Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - The Year of Intelligent Tigers by Kate Orman (featuring Nathan Bottomley)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - The Year of Intelligent Tigers by Kate Orman (featuring Nathan Bottomley) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:04
  The tornado was widening, thinning out.
• 0:08
  The doctor was laughing madly. No, it was warm and genuine, his
• 0:13
  real laugh. There wasn't a hint of madness
• 0:16
  in it, just delight, elation. He had gone native, thought
• 0:21
  Angie. He had become Hychamus,
• 0:24
  hardwired into its atmosphere, into its air and water.
• 0:29
  That's enough, he said. His voice was as clear as though
• 0:33
  he was standing next to her. No more.
• 0:36
  That's quite enough. The tornado hadn't been the
• 0:39
  thing that was coming. It was just an overture.
• 0:43
  The sky darkened, the lightning dying down to nothing.
• 0:48
  It all stopped snapping off. The air sang with tension.
• 0:55
  The doctor stopped laughing. He raised his hands above his
• 0:58
  head and brought them sharply down.
• 1:02
  Then it happened. The entire eastern sky had burst
• 1:08
  like a flash bulb. It wasn't lightning, not unless
• 1:11
  it was a bolt several kilometres wide.
• 1:14
  It couldn't have been a nuke. Surely the flash would have been
• 1:17
  followed by a killing shockwave. Whatever it was, it had hit the
• 1:21
  space board. She immediately imagined what
• 1:25
  must be left of the tarmac and its double arc of buildings.
• 1:29
  The sun had come out. The sky overhead was a blurry
• 1:33
  patch of blue, painful to look at, a hole in the middle of the
• 1:37
  clouds. It looked like an eye in
• 1:39
  reverse, blue pupil and black iris, staring down at the dam.
• 1:46
  Do I have your full attention? Said the Doctor.
• 1:50
  He was still there, at the top of the dam.
• 1:53
  He was speaking normally, even quietly, but the swirling winds
• 1:57
  picked up his voice and carried it across the dam.
• 2:00
  It was something like those invisible speakers they used
• 2:03
  here, thought Angie. She was certain that all of the
• 2:06
  combatants had heard it. Probably the whole city had
• 2:09
  heard it. Maybe the whole planet had heard
• 2:11
  it. Now she could see the tigers and
• 2:14
  humans cowering together at the edge of the Creek.
• 2:17
  They stood stunned, shaking their heads from side to side,
• 2:21
  rubbing their eyes. Faces were turned up to the
• 2:24
  widening circle of light above them and the small figure
• 2:27
  beneath it. I've spent all this time
• 2:30
  encouraging you to find your own solution, said the doctor.
• 2:34
  I wanted you to work together to make peace.
• 2:37
  Well, now I'm going to make you make peace.
• 2:40
  Angie realised he wasn't quite touching the ground.
• 2:43
  The winds were holding him up like a bird of prey, hovering in
• 2:46
  place. Yes, I've destroyed the
• 2:49
  spaceport, he said. I could destroy everything if I
• 2:52
  wanted to. All of it.
• 2:54
  The city, the storehouses, the bewilderness.
• 2:57
  I could erase this last bit of land, let the ocean swallow it
• 3:00
  up. But I'm not going to.
• 3:03
  Of course I'm not going to. I wish you could see yourselves.
• 3:07
  Tiny people, miniature tigers. He spread his arms wide.
• 3:12
  The tigers took this world and saved it, made it possible for
• 3:16
  life to go on here. They've reached incredible
• 3:18
  heights again and again. The weather system they built
• 3:21
  stretches over the entire globe. And you're both arrogant enough
• 3:24
  to think that this planet is yours to control.
• 3:27
  Well, the planet is tired of your fumbling games.
• 3:30
  The human beings came here across the empty sky of the
• 3:33
  universe. Imagine it.
• 3:35
  You're both like sailors from different seas, cast up together
• 3:38
  on the same little island. This tiny, precious island
• 3:41
  world. It's just you now.
• 3:43
  I could have destroyed anything. Everything.
• 3:46
  But I've destroyed the spaceport.
• 3:48
  You're stuck here with one another.
• 3:51
  This world is inherently unstable.
• 3:53
  Like everything in life, the only way it can be made
• 3:56
  habitable is to correct the drift in the weather system.
• 3:59
  And I've done a little tinkering.
• 4:01
  I've just made that drift much, much worse.
• 4:05
  Your island will be ruined and gone within a decade unless you
• 4:08
  fix it. Neither of you have the skills
• 4:11
  to do that on your own. Not before the Hurricanes
• 4:13
  destroy you. The tigers understand how their
• 4:16
  ancestors thought. They can translate.
• 4:18
  The archives work the machines. The humans understand Whether
• 4:23
  they'll bring the scientific knowledge the tigers are
• 4:25
  lacking, it's up to you now. I've finished here.
• 4:29
  Save your own world for a change.
• 4:32
  And Angie realized he wasn't possessed.
• 4:35
  He wasn't transformed. He was, at last, absolutely
• 4:39
  himself. He took a bow in the spotlight
• 4:43
  of sunshine and walked away. Welcome back to the Hamster Book
• 5:29
  Club. My name is Joe Ford and it's
• 5:34
  been a while, but he did in fact, open the book club many
• 5:40
  years ago. It feels like now.
• 5:42
  Mr. Nathan Bottomley. Hello, Nathan.
• 5:46
  Hey Joe, how are you? What book did we do?
• 5:48
  I can't remember. Which is Festival of Death by
• 5:50
  Jonathan Morris with Science. Fraser That's right.
• 5:53
  Yeah, many, many moons ago you were so horrified you never came
• 5:57
  back. I think I did say at the time,
• 6:01
  didn't I, that for me, Doctor Who was ATV show.
• 6:05
  Yeah, wouldn't. Brilliantly, in the middle of
• 6:07
  that episode, you said, yeah, this is very cool.
• 6:10
  There's only so much effort I'm prepared to put into a Doctor
• 6:13
  Who book. It's like I'll find him
• 6:17
  something simpler next time. And you did and.
• 6:22
  I did, yes. Well, look, today we are here to
• 6:25
  talk about The Year of Intelligent Tigers by Kate
• 6:29
  Allman, and I want to ask you a question first before we even
• 6:32
  talk about the book. You know Kate Allman, don't you?
• 6:38
  Yeah, yeah. So we met at university and we
• 6:44
  ended up sort of working on the Doctor Who Club of Australia
• 6:48
  newsletter. And for sure, while we're
• 6:50
  actually flatmates and I kind of had lost touch with her a bit
• 6:58
  during the writing of the Year of Intelligent Tigers.
• 7:02
  And in fact, so I was around for some of the new adventures
• 7:07
  things. I think I was I think I was the
• 7:10
  first person, I think I might have been the first person to to
• 7:18
  read sleepy. I'm not if I'm not sure if
• 7:22
  that's true, but in in some, you know, like I, I was sort of
• 7:26
  around while she was involved in those.
• 7:28
  And that sort of added an extra layer of interest in the new
• 7:33
  adventures to ask because, you know, Kate was being
• 7:36
  commissioned. But we got we had nail piece.
• 7:40
  You know, because you had a credit in that book.
• 7:42
  Yes, I provided all of the very bad French that appears in that
• 7:48
  in that book, sadly. But yeah.
• 7:52
  Yeah. So, you know, like the the New
• 7:54
  Adventures were the series of Doctor Who novels that I
• 7:57
  actually kind of ended up reading and I got as far as
• 8:00
  Falls the Shadow and then I was done.
• 8:05
  Understandable. I do want to ask though, Like I,
• 8:08
  you know, knowing you as well as I do and a few things about Kate
• 8:12
  Orman, like I could only imagine that the two of you sharing a
• 8:15
  flat, you know, is a sitcom in the making.
• 8:18
  But there are locks and adventures occur in there.
• 8:21
  There weren't really larks and adventures so much, but we did
• 8:25
  get on very, very well. And one of the things about Kate
• 8:30
  that I always loved is the sound of her laugh.
• 8:34
  And one of the reasons, I mean, beyond the fact that she's just
• 8:38
  incredibly brilliant and insightful, one of the reasons
• 8:43
  that I wanted to get her on flight through entirety, which I
• 8:45
  finally managed to do this year, was just so that people could
• 8:50
  hear the sound of her laugh. And being able to provoke that
• 8:53
  laugh is something pretty special as well.
