S7 E01 - Peter Ling The Shit Out Of It!

Doctor Who: Too Hot For TV is back, to celebrate 30 years of the 8th Doctor, every week Dylan will be joined by a different guest to discuss the expanded universe of the 8th Doctor with Maygann! This week Dylan is joined by Luke Molloy to look at the audiobook 'Earth and Beyond' and 'Dark Eyes Vol.1'.

Artwork for MayGann provided by Artfully Liam https://www.instagram.com/artfullyliam/

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:39

Welcome back to Doctor Who, Too Hot for TV. We are the podcast that looks at all things Doctor Who expanded universe. It's been four months. I've been lost in a dark dimension of X-Files, Coronation Street, Aliens, and Batman 66, but I'm back where I belong, talking about good old-fashioned Dockey Who. And I can't do this alone. So I'm joined once again by Mr. Luke Malloy. Luke, welcome to Doctor Who Too Hot for TV. Hello, it's so good to be back.

SPEAKER_04 1:11

I fucking hate Batman. Not true, not true, but you know, it's only so long until you relapse into a Doctor Who hole, isn't it? A Dockey Who Hole.

SPEAKER_03 1:25

And what a relapse we've got coming up. It's the month of May. It's 30 years since the TV movie was first broadcast. So we're renaming it Mae Gan. And for the next four for the next four or five weeks, you'll get an episode of Doctor Who too hot for TV every week looking at the Eighth Doctor in assorted spin-off media. Plus, there'll be episodes on Strangers in Space, on Hamster with a Blunt Pen Knife, and over on my other podcast, too, Hot for TV, we love the 90s so much. We're doing X-Files and Millennium, and we've got an episode called I Heart the 90s, which is going to take you all the way back to those glory days. So there's about four million episodes of Two Hot for TV in one month. They're like buses. You wait for ages and 19 of them come along. Now you're bloody talking. Come on, round of applause, listeners. Listen to this. Wow. So Luke, we're here to discuss two Eighth Doctor stories. But like, because you're a new series fan. When did you first discover, or how did you first discover the Eighth Doctor? Was it the TV movie? Was it comic strips? Was it the audio?

SPEAKER_04 2:38

It would have been the TV movie on DVD. Uh the there was strangely sort of basic cover with just his eyes and it's a you know a bit blue. Uh I think the Masters on there in snake form at some point. But it then it would have been from a charity shop haul that my dad got of like 20 Doctor Who books. And I will have read them, but I wouldn't have understood a word of them. And they were like There was a few new adventures, there was a few BBC books, so we're talking like Unnatural History, Um, Rags, uh, Sky Pirates. All the classics. Timeworm, yeah. Uh oh, Sky Pirates is seventh, isn't it? Um, but there yeah, there was like a bunch of those ones. And I will have read them, but not really I wouldn't say experienced them. Like they're on the shelf over there, I have no idea what they're really about. I d I sort of do want to go back to them at some point. But the Eighth Doctor for me really began. Probably went about a year into Jody Whitka's era, when I was like, no, the show's not for me anymore, the show's not for me. And I think any if you're if we're a big Finnish fan, I think we all have this, unless you started in the 90s, that there's a moment where you sort of disconnect from the main show and suddenly invest deeper than you ever have into these silly little CDs. And that's that's what happened. And it for me, it was it was Dark Eyes that I jumped in on, and that was very much like I'm a big Finnish fan, I'm an Ape Doctor fan, I want to buy more of it.

SPEAKER_03 4:11

Dark Eyes for me was also, I was listening to that when it came out because I wasn't enjoying the TV show as much at the time, which was around the end of Matt Smith's era, early Capaldi, where just I wasn't invested. But I was a I'm I'm I'm generation McGann, you know? I I was there waiting, I saw Doctor Who wander off air in 1989 and various bits of false news and DWM in the press. There was always something, we covered all those stories on Doctor Who Too Hot for TV. There's always a movie in the works or something like that. And I remember in late 1995, all of a sudden, a lot of the news stories were like, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. Then all of a sudden, Paul McGann was cast as the doctor. And even though he was cast as the doctor, it still felt fake, especially like I'm 12 years old or whatever. It's like, yeah, but David Hasselhoff was the doctor a few months ago, you know, like that there was always things in the paper. And then uh, I know you love a story about a convention, Luke. There was a convention held in Birmingham called Alecon in February of 1996, and Sylvester McCoy was supposed to be there, and they said they can't he cancelled and they said he's not here because he's off shooting new Doctor Who. And that's when I was like, oh fuck, it's actually happening. And from there, you know, the build-up was intense. It was just like snippets of information, pictures. I remember the first picture in the Radio Times is that picture where he sits up from in the morgue after he's regenerated, and you're just like, oh, that looks cool. That doesn't look like Doctor Who's ever looked. And then I remember they had a big two-page spread of the Eye of Harmony and said, This is inside the TARDIS. And I was like, Well, this is going to be the greatest thing that's ever happened. And for one night only it was, and then the come down was unreal.

SPEAKER_04 6:04

Was was Alecon a Doctor Who Con or just a drunkard or something?

SPEAKER_03 6:10

It was a Doctor Who convention that happened in Aylesbury once and then moved to Birmingham, but they didn't bother changing the name.

SPEAKER_04 6:18

I I remember watching the movie quite a lot compared to quite a lot of the other DVDs, and it it was probably that thing of like completing a Doctor's Era in one go. It's the same I watched a lot of Colin Baker when I was younger, and I think that was part of it was that you could complete the era quite quickly and get a real a real good sort of grasp of the of the character sort of thing.

SPEAKER_03 6:41

And then I was just as excited when Paul McGann came to audio with Big Finish, and I've been an avid Eighth Doctor listener ever since. I don't check it all out like I used to, but it the Eighth Doctor was the doctor that I stayed with for the longest time. It was only I think it was after stranded that I finally went, I don't know whether I need any more of this.

SPEAKER_04 7:03

And uh Yeah, I d I do get that. It goes, it's fairly aimless. There's good stuff out there, but it's a bit more aimless than it ever was. It was always always in what like a forward arrow direction.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

Now it's a bit Yeah, it feels like the rest of Big Finish, doesn't it? Like it used to feel like the Eighth Doctor was their continuing series.

SPEAKER_04 7:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:25

But now we're jumping around the Doctor's timeline. We've kind of done everything we need to do. That doesn't mean like I listened to The Doctor and Pacini the other day, which you know I j it's just one story I jumped into, and I thought it was lovely and great, and just as a a little extra fix of that Doctor, but I don't need big story arcs for them anymore because it for me, I mean they sort of finish with Dark Eyes, although obviously there is box sets after that that I that I forced myself to listen to.

SPEAKER_04 7:50

Yeah, well I mean well and we'll probably get into it with Dark Eyes, but it Dark Eyes was a reaction to Night of the Doctor, wasn't it? Uh and even though I say yeah, I really got into Paul McGannon with Jenny Whitka, I was still one of those people that was losing their mind. I mean, I don't think there was any Doctor TV fans that didn't lose their mind the day Night of the Doctor dropped, you know. And I've had I've had news series fans that have just seen them seven minutes and said, like multiple news series fans have said, like, oh, he was great. Why don't we have more of him? I'm like, Yeah, unless you can be bothered putting earplugs in, you don't.

SPEAKER_03 8:26

But if you can, it's thousands of hours. When he showed up in power of the doctor, I knew I'd been told classic doctors shown up, but because Paul recorded his bits on a different day, I wasn't expecting to see Paul McGahn. So that was like a genuine surprise, but I knew all the others were there. So and it was, you know, that was that was another great moment of just like a little bit more Paul McGahn on television.

SPEAKER_04 8:52

Yeah, that was it, that was a great moment. I think for me, the the Eighth Doctor, he's got that sort of missing episode aura in that like there's an infinite potential there, all the others seem to be quite locked in. It's I think it's the same reason I'm still with the big finish rangers, even though they are more aimless. It's like it doesn't feel like it's compromising anything. The stories can still be ongoing in a way, and and it feels like you're never ever going to complete the eighth doctor the same way with the missing episodes, and that sort of brings you back quite a lot. You can't you can't ever get a defining answer or complete picture.

SPEAKER_03 9:31

Yeah, I that's what it felt like in 1993, 1994 with the Seventh Doctor, because they wander off-screen and you don't see that final end, and then there was just more of it out there. And I never thought I'd read all the new adventures, and I was right I didn't. But you know, it just felt like for four or five years there were just stories and stories and stories about the seventh doctor Ace and this new person, Bernice, and it was it was amazing, and then you know, they picked up that bat on with the eighth doctor.

