Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - The Romans & The Myth Makers by Donald Cotton (featuring Luke Sims-Jenkins, Jon Arnold & Andrew Batty)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - The Romans & The Myth Makers by Donald Cotton (featuring Luke Sims-Jenkins, Jon Arnold & Andrew Batty) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:01
  Epistle to the Keeper of the Imperial Archives, Rome.
• 0:08
  Dear Sir, I am in reluctant receipt of your insufferable
• 0:12
  scroll written. I must remark on papyrus of so
• 0:15
  inferior a quality that I can only suppose it to have been
• 0:19
  selected especially to suit the style of your grammatical
• 0:21
  construction and the insolence of your tone.
• 0:25
  I must ask you, therefore, to attribute the fact that I now
• 0:28
  apply Styrus to tablets in response, rather than inserting
• 0:32
  your impertinences into my insinitorion, as they deserve.
• 0:35
  Not to any old world courtesy on my part, but to the irritating
• 0:40
  circumstance that your communication is merely the
• 0:42
  latest in a dreary series of querulous queries.
• 0:46
  And I now wish to stem this nuisance at its source before my
• 0:49
  desk becomes quite buried beneath a pile of junk mail, all
• 0:53
  of it bearing your indecipherable signature.
• 0:57
  You speak confound you of breach of contract, and have the
• 1:01
  further temerity to threaten the invocation of penalty clauses if
• 1:05
  I do not at once submit for your inspection those chapters of my
• 1:08
  annals which cover the great fire of Rome and the last few
• 1:11
  years of Nero Caesar's reign, described so aptly by my
• 1:15
  colleague Suetonius as the Terror.
• 1:18
  Now I must make it quite clear to you that I Tacitus I'm not
• 1:22
  accustomed to being thus pestered and berated by jumped
• 1:25
  up a Argos in office who are apparently incapable of
• 1:29
  recognizing a hot property when they read. 1 For must I remind
• 1:32
  you that those sections of the book already completed have
• 1:36
  received extremely favourable advance notices from all
• 1:39
  discerning critics, and already there is talk of its
• 1:42
  dramatisation by Juvenile as the centrepiece of next year's
• 1:45
  festival of Roman arts, culture and blood sports at the Circus
• 1:49
  Maximus. However, since you have the
• 1:51
  infernal bad taste to speak of the possibility of your
• 1:54
  withholding not only the final down payment but the royalties
• 1:57
  themselves, it seems that I have no alternative but to explain
• 2:01
  the set of somewhat bizarre circumstances which have
• 2:04
  persuaded me to retain the remainder of the work, at least
• 2:07
  until I've completed further research.
• 2:09
  As to the authenticity of certain documents which have
• 2:12
  only recently come into my possession, and which would, if
• 2:15
  genuine, necessitate not only the postponement of publication
• 2:19
  but the rewriting of history itself.
• 2:22
  I will not detain an incompetent dunderhead like your good self
• 2:25
  with a detailed account of how I acquired these extraordinary
• 2:28
  papers which I now enclose for your attention.
• 2:31
  Suffice it to say that my field workers are constantly abroad
• 2:34
  about my business, and it is not for me to inquire too closely
• 2:37
  into the methods they employ in the collection of such
• 2:40
  information. But the new facts herein
• 2:42
  revealed would, if true, explain a great deal which has
• 2:45
  previously puzzled me, and I am therefore tempted to believe
• 2:49
  them. You'll remember from your no
• 2:52
  doubt laborious perusal of my last manuscript that it contains
• 2:56
  references to a series of prodigies and portents which
• 2:58
  heralded the year of the Great Fire.
• 3:01
  Also unearthly noises were heard in the vicinity of this cisium
• 3:05
  and it is my cautious submission that for these the enclosed
• 3:08
  exclusives may well furnish an explanation.
• 3:11
  Indeed, we would then have no choice but to believe that
• 3:15
  during this doom encumbered year Rome was visited by intruders
• 3:18
  from another time space or similar unwelcome dimension and
• 3:22
  that the possibly comet like vehicle in which they travelled
• 3:25
  was known to them as the TARDIS. I can only suggest that you
• 3:30
  reserve judgement until you have read the items in question, at
• 3:33
  which time it will be my dubious pleasure to receive your inept
• 3:36
  comments upon them. For the moment, I will only
• 3:40
  remind you that there are more things in Olympus on Earth that
• 3:42
  are dreamed of by an urban district employee of lowly grade
• 3:45
  and status and remain, with marked lack of respect, your
• 3:50
  best selling author of this or any other year Tacitus
• 3:54
  postscriptum. I have arranged these documents
• 3:57
  in what I assume to be their chronological order.
• 4:00
  You'll be sensible to share this assumption.
• 4:23
  The. Welcome back to the Hamster Book
• 4:36
  Club. My name is Joe Ford and once
• 4:39
  again the four of us, the four Amigos, have come together to
• 4:45
  RIP to shreds to absolute classics.
• 4:48
  Today I am here with the slightly chilly, but less chilly
• 4:55
  than he was because he's just taking his dressing gown off.
• 4:57
  Andrew Batty. Hello, Andrew.
• 4:59
  Hello, I'm wearing clothes underneath the dressing gown.
• 5:01
  I just want to make that clear. Oh, that's lying.
• 5:05
  He's lying. That was the mellifluous tones
• 5:10
  of Mr. Luke Sims Jenkins. Hello, Luke.
• 5:12
  Hello. How are you doing today I'm.
• 5:15
  Doing I'm doing really well, thank you.
• 5:17
  I mean, I'm excited to not have to talk about these books
• 5:22
  anymore, yeah. Sorry the messages you've been
• 5:25
  sent now I fucking hate these books.
• 5:29
  Can I ask is it nice and warm where you are?
• 5:32
  No, it's what in Australia we'd call fucking hot.
• 5:36
  It's it's about going to be 34 today, but it's about 20
• 5:40
  something now. So it's it's building.
• 5:42
  And just sort of pre warn us, will your mother-in-law be
• 5:45
  needing a shower at some point during this episode?
• 5:48
  There is a likelihood that that would happen, that will happen,
• 5:52
  but I can guarantee that you will see a hand sticking through
• 5:56
  with a cup of coffee. So you guys all think like
• 5:58
  that's all like my wife just she makes all the coffees.
• 6:03
  What you don't see is when she's on a Zoom meeting and she's on
• 6:06
  the other side of this part when I'm handing her the coffee.
• 6:09
  So. Unfortunately, we're not present
• 6:11
  for those. We don't know whether you're
• 6:12
  telling the truth or not, frankly, but you're today.
• 6:16
  Your mother in law's cameo on the Crooked World is still the
• 6:19
  best cameo in any hamster episode.
• 6:23
  And of course, last but most definitely not least, published
• 6:28
  author himself, John Arnold. Hello, John.
• 6:32
  Hello, I'm the only one not stripping today then I tell you.
• 6:37
  Well, we'll see. We'll see.
• 6:40
  I just say you're a published author.
• 6:41
  Then why don't you just tell us about that very quickly?
• 6:43
  Oh yeah, I've done 4 Black Archives, Rose, Scream of the
• 6:49
  Shalker, The 11th Hour, and Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
• 6:52
  Edited because we're recording this on Bowie's birthday.
• 6:56
  A book about David Bowie, of essays by people about him and
• 7:01
  God knows how many short stories and essays in various books
• 7:05
  across Doctor Who and music and whatever anyone asked me to do.
• 7:11
  Well, only one real question we can ask you then, and that is
• 7:13
  that this Christmas I've got this fabulous New Adventures
• 7:16
  book by David J Howe, full of, I think Andrew's brought up trivia
• 7:20
  from it before, full of fabulous pictures and the old preludes
• 7:24
  and all of that in it. Yeah.
• 7:25
  If you are a publisher also, and you know you've got people in
• 7:27
  the know, Yeah. When the hell are you going to
• 7:29
  write us this 8th Doctor book? Now we've started seducing you
• 7:32
  to the ways of the Doctor. Well, whatever you want.
• 7:35
  Frankly, I'm happy. Well, if you could start today,
• 7:38
  please. We're going to get on the
• 7:39
  shelves by Christmas. No problem.
• 7:41
  Which companions do you want? No, I want you to do it.
• 7:44
  I wait not to run. Oh, hold on.
• 7:46
  Hey, Doctor. Yeah.
• 7:47
  Trivia photographs, You know, made-up pictures of Sam Jones.
• 7:51
  Get that Doctor Who mid journey and he'll do you some lovely
• 7:53
  pictures. You're on.
• 7:57
  Andrew, would you please tell everybody why we are here today?
• 8:00
  What are we here to discuss? We're here to discuss 2 very
• 8:06
  highly regarded novelisations, The Romans and the Myth Makers
• 8:11
  by Donald Cotton, which yeah, I think have a have a reputation
• 8:15
  for being good ones and being unusual ones.
• 8:19
  So yeah, it'll be interesting to see what we all make of them.
• 8:23
  We are the sample audience of whether this is good or bad.
• 8:26
  Maybe I should publish some of those messages in that group
• 8:29
  chat to see if these are popular or not.
• 8:33
  And since you did come up with our icebreaker question today,
• 8:37
  hit us. Oh yeah.
• 8:40
  So I wanted to broach the question now that we've sort of
• 8:44
  rediscovered our love for the wilderness wilderness era
• 8:48
  through doing this podcast, which is better, wilderness era
• 8:53
  or new series? But.
• 8:56
  That is such a contentious topic given you are the evil
• 9:01
  mastermind behind it. Why don't you go first?
• 9:06
  Oh, OK. Well then let's swing round to
• 9:08
  John. Hello, John.
• 9:09
  Hello. Well, The thing is, I absolutely
• 9:16
  do all that kind of that first year that series came back when,
• 9:19
  you know, Doctor Who, this thing that had been this kind of
• 9:22
  little party between a few thousand of us for what, 15 odd
• 9:27
  years just became the absolutely biggest thing on to it.
• 9:32
  You know, you go to oh, go. I remember going through I think
• 9:35
  it was Houston. There's Doctor Who on a big
• 9:37
  bloody billboard. There's Echo Sir and Piper
• 9:40
  people Googling what's going to happen on Saturday.
• 9:43
  John desperately find out what the part of the ways and you
• 9:45
  know, and it got bigger and bigger and it's just got some of
• 9:49
  my absolute favorite who of all time.
• 9:52
  But I can't help but go that the wilderness years were my
• 9:56
  formative years. You know, I read the books.
• 10:01
  I met so many friends through them.
• 10:03
  You know, I found mailing this to people who just wanted to
• 10:06
  talk Doctor Who books like that. So I'm going, I think, just pure
• 10:13
  sentiment that my heart will always be with the wilderness
• 10:17
  years. I'd say it's to you that there
• 10:20
  is a small list of writers that are all living together in a
• 10:24
  mentor asylum after spending some time on records.
• 10:27
  Doctor Who in the 90s. Well, as long as we went on J
• 10:31
  Pagoda. Maybe that's why Steve Marley
• 10:35
  only wrote one book. He's in that.
• 10:37
  Yeah, sorry, my fault. Luke, the new series or the
• 10:42
  wilderness years? Well, I, I got into the show
• 10:46
  maybe 89 or 90. So it so it's kind of all
• 10:52
  wilderness for me. Like by the time the new series
• 10:54
  could come back, I've gone from like what, eight or nine years
• 10:58
  old to like 20/20/21. So all of that formative time
• 11:02
  the books were, were cheaper. So, like, they were like 10
• 11:06
  bucks in Australia, whereas the VHS was bloody $30.
• 11:10
  Can you believe that? For one story.
• 11:14
  Yeah. Madness.
• 11:14
  So, you know, I, I couldn't always convince my parents to
• 11:17
  buy me a VHS, but 10 bucks, Yeah.
• 11:20
  All right. And yeah, we could swing a book.
• 11:22
  So I had a a lot more Doctor Who books than VHSS and all that
• 11:27
  kind of stuff growing up. And, you know, also new series
• 11:31
  kind of like to likes to take ideas and things from those
• 11:36
  books and not do them as well. The biggest one for me, and I
• 11:40
  know people will disagree and that's that's all right, is that
• 11:43
  I I don't like human nature, the televersion, mostly because
• 11:48
  like, are you trying to tell me that David Tennant's doctor
• 11:53
  doesn't know what it is to be human?
• 11:55
  He's already fucked like several of them.
• 11:57
  Get out of here. He knows how to fucking.
• 12:00
  He knows how to schmooze and, and chat with, with people and,
• 12:05
  and kind of get him on his side and stuff.
• 12:07
  So, but like the 7th Doctor, I can see that he's a bit colder.
• 12:10
  He's a bit more distant. So I can see him just trying to
• 12:13
  need that more. So that's kind of where I come
• 12:17
  from with that. And, you know, just
• 12:19
  rediscovering all these books with you guys and stuff has also
• 12:22
  made me think like, wow, there's a lot of things that you show
• 12:27
  took from these that I think maybe it was done better in
• 12:30
  print. But yeah, I'm, I'm a wilderness
• 12:34
  kid. It's just an age thing really.
• 12:35
  Like if I grew up during, if I grew up during the Pertwee era,
• 12:38
  I'd probably love the Pertwee era, right?
• 12:41
  But I did it so I I don't. You wouldn't 2.
• 12:45
  Kneel 2. Kneel to the wilderness Years.
• 12:48
  Is Andrew going to swing it now? Well, I think similarly, it's
• 12:53
  just that being the right age for stuff because I suppose I
• 12:58
  was most most into the books when I was like 13 to 18, which
• 13:03
  is like your sort of Uber fan years of when, you know, I was.
• 13:08
  I had a spreadsheet, I had word documents where I kept little
• 13:12
  reviews. I used to do my own corrected
• 13:16
  version of like the order of that stories came in, but my own
• 13:22
  chronology because the ones that were online weren't good enough.
• 13:25
  Yeah. So yeah, yeah.
• 13:29
  The wilderness years will always like have that.
• 13:32
  I was just like the right age to be like an extreme fanfare.
