If We Tolerate This, by Daniel Trilling

On Monday, the Dr and I had a day trip to Oxford. She went to the new Aphrodite exhibition at the Ashmoleon, and I spent an afternoon in a university library reading a 60 year-old pamphlet for a thing I am writing. On the way there and back, we listened to Rory Kinnear reading this short book which seems to have two subtitles: "How the British establishment made the far right respectable" and, "The rise of the far right and what we can do to stop it."

As Trilling argues, what were at the time of the 2010 general election considered rather fringe, extreme views, on immigration especially, have since shifted into the mainstream. He charts why and how, threading together austerity, neoliberalism, unregulated social media and political opportunism more generally. 

Along the way, he asks key questions, such as why there was a sudden surge in the numbers of immigrants attempting to reach the UK by small boats after January 2021, aka the "Boriswave." But he does more than just ask questions; he does his best to provide the answers, too. In answering this question, for example, he explains why efforts by governments both blue and red have struggled to meet their own targets to reduce such numbers (and why such targets were a hostage to fortune anyway). 

It's at once a depressing read and yet also empowering, in part by making sense of the apparent chaos and in part because he identifies a number of positive ways forward. Concise, cogent and pragmatically optimistic, it's a good primer on what the heck is going on, and what we can and should do next.

I'd been keen to read this since meeting author Daniel Trilling at the Festival of Ideas in York earlier this year, where we were both speaking - on YouTube, you can watch him on the panel "Democracy on trial: the promise of democracy" and my talk on writers David Whitaker and Terrance Dicks. But I knew Daniel's work already, not least his brilliant piece on Alexander Baron for the LRB (in case of interest, I've previously written here on Baron's memoir Chapters of Accidents and novel The Lowlife.)

The Doctor Who Production Diary - 2. The Troughton Years, by David Brunt

This engrossing, 774-page brick of a volume details the day-by-day production of Doctor Who in the late 1960s, when Patrick Troughton was the Doctor. It follows the magnificent first volume in perhaps even more exhaustive detail, covering the period Monday 18 April 1966 (when ‘significant’ changes to Doctor Who were mooted, which surely included the recasting of the lead character) to Monday 4 August 1969 (and the issuing of an audience research report on reactions to the final episode of The War Games). I have delighted in every page.

A lot of histories of Doctor Who tend to focus on one given story at a time. Brunt’s approach coveys the dizzying chaos of multiple stories being in different stages of development all at once. Seeing things presented in this way sparks a lot of new thoughts and connections.

For example, The Evil of the Daleks was broadcast as the final story of Season 4, the last episode airing on 1 July 1967. After a summer break, Season 5 began with The Tomb of the Cybermen, the first episode broadcast on 2 September. That gap, I think, helped to hide the fact that these two consecutive serials, recorded back to back, have a number of similar features. The Doctor visits the planet of his enemies and meets a larger-headed leader version whose plan is to brainwash humans. The Doctor defeats the villains but, in the closing seconds of the final episode, we see that something survives… 

That surely can’t be a coincidence, so I suspect story editor and co-writer Gerry Davis consciously sought to mirror the Dalek story in what he wrote for the Cybermen. Something similar then happened in a subsequent Cybermen story, The Invasion (1968), in which the villains are seen stalking around landmarks of London, mirrors something similar in The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964).

Another connection I’d not made before is that the first approval to wipe an original videotape recording of Doctor Who (boo, hiss) was issued on Thursday 9 March 1967 (p. 198), two days ahead of the broadcast of Episode 1 of The Macra Terror, which debuted a new title sequence. It’s boggling — to me — to think that the videotape archive of Doctor Who remained complete for the entire span that the original title sequence was in use. The wiping of episodes and the commissioning of new titles are also both, I think, signs of a production team looking forwards, not back — at a time when they were also jettisoning what had once been a fundamental part of the series format, stories set in the past. It is all part of a consistent mindset.

As with the first volume, I must declare an interest in that I liaised a bit with David Brunt as he assembled this extraordinary compendium. Especially with the later bits, we scrutinised many of the same sources as I worked on my imminent biography, Written by Terrance Dicks. We discussed and debated various points where the sources aren’t entirely clear, and he read over my draft chapters and caught some of my more glaring errors.

As he explains in the introduction here, his approach has been to work chiefly from the BBC paperwork held at the Written Archives Centre in Caversham — his list of the files there that he looked through takes up two whole pages (pp. 771-2). From this, he lays out, as objectively as possible, what happened on what date. Along the way, he makes a number of shrewd deductions to tackle discrepancies in the primary sources or to plug gaps in the record. 

Even so, his emphasis is on evidence from documentation. Where no documents survive, he is warier than me of using things said in later interviews by cast and crew. For example, there are several accounts that script editor / associate producer / producer Derrick Sherwin organised a screening or screenings of the Quatermass serials from the 1950s for himself and his team (Terrance Dicks and Trevor Ray) ahead of commissioning the first Doctor Who stories involving the new Earthbound format. In discussing that with Brunt, we think this must have taken place in late December 1968 — but, unable to be surer than that, he leaves it out of his production diary.

There are a few instances where I disagree with his conclusions — not that he’s wrong, but I interpret things another way. For example, in his entry for Tuesday 18 October 1966, he provides a summary of an early version of Part One of The Power of the Daleks, detailing how it varies from the episode as broadcast. That surviving early script is not dated, but Brunt suggests it’s the version issued to the cast for the start of rehearsals, which began on this particular Tuesday. I think the very different and much wordier version of the Doctor in this script suggests that this is the script written by David Whitaker, before — on Friday 7 October, as detailed by Brunt — Dennis Spooner was engaged to rewrite it. I think a now-lost Spooner rewrite was used in rehearsals, prior to a final (surviving) camera script being drafted.  

Likewise, Brunt thinks “on or around” Tuesday 20 February 1968 that Terrance Dicks was interviewed for the job as assistant story editor on Doctor Who, and at the same attended the video playback of the most recently recorded instalment of Doctor Who, Episode 6 of The Web of Fear. My sense from Terrance’s own (brief, not entirely clear) accounts of what happened is that this playback was among the first things to happen once he’d been appointed.

This isn’t meant to quibble — it’s a delight to engage with this stuff and puzzle out the nuances as best we can. Brunt’s different perspective has made me look again at what I’ve come up with and in a couple of places I’ve been able to correct small details in my own book, just in time. What’s more, something here prompted a new line of thought and on Monday I’m off on a research trip to dig out what I hope will be new information for an article in DWM...

I look forward eagerly to the next volume.

Doctor Who Magazine #635

The new issue of the official Doctor Who Magazine is out today, and comes with a free Target novel: Doctor Who - At Childhood's End by Sophie Aldred.

In among the other treats, Chris Bentley talked to me about my forthcoming audio novel The Missing Hour, which is released next week. And on p. 8, reader Lloyd Peterson from New Jersey, USA, responds to my recent article about Star Trek. It's nice to make such far-reaching connections...

Trailer for The Missing Hour

Big Finish have posted a three-minute excerpt from my forthcoming, six-hour Doctor Who audio novella, The Missing Hour, which is due for release in full on 22 October.

To hear the excerpt, read by Barnaby Edwards, visit The Missing Hour page on the Big Finish website and click "Listen to the trailer" or "Download Trailer" just below the cover image.

The Moonlandings, by Reginald Turnill

I greatly enjoyed this exhaustive memoir of the US space programme written by BBC aviation correspondent Reg Turnill — a familiar face from my childhood, reporting on space stuff for children’s shows Newsround and Blue Peter. The book covers what Turnill calls the “first era of manned spaceflight” (p. 393), from Alan Shepard becoming the first American in space in 1961 to Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz in the mid-1970s.

By working from his archive of paperwork and scripts, which I suspect may include programmes no longer held in the BBC archive, Turnill provides a lot of detail about the flights themselves, and what did and didn’t go right. He tells us he couldn’t, at first, shake the hand of Wernher von Braun because of the man’s involvement in the wartime bombing of London — Turnill and his family lived in Sydenham. Over time, their relationship mellows and Turnill quotes from this own lengthy, revealing interviews with von Braun, yet remains unsure about his legacy. 