SPEAKER_04 10:03

Yeah, and I mean I mean we could have had that, you know. I'm not and not we're not here to talk about the new series or anything, but like that very much could have been a thing right now. We there would I don't think the mood would have to be so low because you could have loads of stories out there of the shitty guy with a doctor carrying on, which would be quite exciting. But he's so locked in. I mean, he ain't he ain't ever getting out. You know, the 14th doctor's got more wiggle room than him. Yeah. Because he's still going. Yeah. It's just strange, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 10:37

So the first thing we're going to do is Earth and Beyond, which was released on the 7th of September 1998. Now, this isn't a release that people talk about a lot, but essentially, uh, it was described by the BBC as three gripping Doctor Who adventures read by the Eighth Doctor himself. And those stories are Bounty by Peter Angelides, Dead Time by Andrew Miller, and The People's Temple by Paul Leonard. As I said, it was September 1998. So what was going on in the world of Doctor Who? Dixon Boucher return to the field and Toymaker plays it again for new BBC book, and this was basically the BBC books were rolling out some of their earlier titles for the Past Doctor and Eighth Doctor range, which everybody was very excited about. But the biggest news at the time was that Andrew Cartmel reported that dragonfire writer Ian Briggs had given up writing to become a masseuse. I don't know how true that is, but Ian Briggs could rub my shoulders any day. Releases at the time. We had from Big Finish, the Bernie Summerfield audios, Oh No It Isn't and Beyond the Sun. From BBC Books, we had The Scarlet Empress featuring the Eighth Doctor and Sam, and Last Man Running featuring the Fourth Doctor and Leela. The VHS was Planet of Fire, and the comic strip was Wormwood featuring the Eighth Doctor, Faye and Izzy. So it's been a few years since the TV movie, and the landscape is very much everybody's running with the Eighth Doctor, as we said. Have you heard any of those big finish? Read any of those books?

SPEAKER_04 12:19

Um not not Bernice. I've never touched the Bernice Range. I think I've just it's just past my time and I'm never gonna go back. Like I just missed it, and that's fine. I've heard of the Scarlet Empress, so maybe it's one that's well regarded. It is. Yeah, I've had it.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

It's a Paul Mars book, they're always well regarded.

SPEAKER_04 12:39

After verdigree, thanks, Joe, for the and I've yes, I've watched Planet of Fire, sadly. Um you leave Planet of Fire alone, mate. Yeah, I can't say anything because I've proposed in Lanzarote, and that was that was always a direct subconscious, you know, driven by Planet of Fire.

SPEAKER_03 13:01

It was it was either that or a quarry just outside the M25. It's like you may think this is weird, but Destiny of the Daleks was filmed here.

SPEAKER_04 13:11

Or what was the other one after the Planet Fire? Uh the comic strip was Wormwood featuring. Yeah, it's that I think that's the one with Nick Briggs, is it? It is, isn't it? Yeah, the Briggsy Doc. Yeah, the Briggsy Doc. That is I mean, how many times can we say on this podcast that those comics are just elite? But that even I came to them like 15 years, like 16 years later. Amazing. The whole four novel volumes, bloody bloody. They they were probably actually before my big finish, Jenny. So actually, I did loads of them again before before Big Finish.

SPEAKER_03 13:44

I think when the show ends in 1989, there's a feeling that it's ending, but nobody's quite sure. And so the spin-off media for a few years isn't really sure what they want to do with it. So the magazine's like, okay, well, I guess we'll carry on with the Seventh Doctor. And then they go, Oh, well, maybe we can jump around a bit, and then they go, Oh, maybe we can do a continuing series that ties into the new adventures because they're up and running at that point. Target have a few years of continuing their novelisations before we get the new adventures. When the Eighth Doctor happens, everyone's like, No, we're gonna be ready for this. Regardless of whether there's a new series or not, they're gonna be like, we are gonna roll out stories with this Doctor, and we are gonna tell continuing stories with continuing story arcs. So, love although those early Eighth Doctor books and you know, the those comic strips of the time, they all had a plan that they set out to do and they achieved it for better or for worse. And I think the comic strips are the are the pinnacle of those early Megan experiments. Yeah, very possibly. While playing Never Have I Ever on a Beach, Sam and the Doctor discover alien objects, one of which, along with the Doctor's TARDIS key, is stolen by a disguised rip token. The Doctor tracks the thief to two fugitives, Lerpa and Ladith, who are being hunted by the ruthless bounty hunter Reduz. After Reduz kills Lerpa using saltwater and poisons Sam indirectly, a tense confrontation unfolds aboard Ladith's ship. The Doctor ultimately defeats Reduz with saltwater, rescues a weakened Sam, and escapes as the ship explodes, later curing a poison back on the beach. They finish their game with the Doctor winning, and instead of taking Sam home, he takes her on another adventure. When the TARDIS malfunctions and strands the Doctor and Sam in a dark void across countless times, they venture outside and encounter eerie lights and distorted faces that chase them into an ancient dormant TARDIS. There, Sam is trapped in stasis while the Doctor is physically attacked by the Forgotten, ancient Gallifreyan entities that travel through a Time Lord's timeline, unraveling their life. A future version of the Doctor warns him of the dangers before fading, and the creatures begin invading his past. He ultimately traps them within a sealed part of his mind during a key regenerative moment. As the unstable reality collapses, the Doctor frees Sam and they escape back to their own TARDIS. Two boys, Coin and Charlin, dream of building a great stone temple, and years later, as leaders of the Bearmen, they enslave a rival tribe to construct it. When an accident kills a slave girl, Coin demands a sacrifice, choosing Dorlin, until the Doctor and Sam arrive, disrupt the ritual and rescue him. While Sam heals Dorlin and inadvertently inspires a rebellion using spray paint, tensions escalate. Charlin plots against the increasingly unstable Coin but is killed, and a clash between tribes leads to further death. The Doctor ultimately persuades Coin to see his mistakes and free the slaves. And after Sam accepts responsibility for the chaos, she and the Doctor depart, with him offering to take her to Stonehenge at a safer time. So then it comes to Earth and Beyond.

SPEAKER_04 17:06

Have you ever heard Earth and Beyond? I had never heard of this. And I would consider myself a a quite big Paul McGann fan.

SPEAKER_03 17:15

A Paul McGann fan stan?

SPEAKER_04 17:17

Yeah, an eighth Doctor fan stan for Dockey Who. And I'd never heard of this.

SPEAKER_03 17:23

Yeah, so this was quite a big deal at the time, but it's very much been lost to time because bigger and better things have sort of superseded it. So this is a reading of three Doctor Who stories by Paul McGann, one of which is exclusive to the tape, the other two are short stories from an anthology. But essentially, Paul McGahn does the TV movie. He very quickly then reads the novel of the film, and then that's it. Now, obviously there isn't a huge amount of places for him to go, but in interviews, and that was generally with the general press rather than Doctor Who magazine or genre magazines, he was just like, well, you know, it's happened, nothing came of it, so I'd rather leave it behind. He doesn't want to do conventions, so everybody's thinking, well, he's sort of the, you know, the George Laserby of Doctor Who was thrown around at the time. Yeah, yeah. Um so he it felt like he'd very much left it behind. And then all roads are leading to audio at this point because BBV are doing their audios, Big Finish of obviously doing the Bernice range, and we're not too far off the announcement that Big Finish are gonna get the Doctor Who license. But it was a bit of a shock to everybody when all of a sudden Paul McGann turns around and goes, Oh yeah, I know, I'll I'll read an audiobook of of Doctor Who, sure. So it's the first time he comes back and in inverted commas plays the role. We'll sort of go through the stories individually, but just sort of some overall thoughts. How does this compare to other experiences of Doctor Who audiobooks as we know them?

SPEAKER_04 18:56

So I mean it's compared to Big Finish, it's sort of it's it's a little easier to keep up with. I think that's it's because the plots aren't really that well actually one of them is the plots aren't really that complex. And I just generally think if you've got a narrator like explaining things, it makes it quite easy to to keep up with in regards to Big Finish, you know, it's like bang, bang, bang, bang, ah! Crash titles and you don't have a clue what's going on. I think in one of them he actually talks really quick, like he's trying to get through it as quickly as possible. But then I think the one that he's enjoying, that which is the one I enjoyed, he actually is quite slowly paced, and you really can like sort of bathe in it and keep up with it. I suppose it's slightly more personable, like it really because it is Paul McGann talking directly into your ears, which a lot of people can do that, it can be annoying, but when it's Paul McGann, it makes you slightly hard.

SPEAKER_03 19:55

I think there's something really exciting about hearing him say the dialogue. I'm not a big audiobook fan, and I I did get this at the time because it was new Paul McGann. And I think he's quite a good narrator, but the excitement at the time, and still the excitement now because he sounds so young, is hearing the Eighth Doctor almost fresh off the set of Vancouver sounding exactly like the Eighth Doctor. And he does differentiate when he's performing the Eighth Doctor to his readings of other characters and the prose as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He does. So there's three stories. The one exclusive to the set is Banty by Peter Angelides. So this is brand new audio bit of Eighth Doctor. This is the thing that's good, you know. We don't know. We could get these every three months, we could get them every month. This could be the future of Doctor Who audio readings by Paul McGann. Let's start with an exclusive story. What do we think of Banty?

