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Hamster Book Club - The Pirate Loop (featuring Daniel Rawnsley) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:02
  You want to stay, do you? His grin faded, and in his eyes
• 0:07
  there was that terrible alien loneliness.
• 0:11
  He tried not to show it when he turned to her.
• 0:14
  Nah, he said we get bored. Well, I'll get bored, and
• 0:18
  that'll be boring for you. So yeah, we both get bored.
• 0:21
  What I said the first time, Doctor.
• 0:24
  What about everyone else? What about them?
• 0:27
  They might get bored. Too what on a ship with?
• 0:31
  Everlasting cheese and pineapple on sticks.
• 0:34
  Martha held his gaze, saying nothing.
• 0:38
  OK, he said at length, and got to his feet and started clapping
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  his hands. Attention, he called.
• 0:46
  The noise of the party died down, and people came in from
• 0:49
  the ballroom to hear what he had to say.
• 0:52
  The party here never ends, he said, and there's nobody who can
• 0:56
  tell you otherwise except you. The partygoers glanced round at
• 1:02
  each other nervously, not sure what the Doctor meant.
• 1:06
  Me and Martha, he told them. We're leaving in an hour, and
• 1:10
  when we're gone, that's it. There's no way out of here.
• 1:13
  You stay here forever. The background rumble of chatter
• 1:17
  died suddenly away. Everyone stood transfixed by the
• 1:21
  Doctor. So he told them.
• 1:25
  You can come with us. We'll drop you off somewhere and
• 1:28
  you continue your lives as you were, with a war coming with
• 1:31
  real stuff to deal with, with food that runs out and people
• 1:35
  who die and things never quite the same way anymore.
• 1:39
  Or you can stay forever, the party going on and on, never
• 1:44
  getting old but it never being any different, never getting
• 1:47
  outside, never seeing anyone else but safe.
• 1:52
  No one owns any of you. No one else gets to decide.
• 1:56
  You each have to make your own choice.
• 1:59
  My ship's the blue box in the engine rooms.
• 2:02
  You've got an hour to decide. Come on, Martha.
• 2:06
  Martha let the Doctor lead her to the centre of the ballroom.
• 2:10
  The Doctor took Martha's left hand in his.
• 2:13
  She put her hand onto his shoulder, so close to him she
• 2:16
  could feel the buttons of his suit against her chest.
• 2:19
  So close she could feel his heart's beating.
• 2:23
  But what if they want to stay? She asked him.
• 2:26
  Then they stay, but they have to choose.
• 2:30
  From the brilliant speakers, a new pop song began.
• 2:34
  Grace Kelly. She laughed.
• 2:37
  Got it off your iPod. Thought you wouldn't mind.
• 2:39
  Good old Maker. Following the Doctor of Martha's
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  lead, others joined the dance floor.
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  Martha could see the same look on all their faces, the same
• 2:49
  determination to enjoy themselves, the same terror and
• 2:53
  confusion as they tried to make their choices.
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  Martha looked away quickly. She kept her mind on the music
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  and not treading on the Doctor's toes.
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  At least she didn't have to make that choice herself, she
• 3:05
  thought. But really, she already had a
• 3:08
  long time ago. And one day, he'd take her back
• 3:12
  to her own time, and she'd have to choose again.
• 3:24
  Hamster Book Club, The Doctor Who Novel Review Podcast with
• 3:29
  Joe Ford and Daniel Rawnsley. The Pirate Loop by Simon Gary.
• 3:56
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 3:59
  My name is Joe Ford and I have a Virgin Hamster Book Club with me
• 4:05
  today. One of my favourite new finds
• 4:09
  from Hans for Blood Penknife, it's Mr. Daniel Rosley.
• 4:12
  Hello, Daniel. Hello Joe, thanks for inviting
• 4:16
  me into your into your book club.
• 4:18
  How did you sound even camper than me then?
• 4:22
  I'm a bit nervous. I'm a you know, this is my first
• 4:24
  time. Well, it's not your first time
• 4:27
  on a hamster or blunt pen knife. No, but first time talking about
• 4:30
  a book. You've been on the On the Hunt
• 4:33
  for Space babies in the past. You've abducted and died
• 4:38
  throughout Season 6 on the Strictly Come Hamster.
• 4:42
  What else did we do? Oh, what else did we?
• 4:44
  Do Oh, we did, Rose, didn't we as well?
• 4:47
  Was that our first? That was our first.
• 4:49
  You never forget your first. That was your first as well,
• 4:52
  wouldn't it? It was.
• 4:54
  Well, what are we here to talk about today?
• 4:56
  So we're here to talk about, well, a book.
• 5:00
  Not any kind of book. It's a Doctor Who book, The
• 5:04
  Pirate Loop by Simon Garrier. But before we get there, I've
• 5:10
  got a big question for you, and I was sort of going to throw
• 5:14
  like a machine gun barrage of questions at you in one go.
• 5:17
  Oh. Gosh, OK.
• 5:19
  One sort of what is your Doctor Who book journey like?
• 5:22
  What Doctor Who books have you read?
• 5:24
  What ranges have you read? Have you read much?
• 5:28
  Do you have a life so you don't read many?
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  2 Are you much of A reader in general?
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  Like are you quite a voracious reader or is it something you
• 5:36
  just do a little bit? Well, let's start there.
• 5:38
  Let's start with those. That's enough.
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  Am I much of A read? I'll start in reverse order
• 5:42
  then. Am I much of A reader?
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  Yes, I was. I took to it quite early.
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  I was about 7 and my parents used to read to me.
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  And then I think I remember that the first book I read by myself
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  was the book version of Babe, actually, Babe the Sheep Pig.
• 6:02
  And yeah. And then I and when I in my
• 6:05
  teenage year, I was teenage years, I was a big, big reader.
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  I used to pride myself on how fast I could read books.
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  And those days seem pretty distant now because now I have
• 6:17
  trouble getting through a book because there's so many other
• 6:19
  things that distract me. So I have to have several books
• 6:22
  on the go now. One for one for bed, one for the
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  living room, 1 to take with me that I won't mind losing if I
• 6:29
  leave it on A at a bus stop somewhere.
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  So yeah, I'm a bit slower than I was in terms of reading, but I'm
• 6:37
  still, I still read as much as I can.
• 6:40
  You have specific books for different places in your house.
• 6:43
  Yes. So one for light reading, one
• 6:45
  that's non fiction, one that's a bit heavier.
• 6:48
  Depends, depends on what's what. I'm what I'm reading at the
• 6:52
  moment. Really, I'll ask, is there a
• 6:53
  book in your toilet? No, but I take books for the
• 6:56
  toilet. Yeah, so do I shouldn't say that
• 7:01
  on my but. I should probably wash my hands
• 7:03
  afterwards. Every.
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  Well, do you not then? Oh well, I do.
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  I am, yeah. No, I'm a toilet reader as well.
• 7:12
  Well, people read on their phones on the toilet.
• 7:14
  What's wrong with? How did we get here already,
• 7:16
  Daniel? Lower the tone already.
• 7:19
  We're already in the toilet. Well, what about Doctor Who
• 7:23
  books then? So my Doctor Who Booker, well, I
• 7:27
  was also got a bit of an obsession with Doctor Who books.
• 7:31
  It started as a guest as I was growing up with the new series.
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  So they had all these, all the merchandise that came out, all
• 7:36
  the reference books. So monsters and villains and
• 7:40
  creatures and demons and aliens and enemies.
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  I think I've got the whole collection of that.
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  And then they had the Doctor Who Encyclopedia and then they had
• 7:50
  the Writer's Tale. So all the non fiction books
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  really were more in were more of interest to me because I was
• 7:56
  trying to pick up every little factoid, every little trivia bit
• 8:00
  about how these were made or you know what, what was the name of
• 8:05
  this person in that episode in that character?
• 8:08
  So strangely enough, when all the new series adventures came
• 8:12
  out, I kind of took against them a bit because I was like, no,
• 8:16
  it's it's got to be the the Canon is the only Canon is the
• 8:20
  one in the TV show. I was very purist about it at
• 8:23
  the time. So I'm like, not in no, no
• 8:25
  interest in reading those. The only version that matters is
• 8:28
  what's on the screen. I've since of course disabused
• 8:31
  myself of that of that position. Do you remember in Boomtown when
• 8:37
  Rose details some of the planets that they visited and mentions
• 8:41
  Justicia, which is the the planet in it's one of the
• 8:46
  monsters? The monsters inside.
• 8:48
  Oh, there you go. Yeah, one of the Steve Cole one.
• 8:50
  Yeah. Right.
• 8:51
  And that's the that's what I realized when I eventually
• 8:53
  started picking them up. I've only read a few.
• 8:55
  I haven't read many, but the fewer ones I have read, I'll
• 8:58
  say, oh, but there's these, there's these bits that that
• 9:01
  were never covered in the TV show.
• 9:03
  So Rose's first moment on an alien planet is not New Earth.
• 9:07
  It's that planet on the planet on the monsters inside when she
• 9:11
  first steps out and she I think it's there's a whole bit about
• 9:14
  she discovers a flower or something I.
• 9:18
  Think that might be the only time a book is explicitly
• 9:24
  referenced in the TV show ever? I'm trying to.
• 9:28
  Yeah, I'm trying. To like, I'm sure there's
• 9:29
  illusions, obviously human nature got made and things like
• 9:32
  that. So there's so there are things
• 9:34
  like that and I think there's references to certain things.
• 9:37
  But you know, this was an actual adventure that took place and
• 9:41
  it's one of our spin off books. I think that's right time it's
• 9:44
  happened. Well, then did you buy them then
• 9:45
  the NSA? Did you read the lot?
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  Well, no. But what, what's happened quite
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  recently? Actually, it happened I think
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  as, as as early as last year. I, I found on the equivalent of,
• 9:58
  you know, when you buy, you buy your furniture second hand off
• 10:01
  the Internet. I found in France someone
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  selling like a whole collection of new series, adventure Doctor
• 10:08
  Who books. And I was like, what in this
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  part, in this part of France especially, like no one, no one,
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  no one gives a shit about that. So I went and bought the lot.
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  I bought the lot. It would only cost me £30.
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  There was the whole collection. I've got about at least sort of
• 10:26
  15 of them 1516. Oh my God.
• 10:29
  Coming soon to Hamster Book Club, Joe and Daniel discussed
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  15 separate new series adventures and have you read
• 10:36
  them is the question, or are they to be read?
• 10:39
  They are to be read. Oh, so is this the literally the
• 10:41
  first top two book you've ever read?
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  The Pirate. This is the first new series
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  adventure I've read from cover to cover.
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  I've read bits of the others I read through.
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  I do remember reading through skimming through the stone Rose,
• 10:53
  which I I need to get back to at some point.
• 10:56
  That's that's the one in in which they have the the the
• 10:59
  Doctor Rose have their second snog that's.
• 11:02
  Right. Yeah, Jacqueline.
• 11:04
  I don't know how they got that. Horny cow.
• 11:05
  I'll tell you. Excuse me.
• 11:07
  There was a joke in this where I was like, I can't believe that
• 11:10
  got past the census, the pirate. Look, I will, I will.
• 11:15
  There was a moment where I was like, I'll see you, Simon Guru,
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  I'll see you. So have you have you ever looked
• 11:20
  at the targets? Have you ever looked at any of
• 11:22
  the sort of the? Yeah, so that's what happened
• 11:25
  after is I, I then found out that the.
• 11:28
  Yeah, there was the targets, the novelisations.
• 11:29
  I think someone gave me a French translation of the very first
• 11:36
  the An Unearthly. Child.
• 11:38
  What's that called in French? I think it's called Doctor Who
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  and the oh where did it go? Oh, Doctor Who and prehistoric
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  times, or Doctor Who and 10 and 100,000 BC?
• 11:52
  In French, I think yeah. But how do you say it in French?
• 11:54
  So you would say Doctor Who or be de dinosaur?
• 12:01
  Oh, that sounds much better. Doctor Who, Doctor Who in the
• 12:03
  land of the dinosaurs there. But you know.
• 12:05
  That sounds way more exciting than An Unearthly Child, if you
• 12:08
  ask me. So so so.
• 12:11
  Have you read any of those targets?
• 12:13
  So then what I discovered is that, yeah, that a lot of these
• 12:17
  targets were available. So I started getting those.
• 12:20
  So I've read and during lockdown I had this sort of mini project
• 12:24
  where this was before the whole trove of Doctor Who all the, all
• 12:29
  the series dropped on iPlayer and I didn't have the sort of
• 12:33
  the, the money or the energy to go out and buy all the DVDs.
