Firstly, Doctor Who: The Monster Vault, a guide to (nearly*) all the monsters that have appeared in Doctor Who, from 1963 to 2020. I co-wrote it with Penny CS Andrews, it’s (amazingly) illustrated by Lee Johnson and the whole thing was put together by the (lovely) Paul Lang.
As you might imagine, writing this book was a dream job for
me. A labour of love. So, wherever possible, I tried to go the extra mile in
finding stuff out. For each and every monster I went back to the story or
stories they appeared in, and went through the scripts (as broadcast) to glean
every piece of information we are told, or which is implied, about them. And
then I went through the rehearsal and camera scripts, looking for any extra
details the writer intended which may have been left on the cutting room or
rehearsal room floor. (So, for instance, the Pipe People from The Happiness Patrol have a whole
backstory which is taken from the rehearsal scripts). Where possible, I tried
to include the descriptions of the monsters given in the original scripts; this
wasn’t always possible, because either the writer didn’t bother to describe
them, or because what they ended up looking like was nothing like how they were
described in the script. For the more recent stories, where I don’t have the
scripts, I made use of the fact that Andrew Pixley covered every single
description and cut line in his articles for DWM and The Complete History.
And then, given all this information and a word-limit of 400 words per monster (except for the ones that Came Back For More) I tried to tie together everything we know and extrapolate logically, trying to work out what each creature’s ecology, its life-cycle, how it might have evolved and so on. (So, for instance, for the first monster I covered, the Mandrels, I thought how they might interact with the Eden moths that have a tranquilising sting; maybe they feed on them and the reason why Mandrels contain so much ‘Vraxoin’ is because they have absorbed it from the moths!). That sort of thing! For over a hundred monsters.
So, essentially, it’s a book based on the monsters in terms of their TV appearances. Now, as we all know, that is the tip of the proverbial iceberg, as nearly every monster has made subsequent appearances in comic strips, novels, and audios as well as having more information included in novelisations, other monster books and online guides. While much of this information is vivid, ingenious and fascinating (such as my own backstory for the origins of the Nucleus of the Swarm), it is also contradictory and researching it would be like trying to mine a bottomless pit. A line had to be drawn somewhere and so, whilst it would have been lovely to have included the Quarks’ ongoing battle against giant space bees, I had to limit myself to stuff that was on the telly. Which was more than enough to be going on with!
I could go on. I could go through every entry I wrote and tell you where I got all the bits from. But I shall spare you that. Suffice it to say, I put in the hours, and hopefully it will delight readers to read how I have, for example, explained about who created the Raston Warrior robots and why. And even if you don’t care one bean about my theories, it’s worth getting just for Lee Johnson’s amazing illustrations.
The book should be available from all good bookshops. If it isn’t, they should be able to order it in. It’s officially out on the 22nd October but apparently it has already started appearing on shelves and copies have started being sent out by online booksellers. So if you order it from amazon it should be with you fairly soon. And if you do enjoy it, please, please, please remember leave a good review, recommend it to your friends and buy it for people for Christmas.
* A few didn’t make the grade because either they couldn’t be illustrated (hello, Visians), because they are basically just wild animals (hello, Taran Wood Beast) or because they are villains and would be better served in a book about villains (hello, Lady Cassandra). Hopefully, if The Monster Vault sells well, we’ll get asked back to do The Villain Vault.
On top of that, earlier this week saw the release of my latest Doctor Who audio adventure, Lightspeed, part of the Shadow of the Daleks epic. I’d thought that The Kamelion Empire would be my last story for the main range so I was delighted to be asked back, with the additional challenge of having a pretty tight deadline. I like rising to challenges! I haven’t heard the finished product yet, but it seems to be going down okay. It can be ordered here.
And finally, I have returned to Doctor Who Magazine after a well-deserved hiatus. The Blogs of Doom is back. And hopefully it will have an even more refined wit than usual as I had to write it twice; for some reason when I was doing my usual thing of checking spelling and taking out double spaces I also deleted half the article and then saved it, thus losing what I had deleted forever. I’m telling you this just to let you know that I’ve suffered for my art so now it’s your turn.
As usual, Doctor Who Magazine is available from all good newsagents and some large supermarkets, but you can also order it and even download it by pointing your megabyte modems in the direction of this site.