• 8:55
  So, yeah, yeah. And so now I'm assuming we're
• 9:00
  heading into this book with absolutely no bias whatsoever.
• 9:04
  Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I have already
• 9:09
  actually podcasted about one of Kate's books.
• 9:13
  I did an episode of The Real McCoy about her first book, The
• 9:16
  left-handed Hummingbird, which I read at the time and had read
• 9:21
  sort of several times. And, you know, I had read, you
• 9:27
  know, his subsequent books like Sad Piece and Sleepy.
• 9:30
  But I, I kind of had abandoned the New Adventures at some point
• 9:35
  during its run and I never really picked up the BBC books.
• 9:39
  And so, so I had never read the Year of Intelligent Tigers
• 9:46
  before and I didn't even really know it by reputation.
• 9:50
  So this was a bit of an unknown. So I, you know, came to it
• 9:55
  prepared to, you know, I came to it pleased that it was a cake
• 9:59
  book because I knew it would be good, but I actually wasn't
• 10:03
  prepared for how good it was because I think it's really
• 10:07
  incredible. I I really wanted to do like a
• 10:12
  one-on-one book club with you and I was sort of rooting around
• 10:16
  thinking what would be a great book for Nathan to read.
• 10:19
  And then I'll sort of remembered the the almost no, not the
• 10:23
  almost gay romance, the gay romance the doctor has in this
• 10:26
  book. And then I remembered that it
• 10:28
  was quite a chill book in in terms of it isn't sort of new
• 10:32
  adventures in its extreme plotting and cyberspace and all
• 10:39
  that bullshit that happened over there.
• 10:41
  And just say it was quite like a sensual book.
• 10:44
  It was a real book that sort of put you into the page, like with
• 10:48
  how the prose was written. So I was sort of hoping I was on
• 10:53
  a good thing giving this one to you.
• 10:55
  But then, and I love it as well. So I was like, oh man, if he
• 10:59
  hates it, it's going to break my heart.
• 11:01
  So when you sent the first message, you're about 1/3 in and
• 11:04
  went, this is fantastic. My whole body just relaxed.
• 11:08
  Oh, thank God. Where do we start?
• 11:12
  Where do we start with this? So, so I, I've got a kind of
• 11:20
  opening statement, right? So I don't think Doctor Who is a
• 11:25
  science fiction program and I am happy about that.
• 11:30
  And occasionally it does science fiction, but that's not
• 11:33
  something that I'm super interested in.
• 11:37
  When Kate did Oxygen on FTA, she said that the reason that she
• 11:42
  really likes it is because it's it's science fiction.
• 11:46
  And that reminded me that Kate, I think, is a science fiction
• 11:52
  writer and this, I mean, you know, like it's ATV tie in sort
• 12:01
  of genre book, but it's very like Ursula Le Guin's writing, I
• 12:10
  think. Like I think it's.
• 12:13
  Comparable. OK, so, so Ursula Le Guin, I
• 12:17
  first met as a kid when I read her first Earthsea novel, and
• 12:22
  she had written three books about Wizards and staff who
• 12:28
  lived in an archipelago, like islands, and there were Dragons
• 12:31
  and stuff like that. It was fairly traditional
• 12:34
  science. It was fairly traditional sort
• 12:36
  of fantasy in that sense, but it was beautifully written.
• 12:40
  Like the prose is really spare and really descriptive and the
• 12:45
  use of imagery is really striking without being annoying.
• 12:49
  And Kate has has, I think I'm like, I don't know, I can't
• 12:54
  believe that Kate hasn't read any Ursula Le Guin.
• 12:58
  But but Ursula Le Guin is also a science fiction writer.
• 13:03
  Her most famous book is The Left Hand of Darkness, which is about
• 13:07
  a planet where there's only one gender.
• 13:10
  And so there's been no war for some reason as well.
• 13:15
  And it's a sort of experiment with, you know, how do human
• 13:20
  societies operate without the differences between genders,
• 13:24
  right? And and her science fiction is
• 13:27
  like that. It sets up worlds of particular
• 13:32
  types and sees what happens. But there are all sorts of
• 13:37
  issues or ideas about the way races interact with one another
• 13:45
  or different groups of people at different levels of technology
• 13:48
  interact with one another. And, and so I guess this seemed
• 13:56
  like that. It seemed like not quite a
• 13:59
  thought experiment because it is a story.
• 14:01
  I mean, she's interested in creating a world and describing
• 14:04
  it and talking about it. But but she manages to set up a
• 14:12
  thing that has all these resonances, that has all these
• 14:15
  ideas about like indigeneity and and ownership of the land and
• 14:20
  and a transmission of knowledge and all of these things that are
• 14:25
  hugely important, particularly in Australian context, you know,
• 14:30
  for us to understand our relationships with each other as
• 14:35
  Australians, both Indigenous and non indigenous, and our
• 14:38
  understanding of our relationship with the land, you
• 14:41
  know, on which we find ourselves.
• 14:43
  All of that stuff is there without it being, you know,
• 14:47
  without it being a sermon and without it, you know, without it
• 14:51
  being an allegory or anything like that.
• 14:53
  But she sets up a proper science fiction thing, and it's resonant
• 14:59
  because it it, it, it covers that sort of ground.
• 15:04
  Yeah. So anyway, I just think I like,
• 15:06
  I just think it's astoundingly beautifully written and it has
• 15:10
  something to say. But, you know, first and
• 15:14
  foremost, it's a story about that world and those people and
• 15:17
  about the Doctor. I just think it's amazing.
• 15:20
  I have read so many Doctor Who works lately for the book club
• 15:25
  by inexperienced authors who over describe everything and and
• 15:35
  just feel sentences full of too many adjectives and too much
• 15:39
  punctuation and the sentences are far too long.
• 15:42
  You know, paragraph long sentences describing the TARDIS
• 15:46
  flying through the vortex and all of this.
• 15:47
  And when I started reading this book and it was simple
• 15:52
  sentences, but with beauty in the writing, I choose like, why
• 15:59
  are, you know, less is more, you know, like, yeah.
• 16:03
  And she, she really makes an impact with with just I, I think
• 16:07
  she's relaxed as a writer as well.
• 16:09
  Because I have recently read Set piece and set pieces is full of
• 16:14
  all of those new adventure tropes.
• 16:16
  It is angst ridden and it is overcomplicated and the plot is
• 16:20
  too heavy and there's, I don't know, there's just too much
• 16:23
  happening. Whereas here I just feel like
• 16:25
  she, she took a simple idea, one simple idea and explored it
• 16:31
  thoroughly, beautifully, emotionally, maturely.
• 16:37
  And I've not made those who books.
• 16:38
  I could say that was a really mature read, you know?
• 16:41
  But also, I came out of it. I thought, fuck me, she really
• 16:44
  understands people, you know, and this is not a world that
• 16:48
  exists, but she knows how this world ticks.
• 16:51
  It's it's really good the sense of place that she creates as
• 16:56
  well. And that's the other actually a
• 16:57
  little green thing. Those, those earthy books had a
• 17:01
  map of earthy, you know, which is like an archipelago full of
• 17:05
  violence with all of these strange names and stuff like
• 17:07
  that. And it's a kind of traditional
• 17:09
  thing, you know, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and stuff.
• 17:11
  They'll have maps at the beginning of it.
• 17:13
  That's kind of a thing that those sorts of books do.
• 17:16
  But you don't need the map to get a real sense of what
• 17:20
  Hitchamen is like both you know where it is in its solar system,
• 17:26
  what the surface of the planet is like and what that one
• 17:30
  continent, that one island that exists in its sea is like.
• 17:35
  What's there and the relationships and it like it
• 17:38
  said, there's a real, there's a real sense of of of place which
• 17:44
  there needs to be, I think, for the themes of it to work as.
• 17:48
  Well, I think the the idea of writing about a world full of
• 17:55
  music, it's it's almost a mad concept, right, Because music is
• 17:59
  such a you have such an emotional response to music.
• 18:02
  So hearing it is that they experiencing it.
• 18:05
  So I would thought if, if that was your starting point, I
• 18:07
  thought, oh, you're onto a loser there like.