SPEAKER_04 20:52

It's strange, isn't it? It's like uh a story from the annuals, which you'll be very familiar with. It's quite it's got that sort of Sunday afternoon breeziness about it. Yeah. Where he sort of runs after a a thing, uh who's stolen a thing, and then Sam goes with a thing that's it's not quite a thing, and then there's a fight and it's over. And they don't really get really involved in it or anything like that. And it's it I definitely felt like an annual story to me.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

Yeah, it's so slight. Like if you'd had said this is the beginning chapter to like a cold open to a Doctor Who book, and then the story goes somewhere else, I would have believed you. So it's bizarre that they go, This is the exclusive story, the the one that you've not heard before, but we're gonna give you this. Because you're right, an annual story is kind of where it's at. And I don't mean that like the very early annual stories where none of it makes sense, but it's just there's not enough time for this author to tell a compelling enough story. So it's very much just like can we capture the characters? Sort of, is there a threat? Sort of. Is it a big threat? Yeah, not really. But it's done.

SPEAKER_04 22:03

It's yeah, it's not compelling. It it just sort of is there. And I think for me it was more just like Paul McGann's narrating, and I don't really know anything about Sam, so let's get involved in that. Um, because the stu yeah, the story's just so slight. I mean, even the names of the monsters are are very annual. You got your Rip Togans and your Ledifts and your Leopaz.

SPEAKER_03 22:27

Yeah, it's bizarre. And even when Sam is poisoned and is potentially going to die, there's something about I don't know whether it's in the prose, the narration, a mix of the two, but I never really get the intensity. I suppose in my mind I'm also going, they've just launched this new companion, they're not going to kill it off in the first short story audio reading. But it it just feels like, okay, so here's your minuscule threat you've got to solve in the next ten minutes.

SPEAKER_04 22:51

I mean, I didn't know this was the one that was the special, like specially included, but they do usually tend to be the quite slight ones, so the specially included because they're a bit shit. You know, like the subscriber bonus stories from back in the day of um of big finish and that.

SPEAKER_03 23:09

Yeah, someone's turned round to Peter Angelinis and said, uh, we need this story, we need it tomorrow, and we've got half the money we'd normally pay you for something like this. What can you do? And he goes, Yeah, yeah, that'll do. Bounty. He was eating a bounty at the time and like I know.

SPEAKER_04 23:26

I've got it. Yeah, McGann, like, you know, people always say sort of like I could listen to them narrate the phone book. I mean, this is as close as you'll get, really. Like, I think I think he sparks up a bit more in the other two, but I think in this one he is doing just like a fine professional job of narrating, but it's quite nondescript and it's you know, not really got any fizz as a as an actual narrator.

SPEAKER_03 23:52

Yeah. Um, it's inconsequential, but at least it's short, eh? Don't know what you're trying to say. Deadtime by Andrew Miller is the second one. Now, this one I really enjoyed.

SPEAKER_04 24:09

I knew you'd like this one. Yeah, you're right. It's class. It's sort of like prototype scherzo. Uh yeah, my first note is if Stephen Moffat wrote Scherzo.

SPEAKER_03 24:25

And this is the one where I'm like, so stories one and two are sort of 25 minutes. The last one's like 80 minutes. It's like, this is the one you need to make 90 minutes or whatever it is. Like, this is the one that's got so much to it that you're like, at the end of it, I want more of this and this sort of stuff. So I'm really surprised that this isn't the main feet feature, as it were.

SPEAKER_04 24:46

Spot-wise, this is the absolute opposite of of the previous story. I mean, the it's got a hundred ideas, but it doesn't feel overcrowded either. Writers somehow made them feel like a quite an easy story to listen to, but they're high concept ideas.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

Yeah. They're they're trapped in darkness for the first part of the story in this weird alien space. And it turns out that they're basically in a dying TARDIS, which is a fucking cool concept that I it has been explored many times in spin-off media, but I don't know why the TV series has never done it. And then you get this whole thing about these creatures called the the memory surfers who are like gallifraying dirty secrets, and they're sort of forgotten time lords. Uh it's a bit neverland, it's a bit divergent universe.

SPEAKER_04 25:39

It is, yeah. I mean, it's got like mind robber, scherzo, name of the doctor, yeah, like all going on. I mean, they I don't know how you would actually think of these creatures. They it's like surfers that have jumped, well, they've like surfed the matrix, jumped onto a time lord. They want to go back in time to prove that they can do it, and the way they do that is by jumping on another time lord that was older than them, and they've got to like jump host to host. And then to defeat them, the doctor does like a he sort of speaks to himself like a very Stephen Moffy thing, you know, like a joy to the world or a big bang, yeah, to sort of like tell himself the solution to the problem, and then he like rewinds through his regenerations exactly like the Big Bang, or like you know, any shitty gatter episode where the clips are going. And and then to defeat them, he he manages to trap them in like one of his his first incarnations, death before he regenerates in his mind. I mean, this is big high concept stuff. I was sort of just beaming, it should be nonsense, but it was a conviction to the whole thing that made it really work.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

After the first one, I was like, God, why did I suggest this? Because if we just because at one point we were talking about just doing the first story, and it's like, well, you heard our review of the first story, it lasted two minutes. And then when I got into this, you know, as I said, there's loads of these big ideas, and that they're going to invade Gallifrey using the doctor as a bridgehead, and that they're traveling through his timeline and stuff like that. And it's just this great high concept idea, and as you say, the doctor talking to the doctor, all that stuff. But also, it feels like everybody who's making this one has gone, or we need to make this one bigger. So the music and the sound design is elevated.

SPEAKER_04 27:29

McGann's narration is heightened and oh, it's definitely yeah, it's more infused with just energy and and spookiness and atmosphere.

SPEAKER_03 27:38

He's had a coffee by this point, you know. He got out of bed, came and did bounty. Who wrote the the mind job it was like Peter Ling. Peter Ling, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:46

Yeah, you know that quote about Kill the Moon where Moffat says this should Hingecliff the shit out of it. This feels like the note is Peter Ling the shit out of this.

SPEAKER_03 27:59

Yeah, and this is the sort of story that I'm just like, there's a big finish in this, like recycle it, like make it bigger. I need four episodes of it. You couldn't make it into a TV story because part of it, the first episode, it'd all be in the dark.

SPEAKER_04 28:13

But it sort of is, like, I half of this felt like Name of the Doctor. Yeah. I thought you're saying because they because they sort of say that once they jump onto the doctors of bridgehead, they kill them at every point in space and time they've ever been, and it's agony and all that. And it's in the dying TARDIS and all that.

SPEAKER_03 28:30

Oh, of course they do do the dying TARDIS in uh name of the doctor, but it's just the TARDIS with the console removed.

SPEAKER_04 28:37

It's got some plants in.

SPEAKER_03 28:38

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Plim down the garden centre. Yeah. It's a big concept. I'm happy with the way the story resolves. I'm happy with all of it, and I'm just like, right, now we're in because a boring audiobook, I can be distracted, and all of a sudden I've done the dishes and not listen to the last 15 minutes of it. But dead time, I was lying in bed and I was just like, this is good, this is fucking good.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:03

I mean, before we move on to the third one, I don't really know anything about Sam Jones.

SPEAKER_03 29:08

Well, this this was gonna be my question to you. Do you get any idea of what Sam is, uh, who Sam is, and does she make an impression over these any of these stories?

SPEAKER_04 29:17

Well, this is what I was gonna say. I think she might be completely different to you than what she is to me, because the impression over these stories is that she's just like a schoolgirl that swoons over the doctor. And I know she's in about a hundred books written by Perves, so there's no way there's no way that could just be it. But I mean, in in this one it does add to that skirt so vibe because it's very much like them two walking into a void together and she's sort of swooning over him, and he very much doesn't or won't say anything about love. But yeah, but I felt like I felt like what I was listening to must be a different version to the ones in the books.

SPEAKER_03 29:57

Well, Sam's an interesting one because she's got a bit of a bad rep, and certainly nobody seemed to like writing her at the time. When they launched the Eighth Doctor Range, they're trying to make it more kid-friendly, and I don't mean like five-year-olds, I mean teenagers, 12-year-olds rather than new adventures, which are 18 plus realistically. And so they go for this younger companion. I say younger, she's like six form. I think she's like 16, 17, maybe even 18, who knows?

SPEAKER_04 30:22

She's definitely 16, because there's a line about her going to the Cole Hill disco at age 16.

SPEAKER_03 30:27

Right, yeah, there you go. So she's she's 16, and I think you've got a bunch of writers who have been used to writing Ace and Bernice, and they're like, well, what the fuck do we do with this 16-year-old girl? And certain writers get it right. So I've just read Vampire Science by Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum. And she's a really interesting, compelling character in there, and it goes a lot into her history, her motivations for travelling with the doctor, uh, what she sees in the doctor, and hers, you know, she's a middle-class kid who ultimately is a bit of a crusader. Like she'd be called woke now, but um she she ultimately believes in rightness and good, which is a perfect reason why the doctor would pick somebody like her to travel with.

SPEAKER_04 31:09

He doesn't seem to like her too much in these three audios.

