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Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Verdigris by Paul Magrs (featuring Kieran Pell) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  Planet Four took several hours, and it was dislocating and
• 0:03
  disorienting, so the two of them weren't quite sure how much time
• 0:07
  was passing as they tumbled and twirled and banged into each
• 0:11
  other. Sound was peculiar, too.
• 0:14
  Iris's voice was distorted as she howled.
• 0:16
  Look, I've got my bag back. It's mine again.
• 0:20
  Mine. In the tiny space she tried to
• 0:24
  turn cartwheels and the handbag floated out on its golden
• 0:27
  straps. The Doctor was feeling somewhat
• 0:30
  seasick as they careered towards the South of England, and they
• 0:33
  warmed up dreadfully as they breasted the atmosphere.
• 0:37
  The capsule, tossed into the broiling mass like a stone,
• 0:40
  plopped into the sea. Unhand me, Madam, the Doctor's
• 0:45
  outraged voice bursting out in the lofty air.
• 0:48
  So their plummet continued inexorably, and he just couldn't
• 0:52
  agree with Iris that their best bet for not breaking any bones
• 0:56
  was to squeeze together as close as possible and brace themselves
• 0:59
  for impact. Unhand me, Madam.
• 1:02
  He yelled again as the familiar geography rose up fresh green to
• 1:07
  claim them. How long had it been?
• 1:14
  A few years now, at any rate. Sally had seen some funny old
• 1:17
  things around here, and today was going to be no exception.
• 1:21
  Every time there was something funny going on, the doctor was
• 1:24
  always involved. He'd come dashing into her shop
• 1:27
  all of a flurry and warn her to hide in her cellar or her attic.
• 1:31
  She'd been selling him his paper or putting stamps on a parcel
• 1:34
  for him, and he'd be going on in all seriousness about some
• 1:37
  dreadful catastrophe about to overwhelm the world.
• 1:41
  Oh, he was a card all right. He knew she could take the joke,
• 1:44
  otherwise. He wouldn't go telling a poor
• 1:46
  woman about things that would scare her, would he?
• 1:49
  Honestly, Sally, you would say. I'm only telling you because if
• 1:52
  the whole place needs evacuating, I know you'd need a
• 1:55
  little longer to mobilize yourself.
• 1:58
  Oh yes, she'd say. And what else was it?
• 2:01
  1/4 of strawberry bon bons. Yes, please.
• 2:04
  You see, I'm actually an alien exiled to Earth, and my presence
• 2:08
  near your charming little village attracts all kinds of
• 2:10
  unwarranted attention from the less neighborly species
• 2:13
  patrolling this area of space. I wouldn't like to call some
• 2:17
  kind of disaster and not give you fair warning.
• 2:20
  Aha, she said. Right you are, Doctor.
• 2:23
  Do you want to take your Radio Times now?
• 2:24
  Or should I send it out with the papers?
• 2:26
  Oh, just with the papers. Do you see, Sally?
• 2:29
  You mean about you working for the United Nations and messing
• 2:32
  about with alien creatures and all?
• 2:34
  Oh, yes, of course. Every time he went to his shop,
• 2:37
  he seemed to try his hardest to prove his oddity to her.
• 2:40
  Remember when I was the other chap?
• 2:42
  The short bum with the dark hair?
• 2:43
  She chuckled. The little doctor, the first one
• 2:46
  who came here. She shook her head.
• 2:49
  Don't you take the Mickey out of an old lady, Doctor.
• 2:52
  He explained to me what was going on.
• 2:54
  He said one day he'd go away and another doctor would take his
• 2:57
  place. His brother or something.
• 2:59
  That's who you are, aren't you? Still an all, this one was
• 3:03
  dashing, charming gentleman, and it cheers Sally up to have
• 3:06
  someone so refined coming into the place and chatting her up.
• 3:09
  And he always got up so nicely. He made a real effort dressing
• 3:13
  up not like some around here. It was flattering to Sally to
• 3:17
  have him come in and pass the time of day.
• 3:19
  Besides, it gave the other women in the shop something to talk
• 3:22
  about. Today was pension day and she
• 3:24
  had quite a cue at the post office counter.
• 3:27
  She was rather hoping the doctor would turn up and pass the time
• 3:30
  with his usual brand of nonsense.
• 3:32
  Give the old deer something to cluck about once she had asked
• 3:36
  him. And say that all this is true,
• 3:38
  Isn't it top secret? Why do you bore me and tell me
• 3:41
  you're the secrets, Doctor? She titivated her hair as she
• 3:44
  asked this. Because he smiled.
• 3:47
  Because perhaps you remind me a little of my mother.
• 3:51
  This hadn't gone down too well with Sally.
• 3:53
  Why are you cheeky devil? How old do you think I am?
• 3:57
  I'm only 67 this March. You can't be much younger than
• 4:00
  that. Sally had been scandalized, and
• 4:03
  the doctor had beaten a hasty retreat out of her shop.
• 4:06
  That had been the last time he'd visited, taking milk and
• 4:08
  newspapers and his usual sweets. She supposed he was often one of
• 4:12
  his hush hush jaunts, fighting alien monsters and so on.
• 4:16
  He was harmless enough, and she missed him popping in.
• 4:18
  They said he had a rather grand old house.
• 4:22
  She hadn't seen it. An eccentric millionaire he was.
• 4:25
  Quite a catch. Really, the pension queue was
• 4:28
  even more animated than usual this morning.
• 4:30
  When she asked Dolly who was first, as usual, what was wrong
• 4:33
  with everyone, She heard the tale of old Ted, found dead in
• 4:36
  the woods this morning. There was something out there,
• 4:39
  the old people were saying. Something unnatural.
• 4:41
  Actually, Sally thought, she'd not seen the paper boy, Matthew
• 4:44
  yet. He hadn't come back for the rest
• 4:46
  of the papers. He should have been back hours
• 4:48
  ago. The old people were muttering
• 4:51
  darkly. Dolly said There's a funny old
• 4:54
  atmosphere about out there to day Sally.
• 4:56
  There's definitely something afoot.
• 4:58
  Then she was gone, banging on the door too, setting the small
• 5:02
  Bella Jingle more next in the queue, slapped her pension book
• 5:05
  down and declared. Old Ned was found burnt to a
• 5:08
  crisp. He was on the doctor's land.
• 5:11
  You know him, you fancy man? Sally blushed.
• 5:14
  She knew the old women had taken note of the amount of time the
• 5:17
  doctor had spent gossiping over the counter with her.
• 5:19
  They were interrupted by a squawk of fright from the
• 5:22
  street. Dolly.
• 5:23
  Somebody screamed. The old people jostled and
• 5:26
  hurried over to stare out the shop's window.
• 5:28
  It's only sheep. Maud said gruffly.
• 5:31
  But outside in the street, Dolly was clutching her shopping bag
• 5:34
  and backing away from the neat column of sheep as they
• 5:37
  approached her. There was something altogether
• 5:39
  too neat about that column of animals.
• 5:42
  They move. Deliberate, sinister purpose.
• 5:45
  And their eyes were glinting and livid red.
• 5:47
  They they aren't natural. Gasp, one of the old people.
• 5:51
  Dolly screamed again, but no one moved to save her.
• 5:54
  The sheep closest to her stops in his tracks.
• 5:57
  A bolt of red fire leapt from its eyes and dazzled the
• 6:00
  spectators for a second. Then they could see Dolly in
• 6:03
  flames and crumpling to the ground.
• 6:05
  It fried her on the spot, but it's a.
• 6:08
  Sheep. They cowered in the shop window
• 6:11
  as the sheep glided through the village St. turning their evil
• 6:14
  heads this way and that, moving steadily, sweeping straight over
• 6:18
  the charred remains of Dolly. There's about 30 of them.
• 6:22
  Golf, Sally. They're on casters, the doctor
• 6:26
  thought. Sally, this is something to do
• 6:28
  with him. He was riot.
• 6:31
  The sheep had passed on out of sight by now.
• 6:33
  The street was empty, apart from what was left of Dolly.
• 6:36
  Curiously, her pension book lay hardly singed on the ground
• 6:40
  beside her. Sally opened the door and
• 6:43
  stepped out into the street. You can't go out there, The
• 6:46
  pensioners cried. She shushed them and cocked her
• 6:49
  head. There was a heavy silence in the
• 6:51
  small village. And then a whining, almost like
• 6:57
  an aeroplane. Sally looked up to see an arc in
• 7:01
  the sky, a white smear against the morning blue, a ragged strip
• 7:05
  of cloud through which something was descending at great speed.
• 7:09
  The noise was getting louder. Something's going to.
• 7:12
  Crash. Came a scream from behind her.
• 7:15
  Lord love us. Sally stared up at the sky and
• 7:18
  watched as the object came closer.
• 7:20
  There was a tremendous roar as it skimmed the rooftops of the
• 7:23
  village. Everyone clapped their hands to
• 7:25
  their ears and a massive crash as it hit home at last on top of
• 7:30
  the old cinema. It's a doodle bug.
• 7:34
  It's gone right into the bloody picture house.
• 7:37
  No more bingo. Old Arthur had hold of Sally's
• 7:41
  arm. What was it?
• 7:42
  She pulled away, and leaving our shops still open and full of
• 7:45
  customers, she set off at a trot across the village to see
• 7:49
  whatever it was punched a hole the size of her whole house in
• 7:53
  the side of the cinema. In the auditorium, a tremendous,
• 7:57
  ponderous silence, like the calm before the storm, there was a
• 8:01
  creaking and groaning, as if the roof was wondering whether to
• 8:04
  cave in once and for all. The seats were strewn, ripped
• 8:08
  out of their sockets. It was a wasteland of cushions
• 8:11
  and plush. The massive scream was renting
• 8:14
  too. On the remains of the stage was
• 8:16
  a steaming egg shaped object. It wasn't quite as big as Sally
• 8:20
  had been expecting, but it was big enough.
• 8:22
  Gouts of steam were rising off it.
• 8:25
  She'd hoped it wasn't a bomb somehow.
• 8:27
  She knew, though, as she hobbled through the ruined auditorium
• 8:30
  towards the stage area, that it wasn't a bomb.
• 8:34
  She knew what it was, and her heart lifted up at the
• 8:37
  confirmation of all his wild tails.
• 8:40
  A hatchway, dark and mysterious, slid open at the side of the
• 8:43
  egg. Doctor.
• 8:45
  Asked Sally, hesitantly. Then she said with more
• 8:47
  confidence. Doctor, is that you from the
• 8:51
  wreckage? He jumped up, unscathed.
• 8:54
  He was standing there on top of the capsule, his velvet Cape
• 8:57
  streaming out behind him. Sally.
• 9:00
  He asked. I've just landed from space.
• 9:04
  He was joined by an elderly woman who looked rather more
• 9:07
  shaken than he did. The feather in her hat was
• 9:09
  broken and hanging the skew. I always knew you were telling
• 9:13
  the truth, Doctor, said Sally. Welcome back to the Hamster Book
• 9:21
  Club. My name is Joe Ford, and it is
• 9:24
  my delight to have discovered via the Hamster Patriot A well,
• 9:31
  I'm going to say our pop because he's young.
• 9:33
  Oh. He's bastard one. 20. 1.
• 9:37
  Oh, 44 anyone's young to me but somebody young who is reading
• 9:46
  wilderness years Doctor Who books.
• 9:48
  How the fucking you, Lou? Yeah, I'm.
• 9:50
  The only one on the planet. You are the only one.
• 9:53
  Yeah, Kieran, welcome to the book club.
• 9:56
  Hello, it's a pleasure to be here.
• 9:58
  And how are you doing today? Fucking swell.
• 10:01
  No, I'm here. OK, Kieran, can I ask you a
• 10:05
  question before we even go into talking about the degree by
• 10:08
  Paul, which is why we're here today.
• 10:11
  One Earth at 21 years of age is your Doctor Who book journey.
• 10:19
  So I've not been a massive reader until for about the last
• 10:23
  five years. I think my first Doctor Who book
• 10:25
  was it was, I don't remember the exact title, but it's like a
• 10:29
  something guide to monsters by Justin Richards, Peter Capaldi
• 10:32
  on the front some Daleks side men weeping age.
• 10:35
  You know what all about secret life for monsters by Justin
• 10:37
  Richards. That was my first one.
• 10:38
  I remember getting that whenever it came out in like AWH Smith's
• 10:41
  and just flicking through it going, Oh, there's a Slovene.
• 10:43
  Oh, just being really like shuffed over that and but I
• 10:48
  didn't read it. You know, I just kind of looked
• 10:49
  at the pictures and kind of took it in.
• 10:51
  But I was a very stupid, what, 10 or 11 year old at the time
• 10:56
  was that? Like an information.
• 10:57
  But that wasn't a fiction book, was it?
• 10:59
  No, it was. I think it had fictional bits.
• 11:01
  I've gone back and apparently fucking Jeremy Fitz Oliver shows
• 11:03
  up in it somehow, but I'll still have to go back and read it
• 11:06
  again. That is the stamp of the.
• 11:07
  Niche response, yeah. And then I'll go into kind of my
• 11:14
  proper Doctor Who book journey now, which was only about a year
• 11:19
  or two ago. I read Alien Bodies by Lance
• 11:22
  Miles and well, I was. I was fucking sold like that
• 11:25
  really, and I've not come back. I mean, that's sort of starting
• 11:29
  high though, right? It is.
• 11:30
  It is are. You on a hiding for nothing
• 11:32
  starting there. Well, I did Nightshade and Love
• 11:35
  and War after that, and I did a few more new adventures and I
• 11:38
  thought they were all out of crap.
