Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - The Ghosts of N-Space by Barry Letts (featuring Andrew Batty, Jon Arnold & Luke Sims-Jenkins)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - The Ghosts of N-Space by Barry Letts (featuring Andrew Batty, Jon Arnold & Luke Sims-Jenkins) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:01
  Sarah, wait. She turned in the doorway of the
• 0:06
  TARDIS. For heaven's sake, Jeremy,
• 0:10
  what's going on? Have you changed your mind?
• 0:13
  But Jeremy, who had run all the way from the harbour, stumbling
• 0:17
  and staggering as he neared the top of the steep hill, running
• 0:20
  on whan and watery legs through the long corridors to the
• 0:23
  courtyard, had used up all his available breath in his cry to
• 0:27
  her now. No, it's me, it's the doctor
• 0:33
  that he ran out of POV yet again.
• 0:38
  Look, he started doing stuff in there.
• 0:40
  I can't stop him. Lord knows what would happen.
• 0:43
  Jeremy took a couple of deep breaths.
• 0:46
  That Max Vilmio chap, the one who's nobbling poor old Mario,
• 0:52
  he's again. He had to stop.
• 0:56
  Well, he's what? What about him?
• 0:59
  He's sending somebody to kill the Doctor.
• 1:02
  I heard them talking, sort of. Monk chap.
• 1:05
  We've got to warn him. Sarah looked at him as if he'd
• 1:08
  gone totally bonkers. OK, OK, I'll tell him.
• 1:13
  But it's not as if he's going to be in much danger where we're
• 1:15
  going now, is he? Not that sort, anyway.
• 1:19
  An irate voice came from inside Sarah.
• 1:23
  Are you coming or aren't you coming?
• 1:28
  And with a sort of tot and shake of her head, she disappeared
• 1:31
  inside. Suddenly.
• 1:33
  Jeremy couldn't bear it. Wait, he cried.
• 1:37
  I've changed my mind. I'll come too.
• 1:40
  But his only answer was the elephantine song of the TARDIS.
• 1:43
  As she vanished from sight. He turned away, but his eye was
• 1:49
  called by a movement in the shadows.
• 1:51
  Who's that? He called.
• 1:54
  There was no answer, and as he moved over to have a closer
• 1:58
  look, he saw that there was nobody there.
• 2:01
  Yes, as he wandered disconsolately back through the
• 2:03
  long corridors, he couldn't shake the idea from his mind.
• 2:07
  But he had in fact caught a glimpse of Max Vilnios.
• 2:09
  Unlikely Hitman. What a load of Tommy rod,
• 2:13
  thought Jeremy. After all, he could have hardly
• 2:17
  just vanished through the wall, could he?
• 3:02
  Welcome back to Hamster Book Club and with me today I'm John.
• 3:08
  I have the magnificent Joe Ford. Oh, hello there.
• 3:12
  The wonderfully grumpy Luke. Hey, how's it going?
• 3:17
  And the ever intellectual Andrew?
• 3:21
  It's a lot to live. Up to absolutely.
• 3:24
  We have been gathered here today as usual.
• 3:27
  We've been talking about some quite hybrid Doctor Who books
• 3:30
  recently. You know, the crooked world,
• 3:33
  both parts of interference. So Joe, what did you suggest
• 3:39
  that we gather here today to talk about to follow those
• 3:43
  intellectual heavyweights? Yes, Joe.
• 3:45
  Was it my fault? Did I choose this?
• 3:47
  No, it was me. Oh my God.
• 3:50
  Don't you blame me for this. It's him down there.
• 3:53
  That's right, it was. Andrew's loved that.
• 3:55
  I could blame Andrew for anything.
• 3:57
  No. Neither could I, No.
• 3:59
  Well, Joe was very insistent that we were doing too many good
• 4:02
  books and we had to pick one from the bottom of the pile.
• 4:06
  So we went right to the bottom of Doctor Who Magazine's poll of
• 4:11
  the best books and worst books ever and chose the worst missing
• 4:15
  adventure, which is the Ghost of N Space Hang.
• 4:20
  On if we were supposed to be doing a book that's really,
• 4:22
  really bad, we failed. That's all I'm going to say.
• 4:28
  Well. Conflict.
• 4:31
  Sometimes the audience of Doctor Hill Magazine is wrong.
• 4:34
  Sometimes. I'm not saying we're here to
• 4:38
  talk about whether fans are wrong.
• 4:40
  Of course fans are wrong. We're fans.
• 4:42
  It's what we do for a living, right?
• 4:43
  That's right. Yes, definitely, yeah.
• 4:45
  But I, you know, Joe, Joe Connor came up with an introduction for
• 4:50
  us. And you know, Barry Letts, he
• 4:53
  isn't here to talk about it. He isn't here to be into about
• 4:55
  this book anymore. So, you know, Baroness did a
• 4:58
  hell of a lot for Doctor over the years.
• 5:00
  Pretty much everything. You know, he's a handyman, he's
• 5:02
  director, He was a writer, he was a producer, he was an
• 5:05
  executive producer. So you know, that contribution
• 5:09
  to Doctor Who is absolutely immense.
• 5:12
  It stretches over 20 or nearly 30 years or 30, including novels
• 5:21
  close to 50. So what you suggest is, what do
• 5:25
  we think of Barry Letts's general contribution to Doctor
• 5:29
  Who? Now, Joe, you and me have taught
• 5:31
  Barry Letts before. Yeah.
• 5:32
  We've done a strict episode with that.
• 5:34
  So I will come to you first because, you know, we knew
• 5:36
  roughly where we're coming from. You know, Andrews always goes.
• 5:40
  I think we ought to start in a really special place with, you
• 5:43
  know, something that will really set the tone of the episode.
• 5:46
  Luke, what do you think of Barry Letts's contribution to Doctor
• 5:50
  Who? I, I love the enemy of the
• 5:55
  world. I love that story and I love a
• 5:59
  lot of Doctor Who he has been a part of.
• 6:01
  I'm not going to sit here and lie.
• 6:02
  Season 7 is one of my favorite things ever, ever in Doctor Who.
• 6:06
  So let me just get that out of the way.
• 6:09
  There's a bit of a story with me and the Pert Weira and he did
• 6:13
  all of it. So, you know, might as well talk
• 6:16
  about it. When I was a kid I had access to
• 6:19
  like four or five stories via the video store or just VHS as I
• 6:24
  owned. So with no water I guess that
• 6:26
  was Spearhead from Space Tear, the Autons, the Three Doctors,
• 6:30
  the Time Warrior, and Planet of the Spiders.
• 6:33
  Those are the only hertways I'd seen until like I was 1617.
• 6:37
  Met a friend at a day with Fraser Heinz convention.
• 6:41
  Everyone was all sweaty old motherfuckers right?
• 6:44
  Like, you know. Every doctor convention all
• 6:46
  right, but. He was, I was like 16.
• 6:49
  He was like, 22, and we were the two youngest people there, and
• 6:54
  we bonded over Doctor Who and, hey, mate, give me blank tapes.
• 6:59
  And, you know, here's some Doctor Who.
• 7:02
  So I'd seen all the Davidsons and I was like, I'll start with
• 7:04
  Permit. And, you know, because I haven't
• 7:06
  seen a lot of it. And all right, now I start.
• 7:11
  I know things. I know some things.
• 7:13
  So I know, of course, Terry, the Autons, it's Joe's first story,
• 7:16
  so I must mean the story before that.
• 7:19
  OK, that's where Liz lives, right.
• 7:21
  So I'm, I'm, I'm watching season 7 in order and I've just like,
• 7:25
  I've set my mind blown. Oh my God, I love it.
• 7:27
  So I'm watching episode 7 of inferno.
• 7:30
  I'm like, all right, goodbye, Doctor, goodbye, goodbye,
• 7:33
  goodbye. And it's over.
• 7:35
  And then I rewatched terribly autonomy context and I have
• 7:42
  never liked ever again. Yeah, so I I love Liz Shaw and I
• 7:50
  love Sarah Jane Smith and it's the it's the middle part.
• 7:55
  I just, I love Katie Manning. I've met her at a convention
• 7:58
  stuff. I think she's great, like Irish
• 7:59
  Royal time. I think she's a great person.
• 8:01
  I think she's a great ambassador for Doctor Who.
• 8:03
  I'm not cheating on Katie Manning.
• 8:05
  She plays it in a way that I think a lot of kids and all that
• 8:09
  glommed onto. That's fine.
• 8:10
  I'm like 17 or something like that when I first see this stuff
• 8:13
  in context and I'm just like, I'm not getting this the way
• 8:18
  everybody else got this big, probably because I only had like
• 8:22
  a certain amount of VHSS. So there's two things that's
• 8:25
  going to be against me for this. It's like this isn't a soft spot
• 8:29
  era for me. Not even season 10 is because I
• 8:31
  feel like if I want to watch Sarah Jane, I'd rather watch him
• 8:34
  watch her with with Tom Bacon, to be honest.
• 8:36
  So I don't have that affection to the era where I'm like, you
• 8:44
  know what, I'm going to watch a Pertwee and I'm even going to
• 8:46
  watch one of the the bad ones because it's fun and all that.
• 8:49
  I'm just like, now I'll put on the world, watch for the
• 8:52
  doomsday. You know, those are my styles of
• 8:55
  kind of bad for me. And I've got soft spots for
• 8:58
  those because I saw those when I was at an age where the
• 9:02
  dominators were my first black and white.
• 9:04
  So I I love it, you know, so I do have a soft spot for bad
• 9:09
  areas of Doctor Who and intolerance for Doctor Who that
• 9:11
  maybe isn't good. I like the sensor, right?
• 9:13
  I'm I'm insane. No, I like the sense of that.
• 9:16
  But I've just never been able to fully love and appreciate, I
• 9:23
  guess, a good portion of Pertwe the way so many other Doctor Who
• 9:27
  fans do. So yeah.
• 9:31
  John is brandishing his sense right as we speak.
• 9:38
  It's probably my it's one of my least go TOS I guess for classic
• 9:42
  era, just like Matt Smith's might least go to for new
• 9:45
  series. But see I read a new series book
• 9:48
  with Matt Smith in it and I fucking loved it.
• 9:51
  Ghost of N Space is not borrowed time.
• 9:54
  But we will find you a per we book you love.
• 9:58
  I hope so, yeah. At some point.
• 10:02
  Well, that's good. So, Andrew, where do you stand
• 10:07
  on Barry Lex? I think he was a really good
• 10:11
  producer. Nuts.
• 10:14
  That was you, Luke. There's no balloon there.
• 10:16
  He's shitting on Katie Manning. He's standing on Barry Letts.
• 10:20
  What's going on tonight? I would never disrespect the
• 10:24
  great Barry Letts landing on him.
• 10:28
  I'm a horse on Barry Letts's back.
• 10:31
  There's the horse. Ding, Ding, Ding.
• 10:35
  Yeah, Barry Letts. I think he was a really good
• 10:39
  producer. He directed one of my favorite
• 10:42
  Doctor Who stories, which is the Android Invasion in a Minority.
• 10:47
  I got a soft spot for that. Yeah, but I I wouldn't say I'm a
• 10:53
  huge lover of his TV writing. I suppose of the ones that he
• 11:00
  kind of had a hand in, I think the Green Death is the best.
• 11:04
  I don't really like the demons. It's one of those ones which
• 11:08
  it's got all those pieces which I feel like I should like and
• 11:11
  it's all like in my wheelhouse, but it just kind of leaves me a
• 11:14
  bit cold. So I've never really liked the
• 11:16
  demons. Time warrior is not the time
• 11:19
  warrior. The time Monster is a lot of
• 11:20
  fun, but it's not good. It's not this.
• 11:24
  Book. And yeah, the Planet of the
• 11:29
  Spiders again sort of just leaves me a bit cold.
• 11:33
  But I did have a big childhood love for the ghost pen space
• 11:39
  from I'd never read the book, but I did listen to the radio
• 11:44
  version. Although I remember listening to
• 11:48
  the first episode when it went out live and it was too scary
• 11:51
  and it had to had to be switched off.
• 11:54
  But my dad taped the whole series of the radio for me.
• 11:58
  So I came back to it when I was probably about 10 or 11 and like
• 12:01
  a little bit less scared of ghosts.
• 12:03
  So yeah, it's one of those ones which I listened to so much as a
• 12:06
  kid. Like it's just gone in and I
• 12:09
  haven't listened to it. But absent or, you know, read it
• 12:12
  or encountered it for absolute years, mainly because like, it's
• 12:14
  embedded in my head. Oh, it's a shit one.
• 12:16
  You shouldn't like it. But going back to the I mean,
• 12:19
  reading the book for the first time, listening to the audio,
• 12:21
  it's really kind of reignited my passion for the ghost of End
• 12:25
  Space. So yeah.
• 12:27
  So a mixed, mixed feelings about Barry Letts, although I did meet
• 12:34
  him when I was a kid at the few Doctor Who conventions I've ever
• 12:37
  been to. And he was such a lovely man and
• 12:40
  he had to chat to me and he signed my copy of The Sea
• 12:45
  Devils, which he didn't write. But yeah, he was just a
• 12:49
  thoroughly lovely, kind gentleman.
• 12:52
  So yeah, what whatever I think of his Doctor Who output, he
• 12:57
  was, he was a lovely person. So was ghost fence space your
• 13:00
  first per wee or? No, it wasn't my first per wee
• 13:04
  because I'd I had quite a few on video by that point.
• 13:09
  It it might have been my No, it wasn't.
• 13:12
  It wasn't my first per wee and Sarah Jane, because I think I I
• 13:16
  death to the Daleks was one of my early videos.
• 13:19
  But yeah, I suppose it was sort of like that early getting into
• 13:22
  Doctor Who era for me. So I would have been 9 when the
• 13:26
  radio series went out and then maybe like 10 or 11 when I
• 13:29
  actually listened to the full thing back.
• 13:31
  So yeah, it's it's kind of one of those foundationary Doctor
• 13:36
  Who's that just like goes in and sticks.
• 13:38
  Lovely. And Joe, I won't ask you about
• 13:43
  you standing on baronettes or what you're going to do to him,
• 13:45
  but what's your opinion of his worth?
• 13:47
  Shall be defecating on Katie Manning either, Andrew.
• 13:53
  My God, how gorgeous. Your dad taped the ghost of N
• 13:56
  Space and banked it for years for you to listen to later.
• 14:01
  How wonderful that's. Great.
• 14:04
  I mean, I think he sensed, you know, this is a bit of an
• 14:07
  obsession. Like this will be a missed
• 14:10
  opportunity if I don't do it. And yeah, he was a big like,
• 14:13
  home taper, so. Paradox of death as well for
• 14:16
  you? No, because that that went out
• 14:18
  before I before I was into Doctor Who.
• 14:20
  So I didn't get that one until it was quite difficult to find
• 14:24
  the tape as well. So I think I was probably like
• 14:26
  13 or 14. I don't really like the paradise
• 14:29
  of death, but. Wait, so you're telling me that
• 14:31
  Jamie Fitz Oliver survives 2 stories?
• 14:34
  No 3, The Island of Death as well.
• 14:38
  Great. I think he might be in a sex
• 14:40
  doctor book as well. You and me are going to be
• 14:42
  having words about Jamie Fitz. Oh, is it?
• 14:44
  Oh, is it all right? It's a darkness he's in.
• 14:47
  If you're coming for Jeremy, you got to get through me first, all
• 14:50
  right? I put him in my bottom free.
• 14:53
  What was I thinking? What were you thinking?
• 14:55
  I know, I know. But As for Barry Letts I, the
• 14:59
  Pertway era is my comfort. Doctor Who era.
• 15:02
  I can watch any of those stories, even the ones I really
• 15:04
  don't like. In fact, this week I had a bit
• 15:06
  of an insomniac night, so I took desperate measures and found the
• 15:10
  two most boring episodes of Doctor Who ever recorded the
• 15:14
  monster of Peloton one and two. And I was like, if I go
• 15:16
  downstairs, if I put those on, I'll fall asleep at one point.
• 15:19
  Unfortunately, I got through both episodes, so it didn't
• 15:23
  work. But and even those I just think
• 15:25
  are glorious. And I actually think had Barry,
• 15:28
  let's not made the changes he did from 7:00 to 8:00, the show
• 15:31
  would have ended. I think the weight ratings would
• 15:34
  have dwindled if we kept doing that sort of season 7, very
• 15:37
  clinical thriller style Doctor Who.
