Out today is issue 445 of everyone’s favourite four-weekly Doctor Who-focused magazine publication, Doctor Who Magazine. As well as a terribly insightful review of my adventure The Curse Of Davros, and all sorts of thrilling, informative and provocative articles, it includes a Fact Of Fiction feature, written by yours truly, about one of my favourite Doctor Who stories, certainly my favourite William Hartnell story, The Keys Of Marinus.
I delve into the whys, wherefores, and whodhavethoughtits of the story to a depth unattained by previous articles. You want theories about Darrius’ identity, the true nature of the Voord, where Terry Nation got the idea for The Velvet Web from, how the Doctor worked out the solution to the locked-room mystery on Millenius and a cut scene where Barbara stabs someone to death? Then this article should be the first, indeed the only, place you should look. I only hope the readers can cope with ten whole pages of The Keys Of Marinus goodness. (That’s longer than the script of two episodes). I did have one rule though; I couldn’t spend longer writing about the scripts than Terry Nation actually spent writing them, and at this point, he was bashing them out at the rate of one every three days.
Writing these articles is great fun, trying to find out stuff that hasn’t already been uncovered by Andrew Pixley’s already-extremely-thorough researches and the production subtitles on the DVDs. This is the fourth such article I’ve done, after The Shakespeare Code, Paradise Towers and Love & Monsters, and I’ve already started work on another couple. Beats working for a living.