• 11:40
  Well, not all of them, not all of them.
• 11:42
  Some of them were good. I love Nightshade.
• 11:44
  I didn't think all too much of Love and War.
• 11:47
  Then I did Lucifer Rising and got sick of it because they had
• 11:50
  all these techno Babble. It just kept going on that
• 11:52
  techno Babble and it was just bridge.
• 11:53
  I didn't understand what the fuck it was.
• 11:54
  It just I couldn't. It was something to do with like
• 11:56
  the 5th dimension, 4th or 5th dimension and I just want to
• 11:59
  know what it looks like in my head, but I couldn't.
• 12:01
  So just characters walking about.
• 12:02
  Confusing science fiction? Yes, that sounds like a new.
• 12:05
  Adventure, I need like paracetamol to just by my side
• 12:09
  with it. Then I moved over to the
• 12:12
  targets, the new series targets. So like Rose Beth, Doctor Dalek
• 12:19
  and then I'll just jumped into the Ed as again and I I did the
• 12:22
  first kind of half or the first bit up to interference on and
• 12:27
  off. So I did Alien Bodies, seeing
• 12:30
  eye, a Natural History and an interference from the arse
• 12:33
  because there's so many shit books did.
• 12:35
  All the best ones, yeah. Oh well.
• 12:36
  No, I was going to do an order. Actually I did Scarlet Empress
• 12:39
  as well, and then I thought I'll do the book after Scarlet
• 12:41
  Empress. Well, no, I'll do the book after
• 12:42
  Seeing eye, and that's Placebo Effect by Gary Russell.
• 12:45
  And how was that Kieran? Fucking dreadful.
• 12:49
  It was it was all right. But then like halfway through
• 12:53
  there's this like 20 pages where Sam and it's like cult, it's
• 12:57
  like cultish people have a discussion on God and does does
• 12:59
  God exist? And it goes on for like 20
• 13:02
  pages. And I thought, you're not
• 13:03
  writing a book here, Gary, you're just going off on it.
• 13:06
  But it's nothing about the book itself.
• 13:08
  It's nothing to do with the. Plot of the.
• 13:10
  Book nothing I I will be favourable to Gary, Gary Russell
• 13:12
  because you wrote one of my favourite Doctor Who books in
• 13:14
  Scales and Justice. So he he's fucking brilliant.
• 13:19
  So how have you found, how have you found exploring the books as
• 13:23
  a whole? Like obviously I'm assuming you
• 13:25
  watched the new series, right? Yes, that's why I came in.
• 13:28
  I came in properly. I'd say I came in as a fan with
• 13:33
  Voyage of the Damned back in 2007.
• 13:36
  So yeah. And I was there whenever
• 13:38
  Partners in Crime came out, waiting for that fucking to turn
• 13:42
  on the telly. And it's, it's on and off since.
• 13:44
  But I think I'm back to Doctor Who for like the foreseeable
• 13:48
  future now. Really.
• 13:49
  That's. Really.
• 13:50
  And do you find like these wilderness year theories of
• 13:54
  books? How you know is it very
• 13:56
  different from the TV show? I this is very biased because
• 14:01
  I've got I've as as the listener can't see, but Joe can see.
• 14:05
  I've got a fuck load of all these Doctor Who books.
• 14:08
  I think it's the best run of Doctor Who full stop.
• 14:11
  I don't think it gets better. That's a really interesting
• 14:14
  response. And I'm not going to keep going
• 14:16
  on about your age, I promise. Yeah, but but for somebody young
• 14:20
  who's come to the TV show via, sorry, come to the books via the
• 14:24
  TV show, the new series, really. Why is that then?
• 14:30
  Because there was no I think it might come to cancellation
• 14:33
  anxiety a little bit with doctor fans where if something maybe
• 14:40
  it's a lot of a lot of older doctor fans who like with me and
• 14:43
  my generation, we've never had it go away of when when this
• 14:47
  episode bad. Oh no, it's gone away forever.
• 14:50
  Doctor Who's going to disappear. That's my.
• 14:53
  Generation. Saying, yeah, with the books
• 14:55
  cancellation, with the books, everyone's going to buy them
• 14:58
  every month. So you could do whatever you
• 15:00
  want. You could do a Mad Dogs, an
• 15:04
  Englishman, for example, just something completely bizarre.
• 15:06
  Or Blue Angel is probably a better example.
• 15:07
  I don't just listen to more Paul Miles books, but.
• 15:11
  They are the most all their. Ones for them, Pretty much,
• 15:13
  yeah. Or campaign by Jim Mortimer.
• 15:16
  There you go. There's another one.
• 15:18
  It does sort of feel like all bets are off, right?
• 15:20
  Like there. Is no limits, they can just go
• 15:22
  anywhere. Which is, which is good.
• 15:24
  I I feel in the TV show and they do sort of think outside the box
• 15:28
  occasionally on the TV show, but they've got a formula, right?
• 15:31
  They they've got to hit certain beats.
• 15:33
  We want it to be fairly emotional.
• 15:34
  We want it to be a story told in an hour and you know, it's got
• 15:38
  to have an alien in it. They're they're going right
• 15:41
  episode with the books. You can literally have something
• 15:44
  like Adventurous and Henrietta St. one month and Mad Dogs and
• 15:48
  Englishmen the next. I think it's also because
• 15:51
  there's less people involved. It's the writer, the editor and
• 15:54
  whoever else is there. That's about 3 or 4 people.
• 15:56
  But with like ATV, Doctor Who, you've got, you've got fucking
• 16:01
  everyone. Yeah, So and they will put their
• 16:03
  input in and in your original idea, which sounds really cool,
• 16:06
  turns into something that's a bit less cool.
• 16:08
  It's still a bit cool you. Know what that means though,
• 16:10
  don't you? Less people involved.
• 16:12
  The author's only got themselves to blame with whatever the
• 16:16
  reception to the book is. So your fault, I thought.
• 16:20
  Can I ask him to name someone? Then I'm going to ask you before
• 16:23
  we go into third degree, then pull out of a hat two names of
• 16:26
  authors that are not Paul Myles and Lawrence Myles, because I
• 16:29
  know you love those and they're too easy to I.
• 16:31
  Haven't read any others. That you love and two, where
• 16:34
  you've read them and gone. I don't think that person's
• 16:36
  style for me. Two you.
• 16:38
  Love you don't. I'll go with Steve Cole.
• 16:44
  I've read Vanishing Point recently and I thought that was,
• 16:47
  well, the plot wasn't too crazy. It was a very, it was superbly
• 16:52
  written. It was just, it just flew up
• 16:54
  like open Page 1 and I put it down and it's all finished.
• 16:57
  Oh brilliant sound as 8th Doctor.
• 17:00
  Doesn't he? He does.
• 17:01
  He gets it right on point. Another one I'd say is I don't
• 17:09
  want to be too obvious, I'll go for it.
• 17:12
  City of the Dead by Lloyd Rose. That was a fantastic one.
• 17:15
  What can I say, Doctor? Shirtless in a fucking Hawaiian
• 17:19
  mansion. What or what could you ask for?
• 17:21
  And in two books that didn't work.
• 17:24
  Describe my dream life there the.
• 17:25
  Doctor, there you go. Mansion.
• 17:28
  Chained up. Yeah, go in.
• 17:30
  Come on. Sorry two you didn't like.
• 17:34
  Two I didn't like was You're going to hate this, The Turing
• 17:37
  Test by Paul Leonard. I really didn't like that one.
• 17:40
  How interesting. It's quite divisive though.
• 17:43
  Yeah, I was going to say another Paul Leonard in Venusian
• 17:45
  Lullaby, which was awful, but oh, and Quantum Archangel by
• 17:50
  Craig and I got I couldn't even get past the page 100.
• 17:53
  It was just so much. It was just too much in the
• 17:56
  book. You just needed to scale it back
• 17:58
  and cut cut it all out. Just focus on the main thing.
• 18:03
  Doing too little was never great, you know, biggest crime.
• 18:08
  I've not read many of this, but that's the only book I've read.
• 18:10
  I've got the Crystal Bucephalus, which I need to read at some
• 18:12
  point, which seems such more. Yeah, it seems a lot more scaled
• 18:17
  back. Well, look, we could have
• 18:19
  started anywhere with your book club journey.
• 18:22
  We could have started anywhere. We could have done a nice target
• 18:25
  novel, you know, to ease you in, or a.
• 18:28
  Gentleman in the Underworld. No, no, no.
• 18:30
  Instead we've gone for Paul Marsh, the most literary of all
• 18:34
  Doctor Who writers and her degree.
• 18:36
  And I think, did you choose this or did I?
• 18:39
  I can't remember. I think I chose it, but I chose
• 18:45
  it because I knew you try to do this from before.
• 18:51
  Can I quickly explain that? To everything because.
• 18:54
  I do need to issue an apology to both Luke Malloy and Dylan Rees
• 18:57
  who I am forced to read this book and they both had such an
• 19:02
  adverse reaction to it. And unfortunately, there are
• 19:05
  certain writers where I just will not put out a scathing
• 19:08
  review of their work because. I respect.
• 19:11
  Them too much and Paul Mars is one of those people because I
• 19:14
  think it's too easy I think to come down hard on somebody
• 19:18
  that's trying to be this quirky and to be fair to Dylan he did
• 19:23
  say that he didn't like the book but it was not a badly written
• 19:28
  book. He just didn't like what it was
• 19:30
  doing and I do want to. That's more than fair.
• 19:33
  Because I believe you've done a bit of digging about the
• 19:36
  reception to this book back in the day.
• 19:39
  Not too much, but just a little surface of like what fandom was
• 19:43
  kind of feeling at the time really, and what it sits next
• 19:45
  to. What do you think fandom was
• 19:47
  feeling back in the day? What a crock of shit.
• 19:50
  It's basically what That's what the reception was, wasn't it?
• 19:54
  But. OK, the first question I'm going
• 19:56
  to ask you is. This is because I'll put my
• 19:59
  hands up and say. This is probably the most meta
• 20:03
  Doctor Who book I've ever read. On every single page.
• 20:07
  Paul Marsh is referring to either another television show
• 20:10
  in the 70s or a book elsewhere, or he's making a comment on
• 20:15
  Doctor Who in the 70s itself. And I wonder, because I said to
• 20:20
  ask you, I wonder if where you fall with this book is if are
• 20:24
  you willing to let your favorite period of Doctor Who be
• 20:29
  eviscerated by a very clever man?
• 20:32
  See, I don't think it's, I don't think it eviscerates the Pertwee
• 20:34
  era. I think it's kind of making
• 20:37
  observations that we all know were there.
• 20:40
  Such as? Pertwee's a prick.
• 20:44
  He is he's a complete asshole to Joe all for like what tear of
• 20:49
  the autumn? He's like get out.
• 20:51
  Who are you? Why are you here?
• 20:53
  Or, I know it's not the 3rd Doctor directly, but in the mind
• 20:59
  of evil, you know when the Master uses the What's the
• 21:01
  machine called in the mind of evil?
• 21:02
  The. Keller Machine.
• 21:03
  The Keller machine And his worst fear is the Doctor laughing at
• 21:07
  him. Yes, that's so perfectly He's
• 21:09
  all eccentric. He's just his wine and his
• 21:11
  cheese. And is the irony.
• 21:13
  Is there, you know the irony, Kieran?
• 21:15
  There is. If Joe was strapped into that
• 21:17
  machine, her fear would be exactly the same thing.
• 21:19
  Definitely. An upper class twat, you say?
• 21:24
  Yeah, but he's, I love him as well.
• 21:26
  You say? I mean, I I love him.
• 21:27
  He's great. But yeah, I love him when he is
• 21:29
  pompous. I do yeah.
• 21:31
  In. This book in a wonderful,
• 21:35
  wonderful way. He's made a bit useless, isn't
• 21:38
  he? And he's striding around like he
• 21:40
  normally is, and he's appalled that no one seems to know who he
• 21:44
  is. Yeah, his, his entire question
• 21:49
  of reality is everyone's reality is questioned here.
• 21:52
  And I don't think he can take it.
• 21:55
  I don't think his ego can handle it.
• 21:57
  And that and it's also making, and we'll get into all this
• 22:00
  stuff, but it's making observations about how 2
• 22:02
  dimensional some of the recurring cast in the PER we
• 22:07
  reckon be. It also rips at how cheap The
• 22:10
  Tomorrow People looked as a television show.
• 22:13
  I mean, there is basically no sacred cow that Paul Mars does
• 22:17
  not pull apart, but I think it is a very fine line between
• 22:22
  taking the piss and being affectionate, and I think he's
• 22:25
  on the right side of the line. I I don't think there is a line.
• 22:30
  It's kind of where you draw the line yourself and how much you
• 22:33
  or how much you want to take the piss out of it.
• 22:36
  Because I can fully understand why someone wouldn't want the
• 22:41
  part the era messed with. Because I'd kind of feel the
• 22:44
  same if someone did that to. Like if someone did a VER degree
• 22:47
  with the 10th Doctor and Donna, I'd kind of feel a bit like.
• 22:50
  Oh. You can't say that, but.
• 22:54
  So you get it, then you get the reaction.
• 22:56
  I completely understand the reaction because what the month
• 22:59
  we'll go through where this kind of sits in the past doctor
• 23:02
  adventures. So the month before you had
• 23:04
  Tumor Valdemar by Simon Messingham?
• 23:07
  Which is a great book and quite experimental as well.
