S7 E03 - A Matthew Waterhouse Themed Séance

As Maygann continues, Dylan is joined by J.R., Matt and Jon from Strangers in Space to look at two Matthew Jacobs releases. First it's the documentary 'Doctor Who Am I'  Directed byVanessa Yuille & Matthew Jacobs, then they look at 'Puccini and the Doctor' featuring the Eighth Doctor, Charley & Audacity.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're listening to Doctor Who Too Hot for TV, and for the next hour to an hour and a half, we're going to be talking about the expanded universe of Matthew Jacob's Doctor Who, so you don't have to. Hi, I'm Dylan. Hi, I'm JL. Hi, I'm John. Hi, I'm Matt. So, yeah, we're here because it's May, it's May Gann. We're celebrating it on Strangers in Space. We're celebrating it on Doctor Who Too Hot for TV. It's McGann everywhere. And I've pulled three men out of the retirement home of Strangers in Space to join me on this hip young podcast for people who are very nearly in their 30s. I love how he's got his mug there just to emphasize this. He's got his cocoa going down. All links, isn't it? I bet he's got a blanket over his legs. He has, you can see it. Is this the bit that gets edited out? Yes. It'll be your links if you don't mind your tongue, John Arnold. That's good. So I've gathered the great and the good from Strangers in Space to talk about the expanded universe that Matthew Jacobs has contributed to over on Strangers in Space. We've talked about or will have talked about Matthew Jacobs' other work beyond the TV movie, things like that. But here he's made a couple of extra contributions to the world of Doctor Who, beginning with Doctor Who Am I, which was directed by Matthew Jacobs and Vanessa Yule, which was released on the 10th of November 2022 at Picture House Cinemas, and then the 28th of November on DVD and Digital, also in the same year. News of the time, Shootie Gatwa was announced as being the new Doctor Who, and they were rolling out Demon Quest on vinyl, which Demon Quest is the Tom Baker audio that has been released approximately 4,000 times. And it's great. Is it? Yeah, I've never gone. The whole form was in Nescotch is great. Demon Quest on vinyl must be the most hipster thing in Australia. Sorry, I'm I like. Oh no, no, no. It's the audio of novelization of slipback. Now, other releases at the time, the landscape of Doctor Who, from Big Finish, we had What Lies Inside, featuring the eighth Doctor, Liv and Ellen. We had Sullivan and Cross, AWOL, Objective Earth, which was a unit audio box set, Hidden Depths, featuring the ninth Doctor Liv and Tanya, and the Torchwood story, The Lincolnshire Poacher. From BBC Audio, we had The Power of the Daleks and the 10th Doctor novels, Volume 5. From BBC Books, we had Doctor Who and the Daleks and The World of Demons, The Villains of Doctor Who. The comic strip was Liberation of the Daleks, featuring the 14th Doctor. On Blu-ray, we had the Series 13 specials and Power of the Doctor. And Candy Jar books were releasing The Ballad of the Borad, The Invisible Woman, Memories of the Future, and Rampage of the Drop Bears. By the look on Matt's face, he's read and heard all of those. I know I've heard Power of the Doctor. And I've heard of Doctor Who. The rest was all a bit. What was it? What was the thing about the Drop Bears? Uh it was Rampage of the Drop Bears. That's candy jar, is it? Yes. You write for them, so you can't say anything about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Lovely, lovely people.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

The ballad of the Borad. My god. I like the sound. The Lincolnshire poacher. Yeah. That sounds interesting. It is a Torchwood story. Oh, that's not up my throat. And you know there's there's 20 years of Torchwood coming up in October, guys. And I'm out. Oh, I'm in. We're doing. You know how we're doing May Gann on uh Make Strangers and for the sort of whole of May is all gonna be Paul McGann and the TV movie and Matthew Jacobs and Jeffrey Sachs. So to celebrate Torchwood's 20th anniversary in October, we're all gonna have sex. It's gonna be a load of old cock. I'll be fine with that, just to just to stop me thinking about Torchwood. I mean, if Torchwood comes up in the randomizer between now and then, maybe we'll just save the episode. Sounds wonderful. I'm probably not in. We've done the good ones, haven't we? Good one? Take back controlled, and take back controlled. I know, I know, I know. Don't worry, it'll it'll be seamless. So I first saw this probably about a year after it was released, around the time of the 60th. Because sort of around this time, it's the end of the Whitaker era, the 14th Doctor's all already running around in comic form. So it feels like it's the build-up to the 60th. And as part of the 60th, I just thought, well, I haven't watched Matthew Jacob's documentary. And I didn't really get on with it first time round, but I think I've revised my opinion somewhat this time. So let's come to Matt first. Have you heard it? What did you think of it then? And has your mind changed? Yeah, I watched it for the podcast. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure we did it on the Strangers podcast. I think JR and I are both exactly the same. So hang on. I've got all you guys here to do a thing you've already reviewed. Why don't I just tap that in? Oh yeah. We just had it funny. I mean, but have we changed our minds? I presumed I was getting a different lineup of people that were getting the lineup that just turns up. This is it. Yeah. So I've so many people in that concession and nobody ever turns up apart from these two. So I from from memory, I had the typical, typical reaction to it from the Strangers of Biss podcast. I really liked it when I first watched it, and I didn't think I was going to like it. I thought it was going to be self-indulgent and and kind of niche and a bit a bit kind of, you know, uh eating itself. But actually, Matthew Jacobs is so sweet, he just sort of won me over. And the the focus he kept on trying to divert attention from himself to the fans. So I yes, I really liked it when I first uh watched it. I kept getting distracted by the fact so many of my mates turned up in the gallery scenes. I was like, yeah, there's Tim. Yeah, there's Martin, yeah, there's everyone else. But it's and look kind it is so sweet. Um there's stuff um about Linkia's mother's death in there as well. Yeah. Um and yeah, and then what's what's it that when he has performed Gant's birthday party and showing it on video to Edwin? Are they just really kind of human moments? And you you do get something of an idea of the man rather than just him exploring that legacy. It it is his point of view, and it's his point of view of us to a certain degree. He strikes me as Ian Ladin, but with warmth. That's my um I view of Matty Jacobs. Well, and also, but in some ways he's the opposite, because he is absolutely not nerdy in that kind of collector gene kind of a way. He doesn't collect facts and figures, he doesn't he doesn't know an awful lot about Doctor Who, I don't think. No, he's just kind of a casual fan, if anything, even back then. There's a fundamental generosity to him, I think, that doesn't isn't quite there with the in the V. Uh JR, so presumably you saw it around that time as well. I have the Blu-ray. I bought the Blu-ray when it came out. You could have bought that at any time, JR. Such is the nature of the passage of time. Well, such as uh so I mean we're talking about now the passage of time and Matthew Jacobs' expanded universe. This sounds like a carry-on Doctor movie. I really liked it. I think something really interesting happened during the making of it, and I think these two have kind of alluded to it. But my I tell you what I think happened. I think Matthew Jacobs set out to make a documentary about Doctor Who fans because he'd never been to a Doctor Who convention and had no idea about the universe of Doctor Who fans until he went to his first Gallifrey. And I think when he underwent that experience, he thought, oh, this is actually interesting enough for us to turn the cameras on these people and try and capture what Doctor Who means to people in America. And then I think he got Vanessa Yule, who he's worked with on a bunch of things, to come in and co-direct so that somebody would have an objective view of what was happening. And I think, this is my theory, and this has not been said, I've not heard this from anyone. I think Vanessa Yule said, actually, my objective view, Matthew, is that this should be your story as opposed to their story. And we should combine the two stories so you get a picture that lands at the exact midpoint between the incredibly nerdy Doctor Who fans who go to these conventions and the not very nerdy Doctor Who sort of fan who wrote for Doctor Who and who hasn't been a member of Doctor Who Fandom. And so his introduction to Doctor Who Fandom is Doctor Who Fandom's introduction to this guy who wrote this thing and then was basically kind of forgotten about for 20 years. And so he sort of spends 20 years in the wilderness and then turns up and they basically recorded him turning up in Doctor Who Fandom. I I agree entirely with JR, but I'd like to point out that he's done exactly what people do on the Strangers' Space podcast that he criticizes when they're asked what did you think about it when he first heard it. They then basically unleash everything they want to say in the podcast. Oh no, just one thing. Oh, just the one thing. It's just my theory about what it is. I can't really talk, I can't talk incredibly objectively about it. I was invited to be on it. Were you? Yeah, even though obviously I've never been to America and I'm not an American fan. But I think because well, I may be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure it was me who forwarded Matthew's email address to Sean at Galafre One and got Matthew in on the door at that first convention. So you're basically the executive producer. No, exactly not the executive producer, and it wouldn't have been it wouldn't have made any sense for me to be on it. But I think that he invited me on because I kind of opened the door slightly or helped to open the door. I mean, it's not like he hadn't done Doctor Who stuff, but it's a weird situation. He was on the documentaries on the TV movie, and that was released on Blu-ray, right? Or the re-release rather, or the great documentaries on there. And yet nobody ever asked him to Doctor Who conventions or anything. I've got a feeling he did do a couple, and he might be misremembering because it was 15 odd years ago, or he might be misremembering because it's a better story for his documentary. But I feel like he did a couple, not I would say probab pre-new series, but a few years after the movie. But again, they would have been much smaller at that point as well. So perhaps you know, they've slipped his memory. And would the would they have been from the era of conventions where you didn't have to pay huge amounts for it? So this is the first time he'll have been to a convention where actually it's quite lucrative. Yeah. Which for him, fair enough, because you know, yeah. I respect writers getting that money. But Matt's taking the piss out of the fact that I went through this whole thing. But I was gonna use that as a way of saying, but that's what I really enjoyed about it, because I think there's this tension to it. And also because of the way that thing has happened, I think it makes it much more intimate, and that just makes it much more engrossing and a lot more meaningful, I think. I th I think the reason I didn't like it first time around is because it does what the mainstream media always does when they do something about science fiction, and it was especially true in the 90s that they take the nerdiest fans and put them in front of the camera. And I'm particularly thinking about that slightly cringy moment where he goes round to those fans' houses and they uh question him about it. But of course you do that because there's no story in just a bunch of people who really liked the thing you wrote.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