• 15:40
  I agree. And Peep and so the fact that
• 15:42
  we're here today and so much Doctor Who has come since, I
• 15:45
  think we kind of have Barry, let's to thank for that.
• 15:48
  I agree I like I like some of the decisions he made, but
• 15:52
  deciding to not renew Carolyn John for a second she was
• 15:58
  having. A baby Luke.
• 15:59
  She couldn't come back anyway. What, you could have her come
• 16:04
  back after the baby? We were better pregnant.
• 16:08
  That would be great. I don't know, You could have put
• 16:11
  some gigantic lab coat on her. She's in the lab it.
• 16:15
  Works good. Works for Gillian Hanson it.
• 16:17
  Worked for There You Go, Kate McFadden as well.
• 16:19
  In fact, we could have had in terror of the Autons.
• 16:21
  They're all sort of going, do you think Liz Shaw?
• 16:23
  I think she's up the Duff. Who's she been going on dates
• 16:25
  with? Benton Yates.
• 16:27
  Who is it? Oh, now?
• 16:28
  And the Brigadier sort of like, yes.
• 16:30
  Well. Lynn, have you swung a netting
• 16:33
  energy unit? Oh, is that the first perk we
• 16:36
  quote? Great.
• 16:38
  It's not going to be the last. I think he's a really ambitious
• 16:42
  writer. I don't think he always meets
• 16:44
  the ambitions that he's going for.
• 16:46
  But man and man, he tries things with this as well.
• 16:50
  He tries to push Doctor Who in all these directions and
• 16:53
  sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
• 16:55
  When it does work, the Green Death, I love demons as well,
• 16:58
  and I like a lot of planet that spiders too.
• 17:00
  I think it really hits. He understands those characters
• 17:03
  really well and he does create a very cosy atmosphere amongst
• 17:07
  that ensemble, which I really, really love.
• 17:11
  And I think he's a very competent director as well.
• 17:13
  Like he's incompetent when it comes to CSO because he relies
• 17:18
  on it far too much. But yeah, but like the Android
• 17:22
  Invasion episode 1, it's one of the most beautifully directed
• 17:25
  Doctor Who episodes. All of that location work is so
• 17:28
  it's gorgeous. It's like an Avengers episode in
• 17:31
  Doctor Who. So I think and the thing, the
• 17:35
  best thing he brought to Doctor Who was his integrity and
• 17:38
  honesty. Because go listen to him on any
• 17:40
  of those commentaries. Every time Katie Manning is
• 17:43
  telling a bullshit story and she's made-up for conventions,
• 17:47
  Barry let's us there going. Are you sure that happened,
• 17:49
  Katie? Now, I could have sworn, you
• 17:50
  know, you was wearing those rings that when you came in for
• 17:53
  your audition. No, no, no.
• 17:55
  John told me to wear the rings because I was biting my nails.
• 17:58
  He goes, Yeah, all right. Yeah.
• 18:00
  I mean, they're just hilarious. He he cuts through all the crap.
• 18:03
  Oh, and every time the bet comes, oh, that's shit, isn't
• 18:06
  it? Basically, he's there every
• 18:08
  time. And, you know, as a writer of
• 18:10
  prose, well, we'll get there. I think, yeah, you mainly.
• 18:18
  You're covered. Everything I could have said, I
• 18:19
  think in terms of actual production of Doctor Who, he is
• 18:23
  pretty much as good a producer as Doctor Who's ever had.
• 18:25
  You know, it's a dream now. The show's coming in low
• 18:28
  ratings. He's inherited this format and
• 18:32
  he, when he leaves, he delivers year on year on year, increase
• 18:38
  in ratings. The script, there are no scripts
• 18:41
  thrown away. He and Terence are a machine.
• 18:44
  They get those stories out on time every year.
• 18:46
  There's no drama about the scenes.
• 18:48
  They keep John Perkley happy, except maybe, you know, when
• 18:51
  he's got to go and do his cabaret turns.
• 18:54
  He and what's the last thing he does?
• 18:56
  He cast Tom Bloody Baker. That's.
• 18:59
  The most stable era. Tom Baker Add list Sladen within
• 19:03
  a year. Totally the.
• 19:05
  Isn't the most stable classic era?
• 19:07
  In terms of ratings going up, yeah, definitely.
• 19:10
  But in also in terms of production because.
• 19:12
  It's yeah, three straight years. There's no change in personnel,
• 19:16
  essentially. Because you hear just like even
• 19:19
  a passing glance at the Trout and era and there's like 500
• 19:22
  scripts that fell through and suddenly this episode's now six
• 19:25
  parter. This one's five parts, this
• 19:27
  one's four, like all this kind of stuff.
• 19:29
  And then you go to Pertwee, like it feels like smooth sailing,
• 19:35
  like pretty much for all these seasons.
• 19:37
  It's not an easy customer to keep happy by all accounts.
• 19:39
  You know, it could be a bit of an arrogant and you hear these
• 19:42
  stories of him getting oh, Terence, please come down.
• 19:44
  John's not happy with the script and the him and him and Barry
• 19:48
  let us turn up on the set and they're sort of like smoothing
• 19:50
  down his clothes and, you know, stroking his air and go, come
• 19:53
  on, John. Now you know, they just knew how
• 19:55
  to manage him, didn't they? Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:58
  That. Again, that's part of the job,
• 19:59
  because Grave Williams couldn't manage Tom Baker later on,
• 20:02
  Princess, you hear the story. Who's there?
• 20:05
  So I get the guy, he knows exactly what he's doing writing
• 20:09
  wise. I do love the demons, but I love
• 20:12
  the demons because of the sense of place it has, because it
• 20:16
  create, because what he does is create that community.
• 20:20
  You know the place is based around the pub.
• 20:22
  I love that in Doctor expecting the pub is just that whole locus
• 20:27
  for that village setting all the characters there and they're
• 20:29
  giving you, you know, they've got that E those easy lines
• 20:32
  going back in each other. You can believe the
• 20:34
  relationships and again, this is something he does right through
• 20:38
  the stories he writes. Again, the community, you know,
• 20:44
  Han Vayevac, that is a brilliantly drawn community and
• 20:48
  I love the direction in that as well.
• 20:50
  Shit, I didn't say quite that on.
• 20:52
  Beef, John, It is beef. Oh, we're going to get all the
• 20:59
  quotes. But yeah, as, as a writer, I
• 21:02
  think he, he generally needs a Terrance there because he throws
• 21:07
  in every single idea he can find, every single setting he
• 21:10
  can buy, every single kind of excuse to go somewhere else he
• 21:13
  can find. Keeps things moving, but it
• 21:15
  doesn't necessarily make for a fantastic story sometimes
• 21:20
  direction wise. Yeah, I I think he starts
• 21:22
  welling. Maybe he goes up.
• 21:24
  He's a goes downhill for me. I don't think he better the
• 21:27
  enemy of the world. You know when you know when that
• 21:29
  helicopter comes in, for instance, and the shot those
• 21:32
  those gorgeous. There's such an ambitious
• 21:35
  production, maybe he got it through because, you know, no
• 21:38
  one's watching. The budget behind the scenes are
• 21:40
  on the BBC Bar instead. He didn't write that one, did
• 21:42
  he? Bizarrely, he didn't write his
• 21:44
  direction on that one. No, but he never did.
• 21:48
  Did he see it before it came back?
• 21:49
  I. Think.
• 21:49
  I don't think. He died.
• 21:51
  I think he died before it came back.
• 21:53
  Yeah, yeah. Sad because I think there's a
• 21:56
  lot in there he'd see and maybe love.
• 21:59
  So, yeah. And, and again, I like, and I
• 22:02
  can tell you about. He was such a lovely chap.
• 22:05
  I met him a couple of times and he was just polite, wonderful
• 22:09
  company and engaged. And if you were happy to talk to
• 22:12
  him on any kind level, he would engage you exactly like that and
• 22:15
  just give you an intelligent, considered conversation.
• 22:21
  Lovely chap, him. He and Terence nicked my guide
• 22:25
  when I was at galley for the first time.
• 22:26
  The bastards. And they never gave it back.
• 22:29
  He did ask polite you for it, but navigate God damn it.
• 22:33
  But yeah, overall I think Doctor Who was really, really benefited
• 22:38
  over the years from Barry ads, even if maybe when he got to the
• 22:42
  90s, maybe not quite so much. You know, there's one other
• 22:47
  thing, like he would always say if he was wrong as well.
• 22:51
  And not a lot of Doctor Who producers would do that.
• 22:55
  JNT certainly would never do that.
• 22:57
  Yeah. And there's that lovely story
• 22:58
  that Toby Haddock tells. And when they came in to do a
• 23:00
  commentary and they realized they needed like, you know,
• 23:04
  someone to drive the conversation.
• 23:06
  So that's why Toby was there and Barry Letts was there going, why
• 23:09
  don't we? We don't need him here.
• 23:11
  Why is he here? We we'll just talk about the
• 23:13
  stories, like. And Toby heard that and was
• 23:16
  like, oh, God, oh, I don't want to go in now and do it.
• 23:18
  And then once they were done and Toby directed them so
• 23:21
  beautifully in the way that he does, he came up to him and
• 23:24
  said, I'm so sorry. I was so rude to you earlier.
• 23:27
  You were just perfect for this. Thank you very much.
• 23:30
  And that says a lot about his integrity.
• 23:33
  Absolutely. And all if you hear him talk
• 23:35
  about the era, everything, he takes that as his own fault.
• 23:38
  He's he's like the manager of a team in anything.
• 23:41
  He's the exact kind of manager you'd want.
• 23:43
  The guy who goes, yeah, it's my responsibility.
• 23:45
  It happened on my watch. Hands up.
• 23:48
  It's. Me.
• 23:48
  Did you say that about the ghost events space as well?
• 23:52
  Did he say it about? I think the death is the
• 23:54
  question. Now, do you know what I was
• 23:57
  thinking, actually, of a little project, right.
• 23:59
  What I might do is turn the island of death into a script.
• 24:02
  Yeah. And then get the four of us to
• 24:04
  do. One of us can do the Doctor.
• 24:06
  One of us. Obviously.
• 24:07
  Andrew. You'll be Jeremy, obviously.
• 24:09
  I've heard your Jeremy is fabulous.
• 24:11
  One of us there. One of us, Brigadier.
• 24:13
  And we'll just we'll just act out the whole script.
• 24:15
  So there's a third per week. Very.
• 24:18
  Let's adventure. What do you reckon?
• 24:20
  I'm in. Oh, glad.
• 24:23
  We'll do it, you know. I reckon I darkly get Sadie
• 24:26
  Miller. Can I die in episode 1?
• 24:31
  No, you're being the doctor. Punishment.
• 24:36
  I feel like I'm being punished because we just did like Steve
• 24:39
  Lyons, my favorite author, and now we, we, we just went to, Oh
• 24:45
  my God, to this book. It's it's Baronet, it's
• 24:47
  Buddhism, it's yin and it's Yang.
• 24:50
  You know, for every light there must be a dark.
• 24:55
  But anyway, that kind of seems like a nice segue into the
• 24:58
  actual book itself. So what I'm going to do, I'm
• 25:03
  going to apologise to Andrew because he's already covered
• 25:06
  this. How did you guys first come to
• 25:09
  the ghosts of N Space? And I'll go in reverse, or so
• 25:13
  I'll go Joe. The book I'd I'd never heard the
• 25:19
  audio. No, I'd heard episode 1 before
• 25:22
  and for Oh no, that's a lot of screaming.
• 25:24
  I don't want to listen to that and just put it aside.
• 25:26
  And so that's one of the reasons I was desperate to read the
• 25:28
  book. So I hadn't experienced the
• 25:30
  ghost event space. And yet everybody was telling me
• 25:32
  it was the worst thing ever, ever written for Doctor Who in
• 25:35
  any format. So for this book club is my
• 25:39
  answer. Oh, nice.
• 25:41
  And the audio as well. Utterly blissful, but we'll get
• 25:46
  there. Luke, when did you first come to
• 25:50
  End Space? There's there's this guy, he's
• 25:54
  an asshole named Andrew and he suggested that we do this for
• 25:57
  book club and that was my first experience.
• 26:01
  I'm sure you'll get your revenge.
• 26:05
  It's a Simon Messing handbook. Oh.
• 26:09
  You can't do that to Andrew again, surely?
• 26:13
  We've got some on the list. It's coming.
• 26:16
  So am I the only one who actually read it when it first
• 26:20
  came out then? Because I don't think I yeah, I
• 26:23
  think, I don't think I've been back to it since it was.
• 26:29
  I actually got this before the Rants of Crime was due out.
• 26:33
  So I got it before the previous book was due out because that I
• 26:38
  was telling this to my girlfriend in Joe's neck of the
• 26:39
  words. I think it was either Crawley or
• 26:41
  Worthing and it's just like, oh, what's that on the show?
• 26:44
  Ghost fan space? That's not 8 for another month,
• 26:46
  I'll have that. You went to Crawley by choice?
• 26:50
  My girlfriend fair Torrington. Torrington Way.
• 26:54
  Misses it a. Lot of people went to Crawley
• 26:56
  for nookie, don't worry. But did they question?
• 27:02
  Yeah, but I'm the 1st St. man to go live from Nucky, right?
• 27:04
  I only left with the ghost of events space unfortunately.
• 27:07
  Yes, that's all. I've never been back.
• 27:11
  And you never read this again. Though, And yeah, I listened to
• 27:16
  it on the original airing. I think the, I think what I'll
• 27:21
  start the conversation is because this is a novelisation,
• 27:25
  but it's kind, it's not quite unique because Five Doctors came
• 27:28
  up before it's adaptation to do you think the reputation of this
• 27:34
  was kind of affected because it came out so far ahead of the
• 27:41
  actual story itself being broadcast?
• 27:44
  So this was all we had for a year.
• 27:46
  A year. Yeah, it was.
• 27:48
  It was 96 before Dead Space was broadcast.
• 27:51
  What a baffling choice I. Think it was admin.
• 27:55
  I think it was, it was recorded in 94, but then I think because
• 28:00
  of the TV movie it got trapped in sort of we can't release it
• 28:05
  because the TV movie is coming out so.
• 28:07
  Just Doctor Who fans can only handle one thing coming out at a
• 28:10
  time. A.
• 28:11
  Year, but then but then I say that, but then I think it did go
• 28:14
  it did go out before the before the TV movie.
• 28:17
  It was either January or February, I think.
• 28:19
  Yeah. In 96 so yeah, maybe I.
• 28:23
  Love that logic even though we were getting two books a month
• 28:25
  every month. Your two choices that year were
• 28:29
  the Ghost of Ben Space or the TV movie What a Time to Be Alive.
• 28:33
  I also might be making this, maybe it was recorded for the
• 28:36
  BBC for Radio 2 but it ended up on Radio 4 or something.
• 28:41
  Like I think maybe Radio 2 stopped doing drama or
• 28:43
  something. Like that radio?
• 28:45
  Was it Radio 5? They did.
• 28:47
  Oh yeah, maybe. Yeah, I think it was really fun.
• 28:49
  And then it switched to Radio 2. So yeah, there was a lot of red
• 28:52
  tape holding it up. It did go on out under the
• 28:55
  umbrella term of a drama then. Theoretically, yes.
• 29:02
  To light entertainment? Yeah, absolutely.
• 29:04
  Sitcom. I was going to say that.
• 29:06
  The producer was a light entertainment producer.
• 29:09
  You can tell. Yeah.
• 29:12
  I think the presence of Sandra Dickinson might say.
• 29:16
  Oh, the line. Does catamite mean what I think
• 29:19
  it does I mean? God.
• 29:24
  I don't know what that meant till I looked it up.
• 29:27
  I'm pleased I did. So hang on, there's.
• 29:30
  One that's Doctor Who educating and informing.
• 29:33
  There you go. There you go, living up to.
• 29:35
  Its premise at an area I thought Joe wouldn't need to be.
• 29:37
  Educated. Oh, I know, right?
• 29:40
  I didn't realize there was smart terms for that sort of thing.
• 29:45
  Yeah, we just use a filthy language, let's face it, right?
• 29:48
  Absolutely. So yeah, would you have said,
• 29:53
  would you have thought the reputation book might of might
• 29:56
  be better if the radio play had been broadcast first?
