Stories of Old

Last week (I am never up-to-date with my updates) there was a new Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition, devoted to the novelisations published by Target Books in the 1970s and 1980s. My contribution to this, quite frankly, wonderful publication was an introduction. In the space of 3000 words I had to give a potted history of the books and explain their appeal. Obviously both subjects could easily merit much more detailed and comprehensive articles, but such articles have already appeared elsewhere so, for this, I decided to include a few personal memories (as examples of how all Doctor Who fans of a certain vintage associate the books with moments in their childhood), and dedicated a chunk of my wordcount to stuff which hasn’t really been covered elsewhere; the books’ literary style, and how their content shifted over the decades from writing novelisations for ‘casual viewers’, kids who watched Doctor Who on telly who might need the basics introduced to them, to ‘dedicated fans’ who wanted accurate novelisations of old adventures they didn’t have on video and expanded novelisations of the recent adventures they did have on video. Thinking about it now, that is best illustrated by the shift from the books having ‘Doctor Who and the’ titles to having ‘Doctor Who hyphen The Title of the Story’ titles. I wish I’d thought of that when I was writing the article! (There’s also a gradual shift from having child-enticing covers in the 1970s showcasing the monsters to fan-accommodating covers in the 1980s consisting of photo-referenced heads floating in a vortex). 

I also included a box-out on something else which has never really been brought up, which is how the Doctor Who novelisations fitted into the history of novelisations as a sub-genre. Because when they started, there were a few other novelisations of shows like Timeslip already on the shelves, and then later, as you move into the late 1970s and the 1980s, there’s a whole load of books offering new stories and novelisations of TV series, from sitcoms like The Good Life and to Porridge to Grange Hill and EastEnders. I mean, one overlooked thing about the Doctor Who novelisations shift to ‘photographic’ covers in the early 1980s meant that they were being brought into line with the other TV tie-ins being published at the same time. Plus that was the era of novelisations of Hollywood movies, just before video recorders came in and rendered the whole idea moot. 

Sadly I didn’t have room for all that, or to go into detail about the dull and complicated history of the hardback editions, or to mention the amusing misprint in Doctor Who – Delta and the Bannermen. However, I still found plenty to say, and all the other aspects of the novelisations – their covers, how the differ from the TV stories, plus the Discovers books and other spin-offs are all covered elsewhere in the magazine. Only £6.99, available from all good newsagents! 

 

Celebration

Update.

Doctor Who: The Legacy of Time has been released. I’ve got my freebie and have listened to my story. It’s marvellous, very evocative of its era. Well, two eras. The television era of sixth Doctor stories circa 1987 and the Big Finish era of sixth Doctor stories circa 2008. I think Big Finish have been going long enough to have eras, haven’t they? Anyway, I couldn’t be more delighted with it, and thankfully it seems to be going down very well. Inevitably some people are going, “I miss Jago and Litefoot, I wish they were in it” and I sympathise. If you wish they had been in it, imagine what it was like for the guy who had a whole story worked out for them, and who wrote half a script! But any story has to stand or fall based on the end product, not what went on behind-the-scenes, and I’m glad to say that I think The Avenues of Possibility stands. 

 (I’ll get around to listening to the other stories in due course. Always a weird thing. Naturally, I want them to be good – I don’t want to be bored or annoyed by other peoples’ stories – but what if they are obviously and massively much better than mine? That might be quite hard to cope with.)

It can be ordered here. I hear they’re running low on the boxsets so don’t leave it too late!

There’s also another Doctor Who Magazine, which means another instalment of The Blogs of Doom. By all accounts, it’s a particularly amusing one this time, so maybe if the previous instalments haven’t hit the mark you might like to give this one a go. Sometimes I hit what seems to me like a rich comedy seam. I make myself laugh out loud writing these things so hopefully it will elicit a chuckle or two. 

The magazine also includes a couple of article by me, on director Christopher Barry and his work – with particular regard to ambitious video effects – on The Mutants and The Creature from the Pit. I found it quite fascinating researching these things; I think it’s hard for a modern viewer to appreciate the idea of video effects being achieved ‘live’ in the studio, rather than as part of post-production. But you would have the actors standing still in one part of the studio – holding their positions so they wouldn’t appear to move when the video mixer ‘roll-back-and-mix’-ed to them from a recording made a few minutes ago – while elsewhere in the studio a cameraman is lining up his camera at a monitor screen in order to create a glow effect, one special effects assistant is turning a roller with multicoloured strips on it and another special effects assistant is getting ready to sprinkle dust. Then the director cues the action and you have all the elements – the actors, the cameramen, the special effects assistants, and the video mixer all working in split-second harmony in order to achieve an effect that may only last one or two seconds.

So check it out, in all good newsagents and available to download now.

And... coming soon. Rose Tyler: Dimension Cannon. There’s more information about my story, The Endless Night, here. And you can listen to a bit of it here. Rose Tyler meeting Clive Finch again! Or rather another Clive Finch for the first time. Oh, I can’t wait for this to come out. I think it’s gonna blow people’s socks off.

Thunderball

Update.

There’s a new Doctor Who Magazine on the shelves, which can only mean another instalment of The Blogs of Doom. The issue has a Pertwee-era theme, so this month I plumped for everyone’s favourite rabbit poacher and sphere-hoarder, Sam Seeley. There’s also a few words on The Three Doctors from me in there.

By one of those odd coincidences, I seem to have had something released every month this year – The Bekdel Test, The Belly of the Beast, The Kamelion Empire, my book on The Dalek Invasion of Earth, This Sleep of Death and The Cars That Ate London! Well, it looks like the run will continue for a while longer as this month will see the release of The Avenues of Possibility, part of the The Legacy of Time box set, commemorating twenty glorious years of Big Finish doing Doctor Who stories. It will also commemorate eighteen glorious years of me writing them, on and off. Anyway, you can read more about the story in the latest Doctor Who Magazine (there’s a photo of me, eek) and in the latest edition of Vortex.

 But after that I think I don’t have anything coming in August. Ah well, all good things...