And while those guys, you know, I doubt they're listening, but they come off really they come off really badly. Uh are they your mates of yours, John? No. They stri they strike me as a it's about American fandom. And I haven't been to American conventions, but it strikes me that they're passionate in both directions. And American So as a Brit watching it, you see the the real positive passion and you're a bit disconcerted by it. You see the real negative passion and you're a bit disconcerted by it. But it all comes out in the wash eventually. And there is just no story in a bunch of people who quite like something or you know, who just like Yeah, yeah, I've watched it a few times and it was great. Like that it just doesn't it just doesn't exist. It was nice that the documentary is honest enough to stick him in a room with a guy who really didn't like the TV movie and get the guy to talk to him about why he didn't like the TV movie. And Matthew J and Matthew Jacobs, hearing Matthew Jacobs' riposte to it and his explanation behind it convinced me. So it was actually an opportunity to the doctor is half human. Oh, okay. That I get it now. That's fine. I mean, what he says that he said he put in that the doctor is half human isn't true. It was in every scripted version of a pilot of which there were multiple scripts by multiple writers, he was half human. But, you know, a minor detail. Again, there's no story there for them. But he wouldn't have known any of those drafts, of course. Of course he was. He was handed the Leakley Bible that said the doctor is half human. That's what they gave to the writers. So at the time, I remember there being a big, not a big Ferrara, but a bit of a thing of like, well, why is he doing this? Because we've got the DVDs, we've got mythmakers, we've got this what why make this film and why do it this way? And he did sort of film festivals and things like that. Do we think this has a broader appeal as a documentary than just Doctor Who fan? It's difficult because you know the central whole theme of it is Doctor Who. If if you have a kind of sociological interest in fandom, I think I think it is. If you're and if you're kind of, as Matt was saying, if you're interested in the differences between say UK and US fandom, I I I think it's a really good way of seeing that, you know. They are so passionate in some ways. You know, you go back, you know, you go over there and the cosplay, you're used to British conventions where, let's face it, particularly up till mid say 2000s, it was quite tatty in a lot of ways. It was a standing joke. There's the infamous story about uh the guy coming to the TAV in a Tom Baker outfit looking for other Doctor Who fans and turning around going, There's no one here and buggering off out, that kind of thing. You go over there and they make such they work for months on these costumes. And this is the kind of thing that comes out. It's I can do it in six words, John. Yeah. Go on then. It's Doctor Who's Alien on Stage. Nice. I think that's a good example.

