Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Frida Kahlo & the Skull Children by Sophie McKenzie (featuring Michael Mills)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Frida Kahlo & the Skull Children by Sophie McKenzie (featuring Michael Mills) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:02
  There was a time when Freda had been worried a lot about how
• 0:05
  people saw her. She'd even been embarrassed by
• 0:08
  the limp that was the legacy of the polio she had contracted
• 0:11
  when she was a small child. But then, six months ago, came
• 0:14
  the terrible crash on her way home from school.
• 0:18
  The bus collided with a trolley car, leaving Freda with a
• 0:21
  shattered pelvis and much else broken in her body.
• 0:31
  Now it didn't bother her what people thought.
• 0:34
  Mostly she just felt angry at the world.
• 0:37
  Breathing heavily from her exertions, she reached Christina
• 0:41
  at the park gate. Why didn't you wait for me?
• 0:45
  Christina smiled. Sorry, Manita.
• 0:49
  Freda shook her head. Sometimes she felt more like
• 0:52
  Christina's mother than her sister.
• 0:55
  The year between them had never seemed so vast.
• 0:58
  Don't be cross. The sun is shining and there are
• 1:01
  boys we know in the park. Freda rolled her eyes.
• 1:06
  No wonder Christina had got so dressed up to come out today.
• 1:10
  So this so-called walk we are having is basically to give you
• 1:14
  a chance to hang out with boys? No, it's to give you a chance to
• 1:20
  get out of the house and talk to people.
• 1:23
  Christina sighed. It's just Pablo from church and
• 1:27
  some of his friends. I thought you'd be pleased to
• 1:29
  see them. Freda made a face.
• 1:33
  I don't want to talk to Pablo right now, or his friends.
• 1:38
  I'm going to sit in the shade for a bit.
• 1:41
  She strode through the park gates, heading towards the large
• 1:44
  cops of trees on the right. She felt guilty for being so
• 1:47
  cross. Christina had only been trying
• 1:50
  to help. It wasn't her fault that Freda
• 1:53
  was so far away from wanting to socialize.
• 1:56
  How could she expect her little sister to understand her when
• 1:59
  literally nobody else in the world did?
• 2:03
  Freda reached the wooden bench and sat down.
• 2:07
  She took a deep breath of sweet, warm air, trying to ignore the
• 2:11
  pain that crawled through her body.
• 2:13
  Across the grass, the leaves on the trees seem to shimmer, then
• 2:17
  blur into each other. For a moment, Freda thought her
• 2:21
  eyes were playing tricks. She blinked, but the blurring
• 2:25
  got stronger. She made her way across the
• 2:28
  grass. She kept her eyes fixed on the
• 2:31
  blurry section of trees. As she drew closer, Freda saw
• 2:36
  that the shimmering wasn't one mass, but several small
• 2:39
  individual masses, each one darting around and across each
• 2:43
  other with bewildering speed. All of a sudden, the shimmering
• 2:48
  shapes dived into the branches and disappeared from view.
• 2:52
  Frida stepped carefully forward and peered into the shady copse
• 2:55
  of trees. Everything there appeared
• 2:58
  perfectly normal, no sign of the mysterious blurry forms.
• 3:03
  Maybe her eyes were playing a trick on her after all.
• 3:06
  She was about to turn away when from the deep within the trees
• 3:10
  came a strange mechanical sound, like the whirring of an engine
• 3:14
  and with it a blue flashing light.
• 3:19
  Nestled between two huge bushes was a very strange looking blue
• 3:23
  structure. A sign above the door read
• 3:27
  POLICE BOX. Those words were English, a
• 3:31
  language freed and knew well, but they made no sense to her.
• 3:35
  Why would La Policia need such a large box?
• 3:38
  And what was it doing here in the wooded area of the park?
• 3:42
  Before Freda could think what to do next, the door of the strange
• 3:46
  blue box opened and a woman stepped out.
• 4:01
  Hamster Book Club, The Doctor Who Novel Review Podcast with
• 4:06
  Joe Ford and Michael Mills. Frida Kahlo and the Skull
• 4:19
  Children by Sophie McKenzie. Welcome back to the Hamster Book
• 4:30
  Club. Christmas has been and gone, New
• 4:33
  Year's has been and gone, and Michael Mills and I have not
• 4:37
  spoken now for a couple of weeks.
• 4:39
  Hello, Michael, How are you today?
• 4:41
  Happy New Year, Joe. I'm very well.
• 4:43
  Thank you. Thank you, as ever, for having
• 4:44
  me back again. Did you have a number of
• 4:47
  exciting Doctor Who gifts this year for Christmas?
• 4:50
  No. No, nothing.
• 4:52
  No, no, no, no, no. I don't get anything anymore.
• 4:55
  I've got a small child. By the time they're all done
• 4:58
  buying her her Lego and Paddington books, they've not
• 5:01
  got anything left for me. Oh, nothing at all.
• 5:03
  I'm just going to be out of the world's smallest violin right
• 5:06
  now. Here we go.
• 5:08
  Wait, I'll send you a Christmas gift.
• 5:10
  All right, you did get a gift last year.
• 5:15
  Oh yeah. Thanks for that, Joe.
• 5:16
  You're very welcome. It was a it was the Time Lords
• 5:19
  VHS collection. That's.
• 5:21
  Right, No. I've sent you Tegan Tales
• 5:23
  featuring Arkham Infinity and Time Flight.
• 5:27
  Michael, what are we here to talk about today?
• 5:30
  We're here quite excitingly, not none.
• 5:32
  None of this rippery of old, battered paperbacks from days
• 5:36
  gone by. We're here to discuss something.
• 5:40
  New. Something new, right?
• 5:42
  Very new as of October, November last year.
• 5:46
  I think commercially this podcast is commercially
• 5:49
  relevant, no? It's not what are you talking
• 5:52
  about? But what is it then?
• 5:55
  It is Doctor Who and Freda Carlo and the Skull Children.
• 6:01
  Is that the official dial? Doctor Who and the and the and
• 6:05
  the. Doctor Who colon icons Colon
• 6:09
  Freda Carlo and the Skull Children by Sophie McKenzie The
• 6:13
  first in a new series from BBC Books of Novellas very short,
• 6:20
  which see various doctors meet up with various famous
• 6:23
  historical figures. This is the first one, and as
• 6:27
  the attendant among you will have guessed, it sees the 13th
• 6:31
  Doctor as played by T VS Jodie Whittaker, meeting Freda.
• 6:35
  Carlo, I'm sure we'll have much to say about that before we do
• 6:41
  get there though and talk about the range in general, because
• 6:43
  I've got to say I was enticed by the 1st 2 chapters of the
• 6:46
  Charles Darwin one at the end of the Kindle version I was
• 6:49
  reading. Can I ask you a question?
• 6:54
  No. I'm going to anyway, and the
• 6:56
  question is, what do you think of the short form Doctor Who
• 7:02
  book? So novellas, stroke short
• 7:05
  stories, and also I suppose with short stories, we're talking
• 7:07
  about collections. Is this your bag?
• 7:11
  Does it work? Is it something Doctor Who
• 7:13
  should be exploring? Or, you know, when it comes to
• 7:16
  the printed word, should it just be full length novels?
• 7:20
  No, I, I, I approve of this sort of thing.
• 7:22
  I think it should be encouraged and I think it's good for
• 7:24
  people's moral and artistic fibre.
• 7:27
  I'll, I'll tell you why. Moral, moral and autistic fibre.
• 7:33
  Well, because you, you know, OK, the problem with a lot of Doctor
• 7:36
  Who fans, as with a lot of fans of things in general, is they
• 7:40
  don't want new stuff. They want more of the old stuff
• 7:45
  that they already had, right? You mean the big Finnish
• 7:47
  audience? I'm not here to name names.
• 7:49
  OK, I'll do it for you. But and it's it's interesting
• 7:54
  how quickly those things can can embed, right.
• 7:56
  So, you know, I'm I'm not again, I'm not here to have a go at any
• 8:00
  particular Rangers in the past, but there are people who will
• 8:02
  say the virgin new adventures are amazing and everything else
• 8:04
  has been crap. If they want more books, they
• 8:05
  just want more virgin new adventures, right.
• 8:07
  And that's, you know, I understand that.
• 8:10
  I do, but I don't think those people have read any other books
• 8:13
  ever apart from the Virgin New Adventures.
• 8:17
  And two 8th Doctor adventures at the start and they didn't like
• 8:20
  it. That's right, but that's quite a
• 8:22
  few people at this book club. So the reason that I, I, I, I
• 8:26
  say it's good, though, is because these things embed very
• 8:30
  quickly. So even though full length
• 8:32
  novels were new for Doctor Who in the early 90s, and you know,
• 8:36
  they what you should be trying to do when you, when, if you're
• 8:40
  doing something new, you should be trying to do something new.
• 8:43
  That might sound stupid, but putting things into a new
• 8:47
  format, a different medium, should encourage you to think
• 8:53
  about approaching those characters and those stories
• 8:55
  differently. And that might sound like a
• 8:57
  really obvious thing to do. Yes, Michael, I know I'm writing
• 9:00
  on a laptop right now. I'm not behind a camera.
• 9:04
  But how often do you read a Doctor Who book?
• 9:06
  When people go, oh, oh, it was, it was like, it was like reading
• 9:10
  a novelization of ATV episode. Don't.
• 9:15
  No, that's not what it should be.
• 9:17
  That's not what it should be like.
• 9:19
  Saturday Tea Time 1975 all over again should not be what we're
• 9:22
  aiming for here, people. And do you know actually very
• 9:25
  quickly just to say the missing adventures that I've explored
• 9:28
  and the past Octopus and those are absolutely the books that
• 9:31
  should be appealing to those people, right?
• 9:34
  What surprised me about those ranges is they're not doing
• 9:39
  that, really. Some of them are, but most of
• 9:40
  them are really thinking outside the box.
• 9:44
  Yeah, absolutely. And I wonder, this is entirely
• 9:49
  speculation here, but you know, we all, we've all either
• 9:52
  remember from the time or ever since read all those interviews
• 9:55
  about the Virgin New Adventures, adventures too broad and too
• 9:58
  deep for the small screen. And also, we're not just filling
• 10:01
  in gaps here, OK? We're taking it forwards.
• 10:03
  We're making different things happen.
• 10:06
  And then when they came to do the the missing adventures, I
• 10:12
  guess they didn't want to have egg on their faces, so they
• 10:14
  wanted to show we want to do things differently.
• 10:17
  And obviously you're limited in terms of where you can take the
• 10:19
  story. There are some some gaps are
• 10:21
  bigger and vaguer than others, sure, but ultimately, you know,
• 10:27
  Colin's going to bang his head on the time rota and turn into
• 10:30
  into Sylvester McCoy. So instead, where they took it
• 10:34
  was to make the different, the stories they were telling
• 10:37
  different. And so you get things like state
• 10:40
  of change, which, OK, I I say state of change because I know
• 10:43
  it's not recorded as a classic, but it's not short an ambition,
• 10:46
  a huge epic set in a steampunk alternative roam, right?
• 10:51
  That is 100% nothing you would ever see on TV.
• 10:53
  And I don't want to be virgin books as well, because the BBC
• 10:55
  books were the same. I, as I occasionally do find
• 11:00
  myself with an episode where you're not talking to me about
• 11:04
  books on in the background. And you said some people say
• 11:07
  that. Oh, the BBC past Oxford
• 11:09
  adventures, they're just the same old stuff, you know,
• 11:11
  they're just traditional stuff. You read the indestructible man.
• 11:16
  Oh. Boy, in terms of, well,
• 11:17
  building, that is really pushing the boat out.
• 11:20
  TV's Doctor Who gets shot through the head in it.
• 11:24
  Something like this sort of diff.
• 11:25
  I know I was banging on about it a lot, but telling a story in
• 11:27
  reverse, like narratively they they experiment a lot as well.
• 11:30
  Yeah, 100%. And of course there was some
• 11:31
  stuff in there that was that was more trad than others, but it's
• 11:38
  not a fair characterization. And that is because you're
• 11:40
  taking it into different medium and you can do different things.
• 11:42
  And yes, some of that is, is the age-old thing about the budget
• 11:46
  to infinite, but it's also just you, you're telling a story in a
• 11:49
  different way. You're engaging with things in a
• 11:52
  different way. And so therefore your story
• 11:58
  should be different and they should be an impetus to, it
• 12:03
  should be an impetus to tell a novel type of Doctor Who story.
• 12:08
  Your aim shouldn't be to try and make it as much like watching
• 12:12
  ATV program as it could possibly be when you can't make ATV
• 12:16
  program, which especially during the wilderness years, was
• 12:18
  occasionally a trap that some places would fall into because
• 12:20
  we all wanted Doctor Who back so much.