• 18:10
  No, Yeah. How are you going to write about
• 18:12
  music? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:13
  I, I always listen to those opening chapters where Angie's
• 18:17
  walking around the city of Tigers with instruments coming
• 18:21
  at her and there's rehearsals going on over there, people
• 18:24
  doing gigs over there, someone just on the street strumming
• 18:27
  their guitar. And you could just hear music
• 18:30
  coming from every direction. To later in the book where
• 18:34
  there's a beautiful, beautiful sequence where the, the car was
• 18:39
  teaching the tiger about music. And he talks about the music in
• 18:46
  like instinctive terms of like what the music sounds like.
• 18:50
  And you can hear it just for how how the tiger is translating the
• 18:54
  music that he's hearing. Isn't, isn't Carl explaining
• 18:58
  like the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to to
• 19:02
  the Tiger? It's amazing.
• 19:04
  It's not good. And of course, you know, like,
• 19:06
  as, as he says, it's one of the most famous bits of music kind
• 19:10
  of ever. And then there's a description
• 19:12
  where this music teacher is talking his way through it.
• 19:15
  But the descriptions of playing and the descriptions of the
• 19:18
  instruments and all of that sort of thing is really great.
• 19:21
  I mean, can we talk about the the world maybe because like
• 19:27
  this, that city, the single city, city Port Annie.
• 19:31
  And that's a very silly liquid name, I think is like it's not
• 19:39
  described in a massive amount of detail, but we get little hints.
• 19:42
  You know, the sort of clothes that people are wearing are kind
• 19:45
  of described and and sort of the technology is described, but
• 19:51
  there's not a lot, you know, we get it's glass and concrete.
• 19:54
  The buildings are low and then there's just sort of music
• 19:57
  everywhere. And it's that first chapter, I
• 19:59
  think, which is just so brilliant, isn't it?
• 20:02
  Like it's it starts in the middle with and Angie.
• 20:08
  Kind of running to find the doctor after she's had a kind of
• 20:12
  bad tiger experience. And then you get the doctor
• 20:17
  saying, tell us about the tigers.
• 20:18
  And then we go back to the beginning and we get, you know,
• 20:21
  everything that's LED up to that event with the tigers so that
• 20:25
  that chapter can end with the confrontation with the tiger
• 20:29
  that's upset her. But in that chapter, we just get
• 20:31
  an absolute sense of what that world is like.
• 20:35
  And it's something that's so rare in Doctor Who, isn't it?
• 20:38
  Like most alien planets just have a building on them, at
• 20:41
  least in the classic series, you know, So the idea of sort of,
• 20:46
  you know, a place with just cafes and, and pubs and bars
• 20:51
  and, and a library and all of that is so great, You know, the.
• 20:56
  Other thing that's rare in that chapter is it's just hang time
• 20:59
  for these regulars. Well, they're just on this
• 21:01
  planet. They've been there for a little
• 21:02
  while. They're settled in.
• 21:04
  The Doctors got a May, maybe more than a mate.
• 21:08
  This is having the best time of his life because he's a
• 21:11
  musician. And so this is the one planet
• 21:13
  he's come to where he's basically a rock star.
• 21:16
  You know, he's Got Talent. Angie's.
• 21:19
  Angie's not used to sort of the slower pace of what's going on.
• 21:22
  So she's investigating. She's up the library.
• 21:25
  She's doing, you know, proper investigation to what's happened
• 21:28
  with the tigers. I just love that.
• 21:30
  I love that about these three because they do this quite a bit
• 21:34
  where there's lots going on in in books.
• 21:36
  And then there's one book where it's just chill, you know?
• 21:39
  And you feel like, yeah, do you know what?
• 21:41
  I understand why you're going on these adventures because it
• 21:44
  isn't always, you know, full frostle.
• 21:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all, it's so good.
• 21:50
  I mean, because in and then in the next chapter, it's like, you
• 21:53
  know, we go on a picnic and, and like, and the world isn't just
• 21:59
  like, you know, in a way the world is enough like ours that
• 22:02
  we can kind of understand it. Do you know what I mean?
• 22:04
  It's like a beach town or something like that.
• 22:08
  You know, there's a universal basic income for musicians of
• 22:11
  some sort. And, and so there's no sort of
• 22:14
  poverty or anything like that. And there's just sort of music
• 22:16
  everywhere. And it's a place where there's
• 22:18
  lots of live music like that's and it's it's future technology,
• 22:22
  but not sort of super intrusively future technology.
• 22:25
  And so in a way, too, I just got the sense from the beginning
• 22:28
  that the idea of a city where just tigers are wandering
• 22:31
  through like it's always. Aware of them?
• 22:33
  Are you just sort of lazily lying about in the streets or in
• 22:38
  the library or whatever? So when they do make their move,
• 22:41
  you know they're everywhere because they've been, Yeah.
• 22:44
  Yeah. In lots of different places.
• 22:46
  But I mean, there's something odd and magical about that.
• 22:50
  And you know that it's our world, but there are tigers
• 22:53
  wandering through it. And, you know, there's a tiger
• 22:55
  in the library, and no one really kind of bats an eyelid at
• 22:59
  it, you know? And it's like, I just think
• 23:03
  that's such a brilliant, beautiful idea, making the
• 23:07
  adversaries tigers instead of some bullshit Doctor Who's on.
• 23:11
  Fire isn't it? It's brilliant, beautiful.
• 23:14
  Tigers are absolutely beautiful and they're deadly.
• 23:17
  So they work on both levels and you just get it right.
• 23:20
  We've all seen a documentary of tigers.
• 23:22
  If you're lucky enough, you've seen an actual tiger.
• 23:25
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's brilliant, isn't it?
• 23:27
  It's perfect because they don't need to be described.
• 23:30
  They're not stupid. Like probably the closest that
• 23:34
  classic Doctor Who comes to dealing with the issues in this
• 23:39
  is Doctor Who and the Silurians. Yeah, I made a few notes of
• 23:42
  that. Well, is where where the doctors
• 23:44
  sort of both sides and trying to.
• 23:47
  Yeah, yeah, between them, absolutely.
• 23:52
  There's one moment, like very early on, there's a meeting of
• 23:54
  the movement. You know, they're rebelling
• 23:56
  against the Tigers once they make their move and the Doctor
• 23:59
  says, oh, of course this is their planet.
• 24:02
  And like everyone, kind of everyone sort of, you know, and
• 24:05
  Angie has to kind of step in and say something and try and sort
• 24:09
  of mitigate that. And it's not there's it's not a
• 24:11
  big moment. You might miss it.
• 24:13
  But you know the Doctor automatically sides with them
• 24:17
  because they were here 1st and. The point is that there are lots
• 24:22
  of planets with humans on them. This is the one, the one with
• 24:26
  targets. That's right.
• 24:30
  And so that that idea. But, you know, the Silurians are
• 24:34
  silly. Do you know what I mean?
• 24:35
  Like we love Doctor and the Silurians and it is of course
• 24:38
  brilliant and you know, but the Siberians?
• 24:42
  Are many rubber? Going, you know, like they're
• 24:48
  silly and having tigers. Which, yeah.
• 24:52
  Of course the tigers like there's something magical about
• 24:56
  them and there's a couple of references to William Blakes,
• 25:01
  you know, tiger, tiger burning bright the the poem that Tommy
• 25:05
  reads under the stairs in planet of the spiders and, you know,
• 25:10
  bears Mcgree for tigerologist, you know, refers to the tigers
• 25:16
  fearful symmetry at some point. And and so they're mythic as
• 25:20
  well. Aren't they tigers?
• 25:22
  You know, like, and they have a look, you know, they're orange
• 25:26
  and and. And describing like the flash of
• 25:30
  lime eyes and things like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:33
  How? Evocative on the page.
• 25:34
  Simple again though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:37
  And they just can kill you and they, they will eat you as well.
• 25:41
  And the idea that the tigers, you know, there's one point
• 25:44
  where one of the tigers remembers discussions about kind
• 25:49
  of the humans being overtaken. And she characterizes a possible
• 25:54
  plan as eating them all up. And there are a few.
• 25:58
  There are a few. Like there are one or two.
• 26:00
  You know, there's one really striking moment where, you know,
• 26:04
  a woman is eaten. And then later on when the
• 26:06
  tigers sort of come back into the city to attack.
• 26:09
  And one of the things Kate does is throw away really, really
• 26:12
  horrible violent moments. Like she'll just, she'll under
• 26:15
  describe them. And it's not just the it's not
• 26:18
  the imagery that makes them horrible.
• 26:20
  It's just, you know, the tigers ate people.
