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Hamster Book Club - Mad Dogs & Englishmen · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:05
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 0:08
  My name is Joe Ford and I am here today with three esteemed,
• 0:14
  charismatic, handsome gentlemen. Mr. Paul Quinn.
• 0:19
  Hello, Paul. Hello, Joe.
• 0:21
  Mr. David. Let's be proud.
• 0:23
  Hello, David. Hello, Joe.
• 0:25
  And Mr. James, I'm going to get this right.
• 0:30
  Hadwin Bennett. Correct.
• 0:36
  It's can I just say after the conversation we've been having
• 0:40
  on to that I'm deeply disappointed in the other three
• 0:42
  of you. Go on.
• 0:44
  Because I'm the only bloody one who went out the way to get a
• 0:48
  pink T-shirt sorted. For Well done.
• 0:52
  I do love how you've waited to unveil that as well.
• 0:58
  I don't own anything pink. You're forgiven.
• 1:01
  You're heterosexual. This is the only thing I own
• 1:05
  that isn't pink. Most of the stuff I have is Gray
• 1:11
  or blue. I bet you all look stunning in
• 1:14
  big guys. It is wonderful to have you all
• 1:17
  back together again. I'm actually going to hit the
• 1:21
  three of you with a question that I have given you no
• 1:23
  preparation for whatsoever. This isn't that kind of me.
• 1:28
  And that is the first time we spoke.
• 1:30
  I asked you to let me know what your favorite, sorry, your first
• 1:34
  Doctor Who book is. Would you very quickly, each of
• 1:39
  you tell me what your favorite Doctor Who author in prose is,
• 1:42
  just to get us going? And I'm going to throw it over
• 1:45
  to James first. I cheated.
• 1:48
  I prepared this because I listened to your previous
• 1:49
  podcasts. I I got it down to a choice of
• 1:54
  two and in the end I went for one.
• 1:58
  Someone who's very sadly no longer with us and who hasn't
• 2:01
  been with us for a while. So this I'm kind of saying kind
• 2:06
  of Craig Hinton. I miss Craig massively.
• 2:10
  He embraces every good thing about Doctor Who fandom.
• 2:16
  He is the gentleman for whom the expression fan wank.
• 2:19
  God was turned into a T-shirt. And yeah, I just, I loved his
• 2:25
  stuff. He was a lovely person as well.
• 2:29
  And yeah he's he's embracing of kind of this really ridiculous.
• 2:35
  I mean what was it was like 45 year history when he was
• 2:38
  writing? Yeah, it was just brilliant.
• 2:42
  And strangely enough, he has got a connection to tonight's novel.
• 2:48
  I look forward to hearing what that is.
• 2:50
  I still think one of the the best fan weight novels we ever
• 2:54
  had is The Quantum Archangel. You know, the thing we never
• 2:59
  knew we needed in our lives? The sequel to The Time Monster
• 3:03
  featuring the 6th Doctor of Male and every single, you know,
• 3:08
  gold. Because they're all in there,
• 3:09
  aren't they? They're all in wars.
• 3:11
  And the guardians everything. Kind of chatting to some of us.
• 3:15
  Kind of like saying like, have I missed anyone?
• 3:17
  Have I got them all now? And it's just like us slowing
• 3:19
  these things at him and him embracing it and putting it in
• 3:22
  the novel. So, yeah, Craig Hinton.
• 3:27
  David, see, I did the same. I was, I was listening to your,
• 3:30
  Your time, what's it called, Dave the Doctor.
• 3:35
  And it was like, OK, that's the question he's going to ask us.
• 3:37
  And so I spent the last two hours going to go, who is that?
• 3:39
  So I think when I was reading New Adventures, when I was going
• 3:42
  back through them, it was always the poor Canal books that and I
• 3:45
  look forward to reading. I mean I have probably a lot 8
• 3:48
  people who enjoyed no future and thought that was really
• 3:51
  satisfying into that arc and Happy Endings.
• 3:54
  I think I read in one sitting and there's not many books I
• 3:57
  would just have sat and just went through and I really wish I
• 4:00
  hadn't sold that one. But just writes well, writes in,
• 4:04
  wrote some interesting stuff in the early 90s.
• 4:07
  And yeah, I just think which ones did I not put down easily?
• 4:13
  And it was. It was always Paul's books.
• 4:16
  What did you think of the novelisation of Scream of the
• 4:18
  Shocker? I have not read that one.
• 4:21
  Not bad, you. Know, Struggle to remember.
• 4:23
  Scream of the Shocker exists. Along with everybody else.
• 4:28
  You loved it. Did you say?
• 4:29
  Oh, does. This one have.
• 4:31
  To oh, there's a conversation due to happen there.
• 4:33
  Then James and you Paul, how What's your favorite doctor all
• 4:37
  for? In Progress from?
• 4:40
  You not knew who missed an event past Doctors No.
• 4:45
  Virgin. Lawrence Miles.
• 4:49
  Yeah. I think.
• 4:51
  I think Mars is extraordinary. I think I I wish we had got his
• 4:55
  cartoon version of Doctor Who that the sole author was clearly
• 4:58
  some type of Babylon 5 version. I think.
• 5:03
  I think Aaron Ovitch and Platt stuff from the end of the target
• 5:08
  run is really important for pointing forward to where things
• 5:11
  are going to go and and Ian Briggs you know particularly
• 5:14
  like cursive Fenrick I think novelisation of cursive Ferrick
• 5:17
  is extraordinary but I think yeah Lawrence Miles from you
• 5:21
  know interference alien bodies Henry history the the they're
• 5:25
  they're incredible. Yeah.
• 5:26
  And and then the faction paradox stuff that he produced for Mad
• 5:31
  Norwegian really really interesting stuff really.
• 5:34
  Yeah. Yeah, really a figure.
• 5:37
  It's easy to mock I think, but a figure is really, really
• 5:40
  important. And yeah, he he's writing style
• 5:43
  is interesting. I see someone's reading Alien
• 5:46
  Bodies on Twitter and there was already starting to annoy them
• 5:49
  very early on. But I think Alien Bodies is is
• 5:50
  an incredible book and as a rug pulling exercise and it's funny
• 5:54
  and it's it does something interesting with the Crotons,
• 5:57
  yeah, it's it's, it's it's really, it's really good stuff.
• 6:00
  We, another group did Alien Bodies for the book club and
• 6:06
  then as a second book they did they are the Doctor and we
• 6:11
  couldn't believe the amount of similarities, not sort of in the
• 6:14
  but sort of in the ideas that were in play that yeah, I think
• 6:20
  it's a he's a very influential writer.
• 6:23
  I don't think that's acknowledged as much as it
• 6:25
  should be. Certainly with Moffett, I think.
• 6:27
  I think he influenced Moffett an awful lot.
• 6:30
  When I was asked this question before my very quick answer, I
• 6:35
  wanted to say Terence Dicks and I think.
• 6:37
  Everyone wants to say Terence. But nobody has.
• 6:39
  That's no one has said Terence Dicks yet, because I think it's
• 6:42
  too easy an answer. Yeah, but if anyone's going to
• 6:45
  have Dicks coming out of their mouth, I'm sorry.
• 6:47
  I think we. Would you care to finish that
• 6:52
  sentence, please? No, I think we'll leave you
• 6:54
  hanging in there. His.
• 6:56
  Mouth is. Full My answer was Paul Mars,
• 7:02
  which has actually been a popular answer on the book club,
• 7:08
  and I think it's because I think Mars is an extremely clever
• 7:11
  writer. I think he's a very funny writer
• 7:14
  and I think he's written off as being camp.
• 7:17
  But what he does is he writes very readable books that if you
• 7:21
  sort of look beneath the surface, there's an incredible
• 7:24
  amount going on. For example, Mad Dogs and
• 7:35
  Englishmen written by Paul Mars, which we are going to be talking
• 7:39
  about today. And what I really like the three
• 7:44
  of you to do, if you dare, is to in some way describe miles and
• 7:51
  some miles. Mars is style to kick off this,
• 7:56
  this book conversation. And I'm going to throw it out to
• 7:59
  David first. I was going.
• 8:03
  To say on the surface it's Barbie and some of the ideas you
• 8:07
  just where have these come from? But as you say, as soon as you
• 8:10
  start going below the surface, there's so much more going on,
• 8:15
  and it's a lot more interesting and there's a lot more critique
• 8:18
  about writing and the creative process and everything.
• 8:22
  And it's incredibly subversive as well, but not just on the
• 8:26
  immediate level. It's subversive in multiple
• 8:29
  ways, which will come on to at some point.
• 8:31
  And so it's, you know, on the surface, it's the pink Book with
• 8:35
  the poodle on it, but actually it's saying a lot more.
• 8:38
  It's yeah, very. It's a brilliant book.
• 8:43
  I bloody loved it. How about you there, James?
• 8:46
  How would you describe Mars in style?
• 8:51
  Oh, oh, again, I was kind of trying to work out a kind of a
• 8:55
  succinct way of of describing it and I think the best thing I can
• 9:00
  say is it's a meal wrapped in candy floss.
• 9:04
  You know, it's it's kind of there's there's substance in the
• 9:07
  middle, but there's a lot of kind of fluffiness around the
• 9:10
  edge. And does that appeal?
• 9:12
  Sometimes. Oh, interesting.
• 9:16
  We'll get into that, Paul. I'd say he's simultaneously
• 9:20
  Florida and clinical. It's an interesting combination
• 9:25
  because as David says, you look at the book, there's a poodle
• 9:30
  with hands and a gun and a cigarette in a cigarette holder
• 9:37
  and it screams that kind of 1960s Avengers.
• 9:43
  Or rather The Avengers shot through Austin Powers, who of
• 9:48
  course was in the cultural firmament by the time he he
• 9:51
  writes this, but actually had to David's point where you get
• 9:54
  below that. I mean I I have some trouble
• 9:57
  with the book in terms of how disparate he moves the the
• 10:01
  protagonist. And I'm not quite sure that that
• 10:03
  works. There's a kind of a clinical
• 10:06
  fashion to his right and there's there's the purity around some
• 10:09
  of that writing which in a writer who was simply Florida
• 10:12
  and interestingly relating to camp because the camp is a word
• 10:14
  like gothic, that's starting around.
• 10:15
  People don't really know what they mean by that.
• 10:17
  And by camp they often mean a bit gay and it's revealing
• 10:21
  something about themselves and and and how they view sexuality
• 10:27
  and and and culture. But I think, yeah, there's a,
• 10:31
  there's there's there's a, there's a precision and a kind
• 10:34
  of bite to it that's belied by some of the surrounding material
• 10:39
  or some of the material within the text itself.
• 10:41
  That's a very academic, a way of not really answering the
• 10:44
  question, but that's as good as you're going to get at this
• 10:46
  stage in the conversation. But yeah, Florida and clinical
• 10:49
  at the same time. I mean, I would certainly say
• 10:52
  this is a little bit gay, this book, you know, you've got no
• 10:55
  coward in there with a pair of pinking shears cutting up the
• 10:59
  time vortex, potentially unravelling it like a load of
• 11:03
  old knitting. I mean, the sequence where
• 11:06
  there's thousands of no cowards walking about the place, I
• 11:10
  thought, I mean, what drugs was our smoking today?
• 11:13
  But this is some balmy shit going on, OK, James?
• 11:20
  Yes. You said you said that you liked
• 11:24
  some of it and you didn't like other parts of it.
• 11:27
  Will you, will you quantify that statement please?
• 11:29
  OK, so I've got the set I was. I've scribbled down loads and
• 11:34
  loads of notes I've there's a category that a a friend and I
• 11:37
  came up with, which is this is an arse book ARSE.
• 11:42
  Another reset switch ending. OK.
• 11:46
  Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, as
• 11:48
  soon as you realize at the start of the time has been changed,
• 11:50
  it's like, OK, I know exactly how this book is going to end.
• 11:53
  Which kind of then does muddy the ending an awful lot.
• 11:56
  There's AI mean say the summer. I loved his comments on CGI.
• 12:01
  There's kind of good bits. It's just one of these books
• 12:06
  where kind of like, you know if I was to try and drop a pros and
• 12:08
  cons list, I think they would both be the same length and
• 12:11
  there are some bits which kind of like flipped between them.
• 12:14
  I mean it's very much and I will explain this comment all right.
• 12:18
  It's very much a kind of a a season 8 attitude from Paul Ma
• 12:22
  because at this stage everything has to have, everything has to
• 12:26
  have Iris in. So I was reading this thinking
• 12:28
  kind of. I remember reading it the first
• 12:30
  time thinking oh God, when she going to turn up this time.
• 12:35
  And of course, this, yeah, the the following month was the
• 12:39
  launch of Iris on audio as well, which kind of buggered my brain
• 12:43
  because when we got to the IRIS bits, I was struggling not to
• 12:47
  hear them in Katie Manning's voice because of course it's a
• 12:49
  different Iris. So yeah, it's kind of, there's a
• 12:52
  certain kind of very much, as you say, kind of like a
• 12:55
  flamboyance and everything. For this one, I wasn't impressed
• 13:00
  by the plot. So kind of like it was candy
• 13:02
  floss wrapped around an instant meal rather than the banquet,
• 13:07
  you know, it was a, you know, it was, I felt with this one that
• 13:12
  there was a lot of kind of, I've got a very standard plot, which
• 13:17
  I should tell you my thoughts on in a little bit because I don't
• 13:20
  think you'll be able to guess what I'm going to say.
• 13:22
  It's a very standard plot, but it's kind of like, how am I
• 13:25
  going to present this in a way that makes it kind of more
• 13:27
  memorable? And yeah, it's kind of like I
• 13:30
  thought it was like a plot with the bits added on to it, rather
• 13:34
  than the bits being an intrinsic part of it.
