Doctor Who: 1994

After episode 695 (Survival, part 3)
Shakedown - Return of the Sontarans, premiered 1 December 1994
<< back to 1993

Susan and Ace?
Shakedown (1994)

Earlier this month, TV Choice gave a special award to Doctor Who for reaching 50. Peter Davison made a short speech:

"When Doctor Who was taken off the air in 1989, it seemed unlikely it would ever return - but we had forgotten about the fans, the people who had grown up watching and being inspired by the show."

A few years ago, I traced one thread of how that happened - starting in 1994.

Five years after the last episode had been broadcast, there was still no prospect of new Doctor Who on TV. Yet there was an audience for books, videos and magazines - a grown-up audience with disposable income. The Dreamwatch convention even produced its own original straight-to-video adventure, Shakedown  - which my friend Jason Haigh-Ellery worked on.

"‘Keith Barnfather had been offering [the convention] Downtime,’ says Haigh-Ellery. The script for this was by Marc Platt, and reunited several of the Doctor’s companions – a major selling point for fans. ‘But it just wasn’t ever going to get off the ground,’ Haigh-Ellery remembers. ‘That was nothing to do with rights but the availability of the actors. Kevin Davies heard about this, and said, “I’ve got this idea for a Sontarans story.”’

... The Sontarans would be just one way of drawing the fans to Shakedown, as the project was christened. The script would be by veteran Doctor Who writer Terrance Dicks and the production could also use ‘name’ actors when casting its several human characters. Because these were new roles, actor availability was no longer a problem – if one former Doctor Who star could not make the proposed shooting dates, they could go to another. The new roles also appealed to the actors.

Me, Bernice Summerfield - The Inside Story (2009), pp. 95-6.

"Directed by Kevin Davies, Shakedown was shot on location at HMS Belfast, a former frigate docked on the south bank of the Thames, in the summer of 1994. The cast was largely culled from Doctor Who and Blake’s 7, and included Ace-actress Sophie Aldred in the role of Mari. The bitchy, cowardly character was specifically written to be a million miles from Ace.

‘It’s always lovely to be given something different to do,’ says Aldred. ‘Ace had been going a long time even then, and there’s only so much you can dig into her past. She’s had everything analysed, every part of her. So actually to play a different part and confound audience expectation is fantastic. I think that’s really a kind of carry-on from the TV series, where people like Sheila Hancock and Dinsdale Landen completely relished play baddies. It’s always more fun to play the baddie, let’s face it.’"

Ibid., p. 56.

"The project got moving quickly. ‘Within a couple of weeks,’ says Haigh-Ellery, ‘everything was signed, sealed and delivered. It was that fast.’ Gary Leigh was executive producer, with director Kevin Davies and composer Mark Ayres also producing. How did Haigh-Ellery get involved? ‘I’d done productions, I was really keen to do it and also I’m a businessman. I’d worked with Gary on his magazine so he trusted me. He said, “Can you help me out?” So I came in as associate producer.’ What is the role of an associate producer? ‘As I discovered on that shoot, it was to stop the executive producer from killing the director! It was quite fraught, as we were all very honest about in the Making of Shakedown video. I think the film is great, don’t get me wrong. We were doing a Terrance Dicks Doctor Who script by any other name!’

The production went over budget, but by this point Haigh-Ellery had got the family business into much healthier shape. ‘I was able to say to Gary Leigh, “Don’t worry, I’ll cover it.” It was good I had the money to do that.’ Yet it had been a long slog to reach this point. ‘That two weeks filming on Shakedown was my first holiday since 1988,’ he says. ‘You wouldn’t think it was a holiday, but I did.’

How successful was Shakedown? ‘It made its money back and it’s still earning money today,’ says Haigh-Ellery. He was keen to start work on a follow-up project, but others did not share his enthusiasm. ‘Gary Leigh will say himself that he found Shakedown quite difficult,’ he continues. ‘We talked about Shakedown 2, and Gary was like, “Yeah, but I’m not doing it now.”’"

Ibid., p. 96

So Haigh-Ellery went it alone, commissioning Paul Cornell to write an original science-fiction drama, Phoneix Ryan, that he hoped would star Sophie Aldred. He was in negotiations with the Sci-Fi Channel to co-fund the project (as they had done on the PROBE series written by Mark Gatiss, which also starred characters and actors from Doctor Who).

Phoenix Ryan didn't happen, but as part of the negotiations Haigh-Ellery was required to set up a production company. So, on 21 June 1996 he formally registered company 03217457 - Big Finish Productions Limited.

We will speak more of Big Finish later.

Next episode: 1995

Blake's 7: Spy

I've written another Blake's 7 play for those splendid fellows at Big Finish:

Spy by Simon Guerrier
Starring Jan Chappell as Cally, Michael Keating as Vila and Gemma Whelan as Arta
Cally and Vila are undercover on the Federation-controlled world Cortol Four. It's a mission with an irresistible prize. And it's a mission that goes horribly wrong…

It's one of three hour-long stories in The Liberator Chronicles volume 7 out in February 2014 (but available to preorder now). The other two stories are by my mortal enemies Eddie Robson and James Swallow.

Tumbling

I am on Tumblr now - 0tralala.tumblr.com - posting odd bits of nonsense that will dovetail with this 'ere blog. Just posted this lovely publicity image for Graceless III wot I wrote, a portrait of Ciara Janson and Laura Doddington by Alex Mallinson.

Doctor Who: 1985

Episode 630: Vengeance on Varos, part two
First broadcast: 5.20 pm, Saturday 26 January 1985
<< back to 1984

The Doctor rescues Peri - doesn't he?
Vengeance on Varos, part two

I used to be terrified of Doctor Who - or at least some of it. As I've said already, it was always (or always seemed) a serious, adult show full of things I didn't understand and content unsuitable for an impressionable small boy.