We learn, too, of the celebs at the launch of Apollo 11 on 16 July 1969: former President Lyndon Johnson, Vice President Spiro Agnew, air pioneer Charles Lindbergh, rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth and science-fiction writer Arthur C Clarke — the latter stopping by Turnill’s news desk to rehearse what he was going to say on screen to Walter Cronkite at CBS. 

We’re also told who wasn’t there — Nixon attended the launch of Apollo 12, in the cold and rain, but no others. John Freeman, former presenter of the BBC programmes Panorama and Face to Face, was now US ambassador and had been to the launch of Apollo 10. To explain why he turned down the invitation to the next one, his spokesperson responded, “When you’ve seen one Apollo launch, you’ve seen them all” (p. 231). Turnill clearly finds that indifference amazing.

I’m especially, nerdily, thrilled by all the mechanics of the TV and radio coverage, the way improvements in satellite and camera technology shaped what could be shown, and the gossip about “the BBC’s never-ending internecine warfare” (p. 389) between three of its own departments: News and Current Affairs, which Turnill worked for, and Outside Broadcasts were both based in Lime Grove, while Science and Features, led by Richard Francis and Aubrey Singer, was at Kensington House.

The different teams were instructed by the BBC’s director-general to collaborate on the Mercury 9 launch in 1963, but Turnill explains that this, “was really a victory for Science and Features, who could not now be excluded” (p. 82). Francis quickly set about organising a big TV special.

“Robin Day, newly recruited from Independent Television News to Paul Fox’s Current Affairs team, who were the principal customers for Outside Broadcasts facilities, happened to be in New York working on a political contribution to Panorama. He was told to drop everything and stand by to ‘anchor’ live TV coverage via satellite.” (p. 82)

But Day declined, knowing nothing about spaceflight, so Turnill got the gig. 

He and Francis seem to have got on well enough until October 1968 and the launch of Apollo 7. Turnill describes Francis arriving at Cape Kennedy with a “posse” of assistants and secretaries to mastermind the TV coverage, and maddening the team back in London by adopting “space-speak”: “affirmative” and “negative” instead of yes or no, “go” and “no-go” when something was or wasn’t possible. Then, on 20 December, Turnill felt it his duty to share a weather report that suggested there would be little to see of the launch of Apollo 8. Francis felt this cost them a million TV viewers on the BBC at lunchtime on Saturday 21 December (a few hours before the broadcast of Episode 8 of Doctor Who story The Invasion). Decades later, Turnill was unapologetic about what he had done:

“I had no guilty conscience even when the launch weather and the view of lift-off were spectacularly perfect!” (p. 156)

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he was squeezed out of the TV coverage of Apollo 11 the following summer.

“The reason I was unemployed at this supreme journalistic highlight of my career was that the BBC’s ‘Apollo Studio’, at Shepherds Bush for TV, and at Broadcasting House for radio, had insisted on taking over the launch coverage. The studios were packed with ‘experts’ who had to be given something to do, and once again it had been a case of ‘leave the facts to us, Reg. We’ll just come to you with the question: What’s the atmosphere at the Cape?’ Since most of the experts had never been near America’s space programme, I was well aware that they would call upon me for tougher explanations than that if anything went wrong.” (p. 234)

Turnill was clearly hurt and frustrated at being squeezed out, and annoyed by TV executives wanting him to emphasise drama — he tells us there was no real risk to the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts (!) so is withering about Burke crossing his fingers on TV. He also says a key problem was the focus on live pictures, with better-quality colour or film images of no interest to the editors because they arrived half-an-hour later than the less good live images. The sense is that the public appeal of the spaceflights — or, in some cases, the lack of it — was shaped by the coverage on TV, which was in turn led by the prejudices of the execs. Turnill says he was “baffled” by such decisions, then adds,

“TV executives tend to have literary rather than scientific backgrounds” (p. 189).

He refers to the “experts”, in quotes, as “superfluous” (p. 261), and claims they had no or little knowledge of spaceflight, not least because they’d not been to the Cape. That’s not true of James Burke, who Turnill mentions just twice in the whole book, who pre-filmed a series of reports at different NASA facilities and was very good on technical detail. I would like to cross-check the account here with Burke’s own memoir from 2019, James Burke: Our Man on the Moon.

Turnill does not name at all the other members of the TV crew covering Apollo 11, such as Patrick Moore, Cliff Michelmore and Michael Charlton. Charlton reported from Houston, and Moore was hardly inexpert in matters of space — the Apollo astronauts made use of his maps of the Moon. So it’s a rich text, full of fascinating detail and stuff that isn’t quite as straightforward as the author makes out. I found it utterly compelling.

More of this sort of thing:

• Carrying the Fire by Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins
• The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
• Apollo 11 graphic novel by Fitch, Baker and Collins 
• Moonglow by Michael Chabon

The return of Play School

Yesterday, the BBC announced the return of children’s TV series Play School after 38 years. The news prompted me to look out the piece I wrote in 2019 for the magazine TV Years (from the team behind TV Choice), in which I interviewed series creator Joy Whitby and presenters Carol Chell and Carol Leader. I grew up on Play School and wanted to know what it and they had done to me...

With the kind permission of editor Graham Kibble-White, here it is as published, including the pages designed so beautifully by Richard Atkinson.

Ready to play?


Generations of children grew up with Play School – but what were they learning? We spoke to original producer Joy Whitby and presenters Carol Chell and Carol Leader


INTERVIEWS BY SIMON GUERRIER
(originally published in TV Years #4 — Classic Children’s Television (2019), pp. 70-73)

Joy Whitby: ‘We were pioneers’

‘Are you an exhausted parent of a child under the age of five?’ asked Radio Times in April 1964. ‘If so, Play School may be just what you are looking for.’ The programme would, it promised, ‘use all the advantages of television to do the job of a nursery school in its own exciting way,’ and children would ‘benefit from the leading authorities on nursery education.’ Parents were assured the presenters were, ‘young and resourceful men and women, most of them with children of their own.’

If today that sounds rather worthy, Play School was revolutionary for its time. ‘Yes, we were pioneers,’ says creator and first producer Joy Whitby. ‘I started my career in radio, on the children’s programme Listen With Mother. I learned a lot from that, and then from having to write a report on Watch With Mother, which consisted mainly of puppet shows such as Andy Pandy and The Woodentops, all on film. My report was fairly critical, because there was no new thinking going into these programmes. They had that “kindergarten smile” approach, which tended to talk down to children, like saying, “puff puff” instead of “train”. The nanny we had at home talked to my boys as grown-ups from the start, and I’d seen how that helped their development.’

Joy’s insights impressed Michael Peacock, BBC2’s newly appointed Head of Programmes. ‘He also had small sons and was very aware of the dearth of nursery education for children under five. He allocated 25 minutes from Monday to Friday to serve this audience and wanted somebody to devise the programming. I was lucky to get the job.’

‘I was really starting from scratch,’ Joy admits. ‘I went to the government office overseeing young children’s education, and they directed me to Nancy Quayle, who became our consultant – everyone knew her as “Q”. She was an ex-teacher and very knowledgeable about learning through play, though the title, Play School, preceded her. Then I got Marjorie Fisher, who was an expert on picture books, and Wendy Duggan was an expert supplier of animals – I remember her house was full of birds in cages. I didn’t want to say, “I’ve got children so I know all about it.” But of course, I knew what had worked with my own, like opening up an old clock or melting soap into water to create a kind of bubble bath with a straw. All those sorts of things from personal experience I fed into the programme.’

Joy’s sons weren’t the only family members to influence Play School. ‘My husband also worked for the BBC on a programme called Tonight – sort of the forerunner of Newsnight. Cliff Michelmore famously presented that, but he was one of a team. So I set up an inter-changing roster of presenters for Play School, which had many advantages. It meant we weren’t dependent on any single person who might decide to leave, and there was built-in variety. We had the same two presenters Monday to Friday, then two more the following week. I was also keen they came from different backgrounds. Marla Landi was Italian and her English was sometimes rather broken, but her charm was what mattered. We also had one of the first black presenters for children – Paul Danquah, from Ghana.’

