Two things.
Out later this week, I think Thursday, is another Doctor Who Magazine with
a couple of articles in it by me. There’s another instalment of The Blogs of Doom featuring a fan
favourite character (well, a favourite character of this fan) and a brief but
nevertheless in-depth article on UNIT’s place within the Who-niverse, and how it works as a storytelling device. It’s
available from all good newsagents and Smiths.
Big Finish have also announced that my ‘Main Range’ story out next March is not called Empire but is, in fact, called The Kamelion Empire, featuring as it does the legendary robot Kamelion alongside the fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough. I am, of course, sworn to secrecy, but can say that the story was inspired by the paintings of Claude Lorrain and Pierre Patel, and that it doesn’t feature Kamelion being put in charge of Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre. For reasons that will become clear in due course it was quite a tricky story to write. I hesitate to say it’s experimental but it’s certainly not comfort zone stuff.
It has been asked elsewhere how this run of four ‘Kamelion’ stories will fit with Craig Hinton’s 1994 Doctor Who novel The Crystal Bucephalus. The simple answer is that it doesn’t. It can’t, because, as anyone who has read the novel will know, or who has simply scanned the opening and closing pages, the book doesn’t just take place in the gap between The King’s Demons and The Five Doctors, it also seals the gap, leaving no space for any other stories, as well as ruling out any further Kamelion stories after The Five Doctors.
I don’t quite know why Craig did this – I suspect he misunderstood the nature of the ‘fitting books into the gaps’ brief – but I do know, or I like to think, that he wouldn’t give a damn about some more stories coming along 25 years later and doing something different. In my mind, he would be laughing his head off at the utter silliness of it all. “Who cares, Jonny?” I can hear him saying. “Who cares?” However, I was very conscious when I was writing The Kamelion Empire that I was following in Craig’s footsteps, so to speak, and so the story is dedicated to his memory.
It can be pre-ordered here.