• 30:01
  I think I think maybe the gap between it and Paradise of Death
• 30:05
  sort of killed it a bit as well because that was what like
• 30:09
  909293 and I guess maybe people were like hungry for the follow
• 30:15
  up. And then by the time it came out
• 30:16
  it was TV movie mania. So maybe it just didn't really
• 30:19
  get its time to shine, really, because it was so overshadowed
• 30:23
  by the TV movie and people had already read the book and
• 30:26
  decided they didn't like it. And I think the the radio
• 30:30
  version does really lift the story and the performances bring
• 30:34
  a lot to it. And yeah, I think if you're
• 30:39
  reading this book as a sort of very serious tone, like a lot of
• 30:46
  the kind of new and missing adventures could be very
• 30:47
  serious. And this is not like it's, it's
• 30:51
  a very silly book. So yeah, I think maybe it just
• 30:56
  kind of, yeah, it didn't find its audience.
• 31:01
  And also it is trash. It is.
• 31:03
  It is absolutely. But Joe, if you read this on the
• 31:06
  page, yeah, you, if you read this on the page, you would
• 31:10
  think there are no actors in the land that could lift this
• 31:14
  material, right? It would be impossible to make
• 31:17
  this sparkle. And then you press play on
• 31:20
  audible on the Ghosts of N Space as performed by John Pertwee,
• 31:23
  Elizabeth Slayton and Nicholas Courtney.
• 31:25
  And who plays Jeremy Fitz Oliver.
• 31:28
  Richard Pierce. Richard Pierce.
• 31:30
  Oh Lord. The the voice of Budgie, the
• 31:33
  little helicopter I discovered through IMDb will.
• 31:35
  You just sing the theme tune for me for a second.
• 31:37
  Budgie the little helicopter. What a banger.
• 31:43
  I actually know the full lyrics to that theme tune, but I'm not
• 31:46
  going to give you any more. What?
• 31:48
  What? What about proof?
• 31:49
  When you press play on the audio is actually Barry Lettuce's
• 31:52
  instincts are right, but in the right format.
• 31:57
  And you do. It's like a good panto.
• 31:59
  You know you. I've read.
• 32:00
  Oh, no, it isn't. Remember that a panto on the
• 32:02
  page is dismal. A panto in the mouths.
• 32:05
  Why are you laughing, Andrew? I'm.
• 32:07
  Just looking at Luke's. Face.
• 32:09
  Oh, OK. He was staring into the camera
• 32:11
  lane lens like Norman Bates at the end.
• 32:16
  Of time, you guys. Talking at absolute shite.
• 32:20
  But like a panto, you don't want to read about it in a book, but
• 32:23
  you do want to experience it. And you don't really want to
• 32:26
  read Ghosts of In Space as a book.
• 32:28
  You want to experience it out of the mouths of actors.
• 32:31
  I think that is the best way. But anyway.
• 32:35
  Do you care? Books.
• 32:40
  Fucking shit. Why?
• 32:45
  Like every book I've read for this book club, I've not only
• 32:49
  read it well in advance, I've probably read another book or
• 32:53
  two in between because like I like to read Doctor Who books.
• 32:56
  I'm, I'm saying like that I finished this yesterday.
• 33:03
  That's the fucking first time I've ever read a Doctor Who
• 33:06
  book. And I've finished it the day
• 33:08
  before we record. It's the first time.
• 33:11
  Never done that before. And yeah, I left myself plenty
• 33:16
  of time because, you know, and I get to walk the dog to listen to
• 33:20
  the audio and all right, it started off well for me.
• 33:25
  I'm like, all right, Jeremy Fitz Oliver, he actually sounds
• 33:28
  exactly like how he I imagined he sounds in the in the book.
• 33:33
  By the way, I fucking hate that guy.
• 33:35
  I I hate him. I hate him.
• 33:38
  He is the worst character Doctor Who book I have ever read in my
• 33:41
  life. And Joe, you saw the actors,
• 33:44
  what the actor looked like, and you were like, he's a bit of all
• 33:46
  right. And that's the end of the story.
• 33:48
  And you love him. See, that's why he will forever
• 33:51
  be in my top ten opinion to you in a second.
• 33:53
  Please continue. But I he and I'm fine.
• 33:58
  And then we get to the scene where Max Vilmio and the other
• 34:01
  gangsters, the whole gangster someplace stupid.
• 34:03
  You could have just had Vilmio attack the whole time with the
• 34:06
  ghosts. Like what do you need the
• 34:08
  gangsters for? But he's talking to the other
• 34:12
  gangster, right? The other gang leader, mafia
• 34:14
  mafiosi and the other mafiosi. I'm like, I actually, oh, that
• 34:19
  voice is pretty good. And then Max Vilmier opens his
• 34:22
  mouth. I'm like, oh fuck, can I switch
• 34:24
  report parts, please, please. He's the one in six episodes.
• 34:28
  Him. He does the six episodes like
• 34:31
  that. An awesome questionable accents
• 34:34
  in. The and and then I'm like I'm.
• 34:36
  I'm not sure I want to, by the way, I'm I'm the regulars are
• 34:41
  fine. I've got nothing bad to say
• 34:43
  about Perts Brick, Nick Courtney or Liz Sladen.
• 34:49
  They know how to work material. But then, but then I hear it.
• 34:55
  I hear Maggie's voice and. What do you mean?
• 35:01
  What do you mean? And then I remember in about
• 35:03
  episode 4, then I think to myself, wait in about 5 or five
• 35:07
  so episodes time, this voice is going to have a screaming orgasm
• 35:13
  as a as a ghost takes over her. I don't think I don't.
• 35:19
  Did you get to that bit like? No, I.
• 35:21
  Guess it's. Absolutely blissful, that thing.
• 35:28
  Oh my God. Think of it this way.
• 35:30
  It's an insight into Peter Davidson's marriage.
• 35:32
  Oh. My God.
• 35:36
  Wow. So we did not need absolutely.
• 35:41
  All right, I guess he likes being annoyed and frustrated on
• 35:45
  on screen and off camera as well.
• 35:47
  He's a very English guy, so yes. I no disrespect to Sandra
• 35:51
  Dickerson, I'm sorry about that. I have no idea what she's like
• 35:53
  as a person, but I by. All accounts.
• 35:57
  I did well, then I'll take it back.
• 35:59
  Fuck it. So but no, I heard the first
• 36:06
  episode and I was like, you know what?
• 36:09
  I did my job, and that was to read this book.
• 36:12
  I don't have to listen to this. So I I didn't and I put on and I
• 36:19
  put on a Strangers in Space and then a too hot for TV on my dog
• 36:24
  walks instead. So I was much happier.
• 36:27
  Have you seen a job? You say?
• 36:29
  A job there. Are you expecting a salary?
• 36:35
  I could supply you with Doctor Whobrews, you know.
• 36:37
  Well, I'm, you know, I feel like if I'm ever going to read
• 36:43
  something like this, I'm glad there's a Steve Lyons before it
• 36:46
  and what we get after it after it, because they're my two
• 36:50
  favorites, so. The joy is right.
• 36:52
  The joy is with these books that we, you know, we're all picking
• 36:56
  random books of our own choices is that at the end we all get to
• 37:01
  come together and have a laugh talking about them.
• 37:03
  It makes the pain worthwhile. Yeah.
• 37:07
  It's the varieties joy of Doctor Who.
• 37:11
  Really enjoyed reading this. You did.
• 37:14
  Oh, you did. No, I loved it.
• 37:15
  I really enjoyed it. Oh, you did too.
• 37:20
  I found it really readable and like a page turn.
• 37:24
  I mean, and I know, I know. The story is absolute hot trash.
• 37:28
  It's loads of elements that don't work together.
• 37:32
  It's stupid, it's nonsensical, it's lazily plotted, it's
• 37:37
  completely reliant on on coincidence.
• 37:40
  The characters are all complete stereotypes.
• 37:44
  It's. What are you going to get to the
• 37:45
  bad stuff about the book? But, you know, it's, it's, it's
• 37:52
  what I imagine a Dan Brown book is like to read.
• 37:55
  You would be right. You know, it's just loads of
• 38:00
  like stupid stuff smashed together in a, in a fun holiday
• 38:04
  setting, fun characters and you know, it doesn't, It doesn't.
• 38:11
  Mean the book is in fucking brackets.
• 38:13
  Oh, we'll get to the but you know what, right.
• 38:16
  Like, I figure as a as an overview of Doctor Who, this
• 38:19
  book's got it. Oh, right.
• 38:21
  It's got modern day setting, plus we go overseas.
• 38:24
  It's got action set pieces. It's got trips back in time to
• 38:28
  historical characters. It's got superstition and magic
• 38:32
  in it. It's got a trip to fucking hell
• 38:34
  at the end of the book, for God's sakes.
• 38:36
  You know, perk we do in a jewel. It's got Bansa.
• 38:40
  It's got larks. It's got Jeremy Fitz.
• 38:42
  Jeremy Fitz Oliver. It's got rock and tits.
• 38:48
  There there are a lot of tits and bums and whores and
• 38:51
  catamites in this as. Well.
• 38:53
  Can I, can I just quickly read just I want to just give
• 38:56
  everyone a sample of the pros very quickly.
• 38:58
  Yeah, I want. Maybe you gentlemen can explain
• 39:01
  what this means. Imagine what Joe's reading is in
• 39:04
  brackets. By the way, everyone.
• 39:05
  No, this is one of those sentences that is a paragraph,
• 39:08
  because a lot of them were. Some of the paragraphs are
• 39:10
  longer than a page it. Doesn't have brackets.
• 39:14
  The shimmering light has extended itself in a series of
• 39:18
  crazed patterns like frozen lightning and scattered nearby
• 39:21
  spider leg centres of coal fire were growing light shoots from a
• 39:25
  self sown plant and through the newborn light were appearing
• 39:29
  glimmerings of phantasms far more fearful than the unhappy
• 39:33
  Rafe they have been watching. Now by the time I got to the end
• 39:36
  of that sentence, I'd forgotten what was happening at the
• 39:38
  beginning and I was like, oh OK, I got to read that again.
• 39:41
  And I did do a lot of that with this book.
• 39:43
  And I was like, I do think the prose was fairly nonsensical for
• 39:48
  them, but it's the tone of it. It just had a tone of, of energy
• 39:55
  and fun and pace and just like not taking itself too seriously.
• 40:01
  So I didn't take it too seriously and I had a ball with
• 40:04
  it. See, for for me, the problem is
• 40:07
  if you've got a book, you you want there to be something kind
• 40:10
  of meaty in there. The ghost fence base as a story
• 40:14
  exists as a simply as an excuse for John Pervy to get back in
• 40:18
  the Cape. Right.
• 40:20
  It that's it. It's like, OK, we've got John,
• 40:22
  we've got Lee's, we've got Nick. Let's give him some fun.
• 40:26
  And that's a perfectly fine reason to have a story.
• 40:29
  It is a fun listen because they're having a way over time,
• 40:32
  so you can't get swept along with that.
• 40:36
  But it makes for a terrible book because Barry Lads has written a
• 40:40
  really good audio thing because the voices, he's made sure each
• 40:44
  of these characters got distinct voices and he's, you know, in a
• 40:48
  way the actors can't just go. I'll just do that one.
• 40:52
  It's distinct the, you know, to the point caricature.
• 40:56
  What do you mean, John? What are you talking about?
• 41:00
  I don't know. It's me, Mario, right?
• 41:05
  I'm a Baroni. Left with George, my man.
• 41:10
  Now come and help me protect the Castillo.
• 41:14
  It's yeah, it's just so bloody thing.
• 41:17
  It took it took me a couple of weeks to get through this part
• 41:20
  because I was also didn't have any compensate.
• 41:24
  I I I didn't have a concentration to read it for a
• 41:27
  while. Your defences were down, Jordan.
• 41:30
  Yeah, my defence was down, but funny, if I've recovered once, I
• 41:33
  stopped once I finished it. So I'm blaming this for making
• 41:35
  me ill. What a bust.
• 41:38
  It's Barry. Barry.
• 41:39
  Let's give me the calmer in advance.
• 41:40
  That's what I like to think because he's a nice guy.
• 41:44
  I don't think he set out to write a bad book though.
• 41:46
  No, I just, I think he set out to throw everything in the pot
• 41:50
  and just have a lark. That that's it.
• 41:52
  This is where I was saying earlier, he needs a Terence to
• 41:55
  maybe structure. It's so tough, you know that
• 41:58
  everything. Would have looked at this and
• 42:00
  gone, no? Arey for fuck's sake.
• 42:05
  Oh fuck, he's my boss. All right, I'll just change one
• 42:07
  or two lines. Yeah, you know that.
• 42:10
  That'll be so coincidence. Yeah, Sarah turns up on this
• 42:13
  one. I'd.
• 42:14
  Oh, there's Brigadier. You don't need that.
• 42:18
  I think it was I. Just turned up with the doctor.
• 42:20
  Just turn up with him. That way you don't have Jeremy.
• 42:22
  Ever. When she sees him in the audio,
• 42:25
  she goes, oh, there's the brick. Oh, we haven't seen me.
• 42:31
  Let's go chase him on the boat. He must be on a holiday.
• 42:33
  Let's follow him. Why?
• 42:36
  But it's like it's so reliant on ridiculous coincidence.
• 42:39
  And then he kind of tries to justify it by having Sarah write
• 42:44
  this ridiculous book, which is also heavily reliant on
• 42:47
  coincidence, and then brings in all this stuff about
• 42:50
  synchronicity. Where synchronicity?
• 42:57
  Is Sarah. No, that one, deputy.
• 43:05
  Yeah, So it's just he knows. He knows that it's ludicrous.
• 43:09
  So he brings all this stuff into sort of like, give it this
• 43:12
  glass. But it's still just so stupid.
• 43:15
  And it doesn't need to be like, there's very simple solutions.
• 43:19
  Like, yeah, don't have Sarah bump into the Brigadier when
• 43:22
  he's on holiday in Sicily. That's so stupid.
• 43:25
  And like so many of the criticisms of the book, like,
• 43:27
  why? Why does the Brigadier suddenly
• 43:29
  have Italian ancestry and the inheritance of this parcel?
• 43:34
  It's like, just make it Jeremy Fitz, Oliver's uncle, like we
• 43:36
  know nothing about him. He could be half Italian.
• 43:39
  Like have you guys ever seen Inglorious Bastards?
• 43:42
  There's a scene in it where Brad Pitt, who plays a Southern
• 43:48
  American freeze from the American South, right, and he
• 43:54
  has to infiltrate some place in Italy and his Italian accent,
• 44:00
  he's awful and he sounds like this bonjourno and he was about
• 44:05
  and that's the joke, right, Like he doesn't.
• 44:07
  He was hoping he'd never had to speak.
• 44:09
  So Brad Pitt as an Italian is about as works about as much as,
• 44:15
  I don't know, Nicholas Courtney being a part Italian as well.
• 44:20
  I. Mean he's partnership.
• 44:21
  You know, because couldn't. He is.
• 44:23
  Oh well. He looks.
• 44:24
  Like, but I just imagine because of his voice and because of the
• 44:27
  character of the Brigadier, I imagine if the Brigadier was to
• 44:31
  ever put on his put, say anything in Italian, it would
• 44:34
  sound like a little bit like Brad Pitt from Glorious
• 44:37
  Bastards. Absolutely terrible.
• 44:38
  Could you imagine, though, like you were saying, how absurd this
• 44:41
  book is? Yeah, imagine these truly dismal
• 44:43
  ideas. Yeah, but the ridiculousness
• 44:46
  dialed down OK. And it's just a very serious,
• 44:50
  worthy book. I mean, it would be unreadable.
• 44:54
  The fact that he just goes crazy with the ideas is that it's
• 44:58
  almost like, I don't know, Douglas Adams and Malcolm Hulk
• 45:02
  having a baby together, you know?
• 45:05
  I think a lot of people criticize this and paradise of
• 45:09
  of death as well for like being a bit out of character for all
• 45:13
  of the the main 70s cast. And like, why does Barry, let's
• 45:16
  not know how to characterize these people when he was the
• 45:19
  producer. But I think he's making very
• 45:21
  deliberate choices here. Like he's not trying to evoke
• 45:25
  the 70s. He's doing these characters in
• 45:27
  the 90s and he's kind of like, I don't care.
