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Hamster Book Club - Mad Dogs & Englishmen Redux by Paul Magrs (featuring Nathan Bottomley) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:02
  Flossie and Fitz had a dining table right by the end of the
• 0:05
  extended stage area. Aren't we lucky?
• 0:10
  She asked him. There was a kind of runway
• 0:13
  decked out in pink carpeting so that Brenda Subbie could dance
• 0:17
  her way to the front so that she will be almost amongst her
• 0:20
  audience of grateful, worshipping fans.
• 0:23
  Though we're in the limelight here, said Flossie.
• 0:27
  Look at the fake stars on the backdrop.
• 0:29
  This is real show business, this isn't it?
• 0:32
  Oh, wasn't I clever to get those good seats?
• 0:35
  Oh, it's marvelous, sighed Flossie, who had only ever
• 0:39
  dreamed of such things. And to think, she reminded
• 0:43
  herself, just yesterday I was slaving in that hellish kitchen.
• 0:48
  Oh, Mr. Brewster, why can't you be here with me instead of this
• 0:51
  surly boy? A bucket of ice and a bottle of
• 0:55
  champagne had appeared out of nowhere.
• 0:58
  Compliments. They were told of a very shady
• 1:00
  character a few tables away who nodded at them a few times from
• 1:04
  under his hat. Flossie quickly assumed that the
• 1:07
  gift to be a tribute to her and fluttered her eyelashes
• 1:10
  accordingly. Fitz thought there was probably
• 1:13
  more to it than that there usually was, but he was gagging
• 1:17
  for a drink and decided to take the risk.
• 1:20
  The two of them had visited a boutique in the late afternoon
• 1:23
  and talked themselves out for a night on the town.
• 1:26
  Fitz was in a velvet leopard skin number with snakeskin
• 1:29
  shoes. Flossie had been decked out in
• 1:32
  ruffles of silk. Now she looked like a box of
• 1:34
  chocolates and seemed entirely delighted with the effect.
• 1:39
  They sat back, drank the bubbly, lit a couple of cocktail
• 1:42
  cigarettes and then the house lights dimmed and Brenda Soubi
• 1:46
  stepped out on stage. She had smooth coffee coloured
• 1:50
  skin and hair piled high. She was a Belter, she virtually
• 1:56
  shouted every word of every song she sang.
• 2:00
  Somehow Fitz had been expecting something gentler.
• 2:03
  Something, well, a bit more easy on the ear.
• 2:10
  Goodness, said Flossie as the house lights popped on for the
• 2:14
  interval. Gives it her all, doesn't she?
• 2:18
  Flossie turned to look at the feather boa Brenda Subi had
• 2:21
  left, strewn like a throttle down a conda on the stage at the
• 2:24
  end of her last song. She rather fancied herself in a
• 2:27
  feather boa. Flossie, Fitz was saying now, in
• 2:32
  that whining, grumbling voice of his.
• 2:35
  Hush now, Fitzy boy. We're staying for the second act
• 2:38
  and that's that. I know it's not your kind of
• 2:40
  thing, but oh. She was startled because the
• 2:44
  shady looking man in the hat who had sent the now quite empty
• 2:47
  bottle of champagne to the table was standing right behind Fitz.
• 2:52
  He was standing there rather menacingly, it had to be said.
• 2:55
  He's got a gun wedged right into my rib cage.
• 2:59
  Fitz explained to her. Either that or he's extremely
• 3:03
  pleased to see me. Hamster Book Club, the Doctor
• 3:20
  Who Novel Review podcast with Joe Ford and Nathan Bottomley.
• 3:36
  Mad Dogs and Englishmen by Paul Mars.
• 3:42
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 3:45
  My name is Joe Ford and I didn't frighten him away after reading
• 3:51
  The Year of Intelligent Tigers by Kay Orman.
• 3:53
  Mr. Nathan, possibly hello. Hello, we are back in our series
• 3:59
  of episodes about Doctor Who books that feature talking
• 4:03
  animals with hands. Is this the last one?
• 4:07
  I'm sure there's probably more. You know, isn't that the go
• 4:10
  through thing with Doctor Who monsters?
• 4:11
  Isn't that the Russell Sue Davis thing?
• 4:12
  Rhinos. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:14
  Where people, rhinos. Yeah, exactly.
• 4:17
  Is it like things that people can understand, you know, we'll
• 4:19
  just give them. Yeah.
• 4:20
  Basic characteristics, Yeah, no, for.
• 4:24
  So it hasn't been too long since we did Tigers, isn't it?
• 4:29
  No, no. And, you know, we talked about
• 4:31
  how sort of weird and mythic and brilliant the idea of tigers
• 4:36
  was, and he it's sort of brilliant in another way.
• 4:41
  Well, you're you're quite a big fan of dogs, aren't you?
• 4:44
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And my dogs are sort of poodly,
• 4:47
  like they're, they're half poodle.
• 4:49
  They're poodle cross breeds. And say, some of this is very
• 4:52
  sort of familiar, but these aren't sort of particularly
• 4:55
  annoying and sort of ridiculous dogs.
• 4:59
  And we do get, and they dyed sort of bright colours as well,
• 5:03
  just to make them even sillier. And so it's doing an opposite
• 5:09
  thing to what Kay does is in intelligent Tigers, isn't it?
• 5:13
  And I think you compared it as we were sort of preparing to
• 5:18
  talk about this to space babies where you have something that
• 5:22
  shouldn't be in Doctor Who and that plenty of people are
• 5:25
  annoyed or in Doctor Who. And it's it leans into how
• 5:29
  ridiculous babies are in that case and how ridiculous sort of
• 5:34
  fluffy poodly dogs are in this case.
• 5:39
  I mean, I'm not going to name any names, right?
• 5:41
  But there's people that I know and that, you know, that I would
• 5:44
  imagine had Mad Dogs and Englishmen by Paul Mars.
• 5:47
  Sorry, I haven't mentioned the name of the book yet.
• 5:50
  Yes. If that hit the screen sort of
• 5:53
  in the early 2000s, a similar sort of reaction to space babies
• 5:58
  may have been may have happened. Yeah, I mean, it's not the sort
• 6:01
  of thing that ever really could do that because it is, you know,
• 6:06
  something that works as a book and something, it is sort of
• 6:08
  quite literary and quite expansive and you could never
• 6:11
  have crammed it into sort of 45 minutes or even an hour and a
• 6:14
  half, really. But it it has a wildly different
• 6:21
  tone. And again, I'm not super
• 6:22
  familiar with the 8th Doctor adventures.
• 6:26
  I like the fact that. You're a little snapshots,
• 6:28
  though. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:30
  Well, we've gone, we've gone from a really kind of beautiful
• 6:35
  and and sort of spare and clever science fiction novel in
• 6:44
  Intelligent Tigers. I mean, this is a romp and it's
• 6:48
  sort of a little bit Douglas Adams ish, but it's much looser
• 6:52
  than Douglas Adams in a sense. You know, Douglas Adams is all
• 6:55
  puzzle boxes and and stuff like that, and there's sort of
• 6:58
  elements of that, but this is much more odd and freewheeling
• 7:02
  and it uses the idea of time travel to kind of subvert the
• 7:10
  idea that there's a coherent narrative to anything, which I
• 7:16
  think is really interesting. So, you know, it centres on a
• 7:19
  book that could be like Lord of the Rings or could be about
• 7:24
  fluffy dogs. And you know, from scene to
• 7:29
  scene it's about different ones of those.
• 7:32
  And you know, it's the whole thing is a fight about which one
• 7:37
  of those is going to prevail, I think.
• 7:39
  Because apparently books are so powerful.
• 7:42
  And books are powerful, right? Books are so powerful that they
• 7:46
  can change the political landscape of an entire world
• 7:50
  depending on which one is published.
• 7:52
  Yeah. Yeah, and that's.
• 7:54
  When you say this is freewheeling, I don't really
• 7:57
  think, and I think this is true of a lot of Paul Marsworks.
• 8:00
  I don't think he really cares about the destination too much.
• 8:03
  It's the journey he's more interested in.
• 8:06
  And so whilst this does have a a narrative and a structure to it,
• 8:11
  and he very deliberately separates the Doctor and his
• 8:14
  companions in different places for for reasons, and then they
• 8:18
  all come together at the end. I mean, this omnipresent, the
• 8:22
  narrator of the book goes, well, here we are, the gangs back
• 8:25
  together. You know, at the end, yeah.
• 8:27
  But like, the ending of the book is basically a bloody
• 8:29
  revolution. But I think the fun of the book
• 8:32
  is where the hell are we going next in this instant book?
• 8:35
  You know, like. Yeah, yeah.
• 8:38
  And I think the only thing that limits here is the imagination,
• 8:42
  like, and he has a limitless imagination.
• 8:44
  You know, he will literally have Noël Coward pull out a pair of
• 8:47
  pinking shears at some point. Can't open the fabric of space
• 8:51
  and time and. The very fabric of time and
• 8:55
  space it is. What is it the?
• 8:57
  Weft and waft of the fabric. Of the wolf and weft, it's yeah.
• 9:05
  What I was going to say I, I, I, summer, I sort of read through
• 9:09
  my notes and then I summarised my thoughts about the book very
• 9:15
  briefly as like, let's start here.
• 9:17
  OK, So what I wrote was lovely short chapters, laughs a feeling
• 9:22
  that the universe is a gloriously bonkers thing.
• 9:26
  Precise prose pin, sharp, sensual mask and absolutely
• 9:31
  achieve in a sentence what takes most people a paragraph.
• 9:35
  Pick out any one of those points and let's discuss.
• 9:39
  Like, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 9:42
  So I mean, again, he writes really straightforwardly, but it
• 9:45
  is just just an incredible kind of deafness in the way that he
• 9:50
  chooses words. And that was the thing that we
• 9:53
  talked about, I think with with Kate's book last time, that she
• 9:58
  doesn't, it's not fancy writing, do you know what I mean?
• 10:00
  But it's just clever, well chosen words and images.
• 10:06
  And he does that as well. And the one that you've
• 10:08
  mentioned a couple of times is in conversation with me in the
• 10:12
  lead up to this is the feather boa, which is owned by Brenda
• 10:18
  Subi, which is just left on the stage.
• 10:21
  Isn't it like a strangled Anaconda?
• 10:26
  Be Katharine Hepburn, Flossy thought.
• 10:28
  Come out with something witty and beguiling and put the
• 10:31
  gangster right off his stroke. Oh, help, she whimpered instead.
• 10:37
  What are we going to do? You 2 are going to come with me,
• 10:42
  said the man in my hat, grinding out the words between perfectly
• 10:45
  square teeth. OK, OK, said Fitz.
• 10:48
  We'll come quietly. Wait.
• 10:51
  He can't do anything here. He can't shoot you here.
• 10:55
  What? Said Fitz, looking anguished.
• 10:58
  I'm right, aren't I? If you shoot my friend through
• 11:00
  his skinny little rib cage here and now, then you're going to
• 11:03
  draw an awful lot of attention to yourself, aren't you?
• 11:06
  You're going to blow his measly little guts right across the
• 11:08
  stage area and up the star spangled backdrop, and then
• 11:12
  everyone in this place is going to see exactly what you're
• 11:14
  about. They'll see what a nasty little
• 11:17
  man you are. Fitz's eyes had widened in
• 11:20
  horror. Just you sit there, Fitz.
