, it's it's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, right?
• 1:25:05
  I learnt a new word. You know, eructation.
• 1:25:08
  Which I didn't. I didn't know what it meant
• 1:25:10
  until I read it. And the description is The
• 1:25:14
  Doctor laughs manically as the world's most terrifying bird
• 1:25:17
  frightens off the draw. A mighty eructation was ripping
• 1:25:21
  out across the land like the cries of some ancient primeval
• 1:25:25
  beast. Oh, it's brilliant, isn't it?
• 1:25:28
  Because I have to remember that, you know, beyond Doctor Who
• 1:25:32
  fans, you and me, even when this came out, you know, I was, I was
• 1:25:36
  at uni. I think when this came out the
• 1:25:37
  first time I was already too old for it.
• 1:25:39
  Then the the audience, the, the reason these books sold
• 1:25:43
  thousands and thousands and thousands of copies was because
• 1:25:46
  it was kids reading it, right. And I think that is the sort of
• 1:25:53
  thing that kids are going to love because again, it brings it
• 1:25:55
  down to to kids reality and it's funny.
• 1:25:59
  I loved it. Well, you must.
• 1:26:01
  Be a good point, yeah. And I love.
• 1:26:04
  I loved it as well. But you know what I mean?
• 1:26:06
  I can totally People who say, oh, I don't read the new series
• 1:26:09
  of adventures, they're just for kids.
• 1:26:10
  Well, yeah. And you know what?
• 1:26:11
  You're not obviously for kids, Because that doesn't mean as
• 1:26:14
  hopeful made sure through all this discussion.
• 1:26:15
  That doesn't mean talking down to it, because there are shelves
• 1:26:19
  and shelves of books written for kids are not being read in any.
• 1:26:25
  You know, when I'm in a, you know, bad mood, I don't reach
• 1:26:28
  for The Shawshank Redemption off my shelf to watch.
• 1:26:31
  I grabbed Toy Story or Mary Poppins to cheer me up because
• 1:26:35
  it takes me back to the excitement of being a kid.
• 1:26:38
  Isn't that what Doctor Who's about?
• 1:26:40
  Yeah. And it's it's, you know, and
• 1:26:42
  it's and it's it's internally coherent because the reason the
• 1:26:44
  Burps work is because they they amplify it.
• 1:26:48
  And it sounds to the crawl like it's an even bigger crawl.
• 1:26:52
  And it scares it away because as the Doctor explains to Solon,
• 1:26:57
  the one thing bullies don't like is a bigger bully.
• 1:27:00
  And there, my friends, we have a thematic resolution.
• 1:27:06
  Well look, does this book get? Does it get anything wrong?
• 1:27:14
  No. A very succinct answer there.
• 1:27:19
  No, I I, I, I loved it. I mean, I I think, I think the
• 1:27:22
  things that we've we've touched on around, you know, Martha
• 1:27:26
  doesn't. Martha is very thin in this.
• 1:27:28
  But I don't think that's the fault of the book.
• 1:27:32
  And I don't think there's any way there's even a world in
• 1:27:34
  which this was just a solo 10th Doctor book in which he got
• 1:27:37
  Toaster and Barbara, his his companions.
• 1:27:39
  And I think it would have worked just as well.
• 1:27:40
  But you know, you weren't going to be able to do that at this
• 1:27:43
  time. I think unless Martha on TV is
• 1:27:46
  being written by Rusty Davis or Paul Cornell, Martha is very
• 1:27:49
  thin anyway. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:27:52
  So that's not, that's not Paul Mars.
• 1:27:53
  But I don't think I can't think of of a book in which she was
• 1:27:59
  really interesting because there isn't that much to the
• 1:28:01
  character. I mean, I did really like the
• 1:28:03
  story of Martha. Oh, no, fans, Yeah.
• 1:28:06
  No, which, but but again, like you said, that's tying into her
• 1:28:09
  arc and telling a really interesting gap that that we
• 1:28:13
  deliberately didn't see on screen.
• 1:28:16
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I don't know why.