• 45:29
  I don't care if it doesn't fit in between like the the monster
• 45:32
  of Peloton and whatever. Like, I'm just putting radio
• 45:36
  drama out for a mainstream audience who kind of had vague
• 45:40
  memories of the 70s. And it's just like, you know,
• 45:42
  it's full of 90s tropes rather than 70s stuff.
• 45:45
  It's not really trying to evoke that in the way that, like, Big
• 45:48
  Finish is. So for that, you kind of got to
• 45:51
  like accept it on its own terms and enjoy it for what it is,
• 45:54
  which is a chance for these characters to these actors to
• 45:58
  come out of retirement in the 90s, Have fun and yeah, do
• 46:03
  something a bit. But by the time, you know, you
• 46:05
  get to episode 5 of the audio, right?
• 46:08
  And he's got hurt. We've been an arrogant prick,
• 46:11
  you know, Farrah, be a good girl, Do as you're told, you
• 46:14
  know, and stay here. And her calling him an arrogant
• 46:17
  prick and all of that. I was totally back in Season 11.
• 46:20
  Like, there were absolute flashes of Season 11 in there.
• 46:24
  But yeah, sort of. We didn't go across to Italy and
• 46:28
  storm the castle or anything like that.
• 46:29
  That's all a bit odd. Yeah, I I think he's, he's
• 46:34
  writing for the actors rather than the characters, I think.
• 46:36
  And that's absolutely fine. I don't see any problem with
• 46:39
  that. But do we think part of it is,
• 46:42
  you know, the Gooks event space is languishing right at the
• 46:44
  bottom of all these worst Doctor novel of all time lists?
• 46:48
  Is that because it's so out of kilter with the times?
• 46:53
  You know, the times were the new adventures.
• 46:55
  They they are, you know, grim, dark stuff.
• 46:58
  They are. Doctor Who has to be serious.
• 47:00
  We have to take Doctor Who. Seriously, why would you want to
• 47:03
  be? In.
• 47:03
  Kieran with that, John. I was there in the 90s.
• 47:07
  We, I don't know I I'd forgotten if I ever knew why it should be
• 47:15
  fun. Yeah, I suppose when it was fun
• 47:17
  in the 90s as well, like the the Gareth Robert ones, they were,
• 47:22
  they were fun, but they were also very in keeping with with
• 47:26
  the era they were evoking. They weren't sort of trying to
• 47:29
  upset things and and do things radically different with the
• 47:32
  characters. They were also quite
• 47:33
  sophisticated books, you know. Oh yeah, they were.
• 47:37
  Out there, it's like watching a really entertaining car crash,
• 47:43
  you know, in slow motion for 280 pages with ghosts.
• 47:50
  That's right. And catamites.
• 47:55
  Yeah, yes, magic versus science. It's perfect per year of stuff
• 47:59
  because the doctor is explaining what everyone else is seeing,
• 48:03
  you know, because Max for all he's he's an alchemist
• 48:08
  essentially, you know, which is, you know, the most bullshit
• 48:11
  science ever invented up until artificial intelligence and all
• 48:14
  that. But it but kind of that would do
• 48:20
  you think they can make more of that kind of conflict between
• 48:22
  Maxine, what he's doing is magic and the Doctor being that kind
• 48:27
  of scientist? I mean, they sorted that in the
• 48:30
  demons, didn't they? Yeah, this is what it's an echo
• 48:34
  on that front. I think he but.
• 48:35
  There's not really much discussion about it at all is.
• 48:37
  There really no, this is what I think this is something
• 48:41
  Terrence, my ball was you can bring that out, just bring that
• 48:44
  full because it's right there in the script for you to use both
• 48:48
  you've used before. You know, I think as Rob Schumer
• 48:50
  said, if you repeat something, it's just comes a theme.
• 48:54
  That's fine. I kept waiting for the twist to
• 48:57
  be something more exciting than immortality.
• 48:59
  I was like why is it he wants some grand super weapon or
• 49:02
  something amazing? No, you just.
• 49:04
  Want immortality? The elixir of life.
• 49:07
  Lane Horror Bora. Oh please can we do the rest in
• 49:13
  Perth way the whole episode? We've got to have someone do
• 49:17
  Jeremy surely all the way through.
• 49:19
  Luke, you can do a Jeremy. Jeremy, please, can we talk
• 49:22
  about Jeremy? Luke, what did you think of
• 49:24
  Jeremy? Please be kind to me, please.
• 49:31
  I think I was about 50 pages into it when I wrote in the chat
• 49:35
  that I hope this man dies. He's a little bitch.
• 49:44
  That's how I. Describe it.
• 49:46
  He just fucking moans and like and moans and it's annoying.
• 49:52
  Like, usually when you get a character like this, they got at
• 49:55
  least something that redeems them and makes them, I guess,
• 50:00
  less annoying. And then you think he has that
• 50:03
  moment later on in half, halfway through the book where, oh, he's
• 50:07
  got the stun gun and look at me. Boo, Boo, Boo.
• 50:10
  Oh, the N4. I got him.
• 50:11
  Yeah, I'm fucking champ. I'm the best.
• 50:14
  And everyone's like, Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy.
• 50:18
  I'm the fucking best as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 50:20
  Then the doctor later on in the story says, oh, by the way, I
• 50:23
  left that gun on easy mode so any fucking idiot could use it.
• 50:27
  And then I had, I was like, no. He goes I've.
• 50:30
  Met Jeremy Mope about everything in this book and guess what
• 50:34
  happens in the next paragraph? Oh, now they've taken away my
• 50:38
  tricks shooting and this and this.
• 50:39
  They're like. Can I offer an alternative
• 50:44
  reading on Jeremy in this book, please?
• 50:46
  Well, because in the first half of the book, yeah, he's the only
• 50:50
  sensible person in the book because it's so ghastly and he
• 50:53
  don't want to be a part of it. So I was like, absolutely,
• 50:56
  Jeremy, I'm on your side. I don't want to be a part of
• 50:59
  this crazy story either. And then in the second-half of
• 51:01
  the book, he utterly redeems himself, I think, by overcoming
• 51:06
  his natural cowardice, which he admits he is, by literally
• 51:11
  picking up that gun, by having a goat, despite the fact that it's
• 51:14
  it's there and it's pre programmed to shoot people.
• 51:17
  He's brave and he goes on the boat and he saves the girl and
• 51:21
  he is the hero. And we, I think we love that.
• 51:25
  We love somebody. Seen in the in.
• 51:28
  The audience, he plays that brilliantly in the audio, but
• 51:33
  like he's, he's the underdog, right?
• 51:35
  And when the underdog rises off and proves his to be a better
• 51:38
  man just putting into the book I was like please fuck Sarah Jane.
• 51:42
  Jeremy into the TARDIS. And for the first half, he's
• 51:45
  he's essentially Sarah Jane Smith's companion.
• 51:48
  And he's kind of, it makes sense to give her a companion so that
• 51:53
  when she's doing her own storyline, it's on audio, she's
• 51:55
  got someone to talk to. So that's kind of like the
• 51:56
  function of that character. And I don't really get why
• 52:00
  Doctor Who fans hate him so much because he's essentially Harry
• 52:04
  Sullivan. Like he's the upper class twit
• 52:08
  that's kind of a bit buffoonish and lovable.
• 52:10
  Like yes, Harry is a bit more capable and he's playing played
• 52:15
  by Ian Martin. We all love him, but it's a very
• 52:18
  similar dynamic between him and Sarah Jane Smith.
• 52:20
  And that just works for Sarah having someone that she can boss
• 52:24
  about and treat like they're an idiot.
• 52:26
  It works with Harry, it works with Brendan in Canine and
• 52:29
  Company. So you can completely understand
• 52:31
  why they're like, that's a dynamic that works with this
• 52:33
  character. We'll give her this upper class
• 52:35
  twit and you know, like we like that's a that type of character.
• 52:39
  He's like the one from from 2012 and W1A, the the intern who's
• 52:45
  played by Hugh Skinner. He's that character, like the
• 52:47
  posh idiot, inevitable but kind of lovable at the same time.
• 52:52
  Like, I like him. I like Jeremy.
• 52:54
  I. Just saw him as Worcester.
• 52:56
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 52:59
  Yeah, he, and he's kind of aware of his, you know, his privileged
• 53:03
  background as well, because, you know, yeah, all the places at
• 53:05
  Toby Day before Daddy pulled some strings for me.
• 53:10
  He knows what he's on, but he knows he's not very good.
• 53:12
  That's quite. I think that's what Joe Brock as
• 53:14
  well. She has some strings, Paul.
• 53:17
  Yeah, she and, you know, have you seen the average Doctor Who
• 53:19
  fan? I realise that's I was on this
• 53:21
  call. I think we don't like Jeremy
• 53:26
  Fitzsolaber because he holds up a mirror to us.
• 53:29
  Because really, if we was in a Doctor Who adventure, we'd be
• 53:32
  going oh, no, there were no partners.
• 53:34
  Thank you very much. Yeah, he was kind of like Wesley
• 53:37
  in first season of Star Trek Next Generation, because he got
• 53:41
  absolute stick. Because let's face it, it was
• 53:43
  all the team boys having the themselves reflected back become
• 53:47
  like Radrick even. Or what was that that
• 53:50
  character's name in Great Show in the Galaxy?
• 53:52
  You know the. Oh, Wizkid.
• 53:53
  Yeah, no one liked him either, did they?
• 53:56
  Wizkid is hilarious. Yes.
• 53:59
  Well, Wizkid is Joan Rief. It's Oliver, right?
• 54:01
  Yeah, justice for much. I thought he was a delight,
• 54:07
  though, I've got to say I I it totally floored me because I
• 54:11
  really expected to hate him so much.
• 54:14
  And by the end of the book, oh, it's pro Jeremy all the way.
• 54:17
  And he does get a redemption at the end because he after being
• 54:23
  after being knocked off his perch by the doctor with the
• 54:26
  I've just set the gun on an idiot setting.
• 54:28
  He then gets to fire his gun at the at the possessed mafia gang
• 54:33
  who are possessed by the fiend and then they all destroy each
• 54:35
  other. From his clever ideas he gets
• 54:38
  like he gets a redemption at the end.
• 54:41
  One of the faults in his head is him saying that he the epic saga
• 54:45
  of the triumphs of Jeremy as expounded by me, you arrogant
• 54:51
  prick, he. Loved it.
• 54:53
  Was this your first weekend with him, Joe?
• 54:56
  No, I had heard, I had heard The Paradise of Death as well, and
• 55:00
  also I'd read Island of Death as well, coming to an audio near
• 55:03
  you. Be totally up.
• 55:08
  Right, I will do. It.
• 55:09
  I'll get someone to do sound effects and music and
• 55:11
  everything, you know? Do we actually get to go to
• 55:15
  Greece to do that as well? Does it purchase?
• 55:18
  Yourself. Yeah, I will have a retail, all
• 55:22
  right. We'll have a background then,
• 55:24
  right? Yeah, just put the background,
• 55:26
  yeah. But imagine the fun we'll have
• 55:28
  recording it. Oh God.
• 55:30
  So we kind of talk about Jeremy that that gives opportunities
• 55:34
  kind of move on to how they treat the regulars and how did
• 55:37
  you kind of think they were? Does one of you want to take a
• 55:40
  regular each? And we'll run through it that
• 55:43
  way. So someone wants a doctor?
• 55:46
  You can. You can have Sarah, Luke,
• 55:47
  Andrew, anyone you want as well. Oh, who's who's left?
• 55:52
  Brigadier or the Doctor? I'll take the Brigadier.
• 55:57
  Oh, in which case I've left with Luke and we'll say Luke's
• 56:02
  wonderful Andrew. So what did you think of the
• 56:07
  Brigadier in this? To say that he's sort of like
• 56:11
  the linchpin of the story, given that it's based on his Italian
• 56:17
  ancestry, his famed Italian ancestry, and that we meet his
• 56:22
  relative Mario, he's quite thinly written in this.
• 56:26
  Like it's much more of a Sarah. Well, I think Sarah is probably
• 56:31
  the person who gets like the biggest chunk of the the story,
• 56:33
  the Brig kind of he's there to be like stalwart Wart and to
• 56:38
  lead this sort of to repel the attack on the castle and kind of
• 56:43
  organize all the characters. And he's very stiff up a lip.
• 56:48
  But yeah, we don't really dive that much into him as a
• 56:51
  character. We get kind of like the back
• 56:53
  story of him having these little trips to Italy as a kid and
• 56:58
  Uncle Mario stealing his books and learning English.
• 57:04
  And his English is peppered with just nursery rhyme, mangled
• 57:09
  nursery rhymes. But yeah, not really that much
• 57:14
  for the Brig to do. And then I think the audio kind
• 57:18
  of lifts it because you've got Nick Courtney then doing these
• 57:21
  lines, and we kind of get like, our familiar Brigadier and nice
• 57:27
  interplay between the characters.
• 57:28
  But I think maybe it's a bit surprising given that it's,
• 57:32
  yeah, his family that's driving the story, and that on the
• 57:35
  missing adventure, the Brig is the character featured in the
• 57:38
  companion slot. That he's not more of a presence
• 57:42
  in this story I would say isn't. That the Brigadier in this book
• 57:49
  is a dumb. Dumb is like I am a trained
• 57:54
  soldier and I am trained in the use of firearms and military
• 57:58
  strategy and tactics. I know what I'll do.
• 58:01
  I'll go up the watchtower and just keep an eye out.
• 58:05
  Hey, Jeremy, here's the gun. Are you serious?
• 58:09
  Those are sound military tactics, you know.
• 58:12
  Put him up the top and or anyone else up the top, Elvis, anyone
• 58:16
  up there? Anyone else?
• 58:19
  Not maybe not the 90 year old guy because he might.
• 58:21
  That's fine. Like all right, anyone that
• 58:24
  anyone else keep lookout and then train man with gun does the
• 58:28
  shooty Bang Bang. But no, dear Jeremy, I trust you
• 58:31
  with this. He actually doesn't do anything
• 58:34
  until page 171. That's when he goes.
• 58:37
  The siege of the Castillo is on, and that's the point where the
• 58:40
  Brigadier actually does something in the plot apart from
• 58:43
  just being there as part of the ring of the scenes.
• 58:46
  Yeah. Yeah, and he's very much treated
• 58:49
  as the Butler, which is funny where Maggie mistakes him for a
• 58:53
  lovely English Butler. Is that your Australian accent?
• 58:58
  What was that? That.
• 59:01
  Was my Bronx. Get out.
• 59:04
  Here I mean it was hilarious when the ordered a buffet picnic
• 59:09
  just before the siege. I was like we're doing the time
• 59:12
  monster again. Everyone sitting around eating
• 59:14
  sandwiches just saw the. Action.
• 59:16
  I did love all the references to food.
• 59:19
  It feels like about every 10 pages he details what's Umberto
• 59:23
  is rustling up in the kitchen. Which, you know, if this was a
• 59:27
  holiday read, you'd be like, yeah, sure, yeah, I'm going to
• 59:30
  pop down the Tavana. Jeremy has an orgasmic dessert
• 59:33
  at one point, doesn't he? Does he's having an ice cream or
• 59:36
  something? And he's all literally?
• 59:38
  Oh. Yeah.
• 59:43
  Oh God, So that's pretty Joe. Why do he tell us why the
• 59:47
  doctor's such a cunt in this? Oh, my God, May I say he is a
• 59:52
  glorious cunt in this book. Like, it's partly at it's most
• 59:56
  arrogant. And actually in the audio, he's
• 59:59
  super charming. Like he manages to somehow take
• 1:00:01
  these lines. And because he's just, you can
• 1:00:04
  just hear the energy in the room.
• 1:00:06
  He's loving playing the doctor again.
• 1:00:08
  But on the page, yeah, I mean, he gets lines like this.
• 1:00:11
  You're ready. When the catastrophe point is
• 1:00:14
  breached and the barrier gives way, this planet will be blotted
• 1:00:18
  by all the evil in end space. All the fair greed, anger, hate,
• 1:00:22
  all the sheer malevolence the world has experienced at the
• 1:00:25
  beginning of time will pour into this world in an overwhelming
• 1:00:29
  torrent. Oh, it's just glorious, isn't
• 1:00:32
  it? My God, he had it on a script in
• 1:00:34
  front of him because every that TARDIS set would have been
• 1:00:37
  absolutely covered with nose, wouldn't it?
