Under Three Hundred

Waterloo

2012-01-26T20:58:00.003Z

Yes, he’s been quiet again. What are the excuses? Busyness, mainly. I’ve had a great deal of stuff to write over the past few weeks and it’s been fairly non-stop, broken up only by a couple of days in a recording studio, I’ve said too much already, popping into the Big Finish office to record a couple of podcasts – I have never sounded more hesitant, which is odd because normally talking about myself and my writing is one of my favourite subjects – and nipping down to Tunbridge Wells to guest at a Doctor Who convention, Big Blue Box, alongside Simon Guerrier and John Dorney.

Whilst at the convention, I saw Simon’s short film, Cleaning Up, which is terrific, I praise the writing, acting and direction equally lavishly, and Louise Jameson’s play (written by Helen Goldwyn, who has occasionally turned up in things I wrote in thankless parts) Pulling Faces which was also rather extraordinary, a real showcase for Louise’s versatility and range.

But the real reason why I’m putting finger to keyboard is that this week saw the release of my latest original Doctor Who audio adventure, The Curse Of Davros. I say original because, of course, my last one was an adaptation of a storyline by Philip Hinchcliffe (and he phoned the Big Finish office to tell them how much he’d enjoyed it! Can you believe that? I can’t.).

The Curse Of Davros features Colin Baker and Terry Molloy as the sixth Doctor and Davros, and introduces – or rather, re-introduces – Lisa Greenwood as new companion Philippa ‘Flip’ Jackson, and also stars Nicholas Briggs as the voice of the Daleks (he also directed it). It starts off in present-day Thamesmead and then leaps back to the Battle of Waterloo, which as I’m sure you know took place in Belgium on the 18th June 1815. As such, it features appearances by Napoleon Bonaparte, the Duke Of Wellington, Marshal Ney plus myriad other French and English soldiers. It’s intended to be a big, bold, ‘season opener’ type story, an action-packed blockbuster with incident, comedy, scary bits and mad ideas. And if you like, there’s even a little bit of moral stuff in there about the nature of evil.

It was an absurd, overwhelming honour to be asked to write for Davros and the Daleks – I remember when Joe Lidster was writing Terra Firma sitting in our front room searching the internet for songs that were out of copyright to use in a party scene – and I pulled out all the stops and put in all the late nights I could in writing it. I even visited the Napoleon museum in Paris for research (as well as reading a couple of books on Napoleon and the Battle of Waterloo). To give you some idea of how much effort I was putting in, the first draft of the final episode came to 9,500 words (the optimum length of an audio episode being 5,000 words). So all those scenes on St Helena with the two Napoleons had to go, alas, along with innumerable scenes of French people being blown up.

I may talk about some aspects of the story later – if I can remember – as it’s already thrown up a couple of interesting discussions in various fora. But for now suffice it to say I think it’s the best thing I’ve done (so far), the performances are incredible, the direction and sound design are spot on, the cover artwork is stunning, and I couldn’t be happier with it*. If I had to choose only one Doctor Who audio I’ve written as an example of my work, this would be the one.

It can be ordered here.

* Though I wanted the theme tune to part four to start with the Marseillais a la All You Need Is Love. Oh well, you can’t have everything!

Valley Of No Return

2012-01-12T18:00:00.004Z

Hello, happy new year, and welcome back. Lots of writing to do so I’ll be brief.

Monday this week saw the (download) release of the Doctor Who: Lost Stories box set which includes the story The Valley Of Death, written by yours truly, based on a storyline by Philip Hinchcliffe, and starring Tom Baker as the Doctor and Louise Jameson as his companion Leela. I’ve written about it previously, but have now heard the finished production. Which is utterly fabulous. Tom is on great form, the sound design and music are magnificent, and it all feels fresh and funny whilst also having that authentic ‘1977’ feel.

It’s not quite as serious as the other story in the box-set, The Foe From The Future (by John Dorney, based on a storyline by Robert Banks Stewart, and with yours truly as script editor) and is a lighter, blockbuster-y romp, more in the vein of tales like The Android Invasion and The Hand Of Fear. The physical version of the box-set will no doubt be materializing shortly.

Out today is the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine, which includes a 9 (!) page article by yours truly, a ‘Fact Of Fiction’ on the 2006 story Love & Monsters. The story is a particular favourite of mine, which is why I volunteered to research it, and I think I found a few new and interesting things to say about it – not least because the story’s author, Russell T Davies, very kindly agreed to answer a few questions about it. It’s the first time an author has been interviewed for a ‘Fact Of Fiction’, so kudos to Russell for breaking new ground.

Out soon is the latest issue of the Doctor Who fanzine Nothing At The End Of The Lane, a magazine focussing on the old series which comes out roughly once every six years. I have made a very small contribution to it – some thoughts on a rejected Brian Hayles story outline – and am lucky enough to have been sent an advance copy of the fanzine. It includes all sorts of wonders for fans of the show, including new off-screen photos from missing episodes and various other surprises. An essential purchase for fans of the original show, you will soon be able to order it from this website.

Everywhere It's Christmas

2011-12-23T12:32:00.004Z

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

2011-12-20T19:04:00.005Z

A sketch I wrote a few years back and never managed to sell, probably because it's only sporadically and mildly amusing and is far too long.

SANTA

Casual chat between MIKE and DAVE. MIKE is busy writing, wearing an intense expression.

MIKE:
…and a Wii with loads of games and a racing bike and…

DAVE:
Sorry, what are you doing?

MIKE:
What?

DAVE:
You’re writing something, what is it?

MIKE:
Oh, nothing.

DAVE:
No, go on, tell me.

MIKE:
No, you’ll be funny about it and take the piss.

DAVE:
No, I won’t, I promise. What is it?

MIKE:
I’m making a Christmas list. For Santa.

DAVE:
(incredulous) For Santa?

MIKE:
I knew it! I knew you’d be all snide and… snide.

DAVE:
I’m sorry, but aren’t you a bit old to be writing to Santa Claus?

MIKE:
(very resentful) Oh, right. Suddenly you decide to mock my faith…

DAVE:
No, but… you do know that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, don’t you?

MIKE:
You can say that, but for me, Santa is very real, and very much part of my day-to-day spiritual experience.

DAVE:
But he’s made up…

MIKE:
Yes, you lot, mention someone’s religious convictions and you become all high-and-mighty and ‘I know better’.

DAVE:
You lot?

MIKE:
You and Richard bloody Dawkins and Christopher sodding Hitchens. Look, I’m not trying to convert anyone, I just happened to be a believer – is it too difficult for you to respect that?

DAVE:
It’s quite difficult to respect someone still believing in Santa Claus, yes.

MIKE:
Oh! Oh!

DAVE:
I mean, I’m not religious myself but I can understand someone following something which is part of a recognised belief system. But Santa is not part of a recognised belief system, he’s an obese man in a hat who laughs too much.

MIKE:
Yeah. Like Buddha. Or Jesus. Or Mohammed. You wouldn’t take the piss out of them, would you?

DAVE:
No, I wouldn’t, because they are not generally associated with sitting in a sleigh that’s pulled by reindeer, one of whom has a very shiny nose.

MIKE:
Laugh all you like. I don’t care. I have my faith.

DAVE:
It’s not even a proper faith. It’s just a myth based around some pagan superstitions and a series of advertisements for Coca Cola.

MIKE:
That’s what you say. But Santa has changed my life. He is mysterious and wonderful in ways you could never hope to understand.

DAVE:
Right. No, of course he is.

MIKE:
Now you’re just being sarcastic.

DAVE:
Yes I’m being sarcastic! It’s hard not to be sarcastic when someone says they have a spiritual belief in a man you can visit in the Arndale centre for a pound.

MIKE:
That’s not the real Santa Claus. That is merely his representative on Earth.

DAVE:
I see. Like the Archbishop of Canterbury.

MIKE:
The principle’s the same. I’m sorry if it offends you, but I happen to believe that Santa is a real force for good in this world. After all, he’s making a list.

DAVE:
A list?

MIKE:
He’s checking it twice.

DAVE:
Well, that’s thorough, I suppose.

MIKE:
He’s gonna find out who’s naughty and who’s nice.

DAVE:
Now it’s gone all a bit sinister.

MIKE:
No, that’s the whole point, you see. If you’re naughty, he won’t come down your chimney, but if you’re nice for the whole year, you get presents.

DAVE:
So basically what you’re saying is that he bribes you.

MIKE:
No.

DAVE:
He bribes you to be good.

MIKE:
It’s more a system of incentives and deterrents. Like heaven and hell, but in a much more real, and immediate sense, because if you’ve been naughty, he’ll know, and -

DAVE:
And you won’t get a Ninentendo DS Lite.

MIKE:
Exactly. But I will, because I’ve been nice. You, on the other hand, had better watch out. You’d better not cry. You’d better not pout.

DAVE:
Why?

MIKE:
I’m telling you why.

DAVE:
Oh good grief.

MIKE:
(evangelical) Because Santa Claus is coming. Santa Claus is coming. Santa Claus is coming to town. Amen.

DAVE:
That’s a hymn, is it?

MIKE:
Yes.

DAVE:
And Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer?

MIKE:
Yes, that’s one too. Though we don’t actually believe the story of Rudolph, it’s more of a metaphor for Santa Claus’s infinite capacity for forgiveness.

DAVE:
Of course it is, how stupid of me not to realise that…

MIKE:
It’s alright. I was like you once. A sceptic. A non-believer. A mocking mocker.

DAVE:
So what changed all that?

MIKE:
You’re not to laugh, alright? It’s just that, one night… I saw him. I was very young, about six or seven, lying in my bed on Christmas eve… and suddenly there he was, at the foot of my bed, stuffing presents in a pillow case. Santa.

DAVE:
Oh.

MIKE:
Yeah. And so ever since then, I have let Santa into my heart.

DAVE:
You don’t think, possibly, that it might have been your dad dressed up?

MIKE:
What -? Well, he did have the same aftershave as my -

MIKE suddenly has a crisis of faith.

MIKE:
Oh my God… oh my God, you’re right… it’s all been a pathetic lie, hasn’t it?

END

Do They Know It's Christmas?

2011-12-19T18:05:00.005Z

Here’s a silly, fun, festive thing I did on twitter at midday today: I started a singalong of Do They Know It’s Christmas. This is how it happened:

jonnymorris1973 Jonathan Morris
Members of the choir. Songsheets at the ready.

jonnymorris1973 Jonathan Morris
The hashttag is #xmaskaraoke

jonnymorris1973 Jonathan Morris
One two three four...

jonnymorris1973 Jonathan Morris
It's Christmas time, there's no need to be afraid #xmaskaraoke

Paul_Cornell Paul_Cornell
At Christmas time... we let in light and we banish shade. #xmaskaraoke

cathieharvey Catherine Green
And in our world of plenty we can spread a smile of joy

markravenhill Mark Ravenhill
Throw your arms around terra in the mutter spiral at Christmas time

TomSpilsbury Tom Spilsbury
But say a prayer, pray for the other ones. #xmaskaraoke

jamesgrayh James: DrWho Fansite
At Christmastime it's hard, but when you're having fun #xmaskaraoke

jamesmoran James Moran
Theeeeere's a world outside your window and it's a world of dread and fear #xmaskaraoke

edstradling Ed Stradling
Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears ... #xmaskaraoke

theolismith Oli Smith
And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom, #xmaskaraoke

joelidster Joe Lidster
Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you. #xmaskaraoke

HokusBloke Neil Gardner
And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time #xmaskaraoke

ianzpotter Ian Potter
The greatest gift they'll get this year is liiife (woah oh) #xmaskaraoke

anghelides Peter Anghelides
Where nothing ever grows, no rain nor River Song.

MrsSteveOBrien Steve O'Brien
Do they know it's christmas time (flight) at all?

sirdigbychicken Martin Day
Here's to you, raise your glass for everyone #xmaskaraoke

PiaGuerra Pia Guerra
Here's to them, underneath that burning sun #xmaskaraoke

gossjam James Goss
Do they know it's Christmas time at all?

mrtonylee Tony Lee
Do they know it's Christmas Time at all.... #xmaskaraoke

jonnymorris1973 Jonathan Morris
AND NOW: EVERYBODY ON TWITTER! #xmaskaraoke

At which point about a hundred or so people joined in tweeting the chorus with the hashtag #xmaskaraoke. For about 15 minutes.

jonnymorris1973 Jonathan Morris
Applause! Well done everyone! That was fantastic! #xmaskaraoke

jonnymorris1973 Jonathan Morris
Thanks to everyone who took part. Particularly everyone who came in too early, too late, or who sang the wrong line. #xmaskaraoke

jonnymorris1973 Jonathan Morris
Though I think 45 minutes is possibly too long for Do They Know It's Christmas. #karaoke

jonnymorris1973 Jonathan Morris
And a very merry Christmas to you all. x

This may become a Christmas tradition. I hope so. If nothing else, it gained me about 250 new followers!

Deeper Shade Of Blue

2011-12-16T14:26:00.011Z

The latest Doctor Who Magazine and the Big Finish website have both announced that 2013 will see a second series of Tom Baker audio adventures, two of which are written by yours truly. They are ‘The Auntie Matter’, where he is joined by his companion Romana, portrayed by Mary Tamm, and ‘Phantoms Of The Deep’, where they are also joined by K-9, the adorably prissy robot dog portrayed by John Leeson.

Both stories were written earlier this year, in June and August respectively. I was lucky enough to attend both recordings and on both occasions at the end of the day my jaw was aching from constant grinning. To hear Tom Baker performing my words, and doing it so well, with such attention to detail, with such irrepressible humour and with such panache! Many times I closed my eyes and it was like being transported back to 1978, or sticking on a DVD of a Doctor Who from 1978. I count myself inordinately fortunate to have been given such an opportunity; even it retrospect I still can’t quite believe it happened. It will be a memory to treasure for the rest of my life. I’ve written two stories for Tom Baker’s Doctor (three if you count the adaptation of The Valley Of Death). That’s just mind-boggling.

My favourite moment was the first TARDIS scene from Phantoms Of The Deep (I wrote a TARDIS scene!). The Doctor and K-9... together for the first time since 1980. It was utter magic.

I can’t tell you much about the stories, because I’ll get into trouble with Big Finish, and because they won’t be released until 2013. (Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary year! No doubt Moffat’s TV show will be doing some sort of 3-D live spectacular with Jeff-Bridges-in-Tron-style CGI reconstructions of the deceased Doctors, but at least I’ll be contributing in my own modest way.)

‘The Auntie Matter’ stars Julia McKenzie, who I’m sure you know from Marple, Cranford, Fresh Fields and numerous Stephen Sondheim musicals. It’s a Doctor Who story written in the style of PG Wodehouse, a deceptively light comedy. ‘Phantoms Of The Deep’ stars Alice Krige, of Spooks and Star Trek: First Contact. It couldn’t be more different from ‘The Auntie Matter’; it’s a claustrophobic hard-sci-fi blockbuster. The sort of story that would be advertised by a poster that is mostly black but with a hint of dark blue. This might give you some clues as to the subject matter.

They can be pre-ordered; click on the names on the list of Things I've Written on the right. I also script-edited one story for the same season, 'The Justice Of Jalxar' written by John Dorney, in which the Doctor is reunited with Professor Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago of The Talons Of Weng-Chiang. It's a terrific story for which I can sadly take very, very little credit.

It’s a little strange, having these things announced so far in advance. I mean, where will we all be in 2013? What will the world be like so far in the future? The Olympics, the Diamond Jubilee and Ed Miliband’s leadership of the Labour Party will all be distant memories by then. And I’ll be nearly 40.

Some Dreams Come True

2011-12-14T12:34:00.004Z

Big Finish productions have just released a trailer for their forthcoming series of Doctor Who audios starring Tom Baker as the Doctor and Louise Jameson as Leela.

My contribution is that I wrote/adapted the 'Lost Story' The Valley Of Death based on an outline by former Doctor Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe. I also performed script-editing chores on The Wrath Of The Iceni and The Oseidon Adventure. A brief account of the recording of The Valley Of Death can be found here.

The entire series of new audios can be pre-ordered here (or here for download-only) and the Lost Stories box-set (which includes 'The Valley of Death') can be pre-ordered here (or here for download-only). There are also discounts for buying both together, which can be found here.

Here Is The News

2011-12-14T12:24:00.002Z

As a little follow-on from my previous post, here's a news report on the event made by Ed Stradling. It's more factually accurate and better-put-together than the BBC's own reports.

Underwater Love

2011-12-12T19:13:00.023Z

On Sunday went to Missing Believed Wiped where, as I’m sure anyone reading this knows, they showed the recently-recovered Doctor Who episode The Underwater Menace part two and a clip from the also recently-recovered Doctor Who episode Galaxy 4 part three. Of which more later. But those weren’t the only things they showed.

The reason why I’d originally been excited about the event, before I may have heard a rumour and been sworn to secrecy, was that it would include a long-long Dennis Potter play, Emergency Ward 9, first broadcast in 1966. The play’s story editor Kenith Trodd introduced it, but with caveats; it was written in a rush, it was from a different time where racism was more commonplace. I think, actually, the play is much better than he thinks it is. It’s essentially about two men in adjoining bates, Mr Flanders and Mr Padstow, and we follow them over a few days in a typical NHS hospital. The only part of the story that didn’t ring true was the wealth black character; if he’s so wealthy, why is he in an NHS ward? The death of a patient asking repeatedly for a ‘cuppa tea’ was pretty tough viewing; this, and some other parts of the play (including the use of archive music) turned up in a rewritten form in The Singing Detective 20 years later. It was a funny, moving and in places ‘angry’ play; much better than some of the dull tat he was knocking out for LWT a few years later.

We were also shown some adverts and music clips with puppets, which were amusing enough, and a rather stiff play from the 50’s starring Andre Morrell, a supposedly but not actually true story about an allied soldier having plastic surgery so that he could take the place of a Nazi officer in Norway.

And then Mark Gatiss introduced the Doctor Who discoveries. It was an incredibly thrilling moment, to see the Hartnell titles on the screen, and then to see a Rill (a monster which fans had previously only been able to see in two grainy photographs) in action, followed by Air Lock, the title of the third episode of Galaxy 4. The Doctor and Vicki are trying to escape from its spaceship, a rather flimsy-looking affair like a geodesic climbing frame. Part of the set breaks off out of shot, but Hartnell carries on regardless. But then Vicki is grabbed by a Chumblie (a robot that resembles a stack of upturned colanders) and we get to see that Chumblies have arms and guns and little lights. We then cut to a scene of Maaga, leader of the Drahvins, discussing the artificial genetically-modified nature of the Drahvin race, most of which was delivered as a soliloquy to camera. And then the picture cut out. Just as it was getting exciting.

The Underwater Menace part two was no less fascinating. It’s Patrick Troughton’s earliest surviving performance as the Doctor, and as such is more gimmicky and comedic than what would come later. My mum once told me how annoying he was to begin with, because he’d just sit and play his bloody recorder all the time, and yet until now we’ve never had a clip of Troughton doing just that*; I also suspect that this episode is so early in his run that he’s still wearing a wig over his own hair. He’s also still very much in the wearing-silly-hats –whenever-he-can stage. What was surprising was how dark the episode was, how seriously it was all taken (given that the plot and dialogue are both pure comic strip). The story’s villain, Professor Zaroff, is supposed to be mad, and seeing Joseph Furst’s performance in this episode puts his increasing mania in episode three (which has long-since existed) into context; it also makes more sense of the politics and religion of the Atlantean people. It was also lovely to see more of Ben, Polly and Jamie (Jamie still wearing his highlander outfit from his first story). The only major disappointment is that I’d expected to see a shot of Zaroff’s pet octopus, but alas, no octopus was forthcoming. But it was a surprisingly strong episode; the darkness and cavernous echo giving it a real sense of claustrophobia, of it all taking place deep below ground, where a whole society is slowly going stir crazy. It’s still a daft, random, clunkily-written story, but the joy is in seeing Patrick Troughton working with what dialogue he’s given, playing against it, or weighing up his moments carefully, and creating a believable, magical performance, not so much with the words but through his mannerisms and expressions. Even if he does play that bloody recorder.

The second half of Missing Believed Wiped wasn’t nearly so much fun. I should have just gone to the bar.

After about half of the audience had left, Dick Fiddy took to the stage to remind people that they shouldn’t record stuff shown on the big screen. A reminder which might have been more effective before half the audience had left. But then it was on with the show...

First there were some clips from Oh Boy! An episode of the show has recently been found, but what seems to have happened is that someone has appropriated the footage in the hope of getting their Oh Boy! documentary off the ground, so rather than seeing the recovered footage in situ, instead we only got to see his trailer for his prospective documentary (which largely comprised of footage not from the recovered episode). I’m not keen on people trying to further their careers by interpolating themselves between recovered footage and people getting to see it. So rather than the footage of one of Cliff Richard’s earliest TV performance being made available for, say, a documentary about Cliff Richard, it seems either it will only see the light of day as part of some guy's documentary on Oh Boy! or not at all. Which seems counter to the spirit of Missing Believed Wiped – this stuff should be made available to as many people who want to see it, not hoarded or hidden or with an agenda attached.

Next up was an episode of The Rolf Harris Show. It was 45 minutes of sheer torture. I suppose it could be argued it has some historical merit – if nothing else it makes you appreciate how much better Lulu and Dusty Springfield’s shows were from the same time – and it was interesting to note that even when they were young, the Beverley Sisters looked like they were in their late 50s - but it was excruciating to sit through. As was the following ‘recovery’, a recording of a guitar festival from 1984. I put recovery in quotation marks because this concert was never actually missing, it was barely even broadcast in the first place (only being shown on a satellite channel that no-one could pick up) and has been retained in an indie's archive ever since.

What baffles me about this is that the people going to Missing Believed Wiped were only shown a measly 5 minutes of Galaxy 4, a recovery which will bring delight to thousands of people, and which made the national news, because the organisers thought it was more important to show 45 minutes of The Rolf Harris Show and a guitar festival from 1984.

Edit: Alternatively, they could have dropped the 50's play, as it hadn't been mentioned in publicity and, given the howls of derision with which it was greeted, I don't think it would have been missed.

Now, I’m not saying those things aren’t important in their own way, of course they are, but if the BFI's attitude to what gets shown at Missing Believed Wiped reflects their priorities regarding what they decide to keep and what they chuck then I worry. Unless, of course, it wasn’t their decision to make, and the fact that they could only show 5 minutes of Galaxy 4 was because of the owner of the footage or the BBC or for technical reasons.

But even so, I think there could be more flexibility in what gets show at Missing Believed Wiped. It’s not as if the programme is announced in advance. The publicity makes it clear 'As per normal not all the content of the day is verified at the time of going to press'. If you have a year in which lots of TV shows have turned up, but not many musical performances, don’t allocate TV shows and musical performances equal running time. Because, quite frankly, sitting through The Rolf Harris Show my attitude was that it should be chucked right back in the skip. I don't bedgrudge some highlights being shown, but the whole 45 mins? And the same goes for the guitar festival from 1984. The programme selection of Missing Believed Wiped should better reflect what the people paying to see the footage might actually be interested in and not the whims and personal tastes of the organisers. I mean, I was delighted to see the footage of David Bowie performing Jean Genie on Top of the Pops, but to play it twice? When you could be showing something else (like the rest of Galaxy 4 part three)? Because, I think, if the people paying to go to Missing Believed Wiped keep on being subjected to stuff like The Rolf Harris Show or a guitar festival from 1984 when there’s so much other more interesting and entertaining stuff turning up that could and should be shown (such as a whole edition of Top Of The Pops from 1976) then they’ll stop paying to go to Missing Believed Wiped. The event should be a showcase for gems from the past, not a feat of endurance.

Oh, I know I'm being greedy, I'm just annoyed that they didn't show all of Galaxy 4 part three. Because that would've been fantastic.

See blogs on previous Missing Believed Wipeds here, here and here.

* I have since been reminded that he does in The Abominable Snowmen part two.

Paris

2011-11-22T12:29:00.000Z

As a follow-up to this, time for another lost DVD extra. Richard Bignells presents a Now And Then and Now And Then on the classic Classic Doctor Who story Doctor Who And The City Of Death. All the same jokes as last time but in even worse sound quality.

Fireworks

2011-11-05T12:47:00.003Z

Here's a sketch I wrote four years ago which I couldn't sell to anybody.

CONSPIRATOR

A cellar in the early 17^th century. A Catholic Conspirator, ROBERT, sits on a barrel marked ‘gunpowder’, waiting, looking bored, smoking and sighing.

He is discovered by a GUARD in a Jacobean ‘Yeoman’ outfit.

GUARD:

Halt! Who goes there?

ROBERT:

Oh, hello, company at last! I thought it was just me down here!

GUARD:

You are alone?

ROBERT:

Well, I was supposed to meet some friends for a sort of fireworks party, but they haven’t turned up. Typical them!

GUARD:

You were to meet your friends here? In the private vault of the House of Lords?

ROBERT:

Phew, I’ve got that bit right at least! No, we were all to meet down here, a sort of bring-your-own-gunpowder do. Look, I’ve got a flyer. It’s definitely tonight.

He gives the GUARD a note.

ROBERT:

See. Under where it says ‘Guaranteed To Go With A Bang’, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. ‘Remember, remember. The eleventh of May’.

GUARD:

The eleventh of May?

ROBERT;

Yes.

GUARD:

It says here the fifth of November.

ROBERT:

What?

He takes the GUARD’s note back.

ROBERT:

Oh, shit. I know what I’ve done. It’s five of the eleven, not eleven of the five. I’m always doing that. I’ve been working on the system they use in the New World.

GUARD:

So you’re six months early!

ROBERT:

D’oh, what am I like! Oh God, the boys are so going to laugh when they hear this. I’ve been sitting down here for three hours like some sort of prize lemon!

GUARD:

Yes... so you’ll be back here on the fifth of November?

ROBERT:

Yes, me and all the boys. I can’t believe this. And I came all the way from Northampton, it took a week! Oh well, at least I’ll know the way for next time.

GUARD:

I’ll being see you again, then?

ROBERT:

Yes, I suppose you will!

GUARD:

Tell you what, I’ll bring a few of my mates from the Yeomen of the Guard along too, if that’s okay?

ROBERT:

No, that’s fine. The more the merrier. See you in six months!

GUARD:

Six months!

The GUARD leaves. ROBERT reads at the flier again. And suddenly The Penny Of Terrible Realisation drops.

ROBERT:

Hang on... shit! Shit! What have I done? How could I have been so stupid. November the fifth – it clashes with Bonfire Night!

END

The Sound Of Silence

2011-10-26T18:13:00.007+01:00

Another short story from a Doctor Who charity anthology, this time The Silent City which was originally published as part of Missing Pieces back in 2001. The theme of the anthology was, as you might expect from the title, missing pieces, so I decided to write a 4-part William Hartnell story, where the last 3 parts are missing. Usual health warnings apply.

As the music dies away, we fade up from blackness and find ourselves overlooking a beautiful woodland. Or, at least, an image of one. It is high summer; the oaks are covered in a heavy layer of leaves, the grass is lush, and the sun is burning in a clear sky. The trees form a crescent around a grove at the rise of the hill, where a path leads past an unoccupied park bench. It is a perfect, tranquil scene, but nevertheless there is a sense of something eerie and extraordinary. Perhaps it is the silence. The scene is so still, and so quiet, it is like a wake.

The peace is broken by a distorted trumpeting. A small wooden building ghosts into existence in an unobtrusive corner of the glade, its battered paintwork half-hidden in the shadows. For some seconds, we cast our gaze over the panelling, rising up past the frosted windows to read the lettering above the double doors. ‘Police Public Call Box’.

Caption:

THE SILENT CITY

The trumpeting halts with an abrupt crump, and we are returned to the sheer silence.

Caption:

BY JONATHAN MORRIS

For a few more seconds, we watch the police box as it stands, expectant and mournful. And then the caption disappears and we fade back to darkness.

After a refreshing night’s sleep,a wash and a shave, Steven strolled into the console room, closing the door to the living quarters behind him. He stifled a yawn, and tugged the neck of his sweater into place, before stretching his arms to wake himself up.

The room was unusually gloomy, the roundels of the walls barely visible in the shadows. The only illumination came from within the glass column at the centre of the six-sided console, where the Doctor stood hunched over the controls, the light picking out his deeply lined forehead and pursed lips, his silvery hair swept back in an imperious curl. He tutted merrily to himself as he adjusted various levers and switches, oblivious to anything but the dials before him. Steven studied the Doctor’s reflection through the column; his features stretched and grew, changing the familiar, kindly-faced old man into something distorted and alien.

The central column lay at rest, indicating that the TARDIS had materialised. Steven rubbed his jaw, still tender to the touch. ‘Where are we this time, Doctor?’