• 1:28:19
  Did you have problems with it? There was one bit at the end
• 1:28:22
  where I was like, it's the way the Doctor casually dismisses
• 1:28:27
  Solon's pain at the end. And he goes, right off you go to
• 1:28:31
  the to the satellite with this vending machine, and off you
• 1:28:34
  have jolly scrapes. And then I thought about it for
• 1:28:37
  a second, and I was like, no, that's exactly what the Doctor
• 1:28:40
  has done. He did something truly terrible,
• 1:28:43
  and then he's tried to push that away by going off and having
• 1:28:46
  jolly adventures. And I think the story is smart
• 1:28:52
  enough to suggest that that is going to catch up with Solon in
• 1:28:57
  exactly the same way that it catches up with the Doctor
• 1:29:00
  eventually. Yeah.
• 1:29:02
  So it's sort of open-ended. When I was reading it, I thought
• 1:29:05
  it was unsatisfying. Then I just thought, no, that's
• 1:29:07
  actually, that is definitely that's the Doctor's story, but
• 1:29:10
  that's exactly how he would behave.
• 1:29:13
  Yeah. And again, as you read this as
• 1:29:14
  an adult, it's you do start to pick up on that dog.
• 1:29:17
  And it is there for Paul Moss, but but not in such a way as to
• 1:29:22
  overburden kids with it. Because yeah, I think kids can
• 1:29:24
  just accept that, that he's had a great big adventure.
• 1:29:27
  Now he's going to go on with his life and the doctor will fly
• 1:29:30
  off. But yeah, it's it's there for,
• 1:29:32
  it's there for adults. And I imagine, you know, the
• 1:29:34
  more discerning kids as well as they get older to pick up on
• 1:29:36
  this. You know, there are, there are
• 1:29:37
  much like the house layers beneath the surface to to what's
• 1:29:41
  going on here. And it is, it's something this
• 1:29:43
  whole era of Doctor Who really wrestled with Series 3, Series 4
• 1:29:46
  and those final specials is the vaingloriousness of the 10th
• 1:29:50
  Doctor, of his, of his ability, but also his callousness.
• 1:29:55
  And you know, you could argue there maybe in that sense
• 1:29:56
  there's some, as you say, some sort of parallels between Ernest
• 1:30:00
  him and the Doctor's behavior. They are big, both powerful men
• 1:30:03
  who come in and do things and bend everything to their will
• 1:30:05
  and change the day and all the people.
• 1:30:07
  Why they? Clash, it's so sweet, you know,
• 1:30:10
  they both want to take control of that situation.
• 1:30:13
  They are. And obviously the Doctor is not,
• 1:30:14
  as you know, directly or deliberately cruel to others as
• 1:30:20
  Ernest Tim. And it's, you know, I don't
• 1:30:21
  think there's necessarily a moral equivalence being drawn,
• 1:30:23
  but there's definite parallels in their behaviour.
• 1:30:26
  And, you know, I think that's what The Waters of Mars was on
• 1:30:32
  TV. Trying to draw attention to
• 1:30:35
  before sending the 10th Doctor off is no, look, behaving like
• 1:30:38
  this has consequences. You can't treat other people
• 1:30:41
  like this. And I think we get hints of that
• 1:30:44
  here. Well, is there anything we
• 1:30:47
  haven't covered then in this book that you'd like to talk
• 1:30:50
  about? Is there a reading of this where
• 1:30:53
  it's just a criticism of mega basements?
• 1:30:57
  Very possibly, yes. I would like to highlight the
• 1:31:02
  first scene of the book because only Paul Mars would think to
• 1:31:05
  open a book from the point of view of a sake tooth tiger and
• 1:31:10
  make that just so vivid. What are brilliant into the
• 1:31:15
  book? I love how I think there's a
• 1:31:17
  description. She could almost taste their
• 1:31:19
  warmth and blood. And then she remembered she was
• 1:31:22
  starving. But immediately, the Doctor,
• 1:31:24
  Martha, the second they step out of that TARDIS, they're in
• 1:31:26
  terrible danger. Yeah, no, it's it's brilliant as
• 1:31:31
  well. And I think, I think it's the
• 1:31:34
  last thing I'd say is, well is this.