• 12:22
  Do you remember some of the early big finishes even had when
• 12:25
  you got the little inlay in the CD?
• 12:27
  They'd even have fake Radio Times listings from the inside.
• 12:31
  I I was looking at one of those again, not not that long ago.
• 12:33
  I just thought it's a bit tragic and it was quite a good it.
• 12:37
  Was when they did those Radio Times in lays on something like
• 12:40
  the Holy Terror and you're like, well, this, there's no way this
• 12:43
  ever would have been screened in 1985.
• 12:46
  Minuet in hell which? Which?
• 12:49
  Which? In fact, BBC Radio 7, as it then
• 12:51
  was, would not air. Was it because Charlie was
• 12:54
  working in a sex club or because it had the devil in it?
• 12:57
  All of the above and more and it's literally too hot for TV.
• 13:02
  Because it was really fucking boring.
• 13:04
  They listened to it, that's why they wouldn't put it out.
• 13:08
  But but short stories in novellas, you know, so the same
• 13:11
  thing comes on here. So even if you know, if you've,
• 13:14
  if most of our Doctor Who books that we talk about are novels.
• 13:19
  Now, of course, the target novelisations are really novella
• 13:22
  length for the most part, but you know that that they're
• 13:25
  almost a thing apart, aren't they?
• 13:26
  A lot, but most of them. And if you're telling a novella
• 13:31
  or a short story, similarly, your aim shouldn't just be to
• 13:33
  tell a cut down novel, right? And, and you do encounter those
• 13:38
  on occasion where you come across story things like this is
• 13:42
  someone wanted to write a missing adventure or past doctor
• 13:46
  adventure. They've not got a space, they're
• 13:47
  going to try and cram it in here.
• 13:48
  And then they're never the most satisfying.
• 13:50
  James Lark and I did Tales of Terror and I think about 10 of
• 13:55
  the 12 stories in that collection were exactly what you
• 13:59
  just described. There was a couple where they
• 14:01
  really experimented and the rest were like, yeah, they've tried
• 14:04
  to squeeze it. A four part Doctor Who story in
• 14:06
  25 pages. Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:09
  And we should do more. We should do more of them on
• 14:11
  here because they never get spoken about as much.
• 14:14
  And but even if you look at the Doctor Who short stories that
• 14:16
  people can name, right, mostly by Stephen Moffett, Continuity
• 14:19
  Errors, What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally
• 14:21
  Sparrow, all of these ones, the thing that's notable about them
• 14:25
  is they're not just cut down episodes.
• 14:26
  Continuity Errors is a brilliantly structured short
• 14:28
  story. What I Did on My Christmas
• 14:30
  Holiday is written entirely as as a school essay, right?
• 14:33
  Old Flames by Paul Mars was so successful it spawned off an
• 14:37
  entire range of Irish wild time adventures.
• 14:40
  Exactly that. And, you know, you've got enough
• 14:43
  space to for a vignette or a, you know, that can sometimes
• 14:50
  work against you as well. I think if you've read more than
• 14:53
  two of Doctor Who Magazine's Brief Encounters, you've
• 14:55
  probably hit on the formula. Oh my God, it was actually
• 15:00
  Duggan. Oh, oh, you'll never guess that
• 15:04
  the man from the Macro Terror was talking to was actually
• 15:07
  Sylvester McCoy. Oh boy, I hate it.
• 15:10
  And Big Finish do that a hell of a lot, I'll tell you.
• 15:16
  And or, or or and perhaps more relevantly for Doctor Who, it
• 15:20
  can allow you to sort of undertake a thought experiment
• 15:25
  or a different approach to how, how should we do Doctor Who.
• 15:27
  That was I think pretty much we talked about time and relative
• 15:30
  on the podcast last year and the Telus novella Rangers were
• 15:35
  pretty much explicitly that I believe was we're going to try
• 15:38
  and do different types of Doctor Who with this.
• 15:40
  This will be a real effort. And you know, from once I've
• 15:43
  read that that's really true. Books like Cabinet of Light,
• 15:47
  Doctor Who book, not like any Doctor Who book you you've read
• 15:49
  before. Time and relative has a has a
• 15:53
  has a brilliant reapproach to 1960s Doctor Who and and it's
• 15:56
  medium and it's metier, but don't do itself should do this
• 16:00
  because. You're not baffling.
• 16:02
  Sorry to interrupt. So it's that I believe that
• 16:04
  Decalogues are considered pretty good.
• 16:08
  The short trips collections are considered very good.
• 16:11
  And the, you know, the, the big finish ones that they did, it's
• 16:15
  that short trips as well. What are those ones called?
• 16:17
  Are they short trips as well as the BBC ones?
• 16:20
  How confusing. Why does nobody talk about these
• 16:24
  short story collections then? They just sort of get forgotten
• 16:27
  about. I mean, my understanding is that
• 16:30
  in publishing in general, short stories don't generally sell
• 16:33
  unless they're by a big name author, you know, unless you're
• 16:36
  Stephen King. And even then, I would hazard a
• 16:38
  guess that Stephen King's short story collections don't sell as
• 16:41
  much as his novels. You know, people don't, people
• 16:44
  don't want them. We've not got the habit, at
• 16:45
  least in at least in the UK. What do you think is the best
• 16:49
  approach then with a short story collection?
• 16:51
  Do you think it's, you know, choosing a theme, I don't know,
• 16:54
  a Christmas treasury, we're going to do lots of Christmassy
• 16:56
  stories or having like a novel. So like an entire story told
• 17:01
  just for a selection of short stories and what what's the best
• 17:04
  way or just completely random stories thrown together like
• 17:07
  Tales of Terror, which is absolutely what that was, I
• 17:09
  mean. I'm going to be unhelpful and
• 17:11
  say all of the above. The thing that I, the thing that
• 17:15
  I liked about the Big Finish Short Trip collections was they
• 17:19
  had different editors. And, you know, I, I understand
• 17:21
  the editors were, you know, sort of the leads on these.
• 17:25
  Of course they would be be, you know what I mean?
• 17:26
  They, they would take it in the direction they wanted to take it
• 17:28
  and they would be responsible for commissioning.
• 17:31
  I may be wrong there. Please let me know blue sky, if
• 17:33
  I am. And so the result was that you
• 17:35
  did get different approaches. You say you've got some that
• 17:37
  were just collections and you've got some that were very tightly
• 17:41
  connected together. The centenarian, for example, is
• 17:45
  a, is a very good one that tells the story of a man's life
• 17:48
  through his encounters with the doctor over 100 years.
• 17:51
  That, that that's, that's a brilliant one.
• 17:52
  And some of them more thematic and some of them have got very
• 17:55
  obvious themes. Christmas, some of them have got
• 18:01
  more involved themes like short trips 2040.
• 18:03
  We're going to imagine what the world is going to be like in the
• 18:06
  year 2040. And then we're going to give you
• 18:08
  a dozen or however many stories set in that year.
• 18:11
  I didn't know half of these, Michael.
• 18:13
  Good. We're going to have to cover
• 18:14
  some of these. They sound really great.
• 18:16
  Well, I mean, you have to dig into your pockets.
• 18:17
  I believe some of them are quite expensive.
• 18:19
  Don't worry, Mark's got the lot. I've just never read them.
• 18:22
  And especially that winter time Paradox one.
• 18:24
  That's a load of short stories, isn't it?
• 18:26
  Yes, it is, but all by the same author, Dave Rudden.
• 18:30
  But that's another interesting approach, the life during
• 18:32
  wartime approach, which is telling a full narrative from
• 18:36
  lots of different characters, points of views and then
• 18:38
  stopping halfway through the narrative and ending as an order
• 18:41
  go. I mean, that's the most insane
• 18:43
  short story collection I've ever heard, but somehow it works.
• 18:47
  Yeah, absolutely. And of course, when it comes to
• 18:49
  when it come, I think short stories and a Vella should
• 18:51
  encourage experimentation. You've got this little amount of
• 18:53
  time, you don't have to sustain it across the 200,000 words of a
• 19:00
  of a novel. You can, you know, you've got
• 19:01
  say 15,000 to do it in. And I think I think that is the
• 19:06
  right approach. And you know, in amongst that
• 19:08
  there will be room for more traditional approaches and maybe
• 19:10
  you're going to tell something different.
• 19:11
  But I just think what I don't need is, is more Doctor Who, but
• 19:16
  shorter. I want to see different types of
• 19:18
  Doctor Who. I see really different takes on
• 19:19
  Doctor Who. And as you said, with Iris world
• 19:21
  time old flames if or, or or the cabinet of light, which spawns
• 19:24
  the whole time Hunter spin off series as well, or the faction
• 19:28
  Paradox novella ranges as well. You know, let's talk about all
• 19:30
  of these. Some of those are some of those
• 19:32
  are remarkably experimental. They're almost like we should do
• 19:35
  Faction Paradox at some point, because that's almost like a
• 19:37
  sort of Doctor Who free form experimental jazz form of Doctor
• 19:42
  Who. Like how far can we can we go
• 19:44
  from the melody and yet still be recognisably Doctor Who in some
• 19:47
  form? Plus it's also a must see old
• 19:49
  cupboard we haven't shown a torch in yet as well so.
• 19:52
  Well, indeed there are shadows, or not or not, or there are no
• 19:57
  shadows. Well done.
• 19:59
  Better. Joke.
• 20:01
  You know, to bring it around full circle, that sort of
• 20:04
  variation experimentation is. Is inherent in Doctor Who, and I
• 20:10
  don't mean that in a sort of, oh, you can tell any type of
• 20:13
  story you want to with Doctor Who because let's be honest,
• 20:16
  you, you can't. It does have a format, yes, it
• 20:18
  is a very flexible one. But even if you just look at the
• 20:21
  actual Doctor Who was produced, you know, even across the 26
• 20:25
  years of its original run, you had stories ranging from 1/2
• 20:29
  hour episode to 14. So clearly, Doctor Housing can
• 20:33
  be told in different lengths of time and different breadths of
• 20:36
  story and different breadths of focus.
• 20:43
  One thing I will say before we head into Freda is personal
• 20:46
  preference. I like relaxing into a full
• 20:49
  length novel, especially a Doctor Who book, right?
• 20:51
  I like spending a lot of time with characters, even if it's
• 20:55
  something I'm going to read quickly over a couple of days.
• 20:57
  And when it's a short story, I'm like, OK, this is going to be
• 21:01
  over within half an hour, you know?
• 21:03
  And so I just don't get the same.
• 21:06
  I don't know, I'm not immersed in the same way that I am with a
• 21:10
  full length novel. Now, that doesn't mean I don't
• 21:12
  think there's, like, great Doctor Who short stories and
• 21:14
  great Doctor Who novellas. But I mean, do you prefer a full
• 21:19
  length novel or would. Yeah.
• 21:21
  I mean, you're a busy man now. You're a father, for goodness
• 21:23
  sakes. You know, Like, is reading a
• 21:25
  short story your preference before bed?
• 21:28
  Well, you might as well ask me, do I prefer pizza or burgers for
• 21:32
  tea? What?
• 21:33
  Do you prefer pizza or burgers for tea?
• 21:35
  You're allowed to like both because they're different things
• 21:38
  and I think that's the things you remember perhaps that's both
• 21:40
  as a reader and as as a writer is they're, they're different
• 21:43
  things. You can tell because they look
• 21:45
  different on the shelf. And therefore you going into
• 21:49
  them, I think you should expect different things and perhaps aim
• 21:55
  to get different things from them or expect to get different
• 21:57
  things from them. And so that's an entire, that's
• 22:00
  entirely fair of what you want to get from novels and perhaps
• 22:03
  that's your preferred experience.
• 22:05
  A short story, as you say, can't give you that, but it can give
• 22:07
  you other things that a novel can't do.
• 22:09
  You know, a lot of ideas and short stories would not be
• 22:11
  sustained across a novel or they don't have the depth to go into,
• 22:15
  or maybe they're just not there. Maybe they're too high concept,
• 22:18
  all of these things. And Lord knows we've all read
• 22:20
  books and Lord knows we've all read Doctor Who books that are
• 22:23
  too drawn out and that don't have enough ideas or story to to
• 22:28
  to sustain them. So yeah, I guess it's what?
• 22:31
  I don't think I've explored enough of the Decalogues or the
• 22:34
  short trips, and certainly not the big finished ones, which I
• 22:37
  barely touched at all, for me to have any kind of opinion on how
• 22:40
  good they are or not. And I really want it now after
• 22:42
  this conversation. I think the reason I love those
• 22:45
  Bernie Summerfield ones, a life worth living, life during
• 22:48
  wartime, all of those, was because it was a narrative.
