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Hamster Book Club - The Book of the Still by Paul Ebbs (featuring Mark Donaldson) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  As Rianne tried to hide that she was in fact leading, her partner
• 0:03
  was completely useless. Her shin and ankles screamed in
• 0:07
  protest as the Doctor's 2 pointy shoes barked against them with
• 0:11
  disturbing regularity. The crowds around them took no
• 0:15
  notice. It seemed to Rianne that they
• 0:17
  could have given up dancing and just marched through them at any
• 0:19
  point in the centre of the mass of dancers where the Doctor
• 0:22
  thought the book was located. But he insisted that they should
• 0:25
  not draw any undue attention to themselves, as there was a good
• 0:29
  possibility that it could be a trap.
• 0:32
  The Doctor tried going left. As Rianne went right.
• 0:35
  They became separated for a moment.
• 0:37
  Can't you follow a simple repeating pattern?
• 0:40
  For goodness sakes, I can't. I can't see my face through the
• 0:43
  mask. I'm trying to locate the book
• 0:46
  and your shins keep getting in the way of my shoes.
• 0:48
  I'm doing my best. Rianne bit back a sarcastic
• 0:52
  response. The doctor was frustrated that
• 0:54
  he couldn't get the dance right. He was bothered by the fact that
• 0:57
  there was something he couldn't do.
• 1:00
  The doctor sighed loudly and tutted.
• 1:02
  Taking a firm grip of Rianne's hands and drawing a deep breath.
• 1:05
  He tried once again to throw himself into the dance.
• 1:08
  It was the most human behaviour that he had exhibited.
• 1:11
  Rianne felt connected to him in a way that she had not
• 1:13
  experienced before. It was a levelling moment that
• 1:16
  brought a smile to her lips for the first time in days.
• 1:19
  It's not an improvisation. She managed to say between
• 1:22
  giggles. The doctor wasn't listening, or
• 1:25
  she thought more accurately, was refusing to listen.
• 1:28
  He was piqued. And because of that, in the
• 1:31
  middle of this whole bitter, violent and desperate situation,
• 1:35
  Rhian fell, if only for a few seconds.
• 1:38
  OK. The music began to speed up from
• 1:44
  a waltz to tango like beats into the realms of a dervish and she
• 1:49
  was in the arms of a green skinned female who was hugging
• 1:51
  her so tight that her spiky mask was cutting a line of deep
• 1:55
  scratches at Angie's hairline and a fork.
• 1:58
  Tonne was whispering a damp bossa Nova in her ear while I
• 2:01
  come back to my place and she gulped and was pushed even
• 2:05
  further into the voluminous bosom.
• 2:08
  At each change in the music, every leader stole a new partner
• 2:12
  from a couple immediately to the right.
• 2:14
  Partners reeled away and legs swirled in the air as gravity
• 2:18
  belts lifted the more adventurous and gentle arcs
• 2:20
  above the throng to land between couples on the correct beat of
• 2:24
  the song. Others were prized from their
• 2:26
  partners with dancing gemmies which hitherto had been
• 2:29
  disguised in leather scabbards. 2 dancers suddenly found
• 2:33
  themselves alone and partnerless in their throng.
• 2:36
  The taller in the bulbous El Doctor mask shrugged and moved
• 2:40
  towards a shorter woman with a butterfly covering her features.
• 2:44
  The music changed. Rhianne extricated herself from
• 2:48
  the third indeterminate sex partner she'd been forced to
• 2:51
  dance with and stood up tiptoe to catch sight of the Doctor.
• 2:55
  With a whoop of joy, Rhianne saw him between the figures.
• 2:58
  He was edging slowly towards a humanoid wearing a large
• 3:01
  jewelled butterfly. Ducking various appendages that
• 3:04
  swooped towards her. Rhianne crapped purposely
• 3:08
  through the crowd. Fitz felt that the sensible
• 3:11
  thing to do would be to wait until the music stopped.
• 3:14
  When the swapping mayhem died down, it would be easier to find
• 3:17
  Karamodi. Unfortunately, the music seemed
• 3:19
  to be getting more and more intense and somehow showed no
• 3:22
  sign of stopping. Fitz could see the guy who was
• 3:26
  groping him close to licking at his lips in a disturbingly
• 3:30
  predatory way. Fitz had long sick Scotland over
• 3:33
  the shock of visiting cultures that were overtly bisexual.
• 3:36
  Each 2 is on her own in it, but the attentions of this current
• 3:40
  dancer were just a bit too much for him.
• 3:42
  The music changed again. It's part that swung away in
• 3:45
  search of a more accommodating dancey.
• 3:47
  A butterfly. Just a glimpse, but definitely a
• 3:51
  butterfly. Rianne got within arm's length
• 3:54
  of the Doctor. Fitz managed to touch Karmodi on
• 3:57
  the arm and you just tumbled between them by accident.
• 4:01
  That is, Anna yelled with triumph as he hooked his fingers
• 4:04
  into the edge of Angie Sari. Nobody noticed that the music
• 4:08
  had stopped. The ceiling had exploded.
• 4:11
  The unnoticed had come to the ball.
• 4:23
  Welcome back to the Hamster A Boom.
• 4:27
  Shaka Laka Laka Ali Ali Book Club.
• 4:31
  My name is Joe Ford. Maybe you're confused already.
• 4:35
  I'm here today with Bollywood superstar Mark Donaldson.
• 4:39
  Hello, Mark. Hello.
• 4:42
  Mark Johnson isn't a very Bollywood name I suppose, but
• 4:45
  yes. Hello, how are you?
• 4:46
  Very fetching in a sari though, I have to say.
• 4:50
  Thank you, I stitched it myself. Now you don't know this, but
• 4:54
  there's a Bollywood number that's just played at the start
• 4:57
  of this episode, so. Oh great, it will.
• 5:00
  Make sense to everyone, Mark, can I take you on a little
• 5:03
  journey for a second? Yeah, please.
• 5:06
  Yeah. Oh.
• 5:06
  Great, SO message popped into my Facebook Messenger as these
• 5:12
  things happen to do. Hello Joe, I've got a bit of
• 5:15
  time on my hands, so I fancy reading a Doctor Who book.
• 5:18
  Oh great, says I, Right, well, try this one, The Book of the
• 5:21
  Still by Paul Ebbs. I said, you know, he only wrote
• 5:25
  one and this might be quite interesting.
• 5:27
  Fair enough. You went away with absolute
• 5:30
  confidence that this was going to be a fine recommendation.
• 5:33
  Skip forward two weeks. Oh, I'm having a bit of trouble
• 5:36
  with this, you know, skip forward a week.
• 5:39
  Oh, this is a fucking chore to read this book.
• 5:42
  Skip forward another week. Thank God it's over.
• 5:47
  So, Mark, how did you find the Book of the Steel by Poets?
• 5:51
  Yeah, it's I, I did find that slog.
• 5:54
  I do think the second house better.
• 5:56
  But yeah, I, I think I, I really found it quite difficult to kind
• 6:02
  of get into because when you kind of pitched it to me like
• 6:06
  this is what it is, this is the synopsis.
• 6:08
  It sounded like a kind of Indiana Jones style adventure.
• 6:12
  They're going on a kind of intergalactic quest to find this
• 6:15
  book while they're being chased by these aliens that don't want
• 6:18
  them to find the book because obviously their their location
• 6:21
  is contained within it. I said, well, that sounds quite
• 6:23
  exciting. Yeah, I'm up for that.
• 6:26
  That sounds, that sounds great. And then?
• 6:27
  Nothing happened for the first half of the book for the. 1st
• 6:30
  100 pages, barely anything happens.
• 6:34
  The Doctor crashes through the roof of a library, basically.
• 6:39
  Obligatory spectacular opening. Yes, yes, there's a kind of very
• 6:44
  smug nudge, nudge, wink, wink tone to a lot of the writing.
• 6:51
  But yeah, they kind of just stand around either in prison
• 6:53
  cells or it's basically like, it opens with a Doctor Who Part 3.
• 6:58
  It's like everybody's kind of just imprisoned like, and they
• 7:01
  can't quite get to the to the climax yet because there's not,
• 7:04
  you know, there's another week to go and there's not enough
• 7:07
  budget to make this a three barter, oddly.
• 7:09
  Enough. Then I feel as if like the, the,
• 7:11
  the, the sort of the, the middle section or just after the middle
• 7:15
  section, sort of that's where episode one starts and then
• 7:18
  suddenly you're immediately in episode 4 where everything's
• 7:22
  wrapping up. Yeah, it's, it's an odd book and
• 7:25
  I think it's it, it has that thing.
• 7:28
  I I found this a little bit with Paul Leonard's genocide.
• 7:34
  Not the first time I read it, the first when I was because I
• 7:36
  read it as a teenager and I was like, yeah, this is cool.
• 7:38
  This is like gritty Doctor Who. And it's not when you read it as
• 7:41
  an adult at all, but it had a lot of ideas stuffed into.
• 7:46
  So it's like a kind of eco parable, but it's also a kind of
• 7:50
  tiny whimy book and all, and it's also a kind of what happens
• 7:54
  to a Doctor's companion after he leaves the TARDIS book.
• 7:57
  And all of those things are kind of warring with each other to be
• 8:00
  like a coherent whole. And I don't think it quite
• 8:02
  works. Genocide is fucking miserable,
• 8:05
  right? At least it's got some jokes in
• 8:07
  it and a bit of energy. Yeah.
• 8:09
  But similarly, this has a lot of ideas that I think it really
• 8:12
  struggles to figure out what it wants to do with it.
• 8:15
  So you've got the sort of virtual reality.
• 8:19
  Well, it's not, it's not really virtually.
• 8:21
  It's a kind of they, they put, they put like a simulate, they
• 8:24
  run a simulation in your brain that basically can convince you
• 8:29
  that you're a great hero or, you know, a great lover or whatever,
• 8:34
  or that you're in love with somebody and they use that sort.
• 8:36
  Of doses you with acids, doesn't it?
• 8:38
  Memory acids. Not.