Vicki, the Doctor’s other companion, put one finger to her lips and shushed him. She sat perched in the wing-backed armchair, her knees tucked up against her chest. She wore a formless grey jumper decorated with geometric designs and plain trousers. She gave Steven a confidential don’t-disturb-him smirk and nodded towards the Doctor.

‘I was only asking-’ said Steven.

‘The Doctor’s busy.’ Vicki raised her eyebrows reprovingly.

The Doctor gave a chuckle, and cleared his throat. He looked up from the controls. ‘Ah. Steven, my boy. Glad you could join us.’ He took a step back and clasped his hands together. ‘We have arrived, it would seem. Yes, we have arrived.’

‘But where?’ Steven joined the Doctor at the console, and Vicki clambered out of the chair and stood to one side.

‘We shall soon see,’ said the Doctor, twisting the scanner control. The television screen fixed high up the far wall flared into life.

The image on the screen sharpened from a blur of grey and black to reveal the leaves and branches of a woodland glade. As the scanner panned to the right, more trees and bushes moved into view in an leisurely procession. There were no signs of life; no birds, no forest animals. There was no movement at all.

‘It’s so peaceful,’ sighed Vicki dreamily.

‘It looks like we’re still on Earth,’ said Steven. ‘Doctor?’

‘It would appear to be so.’ The Doctor rubbed his fingers together. ‘Yes, yes. Certainly, all of the astral and atmospheric readings indicate that we are on the Earth.’ He smiled. ‘The ship seems to becoming rather fond of the place, hmm?’

‘Can we go outside?’ said Vicki, her eyes never leaving the screen. ‘Oh, can we?’

The Doctor patted her shoulder. ‘I don’t see why not, my dear.’

‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ said Steven warily. The Doctor had a habit of landing them in places that initially seemed welcoming but that invariably turned out to be hostile. Only recently, they had found themselves in the dank forests of medieval England being chased by mead-soaked Vikings. And a visit to Venice had ended with them embroiled in a plot involving stick-like aliens and a spy by the name of William Shakespeare. Experience had given Steven good reason to be cautious.

‘Safe? Mmm?’ The Doctor fastened his black cape and rounded on Steven. ‘Of course it is safe.’ He laughed to himself. ‘You would do well not to doubt my abilities! A little optimism goes a long way you know!’

‘Do you think we might be in the late twentieth century?’ gushed Vicki. Born more than a century and a half earlier than Steven, she had been travelling with the Doctor for several months, and regarded him with the bright, unswerving faith of an innocent teenager. ‘We could go and visit Ian and Barbara!’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘I’m afraid it is unlikely, my dear. The chances that we have arrived at the right time, in the correct continent, are extremely remote.’

‘But still-’

‘No. It is better you have realistic expectations’. The Doctor pressed the switch that activated the door mechanism. ‘A little optimism, Steven. But not, perhaps, too much.’

Steven laughed and joined Vicki at the exterior doors. With a hum, the double doors drew apart. Outside was a gloriously sunny day and the smell of rich, wet grass. The sight was inviting. Vicki rushed eagerly out of the starkness of the TARDIS console room and into the leafy glade.

Steven was about to follow her when an impatient tapping sound caught his attention. He turned to see the Doctor stooped over the Ormulu clock, his face set in concentration. The Doctor rapped the minute hand of the clock with an index finger. With no result, he studied the antiquated clock face intently, numeral by numeral. ‘Doctor?’

Startled, the Doctor looked up. ‘Ah. Steven.’

‘What is it?’

‘Oh, nothing. Nothing,’ said the Doctor, dismissing the matter with a wave of a hand. ‘It probably just needs winding, that’s all. Yes, that’s it.’ He led Steven back to the doors. ‘Let’s see where Vicki’s got to, shall we? Hmm?’

The bright sunlight warmed Vicki’s upturned face. She circled slowly around the woodland clearing, her shoes sinking into the soft grass, and took a lungful of fresh air. After the sterile atmosphere of the TARDIS, emerging into the real world felt like waking up. Vicki closed her eyes and smiled.

She turned to see the Doctor and Steven emerging from the police box, the Doctor harrumphing as he locked the doors. As he stepped out of the shadows, he appraised their surroundings and nodded stiffly in approval.

‘Well, it looks like Earth,’ said Steven dubiously.

‘It smells like it, too,’ said Vicki as she walked over to join them. ‘It’s lovely.’

‘Where exactly do you think we might be, Doctor?’ said Steven. ‘Or when?’

Vicki giggled. ‘As if the Doctor would know!’

The Doctor shot her a look of mock indignation. ‘My child, it is perfectly possible to deduce our location with a little reasoning intelligence and patience.’

Steven scanned the surrounding trees for some clue, but the trees were as silent and motionless as a painted backdrop. He shrugged an unimpressed shrug. ‘A forest, by the look of it.’ He strolled away from the TARDIS, his boots trudging into the sodden earth. ‘There’s some sort of path.’

Shielding her eyes, Vicki cast her gaze around the treetops, and gave a gasp. ‘Over there.’ She pointed, arm outstretched. ‘Look, Doctor, Steven; over those trees. In the distance. A church tower.’

The Doctor peered. ‘Yes, yes. And some other buildings. Well, that would seem to confirm it. We are on Earth. But-’

‘But when?’ pressed Steven.

‘Five minutes to twelve o’clock’, giggled Vicki. ‘You can see the clock on the tower. There.’

Steven joined her and followed her pointing finger. ‘Where? Oh, I see. Eleven fifty-five.’ He squinted. ‘It’s made of stone. You haven’t landed us in the middle ages again, have you, Doc?’

‘No. Just because the building dates from the middle ages, it doesn’t mean that is necessarily where- when we are. You see, that building could have been standing for centuries. It’s not brand new, is it? Silly boy. Hmm. But-’ The Doctor’s fingers twitched at his lapels in irritation. ‘But there is something strange. Have you noticed it, I wonder?’

Steven regarded him. ‘Something strange?’

‘I haven’t spotted anything,’ said Vicki brightly. ‘It seems perfectly normal.’

‘No?’ The Doctor raised his eyebrows. ‘Look around you. Listen. Something out of the ordinary?’

Steven gave Vicki a look of incredulity, and then, hands on hips, looked around intently for any signs of life. Vicki held her breath and listened, but there was nothing to hear. It was absolutely silent. No rustle of leaves, nothing.

‘Of course-’ began Vicki. She put a hand to her cheek. Outdoors, there would normally be a breeze gently ruffling the bushes and the grass. But the air was utterly calm, unnervingly so. Apart from their own voices and footsteps, there hadn’t been a sound since they had stepped out of the TARDIS. And nothing was moving; it was like standing inside a photograph. Forever trapped in a lifeless, soundless world, thought Vicki. Utterly alone. She shivered, feeling a sudden sense of claustrophobia. The silence seemed so intense, so suffocating.

‘What is it?’ said Steven, breaking the spell. ‘I can’t hear anything.’

‘Exactly,’ announced Vicki. ‘That’s because there isn’t anything to hear. It’s completely quiet.’

Steven’s mouth opened in realisation. ‘You’re right. There hasn’t been a single sound. And nothing’s moving; the leaves on the trees, nothing. There’s no breeze at all. Doctor?’

The Doctor stroked his chin. ‘This is most interesting, isn’t it?’ He adopted a poetic frown. ‘No noise, no wind. Most curious, yes.’

‘No bird song, either,’ said Steven, looking up into the empty sky. ‘No birds. It’s as quiet as the grave.’

‘You don’t think-’ stammered Vicki. ‘You don’t think we’ve skipped a time track again?’ She remembered with dread their visit to Xeros, where, due to a TARDIS malfunction, they had arrived as ghosts cast into their own future.

‘That was my thought, but I don’t think so,’ said the Doctor. He waved a hand, indicating the grass and mud. ‘We have left footprints, you see. No, we are most definitely real.’

‘Then - then what is it?’ said Steven.

‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ said the Doctor. ‘Perhaps- ’ He stopped himself mid-thought and shook his head. ‘No. I think we should investigate further. Now, if we follow this course, we should end up in that settlement. I think that is the best path of action.’

‘But-’ began Vicki, a question on her lips.

‘Later, later,’ said the Doctor, starting briskly down the path. He gave a sprightly giggle. ‘Do keep up!’

Steven and Vicki exchanged bemused expressions, and followed.

The path wound a short distance through the wood and escaped onto the crest of a grassy hill. From this point they overlooked an expanse of parkland rolling away a mile or so below them. The trees extended to either side, thinning out to reveal hints of civilisation; the angular shapes of slated roofs, an occasional window, and, most conspicuously of all, the aerials mounted onto each of the chimney stacks. The aerials, Steven deduced, indicated they had arrived at some point during the twentieth century, in that brief period when communications were sophisticated enough to use radio but not sophisticated enough to do it unobtrusively.

At first Steven had assumed they were on the outskirts of a village, but as they reached the apex of the hill he realised that they were on the fringes of a vast city. In the far distance, spaced irregularly along the horizon, shining in the brilliant, burning sunlight, were a half-recognisable mixture of buildings. It had been several years since Steven had left Earth, and the skyline would clutter dramatically over the next six centuries, but nevertheless the view felt familiar and reassuring. Over to the far left, there was the domed cathedral; nearer, there was a solitary tower, a squat cylinder resting on a spire; and, to the right, the four chimneys of the power station. The view seemed strangely bare and antiquated; the last time Steven had visited the city, those monuments had been dwarfed by the geodesic cloudscrapers and spiralling monorails.

Vicki bounded excitedly to Steven’s side and took in the panorama with breathless delight. ‘Oh, Steven, I know where we are!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s old London. I remember seeing it in a history programme. Ooh, hasn’t it changed?’

‘Changed?’ said Steven.

‘Well, last time I was here it was all moving walkways,’ said Vicki proudly. ‘And space cars.’

‘Really?’ Steven fought the urge to smile. He was tempted to tell her that moving walkways and space cars were, to him, also the stuff of history programmes. But, for all his cynicism, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He found her endless enthusiasm endearing and he knew that, despite her bright disposition, she had, like him, endured more than her share of hardship. They had both been survivors of spaceship crashes, given up for lost, and had both suffered the loneliness of months of captivity before being rescued by the kindly, enigmatic and occasionally infuriating old man known only as the Doctor. Steven couldn’t help but be touched by Vicki’s almost childlike faith in the Doctor, and yet, as they travelled together, and the memories of his own ordeal faded, he found that he was beginning to share in her admiration for the old man. He knew, with complete certainty, that he could trust the Doctor more than he could trust anything else in life.

A wheezing and coughing heralded the arrival of the Doctor in his shirtsleeves, his cloak slung over one shoulder. Spotting a park bench, he eased himself into it with a grateful sigh.

‘Doctor!’ cried Vicki, ‘You should take it more easy at your age.’

‘At my age?’ The Doctor dabbed at his forehead with an indignant handkerchief. ‘Just because I don’t canter about like a billy goat, it doesn’t mean I am an invalid, you know.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘It is, I feel, uncommonly humid. Very hot. Now. Now where are we? Hmm?’

‘Old London,’ said Vicki. ‘See!’

Remaining seated, the Doctor inspected the buildings on the horizon with academic amusement. ‘Ah, yes. Old London? I don’t think Miss Wright and Chesterton would care for you to call it that.’

‘I know, but-.’ Vicki stopped as something caught her eye. She pointed an excited finger. ‘Look. There’s some people down there.’

The Doctor and Steven followed her gaze. ‘So we’re not alone,’ muttered Steven to himself. About a hundred yards away, there were four figures, all dressed in summer clothes. Two men and two women, facing towards each other in an approximate square.

‘No, it would seem not, my boy. Perhaps you might try attracting their attention.’ The Doctor fluttered his handkerchief by way of an example.

Grinning, Vicki stood tip-toes and waved. ‘Hello,’ she called, cupping her hands around her mouth. ‘Hello!’

‘Hello!’, shouted Steven stiffly. ‘Over here-!’ As the last syllable left his lips, he suddenly paused. In this silence, there should have been some echo but instead his words seemed to become muted in the air. The atmosphere was utterly dead. And there was no response. The four figures didn’t turn their heads or show any reaction to the commotion.

‘Maybe they can’t hear us,’ suggested Vicki.

‘No, they should have been able to,’ said Steven. He frowned. This latest development unnerved him. There was something eerie and unreal about this place; it was like walking through a half-waking dream. Perhaps they hadn’t been brought to the Earth at all. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘You think they’re ignoring us? Maybe they’re all deaf?’ said Vicki.

‘Must you always jump to the least likely explanation, my dear?’ uttered the Doctor. ‘Ignoring us! Preposterous!’

‘So what do you think it is?’ said Steven.

‘I’m not sure.’ The Doctor patted the park bench and narrowed his eyes. ‘Perhaps we are not making any sound? Or maybe this atmosphere – this atmosphere doesn’t carry sound? Sound travels at different speeds according to the medium, you know.’

‘But-’ protested Steven.

‘Ah-ha!’ Forgetting their conversation, the Doctor reached down, and retrieved a discarded newspaper from underneath the bench. ‘Now, this should provide some clue.’ The paper had been slightly crumpled but the print was fresh and clear. ‘Let us see. Yes. The date! Today is the thirty-first of July, nineteen sixty-five.’

‘Nineteen sixty-five?’ said Steven. He had guessed as much, though the thought of visiting so ancient an era still left him disorientated.

‘So we can go and visit Ian and Barbara!’ clapped Vicki. ‘Oh, can we?’

‘I wouldn’t be so certain.’ The Doctor pulled himself to his feet. ‘We would have a strange time, if we were to visit them, and they couldn’t hear us, hmmm? No, no, there is something very odd happening here. And I won’t be satisfied until I’ve got to the bottom of it.’

Steven approached him. ‘What do you propose we do next?’

‘I think our next step should be to go and see those people down there. Perhaps, in a closer vicinity, we may be able to communicate? Or maybe we shall find an answer to the explanation.’

‘After you,’ said Steven, indicating the downward path to the Doctor.

‘But I don’t understand,’ gasped Vicki. ‘What’s happened?’

At the bottom of the hill, the trees and bushes were more sparse and the grass had worn away to a dustbowl of gravel. The edge of the park thinned into scrubland, separated from the pavement by a low beam fence. Beyond the pavement the road tarmac baked lazily in the late morning sunshine. Several cars rested at intervals down the road, a dozen or so yards apart. The cars were rounded and made of dull metal; some also sported a wooden border around the doors and windows.

Inside each car, seated in the drivers seat, was the shadowy form of a person. It was hard to make out their features through the reflected windscreen glare, but they seemed to be fairly normal, wearing suits and headscarves. Except none of them was moving. They were sitting, their eyes fixed on the road ahead, their features set, motionless.

‘Are they all parked?’ asked Vicki.

‘No, Vicki,’ said Steven. ‘I don’t know much about the twentieth century, but I don’t think they had a habit of parking in the middle of the road.’

‘Then what-?’

‘Shush, my dear.’ The Doctor beadily inspected the cars, his hands perched eagle-like on his lapels. ‘If you will observe, you can see the petrol fumes coming from the car exhausts.’

The Doctor was right. Out of the exhaust tubes of each car, there was a similar cloud of black smoke. But the odd thing was, the smoke was also perfectly still, hanging in the air like a half-coiled mist.

‘But the fumes,’ said Steven. ‘They’re not moving either.’

‘Exactly, exactly.’ The Doctor chuckled. ‘And yet a gas – it does not match the behaviour we would expect. It doesn’t float away, it remains where it is. Hmmm.’

‘And the people. They’re just sitting there,’ said Vicki fearfully.

‘Are they? They look like they’re driving to me,’ said the Doctor.

‘But they’re not going anywhere,’ Vicki replied.

‘No, they’re not, are they? This is most odd.’ The Doctor rubbed his brow. ‘No sound, and no motion.’

‘Any ideas, Doctor?’ said Steven.

‘I have a theory, yes, and I would like to put it to the test. Those people we waved to earlier. Where are they?’

Vicki led the Doctor away from the fence and nodded towards the four figures, who were standing only a short distance away. They hadn’t moved from their earlier position; they were still arranged in a square, facing each other. ‘There.’

‘Oh yes,’ huffed the Doctor. He jutted out his chin and strode towards them.

‘Careful, Doctor!’ warned Steven.

The Doctor walked right up to one of the figures. A man in his twenties, with light hair, a cotton shirt and flannel trousers. The man was looking away from the Doctor, as though something had caught his attention.

His fist to his mouth, the Doctor coughed. And coughed again. ‘Excuse me, hmmm?’ he called. The young man remained motionless. The Doctor tapped him on his elbow, but there was still no reaction. The Doctor patted him, and, receiving no response, circled around him. Once they were face to face, the Doctor peered into his pale eyes and then snorted victoriously.

‘Don’t worry,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s quite safe. Vicki, Steven-?’

Steven and Vicki approached the four figures. As they drew closer, Steven noticed that although they were standing still, they were not actually upright. Each of them leaned either forwards or to one side, balanced on one leg, as if they were frozen mid-way through a movement. The two men and women were each holding unfamiliar wooden implements consisting of a handle and a near-circle of gridded twine.

Vicki watched them, wide-eyed. ‘How can they balance?’ she said. ‘Standing in one leg?’ She giggled at the thought.

Steven turned to each of the figures in turn. Their faces were also fixed in their expressions, their mouths open, their eyes unblinking. This close, the resemblance to statues was astonishing..

‘That is an interesting question,’ said the Doctor, placing a comforting arm around Vicki’s shoulders. ‘Why don’t they fall over, hmm?’

‘Well, Doctor?’ said Steven impatiently. Unprompted, the Doctor would never think of sharing his explanations, and would be content simply to off away, muttering and giggling to himself.

‘It appears-’ He paused. ‘It appears that the laws of gravity and momentum have been suspended. That fellow there’ – he wagged a finger – ‘he could not possibly balance like that. If you look, there, he is in the process of stepping forward. But, as we see him, he is achieving the impossible. Most peculiar.’

Vicki gaped as the sight before her triggered a memory. ‘Of course! They’re playing tennis!’

‘Tennis?’ said Steven.

‘An old Earth game,’ said Vicki. ‘Played with rackets, and a ball.’

‘A ball?’ Steven scanned the nearby ground, but found no sign of a ball. Lifting his head, he spotted it. It hung in mid-air between the four players, some two yards off the ground. There was nothing to support it; it was, as far as Steven could see, defying gravity.

The Doctor had also seen it. ‘Ah, yes. I’m rather afraid that proves my theory. You see time- my boy! What are you doing!’

Steven turned guiltily to the Doctor. He had reached up for the ball and, as though it was the most natural thing to do, collected it from its position at head height. He felt its surface, and weighed it in his palm. The tennis ball felt furry and light, but not light enough to float. To make sure, Steven held it in front of him, and let go. The ball sank into the grass.

The Doctor barked in disapproval. ‘You shouldn’t touch! Don’t move anything!’

‘But why not?’ said Steven, crouching to pick up the ball.

‘Don’t you see? They were playing tennis with that. You can’t put it back where you found it, can you?’

Feeling slightly ridiculous, Steven tried to return to the ball to mid-air. Predictably, the ball fell, and he clutched it before it hit the ground.

‘There!’ said the Doctor. ‘You see, what has happened is these people – perhaps the whole world – have been frozen in time.’

‘Frozen in time?’ said Vicki uncomprehendingly.

‘Time, the fourth dimension, my dear. It is a dimension like any other. Normally you move along it, one second after another, but if it is possibly to move along something, it is also possible to stop at a single point.’ He put a finger to his lips.

‘You mean, like a freeze-frame?’ said Steven.

‘Precisely! What we are seeing is a single moment in time.’

Vicki looked scared. ‘It’s horrible. It’s like looking at a photograph. All these people, stuck in one moment.’

‘Indeed,’ agreed the Doctor. ‘For us, time has come to a halt. But as far as these good people are concerned, they are in the middle of a game of tennis. Now do you see what you have done, Steven?’

Steven nodded. ‘They’re going to wonder where their ball’s got to.’ He tossed the ball a couple more times, and then placed it at the feet of one of the figures.

‘Fortunately, it is not serious,’ said the Doctor. ‘But we shall have to be most careful. We must not move anything. Who knows what the consequences might be?’

‘So wait a minute-,’ said Steven. ‘What you’re saying is, that we are stuck at a single point in time?’

‘Yes. Time has stopped. All this time we have been here, it has only been a single instant.’

‘That explains why no-one could hear us!’ said Vicki. ‘And why there was no noise!’

‘Exactly – because there was no time for the noise to be in. Every sound, no matter how short, requires a certain amount of time to be heard. But in an instant – utter silence!’

‘And so you’re saying we’ve only been here, for – what?’ said Steven.

‘No time at all,’ answered Vicki.

Steven shook his head in disbelief. ‘But that’s ridiculous!’

The Doctor walked to one side, facing away from them. ‘Not at all. The question is, though, why has this happened? Why is time standing still for everyone else, and yet we are unaffected? Hmm?’

‘The ship?’ suggested Steven. ‘A malfunction with the TARDIS?’

‘A possibility, a possibility. But I think not. A malfunction with the TARDIS would affect us, yes, but not the whole planet. No, I think there is some other reason.’ The Doctor stared keenly into the distance. ‘And the answer is out there, somewhere. Why are we still able to move about when the rest of the world is trapped - like an insect caught in amber?’

We move in on the Doctor’s face, his lips tightly set, his eyes wide with indignant curiosity. Then, holding the image, we fade to blackness.

We fade up to reveal an image of London; a busy high street, with bustling pedestrians and double-decker buses and cars. But the image is frozen, like a photograph. We pan across the image, past the shops and the pedestrians struggling with their baskets and bags.

There is an unsettling, alien atmosphere. We hear distorted music, an electronic throbbing punctuated by rhythmic, metallic clangs.

The image fades to be replaced by another view of London; the exit of Covent Garden underground station. There are dozens of people walking through the entrance, their faces fixed in a variety of expressions; joy, boredom, exhaustion.

Another view. A picture of a couple, running through the street, hand in hand, their faces filled with laughter. An unmoving dog bounds happily along beside them.

Another view. Trafalgar Square. Something has disturbed the pigeons, and they are fixed in position as they flurry past in a blur of wings.

We fade up again to reveal one side of the city street. In the background is a newsagents; its windows are full of posters advertising magazines and competitions. In the foreground is the pavement, where two figures are passing; an elderly man in a cap and grey coat carrying a newspaper and a woman in her thirties, pushing a pram. They both resemble waxworks, or cut-outs.

Vicki skipped up to the newsagents and peered through the window, waiting for the Doctor and Steven to catch up. It had been a surreal journey through the silent city, winding their way between the frozen people as they went obliviously about their business. Men hailed taxis that would never arrive. Mouths were open, caught in conversation. Passing a café, they had seen people eating, a sandwich or cup of coffee paused on their lips. Strangest of all, there had been the window-cleaner propped at the top of a ladder, the foamy water spilling out of his bucket and forming a sheet of glass in mid-air. Vicki had been tempted to touch the water, but the Doctor had warned her away. It was, he had sternly explained, vitally important that nothing be disturbed.

At the sound of her companions’ footsteps, Vicki turned. ‘It’s funny, all these people staying still.’ She smiled. ‘We could look in their bags without them noticing.’

The Doctor leaned forward in disapproval. ‘And what if time starts moving forward again? What if things return to normal? Where would you be then? A pretty predicament!’

‘You think that might happen?’ said Steven.

‘Who knows?’ The Doctor rocked on his heels. ‘And they discover Vicki, her hand in their bags? You would have some explaining to do then, my child! No, you mustn’t touch or move anything, I have told you.’

Vicki puzzled for a few seconds. ‘But if time did start moving – they can’t see us walking about, can they?’

‘No, of course not-’

‘So we would suddenly appear out of nowhere!’ Vicki giggled at the thought of the astonishment on their faces. ‘They wouldn’t know where we’d come from!’ She paused. ‘Assuming time does start moving again.’

‘Yes, quite. Quite.’ The Doctor’s eyes shifted cagily over the immediate area. The street continued a short way ahead of them, past a pillar box and a narrow alley. And beyond that-

Vicki followed his gaze and gave a yelp of fright. ‘Look!’

On the edge of the pavement was a woman in her twenties, wearing a neat dress and heels, caught in the act of toppling backwards into the road. Her face was a picture of astonishment and alarm. The papers and books she was carrying in her hands were strewn and piled in the air around her, as though they were a flock of birds attacking her.

A suited man of a similar age gripped her by the lapels, his face twisted in a rictus of anger, his teeth bared, his lips glistening. He was pushing her into the road. Into the path of an approaching car.

The car’s driver, an elderly lady, had obviously spotted the confrontation. Her jaw had dropped, her eyes startled. She was twisting the steering wheel, attempting in vain to swerve the vehicle away from the falling woman. But there were only three feet to separate them. It was obviously too late. The car was going to hit.

Vicki rushed up to them, Steven and the Doctor on her heels. ‘She – she’s going to be killed!’ exclaimed Vicki.

The Doctor observed the situation with detachment. ‘Now, remember what I said. We must not interfere.’

‘But if we don’t-’

‘Listen to me,’ snapped the Doctor. ‘There is nothing we can do to prevent this incident.’

Steven took his place beside Vicki. ‘But Doctor, surely in this case-’

‘No, we mustn’t do anything.’ The Doctor narrowed his eyes. ‘It appears that this gentleman is pushing this young woman into the path of that vehicle, yes. But how can we be sure?’

‘What do you mean?’ said Steven.

‘Look, he is holding onto her.’ The Doctor waggled a finger, indicating where the man had grasped the woman’s coat. ‘Perhaps he is pulling her out of the way of the oncoming car? Perhaps, hmm, he is saving her life?’

Vicki looked closer. What she had taken for anger in the man’s face could have been anxiety. The sinews on his arms were bulging. The Doctor could be right – maybe the man was heaving the woman towards him, rather than thrusting her out into the road. It was impossible to tell.

‘You might be right,’ Vicki admitted. ‘But shouldn’t we try to do something anyway?’

‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m sorry, but we hold a responsibility. If we were not here, if time hadn’t be stopped, it would be too late anyway. And the more we interfere, we cannot be sure we are doing the correct thing. We may even be preventing time from moving again, yes.’

Vicki drew away from the struggling figures and bowed her apologetically. ‘I suppose you’re right, Doctor.’

‘That is very wise of you, my dear.’ The Doctor rubbed his fingers. ‘Now. There doesn’t seem to be anything more to see here, so perhaps we should return to the ship?’

‘No, wait a minute, Doctor-’ said Steven, looking over their heads in sudden astonishment. ‘Look, up there.’

‘What is it my now, boy, what is it?’ flustered the Doctor as he turned around and lifted his gaze. ‘Oh, my word-’

A fog of black smoke was curling away above them, rising from behind the chimney tops and then dissipating into the pale sky.

‘A fire?’ said Vicki. ‘I don’t see-’

‘But look, Vicki – the smoke – it’s moving,’ breathed Steven.

Vicki looked again. The plume rose and unravelled as it ascended into the windless air, past the stationary birds and clouds. In a world where everything was still, it was the first movement they had seen.

‘You are quite right,’ said the Doctor. ‘Fascinating!’ He checked the street, but everything remained motionless. ‘Perhaps time has not stopped everywhere, as we thought? This may provide some clue. I think we should investigate.’

‘It seems to be coming from those buildings over there,’ said Steven. ‘It can’t be more than a couple of streets away.’

‘Then come on, come on!’ ushered the Doctor eagerly. ‘We have no time to lose!’ Beckoning them after him, he started down the side street in the direction of the smoke.

‘I don’t believe it,’ muttered Steven, shaking his head.

High brick buildings enclosed the small square on every side, each presenting a brace of shop windows. At the centre of the square was a garden enclosed in railings, consisting of a bench, a lawn, and a flower bed. In the far corner, the fence had been flattened by a crashed space craft.

The craft appeared to be constructed out of a dull, grey metal; it had originally had a sleek, cylindrical structure, but much of its surface had been buckled out of shape when it had impacted into the ground. Sections of the side had fallen away to reveal pipes and cables; other parts of the object had been smudged by trails of smoke and pockmarked by meteor impacts. The large radar dish fixed to its roof was broken. A hatch was set mid-way along one side, and at the rear were a set of conical exhaust pipes. The engines formed the source of the cloud, the thick, fuming gas pouring out of the ruptured fuel tubes.

‘It’s a space ship,’ said Steven, walking towards it. But it was a space ship unlike any he had seen. It was so small for a start; there would only be room for two or three astronauts inside. The design of the engines was also unfamiliar, and the markings set along one side of the ship were written in incomprehensible alien symbols.

‘Fascinating, fascinating,’ said the Doctor gleefully as he crouched down for a closer inspection.