• 26:22
  They came into the thing and they ate.
• 26:24
  Although there was one moment that really struck me where
• 26:28
  somebody is killed and then the tiger just is described as
• 26:31
  dragging the person off like a side of bloody me.
• 26:35
  Yeah, yeah, it's that, that was the big yeah.
• 26:38
  But even that, like there's that.
• 26:39
  And that's a really shocking because Carl's involved in that,
• 26:42
  isn't it? So there's there's a moment
• 26:44
  because the Tigers, when they rise up, just brilliantly abduct
• 26:49
  all of the music teachers and take them out into the
• 26:52
  wilderness and ask to be taught the violin like that.
• 26:56
  That's the first that you hear here is that a tiger comes up to
• 27:00
  Carl and says teach us the teach me the violin and he doesn't
• 27:05
  even understand him at 1st and so the doctor that mounts a
• 27:09
  rescue and. Wonderfully, the most romantic
• 27:14
  depiction of Paul Mcgannon Dr. you'll ever see.
• 27:17
  A stride? A horse?
• 27:19
  Isn't it like coming through the wilderness?
• 27:22
  No, she describes him like a Centaur because he's on a Black
• 27:25
  Horse in dressed in black with hair sort of streaming behind
• 27:29
  him. Oh.
• 27:30
  My, now we're talking hot, all right?
• 27:33
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:34
  Kate did have a thing for Sylvester McCoy and did have a
• 27:37
  thing for Paul McGann as well. And you know, she, yeah, we,
• 27:42
  yeah, she, I mean, she. And like, I don't know properly
• 27:47
  the history of the BBC 8th Doctor adventures, but she and
• 27:52
  John write the 2nd 1:00, AM I right?
• 27:54
  That's right. Yeah, they and then they go on
• 27:56
  and write two more after that, and then Kate writes this one
• 28:00
  effectively solo. Right.
• 28:03
  Yeah. She she says that he writes 2
• 28:05
  inset chapters and that the that the two of them outlined the
• 28:11
  story together. I think.
• 28:13
  Yeah, yeah. So, so she she kind of helps to
• 28:19
  create the 8th Doctor because there's not that much there, is
• 28:23
  there? I mean, I, you know, I also love
• 28:28
  the TV movie, but you know, it's not great moment in televisual
• 28:34
  history or anything. And it's all we've got is about
• 28:37
  60 minutes of Paul Mcgann's performance as the Doctor.
• 28:40
  I mean, I've done I've done both the eight Doctors and Vampire
• 28:43
  science this year, right. And Terence decides in the 8
• 28:48
  Doctors he did a lot of TV movies at all.
• 28:50
  So he's he basically has in the opening chapter, the doctor
• 28:54
  think, well, that was a awfully strange affair that I just was
• 28:58
  involved in full of illogical events.
• 29:00
  Anyway, I'm going to turn this weird console room back into the
• 29:03
  white one and let's go off on some adventures.
• 29:05
  Hurrah. And then Kate and John come
• 29:08
  along in vampire science and go, no, we're not doing that.
• 29:11
  We're back to the TV movie console room.
• 29:14
  And he is absolutely that romantic figure that he was in
• 29:18
  the TV movie. But they put him in a really
• 29:21
  impossible situation where it's a bit like this where he's
• 29:24
  trying to negotiate between humans and vampires in that one.
• 29:28
  And he's just trying to stop them or getting killed.
• 29:31
  It's really interesting book. But this book this book comes
• 29:36
  after you'll be pleased to hear Gallifrey has been destroyed in
• 29:40
  the. Past.
• 29:41
  They decided that it was all getting a bit too complicated
• 29:44
  with Gallifrey, so let's just get rid of that there.
• 29:47
  And as a result, the Doctor has lost his memories.
• 29:49
  So we're ditching continuity for the second-half of the 8th
• 29:53
  Doctor books. The best move they ever made.
• 29:56
  So we ain't doing Daleks assignment and all this
• 29:57
  bullshit. We're going to tell some
• 29:59
  original Doctor Who books for a little while.
• 30:02
  And so this is the Doctor to three books into getting the
• 30:06
  TARDIS back after spending 100 years on Earth because they want
• 30:11
  to sort of build him up as a character who's had lived
• 30:14
  experiences. So he has a century on Earth.
• 30:17
  Then he gets the TARDIS back, and this is basically is second
• 30:21
  time out into space after getting the TARDIS back.
• 30:23
  So OK, we're making faltering steps into him discovering the
• 30:27
  universe again, which is why there's a lot of talk about he
• 30:32
  doesn't belong anywhere in the book.
• 30:33
  Yeah, Yeah. OK.
• 30:35
  And because we get that chapter that said in the 30s and another
• 30:39
  one said in the 60s. So that's like during that, like
• 30:43
  during that period. And he does say something about
• 30:46
  how he hopes he never gets his memories back at at one point.
• 30:51
  And there's he refers to amnesia and stuff as well.
• 30:56
  Yeah, I, we don't see the TARDIS at all, do we?
• 31:01
  Do we? Does it even?
• 31:02
  Get mentioned. No.
• 31:03
  Oh, how lovely. He's very, very Cartmel, isn't
• 31:06
  it? You know, like, yeah, let's,
• 31:08
  let's just use it to get to the planet and then tell a story.
• 31:12
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a reference to it
• 31:14
  because, you know, Carl's aware that the doctor has arrived and
• 31:17
  that he will go at some point. Do we want to talk about Carl?
• 31:25
  Please, can we talk about Carl? Because you know what, right?
• 31:28
  This isn't the first time, weird enough in this short run of
• 31:30
  books since he's lost his memory where the Doctor has a
• 31:35
  flirtation with another man. Because there's a book called
• 31:38
  The Turing Test in the Earth arc where Alan Turin is absolutely
• 31:43
  obsessed with this gorgeous figure that's walked into the
• 31:47
  coding office and they have a fabulous adventure together.
• 31:50
  And the Doctor's actually using Turing the whole time and his
• 31:55
  his feelings for the Doctor to get because he's basically
• 31:58
  trying to get back out into space.
• 32:00
  It's a really interesting book. So I think this this sort of
• 32:04
  amnesiac Dr. Yeah, he sort of, he swings both ways.
• 32:09
  It's very coy about it. I mean, there's no way of
• 32:12
  reading it other than it's a romance.
• 32:14
  I mean, there's a, you know, he's playing the harpsichord and
• 32:17
  Karl comes out in his, you know, an interesting gown.
• 32:21
  Yeah. You know, and Karl doesn't want
• 32:24
  him to leave. And, you know, he's kind of
• 32:26
  aware that that if he stops playing first violin in this
• 32:30
  thing, then, you know, he might just go.
• 32:32
  In fact, he thinks he's never going to see him again once he's
• 32:35
  caught by the Tigers. He thinks the prop the doctor's
• 32:37
  probably gone. They're living together, aren't
• 32:40
  they? They're living together in that
• 32:41
  flat. Well, no, but he has his own
• 32:44
  flat, remember, because they have that big fight, like they
• 32:46
  have a giant fight early on where the dogs are Wonderful.
• 32:50
  Yeah. In fact, there's some
• 32:52
  strangeness about the doctor's behaviour there because he
• 32:55
  smashes the violin and sort of storms off.
• 32:57
  And his relationship with the music is really interesting.
• 33:00
  And there's a, there's a sort of sense that at one point both
• 33:04
  Carl and Angie kind of, we have this sort of thing where he's an
• 33:09
  imposter, you know, like he's not really one of us.
• 33:13
  And, you know, he has all of these sort of special powers as
• 33:17
  an alien and stuff that sort of sets him apart and means that he
• 33:22
  can't really know their experiences very well.
• 33:25
  I can't. Really like that imposter
• 33:27
  approach though, because it does sort of stress that he is alpha,
• 33:30
  you know he's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, without him
• 33:33
  having to behave. You know, in insane ways.
• 33:36
  Yes, yeah, although he does behave in a slightly insane way,
• 33:39
  doesn't he? He's got carried away in the
• 33:41
  solo. That is one of the things I like
• 33:43
  about the 8th Doctor in this second run of books is that he
• 33:46
  is a bit unpredictable and he is very emotional at times as well.
• 33:51
  But I'll tell you what, when they went off for that picnic
• 33:54
  making chocolate martinis at Twilight in.