‘I looked for people who could bring different skills to the programme. Actor Brian Cant applied for an audition and was given a cardboard box and told to row out to sea. He improvised an imaginary fishing rod to catch an old boot full of custard. And he made you believe it, even as an adult. Then there was a play I went to because I thought an actress might be right for us. The audience was spellbound by someone else, a singer, so immediately afterwards I went backstage and asked him to be in Play School. That was Rick Jones, from Canada.’

Carol Chell: ‘People put their children in front of the television — we were known as “25 minutes’ peace”!’

Carol Chell was in the play Pink String And Ceiling Wax when she heard, via a friend who was going out with one of Play School’s directors, about auditions. Having improvised a hat out of napkins to be worn by doll Jemima, she was given the job and made her debut appearance on 28 February 1966.

‘My first week, I was on with Eric Thompson,’ Carol tells TV Years. ‘I was just out of theatre, so it was quite a shock to be in this tiny TV studio at Riverside [in London]. Of course, I’d learned all my lines but Eric didn’t look at his script and ad libbed away. Recording was stop and start, so that was OK, but in later years we had to do it with as few stops as possible and many times just went straight through as if it was live.’ She laughs. ‘That was a huge pill without autocue.’

Even so, Carol was with the programme for 22 years, appearing in 763 episodes – more than any other presenter. ‘Yes, it overtook me,’ she says. ‘I enjoyed it so much. I still did the odd bit of theatre but my love was for the children and this very special programme. We all adored doing it and I worked with some lovely guys – it was always a boy and girl presenting each week, but the next week you came in you were with a different boy. We had such fun, which I think came across on screen.’

Joy Whitby left Play School – and the BBC – in 1967, following Michael Peacock to London Weekend Television. The format of the programme was gently revised, losing the themed days such as dressing up on Tuesdays and pets on Wednesdays. What other changes did Carol see? 

‘It was very low key to begin with,’ she says. ‘By the time I left, it was very glossy and slick, and I felt we were doing real performances – proper acting. But it was always charming, wasn’t it?’

She emphasises how much stayed the same over the years. ‘We always had that connection to the child watching: what Joy said, talking to children in an adult way with intelligence. Lots of young mums would come up and say, “You’ve taught me how to speak to my child!” There were no pre-school play groups when I started, and many parents were desperate for help. We showed them how to get the nursery rhymes and stories going. It helped when I had my own children!’ 

‘Of course,’ Carol continues, ‘we couldn’t rely on parents actually watching. A lot of people just put their child in front of the television – we were known as “25 minutes’ peace”! At one point, our producer told us to imagine we were talking to a child all alone at the top of a high-rise building. We could still make a connection, we could still involve them. “Why don’t you sing along?” I’d say, or, “You could do that, couldn’t you?”’ 

Does that mean Play School was ‘progressive’? She takes a moment. ‘I don’t know. I think we moved with the times. We certainly tried to be as diverse as possible – we’d cover Diwali, or have African storytellers come in, and later we replaced Hamble with a black doll, Poppy. And I did a course in Makaton, the sign language, and brought that into the programme. I’m very proud of that.’ 

Carol is also very proud of fellow presenter Floella Benjamin, who since leaving Play School has campaigned tirelessly for causes related to children and young people. ‘She’s our greatest ambassador,’ says Carol, ‘and that’s led to her being in the House of Lords. The stuffy old men there go jelly-kneed when they see her! And that helps her get things done – for children and for children’s television. She’s changing the world!’

Carol Leader: ‘Television can be cut-throat, but in’ Play School I was genuinely supported by other people

Carol Leader presented Play School between 1975 and 1988, and then, in the Nineties, trained as a psychotherapist. ‘I was in my early 40s, and less comfortable crawling around on the floor pretending to be a dragon,’ she explains. ‘I was also busy as an actor but as a result of being in therapy for some time, I was finding the roles I was given unfulfilling and wanted to do a job where I was myself – as my work in Play School had encouraged. Many actors go into therapy for their own personal reasons but also because the two worlds are not that different – actors are always trying to delve into their own inner world or think about different emotional landscapes for the parts they play. Personally, therapy started to pull me in a different direction. So I left acting behind.’

As a psychotherapist, can Carol explain how Play School affected the millions of young children who watched it over the years? She considers carefully. ‘I would have thought that I and the other presenters provided a relationship with each child watching that treated them as an equal, that was good fun, and encouraged and helped them to play – which is where all real learning comes from at that early age. We helped them play with toys, and to understand that they could sort out a problem by seeing how a toy dealt with it. Looking through the windows, we taught them about the real world outside.’

Carol says if she ever watches old episodes of Play School now, it seems very slow compared to modern TV. ‘But I think that was beneficial, too,’ she says. ‘A lot of children’s television today gives too easily and doesn’t invite the child to respond in return. We know, both educationally and therapeutically, that that’s important. Slowing things down creates an atmosphere that’s good for reflective thinking. Those supportive, creative experiences help to form a child’s inner world, which has a massive impact on character development. These things go very deep into a child’s psyche. If they go in in a good way, they become what in my trade we call a good “object” – held as a good experience that can help when times are more difficult, or just there as a good thing for the child. A child with bad objects or experience carries with them a very different internal world.’

So it’s little wonder that people who grew up watching Play School look back on it with such affection. ‘That’s right,’ says Carol. ‘I mean, I carry Play School in me, too. A lot of theatre and television jobs can be cut-throat and competitive, but I remember Play School as a really good experience – I was genuinely supported by other people, I felt they liked my work and that I had a contribution to make. So I hold it as a very good object. And there’s another thing in the theory: if you have a good enough experience, you don’t necessarily feel you want to hold on for ever. I got to a point in my life where I thought, ‘I’ve really loved this but I’m now getting too old.’ Play School was such a good experience I was able to leave it behind.’

See also:

• Samira Ahmed and Graham Kibble-White interviewed Joy Whitby at length earlier this year for an episode of their podcast Through the Square Window. 
• Carol Leader has written further on the link between Play School and psychotherapy in Television and Psychoanalysis: Psycho-Cultural Perspectives (eds. Caroline Bainbridge, Ivan Ward and Candida Yates; Routledge, 2013).
• Me on the book Box of Delights — The Story of Children’s Television 1967-1997, by Richard Marson
• My Social Care Today interview with Julian Bashford, producer of Boo Snoo, on making TV for neurodivergent children
• My book David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television (2023) 

Typhoon, by Qaisra Shahraz

Last night, I was at Chorlton Library to interview writer Qaisra Shahraz as part of Chorlton Book Festival. It was the first time we’d met in person, although we were fellow jurors a few years ago on the First Novel Award for the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, and Qaisra has involved me in online events for the Muslim Arts and Culture Festival (Macfest). She told me in advance she would read from her second novel, Typhoon (2003), so in preparation I read that, as well as some of her short stories and a chunk of her first novel, The Holy Woman (2001), and dug through some old interviews and reviews.

Typhoon opens on a Tuesday in May 2002 in the village of Chiragpur, Pakistan, where the local qazi or judge is dying, but causes a stir by asking to see two particular women before he dies. We then jump back 20 years to understand why. In May 1982, a young woman called Gulshan is woken in the night by her husband is sneaking out of bed. Without him knowing, Gulshan follows him outside and sees him passionately embrace another woman — one she recognises as a recent arrival to the village from the city, and whose modern ways have already aroused some comment. Gulshan returns home, tells her mother Hajra what she’s seen, and Hajra goes out to see for herself. 

Soon, the local gossips have got wind of what’s going on, and it’s like a typhoon has whipped up. Hajra demands than the local qazi pass judgment… But what Gulshan and Hajra witnessed going on isn’t quite what they think…

Typhoon is a fast-moving, engaging story with lots of tension and emotion, and some great twists along the way. It involves a huge cast of different characters, and several plots going on at once. For example, there’s also the story of a rich young widow who refuses to remarry, and the strain on the qazi’s granddaughter of leaving her husband to come tend to the dying man. This means we often witness particular events from one character’s perspective, then have what we think happened challenged or shifted by someone else.

