Winter Rose

A new Rose Tyler series! Yes. And I’m writing the first one, The Endless Night.

Imagine my excitement when I opened up an email from Matt Fitton (‘Top secret new series thing’) inviting me to pitch a story for a brand new series all about Rose’s dimension-hopping adventures between Doomsday and Partners in Crime. Featuring not just Billie Piper as Rose, but the return of Camille Coduri as Jackie, Shaun Dingwall as Pete and the legendary Mark Benton as Clive. 

(Yes, I know Clive was killed in Rose. But in science-fiction, there’s always a way of coming back)

I can’t really say any more, although I could describe to you the dance of happiness I did when I received the email. I got up from this chair I am sitting in now and sort of did a Davy Jones-style saunter into the sitting room, where I told my wife I had some exciting news that I couldn’t tell her, and then I sashayed into the kitchen, back to the sitting room and back into my office chair. That was the dance I did.

I had to do another little dance when I got to the point of writing scenes with ROSE, PETE, JACKIE and CLIVE in them. It was so exciting. And so much fun. The characters are so vivid and funny, all I had to do was put them in the same room and type out what they said.

So, please check out the press release here. There’s also a video trailer here which includes a few moments from my story. Yes, Billie Piper, saying my words. Amazing.

In other news – there is always other news – there’s now a blurb up for my forthcoming Doctor Who adventure, The Kamelion Empire. Featuring the fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough and Kamelion. You can read it here.

And check out the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine. Not only is there another Blog of Doom – (‘Not as bad as it used to be’) but I’m interviewed about my other forthcoming Doctor Who adventure, The Crash of the UK-201.

It’s all go. Anyway, enough blogging, back to twitter.

Cars Are Cars

Earlier this week a new Big Finish series was announced, featuring the ‘Paternoster Gang’ from Doctor Who (as seen in A Good Man Goes To War, The Snowmen, The Crimson Horror, The Name of the Doctor and Deep Breath). My story, The Cars That Ate London! is the first of three in the first box set, so I have the task of setting up the series – although I’m pretty sure everyone can guess how the series will work, as the format for future Vastra, Jenny and Strax adventures was pretty well established in The Crimson Horror. It’s a spin-off series that fans have been requesting for a good five years now, so it’s great to finally kick it off. My story, as it’s the first one, is deliberately a fairly what-it-says-on-the-tin thrills-and-spills adventure in order to launch the format; you have to establish what a standard story is, and then later on you can subvert it or experiment with the form.

I wrote it in ‘Steven Moffat’ mode (which is mainly just a process of imagining him laughing at the jokes) so hopefully it will be a seamless continuation from Deep Breath. I was fortunate enough to attend the recording and I can tell you that all the cast were absolutely note-perfect. It wasn’t hard to imagine the characters – in fact, it was harder to imagine the actors. Dan Starkey knows Strax so well he can adlib indefinitely, while it was rather wonderful to be able to watch Neve McIntosh and Catrin Stewart interacting as Vastra and Jenny; not just saying the words, but acting out the scenes physically and reacting with looks and gestures when they didn’t have lines. Which should all come across in the finished product; you will be hearing the three of them in the studio, together.

Anyway, the observant readers amongst you will notice that I haven’t mentioned what the story is about. Well, that is for Big Finish to announce as and when, you’ll get no secrets from me, Silurian. But it will be a lot of fun, I promise you.

The full announcement can be found here and the box set can be pre-ordered here.