• 22:51
  You know, something changed things.
• 22:52
  Like they started doing 3 novellas, didn't they?
• 22:55
  In one book as well, which was a really interesting idea, but it
• 22:59
  was an overarching story that they were telling.
• 23:02
  So it felt like a book. I think maybe I'll just need to
• 23:05
  be educated in the short story or the Doctor Who short story.
• 23:10
  Coming to a podcast near you? Yeah, I really.
• 23:13
  Know that? Well, let's swing it round to
• 23:16
  Frida Kahlo then and the Skull children now.
• 23:19
  What's this all about them, these young adult books for
• 23:21
  Doctor Who? Are we trying to appeal to a
• 23:24
  whole new market? I mean, I hope they are.
• 23:28
  Are they successful, do you think?
• 23:30
  Well, I've only read this one and I've not seen the sales
• 23:32
  figures yet, but I think it's. Realise you were Privy to the
• 23:35
  sales figures. I, I think it's, but I, I, I
• 23:41
  think I, so as a premise, I approve of it.
• 23:45
  I think they should be doing this.
• 23:46
  I think Doctor Who doesn't only need to aim for a, a, a new,
• 23:51
  younger audience. There should be space for, for
• 23:53
  those who've loved it for 10 years, 20 years, 50 years.
• 24:00
  But as with so many established franchises, Doctor Who is at
• 24:05
  times at risk of only appealing to adults.
• 24:08
  You start off with something that was primarily for children
• 24:10
  and is now only made for adults. And I think there are sort of
• 24:14
  warnings of Ghosts of Christmas Future from other franchises of
• 24:20
  what Doctor Who might end up becoming.
• 24:22
  If it doesn't, if it doesn't, you know, watch itself and keep
• 24:26
  reminding itself that it needs to bring in that flesh, fresh
• 24:28
  blood the whole time. Not naming names, Transformers.
• 24:34
  I know nothing about that. We'll talk.
• 24:36
  Yes, so it's good. It's good that it's doing this.
• 24:40
  So I approve of it on that front.
• 24:41
  I also approve on it because you know, we all we there's that
• 24:47
  slightly twee thing about Sidney Newman giving the directive that
• 24:50
  Doctor Who should be educational, that you know that
• 24:53
  you have two teachers, one does science, one does history and
• 24:56
  that's going to be our format and you sort of go, oh, isn't
• 24:59
  that lovely? And Rethian and BBC in 1963
• 25:02
  approach and you also sort of forget.
• 25:05
  Yeah, but it's a really good idea.
• 25:08
  What's 1 of the big breakout hits of CBBC of the last 20
• 25:12
  years? Horrible.
• 25:12
  History. Kids, kids love to learn and
• 25:15
  they love to. Oh, I find a way.
• 25:17
  So did I. And we've both learned fantastic
• 25:19
  things from Doctor Who, Doctor Who books, Doctor Who audios,
• 25:23
  Doctor Who comic strips over the years.
• 25:25
  It's a fantastic way for, for delivering information and
• 25:29
  education. And you know, kids love history.
• 25:31
  You know, that's why it's, it's one of the subjects that doesn't
• 25:33
  have a shortage of teachers, as I understand it, because people
• 25:35
  want to talk about it and kids want to learn about.
• 25:38
  It and they're going about it in the new series way, aren't they,
• 25:41
  of the celebrity historical? We're starting with the first
• 25:44
  two. It's Frida Carlo and Charles
• 25:46
  Darwin. Yeah.
• 25:48
  I don't think that's an interesting approach.
• 25:50
  I'm not sure why we're doing history, why we're not doing
• 25:52
  battles and things like that. You know, something a bit more
• 25:54
  exciting. I suppose it's a more obvious
• 25:57
  hook. I suppose it's more immediately
• 26:00
  engaging. I mean, I don't know anything
• 26:03
  about, you know, the insides of the publishing industry.
• 26:06
  You have other guests who can talk much more authoritatively
• 26:09
  about that. But certainly I know if you walk
• 26:10
  through the kids section of any High Street bookshop now, you
• 26:14
  will see those, those books that are all about the life stories
• 26:17
  of various famous people from recent history, from past
• 26:20
  history and using them and their identities.
• 26:23
  You know, people like to know about people and using them as
• 26:27
  as as as gateways to the past. Interestingly, when I went
• 26:31
  looking for Freda Carlo and the Skull Children in Waterstones,
• 26:35
  the only Doctor Who book that was facing outward at the end in
• 26:39
  the recommend section was this. And I think it's got a the the
• 26:43
  design of the covers of these books are gorgeous and very.
• 26:46
  Beautiful, oh beautiful. The with Jodie Whittaker's face
• 26:52
  and Freda Carlo's face is looking looking at each other
• 26:55
  from from the end. Although it does somewhat
• 26:57
  suggest that they're going to be able to do books about people
• 27:00
  who've lived since the invention of the photograph.
• 27:01
  Sorry Napoleon, you missed. Again, we've done that in world
• 27:05
  game, don't worry about it. Or maybe more on that later.
• 27:09
  Yeah. OK.
• 27:10
  I've got another question for you then, Freda Carlo.
• 27:15
  It's a really interesting choice and I think it's a choice that a
• 27:20
  lot of kids wouldn't really know about.
• 27:22
  So it's hitting the brief of educating.
• 27:24
  But is it like, my God, you know, this 7 year old kid going,
• 27:27
  I must read that book on Frida car meeting the doctor.
• 27:31
  I don't know, is that an odd choice to start the range?
• 27:34
  Well, I wonder if it's slightly old.
• 27:35
  I think there's a young adult books, aren't they?
• 27:36
  They're not children's books. So I think we're looking more
• 27:39
  sort of. What's the age group then?
• 27:42
  Oh gosh, I mean, I'm sure there are actual industry stats about
• 27:44
  this, but I in my mind it's, you know, you're probably looking at
• 27:52
  9:50 to 15 maybe as the sort of age group source of the, the
• 27:56
  niche that was defined by Harry Potter.
• 27:58
  Of course those readers existed before but but it's very much a
• 28:01
  section of the market that was defined by the kids who buy
• 28:04
  Harry Potter. But I am willing to bet that the
• 28:07
  average child of that age would know who Charles Darwin was and
• 28:11
  go, oh, OK, that could be quite interesting.
• 28:12
  Plus the Silurians, interesting. I'll defined alien menace, the
• 28:17
  Skull Children and some painter from Mexico we don't really know
• 28:22
  anything about. I don't know.
• 28:23
  I mean, I think it's a great, it's a really great and engaging
• 28:27
  first choice. I just can't imagine a kid being
• 28:29
  desperate to get hold of this. And yet she's absolutely the
• 28:34
  sort of artist that I can imagine some of my more artsy
• 28:37
  friends at school having got really into, you know, she she
• 28:40
  is a she is a painter whose, whose work has lasted.
• 28:44
  And I think importantly, I think having freed, having her having
• 28:46
  freed Carlo as the first subjects of this series is a
• 28:50
  statement of intent. Because, you know, we're going
• 28:53
  to do history. We're going to do the major
• 28:54
  figures of of history, but having as your protagonist in
• 28:58
  the first one, a disabled bisexual gender non conforming
• 29:04
  artist from outside the Anglosphere is a pretty major
• 29:07
  statement of Enchant 10. And I think is is an admirable
• 29:15
  attempt to say that you are going beyond the established
• 29:19
  Canon of history. You know, right there you've
• 29:20
  got, you know, queer, feminist disabled history.
• 29:23
  You know, we're not just yes, OK, Freda Carlo is not an
• 29:25
  obscure historical figure, but we are we are going to be going
• 29:29
  beyond the Canon. It's not going to be Doctor Who
• 29:31
  meets George Washington. OK, We've got Charles Darwin in
• 29:34
  the second one. That's absolutely fine.
• 29:35
  We're not saying, you know, these people weren't interesting
• 29:37
  and worth reading about. I would like to have a Doctor
• 29:39
  Who meets Alfred Ross Wallace book, but hey, that's not going
• 29:42
  to happen anytime soon. And I think.
• 29:44
  That's one of the massive successes in sort of young adult
• 29:47
  fiction over The Last Heart Stopper.
• 29:50
  This is like Doctor Who's Heart Stopper, isn't it?
• 29:52
  Or as close as you're going to get.
• 29:54
  Yeah, and it's brilliant because Doctor Who, I think does have a
• 29:57
  certain responsibility to talk about these things.
• 30:00
  You know, if you are a show that explores history, what you
• 30:03
  choose to explore is important because.
• 30:07
  And there is a certain sense to doing the Horrible Histories
• 30:11
  what's on the history curriculum because that will be familiar to
• 30:14
  kids and that will help engage them.
• 30:15
  And that's fine. They.
• 30:16
  Did that in the 1st 25 years stop True, we don't need to do
• 30:19
  that. Yeah, absolutely.
• 30:21
  But and saying no, actually we, we, you know, there are history
• 30:27
  is a lot bigger than what we've often painted it as.
• 30:29
  And we're going to go and explore that and we're going to
• 30:31
  go and look at that. So I think I think it's I think
• 30:33
  it's a statement of intent. I think it's an Aberrom 1.
• 30:35
  Interestingly, although it's not out yet, the third book, they've
• 30:38
  only announced three of these, two of them already out.
• 30:39
  I think the third one out soon, the third one, Shirley Jackson.
• 30:43
  I don't even know who that is, Michael.
• 30:45
  Sure, at the House on Haunted Hill and the Lottery.
• 30:47
  American American Horror speculative fiction writer of
• 30:51
  the mid 20th century. Doctor she hanging out with?
• 30:54
  Oh, I can't remember Matt Smith. I'm not sure.
• 30:56
  I don't think I've seen a cover I.
• 30:58
  Look forward to be educated again.
• 31:00
  I mean, I will say for my part, yeah, I knew a little bit about
• 31:04
  Frida Carlo because I did date a beautiful and very kind Mexican
• 31:08
  for six months. And who raved about Frida Carlo
• 31:11
  used to take me to a shop in Brighton where they sell prints.
• 31:13
  And so I'd sort of had a peripheral knowledge, but I
• 31:16
  didn't really know the details. I read the book and it got its
• 31:20
  hooks into me enough about her disability, about her life,
• 31:23
  about her art, that I then went and explored.
• 31:27
  Oh well, Wikipedia, sorry, but it should be.
• 31:30
  Most of it's factual. But more importantly, I explored
• 31:33
  the art. I spent an afternoon just
• 31:36
  scrolling through Frida Carlo Art and then I went out and
• 31:39
  bought something. So it absolutely hit the remit
• 31:42
  for me. Well, and that's also why she's
• 31:45
  a clever choice as well, because apart from anything else, she's
• 31:48
  a name you've heard of but you maybe don't know much about.
• 31:51
  Oh, yeah. What?
• 31:51
  What was her deal for you to call?
• 31:53
  I can see the face. I know the name, but what, what
• 31:57
  was that all about? And so that that's a gateway
• 31:58
  instincts. And I, I approve of this.
• 32:00
  I think, I think Doctor Who should be educational doesn't
• 32:03
  mean it always has to be, but I think it's a, but for anything
• 32:05
  else, it's a really rich narrative theme to explore
• 32:08
  because in explaining things, in introducing things to people,
• 32:12
  you've also got a story to tell, right?
• 32:14
  You've given yourself something and in doing it narrative,
• 32:17
  narratively, you can say not only what happened and who they
• 32:20
  were, but why they were important and what it means and
• 32:22
  why we remember them. I do think Doctor Who, when it's
• 32:27
  approaching historical figures, sometimes there are, there are
• 32:30
  well documented issues, you know, the, the, the very much
• 32:34
  the crown version of Winston Churchill that we get in Victory
• 32:37
  of the Daleks. March discussed on this podcast,
• 32:43
  I'll tell you. Yeah.
• 32:45
  I mean, there are. So there are those issues
• 32:47
  already of, OK, if we're dealing with complex historical figures
• 32:50
  or maybe, you know, should we say very different readings of
• 32:54
  those people's legacies. They could have just put the
• 32:56
  bulldog from the advert Churchill, couldn't they, into
• 32:59
  victory of the Daleks and there would have been much difference.
• 33:02
  Oh yes. So there's that.
• 33:06
  There's that issue. But I think also sometimes just
• 33:08
  from A and this isn't, this isn't the case of Churchill,
• 33:12
  it's the case of a couple of other people who've turned up.