• 13:38
  No matter what you said right at the start there, I always figure
• 13:40
  with a Paul Mars book like I apart from The Blue Angel, which
• 13:45
  had the nerve to neglect to have an ending and instead gave you a
• 13:50
  series of 10 or 20 questions at the end where you basically make
• 13:53
  up your own ending. I'll never really expect like a
• 13:56
  big rousing climax, but just an incredible journey along the
• 14:01
  way. There's a lot of kind of
• 14:04
  interesting bits, say, kind of, you know, the the Sirens of Time
• 14:06
  style. Kind of like this person has
• 14:09
  this adventure, this person has this adventure, this person has
• 14:11
  this adventure, and then we bring them all together, let's
• 14:13
  say kind of again, different feelings about those which we'll
• 14:15
  get into. I certainly enjoyed reading it,
• 14:17
  but at the end I felt that it was more candy floss than meal,
• 14:20
  and that kind of it wasn't a substantial novel for me.
• 14:25
  OK, well then throwing it across to you, David, you said you
• 14:28
  really loved this. So let's let's hear about this
• 14:31
  book from the other direction. The other direction, well, I
• 14:34
  think because this is the second time I've read it, because I
• 14:36
  read it back in 2002 when it came out and that's when I was
• 14:41
  reading the books religiously every month they came out.
• 14:45
  And this is coming after Adventurous of Henrietta St.
• 14:49
  which is incredibly densely plotted.
• 14:53
  I mean the there's so much they've crammed into that
• 14:56
  Lawrence Miles has crammed into that book, they had to shrink
• 14:58
  the font size down. To a point where your eyes bleed
• 15:02
  you. Can zoom in.
• 15:05
  And that's, you know that's a very dense, very lyrical and
• 15:08
  there's also it's very clever book, but it's not the most easy
• 15:13
  read. And also it's arc heavy as well
• 15:16
  because you've got all stuff with Sabbath, you've got the
• 15:18
  doctor having his heart cut out, you've got tantric sex going on
• 15:22
  with eight creatures and all sorts of things.
• 15:25
  And then this book comes along and I think I would dugout DWMS
• 15:31
  preview and Paul Miles is like, yeah, I'm putting a pause on the
• 15:34
  of the ongoing story arc just to tell a straightforward story.
• 15:37
  And I think coming after some arc heavy stuff that sort of
• 15:41
  candy floss that kind of a lighter book was a massive
• 15:44
  relief because it was just like, well, we've had this book, this
• 15:47
  book was Henrietta St. Grey.
• 15:49
  But I I bloody love that book as well.
• 15:53
  But you can, and this was the light relief to follow that up.
• 15:55
  And there's only a handful of references back.
• 15:59
  And I think that's the same when, you know, talking about
• 16:01
  when Iris going to turn up because this is a Doctor
• 16:04
  Amnesiac. They're dropping hints left
• 16:06
  right and centre of, you know, because they have they play that
• 16:09
  joke of ending a chapter with the Master.
• 16:13
  And at the time there was, could it could they actually be doing
• 16:17
  this? Because we had no idea where
• 16:18
  these books were going. So for me, I think it benefited
• 16:22
  at the time from coming after something out.
• 16:25
  You needed something a bit lighter.
• 16:27
  But reading it back compared to when we did Original Sin last
• 16:30
  time, it's just a really easy, accessible read.
• 16:33
  And I just gave away going. It's not, it's not the best book
• 16:36
  I've ever read or anything like that, but I had fun reading it.
• 16:40
  I think the thing I did struggle a little bit with in the middle
• 16:43
  was that those disparate plot lines, but it was structured in
• 16:46
  123 way. You would do this chapter with
• 16:48
  it, then you cut and and there was a time going well.
• 16:51
  I know we're going back to the doctor's plot because that's
• 16:53
  what the book does now. The structure in the middle of
• 16:55
  the book is quite predictable in that way.
• 16:58
  And that was probably the bit that I struggled with most is
• 17:01
  that it felt a bit. Actually that's the way it felt,
• 17:04
  a bit clinical in the middle there with that.
• 17:06
  But I had the same thing when reading Brenda or irises.
• 17:10
  I could not get Katie Manning's voice out of my head, because
• 17:14
  that is, that's just the voice of an Iris now.
• 17:17
  But her turning up at that point in the book series felt like a
• 17:19
  significant. Moment, I remember.
• 17:21
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And.
• 17:22
  And that's sort of the bit at the end where he realises that
• 17:26
  he's not the only one of his kind.
• 17:28
  Actually felt like a moment of triumph because you've waited
• 17:31
  about 20 books or so, except for that revelation.
• 17:35
  But yeah, one of the big comments I had, because I
• 17:39
  remember reading this in 2002, the kind of I didn't feel as
• 17:42
  though there was kind of a particularly strong editorial
• 17:45
  hand between the individual books.
• 17:49
  Because I can remember the bit you said about kind of like, oh,
• 17:53
  I'm not the only one. And then thinking what what last
• 17:56
  book we were told this crypto thing about four.
• 17:59
  So I think coming back to it has been a very different experience
• 18:02
  because I've not had that frustration about the editorial.
• 18:06
  I mean you. Look at the just just reading it
• 18:08
  in isolation, you mean? Yeah.
• 18:09
  And when you look at the kind of the books around it, we've had
• 18:12
  Earth world, we've had grim reality, we've got the crooked
• 18:15
  world coming up and kind of there was this great long run of
• 18:18
  books of out there kind of bizarre scenarios.
• 18:22
  I didn't feel that the editorial hand was strong enough to kind
• 18:26
  of pace things out a bit, You know, I I would have liked it at
• 18:31
  the time more. But yeah, in my isolation it was
• 18:35
  a better read this time. So I had to grow and agree with
• 18:37
  David. It was a good read.
• 18:38
  I think I found the because I went when this came up.
• 18:42
  It's like that's in the middle of the arc because I got it's
• 18:44
  been 20 odd years and it's like how much am I going to remember
• 18:47
  of the arc of where we're up to? And it's like I say, it barely
• 18:51
  deals with it. You don't need it, no.
• 18:53
  There's a couple of bits where Iris reacts to a change Doctor
• 18:57
  but and that is he's a bit more brutal in places but apart from
• 19:02
  that and and he's got a. Beard.
• 19:05
  Yeah, they do mention. Well they also mentioned the
• 19:07
  Iris visited the doctor during Father time which is is
• 19:12
  mentioned in Father time that that she went there and stayed
• 19:14
  with him for a bit and he was just so baffled by her she he
• 19:17
  just asked her to go but obviously in a different guy so
• 19:20
  he doesn't remember it this time as well.
• 19:22
  Also as well like there was a there was a series of books from
• 19:26
  Adventurous onwards that was dealing with time travel in
• 19:30
  various ways to show that oh hello James is get excited that
• 19:36
  show that time was being buggered about with by Sabbath
• 19:41
  and I thought like this was the first one after adventurous.
• 19:44
  And actually this is just having a bit of fun with the idea
• 19:47
  rather than leaning into it wholeheartedly.
• 19:50
  Paul, can I throw this to you then?
• 19:53
  Because I have no idea which way you felt with this book, so
• 19:59
  let's know I I. Was weirdly agnostic about this
• 20:03
  book, Joe. I'll be honest, I went back to
• 20:05
  it this week and so of course, you know, obviously we we, we
• 20:08
  tried recording this at various points and like things like
• 20:11
  fathers who might have died got in the way.
• 20:13
  And so it's. Not.
• 20:16
  It's really a book that's interested in plot.
• 20:18
  I don't think it's interested in set pieces.
• 20:22
  And the plot is kind of arbitrary.
• 20:25
  And so you get that strange moment towards the end where old
• 20:28
  Noël Coward kind of explains everything.
• 20:30
  And there's a sense in which it's an author who's writing
• 20:34
  about things that he enjoys or periods in time that he thinks
• 20:38
  people will be interested in in the 1960s.
• 20:42
  Very. Harry Harrison, Princess
• 20:45
  Margaret, who's an interesting figure.
• 20:47
  It's very much the Princess Margaret of the early naughties.
• 20:49
  And so when you asked what questions we put to him when
• 20:53
  you're interviewing him, I asked about Craig Brown's really
• 20:55
  fascinating biography, Princess Mark Dearest to Mom, Darling,
• 21:02
  which is 99 episodes in the life of Princess Margaret.
• 21:05
  And she comes across a very different figure.
• 21:07
  This is very much the Princess Margaret of when she died.
• 21:09
  And she an old drunk with various lovers and she's a bit
• 21:14
  racist and she's got that gangster lover who can balance
• 21:16
  pint pots on his erect penis. Whereas in Craig Brown's book
• 21:20
  it's it's kind of different view.
• 21:21
  And I I was lecturing this week on oh what a Lovely war, which
• 21:27
  of course reused the the dump in Brighton, the the the the set
• 21:32
  that the the War games had used And trout and said if he'd saw
• 21:35
  he said he's a rat, he was walking.
• 21:37
  It's a it's a rubbish tip you're going to see a rat trout.
• 21:40
  Princess Margaret's responsible for that play being transferred
• 21:42
  to the West End because she says it says what should have been
• 21:45
  said years ago about the First World War.
• 21:47
  So there's an interesting revision to Princess Margaret
• 21:49
  whereas here we've got her as very much the Margaret when when
• 21:52
  she dies And so there's a sense in this is a book about the 60s
• 21:57
  and a book about ideas about the 60s and book about the Inklings.
• 22:00
  Of course it's you can't say it's talking because talking to
• 22:04
  say it's notorious litigious and CS Lewis and Company, who I I've
• 22:08
  helped deal with are peculiarly touchy about Lewis.
• 22:13
  So it's an interesting book about set pieces.
• 22:15
  But in terms of plot I'm I'm not really sure the plot is
• 22:18
  important. It's more about the feeling and
• 22:20
  how you move between these various things.
• 22:22
  And yeah, the lusciousness about the kind of satirical bite, no
• 22:26
  coward fulfilling a role that you find in the subtle life.
• 22:29
  It's interesting that he writes this about four or five years
• 22:31
  after The Subtle Life and now you can cut through time.
• 22:34
  It's an interesting kind of. It's not an anti novel, which is
• 22:38
  a phrase I've been using too much recently.
• 22:40
  But it certainly is assuming the type of Arc heavy material that
• 22:43
  you've seen up until this point. And it is as as James, the
• 22:47
  Davidson, it's and then yourself it's, it's removed from that
• 22:50
  arc. But in removing that arc, it's
• 22:51
  kind of gone for set pieces and feelings and responses and kind
• 22:56
  of a a plot that's strung between which is interesting and
• 22:59
  it's kind of a throwback to say Marco Polo or something like
• 23:02
  that. But it feels like a long
• 23:04
  standing Doctor Who found a long standing cultural critic picking
• 23:09
  various moments to write about and putting it the doctor as the
• 23:12
  kind of the annies companies as the kind of unifying thread
• 23:16
  which doesn't answer your question either.
• 23:17
  It's going to be well, you're standing.
• 23:19
  To be a politician. Are you Are you being
• 23:22
  deliberately evasive tonight? No, it's just just it's just
• 23:25
  full academic mode I'm afraid. So I've been doing a book
• 23:28
  proposal around CS Lewis and Tolkien and I'm lecturing I'm in
• 23:30
  a couple of weeks. So it's it's kind of there at
• 23:32
  the forefront of my mind. And I was thinking, this is
• 23:34
  Lewis and this is Tolkien. But they do this and they don't
• 23:36
  do that, and they do these other things.
• 23:37
  And it's really interesting, coming back to it now two or
• 23:40
  three months down the line, that I'm reading it differently.
• 23:43
  But I think it's that type of novel.
• 23:45
  And I think you do respond to it differently each time you come
• 23:49
  to it, which is probably the hallmark of a good novel, which
• 23:52
  makes it stand out for some of its other materials in that
• 23:56
  particular range of novels. And the virgin stuff that we
• 23:59
  looked at previously, there's stuff that you'd read and you'd
• 24:01
  read it the same way. But this is this is genuinely
• 24:05
  good to great novelist who's doing something interesting with
• 24:08
  these these these various scenes.
• 24:10
  I think that the things he was saying about the not
• 24:13
  particularly subtly hidden characters in this book, I think
• 24:17
  it was you, David, on a a separate hamster recording that
• 24:20
  said to me that John Fuchsia or Fuckers could be George Lucas
• 24:27
  himself. That wasn't me, but that's a
• 24:29
  very good point. Oh, who else have said that to
• 24:32
  me? It could be anyone, to be
• 24:34
  honest. And you know, there's certainly
• 24:37
  a lot of commentary on Lord of the Rings in there as well about
• 24:40
  this sort of tedious manuscript that took a lifetime to create.
• 24:44
  And then the very cute scenes of Ray Harryhausen and his being
• 24:50
  passed over for more than the CGI that's coming in things.
• 24:54
  Right, because this is one of the big things I've written.
• 24:57
  WTF. Next to just exactly what was
• 25:02
  the deal with the clay figures suddenly coming to life and
• 25:08
  doing the the kind of the stuff that they do and the did I miss
• 25:13
  an explanation for that? Well, why did the fellow face
• 25:16
  melt halfway? You know when.
• 25:19
  When Yeah, yeah, again, kind of. There's an awful lot of comments
• 25:23
  where I put WTF next to them on the.
• 25:26
  I don't think he I don't think he has any interest at all in.
• 25:30
  I know, I know you like a coherent logical world that
• 25:34
  makes sense in the details. So this is probably like the
• 25:37
  anti book for you to read because I just don't think he
• 25:40
  cares. Yeah.
• 25:42
  I mean, it's kind of like going back to the Blue Angel thing.
• 25:46
  It's kind of like Agatha Christie stopping 3/4 of the way
• 25:48
  through. I'm just putting the 20
• 25:50
  questions hinting at the murderer and not actually
• 25:53
  bothering to say what it will. Probably be more satisfied than
• 25:55
  some of those lack of Christianity, because if I'm
• 25:57
  honest. There is, there is an example of
• 26:02
  a novel where they don't give you the answer and they give you
• 26:04
  the clues and you're meant to solve it yourself.
• 26:06
  And I think what he's working here with, so the face milking.
• 26:09
  But I think that the figures come into life.
• 26:11
  If you know the films, you expect that thing to happen.
• 26:13
  It doesn't surprise you if it happens and he's relying on an
• 26:17
  audience around his age, but it doesn't work.
