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This transcript was created on 2026-06-07 at 09:14:49

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Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 Year Diary.

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The only Doctor Who podcast with plans to nip back in time to 1945 to lace Fred and Mary Ann's highballs with radium.

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I'm Nathan.

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I'm Adam.

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I'm Kate.

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I'm pizza.

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It's the 15th of August, 1991.

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Just over 2 months ago, Virgin Publishing launched a new series of original novels to broad, deep, wide and thick for the small screen.

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The Virgin New Adventures. which would serve as our only source of new Doctor Who for nearly 10 years, you know, apart from that one night in 1996.

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And who else should they tap to contribute to the range, but Terrence Dix, the man who has written more Doctor Who novels than anyone else ever, and whose association with the show stretches back more than 20 years.

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Can Terence create original Doctor Who for a new decade, a new era, and a new medium?

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Let's find out as we head back to Nazi occupied London in 1951 for Timeworm Exodus.

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So, this is the second of Virgin's new adventures in the second in the timeworm series.

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Maybe we could just talk briefly about what the Virgin New Adventures meant to us, perhaps.

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Well, I know for Kate, it was a living for a little while.

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At that point, it was certainly my ambition.

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As soon as I saw those guidelines, that's what I'm going to have a go at.

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Yeah.

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I submitted one.

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I was 19.

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I got told there was too much running around getting caught in escaping.

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I'm like, yes, that's Doctor Who.

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Someone brought up on season 22.

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It's literally what it was it was a Colin Baker one.

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Kate, I remember back in those days.

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I remember that virtually as soon as they published the guidelines on it, you were like, I'm going to make my 1st submission and your 1st novel comes around very quickly.

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Yeah.

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My 1st attempt was refused for similar reasons.

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It was too linear.

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It was too preachy.

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Yeah, was it?

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The sequel to the arc with the refusion.

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Rubbish.

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I did a 2nd one and that was sort of, yes, maybe. and I thought, God, that's encouraging.

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Yeah.

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And then the 3rd one, it was like, that's the left-handed hummingbird.

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So yeah, but I mean, I was just going to keep shooting off attempts until they had to publish a manuscript just so that they could actually leave the office.

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Get all paper out of the way.

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That was the old days when it was actual paper.

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Like you had to send in physical, like now you're just far off an email and go, can you publish my thing?

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They're like, nah.

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I think I remember seeing like manuscripts of yours, you know, double spaced and all of that sort of thing, pieces of paper.

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Yeah.

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So this is before your published, obviously, and this is the 1st Tet trilogy of stories, and we've had John Peel, is it?

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Yes, they did the 1st one.

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The weirdly rapey Gilgamesh one.

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Yeah.

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Like the dawn of civilisation business.

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And so it's called Genesis with a Y. like the Terminator movie.

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All things where you spell Genesis with a Y of questionable quality.

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That's true.

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This is Exodus without a Y.

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It doesn't seem to have anything to do with an actual exodus.

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Apart from the fact that it's set during the war and they mentioned Jews twice and they're, you know.

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And they all eventually moved to Israel.

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Like, other than that, yeah, it's weird, isn't it?

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And then we have 2 that are both called like Revelation and Apocalypse, which are the same book.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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Well, nobody's going to do Timeworm Kings 2 or something.

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Yeah, yeah, Timeworm Matthew.

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Time worm Leviticus.

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Oh, Lord, you thought Genesis was raping?

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And of course you get Terrence to do one.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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I mean, the great mystery is that Terence wasn't asked to go thirst.

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Yeah.

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And he will next time, won't he?

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Yeah, let's see how that goes.

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But he was the obvious choice too, if not go first, to be very early on, because what I think Terence gives in the product and with his reputation is he brings fans board.

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It's like, don't be scared.

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Terrence is involved.

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It's like a halfway house between the novelisations and sort of the 2 broad, 2 deep stories that are to come in the novel range and I think it was a very canny idea having him.

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Yeah, it kind of legitimises it in a way.

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It's like, 0 no, this is the guy you know from the show.

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And that you've read all his 4000 books as a 12 year old.

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That's right.

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And, you know, if you're not sure if the novels are going to be like the TV show, read this because this is going to read exactly like a novelisation of the TV show.

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Yes.

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And I think he does a very good job.

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I have to say that I didn't really enjoy it very much.

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But he certainly does what we expect Terrence to do.

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You know, it's a plot where things happen.

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There's a range of different villains.

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It's a sequel to something that we've covered already, which I had forgotten.

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Did you forget about that?

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Yeah, yeah, it's really funny.

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I actually think.

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Because I collected all of the new adventures all the way up till Falls the Shadow and Falls the Shadow defeated me.

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It's just like, I...

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And they're still all upstairs somewhere under a 100 different unopened Lego kits that will be getting rid of at Calvin's wake.

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And so I will never see them again.

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So I definitely had a copy of it, but I actually don't think I ever read it.

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And obviously at the time, I don't think I had seen, had we seen the War Games by 1991.

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The war games, I believe, was released in 1990 or 1991.

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Okay, okay.

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So maybe we had seen it.

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Oh, yeah, I think it was on telly, wasn't it?

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before then?

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1969, yes. repeat just.

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Because I remember seeing the war games before and, you know, had read the book, obviously.

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But yeah, I was living in the UK when these came out, and it was exciting and fun and because I'd moved over there in 91, waiting for Doctor Who to come back on, as we all were.

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I thought you'd be 1st in the queue.

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Well, I'm going to see it before it gets to Australia 6 months or 4 years later. as was the style at the time.

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And yeah, so these came out and I was like almost, like on one hand, it was like a great big fat sign saying, you know, it's not coming back.

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And I'd enjoyed reading some of those Star Trek books.

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Like some of those were great.

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You know, you had great writers like Greg Bear and Vonder McIntyre writing those kind of things.

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So I was like, oh, maybe this is the, you know, this will be Doctor Who's version.

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And it wasn't.

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On the whole, no.

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But there are some spectacular ones, including ones written by people in the room.

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Yeah.

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On the call with us now.

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Well, you know, there's only a handful of new adventures that I've read twice.

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Wow.

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And that's not any indictment of them.

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You know, there's something you got.

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I got every single one of them.

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I enjoyed most of them.

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I read them all.

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The ones I returned to twice.

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Obviously, Kate's because she's a friend and because they're all exceptionally good.

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And also, Timeline Exodus, because when you want that little charge of Terenceism, and you want something which is so aligned with the series as it was and reads like the Doctor Who of your childhood.

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It's a go-to book.

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So I think I've read Exodus maybe 3 or 4 times.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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One thing I do love about Terrence's writing is it's like Agatha Christie.

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It is unmistakeable.

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It is straightforward.

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It's easy to read.

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And he has a turn of phrase that you go, oh, we're using that now, aren't we?

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I mean, sometimes he does some really genuinely clever things with language.

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And of course, I think if we all thought hard enough, we would be able to come up with words that we learned from reading novelisations by Terrence, words that he introduced us to.

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I didn't know what a tunic was for most of my life, but I knew that it was a thing.

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Voluminous.

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Capacious.

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Yeah, yeah.

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So, I mean, that's a huge deal.

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And it was super readable.

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Like I did find myself going through it.

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And I think a lot of the younger writers wanted to be challenging.

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And so you would have the sort of every 2nd chapter would be in italics and seem to have nothing to do with what was going on.

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I mean, even Exodus false victim.

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Oh yeah.

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You know, that sort of thing where it's just like, really, this is much, much more work than I want to do to read a TV tie in book at this point, where Terrence writes very straightforwardly and breezily and interestingly, and he makes things happen.

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He outlines pretty clear characters and stuff.

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Like, I think there's a lot of virtue to it.

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I do think, though, Terrence wrote the novelisations for children.

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The TV show was for adults, but the novelisations were for children.

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And here he is writing for adults.

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And I think what he's decided is that what adults like is things that are mostly boring.

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So, um, so with children, you know, you've got to throw a monster in or something thrilling, but this is just going to be like people talking quite a lot.

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And I used to say when we did the 60s stories in flights through entirety, that a story would be vastly improved by flinging a terraleptyl in, uh, uh, and the Aztecs with a pteroreptyl.

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Do you know what I mean?

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The Romans with the pter leptol.

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Oh my god, the massacre with a whole bunch of pteroactic.

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Or is the deep.

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It would actually be much better.

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And clearly as well.

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So Terrence is born in 1935.

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So when he's a little boy, the war is going on and he's of sort of Doctor Who age when it finishes and clearly he's super interested in the war, you've heard his opinion about the Nazis, Peter, what did he say?

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What an incredible bunch of cooks.

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And it shows very much in this novel.

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Yeah, in fact, one of the things that's really striking about reading the novel in 2025.

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Oh my god.

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Yeah, yeah.

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He's just Hitler's not a great orator.

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He's an idiot.

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He's sort of basically incompetent.

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His speech is are all about nothing.

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They're long rambling rallies where he just doesn't talk about it.

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And just starts screaming.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And people get riled up by the screaming and the yelling.

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And then everyone's making money.

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Like everyone's a crook.

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Everyone's on the take and so they're making money for themselves. describes more physically and such grotesque time.

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Oh, yeah, ratty and corpulent.

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Not together.

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And so, you know, this is his thing.

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This is the thing that he's been longing to ride, I think.

