S7 E04 - Justice for Sam!

As MayGann continues, Dylan is joined by Martin to look at the EDA 'Vampire Science' by Kate Orman & Jonathan Blum and the DWM comic strip ' Children of the Revolution' by Scott Gray. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Welcome back to Doctor Who Too Hot for TV. We are the podcast that looks at all things expanded universe, Doctor Who. And we're right in the middle of May Gan, where we're celebrating the life and times of the Eighth Doctor. And today I'm once again joined by Martin Parsons. Martin, welcome to Doctor Who Too Hot for TV. Hello, it's lovely to be back on the OG Too Hot for TV. Yeah, we're back for one night only. Well, not one night only, one month only. And there are many more episodes coming over the year, but you know. To celebrate all things Paul McGann. It's 30 years since the TV movie, and he is that doctor that's carried on. I mean, they all carry on and on now, but uh They do, they do. He he felt like the first one that was truly embedded in spin-off media. He was the spin-off doctor. I know McCoy had his run of new adventures, but he was the first one. He was at DDAs, he was audios. That was his world from sort of 97 through to 2005. So what is your relationship with the Eighth Doctor spin-off material?

SPEAKER_03 1:40

Oh, I mean, I was there from the the very beginning because the TV movie was my first, well, first new sort of TV who. Although I recently I was thinking that Paradise of Death was my first big new thing, uh, which I think I do have a sort of association with that kind of later Pertwee Years unit unit team because that was new, that was exciting. But the TV movie was wild. I mean, I remember the trailers coming on and just being like, what is this? Like I could I couldn't quite comprehend because I didn't know in advance. I wasn't, I didn't get Doctor Who magazine, I didn't know anything about it. So just the trailer came on, It's About Time or whatever it was, and uh it was like, oh, okay. And so then what then I was just I was obviously all in. I thought it was great, it was the most exciting thing I'd ever seen. Um, the rented the video of it, which had that um compilation of all the regeneration scenes at the beginning that was the most exciting thing I'd ever seen. Oh my god, because I hadn't seen half of those regenerations. So I would the the baker, well, baker to McCoy in a vertical commerce one was um like, what is this? What's that what's that furry hand? That was that was wild. So then as soon as the books I never I never had, and still to this day do not have, I've read it, but I don't own it, the dying days. So I missed that, the tail end of the Virgin New Adventures. But I was in for the eight doctor. I remember the eight doctors coming out, and I was um at a there was a Doctor Who shop in Sheffield called Galaxy 4, and they used to run these days where you could meet one person from Doctor Who. And it's the first time I'd done one. It's Colin Baker, it was brilliant the day, and there was a table of of merchandise, and on this was the eight doctors. So it's like that Seal of Rassalon cover. I was like, what is this? And again, I hadn't known that there were new books happening after the Virgin. I knew about the Virgin books, didn't know there were new books coming out. So it was that and the Devil Goblins from Neptune that were sort of next to each other. I was like, what is this strange new world of circular book covers? And and so I was in, I was all in then in the eighth doctor range. I didn't stick with it. I came and went. There was I sort of and then and I did start getting Doctor Who magazine, and I'd sort of come in and out. And so then I picked up Doctor Who magazine and started reading it again from about 1999. And so it was, I remember it was the last part of the Company of Thieves was the comic book, uh, comic strip. And so that then led into The Glorious Dead, which is just amazing. So I was really in on the comics as well. Comic then that stayed right through to the end of the eighth Doctor Comics. And then Big Finish 2, that was my first Big Finish subscription, was the one that started at Storm Warning, because when they announced that season 27 is happening, well, not you know, not season 27, but the the new season. As good as uh, and it was like the brigadier, and he's got this new friend called Charlotte Pollard, all of that. I mean, I was a hundred percent in, and I was in for that first up until the divergent universe, it was like event listening. Yeah. I don't hate the divergent universe. Gotta I do have to point that out. I still think there's interesting stuff, but I just wasn't as invested because I was doing other things. I was busy, I was spending my money on drinking and just doing other things. I wasn't I wasn't following it. But I was all in on the spin-off. And now I I'm still there. Uh uh, what are those comics called? Is it Titan comic? I don't I don't follow those sort of things really, the the graphic novel things.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

There's Titan and IDW who have had runs of uh eighth doctor well, long runs of Doctor Who.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

Yeah, of Doctor Who, yeah. I think I've I think I'll be bought a couple of them. I remember there was an anniversary special that I quite liked, but I haven't really followed those. Big Finish, I dip in and out. I will I will sometimes miss it. I don't listen to all of them. Sometimes that'll be one that comes up and I'm like, oh, okay. I I did recently re-listen back to that first, the first sort of three uh series of it up until the end of the Divergent Universe. And it was really nice to go back and listen to it. But I think my heart really belongs to the Doctor Who magazine comics. They were the ones that felt the most important to me, I think, of the Eighth Doctor spin-offs. But I but I was a fan of all of them.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

I mean, it's it's a similar story to mine. I was a bit more invested in the audios. I I certainly stuck with them way after the Divergent Universe. In fact, it was only really Stranded where I stopped checking every single Eighth Doctor story, and that is and what happened there was I got tired of whatever it was, ravenous or whatever the thing. But I kept going, and then I put on the final box set of Stranded and accidentally listened to the last one first, and it made total sense. And I was just like, maybe I don't need to listen to all of these, and you know, I I've been a bit more picky since then. Although during this month of May Gan, I have listened to some newer ones and had a fantastic time with a couple of them. So he's still got it.

SPEAKER_03 6:31

Oh, he's still got it. And anytime I do listen to a new one, I'm like, oh yeah, like this is still still kind of quality. I'm still happy to spend time with them. And I don't hate, I know that lots of people don't like Live and Helen. I like Living Helen. I'm gonna have I'm totally happy to listen to all of them having their little adventures. I haven't listened to those newest one, uh the Audacity ones I've not listened to, but it's sort of on the list to catch up with. I haven't listened to those ones.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

I've listened to, I've not listened to the full box sets, but I've listened to three of them now, and they're really good because it's Charlie comes in after a couple of stories and it's early Charlie rather than later Charlie. Fun Charlie. Fun Charlie. And they're having a riot, and I'm halfway through the the last one that they did, and uh it's just ended on a cliffhanger, but people will hear more about that in a couple of episodes later. Look forward to that. So today we're doing the EDA Vampire Science and the comic strip Children of the Revolution. And the simple reason we're doing them is uh you said to me, Oh, what's have you got coming up? And I said, Oh, I'm gonna do this. And I was like, Would you like to cover vampire science and children of the revolution? Because they're two things that I've always wanted to cover on this, and no one's ever bought them up. So here we are. They're things I remember very fondly. Both of them, there's a bit of trepidation of like, will I still enjoy this? Because it was uh like, well, certainly for vampire science, it's early days of the of the books. And the Eighth Ops Comic Strips never really disappointed when I've gone back to it. But you know, there's always a chance.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

Yeah. Vampire Science, same for me. I was really genuinely quite worried about reading vampire science. It sort of exists in my mind as this real kind of masterpiece. And I just was, yeah, I was actually genuine. I didn't want to start it. I didn't want to. I was like, oh no, it's gonna be bad, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Fortunately, I had seen a few people talk about it on X or Blue Sky, and I'd said, Oh, I'm really worried about rereading this, but I want it. And they all said, Don't you worry, you'll be fine. Yeah, I think we were okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

So Vampire Science came from BBC Books on the 7th of July 1997. It was written by Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum News at the time. New video material starring Anthony Ainley as the master, and audio material featuring Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy, and Nicholas Courtney has been recorded for a BBC multimedia Doctor Who CD-ROM due to go on sale in October, which is, of course, was Destiny of the Doctors. And K9, soon to be in his own TV show, uh, makes a very special appearance at Longleat's Doctor Who exhibition on Sunday, the 10th of August, where he'll be celebrating his own 20th birthday. Ultimately, he was the reason the thing burned down. So, you know, I'm not sure how that went. And if you're wondering what Eric Roberts was up to, uh he had three films coming out: The Shark Hunter, Death Valley, and Adam and Smoke, which I've not seen any of them, but I'm sure they're brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

I can't believe there was a year when he only had three films out there. That's such a light year for Eric Roberts.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

That was the news, you know. I mean, it was light pickings because it was the wilderness era and the TV movie was gone, gone, gone. Other releases that month, the comic strip was Fire and Brimstone, featuring the Eighth Doctor and Izzy. Then the Past Doctor adventure was the Murder Game, featuring the second Doctor, Ben, and Polly. And the new adventure was the Bernie Summerfield novel Beyond the Sun. And that was it. It was a small amount of releases, eh?

SPEAKER_03 10:05

Yeah, but I remember all of those releases really kind of fondly. I think that is one of those things of the time. There wasn't that much coming out, so all of those things really stick to. And I'm a huge fan of Beyond the Sun. No one likes Beyond the Sun. I think it's great. I mean it's it's very simple. It's not a complicated story, but I'm a huge fan. And I like the audio too. I remember it getting absolutely panned at the time it came out. And I think they're both really fun.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

I've defin I don't think I've read the book, but I've definitely heard the audio, but couldn't tell you anything about it. But one day, eh? One day. In 1976, San Francisco, the doctor and Sam Jones investigate the sudden appearance of vampires and briefly work with biochemistry student Carolyn McConnell. The case seems resolved after an early confrontation with a vampire named Eva, but the doctor leaves Carolyn with a way to contact him if the problem returns. Two decades later, Carolyn, now a doctor herself, gets drawn back into the mystery when a series of deaths linked to a nightclub suggest vampires have returned. The Doctor and Unit discover a divided vampire society. One faction wants to coexist by developing a synthetic blood, while another, led by the violent Slake, insists on hunting and killing humans as they are the dominant species. As tensions escalate into an open conflict, the Doctor negotiates with the more moderate vampires and works to prevent a massacre, ultimately being forced to use a chemical called Vampaway to neutralise the threat and stop Slake's faction. The crisis ends with the vampire community fractured and Carolyn choosing to stay on Earth. So, vampire science, presumably we both read it at the time. As I said, I remember thinking this was brilliant. I remember thinking it was so different from the Eight Doctors, which I loved, but I think we can all admit that the Eight Doctors is a particular style of novel that perhaps doesn't hold up well if you're, I don't know, in your 30s, 40s, 50s, or whatever. But pitched to that 14-year-old Doctor Who audience, it's brilliant. This novel felt really grown up and adult and dark at the time. I mean, to a certain extent, I think it still does, but it hasn't changed a bit for me. Like it's still, it's still like a top quality bit of Doctor Who. What about you and your memories and uh where we are now?

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Yeah, so in my memories, it went alongside Buffy and Ultraviolet as one of those like the late 90s sort of creme de la creme of of vampire stuff. And that's yeah, so that's why I felt really terrible and like really worried about uh going back to it. But no, I think it stands up really, really well. And exactly as you said, I couldn't, I think I messaged you to say I couldn't believe when there's a reference to the eight doctors in it. And I was like, oh god, yeah, that's just one book. That's a month ago. Like, this is crazy, just to think that these two. And at the time I don't remember feeling that there was this sort of huge chasm of difference. It just felt like new Doctor Who, that's cool. Like I'm kind of into it. But now, sort of hindsight, it's like, whoa, the whiplash effect of this thing, and the fact that there were just vampires two months in a row, but in a very, very different way. And I think what's sort of important about it in some ways is it feels like a new adventure still. Like that, it kind of feels like it's in the continuity of what we've had before, where you get kind of brilliant character exploration and things like that, which obviously you don't really have in the eight doctors. There's a certain a certain amount of um but he likes talking about what Colin Baker's feeling. There's a lot of like six the sixth doctor introspection, which to be fair also happened in The New Adventures. What he's feeling and what he's eating. What is he eating, how he's looking, what he's feeling, what he's eating, just a close examination of Colin. But um, no, no, I and I think I mean I have to sort of front-load the fact that I think Kate Orman is absolutely fucking incredible. I just I don't think there's a Kate Orman book that I don't like. Whenever there is an element that I'm not that sure about, it tends to be when she's working with Jonathan Blum. I don't know. Uh I'm I'm there are certain there are the one or two points that I think for me were a bit weaker, but they don't feel like Kate Orman points. They feel like they may be sort of external to that because I think her exploration of character is second to none. I just think she's excellent. I think she was exactly the right author to bring in, sort of when you're not kicking off the range, obviously, but you're sort of starting as you mean to go on. I think I think she was a really, really good choice of author.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Yeah, absolutely. I think I wouldn't have noticed the tonal whiplash at the time. I just think I would have gone, here's one great Doctor Who book, and here's another one. Yeah, another masterpiece. Fantastic. But going back to it now, you could use this as the basis for a pilot for a brand new series of Doctor Who or a vampire show. Oh, yeah, and not have to change an awful lot about it. Sure, it's got a companion from the the 90s, and there are lots of but it's set in the 90s, like you know, it's fine, and the 70s, but it is perfectly pitched, and like you don't need to have read The Eight Doctors. It feels like Sam and the Doctor have been traveling together forever, and they're there's this great team. So I'm like, I'm so glad it stands up, but I just got immersed in that world straight away. Within sort of two chapters, I was like, no, I'm in. And you know, it starts off with this sort of preamble in the 70s where they're investigating a vampire in a club, somebody gets killed, and it's where they meet uh Carolyn, who becomes a big part of the plot, but it's just it just hits the ground running and doesn't stop, I think.