• 33:15
  If you think of the devil's Chord, for example, about The
• 33:17
  Beatles, now I know the focus isn't The Beatles in that story,
• 33:20
  but they're there and they're talked about a lot.
• 33:22
  Mis advertised then on Doctor Who magazine, wasn't it?
• 33:25
  Yeah, but the issue with the devil's chord and it's portrayal
• 33:29
  of The Beatles is that it wants to, it wants to talk about The
• 33:35
  Beatles and it wants to draw on the the legacy and the cultural
• 33:37
  impact of The Beatles for the purposes of its plot narrative.
• 33:41
  But it doesn't actually have anything to say about The
• 33:44
  Beatles other than they were good at music.
• 33:46
  And it almost, it almost seems to present being good at music
• 33:50
  as a kind of preternatural thing.
• 33:53
  And obviously people will have aptitudes and people have
• 33:55
  abilities. But you, you know that there are
• 33:57
  plenty of amazing books on works on The Beatles.
• 33:59
  But if we want to stick with Doctor Who, the actually I'll
• 34:02
  recommend A Big Finish and say Fanfare for the Common Men is
• 34:06
  much better about the what. A great soundtrack that's got.
• 34:09
  Oh, it's brilliant and it's a brilliant story.
• 34:12
  And so there is that danger sometimes in Doctor Who when you
• 34:16
  you you go and look at something and you say, oh, they were
• 34:18
  fantastic. But you don't end up saying
• 34:20
  anything other than, oh, you're fantastic.
• 34:22
  And you know, you can, you can ChatGPT in your head straight
• 34:24
  away if, you know. David Tennant stood beaming at,
• 34:28
  oh, I don't I, I don't know, Jilly Cooper and go, oh, you
• 34:34
  were amazing, Jilly. All that, all that shame.
• 34:36
  Yeah, I'm being parodic. You're being current anyway.
• 34:44
  Or, you know, it's a, it's a bit like, I mean, actually the
• 34:48
  unquiet dead is very good. So I'm not going to have a go at
• 34:50
  the Unquiet dead. And I think they do Charles
• 34:51
  Dickens well there. But it's almost a bit like, you
• 34:54
  know, the Unicorn and the Wasp. Actually, that's not even,
• 34:59
  that's not even a fair example, but there's a little bit, you
• 35:01
  know what I'm saying? At times they just sort of go,
• 35:03
  do you know what, you were great.
• 35:04
  And they go, yes, I know they were great, but why were they?
• 35:07
  Actually, I take it back, the good thing about the Unicorn the
• 35:10
  Wasp is being a parody of an Agatha Christie novel.
• 35:13
  It shows you why Agatha Christie novels are a lot of fun and why
• 35:16
  they've lasted. But we definitely sometimes get
• 35:19
  things like. You lose a little bit of what
• 35:23
  the artist achieved. I know, I know you're sort of
• 35:25
  seeing it in the episode itself, but I don't know, Not in the
• 35:29
  same way I saw in something like Rosa where I I felt as if I
• 35:33
  understood the person in that story.
• 35:37
  Yeah. And you know, I'm aware that's
• 35:38
  an episode that has also been, has also been critiqued.
• 35:41
  And perhaps, you know, perhaps that's, that's an inevitability
• 35:44
  whenever you're, whenever you're dealing with, whenever you are
• 35:46
  dealing with history and certainly recent history, you
• 35:51
  are going to be dealing with things that, that are, that have
• 35:54
  continued relevance to people's lives.
• 35:57
  You know, it's not like, you know, it's not all the
• 36:00
  Peloponnesian wars or something like that.
• 36:04
  I actually watched, I was watching the war games in colour
• 36:06
  a couple of weeks ago. It suddenly thought to me,
• 36:09
  Blimey, we're in the trenches of the First World War here.
• 36:11
  And this was, this was, this was only 50 years later, right?
• 36:15
  You can't imagine them doing, I know we're not quite there yet.
• 36:17
  You can't, you still can't imagine them doing the Falklands
• 36:20
  in the same way or or Vietnam if you want to do 50 years now,
• 36:23
  right? I mean, we've just done COVID,
• 36:25
  Michael, come on now. No, that, but I mean, that's,
• 36:28
  that's that's fair. But but you know, well, again,
• 36:31
  that's an important point and that raised that raised
• 36:33
  controversy. People had opinions because.
• 36:35
  They certainly did, yes. I'll leave that for some for
• 36:39
  other episodes. What I will say though is, is 1
• 36:43
  brilliant thing about choosing Frida, Carlo and the 13th Doctor
• 36:46
  is this absolutely feels like it's come straight from the
• 36:49
  Chris Chipnow era. It feels like the era is
• 36:52
  supposed to be set in. They did celebrate famous female
• 36:57
  celebrity historicals. Rosa Parks.
• 36:59
  Good grief. I'm going to forget all the
• 37:01
  names now. What's the lady's name in War of
• 37:03
  the Sontarans? Help me out here.
• 37:04
  Florence. No sequel.
• 37:05
  No, Mary sequel. Oh, God.
• 37:07
  They take the piss out of Florence.
• 37:08
  And I didn't go on that one, don't they?
• 37:09
  And oh, my God, Michael, I'm really embarrassing myself.
• 37:14
  Here. Help me out.
• 37:14
  The haunting of Villa. Dear Dalte Mary Shelley.
• 37:17
  Thank you. Thank you for the not help
• 37:19
  there. It's amazing how I can say the
• 37:21
  words Mary Shelley with just a look, isn't it?
• 37:23
  It is incredible. Yes, you are as literate.
• 37:28
  Percy Bish, but there we go. Oh.
• 37:29
  Boy, it was gorgeous. But it does feel like the era,
• 37:33
  right? I I definitely felt as if I was
• 37:35
  reading a Chris Chibnall era piece of fiction.
• 37:40
  Discuss. Yes, yes, yes it is.
• 37:43
  And, you know, I think I'm, I'm not the biggest fan of the Chris
• 37:49
  Chibnall era, but neither am I someone who's particularly
• 37:51
  interested in joining a pile on because I think most of my
• 37:56
  issues with it are matters of execution, not of intent.
• 37:59
  I think, I think generally his, his views, his what from what we
• 38:03
  can tell of what's, what's on the screen.
• 38:06
  I think a lot of his ideas of what Doctor Who should be and
• 38:08
  what it's doing are correct and commendable.
• 38:10
  I, the fact that people like you and and others I know get so
• 38:14
  much out of of the era actually makes me feel a bit better about
• 38:17
  it. I, I, I think his casting is
• 38:21
  excellent. I think it's, I think it's an
• 38:23
  era that is shot beautifully. I think it definitely, perhaps
• 38:29
  unusually the three main showrunners so far, actually
• 38:32
  perceptibly gets better as it goes along.
• 38:34
  His era seems to find its feet a lot, a lot better and be more
• 38:39
  reliably entertaining. And I had.
• 38:40
  Another one to the list, I actually think he takes the
• 38:43
  staples of Doctor Who, the Daleks aside, men, the Master,
• 38:47
  and possibly does the most interesting things or certainly
• 38:51
  the most vivid things with them. I shared that Dalek in
• 38:54
  resolution. I mean I fucking love Sasha
• 38:56
  Dewan as. Well, you're starting your
• 38:58
  defence of the chimney with Ashad, I mean.
• 39:01
  Oh my God he's fucking amazing. What is wrong with you?
• 39:05
  The most ghoulish side man we've ever seen.
• 39:08
  That's that's that's a good conversation for another day.
• 39:11
  OK, we'll. Go there another time.
• 39:13
  But but the issues I have with it are are more often to do it
• 39:16
  to do with execution. I think often the the scripts
• 39:19
  don't really hang together terribly well, I think.
• 39:22
  I think the plotting is often really quite poor in terms of
• 39:26
  how how the story hangs together.
• 39:28
  I think at times there's almost a weird sort of inability to
• 39:33
  join, to join the dots within the story itself.
• 39:36
  And I think, and I, I think at other points, you know, think
• 39:42
  things happen that are not earned.
• 39:43
  I'm not feeling what it wants me to feel.
• 39:45
  But but that's not to mean that I, I, I don't think that's.
• 39:49
  All issues that you had with Frida, Carlo and the Skull
• 39:51
  children. That's a good question.
• 39:54
  Well, so let's let's start with what I like about this.
• 39:58
  So if established, I like that they're doing they're doing
• 40:01
  Freda Carlo that they are exploring, you know, areas of
• 40:04
  history that Doctor Who, at least on television, often
• 40:08
  hasn't done in the past. Worth mentioning, Freda Carlo
• 40:09
  has turned up in Doctor Who's spin off fiction before.
• 40:12
  She was in the 8th Doctor comic strip The way of All Flesh back
• 40:16
  in 2001, I believe. Worth checking out.
• 40:19
  It's very good. I like that they're doing that.
• 40:22
  I like. The ideas not as with the
• 40:25
  chimney, I like some of the ideas that this story wants to
• 40:28
  explore. So as we've mentioned, those
• 40:31
  sorts of, you know, non traditional readings of history,
• 40:36
  I think they're good. I think exploring our that
• 40:41
  historical figure not in the not presenting the character who is
• 40:49
  the photograph on the Wikipedia article, if you like me.
• 40:51
  So we meet Freda as a young woman here.
• 40:52
  She's yet to become the artist we all know.
• 40:54
  Neither is she a chance they're not doing the cutesy thing of
• 40:57
  and that's, you know, chapter 10, final paragraph.
• 41:01
  Freda, what is your surname? No, Miss Carlo.
• 41:03
  Miss Carlo, come in, you know. Brilliant choice, they tell the
• 41:06
  entire book from her point of view.
• 41:08
  The entire book. That's really good.
• 41:10
  And it's also worth mentioning there's some interesting stuff
• 41:12
  about the it's it's quite a gentle book, even for a novella,
• 41:16
  it has quite a gentle pace to it.
• 41:20
  Even even when we're told that the whole, you know, the whole
• 41:23
  of the universe is in danger, I didn't really feed it.
• 41:25
  I was like, well, I'm sure you'll, you'll be all right, you
• 41:27
  know, like as we gently aim, but you know, from the, from the
• 41:31
  playground, from the TARDIS, back to the playground again,
• 41:33
  you know? There's a lot of back and forth
• 41:35
  in this. Episode a bit like the crescendo
• 41:38
  era. And a bit like the war games in
• 41:40
  colour. That was editing all right.
• 41:46
  And, and I like that they, they're also talking about the
• 41:48
  era. So, you know, they, they do not,
• 41:50
  not in any deep way, but we do touch on events from, from her
• 41:53
  life and from, from, you know, and, and the history of Mexico
• 41:57
  City and in that era and going back much further as well.
• 42:01
  Mexico as well was simply but very vividly depicted.
• 42:07
  I'll send you a picture of one of the trees that's described in
• 42:09
  this book, and I can absolutely see it in the prose.
• 42:13
  Yeah, absolutely. It's very vividly captured.
• 42:15
  I think that's a potentially the book's greatest success is how
• 42:20
  it captures the city in that time.
• 42:22
  Because I, you know, I don't have many reference points for
• 42:24
  it. I can look up photographs.
• 42:25
  I can sort of vaguely remember the film about her and how
• 42:28
  things looked. But I, I, I, I got that sense of
• 42:31
  place of, of this, of the sun, of the colours, of the layout,
• 42:35
  of the, of the, of the vibe of but also.
• 42:40
  The sense of community I got as well, like when I was out in
• 42:44
  South America, that sense of community there, everyone's very
• 42:47
  close, that the families are. Just the vibe of it was very
• 42:50
  different to something set in England.
• 42:52
  Yeah, yeah. And that, that is brilliant.
• 42:56
  I also like the idea of the antagonists in this so, and it
• 42:59
  takes, as you mentioned, it takes a while for the, for the
• 43:01
  threats to become apparent. But we, we learned that the, the
• 43:06
  skull children. So obviously there you're
• 43:07
  dealing with, you know, what's an, an, an image that a Western
• 43:13
  or certainly, you know, Anglophonic readership would
• 43:17
  associate with Mexico in the past, you know, the day of the
• 43:21
  dead and the aesthetics, the aesthetics of that.
• 43:25
  But the actual threat underlying that is revealed to essentially
• 43:30
  be AI. So it's, it's quite a, it's
• 43:34
  quite a contemporary idea of threats that they are.
• 43:38
  So they're called the Keratins. They are a non binary binary
• 43:43
  code. Yes, they are AI from the
• 43:45
  planet. No, that's right, NOH, which has
• 43:49
  got a gloriously sort of William Hartnell annual story vibe to it
• 43:54
  as a planet name. Like it was this sort of
• 43:57
  throwaway back story about them being trapped in a rock, the
• 44:01
  rock landing on Earth millions of years ago.