Vicki was bewildered. ‘But what’s a space ship doing here, in the middle of London?’

‘Well, Vicki, it looks like it’s crashed,’ said Steven. The front of the craft had buried itself into the flowerbed, ploughing up much of the garden and piling it into the opposite end of the square.

‘I can see that,’ Vicki said. ‘I meant, what is it doing here, at all?’

‘I don’t know. Doctor?’

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m not sure. I should imagine it has something to do with the effect in time we have observed. Its arrival has gone unnoticed, do you see? If time was not standing still, there would be lots of people running around. Fire engines and policemen, I shouldn’t wonder. No, I think the two things are connected.’ Patting his knees, he pulled himself upright. ‘What do you make of it, Steven, my boy?’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Following the Doctor’s lead, Steven approached the craft. Although the engines were smoking, the ship itself didn’t seem to be producing any heat. But, thought Steven, any ship entering the Earth’s atmosphere would become hot through the air friction. And, for a crash landing, it was in remarkably good condition.

‘Do you think it belongs to aliens?’ asked Vicki.

‘Yes, well, we won’t get very far by just asking a lot of questions, will we?’ clucked the Doctor impatiently. He extended a finger and lightly tapped the side of the craft.

‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ said Steven as the Doctor wended his way towards the hatchway. ‘What if there’s someone inside?’

‘I shall expect they will be very pleased to see us!’ said the Doctor. The entry hatch worked on a simple lever operated system. The Doctor grasped the control bar and swung it to the left. The hatch swung open with a yawning creak. The Doctor watched it with the expectant pride of a stage magician.

Steven joined the Doctor. To his relief, the inside of the craft was unoccupied. The cockpit was gloomy and cramped, consisting of a control panel filled with a variety of switches and dials and two padded seats. The seats, Steven noted, were intended for human occupants, and made from a type of plastic. Apart from the controls, the cabin was bare and functional, with no ornamentation or colour of any kind.

Without hesitation, the Doctor climbed into the cockpit, the low ceiling forcing him to stoop. Steven squeezed himself in after him, his shoulders pressed against the walls, the floor creaking beneath them. The air inside craft smelt metallic and acrid, like old batteries.

‘There’s no-one at home,’ Steven observed. ‘No pilot.’

The Doctor inspected the control panel. ‘No. No, I wonder where they’ve got to? Hmm?’ He turned to Vicki, who was about to clamber on board. ‘Ah. I think you had better wait outside, my dear. There isn’t room for three of us in here.’

Vicki pulled a face and moved away. ‘Oh, if you say so.’

‘What do you think, Doctor?’ said Steven, moving awkwardly down the cabin.

‘Well, this is all very sophisticated. Very sophisticated indeed. Whoever built this ship was certainly most advanced.’ The Doctor directed his attention back to the controls, and then twisted himself around to examine the rear of the cabin. ‘Ah. Now let’s see.’ He crouched down in front of a bank of instruments. A row of warning lights.

Steven moved next to the Doctor. ‘What is it?’

‘This is most curious. These instruments here refer to the motors of the craft.’

‘The engines?’

‘Yes. It seems they are based on a form of energy radiation.’ He gave a start and pointed to one of the dials. It jittered in the red ‘Danger’ section. ‘Oh my goodness. It would appear that the engines are about to explode!’

‘Explode?’

‘Yes, my boy, explode. In a little over five minutes’ time.’

Steven stared at the dial. ‘Wh-What-?’

The Doctor stroked his chin, considering for some seconds. He leaned forward confidentially. ‘There will be a massive explosion, destroying the whole of London.’

‘You mean this space craft – it’s going to blow up?’

‘Yes!’ proclaimed the Doctor. He ran a wry finger over the dials. ‘There is some damage, but I think it can be repaired. Yes, someone with my expertise-’

‘But if we only have five minutes left,’ Steven reminded him.

‘Have you forgotten, my boy?’ The Doctor turned to face him and chuckled. ‘Time has come to a halt! We have all the time in the world!’

Her hands behind her back, Vicki turned away from the space craft and made her way around the gardens. It was typical; she was always the one who had to wait outside until her elders had satisfied themselves it was safe. The Doctor and Steven treated her like a child, always bossing her about and deciding what was best. Well, not this time, she thought.

She watched the smoke rising overhead, and then, bored, she looked around the surrounding shop windows. So this was Barbara and Ian’s time. It all seemed so unsophisticated. Life must be so much hard work. Imagine having to go out to buy food, rather than just turning a sequence of dials on a food machine. Imagine having to walk everywhere, rather than letting the pavement carry you. And those cars looked so dangerous, relying only on the reactions of the driver. In her time, the space cars were operated by remote control and had special anti-magnetic cushions to prevent collision.

But that time was so very far away, and Vicki had learned that although her era was very high-tech and conventional, compared to earlier periods in Earth’s history it was rather, well, pedestrian.

For an absent-minded moment, she dismissed the sudden motion she glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. Then, remembering, she looked again. A shadowy figure in one of the alleys flitted and then vanished. There was someone down there; someone had been approaching the craft and then, after spotting her, they had suddenly darted away again.

‘Doctor! Steven!’ whispered Vicki as loudly as she dared. But they couldn’t hear her. She considered knocking on the hatch to alert the Doctor and Steven, and then decided against it. No, whilst they were busy having fun exploring the space craft without her, she would do some investigating of her own. She would find out the cause of this time problem. And then they would be forced to show her some respect. Yes, that would show them.

Determined, Vicki set off down the alley in pursuit of the shadowy figure.

The Doctor stroked his temples, his furrowed brown illuminated by the warning lights. ‘Yes, yes, the energy radiation. Hmm. There has been a malfunction with the engines, causing this craft to become stranded here, yes.’

Steven looked at the dials. They all looked meaningless to him. He tried to wrestle with what the Doctor had told him. ‘You mean they broke down? And that’s why they crashed?’

‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said the Doctor, grinning at some private joke.

Steven tried to draw him back to the matter in hand. ‘But you think you will be able to repair it?’

‘Given a few hours, yes, I believe I can.’ The Doctor smiled like a benevolent grandparent.

Steven rested himself on the cockpit wall. ‘You know, It’s lucky that time has stood still,’ he said. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have the chance to make the repairs.’

‘But don’t you realise, my boy, that is precisely the point,’ said the Doctor. ‘Time has been stopped so that we have the opportunity to make the necessary repairs.’

‘What do you mean?’

The Doctor templed together his hands. ‘Imagine you are in a space craft, and it is about to explode in a matter of minutes due to some difficulty. If you could bring time to a standstill, that would afford you the time to avert the disaster. It is the ideal solution.’

‘So you’re saying that time has come to a halt – because of this?’

‘Quite so, quite so.’ The Doctor waved a hand towards a set of levers situated beside the right seat. ‘It is part of the safety mechanism. When things go wrong, rather than pressing on the brake pedal, why not bring time itself to a stop? Then you can make repairs or evacuate, if need be.’ Steven couldn’t tell whether the Doctor was more impressed by the technology on display or his own deductive powers. ‘Ingenious! Ingenious!’

‘But if they have time technology-’ Steven began.

‘Of course, my boy, of course,’ said the Doctor. ‘We are standing in a time machine.’

‘A time machine? Like the TARD-’

‘And they have, for some reason, crashed here. They have brought the fourth dimension to a halt. The people who made this ship are clever people, you know.’

‘So,’ deadpanned Steven with a sigh. ‘Where are they now?’

‘That is a good question. Presumably they have gone to fetch the items to equip them to make repairs.’

Steven looked out of the open hatchway into the empty London street. ‘You mean, they’re somewhere out there?’

By his tone, the Doctor considered the question obvious. ‘Yes, yes.’

‘And they’re going to come back here?’

‘I should expect so, yes.’ The Doctor raised his eyebrows with amusement at Steven’s concern.

‘What sort of people do you think they are?’

The Doctor coughed and dabbed his cheeks with his handkerchief. ‘Before you ask me more questions like that, perhaps we should step outside.’ He wiped his forehead. ‘It is terribly stuffy in here! And on such a warm day!’

Steven let the Doctor climb out of the craft, and watched him carefully as he lowered himself to the ground below. Steven braced himself against the sides of the hatchway, and then jumped. Outside, he blinked in the sudden harsh sunlight. The Doctor, meanwhile, seemed more concerned with brushing his sleeves and adjusting his collar.

A hand shielding his eyes, Steven scanned the shop windows overlooking the craft. ‘Well, Doctor? What do you think has happened to the ship’s crew?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the Doctor sagely. ‘But I should like to meet them! Yes, I would!’

Steven looked back at the craft. The fuel pipes were still sending a black cloud spiralling into the overhead sky. ‘And what are they doing here? Why did they crash?’

‘Those are very intelligent questions. I was thinking them myself.’

Steven turned back to the Doctor. ‘I’ve got another question for you. Where’s Vicki?’

‘Vicki?’ The Doctor looked around worriedly. He pursed his lips in agitation. ‘Oh, where has that impossible child got to?’

‘She can’t have gone far.’ Steve paced around the square, checking the alleys and streets and shops. The first shop window he came to was covered in dust and filled with shelf after shelf of clocks. Steven gazed inside. There were clocks of every variety; carriage clocks, wall clocks, cuckoo clocks. There was something unusual about them, but for a moment Steven couldn’t place what it was. And then it hit him. Each clock face showed the time. Eleven fifty-seven.

‘Doctor, over here,’ called Steven.

‘What is it, my boy?’ The Doctor hastened over to Steven, and gazed down into the window.

‘Look,’ said Steven, ‘The time.’

The Doctor gave a startled gasp. ‘How could I have been so wrong?’

‘What?’ Steven felt a sudden chill, and rubbed his neck.

‘How long would you say we have been here?’ the Doctor asked him, in sudden seriousness.

‘Well, it’s hard to tell. A couple of hours or so.’

‘Exactly. And yet that clock over there reads three minutes to twelve.’

‘But when we arrived – the time was eleven fifty-five’

‘Quite so.’ The Doctor’s fingers twitched. ‘Since we have arrived, two whole minutes have passed.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Steven.

‘Don’t you see, my boy? Don’t you see?’ said the Doctor. ‘We presumed that time had been brought to a halt. But it hasn’t. No, time has merely been slowed down. Slowed down to a point that, to us, it was imperceptible. Progressing at a snail’s pace, but it has still been moving forward nonetheless.’

‘But if that’s the case-’

The Doctor nodded. ‘We don’t have much time left at all. At the current rate, this space craft will explode in approximately five hours!’

The figure had disappeared. Glancing left and right, Vicki ran down the passage, her footsteps clicking on the pavement. She had chased the shadowy shape down backstreet after backstreet, turning left and right until she was completely disorientated. She no longer knew where she was, or how to get back to the Doctor and Steven. Feeling utterly alone and lost, she wished they were with her, or that she could call out to them for help. Oh, why had she been so stupid and impetuous?

Vicki rested against a brick wall to recover her breath. The figure must have run down this passage before her, but now there was no trace of it. But Vicki could sense it was somewhere nearby. Perhaps it was even watching her. She recoiled at the thought, her eyes wide with fear.

Something moved further down the passage. Vicki pulled herself upright and walked towards it. ‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Hello? Doctor? Steven?’

A gloved hand clamped itself over her mouth and pulled her backwards. Astonished, Vicki’s first impression was of the overwhelming smell and taste of the leathery fabric of the glove. Then her feet slipped as she swung around, coming suddenly face to face with her attacker.

The figure stood about six feet tall and wore a bulbous grey space suit. Valves and pipes covered the suit from head to toe. A domed helmet enclosed the head, but Vicki could still make out the basic features within. Two giant, staring eyes, unblinking, like those of a fish. And the impression of dark scales and a wide open mouth.

Vicki screamed.

We move in on the face of the alien, bringing every detail of its huge, plate-like eyes and yawning mouth into terrifying focus. We hold the image for a few seconds, the creature’s features filling our view.

Caption:

NEXT EPISODE:

THE TIME TRAVELLERS

We fade to black as the music begins.

The Beautiful Ones

2011-10-22T12:57:00.002+01:00

Quick plug – my Doctor Who audio ‘The Beautiful People’, one of the first releases in the ‘Companion Chronicles’ range, is available this day only for £5. It’s a story narrated by the fabulous Lalla Ward, as Romana, guest-starring Marcia Ashton (out of Brookside) as the evil Karna. It owes more than a little debt to Little Britain, Victoria Wood’s Men Sana In Thingummy Doodah and, of course, The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It’s a breezy comedy with a serious point.

To order it, click here. Other ‘Companion Chronicles’ are also available.

As a little taster, here’s the first page from the script.

(FX: TARDIS INTERIOR)

ROMANA: The Doctor was having another of his funny moods.

‘Doughnuts!’ he shouted, as though giving the answer to a very important question.

I had only just walked into the TARDIS control room and, of course, I hadn’t actually asked him anything.

‘What?’ I asked wearily.

‘Doughnuts!’ the Doctor repeated. ‘Why is it, Romana, that we never seem to have enough doughnuts? Travelling through time and space is hungry work, you know. And we’ve run out. Again!’

I had found that it was best to humour the Doctor on these occasions. ‘The TARDIS food machine is perfectly capable of approximating the flavour and texture-

‘Pah!’ the Doctor interrupted. ‘It’s nowhere near the same! You can’t have cookery by machine! Where’s the panache, the élan, in micro-circuitry, hmm?’

‘It provides healthy, vitamin-enriched alternatives,’ I reminded him.

‘And that’s another thing, Romana’. The Doctor pulled one of his indignant expressions. ‘What if I don’t want to eat healthily? Sometimes, you know, it’s good for you to have something that’s bad for you.’

I knew there would be no point in questioning the Doctor’s logic, as he only makes these sort of statements to be irritating, so instead I gently suggested that if he wanted doughnuts so badly, he should try baking some himself.

‘It’s not the same if you have to bake them yourself,’ he replied, sulkily adjusting his long, multi-coloured scarf.

‘Well, what about K-9?’ I said. ‘You could ask him.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said the Doctor. ‘Me, training a dog to bake doughnuts? And besides, I’ve already tried, and he always uses the wrong sort of jam.’

Kinky Boots

2011-10-21T10:46:00.012+01:00

Yesterday I also received in the post the ‘Doctor Who – The Prison In Space’ script book. It’s an unofficial fan publication, meaning that it’s made for love, not money (quite the opposite) and is not trying to step onto any licensed toes.

It’s a huge, A4-sized, weighty tome, containing scans of the scripts for the legendary unmade Patrick Troughton Doctor Who story The Prison In Space. For quite a long time in 1968, it looked like the second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe would be having an adventure set on a future Earth ruled by women, an adventure which involved cross-dressing, disco-dancing, and some spanking. It would, no doubt, have been a classic adventure – as demonstrated by Big Finish’s fabulous adaptation of the scripts last year, by the annoyingly talented and pleasant Simon Guerrier. This script book isn’t mean as an alternative to that production, they are complementary, you have to buy both.

There are only two things wrong with The Prison In Space. Firstly, it has no monsters. Secondly, it’s very, very sexist. Because on this future Earth women are the monsters, aaah. And while it’s intended satirically, it’s quite blunt anti-feminist satire, filtered through middle-aged male fantasy. There’s a longer review/essay on the story by me included in the book, as well all sorts of other goodies; Dick Sharples' original scene breakdown for the story, Brian Hayles’ scene breakdown for an unmade Ice Warriors story, a special Time Team, and Andrew Pixley trying to make sense of the mad merry-go-round behind the scenes of Doctor Who in 1968, where scripts fell through, got pulled out of the bin, gained or lost episodes, and where the producer and script editor seemed to swap jobs on a weekly basis. The Prison In Space got so far as having a guest part cast, and sets and costumes designed before it was cancelled, suffering the indignity of being replaced by The Krotons.

To order this book, you’ll probably find the details at Nothing At The End Of The Lane in a few weeks’ time.

Scream And Run Away

2011-10-20T18:44:00.010+01:00

Out today, a new issue of Doctor Who Magazine. It’s a special tribute issue to the wonderful actress Elisabeth Sladen who played Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures. While the magazine does her proud, I think we’ve had enough special tribute issues now, so could former Doctor Who companions please stop dying for a bit? If you’re a former Doctor Who companion and planning on dying, hold your breath. No, on second thoughts, don’t hold your breath, keep breathing regularly. (And the same applies to former Doctor Whos, producers, writers and script editors.)

Playing a Doctor Who companion can be a thankless task, as the characters are often under-written, existing only to ask questions and get into trouble. I think why Elisabeth Sladen is so highly-regarded is that she worked so hard to make Sarah Jane Smith more than that. Watch any of her episodes and she’s always making interesting, clever acting choices; always attentive and reacting to what’s going on, sometimes playing against lines or delivering them self-mockingly, always adding both a sense of fun and a sense of emotional truth to what’s written on the page. She made Sarah Jane a companion you wanted to spend time with, a companion who you laughed with, and also a companion who you were scared with. I’m always in awe of actors who lift the material they are given, who give two-dimensional characters depth, who seemingly instinctively add humour and life to a part, and Elisabeth Sladen was one of the best.

I started writing this blog with the intention of plugging my comic strip The Child of Time, part three of which nestles unobtrusively between pages 66 and 79 of the magazine. It’s all setting the stage for the fourth and final part and is quite grim and serious.

Elsewhere in the magazine there’s a wonderful review by the erstwhile Gary Gillatt of the recent DVD release Day Of The Daleks. I love this story so much I had to buy the DVD without waiting for it be discounted. It’s more-or-less the first time Doctor Who did a story about time travel, but it’s also about much more than that; the various moral choices and compromises people have to make, whether they are freedom fighters or dictators.

The DVD also includes a bonus special edition of the story, in which some of the special effects have been replaced, some of the more ‘embarrassing’ moments have been removed, and various other perceived deficiencies in the production have been remedied. I realise lots of people like these special editions, and I’m delighted these special editions exist for them, but they’re not for me. It just seems pointless to go back and insert modern special effects when everything else, from the script to the performances to the sets to the costumes to the film stock screams 1970’s. If those things don’t take you out of a story, then why worry about some special effects which were, for the time the programme was made and the resources available to them, at worst serviceable and at best extremely ingenious and technically impressive. (Though I couldn’t help noticing that some of the CSO in the ‘original’ version had been tidied up, which ironically I found more distracting than had it been left uncorrected.)

Mary

2011-10-19T19:21:00.003+01:00

My 2009 Doctor Who episode Mary’s Story is now available for download from Big Finish for 99p, a special offer price for a limited period only. It serves as an introduction for the character of Mary Shelley, who enjoys another adventure with the Doctor in this month’s release The Silver Turk by the enviably talented and consistent Marc Platt. Mary Shelley is, of course, loosely based on the real-life historical personality Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein, and Mary’s Story has some fun with the idea of where she might have got some of the inspiration for that novel. It was originally released as part of The Company Of Friends collection and also features Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Polidori, and a very silly joke in the final line.

Also put aside five hundred pennies for October 22^nd where my Doctor Who story The Beautiful People will be available for at a discount, a bargain if you haven’t already bought it, any excuses you may have for not owning it are now rapidly diminishing. I’ll plug it again on the day.

But as a taster, here’s the first page of the script of Mary’s Story (working title The Creature!).

1: OUTSIDE VILLA, FOREST.

DURING THE FOLLOWING, FADE UP ON: A STORMY NIGHT. THUNDER. RAIN. CREAKING AND RUSTLING TREES. BANGING WINDOW SHUTTERS. MAYBE A WOLF HOWLING.

MARY: (NARRATION)

It was eighteen-sixteen, the year without a summer, when we sojourned at the Villa Diodati. There were five of us - myself, my husband Percy, my step-sister Claire, Lord Byron, and his physician, Polidori. Our intention had been to spend pleasant hours wandering on the shores of Lake Geneva - instead we found ourselves confined to the house for days on end, besieged by the incessant rain and suffocated by a dense, white fog. It was while we were there, one dreary night in June, that I first met the traveller known as the Doctor. The man to whom I would become a companion, in his voyages through time and space.

STING: INTO TITLE MUSIC (IF WE’RE DOING PRE-TITLE SEQUENCES)

2: INSIDE VILLA, STUDY/OUTSIDE VILLA, FOREST.

A DOOR SLAMS ON THE WIND AND THE RAIN AND WE ARE IN A STUDY. A FIRE CRACKLES REASSURINGLY. A CLOCK TICS OUT THE SECONDS.

BYRON: (READING POEM ALOUD)

- and full in view. Behold! Her bosom and half her side,

Hideous, deformed and pale of hue

A sight to dream of, not to tell

And she is to sleep by Christabel!

LIGHT APPLAUSE. CLINKING OF DRINKS.

POLIDORI:

(LAUGHING) Encore! Encore!

CLAIRE:

Byron reads most beautifully, don’t you think, Mary?

BYRON:

(AMUSED) Well enough to scare poor Percy out of his wits, by the look of it. Percy?

PERCY:

(DISTURBED, EDGY) What? What did you say?

MARY:

Percy? Are you alright?

PERCY:

Mary? (FEARFUL) What’s happened to you? You - you - your eyes!

It Had To Be You

2011-10-18T18:58:00.000+01:00

Also on my holiday I read It Had To Be You. I had very little idea what to expect, as I don’t read back-cover blurbs (they either tell you nothing or give away surprises), but as it was by David Nobbs, I knew it would be beautifully-written, with very compassionately-observed and sympathetic characters, and of course that it would be very funny. I was correct in all these assumptions.

It’s not the easiest subject for a humorous novel. Actually, I rather annoyed myself by using the phrase ‘humorous novel’, it sounds awfully limiting, as though simply being amusing is the sum total of the author’s ambition and worth. I’ll try again. It’s not the easiest subject for a novel. I think when David wrote Sex And Other Changes he may have come up with the idea for the novel thinking it would have comic potential - a husband and wife both have sex-change operations and end up together - only to find the subject to be much weightier and more serious than expected. The result being that he was forced to avoid easy laughs and had to really work to find the humour – but when the humour comes, it packs more of a punch.

Ever since then, he seems to have been making life deliberately difficult for himself by choosing subjects for his novels which are incredibly sad and serious, and yet finding the humour in those subjects. Bringing a lightness of touch to the darkest subject matter. It is the mixture of a gently comedic tone and serious subject that makes his work seem true to life and life-affirming.

Possible spoilers follow.

Enough speaking in general terms, what’s the book about? Well, it’s about a middle-aged man called James Hollinghurst and what happens to him in the week after his wife’s death in a road accident. It’s about the preparations for a funeral, with family and friends descending upon him, while James himself isn’t so much as coming to terms with grief as wondering when the grief is going to turn up. He’d been having an affair, you see, and during the course of the novel he suspects that his wife was having an affair too. And yet, as he discovers her various secrets, he falls in love with his wife all over again. It’s an odd kind of love story; a husband falling back into love with his wife after her death.

I found it very moving and loved the characters, particularly James’ Uncle Stanley, a man who has been living on his own for so long he now just says what he thinks, absolutely honest and utterly tactless. If I had to quibble, I’d say that the murder-mystery sub-plot felt superfluous and that the ‘twist’ reveal of the identity of his wife’s lover didn’t add a great deal either; for me, the story was powerful enough on its own terms not to require these devices.

Oh, and two more things. One, I wish that the dead wife didn’t have the same name as my wife. It’s kind of an unfortunate coincidence but I look forward to the day in the future where we can buy all novels on Kindles and customise the character names to avoid these sort of connotative distractions.

Secondly, after One Day by David Nicholls, I think the wife-dies-in-a-car-crash device should be given a rest for a while now. Particularly as I did the same thing in my Touched By An Angel novel (I flatter myself to be in such good company). I feel for my friend Robert who read both books in succession, it must have felt like overkill, wives being constantly killed in car crashes wherever he turned.

The Killing Moon

2011-10-17T18:03:00.000+01:00

On holiday last week, as well as not particularly enjoying The Psychopath Test, I read a couple of other books. The first of which was Scrivener’s Moon, by Philip Reeve, the third prequel to the Mortal Engines series.

If you haven’t read the Mortal Engines series, I can’t recommend it too highly. I’d put it above Harry Potter, in terms of character, writing style, humour, imagination, and in particular, in terms of plotting. Reeve pulls fantastic twists out of nowhere. The good guys don’t necessarily survive. The only real flaw with the books is that I’m reading them as a 38-year-old, when they would have taken the top of my head off if I had read them thirty years ago.

The books are set in a post-apocalyptic future, and concern cities on wheels roaming the ruined Earth eating each other. At this point I can imagine your eyes glazing over so I should leap in and say that you’ll enjoy these books even if you don’t enjoy science fiction, they’re not steampunk, and while you’ll probably find them in the young adults section of Waterstone’s they’re as full of adult themes as anything you’ll find in the Alphabetical By Author section.

Scrivener’s Moon is one of best books in the series, if not the very best. I wasn’t totally blown away by its rather sedentary predecessor, Fever Crumb, but this book has it all. Action. Adventure. Death. Incredible battles. Mysterious pyramids. Mammoths. Explosions. Knife tricks. A joke about Ken Livingstone. A fabulous heroine in Fever Crumb and a brilliantly – brilliantly – characterised anti-hero in Charley Shallow. And most excitingly of all, it has the scene where... spoilers. I read through the whole thing in one sitting, in about five hours (it’s not a short book).

But if you haven’t read the rest of the Mortal Engines series, you’ve got another six books to read first. Buy and read them all. I can think of no books that I wish more that I had written, and there is no higher recommendation.

A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld

2011-10-16T19:56:00.003+01:00

On the end of one of my Doctor-Who-off-UK-Gold tapes, there is a short interview with Jacqueline Pearce. You know the sort; lit so that the subject looks like an embalmed fish in front of a CSO projection of stars and galaxies. The interviewer has been excised so we only get the subject's apparently unsolicited sci-fi musings.

Anyway, so Jacqueline Pearce is there. She has a sort of wicked, knowing look, her eye lids half-closed languidly. She's treating it as an intimate confessional. Just out of shot she has a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

She leans forward. 'Of course, I received many letters about me as Servalan. I was adored up and down the country. For many young men, seeing me as Servalan was the moment of their first sexual awakening'. Dirty pause. Wide knowing smile. Flirtatious twitch of the eyebrow.

Yes. But how ironic it is that all of those young men then grew up to become raging homosexuals. Because the moment they saw Servalan on screen, they realised - 'Right, that's it, I'm going to be like one of those gays like off of Are You Being Served? from now on'. Poor Jacqueline Pearce. Thousands of young men, up and down the country, captivated and enthralled by her.

But they didn't want to get into Jacqueline Pearce’s knickers. They wanted to get into her frock.

Anyway, this is entirely irrelevant, because I've just watched two Servalan-free episodes.

SARCOPHAGUS

It's happened before in Blakes 7. The writer is told; 'Sorry, cock, but we've got no money for your one. You're allowed one set and ideally, cock, try to keep the guest cast to a minimum. No guest cast at all would be ideal.' And the results have usually been dreadful. They tend to concentrate on Cally far too much, and usually have one of the cast being mentally possessed by something which makes them behave strangely. 'Voice From The Past'. Bad. 'Dawn Of The Gods'. Bad. And 'Sarcophagus'...

Something has gone seriously wrong here. Because it's good. Very good. No guest cast. One set. And yet... the writing is very clever. Yes, it does the old 'Cally has been possessed again' thing. Yes, Cally seems to have angst about never returning to Auron even though she only went there about three weeks ago. Yes, it has Stephen Pacey in diaphanous red pyjamas.

But the story is great, the dialogue bounces, and the direction is... unusually competent. The opening sequence is lovely - okay, it goes on a bit, but then, so do the Paris sequences in City Of Death - it's all quite arty and ambiguous. It's doing the science fantasy thing, becoming unreal and mystical. So there's these aliens, on a spaceship. And they're watching some half-hearted light-entertainment routines. But it's weird. Wonderfully weird.

And the performances... Jan Chappell is very good. Paul Darrow is leaving the scenery bereft of teeth marks. Michael Keating is sympathetic rather than stupid and annoying. There even seems to be some point to Dayna and Tarrant's existence. And Avon looks so evil in his black pyjamas.

It's a ghost story. It's a cheapo. But somehow a little bit of magic happened along the way.

ULTRAWORLD

'Och no Jonnee', goes REDACTED (MY FELLOW BLAKE’S 7 VIEWER WHO MAY WISH TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS – JONNY 2011). 'Ultraworld no very good.' This is his description of my favourite Blakes 7 story. It's the one I have great memories of, from watching it as a kid twenty-odd years ago. It was scary and exciting and strange and new. I remember being terrified of the Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld as it greedily and gurglingly ate up all the people on the conveyor belt and then exploded into green goo. And yet it's not highly regarded in Seven circles.