unknown 15:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Because that works even if you're not an alien fan. You just have to have a passing interest in sci-fi, and you get what's happening, and it's the actual people in it who draw you in and keep you uh moving along. It emphasizes the eccentricities, essentially, without without dehumanising them. Yeah, without mocking. It's not punching down, it's not interested in that. So so yeah, I think there is something, but I don't think no, there's necessarily an audience for something about Doctor Who without kind of that hook of Doctor Who. I think there might be because of what JR said, because it's about because it's about the relationship between Matthew Jacobs and fandom and how the the documentary sort of blurs the focus between the two. I think there's something universal in there that goes beyond Doctor Who. It's about a man reconciling himself to to being known for something that he did however many, how years, how many years ago? 30 years ago. So well, no, at the time it was maybe 25 years. Yeah, 25 years ago. 25 years, so a man's famous for something he did 25 years ago and he doesn't realize how famous he is. And this is a sort of a revelation that actually he's not only famous, but people are positive about something he did. Yeah. And I think there is, I mean, it's not massively universal, it is still quite niche, but I think it goes beyond Doctor Who. It's it tells a story that's that doesn't rely on knowledge of Doctor Who. So I think it is worth worth it. Yeah. It's the kind of thing that you can show at film festivals and non-Doctor Who people. If you're at a film festival, you're gonna be interested enough in just, you know, the sort of basics of screen storytelling that if it's a worthwhile story being told, it's not gonna matter that it's about Doctor Who. And I think it I it's hard to tell because of how close to, you know, Doctor Who we are, but I I think it probably does work on that level because it's not about Doctor Who, it's about a bunch of human beings. And Doctor Who just happens to be the thing they've got in common. It's not a survey of the the TV movie and the history of the TV movie. It's about people and characters and and that. So yeah. And you I think you can, as a non-Doctor Who fan who knows nothing about the TV movie, I think you could still watch it and be engaged and follow it and understand what's going on. And it starts with Matthew saying to Vanessa, doesn't it? I think it's Vanessa who he's talking to, and he says, These people hate the TV movie. The thing I did in Doctor Who, these people hate it. We're gonna go to this convention, and it's probably not gonna go down too well. And of course he's wrong, isn't it? And the store and and so the sort of central story of the sort of 80 minutes is how he goes from expecting not to be liked to being somebody that actually everybody loves. It's also about subcultures, and I think people desperately like to look into those things, whether it's Louis Thoreau's weird weekends with the more sort of extreme niche ends of sort of politics, religion, or indeed fandoms and things like that and popular culture. But I remember I used to have a girlfriend who had no interest in science fiction, but she loved those two documentaries, Trekys. And I can't I didn't show them to her first, but she was like, one of her friends must have shown them to her years ago, and she was just like, I think they're amazing and fascinating because it's an into a world that she just had no idea about. And I don't think she'd ever seen an episode of Star Trek. And I I think I think this does sort of give a similar thing, but it's from the point of view of one of the stars in inverted commas that that's taking you into that world and going, well, this is what it's like to enter that world and to suddenly find that your signature is monetized and your photograph is monetized. And as you say, he starts off going, Oh, I think you know, they all hated it. And I think there is that perception, if you haven't been around it for 20 years, because the TV movie was this big thing and then nothing happened, it was deemed a failure by everybody. Lots of people liked it at the time, sure, but the reappraisal really only started happening when the show came back and it suddenly, as always, wasn't the most important bit of Doctor Who anymore. Yeah. And it was okay to like the thing that hadn't led to a series because now you did have a series. Yeah, but that's Doctor Who fans. It's the last thing is always terrible because it we're always scared that it's not coming back. Yeah, because that might be the last thing. The last thing might be the last thing. And Doctor Who fans have a high nostalgia. There's a high nostalgia factor in Doctor Who fandom. After 10, 15, 20 years, suddenly you start liking things and do we think they knew or Jacobs knew what he was doing on his way into this documentary? I know J.R. touched on this a little bit. And do you think his intentions changed over the course of the film? Well, I'm suspicious now because I suspect, Dylan, you think it's more constructed and planned than it comes across on screen from what you've said. But from what I saw on screen, and I don't obviously I'm not I'm not involved in the filmmaking, I'm not a BAFTA-winning filmmaker like I like you are. Emmy. Emmy? No, I'm not a BAFTA. Emmy. I have worked on a BAFTA-winning film, though, but I but I don't like BAFTA. Is that after love? Yes, it is. Yeah, that's the best, that's the best thing you've ever worked on. It absolutely is. Such a good film, that's such a good film. But what I saw was did seem genuine because I kind of trusted Matthew Jacobs. He he he has a very and he is an actor as well. So I I understand that there is a degree to which he could be performing, but he just looked naturally trustworthy. And he was so sort of he was repeatedly unsure about the thing. Because it wasn't just he wasn't sure how he was he was going to be received. When they were planning on the gunfighters panel with Chapansky, he wasn't sure, he didn't know what he was gonna say, he didn't know you know what it was gonna do, and it Turned out to be a massive thing about his father and and his background. And yeah, that that kind of feels constructive, but I get the feeling it's edited really well rather than planned and filmed really well. I think he doesn't edit this at all. It's entirely Vanessa. Yeah. I mean, I say it's entirely Vanessa, it's entirely Vanessa is credited. So presumably he has some say in it, but I think it's she's taken, like Matt says, I think she's taken it and she's fashioned the story rather than his. Most monk films are shaped in the edit. To be fair to him as well, he doesn't necessarily know he might be exaggerating what he's thinking going to the convention because if you read online reaction, it's really easy to get the wrong impression. But I've been to that California convention. And it's so generous when they're when they're in the room. It genuinely it's jet that's genuinely the right impression of that because you see people going in front of that convention and they you know they're half terrified of what the fans are going to do. No, they're absolutely and you get someone like say Catherine Tater, who's a born entertainer, and the place goes absolutely nuts. It's it there's a lot of love in that rumour. So it's you don't get much of that kind of stereotype of the fan asking them you know why something was so crap. It's they're really interested in what it worked, why something they loved about it. And there's and there are people out there who love every aspect of Doc 2. There are people there who love the twin dilemma for God's sake. Well, I was thinking, I was thinking it is that these conventions are it's a repeated story that writers or actors who are in the lesser well-regarded Doctor Who stories turn up thinking nobody's gonna be interested. And actually, they're more loved, if anything, than than the ones who have been to the conventions time and again because they're so rare. If Glenn McCoy turned up for the Doctor Who convention, I suspect he'd do quite well because he's so he's like the lesser spotted. All you need to do is go to the bar. Oh, go into the bar, and people are you'll be bought drinks all night. It's fine. And just just have chat along. As you say, Matt, it's those, A, because they're rarer, but it's those new stories. And if you're a fan with a completist gene who needs all the autographs, all the photos, you know, people are genuinely so happy to see you. I I saw Glenn McCoy at an event and he he was on the same bill as another rare guest, Ben Aronovich, and both of them were greeted with the same amount of warmth and enthusiasm, despite one of them having written a hands-down classic and the other one having written a less loved story. Don't disbattlefield. I think it's good for fandom and for and for fans as well, because it's the sort of thing where when you're on social media, you just hit, hit, hit, or you can just hit, hit, hit. When the person sat in front of you in the convention, they're suddenly a human, like Glenn has a human face, and suddenly you've you've turned a whole audience of fans going, Well, actually, you know, I still don't like Twin Dilemma, but my god, he's a nice guy or Tiny Nash or whatever you do. I tell you what, I didn't necessarily get a sense of here, and there's a little bit of it at the beginning, where he says, I'm I'm doing it because I need the money, and he's going through his lock up full of scripts and things like that. What it's slightly missing for me, which doesn't isn't a deal breaker, is where is he at in terms of his career? And I I mean, I guess the it the inference is that his career is essentially over and now he's just looking for other ways to get a few quid until his pension kicks in or whatever. But I don't know that for certain. So I think he spends a lot of time looking inwardly on, you know, his relationship with his dad, on his time on Doctor Who, but not necessarily the larger career around it, which I do think could have done with, you know, a a little bit more insight. It struck me that the answer to that question, if you asked him, What are you doing in your career, it would be making this documentary because this is clearly this is his job whilst he's making it. But yeah, I felt I felt the same that I was going on Wikipedia whilst it was on looking to see what he'd done in the last, you know. Teacher's done what he's been doing for the last sort of I I I suspect he's retired now because he must be pushing. Towards eighty. He he's 70 this year. Yes. 80. 70 is what I meant. So I imagine the teaching is probably stopped, or maybe not quite stopped, but and the films he's done in the last ten years have been very low budget, kind of often two three-handers. Yeah, he's he's got a lot of credits up to about 2000, then a fairly big gap, um, up to 2008, 2010? Yeah, and then he does a bunch of things. And Bernard Rose, I think, comes back into the pic picture as well. Didn't they do a Frankenstein together where Bernard Rose directs and Matthew Jacobs is one of the actors? Uh yeah. 2015. Correct.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

So that strand was something that didn't work for me. Was there anything for you guys that didn't work in the documentary Let's Come to JR first? I don't think so. Because I don't think I it's hard to go into it with expectations. And so not having expectations, there's nothing that can disappoint you. I kind of you know, before you watch it, I think you think, oh, it's gonna be a documentary without fandom in America because that's what it was sold as, I think. And you kind of uh I think you kind of expect it to be just a portrait of the fans, and that could be very episodic and not really have a narrative, and in the end could be quite unengaging. But I think the fact that he tells this story in this way, with sort of him going to other conventions as well, much smaller ones too. There's one where he's in a room and it looks for all the world, like there's about 12 other people in that room or whatever. And then he throws in interviews, some of them from conventions, and other ones like the um Paul McCann one is just done sort of like, you know, in town or something, not at a convention or whatever. He throws all this other stuff in as well, and Vanessa Yule turns it into a narrative, and the narrative that she turns it into is very different from the narrative we were expecting to get. It reminds me in some ways of listen or hellbent two of my favorite, probably my two favourite Doctor Who stories, because both of those confound your expectations, but turn out to be something much better than what you could possibly have anticipated there would be. And I think this does the same thing. I think it's got such a simple premise, but goes to so much more interesting places than the premise makes you think it's going to. I just think it it overachieves on just about every level, frankly. Matt Barber, anything that doesn't work for you? Yeah, I sort of agree with with JR. It's difficult to think of things that didn't work because a lot of it is you've constructed the documentary in your own head based on what you it doesn't it doesn't force a narrative on you, it doesn't force things on you. So it gives you the freedom to to work out what the narrative is yourself. And when that's the case, you know, so long as you come up with a coherent narrative that's quite interesting, then it's successful. I think you didn't hear much about his private life, or you knew you know he's got an ex-wife, but maybe that's all you need to know. You do meet his kid though, don't you, at the end? Yeah. So he's got he's got kids. Two kids, yeah, two boys. And again, in the edit, that kind of that's uh uh that's kind of contrasted with his childhood as well. So it's after the the gunfight is bit. Maybe a bit longer with Philip Sigal, I guess. But but then I got the impression that that was quite a short, a short meeting. Yeah, because Philip Sigal probably had five minutes to say hi. Look at my toys. Bye. John, is there anything that doesn't work for you? And if there isn't, why don't you tell us some of your favourite bits? I think it works as Jazz because it's got a sweetness to it. Yeah, it's I know it's gonna be heresy to you. I find it more interesting than the mythmakers kind of style, which is obviously the person.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