Some pivotal scenes are told very visually. For example, one key moment towards the end of the story — which I won’t spoil, but involves a woman at a well — is conveyed by describing the surface of the water being disturbed, and I had to read it again to ensure I’d understood what was happening. It’s a powerful moment, and a key one to the novel, but it’s rendered in a kind of cinematic prose.

Qaisra told me last night that this kind of thing was, in part, informed by her time working on the TV drama Dil Her to Hai (The Heart It Is), broadcast in Pakistan in 2003. Based in Manchester, she wrote the scripts in English and they were translated into Urdu by the production team, who also made some amendments and even added whole scenes to better showcase the leading actors. In Typhoon, she adopted some of the visual storytelling she’d developed in the series, but exerted more control over characters and story.

I think we can also detect some of the tensions experienced in working in TV in a particular line from the novel:

“The TV people forgot that there were people living out in the countryside whose problems and lifestyle needed to be reflected” (p. 69).

Qaisra kindly gave me a couple more of her books last night, so I’ll get to those in due course…

The Coral Bones, by EJ Swift

Three woman, separated by 250 years, are drawn to the same stretch of the Great Barrier Reef. In the present day, marine biologist Hana Ishikawa is working on a laboratory project to artificially evolve corals that will be more resilient to climate change. She also sets out in scuba gear to document the extinction of the coral out in the sea, bracing herself to dip under the water to see the damage done. Then a dead man is discovered in the water, his body painted in different colours as some kind of warning. The death creates headlines, and then the man’s widow gives Hana her late husband’s research, which includes old scientific papers about the waters where he was found, written by…

Judith Holliman is 17 when, in 1839, she convinces her father — a captain in the navy — to let her go with him on a voyage to chart the waters off northern Australia. Judith is an avid naturalist having read the books in her father’s library, but her options are limited due to her sex. How can she ever hope to be taken seriously, let alone be published? Things aren’t helped by the ship’s on-board naturalist, Mr Pook, treating her with such disdain…

And then, towards the end of the 22nd century, Telma Velasco is employed by a government agency to track down rare animals held in captivity, in a heat-ravaged world where climate mitigation is just beginning to have an impact. She is also grieving — or failing to properly grieve — the loss of a grown-up daughter in a wildfire. But then Team gets the most extraordinary tip-off…

As with the author’s When There Are Wolves Again, this is a brilliant book. Like that novel, it involves two women battling to respond to the debilitating effects of climate change, and begins in the present day and extends into the future. In doing so, it explores what we’re going to have to live through and what things might be done to protect ourselves and the environment. It is by turns devastating and full of hope. But here, there’s a third woman, writing in 1839, just after Darwin has published a report of time on the Beagle but before he’s worked out his ideas of evolution by natural selection. I think that would help win over readers who would not normally venture into sci-fi.

The three women are very different in themselves, a fact underlined by the audio version having three narrators, Anna Burnett, Brigid Lohrey and Kate Winter. The three protagonists live in very different times, facing very different social pressures. Yet all three share a passion for the natural world, a horror at its destruction, and are constrained in what they can do. It it seems impossible that any of them might have a happy ending. 

Hana, for example, is so overwhelmed by grief for the coming apocalypse, the sixth major extinction event on Earth, that she breaks up with her pregnant partner — unable to contemplate the world in which they’d be bringing up a child. Judith is on a last adventure before she is inevitably sent to London where her mother will find her a husband. Telma is so beaten up by grief and loss she can’t face her surviving family, including a new grandchild.

As the story continues, there are hints of links between these three women, and the chance to work out what became of Judith and Hana after their own accounts end, teased from clues in the later-set stories. It’s beautifully done, teasing us with pain and loss to come for these people we’ve come to like. They’re each well drawn characters, with foibles of their own: flawed humans, in the face of insurmountable odds and loss, trying to do the right thing and save something of our world. I didn’t want it to end.

Arise to Conquer, by Wing Commander Ian Gleed, DFC

A friend recommended this extraordinary first-hand account of the Battle of Britain by one of the Hurricane pilots, written soon after the events of the summer of 1940 and published in 1942. That was just as well, as Wing Commander “Widge” Gleed was killed in action the following year. I got hold of a first edition, yet knowing his fate casts a shadow as I read it. His friends are shot down, he’s in a serious accident, he wonders about his odds, and won’t make long-term plans... 

The book begins on the morning of 3 September 1939, with Gleed woken by his batman, going for breakfast with other pilots, then to check his plane out on the ’drome before listening to the Prime Minister’s announcement on the radio. Yet war doesn’t kick off immediately — the expected Blitz doesn’t come, at least not at first.

“For days there had been no action” except instructions on what to do in an air raid, the business of blacking out building and vehicles, and ominous warnings of fuel rationing that is bad news for one friend, Micky, who owns a rather fuel-thirsty Buick.

The commanding officer knows Gleed as “Leeds” (p. 14), his fellow pilots called him “Widget” or “Widge”; of the latter, he claims “I don’t know why” (p. 15), but Wikipedia suggests it was because he wasn’t very tall. He must have known that but chose not to say, the first of several examples of him not being entirely honest with the reader.

Given a forty-eighter, or 48 hours’ leave, he heads to Herne Bay with his girlfriend Pam, where they sail his boat to Broadstairs — where she lives — without formal permission to be in the water, running the risk of being apprehended or hitting mines. They chance their luck anyhow and, “It was a wizard day,” he says (p. 19) — an adjective he uses a lot. So here he is, cheerful, optimistic, a bit gleefully mischievous. 

Yet this scene and several that follow read very differently when we know Pamela didn’t exist. Gleed later claimed he invented a girlfriend for the book because reader’s like a romance. But in later years, some people who knew Gleed claimed he was gay. So I found myself reading the frequent references to Pam wondering if she was entirely invented, and how much she might stand in for someone else, a man Gleed was close to but did not dare put in print.

For example, Gleed has a last weekend with his parents in Finchley before being posted to France. His mum has amassed a great wealth of supplies for him to take, including two rolls of loo paper; his father — a veteran of the First World War — knows he’ll want to travel light. Meanwhile,

“Daphne, my sister, ‘phoned up Pam for me, and asked her to come and stay the night with us—rather a tall order for her, as she was at home at Broadstairs. She said that she would be arriving at Victoria at ten that evening, and would I meet her?” (p. 24)

He and Pam stay up until the early hours talking, and in the morning Mum can barely keep the tears back, Daphne has to blow her nose a lot, “and Pam and Dad smiled.” If Pam never existed, did something like this still play out, with Daphne — perhaps knowing more than Mum and Dad about the nature of the relationship — inviting someone else?

Then there are some other encounters. In France, Gleed arrives in Merville to find the place crowded with troops and refugees, but he finds a house with a huge double bed going spare, and offers to share it with another pilot, John Banks:

“He was a young boy, who was looking very tired … After asking the lady of the house to wake us at four-thirty, we retired to our room with a couple of candles, stripped and leapt into bed naked. … In two minutes I was asleep.” (p. 40).

In Lille, Gleed and another pilot are the only ones not to befriend the local sex workers and find a double room together (p. 26). It’s at least suggestive.

These infrequent moments aside, the bulk of the book is vivid descriptions of battle in the air. He gives a really good sense of the nerves before a flight and the eagerness to get airborne and have a crack at the enemy. Then, when specks of black appear in the sky, we’re suddenly “Tally-ho” and into the frantic business, the breathless style often passing into internal dialogue and the present tense. Brrrrrrrrm! he tells us, and rat tat tat, rat tat tat.

There’s a lot of slang — Gleed feels the need of footnotes to explain “bull” (red tape),  “flap” (a fuss), “a bind” (a chore), “bumf” (paper), “duffs up” (conditions becoming hazy or cloudy; by extension “duff” means anything going wrong), “force-lob” (forced landing), “piece of cake” (easy), “gong” (medal). I wonder how much war films are to blame for much of this passing into common use. He uses “wizard” a lot, and also “old boy” — the latter still a favourite of my paternal grandfather, who was also in the RAF in the war; it's how he addressed me in my teens and twenties. 

