Too Hot For TV
A podcast dedicated to the expanded universe of your favourite franchises.
Too Hot For TV
S01 E15 - Gruff and Transactional
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On this episode Dylan is joined by Rob from The Doctor Who Show to discuss the expanded universe of Indiana Jones. Rob takes Dylan on a whirlwind trip through all of the original Indiana Jones novels.
Welcome back to Too Hot for TV. We are the podcast that looks at all things expanded universe. Today I'm jumping into the expanded universe of Indiana Jones with Rob from the Doctor Who show. Rob, welcome to Too Hot for TV. Oh, Dylan, it's good to be here. It's wonderful to have you here in our other time stream of non-Doctor Who related chat. Yes, first time for me, yeah. Excellent. So we're doing Indiana Jones today. Now, usually on this podcast, I will jump into a franchise, whether I know it well, know it a little bit, don't know it all, and me and a guest will pick two things to read, listen to, whatever, watch, and then talk about it. But today, I've not read the things we're talking about at all. In fact, we're doing a bit of a different spin here today. So it's sort of over to you with a bit of uh questioning from me. So why don't you tell everybody what what we're talking about today?
SPEAKER_02Well, tonight we're going to talk about the young Indiana Jones novels from the 1990s. Then there's a dozen of those, and then there's one further one that happens about 10 years after that. So it's 13 novels in total. And this is my fault, Dylan. I remember the first time I came on Doctor Who, Too Hot for TV. You said, let's talk about a Doctor Who coffee table book. I said, No, let's talk about all the Doctor Who coffee table books, Dylan. So I always seem to to sort of wreck your format every time I come on. I do apologize for that. But I think it's worth talking about all of these novels as a whole for reasons that will become apparent as we go along.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. No, it's good to change up the format so you come and wreck away anytime you want. Excellent. But before we do that, Indiana Jones is an American media franchise owned by Lucasfilm, consisting of five films and a prequel television series, along with video games, comics, and tie-in novels. The franchise centers on the adventures of Dr. Henry Walton, Indiana Jones Jr., a fictional professor of archaeology, Jones is portrayed by Harrison Ford in all five of the films. What is your relationship with the Indiana Jones franchise? Presumably you're a fan if you've read a bunch of spin-off media.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, I've I've loved Indie basically as long as I've loved Star Wars. You know, early 80s, I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark on VHS from the local video store. I thought that's fantastic. You know, it was almost as good as Star Wars for me. Then by the time Temple of Doom came around, I was nine years old, so I got taken to see that at the cinema. And I thought it was pretty good, although I still liked Raiders more. Then 89 came, I saw Last Crusade at the cinema with my mates, because I was 14 by now, we were going to the cinema on our own, you know, wacky do. And I just thought that was fantastic. And then that paved the way for a 1990s where we not only had the young Indiana Jones TV series, which I adored, and I will fight anyone over if they don't like it, but we had Indiana Jones comics. I mean, we had those in the 80s too, but we had Dark Horse doing them in the 90s. We had computer games, and we had this series of novels that we're going to discuss tonight. So that's my rough history with the franchise.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. Yeah, so I I'm a big fan of the original three. They played a huge part in my childhood. I would say at least one of them gets put on once a year for me. It's just, it's it's a go-to when I'm like, I'm not sure what I want to watch. It's a Sunday afternoon. I want something comforting, and so an Indiana Jones will do. I have some positives about the two more recent films. I say two more recent, one of them's 20 years old by now, but that it's mainly just seeing the character again. The rest of them don't work as well for me. And then sort of spin-off-wise, I have some memories of the young Indiana Jones, but I I hate to say, Rob, I didn't like it as a kid, but who knows, maybe if I jump back into it now, I would find much to enjoy. But I've never read any Indiana Jones books, comics, anything like that. So I am coming to this podcast completely fresh to get your take on uh this book range.
SPEAKER_02Ah, excellent. This was really one of the first spin-off mediums I really came across. You know, it's probably this in Star Wars in the 90s that really kicked things off. I mean, there were spin-offs before this for me, but this is really where I I sort of sat down and went, oh my god, you can tell stories in these universes I like? Wow. You know? So yeah, it's fun times.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like I think my in to general spin-off media was of course Doctor Who. But I remember going on holiday as a kid and getting to the airport and seeing a Star Wars book that was a new Star Wars story. And that that was my first sort of in of like, oh my god, everybody's got these sort of I wouldn't have called it an expanded universe there, but everybody's got these extra bits. And so, and doing this podcast, it's wild the stuff that exists out there, and also how much of it there is. Like with these Indiana Jones books, as you say, we're talking about 13 books. And I just don't think if the franchise launched today, you'd suddenly get 13 books about the film series.
SPEAKER_02No, well, when they came back with one in 2009, I thought this is going to s kickstart a little series at least, and it kickstarted nothing. Right. So I think you're quite right in that. But look, Dylan, being slightly older than you, I remember a spin-off Star Wars book before the Extended Universe began.
SPEAKER_00Oh, really?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. When I was very, very young in infant school in the early 80s, our library had Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which was the first spin-off novel for Star Wars. And it had this really cool cover with Darth Vader, and he's standing in this misty forest, and there's Luke and Leia on the ground in front of him. They're sort of recoiling with fear. And we'd always pull it out and try to imagine what the story was about because none of us had actually read it. We were too young to read it. But we would look at it, and so I was aware of these things existing, and it was probably Star Wars comic books from Marvel in the 80s that was my first in into spin-off media that weren't novels, I guess, uh, because comic books were easier to read when you're a young kid. And that's how I got into them, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. So, what made you want to explore this book range this time around?