• 23:10
  Quite experimental as well. And then so before that you have
• 23:14
  last the Gathering by Mark. Gattis, OH as.
• 23:17
  Which is very as trad. And then after that is Great
• 23:20
  Matter by Justin Richards. I very tried again.
• 23:23
  Very tried again. Zombies on an island, a sort of
• 23:25
  Hinchcliffe horror with the sick Doctor in Perry.
• 23:28
  I'm not sure what the EDA is that month as well, but let's do
• 23:33
  a bit of research on a podcast. Do a bit of Googling right.
• 23:37
  Now, yeah, I've had weeks to prepare.
• 23:42
  It's Oh my God, I'm trying to think.
• 23:46
  It's #29. 29 it's going to be around frontier worlds,
• 23:52
  something like. That yeah, one of them.
• 23:55
  It is Frontier Worlds. Well, you say where it falls
• 24:00
  because there is, shall we say, a gentle dig at recent
• 24:06
  developments in interference in this book as well.
• 24:09
  So we're even referring to the Edas in this book.
• 24:12
  Oh, definitely. Yeah, Well, how could you?
• 24:13
  Not really. This is this is post Paul.
• 24:18
  Poor old jump. Shotgun to the chest.
• 24:20
  Being murdered in interference. And very early in the book, Paul
• 24:24
  Mars makes a statement. This is long before all of the
• 24:28
  timelines got twisted, continuity was perverted, and
• 24:32
  you know people died. You want to.
• 24:36
  Say oh sorry, no, I was just clearing my phone.
• 24:37
  Oh sorry, I do want to say something but I'll just clear my
• 24:40
  phone. So he basically what I'm saying
• 24:43
  is he's got a lot to say. Yeah, I have the quote here.
• 24:47
  It's from Iris's journal in whatever chapter it is with
• 24:50
  perfect, with perfect access to the Doctor as he was then.
• 24:54
  A gentler time, perhaps a more innocent time.
• 24:56
  Here, the timelines are intact, causality is unimpeached, and
• 25:00
  one historical event follows another in strict chronological
• 25:02
  order. What bliss to be seated in the
• 25:04
  car with the Doctor and Joe and Tom in an era before Canon
• 25:07
  death, before everything was altered.
• 25:10
  It almost seems unfair to warn the Doctor of what will happen
• 25:12
  in years hence from now. In an era before Canon death.
• 25:16
  I fucking burst out laughing at that line.
• 25:20
  Paul Miles has obviously read Interference with God.
• 25:22
  No, no, no, we're not having any of this.
• 25:24
  In mind, we're not having this. Yeah, shut it straight in the
• 25:27
  bin. So where's your line then?
• 25:31
  I want to ask you that because, like, have you watched all of
• 25:35
  the 3rd Doctor era? Does all of this stuff make
• 25:37
  sense to you? I've not watched every single
• 25:40
  Pertwee story, but I've watched kind of the most famous and
• 25:44
  infamous ones. You know, like I know how a
• 25:47
  typical I've watched Claws of Axos.
• 25:48
  I know how a typical Pertwee era like goes on.
• 25:51
  You know, I've watched all of 7-8 and some of nine and 10:00.
• 25:56
  I've not watched any of. Series 11.
• 25:57
  I mean, I think you only really need to read or watch Claws of
• 26:00
  Axos to know what a Pertwee story is like.
• 26:02
  Basically. Yeah, alien and threat to Earth.
• 26:05
  That's a simple. An annoying politician getting
• 26:07
  in the way, we being a prick, units there, it's all perfect.
• 26:12
  And a few unit soldiers be like get back and they get killed.
• 26:16
  But like, how do I say this? You know, put, say, putting the
• 26:21
  Brigadier into a supermarket for the entire length of the novel
• 26:25
  and having him. In.
• 26:27
  Terms. Of Tesla, What do you think?
• 26:29
  Is murder a family? As well.
• 26:31
  Well, that does happen too. Obviously, there's master
• 26:34
  reveals, there's just everything.
• 26:35
  There's every single cliche of the era in here, but it's all
• 26:39
  sort of subverted in one way or another.
• 26:42
  Definitely Will. Will you do me a favour then
• 26:44
  please? Let's somehow, because halfway
• 26:48
  through the book I realised there was an awful lot
• 26:49
  occurring, start taking me through the insane plot points
• 26:55
  that are occurring. So let's start with.
• 26:58
  Iris and Tom. Let's start with Iris and Tom,
• 27:00
  because that's where the book starts.
• 27:03
  So I don't really have to introduce Iris Wild time, do I?
• 27:07
  Not really. I mean, we've done a few few of
• 27:09
  us already on the book club, but.
• 27:11
  What incarnation of Virus is this?
• 27:13
  Is it? I assume it's the Katie Manning
• 27:14
  1. So I can't imagine any other any
• 27:17
  other variant of Virus. No, there are different ones in
• 27:21
  different books, but it's always just Katie Manning in my head.
• 27:23
  Isn't that perfect? As well, because it's a it's the
• 27:26
  doctor story, it's the Katie Manning Iris.
• 27:30
  Gorgeous. You have find and replace that
• 27:33
  Paul Mars also did where you had that.
• 27:35
  We had Katie Manning playing both.
• 27:36
  That's fantastic. Anyway, and she has kidnapped,
• 27:40
  kidnapped, yes, kidnapped Tom, who is from 2000.
• 27:44
  It's from when the book is set and he's an English literature
• 27:47
  student. Oh.
• 27:49
  My word, Kieran. Oh my God is.
• 27:52
  An English literature student, you say?
• 27:55
  I know, but I I've been kidnapped by a time traveller
• 27:57
  yet so I'm waiting for that to happen.
• 27:58
  It's going to happen and he's gay.
• 28:01
  Shock horror to any Doctor Who found in 2000.
• 28:05
  It's really nicely done, isn't it?
• 28:07
  Like I I think. It's not really brought.
• 28:08
  Up well. It is, especially at the stars
• 28:11
  and then. At the start and then in one
• 28:14
  scene later on, as that's all I can really think of.
• 28:16
  Or two or three scenes later on with the Children of Destiny I.
• 28:19
  Figured that Mars was making a bit of a you know, how people
• 28:24
  break out to becoming. Oh my goodness.
• 28:27
  Yes, I think that that was a bit of a metaphor for coming.
• 28:30
  Definitely. I I don't know if you've watched
• 28:32
  any of the 1970s Tomorrow, people.
• 28:34
  Why the fuck would I? I mean, I have because I've been
• 28:38
  doing the tomorrow people finish bigs.
• 28:40
  I'll give them a listen, then I'd watch a Big finish and see
• 28:43
  what. It was like, boy, oh boy, it
• 28:45
  changed my life and how I feel, as if the the depths that TV
• 28:48
  could Plumb. But there was certainly a, let's
• 28:51
  say, homoerotic angle to the Tomorrow people.
• 28:55
  Yeah. Yeah, it looks, it's the, IT
• 28:57
  looks like the gayest show on television.
• 28:59
  There's a lot of twinks in, you know, underage twinks in prison
• 29:02
  cells. And things like this, it's.
• 29:04
  Scantily dressed. It's all very odd for kids to.
• 29:06
  Just like City of the Dead. Yeah, pretty much.
• 29:10
  For paedophiles, yes, also. Oh God, no, we're not going
• 29:13
  there, but. OK, Iris and Tom, and it's a
• 29:17
  fractious relationship. I mean, some days they get on
• 29:20
  and they're singing Shirley Bassey on the bus and having a
• 29:22
  great time. Other times they're going to
• 29:25
  Egyptian times and he's not at. All and Tom, I think it's the
• 29:29
  quote where I can't remember it often.
• 29:31
  I don't have it written down, but it's something like all the
• 29:37
  we had some historical adventures and Tom wasn't.
• 29:40
  Tom thought they're all boring or something like that, or he
• 29:42
  wasn't impressed. Except.
• 29:45
  Except when I. Met Cleopatra?
• 29:47
  Yes, Well, of course. I mean, if that wasn't a flag
• 29:50
  that he was gay, well, I don't know what is.
• 29:55
  And Iris, in one remark, says I really don't fancy a
• 29:58
  deconstructionist running around with me.
• 30:01
  Yeah, there's actually more. Lines like that coming?
• 30:04
  Up later I've got. I've got a few.
• 30:06
  They decide, you know, Iris goes.
• 30:07
  Do you know what? I've not visited my old pal the
• 30:09
  Doctor for a while. I think we'll go and visit him
• 30:12
  in his third in. You'll love him when he gets
• 30:14
  along. And he's got this fabulous house
• 30:17
  in the country. Well, this the 1st I knew about
• 30:19
  Kieran. The doctor's got a house in the
• 30:21
  country. I think it's come up a few times
• 30:24
  in a few different pieces of media about him having houses
• 30:26
  here, there and everywhere. I know 1 short story collection.
• 30:29
  I don't know when it was, it might have been fuck knows, but
• 30:34
  it was about pert. We have a house and it was all
• 30:38
  from the perspective of a child. And then like the Silurian sea
• 30:41
  devil come up or something and the child doesn't really know
• 30:43
  what he's saying and the third one comes in and tells them off
• 30:45
  and it's really as. Well, where he has a house, so I
• 30:48
  think it's a popular idea. What he.
• 30:50
  Yeah, he. Would have.
• 30:52
  Unit HQ is. How he sleeps on the floor of
• 30:55
  HQ. And strange things are afoot,
• 31:00
  are they not? Train carriages are appearing in
• 31:03
  the country. All over the country.
• 31:06
  Featuring what's inside the carriages.
• 31:10
  Character from the classic literature, Classic English
• 31:13
  literature which which no Doctor Who fan has read, so I don't
• 31:17
  know why I put it in there. Well, I mean, there was a few.
• 31:19
  I'll recognise there's some. There's a Jane Austen carriage,
• 31:23
  isn't it? Yes, you have Miss Havisham from
• 31:25
  Dickens Great Expectations. That's the one I recognised.
• 31:30
  As I mention of Thackery as well.
• 31:32
  Yeah. And they do mention Moby Dick at
• 31:34
  one point. So, so, so that's our mystery
• 31:40
  #1. That's our mystery number.
• 31:42
  One our fictional characters appearing around the South of
• 31:46
  England in train carriages. And turning into slime.
• 31:50
  And turning into slime. But alongside that, there seems
• 31:54
  to be an army of robotic sheep. Coming out of the unit on Sorry
• 32:00
  no the the mystery is unit is never existed.
• 32:05
  Joe's entire life has been a lie and robot sheep have been made
• 32:09
  in telesnaps. Now that's quite a lot.
• 32:13
  There isn't. It if I think if you told that
• 32:16
  to, if you tried to sell that to an average person, they'd
• 32:18
  probably think what? Stay away from me, you're crazy.
• 32:21
  But I think as well that the short pricing you just gave
• 32:24
  there, I think some people will go, yeah, that's just a bit too
• 32:28
  weird for me unit. Doesn't it is fucking bomb.
• 32:30
  Characters in the countryside, robot sheep going around killing
• 32:33
  people. Mike Yates been turned to
• 32:35
  cardboard like this is not your traditional Doctor Who story.
• 32:39
  Yeah. What's Benton doing?
• 32:41
  Is he a cashier at this market? Yeah, that's what he's doing
• 32:46
  now. He's the Brigadier's loyal
• 32:47
  cashier in the. That's it, Something like that.
• 32:50
  And I did think halfway through the book, and I had read this
• 32:53
  before, I thought, my God, there's so many plot elements
• 32:57
  here, how is this all going to make sense?
• 32:59
  I was thinking that about because this is a very slight
• 33:01
  book. It's only Is it even 240 pages?
• 33:04
  Slight but full of substance. Right.
• 33:06
  Yeah, I think this will. I think it crams more into its
• 33:10
  240 pages than most Doctor Who books get into over 300.
• 33:14
  Really agree. Because it well, I guess it's
• 33:19
  time to talk about the text now. It's it's how would you describe
• 33:22
  as written? Because I think some of it's
• 33:23
  very targety, very like Terrance Dicks really.
• 33:26
  Simple. Really.
• 33:27
  Auton Invasion. But economic, but really easy to
• 33:35
  visualise. Yes, you know, but also he he
• 33:38
  just has a way with words. You know what Paul Mars reminds
• 33:41
  me of Victoria Woods. OK, Victoria Woods writes simple
• 33:44
  comedy about people and she agonized over the right words.
• 33:49
  She goes so it doesn't have to be thick that that what the
• 33:51
  people are saying, but it just has to be the right words.
• 33:54
  And I think Paul Mars chooses the right words.
• 33:57
  So he doesn't need to write sort of flowery Florida prose.
• 34:00
  He writes simple sentences with beautiful words.
• 34:04
  I think that goes for the same as Terrence Dicks.
• 34:06
  You know, he's they're practically doing the same
• 34:08
  thing, but Mars is just. On another planet.
• 34:12
  On drugs? Probably, yeah.
• 34:14
  Like everyone else in the 70s. Yeah, so.
• 34:18
  It's accurate. So did what?
• 34:22
  Was there a point then where you were going?
• 34:23
  Oh, right, this is a bit unwieldy.
• 34:25
  There's far too much happening. Or.
• 34:27
  About page 200 or so. How the fuck is he going to wrap
• 34:30
  this up? All the sort of the
• 34:33
  idiosyncrasies, all of the eccentricness.
• 34:35
  Were you just going with it going well, Leslie?
• 34:38
  Will I trust him? Well this wasn't my first
• 34:39
  format. I've read Scarlet Empress and
• 34:41
  the Blue Angel and no that's the only two I've read I think.