Gleed uses “damned” and “bastard” but there are several instances of a censored “b——s”, not least in referring to the enemy. There are also footnotes for the technical terms used by the RAF: “gen” (genuine information, to be relied on), “black-out” (rendered unconscious by by pulling too quickly out of a dive or turning too quickly), “perspex” and “glasshouse” (the hood of the cockpit), and “super-readiness” (pilots sitting in their planes so they can be airborne in 15 seconds). Pilots shout “Contact” to ground crews when their planes are starting up, and wish one another “Good hunting”. A system for producing a little extra speed is known as a “tit”, which results in an extraordinary sentence in the midst of one scrap:

“I was balls out with the tit pulled” (p. 79).

He’s good on other details: the role of batmen in running round after their pilots, getting them washed and packed and fed; the different types of Hurricane screw; the physical impact of flying (lots of sweating, plus sore arms); and the nature of tests conducted on pilots — a naked examination where Gleed is worried about having dirty feet, then a sight test involving being able to discern tiny letters or figures on a colour background, then blowing a bubble of mercury up a tube and holding it there, as seen in The Right Stuff. 

There’s also good detail on what pilots do in their time off. There’s a lot of drinking — one evening involves, “sherry, champagne and port; then, after that, beer” (p. 15). Once promoted to Wing Commander, Gleed is a bit more careful:

“We all drank orange squash, much to Robbie’s disgust. I was strict about that, as we had a long time to wait, and it’s so damned easy to drink quietly away, not noticing how many beers you have; by the time midnight came we would have been in no condition for a ground-straff. So orange squash it was.” (p. 93)

We learn the pilots share a copy of the book Gone With the Wind (p. 55), read detective novels and magazines, and go to the flicks or the theatre — after getting his gong from the King at Buckingham Palace, Gleed has lunch at the Savoy and then sees Cottage to Let. Pilots lark about, build model aircraft, eat lots of bacon and eggs and worry about getting their tea. It’s a convivial fraternity with Cock, Robbie, Dusty, Watty, Dinky, Beaver, Dickie, Rubber, etc — and so all the more shocking when some of these chaps don’t come home. There’s a poignant chapter in which a few men attend the funeral of one man, Squadron-Leader “Shuvvel” Forbes, killed in the big blitz on 14 August 1940. He’s from New Zealand so has no relatives nearby; his colleagues fly in for the ceremony, place their wreaths and then fly back to HQ ready for the next scrap, trying not to think too much about their own mortality.

All in all, this is an invaluable primary source. For all that bits may be invented, it conjures the sounds and atmosphere. The tone of it, the I-say-you-chaps, is very like the other books I’ve read on the subject and the films of the time, though I think anyone writing about the Battle of Britain or the pilots of the time — my forthcoming Doctor Who — The Missing Hour involves Hurricane pilots on Malta around this same period — may find it too easy to fall into pastiche. That would be a pity given that this book, this record of a man on borrowed time, is so bracingly alive.

I have also been recommended Flying to the Limit (1996) by Roland Beaumont, who flew with Gleed. More on that to come...

Jean Steps Out, by Jean Kitson

Published this month, Jean Steps Out: The Memoirs of a Yorkshire Actress in Rep 1946-1959 is an account by Jean Kitson (1928-2020) of her years with Harry Hanson’s Court Players in Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Keighley, Chester, Stockport and Swansea. It’s been published by her son David, who provides notes, a list of his mother’s known stage performances and biographies of the other actors in the company. That includes Jean’s sometime boyfriend, David Whitaker, about whom I wrote a book.

Jean and David were both in the cast of Murder at the Vicarage at the Prince’s Theatre, Bradford, performed during the week of 19-24 February 1951, and rehearsed the week before. They remained in Bradford for the next couple of months and then both transferred to the Theatre Royal, Leeds, their last known credit together Night Call, which ran from 24 to 29 November 1952. In the new year, David joined the Hanson company in Stockton-on-Tees and Jean rejoined the company in Bradford.

This memoir is an engaging account, full of anecdotes about the practicalities of repertory theatre: what exactly an assistant stage manager does, and how they move up to full actor; the fact Harry Hanson wouldn’t allow prompting of lines in actual performances; his kindness and support in turning up for shows across the country; the fact he chose the plays he thought his audience would pay for, imposing them on his companies. 

For a researcher like me, it’s useful to know what Jean got paid — having left school, she was on 25 shilling at week at a mill office in Morley, then £2 a week at the Inland Revenue, then £4 a week as ASM at the Theatre Royal in Leeds, so joining the theatre was a step up from ordinary work. Still, there were privations: the cold, the struggle to find costumes and props, even the accommodation. For a season of plays in south Wales, Jean had to share a bed with leading lady Joyce Cross (p. 21).

Yet this is a cheery account of a fondly remembered period. Jean’s enthusiasm for her days in rep is matched by her delight in the later success of many actors she worked with — Billie Whitelaw, Peggy Mount, Patricia Pilkington (ie Pat Phoenix), Francis Matthews and Bryan Mosley, as well as future Labour MP Gerald Kaufman. I was particularly interested to read more about names that are perhaps less well known but are familiar to me from the cast lists and reviews of David Whitaker’s own stage plays, such as Cissie Ashley, Lawrence Storm and Frank Senior.

And then, at the end, the book includes a QR code with a link to an audio recording of Jean and (it’s thought) John Whyte in a scene from the play Jean Steps Out and with John Roberts in a scene from Quiet Wedding, both recorded in 1948. The former is rather risqué — Basil calls the bluff of his fiancé’s flirtatious sister Jane by turning up in her bedroom one night. The accents are cut-glass, a hint of the north-east still discernible under vowels stretched by elocution. It’s a vivid bit of social history, suddenly alive — and gave me shivers.

Sadly, for my purposes, there’s no mention in what Jean wrote of David Whitaker, as either actor or boyfriend, but Jean’s son David has kindly told me what his mother told him. Indeed, he got in touch because he recognised his mother in one of the photos included in my biography. The memoir provides some context for that picture:

“During the summer months many of the towns we played on organised Sunday afternoon fetes and galas. Celebrities were sought on these occasions, not only to perform the opening ceremony but to crown the Carnival Queen and sometimes judge a fancy dress competition. Not having access either to Royalty or the film industry the organisers looked closer to home, and that’s where the Court Players came in handy.

“We girls always thought it was well worthwhile. I’m not sure the men were quite so enthusiastic but they gallantly came along as escorts ... For us it was a rare opportunity to dress up glamorously, be picked up with some ceremony at the Stage Door and whisked away to a summer afternoon of festivity.” (p. 66)

So here is David Whitaker, on his feet and in mid-flow, in the summer of either 1951 or 1952, presumably in Leeds. Jean is beside him in the white hat. There is a prize cup on the table in front of them, about to be awarded. David and Jean are both 23 or 24 in the picture.

Sadly, Jean probably didn’t know that David immortalised her in the names of the protagonists of his episode of Public Eye (1968) — Valerie and Eric Kitson, played by Sheila Fearn and Edward Fox.

See also:

• Jean Kitson at Theatricalia
• David Whitaker at Theatricalia

Written by Terrance Dicks book launch, 25 November

The Portico Library in Manchester will host the launch of my new biography, Written by Terrance Dicks, on the evening of 25 November. I'll be in conversation with Portico Library trustee Esther Lisk-Carew from Manchester Metropolitan University, discussing Terrance's life and career.

• Buy tickets for Written by Terrance Dicks: Book Launch with Simon Guerrier

As well as his prolific contribution to Doctor Who and the 235 books he published, Terrance was also script editor and producer of the BBC's classic serials in the 1980s. At the event, the Portico Library will display some first editions of some of the books he saw dramatised, including Jane Eyre and Oliver Twist. 

I'll also be at Target Book Club in London on 24 October. More events and details relating to the book, including how to pre-order it, to follow soon. You can already pre-order my novelisation The Six Doctors and Steve Cole's novelisation of The Vampire Mutation, both based on papers I uncovered in the course of researching the biography.

(Yes, 25 November is the anniversary of the UK broadcast of The Five Doctors.)