• 44:03
  And eventually the the binary creatures are out and they want
• 44:07
  to sort of puppeteer humans because they just want to
• 44:10
  experience life and how it is to feel and puppeteer somebody and
• 44:14
  have arms and legs and feel the sun on their face and all of
• 44:17
  that. And I thought that was really
• 44:19
  interesting. I don't think it quite went far
• 44:21
  enough, but as an idea I thought it was interesting.
• 44:24
  Yeah, absolutely. And that that back story is
• 44:25
  Earth just hovering over for a moment because yes, they're from
• 44:28
  the planet. No, which 10s of millions of
• 44:30
  years in the past they superseded the organic life and
• 44:34
  ended up destroying the planets themselves in in classic 1960s
• 44:37
  Doctor Who galactic explosion style.
• 44:40
  Somehow our planet exploded, are you saying?
• 44:43
  Michael, an AI life form superseded all organic life.
• 44:48
  My God, this could be a portent of our future.
• 44:53
  Do you think there might be a satirical element to some of
• 44:55
  this? Joe Just.
• 44:56
  A slight little touch of it, perhaps?
• 44:59
  So the planet was destroyed, bits of rock were thrown off.
• 45:02
  The characters we meet here were trapped within a fragment of
• 45:04
  this rock which, and I love this, which fell to Earth
• 45:09
  66,000,000 years ago. You've got to bring up that
• 45:13
  continuity reference you were telling me about.
• 45:16
  Yes, so the doctor, so they talk about this and the doctor was
• 45:19
  that was and they go through, they go, that was that was the
• 45:21
  meteorite that just that wiped out the dinosaurs.
• 45:25
  Then then the cursor comes in on the Word document adds a line
• 45:29
  break. Oh, it must have been drawn.
• 45:31
  It must have been drawn in by the freighter that killed Adric.
• 45:36
  And you go. I have never seen a more blatant
• 45:38
  editorial note in my life. There is absolutely no reason.
• 45:42
  No, excuse me, I found one even more Blatter than that in this
• 45:46
  book where there's some random line that went with that was
• 45:49
  weirder than Heather and the oil puzzle.
• 45:52
  I'm like, why are we throwing in some random reference to the
• 45:54
  pilot? It gave me a wonderful vibe.
• 45:58
  Do you remember when, you know, 2000 and six 2007 that sort of
• 46:02
  era and you'd get the three new series adventures that would be
• 46:05
  out to tie into the launch of the new series and all of them
• 46:08
  would have references to the first 3 episodes of the new
• 46:11
  series because those were the ones they'd got scripts for.
• 46:13
  That was a wonderful it's like, I know, but the Earth shock was
• 46:16
  just wonderful because, you know, say Sophie McKenzie need
• 46:18
  not have watched Earth Shock, but it was.
• 46:21
  But I, I'm sorry if an editor hadn't stepped in and gone we
• 46:26
  all Doctor Who's already done what wiped out the dinosaurs.
• 46:28
  You think you could add a line and then it's amazing how much
• 46:31
  it breeds like that's what happened.
• 46:33
  Can I bring something up which made me interrogate myself?
• 46:39
  Is it related to the book or is this a personal matter?
• 46:43
  Well, it's not about me, it is about the book.
• 46:45
  So there was a lie. Yeah.
• 46:47
  Where the doctor goes, you're binary and yet I'm guessing non
• 46:50
  binary when it comes to gender. What are your pronouns?
• 46:53
  And then the, what are they called?
• 46:57
  Let's go with Keratins. Keratins say we have no gender
• 47:00
  and the doctor goes and makes sense.
• 47:01
  Let's go with they them, right. And you know what I did?
• 47:05
  I went oh God, like, and I'm like, what is wrong with me?
• 47:10
  But this is so great. It's so progressive.
• 47:12
  Why was that my reaction to that?
• 47:15
  Because you're a terrible person.
• 47:16
  I think I probably, no, I think I think it's because I have
• 47:22
  spent far too long on social media in recent years listening
• 47:29
  to people banging on about how bad this stuff is and giving it
• 47:33
  that sort of umbrella term of woke, you know, so that the
• 47:37
  exclusivity that's happening in a lot of television and fiction
• 47:42
  and all of that now, which is such a wonderful thing.
• 47:46
  And I really was angry at myself.
• 47:47
  The point like Jack Ford, you're better than this.
• 47:51
  I took a little lesson. Yeah, no.
• 47:53
  And absolutely. And again, it, it's educating
• 47:55
  us, right. And it's, it's, it's important
• 47:57
  to be challenged on these things because it is very easy if you
• 48:00
  are part of you know, I say this as a, as a, as a hetero sis
• 48:06
  white man, It's very easy if you are part of historically and
• 48:11
  continually privileged. I you know, group or groups to
• 48:16
  think that any to feel like that is the your experience is, is
• 48:19
  normal. And when you know, as the old
• 48:21
  saying goes, when you're used to privilege, then equality can
• 48:25
  feel a lot like oppression, right?
• 48:27
  And that's what that's what you know, it's sad says a lot of
• 48:29
  people seem to be building entire careers on validating
• 48:33
  that feeling of certain people. And when you even one thing
• 48:37
  about social media is you get exposed to these views all the
• 48:39
  time. And even though, you know,
• 48:41
  we're, we're right on right, we're left, we're, you know,
• 48:44
  left-leaning. Absolutely.
• 48:46
  You know bleeding heart liberals, but that stuff does
• 48:48
  begin to see does begin to seep in what you know and it can
• 48:51
  affect you in ways you don't want to it and it's good to be
• 48:53
  called up on it. It's.
• 48:53
  Good to be grabbed. I mean, I called myself up on it
• 48:56
  and I did bring it up for a reason, because I think other
• 48:58
  people might rupe this and have a similar reaction, right?
• 49:01
  And I do think there can be times when stuff like that can
• 49:05
  feel box ticky. I don't think this was the case.
• 49:07
  It's literally a binary life form, right?
• 49:10
  So to have this in this book, which also deals with a
• 49:13
  historical character that has, you know, gender, gender
• 49:18
  identity, is going through something sort of similar as
• 49:22
  well. It all makes sense.
• 49:24
  I just think I had to step back from the book for a second and
• 49:27
  say how many books, TV, whatever is being written where these
• 49:32
  things don't feature? Oh, that's right.
• 49:34
  The other 99.9% of what has been brought out, who fucking rather
• 49:39
  this stuff is being included? Yeah, I would hundred, I 100%
• 49:43
  agree. And I think, you know, when you
• 49:45
  say sometimes it can feel box sticky, I think what we often
• 49:48
  tend to mean by that actually is, is when someone or something
• 49:54
  or some text wants the kind of cachet of being seen to care
• 49:57
  about a current topic or, or, or currently a currently popular
• 50:00
  topic, I should should say, And to seem to to profess to be on
• 50:04
  the right side of that, but doesn't follow it through in any
• 50:06
  way. So, you know, it's, it's the
• 50:08
  thing of, oh, we're going to have the first gay kiss in Star
• 50:10
  Wars. And it's two, it's two jellies
• 50:13
  in the background of one shot, right.
• 50:17
  But this, as you say, is telling a story about this.
• 50:19
  Now, of course there will be, there will, there will be people
• 50:23
  whose identity is more closely overlap, but those with Frida
• 50:25
  Kahlo, who maybe know more about the subject and will be able to
• 50:27
  tell us, I'd love to hear from, from, from, from people who more
• 50:31
  closely identify with her about how they related to this story.
• 50:36
  But certainly from my, my outsider perspective, it was
• 50:38
  great to have that. It did feel like, no, this is a
• 50:40
  story that wants to talk about this person and wants to present
• 50:43
  those identities. Like you said, though, it is an
• 50:46
  it's not just an education about freedom.
• 50:48
  There was more of an education going on here for me than I
• 50:51
  thought, and that's a really good thing.
• 50:54
  Yeah, it's brilliant. So to go back to the the
• 50:58
  Keratins as well, in terms of, you know, sort of current
• 51:02
  contemporary high profile issues of AII think I would agree with
• 51:08
  what you said about about the handling of AI in this book,
• 51:10
  though, in terms of things that I didn't think worked so well,
• 51:12
  which is the idea is they want to learn about the world and
• 51:18
  they want to go out there and take it.
• 51:19
  But in doing that, they're going to end up killing lots of people
• 51:21
  because they don't really care. They will do everything they can
• 51:24
  to get the information on different human experiences.
• 51:25
  And if that means making people jump off tall buildings, they
• 51:28
  want to know what it's like to jump off a tall building,
• 51:30
  they'll do it. And.
• 51:32
  I mean, I thought that was just in there to add a bit of
• 51:34
  jeopardy. Otherwise, this is the most
• 51:36
  gentle Doctor Who story we've ever told.
• 51:39
  Yeah, exactly. And I think it they they do
• 51:41
  ultimate for all that it wants to be a contemporary threat, it
• 51:46
  is ultimately quite a, you know, they come across as quite
• 51:49
  familiar logical pseudo. They're not robots, but pseudo
• 51:53
  robot baddies. And actually, if you want to see
• 51:56
  in recent talk to who a more interesting take on AI Rotish
• 52:02
  intelligence as a as a horror theme, I think while blue Yonder
• 52:05
  does it a lot better there where you've got 2 to to entities that
• 52:09
  are just going to keep copying you.
• 52:10
  And the more information you give them, the better they're
• 52:13
  going to be at copying you until they can eventually replace you
• 52:16
  entirely. That struck me as being a very
• 52:20
  interesting parallel for AI and I think a lot more threatening
• 52:25
  how how they are present, how they are presented here.
• 52:27
  But that doesn't mean I didn't like the idea.
• 52:30
  And it seems on the face of it, it does seem, you know, Freda
• 52:33
  Carlo versus AI. It might not seem like an
• 52:38
  obvious it's a. Great idea what you're talking
• 52:42
  about. But what what was saying is
• 52:44
  it's, it's not Charles Dickens versus ghosts, is it?
• 52:46
  Or William Shakespeare versus witches.
• 52:49
  Basically the artist traps AI in a cage at the end.
• 52:53
  Wonderful. But, but, but, you know, I think
• 52:56
  Mackenzie, she does make an interesting story about identity
• 53:00
  out of that. Who are we?
• 53:01
  How are we defined? Are we individual?
• 53:04
  You know, are we individuals or is identity something that can
• 53:07
  be replicated and understood externally?
• 53:12
  And I guess you might even, you could even infer a point about
• 53:17
  the creative ability of human artists as as opposed to sort of
• 53:21
  the regurgitations of of AI. But it's there.
• 53:26
  But I think the book doesn't make enough of that point, which
• 53:29
  was a little bit disappointed by.
• 53:30
  Do you know why? It's because this is a Doctor
• 53:33
  Who book as well. And I think when this was a book
• 53:35
  about Freda Carlo, it was super interesting.
• 53:39
  I was so engaged with it when this was a Doctor Who narrative
• 53:43
  and it was about aliens coming to Earth and how do we get rid
• 53:47
  of the aliens? It was so functional.
• 53:50
  It was so like, OK, there's the threat.
• 53:53
  OK, they've taken over the kids, very children of Earth.
• 53:56
  OK, how do we stop them? I know what I'm going to make a
• 53:58
  holodeck in the TARDIS. Great.
• 54:01
  Fredo, you distract them, let's get them in the holodeck.
• 54:04
  The end. And I was like, OK, that's so
• 54:06
  functional, that story. Well, the Doctor does actually
• 54:09
  call that that holodeck, that virtual reality and metaverse at
• 54:12
  one point. And I quite like, I quite like
• 54:14
  the ending of can't we just make the?
• 54:15
  Can't we just trap the AIS in the metaverse and have done with
• 54:18
  it all? Have we not done with, you know,
• 54:21
  we've done away with all this bollocks from the early New
• 54:23
  Adventures and we're these artificial worlds.
• 54:27
  Cyberpunk is here again. Oh.
• 54:29
  Christ away, but can I say you, and I think I thought this book
• 54:34
  did superbly well was explore the pain that Freda Carlo was
• 54:40
  going through, how that pain was channelled into her art.
• 54:44
  I very often think that the best artists, in whatever form you
• 54:48
  wanted to say, are kind of tortured souls in one way or
• 54:52
  another. Mentally, physically, I thought
• 54:55
  that was all done brilliantly. And the way it was described and
• 54:57
  how she's in constant pain and when the binary creatures are
• 55:01
  inside her and they don't understand why she's not
• 55:05
  functioning properly. And I just thought all of that
• 55:08
  was brilliantly done. Yeah, yeah.
