Start Again

To commemorate tonight's 'Lockdown Doctor Who' communal viewing of The Doctor’s Wife, here's an item from the vaults – my Doctor Who story that was cancelled because it was too similar to The Doctor’s Wife.

Tiny bit of background. In 2009 I was asked to write the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, to coincide with Matt Smith being introduced as the new Doctor. Now, I had some very strong ideas about what to do with the comic strip, one of them being that it should tell the same sort of stories that Steven Moffat would be telling on television. It would also have an arc, about the TARDIS absorbing various life forms across its travels.

So in early 2010 I sent off my plan for what would be the finale of the arc, which you can see below; DWM comic strip editor Scott Gray suggested the idea of making Chiyoko the child of the mutated TARDIS, which I was happy to include. And for the next six months I wrote the first three stories – Supernature, Planet Bollywood and The Golden Ones based on the arc we had worked out.

And then in August, I received an email for Scott saying that he’d just read the script for Neil Gaiman’s upcoming story and it was far too similar to mine – even insofar as having the TARDIS turn into a pretty young woman!

Anyway, I went away and came up with a different ending to the arc, which now formed the basis of two stories, Apotheosis and The Child of Time. Which turned out very well, and The Doctor's Wife was marvellous too, so I have nothing to be cross about.

But I was a bit annoyed, back in August 2010. Entirely my own fault, of course, for trying to tell stories like the ones they’d be doing on television...

COMIC STRIP “ARC” PLAN

At the end of story 1 – The Plague of Paradise, although neither the reader nor the Doctor knows it yet, the TARDIS has been subtly altered by the events on that planet. It has absorbed some of the local wildlife... and is beginning to ‘evolve’.

Over the next year or so – with each adventure, the TARDIS continues to assimilate more life forms into itself, and with each new life form, it changes its nature, becoming more sentient, a living, breathing creature. Added to the mix are some villains and monsters – possibly the Axons! – affecting the way the TARDIS operates. It is growing restless, savage, resentful... and hungry.

Final story – By now the Doctor has realised there is something strange afflicting the TARDIS. It is no longer following his instructions and has instead developed an independent persona of its own. In order to run a diagnostic, the Doctor lands the TARDIS inside itself – only for the Police Box exterior to turn into a monster, with windows for eyes and the door transformed into a mouth!

The TARDIS proceeds to consume itself – creating within its interior a whole world out of all the places it has visited, populated with every life form it has absorbed. Jungles and cities, all inside the TARDIS, all knotted up impossibly in four dimensions. The Doctor and Amy have to fight their way through this surreal labyrinth in order to restore the TARDIS to health and rid it of all the various parasites and mutations it has picked up; it becomes a fight between the psyche of the healthy TARDIS and the psyche of the diseased TARDIS.

The whole story takes place within the confines of the TARDIS, a nightmare kingdom representing its mental landscape. At the end, of course, the Doctor cures the TARDIS and returns it to normal, with all the malignant elements safely ejected into the time vortex.

Additional idea for the story, March 2010:

The other idea I had for the story (well, it's quite a way away, I'm taking my time!) was that the inside of the TARDIS would contain a city, like Bruegel's depiction of the Tower of Babel being constructed, where all the outer walls are Police Box panels and where all the inner sections resemble the TARDIS interior, the console room and so on. That would be all part of the 'inside the corrupted TARDIS' story.

(I later used this idea in 'Prisoners of Fate'!)

Walk Like An Egyptian

And now, the revised version of Jago and Litefoot: The Claws of the Scarab. As you will read, I completely changed the nature of the villains of the story. Is it better or worse? I don’t know. It still got rejected!

This version has all the changed bits in red, which is a thing that I do to be helpful to producers, so they don’t have to read the whole thing again.

JAGO & LITEFOOT

 “THE CLAWS OF THE SCARAB”

Our heroes and Ellie attend an opening of a newly-found sarcophagus at the British Museum Archaeologist Randall Brooks Morton – a colleague of Flinders Petrie – is there with his fiancée Constance Drake. The sarcophagus is of a long-dead Egyptian Queen, Aret-Hanutma. As the mummy is unwrapped, it momentarily seems to spring to life, gasping for air. Constance faints of revulsion/shock. The mummy is clasping an amulet in the shape of a beetle.

