Well, at last I have a spare moment, so it’s time for a
long-overdue blog. I make no excuses, but the short-and-the-tall of it is that
I’ve been very busy over the last few months. Terrifically busy. Early starts
and late shifts and everything. In fact, since the last blog I’ve written over 4
hours’ worth of scripts, plus rewrites of other scripts, script-edited over
half a dozen others, plus a DWM Fact of Fiction, a review, plus all the
introductions, synopses and a telesnap commentary for the DWM Missing Episodes –
Second Doctor volume 2. Oh, and I started work on another two scripts and wrote
an introduction to a reprint of one of my novels. Plus some other bits and bobs
I’ve forgotten.
So you might understand why, at the end of the day –
whenever in the early hours that may be – I’ve been disinclined to tap out a
blog. Plus my life has undergone a fundamental re-assignment of priorities, so
blogging has been bumped down the list *.
So what have I missed? Well, I’ve had two Big Finish Doctor
Who audios released. The first was a Companion Chronicle called The Ghost in
the Machine starring Katy Manning as Jo Grant with Damian Lynch as Benhamin
Chikito. It’s a spooky, claustrophobic tale of tape recordings developing a
life of their own, a bit Sapphire & Steel, a bit The Stone Tape, and
whatever remains must be original. Katy is superb in it, Louise Jameson did a
fabulous job directing it, and it seems to have gone down quite well. It’s my
last entry in the Companion Chronicles range (which is being brought to an end)
and one of my best ones, though what I’m most proud of is the diversity of styles
and subjects that I’ve covered, from hard sci-fi to history to comedy to
psychological horror to Rod Serling tribute to ghost story.
And I get to name-drop Katy Manning and Louise Jameson in
the same paragraph. Jo and Leela. Sometimes my life is like the eight-year old
me is having a particularly vivid Doctor Who-themed dream. Maybe that’s what it is.
The Ghost on the Machine can be ordered here.
The other Big Finish Doctor Who audio was The Space Race, a
story set in November 1963, in the
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union. I wasn’t overwhelmingly
confident of my script for this one, to be honest I thought I’d messed it up,
but nevertheless it seems to have gone down quite well, for which I give all
credit to the stars, Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant, the director Nicholas Briggs,
noise wizard Howard Carter and the rest of the cast, particularly Samantha Béart
who did a fantastic job brining pathos to an outlandish role. The
story deliberately starts off very Quatermass, very switches-and-oscilloscopes,
and then does something completely different. There are some serious ideas in
there, some cutting edge hard-sci fi (or what I think passes for it!) and I was
so proud of each of the three cliff-hangers I was dancing around the room
when I wrote them. But a few critics have pointed out that it is, essentially, a bit of a shaggy dog story and I can’t really disagree.
Whilst those were being released another story was being
polished and recorded, namely Psychodrome, starring Peter Davison as the fifth
Doctor, along with his companions Tegan, Nyssa and Adric. Yes, Adric is
back, portrayed by Matthew Waterhouse. As I grew up with a picture of Adric on
my bedroom wall (the one of him in his spacesuit from Four to Doomsday,
naturally) it was a massive thrill to finally get to write for the character.
It’s always a thrill to write for the fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa so this was
extra-exciting for me. As for the story, well, it’s a strange one, different
from pretty much anything I’ve ever done before, or that anyone has ever done
before in Doctor Who at least. The starting point was to tell a Big Dumb Object
tale like Rendezvous with Rama. The end point was somewhere else entirely. It’s
set early on in the run of fifth Doctor stories – between Castrovalva and
Four to Doomsday, chronological-shelving-fans – and addresses a few of the tiny bumps in
continuity between those stories, by showing the four TARDIS travellers getting
to know and trust each other, and to learn a little bit more about where they
are all coming from and take stock. But it’s also about a lot more than that,
and to say any more would spoil the surprises.
Psychodrome can be ordered here.
Since I last blogged the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who
has been and gone. Wasn’t it all marvellous? Watching An Adventure in Space and
Time I started crying when the Daleks turned up and didn’t stop until the end.
Peter Davison’s The Five(ish) Doctors was hilarious. And Steven did a fantastic
job with the anniversary episode, rising to the challenge of impossible
expectations by pulling out all the stops, switching off all cynicism and
engaging his LITTLE BOY FAN BRAIN. Which is the only way to write these things, I find,
with punch-the-air excitement, with boldness, and with love.