• 12:37
  So I got the targets instead. And what I started doing is that
• 12:41
  because I'm an aspire still aspiring voice actor, I was
• 12:45
  reading my way through them out loud to myself during lockdown.
• 12:51
  And I would even have my computer next to me and put sort
• 12:54
  of sound effects and sort of ambience.
• 12:58
  Videos Oh my God I love. That and so just going and I
• 13:02
  went, I managed to go through the whole of Hartnell and almost
• 13:06
  the whole of Trout and I think I just had I just had the war
• 13:09
  games to go before I eventually it eventually petered out.
• 13:13
  I stopped doing it, but I was like I I did have an ambition at
• 13:17
  one point to go through the whole classic series that way.
• 13:19
  Oh, A. Shame you didn't get those down,
• 13:21
  you know, and with the sound effects and everything when you
• 13:23
  could have subbed those for a minute.
• 13:25
  I should have recorded all those.
• 13:26
  Yeah, didn't. I didn't know I should.
• 13:28
  A lovely idea to turn it into like a a bit more of an
• 13:31
  immersive experience. Yeah, it was my own sort of
• 13:33
  personal story time, and I was doing all the voices and, you
• 13:36
  know, doing Hartnell, doing Barbara, Susan.
• 13:41
  Would you mind, would you mind giving me a small sample of your
• 13:45
  Susan then, please? OK.
• 13:49
  The grandfather. Oh, I spot on.
• 13:51
  Well, well done. And and so finally, what about
• 13:57
  the wilderness here stuff? So the New Adventures, the
• 13:59
  Missing Adventures, the 8th Doctor books and the Past Doctor
• 14:03
  books, have you not touched those at all?
• 14:05
  So I haven't touched those at all.
• 14:06
  So I have to confess, the only stuff I know about those is like
• 14:11
  reading bits and bobs on TARDIS wiki or, you know, the Doctor
• 14:15
  Who Reference Guide online where they've kind of managed to sort
• 14:19
  of arrange all the past Doctor adventures and new, new Doctor
• 14:23
  adventures sort of after the TV movie.
• 14:27
  Or, you know, between, between Doctors, you know, it's very
• 14:31
  sort of. Daniel, you might just be the
• 14:35
  man I've been searching for my whole life, ever since I started
• 14:38
  the book club because I wanted to find somebody that hadn't
• 14:42
  touched and had scant knowledge of those ranges.
• 14:45
  Tonight read a book from it Completely black just going in
• 14:49
  blind and and and how do they find it?
• 14:51
  We might have to talk to you though.
• 14:53
  We might have to, Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
• 14:55
  My little package come into your house just with one book in it.
• 15:00
  I'll try and make it a good one. OK, so, so like the TV show
• 15:05
  you're in was the new series and then you sort of went backwards
• 15:09
  from there. Yeah, I did.
• 15:10
  I went back to the classics area and you know, and I still kind
• 15:13
  of like to pick up the classic targets every now and again
• 15:16
  because some of them are are a revelation, you know?
• 15:20
  Well, then my last question before we talk about the pirate
• 15:23
  loop then, is how do Doctor Who books stack up to the rest of
• 15:30
  the books that you read in your life?
• 15:32
  Like are these, are they, you know, ephemera?
• 15:37
  Are they just sort of throw away stories or do you think these
• 15:41
  are of merit? A bit of both actually, they are
• 15:47
  very throwaway because I think they were written with that in
• 15:50
  mind originally just as a sort of tie in merchandise thing.
• 15:54
  But then you kind of you come across one that's obviously had
• 15:57
  a lot of care put into it or a writer who's gone back to his
• 16:00
  script and sort of fixed it, quote UN quote.
• 16:04
  And and you think, oh, actually, you know, that you kind of look
• 16:07
  at the episode in a different way.
• 16:08
  And that's why I became so obsessed with the targets.
• 16:11
  Actually, it's because you kind of, it's another angle on the
• 16:14
  episode and you don't have to sort of reproduce the same, the
• 16:19
  same exact events that happened in the episode as long as it's
• 16:21
  the same story or the general idea of the story, you know?
• 16:26
  My trouble is I started reading Doctor Who books and then I
• 16:30
  started reading other books and I realized other books are a lot
• 16:33
  worthier and you know, and more in depth and mostly better
• 16:40
  written it. Feels a bit more like an effort,
• 16:42
  doesn't it? When you go back to normal
• 16:44
  books, you think, OK, I have to read this because it's obviously
• 16:47
  well written and it's obviously been well reviewed and everyone.
• 16:51
  Likes it, you know, Fucking boring, isn't it?
• 16:54
  Where's the Doctor and the Daleks?
• 16:56
  Come on. Well, no, But then I, I so.
• 16:58
  Yeah. So I sort of rejected Doctor Who
• 17:00
  books a little bit then and then and then I went back to Doctor
• 17:04
  Who books and I was like, no, it's just something I really
• 17:06
  enjoy. So whatever their literary
• 17:08
  merits are, they bring me pleasure, which is why I'll
• 17:12
  start at this book club, so we can actually talk about these
• 17:14
  and give them a bit more exposure.
• 17:16
  And isn't that what a book's about?
• 17:19
  To bring people pleasure? Yeah, to bring people pleasure
• 17:22
  and to yeah, to share with other people too.
• 17:25
  You know, well, that is a a good note for us to come around to
• 17:30
  the Pirate Loop by Simon Guria. And I suppose the first question
• 17:35
  is, did this book bring you pleasure?
• 17:39
  It did. It did I I started reading it, I
• 17:42
  think on a it was on a trip back, I think a trip back from
• 17:46
  somewhere, I can't remember where, but I and I love, I
• 17:49
  actually love taking a book with me when I travel.
• 17:51
  So it was a great companion to, to, to travel with, for sure.
• 17:57
  I, I didn't get through it as quickly as I expected to, but
• 17:59
  that's no fault of the book. That's my reading habits, you
• 18:04
  know now. You chose this book of the ones
• 18:07
  that you have, so why? Why this one?
• 18:09
  Was it literally just because this was the one you'd started?
• 18:12
  This one was Oh yes. And also because I was, I was
• 18:15
  surprised how much I enjoyed it because that's, that was my sort
• 18:19
  of my memory from my teenage years of the sort of the new
• 18:23
  series Adventures was. Oh, well, yeah, it's just a tie
• 18:26
  in thing. So it's not going to be any
• 18:28
  good. And of course you realise that
• 18:31
  there there's writers here who haven't written for the new
• 18:34
  series or the old series, and they probably should have
• 18:37
  because they're, they're great writers in their own right, you
• 18:39
  know? Will you do me a big favour
• 18:43
  then, please? You have the book to hand there,
• 18:44
  don't you? I do.
• 18:47
  In your in your greatest, in your capacity as a voice artist,
• 18:52
  would you please read out the blurb, the back cover to me,
• 18:55
  please, in your best back cover reading voice.
• 18:59
  Oh, yeah. So this has got to be yeah, this
• 19:00
  is to sell the book. So OK, the back cover blurb.
• 19:03
  OK, so this is for for you and for the listeners.
• 19:09
  The Doctors been everywhere and everywhere and in the whole of
• 19:12
  the universe and seems to know all the answers.
• 19:16
  But ask him what happened to the Starship Brilliant and he hasn't
• 19:19
  the first idea. Did it fall into a sun or a
• 19:22
  black hole? Was it shot down in the first
• 19:24
  moments of the galactic war? And was this about an A secret
• 19:28
  experimental Dr. The Doctor is skittish, but if Martha is so
• 19:33
  keen to find out, he'll land the TARDIS on the Brilliant a few
• 19:36
  days before it vanishes. Then they can see for
• 19:39
  themselves. Soon the Doctor learns the awful
• 19:43
  truth and Martha learns that you need to be careful what you wish
• 19:46
  for. She certainly wasn't hoping for
• 19:48
  mayhem, death and badger faced space pirates.
• 19:55
  Now that sounds delightful, right?
• 19:57
  It sounds like a book with a big strong premise and lots of big
• 20:01
  ideas and mystery and suspense there as well.
• 20:05
  The last thing I expected when I picked up The Pirate Loop but
• 20:09
  Simon Guria was to find a book that very engagingly dealt with
• 20:16
  capitalism, quantum theory, slavery, class divide and
• 20:21
  causality. I was so shocked at the
• 20:26
  sophistication of the ideas in this kids book and I was like
• 20:30
  wowzers. Because I'll tell you what, I've
• 20:31
  read a lot of these and they're not all doing this.
• 20:34
  No, I know I. Think he's gone in with a
• 20:36
  mission. You know that actually I'm going
• 20:38
  to write a bloody good book that makes kids think, that teaches
• 20:41
  them things. And it's just a great read as
• 20:44
  well. Yeah, yeah, I know for sure, for
• 20:48
  sure. Yeah, there's, there's tons of
• 20:50
  ideas and themes packed in here, you know.
• 20:53
  Would you do me a favour? Would you please try and explain
• 20:55
  to me then? Because Simon Guria did it.
• 20:58
  I'll just take something down, Some notes about it.
• 21:01
  This ship, the Starship. Brilliant.
• 21:03
  Yeah. This fabulous ship with the
• 21:05
  experimental drive. So what does it do?
• 21:07
  It skims across the time vortex like a a stone over a puddle.
• 21:12
  Is that right? A.
• 21:12
  Stone over a lake? Yeah, skimming a stone across a
• 21:15
  lake, there's a brilliant sort of explanation of how it works.
• 21:18
  It's sort of it, it, it jumps through time, but he doesn't
• 21:22
  have to go through space. I think it's the, the any the
• 21:27
  Doctor sort of mentions it pushes against the vortex, it
• 21:29
  pushes against the sides so that it, it kind of jumps forward a
• 21:34
  bit through time. But yeah, it gets all the boring
• 21:36
  space travel out of the way. Even if you don't quite get all
• 21:41
  the science, because it gets quite complicated when he's
• 21:44
  talking about it, the visual of that ship going Boing, Boing,
• 21:48
  boing across a lake, and that lake is the vortex, well, that's
• 21:51
  kind of all you need. Yeah, yeah.
• 21:55
  And that's, that was the big sort of the big, the one of the
• 21:57
  big things in this book is taking these very, very
• 22:00
  complicated scientific concepts and kind of boiling them down to
• 22:04
  something very quite domestic and ordinary.
• 22:07
  So it's accessible for kids, you know?
• 22:09
  Well, Gordon hit me with a scientific concept that we can
• 22:12
  boil down to something. Speaking of boiling, that's what
• 22:17
  you do with eggs and, but not in this case, you scramble them
• 22:21
  because there's so when the Doctor, the Doctor and Martha
• 22:24
  land on the brilliant and they start seeing all this sort of
• 22:29
  this weird fungus or time fungus as Martha refers to it.
• 22:35
  And it's, it's kind of got the same texture as cold scrambled
• 22:39
  egg. And, and basically the, the,
• 22:43
  the, the Doctor explains, it's, it's basically quantum quantum
• 22:47
  mechanics. You know, that's that's the kind
• 22:49
  of the visual he Simon Gurrier uses to kind of explain
• 22:54
  something as complex as as quantum mechanics.
• 22:57
  I've got time. Fungus, isn't it?
• 23:00
  Right, yes, he says there's them in the TARDIS as well.
• 23:03
  So it's it's not alien to the Doctor He's seen and and the
• 23:10
  whole the whole point of the book actually is there's a
• 23:12
  there's a time differential. So they one of them goes through
• 23:16
  the the the scrambled egg wall and they're three hours ahead of
• 23:22
  the other one. So there's, there's, there's,
• 23:24
  there's two different sort of adventures happening on 1-3
• 23:30
  hours ahead and 1-3 hours behind.
• 23:33
  You know, I was wondering if Steven Moffat had perhaps read
• 23:36
  the Pirate Loop before he wrote Well enough of Time When the
• 23:39
  Doctor Falls. Yeah, it's.
• 23:41
  Quite. Because there's a bit of that.
• 23:44
  Sorry. Go on.
• 23:45
  No, go on. Well, I'm saying there's a bit
• 23:47
  of that going on in that two parter, isn't there, where at
• 23:50
  one end of the ship time is running at a very different rate
• 23:53
  to another part of the ship. Right.