• 26:20
  Does it work as a novel? That that's the question.
• 26:22
  That was the problem. It's.
• 26:23
  Yeah, it's reliant on you recognizing those references.
• 26:25
  Therefore his his ship must be around the same age or have
• 26:31
  watched those films they've repeated on BBC or ITV during
• 26:33
  the 1980s. And so it's an interesting
• 26:35
  technique that it relies on you being the same age, haven't seen
• 26:38
  the first time around or having that type of connection to the
• 26:40
  television. So it's it's a perfect one for
• 26:42
  an idea of dot to who fans that they don't never leave the house
• 26:46
  and they watch all of this stuff obsessively so you recognize the
• 26:48
  references when they turn up. And I think that's partly what
• 26:50
  he's doing. So it's kind of a kind of very
• 26:52
  meta textual throughout the the the text, but that doesn't
• 26:56
  necessarily lend itself to an enjoyable novel, but as a as a
• 27:02
  text that you read we recognize the references and you think how
• 27:04
  clever you are or you how clever he is and therefore you're as
• 27:06
  clever as he is. It might be working on that
• 27:08
  level. I recognised it all with the
• 27:11
  Harryhausen. I mean, the train ride
• 27:13
  apparently is a throwback to Verdigris or something, where
• 27:17
  there's all the fictional characters on the train ride in
• 27:20
  the middle the Doctor takes. Oh, I loved all of that.
• 27:24
  That there was all those people on that train having adventures
• 27:27
  that we just had no idea about at all.
• 27:29
  This is one of my favorite Doctor Who books because I you
• 27:34
  introduced the word set pieces, Paul.
• 27:36
  I just love all the set pieces in this.
• 27:39
  And for like you said there about the figures coming to
• 27:42
  life, James. Yeah.
• 27:43
  Does it make sense? No, it doesn't.
• 27:45
  Is it a really fucking cool moment?
• 27:47
  Yeah, it is. And I can see it.
• 27:49
  And I was just like, this is great, more of this please.
• 27:53
  But the the reason why I love this so much, I just think it is
• 27:56
  so funny. I think Mars writes really,
• 28:00
  really great jokes and I was laughing my head off throughout.
• 28:04
  I heard a lot of the the dialogue in the book.
• 28:08
  It's very funny, but I also think the prose is really nice
• 28:12
  as well. I think he very sort of
• 28:14
  economically can sketch in a scene in a really sort of poetic
• 28:20
  way, the the way that Las Vegas was described in those sequences
• 28:24
  in like a couple of paragraphs. It was so evocative.
• 28:29
  I found myself, I was writing notes and I was literally
• 28:31
  writing out whole paragraphs. I was like, oh, I really want
• 28:34
  to, I really want to say this. And then I realised I was going
• 28:36
  to have to read out half the book.
• 28:38
  So I just stopped doing that completely.
• 28:40
  But he is working on cultural resonances.
• 28:42
  Though he expects his readers to know Diamonds of Forever and to
• 28:46
  know Casino and possibly to know Crime Story, and therefore the
• 28:50
  precision comes from, he doesn't have to say much for it to
• 28:53
  resonate with his readership. Again, he's dependent upon all
• 28:57
  he's expecting, a readership who have the same cultural reference
• 29:00
  points as him, which means it's quite a closed potential
• 29:03
  narrative, closed readership, but it does make you very
• 29:05
  intimate, which I think helps in the engagement with the store.
• 29:09
  I found it a very easy read. And yeah, the set pieces were
• 29:13
  nice, but I would have liked more hanging them together and
• 29:17
  kind of actually a better story around them, you know, that's
• 29:22
  that's why I said, yeah, the set pieces, yeah, they're great, but
• 29:25
  like the the sum of the parts and the kind of the whole, there
• 29:30
  was a disparity between them. He's working with an idea about
• 29:34
  how you move between the set piece of course, and then he's
• 29:36
  assuming the usual Doctor Who narrative of X happens and Y
• 29:39
  happens. You get to Z by following 1-2
• 29:42
  and three and it's more of a series of almost emotional
• 29:46
  moments and he wants to move between them.
• 29:47
  So he's playing with things look kind of things that Virginia
• 29:50
  Woolf is talking about. Or you know when Chandler says
• 29:52
  you have if a man runs in with a gun, you have to use that gun in
• 29:55
  in the third act. And he's playing with these type
• 29:56
  of ideas around that narrative I think.
• 29:59
  And and again, he potentially limits his readership or it
• 30:03
  frustrates his readership. I think that's the potential
• 30:05
  issue that not everyone comes to it with that sense of you can do
• 30:08
  this type of thing rather than here is a linear narrative.
• 30:11
  And so he is, I think Joe, you said in in in some of the twink
• 30:15
  of conversation what he said he wants to do with Doctor Who.
• 30:17
  Certainly what he's not trying to do, Doctor Who is here's a
• 30:19
  four part episode that you could have filmed in 1980s or 1970s
• 30:22
  and you can see how you move between the the, the set pieces,
• 30:26
  the set pieces of the crucial thing, the bits in between.
• 30:28
  That's kind of irrelevant, essentially, to this narrative.
• 30:31
  So naturally you have a double Decker bus to move people
• 30:34
  between them because it's playing with ideas of the 1960s
• 30:38
  and Swinging London, but it literally moves the characters
• 30:41
  where they need to be to move on to the next step.
• 30:43
  The thing for me, when I was reading this, I was kind of
• 30:45
  awkward teenager and this was a this was a this was a naughty
• 30:48
  book because one, it's bright and pink and me sitting in
• 30:52
  secondary school reading this book when you're you're not out
• 30:55
  and you're like, this is just a massive signal to people what's
• 30:58
  going on. But there's two bits that one
• 31:02
  would just made it feel like you were reading something slightly
• 31:04
  subversive. And also, I can just imagine if
• 31:07
  you put this in front of previously compliance, now
• 31:09
  there's probably heads that explode.
• 31:11
  One is the stuff on the dog station, which you've got the
• 31:15
  doctor, Fitz and Angie Stripped dressed as dogs.
• 31:19
  You've got Angie averting her eyes to with the Doctor and
• 31:22
  everything. That wasn't filmed, isn't it?
• 31:26
  What a. Shame the the shitstream
• 31:28
  corridors of the dog station. And then you've got the
• 31:34
  relationship with Princess Margaret, like the revealed
• 31:37
  later in the book. And you know, if you complete
• 31:41
  this, if you want, this is the literally Doctor Who and the
• 31:43
  dog, the dog Fucker. Right, I'm going to go back to
• 31:47
  something I hinted at earlier. Basically, this book is a toned
• 31:52
  down version of a bitch fight in the furry community.
• 31:57
  The trouble isn't in 2002. Yeah, I knew a lot.
• 32:02
  I've still know a lot of people and I was chatting about this to
• 32:06
  some of my slightly more weirder friends.
• 32:12
  Because, you know, the the people on this call are are
• 32:14
  depressingly boring compared to some of my friends.
• 32:17
  How do you know? That I know, yeah.
• 32:23
  And yeah, this is essentially just a book about the furry
• 32:26
  community. And I think in 2002 there were
• 32:28
  two problems. One, I knew a lot of people in
• 32:31
  the furry community, and so does none of this shocked me.
• 32:34
  None of this was a surprise. And the second problem?
• 32:37
  And I actually even located the episode two years previously to
• 32:43
  this. Futurama had started doing
• 32:45
  anthropomorphized and creatures with naked human pets.
• 32:51
  You start seeing them in the first episode of season 2 called
• 32:54
  I Second that emotion. And so, unfortunately for me,
• 32:58
  because I was kind of quite into Futurama by then, a lot of this,
• 33:03
  I just thought, yeah, seen this, I've seen it animated.
• 33:07
  But I'm going to dare to say that now.
• 33:09
  I'm not going to cast any aspersions either on your life
• 33:12
  or the people that you hang around with.
• 33:14
  Yeah, I'm going to dare to say that the majority of the Doctor
• 33:18
  Who community haven't gone there.
• 33:20
  Yeah, and that this is quite subversive for the majority.
• 33:24
  Yeah, and that's the thing, because I was watching Futurama
• 33:27
  at the same time, it being there, you expect it to be
• 33:29
  there. I didn't.
• 33:30
  You don't expect that in a Doctor Who book.
• 33:32
  Furries, by the way, wouldn't have any problems with this
• 33:35
  because it's consensual. And so therefore, kind of like
• 33:39
  there's a a big aspect of it where, yeah, I was describing it
• 33:44
  and the interspecies stuff and I said, yeah, but if the creatures
• 33:47
  involved are consensual, then where's the problem?
• 33:50
  I agree. I still think it's that is a
• 33:52
  unique point of view, weirdly enough.
• 33:54
  You know I think one of the most subversive things or certainly
• 33:56
  the most controversial things about this book is the bloody
• 33:59
  cover because this came out and the shitstorm that that caused
• 34:04
  when this because I think this rank didn't it in the DWM part.
• 34:07
  I may have won it I think and and and it also has emblazoned
• 34:12
  on the top the 100th beat. They didn't choose Adventure S
• 34:15
  and Henrietta St. you know the academic text that people could
• 34:18
  take incredibly serious. I chose the pink poodle smoking
• 34:22
  a cigarillo on the front cover to to announce that they've, you
• 34:26
  know, released 100 books and you know the reaction against this
• 34:31
  cover. How dare you not take Doctor Who
• 34:35
  seriously, you know, which was still a problem, wasn't it, in
• 34:38
  the 90s? I don't know if it's as bad now
• 34:41
  in the wake of the. New series.
• 34:43
  It is no joke. It is no joke.
• 34:44
  And the other, The other underlying problem with the
• 34:46
  cover is homophobes, which we've seen rampant in the last days or
• 34:52
  so. And that's part of the reaction
• 34:54
  to that text, is the book looks gay.
• 34:56
  And therefore, you know, these tend to be inset types who, if
• 35:00
  they just embrace their inner homosexuality, they'd be much
• 35:03
  happier and they wouldn't now be spewing their shit all over
• 35:06
  online and clapping their hands in delight at what they've done
• 35:09
  online and then going to have a massive wank.
• 35:12
  What they'd be better off is going to read in this book and
• 35:14
  actually recognizing some of the cultural record points and going
• 35:17
  following them up because it's full of them.
• 35:19
  So it's about The infernal. It's about The Infernal Design
• 35:22
  Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter, where in one of
• 35:25
  the later sections, the James Bondesque figure and Hoffman's
• 35:28
  daughter who sent all is a horrific rape scene, but they
• 35:34
  are stripped naked because they are treated as animals, which is
• 35:37
  what we find here. The issue I have with that
• 35:40
  section is it's not radical enough.
• 35:42
  James's point about the furries, I don't know.
• 35:43
  That sounds incredibly exciting and I wish I'd been involved
• 35:46
  with furries in the early N late 90s.
• 35:48
  I probably a happier person, you know, if I'd indulge that.
• 35:53
  And I've had a sex life at all. But that's by the bike.
• 35:57
  But it's kind of a a joke that it's dogs.
• 36:00
  It should be something else. I don't.
• 36:01
  There's a problem with that sequence that it's kind of it's
• 36:03
  shocking because Angie doesn't want to look at the Doctor's
• 36:06
  penis. And for those so long, we didn't
• 36:08
  think the dog had a penis, did we?
• 36:09
  You know John Nathan Turner. There's no, there's no hanky
• 36:11
  panky in the TARDIS. It's just fellatio and
• 36:14
  cunnilingus, and Benny refused to look.
• 36:18
  It's I got. She doesn't want to look, but
• 36:20
  she does. But has he got a weird one?
• 36:23
  Is that The thing? Is the Doctor's?
• 36:24
  Penis. Really.
• 36:24
  I don't want to know. I've seen it off for she got off
• 36:28
  Twitter account. I want to know.
• 36:32
  Oh, and now you see, now the homophobes are also racist, Of
• 36:35
  course. So of course you see that
• 36:36
  ridiculous meme of David Bradley looking at a greased up Cuhi
• 36:40
  Gatwa. And you know, Cuhiatwa is a
• 36:42
  beautiful man. And what's their problem with
• 36:45
  that anyway? That's by the bite.
• 36:47
  That's fine. What was the point I was trying
• 36:48
  to make? It's not radical enough.
• 36:49
  I think it's trying to be radical, but it's not radical
• 36:52
  enough. You essentially need some type
• 36:53
  of fucking going on in. No, agreed.
• 36:56
  Definitely agreed. Dog the dog shit everywhere.
• 36:59
  Yes, that's what. Yes, James agrees with me that
• 37:01
  that's what I've I've made a point there.
• 37:03
  Definitely. At least have a fucking gun on
• 37:04
  the background. I thought if that's as much as
• 37:06
  they could have got. Exactly.
• 37:08
  If they'd have gone any further than that, they'd have been Peck
• 37:11
  it in Justin Rich's office, for God's sake.
• 37:13
  Saying how dare you? It would have got it all out of
• 37:16
  the system 30 years earlier and we wouldn't be experiencing what
• 37:19
  we're experiencing now. That's a very good point.
• 37:22
  Well, I'll tell you what, boys, I'm going to bring this.
• 37:24
  I cannot believe I'm going to say this.
• 37:27
  Wow. I'm going to bring it away from
• 37:29
  sex for a moment and and well, you know, the fact that we're
• 37:37
  talking about that means this this book is going to
• 37:40
  interesting places. Well, it was the 90s to the
• 37:45
  regulars in this book because I've not long done a book club
• 37:52
  on the Crooked world where there was a mixed response to the 8th
• 37:57
  Doctor, Fitz and Angie, which is a line up that I is probably my
• 38:02
  favorite from all of the book runs and I'd love to know what
• 38:06
  you think about this bunch and how they're handled in this
• 38:08
  novel. Let's skip across to David
• 38:12
  first. I love that trio.
• 38:15
  So they say when reading these books, they were just a great
• 38:19
  crowd to be with this. This doesn't serve them the
• 38:23
  best, I think. Fitz does fine, but Angie's just
• 38:26
  a bit mopey at times. She doesn't really have a huge
• 38:28
  amount of agency and the Doctor is a changed man after what's
• 38:33
  happened in adventurous of Henrietta Street.