But this is him and his relationship with human beings and his relationship with Doctor Who. And it and it's just I get more of a sense of him as a person. Mythmakers gives you a really good sense of them as their working lives. Yeah, but I I love the mythmakers, they've done Star War work down the years. And there's a great book on Archie. So I've heard. Yeah. So I I'd I won't I wouldn't be too modest about it if I'd written it, you know. Um I I just like him. I just like him interacting with the fans at the convention. Like when they come to the desk and it's almost like he doesn't know quite how to relate to them because if you've been to conventions, you're quite used to to the Doctor Who's people who've done this for years. Yeah. They're very professional. They they will have a chat and a chat, but they know what they're doing, or they're actors, and they just know exactly how to handle it. I just don't get the impression that Matthew Jacobs knew what to expect there. Yeah. And and it's it's so endearing just to watch someone kind of work out how this all works as he's as it's going along at that point. That's kind of that's really why and it's just a kind of bonus of it's people I know going into and I know what they're like. I kind of agree with John in the sense that not that it's better than mythmakers, but this is different from Mythmakers because it totally relies on Matthew Jacobs as an individual. Yeah. If Matthew Jacobs did a Mythmakers, it would potentially be similar to this. But there's so much of Matthew Jacobs' personality that getting it shot through this documentary. I I think he must side with Daksha that he's interesting enough to do this. Because that's where I've kind of felt the start, and then that's how he found his way into it. Well, and that's why I'm pretty sure it didn't start out as a film about him, but that's what became of it in the end. Because of course he asked, he spoke, he told me about it before he ever started work on it, and it was like I'm gonna do this documentary about Doctor Who fans. And then, you know, when you turn the thing on and you see what he's made, or you see what she's made, to be perfectly frank, and it turns out not to be the thing that kind of he had said in the first place, after all, in many ways. I think for me, like, because it avoids the facts and the figures of a Blu-ray extra or DVD extra, and possibly a myth maker's as well. It's the quieter moments like when he's talking about his dad's bipolar disorder and you know, meeting Jackie Lane as a kid and things like that. That that's far more interesting to me, just getting snippets of a of a childhood than than talking about how he had to write the TV movie script really quickly, as he has done in other interviews. Plus, the stuff you get with Eric Roberts and Paul McGann and all the rest of them is a million miles away from anything you'd get from any of those on a Mythmakers or a Blu-ray or DVD or even the sort of go on. If any of you get a chance to watch Eric Roberts' Mythmakers, the only way I can describe it is like a hostage situation. It's well worth well worth abuse. And I'll leave it at that. Not not because Keith's holding him a hostage, oh no, because his own wife is. Is Eric Roberts' wife always there? Because she was there in this. Is she there basically to stop him from saying anything libelous? And possibly to jog his co-frazzled mind. Okay, right. She was there at Gallipree this year when he was as well. So yes. But there was a particular highlight for me, and it's very much a what the fuck moment. There was a seance scene where somebody was inhabited by the spirit of Matthew Waterhouse, who, last time I checked, isn't dead and certainly wasn't dead when this was being made. What the fuck was that all about? Spirit of Adrick, surely. He's dead. He died thousands of years ago. So they're improv. Millions. It was an improv group, wasn't it? Right, okay. So they were doing a sort of an improv thing. But in a typical fan way, they kind of mixed Adrick up with Matthew Waterhouse. And then Jacobs called him Matthew Waterson, and you could tell everybody wanted to correct him, but he was Matthew Jacobs. So he was the sled of the panel. So they all go, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then the punchline is when about two minutes into it, Matthew Jacobs says, Yeah, I'm not entirely sure this is for us. August off. But I think the point of it was that they weren't trying to, it it wasn't a proper seance where they were trying to get the spirit of Matthew Waterhouse. What they were trying to do was in that improv way, or in an actually way, when you're trying to inhabit a real person. The person uh who was the center of it was trying to inhabit who Matthew Waterhouse was as a person, rather than the spirit of Matthew Waterhouse. You don't need a seance for the living, the phone exists. We could get him on a Zoom, I'm sure. Matthew Waterhouse? Yeah. Let's do it. Right. What time is it in? Is he still an American? Do you think no? He lives in lives in England now. Yeah. Does he? He does loads of content over here. Yeah, he's come back. Okay. Okay. I think he lives in Hastings. I mean, there's there are planes. Somewhere in I watched I watched the documentary about Mark Strixon, and that's a really good thing. The interview with Mark Strixen on the latest Doom. Oh, I've not got to that yet. Or is it Matthew Sweet? Yeah, it's really good. Well, when you say there are planes, is what you're suggesting is that we put Matthew Waterhouse on a plane to America so that we can speak to him on Zoom from there. No. I'm suggesting that just because he does conventions here doesn't mean that necessarily because planes can get you here. However, but they haven't got the budget for those years. Yeah, it's all about the money for that, isn't it? Uh do we have much more we want to say on Doctor Who Am I? No, not really. I mean it's just a really sweet individual documentary. I don't feel like it accompanies the TV movie, and I think that's a good thing. So it's if the TV movie box set's released, I'd hope that Bidding Ado is on there and various other documentaries, but I wouldn't necessarily expect this to be on there because it's so kind of individual. And I think that's what I liked about it, just as sort of the the feeling it's a kind of rare documentary.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

John, anything to add?