The Great Dictator, by Matthew Sweet

The Dr and I had a lovely time this week in That London, at the launch for this new biography of Barbara Cartland by our pal Matthew. What joy to catch up with old mates and natter to new people. 

The book is magnificent, in part because its subject is so extraordinary, at once compelling and alarming. I found the accounts of her brothers’ wartime experience especially moving, and the attempts to cash in on the family connection to Princess Diana particularly cringe-inducing. But the book is also peppered with other, extraordinary lives — the various scrapes of Commander Glen Kidston, which begins with him as a 16 year-old naval cadet being torpedoed and rescued twice in one morning in 1914 (p. 146), or the amazing locked-room mystery of a man who somehow fell from a plane (p. 148). 

As ever, Matthew has an eye for the telling detail, the incongruous and absurd — such as the promotion to give away Cartland’s books to customers of a particular butcher. As he says, she’s a major figure of the 20th century, so her life is a kind affords a new history of that period, stranger than we might expect.

It is also a new experience to be papped.

London, UK. 9 September 2026. (C) Simon Guerrier, writer, attends the launch party of The Great Dictator: A Life of Barbara Cartland by Matthew Sweet (Hodder & Stoughton) taking place at The Warburg Institute in Woburn Square. Guests were encouraged to wear pink to honour Barbara Cartland. Credit: Stephen Chung / Alamy Live News

See also: me on Bookish Volume II by Matthew Sweet.

The Masters, by CP Snow

First published in 1951, this is the fourth of Snow’s “Strangers and Brothers” novels, which chart the life of lawyer and scholar Lewis Eliot (the series that originated the phrase “corridors of power”). This one, spanning 1937, begins with Eliot, now based at an unnamed Cambridge college, informed that the beloved master there is dying of cancer — but doesn’t know it himself. The master’s wife, out of love, wants to let him enjoy what life remains.

While Eliot and his colleagues debate the ethics of this, they also discuss which of them will succeed the master — or whether the unthinkable might happen, with someone brought in from outside. Yet when two candidates put themselves forward, the electors are split seven to six. Eliot favours a man called Jago, but others think him too ordinary, his wife too presumptuous and overbearing. Before the old master is dead, the campaigning starts to get nasty…

There didn’t seem much substance to this not-quite-comedy of manners, at least to begin with. But as the months pass and word comes through of things seen and heard on the Continent, the petty squabbles, egos and viciousness of this small college become an analogy for something greater — politics and honour and relationships and values in the shadow of looming war. 

It’s also peppered with strange, sad details. There’s a particularly haunting moment relatively late on, when Lady Muriel finally tells her husband the truth, that he will not recover from his cancer. Until this moment, the lie about his condition has been a burden for Lady Muriel and the others in the college, but telling him offers little solace. Though ill and getting ever thinner, the master had been ploughing on with a book. Now that abruptly halts, because, “It’s hard to think without a future,” he says.

Then there’s what the news does to his relationship with his wife:

“But the hardest blow for her was that in looking towards his death, he seemed to have forgotten her.”

Indeed, a close friend, Roy Calvert, reveals to Eliot that the master and his wife have long had problems.

“Theirs had not been a joyous marriage. The Master might have brought happiness to many women, Roy said, but somehow he had never set her free.” (p. 126)

It’s all quietly devastating, but I’m also really struck by that conception of what a good marriage should be — liberating and empowering, so that your partner takes flight.

The campaign against Jago is horrible, and reminded me of the villainous Mrs Gamart in The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald, whose malicious campaign is just as destructive. It’s also horribly misogynist, and there’s a lot here about a little world of men, petty and jealous and vain, who are — for all some of them have the potential to be brilliant — all in their ways little men. 

I thought one younger member of the group might be different, a scientist called Luke. But then he has some success in puzzling out a new theory, and goes full on Swiss Tony:

“It’s wonderful … when you’ve got a problem that is really coming out. It’s like making love — suddenly you unconscious takes control. And nothing can stop you. You know that you’re making old Mother Nature sit up and beg. And you say to her, ‘I’ve got you, you old bitch.’ You’ve got her just where you want her. Then to show there’s no ill-feeling, you give her an affectionate pinch on the bottom.” (p. 268)

The story ends with with some last-minute shenanigans over who will vote for whom, the result of the election and the loser being brave. One wonders how agreeably things might continue in the college given the way people have behaved. But the sense from Eliot is that some kind of order is restored — though, as readers, we know they’re all now under the cloud of war. That’s explored in the next novel in the sequence, The New Man (1954).

Snow then provides a 12-page appendix with the history of his fictional college. A bit to my surprise, I found this compelling. He charts how, in the middle ages, an informal gathering of locals seeking advantage in trade abroad, which meant learning some Latin and maths, slowly gained structure and architecture. While the colleges and university — the two are apparently distinct — have existed for a thousand years, we’re told that most of its traditions are just a few generations old. The implication is that its history is fiction, but it’s an invented place anyway, based on fact.

Star Trek 4, by James Blish

Star Trek is 60 years-old today, sort of. Over the weekend of 1-5 September 1966, its pilot episode The Menagerie was shown to attendees of the 24th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Cleveland, Ohio — says p. 93 of this book. The series proper began with The Man Trap, broadcast on CTV in Canada on 6 September and on NBC in the US two days later. It wasn’t shown in the UK for almost another three years.

Anyway, this fourth anthology of prose versions of TV episodes was published in the US in July 1971 and issued in the UK in October, price 25p (the first Star Trek book in New Pence). It was the last of five Star Trek books available in the UK prior to 8 March 1972, the date on which Doctor Who script editor Terrance Dicks wrote to writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin, asking (among other things) for the return of the Star Trek books he’d loaned them. So, this is my final post on the subject of the influence of these books on Doctor Who of that period.

(For more of this stuff see my posts on Blish’s Star Trek, Star Trek 2, Star Trek 3 and the original novel Spock Must Die!, plus my article “Who Connections — Star Trek”, for Doctor Who Magazine #632 (August 2026), pp. 44-49 and my forthcoming biography Written by Terrance Dicks...)

The cover of Star Trek 4 looks very different from previous books, with artwork depicting the USS Enterprise in space, between two pale blue worlds. For the first time, there’s no artwork or photograph of the main characters — I wonder if, like with the later Doctor Who novelisations, there were issues over fees owed to actors. As with the previous volume, this is “all new award-winning” Star Trek, though that “new” is a little ingenuous: the adventures here were all broadcast on TV at least three years previously.

The book is dedicated “To Donna Woodman and the other new English Star Trek fans”, the author having now settled in the UK and, through these books, found himself the locus of an active fandom determined to see Star Trek resurrected. In his preface, Blish says he receives a lot of letters from fans and uses them to decide which stories to adapt next — suggesting he had free choice, rather than having it imposed by the publisher or rights-holder. 

He tells us that The Menagerie, adapted in this volume, won the prestigious Hugo award in 1967 and City on the Edge of Forever (adapted in Star Trek 2) won in 1968, but that the subsequent cancellation of the series meant there was nothing to nominate for the award in 1970. This is not entirely honest. For one thing, it misses out the 1969 awards entirely, where no Star Trek episodes were nominated. Technically, Star Trek could have been nominated in 1970 — any of the the 11 new episodes first broadcast in 1969 would have been eligible. But for two years running, it seems, the series was on air but not considered good enough by science-fiction fans.

Production on Star Trek ended in 1969, so Blish was faced with a limited number of episodes to choose from for these books, and an even more limited number of good episodes. But he’d also by this point committed to double the number of these books: 

“As matters stand now, there will be at least four more, all within the next year or so” (p. ix).

That may explain why there are just six episodes in this book, so as not to burn through the fuel. But I think it also explains the peculiar choice of first story.

All Our Yesterdays involves yet another time travel portal, on this occasion dumping our heroes back in a superstitious period. Spock gets emotional and snogs a woman because, we learn, he is 10,000 years back in time and that's what Vulcans were like back then — as if the psychology of his people, even on a far distant world, is contagious. There’s no effort to suggest that the same is true of humans. Anyway, the basic wheeze is that Kirk, with his technological gizmos, is accused of witchcraft. There’s a bit of running about. It’s not very good.