• 38:34
  So it's probably not the most interesting book for that trio.
• 38:41
  But I think of the three fits comes out the best.
• 38:43
  I think he's probably got the most interesting bits.
• 38:47
  I wasn't keen on some of the stuff with him in Flossy I felt,
• 38:52
  because basically it's Flossy let's is she fat?
• 38:55
  Is she is she not very attractive Let's let's have some
• 38:58
  more pros to describe. That's the only bit I read
• 39:01
  thought. That's very much of its of its
• 39:03
  time, and I wasn't massively keen on some of that.
• 39:06
  But he's felt the most flesh act particularly.
• 39:09
  He's got all the stuff with Iris, and so that's kind of
• 39:11
  going back to his wider story arc and dealing with some of his
• 39:15
  plot lines. But yeah, they're in it.
• 39:19
  They're fine, but it's probably not their finest book.
• 39:22
  How do you just say that? You know, because I thought this
• 39:23
  was one of the strongest Angie novels.
• 39:27
  Because there's a great passage where Fitz is like, Angie just
• 39:31
  has this way of sometimes just really clicking with people,
• 39:34
  making them feel comfortable. Then she goes to Las Vegas and
• 39:38
  there's a sequence where she's like, do you know what this is?
• 39:40
  Somewhere I'd actually choose to be at the bar and having fun.
• 39:44
  And she's sort of very empathetic towards, what's his
• 39:47
  name, Ron Von Almond, the special effects guy.
• 39:51
  So I thought I thought this was quite and I just thought she was
• 39:54
  very funny, trying not to look at his cock as well.
• 39:56
  Sorry, back to the sex again. What about you then, Paul?
• 40:00
  I think the other characters are more interesting than the
• 40:04
  tireless regulars. I think, you know, Fitz is a
• 40:07
  really interesting character, isn't he?
• 40:09
  There's kind of a a dissection going on across the run of these
• 40:13
  books about what it is to be a male companion.
• 40:15
  And Fitz is put through the the what I do by this idea is in the
• 40:18
  Doctor and one female companion, a male companion, is seen as
• 40:22
  atypical. So you put Fitz here as you see
• 40:24
  the longest running companion of the 8th Doctor in the books.
• 40:26
  I think he probably is and and he's really interested in about
• 40:28
  what he can do and what he can't do and he has the same kind of
• 40:31
  thing going on here. So the stripping him and the
• 40:33
  doctor naked reduces their masculinity.
• 40:36
  They're chained up but they don't have sex and then he's put
• 40:38
  off on this. It's kind of 60s well where he
• 40:41
  should be a great shagger, but he's not well.
• 40:44
  He normally is. He normally is but some, but of
• 40:46
  course what he should do, he doesn't do.
• 40:49
  And so because for long term readers kind of a deny of the
• 40:51
  expectation of what he would do and given the 60s it meant to be
• 40:54
  all Austin Powers, he's kind of to a kind of John Steed.
• 40:57
  He doesn't have sex with them and why doesn't he have sex with
• 41:00
  them. So it's a kind of interesting
• 41:01
  interrogation. But the text I think is more
• 41:03
  interested in the other characters and the historical
• 41:06
  antisodents. I think.
• 41:07
  I think when Brenda turns up, that puts a boot into it.
• 41:11
  When Bon Armin turns up or or or when you're dealing with the the
• 41:14
  smudgelings, I think he's more interested in those type of
• 41:17
  figures. But I think it's quite a good
• 41:19
  outing for for for these characters, which is a group I
• 41:22
  really like. And I think, yeah, it's hard to
• 41:26
  dislike them. Actually, there's a sentence in
• 41:29
  which once you get rid of Sam. Kind.
• 41:32
  Of a weird fancy what a companion should be, and so it
• 41:34
  doesn't really work when you get into to Fitz and Angie.
• 41:37
  Actually, you're much closer to something this point forward to
• 41:40
  where we're more familiar with, I think.
• 41:43
  But in this text, because they're surrounded by
• 41:45
  characters, both are and aren't the historical figures.
• 41:48
  They're kind of, they come outweighed and the dogs as well,
• 41:51
  the dogs doing a weird thing in terms of the plot, in terms how
• 41:54
  they're taking their attention away.
• 41:55
  But I think they're good. But there's more interesting
• 41:57
  material around the Tolkien figure and the Lewis figure and
• 42:01
  the Cali figure and and then certainly when when Noël Coward
• 42:05
  is named as such. Now James, I know what we did
• 42:09
  our last, but Original Sin, you are enormous fan of Chris and
• 42:14
  Ross and probably the 7th Doctor as well.
• 42:18
  I know the sort of the Virgin New Adventures that's that's.
• 42:21
  On and off, yeah. How did they fare?
• 42:23
  I agree with Paul that the other characters were far more
• 42:25
  interesting. I mean, the trouble is, because
• 42:26
  I say adventurous, the Doctor went through shit.
• 42:30
  The trouble is, it kind of by then having this book afterwards
• 42:33
  where there's very little of it, you feel as though actually kind
• 42:37
  of like more should have been made of the after effects of
• 42:41
  what they've just been through. And yeah, I felt smudgelings
• 42:44
  were actually a much more interesting bunch to me.
• 42:48
  The best thing I can say is I would have liked to have read
• 42:50
  this as a novel that wasn't a Doctor Who novel.
• 42:55
  I think if this hadn't been Doctor Who, I would have enjoyed
• 42:57
  it a lot more. And going back to what someone
• 43:00
  said on the Crooked World podcast, this is, you know, we
• 43:05
  live in a universe where there are laws of physics where it's
• 43:07
  kind of like in the Doctor Who laws and everything like that.
• 43:10
  And yeah, it's all very well kind of Paul saying he wants to
• 43:13
  submit, subvert them and everything like that.
• 43:16
  But when you're playing in someone else's sandpit, you kind
• 43:19
  of do have to sort of respect their rules and you know, leave
• 43:23
  it a bit tidier at the end. Yeah, if this had been a stand
• 43:27
  alone novel about, you know, mutinous dogs, Noël Coward with
• 43:33
  an iPhone in his name, you know, and kind of weird magical
• 43:38
  creatures, I would have accepted it a lot more.
• 43:40
  I would have been a lot happier with it.
• 43:42
  But because it's in the Doctor Who trappings, I felt kind of
• 43:45
  like, you know, it didn't really serve Doctor Who very well and
• 43:48
  as as such Angie and Fitz didn't come out of it too well.
• 43:54
  I prefer kind of Angie. I mean, Earth World is
• 43:57
  fantastic, but for Angie love Earth Water bits.
• 44:00
  I think that's a fantastic one for Fitz.
• 44:04
  By this stage I got bored of because it was very much the
• 44:07
  South Park. Oh my God, they killed Fitz.
• 44:09
  You know, it's the same same as they did with Rory.
• 44:12
  You know, they kept killing the. Yeah, and say kind of like I
• 44:17
  didn't feel like the Doctor stuff was picked up on.
• 44:20
  I mean, there's some stuff at the end where they're talking
• 44:22
  about and not feeling well because of staff.
• 44:24
  And yeah, I just, I was more interested in the other
• 44:28
  characters and would actually rather very happily I've ditched
• 44:31
  this as a Doctor Who book and read it as a Paul MA novel.
• 44:35
  I mean we get there with the doctors, don't we?
• 44:37
  Like we we get there. Where is he gets weaker weaker.
• 44:41
  Doesn't he come camera obscura like that?
• 44:44
  That is 1. Heart is failing at that point
• 44:47
  and he's, you know, near to death, but it is a long time
• 44:50
  coming. Yeah.
• 44:51
  And say, given that this is the book directly after, I can see
• 44:55
  why yet again they've put Paul Ma after Lawrence Miles.
• 44:58
  I mean, they've done this a few times.
• 45:00
  I think that's a bold move to go from something as academic as
• 45:04
  the previous one to something as fluffy.
• 45:06
  It ties ties in with the kind of the lack of editorial strength
• 45:11
  I. Always feel like the reason this
• 45:13
  set of regular works so well is that you have this sort of new,
• 45:19
  slightly unpredictable, occasionally romantic,
• 45:24
  occasionally quite violent, brutally violent at times, the
• 45:28
  burning Doctor Who we don't really know much about.
• 45:32
  And then you have that mad contrast between Angie, who is
• 45:37
  very serious and very logical and fits, who is, you know, the
• 45:43
  world's the slackiest slacker you're ever going to meet who
• 45:47
  wants to be a hero. It's it's there's some good
• 45:49
  contrast in there with him. Very much bizarrely the same as
• 45:53
  the Doctor in Original Sin, who's like the manipulative 7th
• 45:58
  Doctor we don't know much about. You've got Roz, who's the very
• 46:00
  serious Ultra by the book, and you've got qued who wants to be
• 46:04
  the hero. It's kind of.
• 46:05
  It's the same setup. I think 3 works in the books
• 46:09
  where one doesn't weirdly enough because you know it means you
• 46:13
  can go off and do like in this one where Doctor goes, right.
• 46:16
  You're going off to sort out the special effects.
• 46:19
  You're going to go and sort out the woman who does the theme
• 46:21
  song. I'm going to go and find the guy
• 46:23
  that's doing the writer you know sort of separates separates.
• 46:26
  OK well then you've all mentioned the guest characters.
• 46:30
  So can can you all highlight one the particularly impressed you
• 46:35
  and tell me why and let's do it in the same order again.
• 46:38
  Let's go back to David. I mean, I think it's certainly
• 46:41
  having at least three or four times out travelling Noel
• 46:44
  cowards and and his motivations were just bizarre, but I think I
• 46:50
  was quite interested in the villain whose name I've suddenly
• 46:53
  forgotten. Bria.
• 46:55
  Bria just just get the impression of this camp
• 46:59
  megalomaniac villain and maybe not camp because, you know,
• 47:01
  we're not, we're debating the use of the word.
• 47:03
  But it was interesting and I think, yeah, I don't know, I
• 47:10
  it's weird when you put me on the spot and I'm like, I can't
• 47:12
  think of it any suddenly. I kept trying to think we're
• 47:14
  free. You know, who the hell would
• 47:15
  play that in the mid 90s? This sort of Camp Sinister
• 47:19
  villain. While the the all the side
• 47:21
  characters are interesting, are they interesting enough?
• 47:23
  Do they stand out enough to go? Yes, that's the best character
• 47:26
  in the book. I said this is a book I enjoyed,
• 47:29
  but I couldn't, I couldn't necessarily say this is the best
• 47:33
  character in it, that that you put me on the spot and like my
• 47:35
  brain is not picking anyone, so that's probably got to be a
• 47:38
  sign. I would say so.
• 47:40
  OK, let's throw it. James, you said.
• 47:43
  You're going to do it in the same order as the last time
• 47:45
  you're. Cheating.
• 47:45
  I do apologize, just shaking it up a bit.
• 47:47
  But because of my this is going to be quite a sad one because of
• 47:51
  my ultra logical brain and bringing things together.
• 47:55
  Because when we're also about the journeys and stuff, I think
• 47:57
  I feel very sorry for Flossy. I love Flossy.
• 48:00
  I say not because of the fact that kind of there is the
• 48:03
  horrendous thing that some people do like kind of, you
• 48:07
  know, concentrating on her physical attributes.
• 48:10
  It's this wonderful thing that she's gone from this horrid life
• 48:15
  in the hotel and that opening scene will just kind of gloss
• 48:18
  over for now and she develops and then they they all go off on
• 48:22
  this kind of like this ghost like type ending where they're
• 48:24
  all off on and it's like wonderful.
• 48:25
  And then you realize that actually this whole story has
• 48:27
  been written out of history because time has been reset back
• 48:30
  to how it was. So probably Flossie has had this
• 48:32
  kind of great, wonderful new life, and then suddenly she's
• 48:37
  back at. Back at the hotel, OK.
• 48:40
  Because time is reset and it's just like, oh God, this all this
• 48:44
  lovely stuff where she's realized that there's more out
• 48:47
  there and everything and it's like, she can be more than a
• 48:50
  cook, she can be more than a chef, She and no, she and
• 48:53
  probably ends up back at the hotel.
• 48:56
  The Donna Noble story All over again.
• 48:58
  Oh, wait, hang on until last week.
• 49:01
  I'm. Sorry.
• 49:02
  But wasn't the hotel manager about professors undying love to
• 49:05
  flossy before you are? The giant again.
• 49:08
  But again, we're back to to interspecies relationship
• 49:11
  because he's a giant boar. That's right, OAR.
• 49:14
  Not BORE. Mr. Brewster?
• 49:16
  Was that his name? Something like that, yeah.
• 49:20
  So it's a very strange one, but I I love the character, but this
• 49:23
  heartbreaking realisation that if time has been reset, she's
• 49:27
  lost it all. That one of my other guests on
• 49:30
  the book club who chose Paul Marsden's favorite author, said
• 49:32
  that he writes with a lot of warm humanity and I think that's
• 49:36
  exemplified in Flossy. She's just this really.
• 49:39
  I mean, I think her back story is hilarious about having to
• 49:42
  deliver the meal to the ambassador visiting the station.
• 49:46
  And nobody told her that. It was a a bunch of lobster
• 49:49
  people. And of course, what the hell,
• 49:51
  did she serve them out? I just thought that was
• 49:54
  wonderful. I like the idea of her just sort
• 49:57
  of spring cleaning the tardish, you know?
• 49:59
  Yeah, she could have just stuck around and every now and again
• 50:01
  she'd be there, you know, sorted out.
• 50:02
  She. Could have been like the master
• 50:04
  in Scream of the Shalka TARDIS bound and just kind of like
• 50:07
  maintaining the ship, I think. It should be more like, was it
• 50:12
  Wolsey? You know the inherit.
• 50:14
  Every now and again they remember there's a cat in the
• 50:15
  TARDIS. I love.
• 50:18
  I love the fact as well. You know, like she was always
• 50:20
  going, oh, for God's sakes, fix, you're on this amazing
• 50:23
  adventure. What the heck, why are you
• 50:24
  slouching over there in the corner whinging.