SPEAKER_03 31:13

No, uh that's weird because in vampire science he definitely does.

SPEAKER_04 31:17

But I mean He's quite dismissive and a bit like annoyed that he's got to travel with this child, is was the vibe I was getting.

SPEAKER_03 31:24

I think that is the writers right there coming through and going, I'm a bit annoyed I've got to write a 16-year-old because I can't write her shagging anyone, not without it being really problematic.

SPEAKER_04 31:34

Well, they they don't really either, do they? Like, she's not she don't really get anything to do in these two stories.

SPEAKER_03 31:40

She does start a war in the next one.

SPEAKER_04 31:42

In the next one, she gets a bit more to do. But I'd I'd completely tuned out by the time we got there.

SPEAKER_03 31:49

Shall we move into The People's Temple by Paul Leonard?

SPEAKER_04 31:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 31:54

This is an interesting one. So this is your feature presentation, 80-90 minutes of Pure Doctor Who, your chance to tell a big, big story on this double cassette pack. I mean, I listened to this in several chunks. It's a historical. It's something to do with Stonehenge. They show up, there's some beef between the locals, a war starts, uh, and yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:20

They spend like 15 minutes moving a stone in one in one scene. No, yeah, I very much thought if if you're in the 1% of people that likes the eaters of light, then this one's for you.

SPEAKER_03 32:32

I'm in the I'm in that 1%.

SPEAKER_04 32:34

Well, if you're in the 0.5% that likes the eaters of light and mask of managora, this one's for you.

SPEAKER_05 32:41

I'm in that 0.5%.

SPEAKER_04 32:45

No, it's definitely got like those sort of boring worldscapes of the Mask of Managora and the Reboss operation where the doctor and the companion don't turn up for a while and you've got to take it. I mean, at least with like Reboss, it's an alien world and uh, you know, mask, you've got like the filming. I think Eaters of Light is like the worst case of all, where you're just in a field with with people from the old days that you can't relate to. But I'm saying that honestly, for the first like 30 odd minutes, I was quite into this.

SPEAKER_03 33:18

Yeah, I I I think there is like a there's a subtlety and niceness that feels like a Hartnell historical, which I'm a big fan of Hartnell historical.

SPEAKER_04 33:27

So the first 10 minutes is like two things called like Burkub and Deer or something. Yeah. And and they're like deciding to make a temple. It was very glacial, and I was I was into it. I didn't mind that the doctor hadn't turned up or anything like that. And then it's almost as soon as they turn up, which is about half an hour into the story, that there starts to be a war between, yeah, like two people and a few people die, and everyone gets upset. And I've no idea. My patients have worn very thin by that point.

SPEAKER_03 33:57

And it feels like Paul McGann is kind of enjoying reading this one though, like because it feels I don't know, like I know he's a big history guy, so maybe there's a more considered pace to it. It's slow like the first one, but I do feel like he's giving he's giving a gentler performance on purpose.

SPEAKER_04 34:17

It's got a bit more texture in the first one though. Yeah. Yeah, it's got a bit more depth to it. It's just it's it's almost still as slight a story, but it's definitely a bit warmer and nicer around the edge. But yeah, it's far too long, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 34:33

When people say, Oh, why can't the new series do a pure historical? I look at something like this and go, because this. I can only imagine how this would turn viewers off in their droves if it was broadcast on Saturday night on BBC One.

SPEAKER_04 34:50

Eaters of Light is pretty close to a pure historical. You get that little light beast for about a minute and a half, don't you? Yeah. But this there are similarities to it, because like the doctor does that thing with his popcorn and the eaters of light, and here he's he's doing some light tricks, isn't he, to distract them all. But I don't really feel like it ever got to the bottom of Stonehenge, and then I think all like got anywhere with that, considering the big, big setup. And then it seems to be like the pit that the guy was building at the end is actually a different monument to Stonehenge. Because Sam just wanted to know how Stonehenge was built and ends up becoming like queen of the motherland and starts a war. Classic Sam. Classic, yeah, that's why we love him.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

What's her surname? Jones. Yes, you've got it, that's fine. You've that's the test. Over these three stories, do you think you get a sense that the writers and in turn the audience know who the eighth doctor is at this point? And is it the same eighth doctor you know from later audios?

SPEAKER_04 35:56

It's a tough one, though, isn't it? Because the the Eighth Doctor is he's he is different. We all pretend that he's not, but it it like he is very different at different points. It's just it's all connected through this dreamy voice of Paul McGann that makes it all feel the same. Like, yeah, this is very different to like the Dark Eyes Doctor or or the comic, or probably definitely the um the BBC Books Doctor. Yeah. That doesn't mean it's worse. It's it's got that, as you said at the beginning, it's got that like freshness of the eighth doctor straight from the set, and and that's its big appeal. That and the high concept ideas of the second story. Apart from that, I don't really think there's anything here.

SPEAKER_03 36:38

Yeah, I think it's that there's a lightness to it. There's infinite possibility with this Doctor, as we said, but they haven't got there yet. So Neverland hasn't happened, the Time War hasn't happened, Dark Eyes hasn't happened, whatever happened in Ravenus hasn't happened. And it's quite nice just to hear the Doctor on a couple of different little adventures, but they are little adventures, with the exception of Dead Time, which is an absolute belter.

SPEAKER_04 37:06

I was gonna say there's a pure historical in uh Stranded, but it's like a contemporary historical, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:12

And that's quite good. Yeah, sure. I can't remember anything about Stranded apart from there was a dating story that everybody enjoyed and I quite enjoyed. There was a trans companion, PC Andy was there, and Tom Baker showed up as the curator because Colin Baker shows up as the curator. Because Tom doesn't want to do the curator. Because Tom didn't want to do it again. Who knows? I'll get to stranded on here one day, I'm sure. Anything else to say on Earth and Beyond?

SPEAKER_04 37:41

No, only like a very, very small detail of he mentions his VW Purple Beetle once or twice.

SPEAKER_03 37:49

This is a thing?

SPEAKER_04 37:50

Yeah, yeah. I was gonna say is this a thing? Because it comes up like once in in big finish audios. I'm sure it does. It comes up in a dark eyes, but not the one we've listened to, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

And so is this a thing in the books that he just had a in the early 8th Doctor books, he had this beetle that lived in the TARDIS, and he'd drive her out of the TARDIS every now and then, which is pretty cool. Like, and I like that idea. And there was some CGI fan art that somebody did, and Big Finish adopted it as one of their early trailers of the car just sat in a CGI TARDIS and everyone went, Oh, that looks cool, bring Doctor Who back. They can do it with computers now.

SPEAKER_04 38:30

Well, I mean, I would like that. I would like the doctor to be driving something cool out of the TARDIS. It's quite good in the Idiot's Lantin, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:37

He does it with a bike, but do it with a car.

SPEAKER_04 38:39

Yeah, do it with a car, it'd be really cool.

SPEAKER_03 38:41

Yeah. So we must rate this. I would say, I'm gonna say that bounty's a clanger, that the people's temple is an average meander, and dead time's a banger. What say you?

SPEAKER_04 38:54

Um I I would go clanger on one on three, but yeah, dead time is a is a very good banger. Yeah. And for 25 minutes, just slap it on, it's great.

SPEAKER_03 39:06

It's always nice to do something like this and just find a tiny little bit of Doctor Who you really enjoy that you just would never expect to find in a place like this.

SPEAKER_04 39:16

Yeah, yeah. It's it's so good. It's even more surprising when it's surrounded by the other two as well. Like the other two feel like they should be here. This doesn't feel like it should be here.

SPEAKER_03 39:29

Absolutely. So, the next thing we're going to talk about is Dark Eyes Volume 1, released on the 10th of November 2012, written and directed by Nick Briggs. It came from Big Finish Productions and was recorded on the 1st and the 18th to the 20th of June 2012 at the Moat Studios. News at the time. As part of the BBC annual Children in Need fundraiser, several Doctor Who items were being auctioned on eBay to benefit the charity. A cast of Matt Smith's hands raised£700, Matt Smith's autograph£297, and a Pudsy Teddy Bear autographed by David Tennant went for£720. So even then, David Tennant's autograph was worth more than Matt Smith's because David Tennant's king and John Barriman's autograph raised£410. You wouldn't get him on Children in Need these days.

SPEAKER_04 40:29

I can only think what that autograph was. Number three to the top.

SPEAKER_03 40:37

Also, the BFI South Bank in London announced a series of events celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who. Throughout 2013, they would be celebrating the 11 Doctors in chronological order with screenings and guests, which would obviously go on and on and on. And here we are in 2026, and those things are still happening. You've still never been to one. One day, my friend. One day.

SPEAKER_04 41:02

Yeah. When we're getting to the real dogs of the animation. Like we haven't done already, but when we're getting to, I don't know, the bloody Highlanders episode three.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

And you'll be there.

SPEAKER_04 41:15

I'll be there watching Stick Men talking in Scottish.