The Devil in the Dark is much better. It’s set on the planet Janus — not Janus VI as on TV — which is rich in the element pergium, atomic number 358. Mining operations for this precious resource are halted by a “big and kind of shaggy monster” (p. 23) that kills an engineer. There are references to new sci-fi material teflon (p. 24 and p. 26), a recent real-life invention of the space age, and Kirk is surprised that people here still use old-fashioned technology like fission (p. 27), because the Enterprise gets its energy from antimatter (p. 25). There’s no mention of teflon, fission or antimatter in the TV episodes, so this sci-fi materials stuff must all come from Blish.

At one heroic moment, Kirk says, “I feel the need for a conference” (p. 29), meaning a planning meeting to decide the next move. I tend to think of sci-fi business meetings round a table, all Walter Citrine in space, as a characteristic of The Next Generation, so this early version caught my attention. But “conference” is also the word Doctor Who script editor Terrance Dicks and producer Barry Letts used for their meetings with writers to discuss potential storylines, scene breakdowns and scripts. I’ve seen no evidence of the term being used on Doctor Who before this, so the intriguing thought is they took the word from Kirk to make their natters about plot logic sound a bit more dynamic…

If that’s a bit fanciful, elements of this episode were surely a direct influence on them. The plot, involving the last survivor of an intelligent alien species attacking human miners, only for us to realise the alien is quite nice, surely helped to shape The Curse of Peladon (1972). You can almost hear Spock addressing the Third Doctor in one exchange (though he’s really addressing McCoy):

“No creature is monstrous in its own environment, Doctor. And this one appears to be Intelligent, as well.” (p. 29)

I’ve previously argued that the influence of Star Trek episode Mirror Mirror on Doctor Who story Inferno (1970) must have been via the book rather than the TV episode, given relative dates they were available in the UK. Here, the opposite must be true: scripts for The Curse of Peladon were commissioned on 14 May 1971, after a storyline conference between Dicks, Letts and writer Brian Hayles on 1 March — months before this book was issued in the UK. But The Devil in the Dark was broadcast on BBC One at 17.15 on Saturday 6 September 1969 and repeated on 17 March 1971, the latter just as the plot for The Curse of Peladon was being worked out. So, it was the repeat that influenced Doctor Who.

Hayles said himself that he drew on Conan-Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), with attacks by a mythical creature revealed to be a hoax. Yet his Doctor Who story is much closer to what happens with the Horta here. The whole feel of the Doctor Who story, with a sci-fi trip to a civilisation that feels if not ancient than medieval may mean All Our Yesterdays was also an influence.

Both TV episode and book version of The Devil in the Dark reveal the Horta to be a silicon-based life form, which may have influenced Baker and Martin’s later Doctor Who story The Hand of Fear (1976). Blish thought beyond the surface of this creature, and tells us it has teflon-like internal tubing — a stone on the outside but with circulatory system of molten plastic.

Spock sets out his case for not killing the creature even before he’s learned its soft centre:

“If this is the only survivor of a dead race, to kill it would be a crime against science.”

Kirk seems to find this eccentric: 

“Spock in particular was sometimes inclined to hold his fire when his conservation instincts, or his scientific curiosity, were aroused” (p. 34).

He supports his friend, but is bemused by this hippy/ecowarrior/woke sensibility. I would argue thaty this sensibility is very much in line with the Third Doctor — and a new development compared to previous incarnations. I contend that this Star Trek influenced both the character of the Third Doctor and the adventures he had.

Blish describes something quite different to the blobby creature seen on screen:

“It was huge, shaggy, multicolored, and knobbly with objects which might have been heads, sense organs, hands” (p. 37).

The shagginess is much more like Aggedor in The Curse of Peladon, so perhaps the book informed the design of that story — which went into production after this book was available in the UK. 

The TV episode and the book both reveal the simplistic way in which the Horta communicates with humans: “No Kill” it says (p. 39). Blish suggests in the altar and chamber something of the creature’s culture (p. 40). I think this inspired more than stuff in Doctor Who; amaze amaze, there’s quite a bit of the Horta in Rocky in Project Hail Mary.

In treating the wounded stone creature, McCoy uses thermoconcrete — a fun gag — and gets to use the first iteration of his, “I’m a doctor” catchphrase; in this case, he is not a bricklayer (p. 41). At the end of the story, the Horta and its progeny agree to help the humans with their mining. Spock says the agreement is logical, but I can’t think what’s in it for these indigenous creatures as their world is plundered.

That, I think, is where The Curse of Peladon is notably different from Star Trek. Doctor Who of this period is much more ambivalent about the virtues of the Federation and Earth Empire, which Terrance acknowledged quite openly:

“You can’t just do a kind of old imperial story whereby the galactic federation is coming to Peladon and is bringing the simplistic natives the benefits of civilisation, like Sanders of Africa bringing law and order to Africa. This isn’t how people think any more, even with a family adventure serial. We are all well aware now that what happens when an advanced [people] meet a primitive [one] is not always to the benefit of the primitives.” — Terrance interviewed by John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado for Doctor Who — The Unfolding Text (1983), p. 53.

The next story in the book, Journey to Babel, begins with Dr McCoy asking Spock for a demonstration of the Vulcan salute, which we’re told is “complex” and that McCoy cannot reproduce, making it sound more like the flourish of Arnold J Rimmer in Red Dwarf than the familiar split-fingers thing. Again, I wonder how much Star Trek Blish had actually seen to miss something so well known. 

The concern about such protocol is that Kirk, Spock and McCoy are welcoming aboard a Vulcan ambassador called Sarek. Kirk knows this Sarek is 102 years-old, but not that he is Spock’s dad. The awkwardness that follows is surely because Kirk has been badly briefed; I reckon by AI.

There’s some fun stuff about Spock’s people, such as that a Vulcan teddy bear, a sehlat, is alive and has six-inch fangs (p. 51). (No, even I think it’s going too far to suggest that that could have been an influence on the troll doll in Terror of the Autons.)

Sarek is one of a number of delegates squabbling over whether to allow planet Coridan to join the Federation. The issue is that, 

“Coridans have a nearly unlimited wealth of dilithium crystals, but are underpopulated and unprotected. This invites illegal mining operations.” (p. 52)

Of course, the Federation is acting entirely altruistically and it’s just one heck of a coincidence that its fleet of starships run on exactly these crystals. One delegate, a Tellarite, is then murdered and we must work out the culprit. That is all very The Curse of Peladon, though Journey to Babel was first broadcast in the UK on Monday, 22 June 1970, a month after scripts had been commissioned for that Doctor Who story.

There are some notable details here: McCoy can give Kirk orders; Spock trusts McCoy, “to McCoy’s obvious startlement” (p. 58); and Spock insists on observing protocol even if means doing so at the expense of his own father (p. 59). Spock’s relationship with his father doesn’t seem logical in the slightest, but hush, you’re spoiling the story.

At the end, Spock exposes the real villains — smugglers from Orion trying to cause chaos and play off both sides (p. 66). There’s something of that in The Curse of Peladon and another Doctor Who story, Frontier in Space (1973), though I think the latter owes more to the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967). In fact, I wonder if that film inspired elements of this Star Trek.

The Menagerie begins with a 15-line footnote explaining that Blish felt it too confusing to adapt the broadcast version, which added lots of new material involving Kirk etc to the untransmitted pilot episode which had Spock under the command of a different captain. Instead of all the dramatic business of Spock-now facing court martial, Blish simply adapted the script of the pilot, in the process restoring the original ending not seen on broadcast. 

Reading it now, with these episodes readily available to watch or rewatch, that means the adaptation offers intriguing details about the original conception and development of this key story. But I can a Star Trek fan of the time feeling a bit short-changed to lose half the TV story — including all the “proper” bits of Star Trek, such as Kirk, McCoy etc. Our relationship to the book is different when it is the only permanent record of ephemeral TV.

Blish says that The Menagerie was the only two-part Star Trek story of the orignal run because the producers didn’t feel it worked. That is odd because it works very well, I think. Indeed, some of my favourite moments of later iterations of Star Trek are its cliffhangers.