SPEAKER_02I think, I mean, it's a range I never hear people talk about like ever. You know, sometimes you find the odd YouTube video about it where some guy 15 years ago on YouTube talked about one of the novels. But actually in my friends' group, like I I don't even have a lot of Indiana Jones fans in that group, let alone people who have gone out and read a novel, let alone have gone out and read all 13 of the novels. So I thought this could be a topic where, you know, you you've done other topics where I sit at home thinking, oh, I would have loved to have done that topic with Dylan, like X-Files was one of them, for example. But a lot of people can do X-Files. But this one I thought, I'm not sure anyone will ever do it. So damn it, it's gonna be me.
SPEAKER_00That's why I picked it. No, and when and when you said it, like I I sort of bit your hand off in that respect because it's not a franchise that somebody else has has mentioned doing. And also it's this thing that like Indiana Jones is a popular franchise, but it's weird. It just it just doesn't feel like it's expanded media has the same sort of reach as a lot of other franchises, expanded media does, as you say.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's an interesting one because the movies, well, the first three well, all actually all of the movies did reasonably well, but the first three are obviously big ten call movies. And yet the the the audience just didn't seem to click as much with spin-off media as maybe other franchises did. Yeah. It's interesting. Maybe it's a an older audience, maybe it's a more conservative audience. They like that the 1930s-40s shtick, and that doesn't convert to reading comic books about it or novels. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's it's an odd one. So within this series of books, are they true to the character of Indy from the film series?
SPEAKER_02That's really hard to answer because some are and some aren't. And look, to some degree, that probably comes down to how into the character someone might be. You know, there there are novels in this range where I'm reading it going, no, no, no, this this feels all kinds of wrong. This is an indie. Whereas I can imagine someone not as invested in the character, or if I can just put it like this, who is just easier to please, might read the same thing and be like, what are you talking about? I'm reading about an American, he's in a brown leather jacket and a hat, it's the 1930s, he said a quippy line, a lady wants to have sex with him, he's looking into an historical mystery. This is the most Indiana Jones thing that ever indied Rob. You know, what are you talking about? So I think the perception of the character probably plays into that, but for me, some of these aren't true to the character at all.
SPEAKER_00Okay, that's interesting. I guess that sort of depends on who's writing it, right?
SPEAKER_02It does, you know, because I think those type of people who are very easy to please would be hard-pressed when they get to a novel we're jumping ahead a bit by Martin Caden called Sky Pirates, where Indy is this very cold, sort of homesian genius. He he's not the happy-go-lucky guy, make it up as you go along, seat of the pants guy that we know him from in the movies. That book is an absolute shocker for characterisation and a lot of other things. Or there's another novel, The White Witch, where Indy's driving a car with this woman and they need to escape across a river. So she freezes it with magic. And they just drive across the ice, and you're left wondering, what the actual fuck? You know? And not just because of the use of the magic, but the way Indy goes along with it. Oh, you did magic? Yeah, cool. Because although the Indie movies, if I can go on, have far-fetched things in them: people melting, people having their hearts plucked out, immortality if you drink from the the holy grail, whatever. There is that invisible line where weird stuff can't happen in day-to-day life. Like Indy can be on an island away from civilization and the wrath of God zaps some Nazis. Okay, fine, that's great. But if that same thing happened in Times Square, it would seem ridiculous, right? So, you know, when this witch freezes this river in an otherwise mundane English village for him to drive the car over. I I just think just about anyone would call bullshit on that, really.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, absolutely. Because you you're right, the sort of mysticism that happens in the films is that big climax thing of like it's all been leading there. But they it's not a problem-solving device, is it? That it's it's very much a resolution and things are at their most desperate w w when you get to that sort of stuff. So yeah, I I think I would bump with Indy and a river-free witch.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and look, there are smaller things in the books too. Like when I was doing some notes for this, I was reminded he's set up in the first of these novels as a kid who's just done his first degree in the US, now he's at the Sorbonne doing his second degree, and he wants to be wait for it, a linguist. And that just feels wrong on multiple levels. Even a casual fan, I think, would read that and go, huh, I thought by the time he was on to his second degree, he'd at least be doing archaeology. Yeah. And for people who have watched the young indie TV series, he decides to be an archaeologist while he's still in his teen years. So when the books begin, it's a bit weird for people who are into the character, again, who are into the character, you're reading this and you're thinking, why? You know, why does he want to do this? I guess it's so he has this first adventure, and then at the end of it, he's like, oh, why do I want to be a linguist? I think archaeology is great, you know, because he's had this big archaeological adventure. It doesn't need to be there, though. So when you read that first novel, even small stuff like that sort of niggles at you.
SPEAKER_00Right. Okay, that's interesting. So it's not necessarily in keeping with the continuity of things like the Young Indiana Jones TV series.
SPEAKER_02No, and look, to some degree I think that's because they were probably at the very start of the novels being written concurrently with the TV show. So maybe they didn't have all the answers. Right. You know, there there's one where he sees a tank and he reacts in a very strange way to that if you take into account in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, he's fought in World War I and he's seen many tanks.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02You know, so that moment in the novels is like, oh, that doesn't gel, but it was probably just written before the Chronicles episode came out.
SPEAKER_00And we're in a world where there's less brand management, I guess, because now you would have somebody going, well, that contradicts that, and we can't do that because we're doing it on the television. But at the time, these things are just sort of separate entities, I guess.
SPEAKER_02Uh, we'll get to my thoughts on the editors of this range later on.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. So, where do the books take the character?
SPEAKER_02It's interesting. The books don't always take you where you think the character or an Indiana Jones story might go. You know, some go totally off-piste. I I just mentioned the Sky Pirates, for example. And that has Indy working with the US government, and he's requisitioning prototype aircraft and having this big adventure, and he's sort of like an American James Bond. Right. You know, that's weird. Others, though, are right in the indie wheelhouse. So again, some of these novels feel totally indie, but some of them are just bizarre and a bit shit. Yeah. That's the best way I can say it.
