The random witterings of Jonathan Morris, writer.

Thursday 17 November 2016

The End of the World

Out today, the new issue of Doctor Who Magazine (available at all good newsagents) has a couple of things by me in it.


First of all, there’s Take Two – 50 Years of the Second Doctor, an article on the Patrick Troughton era of  the show. Hopefully I say a few things that haven’t been said before, point out some things that have been overlooked. As it is, it’s more about the way the programme changed as Patrick Troughton became the second Doctor, but with the change of Doctor reflecting the way the programme was changing under producer Innes Lloyd rather than the change of Doctor causing the show to change. And at no point do I use the term ‘cosmic hobo’, which is a first.

Secondly there’s a Fact of Fiction article on The End of the World. Which, thanks to an extremely lovely person, includes a large amount of hitherto unpublished information about the first draft of the script, including lots of deleted scenes. The whole point of doing these articles is to uncover new information, stuff which hasn’t been covered in previous archives or The Complete Series magazines; it makes life difficult but that is also the fun of it, and hopefully it will make going to back to watch the episode a richer experience (in the same way as reading Revolution in the Head and The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions might increase a fan’s appreciation of the Beatles).

Plus, marvellously, the wonderful Russell T Davies agreed to answer a few questions about the episode, so even if you’re not fascinated by differences between script drafts and which bits of dialogue were late additions in ADR there is a lot of entertaining and illuminating stuff in there.

And, in four weeks’ time, there’ll be another one. A Fact of Fiction on The Runaway Bride – which includes a rather amazing thing that no-one has noticed, hidden in clear view all along...