• 55:11
  So it does touch on that as well that the Frida Carlo was.
• 55:14
  So the book is set in, I think it's meant to be 1926, April,
• 55:21
  April 1926. And so it's six months since
• 55:27
  Freda Carlo's historical accident where she was involved.
• 55:30
  I think it was a tram crash and at the age of 18, which left her
• 55:37
  with with injuries that that caused her her pain throughout
• 55:39
  throughout the rest of her life. And I thought that one of the
• 55:44
  things the book did read about, it's in a similar way that it it
• 55:46
  cut it, you know, sort of conjured up that sense of Mexico
• 55:50
  City was how it captured the the constantness of pain.
• 55:57
  The fact that she is she's the the pain is ever present in her
• 55:59
  life as a physical thing that informs her that she has to
• 56:02
  consider and she has to she has to live with.
• 56:04
  I thought, I thought that was very well done it.
• 56:07
  Was a very profound cut series of lives at the start.
• 56:11
  Only since her accident had she understood life's great truth.
• 56:14
  Suffering was what it meant to be human.
• 56:17
  The pain was all she had. Now it was her life, her future.
• 56:20
  And I was like, that kind of tells me everything I need to
• 56:22
  know there in a couple of lines. Yeah, yeah, I, I, that's right.
• 56:28
  It's been quite effective. And again, of, you know, it's
• 56:31
  called icons. So the intent here is to talk
• 56:35
  about the, the, our central historical characters.
• 56:40
  I've, I've not read either of the other two entries yet.
• 56:42
  And yeah, in terms of using Frida Carlo to, to talk about
• 56:47
  those different forms of identity, those different forms
• 56:50
  of, of, of, of ability. I, I felt it did that really
• 56:55
  well in terms of making me understand what it was like to
• 56:59
  be here and to be here as a person, to be here as an 18 year
• 57:02
  old at that time, not as super magic creative person.
• 57:08
  She was surrounded by kind people, her friend that came and
• 57:11
  visited her when she was in hospital, her sister that's
• 57:15
  trying to take her out and introduce her to boys and
• 57:18
  friends and things. And she's just angry, isn't she?
• 57:21
  She's really angry and withdrawn from the world because she's
• 57:24
  different from everybody else. And the conclusion that the book
• 57:27
  draws where she comes home after this sort of incredible
• 57:31
  experience that she's had. And the the easel was there set
• 57:34
  up. It's sort of set up earlier in
• 57:36
  the book and she's seen all these fabulous colours from the
• 57:39
  metaverse that the doctors created.
• 57:42
  And there we know. We know exactly what we need to
• 57:45
  know without the book actually telling us that she's going to
• 57:48
  go on to be an incredible artist.
• 57:51
  Yeah, Yeah. I think, I think that's nice
• 57:52
  that it is. I mean, there there is a bit
• 57:55
  where ultimately she does sort of create this universe, this
• 58:01
  virtual reality through her incredible artistic ability,
• 58:04
  which did feel a little bit Russell T Davis finger clicky,
• 58:09
  brilliant person to save the day, Which was a shame because
• 58:13
  part of that I liked that we had seen Freda Cara as someone who
• 58:16
  will grow into an icon legend, but is a person.
• 58:20
  And there was one line at the end of the book which I just
• 58:23
  thought was beautiful. It was coming from the doctor
• 58:25
  where she just said, turn your pain into passion.
• 58:28
  That's your superpower. Frida Carlo.
• 58:30
  And I think a lot of artists have turned pain into passion.
• 58:34
  I thought that captured it really, really well.
• 58:36
  We need to talk about the 13th Doctor.
• 58:39
  OK. Because I don't think you were
• 58:42
  very impressed with her depiction in this as usual.
• 58:47
  And and there was, I mean, even I there was a few moments where
• 58:49
  I was like, my God, that is so Christian or dialogue like she's
• 58:53
  captured that absolutely beautiful.
• 58:55
  There was a moment where, hang on, where is it?
• 58:59
  Edit, edit, edit, edit edit edit.
• 59:01
  I won't edit where where the Doctor literally explains what a
• 59:06
  word means the chupacabra and then makes a terrible joke
• 59:09
  about. It Oh God, I wrote that down.
• 59:12
  I was like Oh my God that's absolutely chipmunal dialogue
• 59:15
  explaining the bloody word before the joke.
• 59:19
  Nice bloke, miss a bit misunderstood.
• 59:21
  Like that's not a joke. That's not that's that's, that's
• 59:24
  just something that has the shape of a joke.
• 59:26
  But there's absolutely no humour in it whatsoever, and yet in
• 59:31
  that way it's perfectly Christianal.
• 59:33
  Yes, indeed, and. Oh yes, it's like it's like that
• 59:38
  time I met the minor tour and Queen Elizabeth the second.
• 59:42
  Oh, it's on a space yacht going around Jupiter.
• 59:45
  It were crazy. I stopped talking are.
• 59:48
  You all right there? Are you OK, Russell?
• 59:50
  This is going to turn into therapy for you.
• 59:53
  Russell C Davis said somewhere that every single script you got
• 59:56
  in from a new writer would have a line about along those lines
• 1:00:00
  of, oh, this is worse than that time I thought velociraptor with
• 1:00:02
  Budka. And every single time he'd cut
• 1:00:04
  it out. And there's so many things.
• 1:00:06
  We just go, Christianal did a ball, left it in.
• 1:00:10
  There was some descriptions from free to the point of view that I
• 1:00:13
  thought were very nice of the 13th Doctor.
• 1:00:15
  She calls her Las Pelonas, women who had the confidence to rebel
• 1:00:19
  against traditional expectations and celebrate themselves the way
• 1:00:23
  they wanted. I really like that.
• 1:00:25
  The fact that she's called Doctor and Freda shocked that a
• 1:00:28
  woman has a profession, I really like that.
• 1:00:32
  So there was lots of lovely bits.
• 1:00:33
  And she's clearly very impressed.
• 1:00:35
  And she goes in the TARDIS and she's wowed.
• 1:00:36
  Nick Briggs, pay attention, please.
• 1:00:38
  You didn't not have those TARDIS, Those kids going into
• 1:00:41
  the TARDIS from the kids point of view, this is how you do it.
• 1:00:44
  We go into the TARDIS through freedom point of view, and it's
• 1:00:47
  lovely. But even I thought, yeah, we're
• 1:00:52
  just sort of waving the Sonic around and doing exposition for
• 1:00:56
  most of the book. Yeah, No, I know there's more to
• 1:01:00
  the 13th Doctor than that. I know.
• 1:01:02
  Basically, you said to me you have.
• 1:01:04
  No, in our sort of in our WhatsApp chat, you said you have
• 1:01:07
  no clue who the 30th Doctor is. To me, the 30th Doctor is just a
• 1:01:10
  massive heart. She loves the universe, she
• 1:01:12
  loves her friends, and she just goes out spreading acceptance
• 1:01:16
  and love to everybody. And that's a wonderful message.
• 1:01:18
  And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
• 1:01:20
  I realize it's not as deep and angsty and man painy as many of
• 1:01:25
  the male doctors we've had since then since the new series has
• 1:01:29
  come back, but it kind of works for me.
• 1:01:31
  But this book isn't really doing that.
• 1:01:33
  It is basically using the Doctor as a narrative tool.
• 1:01:37
  For the record, I don't like the angsty out of man painy bits.
• 1:01:40
  My favorite My favorite Doctor portrayal is is.
• 1:01:43
  Romantic. Why do you like the Moffy era
• 1:01:45
  then? That's all it was.
• 1:01:47
  That's the man pain. My my single favorite bit of doc
• 1:01:51
  Doctor Ness in a Doctor Who is the 8th Doctor in the TV movie.
• 1:01:55
  All right, that's the, that's the guy like.
• 1:01:56
  Hang on, let me see if I've been paying attention.
• 1:01:59
  Is it you? Come with me.
• 1:02:01
  Me. Come with you.
• 1:02:02
  It's tempting. Yeah, that's great.
• 1:02:05
  But I know I know what you're saying about about 30 dogs and I
• 1:02:07
  accept it and it's not it it, I don't say I've never really kept
• 1:02:13
  terrible word connected with the 13th Doctor in the way that even
• 1:02:16
  like say, first series Capaldi, who I don't like.
• 1:02:19
  I don't like that portrayal of the Doctor, but I at least
• 1:02:21
  understand what the character is, even if it's a character I
• 1:02:24
  don't like. I think, I think your
• 1:02:26
  description of the 13th Doctor is great.
• 1:02:28
  And that's, and I want to see more of that.
• 1:02:31
  I think the danger is if that's not, that's not always
• 1:02:35
  brilliantly articulated in terms of what that can actually mean
• 1:02:38
  in story terms and in character terms.
• 1:02:41
  And so there is the danger that she does just come across as
• 1:02:43
  nice outer space lady. Yeah, I'd rather like that
• 1:02:47
  though, you know, especially when it's Jodie Whittaker saying
• 1:02:49
  the words. I'll tell you what the perfect
• 1:02:51
  encapsulation of who the 13th Doctor is, is the speech she
• 1:02:54
  gives at the wedding and demons in a Punjab.
• 1:02:56
  That's who she is. You you say that like I can
• 1:02:59
  remember that. Dialogue.
• 1:03:00
  Well, you should remember it. She's talking about love in all
• 1:03:04
  of its forms. Being.
• 1:03:05
  No, Sherlock, That's my favorite bit of this doctor.
• 1:03:10
  My favorite Prince when I see devil calls her a twat.
• 1:03:16
  But no my point stands is in this book I don't think there's
• 1:03:20
  any great attempt to explore who the 13th Doctor is.
• 1:03:23
  Like I recently read The Good Doctor.
• 1:03:25
  That was a fantastic thing in Doctor book.
• 1:03:27
  She got to be properly angry and railing against a really unfair
• 1:03:32
  society and took it down. By the end of the book it was
• 1:03:35
  really great. Here she is basically here to
• 1:03:38
  tell free to come what's going on, what the aliens are, to sort
• 1:03:42
  of decipher the techno Babble a bit and then create the
• 1:03:46
  solution, you know? But because the whole book is
• 1:03:48
  from Frida's point of view, well, we don't get any great
• 1:03:52
  insight into the 13th Doctor. No.
• 1:03:55
  And I think this comes back to the point you've made that is
• 1:04:00
  generally a book that I feel positive about, but is, you
• 1:04:03
  know, has its flaws. Its single biggest flaws is is
• 1:04:05
  it is lacking in jeopardy while being a story that wants to have
• 1:04:10
  some jeopardy. You know, it's fine.
• 1:04:11
  It's fine. You don't necessarily have to
• 1:04:13
  have a story that is that doesn't always and you know, you
• 1:04:16
  need to have a plot, but it doesn't necessarily have to be
• 1:04:18
  edge of your seat stuff. And the part the problem with
• 1:04:22
  this is that the resolution is that the Doctor just goes to the
• 1:04:26
  TARDIS, works works in the TARDIS for about 1/3 of the
• 1:04:29
  book, and then he goes, oh, it's fine.
• 1:04:33
  It was a bit dull, weren't it? Even I even, I almost messaged
• 1:04:36
  you at the end, but I didn't want to endorse you, so I
• 1:04:39
  didn't. I waited for this moment and I
• 1:04:42
  want to sort of go, oh, that was sort of a bit of nothing really,
• 1:04:45
  wouldn't it that. I mean, come on, you're doing
• 1:04:48
  Chris Chibnall. At least have the school teacher
• 1:04:49
  needlessly sacrifice herself to hold some wires.
• 1:04:52
  I. Know where was the Co Sharma's
• 1:04:53
  effect? Come along now, Chris.
• 1:04:55
  Oh, not Chris, it's Sophie, isn't it?
• 1:04:57
  Or your man from the legend of the Sea Devils, the pirate
• 1:05:00
  captain who literally dies because no one's got any sticky
• 1:05:03
  tape on them. But for once, I actually felt
• 1:05:06
  the criticism that a lot of people level at the Chipnall
• 1:05:09
  historicals, which I think are the best historicals in the new
• 1:05:12
  series by a mile, is that do we need the science fiction
• 1:05:16
  elements? And, you know, for once I was
• 1:05:18
  like, yeah, I could see another version of this story without
• 1:05:23
  all that bullshit where we're just with Freda and we're living
• 1:05:26
  her life for the book and, and there's just a, a, a real threat
• 1:05:31
  on the earth, you know, do you know what I mean?
• 1:05:34
  Like, like just none of this science fiction bullshit, which,
• 1:05:37
  really, if it's not going to reach any kind of a
• 1:05:41
  groundbreaking conclusion, why are we doing it?