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Yeah, I think that prologue the doctor and Sam are so fucking cool because also we didn't have any time with them in the in the Eight Doctors. You get she gets chased by the crack dealers, and then he fucks off and leaves her, and then he pops back at the end and he's like, Hey, let's go on a little trip. There's no real like development at all. So, like I say, I think it was the right choice to have a bit of a jump and they have been travelling together, they uh they do get on really well, they're coming in and just and seen from Carolyn's perspective as well. So you're getting this sort of reintroduction to the pair of them. And yeah, like you said, it doesn't really matter. You don't have to have read the eight doctors, you just have to know that he's got this mate called Sam, who then they do go back and sort of explain a lot of what she's about as well. So you could really kick off from this point. And yeah, I just think it's great. And I think having that outsider is such a good way of structuring the book and her relationship to the doctor and her relationship to Sam, which is really quite nicely done as well. And it, I mean, it pr it starts off. I'd sort of forgotten that we had the sort of romantic leanings between Sam and the Doctor this early on. Yeah. And it's at but at this point, it doesn't make me want to like smack myself in the face because it's it's done very, very nicely, because it's Kate Orman. But I thought that was actually really well sort of seeded, terribly then followed up on later on, but well seeded here.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

It really helps having a woman who's been in a relationship with somebody writing these things, as opposed to a bunch of sweaty nerds who haven't quite figured out uh how relationships work because you're right. It it feels it feels like well put together. And there's that brilliant moment where Kramer says to the doctor, Do you know how dangerous you are? And you think, oh, we're getting for some big speech about like, you know, the oncoming storm. It's like, no, now that you're this handsome and you're touchy-feely, she's like, you know, I couldn't imagine the last you giving somebody a cuddle and, you know, um charming them into time and space. And like, that is such that is such a brilliant moment. And of course it was a female author that came up with that.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

Yeah, well, I mean, there was someone recently talking about some of Kate Orman's work on, or maybe it wasn't, maybe I just listened to it recently. It was about Return of the Living Dad. And it was about someone gave this really interesting perspective that I'd never thought about. That there's sort of it was like a lot of Kate Orman's writing has these elements that are like women's fantasies. And and obviously not being a woman, I'd never sort of considered that this was that there were sort of like tropes that were being worked in there. But then when I was reading this time, I kind of had that in mind of like the perspective she's writing from. And exactly as you said, I thought it was so fascinating the layers of relationship that I just don't think you would get with a male author. I just, I just don't, I mean, and I don't want that to sound sort of sexist, like you know, men can only write one thing, women can only write one thing. But I think like exactly as you said, there's a sort of nuance there that I I think well, I was gonna say only female dots here writers, only Kate Orman, because she's the only one for a whole time. She was the only one. Um I but I think she captures something and it reads, it does read differently. Her books do have a different kind of style. I think they all do. The way she writes an ace in set piece, that um she does this sort of she's got this huge job of kind of reconstructing the character from all the terrible things that have happened to the character. I I love and I think I read them out of order. I think I read set piece quite early on. So I never kind of had a problem with the New Adventures Ace because I sort of knew where she was going. And so that always that that kind of guided me through the reading of of the earlier books. And so I I kind of feel like she handles these relationships just incredibly well. Uh and all of the characters in this, uh, their sort of romantic or their kind of inner lives are all so beautifully defined in a way that you just don't have a lot of the time in Doctor Who literature.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

Something I haven't really seen until I've done this run of Eighth Doctor stories from different parts of um the Eighth Doctor run is quite a few people earlier, early on in the Eighth Doctor run pick up on the romance. And I don't mean the romance as like a romance with a large R, I guess you a romance with a capital R like the sort of Byronic nature, but without any of the negativeness of it, that there's something quite romantic and charming about the Doctor's life. And I think the new series picks up on that a lot of the time as well, of like, actually, it's it's a world where there is dangers, but the excitement and that sort of the magicalness of it all is something that people will risk being chewed on by a vampire or something like that to experience. And like the doctor himself is just this enchanting magical creature in this book. And he's a bit like that in Storm Warning, and there's other little places that he is, but I think we lose that quite quickly in the books, in the audios, and he settles down into a version of the doctor that's definitely him, but that is slightly more generic Doctor, perhaps.

SPEAKER_03 20:45

Yeah, and I think definitely the fact that we get over and over again, they sort of say how magic the Doctor is. And what I wrote down is the human and the wandrous, and I think that's something that Kate Orman does really well. And the scene in this where they go into that bit of the TARDINIS that I wish they'd done when they I wish they'd done it in RTDT when they had the budget. The bit that's like a hillside full of butterflies that you get a few times, it's just such a gorgeous scene. And it's and it and it does just show like how magnificent. And we know that the scope for that was there because we've seen how amazing the uh console room in the TV movie is, and the idea that there is more space to the TARDIS and things like that, and the the the Volkswagen beetle that's sort of like parked in there and all that. I think it's done so brilliantly here, and the fact that yeah, you get these characters who are just looking at this life and how magnificent and different it is to the life that they've got on Earth. And you get that obviously in in Rose, for example, you you get that done really, really well. What I did really appreciate here as well, though, is that you have a puncturing point of that, which is uh General Kramer, who's coming in being like but also you might get killed. And like also, and like you said, she's also like Doctor, do you know what a handsome bastard you are and how you're making all these women follow you, and they're all gonna die. Um, because she knows the doctor of old, and so she's sort of got this sense of like you can't trust him necessarily all the time. And I think that was such a great sort of character portrait of the doctor as well, that it's like he's not necessarily always going to be doing uh not not he is doing the right thing, but the way he does it is not necessarily always going to have great outcomes for all of the characters involved.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

Yeah, absolutely. And I think she just gets it so right. And Kramer, this is Kramer's first appearance, right? But she does make some appearance.

SPEAKER_03 22:32

No, this I think I think this is what made me sad. I think this is her only appearance in the books. Oh, yeah, I think she gets mentioned later on. I don't think she comes back, but she's in Time Rift, the fan video, if you've ever seen her.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Oh, yes, of course.

SPEAKER_03 22:46

So so she has you have a there is a face to put to the character, and to be honest, she's great in Time Rift. I mean, it's awful, but she's great. I you kind of I I kind of love her, even in that as a fan film.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

Now, I'm just having a quick look on TARDIS wiki, and she shows up in a natural history of Oh, yeah, that's that's the next Orman and Blum book, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 23:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

And then she is in Of course, she makes several appearances in Candy Jar Books, Brigadier and Rose Kingdom.

SPEAKER_03 23:18

Okay, that makes sense, okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Yeah. A brilliant replacement for the Brigadier.

SPEAKER_03 23:23

Again, like Oh, an amazing replacement. Yeah, and and it's great because it it could have been Bambera, but Bambera seemed to get on too well with the doctor. So that it's good to have someone who's a bit more antagonistic. And even in the fan film, uh, she's more standoffish like she is in this book. She's a bit like, what are you doing? What are you up to? And I think that just works fantastically well. And she's just a really well-drawn character. And I'd especially like, like I say, the role she's playing, making Sam question herself, which is really good. Because from the prologue, you get Sam coming in all sort of cool, and then she meets Kramer, and Kramer's like, Do you actually know anything about this man you're traveling with? What what do you know about his history?

SPEAKER_02 24:06

Yeah, it's and it it just makes it makes perfect sense to make them a bit more antagonistic and yeah, more Kramer pleased. Oh, absolutely. So Carolyn McConnell is the main guest companion for the story, which was originally written as Grace Holloway. Yeah. What could have been, but uh as has been going on for 30 years now. They can't get the rights to use Grace, which is absolutely fucking insane. One of the early chapters is published in a charity anthology called Perfect Timing, which is features her role as Grace, essentially. I don't quite know how that would have worked with the 70s though.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Yeah, no, that's an interesting one. And I don't know that it I think if it's Grace, you come with all this extra baggage. Yeah that and Grace's relationship, because she was with the doctor right at the start of that regenerate. I don't know, I'm sort of like I kind of think it works well not being Grace, much though I would absolutely love Grace to be in to have been in the book. So that's one of the reasons I particularly like the comics, because you do actually get Grace back, and I think it is a real, real shame that we haven't had her back, and especially that this year we didn't get her. I know Daphne Ashbrook's coming back, but it's not the same, is it? I don't give a shit about Daphne. No, I like Daphne. It's always nice to um always nice to hear Daphne Ashbrook and in in that story which she was in in the Divergent Universe, The Next Life, where they have that conversation about Grace, and it's like, oh, it does sort of warm my cockles. But I do wish we could actually see the character again properly.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

Yeah, I can only assume that when the comics have done it, they've used the lightness and just not told, and they've just figured we're a comic in the uh in the wilderness era, nobody's gonna fucking care for the biggest.

SPEAKER_03 25:48

But I assume as well, because they got the eighth doctor, they were allowed to use the eighth doctor, and I know that that's slightly different, right? But I just sort of assume that the comics were like, yeah, we could probably use stuff from the TV movie, can't we? We've got the console room, we've got all the sort of like decor, yeah. It's such an odd situation.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

My understanding is they can use the Doctor and the Master because they're owned by the BBC, and so it doesn't really matter who's playing them, but the fact like Grace and Chang Li should have been back every other fucking week. Yeah, absolutely, definitely. But it was not to be. How do we feel about the use of vampires and their place in the Doctor Who universe?

SPEAKER_03 26:24

Absolutely amazing. I mean, I think we should have vampires more off all the bloody time. I I think um one thing that I remember I remember reading somewhere, someone talking about Gallifrey and writing about the way Gallifray and history is uh given bit by bit in the show and gradually kind of consolidates into the Gallifrey that we know today and wrestle on and all that. And there was the suggestion that the fact that we got invasion of time instead of the one with the killer cats, whatever it was supposed to be. I know it's not, I know it wasn't Geng Sing, but whatever it was called, the killer cats. And that that meant we lost an element of like building on Gallifreyan lore, and it was kind of the last time we had the chance to do something different. But that's not true because state of decay gives you the extra bit of Gallifrayan lore. And it's a beautiful bit of because basically what I love about it, that they've done really well in some of the audio dramas, is that they go through this thing where essentially it sort of makes the doctor a bit racist. Like he's a bit like, oh, I hate vampires. Yeah. And then and then that goes through quite a lot of the sort of earlier regenerations and blood harvest and things like that. And then by the time he gets the eighth doctor, he's dealing with it differently and he's like trying to kind of understand them. And you get that in the in this book done really, really well. And there's an audio, the final main range audio, the beginning of the end, uh, or the end of the beginning. Yeah. And there's a story in that one where he's got a vampire who's just his mate, like the hijack vampire. And I love that. I thought it was really sweet. And it's like, I think this this is something I really wish the show had dealt with more. And the way they kind of work vampires into the mythology, you've got the ancient vampires, the great vampires, you've got the fact that humans are always destined to turn into hemovores or the future kind. They're always going to become vampires in the end. And they barely touch on it in the in the new since 2005. And I kind of feel like it's a real wasted opportunity. And I can't believe they've not done at least one full proper. I know there's the plasmovore, they've done like little The vampires of Venice that weren't really vampires of Venice that weren't vampires. Yeah, I kind of wish there'd just been one that was like full-on vampire, full buffy, you know, full stakings, all of that.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

I think it's blood that that puts them off because they're not allowed. But then you just like you don't do the blood. Yeah. You do something else, you see them bite somebody's neck. You don't, it doesn't have to be loads of blood. When you start with the stake, they turn to dust and like Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

And even, I mean, in the cut scenes from Curse of Fenric, where you've got the Russian soldiers staking the vampires, those are great. I was like, this sugar because also the first time I watched Curse of Fenric, I didn't really get that they were supposed to be vampires that much. Because in the original, you're so I mean, you get a few bits with like the nails on the throat, but it's like I'm not really getting it. But when you see the cutscenes, you're like, oh yeah, they're just going out staking vampires. Of course they are. This is what you do.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

Yeah, uh, it's it's a real shame because it it is this big it's the most interesting thing about Galaphaian mythos almost, like this war that they had with the vampires and wiping them out. And you just think like it's almost worse than the Daleks in that it makes the Doctor act out of character. There's just like a race memory in there that goes, Yeah, you hate these things, you must destroy them. And even though this is the incarnation in the story where actually he's trying to be a bit more fair to the vampires, it's still like it has huge story potential, and I cannot believe that somebody somewhere hasn't mined it. Look, whoever's gonna pick up the show in three years' time or whatever, just do this and then just make it all about vampires. I don't care.