What is wrong with it? Virtually nothing. Okay, it's a shame that the zombies don't look like zombies but instead look just like balding, overweight men in their forties in blue pyjamas And maybe the Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld is a bit of an Erato beach-ball. But otherwise it's tops. Terry Nation-mongous. A great, solid story.

Okay, so it's 'Redemption' all over again, more-or-less. Orac saves the day, by utilizing Vila's ability to come up with feeble jokes and weak wordplay. Apparently, poor puns are the only defence against the Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld. So Peter Anghelides has his uses.

It's a shame, perhaps, that Vila's jokes are a bit on the lame side, though, because his banter with Orac is tops. Orac this week is basically K9, anyway. My favourite thing about Orac, though, is the rather irked mewing noise he makes when he's switched off.

Oh, and we're in the same tunnels as for 'The Sun Makers'. Except sometimes they are lit in a dark red, to indicate that we're in the close vicinity of the Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld.

What I like about Ultraworld, though, is that it's one of those simple, straightforward, no-arsing about Blake’s 7 stories, like what Terry Nation used to write. That said, though, it's a bit Original Star Trek too... but it's great, mindless fun. The Glitterball of doom! Plus lots of running up and down cylinder-shaped corridors. Monsters. Guns. Spaceships.

I note that the Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld, despite having absorbed the minds and memories of over a billion people, still doesn't know about 'the bonding ceremony'. This means that the Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld has, in fact, absorbed the minds and memories of a billion balding, overweight fifty-year old virgins in blue pyjamas. No wonder it's frustrated. No wonder its throbbing, groaning and leaking fluid. No wonder the Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld wants to watch some hot Tarrant-on-Dayna action at the first opportunity.

Madness (Is All In The Mind)

2011-10-14T14:16:00.024+01:00

It was an early October evening and I was meeting Jon Ronson for coffee in a coffee shop near my home in South London. The coffee shop was painted in the calming hues of a South London coffee shop. Jon Ronson was a quite pale-looking man with spiky yellow hair and John Lennon-style granny glasses of the type associated with John Lennon, through which he gazed at his cappuccino coffee as he stirred it with the plastic utensil provided. His lack of resemblance to Ewan McGregor, who portrayed a fictionalised version of Jon Ronson in the film The Men Who Stare At Goats based on Jon Ronson’s bestselling book The Men Who Stare At Goats, was quite marked.

I made a note in my notepad. Jon Ronson bears a quite marked lack of resemblance to Ewan McGregor. I would have to make sure to include that observation in the article I would be writing about the interview afterwards.

I was here to speak to him about his recent book, The Psychopath Test. ‘How did the idea for the book come about?’ I asked.

Ron shrugged and glanced at the floor for a moment. ‘Well, I’d written a few articles on the subject for some colour supplements, and I thought, why not pad them out and make a book of it?’

‘When you say articles on the subject, you mean –‘

‘Psychopathy,’ he said. ‘Well, madness in general. Well, things to do with madness. In general.’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘Because I couldn’t help noticing, reading the book, how little of it was actually about psychopathy’. I pronounced the word ‘about’ in italics for emphasis.

Ron stirred his coffee. ‘You think so?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of the book's eleven chapters, only four could reasonably said to refer to the psychopathic condition. Two chapters are about a Norwegian sending out copies of a book as a kind of cryptic experiment. One chapter is about a man who ran a toaster company who you conclude is not a psychopath. Another is about a woman who used to book people for talk shows. There’s also a chapter about David Shayler, who is undeniably loopy but clearly not a psychopath, a chapter about a failed psychological profiler who you keep on comparing to Cracker, and finally there’s a chapter about the increasing medicalisation of behavioural non-conformity.’

Ron shrugged. ‘Yes. I thought there was an important book to be written about the subject of how various behaviours which are mildly eccentric are now labelled as conditions which have to be treated with drugs.’

‘And you thought you’d write that important book?’

‘No,’ said Ron. ‘I thought I’d get all the people who wanted that book to buy mine instead.’

It all started in the late 1990’s. Jon Ronson realised that as a journalist, he could get paid twice by repackaging articles written for colour supplements and TV and radio shows into books. For his subject, he chose people who were in some way mentally ill or very eccentric. He would throw in a few psychology-related facts towards the end of each article in order to make it look like something more than merely an exercise in exploitation, and would make sure that at least twenty-five per-cent of each article would not be about the interviewee but would instead concern itself with Jon Ronson’s favourite subject - Jon Ronson.

‘So you didn’t enjoy my book?’ asked Jon Ronson between sips of his coffee-shop coffee.

‘No, it was very readable,’ I replied as I looked up from my notepad. ‘It’s just that – ‘

‘Yes?’

‘It’s just that it reminded me of those BBC documentaries, where it’s all about a celebrities’ ‘journey’, where they do the narration while driving a car across America, on their way to interview various scientists and academics and other celebrities, where the whole documentary ends up not being about whatever-it-was the celebrity was trying to find out about, but instead being about how the celebrity feels about whatever-it-was they were trying to find out about.’

‘And you have a problem with that?’ said Jon Ronson, putting the final word into italics quite aggressively.

‘I know what else it reminded me of’. It was no good. I had to say it. I couldn’t hold it back any longer. ‘It’s like reading a novelisation of a Louis Theroux documentary.’

Jon Ronson looked at me coldly, as if I’d hit a sore point. I’d clearly hit a sore point. I remembered too late that his book had contained a mere half a page on the Coalinga Mental Hospital, when Louis Theroux had done a whole documentary about the same subject.

I paused in my interview for a moment of self-analysis. Had I gone too far? I remembered, in italics, the Hare list that Jon Ronson had quoted extensively and quite repetitively throughout the book. Item 5: Self-absorption. Item 9: Gratuitous repetition Item 10: Blatant padding Item 15: Gratuitous repetition

I made another note in my notepad. Break up interview scene with factual asides, even if they’re just mindlessly repeating what I’ve said before.

It was in the late 1990’s that Jon Ronson realised that being a journalist wouldn’t be enough. He would have to be a brand. And therefore he would make sure that at least twenty-five percent of every article he wrote would be concerned with his favourite subject – Jon Ronson.

‘Any other criticisms?’ said Jon Ronson, helpfully asking a question to prompt an answer I’d already prepared, though I was growing increasingly irritated by the way he would end each question in italics for emphasis.

‘Well, regarding that chapter about the medicalisation of mental illnesses. You give the strong impression that a large number of mental illnesses were, in fact, made up by Robert Spitzer during his time editing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, with people shouting out suggestions of mental illnesses at unminuted editorial meetings.’

Jon Ronson shot me a sharp look. ‘So?’

‘So don’t you think it’s a little irresponsible to strongly suggest that mental illnesses such as anorexia nerovsa, bulimia, autism, attention deficit disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder are not genuine illnesses that have had their diagnoses and treatments backed up by huge amounts of medical research?’

Jon Ronson fell silent. I waited for him to answer. But the silence lasted four minutes. Finally, he said, 'No.'

There was something else I had to mention, so I thought I would mention it. ‘And I couldn’t help noticing that the impression your book gives, that many mental illnesses are the invention of drug companies, is very similar to the position held by followers of the Church of Scientology, to whom you refer in uncritical terms throughout the book, thanking them for their assistance, even going so far as to use their propaganda as the basis for your ‘research’.’

Jon Ronson denied being a spokesman or apologist for Scientology. We got the bill, paid it, and left, going our separate ways.

If anyone is interested in psychopathy, a good place to start is the Wikipedia article on Psychopathy. If you are interested in the Hare Psychology checklist, which forms pretty much the entire basis of Jon Ronson’s book, you can find it in the Wikipedia article on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. And if you are interested in the medicalisation of mental illness, there’s also a Wikipedia article on that. Recent studies indicate that all of the facts contained within The Psychopath Test can be found on Wikipedia or elsewhere on the internet, whilst there are many relevant facts that can be found on Wikipedia and elsewhere on the internet that are nowhere to be found within The Psychopath Test.

Later that evening I received an email from Jon Ronson. My wife was in the next room watching an episode of The West Wing on television. The one where they have a thing with cheese. But I only mention that to set the scene, I couldn’t actually hear the programme or anything.

‘Just checking,’ said Jon Ronson in the email. ‘That you realise that the interview which took place earlier today didn’t really happen, and that in fact the entire article was made up for satirical purposes.’

I didn’t think it needed to be said. I paused. I had just written a 1,400-word parody of Jon Ronson’s book. What did that say about me? Was I becoming obsessed? I remembered item 20 on the Hare checklist. Item 20: In the end it all comes back to Jon Ronson.

‘Oh, and one more thing,’ he said. ‘Always remember to end each chapter on a cliff-hanger.’

A few days later I heard from Jon Ronson’s lawyers.

Deliver Your Children

2011-10-08T18:32:00.005+01:00

More Blake's' 7 reviews...

Children Of Auron

Featuring a blonde Michael Troughton, in possibly his first TV job. The plot is basically 'Killer' again, but whereas 'Killer' had a subplot about Avon and Vila trying to get hold of some sort of gizmo, in 'Auron' the subplot is about Servalan wanting to have children. Or, at least, to clone herself. Which means the story is about embryos and disease and... it's just in appalling bad taste, really. It's only the lack of plausability that saves it from being an offensive peice of television. Servalan's reaction to the death of her 'babies' is quite extraordinary. Though why she should have some sort of telepathic link to them, I don't know...

For a planet of telepaths, Auron is a remarkably conventional place. They're telepathic, but they still need to use video telephones and radios, and live in somewhere that resembles the Bullring in Birmingham. It has the Ronald Leigh-Hunt in it. It has a quarantine door that flaps back and forth. But, on the whole, there are some great things in there; some fab location filming with terrific explosions, and scenes with Cally and her double which are astonishingly convincing, just from the way they are cut together. Though Cally's sisters death is typically dull for a member of the Cally family.

Disqueting, but quite good. Better than 'Killer'; a few convenient revelations aside, it all makes sense and fits together in a pacey way. Though the comedy ending is horrible horrible horrible. Avon does *not* make jokes, unless they're pointing out how stupid everyone else is.

Speaking of things that are pacey, did Stephen Pacey ever work on TV again after 'Blakes 7'? (NOTE FROM JONNY IN 2011: YES, LOADS) I mean, he's carved out a very respectable West-End career, but the only thing I ever remember seeing him in was an edition of 'Jim'll Fix It'. It was an edition where a young girl had written in asking to be a film director, and Jim had fixed it for her to make a short film. However, the young girl was an astonishingly precocious brat, and threw away the script the BBC had given her, choosing to film her own script, and she gave the actors an incredibly hard time. Including said Pacey as the romantic lead. Why do I remember all this? Anyway, I loathed 'Jim'll Fix It'. All upper-middle-class kids getting to do lame and low-budget things which only upper-middle-class kids would want to do.

Rumours Of Death

I love this, this is a great story. Suddenly we're back on Earth and the Federation seems real again; real soldiers with guns marching past buildings over gravel, that's what Blakes 7 should've been about. I remember those bits from when I was 7. The plot is incredibly tight and well-thought-through too - except possibly with regard to Anne's motivation - is she planning to betray the rebels, or is she genuinely trying to lead a rebellion? If it's the latter, it's a shame that Avon killed her, really. I mean, I know she betrayed him and all, but it's not as if she got him captured or killed, is it? Forgive and forget, Avon.

There are so many great things in here; let's ignore the Blakes 7 crew dancing around the torturer going 'cowardly cowardly cutlet' - instead, there's just the idea of the torturer being stuck in a cave with no exit on his own, left to die. That's quite a nasty idea that sticks with you. And there's the cool teleportation effect where, instead of Avon and the torturer going wibbly, their surroundings go wibbly - presumably they could only do this because it's a teleportation from one side of the studio to the other.

It's all about Avon, and the Darrow is on great form - he's getting twitchy, and paranoid, and he's whirling his gun about suspiciously like it's going out of fashion. He is great, constantly tiptoeing on the narrow tight-rope between good acting and William Shatner. The final scene where he realises that Anne betrayed him... he carries it off. He really does. Darrow is exceptional.

The plot is great too - all twists and turns and actually building on stuff we learnt back in 'Countdown' but also completely contradicting it too; Anne didn't die, she went on to marry someone in the Federation etc. etc. etc. It's really interesting, in terms of Avon's character, to hear him trusting someone, only for her to betray him too. No wonder he's so clenched all the time. And the rebel assault on the building; it's just carried off so well, the plotting is all logical and tidy.

It has David 'Pangol' Haig in it looking positively prepubescent. Flowing locks, sans moustache.

I note that Servalan is chained to the wall with her arms outstretched on either side. I assume this is because it is the default posture for Servalan anyway. Only Servalan could be chained to the wall in a mid-'champagne, darlings?' gesture. But she's quite good in this story, sporting half of a Madonna conical bra. We start to see Servalan cracking up and being undermined, though it's a shame that Tarrant has to point this out. She's frightened and bitter. It's great. If only she had her Liberator for company.

'It's an old wall, Avon. It waits'. Now, what Servalan - or rather, Chris Boucher - is trying to say here is, 'just you wait, Avon, one day you'll end up chained to a wall too'. However, Boucher is trying to express too much in too few words, and so it ends up just sounding ridiculous. Because even if Avon were to one day end up chained to a wall, it's rather unlikely that it would be the *same* old wall, isn't it? The wall itself is not important, nor is its age, it's the fact that the metaphysical wall is waiting for Avon. The wall being a sort of metaphor for a fatal flaw, a nemesis. Servalan has faced her wall, and found herself chained up against it. One day Avon will face his wall. And it's an old wall, Avon. It waits.

Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea

2011-10-07T15:51:00.010+01:00

Some thoughts about writing inspired by a discussion elsewhere.

What actually is a character-based story? Well, I’d say it was a story about character. That’s not just that it’s a story that contains interesting characters, but that it is driven by those characters and the choices they make. And that’s because character is demonstrated through the choices someone makes; which way they decide to leap given two or more alternatives.

The alternative to a character-based story is a plot-based story, where characters are passive or reactive, and so don’t need to make decisions. They are effectively clockwork mice running through a labyrinth with no junctions. But these tales tend to be a bit dull, because if character is demonstrated by making choices, without choices, you don’t have any characters. These sort of stories are about people who are not in control of their own destinies. They're about victims of circumstance.

After all, think of all the greatest stories ever told, in films, books, TV, wherever, and the reason why they are so powerful is because they are about characters facing incredibly difficult choices. Think of Casablanca, where Humphrey Bogart has to choose between doing the right thing for the war and keeping the girl he loves. Or Raiders Of The Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones has to choose between destroying the Ark or letting the Nazis have it. Or the New Testament, where Jesus has to decide between dying for people’s sins or not dying and having all of humanity's sins go un-died-for.

Drama, I would suggest, is all about creating moments where characters have to make incredibly difficult decisions. Where they have to choose between two outcomes, between doing the easy, safe, selfish thing, and doing the right thing. Where those choices come with consequences and costs. The best TV shows and films are not just full of these moments, their stories are about creating these moments and are constructed from these moments. About moments of crisis and leaps of faith.

I’d say the ultimate example of this is a choice mentioned in Robert Harris’ novel Pompeii, where the lead character’s wife has problems during childbirth, and he has to decide whether to let his wife die so the baby can live, or to let the baby die so the wife can live. An impossible decision to make, but an incredibly dramatic one. Each choice comes with a reward but at a terrible cost. And there are no guarantees, no absolutes; it’s a choice made in terms of risk, not certainties.

I’d argue that it is important for characters to be seen to live with the results of these choices, but that’s not compulsory. You can put the character in the situation, have them make their decision, and then have some other agency come to their rescue or make a choice for them. It’s something Russell T Davies does quite a lot with his season finales; the Doctor has to choose between wiping out the human race or letting the Daleks take over the galaxy, but fortunately Rose has looked into the heart of the TARDIS and so she can sort it out anyway. What you might call The Third Way.

Think of the greatest moments in Doctor Who. It’s the Doctor choosing between whether to kill the Daleks or to become as bad as the Daleks. It’s about him giving Peri the anti-toxin instead of saving it for himself. It’s the Doctor being forced to choose between defeating the Daleks and saving Rose. It’s about the choices; about characters demonstrating their bravery (or their cowardice). At its most basic, it’s about someone choosing to run into a burning building, risking injury and death to save someone else. And the more there is at stake, the more exciting the moment is.

There’s a recent episode of Doctor Who that did this very well, The Girl Who Waited, where Rory is faced with the impossible decision of choosing whether to save young Amy or middle-aged Amy. There are no easy answers. There’s no right and wrong. There’s a reward that comes at a terrible cost.

But if a story ends with characters not having to make any difficult decisions, where there is nothing at risk and where they don’t have any choice about what happens, I think that’s quite disappointing. A victory with no risk, no cost, no need for a show of courage is a hollow victory. It’s no victory at all. It’s like, oh, Luke Skywalker destroying the death star without using the force because his targeting computer is better. It might be the very clever thing to do but it’s not very dramatic.

It’s basically the equivalent of pointing a gun at the lead character’s head and saying ‘Press the story off switch!’ They don’t have any choice in the matter, they have everything to gain and nothing to lose, of course they’re going to press the story off switch. Compare that to pointing a gun at the love of the lead character’s life and saying ‘If you try to press the story off switch, I’ll kill the person you love!’ Suddenly you have drama, arising of out of character, arising out of choice. What will the lead character do? What would you do? What would Jack Bauer do? What would House do? What would Josh Bartlett do? What would Harry Pearce do? What would Dr Gillian Magwilde do?

We Can Dance Again

2011-10-06T18:21:00.005+01:00

More Blake's 7 reviews from 2002. I seem to have missed 'Gambit'. Probably the least of my worries at the time!

Well, things picked up a bit at the end of Season 2.

The Keeper: Bruce Purchase painted bright yellow playing a medieval king, for a start. He's a cut-price Brian Blessed. Blake is sidelined, but Jenna gets some stuff to do. Perky. Unusually for the 7, it has a plot twist which isn't completely predictable. Not sure about the use of magic in the 7 universe, though - seems too wacky for this gritty vision of the future. Servalan involved for no apparent reason.

Star One: Now, in my memory I'd confused this one with the one on the Planet Of The Space Monkeys. But that must be the almost-completely-identical story from the end of the third year. Anyway, this is great. There is a real sense that Blake's plans are falling apart and he hasn't thought things through. It's got the guy out of Sapphire & Steel and Blue Jam in it. We never see the Andromedans except when they've been reduced to green slime. Actually has some shocks and spooky moments. Love the final shoot-out between Blake and Travis, who I was beginning to start liking again. It's a shame they didn't write Blake and Jenna out properly when they had the chance. But this is best of Season 2, I think, along with Pressue Point and Countdown.

Season 3.

Oh my goodness, what have they done to the opening titles? They are so dreadfully lame. This is the point when I start remembering the stories from when I saw them as a kid, but I don't remember these titles at all. I remember the one where they're flying over a moon, which must be from later on. The original titles set up the series and told a story; the new ones are just spaceships, and seem all rather directionless. Which rather sums up this series so far.

Aftermath: After quite an exciting opening, things take a turn for the dull. My memories of this were a bit confused with Orac, which also features a base under water accessed via a tunnel on a beach. Servalan's involvement seems odd; her relationship with Avon doesn't fit what we already know and seems much too soap-opera-y. Introduces Dayna, who does a good job with the lines she's given, unlike her father who is another mad-accented scientist.

Season 3 was made around the same time as Season 17 of Doctor Who, wasn't it? They sort of look and feel the same. There is that same air of desperation.

Powerplay: In a staggering coincidence, Servalan now gets picked up by a ship and meets up with Cally. It's beginning to feel like Howards' Way In Space. Vila's plot requires him to be deeply stupid as he meets the 'Why father? Why? Why? Why? Why?' girl from 'The Pirate Planet'. Cally meets 'May my bones rot' from 'The Twin Dilemna'. Introduces Stephen Pacey as Tarrant. I remember him being quite good. Oh, and Michael Sheard's in it too.

There are a couple of really noticeable continuity mess-ups; the planet Servalan is picked up from doesn't look like the planet in 'Aftermath', and I'm not sure whether her control room is supposed to be in a space wheel or inside a spaceship that looks like a cuttlefish with big point teeth.

Volcano: Things are continuing downhill. The characters are all slightly-off; Vila is becoming a stereotype, a drunkard, a stupid wisecracking idiot. I'm not entirely sure the foregrounding of Avon and Vila actually works. Tarrant and Dayna, just like Blake, seem to have friends and relatives scattered around the universe, and they seem to be treating the Liberator as a chance to catch up on them all. Servalan is in it, for no readily apparent reason. Has Michael Gough in it; he's a great actor, but in line with BBC Blakes 7 policy he has to leave his talent at the studio door. I liked the robot; this was the time of robot-dancing on Top Of The Pops, but Doctor Who and Blakes 7 never really picked up on that, except here, and in the sublime 'Timelash'.

By now, I'm beginning to forget what the series is actually *about*. The Federation doesn't exist any more, except it does, a bit, sometimes. What are Avon and the others actually trying to do? No-one seems to know any more. They've stopped looking for Blake and Jenna, and instead just spend their time playing Space Monopoly. These are hard-bitten space terrorists, and yet they're behaving like the F**king Famous Five.

Dawn Of The Gods: It's another cheap one, which means that Cally gets things to do. Why did they lose Jenna and keep Cally? Jenna was great. Cally just looks miffed. Anyway, it's not quite as dreadful as 'Voice From The Past', but at points it really, really does try. We see Vila - who is now just a cypher - being terrified by what appears to be a Sinclair C5 with big pointy teeth painted on it. The plot is The Wizard Of Oz, via The Three Doctors. Has Keynsham from 'The Seeds Of Death' in it and some costumes I'm sure I recognise for somewhere. Again, it feels a too 'wacky' to fit into the 7 universe. But I liked the bit with Tarrant having the tell the truth in a misleading way.

Avon's motivation is all over the place. Tarrant speaks every line as though his hands are on his hips. Orac is getting too much to do and he's f**king annoying. At least K9 never deliberately piloted the TARDIS into a black hole!

The Harvest Of Kairos: The problem with Servalan is that now that Travis has gone, she has no-one interesting to talk to. Jacqueline Pearce's acting has gone through the roof. She sticks her arms out when talking for no real reason, and over emphasises every line to the point where all meaning and significance is lost. I notice her boyfriend's chest gets more and more exposed throughout the story. Yes, this is the story where Servalan decides the let the bloke who works in the Federation post room decide how to capture the Liberator [said post room bloke being an old mate of Tarrant's, naturally - it's a very small universe]. Avon is completely out of character. That said, though, it does have some good stuff in it, and I rather enjoyed it - there are occasional brief flashes of story logic.

The 7's plan seems to be a] to look up as many old mates as they can and b] to nick valuable stuff. They're not looking for Blake or Jenna, or doing anything, particularly. I'm beginning to wonder why I'm watching the programme. Servalan is in it far too much, but for no real reason. The stories are more interesting when she's not around.

The City At The Edge Of The World: Colin Baker isn't really grizzled enough to pull off a barbarian. What the part really needed was a cut-price Brian Blessed. But this is - quite surprisingly - a very good story, with a plot that makes sense all the way through and actually works. Vila is the lead, and he's back in character, for a change, rather than just getting pissed all the time. Valentine Dyall is in it, as is the door to Soldeed's office from 'The Horns Of Nimon'. I remembered this vividly as a kid, particularly the CSO moon-planet with the paddling pool.

I'm missing the great storytelling of the first series, and in particular, Terry Nation's feel for character and dialogue. That may seem an odd thing to say, but none of the other writers - with the possible exception of Boucher and Holmes - seem to have any clue as to what the series is *about*, and how 'realistic' it should be - they get the characters wrong, the dialogue is appalling and the science fiction conceits are absurd.

But I'm really enjoying it.

This Is The Life

2011-10-05T10:35:00.001+01:00

Another chapter from my abandoned Shakespeare book. It's basically a list of all the primary sources that biographers have to go on when writing his biography (in addition to his written works, the historical context and circumstantial evidence.) Knowing me, it's probably got some mistakes in it and is incomplete.

A Shakespeare Chronology

Listed below is pretty much everything we know about Shakespeare’s life, in addition to his published works. This is all the information scholars have to go on when trying to work out when the plays were written.

1556 - Anne Hathaway born

1558 - November 17 - Elizabeth I begins reign as Queen of England

1559 - January 15 - coronation of Queen Elizabeth I

1564 - April 26 - William Shakespeare baptised

1566 - October 13 - brother Gilbert baptised

1569 - sister Joan born

1571 - September 28 - sister Anne baptised

1574 - March 11 - brother Richard baptised

1579 - sister Anne dies

1580 - April 6 - England rocked by earthquake. Mentioned in Romeo and Juliet

1580 - May 3 - brother Edmund baptised

1582 - November 27 - Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway marriage license issued

1583 - May 26 - daughter Susanna baptised

1585 - February 2 - son Hamnet and daughter Judith baptised

1587 - February 8 - Mary, Queen of Scots executed

1588 - August 8 - Spanish Armada defeated

1588 - Ferdinando Stanley (‘Lord Strange’) replaces his acrobatics troupe with an acting troupe - Lord Strange’s Men

1589 - August 1 - King Henry III of France assassinated, igniting war of succession. Mentioned in The Comedy of Errors

1592 - February 26 - The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe performed by Lord Strange’s Men. An influence on The Merchant of Venice

1592 - March 3 - Henry VI performance noted in Philip Henslow’s diary

1592 - September 3 - Robert Greene dies

1592 - September 7 – London theatres closed due to plague

1592 - September 20 - Robert Greene’s pamphlet Greene’s Groats-Worth of Wit registered. Mentions ‘Shake-scene’ and refers to Henry VI Three

1592 - Henry Chettle apologises for Greene’s pamphlet in Kind-heart’s Dream

1592 - December 18 - Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe registered

1592 - The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd published in quarto

1593 - January - theatres opened again

1593 - January 26 - Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris performed

1593 - January 28 - London theatres closed due to plague

1593 - April 18 - Venus and Adonis registered

1593 - Venus and Adonis published in quarto

1593 - May 12 - Thomas Kyd arrested for posting ‘divers lewd and mutinous libels’. Under torture, he implicates Christopher Marlowe

1593 - May 30 - Christopher Marlowe dies in suspicious circumstances

1593 - December 30 - Buckingham performance noted in Philip Henslow’s diary

1594 - January - theatres opened again

1594 - January 24 - Titus Andronicus performance noted in Philip Henslow’s diary

1594 - February 3 – London theatres closed again due to plague

1594 - February 6 - Titus Andronicus registered

1594 - Titus Andronicus published in quarto

1594 - March 12 - Henry VI Two registered

1594 - Henry VI Two published in quarto

1594 - April 16 - Ferdinando Stanley (‘Lord Strange’) dies

1594 - May 2 - The Taming of a Shrew registered

1594 - May - rebellion begins in Ireland

1594 - The Taming of a Shrew published in quarto

1594 - May 9 - The Rape of Lucrece registered

1594 - The Rape of Lucrece published in quarto

1594 - June 3 - theatres opened again

1594 - formation of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, based at the Theatre, Shoreditch

1594 - June 13 - The Taming of a Shrew performance noted in Philip Henslow’s diary

1594 - July 16 - Thomas Kyd dies

1594 - bad weather and poor harvests. Mentioned in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

1594 - December 26 - performs for Queen Elizabeth I at Greenwich

1594 - December 28 - performance of The Comedy of Errors at Gray’s Inn Hall. Meanwhile performs again for Queen Elizabeth I at Greenwich. Busy night!