• 8:41
  Much experience of memory acids. No, no, no, not really.
• 8:46
  No, I'm not. Never been big into my big into
• 8:48
  my drugs really. OK.
• 8:50
  What about virtual and I? Feel like I would argue that
• 8:52
  polyps probably hasn't either because it has that do you know,
• 8:56
  it has that tone of somebody sort of like writing about
• 8:58
  something that they've had no experience of.
• 9:01
  Do you know what I mean? Like there's a kind of, oh,
• 9:03
  memory acids. Oh yeah, that sounds like
• 9:05
  something because I think there's like a degree to which
• 9:09
  especially the Bollywood stuff when they they give Angie the
• 9:13
  memory acids and convince her she's in a kind of Bollywood
• 9:16
  movie. Like I'm like, is he, is he just
• 9:20
  like, oh, that must be what it it, it I've heard that's what
• 9:23
  it's like to be on ecstasy. Everybody's dance, you know,
• 9:26
  everybody's dancing and having a lovely time.
• 9:28
  You know what I mean? Do you know do?
• 9:30
  You remember the TV show Hustle? Fabulous.
• 9:33
  Show where they went on heists and all took on different
• 9:36
  personalities. Yeah, I think he watched that
• 9:38
  Bollywood episode of Hustle because it was out about this
• 9:40
  time, you know? Oh, right.
• 9:42
  So when, oh, I'll have a bit of that without ever actually
• 9:46
  leaping into the world of Bollywood and finding out what
• 9:49
  it's all about, you know, the the visual splendor of it and
• 9:52
  the fabulous production value. Yeah, there's a kind of, there
• 9:56
  is a very kind of two-dimensional, oh, this is
• 10:00
  what Bollywood is, right? Because, you know, there was a
• 10:02
  video shop near me when I was a kid that it was basically all
• 10:06
  Bollywood. So you would walk past it and be
• 10:08
  just the whole, it would be wall to wall just Bollywood posters.
• 10:12
  And then we'd have like all the videos and, and I was always
• 10:15
  really quite like, oh, that looks really colourful and
• 10:18
  interesting and exciting. And I never quite really delved
• 10:20
  into it until I went into went to film school.
• 10:23
  But it is a lot more than just like, oh, you know, the evil,
• 10:26
  the evil stepfather in the sort of romance and all that kind of
• 10:29
  thing. Yeah, there's a lot of that.
• 10:30
  But anyway, we're not massive. Isn't it like Bollywood?
• 10:33
  It's it's huge. It's one of the biggest.
• 10:35
  Monasteries spinner, isn't it? In a way, I don't think
• 10:39
  Hollywood maybe is these days. I think the I cannot remember
• 10:43
  now where the standings are, but yeah, you might not be wrong on
• 10:46
  that. I'm pretty sure because, I mean,
• 10:48
  it's a bigger populace, I suppose there's a bigger sort of
• 10:52
  population for it. But yeah.
• 10:55
  Have you seen those Indian men and women?
• 10:57
  I mean, I'm not surprised. They're so pretty, aren't they?
• 11:00
  You put them in the beautiful productions.
• 11:02
  Oh boy, oh boy. Sorry, I'm off target already.
• 11:06
  Yes, but do you know what? I I'm going to agree with you on
• 11:09
  something. I ain't going to agree with you
• 11:10
  a lot on this call, but I'm going to agree with you on that.
• 11:12
  And I would have just removed that.
• 11:14
  All the Bollywood stuff, I don't think any of it is necessary to
• 11:17
  tell this story whatsoever. It's just weird, quirky gloss.
• 11:22
  It is weird because and the fit stuff as well, because obviously
• 11:26
  it's just basically the. So earlier in the book, you have
• 11:29
  Fitz believing he's this kind of swashbuckling hero and he's to
• 11:34
  fall in love with the women in it.
• 11:39
  Carmodi. Carmodi.
• 11:41
  That's this, yes. So that's the the whole thing.
• 11:44
  I felt that was extraneous. You could have just gone.
• 11:48
  We've drugged him to make him believe that he's in love with
• 11:51
  this. Because the idea is that because
• 11:53
  you because you believe you're that person, you will do things
• 11:57
  that you wouldn't necessarily always do.
• 11:59
  And I think that's fine. But I think actually there's a
• 12:02
  more tender version of this where you go, yeah, but isn't
• 12:04
  that love anyway? Isn't that if you love somebody,
• 12:07
  you are willing to go to the ends of the universe or whatever
• 12:12
  for them? So surely just by fix believing
• 12:15
  that he's in love with Kamodi, he'll and you do get that as the
• 12:19
  book goes on. And there's a kind of there's an
• 12:22
  interesting thing where it's like how much of it is the drugs
• 12:26
  and how much of it is actually the relationship that he's
• 12:29
  forming with her in kind of real life.
• 12:31
  So I don't think you necessarily need all that.
• 12:33
  It feels like I need to make up my word count.
• 12:37
  What can I do? I'll throw in like a big
• 12:39
  swashbuckling sequence and I'll kind of paper through the cracks
• 12:43
  there to to make that fit in. And with the Bollywood thing, I
• 12:47
  don't really know why they drug energy beyond the point that
• 12:49
  they've kidnapped her. And I suppose they need to keep
• 12:52
  her. Wishful thing.
• 12:55
  Yeah, there's like that. You're a.
• 12:57
  Very naughty man. All right.
• 12:59
  Well, because in the middle of the book as well, there's an
• 13:01
  extraordinary chapter which I really, really liked, where all
• 13:05
  the plots converge on one dance floor.
• 13:08
  And yes, and Cammodia are there, and Angie and the criminals are
• 13:12
  there. You know, these sort of always
• 13:14
  call them the drug dealers, but they're memory asset dealers.
• 13:17
  But the drug dealers are there, the doctor and Rihanna there,
• 13:20
  and it's this sort of spectacular dance number.
• 13:23
  You can see it on the screen and everyone sort of walks in around
• 13:27
  each other and throwing each other at each other and the book
• 13:30
  of the stills doing the rounds in the room.
• 13:32
  And I'm like, yeah, that's enough.
• 13:34
  We don't need the Bollywood dance sequences as well.
• 13:38
  No, no, it's. Chill out, basically stop trying
• 13:42
  so hard. There is a real try hard mention
• 13:45
  to this because so, yeah, you've got that kind of idea of the the
• 13:48
  memory acids, you've got the book of the still itself.
• 13:51
  There's this sort of book that transcends sort of linear time
• 13:56
  so that anybody can access it at any point and the the book
• 14:00
  itself will be updated. So it's kind of this idea that
• 14:04
  time travellers can put their their name and location in the
• 14:06
  book and other time travellers can find them and rescue them
• 14:10
  more. That's a tasty idea, though,
• 14:11
  right? Yeah, I think that's a great
• 14:13
  idea. And I think it gives, it gives
• 14:16
  Rianne when her motive hits sort of 2/3 into the book.
• 14:19
  It gives really great motive for everything that's happened.
• 14:24
  Definitely, I do wish it had come in a bit earlier.
• 14:26
  I feel like I I wish that had kind of been the this sort of
• 14:31
  driving story in the book, which I don't think it kind of it
• 14:35
  because you're right. When it clicks into place
• 14:37
  towards the end, it goes, oh, yeah, this is a really great
• 14:40
  idea. Yeah, this is a really great
• 14:43
  idea. But it just comes in a bit too
• 14:46
  late, I think for me. I think I think if there was
• 14:49
  more, if she was the kind of Carmodie character who's a bit
• 14:53
  shifty and and she's paired with the Doctor and the Doctor's kind
• 14:57
  of doing his doctor and companion thing and he kind of
• 15:00
  sees her as this kind of budding companion, which he does.
• 15:04
  But if there was this kind of suggestion that she's got
• 15:06
  ulterior motives and and things like that, I don't know, I just
• 15:10
  feel it would have just been a bit of a tighter book if they
• 15:12
  focused more on that rather than all this mad shit with Bollywood
• 15:18
  dances and rapiers and castles and all that kind of stuff.
• 15:24
  I tried so hard to impress you in that first half with the
• 15:28
  writing. Yeah, and it's trying as in God
• 15:32
  it's trying at times. Like some of some of the prose
• 15:34
  is really trying, but also it's trying.
• 15:37
  And I would rather have a Doctor Who book that is trying than
• 15:41
  read another Christopher Beulis, which is a terrorist Dicks knock
• 15:44
  off without a single original idea in it, you know, like, so I
• 15:47
  would rather something, I'd rather something that's just
• 15:49
  trying to entertain me than something that's just going,
• 15:53
  well, that's a TV toy. There you go.
• 15:55
  You know, like. Yeah, no, I, I think that's
• 15:58
  fair. But I think also I, I do think
• 16:01
  that's the interesting thing with with the spin off media is
• 16:04
  that I do think some people approach it as a kind of TV tie
• 16:08
  in sort of thing. Other people approach it as
• 16:11
  their chance to write a kind of great literary novel because
• 16:16
  maybe they've had, like, their manuscripts rejected elsewhere
• 16:21
  and BBC books will be like, Oh, no, well, yeah, yeah, bring that
• 16:24
  here, make it a Doctor Who story or whatever.
• 16:26
  You think that's BBC books? Are you kidding me?
• 16:28
  I mean, I've read so many Virgin New Adventures lately where, oh,
• 16:31
  doctors not even fucking in it. And they clearly just want to
• 16:34
  write detective novels and all of this stuff.
• 16:36
  Like, why is the Doctor even here?
• 16:38
  Like, yeah. I just meant in this time
• 16:41
  period. But yeah, you're absolutely
• 16:42
  right. The same applies to the The
• 16:44
  Virgin New Adventures. There's so much of that.
• 16:46
  And I mean, you could argue that the same applies to anything
• 16:49
  Eric Sabret ever wrote for the TV show.
• 16:51
  Like it's. I mean, he's proven it now I've
• 16:55
  cutaway comics. Isn't he taking all of those
• 16:57
  bloody mercenaries and doing spin off media?
• 17:00
  This is what I wanted all along. Yeah.