• 1:05:45
  I, I, I see where you're coming from and I see, I understand.
• 1:05:48
  And it's not necessarily wrong. If something's not working, just
• 1:05:50
  take it out like an appendix. And, and yet, and yet I think it
• 1:05:58
  is reflective of the chimney era for me or my feelings towards
• 1:06:01
  the chimney era in that I actually think all of the
• 1:06:03
  elements are there. I, like I said, I think there is
• 1:06:05
  an interesting story here to be told about human creativity.
• 1:06:10
  And you know, heck, as we're recording this, there's all the
• 1:06:12
  stories about the Instagram's filling itself up with AI
• 1:06:17
  replacement people for no apparent purpose.
• 1:06:20
  You know, I think there is a contempt.
• 1:06:22
  There is a contemporary story. I do interesting.
• 1:06:25
  I, I genuinely don't know, like, you know, a lot of this AI
• 1:06:29
  stuff. So we stick with Instagram
• 1:06:30
  because we think we're more popular than we are.
• 1:06:32
  We've got suddenly get a load of new followers.
• 1:06:35
  Yeah, I mean almost certainly, but I think, I think there is a,
• 1:06:38
  there is a story here to be told about human, the difference
• 1:06:41
  between genuine creativity and regurgitation of learnt
• 1:06:45
  patterns, right. And, and, and but also the
• 1:06:48
  problematic nature of that argument.
• 1:06:49
  Because what is the indefinable human element that we bring to
• 1:06:52
  that that allows some spark? Is it, is it just the fact that
• 1:06:55
  our brains are so much more complex than any AI model could
• 1:06:57
  possibly be? Is, you know, and using and
• 1:07:00
  putting Freda Carlos, who is, who is, who has all of these
• 1:07:03
  intersect intersecting identities at putting her into
• 1:07:06
  that mix. It's a brilliant story.
• 1:07:08
  I want to read that story. We don't have that conversation.
• 1:07:10
  That conversation never happens in the book.
• 1:07:13
  It's and it's the it's the same it's it's the same problem as as
• 1:07:17
  resolution, right where you just have these.
• 1:07:19
  Leave resolution alone. All right, you have got her from
• 1:07:23
  Ghosts with a Dalek mutant on her back.
• 1:07:27
  They have all of these stories going on in parallel with
• 1:07:29
  obvious ways they could tie up and be made to have.
• 1:07:31
  Some, excuse me, the microwave was how it was all tied up,
• 1:07:35
  thank you very much. That was being carried around
• 1:07:38
  from scene to scene. The microwave is the metaverse
• 1:07:41
  in in this book and you know it. Oh, that's the light of the
• 1:07:45
  episode. The microwave is the metaverse.
• 1:07:50
  And so for me, it felt very true to the chipper era in that
• 1:07:53
  regard. Did you not enjoy it then?
• 1:07:59
  It's difficult, isn't it? Because.
• 1:08:01
  I don't mean the era, I meant this book.
• 1:08:03
  I know I, because I, I, I did enjoy lots of it and I liked a
• 1:08:08
  lot of what it was doing. I think, I think I did enjoy
• 1:08:13
  reading it, but I oh. I pause just.
• 1:08:19
  Too long there for you to I go back on what you just said.
• 1:08:24
  I liked, I liked reading it. I I liked the story.
• 1:08:29
  I don't know that I enjoyed it and I think it was a
• 1:08:33
  frustration. Just like the Chibnu era.
• 1:08:36
  I didn't like a lot of the chibnu.
• 1:08:39
  I mean, I liked and enjoyed most of it.
• 1:08:41
  I liked this. I liked the prose.
• 1:08:44
  I thought it was very well written.
• 1:08:45
  I thought she conjured up an atmosphere economically.
• 1:08:50
  I liked the fact that it was all set from Fried's point of view
• 1:08:54
  and it encouraged me enough to go and learn more about her
• 1:08:58
  afterwards. I loved the Mexico setting.
• 1:09:01
  I just didn't like the Doctor Who bits.
• 1:09:04
  I basically want this who I think is a good writer to write
• 1:09:09
  a Frida Carlo book, that this isn't a Doctor Who book.
• 1:09:11
  I'd read that and I'd love it, I think.
• 1:09:14
  I liked all of those threads that you mentioned.
• 1:09:17
  I just wanted another little turn of the knots to really
• 1:09:21
  tighten them up and pull them together.
• 1:09:23
  And this could have been something really exceptional.
• 1:09:25
  And I think because I felt that lack so much ultimately it means
• 1:09:30
  I didn't I, I, I couldn't enjoy it in the way I wanted to.
• 1:09:33
  That's. Fair well, should we?
• 1:09:35
  Should we end Freda Carlo and the Skull Children there?
• 1:09:39
  Let's. And skip into, I really have no
• 1:09:44
  idea what you're going to say to me now.
• 1:09:46
  Our top three for this episode. I skipped over it last time
• 1:09:49
  because we both had to have tea. But tonight, we're going to go
• 1:09:52
  ahead and do it. We're doing our top three.
• 1:09:55
  Very appropriate for this episode.
• 1:09:57
  Celebrity historicals. Yeah.
• 1:10:00
  Now, have you chosen a character or sort of a story?
• 1:10:06
  I've chosen three stories, each one focusing on a different
• 1:10:11
  character. Well.
• 1:10:12
  We'll do what we normally do. We'll start with you and then to
• 1:10:14
  me, and then back and forth again.
• 1:10:16
  Cool, so in no particular order, my first one is Reckless
• 1:10:20
  Engineering from the 8th Doctor adventure range do.
• 1:10:24
  You know what, I was thinking so hard about latter day 8th Doctor
• 1:10:28
  books and I was like, is there any?
• 1:10:30
  I couldn't think of any. Yeah.
• 1:10:32
  Well, so this is from the much maligned what, what do we call
• 1:10:37
  it, alternate universes, mini arc, that sort of Arc.
• 1:10:40
  It's. Fairly maligned, Michael.
• 1:10:42
  We will get there. Yeah, but it's because the
• 1:10:44
  domino effect came first and that is rubbish.
• 1:10:47
  The Infinity race came first. Oh yeah, and that is, that is
• 1:10:51
  rubbish. So we've said, we've said
• 1:10:53
  unfairly maligned and two of the four books are rubbish, but.
• 1:10:56
  I mean, I think the reconstant engineering may be the tipping
• 1:10:59
  point though in the right direction.
• 1:11:00
  Reconstant engineer is brilliant.
• 1:11:02
  So the Doctor, Fitz and Angie arrive on Earth in 2003 but find
• 1:11:09
  that that it's a world devastated My seemingly
• 1:11:13
  technology has has not progressed following an
• 1:11:15
  apocalyptic event in the 19th century.
• 1:11:18
  Very much time you want me very much alternative universe.
• 1:11:21
  But at the centre of all of this is Isimbard Kings and Brunel and
• 1:11:27
  the you know, the the the famous engineer of of the of the
• 1:11:30
  British Empire, he of the reinforced stovepipe hat, the
• 1:11:32
  Clifton Suspension Bridge, the S S Great Eastern was that the was
• 1:11:38
  that the the the propeller driven propeller driven boats
• 1:11:43
  and all all the rest of it. I.
• 1:11:44
  Already knew about the bridge if I'm honest.
• 1:11:47
  Well, the Clifton, The Clifton Suspension Bridge is in two
• 1:11:50
  Doctor Who books, but in both occasions it is in a devastated
• 1:11:54
  parallel earth. There we go, electron to tell us
• 1:11:57
  something. Because it's also in blood heat.
• 1:12:00
  OK. And, and So what I, what I like
• 1:12:04
  about this book is it's Doctor Dooping.
• 1:12:07
  It feels like it's a little bit ahead of its time, this sort of
• 1:12:11
  historical figures and alternative histories.
• 1:12:12
  I know it existed before this, but it's become a much bigger
• 1:12:15
  deal since then. You know, there are plenty of
• 1:12:19
  books there which sort of present historical figures in in
• 1:12:22
  in counterfactual narratives. And it's Doctor Who telling a
• 1:12:26
  really just a really big, quite dark, quite interesting story.
• 1:12:30
  And also one of the great BBC book covers with the famous
• 1:12:34
  photo of OH. It's oh of oxy isn't it?
• 1:12:37
  Yes, isn't about the famous photo of isn't about Kingdom
• 1:12:39
  Brunel stood in front of the chains of of apologies, not the
• 1:12:43
  S S Great Eastern who got the name wrong, but his face is
• 1:12:46
  replaced with a skull. You know, with black sheep,
• 1:12:49
  right? I think there were many
• 1:12:50
  discussions where they went, well, should we just Photoshop a
• 1:12:52
  skull in? And this was the one time when
• 1:12:54
  it really works, you know. Yeah, so it's a great book and
• 1:13:00
  it's a very different type of of celebrity of celebrity
• 1:13:03
  historical. My second one I'm going for is a
• 1:13:06
  short story. Oh, good one.
• 1:13:09
  From Big Finish, short trips, Past tense, I'm going with The
• 1:13:12
  Thief of Sherwood by Jonathan Morris.
• 1:13:16
  How sure would you say? Yes, now I realise Robin Hood
• 1:13:19
  wasn't a real historical figure. Except he wasn't Doctor Who, so
• 1:13:22
  it counts. Don't at me.
• 1:13:24
  This was this was before many years.
• 1:13:27
  Paul Robes or Sherwood? Don't you come for the chip nor
• 1:13:30
  historicals, all right, if you're going to talk about Robot
• 1:13:32
  or Sherwood. And it's a brilliant idea in
• 1:13:36
  terms of we're talking at the start of the episode about the
• 1:13:39
  way in which a short story lets you be more experimental, try
• 1:13:43
  different types of story, but also different ways of telling a
• 1:13:46
  story. Swollen who's not read The Thief
• 1:13:47
  of Sherwood? It is such a great idea because
• 1:13:50
  the whole story is presented as a selection of extracts from
• 1:13:58
  books, from Doctor Who magazine, articles from script books about
• 1:14:03
  a missing Doctor Who story called The Thief of Sherwood, in
• 1:14:08
  which I think it's the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, possibly Susan as
• 1:14:13
  well. Meet Rob, meet Robin Hood.
• 1:14:16
  And so there's bits where Jonathan Morris is aping, you
• 1:14:19
  know, the DWDWMS of the 1980s. I think it's just a bit with a
• 1:14:24
  bit of the Discontinuity Guide as well and the television
• 1:14:27
  companion giving you like the cliffhangers and some of the
• 1:14:30
  errors. God.
• 1:14:31
  That sounds amazingly good. It's it's brilliantly done.
• 1:14:35
  And also, you know, a wonderful little snapshot of a time when
• 1:14:38
  you didn't have, you know, you couldn't just turn on your TV
• 1:14:40
  and watch the macro terror, you know, so you only knew about
• 1:14:43
  these stories from from what was that?
• 1:14:46
  And it's it's a. Great archaeology of Doctor Who,
• 1:14:49
  I call it. Yeah.
• 1:14:50
  And it's just a fantastic sort of almost like found footage
• 1:14:53
  version version of Doctor Who, but built around.
• 1:14:56
  But he, he, you know, the fact that he's built around the
• 1:14:59
  legends of Robin Hood sort of gives it that structure to allow
• 1:15:03
  you to, to follow the story. That's literally what you said
• 1:15:07
  earlier, wasn't it about short stories and just using the
• 1:15:09
  advantage of it being told in a in a smaller number of pages and
• 1:15:14
  just playing with the format? What a great that sounds
• 1:15:18
  amazing. What which collection is that in
• 1:15:19
  again? Short trips, past tense.
• 1:15:23
  Right, it's coming off the shelf tomorrow.
• 1:15:27
  And my final one is from BBC Books, the Shakespeare
• 1:15:31
  Notebooks. What on earth is that?
• 1:15:36
  This was from back ten years ago.
• 1:15:38
  I think it's, I want to say it's 2013, 2014.
• 1:15:41
  It's a book, which is, I guess it's a short story collection
• 1:15:46
  really, but the short stories are not really short stories.
• 1:15:49
  It's a collection of vignettes of Doctor Who mashed up with the
• 1:15:55
  works, the life and works of William Shakespeare.
• 1:15:59
  So you get these things where you get the missing bit of Titus
• 1:16:03
  Andronicus, which which the the the cut ending, which reveals
• 1:16:08
  that it was all about the axons. And so the Doctor turns up as a
• 1:16:10
  companion and that as well. There's a sort of sequel to
• 1:16:15
  Midsummer Night's Dream set on Vortis with the Sontarans.