SPEAKER_01 36:57

Yeah, is that the title's well chosen because it's obviously Doctor Who is your hook? And but it's who am I? And I think Matthew Jacobs finding essentially finding himself through this this thing to a certain degree, or at least that's a story we want that they want to tell us on. Reconnecting with his past, if not finding himself. Yeah. And absolutely kind of reconciling himself with all the all the the because there is kind of trauma, I suppose, in in those memories of Doctor Who with his dad and with the experience of the TV movie on a lesser scale. Absolutely. I think the story of this, and I think this will be something that we talk about when we talk about the next thing too, to a degree, and I think it's relevant to the TV movie as well in some ways. I think it is the story of somebody who likes Doctor Who a lot and has a personal connection with Doctor Who, hence the reason probably why he put his name forward for the TV movie and stuff like that, but who's not encyclopedic about it. So this documentary, in some ways, feels like the documentary that somebody who's not a Doctor Who fan would make about being a Doctor Who fan, just as the TV movie feels like the kind of Doctor Who that somebody who's not a Doctor Who fan but likes Doctor Who would write if they were writing Doctor Who. And I think that's true of the Big Finish as well in some ways. It's got like a raced memory or a nostalgia for what Doctor Who is and for what the TV movie was, but it's not beholden to all of the facts. Instead, it approaches it from the memory rather than from documentised sort of research into what it really was. It's the best kind of thing in some ways, because if you it I think if you go into documentaries and stuff like that just with an arm full of facts and looking to add to the facts or research the facts or whatever, you can very quickly run into some very dry ground. But if you go into it without anything, then what you I it's like I don't when I used to do interviews with Starburst, I didn't used to like to over-research because if you know everything already, there's nothing to ask. If you know what I mean. I mean, clearly that's not how interviews work. But I liked to know just enough that I wanted to know more so that when the person is sitting in front of me, I am genuinely asking questions that I'm interested in rather than just getting them to repeat stuff. And this documentary feels like Matthew Jacobs genuinely opening himself up to an experience instead of just setting out with the plan and making the plan happen. Bang it, Dylan. Bang it. Well, that's what I was going to say. We must rate it. And there are only three ratings on this podcast: a clanger, a banger, or an average meander, because they rhyme. And it's a banger for me. I had a much better time with it this time around. I felt like I came away from it knowing Matthew Jacobs a little better. John, what say you? I would say it's a banger because, as I say, it it's about a person and it's about fandom and it's about how those stories intersect, and it does it beautifully. Every story is kind of a fiction of some kind, and I bought exactly what they were telling me here. Excellent. Banger. Matt. Banger. Because there's only three three categories. But obviously, obviously it's a banger. Because it's entirely successful in what it either sets out to do or the the way it's edited to create a successful story. Agreed. Fantastic. It was great to revisit it and f and enjoy it this time round a lot more. And I hope to go to a Matthew Waterhouse theme seance at some point myself. That's all I can arrange for it if you want very dark. So Pacini and the Doctor was part of an eighth Doctor box set called Deadly Strangers, published by Big Finish Productions on the 10th of December 2024. Written by Matthew Jacobs and directed by Ken Bentley. News of the time. Absolutely fuck all going on, unless you're interested in announcements about Funko Pops, and I don't think anybody here is. From Big Finish at the time, we had the Patanostra gang, No Place Like Home. Bernie Summerfield did the Eternity Club 4, War Doctor, Unknown Soldiers, Torchwood Reflect, a Christmas card from Mr. Colchester, which was another Torchwood, and then we had The Curse of Time, featuring the fourth Doctor, Sarah and Harry. From BBC Audio, we had Harry Sullivan's War, Eden Rebellion, featuring the Fifth Doctor and Ruby, and Doctor Who at the BBC, Who Are We? And on TV, we had The War Games in Colour, Doctor Who at the Proms, and Joy to the World. So Matt, what was your favourite big finish out of those? I didn't even hear what were the I well I heard of Harry Sullivan's War. Is that a big finish? No, they did an audio book of it for a BBC audio. Okay. That's the only one I recognize. Everything else, it's like this parallel universe of AI generated Doctor Who stories that sound likely, but I've never heard of half of them, I'm afraid. Are you saying Big Finish is slop? I don't I'm I'm not suggesting they're using AI. I'm just suggesting that their approach is effectively an AI-ish approach at times. Fair. I mean, say what you like about all the tat that was being churned out at the time. I've consumed more of that than I have the actual episode of Doctor Who that was on TV at the time. So, you know. It's a win for Big Finish and BBC Audio. The Doctor, Charlie, and Audacity arrive in Milan 1904, drawn there by the Doctor's admiration for the composer Pacini. The Doctor hopes to immerse himself in the emotional world that fuels Pacini's operas, but their visit coincides with a period of creative struggle in the composer's life. As they explore the artistic circle surrounding Pacini, they encounter Tura, an alien being fascinated by human emotion, who conducts strange experiments by presenting individuals with riddles that tap into their deepest feelings of love, loss, and desire. As the situation escalates, the Doctor realizes that Tura's experiments are not malicious in intent, but dangerously indifferent to human limitations, pushing participants towards emotional extremes that risk overwhelming them. The Doctor confronts Tura and challenges her detached curiosity, demonstrating that human creativity embodied in Pacini's music arises not from manipulation, but from lived experience and emotional truth. By helping Tura understand the value of restraint and genuine empathy, the Doctor persuades her to cease her experiments and withdraw. With the alien influence removed, Pacini is left free to continue his work naturally. His inspiration restored through his own humanity rather than external interference of the Doctor and his companions. Depart, having preserved both a life and a legacy. Obviously, this is a podcast about expanded media. Everybody knows my history with the Eighth Doctor, with big finish, blah, blah, blah. But Matt, you're new around these parts. Are you someone that has experienced a lot of Eighth Doctor in his various forms? I'd say a f a fair amount more than the average. So the TV movie was was I was the right age for it, I guess. Um God, I was 19, so I was a bit old for it, but I was about the right age for it. The the books, I was the right age for because they sort of aged up with me. So I definitely read a fair number of eighth Doctor adventures, particularly when he gets he loses his memory and gets stranded on earth. So the touring test and and that kind of cycle. I was really impressed with that. I think I think the books hit a kind of a new a new quality around the Eighth Doctor adventures. Big finish, possibly less so because they're just so so many and so expensive. And just I think I listened to his first season, the the minuet in hell season, and then I kind of I kind of sort of uh listened to the mad hock. I listened to some of the Sheridan Smith ones. So I sort of dipped in announced. But he's really good. I mean, he is really good on audio. He's clearly very enthusiastic to to to be to continue being the eighth doctor, and it's giving him it gives him the opportunity to sort of expand the character. And that's kind of exciting because he is he is the kind of spin-off media doctor. His entire personality and his his costume and and his development has spun off in different directions across all of these different mediums. And I really like that idea. J.R., what about you? I'm a TV person, really. I mean, uh so I d it's not that I uh look down my nose at expanded media stuff, and you know that I've experienced, you know, plenty of expanded media stuff across the years. But really, if I turn television off turn Doctor Who off on the television and look for something else I want to do, generally speaking, it's another television programme rather than more Doctor Who in a different medium. So I've read a couple of Eighth Doctor books and I've listened to a couple of Eighth Doctor audios and you know a few other things, I suppose, like this. But no, I don't have a great deal of experience of it if I'm going to be brutally honest. And John? Funnily enough, yeah. I read the Eighth Doctor books that have come out. I've read most of them multiple times. I've done shed loads of them with Joe on the Hamster Book Club again since. So yeah, I'm very well done. I yeah, read all the comic strips. I've bought the omnibuses and read all those and thoroughly enjoyed them again, actually. And Big Finish, I'm a little more patchy. Um yeah, I've heard pretty much all that first Charlie run, the Sheridan Smith ones. Love the stranded kind of box sets quite recently as well. I'm a little I kind of hazer in the middle because there's no way I can afford to keep up with Big Finish there. I did listen to that entire run on the radio. Do you remember when they did those that were sort of for the radio? Yeah, the Sheridan Smith ones. Yeah, yeah. I did listen to that entire run. The first season and a few more. Yeah. Um yeah, I didn't like the way it ended, but the rest of it was pretty good. So yeah, I I do love the Eight Doctor. I love the fact he is basically the doctor the fans made to a large degree. Do you know there's this thing about how people's brains work, and there's a certain thing about memory and visualization and stuff, but if you extrapolate from that, then it probably works in other areas as well. And I guess what I mean by this is that listening to audio plays works differently for different people. I think for a lot of people, you listen to an audio play and you visualize it, and then for some people, you listen to an audio play and you can't visualize it, and therefore it's harder to keep up because you've only got the voices to go by rather than a visual image of who all the characters are. And I think my brain works like that. So when I listen to an audio play, I find it very easy to lose track of who's who and what's what. Even if I've given it properly my attention. Fair enough. I'm presuming nobody here had heard this particular story before. John is the only one that might have likely to have, I suppose. I have because frankly, I've been listening to India Fisher for 26 years. It's far too long to be doing that. MasterChef's India Fisher. Master Chef's India. Yes, Miss MasterChef. So this is obviously Matthew Jacob's return to Doctor Who. And I suspect Doctor Who am I has something to do with that since Nick Briggs is interviewed in the thing, and I'm sure he went, well, if you ever fancy writing a Doctor Who, does this feel like a story from the pen of the man who wrote the TV movie? It's difficult to say no, because it draw it clearly draws on a kind of a line from the TV movie and and or more than a line, I guess, a little strand of the TV movie and then extrapolates it. Yeah, but it's not like spin-off media doesn't do that all the time, whether it's No, that's true. But this did feel like a little bit different from the other spin-off medias because it was so original, because it felt like Jacobs hadn't been edited too much in terms of the story he wanted to tell. I think it felt like he'd been given the companions, because I didn't know who the companion was. I mean, I recognized Charlie, but I didn't know who the other companion was, which gave me a bit of I had to do a bit of catching up mentally. Um but but and I I suspect that's something that Matthew Jacobs would as well. But the central story, obviously, it takes something he's really interested in and and something he's passionate about, which isn't Doctor Who, but it's Pacini.

SPEAKER_02 50:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

And it weaves a story into into into the kind of details of of a particular point in Pacini's life. And I kind of celebrate that. I really appreciate it. I think that's a good way of finding a Doctor Who story rather than what happens if we pitch Cybermen against the Borad or something. I think that's l that's a legitimate way of coming up with stories, but I think it's slightly more interesting to sort of to kind of investigate a historical character and tease out a science fiction story from that. It's because he he's not coming to it with the weight that the other authors do, in that they are immersed in the world of Doctor Who and quite often immersed in the world of Big Finish, so it's like, what can I do that's different? Doctor Who to Matthew Jacobs is the TV movie and then a show that his dad was in. And the th the thing it really picks up for me, obviously, romance is the theme of the plot, but there is a romanticism to the Eighth Doctor, and I don't mean just because he has a kiss within the TV movie that is very much present within this, that doesn't really like there's bits of it in some of the early books and some of the early audios, but here he he he feels like a romantic character that belongs in the this environment being surrounded by these creatives. It's usually the books written by the female authors where you get that more romantic view of him. But it's uh it's it's romantic with a capital R, right? Yeah. So so the the TV movie emphasized the romantic with the little R, but with the kissing and you know, but this is pointing out that actually it's with the big R. He's he's drawing on, he's a nice Byron, basically. There's a thing that the TV movie does where the doctor goes around and everybody he meets, he says, This is the thing that's gonna happen to you in the future. And that's that's two things happening there. One of them is this is a character who travels in time, so he knows what's gonna happen to everybody. And obviously, that's not any other doctor, that's just this doctor. But the other thing that's doing is it's like poetry, because the way poetry works is it takes what's happened and what's going to happen, and it finds a nexus point in the middle, and it makes something out of that nexus point in the middle, and it and and in some ways the eighth doctor is that nexus point in the middle. Matthew Jacobs comes to the eighth doctor, and yes, romanticism with a big R, because clearly he's based on Byron, right? And with a little R because he gets to do the kiss. And here they do the thing where he doesn't, he's not aware of the fact that Charlie fances him, right? So then there's a play on that as well. But also, it's just like the doctor, the character of the doctor, as seen by Matthew Jacobs, is at the centre of a poem that he doesn't know he's the subject of. It's kind of what Mutreal Spark does in the books as well. So she introduces the characters to start and she tells you basically how they're gonna die or what happens to them at the end of the book. So is it that yeah, so there's a tension there. It's an intro. Fowls does it a little bit in a very different way in things like The French Lieutenants Woman, but it's there, it's like poetry disguised as something else. Yeah, there is a poetic nature to it. It's certainly it's quite different from a lot of the big finish output for this doctor, especially because they've been doing Paul McGann audios since what, like 2001? Is it 2000 now? So yeah, they've been doing them for 26 years. So they've taken that doctor every which way you could possibly go. And what I liked about this was it felt very back to basics and going, well, this is the person that set the blueprint. And actually, the thing that uh often I find works for me with Big Finish now is a slightly inconsequential little story that's an hour long. It's what I call like episode three energy, you know, like of the new series where it's 45 minutes of an adventure and you have a nice time and you go, Well, that was great. It's less with Big Finish, the big arcs, because they've done so much with all these characters that I really don't care about. It's when you get a story in the engine, right?