• 17:03
  I mean, I will say, I will say like as as a side note, I think
• 17:08
  yes, yeah. Those two camps, people tired
• 17:12
  novels and those that want to write big ambitious ideas.
• 17:16
  I think sort of the net result with spin off fiction for Doctor
• 17:21
  Who is some of it is just agonizingly poor and some of it
• 17:26
  is some of the most ambitious Doctor Who we've ever had in
• 17:28
  terms of ideas and characterization and how far
• 17:32
  they're willing to push the content.
• 17:33
  So it's sort of swings around. And the annoying thing is it's
• 17:36
  all bats between the two. From book to book.
• 17:38
  You never quite fucking know what you're going to get from
• 17:40
  one week to the next. You know you're doing Terran
• 17:42
  sticks one minute and Laura smiles the next.
• 17:45
  Yes, so because yeah, I mean there's there's stuff in here
• 17:51
  where like I think Paul Ebbs is very keen on writing a kind of
• 17:54
  smart sort of literary sci-fi novel.
• 17:59
  I think it's kind of his but in so like, but then I don't know
• 18:05
  if he's all that good on the sci-fi.
• 18:07
  So there's a bit where it's like, and I read this and I had
• 18:11
  to read it like, like read it back.
• 18:14
  And I'm like, I'm sorry, what? And it was at the end of the end
• 18:17
  of a long day. I was on the train home from
• 18:19
  work and I was like and I read the end.
• 18:22
  Of the. Time the unnoticed or blanketing
• 18:25
  the entire system with a wave interrupter.
• 18:28
  Luke, I know you're doing the blank faced open mouth thing,
• 18:31
  but it will all become clear. I swear as the approach.
• 18:34
  The disturbances from the wave interrupter will effectively
• 18:37
  destroy all methods of communication, stop generators
• 18:40
  from producing energy, even shut down electrons moving through
• 18:43
  wires, killing microwave transmissions, everything.
• 18:46
  It is without doubt a terrific piece of kit and it's like.
• 18:51
  What the hell are you complaining about?
• 18:52
  You've written 5 million articles on Star Trek, you know,
• 18:56
  and that's every Star Trek episode there.
• 18:58
  Sure, sure. Yes it is.
• 19:00
  But I, I I'm. Being facetious, of course.
• 19:03
  But that's it though, isn't it? It's like, it's like, OK, I need
• 19:06
  to, I need to throw in some sci-fi jargon now because,
• 19:10
  because that's the point in the book that dictates like I, I
• 19:15
  don't know, it's. I'll, I'm going to give you an
• 19:18
  alternative reading. I said I was going to fight you
• 19:20
  a few times. Yes.
• 19:21
  Yeah. In the same breath, I think he
• 19:23
  has a gift for startling imagery and just massive concepts that
• 19:29
  in no way hold weight in science fiction.
• 19:32
  But like a tent City made out of fabric and baseline reality that
• 19:37
  you could use to wallpaper a black hole.
• 19:40
  I mean, that's a massive idea. And it's there on the corona of
• 19:43
  a sun, a massive tent city that these horrible scabby creatures
• 19:47
  live on. I mean, it's a big idea.
• 19:50
  It's a great one, but it's it's, it's outside the box, I think.
• 19:56
  Yeah, and that's what I mean about like kind of he's writing
• 19:58
  a kind of big sci-fi novel that kind of maybe gets sort of
• 20:04
  hammered into the shape of a of a Doctor Who book, do you think?
• 20:08
  Because. It's a Doctor Who book then
• 20:10
  hampers it because they have to have a lot of escape capture in
• 20:14
  prison cells. Exposition it it maybe.
• 20:18
  Would this be a better book if it was just about Carl Modi and
• 20:21
  Rhianne? Maybe, I don't know, but then
• 20:25
  would you still have the same problem where you spent where
• 20:28
  you spend the first half of the book with Cammodia and Rianne
• 20:32
  just waiting? Yeah, for.
• 20:36
  Yeah, you're probably right. Yeah, I mean, there is.
• 20:38
  A lot of waiting around for it to kick off, Ella.
• 20:41
  Maybe this would be a good sort of harmfully book where you just
• 20:44
  get to that middle point in chapter 1 and then you're
• 20:47
  running. Well, 'cause this is it, 'cause
• 20:50
  what is it like? It's the end of Chapter 1.
• 20:52
  The doctor steals the book of the Stealer gets caught, right?
• 20:55
  Well, he goes, yeah, this is a bit.
• 20:56
  And then there's like a flashback to explain, yeah.
• 21:00
  Like, you know that Jodie Whittaker fabulous trailer that
• 21:04
  they did where the whole glass ceiling explodes?
• 21:06
  Yeah. And she sort of goes, oh,
• 21:07
  whoops. It's basically that he's
• 21:09
  standing there. He's come through the ceiling
• 21:11
  from from space. I know he's in a space suit and
• 21:15
  he's got a book and then suddenly all these drones are
• 21:17
  surrounding him and he's thrown in prison.
• 21:20
  Yes. So that's like the books already
• 21:24
  in the doctor's hands at the start of the of the book.
• 21:27
  And I feel that you're, I think the problem with doing these
• 21:33
  sort of big, exciting, sweeping opening sequences is that you
• 21:38
  then have to go back and just wait for the adventure.
• 21:42
  And sometimes that works. Before that, they do that.
• 21:45
  Don't know. It's like, it's like the alias
• 21:47
  thing. Yeah.
• 21:48
  OK, here's your exciting start. And then there's now there's
• 21:50
  four chapters. This is how we got there.
• 21:53
  Well, we know that because we've already just read it.
• 21:55
  Yeah. Can we just like crack on,
• 21:58
  especially because I think is it not, does it not jump forward?
• 22:01
  So once you've once you've got to the bed where the doctor goes
• 22:05
  like he disappears and then it's like three weeks later, the
• 22:10
  doctor had been sentenced and she's like going to see his
• 22:14
  lawyer or something to, you know, try and arrange an appeal
• 22:17
  and the doctor's in prison. And you're like, well, you could
• 22:19
  have just done that from Chapter 2.
• 22:22
  Although I did like that Fitz was like, yeah, the Doctor will
• 22:25
  be all right. I'm going to go to a load of
• 22:26
  parties. Thanks.
• 22:28
  In big white shirts. It's a distinctive look on this
• 22:32
  planet. That's a fun idea, the kind of
• 22:35
  complacency of the companion. He's like, oh, but the doctor
• 22:39
  always gets out of things. It'll be fine.
• 22:40
  What are you worried about? You'll be out in no time and
• 22:43
  we'll all get back to the time. Angie obviously being the woman
• 22:46
  of the team, she's the problem solver.
• 22:47
  So she's like, no, I'm going to figure out this legal system and
• 22:50
  get him out. Fuck, I love Angie Kapoor, but I
• 22:52
  will get there. I've got some.
• 22:57
  Things to say. She is very good.
• 22:59
  But yeah, so pacing feels a bit kind of like, because when you I
• 23:02
  like, I say when you open with that big like a Stephen Moth
• 23:05
  opener and I think Paul ebbs reading Paul ebbs, there's a
• 23:11
  there's an element of me that goes, oh, I understand why
• 23:14
  people don't like that. And Steven Moffat, Doctor Who,
• 23:16
  that kind of slightly self satisfied froze style.
• 23:19
  And that's sort of the way people speak.
• 23:21
  Like everybody's got like kind of like Buffy style, you know,
• 23:25
  like witticisms and like everywhere.
• 23:27
  The dialogue is spiky and yeah, I'll tell you what.
• 23:31
  And, and just the premise alone, you know, the book for stranded
• 23:35
  time travellers, which means it automatically has that weird
• 23:38
  sort of tiny wimey approach. I was just like, I mean, I'm
• 23:42
  absolutely certain Steven Moffett has read a handful of
• 23:45
  these eight Doctor books because many of the ideas have turned up
• 23:48
  in his better episodes in the TV series.
• 23:53
  We will get there. You and me have been talking
• 23:54
  about that today, haven't we? We will get there.
• 23:56
  We will. Bewitched me with Steven Moffett
• 23:59
  barely soon could I give you a alternative.
• 24:03
  Very positive reading on the book.
• 24:05
  Yes, please do. Well, because I think this is a
• 24:07
  romance. This isn't a science fiction
• 24:09
  book at all. I think this book is a romance
• 24:11
  and what you have here is 2 manufactured romances, 1 is the
• 24:16
  memory acid angst or Fitz Criner.
• 24:18
  And sort of I was really pleased you were messaging me whilst I
• 24:21
  was working my way through it because you went oh this
• 24:23
  agonizing romantic dialogue. You know when she smiles,
• 24:27
  butterflies fly from my eyes and things.
• 24:30
  And it absolutely is. And it reads like I read Love
• 24:33
  and War recently, a much bizarrely celebrated new
• 24:37
  adventure with the most hideous ace romance you could possibly
• 24:41
  imagine. Get Get in ear ace and kiss my
• 24:43
  snake, he says at 1.0. God, it is.
• 24:47
  It is pukey, angsty teenage romance fiction of the worst
• 24:50
  kind. And that's what Ed is doing with
• 24:52
  that. But the second one, the
• 24:54
  manufactured romances, is the Bollywood spectacular, right?
• 24:57
  It's sort of that that's the other big romance for this.
• 25:00
  And they're both unconvincing, and they're both completely
• 25:03
  facile. Yeah, obviously this is hideous.
• 25:06
  What's he trying to do with this?
• 25:07
  And it wasn't until the second-half of the book I was
• 25:09
  like, I think I know what he's trying to do with this.
• 25:13
  Because alongside them, you've got the Doctor and Rhian who are
• 25:17
  in emotionally intense, slow burn romance.
• 25:21
  Throughout the book, they're sort of brought together
• 25:23
  accidentally. They lean on each other in tough
• 25:25
  times. They're emotionally dependent on
• 25:27
  each other within it. The Doctor gets to be vulnerable
• 25:31
  and open and awkward and impressive.