• 34:46
  So I trust him to deliver. Otherwise we'll have thrown the
• 34:50
  book out probably after 50 pages of what the fuck is going on.
• 34:52
  Which I think is what what is happening.
• 34:57
  I think the true breaking point is the telesnap scene where you
• 35:01
  can't hear. What should we talk about that?
• 35:03
  Should we? So you're I haven't Well,
• 35:07
  because I have a little bit of a life left.
• 35:09
  I don't watch telesnap reconstructions.
• 35:12
  Sorry for you guys out there who absolutely.
• 35:13
  You have a life, did you say? You will have to tell me what
• 35:15
  that's like sometimes. Well, I still read Doctor Who.
• 35:17
  I've got all these Doctor Who books so it I only get outside
• 35:20
  once a week. I just realised now you're still
• 35:23
  a 21 year old reading wilderness years Doctor Who books.
• 35:26
  Not much of A life. Though no, a little one so.
• 35:33
  Well, it points out telly snaps every load of shy.
• 35:37
  You can't hear anything. It's all in black and white so
• 35:40
  it looks like fucking sandpaper on the screen.
• 35:45
  That's how he described. He literally describes it as
• 35:47
  it's sort of snowy on the screen, it's still images and
• 35:51
  there's a crackly soundtrack that you've got from the what's
• 35:55
  the CCTV? Yeah, yeah.
• 35:57
  CCTV. That's it.
• 35:59
  I'm surprised that he didn't go. I think one era area of Paul of
• 36:04
  the peril area that he might have missed was pirate videos.
• 36:10
  Because I because I know that you could, you probably know
• 36:12
  more about this because you've you've probably had billions of
• 36:15
  Doctor Who pirate videos for their release on VHS.
• 36:17
  But you'd get them through like other people and you'd get these
• 36:21
  copies of what's the Sonorians? And it's just a.
• 36:27
  Snow, I can't see anything. My first was the Silurians, my
• 36:30
  first pirate. And hello, Darren McKay.
• 36:33
  I know you listen. He was my dealer up in Edinburgh
• 36:35
  and he sent me a copy of the Silurians.
• 36:39
  Yeah. And was it fucking unwatchable?
• 36:42
  It was a little bit, yeah. I imagine the Blu-ray coming out
• 36:46
  soon will be a lot clearer. Oh my God, yeah, I forgot about
• 36:49
  that. I didn't care, Kieran, I was
• 36:51
  watching the fucking Silurians. Mouth Agate has taken it all in.
• 36:56
  With that terrible music, I didn't care and none of it made
• 36:59
  any sense and I couldn't see it. I was still watching it.
• 37:02
  That cliffhanger with a silurium wobbling its head while perk We
• 37:04
  Just Goans must have been fucking like Citizen Kane.
• 37:09
  Catnip. But you're right.
• 37:14
  You're right. The telly snap scene.
• 37:16
  So. So it's an entire chapter of her
• 37:18
  degree where Joe is exploring UNIT HQ and someones trying to
• 37:22
  convince her that UNIT is a massive con and the doctor's
• 37:26
  been lying to her all this whole time.
• 37:28
  Did. You say the Masters lied about
• 37:30
  it, or the Master's been like feeding her lies about us and
• 37:33
  such. Well, pretty much, but the whole
• 37:35
  chapter is written as A and it's very cheeky as a series of
• 37:39
  stills. He literally said still one
• 37:41
  describe. 2. And my favorite one was this.
• 37:45
  You ready? Is it?
• 37:46
  Still 21 to 59. No, it's.
• 37:49
  Still still 9 and it just says Joe in another corridor tearing
• 37:55
  her hair out. You can just see Katie Manning
• 37:58
  going. Just go for it, my mind.
• 38:04
  And yeah, I think if you can't get on board with that, if you
• 38:07
  can't get on board with Paul Mars doing a direct reference to
• 38:11
  Doctor Who telly snaps in a very meta way, don't read this book.
• 38:15
  No, you're not. You're not going to get any
• 38:17
  pleasure from this. However, if you are willing to
• 38:20
  deconstruct Doctor Who like this and poke fun at it
• 38:23
  affectionately, go for it, because that's what this book is
• 38:26
  doing. So to move on to the Third
• 38:29
  Doctor, just to show what Paul Mars thinks, the 3rd Doctor
• 38:35
  Pertwee has five different portraits in his home of the 3rd
• 38:38
  Doctor in different outfits. To which Tom asks Cyrus, Oh
• 38:42
  well, there is grandparents or his ancestors literally similar
• 38:45
  to him. And I suppose, no, he just, he
• 38:48
  just likes to take, he just likes pictures of himself up on
• 38:50
  the wall or something like that. Do you know, I absolutely think
• 38:54
  the 3rd Doctor would do that, you know, yeah.
• 38:57
  He's looking imperious and. Everything.
• 38:59
  It'd be like that famous painting of Napoleon was hand in
• 39:01
  his shirt like that. What, Five of them?
• 39:03
  You. Remember that?
• 39:04
  That shot of him with the the rapier from the 50th anniversary
• 39:09
  trailer? I imagine one of them's like
• 39:11
  that, you know? Oh, I'd like, I'd like one with
• 39:13
  him. Him, the gun in his hand.
• 39:15
  Day of the Daleks off. He fucking murders the Ogon.
• 39:17
  Just that killer look on his face.
• 39:20
  But OK, Iris and the doctor are long term friends and.
• 39:30
  He's. Sort of long-suffering because
• 39:32
  she fancies the arse off him. Has any?
• 39:34
  Has any incarnation of Doctor actually like Tyrus Wilde time?
• 39:40
  Do you know what on audio? Because Katie Manning's playing
• 39:43
  it. There's moments in The Wormery
• 39:45
  with Colin Baker. There's moments in Excel is
• 39:48
  Dawn. I've listened to.
• 39:50
  There are always. Always I remember about the
• 39:53
  wormery, I've listened to it a few times.
• 39:55
  Was Colin Baker once it gets revealed.
• 39:58
  Sorry for the spoilers, but as soon as it gets real with
• 40:01
  Bianca's Iris Valliard, he stops the story and goes Iris Wild
• 40:04
  time. I'm having a word with you.
• 40:06
  This is not on. Yeah, but the the joy of it is
• 40:12
  is you've got literally chaos in humanoid form in Iris mild time,
• 40:18
  and you've got the most serious straight up character ever in
• 40:21
  the 3rd Doctor. You put them in a scene
• 40:24
  together. It's fucking comedy.
• 40:25
  Gold. It's because it's, it's the Oh,
• 40:28
  sorry, no, no. No, go on, go on.
• 40:30
  It's the most PO faced Doctor Who gets, isn't it?
• 40:32
  It's the most serious era of Doctor Who on telly, that is,
• 40:36
  you know. Take nothing serious.
• 40:38
  At all? No.
• 40:39
  So it's like the comedy of contrast and that.
• 40:42
  Always works really well I think.
• 40:45
  And as well as that contrast, the iris being put into a Third
• 40:49
  Doctor story is again another call to interference.
• 40:52
  I don't know if that was intentional or how it was only a
• 40:54
  couple months after interference, but it's the same
• 40:57
  thing of going back and changing the 3rd Doctor's life, just not
• 41:01
  in as impactful a way as that does.
• 41:02
  It's just what a slight nuisance instead.
• 41:04
  When I realised this wasn't just Iris coming into the 3rd
• 41:08
  Doctor's life and taking the Pierce was the moments where
• 41:13
  he's basically desperate to find out yes 1.
• 41:17
  He wants to nick the bus. He wants to nick the.
• 41:19
  Bus. He wants to nick the bus.
• 41:21
  And two is he shakes her at one point when they're in a prison
• 41:24
  cell and says, tell me, where do I ever get off the earth?
• 41:27
  Like he really hates being on exile and he wants to get back
• 41:30
  into her outer. Space.
• 41:31
  I have a great quote from Pertly.
• 41:34
  This how good the book is. I attribute this to Pertly and
• 41:37
  not Paul Mars. You would know.
• 41:40
  I couldn't help saying what it's really like, Doctor, being stuck
• 41:43
  in one time, being able to shoot forward or back and have to live
• 41:46
  every moment as it comes, one after the next, in the correct
• 41:49
  chronological order. He looked at me dolefully.
• 41:51
  It's ghastly. I thought it might be.
• 41:54
  I imagine it's imagine, Imagine if someone took all those books
• 41:56
  out there. He gestured Ranley with one arm
• 41:59
  and put them in a strict order of publication, and then made
• 42:01
  you sit down for the rest of your life and force you to read
• 42:04
  them all in that order. You couldn't skip ahead.
• 42:06
  You couldn't radically juxtapose.
• 42:08
  Just imagine. You weren't free to pick up what
• 42:10
  you wanted, having to adhere instead to the humdrum,
• 42:13
  plodding, prosaic March of accurate chronology.
• 42:16
  It's like being a hamster on a wheel.
• 42:18
  How appropriate. It's gorgeous, though isn't.
• 42:20
  It. It's always.
• 42:22
  I don't for a way of describing. It I didn't think anyone could
• 42:24
  could describe to me what it's like being a time traveller, but
• 42:29
  even Paul Mars did it, just with a couple of sentences there.
• 42:32
  Later on they're in a cell and she very quietly says to him,
• 42:35
  you're not going to be in. Ex.
• 42:37
  That's in the cell that's in the same scene.
• 42:39
  I was in the same one. It's the same scene.
• 42:41
  And I was like, OK, so he's not just deconstructing here.
• 42:44
  He is providing us with a relationship with emotional
• 42:47
  payoff. What we've focused so far on,
• 42:50
  like the mocking of this era, it also loves this era.
• 42:53
  It loves this era so much because of that quote and what
• 42:57
  you've just said and that he's the doctor is so desperate, but
• 43:02
  he knows he has to go along with it.
• 43:04
  And he's he's also kind. You know, while he's always up
• 43:07
  to people, he's always kind to Joe.
• 43:09
  He's I can't remember what it's like with Tom.
• 43:12
  I think he's a bit on and off with Tom.
• 43:13
  He. Doesn't spend too much time with
• 43:15
  him, does. He no, but he's still, he's
• 43:19
  still the Third Doctor. He's not this evil like crooked
• 43:22
  Mr. Hyde version of 3rd Doctor. It's just there, laid bare in
• 43:28
  front of you. Take it or leave it.
• 43:30
  But he also as well has several moments of that.
• 43:33
  He just can't believe what is happening in front of his eyes.
• 43:37
  When they get to Saint Pancras in space you mean?
• 43:39
  When they get to Saint Pancras in space and they realize that
• 43:42
  this race of beings that want to infiltrate the Earth, we can't
• 43:45
  quite decide whether it's an invasion or they just want to
• 43:47
  hang out on the Earth. But yeah, it's the only
• 43:50
  reference material that they found for what life is actually
• 43:53
  like on the earth, unfortunately, is classic
• 43:55
  literature. So I think, right, that's
• 43:57
  exactly what, which is why they're sending down, you know,
• 44:00
  the cast of Pride and Prejudice and Bleak House and all this in
• 44:04
  railway carriages. And listen to this quote.
• 44:07
  You can just imagine perfectly saying we can't have fictional
• 44:10
  characters wandering about all over the place.
• 44:12
  It's an ontological nightmare. It's bad enough in the last
• 44:16
  quarter of the century, 20th century as it is.
• 44:18
  Postmodernism. Is that when he goes on about
• 44:21
  postmodernism, postmodernism or some such and he says we'll just
• 44:24
  confuse everyone and we'll just set us back a century or?
• 44:27
  Something so these aliens, unfortunately hugely embarrassed
• 44:31
  by what they've done when they realised, then introduce the
• 44:35
  term postmodernism into society. 1970s.
• 44:40
  To excuse of the dreadful mistake that they've made
• 44:43
  sending down Pride and Prejudice.
• 44:45
  And forgive me, I've got to say this bit because we ourselves
• 44:49
  invented those ludicrous categories of postmodernity,
• 44:53
  self referentiality and meta textuality just to cover up our
• 44:56
  silly mistake to which the doctor goes.
• 44:59
  But that's monstrous. You've infected the Earth with
• 45:02
  an epistemological quandary that would leave them stymied and
• 45:05
  perplexed for centuries. You've got, you've got the,
• 45:08
  you've got the list for Pertwee in there as well, right?
• 45:10
  And. Then one more can I do one more
• 45:13
  quote? Please go for it.
• 45:13
  Go for it. You've turned the earth into a
• 45:16
  vapid, smugly self referential abortion of a world just because
• 45:20
  of your foolishness. And then Iris pops up with it's
• 45:23
  the most. Pertwee dialogue ever.
• 45:25
  Iris goes I thought you liked the Internet.
• 45:29
  Well, well, the Internet certainly isn't like Iris.
• 45:31
  Wild time, she thinks. Oh God, I mean, it's really
• 45:35
  clever, isn't it? I think, I don't think not to
• 45:39
  insult your intelligence show, but I don't think either of us
• 45:41
  are smart enough for this book. I think it's working on another
• 45:44
  level. We're not getting all of it.
• 45:46
  There's I think most of this book is beyond our reach and it
• 45:49
  needs to go to like who's someone properly intelligent or
• 45:54
  Paul Quinn. You know you do a great job on
• 45:56
  this. Always doing season 15 tonight.
• 45:59
  You know, I know the least intelligible Doctor Who season
• 46:02
  of all time anyway. But I mean, what I did get, I
• 46:08
  just was so impressed. I was so impressed.