SPEAKER_03 29:52

Yeah, well, I mean, we'll get onto this later on, but it's this idea of the sort of unmined aspects of the mythology where again you don't you don't want to do always the continuity heavy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this, it's such a you don't need that much. You just need to say they are an ancient enemy. The doctors have thought that that's it. And then it's like they're just then they're just really cool vampires, and that's all that you really need to work with. And there are bits in in this one, and the same in um, I think Goth Opera probably does it better, but the characters in Goth Opera and that sort of buffy adjacent kind of characters that you get in vampire science as well. Uh, but then you've also got the older vampires, and I really like that distinction that's sort of like in um around the same time, like in the film of Blade, where you've got the older sort of um better behaved vampires, then you've got the younger upstart vampires. But what also works really well with the older vampires, especially in this one with Joanna, is that they're like they're basically the same as the Doctor. But I and I think that thing of immortals or long-lived characters uh works really well as points of comparison with the Doctor. I mean, I really loved in um the Moffat, I I liked Maisie Williams' uh a shield, me, and I know loads of people didn't, but I sort of really enjoyed the progression of going from just like child to sort of sort of villain to kind of yeah, I thought it was really well done, and I love that. And there's a line in that in I guess it's Hell Bent where she says something about like at the end of the universe, you can only expect the company of immortals or something like that. And it's like, yeah, this is great. I like the sisterhood of Khan. I like I like all the other sort of compar points of comparison with the with the Time Lords. Uh the difference obviously being that the Time Lords are not tied to linear time in the way that all the other ones are. And I just think the way they're discussing this one, where they're basically like, you're just the same as us. Like you're just this really long-lived person, and you've got these experiences and how we can kind of learn from each other. I think that's just beautifully played. And obviously, the doctor ends up bonded to the main vampire, which kind of makes that even more explicit of their connection. I thought that was all brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

Yeah, I love it. I I think the hierarchy of the vampire society in this is played really interestingly. But also there's certain things like uh Slake, one of them preying on a depressed man, uh, shackled, and go like who wants to kill himself and going, well, instead of you killing yourself, why not join us? And his slow sort of decline into going, yeah, do you know what? Fuck it. This is all I've got of all I've got left of. Shackle is amazing.

SPEAKER_03 32:22

And I had that, I was tardis wickieing that to be like, does Shackle come back? Because I'd sort of forgotten about him, but he's so good. And the way the poor man, no, he's just basically forced, he sees the horror of life because he's working as a surgeon in like really rough area where everyone's getting shot and he's putting people back together, and then the vampires are slowly making him more and more depressed to try and convince him to turn to their side, but then he and he doesn't get saved at the end, and he's just sort of still carrying on and he's just left on his own. Although, I mean, you do get he's sort of like it kind of says at the end, doesn't it? Like he knew he could probably go and find them again. Like he's not he's not been abandoned completely, but he's just sort of learning what his new place in in the world is. So I thought that was absolutely amazing. And I that I'd completely forgotten him. And I think it's one of those things that maybe as a younger reader that doesn't resonate at all with this sort of character who just cannot face how awful the world is and just wants to give up. And that seems to you when you get towards your 40s, you're like, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:21

Yeah, it resonates with a Monday morning. Uh yeah, there's that, and that they talk about the lifespan of the vampire and like the depression that can come with it, and like people walking out into the sun and just because they're just so fed up and killing themselves in that respect. And things like the the process of becoming a vampire and rigor mortis setting in and learning to use your body again and all that stuff, and it's just like little layers and textures that just work so well.

SPEAKER_03 33:49

Yeah, absolutely. And it made that that bit when he's talking about, yeah, he's like, You're gonna want to rush to the toilet now, and he's like, Well, that's not that's all brand. And that made me think of um the film Near Dark, where it's like a man's becoming a vampire, and he's being like coached through the process, and uh interview with a vampire as well, where you've got someone who's being helped through the process of becoming a vampire and sort of seeing what it's all about and learning about what you gain but also what you lose. And the whole thing of this story about ice cream, how you can't have ice cream anymore. And Sam's like, Why the fuck would you give up this stuff? Giving up chocolate, what you're doing, and that's all just lovely as well. Just that thinking about things in a slightly different way. Um, and it's kind of it's not funny, but it is it's very touching, I think, when they when they talk about things like that, what happens to you, what you lose becoming a vampire. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

Two things that I remember vividly from reading this 30 odd years ago was that they lived in this theatre, which I just thought was a great place for, of course, there's no natural fight in a theatre. And the other one was Harold. Is it Mad Harold or something? Weird Harold. Weird Harold, yeah. Where a vampire has to go to ground because he's got some sort of issue, be it um I think a physical issue, and you bury yourself and you regenerate, but somebody builds a fucking building on top of him and he just spent centuries digging his way out and his mind snapped.

SPEAKER_03 35:13

It's such a horrific, and I don't know if that's the first time that sort of thing's been thought about, but that the whole thing of kind of clawing yourself out the grave. Um, I remember watching the John Badam, the Dracula with Frank Langela in it, where you they go down, they they dig up a grave, but she sort of clawed her way sideways out of the coffin and into like a mine underneath the coffin. But it's that that thing of clawing your way out really stuck with me. And they do it later on in Buffy, where she gets resurrected, but she's buried and they don't dig her out, so she has to claw her way out. And there's something so kind of like, oh, it's making me shiver a bit now. It's something horrible about it, and that is just so and the fact it just drove him mad, and and he's just and they can't save him. And and Sam's really like, oh, but like you tried to save him, and they're like, Yeah, of course we did. Like, you know, like we're not, we're not monsters, essentially, is what they're saying, but they couldn't, and so he just stayed locked away because he was and he's so hungry. That thing of his the the like he just cannot eat enough because he's had this thing of being so starved with such a brilliant, terrifying image. It's wonderful. Who do you think this is pitched at? I mean, that is a good question, because exactly like you said earlier on, at the time, um, I mean, I was like, what was I was like 11, 10, 11, it was, it just seemed like another Doctor Who story. So it's like, okay, it's just everyone that's that's reading it. But it really is that thing of now, if people were picking this up. I and it's really hard to tell because it I do think it it's pitched at a uh new adventures audio. It's like the Paul Cornell books in the EDAs as well, where it's like he he knows that he's expecting people have read books before, and there's almost I don't think in this one there's actually explicit references, but in Paul Cornell's books there are actual references to new adventures events and stuff. And it was always that thing where no one was really sure, were they, whether it was kind because they do I know in again in Paul Cornell in Shadows of Babylon, they have the rejuvenated brigadier, which is from Happy Endings, and it was like, okay, so we are we are in that continuity, yeah, sort of. I'd say obviously it's not for kids, you know. The and the eight, well, arguably eighth doctors is not for kids because you have to be about 25 to know all the references, but but in terms of the writing style, it's it's Terrence and you know it's it's quite quite easy to read. And this one, I mean, it's it's it's um beautifully written. I Kate Orman's prose is well, I say Kate, sorry, John Blum as well, I'm sure you're part of it, but it's very accessible, it's very nicely written, it's very simple. Uh what I like about this one, actually, as well, I have to say, is that it's very straightforward. And I think that's important. It's the it's not a complicated plot. It's not, you you know, you start in the past and then you move forward to the present, but you're not flitting between the time zones. The the character motivations are sort of relatively straightforward, but you're getting these amazing explorations of the Doctor, of Sam, of the villains. I think that's really important this early on in the range. Um, and then you can move on to alien bodies and go into doing totally different things sort of shortly afterwards. But yeah, it's sorry, I'm not answering your question at all, but it's hard to say really who this is pitched at. I mean, I guess it's sort of they're aiming for that kind of teenage young adult sort of audience, but I don't know how many of those people were actually reading it at the time.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

I think essentially they went for the young adult audience because they assumed that Doctor Who would be a continuing series again shortly after this.

SPEAKER_05 38:40

Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_02 38:42

But it's a bumbled way of doing it because you get Terence who writes very child-friendly prose, but he writes this absolute it was child-friendly for 14-year-old me, you know? But it's but that's because I know what the Cartmel Master Plan is. Like I've got a tin with all of Trial of a Time Lord in, so I'm I I'm good. But like, if a kid at my school who'd only seen the TV movie picked up the eight doctors, I imagine they would put it down pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_03 39:10

The idea, the very idea that a normie could have picked that up.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

Jesus Christ. But then this, as you say, is a bit more new adventures. And I suppose it did appeal to me at the time, but perhaps it is slightly like there are bits of it that perhaps aren't. I suppose you get there's nothing here you wouldn't get necessarily in the later Harry Potter books, though, or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 39:31

No, I don't think so. I was trying to think if it if there was anything that it sort of that uh books-wise it it made me think of. And the only thing I could think of was the but it's much more recent, was the Guillermo del Toro vampire novel trilogy that he did. I don't know if he actually wrote them, he sort of presented them, um, which I cannot remember the names of, but that where it's a bit a bit more that sort of scientific vampire stuff. But yeah, I think it's that yeah, that like you said, there's nothing in it that's sort of too uh I don't I don't think it's inappropriate for younger readers. I think that I just think younger readers might not get as much out of it as as more seasoned and depressed readers might get out of it. Yeah, because a lot of even just purely I mean, it it makes me think of um my uncle, who's uh uh an academic, and he was talking about there's a a book, uh French, very famous French novel by Albert Camus called The Stranger. And uh it was a huge classic. And I I finally got round to reading it when I was sort of the French people reading it in school, so I read it when I was a bit older. And I was like, Oh, I don't really get the fuss about I mean, I like it, it's good, but I don't really get why it was such a classic. And my uncle was like, right, you have to think about when it was written in the 1950s, people didn't travel that much. And it's set in North Africa and it's explaining the heat of the desert and stuff like that. And he was like, people just wouldn't have have had a comprehension, they wouldn't know what that kind of heat was like, they wouldn't understand it. So when they're reading that, it's this kind of mind-blowing thing. So I and I kind of think some of the more violent, sort of slightly shocking elements in this one, like Sam getting attacked by by Harold, is at the time was probably a bit like, oh, that's that's grim. But now it's now, you know, kids have seen true blood and stuff now. They're probably not particularly like that that bothered by it. So I think it sort of fits quite well into that that mould. I mean, I've obviously I've got no idea how the eight doctors, I'm imagining, sold a billion copies, and then this one sold 60 or whatever it was. I imagine there was a fairly heavy drop afterwards. Um, but I think it's I think it's a really interesting way to go. And I I know that the um the range editors got get quite a lot of stick for the early years of the EDAs, where they it can be a bit sort of tonally very jarring and really on and some absolute shite that got published. But I sort of think I I do feel like they were trying, and they they and at least one of them was not a Doctor Who fan, so wasn't doing this in terms of like what do the fans want? It was more about you know what what books are interesting, what's coming in.

SPEAKER_02 42:01

Also, everybody goes, you know, oh, some absolute shite was published. Of course, the new adventures were just all fucking classic after classic after classic. It's like you come for time worm.