• 23:55
  Yeah, exactly. And that that's also explained
• 23:57
  in a sort of a quite a very accessible way at the beginning
• 24:01
  of the sport. So you understand stakes for the
• 24:03
  rest of the of the finale, you know, and it, and it's so much
• 24:07
  more kind of engaging than something like, I don't know if
• 24:11
  you've seen this film Interstellar, Christopher
• 24:13
  Nolan's Interstellar, which is which whole thing about time
• 24:19
  running differently at different speeds because of time travel,
• 24:21
  because of going through a wormhole.
• 24:24
  And as, as you know, as, as there as many qualities as that
• 24:28
  film has, it's just not explained in a very, very fun
• 24:31
  way. You know, it's kind of it's,
• 24:34
  it's, it's a bit boring to be honest.
• 24:37
  What I love as well is you've got the big mystery about what
• 24:41
  what the hell happened to the Starship?
• 24:42
  Brilliant. And he goes, well, it could have
• 24:44
  something to do with this experimental drive because when
• 24:47
  it does bounce across the vortex like that, it actually
• 24:50
  disappears. The second it's not touching the
• 24:52
  vortex, it vanishes. That's right.
• 24:54
  And so at some point in that journey, something has gone
• 24:58
  wrong. Right.
• 25:00
  Yeah. And that's why they kind of
• 25:01
  stick around too, because Martha says, you know, well, we have to
• 25:04
  find out what's going on. And he says, well, we can't
• 25:06
  change. This happened.
• 25:07
  It vanished. The brilliant vanished.
• 25:09
  So you can't change history. But she stands up to him and,
• 25:13
  and he kind of relents and says, well, OK, I'll, I'll at least go
• 25:16
  and warn the captain and the crew, you know, And that's what
• 25:19
  kicks everything off you. Know you can absolutely, because
• 25:21
  there's a wonderful 1st chapter which has nothing to do with the
• 25:25
  book at all. It's all about this.
• 25:26
  The production of Martha are helping out on this robot war
• 25:30
  and they managed to overthrow it.
• 25:33
  And then there's a wonderful line about 6000 robots lived
• 25:36
  happily ever after. I love that line.
• 25:39
  Apparently. Sorry.
• 25:40
  Go on. Go on.
• 25:42
  No, you go. Oh, I mean, yeah, that that it
• 25:45
  opens in the middle of another Doctor Who adventure, sort of.
• 25:47
  That's what I that's the great a great opening for the book.
• 25:51
  And it's kind of what is called Milky Pink City, which was this
• 25:54
  city that was built by these robots in preparation for human
• 26:00
  holiday makers. But they never arrived.
• 26:02
  So the robots have just been tending, you know, left to their
• 26:06
  own devices. And then the Doctor and Martha
• 26:08
  come along and they all fall over themselves to kind of to
• 26:12
  pleasure them, or that's probably not the right word to
• 26:15
  to make, to make them happy, to serve them, to serve them.
• 26:19
  That's right. And and they will fight amongst
• 26:22
  themselves. And then they turn on the Doctor
• 26:24
  and Martha and they almost get executed.
• 26:26
  I mean, that is all explained in a paragraph.
• 26:28
  It's not even dwelt on. It's just sort of referenced in
• 26:31
  a paragraph as they escape, and they escape through the musical
• 26:36
  magic of Mika Jesus, a singer I haven't listened to in years.
• 26:43
  I fucking love Maker so much. And the song that he's talking
• 26:46
  about, you know, I could be blue, I could be brown, I could
• 26:49
  be Violet Sky. And he says that, doesn't it?
• 26:52
  You guys, humans are mad. How can something be?
• 26:55
  How can something be Violet sky? What the hell does that mean?
• 26:58
  Like, but you just know, Martha says at one point the reason why
• 27:04
  they went to the brilliant is because he's always going, well,
• 27:07
  that's brilliant, Martha. And, and, and he followed that
• 27:11
  up with, you know, oh, I want to do a spaceship called Starship
• 27:14
  Brilliant. Maybe we should go there one
• 27:16
  time. And it just makes perfect sense
• 27:18
  because you can hear David Tennant saying that.
• 27:20
  Absolutely. Well, and that's, yeah, that's
• 27:21
  got to be an in joke for David Tennant's.
• 27:24
  I mean, it didn't exactly become his catch phrase, but he did say
• 27:27
  it as a lot, a lot as the 10th Doctor.
• 27:29
  Oh, it's brilliant. It's brilliant.
• 27:31
  So we've got the mystery of what's happened, like what's
• 27:34
  happened to the ship, Why did it vanish?
• 27:37
  But once they arrive, it's like, well, where's the crew?
• 27:41
  Where are the crew? We can't find them.
• 27:42
  And also there's a transmat beam.
• 27:45
  Why can't we just use that? Because they use this transmat
• 27:47
  beam to beam about different parts of the ship.
• 27:50
  But when they try and do that, somebody is coming through the
• 27:54
  other side very slowly, so they can't go through it.
• 27:59
  And of course, all of this is is being set up.
• 28:01
  So it's paid off later. Because I think twist, it's the
• 28:03
  Doctor, isn't it? Yeah, I think it.
• 28:06
  Is because he's at the other end of the ship and that's moving at
• 28:08
  a different rate. He's beaming through into that
• 28:11
  part of the ship very slowly. Very, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:15
  And I did wonder about the, the transmat sort of technology
• 28:19
  because it's kind of described as there's these glass booths
• 28:24
  and, and as you, when you transmit, you just pop out of
• 28:28
  existence and pop in somewhere else.
• 28:31
  And so it kind of, and he's even described as being quite painful
• 28:34
  because you, it reassembles all your molecules.
• 28:38
  And I'm just wondering is that is that a reference to the Teema
• 28:41
  in Seeds of Death? I may be so.
• 28:45
  Yes. But then there was also a
• 28:47
  mention of piracy being rife during this time and I think
• 28:52
  that might be a reference to the space pirates.
• 28:56
  And can I tell you something? Because I don't think you will
• 28:58
  notice if you haven't explored the New adventures too much.
• 29:01
  But there's referencing this to a Jamaean and Jamaea, it's the
• 29:08
  Planet from Kate Orman Sleepy, which was published sometime in
• 29:13
  the 1990s. And Guria is obviously a massive
• 29:16
  fan of those books, so there's lots of nice little references
• 29:19
  like that peppered about. There's another reference which
• 29:22
  we'll get to later, which I can't wait to talk to you about
• 29:25
  because it's so random, but it's rather wonderful.
• 29:28
  Well, OK, so then Martha goes through the scrambled egg and
• 29:33
  finds herself at this fabulous party.
• 29:36
  That's right, she's greeted by this robot called Gabriel or his
• 29:40
  designation. My designation is Gabriel.
• 29:43
  And and that bit is just gold because it's it's it's just it's
• 29:48
  very it's actually very Douglas Adams actually that whole that
• 29:51
  whole comedy bit where she asked him all when he each time he
• 29:55
  goes checking and then gives a very sort of, as you would
• 30:01
  expect, quite obtuse answer. And so she eventually accompany
• 30:08
  him to the Tower Lounge because otherwise he can, he can get her
• 30:12
  there by force. So she doesn't have a voice in
• 30:15
  the matter really. And what is it?
• 30:18
  What does she, what she gets to the cocktail?
• 30:20
  Hydrogen hydroxide or or something?
• 30:24
  Is that a glass of water? Yeah.
• 30:26
  It's a glass of water. They've got too many mysteries
• 30:28
  to solve. She cannot get pissed.
• 30:30
  But it did have a wonderful though.
• 30:32
  This was the cheeky joke in here because she goes to Gabriel.
• 30:35
  The thing is, I'm waiting for this bloke and Gabriel goes.
• 30:39
  I'm programmed with discretion parameters, Miss Martha.
• 30:43
  OK, we can still slip the sly reference to Nookie in there.
• 30:48
  Well, there's another, there's another.
• 30:49
  There's a couple of references to that, but we'll get to those,
• 30:51
  Yeah. Well, so who's at this party
• 30:54
  then? And what's occurring on this
• 30:56
  mysterious ship that's lost in space?
• 30:58
  That's right. There's well, then she arrives
• 31:00
  at the party and there's all as she as she's being escorted
• 31:04
  there, there's all these crashes and noises in the distance and
• 31:07
  she and she's quite cheerfully informed by some of the aliens
• 31:11
  there, these dumpy little alien, I think they're called the the
• 31:14
  Balloomin or the the Balloomin. I can't, I can't remember.
• 31:18
  Well done. And there's this character who
• 31:23
  who I immediately fell in love with, Misses Wingsworth.
• 31:28
  She goes, she goes. I'm Misses Wingsworth.
• 31:31
  My friends call me Misses Wingsworth.
• 31:36
  Oh, shit. Well, now.
• 31:38
  Well, because it's interesting, because she's not a one note
• 31:40
  character, is she? No, you've learned quite a lot
• 31:44
  about her. And she does go on a bit of a
• 31:46
  journey, but she's not altogether nice all the time as
• 31:50
  well because she's in a privileged position.
• 31:53
  And she does. Socialite.
• 31:54
  Down on people in quite a a vicious way.
• 31:58
  I did like the visual. I don't.
• 32:00
  I don't often like it when Doctor Who writers cannot be
• 32:03
  asked to really describe what aliens and things look like, and
• 32:07
  so they just use a pop culture reference to do it.
• 32:11
  I've just read a book, War of the Daleks, which was doing it
• 32:13
  all the time where the fellow was.
• 32:14
  Gone. Give me an example.
• 32:15
  It's like, it was like something from Star Trek, it was like
• 32:18
  something from Star Wars. However, Simon Guria explained
• 32:22
  precisely what these aliens look like.
• 32:24
  And then after he'd taken the effort to do that goes, it was
• 32:28
  like going to a party with Mr. Tickable's family.
• 32:31
  And I was like, right, OK, that's all I need.
• 32:33
  That's all I need. They've got big long arms.
• 32:35
  OK, that's. Right there, these dumpy little
• 32:37
  aliens, long sort of tentatively arms, you know that's right.
• 32:43
  But missus Ringsworth is somewhat smug and cavalier about
• 32:48
  the potential danger that she might be in.
• 32:51
  Yeah, she's delighted of being invaded.
• 32:54
  She goes, oh how, how terribly exciting.
• 32:58
  And, and I, I just remember reading through all her bits and
• 33:03
  she seems to punctuate almost every, every line of dialogue
• 33:07
  with dear, oh, how marvellous dear.
• 33:09
  Oh yes. You can just imagine some
• 33:13
  fabulous. The other thing is there's a a
• 33:16
  comedy of repetition, so the more you say something, the
• 33:18
  funnier it becomes, you know? You could just imagine kind of
• 33:21
  some fabulous camp like cabaret style playing Mrs. Ringsworth's
• 33:27
  voice, can't you? You know.
• 33:30
  So yes, they're yes. So the party is actually they.
• 33:35
  So the party's going on, and then they meet some new
• 33:38
  characters, don't they? They do, yes.
• 33:41
  And this was the point where I was like, Oh dear, is this where
• 33:44
  this is going to be a really kiddy book when these pirates
• 33:47
  show up? Yes, and so as as the blurb on
• 33:51
  the back of the book said, badger faced pirates.
• 33:56
  So and what are their names again?
• 33:58
  So there's Jocelyn or Joss. That's another thing that's an
• 34:03
  interesting thing I noticed is because when the Doctor and
• 34:06
  Martha gets split up, the Doctor meets them as well.
• 34:09
  And so they refer to themselves as Jocelyn, Archibald and
• 34:13
  Dashiel. And then when Martha meets them,
• 34:15
  it's it's Joss, Archie and and Dash.
• 34:21
  That's because Martha's so lovely, nobody could possibly be
• 34:24
  formal with her. But they're, they're, they're so
• 34:28
  basically humanoid Badgers, which is, it's very Rossly
• 34:31
  Davis, isn't it? Humanoid rhinos.
• 34:33
  You know, humanoid pigs. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:36
  So taking someone from the animal Kingdom and making it an
• 34:39
  alien. And they are sort of introduced
• 34:42
  as as they're teenagers as well, aren't they?
• 34:44
  So they're quite young. Yeah, they're described as quite
• 34:47
  young and that that's the sort of the the interesting thing
• 34:49
  about the book is that they're they're, yeah, they're kind of
• 34:53
  characterized as the kind of teenagers you would find
• 34:55
  loitering around the Co-op, you know?