• 46:11
  I was like, that's mad. That's Douglas Adams mad.
• 46:14
  An alien race covering up their own ridiculous mistakes by
• 46:18
  introducing postmodernity into society.
• 46:24
  That is probably about, but The thing is that is this is this is
• 46:29
  going to sound quite like pseudo intellectual by my part.
• 46:32
  You have to be smart. You have to be smart enough to
• 46:34
  understand that that's a threat like with ish, where the threat
• 46:38
  is the disarticulation of English.
• 46:41
  You have to be, you have to be aware enough to know how that's
• 46:45
  kind of worse than the end of the universe, because everyone's
• 46:47
  just a jibbering idiot. I mean, I feel as if the threat
• 46:50
  has come to be, you know, this alien race created
• 46:53
  postmodernism, and as a result, we've got the Steven Moffett era
• 46:56
  of Doctor Who. The threat.
• 46:59
  The threat is real. I'll.
• 47:00
  Force my knees. I don't think I can do it.
• 47:05
  Actually I think this lands this book lands better post the
• 47:10
  Morphy era actually. I think this book lands better
• 47:12
  the new series. But there's so much meta text in
• 47:16
  the Steven Morphy era, there's a lot of deconstruction.
• 47:19
  Yeah, for example, there's Riversong going the Doctor
• 47:23
  course, and she goes, oh, you, you always does everything,
• 47:25
  everything in human history. The Doctor's bloody 'cause, you
• 47:27
  know, it's sort of the. The post Buffy effect isn't it?
• 47:30
  I think Buffy sort of came in and did a lot of, although if
• 47:35
  we're to believe the degree and then it happened all in the 70s
• 47:39
  or possibly the 80s. I'm not.
• 47:40
  Sure. Oh, we're not going there.
• 47:44
  OK, well then can we please discuss?
• 47:47
  I realise we're jumping about all over the place.
• 47:49
  I know so. So does.
• 47:50
  So does this book, Yeah. You're in this episode.
• 47:54
  You're absolutely experiencing what it is to read the degree by
• 47:57
  Paul Mars, OK. An intelligent mess.
• 48:01
  Thank you, you've just called me stupid and intelligent in a
• 48:04
  breath. Can we please talk about Tom and
• 48:08
  the Children of Destiny? So Tom and the Children of
• 48:12
  Destiny, like you said earlier, it's about coming out, isn't it?
• 48:19
  And I guess, well, this is probably the second person on
• 48:21
  the podcast who kind of has that experience with I'm, I'm not a
• 48:25
  gay man I've, I've not, I've got nothing to come out to really.
• 48:28
  But I'd call myself queer. You know, I'm not really sure
• 48:31
  I've fit along that line, but I'm somewhere I need to figure
• 48:34
  it out. And with the children dusted,
• 48:38
  they're so camp that Tom goes there and he's projected by him,
• 48:42
  you know, you know, they say you're not our future.
• 48:46
  And I kind of, I kind of have a similar experience with what I
• 48:50
  my first year university when I went to the LGBT society and I
• 48:54
  kind of just didn't slot in. They weren't mean to me or
• 48:56
  anything. In fact, they were quite polite
• 48:57
  and nice. But it just, I just didn't feel
• 48:58
  like their future. So I just felt bothered after it
• 49:04
  was very strange. But that's not the only.
• 49:06
  Time in this book. Then no, no, I don't think so.
• 49:12
  Actually a little bit because the English literature stuff,
• 49:14
  he's, I think he's a bit of a now, I think.
• 49:18
  But I think he's a surrogate character for most of the
• 49:19
  readers who will like this book. I think you're.
• 49:24
  Probably, right? Well, I mean, Andrew Batty said
• 49:26
  he read, he read this book. And it was the first, he said.
• 49:28
  It was the book that made him gay, I believe.
• 49:30
  Basically, it was the quote, yeah, But it was a character
• 49:34
  that was gay, that was accepted by everybody, and he was
• 49:36
  encouraged to come out by Iris. Yeah, at one point Iris goes,
• 49:40
  for God's sake, stop giving him moon eyes and just kiss the boy
• 49:42
  already. It's wonderful to have this
• 49:46
  level of acceptance in 90s Doctor.
• 49:48
  It's just so great. He's offered in another way as
• 49:50
  well. He's sent back in time,
• 49:53
  obviously, he said. Back in time to the 70s.
• 49:55
  And he meets his own mother. He meets his own mother.
• 49:57
  Sorry, no. That's very Moffett again, isn't
• 50:00
  it? Yes, meeting your mother and her
• 50:03
  saying oh you're going to have a very important future.
• 50:05
  She gives him a belt when he was a child and says you're going to
• 50:09
  be a very involved because she's already met him in anyway.
• 50:13
  We're not going there, no. We'll go boss side, but he's
• 50:16
  standing there in the middle of London and he's a total outsider
• 50:20
  and nothing makes sense. So and every sense of the word
• 50:23
  Tom is an outsider in this book. And I think, I do think we all
• 50:27
  know what that feels like in one way or another, whether that's
• 50:31
  sexuality or whatever. I mean, I, I went to a, a, a gay
• 50:36
  Doctor Who fan meet up in Brighton, right?
• 50:39
  I've never felt more other than my entire life but.
• 50:42
  I was, Oh my God, what was it like?
• 50:43
  I was like, well, firstly, what year was this?
• 50:46
  What year was this? It was.
• 50:47
  In the 90s, I was I was 18 and the rest of them were about 50.
• 50:53
  And they always fucking happiness patrol.
• 50:57
  No, they're all trying to get me in the toilet.
• 51:00
  I was like, I'm out of here. But it does work on another
• 51:05
  level. Whereas obviously Paul Mars is
• 51:07
  ripping the Tomorrow People as well.
• 51:09
  And I think that's enough of fandom.
• 51:11
  Where if. You love.
• 51:14
  Tomorrow, people. But if you love it, you might go
• 51:16
  what? What?
• 51:17
  That? Because, you know, he makes
• 51:18
  jokes about the fact that the sets are cheap, that the
• 51:21
  monsters look, you know, hideously realistic.
• 51:25
  There's it completely breaks all sense of reality by giving us a
• 51:31
  propped Dalek with pedals inside and what I believe is they don't
• 51:36
  describe it properly, but what I believe is a Axos suit it made
• 51:40
  out of rubber. Well, because, because the
• 51:42
  Children of Destiny are trying to, they're trying to pull off
• 51:47
  that the Doctor has faked all the alien invasions they've
• 51:50
  left, like Silurian hands and things.
• 51:53
  And it's when this wolf man is convinced, and, Joe, the unit's
• 51:59
  not real, she says, or he says to her.
• 52:01
  So you ever notice that there's always a blue haze around
• 52:03
  everything about every monster, which I imagine is something to
• 52:06
  do with, like, CSO, right? Yeah.
• 52:09
  The reason they look fake Joe is because.
• 52:11
  Is because they are. Oh please, I was pissing myself
• 52:15
  at that point. That's fantastic.
• 52:17
  But there's also as well. Now you wouldn't have seen this,
• 52:19
  but there's an episode of the Tomorrow People when they go and
• 52:22
  visit the Galactic Council, right?
• 52:24
  And it's the the world. Is there?
• 52:26
  Is there a talking handbag? The next best thing?
• 52:30
  They're all jellies and bean bags and they just put eyes on
• 52:34
  things and they just sort of wobble about going.
• 52:37
  What's what's that thing from cursor?
• 52:40
  Paladon is the the thing in the jar.
• 52:42
  No, that is, that is sophisticated.
• 52:46
  Commit to the tomorrow. People, that's what they're
• 52:48
  called. They look terrible and of course
• 52:51
  in this Marsha, who's one of the children of Destiny, she's got a
• 52:55
  bit of a kink for Ambassador Borges.
• 52:58
  Which one's he again? Well, he's a sort of green Jelly
• 53:01
  with an ice stalk. She loves when his when his ice
• 53:05
  stalk quivers like that, it really makes her moist.
• 53:10
  The way it describes it is is putrid.
• 53:14
  We're doing a bit of sort of, you know, come one, come all.
• 53:16
  We're doing interspecies flirting, we're doing gay.
• 53:19
  We're doing what? It's wonderful.
• 53:21
  I know so Iris has this handbag. Yes.
• 53:27
  Which is a delegate of the Galactic Committee.
• 53:31
  That's right now, as at one point we think it might be a
• 53:34
  goat. But yes, it turns out to be a
• 53:37
  delegate. Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
• 53:38
  It's praises are gone. For a while, the delegate very
• 53:41
  quickly assesses the situation. He takes them all hostage.
• 53:45
  He. Cuts them all down terribly,
• 53:47
  doesn't he? With his with his words.
• 53:50
  Doctor, you're a pompous prick. Irish, you're a mad drunk
• 53:54
  eccentric. And Joe, I've never seen anyone
• 53:57
  so dizzy in all of my life. Oh my God, that was the one that
• 54:00
  got me. He just called Joe Grant like a
• 54:02
  moron. Well, quite a few people call
• 54:05
  Joe a moron in this. There was.
• 54:08
  There was one quote where Iris in one of her diary extracts
• 54:12
  goes she's the most mind numbingly loyal assistant a
• 54:16
  sexist rake could ever desire. A sexist rake is one of my lines
• 54:20
  for how pert we described in this book.
• 54:21
  It's fantastic. Now, OK, good grief, I don't
• 54:25
  know where we are with this plot now.
• 54:26
  We've got robot sheep, we've got fictional characters, we've got
• 54:29
  a handbag that turns out to be a space delegate, we've got a piss
• 54:33
  taker for tomorrow people. And we've got the Doctor faking
• 54:37
  alien invasions and UNIT never exists and Mike Yate has been
• 54:42
  turned into cardboard and folded up in Joe's handbag.
• 54:47
  I thought, is that everything? And working in the supermarket.
• 54:51
  And I think that's back. Then and then when I thought he
• 54:55
  couldn't add anything. Else and the Galactic HQ's in a
• 54:57
  mountain in Wales. Oh yeah.
• 55:00
  Oh, wasn't talk about new series.
• 55:01
  It was very meta, wasn't it? Anyone around here sells Wilsh?
• 55:06
  There's turn turn the light when it's getting super dark in my
• 55:08
  room. When I thought we couldn't do
• 55:10
  anything else. Kieran, then Iris Wild Time,
• 55:13
  admits that she used to be a member of the.
• 55:16
  Of the sisterhood of Khan and she got what pissed drunk and
• 55:21
  looked for. Should we move on to, well, what
• 55:25
  the actual plot is? Yeah.
• 55:27
  Please try and pull all this together.
• 55:29
  So what's going on? Well, Green Crystal Man is
• 55:33
  behind it all really, isn't he? What is this, the titular ver.
• 55:37
  Degree ver degree. Now there are very smart things
• 55:42
  with why the book is called ver degree and what ver degree is
• 55:45
  Ver degree is. It's kind of what rusts over
• 55:48
  copper, isn't it? And it's like that same greenish
• 55:50
  colour, which I guess is like, well, this is verdigris.
• 55:53
  It's just Paul Mars putting onto the purple era.
• 55:56
  If you want to be all intellectual and that and had
• 55:58
  talk about the way you go back to past doctor books as you'll
• 56:04
  never get it right. You're always doing like a
• 56:07
  facsimile and most of the time a bit of a shit one.
• 56:10
  Only a few writers can actually like fully pinpoint and collect
• 56:16
  what that era was about. Like, for example, Ben and one
• 56:19
  of which were the 7th Doctor Terence Dicks with most Doctors
• 56:24
  anyone. Or like Stephen Moffatt with 11
• 56:27
  or 12, that kind of thing. If anyone else has to write this
• 56:29
  book after that era is concluded, it's not the same,
• 56:32
  it's different, it's not fair. And with well, that's all the
• 56:39
  very intelligent reading of it. Or their degree is a big crystal
• 56:42
  man that Iris summoned up drunk to get the Doctor off Earth.
• 56:46
  Which is such AI mean. It's such a backhanded
• 56:49
  explanation for everything. But it does make sense.
• 56:52
  So the whole, the whole faking of the alien invasions by the
• 56:56
  Children of Destiny, that's being done, Why?
• 57:02
  God, so the fake invasion from the people there is a bit of AI
• 57:09
  might have missed this out, but there's a bit of a continuity
• 57:11
  error maybe where there Mia Cox is what this alien race is
• 57:16
  called. They're running away from the
• 57:17
  glass men of Alcia and the Blue Angel.
• 57:20
  So they're from the office, but then it's very degree who's kind
• 57:24
  of sent them there to invade Earth, as well as pretending to
• 57:29
  be the Master to convince Joe that units not real while
• 57:33
  manoeuvring the Children of Destiny and the Galactic
• 57:36
  Council. All for the means to get the
• 57:38
  Doctor technology to get off of Earth back in space because
• 57:41
  Iris, drunk wishing drunkenly wished it.
• 57:44
  That is absolutely right, yes. And apparently the the the end
• 57:49
  result is to an alien race will be attracted to Earth for
• 57:53
  whatever reason, and then the Doctor will use that technology
• 57:55
  escape. Yeah, that's it.
• 57:57
  And I love the fact that it was Iris drunk that conjured up this
• 58:00
  whole thing. And actually, but she's been
• 58:02
  inveigled into it because she's forgotten, because she was so
• 58:04
  pissed. I thought, you know what, it
• 58:06
  would have been a lot simpler if she just said to her degree when
• 58:09
  she comes, you know, up just distracts him.