SPEAKER_00I mean, such is the want of spin-off media, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Oh, look, I think one interesting thing people wouldn't know is they do give Indy a wife in a couple of months. Okay. I won't go into huge detail. It's kind of icky looking back from 2026 because she is one of his students in this novel. Because he's he's got his second degree now and he's he's now a professor, he's like in his late 20s. And I guess they don't want to have Indy married for too long. So it just sort of comes and goes across a couple of novels in the series, and you think, oh, well, what was the point of that? When you look back, I guess what they're trying to do. I mean, I've never read articles about this or interviews. I guess what they wanted to do is damage the character in his late twenties so that when we get to the indie in the movies, who's a more cynical sort of guy, he's very gruff, he can be a bit transactional with women, they can sort of bridge that between the younger, happier, even romantic indie of the early novels, or particularly the young Indiana Jones TV series. There is a disconnect. So I think by having a wife for a couple of novels and then losing her in a particular way is what makes Indy indie in his 30s.
SPEAKER_00Okay, interesting. Yeah, I don't especially because even where we find him in the final film, which I know was way after this, I somehow just don't picture him ever settled down, you know? Yeah. Maybe he gets his happy ending eventually, but yeah, I don't see him suddenly getting married, and as you say. I mean, it's probably true to the era the things are set in that he would marry a younger woman that was perhaps his student, even if we do look at it through a sort of modern lens and go, that's a bit icky, as you say.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, oh look, it was the 1920s, Dylan. Yeah, exactly. These things happen. What else? They also have to tread a bit of a fine line in the novels, with Indy not being so much a man of science, but he certainly doesn't believe in the supernatural and things like that. You know, for for the ex-Wiles fans out there, he he's not quite Dana Scully, but he's certainly not Fox Mulder. And I think this is tricky enough in the films where all these fantastical things happen, and he still has to stay on that slightly non-believery path, even though these things have happened. Yeah. And that gets ratcheted up a lot in the books because he'll start having conversations with people from mythology or seeing mythological creatures or basically encountering really weird shit, which is clearly real. But he has to remain that kind of, oh yeah, this is just nonsense and laconic kind of guy. You know, that stretches belief at times. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Where in Indy's timeline does this take place?
SPEAKER_02It's a fair spread of time. The first one, which is called Peril at Delphi, is set in 1922. So he's a 23-year-old bear. That's where he's studying at the Sorbonne for his linguist degree and all of this. So he's different to the teenager of the young Indiana Jones Chronicles, uh, who's just angling towards going to college for the first time and all of that. And I'm pretty sure he does sex with a lady in that novel to reinforce he's all grown up. Although that said, I think he porked Matahari in the Young Indie show when he was about 16. So, you know, he uh he got his rocks off early. Uh so we start fairly youngish, and then there's a further, I guess, 11 novels between 1925 and 1934. So he's 26 to 35 in those, and I can say that with authority. His age is very easy to work out because he was born in 1899, so you just uh add one to whatever the 1900 date is. It's a pretty useful spread of time where, you know, he can be Indiana Jones without being the Indiana Jones of the films, because chronologically, Temple of Doom happens next in 35, then Raiders of the Lost Ark in 36, because yes, Temple of Doom is a prequel. Then Last Crusade happens in 38. So basically the whole series of original Bantam books happens before the first three movies happen.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02And then the one other book from ten years after that, which was by Delray, the publisher Delray, Army of the Dead, is set after the first three films, and that's in 1943. So that gives us a World War II indie, the kind that was sort of hinted about during the Crystal Skulls movie, where they're talking about, oh yeah, he was a legend in World War II. You know, up until that last abomination of the film that gave us a whole sequence in World War II. But before that, if you wanted to read about Indy and World War II, that final 13th novel, it even has Mac from Crystal Skulls in it.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Army of the Dead. That was the shit. That was the one to read.
SPEAKER_00Right, okay. So you mentioned the the sort of link in there to Crystal Skulls, but throughout the books, are there other familiar characters, locations, themes, plot points from the films?
SPEAKER_02There are, but it's not particularly over the top. I mean, Marcus Brody pops up across many of the books, usually as a kind of get out of jail free card for Indy. Like, oh, I'm stuck overseas, let's call Marcus at the museum. He'll wire me some money, or you know, he'll he'll he'll help with the government and get me out of this problem, that sort of thing. Right. Sullah pops up in the novel Secret of the Sphinx, which I guess is appropriate given he's from that neck of the woods in Egypt. MacHale, I mentioned a moment ago, he's in Army of the Dead, and he was a really interesting character in Crystal Skulls. You know, you couldn't quite get a read on him because he sort of portrays Indy, but he and Indy are mates, and it's like, I don't have a read on this guy. So it's it's fun to actually read a wartime story with him and Indy getting the job done. That's kind of fun. Hollow Earth has a wonderful scenery chewing Renee Belloc sequence that happens in New Orleans, and the novel Dinosaur Eggs is bookended with a sort of a mini adventure with Belloch. And I think Bellock's a great character, so revisiting him before he gets zapped in Raiders of the Lost Ark is quite cool. But yeah, on the whole, there's not a lot of returning characters or themes, you know, as as the novels, again, aside from Army of the Dead, are all set before the movies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So a lot of stuff hasn't happened yet in order to sort of easily reference or have those people in it. They actually invent some new characters to get around this. Okay. Like Indy has a good college friend who continues on through a number of the novels called Jack Shannon. Oh, and we also do get a setup for Temple of Doom in Secret of the Sphinx, which is fun because Secret of the Sphinx is set the year before Temple of Doom. And Marcus is talking to Indy, and he casually mentions the ashes of New Hachi to Indy, which is what kicks off the start of Temple of Doom. Indy's trying to get the urn with the ashes of New Hachi in it. Right. So uh there's sort of a hat tip to that in that note. And I'm sure there are other winks and nods along the way. I'm sure I remember there being them as I went through like little Easter eggs, but I haven't committed them all to memory.
