Anyway, stuff to plug! First off, I must implore you all to
rush out and buy the latest Doctor Who
Magazine as it contains two things by me; firstly, a ‘Fact of Fiction’ on
the classic 1974 tale Death to the Daleks
and secondly an appreciation of the classic 1968 tale The Wheel in Space.
Doing the ‘Fact of Fiction’ on Death to the Daleks was great fun, because I love the story, it’s
pretty robust plot-wise as you would expect from Terries Dicks and Nation, and
(I hope) I managed to find out some interesting new stuff about it. Doing these
features involves what I believe proper academics call ‘close reading’ –
looking at a camera script and working out what is implied by things like
missing pages, mis-numbered scenes, different typefaces, handwritten notes and
so on. And with each ‘Fact of Fiction’ I set myself a little challenge – in the
past I’ve tried to identify stock footage of rocket launches and so on – and for
Death to the Daleks my challenge was
to identify the Peruvian temple that Terry Nation was referring to in part
three. It’s a combination of two – one of them is this one which I trust you’ll
agree looks a bit like the Exxilon city.
I’m also quite proud of my guesses as to possible sources of
the names Railton and Parrinium – and for hopefully laying the ‘Doctor Who and
the Exilons’ myth to rest. I have a couple more 'Fact of Fiction's in the pipeline, so keep buying the magazine.
With The Wheel in
Space article I came up against an unusual challenge. When I was asked ‘Which
story would you like to write about’, I suggested The Wheel in Space because I have lots of interesting opinions
about it. But then, in preparation for writing the article, I checked to see
what I’d written about it before in the Second
Doctor Missing Episodes special – and there were all the interesting
opinions I was going to write about! So I had to come up with more interesting opinions about The Wheel in Space, which fortunately is
not difficult as it is ceaselessly fascinating. Initially I had planned to do 2000 words just on the opening episode but didn’t quite manage
it.
So there you go. People have said kind words about both
features so it looks like I’ve got away with it again.
What else? Well, I’ve a few Big Finish releases coming up.
February will see the release of the third series of Vienna, which I script-edited and fiddled about with, which
consists of three terrific stories by Ian Potter, Guy Adams and Steve Lyons. Lots of weird and wonderful alien worlds and
mind-boggling sci-fi concepts and action and adventure. You can order it here –
it’s probably worth it just for the cover:
You can also listen to the trailer here.
March will see the release of Doctor Who: The Paradox Planet, starring Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, Tom
Chadbon and Simon Rouse amongst others. I shall plug it at greater length nearer
the time but suffice it to say I am extremely proud of it, it was a thrill to
do, to have an opportunity to pay tribute to Tom, Lalla, Graham Williams and
particularly Douglas Adams, and when I listened to the trailer (which can be
found here) I was immediately carried back to the autumn of 1979 and could visualise
the sets, costumes and special effects. You can pre-order it here (you’ll need
to pre-order Legacy of Death too, as
that’s the second half of the story).
Most importantly, sometime later this month my next Doctor Who audio adventure by Big Finish
will be released. This is The Waters of
Amsterdam, featuring everyone’s favourite fifth Doctor, Peter Davison,
along with his companions Tegan and Nyssa. I’ve heard the first episode and
director Jamie Anderson has done a terrific job with it, he’s got the tone just
right – it has a sort of lightness of touch to it, to give the characters and
emotion a chance to breathe. Story-wise it’s a bit of a departure, I hope,
something a bit different, because although there are alien monsters and time travel
and stuff, I think the story’s structure has a (deliberately) unusual shape and
the emphasis is much more on the characters’ relationships and emotional
journeys. I mean, it’s lovely to do stories that open with episodes of the
Doctor and his friends exploring a deserted spaceship, I’ve done a few of those
in my time, but it’s just as lovely, every now and then, to tell a story which
doesn’t do what people expect, which veers off at hopefully unexpected tangents.
And I’m particularly proud of some of the scenes later on with Rembrandt,
hopefully I will do him justice, I look forward to hearing the rest of it!
The other thing that cannot be emphasized too strongly is
this; Don’t worry, it will fit in with Omega
and The Burning Prince and The Elite. I even sent the script to Nev
Fountain to check! Although it’s never actually stated anywhere that Omega takes place shortly after Arc of Infinity, that’s what everyone thinks
because of the production code it was given, so I have respected that. It all
fits, I appreciate how important that is!
One other thing I should mention is that I’ve been
working on the Doctor Who: The Complete
History partworks, providing new synopses for all the different stories.
Which has been more interesting than you may think – there’s a hell of a lot of
discipline in boiling down each episode to just 300 words, and in the process I
find I often come away with a new-found appreciation of just how clever some
stories are – The Day of the Doctor,
for instance – while sometimes I discover that stories I had previously admired fall apart when you subject them to close scrutiny (I’m not saying
which ones).
The books themselves are truly stunning, absolutely
magnificent and quite definitive, so I thoroughly you recommend you avail
yourself of them here.
It’s a little odd for me, plugging these articles and stories,
partly because I wrote the Tom and Lalla stories quite a while ago – in June
2013 – and partly because all this stuff is, for me, a fun sideline, as my
focus is on my other main writing project which is, for the moment, not
something I want to talk about. When and if I have anything to tell you, I
shall be tweeting about it from the rooftops. But rest assured, I am doing
other stuff!