• 25:35
  He impresses her a lot. The bit where she teaches him to
• 25:39
  dance, where they think they're going to die, that's the bit
• 25:42
  where they consummate that relationship.
• 25:44
  It isn't sex, it's just two people connecting in a moment
• 25:47
  and it's really touching. I was really moved reading that
• 25:50
  scene and I was like, OK, so is he trying to do a contrast
• 25:54
  between the usual one shot romances in Doctor Who books?
• 25:59
  And that's the fake one with Fitz and Karmodi.
• 26:02
  But then that plot started surprised me as well, because
• 26:06
  he's told pheasants like this lovesick puppy.
• 26:09
  And then when his when his memories start re establishing
• 26:13
  themselves, he sees Carmodi as she really is.
• 26:17
  And it's really sort of monstrous, you know, scabby
• 26:19
  lesions and bald and all of this.
• 26:21
  And instead of going, no, you know, you were really pretty
• 26:26
  before. He holds her and he comforts her
• 26:28
  and he promises to help her to escape.
• 26:31
  And he shows an emotional maturity that really, we see
• 26:36
  quite a lot with it. People don't think we do.
• 26:38
  But you, I've done a lot of these books lately, and you see
• 26:40
  more of that than the sort of teenage hornball that people
• 26:43
  seem to think. Yeah.
• 26:46
  Because I don't ever think romances are about, you know,
• 26:49
  sex. You know, it's not the stranger
• 26:51
  of that dreadful Porsche, the Costa novel featuring the 8th
• 26:54
  Doctor having orgasms all over the place.
• 26:57
  It's about emotions and connections.
• 26:59
  And especially with the Doctor and Rihanna, I think that's a
• 27:01
  really terrific romantic relationship that they have
• 27:06
  throughout. I agree.
• 27:09
  I think, I think the scene where there where she teaches him to
• 27:12
  dance as the world's about to end is incredibly well written.
• 27:19
  And it's a it's a beautiful image and you could see, you
• 27:22
  could see that on the screen. And you can, and crucially, you
• 27:24
  can see Mcgann's doctor doing that.
• 27:29
  It's it's very much like that's the point where I was like, no,
• 27:32
  he does he he is sort of pulling on the TV movie as a touchstone
• 27:37
  to like how he's characterizing the doctor.
• 27:39
  It's not necessarily the books that have that have passed it
• 27:44
  like, because obviously at this point the Doctor still doesn't
• 27:46
  really know who he is. He's got like some of his
• 27:48
  memories back, but he's like, yeah, I think I'm a time
• 27:51
  traveller. I don't really know like
• 27:52
  anything beyond the burns basically it.
• 27:55
  Was an excuse for the mark to ditch all the continuity.
• 27:58
  Yeah, things have got. So.
• 27:59
  I mean, we read the ancestors say, all right, things have got
• 28:01
  so wound up in continuity. They were like, oh, let's just
• 28:04
  have him lose his memory and tell some original stories.
• 28:07
  Yeah, and that gets him back to the TV movie version of the
• 28:10
  Doctor, I think as well. So you you have that, that kind
• 28:14
  of romance and that kind of like zest for life and that because,
• 28:21
  yeah, he like the way I love this.
• 28:23
  There's a bit like the way he interacts with Angie, like that
• 28:28
  kind of, he can read to her like a book and he can kind of like,
• 28:31
  you know, it's exactly like how annoyed she is or like what
• 28:34
  she's going to do next. And it's a kind of lovely play
• 28:37
  on the 8th Doctor's kind of weird telepathy that he gets and
• 28:41
  sort of precognizance. So like that, That's a fun idea
• 28:46
  to play with as well. Angie doesn't hide it very well
• 28:48
  though. Let's be honest, I'm.
• 28:49
  A. Unitary telepathic Jesus Christ.
• 28:53
  I mean, also as well, you know, the bit where I thought it was a
• 28:56
  great thing where he pulls together the orchestra to
• 29:00
  symphonically resonate the unnoticed ship and get rid of
• 29:04
  them. And I could just see McCann
• 29:06
  there sort of hair flying, you know, with a whole orchestra in
• 29:09
  front of him. He is the sort of Byronic Dr.,
• 29:12
  isn't he? Yes, yeah.
• 29:15
  And, and like, like say the second-half of the book, which
• 29:17
  is I would say from that kind of once they leave the 1st planet
• 29:23
  and go to the next one and the dad stuff like that, I think
• 29:28
  that's, that's when it kind of kicked into gear for me.
• 29:31
  And I was like, yeah, I can see this is a Doctor Who story that
• 29:35
  feels quite contemporary and it's doing kind of new things.
• 29:39
  And it's like big ideas, but not too many big ideas, which I
• 29:42
  think the first half does. And that's maybe why it gets so
• 29:46
  stuck waiting for the unnoticed to turn up is because it's like.
• 29:50
  I think that's the point there. That's where the book kicks in
• 29:53
  for me. And I'm like, OK, fine.
• 29:55
  And they're described in so many disgusting ways.
• 29:59
  I mean, it isn't being inside the ship.
• 30:02
  What was it? It says like, it's like being
• 30:03
  inside a head cold. I was like, oh, God, that's
• 30:06
  horrible, horrible, scabby, burnt smells.
• 30:11
  And oh, good grief. Bless you, Paul Webs.
• 30:15
  Yeah, you've got a twisted mind also as well.
• 30:22
  I do really like in the second-half all the mad set
• 30:27
  pieces of the bit where the Doctor tears all the pages out
• 30:32
  of the Book of the Steel and essentially makes an enormous
• 30:35
  paper aeroplane to fly into the corona of the sun.
• 30:40
  Well, that's not a sentence you say everyday.
• 30:44
  No, it's not. Would totally go there.
• 30:47
  Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Except.
• 30:50
  Matt Smith will be going. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's,
• 31:00
  that's got that kind of like child like kind of Glee to the
• 31:03
  dot. Like the, like you can again,
• 31:05
  like there's really great images in the second-half where like
• 31:10
  you can absolutely picture McGann sitting cross legged on
• 31:13
  the floor, sort of tearing out pages from the book and laughing
• 31:17
  and then kind of going, right. What we're going to do is we're
• 31:19
  going to stitch all these pages together into a big cube that we
• 31:23
  can then fly into the sun. And it won't.
• 31:27
  It won't just burn into like a big puff of ashes.
• 31:30
  That's all from Angie's point of view, and she's like, you know,
• 31:33
  I follow you and believe that you could get us out of
• 31:35
  anything, but I think you finally might have lost it.
• 31:38
  You want me to go in a paper plane into a sum?
• 31:41
  I've been joking. Fucking hell, how much of A cunt
• 31:48
  is she in this book? Oh, it's glorious.
• 31:52
  She's just horrible to everybody, isn't she?
• 31:54
  Now, Andrew Kapoor is a love it or hate it sort of a character.
• 31:59
  I think she's a bit Tegan like that, you know, and she's got
• 32:02
  the same sort of story. I don't know how much, you know,
• 32:03
  but basically she's effectively been kidnapped by the Doctor and
• 32:08
  he can't quite get her own and she doesn't want to be there.
• 32:12
  But along the way, she just has a a generally great time and
• 32:16
  falls head over heels for him at Fitz.
• 32:19
  But she does always want to get back home, and that's always
• 32:22
  where she's heading for. So it's like Ian and Barbara and
• 32:24
  a bit like Megan. And her books usually veer
• 32:29
  between her being, like, ridiculously competent.
• 32:32
  Yeah, really. Michael Mills said it
• 32:35
  brilliantly. She's not the the sci-fi geek.
• 32:39
  She's not the Izzy. She's not the fit in for the
• 32:41
  Bromas. She's the sci-fi geek's
• 32:44
  girlfriend that wants nothing to do with science fiction.
• 32:47
  In a load of Doctor Who books, she's the the Jackie Tyler, you
• 32:50
  know, the person that doesn't belong here at all.
• 32:53
  But as a result, you kind of do interesting things because
• 32:57
  you're seeing it all from another perspective.
• 33:00
  Yeah. So she's either usually
• 33:02
  ridiculously competent or a total cow.
• 33:05
  And in this one, boy, boy, she's just horrible and like.
• 33:10
  What did you think? I liked her actually.
• 33:14
  But yeah, she's proper Catholic like others like that.
• 33:18
  Kind of like slight jealousy towards Rihanna as well, which
• 33:23
  is quite funny. She calls.
• 33:25
  Her Velma from Scooby-doo. Yeah, she's quite, Yeah, she's
• 33:29
  quite horrible about her, which does make me think, well, this
• 33:33
  is a man writing two women, you know, you wouldn't.
• 33:36
  I don't think it's like, say, Jacqueline Rayner or something
• 33:39
  like that wrote that relationship if it would be
• 33:41
  quite as focused on, well, look at her, the dumpy little so and
• 33:45
  so. She looks like Velma from
• 33:46
  Scooby-doo. Dumpy 4 or something.
• 33:50
  Like that, Something like that. Yeah, I feel like a bit harsh, I
• 33:54
  know. We don't think, we don't say
• 33:57
  about that do. We because there's like, yeah,
• 34:01
  so but she is, I think also she has that kind of confidence and
• 34:05
  competence as well. Like the bit where she's kind of
• 34:07
  escaping from the what's it like?
• 34:11
  No, wait, there's a big rot. That's it.
• 34:13
  When the unnoticed turn up and she's trying to get back to the
• 34:16
  TARDIS and she's the TARDIS has fallen over and she can't pick
• 34:20
  up by herself. So she's and it's really stupid
• 34:23
  and really kind of Looney Tunes, but she gets like a mob to kind
• 34:29
  of follow her down an alleyway to right the TARDIS into the
• 34:34
  correct position so she can get. She falls into it, but it's not
• 34:38
  the wrong in the wrong angle, so she just goes flying down and
• 34:41
  slides down and hits the console.
• 34:44
  Yeah, yeah. Why have they never done that
• 34:47
  before? That's such a great idea.
• 34:48
  The TARDIS just fallen. To play with the kind of
• 34:50
  Internet, yeah, the dimensions and stuff.