• 58:11
  He's stuck on Earth, just distracts him until he gets his
• 58:16
  exile concluded. And all this weird stuff would
• 58:20
  have happened just because, just to give him something to do.
• 58:23
  Basically this is our SWAT I'm talking about and I think.
• 58:27
  You can't predict this woman's actions.
• 58:29
  That is very, very true. I mean, Jesus Christ, where?
• 58:33
  What? Else is there here.
• 58:34
  What else is there? Hang on Like at one point, at
• 58:40
  one point, literally, the Doctor summarizes everything goes.
• 58:43
  We've got the disappearance of uni personnel.
• 58:44
  My gaze turned into cardboard, A spaceship full of irate handbag
• 58:47
  worshipping aliens, a forest of deadly trees on fire, a
• 58:51
  mysterious Green Man and killer robot sheep.
• 58:55
  So please, can we talk about robot sheep?
• 58:57
  The Doctor and Iris screaming through space and crash landing
• 59:03
  into a cinema. Yeah, where the Doctor meets.
• 59:06
  Sally from the. Newsagent from the post office.
• 59:09
  Yeah, lovely. Sally, I do have the idea that
• 59:12
  he goes in there to buy a strawberry.
• 59:13
  Bon bons and ends up telling her this is about chatting.
• 59:16
  Yeah, she don't believe A. What, a lick or a lick of it is
• 59:19
  she? Yeah.
• 59:20
  When he comes out, he goes. Sally, I've just come from outer
• 59:23
  space. Oh, let's not talk about what
• 59:26
  the what? Iris.
• 59:27
  And the Doctor, or what Iris tried to do to the Doctor in
• 59:29
  that capsule. Unhand me, Madam, you can just
• 59:32
  hear John Will. Be saying that, can't you
• 59:35
  definitely I I'm he must have. Said that on telly one at least
• 59:39
  once on hand, but they. Do mention how many times he
• 59:43
  calls people Madam, because Iris says you sound very obsequious.
• 59:48
  Every time you. Say, Madam, what you should say.
• 59:51
  In the 70s is hey man OK. Do you have anything in your
• 59:58
  notes here that we haven't got? We've sort of.
• 1:00:01
  Jumped around like a crazy Venn diagram.
• 1:00:04
  I've quite a lot of notes. I don't think the Virgin Doctor
• 1:00:08
  fans are over Virgin losing the licence yet and this is a very
• 1:00:12
  strange. Question because.
• 1:00:14
  The Virgin New Adventures had a tendency to take Doctor Who
• 1:00:17
  seriously. And by seriously I mean like
• 1:00:21
  torture. Parasite falls a shadow
• 1:00:25
  Seriously. And if it wasn't dark and
• 1:00:27
  miserable and everyone had a miserable time, it wasn't good.
• 1:00:31
  So I guess they followed that into the 8th Doctor range.
• 1:00:34
  They dropped off because if you read Cursile, you would too.
• 1:00:38
  And so then you get to the past Doctor adventures, which were
• 1:00:41
  fine, I think. I think most of them are fine
• 1:00:43
  apart from the ultimate treasure at the beginning.
• 1:00:46
  But in the I guess that exit point is here.
• 1:00:49
  Of those the last few remaining fans of the Virgin era to go,
• 1:00:54
  this isn't for you. Piss off, really.
• 1:00:57
  Go read the Benny books. I know they're not around at
• 1:00:59
  this point. They're gone now, I think also,
• 1:01:03
  hang on, can I just address that because I can see what you're
• 1:01:06
  saying there? Absolutely.
• 1:01:08
  I think this and the Scarlet Empress in the 8th Doctor line,
• 1:01:11
  that's where there was like a new wave of this is how we can
• 1:01:16
  do Doctor Who now. You did sort of revelation time
• 1:01:19
  when Revelation I think was when the new adventures said this is
• 1:01:23
  a whole new way of doing Doctor Who.
• 1:01:24
  This is what we're going to explore.
• 1:01:26
  I think I'd I'd attribute that more to love and.
• 1:01:28
  War as like the new adventure that's like the setup of like
• 1:01:32
  that. Structure.
• 1:01:34
  The same doctor going It's probably the ultimate new
• 1:01:36
  adventure, isn't it? Love and war, good and bad.
• 1:01:39
  Good. I've had.
• 1:01:40
  Yes. Yeah, that metaphor.
• 1:01:42
  Good grief. But yeah, so.
• 1:01:45
  And I think some people got on board with this approach and
• 1:01:50
  other people just went, you know what?
• 1:01:51
  It ain't for me. There's lots of layers to it.
• 1:01:54
  It's very clever. But I'm out.
• 1:01:57
  I'm going to go read. Warlock again I don't know, but
• 1:02:03
  go and enjoy the torture of. Animals, you know?
• 1:02:05
  Yeah, we're going to take. Apart the entire. 7th Cut their
• 1:02:09
  necks off, pull their legs. Yeah, let's go.
• 1:02:11
  For it I I did make a note here that.
• 1:02:15
  There's lots of digs out the cosiness of the Purwi era.
• 1:02:18
  Yes, Joe was wondering at the Master's place in recent events.
• 1:02:22
  No one, no one she knows has heard much from him recently,
• 1:02:25
  not since the last unit Christmas party of the full.
• 1:02:29
  And then at the end, the master was the Chinese take away, isn't
• 1:02:31
  he? Yeah, this is a very.
• 1:02:34
  Brief one but not mentioned. The green cross code is
• 1:02:36
  mentioned but not splink. Yes I did.
• 1:02:38
  I did make a. Reference for that as well.
• 1:02:41
  I also think this. Oh, sorry, there's a.
• 1:02:43
  Beautiful. There's an absolutely.
• 1:02:45
  Beautiful moment where all of the comedy with Iris has dropped
• 1:02:49
  and she has this quote about the bus.
• 1:02:51
  I never borrowed my bus. I found it.
• 1:02:53
  They left it to die in the mountains.
• 1:02:55
  They abandoned it. A wasted experiment.
• 1:02:58
  I coaxed it back to life. I taught it the things it needed
• 1:03:01
  to know. I fed it and I helped it to
• 1:03:03
  evolve. And I just thought that was
• 1:03:05
  lovely. It's fantastic.
• 1:03:06
  Like it is breaking that. Like the ice on Iris, we don't
• 1:03:12
  really get to see what she actually thinks a lot of the
• 1:03:15
  time, do we? There's a there's that moment.
• 1:03:17
  There's a moment in the Scarlet Empress where something similar
• 1:03:19
  happens, where she goes, No doctor, they'll stop taking the
• 1:03:23
  piss for a minute and I'll tell you what's what.
• 1:03:24
  The rest of the time she's just basically saying, well I was in
• 1:03:27
  this. Ridiculous parody of several
• 1:03:29
  Doctor Who stories at one point. Oh yeah, the Void were there
• 1:03:32
  Quartz The. Mecanoid the mecanoids.
• 1:03:36
  I also think this book is part of like a trilogy of like red
• 1:03:40
  blue and green of scarlet, Empress Verdigree and the Blue
• 1:03:43
  Angel. I think they just.
• 1:03:45
  I never thought of that. Well, because I don't think the
• 1:03:49
  mad dogs and. Englishmen really fit because
• 1:03:51
  it's, it's it's like, yeah, well, I guess it's the pink one.
• 1:03:55
  It fits in but. But no, just those like basic
• 1:03:58
  colours, I guess. What you could talk about the
• 1:03:59
  basic building blocks of Doctor Who, you know?
• 1:04:01
  Yeah. Your trad story in 3rd degree, I
• 1:04:03
  think. It's not very trad, is it?
• 1:04:06
  You kind of bold new direction in Scarlet Empress.
• 1:04:08
  And fuck knows what the Blue Angel was about that.
• 1:04:15
  Was narrative Deacon, We're not going to give you.
• 1:04:17
  An ending. All right, Make it up.
• 1:04:18
  Make it up yourself, yeah? Oh, now this was something that
• 1:04:22
  you. Got me onto you mentioned this
• 1:04:23
  before I even got to this part of the book, but I must say it
• 1:04:27
  because there was some real sort of fortune telling by Paul Miles
• 1:04:31
  here where he he proceeded the entire Timeless Child arc from
• 1:04:36
  the Chris Chibner era. Listen to this.
• 1:04:38
  You ready? This is Iris and the doctor.
• 1:04:41
  You underestimate how much they know about you.
• 1:04:44
  They know you're not just some simple renegade.
• 1:04:46
  They know more about your past lives and even you think more
• 1:04:50
  about my past lives, said the doctor.
• 1:04:52
  Oh, you know all that. You know the stuff that's meant
• 1:04:56
  to be a secret, your past. That's why they bummed you away
• 1:04:59
  in some backwater. They know you've got a history
• 1:05:02
  and a destiny to fulfil, my dear, says the Doctor.
• 1:05:08
  I'm not sure I've got any idea what you're talking about.
• 1:05:12
  Timeless Children Klaxon. That should be added in.
• 1:05:17
  Potential Cartmole master plan. Klaxon.
• 1:05:20
  Basically anything that's anything.
• 1:05:23
  That's going to suggest the doctor has.
• 1:05:25
  A deep, dark past that we don't know about.
• 1:05:27
  But I thought to myself, my God, between that, the Welsh jokes,
• 1:05:32
  I'm like, it's like Paul Mars knew the new series was coming.
• 1:05:35
  Oh, I read that and I thought this man is clairvoyant.
• 1:05:38
  He's got TARDIS sitting somewhere at home.
• 1:05:39
  He's useless to come here. No, they've all got Welsh
• 1:05:42
  accents. You know what it is?
• 1:05:44
  He's just, he's a forward thinker.
• 1:05:45
  That's. All it is he knows he's.
• 1:05:48
  Not treading the well worn path. He's literally making the path
• 1:05:52
  himself. No.
• 1:05:54
  Oh. Wait.
• 1:05:58
  Listen to this. The doctor goes, at first I
• 1:06:01
  thought this tripod business was aping HG Wells.
• 1:06:04
  Oh yes, naturally one would. But if it turns out they really,
• 1:06:08
  But it turns out they really are like this.
• 1:06:09
  And Mr. Wells was a lot cleverer than we all thought.
• 1:06:13
  Well, that. Isn't that that'd be a.
• 1:06:16
  Time lash reference, wouldn't it?
• 1:06:18
  I wouldn't put it past it. Into.
• 1:06:22
  The Time Lash. So the.
• 1:06:26
  Epilogue of this book. Is after the three doctors as
• 1:06:30
  well Yeah, the three Well, sorry, no, I should say, I
• 1:06:33
  should say before that the three Doctors was entirely
• 1:06:35
  orchestrated by her degree yes he decides to go after the.
• 1:06:38
  Antimatter verse doesn't he and to talk to Omega Omega go and go
• 1:06:41
  look there's a. Doctor.
• 1:06:43
  Use him. If you need a Time Lord, use him
• 1:06:45
  and then the Time Lords might forgive him and then he could
• 1:06:47
  get back out into space again I think.
• 1:06:51
  So it is kind of like infecting other periods.
• 1:06:55
  No bit of pertly safe from this book.
• 1:06:58
  You can't outrun it as much as you.
• 1:06:59
  Tried because. Paul Mars makes sure that
• 1:07:02
  whenever you're watching the three doctors, your little
• 1:07:03
  comfort story. You thought you could get away
• 1:07:05
  from that post mods, and now he's sitting there in the back
• 1:07:07
  of your head. No inferred agreed at all this
• 1:07:10
  and even even you know. Lawrence Miles's take on the
• 1:07:13
  Pertway era. As we've already mentioned, he's
• 1:07:15
  taking a piss out of that as well.
• 1:07:18
  Nothing is safe. Oh, I did love this as well.
• 1:07:22
  There's a bit where they're talking about the superior
• 1:07:24
  beings, the children of destiny. Are you the tomorrow people?
• 1:07:27
  And someone goes isn't. Isn't that a bit?
• 1:07:30
  Fascistic. Fascistic.
• 1:07:31
  Yeah, Or one, One other. Line which is fairly like post
• 1:07:35
  1. Destiny's Children can't die, it
• 1:07:38
  just doesn't happen. Exception A Gary.
• 1:07:41
  Russell scripts of. Course for the.
• 1:07:42
  Audio range do they He just murders them all doesn't he does
• 1:07:45
  meant. He's murdered quite a few,
• 1:07:46
  actually. How about this?
• 1:07:48
  No one wants to. Invade the Earth?
• 1:07:49
  Really. Why bother?
• 1:07:51
  We've got nothing they'd want. They look around at our media
• 1:07:54
  and all they see is rampant paranoia and nasty unconvinced
• 1:07:57
  an alien fakes. So it's like the. 12th Doctor
• 1:08:01
  says. You've got a film named Alien
• 1:08:03
  that's horrible. Another quote from the Children
• 1:08:07
  of Destiny. Is evil?
• 1:08:09
  Mary asked. She looked like she was going to
• 1:08:11
  laugh. Don't tell me you believe in
• 1:08:12
  evil or some kind of abstract, inextractable quality that can
• 1:08:15
  possess a whole being or personal being.
• 1:08:18
  What? Don't you just believe in acts
• 1:08:20
  and attributes, or in vastly generalised, insensate
• 1:08:24
  qualities? I'm not having a debate about
• 1:08:26
  relativism. Now get a grip, Mary.
• 1:08:27
  Look, the Sky's gone dark. Fantastic.