SPEAKER_00Do the different authors bring different takes on the characters and his adventures?
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. Uh Massively, massively, massively. There are three different authors who look after the Bantam run of books, and then the Army of the Dead, which again came a decade later, is by a fourth guy. So first up, we've got Rob McGregor, who does the first six. And he is a decent writer. He's very easy to understand. Stand, the words just zip along. For Doctor Who fans, he's sort of like Terence Dix in some ways. And his books on the whole are decent. They're average. They have they they do have interesting ideas most of the time, but he also goes off on weird flights of fancy here and there, which makes his work a bit hard to judge because he has these big ideas, which an author should always want to have, you know. And he tries to tie it into real-world stuff. Like he'll try and tie something into the statues on Easter Island, which are real things. You can go to Easter Island and see these things. But then he'll sprinkle in some weird stuff that definitely doesn't exist, definitely never happened. And you're often left like, oh, this kind of works, but it kind of doesn't. You know, I'm not sure why you need it to go so weird there, Rob.
SPEAKER_00Just looking up his work, he's done a lot of tie-in media. Yes. Feels like he's a good fit for the range. And outside of that, he's done a lot of what looks like adventure and sort of treasure hunting novels. So he feels like the perfect choice.
SPEAKER_02Oh, definitely. And what got him into the range, I mean, the first time I read a Rob McGregor book, was he novelised Last Crusade. Right. And I had I read that, you know, two or three years before these novels started coming out. And so I sort of knew Rob McGregor. Oh, he's the guy who wrote that indie adaptation, which, you know, some people might call a spin-off. I wouldn't, because it's not a spin-off, it was just an adaptation. But that's how he got involved with indie. And so yeah, I had some sort of background with him early on. Who's the next one? Then we have Martin Caden, who does two novels, and he is just a disaster. One of his books, which I'll talk about later, doesn't even feel like it was originally written as an Indiana Jones story. To be charitable about his stuff, it reminds me in some ways of the Aubrey and Matcharin novels by Patrick O'Brien, stuff like Master and Commander and the other 20 odd novels that Patrick O'Brien wrote, where O'Brien always goes into insane detail about sailing ships in the Napoleonic era. The difference, though, is besides O'Brien being a really good author, I guess, you also open one of those novels wanting to hear about sailing ships, because you probably have an interest in that. But you don't open an Indiana Jones novel expecting to be hit over the head repeatedly with aviation information on almost every page because that's Caden's big thing. The first Caden novel is probably the worst for it, but even the second one opens with Indy absolutely intensely interested in becoming a pilot. So Caden has him in a plane with his girlfriend, and his girlfriend's the instructor. But the idea goes absolutely nowhere, and Indy doesn't do any more training as a pilot, nor does having piloting skills come back, like Chekhov's gun style later in the story. It's just there because aviation and Martin Caden is just this nut for aviation. I could go on and on about him, and I will talk about one of his stories later. I'll just say his stuff goes from A to B to C. He has this insane aviation knowledge that he tries to work into everything, but it just doesn't land, no pun intended, as Indiana Jones. It's awful.
SPEAKER_00Well, looking at Caden, I guess he was one of the older writers on the range. He didn't he passed away in '97, and he was an aeronautics and aviation authority, so I can see why he's obviously put that into the story. It feels like, you know, this this this would have been one of the last few things that he'd ri he'd written. But yeah, interesting. He wrote a novel called Cyborg in the 70s, which was the basis for the six million dollar man. There you go. How about that? But if yeah, perhaps it feels like he was nearing the end of his career. And so if we're being charitable to his perhaps his novel's not being that good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and he probably ate out for free on having written that cyborg novel for years, and that's probably why they picked him, like, oh, it's this legendary author who wrote the start of the six million dollar man. Let's get him in. But his stuff, it just doesn't suit Indiana Jones at all.
SPEAKER_00Right, yeah. So it's pretty much a case of wrong author for the job.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Next, we have Max McCoy who does four novels. And conversely, I can't say enough good things about Max McCoy. Oh, brilliant. Yeah. From the off, Indy is out there. He's raiding temples, he's discovering cool stuff, he's fighting fascists, he's delivering lines that actually sound like Indy. You know, the the kind of stuff you'd have expected him to be doing all along in the novels. And that's weird because Indiana Jones is pretty formulaic. You know, you'd think it's hard to mess up, but Rob McGregor would go off and do his weird stuff at times. Caden was just a dumpster fire. So when you get to Max McCoy's four books, assuming you've been reading them in order like I did, it's like this breath of fresh air. It's like your house is on fire and you've opened a window and you stuck your head out the window, and you're just amazed that someone who knows the character is finally writing stories that feel like Indiana Jones stories. It shouldn't be a hard thing. But when you get to his books, it's just amazing. Wow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, looking at his career, like he's done a lot of writing. I can't say I've really heard of anything else he has written, but he's clearly somebody who was an experienced writer who carried on writing long beyond these books and you know had a successful career at it. And he, as you say, he must have just really liked the character, which always helps.
SPEAKER_02Funnily enough, it does, yeah. And then finally, as I say, a decade later, a guy called Steve Perry comes along and does one novel. And I've seen a a lot of comments online that are less complimentary about his novel, but I think it's really great too, on the back of the Max McCoy novels. And I've given it some thought, and I don't know whether it's just a slightly more modern way of writing. The the 90s books are very like these are definitely nineties spin-off books. Whereas this is maybe the writing is a little different. Maybe he's just a younger writer, you know, Caden in particular, you mentioned but being an older guy. Or maybe it's the way we've leapt from the twenties and thirties into the forties. So we have a different indie, it's a different world. And that one's got themes of voodoo and zombies.