• 33:57
  The. I was like, this is the most
• 33:59
  romantic moment the Doctor's ever had.
• 34:02
  Yeah, it really is, isn't it? They're having a great time.
• 34:05
  Should we? I think we should.
• 34:06
  You know, next time you can't. Let's get.
• 34:08
  Out, yeah. We'll make chocolate martinis.
• 34:10
  Chocolate martinis would be awesome.
• 34:13
  But yes, like they've, you know, it's like, and that really
• 34:18
  works. I think that's really that's
• 34:21
  good. And you know, like, I don't
• 34:24
  know, we're the first kind of do you remember that?
• 34:27
  Everyone kind of went Oh no, he kissed Daphne Ashbrook.
• 34:30
  That's terrible. Do you know what I mean?
• 34:32
  Now, the doctor's straight and it, that didn't have to mean
• 34:36
  that. And there's a hilarious way of
• 34:37
  it, too, isn't there? Where it's kind of winds Angie
• 34:44
  up and says, you know, you want to be careful.
• 34:47
  I've heard that everyone in this century is bi.
• 34:53
  And Prince is from the 60s. He's so.
• 34:55
  Relaxed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:58
  When do we get so uptight? Honestly, that's.
• 35:01
  Right. And so and and so that's clearly
• 35:05
  the thing with the doctor. And you know, we're now here 20
• 35:08
  something years later. And of course the doctors had an
• 35:11
  on screen same sex romance with snogging and everything.
• 35:15
  But I'm glad that 20 years ago, Kate was already heading in that
• 35:20
  direction. I mean, it's Paul McCann, right?
• 35:23
  He's super hot. He.
• 35:24
  Wouldn't be attractive. There is a moment towards the
• 35:27
  the climax of the book where the doctor and Carl are talking and,
• 35:32
  and he opens his mouth and Carl sort of presses his fingers
• 35:36
  against his lips. And I thought, are we actually
• 35:38
  going to see? Are they going to have a kiss?
• 35:40
  And they don't. But it was, it was intimate
• 35:42
  enough that I was like, yeah, it's very clear what's happening
• 35:46
  here. And then of course, something
• 35:48
  really terrible happens. And I like, I think the way that
• 35:51
  it ends is really probably good where the doctor doesn't forgive
• 35:55
  him for it. He does a really terrible thing.
• 35:58
  And it's another one of those things that's kind of thrown
• 36:00
  away. Like it looks like she doesn't
• 36:03
  actually kind of describe him pressing the button or anything
• 36:06
  like that. And then there's a hint of sort
• 36:08
  of Tiger's bodies in the water, but that's not clear either.
• 36:13
  And then later, like a tiger that we really like who really
• 36:17
  bonds with the Doctor, He's dead.
• 36:20
  And the doctor's weeping over her body.
• 36:23
  And that's when he sees Carl. And like, later on, like, he
• 36:27
  doesn't forgive Carl. He says, I understand why this
• 36:29
  happens and how it happens, but that's, you know, that's clearly
• 36:33
  the end of that. You know, and there's an
• 36:37
  explanation for why Carl does what he does, but he's not let
• 36:41
  off the hook at all for having done it.
• 36:43
  It could be so Pat, but the one of the last things the doctor
• 36:47
  says to Carl. I just think it's so well
• 36:50
  written. He says.
• 36:51
  I can't play your music anymore Carl.
• 36:53
  I don't forgive you. I don't understand you.
• 36:56
  I know the frosty it took it to open those floodgates and drown
• 36:59
  your enemies. But my passion is for something
• 37:02
  different, for life. Inexorable, relentless, dogged
• 37:06
  life. It's.
• 37:07
  Just gorgeous. Yeah, yeah.
• 37:11
  And, and like, that is really good as well because, you know,
• 37:17
  the, the, the when war breaks out and you know, like the
• 37:22
  doctor tries to prevent it from breaking out.
• 37:26
  You know, it's the moment, there's a moment where this is
• 37:29
  another thing, the series of books by an Australian writer
• 37:31
  called John Marsden and their kids books.
• 37:34
  And there's, I don't know whether people read them
• 37:37
  anymore. They're sort of slightly
• 37:38
  problematic, but they're really well done.
• 37:42
  Australia gets invaded and the kids are on a camping holiday
• 37:47
  when it happens and they end up having to fight and you know,
• 37:51
  they commit acts of terrorism and stuff and they kill people.
• 37:55
  It's really good. And so the first book, School
• 37:57
  Tomorrow when the war began, and there's like 7 or 8 of them.
• 38:00
  And there's even a sequel trilogy as well.
• 38:04
  And in a way it's a sort of metaphor for adulthood and stuff
• 38:07
  like that. But the description of these
• 38:09
  military actions, he's, he's really well done in those books.
• 38:14
  And, and I got that here. Like there's a, there's a moment
• 38:18
  where they go to the spaceport and try and take over the
• 38:21
  spaceport so that they can send a message to ask for help.
• 38:25
  And it's all just very well described, isn't it?
• 38:27
  And then, and then the doctor goes out to talk to the Tigers
• 38:33
  and he's having some success with that.
• 38:36
  And then there's a guy called Quick who is a cafe owner, and
• 38:41
  he and some other people come out and, and try and rescue the
• 38:45
  doctor or they misinterpret what's going on or that, or
• 38:49
  possibly they even just want to stop any sort of negotiation.
• 38:54
  And the whole thing sort of turns into sort of into
• 38:57
  bloodshed and stuff. And, and like when things go
• 39:01
  South, both Angie and Carl are kind of on the human side
• 39:07
  against the tigers, you know, and, and initially there are
• 39:11
  these things, you know, there's the attempt to rescue the
• 39:14
  hostages in the desert, in the bewilderness, for God's sake,
• 39:17
  that beautiful word. Brilliant name.
• 39:20
  Yeah. And you know, then trying to
• 39:23
  rescue Bess Mcgreeve, the tigerologist, from her house
• 39:26
  where she's under house arrest. And, and the and, and the scene
• 39:30
  at the, at the, at the spaceport, all of those are sort
• 39:33
  of really well done. But it's still contained.
• 39:35
  It's still we're trying to do something, but then it just
• 39:38
  breaks out into the kind of all out war.
• 39:40
  She explains it as like lawless violence and it's just
• 39:44
  irrational violence at that point.
• 39:46
  That bit where they go to Bizmas house, I thought that bit was
• 39:49
  superbly written. It was.
• 39:51
  Well told. Really awkward.
• 39:54
  You got big tigers in a small space, people are being swatted
• 39:58
  and not It is just viscerally violent.
• 40:01
  Yeah, really effective. And and like Angie stabs one of
• 40:07
  them with a pitchfork. And I think that that's long
• 40:11
  body, isn't it? The the tiger who is the most
• 40:14
  belligerent tiger later on? And Angie doesn't recognize her.
• 40:19
  In fact, there's a wonderful moment where does the doctor
• 40:22
  just say listen, you know, and suddenly Angie can understand
• 40:26
  them speaking. Yes, yeah.
• 40:30
  And it's like she could have been doing that all along.
• 40:33
  Do you know what I mean? Like that, that's a proper sort
• 40:37
  of serious moment. And that's a moment where she
• 40:38
  recognises, oh wait, that's the tiger that I, you know, shove
• 40:41
  the pitchfork into as well. But I do like as well that the
• 40:45
  tigers have behaved violently. So the reaction that the humans
• 40:49
  are having, it's not irrational. No.
• 40:52
  But they're not trying to communicate.
• 40:53
  They're not trying to ask why are you doing this?
• 40:55
  They're just like, well, we're just going to fight back.
• 40:58
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so, so you've got the
• 41:01
  doctor doing what the doctor always does, which is tries to
• 41:04
  find a way to make peace. And, you know, when he fails to
• 41:11
  do that with the human beings, he goes and and, you know,
• 41:17
  investigates the tigers. And then you get Angie
• 41:19
  Embassment doing that as well in in a sort of different way.
• 41:24
  And we start to find out stuff about what they what they are.
• 41:29
  I did wonder then, because you, you have that beautiful chapter
• 41:32
  of the Doctor going out into the bewilderness, and it is
• 41:36
  basically a chapter of bounce on the Doctor, watching each other,
• 41:40
  learning from each other. The Doctor just sits on a rock
• 41:42
  and starts playing the violin and bouncing.
• 41:44
  Absolutely in France, you know, beautifully beautiful.