• 1:08:31
  There's a moment right at the start.
• 1:08:32
  Of the book where the Doctors doing the washing up in pink
• 1:08:35
  marigolds and plotting to steal irises tardis Yeah I just feel
• 1:08:40
  like the. Characters are so close in this
• 1:08:42
  book to realising they're in a book and then one of the other
• 1:08:46
  characters will like quickly run up as if they're like filming on
• 1:08:49
  telly, slap me on the face and go.
• 1:08:51
  We're in Doctor Who. Don't think about it too hard.
• 1:08:53
  They're like they're fighting a battle to get out of this book
• 1:08:56
  and they can't. I mean that would have been the
• 1:08:58
  the last. Sort of layer, wouldn't it?
• 1:09:00
  If walk off the page, what? Are you doing holding this book?
• 1:09:05
  I'm off. He should have done it this
• 1:09:07
  stuff. 'S too weird for me.
• 1:09:08
  I'm off to the next past doctor adventure.
• 1:09:10
  All right, see you in a bit While you have what, Justin
• 1:09:13
  Richards? Include iris for one page and
• 1:09:16
  grave matter whatever is there. What came away from ver degree
• 1:09:20
  thinking? Was one that Paul Mars is just
• 1:09:23
  an incredibly smart man. Yeah.
• 1:09:26
  And he had lots of thoughts about 70s Doctor Who that he
• 1:09:32
  loves. I mean, I've.
• 1:09:33
  I've interviewed him and he absolutely adores this period of
• 1:09:36
  Doctor Who. And he was determined to get
• 1:09:38
  pack them all into 250 pages in what But in his own mad quirky
• 1:09:46
  style full of sort of what appears to be illogical, crazy
• 1:09:50
  events. Yeah.
• 1:09:52
  And then like a magician, just whip it all into a razor sharp
• 1:09:57
  narrative at the end. It's just so clever.
• 1:10:00
  I think I'm like, I think the first draft of this.
• 1:10:03
  Book must have been like 800 pages and he just had to like
• 1:10:06
  very slowly trim it all down or as the chapters were coming
• 1:10:09
  into. Steve Cole, the editor, He's
• 1:10:11
  like, Paul, what? What's going on now?
• 1:10:14
  Was it still Steve Cole at this point?
• 1:10:15
  I yeah, this is this is. Pre Ancestor cell, yeah, I think
• 1:10:20
  Festival of Death is where Justin Richards came in, which
• 1:10:23
  is just down the lane I think. OK, yeah, so one of his.
• 1:10:26
  One of his last few. I think so.
• 1:10:29
  He was going out on sort of an experiment.
• 1:10:30
  What a way to go. But Can you imagine these?
• 1:10:32
  Chapters coming in, I'll be reading them.
• 1:10:34
  Going What? Robot sheep?
• 1:10:36
  Mike Yates has been turned 2 dimensional.
• 1:10:38
  What's going on here, Paul? Are you all right?
• 1:10:40
  Are you? OK, Yeah.
• 1:10:44
  Another. Thing I've just I've looked from
• 1:10:46
  my notes and seen is that Tom is a Doctor Who viewer who came to
• 1:10:49
  the classic series after 1989. Explain that to me.
• 1:10:54
  When he's come back and he's looked at it and he goes.
• 1:10:56
  Is this what they're really that fussed about?
• 1:10:59
  What is this I? See what you're saying?
• 1:11:02
  Like I. But my first steps.
• 1:11:06
  Into classic Doctor. Who was I was like what are the
• 1:11:09
  best classic Doctor Who stories? So I watched Genesis of the
• 1:11:12
  Garlics and I got to episode 3 and I thought what a load of
• 1:11:14
  kaak. And then I tried remembrance of
• 1:11:18
  garlic, the. Audience now.
• 1:11:20
  Thanks, Kieran. Sorry.
• 1:11:21
  I'm sorry, I love it now or same.
• 1:11:23
  With remembrance, which I love now but I thought this is a load
• 1:11:25
  of shit and it wasn't until I watched the Deadly Assassin.
• 1:11:30
  Where it was so. Ridiculous that I could just
• 1:11:33
  accept it and I've just accepted it from there onwards, you know.
• 1:11:36
  But any I was suppose to say, any normal person, any normal
• 1:11:40
  person who comes to classic Doctor Who, you're not including
• 1:11:43
  you and me in this. Yeah, sure.
• 1:11:48
  We've got these ridiculously like posh collection sets now
• 1:11:52
  with these nice booklets and all that.
• 1:11:54
  And then you put the disc in and what if you were to show someone
• 1:12:00
  completely new and they go, oh, what is this?
• 1:12:03
  There's no other like Blu rays like them, is there?
• 1:12:05
  And you put it in and let you put in what story?
• 1:12:09
  Underworld. We'll go for Underworld.
• 1:12:11
  And then you put that on and they're like, what the fuck is
• 1:12:13
  this? Is it?
• 1:12:14
  What was all this like? It revolutionized television.
• 1:12:18
  You know, yeah. What was for?
• 1:12:20
  What was this for? All for this, I'll tell you
• 1:12:23
  what. Actually, there's a special
• 1:12:24
  feature. On it's either season 17 or
• 1:12:26
  season 18, where for some reason they took to the streets and
• 1:12:31
  asked a load of hip young girls just in town centres yeah what
• 1:12:36
  do you think of this costume of Ramana twos right and they're
• 1:12:39
  all just looking at the costumes going oh, is it the one from
• 1:12:43
  Pictures from the pit? It's.
• 1:12:44
  Maybe he it's all of her. Costumes and these trendy, these
• 1:12:48
  trendy girls from 2010 or whenever it was filmed.
• 1:12:51
  I just, I mean, what are you showing me?
• 1:12:53
  And it's like, yeah, that is the face of Tom Inverdigree just
• 1:12:57
  there. Yes, like what the fuck is going
• 1:13:00
  on? Yeah.
• 1:13:01
  But I think, I think you go one or two ways, right you.
• 1:13:04
  Go. You either say, do you know
• 1:13:05
  what? That ain't for me?
• 1:13:06
  Classic KU. And I know plenty of people that
• 1:13:07
  have, or you go the way you went.
• 1:13:10
  And that is, I'm going to accept this on its own terms and I'm
• 1:13:12
  going to find enjoyment in it. Well, The thing is, I don't
• 1:13:15
  think I like classic KU. For the same reason that a lot
• 1:13:17
  of people like Classic KU, because they grew up on it.
• 1:13:19
  I like Classic KU because this is going to lose your other half
• 1:13:23
  your viewership. I think it's a little bit shit.
• 1:13:26
  Well, I mean, it is. It's.
• 1:13:27
  Very cheap, yes. It's cheap, it looks like shit,
• 1:13:31
  the. Script.
• 1:13:31
  Most of the time the scripts aren't very good and very rarely
• 1:13:35
  it all coalesces to make something incredible.
• 1:13:37
  And that's that's why I love it. It's for those little gems.
• 1:13:41
  And when it's not like that on form, I love just to see the
• 1:13:44
  edges of where it's not come together.
• 1:13:46
  Just just right. Like you go into the two dots
• 1:13:48
  and you go, that's Top of the pops, you know?
• 1:13:50
  It's stuff like that and it's just fucking brilliant.
• 1:13:52
  That's why I love classic rock to him.
• 1:13:54
  I mean, all opinions are welcome here even.
• 1:13:56
  Insane ones like the ones you just gave there, you know I made
• 1:14:00
  an enemy. Of all of.
• 1:14:01
  Hamster. Oh, please, have you heard
• 1:14:03
  Fraser, Gregory and. His mad opinions?
• 1:14:05
  Grief. You're in a nursery.
• 1:14:07
  Compared to him. But like, like we just said
• 1:14:12
  there about accepting classic Doctor Who in its own terms, I
• 1:14:15
  actually think Ver degree is pointing out all the
• 1:14:18
  ridiculousness, all the annoying inconsistencies of the 70s and
• 1:14:23
  it but at the end it's saying just accept this on its own
• 1:14:27
  terms. This is great.
• 1:14:29
  Enjoy this. I don't think it's taking the
• 1:14:31
  piss. I think it's celebrating 72.
• 1:14:34
  But in doing so, it's pointing out just how fun.
• 1:14:37
  What didn't work? Ridiculous all.
• 1:14:39
  Of it is. Yeah, but that's what makes it
• 1:14:42
  so much. More like you've got the special
• 1:14:47
  edition for Day of the Daleks. For example.
• 1:14:49
  I'd watch the original because I want the Dalek Invasion force to
• 1:14:52
  be 3 Daleks because that just like I don't know it sells me on
• 1:14:58
  it. It just it really.
• 1:14:59
  Draws me into how just fucking ridiculous this was at the time
• 1:15:03
  because you have all this new dialects, you have the new
• 1:15:05
  dialect voice. I quite like the new dialect
• 1:15:06
  voice. They're dialects, so I'd like to
• 1:15:07
  keep those that have the original and you have all these
• 1:15:10
  new laser effects and a lot of things, a lot of stories, they
• 1:15:14
  all have new like Caves and Rosani.
• 1:15:16
  They fixed all the lasers of those little cones to make them
• 1:15:19
  proper fire bolts and it just looks jarring and odd.
• 1:15:22
  So they're going back and like patching it up and it just
• 1:15:25
  doesn't work. You just got to leave it with
• 1:15:26
  all its flaws and come as you are.
• 1:15:30
  It's brilliant. In Dale of Daleks they they did
• 1:15:32
  that sort of. CGI exterior, yes it looked
• 1:15:36
  terrible, which doesn't match with the.
• 1:15:37
  Location work. It doesn't.
• 1:15:39
  It just looks so out of place and it's like, it's a bit like,
• 1:15:43
  forgive me, the Daleks in colour and the War Games in colour,
• 1:15:46
  where they're cutting 1960s Doctor Who as if it was made in
• 1:15:51
  2024. Now I get why they're doing
• 1:15:54
  this. They're trying to hand that to a
• 1:15:55
  new generation of kids and say give us a chance, You might.
• 1:15:58
  I think it's worked. I think it's, I think.
• 1:16:00
  It's been a resounding success. I just I do you know what in my?
• 1:16:03
  Head. I know because of how this is
• 1:16:06
  shot. It's 1960s TV pretending to be
• 1:16:10
  2024 TV. There's a total disconnect in my
• 1:16:13
  head. Whereas with this book, with
• 1:16:16
  this book, every time he made a joke at the 70s expense, I went
• 1:16:22
  both. Yes, you are absolutely right.
• 1:16:26
  And at the same time I went, I fucking love that about 70s
• 1:16:29
  Doctor Who. Yes, he hit it.
• 1:16:31
  He hit it on the nail for me. I think the people that have an
• 1:16:34
  issue with this are the ones that go how dare you point out.
• 1:16:39
  Mike Yates is 2. Dimensional.
• 1:16:41
  Are you suggesting a certain? Fan with a certain name who runs
• 1:16:45
  a certain Facebook group? Oh, who could we be talking
• 1:16:48
  about now? I wonder I won't.
• 1:16:53
  And hi, Ian. Don't block me Ian Loving could
• 1:16:58
  not read this book. He just couldn't.
• 1:17:01
  He would, absolutely. Have a fucking seizure.
• 1:17:03
  Caps lock on. I can't believe this.
• 1:17:06
  He'll read a target. Target of.
• 1:17:09
  A John Perry's story, but he just, no, he doesn't have enough
• 1:17:13
  of a sense of humour. I think this book an
• 1:17:16
  interference haunt in his dreams.
• 1:17:19
  Basically. I'm going to try and summarize
• 1:17:21
  this. Basically, Paul Mars is saying
• 1:17:24
  what you just said there. Do you know what, Doctor Who's a
• 1:17:29
  bit crap, but we still love it? Exactly.
• 1:17:34
  Because unlike what a lot of. Other past Doctor adventures do
• 1:17:37
  is. I know a lot of Doctor Who fans
• 1:17:39
  when they read a past Doctor adventure or a period of form
• 1:17:41
  they imagine it with the production of that time.
• 1:17:44
  Like the 8th Doctor books look like X-Files or this or some of
• 1:17:50
  the 3rd Doctor ones look like, well, Verdigry looks like a
• 1:17:53
  third Doctor. Sorry, I don't.
• 1:17:54
  Do that. Usually I just feel it how it
• 1:17:56
  how as it is in my head, but this book I felt like I was
• 1:18:02
  watching. 1/3 Doctor story and. That is so difficult to do
• 1:18:05
  because it could have been so wordy.
• 1:18:08
  All the language is so many like multi syllabic words near that
• 1:18:11
  could have been so easily lost and think what the fuck is going
• 1:18:14
  on. But although there is all that
• 1:18:16
  intelligence stuff going on, it's still just a fun.
• 1:18:20
  If you want it to be as simple as possible.
• 1:18:21
  It can still just be a fun, easy read that you put up, you pick
• 1:18:25
  down, and you never think of again, and on the.
• 1:18:29
  Other hand if you want. A book which is which has a lot
• 1:18:34
  to say. Yeah, which is packing in a lot
• 1:18:36
  of commentary. You've got that as well.
• 1:18:38
  And not. But you know what?
• 1:18:40
  Not a lot of Doctor Who books give you that option.
• 1:18:42
  No, usually they're not. Smart enough?
• 1:18:45
  In either direction. No, they're just meander about
• 1:18:48
  and there's a. Fucking Dalek somewhere.
• 1:18:50
  No, no, no, not a Dalek. Somewhere.