• 34:58
  And so they're very stupid. They're very kind of this, this
• 35:01
  kind of brute, you know, kind of dumb beast kind of character
• 35:06
  personality. But that's what makes them so
• 35:09
  dangerous. I've got a Co-op up the road.
• 35:12
  All right Daniel, I know how dangerous those kids are
• 35:14
  standing outside. They're fucking vicious.
• 35:19
  Yeah. So, so they've, there's one
• 35:22
  that's there's one. Well, there's one particular
• 35:25
  that Martha kind of really connects with called Archie.
• 35:28
  And, and he actually takes kind of kind of a bit of a shine to
• 35:32
  her. But I just remember reading all
• 35:36
  their, their dialogue because they're even the pirates are
• 35:38
  funny because as scary as they can, because they do, they kill
• 35:41
  people. And, you know, they're very,
• 35:42
  kind of quite, they're quite violent, you know, but their
• 35:45
  dialogue is always quite, very monosyllabic or these very short
• 35:49
  declarative sentences. So they'll go like, yeah, right.
• 35:54
  Yeah. You know, and I'll just you
• 35:56
  again, the comedy of repetition you.
• 35:58
  Know, I think Simon Guru has been like he's been having his
• 36:00
  friends kids around this game, right.
• 36:02
  Well, say something again, right.
• 36:03
  Yeah. And just writing down what
• 36:05
  they're saying. What was so clever about the
• 36:08
  badges? I thought because I, I, I did, I
• 36:11
  was a bit worried that, oh, OK, because these books can tend to
• 36:15
  be very kiddy friendly and they usually have a kid in them.
• 36:19
  You know, I was like, oh, is this where this is all going?
• 36:23
  Because it's been, you know, the science fiction he's talking
• 36:25
  about is fairly sophisticated. There's lots of mysteries.
• 36:27
  This just rules like reads like a good Doctor Who book at the
• 36:30
  moment. What he did was he introduced
• 36:33
  those characters and then turned the badges into this massive
• 36:38
  sort of treaties on slavery, on the fact that the badges are
• 36:44
  forced grown in laboratories. He describes the whole thing as
• 36:49
  on Earth. Basically, we trashed the planet
• 36:51
  in the future despite years of evidence.
• 36:54
  Oh, that's right. Yeah, there is a whole bit where
• 36:56
  he says the bank, the the badger goes extinct in your lifetime or
• 37:00
  something, he mentions. Yeah, all, all.
• 37:02
  Kinds of species die out, including the Badgers.
• 37:05
  And then there was a sort of a group of environmentalists who
• 37:08
  really cared, so they started recreating wildlife like Badgers
• 37:12
  on other worlds. And then the profit mongers were
• 37:15
  like, look at this, these are humanoid badges.
• 37:19
  You know, they have skills beyond humans.
• 37:22
  How can we exploit this? And then they're force grown in
• 37:26
  their absolute millions and sort of battery, like battery hens
• 37:31
  put on these ships in their thousands.
• 37:34
  And then they're sent off to war because there's a big war that's
• 37:37
  going on. And basically what happens is
• 37:39
  one of the pirate ship comes in and they'll send out hundreds of
• 37:44
  these little Arrow ships with two or three badges in each one,
• 37:47
  knowing that only a couple of those will make it through to
• 37:52
  the ship. And they, they literally like
• 37:54
  punch into the ship like a dagger going into someone's
• 37:57
  belly. That's right.
• 37:58
  Yeah. They punt.
• 37:58
  Yeah. It's very kind of a very violent
• 38:00
  way of boarding, actually, yeah. And there's a bit later where he
• 38:03
  describes it, doesn't it? Of of all of the, the Arrow
• 38:07
  ships are sort of being vomited out into space towards the
• 38:10
  brilliant and and like, like I said, like loads of them end up
• 38:14
  dying. So they're utterly disposable.
• 38:17
  They're completely being exploited.
• 38:20
  And we first find, yeah, we first are introduced to them as
• 38:26
  villains in adverted comments because they are the Pirates of
• 38:29
  the story. But actually that, yeah, this
• 38:32
  infected back story comes out and it's really clever.
• 38:35
  It's it's. And this has been set up
• 38:38
  already, like as soon as the Doctor and Martha arrive on the
• 38:41
  ship, because they arrive in the engine room.
• 38:43
  And in the engine room you have these mouthless men or these
• 38:47
  marvelous engineers who is, it's a very funny description
• 38:50
  actually, because they're described as wearing these kind
• 38:52
  of tough leather aprons and Bermuda shorts, but they've got
• 38:56
  no mouths. So they so they and they only
• 39:00
  work in the engine rooms. So they've kind of been designed
• 39:03
  as this sort of slave on the class who understand orders,
• 39:07
  because when Martha and the Doctor talk to them, they
• 39:09
  understand them perfectly. But they can't.
• 39:13
  They can't answer back. They can't question any orders.
• 39:16
  That's kind of shocking, isn't it?
• 39:18
  Yeah, yeah. So literally they, their voice
• 39:21
  has been, they have no voice. They have there are there are
• 39:24
  people with no voice, you know. There seems to be some hint that
• 39:28
  and what I love the fact is that this war that is on the the
• 39:33
  periphery of this story, this war that's taking place, which
• 39:36
  is why the experimental drive on the brilliant is being used and.
• 39:40
  Testing. That's right, because they want
• 39:42
  to be able to travel vast areas of space very quickly.
• 39:45
  So, you know, strategically so, but but on the brilliant, which
• 39:51
  is obviously one side of this war, you've got them exploiting
• 39:54
  those mouthless people down in the engine room.
• 39:57
  And on the other side of this war where the pirates, they're
• 40:00
  they're as bad as each other. They're all using black sentient
• 40:05
  people in really disturbing ways to as an end to a means.
• 40:10
  Right. So the, the, the pirate, the
• 40:12
  badge of pirates or the pirate badges are are just the next
• 40:15
  sort of the next thing along from.
• 40:17
  So yeah, the, the, the brilliant is already exploiting an
• 40:21
  underclass and the pirates themselves are also being
• 40:24
  exploited, you know. And Misses Wingsworth, who I
• 40:28
  said earlier had a sort of darker side to her, actually
• 40:31
  says at one point, well, we need someone to do the grubby jobs,
• 40:34
  don't we? You know.
• 40:35
  That's right. She's so sort of snobbish and
• 40:37
  that's what and that's what gets her killed.
• 40:40
  But this is the interesting thing about the book is that
• 40:43
  these characters all get killed, but not just once.
• 40:46
  They get killed several times. And that's because that's what
• 40:51
  there's, this goes to the title of the book is this.
• 40:54
  They're stuck in a sort of time loop.
• 40:56
  And it's not a complete loop. That's the interesting thing is
• 40:59
  the doctor eventually kind of clarifies that that is this.
• 41:02
  It's not a complete loop, but they die.
• 41:05
  And so then they go back to the place they were before.
• 41:10
  And so it, it gets quite funny where they they get these these
• 41:14
  characters get disintegrated many times over and they go, oh,
• 41:17
  here we go again. All right.
• 41:19
  Well, I wondered if Chris Shipner would read this book
• 41:21
  before he wrote E for the Darling.
• 41:23
  E for the Darling which? Which is exactly that, isn't it?
• 41:26
  They don't worry and then they end up.
• 41:27
  But I think the doctor describes it as a closed loop, runs and
• 41:32
  runs, but with a gap in it. Everything goes round, but
• 41:36
  something's a bit different each time.
• 41:38
  So people die within this loop, they're born again, but there
• 41:44
  are consequences. So there's a scar if you're
• 41:46
  stabbed or something like that, you know that's.
• 41:49
  Right. And the first sort of the first
• 41:51
  sort of indication of that is they have all these canopies in
• 41:56
  the, in the cocktail lounge that are getting served.
• 41:58
  And, and Martha has this very, I mean, I'll get into that in more
• 42:03
  detail in a bit, but she has this great bit where she
• 42:05
  introduces Archie to to canapes. I did wonder what that was
• 42:10
  about. Like before I realized what all
• 42:12
  that was about, I was like, why are we having these extended
• 42:15
  dialogue scenes about pineapples and cheese on sticks?
• 42:20
  And he gets a taste of a life that he's never known because I
• 42:23
  think he, I think, well, we brought we brought up toilets at
• 42:26
  the beginning of the episode. I think he says he mentions all
• 42:29
  his food was recycled out of the toilet.
• 42:31
  Yeah. So he's he's lived a very
• 42:34
  compartmentalized kind of brutal existence.
• 42:37
  And so these, these kind of little sticks of cheese and
• 42:40
  pineapple are the kind of luxury that he's never known before.
• 42:45
  And so he, he, he. So they eat them and then the,
• 42:49
  the food mysteriously gets replenished.
• 42:51
  And so it's food that never runs out.
• 42:54
  And so that's the first indication of the the time loop.
• 42:56
  And then, as you mentioned, yeah, people start dying and
• 43:00
  then they come back to life. And it's a double whammy, right?
• 43:03
  With those cheese and pineapple sticks.
• 43:04
  I should have just been patient because not only is it showing
• 43:08
  you the loop before we find out about the loop, but it's
• 43:12
  actually talking about the different classes because
• 43:16
  Archibald just doesn't understand.
• 43:19
  He's embarrassed to even try it because he doesn't know how to
• 43:21
  pick it up. He doesn't know how to eat it.
• 43:23
  Like he has to explain to him how to how to use it.
• 43:26
  Yeah. And Mrs. Wingsworth sat in there
• 43:28
  laughing her head off going, you know.
• 43:29
  Oh, how appalling. You know, he doesn't even know
• 43:32
  how to eat a canopy. It's it's it's working on
• 43:35
  layers. Yeah, yeah, I know there's a lot
• 43:38
  of layers in there. And I think, yeah, the pirates
• 43:40
  themselves, they say, yeah, they call them Cana Cana peas because
• 43:45
  they've never, yeah, they've never.
• 43:46
  They've never tasted them before.
• 43:47
  They've never had and, you know, food like this, you know?
• 43:52
  And it's so important later when we get to the end of the book
• 43:55
  that exposure to a better life because everyone has to make a
• 44:00
  big choice at the end of this book and we'll get there.
• 44:03
  But this exposure to that better life for the pirates.
• 44:06
  And it starts to spread as each one talks to to the other and
• 44:10
  says, let's try this, this is real food, blah, blah, blah.
• 44:14
  You know, where they eventually have to make that choice about
• 44:17
  their fate. Well, maybe that would be enough
• 44:19
  to make that choice. We'll see.
• 44:21
  But what I really liked was how Martha and Archie, they
• 44:26
  developed this lovely rapport and then before you know it,
• 44:30
  she's trying to escape. He's going after her.
• 44:34
  And there's an end of chapter, which is one of my favorite new
• 44:38
  series adventures. End of chapters aren't done yet.
• 44:41
  Well, I I literally sort of recoiled from the book.
• 44:44
  Like, did Cyber Guru just murder Martha Jones?
• 44:48
  Yeah, OK, so just a bit of set up for that because there's
• 44:51
  yeah, there. So so as you mentioned, they
• 44:53
  have this lovely rapport because she she reckons she's OK.
• 44:58
  She I'm trapped with these three pirates.
• 44:59
  So I'm going to try and make nice with with Archie, who I
• 45:03
  think is meant to be the youngest or the least
• 45:05
  experienced. And and it's also it's all quite
• 45:09
  cleverly set up at the very beginning of the book, at the
• 45:11
  very beginning of the book when they meant when they arrive on
• 45:13
  the on the brilliant. It's mentioned that Martha takes
• 45:16
  her jacket off because it's so sort of hot and impressive in
• 45:19
  the engine room. And then a little bit a little
• 45:22
  bit later when she first arrives in the cocktail lounge, it
• 45:25
  mentions, I think there's a passage that says she felt very
• 45:28
  underdressed in her sort of vest top and jeans.
• 45:31
  And that sets it all up for this, for when she starts to
• 45:34
  flirt with Archie and because she takes on sort of lessons
• 45:39
  that are what that her big sister Tish used to do with men,
• 45:43
  you know, So I think there's things like, oh, Tish loved Tish
• 45:47
  lived to torture men or something.
• 45:48
  There's a there's a line like that in there.
• 45:51
  And he he's quite flustered and he doesn't really, he doesn't
• 45:54
  really know how to sort of how to answer.
• 45:56
  She tries to kind of get him drunk.