1595 - December 9 - King Richard performed at Sir Edward Hoby’s house

1595 - Henry VI Three published in octavo

1596 - August 11 - son Hamnet buried

1596 - October 20 – father John Shakespeare granted coat of arms

1596 - November - issued with a writ by William Wayte following a breach of the peace

1596 - Edward III published

1597 - Lord Chamberlain’s Men change venue to the Curtain theatre, Shoreditch

1597 - May 4 - purchases New Place in Stratford for £60

1597 - August 29 - Richard II registered

1597 - Richard II published in quarto

1597 - October 20 - Richard III registered

1597 - Richard III published in quarto

1597 - Romeo and Juliet published in quarto

1597 - November 15 - defaults on tax payment in St Helen’s parish, London

1597 - December - Love’s Labour’s Lost performed at Court for Queen Elizabeth I

1598 - Love’s Labours Lost published in quarto

1598 - February 25 - Henry IV One registered

1598 - Henry IV One published in quarto

1598 - appears as Knowell in Every Man in His Humour by Ben Jonson

1598 - July 22 - The Merchant of Venice registered

1598 - Francis Meres’ Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury is published. Lists Ge’tleme’ of Verona, Errors, Love labors lost, Love labours wonne, Midsummer night dreame, Merchant of Venice, Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King John, Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet

1598 - October 1 - defaults on tax payment in St Helen’s parish, London

1598 - December 28 - The Theatre at Shoreditch dismantled (to be reconstructed at Bankside as the Globe)

1599 - construction of Globe theatre at Bankside which becomes venue for Lord Chamberlain’s Men

1599 - March - Earl of Essex departs for Ireland. Mentioned in Henry V

1599 - September - Earl of Essex returns from Ireland, disobeying Queen’s orders

1599 - September 21 - Julius Caesar performed at Globe

1599 - October 6 - listed as tax defaulter in London

1599 - William Kempe leaves the Lord Chamberlain’s Men

1599 - The Passionate Pilgrim collection published in quarto

1600 - February - William Kempe morris-dances from London to Norwich

1600 - March 6 - Henry IV One performed at Court

1600 - August 4 - Much Ado About Nothing registered

1600 - August 4 - As You Like It registered

1600 - Much Ado About Nothing published in quarto

1600 - The Merchant of Venice published in quarto

1600 - August 14 - Henry V registered

1600 - Henry V published in quarto

1600 - August 23 - Henry IV Two registered

1600 - Henry IV Two published in quarto

1600 - Sir John Oldcastle published in quarto

1600 - October 6 - listed as tax defaulter in London

1600 - October 8 - A Midsummer Night’s Dream registered

1601 - January 6 - Twelfth Night possibly performed at Whitehall

1601 - February 7 - Richard II performed at Globe as part of Earl of Essex’s attempted rebellion

1601 - February 21 - Earl of Essex executed

1601 - September 8 - father John Shakespeare buried

1601 - October 7 - mentioned on deeds of Globe

1601 - November 30 - Queen Elizabeth I addresses parliament for the final time

1601 - The Phoenix and the Turtle published as part of Robert Chester’s Loves Martyr quarto

1602 - January 3 - end of rebellion in Ireland

1602 - January 18 - The Merry Wives of Windsor registered

1602 - The Merry Wives of Windsor published in quarto

1602 - February 2 - Twelfth Night performed at Middle Temple Hall

1602 - March 13 - Barrister John Manningham records in his diary a salacious rumour about Shakespeare sleeping with one of Burbage’s groupies

1602 - April 19 - Henry VI Three registered

1602 - May 1 - purchases land in Stratford

1602 - July 26 - Hamlet registered (having been ‘latelie Acted’)

1602 - September 28 - purchases a cottage on Chapel Lane, Stratford

1603 - Hamlet published in quarto

1603 - February 7 - Troilus and Cressida registered

1603 - appears in Sejanus His Fall by Ben Jonson

1603 - March - London theatres closed due to plague

1603 - March 23 - Queen Elizabeth I of England dies

1603 - March 24 - James I begins reign as King of England with Anne of Denmark

1603 - May 19 - Lord Chamberlain’s Men receive royal patent and become the King’s Men

1603 - July - 25 - coronation of King James I

1603 - August - Christopher Hunt’s booklist includes Marchant of Vennis, Taming of a Shrew, Loves Labour Lost, Loves Labour Won

1603 - begins lodging with the Mountjoys on Silver Street

1603 - December 2 - As You Like It performed at Wilton House

1603 - December 31 - Edward Shakespeare buried

1604 - January 1 - A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed at Court

1604 - March 15 - joins in postponed investiture parade for King James and Anne of Denmark. Wears red cloth

1604 - April - theatres opened again

1604 - sues Philip Rogers for not paying for a delivery of malt

1604 - King James I commissions a new translation of the Bible

1604 - October - convinces Stephen Bellott to marry Mary Mountjoy

1604 - November 1 - Othello performed at Whitehall

1604 - November 4 - The Merry Wives of Windsor performed at Whitehall

1604 - December 26 - Measure for Measure performed at Court

1605 - January 7 - Henry V performed at Court

1605 - February 10 - The Merchant of Venice performed at Court

1605 - The London Prodigal published in quarto

1605 - November 5 - Gunpowder plot against King James I fails

1606 - Ben Jonson’s Volpone performed at Globe

1606 - Profanity Act is passed, proscribing the use of religious swear words. This means revivals of pre-1606 plays must be edited to remove any such language

1606 - December 26 - King Lear performed at Whitehall

1607 - January 22 - Love’s Labour’s Lost registered

1607 - January 22 - Romeo and Juliet registered

1607 - June 5 - daughter Susanna marries Dr John Hall

1607 - George Wilkins writes The Miseries of Enforced Marriage

1607 - Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy published

1607 - September - Hamlet and Richard III performed on board the ‘Red Dragon’ anchored at Sierra Leone

1607 - November 26 - King Lear registered

1607 - December 31 - brother Edmund buried

1608 - February 21 - granddaughter Elizabeth baptised

1608 - May 20 - Antony and Cleopatra registered

1608 - May 20 - Pericles, Prince of Tyre registered (performed at some point between 1606 January 6 and 1608 November 23)

1608 - July – London theatres closed due to plague

1608 - August 10 - King’s Men lease Blackfriars theatre as a private venue

1608 - King Lear published in quarto

1608 - A Yorkshire Tragedy published in quarto

1608 - George Wilkins’ The Painfull Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre novelisation published

1608 - September 9 - mother Mary Arden buried

1608 - November 11 - mentioned on deeds of Globe again

1608 - December 17 - sues John Addenbrooke for not repaying £6

1609 - May 20 - Shake-speares Sonnets registered

1609 - July 25 - the ‘Sea Venture’ is shipwrecked in Bermuda. An inspiration for The Tempest

1609 - Troilus and Cressida published in quarto

1609 - Pericles, Prince of Tyre published in quarto

1609 - Shake-speares Sonnets published in quarto

1610 - February 2 - Pericles, Prince of Tyre performed at Gowthwaite Hall

1610 - Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist performed in Oxford

1610 - theatres opened again

1611 - April 20 - Macbeth performed at Globe (noted by Simon Forman)

1611 - May 15 - The Winter’s Tale performed at Globe (noted by Simon Forman)

1611 - Cymbeline performed (noted by Simon Forman)

1611 - November 1 - The Tempest performed at Whitehall

1612 - February 12 - brother Gilbert buried

1612 - May 11 - gives deposition in case of Bellott vs Mountjoy (Mountjoy being his former landlord at Silver Street, Bellott being Mountjoy’s son-in-law)

1612 - Henry IV Two performed at Court

1612 - Much Ado About Nothing performed at Court

1613 - February 4 - brother Richard buried

1613 - March 11- mentioned on mortgage for Blackfriars gatehouse

1613 - June 8 - Cardenio performed at Court

1613 - June 29 - Henry VIII performed at Globe. Globe burns down

1613 - retires to Stratford

1614 - Globe rebuilt

1614 - November 16 - briefly returns to London

1616 - February 10 - daughter Judith marries Thomas Quiney

1616 - March 25 - makes will

1616 - April 23 - William Shakespeare dies

1616 - April 25 - William Shakespeare buried

1619 - False Folio published

1622 - Othello published in quarto

1623 - August 6 - Anne Hathaway dies

1623 - First Folio published. First publication of Henry VI One, King John, Henry VIII, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure to Measure, Julius Caesar, Timon of Athens, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest

1634 - April 8 - The Two Noble Kinsmen registered

1634 - The Two Noble Kinsmen published

Notes:

A work being registered means it was entered onto the ‘stationer’s register’ - an early form of copyright protection, usually as a precursor to publication. The idea being, if you registered a work then no-one else could publish it without your permission. This could be for several reasons - either to prevent rival publications, or to prevent copies of a play circulating while it was still in the theatres, or even to keep a controversial work out of the public eye (as may have happened with Troilus and Cressida).

Regarding performances, only the earliest recorded staging is included - but they aren’t necessarily the first performances, the date of which is a matter of conjecture. I haven’t bothered including plays where the first known performance took place after Shakespeare’s death. ‘At Court’ usually, but not specifically, means a performance at Hampton Court, by Royal Request - as were the performances at Whitehall palace.

Philip Henslow was a theatre manager who kept a diary of box-office receipts, payments to writers and other production expenses. The play he calls Henry VI could be Henry VI One, and the play he calls Buckingham could be Richard III. Similarly the King Richard performed in 1595 is thought to be Richard II. Simon Forman was a doctor who kept a diary of moral lessons he’d learned from his trips to the theatre.

There’s some confusion over whether The Taming of a Shrew was a version of The Taming of the Shrew so I’ve tried to maintain that confusion for the sake of clarity.

Months and precise dates are included where available, but are not necessarily totally accurate - for instance, some sources put the date of the second performance in Greenwich in December 1594 as the 27th, and Henslow’s diary implies Titus Andronicus was performed up until February 6 1594 - three days after the Privy Council ordered all London theatres to be closed because of the plague. There would probably have been quite a lot of coughing and sneezing in the back row.

Similarly, where precise dates aren’t available, I’ve guessed at a sequence of events. For instance, plays being published shortly after their registration, and plays and poetry being published as a way of generating revenue when the theatres were shut.

Baptisms and burials were recorded, while births and deaths generally were not, so I’ve included the most accurate information available. Baptisms would’ve taken place a few days after the birth, and similarly, burials a few days after the death.

Amateur Hour

2011-10-04T13:34:00.006+01:00

Back in 1998 I wrote a Doctor Who story story for the charity anthology Perfect Timing. As that book will never be reprinted, I thought I'd share the story with you here. But it comes with a health warning! This story is one of the first Doctor Who things I wrote and so you must excuse the clunky writing style. I have improved since then!

The Zargathon Menace

by

Jonathan Morris

‘The stars in the sky are so distant that it takes years and years for their light to reach us. So when you look up at the night sky, you are actually looking back in time. Similarly, if somebody on a planet circling one of those distant stars was looking back at the Earth through a powerful telescope, they would see Columbus discovering America, or the French Revolution. Even in the nearest solar systems to ours it would still take many years for light, or television signals, to reach them, so they would only now be receiving television programmes broadcast ten years ago. Perhaps some green-eyed life form with three noses on Alpha Centauri is watching the very first episode of Professor X at this very moment!’

Dick Terrents, The Making Of Professor X, (Piccolo, 1972)

According to Professor Academi Plurix of the Institute Of Hypothetical Research on Smorglett Beta, there is something fundamentally flawed about the universe. His theory was based on the idea that at the point that the universe was born there was a shortfall in the amount of reality that was created. There was an infinite amount of matter, but a much smaller amount of realism to go with it. So, as the galaxies expanded, the amount of realism available to accommodate them was stretched ever thinner. In places where the realism was weak, Plurix wrote, events happened on a far less credible basis. Perhaps spaceships would start resembling small models, or walls would begin to wobble incongruously, or floating things would gain fuzzy blue outlines. People’s clothes and hairstyles would change abruptly because of the lack of quantum continuity and the laws of physics would run on a less rational basis. In extreme cases, on planets where the realism was particularly fragile, people would gain Welsh accents in mid-sentence.

Plurix also believed that pockets of Thin Reality floated randomly throughout the universe, and that one such area of implausibility was at that very moment enveloping the Institute Of Hypothetical Research on Smorglett Beta. He proposed this particular theory at the top of one of the largest restaurant bills ever presented in the Institute’s history. The academic authorities immediately dismissed his theory for being ‘unconvincing’, to which Plurix replied that that just proved he was right.

The Doctor leaned back into his chair and pulled a crumpled white bag from the depths of his coat. He offered the child sitting next to him a jelly baby. As the boy was about to reach into the bag, his mother scolded him and tugged him back into his seat. She glared at the Doctor, who beamed at her innocently.

‘Doctor, what is this we’re going to see again?’, asked Romana, delicately retrieving a jelly baby from the paper bag.

‘The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special, 1979. We’re here to watch it being recorded. A classic moment in the cultural history of the twentieth century.’

‘Really, how intriguing’ commented Romana, munching disdainfully. ‘What’s so marvellous about it?’

‘What so marvellous about it? You sit there and ask me what’s so marvellous about it? I’ll tell you what’s so marvellous about it.’ The Doctor bit an indignant jelly baby. ‘It’s marvellous.’

‘Gosh’, said Romana, settling back in mock awe. ‘How marvellous.’

Behind them the audience broke into excited chatter. Children raised questions that were hushed by parents. There was a mixture of astonished laughter and muttered nudges. The man seated immediately behind the Doctor exclaimed hoarsely, ‘What on Earth-!’

A square metal dog was trundling wobbily down the theatre aisle. His red eye visor was lit with determination as he bounced clumsily over each step. As he reached the Doctor’s row, he turned with an eager whirr and picked his way along the row.

‘K9, my dear fellow. What are you doing here? I thought I told you to wait in the TARDIS like a good dog,’ the Doctor said.

‘Affirmative, master. But I have urgent information to report.’

‘Urgent information?’

‘What is it, K9?’ whispered Romana, conscious that they were on the receiving end of a dozen gawping stares.

‘The TARDIS sensors indicate that there is a large spaceship in orbit directly above us.’

‘A large spaceship?’

‘Affirmative, mistress. It arrived approximately thirty-five minutes twenty seconds ago.’

‘And you came all the way here just to tell us that?’ accused the Doctor, leaping dramatically to his feet, his seat snapping upright beneath him.

‘Affirmative,’ said K9 meekly.

‘Good boy K9,’ said the Doctor warmly, patting K9’s nose sensor. He tidied the loops of his scarf and tossed the bag of sweets into the boy’s lap. The boy didn’t notice, he was still gazing with dumb-struck amazement at K9. He made a mental note to add another item to his Christmas list when he got home.

‘Come on then, we’d better get out of here.’ The Doctor made apologetic mimes as he shuffled towards the aisle, Romana resignedly rising to follow him.

‘What about Morecambe and Wise?’, she asked, indicating the cluttered stage of the theatre.

‘Morecambe and Wise can wait. We have work to do. Lead on, K9.’

The room was gloomy and oppressive, the only illumination coming from the blinking and flickering control panels.

‘We have arrived at the planet, Great Leader.’

The metallic doors closed with a whoosh and a thrum behind the Great Leader as he stomped onto the bridge. He joined his lieutenant at the observation panel and surveyed the landscape below with a scowl.

‘This is the place?’ rasped the Great Leader, thrusting a leather gloved claw at a central building rising out of the depressing grey city. It was a drab, functional structure, forming an almost complete circle around a predominantly concrete central area. The asphalt roof was cluttered with heavy aerials and dishes, the windows below glistening bleakly in the evening drizzle. Black and red vehicles flowed along the tarmac surrounding the building, oblivious to the Imperial warship hovering invisibly ten miles above.

‘Indeed, Great Leader,’ growled lieutenant Greeple.

‘Excellent.’ The Great Leader’s tail flicked with satisfaction as he feasted his lizardine eyes on the building. ‘We shall beam down at once.’

Greeple nodded and saluted with a neat stamp. He collected his demat rifle and stroked it affectionately. The rifle buzzed with homicidal glee, bristling to be fired. Greeple adjusted the power levels and then clipped it into his belt.

The Great Leader slid his helmet over his cragged features and joined Greeple on the teleportation pads. ‘Beam us down - now!’

The two uniformed figures stood to attention and a sonorous warble filled the air. The sound rose to a fluttering buzz and they were bathed them in a warm lilac halo. Their bodies rippled and twisted before shimmering away into nothing.

The Doctor dashed along the street, his coat flapping urgently in his wake. He paused at the white barrier, gathering his scarf about him, and hissed at Romana and K9 to keep up.

Romana’s shoes clicked on the pavement as she caught up with the Doctor, securing her sailor hat with one hand and brushing back her hair with the other. She smiled breathlessly as K9 joined them, his motors whinnying with the effort.

The Doctor gave a cheery wave to the security guard perched in his booth. The dour-faced guard lifted his gaze from his newspaper and considered them thoughtfully. He gave the Doctor a nod and signalled his approval to his colleague before returning, satisfied, to his paper.

The barrier rose and the Doctor bustled his companions through the entrance. They sprinted across the expanse of tarmac and up the steps to the drab, functional building, the Doctor leaping over the bowls of potted plants that lined the way. He slammed open the glass doors and ushered Romana and K9 into the lobby of Television Centre.

The Great Leader surveyed the occupants of the food hall. They were preoccupied with their meals, collecting them on wooden slats, treating them with condiments and then digesting them amid the general clatter and hubbub. There were over a hundred of the life-forms, engrossed with prodding at their food and exchanging pleasantries. So deeply engrossed that they had failed to notice the entrance of two warriors of the Elyanos empire. Even after they had removed their helmets.

His tongue looped around his fangs in irritation. The humans hadn’t given him a second glance. As he walked sternly towards the food bay, his tail lolling along the linoleum, he even noticed some people offering him sympathetic smiles.

‘Rather you than me, mate. You must be boiling hot in there,’ sighed one the humans. The Great Leader acknowledged the human with an awkward shrug and turned to his lieutenant.

‘They do not seem have noticed that we are not of this planet,’ he said, running a claw through the folds of his cloak.

‘No, Great Leader.’ Greeple clenched his rifle for reassurance.

‘Why is that, do you think?’

Greeple struggled. ‘Perhaps they are too stupid to realise.’

‘Indeed.’ The Great Leader weighed up a tray. ‘That is certainly a possibility. We should still attempt to make contact, however.’

Greeple shuffled behind the Great Leader in the queue. The Great Leader pushed his tray along the guiding rail, methodically sniffing the various foods on offer. He paused before a rounded female human who was stooped behind the counter. Her hair was coloured an improbable shade of blue and a smouldering tube dangled from between her caked lips.

‘Greetings, human,’ said the Great Leader. ‘We are Elyans.’

‘Are you, dear. That’s nice’, said the woman, stirring some baked beans.

‘No, you don’t understand. We are Elyans. We have come to free the Earth from the clutches of the evil Zargathon.’

‘Of course you have.’

‘You do believe us?’ said Greeple incredulously.

‘Yes, dear. You’ve come for the evil Zargathon. Do you want peas?’

‘Yes. We do want peace. We want peace on a galactic scale. But first the Zargathon must be vanquished,’ announced the Great Leader.

The dinner lady spooned a lump of mush onto a plate and offered it to the Great Leader. ‘Next.’

‘Do you know-’

‘Next,’ grated the dinner lady, drawing on her smouldering tube.

The Great Leader examined the contents of his tray with bemusement. He poked at the mush with an inquisitive claw and licked off some of the substance with a grimace. Greeple reciprocated his confused expression as they lumbered further along the counter.

The dinner lady watched them go and tut-tutted to herself. ‘Method actors.’

The Doctor bounded into the canteen and drank in the familiar surroundings. The room was filled with the faces of minor TV personalities tucking suspiciously into their lukewarm pies. The inviting smell of fresh steam hung in the air.

A small, bony-faced man with a flurry of greying hair put aside his tobacco to greet the Doctor with an outstretched hand.

‘Wonderful to see you again, Doctor,’ he said eagerly. The Doctor didn’t recognise him but pumped his hand anyway.

‘Yes, and you too,’ the Doctor replied. ‘Have we met somewhere before, I’m afraid I don’t recall-’

‘No, Doctor. We haven’t met before.’ said the bony-faced man, his eyes twinkling. ‘Not yet.’

‘Right. I see,’ paused the Doctor, flicking the tassels of his scarf. ‘You don’t happen to have seen any odd-looking fellows wandering around here recently?’

The bony-faced man pointed.

Standing stiffly beside the serving hatch were two reptiles clad in oily body-moulded armour. They were approximately humanoid except for the lengthy scabrous tails peering out from under their battle cloaks. Their faces were lined with heavily sculptured ridges, with only their eyes and mouth showing any expression. They appraised the Doctor as he approached.

‘Hello, I am the Doctor. You’re not from this planet, I take it?’

The superior of the two creatures inspected the Doctor. ‘No, we are Elyans. I am the Great Leader, and this is Greeple, my lieutenant. Greetings.’

Greeple acknowledged the Doctor with a slight bow. The Doctor grinned back genially. ‘Pleased to meet you. Elyans, eh?’

‘We are from the planet Elyanos,’ stated the Great Leader. ‘Tell, how did you realise that we were not of this world?’

‘Oh, well, the rubbery green scales. And the tails. Bit of a give-away, the tails,’ said the Doctor. ‘And the Imperial warship hovering undetectably in the upper stratosphere, of course.’

‘You are the first Earthling to have noticed,’ said Greeple.

‘Am I? I am?’ The Doctor gave him a penetrating stare. ‘That would be because I’m not actually an Earthling, you see. I’m a Time Lord.’

A passing light entertainment producer frowned at the Doctor. He selected his knife and fork and moved away slowly but definitely.

‘Indeed,’ observed the Great Leader. ‘Are Earthlings a very stupid species?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, they have their moments, you know. They’re probably just being discreet. Polite,’ said the Doctor. ‘By the way, may I ask what you’re doing here, visiting this planet?’

‘We have come to vanquish the Zargathon,’ the Great Leader proclaimed.

‘We are here to free the Earth from their dreaded clutches,’ added Greeple helpfully.

‘The Zargathon? Yes, of course, the Zargathon!’ exclaimed the Doctor, slapping his thighs for dramatic emphasis. ‘Never heard of them. Who are the Zargathon?’

‘We have traced them to this location. They have invaded the planet Earth.’

The Doctor boggled at Greeple. Greeple confirmed his leader’s statement with a grave nod.

‘Have they?’ said the Doctor. ‘I don’t suppose you could tell me what these dreaded Zargathon actually look like, could you?’

K9 whirred after Romana into the BBC canteen, his ear radars twitching.

‘I’m sure he was heading this way. We can’t have lost him,’ said Romana.

She ran her eyes over the crowds of diners as they chewed blankly on their ordinary meals. There was no sign of him, and if you could say one thing about the Doctor it would be that he stood out in a crowd.

‘Sensors indicate that the Doctor is nearby,’ said K9.

‘Then where is he?’ queried Romana impatiently.

A figure engrossed with a glass of dark red wine caught Romana’s attention. It was the Doctor, or at least it appeared to be. He had the same mess of unruly brown curls, the same aloof nose and the same indignant, probing eyes. He studied the wine as it lapped and swirled and then gulped it down with a satisfied sigh.

‘Doctor?’ said Romana. The man glanced up, grinning toothily

‘I’m sorry?’ said the man, his voice rich and deep. ‘I’m not a Doctor. I’m Tom.’

‘Tom?’ Romana was startled.

‘Yes, Tom. Absolutely overjoyed to meet you, my dear. And your metal dog too, most delightful. Hello, metal dog. And you are?’

K9 did not reply, his eyes burning. ‘I’m Romana. But you’re-,’ began Romana.

‘The Professor, yes, I know, I know. But I am so much more besides. Please, I’d be most gratified if you’d sit down and join me, Miss Romana. What can I do for you and your metal dog?’

‘This is not the Doctor, mistress,’ clipped K9. ‘This is merely a human being with the same appearance. He should not be trusted.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Romana.

‘The Doctor is in the adjoining corridor,’ said K9, his wheels rumbling over the linoleum as he sped off.

‘The Doctor... Then you’re -’, said Romana, piecing her thoughts together. She finally realised who this mysterious Tom actually was. But that was impossible.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve mistaken you for somebody else.’ She smiled apologetically and drew herself away to follow K9.

Tom watched them go ruefully and returned to his wine.

Greeple levelled his demat rifle at the Doctor. ‘You know how to find the Zargathon?’

‘Well, yes, I think so.’ The Doctor raised his hands and backed away gingerly. The rifle barrel trailed him, the corridor lights glittering over its crumpled tin foil surface.

‘Where are they? You must tell us,’ demanded the Great Leader, his eyes darting about. He advanced on the Doctor, his boots clumping threateningly on the carpet.

‘I think I can show you,’ admitted the Doctor. ‘But first, please, put the gun down.’

‘You will take us to the Zargathon or you will be dematerialised’ howled Greeple.

‘All right,’ said the Doctor through gritted teeth. ‘I’ll take you to them.’

‘Excellent’, said the Great Leader, indicating to Greeple that he should lower the rifle. Greeple held it trained on the Doctor for a pointed moment and then clunked it back into his battle belt.

‘The Zargathon shall be vanquished,’ Greeple said.

‘Excuse me, do you mind not rehearsing in the corridor?’ complained a production manager. ‘It’s most unprofessional.’

The production manager hastened past the Doctor and the Elyans, a clump of untidy scripts clutched to his chest. He made a conspicuous effort to avoid their gaze, keeping his attention firmly fixed on the floor. The Doctor and the Elyans waited for him to disappear around the curve of the passageway before continuing.

‘Now, where were we?’ the Doctor asked cordially.

‘You were going to take us to-’

‘Oh yes. But first I need to find a couple of friends of mine whom I have mislaid. Ah, here they come now.’

Romana and K9 were pounding down the corridor towards them, but suddenly halted in alarm when they saw the Elyans. Romana backed away defensively and K9 extended his nasal laser gun.

‘Romana, K9, hello. These are Elyans, the Great Leader and Greeple,’ effused the Doctor. ‘Great Leader and Greeple, these are my friends, Romana and K9. K9, don’t fire. Be nice to the aliens.’

K9 retracted his nose gun reluctantly. He probed the aliens with his central eye sensor just to let them know that he disapproved of them.

‘Doctor, what are these, these Elyans doing here?’ Romana asked.

‘We have come to vanquish-’, proclaimed Greeple.

‘They’re looking for some other fellows, called the Zargathon, and I’ve agreed to help them find them,’ hurried the Doctor. He adjusted his scarf and plopped his hat on.

‘The who?’

‘Never mind that now, Romana.’ The Doctor squeezed her arm and made a let’s-play-along-with-them face. He turned his attention back to the glowering Elyans. ‘If you wouldn’t mind following me, I have a vehicle parked outside.’

The Doctor swept out of the building and hurled himself down the stairwell and across a dew-soaked lawn. He was accompanied by Romana and the Elyans, K9 doggedly bringing up the rear.

The lawn led into an enclosed garden, divided neatly into a rectangular sunken pond, a greenhouse and a vegetable patch, all glistening eerily under the neon orange sky. A slick black statue of a dog cast its benevolent gaze over the flower beds from its vantage point on a concrete podium. The air was cool and earthy, the high walls protecting the garden from the tower blocks that surrounded it. It was a small sanctuary of calm, incongruous in the middle of the dark city.

A security guard stepped into the Doctor’s path with a sudden shout and the Doctor skidded to a stop. The guard was gabbling and the Doctor stooped towards him politely to hear what he was saying.

Romana could see a heated discussion taking place, the Doctor making expansive gestures and the security guard pulling a notepad from his breast pocket.

‘It’s not for me, you understand, it’s for my nephew,’ said the guard as Romana moved into earshot. ‘He loves it, he won’t miss an episode, collects all the books and dolls and everything.’

‘And what is your nephew’s name?’ asked the Doctor, scribbling loosely over the pad.

‘Er - Gareth. Just sign it to Gareth.’ The man confided to Romana, ‘He has to have total silence whenever it’s on. I mean, personally speaking I can’t stand it myself, but-’

‘There you go.’ The Doctor returned the notepad and straightened up. He shrugged a bewildered shrug in reply to Romana’s questioning gaze.

The TARDIS was perched lugubriously in a shadowy corner of the garden. The doors opened with a mellow hum and the Doctor darted inside.

‘This way.’ Romana waved the Elyans into the Police Box, keeping an eye on the security guard. He was still reading his pad in disbelief.

K9 bumbled and slid over the grass to the door ledge, and Romana lifted him gently over the threshold. The doors slapped shut behind her.

‘Hang on a minute,’ protested the security guard, looking up. ‘You’ve signed it as-’

There was the sound of a dilapidated engine wrenching itself into life. The beacon on the roof flashed momentarily and the Police Box lurched itself unceremoniously out of existence.

Fifteen years earlier, the TARDIS materialised in an untidy storeroom. Various wall sections were stacked up against one side of the room, the backs of each section revealing them to be nothing more than painted plywood. The remaining space was cluttered with chairs, sofas, tables, vases, columns and other items of furniture, each with a crisping yellow label attached. It was like a treasure trove, except everything was coated in a thin layer of dust.

The Doctor emerged and shook hands with a skeleton dangling nearby. Peering around the TARDIS, he was startled to see another, identical Police Box lurking behind it. He ran his hand tentatively over its surface. There was no vibration, it was just a normal, hollow Police Box. The Doctor blew the grime off his hand.

‘K9, the Doctor and I won’t be long,’ said Romana, wrinkling her nose at the stuffy atmosphere. She read the label on a nearby plastic statue. ‘Prop room, Lime Grove. What are we doing here?’

‘All will be revealed’, grinned the Doctor.