After the evening’s end, Constance is taken home by Ellie while Litefoot examines the mummy, in his capacity as a pathologist. He thinks the gasp was just the result of gases that had built up inside it. Aret-Hanutma seems to have died by being mummified alive. Jago spots a movement in the shadows, and one by one, Jago, Randall and then Litefoot are knocked out by an unseen assailant. When they come to, the mummy has vanished. Jago thinks it was the mummy that attacked them, and it has now escaped into the night!

Ellie puts Constance to bed; she seems feverish, delirious. Ellie notices she is holding the beetle amulet and refuses to let it go. Ellie then hears a sinister scuttling sound but can’t see its source...

She reports this back to Litefoot at the Red Tavern the next day. Jago fails to turn up because he has been kidnapped. He wakes up in a room resembling an Egyptian temple/pyramid interior, full of Egyptian relics. It turns out this is the cellar of the mansion of Hortense Delacroix, a flamboyant, wealthy widow (think Eleanor Bron/Frances De La Tour) fascinated by Egyptology and its related mysticism. She is assisted by her taciturn butler Mr Cecil. The vanished mummy is now the pride of her collection. Delacroix forces Jago to describe what happened after the sarcophagus was opened. When he mentions Constance fainting, Delacroix realises ‘We were too late! She must have already been chosen’. She asks Jago where Constance is, but Jago refuses to say. He is locked up with a young flower-seller kidnapped by Delacroix, Josie. Jago and Josie escape through a coal-hole. Jago sends Josie home to recover. (Note: Josie and Cecil are doubling-up characters of few lines.)

Meanwhile, Constance awakes. Randall talks to her but she no longer recognises him. Instead, she claims to be Aret-Hanutma! She remembers being mummified alive, after being given an ‘elixir’ to keep her in a state of living death, entombed with the amulet of Khepri (a relic of the gods) which would transfer her ‘essence’ into the nearest young woman when she was exhumed. That way, she would be resurrected and live forever. She goes for a walk with Randall and sees a little of late Victorian London, remarking on how different the world is from the one she left. An unconventional romance blossoms. (Note: the ‘possession’ is more like a dissociative identity disorder/fugue state.)

Jago reaches Litefoot and Ellie and tells them of his recent ordeal. Jago and Litefoot hurry to Constance’s house - unaware they are being followed by Delacroix and Cecil (who allowed Jago to escape precisely so that he would lead them to ‘the chosen one’). They arrive and are filled in regarding Aret-Hanutma and her possession of Constance’s body. She explains that she was mummified, thousands of years ago, by her cruel husband, during an uprising. He had a secret plan for them both to escape retribution by having their ‘essences’ resurrected in new bodies when the time came. But his mummy was destroyed and the plan was forgotten. But Delacroix must have discovered it, as part of her research into Egyptian relics/mysticism. She instructed Cecil to break into the Egyptian hall and steal the mummy, intending to transfer Aret-Hanutma’s ‘essence’ into Josie!

They are visited by Delacroix, escorted by Cecil. Delacroix explains that she was secretly funding Randall’s expedition because she wanted Aret-Hanutma found and resurrected – so she could rule once more. Delacroix is essentially Aret-Hanutma’s biggest fan, and wants a return to the glory days of the pharaohs. Aret-Hanutma has no wish to rule and explains that the amulet of Khepri gives her the power to summon familiar spirits in the shape of insects. She holds the amulet, opens her mouth, and a horde of locusts stream out and set upon Delacroix and Cecil. They flee. Aret-Hanutma tells our heroes that she wishes for her ‘essence’ to return to the mummy so Constance can have her body back. Aret-Hanutma has no wish to be immortal at another’s expense. She has enjoyed her day with Randall, but now her life must come to an end.

While Randall stays with Aret-Hanutma in Constance’s house, Jago leads Litefoot to Delacroix’s home to search for Aret-Hanutma’s mummy. When they get there, they discover it is deserted. Delacroix and Cecil must be elsewhere.

Delacroix and Cecil return to Constance’s house, this time with Ellie as their hostage. They force Aret-Hanutma and Randall to surrender.

Jago and Litefoot hide in the cellar-temple as Delacroix and Cecil return with their prisoners. They watch as Delacroix informs Aret-Hanutma she must do as she is told or she will be forced to make sacrifices in her honour – beginning with Ellie and Randall, who are placed on a special altar. Aret-Hanutma submits and summons a giant scarab as a sign of her obedience. Then she weakens and the beetle disappears. Delacroix instructs Cecil to place Aret-Hanutma in her ‘royal chamber’ to recover. After they have gone Delacroix orders Randall to destroy the mummified remains of Aret-Hanutma so her ‘essence’ can never return to it; but the mummy has disappeared!