• 34:53
  They've thought of many various spectacular ways to stop them
• 34:56
  getting into the TARDIS over the years.
• 34:57
  It's never just fallen on its front.
• 35:00
  No, Yeah, that's true. It's usually like what?
• 35:04
  Yeah, surely we just open another door, right?
• 35:08
  But anyway, Oh. How many times I did.
• 35:11
  It's how it works. Well, I don't know.
• 35:13
  Yeah, he's always playing with the entered dimensions, isn't
• 35:15
  he? That's.
• 35:16
  True. But yeah, he doesn't know that
• 35:19
  he's got amnesia. So he's just like, ah, we need
• 35:21
  to, we need to turn it over. It's like sex with a human.
• 35:23
  Is it various ways of getting inside?
• 35:26
  Indeed. Indeed, yeah.
• 35:28
  Well, yes, I mean entering. A TARDIS is a lot like making
• 35:31
  love to a beautiful woman as Swiss tournament.
• 35:34
  Bigger on the inside, although really we prefer it when they're
• 35:37
  smaller on the inside, if I'm honest.
• 35:42
  Now, you sent me. You sent me a wonderful, When I
• 35:46
  say wonderful, I mean truly agonising bit of prose right at
• 35:51
  the start of the book. Lovely.
• 35:52
  What did you send? It was like it was describing
• 35:55
  what it looked like or smelt like or something.
• 35:57
  Oh, right, yes, no, I do remember this thing.
• 36:00
  You read it out because it was so funny and you were like,
• 36:02
  yeah, what the hell does that mean?
• 36:05
  Yeah, again, in this kind of like idea that Paul Ebbs really
• 36:10
  wants you to know what a good writer he is.
• 36:14
  But then also is he? Yeah, that's it.
• 36:17
  So it was the the whole museum exuded a set, a stench of denied
• 36:21
  knowledge and hoarded wonder. Now what?
• 36:24
  What does that smell like, Joe Ford?
• 36:26
  What? What do you think denied
• 36:27
  knowledge and hoarded wonder combines?
• 36:30
  Smells like. I mean, you can give me the
• 36:32
  individual smells as well if you'd like, no?
• 36:34
  No. Well, I think it's sort of a
• 36:35
  mixture really, of sort of wet hay when you leave the door open
• 36:42
  after you've done a really bad poo and sort of carbonara just
• 36:48
  before you're about to eat it. It's sort of those things mixed
• 36:51
  together. Or at least, that's probably
• 36:54
  what Paul Webs would say. Yeah, no, that's fine.
• 36:57
  Yeah, maybe a touch of lavender, I don't know.
• 37:00
  Did you? Did you think it was all all
• 37:04
  trying too much or was there bits where you were like,
• 37:07
  actually do you know what? He clearly has got some talent.
• 37:10
  He just needs to, it's a first time author and he just needs to
• 37:14
  get a few more books under himself and then he'll read this
• 37:16
  and go why was I trying that hard?
• 37:20
  I think, I think there's definitely an element of that.
• 37:22
  I think there's I do because I don't think it was all bad and I
• 37:24
  think there's a lot. It's a much more interesting
• 37:27
  book than just a first time author being overexcited and
• 37:31
  just spaffing off. I, I sort of Doctor Who book, I
• 37:35
  think he's an excitable author who has a lot of ideas and maybe
• 37:40
  thinks this is his one chance, one and only chance to do a
• 37:43
  Doctor Who book and therefore throws 3 or 4 Doctor Who stories
• 37:47
  into the book and they don't all quite cohere.
• 37:51
  But I think once we get out, once we get into that dance
• 37:54
  sequence and the Bollywood stuff, kind of.
• 37:58
  Goes. By the wayside, I think it from
• 38:01
  then on it becomes a really cracking Doctor Who book and a
• 38:06
  really solid story that kind of moves from place to place, like
• 38:09
  the whole thing with the the planets about to get destroyed
• 38:13
  and really and finally makes the revelation of like why she needs
• 38:17
  to find the book. And then the Doctor's like, oh,
• 38:20
  great, so I've got to actually just let that planet get
• 38:24
  destroyed and we've got to move on to the next place.
• 38:27
  That's all really exciting. And that's the books that I
• 38:29
  thought it was going to be, you know, 70. 3 yards mark because
• 38:33
  you know, 73 yards where you know, it's like, well, what the
• 38:35
  hell did that woman say? Right.
• 38:36
  And we can never know what that woman said in 73 yards because
• 38:39
  then it will ruin the episode. The whole the sort of the scary
• 38:43
  thing is the ambiguity of it. And that bit where he read the
• 38:46
  book and went well, OK, fine, we can leave the planet and then it
• 38:50
  blows up and everyone dies. I'm like, what the hell could
• 38:53
  possibly be in that book to make him desert that planet?
• 38:57
  And you get the answer almost immediately.
• 39:00
  Straight away. Actually, I was like, morally I
• 39:05
  was like, yeah, OK, fine. That's in the future.
• 39:07
  She hasn't written it yet. And if she doesn't write that,
• 39:09
  then that's going to blow all in the universe, potentially, but
• 39:12
  you've just left hundreds of millions of people on that
• 39:15
  planet to die. Yeah, and that, but that's the
• 39:20
  Doctor, isn't it? Like ultimately that's the
• 39:22
  that's the kind of, I suppose that's the books version of the
• 39:25
  Doctor, isn't it? I.
• 39:26
  Hate it when they put him in positions like that though.
• 39:28
  I know. I mean, it's like the lesser of
• 39:30
  two bastards. Yeah.
• 39:35
  Genocide was full of moments like that, wasn't it?
• 39:37
  Oh, that was another Paul Paul Leonard.
• 39:39
  But genocide was full of that, wasn't it?
• 39:40
  It's like, you know what terrible thing can we make the
• 39:43
  8th Doctor do next in this book? Yeah, then they have got Joe
• 39:47
  Grant gunned down a bunch of horses.
• 39:49
  Such a weird book do. You know, I just read Blood Heat
• 39:53
  recently, right at a feral Joe Grant.
• 39:56
  Yeah, clutching the bloody remains of her miscarried child.
• 40:00
  I think these books, they really don't like her very much.
• 40:04
  Yeah, I, I mentioned this to somebody recently on an in the
• 40:10
  time Lash. Can't remember who it was but I
• 40:13
  said I'm surprised that nobody's come in with the inherent
• 40:18
  misogyny and a lot of doctors spin off media of 1990s.
• 40:21
  Yeah, have you not seen a squeezed into that lever
• 40:24
  costume? They make Sophie Aldrin wear the
• 40:26
  fucking thing, didn't they? And then 2 loads of pictures of
• 40:30
  her. Yeah.
• 40:31
  Sorry, I'll say it again. She has got to pay her gas bill,
• 40:34
  so she was up for it. But I mean, come on.
• 40:38
  OK, hang on. What else have we got here?
• 40:41
  Do we have Eddie? Oh, what about these criminals
• 40:44
  in this what they call GIMP? Oh.
• 40:46
  Bum crack in. There.
• 40:49
  Yeah, this is like what, Sadie? Sadie Vista or something?
• 40:53
  Yeah, Saddam Vista, Darlo, Darlo and.
• 40:57
  Yeah, I just didn't care about them at all.
• 40:59
  I did not care about them at all.
• 41:00
  And I always was skipping over the scenes they were in.
• 41:04
  You do want to, because I think like, I think what he's trying
• 41:07
  to do is he's trying to do a kind of Bob Holmes double act or
• 41:13
  like a trio. I guess it's.
• 41:14
  Not enough personality though, is there?
• 41:16
  There's not. They're just kind of, they're
• 41:18
  just kind of grunting henchman characters and sort of sneering
• 41:24
  sort of villain character. You know, like the one who's
• 41:27
  slightly intelligent, but actually is he any better than
• 41:29
  the 2 like blunt instrument. It's a dynamic you see you've
• 41:33
  seen since the 1920s in sort of gangster movies and and all this
• 41:37
  kind. Of thing, maybe.
• 41:38
  I mean, listen to this. This is a bit of dialogue.
• 41:40
  You ready? But Game Crack might take
• 41:43
  offence on my behalf, wouldn't you, Game Crack?
• 41:45
  If you want me to, Mr. Darlo, I'll be very happy to take
• 41:49
  offence. You know, it's very glitz and
• 41:51
  dibber. Yeah.
• 41:52
  And it's just all that kind of chord gangster movie dialogue
• 41:56
  that, yeah, they're just not very interesting characters and
• 42:01
  we don't really have any impact. The plot as well.
• 42:04
  No, and also like, oh, we want to get the book of the still.
• 42:06
  And it's like, why? Like, because there's like this
• 42:09
  idea that I suppose like, Oh, well, we could sell onto the
• 42:12
  highest bidder and say, all right, fine.
• 42:13
  But that's just not as like the unknown, like the unnoticed
• 42:17
  motives for one to get incredible.
• 42:19
  That that's a really, I think the idea of a kind of alien
• 42:22
  species that don't want want to be found that kind of like
• 42:26
  extreme xenophobia where you're so xenophobic that you want to
• 42:30
  just hide your entire existence. Why isn't it from everybody
• 42:33
  else? That they shouldn't exist, and
• 42:36
  they know they shouldn't exist. So any men, they hide
• 42:39
  themselves. They will destroy an entire
• 42:41
  planet. If one person goes on that
• 42:43
  planet that knows of their existence.
• 42:45
  Boy, oh boy, now we know about them.
• 42:47
  I'll see you later, Mark. I know.
• 42:50
  Hi. What's that just coming up over
• 42:52
  the It's a big black? Is it a monster?
• 42:56
  Is it a monster? They've got really good, they've
• 43:01
  got really good motives. Rianne's got a great motive for
• 43:05
  the book. Kamode's got a great motive for
• 43:07
  the book. Bum crack in Santa Vista and all
• 43:10
  this. It's just, it's just money.
• 43:14
  It's just a kind of element that I don't think we need.
• 43:17
  They need to be there to implant the memory acids into fits.