• 1:00:39
  There was a lot of overwhelming torrents in this book.
• 1:00:42
  This is sort of John Perry as written by Steven Moffett,
• 1:00:45
  because he has absolute mastery of the TARDIS in this book and
• 1:00:48
  and the various means of getting about the place and he can pop
• 1:00:52
  off to all these different time zones whenever he wants with
• 1:00:55
  absolute accuracy. But I kind of liked it and all
• 1:00:59
  the stuff, all the stuff with the Doctor and Sarah in the
• 1:01:02
  past, I just thought was terrific characterization.
• 1:01:07
  There was there was a wonderful beer.
• 1:01:10
  Where God, where is the quote? We'll make an edit point here.
• 1:01:17
  So annoying. Oh, here we go.
• 1:01:18
  There's a wonderful quote in TARDIS and this is the exchange.
• 1:01:23
  He goes, it came from the King's kitchen And Sarah, thank God, he
• 1:01:27
  was a bit of a snob. The Doctor, the King of Wessex,
• 1:01:30
  a chap called Alfred. And she goes, oh, the one who
• 1:01:33
  burnt the cakes. And you can.
• 1:01:35
  It's just so the Doctor and Sarah, this sort of back and
• 1:01:37
  forth banter. I think once he gets into the
• 1:01:42
  story, a lot of the boobs and tits and whores and catamites,
• 1:01:47
  that all calms down a bit. He's got it all out of his
• 1:01:49
  system early on. And then he's just writing a
• 1:01:52
  Doctor Who book with time travel and monsters and strange never
• 1:01:57
  spaces and hell and jewelling swords and all of this, and he's
• 1:02:02
  just having a riot. And at the heart of it always is
• 1:02:05
  the Third Doctor. Just radiant, I thought.
• 1:02:09
  Like, yeah, like unbearably smug and patronising, but in a way.
• 1:02:17
  Moments of charm, they're called.
• 1:02:19
  Whoa. I mean, it kind of was.
• 1:02:21
  It kind of was. I thought it was spot on.
• 1:02:23
  I thought the the 3rd Doctor characterization was absolutely
• 1:02:26
  spot on. And where you fall, Luke with
• 1:02:29
  the 3rd Doctor, it will depend on whether you find that
• 1:02:33
  agreeable or unbearable. No, I, yeah, it's weird.
• 1:02:40
  Like I love season 7 and he's probably the biggest prick ever
• 1:02:46
  in that. It's weird that I never quite
• 1:02:48
  have gommed onto Capelli until he softened.
• 1:02:50
  Just weird because I I guess I do like a grumpy doctor.
• 1:02:54
  But yeah. I.
• 1:02:57
  I like the I like his arrogance and stuff.
• 1:03:00
  When you get to something like the end of the of inferno where
• 1:03:02
  he says fuck you Brigadier, I'm out of here.
• 1:03:05
  Then then it goes wrong and he looks like a big idiot with egg
• 1:03:08
  on his face. And I feel like for me the worst
• 1:03:12
  pertways forget to put the egg on his face a bit more.
• 1:03:15
  You know, humble him a bit because I really like those
• 1:03:17
  moments because it makes him humbler and a bit more genuine
• 1:03:22
  because he takes it on the chin as well.
• 1:03:24
  That's what I like about him. He's arrogant, but if he gets a
• 1:03:28
  bit back, I'll always like that He will take it on the chin and
• 1:03:31
  move on. All right, all right, so in this
• 1:03:34
  book, I don't think he gets his comeuppance anywhere near as
• 1:03:39
  much as I think he should. He's especially like, he just
• 1:03:41
  totally drops trail. Takes the big shit on Jeremy's
• 1:03:45
  heroics as well. There's such an offhanded
• 1:03:48
  country play. And I was like, come on, man.
• 1:03:50
  That's the only redeeming thing he's done.
• 1:03:52
  So I'm powerful saving Maggie, I guess, but even still he still
• 1:03:57
  managed to do that and we'll see this way as possible, but.
• 1:04:00
  But yeah, this. Pull this way Lawrence Miles
• 1:04:05
  made me feel bad for the third doctor and he's not necessarily
• 1:04:08
  my favorite and doctor so you can do things with him that like
• 1:04:14
  get to me. This just made me think he was a
• 1:04:16
  big asshole and I don't know why anyone would want to go to time
• 1:04:20
  and space with him. Because he's a big asshole,
• 1:04:22
  that's why. So he thought he deserved it.
• 1:04:27
  Bring on Magdalena in her garden.
• 1:04:29
  Maybe that's why the Sarah Doctor seems work so well,
• 1:04:31
  because she ain't going to put on with none of his shit.
• 1:04:33
  She don't. And so she stands up to him.
• 1:04:35
  I. Think this is what I was
• 1:04:37
  thinking. Oh, really?
• 1:04:38
  It was how would this play with Katie in there?
• 1:04:41
  And it would play very differently.
• 1:04:43
  And I think that's why people maybe don't get on with those
• 1:04:47
  middle seasons, is that she almost kind of enables him
• 1:04:50
  there, whereas Liz and Sarah, we've got time for that
• 1:04:53
  bullshit. Well, I mean, no one's going to
• 1:04:56
  mistake Katie Manning for a teenage boy prostitute, are
• 1:04:59
  they? With difficulty anyway.
• 1:05:03
  Well, she's played a prostitute, isn't she, in the past?
• 1:05:05
  Oh, has. She.
• 1:05:06
  I think she won. I can't.
• 1:05:09
  Remember not did you expect that was Douglas Adams, isn't it?
• 1:05:15
  Yes, it's target that it was target.
• 1:05:19
  That's it. It's it's in her wheelhouse.
• 1:05:23
  John, I've got to ask you though, right?
• 1:05:24
  Because you're, you're doing so much to hand out, look at
• 1:05:26
  discussions to the rest of us. What do you think of the
• 1:05:29
  regulars? I I kind of like, I think
• 1:05:33
  they're, they're almost kind of caricatures themselves.
• 1:05:38
  Again, this was where I think the reputation of the book is.
• 1:05:41
  It's that they're written for the actors to go and have a lot
• 1:05:46
  of fun with. So I could absolutely picture
• 1:05:50
  them there. But the thing I I was that kind
• 1:05:53
  of just held me back on like it was that that they don't really
• 1:05:58
  drive the plot as you'd want them to.
• 1:06:00
  They're very kind of, they're almost passive, you know it.
• 1:06:05
  It's something Sarah remarks from when they've gone to the
• 1:06:07
  past. And yet they are lovely,
• 1:06:10
  beautifully done scenes. But so you know, for, you know,
• 1:06:12
  for the people of the interventionist school of time
• 1:06:14
  travel, they've done bugger all, to paraphrase it.
• 1:06:18
  And, and I did want them to kind of drive the plot more rather
• 1:06:21
  than come on from the end of the nicely done light entertainment
• 1:06:25
  sketch. Yeah, I thought that was going
• 1:06:28
  to be a bit where the Doctor and Sarah kind of realise their part
• 1:06:32
  in history and then have to work out what they need to do in
• 1:06:36
  order to be part of that history.
• 1:06:37
  Rather than them in both time periods kind of being like,
• 1:06:41
  we've got to change history. And then realising at the end of
• 1:06:43
  it, Oh no, we've just become part of history.
• 1:06:46
  It's all happened the way it was meant to.
• 1:06:48
  It's like when we kind of get that twice.
• 1:06:50
  Yes, this is my. God explain it at every point.
• 1:06:53
  Don't. They it's like Barry, you know
• 1:06:56
  what you're doing wrong. You've said it, but.
• 1:06:59
  I will say for I keep saying, it's not that it's the 3rd
• 1:07:03
  Doctor at the bit at the end, you know, where he finally goes
• 1:07:05
  away. We're going to hell, Sarah, and
• 1:07:08
  I'm going to challenge him to a jewel.
• 1:07:10
  That was the point where he really got involved and I was
• 1:07:13
  there for it. Yeah, that.
• 1:07:14
  That's fine. I'm sorry.
• 1:07:15
  Yeah, perfect. Getting to take on a 30 foot
• 1:07:17
  tall. Mat Yeah, in hell.
• 1:07:20
  Yeah, it's, it's three doctors all over again on the sucker
• 1:07:23
  batch, as you know from strictly.
• 1:07:25
  It's so the time monster, isn't it?
• 1:07:27
  That that massive grand conclusion in Atlantis stroke
• 1:07:30
  hell that you know. Yeah, on a big scale, big
• 1:07:34
  canvas, huge. Monster jabber light falling,
• 1:07:37
  can't you? Yeah, I've shared on this book a
• 1:07:40
  few times and I'm probably going to do it some more, but 30 foot
• 1:07:43
  tall Jon Pertwee versus 30 foot tall Max Vilmio The Alchemist is
• 1:07:50
  fucking metal as hell. And it was awesome.
• 1:07:53
  Sort of like Pertwee Power Rangers, isn't it?
• 1:07:56
  Oh dude turned into Voltron and went let's go.
• 1:08:00
  You could hear the music down. I'm that thing that did me on
• 1:08:08
  the audio, it was, it's the Davison, the era theme.
• 1:08:11
  What have you done? Now dude, this is like the
• 1:08:14
  second worst thing I've ever heard with Peter Hell's music
• 1:08:17
  attached to it. I think the worst would have
• 1:08:19
  been Necromantia. So.
• 1:08:22
  I did like his incidental music though.
• 1:08:31
  It's not weird to me. Like for some reason, one of the
• 1:08:35
  things I really hate about early Big Finish is all right, I'm
• 1:08:39
  going to put on the Luke Guru. What is this?
• 1:08:43
  That's the themes wrong in it. And I'm like, that's not the
• 1:08:45
  vibe I'm going for. Where's the freaking star field?
• 1:08:49
  They've just reissued the Sirens of Time Redux with the correct
• 1:08:53
  theme. Shoot on just for you.
• 1:08:57
  How long would it take someone to be like on this version?
• 1:09:01
  On the app? We've just switched out the
• 1:09:03
  themes. Maybe you just copy and paste
• 1:09:05
  the themes on the other one. You need to write to Vortex
• 1:09:08
  magazine. Yeah, I can at least assure you
• 1:09:10
  in Ireland of Death, coming Soon from Hamster Productions
• 1:09:15
  starring Andrew Batty, John Arnold and Lucy Jenkins, will
• 1:09:18
  have the correct John Perry theme tune on it.
• 1:09:21
  That's right. No, no, it must be.
• 1:09:24
  Oh. My God, creative differences
• 1:09:26
  already. I'm out.
• 1:09:31
  No, Nobody else could do Jeremy justice.
• 1:09:34
  Something like. We need something to bring us
• 1:09:36
  together. We haven't had Luke talk about
• 1:09:38
  Sarah yet, so you know, this is what I'm here for, Luke.
• 1:09:43
  We just, we just read a book, gentlemen, that had some of the
• 1:09:47
  best characterization of Sarah Jane Smith I've ever
• 1:09:51
  encountered, not just. It was called the space.
• 1:09:57
  Mic drop, we're done here. And and it's interference.
• 1:10:01
  We get it's not just her from this era or the season 11 era,
• 1:10:06
  but we also get an extrapolation of like where she'd be in the in
• 1:10:11
  the 90s and it's amazing. It's wonderful.
• 1:10:15
  There's little nitpicks. You can make sure that I'm I'm
• 1:10:19
  I'm the whole I loved Sarah in that book.
• 1:10:23
  Sarah in this book is big, dumb, dumb idiot head and I don't
• 1:10:29
  work. I'm going to win the book award
• 1:10:32
  5 minutes later, 10 pages later, depending on what format.
• 1:10:38
  What is synchronicity, Dr. Like what you would have heard of
• 1:10:42
  that Like you, you're like, you've got some form of degree
• 1:10:47
  in writing because you're a journalist.
• 1:10:49
  Come on, man, You've you've you would have pulled that word out
• 1:10:53
  somewhere or at least heard of it.
• 1:10:54
  Like because look, when you read it, she maybe you just think
• 1:10:59
  like she's asking in context, like of this moment, what does
• 1:11:03
  synchronicity mean? Then you'd listen to the audio
• 1:11:05
  version and the way set at least slide and delivers the word
• 1:11:08
  synchronicity. It's like sing like she's never
• 1:11:13
  heard the word before. You were just talking about
• 1:11:15
  wanting to win a book award. Also, what is she Barry?
• 1:11:21
  Barry has her as a she's. He's turned her into Kolchak
• 1:11:29
  like the night stalk almost because the.
• 1:11:31
  He's he He. Would go off all these monster
• 1:11:34
  adventures, right? And then he'd write about them
• 1:11:36
  and no one would believe him. And the only one that would
• 1:11:38
  publish him would be like The Enquirer or something like that,
• 1:11:41
  right In this book, she's writing about stuff.
• 1:11:45
  And they're like, oh, no, that's bullshit and all that kind of
• 1:11:47
  stuff. I'm like, you saw the dinosaurs
• 1:11:49
  get out of here. Oh.
• 1:11:51
  It's a Daleks 1, isn't it? I I tried to sell Clarinda the
• 1:11:54
  story about that. Why would you sell a story about
• 1:11:57
  the Daleks? But.
• 1:11:58
  There was this alien planet called Exelon, Right?
• 1:12:01
  OK, Yeah, OK. I'm Clarinda.
• 1:12:04
  Just like, get out of my office. I'd love to read a Clarinda
• 1:12:08
  novel. Oh.
• 1:12:09
  Yeah. Is.
• 1:12:12
  She. That one.
• 1:12:13
  Yeah, well, I'll get the script ready all right.
• 1:12:16
  Do you guys fan told you guys the Clarinda Chronicles?
• 1:12:20
  Oh. Coming from Candy Charles soon.
• 1:12:26
  Oh, so yeah, I so I'm on the back foot with this already
• 1:12:30
  thinking I've got Sarah wrong. And then, like, I know she's an
• 1:12:34
  investigative reporter and stuff, but it's not like the
• 1:12:38
  Brigadier is standing there in his UNIT military uniform with
• 1:12:42
  things cordoned off. And there's a bit of awe of a
• 1:12:45
  mystery, like wonder what he's doing there.
• 1:12:47
  It's like, well, aren't you and Jeremy there on a holiday?
• 1:12:50
  Yes, we are. Well, maybe he's there for a
• 1:12:52
  holiday too. Leave him alone.
• 1:12:53
  So I would have just had her arrive at the Doctor.
• 1:12:56
  That's it. Done.
• 1:12:56
  Bish, bash, bash, boom. They're both of them.
• 1:12:58
  If you've got to have Jeremy, just they arrive at the Doctor.
• 1:13:01
  Done. Don't have to have any of this
• 1:13:03
  weirdness. So I thought that made it look
• 1:13:07
  dumb and I was getting really mad.
• 1:13:10
  But I feel like the doctor being heavy metal, right?
• 1:13:14
  Right at the end, I really liked pretty much every moment with
• 1:13:18
  her and Louisa. Oh, yes, yeah.
• 1:13:22
  So yeah, there's things I absolutely can't stand about
• 1:13:26
  some of the characterization and the decisions and things like
• 1:13:29
  that. There is, and the writing style.
• 1:13:31
  Like if I ever see brackets again.
• 1:13:35
  Another stamp on his own nut. They're thoughts within thoughts
• 1:13:39
  because the paragraph itself is a thought, but then they're
• 1:13:42
  having internal thoughts within those thoughts.
• 1:13:46
  The ghosts of Inception. And so there are there are
• 1:13:54
  really cool moments like her not wanting to leave the end form
• 1:14:00
  plane at the end because like she wants to see what happens
• 1:14:03
  with Louisa. And it's bringing back all these
• 1:14:05
  great memories and stuff too. So all of the Louisa stuff
• 1:14:10
  actually worked. So yeah, I know that I also had
• 1:14:14
  that thing Joe, like, oh wow. But we can really control the
• 1:14:18
  TARDIS right now, can't he? But all the stuff in the past
• 1:14:22
  was probably the most readable parts of the novel for me.
• 1:14:26
  Yeah. Especially when it's got the
• 1:14:28
  Louisa on the heel and she's the ghost thing.
• 1:14:30
  By the way, I wonder if the word the term in space stuck in his
• 1:14:35
  head when he was executive producing in Season 18.