• 50:26
  You know, like, have some fun, for God's sakes.
• 50:28
  Yes. Definitely.
• 50:31
  Did like their double eye? I mean, when I say when they
• 50:33
  were making comments about her appearance, I did kind of like
• 50:35
  to have the dynamic because it's like, do you not know what
• 50:38
  you've got? Yeah.
• 50:41
  How about you then, Paul? I think probably it's reflective
• 50:45
  of some research, but I'm I'm really interested in his
• 50:48
  depiction of CS Lewis and Warner or the version of Lewis and
• 50:53
  Warney that we find in this text and and and Tolkien as well and
• 50:59
  the biggest character, I think. I think that that force is
• 51:03
  really interesting in how he's clearly responding to actually I
• 51:10
  couldn't be I'm just thinking when the Lord of the Rings
• 51:12
  Fellowship rings released since the otherwise it's the same as
• 51:14
  the book so he can't be responding directly to that.
• 51:17
  It's interesting interrogation of where Lewis and Tolkien are
• 51:24
  culturally for the wider readership, because the
• 51:27
  assumption would be that the reach of a red Tolkien or some
• 51:30
  of it, and they may have had Lewis read to them as children
• 51:33
  or Reddit. But then of course you've seen
• 51:35
  that the TV adaptations from the late 80s I think, line the which
• 51:41
  the Water coincides with season 25, if I recall correctly.
• 51:46
  You're off by a few years. No, I don't think I am.
• 51:48
  I think, I think the TV adaptation of Line of which an
• 51:51
  order of is the 88. 88 We were watching it the other day. 89 I
• 51:56
  seem to recall it is. Yeah, it is season 25.
• 51:59
  And so the readership of Doctor Who at this point may want to
• 52:02
  engaged Lucer at that level. And so it's interesting in that
• 52:06
  text when we go to Oxford 1914 and we have Edith, this idea of
• 52:12
  Edith going off to live in the OR go off to the Caribbean after
• 52:15
  Tyler dies, which of course is what Princess Margaret does.
• 52:18
  Of course she goes to Mystique, doesn't she?
• 52:19
  That's where she retreats to her kind of Paradise Island where
• 52:21
  she can indulge all her appetite away from the British press is
• 52:26
  interesting how she becomes that type of figure and then Princess
• 52:28
  Margaret turns up. So those figures that I I'm, I'm
• 52:31
  most interested in, but that's me personally what he's doing
• 52:35
  with. We're talking I think when the
• 52:36
  when the dog appears in the mist and it's when the talking figure
• 52:41
  dies. Isn't it very early on in the
• 52:42
  text that's really quite striking.
• 52:44
  It made me think of Robert robbing the show in fact.
• 52:47
  When when, when, when Hearn turns up and then you get this
• 52:49
  kind of comedy manners and then Freer turns up.
• 52:52
  Freer is kind of generally missing character.
• 52:54
  And when Tolkien's face melts, which I was all referred to it,
• 52:57
  he kind of comes out of nowhere because you've got this kind of
• 52:59
  takes off this form we just kind of knock about and you know, do
• 53:02
  you take it seriously because it's dogs with guns or the dogs
• 53:05
  too close to what we recognize and therefore we can't take it
• 53:07
  seriously? And then the face notes and you
• 53:09
  shift in this kind of horror aesthetic and it's really quite
• 53:13
  striking and and so, yeah, that that's who I'm I'm most
• 53:16
  interested in, but it may be what I am as an individual, as a
• 53:19
  researcher at this point in time.
• 53:21
  I think it was. You that said earlier in the
• 53:22
  episode that this book had a bit of a bite to it.
• 53:26
  And I think sometimes it sort of lulls you into a full sense of
• 53:29
  security with all the jokes and all the camp.
• 53:32
  And then you get a sequence in the climax where somebody has
• 53:34
  their throat ripped out and it's the bloodiest revolution you're
• 53:38
  going to see. I really like that though.
• 53:40
  I like it's the same sort of thing that I get it's it's
• 53:45
  fluffier than a Rob Sheerman story, but I always feel like he
• 53:48
  uses his his humour. It's a lot darker humour with
• 53:51
  Rob Sheeran usually, but he he sort of makes you feel
• 53:54
  comfortable and he really sort of stabs you in the heart with
• 53:57
  something quite shocking. It's a strange book, this, isn't
• 54:00
  it? That's an understatement.
• 54:04
  Pony. It's all over the place.
• 54:05
  Yeah. It's very it's very you almost
• 54:07
  want it to have been a kind of standalone.
• 54:09
  You know, here is here's the connected universe, here's
• 54:11
  something different and it's asking for for something that's
• 54:14
  not happening in the book series at that time.
• 54:16
  And James's point about where the editors is fascinating.
• 54:20
  This is almost like an alternative doctor or this is
• 54:22
  what's happening alongside the main series and then you can do
• 54:25
  those types of things and it's just the the problem with it is
• 54:28
  part of a monthly sequence and therefore it has to follow him
• 54:34
  history. It doesn't doesn't follow
• 54:36
  history really way, way shape or form.
• 54:38
  It's just something very different.
• 54:39
  But that's part of the richness of the series at that point.
• 54:42
  They're able to do these things and and so therefore they can
• 54:45
  put the character in these positions.
• 54:46
  The readership is relatively small and therefore the impact
• 54:50
  is relatively small but within the community it has this this
• 54:53
  this serious impact and and of course it's it's you know it's
• 54:56
  the two fitness you know it's Miles and an actress and they're
• 54:59
  they can write not like they disappear then once the series
• 55:02
  collapse they they've still got a presence as with a proper
• 55:06
  publisher or just as as a as a figure online that people look
• 55:09
  to in the case of Miles and yeah I think there's there's
• 55:11
  something fascinating that they are paired and kind of opposites
• 55:14
  but they are pushing the format and the character in places that
• 55:18
  it can't go on the television or couldn't go on television and
• 55:21
  still couldn't go on the service.
• 55:22
  I don't think this would be something to see on the
• 55:24
  television. I don't you could do it.
• 55:25
  I mean, you ever have interspecies sex with Victorians
• 55:29
  and lizards and yeah. Outrageous.
• 55:33
  But you could encode it, and then the gamanocracy could lose
• 55:36
  their minds thinking about it, but also wanking to it.
• 55:42
  OK, well then someone just mentioned the word weird.
• 55:45
  Actually, it might have been me. Should it be this?
• 55:47
  Should these books be this weird?
• 55:50
  Should we be writing sort of knock about Doctor Who
• 55:52
  adventures, or should we be aspiring to be a little bit
• 55:56
  stranger than? That no, they should be as weird
• 55:59
  as possible because it's back to series 1-2 and three where
• 56:02
  Doctor Who can do anything it wants from week to week or from
• 56:05
  blocks of stories. It should never be formulated
• 56:08
  and so therefore you should be able to jump around like this.
• 56:10
  The problem is when they impose a running storyline and that's
• 56:14
  kind of pulling against Doctor Who at that.
• 56:16
  Yeah, that's essentially what you've had serious 23 running
• 56:19
  storyline. It should be that it can move
• 56:20
  from fast to serious to tragedy to sci-fi to history and that's
• 56:24
  what they're trying to do in these books.
• 56:25
  The problem is they put this running storyline in and
• 56:27
  therefore you have to accommodate all of them, which
• 56:29
  we can do is intelligent readers, but I'm not sure at the
• 56:32
  time it was as appreciated as it should have been.
• 56:34
  How about you, David? What do you think?
• 56:36
  I I I think what early 2000s is just such a You've got three
• 56:42
  separate runs of 8th Doctor stories going on at the same
• 56:46
  time. You've got comics.
• 56:47
  You've got Big Finish, you've got names and so I've got DWM.
• 56:51
  You've got Children of the Revolution, which is kind of
• 56:53
  absolutely in the core of some of the best comic strips Doctor
• 56:56
  Magazine's ever done. You've got the second Paul
• 56:59
  McGann seasons about just about to come out, I think Invasive
• 57:02
  Vedas. Vedas.
• 57:03
  Miles came out the month after this.
• 57:06
  And you've got these books and they are telling some bold and
• 57:10
  wild tales. They're telling stuff that's so
• 57:13
  different, and they've got three completely different mediums
• 57:15
  telling three different types of stories.
• 57:18
  But they're unlike anything that you've had before.
• 57:21
  And they are imaginative, they are creative, and they're not
• 57:26
  run-of-the-mill. And I think I look back on the
• 57:29
  there's so much more varied than some of the new adventures.
• 57:31
  At times I think that they take more risks.
• 57:35
  I think some of the stuff in Henry Acton St. in this when you
• 57:39
  get to things like obscure and stuff like that, you know these
• 57:42
  are they're taking doctor in a completely new direction.
• 57:44
  They're doing things that are wild and different.
• 57:49
  And I think they're all stronger for it because at that point Dr.
• 57:53
  Who was completely and utterly dead in terms of television.
• 57:56
  So why not do something universe shattering and different and we
• 58:02
  can afford to have, you know, the poodle story we can have.
• 58:07
  The Dead Sea. You know, historical lyrical
• 58:09
  text. But I take the point that that
• 58:13
  ongoing storyline which threads through them all, links them all
• 58:17
  together. They don't get a chance to stand
• 58:19
  on their own. To face it is a links them too
• 58:23
  much. How can you go from the trauma
• 58:25
  of Henrietta St. to oh, I'm fine, and I do wonder whether or
• 58:30
  not there were some. It's just a weird coincidence.
• 58:33
  Of all the books that is the 100th BBC book where they decide
• 58:37
  to emblazonate with my cover is this one.
• 58:40
  So there's just a part of me wondering whether or not
• 58:43
  ordering books might have been changed somewhere to make this
• 58:46
  the 100th book. Because either going to be this
• 58:48
  or relative. Is it relative dimensions?
• 58:50
  I can't see that having 100th BBC book blazoned on its cover
• 58:53
  having the same impact. Do you know what I think is?
• 58:55
  There were one or two things, right?
• 58:57
  One, they're bolder than even I thought they were to make this
• 59:01
  the 100th Doctor Who novel, this cover.
• 59:04
  I mean, look at it. It's designed to irritate
• 59:07
  people. Or two, it's like other people
• 59:11
  have said editorial control has gone out of the window, no one's
• 59:14
  paying attention. And that just happened to me,
• 59:16
  the 100th novel, and they slapped that on the cover.
• 59:19
  Then somebody sat there, worked out and say, hey, this is our
• 59:21
  this is the 100th book going, You know what?
• 59:23
  Stick it on the cover. Let's get it, let's get it.
• 59:25
  Golden bust on the I'll tell. You what?
• 59:27
  It's a hell of a mission statement, isn't?
• 59:29
  It at least it wasn't something circular and swirly with a
• 59:32
  Photoshop. That's true, James.
• 59:36
  Come on then. Weirdness.
• 59:37
  Yeah, I'm going to kind of tie these comments together because
• 59:41
  I was thinking about this a lot and what I would have liked to
• 59:44
  have seen was a slight more mimicking of the TV series in
• 59:48
  that. For example, here you have the
• 59:50
  Hinchcliffe era, which is dark and horror.
• 59:53
  Then you've got season 17, which is the Douglas Adams era, which
• 59:57
  is kind of like the the, the, the more jokey stuff.
• 1:00:00
  I would have liked to have actually had the books more in
• 1:00:03
  seasons, so you could have had a season of OK, we'll make the
• 1:00:09
  season Grim Reality, Mad Dogs, Crooked Robot.
• 1:00:13
  We'll do them in succession so there is a theme running through
• 1:00:16
  them. So that you're talking about the
• 1:00:19
  cycles from the Virgin New Adventures, aren't you?
• 1:00:21
  Because my problem with the 8th Doctor books at the time was the
• 1:00:26
  kind of the wild bloody motion sickness of lurching from one to
• 1:00:31
  another. I see.
• 1:00:32
  I love that. No, it's Doctor.
• 1:00:34
  Who to me? That, that.
• 1:00:36
  That's, I think, because that's how I came to Doctor Who in
• 1:00:38
  random order in the 90s. Therefore, going from I'm
• 1:00:42
  watching Hinchcliffe, I'm watching Hartnell, therefore The
• 1:00:45
  Lurching in. Whereas I, whereas I grew up
• 1:00:48
  kind of watching it in the 80s. So you kind of saw the almost
• 1:00:53
  the development from, you know, Davison maturing and kind of
• 1:00:58
  then you got into Colin Baker starting off really well but
• 1:01:02
  mellowing and actually accepting his relationship with Perry and
• 1:01:05
  stuff. And then you got the 7th Doctor
• 1:01:06
  developing with the manipulative side of things.
• 1:01:10
  And to me, that's what was missing from a lot of the 8th
• 1:01:13
  Doctor stuff was the the kind of the the natural.
• 1:01:18
  The ebb and flow of it. Ebb and flow?
• 1:01:20
  Yeah. So again, I have no problems as
• 1:01:24
  such with them doing things like mad dogs, but because at the
• 1:01:28
  time it wasn't what I was used to.
• 1:01:31
  I get that, you know, and I I actually think if had they done
• 1:01:34
  that well, I don't agree with that stance.
• 1:01:37
  I like, I like how it sort of moves about all over the place
• 1:01:40
  totally. But I think they would have been
• 1:01:43
  more popular at the time if they'd take, if it had felt a
• 1:01:46
  bit more structured. And I think that was the problem
• 1:01:48
  because they knew their audience was dwindling.
• 1:01:51
  They didn't make an effort to rebuild the audience.
• 1:01:55
  What astonishes me about this period of the books is I think
• 1:02:01
  it is a a exceptional run. I think you get adventurous and
• 1:02:06
  Henry at Red St. you get a year of intelligent tigers, you get
• 1:02:09
  City of the Dead, you get Anacrophobia, Crooked World
• 1:02:13
  Camera Obscura. Like, these are really, really
• 1:02:16
  great Doctor stories, and a lot of them are in succession.
• 1:02:19
  So I do. I do think it's a it's a it's a
• 1:02:21
  sort of forgotten golden period of the books it.