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And so he does go to the alternative earth where the Nazis won, and it's his 2nd Doctor Who novelisation where he's done that, because of course he did Dalek Invasion of Earth.

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And it's a little bit of a kind of, it's played, I think, by 1991.

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We've had a lot of those. over the years.

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Philip K. Dix, but spectacular work, the man in the high castle, where you're just like, oh yeah, this is what happens.

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Right.

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Well, remember the story which Terrence Scripted is at Inferno.

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Yeah, where they're living in that Britain, where fascism won.

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This almost feels like an upside down version of Inferno where it like it starts in the alternate world and then goes back. instead of starting in our world and then going to the fascist world.

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I can just see Terrence getting those instructions from Virgin publishing.

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These books are for adults.

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You can do adult things in them.

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These are not novelisations. children that have to be safe.

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John Peel, I think perhaps interpreted that as you can be sexy.

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So...

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Inverted colours.

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You know, he did not shy away from such topics.

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No, I'm Genesis.

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And Charice's thought, if this is not for kids, I can actually go in amongst Nazis.

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Yeah.

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I can have the doctor help Hitler.

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I mean, it's part of our plan.

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But this is kind of a taboo area where, you know, you're not really supposed to see these, especially these high ranking Nazis.

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There's anything human at all.

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And they are in his version.

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They are very flawed, very corrupt human beings.

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And we kind of, we will take their point of view for a page and just sort of see what makes them tick and then go to somewhere else.

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You make certain among them quite likeable way.

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Like, I'm thinking general stressor in the Britain timeline early on and Goring actually come across quite well and you catch yourself double thinking.

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Hang on.

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Wait, wait.

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Yeah, even Borman seems like a fairly decent guy.

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It's like, oh, yeah, he's just good at doing his paperwork.

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I think a clever thing that Terrence has done is because the doctor's got ace, essentially a child figure or an adolescent figure with him.

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She can do the appropriate moral reactions to everything.

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As soon as Hitler says something about the Jews, she's furious, but the doctor stops her from doing anything that would get them killed.

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Then the doctor can be the one who goes in and manipulates the Nazis, interacts with them, pretends to be their pal, because we have this moral centre by his side.

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And I think that's actually quite a clever use of them.

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Although I object to having a faint, a scream and faint.

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No, that's that's just a mischaracterize.

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And even she points that out.

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There's a hilarious line later on where she says, honest professor, me screaming and fainting, but she's embarrassed and he responds, you've got to stop clinging to this macho image, which I thought was hilarious.

227
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He says he would be screaming the place down if he was in the same situation.

228
00:15:44.460 --> 00:15:51.360
What you were saying about the fact that Terence takes his instructions as being more adult.

229
00:15:51.419 --> 00:16:04.620
I like what that allows him to do with characterising the doctor because there's a very striking moment early on where the doctor physically attacks the 2 thugs who are harassing the guy at the festival of Britain.

230
00:16:04.679 --> 00:16:06.120
And that's quite a striking moment.

231
00:16:06.120 --> 00:16:11.580
And you wouldn't imagine that happening on television, but I think Terrence has gone, the stakes here are high.

232
00:16:11.639 --> 00:16:14.340
There's Nazi thugs in charge of the world at this point.

233
00:16:14.399 --> 00:16:17.039
There's these 2 small-time villains hassling this guy.

234
00:16:17.159 --> 00:16:22.320
When the doctor assumes his role as kind of the Nazi who they're going to defer to.

235
00:16:22.379 --> 00:16:26.039
The fact that he physically beats them around the head is quite shocking.

236
00:16:26.460 --> 00:16:29.460
I have to say that I didn't like that at all.

237
00:16:29.519 --> 00:16:46.440
And there is something where part of the thing about hanging around with the Nazis is that they put you in moral peril because, you know, in a way, it's okay and perhaps even in some circumstances morally obligatory to punch them in the face.

238
00:16:46.500 --> 00:16:55.919
But the doctor sometimes comments on that feeling of wanting to do that, both in AC and in himself, that the Nazis are corrupting morally.

239
00:16:55.980 --> 00:17:06.599
But for me, the problem that I have is that it's a misunderstanding of Sylvester McCoy's doctor, that he is never physically violent, that he never, ever shoots someone.

240
00:17:06.660 --> 00:17:09.180
Remember when Terrence was script editing.

241
00:17:09.240 --> 00:17:14.160
You had Pertwe shooting Ogons with guns and killing them. for that.

242
00:17:14.339 --> 00:17:17.759
But Sylvester McCoy's doctor would never, ever do that.

243
00:17:17.819 --> 00:17:19.859
You have ace shooting people dead.

244
00:17:19.920 --> 00:17:21.720
You have ace blowing people up.

245
00:17:21.779 --> 00:17:25.740
That's something that would never, ever have happened in the McCoy era.

246
00:17:25.799 --> 00:17:43.559
And all of the kind of moral peril and stuff that the doctor is in, is things like blowing up Scaro or blowing up the cyberfleet or whatever, which is done from a distance, but he himself is never violent and he prevents people in his presence from using guns if he can.

247
00:17:43.799 --> 00:17:46.440
And so I thought that that was a misreading of the character.

248
00:17:46.500 --> 00:17:52.920
I mean, Terence has a handle on the doctor, of course, because he creates the character of the doctor in all kinds of ways.

249
00:17:52.980 --> 00:17:55.980
But I don't think he gets McCoy's doctor.

250
00:17:56.039 --> 00:17:59.099
Well, that's because this is a 3rd doctor novel.

251
00:17:59.160 --> 00:18:00.180
Yes, yeah.

252
00:18:00.240 --> 00:18:01.259
Yeah, essentially.

253
00:18:01.380 --> 00:18:04.440
It's hard to imagine the 7th doctor saying, good grief.

254
00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:15.180
I don't find it difficult to envisage to Wester's doctor doing a lot of the things that he does in this book and that hearing him say the things that he says in this book.

255
00:18:15.240 --> 00:18:17.940
But it does strike me as the 3rd doctor a lot.

256
00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:18.839
Yeah, yeah.

257
00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:23.940
I mean, when the doctor punches a Nazi or punches a racist on television in thin ice.

258
00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:30.660
The thing about that that's so great is, firstly, the guy absolutely richly deserves it and so it's fun to watch.

259
00:18:30.720 --> 00:18:33.900
But secondly, it's him losing.

260
00:18:33.960 --> 00:18:42.119
You know, he's he's lectured Bill on retaining her composure and behaving and stuff and then he punches the guy in the face the moment he says anything.

261
00:18:42.180 --> 00:18:43.859
And so it's him being an idiot.

262
00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:45.000
You know what I mean?

263
00:18:45.059 --> 00:18:55.859
Whereas I actually found the scenes of the doctor being violent and the doctor hanging out with the Nazis actually really quite unenjoyable because yeah.

264
00:18:55.920 --> 00:19:08.759
Just because that's, I mean, this version of Doctor Who doesn't have to be the version that I see on TV or anything like that, but it's Sylvester McCoy's doctor that's being portrayed here.

265
00:19:08.819 --> 00:19:12.299
And I just don't think, I think he doesn't capture him.

266
00:19:12.359 --> 00:19:13.980
He's still doing a 1970s.

267
00:19:14.099 --> 00:19:28.319
I think you're right, Kate, that it feels like a 3rd doctor story because the 3rd doctor is like in the firmament with, you know, hanging out of the club with Squidge or whatever his name is and being part of that whole sort of, you know, Boney, I said.

268
00:19:28.380 --> 00:19:28.680
Yeah.

269
00:19:28.680 --> 00:19:31.680
Like all of that kind of thing.

270
00:19:31.740 --> 00:19:38.339
And you can see the 3rd doctor just like settling down with a bunch of Nazis and going, yeah, this is this is who's in charge.

271
00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:43.019
I will suck up to them and get what I need out of them and then shut them down.

272
00:19:43.140 --> 00:19:45.900
That's why those scenes really do work well for me.

273
00:19:45.960 --> 00:19:54.299
They're probably my favourite part of the book because while Sylvester's doctor is very good at insinuating himself into a situation, which is what he does there.

274
00:19:54.359 --> 00:20:01.440
The book does a good job of making you realise that the doctor kind of is dripping with contempt at the same time for these people.

275
00:20:01.440 --> 00:20:11.700
I think that's part of Terrence moving it towards more of an adult reader, but I think it's also partly a symptom of the fact that Terrence never novelized a 7th doctor story.

276
00:20:11.759 --> 00:20:26.220
And so when people, and I suspect when he said people, he meant Paul Cornell, told him what to watch, they directed him to the curse of Fenrick to get a handle on Sylvester and Sophie's characters, and he watched it several times over.

277
00:20:26.279 --> 00:20:30.839
And Kursa Frederick is a certain kind of heightened drama for both of those characters.

278
00:20:30.900 --> 00:20:32.880
And I think that's what he latches onto.

279
00:20:41.039 --> 00:20:50.220
Another aspect that would be considered more adult than your average target novelisation would be the existence of torture in this universe.

280
00:20:50.279 --> 00:20:50.819
Yeah.

281
00:20:50.819 --> 00:20:59.220
And I think Terrence has been extremely clever because he's not thinking, I'll run up this for an hour, like 60 year old man who's seen the world and it's not going to be bothered by anything that I tell him.

282
00:20:59.220 --> 00:21:01.500
I've still got to keep the younger readers in mind.