The mummy has, in fact, been stolen by Jago and Litefoot. They manage to sneak in to see Aret-Hanutma and devise a plan between them. But will involve following some precise instructions.

A few minutes later, Delacroix enters the prison to find Jago and Litefoot with Aret-Hanutma, who is attempting to return to her mummified remains. But Delacroix interrupts the process. She has them taken back into her temple, along with the mummy. She orders Aret-Hanutma to summon the giant beetle again so that Jago and Litefoot can be sacrificed to it. She agrees and the beetle appears. But before it feeds Delacroix sets fire to the mummy so Aret-Hanutma can never return to her old body.

But it turns out that she had already returned to it! When she was with Jago and Litefoot she released Constance from her possession and put her ‘essence’ back in the mummy. Ever since, Constance has been pretending to be Aret-Hanutma prompted by Jago and Litefoot and following instructions left by Aret-Hanutma on how to summon the giant scarab using the amulet of Khepri.

As the mummy is burned, a terrible supernatural force is unleashed; the final vengeance of Aret-Hanutma. Rather than feeding on our heroes, the giant scarab turns on Delacroix and Cecil. Delacroix orders Constance to call the beetle off or she will kill Ellie and Randall, but she genuinely doesn’t know how to. The beetle devours Delacroix and Cecil and approaches Ellie and Randall. In the nick of time, Litefoot destroys the amulet and the scarab dissolves into a swarm of locusts and disappears.

With Constance herself again (with no memory of anything that happened while her body was occupied by Aret-Hanutma), she and Randall are reunited, and give Jago and Litefoot their thanks. They return to the Red Tavern, as they feel they probably owe Ellie a drink.

Spirits of Ancient Egypt

Okay, here’s something a bit different. A rejected outline for a Jago and Litefoot story from 2014. I can’t remember why it was rejected – I daresay you may come up with a few reasons, and they may probably be right. Anyway, after it was rejected I came up with The Year of the Bat which was better; a kind of glorious collision of four ideas at once (a time postbox, young Jago and Litefoot, vampire nannies and Wyld’s Great Globe doing James and the Giant Peach). That story is still available here, obligatory plug.

What I wanted to do was this story was to do a story based around the literature of Victorian Egyptomania. To avoid all the stuff in Pyramids of Mars but to combine/pastiche The Jewel of the Seven Stars,  Lot No 249 and The Beetle, with maybe a bit of the Frenzy of Tongs episode of Dr Terrible’s House of Horrible creeping in at the end. I think, on reflection, the pastiche was too ‘straight’ so my story lacked originality. But see what you think.

(Normally any stories I come up with which are rejected goes back into the 'ideas' folder in case I can repurpose them, but I don't think this one can be repurposed).

I did two versions. This is the first one, I’ll post the second one tomorrow.

JAGO & LITEFOOT

 “THE CLAWS OF THE SCARAB”

Our heroes and Ellie attend an opening of a newly-found sarcophagus at the British Museum Archaeologist Randall Brooks Morton – a colleague of Flinders Petrie – is there with his fiancée Constance Drake. The sarcophagus is of a long-dead Egyptian Queen, Aret-Hanutma. As the mummy is unwrapped, it momentarily seems to spring to life, gasping for air. Constance faints of revulsion/shock. The mummy is clasping an amulet in the shape of a beetle. 

After the evening’s end, Constance is taken home by Ellie while Litefoot examines the mummy, in his capacity as a pathologist. He thinks the gasp was just the result of gases that had built up inside it. Aret-Hanutma seems to have died by being mummified alive. Jago spots a movement in the shadows, and one by one, Jago, Randall and then Litefoot are knocked out by an unseen assailant. When they come to, the mummy has vanished. Jago thinks it was the mummy that attacked them, and it has now escaped into the night!

Ellie puts Constance to bed; she seems feverish, delirious. Ellie notices she is holding the beetle amulet and refuses to let it go. Ellie then hears a sinister scuttling sound but can’t see its source...