• 11:24
  He can't threaten you in here. Everyone would see, and he
• 11:27
  wouldn't want that, whatever his funny business is.
• 11:31
  Fitz looked as if he wanted to cry.
• 11:34
  All right, Yeah, got a point? Fat lady.
• 11:38
  Fat lady, how dare you. I'm going back to my table now
• 11:44
  till the end of the show, but after that you 2 are coming with
• 11:48
  me, OK? He stepped back smartly, leaving
• 11:53
  Fitz to breathe sharply and slumped forward at their table
• 11:56
  in immense relief. Fitz, you're such a worse
• 12:01
  booger, you. Well, that wasn't a proper
• 12:05
  interval, I don't think. There wasn't even time to go and
• 12:08
  powder my nose. Your old bag.
• 12:10
  You could have had me killed, but I didn't, did I?
• 12:15
  Now be a dear and keep quiet, will you?
• 12:17
  Oh, Brenda's coming back on. Brenda Subi was indeed back on
• 12:22
  stage. The audience sighed with vast
• 12:26
  collective pleasure as she launched into her next bout of
• 12:29
  decorous yodeling. Only after a few minutes did he
• 12:34
  realize what he was listening to Brenda Subi singing.
• 12:38
  Hey, he leaned forward and whispered to Flossie.
• 12:41
  That's a bloody Beatles medley. That's right, her version of Hey
• 12:46
  Jude pisses on Paul McCartney's, doesn't it?
• 12:50
  The second-half of the concert seemed to go on for the rest of
• 12:52
  Fitzy's life. He couldn't be sure what put him
• 12:56
  under the greater emotional strain.
• 12:58
  The gunman at his back? The rapturous size of the
• 13:01
  ungainly head cook with a hysterical warbling of the
• 13:04
  superstar on stage. All in all, his poor nerves were
• 13:08
  shattered. All right, Fitzy boy, we're in
• 13:11
  terrible danger here, as you well know, mostly from that
• 13:14
  horrible man with a gun who's staring so intently at that oh
• 13:18
  so tender and vulnerable neighbor of your neck.
• 13:21
  What I suggest we do is make a break for it.
• 13:25
  But how? He wondered where the Press of
• 13:28
  the departing crowd, once the lights were up, would hold them
• 13:31
  back. Sure as anything, it would make
• 13:33
  them an easy target for the gangster type person.
• 13:37
  There's only One Direction we can run in somewhere.
• 13:39
  He'll never fire after us. She locked up, horrified, into
• 13:44
  Flossie's pasty, nodding face. Oh no.
• 13:50
  Brenda Subi had at last reached her climax.
• 13:54
  The applause was immense Now, Fitz.
• 13:58
  She grabbed his skinny arms, launched herself out of her
• 14:01
  seat, and the two of them, to the gasps and shrinks of the
• 14:05
  audience, were barrelling at top speed, full throttle, into
• 14:08
  Brenda Subi herself. In the audience, pandemonium
• 14:12
  broke out. There were screams, shouts and
• 14:15
  stamping of feet, a gigantic roar of disapproval.
• 14:19
  Story of my bleeding life, Fitz thought crossly.
• 14:23
  And above it all, he could hear shots being fired in the wings.
• 14:27
  The stagehands were going crazy. The orchestra was scattering,
• 14:31
  terrified. Then the heavy stage curtains
• 14:34
  dropped with a thump and Fitz was actually, to his immense
• 14:38
  relief, knocked out cold. And is that the?
• 14:45
  That's it, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
• 14:49
  Just because like, it's a vivid image, it's a funny word.
• 14:54
  Like Anaconda is a funny word, you know, specific, you know,
• 14:58
  it's much funnier than snake because of the specificity and
• 15:02
  just the violence of the strangled Anaconda as well.
• 15:05
  When he's spent a lot of time talking about how she sings, how
• 15:09
  Brenda sings, we go to this this concert in the 1960s, Brenda is
• 15:17
  sort of a Shirley Bassey analogue or Dionne Warwick or
• 15:22
  something like that. But she there's no subtlety.
• 15:25
  They're not torch songs. She just belts it out and
• 15:28
  there's no indication that she's bad.
• 15:30
  She's not, it's not that she's a bad singer, but she just
• 15:32
  absolutely kind of Rams at home. So the singing is really kind of
• 15:37
  strong and stuff. And so the strength down a
• 15:40
  Condor and the idea of kind of violence behind that works
• 15:44
  perfectly well. Sort of with it is an image.
• 15:46
  There's another way where the guy, the guy who makes the the
• 15:52
  little models. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:54
  Where he's breath is described as intestinal, which I just
• 15:59
  think is unbelievably gross and just brilliantly kind of chosen
• 16:06
  vocabulary. So all of vocabulary is really,
• 16:08
  it's just cleverly, cleverly done and not in a kind of look
• 16:12
  at me kind of way. I just think these are, yeah,
• 16:15
  yeah, they're just well chosen words.
• 16:17
  He's good. Here's the line.
• 16:19
  Here's the line. Well, I mean, Paul Mars has read
• 16:21
  books. If you look at his YouTube
• 16:23
  channel where he filmed, he's just surround, He's got a
• 16:26
  library in his house. He's just surrounded by piles of
• 16:28
  books. So he knows words.
• 16:30
  And yeah, he's a, he's got a lit PhD or something like that, You
• 16:34
  know, he's a clever, clever bloke.
• 16:37
  He says here about Brenda Souby. Every notable song writer of
• 16:41
  repute was gobbled up and swallowed down with massive
• 16:44
  relish. She howled and yelled and belted
• 16:47
  and shrieked. So good, isn't it?
• 16:51
  Those like just the, the rhythm of that, the fact that all of
• 16:55
  those words are one syllable long on a belted, howled and
• 16:59
  yelled and belted and shrieked. It's wonderful, you know, like
• 17:02
  the rhythm of the sentence works really well, that all of the
• 17:05
  words are different from one another, all perfectly chosen.
• 17:08
  Like he's really properly good. And I thought that that was a
• 17:12
  great scene and a great introduction to that character.
• 17:14
  And I have to say that it took me much longer than it should
• 17:18
  have to realise that she's Iris. Well, I think in the book it
• 17:23
  waits a while to reveal because because Fitz knows Iris.
• 17:26
  Fitz has met Iris before in The Blue Angel.
• 17:28
  So yeah, so got that. It's not until he sees the boss,
• 17:31
  which is the ultimate iris icon. I mean, Jesus Christ, a bus
• 17:37
  chase in the Las Vegas Vegas desert with a helicopter going
• 17:41
  after him and poodles driving that, I mean.
• 17:43
  I just. Want to see it?
• 17:44
  I want to see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:47
  They can never do it. Well look, I say, I'm going to
• 17:49
  wind it back to the start of the book where we're on a space
• 17:54
  station which looks a little bit like a bunch of fairy liquid
• 17:57
  bottles stuck together, but for some reason is posing as a hotel
• 18:02
  in Bournemouth, which is the most miserable seaside town in
• 18:05
  imaginable. No, no, the, the it's the dog
• 18:08
  station that looks like that looks like very liquid bottles
• 18:13
  glued together. But this is an old English, a
• 18:16
  horrible English hotel, like a horrible English season.
• 18:19
  Who? Stayed enough and knows, right?
• 18:20
  No. I've been to Bournemouth,
• 18:23
  actually. I've actually, I have actually
• 18:25
  been to Bournemouth. You can.
• 18:27
  Absolutely. Picture what he's got.
• 18:28
  You can see the carpet, can't you?
• 18:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, like something really
• 18:35
  unusual happens in that the rules of Doctor Who get broken
• 18:38
  because he the TARDIS lands on something and breaks it and
• 18:44
  kills someone like, and that breaks the rules of Doctor Who
• 18:49
  in a in a way. And I wasn't aware of the beard
• 18:51
  from Henrietta St. And the thing I like about the
• 18:54
  beard, that was when we first see that the Doctor has a beard
• 18:56
  and the Doctor is oddly kind of flip about killing this guy.
• 19:00
  So it's a, it's a science fiction convention, but it's a
• 19:04
  sort of academic convention. It's not like, you know, we go
• 19:09
  to a Doctor Who convention or anything.
• 19:10
  It's a convention where people who study science fiction and
• 19:15
  there's all this commentary about how stupid science fiction
• 19:17
  is or how, you know, what gives human beings the right to
• 19:21
  imagine what things are like out there and all of that.
• 19:24
  There's a sort of discussion of science fiction in the way that
• 19:26
  people react to science fiction, but yeah.
• 19:30
  And also about critics, right? You're far.
• 19:32
  Yeah, yeah, you're. Far too credulous to be a
• 19:35
  critic, says one of them. You know you have to truly learn
• 19:38
  how to despise what you analyze well.
• 19:42
  It could be. About Doctor Who fans now,
• 19:44
  couldn't it? Well, it could be about Doctor
• 19:46
  Who are fans at any any time because because there's a sense
• 19:49
  in which the the people who don't like it in a Doctor Who
• 19:55
  context where we like Doctor Who, you might have clever
• 20:00
  inside knowledge about why it's actually bad.
• 20:03
  Do you know what I mean? You, you become more serious as
• 20:07
  a person because you're able to talk about why it's bad.
• 20:11
  And in a way, I think the the opposite is kind of true.
• 20:15
  It's you know, this is a silly show.
• 20:19
  Show me why. Why it's good.
• 20:21
  Do you know what I mean? Explain what it is about it that
• 20:24
  makes it great. It's a more interesting thing.
• 20:27
  More podcasts take the other approach.
• 20:28
  Now this is a load of shit. You know we're just gonna sift
• 20:31
  out the gold. Yeah, yeah, I mean the thing
• 20:34
  with flights for entirety, we we've gone all the way through
• 20:36
  Doctor Who. We didn't have the choice to
• 20:38
  kind of detour around anything. And so we do say that things are
• 20:42
  shit, but it's really common for us to to see an episode that no
• 20:47
  one very much likes and find things that are good about it,
• 20:52
  you know, and, and so, so, so you've got this sort of science
• 20:58
  fiction convention, but the rules are being weirdly broken.
• 21:00
  And then the doctor comes out, he's got a beard.
• 21:01
  It's kind of like, why is he got a beard?
• 21:03
  And the thing about him having a beard is that interferes with
• 21:07
  the way that you visualize him for the rest of the time he gets
• 21:10
  a beard, the beard gets mentioned once more.
• 21:13
  But if you're reading this as and you're trying to imagine a
• 21:17
  Doctor Who story in your head, you have to imagine Paul Mcgahn
• 21:21
  with a beard. There's another hilarious moment
• 21:23
  where he's described as tall, which I think is, which is it's
• 21:31
  not what Paul McGann is like at all.
• 21:35
  Do you? Remember the second time the
• 21:36
  beards mentioned is when they're investigating this ghastly
• 21:39
  murder of this woman, My dislike.
• 21:41
  And he finds he finds a hair on the floor.
• 21:44
  He picks it up, strokes his beard and goes poodle.
• 21:50
  And she's called my dislike as well.
• 21:53
  My dislike me I was reading it as actually me dislike Meeda
• 21:58
  MIDAI was reading as Meeda me dislike, you know, like she's a
• 22:02
  critic who goes around saying, oh, I dislike this.
• 22:05
  You know it like it's a perfect name for a critic.
