The random witterings of Jonathan Morris, writer.

Wednesday, 4 March 2009

Revolution

Tomorrow, very exciting, all being well, I’ll be at the recording of my next Big Finish Doctor Who thing. It’s a Companion Chronicle – a sort of half-way house between a first-person narration and a two-handed play – for Frazer Hines, playing the Doctor’s companion Jamie McCrimmon. For those who don’t know, Jamie travelled in the TARDIS with the Patrick Troughton Doctor Who in the 1960’s, when it was in black and white and every space station looked like it had been made out of balsa wood.

The story’s entitled The Glorious Revolution and anyone with access to Google can type that in and get a rough idea of what it’s about. It’s what’s known as a ‘pure historical’ adventure, not something I’ve ever written before, partly because they’re more difficult in terms of coming up with plots, but mainly because setting a story in history means having to do some actual research. My previous Companion Chronicle, The Great Space Elevator, was all about evoking the feel of the TV show; this one is attempting something a little different.

It’s always very exciting seeing or hearing professional actors bringing your script to life and making you look good, but I’ve been particularly looking forward to this one because – to toot my own trumpet – I think this is one of my better efforts and because Frazer Hines did such a phenomenal job on his previous Companion Chronicle, Helicon Prime. I would recommend it to you but I’d rather you saved your cash and bought my one instead. See bigfinish.com for details.

Going to recordings, as a writer, means a day spent sitting around like a spare (but very happy) lemon. Occasionally someone might ask you what a line might mean, but if you’ve done your job properly, that won’t happen very often.