• 1:31:37
  There's also just a real wonderful sense of at times
• 1:31:39
  unreality about this. Or rather, it creates its own
• 1:31:41
  reality, its own heightened reality, where all of these
• 1:31:44
  influences and elements all have a sort of internal coherent
• 1:31:47
  meaning. That is, as you said right back
• 1:31:50
  at the start with his writing, it's always delivered through
• 1:31:53
  this lens of quite domestic, quite ironic and quite dark
• 1:32:03
  sensibilities that it almost times reminds me a bit of some
• 1:32:10
  of those old annual stories. You know, the way in which
• 1:32:14
  there's just such a collision of elements and and and and sort of
• 1:32:16
  love of deliberate kitsch. It sort of exists in it's and
• 1:32:22
  it's it's such a underlined. It's such an achievement to have
• 1:32:26
  all of this going on and yet have a plot that is completely
• 1:32:32
  trackable, that is it completely internally coherent, is not
• 1:32:36
  overly complicated, is not saturated, that all of those
• 1:32:41
  rich ingredients come together into such a beautiful, hearty
• 1:32:47
  soup. It's it's brilliant.
• 1:32:50
  Paul Mars is brilliant. And it's an exciting romp as
• 1:32:54
  well. And it is an exciting romp.
• 1:32:56
  Kids will love this. Hopefully did love this one.
• 1:33:00
  I think there's a description like halfway through the Book of
• 1:33:04
  the Forest you say can talk about sort of sense of
• 1:33:07
  unreality. It just captures it so quickly.
• 1:33:10
  With a few words, he goes. It looked sugar frosted and
• 1:33:14
  beautiful in the moonlight. That's all you need, right?
• 1:33:17
  See that whole forest? Yeah, it's glorious.
• 1:33:21
  I think this is a wonderful book for me.
• 1:33:23
  It's the closest Doctor Who has come to how I felt reading Roald
• 1:33:28
  Dahl when I was younger. You know, because Roald Dahl
• 1:33:31
  writes very funny, colourful books where unpleasant things
• 1:33:36
  happen to people, and it's a bit gross as well.
• 1:33:40
  And all of that's going on in in sick building.
• 1:33:42
  I think this is maybe a little bit more sophisticated because I
• 1:33:46
  think Mars is a more sophisticated writer, but to tap
• 1:33:50
  into that and to make me feel that again, like I did when I
• 1:33:53
  was 8 years old, wonderful. Yeah, well, the scene where
• 1:33:58
  Solon and his mother are taken off to the dust chamber by the
• 1:34:01
  robot vacuum cleaners, I mean, that's, you know, that's Faruka
• 1:34:05
  Sultan, that's. Literally, Charlie.
• 1:34:07
  Chocolate Factory. Yeah, that's wonderful.
• 1:34:18
  Well, OK, let's move on then to our recommends this week.
• 1:34:25
  What have you got for me? I am going to keep the ball
• 1:34:29
  rolling and recommend another Paul Moss book.
• 1:34:35
  I mean, I've covered a lot on this.
• 1:34:36
  Find one I haven't. Would be a miracle, but go on.
• 1:34:39
  Well, you know this, this, this, this book, 2007.
• 1:34:41
  I think if you've not read it, you've not read it in a while,
• 1:34:44
  listeners. In case you've made it clear,
• 1:34:45
  you should go back and either read it or reread it now.
• 1:34:48
  However, I think it's quite fair to say a lot of people that have
• 1:34:50
  read this one at at some point. So I want to give something bang
• 1:34:53
  up today that people may not have read and that is Dead on
• 1:34:57
  Arrival and Other Stories by Paul Mars came out a year or two
• 1:35:02
  ago. Direct Audio and It is a
• 1:35:06
  collection of three short stories that Paul Mars has
• 1:35:09
  adapted from comic strips in the Old World Distributors animal
• 1:35:15
  Annuals. Wow, I've never heard of it.
• 1:35:19
  No, it it completely flown under the radar.
• 1:35:21
  I listened to it about a month or so ago and it is great fun.
• 1:35:25
  So the title one Dead on Arrival, is from one of the
• 1:35:28
  poetry annuals and it's a terrific story about Joe.
• 1:35:33
  Joe Grant is killed but comes back as a ghost and can see
• 1:35:38
  everyone, including the Doctor mourning her death and her
• 1:35:41
  passing. But also as a ghost.
• 1:35:43
  She seems to be able to see these alien invaders that no one
• 1:35:45
  else can see and what's going on there?
• 1:35:49
  And then we get a couple of Tom Baker stories as well, adapted
• 1:35:53
  from comic strips, I think. I'm not sure, but I think they
• 1:35:56
  might be part of the same release range as those audio
• 1:35:58
  annual stories. You know, we've run out short
• 1:36:01
  stories. There's tons of comics.