• 22:08
  And I am going to drop a few spoilers, obviously, because
• 22:10
  we're talking about a book that was published 20 odd years ago
• 22:12
  now. So the TARDIS has landed on this
• 22:16
  tiny little aphid Professor, Professor Aled Jag.
• 22:19
  He's been squashed, and then my dislike is murdered as well.
• 22:23
  Well, surprise everybody. By the end of the book, neither
• 22:26
  one of these characters is actually dead.
• 22:28
  They don't fake their own deaths, isn't that right?
• 22:31
  Because they're working for Meow.
• 22:34
  Yes, the Ministry of Ontological Wonders, which is the most
• 22:40
  Hallmarks thing he's ever written.
• 22:42
  Yeah, yeah, he's and they come back like they're I'm, I'm like
• 22:47
  imagining them as the the people who come and visit Captain Cisco
• 22:54
  in trials and tribulations, you know?
• 22:59
  All the time travel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 23:02
  Yeah, yeah. So they're.
• 23:04
  Kind of investigate. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:07
  So and and she like her academic specialty is like
• 23:12
  bastardization, isn't it? Like the way that the way that
• 23:17
  things get reimagined or wrongly imagined or something like that
• 23:20
  in. I can't remember that detail,
• 23:22
  but yeah. But given that that's what the
• 23:26
  book is about, you know, the central problem of the book is
• 23:32
  that the Lord of the Rings now has poodles in it.
• 23:38
  You know, that's a that's the thing that she she should be
• 23:40
  involved investigating. So they're both involved in
• 23:42
  that. And then and we get hurt, we get
• 23:44
  told that people from now are constantly faking their own
• 23:47
  deaths, like all the time. And so that's that's what
• 23:51
  happened. So.
• 23:52
  The Doctor, the Doctor, Fitz and Angie are are banged up and
• 23:56
  accused of the murder of Midas. Like I love that name so much.
• 24:01
  And whilst they're in the cold meat seller in the kitchens,
• 24:05
  banged up, the Doctor sort of reads the book The True History
• 24:08
  of Planets. This dreadfully pretentious read
• 24:12
  full of elves and things, and it's absolutely a pool to find
• 24:16
  that actually it's full of poodles.
• 24:18
  And in the margins, in the margins of one of the pages
• 24:23
  appears to be galactic coordinates.
• 24:25
  And so, to Angie's horror, he punches those straight into the
• 24:30
  TARDIS console and off they go to the dock station.
• 24:33
  Yeah, she says like you typed a typo into the theme because it
• 24:37
  looks like a printing error, like, and he decides to sort of
• 24:40
  print put it in to, to find the place.
• 24:43
  But so, so and so there's the book and there's the film and,
• 24:51
  and I think that the, that the, the stuff out the book is
• 24:54
  really, really super interesting because like, have you read Lord
• 24:58
  of the Rings? I have read Lord of the Rings,
• 25:02
  I've read it once and I've watched the films through once.
• 25:05
  I'm not an expert by yes. No, yeah, like I read it as a
• 25:08
  kid and I remember reading it over a long period of time.
• 25:13
  Like I remember being spoiled about how it ended and reading
• 25:16
  on the basses stuff and and like so reading as a kid and, and I
• 25:20
  also read the Narnia books as a kid and I also read quite a lot
• 25:23
  of other CS Lewis staff, including his sort of non
• 25:26
  fiction stuff and his Christian stuff and things.
• 25:30
  And and so I knew about the Inklings because I and I'd even
• 25:34
  read sort of biographies of Lewis to.
• 25:37
  Smudgelings, don't you? Yeah, the Smudgelings.
• 25:39
  So the Smudgelings are like a crapper version of the Inklings.
• 25:42
  Do you know what I mean? Like the Inklings, they come
• 25:44
  from ink, but a smudge is what happens when ink goes wrong.
• 25:48
  And so they're the smudgelings. And so you've got you've got
• 25:52
  Tyler who is Tolkien and you've got Cleavers because he's Clive
• 26:01
  Lewis. His first name is John Lewis
• 26:04
  went by Jack like his family knew him as Jack Lewis, not
• 26:08
  Clive. But Clevis and and Tyler are
• 26:11
  Lewis and Tolkien and they were part of this group.
• 26:15
  And I think that the really interesting thing about this is
• 26:21
  like, I've read Lord of the Rings, I've seen the films on
• 26:24
  Last weekend Calvin and I went and saw Lord of the Rings the
• 26:28
  musical. We're so funny not.
• 26:31
  Very good, but there were one or two things about it that I
• 26:34
  liked, but it was basically not really.
• 26:36
  Bet David isn't it Nathan? No, sadly, but but Pippin was
• 26:43
  played by a girl, which I thought was an excellent
• 26:46
  improvement on what is, after all, just an incredible sausage
• 26:50
  fest. And there's that bit like you
• 26:52
  quoted it to me, like, like Mars doesn't like Tolkien and makes
• 27:00
  fun of Lewis as well. Like Lewis is worse than
• 27:04
  Tolkien. Like Tolkien's stuff is very
• 27:05
  literary and stuff. The film he says.
• 27:09
  So this comes out 2002, This comes out the year after
• 27:14
  Fellowship of the Rings came out in 2001, right?
• 27:17
  The film and and the film, I think the film does as good a
• 27:23
  job as you could expect of doing Lord of the Rings.
• 27:26
  But it is sort of monsters and and stuff and much less kind of,
• 27:34
  you know, linguistics and and sort of ancient languages and
• 27:39
  things, you know, like it's. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:41
  And like, I think it's pretty good.
• 27:43
  I'm not a big fan of those films and I can imagine myself never
• 27:46
  reading Lord of the Rings again, to be honest.
• 27:48
  But but I loved it and I know it quite well.
• 27:52
  But his assessment of it. Did you do you have that?
• 27:54
  I have it right. Here it comes.
• 27:56
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:57
  I can't really do a very good Noël Coward impression.
• 27:59
  And trust me, we'll get to Noël Coward.
• 28:02
  But basically all this, all these ghastly elves and troll
• 28:05
  was running about the place with nothing on their hairy feet.
• 28:08
  Oh, it was dreadful and not at all to my taste.
• 28:11
  I think this is literally Paul Miles talking.
• 28:13
  No wit, no glamour, just loads of not very realistic people
• 28:17
  talking a ridiculously ornate and overblown sentences about
• 28:21
  prophecies and quests, all of them invincing a very dubious
• 28:25
  religiosity. Yeah, yeah, I think that's
• 28:27
  actually, that's actually a pretty fair critique of Lord of
• 28:31
  the Rings. And all I can think of is Hugo
• 28:33
  fucking Weaving playing L wrong in those films where that's all
• 28:38
  he does. Hugo Weaving is actually sort of
• 28:41
  funny and a bit naughty and he is so boring in those films and
• 28:45
  all he does is declaim, you know, like in this sort of
• 28:50
  tedious way. And so like I think there is a
• 28:52
  lot of wit and fun to be had actually in the books.
• 28:55
  But that's, you know, that assessment of them doesn't
• 28:59
  strike me as particularly unfair, in fact.
• 29:02
  Do you think Mars is literally saying these would be better
• 29:05
  books if they were all about pink poodles?
• 29:08
  No, but I think he is saying there'd be better books if they
• 29:10
  were more fun. It's the no wheat or glamorous.
• 29:14
  The problem is, you know, they're not actually that much
• 29:16
  fun. And and then Lewis is worse than
• 29:20
  that. Do you know what I mean?
• 29:21
  Because he writes fantasy, high fantasy stories with talking
• 29:23
  Beavers and Father Christmas and stuff and then all all of the
• 29:27
  sort of Christianity and things. And his stuff is much less, you
• 29:31
  know, Tolkien's imagine this world that sort of self
• 29:35
  consistent in all of these ways and has a long history and
• 29:39
  stuff. Whereas Lewis is just pulling
• 29:40
  this stuff out of his ass in all sorts of ways as well.
• 29:43
  And like, like, again, people who enjoyed Narnia as kids were
• 29:48
  perhaps not wrong to do that. But, you know, his stuff is
• 29:52
  vastly inferior, I think, to Tolkien and and.
• 29:55
  You know, I mean, I send you a message where I said let's CS
• 29:59
  Lewis and Jr. Tolkien more Nick Briggs and
• 30:02
  Paul Mars. With Paul Mars going, you have
• 30:04
  to craft your work, you know, craft it and try take the effort
• 30:08
  to put out something really good.
• 30:10
  And then there's Briggs going. No, no, no.
• 30:12
  Knock him out, you know, get another story out on the shelf
• 30:15
  and keep going with the next idea.
• 30:17
  I mean, yeah. The comparison, yeah.
• 30:21
  Yeah. So I thought all of that stuff
• 30:22
  was really super interesting. But, you know, like, it
• 30:25
  recognizes the massive importance of Lord of the Rings
• 30:28
  as a book. Yeah, and, you know, as a target
• 30:32
  for kind of subversion and something that can be the sort
• 30:35
  of main kind of Mac Guffin of of his novel.
• 30:38
  And it's surprising how much time and effort goes into like
• 30:41
  portraying them. I thought the relationship
• 30:43
  between Enid and and Tyler was really good.
• 30:47
  I thought she was a really interesting character.
• 30:49
  Like all of that stuff was really great.
• 30:51
  He. Goes one step.
• 30:52
  I mean, I mean, Mehta doesn't cover this book, does it?
• 30:55
  But he goes one step further. That's right is he has the
• 31:00
  doctor reading CS Lewis's version of Iris Wild Time as a
• 31:06
  kids book and has the doctor commenting on Paul Mars's work
• 31:11
  by saying oh she sounds like such an old meddler.
• 31:13
  What a selfish old woman involving herself in everyone's
• 31:16
  adventures, taking no responsibility whatsoever.
• 31:19
  She drugs bonkers. It's really funny actually,
• 31:22
  because I didn't realise at the time, and I should have, that A
• 31:27
  can't possibly remember her. And yeah, so yeah, I originally
• 31:32
  thought because he writes back to her and says cut the, cut the
• 31:35
  book, cut the old woman, the aunt and the flying bus or
• 31:40
  whatever and replace them with like a chest of drawers or
• 31:43
  something. And which is awesome, but I
• 31:52
  hadn't realized that of course he doesn't know who she is and
• 31:56
  doesn't remember his previous adventures with her at all.
• 31:59
  And that's kind of telling. So you're right, it is sort of
• 32:01
  commenting on like it's Lewis''s response, it's the doctor's
• 32:08
  response to to Mars's work, I think.
• 32:11
  Which is rather wonderful. So.
• 32:14
  We, we then head to the dog station where things get a
• 32:19
  little bit kinky for a while, where naturally, because they're
• 32:23
  dogs and these wretched people, the doctor, Fitz and Angie and
• 32:27
  Flossie the cook, of course, who's come along from from the
• 32:30
  kitchens to join them on their great adventures.
• 32:34
  And just a quick word for Flossie.
• 32:36
  I mean, I just love characters that are this excitable and so
• 32:39
  happy to be on an adventure. You can't help but love these
• 32:42
  people, can you? Yeah, I don't think we would
• 32:44
  have done the kind of physical description of Flossy because
• 32:47
  there's a lot of. Although she's very big, yes.