283
00:21:01.559 --> 00:21:09.660
And also, sometimes the person who might get tortured is ace, you know, this is a young woman, so that would be a bit, you know, not on.

284
00:21:09.720 --> 00:21:12.359
So what he does is he keeps torture off screen.

285
00:21:12.420 --> 00:21:15.960
He positions us before torture.

286
00:21:16.019 --> 00:21:22.380
So the doctor and I are sitting in their cell and they can hear these terrible noises off and the doctors explain, look, this is just a psychological softening up.

287
00:21:22.440 --> 00:21:25.559
So he actually takes a scare away for the reader as well as for ace.

288
00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:31.259
And then later, uh, Hemmings tells Ace all the lovely things he would like to do with her, but he never gets the chat.

289
00:21:31.319 --> 00:21:35.279
So it's there, that threat, that Nazi threat is there.

290
00:21:35.339 --> 00:21:37.500
But it's not played out on screen.

291
00:21:37.559 --> 00:21:42.180
I mean, the Holocaust has not played out in the novel either, if that's, that has to be kept off screen.

292
00:21:42.240 --> 00:21:51.119
Otherwise, it's completely incompatible to have, even now these days we have, what are they called now where there's a historical event that cannot be changed?

293
00:21:51.180 --> 00:21:53.759
Fixed point in time.

294
00:21:53.819 --> 00:21:56.640
We have those now so that we can all relax about that.

295
00:21:56.700 --> 00:21:58.500
But we don't have them in 1991.

296
00:21:58.680 --> 00:22:00.660
So if the doctor turns up and there's Nazis around.

297
00:22:00.720 --> 00:22:03.240
He has to defeat them and prevent World War II and prevent the whole.

298
00:22:03.299 --> 00:22:03.779
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

299
00:22:03.900 --> 00:22:04.500
He just starts.

300
00:22:04.559 --> 00:22:06.960
And this is simply not an option to change history like that.

301
00:22:07.019 --> 00:22:11.640
And also, comic book versions of Nazis are as old as the hills.

302
00:22:11.700 --> 00:22:18.720
I mean, look at, say, the Indiana Jones trilogy, where, you know, Indiana Jones comes up and has Hitler sign the book that will show him where the Holy Grail is.

303
00:22:18.779 --> 00:22:21.839
I think you'll find that was kneebore from the planet.

304
00:22:22.259 --> 00:22:24.240
Absolutely was.

305
00:22:24.299 --> 00:22:27.480
Michael Shed doing his best Hitler for the 4th time.

306
00:22:27.599 --> 00:22:28.980
So good.

307
00:22:28.980 --> 00:22:36.779
Whereas you can't include something like the Holocaust in a Doctor Who story because there's just no entertainment value, you know, at all.

308
00:22:36.839 --> 00:22:41.160
You can't infantilize the audience by turning that into an adventure story in any way.

309
00:22:41.220 --> 00:22:47.579
I think that's why we meet Mr. Gold at the beginning, that we're going to gesture in that direction, but we're not going to go any further.

310
00:22:47.640 --> 00:22:48.539
Yeah.

311
00:22:48.539 --> 00:22:49.200
Yeah.

312
00:22:49.259 --> 00:22:58.440
There's some anti-Semitic rhetoric, which is described or mentioned in the description of the big rally in Nuremberg, but we don't hear it so much.

313
00:22:59.160 --> 00:23:01.380
And everything else kind of happens off screen.

314
00:23:01.440 --> 00:23:16.799
And also there's Dr. Krieg's Lightest library, which Ace gets drugged in where you've got all of the Aryan, the pro-Aryan writing, and Terence takes great pains to talk about how dirty and awful Ace feel surrounded by something they've been committed to literature like that.

315
00:23:16.859 --> 00:23:19.079
Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting, isn't it?

316
00:23:19.200 --> 00:23:20.819
Because now it's the manosphere.

317
00:23:23.940 --> 00:23:33.480
I mean, the thing is that Ace, you know, has encountered racism and we had that speech in Ghostlight...

318
00:23:33.539 --> 00:23:34.440
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

319
00:23:34.500 --> 00:23:35.759
And that even gets alluded to.

320
00:23:35.819 --> 00:23:42.539
So she's aware of it, but it's here where it's actually committed to writing as if people are kind of proud of it.

321
00:23:43.140 --> 00:23:48.539
And people, you know, who think and read are committed to these ideas.

322
00:23:48.599 --> 00:23:49.859
Given some kind of serious consideration.

323
00:23:49.980 --> 00:23:51.000
Yeah, yeah.

324
00:23:51.059 --> 00:23:57.480
That's interesting, actually, that it's booked in particular that come in for this sort of execration. in a book.

325
00:23:57.539 --> 00:23:59.819
It's almost like Terrence is saying, there are things.

326
00:23:59.880 --> 00:24:02.400
I'm not going to talk about because they are too disgusting.

327
00:24:02.460 --> 00:24:05.220
Yeah, but they are in other books and I know about it.

328
00:24:05.400 --> 00:24:08.039
It's by Malcolm Hulk.

329
00:24:10.859 --> 00:24:34.920
One thing I found interesting, like when I read this as a kid, like 19, I think, 20, um, was there there had been no real investigation of the history of Hitler and Nazis, which, if you watch certain channels, like SBS, for instance, people of my age seem to be obsessed with, like the rise of the Nazis, how it happened.

330
00:24:35.039 --> 00:24:36.059
Like, it's a constant thing.

331
00:24:36.119 --> 00:24:40.259
But this was the 1st time I think I'd ever read all of it put in that order.

332
00:24:40.319 --> 00:24:56.220
Like, and for a lot of this book is Terrence Dick's writing historical fiction about the rise of Hitler, how it happened, like, you know, the various points at which the war started, you know, going to Dunkirk, all that kind of thing.

333
00:24:56.279 --> 00:25:05.160
And, yeah, I think that's his main concern and trying to jam in the other bits of the Doctor Whoisms, I feel like a last minute thing.

334
00:25:05.160 --> 00:25:12.119
He's like, oh, yeah, I've got to have the doctor there, an ace turn up, but mainly he seems to be concerned about writing the history of Hitler.

335
00:25:12.180 --> 00:25:17.880
It's really funny too because there's 2 levels of Doctor Whoness involved in this story.

336
00:25:17.940 --> 00:25:21.180
And one is that it's a sequel to the war games.

337
00:25:21.240 --> 00:25:27.839
And we observed a few weeks ago that the War Games wasn't really allowed to do World War II.

338
00:25:27.900 --> 00:25:31.319
No, it was yeah, too soon and kind of too serious.

339
00:25:31.380 --> 00:25:34.980
And so the latest war that it can do is World War one.

340
00:25:35.039 --> 00:25:38.339
And so he makes it a sequel to the war games.

341
00:25:38.339 --> 00:25:46.259
And he even comments on the premise of the war games and has the war chiefs say, actually, that was a ridiculously overcomplicated plot.

342
00:25:46.319 --> 00:25:50.819
And I could have just got the Nazis to take over the galaxy and it would have been fine.

343
00:25:50.880 --> 00:25:53.700
And this is the 4 episode version, not the 10th.

344
00:25:54.180 --> 00:25:59.700
I don't know. the bit in alternate universe. feels like a couple of episodes.

345
00:26:00.240 --> 00:26:03.900
And then, of course, there's the timeworm.

346
00:26:03.900 --> 00:26:11.700
And so the timeworm is trapped in Hitler's mind and unable to do anything.

347
00:26:11.759 --> 00:26:19.200
Yeah. and the people in the other Doctor Who plot in the war chief plot are aware of it but don't know what it is.

348
00:26:19.259 --> 00:26:25.019
And so I think it's his way of containing the timeworm so he doesn't have to do a timeworm story.

349
00:26:25.079 --> 00:26:31.019
He wants to do a sequel to the war games, but even more than that, he wants to write about World War II.

350
00:26:31.079 --> 00:26:35.460
And so he does a great job of making it a sequel to the war games.

351
00:26:35.519 --> 00:26:37.079
That seems like the obvious thing to do.

352
00:26:37.200 --> 00:26:40.500
And then he gets to put the timeworm to one side.

353
00:26:40.559 --> 00:26:44.400
So it can be dealt with in the italics chapter at the beginning.

354
00:26:44.460 --> 00:26:46.920
And then in the coder at the end.

355
00:26:47.099 --> 00:26:52.440
That's clever if you're going to have the timeworm change history and make the Nazis win.

356
00:26:52.500 --> 00:26:56.940
You are sort of thinking like, do we have scenes with Hitler and the time where I'm shaking hands?

357
00:26:56.940 --> 00:27:05.640
But the idea, I liked the fact that the timeworm is present in Hitler's mind, that this is, she's trapped in the mind of a madman.

358
00:27:05.880 --> 00:27:15.779
She gives him a little bit of extra power and he's a little bit more charismatic and convincing and what have you, but she isn't the one going, I will now make the Nazis win.

359
00:27:15.839 --> 00:27:16.380
Yes.

360
00:27:16.440 --> 00:27:22.440
So, you know, it eventually does end up in Britain getting conquered in the alternative timeline.

361
00:27:22.500 --> 00:27:23.880
It's enough to cause that.

362
00:27:23.940 --> 00:27:28.859
But it's not simple cause and the fact that the timeworm says now, now the Nazis will win.