The Great Leader and Greeple waited uncertainly in the TARDIS doorway, clutching their demat rifles for reassurance.

‘The Zargathon are here?’ Greeple said fearfully.

‘Oh yes, I think so. Look after the TARDIS, will you, K9?’ The Doctor pulled the TARDIS doors shut.

‘The Zargathon shall be vanquished,’ said the Great Leader to nobody in particular.

‘Nobody is going to vanquish anybody,’ scolded the Doctor. ‘Now, all of you. Follow me.’

Romana watched as the Doctor launched himself into the television studio. He had often said that, on planet Earth, if you acted as though you belonged to be somewhere, everyone would be far too embarrassed to question it. He patted a floor manager on the shoulder and mouthed that he wanted to borrow the script. The floor manager, his cumbersome earphones rendering him deaf to the world, handed it to him without comment.

The small, claustrophobic studio was thrilling with commotion. People wandered about, smoking, flicking through scripts, drinking from styrofoam cups of coffee. Two slick-haired men argued as a metal grid festooned in blinkered lights rose jerkily to the ceiling above their heads. Another man, his T-shirt clinging to his belly, waved to some invisible colleague as a section of board was lowered into place. The board was crudely painted to resemble a rock face. It wobbled inelegantly. The man in the T-shirt swore out some instructions and the sound of frantic hammering started. A young, serene woman carrying a tray of make-up picked her way between the dozens of thick, snaking cables. Six heavy cameras lolled about the studio gracefully, immense grey metal boxes with miniature, bulbous lenses hidden in the bay of one end. Each movement the cameras made was mirrored by the images on the dozens of black and white televisions littered about the studio. The pictures would vacillate wildly, or zoom into random objects, cloudy but becoming clear and distinct as the camera focused, before the image was wrenched back again to the studio itself. The man with the earphones yelled and the studio blossomed into brilliant light. He yelled again and the lights dimmed. The hammering stopped and the man in the T-shirt thumped the stone-painted board experimentally. It shook visibly, and he withered, crumpling another coffee cup.

Romana contemplated the images on the monitors with interest. The studio was divided into five sets, each opening towards the central area. One of the sets was meant to be a cave, a cave with strangely angular walls and an unusually flat floor. On the monitors, Romana saw the cave as it would appear on screen. The camera had been angled upwards from the ground and the edges of the walls were shrouded in darkness, so the cave seemed to be utterly convincing. The other sets were a laboratory, a futuristic control room, a corridor and a jungle consisting of two potted plants and a false-perspective backdrop.

The Doctor thumbed through the script. ‘Wonderful. They don’t write them like that any more.’ He tossed it back to the studio manager.

Romana stepped from one foot to another nervously. The Great Leader and Greeple were staring at her impatiently. They had no idea what they were doing there either. Greeple tensed, training his rifle on people as they walked past him.

‘Doctor, what’s going on-’

‘They’re recording a television programme,’ said the Doctor, lost in happy thoughts. ‘A very, very special television programme.’

An elderly gentleman with shoulder-length white hair strolled up to the Doctor. He gripped the Doctor by his shoulders and admired him gleefully. ‘It is, isn’t it? The Doctor. How nice to see you again!’

‘Bill! How are you?’

‘Bearing up, bearing up. And you?’ said the gentleman, fingering the lapels of his costume, regarding the Doctor up and down.

‘Oh, you know. Mustn’t grumble. How’s the show going?’

‘Very well. A huge success with the children, they simply adore it. It’s been going for almost, ah, a whole year now!’

‘And they said it would only last six weeks,’ complemented the Doctor.

‘Quite so. But I really should thank you again for all your assistance, Doctor’, said Bill. ‘Without your help on the, ahem, “research”-’

‘Don’t mention it,’ interrupted the Doctor, tapping his nose. ‘Please. Just between you and me.’

Romana sighed, left out of the conversation. The Doctor was liable to continue chatting in this vein indefinitely, oblivious to the important matter of their search for the Zargathon. She jabbed the Doctor with her elbow. ‘Doctor-’

‘Oh, I’m so terribly sorry. Bill, let me introduce Romana. And these are two Elyans. Romana, Elyans. This is Bill. Or should I say, Professor X?’

‘Delighted.’ Bill clasped Romana’s outstretched hand and gave the two Elyans a frivolous wave. ‘Well, well. Anyway, back to work. No rest for the wicked, eh?’

As the old gentleman threaded his way back to the control room set, the Elyans jostled for the Doctor’s attention.

‘Enough of this. Where are the Zargathon?’ scowled the Great Leader, flouncing his cape.

The Doctor regarded the Great Leader. ‘You want Zargathons? Look. Over there.’

Three figures were shuffling into the studio. They were humanoid, their skin black and rubbery, their faces hidden by bulbous helmets decorated with tubing and a drooping central snorkel. At the front of each helmet was a single, doleful eye. They shambled about, tripping over their large flippers and knocking into anything below knee level.

‘The Zargathon!’ Greeple croaked in awe. Trembling, he raised his demat rifle.

‘They are here.’ The Great Leader retreated in fear. ‘They have conquered the Earth.’

‘Nonsense. You see, they’re filming an episode of a programme called Professor X and Greeple, put that gun down!’ The Doctor dived at Greeple, forcing the barrel sideways as Greeple engaged the trigger. The gun rasped and pulsated and fired a beam of brilliant white.

The beam sheared across the studio and enveloped one of the television cameras in a ferocious aura. Crackles of blue lightning snaked and writhed over the surface of the camera, rocking it violently back and forth. There was a sudden blinding flash and a shriek of thunder.

Romana squinted to disperse the red and green after-images swimming before her eyes. Where the camera had stood, there was now an expanse of grey studio floor. The camera had been completely dematerialised..

The studio crew staggered about, stunned. They turned to each other in disbelief, doing comical double-takes. The floor manager stepped gingerly into the empty space left by the camera, and examined the ground in a wide circle, testing the surface with little jumps. A disconnected cable fizzled at his feet.

‘We’ve lost camera number 5.’

‘It was here,’ said a cameraman, to whom the obvious was worthy of comment. ‘And then it vanished.’

‘Things don’t just vanish,’ stamped the floor manager. ‘They just don’t.’

‘Some sort of electrical fault?’

The Doctor backed away from the commotion, dragging the Elyans and Romana behind him. He rounded on Greeple.

‘Don’t you dare fire that thing again! You can’t go around dematerialising things willy-nilly. You might hurt somebody’, spluttered the Doctor, pounding the air furiously. ‘And as for this Zargathon nonsense-’

He bolted across the studio and chatted to one of the figures dressed in a rubber wet suit. At the Doctor’s suggestion, the figure struggled towards the Elyans, its feet flapping. It stood before them, swaying slightly. The Elyans cringed.

The Doctor folded his arms. ‘Ready.’

The figure lifted off his mask. Beneath it was revealed a bony-faced man with a flurry of brown hair, his skin oozing with sweat. He blinked into the harsh studio light and grinned.

‘What is this?’ asked the Great Leader, affronted.

‘This is John,’ said the Doctor, slapping the rubber-clad actor on the back. John stumbled forward under the force of the impact. ‘A new friend of mine. And your so-called “Zargathon”.’

‘Hello. Are you in this too?’ chirped John.

‘This is impossible,’ said Greeple. ‘The Zargathon are-’

‘-not real,’ finished the Doctor. ‘They don’t exist. They are just men in rubber suits. Nothing to be scared of at all.’

Greeple and the Great Leader turned to each other. ‘But we saw them. In a broadcast from Earth. They were invading.’

‘That was a television programme. An episode of Professor X. It was a story. Fiction’

Greeple’s forehead crinkled. ‘“Fiction”?’

‘You know, something that is not true. Made up,’ said Romana, talking to them as if they were children.

‘I do not comprehend. How could we see something that was not true?’ inquired the Great Leader.

‘It’s pretend. It’s not really happening.’

The Elyans considered this scrupulously. John winked at them, preparing a fresh roll-up, his snorkel mask tucked under his arm. He lit it, swiped out the match in his webbed glove, and sucked in a satisfied breath of tobacco.

‘What is “pretend”?’ said Greeple eventually. Romana sighed and looked heavenwards.

‘Romana, where the Elyans come from they have no such thing as fiction. They are a very unimaginative species. They have to take everything literally,’ explained the Doctor, fiddling with his pockets. ‘To them there is no pretend.’

‘You say that the Zargathon are humans dressed up’, pronounced the Great Leader. ‘But why would the humans wish to disguise themselves as the Zargathon? The very same race that has lain waste to their planet?’

‘Good grief. The Zargathon haven’t lain waste to the Earth. Look around you, does it look as if it has been lain waste to?’ said the Doctor. ‘The humans haven’t really been invaded. They’re only acting. In a story. The same story that you watched on television. ’The Doctor retrieved a script and presented it to the Great Leader. ‘See?’

On the front page was written;

---

Professor X - Serial K

“The Zargathon Menace” by Dick Terrents

---

‘But why would the humans act as if they had been invaded, if they haven’t?’ said the Great Leader, his eyes narrowing.

‘Perhaps it is a trick?’ Greeple suggested.

The Doctor replaced the script. ‘Because it’s the sort of thing they do! They find it entertaining! They like to imagine what it would be like to be invaded! It doesn’t mean they have been invaded, it doesn’t mean they need you to pootle half-way across the galaxy in a warship to come and rescue them! It doesn’t mean anything.’ The Doctor slapped his fist in frustration. ‘Listen to me. There are no such things as Zargathon.’

‘No such things as Zargathon?’ digested the Great Leader.

‘The Zargathon must be vanquished,’ muttered Greeple to himself..

‘Excuse me, but if you don’t need me any more, I think they’re getting ready to start,’ interrupted John in his cockney drawl. He flicked out his cigarette and squished it underflipper. ‘I’d love to hear more, but-’

‘Please, don’t let us stop you,’ said the Doctor graciously. ‘Thanks for your help. See you later.’

‘Well. Cheers, then, all of you.’ John placed his head in the bulbous, plastic helmet. He nodded to them in turn, his snorkel bobbling, and flapped towards the laboratory set, steadying himself against the scenery..

Romana watched him go. ‘Well, do you understand now?’ she asked the Elyans.

‘I think so. The humans here are making a performance of a Zargathon invasion, even though it has not happened,’ said the Great Leader.

‘Correct,’ said the Doctor.

‘At last,’ breathed Romana.

‘...Yet’, added Greeple. ‘They might invade later.’

Romana arched her eyebrows. ‘You really are the most astonishingly credulous race, aren’t you?’

‘The Zargathon are a race of terrible, evil creatures. They are roughly humanoid, but have hideous insect-like faces and webbed feet. They have one staring eye, and a special antennae on the top of their heads for picking up and giving out radio signals.

When Professor X encountered them, they were planning to take over the Earth by turning people into their robotic slaves. Luckily the good Professor managed to defeat them by jamming their antennae radios and the human race survived to face another day.’

Dick Terrents, The Professor X Monster Book, (Target, 1975)

A tubby, bald man with thick-rimmed glasses strode into the studio, hands disapprovingly on hips. ‘And what has happened here?’

‘One of the cameras has gone.’

‘What do you mean “one of the cameras has gone?”’ said the tubby man, itching the folds of his neck.

‘It was here. And now it isn’t,’ illuminated the floor manager.

‘Well we’ll just have to manage without it then, won’t we? Heavens above. All right, ready everyone?’ The tubby man clapped his clipboard for attention. ‘Okay, we’re going to start now. Everybody know what they’re doing? Good. Remember, we’re going from scene one to scene seven in one take. Hopefully.’

The cameras swung into position. The studio dimmed, the remaining lights meticulously picking out every detail of the sets. The T-shirted prop man threatened the cave wall not to fall down during filming and joined the rest of the staff crowding into a disused corner of the studio.

The tubby man enunciated his instructions. ‘Okay. Lights, wonderful. Sound, good. Actors. Everyone where they should be? Bill? Good. Oh dear.’ The tubby man had alighted upon the Doctor, Romana and the Elyans, hunched in the shadows trying to look inconspicuous. He fixed them with an indignant glare. ‘And what are you doing?’

The Doctor was about to speak when the man yelled at them again. ‘Get in your positions. Over there!’ He directed them towards the control room set with his clipboard. It was occupied by four rather bored-looking Zargathon. ‘Go over there, into set four.’

The Doctor gathered up his scarf and bounded into the middle of the control room set. He grinned broadly. ‘Here?’

‘Yes. Stand at the back. All of you,’ commanded the director. ‘Make it look busy.’

The Elyans shambled into the set, appealing to Romana for guidance. She elbowed them into position, and then took her place beside the Doctor.

‘What are we supposed to do?’ Romana whispered.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ smiled the Doctor. ‘Just join in if everybody starts shouting “the humans must die” or something.’

‘Right,’ said Romana. She passed the instructions on to the Elyans. They fidgeted, their tails lashing about nervously.

‘This is exciting, isn’t it?’ The Doctor popped his head over the shoulder of a nearby Zargathon. ‘I’ve always wanted to be in-’

‘Quiet,’ bellowed the director. ‘Alright. Lights. Cameras?’

The cameraman stuck their thumbs up. The floor manager counted down with his fingers. ‘Five, four, three...’ He backed away silently.

‘Action.’

‘The Professor, Carol and William ran into the control room. The walls were lined with control panels full of flickering dials, and there was a giant clock-like structure along one wall. Instead of numbers, the clock had strange, alien symbols. The hand of the clock slowly moved towards an area coloured in red.

‘We’re too late,’ said William.

‘Look!’ screamed Carol.

In front of them were four Zargathon armed with laser guns. Behind the Zargathon were two giant lizards in military uniform and two humanoid aliens dressed in eccentric clothing.

‘So, it was you all along. The Zargathon. I should have guessed. Well, I must warn you. If you intend to invade the Earth, I shall do my very best to defeat you!’ said the Professor proudly.

The Zargathon pointed their guns at the time travellers. Meanwhile, the clock continued to count down to destruction. It was now at the half-way mark. Time was running out.

‘The humans must die. The humans must die. THE HUMANS MUST DIE’, chanted the Zargathon, the lizards and the other aliens joining in with the chant a few seconds later.

Carol screamed.’

Dick Terrents, Professor X and the Zargathons, (Target, 1978)

The Great Leader followed the Doctor, Romana and lieutenant Greeple into the storeroom. His head weighed heavily upon his shoulders. They had failed in their mission, he thought. They had brought shame upon the glorious Elyan Empire.

‘So you watch a lot of television, do you?’ teased the Doctor. ‘Have you seen any Morecambe and Wise?’

The Elyans did not reply. The Great Leader avoided the Doctor’s gaze, blinking strictly into the distance.

‘You should, you know.’ The Doctor drew the key to the TARDIS from the depths of his coat. ‘Romana thinks they’re marvellous.’

‘Where to now, Doctor?’ said Romana, skipping over to the blue booth.

‘The Elyan warship, I think,’ said the Doctor. He turned the key in the lock, but to no effect. He tried the key again, twisting it back and forth. ‘That’s odd.’

Romana pushed the door and it creaked open. Harrumphing, the Doctor steered her inside.

The Great Leader was about to follow them when the Doctor and Romana suddenly reappeared from around the back of the structure. Surprised, he peered into the booth. The interior was dark and cramped and the rear wall was missing. Where it should have been, there was just a hole leading back into the storeroom.

‘This isn’t the TARDIS,’ said Romana apprehensively.

Frowning, the Doctor hopped into the booth, winding his scarf around him. Again, he emerged from the other side. ‘No, it isn’t.’

‘What has happened?’ questioned Greeple.

The Doctor paced about the storeroom. He crouched to inspect a square outline in the dusty floor. ‘I’m not sure, but-’

‘Doctor, what about K9? He was inside.’

‘It’s the last time I leave that dog in charge. I told him quite distinctly,-’ said the Doctor, rubbing his lips. ‘You know, there’s something missing here, and I can’t quite remember what.’

‘The TARDIS?’ prompted Romana.

‘The Police Box! There was another Police Box here! And now it’s gone.’ The Doctor sprang to his feet and walked over to the blue booth. He ran his hands over the panelling thoughtfully. ‘Except it’s still here. And if the replica Police Box is still here, that means the TARDIS-’

A whistle echoed eerily in the darkness. A torch glowed through the fog and a policeman appeared behind it.

‘Evenin’ all.’ He spoke slowly, lending each word proper authority and emphasis. He rocked back on his feet, cordially addressing his audience. ‘You know, a policeman’s lot can often be a tricky one. Believe me, there are times when it seems that there is no end to the mischief that the criminal fraternity will perpetrate. But-’

‘Excuse me.’ A gangly, curly-haired man in a heavy brown coat brushed past the policeman. He smiled down at the officer. ‘You haven’t seen a Police Box around here, have you? Blue, about so high? Ah-ha!’

In a nearby alleyway a Police Box was looming through the mist. The policeman watched in bewilderment as the man loped towards it, accompanied by a bright-faced young woman and what appeared to be two giant lizards in plastic armour.

The gangly man smoothed the Police Box. ‘There you are, old girl.’ The doors swung open and he disappeared inside. ‘Down K9, down!’

The woman and the lizards pursued the man into the Police Box, slamming the doors behind them. The roof beacon flashed and faded, spiriting the blue box away into nothingness. It left behind an empty street corner whirling with dry ice.

The policeman removed his helmet and scratched his head. He turned to the camera for reassurance, his face lined with confusion.

An unseen voice instructed, ‘Okay, cut. Now can somebody tell me what the hell is going on?’

The control room was silent and dark, the control panel lights glimmering in the stillness. The Television Centre fluttered in the centre of the observation panel.

With a painful grinding, the TARDIS solidified itself onto the bridge and the Doctor, Romana and the Elyans emerged.

‘Here you are,’ announced the Doctor dismissively. He wandered around the control room, his hands plunged into his pockets. ‘Elyan Imperial Warship.’

‘Can’t say I care much for the decor,’ sniffed Romana. ‘Very unimaginative. You were right, Doctor.’

The Great Leader circled over to the main console and started pulling and twisting various levers and knobs. ‘We shall leave for Elyanos immediately.’

‘Very wise,’ said the Doctor. ‘And when you get back, I recommend you take another good look at your Professor X tape. If you watch very carefully, you should be able to spot yourselves in the background of one of the scenes. Your moment of fame.’

‘We shall do that,’ bristled Greeple. He pressed his claws onto a console panel and the spaceship’s engines rumbled into life.

‘Which will prove to your people that the Zargathon are not real,’ suggested Romana, perching herself onto the observation panel.

‘And that the human race doesn’t need you to turn up and rescue them from their evil clutches,’ completed the Doctor. ‘Always keep in mind that most of human television is completely made-up. Particularly Professor X. No matter how realistic it may seem, you should never, ever take it seriously.’

The Great Leader bowed formally. ‘I can assure you that the Elyan Empire will heed your advice, Doctor. Thank you for your assistance.’

‘Not at all, think nothing of it,’ the Doctor grinned. ‘And if you ever get scared watching Professor X, I recommend you just hide behind the sofa.’

Romana giggled and swung herself off the desk. ‘Time we were gone?’

‘I think so. Well, goodbye, goodbye. Charmed meeting you both.’ The Doctor shook the Elyan’s claws vigorously and set off for the TARDIS.

‘Goodbye, Doctor, Romana,’ said the Great Leader.

‘And no more vanquishing,’ joked Romana, slipping through the entrance of the Police Box. The Doctor gave a cheery wave and vanished after her.

After the TARDIS had dematerialised, Greeple and the Great Leader lingered in contemplation for some minutes. Eventually the Great Leader swished over to the observation panel and glowered at it intently. He would never live down the humiliation. Fooled by a fake human broadcast, he would be the laughing stock of Elyanos.

Greeple clicked his tongue. ‘What’s a sofa?’

Dust danced and swirled in the spotlight of a single cheerless light bulb. The floor of the basement was crusted in swirls of grime. The shelves were stacked high with thousands of musty cans of film, piled into clumsy towers and racked into teetering, domino-like constructions.

The TARDIS thumped into reality, its beacon sweeping over the gloomy avenues of shelving. Romana stepped out and switched on a heavy, black rubber torch.

‘What have we come here for?’

‘A spot of tidying up,’ the Doctor replied. He glided along the shelves, perusing the crisping identification labels. Unable to find what he was looking for, he squatted to scrutinise the lower shelves.

‘If you told me what you were after, I might be able to help.’

‘Romana, have you ever read the Expense Accounts of Acedemi Plurix?’

‘Pardon?’

‘One of the greatest philosophical works of the Institute of Hypothetical Research on Smorglett Beta.’ The Doctor sank into the shadows, his voice resonating in the dead atmosphere. ‘A great thinker, old Acedemi, and a very, very accomplished eater. I remember once he proved the non-existence of the entire universe from first principles just to get out of paying for lunch.’

‘What’s in these Expense Accounts?’

‘Well, Plurix had this theory that realism wasn’t consistent throughout the galaxies. He believed that whilst realism is usually pretty strong, occasionally there are places where it becomes stretched and weak. And in these areas of Thin Reality, as he called them, what was real would appear to be unrealistic, and what was unrealistic would appear to be real. Fact and fiction would become indistinguishable.’

Romana arched her eyebrows. ‘That is complete nonsense.’

‘Yes, probably,’ agreed the Doctor, returning from the blackness. Tucked beneath one arm was a pile of film cans. ‘But tell me, what did you think of the Elyans?’

‘To be honest, they seemed rather ridiculous. A very unlikely race.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ mused the Doctor. ‘Unbelievable. Or perhaps they only seemed unrealistic? Remember when we were in the television studio. Did anything strike you as odd?’

Romana drew herself up. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘The pictures on the monitors,’ prompted the Doctor, unloading the tins onto a nearby desk. ‘The studio sets?’

‘Well, to be fair, I thought they seemed rather convincing-’ Romana stopped herself.

‘Exactly. And yet in real life they were wobbling. Let me tell you, if there’s one thing Professor X never is, it’s convincing. There’s always something wrong, some shaky set, or some daft-looking monster, or some piece of string holding up a space ship. And yet in this particular story everything was totally realistic. Why do you think that was?’

‘You don’t really expect me to believe that it was due to Thin Reality?’ snorted Romana.

‘It makes the unrealistic appear realistic.’ The Doctor began rummaging through the tins, puffing the dust off each of the labels. ‘Romana, I think we have been caught in a Thin Reality field. Our experiences of late have seemed implausible to say the least, and yet an implausible Professor X story has seemed completely convincing. So convincing, in fact, that anybody watching it would find it almost impossible to believe it wasn’t true.’

‘Like the Elyans did?’

‘Indeed. The Thin Reality had made the Zargathon appear utterly, utterly real. Terrifyingly so.’

Romana was appalled. ‘But if what you say is true, that means any alien race seeing the programme could mistake it for genuine - and then come to Earth and attempt to destroy the Zargathon.’

‘Which is why we are here.’ The Doctor retrieved a can of film and passed it to Romana. The lid was marked in clumsy biro;

---

Prof. X. Serial K. Menace of the Zargathon.

---

‘We can’t allow this story ever to be broadcast again,’ said the Doctor solemnly. ‘It is far too dangerous. Who knows what creatures may be watching next time? They might not be as understanding as the Elyans. They might decide to just blow Earth out of existence to save time.’

‘You’re going to destroy the programme?’ asserted Romana, returning the tin to the Doctor.

The Doctor exhaled gravely. ‘Yes. Every single copy, except for this one. This is for... posterity. In the TARDIS archive.’

‘But won’t anybody notice it’s missing?’

‘Knowing the BBC, it’ll probably be at least ten years before they realise it’s gone. And by then it will only exist as a few dog-eared scripts and some fondly held memories.’

‘A shame, really. The best Professor X story and nobody will ever get the chance to see it again,’ mourned Romana.

‘I know.’ The Doctor shook the can, as if he was searching for something to say. He frowned up at Romana guiltily. ‘But unfortunately there are some extraordinarily gullible races out there, and one can’t be too careful.’

Romana crossed over to the TARDIS, her head hanging down, and tip-toed over the threshold. The Doctor stood in reflection for some minutes, drumming his fingers on the film can, before turning to face to the TARDIS. It was waiting for him, the doors open in expectation.

Ruffling his hair, the Doctor ducked into the Police Box and drew the doors together behind him. Seconds later, the familiar grinding began and the Police Box faded away into the space-time vortex.

The Doctor’s voice rang out briefly after the TARDIS had vanished. ‘Well, I wouldn’t say it’s the best. A good one, yes, but not the best. You should see “The City Of Doom”...’

‘One of the most sought-after missing stories is the classic first Professor story The Zargathon Menace. Although much of Season 2 still exists, this particular story was tragically lost in the early 1970’s. Apparently, a memo to BBC Enterprises from the BBC Film Library had said that they held a copy of this story, and so BBC Enterprises destroyed all of their copies to make space for other programmes. The BBC Film Library copy, however, mysteriously then went missing a few days later. The only surviving clip from this classic story is a short excerpt from Episode 1 that was included in an edition of Blue Peter.’

The Missing Classics, Professor X Winter Special (Marvel, 1981)

Ian Chesterton yawned and checked his watch. He had been sitting outside the cave keeping watch for over four hours. He was achingly tired.

The jungle atmosphere was humid and sticky. His shirt and trousers were soaked with sweat and glued to his skin. The boulder he was using for a seat was dank and uncomfortable. He had chosen it deliberately to help him stay awake. Not that he would be able to sleep, thanks to the pounding of the bruise on the back of his head.

Behind him the Doctor, Barbara and Vicki slept soundlessly on the smooth cave floor. In front of him was the writhing mass of the dark alien jungle. Lithe vines coiled down from the jungle canopy and exotic, swollen plants lurked in the dense vegetation. In the distance he could hear the screech and caw of the local fauna. The undergrowth shifted and rustled in the low breeze, as if it was breathing. Ian felt that the jungle was watching him. It was alive.

Ian stretched his legs and heaved himself upright. He squinted suspiciously into the gloom. Out there, he knew, were giant voracious funguses, creeping through the blackness, ready to ensnare any unsuspecting victim in their mottled folds. He had heard them shuffling about, blindly searching for their prey. But they were not the main threat. Somewhere in the darkness, waiting, machinating, were the Daleks.

Ian was startled from his reverie by a sudden crackle of thunder. A brilliant blaze of light exploded in the jungle nearby, scattering plumes of fizzling blue sparks over a wide area. There was a cacophony of squawking and flapping from the alarmed wildlife. Even the giant funguses were shrinking back from the furious conflagration.

After only a fraction of a second, the dazzling light ceased and Ian was plunged back into the night. The jungle continued to shriek indignantly for a several more minutes, until eventually the calm returned.

Ian glanced at his companions in the cave. They were all still asleep. He massaged his fist as he considered his next move. The disturbance had only been a short distance away. The cave would only be unguarded for a few minute while he investigated. If there was a threat, he could warn the others. If it turned out to be nothing, well, there was no need to disturb them.

Ian resolved to find out what had caused the commotion. He straightened his blazer and cautiously picked his way into the undergrowth. After trudging solidly for several minutes, he dragged apart a curtain of vines and abruptly found himself in a wide clearing.

In the centre of the clearing, bathed in a tranquil glow, was a bulky television camera. Its grey metal surface glistened as it rocked complacently back and forth. It had a strange, ghostlike quality.

As Ian approached, he could make out the writing along one side of the camera. It said ‘BBC TV’. Beside it was a large number 5.

This was impossible, Ian thought. He must be seeing things. The others would never believe him.

Bleary-eyed, Ian sleepwalked his way back to the cave and sank down outside the entrance. He tenderly investigated the bruise on the back of his head. It was still throbbing painfully. Vicki must have hit him harder than he’d thought.

Brenda Is Always In The Way

2011-09-30T11:06:00.003+01:00

Time for a quick rant. Now that Virgin Media have finally taken away the cable on my front lawn – o frabjous day – I’m moving down the list of irritations, from major annoyance to minor niggle.

The thing that is annoying me today is this: when pop stars stick exclusive bonus tracks on albums in other countries. I find that annoying. Because if I like a pop star, then I like to own everything they have released. I’m obsessive like that, loyal, a completist. It’s a trait that is good to encourage in one’s fan-base; you want the fans to collect the b-sides, the cover versions on charity compilations, the box sets of demos.

But how is one to maintain a complete collection if pop stars insist on releasing things that it is impossible to buy. I realise why they do it, it’s because if you release an album in one territory after it’s already been available elsewhere in the world, you want to give added value, particularly if the domestic album is more expensive than the import. I understand that. But that is no excuse for not making those ‘added value’ tracks available to those people who want to own them elsewhere. It’s just encouraging file-sharing and depriving the artist of revenue. I’m not saying it has to be available immediately, just within a reasonable time period, by some legal means.