• 13:38
  And yeah, when the new series came out, I was like a little
• 13:42
  bit older. I was, I think I was sick form
• 13:46
  and then going into university. So I loved it, but I just didn't
• 13:50
  have that kind of depth of like obsession, I guess.
• 13:55
  And it's actually been lovely doing this podcast because I've
• 13:57
  kind of not really gone back to much wilderness era stuff in the
• 14:03
  in the years following. So it's been really nice to kind
• 14:05
  of go back and rediscover all that stuff.
• 14:10
  But I think, I think something from having gone back and read,
• 14:15
  read it again, I just love the depth that you can go into with
• 14:18
  these things in terms of like the settings and the themes of
• 14:25
  the books, where sometimes in the TV series it can just be a
• 14:29
  little bit superficial and they don't really interrogate things
• 14:33
  very much. You don't get time to spend in
• 14:35
  places, you don't get time to spend with the characters.
• 14:37
  So like, although the performances are grey and like
• 14:40
  the visuals are brilliant and it all zips along and it's
• 14:43
  wonderful. I do kind of miss that kind of
• 14:47
  extended time that you get with with place and character in a in
• 14:52
  a book. And it would be nice if they
• 14:54
  sort of did did a bit more long form storytelling in the series.
• 14:57
  I think if they did like some little mini series and stuff.
• 14:59
  So. So who knows?
• 15:00
  Who knows where where it'll go next?
• 15:03
  I wonder if they don't trust the kids nowadays have the attention
• 15:07
  to too much long, which is why a lot of it zips along at such a
• 15:11
  It's almost like a fault of the of where television is now.
• 15:14
  I don't know, I think I think it's now getting a bit dated,
• 15:17
  that kind of episode of the week stuff.
• 15:19
  And like when you look at Stranger Things and they're
• 15:21
  doing like 3 hour episodes and 8 hour storytelling and then
• 15:27
  people will sit down and watch it all in one go.
• 15:29
  I think maybe like Flux was the right way to be pushing things
• 15:32
  and they've kind of gone back on that and now they're so.
• 15:35
  Yeah, in a little way it felt, feels a little bit antiquated
• 15:37
  now, I think. So that's three nil, and it's
• 15:43
  obviously going to be a full house for me.
• 15:45
  I'll start this bloody podcast to talk about these books.
• 15:49
  Yeah, I like what Andrew said. I just don't think the new
• 15:52
  series can go to the places where the books went for good or
• 15:55
  for bad. They push the boundaries in
• 15:58
  insane ways, and very often it really expanded what Doctor Who
• 16:03
  could do. And in a lot of ways, they just
• 16:06
  couldn't do a lot of this stuff on TV.
• 16:08
  And it's certainly the stuff that we've talked about before.
• 16:12
  I do love the new series, but you know what?
• 16:14
  I've sort of come to a conclusion recently, John,
• 16:17
  You'll know in that Strangers in Space chat where I'm very vocal
• 16:22
  in AI. Don't know if I'm not.
• 16:24
  I don't think I'm outgrowing the news.
• 16:26
  I'll always watch Doctor Who. But it just feels like old hat
• 16:29
  to me now. Like I know all the tricks, I
• 16:31
  know all the quirks, I know what they can do.
• 16:34
  And every now and again they'll do an episode where it's out
• 16:37
  there 73 yards, not a bubble, something like that.
• 16:40
  But otherwise it is just sort of going through the motions and
• 16:42
  it's well made and it's well acted.
• 16:44
  But it is just sort of what I expect.
• 16:47
  And I I was saying, wasn't I? I think we needed like a new
• 16:50
  Cartmel to come in, a young non Doctor Who fan to come in and
• 16:56
  shake it up and take it in a totally new direction, which is
• 16:59
  what the books did all the time, right.
• 17:02
  And like when you talk about long form storytelling, that 8th
• 17:04
  Doctor arc that basically started in Alien Bodies and
• 17:08
  finished in the Gallifrey Chronicles, you know, you could
• 17:12
  chart that faction paradox all the way up to Ancestor Cell and
• 17:15
  then all the way round through to the Gallifrey Chronicles.
• 17:18
  Like that's the sort of long form I will never see again, I
• 17:22
  don't think ever even in the books or anything like that.
• 17:24
  So it's 4 for four for the wilderness years.
• 17:30
  Plus, you know, we'll get to hang out and talk about this
• 17:32
  stuff as well. So happy days and I've no idea
• 17:38
  how to segue from that. Question into.
• 17:41
  Two very antiquated Donald Cotton target novelisations.
• 17:47
  Except, well, where should we start with this?
• 17:50
  We'll start with the Romans, because we did the Romans.
• 17:52
  Did we all do the Romans first? Yes, yeah, yeah, you've got to
• 17:57
  do chronological. Jesus Christ.
• 18:00
  Yeah, when you do this book about the 8th Doctor, right, can
• 18:02
  you put your spreadsheets and chronology?
• 18:04
  In the first pages of the book. I want the Doctor Who reference
• 18:09
  guide in there. We want Andrew Batty's
• 18:10
  chronology. All right, Proper.
• 18:13
  It was colour coded in everything.
• 18:15
  Oh, beautiful. See, this is art.
• 18:18
  This is not just what this art. Maybe it should be a book in its
• 18:23
  own right, actually. It's teasing us with the least.
• 18:25
  And all those theories as well. Oh my God, there's a whole book
• 18:28
  in this. Have you found any more of
• 18:30
  those, by the way? You know those.
• 18:31
  Oh yes, I have. Actually.
• 18:33
  I took very care of the more of them, but I don't think I I
• 18:35
  think I was saving them in case we actually do the books.
• 18:38
  Do you know what? The point this week when I knew
• 18:42
  Andrew's answer to his own question was going to be the
• 18:44
  wilderness years was when he gleefully messaged all of us and
• 18:47
  went. I was at DWM's perfect day.
• 18:53
  Was it amazing? Yeah, it was, well, we're going
• 18:56
  off. This has nothing to do with the
• 18:58
  Romans, but yeah, it was like a convention that Doctor Who
• 19:03
  magazine organised in like 1998, I think, where they did all the
• 19:07
  pole result results of like the the full series poll that they
• 19:12
  did. And they did like a countdown
• 19:14
  and there were trophies and stuff.
• 19:16
  And I'd never been to anything like that.
• 19:17
  And I like begged my mum to take me and she took me.
• 19:20
  And it was, it was at some university in London I think.
• 19:23
  And yeah, I really, really enjoyed it.
• 19:25
  But I think I enjoyed more being in the audience.
• 19:27
  I didn't really like enjoy like like I met Nicholas Courtney and
• 19:33
  I, I was just really starstruck and just felt really weird.
• 19:36
  And I think I've always carried that with me.
• 19:40
  I always feel slightly. I'm not.
• 19:44
  I'm all mouthed until I get to the table and then I'm like,
• 19:48
  hello, At what point in the convention did Paul Cornell RIP
• 19:52
  off his Rebecca Levine mask? Sorry, that's just that's an in
• 19:56
  joke but nobody else will get. You say that, but I, I think
• 20:02
  that there was somebody who was like dressed up as Benny to like
• 20:06
  give him an award and it might have been Jack Rayner, but I'm
• 20:09
  not entirely could have just been another woman with short
• 20:12
  hair. So my next question is then, why
• 20:16
  did none of you people like the Romans by time?
• 20:19
  And let's go straight over to the loudest detractor, Luke Sims
• 20:23
  Jenkins. All right, I, I don't know, I
• 20:31
  like the concept of how it's written letters from different
• 20:34
  people, they're all compiled together, things like that.
• 20:38
  And then, and then I get to, I can't remember whose was first,
• 20:43
  the doctors or the Ian's perspective, but I'm reading the
• 20:47
  doctor's perspective. I'm like, I hate this man.
• 20:51
  And I don't like who is this guy?
• 20:54
  He is I, he's, I don't like his attitude towards Vicki the
• 20:59
  entire book either. Like I just, it really, it
• 21:04
  really grated on me. And then we get to Ian and I'm
• 21:06
  like, why? Like out of all the people in
• 21:09
  your life, you're writing to your headmaster?
• 21:12
  Not like I don't know your mom, your dad, or something like your
• 21:17
  headmaster. Prick Ian from Doctor Who and
• 21:20
  the Daleks. You remember that one?
• 21:21
  Yeah. Also, what is the headmaster's
• 21:23
  name? Why don't you use his name?
• 21:25
  So I don't know if you remember early episodes of All in Time
• 21:30
  and Space, but I remember Ian Martin just having this kind of
• 21:37
  opinion on Ian that was very different.
• 21:39
  He didn't like him and this novelization of the Romans.
• 21:43
  I was like, yeah, I kind of understand why Ian Martin didn't
• 21:47
  like Ian Chesterton TV show because this guy is terrible.
• 21:53
  And then there's also the criminal thing of like Barbara
• 21:57
  gets 2 pages, Vicky gets none. And that kind of, I did.
• 22:05
  I didn't like that. And then, all right.
• 22:08
  If you're going down the sexism room, Papaya and Lacosta both
• 22:12
  get extracts like the women I've forgotten completely.
• 22:17
  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because I, I feel a little bit
• 22:21
  like that with the myth makers as well.
• 22:23
  But Cassandra makes me laugh like oh.
• 22:26
  Boy, we'll get. There like we'll talk about that
• 22:30
  when we get to it. So I'm not, I don't have an
• 22:32
  issue with that. But there's some weird ways that
• 22:34
  they describe both Ian and the Doctor describe Vicki and and
• 22:42
  Barbara. I mean, the Doctor saying that
• 22:45
  Vicki has a tiny mind and things like that.
• 22:49
  I I really don't like that. And Ian, Ian doesn't understand
• 22:53
  how time travel works. He thinks that if he dies in the
• 22:55
  past, he won't be born. Like, what are you stupid?
• 23:00
  That's not a time travel law. Like, what is that?
• 23:03
  Yeah. So there's there's other things,
• 23:05
  but I feel like there's there's there's actually a few things I
• 23:10
  really do like about this as well.
• 23:12
  But I thought, you know, you wanted to get the grumpiness out
• 23:16
  at the start. Like here is some of it.
• 23:19
  Also like how's Ian writing these?
• 23:23
  He's supposed to be rowing. Oh.
• 23:26
  Man, you need to chill out about that.
• 23:27
  All right, OK. Every time you kept bringing
• 23:32
  that up, I was like, yeah. But otherwise then we just get
• 23:37
  like a script page novelization, and we don't get an experiment.
• 23:42
  Yeah, it's great to have an experiment.
• 23:46
  Yeah, I, I had my logic, I think.
• 23:49
  Like I was already in some form of mood because I'm like, I
• 23:54
  don't like half of the regulars in there, so I'm like they're
• 23:57
  borderline readable to me. Like I don't like them.
• 24:00
  And I, I hope they in this book hope the assassin does get hot
• 24:04
  or I hope Ian does friggin get eaten by a lion in this like,
• 24:10
  and maybe that that, that if there's a part of a book I don't
• 24:14
  like, it kind of switches my brain a bit.
• 24:19
  And I kind of like, I'm a bit more critical of a lot of things
• 24:22
  maybe than I wouldn't have been if I am.
• 24:24
  Because yeah, there's anachronisms too at some some
• 24:27
  points in the book, especially in the myth makers that kind of
• 24:30
  grate on as well. Favorite bits?
• 24:32
  Well, we'll get there as well. Well, John, grumpy or not.
• 24:38
  See, I never said I hated them. I was always.
• 24:41
  I'm more halfway where you fell. I love what it's doing.
• 24:47
  I love the way it plays with poem.
• 24:48
  I remember I didn't like it that much at the time because
• 24:53
  obviously back in 1987 I think this came out.
• 24:57
  I was quite happy with this, the, you know, the script page
• 25:00
  because I didn't even have a video record at that point.
• 25:03
  I didn't know I was ever going to get see the ropes.
• 25:05
  I wanted what essentially what was on screen just done very
• 25:09
  well. A a Terence.
• 25:11
  Same with the myth makers. It's it's like Luke when Luke
• 25:14
  said, oh, I'd apparently these when I was 10.
• 25:17
  I think I was 10 or 11 when the myth makers in Romans came out.
• 25:22
  Oh, 13 when it came out. They're not for that age.
• 25:26
  They are Donald Cotton. Both are being allowed to
• 25:31
  stretch the series because Nigel Robinson comes in.
• 25:34
  He's much happier to let the writers go off and do what they
• 25:37
  want. So the thing for me, I I love
• 25:43
  the F story structure. That is a fantastic idea, a way
• 25:47
  to sell novel. I don't think it's entirely
• 25:50
  successful because I think a couple of voices, particularly
• 25:52
  Ian, the Doctor May tasked as to aren't that distinguishable.
• 25:58
  I think they've all all got this kind of this same verbose style.
• 26:01
  So I thought I could see the author poking through there.
• 26:06
  And I think they what what the format is.
• 26:09
  It's Donald Cotton trying to do the same thing he does with his
• 26:11
  TV stories. Because obviously this is an
• 26:13
  adaptation of Dennis Spooner's, who I think was died by the
• 26:16
  point that Romans came along. So it can put into it which
• 26:21
  Donald Cotton likes to take history and, you know, look,
• 26:28
  peek behind the curtain. Just reduce it to this comedy.
• 26:31
  It's ordinary people getting into a fix and it all goes wrong
• 26:34
  in a hugely violent way at the end.
• 26:38
  So it's kind of find the comedy and the tragedy in history.
• 26:41
  And there was room to do that here.
• 26:43
  And The thing is, I thought you absolutely blew the ending of
• 26:46
  the Romans because the the funniest thing about the on
• 26:49
  screen, because I love both these stories.
• 26:51
  Probably my favorite Hartwell's it the whole gag is Ian and
• 26:56
  Barb. You know, Ian and Barbara, the
• 26:58
  doctor and Vicky think they've been in there.
• 26:59
  It's a nicely comic ending and it's, it's just, it stops.
• 27:03
  That's it. There's no big ending.
• 27:06
  It's not quite as funny as you'd like it to be.