363
00:27:28.920 --> 00:27:37.200
I actually had a similar problem with wheat Zealand and the left-handed hummingbird because somebody pointed this out to me when I was 2 thirds of the way through writing it, I think.

364
00:27:37.259 --> 00:27:41.099
It looked like New Zealand was responsible for violence in human history.

365
00:27:41.160 --> 00:27:43.380
The way that I was portraying it.

366
00:27:43.440 --> 00:27:45.480
I thought, oh my god, that's not what I'm trying to get at.

367
00:27:45.539 --> 00:27:48.720
I'm not trying to you know, give history an excuse like that.

368
00:27:48.779 --> 00:27:51.420
So I had to make certain things more clear.

369
00:27:51.480 --> 00:27:53.339
But I think that's what Terrence has done here.

370
00:27:53.400 --> 00:28:02.819
I mean, the funny thing is that, of course, the defeat of Britain is caused by the war chief rather than the timeworm.

371
00:28:02.880 --> 00:28:06.359
And the doctor says this doesn't smell like the time worm.

372
00:28:06.420 --> 00:28:12.359
You know, this is an intervention in history that doesn't feel like what the time worm would do.

373
00:28:12.420 --> 00:28:27.240
And there is a huge problem with kind of putting aliens in, um, it's a problem that we managed to avoid, for instance, in Rosa, by having the villain be a human being for a start, just a racist white guy.

374
00:28:27.299 --> 00:28:34.500
And by keeping Rosa away from any sort of ridiculous science fiction nonsense in the episode.

375
00:28:34.559 --> 00:28:52.079
And here, I think, making Hitler a little bit more charismatic, because clearly everyone imagines what Terrence is doing, one of the things that he wants to make clear is that Hitler was actually hopeless and incompetent, and that that was a good thing.

376
00:28:52.140 --> 00:29:01.859
And, you know, coming after Trump's 1st presidency, again, where he was just an he's just an idiot and surrounded by people who are also idiots.

377
00:29:01.920 --> 00:29:04.559
And so he's an incompetent dictator.

378
00:29:04.619 --> 00:29:16.680
We don't need the timeworm to explain why Hitler was such a convincing orator despite being so bad at it because we've been living through it for the last 10 years.

379
00:29:16.740 --> 00:29:20.519
It struck me a little bit that there was conflicting instructions here.

380
00:29:20.579 --> 00:29:24.539
You know, we've always talked about sort of the one more draft kind of theory of things.

381
00:29:24.599 --> 00:29:42.299
I think the plot of this could have had another draft because they're a bit conflicting, the timeworm, and the warlords, one of them should have created the situation whereby Hitler's oratory is a little bit more powerful, and then he doesn't make stupid decisions, so the invasion of Britain happens.

382
00:29:42.299 --> 00:29:46.920
To have 2 of them, and one of them sidelined seems a bit muddled to me.

383
00:29:46.980 --> 00:29:57.180
Yeah, I think it is just because he's got a brief, you know, he's had to shoehorn in the arc staff and he's done it as ungraciously as possible, I think.

384
00:29:57.599 --> 00:30:00.240
I want to ask Kate.

385
00:30:00.299 --> 00:30:05.579
Was the timeline on submitting, once you'd been accepted, was that really tight?

386
00:30:05.640 --> 00:30:08.099
Was that a tight turnaround to get a draft in?

387
00:30:08.160 --> 00:30:09.900
Almost always, yes.

388
00:30:10.019 --> 00:30:19.259
Lie-handed Hummingbird was written over 9 months and you can tell the difference between that book and later books that I wrote because they would be more like 3 or 4 months.

389
00:30:19.319 --> 00:30:19.980
Yeah.

390
00:30:19.980 --> 00:30:21.059
So yeah, it's pretty quick.

391
00:30:21.119 --> 00:30:22.680
Yeah, and knowing Terrence.

392
00:30:24.240 --> 00:30:26.880
They probably could produce.

393
00:30:26.880 --> 00:30:27.420
Yeah, yes.

394
00:30:27.420 --> 00:30:28.619
Publishable material.

395
00:30:28.680 --> 00:30:32.640
Yeah, without needing a 2nd draft, but wouldn't it be great if he did take one?

396
00:30:33.420 --> 00:30:36.839
I mean, I actually don't mind...

397
00:30:36.839 --> 00:30:42.900
It's a little bit like the way that the Reebus operation makes fun of its arc story.

398
00:30:42.960 --> 00:30:55.500
It's just like there's been over the heretic being told that there aren't godlike forces warring over the planet in a story that's entirely part of an arc that is about godlike forces warrior in the universe.

399
00:30:55.559 --> 00:31:02.039
And so Terrence is kind of going, yes, there is going to be a change in history, but psych, it's not the time where I'm doing it at all.

400
00:31:02.099 --> 00:31:04.259
It's my made-up guy.

401
00:31:04.859 --> 00:31:10.920
I think what Adam was saying about the fact that Terrence really just wants to talk about the 2nd world.

402
00:31:11.339 --> 00:31:20.700
I think that's right because I think maybe the 1st half of the book is the more successful part and all of that alternate history stuff in Britain.

403
00:31:20.759 --> 00:31:22.500
It feels like Terrence is really enjoying that.

404
00:31:22.619 --> 00:31:30.480
So going from the Festival of Britain to the Savoy Hotel occupied by, you know, the Nazi hierarchy to like the resistance calf.

405
00:31:30.539 --> 00:31:32.940
And by the way, oddly for Terence.

406
00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:34.740
He gets the directions wrong.

407
00:31:34.799 --> 00:31:40.380
When he says you go from the Festival of Britain, over Waterloo Bridge, left onto the Strand, and right into the Savoy.

408
00:31:40.440 --> 00:31:40.920
It's not.

409
00:31:40.980 --> 00:31:43.079
It over Waterloo Bridge, left on the strand and left.

410
00:31:43.680 --> 00:31:47.039
Very unusual for Terrence. alternative universe.

411
00:31:47.279 --> 00:31:50.099
Alternative map topography.

412
00:31:50.160 --> 00:31:52.559
Maybe the Nazis moved the door.

413
00:31:52.859 --> 00:31:55.259
Move to the Savoy, yeah.

414
00:31:55.319 --> 00:31:57.000
The tunnel now.

415
00:31:57.059 --> 00:31:59.640
Those rotters. put it past them.

416
00:31:59.700 --> 00:32:00.720
How dare they?

417
00:32:03.779 --> 00:32:09.000
But I think you can tell because those early chapters are far and away the best.

418
00:32:09.059 --> 00:32:10.680
They're very evocative.

419
00:32:10.740 --> 00:32:22.500
So those scenes traipsing around the dismal festival of Britain with like only old people there and children. paints a really bleak picture and Terence, I think, revels in it.

420
00:32:22.559 --> 00:32:34.740
Once the Doctor Who stuff gets in the way and you're off to a castle in Germany somewhere with kind of zombies running around. and the war chief has suddenly turned up and now he's being tereptilized.

421
00:32:34.799 --> 00:32:37.740
Yeah, I think maybe the sheen comes off a little bit.

422
00:32:37.799 --> 00:32:40.319
There's wonderful descriptions of food in that book.

423
00:32:40.380 --> 00:32:41.279
Oh yeah.

424
00:32:41.339 --> 00:32:50.099
Everybody's starving and occupied Britain, but they keep getting bread and cheese and cold meats and these incredible descriptions of the menu.

425
00:32:50.160 --> 00:32:52.140
Even though they're prisoners.

426
00:32:52.200 --> 00:32:54.299
That stuff talking about tea.

427
00:32:54.359 --> 00:32:56.279
Oh yeah, the her set's tea tastes awful.

428
00:32:56.339 --> 00:33:01.259
And then you get the real tea at the end when you get to the real festival of Britain. you're like, oh, that's right.

429
00:33:01.319 --> 00:33:02.039
The tea's good again.

430
00:33:02.099 --> 00:33:05.640
Even though there was rationing and it probably was like 4 leaves.

431
00:33:05.700 --> 00:33:06.900
They do mention it, though.

432
00:33:06.960 --> 00:33:08.400
They do mention the rationing.

433
00:33:08.700 --> 00:33:12.299
Yeah, there is that sort of Terrence thing.

434
00:33:12.359 --> 00:33:18.660
We've talked about, there's a kind of vague sort of liberalism and a sort of soft leftness to his writing.

435
00:33:18.720 --> 00:33:25.380
And so there's that moment where he says, everywhere in the world, wherever you are, the people on top are doing very nicely.

436
00:33:25.440 --> 00:33:25.920
Thank you.

437
00:33:26.700 --> 00:33:29.880
And he makes that sort of very clear.

438
00:33:29.940 --> 00:33:30.660
Yeah.

439
00:33:30.660 --> 00:33:38.039
I have a problem with, with, we can't change history, and the whole thing is that we have to make World War 2 happen.

440
00:33:38.039 --> 00:33:45.660
And it is on a bigger scale. what happens in Rosa, you know, our job in Rosa is to ensure that a racism happens.

441
00:33:45.720 --> 00:33:52.500
And I think part of the problem with it is that it makes the doctor seem powerless.

442
00:33:52.500 --> 00:34:02.160
And it also makes up a rule that the doctor has to adhere to that doesn't resemble any actual kind of moral rule.