• 1:14:37
  And he thought, and it just popped into his brain when he
• 1:14:40
  wrote this book. He's like, oh, audio.
• 1:14:42
  And he's like, Yep, that'll do. What the fuck?
• 1:14:44
  Was in space. I was still confused.
• 1:14:47
  Describe it as you. Real, but not real.
• 1:14:50
  Oh, so it's not real? No, it's 100% real.
• 1:14:52
  But you just said it's not real. No, it is.
• 1:14:54
  I've had that explanation. Thank you, Luke.
• 1:14:56
  John. It's called.
• 1:14:58
  It's a null space. It it's basically hell.
• 1:15:02
  Hell. OK, Andrew.
• 1:15:04
  I think it's sort of half hell, half purgatory.
• 1:15:07
  So you can get you you if you're there.
• 1:15:10
  You're not necessarily stuck because you can.
• 1:15:13
  It's, it's the Doctor Who afterlife.
• 1:15:14
  It's a scientific afterlife, but it's a bit strange that nobody
• 1:15:19
  mentions there at any other point in any Doctor Who story
• 1:15:22
  had. 3 vaguely conflicting accounts of what end space is
• 1:15:25
  there, which may perhaps suggest that Harry wasn't as clear as he
• 1:15:29
  might have been in the book. Oh, Luke's gone off, off to end
• 1:15:34
  space. With you, Luke, he'd gone into
• 1:15:37
  the light. Synchronicity.
• 1:15:40
  Remember to look out for it. Has he?
• 1:15:44
  He's just been absorbed by some big horrible.
• 1:15:48
  Do we dare approach? Do we dare approach all the
• 1:15:51
  boobs and bums and stuff? I.
• 1:15:53
  Think you've got to talk about it because.
• 1:15:55
  I thought he was a nice, gentle, sort of Buddhist sort of chap.
• 1:15:58
  I don't know why he's so obsessed with, you know, the
• 1:16:02
  female. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:16:06
  Yeah, catamites and cow shit and boobs and le.
• 1:16:13
  I was. So surprised that cow shit makes
• 1:16:15
  it into the audio drama. Like like.
• 1:16:20
  Bastard bastards in there as well.
• 1:16:24
  And Catamite, I mean Catamite would go over most people's
• 1:16:27
  heads but doesn't think this is what shit in a Doctor Who audio
• 1:16:31
  book? Do you think does he think this
• 1:16:33
  is what virgin want? Because it was written for the I
• 1:16:38
  think the problem lies in that the guy who's doing it was a
• 1:16:43
  light entity producer and a fan. So I don't know if he's able to
• 1:16:46
  go. I'm script editing Barry let
• 1:16:49
  I'll tell him that he can't do that.
• 1:16:52
  So was it a case? He was a little bit too
• 1:16:54
  reverent? And then when Virgin get to it,
• 1:16:56
  we can't do it because it's in the audio as well.
• 1:16:59
  So we can't change it. So I kind of wonder if it falls
• 1:17:03
  between those stools. There's a passage here, right?
• 1:17:06
  I mean, please listen to this. Jeremy wants to prove he's not
• 1:17:10
  some sort of Hooray Henry, but a proper, what's a Hooray Henry?
• 1:17:15
  I don't know a proper investigative journalist.
• 1:17:18
  It's kind of one of these upper classes.
• 1:17:21
  It's kind of you, you know, the kind of people you hate who's
• 1:17:25
  who are all that the upper class parties, kind of chinless
• 1:17:28
  wonders, those types. Yeah, Worcester.
• 1:17:30
  Yeah, yeah. He felt rather racy, looking at
• 1:17:34
  her barely concealed boobs, at the sight of her jiggling
• 1:17:37
  figure. Each part seemed to have a mind
• 1:17:40
  of its own, a bit of a smash, a Roo, and then, and then in the
• 1:17:45
  next paragraph. Maggie preferred a man to be a
• 1:17:49
  man. She'd even admit that she found
• 1:17:51
  sniffing a creep who deserved it like a turn on.
• 1:17:58
  It's going on. Can I just?
• 1:18:00
  Say she likes bad boys. Like that's all you need to say
• 1:18:03
  like. That that line that you, that
• 1:18:06
  line of description from Jeremy's point of view there in
• 1:18:08
  the audio drama, it's just replaced with the line.
• 1:18:11
  Check out the boobs on that tourist, which is one of the
• 1:18:16
  strangest things to hear in the Doctor Who Trump.
• 1:18:20
  Hey don't get we have I think broadcast doctors first orgasm
• 1:18:24
  in this as well. You know, Barry pushes the
• 1:18:26
  boundaries. You know, they say he's safe,
• 1:18:28
  but he's not. Oh no.
• 1:18:30
  Luke's got his head in his hands.
• 1:18:31
  I can understand if you're like some reason I never heard these
• 1:18:36
  before or experienced any parts of these.
• 1:18:39
  Barry let's audio such books Never.
• 1:18:43
  But I've heard The Sevenfold Crown and the Sedetton
• 1:18:45
  Experiment and oh, you. Poor SO.
• 1:18:48
  So why did he get those wrong? Oh, because he doesn't know shit
• 1:18:51
  about Blake 7. Like, I couldn't get Chris
• 1:18:53
  Bathroom, but never mind. So you wouldn't think that these
• 1:18:59
  would have the same problem. Like the characterizations are
• 1:19:01
  wrong and all this other kinds of weirdness.
• 1:19:04
  This is this is his wheelhouse. It's yeah.
• 1:19:09
  Did you feel dirty reading it, Luke?
• 1:19:14
  No, not really. I've because I'm amused.
• 1:19:19
  Yeah, look what I did love in the in the chat.
• 1:19:24
  Like, I'm, I'm reading, I'm mentioning some of the filthy
• 1:19:26
  things in this book and John's like, guess how?
• 1:19:31
  All right, how old was Barry Let's when he wrote this job?
• 1:19:33
  He was 69. There we go.
• 1:19:39
  Oh, no, we've did some of the racy stuff in this book.
• 1:19:42
  It makes me feel like he'd picked up a couple books, maybe
• 1:19:44
  in the ranges just to see what's been written, what's what, what
• 1:19:48
  are the, what are the, you know, what's going on?
• 1:19:51
  And he's like, oh, there's a lot of works.
• 1:19:53
  There's there are references, but they're not us.
• 1:19:56
  They're not. Awkward as this.
• 1:19:58
  Did they give him transit? It's the question.
• 1:20:01
  I think he's also, he's just sort of in like 90s thriller
• 1:20:05
  mode, like, you know, books for men.
• 1:20:09
  I think he's read a lot of books for men and then he's been like,
• 1:20:11
  I'm going to write Doctor Who as a, as a book like that.
• 1:20:13
  Well. You know, we're like the exotic
• 1:20:14
  location and the bikini ladies. I thought he was in like a Bond
• 1:20:18
  movie when he was in Italy, you know?
• 1:20:20
  I I thought he's going for the Godfather at the start as well,
• 1:20:23
  because that has some very dubious.
• 1:20:25
  That gets dropped. Really.
• 1:20:26
  That gets dropped like, all right, so here's the thing about
• 1:20:31
  Maximilian Vilmio that I don't quite understand.
• 1:20:36
  I get The Alchemist part that that, all right?
• 1:20:39
  I get that that's, that's who he is from this point in time, this
• 1:20:43
  point in time and today. I get that right, fine.
• 1:20:47
  Why is he a billionaire gangster?
• 1:20:50
  It's so stupid. Look.
• 1:20:53
  At. Me, look at me, and I grew
• 1:20:56
  smiling from ear to ear. But even if so.
• 1:21:02
  Yeah, he he. Gets you've been making your
• 1:21:03
  plans for hundreds of years and you've literally had centuries
• 1:21:09
  to find at least someone who owns that house is willing to
• 1:21:12
  friggin sell it to you or off them sooner.
• 1:21:16
  You know, like way before Baroni Lethbridge Stewart turns up.
• 1:21:23
  Yeah, he's, you know, so he's left it super last minute with
• 1:21:26
  these plans. He needs to get a good project
• 1:21:28
  manager on it. Yeah, I I just heard that he's
• 1:21:31
  just buggered off to New York for 100 years for no good
• 1:21:34
  reason. New York.
• 1:21:36
  New York to become a. Well, you mean New York, the
• 1:21:39
  drug? Business or whatever.
• 1:21:41
  It's doing like it's. It's Tallulah come early, isn't
• 1:21:46
  it? Literally in this case, yes.
• 1:21:50
  Well done. It's such a weird character,
• 1:21:53
  isn't she, Maggie? It's like, what?
• 1:21:55
  What the hell is this character? The more she was in the book
• 1:21:58
  though, sorry, the more she was in the audio.
• 1:22:00
  I thought Dickinson really got into the role and had very sweet
• 1:22:04
  scenes with Jared. Yeah, I think she works much
• 1:22:06
  better in the audio than in the book.
• 1:22:08
  There is some very weird dodgy stuff with Maggie in the book.
• 1:22:12
  It's quite sexist and misogynistic and it's like
• 1:22:17
  she's, she's like sexually aroused by this violence going
• 1:22:22
  on. And it just, and then there's
• 1:22:24
  all this stuff about her being abused as a child and like the
• 1:22:29
  way that she dies is kind of like her being punished for
• 1:22:33
  being sexual, you know, It's just, it's really icky and it's
• 1:22:38
  very new adventures, but it's just, it's.
• 1:22:41
  Where is you get this really good pure ending for sweet
• 1:22:46
  Louisa? He was also thicker shit like
• 1:22:50
  the two women in this book who aren't Sarah Jane Smith.
• 1:22:54
  But I thought at the conclusion, because I didn't really give a
• 1:22:57
  toss about Maximilian and the two bodies and all that
• 1:23:00
  technobabble the doctors talking about, I don't even have a clue
• 1:23:02
  what was going on with him, if I'm honest.
• 1:23:04
  But the emotional conclusion for Sarah and Louisa that I thought
• 1:23:08
  worked really well. So I was like, OK, well, if the
• 1:23:11
  plot it hasn't worked so well at the end, the character stuff has
• 1:23:15
  and so I've got a satisfying resolution of some kind.
• 1:23:19
  Again in the, I think in the audio drama as well.
• 1:23:22
  Both Maggie and Louisa are massively lifted by the
• 1:23:26
  performances of the actresses. Like whatever you say about
• 1:23:29
  Sandra Dickinson, she brings a lot of charm to that role.
• 1:23:33
  And she was actually like quite big in the 90s.
• 1:23:36
  Like she was, she was in those Philadelphia adverts that were
• 1:23:40
  everywhere. She was always on Knowles house
• 1:23:42
  party. She's in 2.4 Children.
• 1:23:44
  She's like she was in. She was a really recognizable
• 1:23:47
  figure, so she. Was great in 2.4 children.
• 1:23:51
  Wasn't she as the annoying sister-in-law?
• 1:23:54
  And then, and then you find out that her husband's having an
• 1:23:56
  affair and your heart breaks for her.
• 1:24:00
  Exactly like she she actually, although she has this stupid
• 1:24:03
  voice, like she's she's a good comedy actress.
• 1:24:06
  She's she's got good comedy and acting chops, I think, and I
• 1:24:09
  think because of the voice and you know, also she was Trillion
• 1:24:13
  and Hitchhiker's Guide, which is probably why she was then cast
• 1:24:18
  in this for the for the Nerds. But yeah, I think I think she's
• 1:24:22
  good. I think she's underrated and I
• 1:24:24
  think she brings something to Maggie that is definitely
• 1:24:26
  missing on the page. I.
• 1:24:28
  Don't remember who played Louisa, but that is a really
• 1:24:31
  assured performance in the production.
• 1:24:33
  And just like really warm. I just love that character.
• 1:24:36
  The second shape in her mouth. Yeah, I get, I get the feeling
• 1:24:39
  that the that the other parts in this that aren't the sort of
• 1:24:43
  star name ones, I think they were probably like just very
• 1:24:47
  experienced radio actors. It feels like, because I was
• 1:24:51
  listening to a lot of like kids Radio 4 stuff at this time and
• 1:24:54
  it's very much got that feel. And I feel like there were,
• 1:24:57
  there was sort of a Bank of actors who just did this stuff
• 1:25:00
  week on week and they could, they could.
• 1:25:03
  Rep Companies. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:25:05
  Yeah. So I feel like Radio 4 feel.
• 1:25:10
  Are you free? Take this bullshit script.
• 1:25:12
  You've got 3 lines, that sort of thing.
• 1:25:17
  Exactly. So, so how did we kind of find
• 1:25:20
  the the way that Barry let's differentiated the characters,
• 1:25:24
  particularly in male characters. We've covered the female
• 1:25:26
  characters quite nicely, I think.
• 1:25:29
  But you know, the male character all have, shall we say, quite.
• 1:25:32
  Ludicrous. Statement.
• 1:25:33
  Ludicrous is a good word. I like that.
• 1:25:35
  We'll go with that. How do we kind of feel that
• 1:25:37
  worked? What?
• 1:25:40
  Who does Elvis play in? Who?
• 1:25:42
  Who does Elvis guy play in? In the audio that he doesn't
• 1:25:46
  play Elvis songs for sure. There's no way.
• 1:25:48
  I think they sort of get away with it by just having like very
• 1:25:51
  shorts, like a couple here and there.
• 1:25:54
  But yeah, he's still Elvis in the in the OK.
• 1:25:59
  Are there any of the male characters made an impact?
• 1:26:01
  Really. No, not like the women did.
• 1:26:04
  The only male character that is one of the regulars that had an
• 1:26:08
  impact would have been Umberto, because I reckon Barry must.
• 1:26:13
  Every time Barry's at his computer or typewriter, you must
• 1:26:16
  have known when he got fucking hungry, because suddenly
• 1:26:19
  umberto's coming out. Olive, five different cheeses.
• 1:26:26
  You know, we've got all this kind of food.
• 1:26:30
  And then I went. Then I think he pissed off and
• 1:26:32
  got some food himself. Then he came back to arrive.
• 1:26:35
  How many stone? Yeah.
• 1:26:36
  How many stone do we think Barry let's put on during the writing
• 1:26:39
  of this? Book just sitting there with his
• 1:26:44
  little charcuterie platter. Yeah, he's doing Mike Yates
• 1:26:48
  right with the cheese and the wine.
• 1:26:50
  Yeah, I. Don't need to go out to get
• 1:26:51
  this, I can just have it right next to me a block of.
• 1:26:53
  Glory and goes right? That could go in as well.
• 1:26:56
  Jeremy ate his ice cream. Orgasmically lovely.
• 1:26:59
  That's another 500 words snatched.
• 1:27:01
  Out right thing. All in one.
• 1:27:06
  Oh wait, I didn't put the brackets in.
• 1:27:08
  There we go. Lovely.
• 1:27:09
  That's right. And there was one other male
• 1:27:12
  character I think, you know, makes a bit of an impact the the
• 1:27:17
  guy in the medieval sequence of the sort of sort of love
• 1:27:20
  interest for Sarah, the sort of wandering minstrel, forgotten
• 1:27:23
  son, where I thought it was going to go a bit.
• 1:27:29
  Bob in Blackadder. He thinks that Sarah Jane is
• 1:27:34
  this young young boy. He's this son signed of.
• 1:27:40
  Yeah. Lusty minstrel.
• 1:27:42
  I thought there was going to be some sort of hilarious Yeah,
• 1:27:48
  Gareth was just writing the plot.
• 1:27:49
  I was. Going, I'll have a bit of that,
• 1:27:51
  you know. That's where I would have taken
• 1:27:55
  it anyway. But you know, like when you're
• 1:27:56
  free, sort of. Big male characters are the 3rd
• 1:27:59
  Doctor, the Brigadier and Jeremy Fitz Oliver.
• 1:28:02
  The rest of the men don't really have much of A hope.
• 1:28:04
  They're big personalities. Too much testosterone.
• 1:28:08
  Oh yes. Oh, so is there anything else
• 1:28:16
  you guys have in your notes that you want to cover in this?
• 1:28:19
  Oh, I had another plot point that annoyed me.
• 1:28:22
  Like in the same way that Luke got annoyed by the the gang, he
• 1:28:26
  just pissed off and became a gangster rather than just buying
• 1:28:28
  the castle there. So there was a storyline that I
• 1:28:32
  thought was going to go somewhere.