SPEAKER_03 42:12

I've still never read Timeworm. One day. One day. No, it's up and down, it's up and down. I think it's only really Timeworm Apocalypse that I'm like, ugh, what's the point? Um the the Cat's Cradle ones are a little bit more patchy.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

Look, like, yeah, I mean, it is that I I think because fans who were of a certain age, who were the right age for the new adventures, suddenly being faced with the eight doctors, it's a to it's totally very jarring for them. Yeah, yeah. But it is a little bit of oh perhaps Doctor Who isn't just aimed at me anymore. And for a br uh for a good year, because especially because of a backlog and sort of lead times and stuff, you are you are dealing with books that are perhaps aimed at a a slightly younger audience and are supposed to be in theory more accessible. But that's just where it lands, and then it's sort of, you know, by the time you get to Henrietta Street and what have you, it's built on its its its own mythos and its own lore, and it's just as convoluted and just as adult again in inverted commas as uh the new adventures were.

SPEAKER_03 43:18

I I think what's nice about vampire science as well, though, is that they do uh John Blum and Kate Orman, they don't feel like they're trying to almost they don't feel like they're trying to appeal to fans. They do, it's quite it, it feels very fresh. And there's bits that just just the phrase vampire crack squirrels that I just don't think uh Terence would have been using. But it just feels very sort of it feels very 90s in a in a good way. Uh it feels very much like of its time. I'd forgotten that there is actually the explicit buffy reference. Like you do get stuff by and and Forever Night as well. It's all the 90s vampires. I think that's I think that's great. And I think it does, but it doesn't feel sort of offensively. Pop culture. It's just very, it's very nicely done, I think. I mean, I've never been to um San Francisco, so I don't know, but I'm assuming it's good in terms of the geography of it as well. That you get a lot of the city description. And I like that they talk about the earthquake and stuff like that. And I think that's all um I think it's all nicely put together. Although it is a bit weird that they're sort of in San Francisco and it's and I know that's the Gregor Holloway thing, but like it's that then it doesn't really reference the TV. You'd think you'd be a bit like, oh yeah, I was here Yeah, or I will be here like in two years' time. You know, they don't they don't really talk about it, and it feels like that would at least get a mention, but it just yeah, it just seems to pass by.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

San Francisco's a great setting because it has a huge problem with homelessness, unfortunately. And it just feels like if you're going to have a community of vampires flying under the radar feeding on people, then it's in a place like that where people can go missing and disappear over the course of time and nobody will realise. And also as a result, you know, there are a lot of places realistically, such as abandoned buildings and things like that, where people do unfortunately have to live. So it's it's a really good setting. And it's just nice not to be in London or the home counties, you know, escape the home counties.

SPEAKER_03 45:16

But it is the thing about the homeless thing when they because they call them the the remembered and the forgotten, don't like that the that that's great. It's just and that the the hunting grounds and even the way that they talk about it, where even the kind of good vampires in inverted commas are like, yeah, well, we'll just get one person and let 14 of us feed on them at the same time. We're not gonna go out and kill loads of people, but there's still this thing of like, but we're still probably gonna kill someone, and that's really nicely done. And when the doctor lets the vampires go, uh, stops them massacring loads of people, but then Sam realizes that at one person is still gonna die and gets so angry at that, that was really nicely done. Because we haven't talked about Sam. I'm I'm always in this book, I basically, if Kate Orman is writing Sam, I really like Sam. Any other time, I probably don't really like Sam that much. Um, but I think in this book, it the way she learns about the Doctor, the way she gets called into question, because when Terence writes her, it's like Sam Jones walks along with her Greenpeace t-shirt on and was all really right on and was fighting for people's. And it's like, okay, but she's not really, she's just a sort of collection of ideas. And in this one, you get the vampire sort of quizzing her, being like, Oh, you're you like you think you're so good and you think that you stand for all these things, but actually, what do you really stand for? And like, are you really putting yourself out in the world and you sort of say this from your safe little life? And I think it's she needs that. The character needs that to be sort of taken down a peg or at least questioned as to like, what does this actually mean? What is this person? Because otherwise, I think she ends up just being this sort of cipher character, which does happen in a lot of the books, and a lot of the books she becomes just sort of fill-in companion placemarker. But when you get Kate Orman, I mean later on in Seeing I, she just it's just incredible the way they deal with Sam. And you're like, what would actually happen? And they make her into a refugee, and it's like she's just traps on this planet, and she's been she it's not even the planet she was meant to go to, she's just been dumped there, and she's trying to build her life, and that's all done just incredibly well. But I think Kate Orman does it best.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

It also has her sort of questioning Hearth Greenpeace, right on us, or what we call wokeness now, what have you, and of her being a bit of a sort of cause crusader. Ultimately, she's just like, I'm just trying to do the best I can because I give a shit, which is exactly the sort of person the doctor would take with them. Yeah. I can't remember much of the other uh EDAs with her in, and all the EDAs I've read over that since doing this podcast, essentially, have all been later in the run. But it's the writers of those books who said, Oh, I hated Sam. And it's like, but it's your job to make the companion better. Like, you don't just go, oh, it's really annoying. And Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum prove here that you can make her an interesting, likable character that it can have a great time with the doctor, that is a good foil for the doctor in sort of pulling him up on his shit as well. And it's like, you can't just go, that character's shit. Your job is to make it better. So shame on the rest of you because it works here.

SPEAKER_03 48:19

And it was true, and it's also exactly the same as Chris and Rolls in the new advent. You got so many of the authors that hated Chris and Rose. And it's like, but they're brilliant. I mean, well, also that I just think Chris and Rose were good from the start, but it's like so then do something with them. Do something, and again, when Kate Orman gets Chris and Ross, they're amazing. Like, you know, based on it isn't other people can do them as well. I think you're completely right. It's like that the uh it just seemed like a really odd decision in the books that they were just kind of like, oh yeah, she's just gonna become like and then they kept bringing in like other characters taking the place of the companion, even in this one, I mean, to an extent, but she still gets, you know, sort of to um make a good account of herself in this one. But in some of the other books, they'll just bring in another character who's filling the role of the companion. You're like, but what about Sam? Like she's just sort of here, just kind of abandoned. Whereas when it gets to the audios, you get Charlie, who's so in in the story, then it becomes all about her story, and that's you know, done really well. But yeah, poor Sam. But I didn't mourn her. Like one when she was gone. I there was never a day when I was like, Do you know who I miss? I miss Sam. But I mean, also it goes back to the right. I think the writers did, yeah, the writers were like, Oh yeah, do you remember when Sam died? They're like, Oh yeah. And it feels like they sort of kill off every companion and then they resurrect them all, but not Sam. They're just like, No, no, she's still dead.

SPEAKER_02 49:36

No, she's still dead, she's very, very dead. I hope one day when they do the very last eighth Doctor story, it's Sam's revenge somehow, and she comes back and just fucking tortures him for three hours at big finish and then lets him go off and meet Cass on that spaceship and the crash.

SPEAKER_03 49:55

Because even the I mean, because because Sam was supposed to be in the Sarah Jane Smith series. And I don't know if it was somebody vetoed it. Was it Elizabeth Sadon's I don't want a character that's sort of not from No, she said I don't want another companion in it.

SPEAKER_02 50:08

No, another companion story. I can't remember whether they'd recorded them or whether it was still a scripting process, but basically she turned around at some point and went, No, that could that that can't be Sam. And I just I think that's a terrible shade, but you know.

SPEAKER_03 50:20

I think it is a bit sad. Although to be fair, I mean, based on the stories we got, Sam would have been, hello, I'm Sam and I'm a Greenpeace warrior. And that is all that you get from that character that she because so it's I don't know whether it would have sort of salvaged the uh the character, but then because I'm trying to think if she no, because she gets kind of mentioned in the later books once or twice, but she's just there's one bit where uh Fitz is like, oh, we could go back and visit Sam or something. And everyone's like, no, we're all right. Let's just let's not. How do you think the book handles the horror? I think it's good. I do think that they they don't go into like you're saying, like they they there are bits where they sort of pull their punches a little. There are nasty bits, and I think it's the bit where Sam's getting drained. Yeah. The description of the nightclub is brilliant, where it's just kind of like there are real vampires there, and then there's just all these like posers that are just goths that want to be called, and then Sam's just there and she's thinking she's got a handle on things, and then she just gets attacked. And it's really uh quite upsetting, like it's very traumatic, and they don't shy away from that, and she is really sort of she's pretty fucked up by it for the rest of the book, and she's so desperate to find a vampire that bit her because it sort of traumatized her so much. Um, but I feel like I was expecting it like the way in my memory it kind of got merged with all the other new adventures and missing adventures, vampire stories. Now I was expecting sort of a lot more kind of blood splatter. And yeah. And there's not, there's not really like it's it's pretty then you get one or two little bits, but there are bits where they could have gone into much greater detail, and they just don't particularly. But I think that works for the book. I think it's not that kind of horror, it doesn't need to be, it's more of a a character piece.

SPEAKER_02 52:02

Yeah, absolutely. And what about our villains? So we've got the well, our two lead vampires, shall we say? So we've got Slake, who's one of the younger vampires and leading this sort of rebellion within the vampires, and then we've got Joanna Harris, who is one of the elders, who's working with the Doctor, who's blood bonded with the Doctor, so that if one of them dies, the other one dies in an attempt to broker the peace. But she's also, she's not a good, a good person fundamentally, and they certainly have their moments where they come up against each other. What do we think of their dynamic and how they're used in the story?

SPEAKER_03 52:37

I think they're great. I mean, I think, like you said earlier on, the whole vampire hierarchy is brilliant. That you've got the sort of newbies who've come in after all the old, the former newbies got killed off because they had a bit of an uprising, and then now we've got like a whole new set of newbies who are all being a bit useless and trying to sort of one of the slake is trying to take power for himself. But I think it works really again, going back to like the blade thing. It worked. He's he's that Stephen Dorf character who's a sort of horrible little upstart, who's trying to do things his own way. And then you've got Joanna, who's brilliant, I think, as a just a wonderful character, who's trying to kind of keep things under control. Like you said, she's not good. She'll she's definitely doing bad things, and she doesn't really care. And there's a bit where she attacks Sam and the doctor's like, how could you do that? And she's like, Oh, I didn't realise it was your friend. I thought it was just some random person coming in, so I was gonna murder them. Uh and then and then and then the doctor, that the brilliant part where she gets sort of angry at the doctor, because the doctor th the doctor then to save Sam because they're bonded. If the doctor dies, she dies. So the doctor threatens to throw himself out of a window to kill them both. So then to get her revenge, she goes and kills someone to make him feel what it's like to kill someone. And then he then gets his sort of slight revenge for that by taking making her attend the funeral of the man that she killed. And it's just this great back and forth. It's so beautifully done. And I mean, I also like all the kind of middle, the the younger than her, but still quite old. There's the one who's the conquistador who has been he gets in, gets stakes, but he's not quite dead yet, and he's remembering going to like El Dorado, and it's just it's just so sweet. And then you've got Abner, who's sort of older, but he's not that old, but he's he's putting down the younger ones, putting them in their place. And I just think the whole thing is just beautifully done. It gives you a great set of characters to work with. And any group of a groupie of those characters could kind of work beyond the realms of this story as well, which is the same thing. I think you do get the same thing in the goth opera, Paul Cornell's book with where you've got Jake and Maddy who kind of go off at the end into space. And I do like those sort of characters. But this one, I think they all had their own personalities and they didn't feel like they were riffing on other vampires that we've met in other st stories. Not Doctor Who, I mean beyond that, from vampire literature or films or TV. None of these felt like, oh, I know that character, I know that sort of archetype. They just they all felt quite individual, and and all most of them are all just really quite charming as well. Not so much the younger ones. Slake's not, he's just a dickhead, but like all the older ones are all quite lovely. You kind of want to hang out with them. And they do side with the doctor pretty much, most of the older ones. They're kind of like, yeah, we're then they all get most of them get killed off.

SPEAKER_02 55:18

It's a good vampire book as well as being a good-hour book, I think. And really good. There's that whole thing of Paris's, she's trying to find this blood. Well, we think it's a blood synthesis, but in the end, it turns out she's basically just breeding humans as cattle, which is a brilliant. I think it's something that is used in is it Daybreakers or something like that? There's the Sam Neil thing. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Daybreakers has that, yeah. And it's such a grim idea of just these mute, unintelligent creatures just herded up like cattle in these cages, and you you can see the whole thing. It's it's really grim.