• 45:58
  That doesn't work. And then, and that's where he
• 46:01
  discovers all the, the, the, the pleasures of the canapes and,
• 46:05
  and yes. And so as you've said, yeah,
• 46:07
  they, they build up this report. And then she tries to escapes
• 46:10
  when the, when I think it's misses Winsworth, who, who
• 46:14
  sticks her, sticks her oar in and sort of get gets them riled
• 46:17
  up. And so she has to.
• 46:19
  She then eventually, yeah, escapes and and yeah, he murders
• 46:23
  her. I I want to read out the
• 46:26
  description because it's kind of vicious.
• 46:29
  I was really surprised at how sort of visceral it was, the
• 46:33
  desperation as Martha tries to Scrabble about, biting and
• 46:36
  kicking, a sudden hot pain in her gut.
• 46:39
  Looking down, she saw the dagger Archibald thrust into her
• 46:43
  stomach. And this is the singer.
• 46:46
  And she died. I mean, I was like, what is
• 46:49
  going on? I'd forgotten.
• 46:52
  I'd forgotten that Martha got killed in this.
• 46:55
  And she has a, she has this kind of, yeah, it's a very darkly
• 46:57
  comic reaction too, because she, because all she can say is AC.
• 47:02
  Yeah, well, you would, wouldn't you?
• 47:04
  A knife on your side, which does lead to a wonderful moment where
• 47:09
  the dog sort of discovers a body and then he thinks I'm just
• 47:14
  going to read another little bit where?
• 47:17
  And I thought this was beautifully.
• 47:18
  I've got to find that passage because it is really good.
• 47:21
  Yeah, hold on. I've.
• 47:21
  I've written it. I've written it down.
• 47:23
  Somewhere. Oh, well, you read it then.
• 47:24
  Come on. I'm doing all the readings.
• 47:25
  You read it. OK, Bear with us.
• 47:30
  Yes, here we go. It's 99.
• 47:35
  No, hold on. Oh, we better keep them
• 47:42
  occupied. What's that?
• 47:45
  What? No.
• 47:45
  I'll edit around this, don't you worry.
• 47:47
  All right, don't worry. Here we go.
• 47:52
  Here. We go.
• 47:52
  I've got to edit it now. Here we go.
• 47:57
  So there's a whole passage here. The doctor nodded.
• 48:01
  He could think myriad complex thoughts at once, and a small
• 48:04
  part of his brain acknowledged that the protocols for deaths in
• 48:07
  space were much like deaths at sea.
• 48:10
  Martha's body would have been discreetly, respectfully put
• 48:13
  overboard to minimize any concern from or risk of disease
• 48:17
  to those remaining. She would be out there, floating
• 48:21
  in the darkness, calm and cold and lonely.
• 48:25
  Another part of his brain already knew that he would find
• 48:28
  her, however long it took. He could already see the look on
• 48:31
  Francine's face when he brought her daughter home, could already
• 48:34
  feel the Jones family's tide of grief and anger.
• 48:38
  They would blame him for her death, and they would be right
• 48:41
  to once. It would never have occurred to
• 48:43
  him to brave something like that, if he could avoid it.
• 48:45
  But he knew that Martha would have wanted him to take her back
• 48:48
  to them, and because of that, he would face whatever came.
• 48:52
  It's beautiful, isn't it? That's really correct.
• 48:55
  So it means in amongst, you know, these quirky guest
• 48:59
  characters, in amongst these big ideas, the mysteries, the
• 49:02
  suspense, wait, there's. He's punctuating with proper
• 49:05
  moments of character as well. Definitely, yeah.
• 49:08
  And that's so, yeah, there is. The Doctor does have a moment
• 49:12
  where he thinks, yeah, Martha's dead and I'm going to have to
• 49:14
  take her back to her family. And actually, it's interesting
• 49:17
  how they characterize the Doctor kind of getting angry because he
• 49:21
  does get angry, but it's a very contained type of anger.
• 49:25
  It's because, I mean, we all remember from Series 3 where he,
• 49:29
  he shouts a lot. I'm trying to remember what is
• 49:32
  the evolution of the Daleks where he screams for the Daleks
• 49:35
  to kill him. Just do it.
• 49:37
  Just do it. But here it's.
• 49:40
  Yeah, he I think he just says to the Badgers, you know, you don't
• 49:42
  want to cross me. You know, you don't want to find
• 49:44
  out, but he just, he just and then he goes back to being his
• 49:47
  sort of, you know, his smiley grinning, kind of, you know,
• 49:51
  brilliant self again. I like to imagine we get David
• 49:54
  Tennant on a good day in the pirate loop.
• 49:59
  But of course, I mean, Martha is dead.
• 50:01
  She does die. That is all real.
• 50:04
  But because we're in this loop and now this is where we learn
• 50:06
  about the the loop. So it's not that's great.
• 50:10
  So so so shockers and then show us the get out which you've
• 50:14
  already set up with the canapes that this this ship is going in
• 50:18
  a perpetual loop where and and Mrs. Wingsworth's sort of lack
• 50:24
  of concern being hijacked as well Who?
• 50:27
  Is this exciting, dear all? Sort of hints about what's going
• 50:30
  on. And so this is where we learn we
• 50:32
  are in the and I quote pirate loop.
• 50:35
  Pirate loop. Yes, where we're going, we're
• 50:38
  going round and around and around murdering each other
• 50:42
  because we can't quite all get on because the pirates are
• 50:44
  trying to get onto the ship to steal the experimental Dr.
• 50:47
  that's. Right.
• 50:48
  Yeah, yeah. Which we don't.
• 50:51
  We don't really find out too much about that, and we don't
• 50:53
  really find out too much about the war.
• 50:55
  And I like that because this story is not really about that.
• 50:58
  No, it will get too bogged down. I think if you start saying, oh,
• 51:01
  the galactic sector of 57 is, you know, yeah.
• 51:06
  So there's no, there's no kind of too much of A, it's all a
• 51:08
  background. It's a background sort of
• 51:10
  tableau, if you like. And, and yeah.
• 51:14
  And so Martha is not dead, but because as, as I think I
• 51:19
  mentioned, they when they die, that they go back to the point
• 51:21
  where they originally were. So the Doctor goes back to the
• 51:24
  engine room and finds that she's still alive.
• 51:28
  But there is still, they do mention that, you know, she
• 51:30
  still has that scar from, from the dagger that Archie stabbed
• 51:35
  her with. And so she still remembers, she
• 51:38
  still remembers what happened even though, even even though
• 51:42
  she came back to life, you know, so she has that.
• 51:44
  So there is a bit of that uneasy truce when when they're all
• 51:47
  friends again and she's still kind of not sure how to feel
• 51:51
  about Archie stabbing her, you know?
• 51:54
  Well, it would put a cramp on your friendship if you stabbed
• 51:56
  me. I would have second thoughts
• 51:58
  about this, you know, but where are the crew, Daniel?
• 52:03
  Where are the crew? The crew.
• 52:07
  Got themselves in the cockpit or the, the, the control, the
• 52:10
  bridge, the bridge, the and it's this very, I mean, that's what I
• 52:13
  like too. It's this very sort of sort of
• 52:16
  young, attractive sort of new Star Trek crew almost where
• 52:23
  their their captain, this woman, Captain Georgina, who's this
• 52:28
  supposed to be this gorgeous blonde woman who I actually kind
• 52:31
  of pictured in my head when I read when I read through those
• 52:34
  chapters as like, have you seen what is it Star Darkness the
• 52:40
  second? Yeah.
• 52:43
  Which is not, I mean, I'm not a huge fan of it, but Alice Eve
• 52:47
  could have played that role because she's she's she's, you
• 52:50
  know, she she could pull, pull, pull that off, but she didn't
• 52:53
  get much of A role in Star Trek. So.
• 52:56
  She wouldn't have much of A role in this stuck up in the
• 52:59
  essentially they're cowardly countless, aren't they?
• 53:02
  They've they've hidden away up in the control room and
• 53:05
  determined to protect this experimental Dr. at all costs.
• 53:10
  But it's essentially again, a class thing.
• 53:13
  They they, they basically say we're too important to be put a
• 53:16
  risk. Right, and screw the passengers.
• 53:19
  Yeah, fuck the passengers. Yeah, yeah.
• 53:23
  Which is, you know, again, I'm not sure this is a period of the
• 53:27
  future I'd want to visit, you know?
• 53:30
  Where's the 14th century? I think, which the Doctor and
• 53:33
  Martha have travelled to before. I think in there was it.
• 53:35
  Well, Speaking of pirates, there's the infinite quest.
• 53:38
  That was. That was a pirate adventure,
• 53:40
  wasn't it? It?
• 53:40
  Was it was essentially was within the loop.
• 53:47
  The doctor figures out I can get us out of this loop and, and he
• 53:55
  does manage to do that for a feat of techno Babble, which I
• 53:58
  shan't repeat because, you know, he cares about the techno
• 54:00
  Babble. He's just very clever.
• 54:02
  But what that leads to is what I thought was the best chapter of
• 54:07
  the book, where, yes, they're out of the loop now, and the
• 54:11
  pirate ships attacking, and it's fucking pandemonium and it's
• 54:16
  bloody and it's violent. And people die.
• 54:19
  Everybody dies. Everybody dies.
• 54:23
  So the Doctor effectively saves the day and kills everybody and
• 54:27
  even the spaceship. Brilliant.
• 54:29
  Boom. That's right, yes, because they
• 54:32
  get taken aboard the the pirate ship, which I can't remember the
• 54:36
  name, but I do remember it's described as this kind of spiked
• 54:39
  Peach. And yes, and, and it's captained
• 54:43
  by this, this, this, this, this other badger, this other female
• 54:47
  badger, because Jocelyn is one of the female Badgers.
• 54:50
  But there's this other female badger who's the captain called
• 54:53
  Captain Florence. And they keep mentioning her
• 54:55
  throughout the book. So they build it, they build her
• 54:57
  up. And, and again, she, she, even
• 55:01
  though she's a really nasty piece of work, very violent, I
• 55:04
  think she, she smacks the doctor around a couple of times.
• 55:07
  She smacks her own crew around. So her crew.
• 55:09
  So she kind of governs her crew by fear and intimidation.
• 55:15
  And, and the doctor challenges her to a well, it's sort of a
• 55:19
  duel really, but it's more of a knife fight.
• 55:22
  I mean, I was expecting. It's a knife fight, yeah.
• 55:25
  Yeah, I was expecting a big sword fight because it's, you
• 55:28
  know, it's pirates, but no, it's a kind of let's hope knife
• 55:31
  fight. The Kitty winks reading this
• 55:33
  book all pick up their bread knives and go at it like the
• 55:35
  Doctor and Florence. And we find out that, yeah, she,
• 55:40
  well, exposes her as, yeah, she's, she's also kind of a
• 55:47
  victim of, of, of, of, of she kind of, she she how do I
• 55:52
  explain? She's she, Yeah, she rules by
• 55:56
  fear because that's the only life she's ever known.
• 55:58
  So like, just like Archie, just like Jocelyn and Dashiel, who
• 56:02
  we've got to know quite well over the course of the book,
• 56:05
  she's known. She doesn't know any other life.
• 56:08
  And we eventually she gets a taste of that life too, but not
• 56:13
  before dying as well. She also gets to die.
• 56:16
  I think that's what sort of turns her around, because
• 56:20
  otherwise it's quite a big wrench to go from from being
• 56:22
  that person to being, oh, how lovely Canape is being.
• 56:26
  Vicious to, yeah. But being killed is going to do
• 56:28
  that to you, right? And then waking up again.
• 56:31
  Do you know that bit where where he does break the loop?
• 56:37
  Yeah. And there's a there's a bit
• 56:39
  where Martha's watching. This shows you how like
• 56:42
  occasionally very adult this book is.
• 56:44
  Martha's watching because she's not on the Brilliant at this
• 56:46
  point. She's on the the Badger ship and
• 56:49
  it's on the big view screen and apparently all of the arrows
• 56:52
  that have got through and stuck into the Brilliant all come out
• 56:56
  at once. And then all the crew that are
• 56:59
  in the Brilliant just all get sucked into space just before
• 57:04
  the whole ship blows up and then just explodes them all to death
• 57:07
  anyway. Right.
• 57:08
  Yeah. And, and there's a brief moment
• 57:11
  where she thinks they've they've killed the doctor as well.
• 57:14
  So we've got a moment where the Doctor thinks Martha's dead,
• 57:16
  we've got a moment where Martha thinks the Doctor's dead, and we
• 57:19
  get to deal with their grief in different ways.
