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.
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.