SPEAKER_03 55:52

That comes in also. I'd sort of forgotten that whole part because it it comes in quite late in the day, and then at the end the doctor's just a bit like, oh, by the way, you need to look after those kind of halflings that you've created in that cave. And they're all and she's like, Oh, they don't have feelings, and then they're all sort of reaching through the bars and trying to like take people's hands and stuff. And that that was just brilliant. That felt like a that felt like an X-Files sort of story. That that that bit. And I think that's and that's great. I say that's very 90s in a really good way. I also did quite like at the end that it felt very new series where you get Kramer at the end coming in and be like, Does anyone want to work for Unit? Does anybody fancy joining us? Like, we got all this thing, you're like, oh yeah, cool. Okay, there we go. Sam's young enough to work for unit to these days. Yeah, it's like Sam. You're still a teenager, right? Cool, yeah. Who's your colleague? He's 11. Yeah, oh come on, kids. I forget though, actually, that's true, that Sam is really young. I because was is she meant to be 16 in the eight documents? She's in sixth form, I think. Yeah, so 16, 17. And then and then and then they age her up later on, that I think is done pretty well. But I forget that in this one she's still just a child and she's going through all this horrific stuff. And then they kind of and she starts off so cool in the prologue, and then later on they're like, oh no, she is just a really young person who's dealing with this horrible trauma, especially after she gets bitten. And then the doctor's sort of putting it, calling himself into question, saying, Kind of what have I done? I shouldn't put people in these situations and it's so dangerous, and then trying to essentially talk Carolyn out of coming with him by getting her, but there's a great sort of like almost like it becomes a bit rom-commy in the middle where the doctor's going to her boyfriend and being like, Come on, you gotta get you gotta get involved again. And he's just like, I really don't wanna, I really don't want to do this. I've been kidnapped by vampires, I've been kept kept prisoner, I don't, I don't want to be part of it. The doctor's like, come on, help us out, and then you can be together at the end. And I thought that that was quite nicely done.

SPEAKER_02 57:41

I don't think the TV series proper nails that until perhaps Rory, but I love a reluctant companion who's just like, perhaps I don't want to be part of this, but I'm I will for the person I love. Like, I get they get it a bit with Mickey towards the end, and Adam's a bit of a misfire. Yeah. But yeah, I think Rory's the one where they finally get it right.

SPEAKER_03 58:00

It's like Polly James, the live bird from The Awakening. Yeah. Who who's a bit like, what is going on? And she's just really and she's being sort of sarcastic and she's really scared, but she's sort of going along with it, but she's always the one asking the questions and kind of puncturing things. And I think I love that kind of character right there. And like you say, yeah, Rory is is brilliant for that later on.

SPEAKER_02 58:21

You mentioned there are a couple of things that you're putting down to John Blonde that don't work. So, what are the bits that don't work for you? Because I've got a couple, but this is like 98% perfect for me. Oh, yeah, no, no, it definitely is.

SPEAKER_03 58:33

And it's very, it's very, it's quite petty. There is just one or two of the little character bits that and I have this big bugbear about transposing sort of US context onto UK context. And it's one of the reasons, and this is very, it's very like, it's not really a valid critic, but it's one of the reasons I've never watched sex education because I remember the trailer coming out, and all the students are wearing school uniform that looks like letterman jackets. And I remember being like, oh no, I can't do it. And it was like skins in skins where they're like, Oh, we're in high school. I was like, no, no, I don't, I'm not, I don't, this just isn't the same thing. It's sort of you're Americanizing it. And I don't. There's a bit where Sam Jones is talking about protecting someone from being beaten up by the football players. And I was reading it in an American accent, and I was like, nah, this is not, it's not, it's so sort of like out of character. It's just not the kind, it just didn't feel believable to me at all. And when it's a book that's so good on character, that felt really off. And I was like, I sort of feel like this isn't the same person writing this. Yeah, I'm getting like a sense, and there's a couple of character bits later on. I think it's basically any of the character descriptions that suddenly feel a bit off from what we've got so far. And Kate Orman, I think, has just a complete mastery of her characters. I've never noticed in Kate Orman only books, there's never a bit where I suddenly go, oh what? And in this one, there were one or two bits where it's like, oh, really? Okay. And that's where I felt like maybe there was. I mean, I don't know, John Block. I don't know, apart from acting in Time Rift. And and didn't he also originally write Zygon when being you isn't enough for. Oh no, was that Lance Park? It was both of them had a gun at it, but none of them have then neither of them get credited on it. No. So I don't think I so maybe I'm being unfair, but it just there were just one or two bits that felt a bit off for me in this one that never I've never had that in a Kate Orman only book.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:25

Yeah. The one thing that niggles me a little bit is Vampaway, which is ultimately the resolution for the story. Because it just feels like in a story with such rich ideas and that's so clever, to then just have such a I mean, Doctor Who is very guilty of this, but it's very the end of New Earth, it's very the end of Rose with anti-plastic. It's just like Warriors of the Deep, we've got this thing that can kill them all. We really don't want to use it. The setup for it's really good that they go, you know, they like put on a light show within the theatre, and the doctor's really trying to find a reason not to kill them. But ultimately, it's been set up there for a long time that at some point they're going to do it. The only thing that uh I do like about its use, and this is the reason why it sells it, is the doctor drinks it and then lets the vampires feed on him, which again is quite a dark image, and then there we go.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:17

Yeah, that is I do like the way, and I like the way they set it up when he's like, if you if you try it on with me, you're gonna regret it or something. And then then Sam remembers that line being said later on because he and then she's like, when did you that that was the the good thing about that was the when did you drink it? When they're like, when did you poison yourself? When did you know you were gonna be attacked? And he's like, Oh, I don't know, just a while ago. And he's been doing the whole thing of like, we need to come to a peaceful solution, but then he sort of knows that he's planning on killing them all because he but because he knows they're gonna attack him, so he's sort of getting ready preemptively. I did like that, but yeah, I completely agree with you. And it just also felt like the book offered a load of possible resolutions. Yeah. And then the the ending does feel a bit rushed. I I didn't hate it because I felt like it was like I said before, the story wasn't the most important thing, really. It's like the character stuff is the most important thing. Absolutely. But it did it did feel like suddenly we're at the end, and you're like, oh, is that that's it? Okay. And then and then you get the end stuff with Joanna, which I thought was lovely. So that that kind of makes up for it. But it's true that it does suddenly feel like they'd not written themselves into a corner, but just that they needed an ending pretty quickly. And they're like, ah, and the ending is this. Because there's a bit of the very beginning where because doesn't Carolyn go off with like a jar of vampire blood at the beginning. And I was like, is it that the like the resolution? Is it that? And it's like, not really, no, it's like that's not really anything to do with it. And you're sort of like, oh, okay. So I was always I was kind of expecting there to be more of a twist. And I think I remembered it being a bit cleverer. I I think I remember it as like a book that was quite sort of intelligent, and it and it is emotionally, but I don't think it's necessarily that great as a as a purely as a as a as a story.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:01

No, I agree. The ending of this frustrates me as well, not because of what happens in it, but what doesn't happen afterwards. Because as I said earlier, this is the perfect pilot for Doctor Who back then or now. And somebody in BBC Books should have gone, okay, so our returning characters here for Doctor Who, it's Kramer, it's Harris, uh, it's Carolyn. Those should be the characters we keep coming back to. And the Doctor, some for some reason somehow, is being kept drawn to San Francisco. We'll get some more vampire threats, but there's other alien threats and things like that. And it's like, that's the series right there, because all of these characters you want to see again and you want to know what happens to them. And there's other stories you can tell with them. It's not, and they go away and they have a happy ending and there's nothing left to do with them. So it's bizarre to me that they nobody read this and went, This is the blueprint for Doctor Who for the next few years. I think you're completely right.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:54

And I think it's a shame. But I mean, the new adventures are kind of the same. They don't really. I'm trying to think, Kediatu left Bridge Stewart. I'm trying to think if there's recurring, particularly like there's one or two, but they they they sort of lose that thing of having like a you don't not that you don't necessarily need your like brigadier character. No, but I think like you said, about returning to some of them. And Harris, I can't believe they did because also she fits really well because she fits with the sort of vampire thing uh and the time lord thing, and then later on you get faction paradox with their use of biodata, and it's like that all fits really well with the vampires, but they never seem to sort of marry those up particularly. And that I think that is a real shame.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:34

I think the problem is with the new adventures, EDAs, PDAs, missing adventures, is everybody wants to write their version of Doctor Who, their definitive version of Doctor Who, and introduce their characters. And I think in some ways, this is going to sound like blasphemy, but I don't mean it in a bad way. Bernice Summerfield becoming a continuing character and becoming a companion was almost one of the worst things that happened to the the writers because everybody went, especially when they were experimenting with different characters around the time, everybody went, I need to create a new character that hopefully resonates the same as Bernice does. Like, I'm not pissing on Bernice's legacy. No, no, no, no, no. But you know, like a lot of the time you feel like someone's creating their not quite in the Eric Sayward way of I'm not interested in telling a story about the doctor, but I think you sa, as you say about Sam Jones, people are going, Well, Sam shit, if I write a character, maybe they'll they'll go, Oh, we can bring that character in and carry them on. And they do it really well here, and I just think somebody in the editorial team should have gone. This is the future of Doctor Who.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:34

Yeah, and I think also I I do I often feel this way about when you get given a really good setup, I feel like it's I mean, obviously they do it with Peladon, they do it with New Earth, but when you get that good setup and you but then you stop, you don't go back there very often. And it's like I can't I I do I felt it most in the Jody Whit obviously I felt it most in Sheffield, in the Jody Whitaker series where they have like the you start off and you get the the in arachnids in the UK. You've got the university team. And then as soon as you get to resolution, you have just like a different set of scientists. And I was like, oh, why aren't they the same science? Like it's the same, it's the same city. It's like the same what why why not just bring back some people or you know, add in new people, bring back those people. Yeah. I do miss that sometimes at having just a fixed point that they can go. Like it doesn't, and then obviously now it's become unit again. But it doesn't have to be unit. Not that I hate unit, but it doesn't have to be always unit.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:30

Yeah, it could be anything. I mean, it's unit here, though, isn't it? But to be fair, it does always have to be unit.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:36

Yeah, but it's American unit. So it's slightly a little bit different. And she's great. I mean, I Kramer, I just and I love the fact that Kramer comes in and she's like, the doctor is this manipulative, cold, distant, and then the doctor's like, Hey yeah. That was that was like that was just brilliant. And because it is that real difference of which obviously, I mean, you get the TV movie, but you get Sylvester McCoy, especially like older Sylvester McCoy, and then you get Paul McGann, and he's got his Tigger energy, and it's that just brilliant, bouncy doctor. And at this point, that's very much what you're working with. He's not had amnesia 67 times, he's not got the whole of Gallifrey downloaded into his brain, he's not dealing with all of the whatever divergent universe stuff, he's not lost time, he's not and it and he's just so fun. And I think there's something about Paul McGann's performance that catches that so well that in the books, especially the early books, you can't help but see him. So all these bits when he's like bouncing around the TARDIS, and so you're just like, yes, that it that is it's the eighth doctor, is Paul McGahn. I can a hundred percent see it. This is this is great, and that's what's so lovely about that kind of late 90s, early 2000s period, especially, in that he's very much, as you said, he's the spin-off doctor. Like, even though there are other doctors doing spin-offs, but he is the one who's sort of carrying it forward, and that's so nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:55

In that sort of hour of the TV movie that he's the doctor, he encapsulates it perfectly and gives everybody stuff to run with. Imagine if Doctor Who had finished after Time and the Rani, or the Twin Dilemma, or Castro Valva, or even Robot, who those guys are in those episodes is not who they go on to be as they learn the role. So it's it's a testament to Paul McGann that he defines the character so well in the hour of screen timing.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:21

Oh, yeah, he absolutely nails it. Yeah, and I think that's always I think people do now, obviously, we live through a period where there was a certain amount of criticism of the TV movie and everything. But now, even though I know a lot of people would they were still okay with McGann, but I think now everybody sees that it's brilliant. Uh uh, like not necessarily the story, but I think definitely um Paul McGann's performance, the doctor that they put forward is is done incredibly well and stands up. I'm looking forward to this new sort of 4K scan or whatever of it as well, just to sort of see it again looking a bit brighter.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:53

No, me too. I watched the movie again the other day and it's still brilliant, and I yeah, I can't wait to see it. I think it's gonna be a real treat. Do we have much more we want to say on vampire science?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:05

No, I don't think so. Just that I think it like you said, it gives an indication of what the series could have been, and I think the series would have been brilliant had it done that. And also I think to this day, I think vampires in Doctor Who are underused, and I think this book demonstrates how well they fit with the the whole world of Doctor Who.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:29