• 1:16:20
  There's they do a brilliant sort.
• 1:16:21
  There's one that's a fantastic sort of Rosencrantz and
• 1:16:24
  Guildenstern are Dead for Macbeth, where it's the Second
• 1:16:27
  Doctor, Jamie and Zoe as the witches basically running around
• 1:16:30
  in the background of Macbeth, making sure all of the events
• 1:16:34
  happen in the way they're meant to and that they remember them
• 1:16:36
  happening. And it's this.
• 1:16:38
  Book completely slipped past me. I know.
• 1:16:41
  I think it's just one of those sorts of bits of ephemera that
• 1:16:43
  sort of even Doctor Who, because it's not part of the official
• 1:16:46
  novel range, right? People just sort of miss these
• 1:16:48
  things when they come out and it's really good fun.
• 1:16:52
  It's clearly met by people who know what they're talking about,
• 1:16:54
  like. What sort of rise is it,
• 1:16:56
  Michael? But you know what?
• 1:16:57
  Brilliantly I've I've got the TARDIS Wiki entry up here for
• 1:17:01
  the Shakespeare Notebooks, and the credited writers are James
• 1:17:05
  Goss. Oh.
• 1:17:06
  Gold. Jonathan Morris again.
• 1:17:08
  Amazing. Julian Richards.
• 1:17:10
  But I don't know who that is. Is that Justin Richards brother?
• 1:17:14
  I think Justin Justin Richards is also there.
• 1:17:17
  Matthew Sweet and and William Shakespeare, possibly his only
• 1:17:23
  credit on Doctor. Well, you know, he does try and
• 1:17:27
  travel about. You know Matthew Sweet, right?
• 1:17:30
  In a Shakespeare version of Doctor Who?
• 1:17:32
  That sounds incredible. It's great fun and it's got a
• 1:17:35
  wonderful sort of scrapbook collage approach as well,
• 1:17:37
  because there's lots of different takes on it, lots of
• 1:17:41
  different approaches. But that's why I like it in
• 1:17:44
  terms of how Doctor Who can engage with historical figures
• 1:17:49
  and their works. It's just such a different
• 1:17:51
  approach again, of sort of what was through the works of
• 1:17:54
  injecting the Doctor into these artworks as well as stepping
• 1:17:56
  outside of them as well. It's, it's, it's, it's great fun
• 1:18:00
  as as with most of us, you know, I probably know one or two
• 1:18:03
  Shakespeare plays quite well because I studied them at
• 1:18:05
  school. And on the basis of the ones I
• 1:18:07
  knew, you know, it's it's, it's this seems to be by people who
• 1:18:11
  know their stuff. I mean, of all of the potential
• 1:18:14
  pitches I've heard to entice me, A Midsummer Night's Dream on
• 1:18:19
  Vortis could be up there. You know there could be #1 Well,
• 1:18:26
  thank you very much for making my list seem very boring in
• 1:18:29
  comparison, because I've just chosen full length novels and
• 1:18:32
  probably the usual suspects. Are you ready for this?
• 1:18:36
  Yes. Just outside, by the way, was
• 1:18:38
  Rasputin in The Wages of Sin. It's a very contentious ending
• 1:18:45
  where the doctor hesitates to favour Rasputin at the end of
• 1:18:49
  the book because he's such an appalling person.
• 1:18:51
  So I didn't include that one. And which is going to be on my
• 1:18:56
  ever Just outside. It's going to be Churchill in
• 1:19:00
  Players, and I chose that one just because I really like the
• 1:19:05
  fact that Players actually technically informs the series
• 1:19:09
  because there's an established relationship between Churchill
• 1:19:11
  and the 11th Doctor in Victory in the Daleks.
• 1:19:14
  And it is beautifully set up in Players where he's a struggling
• 1:19:19
  politician and war correspondent in that and the Doctors helping
• 1:19:23
  him out earlier in his career. So those didn't make it.
• 1:19:27
  However, I would like to choose, somewhat controversially, Hitler
• 1:19:32
  from Shadow in the Glass which. Somewhat controversially,
• 1:19:36
  Hitler. This time not going in a
• 1:19:38
  cupboard, but actually telling the story of the last days in
• 1:19:43
  the bunker at the end of the Second World War.
• 1:19:47
  Potentially really dodgy to do that.
• 1:19:50
  And they do it really, really well.
• 1:19:52
  And have you read Shadow in the Glass recently?
• 1:19:54
  No. Have you read it at all?
• 1:19:58
  Fuck me, I can't tell you the ending.
• 1:19:59
  It's got an amazing twist ending where something truly appalling
• 1:20:04
  happens to companion of the book Claire, who looks like she's
• 1:20:08
  going to go on to be the Doctor Who companion for the 6th
• 1:20:11
  Doctor. But the reason I chose Hitler in
• 1:20:13
  this is because there is a gripping scene where the
• 1:20:17
  Brigadier has to have he's at a party.
• 1:20:22
  With the Nazis, the doctors basically said just stall them,
• 1:20:25
  all right, and he has to have a conversation.
• 1:20:27
  So we've got, you know, the Brigadier, our stalwart British
• 1:20:30
  hero and the leader of the Nazis, having a conversation
• 1:20:34
  together, and the Brigadier just hates being there.
• 1:20:37
  It's so beautifully written. The whole of Shadow in the Glass
• 1:20:40
  is a really great book. It was written in basically a
• 1:20:42
  weekend between Justin Richards and Stephen Cole when something
• 1:20:46
  else fell through. I don't know what that was.
• 1:20:48
  It was going to be I know this one.
• 1:20:50
  It was Instruments of Darkness looked like it wasn't going to
• 1:20:54
  come through, but it had already been announced and put into the
• 1:20:58
  schedules. So not only do they have to
• 1:21:00
  write a potential replacement, they have to write a potential
• 1:21:03
  replacement that could go out under the title Instruments of
• 1:21:06
  Darkness. And in the end, it didn't need
• 1:21:08
  to. But yeah, that's the story.
• 1:21:10
  Well, they did a superb job and they took a potentially really
• 1:21:16
  dodgy bit of subject matter, which is Hitler, and did
• 1:21:19
  something thoroughly gripping with it.
• 1:21:21
  My second choice is King James in the Witch Finders novel
• 1:21:25
  because Joy Wilkerson took that story and gave it so many layers
• 1:21:30
  in the book, added so much depth to the characters that were on
• 1:21:33
  screen, and I think presented King James in a much.
• 1:21:36
  But it's not Alan Cumming playing the role.
• 1:21:40
  That is presented in a far more sympathetic and sinister way
• 1:21:44
  than he was on screen. On screen, he's just hilarious
• 1:21:47
  to watch and he's wonderful because he's Alan coming.
• 1:21:49
  But in the book I really got a sense of who he was.
• 1:21:53
  And my last choice very obviously is Alan Turing in The
• 1:21:57
  Turing Test, which is, you know, pretty much everybody's favorite
• 1:22:02
  historical 8th Doctor book, apart from you, of course, which
• 1:22:05
  is reckless engineering. And just because it, it is huge
• 1:22:08
  insight into Alan Cheery. And I think the way that the
• 1:22:11
  Doctor uses him in that book is some of the most appalling
• 1:22:14
  things the ape Doctors ever done.
• 1:22:17
  And that whole, I think it's a unrequited gay romance done
• 1:22:23
  better than any other Doctor Who book.
• 1:22:25
  It's just beautifully done. There was a few other examples
• 1:22:29
  as well, but they don't really go to that well too often, do
• 1:22:31
  they? No surprise, no.
• 1:22:34
  And I think it's really something that we now take for
• 1:22:36
  granted as being a bit as being a type of Doctor Who story, but
• 1:22:42
  it's really an invention of the 21st in the, in the way that we
• 1:22:45
  think of it, it's very much an invention of the 21st century
• 1:22:48
  Doctor Who doesn't mean it wasn't there at all.
• 1:22:50
  Like things like Blood Tide in Big Finish.
• 1:22:52
  That's very much. HG Wales and Time Lash.
• 1:22:55
  Yeah, but it's not, it's not a staple of the classic Doctor
• 1:22:59
  Who, is it really? In a way, that's actually quite
• 1:23:01
  surprising. The annoying thing about that,
• 1:23:03
  there is a great story to be told of HG worlds going off to
• 1:23:07
  an alien planet. It's just not Time Lash.
• 1:23:10
  If you had to name a single character, a single historical
• 1:23:12
  character who would fit best with Doctor Who and give you the
• 1:23:15
  most the guy who wrote The Time Machine and and The War of the
• 1:23:19
  Worlds. And they do.
• 1:23:21
  Bloody Time Lash. It's terrible, isn't it?
• 1:23:23
  Well, Michael, thank you for this little dip into history.
• 1:23:26
  And it's another range we've ticked off our list.
• 1:23:30
  Can I ask you the question I ask you at the end of all of these?
• 1:23:33
  Where on earth are we heading next?
• 1:23:38
  We are heading to somewhere we've not actually,
• 1:23:42
  surprisingly, me and you properly been before.
• 1:23:46
  And that is the O the OG honest to God Doctor Who target
• 1:23:52
  novelization range because we did the giggle last year.
• 1:23:56
  But you know, they're not, they're not proper targets, are
• 1:23:59
  they? One of those tied up fake new
• 1:24:02
  series targets. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:24:04
  I mean, excellent novel, but not, no, not a real, not a real
• 1:24:08
  target. We are going to be building high
• 1:24:11
  for happiness as we visit Paradise Towers.
• 1:24:16
  And I'm already halfway through this, and I'm enjoying it
• 1:24:18
  immensely. Amazingly, You know, when you're
• 1:24:20
  not looking at the direction of things like that, the story
• 1:24:23
  comes alive in many, many ways. And would you agree when I say
• 1:24:27
  this is probably where the Andrew Cartmel era of Doctor Who
• 1:24:30
  kicked off, you know, where we're first seeing the themes
• 1:24:33
  and tone of his era? Oh, absolutely.
• 1:24:36
  There will be so much to talk about when we we can mean, I
• 1:24:41
  have no doubt. JG Ballard, Andrew Cartmel, 2000
• 1:24:45
  AD The whole blinking lot of it. May I ask you a question before
• 1:24:49
  we go? How long is the book high rise?
• 1:24:54
  You don't expect me to have the pageant.
• 1:24:56
  I I look, I know I'm clever. I know a lot of stuff, but the
• 1:24:58
  pagination of 1970s science fiction novels is not one of
• 1:25:02
  them. OK, well.
• 1:25:04
  I I may try and squeeze it in just so I can see if all the
• 1:25:07
  rumours are true, but I'm reliably informed.
• 1:25:10
  Actually, beyond the fact that it's set in a building, there
• 1:25:13
  really aren't too many similarities at all.
• 1:25:17
  Well, we shall discuss this and much more next time.
• 1:25:20
  On your assignment is to watch the episodes as well.
• 1:25:23
  I believe that's what you said you were going to do.
• 1:25:27
  Yes, more homework. It might be quite interesting to
• 1:25:32
  see how the book and the TV story compare.
• 1:25:35
  Yes. No, I should.
• 1:25:36
  I've not, I've, I've actually not for a story that I quite
• 1:25:39
  like. I've not actually watched
• 1:25:40
  Paradise Towers in a good few years.
• 1:25:41
  I don't. Do you have this with, with,
• 1:25:42
  with Doctor Who? You watched all of it so much at
• 1:25:45
  one point that you suddenly realise, oh, I've seen it 100
• 1:25:48
  times, but not for 20 years. I think I've seen Planet of Fire
• 1:25:51
  for 20 years. There could be a good reason for
• 1:25:53
  that. Like.
• 1:25:55
  Probably. Well, until we build high for
• 1:25:59
  happiness and say how you do and head up in the alleviator and
• 1:26:03
  all those other fabulous linguistical Oh God, I've lost
• 1:26:08
  my sentence, all those fabulous linguistics.
• 1:26:13
  Michael, may I bid you add you? Oh, Buenos Dias.
• 1:27:17
  Let's go romance like Calypso God is at the disco and see my
• 1:27:24
  phone video. Let's just see how it goes.
• 1:27:27
  I'm afraid of calo amazed with the view.
• 1:27:29
  I'm afraid of Calo. I paint through the Blues artist
• 1:27:32
  not saying I give you a mood get a lot of love.
• 1:27:34
  I can't pick the choose everything I'm listen fine is
• 1:27:37
  material every moment in my love and mind I'm material.
• 1:27:40
  I'm a rainbow chap. Want to be wild, dream out loud,
• 1:27:43
  be in the fire.