• 1:02:25
  Definitely needs revisiting. I mean, you look at how little
• 1:02:28
  coverage DWM has given it. There's been you've got the
• 1:02:31
  David Howe book about the Virgin years, no books about Ed, as you
• 1:02:36
  know. I'm trying to actually find out
• 1:02:39
  what was going on because I mean DWM ran article on article upon
• 1:02:44
  article about the Virgin era and the fiction factory and kind of
• 1:02:47
  like the and then because Big Finish come along.
• 1:02:51
  I do wonder if that was because when Virgin came along, that was
• 1:02:55
  the first new Doctor Who. Yeah, so like, suddenly they had
• 1:02:58
  something to run in Doctor. Magazine.
• 1:03:00
  You can see that basically as soon as McGann turns up in the
• 1:03:03
  Big Finish, DWM loses interest in the EDAS and that kills off
• 1:03:08
  what a. Shame.
• 1:03:09
  Yeah, we had to make that choice basically between the EDAS or
• 1:03:15
  McGann, you know, that was essentially the choice that
• 1:03:18
  Doctor Who was faced with it. Got half a page as a preview,
• 1:03:21
  yeah. That's it.
• 1:03:22
  Although they did used to do those very cool cartoons.
• 1:03:24
  Do you remember? But they even then they weren't
• 1:03:26
  always EDA based. They were almost all Big Finish.
• 1:03:29
  Yeah, I've got it. I mean, I've got the preview
• 1:03:31
  here, and it does have a quote from From Mars, which is he
• 1:03:37
  believes if Keys and Mariners had appeared in Season 17, it
• 1:03:39
  might have been a bit like this. Wow.
• 1:03:43
  That's what he was aiming for, apparently.
• 1:03:45
  Okay. Although I do remember for the
• 1:03:47
  reviews they used to do. Great culture though.
• 1:03:50
  One of Paul McGann stopped playing the violin with all the
• 1:03:54
  tigers around it. The year of intelligent tigers
• 1:03:56
  and stuff like that. Or you know what?
• 1:03:58
  We'll take what we can get, yeah.
• 1:03:59
  They didn't give the illustration to this one because
• 1:04:02
  I've got the review here as well.
• 1:04:04
  That's that's the second or third review I was going to
• 1:04:07
  like. They must have given that the
• 1:04:08
  pic. It wasn't.
• 1:04:08
  I think it's the Tomb and Cybermen DVD.
• 1:04:10
  They gave it to you. Although James, I'm going to
• 1:04:12
  come back to you very quickly and just say because you were
• 1:04:15
  sort of talking about the books as a whole, but the question
• 1:04:20
  was, how weird is too weird? And again, the trouble is, it's
• 1:04:26
  a very individual thing because everyone draws the line in
• 1:04:31
  different places for different things.
• 1:04:33
  So for example, you know, I draw the line in one place for a
• 1:04:37
  story that isn't actually coherent enough for me because
• 1:04:40
  it's more focused on the set pieces, whereas Paul is more
• 1:04:43
  interested in the set pieces. Whereas for me, because of who I
• 1:04:48
  hang around with, because of other aspects of my life,
• 1:04:50
  because all kinds of things, this wasn't weird.
• 1:04:53
  This was a bitch fight in the third.
• 1:04:56
  You know, I've, I've, I've seen what goes on in the pup
• 1:04:59
  community and Jesus Christ. Not put that into a Doctor Who
• 1:05:03
  novel because that would be seen as whoa.
• 1:05:05
  Don't mention it here. I'll have to put an X rating on
• 1:05:07
  this. All right.
• 1:05:09
  I usually draw the line that weird with Dave Stone.
• 1:05:12
  You know, like, go on, bet it's sky pirates that is on another
• 1:05:16
  world. That is, that's another
• 1:05:17
  universe. Your bone is the line that
• 1:05:19
  always reminds me for sky pirates.
• 1:05:22
  Oh, you want to say something? Wouldn't wouldn't Virgin have
• 1:05:26
  gone there in a way BBC Books wouldn't.
• 1:05:28
  There's potential that you could have gone far weirder if Virgin
• 1:05:30
  still had their franchise in a way that the BBC haven't.
• 1:05:33
  And what you find in the early N is I think is a kind of
• 1:05:36
  industrial military complex between DWM which was still
• 1:05:39
  rising the fact that they were the official publication and Big
• 1:05:43
  Finish And of course you know Gary Russell you know his career
• 1:05:46
  is made from bad reviews of City of Death and Panic spiders.
• 1:05:50
  He becomes this great sage who slays the mythological great
• 1:05:55
  episodes and then he moves on to to Big Finish via Virgin of
• 1:06:00
  course with Legacy. So there is a sense in which you
• 1:06:02
  could you've had the radical transgressive material something
• 1:06:05
  like transit and it hasn't landed and it's got column
• 1:06:09
  inches in in the in the Sunday Press of heavens to Betsy you
• 1:06:12
  know the sky is falling pole collection a doctor Uber has
• 1:06:16
  this type of thing you've got out of the system.
• 1:06:18
  The EDAS did make the the newspapers.
• 1:06:21
  When compassion turned into a TARDIS there there was some
• 1:06:24
  articles like the Doctor riding around inside a woman.
• 1:06:28
  But that's a different thing though, isn't it?
• 1:06:30
  You know, that's a fear on sex in Doctor Who, Yeah.
• 1:06:33
  Whereas whereas transit was far more about language, and it's
• 1:06:37
  far more visceral and far more in your face, here is a
• 1:06:39
  prostitute. This is that was the text and
• 1:06:41
  moves into the position which the television couldn't go to.
• 1:06:45
  You know Ace as a teenager surely her background must have
• 1:06:50
  had sex. And yet we have the whole weird
• 1:06:53
  conversation with the soldier in in Cursive Fenrick and the fact
• 1:06:55
  that she's probably from 1984, as I think Miles and Woods argue
• 1:06:59
  based on her weird kind of non swearing slang.
• 1:07:03
  And so there's this weird kind of rejection of sex but the
• 1:07:07
  virgin adventures, they're not afraid of sex whatsoever.
• 1:07:10
  But that's of course that's the type of readership even there in
• 1:07:13
  the first book, Genesis, you know the doctor happily sends a
• 1:07:16
  prostitute back into her line of work in order to get
• 1:07:19
  information. It's it's it's that 7th doctor
• 1:07:22
  figure that might have kind of molipulative figure the the the
• 1:07:24
  the mythical Cartmore plan that we see writ large.
• 1:07:27
  Whereas this is different and and they're producing something
• 1:07:31
  but maybe more interesting or or as interesting, I think is what
• 1:07:34
  I mean. But they're they're ignored
• 1:07:35
  because Big Finish, that's proper Doctor Who.
• 1:07:38
  Yeah, actors. And it's got scripts and it's a
• 1:07:41
  kind of prejudice about original Doctor Who and fiction, because
• 1:07:44
  up until that point Dr. Who is this is how you learn about
• 1:07:47
  everything you can't see anymore.
• 1:07:48
  It's Terence Dixon, maybe Malcolm Hope.
• 1:07:50
  All Ian Masters has Bastard in his all shocking, but it's
• 1:07:54
  laying the path. And so Aronovich and Platt and
• 1:07:56
  Briggs are all laying the path, but who's reading it?
• 1:07:58
  But that point. But they're pointless in the
• 1:08:00
  direction of new Who but these novels.
• 1:08:02
  But there's a weird thing going on with DWM that he is tying
• 1:08:06
  itself in to Big Finish and Big Finish maybe isn't as interested
• 1:08:11
  at this point as what the 8 Software Adventures are doing,
• 1:08:13
  because they are. There's some fascinating
• 1:08:14
  material. There's some really great
• 1:08:16
  material there and James is right there there.
• 1:08:18
  There's some type of revisit to it or or or re examination of it
• 1:08:23
  is due. And that's what this podcast
• 1:08:25
  could do is to make people go back to that material and then
• 1:08:28
  it will make lots of eBay sellers very happy because
• 1:08:30
  suddenly you can ratchet up the price on these goods that people
• 1:08:33
  didn't read at the time. Joe, you were there in
• 1:08:34
  gardeners, I was in books on it and we weren't selling that
• 1:08:37
  material. Kind of fallen off a Cliff and
• 1:08:40
  it was a very small region and therefore you could do the type
• 1:08:43
  of thing we see in this text, do what he had done.
• 1:08:47
  When when the new series came back and they started doing the
• 1:08:50
  NSA. So I can't wait to cover one of
• 1:08:53
  those because there's plenty to talk about there.
• 1:08:57
  Effectively. Doctor Who fiction
• 1:08:59
  straitjacketed. Perhaps there's some good there
• 1:09:02
  is some good stuff in there, but.
• 1:09:04
  Having having read the EDA and then picking up Clockwise Man,
• 1:09:07
  which in itself is not a bad book, but going from these.
• 1:09:11
  You're going back to enhanced targets, basically.
• 1:09:14
  It feels less sophisticated, doesn't it?
• 1:09:15
  But. Say it's safe.
• 1:09:17
  The target length it's the the length of it.
• 1:09:19
  But they sold and those first maybe four or five batches of
• 1:09:24
  free were in, there were #1 two and three those weeks they were
• 1:09:28
  coming out and they were selling in the hundreds of thousands.
• 1:09:31
  These were selling in the, if they were lucky, thousands.
• 1:09:37
  Well, do you know what, I'm going to bring it back to Mad
• 1:09:39
  Dogs and Englishmen because we've, we've stopped talking
• 1:09:42
  about that for the last sort of 1015 minutes and with good
• 1:09:44
  reason. This has been really, really
• 1:09:46
  interesting. Do you fellas have anything
• 1:09:49
  else? I know I would say this, James,
• 1:09:52
  I know you're going to have something else to say, but do
• 1:09:54
  you have anything else to say? We sort of cover the regulars,
• 1:09:58
  we've covered the guest characters.
• 1:10:00
  We've talked about the sort of tone of the book, sort of round
• 1:10:05
  up your thoughts on it and anything else that we haven't
• 1:10:08
  covered so far, Paul. It's still got the doctor's cock
• 1:10:14
  and we're not allowed to look at it.
• 1:10:18
  It's true. That's fascinating.
• 1:10:20
  It takes us to a point that there's a point at which the
• 1:10:22
  Veil has to be pulled, and therefore Angie, as ever the
• 1:10:26
  companion, as the the viewers entry point into this world.
• 1:10:31
  She has to look away because some things have to remain
• 1:10:33
  mysterious even at this point in time.
• 1:10:35
  It's really interesting that even at that point, the Doctor,
• 1:10:39
  we can't see his penis and although we have dog sex, the
• 1:10:42
  doctor cannot have genitals. It's it's fascinating what it
• 1:10:45
  starts about the the character of the doctor.
• 1:10:47
  You haven't really talked about the Doctor.
• 1:10:49
  Well, OK, all right, well, then, let's, let's talk about the
• 1:10:52
  doctor and then we'll round it off.
• 1:10:54
  What do you have to say about the doctor?
• 1:10:56
  This kind of Is he really interested in the 8th Doctor?
• 1:10:59
  Do we know even at this point what the 8th Doctor is?
• 1:11:01
  Because of course they're going to wiping at the slate of the
• 1:11:03
  8th Doctor. He's gone through the period of
• 1:11:06
  of amnesia and that really great run of books.
• 1:11:09
  By and large. There's a few dodgy ones there.
• 1:11:12
  But that Father Time is an astonishing piece of work.
• 1:11:15
  And yet here we have an interest What Turing Test.
• 1:11:18
  You know, the burning. It's it's a Catholic war even.
• 1:11:22
  It's a great run of books. What do we have at the end?
• 1:11:24
  But in fact we have the text that reads really interesting.
• 1:11:27
  Here is the Doctor and it's the name is enough.
• 1:11:30
  And we put him in these strange scenarios and therefore we move
• 1:11:33
  it around like that And so it's it's a Doctor Who book.
• 1:11:36
  To James's point. We would be better without the
• 1:11:38
  Doctor. It'll be a very different book
• 1:11:40
  in my more interesting book. But it's where we put the Doctor
• 1:11:42
  into this strange world. But his world actually seems to
• 1:11:44
  be in Oxford in the 1940s that's recently was comfortable
• 1:11:48
  pretending to be an academic, pretending someone from Ireland,
• 1:11:51
  which was a nice throwback to his gallery and Ireland from
• 1:11:53
  from season 14. And so I think it's comfortable.
• 1:11:57
  It's a comfortable vision of the Doctor that Angie fits the
• 1:12:00
  comfortable and the surrounding material is what's unusual.
• 1:12:03
  It's where you put them is is what's interesting rather than
• 1:12:06
  the conventional narrative. I felt this sort of lent into,
• 1:12:09
  you know, the the sort of breathless romantic the jumped
• 1:12:13
  into Big Finish in Storm Warning, and he's sort of giddy
• 1:12:17
  and up for the adventure. I thought this LED into that
• 1:12:20
  really, really sort of sequence on the train, you know, sort of
• 1:12:23
  leaping out of the TARDIS going, Oh my God, I could be going over
• 1:12:26
  the whole universe and squashing academics and I'll never know
• 1:12:29
  about it and all all this sort of fun that you're having with
• 1:12:32
  him. How did you find him, David?
• 1:12:35
  I think you could read it on a level that, you know, he's gone
• 1:12:38
  through this trauma. He's kind of almost in denial
• 1:12:40
  about it. Therefore it's kind of, I'm
• 1:12:43
  going to just try and go out and enjoy this now because I've just
• 1:12:45
  undergone open heart surgery and got over as they got over it
• 1:12:50
  ridiculously quickly. But yeah, there was, there was a
• 1:12:52
  degree of there was some of that joyous 8th doctor in there, but
• 1:12:55
  whether or not that was the character forcing it because
• 1:12:58
  he's trying to get some normality back.
• 1:13:02
  But yeah, I think the fact that book is definitely parking the
• 1:13:07
  emotional issues and everything and just having him enjoy
• 1:13:11
  himself and whether or not that's tying into that kind of
• 1:13:13
  breathless performance that would Mcgann's back this, you
• 1:13:17
  know, whether or not I was writing this.