For instance, I really like Marina & The Diamonds. They, or rather she, is probably my favourite ‘current artist’ and no, I don’t know why I’m putting that in quotation marks either. I bought her album The Family Jewels on iTunes, thus entitling me to the eponymous title track as a bonus (it’s not part of the canonical album). But I’m still missing ‘Seventeen’, a track only available in the US and Japan. It’s not been released in the UK as a b-side or anything. You just cannot buy it for love nor money.

Next defendant – Mika. His first album, Life In Cartoon Motion, released in some territories with the track 'Erase'. Not available in the UK. Second album, The Boy Who Knew Too much. Released in some territories with the track 'Lady Jane'. Not available in the UK.

And finally – well, I’m sure there are dozens of other examples, but I’m stopping with this one – Sparks, who I discover, a mere 3 years after buying their album Exotic Creatures Of The Deep, released it in Japan with the additional track 'Brenda Is Always In The Way', not available in the UK (well, it might have been on a 7" single but what is this, the middle ages?).

Ah well, if these pop stars don’t want my money, it’s their loss. Silly sods.

The Trees

2011-09-28T10:07:00.006+01:00

Another blast from the archives, this time from 2006, a review of the Douglas Adams/Graham Chapman sketch show 'Out Of The Trees'. The only surviving off-air copy was shown at a Missing Believed Wiped event at the NFT; I'm surprised and disappointed it hasn't been commercially released since then.

Out Of The Trees

Douglas Adams once described his ill-fated collaboration on a sketch show with Graham Chapman and Bernard McKenna as 'only semi-brilliant'. This sounds like modesty until you bear in mind that he only wrote about half of it, and the brilliant half to which he was referring to was his half.

Adams' main contribution seems to have been the Genghis Khan scenes, and the peony sequence at the end, and certainly the Khan scenes are the highlights. To begin with there is a worry it is going to dissolve into look-we've-hired-an-actress-with-big-tits sniggering of the type found in Spike Milligan's Q shows, but instead we get some extremely well-constructed, economical sketches - the first of which even has a decent punchline.

The second Khan sketch is, as has been mentioned elsewhere, Graham Chapman taking the piss out of John Cleese never having time to do 'Python' because of his business interests and wanting to get more reading in. Clearly the character is written as a Cleese character, but Chapman does a good job, and there are some great sequences later on with Khan massacring and becoming a businessman.

However, saying that Khan is written as a Cleese character kind of points up one of the problems with the show. There's another character, a Scout Leader, who has obviously been written as Michael Palin (or has been written as a Michael Palin-type character) - who just doesn't work when played by Tim Preece, even though he is quite close to Palin in terms of voice. Similarly the two bickering women would have been much better played by Chapman and another 'Python' in drag, but played by actresses, they don't quite work.

This leads me on to a couple of other criticisms. The sketches with which Adams doesn't seem have been involved - one about firemen politicians, another about businessmen - feel like very generic 'Python', and in particular, series 3 and 4 'Python' when the formula was beginning to look a little tired. There are good lines but a feeling that it's all been done before. Also, the linking device of the show feels like pastiche 'Python' - three or four half-finished sketches being played out in the same location, plus some self-referential 'deconstruction of the form' which felt rather-sixth form-revue without being particularly amusing. And these three or four half-finished sketches were all very familiar - the boring cycling enthusiast, the 'Four Yorkshiremen'-esque game of one-upmanship between two housewives, the waiter who gets the wrong end of the stick (a la the two guards in 'Holy Grail').

On the other hand there is the line 'Well, not as such, I more, sort of, don't' - which doesn't quite work written down but is very funny spoken.

The other odd thing about the show is how little Graham Chapman has to do in it. Apart from his turn as Genghis Khan, he is present in most sketches but only as a bit-part player. It's not quite because it's an ensemble piece, it's more a general lack of focus. In some scenes he looks, well, bored. In others, plain drunk. He doesn't quite know what to do when he hasn't given himself any lines, so he throws in unnecessary 'reacting along' acting. And yet when the focus is on him, when he takes centre stage, he is utterly self-assured.

But you can see why it didn't go beyond a pilot (and my suspicion is that the decision was made even before this one episode was broadcast, as the script mentions it being a 'series' and yet they haven't even bothered giving it a title sequence). The BBC would have been expecting a Graham Chapman vehicle, just as Rutland Weekend Television was Eric's and Ripping Yarns was Michael's and Fawlty Towers was John's. Instead they got a show with some not-very-good-at-comedy actors not making the most of some half-hearted material. I mean, Simon Jones is fantastic, and Mark Wing-Davey does the best with what he's given, but they are also barely in it. Instead there's far too much Roger Brierley, a sort of bank manager of an actor, and nowhere near enough Graham Chapman.

And yet it is, as Douglas said, semi-brilliant. A lot of money seems to have been spent on it - particularly the film sequences with Khan and the end bit with the peony - and to be fair it's on about the same level as the last series of 'Python' or something like End Of Part One - not terrible, but with too much self-indulgent funny-when-written-down weirdness instead of jokes. For Graham Chapman, it feels like he's going through the motions, and for Douglas Adams, it feels like he's doing a John Cleese impersonation - he hasn't really found his authorial 'voice' yet.

But it was lovely to see it at last and, if you ever get the chance to see it, do.

Countdown

2011-09-27T11:21:00.006+01:00

More Blake's 7 episode reviews, from back in 2002:

'Countdown' yesterday. Great stuff; a simple, straightforward and relatively cheap plot by Terry Nation that not only works, but also manages to fill up its 45 minutes with no padding. Sadly Jenna and Cally get even less to do than usual; Jenna's performance is so knowing I'm surprised she doesn't wink at the camera. Cally's getting a bit tetchy. Vila's comedy banter falls a bit flat, as usual, but he's a likeable enough sod. Avon unusually heroic, and Blake unusually gullible. I really enjoyed it. I would give it a good '8 out of 10' if I awarded things marks out of 10, but I don't.

Voice From The Past

Oh my goodness. There's some real vying going on in the competition for 'most sheepish episode of Blake's 7 ever'. But it will be difficult to out-sheep this.

To begin with, this appears to be the episode that has had no money spent on it whatsoever. Four sets - three of which are the Liberator control room, a room in the Liberator and Servalan's office. Three non-regular speaking cast members. And five minute's location filming, at the Barbican if I'm not mistaken, unless that's a corridor in TV Centre.

The plot is essentially, 'Blake gets a headache and goes a bit mad'. He has to be restrained to a chair. Cue lots of nasal hair shots. There is some endless to-ing and fro-ing - will they go to the asteroid or the bouncy planet with the Fera particles? For the longest time this viewer was convinced they wouldn't even get off the bloody Liberator. Cue model shot of Liberator turning left. Cue model shot of Liberator turning right. Cue model shot of Liberator turning left again.

In all its years of rubbishness, Doctor Who never managed a special effect as colon-evacuatingly awful as the space-suited Blake wandering across the surface of the asteroid. I mean, I think it's lovely that they let the producer's four-year-old daughter paint the backdrop, I really do, but what is that big white line supposed to be? Is that big round thing a moon or something? Is that a giant Gin and Tonic?

It gets worse. Blake is here to meet Shevan, a rebel leader. Who is covered entirely, from head to foot, in bandages. And who talks like Papa Lazarou after he's had a stroke. 'Elllo Blaaaake. You wanna buy some pegs? Maaaaa wife was right, there was a problem with the Federation, but I fixed it. Of cooourse you can join us! etc. etc.'

It transpires, in a trouser-changingly absurd plot twist, that Shevan is none other than Travis in what must be the feeblest disguise since John Simpson tried to smuggle himself into Afghanistan dressed in only an Hawaiian grass skirt and a coconut bra. A disguise which somehow fools not only Orac, but which has passed every medical examination test known to man. Even Scooby Doo could've spotted this one.

The actors are past caring. The dialogue is ridiculously out of character - whoever wrote this episode seems to think the Blake gang are a bunch of petulant 17-year olds out on a jolly picnic. So whenever a line comes along which doesn't fit with the character, it is delivered flatly, with just a hint of 'get me out of this series NOW' desperation. Cally and Jenna seem embarrased by the juvenile bitching they have to perform, never mind discussing how pretty asteroids are. Vila makes no pretence to be taken in by Blake's loopy plan. Only the Darrow bothers to put in a performance, but even his gritting seems somehow half-hearted. He's only semi-clenched.

You know the woman in Timelash, the one with the cheek blusher and wide-eyed facial expression? Vena, played by Jeanette or Jean something. You probably thought she gave the most wooden performance by anyone in a sci-fi series ever. But, no, the woman who plays the rebelling planet president leader thing in 'Voice From The Past' is even worse. No emotional inflection what-so-ever. She takes inanimation to extraordinary lengths.

And how is this dire situation resolved? It suddenly occurs to Avon that it might be a good idea to smash the box which is controlling Blake's brain. He does so. Blake then wakes up - and lucky old Blake has no memory whatsoever of the events of 'Voice From The Past'. I wish I were Blake. Apart from the puffy sleeves and space wellies, of course. But that's it, that's the ending. Fnnurk.

The - rather unexpected - couple of scenes shot at Barbican look quite nice, though. You get to see the federation guards in spotlights, looking quite sinister. But that's hardly enough to redeem the most sheepish Blake's 7 Episode ever. So far.

And those exercises looked extremely painful.

Dead Bodies

2011-09-26T16:46:00.005+01:00

Yesterday I finished reading the second, and middle, book of the Mervyn Stone trilogy, DVD Extras Include: Murder by Nev Fountain. I’d already finished reading the first book, Geek Tragedy, several weeks ago, and I read the third one Cursed Among Sequels last year in a giving-encouraging-notes capacity.

A quick bit of background. Nev started writing the first book four or five years ago, possibly longer, and sent it to me when he’d written about the first third. I thought it was very terrific and told him to complete the novel as I was desperate to find out what happened next. I think it gives you some idea of how much weight my opinion carries that a mere four or five years later, Nev followed my advice and completed the novel, and then kept on going and completed two more.

The books are ‘whodunits’ with the detective role being filled by Mervyn Stone, a former TV script editor on a science fiction show called Vixens From The Void. Since Vixens was put on an indefinite hiatus in the 1990’s - alright, alright, it was axed - his career hasn’t been going particularly well, so to make ends meet he appears at Vixens From The Void conventions, records commentaries for Vixen From The Void DVDs, and – in the third novel – acts as a consultant on the Vixens From The Void revival. Bu then people start being murdered, and it’s down to Mervyn Stone, with his script editor’s eye for detail and things that don’t make sense, to find the culprit.

As you may guess from that, the books contain a great deal of humour based around science fiction TV and its fans. But while from a lesser writer you might expect a lot of sneering at anoraks, Nev writes Vixens From The Void fandom with insight and sympathy, and brings to live the full, wild, eccentric diversity of fandom in all its shapes and forms. It’s very affectionate, almost celebratory. If you want to get inside the head of a science fiction fan, I would strongly suggest you reconsider, but failing that, these books are a good place to start.

And as odd as the fans are, they’re nowhere near as strange as the various actors, actresses, writers, directors and producers of Vixens Of The Void that we meet over the course of these novels, with their tangled web of feuds, nervous breakdowns, and sexual liaisons.

As you might expect, from a writer for Private Eye and DeadRingers they are also full of satire about the state of TV, though with a lot more bite than Nev’s other work. But all this would be for nothing if it weren’t for the fact that each book is also an incredibly well-plotted and ingenious whodunit; in the second book, for instance, someone is murdered during the recording of a DVD commentary, by means which seem almost miraculous.

But most of all these books are beautifully written and very, very funny. The argument between Graham Goldingay and The Gorg in the third book, Cursed Among Sequels, is one of the funniest things I have ever read, I had to put the book down to regain my composure.

I recommend you buy them now so that Nev will be forced to write some more.

The Greater Good

2011-09-25T13:30:00.003+01:00

First of all, here's a screengrab of the most exciting moment from last night's episode of Doctor Who.

The advert for my book! It's been on TV after the Doctor Who title sequence, therefore it is canonical.

Secondly, a brief update on the Virgin Media situation. I still have yet to receive the refund cheque they promised and send round a tech team to remove the cable they dumped outside my flat. It's been a month.

And thirdly, a thing I meant to post ages ago but forgot. It's my Mission Statement from the Doctor Who story Deimos/The Resurrection Of Mars. I wrote it as kind of a prelude to a synopsis; not so much saying what would happen in the story but what it would be about thematically. I think this approach worked out very well so I'm now wondering why I've never done this sort of thing before or since.

Contains spoilers for the Big Finish Doctor Who stories Deimos and The Resurrection Of Mars. It was written 15 April 2009, at a point where some parts of the arc had been worked out, and some hadn't.

THE GREATER GOOD

This is not a synopsis. It’s just some thoughts.

Episodes 1 and 2 concern the ICE WARRIORS who are preparing to invade MARS. It’s at some not-contradicting-established-continuity point in our future, after The Seeds of Death and Red Dawn. Humanity is aware of Ice Warriors but believes them to be now extinct. We have now established a colony city on Mars, of about 300,000 souls. Living in biodomes, with terraforming in its early stages. The Ice Warriors, having frozen themselves in a comet, or on one of the moons, have returned and now wish to take back their home world.

That’s the first two episodes – the Doctor and his companion, let’s call her Tilly, arrive as the Ice Warriors are establishing a bridgehead on the moon of Deimos (or a space station). All hard sci-fi action-packed space battles, with the Ice Warriors gradually taking over the moonbase. Until at the end of episode 2, the Doctor has evacuated all the remaining humans from the base (possibly by using T-mat?) and has set primed explosives throughout the base ready to explode, powerful enough to destroy the moon. He’s not on the moon by this point and is able to detonate the explosives by remote control.

He gives the Ice Warriors an ultimatum. Leave and find a new home planet – or he’ll blow them up. It’s their choice. The Ice Warriors decide to call his bluff.

And then, end of episode 2, there’s another message. It’s Lucie. She’s on the moonbase, hiding from the Ice Warriors! If the Doctor sets off the bombs, he’ll kill her. So he decides not to... meaning that there is now nothing to stop the Ice Warriors launching their main attack on Mars! Oh f**k!

• MAD IDEA – Could Lucie’s return come as a complete surprise? If there’s no pre-publicity – or the pre-publicity suggests that she joins in the next story – then this cliff-hanger could come as a brilliant, out-of-the-blue, WTF moment.

• EVEN MADDER IDEA – Could the fact that this is a four-part story come as a surprise? Maybe the pre-publicity could have it down as a two-part story, so the listeners will think, nearing the end of episode 2, they are approaching the conclusion of the story – when in fact they’re not! Maybe this could be achieved by announcing the next 2 episodes as being another story by Jonathan Morris, one which sounds really dull, so no-one will be disappointed that it doesn’t exist. Or maybe just another story with the same cast ‘set on Mars a short time later’.

This is where things get interesting. Paul McGann’s always saying he wants to do stories which explore the nature of the Doctor and why he does what he does. And that’s what this story is going to try to do.

It’s about the dilemma the Doctor faces at the end of part 2. Because he’s the guy – the only guy – who is not prepared to sacrifice someone else for the greater good. While he’s happy to put his life on the line of others, he is not prepared to ask someone else to give their life on his behalf. As far as he is concerned, the only acceptable number of casualties is zero.

That’s what’s different about him. He’s not prepared to make the calculation of one-life-for-many, because he knows that if he’s prepared to let one person die to save millions, then he would be prepared to let a hundred people die to save millions, he would be prepared to let a hundred thousand people die to save millions. He refuses to do the maths.

Why? Because that’s the difference between him and the bad guys. The bad guys will always justify killing in terms of ‘the greater good’, in terms of a long-term benefit. And the Doctor remembers that he used to be like that – he used to ‘manipulate’ events, he used to make ‘masterplans’ – and realised that he was turning into the very thing he was fighting against. He was becoming a monster... and ended up travelling alone, because he knew that if it came to it, he would even be prepared to sacrifice one of his companions.

And we learn, that’s why he likes to have human companions travel with him. So he can never become that man again. So he can never forget how much one life is worth. So whenever he’s given the choice to let one person die to save millions, he’ll never be prepared to let that one person die, he’ll always, always find another way. Because he’s found out the hard way that ‘evil’ is nothing more than somebody believing that the ends will justify the means.

But this story is where this high-minded outlook comes back to bite him on the bum! Because in parts 3 and 4, the Ice Warriors launch their attack on Mars – and endanger the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Innocent people who would’ve lived had the Doctor been prepared to sacrifice Lucie’s life.

The Doctor is confronted by survivors who have lost their families, who blame the Doctor for not being prepared to let Lucie die. Worse, he’s confronted by Lucie herself, who now has the loss of hundreds of lives on her conscience.

So not only are the people of Mars arguing that the Doctor should’ve thought of ‘the greater good’, but his companion – the companion who he saved – is arguing with him about that two. Real emotional drama!

But this theme, of ‘the greater good’, feeds into the story in two other ways. Firstly, in the conclusion – there’s a landing party of Ice Warriors on one of the Mars colonies, with the Doctor, Lucie and Tilly, when Grand Marshall Izal gives the order for the whole colony to be destroyed. The Doctor tries to argue with the Ice Warriors trapped with them in the colony that now that their leader is prepared to sacrifice their lives, they should join forces with him against that leader. But the Ice Warriors refuse! They’re happy to die for the greater good.

Somehow that gives us the climax of the story, as the Doctor is once again confronted with the dilemma of having to choose between the life of his companion(s) and the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocents. And he finds a third way. Not sure what it is yet, but it’ll be devastatingly clever. The point being, the Doctor’s way is right – and that anyone who is prepared to let innocent people die for the ‘greater good’ is wrong.

Secondly, this theme feeds into the explanation of how and why Lucie happens to turn up at the end of episode 2! You were probably wondering if I’d get to that. Because Lucie has been brought there deliberately to prevent the Doctor from defeating the Ice Warriors invasion of Mars. Why? I’ll explain.

If the Doctor defeats the Ice Warriors, then they will abandon their attempts to reclaim Mars and instead they will establish a ‘New Mars’ on a second world. Not an uninhabited world. A world currently home to a peace-loving race, who I’ll call the Zogs. According to their ‘established history’, the Doctor’s defeat of the Ice Warrior invasion of Mars leads directly to the Ice Warrior’s colonisation of the planet Zog – and the total extermination of the Zog race.

So, as a last-ditch attempt to prevent this happening, the Zogs have enlisted one of their number – or a passing time-travelling Doctor-surrogate who I shall call Brian - to travel back in time, in a rough-and-ready Zygma-powered time machine - to prevent the Doctor from defeating the Ice Warriors, so that the Ice Warriors conquer Mars and never go on to destroy the peace-loving Zogs.

And the best way Brian can think of sabotaging the Doctor’s plan is to find his best-loved companion and stick her in the middle of it at the most crucial moment to prevent the Doctor from pressing the button that would destroy the invasion fleet. So Brian has travelled back to 21st century Europe, found Lucie whilst she’s on holiday, befriended her (Brian appears totally human) and transported her to Mars, centuries into the future, under the pretence that he’s been sent to fetch her by the Doctor because he needs her assistance.

This means the whole idea of why Lucie appears out of the blue at the end of Part 2 isn’t a coincidence, but is actually the point of the story. Because Brian and the Zogs are, of course, also acting for the ‘greater good’ in their way – they’re prepared to let 300,000 humans die in order to save a whole world.

This is all very vague and train-of-thought at the moment, but I think this might be an exciting and dramatic idea, to tell a story where the Doctor’s principles put him into conflict with not just the villains, but also the villain’s victims and his companions. To make the whole story about the Doctor’s moral choices, and why he does what he does, and why he’s the guy who’s not prepared to give up one person’s life in order to save thousands. Because, as the events of the story will make clear, that’s what makes him different from the bad guys.

Future Legend

2011-09-24T10:58:00.003+01:00

If you haven’t already bought it or received it as part of a subscription, I recommend picking up a copy of the new issue of Doctor Who Magazine, as it features part two of my comic strip, The Child Of Time. Of course, it won’t make a great deal of sense if you haven’t read part one; I’m not sure it makes much more sense if you have. I think I must have been on the Moffat pills when I wrote it as virtually every page contains an insane twist. I’m rather proud of that. This is my big, epic, season finale, one which will hopefully grace the latter pages of a graphic novel featuring my entire 11th Doctor run.

Richard III

2011-09-21T10:52:00.002+01:00

Another chapter from my thankfully-abandoned Shakespeare book - a complete (?) guide to Shakespeare references in the TV series Black Adder. (The idea for the book was that it would include all sorts of nonsense that normal Shakespeare books avoid, like listing all the Shakespeare quotes that have become the titles of Star Trek episodes, that sort of thing. Anyway.)

Shakespeare on Blackadder

Shakespeare, quite rightly, receives an ‘additional dialogue’ credit on the first series of the TV comedy ‘The Black Adder’. Many episodes of the series contain references to Shakespeare, or parodies of his work - many of which only become clear when you bear in mind that the first series of ‘The Black Adder’ was broadcast a few months after the BBC’s productions of the Henry VI and Richard III plays. But no-one has been sad enough to compile a list of all the Shakespeare references. Until now.

Series 1: The Black Adder

1. The Foretelling

Edmund Blackadder is named after Edmund from King Lear, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester who plots to turn his father against his legitimate son, Edgar. There was a genuine Blackadder dynasty in the middle ages, but they were based in Scotland. Blackadder’s manner and appearance seem to be inspired by Ron Cook’s performance in the BBC production of Richard III.

A Baldrick is a type of ornamental belt worn diagonally, but is also a slang term for vagina - see Much Ado About Nothing’s ‘hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick’.

This episode concerns the Battle of Bosworth Field, presenting an alternative ‘true’ version of events to those shown in Richard III. It begins with Richard III, portrayed as a kindly uncle by Peter Cook, in a parody of the opening of Richard III - where Shakespeare’s Richard is self-loathing, Blackadder’s Richard is self-deprecating:

‘Now is the summer of our sweet content
Made overcast winter by these Tudor clouds...
And I, that am not shaped for black-faced war,
I am that am rudely cast and want true majesty...’ - Richard III, Blackadder

‘Now is the winter of our discontent,
Made glorious summer by this son of York...
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks...
I, that am rudely stamped and want love’s majesty...’ - Richard III, Richard III

And later, at the battle itself, Richard conflates two speeches from Henry V:

‘Once more onto the breach, dear friends, once more.
Consign their parts most private to a Rutland tree...
And gentlemen in London now abed.
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here.
And hold their manhoods cheap while others speak.
Who fought with us upon Ralph the Liar’s day!’ - Richard III, Blackadder

‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.
Or close the wall up with our English dead...’ - Henry V, Henry V

‘And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here.
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day!’ ’ - Henry V, Henry V

Later, having defeated Henry Tudor, Richard casually calls out for ‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ as in Richard III, before being accidentally beheaded by Blackadder. Meanwhile Blackadder’s idiot friend Percy helps Henry Tudor flee the site of battle (Henry Tudor coincidentally being performed by Peter Benson, who had played Henry VI in the BBC’s productions).

When Prince Harry, Richard’s grandson, discovers the corpse, he mourns him by paraphrasing Hamlet: ‘Goodnight, sweet king. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’

Later in the episode, Blackadder is visited by the ghost of Richard III while at the banquet, in a scene combining the ghostly visitations of Hamlet and Macbeth.

And finally, while chasing Henry Tudor through some woods, Blackadder encounters three witches, named Cordelia, Goneril and Regan after the daughters in King Lear, in a situation reminiscent of the opening of Macbeth, where they inform him that one day he will be king. It turns out that they have got him mixed up with Henry Tudor.

6. The Black Seal

The bloodbath conclusion of this episode, with everyone accidentally drinking poison, recalls the climax of Hamlet. Just before Blackadder dies, his father calls him Edgar - possibly a reference to King Lear, but also part of the running gag that at this point in history it’s quite difficult to keep track of names and who’s related to who.

Series 2: Blackadder II - 1986

1. Bells

This episode concerns a girl, Kate, dressing as a boy to seek her fortune, falling in love with her employer, Blackadder, in a direct homage to the plot of Twelfth Night where Viola falls for the Duke while pretending to be ‘Cesario’. And according to Tim McInnery, his characterisation of Percy was based on Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

Sir Thomas More, who pointed out that a boy without a winkle is a girl, would later be the subject of the play Sir Thomas More, partially written by Shakespeare.

‘Kiss me, Kate’ is obviously a reference to The Taming of the Shrew.

Nursie seems to be inspired by the character of the Nurse from Romeo and Juliet, who is similarly obsessed with sex - and who was coincidentally performed by the same actress, Patsy Byrne, in the 1976 Thames Television production of the play.

2. Head

Blackadder mentions how keen Queenie was on Essex, right up to the point where she had his head cut off. This would be Robert Deveraux, the Earl of Essex, alluded to in Henry V and the last person to be executed at the Tower of London.

3. Potato

Shakespeare has helped Queenie out with the title of her poem, ‘Edmund’.

4. Money

Tom, the Mad Beggar, seems to have wandered in from a production of King Lear, where Edgar pretends to be an extremely similar mad beggar, Tom O’Bedlam, who refers to himself as ‘poor Tom’ and is always going on about how ‘acold’ he is.

Percy suggests ‘For God’s sake, let us sit upon the carpet and tell sad stories...’, paraphrasing Richard II - ‘For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.’

Baldrick has a such a poor sense of humour he’d ‘laugh at a Shakespeare comedy’.

The ballad played at the end says ‘be not a borrower or lender’, paraphrasing a well-known saying from Hamlet.

6. Chains

Lord Melchett is identified as Lord Chamberlain. There wasn’t a real Lord Melchett - towards the end of Elizabeth I’s reign, the Lord Chamberlain was her cousin, Henry Carey, who was also the patron of Shakespeare’s acting company, hence the name, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

Series 3: Blackadder The Third - 1987

4. Sense and Senility

The actors Mossop and Keanrick are superstitious about the name of the ‘Scottish play’, Macbeth, and whenever it’s mentioned they have to perform a chant ending with the line ‘Puck will make amends’, paraphrasing A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Coincidentally, Baldrick’s uncle was in Macbeth once - he played second codpiece.

Blackadder mentions that during the assassination scene from Julius Caesar, the Prince Regent shouted out, ‘Look out behind you, Mr Caesar!’ The part of Brutus was played by an actor called Kemp, possibly an allusion to William Kempe. Mossop and Keanrick perform their stage roars from Hamlet, Julius Caesar and Macbeth.

The Bloody Murder of the Foul Prince Romero and His Enormously Bosomed Wife appears to be a particularly gruesome revenge tragedy in the John Webster/Thomas Middleton mould.

The Shakespeare Sketch - 1989

Not strictly canonical Blackadder, but clearly in a similar mould, this sketch was performed by Rowan Atkinson and Hugh Laurie at the Hysteria 2 benefit concert. Hugh Laurie plays William Shakespeare, who is being advised by Atkinson’s character on possible cuts to Hamlet. He suggests editing the ‘stand-up stuff in the middle’, reducing the line ‘To be a victim of all life’s earthly woes, or not to be a coward and take death by his proffered hand’ to ‘To be or not to be’ and, by taking out the guff later on in the speech, creates the mixed metaphor ‘to take arms against a sea of troubles’. He also suggests killing off the main character in Act One:

“Let’s face it, it’s the ghost that’s selling this show at the moment. Joe Public loves the ghost, he loves the sword-fights, he loves the crazy chick in the see-through dress who does the flower gags and then drowns herself. But no-one likes Hamlet.’

Eventually Shakespeare agrees to the cuts - in return for the scene with the ‘awful cockney gravediggers’ and ‘the skull routine’ being put back in.

Special: Back & Forth - 1999

In this sequel-too-far, Blackadder finally bumps into Shakespeare himself, played by Colin Firth. After getting his autograph, Blackadder punches him for all the suffering he will cause schoolchildren for the next four hundred years, stuck ‘at school desks trying to find one joke in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. And then he kicks him as retribution for ‘Kenneth Branagh’s endless uncut four-hour version of Hamlet.’

There are also non-specific references made to Macbeth, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Othello, and then later, in an alternative version of history, Blackadder congratulates Shakespeare on his King Lear, describing it as ‘very funny’.

Angel Eyes (Extended Remix)

2011-09-18T10:26:00.008+01:00

Today, I proudly present a 'deleted scene' from my Doctor Who novel Touched By An Angel, published earlier this year by BBC Books. Though it's not so much a deleted scene as a heavily-edited scene; when writing, my approach is always to over-write and then cut down to length.