SPEAKER_00Okay, interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, their themes I think people can grasp onto because Haiti is a real place, and people do voodoo in real life. You know, so it's not that much of a stretch to take it, let's take it a degree or two further into raising the dead. You know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's kind of like, yeah, I can get my head around that. Which is a real contrast to some of the like purely fantastical things that we're that we're asked to believe in some of the other books that have just no basis in reality. And also Perry does this thing where his antagonists get a lot of the story devoted to them. So they're not just cartoon characters who pop up from time to time to, you know, twirl their mustache and disappear again. So you've got this group of Nazis, you've got this group of Japanese army guys, and they're separately searching for the MacGuffin that Indy's also going for in this jungle. So think of um a jungle with Nazis, with Japanese, with Indy and Mac Mikhail, and then in the background, there's this Haitian guy doing voodoo and raising the dead and sort of sending zombies after everybody. And so Indy sort of takes a back seat to the the villains and the the Haitian guy. And that's okay, because I think we know enough about Indy. I like hearing about all these new characters and how these people were doing voodoo and raising the dead. It was quite an interesting novel. I quite liked it. But as I say, some people, it it didn't land for them.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, who knows? Certainly, out of all the ones you've mentioned, that one sounds the most appealing to me. If I was going to pick one up, I think it'd possibly be that one. Yeah. And Steve Perry is big in the world of sort of spin-off writing, and he he wrote Shadow of the Empire for Star Wars, which That's right. You know, is obviously uh well thought of largely. He's written for Aliens, Alien versus Predator, Tom Clancy, Conan. He's the sort of author that as this podcast continues, I'm sure will be brought up again.
SPEAKER_02Oh, well, look, Shadows of the Empire is ripe for your show because that was like a multimedia extravaganza. There there is a soundtrack for Shadows of the Empire. It's like a it's a it's a novel. I think there's a computer game. There is a soundtrack for it, even though no movie exists. Like someone sat down and and wrote these imaginary pieces, so you can sort of listen to them and imagine that the action from that story is happening during the story. Anyway, we're getting off on a Star Wars tangent now. I'll stop. But yeah, Shadows of the Empire is fascinating. And yes, that was Steve Perry.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So like a fascinating author, and the sort of author that I think, you know, is well suited for these sorts of books. And as you say, he's a little younger than previous authors. I guess he knows how to do interesting things with existing IP. So I mean, as I said, that that was a a standout standing book for me. Difficult for me to 100% say when I've not read them, but it's got the most intriguing premise.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and probably for you or anyone who's thinking, yeah, maybe that's the one I'll read, much easier to get than the others. Because the others are back from the nineties, whereas that's from 2009. Right. You can still pick that one up in like new condition pretty easily, pretty cheaply. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right. So what are the highlights of the range?
SPEAKER_02Well, I I think I've already spoiled this answer, but the four Max McCoy books are a really good time. They're Philosopher's Stone, Dinosaur Eggs, Hollow Earth, and Secret of the Sphinx. Pick up any of those, you'll be fine. But I do think the best in the range is Army of the Dead, for me at least. And, you know, for the life of me, I don't know why it didn't kick off another, at least a little series of novels. Yeah. I presume it was just sales not hitting some KPI on a spreadsheet somewhere. Maybe it was the reaction from fans because there are negative reactions to it. But I think it was a really cool story, and nope. Poof, no more novels. No, no more novels since 2009.
SPEAKER_00That's such a shame because I kind of feel like I I don't think there's necessarily an appetite for another Indiana Jones film, but books seems like an interesting place that the character could carry on and exist in, and you could still get something that feels like, you know, the the original trilogy that we all love, and also explore sort of new territory as well.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, but here's an interesting question, and let's tie it into Doctor Who, because we've got a lot of Doctor Who people on the line. Doctor Who novels have sort of gone down the toilet. Maybe they'll put out three a year, you know. I know there are other little spin-offs like comics, and there'll be a bit of this and a bit of that. But that era, not just of like the new adventures and the eighth Doctor Adventures, but even the NSAs in the early years, they were they were coming out monthly. Yeah, little book coming out monthly. Is it just that people aren't buying books and so there's no reason to make books? Because I I think if a publisher could make money, surely they'd want to make money.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I think it must be that. I've I I maybe like the new era of fans just they get their kicks in different ways. And for us, you know, we didn't have the internet, so picking up a tie-in novel that you might read over a month or so as a kid or a young adult or whatever was your your way to sort of immerge yourself in that universe. But now I I guess there are other ways. And for something like Indiana Jones, with the best will in the world, I don't think that last film brought in a bunch of new people who are like, I need more indie. No. I I think it's just uh unfortunate that this is a a franchise that perhaps is petering out slightly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think the big audience for that last indie film, and it didn't get a big, big audience, but the people who were there in that audience, a big number of them were like 50 years plus guys. Absolutely. It certainly wasn't like 14-year-olds like I was watching Last Crusade.