• 32:50
  She's very big and I don't think we would do that now, but she's
• 32:55
  incredibly lovable. Like she's super likable and fun
• 32:59
  and sweet. You always need someone with
• 33:02
  fits to tell fits, for God's sakes, will you pull yourself
• 33:05
  together, please? And, and she, Absolutely.
• 33:07
  She's paired up with him, and she's all full of enthusiasm for
• 33:10
  the assignment the Doctor's given them, and Fitz is
• 33:13
  obviously just slouching around wanting to gamble.
• 33:15
  Anyway, we will get there. We're on the dog station, and
• 33:19
  poor Angie is stuck in the mortifying position of having
• 33:23
  all of her clothes removed alongside the Doctor and Fitz,
• 33:27
  shoved in a dog pen and given a squeaky toy and a leash.
• 33:31
  Now we're doing is this Doctor Who does furries?
• 33:37
  So yeah, I actually thought it was my first sort of laugh out
• 33:40
  loud moment because we have had the dogs mentioned by these
• 33:43
  points. We're already aware of them.
• 33:45
  This isn't us seeing them for the first time, but it is the
• 33:49
  first time we I realised how small they were.
• 33:52
  And so we've had these interactions between the dogs so
• 33:55
  that we've got the two characters, Char and Brisa,
• 33:59
  Yeah, who introduced. And we hear about their
• 34:02
  relationship and we hear about, you know, what their job is and
• 34:05
  all of that sort of thing. But I hadn't realized that they
• 34:08
  were like tiny little dogs, that they were like, you know,
• 34:11
  Jasper, my little dog Jasper's size.
• 34:14
  And so when so they they be. And that's when we meet the
• 34:18
  villain as well, isn't it? That's when we meet the the
• 34:22
  villain who which we don't realise.
• 34:24
  Princess Margaret. Princess Margaret.
• 34:29
  She's sort of like a, a, a, a, a royal that's been forgotten a
• 34:34
  little bit, you know, and was. Yeah, yeah.
• 34:37
  And so we discover, and this is sort of super important because
• 34:40
  it's the kind of central political thing that's happening
• 34:43
  on Dog World, which is that her mother used to be the emperor
• 34:47
  and she was killed by the current emperor and she thinks
• 34:52
  that she should be the emperor. And it's so we tend to side with
• 34:57
  her a bit, I think. Well, for a while, yes.
• 35:01
  Initially, I mean. She's brought in at gunpoint,
• 35:04
  isn't she? So she's absolutely painted as
• 35:07
  the victim. And we got these two, these two
• 35:09
  lovely people that work on the dog station, these two lovely
• 35:11
  poodles, Char and Fritter, One of them which is recording
• 35:15
  subversive, subversive recordings that are coming
• 35:19
  through such as Digby the Great Dog on the world and what was.
• 35:24
  Beethoven Second. Beethoven Second.
• 35:27
  Basically the idea is this is sort of porn on the dog worlds.
• 35:29
  Yeah, that's porn on the dog. So they're a little bit like the
• 35:34
  Grebulons, I think in that last Hitchhiker's book where they're
• 35:40
  monitoring Earth's transmissions and.
• 35:44
  And yeah, he's videotaping because they have VHSS on Dog
• 35:48
  World as well, because. He's basically the black market
• 35:50
  of dog porn isn't. It yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 35:52
  And so and so he it's like things about dogs where dogs
• 35:56
  have pets and stuff like that. So that's that's pornography,
• 36:02
  yeah. I mean, I was reading these pics
• 36:04
  and going, yeah, I could see maybe why those very serious gun
• 36:07
  Doctor Who fans were having a bit of an issue this at this
• 36:10
  point. That is awesome because it's an
• 36:12
  important plot point. It's not just colour, it's not
• 36:14
  just a joke because it is how the the film gets out, right?
• 36:21
  Because because the Doctor's been reading the book and we
• 36:24
  have this sort of weird situation where the book is
• 36:27
  already like is, is is already a, a, you know, one of two
• 36:38
  possible things. Do you know what I mean?
• 36:40
  There's the Doctor's memory of the book and then the book, the
• 36:43
  version that he's just read. We don't know what we're going
• 36:45
  to see. It's a film that's made in 2008
• 36:49
  of the true history of planets. So none of them know, you know,
• 36:53
  it hasn't happened yet at this point.
• 36:56
  And then it ends up being the dog version, but it ends up
• 36:58
  being of a dog version, which is about the, you know, you know,
• 37:06
  Princess Margaret's own history and stuff like that.
• 37:10
  So then, and I think quite cleverly, he then splits up all
• 37:14
  of the characters, right? So they want to go and and see
• 37:18
  all the people responsible for making this film to see who is
• 37:23
  perverting the course of history and turning this film, this Lord
• 37:27
  of the Rings into poodle mania or poodle to the blood
• 37:31
  revolution or whatever you want to call it.
• 37:34
  So and we we start doing, and I think it's the best way of doing
• 37:39
  it, an ABC structure to the book.
• 37:42
  You've got Fitz and Flossie in Las Vegas.
• 37:46
  They've gone to see Brenda Subbie, who sang the theme tune
• 37:50
  to the movie. And the second is you've got
• 37:53
  Angie in Las Vegas. She's no Angie in Hollywood.
• 37:56
  Sorry. She's there to see Ron Von
• 37:59
  Arman, who did the stop motion special effects for the movie.
• 38:03
  Or did he? Let's find out.
• 38:05
  Yeah. And then the third plot is the
• 38:07
  doctor goes to see Clevis and the smudglings, and I forgot his
• 38:13
  name. Reginald Tyler Tyler.
• 38:15
  And just to see who's perverting the actual writing of this book.
• 38:18
  So it's the. In the 40s, right during the
• 38:20
  Second World War. The song, the special effects
• 38:22
  and and I really like that as well because, you know, you
• 38:25
  know, you and me talk a lot about the nuts and bolts of how
• 38:28
  TV and movies are put together. So I loved all of this
• 38:31
  explanation or exploration of all the various ways that a film
• 38:35
  is made. John Fuchsias thought he was
• 38:38
  alone that night. Alone and safe in his moguls
• 38:41
  ranch, far from prying eyes. Safe from the lenses and the
• 38:46
  gossips of the world. The world's most famous
• 38:49
  director, relaxing at home the way he knew best, free from
• 38:53
  wagging tongues and fan speculation about his newest
• 38:56
  projects. In his basement, he had the
• 39:00
  lights down low and he was lying full length on a pasteboard
• 39:03
  model of the surface of a world of ice.
• 39:07
  He was absolutely in that world. His whole concentration was
• 39:12
  wrapped up in believing that this planet's miniature
• 39:14
  landscape was real. Across that scale model came
• 39:18
  marching hundreds of tiny men, stiff jointed, plastic limbed,
• 39:23
  and through the skies of that planet roved spaceships of all
• 39:26
  descriptions. This was the necessary work of
• 39:30
  imagining. It was the earliest stages of
• 39:33
  invention. It might have looked like he was
• 39:36
  playing with the merchandise from his first movie in the
• 39:38
  trilogy, but actually he was plotting out the manoeuvres for
• 39:41
  the next one. Oh, what wouldn't his millions
• 39:45
  of fans worldwide give for just a glimpse?
• 39:47
  The merest glimpse of what the great man was playing at?
• 39:51
  He was a short, stocky man in a short sleeved Plaid shirt and
• 39:55
  faded jeans. Immense fame hadn't changed him
• 39:58
  one bit, he was still just the same guy underneath.
• 40:03
  So caught up in plotting the next chapter of the myth was he
• 40:06
  that he completely forgot he had buzzed in visitors for the
• 40:09
  night. And so caught up in his new
• 40:11
  story was he, he never heard the door at the top of the basement
• 40:15
  stairs creak open just a tad. He never heard von Arnhem's tiny
• 40:19
  army at all. The first he knew about the
• 40:22
  disturbance was when Captain Wilberforce in his hands, turned
• 40:26
  to look over his shoulder and saw the two foot tall 5 headed
• 40:29
  Hydra galumphing up the pasteboard valley.
• 40:33
  John Fuchsias watched an amazed horror as one of those
• 40:36
  glistening savage beaks darted forward and bit off the head of
• 40:39
  the hero of the hour. He hadn't quite worked out what
• 40:42
  was happening yet, but whatever it was, it had ruined his work.
• 40:47
  He blinked and saw that in addition to the horrific Hydra
• 40:50
  thing, there were bad creatures, flying zombies and pterodactyls
• 40:53
  swarming about his head. An army of skeletons with swords
• 40:57
  came marching across his world. A brontosaurus, 3 gorgons, and
• 41:02
  several Yeti was storming the stronghold of his heroes.
• 41:06
  What's happening? Fuchsias raged as if he expected
• 41:09
  personal assistance to come running out of the shadows.
• 41:13
  Instead came the deranged and wild herd, Ron von Arnim
• 41:17
  brandishing his rifle on the cellar stairs.
• 41:20
  Good evening, John. I guess you could say we've come
• 41:24
  round to. Play well.
• 41:31
  Where do you want to go first? Las Vegas.
• 41:34
  Yeah, I thought Las Vegas was pretty great, I have to say.
• 41:37
  And we've already talked about the concert, the Brenda Subi
• 41:41
  concert, and I am going in, not tomorrow night, but the night
• 41:45
  after. I'm actually going to see Dionne
• 41:47
  Warwick in concert. Yeah.
• 41:50
  Yeah. And like, so she starts in the
• 41:52
  1960s, doesn't she? Dionne Warwick, Like, she's 85
• 41:56
  or something at the moment. It's her one last time tour and,
• 42:01
  you know, shoot. Yeah.
• 42:02
  I'm going to see Dionne Warwick in the summer because after
• 42:05
  she's finished in Australia. She's going to yeah, yeah, it's
• 42:09
  so, yeah. I mean, she's so great.
• 42:12
  And it's really funny, Calvin. I just wouldn't have expected my
• 42:15
  husband to kind of even think of that.
• 42:17
  Like, I didn't think he would even know who Dionne Warwick
• 42:20
  was. But I really loved Dionne
• 42:22
  Warwick. I'm super excited by it.
• 42:24
  And that whole Vegas thing is like, it's such a, you know,
• 42:27
  like a gift that, that, that place.
• 42:30
  And it works really well for Fitz.
• 42:32
  Fitz is from the 60s. This is like 61 or something
• 42:36
  like that. Yeah.
• 42:39
  And and he wants to gamble. And Flossy's really enjoying
• 42:45
  herself. And Flossy gets a lovely frock
• 42:47
  for the concert. And he gets a sort of a terrible
• 42:50
  leopard print suit. And like, he works really well.
• 42:53
  I think in that context, it's funny having my two versions of
• 42:59
  Fitz and Angie, the only two books I've read with them in
• 43:03
  Tigers. And the obviously, you know,
• 43:11
  there's a little bit more interiority to the characters in
• 43:15
  Tigers. I mean, there's far less going
• 43:17
  on in Tigers, isn't there, than there is in this.
• 43:19
  This is. Packed.
• 43:20
  Yeah. Incident and I don't think yeah
• 43:23
  like there is good character moments in this like we'll get
• 43:26
  to it because when we go to Hollywood there's a lovely bit
• 43:28
  with Angie where she's in the bar on her own and we we do get
• 43:32
  to you know yeah yeah our thoughts about being back on
• 43:34
  earth but really this book isn't doing that is it at.