• 1:36:02
  Comics don't tend to work in an audio medium, but Paul Miles has
• 1:36:07
  adapted them very sympathetically, very
• 1:36:08
  intelligently as well. It's great fun.
• 1:36:12
  It's a wonderful. I don't want to say
• 1:36:15
  reappreciation, but it certainly made me appreciate some of those
• 1:36:19
  stories anew, because I think they often have a bit of a low
• 1:36:25
  reputation on some Doctor Who fans that they're seen as not
• 1:36:29
  always being terribly coherent with the TV series and you've.
• 1:36:34
  Never heard of that episode of Too Hot TV, did you?
• 1:36:37
  I didn't want to name names, but yes, Dylan Reese.
• 1:36:41
  Dylan Reese, We could use it as an exclamation now.
• 1:36:47
  But I but Port Mars is clearly a fan of those.
• 1:36:51
  I mean I think you've written a whole book about About the World
• 1:36:54
  Distributors Annuals, which I sadly haven't read but looks
• 1:36:57
  fantastic. But he's, he adapts them with
• 1:37:03
  very light changes just to sort of fix some little continuity
• 1:37:06
  bits or some of the Wilder or more obvious discrepancies.
• 1:37:12
  So like I think if one of the Tom Baker Coinship's 4th Doctor
• 1:37:16
  is depicted as wearing a suit and but they're there for a
• 1:37:19
  wedding. So, you know, Paul Ma says he's
• 1:37:22
  wearing a suit for the occasion like, well, that's all you need
• 1:37:24
  to sort of cross that one off. And he ties the the 3rd Doctor
• 1:37:29
  in Joe One into they're on their way back from one of their early
• 1:37:33
  trips away in the TARDIS and stuff like that.
• 1:37:35
  So it just shows that with these very small changes, you're able
• 1:37:41
  to, you know, bring these things into line with continuity for
• 1:37:44
  those who to whom that matters. And that once you've sort of got
• 1:37:48
  those obvious hang ups out of the way, you can really
• 1:37:50
  appreciate them for their really bold and wild ideas.
• 1:37:54
  I think it's terrific. He does a fantastic job.
• 1:37:56
  It's a wonderful, almost sort of tribute towards these, this area
• 1:38:04
  of Doctor Who that is often overlooked and those who do look
• 1:38:08
  and not always fans. To repeat, no, no, this is
• 1:38:10
  really good. These are really fun and I'd
• 1:38:13
  recommend it to anyone. Yeah, I'm off this way.
• 1:38:16
  You know, I want to get that tomorrow and have a listen that
• 1:38:19
  sounds amazing, and there's no one else I'd trust to do those
• 1:38:22
  more, those old ideas. Do you know what I was going to
• 1:38:28
  recommend the latest fabulous coffee table book about the two
• 1:38:34
  Daleks movies that I got recently, but you just put me in
• 1:38:38
  a more Paul Mars state of mind. So instead, I'd like to
• 1:38:43
  recommend a single short story from the Doctor Who Origins
• 1:38:49
  Stories anthology that I got recently.
• 1:38:52
  And you know, there's some very good writers in there, but it
• 1:38:55
  was Paul Miles doing 2 two stories in there that I was
• 1:38:58
  like, I need this, you know, it's worth getting just on that
• 1:39:01
  alone. And the first story he does is
• 1:39:04
  The Monster in the Woods, which is a wonderful, very brief but
• 1:39:09
  evocative tale told from children's point of view, these
• 1:39:14
  kids that go exploring in the woods.
• 1:39:16
  But there's this horrible myth that if you go in the woods
• 1:39:18
  because loads of kids have gone in there and gone missing, and
• 1:39:21
  there's a monster somewhere in the middle, well, it turns out
• 1:39:24
  it's a darling. And it's one of the Daleks that
• 1:39:27
  came from the 22nd century in Day of the Daleks, that's hiding
• 1:39:33
  out in these woods, attempting to build a time travel device or
• 1:39:36
  a spaceship or whatever. And he's luring these kids in,
• 1:39:40
  convincing them to go and get in bits and bobs.