Yeah, absolutely. More vampires, please. More vampires. And bring back all these characters, but make it good. Yes. So we must rate it. Is it a clanger, a banger, or an average meander? Oh, it's a banger for me. It's a banger for me too.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:46

TV.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:47

So the next thing we're going to look at is the Doctor Who magazine comic strip Children of the Revolution, printed in Doctor Who magazines 312 to 317, from the 13th of December 2001 to the 2nd of May 2002, written by Scott Gray, art by Lee Sullivan, colourist Adrian Salmon, and letterer Roger Landridge. Bear in mind this is a you know a six-month period. The news at the time, Hutch comes to time, David Sol, star of popular US crime series Starsky and Hutch, is to join Death Comes to Time. And again, you wouldn't know he was in there. Paul McGann's UK convention debut is cancelled due to poor ticket sales. Now, this is by the company Star Fury, who recently did the big flux event that was marred by a few problems, and Christopher Eccleston famously didn't show up. I know I was there, but it seems like I was at Paul McGann's actual debut and they didn't have a problem shifting 2,000 tickets. So I'm going to put that on the company rather than Paul McGann. Yeah. Mary Whitehouse had just died. How very, very sad for us all. Dapol Doctors, the tomb of the Cybermen on your kitchen table is likely to impress your friends. Probably not, but Dapol have one of those new second doctor figure sets. They were like a solid sort of, it wasn't really a figure, it was like a solid statue sort of thing. But they were they were starting to shift a few of these like solid state figures and things like that. But then a month later, after 15 years, Dapol loses their license to make Doctor Who merchandise. A spokesperson said we are completely stunned by the decision. We would have thought that after providing hundreds of thousands of pounds in royalty payments to the BBC and seemingly single-handedly preserving Doctor Who branded awareness, our future was destroyed. We were mistaken. We have had to cancel figures of the first Doctor, Jamie Polly, the Yeti unit troops, and the cyber leader and a TARDIS console. Damn.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:46

I was going to say they single-handedly kept Doctor Who going, but they didn't manage a single-handed Davros, did they?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:53

I think that is the beginning, though, of the BBC just trying to bring brands into house, yeah, yeah, yeah. And just going, if we're going to do something with this, we need our action figures to look like the rest of the action figures out there and not like bootleg original Star Wars toys, which is what sparkly Christmas Daleks. You you you leave the Millennium Daleks. The Millennium Daleks, that's the Christmas. You leave them alone. Doctor Who and the Bidding War. Apparently, various reports have linked the likes of Dan Friedman of Death Comes to Time, Russell T. Davis, Mark Gatis, and Gareth Roberts on perceived bids to produce the show, all of which obviously did happen, and one of them would ultimately be a success. Earth Music in Space, a piece of music loosely based on the Doctor Who theme, is set to be loaded aboard the Beagle 2, a segment of the Mars Express Pro being sent to the red planet in 2003. The track is by Blur. I don't know whether that was ever released or it was just What?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:54

I think I say it was by Cybertech. I mean that that would have been the one. The Dimensions in Time theme has been sent to Mars. We can only hope.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:05

BBC Books halved their output. BBV announced a fourth probe drama starring Caroline John, an audio called Drome by Dave Stone, which was never to be. And dinner with Tom. Tom Baker is lending his voice to a new 2D computer animation series, Tom's Diner, made by the producers of his channel for animation, Max the Bear. The series will be initially marketed online that gives the website freespace.virgin.net forward slash Brian.panks. That's once again on Internet Archive 4 and hope that's the yeah. It will then be offered to broadcasters. Tom will play a food-obsessed Tom Plum, who, after leaving the Institute for Culinary Insane, manages the local American-style diner. Whatever happened to that, eh?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:54

Well, what is Max the Bear? That's what I want to review. Because it sounds like that actually existed. Yeah. Oh god, no, Internet Archive again.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:03

Yeah, we'll be covering that on a different podcast at some point. Uh, then releases at the time. From Big Finish, we had the One Doctor with the Six Doctor and Mel, a Bernice book called The Glass Prison, the Six Doctor DWM exclusive, The Ratings War, Darek Empire, Project Infinity, Bernie Summerfield, The Greatest Shop in the Galaxy, Series Two of The Eighth Doctor and Charlie, and the Excelsius series Nan. Something I've not heard of. Regenerations was broadcast on Radio 3, which is a radio play set at a Doctor Who convention in Belfast featuring Tom Baker and Sophie Aldridge. It's great.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:38

It's really I I really, really like it. Yeah, it was on the I missed it. I remember seeing it advertised at the time and missing it and not recording it. And then it was that it was on one of those BBC CDs that was like Doctor Who at the BBC. I think it might have been the one that had the Delia Derbyshire drama on it, Shining Sands and Silver Veils or something. Regeneration. It's really, I think Sophie, it's the one that Sophie Aldridge, she sort of asked them to rewrite it. There was a bit when she was like, oh, piss off your loser or something. She was like, I don't want to say, I don't feel comfortable saying this. So she asked them to rewrite her bit. But there's a bit where this guy, they end up like, I don't know, is it? They're in like, I don't know if it's like the troubles. They end up going outside and there's like a gang fight. And this guy's trap, this guy's trapped to the fight. And then Tom Baker's like, come with me. And then the Doctor Who theme starts. And it's actually loves it. It's a really it's a really nice, it's quite a sweet like relationship drama. But then there's this, there's just every so often there's bits for the Doctor Who actors in. It's good, it's good. I recommend it.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:33

Right. Okay, I'll check that out. That's what might be one for a future episode. And then the EDAs, we had the eighth Doctor, Angie and Fitz in Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Hope, Anacrophobia, Trading Futures, and The Book of the Still. In the Past Doctor Adventures, we had Relative Dementors, featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace, Drift with the Fourth Doctor and Leela, Palace of the Red Sun, Sixth and Perry, Amarality Tale, featuring the third Doctor and Sarah, and Warmonger, featuring the fifth Doctor and Perry. On DVD, we had Tomb of the Cybermen, Ark in Space, on VHS, Planet of the Giants, The Ambassadors of Death, BBC Audio, we had the soundtracks for the Faceless Ones and the Smugglers. From Telos, we had Citadel of Dreams with the seventh Doctor and Ace, and Night Dreamers with the Third Doctor and Joe. On BBC I, we had Death Comes to Time. And from Magic Bullet, we had Kaldor City, Death's Head. What a time to be alive.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:23

Bloody hell.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:23

I mean, there there is some absolute what year is this? 2000? The end of 2001 into 2002. So it's six months over that period.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:33

Some of those things are just sort of absolute. I mean, I the thing is, I think I've got a lot of time for pretty much everything on there. I'm like, ugh, that. But I mean, just things that were great attempts. I think Death Comes to Time was a great attempt at something a bit different. I think Kaldor City is an absolute banger. I re-listened to that recently and was sort of astonished at how well put together it is as a series. Most of those books, I mean I think also having been a bit bitchy about Sam Jones, but once you get into Fitz and Angie tricks, I was a bit less sold off, but I just think that Fitz was such a great character. Compassion I really liked as well. And I think they had that once you get into those later books where the authors actually like the companions, they do such brilliant work with them. And it is a shame that I know they sort of cropped up in big finish that once, but I feel like Fitz especially has been a bit underused in in subsequent years. Where's his spin-off series? Actually, no, don't. Do Candy Jar have a spin off series of it? Maybe, I don't know. Probably. They got Chris, they got everyone else.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:36

Yeah, it's a good run, but things are starting to wind down. You know, Dapol's lost their license. BBC I obviously go nowhere, BBV are doing less. Like there was an announcement of a BBV drama there, but there weren't any BBV things released.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:49

I was gutted about that BBC uh the BBV drama. I I really I like the probe series. I really wanted I like Caroline John in general. I wanted more. I was really upset that that never that never happened. I remember still every so often hearing about it and thinking, I think I thought it had been recorded and would eventually get released. That's that's like, oh no, it's just never happened. Nah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:11

What could have been. It's always just such a shame that I just feel like the one thing that Bill Baggs did that had more life in it was the probe range, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:18

Oh yeah, by far. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:23

The Doctor and Izzy arrive on the planet Cryal, where the science officer aboard a submarine crew is helping Izzy adapt to her new fish-like body. However, they encounter a group of Daleks behaving in a completely unexpected way, capturing rather than exterminating humans. The Doctor soon discovers these are the humanized Daleks created from his earlier attempts to instill them with human emotions back on Scaro in his second incarnation. And they now regard the Doctor as their creator and saviour. Led by Alpha, these altered Daleks struggle to define their identity, torn between their violent origins and newfound individuality, while an external psychic influence manipulates them towards chaos. As tensions rise between the Doctor, the humans, and the Daleks, the Doctor realizes his past interference has led to dangerous consequences, and he must confront both the psychic threat and the tragic instability of the Dalek's evolution, ending on a bittersweet reflection on whether the Daleks can ever truly change.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:25

Did you read this at the time? Oh god, did I read this at the time? When you suggested this, that both things, but particularly this, I still get like goosebumps thinking about the I love this comic book. Like I said earlier on, I came into having not read Doctor He magazine since the kind of early mid-90s, I had about four years where I wasn't reading it. Came back in again, and I was sort of not expecting to enjoy the comic strip. I sort of flicked through it, and then I remember being like, oh, this is actually really good. And then I sort of picked in it, came in again at Company of Thieves. The next one is The Glorious Dead, that's an absolutely like fantastic comic. Uh, and just made me love Izzy so much and just the brilliant character and the gorgeous art. And then I was just completely sold. Then it moved into colour on issue 300. And I remember being like, ooh, colour, not sure about that. And and the first story, thinking, oh, dunno, it's like, is it just gonna be a bit knockabout, a bit silly? And then that first story of Phideus, where you get, as far as you're aware, you get Izzy body swapped with a fish girl Destri, and then her body gets burned, and at the end she's just stuck as a fish person. And I thought that that whole run was absolutely amazing. And this comes not that far into that run. You've had a couple of stories of her her trying to come to terms with the fact that she's been turned into a fish person, uh, which is just beautifully done, and this all being done in sort of the eight, eight-page episodes, and the amount of story and character that they get across. I just think it's sort of unparalleled anywhere in in the rest of Doctor Who. And when RTD2 started with Starbeast uh reboot, I was like, do you know what? You should just take a run of comics. Yeah. Just do comics, just just do you'll get guaranteed hits all the way through. It's all brilliant. Like, why not just touch on this? So this is just one of a series that for me is pretty much untouchable in terms of just just greatness. The Eighth Doctor DWM comics, I think, are just perfect Doctor Who.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:31

Yeah, it's the only time I've been excited month to month to read the DWM comic. And I was straight in from the moment the TV movie finished, and um because I was so hyped by the TV movie that the moment they launched the Eighth Doctor, I was like, okay, let's see what they do with him. And they don't drop a beat. I remember very specifically. So, what used to happen is on a Saturday lunchtime, my dad, my uncles and aunts would go to this pub, and there was a comic shop on the way. So my dad had taken me to the comic shop, I'd get my Doctor Who magazine, and I'd sit there while they drank and smoke and talked about stuff, and I'd drink a Pepsi Max and read my Doctor Who magazine. And I sometimes I'd flick through it first, decide what to read. And I'm so glad I didn't with this one because I remember just going straight to the comic strip and then turning over and seeing the Daleks and being like, fucking hell.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:25