• 43:37
  All no, no, no, no, no. But so all of that sort of stuff
• 43:42
  was fun. And then it ends up with the bus
• 43:43
  chase and all of that sort of thing.
• 43:44
  But it is the giant appearance. The big moment is the appearance
• 43:48
  of Noël Coward, isn't it? So after the thing and and he's
• 43:52
  just decided to drop around and it's before we know that Brenda
• 43:57
  is Iris and even suspect that and there's all these.
• 44:02
  Undesirables. You seem to be hanging out with
• 44:05
  Brenda. No, I thought that the best bit
• 44:07
  was that like he arrives and he sees Fitz and we're waiting for
• 44:13
  him to say something incredibly witty and knockout ish and we
• 44:18
  switched chapters and we never get to hear it.
• 44:21
  But we know it was devastating. With well, there's one moment as
• 44:26
  well later on where he sees all these monsters and he just goes,
• 44:29
  goodness, just terrific. My favorite, my favorite Dolcal
• 44:36
  moment and the whole book was in the climax.
• 44:38
  We're headed towards the climax and he goes, well, of course,
• 44:41
  you know, of course we must stop for lunch and they yes, and
• 44:45
  they'll just sit and have eggs. You know, it's wonderful so.
• 44:48
  No, the other thing that sort of struck me is that of course Noël
• 44:51
  Coward leaves till what, 72 or something like that?
• 44:58
  And so he's around for the 1st 10 years of Doctor Who and may
• 45:03
  even be aware of it. And isn't there some terrible
• 45:07
  story about him and Bonnie Langford?
• 45:14
  Well, I only heard that from your podcast.
• 45:18
  Yeah, OK. OK.
• 45:19
  So. Would you care to regalos with
• 45:21
  the story? Well, I'm just checking.
• 45:24
  I'm just checking whether I'm right about this or not.
• 45:28
  But the way that I remember the story going is she was in, she
• 45:36
  was a child actor obviously, as everyone in England knows more
• 45:40
  than I do. And she is in a play that Noël
• 45:44
  Coward goes to see. And the the play had a horse on
• 45:51
  stage and the horse shat on the stage during the production.
• 45:57
  And Noel Coward's response and it's talking about Dame Body
• 46:01
  Langford, right? If they'd stuffed the child's
• 46:04
  head up the horse's ass, they would have solved 2 problems at
• 46:08
  once. I mean, she was unbearable as a
• 46:14
  child. Let's not lie about that.
• 46:16
  He's not wrong. She's like violent Elizabeth
• 46:20
  Bod, you know, like that's why a generation of children hated
• 46:23
  her. But I mean, he does the trick
• 46:26
  that because Noël Coward, like is incredible here and
• 46:31
  wonderful. He's really great.
• 46:33
  And, you know, like it hadn't it, you know, like, I obviously
• 46:36
  knew that Mad Dogs and Englishmen is a reference to a
• 46:38
  song by Noël Coward. And Noël Coward writes hundreds,
• 46:41
  like literally hundreds of songs during his time.
• 46:44
  He does go to Vegas and perform at Vegas.
• 46:47
  That is a thing that he does do. And, and, and in Dirk Gently's
• 46:55
  Holistic Detective Agency, there's a science fiction,
• 47:00
  science fiction explanation for how come Bach is so great.
• 47:06
  Remember the, the, the, that they, that they, they go to a
• 47:10
  satellite which has this incredible music playing and
• 47:13
  they rescue the music and they create this person called Bark
• 47:16
  and they inject him into the timeline.
• 47:19
  And there's one point where they say no one will ever believe
• 47:22
  that a single person could have produced this much music, but,
• 47:26
  you know, like, whatever. And, And so that's the kind of
• 47:29
  solution. And they do that with cow, with
• 47:31
  Coward. Do you know what I mean?
• 47:33
  Like, how is Noël Coward able to be so incredible?
• 47:36
  You know, with all the plays that he wrote?
• 47:38
  There's a reference to Blithe Spirit.
• 47:40
  Remember, the doctor says you can't go keep changing literary
• 47:43
  works. You can't put dolphins in Blithe
• 47:45
  Spirit. And he says, I wrote Blithe
• 47:47
  Spirit. I can put dolphins in it if I
• 47:48
  want. You know, like, that's how it
• 47:51
  comes. She is because he can travel
• 47:52
  through time and space because he has pinking shoes that allow
• 47:55
  him to, to, to cut the very fabric of time and space all
• 48:03
  capitalized, which everything is so brilliant because fabric.
• 48:08
  Do you know what I mean? Like it's a metaphor.
• 48:09
  It's an obvious metaphor that we use all the time and it just
• 48:12
  that it's the very fabric whenever it's mentioned, it's
• 48:15
  the very fabric of time and space.
• 48:17
  I just think it's so great because that's how we talk.
• 48:20
  There's a. Description.
• 48:23
  Where is it he goes? These are what I use to slash
• 48:26
  open from the very fabric of time and space.
• 48:29
  As fabric goes, it cuts the slices open rather beautifully.
• 48:35
  And then there's an image. Oh boy.
• 48:38
  I mean, I would love to see it visualized, but it's in my head.
• 48:41
  It's in here of millions of Noel cowards walking up and down the
• 48:46
  various strands of time and space, and they've all got
• 48:50
  pinking shears and poodles trotting behind them.
• 48:53
  I mean, it's mad, isn't it? I love it.
• 48:56
  Yeah, it's, it's great, isn't it?
• 48:57
  And he, he kind of just, he sort of looks down on the doctors,
• 49:00
  you know, the time vortex as a metaphor.
• 49:03
  That's a vastly impure, inferior metaphor.
• 49:07
  And so, so that's, that's the sort of craziness that's
• 49:11
  occurring and there's lots of sort of running in and out of
• 49:13
  rooms in the hotel and a high speed chase into the desert and
• 49:17
  there's lots happening. It's super, super fun.
• 49:20
  Then in Hollywood. So that's where we've got Angie
• 49:23
  now. Angie's in Hollywood having a
• 49:25
  nice drink in a bar and deciding to herself.
• 49:29
  Do you know what, for once he's done All right, this is actually
• 49:31
  somewhere I might choose to go if I actually had a choice where
• 49:35
  the TARDIS was taking me. And she does have a thought for
• 49:38
  a second. You know, he's been trying to
• 49:39
  get me home for ages. And when you start to.
• 49:43
  Drop us all off in the right place, no problem.
• 49:46
  Maybe he doesn't want me to go. All right, I'll park that.
• 49:48
  We'll come back to it later. She's with Frita.
• 49:53
  She's with Frita and and meets this sort of ghastly, drunken
• 49:58
  old man at the bar with, what did you say, intestinal breath?
• 50:00
  Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.
• 50:03
  It turns out he is one of those fabulous special effects man.
• 50:07
  Now, is this Ray Harry Howson? Well, I thought Ray, Harry
• 50:10
  Howson, like, I don't know. I thought he was the director.
• 50:13
  I was going to look him up, but he's the obvious person to think
• 50:15
  of and remember that. So this is John.
• 50:19
  John Fucus. I don't even know how to say it.
• 50:22
  I just think he's like fuck. You, Lucas.
• 50:24
  Do you know what I mean? F you Lucas.
• 50:26
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but I think F you
• 50:29
  Lucas, do you know what I mean? Like Fucus.
• 50:35
  Ron gasped. Fuchsius, What are they?
• 50:39
  Little robots? How did you do this?
• 50:41
  How can they live like this? Shut up, Von Arnim snapped.
• 50:47
  You think I'd give away my secrets to the likes of you
• 50:50
  after what you've done to me? Fuchsia struggled to remain
• 50:54
  upright as the menagerie snapped at his sneak at heels.
• 50:58
  What are you talking about, Ron? What have I done to you?
• 51:03
  Jeered Ron and roughly forced the director to sit in a wooden
• 51:06
  chair. Ron made a savage cutting
• 51:09
  gesture in the air and all his hideous familiars fell silent as
• 51:13
  one. I mean it, Ron.
• 51:16
  What have I done to you? Why are you so mad at me?
• 51:19
  I employed you when nobody else in the industry would, when
• 51:23
  you're supposed to be washed up and finished.
• 51:26
  Shut up. A dribble of blood ran down
• 51:29
  Fuchsias face, there was real terror in his eyes, even he
• 51:34
  could see how real this was becoming.
• 51:37
  Ron, Ron, you know I love your work.
• 51:41
  All those old monster movies, weather exactly what inspired me
• 51:44
  in the 1st place and set me off on my own career of making movie
• 51:48
  magic and dreams come true. Ron jeered.
• 51:53
  Yeah, you set off to become one of the most successful movie
• 51:56
  makers of all time. You took my genre and you bought
• 52:00
  it up wholesale and traded it in for a life I can only dream of.
• 52:04
  And then you spit on me. Spit on you how?
• 52:09
  I gave you a contract. You're designing poodles for me,
• 52:13
  You're meant to be constructing them now.
• 52:16
  Fuchsias could see that Ron was clearly unhinged and that there
• 52:19
  was to be no reasoning with him. Fuchsias eyes widened as he
• 52:23
  looked across to the open plan lounge area and saw Angie
• 52:27
  standing there with a poodle and what appeared to be Noël Coward.
• 52:32
  Oh yeah? Ron said.
• 52:34
  I brought some other friends too.
• 52:42
  And so he he, I mean, in the original, and I don't know
• 52:46
  whether it survived the various editions that have been out
• 52:49
  since then, but in the original Star Wars, which is 1978, which
• 52:54
  is when this is said, this sequence, there are stop motion
• 53:01
  monsters, but they're. How?
• 53:03
  Old is, it is. It chess people.
• 53:05
  On the chess game, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 53:08
  So you've got the little stop motion aliens on the chess
• 53:10
  thing. Most of the aliens.
• 53:12
  I mean, there's much fewer aliens in Star Wars than there
• 53:14
  are in the later films. And.
• 53:15
  And mostly it's puppetry. I think I confess something.
• 53:19
  Go with I. Fucking love stop motion
• 53:23
  animation. That's adorable.
• 53:24
  You know, and there is one point where he describes, because at
• 53:28
  some point in this sequence, all of Ron von Armands, Mad Gorgons
• 53:33
  and minor tours and dinosaurs and skeletons with Shields and
• 53:37
  swords. That was the thing that sold it
• 53:39
  for me because I can see those skeletons moving.
• 53:42
  For Well, that is Ray Harry Harrison, isn't it?
• 53:44
  What's? The movie I can't remember.
• 53:47
  I don't know and but I just to associate him with, you know,
• 53:50
  versions of the of Greek myths and stuff like that, monsters
• 53:54
  from Greek. But you know, what it is about
• 53:56
  the motion stuff that really creeps me out more than CGI is
• 54:00
  the fact that it is sort of juddery.
• 54:02
  None of them move naturally. It's so weird.
• 54:06
  So Doctor Who does it a bit, doesn't it?
• 54:08
  Like the Scarasan is stop motion and it's one of the only times
• 54:12
  that Doctor Who kind of does it. And King Kong, he's responsible
• 54:15
  for King Kong. Is this right?
• 54:17
  Oh, in the book, yes, he is. No in in real life, no, no,
• 54:24
  there's someone else. But there's there's stop motion
• 54:26
  as early as 1930s with King Kong.