Apart from The Space Race, my other small contribution to
the jamboree was a 6-page article for the anniversary edition of Doctor Who
Magazine, an article called The Wonder of Who setting out to define, once and
for all, the indefinable magic of Doctor Who. It was commissioned as a
feel-good piece and basically I just wrote why I, personally, love the show and
hope that others felt the same. I think I did a pretty good job, no doubt I’ll
add it to this blog when the dust has settled, and even though it wasn’t listed
in the magazine contents I like to think it was singlehandedly responsible for
that issue of the magazine being the biggest-selling edition since the early
1980s. But then, I like to think a lot of things.
That magazine also contained a Fact of Fiction on the story
The Five Doctors, which I wrote back in September (so it doesn’t fall under the
things-I’ve-done-since-the-last-blog rule). As it’s one of my favourite Doctor
Who stories it was sheer joy to write about it and point out all the little
things I’ve noticed over the last thirty years, including an Amazing Moment that
no-one else have ever spotted, the source of the phrase ‘A man is the sum of
his memories’ and all my theories about quite how the Easy as Pi chessboard
might work. There was a lot to say about the story so it ended up being a very
long article, as I also sought out the great and the good from the world of
Doctor Who for their favourite moments, including Terrance Dicks, Peter Howell,
Mark Gatiss, Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat amongst many others. So maybe
that article was also the reason why the magazine sold so well. Maybe I’ll do a
similar one for the 100th anniversary on The Day of the Doctor, if I’m still
here (I’m sure Doctor Who and Doctor Who Magazine will both be going strong).
The month after that, in the current edition, I wrote a Fact
of Fiction on the recent Matt Smith Christmas episode A Christmas Carol. The
most exciting part of writing this article for me was that Steven very kindly,
and unprecedentedly, sent me a copy of his very first draft of the episode, one
that was so ‘hot-off-the-press’ it still had asterisks in the right-hand column
to indicate how much of it he’d written in his final sitting. So the article explores
the writing process of a Steven Moffat script in unprecedented detail. Of
course, he got most of it bang-on in the first draft, but it’s interesting to
see which scenes were problematic and how they were rewritten and which ones
were plain sailing. And I love the episode so it was an unadulterated pleasure.
That magazine was closely followed by a special edition, The
Missing Episodes – The Second Doctor volume 2. Originally there were going to
be three volumes but one very plucky chap went and found nine of them so we
revised our plans (and this volume was brought forward, not to pre-empt any
further potential discoveries but because the planned Matt Smith behind-the-scenes
volume wasn’t ready). For the magazine, I wrote introductions to the various
stories; I’m particularly proud of my write-up for The Web of Fear, given that
the story has been recently (mostly) recovered so I couldn’t just write a
review and had to come up with something more creative, more personal. And it
was interesting taking an in-depth look at all the other stories, with my
admiration for The Abominable Snowmen increasing while my dissatisfaction regarding
The Ice Warriors also went up a notch. And I discovered to my surprise that
episode five of The Wheel in Space is actually really good! Who knew? For the magazine, I
also wrote a telesnap commentary for the entirely missing story Fury from the
Deep, based on the camera scripts, an audio recording and the telesnaps, which
was easier-going than my previous efforts as the story holds fewer mysteries but
in a way slightly harder work because the first two episodes are awfully dull,
with the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria barely appearing and lots of lengthy arguments
about pipes. But I sprinkled lots of Morris magic, so hopefully that didn’t
show.
And I think that’s all. No, that’s not quite all. This month
Big Finish released Afterlife by Matt Fitton, which I script-edited (which with
his scripts basically involves just reading them and sending him an email
saying they’re great). BBC Books have announced that they’re going to reprint
my Doctor Who novel Touched by an Angel with an exciting new cover (they haven’t
even let the previous edition go out of print first). I’ve written a new introduction for it and
some of the typos have been corrected so even if you’ve bought the previous
edition, you have no excuses, you must buy it again.
Touched by an Angel can be ordered here.
That’s everything. Oh, I attended a few recordings of other
scripts but they haven’t been announced yet so my lips are sealed. Suffice it
to say on several occasions my ‘career’ has been more like having won a
competition. 2013 has been good. But 2014, oh, 2014 is going to be phenomenal.
* Don’t worry, it’s good news.