SPEAKER_00No, exactly, exactly. But yeah, I think you're right, books just don't sell like they used to. It's a shame because I mean, I've heard you talk about this on your podcast and or maybe it was online, but just like going into bookshops as a kid in the 90s or whatever, and there was just a vast array, like too much to consume of spin-off material from all of your favorite franchises. It was like a magical thing to see.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was a real 90s thing now that I look back on it, you know, because that's where the Star Wars books sort of got resurrected and had their second coming. Because there had been, you know, uh apart from Splinter of the Mind's Eye, there'd been a hand solo trilogy, there'd been a Lando Carrizian trilogy in the 80s. But then they went away for a long time. And when they came back around '91 with the Heir to the Empire trilogy, yeah, they were back. And then we got Star Trek novels, and things started to ramp up on the back of Next Jam. And everyone seemed to have spin-off novels. Buffy had spin-off novels, Angel had spin-off novels, Babylon 5 had spin-off novels, you know, Indiana Jones got spin-off novels. Robotech had spin off novels. I'm looking at my shelves now, I could just keep going. Everyone had spin-off novels, but now it's just not a thing so much. I'm sure they do exist for some shows, but not to the degree in terms of how many shows have them, and not to the degree of individual books for those shows.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And it wasn't just genre fiction as well. I remember there was neighbours novels and the EastEnders and Baywatch and things like that. Like everything seemed to have a little tie-in novel here or there. It might not have been to the extent of the indie ones or the Star Wars ones, but that they existed. And I just don't think you would get that now.
SPEAKER_02Fun fact about 86 or 87, I got an EastEnders novel signed by Letitia Dean.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. I love that.
SPEAKER_02There's something I would never say on any other podcast.
SPEAKER_00What were the circumstances of that?
SPEAKER_02She she came out to do a tour of the ABC out here, used to have ABC shops where they would sell at the time VHS of shows that would be on the ABC and t-shirts from shows on the ABC and all whatever spin-off items they could find, hats, you know, it was sort of like a lifestyle shop in some ways, based around the ABC brand, which in many ways was the BBC brand because the ABC bought many BBC shows. And so she came out, and because these novels were new, I think they'd only been one or two released at the time, she was signing East Enders novels. And I had been watching East Enders a bit around 86, or maybe 87, and I I went along. I got to sign a book. It's around here somewhere. It's it's not front and center on my shelves, but it's somewhere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Amazing. I mean, yeah, you just you just would not get that now, I don't think. And a shame. I think we're poorer for it, but that's my nostalgic tinted spectacles. Like, you know, if if there isn't an audience there for it, there isn't an audience.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, how much do they have to pay an author for one of these things? I don't know, and then pay the editors, and you know, I I guess the the economics just aren't there. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00So what about the low points of the range?
SPEAKER_02Well, this is easy. It's the two Martin Caden books, which are Sky Pirates and The White Witch. They are just trash. White Witch is the one I talked about earlier with the whole freezing of the river in the English countryside and driving over it and nonsense like that. And Sky Pirates I mentioned earlier too. And I'll get to what I was going to say earlier. Sky Pirates is like Caden's had an idea for a novel that's part spy adventure, maybe part Ocean's Eleven. And instead instead of just keeping that in his top drawer until it found a home, until a publisher said, Oh yeah, we'll have a look at that. It feels like he's got the Indiana Jones gig and gone, yes, and changed the era in the 1930s, done a finder place on the lead character's name. There are even tells in it, I believe, because the town of truth or consequences is in the novel, that US town called Truth or Consequences. And that didn't exist until the 50s or 60s, because I think it got named after a TV show. It won a competition or to win a competition, they renamed the town. So that didn't happen until the 50s or 60s. And yet the town of truth or consequences is in this 1930s Indiana Jones novel. Right. You know. And don't get me started on his bloody obsession with aviation in the books. I mean, I don't mind aviation. I sometimes go to air shows. You know, I'm into aviation more than many people listening to this are into aviation. But Caden is just so obsessed, it becomes distracting. You know, I don't read Indiana Jones to wade through the nuts and bolts discussion literally of different aircraft and how they work. And, you know, I'd feel exactly the same if his obsession was car racing and he made Indy a a car racer for a few stories or scuba diving and suddenly everything was scuba diving. I'd feel the same if that was his obsession. You know, it might be very interesting in and of itself, but it's not an Indiana Jones sort of thing. You know, when people talk about their favorite thing all the time and they just aren't self-aware that all the people around them really don't give a shit about whatever it is. Caden and aviation is the literary equivalent of that, the end.
SPEAKER_00What more can you add there? It it doesn't sound very appealing. And as you say, like, but because there's something like the idea of Indy in a plane, you know, piloting a plane, things like that, is something we, you know, we see in the movies, and it's quite exciting, but you don't need to get into the minute detail of it.
SPEAKER_02So Well, as he says in Last Crusade, fly, yes, land, no. And uh yeah, look, he he gets around in planes in the films. Famously, you see the the line going across the map. He's in planes then, but we don't see what's going on on the plane or have a conversation with the engineer about how it has the latest engine and it can do an extra, you know, fifty knots at a certain, you know, 30,000 feet or something, which is the kind of detail Caden goes into in his books. It's like, oh Martin, go away. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So how do these compare to the expanded media of other franchises? Because you've you've obviously noted you've got a bookshelf full of stuff from different franchises.
SPEAKER_02So where does this sit? If I'm being really honest, Dylan, it it doesn't really compare well. Right. All franchise spin-offs have clangers in their ranges, if the ranges are big enough. You know, but generally the books will be mostly decent for what they're meant to be. And as I was preparing my notes for this, I was thinking about when you and Ian talked about the X-Files. And my sense was that Ian was dancing around the concept that X-Files novels aren't high art. Like you won't mistake them for Martin Amos or something, you know. But but but you can't completely slag them off either because they're doing what they say on the tin. You know, they're doing what you want them to do. You you want an X-Files story, so you get an X-Files story. The same for Babylon 5, same for Star Wars, same for Star Trek, Buffy, all those ones I mentioned earlier. Spin-off novels scratch and itch, but they are McDonald's hamburgers, you know. So I know that. But with the indie novels at times, it feels like the editors were just totally asleep at the wheel. You know, maybe the job was lumped on some poor editor and they didn't really know Indiana Jones, outside of maybe having seen one of the films once, you know. Or maybe they just didn't care. Or maybe, to be charitable, they had deadlines to meet, and when someone, Martin Caden, turned in a manuscript that was just shit, perhaps they really wanted to push back and say, no, Martin, no, this is just shit. But they didn't have the luxury of giving him time for a rewrite or the budget to just pay him and not put the book out or or something. So it's created a series where I I really can't just hand wave and say, hey, hey, listeners, go and grab one, you'll probably love it. Because there's a decent chance versus any other franchise I've ever read that you'll hit either a shit one or at best a very average one.