• 1:28:33
  And I thought when I was reading the book, I was like, I don't
• 1:28:36
  remember this being a plot point in the audio, but maybe in the
• 1:28:39
  in the novel they're going to do something with this.
• 1:28:41
  It's the Ann Radcliffe book about the so.
• 1:28:47
  So a key plot point is that Sarah and Jeremy find this book
• 1:28:51
  in the library, which tells the story of the medieval mystery
• 1:28:59
  and seems to recount the the events of that.
• 1:29:03
  Then the doctor and Sarah go back in time to experience it's
• 1:29:06
  a fictional version which then Louisa reads in the 18th century
• 1:29:11
  section which inspires her to try and find the treasure.
• 1:29:14
  So I was like, and Anne Radcliffe was a real person who
• 1:29:17
  wrote the mysteries of Udolpho, which is a real book.
• 1:29:20
  This book is not real and and she seems, it seems to know all
• 1:29:25
  the stuff about the plot. So I was like, and Sarah's
• 1:29:27
  trying to write a novel at the beginning.
• 1:29:29
  So I was like, is this going to be the book that Sarah writes?
• 1:29:33
  They then plant it in the library and then it inspires
• 1:29:36
  Louisa to do this to kind of, you know, I.
• 1:29:39
  Mean I still don't. Know.
• 1:29:41
  What? That's where it's.
• 1:29:41
  Coming like something, but that would have been a nice little
• 1:29:45
  tie up, you're right. But I thought that that was
• 1:29:47
  exactly where it was going. Like it felt like that was what
• 1:29:50
  was being. Terence would have made that
• 1:29:53
  connection. This would.
• 1:29:54
  Have. Been great.
• 1:29:57
  Yeah. Like, you've got Sarah trying to
• 1:30:00
  write a novel. You've got this novel that's
• 1:30:02
  appeared out of nowhere. Yeah.
• 1:30:04
  It was really odd that it then just didn't connect in that way
• 1:30:07
  that I thought it was going to. Maybe he just forgot about it.
• 1:30:11
  I've got 3 very small things that I'd just like to say to one
• 1:30:15
  was what does this mean? A jinking, jerking, diddle
• 1:30:21
  daddling target. What does that mean?
• 1:30:24
  Just moving around a lot? It's maybe.
• 1:30:26
  Weaving back. Digs nagging.
• 1:30:28
  About someone's ass. I'm not entirely sure.
• 1:30:31
  I've just written down jinking, jerking, diddle daddling target.
• 1:30:36
  It was like Pip and Jay Baker were writing for a second.
• 1:30:38
  That's a Jerry paragraph for sure.
• 1:30:40
  Nice. The other thing was going to
• 1:30:43
  hell. You know, we all thought Stephen
• 1:30:45
  Moffett was being very original in Dark Water, but no, Barry,
• 1:30:48
  let's got there first in the 90s.
• 1:30:50
  Honestly, Moffett read a lot of these books, didn't he?
• 1:30:53
  Sorry, I had to get something in.
• 1:30:54
  There. Something in there somewhere?
• 1:30:58
  That's, I think that's the longest in any episode that
• 1:31:00
  you've gone. Without.
• 1:31:01
  I know, I know. And thank God Sophie Aldred
• 1:31:05
  didn't touch the audio in any way, shape or form because she
• 1:31:08
  was in everything. In the 90s.
• 1:31:10
  She would have been a dismal Louisa, wouldn't she?
• 1:31:13
  She was probably still trying to squeeze into that leather.
• 1:31:16
  And I do have 1/3. Thing and now I've completely
• 1:31:19
  forgotten what. It is Maggie.
• 1:31:21
  Was it Sarah shagging a sailor, which was a key plot point which
• 1:31:27
  kept being returned to see? I'm just going Was that Harry?
• 1:31:31
  Did they? They've got a past.
• 1:31:36
  Yeah. My only last point really is
• 1:31:39
  that this has time travel, shit science, dabbles in history,
• 1:31:42
  magic, and gunplay. It's a fucking riot.
• 1:31:45
  It's terrible in many, many, many ways, but I had an absolute
• 1:31:49
  blast with it. And if we're gauging these
• 1:31:51
  things on it, not on whether they're good quality or bad
• 1:31:54
  quality, but whether we had a good time or not, I had a good
• 1:31:58
  time with this. Book.
• 1:32:00
  It's not boring. Definitely not.
• 1:32:03
  It doesn't have a chance to be boring.
• 1:32:05
  It's doing a million things. I would say if you're a Doctor
• 1:32:08
  Who fan of a certain age that has a big appreciation for the
• 1:32:13
  Peru era, and let's face it, that's turns out to be most
• 1:32:16
  classic era lovers of Doctor Who in my experience, then I think I
• 1:32:21
  think you'll get a so bad as good vibe from this.
• 1:32:24
  But if you're, if you're like me and you don't have that huge
• 1:32:28
  affinity for that era, yeah, this book shit.
• 1:32:31
  So avoid. But if you do like the era,
• 1:32:36
  yeah. Yeah.
• 1:32:38
  If you can, if you can watch the Thai monster and think like that
• 1:32:42
  was really fun, then I think you should probably listen to this
• 1:32:45
  or read it. Yeah.
• 1:32:46
  And I think it's quite appropriate to give Luke that
• 1:32:49
  last word on this before we move to the epic.
• 1:32:54
  The three questions are three choices.
• 1:32:59
  This time we're following on from last time.
• 1:33:01
  Last time with Crooked World, we picked our fav three favorite
• 1:33:05
  BBC books covers. So now we're covering a Virgin
• 1:33:08
  book. We decided three favorite virgin
• 1:33:14
  books covers. So everyone's got their list
• 1:33:20
  there. I took it.
• 1:33:20
  Everyone's looking eager, even look happy.
• 1:33:23
  I'm looking, Andrew's looking, nodding, looking happy.
• 1:33:26
  Andrew, I'll come to you first. What's your first are?
• 1:33:29
  We doing one each and going round.
• 1:33:32
  Yes, one each and we'll I'll come back.
• 1:33:34
  So the first one I want to talk about is so Viola Sin.
• 1:33:38
  That's one of my favorite. So the the cover to that book,
• 1:33:44
  so it show it depicts the companion Roz Forrester and her
• 1:33:48
  sister Lee RP and the cover painting is actually a painting
• 1:33:53
  on their wall in the book. So it's the two of them as
• 1:33:56
  teenagers. And it's kind of a plot point
• 1:33:58
  that they see this book of the characters younger.
• 1:34:02
  And it's a it's sort of like a 30th century sort of propaganda
• 1:34:06
  painting because they're this imperial family.
• 1:34:09
  And it's just, it's quite a beautiful image.
• 1:34:12
  And I also like that it's a depiction of a New Adventures
• 1:34:17
  companion where it's not like hyper sexualized, it's not huge
• 1:34:22
  tits and a gun, which is what most of the New Adventures
• 1:34:27
  covers where they put a companion on it alike.
• 1:34:29
  So it's quite nice that it's it's Roz's last book and we get
• 1:34:32
  this kind of hero shot of her on the on the cover.
• 1:34:38
  And yeah, I just, I just like it.
• 1:34:39
  I just think it's a nice painting.
• 1:34:42
  So, and it's in this, I think there's a new adventures that
• 1:34:45
  you all had to be a scene from the story.
• 1:34:48
  So that was a really clever way of getting a a nice image out of
• 1:34:51
  that as well. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:34:53
  And yeah, I guess it's kind of like you have an artifact from
• 1:34:57
  the story because it is that painting within the book.
• 1:35:00
  So yeah, it kind of feels like you've got a tangible bit of
• 1:35:04
  Doctor Who there. Absolutely, Luke, what's your
• 1:35:09
  first choice? I'm going for a cliche choice.
• 1:35:12
  I feel like I feel sorry for Andrew Hunt.
• 1:35:16
  Like no one remembers his book in a good way, except maybe one
• 1:35:20
  way in particular. And that's the fact that Cats
• 1:35:22
  Create a Witch Mark has an absolutely gorgeous cover.
• 1:35:26
  It's like a sun setting. There's a Unicorn coming out of
• 1:35:29
  what looks like Stonehenge. This silver cat.
• 1:35:32
  The TARDIS is right in the middle.
• 1:35:34
  And it is. It's just beautiful.
• 1:35:36
  It's it's wonderful. OK.
• 1:35:38
  It's great. Yeah.
• 1:35:40
  It is, yeah. Re atmospheric.
• 1:35:43
  Those kind of little touches with the little creeps on the
• 1:35:47
  side, isn't it? The Unicorn coming out the door?
• 1:35:49
  Just yeah. Beautiful.
• 1:35:51
  It's just that it's always something wonderful to look at.
• 1:35:54
  It's one of those covers that's so good that I'm sorry, Andrew,
• 1:35:57
  but Andrew Hunt, but books up. But but here's your take away.
• 1:36:04
  You've got like for me in for my it's an image burned in my right
• 1:36:08
  is pretty much it's a pretty iconic for me.
• 1:36:11
  And Joe, why didn't you come up with this?
• 1:36:14
  Well, my first choice is also an unpopular book, but with a truly
• 1:36:20
  beautiful cover and that's catch crater witch mark, which, yeah,
• 1:36:26
  I agree and I think it looks beautiful here, but it looks
• 1:36:30
  even more beautiful in the time frame book when it's a four page
• 1:36:35
  picture without the logo all over it and all the sort of
• 1:36:38
  messy rising. It's just a a staggering bit of
• 1:36:42
  our I can get lost in that picture.
• 1:36:45
  Shame about the book. Gorgeous.
• 1:36:48
  And I will come up because I can.
• 1:36:49
  Literally, it's the only I can do this for.
• 1:36:51
  You can't see all that, boys. Oh yeah.
• 1:36:55
  Time Worm Revelation. Obviously I've talked before of
• 1:37:00
  exactly what the kind it means to me, being there in time, the
• 1:37:04
  way it should change things, but it's such a gorgeously surreal
• 1:37:07
  cover that you could do an almost anything.
• 1:37:09
  It's that moon earthrise photo. We we we've got the earth coming
• 1:37:14
  up in the background over the moon landscape and you've just
• 1:37:17
  got a church on the moon. You've got a kid astronaut and
• 1:37:21
  you've got the doctor dancing with death.
• 1:37:24
  I mean, you look at that girl goes.
• 1:37:26
  I don't know what the hell is going on here, but I want a
• 1:37:29
  piece of that I. Really.
• 1:37:31
  Am in the. Creams of the New Adventures.
• 1:37:34
  Totally. It's a new adventure thing.
• 1:37:37
  Ever Yeah, that would be my just the atmosphere gorgeous.
• 1:37:43
  So yes, I have a print of it up. I can't play anything up because
• 1:37:47
  we're rent, we're renting. But it's a picture that's up in
• 1:37:49
  my office and I look back and yes, beautiful.
• 1:37:51
  Oh, can you not do that when you're?
• 1:37:54
  No, not on our, not on our contract, damn it.
• 1:37:59
  Otherwise it'd just be your Doctor Who art rank here.
• 1:38:00
  It's. Pretty much it to hear if I'm
• 1:38:02
  most Philip Olivia naked but you know.
• 1:38:06
  It's a. It's a reasonable choice.
• 1:38:08
  Still, Doctor Who food. Yeah, absolutely, Andrew, your
• 1:38:11
  second choice. My second choice was also which
• 1:38:15
  Mark? But I think I think it, you
• 1:38:19
  know, bears repeating like it's a beautiful piece of artwork and
• 1:38:25
  yeah, just that sunset in the background.
• 1:38:27
  And I think it's it's it's got a sort of non screen accurate
• 1:38:33
  TARDIS, like it's not quite the right portions, like the roof
• 1:38:37
  isn't quite right, but it doesn't fucking matter because
• 1:38:41
  it's just such a beautiful painting.
• 1:38:43
  And yeah, it just, I had, I had the time frame book that Joe was
• 1:38:49
  talking about and that was one of my first, it's, it was one of
• 1:38:55
  my first Doctor Who books because my mom was part of this
• 1:38:57
  like sci-fi book club where you could like get a certain amount
• 1:39:00
  of books per month. And that was the one of the ones
• 1:39:04
  that he chose for me. And I just was obsessed with
• 1:39:08
  that book. And I the way I encountered a
• 1:39:12
  lot of Doctor Who stories was through the artwork and that
• 1:39:15
  book and through the cover art. So I saw that before I saw like
• 1:39:17
  any photos of them or videos or anything.
• 1:39:20
  So and those new adventures covers that are in that book are
• 1:39:24
  just as evocative for me as some of the other pieces of artwork.
• 1:39:29
  And that one is just one that like completely stuck in my mind
• 1:39:33
  from that book. And then it was the first new
• 1:39:36
  adventure that I bought, like finding a second hand cup,
• 1:39:40
  finding a second hand copy in a bookshop.
• 1:39:43
  I could never really get through it because I was still only like
• 1:39:46
  9 or something when I bought it and I've never, I've never read
• 1:39:49
  which mark, but just that cover is like a really core Doctor Who
• 1:39:54
  image for me. So.
• 1:39:55
  Just don't read the book, but just let the cover be the.
• 1:39:59
  Book take the cover in. That's your imagination, just
• 1:40:03
  use that. So this is so the cover of which
• 1:40:05
  mark is basic response for your Doctor Who but crag habit,
• 1:40:08
  right? Yeah, exactly.
• 1:40:12
  No higher praiser. I should say I dodge picking
• 1:40:15
  which mark because I knew everyone else would picking it.
• 1:40:17
  Is that good? Luke, what are you?
• 1:40:21
  That's why. That's why I skipped the
• 1:40:23
  dimension writers as well, because that's the most doctor
• 1:40:26
  playing chess. And Birthright, because I
• 1:40:29
  figured everyone was going to choose that one.
• 1:40:31
  Oh, yeah. I chose one that's a little bit
• 1:40:34
  more cartoony, but I think the cover is really cool.
• 1:40:37
  You see it and you're just like, what?
• 1:40:39
  I want to read this. It's Blood Heat by Jim Mortimer.
• 1:40:42
  You've got like a Silurian, like riding a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
• 1:40:47
  You've got, you know, everything looking like that forest episode
• 1:40:52
  of Capaldi. And you've got like the TARDIS
• 1:40:55
  that's up on a weird, odd angle. It looks really freaking cool.
• 1:41:00
  And it's then the book is filled with like just awesome imagery
• 1:41:04
  like that, like Solar rains writing T rex's.
• 1:41:07
  There's pterodactyls all around the place, all this kind of kind
• 1:41:10
  of stuff. This is a case of like it's,
• 1:41:12
  it's a fun cover books really awesome too.
• 1:41:15
  So it's both, yeah. Again, you you like books with
• 1:41:21
  the 3rd doctor being killed off, that is what you said.
• 1:41:25
  Less keen on interference, should I?
• 1:41:31
  Joe, your second choice. I really thought we were going
• 1:41:34
  to be like free for free. Then 'cause when he said it's a
• 1:41:36
  really cool cover, I was like, Oh no, it's chosen the same one
• 1:41:39
  as me again. But he hasn't.
• 1:41:41
  I've chosen one from each range just to be a little diverse.
• 1:41:45
  I would like to choose the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
• 1:41:49
  I love these missing adventure covers.
• 1:41:51
  I just adore the pictures of the regulars, they are so perfect on
• 1:41:56
  every single one. And this one has caught the
• 1:41:59
  TARDIS as seen from below with an enormous dragon spitting fire
• 1:42:04
  all over it. I mean despite the only thing
• 1:42:07
  that doesn't make me want to read this book is that it says
• 1:42:09
  the words Christopher Beulis at the bottom, but apart from that
• 1:42:13
  it's beautiful. I mean, you could kind kind of
• 1:42:15
  choose any of the missing adventure covers.
• 1:42:18
  I just, I just think is it Alistair Pearson?
• 1:42:19
  I think he's. That's that's a Paul Campbell
• 1:42:22
  one. Paul Campbell, I salute you
• 1:42:25
  because Hartnell and Caroline Ford look so lifelike in those
• 1:42:29
  pictures. It's beautiful.
• 1:42:32
  Well, that wasn't like needless, because I was going to go for
• 1:42:35
  missing adventures too, but I was going to go for millennial
• 1:42:38
  rights. Because that's gorgeous.