SPEAKER_03 41:20

Fraser fucking Heinz. And he will be. Releases at the time. We had assimilation, the IDW comic, Crossing Over Star Trek The Next Generation and Doctor Who. From Audio Go, we had the City of Death audiobook and Snake Bite featuring the 11th Doctor Amy and Rory. From Big Finish, we had A Thousand and One Nights with the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa. Night of the Stormcrow with the Fourth Doctor and Leela. The Companion Chronicles was The Child with the Fourth Doctor and Leela. And a special release called Voyage to the New World with the Sixth Doctor Jaygo and Lightfoot. On BBC I, we had Houdini and the Space Cuckoos was first published, a novella featuring the 11th Doctor, Vastra Investigates, a Christmas prequel, Devil in the Smoke, and Santaran Carols. The comic strip was Imaginary Enemies featuring the 11th Doctor Amy, Rory, and Mels. And on BBC One, we had The Snowmen.

SPEAKER_04 42:17

Snowmen, brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 42:20

Sabelta.

SPEAKER_04 42:21

Loved that story so much. Uh used every year I used to try and make Rachel watch it because she'd occasionally watch the Christmas specials with me, and every year she fell asleep in the snowmen. It used to really, really get to me deep down. Put David Tennant on. Oh, she's awake. Oh, she's awake for the whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 42:39

She's paying£720 for an autograph Podsy the Bear with his autographs.

SPEAKER_04 42:43

Bit of finesse, bit of sparkle, bit of fairy tale. No, straight to bed. What are people doing with Matt Smith's hands?

SPEAKER_03 42:49

Well, wouldn't you like to know?

SPEAKER_04 42:50

Well, uh for£700.

SPEAKER_03 42:53

£700, you can do what you want with them, mate.

SPEAKER_04 42:56

Yeah. Um there was quite a lot of Matt Smith books there that I I've not got or I've not really touched, which is a bit sad. I might Snake Bite, I've definitely not got that. The Houdini one I thought you were making up.

SPEAKER_03 43:10

Um well the last few were all online originally, and then they were published as books.

SPEAKER_04 43:16

Ruby and the Smoke, I remember happening. Songtar and Carols, that was a YouTube video, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. A few times. That's a bell. I'm sure you are.

SPEAKER_03 43:26

A few sherries deep.

SPEAKER_04 43:28

40 seconds of Strax just, you know, telling jokes like he does. Top lad. Good time to be a fan.

SPEAKER_03 43:36

It was a good time to be a fan before I went horribly wrong with season 7B. In the aftermath of the loss of Lucy Miller, the doctor is searching for hope, but instead is drawn into a dangerous mission by the Time Lords. They have uncovered fragments of a vast conspiracy to destroy the universe, centered inexplicably on a young Irish nurse named. Molly O'Sullivan, living during the First World War. The Doctor finds Molly on the battlefields of France, where strange phenomena and hidden alien forces are already at work. As he recruits her into his travels, the pair are pursued by Daleks and begin to uncover links between Molly's past, a mysterious scientific organization, and a wider temporal plot that spans multiple times and places. The Doctor and Molly trace the conspiracy back to a temporal weapon tied to Molly's past, specifically an experimental procedure she underwent as a child that left her unknowingly connected to a powerful time-altering force. The Daleks intend to exploit this connection and rewrite history on a universal scale. The Doctor confronts the architect of the scheme, X, on a remote world where the weapon is being activated. Realising that Molly herself is the key to both triggering and stopping the process, he helps her understand her role and resist the manipulation. By disrupting the link between Molly and the device, they prevent the Daleks plan from coming to fruition. We talked a little bit earlier about you first hearing this around the Jody Whitaker era. As I said, I first heard it pretty much on release. Do you think this is a good place for the Eighth Doctor to go after the Lucy Miller run? And did you find it accessible when you jumped in as well?

SPEAKER_04 45:18

Yeah, absolutely. This is, you know, this actually is a jumping on point. And yeah, I didn't know what had happened to Lucy, but it doesn't take very long to figure out. Yeah. Um, yeah, because I sort of went back because I I did Dark Eyes and then through the box sets, and then at some point I will have gone back and done Charlie because they were free. A lot of them are free on Spotify. Yeah. And then it was years later where I waited for the price to go down for the Lucy Miller ones to sort of go through them. And I think I I enjoyed them sort of less and less because I was just hearing more and more Paul McGann. So people that aren't too keen on Dark Eyes because they went through all of Charlie and or through Lucy. I think I would sort of understand that because you just heard so much of Paul McGann. But this feels different, doesn't it? It feels like an absolute defining sort of moment, like a re it's got a reason to exist, which you can't say about 99% of other big finish stuff, as enjoyable as it is. Yeah. And the other thing I thought about it was it feels radio worthy, like you could put these four episodes on radio four in a way that you couldn't do that with Ravenous 2. There's just there's something about it that you know you you could put this on the radio and it wouldn't be embarrassing.

SPEAKER_03 46:41

Yeah. There is this thing of like, I've followed the Eighth Doctor stories all the way to Lucy Miller, and you're like, where the fuck does this go now? Because it just feels like it's so bleak at the end of that, and everybody dies, and you're just like, Where do you go? You can't jump back into a happy new doctor. So the doctor sort of has to be changed forever for a bit. And so they do present this more depressing version of Doctor Who, but it's not the Doctor moping, it's the Doctor being forced into an adventure, and the adventure being quite dark, him being depressed, the companion that's thrust upon him doesn't want to be there, and it's just a complete contrast from what's gone before, but it somehow manages to be still recognisably Doctor Who, but a suitable sequel to one of the definitive audio series, which was the Lucy Miller run.

SPEAKER_04 47:36

Yeah, I mean that yeah, that's a beautiful summary, really. But I feel like once they did this after Night of the Doctor, they were like, well, this fits in because he's building up to that moment, which would have worked really well, because this does feel like he's stepping because it's depressing and darker, he is stepping more into that world of the time. And then I imagine I think Paul McGunn just enjoyed himself too much that he ended up doing 16 more boxes.

SPEAKER_03 48:05

Uh Night of the Doctor, although it's not a thing at this point, was the point where a lot of new series fans started to take note of the classic series. I know Jason Hageller, he said, particularly in America, there was suddenly this interest in big finish as a whole, and the eighth doctor was that way in because he's so remarkable in that five minutes or whatever he plays the Doctor again and just slips back into it because he'd never really left. That I think even though this had just this was probably a year old or just under a year old when it came out, it made perfect sense for them to go, this is the thing you need to pick up and jump into if you like that guy who appeared in Night of the Doctor.

SPEAKER_04 48:45

Paul McGann's also said that that, yeah, as soon as soon as Night of the Doctor drops suddenly, people wanted the big finish, eighth Doctor range.

SPEAKER_03 48:54

And I think there's this thing of I can't remember if it's here or just before the Lucy Millers, but apparently Paul had expressed some sort of like feeling that he was a little bit bored of the role and perhaps like he needed things to spice things up. So I think the Lucy Miller stuff going out on radio, and then Dark Eyes is the perfect way to do that. To go, we're gonna tell these big epic stories that are really gonna push your character forward. Because I can understand why, you know, when you're you've done the divergent universe arc and you've come back out and then you're assimilated into the monthly range, and it's like, oh well, we're doing time works and other lives, which are all fine, but it's like it's doing Doctor Who almost for the sake of doing Doctor Who.

SPEAKER_04 49:34

Yeah, yeah, and that that that's what I mean about this, in that it feels like it's got a drive and a purpose and a reason to exist.

SPEAKER_03 49:41

So I want to sort of touch on each of the stories individually, but first of all, I want to talk about the scale of the storytelling here. Now it's written by Nick Briggs, who comes under fire quite a lot from Doctor Who fans, including people on this podcast. But there's a scale to this storytelling and the settings and how it weaves through time and space that Nick Briggs, I think, manages so well. And I'm a little bit in awe of how he presents this sort of dark epic. How do you feel about it?

SPEAKER_04 50:11

Yeah, it's it's so insanely good. I mean, uh just winding back ever so slightly, I think this is my third, third or fourth time listening through it, and my first time in a few years, and I was, you know, very trepidatious. Coming on for Megan, would it be as good as I've always sort of thought? And yeah, it like it just flew by. I I thought I'd put one on like every day, but I listened to the first three one after the other, and then the next one the day after. Like it and was this the first ever proper box set they did?

SPEAKER_03 50:47

I think so. I around this time they're starting to experiment. I don't know which comes first, but there's this and the seventh Doctor Story Unit Dominion, and both of them I remember feeling like big events and going, okay, this is the future of Doctor Who on audio.