• 27:10
  It does throw away that there is a bit in the middle as well.
• 27:12
  Is it where the Doctor sees Barbara in the that that woman
• 27:15
  over there in the stable looks just like this, right?
• 27:17
  Anyway, come along child, let's go.
• 27:20
  They recognise Barbara early, don't they as well?
• 27:23
  I said no, no, that's part it it.
• 27:27
  I mean, the comedy of, you know, when they're running around in
• 27:29
  Episode 3 and there's all that very uncomfortable now sex
• 27:32
  comedy of Nero chasing Barber. About the funniest bit about it
• 27:36
  is when Hartnell keeps walking into Short and going Oh my God,
• 27:39
  I wanted to speak to Susan Nero, but he seems to be rather busy
• 27:41
  and just sort of goes up again. You know, that's brilliant, but
• 27:46
  Cotton's not that interested that broad fast, I don't think.
• 27:49
  Which makes for a really interesting kind of conflict to
• 27:53
  the heart the book, I'd say. Andrew.
• 27:58
  Yeah, I think, I think I can echo both, both the opinions
• 28:05
  we've heard so far. And yeah, I think what John was
• 28:09
  saying about those, the lack of distinction between some of the
• 28:13
  voices in the book, It's not only the lack of distinction,
• 28:16
  it's just that they have that overly verbose pomp.
• 28:23
  Pompous is the word I'm looking for.
• 28:25
  So they're meant they're meant to sound pompous.
• 28:28
  They're written to to be pompous and annoying.
• 28:31
  But it's the four of the characters have pretty much the
• 28:36
  same voice and writing style and it's just really annoying.
• 28:41
  And it's that thing of like so much alliteration and long
• 28:45
  words. And I just it just really
• 28:48
  annoyed me and I wasn't enjoying it.
• 28:51
  And I think I'm just not really that into fast either.
• 28:56
  And all this, this things of like all characters almost
• 28:59
  meeting and not meeting and oh, it's so funny.
• 29:01
  Like I just didn't think I didn't find it funny.
• 29:03
  And I think that was the big thing for me.
• 29:06
  I think if I'd found it funny, I'd have gone gone with it.
• 29:09
  But it just it felt like a shit version of Asterix to me.
• 29:13
  And I love Asterix like that's that's this done well.
• 29:19
  It's. Artist it just didn't didn't
• 29:23
  land for me and which is a shame because also like the the
• 29:29
  concept of it, like Luke was saying it's great.
• 29:32
  Like the idea of telling a Doctor Who story from all these
• 29:36
  like letters and book extracts and all these conflicting
• 29:39
  accounts and the way that one character perceives something
• 29:44
  one way and it's completely misunderstood what's actually
• 29:46
  going on that you found out in a different letter.
• 29:48
  It's like all that is brilliant, like conceptually brilliant.
• 29:51
  I just didn't enjoy the execution at all.
• 29:56
  And I'm coming at it from completely the other direction
• 29:58
  because I really love Donald Cotton's wit.
• 30:03
  I think he's a really clever, really sophisticated writer.
• 30:08
  And I think it's a good book. Like it's a, it's a well written
• 30:14
  book, well structured, and it's using that sort of the letters
• 30:17
  and the extract things in a really interesting experimental
• 30:21
  way. But it's a fucking great audio
• 30:25
  book. And I read it as a book earlier
• 30:27
  in the year and enjoyed it and I listened to it this week as an
• 30:31
  audio book. And with all of those different
• 30:34
  actors playing those roles, it's far easier to make distinctions
• 30:39
  between all of the characters. Dan Starkey's playing the
• 30:42
  Doctor, Tim Trelaws playing as Asterisk is how you say it.
• 30:48
  I'm. Not sure Louise Jameson's in
• 30:49
  there. Maureen O'Brien is playing
• 30:50
  Lacosta, and while so I do agree, I think there is a
• 30:54
  similar verbosity to all of these characters.
• 30:57
  They all sound like Henry Gordon Jago at one point or another,
• 31:01
  but the actors bring it alive. You know, actors love this sort
• 31:04
  of, yeah, fruity dialogue, don't they?
• 31:08
  And especially Tim Trelore as the assassin those.
• 31:11
  And Dan Starkey is the first doctor.
• 31:14
  Those sequences, I was just howling.
• 31:17
  And I think the wit, when performed, the wit really comes
• 31:22
  to the surface. When I was reading it in my head
• 31:25
  and I was doing a lot of the work, it was less successful.
• 31:31
  But yeah, I really enjoyed it. Why do I sound apologetic about
• 31:35
  that? A bit of it that I did like, and
• 31:38
  I did find funny was the way that both Mickey and Delos are
• 31:43
  kind of like the straight men in it, where Ian and the Doctor are
• 31:48
  really pompous and self involved and don't really have an
• 31:53
  understanding of what they're doing.
• 31:54
  Or. And.
• 31:55
  But there's like these little asides that come through from
• 31:58
  like, Vicky, where she'll just, like, roll her eyes at something
• 32:00
  the doctor say and they'll go, Oh, and the child seems to seem
• 32:04
  to be, yeah, you know, he'll, he'll like, we'll get these
• 32:08
  little hints of Vicki, just like, yeah, that she, she's a
• 32:11
  lot smarter than the doctor and realizes what's going on.
• 32:14
  And also with Delos like that, Ian keeps getting him into these
• 32:17
  awful situations and Delos keeps trying to get them out of them.
• 32:21
  And then Ian will just fuck things up again.
• 32:23
  But Ian has no sort of understanding that he's actually
• 32:27
  doing this. And that stuff I thought was was
• 32:30
  was quite funny, but not enough of it for me.
• 32:33
  Some of the some of the direct like who the people were writing
• 32:36
  to in the audio book, like the assassin writing back to his
• 32:41
  mother, that just got funnier and funnier as the audio book
• 32:45
  went on because he's getting so frustrated that she ain't
• 32:47
  writing back. I can't help but notice I
• 32:50
  haven't heard from you mother, you know.
• 32:52
  PS Why did you name me after a parasitic worm and all this
• 32:56
  stuff? Like they said aloud?
• 32:58
  It's so, so funny. Well, OK, John, Luke, Andrew,
• 33:02
  obviously you've had sort of mixed to negative responses to
• 33:06
  this. Was there anything you really
• 33:09
  enjoyed about it? Hey, All right.
• 33:13
  So there's some changes to the story that I what I don't like,
• 33:18
  I'll bring them up in the tick, but there's a couple changes
• 33:21
  that I did like. All right, so you can't really
• 33:25
  have Ian and Ganitis in the TV story fight a whole bunch of
• 33:31
  frickin lions and them attack people and stuff.
• 33:34
  But that that part of it instead of having I can't.
• 33:38
  He's got a different name in the book deal us or something, isn't
• 33:40
  it? It's Ganitis in the TV story,
• 33:42
  right? TV story.
• 33:44
  I think I prefer the bond between them.
• 33:45
  But in terms of this book, just jealous of glowering at him and
• 33:53
  him just being totally oblivious to it makes me laugh.
• 33:56
  And then just there is a line. I didn't write a lot of these
• 34:00
  down like Joe Joe might. But there is a line when the
• 34:03
  lions are eating people and stuff and there's something
• 34:05
  about feeding it more Christians or something like that.
• 34:10
  And I was just like, wait, what? And I read it again and I was
• 34:14
  like, OK, So like he has this really good skill of all right,
• 34:19
  fine, what you're doing isn't working for me, but you made me
• 34:22
  laugh out loud in both books. And it's really hard for even a
• 34:27
  book that I am actively enjoying and engaging and fully to still
• 34:32
  make me laugh out loud. So so I did like that change
• 34:35
  with the all right, we can't have a shitty 60s BBC fight, you
• 34:41
  know, instead we're going to have lions and they're doing all
• 34:44
  this kind of stuff and you've got to say, yeah, that was that
• 34:47
  was something. So lame.
• 34:48
  In the TV show in it, they've got those two pathetic little
• 34:51
  knives. And the guy who plays Delos,
• 34:52
  he's like Bessie makes with Ian. Whereas in the book they are
• 34:55
  like rivals, aren't they? Oh yeah, he does not like Ian at
• 34:59
  all because he's he's fucked everything up for him the whole
• 35:03
  time. One of those references here,
• 35:05
  Luke, people, this is Nero. People seem to think I sit
• 35:08
  around all day doing nothing but writing songs, persecuting
• 35:12
  Christians and organising orgies.
• 35:14
  That sounds like a hell of a life to me.
• 35:18
  Oh my goodness. Yeah, Sean.
• 35:21
  Oh, I, I, I just love because I'm older now and I can
• 35:25
  appreciate it, you know, And this, I think the reason why
• 35:28
  it's lasted about in a lot of other books is because he's
• 35:31
  slipping all these references in.
• 35:32
  If you look carefully, he sneaks all the episode titles in
• 35:35
  somewhere and there's a line. So something about I can't, I
• 35:42
  would have become this, but I didn't have the Hebrew he's
• 35:44
  nicked to Peter Cook line, you know, about I'd become a judge,
• 35:47
  but I didn't have the Latin. And it's just that because I
• 35:52
  appreciate that kind of Cambridge University type
• 35:54
  workplace, sense of humour, act, and I'd love those kind of
• 35:57
  little references that he just dropped in for the people who
• 36:00
  get it. It's nothing, you know, for the
• 36:02
  general audience for these books.
• 36:04
  But then please, thank you when your world's expanded.
• 36:08
  Brilliant. I mean, he froze in all of the
• 36:11
  titles that didn't make it to the screen as well, doesn't he
• 36:15
  Adam? I'd love that.
• 36:18
  I mean, is there a doctor in the horse in the?
• 36:20
  Horse. Jessica.
• 36:22
  No, Zeus X Machina is crazy. Do you know?
• 36:27
  I liked, I like the fact that in both books and the gunfires,
• 36:30
  he's not afraid to mention a bit of nookie.
• 36:32
  You know, like, they were debauched back then, weren't
• 36:35
  they? So this is wonderful sequence
• 36:37
  where Nero's talking about papaya because in fact, I have
• 36:41
  known her to visit the barracks at all hours of the night just
• 36:44
  to see if there's any young recruits feeling the cold.
• 36:48
  She's becoming very popular with the men.
• 36:50
  Oh. Yeah, and you get.
• 36:52
  Tough thing reading that. And you get Pepe's point of view
• 36:55
  on it, as well as gorgeous Let's Please.
• 36:58
  You total harlot and she honestly, Andrew, or have you
• 37:05
  said the one thing you liked about this?
• 37:08
  I think I've probably exhausted the things I liked.
• 37:12
  Well, is there anything else you truly loathed about this then?
• 37:15
  All right. Oh, oh, he's straight in.
• 37:17
  He's straight. In one of my favorite scenes in
• 37:22
  the Ian and Barbara era is at the start of the Romans.
• 37:26
  Hey, why don't you just get that out of the refrigerator for me?
• 37:29
  Yeah. OK.
• 37:31
  Oh, you know that scene and they're flirting and they're,
• 37:35
  they're comfortable with each other.
• 37:36
  And I'm like, that's not in the book at all.
• 37:40
  That is so post cordial, wouldn't it?
• 37:42
  They just had it off. Let's be.
• 37:46
  So yeah, I was just like, really, that's one of my
• 37:50
  favourite moments of the. What has happened?
• 37:51
  It's not. There's, there's quite a lot of
• 37:55
  that in the book because it, it's not just a straight scene
• 37:57
  by scene retelling. So most of the the scenes of the
• 38:02
  book go because it's not sort of dialogue, it's someone sort of
• 38:05
  giving an overview of what's happened in the day that's just
• 38:09
  passed or whatever. And sometimes that really works,
• 38:12
  particularly like I can't see like all of the farcical stuff
• 38:15
  working on the page of Barbara being chased around by Nero.
• 38:20
  That would just be so tedious if you had the Terence Dix version
• 38:23
  of that. So I think in some ways that
• 38:26
  works really well in the book. But in others you yeah, you lose
• 38:29
  those lovely scenes with the regulars and you know, like
• 38:32
  Vicki and Barbara's trip to the market is kind of told second
• 38:36
  hand through the slave traders when they come later in the
• 38:40
  novel. So you just lose a lot of of the
• 38:42
  kind of, yeah, detail of the story.
• 38:45
  So there's there's pros, pros and cons of it I think.
• 38:49
  Liar was the one I would really regret losing as well.
• 38:52
  What thermodynamic functions? Yeah.
• 38:55
  Yeah, it's a different gag, which I think works.
• 39:00
  Yes, John, it will soon supersede the classical and
• 39:02
  romantic traditions of playing tunes.
• 39:05
  But him just taking the piss by not playing the liar taking the
• 39:08
  piss, gorgeous. But again, it's it's kind of
• 39:11
  thinking about what works on TV and what works on the page.
• 39:13
  Because it is, as Andrew's put it, it's really difficult to do
• 39:17
  fast on a page without it just turning.
• 39:20
  Absolutely. Woodhouse can do it.
• 39:22
  Maybe PG Widows and not many others.
• 39:25
  I thought it was less problematic on the page than it
• 39:27
  was like, you know, actually watching Derrick Francis chasing
• 39:31
  Jacqueline Hill about those and her screaming her head off and
• 39:34
  we're all going, oh, isn't this amusing?
• 39:35
  You know, he's trying to rape her.
• 39:38
  In the book you get a a sequence where Barbara writes to Nero and
• 39:43
  let's be honest, he deserves it. She just says I do not find you
• 39:46
  the least bit attractive. I'm very sorry if this seemed
• 39:48
  harsh and I hope you'll be how to you'll be able to forgive me
• 39:52
  and allow me to remain your unmolested in all other
• 39:55
  respects, obedient servant which made me laugh.
• 39:58
  I know, I know ancient Rome was filled with a lot of that stuff,
• 40:03
  and OK, that's fine. But you don't need to put that
• 40:07
  in your Doctor Who story and stuff like that, you know?