• 1:18:52
  There's a Dalek mention on every other page because they can't
• 1:18:54
  actually get Daleks. But the right desperately wants
• 1:18:56
  to write the Daleks. I'll put one word or two words
• 1:18:58
  in where of the ones that you've read and I'm, I'm.
• 1:19:01
  Not sure how many that you have read.
• 1:19:03
  Where would this rank with the Paul Mars books of the Paul Mars
• 1:19:07
  books? Oh.
• 1:19:09
  This is the best Paul Mars easily.
• 1:19:11
  See, Mad Dogs is my favorite. I've just I've yet to read it.
• 1:19:14
  I'm reading it. You'll love it.
• 1:19:16
  Soon ish so it's that's as bad shit as this but.
• 1:19:20
  I'd say the plot is a bit more robust, like it's, it's got a, a
• 1:19:24
  more clear narrative, you know where the story is going.
• 1:19:29
  But it's, well, it's full of pink poodle smoking cigarillos.
• 1:19:33
  It's Paul Mars. Yeah.
• 1:19:34
  Oh. Talk about I think because for
• 1:19:39
  Mars knew how how many people he pissed off of her degree, he
• 1:19:42
  probably went that extra step further with that cover of Mad
• 1:19:45
  Dogs and Englishmen. What is this in my hand?
• 1:19:48
  The 100th Doctor Who book and it's a pink poodle smoking a fag
• 1:19:53
  to to my opinion. Of my own sexuality that I
• 1:19:57
  picked up that book and I just didn't think that anybody would
• 1:20:01
  take any have a problem with it. I took it to the person at the.
• 1:20:04
  Counter we're going oh, it's. The new Doctor Who book and
• 1:20:06
  they're just looking at me going.
• 1:20:07
  It's bright pink and it's got a poodle on the front.
• 1:20:10
  Have a nice day, young man. Oh my, it's so embarrassing.
• 1:20:14
  You go out there with your. Copy of The Giggle by James Goss
• 1:20:16
  and they just look at you like you're a grown ass man reading
• 1:20:18
  this. That is why they did.
• 1:20:21
  Those Harry Porter books. With the adult covers wasn't it?
• 1:20:24
  Just get a Kindle. It's a lot easier.
• 1:20:27
  No, I'm just out and proud. I'm there with my.
• 1:20:29
  Electric Pink book now on the train, please.
• 1:20:33
  Yeah, well, no. I.
• 1:20:34
  Just sort of poke my head over the top and go.
• 1:20:35
  Yeah, the greatest book ever written.
• 1:20:38
  You want to read? This too, don't you?
• 1:20:39
  Yes. He has the gall to write that on
• 1:20:42
  the blurb as. Well, anything else to say
• 1:20:45
  about? Verdegree I mean, I feel as if
• 1:20:48
  we packed in as much substance in this episode as he did in the
• 1:20:52
  book. We did it in a crazy way, but my
• 1:20:55
  God, yeah, just as a mad and. Unstructured way as probably
• 1:20:58
  verdegree is buy it, read it, put it on your shelf.
• 1:21:04
  And let it gathered us, then read.
• 1:21:05
  It again, then put it back on your shelf and I'll just add.
• 1:21:10
  Don't take Doctor Who too seriously.
• 1:21:14
  Well, tell that you could. You could tell that to some.
• 1:21:16
  People. But they won't listen like for,
• 1:21:18
  for, for God's sakes, humour. Is one of the things that makes
• 1:21:22
  Doctor Who what it is, Yeah. It's why Doctor Who is not The
• 1:21:25
  X-Files or something like that, is that it is a bit crazy and
• 1:21:29
  it's funny and it has lovely people in it and this that's
• 1:21:32
  it's USP. That's it's USP.
• 1:21:35
  Because I try to watch, you're going to hate this.
• 1:21:37
  I tried to watch Star Trek Next Generation recently, the first
• 1:21:40
  season, and I thought it's all on the bridge and they're all
• 1:21:44
  like Starship command ready and it's like fucking Al can you do
• 1:21:48
  something interesting? But when Q shows up oh that's
• 1:21:51
  lovely, but in this appears and it gets fucking boring again.
• 1:21:54
  I love hearing your opinion on things that I.
• 1:21:56
  Absolutely adored when I was being savaged.
• 1:22:01
  Yes. I'm sure we'll do a bit more of
• 1:22:03
  this as we go along. Well, look, thank you very much.
• 1:22:07
  Thank you for reading this. Thank you for joining us.
• 1:22:10
  My pleasure. It's been a joy to.
• 1:22:11
  Get to know you and. We've got a little bit of a list
• 1:22:15
  forming now, don't we, of books to come of of good and bad.
• 1:22:19
  That's right. Well, why don't you tell?
• 1:22:21
  Everybody after this insanity. What insanity we're covering
• 1:22:25
  next. Well, we're going to the after.
• 1:22:28
  The end of this universe and before the next, a Galaxy wide
• 1:22:32
  city. Where every.
• 1:22:33
  Human, proto human or caveman ever lived, We're going to The
• 1:22:37
  City of the Saved by Philip Purcell Hallett, or if it's full
• 1:22:41
  title of the City of the Saved, of its divine citizenry and of
• 1:22:45
  its sundry divinities with a a disquisition on the protocols of
• 1:22:48
  history. Mouthful fucking pretentious is
• 1:22:53
  that I know. This book is going to be so.
• 1:22:55
  Fucking pretentious. We are diving headlong.
• 1:22:59
  Into the faction paradox. And it was Is this the first?
• 1:23:01
  Will that be the first faction Paradox?
• 1:23:03
  No, I have done the two interference.
• 1:23:05
  Books and I have done Alien Bodies as well, but it's the
• 1:23:08
  first of that range. Yes, yeah, I can't wait because
• 1:23:13
  I'm going to be doing the Faction Paradox audios on Dylan
• 1:23:15
  Reese's soon as well. So.
• 1:23:17
  Oh, I've listened to them. I listened to those BBB.
• 1:23:20
  Ones yeah, the scripts, the scripts were good, but then the
• 1:23:25
  apparently the ones magic. Bullet ones are better.
• 1:23:28
  A lot better they're. Supposed to be a lot better,
• 1:23:30
  but. If we thought we were sort of
• 1:23:33
  generous with ideas in this book, well, I know what the
• 1:23:37
  fashion paradox range is probably like.
• 1:23:39
  I can imagine like it's going out of style, aren't?
• 1:23:42
  They and I can. I'm starting to see the sort of
• 1:23:45
  Doctor Who. You like as well?
• 1:23:46
  Just one. Just mad, yeah.
• 1:23:49
  No, I, I think. You need a lot coming at you, if
• 1:23:52
  you'll forgive me, but it's got to be smart and it's got to be
• 1:23:56
  funny and it's got to be engaging.
• 1:23:58
  So we certainly it's got to have, it's got to have a point.
• 1:24:01
  We shan't be reading our Christopher Boulis anytime.
• 1:24:03
  Soon. Well, we've got Legacy of the
• 1:24:05
  Daleks on this. List so.
• 1:24:10
  Well, I'm pleased we're starting with something strong.
• 1:24:12
  I know Kieran, can I? Ask you a question.
• 1:24:15
  Go for it. Where can people find?
• 1:24:17
  You online. If you wish them to find you
• 1:24:20
  online, that is, you can. Find me.
• 1:24:22
  On blue Sky. As it is now because we've left
• 1:24:25
  Twitter behind, you can find me on there at left-handed Dalek.
• 1:24:30
  Same on Instagram. Also run another Instagram page
• 1:24:33
  called BBC Books. Under score love because someone
• 1:24:36
  has to represent them on Instagram.
• 1:24:39
  That's what you can find. I'm looking for that.
• 1:24:41
  Well, it was just on. On Instagram I see a lot of
• 1:24:43
  accounts. Focusing on the version books
• 1:24:45
  and then on the BBC. So I like to do it.
• 1:24:47
  That's where you can find me. You won't get anything
• 1:24:51
  particularly interesting apart from what I've read and me
• 1:24:54
  moaning about Doctor Who. What more do we need?
• 1:24:57
  Do you know what I know? You turned up at that first
• 1:24:59
  hamster Social right and you started talking about the books
• 1:25:02
  and then you started making really obscure references to
• 1:25:05
  doctor and immediately in the back of my head, I was going
• 1:25:09
  he's got to do a book club. He's got to do a book.
• 1:25:12
  I owe too much for my own good. The. 2nd that Co ended.
• 1:25:15
  I messaged you and went. Kieran, come and do a book.
• 1:25:18
  Get on. Thank you very.
• 1:25:21
  Much for your time today. That was my pleasure.
• 1:25:23
  That was a a really eccentric book for us to start with.
• 1:25:27
  That's but interesting, right? Definitely.
• 1:25:33
  How do we end? This thing unhappy, Madam?
• 1:25:38
  Yeah, I'll. Cut it there.
• 1:25:42
  I might even take out the pause. Just you screaming unhappy
• 1:25:45
  Madam. Oh boy.
• 1:25:48
  I kind of had a feeling we were going to be scattershot with
• 1:25:51
  this because I knew it was going to be insane.
• 1:25:53
  I had notes all over the place. Mine are just.
• 1:25:55
  Like Karen, that was. Quite points.
• 1:25:58
  Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure
• 1:26:00
  as we went along, right? We started off sort of on a
• 1:26:04
  point for a bit and as we went along we were like, oh, and this
• 1:26:07
  bit. Oh, and this bit.
• 1:26:08
  But no, that's the book, right? It's the book.
• 1:26:12
  Oh, I've got to recommend a book.
• 1:26:15
  No, no, no, no, no. No, don't do it and I'll cut it
• 1:26:18
  in. OK, so about time.
• 1:26:20
  Now wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 1:26:23
  So Kieran, now at 21 years of age, I'm assuming that you have
• 1:26:30
  some Doctor Who book recommendations for us.
• 1:26:32
  Yes, yes. I'd like to recommend About Time
• 1:26:36
  by Tatwood and Lawrence Miles, particularly the 1st edition of
• 1:26:40
  seasons 12 to 17, because I'm not getting the Tatwood one on
• 1:26:44
  its own because it's like too fucking long and it's got the
• 1:26:47
  best part taken out. This is the most the funniest
• 1:26:51
  take on Doctor Who I've seen in ludicrous detail.
• 1:26:56
  Where is Gallifrey? Where and when is Gallifrey?
• 1:26:58
  Sorry, just stupid essays. Like why couldn't they have
• 1:27:02
  spent more money? Who are all these strange men in
• 1:27:05
  wigs? What's another one here?
• 1:27:09
  Did Russell on know Emma Omega? That's three pages long.
• 1:27:12
  So if you ever wanted to answer to those things and for Lawrence
• 1:27:15
  Miles to take every single Doctor Who story that you love
• 1:27:18
  dearly and point out all the plot holes in them, pick it up.
• 1:27:22
  I love them. I I do agree with you though I
• 1:27:24
  think. When Tatwood was doing them on
• 1:27:26
  his own, one, they're far too long and indulging at that
• 1:27:29
  point. They're too serious.
• 1:27:30
  You can, absolutely. See where the smarts?
• 1:27:32
  Were in those early volumes. It was coming from Miles.
• 1:27:35
  Yeah, he's mad as a box of frogs.
• 1:27:38
  But he's very. Smart Do you hear what you have
• 1:27:40
  to say about the War Games I. Did I did?
• 1:27:43
  Yes. I don't.
• 1:27:43
  Think we should be wishing that on anybody?
• 1:27:45
  No, that's not I'll think you're fucking.
• 1:27:47
  No, it's. Only you can still watch the
• 1:27:49
  other one. Bless his heart.
• 1:27:51
  I think he may have. Truly have ostracised himself
• 1:27:54
  now, away from the It's so unfortunate because I.
• 1:27:57
  I just wish we got one more book out of him.
• 1:28:00
  I just want one more I. I don't say this gently.
• 1:28:03
  I. Think he's the best Doctor Who
• 1:28:05
  writer for me. I completely agree.
• 1:28:07
  I think he's genuinely the best Doctor Who writer.
• 1:28:11
  Just he's got so many in it, like.
• 1:28:15
  Like I said earlier, that's my type of doctor.
• 1:28:16
  Who? He just grabs all the ideas
• 1:28:18
  that's been stuffed in his pockets.
• 1:28:19
  He just throws them out. He have all these driving ship
• 1:28:21
  crashes on a big Gallifrey warship.
• 1:28:23
  Go for it. The 8th Doctor doesn't know how
• 1:28:26
  to play multidimensional chess. There you go.
• 1:28:28
  His pockets are fucking infinite or something.
• 1:28:31
  Whatever, I'm going to mush together a past Doctor, an
• 1:28:34
  Eighth Doctor. Book and see what happens.
• 1:28:35
  I'm going to murder off a character from the classic
• 1:28:39
  series in a different way and it's going to be the only book
• 1:28:41
  you can get that month otherwise.
• 1:28:42
  You should fuck off and wait till next month.
• 1:28:44
  I'm going to tell you a story. About an auction and every 50
• 1:28:48
  pages I'm going to go into the back story of each one of those
• 1:28:51
  people bidding on the Doctor's like like I'm going to make the
• 1:28:54
  crotons interesting. There you go.
• 1:28:56
  Just. Leave it at that.
• 1:28:56
  His ambition is staggering. Absolutely staggering.
• 1:29:01
  You notice how we said all that about Lawrence Miles?
• 1:29:03
  But not sort of word about that word.
• 1:29:05
  Yeah, let's leave it there, shall we?