SPEAKER_00Right. I mean, I think expanded media as a whole, especially at that time, was very much deemed like lesser literature if we're looking at the book ranges of things. And it takes somebody who it's almost a cynical cash grab by a larger company. And sometimes you get lucky that they have like you'll get somebody, a writer or an editor who really cares about the range and does really interesting or really solid stuff with it. But other times you can see a big publishing house just going, oh, we can make a few quid off this. Yeah, we've got a small budget, pay the writer, do one, you know, one draft of proofing, maybe send a few notes back, but you need to turn this round in like two or three months, and that's it. And we put it out. The kids, they'll buy anything.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I I agree with all that. And here's an example of how lazy or asleep at the wheel I think the editors were. Go on. There's a novel in the range called The Interior World, where we have the concept. Of a hollow earth with a race of people living inside. You know, page after page of shape-shifting people who live behind portals and you have to drink a magic potion to enter or exit, and there's a dragon and there's a giant and there's a dinosaur. I mean, this doesn't sound like Indiana Jones already, does it? But, you know, park that and now consider that story ends with Indy completely gung-ho to tell a journalist about the hollow earth. You know, I've been there, I've seen it, I want you to know about it, I want you to tell the world the earth's hollow and these these people living in it. So it's established beyond a doubt, this is a place he's been, it's a place he feels passionate about. Then, five novels later, we have a novel called The Hollow Earth, which is the concept of a hollow earth with people living in it. Different author, that's a Max McCoy one. So maybe he didn't know the range had already done the topic. But you would think, surely to God, an editor would pick it up and say, Oh no, sorry, we we did that five books ago, don't write that again. Or just not commission it. So the effect, if you're reading these novels in order, is Indy is completely dumb to this idea of the Hollow Earth in that novel, even though ostensibly he's been there five novels earlier. But what saves that book is the take on the Hollow Earth concept is way better in the Max McCoy novel than the way they did it in the uh the earlier one, Interior World. It's it's a completely different take. I mean, the concept is the same. Yes, the earth is hollow, people are living in it. But the rest is different. So if you only read one Hollow Earth Indiana Jones novel, dear listener, read the one called The Hollow Earth, not the interior world. And that that just highlights how weird the editing is on that this range.
SPEAKER_00The interior world also sounds like they've gone to AI and said, what's another word for hollow earth? Because it's such a better title.
SPEAKER_02Yes. But ironically, that's the one that comes first. They couldn't have called it Hollow Earth, because the McCoy book happened at that point.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That is absolutely wild. I can't believe it. But I mean, yeah. Some somebody was not paying attention somewhere. Or do you know if they have the same editors across the range?
SPEAKER_02I really don't know. That that's why I make all these outloundish claims about editors being asleep at the wheel, because I just don't know. It's just the way it comes across to me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, th some something's happened there, but somebody is not across what the what the full range is doing and has done.
SPEAKER_02You know, maybe at the end of uh Rob McGregor's run, the editor left, and by the time the editor for Max McCoy came in, it was a different editor, and they just never looked at what had been done in the range before? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Quite possibly. As you say, i if it's sort of looked down a little bit, this editor's probably got another bunch of r uh ranges that he's also or that he or she are also looking at and just doesn't have the time to do any research if we're being charitable. That's that's right, yes. Anything else you want to say on this book range?
SPEAKER_02I mean, this has been fun, Dil. It's always fun chatting with you. Even if, as I said earlier, I never quite seem to nail the brief of just talking about two items. No. Um I I think the best thing I can say here to anyone who loves indie and is sitting out there thinking, gosh, I've never heard of these books. I should really give them a try. Just pay attention to what I've said in tonight's show. There are a few good ones that you'll have a fun time with, the four Max McCoys and the one Steve Perry. There's also some real shit, and there are some where it's like, well, it wasn't bad, but it was kind of silly, you know, and I think I could have spent my money more wisely. So just read the good ones, like Secret of the Sphinx or Army of the Dead, and leave it at that. You don't need to read them all. Between the authors having different styles, which we've covered, the themes being repeated, like the Hollow Earth thing, which we just spoke about, inconsistent characterization and some of them like Indy being Sherlock Holmes in the Sky Pirates. You know, it's not a coherent line of books anyway. You you won't get a coherent story, even if you do read them start to finish. Trust me, I've done it. You know, if you're a real masochist and you think, gosh, Rob's really slagged this Sky Pirates, I want to read that now and see for myself. I can't stop you doing that. You'll you'll find that everything I said was bang on. So don't blame me. That's what I'm getting at. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We're not encouraging you to do it, but if you want to do it, then you know, good luck, everybody.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's this isn't reverse psychology where I'm saying this is so bad because I want you to read it. No, I'm saying this is so bad because it is so bad. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Then I must ask you to rate the range as a whole with my limited rating system of clanger banger or average meander. But if you if you've got to take a snapshot of the whole thing, where d where does it lie?