• 40:09
  Yeah. It's like when you're watching
• 40:11
  the Time Meddler and you have an ironically good time, and then
• 40:15
  there's like, wait, did that Lady just get, oh, you know that
• 40:19
  that all right, it did happen, but maybe you don't need to put
• 40:24
  it on. And the like, the the sequence,
• 40:28
  you know, where Vicky swaps the drinks around in is so funny.
• 40:33
  And the thing, you know, he's got his arm around.
• 40:34
  If I can only just get my hands on the person responsible.
• 40:37
  And what in the TV show, it's really, really funny.
• 40:39
  It is skipped over again. All of those sort of set pieces
• 40:42
  are neglected a little bit just in because of how he's choosing
• 40:46
  to tell the story. I wonder how that came about to
• 40:51
  do it as extracts and letters and.
• 40:53
  It's interesting too, because he, he's not afraid of, of
• 40:56
  female voices at all. Like the book is fulfilled with
• 40:59
  them. I, I do like the perspective
• 41:01
  from the poisoner. That's, that's pretty
• 41:04
  interesting, right? So, and, and, and Nero's, Nero's
• 41:10
  wife, whose name escapes me right now, but you know,
• 41:13
  they're, they're really fun. And then when you get to the
• 41:15
  myth makers, Cassandra's quite entertaining as well.
• 41:19
  So it's not he's, he's obviously not afraid to put feminine
• 41:23
  voices in his books. So why does he avoid Barbara and
• 41:26
  Vicki so much? It's, it's, and I feel like
• 41:30
  that's the reason some of this stuff from the TV show isn't in
• 41:35
  the book, because they happened to Barbara and Vicki.
• 41:39
  And if Ian or the Doctor aren't there, well, they're just kind
• 41:43
  of got those bits. It's going to be glossed over
• 41:46
  unless the poisoner's got a diary or something.
• 41:48
  So yeah, it was a choice. The women that he does focus on
• 41:53
  are these kind of like broad comedy, like Shrew, like women.
• 41:59
  They're not necessarily particularly fully rounded.
• 42:02
  I mean, particularly like Cassandra and Cassandra in
• 42:06
  Makers, who's like the most prominent woman in it, but what
• 42:09
  she's doing is sort of like yelling at people and being a
• 42:12
  figure of fun and, you know, being this this awful harridan.
• 42:16
  So yeah, I feel like he's a lot more invested in the men that
• 42:21
  he's writing about than the women.
• 42:23
  And the the female characters sections in the Romans are all
• 42:26
  quite slim, particularly Barbara's.
• 42:29
  And yeah, nothing for Vicky. So yeah, I just think he's just
• 42:33
  not really that interested in writing fully rounded women.
• 42:37
  I would agree with that, but I thought he wrote Vicky really
• 42:41
  well in The Myth Makers and wrote her up in a couple of
• 42:44
  scenes more so than the TV show, but that's not this one.
• 42:49
  I mean, you'd get a great scene from Papaya's point of view, but
• 42:53
  then you'd have Nero come in with a line like this.
• 42:56
  If a marriage has come to last, it will never be my fault.
• 42:59
  In fact, I've already written her obituary and I cannot wait
• 43:03
  to publish so immediately. It's like a sexist remark in the
• 43:07
  very next extract. I.
• 43:09
  Mean though I can some reason I can imagine Nero saying and
• 43:14
  writing stuff like that He killed his he killed his own mum
• 43:16
  I think. So the guy was capable of all
• 43:18
  sorts of didn't he burn Ryan? Burn Ryan.
• 43:21
  So allegedly. So yeah, he's a nasty piece of
• 43:24
  work. It's.
• 43:24
  Way nasty that we saw on the TV. Episode It's funny too, because
• 43:29
  in the TV story the guy playing him is like what, 50 Nero was 30
• 43:33
  when he was when he's killed yeah begins.
• 43:35
  Doing it begins does it brilliantly.
• 43:38
  But although he does it to have someone young looking doing all
• 43:41
  this kind of stuff on the TV, yeah.
• 43:43
  It does give a woman the best joke in the book, or at least it
• 43:47
  really. I don't know why it tickled me
• 43:48
  so much, but it was the bit about Lacosta being inundated
• 43:52
  with orders and asking Vicki if she ever considered a career in
• 43:56
  toxicology as it's a Grove industry right now.
• 43:59
  Which is it's just a dark joke which really made.
• 44:03
  Business is booming. Maybe I've got a very simple
• 44:06
  sense who? Knows.
• 44:08
  It, it made me chuckle, though. Well, look, should we swing
• 44:12
  around? Because I, I think, you know, we
• 44:14
  may have, we may have covered that as well as we're going to
• 44:18
  without just, you know, tearing every page of the book and
• 44:20
  shitting on it. Let's turn our attention to the
• 44:24
  myth makers then. Look over here, here under the
• 44:31
  olive trees, That's right, by the pile of broken stones and
• 44:37
  the cracked statues of old gods. What do you see?
• 44:43
  By nothing but an old man sitting in the autumn sunshine
• 44:49
  and dreaming and remembering. That is what old men do, having
• 44:56
  nothing better to occupy their time.
• 44:59
  And since that is what I have become, that is why I do it.
• 45:05
  I heard your footsteps when you first entered the Grove to sit
• 45:10
  down, whoever you are, and have a slice of goats cheese with me.
• 45:16
  Yeah, rather good. You'll find I eat very little
• 45:21
  else these days. Teeth gone, of course.
• 45:25
  You think it's sad to be old Nonsense.
• 45:29
  It's a triumph, an unexpected one at that, because I tell you,
• 45:35
  I thought I'd never make it past 30.
• 45:39
  Men do not frequently survive to senility in these dangerous
• 45:43
  times. But then, being blind, I suppose
• 45:48
  I can hardly be considered much of A threat to anyone.
• 45:52
  So somehow I have been allowed to live, although probably more
• 45:57
  by negligence than by charity or proper concern for the elderly.
• 46:03
  And I am grateful for I have a tale or two still to tell before
• 46:09
  I pass Asher on and meet my dead friends in the shadows of the
• 46:14
  netherworld. I am, you see, a myth maker, and
• 46:19
  my name is Homer. I don't know if that wouldn't
• 46:23
  mean anything to you, but it is a name once well considered in
• 46:28
  poetic circles. No matter.
• 46:32
  No reputation lasts forever. But that is why I sit here in
• 46:38
  the stubble of the empty fields and lean against the rubble of
• 46:43
  the fallen city, which was once Troy, while scavengers flap in
• 46:48
  the ruins and the lizards ran across my bare feet.
• 46:52
  At least I hope they're lizards. If they're scorpions, perhaps
• 46:56
  you would be so kind. Thank you.
• 47:01
  And I remember the beginning of it all long ago, when I was
• 47:06
  young. Possibly a bit more interesting
• 47:11
  because none of it exists for us to watch and and the soundtrack
• 47:16
  that's available is frankly obscene on the ears.
• 47:19
  That popping soundtrack. So the book could be a lot of
• 47:24
  people's exposure to the story of the myth makers.
• 47:29
  How did this fare? And let's go in a different
• 47:31
  direction this time, John. This again, this is Donald
• 47:36
  Cotton doing his own book, which might be less of a kind of
• 47:41
  interesting from literary analysis point of view, but it's
• 47:44
  great. It's great because it's got that
• 47:46
  single directed so you don't run into the problem of Donald
• 47:49
  Cotton trying to do different voices and not doing them.
• 47:52
  I think to go back to this point on the letters, there isn't a
• 47:57
  character you can run through the Romans because the point is
• 48:02
  the characters are separated at various points, so it's
• 48:04
  difficult to do that. Whereas with this and the gun
• 48:07
  fighters, he manages to find is it Ned Buntliner thinking the
• 48:10
  gun fighters is a journalist take that holiday.
• 48:13
  He's got that. And it's it's that I love it
• 48:16
  because it's that mute character who was just added to give the
• 48:19
  excuse of that death of a spy title.
• 48:22
  And he makes this character absolutely crucial.
• 48:26
  And again, I think 11 when I read this, I could appreciate
• 48:30
  them missing because I had a, we had a Disney encyclopedia and I
• 48:35
  had a volume on Greek myths. So I knew the kind of myths.
• 48:37
  I love that bit. I've got a lot of the
• 48:39
  references, but it, it was funny in an out of way and I could
• 48:42
  tell it was beyond me at that stage, but it was one I could go
• 48:45
  back to 10 years later. Do the references, look at the
• 48:49
  jokes, look at the way Cotton is playing with the language, the
• 48:52
  the puns, working the titles in, you know, whole low young
• 48:57
  lovers. Again, do the puns beautifully.
• 49:01
  And the characters, Cassandra said is just this, you know, in
• 49:06
  history, he's got this reputation history, but she's
• 49:09
  really funny. And it's just really funny that
• 49:12
  these guys are completely tired or they're just so pissed off.
• 49:17
  And it's gorgeous. And the Rep, the way he kind of
• 49:19
  destroys all their reputation through the book.
• 49:22
  It's it's so, so good. And it, you know, it does
• 49:27
  absolutely deserve its reputation as the best of
• 49:29
  targets. And I'm really, really glad that
• 49:33
  we haven't got the thing because this deserves to be the way the
• 49:37
  story's remembered. I think it's more of a literary
• 49:39
  story than one on TV, if that makes sense.
• 49:43
  So yeah. I mean, this is the farce that
• 49:45
  Andrew was talking about earlier.
• 49:46
  It's basically in and out of those camps like you wouldn't
• 49:49
  believe, or some secret back door or something to get in and
• 49:53
  out, like, oh wait, we need a scene from the Trojan's point of
• 49:56
  view, right? I'm gonna go there now, you
• 49:58
  know. Don't need a horse to get in
• 50:00
  either, he. Walks through the front gates,
• 50:04
  back through the fucking front gates.
• 50:06
  How was it taken 10 years to take this place?
• 50:09
  They're just opening it up for everyone.
• 50:12
  Always a wily operator, Homer, you know, he's got, he's got
• 50:16
  masculine Wiles. He can distract the girls.
• 50:21
  Andrew, how did you find the myth makers?
• 50:23
  I enjoyed the myth Makers a lot more than the Romans.
• 50:27
  I felt like the the telling it from through Homer's voice kind
• 50:33
  of meant that the prose was much more to my taste, I guess, than
• 50:41
  in the Romans. You didn't get that kind of
• 50:43
  ornate language and pomposity, which can just, I find a bit
• 50:48
  grating to read. So yeah.
• 50:52
  And it being, yeah, as you're saying, a literary inspiration
• 50:57
  behind the story, you know, doing that and in a book in book
• 51:01
  form works really well. And it it's just so it's such a
• 51:06
  weird book in that it's told by Homer, yet Homer has all these
• 51:13
  kind of modern references. So he's basically a 60s TV
• 51:18
  writer. Like he, Homer is Donald Cotton
• 51:21
  basically. And all of the kind of, yeah,
• 51:24
  cross references that he's making are ones, yeah, from from
• 51:28
  mid 20th century, not sort of prehistory.
• 51:32
  And so, yeah, it's just such a weird way of telling the story
• 51:39
  and just so surprising that it got published, which I suppose
• 51:43
  is, you know, we should be thankful for.
• 51:47
  But there are a few things that I don't like about it.
• 51:53
  And I think, you know, as as a nerdy Doctor Who fan, I was a
• 51:58
  bit disappointed in the ending that, you know, you usually have
• 52:02
  throughout the books. It's kind of gone to pains for
• 52:05
  Homer to kind of witness everything.
• 52:07
  And then Homer just kind of like, runs away from Troy at the
• 52:10
  end. So you miss all of you miss the
• 52:12
  bloodbath. And then you also miss all the
• 52:14
  stuff with the TARDIS crew changing over.
• 52:17
  You don't get to see Vicki say goodbye to the Doctor and
• 52:19
  Stephen. Katarina has like 1 scene in the
• 52:23
  book. And you think this is a book
• 52:24
  you've got like the chance to kind of build up this character.
• 52:26
  I mean, I know that he doesn't give a shit about the fact that
• 52:29
  she was a companion and we want more of her because this is
• 52:31
  Donald Cotton telling his version of this story.
• 52:34
  But as a Doctor Who nerd, I'm like, oh, I'm sure that he'll
• 52:37
  have taken the opportunity to flesh out Katarina, who has, you
• 52:41
  know, 24 episodes on screen. No, So that kind of frustrated
• 52:46
  me a little bit. And although you said, Joe, that
• 52:51
  that Vicky's written up a bit in this book, I think it still
• 52:55
  doesn't, it doesn't fully take advantage of that character and
• 53:01
  that Vicky is a really, really strong character.
• 53:04
  And I feel like she could have been more integral to this book
• 53:07
  and the telling of the book, even given that Vicky stays
• 53:11
  there, knows Homer, but she's just sort of this, she's one of
• 53:16
  the periphery characters. It's not like, I mean, the way I
• 53:19
  would have told it would have been.
• 53:21
  Maybe it could be a conversation between, rather than the doctor
• 53:25
  sitting with Homer, which is, you know, we have this kind of
• 53:28
  framing device of Homers sitting down with an old friend to
• 53:32
  retell this story. Instead of the doctor, that
• 53:34
  could have been Vicky, and Vicky could have told the bits in Troy
• 53:38
  and she could have told her story of what happened at the
• 53:40
  end for the bits that Homer wasn't present to.
• 53:42
  You wouldn't need the bits of Homer running back and forth
• 53:45
  between the two camps because Homer could tell the Greek bear,
• 53:48
  Vicky could tell the Trojan bear, and you'd kind of build
• 53:51
  her up as this character. But I just don't think he's that
• 53:55
  interested in women and their voices so.
• 53:57
  What the temptation there would be to do it as an unreliable
• 54:01
  narrator, A bit like the The X-Files episode Bad Blood.
• 54:03
  You tell the story from 2 points of view, but they're so
• 54:05
  exaggerated in both directions. In fact, what I what my next
• 54:10
  thought on from that was like, well, actually just make Vicky
• 54:14
  Homer and I think that's that's perhaps what you would do if you
• 54:17
  were novelizing it now that the 11 of the only survivors of the
• 54:22
  Trojan War, the person retelling it who the only way they could
• 54:26
  get published. And it explains all the
• 54:29
  anachronisms. Yeah, exactly like that.