• 57:21
  Yeah, and that's the interesting thing about the whole Doctor and
• 57:23
  Martha dynamic actually is because it's we get a lot of
• 57:26
  them front loaded at the very beginning of the book.
• 57:30
  So they're banter and we get a lot of references to Martha's
• 57:34
  past or memories from Martha's own life.
• 57:36
  So she compares situation, oh, this was like when I was at the,
• 57:40
  you know, Royal Hope Hospital and they were dealing cards in
• 57:43
  the basement. So she compares that to the
• 57:45
  engine room and things like that.
• 57:48
  And then, yeah. And then they get separated for
• 57:50
  quite a bit of the book. And so because their dynamics
• 57:54
  been so, well, sort of set up, it doesn't matter really,
• 57:58
  because we get an equal amount of Doctor and Martha.
• 58:02
  And they do eventually team up again towards the end of the
• 58:05
  book, you know? There's some there's a wonderful
• 58:08
  reference where Martha's trying to be peacemaker at one point
• 58:12
  and she goes it was like a family party with with her being
• 58:15
  peacemaker, except when her parents argued they weren't also
• 58:19
  wielding Duns. Thank goodness, because I don't
• 58:23
  think that will end well if I'm. Honest.
• 58:25
  Yeah, they have all these things.
• 58:26
  There's references to past adventures too.
• 58:27
  So there's, I think there's a, there's a mention to the, the
• 58:32
  wishing well or there's a brief moment where she drew, she, it's
• 58:36
  mentioned she dropped, she dropped sort of money down a
• 58:41
  well because the doctor asked what's the money, what's the
• 58:43
  currency like in the 14th century, you know?
• 58:47
  Just just gentle little nudges that these, there were three
• 58:50
  books coming out together at the time referencing each other.
• 58:54
  But go back to what you were saying there about the knife
• 58:56
  fight. So you've got Florence and the
• 58:58
  doctor going at it. She gets stabbed to death by her
• 59:03
  own, by her own knife as he's fighting her.
• 59:06
  And then she shoots the doctor. And so you and you're you're
• 59:10
  thinking, well, fuck this. The loop stops, they're both
• 59:13
  dead, but of course the doctor's been tinkering before all of
• 59:16
  this, and he's set the loop back in motion again.
• 59:19
  But we don't know this until he wakes up back where he started
• 59:23
  again and goes. That's a relief.
• 59:26
  I wasn't really sure that was going to work, which I thought
• 59:29
  was great. And then we've got a set
• 59:34
  effectively everything in place for the climax of the book.
• 59:39
  So we've established the the pirates, we've established the
• 59:43
  crew, we've established the passengers, and those three sets
• 59:49
  of people don't all get on. But actually, after facing death
• 59:54
  and then complete annihilation, they decide, you know what,
• 59:58
  let's have a party. Let's have some canapes, yeah?
• 1:00:02
  So come on in, take me through the ending.
• 1:00:04
  This wonderful. One of the best endings.
• 1:00:07
  Yeah, that is one. It is one of my favourite.
• 1:00:09
  I mean, I can just, you could just imagine this being put in
• 1:00:13
  in in series itself. It's a beautiful, beautiful
• 1:00:16
  singing when. So the doctor explains he's
• 1:00:18
  closed the loop and so it's no longer a partially open loop.
• 1:00:21
  It was one that he'll go round and round forever.
• 1:00:23
  And so this party he puts on, he puts on some pop tunes in the
• 1:00:29
  cocktail lounge in the ballroom as well.
• 1:00:31
  There's a ballroom in the ship and he puts on the Mika song,
• 1:00:35
  which we've set up at the beginning of the book of Grace
• 1:00:38
  Kelly. And so the the ships playing
• 1:00:42
  Grace Kelly and he so you have a choice and says so I've closed
• 1:00:48
  the loop and I can so and Martha are going to leave in an hour in
• 1:00:55
  the TARDIS and you can either come with us and go back to your
• 1:00:58
  lives and it will be life of you know, there'll be galactic war
• 1:01:03
  and probably misery and they won't be can't guarantee that
• 1:01:07
  you'll always be happy. Or you can stay in this loop
• 1:01:09
  forever and party forever and eat canapes forever, but you'll
• 1:01:15
  never be able to leave and blame people you always were.
• 1:01:21
  And so they left with that choice.
• 1:01:23
  Noah he and Martha he he lead the dance and it has this
• 1:01:28
  Brilliant closing line. So the party aboard the
• 1:01:32
  Brilliant would go on forever. Yet for those who would choose
• 1:01:36
  the one chance to escape, the last dance had begun.
• 1:01:40
  That is a banger of A. Last line, just a brilliant
• 1:01:43
  line. Last line.
• 1:01:44
  And I can just picture, you know, because, because better,
• 1:01:50
  more joyful ending that's also incredibly poignant, quite
• 1:01:54
  meaningful, because it's, you know, you could say, so you
• 1:01:58
  could say it's about life, about you choose to live the same
• 1:02:02
  existence over and over again. Or you go, you go out there and
• 1:02:07
  you take the risk and you not everything.
• 1:02:12
  Everything might not work out the way you think it will, but
• 1:02:15
  there's there's more out there than just canopies and parties.
• 1:02:20
  It's gorgeous, isn't it? And what's so clever about that
• 1:02:23
  ending is it doesn't it doesn't come to a conclusion.
• 1:02:28
  You don't learn any decisions that the characters that we've
• 1:02:32
  met have made. You can sort of take a guess if
• 1:02:34
  you want to. It's asking kids to think about
• 1:02:37
  that situation and think, would I want to stay safe knowing that
• 1:02:42
  I can make mistakes and then go back and be alive again, or, you
• 1:02:48
  know, and, and sort of learn from those mistakes and be safe.
• 1:02:52
  Or would I choose to live in an unpredictable universe?
• 1:02:56
  I don't know. I just think it's, it's such a
• 1:02:58
  smart, thoughtful ending to, to give that sort of dilemma to the
• 1:03:03
  reader and say, well, what would you do?
• 1:03:06
  Because you know what? I'm not sure what I would do
• 1:03:08
  because I'm somebody who likes feeling very safe indeed and I I
• 1:03:13
  like the idea of living an eternal party even though I know
• 1:03:18
  it's going to be the same thing over and over again rather that
• 1:03:22
  than face the bloody world I'm living in right now.
• 1:03:25
  I know tell me about it and to to score that to to Mika's yeah
• 1:03:31
  Grace Kelly, which is such a joyful song, but when he but but
• 1:03:37
  it but it's also kind of very yeah, it's very poignant too.
• 1:03:40
  So it's a very and as you said, ambiguous ending.
• 1:03:43
  And so it's, it's happy, but it's also, yeah, unresolved,
• 1:03:49
  undecided. And you might think, oh, God,
• 1:03:51
  no, Why would anyone choose the loop?
• 1:03:55
  And then you realize, well, no, because the class barriers are
• 1:03:58
  breaking down. They're all partying together
• 1:04:00
  now. Whereas there was all these, you
• 1:04:03
  know, all these class levels before where people were looking
• 1:04:05
  down on each other and treat each other terribly.
• 1:04:07
  They've learned to work together and communicate, you know?
• 1:04:10
  And all socialize, yeah. And you kind of face together,
• 1:04:13
  yeah. So, so it's like, do you know
• 1:04:15
  what have you had the choice to learn from your mistakes over
• 1:04:18
  and over again and probably live your best life?
• 1:04:21
  Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure what choice I'd
• 1:04:23
  make. I know.
• 1:04:25
  And yeah. And it's yeah, and it's and it's
• 1:04:27
  yeah. And he leaves the decision up to
• 1:04:29
  them. He doesn't decide for them,
• 1:04:30
  which I think is great as well. And it it feels very David
• 1:04:34
  Tennant. The speech reads like David
• 1:04:36
  Tennant, I think. But you can absolutely see that
• 1:04:40
  that last scene, that big party in a Russell T Davis episode,
• 1:04:43
  can't you? This big, lavish ballroom maker
• 1:04:46
  playing the TARDIS over there, sort of dramatically lit as the.
• 1:04:50
  Background. The one escape option that you
• 1:04:52
  have, and then you'd have the Doctor and Martha.
• 1:04:54
  I would just walk out of the room.
• 1:04:55
  Maybe such a wonderful end of a TV.
• 1:04:59
  It's a wonderful end of a book, but.
• 1:05:01
  Well, and it's mentioned too that Martha's, because I think
• 1:05:05
  where if you wanted to sort of mark the chronology of where
• 1:05:09
  this, where does this fall in the Doctor Who sort of linear
• 1:05:13
  chronology is there's a brief mention so that Martha remembers
• 1:05:18
  washing floors in a school, which was the last time she'd
• 1:05:21
  been sort of talked down to. So it takes place after sort of
• 1:05:26
  human nature, family of blood. So they're very comfortable with
• 1:05:28
  each other by now. And but she's also thinking,
• 1:05:32
  well, maybe one of these days I'm going to have to leave him
• 1:05:36
  myself, you know, as well. One of the things that I talked
• 1:05:41
  about with Michael Mills when we did Sick Building by Paul Mars,
• 1:05:43
  which is another NSA from around this time, was how the
• 1:05:48
  characterization of the doctrine Martha was.
• 1:05:51
  It was perfectly adequate, but probably the weakest part of the
• 1:05:55
  book. That's not the case here, I
• 1:05:58
  don't think. I think this book knows how to
• 1:06:00
  use both of them to their full strengths.
• 1:06:03
  Martha goes off and does has a whole own plot.
• 1:06:06
  All right, she gets killed, but she has a whole other plot.
• 1:06:09
  The Doctor obviously has the big moral dilemma at the end.
• 1:06:12
  He's the one that breaks him out of the loop.
• 1:06:14
  He's the one that has to have the knife fight and then try and
• 1:06:17
  figure our way back into the loop in case anyone dies.
• 1:06:21
  And there's all these little details.
• 1:06:23
  Yeah. These are like, you know, when,
• 1:06:24
  when when they first arrive on the Brilliant, they kind of
• 1:06:27
  crash into it. And Moth is knocked out.
• 1:06:30
  And when she wakes up, the doctor's kind of standing over
• 1:06:32
  her with a cup of tea. And he's like, no, do you take a
• 1:06:34
  little milk and no sugar? You know, so he knows, he knows
• 1:06:38
  how she takes her tea. And, and then when they meet the
• 1:06:42
  mouthless men in the engine room, you know, she, she uses
• 1:06:45
  the psychic paper to kind of convince them, oh, don't worry,
• 1:06:48
  we don't mean you any harm. We're just inspectors.
• 1:06:50
  And she says, oh, and he's my, he's my assistant and I'm, you
• 1:06:54
  know, and he goes along with it. He doesn't sort of, he doesn't,
• 1:06:58
  you know, throw a sulk or anything.
• 1:06:59
  He kind of goes along with it because he he likes it when she
• 1:07:02
  takes the initiative. He wants her to show sort of,
• 1:07:05
  you know, independence, you know?
• 1:07:08
  She says to him, why can't you just talk normally?
• 1:07:12
  He goes what and be like everyone else.
• 1:07:14
  I was like, yes, I mean, you can be annoying, but that is a good
• 1:07:18
  answer. Do you know, I started taking
• 1:07:20
  notes at the beginning of all of the the great insights into
• 1:07:24
  Martha and there's a couple here.
• 1:07:25
  I won't read all of it, but go for it.
• 1:07:27
  I realized sort of 1/3 into the book, No, she's just going to be
• 1:07:31
  brilliantly characterized throughout this whole book.
• 1:07:33
  Stop taking notes because and just say this is a great book
• 1:07:37
  from Arthur. But like you know, early on you
• 1:07:40
  find out about a family holiday with a Lech that Tisch fell for,
• 1:07:44
  that you that when they were at parties, Francine used to push
• 1:07:48
  her in front of her friends and introduce.
• 1:07:50
  Her. She's nice, you know?
• 1:07:52
  Top daughter, the surgeon, that's right.
• 1:07:55
  How she takes charge of the psychic paper, how she's strong
• 1:07:59
  enough to stand up to the doctor and say she wants to help the
• 1:08:01
  crew, how she wants to free the slaves.
• 1:08:04
  It's just a really great Martha Jones book.
• 1:08:07
  Yeah, and she there's there's even a bit where the Doctor
• 1:08:10
  refers himself as to the well, no, she says, oh, well, as the
• 1:08:14
  last of the Time Lords, you know, you would know.