This scene was edited down for three reasons. 1) It was too long 2) It was telling the reader stuff they already knew, or didn't need to know and 3) One of my 'read-through' critics thought the Doctor sounded like David Tennant. The third is a particular problem with spin-off media; while on television, Matt Smith can turn a David Tennant-y line into a Matt Smith-y line, in books and comic strips, the reader is imagining the character's voice based on cues in the text alone, so the writer must not only avoid writing out-of-character dialogue, but keep on re-emphasizing the actor's voice through the dialogue.

Anyway, here it is. Beginning of chapter 6. All the cut material is the stuff not in italics.

12 June 1994

‘So what exactly are these Weeping Angels?’ asked Mark.

The Doctor sliced his sausage and skewered it with his fork. But rather than eating it, he jabbed it in the air for emphasis. ‘The most malevolent creatures in the history of the universe,’ he said. ‘Nothing gives them greater pleasure than to watch a lesser species suffer. And to them, we are all lesser species.’

‘And they feed by sending people back in time?’

‘Usually.’ The Doctor ate the sausage. ‘But these Angels are different.’

‘A different variety,’ explained Amy helpfully.

‘They feed not on potential time, but time paradoxes. The consequences of irresponsible time travel.’ The Doctor raised his eyebrows at Mark reprovingly.

‘So,’ said Rory. ‘If somebody travelled back and killed their own grandfather - ‘

‘Their idea of a snack,’ said the Doctor. ‘Unless, of course, you killed your own grandfather after he’d met your grandmother and conceived one of your parents, in which case it would just be a horrible thing to do. What is it with time travellers and grandfathers?’

‘But any change, any change at all -‘ said Mark.

‘Well, the bigger the better, obviously. The more potential ramifications. Ramifications, love that word. Rory, could you write it down for me?’

‘Still not your secretary,’ Rory reminded him.

‘Vacancy’s still open. The more ramifications, and, of course, the more paradoxical it is, the better.’

‘The more paradoxical?’ said Amy, sipping her orange juice.

‘The more it violates the normal laws of cause and effect. The universe doesn’t like that, you see. Result - release of vast amounts of time energy. Like blowing up a balloon and popping it. And that’s what you are, Mark.’

‘What, a balloon?’

‘Okay, metaphor doesn’t quite make sense.’ The Doctor squirted more brown sauce over his fried egg and swirled it in the mix. He ate breakfast as though it was a laboratory experiment. ‘That’s the trouble with metaphors. I would’ve gone with “pustule” but, you know, eating.’

Amy winced. ‘So where do these Angels come from?’

‘The Angels are an incredibly ancient race, born during the chaos of the primal universe. The stuff of legend. Regarding these particular Angels... many years ago there was a war, a terrible war between beings that had mastered time. A war waged using history itself, each side re-writing the past. Some races got caught in the crossfire. There were stories of abominations, of whole species transformed into the stuff of nightmares... but some races survived. Some thrived. The result of a million years of evolution in a matter of seconds. My guess is that these Weeping Angels are the remnants of one such race. A race forged in the crucible of war, adapted to life within a temporal schism.’

‘So what are they doing on Earth?’

‘Starving to death. Which makes them even more dangerous.’

‘Sorry,’ said Rory. ‘Why are they starving to death again?’

‘Because, Rory, they’ve evolved to feed on time paradoxes. Which have been rather thin on the ground since the war ended.’ The Doctor gazed into the distance, haunted by a memory. For a few moments, they all sat in silence in the hotel restaurant, the only sound an occasional clatter of cutlery from the kitchen.

‘Which is why,’ announced the Doctor. ‘Which is why we have to take you home, Mark Whitaker.’

‘But if the Angels want a paradox,’ said Amy. ‘Why go to all the trouble of bringing Mark here in the hope he changes history? Why not just do it themselves?’

‘Because that would make them part of the paradox. They need someone to do their dirty work for them so they remain external to the chain of events.’

‘What if I don’t want to go back?’ said Mark.

‘Not an option,’ said the Doctor, wiping his hands and rising to his feet. ‘Look. You’ve had some fun, a chance to relive the good old days, but now the trip’s over.’

Rory and Amy both got out of their seats, as a hint to Mark that he should move. He stayed put. ‘What if can’t go back?’

‘What do you mean, “can’t”?’

Seven

2011-09-16T10:08:00.011+01:00

Nearly ten years ago, I did what I like to call a 'Blake's 7 Watch'. Well, sort of. I started half-way through the second series, because I'd watched the first series too recently (i.e. within the last ten years), and only wanted to watch episodes I'd not seen since they were originally broadcast.

So that I would never have to watch any of the episodes ever again, I wrote up my thoughts after each episode as a review. These reviews, as reviews tend to do, became more detailed and elaborate as time went on. I shall republish them here, but please bear in mind these are 'Voices From The Past' so some of the topical references may be outdated and my writing style may be even more immature than it is now. And please bear in mind that any opinions I express in these articles do not necessarily reflect opinions I currently hold.

Here are the first two reviews, from Jan 28 2002 and March 3 2002 respectively. First, some general thoughts:

I'm currently watching the Blake's 7 on UK Gold, for the first time since way back in the 70's. I remember it as being excellent, adult entertainment; I'm amazed by how well it holds up now - much better than Doctor Who of the same era. If you ignore the Captain Pugwash animation for the spaceships, that is. I particular enjoy the Dudley Simpson and the Terry Nation aspects.

My main sources of fascination are; 1) Jenna, and in particular, is she shagging Blake? I notice they always beam down together and seem awfully intimate on occasions. Either the characters are supposed to be shagging or REDACTED 2) the way Paul Darrow will run into to a room and do a sort of hop-and-skipping motion as he maneuvers himself around a desk to sit down in a hurry. Paul Darrow is the master when it comes to running into a room, hop-and-skipping round a desk and sitting down in a hurry 3) trying to work out who would play who if the casts of Blake's 7 and S Club 7 were interchanged and 4) the way people keep on staring out of a window and talking at empty, black space as though doing so lends their words greater significance. I suppose that's why it's called Clackavoid.

And now a review:

Hostage

Stone me. Doctor Who never got this bad.

The '7' seems to have taken a turn for the worse since Gan left. First there's a rather dreadful Chris Boucher script about a leotard louse creature that talks in pidgin English whilst the multi-chinned bloke out of Coronation Street who says everything twice tries Travis for treason I said Ashley he t-t-t-tries Travis for treason etc etc.

Then there's a uncharacteristically badly-plotted script by Robert Holmes which features a scene of a gas attack where the Federation troopers [who are wearing gas masks] are collapsing whilst the locals [who are not wearing gas masks] remain perfectly fine. Which doesn't even have a 'Don't look at me! Don't look at me!' scene in it.

And now... Allan Prior's dialogue is even more clackavoid than Nation's or Boucher's has ever got; it alternates between portentious- Pip-n-Jane-speak and statements of the bleedin' obvious, often within the same sentence. The model work is a Greatest Hits of all the previous modelwork sequences, with which we are by now painfully familiar. And we are treated to a veritable b-list of Doctor Who villains - a Fibuli, a Ranquin and a Chen. The plotting is ludicrous - you'd think something so hackneyed and cliched would actually make logical sense by some sort of default, but it doesn't. What the hell is Avon's motivation? Or Servalan's? Or Travis'? Or Blake's? Orac is the only character in it with any motivation, and that's just to say something sarky before Avon pulls out his plug with that wonderful peowweeee sound which I believe was sampled in 'Peter Panic' by Blur.

How many former friends and relations does Blake [or 'Roj', as he suddenly seems to be called] have scattered about the universe? Why is a forty-year old pig farmer in wellies being referred to as 'my boy'? Why is Travis suddenly a fat cockney with gaffer tape over one eye instead of a scheming homicidal maniac in a mask? Why has Gareth Thomas stopped acting? Is Cally actually in it any more? Why do the Mutoids now all look like Theresa Gorman? Why does Servalan look like a female version of Marc Almond?

I notice that Jenna is now doing 'Rachel out of Brookside' acting; in other words, just alternating between doing happy and sad expressions irrespective of the lines she is given. And Paul Darrow is obviously the star of the show now. I've previously mentioned his wonderful ability of running into rooms and pirouetting neatly around desks to land into seats with meticulous, breathless urgency. Well, on top of that he now has this thing of being beamed down somewhere, only to drop to a crouch and point his gun suspicously in every direction, teeth gritted, eyes gritted, nose gritted, arse gritted - everything gritted, in fact. It's like he's acting for 7 because the other 6 can't be arsed any more.

Directed by Vere Lorrimer. Directed? A scene in which the camera is pointed at Blake and Ranquin's wellies throughout? A scene in which Ranquin pushes Travis over a cliff in which we see neither Ranquin nor Travis nor the cliff? And Blake and Ranquin dropping giant polystyrene boulders on a 'Nut-o' [a psychopathic muto, apparently] - or, at least, rolling them playfully along the ground towards him.

Still, it could be worse. There could've been a hands-on-hips 'doh, Vil-a' comedy moment at the end. Eeuruuruek.

To be continued.

Shakey Ground

2011-09-15T13:33:00.002+01:00

A few years ago I started to write a 'guide to Shakespeare' book. I never finished it; I think I'd probably bitten off more than I could chew.

Here's what would've been one of the chapters, kind of topical given the release of the film Anonymous.

Did Shakey write Shakey’s plays?

Yes of course he bloody did.

But some people don’t think Shakey wrote his plays. They’re not convinced he even existed. They think the plays were written by someone better-educated, someone from the ruling classes, someone who decided to hide their identity behind a pseudonym. If you ever meet one of these people, give them a slap, because they’re not merely wrong – they’re snobs as well.

Of course it’s unlikely that the son of a glove-maker from Stratford would be the greatest writer of all time. It’s unlikely that an Austrian patents clerk would come up with the theory of relativity but somehow he managed it. Or his wife did. The thing is, no matter how unlikely it may be that Shakey wrote all those plays, it’s still a hell of a lot more likely than any of the alternatives.

Shakey was a real person. There’s as much evidence of his existence as there is of anyone else around at the time – more so, in fact, because we’ve spent so long looking for it. We have everything from the record of his baptism to his marriage certificate to his will to the record of his burial, his signature appears on a court deposition and he’s named in a summons for threatening behaviour, he’s listed on tax records as ‘in arrears’, he’s in the cast of Ben Jonson’s Every Man In His Humour and Sejanus, he turns up on a contemporary list of ‘my top twenty-seven favourite poets, in order’ – at number thirteen - and he’s the victim of character-assassination in Robert Greene’s Groatsworth Of Wit. We have records of him receiving payments as a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. He’s a beneficiary in the will of one of his fellow actors, he’s named on the deeds for the Globe, a house in Blackfriars and New Place and we have his application for a coat of arms. We have records of the births and deaths of his parents, siblings, wife and children. He’s the subject of tributes shortly after his death and there are accounts of tourists visiting his monument at Straftord-Upon-Avon from 1630 onwards. If that weren’t enough, there are all the poems and plays bearing his name and, in the case of the Folio, a large picture of him on the front.

There wouldn’t be all this evidence if ‘Shakespeare’ was a pseudonym.

But assuming that an actor called Shakespeare did exist – is that enough to prove he wrote the plays? Well, it seemed enough at the time. If it was a scam, it’s a scam that took in – or required the collusion of – his fellow author Ben Jonson and his fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell.

That’s the problem with the conspiracy theories. Why would someone spend so much time and effort writing the plays and poems only to allow a lowly Stratford actor to take all the credit?

None of the theories has a convincing answer to this question. They have, however, come up with various candidates for the shrinking violet in question.

Number one in our list of people who didn’t write Shakey’s plays is Francis Bacon. His name was put forward by the not-entirely-coincidentally-named Delia Bacon. Apparently Francis led a team of top scribes, including Edmund The Faerie Queen Spenser and Sir Walter ‘More than a sailor’ Raleigh on a mission to improve the morale fibre of the nation. The main drawback with this theory is that we have examples of Francis Bacon’s writing - and he was crap.

Candidate number two is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. In his favour, he was very well-educated. Problem is, he died in 1604, which means he’d have had trouble putting references to the gunpowder plot into Macbeth or hearing about the shipwreck for The Tempest. There’s also the snag that if he did write the plays, he’d have been writing for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men – rivals to his own theatrical troupe. All this notwithstanding, it’s hard to take this theory seriously because it was dreamt up by a guy called John Thomas Looney. Who thought there was nothing remotely amusing about his name.

Third on the list is Christopher ‘Kit’ Marlowe, who would not only have to had to adopt an entirely new literary style in order to have written Shakey’s plays, he would also have to had to survive being stabbed to death in 1593.

Number four... well, to be honest, the list goes on forever. The thing is, no matter how persuasive each case may be, the best candidate for the author of Shakey’s plays always turns out to be the Bard with the beard himself.

Although he was the son of a glove-maker, he had, by our standards, an extremely thorough classical education, an average school day consisting of Latin, more Latin, and extra double Latin. It’s not implausible that a young actor would become a proficient playwright after a decade or so of touring – particularly as he’d have been learning a new play every couple of weeks.

There’s also the sheer number of references in Shakey’s plays to rural life. While you can imagine a young Stratford lad learning all about courts and Kings through play-acting, it’s hard to imagine a member of the upper classes picking up Warwickshire slang for flowers or the jargon of leather tanners.

But what really marks Shakey out as the writer of his plays is the stuff he doesn’t know. A more well-travelled writer – such as Edward de Vere – would’ve known that Venice is famous for its canals, that Bohemia hasn’t got a coastline, that Verona and Milan aren’t seaports and that the quickest way of getting from France to Spain is not by going through Italy.

And that’s the proof that Shakey wrote his plays, and not somebody better-educated from the ruling classes. Because only the son of a glove-maker from Stratford could have such a poor grasp of basic European geography.

Into The Valley

2011-09-10T15:04:00.013+01:00

For the last couple of days, I’ve been a recording studio somewhere in Kent, for the recording of the Doctor Who story ‘The Valley Of Death’, starring Tom Baker as the Doctor and Louise Jameson as his companion Leela. Normally with these things I have to keep all my excitement under wraps until they’re announced (sometimes months or even years later), but as this story has already been announced I can write a blog about it and sound a fanfare from the rooftops.

The story is an adaptation of a story outline written by Philip Hinchcliffe, who was the producer of Doctor Who for the first three years of Tom Baker’s run, and who was responsible for stories like Genesis Of The Daleks, The Seeds Of Doom and The Talons Of Weng-Chiang. My understanding is that the story was an idea that would probably have made it onto television screens had Philip remained as producer for a fourth year; however, by the time it was pitched to Douglas Adams in 1978, the show’s budget had been substantially reduced, so a story which might have been practical a few years earlier was no longer viable.

This is the second ‘lost story’ I’ve adapted; in both cases, my approach has been to remain as true as possible to the original author’s intentions. That said, had the story been made back in 1978 it would have developed during the scripting process, and would have had a substantial input from the show’s script editor, so I felt I had a little leeway in changing the details where it would serve the story, to make the end result as exciting and dramatic as I could.

The Valley Of Death is very much a Boy’s Own adventure in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H Rider Haggard; it’s easy to imagine it being filmed by Amicus or Hammer in the mid-70’s. What I love about it is that the narrative keeps changing location and subject matter; structurally, the Doctor Who story to which it is most similar is The Hand Of Fear; it has that quality that the final episode is about something entirely different from the opening instalment!

I think it’s a lot of fun, very colourful and imaginative, with room for lots of humour as well as some weighty dramatic confrontations. It will probably come as quite a contrast to the other story that is in the same Lost Stories box set, The Foe From The Future by John Dorney (script edited by me, and based on a storyline by Robert Banks Stewart). The Foe From The Future is, I think, going to be regarded as a classic, as John has written a fabulous script with lots of action and grisly death. I think it will go down well with fans of stories like Pyramids Of Mars and Image Of The Fendahl.

The recording went terrifically well. Tom Baker has a formidable reputation but he was an absolute joy in the studio; professional, meticulous, full of suggestions, and really engaging with the material and having fun with it. Louise Jameson was equally marvellous, portraying Leela with great integrity. There were moments, many moments, when you could close your eyes and imagine you were hearing a story recorded in 1977. Yes, of course, people’s voices sound a little older than they did back then, but I felt the magic. My fan-sense was all a-tingle.

How do I feel about writing a story for my favourite Doctor, writing for the Doctor I watched on television when I was 6 years old, the Doctor who made me a fan of the show in the first place? It’s an honour. It wasn’t a childhood ambition, but only because I would have to have been an insanely ambitious child to think I would ever get the chance to write for Tom Baker’s Doctor.

The Valley Of Death will be released in January next year, with The Foe From The Future as a Lost Stories box set which can be pre-ordered here.

Sparks

2011-09-02T11:11:00.004+01:00

One of the many great things about the pop group Sparks is their choice of subject matter. A list of some song titles should give you some idea; How To Get Your Ass Kicked, Throw Her Away (And Get A New One), I Can’t Believe You Would Fall For All The Crap In This Song, (Baby Baby) Can I Invade Your Country, Tits, Pretending To Be Drunk, Thank God It’s Not Christmas, Your Call’s Very Important To Us Please Hold, Angst In My Pants, I Married A Martian, I Thought I Told You To Wait In The Car, Achoo, etc.

But, just as a fun way to waste time waiting for buses, I’ve thought up titles for songs which Sparks have yet to write. Titles for songs that any band has yet to write, for that matter. So if you’re an aspiring songwriter, or one of the brothers Mael, please feel free to take inspiration from the following:

I’m Not Being Racist But
My Baby Went Over The Niagara Falls In A Barrel
She’s Dyslexic
Sorry I Overslept
Abandoned At The Altar
Those Cheekbones
Practically Invisible
A Parody Of My Former Self
It’s A Feature Not A Fault
The Queen’s English
Unfriends
A Listening Exercise
Foreign Films With English Subtitles
It’s A Million To One Shot (But It Might Just Work)
The Missing Dog
Making Our Own Entertainment
Please Leave It Alone
Hipstamatic
An Area The Size Of Wales
The British Sense Of Humour
Confidence Can Be Taught
Bootlegs
Speaking As A Mother
Left On Standby
This Is Just Like A Movie
Politeness Costs Nothing
Due To Creative Differences
Brian May
We're Poles Apart
I Fell In Love With A Spambot
His Name Is Not Da Vinci
At This Moment In Time
Riding The Coat Tails
Let's Go Antiquing
Shot By Friendly Fire
The Sequel To The Prequel
Montage Sequence
The Curate’s Egg
Me And My Micro
From A Brouhaha To A Hullaballoo
I Much Preferred The Original
I Was The Last Man On The Moon
Position Closed
Pick A Card, Any Card

The Child

2011-09-01T16:12:00.014+01:00

And I’m back.

Two overdue plugs first.

The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine is out now, featuring part one of my final Doctor Who comic strip (at least for a while) called The Child Of Time. It features glorious artwork by Martin Geraghty, the guy who did the Axons story last year, and is something of a ‘season grand finale’ as it picks up the various ongoing threads that have been woven through the previous eighteen months’ worth of stories and ties them up. I’ve just delivered the final part of the story (it’s a four part story) which will be out in November, and then someone else will be taking over.

It would be dishonest of me to say that writing the Doctor Who Magazine was a childhood ambition; for it be an ambition, it would have to seem impossible and to be honest, as a child, I was so much in awe of the people responsible for the comic strip – Pat Mills, John Wagner, Steve Parkhouse etc. that I never dreamed for an instant that my own name might be added to the list thirty-odd years later. But it has, and that’s something of which I am immeasurably proud. I’ve loved writing all the stories, I think they all turned out extremely well (for which I give all credit to the artists, colourists, letterers and editors) and I’m massively grateful to have been given a chance to show what I can do, in terms of telling lots of different styles of story, working with so many talented people, and convoluting a big, complicated-but-hopefully-not-too-complicated arc. I look forward to them all being compiled in a big graphic novel of some form (I don’t know when, but it’s inevitable it will happen eventually).

And secondly, Big Finish have recently released on CD a Companion Chronicle story I wrote back in 2008, called The Mists Of Time. It stars Katy Manning as Jo Grant and relate one of Jo’s adventure with the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who. It was given away as a freebie with Doctor Who Magazine, but this is the first chance that people have had to pay for it! It comes in a box which is, quite frankly, a thing of inordinate beauty, which also includes another former freebie called Freakshow and all the many episodes of The Three Companions by Marc Platt (the companions in question being the Brigadier, Polly, and my own creation, Thomas Brewster.) Please buy.

And finally. I’m back on the internet, thanks to PlusNet. After I wrote the previous blog, and moaned excessively on twitter, Pete from Virgin Media got in touch and offered to arrange for broadband to be installed the next day, but by that point I’d already decided to cancel, because you shouldn’t have to write blogs and moan excessively on twitter in order to get a standard of customer service which is denied to people who merely phone to complain. On top of moving house, it was an extra level of stress which I didn’t need.

However, the fibreoptic cable they left still remains outside my flat. I received a letter saying they were sending someone around to finish the installation tomorrow, on the 2nd, despite the installation having been cancelled, so I look forward to finding out how they will proceed, in much the same way, and with as much confidence, that one looks forward to Norman Wisdom approaching a swimming pool.

UPDATE 2 SEPTEMBER: No-one turned up.

I’ve a few more blogs I want to write, on Lewisham and it’s supposed ‘riots’, and other nonsense. I’ve also realised that on my computer I’ve got lots of reviews of Shakespeare plays and Blakes’ 7 episodes and other things which might as well reach a wider audience. And there are a few deleted scenes and background note things from Touched By An Angel which I’m desperate to inflict upon you. And I haven’t even mentioned the Tom Baker Doctor Who audio story...

And finally, I am on twitter, so should you wish to receive missives of devastating pith and insight in real time, as and when they pop out of my brain. I’m Jonnymorris1973

Virgin

2011-08-19T13:29:00.015+01:00

Having just moved house, I thought it would be sensible to stay with the same internet service provider, Virgin Media. I'm not quite sure what madness possessed me to do this, given that last time I moved, they deleted my email account without warning - including the entire contents of my 'inbox', emails which I hadn't had the chance to download, including dozens of messages relating to work.

They told me that there was broadband available at my new flat - this was one of the things I checked before moving, as it would be a deal-breaker - and informed me that it would be installed on 17th August.

About four or five days before the 17th August, two blokes from Virgin Media turned up at the flat to check the broadband connection and declared that all was well.

On the 17th August, another bloke from Virgin Media turned up at the flat and declared that actually there wasn't a broadband connection available at all and that one would have to be fitted. He then contacted some colleagues to fit the broadband cable and left, promising to return later that day to finish the installation.

Three more blokes from Virgin Media then turned up at the flat and - without calling to let me know they were there, or even ringing my doorbell - began trampling over the lawn and ripping up my neighbour's rose bush in search for a broadband cable that didn't exist. Realising their mistake, they then put in a broadband fibre optic cable, connecting it to the Virgin Media box up the road. They then left the other end of the cable dumped on the lawn and then vanished without another word.

The first guy, the guy who had promised to return, did not return and has never been heard from since.

Wondering quite what was happening, the next day I called Virgin Media, and eventually got through to a helpful lady at the call centre called Kim, I think, who was quite rightly appalled by their incompetence. She told me that they wouldn't be able to finish the job until September 2nd. I pointed out that the fibre optic cable they'd left on the lawn would almost certainly be damaged by the rain by then, assuming it hadn't been stolen, and that perhaps their staff should actually finish the job now, as they had said they would when I first notified them; at no point did anyone tell me that the job would take longer than expected until I phoned up Virgin Media to find out why they hadn't finished it.

The helpful lady said she'd get an area manager to call me back later that day with a view to getting the installation fitted at an earlier date. Nobody did call me back.

And now today, I've spent approximately two hours on the phone to Virgin Media trying to chase up this mythical area manager - which has cost me over £40 as I'm using a mobile phone, as Virgin Media didn't install my telephone either.

I started with Laura, who was very helpful, then got put through to Joe, who informed me that all he could do was appraise me of the installation date. I commended him on his excellent installation-date-appraising abilities and then got put through to Anush, who transferred me to a phone queue for a manager which then eventually hung up on me before I was put through.

I should point out this took two hours; at every step of the way, I had to inform the customer service people of the situation,. Each of them informed me that it was impossible for a company of Virgin Media's size and means to be able to finish installing a broadband connection before September 2nd; I might as well be asking for a bottle of unicorn juice. That was the earliest possible date, I was told. Before being put on hold for twenty-odd minutes listening to Your Song by Ellie Goulding and One Week by the Barenaked Ladies until either they hung up on me or I got put through to someone else.

The latest person I spoke to, Siobhan, promised me that an area manager would call me back. I pointed out to her that I'd been given precisely the same promise yesterday and nothing had happened. So far today, I haven't been contacted by an area manager. I'm not holding out much hope.

UPDATE 20 AUGUST: I was never called back.

So there you go. It seems to be standard Virgin Media policy for them to leave a job half-finished, dumping cables on lawns and leaving wall-sockets open, and for their employees to then leave without so much as a word as to when it might be completed. They will not bother to contact their customer but instead, when their customer contacts then, do everything they can short of anything that which might constitute fulfilling their contractual obligations.

I should make it clear that all the call centre people have been as helpful as they could, bearing in mind they had no direct responsibilty nor ability to resolve the situation. I feel it is the company itself which is displaying both incompetence and contempt for its customers.

Stories Of Old

2011-08-09T16:43:00.008+01:00

Back at my parents’ house, at the bottom of a cupboard, are four A4-sized exercise books, one red, one blue, one yellow, one green. Back in 1987, when I was 13 years old, I filled those books with ideas for Doctor Who stories. Not in prose, but as Doctor Who Magazine archive-style synopses and scripts, all featuring the then-current line-up of the 7th Doctor and Mel.

I didn’t stop writing Doctor Who stories, but at some point after I’d filled up the exercise books my dad got a word processor, an Amstrad PCW9512 (which had many wonderful features, including letting you close documents without saving them). And it was on this word processor that my writing continued. But alas those stories were saved to discs that have long-since been lost.

So far I haven’t had to resort to looking through the four A4-sized exercise books for ideas; most of the stories are pretty devoid of any originality, and are basically exercises in working out how to structure a plot. One or two are quite fun, though, and may yet see the light of day. Possibly forming the basis of an excellent Big Finish Lost Stories box set.

The titles of the stories should give you a general idea of the subject matter. They consist of the following:

Amusement World
Circling Time
Death On Arbamsta
The Bellatrix Confederation
Bracken!
The Burning Plague
The Burning Thieves
Cathedral Of Mutants
The Clockwork Butler
Conflict On Thuso
Contagious
Cozen
The Dawn Of The Black Sun
The Deimos Incident
The Deszidius Conflict
Dive To Trow
The Exterminators
The Flamers Of Time
Fortune's Gatherings
Harvester's Return
The Hibernators
The House Of Fear
Kingdom Of Durarbi
Madradach Landing
The Mind Harvest
New Earth
Nihus Thirty-Six
Octen
Out Of Death
The Possessed
The Price Of Rescue
Pylon!
The Relics Of Helmur
Return Of The Madness
Revenge Of The Daleks
The Spartans
Spirits Of The Sand
Triptych
Voyage To Destruction
World Of Deception
Zooks And Flizzy

I Read You Like An Open Book

2011-08-07T12:41:00.003+01:00

A couple more plugs for things I’ve written, because that is why I am here and why you are reading this fascinating blog.

Thing one is that the audiobook of my Doctor Who novel Touched By An Angel has now been released on download, available directly from AudioGO. I have no idea whether or not it will ever be released on physical CD, so you might as well download it now rather than wait. I was lucky enough to attend part of the recording so I can assure you Clare Corbett’s reading is absolutely excellent. The emotion of the story was all there, heartfelt but beautifully understated. Hearing it, I felt the occasional lump in the throat.

Plus, as an exciting bonus, the audiobook corrects a few typos in the original novel (what do you mean, ‘a few?’) and corrects two very insignificant continuity errors, one which wasn’t my fault regarding the name of a Chinese restaurant, and one which was entirely my fault but which fortunately nobody has noticed so I’m not going to say what it is. I’d have to be a complete idiot even to mention that it was there in the first place.

I would say rush out and buy it, but with downloads you can buy it without so much as having to elevate a buttock from the comfort of your computer chair.

And the second thing I have to plug is the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine, which features the third and final part of the story Apotheosis, with wonderful artwork by Dan McDaid beautifully coloured by James Offredi. But is it really the end of the story? Or is it merely the beginning of something bigger? Well, it’s clearly the latter, as it leads into my spectacular four-part ‘season finale’, The Child Of Time, which begins in Doctor Who Magazine later this month. I’ve seen some of the artwork, by Martin Geraghty, and it would be no exaggeration to describe it as Earth-shatteringly fantastic.