SPEAKER_02 54:14

Yeah, it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 54:17

It's like what you were it's the reason why I'm in not intimidated or slightly intimidated by Big Finish because it's like you were saying that to start with, it's written by fans, so it's kind of riffing on the series, and I recognize that. But obviously, 25, 30 years later, it's now riffing on Big Fin on Big Finish itself.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:38

And that loses me completely. And in some ways, Pacini and the Doctor does that, almost does that, and I was worried that it was going to do that because of this mysterious second companion I'd never heard of. Um, and that made me immediately feel unusually in Doctor Who world like I'm not a fan, like I don't I actually don't know something. And I was having to construct who this second companion was out of out of nothing. But it actually does it quite effectively. Is she a character from history? I mean, is she from sometime in the past? She is from sometime in the past. I've not heard many of her stories, but she's someone they introduced recently, and then they they were like, we're going back to earlier in the Eighth Doctor's life. Have they run out of names or something? They've named it after the computer programme that they edit the episodes of. That's exactly what no, I don't know why she's called Audacity. It's a good I think it's a good name. It is a good name. And then I I get what you were saying, Matt, about there's now a group of like a generation of fans who grew up with Charlie and the Eighth Doctor, and Charlie hadn't been in them for ages, and they've because the character had their story, but they're now going back and filling their own gaps, which can get a bit self-referential, but you know, I mean it's not with the sixth doctor, of course. They're big finish. They're big they're now big finish fans. Yeah. Where once they were Doctor Who fans, and I kind of respect respect that. I I understand that I'm not in that because there's too much for me to catch up on, but I just feel like I'm a new fan approaching Doctor Who, looking at all of these episodes and just thinking, well, maybe I won't, maybe I'll just watch the basic like the best ones. But also, if you come to it from the classic series, you might like Big Finish because it's like the classic series, but you might not like the modern series because it's not so much like the classic series. So you're more likely to listen to the whole of Big Finish than you are to watch, I don't know, Stephen Moffat's stories or Chris Chipnall's stories. Possibly. I've got to ask though. So this story is part of an anthology of three stories called Deadly Strangers, which is I don't know, it feels like a completely mean. They are running out of titles. You get Doctor Who stories now, and they're called things like Run or Hat, and it's just like Who are the Deadly Strangers? Isn't it? Well, well, well you've got one at the st in this one, Princess Tura. Princess Tura. Yeah, isn't there a deadly stranger in pretty much every story in any genre of any format that even possibly loves what it says on the tin. Yeah. But but the the reason why I bring it up is I'm assuming that the other two stories in this anthology are probably slightly more regular Big Finish stories, and then you have this thing opening it up by Matthew Jacobs that I think probably sits apart from the rest of Big Finish. Yeah, to me, this it did. It felt like someone entirely different coming into the Big Finish playground and have finding their own little corner of it. It's a character piece, it's interested in looking at the characters, which I don't necessarily think a lot of big finish writers are do, except as maybe your archetypes and arc artifacts. I would have been way more interested if you they could have got Matthew Jacobs to either write three stories in an anthology or choose the other two stories to go with his. So that the theme is this is Matthew Jacobs' idea of the eighth doctrine. To defend the other two stories, I'm I'm reading brief synopses of them. Yeah. 1975, one set in the future. So you've got past or mouse present and the future. And they all sound fairly independent. There's no there's no sign of verboids in any of them or people gang. Yeah, hang on. They're all kind of hang on. Have you seen the cover of this? Can you work out which returning villain is in the last story here? Hang on. So there is a returning okay. Look at Charlie's eyes and looks and look what's behind her. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she Charlie in the Libertines from 2000. So yeah, Pete Doherty is a returning villain here. It's it's the Mara. Yeah, as I said. The uh the short descriptions that I read uh look familiar. Oh see, Matthew Jacobs talked to who fits much better with the Mara than with a lot of other monsters I would have thought. I mean, it's not a perfect fit, and I couldn't see how it would fit, but I can imagine it would be a better fit than you can't imagine Matthew Jacobs doing Saigons and Daleks and stuff like that, really. But that series would have done something like that that followed it. This would be Austin. This is something that could never have happened because American TV doesn't do that personal kind of tough because there's not enough room for that over a season. You can have a flavour to it, but he wouldn't have been that central writer. Yeah, would would Jacob would Jacobs have been involved in the No. I he told me he wasn't gonna be. He told me he was just doing the TV movie and moving on. I mean, he may have been asked to do an episode or whatever, but yeah. I d but I I'm sure he told me that he wasn't gonna be running the TV series. And that's why I think it would have been more interesting to go back after 25 years or whatever and say to Matthew Jacobs, what would, or not what would you have done, but what would you do now with that character you created? Because my thing about Pacini and the Doctor is I think this is the only time I've ever seen or heard or experienced the Matthew Jacobs eighth doctor as he would have been at the end of that first story that introduces him. Well well, they do box sets called Philip Hinchcliffe Presents, where they get like that they sort of recreate that era, and that was quite successful. So I do think you're right. And they do it with Andrew Cartmel with the lost stories in inverted comments of season 27. Uh and whether you love or loathe them, that is that was Cartmel in 2012 or whatever it is, going, This is what I would do with season 27 now rather than at the time, based on a couple of you know notes that we've had before. But yeah, no, I I think you're right, it's it it is Jacob's Doctor Who. Do we like Jacob's Doctor Who? Do we think it's a good story, a successful script? Yeah, I quite I did, I did quite like so. I was I was sort of criticizing Big Finish in general um before recording started, partly because there's just so much of it, and it is it it does feel like it feels like AI without the without the technology. It feels like Oh, I thought I was gonna say it feels like AI without the eye, and I was gonna say that's a bird. It feels it feels like they're they're kind of producing stories out of a story generator. And actually, and actually Puccini and the Doctor didn't feel that when I when I listened to it, it felt like an original story. I didn't know much about Puccini, I wasn't that interested in Puccini, and I don't like the era, but I respect the passion of the person writing for it for the era, and you know, I had to accept that you know Puccini's a big figure and his operas are very famous, and so I sort of you have to embrace that when you're listening to it, and if you can embrace that, then suddenly it sort of expands. I also suspect I missed a lot of the kind of be in references to Puccini's life and these stories of the opera. I've no idea. I've never listened to Madame Butterfly, I don't know what Madame Butterfly is, the story. Um, and I think part uh I think Matthew Jacobs sort of expects you to know what Matt and Butterfly is and to understand the full nuance. I think it's there's an extra layer rather than, yeah. Yeah, I don't think it spoils it at all. No, no, no. Well, this is what I this is what I'm saying. That once you accept that, you can actually appreciate it, even if you don't fully understand it, because you can sort of see where the gaps in your knowledge are, and that's on to you. That's on you. That's like your fault if you've got to do that. But that's what Doc Who always did for us in the past. It pushed you towards expanding your horizons. It's like Doctor's a bit like this, it's covering go, why don't you go and investigate it? Because if someone's found it interesting enough to essentially insert into a Doctor Who story, there's got to be something to it. Yeah. And it was sort of, yeah, it was a it's a lyrical story. It reminded me a little bit, I'm sorry, Dylan, of the opening to what what's the uh Shigigatwa story that has the Rani turning people into Wishworld. Wishworld. It felt a little bit like the beginning of Wishworld, almost like Russell C. Davis. Is this before Wishworld? Just about? Yeah, yes, because it's joy to the world time and it would have been recorded a year or so before that. So yeah, so it f it felt like it's particularly that opening, that's what I had in in mind, that kind of opening to Wishworld, where the Rani goes to Bavaria in about the same sort of period, potentially. And you guys are family turning into turning into flowers. So I I kind of it w I mean it works. What about you, JR? I thought it was great, I really liked it. I I mean, I'm not into audio dramas, and I find that acting in audio dramas tends to try and overcompensate for the lack of pictures. So I wasn't totally on board with the sort of production value of it in a way. But I'm, you know, basically all audio dramas like that, so that's me rather than the format. But the story itself, I loved it, I think. I was really quite surprised by it. Because I suppose going in knowing that it was a Matthew Jacobs thing, I suppose I should have been expecting something different, but I kind of thought, oh, you know, it'll have been you know, something that he and the producers at Big Finish have put together together and it'll be edited and all this kind of stuff. And obviously it's edited for the characters, I suppose, the sort of pre-existing characters, Audacity and Charlie and what have you. But actually, the whole thing felt completely unedited in a way, and it just felt like going back to what I was saying before, it felt like somebody from outside of the world of Doctor Who, but with just a foot in the world of Doctor Who has made something that feels like it's from outside of the world of Doctor Who, but just has a foot in the world of Doctor Who. And so