• 1:08:16
  And he's like, do I say that a lot?
• 1:08:18
  And she's like, oh, never, never.
• 1:08:22
  Well, look, look, we've sort of been through the plot and we've
• 1:08:25
  talked about the characters. Do you have any more notes that
• 1:08:28
  we haven't covered on the Pirate Loop before we sort of summarize
• 1:08:32
  our final thoughts on the book? Well, just, yeah, there was just
• 1:08:37
  mainly notes on, yeah, the Doctor and Martha that I took.
• 1:08:40
  So there's one where she, she had, she had to explain my space
• 1:08:44
  to him at once. And he looked bewildered.
• 1:08:47
  He don't, he objects to her calling the brilliant a
• 1:08:51
  spaceship and he's like, well, it's not really a spaceship, is
• 1:08:54
  it? She's like, oh, it's a Starship.
• 1:08:56
  You can be such a geek sometimes, you know, so there's
• 1:08:59
  yeah, all these little and the references to past adventures
• 1:09:02
  they have. So, yeah, as I said, there's a
• 1:09:04
  great sort of front loading of Doctor and Martha at the very
• 1:09:07
  beginning so that you really get a sense of what their characters
• 1:09:11
  are. And, and also you kind of find
• 1:09:13
  the same characters that you that you love so much on ATV
• 1:09:16
  show. So that, yeah.
• 1:09:18
  So that as they as they go through on these different
• 1:09:21
  journeys throughout the book, you never lose sight of that.
• 1:09:24
  You know, you're you're rooting for them.
• 1:09:26
  You, you know exactly what, what, how they're going to be,
• 1:09:29
  how they're going to act and what decisions they're going to
• 1:09:32
  make, you know? They're both completely on the
• 1:09:35
  right side of being likable. I think David said it's Doctor
• 1:09:38
  can go either way depending on how he's being characterized.
• 1:09:41
  But they're both bang on in this book.
• 1:09:43
  Very charismatic, very fun to read.
• 1:09:46
  I mean, I've got a line here that I wrote down that I just
• 1:09:48
  have to say, go on. It's nothing to do with the
• 1:09:52
  Doctor of Martha, Captain Florence says.
• 1:09:54
  We're not pirates anyway. We're venture capitalists.
• 1:09:59
  I like that line a lot. And oh, there was a description.
• 1:10:05
  The appalling stink of death and burnt fabric.
• 1:10:08
  The time loop on the Brilliant brought them back from the dead,
• 1:10:10
  but it didn't stop the violence and pain.
• 1:10:13
  Like it's quite, quite bloody in places.
• 1:10:16
  Right. And there's a moment where the
• 1:10:17
  doctor uses the, the transmat and as I, as I mentioned, it is
• 1:10:21
  very painful process because it reassembles your whole self, you
• 1:10:25
  know, and he, there's a brief moment where he wonders if he
• 1:10:27
  hasn't regenerated, you know, and oh, and there's this
• 1:10:34
  brilliant that we, we didn't mention it, but there's, we
• 1:10:38
  mentioned sort of the, the, the tiny whiminess of Steven Moffett
• 1:10:42
  because that, that's where it first appeared in Series 3.
• 1:10:45
  He brought, you know, wibbly wobbly Tommy Wimy, which some
• 1:10:48
  people think might be a bit infantilizing, but there's a
• 1:10:51
  great description here of how time works.
• 1:10:53
  And the Doctor mentions to Martha, he says it's if you
• 1:10:56
  change time, it's like a patchwork of lies where you tell
• 1:11:00
  one lie and then you have to tell another lie to cover the
• 1:11:03
  first lie and then another one until you can no longer keep
• 1:11:07
  track of which lies you've told, which people you've told the
• 1:11:10
  lies to. And you can completely lose
• 1:11:13
  yourself that way, you know? I think we've all been there,
• 1:11:17
  Daniel, you know, have you heard my podcast?
• 1:11:20
  My Patchwork's getting bigger and bigger with every episode.
• 1:11:25
  There's a there's a lovely, oh God, where was it?
• 1:11:28
  Hang on. There's a lovely moment which
• 1:11:31
  felt it came straight from planet viewed in Series 4.
• 1:11:37
  It's it and it's very political and it's about humans making the
• 1:11:42
  Badgers do their dirty work. And there's some lovely
• 1:11:44
  references to past Doctor Who's where the Doctor says you go
• 1:11:48
  into space and it's no longer immigrants but Ood and monoids
• 1:11:52
  and Vox very. Good.
• 1:11:56
  Bringing it all down to a Doctor Who level.
• 1:11:57
  That a gig lot of me can understand.
• 1:12:02
  Oh, I know you remember I said to you.
• 1:12:04
  There was that other very nice reference.
• 1:12:09
  You can. You can have your glass of
• 1:12:11
  hydrogen hydroxide either in a glass in a bowl or in an
• 1:12:16
  immature MIM. You know what a MIM is?
• 1:12:20
  So I only know it's a what a purple kind of sponge thing.
• 1:12:27
  So Simon Guria script edited the Bernie Summerfield audios for
• 1:12:31
  two seasons and did the great meme Draconian War.
• 1:12:34
  So this is such a niche reference.
• 1:12:37
  And then he wrote a couple of companion Chronicles where he
• 1:12:40
  had the 1st Doctor and a few others go up against the meme.
• 1:12:43
  One's called the Library of Alexandria.
• 1:12:45
  Oh, it's all great stuff. Much?
• 1:12:48
  Having a drink and an immature meme.
• 1:12:49
  I mean, that sounds very Douglas Adams.
• 1:12:53
  I thought that was great. Anything else then from your
• 1:12:55
  notes? They they do mention the kind of
• 1:12:58
  you know, because that was the main theme for series 3 Martha
• 1:13:03
  having unrequited feelings for the doctor and at the very
• 1:13:05
  beginning they just take pay lip service to that where she's come
• 1:13:11
  to accept that the doctor doesn't share her feelings for
• 1:13:13
  him. And I quote but sometimes the
• 1:13:16
  way he looked at her. And so that's in a TARDIS scene.
• 1:13:20
  I think he just, you know, because she she, she she
• 1:13:22
  suggests going to the brilliant. But yeah, so that, but that was
• 1:13:28
  quite nice actually, that there was no mention of Rose because a
• 1:13:32
  lot of people got pretty tired of the Doctor kind of mooning
• 1:13:35
  over Rose, losing Rose in Series 3 and kind of sucking all the
• 1:13:39
  energy out of the room while Martha just wants to go on a
• 1:13:41
  jolly adventure, you know? So there was no mention of that
• 1:13:44
  there. Because they've moved along
• 1:13:45
  enough in their relationship that they're quite comfortable
• 1:13:47
  with each other, and they trust each other enough that that
• 1:13:51
  doesn't have to drag them down, you know?
• 1:13:55
  Very last thing that I want to say from my notes then.
• 1:13:58
  And it it it's something that Russell's period of Doctor Who
• 1:14:02
  does at his best is when characters reference something
• 1:14:05
  about their lives away from the story, and you're never going to
• 1:14:09
  find out what it means. It's Mr. Jefferson in the
• 1:14:14
  Impossible Planet, you know. Did your wife ever forgive you?
• 1:14:17
  Let me. Tell me a secret she never did.
• 1:14:20
  I'll. Never know, or when he's the
• 1:14:22
  fellow says to Adelaide in Waters of Mars.
• 1:14:24
  You never did forgive me, did you?
• 1:14:27
  Just before he dies. And there's a wonderful line
• 1:14:29
  where Mrs. Wingsworth, who finally is achieving something
• 1:14:32
  in her life, says it wasn't the war I was running away from on
• 1:14:36
  the brilliant and we don't really know what that means.
• 1:14:40
  Well, that's a brilliant part of the book is this is.
• 1:14:42
  Yeah. The doctor and Misses Wingsworth
• 1:14:44
  kind of become a double team, almost.
• 1:14:46
  And he says to her at one point, you know, well, what about you?
• 1:14:50
  You're always going on about, oh, my uncle used to love this.
• 1:14:53
  My, you know, my brother Harry used to love this.
• 1:14:56
  But what about you? You know, she's never really.
• 1:14:58
  She's always kind of part living vicariously through other people
• 1:15:03
  and never living herself, you know?
• 1:15:06
  And then she realizes she's making decisions for herself.
• 1:15:08
  But she loves it. And she loves it.
• 1:15:10
  She finds it thrilling and she saves Martha's life actually,
• 1:15:14
  because we mentioned when the the pirate ships start blowing
• 1:15:17
  holes in the brilliant and Martha almost gets sucked out
• 1:15:20
  and it's because of Misses Wingsworth's intervention that
• 1:15:22
  she her life is saved, you know? I suppose when the fear of death
• 1:15:27
  is no longer there, we can all learn to be better people.
• 1:15:31
  Yeah, yeah. So what decision would you make
• 1:15:35
  at the end? No, no.
• 1:15:37
  OK, I'll leave it up to the listeners.
• 1:15:40
  What decision would you make, listeners?
• 1:15:42
  Would you stay in the loop or, you know, stay in this hideous
• 1:15:46
  world? What country?
• 1:15:48
  Well, look, let's so summarize your thoughts then on the pirate
• 1:15:52
  loop then. Is it a yay?
• 1:15:53
  Is it a nay? It's a yay.
• 1:15:56
  I I'm usually actually, I'm not usually a huge fan of pirates
• 1:16:00
  because it can get very cliched. It can get very stereotyped.
• 1:16:05
  And I'm just glad that he that Simon Gary found the right
• 1:16:08
  balance where they're threatening as pirates should
• 1:16:12
  be, but they're also quite funny as pirates should be as well,
• 1:16:15
  because pirates just for kids. Anyway, pirates are quite fun.
• 1:16:19
  They're quite funny. And I, I should probably just
• 1:16:22
  mention the doctor's pirate joke here because we, we've gone a
• 1:16:25
  whole podcast about mentioning it where he says to the to the
• 1:16:29
  pirates. And this is when they're still
• 1:16:30
  quite antagonistic towards him. And he says, well, what, what,
• 1:16:34
  why, why are pirates like other pirates?
• 1:16:36
  And they're like, we don't know. Why are pirates like other
• 1:16:39
  pirates? Because they are.
• 1:16:44
  And I can hear David Tennant saying that as well.
• 1:16:47
  And they go, oh, I don't get it, because I know other jokes.
• 1:16:51
  I know funny jokes. No, I quite like that one
• 1:16:54
  actually. Well, I I just like to say that
• 1:16:59
  one thing that neither was really mentioned, but although
• 1:17:02
  we have kind of by talking through the book is just how
• 1:17:05
  engaging the prose is as well. It has to deliver some pretty
• 1:17:10
  big ideas in a way children, young children can understand.
• 1:17:17
  And I think he gets the balance just perfect.
• 1:17:20
  But at the same time, it's a book and not all the new series
• 1:17:23
  of mentions I could say it's about.
• 1:17:25
  It's one that an adult can pick up and read between the lines of
• 1:17:29
  a lot of this stuff and see the slavery and the capitalism and
• 1:17:32
  all of that. And it's like a good Disney
• 1:17:34
  film, you know, it's working on layers.
• 1:17:36
  The kids can sit there and watch what's taking out taking place,
• 1:17:39
  and the adults can actually see sometimes what's really being
• 1:17:41
  said. Big ideas, huge sort of weighty
• 1:17:45
  science fiction ideas. And just that, that brilliant
• 1:17:49
  ending, that thoughtful ending which doesn't give you any easy
• 1:17:54
  answers, that makes you think. Well, you could be brown, you
• 1:17:57
  could be blue, you could be violent sky.
• 1:18:00
  Oh, you're one of those things, Daniel.
• 1:18:02
  But I don't expect these Nsas to be as good as this.
• 1:18:05
  So this was a bit of a revelation for me.
• 1:18:07
  It almost feels like it's kind of been smuggled in the back
• 1:18:10
  sort of, you know, like I've got all the, I've got a, there's a
• 1:18:13
  book in here and I'm going to write it.
• 1:18:16
  And even if it's a Doctor Who book, I can, you know, make a
• 1:18:19
  proper book out of it and not just a doesn't surprise me
• 1:18:23
  because Simon Guria. Only really does good work.
• 1:18:26
  He's a he's a genuinely brilliant writer, but I think
• 1:18:30
  he's outdone himself here because he has, he's created a
• 1:18:33
  book for the family. That's just a bloody good book.