443
00:34:02.220 --> 00:34:07.140
So the idea that we can't change history seems to me to be ridiculous.

444
00:34:07.200 --> 00:34:13.320
There are certain things that if you go back in time you're not allowed to do those things, but you can do them normally.

445
00:34:13.380 --> 00:34:16.019
I mean, it would have taken just a line.

446
00:34:16.079 --> 00:34:24.539
Like, you know how there's, obviously this is about World War 2, but it's said about the Daleks, like, you know, out of such horror, some good will come.

447
00:34:24.599 --> 00:34:28.260
And, you know, it just could have been bringing up penicillin.

448
00:34:28.320 --> 00:34:29.699
That wouldn't have happened without the war.

449
00:34:29.760 --> 00:34:49.019
Like, or, you know, radar or any of the 100s of things that were invented cryptography, like all of that stuff that came out of the war because of the necessity of fighting the Nazis and the Japanese and trying to innovate and the innovations that came from it.

450
00:34:49.079 --> 00:34:55.679
But yeah, because necessity being the mother of invention, you could easily just drop a line in.

451
00:34:55.739 --> 00:35:05.820
Then the doctor's like, we can't do this because then we won't have X, Y, Z. To be fair, the one thing that he does do is he says, it's the war that wipes the Nazis out.

452
00:35:05.880 --> 00:35:09.480
And that's why I don't think we necessarily need qualification about it.

453
00:35:09.539 --> 00:35:12.239
I agree with you to an extent in some circumstances.

454
00:35:12.300 --> 00:35:16.800
But I think in this one and especially from a very British point of view.

455
00:35:16.860 --> 00:35:22.739
World War 2 and stopping the Nazis. is kind of the shining gem in British history.

456
00:35:22.800 --> 00:35:34.019
It's the one moment where they actually protected the world from something dreadful and really were the last 4 standing in their way for possibly years until Americans came aboard.

457
00:35:34.079 --> 00:35:39.360
And I think just the fact that you can point to World War 2 as a just war.

458
00:35:39.420 --> 00:35:43.320
It was stopping a terrible evil is really all you need in this situation.

459
00:35:43.380 --> 00:35:44.159
Yeah.

460
00:35:44.159 --> 00:35:46.260
It's why it's better than World War one.

461
00:35:46.260 --> 00:35:52.920
And, you know, the war game shows a fairly healthy suspicion of what's going on in World War one, I think.

462
00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:06.599
It's why Waters of Mars is so ridiculous.

463
00:36:06.659 --> 00:36:12.900
It's kind of like, I mustn't save these people because someone will have to re-edit their Wikipedia pages.

464
00:36:13.139 --> 00:36:15.239
I was killed on Mars.

465
00:36:15.300 --> 00:36:16.440
Now I shot myself in my home.

466
00:36:16.500 --> 00:36:19.559
I'm sure history will just go on. rails after that.

467
00:36:19.619 --> 00:36:30.000
But you see, that's the counterexample, which proves the point, I think, because in the waters of Mars, they have to go to a great extent to tell you why it's so important that history doesn't get changed.

468
00:36:30.059 --> 00:36:32.940
Whereas we all know that the Nazis had to be stopped.

469
00:36:33.000 --> 00:36:34.199
Yes, yeah.

470
00:36:34.260 --> 00:36:43.559
And again, you know, why Ace can't kill Hitler in 1926 is the fear that someone competent might take over and would win the war. spells that out.

471
00:36:43.679 --> 00:36:45.360
Yeah, yeah. really enjoyed that.

472
00:36:45.420 --> 00:36:55.559
I really enjoyed the idea that Hitler was completely useless and, you know, they wouldn't have tried to fight a war on 2 fronts if he wasn't so megalomaniacal.

473
00:36:55.679 --> 00:36:55.980
Yeah.

474
00:36:55.980 --> 00:36:58.019
And he was also an anglophile.

475
00:36:58.079 --> 00:37:11.760
And so the fact that he halted his troops pushing the Allied forces into the sea at Dunkirk out of this kind of bizarre preoccupation with the fact that Britain might become friends with him might go, oh, okay, it's fine.

476
00:37:11.820 --> 00:37:19.860
That was always going to be madness, but that was him, and that was probably the key turning point where the Brits were able to save their forces and then fight on.

477
00:37:19.920 --> 00:37:20.639
Yeah.

478
00:37:20.699 --> 00:37:29.639
I mean, you know, who knows how close he was at that point to thinking, oh, I will be able to install a different king and they'll just do what I tell them.

479
00:37:29.760 --> 00:37:35.639
Like, yeah, I love time travel story set in World War II.

480
00:37:35.699 --> 00:37:43.019
Like one of my favourites is the Connie Willis books blackout and all clear, which take place throughout the whole of the blitz, basically.

481
00:37:43.440 --> 00:37:45.780
Is it people going back in time?

482
00:37:45.840 --> 00:37:48.000
Yeah, they have to do a history practice at Oxford.

483
00:37:50.340 --> 00:37:52.619
I've heard of those.

484
00:37:52.679 --> 00:37:54.360
They're so great.

485
00:37:54.420 --> 00:37:58.079
But they get trapped there and they can't kind of get out and they meet Agatha Christie.

486
00:37:58.139 --> 00:38:20.340
She's dispensing pills at the hospital and, you know, they make these ridiculous ragamuffins in the East End and it's just lots of hiding in tube stations, but yeah, there's this constant idea of like you can't change anything because so much of what happens afterwards is because of this war. as awful as it is.

487
00:38:20.400 --> 00:38:21.599
It's just a constant thing.

488
00:38:21.659 --> 00:38:30.719
But I mean, you're not allowed when someone collapses on the street, you're not allowed to withhold 1st aid from them in case they grow up to become a dictator in the future.

489
00:38:30.780 --> 00:38:31.739
You know what I mean?

490
00:38:31.800 --> 00:38:35.039
Like we don't make moral decisions like that in practice.

491
00:38:35.219 --> 00:38:36.960
Maybe you don't.

492
00:38:40.619 --> 00:38:45.000
One thing I'll tell you one thing I really hate is the fact that I'm now living through history.

493
00:38:45.059 --> 00:38:45.960
I know.

494
00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:50.699
I always tell myself, Kate, you had 50 years of living through not history.

495
00:38:50.760 --> 00:38:56.340
Just peace, prosperity, lots of terrible things happening overseas, but nothing happening to you and your family personally.

496
00:38:56.400 --> 00:38:59.639
And now I'm living through history, so I had only 50 years.

497
00:38:59.699 --> 00:39:11.039
Well, there's a reason that people talk about the post World War 2 order, which held firm for 50 or 60 years, and made sure that there wasn't another worldwide conflict in that time.

498
00:39:11.099 --> 00:39:15.599
Of course, there was, you know, there was wars and there was skirmishers and there was terrible things which happened.

499
00:39:15.659 --> 00:39:18.659
But basically the order insured, a generally peaceful world.

500
00:39:19.260 --> 00:39:28.739
The way that Chris Eggleston's doctor talks about post-war Britain in the empty child, the doctor dances is just tremendous.

501
00:39:29.519 --> 00:39:33.179
I don't think Doctor Who's ever expressed it in quite that way before.

502
00:39:33.239 --> 00:39:34.079
Yeah.

503
00:39:34.139 --> 00:39:35.099
It's really sweet.

504
00:39:35.159 --> 00:39:37.199
It's, it's kind of weird.

505
00:39:37.260 --> 00:39:41.099
It feels weird going back to World War 2 because it was so banned for so long.

506
00:39:41.159 --> 00:39:43.860
Like, like when Cursor Fenwick came on.

507
00:39:43.980 --> 00:39:45.840
I was like, what, why have they been to World War 2 before?

508
00:39:45.900 --> 00:39:46.559
Yeah.

509
00:39:46.619 --> 00:39:47.880
And you go, oh, that's right.

510
00:39:47.940 --> 00:39:50.099
Because it was 20 years earlier when the show started.

511
00:39:50.159 --> 00:39:57.420
It even meant it takes great pains to avoid Germans as the enemies. like Germany doesn't really play a pass in the story.

512
00:39:57.480 --> 00:39:59.940
No, but they're in the silver nemesis.

513
00:40:00.480 --> 00:40:02.820
They're modern Nazis.

514
00:40:02.880 --> 00:40:06.000
That sober addressing of the issue.

515
00:40:08.159 --> 00:40:10.920
Love a neo-Nazi in the 90s.

516
00:40:11.039 --> 00:40:12.960
They seem so deluded.

517
00:40:13.199 --> 00:40:15.780
We have them in government.

518
00:40:24.840 --> 00:40:32.219
I think the whole book is drafted with such economy and wit that it's impossible not to like it.

519
00:40:32.340 --> 00:40:36.179
I think as it goes on, there's possibly too much economy.

520
00:40:36.239 --> 00:40:39.300
I think Terrence is racing through his pleasures a little bit.

521
00:40:39.360 --> 00:40:47.400
And so you get an awful lot of touing and throwing and going from like escaping from places and going to new places and the doctor following Ace and all of that.

522
00:40:47.460 --> 00:40:53.039
And so it reads a little bit like an episode 3 of a TV story, you know, capture escape, capture escape.

523
00:40:53.099 --> 00:41:09.420
And there's certain scenes which I wanted there to be more of, like, some confrontation scenes, those climactic scenes with the doctor and Hitler in the same room where the doctor is called a manipulating Hitler, but also is in the presence of this historical evil.