• 41:47
  And then there's the scene between Besma and Angie by the
• 41:50
  campfire. They're relaxed.
• 41:53
  They're they're starting to figure things out.
• 41:54
  And I thought, OK, right, so this is actually going to be
• 41:57
  quite a relaxed book. And then Besma is killed.
• 42:00
  In a very terrific. Way, and I think this is at
• 42:06
  Angie's, what, third book? She is learning how this all
• 42:10
  works. She has really no idea who the
• 42:12
  doctor is at this point and he's behaving in what appears to be a
• 42:15
  very wild way in this book. I don't think I don't think her
• 42:20
  reactions in this are ill judged.
• 42:23
  No and. I think at the point where
• 42:25
  Bismuth kills somebody she's very fond of and is figuring
• 42:29
  this out with and then I think when she turns around and says
• 42:32
  you had a chance to do the right thing when you stepped over
• 42:35
  Bismuth's body. Yeah, yeah, it's a it is a good
• 42:39
  book. Fragile.
• 42:40
  Some people would really didn't like Angie because she's
• 42:42
  basically I think she's Tegan done really well.
• 42:46
  She's very competent. She's she's quite an angry
• 42:50
  character sometimes, but she's rational and she's smart as
• 42:55
  well. So here I thought that she was
• 42:59
  there was no kind of attempt to kind of give her
• 43:01
  characterization in the sense that she has quirks or
• 43:04
  preferences or something like that.
• 43:06
  You know, like Fitz is a character who's from a
• 43:08
  particular time period and he's got a particular job and you
• 43:12
  know, he smokes and you know, there's all these sort of
• 43:15
  character traits that sorry that that, you know, make it clear
• 43:22
  how we are to react to him and how we can imagine him and stuff
• 43:25
  like that. Angie's the character who, and
• 43:28
  I've only this is the only book that I've read.
• 43:30
  I don't know about her at all, apart from what I read in this
• 43:33
  book. There's no attempt to give her
• 43:35
  those quirks, is there? She she seems to be wanting to
• 43:39
  do something. She doesn't have the musical
• 43:41
  thing that fits and the Doctor have.
• 43:45
  And so she feels like those first four weeks before kind of
• 43:48
  war breaks or before the tiger thing starts, they're just
• 43:52
  trying to occupy herself and find out.
• 43:55
  You do touristy things and, and, you know, mostly it's visiting
• 43:58
  ruins and visiting the, you know, planet Aerium or whatever
• 44:01
  and, and, and that sort of stuff like and occupying herself.
• 44:04
  And when we first meet her, she's gone to the library
• 44:06
  because she wants to learn more about the planet and its economy
• 44:10
  and its society and stuff like that.
• 44:14
  And, and she seemed to be like a fairly neutral person through
• 44:17
  whom we see most of the book, like, like for quite a lot of
• 44:20
  the time, it's her point of view.
• 44:22
  And she just seemed real like that is.
• 44:25
  It that is basically her quirk, right?
• 44:28
  They they've decided to put into the series of Doctor Who books
• 44:33
  that woman from the office who you actually could know and they
• 44:37
  shouldn't work at all. And she's absolutely my favorite
• 44:41
  Doctor Who book companion because I absolutely understand
• 44:45
  seeing these adventures through her eyes.
• 44:47
  I understand what's happening, you know?
• 44:50
  Yeah. It's really good.
• 44:51
  It worked really well and I just really ended up liking her and
• 44:54
  say the trick of having two people that we like Carl, who
• 44:59
  the doctor loves and who loves the doctor and and Angie who
• 45:04
  we've experienced. You know this through like in
• 45:08
  lots of ways, like having them turn against the doctor or be on
• 45:14
  the opposite side to the doctor and a wonderful.
• 45:18
  Bit later on where Angie is just furious with the doctor, so
• 45:24
  angry and he has to say to her he really says her name in a
• 45:28
  very dramatic way and he says Angie, shut up or they will kill
• 45:33
  you because they're not reacting to what she's saying.
• 45:36
  It's the emotion. They're reacting to the emotion.
• 45:39
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there's that moment too,
• 45:43
  where, where she comes across the doctor crying, doesn't she?
• 45:46
  Does she come across him crying? And well.
• 45:48
  She says you wouldn't cry for Besma.
• 45:50
  You didn't cry for besma. And he says, yeah, no, I'm
• 45:53
  crying for besma and I'm crying for bouts.
• 45:56
  And, you know, like, I thought that was really properly
• 46:00
  effective as well, because it's the Doctor thing.
• 46:04
  Do you know what it mean? Cry later.
• 46:05
  It's an old girl trick, you know, like you, you, he has to
• 46:09
  get on and save the world, you know.
• 46:13
  And so people die unmourned in Doctor Who stories and then we
• 46:18
  think about them later and that's clearly what's happening.
• 46:20
  And maybe, maybe Angie isn't queued into that yet because she
• 46:25
  hasn't been in enough Doctor Who stories.
• 46:28
  The only be where I was like I could have done with a little
• 46:32
  bit more was at the end where Angie decides, no, I'm not going
• 46:36
  to stay here. I'm going to go with them
• 46:37
  because I quite like them really and there is a lot more that
• 46:42
  they do with Angie going forward.
• 46:44
  So it doesn't sort of stop here. But of course, you know, that's
• 46:47
  the companion. It's just got to go with him at
• 46:49
  the. End.
• 46:49
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas I thought this was a
• 46:52
  book where it would be very fits like.
• 46:55
  I mean, apart from the ridiculous bits like where he's
• 46:57
  putting all those foam rubber bits on him which does save his
• 47:00
  life. It does.
• 47:01
  Yeah, yeah. Because the time is.
• 47:03
  Wonderful. Well, she describes like Kate
• 47:07
  describes him having to kind of slit one side of the armor open
• 47:12
  because it doesn't fit. So he's he's made armor at a
• 47:15
  foam rubber and sort of and prop costumes from the rehearsal
• 47:20
  space. And he's he's belted it up
• 47:22
  because he's had to split it open so that he fits in it and
• 47:25
  he's put belts on it. And then there's that moment
• 47:29
  where in the attack on on to try and rescue Besma Roo, the tiger
• 47:34
  who sat on top of him and unbuckles them, like just don't
• 47:38
  touch the buckles, which is so great, so awesome.
• 47:42
  Poor off. And did you know what the the
• 47:44
  fact that he can't fit into that army, It's always described as
• 47:46
  gangly and awkward. Yeah.
• 47:48
  Skinny and stuff. But there, but I thought he had
• 47:51
  one of his best ever moments. So when he pulls together that
• 47:56
  improvised choir and he's like, I am going to show these people
• 48:00
  what they are fighting for, what's important here.
• 48:04
  And then as it's playing out and he's a big part of it, he he
• 48:08
  sort of stands back and goes, my God, I just came from some
• 48:11
  ridiculous garden centre in the 60s.
• 48:13
  I did this like it's a really wonderful moment for him.
• 48:19
  Yeah. So, so one thing that we we
• 48:23
  haven't mentioned is my favorite moment in the book and it is
• 48:26
  early on and it's the end of Chapter 2.
• 48:29
  I think it's the end of Chapter 2.
• 48:30
  Go on. And the doctor has just gone
• 48:33
  crazy with the violin and stuff like that, and that's gone
• 48:40
  horribly wrong. But then we just cut back to the
• 48:44
  tiger, and it's the tiger that met Angie in the library, and
• 48:49
  the tiger is reading the book that it stole from the library.
• 48:55
  It's sitting there reading the book.
• 48:57
  It's in the bewilderness reading the book.
• 49:00
  And then it picks up a violin and starts playing the violin.
• 49:04
  And it's such an incredibly brilliant and strange moment.
• 49:10
  It's absolutely justified by the rest of the book, but it's
• 49:13
  absolute magic. It's just like, Oh my God, you
• 49:17
  know, like, what is this? What is happening here?
• 49:26
  Out in the Savannah, where the glass and water of port Any are
• 49:30
  a distant glitter, a tiger sits crouched on a dirt mound.
• 49:34
  Waves of heat rise from the grassy plain all around,
• 49:38
  shimmering. The tiger sits upright, its
• 49:42
  stumpy tail turned to one side. Its long chin rests on one paw.
• 49:48
  It holds the book it stole from the Central Library in one of
• 49:51
  its feet, lazily stretching its flexible toes to turn the pages.