• 1:18:35
  That's a bloody good book. Yeah.
• 1:18:37
  Well, that's a nice. Note to end the pirate loop on
• 1:18:40
  I. Didn't even ask if you had any
• 1:18:42
  issues with the book. Not really.
• 1:18:45
  I suppose I had to reread the part the sum.
• 1:18:47
  Of well, you mentioned the, the massive sort of sci-fi concepts.
• 1:18:50
  I do have to reread those a few times, but that's just because,
• 1:18:54
  you know, as soon as you start thinking, OK, time loops,
• 1:18:57
  quantum mechanics, it's it's sometimes it's hard to wrap your
• 1:19:02
  head around. But that's just me being a bit
• 1:19:04
  unfamiliar with sci-fi literature.
• 1:19:06
  I haven't really read, I haven't really read a sci-fi book in, in
• 1:19:09
  a while, you know, So I'm a bit, I'm a bit out of practice.
• 1:19:12
  What I will say is this is now officially the fastest.
• 1:19:15
  Book I've read on the book club, I picked it up at about 3:00 in
• 1:19:21
  the afternoon of Wednesday, and I'd finished it by about 9:00 AM
• 1:19:28
  of the Thursday. So it took me less than a day to
• 1:19:30
  just tear. I just tore through it.
• 1:19:32
  So bravo, that's me and my my. Young book reading years.
• 1:19:38
  I need to pick up that pace again.
• 1:19:41
  Well. Before we out the episode, I'm
• 1:19:45
  going to ask you now to recommend another Doctor Who
• 1:19:49
  book. OK, Right.
• 1:19:52
  So. You mentioned you mentioned
• 1:19:54
  quite a few at the start, so I know.
• 1:19:55
  You've read quite a lot. OK, so I'll I'll I'll recommend
• 1:19:59
  a couple then there's. There's some that are sort of
• 1:20:01
  right in my mind right now. I will recommend.
• 1:20:05
  This is quite an odd reading experience, but I guarantee you
• 1:20:08
  should try it. I read the target version of
• 1:20:12
  Fury from the Deep. Yeah, and it's not so much the
• 1:20:17
  actual content of the book itself, because it's quite
• 1:20:21
  faithful to the to the TV adaptation, to the TV episode.
• 1:20:26
  Sorry, but what I did when I read it, as I explained at the
• 1:20:30
  beginning, I like to put sort of soundtracks or sound effects,
• 1:20:36
  put the music for the film The Thing by John Carpenter, Ennio
• 1:20:42
  Morricone's music where it goes doom, doom, doom, doom.
• 1:20:47
  And I used to, I put that every time the weed creature made an
• 1:20:51
  appearance. So every time the weed creature
• 1:20:53
  turned up in the page, the theme to The Thing, which is a very
• 1:20:58
  recognizable theme, and it makes those and the weed read stuff
• 1:21:04
  appears, it makes them 10 times scarier.
• 1:21:08
  So give it a try. Sort of, yeah.
• 1:21:11
  Just give that a. Try put it on the phone.
• 1:21:13
  Or something. And then the other more sort of
• 1:21:17
  more traditional recommendation. This is a non fiction book by
• 1:21:22
  Gary Russell called The Inside Story.
• 1:21:25
  Doctor Who, The inside Story about the making of the first
• 1:21:29
  two years of Doctor Who when the series came back.
• 1:21:33
  So about the episodes, about how the scripting process and all
• 1:21:37
  the all the sound effects, all the visual effects, the casting
• 1:21:42
  of the actors and just sort of almost like an oral history of
• 1:21:46
  those first two years and, and how much thought and, and care
• 1:21:52
  was taken was put into it. Even though, you know, we all
• 1:21:55
  know that they were trying things they'd never done before.
• 1:21:58
  They were making TV and then they were making Doctor Who in a
• 1:22:01
  way they'd never went. They've never met.
• 1:22:06
  And it's a great sort of encyclopedia resource, really
• 1:22:10
  about the those first two years of the Russell T Davies era.
• 1:22:16
  There was one in the 70s wasn't it by Mack Hulk and.
• 1:22:19
  Tara Sticks called the making of a television program.
• 1:22:21
  So I'm guessing this is like an updated version of that.
• 1:22:25
  But you know what? A lot of people that made that
• 1:22:28
  make television now, that were Doctor Who fans in the 70s
• 1:22:31
  poured through the pages of that book.
• 1:22:33
  It was their first glimpse, you know, breaking down the script
• 1:22:36
  editing process, directing an all list of music, maybe people
• 1:22:42
  reading this book now, the encyclopedia.
• 1:22:45
  What's it called? The inside.
• 1:22:47
  The inside story, The inside. Story.
• 1:22:50
  Maybe those will be the people of the future.
• 1:22:52
  Making television for us to enjoy.
• 1:22:54
  What we. I wonder?
• 1:22:55
  Yeah. Well, what about you?
• 1:22:58
  I would like to recommend a book.
• 1:23:01
  That I've held at the wall many times because frankly my opinion
• 1:23:07
  and this gentleman's do not marry very often at all.
• 1:23:12
  It's called Dimensions in Time and Space by Mark Campbell.
• 1:23:16
  Now what what you usually find it in the works for a sort of
• 1:23:21
  £0.99 now, even though it started off as 1495 and there's
• 1:23:25
  a reason for that. And basically what he's done is
• 1:23:28
  he's written out every single Doctor Who TV story all the way
• 1:23:32
  up to sort of series two of the new series.
• 1:23:37
  And then he's done tiny capture reviews as well for the books
• 1:23:40
  and the big Finnish audios up to the date where this was
• 1:23:42
  published. And he sort of breaks it down
• 1:23:45
  with the usual sort of stuff that you get the ratings,
• 1:23:47
  transmission dates, novelization, when it came out
• 1:23:51
  on video, the cast and all of that.
• 1:23:53
  But the thing that makes my blood boil is the section called
• 1:23:58
  Comment, where he writes a capture review of each TV story
• 1:24:02
  and then gives a percentage out of 100.
• 1:24:06
  And frankly, this man's opinions baffle me beyond belief.
• 1:24:10
  Oh, give me some. Well, I shall give you one right
• 1:24:13
  now. Hang on.
• 1:24:15
  OK. Despite copious amounts of.
• 1:24:18
  Location work and. The niftiest side men.
• 1:24:20
  Ever seen the invasion? Turns out to be 1 long bore
• 1:24:23
  2222%. Oh he's mad.
• 1:24:28
  Go on, choose A. Story.
• 1:24:29
  I'll find it. Oh, OK.
• 1:24:32
  So we don't trout and let's do. Oh, the stones of blood, Stones
• 1:24:37
  of blood. Oh, we might quite like that
• 1:24:38
  one. Hang on, let's have a little
• 1:24:39
  look. Stones of Blood OK, the first
• 1:24:43
  two parts are very applescary, directed by Daryl Blake with
• 1:24:46
  omnipresent coring of raisins and an eerie glowing augury
• 1:24:50
  gliding about everywhere. However, the final two episodes
• 1:24:54
  turned back on their carefully orchestrated menace and slip
• 1:24:57
  into sci-fi standard cliches with scenes of Tom Baker hanging
• 1:25:02
  it up in the hyperspace spaceship. 69% Do you know what?
• 1:25:08
  Wait. Guess what he gave Ghost light I
• 1:25:10
  mean. Will you please listen to this?
• 1:25:12
  You ready for this? Go for it.
• 1:25:14
  Do you like Ghost Light, by the way?
• 1:25:16
  Yes, there are many wonderful things about.
• 1:25:19
  Ghost light the beautifully. Decorated set, the atmospheric
• 1:25:21
  lighting, the surreal, disturbing imagery, La La La La
• 1:25:24
  la. But the effect of all these is
• 1:25:25
  largely undermined in the fact that it's a story is a complete
• 1:25:28
  incoherent mess. It's not like I don't like
• 1:25:31
  complex story is that Ghost Light has added score a very
• 1:25:34
  simple story told extremely badly.
• 1:25:37
  This is not entirely Platts fault.
• 1:25:39
  Much of the blame lies with Andrew Cartmel, who as script
• 1:25:42
  editor should have ironed out many of the rough patches have
• 1:25:44
  made sure the story was intelligible to the general
• 1:25:47
  viewer. However, Ghost Light is a story
• 1:25:49
  made solely for fans. And when that happens, the show
• 1:25:54
  deserves what it gets. Which in this case was.
• 1:25:56
  Cancellation 17% out of 100. The show deserves what it gets.
• 1:26:01
  Unbelievable. Isn't it honestly anyway.
• 1:26:04
  I can't, it's like it's like hate reading though.
• 1:26:06
  I can't stop going back to it, and every time I do, I, I know
• 1:26:11
  the feeling. Yeah, that's.
• 1:26:12
  There used to be a few film reviewers that you would just
• 1:26:15
  hate read just because you think, oh, I can't wait, what?
• 1:26:18
  They're going to get wrong this time.
• 1:26:20
  I think that's why people press play on this podcast, you know?
• 1:26:23
  To hear what bullshit I'm going to come up with now.
• 1:26:25
  What is he talking about now? Thank God he's got that Daniel
• 1:26:29
  Rosley with him. Talking some sense.
• 1:26:31
  Oh, you're a charmer. Oh yeah, say it.
• 1:26:33
  Again, you're fabulous. Daniel, now I would like to ask
• 1:26:40
  you one final question before we say goodbye.
• 1:26:43
  And that is I did in fact, issue a challenge to you at some point
• 1:26:47
  in the 1st, 3rd of this episode. And that was to read a book
• 1:26:54
  you've had no exposure to before in a range you've had no
• 1:26:57
  exposure to before. Oh God.
• 1:27:00
  Now if I can get that lay one on me.
• 1:27:05
  I've been waiting for you to say that.
• 1:27:06
  For years. Fine, right?
• 1:27:09
  I'll choose you something really juicy and I'll get it in the
• 1:27:12
  post to you, all right? Oh, you're so kind.
• 1:27:16
  Well, it's basically my way of enticing.
• 1:27:18
  You back to do another website That's so.
• 1:27:19
  Much fun tonight. Oh, of course I'm coming back.
• 1:27:24
  Well. Daniel, please tell everybody
• 1:27:27
  where they can find you online. I want to do another little plug
• 1:27:30
  of your New Earth novelization while we're talking about books.
• 1:27:35
  While we're talking about books. OK, So I.
• 1:27:38
  AM I am probably the only person in the world who wrote a
• 1:27:42
  novelization of the Doctor Who series 2 opener which is quite
• 1:27:47
  unpopular. New Earth, where I I as to to to
• 1:27:53
  make Mr. Some of Mr. Campbell's works.
• 1:27:55
  I ironed out some of the rough patches and added, added a few
• 1:28:00
  things of my own. So it's all written.
• 1:28:04
  The thing is it's it's coming out now in audio form.
• 1:28:07
  It's my own sort of mini podcast, as in sort of audio
• 1:28:10
  book style reading of each chapter with sound effects
• 1:28:14
  because I couldn't get enough of those and little snatches of
• 1:28:18
  music occasionally. And you'll get to hear my
• 1:28:21
  attempts, sort of David Tennant impression.
• 1:28:24
  I didn't realize you know when this is completed.
• 1:28:27
  And all out I'm going to get three of my book clubbers and me
• 1:28:31
  to all listen to it. Of this novelized version.
• 1:28:35
  Absolutely. Oh well, if that's not an
• 1:28:38
  incentive to. Finish it, I don't know what it
• 1:28:40
  is. Bloody good thing I like.
• 1:28:43
  You, you know, all right, fucking be quite hard on these
• 1:28:46
  things. And you can also find me on
• 1:28:49
  Twitter. At Daniel under score Rawnsley,
• 1:28:53
  so that's RAWNSLEY, which is the the the the voice I always use
• 1:29:00
  on the phone when I have to spell on my name now very nice
• 1:29:04
  voices too Daniel. Listen, thank you very much for.
• 1:29:08
  Coming on and doing. This thank you for taking the
• 1:29:10
  time to read the book as well. Thank you for yeah suggesting
• 1:29:14
  this and thank you for. Yeah, bringing me back to the
• 1:29:17
  Doctor Who book world. Well, next time the as you're.
• 1:29:22
  Undetermined book of choice will be our subject matter.
• 1:29:27
  But thank you very much for your time.
• 1:29:29
  It's been wonderful. Thank you, Joe.