SPEAKER_04 51:03

Yeah, well, I'm gonna say this yeah, this one is the first and the best, and they should have stopped. Uh but but it it manages to do what the show has needed to do for the last eight years. And I remember saying this on a podcast about like seven or eight years ago, that it it has the sort of it's a continuous story, but it flies all over the place, and it's not instalments in a story, it's actually just got one story that bounces over the place and has connective tissue between them. And we've never had that. Flux doesn't do that really, it's quite instalment with an o with an arc. And I mean RCD2 definitely doesn't do it, it's just random scatterings of stories, and most big finish box sets are still that, they're like individual stories with an arc over it. This is actually a four-part story, yeah. That man but that also manages to not just you know be boring, it does fly all over the universe, and so you you do start in World War One with all this vivid imagery, and then you go you go on a massive chase through time and space, through 1970s London, and a a big world with a bubble, a flying bubble. I absolutely love the flying bubble bit, and then you know, onwards to alternate sort of dream galaxies, and then the final one. Oh, it's I don't yeah, I don't know how he does it, Dylan. How does Nick Briggs do it? I'm not saying it because it's Nick Briggs, I don't know how anyone could do this on audio, really.

SPEAKER_03 52:38

It's it's a big, big sci-fi epic. It is as close to Doctor Who doing the Avengers, and I don't mean bringing all the elements together, but just going, how big of a story can we possibly tell? And it's bigger than anything told on TV, and it yeah, it's got Time Lords and it's got Daleks, but it doesn't, it's not super fan lanky or anything like that.

SPEAKER_04 53:01

I'm not reliant on them at all. Yeah, it's just they're part of this story, but I mean and it's also got this core about depression and hope and what they mean, which really like ties all these four things together.

SPEAKER_03 53:17

This is only the second time I've heard it. I heard it when it came out and I thought it was brilliant, and I had the same trepidation as you, but like, what if it's not as good? What if it's shit? What if it's just or if it's just age badly, or you know, there's so much Doctor Who that doesn't stand up for repeat listening or repeat viewing, um, because most things are only made to be watched once. But I was just like back in from the moment it started. So let's jump into the first story of the Great War. Now, what struck me most about this is you get the whole intro with the Doctor being really angry in his TARDIS, and Straxer shows up and sends him on this mission, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there are two things within it that really strike me. The depression and the anger of the Eighth Doctor, which, you know, we've just done the bubbly Eighth Doctor fresh off the set of Vancouver in a light little story, and here he is in the TARDIS screaming and shouting. And then the backdrop and visceral nature of the war, because it's very easy to sort of have the war as a backdrop and not really do much with it, or even occasionally, like let's kill Hitler to sell quite a jovial story in the middle of World War II, for instance. But here you're like, fuck the Daleks. The the Doctor could get killed any second now by any number of things, it just feels like they've proper landed in the middle of a great big war movie, which is I know Nick Briggs is a fan of some war movies, so it kind of makes sense that that he would make this approach.

SPEAKER_04 54:43

I mean, it doesn't even feel like a war movie, it feels like the war. Like it is like bocking hell, the doctor's just stuck fighting in World War One. I mean, he's fighting off mustard gas, yeah, and well railway lines that are being shelled. Um it's such a vivid it all of it is so such vivid imagery. And I think because on the front of that box set, you've got him in that leather coat doing this, and like you just you just see that that doctor absolutely like in the dirt, a doctor that started in, as you say, quite like jovial, happy clothes and haircut and you know, yeah, bouncing around a bit pony, and then oh my god, he's in the war, he's in the bloody great war.

SPEAKER_03 55:31

And I think as as Doctor Who fans at the time, because you they weren't quite allowed to use the new series elements, everyone was going, oh, is this the time war? Is this the time war? And it's like, actually, we don't need to do the time war, and this could lead to the time war. Uh, but it's like actually, no, this is just a a dastardly plot that this this guy's caught up in, and and things are more at stake than ever. Because sure the universe is always at stake, but sometimes the universe is at stake and ten minutes later it's not. And then here, you genuinely feel like because you're in World War One, you genuinely like to everybody in World War One, it feels like the world is ending, and to the when with the doctor being trapped there and knowing the larger stakes, it just feels so much more threatening than the end of the world usually does.

SPEAKER_04 56:17

Absolutely, and like like you said, the the timers and the Daleks are almost in this episode particularly, like are just a bit of spice in the background. The the threat very much is World War One, uh get out of that and and and you can sense that McGann is uh completely re-energised with this material, like he's he's really giving it some and more.

SPEAKER_03 56:46

And again, he's a histor he's got a history podcast, McGann, and he he loves particularly wars and things like that, so I suspect he it was a subject matter that he was just happy to get his his teeth stuck into.

SPEAKER_04 57:00

And then, yeah, we've got Molly O'Sullivan.

SPEAKER_03 57:03

Well, yeah. What do we think of the introduction of Molly O'Sullivan, the reluctant companion?

SPEAKER_04 57:09

So I think I mean it's just brilliantly written, I think, and it and and quite cleverly written. I mean, so the letters that she writes to Mammy give us like a personal angle and a bit into her thoughts, as well as depicting the whole sort of events that the doctor's uh b gonna be thrown into. And then as an actual personality, she's strong, but she's not like kick-ass, you know, in the way that it's very easy for female characters to fall into. She's she's just strong because she's in the war and she's losing people and dealing with insane situations, and that makes a a great compliment to the doctor who's also lost people recently and is in insane situations. And so even though she's reluctant, it's not it's it's not shit like Belinda and it's not kick-ass female power like No, she has to be strong.

SPEAKER_03 58:10

I mean, she says later, doesn't she, that she's from a family where like all the other kids essentially died, yeah, and she's just trying to survive in this horrible situation and do her thing and save other people. But it's not a big mission statement to save people, it's because that's what you fucking do in the world.

SPEAKER_04 58:26

Yeah, she just is, and there's loads of nice touches. I mean, the fact that she's not a nurse but a VAD, you know, never heard of a VAD, but it just makes it slightly more real and that you do it just feels like slightly more in immersed in that world. She's great, and the accent just uh absolutely works for me. I mean, like, yeah, uh just the Irish accent is makes her really distinct more so on audio, I think. Um, and if you take like some of the some of the uh line readings and compare them to you know everyone's favourite Living Helen, um you know, there's uh there's she's got a punch and enthusiasm, but again, it's not overdone.

SPEAKER_03 59:08

With the first sort of four McGann companions, you know, you get Charlie, this posh Edwardian adventuress, you get Kerries, who's this like chameleon who's trying to fucking kill everybody half the time. Um you get Lucy Miller, who's Sheridan Smith, who's like this amazing working-class British woman from the early noughties, and you get this super strong Irish nurse from World War One. And just by saying where they're from and their names, that invokes an image in my mind of who those people are. And I can think of a thousand different stories they get involved in, and like they're all so strong and have such interesting plot lines, and then once they're gone, that is when we get to this point of well, I don't really know or care who any of these people are, they're just audio actors showing up to do a couple of stories every year, and yeah. Sometimes interesting things happen and sometimes they don't. But those first four, like, not everything they do with the characters are successful, but they're such standout and they all feel like television Doctor Who companions, whereas by the time you get to the next set of box sets, they all feel like audio Doctor Who companions.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:16

Yeah, you've got that spot on. And notice how you didn't say Mary Shelley there. Uh we don't talk about Mary Shelley. Or um, what are they called?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:24

Samson and Yeah, only in one thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:28

No, you are you are completely right. And uh uh I think Richie Morgan made this point, not related to the Ape Doctor, but like Doctor Who sort of stopped being immersive when all the mocked and all the thing about it was about the the actor's take on on um on the doctor, whereas up until that point it'd always just been like Doctor Who's the same person, and then suddenly it became like so-and-so's playing the Doctor, how are they going to do it? How are they going to do it? And uh it's sort of similar to what you just said, like a lot of the time with big finish box sets now, you feel like it's actors just rolling up cash in, doing off, doing it alright, doing it you know, fairly well, and we'll pay for it and we'll have a decent time with it. Yeah. But here it felt like a story that needed telling that people wanted to tell, and that's different, and that's more.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:25

You're still in an era, aren't you? You're still in the Eighth Doctor's era, and it it feels like there's definitive characters and definitive stories to tell within it.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:35

I have heard over like 80 stories of Helen Sinclair. I can't tell you anything about how she would react in any situation. And she's been putting some like dramatic twists and stories and given things to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:51

I don't know, she's yeah, no, absolutely. I'm I'm the same. Shall we move on to Fugitives, which is the second story here? Uh and suddenly we're in 1970, and Molly and the Doctor on the run from the Daleks, the at the end of the last story finishes with Daleks on a battlefield in World War One, which is a brilliant cliffhanger, it's a brilliant image. Uh, and you're just like, of course, the Daleks feel at home on the battlefields of World War One. Much more than they do floating around the Empire State Building uh or elsewhere.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:27

Yeah. But this the one that the thing that got me into this was I was gonna stop after listening to the first one, and I completely forgot about the time travelly sort of intro where the where the doctor sent someone a billion pounds. And and I was like, I don't remember this. And it immediately hooked me back in. And then once I think once you're in, it doesn't stop this one, does it? It is just like people might call this filler, but it it's not. It's it's it's got some bloody great character work in as well. But the plot is basically they're on the run. Almost Planet of the Spiders, like they're on the run, then they get in a biplane, then they get in a taxi, then they get in a giant space bubble. So they're always moving and moving and moving.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:11