• 43:22
  And then Paul Ebbs goes well, Well, I've got them.
• 43:24
  Yeah, that's it. Ditch them there.
• 43:26
  We don't need them anymore. Yeah, you don't.
• 43:28
  You don't because all they do is they just go around knocking out
• 43:31
  the Doctor or knocking out Angie or like tying people up or, and
• 43:36
  it's just that kind of like, I think by this point we've moved
• 43:42
  past that kind of catch and release, Doctor Who plotting
• 43:46
  that. And I think that's the purpose.
• 43:48
  They're there to serve. And I don't think you need it
• 43:50
  really. I really don't think you do.
• 43:52
  There's enough going on that I think you could just have it
• 43:55
  rattling on, and there's enough stuff that he throws at the
• 43:59
  Doctor and his companions and Cambodia and Rihanna that I
• 44:03
  think could easily just keep the plate spinning for a bit longer
• 44:08
  before you get to the next bit. I I would rather that time
• 44:13
  spending, I wish you'd stop calling him bum crack.
• 44:15
  You know, I'm seeing every fabulous bum crack I've seen in
• 44:18
  my life. That's a lot of them.
• 44:20
  No, I'd spend that time with the unnoticed because I just found
• 44:26
  those things great. And I found his prose was great
• 44:29
  there. He really created that
• 44:30
  nauseating sense of weirdness there.
• 44:34
  And I just wanted to explore that more.
• 44:36
  But then the the book sort of tying itself up at that point.
• 44:40
  So yeah, I don't know, maybe just needed a stronger editor to
• 44:43
  come in and say, do you know what?
• 44:45
  You don't need this. You don't need this.
• 44:47
  Take these ideas which are amazing and and fill them out a
• 44:51
  bit more. Well, because he takes them all
• 44:53
  the way to the end of the book, doesn't he?
• 44:55
  And kind of has them part of the origin story of the of the
• 45:00
  unnoticed. And it's a bit like, I'm fine, I
• 45:03
  guess, but did we really need, do we really need it?
• 45:07
  You know, it's like the idea of the unnoticed is strong enough
• 45:09
  without having to have. And also you've had Karamodi
• 45:12
  there as one of their seers or? Canaries.
• 45:18
  Canaries. That's it.
• 45:19
  She's. Like a time sensitive, isn't
• 45:21
  she? They take her down to the planet
• 45:23
  and she sniffs about literally with fits.
• 45:26
  Yeah, to find time travelers. Why are you sniffing me?
• 45:30
  What's going on? Because he's traveled in the
• 45:32
  hardest. I mean, that's a great idea,
• 45:34
  sending down a time sensitive to as like a Canary.
• 45:38
  I think that's another really strong, although when you see
• 45:41
  what they're actually like, these sort of pale postulated,
• 45:46
  God, it's really horrible, Yeah. Held inside a kind of coat like
• 45:49
  a dirty Mac and The Dirty Mac is opened and this Canary kind of
• 45:53
  pops out. And Fitz, at one point when I
• 45:56
  take him up to the ship, they sort of put the coat around him
• 45:59
  that he's stuck inside with one of them.
• 46:02
  Yummy. And that's where descriptions of
• 46:05
  Stentions make more sense. When you're inside.
• 46:07
  When you're inside a dirty mind. Well, yeah, but he also actually
• 46:11
  gives you a description rather than what you said earlier.
• 46:13
  Some ambiguous bullshit where you're supposed to go.
• 46:16
  Oh, how cloud profound that is. Yeah, it's, it's just a, it's
• 46:21
  like stench isn't the word. You, you want a kind of, you
• 46:24
  know, a, a sense of or a feeling of or.
• 46:28
  Yeah, anyway. Oh yes, there was a line here I
• 46:32
  needed to discuss with you. It's because not something you
• 46:35
  read very often in a Doctor Who book.
• 46:36
  Maybe in a new adventure, I don't know.
• 46:38
  The doctor was politely asked to go and have sex with his mother,
• 46:42
  Rehan back before he could make a ropost.
• 46:46
  I mean, he's a bit cheeky in places as well, but I did like
• 46:49
  that. I like the fact that there was a
• 46:52
  few times where I went. Oh God, I hope there's no Kitty
• 46:54
  winks reading this. Yes, I think I don't know, like,
• 47:00
  yeah, there's there is stuff like that and it's all that kind
• 47:02
  of like, oh, I want to swear on a Doctor Who book, but I can't
• 47:06
  swear on a Doctor Who book. So I'm going to come up with it.
• 47:08
  Oh, you told to have sex with his mother and say, yeah, the
• 47:11
  doctor got called a motherfucker and how was he going to respond
• 47:14
  to that? Look, it's better than saying
• 47:17
  crock, all right? Or whatever they say.
• 47:19
  Is it? Yeah, yeah, it is.
• 47:21
  It is. It is.
• 47:22
  I was like, yeah, yeah, because it's that cock womble stuff.
• 47:26
  It's just I'll grow up. Rock in hell, Mark.
• 47:29
  Jesus, could Ioffer you an alternative version of this book
• 47:33
  that you might have found more palatable?
• 47:35
  OK, so 150 page novella entirely focused on Rianne and Carmody as
• 47:43
  still as the Doctor Who book. Just those twin storylines
• 47:47
  taking place, the bum crack, and that they appear for their one
• 47:50
  scene but then they're out. No Bollywood bullshit in it at
• 47:53
  all. And it is staged romantically,
• 48:00
  but with this big science fiction idea of the unnoticed
• 48:03
  hitting around chapter 3 or 4, you know, Yeah.
• 48:08
  And but it's a more focused character drama because I think
• 48:12
  take out all of the extraneous effort that he's putting in.
• 48:20
  I think there's good sentiment in here and interesting
• 48:24
  relationships to explore, but you have to sort of work, work
• 48:30
  your way through. It's like a treacle full of you.
• 48:34
  Know that's a really good way of describing it.
• 48:36
  It is like a you are kind of wading through treacle to get to
• 48:40
  the good bits. I think like there's a lot of
• 48:43
  time where like you said with bum crack and whatever, whenever
• 48:50
  I it's like the next chapter is them.
• 48:52
  I'm about a first, right? OK.
• 48:56
  Every time a champion started, right, or every time a scene
• 48:59
  started and it said the Doctor or Rihanna, I was like, great,
• 49:02
  yeah. I just relax.
• 49:04
  And I was like, I just want to see where this relationship
• 49:05
  goes. One, because I think romances
• 49:09
  with the doctor can go one of two ways.
• 49:12
  You do like the the Joan Redfern romance in the Human Nature book
• 49:16
  and and he's a different person. He's been turned into a human
• 49:19
  being. And so it's not really the
• 49:20
  doctor or you can do something like Debbie Castle in Father
• 49:25
  Time. I don't know if you've read that
• 49:26
  one. Yes, where he gets his daughter
• 49:30
  and then he saves Debbie Castle from another relationship and
• 49:34
  she sort of moves in and they're a family unit and they've been
• 49:36
  sort of doing at home with the doctor, that sort of thing.
• 49:40
  But this is literally just somebody happens to chance upon
• 49:44
  who for a series of events, they just get incredibly close with
• 49:49
  each other. The bit where he wakes her up
• 49:52
  when he thinks they're going to die and he says, I just didn't
• 49:55
  want to die on my own. That's really moving.
• 49:59
  Yeah. So just that stuff.
• 50:00
  I just want more of that stuff and less boom Shaka laka laka.
• 50:05
  I think that's fair. Yeah, I'm the same.
• 50:07
  Because I do think that I did really like the Doctor and Rhian
• 50:13
  dynamic. And, and then to be honest, I I
• 50:17
  think the fits and Carboli stuff gets really interesting towards
• 50:21
  the end, as you say, when, when you are kind of faced with,
• 50:24
  well, he knows what she's done now and yet he still cares for
• 50:29
  her. Isn't that a kind of love, or at
• 50:32
  least at the very least the caring for somebody?
• 50:34
  A. Connection again.
• 50:36
  Yeah, all that stuff's way more interesting than the kind of
• 50:40
  slightly kind of Joss Whedon esque pros at times and the sort
• 50:45
  of big ideas that are sort of jostling for a prime position
• 50:49
  and the the tedious kind of glitz and the different knock
• 50:52
  offs and and all that stuff. I think because I've heard you
• 50:58
  say this on many a podcast that you know, your Wayne's Doctor
• 51:00
  Who is is character and I think it I think broadly it's mine as
• 51:05
  well. I do like a big idea, but I
• 51:08
  think it has to be anchored by like, believable characters.
• 51:13
  It's that thing Leslie used to say about, you know, you have to
• 51:16
  take a deadly seriously, otherwise, you know, the whole
• 51:20
  thing falls apart. And I think that's the thing
• 51:22
  with the characters. The characters have to be
• 51:25
  believable, or at least, you know, I'm engaging.
• 51:29
  And I think we do have those here.
• 51:30
  It's just they're kind of surrounded by a lot of other
• 51:32
  stuff that kind of takes the focus off them when actually you
• 51:37
  want more of it. I'll give you another Doctor Who
• 51:39
  actually Louise Jamieson, and she often says you need the like
• 51:43
  the honesty of the character in there, you know, and that there
• 51:47
  is plenty of that here, but it's mired in lots of fabrication as
• 51:53
  well and sort of fake relationships and and, you know,
• 51:58
  the Bollywood, which is all just a, a mirage.
• 52:03
  Page it's just, it's just like making up a word count, I feel
• 52:08
  like. Yeah, Dylan and I did William
• 52:12
  M's Choose Your Adventure book. And I made the point in that,
• 52:16
  that there's bits where where like you go down the wrong path
• 52:19
  and it's like, oh, you wake up and you're a race car driver.
• 52:23
  And I'm like, you're literally just, you're not coming up with
• 52:26
  an ending that that allows, that fits with the story and you, oh,
• 52:30
  you're dead now. You have to go back to page 24
• 52:32
  or whatever. You're just writing a whole
• 52:34
  little short story about a race car driver or a pirate captain
• 52:38
  or a you're. It just feels like.