SPEAKER_02Well, I really rate five of the novels, the four McCoys and the Perry one. So that's almost half the range that I rate. You know, and then I think there's enough from Rob McGregor that are at least okay. Genesis Deluge and Seven Veils are probably his two good ones. For that to go up to seven out of 13 and it squeaks, I think, into average Meander territory. But I think if someone picked up a few of these on eBay at random and they weren't those right ones, like they were the Martin Caden ones, or some of the weirder McGregor ones, someone could very well read them and think, oh, average meander, my ass, Rob, you know, these are bloody terrible. But uh objectively, having read the lot and making a call across 13 of them, I think seven of them are good. That's got to be an average Meander. That's what I'm going with.
SPEAKER_00Fair. I th I think that sounds fair from what you've said. I touched a little bit on this earlier, but do you think there is a future for the franchise of Indiana Jones, be it on the big screen, the the small screen, or in books like these or elsewhere?
SPEAKER_02I think there is, and I think it's the small screen, and I think it's animation.
SPEAKER_00Interesting.
SPEAKER_02I think that's the way you can credibly go back in time and do the the the era everyone loves, the 1930s, 1940s, without recasting someone as Harrison Ford and people be saying he's not Harrison Ford, it'd be like the the solo Star Wars movie all over again, like, oh, this guy doesn't look like Harrison Ford, he doesn't talk like him, this is bloody awful. I don't want to know. You know, I think you'd run into that trouble if you did either a movie or a TV show live action. So I think you do animation, and I think because the audience is sort of dying off and getting older, you put it just on the small screen. You don't try and make it a $300 million movie, which was a big mistake with that fifth Indiana Jones film. Yeah. And I think you you maybe try and get kids in or a younger audience in through the fact it is animation. Yeah. And they might be more disposed to watching animation. And it's this fun action-adventure animation, and maybe they don't concentrate as much that, oh, this is the 1930s and I'm not particularly into the 1930s. That would be how I would do it. So yeah, I think it does have a future if they want to throw a bit of money at it and do animation.
SPEAKER_00I think that's a great idea. I think, as you say, like some roles can be recast and you know, we're fine with this. I think the thing with it indie, and it's like you say with solo, the issue with solo was we already knew what a young Han Solo looked like. So to then have somebody else playing the role, who wasn't bad, it just wasn't Harrison Ford. And I I think that's the issue you'd suffer with trying to do like a with recasting the role in another film, because we know what our indie is like when they're younger, and I just like I've I've really got no interest with another actor playing him on the big screen. But yeah, I I I think you're right, perhaps in an animated format that it might really have some legs.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, look, I I think a big appeal of the indie franchise was Harrison Ford, the same as him playing hand solo in Star Wars was a big part of the appeal, you know. And I loved I loved him in that, you know, there are actors you seize on when you're little, and chances are that within half a decade they'll have disappeared or certainly not be flavor of the month. But Harrison Ford is a guy I can remember being one of the very first actors I paid attention to. Like, oh, I like this guy, and he's in this movie as well. Oh, I want to follow this guy. And here we are, decades later. I'm a man about to be past 50 myself, and he's still around doing good work. So I think I bet on the right horse by as a kid going, I like this guy. Yeah, he's still around. It's it's fantastic. And he is he is Indiana Jones just as he is Hansolo.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. As you say, there's a slight AIDS difference between us, but not a huge amount. For people of sort of our generation, he has a real golden streak, doesn't he? Where he does Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Blade Runner, sort of in the space of a few years. And so he he's if you're into sort of genre stuff, he is just the face of big budget American genre at that point, and just taking you on wild adventures that that sort of resonate with you and stick with you for the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and then like he goes off on some tangents, like he does things like Mosquito Coast or Witness and things. But then you get to the nineties and it's the fugitive and it's Air Force One and it it's all sorts of big stuff like that, the devil's own, you know. And he's just a massive big guy in the nineties as well. He's uh he's a real movie star, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And Indy remains, you know, one of his most iconic roles. So I I would struggle to see anybody else in that role personally.
SPEAKER_02Um imagine having your own theme music. Like when you walk on at an award show and they play the theme. That is your theme. Like wouldn't that be a trip? Wouldn't that do your head in? Wow.
SPEAKER_00Well, look, Rob, thank you so much for coming along today and talking about these range of spin-off media of indie books. Like it's something that I'm keen to jump into loads of different franchises, and I'm really happy that we got to do this one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you for having me on. And uh I hinted at the start, I think this is important because there are some good books in the range, but if I just talked to you about one of the good books, we wouldn't have got into the the weeds and talked about the bad books and and so on, and how this is a very up and down sort of range. So I think it was good just to talk about them as a whole and highlight some of the better ones people can sort of cherry pick.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. You've given us a fantastic overview of the series, and I'm sure I'll pick up a couple of them, just not Sky Pirates. No, please don't. If people want to find you, where can they find you?
SPEAKER_02I'm on Twitter at the Doctor Who Show or the DW show is the handle. I co-host the Doctor Who Show with Dave Kitchen, which is a uh a monthly podcast about Doctor Who. We also do little spin-off shows at other times during the month.
SPEAKER_00And that's my thing. I'm a I'm a Doctor Who guy. Amazing. And yeah, you but you obviously you do your alternative galaxies where you do talk about other franchises from time to time, and they're always great fun.
SPEAKER_02We do. They're they're a lot of fun because you know, from time to time you just you do want to talk about something that's not Doctor Who, and it's like, let's talk about the never-ending story.
SPEAKER_00Tell me about it. It's why I'm here. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I feel ya, I feel ya.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. Well, this has been great fun. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as it helps people to find the pod. Look for Too Hot for TV on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at TooHotTheNumber4 Pod. That's Too Hot the number four pod for the latest updates and additional content. Next time I'll be celebrating 60 years of Gene Roddenberry's greatest creation, Star Trek. But until then, I've been Dylan, I've been Rob, and this has been Too Hot for TV.