Yeah, Darek's chasing a cab, you and they end up in World War II in Dunkirk. It's not just filler, because we're learning that whatever this plan to destroy the universe is is all centred on Molly. We get Straxus, Straxus showing up, and we have that kill himself. Yeah, he shows up on an alien planet, speaks to us some native, and it's like, Oh, I'm gonna kill myself. And they're like, You sure you want to do that?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:33

And he's like, Yeah, and it's to force a regeneration, he gets saved, and it's just it, you know, it's quite amusing, and you just And it's sort of quite disconnected, and it's quite trusting of the audience to keep up with it because but it it's weirdly not hard, and it might just be because you're so invested, but I I've never struggled with it, and I think it's again it's got great imagery, you know. I think that the bubble sequence, so they like they get to an alien planet, and it's the first time in like an hour and a half where the doctor and Molly just have a a laugh for like a minute, and they get in this big bubble and they start laughing, and that moment comes at exactly the right time, where you just you just suddenly like, oh yeah, I like these two, just enjoying themselves, and then they get attacked by a dolphin or something.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:24

Do you know what it is? It's it's almost like that opening sequence of flux, but if they've got the the money to go, oh we've we've got you know the Matt Smith openings where it's is it Impossible Astronaut where you'll there'll be like he shows up in like 15 different places or something like that. It's very it's it's like one of those, but just done over the whole of the story. But it's pushing the story along, it's bringing the doctor and Molly closer together, so it's not as filler as I think people could think it is.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:55

Yeah, that's that's yeah, that'd be my argument. And people die, yeah. This is the other thing, it's still still got that edge to it, because um I mean Isabel dies in the first one, and then Sally gets gone in this, although she does come back in some sort of timey, whimey way at some point in the next box set, you know. Yeah. Dark eyes, from my understanding, was meant to be one set and done, and then it did so well that they were like, Well, we've got three more dark eyes on the way.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:25

Yeah, no, I think they had an idea of how it could continue, but they were very happy for it just to be a one-off, but ultimately, you know, big finish. They will always find a way to to to rin something. As the mystery thickens, we get that moment where Molly knocks the doctor out and drags him in the TARDIS, and then she's using the console, and you're like, Oh, what's going on here? And like it's just like another little, oh, this is so fucking good. Who's this woman?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:52

Yeah, there's a lot of nuggets dropped all the time, but it doesn't feel overwhelming. You are they're just constantly intrigue. Um Is that that's around the point where he starts calling her dark eyes, isn't it? Yeah. Um because she because she has dark eyes. Um have you ever named anyone by a physical feature, Dylan?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:12

Uh Big Dick. Yeah, yeah, it's probably I was thinking about it. It's actually my nickname for myself. No one else seems to call it me, though, for some reason.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:22

Cause like there's sit there's some the singers called like kneecap and elbow.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:28

So but I did think it was quite cruel that the doctor is throughout these episodes just being like, you are fucking dark eyes, you, and and she's like, please don't say that about me. And he just keeps doing it. And I think it I think it's the only bit of the box that I've got an issue with because it feels like he's only doing it, so they can call the box dark eyes.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:50

Also, like it's a facial difference in 2026. You'd be told off of pointing that out to someone's features, you know?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:57

Yeah, yeah. So maybe it hasn't aged well after all. Yeah. Get it in the bit, clang it.

unknown 1:07:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:03

Won't even bother talking about the rest. The next one is Tangled Web. Now, this is where we things start to get super sci-fi. And we've got a world of nice Daleks. The end game is approaching. We travel to Molly's past where we see Toby Jones's character, Cortis. Again, Toby fucking Jones is in this.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:24

Yeah, we'll catch a big finish, that is.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:26

He does the usual Toby Jones thing that we all know and love. Yeah, but perfect.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:31

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:32

Kidnaps Molly as a kid, and so we start to see the setup, but we've also got this Dalek utopia with Daleks playing with kids and laughing Daleks. And I mean, I just loved this episode. I mentioned this to Joe Ford and he thought that laughing Daleks was the worst thing you'd ever heard, but fuck fuck that guy.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:52

Yeah, I hate that guy. I bet he likes Evil of the Daleks, doesn't he? When they're all going Dizzy, Dizzy Daleks, Dizzy, Dizzy. He'll be loving all that. But as soon as Nick Briggs puts some dialogue in there, oh no, no, no. Joe.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:05

Yeah, I can hear him spitting out his dummy at home.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:08

Yeah, I can hear the he'll be sending an audio recording the chat right now. You know, Luke, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:15

Well, screw you, Joe. But uh hi, hi Mark, we love you.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:18

Hi Mark, yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:21

So things are amping up. I love it when somebody finds something new to do with the Daleks, especially how they're so overused these days. And although we have seen a Dalek utopia, well, Nick Briggs does it in his seminal book, The Dalek Generation. And obviously, as you mentioned, it's evil of the Daleks. But it's the sort of thing that you can do sparingly every now and then, and it has impact. It's when you do it like every other month.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:46

Yeah, and it has impact here, especially because again, the whole theme is about giving the doctor hope and false hope. Um so putting some nice Daleks in there really works. I mean, that that is by far the strongest bit of this episode because they're Daleks that have de-evolved to live outside the shell and then just like planting flowers and playing in the playground, which is just great. You know, it's not just like nice as in like they've changed for the better, they're actually just like big babies, which is great. I think it's a shame that it ends up sort of being an induced dream world rather than like an actual timeline that could have happened if this thing hadn't happened. I think that's a shame because it it is such a great idea.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:32

But there is that thing that sort of people that are sort of l operating on the doctor and or looking after the doctor and Molly, so when they sort of go, Oh no, but you're very ill, you believe what you've been dreaming and all this stuff, and then right at the end after the doctor escapes, uh the Daleks show up and they're like, But you can't be here, you're the thing from that guy's dreams, and then they're like, Oh fuck.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:56

They just realise it's been telling the truth, and it's just it just slightly it's and this is more apparent in the next story, but it just starts to tip into that time lord stuff that is a bit annoying, like from Gallifrey series that I don't like. So you get you get time rams happening, and there's third parties helping someone out and blah blah blah. But the child Daleks are just so good and so enjoyable that I don't really care about the rest of it. Um I I've never really understood the Dalek time controller in any episode he's been in, like but he sounds fucking cool, doesn't it? He sounds cool and he looks cool and uh and he remembers stuff fine by me.

unknown 1:10:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:39

I don't really remember anything that apart from his purple.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:42

Yeah, he's big and he's purple. Make of that what you will. So I would say the tangled web is the slightly weaker one, but it's also a breathing point, I think, within it's been quite relentless at this point. So it just takes a few minutes to sort of slow down a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:01

It's slightly weaker. I think the weakest one is the last one for me.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:06

Well, let's jump into the last one, X and the Daleks.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:10

Or what Twitter and its users have become.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:14

Am I right?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:15

He's here all week, he's here all week. So this is the the big finale. We get to find out what's been happening with, you know, why the Daleks are why the Daleks and X, or is X or COTIS uh are after Molly. It's to make this time space planner thing or something like that. Uh who knows? And there's TARDIC's within TARDICs, there's time ramming, TARDIS's defences down. Oh, it's a relativity map, that's it. Um and which will enable the Daleks to sort of reshape the universe, erase the time lords, and all this stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:49

I don't think it's that satisfying of a conclusion because it gets so bogged down in the double cross and the technobabble relativity maps and retrogenitor particles and you know blah de blah de blah de blah. But I do think it's got big moments that sort of make all that work.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:11

I think if they were making this exact story today, I would hate this last part. I'd just be like, it's a load of old techno ballop babble bollocks, I don't really know what's going on. But it's all done with such conviction and energy that it feels like the most exciting final part to a Doctor Who story ever.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:28

It feels to me like sort of the same sort of level of bollocks as like Flux Part Six.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:34

Mate, you Flux part six, top-tier bollocks. Most long-running Doctor Who stories end with a bunch of technobabbel. Yeah, top tier bollocks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:45

The good ones end with well, the bad ones end with bollocks. Yeah. The good ones end with top-tier bollocks.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:50

It's reverse the polarity of the neutron flow all over again.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:54

Yeah, you're right. And and so like part of the ways has the reverse the polarity moment. Yeah. But it has a big moment that sells the technobabble. And I think this just about does because I think the twist about Cottress and Straxis actually saves it and gives it something for you to go, oh, okay. Yeah, I'm quite into that.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:17

It's the human element, and I include the Time Lords in that. It's the it's the double crossing, the human element within there. It's the human element in Molly, it's the human element in who's the other character in it.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:29

Nadion. Nadion. I was listening to Nadion and I thought, this Mark Raw would love this guy. He's just the side character, man on a planet that joins them to fight the Daleks. And rather than say Molly, he says, Molly, Molly, all the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:48

He's that guy that's in the timeless children that sacrifices himself at the end, isn't he?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:52