• 54:33
  Vicky is the one telling this story and Vicky has gone on to
• 54:35
  become this great. How much money do you?
• 54:38
  Want of classical history? We remember her as a man, Yeah.
• 54:43
  Do you want Nick British phone number so we can get more to do
• 54:46
  this? I just thought Homer was a
• 54:49
  forward thinker, you know? Yeah, he does seem to get his
• 54:53
  head around paradoxes and all sorts, which I do want to get
• 54:56
  into in a minute. Luke, how did you find the myth
• 54:59
  makers? I mean, am I going to I'm going
• 55:02
  to say necrotism has annoyed me but that science fiction lines
• 55:06
  funny. I like this more than the Romans
• 55:09
  as well. I still 100% love it.
• 55:14
  I don't like it that much. Look Stevens, one of my
• 55:18
  favourites and. I mean diomedy, don't you?
• 55:23
  Oh yeah, I'm glad I, you know, I should have listened to the
• 55:27
  soundtrack first because I'm like Diamedy.
• 55:30
  Like, I mean like any form of soundtrack, like the TV story or
• 55:35
  that one, because I know Aganema, like Dion Medi, like I
• 55:39
  didn't know how to pronounce it until I re listened to the TV
• 55:42
  story after this. I was like, oh, that would have
• 55:45
  been helpful. Great.
• 55:49
  Sometimes it'll be nice. Like tell us how to say these,
• 55:52
  please. I don't, I don't know.
• 55:55
  But look, All right. So at the start of this book,
• 55:59
  the Doctor is trying to take Stephen and Vicki to the 60s
• 56:02
  because they feel it'd be a good place to live.
• 56:06
  Huh. So.
• 56:07
  Then why was Ian and Barbara still like?
• 56:10
  Yeah. And then so why does Stephen say
• 56:12
  he needs to get back home to be part of like the space, like
• 56:16
  military and stuff? What?
• 56:17
  Isn't he? Cover that with a lie.
• 56:19
  And he said he's been on compassionately but some for
• 56:21
  some time now. That's right.
• 56:23
  But there's also the implication there that, like, Stephen likes
• 56:28
  travelling through space but not time.
• 56:31
  And I'm like, oh, really? I mean, he just.
• 56:34
  I never got that impression. I mean, a lot of his adventures
• 56:37
  put him through the ringer, so I can probably say why he didn't
• 56:40
  like it. But yeah.
• 56:42
  And there's things Homer says, like, what do you mean Flying
• 56:47
  Dutchman, You know, like things like that.
• 56:50
  How do you know what a Flying Dutchman is?
• 56:52
  Just go with it. So like I feel like the pubs
• 56:56
  are. So great, just go with it.
• 56:59
  What happens with me in this because I laughed a couple times
• 57:02
  at the Romans, but this one in particular I kind of like.
• 57:07
  The chapters were really short, some of them.
• 57:09
  And you guys are right, the chapter files Temple Fugit is
• 57:12
  another one I like. There's lots of good terms of
• 57:17
  phrase and all that kind of stuff.
• 57:18
  And every time I feel myself like starting to kind of all
• 57:22
  right, relax and enjoy myself, he kind of forgets.
• 57:26
  And then I mean, like the doctor trying to explain time travel to
• 57:30
  it this years and things. And I don't know.
• 57:34
  I can't I can't seem really do it, do that like.
• 57:37
  And then he like telling people like you cleared or Einstein,
• 57:40
  like Homer knows who they are. And he goes, I hadn't I hadn't
• 57:44
  heard of them either until now. I'm like, yeah, but I could
• 57:48
  have. I don't know.
• 57:49
  It just felt like, that's funny. And then they'd do something
• 57:53
  like that. I don't know why he's done it
• 57:56
  like that. And then how is Homer?
• 57:58
  Like, the security here is LAX. The only people who can't foil
• 58:02
  any of the Trojan security ever, at any point in the story are
• 58:06
  Stephen the doctor and Vicki. It's like Homer, though.
• 58:10
  I'm going through trapdoors here.
• 58:12
  I'm coming out the freaking front gates and going back
• 58:14
  through the front gates later and back out again, even though
• 58:17
  there's a freaking Army guy going stabby, stabby, stabby
• 58:20
  stab. I just loved how as the book
• 58:23
  went on his way in and out, just got more relaxed as it went.
• 58:28
  Like I can't even be arsed to think of another way of getting
• 58:31
  into that camp. So I have complained about that
• 58:34
  part. So one of my favorite bits in
• 58:37
  the whole book is when I'm like, I'm getting really annoyed of
• 58:40
  this guy just wandering around Willy nilly and Odysseus, he's
• 58:43
  just like culture bang and and I'm like, there's a bit of
• 58:49
  comeuppance with you. Bloody voyeur follow on everyone
• 58:52
  and not helping a single person in this whole story as well.
• 58:56
  I said you're like, it's a bit extreme.
• 58:59
  I know it's a it's a book though, and it's not real.
• 59:02
  So I'm I'm, I'm got to allow it and laugh my ass off the same
• 59:06
  time. It's dark, isn't it?
• 59:09
  It's dark and it goes, what's that on your face?
• 59:11
  And he goes. I think he was talking about the
• 59:13
  remains of my eyes sticking out of his socket.
• 59:16
  Oh, poor Vicky has to kind of like kind of like clean and all
• 59:21
  that kind of stuff later on in the cell.
• 59:22
  So there is that like sometimes he'll catch himself and be self
• 59:28
  aware of what he's doing and then he'll do something about it
• 59:32
  that makes me really laugh. And I've never had that
• 59:35
  dichotomy of like and laughing my ass off loudly at the same
• 59:42
  time. It's.
• 59:44
  What a complex emotions. You must have been failing
• 59:46
  there. I'm glad I read it, but it it it
• 59:53
  I feel like this book did half of what you're wanting me to
• 59:57
  Joe, and that's just like just chill out and enjoy yourself And
• 1:00:02
  I was. It might have been a battle, but
• 1:00:04
  like the fact that it was able to kind of put a smile on my
• 1:00:07
  face at all in in the way it intended as well.
• 1:00:11
  I feel like, you know, that's a win.
• 1:00:12
  I'll take it. Yeah.
• 1:00:16
  Well, coming after that, I think this might be the best Doctor
• 1:00:21
  Who book of all time for me. I think it's the best Doctor Who
• 1:00:26
  book that I've read since I started the book club.
• 1:00:29
  When I read it last year, it was a revelation to me.
• 1:00:32
  When listening to the audio, I just adored it even more.
• 1:00:36
  I think the premise of the thing, the Doctor materializing,
• 1:00:40
  then mistaken him for a God. Him in the Greek camp, Vicky in
• 1:00:45
  the Trojan camp, the two of them with a countdown, fighting
• 1:00:48
  against each other. That is the most delicious
• 1:00:50
  premise for a Doctor Who story I can think of.
• 1:00:54
  And then you've got the beautifully characterized Greeks
• 1:00:57
  and the naughtiness of the humor there, and you've got the sitcom
• 1:01:01
  nature of the Trojan scenes. I mean, are you being
• 1:01:04
  prophesized? That's what I'd call that show
• 1:01:07
  you've got. You've literally got father, son
• 1:01:10
  and daughter. Ave. father's tired of the sons
• 1:01:12
  incompetence. Daughter scream.
• 1:01:14
  Importance of doom. I mean, the sun's like bloody
• 1:01:17
  Worcester, utterly ineffectual and snobbish.
• 1:01:20
  All three of them sighed at the heavens to each other.
• 1:01:22
  It's fucking Black Adder before Black Adder, right?
• 1:01:26
  And but it's better than Black Adder.
• 1:01:29
  It's wittier, it's more sophisticated.
• 1:01:32
  It's genuinely trying to be a literary piece of work.
• 1:01:36
  I think it's an extraordinary book.
• 1:01:38
  I absolutely loved every second of it.
• 1:01:41
  Everyone's bristling in that one chapter.
• 1:01:43
  Priam Cassandra. Cassandra bristled.
• 1:01:47
  Priam bristled. Now it was Vicky's turn to.
• 1:01:50
  I do, I genuinely. Think Donald?
• 1:01:53
  Donald has moments that get me. He's got a command of language
• 1:01:58
  and wits that supersedes pretty much any other Doctor Who
• 1:02:03
  writer, maybe except for Douglas Adams.
• 1:02:06
  I think it's there in the script, and I definitely think
• 1:02:09
  it's there in the book. That whole sequence.
• 1:02:11
  I've got to read it out. If he didn't dream of doing it
• 1:02:16
  himself, he'd never think it up at all.
• 1:02:18
  That's one of the troubles of time travel.
• 1:02:20
  You see, the Doctor was always so anxious not to alter the
• 1:02:23
  course of history by meddling that he sometimes realized
• 1:02:25
  history couldn't happen. He didn't give it a helping hand
• 1:02:28
  every now and again. The trick is, don't play the
• 1:02:31
  giddy go, just apply to the history books for instructions
• 1:02:34
  and then get on with it. And apparently, since I'll have
• 1:02:37
  written one myself before long, all he had to do was what I told
• 1:02:41
  him, and I couldn't wait to hear what that was.
• 1:02:44
  That is just such a clever joke, and it explains the paradox
• 1:02:47
  beautifully. You know, Steven Moffitt tried
• 1:02:49
  for six seasons, for God's sakes.
• 1:02:51
  He did it there in a paragraph beautifully.
• 1:02:53
  I don't know. I just think this is really
• 1:02:55
  sophisticated bit of work. I can see why it has all of
• 1:02:58
  these accolades thrown at him, but that's what it's really
• 1:03:01
  funny. The sequence, I mean, the
• 1:03:03
  sequence on the screen where Hartnell was talking about
• 1:03:06
  projecting them over the wall in paper planes or whatever it is,
• 1:03:11
  and it goes, well, fine, you can go 1st and they, oh, no way.
• 1:03:16
  I seem to have mistaken the calculations.
• 1:03:18
  We'll try something else. Have you ever thought of the
• 1:03:20
  great horse of Troy? You know, it's just really,
• 1:03:23
  really funny. The whole thing about how it
• 1:03:26
  plays with the myth and whether it's history as well, that's
• 1:03:29
  really clever. I just think it works on levels.
• 1:03:32
  And I and I, it's so refreshing for a target book to be
• 1:03:37
  experimenting with form like this because they just didn't do
• 1:03:41
  it, really. And I think these Donald Cotton
• 1:03:43
  books, maybe some of the latter day 7th Doctor books, they're
• 1:03:48
  the best target books because they're the ones that you can
• 1:03:50
  read and read and read and keep getting new things from them as
• 1:03:53
  you do the rest. Yeah, you can read the Robots of
• 1:03:56
  Deaf Target 98 pages and and read the scripts, but you know,
• 1:04:01
  you can watch the story, whereas this is a total retelling of the
• 1:04:05
  story. I think it's inspired the.
• 1:04:08
  Thing I think is Luke was talking about Homer getting in
• 1:04:11
  and out easily. I think that's the big gap that
• 1:04:13
  Donald Cotton's adding here because fundamentally the idea
• 1:04:17
  of the Greeks, oh you know, building this big horse and the
• 1:04:21
  Trone's going, oh it's our God, let's take it in.
• 1:04:24
  The fundamental theories, they come up with all these stupid
• 1:04:27
  complicated ways of doing it and there's much easier ways.
• 1:04:31
  It's just the humour. They're over complicating
• 1:04:34
  things, they're being stupid. I love that about it.
• 1:04:38
  Continuing to be a disagreeable man on today's call.
• 1:04:44
  I think the ending's great. I really think the ending's
• 1:04:46
  great. I think taking away his eye when
• 1:04:48
  he does that adds a bit of genuine jeopardy that, yeah, he
• 1:04:52
  can't get away with just splitting back and forth.
• 1:04:54
  But taking out the other eye, that cuts out the problem of
• 1:04:57
  having to show the massacre in a book that's geared for kids.
• 1:05:01
  So instead. We can.
• 1:05:02
  Hear it, though, so it's like it's taken.
• 1:05:05
  It's like Cotton's taking a piss.
• 1:05:07
  Yeah, well, all you can do is hear the soundtrack.
• 1:05:09
  Well, that's all you get in the book as well.
• 1:05:11
  I'm afraid. I don't know.
• 1:05:12
  Again, I just think that's super.
• 1:05:14
  So it's it's a good way of keeping this PG 13.
• 1:05:18
  Otherwise, I mean, what are you going to say?
• 1:05:19
  People were, you know, being eviscerated and having their
• 1:05:22
  heads cut off. And actually as a kid, we'd
• 1:05:24
  probably love that wouldn't. We we all, we all know that this
• 1:05:28
  is probably going to turn out to be if it ever gets found.
• 1:05:31
  I don't think it will. It looks like it's going to be a
• 1:05:33
  fun, good kind of story. But let's face it, Genetus
• 1:05:38
  versus Ian sucks balls. That massacre is going to look
• 1:05:43
  like shit and you all know it. Am I going to love it anyway?
• 1:05:48
  Because, like, we've never seen it?
• 1:05:49
  Of course. But we know 60s BBC fighting.
• 1:05:53
  Come on. It it's going to be the same as
• 1:05:55
  the gunfighters do, essentially, because it's the same story.
• 1:05:58
  It's it's all comedy. Oh, and there's a brutal
• 1:06:01
  massacre at the end. Just the.
• 1:06:02
  Gunfire at the end of the gunfires looks great.
• 1:06:04
  All short it's. Fantastic.
• 1:06:06
  But it's just because because they've been told to absolutely
• 1:06:09
  overplay the comedy. It's such a jarring switch.
• 1:06:14
  I think it's much easier to do to do shooty bang bangs than it
• 1:06:17
  is like, let's do this then then I dock and you do this and then
• 1:06:21
  you dock. And how about do Harrison Ford
• 1:06:23
  and just go like that and I go done.