• 52:41
  You're expecting a Steven Baxter.
• 52:43
  It was William M's writer of Galaxy 4.
• 52:47
  Yeah, but it's the same here. It's like I, I think the the
• 52:51
  sort of fits is hallucin. Well, hallucination, delusion,
• 52:55
  dream, whatever. And, and Angie's sort of
• 52:57
  Bollywood's dance sequence stuff, it's all just there to
• 53:02
  fill up space. And I don't think that's a good
• 53:07
  enough reason for doing things, really.
• 53:10
  I mean, I'll say that the last third of the book I was super
• 53:14
  engaged, like, especially with all the stuff around the book,
• 53:17
  we unnoticed the tent city and all of that.
• 53:21
  And I, I think that's where the ideas all cohered as well, all
• 53:24
  the relationships and all the ideas.
• 53:26
  But fuck me, you have to. Yeah, you do have to slog
• 53:29
  through a lot of, you know, my heart swelled like a beautiful
• 53:33
  rose. Oh, God, please.
• 53:39
  No. I mean, it's the sort of love
• 53:40
  poetry I wrote when I was a teenager, you know?
• 53:44
  Yeah, it's a bit Star Wars to attack the clothes as well, just
• 53:47
  that kind of like, Yeah. I find you intoxicating, doesn't
• 53:51
  he say in that it's something? It's a poor old Princess,
• 53:54
  Armadillo, or whatever her name is.
• 53:55
  What's her name? Armadillo.
• 53:58
  As well as the Amadeus but armadillo.
• 54:00
  Yeah, for God's sax. Well, look, I'm in.
• 54:06
  I think we sort of covered it there.
• 54:07
  I am pleased we did this one because what did we do?
• 54:11
  Last ancestor sale? Yeah, we did.
• 54:14
  Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, which was another sort of
• 54:17
  mixed experience with lots of good bits and the direction I'm
• 54:22
  sort of forcing you into next, buying you a book, I'm like, you
• 54:26
  will do another one. I'm getting you something.
• 54:28
  All right? You got to fucking read it now.
• 54:32
  I feel as if I'm on shore territory.
• 54:35
  With the next one, yes, probably.
• 54:37
  You know, of, of all the things that you get wrong in life,
• 54:41
  you're an enormous fan of both Sophie Aldridge Ice and the
• 54:45
  Sylvester McCoy era. So please, Mark, why don't you
• 54:48
  tell us where we're heading next?
• 54:50
  Well, we're going to do, which I'm very excited about.
• 54:53
  We're going to do Ian Briggs's novelisation of Cursor Fenrick
• 54:56
  because I've never read it, which is mental because it's one
• 54:59
  of my favourite doctor's. Stories and I I feel.
• 55:02
  Like I've watched cursor Fenrick more than any other dots.
• 55:06
  That might not be true, but I definitely feels like I have
• 55:09
  watched Curse Fenrick more than any other Doctor Who story
• 55:13
  because I love it. Like I like I remember watching
• 55:17
  it for the first time and it felt like it felt like it was
• 55:20
  like Doctor Who. That was for me because I think
• 55:24
  the thing with the McCoy era, watching it in the early 90s was
• 55:28
  it was quite close to the kind of kids telly that I was
• 55:32
  watching at that kind of time. You know, you're demon head
• 55:36
  masters. You're Aquila.
• 55:38
  Remember Aquila? They've.
• 55:40
  Just watched that this year. Oh my God, that that mad old
• 55:44
  lady next door. Yeah.
• 55:46
  She keeps realizing that the invisible spaceship's going by.
• 55:49
  She's like hello. And then she's in on it.
• 55:52
  She's the one hiding them from the mothers.
• 55:53
  Anyway. Sorry.
• 55:54
  Yeah. Continue, please.
• 55:55
  Yeah, well, so that, you know, dark seas and all that kind of
• 55:58
  stuff, it feels like it, it felt of a piece for that.
• 56:01
  So like I, I really kind of connected with it.
• 56:03
  And the cursor Fenrick has so many big ideas in it that maybe
• 56:09
  don't when you watch it as an adult, you go, Oh yeah, maybe
• 56:14
  not all of this coheres quite as much as I thought it did when I
• 56:17
  was a kid. So I'll be really interested to
• 56:20
  read how Briggs expands that out into a novel.
• 56:24
  I mean, I both I'll put out a wonderful commentary with sigh
• 56:30
  heart because cursor Femrix's favorite story.
• 56:32
  We did the special edition, you know, the latest one with.
• 56:34
  The extra. Scenes put in where I absolutely
• 56:38
  it's stole its virtues, then I'll put out strictly where I
• 56:41
  absolutely went to town and savaged the thing.
• 56:44
  Much to thee. Good loot.
• 56:46
  My lie, man. I thought he was going to murder
• 56:48
  me. I thought his hands were going
• 56:49
  to reach through the zoom screen and kill me when I was going on
• 56:52
  about that. You've got to entertain people,
• 56:55
  Jesus Christ. Even if it's bullshit.
• 56:58
  But the book, I can't believe you haven't read that book.
• 57:03
  Have you read the other? Lie I haven't do.
• 57:05
  You remember it, Ghost, Lie and all the others.
• 57:08
  No. Do you know what I want?
• 57:10
  I wonder, though, I've never been all that interested in this
• 57:16
  might be controversial. I've never been all that
• 57:18
  interested in the in the targets in the sense that so like the
• 57:24
  the Trouting and Hartner ones. I'm there like, you know, Jerry
• 57:30
  James's novelization, the 10th Planet.
• 57:32
  Loved that book because yeah, I can't watch it.
• 57:36
  And so there it's a kind of new way to engage with the with the
• 57:39
  story. And actually it's a more, what's
• 57:42
  the word I'm looking for? Like a more direct way, I think,
• 57:46
  to engage with that story that doesn't exist than just
• 57:50
  listening to the soundtrack and watching.
• 57:53
  Like Tellus knows John Lucarotti is a naughty man and did his
• 57:56
  original script rather than the one that hit the screen, but
• 57:59
  never mind. Oh, I'm not.
• 58:01
  I'm not read. I've got that one.
• 58:02
  I don't know. I've got that one.
• 58:04
  But yeah, so but. Where's the club near you?
• 58:06
  Great. Where it's it's got ones where
• 58:08
  whether it's a target for a one that I've seen and crucially, I
• 58:12
  suppose with like Ghostlight and Chris Frederick and remember
• 58:14
  it's the dialects. Once I've seen loads, I don't
• 58:17
  know, I don't think to go. But actually now that I say
• 58:20
  that, well, why not? Because you've just said that
• 58:23
  watching like reading missing episodes is kind of a more
• 58:26
  involved way of, of engaging with stories that you can't see.
• 58:29
  So why would you do that with stories that you can?
• 58:32
  Because that's another way of experiencing the story and a new
• 58:35
  way. The whole bloody locks.
• 58:36
  I've got remembrance on the shelf somewhere.
• 58:38
  God remembrance. I've done that for the book club
• 58:40
  already. It is an extra like Aronovich is
• 58:43
  deeply embarrassed by his target because he's obviously perfected
• 58:47
  his writing since then. Yeah, but as AI mean it's the
• 58:52
  best new adventure you're ever going to read.
• 58:54
  It's an extraordinary book. Cursor Fenrick is vet both very
• 58:59
  like Cursor Fenrick and completely unlike Cursor Fenrick
• 59:03
  because it just has the space and the time to explore those
• 59:07
  characters in a way that, you know, he's telling a pacey
• 59:10
  story, a reaction in it on the screen, so he's got to keep it
• 59:14
  moving. So you get to learn about
• 59:16
  Johnson and Millington and just brilliant characters like Miss
• 59:20
  Hardy. That's a wonderful back story in
• 59:22
  the book. So I really hope you enjoy it.
• 59:25
  I'm, I'm sure I will. I'm I'm like 90. 9% of that and
• 59:28
  I'm going to, I'm going to love it.
• 59:29
  Consider it an apology. For forcing you to sort of chow
• 59:34
  down on all of this stodgy poor webs prose.
• 59:37
  OK, OK, well, apology accepted. Paul, if you are listening,
• 59:43
  yeah. Yeah, we meant every word.
• 59:45
  All right. Yeah, you can be as apoplectic
• 59:47
  as you want. No, no, there is one very last
• 59:51
  thing just to say about the Book of the Steel and that is this
• 59:55
  this not here in my favorite run of the 8th Doctor books.
• 59:59
  Sort of. Oh, right.
• 59:59
  OK, burning through to time zero.
• 1:00:01
  And I think this is sort of a mid range book of that period.
• 1:00:06
  But the one thing I really appreciate because I do think.
• 1:00:10
  Especially the New Adventures, they have long runs of sort of
• 1:00:13
  torture porn books and you know, very serious, very graphic, very
• 1:00:18
  adult books. And this is a period where, and
• 1:00:21
  Book of the Still is is absolutely doing this as well,
• 1:00:24
  where they were experimenting with a lot of comedy and quirk
• 1:00:30
  your ideas. So you get books like, I don't
• 1:00:31
  know if you've ever seen the cover of Paul Miles's Mad Dogs
• 1:00:34
  and Englishmen. I've seen the cover.
• 1:00:36
  I've never read it, but yeah, a regular.
• 1:00:37
  Doctor Who Bright pink cover you ever?
• 1:00:39
  Seen the cover? Of the crooked world with the
• 1:00:41
  Doctor. As a cartoon, yes.
• 1:00:43
  So they're doing all of these. Books at this point.
• 1:00:45
  As well as the big weighty are we're going to tear the heart
• 1:00:48
  out the doctor this week. Lawrence Miles and and so I do,
• 1:00:53
  I do appreciate that they're doing different things at this
• 1:00:57
  point and they're shaking up what is a very long run series
• 1:01:02
  of books at this point and saying, you know what, we're not
• 1:01:06
  just going to do Doctor Who for horny 19 year olds.
• 1:01:11
  There's a bit of that in this one as well.