if you like Doctor Who, all the Doctor Who stuff is there, but actually, if you sort of step back from it a bit, I just think it feels a lot bigger and more interesting and more layered than Doctor Who generally does. It's not one of these sort of, it's not like a Russell T. Davis celebrity historical where you get a flash about the person's life, and then all of a sudden you've got Shakespeare quoting J.K. Rowling. It this was just something else entirely, and I just thought it was quite lovely and very personal. It was a bit like you were talking about Philip Hinchcliffe Presents. The impression I got from the few I listened to, the Philip Hinchcliffe presents, it's not Philip Hinchcliffe writes, it's Philip Hinchcliffe suggests ideas. Yeah. That works for me a bit like Alfred Hitchcock presents, where he absolutely didn't write any to all these television episodes, but he appears at the beginning going, I I approve of this. Whereas the Matthew Jacobs one, he's a writer. You get the feeling he wrote, he wrote. lots in this and there are s there are bits in this which feel like they're written by a proper a pro sorry nitbriggs a proper writer of the stuff about love and and about and about the the the tying in the puccini stuff and there's quite profound stuff uh in parts here. Yeah absolutely John yeah that's it it is that individual voice I don't think anyone else who writes big finish could write that and sometimes that's not the case of Big Finish because you get to say those interchangeable alien race A versus alien race B with Dr C and Dr D. But you're right about that kind of episode three edge it's a space for the characters. It it's a the plot the story is a device to explore the characters of of Elite it was um in that sense it kind of reminded me a little bit of kind of the also people because it felt kind of low-key it's it's all they were they basically they are on holiday for most of this episode. Yeah and it it it seems relaxed. It's one of those stories where there is a threat but ultimately we realise it's not an evil evil threat you know the holiday thing's important you feel like it's one of those things where you go okay there was danger but I can absolutely see why people would want to travel through time and space with this person in the same way that when you watch Resurrection of the Daleks you go I can absolutely see why that person doesn't want to travel through time and space. Yeah there's a sense of wonder to it isn't there it's definitely more black orchid. Yeah where they spend quite a long time a cricket match eating a buffet and that and then a bit of the story happens. It got to the point where I've I started to ask myself is there going to be any science fiction in this forgetting that there's some science fiction in the prologue unless I misremember I completely forgot on that and I'm thinking oh maybe this is just a straight historical where there's not even a villain but it's literally just the doctor meets some people and finds out about those people. And then when the story kicked in and actually not to give any spoilers about the way it ends but the way it ends is so unlike any Doctor Who or even most science fiction that it could only have come from the brain of somebody who's more interested in Puccini and in sort of like well and in something else that I'll bring up in a second than they are in Daleks and Cybermen. I don't know it was just such a revelation experience in a Doctor Who story that doesn't fall into the usual habits the Doctor Who stories fall into. This is it it's the it is you know technically a celebrity historical but it's not that kind of celebrity historical we've got from the news series which is all mainly look at this historical character, aren't they wonderful? And it's about fighting darlings it it's an imposed personality from from the writers whereas this I don't necessarily think it's that interested in Puccini the man but interested in showing you the kind of wonder of his work more than anything else and the themes of his work. So it's kind of exploring in that way. So it's not kind of Matthew Jacobs being quite egotistical on that front. And there's a little bit Vincent and the doctor in it and that's got to be the closest TV episode to this surely I think Vincent and the doctor there's a little bit of that energy there. So you say it doesn't you don't think it's necessarily interested in the man but I think it's interested enough in him that it it it shows you how that's the person who comes up with those creations. Yeah not the person what makes him tick rather than the personality. And of course it's a big unfinished work it's the most famous thing is the thing he never finished right yeah it's a bit like a reverse a reverse Amadeus effectively because Amadeus is about Salieri kind of forcing himself into Amade Mozart's life in order to complete his final thing to pass it off and himself and a similar thing happens here but it's the kind of the doctor and the surroundings and and it's also the the the the unquiet dead where you know that we find out that Dickens is close to the end of his life and he's about to start writing the mystery of Edwin Drude and we know that he's not going to finish. So there's that there is sort of a repeated thing in Doctor Who of of melancholy isn't it yeah meeting celebrity historicals as they're on their way out a little bit. And the doctor ends the story sad as well which is for quite a rollicking adventure with this romance with a big R. They pop forward to see Giacomo in his one more time in his later life or a year or so later and the doctor walks away feeling really sad because someone he's met for the first time here but has met before in a in a different regeneration is going to pass away and I just think that's quite a nice like Doctor who it ends on a positive image you know like companion draws him a picture gives him a big hug blah blah blah but actually it's quite nice to have that downer but it not be a depressing episode at the same time. Yeah and and the other thing is Puccini I always kind because it's so classical music I keep thinking it's 19th century and before and I kept thinking Puccini was you know maybe 40 50 years earlier. And I think it really kind of brought him more immediately where you we've just simple thing he's in a motor car in that early part of the century. It was weird because then you start thinking oh this is more Gershwin than it is Mozart really isn't it? Yeah probably yeah do we know in this trilogy how much the Mara is the Mara threaded through at the end and it turns out the Mara was the villain all along or is that just the last story? I think it's just the last story. Okay so we don't have to retune our perception of Puccini and the doctor to fit in a kind of an undercurrent dark villain tech control in the beginning. It would diminish the story and you don't get the impression they said to Matthew Jacobs right we want you to write this first part of this thing but we're imposing this villain on you so it wouldn't have really worked in that respect. Should I give you my other theory about this and it kind of goes back to the thing we talked about before and it goes back to the TV movie as well. And obviously by the time this podcast comes out there'll be a whole ream of podcasts about the TV movie and stuff. But and and I don't think this is really an original thing to say but I don't think people really get necessarily what it means. I don't think Matthew Jacobs writes The Doctor I think Matthew Jacobs writes Matthew Jacobs and I think the eighth doctor has all the interests and all the personality that Matthew Jacobs would have if he was an action hero plus the poetry. So this thing about telling the future that I said is a bit like poetry I think that's probably how Matthew Jacobs thinks and I think things like the sort of romantic with a capital R personality of the Eighth Doctor I think that's the things that Matthew Jacobs is interested in. And I think maybe the romantic with the small R of the Eighth Doctor's personality is probably Matthew Jacobs' personality too. And he said things like he made the doctor half human because his mother's half Jewish and he wanted to explore this kind of stuff and maybe that was something that was in the Bible and maybe he co-opted it for that reason or whatever. But I think more than the beats I think the eighth doctor's personality is Matthew Jacobs and I think that's why this story works so well because the person who's writing it is feeling it rather than just playing with it. And so it every beat of it feels like it's being written by somebody who cares about the words and when that says some of the dialogue is more profound some of the ideas are more profound and some of it sounds properly writerly I think that's because it's being written by somebody who's invested in it in a way and it sounds patronizing to say but if you're writing Doctor Who's stories on a churn like Robert Holmes was or Stephen Moffat does or whatever there's going to be episodes that you're less invested in, especially if you try and bring as much variety as you can. And I suppose with the showrunners actually maybe that's a bit less true because they're in because they're employed to showrun and so they're employed to bring themselves to the table. Yeah I just this felt like a Doctor Who story that's got so much more of the writer in it than Doctor Who stories normally do I think it's it's Doctor Who as a vehicle to explore the interest rather than most writers of big pinish they're looking to write a Doctor Who story. And see when Matthew Jacobs does the documentary and it's not supposed to be about him it becomes this thing anyway because Vanessa Yule is editing it but she's only editing what she sees and Matthew Jacobs is making it about him as much as anything else and that's what makes it work and the same thing happens here. Just before we we uh wrap things up on this story I guess I want to know I mean I enjoyed uh all the cast in this I enjoyed Tim McKinry especially playing Pacini. I'm interested to hear everybody's thoughts on the cast but also for Matt and JR who don't listen to a lot of audios how how the eighth doctor sounds 26 years later and how you found his companions. Yeah I I think I mean I think the eighth doctor probably sounds the best on audio because because I mean his voice has changed but we've only got the TV movie to kind of reference it against so I think if any doctor is going to age the eighth doctor can do it. And also we we didn't have the we don't really have the end of the Eighth Doctor although we do now but but the eighth doctor's life seems to encompass from a very young kind of Pomegan to a 60 year old Pomegan so these big finish seem to fit into that lifespan much more neatly than poor Tom Baker who is great but he definitely sounds different and you know