• 1:13:19
  Having listened to, didn't he write for Mcgann's this season?
• 1:13:23
  Stones of Venice, Stones of. Venice is Fab.
• 1:13:26
  So whether he's now, you know, he says he's written for and had
• 1:13:30
  McGann performing his writing, he's being able to channel maybe
• 1:13:33
  a bit of that actual Mcgann's performance into the
• 1:13:38
  characterization of the 8th Doctor.
• 1:13:39
  So actually it might be that we're getting a version closer
• 1:13:42
  to what the the big finished performances were starting to
• 1:13:46
  deliver this book because we'd only have the four of them like
• 1:13:49
  when this book came out. So I think it's interesting why
• 1:13:52
  it kind of parks the story arc and we get something a little
• 1:13:56
  bit more akin to the performed version of 8th Doctor.
• 1:14:00
  For all of the we sort of complained about the editorial
• 1:14:03
  issues and this not being as tight as an arc as it could be,
• 1:14:08
  I do think the bit at the end where he realises he's not
• 1:14:11
  alone. That is a punch the air moment
• 1:14:13
  for his doctor. It's it's a really satisfying
• 1:14:16
  moment because we've gone from the burning to this point, which
• 1:14:18
  is it's a long run of books from thinking he's the only one of
• 1:14:22
  his kind. James the Doctor.
• 1:14:26
  Yeah, I mean, I would agree with Dave.
• 1:14:27
  I think the Big Finish is exerting its influence over
• 1:14:30
  McGann, over the 8th Doctor. I think McGann is kind of very
• 1:14:34
  present on the page. And it's just, again, it's just
• 1:14:36
  a shame that they came along because they could have taken
• 1:14:40
  the Doctor to a lot of new places in this.
• 1:14:42
  But because I think they probably know that kind of big
• 1:14:46
  thing, if she's going to steal their audience, then maybe
• 1:14:49
  putting more of the original happy go lucky romantic
• 1:14:53
  breathless puppy dog into into the books to try and kind of get
• 1:14:59
  people back into them. I mean, he's a, he's a, he's
• 1:15:01
  basically the the McGann Dr. from the the audios.
• 1:15:06
  I'll tell you what, though. That default setting of the
• 1:15:08
  Torture Dr. does assert itself. Because eventually we get to
• 1:15:11
  that series of alternative universe books you remember when
• 1:15:15
  the whole universe is the multiverse has been shattered
• 1:15:18
  and we're on a series. The Lost Resort.
• 1:15:20
  Reckless Engineering. Yeah, and the Doctor is
• 1:15:23
  depressed as hell throughout all of them.
• 1:15:25
  It's like Mccoy's suddenly back in the books, You know, bloody
• 1:15:29
  miserable. Somehow they cannot escape that
• 1:15:32
  sometimes. That's the most in that's the
• 1:15:34
  least interesting version of the Doctor of the books.
• 1:15:36
  That's why there's a real issue with the Virgin run early on.
• 1:15:38
  Nightshades are clear example of that with the Doctors.
• 1:15:41
  I'm so depressed I I can't go on.
• 1:15:44
  You must go and explore for me. I'm going to sit here and and
• 1:15:48
  and just think about how terrible time is.
• 1:15:51
  Doesn't really work for the character, even in the book
• 1:15:54
  version. I don't know if I dare say it,
• 1:15:56
  given, you know, where this writer is considered these days,
• 1:16:00
  but when the high science came along and it was a lot more fun,
• 1:16:04
  it was very refreshing. That was Benny.
• 1:16:07
  It was the influence of Benny getting rid of Ace, bringing
• 1:16:10
  someone in who wasn't angst ridden, who didn't hate the
• 1:16:13
  Doctor, who hadn't had big fallings out, makings up,
• 1:16:15
  fallings out, makings up. And they were.
• 1:16:18
  They weren't tied to a character from the TV, and Benny was able
• 1:16:22
  to kind of reinvigorate the Doctor's enthusiasm for things.
• 1:16:28
  To enjoy the highest science, you have to do what my students
• 1:16:31
  do towards Harry Potter. You have to disassociate the
• 1:16:34
  book from the author. Yeah, and the highest science.
• 1:16:36
  It's still a it's still a great book, a great book early on in
• 1:16:40
  the run there. Of course, whatever, Rob, A
• 1:16:41
  Buffy podcast at the moment, I'm having to do that an awful lot,
• 1:16:44
  you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure.
• 1:16:46
  Good job, because he's another Dick as well, but.
• 1:16:50
  For. Different reasons,
• 1:16:51
  unfortunately. He's quite a creative man.
• 1:16:54
  It's really annoying. Well, look, James, I'm always
• 1:16:57
  appalled that we're not seeing the doctor's knob.
• 1:16:59
  How? No, no, I wouldn't say that.
• 1:17:02
  You know, I wouldn't say that. But, you know, just a kind of
• 1:17:04
  very description of what a Gallifrey and penis looks.
• 1:17:07
  Like I've dread to think. Let's ask Tom Baker.
• 1:17:09
  No, let's not do that. Let's ask Miriam Margulies.
• 1:17:13
  Let's ask go to Trotton. He's a great shagger amongst.
• 1:17:16
  Of course he is, yeah, with his fifteen families.
• 1:17:19
  But any sort of final? Thoughts and.
• 1:17:23
  Things we haven't covered. I for some reason I love the
• 1:17:27
  final chapter, that final one page chapter where no cowardice
• 1:17:32
  could be confronted with the cats.
• 1:17:34
  I don't know why. I just thought that was just it
• 1:17:37
  was hilarious. I don't know why, because it was
• 1:17:39
  just And he slams the slams the door in their faces and it's
• 1:17:43
  just how how will we end this book?
• 1:17:45
  We end it on the series. No, no, no.
• 1:17:47
  The cat people turn up and I don't know what I did say.
• 1:17:50
  It's one page long. I know you mean though, yeah?
• 1:17:54
  It's just like, yeah, that's how you're going to end.
• 1:17:56
  You are going to end it like that on.
• 1:17:57
  Like you're risking some people going, well, I wish you'd done
• 1:18:00
  that with the dogs as well. You know, we hadn't experienced
• 1:18:04
  the book, James. What about you then?
• 1:18:07
  So I've covered the complete lack of explanations why they
• 1:18:10
  can't spell Noel Coward's name correct.
• 1:18:12
  I have no idea. I'm wondering if it's some kind
• 1:18:14
  of getting around him as being a real person.
• 1:18:18
  Yeah, I think actually the majority of it, all my notes
• 1:18:23
  have been have been ticked off. I think I just stand by what I I
• 1:18:27
  said, yeah, I would have rather read this as a novel in its own
• 1:18:32
  right than part of the Doctor Who ongoing narrative, because I
• 1:18:36
  think we could have had more outrageous stuff.
• 1:18:40
  I think we could have kind of shed the kind of the whole
• 1:18:44
  straight jacket of what the Doctor can and cannot do.
• 1:18:46
  Sorry, David looks a poll at the thought of more outrageous
• 1:18:49
  stuff. I live a very sheltered life.
• 1:18:52
  Because also then I would have been happier with the weirdness
• 1:18:55
  of the train ride. I wouldn't have had a problem
• 1:18:57
  with the clay figures coming to life, you know?
• 1:19:00
  I I would have accepted it as its own world rather than part
• 1:19:05
  of the Doctor Who one. Well.
• 1:19:06
  And I will sort of summarise the book.
• 1:19:08
  I I really, really love this. I love the humor of it.
• 1:19:12
  I love the guest characters and I like what it's saying about
• 1:19:15
  who they really are in real life.
• 1:19:18
  I think this has a tighter plot than you guys think actually,
• 1:19:23
  but I think the joy of it is the set pieces and it is scene to
• 1:19:28
  scene to scene. I really enjoyed reading the
• 1:19:32
  prose. I've I've just, I I loved how he
• 1:19:36
  put a sentence together. And so as I was going through
• 1:19:39
  this book, I was just loving the actual function of reading the
• 1:19:43
  book and and how he was writing those scenes.
• 1:19:48
  It's a hard one. It's a hard one to to get a
• 1:19:50
  handle on why I love it. It made me feel really good
• 1:19:54
  reading it. I was laughing, it was warm, It
• 1:19:57
  was smart. I think we could do a lot worse,
• 1:20:03
  you know, when it comes to Doctor Who bills, and I think we
• 1:20:05
  have as well. I'm looking forward to the
• 1:20:07
  episode where where the group gets given like the pit.
• 1:20:13
  I'm also going to ask for a recommendation.
• 1:20:15
  For the next book. At the end of the at the end of
• 1:20:17
  the episode. And I will still do that.
• 1:20:19
  Yeah, well, let's let's park Mad Dogs and Englishmen there then
• 1:20:33
  and come to my favorite part of every end episode And that is,
• 1:20:37
  I'm assuming you have all four of a recommendation, yes.
• 1:20:40
  Oh, definitely. Yeah, great.
• 1:20:42
  Well, let's start with James. Right.
• 1:20:48
  I'm going to be really rebellious today.
• 1:20:51
  What do you mean today? Because without going into
• 1:20:55
  detail, there are lots of ways that you can obtain the Ed as
• 1:21:00
  the PD as without going through a mortgage application on eBay
• 1:21:05
  because there are any moral copies floating out there.
• 1:21:09
  So I'm going to say a big screw you to all of those people, and
• 1:21:12
  I'm going to recommend the book that you cannot literally get
• 1:21:17
  digitally, OK? Oh.
• 1:21:20
  And it's I mean, I I I was going to recommend both of them
• 1:21:24
  because they almost come as a pair.
• 1:21:27
  I'm recommending this. This is a book called Time
• 1:21:29
  Travels and this is gorgeous. This is one of my fate.
• 1:21:36
  This and it's partner space travels, two of my absolute
• 1:21:40
  favorite Doctor Who products ever.
• 1:21:43
  Because to the best of my knowledge they are the only
• 1:21:46
  Doctor Who pop up books that have ever been made and.
• 1:21:50
  They. Pop up.
• 1:21:52
  But also, I mean they've got things like, you know, they
• 1:21:54
  cover the tenant, the first tenant season.
• 1:21:56
  So it seems like you can open up the flaps to read the letter
• 1:22:00
  that Madame de Pompadour wrote. You actually kind of like, you
• 1:22:03
  know you can move, you know you've got TV sets that you can
• 1:22:07
  flick on and off to find that extra facts behind them and then
• 1:22:11
  yeah, so I don't, I don't think in the time travel one there is
• 1:22:14
  a proper one. But in the blink page you
• 1:22:17
  actually define that all the facts you have to rip the
• 1:22:20
  wallpaper away. Oh genius.
• 1:22:23
  And so I want to recommend this because basically this is a
• 1:22:28
  book, this is a proper book that you cannot get as epub, PDF,
• 1:22:32
  whatever you will never, ever be able to experience digitally.
• 1:22:36
  I'll get space travels off the shelf as well to show you this.
• 1:22:39
  You know you cannot get cyber men that literally are
• 1:22:44
  three-dimensional on the page because as you open the book up,
• 1:22:48
  they pop off the page, you know? Oh, what's that?
• 1:22:53
  Oh my God, the TARDIS. Console, The pop up console
• 1:22:57
  room. That is amazing.
• 1:23:00
  How have I never heard of these books?
• 1:23:02
  So yeah, I'm going to be Rose. I'm going to say sorry if you
• 1:23:06
  missed these at the time, good luck in finding them.
• 1:23:09
  But if you have any sense of beauty, of craftsmanship, of
• 1:23:14
  imagination, of a product, that is actually something that is
• 1:23:19
  unique. As I said, I cannot think all 5
• 1:23:23
  bookcases. I've never seen any other Doctor
• 1:23:25
  Who pop up books these two volumes and say purely because
• 1:23:29
  of the Blink page. Oh, actually, hold on, hold on.
• 1:23:32
  There you go. There's the TARDIS in the
• 1:23:35
  vortex, leaping off the page as you open the book.
• 1:23:40
  So yeah, sorry to those who view who are kind of torrenting these
• 1:23:44
  books and finding them all kinds of sites.
• 1:23:46
  I'm recommending books that are books that are physical and that
• 1:23:51
  have to be handled and loved. We've used the word subversive
• 1:23:55
  quite a lot of this episode, you know, I'm desperate to try and
• 1:23:58
  read the digital copy of that, just to see how it how it reads.
• 1:24:02
  There isn't one. I never know.
• 1:24:05
  I'm I'm working on a version which I'm going to spend the
• 1:24:09
  next couple of months doing, but I'll tell more about that when
• 1:24:12
  I've actually done it. OK.
• 1:24:14
  Yeah, that's a great choice. And the last thing I thought you
• 1:24:17
  were going to recommend. So thank you for surprising us.
• 1:24:21
  Next I'm going to go over to Paul.
• 1:24:25
  I've been reading, or I've read recently, Molesworth
• 1:24:29
  reconstruction of John Nathan Turner's production Diaries,
• 1:24:33
  which is utterly fascinating and tells you it was as bad as you
• 1:24:38
  think it was. It was far worse than you think
• 1:24:41
  it was. And actually he was doing far
• 1:24:43
  more than you think he was in the middle section.
• 1:24:46
  There's an astonishing moments where it's clearly all just a
• 1:24:50
  grift for him. It's envelopes of cash from
• 1:24:53
  American convention runners and there's the really weird moment
• 1:24:57
  where he takes three people out to dinner, a very expensive
• 1:25:02
  restaurant, and Graham McDonald. David Reed reluctantly signs off
• 1:25:06
  the expenses and says, but never, ever take three people
• 1:25:10
  for dinner to a somewhere as expensive.
• 1:25:12
  That again and Jonathan tell rather than taking his
• 1:25:14
  punishment being rightly guys. Oh well actually there was four
• 1:25:17
  of us and you just think you're a fucking Dick.
• 1:25:21
  But also you get when you know they they won't, they won't
• 1:25:24
  confirm him as producer permanently for much longer.