• 54:29
  And so look at these, I'm just looking at pictures of his and
• 54:34
  I've seen some of this footage and stuff and like all of that
• 54:37
  super interesting. And so they fuck up, don't they?
• 54:40
  Like they don't do a good job of this because they actually have
• 54:43
  the video tape. And so they show him the film
• 54:46
  and it's all CG and like, because I think the film is
• 54:49
  originally going to come out earlier, you know, like it
• 54:52
  wasn't going to take. I mean, Can you imagine 20?
• 54:54
  Years. Special effects man that year,
• 54:58
  the future of special effects. Yeah, that was the one.
• 55:01
  Yeah. And he's heard about computer
• 55:03
  generated imagery, but no one really knew about it in 1978.
• 55:06
  And I was there. I used a computer in 1978.
• 55:09
  They were really broken. Like no one could have imagined
• 55:12
  in a million years that you could have produced imagery like
• 55:16
  what we get now or what we even got in 2008, to be fair.
• 55:22
  Yeah. And so that like, they fuck up
• 55:25
  and he, he realises that he's, he's, you know, not going to be
• 55:31
  in the film. He doesn't contribute to the
• 55:33
  film. That's not him.
• 55:35
  And then Freda at the end of a chapter just accidentally talks
• 55:40
  in a moment. I just think you say, really?
• 55:42
  And that's what we go out on. At the end of the chapter, we
• 55:44
  switch to another plot. And I thought that was really
• 55:46
  funny. I mean, a lot of this book is
• 55:50
  explained right? He does tick all the boxes at
• 55:52
  the end, but the one thing he really doesn't explain is how on
• 55:55
  earth this ghastly army of stop motion figures suddenly comes to
• 56:01
  life and we're off to George looks.
• 56:04
  Sorry, John Newcast is John fuckers.
• 56:07
  Whatever he's. Wanna call ranch?
• 56:09
  We're off to his ranch and it's secondly right.
• 56:12
  He's described as being in a a Plaid shirt and jeans.
• 56:17
  Yeah, in all those pictures. No, he's in a ranch.
• 56:19
  Remember, he lives in a ranch, which is where he sort of
• 56:21
  leaves. So as if.
• 56:22
  You know he's there, he's there. Playing with his toys isn't.
• 56:25
  He yeah, yeah, yes. Like like Steven Moffett in that
• 56:30
  Doctor Who's booth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 56:32
  Well, he's, he's, he's making the characters do the thing.
• 56:36
  They're on hot. Like he's created a a landscape
• 56:39
  of snow for the characters from his first film to kind of
• 56:43
  interact on. He's playing with these stop
• 56:45
  motion figures. And again, the this is pretty
• 56:48
  dismissive of large science fiction blockbusters.
• 56:51
  At the end of it. It's kind of like also that's
• 56:54
  the end of the large science fiction blockbuster then I
• 56:56
  guess. And you kind of think, well,
• 56:59
  yeah, they're not great, are they?
• 57:01
  You know, Yeah. But I do love, I just love those
• 57:07
  minosaurs and dinosaurs and. Gorgons and bat creatures with
• 57:12
  tentacles. And you can just see them all
• 57:14
  judgering into the room, a bit like the toys coming in in last
• 57:17
  Christmas, you know, coming into the room and basically attacking
• 57:21
  George Lucas for selling out to CGI.
• 57:25
  And I know, well, you and me have had many discussions about
• 57:28
  physical effects and CGIS. Like, we love a puppet, don't
• 57:31
  we? Yeah.
• 57:32
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and CGI does date
• 57:37
  like what looked revolutionary in the 90s.
• 57:39
  Well, I mean puppets date as well.
• 57:41
  I mean we watched Doctor Who. There was no CGI in classic
• 57:44
  Doctor Who and it's dated like 5, you know?
• 57:46
  I don't think they lose their charm though, you know, in the.
• 57:48
  Way. Well, yeah, I'm not sure that's
• 57:51
  an objective thing. I think that's more to do with
• 57:52
  our experiences of them. They don't lose their charm for
• 57:55
  us. Carol for the first time this
• 57:59
  president and it still holds up all right.
• 58:03
  So yes Angie's in a bit of a pickle because poor the poor
• 58:08
  director of this movie well is about to die horribly by Ron von
• 58:13
  Orman stop motion army and then the third plot is and this is
• 58:19
  all happening at the same time. There's there's plenty of
• 58:21
  incident here. In the third plot, the doctor
• 58:24
  visits original Tyler and Clevis and the Smudgelings, ingratiates
• 58:29
  himself with Tyler's wife Enid, and discovers that this sinister
• 58:35
  necromancer, Freya, has ingratiated himself into the
• 58:39
  Smudgelings and and so he's off to investigate why on earth is
• 58:43
  occurring there. And in a truly ghastly moment of
• 58:47
  horror, some horrible spell is going on in the Smudgelings
• 58:52
  meetings. And Freya, well, he melts
• 58:56
  Tyler's face, doesn't he? He shuts his hands in and it's
• 59:00
  literally his skin is described. And we talk about using the
• 59:03
  right words as melting around his hands like hot butter on a
• 59:08
  stove. Yeah, yeah.
• 59:10
  And again, like, I'm not quite sure what was going on there.
• 59:13
  And it turns out that it's something that the dogs can do
• 59:15
  on Dog World or something, and it gets done again at the climax
• 59:19
  of the thing and like he's communicating with the Princess
• 59:23
  or something. Is that right?
• 59:24
  Like the Princess appears, it's, it's not very clear.
• 59:27
  And that is one thing that I don't think kind of gets
• 59:30
  resolved, but like, who cares? And, and, and it's during that
• 59:35
  time when he's recuperating from that, that he sort of properly
• 59:39
  imagines this new version of the true, the true story.
• 59:44
  It's called the true story, isn't it?
• 59:47
  The true history, the true history of planets.
• 59:50
  It's a brilliant title for something that's so contested.
• 59:52
  You know, where there is 2 versions of it.
• 59:55
  So the true history of planets is, is sort of really thought of
• 59:58
  while while that kind of happens.
• 1:00:00
  And I was waiting for Freer to be the master and I spent my
• 1:00:04
  time kind of going William Freer, you know, is it an
• 1:00:07
  anagram? Is there something?
• 1:00:09
  And then there's a moment. Where Freer you may have
• 1:00:12
  remembered, it might be somewhere in the back of your
• 1:00:14
  head. In First Frontier, Freer is the
• 1:00:17
  name of the master. In that book.
• 1:00:19
  It's it's a David. Amy Adventure.
• 1:00:22
  Wow. No, I didn't know that at all.
• 1:00:23
  How about that? Yeah.
• 1:00:25
  Wow. I wonder if that is a reference.
• 1:00:26
  It has to be, surely? Well, because at one point they
• 1:00:29
  call him, they say, you know, the master's coming, don't they?
• 1:00:31
  So we're all. Going yeah, yeah, yeah, Who is
• 1:00:33
  it? And it's always being introduced
• 1:00:35
  to the master. That's really interesting.
• 1:00:36
  And then of course, it's the master is Noël Coward, because
• 1:00:38
  that's the thing that he's actually known as.
• 1:00:40
  And we're not doing the master because because we're in a
• 1:00:44
  situation, remember, we're throwing all that sort of stuff
• 1:00:46
  out. We're in the middle of the
• 1:00:47
  amnesia plot. We're not doing past like we've
• 1:00:51
  got Iris and Iris nearly breaks it, doesn't she?
• 1:00:55
  Almost, yes. In fact, there's a moment, I
• 1:00:58
  think, where Fitz, like, is relieved because he thinks that
• 1:01:03
  the amnesia plot can now be over because he's the Doctor meeting
• 1:01:08
  someone that he knows that's one of his own people.
• 1:01:11
  And he imagines that everything's going to be OK for
• 1:01:13
  a second. Yeah.
• 1:01:14
  And then he kind of says, no, actually, that would kill him.
• 1:01:17
  You. Know there's a lovely touch, you
• 1:01:18
  know, which does go to show that the editors were overseeing this
• 1:01:23
  range quite well because in Father Time, which is the 5th,
• 1:01:27
  the one that's set across the entirety of the 80s in the Earth
• 1:01:30
  lock, it is mentioned that some ghastly woman called Iris comes
• 1:01:35
  to stay with the doctor and his daughter for a couple of months
• 1:01:39
  and that's referenced here. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:01:42
  yeah. I thought all that was really
• 1:01:43
  good. And like that, that there was a
• 1:01:46
  moment where we're nearly breaking that, that, that, that
• 1:01:50
  no coward, No, that, that Iris threatens to kind of break that,
• 1:01:54
  really. But she can't, you know, and
• 1:01:56
  because she challenges sort of any kind of narrative unity
• 1:01:59
  anyway, that's that's sort of kind of interesting.
• 1:02:03
  But so we end up on the train to London, don't we, in order to
• 1:02:06
  meet the master. And then so in each of these
• 1:02:11
  timelines, we end up meeting Noël Coward, don't we?
• 1:02:13
  Like. Yeah.
• 1:02:16
  And and this is. Essentially the point where we
• 1:02:17
  realize he can cut his way into the into the fabric.
• 1:02:21
  The very fabric. Sorry.
• 1:02:22
  Yeah, the very fabric of time and space.
• 1:02:25
  And he is the one that is essentially influencing this
• 1:02:29
  whole thing. He's the he's the one
• 1:02:31
  responsible for turning the true history of planets into
• 1:02:35
  something fun but also subversive.
• 1:02:38
  And then I think like the genius thing is how we learn what's at
• 1:02:47
  stake. And in a sense, it's the trick
• 1:02:52
  that we do in Pyramids of Mars or later in The Devil's Chord,
• 1:03:00
  where we go into the future and see what the consequences are if
• 1:03:06
  the villain wins. And we go into the future, we
• 1:03:09
  discover that for Year is the villain because we're not sure.
• 1:03:13
  Do you know what I mean? We we're really not sure what
• 1:03:16
  Noel Coward's role is or kind of what's going on.
• 1:03:19
  But Frere has manipulated Coward, that Frere has not been
• 1:03:23
  telling Coward the truth, that the Princess, Princess Margaret
• 1:03:27
  is a monster, like a a sort of truly terrible person who
• 1:03:31
  mustn't be allowed to get the throne back at all.
• 1:03:38
  And, and that her aim is to replace the British royal
• 1:03:44
  family, which. And so it's the last day.
• 1:03:49
  It's the last day of Coward's life.
• 1:03:52
  Yeah. And he lives near Freya and
• 1:03:55
  Queen and the Queen Mother is coming to visit.
• 1:04:02
  And there's all these jokes about, you know, like spending
• 1:04:05
  time with an old queen and all of that sort of thing, you know.
• 1:04:09
  But it turns out that the that the, the Princess that, you
• 1:04:13
  know, that it's actually, that it's actually Princess Margaret
• 1:04:17
  who gets out of the limo and not the Queen Mother.
• 1:04:21
  And I thought that that was pretty.
• 1:04:23
  That was pretty great. And then we go back in time so
• 1:04:28
  that that never happens. But I thought that was really
• 1:04:30
  well told and. I thought at this point we've
• 1:04:35
  completely lost or annoyed all of those sort of gun Doctor Who
• 1:04:40
  fans a lot for new adventures. And then it's revealed that Bria
• 1:04:46
  and Margaret have been having an affair, so we're sort.