524
00:41:09.480 --> 00:41:11.760
I wanted more focus to be on that.

525
00:41:11.820 --> 00:41:19.500
And I think it's a slight case of diminishing returns as you go on ending up in a big battle with sort of, you know, a hunchback monster and his zombies at the castle.

526
00:41:19.559 --> 00:41:23.280
And so I think the 2nd half of the novel doesn't quite do justice to the first.

527
00:41:23.340 --> 00:41:29.940
But it's told with such panache and such easy reading that I think it's invaluable that we have it.

528
00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:30.719
Yeah.

529
00:41:30.719 --> 00:41:49.619
The other thing I find is that he's written it like it's a TV episode, like, oh, we'll just hang around outside this one cafe, and look across there, and that can be some footage that was filmed earlier, and then we'll go and be in the Savoy Hotel, and we'll just be in one room, all 2 rooms, and that's it.

530
00:41:49.679 --> 00:41:56.099
And then they go to the castle and they're there for the rest of the time and that's in one or 2 rooms and it's like, you could have left.

531
00:41:56.159 --> 00:41:58.920
Like you could have had a chat in a car.

532
00:41:59.159 --> 00:42:02.099
But it all feels very state and stuff.

533
00:42:02.159 --> 00:42:05.400
I mean, to be fair, there are plenty of chats in cars.

534
00:42:05.460 --> 00:42:07.920
They're smoking it easy for the director.

535
00:42:08.039 --> 00:42:08.639
Exactly.

536
00:42:08.699 --> 00:42:10.079
But it's like...

537
00:42:10.079 --> 00:42:11.519
The director's me.

538
00:42:11.579 --> 00:42:13.079
That's right.

539
00:42:13.079 --> 00:42:14.699
Unlimited budget.

540
00:42:14.760 --> 00:42:15.659
Unlimited budget.

541
00:42:15.719 --> 00:42:18.960
And all I'm seeing is some hastily painted studio flat.

542
00:42:22.019 --> 00:42:34.019
We've been saying about the way Terrence tells a story and we've got this from way back in the War Games, but also in Robot and in Horror Fang Rock, that he's able to make new things happen.

543
00:42:34.079 --> 00:42:42.239
What we don't get is the doctor locked up in episode 3 like we do in the 80s in both robot and Horror Fang Rock.

544
00:42:42.300 --> 00:42:50.280
We have an enemy that has plans and that is doing different things and the doctor is kind of tracking that and responding to that.

545
00:42:50.340 --> 00:42:58.739
So new things happen, new elements, get introduced, and the story never feels like it's artificially keeping us away from the climax.

546
00:42:58.920 --> 00:43:22.380
But here, I got the impression that because he has a kind of didactic purpose, that the storytelling isn't as strong, and I do think that, for instance, going back to 1926 and having the doctor meet Hitler, is largely there so that the doctor can tell Ace, all of this staff.

547
00:43:22.440 --> 00:43:35.519
And I think Terence is aware that Ace is a companion is not like Sarah Jane or Joe, who grew up in a kind of, you know, after the Second World War, in the middle of the 20th century.

548
00:43:35.579 --> 00:43:40.619
And so he has the opportunity to tell the story of the 2nd World War to her.

549
00:43:40.679 --> 00:43:44.579
And so it seemed to me that there was a lot more exposition.

550
00:43:44.699 --> 00:44:00.119
Normally Terence sets things up that are straightforward and comprehensible and don't require a great deal of scaffolding, but here because he really wants to inform us about a thing, he does spend a lot of time just telling Ace the background.

551
00:44:00.179 --> 00:44:02.400
The narrative pauses a fair bit.

552
00:44:02.460 --> 00:44:02.940
Yeah.

553
00:44:02.940 --> 00:44:11.159
Well, just even that even that structure where it's 1951 and then we go to 1926 and then we go to 1939 and all of that sort of thing.

554
00:44:11.219 --> 00:44:18.059
That is the sort of whistle stop tour of the 2nd World War, which is entirely because Terrence wants to tell us about the things.

555
00:44:18.119 --> 00:44:26.400
If he sets it in 1943 or something like that, then he doesn't get to do all of the other things that he wants to include.

556
00:44:26.639 --> 00:44:28.019
Yeah.

557
00:44:28.079 --> 00:44:33.539
And and a McCoy era story really should be all in 1943.

558
00:44:33.539 --> 00:44:34.679
And then you find out.

559
00:44:34.739 --> 00:44:36.599
He's popped back.

560
00:44:36.659 --> 00:44:37.980
He like, I'm just going down the shops.

561
00:44:37.980 --> 00:44:44.219
And then he goes to 26 and it goes to 39 and comes back and you find out he's sewn all these things in.

562
00:44:44.280 --> 00:44:54.780
And, you know, maybe that is the freedom that he has now that he's writing a book rather than doing a television story that he's not going to go for that dramatic unity of place or unity of time.

563
00:44:54.840 --> 00:45:01.619
He can be free of that in a way that you can't be, I guess, in a four-part story or a six-part story.

564
00:45:01.679 --> 00:45:12.119
I mean, it does remind me slightly of Silver Nemesis, where the doctrinates just pop around all over the place, back in time, forwards in time to London, to Windsor.

565
00:45:12.179 --> 00:45:14.699
Like, and so it does ape that.

566
00:45:14.760 --> 00:45:24.300
But yeah, I think Terence is using the structure so that he doesn't just have to sit down with Ace on some stairs, like in remembrance of the Daleks part 3 and explain what's going on.

567
00:45:24.360 --> 00:45:26.760
They actually go there, which is what you can do in a book.

568
00:45:26.820 --> 00:45:29.400
Yeah, I mean, that's the Moffat style thing, isn't it?

569
00:45:29.460 --> 00:45:34.139
Like, why would I have a flashback in this story that has a time machine in it?

570
00:45:34.199 --> 00:45:36.420
where you would just go back in time and do it.

571
00:45:36.480 --> 00:45:39.239
And so he's definitely doing that here.

572
00:45:39.360 --> 00:45:47.280
I also have like this, I don't know, I had this thing in my head of like, he's gone, I've written this normal sized Doctor Who book.

573
00:45:47.340 --> 00:45:50.039
My novelisations are usually quite slim.

574
00:45:50.400 --> 00:45:54.300
And then he's gone, oh, how do I fill up the rest of it?

575
00:45:54.420 --> 00:45:55.860
It's like writing a thesis.

576
00:45:55.920 --> 00:45:58.980
It's like you've gone, I've got I've got this much.

577
00:45:59.039 --> 00:46:04.380
I'm going to do 4 chapters of explaining all of my terms.

578
00:46:05.699 --> 00:46:09.179
Terrence, that is, let's explain Hitler.

579
00:46:09.840 --> 00:46:15.539
For 80% of the book and then like 20% can just be some Doctor Hoopizo at the end.

580
00:46:15.599 --> 00:46:21.059
Well, I mean, maybe the 1951 stuff is the least essential part of it, isn't it?

581
00:46:21.119 --> 00:46:23.519
But he's having fun riding fun, though.

582
00:46:23.579 --> 00:46:24.360
Yeah, yeah.

583
00:46:24.420 --> 00:46:25.860
He's showing us the stakes.

584
00:46:25.920 --> 00:46:26.340
That's fair.

585
00:46:26.460 --> 00:46:27.179
Yeah, yes, yeah.

586
00:46:27.239 --> 00:46:27.599
That's true.

587
00:46:27.659 --> 00:46:28.199
That's true.

588
00:46:28.260 --> 00:46:30.239
And then we go back to a proper 1951.

589
00:46:30.360 --> 00:46:34.800
Yeah, this is this is the brief opening of the door in Pyramids of Mars.

590
00:46:38.039 --> 00:46:39.780
He's just fleshed it out a bit.

591
00:46:41.159 --> 00:46:46.619
You know, I think we can overlook the importance of this book to the new adventures.

592
00:46:46.679 --> 00:46:53.820
Because, obviously, I think it should have been first, but Timeworm Genesis first, he did not receive a good...

593
00:46:53.820 --> 00:46:55.380
No, it was not well received.

594
00:46:55.440 --> 00:47:00.539
I popped onto the timescales review site, and I sampled the reactions timeworm Genesis, and there's some samples.

595
00:47:00.599 --> 00:47:02.460
Infamous and divisive.

596
00:47:02.519 --> 00:47:05.760
Reeks of self-importance, yet feels like fan fiction.

597
00:47:05.820 --> 00:47:09.360
The worst soft reboot this franchise ever spawned.

598
00:47:09.420 --> 00:47:10.139
Ouch.

599
00:47:10.139 --> 00:47:10.679
Oh my god.

600
00:47:10.800 --> 00:47:13.980
Now, none of those criticisms could be applied to Exodus.

601
00:47:14.039 --> 00:47:16.980
And I think if this book hadn't done what it does so well.

602
00:47:17.039 --> 00:47:29.460
If it hadn't kind of swooped in and rescued or put the train back on the rails, I think the new adventures could have been permanently tarred in fandom's eyes as something that was too different.

603
00:47:29.579 --> 00:47:32.280
What this book is is permission.

604
00:47:32.340 --> 00:47:36.059
It's permission for the new adventures to then go off and do different things.

605
00:47:36.119 --> 00:47:44.940
It's permission for Revelation 2 books later or transit half a dozen books later to do their thing because what it's saying is that's a choice.

606
00:47:45.179 --> 00:47:56.519
It's saying to a certain section of fandom, we give you permission to come aboard because we can do this kind of story and this kind of story that you love will still be part of the fiction.

607
00:47:56.579 --> 00:47:57.900
But also we can do these other things.

608
00:47:57.960 --> 00:47:59.159
So come and sample these.

609
00:47:59.219 --> 00:48:03.840
I think it's incredibly important to the new adventures that this book exists.

610
00:48:03.900 --> 00:48:12.659
Also, they're not all going to be sexy. don't panic Even though they tried to do that with the cover and you're like, why does Ace look like she's about to be sacrificed as a virgin?

611
00:48:13.260 --> 00:48:15.960
It's the virgin new adventure.

612
00:48:29.099 --> 00:48:34.260
Can I circle back one more time to Terrence's writing and what it meant to me as a child?

613
00:48:34.320 --> 00:48:35.039
Yeah.

614
00:48:35.099 --> 00:48:38.760
I particularly want to talk about the Pyramids of Mars, novelisation.

615
00:48:38.820 --> 00:48:44.639
Because Terrence told me it was one of his favourite stories to novelize, and you can just see it when you read it.

616
00:48:44.699 --> 00:48:49.199
You know, it's dripping with all of the quality Terenceisms that we know.

617
00:48:49.260 --> 00:48:53.039
The hotel is so evocative and beautifully committed to page.

618
00:48:53.099 --> 00:49:02.820
But the thing which meant a lot to me is this incredible prologue, which tells the story between Sutek and Horus and the science, it goes on for page after page.

619
00:49:02.880 --> 00:49:09.179
It's Terrence's original work rather than someone else's script being novelized, and it's majestic.

620
00:49:09.239 --> 00:49:10.739
It's almost lyrical.

621
00:49:10.800 --> 00:49:12.300
It's like the story from mythology.

622
00:49:12.360 --> 00:49:20.699
It had such an impact on me that when we came at school to study Percy B. Shelley's sonnet Aussie Mandius.

623
00:49:20.760 --> 00:49:28.980
It really captured my imagination, that poem. because it reminded me so heavily of that prologue from the Pyramids Mars.

624
00:49:29.039 --> 00:49:29.940
That sort of took me back there.

625
00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:35.039
So I learnt the words to Ozzymandis by heart and I can still recite them.

626
00:49:35.340 --> 00:49:37.559
From memory. you like me to?

627
00:49:37.619 --> 00:49:38.460
Yes, please.

628
00:49:38.760 --> 00:50:00.239
I met a traveller from an antique land who said, to vast and trunkless legs of stone, stand in the desert, near them on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command tell that its sculpture well those passions read, which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things.

629
00:50:00.300 --> 00:50:03.360
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.

630
00:50:03.420 --> 00:50:06.780
And on the pedestal, these words appear.

631
00:50:06.840 --> 00:50:08.940
My name is Ossimandius, king of kings.

632
00:50:09.000 --> 00:50:11.820
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

633
00:50:11.880 --> 00:50:13.980
Nothing beside remains.

634
00:50:14.159 --> 00:50:21.420
Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.

635
00:50:21.480 --> 00:50:23.219
It's so good isn't it?

636
00:50:23.280 --> 00:50:24.300
It's so good.

637
00:50:24.360 --> 00:50:37.800
And the fact that that was inextricably linked with the pyramids of Mars, in my mind, and that was down to Terence, and it was the fact that I went off and learnt something that was beautiful and literary because of his words.

638
00:50:37.860 --> 00:50:40.440
And I think I'm not alone in that.

639
00:50:40.500 --> 00:50:44.639
I think our generation, he opened the door to so many things.

640
00:50:44.699 --> 00:50:46.320
Oh, yeah. through his book.

641
00:50:46.380 --> 00:50:53.400
So many, you know, so much world building and world learning and sort of going off into different topics, things that you would have known nothing about.

642
00:50:53.460 --> 00:50:57.960
We owe him this debt of gratitude for kind of expanding our horizons a little bit.

643
00:50:58.019 --> 00:50:59.400
Same for me.

644
00:50:59.460 --> 00:51:08.219
Like, I learned that being a writer was a job you could do, like, and I said that as a five-year-old to my parents who said, why don't you get a real job?

645
00:51:08.280 --> 00:51:15.360
Anyway, here I am, professional writer. that owns a house and still feel that horrible thing.

646
00:51:15.659 --> 00:51:17.400
The core of me.

647
00:51:17.460 --> 00:51:27.659
But just because it was a name, like you could attach a name to the things that you loved. like, and that someone was responsible for them and you're like, oh, I want to be that guy.

648
00:51:27.719 --> 00:51:30.420
I want to be the guy that comes up with fun things to do.

649
00:51:30.480 --> 00:51:34.139
And it was, yeah, I think you're right, Peter.

650
00:51:34.199 --> 00:51:45.119
It just makes you feel like you have this entry into a world that you previously didn't know existed and he's responsible for that for so many people.

651
00:51:45.179 --> 00:51:52.559
I always tell the story of reading the novelisation of Planet of the Spiders when I was quite small.

652
00:51:52.619 --> 00:51:56.880
And there's Sarah goes to Metabulous 3.

653
00:51:57.059 --> 00:51:58.679
She's teleported there in an instant.

654
00:51:58.739 --> 00:52:01.980
And I think it's at the beginning of the next chapter.

655
00:52:02.039 --> 00:52:05.219
She's got her eyes shut and she can feel the heat of the desert on her face.

656
00:52:05.280 --> 00:52:09.960
And I remember distinctly thinking, he's telling it from her point of view.

657
00:52:10.019 --> 00:52:11.219
That's what she's experiencing.

658
00:52:11.280 --> 00:52:20.280
It's not what I saw on the television because I would have seen that quite recently and realising that that was a thing you could do and it was my very 1st ever insight into writing.

659
00:52:20.760 --> 00:52:23.760
I must have learned a lot without even realising it.

660
00:52:23.820 --> 00:52:24.360
Yeah.

661
00:52:24.420 --> 00:52:26.579
He was really, really quite incredible.

662
00:52:26.639 --> 00:52:36.179
I have a friend at work who is maybe one of the most voracious readers that I have ever met and people at work and, you know, at Sydney grammar school.

663
00:52:36.239 --> 00:52:37.260
It's an academic school.

664
00:52:37.320 --> 00:52:44.280
People at work go to her and ask her opinion or, you know, what should I read next or what did you think of this?

665
00:52:44.340 --> 00:52:45.960
Does she say underworld?

666
00:52:47.159 --> 00:52:49.320
It's really good book.

667
00:52:49.739 --> 00:52:58.260
But the 1st chapter book that she ever read was the Auton Invasion by Terence Diggs.

668
00:52:58.320 --> 00:53:07.559
And when she went to the Doctor Who experienced years ago, she came back with a copy of the Cave Monsters for me and I had never owned that as a child.

669
00:53:07.619 --> 00:53:15.179
I know that's Malcolm Hulk, but that novelisation of the Orson Invasion, which was the 1st time I ever experienced that story.

670
00:53:15.239 --> 00:53:22.260
I think I read it before I ever saw Spearhead from space, even though that was kind of regularly repeated, is so extraordinary.

671
00:53:22.320 --> 00:53:27.960
Like, and it is the clarity and simplicity, the fact that he doesn't talk down to you.

672
00:53:28.019 --> 00:53:34.139
We've talked about the opening lines, you know, through the ruins of a city, stalk the ruins of a man.

673
00:53:34.199 --> 00:53:36.000
He was a dead man running or whatever.

674
00:53:36.059 --> 00:53:39.300
Like just those wonderful beginnings there.

675
00:53:39.360 --> 00:53:42.000
There's some funny jokes in here.

676
00:53:42.059 --> 00:53:52.500
There are some clever turns of phrase that are almost poetic but not pretentious and it is just something that reads itself in front of you, I think.

677
00:53:52.559 --> 00:54:01.019
It's so, so much easier, so much more fluid, so much more interesting than so many of the other things around it. is really something.

678
00:54:01.079 --> 00:54:03.659
Terrence is the definition of casually brilliant.

679
00:54:03.719 --> 00:54:04.320
Yeah.

680
00:54:04.380 --> 00:54:07.019
Making something really difficult, look easy.

681
00:54:07.079 --> 00:54:07.679
Yeah.

682
00:54:08.400 --> 00:54:15.420
Yeah, I mean, it was that thing that you were talking about the difference between art and craft, but like sometimes I'm not sure there is a difference.

683
00:54:15.480 --> 00:54:24.059
And, you know, like we tend to think of genre fiction or novelisations or something like that is, you know, like that they need to be apologised for.

684
00:54:24.119 --> 00:54:24.659
Do you know what I mean?

685
00:54:24.719 --> 00:54:25.440
They're not art.

686
00:54:25.500 --> 00:54:27.119
They're not art, but they're craft.

687
00:54:27.179 --> 00:54:34.619
We identify it as craft because we don't want to dignify it with a title of art, but that's a kind of snobbery, I think, of sort of genre snobbery, really.

688
00:54:34.800 --> 00:54:43.980
That what he does is he creates something beautiful and meaningful and something that has some kind of impact on the world.

689
00:54:44.639 --> 00:54:50.340
I always define craft as all of the things you do to create something.

690
00:54:50.400 --> 00:54:51.179
Yeah.

691
00:54:51.179 --> 00:54:57.719
And the art is making it better than someone else's.

692
00:54:58.079 --> 00:55:00.840
It's the thing that makes it resonant.

693
00:55:00.900 --> 00:55:05.519
It's the thing that makes you go, oh, I want to read that again. or that was really satisfying.

694
00:55:05.579 --> 00:55:07.739
Like, it's, you know, I felt the same about stand-up.

695
00:55:07.800 --> 00:55:09.960
It's like, I could teach anyone to do a 5 minute set.

696
00:55:10.019 --> 00:55:21.420
Like anyone, but mostly it's just going to be someone being very boring and annoying for 5 minutes and maybe getting a couple of laughs or you could be transcended and create a room full of joy.

697
00:55:21.420 --> 00:55:23.460
And that's the art.

698
00:55:23.579 --> 00:55:27.119
That's the, no, the extra one% that makes it better.

699
00:55:27.179 --> 00:55:30.960
But the craft is like once you know all the rules, you should be able to punch it out.

700
00:55:31.019 --> 00:55:45.179
When you make the distinction between art and craft and genre terms as well, I think people make a distinction between aiming for art, which is more heavyweight literature and doing the craft, which can sometimes become art just by virtue of how well it's done.

701
00:55:45.659 --> 00:55:49.260
It's just that art without craft, I think, isn't really possible.

702
00:55:49.320 --> 00:55:50.519
Do you know what I mean?

703
00:55:50.579 --> 00:55:51.840
Like, it's just wank, really.

704
00:55:51.900 --> 00:55:52.559
I think.

705
00:55:52.619 --> 00:55:53.099
Yeah.

706
00:55:53.159 --> 00:55:53.639
Yeah.

707
00:56:18.300 --> 00:56:22.199
Well, that's all the time we have this week and for this season.

708
00:56:22.260 --> 00:56:30.360
We'll be back early next year for season four of 500 year diary to watch Torchwood, season three, Children of Earth.

709
00:56:30.420 --> 00:56:47.280
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts, and you can keep up with us on our website, 500yearDiary.com, where you'll find our social media links, as well as links to all of our other podcasts, including our other Doctor Who podcasts, flight through entirety, and the 2nd grade and bountiful human empire.

710
00:56:47.340 --> 00:56:54.599
Until next time, remember that you're always allowed to be nice to people, even if it changes human history for the better.

711
00:56:54.659 --> 00:56:57.119
Thank you very much for listening and good night.

712
00:56:57.179 --> 00:56:58.019
Good night.

713
00:56:58.079 --> 00:56:58.920
Bye bye.

714
00:56:58.980 --> 00:56:59.519
Good night.

715
00:57:09.840 --> 00:57:16.019
That was 500 year diary, starring Nathan Bottomley, Peter Griffiths, Kate Orman, and Adam Richard.

716
00:57:16.079 --> 00:57:18.539
The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb.

717
00:57:18.599 --> 00:57:25.860
This episode, Let's explain Hitler, was recorded on the 30th of November 2025, and released on the 28th of December.

718
00:57:26.579 --> 00:57:40.380
Over on maximum power, we've just released our epic retrospective of the whole damn show, featuring hosts from every hemisphere, discussing how Blake 7 has thrilled, delighted, titillated and enraged us over the years.

719
00:57:40.440 --> 00:57:46.199
Go over to maximumpowerpodcast.com or to your podcatcher of choice and give it a listen.

720
00:57:46.260 --> 00:57:47.760
And we'll see you next year.

721
00:57:55.079 --> 00:57:57.960
I don't know, that just sounds like an ad.

722
00:57:58.019 --> 00:57:59.340
It really does.

723
00:58:00.900 --> 00:58:10.619
It's um, I mean, you know, like, obviously, it's Paul and and Terence that launched the missing adventures, isn't it?

724
00:58:10.679 --> 00:58:24.539
I mean, Terrence doesn't write the 1st one, but he and Paul get together to write the 2 parter, the blood harvest and another great Terrence book that is just kind of filled with all of his preoccupations. vampires, time lords.

725
00:58:24.599 --> 00:58:39.719
You know, that's the one thing we didn't talk about was the time lords thing too, because again, you know, Terrence creates the time lords, essentially. and then Bob Holmes wrecks them. really. such a great way.

726
00:58:39.780 --> 00:58:40.739
Yeah, wonderful.

727
00:58:40.800 --> 00:58:41.519
I think it's great.

728
00:58:41.579 --> 00:58:42.239
I don't know.

729
00:58:42.300 --> 00:58:46.739
I love, you know, like I love what he does to them, and it's an inevitably sort of homes thing.

730
00:58:46.800 --> 00:58:49.199
And Terrence takes that on board.

731
00:58:49.260 --> 00:58:53.159
You know, you can see, it's like the interactions between Russell and Moffatt.

732
00:58:53.219 --> 00:58:53.760
Do you know what I mean?

733
00:58:53.820 --> 00:58:57.119
They like each other's Doctor Who and they take things from each other.

734
00:58:57.719 --> 00:59:17.340
And so you have Terence comparing the time lords to the Nazis here explicitly and saying that the time lords are also, you know, full of infighting and backstabbing and and, you know, I mean, it's a striking comparison, I think.

735
00:59:17.400 --> 00:59:35.760
And what he does is he creates a sort of mythical past for the timelords, where they're much more evil and much more kind of terrible, leaving the dodtery homes kind of timelords, alone sort of thing, I think.

736
00:59:35.820 --> 00:59:36.960
Yeah.

737
00:59:37.019 --> 00:59:46.320
It's a bit of a case of diminishing returns, as Terence goes on, because he does, he does write many more entries in the new adventures and then the BBC books.

738
00:59:46.380 --> 00:59:51.780
And I think, you know, he's he's off his peak by then and maybe he's sort of dashing them off for the money.

739
00:59:51.840 --> 00:59:52.260
Who knows?

740
00:59:52.320 --> 00:59:56.340
But this, I think, is distilled Terence, and so is Blood Harvest.

741
00:59:56.400 --> 01:00:02.340
And I think catastrophe, which is one of his later entries, is kind of fun because that's in his wheelhouse.

742
01:00:02.400 --> 01:00:04.019
That's a 3rd doctor in Joe's story.

743
01:00:04.079 --> 01:00:12.179
But once you reach things like the 8 doctors and he's really just doing his greatest hits, he's revisiting all the things that he did and having a bit of fun with them.

744
01:00:12.239 --> 01:00:25.019
There's an audience for that, but I think this is a book where Terrence is writing for the audience and is making them feel comforted and costed and wrapped up in sort of a warm Terrency glow.

745
01:00:25.019 --> 01:00:31.260
It's doing the things that he does well, which he knows that the audience will need at this point, which the readership will need.

746
01:00:31.320 --> 01:00:32.099
And it's the bridge.

747
01:00:32.159 --> 01:00:34.619
Like you say, he's just finished writing a couple of novelisations.

748
01:00:34.679 --> 01:00:41.519
So he's he is the entrée for the rest of us to go, oh, yeah. stick my toe in here.

749
01:00:41.579 --> 01:00:50.579
Because, I mean, you have it from the other direction, don't you, with things like Mark Platt's novelisation and, you know, those season 26 novelisation...

750
01:00:50.639 --> 01:00:56.159
Yeah, yeah, where we're working towards, well, that, you know, remembrance of the Daleks are so extraordinary. context.

751
01:00:56.219 --> 01:00:57.599
It was just incredible, wasn't it?

752
01:00:57.659 --> 01:00:58.619
Like amazing.

753
01:00:58.679 --> 01:01:04.500
And so you have that heading towards something a little bit more literary and a little bit more complicated.

754
01:01:04.619 --> 01:01:10.079
And so the virtue, new adventure seem like kind of the next logical stamp.

755
01:01:10.199 --> 01:01:10.860
Yeah.

756
01:01:10.860 --> 01:01:12.480
And that's kind of the comparison, isn't it?

757
01:01:12.539 --> 01:01:15.960
If you're moving from the novelisation of the space pirates to excess.

758
01:01:16.019 --> 01:01:17.760
It's not too far of a leap.

759
01:01:17.880 --> 01:01:28.199
I think moving from something like the novelisation of battlefield, which Mark Platt does to times crucible, might be going a little bit far for some of the audience.

760
01:01:28.260 --> 01:01:31.920
It's pushing it in a direction, which is not an entirely comfortable fit.

761
01:01:31.980 --> 01:01:33.360
And that's the thing.

762
01:01:33.420 --> 01:01:36.059
It was kind of like, I am kind of here for the Doctor Who.

763
01:01:36.119 --> 01:01:42.480
And so when I'm reading Times Crucible and I am unwilling to do the work that it seems to want me to put in.

764
01:01:42.539 --> 01:01:52.559
Um, you know, uh, like I'm just kind of not really having fun where it's, it's very clear what's going on in, in Terrence's thing.

765
01:01:52.619 --> 01:02:00.239
I mean, like, I will put effort into reading things, but not something with a big silver metal worm on the front cup, frankly.

766
01:02:00.300 --> 01:02:03.480
And also not into things written by John Peel, just saying.

767
01:02:03.539 --> 01:02:04.920
Oh yeah.