The cliffhangers in this one are all brilliant. And I mean we'll get there, but I'd forgotten about the ending as well. I'd completely forgotten that that's where this one ended. I think in my mind, because obviously it was month to month, so this run went on for a long time. Yeah, six months. Yeah, and but it felt like like um I couldn't believe how uh like how how few stories there actually were, like how quickly we get to oblivion, which is where I'm going after this. But they're all so, so good, and the art is just gorgeous. And I I think that um the Scott Gray Lee Sullivan kind of pairing is uh fantastic. Like I think it's just what they do, and then all the rest of them as well, all the colourists, everyone's just great. Even the lettering is just is just wonderful. Did you say that was Roger Langry? Yeah. Amazing, like just it's just it looks beautiful. I said in my because your your COVID purchase was the cover of Shakedown, wasn't it? We were talking about mine. Mine was some of the pages of Ground Zero. Which and what I actually wanted was the page I wanted the cliffhanger from Glorious Dead, which is to my mind uh one of my favourite. Well, what's what I think is nice, and it goes to the EDAs too, is that some of my favorite moments of Doctor Who as a whole are in these media. They're not necessarily the TV show, not even the audios. It's and one of my favourite moments of Doctor Who is the episode of Glorious Dead, where you've got Izzy writing a letter to Max talking about fighting these monsters. The doctor's disappeared, she's on her own, she's learning how to be the doctor, how to lead the revolution, and you get to the end, and the villain comes in and she goes, beat you, and he goes, Congratulations, and shoots her. She gets shrunk, and then the letter's just like, all the best, Max. Speak soon. And it ends. And I I lit I completely lost it. I mean, I just thought that was the best, just heartbreaking, so well put together, just brilliant. That and the bit in Shadows of Avalon where the companion in compassion gets thrown off a battlement and the doctor's thinking she's about to die, and then she just disappears, and then with a wheezing, groaning sound, compassion appeared because she's turning to a TARDIS. Those two bits they just stand up alongside, you know, um, I'm not gonna let you stop me now. Like they're just they're just brilliant moments. And I and I think in in this run, I mean the cliffhangers to this one, and they do the the the sort of splash page cliffhangers that work so, so well. And in this one where Izzy just swims into a load of Daleks, yeah, uh, it's just visually, narratively, character-wise, it's all just unbeatable. It's so, so good. And just that there were people doing this every single month. And I don't know, I'm not really a comics person. I don't know how people in the wider comics world feel about whether they know about these comics. I just feel like they stand alongside anything else. And I feel like they probably don't get that much respect. I know they've been released as graphic novel in graphic novel format, but because they're sort of magazine comic strips, maybe they don't get regarded in the same way as you would like, you know, um, Dark Knight Returns sort of thing. But I just think they're every bit as good as the best that any of DC and Marvel can offer.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:39

Yeah, I'd be interested to know, because I'm not a big comics person. I have read a fair amount of comics because I'm an insane, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm not immersed in the world to know where something like a Doctor Who comic would fit. I was obsessed with Daredevil and I've read shitloads, more Daredevil comics than anything else. And my favourite runs of that, I would say, are probably on par with the eighth Doctor comic book run. Sure, there's a bit more depth to them because they've got longer page counts and things like that. But what they cram in in these sort of eight to ten pages or whatever it is every month. And it's why you do think the stories go on forever, because you're waiting every month to find out. Like when I came back and did the uh Briggs Doctor stuff, I thought he was the doctor for about two years in the comics. Yeah, but it wasn't.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:20

It's one story, and by the end of it, he's not the doctor anymore. I was catching up on those because I what I so when I started, it was Glorious Dead, and then there were all these letters in the letters page being like, Oh, when's Faye coming back? I was like, Oh, who's Faye? Okay. So I went back and bought loads of back issues and then but they were all sort of out of order. So my wormwood and final chapter, I was reading like a bit here, a bit here. I had like I I had the the issue where Shade gets his head smashed at the end and I didn't have the next one. I was like, oh my god, like what is happening? But it was uh they're all just exceptional. I mean, it and I just think it the range just kind of it only got better. And the fact it ends on the flood that's so good, and it's just like that's where we finished on. Yeah. If you talk about ending on a high, bloody hell. But all of it, all of it, there's not one story I can think of where I was like, oh, that wasn't very good. There are some that are better than others, but there were none where it was like, oh, that's and then some of them that I don't feel quite as passionate about are still visually things like the autonomy bug are visually amazing. Like I don't care about it particularly as a story, it's fun and and not much more, but like I think it looks amazing. And there's so many just through the run that are just absolute five out of five bangers, including children of the revolution.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:38

Yeah, because Doc Tzu magazine have gone, this is ours, this is our run. Because they it took them a while to get there with the seventh Doctor and they umdenared with different versions of the comic strip from sort of like 89 through to 96. And they've just gone, no, this is our doctor, we can do what we want with him, and we are going to be, even though there's the books and later bears, and we're going to be the continuing adventures of the Eighth Doctor, and we can make our own series out of it, and they do it so well. Because it wasn't heavy on the like it wasn't that self self-referential. It wasn't heavy on the fan wang. There were obviously throwbacks, but when you've got a mythology, that's what you do. But I put it to you, Martin. Is this fan wank?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:16

It's it's it uh I think it's the right kind of fan wank. I think I remember, so I I think I I must have re- Obviously the first cliffhanger, Daleks appear, and you're like, whoa, fuck, Daleks. Second cliffhanger's the one where the Daleks appear but save everyone, and they're like, hello, saviour. And the doctor's like, oh, this is different. I think I must have realized at that point. I think I did realise straight away what it was. I was like, okay, this is gonna be the human Daleks from Evil of the Daleks. I think I knew that, but nothing, I still got shivers when the Dalek comes in and the doctor's like, that mark on your dome. And it's like, yeah, they call me the leader or whatever, but I go by but my original name was the one you gave me. And even now I'm getting like it's so good. I think it just gets you. I think also partly because it's a lovely idea that hadn't really been followed up on. That it was sort of like, okay, we've got this concept, and this is something. I mean, I I think the new series should have done this one. I think this would have worked really well at any point in the series. I can imagine Capaldi particularly doing the whole like seeing Alpha again thing really, really well, but any of them could have done it. And I just think it's lovely. I don't think it like so it is a little bit wanky. Then again, it's using the Daleks, so it's always gonna be a bit okay, Daleks again, but it's doing something that we haven't seen before. Yeah. Uh I like the fact that it sort of then puts the doctor in a really awkward position because there are humans on one side, Daleks on the other side, and he's trying to help both of them. Yeah. And I think that's really nice. Um, and I just find it really sad at the end. It really gets you a bit about these poor Daleks.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:01

It's a really depressing ending for like this whole because it's a whole civilization, a unique civilization wiped out uh in in one swoop, and they do it to protect themselves and to protect the humans who want to destroy them. It's like what a big story to tell. That's a season finale, right there. Oh god, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's a but it is like the two things you want to pick up from from classic Doctor Who of the Daleks at any point. It can be done with minimal explanation, is those Daleks from Evil and the army of Daleks buried underneath Birrodon.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:35

Like Oh, yeah, the frozen dialeks.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Both of those are prime to be mined, whether it's by spin-off media or the TV show as a whole. Like it's just, it just works. Yeah, absolutely. Without too much explanation. So it is fanwang, but it's the best possible kind. What's the guy who directed Wrath of Khan going, I want to do a sequel to that random episode and make it a big rest of the film?

SPEAKER_03 1:30:58

What is it? Is it Nicholas Mayer? Did he mean and it's exactly that? It is like we've got this, because of course, what we could do now is that show the scale of this comic strip on screen that we never would have been able to do in the past, but it's big, whereas either of the Daleks is very much very small and it's until the end, but it's the doctor talking in rooms to the Daleks and the Daleks being all with Whitaker, mischievous Daleks. And then in this one, it's big and it's big submarines, and it's an underwater planet, and it's all this stuff, and then their their city, and you get the the you see what their city looks like, and it's that nice sort of modular Dalek city. And then you've got also the villain of the piece that's a big many-eyed squid who's sort of manipulating everybody as well, and just the Daleks, and that you do in this one also get the Daleks talking amongst themselves, and some of them are not necessarily in agreement, and that's sort of something that we sort of miss quite a bit as well in in New Who. And whenever they do it, it never works as well for me. Like the the Stephen Moffat friendly Dalek just sort of annoyed me a bit. I don't know, I never really felt that attached to it. I wasn't like, oh great, so happy to see you again. Yeah. Rusty. Is it rusty? Yeah. I was like, but the way that they do Alpha here, and he's just like, you you saved us, and you like, you know, you gave us like a new way of seeing things, and we went and built something really beautiful. But we also know that everyone in the universe wants to kill us because we're Daleks. And it's just this lovely thing of like their sort of otherness, and they've had to protect themselves and hide themselves away, but they're still quite friendly and open and they're trying to help the humans out, and then through various for various reasons, they get manipulated and end up in this situation where, yeah, they all have to kill themselves, which is just horrible. And and the doctor's really broken by it at the end and just sort of goes off, and he's like, you know, like this is horrible. I tried to help everyone and I help no one.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:55

Yeah. The good Dalek thing has been done since TV, it's been done on big by Big Finish a few times, so to varying degrees of success. I think it works in Dark Eyes. Uh, I'm trying to think where else they've done it. Oh, Dalek Empire, it happens as well, but then they turn just as sort of mischievous in their own. Yeah, they're just different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The parallel, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it is something, again, that's crying out for a proper TV story at some point of like whether it's this story or a different one, of just like what does a race of good Daleks look like? And I just think it works so well here because when you see those Daleks underwater, and that Scott Gray said that when the editors were like, we want to do Daleks again, he was just like, Daleks work really well on screen and they work really well on audio, but like actually they're quite static in comics by the nature of comics. So you have to think of something really interesting. And then he said the idea clicked when he thought of Daleks Underwater, because that's a cool image, and then the idea of picking up on the the Daleks removal of the Daleks, and he was like, Okay, now I have my story.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:56

But I mean it's funny he'd say because they they do Daleks so well in the comic, because Fireman Brimstone is a great use of the Daleks as well. They look coming. This one, it's just the bit in the in part two where you have the Daleks come, they think it's the doctor coming in and they open the doors, but it's the Daleks on the other side, and it's doing that thing of shooting the Daleks from below or drawing the Daleks from below that works in any context, it's just so cool. And it's just beautiful, like the colours are amazing. It is a there's real atmosphere to this, to all of them. I you know, I kind of everything I say about this one kind of counts for all of the Eighth Doctor comics as well, but really great.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:35

And artwork-wise, the colours, like I had to go and check whether this because I read the graphic novel. I had to check whether the what it was in colour because in the book, because the colours are massive. The drawings, like this is it's the cliche, but this is Doctor Who, bigger than it's ever been. Uh, I've just done for this podcast Empire of the Wolf, which is the eighth Doctor, 11th Doctor, Rose Tyler thing. And it's actually a very contained sort of like nobody's gone, we're doing sprawling armies and this, that, and the other. Like it's something you could actually quite easily do on TV. Whereas this, you're going, wow, this is this is Doctor Who, the sci-fi action movie, and it works so and the colours they choose are just top-tier. Like, big props to Adrian Salmon for his colouring because it's just so good and so bright, and every page pops, you, and you're just like, I can't wait to turn the page, not only to see what happens next, but to see what all of this looks like. Whereas some comics I can literally just go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, and you can get through in five minutes because the story's okay, the art's meh, and you just but this one you're just like poring over the detail, and I think they visually they do a fantastic job.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:47

Oh, yeah, and I think just the fact that they have black and white flashbacks or some CP of flashbacks is brilliant. Like in the comic, it's like, what happened? He's like, Well, let me tell you, this is what happened on Scaro back in the day. And I just think it's it the the way I mean, Izzy, well, as as Dechastry, Izzy the fish looks brilliant. I love that character design. I just think it's amazing. I think the fact that we're dealing with this ongoing storyline of Izzy turning into a fish is just handled really well. And I like that you have moments where she's like, oh, I'm actually getting used to this. Yeah. And that's weird because I don't want to get used to this because I don't want to be in a fish body, but like I'm sort of like and then when she goes off for a little swim, and it's just beautifully drawn and beautifully sort of um storylined that she's getting really excited by this. The doctor's like, no, but her adrenaline's spiking, like she's getting too, she's got too much freedom. But then she's going singing stingray, she's like, Marina, and could a marine, because like you would if you were suddenly a fish person and you could do this, and then swims into the Daleks. But all of that stuff is is just done really nicely as well, and then Daleks like shooting at Izzy while she's swimming away. That's all just beautifully put together as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:58

What do we think of the human support characters here?