• 1:04:48
  Of doing. We're sort of doing bestiality
• 1:04:51
  now in the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dumb.
• 1:04:53
  Theories now we're doing best. Yeah.
• 1:04:56
  And to prove how truly loathsome she is, she goes, Oh dear, I
• 1:05:01
  manipulated you this whole time as well.
• 1:05:03
  And then tears his throat out with her jaws.
• 1:05:07
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:09
  That's pretty amazing. In a spectacularly bloody
• 1:05:12
  climax, you know, where everybody is being murdered
• 1:05:15
  horribly? All the dogs.
• 1:05:18
  Well, Char goes crazy and actually kills her.
• 1:05:21
  Yeah, Yeah. And then Martha, who is Brenda
• 1:05:25
  Scooby's friend, and they've been hanging out together for 60
• 1:05:28
  years. But it's purely platonic.
• 1:05:29
  I think Martha hurls herself from the parapet and sort of
• 1:05:32
  dies as well. It was a long.
• 1:05:35
  Game now with Martha. You better watch your dogs.
• 1:05:37
  Yeah, it. Was a long.
• 1:05:38
  Game. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:41
  She played her very. Real.
• 1:05:43
  Quiet. He's right here behind.
• 1:05:45
  He's always sitting there on the sofa watching you podcasting,
• 1:05:48
  you know? No, he is.
• 1:05:49
  Absolutely he is. What?
• 1:05:50
  What possible subversive? Reasons.
• 1:05:52
  Could he? Have to be encouraging you to do
• 1:05:55
  all this podcasting. I always knew you'd have a
• 1:06:00
  political impact one day. Yeah.
• 1:06:04
  So yeah, like, like I start to get a little bit lost, like that
• 1:06:08
  big climax and all that. There's a lot of characters
• 1:06:11
  there isn't. There.
• 1:06:11
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And everyone sort of turns up
• 1:06:14
  and stuff. But, and it's not like, you
• 1:06:19
  know, when I said earlier on that it's looser than Adams.
• 1:06:22
  Like one of the things that that Douglas Adams does is he
• 1:06:25
  introduces all of these disparate things and
• 1:06:28
  meticulously ties them up. There are no loose threads.
• 1:06:32
  And that's a particular pleasure.
• 1:06:35
  You know, there's that puzzle box in City of Death which
• 1:06:39
  Romana solves. But in a way, Adams''s plot is a
• 1:06:43
  puzzle box. Do you know what I mean?
• 1:06:45
  Which is why that puzzle box is, is, is there Like, why put the
• 1:06:48
  puzzle box in if he's not commenting on how he's putting
• 1:06:52
  his plots together? And Dirk Gently, which I've
• 1:06:53
  mentioned before, is also just very meticulously plotted.
• 1:06:57
  This isn't this is very freewheeling.
• 1:06:59
  And and you know, we have throwaway lines about how the
• 1:07:02
  emperor can do some kind of magic and and she can do like
• 1:07:05
  female dog world. People can do magic as well and
• 1:07:08
  like whatever, what the hell. And that's sort of there to
• 1:07:12
  justify, like to sell the tireless face melting off thing.
• 1:07:17
  But none of that was necessary or whatever.
• 1:07:19
  I do think, Nathan, I do think that is the reason why some
• 1:07:22
  people don't get on with Mars because, you know, some people
• 1:07:25
  want these books to be, you know, plotted to the hill and
• 1:07:28
  for everything to make sense. And he's just not that writer.
• 1:07:32
  You know he just goes off on flights of fancy and goes just
• 1:07:35
  enjoy the experience. Have fun.
• 1:07:38
  Because that's the other thing which I think was really, really
• 1:07:40
  interesting and which I enjoyed a great deal, was that something
• 1:07:43
  else has happened to time too. Because, for instance, there's a
• 1:07:51
  Bond film that gets referred to that Connery stays on for an
• 1:07:56
  additional Bond film. And it it's, when it's
• 1:07:59
  described, it sounds like it's, oh, what's, what's Moore's first
• 1:08:05
  film called? Oh.
• 1:08:06
  You're asking me? Oh I had a podcast on it.
• 1:08:10
  I can't remember it. It's the one with.
• 1:08:11
  Shameful. Nate Jane Seymour in it.
• 1:08:15
  Brendan. Leave and let die.
• 1:08:17
  Leave and let die. But it's called that voodoo that
• 1:08:22
  you do or something like it's called something else.
• 1:08:25
  It's not. It's not quite that I should
• 1:08:27
  look it up, but it's called something no sillier.
• 1:08:31
  Than that voodoo that you do. Noel coughed and decided this
• 1:08:37
  was clearly the moment at which he should intercede.
• 1:08:40
  He marched over briskly. Good evening, John.
• 1:08:44
  He turned smartly to Ron. Don't you think this has gone
• 1:08:48
  far enough, Ron? Far enough, cried the special
• 1:08:52
  effects man. He's going to ruin me.
• 1:08:55
  I've seen the future, remember? I know what happens.
• 1:08:59
  That's as maybe clipped, Noel, but that doesn't give you the
• 1:09:03
  right to torture cinematic visionaries in their own homes.
• 1:09:08
  Cinematic visionaries? Nothing.
• 1:09:10
  I'm a cinematic visionary, you English queer.
• 1:09:14
  You're no a coward. Fuchsias gasped.
• 1:09:17
  He looked at von Arnim. Is he one of your homunculi too?
• 1:09:21
  Noel shuddered. Thankfully not, Mr. Fuchsius, I
• 1:09:25
  am happily quite real and of my own ineffable invention.
• 1:09:31
  But you're dead. Well, Fuchsius, you died 5 or 6
• 1:09:35
  years ago. One of my lesser known
• 1:09:38
  attributes is my ability to manipulate my own timeline.
• 1:09:42
  Good, isn't it? Fuchsius was astounded.
• 1:09:46
  That, said Noel calmly, is why I am here far beyond my own death.
• 1:09:52
  And I am here for a specific purpose, John Fuchsius, to set
• 1:09:56
  this maniac on me. Indeed not, said coward with
• 1:10:00
  hauteur. Mr. von Arnim seems to have an
• 1:10:03
  agenda of his own, one which I find alarming to say the least.
• 1:10:08
  Von Arnim swore at him. I am here to see that your movie
• 1:10:12
  of the true history of planets goes ahead as planned.
• 1:10:16
  Oh yeah, said Fuchsius. Well, it's going to anyway.
• 1:10:20
  As long as this freak doesn't give me a heart attack with his
• 1:10:23
  toys. I need to ensure that your
• 1:10:26
  projected movie has the required degree of very similitude, said
• 1:10:30
  Coward. Fritter slunk out from behind
• 1:10:33
  Angie then and straightened up onto his hind legs with some
• 1:10:36
  relief. The time for subterfuge was
• 1:10:38
  over, if it had ever began. I think Fritz said that Noel is
• 1:10:44
  talking about putting you in touch with the dog world.
• 1:10:48
  Fuchsia's just stared at the talking poodle.
• 1:10:51
  It's. Not like all that, but it is
• 1:10:56
  like there's some other things are happening to fiction and
• 1:11:00
  stuff as well and we don't know why and none of that gets
• 1:11:05
  resolved but and and I thought that was kind of fun.
• 1:11:10
  I mean, literally, you know what Mars is in a microcosm.
• 1:11:13
  Yeah. He's that chapter on the train.
• 1:11:17
  OK where? So in the middle of the doctor's
• 1:11:21
  investigation into the smudglings, there's a whole
• 1:11:23
  chapter where I love things sit on the train, Nathan, Jesus
• 1:11:26
  Christ. But the doctors on this train
• 1:11:29
  going from A to B And in terms of the plot of this book,
• 1:11:32
  nothing. There's nothing happening at
• 1:11:34
  all. Yeah, they're going to London to
• 1:11:36
  meet Noël Coward. I think there's, although we
• 1:11:39
  don't know. Literally something occurring in
• 1:11:42
  every single train carriage. Paul McCann's running through
• 1:11:45
  every train carriage, and in each one there's another Paul
• 1:11:49
  Mars story occurring that he's written elsewhere.
• 1:11:54
  And the doctor's just walking in on them for a second, seeing the
• 1:11:57
  adventure. Like apparently Professor
• 1:12:00
  Challenger and Sherlock Holmes are both real, for instance, in
• 1:12:03
  this reality. So Professor Challenger is in
• 1:12:06
  one of the one of the compartments.
• 1:12:11
  And then there's a character who says that it's a bit like
• 1:12:15
  Holmes. You know, they get old and they
• 1:12:16
  lose it at the end. And you know, Challenger is
• 1:12:18
  another Conan Doyle character. He's the main guy in The Lost
• 1:12:23
  World and so so all of these sort of weird interactions
• 1:12:28
  between fiction and reality and stuff.
• 1:12:31
  It's called voodoo something to me.
• 1:12:37
  Anytime you like, all right. And you know the musical.
• 1:12:41
  It was Betty Davis's Sauron and Joan Crawford as Gandalf the
• 1:12:45
  Witch. Gandalf the witch?
• 1:12:49
  What is the button? What is that train called?
• 1:12:52
  I think it's called the the train for Dilla Dante
• 1:12:54
  Adventurers or something. Yeah, Dilla Dante adventurers.
• 1:12:57
  That's right, I I wasn't even. 3 nuns, 1 of who's wearing red
• 1:13:02
  high heels. I don't know what that is.
• 1:13:04
  I think that's, I think that's from one of his Brenda and Effie
• 1:13:06
  books, you know? Oh.
• 1:13:08
  So some of it's his own stories and he's basically saying all
• 1:13:11
  this stuff's happening at the same time and the Doctor might
• 1:13:14
  think he's the centre of the universe, but the story just go
• 1:13:17
  on and they go on away from him as well.
• 1:13:19
  It's just mad and it's a super fun where you're kind of getting
• 1:13:23
  half of it and you're kind of not, but it's just really fun to
• 1:13:26
  run through that train. I mean, I've talked about Doctor
• 1:13:31
  Who in the past, about Doctor Who like creating worlds.
• 1:13:36
  It's like the big difference that I that I've talked about in
• 1:13:39
  flights for entirety between the Moffat era and the, and the
• 1:13:42
  Russell T Davis era, even though they have a lot in common and
• 1:13:45
  they're sort of in sympathy with each other in all sorts of ways.
• 1:13:48
  Is that the Russell T Davis era creates a world, you know, like
• 1:13:53
  the the Daleks have a coherent timeline in that world.
• 1:13:56
  The Cybermen do as well. You know, if you're a 10 year
• 1:13:59
  old, you're able to kind of say when things happen, you could,
• 1:14:02
  you know, you could invent timelines, you could do all of
• 1:14:05
  those sorts of things. And that's a fun way to
• 1:14:07
  interact. Whereas Moffett creates a type
• 1:14:09
  of story that the Doctor Who can be in, that the Doctor can be
• 1:14:13
  in, and those stories don't have to be consistent and it, and
• 1:14:17
  they can even kind of compete with each other in all sorts of
• 1:14:20
  ways. And this is what Mars does.
• 1:14:23
  Like, like it's particularly about which fictional version is
• 1:14:28
  going to prevail, you know, because it turns out that the
• 1:14:31
  dog version is fictional, the true history, the poodle version
• 1:14:36
  isn't what really happened on dog world after all anyway.