• 49:58
  After a while, the tiger reaches down and picks up its violin.
• 50:03
  The instrument is lying carefully positioned on a
• 50:06
  tussock of grass. The tiger grasps it firmly in
• 50:10
  its 6 digits, sliding it up under its jaw, allowing it to
• 50:14
  rest on its shoulder. The tiger squints at the book
• 50:18
  again. Its eyes have evolved to detect
• 50:21
  movement, not fine detail. It must switch to less reliable,
• 50:26
  focused vision to read the score.
• 50:29
  Balanced on the dirt hill, its clawed fingers sliding over the
• 50:33
  strings, bow clutched in a furry paw, the tiger begins to play.
• 50:45
  It's an absolute genius moment and a brilliant image.
• 50:49
  And do. You think she started there?
• 50:51
  Maybe she had the that image of the tiger picking it's.
• 50:54
  Such a great moment, isn't it? Because it's before the Tigers
• 50:59
  March on the city, it's before the Tigers March on Port Ennie,
• 51:03
  and it's before we know that much about them.
• 51:05
  It's the end of the chapter where they've been on the on the
• 51:08
  picnic and stuff and, and there have been tigers on the picnic.
• 51:12
  And the one thing we know about the tigers at this point is that
• 51:14
  they're not dangerous and only tourists are worried about them
• 51:18
  and stuff like that. And it's just this little coder
• 51:22
  at the end, like a tiny scene tag scene at the end of the
• 51:24
  chapter, which I just think is brilliant.
• 51:27
  My absolute favorite moment in the book, because I thought sort
• 51:31
  of somewhere in the last third I thought, OK, I can still sort of
• 51:34
  see how this is going to end. There'll be a negotiation of
• 51:38
  some kind. Now, You know, the Doctor's a
• 51:40
  smart bloke. Obviously these fins have
• 51:44
  started bursting up through. The ground.
• 51:46
  That's right. These, this technology that's
• 51:48
  been left behind and the tigers can't remember it because with
• 51:52
  every generation of tigers, it's smart dim, smart dim, right?
• 51:57
  So they, so they, they haven't learned how to master that
• 52:00
  technology because they keep forgetting with every
• 52:03
  generation. Yeah, yeah.
• 52:05
  But obviously the Doctor eventually figures it out, and
• 52:09
  in a moment which I thought was erring on the side of the new
• 52:13
  adventures, he becomes a true elemental controlling the
• 52:18
  weather and conjures up an apocalyptic storm in front of
• 52:22
  everybody just just to get his. So he's literally got a, you
• 52:27
  know, an elemental orchestra playing, going with the theme of
• 52:32
  music just to get everybody's attention, who everyone's sort
• 52:37
  of fighting. But but I mean, the thing he
• 52:39
  does there too is he resolves the thing by by destroying the
• 52:46
  spaceport. And like that storm destroys the
• 52:50
  spaceport. And so they now have no choice
• 52:54
  but to work together. And that's another theme too.
• 52:58
  And it's, you know, it's 2001. We already know, you know, the
• 53:05
  biggest challenge that we face on our planet right now.
• 53:11
  And so here it's the same thing that there's a climate problem
• 53:15
  and the those Finn things are there to control the weather,
• 53:21
  but the Tigers don't know enough about them because, you know,
• 53:26
  they have sort of partial knowledge that's being sort of
• 53:29
  conveyed in these storehouses, one of which is under the city,
• 53:35
  under Port Ennie and one of which, you know, the doctor
• 53:39
  discovers and stuff like that. And so they don't fully
• 53:43
  understand their heritage and their own sort of relationship
• 53:47
  with their native land. But human beings understand
• 53:50
  something of the weather. And so now they're going to have
• 53:53
  to be forced. You know, they get can't afford
• 53:55
  to annihilate each other because they're cut off from everywhere
• 53:58
  else and they're in a massive climate emergency, which is also
• 54:01
  made worse. He actually says I've made this
• 54:04
  worse. So you have to figure this out.
• 54:08
  So, and it's hard line Nathan, it's up to you now.
• 54:12
  I'm finished here. Save your own world for a
• 54:15
  change. Yeah.
• 54:16
  And then it just takes a bow. It's really good, isn't it?
• 54:20
  That is really great. That's a great resolution to the
• 54:23
  problem. And you know, think about how
• 54:25
  badly Silurians flubbed it. Like, what do you do?
• 54:28
  Because like, it's that issues. There's a bit where Quick says
• 54:33
  I'm not to blame for this. Not a single person in Port
• 54:36
  Annie was alive when we were, you know, shooting and
• 54:41
  dispossessing the tigers. None of us did this.
• 54:44
  And so we're not to blame for it.
• 54:46
  And I've worked hard to produce a life for myself.
• 54:51
  And you can't tell me that that life doesn't belong to me or
• 54:55
  that I don't deserve the fruit of my own efforts.
• 54:59
  And he's kind of right, but but he's doing it on the stolen land
• 55:04
  and that's why, you know, that's a particular thing.
• 55:08
  So the idea of climate change is sort of hugely important in in
• 55:13
  the book, but that idea of indigeneity and also the idea of
• 55:18
  interrupted sort of transmission of knowledge as well.
• 55:23
  So the tigers can't transmit knowledge reliably down the
• 55:27
  generations because of this strange genetic quirk that they
• 55:31
  have. But the idea of land and
• 55:35
  knowledge. Do you know what I mean?
• 55:38
  Like in, in Australia, the indigenous people knew enormous
• 55:43
  amounts about the land and the corner and the flora and how to
• 55:48
  survive and how to live and what the land was like.
• 55:51
  And, and you know, it's not and, and mythological stories and
• 55:57
  cultural stories and, and all of those sorts of things, rituals
• 56:01
  and stuff. And the transmission of those
• 56:03
  rituals was just interrupted because we Western, like
• 56:07
  Europeans took the children from their parents and, you know,
• 56:15
  people couldn't live. We, you know, people had to move
• 56:19
  to the city to find work and all of that sort of thing.
• 56:21
  So all of those sort of trains, those transmission things.
• 56:25
  So in like, I don't know if that's intentional at all
• 56:28
  because. But I do think it's an important
• 56:30
  part of the science fiction thought experiment is what if a
• 56:33
  culture that couldn't reliably transmit knowledge down the
• 56:38
  generations? What does that look like?
• 56:41
  What solution do they come up with Put?
• 56:44
  Yourself in and the mindset of a writer that isn't Kate Orman.
• 56:48
  Yeah, who has a lot of the knowledge of the things you've
• 56:51
  just thought, I'm sure how badly this could have been fucked at
• 56:56
  the end. You know, if it had been.
• 56:59
  Removing 11 sect or the other, or, you know, one superseding of
• 57:04
  just. I don't know, Yeah, just saying,
• 57:06
  right? Just talk.
• 57:07
  Just bloody talk, all right? But I do think that the Doctor's
• 57:10
  initial reaction, which is, well, this is their planet.
• 57:15
  Do you know what I mean? Like it's it's, you know, like
• 57:17
  it's not an unreasonable outcome for the people to just say, all
• 57:22
  right, we'll go and we'll leave you to your planet.
• 57:24
  Do you know what I mean? You were here first, you know,
• 57:27
  whatever. But you know, the only way of
• 57:30
  getting this war to stop, do you know what I mean?
• 57:33
  The only way of stopping this conflict where they're killing
• 57:36
  one another in huge numbers is to do this, to make them work
• 57:40
  together. And you know, like it's not a
• 57:42
  complete solution because there will be spaceships back.
• 57:47
  You know, like the spaceport is sort of largely symbolic and it
• 57:50
  even kind of addresses that a little bit.
• 57:52
  But but I think it's such a good, it's such a perfect
• 57:56
  outcome. I think potent image as well.
• 57:58
  Just. Conjuring up a storm, he's
• 58:01
  described as silhouetted against the lightning.
• 58:04
  You know. Like, yeah, well, it's like the
• 58:06
  way he loses his shit playing the solo in Carl's Concerto like
• 58:12
  earlier on back in Chapter 2 and all that stuff about him being
• 58:18
  sort of an alien in disguise, a weird superhuman alien in
• 58:22
  disguise. And so that comes out at the
• 58:25
  end. That's how he solves it, in that
• 58:27
  kind of imperious way. There were lots of moments that
• 58:30
  made me feel like emotional reading this.