SPEAKER_03 1:37:02

I think they're good. The the the only thing I think that's a bit of a shame is you have, as they do a few times in the comics, you've got Alison who's like an old friend of the doctor's, but we've never met her before. And I think it would be interesting if we had someone, although I guess Alison's not really that involved in the plot, but it because the human characters start off as the doctor's like a bunch of mates, and then because he's helping the Daleks, they stop trusting him and they're acting sort of actively against him, or they don't trust the doctor. And I think that would have been lovely if we could have picked up on a group of people that we'd met in a previous story. Yeah. It's not always possible. But I think they're really well drawn. I think it works really well that the first episode is all about, and you sort of wonder if maybe, oh, is Alison going to be a bit of a villain because she's sort of pushing Izzy to explore her new body and stuff. It's like, oh, maybe, but that's not the way we go. But and the other characters all seem really likable, and then suddenly, and then they're under threat, and you really worry about them, and then they're suddenly actually becoming the problem in this scenario. But the doctor's still trying to help everyone, and at the end he's just disgusted by everyone and just storms off. And that's and I think that's just brilliant, too. So and I I like visually, I think they're all really distinctive characters. They're all, I think, and I think that's really good too.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:18

They said they wanted to not make it the Star Trek thing of everybody in uniforms calling each other by their surnames. It's very much that alien thing of they're all colleagues who've been crammed together in this thing for a long time that know each other and that they only call the captain sir or whatever. Also, like things you don't you you sort of take for granted or don't think about, just having the captain as a person of colour and things like that. It's just like that is very much Doctor Who for the late 90s, not the sort of classic 60s, 70s, 80s style Doctor Who. And it's a little thing, but it does, you know, he's got dreadlocks, and it's like that's just representing society of how it was at that point, rather than it being like it's just moved the show on a little bit, I think, is what I'm trying to say.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:00

And even when it has little bits like it, the captain coming in and being like, oh, that that food we had for breakfast was good, and they're like, Oh, and it's just it's such a throwaway bit, but it's like you've only got eight pages. So the storyline has to be really economical, but they still make time to throw in little bits of character development just to pepper them in, um, which is a real skill, I think. I mean, just to be able to tell stories in this format, such good stories that you genuinely or I genuinely care about these characters and the story. What do you think of Cataphobus, the giant squid? Oh, it's great. I just, there's something about that just because obviously the story, you're like, okay, the twist is the Daleks. Oh no, wait, the twist is that they're good Daleks. And then it's like, oh no, wait, the twist is that there's a sort of psychic squid that's been manipulating everybody. And because you sort of know from the beginning that someone attacks us the humans, but it's not the dark, or dark, it's not us, it wasn't us. So there's something else. And I just think that the way the cliffhanger you get as well, where Izzy's thinking to herself and then just gets electrocuted by a tentacle, and it's like, oh, shame you were thinking about that so loud or whatever. And then you meet this, you meet this huge squid thing with loads of eyes, and it's just and it's sort of manipulating everybody because it's it's sort of eaten all of its fellow um members of its race and it just wants to feed on everyone's energy. And and and it and it's great, and I just quite like that it's a sort of it's quite sort of petulant, and the bit when it's like, that was a grave mistake, little Dalek, or something. And it's got and you just and you can imagine that this would be, you know, not Michael Sheen, because he did the other thing, but it would be one of the you'd get a voice actor when you'd have someone really good doing the voice for it, and it'd just be like kind of creepy, and uh and it would look great as a as a as a CGR or even as a model, but you know, it would just look brilliant on screen. I think, yeah, I think Catophobos is a is a a great villain.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:53

It was an element I'd forgotten about the story because I just remember it, I just remember it being humans and Daleks tearing each other apart, which would have been enough, but then you throw in this great big other sci-fi reason and it works. It kind of on paper, on paper's the wrong word because it's all on paper. But in like I can imagine if you read a synopsis, you go, Oh, I'm not sure that bit of the story works, but there's you've already got we're doing a sequel to Evil of the Daleks. Like it kind of it's kind of a bunch of ingredients that you go, that sounds like it should be a bit of a car crash, but it's just all handled so well.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:26

Oh, yeah, really, really well. And I think that's the other thing. They manage to do balance really well, which sometimes it is is astonishing when you get like things like on the flood, where they weren't sure how many episodes it was, how many parts it was going to be, and they were sort of working this story that could sort of extend or or or or shorten depending on how far they got through. And I just think it's brilliant. I think they managed to make everything feel so meticulously planned, and it all flows together really, really well. And I just think the whole, yeah, the the it's just a brilliantly paced story, this one. You get all the surprises at the right times that carries you through, and you get the human stuff coming in. And I just think it's a lovely, just a lovely ending. I mean, it's quite abrupt because that's the way it comes in. It's just like actually, we're just gonna sacrifice ourselves. Yeah. Um, and it and it's sad, and it's like the Daleks are all, and they they do it all together because they've all been living together and they've got this community, and they even go into the detail of well, we when we started, we weren't all in agreement and we were killing each other, but then we realised we had to move past that, and so not everyone they don't have guns anymore, uh, or a lot of them don't have guns anymore. And that's really sweet as well, just this idea of the Daleks structuring their society. Um, I think it's yeah, I think it's just done brilliantly.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:40

So when this comic strip was released, they didn't feel they'd done the end justice enough. So if you get the graphic novel, the end's extended by a couple of panels just to show the the the true destructive nature of the Daleks blowing things up. But it doesn't end there, does it? Because it ends on a cliffhanger.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:58

It ends on an absolute and I this is what I'd forgot. I mean, I remembered this being a cliffhanger. I just didn't remember that it was here where we get this cliffhanger. I absolutely lost my shit at this cliffhanger, because you're dealing with a story where already you've been through a lot, you've gone through how as many was it, six parts, you've gone through six weeks, you'd be like, okay, well, there's that'd be a lot of emotion to deal with. And then it's like, okay, well, we're you know, it's over, we're going. And then suddenly, zap. And because obviously we've had this story where Izzy switched bodies with Destri, and as far as we know, Destri died in Izzy's body, yeah, which turns out not to be the case. At this point, that's what we think happened. And so we but we haven't really thought anything beyond that. We just thought, okay, that's it. This is Izzy's story. She's got to get used to being a fish. You know, it's a comic strip, cool, fish companion, why not? And then we get this pair of sort of crystalline, shiny monsters appearing. And they're like, you know, come on, you've got to come back home now. And the doctor's like, and they say like destrian at us, like, and he's like, no, no, no, that's not her, that's not her. And then they just put him down and fly away with the doctor unconscious. And just, I mean, mind-blowing. We haven't had cliffhangers like that. I mean, this is not, this is not the way Doctor Who stories end. You know, you sort of open-ended. I'm trying to think, maybe like keeper of Traken is the only one where you can have an ending that's a real, like, woo. But I think this, you know, it's just it's such a magnificent, not even talking about where it goes afterwards, but just a brilliant ending to have. And that idea of ongoing drama. I mean, if anything, I maybe I'm trying to think if t T V more recently, maybe the um Rebel Flesh, where where he melts Amy at the end, maybe that sort of thing, where it is a real like, what? Yeah. Uh, but I think this is a proper, like, you know, just desperate to know what happens next. And I mean, and the master stroke of this is that the next episode isn't Izzy and the Doctor. So you get they go back to Faye, and it's just a one-off and like a mission to the unknown sort of thing, just to then link back in. And that too is just amazing. That they made us really wait for the resolution of this. And then once all that kind of, and then it just gets it just gets better and better once you move back to to oblivion and all of the backstory. But this is what a brilliant way to end this story. I mean, I don't know how long they were in sort of discussion of how many stories there were going to be before we get this, but I wasn't expecting it. It just wasn't something I was thinking about. I thought the story was done. I thought our story was Izzy as a fish. I never even considered any of the rest of it. And I just think it comes in and it's so beautifully done. And just the creatures that sort of talk, they hold hands and they sort of, and you'd imagine that they'd have one of those voices, like, yeah, Desatrianatos has been broken. She must be fixed. But they're so creepy, and they just zap people with energy.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:57

It's like, oh, brilliant, just wonderful. It's amazing stuff, and like the whole run is like that. And as you say, it's another great cliffhanger and another great twist in something that's got great cliffhangers and great twists. It's like every episode just keeps giving and giving and giving, and it's brilliant to go back there. I don't have too much more to say on this. What about you?

SPEAKER_03 1:46:17

No, I don't think so. Just that I mean, if anybody, uh I'm sure there won't be that many people, but if anyone listening to this hasn't read the whole of the Eighth Doctor range, I would just say it's so highly recommended. But I mean, I think consistency-wise, and I'm sure you said this in episodes long, many, many years back on this very podcast, but I don't think there's anything else that really comes that close consistency-wise. I mean, there are uh because I know because you're a fan of season uh six of the. I am indeed. And and I also think that that is a very consistent, coherent run of Doctor Who. But I think this that they did, because what what did it start in '97? No, well, when was um Endgame? Was it the year after the TV movie?

SPEAKER_02 1:47:03

Yeah, because uh Grand Zero is still running around the TV movie time and a bit after, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:09

We have to murder Ace before we can move forward. Isn't it always the way? But I think so for however many years it is, whatever it is, eight years or whatever of stories, that they just don't drop the ball. There are no bad stories in the run, I would say. There are some that are not as strong as others, but there are no bad stories. And that for Doctor Who is absolutely wild. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:32

The TV show has never managed it.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:33

The TV show has never managed that. No, it's like where you've always got a censor, right? It's popping up somewhere. But um that is but I think so. I think it is just really everyone involved in it, but also, you know, to Gary Gillett, to Alan Barnes, Clayton Hickman, all the the editors, everyone that was sort of around this, I just think everyone made the right choices, which for Doctor Who is also very, very rare. Because when does the direction match the writing, match the okay, there's no music for this, but they stopped giving out the free discs on the front cover, but you know, things like that. But it's all just so well, and I do feel I have no problem with Doctor Who remaking and plundering its past. And the fact that the 2005 series, we got Jubilee re not actually a remake, but we got you know inspired by, and then we got inspired by spare parts and all of these things. And it it's like, why have we not done things like Children of the Revolution? Children of the Revolution is it it ticks every box, like it's just great story, great story, great cliffhangers, great, you don't obviously have to restructure it, you know, fit a two-part, whatever. But you've also got the fan wanky bit in it, and all of that. It look, it would look incredible. It looks not how other Doctor Who story, and there's under the lake. Warriors of the Deep, but they don't really do underwater that much. What about the third episode of The War Between the Land and the Sea? I honestly, honestly, I've only watched the first two. I genuinely the other day was thinking I must watch that some point.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:01

The third episode's a lot like the first two, but underwater.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:04

But underwater. Yeah. The other day I was watching Underwater Menace, and I hadn't realized how young the actress who plays Ara is. And I was like, you know what? They should have got her in at the end of War Between the Land and the Sea. She's still around, she's not working. And she turns up, she's like, hello, Fish Girl, and Mr. Taby. Welcome to Atlantis. That would have been even a thing, they were never gonna make a second series, but it would just have been a brilliant way to top it off.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:28

I'm into it. Like, I mean, why not at that point? Why not? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:31

Fuck it. What else are we gonna do? We lost the contract.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:37

Yeah, brilliant comic strip, so wonderful to jump back into it. And um, you know, but there's been more positives than negatives over the course of Megan, but there has been a few negatives. But I'm so happy to revisit this one. So an absolute banger from me. What about you? Oh god, 100% banger.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:54

The whole range banger across the board.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:57

Read them all. Read them all, absolutely. Well, thank you for joining me today.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:04

If people want to find you on the internet, where can they find you? I'm on X and uh Blue Sky and Instagram as Martang M-A-R-T-A-N-G-66 for not particularly interesting things on there, just some ramblings, talking about the underwater menace, things like that. And then other of my sort of the other side of my life, my academic stuff, can be found through academia.edu or research gate, things like that. If you're interested in extreme French cinema or uh language didactics, any of you with a interesting uh range of uh interests?

SPEAKER_02 1:50:34

Listeners at Doctor Who Too Hot for TV and not like So we're heading towards the end of May Gan. There's two more episodes to go. As this goes out, we're a few days away from the 27th of May, which is when the TV movie first broadcast in the United Kingdom. So to celebrate this, I've got a very special guest, and Mr. Philip Siegel is dropping by to do an interview. But until then, I've been Dylan. And I've been Martin. And this has been Doctor Who Too Hot for TV.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:43

I've got I've got five out of six behind me. In fact, if I if I unblur, this is good for people listening, isn't it? But uh Oh, how do I turn my blur off?

SPEAKER_04 1:51:56

It's all gone horribly wrong. Oh there we go.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:04

My room's a bit of a mess at the moment, but up there, there's a mix of Daleks including a couple of millennium Daleks.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:10

Um Have you got those little dancing the little wobbly ones that have come out? I don't know if they've ri that recent. Someone bought me this set of four little No, I've not got them. Just give them a little flick and they just dance for you for a bit. That's quite nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:25

Uh yeah, but this the the shelves are a mess, I need to sort them out.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:29

Um no, never say that. They look beautiful. Can't be too messy. Well, exactly.