Another feature from the
archives... a piece originally written for The Complete Fifth Doctor magazine
published back in 2002.
FOUR TO DOOMSDAY
When I was 8 I wrote Doctor Who stories and fill up notebooks
with page after page of illegible pencil. Originality, however, was not my
strong point. Each story consisted of my favourite bits from the books,
annuals, comics and the TV show, plus the latest facts I had committed to
memory from Doctor Who Monthly. They
concentrated on the things that fascinated me; spaceships, robots and
monsters. And, more often than not, the resulting stories were a lot like Four To Doomsday.
Starting was easy. One of the first
things I had learned from the books was that all Doctor Who stories begin with the TARDIS landing somewhere which at
first appears to be deserted. The Doctor and his companions should then split
up to explore and discover it is not as deserted as it at first appeared. Simple.
Characterisation was more of a problem.
The Doctor had just changed and I had no idea how Peter Davidson would play the
role. So I just wrote him as Tristram from All
Creatures Great And Small, although half the time he would still talk and
act like Tom Baker.
I was also unfamiliar with the
companions, so I wrote them with one character trait each. Adric liked maths.
Nyssa liked pointing out what machines were called. And Tegan was unaccountably cross
and thought everybody was mad.
Monsters were important. On TV they had
given up doing proper monsters and just made the baddies men with beards. This
was, I felt, wrong. The baddy should be a green, slimy monster. Called
something like the Master, but not the Master. Monarch!
Doctor Who facts were exciting. I loved
them. So I had to stick in mentions for Gallifrey, Artron energy, the Master,
Rassilon and the Eye Of Harmony even though they had nothing to do with the
story. Someone had written in to Matrix
Data Bank asking for a list of rooms in the TARDIS; so Adric would proclaim
that the TARDIS contains ‘…a power room, a bathroom, even cloisters!’ [to which Monarch would reply, ‘That’s nice, dear’ like
a long-suffering parent].
Jokes were important too. Luckily I had
just seen a Benny Hill in which he
played a funny Chinaman. ‘I am Lin Futu’. ‘Well, I’d never have guessed it, you
look in the best of health to me’.
The story was, by necessity, made up as
it went along. For the first episode, it would be about spaceships. Then I
would grow bored of that and make it about robots. Then it would be about
people floating in space. Eventually I’d find myself half-way down the twelfth
page and it would be time to start thinking about an ending. The monster could
shrink, like in The Sun Makers!
Excellent. I had my story.
Of course, it made no sense. Monarch
needs to breathe air except in the first episode when he doesn’t. The spaceship
is going back and forth to Urbanka to collect humans, but later on it
transpires that Urbanka was destroyed and the baddies want to invade the Earth.
How do they intend to do this? They plan to use Adric to persuade the people of
Earth to let them take over. Why do they want to invade the Earth?
Because…er…because its mineral wealth will allow Monarch to travel in time.
Right.
So I think it is fair to say that I, as
an 8 year-old, would have written something quite like Four To Doomsday. But that is not a criticism. Not at all. That is
praise. Because Four To Doomsday is
exactly the sort of Doctor Who story I wanted to watch, a story which catered
perfectly to my tastes and obsessions… Spaceships, robots and monsters.