• 1:39:43
  And then when they come back with a murder in them horribly,
• 1:39:46
  he's killed loads of kids. And it's just a wonderful fairy
• 1:39:51
  tale story. There are some scenes from Joe
• 1:39:54
  Craft's point of view, but she is basically a child, isn't she?
• 1:39:57
  And Paul Marson arrives so that way, and it becomes a sort of
• 1:40:01
  battle of wheels between the Doctor and the Dalek.
• 1:40:03
  John Purwee, captured so perfectly by Mars in the only
• 1:40:07
  way you can, you know, on hand. Me Madam, he says to her as
• 1:40:11
  well. Done.
• 1:40:12
  Yeah, it's. It is.
• 1:40:13
  About 30 pages long. Get the book.
• 1:40:16
  But that one really stood out because it feels like a perfect
• 1:40:21
  little fairy tale in the middle of the book, which is trying to
• 1:40:23
  do lots of lots of crazy scary things.
• 1:40:27
  This is just like a warm hug of a Horror Story.
• 1:40:31
  Which book do you say that was? Origin Stories I.
• 1:40:34
  Think you'll find it's Tales of Terror?
• 1:40:36
  Oh, it is. Oh, good grief.
• 1:40:39
  There's a anthology series called Tales of Terror.
• 1:40:43
  No, I'll keep it a win. Never mind to hide my
• 1:40:47
  embarrassment somewhere. Then, Michael, why don't you
• 1:40:49
  tell everybody where we're heading next?
• 1:40:53
  Well we are going to be hitting the fast return switch to take
• 1:40:58
  us fast spinning in the TARDIS back to the BBC 8th Doctor
• 1:41:02
  Adventure range. Oh, I barely.
• 1:41:05
  I barely touched those. If I'm honest, it'd be
• 1:41:06
  refreshing to do one of those. Faithful listeners will recall
• 1:41:10
  that a couple of months ago, Joe and I discussed the first book
• 1:41:13
  in the 8th Doctor adventure range, The Eight Doctors, and we
• 1:41:16
  made some comments on blinds that, well, we both appreciated
• 1:41:19
  that book. In the end, it wasn't terribly
• 1:41:22
  reflective of the series as a whole.
• 1:41:24
  So we're going to be talking about the second book in the
• 1:41:28
  Doctor Adventure Age. Perhaps a truer start if we're
• 1:41:31
  being honest. We're gonna be talking about
• 1:41:33
  Doctor Who, the vampire science. Which, oh, I think you haven't
• 1:41:38
  read right. I've not read it.
• 1:41:40
  I'm very excited. How wonderful.
• 1:41:42
  And have you read a lot of Kate Orman?
• 1:41:44
  No. Do you know what?
• 1:41:46
  To my shame, I suddenly realized the own read quite a few of the
• 1:41:49
  short stories in various places. The only one of the books I've
• 1:41:51
  read is Set Piece. Out.
• 1:41:53
  Then you're in for a treat my friend.
• 1:41:56
  Oh, good grief. If you haven't read many of
• 1:41:58
  that. That's right.
• 1:41:59
  The list is getting longer. As we talk blue box year of
• 1:42:02
  intelligent tigers, they're all going on.
• 1:42:05
  I think this isn't very representative of the 8th Doctor
• 1:42:08
  Adventures either. You're fired when you read it.
• 1:42:11
  I think this is absolutely taking where we left in the TV
• 1:42:17
  movie and like, OK, So what if this was the template for new
• 1:42:22
  Doctor Who, but let's actually make it Doctor Who this time and
• 1:42:27
  let's also remember that the new adventures existed.
• 1:42:33
  I I cannot wait. It has been one I've been
• 1:42:36
  meaning to read for donkeys years and I told you got to tell
• 1:42:42
  you at the book club they couldn't listen to it because I
• 1:42:45
  wanted to listen to it. I want this time.
• 1:42:47
  You got goth opera. Well, I got vampire signs.
• 1:42:50
  I feel as if there's this warfare that's breaking out
• 1:42:53
  between these book clubs. What is it you said earlier in
• 1:42:57
  the episode? I know you read with other
• 1:42:59
  people. I know you read around.
• 1:43:02
  I thought you did. So a wonderful choice.
• 1:43:07
  Yes, indeed. Well, we better get cracking on
• 1:43:09
  it, haven't we? We better start reading.
• 1:43:11
  Yes, we better run away now. I'll.
• 1:43:14
  Just cut it there.