• 58:34
  Kate Allman is an expert at playing me like an instrument.
• 58:37
  When? I read her books.
• 58:39
  But the line that really killed me at the end was when Carl
• 58:44
  reaches out to the doctor and it's the last line here where he
• 58:48
  goes, take me with you. I'll forget all about Ischemus.
• 58:52
  I'll have adventures with you as silly as you like.
• 58:56
  I was like, oh, man. And you know he's going to say
• 59:00
  no, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 59:04
  I think all of that is so good. Like I really think that like
• 59:08
  giving them a fourth person who is every bit as important to the
• 59:13
  narrative as the as the other three and having him fail.
• 59:17
  I guess he's like sort of project Adam.
• 59:19
  Do you know like he doesn't like I?
• 59:22
  Just think as well, it could have been so easy to flop the
• 59:25
  Tigers, like the characterised Tigers.
• 59:29
  But she gives all of them a really distinct person.
• 59:32
  I knew who each of them was, you know, in a way that I don't know
• 59:36
  who some people are in other Doctor Who books.
• 59:38
  Yeah. The genius thing too is not
• 59:41
  giving them space names and so bounce.
• 59:47
  No, but they even describe the names.
• 59:49
  So there are do names and there are like names.
• 59:51
  So there are names that the tigers have that describe
• 59:54
  something that they do like bounce and chew you and tigers
• 1:00:02
  that that are named after what they're like, like big and long
• 1:00:07
  body and black and white. And I think that's great.
• 1:00:13
  Like and and sprinter is one of them.
• 1:00:15
  And there's one called Stripe and it like those like those
• 1:00:19
  names really work and they're not dumb and they're not
• 1:00:22
  embarrassing, you know, like there are so many ways that
• 1:00:26
  these. Could have been done wrongly and
• 1:00:28
  she absolutely avoids all of them.
• 1:00:31
  They're really good. The Tigers are so great.
• 1:00:34
  They're so well I. Think Cakes written like 10
• 1:00:36
  books before this. Yeah, 10 dogs have you books
• 1:00:39
  right. So she's learned a lot write in
• 1:00:41
  those books. And there there have been books
• 1:00:44
  where things have been a bit more indulgent and like I said,
• 1:00:47
  a bit more plot heavy and things like that.
• 1:00:49
  But like, listen to this as a as a two line description of a
• 1:00:53
  tiger. It says everything you need to
• 1:00:55
  know about Bounce. Yeah.
• 1:00:56
  She's got the optimism of the young.
• 1:00:59
  She thinks she's going to save the world.
• 1:01:01
  I know who that tiger. Is now you know.
• 1:01:03
  Yeah. Yeah, simple.
• 1:01:05
  So simple. Yeah, well, even just the choice
• 1:01:08
  of individual words, there's a, she describes that first tiger
• 1:01:13
  as having an oblong body. And it's such an odd, striking
• 1:01:18
  word because it's not rectangular.
• 1:01:20
  It's oblong, you know, and it includes the word long.
• 1:01:24
  And, you know, like you just get the impression of angles and
• 1:01:27
  length and stuff just effortlessly in one word.
• 1:01:31
  That's not weird. It's not long.
• 1:01:33
  It's not a long word. It's not a Latin eight word.
• 1:01:36
  It is Latin, but it's not a kind of Latin eight word like just
• 1:01:40
  the simple pull use of vocabulary and like the writing
• 1:01:44
  is so expertly. Done.
• 1:01:46
  This was a mid sort of somewhere in the middle of the New
• 1:01:49
  Adventures. Yeah, all the names would be
• 1:01:52
  full of punctuation, weird punctuation.
• 1:01:54
  So you can't play and you just don't need to impress like that.
• 1:01:58
  No. I, I think she's just relaxed
• 1:02:01
  into writing a really fucking great book in this.
• 1:02:04
  Yeah. And what makes it really sad is
• 1:02:07
  she only did one more after this.
• 1:02:10
  So I don't know what happened there.
• 1:02:13
  If she just thought, well, I've done, you know, 12 Doctor Who
• 1:02:15
  books. That's that's enough for me.
• 1:02:17
  But I really think we missed the trick with Kay Orman not writing
• 1:02:22
  one of the new series adventures because I just think she would
• 1:02:25
  have written a kick ass book for kids in the new series
• 1:02:30
  adventures. Yeah, that would have been
• 1:02:31
  really interesting, wouldn't it? That would have been really
• 1:02:33
  something. I mean, there's still time.
• 1:02:35
  They're still doing them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:39
  And like we know people. We know people who who have
• 1:02:42
  written them. So it's definitely a thing that
• 1:02:45
  could happen. There are lots of well written
• 1:02:48
  Doctor Who books. There are, there's lots of
• 1:02:49
  terribly written Doctor Who books, but there are a lot of
• 1:02:52
  well written, There's really good, you know, Cornell, Lance
• 1:02:54
  Parkin, they can write good prose.
• 1:02:57
  I think this is beautifully written and I don't say that
• 1:03:01
  lightly. No, I mean I was always
• 1:03:04
  astonished, even right back from the beginning.
• 1:03:06
  Right back from left-handed Hummingbird, like how skilled
• 1:03:10
  she was with language. But here like it's something
• 1:03:15
  else. And like I, I, I think it is a
• 1:03:17
  proper science fiction novel that that is well written
• 1:03:24
  without being flashy or indulgent and that has things to
• 1:03:31
  say but isn't a treatise, you know, isn't an essay and it's
• 1:03:37
  still a story and it's in love with creating the world and all
• 1:03:43
  of that stuff. I just think it's so good.
• 1:03:45
  And that's all done so economically and so skillfully.
• 1:03:48
  It's really something. And she has just tapped into, I
• 1:03:53
  keep saying words simple, but I mean it in the most
• 1:03:55
  complimentary way possible. Simple honest emotions that I
• 1:03:59
  understand. So I understand that every point
• 1:04:02
  what each character is going through in this.
• 1:04:04
  Yeah, Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's very.
• 1:04:08
  Good. It's I loved it back in the day.
• 1:04:11
  I've read it four or five Times Now, but I came back to it with
• 1:04:15
  a sense of trepidation because I thought because some of these
• 1:04:18
  books I've reread that I love back in the day and I'm like,
• 1:04:21
  oh, what was I thinking? Did I have any judgement?
• 1:04:26
  But I rated this highly then. I think I rate it higher now.
• 1:04:29
  It's definitely one of the standouts of the ones I've done
• 1:04:32
  so far on the book club. Yeah, I'm not surprised.
• 1:04:36
  It's beautiful. Well, thank you very much for
• 1:04:39
  reading it. I'm so I'm so pleased you
• 1:04:41
  enjoyed it. Thank you for making me read it,
• 1:04:45
  it was a real pleasure and I will be reading it again.
• 1:04:48
  I've already started my second reading so.
• 1:04:50
  You've you have also agreed. And another assignment for the
• 1:04:54
  book club. Now, what are the words you just
• 1:04:56
  used then? Indulgent, over the top, things
• 1:05:00
  like that. Yeah, I think you may get a bit
• 1:05:03
  of that in this book, but it is also the campus gayest Doctor
• 1:05:07
  Who book you ever could read. Why don't you tell everybody
• 1:05:10
  what we're going to do next? So the next time I'm on we will
• 1:05:15
  be doing Mad Dogs and Englishmen by Is it Paul Mars?
• 1:05:19
  Paul Mars. Yes.
• 1:05:22
  Truly spectacular cover. I think you'll agree.
• 1:05:24
  Yeah. Awesome.
• 1:05:26
  The fact that the fact that they had the adventurous of Henry Ed
• 1:05:30
  Street, right, which was like the prestige Lawrence Miles
• 1:05:33
  novel. That was the book before this
• 1:05:35
  and they could put these out in any order, you know.
• 1:05:38
  But no, they chose to stamp the words 100th BBC Doctor Who book
• 1:05:43
  on the one with That's electric pink.
• 1:05:46
  With. Smoking a cigarillo.
• 1:05:50
  I mean, they're bold, right? They're bold.
• 1:05:52
  Yeah, no brilliant creative choice.
• 1:05:55
  Well, until we head to Las Vegas to meet Iris, Wild Time and Noel
• 1:06:00
  Cowards. Thank you very much for your
• 1:06:04
  time. Oh, thank you for having me.
• 1:06:07
  Oh no, I have to there.