She reports this back to Litefoot at the Red Tavern the next day. Jago fails to turn up because he has been kidnapped. He wakes up in an underground temple. The temple is home to the Cult of Khepri, led by Tarik Ahmed. At knifepoint, Tarik forces Jago to relate what happened after the sarcophagus was opened. When he mentions Constance fainting, Tarik realises ‘We were too late! She must have already been chosen’. He asks Jago where Constance is and Jago refuses to say. He is then locked up with a young girl kidnapped by the Cult, Josie. Jago and Josie manage to escape from their prison and make their way back to the surface. Jago sends Josie home to recover from her ordeal. 

Meanwhile, Constance awakes. Randall talks to her but she no longer recognises him. Instead, she claims to be Aret-Hanutma! She remembers being mummified alive, after being given an ‘elixir’ to keep her in a state of living death, entombed with the amulet of Khepri (a relic of the gods) which would transfer her ‘essence’ into the nearest young woman when she was exhumed. That way, she would be resurrected and live forever. She goes for a walk with Randall and sees a little of Victorian London, remarking on how different the world is from the one she left.

Jago reaches Litefoot and Ellie and tells them of his recent adventures. Jago and Litefoot hurry to Constance’s house - unaware they are being followed by Tarik and his fellow cult members (who allowed Jago to escape precisely so he would lead them to ‘the chosen one’). They arrive and are filled in regarding Aret-Hanutma and her possession Constance’s body. She explains that the Cult of Khepri were the ones who mummified her, thousands of years ago, forcing her to become immortal. When her mummified remains were taken to England by Randall, the Cult followed. Not in order to prevent the sarcophagus being opened, but to make sure there was a suitable ‘vessel’ for Aret-Hanutma’s spirit nearby when it was (i.e. Josie). They were the ones who broke into the Egyptian Hall and stole the mummy, but then they must have realised that it no longer contained Aret-Hanutma’s essence. Aret-Hanutma explains that the Cult of Khepri want her alive not so they can worship her, but so they can use her as a tame god and force her to do their will.

The house is besieged by Tarik and the Cult. Aret-Hanutma explains that the amulet of Khepri gives her the power to summon familiar spirits in the shape of insects. She holds the amulet, opens her mouth, and a horde of locusts stream out and set upon Tarik and the Cult. They flee in terror. Aret-Hanutma tells our heroes that she wishes for her essence to return to the mummy; that way, Constance can get her body back. Aret-Hanutma has no wish to be immortal at the expense of another’s life. 

While Randall stays with Aret-Hanutma in Constance’s house, Jago leads Litefoot to the temple. When they get there, they discover it is deserted. All the Cult must be elsewhere.

The Cult of Khepri turn up outside Constance’s house with Ellie as their hostage. They force Aret-Hanutma to surrender herself and Randall.

Jago and Litefoot hide in the temple as Tarik and the Cult return with their prisoners. They watch as Tarik informs Aret-Hanutma she must do as he commands, or they will be forced to make sacrifices in her honour – beginning with Ellie and Randall, who are placed on a special altar. Aret-Hanutma submits and summons a giant scarab as a sign of her obedience. Then she weakens and the beetle disappears. Tarik orders the Cult to place Aret-Hanutma in a special chamber to recover. After she has gone he orders his followers to destroy the mummified remains of Aret-Hanutma so her spirit can never return to it; but the mummy has disappeared!

The mummy has, in fact, been stolen by Jago and Litefoot. They manage to sneak in to see Aret-Hanutma and devise a plan between them. But it will involve following some precise instructions.

A few minutes later, Tarik enters the prison to find Jago and Litefoot with Aret-Hanutma who is attempting to return to her mummified remains. Tarik interrupts the process. He then has them taken back into the temple along with the mummy. He then tells Aret-Hanutma to summon the giant beetle again so that Jago and Litefoot can be sacrificed to it. She agrees and the beetle appears. But before it feeds, Tarik sets fire to the mummy so Aret-Hanutma can never return to her old body. 

But it turns out that she already returned to it. When she was with Jago and Litefoot she released Constance from her possession and put her essence back in the mummy. Ever since, Constance has been pretending to be Aret-Hanutma prompted by Jago and Litefoot and following instructions left by Aret-Hanutma on how to summon the giant scarab using the amulet of Khepri.

