Tim Cundle

In which the better-looking half of the middle-aged crew meets and chats to Earth Island Books and Engineer Records head honcho and author of the forthcoming ‘The Fire Still Burns’, David Gamage and the Barking Poets guitarist and singer Neil Murray and gets up close and personal with Showerings Triple Vintage cider.

In which the middle aged crew wax lyrical about ‘Hangar 18’, ‘Tulsa King’, ‘Agatha All Along’, ‘The Grand Tour’, ‘Bad Monkey’, ‘Slow Horses’ muse about the upcoming Big Thunder Mountain Railroad refurbishment, dream aloud about Robosen Robotics Buzz Lightyear, get mad as Hell about Elon Musk and Tim talks comics…

Hellboy: A Plague of Wasps – Written by Christopher Golden, Created by Mike Mignola, Directed by Scott McCormick & Starring Scott McCormick & Jasmine Hyde (GraphicAudio)

On a primal level, the title of this new BBC audio for the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday sounds like one of the “factual” books of the late 1970s/early 1980s, where Doctor Who would be a portal into factual learning about an important and scientific topic or debunk-resistant mythology.

In which the middle-aged crew ponder the ramifications of the Dead Boys using AI and Denzel heading to Wakanda, chat about Doom Patrol, Day of the Jackal, Conclave, The Substance, Boston Legal, and Mark Hamill’s Pop Culture Quest before Chris reviews some of the latest and greatest graphic novels, and Tim waxes lyrical about Westland American Oak Single Malt and gets Mad as Hell about being ghosted by folks who should know better.

In which the gigantic half of the middle-aged crew talks to one of the Godfathers of Hardcore, Roger Miret about his new book, With Time: The Roger Miret Archives, Agnostic Front. Hardcore, life. the universe and everything in between.

In which the middle-aged crew get down with, and chat about all things Christmas, Walt Disney, festive films, their fantasy dinner table guests and get Mad As Hell about Scrooge McMusk trying to inflict his miserable image of geekdom upon the world.

Having been around some of the musicians in this band for many years now, I was very interested to learn that Darlingon’s The Che Men were releasing a new record. They’re not exactly known for being prolific, so this is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it opportunity especially given the limited vinyl pressing, for all you worshippers of round bits of 12″ plastic.

The Nestenes and their avatars, the Autons are a villain (once a monster) with which it is increasingly hard to find Good Things To Do.

Snakedance was the second story in Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor’s tenure to feature a monster known as the Mara. Christopher Bailey wrote both, and in a sense, they offered something that has become fundamental to Russell T Davies’ second stint in the showrunner’s chair – a monster not born in science-fiction so much as in esoteric fantasy, cultural myth, philosophy and even religion.