• 1:06:27
  We just saved 50 bucks. I don't know how much, but you
• 1:06:30
  know, yeah, it's a it's a lot easier just to pretend you just
• 1:06:34
  got shot and keel over that guest than it is to be like, all
• 1:06:37
  right, get a whole bunch of past 60s access to fucking sword
• 1:06:43
  fight against each other. The other thing as well is I
• 1:06:46
  just think Cassandra is a really interesting character, one
• 1:06:50
  because you're right, Andrew, she is just a melodramatic Herod
• 1:06:56
  and screaming her head off about everything and, you know, in a
• 1:06:59
  perpetual bitch fight with Vicky, which is glorious, but
• 1:07:03
  she's also right as well. Everything she's saying is
• 1:07:06
  right. And there's even a pointed
• 1:07:09
  moment where the two men stand shoulder to shoulder and one
• 1:07:13
  goes, well, I found Vicky, so so we're not going to change the
• 1:07:17
  plans. And the other one goes, well, I
• 1:07:18
  found the horse. So that's coming in and she's
• 1:07:21
  there going, you know, we are doing.
• 1:07:24
  And if they just listen to her, they would have been fine in
• 1:07:27
  that TV show. It's horrible.
• 1:07:29
  She gets dragged off screaming doesn't she in the TV show?
• 1:07:33
  But Cotton lampshades that on such moments to history turn or
• 1:07:37
  something like that. Isn't it?
• 1:07:38
  If they listen, she is right, but she's right for the wrong
• 1:07:42
  reasons. It's because she's just been
• 1:07:44
  this voice of doom all the way through.
• 1:07:46
  That's why no one listens to her.
• 1:07:48
  When she's right, it's it's the it's the girl who cried wolf,
• 1:07:52
  essentially. It's like someone on traders
• 1:07:54
  saying I think this person is the traitor and then they give
• 1:07:58
  you their logic and it's 100% incorrect.
• 1:08:01
  But they're right, that person is the.
• 1:08:03
  Trader, yeah. Probably.
• 1:08:06
  She's so camping. The TV show.
• 1:08:08
  How dare you. She's going to see.
• 1:08:12
  Is that the woman from May to December?
• 1:08:13
  It is, isn't it? The secretary?
• 1:08:16
  Oh, I think it is. OK, everyone's just got me a
• 1:08:21
  little Google Now. I'm sure it is.
• 1:08:24
  I'm sure it is. But I also think as well, you
• 1:08:26
  really can turn a phrase. I love the description of the
• 1:08:29
  horse as a horrifying doom laden juggernaut as well.
• 1:08:33
  You know, it really can turn a phrase.
• 1:08:39
  Oh well, we've all gone quiet. People are still Googling.
• 1:08:43
  I've got something else I wanted to bring up about it that I that
• 1:08:46
  I didn't like, which is it's rare actually, considering the
• 1:08:54
  time that the classic series was made that you get confronted
• 1:08:59
  with homophobia in classic Doctor Who.
• 1:09:02
  Whereas this book has a it's, I find it really depressing in
• 1:09:08
  this book because it's just the kind of casual, mundane
• 1:09:13
  homophobia that is like so ever present in 20th century culture
• 1:09:17
  and still lots of places now. And it's just that it really
• 1:09:21
  sticks out being in a Doctor Who book because because Doctor Who
• 1:09:24
  didn't often deal with sex and relationships and that kind of
• 1:09:28
  thing. I'm sure loads of the creative
• 1:09:30
  people involved in Doctor Who during that time had homophobic
• 1:09:35
  opinions. It's just that it didn't express
• 1:09:37
  itself in the subject matter of the show, which is why I think a
• 1:09:39
  lot of where people resonate with with the show because it
• 1:09:42
  just doesn't have that element to it, which a lot of pop
• 1:09:46
  culture did at the time. So then to kind of be confronted
• 1:09:50
  within the 1st 10 pages of the myth makers with this kind of
• 1:09:54
  casual dismissive homophobia about Achilles and Petroclus,
• 1:10:00
  which is just so it's just so tawdry and just gross.
• 1:10:04
  And I just, I just hated it. And it was just like, oh, OK,
• 1:10:08
  yeah. Like this is the stuff that we
• 1:10:10
  normally don't have to deal with when we're reading Doctor Who
• 1:10:12
  books. And it's just, yeah.
• 1:10:14
  And it was culturally out of place, wasn't it, in that.
• 1:10:18
  Yeah, I mean, when when you think that it's a book about
• 1:10:20
  ancient Greeks like this is this is yeah, one of those.
• 1:10:26
  We would have been all right back then, Andrew.
• 1:10:28
  All right. This is one of those hilarious
• 1:10:32
  transposing of modern ideas on on to Greece.
• 1:10:35
  Which is, you know what, what makes a lot of the humor work
• 1:10:39
  really, really well in the book. But in this instance it's just
• 1:10:43
  like, can you? Explain it to me because all of
• 1:10:45
  this went straight over my head. Well, there's so there's so the
• 1:10:51
  bits where he's talking about Achilles at the beginning of the
• 1:10:54
  book, so he describes him as he had that look of narcissistic
• 1:10:59
  petulance one often sees on the faces of health fanatics or male
• 1:11:03
  models who pose for morally suspect sculptors.
• 1:11:07
  I believe the Greeks have a word for it nowadays.
• 1:11:10
  So it's saying, you know, look, look at Achilles.
• 1:11:15
  Yeah. And then later on when it's
• 1:11:19
  talking about Patroclus being killed, murderer spat Achilles
• 1:11:24
  without wit. Patroclus was a boy, a boy.
• 1:11:28
  So this is this is into the into Homer's voice.
• 1:11:30
  A boy. Quite.
• 1:11:31
  So to understand is not necessarily to approve.
• 1:11:35
  So you know, it's it's it's putting it into a kids book in a
• 1:11:41
  way that it's not saying look at these two disgusting
• 1:11:44
  homosexuals, but it is saying that.
• 1:11:46
  And if you could read between the lines, that's exactly what
• 1:11:48
  it's saying. Look at these two disgusting
• 1:11:51
  people. And it's just that kind of
• 1:11:55
  nudge, nudge wink, wink casual stuff that.
• 1:12:00
  Yeah, I miss both. I absolutely miss both.
• 1:12:03
  Maybe I'm just not attuned to it.
• 1:12:07
  Yeah, I mean, go go back to those early chapters.
• 1:12:09
  It's it's I. Mean they're as dismissive of
• 1:12:11
  women as well. There's all this stuff about
• 1:12:14
  Helen, isn't there? In those scenes where, although
• 1:12:16
  I was laughing quite a lot about that, you know, the most
• 1:12:20
  beautiful woman in all of Troy, Anyone would have a bit of her.
• 1:12:23
  But it is incredibly sexist evening.
• 1:12:26
  Yeah. And that like, I think even it's
• 1:12:29
  just it's all those sort of the opinions of a man of the 60s, I
• 1:12:35
  think. And despite the fact that this
• 1:12:37
  book was written in the 80s, I think probably some attitudes
• 1:12:39
  felt a bit outdated then and they.
• 1:12:42
  Went over JNTZ. He wouldn't be having none of
• 1:12:44
  this, would he? I think, and I think it's
• 1:12:47
  deliberate because he's deliberately evoking that period
• 1:12:50
  of his life, I think, as a writer and and, you know,
• 1:12:53
  putting all that into this book, but it's some of it is just
• 1:12:57
  quite. Yeah, just just don't like it.
• 1:13:02
  And yeah, the same for all the sexist stuff.
• 1:13:04
  And you can just tell that he's, yeah, not that interested in
• 1:13:08
  writing the female characters as characters.
• 1:13:10
  I think my trouble is, is I was brought up on too many of these
• 1:13:12
  sitcoms from the 70s that are so problematic.
• 1:13:15
  Like, I absolutely recognise that.
• 1:13:17
  Are you being served? And things like this are racist
• 1:13:21
  and sexist and homophobic, but they're so funny.
• 1:13:25
  Like so so it's it's on me. It's my problem, no, But with
• 1:13:30
  with something like are you being served?
• 1:13:32
  I think there's a bit of affection in it because, I mean,
• 1:13:34
  we all love Mr. Humphreys, no? Some of some of the races.
• 1:13:38
  I mean, yes, obviously, obviously like, but I think, you
• 1:13:42
  know, with some of them, they kind of get away with it because
• 1:13:45
  it's based around characters that everyone loves.
• 1:13:47
  But in this, I mean, it's Achilles is not a character that
• 1:13:51
  you're meant to love in the book.
• 1:13:53
  And it's, yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm not.
• 1:13:57
  I feel like I'm not articulating this very well.
• 1:13:59
  No, you're articulating it extremely well.
• 1:14:01
  Oh, I mean I will say that the same.
• 1:14:03
  Grubby. It's a grubby part of the book.
• 1:14:06
  But I would say to be fair to Cotton, he's grubby in every
• 1:14:09
  direction. You know, men and women, Pete
• 1:14:13
  families, men and men. Like he's literally ripping
• 1:14:16
  everybody. It's not like he's just pointing
• 1:14:18
  it in that One Direction. But you're.
• 1:14:20
  Old and single in the 80s, is that, is that what we're getting
• 1:14:23
  here? Because there's fuck all
• 1:14:24
  representation anywhere else. When you get a a crumb and it's
• 1:14:28
  that negative, then yeah, that's disappointing.
• 1:14:32
  Wait, OK, right. It's come down now from the best
• 1:14:34
  Doctor Who book ever to one of the best Doctor Who books ever,
• 1:14:38
  with problematic overtones. I noticed something I don't know
• 1:14:43
  how to segue where I ran that Andrew, I'm sorry.
• 1:14:45
  So, but I but I will say like it kind of he he backs on
• 1:14:54
  something. You were saying how you wanted a
• 1:14:58
  little bit more depth for Katerina, not necessarily making
• 1:15:01
  her like the main character or anything, but just giving her
• 1:15:04
  some some meat there. Vicki doesn't really have
• 1:15:07
  anything to do until like page 60 or 61 and.
• 1:15:11
  Show she's yeah 1 scene in the 1st episode.
• 1:15:15
  I know, I know, I know, I but apart from that first episode, I
• 1:15:21
  feel like Vicki Vicki's moments in 2-3 and four are a bit more
• 1:15:26
  spaced out. So after that initial episode,
• 1:15:29
  stay in the TARDIS and then, you know, the two blades get into
• 1:15:32
  trouble and she's dead. And she does it Well, she does.
• 1:15:35
  I feel like her time is a bit more spaced out.
• 1:15:39
  But this book we're almost half past the halfway point and I'm
• 1:15:45
  like, are we going to get some cool Vicky stuff?
• 1:15:47
  It's a last story and it's it's fine.
• 1:15:52
  It's it covers it a little bit of a different dimension in the
• 1:15:55
  in ATV story. It has to, but there is that
• 1:16:01
  characterization of Vicki, but there's also I did appreciate at
• 1:16:05
  the end, and this is probably why I love Andrew's idea of how
• 1:16:09
  I how we wrote you write this book when it does show like
• 1:16:15
  Vicki and Troy Troilus, like escape and here's where they go,
• 1:16:19
  here's what they do and stuff like that.
• 1:16:23
  So yeah, it's I guess I just wanted.
• 1:16:27
  All right, so she might not have been huge in the TV story ever.
• 1:16:31
  All right, maybe I'm wrong there, but it is the book, I
• 1:16:34
  guess. I guess I wanted more meat for
• 1:16:35
  Vicky, I guess, is what I'm saying.
• 1:16:38
  But yeah, I don't know, I like Vicky, have I said.
• 1:16:42
  That got Vicky much better here I thought, because Vicky in the
• 1:16:44
  Romans, I think he really gets the Doctor Vicky relationship
• 1:16:48
  totally wrong. It's quite paternal.
• 1:16:50
  Whereas in that Romans book it was called the doctor is just
• 1:16:55
  irritated by her all the way and it's never like that.
• 1:17:01
  Yeah, on TV he's delighted to take her on on on the trip to
• 1:17:03
  Rome. And so she and they, they're
• 1:17:05
  like good chums. Yeah.
• 1:17:09
  Yeah. The bit where Steven spells it
• 1:17:11
  out, you know, you and the Doctor have got a day to defeat
• 1:17:14
  each other. You happy about that?
• 1:17:16
  And then she finds out he's doing this great horse and she
• 1:17:19
  goes, Well, if that's all he's got to offer, this ain't going
• 1:17:21
  to be hard, is it? Like, Jesus Christ, I've got him
• 1:17:24
  beat. Yeah.
• 1:17:25
  I I yeah, she's not in it enough like the TV show, but I think
• 1:17:30
  her scenes with I've forgotten the fellas name.
• 1:17:33
  What's the Trojan? Please, oh Prime.
• 1:17:36
  I. Think her scenes with Troilus,
• 1:17:39
  where she's putting both Stephen and Troilus in their place in a
• 1:17:43
  very extreme way are great. Yes.
• 1:17:47
  I think the second-half of the book she gets a better deal.
• 1:17:51
  I just think it's a great story. I think it's a brilliant idea
• 1:17:54
  for a story. And I was just laughing a lot
• 1:17:57
  like Dogs Hooper, that makes me laugh this much.
• 1:18:00
  And some of the jokes I had to look up the references.
• 1:18:02
  I was like, oh, OK, well that's funny in hindsight.
• 1:18:05
  But you know, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'm clever enough.
• 1:18:10
  I'm probably clever enough to get 5 out of 10 jokes in this
• 1:18:13
  book. I can see me not reading the
• 1:18:16
  Romans again, but I can see me going all right, coming to the
• 1:18:21
  myth makers again and going all right.
• 1:18:23
  I know what it is this time. Chill the fuck out.
• 1:18:26
  It's been a year, Let's let's. And then I reckon I'd enjoy it
• 1:18:30
  more maybe in a year or two now that I know kind of what it is,
• 1:18:34
  rather than coming to it with with things and just being
• 1:18:38
  annoyed by it because it did make me laugh a lot.