• 1:25:28
  They should have done. And even when they do, Graham
• 1:25:30
  McDonald goes there were other candidates and then David Reed's
• 1:25:33
  got a real problem with his scripts and then turns around.
• 1:25:35
  He's either Reed McDonald's around and says Canine Company
• 1:25:39
  looks better than the main program.
• 1:25:41
  And you're thinking in what universe does Canine Company
• 1:25:43
  look? Good.
• 1:25:45
  And and therefore, how bad a season 19 look to the high UPS
• 1:25:48
  in the BBC. But it's utterly, utterly
• 1:25:50
  fascinating when you read it alongside Cartmel.
• 1:25:53
  It illuminates that whole 10 year period in a really
• 1:25:56
  fascinating way. But most of the end does make
• 1:25:58
  kind of turn into kind of a tragic figure.
• 1:26:02
  And so you're utterly, utterly fascinating.
• 1:26:03
  I am sold. I'm desperate to read that now.
• 1:26:07
  Well, it's cheap on Amazon, so you can get it on the Kindle.
• 1:26:09
  So the absolute, the absolute reverse of James's precious book
• 1:26:13
  that you can left and like sell a kidney to get, or one of
• 1:26:15
  Mark's kidneys to get this one. You can get quite cheap and read
• 1:26:18
  in a couple of days. I'm off.
• 1:26:19
  I'm off tomorrow. I think I know what I'm doing
• 1:26:21
  now do. You know, it's it's it's fast.
• 1:26:24
  Yeah. I mean you you go through like
• 1:26:26
  something, it's kind of tedious, but actually just picking it
• 1:26:27
  through just the kind of crisis around there and that that the,
• 1:26:30
  the, the, the five doctors comes from someone else's decision.
• 1:26:33
  Like Turner wants to move the season to the end of the year to
• 1:26:37
  coincide with the the the anniversary and they go no, no,
• 1:26:39
  you have to leave where it is. But how about a 90 minute
• 1:26:42
  special and then the five drops emerges from that.
• 1:26:44
  Ugly. Utterly fascinating.
• 1:26:45
  Really a great. I mean Molesworth is brilliant.
• 1:26:48
  His homes book on Bugger on on Holmes is brilliant.
• 1:26:50
  But this is this is, this is fascinating stuff.
• 1:26:52
  These piece together from stuff that was in the black sacks that
• 1:26:56
  John Nathan Turner had left and dowry had left and that like
• 1:26:58
  that policeman friend of this, it was just there and went,
• 1:27:00
  there you go, 10 years worth of a television program.
• 1:27:03
  It's ug, fascinating. This is this is going to fuel my
• 1:27:06
  hamster episodes now for the next 10 years.
• 1:27:09
  I'll tell you, although you know that home swap was amazing.
• 1:27:11
  All those mem, those memos across to Jerry Davis and people
• 1:27:15
  like that, oh Holmes was savage, wasn't it?
• 1:27:18
  What you what you do get though is is Nathan Turner what he's
• 1:27:21
  directing and suddenly the the the accusation that he didn't
• 1:27:24
  know how to do rent. Much later when you get into
• 1:27:27
  that Carmel relations, suddenly he's got that hands on
• 1:27:29
  experience and he knows how to make Doctor Who work.
• 1:27:31
  And that partly explains why 24 advisedly 2000 twenties are so
• 1:27:37
  good. They're kind of a return to
• 1:27:39
  greatness. It's karma.
• 1:27:41
  But it's also that Jonathan Turner, because he's now this
• 1:27:44
  revived figure amongst fandom and he's not getting the invites
• 1:27:47
  and the envelopes of cash from America, suddenly he's focused
• 1:27:49
  on his job, he's locked into it, and suddenly it's what it should
• 1:27:52
  have been all along. It's it's it's heartbreaking,
• 1:27:54
  frustrating, anger inducing, but it's utterly fascinating and
• 1:27:58
  about TV production as well. In the 80s, just how many times
• 1:28:01
  just explain why they were running.
• 1:28:02
  It's really his fault, but the BBC are just blaming him.
• 1:28:06
  It's a kind of a study in a tragic character on one level.
• 1:28:11
  Well, we have a complete lack of prose so far.
• 1:28:15
  David, over to you. I mean, I have to disappoint
• 1:28:19
  you. I haven't got any pros, but I
• 1:28:22
  have got fiction. I have got the complete 8th
• 1:28:26
  Doctor comic strips volume to the Glorious Dead because I
• 1:28:29
  wanted to pick one of these graphic novel 8th Doctor
• 1:28:32
  collections and I was like, which one?
• 1:28:35
  Because you've got end game, you've got glorious Dead, you've
• 1:28:37
  got The Flood. I mean, The Flood is fantastic,
• 1:28:40
  but I think for pure nostalgia it was The Glorious Dead,
• 1:28:43
  because as a long comic strip, and I think that was one of the
• 1:28:47
  longest they had done. Ten months.
• 1:28:50
  Ten months and it's tying up storylines from across the
• 1:28:56
  comics as well. I mean, I can't wonder if
• 1:28:59
  Moffett was watching. Was reading some of these
• 1:29:02
  because you've got any characters made a moral by the
• 1:29:07
  Doctor's actions and then all of a sudden turns up and you know
• 1:29:12
  there's definite parallels between some of the series 9
• 1:29:15
  stuff and what's going on in a couple of these stories.
• 1:29:17
  But and also Grace can think they get grace.
• 1:29:21
  Right, Isn't it cliffhanger where he pull, he wakes up in
• 1:29:24
  the bed naked. And the clip.
• 1:29:26
  I mean the the stuffing glorious that all those cliffhangers you
• 1:29:30
  know the the strips knew how to keep you hooked all the way
• 1:29:34
  through. You've got the, you know pretty
• 1:29:36
  in end game. You've got the fake out
• 1:29:37
  regeneration. You've got the return of the 8th
• 1:29:38
  Doctor. You've got all the stuff from
• 1:29:41
  glorious Dead. You've got the return of Meep
• 1:29:43
  Beep, the meep in this one in the one of the anniversary
• 1:29:47
  specials, you know this bold and wild and the artwork is
• 1:29:51
  absolutely gorgeous. And then bringing in crote on
• 1:29:55
  the Cyberman as a companion and making him join the cast and the
• 1:30:00
  sort story arc which is nicely seated through the stories all
• 1:30:05
  comes to head really nicely in that it's a 10 month epic
• 1:30:08
  storyline. It's absolutely incredible and
• 1:30:11
  those say growing up with this the the big finish was just
• 1:30:15
  kicking off. It was like, OK, Doctor Who's
• 1:30:18
  not on telly, but bloody hell, they're telling some good
• 1:30:20
  stories and I think quietly the comics, I don't think that they
• 1:30:24
  get talked about enough sometimes.
• 1:30:25
  I think people are starting to rediscover them again.
• 1:30:27
  I think hopefully people have going back.
• 1:30:30
  Star Beast has been on seeing people picking up collected
• 1:30:33
  volumes of 4th Doctor as I go read the 8th.
• 1:30:35
  Doctor once I know. Trouble is, isn't it for those
• 1:30:38
  in the know who read the comics, especially those like that 8th
• 1:30:41
  Doctor run. They love them with a passion,
• 1:30:46
  but that's a very small part of fandom, reading those, and
• 1:30:50
  that's really research. You know, it's a weird
• 1:30:52
  coincidence because on one of these book clubs, somebody
• 1:30:55
  mentioned that they recommend was The Crooked World, and that
• 1:30:58
  just so happened to be the very next episode I was recording.
• 1:31:02
  You've just mentioned The Glorious Dead.
• 1:31:04
  That just so happens to be the very next episode I'm recording.
• 1:31:08
  It's the it's is it called The Glorious Dead, that graphic
• 1:31:11
  novel. Yeah.
• 1:31:12
  You got End Game, The Glorious Dead, Oblivion and then The
• 1:31:14
  Flood. Yeah, it's it's the yeah, it's
• 1:31:16
  the glorious Dead Bob That's the next episode.
• 1:31:19
  By because you've got the fallen, unnatural one, Killers,
• 1:31:23
  the road to hell, Company of thieves, glorious dead.
• 1:31:26
  Autonomy. Autonomy bug.
• 1:31:27
  Happy death day, which is a glorious anniversary piece and
• 1:31:32
  TV action. Some of those, those were that
• 1:31:35
  they did. The autonomy bug Isn't that the
• 1:31:37
  Roger Landridge 10? The artwork of that is just
• 1:31:41
  stunning. Gosh, they are good, aren't
• 1:31:43
  they? Well, I am going to you.
• 1:31:45
  OK, so we had a pop up book. We've got the Jonathan Turner
• 1:31:49
  Diaries and a comic, so I better choose a bloody book.
• 1:31:54
  The four of us. Where the hell do I go?
• 1:31:57
  There's so many books I love and I haven't prepared one.
• 1:32:00
  So I'm going to pull one out of a hat and I'm going to suggest
• 1:32:04
  that everybody goes and reads Rob Shearman's novelisation of
• 1:32:08
  Dalek has. I have, I Have you read that?
• 1:32:11
  No. Not yet.
• 1:32:13
  It is fantastic. Weirdly, the events in the
• 1:32:19
  episode are about half the book of that sort of target.
• 1:32:26
  I've heard it's very much like slip back in that respect.
• 1:32:30
  And the the bulk of the book is telling the back stories of the
• 1:32:34
  guest characters, like the torturer, like Diana Goddard,
• 1:32:39
  and it goes way back into their lives and explains how we get
• 1:32:42
  from there to there. And there's a ton of stories
• 1:32:46
  going on within Dalek on TV that we had no idea about us all.
• 1:32:51
  It's really, really clever and it's also extremely adeptly
• 1:32:57
  written and it's really dark. I'm surprised that this this was
• 1:33:02
  allowed through Cardiff because there's a sequence which is from
• 1:33:07
  the torturers point of view, who's what.
• 1:33:09
  He gets two scenes in the thing and we go right back into his
• 1:33:13
  childhood and it's a really sort of twisted little short story.
• 1:33:17
  And that's what those are, those back stories all, they're all
• 1:33:19
  little short stories. And I don't know if you've read
• 1:33:22
  Rob Shimon. Is it shy songs of the.
• 1:33:25
  Love songs for The Shining Cynical.
• 1:33:26
  Thank you very much. I knew I was going to get that
• 1:33:28
  wrong, that he, he's sort of like the Master in Doctor Who
• 1:33:31
  terms of the short story. And here he just gets it bang
• 1:33:36
  on. It's my favorite of all the
• 1:33:38
  novelizations and I think there's some bloody I think Rose
• 1:33:41
  is great, The Witch finders, they are the Doctor.
• 1:33:44
  But this is, this is my favorite of the ones they've done so far.
• 1:33:48
  So that's my recommend for today, boys.
• 1:33:51
  We've lost Paul, who's had to go and put his children to bed.
• 1:33:55
  I think he he said it about 45 minutes ago.
• 1:33:58
  He was supposed to put them to bed.
• 1:33:59
  So bless him for hanging on as long as he has.
• 1:34:03
  I'm going to throw out the next episode to one of you two.
• 1:34:08
  I'm done choosing these books. So who?
• 1:34:15
  Come on, someone just name a book and that's what we'll do
• 1:34:18
  next. I think we should do The Quantum
• 1:34:19
  Archangel. Oh yes.
• 1:34:21
  I've never read it. I've never read it.
• 1:34:23
  I've heard so much about it. And when it was mentioned
• 1:34:25
  before, I was like, that should be our next.
• 1:34:28
  One, Yeah. No, I wholeheartedly agree.
• 1:34:31
  I definitely 100% agree. I'll do that one If James writes
• 1:34:35
  down every single continuity reference and then details them
• 1:34:38
  in the episode Deal. It will be a long episode.
• 1:34:47
  I'm game. I mean, James is operatic, that
• 1:34:50
  book, isn't it? Oh yeah.
• 1:34:52
  Oh, yes. I just need an excuse to read
• 1:34:54
  it. And we could make this into I'm
• 1:34:57
  going to do a little bit of digging into Craig Hinton's
• 1:34:59
  other books. We can make this a massive love
• 1:35:01
  letter to Craig Hinton as well, couldn't we?
• 1:35:04
  Because. I say you got the Crystal Be
• 1:35:06
  Carefulous, which is a fantastic story involving time travel.
• 1:35:09
  You've got the Quantum Archangel, which is just fan
• 1:35:12
  wank expanded to a whole new level.
• 1:35:16
  You've got The God Engine, which is a massively underrated book.
• 1:35:19
  There was a cock up with DWM which Craig never.
• 1:35:23
  I don't think he ever forgave him for where it resulted in a
• 1:35:26
  very negative comment in the review because the review.
• 1:35:28
  Oh God. Engine is God.
• 1:35:30
  Awful. God, awful.
• 1:35:30
  Because the review copy was missing some pages, apparently.
• 1:35:34
  Oh, so, so the whole explanation bit they said never came was
• 1:35:38
  actually in the bit that the guy the person never got.
• 1:35:43
  So yeah, definitely yeah. And of course, Craig, just to
• 1:35:48
  tie it back to mad dogs, tangentially.
• 1:35:51
  Oh yeah. Of course, you know this
• 1:35:55
  following month the start of Exelis, which Craig poured his
• 1:36:00
  heart into to do the The Exelis Decays which was at the time,
• 1:36:05
  you know kind of like our first look at an audio just before the
• 1:36:10
  Doctor's regeneration leading into.
• 1:36:12
  So there is, yeah, I would think it's kind of that'd be wonderful
• 1:36:16
  to do. I would very, very happily do
• 1:36:18
  that. Paul's got no choice because
• 1:36:20
  he's not here anymore. Yeah.
• 1:36:23
  Well, fellas, thank you once again.
• 1:36:26
  I think we've got a fabulous group here for our book club.
• 1:36:29
  So thank you very much for those comments on Mad Dogs and
• 1:36:32
  Englishmen. And I'll just say until next
• 1:36:34
  time. See you in 2027, given how well
• 1:36:38
  we schedule these.