As the mummy is burned, a terrible supernatural force is unleashed; the final vengeance of Aret-Hanutma. Realising what is happening, the members of the Cult either flee or sacrifice themselves to the giant scarab. But rather than feeding on our heroes, the giant scarab turns on Tarik. He orders Constance to call the beetle off or he will kill Ellie and Randall but she genuinely doesn’t know how to. It devours Tarik and then approaches Ellie and Randall. In the nick of time, Litefoot destroys the amulet and the scarab dissolves into a swarm of locusts and disappears. 

With Constance herself again, she and Randall are reunited and give Jago and Litefoot their thanks. They return to the Red Tavern, as they owe Ellie a round of drinks...

Laika's Theme

Continuing with Doctor Who: The Space Race, how was it changed for the second draft? Well, there don’t seem to be many deleted scenes. Most of the changes are additions rather than deletions. I see that I was asked to remove references to Laika undergoing dissection, and this bit too:

DOCTOR

Sergeant, I’d be grateful if you could avoid killing Laika. She may still be able to help us.

ALEXEI (VIA INTERCOM)

I can’t make any promises, Doctor.

FX: MOVE TO CORRIDOR.

This is a good example of the sort of boring, unnecessary explaining-stuff-that-doesn’t-need-explaining that should get cut:

PERI

It would be easier to go in the TARDIS.

DOCTOR

If it was working. I’ve nearly finished repairing the circuit. Give me something to do on the flight.

PERI

Can’t it wait? Haven’t we got enough to deal with down here?

In the second draft I added the scene with the two maintenance workers being attacked by dogs, and then rewrote the following scene:

42C. INT. MISSION CONTROL.

ALEXEI ENTERS.

ALEXEI

General LeonovAnd by the time the guards got there, the two men had gone.

MIKHAIL

Sergeant, I’m rather busy right now, can What do you mean, ‘gone’?

ALEXEI

The dogs had dragged their bodies away, we don’t know where. I watched the whole thing on the security cameras.

PERI

And you’re sure Laika did this wait?

ALEXEI

It’s the escaped animals, sir. I’ve just had a report of them attacking one of our maintenance workers.

Oh, yes. She was leading the pack.

MIKHAIL

What do you mean, attacking?

ALEXEI

I mean, they killed him, sir. Savaged him to death. In front of his wife. Then they dragged his body away.

PERI

Laika did this?

ALEXEI

According to the wife’s description, she was leading the pack, yes.

Can’t remember why I cut the next bit. Because I was told to, I expect. Pity, I think it’s a nice little moment. It’s quite common for stories to have bits where characters think somebody is dead but where there isn’t time to explore their reaction. But, of course, it happens so often in Doctor Who that if someone got upset every time they thought the Doctor had been killed they would be upset so often it would become ridiculous.

PERI

No. I’ve thought him dead dozens of times before, and he’s always turned up, out of the blue. Usually with a bad joke.

LEONID

You were close to him?

PERI

He was... is the most wonderful person I’ve ever met. And the most infuriating.

LEONID

You loved him?

PERI

No, not like that. I love being with him. Because he makes me a better person. That’s what he does. He makes people better.

LEONID

Well, he is a Doctor.

For the scene where the Doctor encounters the alien probe, I was asked to give specific quotes of things we might hear rather than generalisations:

FX: A BRIEF BURST OF COPYRIGHT-FREERANDOM RADIO, TELEVISION AND FILM CLIPS PRECEDING 1963. SPEECHES BY RAMSAY MACDONALD, LENIN, KENNEDY, NEWSREELS AND MUSIC: JAZZ, CLASSICAL MUSIC AND EARLY ROCK’N’ROLL, CLASSICAL, HYMNS. WEDDINGS, . CROWDS AT FOOTBALL MATCHES, AUDIENCES LAUGHING AT GOONS.MIXED IN WITH:

RADIO ANNOUNCER ONE:

- Finisterre and Biscay, winds moderate. Rockall, gale warning.

RADIO ANNOUNCER TWO:

And as Maurice Leyland steps up to the wicket -

And finally, I cut the final two lines from the story. Too soppy, too corny, too on-the-nose. Ah well, you throw this stuff out there, some of it sticks, some of it doesn’t.

DOCTOR
Not just mankind. No. It’s a message to the rest of the universe. After all, you never know who might be listening....

PERI

And all because of what happened back on November the twenty-third, nineteen sixty-three.

DOCTOR

Yes. That was quite a day. A day of endings and of magnificent, wonderful beginnings.