The story begins in the aftermath of the Enterprise’s maiden battle, somewhere around Rigel VIII, with Spock still limping from whatever was involved (p. 69). Blish underlines how remarkable it is that Pike doesn't think twice about leaving the Enterprise in the command of Number One — a woman. She is,

“Slim and dark in a Nile Valley sort of way, she was one of those women who always look the same between the ages of twenty and fifty, but she had a mind like the proverbial steel trap, and Pike have never seen her shaken in any situation” (p. 70).

But Blish doesn’t think — or have the authority — to provide her with a name. (In the TV series Strange New Worlds, the character’s name is Una, which is a nice play on “number one” but also in rightful homage to my pal Una McCormack, and surely the coolest thing ever to happen to a TV tie-in writer.)

Blish refers to the “dematerialization of the Transporter” (p. 72). This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. The TARDIS is said to “dematerialise” (or it is “dematerialising” or has “dematerialised”) in dialogue used in TV stories The Time Meddler and The Myth Makers (1965), The Daleks Master Plan (1965-66) and The Smugglers (1966). My guess is that that was the influence of story editor Dennis Spooner, picked up by his immediate successor Donald Tosh. But the word then fell by the wayside.

But then the term was picked up again by Terrance Dicks in exactly the period of Doctor Who that I think was influenced a lot by Star Trek. Not only does the TARDIS dematerialise, it boasts a dematerialisation circuit. In that sense, the word is used in dialogue in Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil, The Claws of Axos and Colony In Space (1971), Day of the Daleks and The Time Monster (1972), The Three Doctors (1972-73), The Green Death (1973) and Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974).

That can’t come from this book, which was published after those 1971 episodes. But perhaps Terrance took the word “dematerialise” from the Star Trek episode Return to Tomorrow, where Scotty uses it to refer to the transporter. That episode was first broadcast in the UK on 17 August 1970, just as scripts for Terror of the Autons were being finalised. Yes, yes, it’s a stretch, but I’m rather delighted by the thought that such a potent word in Doctor Who might have been pinched from the opposition.

Whatever the case, the fantasy realm Captain Pike encounters here is described as, “almost like that of an Oriental potentate” (p. 84); the latest example in these books of Oriental to mean “alien but sexy". There seems a genuine risk that Pike might give up Star Fleet and go with these fantasy slave traders, even before, “Pike saw another girl, nude, her skin green” (p. 85) which tempts him further. This is Vina, her name surely taken from Weena in The Time Machine by HG Wells. Like Pike, she seems quite keen on the fantasy, protesting, “No, let us finish” (p. 86) when it threatens to stop.

At the end of the story, Pike escapes the fantasy world and Vina, but his experience affects how this captain, in charge of a crew of competent people not judged by their sex, now views some members of his crew:

“Pike could not resist stealing a quick look from Number One to [Yeoman] Colt, wondering which of them, in other circumstances, he might have picked.”

Nicely, Blish ends with a twist on this, empowering the two women:

“When he found them both looking at him as if with the same speculation, he turned his eyes determinedly to the viewscreen and banished the thought” (p. 93).

In his afterword, Blish notes that it was decided that this dynamic of captain and two potential love interests would not sustain many episodes of the TV show so it was abandoned. In other changes, he says, Number One was demoted and became Lt Uhura, Colt became Janice Rand, medical officer Boyce becames McCoy, and Tyler became Sulu.

“The net effect was to make the new officers more interracial than before” (p. 94).

He concludes that he sometimes gets letters criticising his adaptations for being different to those as broadcast — presumably from fans with audio recordings of the episodes. He says, “I had to make my own judgment of what would best serve the authors’ intents”, showing fidelity to what was in their heads, if not what they typed.

Next up is The Enterprise Incident, the first adaptation in these books of a third season episode, in which Kirk is working under sealed orders that seem irrational. To keep the secret, he plays up to being “irritable and snappish” as if fatigued (p. 95), to the extent that when Spock questions his behaviour, Kirk responds, “you pointy-eared turncoat” (p. 104).

All of this is because the Federation are sending Kirk on a secret mission to meet a Romulan Commander, an otherwise unnamed woman Kirk thinks, “beautiful, aristocratic, compelling” (p. 99). Like Vina, she soon slips out of her clothes:

“Compared to her appearance in uniform, she seemed now to be wearing hardly anything, although this was in part an illusion of contrast” (p. 109).

We’re also told that, “Vulcans were cyclical in their mating customs, and immune to sexual attraction at all times” (p. 115). That’s clearly not true of the half-human Spock here, who is interested in the Commander.

We learn Spock has been in Starfleet for 18 years (p. 104). He kills Kirk again (p. 107) — a fact spoiled by the Radio Times listing for this episode: Spock “is eventually forced to eliminate his commander with the Vulcan death grip!” (Radio Times #2498, 25 September 1971). I can see why that description would make the casual viewer want to tune in.

The Enterprise achieves Warp Nine while shrouded by the Romulan cloaking device (p. 114), a piece of technology that seems to work very well and is extremely useful; the Enterprise never uses it again. Likewise, the Romulan Commander is a striking woman with a connection to Spock — just the sort of character deserving of a rematch. We don’t see her again, either.

Finally, there’s A Piece of the Action, involving a cargo cult based on Chicago gangsters — and on a particular book, Mobs of the Twenties published in New York in 1993 (p. 121). It’s a fun idea for a story from the 1960s adapted for prose in the early 70s to hinge on a text from the near future but about the past, seized upon by an even more distant future.

In the TV episode, Kirk makes up a card game he says is played on Beta Antares IV. Blish adds that Antares is, in fact, not a double star — so this is Kirk being clever (and certainly not wrong about basic astronomy), saying something his friends will know to be false as a kind of signal to them (p. 124).

Blish also adds a reference to “klee-et”, which he explains is a Vulcan word meaning “prepare to engage”, and refers us in a footnote to the episode Amok Time in Star Trek Three (p. 124, yes spelling out the ordinal) — the first time a footnote appears in these books of adaptations of episodes, having been used a lot in original novel Spock Must Die!

Again, the morality here is a bit suss, Kirk using a show of force from the Enterprise to put down the gangsters. Basically, the Federation is a bigger hoodlum than they are. But I’m struck by a notable absence in these four books: apart from Errand of Mercy in Star Trek 2, they’ve avoided all the TV episodes that work as analogies for the contemporary conflict in Vietnam. At university 30 years ago, I read with great interest H Bruce Franklin’s “Star Trek in the Vietnam Era” in Science-Fiction Studies vol 21, no 1 (March 1994), pp. 24-34, which demonstrates how select episodes of Star Trek reveal changing attitudes to the real-life conflict. Was there an active choice made not to adapt the stories that touched on contemporary geo-politics? Again, I’m curious who decided or imposed the episodes to be adapted.

As a permanent record of the TV episodes, these books must have had a formative influence on early Star Trek fandom in the US and the UK. I wonder how much they influenced a sense of the “best” episodes, or most worthy ones, filtered by the selection process and Blish’s own prejudice as an active member of the community at the World Science Fiction Convention. How much did he impose on fans?

I think this stuff was hugely influential on Doctor Who — both on TV and and on its own nascent fandom. Doctor Who surely took the idea of the Doctor as diplomat from Star Trek. He’s got his own elegant way of fighting — CTRL+F “Vulcan neck-pinch”, CTRL+R “Venusian aikido”. But the Doctor doesn’t kill his best friend the Brigadier, let alone kill him twice. And there’s nothing about the Doctor having alien hormones or a previously unmentioned wife. At least not for the time being.

My abiding thought is how much these breezy adaptations of TV episodes must have influenced Terrance Dicks’s approach to the novelisations of Doctor Who, and even the fact that such books existed at all. Star Trek 5 by James Blish was published in the US in February 1972 and issued in the UK in June that year. Thereafter, Corgi published UK editions of the Star Trek books by Blish. That was surely a vote of confidence in a market for such titles, even with no new Star Trek being made on TV. That must have helped support the case for a new line of Doctor Who novelisations launched by Target in 1973.

I shall return to those Doctor Who novelisations in due course, with a long post picking up where I left off. Coming soon: Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters…