S3E2 - EXTERMINATE/REGENERATE: An Interview with John Higgs

JOSH: [00:00:00] He is a writer who's written some of my favorite reads of the last decade or so, including Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of The 20th Century, The KLF: Chaos, Magic, and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds, and most recently Love and Let Die: James Bond, The Beatles and the British Psyche. 

Coming next on April the 10th, Exterminate/Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who I am very pleased to welcome to TARDIS Rubbish, Mr. John Higgs. John, thanks so much for joining me.

JOHN HIGGS: Uh, it's a pleasure, Josh. Nice to talk to you.

JOSH: So I had a pretty straightforward way that I was gonna start this conversation, but I was going through my notes from the book just before we. We got on and I thought of a, I thought of a cheekier way to start. Um,

JOHN HIGGS: of cheekiness and tangents.

JOSH: okay, good. so let's just get into it then. So, John, is Doctor Who alive.

JOHN HIGGS: Oh, I wouldn't say that's cheeky. I would say that's [00:01:00] profound. That's a difficult question to, to wrestle with because, um, it's, it's hard to define what a living thing is. If you go away and look at, uh, a scientific definition. There's, there's a broad area where there's agreement that something has to grow.

It has to, to, to move, to evolve. It has to sustain over time. There's debate about whether it needs to, um, reproduce and things like this, or feed or whatever. Um, and it never says so, but the assumption is it has to physically exist. It has to be a, a, a physical thing. You know, they, that's kind of taken for red.

So the idea that a, a fiction could be alive. Just strikes so many people as, as nuts. But the problem is when you start to think about what's the difference between something that just acts like it's alive and something that is alive, then you get into a real deep, [00:02:00] um, uh, trench. You can really sort of lose yourself in, in that sort of question because it does so many things, clever things, evolutionary things that fictions aren't supposed to do.

You know, it creates, um. You know, the writers, the, it needs writers, it needs actors, it needs a television production company. It needs all these things to exist. And it doesn't just sort of hope that they come, come around. It creates them, you know, it, it made David Tennant be an actor. It made Russell T. Davis be a writer. You know, that the TV company, Bad Wolf, existed in as a, as a TV company in, in the future. And it became real at a time when the BBC was no longer able to make these things internally and had to put out to tender. So it's, it's what, it's what we call niche creation. It's, it's acting on the, the environment it's in to a, to be able to survive, which is, you know, advanced level stuff for a story, you know?

So, yeah. So the question [00:03:00] of whether this is alive, it, it depends on, you know, how deeply you want to go down that rabbit hole. 'cause it's not a simple thing to answer. It's not a simple No, put it that way.

JOSH: Fair enough. Um, when I started the book at the very beginning, you open it with, two quotes, the second of which is a quote from a Doctor Who episode that I think is a really wonderful episode. I think it's pretty underrated, but Stephen Moffat's In Extremis.

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah,

JOSH: or In Extremis, depending

JOHN HIGGS: Extremis, I, I dunno his pronunciation, but yes. Extremis, yes. 

JOSH: Where Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor, says, you don't have to be real to be the doctor.

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah.

JOSH: Because of course in that episode, he and the audience doesn't realize that, they're actually a computer simulation.

JOHN HIGGS: Hmm.

JOSH: But that doesn't stop him from being the Doctor and from having a material impact on the quote unquote real world.

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah.

JOSH: And I thought that was such a profound idea. So when I saw that, at the very beginning of [00:04:00] this, I thought to myself, I think I'm gonna enjoy this.

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah. Great.

JOSH: the sort of thesis that you arrive at, the observation that, Doctor Who is perhaps alive at what point in the process of your writing do you know where your narrative is headed? So in other words, did you have these ideas in mind already or were they things that you discovered along the way?

JOHN HIGGS: Whenever you write a book, you always discover the book as you, as you write it. You rarely know where you are going when you start. This was a little bit different because, you know, doctor Who has been in my life since about 19 75, 76 or some, something like that. So I'd had plenty of time to think about it and plenty of time to come up with sort of wild and uh, uh, you know, uh, enjoyable sort of perspectives to, to sort of play around with it.

Um, and it is, you know, the role of fictional characters in our lives is interesting [00:05:00] because, um, I ki we ki we kind of the same. You know, neural networks, the same parts of our minds that understand real people and real relationships, um, that evolved to do that when fictional characters came up. It's the same part of our minds that, that we use to sort of understand them.

So they mean a lot to us. Like, they're like real people. We, we know they're not real, but they're not nothing, you know, they, they are significant. Uh, and they have been, they can be really helpful to, to have in your life. Uh, and the idea that you would dismiss them as, oh, they're nothing. They're just a fiction.

You know, they are more than that. They are more important to us than that. And with Doctor Who it seemed the perfect, um, subject to explore things like that, because it is so unique, really, no, it doesn't behave like other [00:06:00] fictional, uh, characters do. Um. There is something, it, the way it survived over the last 60 years is unusual.

Most characters can't do that. Very, very few sort of can, and I do think a lot of it is to do with the fact that it doesn't really have a creator. There's no one person who came up with the idea of this, you know, it was a time traveling alien from gallifrey with two hearts who can regenerate and change their face and things like that.

In fact, when the program started, no one working on it would've recognized what I just said as, as relating to the, to, to the same sort of character. It just sort of emerged outta all these meetings and memos in the BBC in the 1963 and how the sort of gap between many minds and different writers and, and different directors and different actors all sort of gave part of themselves to, to this thing.

Because when a. When a character is [00:07:00] created, like when there's like an Ian Fleming or a JK Rowling, you know, or an Arthur Conan Doyle, who's, who's created them, they sort of define what they are, but they also at the same time are defining what they're not. And when the character gets passed from a creator, like there's James Bond books written by people who aren't Ian Fleming, you know, and there's Arthur Coan Do well, there's Sherlock Holmes stories written, written by people who aren't Arthur Coan do.

And they, they're not quite treated, they're sort of seen as lesser, they're not. There's a little bit outside the canon. They don't really really count. But because Doctor Who is just past writer, to writer, to writer, to showrunner, to showrunner and all that is Doctor who it's able to sort of absorb, um, so many more minds, so many sort of more pools of, of, of imagination, uh, than a, than a normal character can, you know?

And it, it keeps just accumulating and accumulating and becoming [00:08:00] bigger and, and bigger and bigger. And, um, if you are gonna have a fictional character in your life, for me, it's the best by, by some distance. You know, you are always gonna be surprised by it. There's always gonna, you're never gonna know it fully and, and get bored of it.

It's always going to, you know, surprise you, I think.

JOSH: No. Absolutely. And I think, you know, one of the brilliant innovations of the show, or I guess, um, evolutions that the show, you know, figured out how to survive and continue on was, the idea, Of recasting the lead actor, which then once you do that, you can change all sorts of things. So, you know, you can change format, you can change the whole production team, you can change this, you can change that. 

JOHN HIGGS: it's odd the way they went about it though, isn't it? 'cause normally a program will recast, they'll get an actor who looks a bit like the person they're replacing. That person will try and be the same [00:09:00] sort of character in a way that maybe Peter Cushing did. He'd sort of tried to be the William Hartnell doctor in the, in the 1960 films.

But, 'cause, 'cause Hartnell was just so, you know, singular, just so definitive. No one could out-Hartnell Hartnell, you know, it just wouldn't have worked with a lesser, a lesser Hartnell

. Um, and so the idea to, and, and again, they could have just have sort of, you know, killed the character off or moved the character out and brought in another similar Time Lord, if they had that phrase at the time.

But another sensible way to do it. But the idea that the character just becomes completely different, uh, you know, it, even the, um, the, the, the mop top Beatles hair of, uh, of, of Troughton would've been unthinkable in 1963, you know, the sixties. Was changing very, very fast. Um, and it's such such a bold, [00:10:00] bold move to have a character that can just become completely different.

Yet we will still see it as the same thing. And then by the time you get to the early seventies, and you know, this heart was such a, an outsider, such a, a, a scary sort of, uh, mystery who traveled to time and space in his box, come the seventies, you've got this guy who's working for a military organization on earth, you know, and everything about the original format has been thrown away, including, you know, the most unique things, you know, including the idea that he can travel through time and space in a, in a, in his time machine.

It's gone. It's absolutely gone. And I think Verity Lambert was like, that's just appalling. You know, he's an establishment figure now. He's, he's always supposed to be an outside, and yet we still see the character. As the same because really they're a story and stories is a never ending story or they're a never ending [00:11:00] story.

And that's what sort of keeps going and keeps changing. And, and uh, in the same way that we are really, you know, as, as kids, we are nothing like our adult selves. All physically, every cell in our body has been replaced many, many times. And, you know, our ideas, our opinions, our, our, our beliefs, our ideologies, they've all changed our weight, our hair color.

We might have changed our name, we might have changed our gender, we might have changed our nationality, we might have changed our religion. We are so different. And in 20 years time we'll be so different again. But we still see ourselves as the same thing. 'cause we see ourselves as a story and that's how our mind sort of comprehend these evolving, evolving things that can change, you know, so much.

So to put all that. Into a fictional character is really rare, is really strange, and, and that's what makes it such a sort of unique and magical thing.

JOSH: [00:12:00] Certainly. And you know, it's funny because I didn't really realize how unlikely recasting the main actor, the way that they went about it was until you were just speaking. Because you're right, It's not just that they recast the lead actor, they made it the same character, but acknowledged the change within the fiction.

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah, Yeah, 

JOSH: So it's not, you know, like a Richard Hurl situation where it's like, oh no, it's the same guy the whole time.

JOHN HIGGS: Absolutely.

It was the, it was very 1960s thing to do, I think. Yeah. Their, their minds are sort of wide open at that point.

JOSH: exactly. and another I was gonna say stroke of luck, but, you know, maybe stroke of genius or maybe, Doctor Who was working through Russell t Davies, but something very unique about how he revived the show was. He continued the continuity with the original show.

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah. 

JOSH: Especially at that moment in time, it seemed like the natural thing to [00:13:00] do would be to start fresh.

Uh, because it was sort of consensus that one of the reasons the 96 TV movie, failed to spawn a series is that it was too impenetrable, mired in its own continuity.

So, the idea to say no, okay, we're just gonna, start over fresh and, you know, you don't have to know anything. But that's not what he decided to do.

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah. I mean, if you, if you look back at what he did, it's just extraordinary how many really good decisions that that went into it that were counterintuitive, that were like. It was generally, uh, understood that the Daleks would be redesigned so that they didn't have sink plunges. 'cause that was silly, you know?

And yeah, I'm sure you've seen that footage of the spider Daleks uh, uh, Ling was sort of working on at one point. And it makes total sense that of course, that you're trying to bring it back for a new, new generation. You, that's exactly what you do. But, um, the fact that he managed to simplify the, the myth so brilliantly that, oh, there's been a time war and I'm the last it was [00:14:00] so, so sort of brilliantly there.

But it also, there was something really wonderfully unapologetic about it. And it's interesting to, when you read interviews with people who are trying to get the series off the ground in, in that, uh, wilderness years period, they'll often say that our, our, our version was just. A bit embarrassed, you know, uh, it was, it was a little bit sort of, um, apologetic, whereas Russell wasn't, they were, people would try and think, oh, this might work in the sort of X-Files, sort of cult tv sort of slot where Russell T.

Davis is, it's Saturday, it's the fo family, it's seven 30, it's all, all that sort of stuff. And I think a lot comes from, um, what he did with Queer as Folk, um, which was a really groundbreaking, I dunno if you, if you, if you know that series in America, but it's really groundbreaking, uh, representation of gay life in Manchester in the 1990s.

And it's kind of like if he'd have [00:15:00] sort of, tiptoed around the subject a little bit or made it a little bit more, um, uh, uh, uh, easier or, or for the straight audience to sort of get to, wouldn't have been. What it became, it wouldn't have been such a wonderful thing, uh, uh, but he just knew that the right thing to do was just going, I love this.

I'm celebrating it. And he applied the same attitude that he did for queer folk to Doctor Who. Uh, and it just so turned out that there was this huge untapped reservoir of love for the program that had been very, very quiet for a, you know, for a few decades, really due to the general tone of, oh, it's an embarrassing thing that sort of built up in, in the 1980s and there around the hiatus and there were Michael Grade trying to cancel it and it, and it going off and it being so, you know, cheap and multi-camera in, uh, a point when it really shouldn't be.

And, and things like that. There was a sense certainly in the, in the press [00:16:00] that it, uh. We remember it, but it's embarrassing. and it's only when Russell D. Davis, you know, was bold enough to go, wasn't this just the most wonderful thing that everybody, uh, just stood up and it was, it was the most wonderful thing.

I thank God it's back. It was a real, it's real joy. It was so, it was so exciting that time when it came back. And it's a weird contrast with now actually, because I we're recording this, um, a few weeks before the, the second Ncuti Gatwa series is, is on. And in fact a new trailer just dropped before we, we started talking.

I dunno if you 

JOSH: Oh, did it? Okay. Well, when we're through, I'll have to check

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's good. It's really good. Um, uh, and in fact the trailers are great and. The, the episodes they sound really interesting and the, and the, the new companion, um, I've just got a really good feeling about, and yet all the press surrounding the program is very, very negative over here in the UK at least.[00:17:00] 

Um, they're all convinced it's on its way out and Disney will walk away and shoots left and it's, there's not gonna be Doctor Who for years and things like, and it's all coming from speculation and it's all just, um, there's no, definite truth yet in the public domain support such as stance. But it's funny, the mood music around programs, um, and at the moment it's extraordinarily down and it, so it's kind of it.

I'm kind of glad my book's coming out now because I just think it's a good time to go. And if you look at that program again, you know, we're so lucky to have it. It is so unusual, and I know it's been on every year for the past 20 years. I know it's always existed for as long as you can remember, and I know how easy it is for people to get bored of things that are always available.

And I know how Marvel and Star Wars are sort of struggling to sort of keep people enthused by, by things that have been just [00:18:00] around for a long time. Um, but Doctor Who is, it's just a gift. It's just a, it's just a very, very wonderful thing and we are really lucky to have it, you know, and it's, it's, it's, it's worth, it's worth celebrating Des despite the, the mood music, I think. 

JOSH: I'm obviously with you on that completely. And I think you're right. There is this strange kind of, um, vibe that's in the air, about the show. I remember around the time of Ncuti's first season finale, there was a lot of negativity that I was reading from, people who had previously, been very excited and enthused about it. And I didn't quite it because, the whole season was. uh, more or less fulfilled on my hopes and was, what I was hoping it would be. 

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah. It's, it's a, it was a fascinating series. It's, I'm 

JOSH: it really was. 

JOHN HIGGS: still processing a lot of it. I'm still getting my head around it. I could [00:19:00] talk about Space Babies for a long time.

JOSH: I, I, I love that episode. I thought it was wonderful.

JOHN HIGGS: it's what's I think strange about it is, you know, it's season one, episode one, it's setting up the whole thing and it's trying to establish what Doctor who is, and yet it's story about how he saves the monsters, you know, the monster, the, the babies aren't really that threatened by the monster.

Um, uh, the spaceship is gonna run out of oxygen at some point, but that's, that's the spaceship is the, is the sort of thing there. And in fact, if the, the, the Space Station sort of represents the world of Doctor who, it's like this machine that creates, um, sort of stunted adult babies and monsters to entertain them, which is quite a bold sort of way to present Dr.

Who, I dunno how intentional that was. That was a very, very sort of odd sort of thing. But there's the [00:20:00] saving of the monster that, that really is what the story focuses on. Um, that is, oh, we really are changing what Doctor Who is at the moment. It, it does seem that since the toy maker, you know, it doesn't, it's not following the laws of narrative, it's following the laws of play.

Whereas everything you can think of Yes, that will do that. We'll do that. There's, there's the sort of, you know, the regeneration doesn't replace the Doctor. You know, you get them both, you get them all, you know, it's, so yeah. The, the, the series, this is a, a brand new start for a brand new audience, series one.

Uh, and it's a sequel to a 1975 episode. And it's got, it's got Mels from the eighties in it, and there's a, there's a tars made up of memories and it's like, it's just doing everything. It's just piling on. It's, it's very meta modern, I think is the technical, technical term for what's going on. So it's a lot to, a lot to process.

It's, and there's the wild [00:21:00] swings between the episodes in tone, you know, to go from, you know, the devil's chord, a big sort of pantomime, you know, musical thing to like the sort of unresolved folk horror of 73 Yards. And then the Black Mirror, like Dot and Bubble or, it's, it's, I remember, I thought it was, I used to think before the series started and you'd see the images.

I used to think, wow, it's odd that he doesn't have a, a set costume. He's got such different clothes. Uh uh But haven't seen it. I think, no, it makes total sense that he has such different clothes. 'cause every episode was so different and such, such wild swings were were being taken. Yeah. It's a fa it's just a fascinating time for the show, I think. 

JOSH: you said a lot of things, uh, that I wanna come back to, but, you make the point, that, it's hard for. Anything to stand out or break through in this [00:22:00] media landscape that, that we exist in the, um, proverbial fire hose of quote unquote content, which is a word that I also loathe.

Um, and you, you made the observation that, what Russell t Davies is doing, with Doctor Who is, making it unlike anything else that's out there. so with that in mind, it makes complete sense that the tone from episode to episode would vary so wildly because the format of the show allows for that.

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah, because it, because it can do it when nothing else can. You

JOSH: exactly. and yeah, leaning into that. So, uh, you mentioned, the term meta modern, which is not a term I had encountered. 

JOHN HIGGS: It's, it's, it's the sort of, um, it's often the accumulation of opposites. It's, it's a word that's 

used to recognize that the late 20th century is, is sort of classed as postmodern. But we've moved beyond that into, into something new. And it's, uh, I think Barbenheimer is, is a classic example. You know, you've got Barbie, you've got [00:23:00] Oppenheimer.

They're completely different. And yet when you clash 'em together, you get something that's more than the sum of the, the parts more than what those two movies would've been if it hadn't have been for the, the opposite one being out at the, at the same time. It's, um, it's quite a noisy, it's quite a noisy mess that tries to get the best qualities of everything, of, of, even, even, even if they're contradictory, even if they're sort of competing.

So it's, it's an ideological mess, you know? But

that's, the culture we sort of live in as we we're swiping away and scrolling away and just the constant, tsunami of different bits all together.

JOSH: right? So, but that's true though, because, like with Ncuti's first season, it's like you have The Devil's Cord, and then I think. 73 Yards the,

JOHN HIGGS: It was boom. Next, then Boom came, I think.

JOSH: Oh, yes. Right, course, our credit, I forget.

Boom. Um, and all of those individual stories are wonderful. but the [00:24:00] show, it was like The Devil's Chord every week, or if it were like 73 Yards every week,

JOHN HIGGS: yeah.

JOSH: Those individual episodes would feel less special, and the show itself would feel less special because one of the things that makes it so wonderful is that it's, you know, crackling with the the possibility and potential.

And, whatever happens when you smash two completely different tones right up against each other. 

JOHN HIGGS: it would be smaller, wouldn't it? It would be a, it would be a smaller thing and it's, you know, the, the thing with Doctor Who is, it fires the imagination of the young. So it, it can't be smaller. It just has to be, be bigger. You know, it's, it is a sort of, um, it's unique thing is to blow the mind of children in a way that other programs can't.

I think. So it, it, it does make sense that, uh, all that, it's a [00:25:00] shame. The, the series was just eight episodes. I would've been, it was a little bad. I know there's reasons for it, but, uh, a little bit more time with those two characters together would've, would've helped a lot. But, uh, but there's the, you know, there's audio books with of, um, that fit in for that character into that season.

So you can use those to make it seem, uh, you know, similar lengths to the previous ones as well, 

JOSH: you actually, squared two circles that I had been struggling with with the show as of late. I mean, struggling with is a strong way to put it, 

JOHN HIGGS: thinking about it's what we.

JOSH: thinking about Yes, yes. Um, you know, as I hope I made clear, I love the previous season. I am incredibly excited for the new season to start up but something's been nagging at me.

You know, one of the things that I do love about the series is it's sort of scrappiness, 

how it's sort of always punching above its weight, as it were, and not [00:26:00] succeeding all the time.

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah.

JOSH: But it continues trying to do the impossible with whatever's on hand.

And, you know, sometimes the results were absolutely spectacular. It's like, you know, you watch some stories from the sixties or the seventies and you're like, I don't know how this is how they pulled this off, but there's something magical about this.

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah. 

JOSH: And my, fear about the partnership with Disney and I think Russell t Davies said something to the effect of, you know, to remain competitive, to remain viable in today's TV landscape.

It's like. We have to spend a certain amount of money and we have to have, a certain look 

and he is not wrong.

JOHN HIGGS: He's, yes, he's, he's not wrong, but you know, a lot of the Chibnall era era, to my mind, looked more expensive. Um, with the choice of lenses and the, the overseas travel and, um, a a a sort of sense of scale, um, that this new era has gone back to being a little bit more [00:27:00] domestic again. Um, and, and for instance, when Star Beast came on and it was like the first with the Disney budget, so I was, I was really looking for that, looking forward to seeing what they'd done with it. And it was like that. Previously they would've gone to a house in Chisik and filmed there and said, this is Donna's house now. They built in their studio the equivalent of a house in Chisik, and filmed and filmed in there and watching at home. The difference in budget wasn't that sort of apparent? It was in the doctor who unleashed, they would show the, uh, art department saying, look at all this.

Well, every page in these notebooks is all roses, uh, designs and drawings, and there's so many little details on all this, all this, which you just don't see as a, as as a viewer. You know, they spent a lot and lot of money to show a house in Chisik being attacked by an alien, which is the sort of thing they [00:28:00] could, yeah.

I don't know. It's odd. It's an odd one. It's, it's, um, it's Doctor Who has to fit it, it has to fit in with the culture and it has to fit in with the current entertainment environment. And these are very choppy waters at the moment. You know, it's, it's a hard thing to, um, to navigate sort of what the show should be. Now. Um, I certainly, I loved all the goblins. I thought that was money well spent and, uh, and things like that.

But yeah, it's, um, it's, but it's not as if all the weirdness, been erased by the, by the money. You know, it's, it's not as if, committees of executives would had sat there and, you know, said, we've got to explain in 73 yards what, [00:29:00] what this, what this is about. You know, this doesn't make any sense.

You've, you've left this unresolved, you know, there's still the authorial sort of weirdness in there. Um,

and. 

JOSH: So, that's actually the observ, Right. that was actually the observation that you made that, made me reconsider You said something to the effect of, and forgive me, I'm paraphrasing. the way that that manifests now is the show is just going to be, Strange and unlike anything on TV and, Not sanded down for broader consumption, I think is, what you made me realize.

Oh, okay. So that's how the show is still sort of that, scrappy

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah. 

It's, it's. It's a time when there isn't really mainstream. It's such a, a fractured culture that we're sort of in at the moment. And so to survive you just have to make sense to a, a large enough part of the culture and not be concerned about all the other people who don't get it. You know, [00:30:00] who it's, who it's too weird for and stuff like that.

But it's certainly, certainly the case over here that, it's become a program which only people of a certain political persuasion are into. There was, um, some research that came that came out, a podcast called The Rest Is Entertainment, was talking about it. And it's like people who define themselves as politically progressive when asked what their favorite programs are, it's like Blue Planet and things like that.

And Doctor Who is one of their favorite programs, but people on the right. Don't mention it at all. Uh, to the extent that, um, there was, uh, a campaign, um, to choose the next leader of the Conservative Party. Fairly recently, about, about a year ago, conservative Party is the right wing party, the equivalent of your Republicans or how they used to be, you know?

And, uh, this woman, Kemi Badenoch, she launched her campaign [00:31:00] and she put out a video. And her argument for becoming the leader of the Conservative Party was, I'm not afraid of Doctor Who. And this came about because David Tennant had criticized her. Um, I think for reviews on, on trans children and, uh, he'd come out quite strongly against it.

Uh, and her entire stance for ruling the party was, I'm not going to, you know, stand for these, media types, you know, criticizing try to, and if you, if you, if your argument is, I'm not afraid of Doctor Who it's very hard not to look like, uh, an evil villain whose plans are just gonna go horribly wrong very soon, right?

To my eyes, anyway. But to the people she was aiming the message at, it made total sense. And she be, and she became, and still is the leader of the conservative party now based on this anti-D doctor, Dr. [00:32:00] Stance. So there's a, there's a real sense that Russell T Davis' almost gleefully, sort of steered it into the culture wars.

with no fear about the amount of criticism that's gonna come from certain political types because of that. It's, again, it's again, it's that moving from the mainstream that it used to be in the, in the David Tennant days into finding its own sort of strange niche where it's not trying to be for everybody, but it's tr for the people.

It's for, it's really for, and it, it feels to me now that, you know, Trump is back, that a program that's standing so, clearly for diversity regardless of, of he knows how much abuse it's gonna get and how much attack it's gonna get because of that. But it does it anyway, which to me just feels a very Doctor Who thing to do. 

JOSH: That's what the doctor would

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah, 

JOSH: That's what the doctor would do. That's why it's so, it's, it's so strange to me. [00:33:00] You know, this whole notion that, it's not for everybody anymore. Or like there are, conservatives who, who think that the show has somehow, changed in terms of what it stands for.

It's, I find the same thing with, conservative Star Trek fans who were like, it's woken out. It's this, it's that. I'm like, what show did you think you were watching 30 years ago? Like, what is, like, maybe it's not the show. Maybe, maybe it's you,

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah. 

JOSH: but you're absolutely right.

Um, you noted, just now and also in, the book that, Russell T. Davis he hasn't, come to play as they say. He's, he's unapologetically and very forcefully positioning the show to be a champion for, those are in real, danger of, not just, being disenfranchised, but also, very existence.

You know, the Trump administration here, they are removing all references to, the very existence of trans identity, so people are, being legislated out of [00:34:00] existence. 

this is all to say it is very refreshing the.

Clarity and force with which Russell t Davies, not only has been speaking about the show itself, but also just speaking in general. because, times we are living in are very, very frightening. And, we look around and the people who were supposed to be opposing these fascists still seem to be hemming and hawing and trying to make nice. so to have someone with that clarity

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah, because he knows the extent to which representation matters. He knows from doing Queer as Folk. Uh, back in the nineties, in the eighties, there was, uh, a very homophobic, government, uh, who introduced a thing called Clause 28, um, which I won't bore you with, but it was grim, you know, and it was, it was very, uh, out and out homophobic, uh, speeches in parliament.

And you would never have thought at that point that when that party gets back into power, they're going to legislate for [00:35:00] gay marriage, it was just unthinkable. But in that period, in between, particularly in the nineties, you know, when, when things like Queer as Folk were coming on air, uh, and people like Russell T.

Davis are putting up, you know, proper representation and showing people, and people at home were just going, oh, it's just some people, you know, what, what, what was my problem? You know, it's just some people and the way that society sort of changed by seeing things, uh, that might be outside their normal day-to-day existence, but once they're on TV, it becomes normalized.

So for, in something like The Star Beast, uh, it wasn't so much that there was a trans character, it was just a trans teenager shown with a loving family. Right now, where do you see that on, on TV these days? Certainly not on British tv. Yeah. They never see things like that. And he knows full well the impact of putting things like that on.

And he's, I think partly, you know, [00:36:00] between his two shown instincts, uh, he, you know, he nursed his husband, uh, who was terminally ill, so he's kind of gone through the worst thing that you could possibly go through. So he doesn't give any, he doesn't give a fuck anymore. You know. 

JOSH: Yeah, it's just, it's just incredibly refreshing, in this moment where I was expecting there to be many more loud voices than there seems to be. And I still have, hope that, they will show up. But, but in this moment, a voice like, Russell's and the show,

are, sources of a lot of hope and inspiration, for me, and I'm sure for, many, many others.

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah, because it's not, it's not just Russell. I mean, the show had been going that way 

pretty much since since Capaldi punched that racist in Thin Ice, you know, pretty much been going that way. And you can, you can, you can look back to, uh, the speech about the need to fight the fascist Daleks in Hartnell's first Dalek story.

You know, it's all, it's always been there, you [00:37:00] know, but, so it fits. It does fit it. 

JOSH: uh, just a couple other things I just want to touch on, uh, before I'd let you go. I think, uh, what time is it there? Enjoy your dinner.

JOHN HIGGS: Yes. I'll, I will. Yes. Thank you.

JOSH: Okay. Okay. Um. I thought it was very levelly to see, toward the end, and I don't think I'm spoiling anything major, but there was, of a throwback of, the psycho geography of, Watling Street,

toward the end where you talked about, the bus that has, John Nathan Turner's name on it

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah.

JOSH: the route that it drives, all of the Doctor Who related locations. I found that to be I don't know. It was very unexpected and very wonderful. Like I have, been very intrigued this whole concept of psychogeography since I came across it through you.

and I was wondering at what point in writing this you learn about the John Nathan Turner bus.

JOHN HIGGS: Well, it's, uh, because I, I basically, I live in Brighton on the south 

coast of England, and [00:38:00] the, the, um, bus company here has a habit of naming buses after. Notable local residents usually who have died, not always, but usually. And so occasionally you'd see the John Nathan Turner buss going about, which was so, so exciting.

And you'd always want to get on the John Nathan Turner buss. That was always the one to go. But, um, I realized where he used to live, because you, you sort of see it in the, um, the, on the d on the blue rays. There's not many interviews with him, uh, uh, that, that were filmed before he died. And the ones that he did, it was on his, in his house a little bit down the, down the coast.

And there was that, that God, the. The quality of the documentaries on the, on the Blu-rays, on the classic, it's just unbelievable. It's too much to go into now, but the, just the love that's put into that entire season is amazing. And the one about, um, John Nathan Turner was really, really good. And that's when it showed you where his address, [00:39:00] so I, I used to keep an eye out for it and I, I love the fact that the John Nathan Turner buss went past John Nathan Turner's house, but I also loved that on the other side of the road is the beach where they filmed vengeance varo when they were sort of torturing Perry, uh, in the, in the, uh, pink skies and things like that.

And it's true that if you get on the bus and you go along, then you're passing, uh, the bits that they film the war games and then it gets Central Brighton and there's a bit where they film the leisure hive and then, um. Enemy of the world was a little bit further along. And if you keep going, you get to cursor fenrick, and then you get to the power of the doctor.

And it's just England. Uh, and certainly Wales, not lesser extent Scotland, but in parts in Scotland, we're just drenched in, um, Doctor Who locations, especially London, especially Cardiff, Sheffield, Liverpool, um, it's, it's the, it's the ground we walk in. It's [00:40:00] really soaked into, um, if you, if you know, if you keep an eye out for it, it's, it's soaked into our world and in a way that other fictional characters don't.

You know, Robin Hood, you've got Sherwood Forest, you know, Sherlock have, you've got London. You don't have everywhere. Everywhere. There's in the bits of Lanzarote, bits of Amsterdam. You can, you can, you're walking along and then you suddenly spot, like I was in Cambridge, uh. Uh, the other year, and I was just, uh, I spotted all the bits from Shard, you know, just, it was just like wonderful to think that the, the, the, that the, this fiction is sort of soaked into the landscape in a way that other things, you know, don't, you didn't get that with Star Trek.

You don't get that with Star Wars, you know, I mean, possibly bits of New York and Marvel, but it's not quite the same, the same thing, you know? Um, it, it has sort of enchanted the coun the country in, in a way I really enjoy. And you can't, you can't go anywhere in London without [00:41:00] going. That's where Talons of Weng-Chiang was filmed and stuff like that. 

JOSH: exactly. I live in Los Angeles in California,

and the way I describe it to people is that very often it feels like you've wandered into a dream because you know you're going about your day and then you're, stopped at a traffic light or whatever, and you look up and you see some configuration of mountains in the background or a building of some kind, and you don't realize why it looks so familiar.

And then you realize, oh, they shot whatever the movie is here. 

And then for a moment it's like you're moving through a dream that somebody else had and made real and shared with

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah, definitely. We, we, me and my wife had this when we went to New York last May. Um, it was my wife's first time in New York, but she, you know, we came outta the subway and it was like, but I've always been here. You know, I've, I've always 

known these streets, you know, it, 

was this 

very 

strange 

JOSH: what it, no. Yeah, because these locations through film and TV certainly [00:42:00] have into all of our subconsciouses. so it is like, I've always been here. A part of me has always been here. 

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah. 

with, with Dr there's always the sense that wherever you are, that will be a future episode. Yeah. Because it, it keeps coming. It sort, it sort of keeps coming. Eventually there won't be a, a square foot of this country that's not 

JOSH: that's very well put. final, two questions. what is next for you? Are you working on a new book?

JOHN HIGGS: yeah. I'm working on, uh, and I've signed the contract for the new book, but I'm sneakily writing another book and I might have to stop that to do, uh, a little audio book thing. Um. I'm busy. Basically, Josh, I'm, I'm keeping myself busy. But don't, don't you, but I'm, I'm just sort of getting ready to go on tour and sort talking about, you know, the Exterminate/Regenerate book as well.

So, that should be fun. 

JOSH: No, I'm sure that'll be, wonderful fun, especially coinciding with the, the, uh, the new season coming out. where can people find you if they're [00:43:00] curious about checking 

JOHN HIGGS: Um, 

JOSH: work or hearing

JOHN HIGGS: my, I mean my website's the easiest thing to get to. John higgs.com, uh, J-O-H-N-H-I-W-G s.com. Uh, I've got a free newsletter that's usually the best way to find out what I'm, what I'm up to. Uh, I'm not on socials quite so much. I'm sort of forcing myself 'cause the book's gonna have to be on Instagram and, and Blue Sky, but, uh, it just feels like a thing of the 

past a 

JOSH: media is the worst. It's, it's the worst. 

JOHN HIGGS: Yeah. 

JOSH: It's just the worst. speaking of your newsletter, I recommend, uh, that everybody sign up for that. you know, speaking of cutting through the noise,

when I sit down in the morning and I open my email inbox and I see. Zillion things from newsletters, many of which I genuinely am interested in and I do want to read, but just know I will never get to, because there's so many and the fire hose never stops. But, whenever I see, something from you, that's the one I go to first and I know I'm reading that

JOHN HIGGS: that's lovely. 

JOSH: me some clarity, 

JOHN HIGGS: That's lovely. A lot of it is because [00:44:00] I, I only send them out eight times a year it's completely wrong compared to, uh, according to everyone who tells you how you're supposed to do these things, you just keep pumping and pumping and pumping every last thought you have to pump it out at people and stuff like that, and you just get sick of it, and it's real.

I mean, I've subscribed to really interesting writers who have managed to, to bore me senseless with multiple emails every week about, about nothing, you know? 

So just sending one out 

every six in a bit weeks, it 

JOSH: No. Well, so I think there's something to what you're saying, because I think that ironically, something that I've started to realize and I've seen some others do, is a way to cut through the noise is to create some scarcity,

JOHN HIGGS: Ah, 

that's interesting. Yeah, 

JOSH: so, because, you only write eight of these a year.

I'm not seeing it in my inbox every day. So I haven't been able to, tune it out, you know, with the rest of the 

JOHN HIGGS: yeah, yeah. 

JOSH: So when I do see it, very excited and I [00:45:00] know that I'm gonna read that first. it stands out, so

JOHN HIGGS: Great. That's good. And also because, because you don't, if you don't get sick of it and you, you, you live with it for over time for a number of years and stuff like that, and it's, it's sort of a, it's, it's a bit of a long game, but it's just, it's just a nicer relationship that's just. No, it's not too needy.

That's my thinking anyway.

JOSH: I completely agree. John Higgs, thank you so much for being so generous and so responsive, to when I sent you a cold email a few months ago and asked if you could send me an advance review copy, and if you would be able to come on my little podcast.

It was, really, really wonderful to speak to you and I can't wait to, read everything that you write.

JOHN HIGGS: That's very good and the same. Josh, it's been, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Really nice to meet you. 

JOSH: Like you said, you can follow John Higgs if you go to johnhiggs.com and it'll have all the relevant links. please do pick up a copy of Exterminate/Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who. we are TARDIS rubbish across all social media and we'll see you next time.