• 1:01:15
  But one day Mark. One day.
• 1:01:18
  In the future, I hope to entice you back to the 8th Doctor range
• 1:01:22
  for another book in this period that might perhaps be more
• 1:01:27
  palatable to you. So I'm going to be listening
• 1:01:30
  very closely to your podcast now.
• 1:01:32
  I mean, I've already do it anymore.
• 1:01:34
  Everything. Excuse me, I want fucking
• 1:01:36
  content. Or are you better at And just to
• 1:01:40
  see, you know, where your tastes sort of lie because.
• 1:01:43
  Yeah, yeah. You've got some eclectic tastes.
• 1:01:45
  You. I can never quite gauge you.
• 1:01:47
  That's why it's really interesting to talk to you about
• 1:01:49
  things. OK, Yeah.
• 1:01:51
  I'll watch Anna. That's the thing.
• 1:01:53
  Well, aside from cursor. Fenrick, Mark, could you please
• 1:01:57
  tell everybody where if you wish for them to explore you online?
• 1:02:02
  Well, I'll be I'll be at Hooverville in the bar and you
• 1:02:04
  can explore. Me for the price of two, Really.
• 1:02:09
  OK, can I call you bum crack? That day, 22 bottles 2 bottles
• 1:02:12
  of whiskey that'll. Do 2 bottles.
• 1:02:15
  Good stuff though. Good stuff though.
• 1:02:18
  Good stuff. Not 2 bottles of beer, 2.
• 1:02:20
  Not one night, yeah. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:22
  That's. The price, I'm not going to say
• 1:02:23
  I'm going to drink them all that night.
• 1:02:25
  I mean, I like to go all night. You ain't going to go 5.
• 1:02:27
  Minutes. That's the plan.
• 1:02:31
  No refunds. Where can people find you
• 1:02:35
  online? They can find me.
• 1:02:37
  Or well, so on the time Lash, we're we will, we will be back.
• 1:02:43
  I am sure we'll be back with the Shooty Gatwa era.
• 1:02:46
  It just feels a bit too soon, I think.
• 1:02:49
  So we're going to like maybe give it a little bit longer.
• 1:02:53
  But we're doing we're going to do.
• 1:02:55
  There is going to be 1. I don't know when this is going
• 1:02:57
  to, but there's going to be 1 for Dylan Reece's fabulous new
• 1:03:00
  book Myths and Legends. We're doing a sort of old school
• 1:03:04
  on the time lash format, so he's chosen as old school myth
• 1:03:08
  makers. Are you doing that as well?
• 1:03:11
  He's doing that on this too. He's a smart bloke.
• 1:03:15
  Can he? Yeah.
• 1:03:16
  You know, I'm happy to. I'm happy to.
• 1:03:17
  Be part of the press too. So but he's going to show Ben
• 1:03:20
  and I an old myth makers and a new myth myth makers to kind of
• 1:03:24
  talk about as we do on the podcast, talk about how classic
• 1:03:27
  doctor and new Doctor are different and kind of the same.
• 1:03:30
  We're going to do the same with the myth makers and talk about
• 1:03:33
  the book itself. So we're going to do that soon
• 1:03:36
  in the time in the time lash because I fucking.
• 1:03:38
  Love those, I love them. Yes, maybe cut.
• 1:03:43
  This bit out, but the reason I don't do loads of them is
• 1:03:48
  because I don't I I kind of want to make sure people aren't just
• 1:03:53
  going to come on it and just be like and I'll tell you another
• 1:03:56
  thing I don't like about don't say I want like, you know, I
• 1:03:59
  want people to get along with the spirit of it, which is that
• 1:04:02
  actually, if you're talking about stuff you don't like, you
• 1:04:05
  end up talking about the stuff that you do like and it's a more
• 1:04:08
  interesting discussion. So yes, I am going to do more
• 1:04:10
  anytime Lash But yeah, it's so for people listening who don't
• 1:04:14
  know what it is, it's essentially room one O 1 for
• 1:04:17
  Doctor Who I invite and sometimes Ben is with me and we
• 1:04:22
  invite just our Doctor Who pals to submit 5 choices for the time
• 1:04:27
  lash to be haunted into Paul Darrow Spangly opening to spend
• 1:04:31
  the weekend on Loch Ness. So that could be anything from
• 1:04:33
  like, you know, fan myths, ill informed opinions, you know.
• 1:04:42
  I have never seen 2. People look.
• 1:04:44
  So struck when a suggestion has been made.
• 1:04:48
  And then the joy, the absolute joy of hearing Ben go, I don't
• 1:04:53
  like what you're making me feel. I think I agree with you.
• 1:04:59
  And you were steadfast. You were like, no, no, no, the
• 1:05:04
  line must be drawn here. I had.
• 1:05:06
  Too many wank fantasies about. Her as a kid, I refused to
• 1:05:09
  change my opinion. You know, I didn't even, I
• 1:05:11
  didn't, I remember like. Friends, remember that was more
• 1:05:17
  of a Nicola Bryant man. Basic bits.
• 1:05:18
  I mean, come on. It's a look, Yeah.
• 1:05:24
  In the time lash man, police do more.
• 1:05:25
  They are the best and you're a well.
• 1:05:28
  I'm glad you're trying. Fabulous host for doing.
• 1:05:30
  That as well, you know, because. Unlike me, you don't trample all
• 1:05:33
  over everyone's opinions and with your own is you sort of
• 1:05:37
  just E come out, you know it's because I'm quite a bit, right?
• 1:05:40
  OK, right. Yeah, you're processing.
• 1:05:42
  Yeah. And if.
• 1:05:43
  You and if you if you like. Me as a host, I'll be at
• 1:05:46
  Hooverville interviewing Brian Hudson at the end of the month,
• 1:05:49
  so I'm very excited about that. Are you hosting?
• 1:05:51
  I am hosting, yes. Mark, you're good grief, right?
• 1:05:55
  Wow, second second year in a row I won't.
• 1:05:58
  Be as humble for this year. I shall make sure to release
• 1:06:01
  this now in the next couple of. Weeks.
• 1:06:02
  But what whiskey do you like? You know, because anyone does
• 1:06:04
  want to buy you a drink. Are you a famous sort of fan or
• 1:06:08
  do you prefer, you know, white single malt?
• 1:06:12
  Single malt? Don't give me any of that.
• 1:06:13
  Blended single malt, white and Mackay.
• 1:06:16
  Come on. No, I'll take.
• 1:06:19
  I'll take. You know, I'll take, I'll take.
• 1:06:20
  A Glenn Fiddich, you know, Take a Glenn Fiddich if anybody's, if
• 1:06:24
  anybody fancies it, £40 a bottle, you know, I know.
• 1:06:27
  I'll put it on the shelves. But yeah, so yeah, chatting to
• 1:06:33
  Brian Hodgson about making the noise, how the TARDIS makes that
• 1:06:37
  noise, and the BBC Radio Phonic Workshop and all sorts of other
• 1:06:40
  stuff. So yeah, I've realized we have
• 1:06:42
  to tidy this up, but. I genuinely think the special
• 1:06:46
  sounds people for classic who were as vital as the directors,
• 1:06:51
  the musicians, the actors for creating the mood of a Doctor
• 1:06:56
  Who. I mean, what the hell would deaf
• 1:06:58
  to the Daleks be without all of those weird alien sounds?
• 1:07:01
  Well, exactly, exactly. So yes, I'm.
• 1:07:03
  I'm, I'm kind of trying to like prepare for at the moment I'm
• 1:07:06
  just like, do I just just reading my bits of script to go,
• 1:07:10
  all right, well, how did you come up with that?
• 1:07:12
  Not like because the thing. So everybody knows the TARDIS is
• 1:07:16
  made by a key going up and down a piano string, right.
• 1:07:19
  But I I don't think we've ever really kind of got to the number
• 1:07:22
  of like, yeah, but when you read that script, what made you go,
• 1:07:27
  oh, if I put. This key up and down a piano
• 1:07:29
  string. That that'll sound really cool.
• 1:07:31
  Yeah. But you might get a really
• 1:07:32
  disappointing answer. Like, well, I was just looking
• 1:07:34
  around the room and I thought, well, I'll try that.
• 1:07:38
  And it probably is that. And I kind of love that I.
• 1:07:40
  Kind of love that. Just that, well, I just had a
• 1:07:41
  bunch of stuff in a room and I just started, you know, the
• 1:07:44
  immortalized sound effects. Were just knockoffs done on the
• 1:07:48
  day? Although, you know, if you quite
• 1:07:50
  fancy, you know, like now, please, this is not a serious
• 1:07:52
  suggestion. I'll be on the side of the
• 1:07:54
  stage, right? And you can just say every now
• 1:07:56
  and again, right? So how did you think of this
• 1:07:57
  sound effect? And I'll do you know, from the
• 1:08:02
  five doctors or something like that.
• 1:08:05
  What do you think? All right, I'll keep that in
• 1:08:06
  mind. I'll keep that in mind.
• 1:08:07
  It's good if there's like a lull.
• 1:08:10
  If there's like a weird lull, I'll be like, right, OK, it's
• 1:08:12
  time to bring out Joe, bring out the emergency sound effects.
• 1:08:15
  I'll do this. Ready.
• 1:08:16
  What's? This.
• 1:08:21
  That's the excellence, is it, Mark?
• 1:08:27
  Can I say one thing before you go?
• 1:08:29
  Of course you can. You are one of the most.
• 1:08:31
  Delightful human beings. On the planet.
• 1:08:33
  Thank you for reading this book. Thank you for continuing to read
• 1:08:37
  books for the book club. And yeah, I can't wait till next
• 1:08:40
  time. Well, thank you for all of those
• 1:08:44
  kind. Words.
• 1:08:44
  You're also a fabulous human being and thank you for buying
• 1:08:46
  me the crystal Fenrick. My God, he's getting so self.
• 1:08:50
  Congratulatory. We might as well just go and
• 1:08:52
  wank each other off. Let's go.
• 1:08:54
  I'll cut it there. The.
• 1:09:56
  The.