• 1:14:40
  And so you've got 2 fictionalized versions of of
• 1:14:43
  this book and you know which one is going to prevail and all of
• 1:14:46
  that sort of thing. Like all of that I thought was
• 1:14:50
  really, that was sort of terrific stuff, you know?
• 1:14:53
  And so, so, so whether what really happened is not a
• 1:14:57
  question that this book could answer because of course, none
• 1:15:00
  of it really happened. Not even First Frontier really
• 1:15:04
  happened. Oh, shame.
• 1:15:08
  I did love as well. I mean, I'm just going to quite
• 1:15:10
  a couple of bits, right, because I just wrote down.
• 1:15:13
  I have to say them because it just it's just Mars ability to
• 1:15:18
  get a belly laugh out of me. When Noel's no cow was time
• 1:15:23
  tinkering is described as he goes.
• 1:15:25
  The whole thing could unravel like a load of knitting, which
• 1:15:29
  is obviously the worst kind of unraveling you could possibly.
• 1:15:31
  Have and. When Noel Cow was turned around
• 1:15:34
  and exclaims we were hoodwinked my dears by a Satanist and a
• 1:15:38
  royal poodle. I mean.
• 1:15:41
  But my favorite bit of always, a bit obviously that would never
• 1:15:44
  hit the screen is when Princess Margaret, when she realises all
• 1:15:49
  of her plans, all of this mad scheme has come, come to
• 1:15:53
  nothing. She goes.
• 1:15:54
  One of you meddling time travelling bastards has ruined
• 1:15:58
  it all. I mean, he's really not taking
• 1:16:04
  any of this too seriously, is he?
• 1:16:05
  No. And thank God for that.
• 1:16:08
  Yeah. This is a I mean, this has been
• 1:16:11
  a thing with the books, isn't it?
• 1:16:12
  Because the books are written for fans, right?
• 1:16:15
  And Doctor Who was never what the fans was, never what the
• 1:16:19
  fans wanted from Doctor Who. And what Doctor Who was were two
• 1:16:22
  different things on the whole. Yeah.
• 1:16:24
  And like, Doctor Who was like tea time entertainment that the
• 1:16:27
  whole family watched. If you were a lovely BBC
• 1:16:30
  household and you would just have the telly on all evening on
• 1:16:34
  the one channel. Do you know what I mean?
• 1:16:35
  And Doctor Who would be part of that evening, Right.
• 1:16:38
  And. And it was for everyone.
• 1:16:41
  Yeah. And then, then we came along and
• 1:16:44
  we wanted it to be consistent and we wanted it to have a
• 1:16:47
  particular tone. We were, we were worried that
• 1:16:50
  its universe was ridiculous, you know, because it frequently was.
• 1:16:54
  And we were sort of embarrassed and concerned about that.
• 1:16:57
  And then we get put in charge during the wilderness years, and
• 1:17:01
  we write very, very serious stuff.
• 1:17:04
  New Adventures. Yeah, the New adventures.
• 1:17:07
  And initially it was Gareth Roberts's role, I think, to
• 1:17:11
  write something that was more like what we'd seen on TV.
• 1:17:16
  And if you were to read the higher Science, it's really not
• 1:17:19
  not very good. And and it doesn't succeed at
• 1:17:23
  that because it's still new adventuresy enough.
• 1:17:27
  Do you know what I mean? Like it's still it's still part
• 1:17:30
  of that world. And so this book is completely
• 1:17:34
  free of any of that. You know, it's not super
• 1:17:37
  concerned about the next part of the Doctor's story.
• 1:17:42
  It's happy to fit in with the ongoing arc.
• 1:17:44
  It doesn't break that arc. And it even kind of is aware of
• 1:17:49
  the possibility of breaking the arc with Iris's involvement.
• 1:17:56
  But it's it's remembering that Doctor Who is fun and silly, and
• 1:18:02
  that that's a perfectly legitimate mode for it to
• 1:18:04
  operate in. But also as well, a point that I
• 1:18:07
  made to you, and I really want to make this point now, is is
• 1:18:10
  also quite queer as well. This book.
• 1:18:14
  Yeah. Has a bright electric pink
• 1:18:16
  cover. Noël Coward is a major player in
• 1:18:19
  this. Yeah.
• 1:18:20
  You know, it's very gay, this and the the thing I love most
• 1:18:26
  about this book is that they published it at all and that
• 1:18:29
  they stamped. This is the 100th BBC novel in
• 1:18:34
  orange gold foil writing on. The as well.
• 1:18:38
  I think it was something of a mission statement.
• 1:18:40
  I think Justin Richards was a savvy enough editor and he had
• 1:18:44
  Jacqueline Rayner at his side. And Jacqueline Rayner was so
• 1:18:47
  immersed in Doctor Who found him, she knew how gay Doctor Who
• 1:18:51
  found him was. And they do the almost gay
• 1:18:54
  romance in The Turing Test. They do the gay romance in
• 1:18:57
  Tigers. They put this out.
• 1:18:59
  It's OK. It's not literally waving the
• 1:19:02
  pride fag in every. Book No.
• 1:19:04
  No. Isn't that, but they're they're
• 1:19:06
  open to it and they're exploring it and I'm really pleased.
• 1:19:10
  And you know, they bring in, unlike the New adventures, they
• 1:19:12
  bring in a wave 5 or 6 female writers to add some just some
• 1:19:17
  femininity to the fucking range, you know, and make it not about
• 1:19:21
  space colonies and Daleks and soldiers with.
• 1:19:23
  Governments, yeah. And just something a.
• 1:19:25
  Bit more interesting than that, you know, Lloyd Rose comes in.
• 1:19:28
  Kelly Hale. Jack Rayner writes herself.
• 1:19:30
  Kate Orman still writes that. That is why I prefer the AF
• 1:19:35
  Doctor books to the New Adventures.
• 1:19:36
  I think they're more open to experiment.
• 1:19:39
  I think they're they're more open to to offer out Doctor Who
• 1:19:43
  to the whole audience of Doctor Who rather than 17 year old
• 1:19:49
  nerds. That want to wank?
• 1:19:51
  Over ace in a PVC costume you know sorry, that was quite a
• 1:19:56
  statement I made there but I I think it's worth saying you know
• 1:19:59
  and. This is absolutely the direction
• 1:20:02
  Doctor Who went in, because when Rossi Davis brought it back in
• 1:20:04
  2005, spark me, it was queer. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:08
  And I think it's much queer now. In 2024-2025, you've got an
• 1:20:14
  actual gay doctor. Well, another thing I want to
• 1:20:20
  say as well, though, is just that I think Paul Mars is a very
• 1:20:24
  clever man. I think he's a very witty
• 1:20:26
  wordsmith, and I think we're really lucky that he chose to
• 1:20:31
  turn his eye to Doctor Who in the wilderness years and just
• 1:20:35
  create something that is a bit different, a bit more subversive
• 1:20:39
  and a lot more fun. He was a bit of a gift during
• 1:20:43
  this period because a lot of it can be quite samey, you know?
• 1:20:48
  So I want to ask you, I I was just, you know, I've got my sort
• 1:20:56
  of Kindle app in front of me, which is how I looked up one or
• 1:20:58
  two things just now while we're talking.
• 1:21:02
  And I noticed that I do have vertebrae like on the Kindle.
• 1:21:08
  What? What Paul Marr's book should I
• 1:21:13
  read next? I think you'll have an enormous
• 1:21:17
  amount of fun with third degree. I mean, this, this is more
• 1:21:22
  structured than third degree is that is completely freewheeling.
• 1:21:27
  And it's far more bonkers. I mean, literal fictional
• 1:21:30
  characters are turning up on the, you know, the cast of Pride
• 1:21:34
  and Prejudice are turning up in train cars, on beaches.
• 1:21:38
  And that's the mystery at the start of that book.
• 1:21:40
  And it just gets mad at madder as we go along.
• 1:21:44
  That's really fun. Another thing I wanted to
• 1:21:46
  recommend, I was just thinking about this making a cup of
• 1:21:48
  coffee before I came up to do this call was I'm going to send
• 1:21:52
  you the Wormery by Paul Mars as well, which is which is a 6th
• 1:21:58
  Doctor audio set post trial of a Time Lord in Bianca's bar, which
• 1:22:04
  is a bar in outer space for so many reasons.
• 1:22:08
  One, because it's very funny, but two, I just want you to be
• 1:22:12
  able to experience Colin Baker, Doctor Who story as written by
• 1:22:16
  Paul Mars. Wow.
• 1:22:18
  We'll have an absolute blast with it.
• 1:22:20
  So say what that's called again. The Wormery.
• 1:22:23
  The Wormery, all right. Yeah, stop thinking and start
• 1:22:27
  drinking. That's the.
• 1:22:28
  Tagline. What I would also like to do is
• 1:22:34
  when I realise I've made you read two books on the bounce
• 1:22:37
  very quickly, I would like to do a third.
• 1:22:42
  Oh, OK. I think we're sort of, I want to
• 1:22:46
  give you a picture of this range as a whole.
• 1:22:48
  Yeah, I want to do a third one and I want to do another female
• 1:22:53
  written book and I want it to be an Ark book.
• 1:22:58
  And I want to see if you can read a 8th Doctor Ark book.
• 1:23:02
  And this is really dense into the Ark as a stand alone book
• 1:23:07
  and whether that makes sense on its own terms, I would really
• 1:23:10
  like to for you to read Camera Obscura by Lloyd Rose.
• 1:23:15
  OK. Which is one of the most popular
• 1:23:18
  8th Doctor books. I'd say it's even more popular
• 1:23:20
  than Tigers and Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
• 1:23:23
  It's it's very well written book but it's deep in this Doctor
• 1:23:28
  Sabbath arc. It's all about the Doctor's
• 1:23:30
  heart being Miss Missing and it's set in Crystal Palace in
• 1:23:36
  the Victorian times in the opening of.
• 1:23:38
  Crystal Palace. And so different from the two
• 1:23:41
  we've already done. What do you reckon?
• 1:23:44
  Yeah, I'll do that for sure. That'd be brilliant.
• 1:23:47
  I've got, I've got, I'll give you a bit more time this time,
• 1:23:52
  you know, trouble is, is your time, this episode went down so
• 1:23:55
  well. I was like, gosh shit, I've got
• 1:23:56
  to get back in the schedules quick.
• 1:24:07
  The minute you walked in the joint I could see you.
• 1:24:11
  A man of distinction, a real big spender, good looking, so
• 1:24:17
  refined. Say, wouldn't you like to know
• 1:24:20
  what's going on in my mind? So let me get right to the
• 1:24:23
  point. I don't pop my cock for every
• 1:24:27
  man I see. Hey, big spender.
• 1:24:34
  Spend a little time with me. Wouldn't you like to have fun?
• 1:24:46
  The fun, the fun. How's about a few laughs?
• 1:24:51
  Laughs. I could show you a good time.
• 1:24:55
  Let me show you a good time. The minute you walked in the
• 1:25:02
  joint could see you were a man of distinction, a real big
• 1:25:07
  spender. Good looking, so refined.
• 1:25:12
  So wouldn't you like to know what's going on in my mind?
• 1:25:15
  So let me get right to the point.
• 1:25:18
  I don't pop my cock for every man I see.
• 1:25:24
  Hey big spender. Hey big spender.
• 1:25:31
  Hey, big spender.