• 1:42:42
  You know, it's got Colin Baker on one side as a dock in the
• 1:42:45
  Valley Yard outfit. And that tells you, you know, he
• 1:42:49
  wanted that black costume. He would look pretty brilliant
• 1:42:53
  in that. He would look superb.
• 1:42:55
  And then you've got Mel down below him, who at the time was
• 1:42:58
  still in the Everyone Hates a mode as the Bride of
• 1:43:01
  Frankenstein. I think the images of that.
• 1:43:05
  Yeah. I want to pick that book up
• 1:43:07
  straight away. And, you know, and then on the
• 1:43:09
  side you've got that little insert, which is Canary Wharf,
• 1:43:13
  which God going through that revamp phase with demons flying
• 1:43:18
  about it and going, yeah, I am all in on this book without even
• 1:43:22
  opening a page of it. Those are really ambitious,
• 1:43:26
  those new adventure covers, weren't they?
• 1:43:27
  They really, you know, screamed read me.
• 1:43:31
  Yeah. It's.
• 1:43:34
  This is what's in the book. Bring it on.
• 1:43:37
  At first I did particularly like the thought the cover space, the
• 1:43:41
  use of it was a bit. But then I thought, no, you do
• 1:43:45
  need to know which stuff do you get and read in those books
• 1:43:48
  because you think that's major sound boy on them.
• 1:43:50
  It wouldn't be a problem that the pictures of the regulars are
• 1:43:54
  just so accurate. And when they get funky with
• 1:43:57
  them, when they do something different with them, put in out
• 1:43:59
  of costume, well. State of change is a bit odd
• 1:44:01
  with Perry as the bird from Avengers of.
• 1:44:03
  Our God. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:44:05
  And then obviously Tom gets in his his talons gear with the,
• 1:44:09
  you know, evolution. Yeah, it's really, really nice.
• 1:44:13
  But yes, we'll come round. Andrew, your final pick.
• 1:44:17
  Final pick. I've also gone Missing
• 1:44:19
  Adventures for the same reasons that you've just said.
• 1:44:23
  So again, I could basically pick any of them because they're all
• 1:44:27
  such high quality artwork, but I went for the English Way of
• 1:44:31
  Death because I think it just kind of exemplifies it's.
• 1:44:35
  A great one. Yeah, it's it captures Tom Baker
• 1:44:39
  and Lala Ward really, really well.
• 1:44:41
  And I like you were just saying, John, I, I love the way that
• 1:44:46
  with these ones, it's particularly Alastair Pearson.
• 1:44:52
  He doesn't just depend, he doesn't just take a reference
• 1:44:54
  photo and give you the reference photo.
• 1:44:56
  He like creates new costumes for the characters, which are unique
• 1:45:00
  to that book. So there you've got Ramana in
• 1:45:04
  these like Oxford bags and she's got this waistcoat on that has
• 1:45:07
  like a little noughts and crosses pattern on it.
• 1:45:10
  And I don't think that that noughts and crosses thing is
• 1:45:12
  even mentioned in the book. It's just a little detail that
• 1:45:15
  he's added to it. And it's just that attention to
• 1:45:18
  detail, the absolute spot on likenesses and then having like
• 1:45:22
  that little sort of dramatic scene in the little box out,
• 1:45:27
  which on that one is the possessed policeman with the
• 1:45:29
  kind of green gas and a sea behind him.
• 1:45:32
  They're just so evoked. And I know, I know, like if you
• 1:45:36
  were designing a book cover, you would not have like a strip with
• 1:45:39
  two people down the side and then this little image there.
• 1:45:41
  But they're for Doctor Who fans, and we want to see our regulars,
• 1:45:46
  we want to see a monster. So it's just hitting all those
• 1:45:49
  fan buttons. And I am a fan.
• 1:45:51
  So yeah, I lap it up and I love it.
• 1:45:54
  And even to this day when Big Finished, like do a clever bit
• 1:45:58
  of photoshopping and give someone a new outfit.
• 1:46:00
  I fucking love it. Did you like the little fangs I
• 1:46:05
  gave Nyssa? Not the little fangs.
• 1:46:08
  Wonderful. Yeah, that's the only thing I
• 1:46:11
  don't like about those Misk Adventure covers.
• 1:46:13
  They chickened out of Nyssa on the first one.
• 1:46:16
  Yeah, give us the blood. This.
• 1:46:19
  Is fault, wasn't it? Yes, I think it was.
• 1:46:22
  They wouldn't stock it, would they?
• 1:46:23
  There are no missing adventures with Leela in them, so we didn't
• 1:46:26
  get any good Leela out either. So you.
• 1:46:29
  Saw our footprints in drift right in the snow.
• 1:46:32
  Yes, that's a slow sick Luke. Your fire choice please.
• 1:46:38
  There's heaps of missing adventures covers I love, I
• 1:46:43
  guess Santa time, killing ground, dancing.
• 1:46:48
  The code I think has a really cool one as well, but I've gone
• 1:46:51
  some something completely different.
• 1:46:54
  Some reason. It's always kind of just
• 1:46:56
  captured my imagination. I just always really liked
• 1:46:59
  looking at it. It's walking to Babylon like
• 1:47:03
  Kate Allman. It is a beneath Summerfield new
• 1:47:07
  adventure. It is a kind of, I wouldn't say
• 1:47:10
  a sequel to also people, but it she does go on a mission for the
• 1:47:18
  also people. I can't remember their names.
• 1:47:21
  God. Yeah, I think it's something
• 1:47:24
  similar like that in Down as well.
• 1:47:26
  So I think it must be an ongoing thing that she sometimes does
• 1:47:29
  things for them. But yeah, I just like the
• 1:47:31
  really, really cool cover. You've got this blue kind of
• 1:47:36
  castle wall and stuff with all sorts of interesting looking art
• 1:47:40
  on it and stuff, and beneath there in archaeology mode.
• 1:47:43
  So yeah, I don't know. It's just always stuck with me
• 1:47:46
  walking to Babylon, so I'm choosing that.
• 1:47:49
  No, it's a good choice. So Joe, from the third, your
• 1:47:53
  third range, your third choice. Bernie's new adventure, and from
• 1:47:59
  a book that nobody will remember because it was dashed off
• 1:48:02
  towards the end of the range very fast and no one ever talks
• 1:48:05
  about it. But the first time I saw the
• 1:48:07
  cover, I just thought it was the most staggering cover I've ever
• 1:48:10
  seen it. The it's CGI imagery or whatever
• 1:48:14
  you call it, paint box. So it looks a little primitive
• 1:48:16
  now, but they were doing these amazing science fiction covers
• 1:48:21
  of these like huge cityscapes. Mine's the Joy Device which is.
• 1:48:26
  This. Beautiful.
• 1:48:27
  It's got like a in the background you've got like a
• 1:48:29
  cityscape and then there's a castle with a huge waterfall
• 1:48:33
  going down over it looking like it's coming at you.
• 1:48:36
  And then this little Angel figure here on a rock and it's
• 1:48:40
  just a fully realised world, which maybe was dashed off
• 1:48:44
  pretty quickly by. I just.
• 1:48:45
  I don't know, I just want to go there.
• 1:48:48
  And I can't say a higher praise for a book.
• 1:48:52
  I just. It's so beautiful.
• 1:48:53
  I loved their redesigns. I want to go there.
• 1:48:55
  Yeah, They they. When they decided to move.
• 1:48:57
  Out on a high, I think those. When they decided to make them
• 1:49:00
  full length covers again then they made them very sci-fi like.
• 1:49:04
  Return to the Fractured Planet's really cool.
• 1:49:07
  American Sewer Extrusion has a great cover as well.
• 1:49:09
  One with the Angel as well. Yeah.
• 1:49:12
  Naked Angel just rippling muscles.
• 1:49:17
  No wonder you remember that one. But this was also the one I
• 1:49:22
  couldn't find. And while I was late on the
• 1:49:24
  call, I was digging about forever.
• 1:49:26
  But I'm glad I could, because look at that, it's.
• 1:49:28
  Fun fact, my mum has read the Joy device.
• 1:49:32
  Wow. I have not read The Joy Device,
• 1:49:34
  but yeah, my mum is a big reader.
• 1:49:38
  She's not a Doctor Who fan in any way, shape or form, but she
• 1:49:41
  reads a lot of sci-fi and fantasy stuff and she just got
• 1:49:44
  it out of the library and I think she'd she'd already read
• 1:49:46
  it. And I was like, Mum, that's the
• 1:49:47
  Doctor Who book, like back in back in the 90s.
• 1:49:51
  Joe, Joe, there's a new one for the book club here.
• 1:49:53
  Come on, Andrew and his mom. I've been to the book club near
• 1:49:59
  you, Andrew's mother. I think so.
• 1:50:04
  I can't really remember. I think because I hadn't read
• 1:50:08
  it. Like there wasn't really much to
• 1:50:09
  talk about. It was just you're just like,
• 1:50:11
  oh, OK. I don't think she really
• 1:50:13
  realised that it was. Just see the the start of the
• 1:50:15
  episode now. Hello, Andrew's mother.
• 1:50:17
  Welcome to the club. And do you like buff naked
• 1:50:21
  mustly angels on the front cover of Bernie's books as much as
• 1:50:24
  your son does? Oh, you don't?
• 1:50:26
  Oh, whoops. What's that?
• 1:50:27
  Why are you? Why are you phoning him now?
• 1:50:32
  OK, and I'll go to I was tempted by Benny's.
• 1:50:34
  I was tempted by dead romance because it's got that lovely
• 1:50:37
  weird creature on the cover with that reflective face for a
• 1:50:42
  mirror. But ultimately I can't go where
• 1:50:45
  past possibly my favorite Doctor Who cover of all, and it's one
• 1:50:49
  that mentioned before we start this call the also people.
• 1:50:54
  What is more Doctor Who than that?
• 1:50:58
  The Doctor sitting in an object with a cup of tea, well, on the
• 1:51:03
  on the side there, gorgeously, with a massive bunch of
• 1:51:06
  spaceships behind him, talking to God.
• 1:51:11
  If that's not the new adventures, I don't know what
• 1:51:15
  is. Plus you dig into it and my God,
• 1:51:20
  when you read it you go, yeah, better or it should be Will, a
• 1:51:22
  world shattering, world conquering author.
• 1:51:24
  And he is. By the way, we fucking found our
• 1:51:27
  book with a good cover and it's a good book.
• 1:51:33
  So yeah, that's and it was the one on the cover of David.
• 1:51:37
  How's The Who adventures as well.
• 1:51:39
  A wise choice I'd say on that. I would have been disappointed
• 1:51:44
  if you chose the dimension writers because I'm like, that's
• 1:51:45
  the that's the easy choice, isn't it?
• 1:51:47
  Yeah, I'd say it's weirdly enough on the whole, I think
• 1:51:52
  when the virgin covers were grey they outclassed the black sheet
• 1:51:58
  covers, but when they were terrible, they were way worse
• 1:52:02
  than the world's black sheep covers.
• 1:52:04
  So they were sort of the best and the worst with black.
• 1:52:07
  I think I find it hard to compare them because they're
• 1:52:09
  just trying to do different things because the the new
• 1:52:12
  adventures are all sort of narrative images and they're
• 1:52:15
  trying to compete with that sort of like sci-fi aesthetic.
• 1:52:19
  Whereas the the the black sheep ones are more symbolic,
• 1:52:23
  particularly the 8th doctor ones.
• 1:52:25
  They don't tend to be sort of a literal depiction of something.
• 1:52:29
  So what's your? Favorite approach?
• 1:52:33
  I don't know, I think. I.
• 1:52:34
  Don't know. I think, I think they probably
• 1:52:37
  were right to change the approach because by the time the
• 1:52:41
  the BBC books were coming out, that painted style was getting
• 1:52:44
  quite dated. And it's like it's really sad to
• 1:52:48
  have lost that kind of handmade artwork that was there, but it
• 1:52:55
  did create a splash when they when they did that.
• 1:52:58
  Like I think the visuals of the black sheep stuff do really kind
• 1:53:01
  of jump off the shelf about you. So I.
• 1:53:04
  Mean literally right. Those colors jump off your shelf
• 1:53:07
  just from the spines alone. Exactly.
• 1:53:10
  So it's a, it's a, it's a cowards answer, but I like, I
• 1:53:14
  like that. I mean, I think what we can say
• 1:53:17
  is, Oh yeah, we've had a lot of fun talking about our
• 1:53:19
  favourites, but we're going to have more fun talking about the
• 1:53:22
  shit ones. Oh.
• 1:53:23
  Yes. I find I like the BBC covers
• 1:53:28
  better when they don't use the. I know I said the burning was on
• 1:53:31
  my favorite covers, but I like them more when they don't use
• 1:53:35
  blind the PDA's. This mostly and this is the
• 1:53:38
  thing I get annoyed. Annoys me with Big Finish too,
• 1:53:42
  because they're doing Photoshop's kind of covers.
• 1:53:44
  I've got nothing against those, they're fine, there's some great
• 1:53:46
  ones. But I'm sick of looking at the
• 1:53:50
  same fucking photo of Patrick Trout's face from that one
• 1:53:53
  story, or the same production shot of Peter Davison from The
• 1:53:57
  Visitation or something. I'm like use a different photo
• 1:54:00
  better yet. Well be.
• 1:54:01
  Careful. What you wish for, that's.
• 1:54:04
  What you wish for because AI is coming.
• 1:54:07
  AI Trout is coming to those coming.
• 1:54:09
  Give it a few years. He'll be holographic ones.
• 1:54:11
  Where? Yeah.
• 1:54:13
  Keep your powder dry, Luke, because you know you've got
• 1:54:16
  those choices to make coming out.
• 1:54:17
  That's right. In the next episode, actually,
• 1:54:20
  we're doing a virgin again, aren't we?
• 1:54:22
  We are doing a version again. Does anybody want to reveal
• 1:54:24
  which version we have picked? Maybe, Luke, I believe you're
• 1:54:28
  happy with this. Is it your choice, Luke?
• 1:54:32
  Might have been. I wouldn't be surprised because
• 1:54:35
  I love Kate Orman. Excuse me, I'm just reaching for
• 1:54:38
  the book. I've got behind everything.
• 1:54:40
  I'm just, oh. He's prepared.
• 1:54:42
  Mine's on my bedside, so I. Can I just tell you guys
• 1:54:44
  something like this was my go Sand space might be the only
• 1:54:48
  book I didn't buy before seeing because I was like I've heard
• 1:54:52
  this is really bad. What's the cheapest book online?
• 1:54:55
  50 bucks? Nah and then a week later I
• 1:54:57
  bought Cold Fusion. So I'm such an asshole.
• 1:54:59
  Anyway, we're reading Step piece, much to Joe's a little
• 1:55:06
  less. Good cover on the ones we've
• 1:55:07
  been talking about though. I'll tell you what.
• 1:55:09
  Boy. I love this part of the cover
• 1:55:11
  with the pyramids and the robotic bug on it.
• 1:55:16
  Yep. Was it drawn by the same man who
• 1:55:18
  did the Crooked World? It looks quite a simple.
• 1:55:21
  Ace's face doesn't look that great, but.
• 1:55:24
  I don't think I realized that it was meant to be ace until I read
• 1:55:27
  the book. She looks kind of psychotic,
• 1:55:29
  doesn't she? Which is absolutely in
• 1:55:31
  character. Just wait till you read.
• 1:55:32
  Of course, it's a new adventure, so she's brought her tits with
• 1:55:35
  her. So yes, next episode, everyone,
• 1:55:40
  we have Joe being very happy about what happens in this book.
• 1:55:45
  Oh boy, I've read Opportunity. Talk, Sophie ordered again.
• 1:55:50
  But he's great. I was.
• 1:55:53
  Isn't there a a a a a Bit at the Start by Sophie Aldridge?
• 1:55:58
  Oh, it's is it a forward or an afterward?
• 1:56:00
  I think it's a forward. Yes, because she doesn't she
• 1:56:03
  yeah, she did the afterward for time with Genesis, I think or.
• 1:56:06
  And then really twist the knife in on the next 1 then.
• 1:56:09
  Oh, you're looking forward to that?
• 1:56:14
  But yes, until then, everyone usual salute.
• 1:56:20
  Adieu, adieu. See, it's hard to end these
• 1:56:26
  bloody things. And cut it now.
• 1:56:31
  Oh, well done. Oh, thank you for doing.