Yeah, and he is that, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:55

But also, if the Daleks kill Straxis to stop this happening with the relativity map engaged, maybe he's still alive, Dylan.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:02

Well, yeah, exactly. He's played by Ian Cullen, who played Ixtar in the Aztecs, so you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:09

I actually really enjoyed him to the point where I looked up if Nadian had ever come back in everything else, but no No, no, Nadian. I mean there are a few loose ends, I thought, like, especially on a fourth listen now, like the Doctor Sturge's character in the first part, no real answers to who he is, really. Um and you don't really find out when or why the doctor give Sally a million a billion pounds. But we're so far past that now that it doesn't really matter. And I think with all the technobabbel, it does it boils it down basically to a a sacrifice, a one for the you know, one for the better, or what or a million and that's a classic Doctor Who thing, isn't it? Did you kill Molly and save everyone else, or do you kill everyone else and save Molly? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:01

And it's so lovely the way it finishes that her dark eyes have disappeared. She's still got eyes, by the way. They haven't just pulled her eyes out. Uh and the doctor's unconscious or whatever, and Molly lands the TARDIS and writes him a letter and leaves to go and find Kitty. And that would be a lovely way to finish it, but there's another three box sets. I remember loving all of those, and at some point I do want to cover them on this.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:23

But um Yeah, I mean, I I do like the rest of Dark Eyes. I think it goes up and down on like the this set, which feels c consistently and like perfectly well made. Yeah. Um, but Molly does sort of just fall out of the Doctor universe quite limply and slowly to the point where like Dark Eyes 4, she's being played by an old lady.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:46

Well, the actor gets a job on something else, doesn't she? And she can't she can't commit, so they they basically have to fast forward in her life cycle.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:55

Yeah, which is a a real shame because she she really could have been one of the greats. Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:00

So Dark Eyes 2, you start to get You get a lot there.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:05

You get Robomen, you get um the Eminence, it's the first bit of the Eminence which become like a really big thing. And of course, Alex McQueen.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:15

Yeah. Basically they introduce other writers, and then by the end of it, it's all other writers, and there's no Nick Briggs, which is kind of I feel like Nick Briggs told the story he wanted to tell in this box set, and then they were like, okay, how do we carry this on? And they need which is the right way to go, I think. Nick Briggs' defining moments for me will always be those first three Dalek Empire audio series that just feel like such his vision of Doctor Who. And this to me is his ultimate contribution to like not the main range, but you know, the main output of Big Finish, of putting his stamp on it and going, This is my Doctor Who. And I've said this before on this podcast. His Doctor Who is very gun. It's gung-ho, it's Marines and it's war and it's spaceships and it's Daleks and it's Cybermen, and that is a very specific type of Doctor Who that I love in small doses, and I think this is his sort of crowning glory in that. Um, and I think it's good that other people came in and tried to try to do different things with it. I mean, he does he does obviously write some of them, and I think he directs them all, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:17

Yeah, and there's good stuff. I mean, it's because it's right at the beginning of um like when Matt Fitton and John Dorney sort of come on, so their episodes in the later sets are really good as well. There's a lot of talk about retrogenitor articles, that's that was always my takeaway. It's like that is name dropped all the time, and it's very, very clunky. And I think in Dark Eyes 3 it gets a bit bogged down because it's like the eminence and the Daleks become like the two main forces and they're sort of fighting each other, then it just carries on. Alex McQueen carries a lot of it as the master because he's just he's the fucking best.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:54

He is, he's so good. Like more McQueen, please. McGann has a new look for this. What do we think of his uh new unofficial look?

SPEAKER_04 1:18:05

I love it. This is so much better than the you know TV movie look. Oh, this hard knock doctor. I mean, it's actually quite close to Eccleston in a way, isn't it? Yeah. Because because it actually has a purpose, you know. I think unlike the Edwardian coat, which is just quirky guy.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:25

But it is quite literally fancy dress, isn't it? He took it out of a fancy dress wardrobe and and kept it. I think you're right, it's like an it's an interesting hybrid between that uh Edwardian look with sort of the bottoms and things like that, and the more rugged Eccleston look, and I think it's a nice transitional bit.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:44

Yeah, I don't think he has a a bad look though, because I I like it, I like the short hair and the long leather coat here. Yeah. I also like the longer hair and the cravats and other stuff that he has.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:56

So he he'd said as far back as in the behind the scenes for Vengeance of Morbius in 2007 that he'd like to move past the Eighth Doctor's pompous look with the cravat, and that he'd had a leather jacket in mind similar to the ninth doctor's.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:10

They all loved that, didn't they? Because Colin Baker was very much like, wish I'd had that.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:15

Yeah. All of a sudden they're all like, no, that's what I asked for. Honestly, that's what I asked for. Did you, Sylvester McCoy? No, I I kind of wish that when they had done Night of the Doctor, they'd put it in that outfit. But I guess if you're going for classic Doctor Who, you're going for the look that's been on TV.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:35

Yeah, and it it wouldn't make sense now. Not with Time War Uncharted 3, how he's in the cross of again.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:41

What's he wearing in that?

SPEAKER_04 1:19:43

Um no, I think that one's basically the I think the Time War ones are the Night of the Doctor ones. Oh.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:50

Nick Briggs' direction is amazing. The sound design, I love that they use the 1960s Dalek Extermination. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it but it's just, it's so like they've they've spruced up the effect, so it sounds proper horrible. The music, it's got hints of Curse of Fenric, hints of new series, but it's not it's not too bombastic, it's not too Murray Gold. It's just like adds an extra layer to it. Anything you want to add to sort of the production value side of things?

SPEAKER_04 1:20:21

No, I can't really. I mean, sound wise, it was it was the dark extermination effects, they just sound so powerful, especially when they're like hitting the trenches of World War One. It's like you can feel the mud on your face, you know. Oh, it's just brilliant, Dylan. I don't know what else to say.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:39

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:40

It has a it has a little bit of a messy end for me, but I just forgive it because all the best Doctor Who does, and it and it's just one of the best rides.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:51

And quite often when I'm having a good time, I have a bit of a messy end myself. So you know, a hard, hard relate. I don't have too much more to say about it. I will just repeat what I've said again and again. It's fucking brilliant. It's an an audio epic, it's Doctor Who the movie on audio. It works so well, and for one month, Nick Briggs was the best writer in Doctor Who.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:17

Yeah, and you know, oh god, it's like if if he was showrunner just for this this one bit, you can only imagine what this would look like. Um and it gives us one of the best companions that will be forgotten about, and I quite like that, you know, in a universe a universe full of people coming back in endless um endless living hell and and stuff like that. It's quite nice if we've just got this little bit of Molly, makes it more special and it adds so much more weight to these. But most importantly, it just feels like it has a purpose and it is like its own era, and it's not trying to just exist, and it's not trying to wing off the tails of anything else. It it is actually like I want to make this, everyone on this wants to make this, and what we make is bloody brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:08

It doesn't feel churned out, or we're just showing up to do another one. Everybody's doing the best they possibly can to make this epic story. We must rate it. Is it a clanger, a banger, or an average meander? Banger, banger, banger. It is an absolute banger from me too. What I've been wanting to revisit this for the podcast for ages, and May Gan was the perfect opportunity. Excellent. Well, Luke, thanks for joining me and helping me launch May Gan to the masses. It's good to be back in the Doctor Who Too Hot for TV podcasting studio, which is completely different from the Too Hot for TV podcasting studio. Have you got anything you want to plug?

SPEAKER_04 1:22:52

No, I'm on it. I just want to know what's what's coming up in May Gan. And he didn't ask me to say that, Pete.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:58

Good link, good link. Next time I'll be joined by Joe Ford and Ian Martin, and we'll be looking at the big finish audio Other Lives and the Titan comic Empire of the Wolf. But until then, I've been Dylan. And I've been Luke. And this has been Doctor Who Too Hot for TV.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:54

Thousand and one nights with the Fifth Doctor and Tegan sounds like a steamy occurrence on trend uh what's it called? Oh no, I've botched me joke.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:02

And it was it was it was Fifth Doctor and Nissa. Do it again.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:08

Wait, I gonna need to why where's the planet's gone from ahead?

SPEAKER_05 1:24:12

What's the one from husband's song?

SPEAKER_06 1:24:17

What's the bloody planet that they shag on for 26 years?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:23

Hang on, I'll give it a Google. Delirium It is something like Delar.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:32

The singing towers of Darylion?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:36

Darillian sounds right. Uh main uh yeah, Darillion be right. Go on.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:44

A thousand and one nights with the fifth doctor and Nissa sounds like some sort of weirder carryance. Just fucking meme up for this, it's not even good. In fact, this could go straight after the credits.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:58

No, I've got it all there, I'll chop it up, and it'll be like a thousand and one nights on Lirian.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:05

Um Sounds like a fun night on Darillian.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:14

Kate Orman and um who who else what's his what's her husband's name?

SPEAKER_04 1:25:19

I don't know, this is my not my area. My area is the shitty gatherer and the shitty gatherer only.