• 1:18:40
  He's on more short footing as well with his own story, isn't
• 1:18:43
  he? You know, he knows this story
• 1:18:46
  inside out, back to front, which is why he can write things like
• 1:18:49
  Chapter 9, Temple Fugit, which I think is just glorious.
• 1:18:53
  Sorry, John. It's it's, I can try to remember
• 1:18:57
  what I was going to say. I think it's the reason it lasts
• 1:19:00
  because God knows how many times I've read this, it's double
• 1:19:03
  figures at least. It's because every time you
• 1:19:07
  read, you will get more of the references out of it.
• 1:19:10
  You'll pick up more and more. And I think that's why it lasts
• 1:19:13
  better than most of those targets where you just getting
• 1:19:16
  that straight, you're telling what's on screen.
• 1:19:18
  There isn't much depth to it. It's most targets are going back
• 1:19:22
  to it is a nostalgia exercise fundamentally, but this you go
• 1:19:27
  back and you're, oh, I get this now.
• 1:19:28
  I get that it changes with you to a degree.
• 1:19:32
  It changes as you as you learn more, as you understand more and
• 1:19:36
  you look up more. It's actually, it's really
• 1:19:39
  similar conceptually to the Puffin mash up books, isn't it?
• 1:19:44
  It's, you know, mash up into the Iliad and doing it in a really
• 1:19:49
  creative way. So yeah, there's, yeah, there's,
• 1:19:54
  I think there's a lot of parallels there, like when we
• 1:19:56
  were looking at how cool Mars does that.
• 1:19:59
  I think they could have done a bit more of this in the target
• 1:20:02
  range. I think people wouldn't have
• 1:20:03
  been happy because for a long time they were just a way of
• 1:20:07
  experiencing what was on TV. Like Terra's absolutely said he
• 1:20:10
  wrote them. Even if he wanted to make
• 1:20:13
  changes, he wrote them pretty authentically.
• 1:20:16
  But I think these are the ones that last, right.
• 1:20:18
  Oh, just to go back to what we were saying, I do love the fact
• 1:20:21
  that the doctor comes back at the end, one, to check up on
• 1:20:24
  Homer 2 to check up on Vicky, because it goes at the end of
• 1:20:27
  this and that's it. Like who knows what, you know
• 1:20:30
  what's happened to Vicky. Oh.
• 1:20:31
  Well, I mean, does he go to? Check up on Vicky.
• 1:20:33
  Well, he just sort of go and help the child and she goes, he
• 1:20:37
  goes. Yeah, well, she's middle-aged
• 1:20:38
  now. Oh, I suppose she would be, yes.
• 1:20:40
  Yeah, doesn't bother. Doesn't bother to go and knock
• 1:20:42
  on her door, though. He's just like, oh, she's OK.
• 1:20:43
  Yeah, right. OK, see ya.
• 1:20:45
  Back to the TARDIS. Andrew, I'll suggest you check
• 1:20:47
  out the Big Finish audio Fugitive of the Dogs, where he
• 1:20:51
  finally catches up with her. All right.
• 1:20:53
  You know how that book starts, That audio starts it it the
• 1:20:57
  very, very start. It starts with Vicky telling a
• 1:21:01
  freaking story and. The thing is right.
• 1:21:05
  Exactly what he. Said the Doctor's been nipping
• 1:21:07
  back to the homie. Yeah, that's how he finds out
• 1:21:10
  about all the anachronisms. The Doctor is just having a chat
• 1:21:13
  and throwing off all this stuff. Yeah, I did think that.
• 1:21:16
  And maybe maybe home has been on a couple of trips with the
• 1:21:18
  doctor. Oh.
• 1:21:19
  God. What a companion.
• 1:21:22
  Yes please. We have a short trips,
• 1:21:24
  collections, homo recollects or something are.
• 1:21:28
  You are you giving me more to write that?
• 1:21:29
  Yes, please. Yeah, right.
• 1:21:31
  I'm in. Put it at the back of the book.
• 1:21:33
  All right? This.
• 1:21:34
  This book is mutating as we go, isn't it?
• 1:21:37
  All the best ones do. Homer's Odyssey.
• 1:21:46
  I mean, I really want to end the conversation on myth makers on
• 1:21:48
  that wonderful gag, which feels appropriate, but does anyone
• 1:21:52
  have anything else they want to say about Ivor book that they
• 1:21:55
  want to? I mean, I think it's sort of
• 1:21:57
  been a mixed response and everyone has a ad drive.
• 1:22:00
  I am getting the impression of the sort of prose you don't like
• 1:22:04
  now because you weren't so keen on Monagra and you weren't so
• 1:22:07
  keen on the Romans, and I think there's a similar pretension in
• 1:22:10
  the writing of both of them. I don't like fruity writing.
• 1:22:15
  I like it to be clear. Don't read The Dalek Generation
• 1:22:18
  by Nicholas Briggs. And all right, Oh, you cool.
• 1:22:22
  That is the rightest fruit you could ever try.
• 1:22:28
  Have you read that one? No wonder he's still smiling.
• 1:22:34
  It's all right, I've read it twice so you don't have to.
• 1:22:38
  Anything from your notes or should we skip on to the top
• 1:22:41
  three? Let speak now or forever hold
• 1:22:44
  your peace. Silence.
• 1:22:48
  I'm holding my peace. Donald Khan's great, isn't he?
• 1:22:53
  I was going to say. I I I think he is one of the
• 1:22:56
  best OPS who writers and and I truly appreciate him trying new
• 1:23:02
  things. Yeah, I'd like the ones who are
• 1:23:05
  stretching it, and I think these books are here, these two and
• 1:23:09
  the Mccoys, because the editors have a sense that we're in the
• 1:23:14
  time they're being released, so they need to be a little bit
• 1:23:18
  more than you've seen. What's the?
• 1:23:21
  Alternative phrase for the video age.
• 1:23:23
  You know when they say we've hit the video age now where things
• 1:23:25
  are rewatchable? What's the book version of?
• 1:23:31
  That was that the English that let's make these books a bit
• 1:23:34
  more meaty because you could just get the VHSS now like yeah
• 1:23:37
  and or you could just record off the telly.
• 1:23:40
  So let's put more meat in these books that way they're they're
• 1:23:43
  more plantable to they're. Too broad and too deep for the
• 1:23:46
  small. Well done, well done.
• 1:23:51
  Is everybody happy to move on? Yes.
• 1:23:55
  OK, well oh God I forgot. What's our top three again?
• 1:23:59
  Someone please say it. Top three companion exits.
• 1:24:04
  Oh, that's right. Yes.
• 1:24:05
  In the books. In the books we should go round
• 1:24:07
  and do our usual sort of round Robin.
• 1:24:09
  We'll go Luke, Andrew, John May, Luke off.
• 1:24:13
  What's your #1? We're gonna get right.
• 1:24:18
  Here. Oh yeah, you're number. 30 my #3
• 1:24:20
  All right, good, because. I haven't hosted one of these
• 1:24:22
  for a while. You.
• 1:24:25
  Know, I really like Angie's exit in Timeless and all that kind of
• 1:24:30
  stuff. It kind of took me by surprise,
• 1:24:32
  even though it's very in character that eventually when
• 1:24:34
  she got home, she'd want to leave.
• 1:24:36
  But she'd been home a few times by that point.
• 1:24:39
  City of the Dead and a couple other books.
• 1:24:42
  So it kind of lulled me into a false sense of security.
• 1:24:44
  But yeah, I, it is on my to reread pile so someone can help
• 1:24:49
  me out here. But I just remember her kind of
• 1:24:51
  ending being really satisfying and kind of fitting and just
• 1:24:55
  just. It was like the right time.
• 1:24:57
  Yeah. So I'm kind of glad.
• 1:25:00
  Yes, let's say Angie Drew. My number 3 is also Angie.
• 1:25:10
  Yeah. And again, like Luke, I haven't
• 1:25:13
  I haven't reread it recently, but I think the thing about it
• 1:25:15
  that was good is that it was very clearly intended and
• 1:25:19
  signposted because, you know, she wanted to leave a few books
• 1:25:22
  before then you had the whole like parallel universes stuff.
• 1:25:25
  And then so by the time that she actually did leave, it felt
• 1:25:28
  like, you know, it was she was ready.
• 1:25:30
  And even though I do think that it was a mistake to write her
• 1:25:33
  out of the books at that point and they should have kept her
• 1:25:35
  and not broad tricks them, but that's that's another that's
• 1:25:38
  another top three did. They know at that point they
• 1:25:43
  they were going to end because maybe they wouldn't have done.
• 1:25:45
  I don't, I don't think they did. I don't think they would have
• 1:25:47
  gotten rid of her if. Doctor Who always has this thing
• 1:25:50
  where it always has to always be always a female assistant.
• 1:25:56
  Couldn't we have had a few books with just the Bros?
• 1:26:02
  We're turning him, you know, honestly.
• 1:26:09
  We're Doctor Who fans, we don't need much turn in headspace.
• 1:26:14
  Most were on the scale, John. Oh, actually, John, you're next.
• 1:26:18
  OK, I'm going to slightly cheat because I'm going to go with the
• 1:26:21
  Gallifrey Chronicles and I'm going to go with Tricks and Fits
• 1:26:28
  because I adore the way it goes. Because it's not an end.
• 1:26:35
  When you're doing a companion ending, you kind of need a bit
• 1:26:38
  of a resonance to make a good of reason why then.
• 1:26:40
  And they don't leave the Doctor. You don't see it.
• 1:26:43
  It's just them the adventure got.
• 1:26:45
  They jump into a volcano, the adventure goes on.
• 1:26:49
  I think that's such a brilliant way to end the range, because
• 1:26:52
  you're expecting something final, something huge.
• 1:26:55
  And Lance doesn't give you that. He gives you the idea there are
• 1:27:00
  more adventures with these guys. If you want them, you go and
• 1:27:03
  tell them you can imagine them for yourself.
• 1:27:06
  Can I adore that kind of generosity in fiction like that?
• 1:27:12
  Yeah, it's always nice to know there's They did the same with
• 1:27:14
  the comics, didn't they? Yes, with the Doctor.
• 1:27:16
  And is it Destry going over the hill?
• 1:27:19
  That was it, yeah. Hand in that ass.
• 1:27:21
  Cool. Yeah.
• 1:27:22
  Put your headphones back on. Will you read that fucking book
• 1:27:25
  please? So you haven't got to.
• 1:27:26
  Do this every time. Well, our first choices and she
• 1:27:32
  Kapoor, but in Time 0, which is technically when she left Doctor
• 1:27:39
  Who because she was forced in at the end of Time 0 due to the
• 1:27:43
  university shattering or some such nonsense.
• 1:27:47
  But I've talked about it before, so I won't go into too much
• 1:27:49
  detail. But I like the fact that in
• 1:27:51
  Camera Obscura, she's seen the Doctor suffer so much.
• 1:27:55
  She's like, I can't do this anymore, you almost died.
• 1:27:58
  This is breaking my heart. I've got to go.
• 1:28:00
  It's not. Fun anymore?
• 1:28:02
  Yeah, and then that scene I OFT quote of her ringing her mum up,
• 1:28:07
  she finds out that Fitz died on the exposition and and she burst
• 1:28:11
  into tears talking about Dave. And she's not talking about
• 1:28:14
  Dave, she's talking about Fitz. And it just, I don't know, it's
• 1:28:17
  a moment when it all coalesces and you realize how much the
• 1:28:20
  characters mean to each other. And then I'll just love all the
• 1:28:23
  stuff where she ends up on that plane on her own and everyone
• 1:28:28
  else jumps out and the plane is heading towards the mountain
• 1:28:30
  range. Oh, it's just wonderful.
• 1:28:33
  It would have been a great book for us to go out on, but I am
• 1:28:36
  pleased we had some more of her. Back to you, Luke.
• 1:28:41
  Right, it's very fresh in my in my head and I guess I I'm going
• 1:28:49
  my next two companions. I don't necessarily love, but
• 1:28:53
  the exits I kind of do and makes me want more of that version to
• 1:29:00
  carry on. Now.
• 1:29:01
  Ace. I really like her exit.
• 1:29:06
  If anyone's asking, I won't be saying Fitz because I if I read
• 1:29:09
  the Gallifrey Chronicles and there's no more EDA's to read,
• 1:29:12
  so there it. Hasn't left for you yet.
• 1:29:15
  I see you're still travelling. That's right, I got 3 three
• 1:29:18
  books left. That's my New Year's resolution
• 1:29:21
  to finally the dead. So memorial, there's a
• 1:29:25
  Baxendale, there's a Steve Cole in to the.
• 1:29:28
  Slaughter. Yeah, so I, I really like how
• 1:29:34
  she how she left. It's violent and stuff.
• 1:29:37
  But like she's unless like the idea of running across this
• 1:29:42
  French field, like French like barricades and stuff, defending
• 1:29:47
  the women who were trying to flee and all this kind of stuff
• 1:29:49
  and just how it sets up her, whatever, she her next chapter
• 1:29:54
  of her life. I just thought it was a really
• 1:29:55
  good, good kind of exit. There's some really cool moments
• 1:29:58
  between 7 and Ace as well. They get to kind of save each
• 1:30:01
  other and then they get to kind of pass out together and hug
• 1:30:04
  while flowers blossom and and things like that.
• 1:30:08
  So, so you know, she's, she's maligned in the books and by a
• 1:30:14
  lot of readers, and I'd say deservedly so, but I thought her
• 1:30:17
  exit was awesome. With the flowers blossoming from
• 1:30:20
  her chest. Yes.
• 1:30:25
  Andrew, my number 2 is also ace is that piece.
• 1:30:30
  Me and Luke just so aligned, hating Donald Cotton and loving
• 1:30:36
  music. So yeah, for all the reasons
• 1:30:39
  that Luke said and just I do, I do really like those endings
• 1:30:44
  where the companion goes on to sort of be their own.
• 1:30:48
  Be it be a hero in a different way to the doctor.