Colin Baker sounds different. It's a first kind of incarnation that has actually naturally aged I know obviously you've had the other doctors doing it across 25 years but this this doctor essentially one episode and then it's almost imperceptible that he's aging. Yeah and that's and it's acceptable that he's aging as well because and that's part of his story more than the other doctors. So I think Paul McGann and also Paul McGann's a really great voice actor he's a really great radio actor so he you know he's he's got a really expressive way of putting things a really weird intonation in parts um he he knows how to keep you interested in what he's saying even if he's like reading the most boring things he's still keeping you engaged and interesting. Can you talk about Nick Brick scripts again? Well lesbian vampire killers I'm thinking a little bit of at the moment but I I never stopped thinking of that. But also in your nightmares Matthew Jacobs has seen Knight of the Doctor and so he knows where the Eighth Doctor started because he started it and he's seen where the eighth doctor ends. And he said when it came out didn't he that he felt like that was the right ending for the doctor that he created and maybe he was just being nice or enthusiastic because he wasn't expecting it. But also at the same time I think he uses that and I think the doctor he writes here is a doctor who is going on the journey from one of those places to the other of those places because that's the doctor filled with enthusiasm at the start and then at the end it's the doctor who's become cynical and here you've got the midpoint between the enthusiasm and the cynicism which is the melancholy and so he writes the doctor here who's got the melancholy which becomes the cynicism which came out of the enthusiasm. Yeah. And it it certainly works better than some of the later box sets where he's constantly finding excuses not to join the time war and box sets called the time war. Not the time war sometimes I thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed listening to this and as I said increasingly it's the one episode or two episodes of Big Finish that I can just dip into and it's it isn't Vervoids versus Torchwood or whatever. Which isn't a big finish but it is a comic. So I just thought it was a beautiful little story and felt totally different from a lot of the Eighth Doctor stuff but not from the TV movie. And I was really really happy to experience this one. It's the individuality of it that stands out and that is extremely difficult. Even if you think BigFlinch is flawed for the essentially the the meat and potato stuff they can produce something like this which it which would would surprise me I've got to be honest. So I went back I didn't know what to expect from a Matthew Jacobs story now. I didn't know what to expect off this box set. So this just yeah it it really kind of caught my caught my imagination the fact that it's clever it it's playing literary games with Pacini and his work and yeah I I kind of made an up to go back to Madame Butterfly after I love the three riddles stuff as well that kind of mythic background it's beautiful and you know the way the doctor solves them when they're all kind of obviously oh is she going to talk about love. No, it's something different it's those riddles are in Madame Butterfly aren't they as I understand it. So he's he's taking in the same way as the sort of other writers do like when you've got something like um what's the one with the bee? The unicorn and the wasp so in those stories in the Shakespeare code you've literally just got the doctor walking through the story quoting story titles at you. Yes because Gareth Roberts is quite a shallow writer on that he's not going to engage with the work it's gonna be here's a reference for a laugh and but here they take the reference and they use it. It's interwoven to the story it's gorgeously done. Matt, anything to add before we wrap this one up no no I was surprised I I probably it doesn't inspire me to listen to more it didn't feel like a bait luring me into more big finish. I probably wouldn't listen to it again but I enjoyed listening to it and I appreciated it. And part of that is a relief because it's an original story and it it felt freer than other big finish and it's really well written. So yeah I I enjoyed it it would definitely make me want to listen to more Matthew Jacobs Big Finish if they could get him to do another one. Yeah potentially I'd like to see him write a book I think I'd be really interested in what an eighth doctor novel written by Matthew Jacobs would be like um but uh probably never happened. It'd be better than Terence Dix How dare you uh one final thought from me I do wonder because then the way of when you record things and when things get published I don't know if any of us have re-watched the TV movie ahead of reviewing it yet because we're not recording that for a few weeks. I wonder if having listened to this and watched the documentary if we'll get different things out of the TV movie from what we've necessarily got before. Yeah potentially well while we're on UJR is it a clanger a banger or an average meander it's a banger a big banger from me to Matt. Yeah it's a banger yeah John not only the Pandora Crobas but the big banger and cannot say it's just a relief to come to say after doing the bloody darling generation last time something of quality nice to do something of quality indeed. Well that about uh finishes things off for this episode as part of the big Megan celebrations. If you want to find our slots we talk on strangers in space all the time and there's plenty of more McGann related content going on there at the moment. Next time I'll be joined by Martin Parsons and we will be looking at the eighth Doctor novel Vampire Science and the eighth Doctor comic Children of the Revolution but until next time I've been Dylan I've been JR and you won't fool the children of the revolution no you won't fool You said him off didn't you I've been John I've been Matt And we'll speak again soon to have the TV I quite quite like the fact we're obviously podcasters because Taylor asks John do you have anything to add John says no but here's five minutes of of the adding stuff and here's ten minutes of JR of course all I need to do is wind it up and watch him go pretty good I think pretty good you'll be even better in the edit um what silent Matt anything to add before we wrap this one up no apart no no but I was surprised I I probably so I'm doing my level fucking best to put John Arnold up here and it's not working. No John Arnold's brain you just click it into talk mode and he just talks regardless of he's like he's like a Welsh AI he just he hasn't he hasn't got anything he hasn't got anything planned to say it's just the next word is always dictated by the the the language model that he's using. It's Welsh AI you're right yeah I hope you love the fact that I've got all of all of your books within easy reaching distance from this very desk. Yeah I didn't even have to and a box of Kleenex right next to them but it's like the demons for cleaning of the glasses doing don't get the office toilet out you could still reach the glasses that your age it's a I kind of I TV It's a sexual history it's sometimes yes what is your history with the eighth doctor I don't know I actually I legitimate I legitimately don't know what your history is with what's the best what's the best eighth doctor you to put on when you're shanging um I would say it's girl so this one this one that's a good call that's a good call uh no for me I was the right age for the TV movie so the beginning of the McGann range feels like a like an era like a proper era of Doctor Who to me. I read the a lot of the Eighth Doctor books when when they launched I read all the comic strips so like from 96 through to Christopher Eccleston I was consuming Eighth Doctor Eighth Doctor Eighth Doctor and he was my doctor at that point essentially TV do you have any experience with the Eighth Doctor in other media besides no it's not sexual experiences JR um with I was just thinking if I should close the curtain and put the lie on but I think it'll be okay whacka whacker music on there'd be many many people who'd be jealous if you had had sexual experiences excuse me guys Dylan's about to throw the spotlight onto me and ask me a question. So is it is it just the four of us it is for this and then the other two are joining us at nine uh I'm gonna semi steal um the introduction from Strangers in space just because I can I wouldn't expect anything less of you oh do you know what your favourite Doctor Who story is Dylan? I mean I do. What does it say? It says the Daleks Master Plan. Wow I mean it's not true but I don't dislike it. It's the Bottom once has been reconstructed the most number of times by fans during the downtime of Doctor Who so who knows. It it says here that Dylan is particularly known for his expertise in the wilderness years and independent spin-offs but when discussing the course he used he frequently highlights that this first Doctor epic for its scale and ambition no no my my description went off the boil when it kind of got to the second clause oh and he's expressed a deep fondness for the curse of fatal death sure that'll do you're fine um shall we shall uh so you've got your Easter egg by the way get on with it sorry I I edit this so uh I know it's a novel idea so um I've never heard of that prepare to be trimmed uh and also for the big finish beforehand I will record and drop in a complete synopsis like a paragraph or two so spoil away for anything that we discuss Um also no one's gonna fucking listen to like if you're gonna listen to the review, you've either heard it or are never gonna hear it for for a big finish. That's the way I always think. Um and it f frequently people listen to my podcast so they don't have to listen to the actual things we're talking about. Unbelievable. Or in other words, for Strangers Base, we listen to this, so you don't have to. Are we doing the full introduction as normal with our names as well? Yes. Yeah, we're gonna do that. And uh we'll we'll do Doctor, we'll do them in release order and we'll do Doctor Who Am I first. We'll do our names in the first order. We can do. Yeah, JR John, me, Dylan. Oh, here's the thing. No, because I'm in hosting, so I'll uh my name will come first. Then we've got we can go JR, me, and you. Yeah, you're last one way or the other. Okay, we'll do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:51

Everybody ready? No, no, no, no, I'm not ready.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:57

Oh, okay. I'll tell you what, go on. He's a nutrition. You know I'm gonna mess things up. Steve to pop up. I'm going to edit you out of this. So it's a short podcast then, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:13

Yeah.