Thursday, 1 September 2011

The Child


And I’m back.

Two overdue plugs first.

The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine is out now, featuring part one of my final Doctor Who comic strip (at least for a while) called The Child Of Time. It features glorious artwork by Martin Geraghty, the guy who did the Axons story last year, and is something of a ‘season grand finale’ as it picks up the various ongoing threads that have been woven through the previous eighteen months’ worth of stories and ties them up. I’ve just delivered the final part of the story (it’s a four part story) which will be out in November, and then someone else will be taking over.


It would be dishonest of me to say that writing the Doctor Who Magazine was a childhood ambition; for it be an ambition, it would have to seem impossible and to be honest, as a child, I was so much in awe of the people responsible for the comic strip – Pat Mills, John Wagner, Steve Parkhouse etc. that I never dreamed for an instant that my own name might be added to the list thirty-odd years later. But it has, and that’s something of which I am immeasurably proud. I’ve loved writing all the stories, I think they all turned out extremely well (for which I give all credit to the artists, colourists, letterers and editors) and I’m massively grateful to have been given a chance to show what I can do, in terms of telling lots of different styles of story, working with so many talented people, and convoluting a big, complicated-but-hopefully-not-too-complicated arc. I look forward to them all being compiled in a big graphic novel of some form (I don’t know when, but it’s inevitable it will happen eventually).


And secondly, Big Finish have recently released on CD a Companion Chronicle story I wrote back in 2008, called The Mists Of Time. It stars Katy Manning as Jo Grant and relate one of Jo’s adventure with the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who. It was given away as a freebie with Doctor Who Magazine, but this is the first chance that people have had to pay for it! It comes in a box which is, quite frankly, a thing of inordinate beauty, which also includes another former freebie called Freakshow and all the many episodes of The Three Companions by Marc Platt (the companions in question being the Brigadier, Polly, and my own creation, Thomas Brewster.) Please buy.


And finally. I’m back on the internet, thanks to PlusNet. After I wrote the previous blog, and moaned excessively on twitter, Pete from Virgin Media got in touch and offered to arrange for broadband to be installed the next day, but by that point I’d already decided to cancel, because you shouldn’t have to write blogs and moan excessively on twitter in order to get a standard of customer service which is denied to people who merely phone to complain. On top of moving house, it was an extra level of stress which I didn’t need.

However, the fibreoptic cable they left still remains outside my flat. I received a letter saying they were sending someone around to finish the installation tomorrow, on the 2nd, despite the installation having been cancelled, so I look forward to finding out how they will proceed, in much the same way, and with as much confidence, that one looks forward to Norman Wisdom approaching a swimming pool.

UPDATE 2 SEPTEMBER: No-one turned up.

I’ve a few more blogs I want to write, on Lewisham and it’s supposed ‘riots’, and other nonsense. I’ve also realised that on my computer I’ve got lots of reviews of Shakespeare plays and Blakes’ 7 episodes and other things which might as well reach a wider audience. And there are a few deleted scenes and background note things from Touched By An Angel which I’m desperate to inflict upon you. And I haven’t even mentioned the Tom Baker Doctor Who audio story...

And finally, I am on twitter, so should you wish to receive missives of devastating pith and insight in real time, as and when they pop out of my brain. I’m Jonnymorris1973