• 1:30:54
  So yeah, setting ace up as as the times vigilante figure with
• 1:31:00
  her most time travelling motorbike.
• 1:31:02
  I just love that whole concept of like they've spent their time
• 1:31:05
  with the Doctor and then they've sort of graduated from the
• 1:31:07
  doctor. They've become their own person
• 1:31:09
  and they can go off and have their own fabulous spin off
• 1:31:13
  adventures and they're kind of empowered by the time they spent
• 1:31:17
  with the Doctor to move on to something greater rather than,
• 1:31:21
  you know, just sort of dying or something miserable happening.
• 1:31:26
  John. Is.
• 1:31:29
  It ace and set piece by the shots.
• 1:31:30
  Well, I just think it's shocking that anyone would just pick a
• 1:31:34
  book that we've read on recent podcasts to do this to.
• 1:31:37
  Lazy, isn't it? Yeah, it's terrible.
• 1:31:39
  I'm going to. So I'm going to go with Sam in
• 1:31:41
  interference because Sam was such a malign figure.
• 1:31:48
  And for the first sort of at least half of it, unless you had
• 1:31:53
  Kate and John writing him of her, she wasn't in particularly
• 1:31:58
  interested. Those early writers didn't know
• 1:32:00
  how to write a young girl. And then you get to interference
• 1:32:06
  and you get Lawrence has worked out how she developed as a
• 1:32:10
  person. He works out how and why she
• 1:32:15
  could and would leave the Doctor, that she has grown to
• 1:32:18
  the point where she doesn't need him, where he can use her to
• 1:32:23
  make a philosophical point about taking control of your own life,
• 1:32:28
  not just being this companion to this wonderful guy and giving
• 1:32:32
  her like that last couple of few touching scenes at the end.
• 1:32:35
  So yeah, I think to a degree it does what a book can do to a
• 1:32:42
  companion who hasn't been typically well written, and it's
• 1:32:45
  a kind of a redemption for her as well, which I absolutely
• 1:32:48
  adored. When we read, we read that.
• 1:32:52
  God Tammy, you guys are all saying these wonderful ones that
• 1:32:54
  I've completely forgotten about. Malice.
• 1:32:56
  Why not just bash it off in 2 seconds before the call?
• 1:33:00
  You're bashing what up in 2 seconds?
• 1:33:03
  Just a list of companion exits, that's all.
• 1:33:07
  You're going to say this as a cheat and it probably doesn't
• 1:33:09
  count, but I just remember feeling a palpable sense of
• 1:33:12
  emotion of how Melanie Bush was written out in Dale Smith's
• 1:33:18
  heritage. And I know it's undone, but for
• 1:33:21
  a while that was her last story technically, just in a way that
• 1:33:27
  really was very affecting. I remember it being like a quite
• 1:33:32
  a depressing book and that they hold back on the twist for a
• 1:33:37
  long time that it was male that died.
• 1:33:40
  But when it hits this character that no one fucking lied.
• 1:33:44
  This is the one that Dale Smith chooses to write this book
• 1:33:47
  around and it's really, really affecting.
• 1:33:50
  So that is my second choice. Yeah, male in heritage.
• 1:33:54
  And I am pleased it was undone because it sounds like she went
• 1:33:57
  in a truly miserable way. But yeah, it was it was really
• 1:34:00
  well done. We're covering that on way at
• 1:34:02
  some point. I look for on the back of the
• 1:34:06
  Carter, yeah. The list is just basically that
• 1:34:10
  list of mine from teenage years. It's just got everything on it
• 1:34:14
  in order. I hope fellow coded.
• 1:34:16
  That's right, Luke, what's your your favorite companion exit?
• 1:34:21
  All right, well I'm just gonna go through what's the Andrew's
• 1:34:24
  notes that he sent me. Obviously so and John's I guess,
• 1:34:30
  cuz mine is Sam Jones. I not a huge fan of her, but her
• 1:34:35
  exit is awesome. That book, it's complicated.
• 1:34:41
  I do like it, but it's it's a beast this end of a book.
• 1:34:46
  But Sam's exit is is just fantastic.
• 1:34:50
  She gets to go off on kind of journalistic investigation
• 1:34:53
  adventures with Sarah Jane Smith.
• 1:34:57
  That sounds amazing. Sign me up for that show.
• 1:34:59
  Oh, we didn't. We almost got it, but we didn't
• 1:35:03
  do it. Someone shouldn't have just told
• 1:35:05
  her that Sam was from the books and she wouldn't have known.
• 1:35:07
  Oh well. But yeah, I thought, it's always
• 1:35:13
  shitty sometimes when a character leaves and you're just
• 1:35:17
  like, oh, I really like what you did with them.
• 1:35:19
  I couldn't you have done that like.
• 1:35:21
  Probably. Books are good, yeah.
• 1:35:23
  So it's it's frustrating. You're like, I want to see what
• 1:35:25
  happens to this character next. What, you mean the one you
• 1:35:27
  didn't like for, like, the last 15 books?
• 1:35:29
  Yeah. You hypocrite?
• 1:35:32
  Yes. Because I read like this.
• 1:35:36
  I want this and it's over. So yeah, it's yeah, same choice.
• 1:35:41
  My my number one. Yeah.
• 1:35:45
  Andrew Ditto. I mean it might just be recency
• 1:35:51
  bias. 2 titles. In many ways you have the same
• 1:35:56
  mind. Contact.
• 1:36:00
  Yeah, I mean, you, you've both of you have nailed it already as
• 1:36:04
  to why it's so effective. I think for me, Sam's departure,
• 1:36:10
  because I hadn't read interference before.
• 1:36:12
  And also, like out of most Doctor Who fans, I actually
• 1:36:15
  don't mind Sam, I think because because I hadn't read that many
• 1:36:21
  of the early Ed as the ones that I'd read were once that she's a
• 1:36:25
  pretty strong character in. So it was great to read
• 1:36:29
  interference recently and just, yeah, see how how that character
• 1:36:33
  was written out and how strong it was and how it, you know,
• 1:36:37
  emphasizes all the stronger points of the character and
• 1:36:40
  makes them all work and makes you actually really care about
• 1:36:43
  this person. And yeah, I just, I just want to
• 1:36:48
  see all these guys again. Can someone just can someone
• 1:36:52
  write a big Finnish audio novel where they just bring back all
• 1:36:56
  the EDA companions, please? It doesn't even have to have a
• 1:36:59
  plot, it can just be them meeting up for it's.
• 1:37:03
  About to drop a mass. The companion support group.
• 1:37:06
  It's like. And say you did see her again,
• 1:37:08
  but I'm not going to say what it is.
• 1:37:13
  Will you read that book please, Luke?
• 1:37:15
  All right, all right. Well.
• 1:37:17
  Can we do it on a list somewhere again?
• 1:37:19
  Yeah. Oh my God.
• 1:37:19
  We'll cover it, Yeah. When Luke's read it for the
• 1:37:22
  first time, I saw. It yeah, instant reaction.
• 1:37:26
  Yeah, well, actually I'm. Putting the Put the Baxen Dale
• 1:37:29
  in the Cold book. I'll read those after whatever
• 1:37:33
  our next book club is book is then, and then I'll let you know
• 1:37:36
  we can schedule it for later because, you know, I'm not in a
• 1:37:38
  rush to finish the Garfield Chronicles, as you know, so we
• 1:37:41
  can schedule it in the future. But it's like, you know, I'll.
• 1:37:44
  Just we should do all the three. Books in between them.
• 1:37:47
  Yes, well, look, I mean we've already I've already done the
• 1:37:52
  Christian well twice, right. I mean, I've been doing them all
• 1:37:54
  twice. As a complete side note, I've
• 1:37:57
  got to say that interference two-part episode, we did kind it
• 1:38:03
  in the downloads like it was really popular those two
• 1:38:06
  episodes. And people came back for more.
• 1:38:11
  More came back for Part 2 here. We go punishment.
• 1:38:16
  What's your? Favorite.
• 1:38:18
  I'm I'm going to go because I'm not a big fan of killing
• 1:38:21
  companions office and ending because it's easy and cheaply
• 1:38:25
  dramatic, but I'm going to go with Rosin.
• 1:38:28
  So Viola sin, because it's just that last night.
• 1:38:35
  I'm going to misquote it because of but it's it's the same kind
• 1:38:39
  of thing that Kate does with Ace in a set piece where she gives
• 1:38:43
  it that great kind of one line of of where you know.
• 1:38:45
  So it's that Carrie thing. It's you know, and she went up
• 1:38:48
  the hill into history and that's it.
• 1:38:50
  And it's just like you, you know, the situation when since
• 1:38:55
  of us and came out. You knew it was going to come
• 1:38:58
  because obviously it had been delayed by 6 months.
• 1:39:01
  Very unfortunate. Wasn't it?
• 1:39:03
  Yeah. It had been foreshadowed anyway
• 1:39:06
  because I think the prologue and F logo view also, people really
• 1:39:10
  does say she's going to die because actually if you don't.
• 1:39:14
  But it's just that kind of that one moment where you know it's
• 1:39:19
  coming and it's so beautifully written and it's still shocked
• 1:39:23
  with just one night. And that point, you know, Kate
• 1:39:26
  Orton is just a great writer. Forget who, she's just a great
• 1:39:31
  prose writer as well. I think Aronovich would have
• 1:39:34
  given her a great last scene, but he would.
• 1:39:36
  I don't know if he would have given her a line as simple as
• 1:39:39
  that. Like a killer last line, as
• 1:39:40
  simple as that. Oh yeah, Oh, killer.
• 1:39:43
  That's a bad juice. Yeah, it engages you as well,
• 1:39:50
  because you can imagine that exit, it's just at the end of
• 1:39:53
  blackout, it goes forth almost that kind of thing.
• 1:39:55
  Yeah, that man's cheating again. And I'm afraid because you may
• 1:39:59
  all say to me, no, Joe, that doesn't count.
• 1:40:01
  But I'm afraid it does because it's her last Doctor Who book,
• 1:40:05
  even though she went on to have many more books after that.
• 1:40:08
  And that is your favorite of mine, Bernie Summerfield In the
• 1:40:12
  dying days. She literally leaves Doctor Who
• 1:40:14
  books ready to go and have a whole range of adventures all of
• 1:40:18
  her own. And fucks the doctor at the same
• 1:40:22
  time. I mean what a way to go.
• 1:40:25
  Well, the answer is on him at the end, doesn't she?
• 1:40:27
  Like I. Mean it's Paul McCain.
• 1:40:29
  I can't blame her. Have you?
• 1:40:31
  Not read her 12th Doctor book. Oh, of course, she's back for
• 1:40:36
  The Big Bang generation, isn't she?
• 1:40:38
  Does she jump on him as well? Probably don't think she's in to
• 1:40:42
  necrophilia, Andrew. Well, what wonderful companion
• 1:40:48
  excess we've got there. Next time we'll have to do our
• 1:40:50
  least favourites. And that does lead me to ask a
• 1:40:55
  question. Gentlemen, where are we going
• 1:40:58
  next? Now, Luke and I were talking at
• 1:40:59
  the start of the call and it's sort of like a a toss of a coin
• 1:41:03
  between cold fusion and grave matter.
• 1:41:06
  So we're going to put it to the vote right now.
• 1:41:09
  Live on the call, Luke. Oh I've never read Grave Matter
• 1:41:19
  ever, so I'd probably be even though it's a Dave or the other
• 1:41:23
  one. I have read it and listened to
• 1:41:24
  it. I don't mind doing it again, but
• 1:41:26
  if I had to choose I'd probably. Choose grave matter one for
• 1:41:28
  grave matter, Andrew. I yeah, same, because again, I
• 1:41:36
  haven't read Grave Matter before.
• 1:41:37
  And also you said that it was a good winter book and we're in
• 1:41:40
  the depths of snow at the moment.
• 1:41:42
  So although it's safe cold fusion, but yeah, great matter.
• 1:41:47
  Well, that's too John. You're the decider now.
• 1:41:49
  My vote don't count. This is like Strictly is all
• 1:41:52
  over again. Have you got the camp music
• 1:41:55
  playing under this? I'm just trying to make the call
• 1:41:57
  longer. I want to spend more time with
• 1:41:59
  you people. Have we done a Colin book?
• 1:42:02
  I don't think we have done a Colin.
• 1:42:05
  I love Devo but we've done 3 so I'm not greedy.
• 1:42:10
  Yes, you are. Come on.
• 1:42:12
  Yeah, I'm right. Right now, let's do it.
• 1:42:16
  I am going to go with that because I haven't read Greedy
• 1:42:19
  Matters since it came out and I think it's just going to be
• 1:42:23
  really interesting to do with Justin Richard's book because
• 1:42:26
  for a prominent writer of these ranges he is hugely under
• 1:42:30
  discussed. Yeah, actually on this podcast
• 1:42:33
  as well. I think I've only done one or
• 1:42:35
  two and I was going to say grave matter as well purely for I
• 1:42:39
  would still remember to this day the SFX review of that book who
• 1:42:44
  said six doctor and Perry absolutely terrible, like toilet
• 1:42:48
  Doctor Who or something they called it.
• 1:42:50
  And then they ended the review going Justin Richards has
• 1:42:52
  somehow managed to turn shit into gold.
• 1:42:54
  So because I just remember it being a really like a really
• 1:42:59
  good horror book as well, with lots of icky scenes and of
• 1:43:03
  zombies and things coming out in the mist.
• 1:43:06
  Sweet. Well fellas, don't be too scared
• 1:43:09
  between now and the next time we meet.
• 1:43:11
  But oh God I hate doing this bit at the end.
• 1:43:15
  You guys have been fair at this. Dude.
• 1:43:19
  What's an appropriate Donald Cotton esque way of saying
• 1:43:22
  goodbye? Oh, something postmodern.
• 1:43:26
  I I got something goodbye in Latin or Greek?
• 1:43:30
  Quo vardis. No, that's not right.
• 1:43:31
  Quo Vardis, TARDIS. Ferris Weller.
• 1:43:37
  We're going to do better than that.
• 1:43:38
  I'll cut it there.