In 1982, after Kinda - and the Mara lurking in Tegan's dreams - I had nightmares. The following year, there were more, the result of the Mara returning in Snakedance and David Collings' chilling performance in Mawdryn Undead.

I didn't tell anyone: I feared if my parents knew they wouldn't let me watch the programme. And it wasn't that every story led to nightmares. Monsters, generally, didn't scare me - I've never been very squeamish. The death of Adric or the Black Guardian's control of Turlough were thrilling but not scary.

When I got through Season 21 (in 1984) without a sleepless night, I thought I'd achieved something, that I was growing up and out of nightmares. So it was a bit of a shock when the following year Vengeance on Varos utterly terrified me.

The whole story is deliciously horrid. Sil is a brilliantly grotesque creation, giggling as he orders yet more outlandish tortures. And yet the thing that really got in my head is the briefest moment.

Peri and Areta are subjected to an experimental process to amuse the viewing public. As Quillam is all too eager to explain:

QUILLAM:
The nuclear bombardment beams release all the power latent in the recipient's mind. If the changelings see themselves as unworthy, they can become serpentine or reptilian. [Peri], for instance, must wish to fly away from trouble as would a bird.

It's the word "unworthy" that really got me: as if transforming was the victim's fault. If you're not good enough, the machine finds your secret fears and then uses them to change what you look like.

But it wasn't the process that turned Peri into a bird that bothered me so much as the Doctor coming to her rescue. We see her change back to her human self and the Doctor rushes over:

DOCTOR:
I am the Doctor and you are Peri. Perpugilliam Brown.

PERI:
Peri.

DOCTOR:
It's a question of re-imprinting their identities, of establishing again who they are.

JONDAR:
Wake up, Areta. Come on!

DOCTOR:
Can you walk, Peri? Come on, try.

PERI:
I thought I could fly.

There's a hint that she's not back to normal, that for all it looks as if the process has been reversed, inside her head she's still a bird. That's what terrified me and led to nightmares - because the Doctor's too busy trying to escape to notice.

It was only when the story came out on video in 1993 that I saw it again and realised the moment that so terrified me, that I'd kept in my head for years, didn't really happen. Peri doesn't say "I can fly", only that she had thought that she could. She's fine, if confused and exhausted. There is no permanent damage.

I'd taken something in the story and spun it out into something of my own, as if just to scare myself further. The nightmares were a creative act. Once I realised that, I could see it was also true of the other stories that scared me. I'd invented new stories for the Mara, appearing in places I knew in real life such as my school and the fields where we walked our dog. With Mawdryn Undead, there's a brief time when Nyssa and Tegan think Mawdryn might be a regenerated Doctor and I fixed on the idea he had regenerated, in pain, on his own - something that's barely suggested in the episode.

I'm fascinated by how people respond to and take ownership of Doctor Who - telling their own stories, making films and documentaries, dressing up, or looking for work in the industry. David Tennant became an actor because of his love for Doctor Who. Though my favourite version of this is that Dr Marek Kukula pursued an academic career in astrophysics because he wanted to be Leela.

Oh, and that thing of Peri being transformed but the Doctor not noticing? In 2002 I used that as the basis for my first ever professionally published bit of fiction, a Doctor Who short story called "The Switching".

Next episode: 1986

Who are you calling clever-clever?

Due to a holiday plus some regular commuting in the last few weeks, I have read a few books for fun and not solely to steal from for work (I've also done that, too). To remind myself in ages to come and to break up my ongoing Doctor Who project I shall endeavour to blog my thoughts on these books. First off:

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
I’d meant to read this for some time but Steven’s accolade as one of Granta’s Young Writers To Stalk (sort of like Springwatch for typing) prompted me to get on with it. It’s exciting, smart and ridiculous (as I tweeted him), taking the high-concept wheeze of a man who’s memories are being eaten by the abstract idea of a shark, and then seeing what happens next.

“'This is so crazy I'm not even going to ask.'

'Probably for the best,' the doctor said. 'It's easier if you just accept it.' 

Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts (2007), p. 317.

Mark Haddon calls the book “The bastard love-child of The Matrix, Jaws and The da Vinci Code” - on a genuine post-it note stuck rather than printed on the title page, itself an achingly trendy conceit. The book ought to so drip with its own clever-cleverness that I’d have given up early on. The 52-page interruption in the prose where the image of a shark composed of individual letters heads towards us as in a flickbook ought to take us right out of the adventure – as similar textual gimmickry did, I felt, with Philip Palmer's Debateable Space. I want – I love – to be lost in a story and resent the author waving from the margins.

But Steven contrives to make this sequence and the book as a whole enthralling, with twists and characters and digressions on the nature of language that kept me reading on. Bother him, I found it very difficult to put down, right to the last page. I look forward with feverish anticipation to his next one. (There's an excerpt from it in Granta #123; and also he's written some knock-off Doctor Who.)

Cast and crew of Graceless 3

The splendid fellows at Big Finish have announced the cast and crew of Graceless 3, what I wrote. Their announcement goes like this:

Champagne celebration for final Graceless

The third – and final – series of Graceless will be released at the end of June, bringing an end to the adventures of time-travelling sisters Abby and Zara. The three-part series, written by Simon Guerrier and directed by Lisa Bowerman, reunites Ciara Janson as Abby and Laura Doddington as Zara – along with a guest cast of new and familiar faces to the Graceless universe.

“It’s sad to be saying goodbye to Abby and Zara, but after three series, we felt that the story of Graceless was coming to a natural end,” says producer Mark Wright. “It’s been such a happy creative time working with Simon, Lisa, Ciara and Laura over the last few years, and I think that the scripts Simon has come up with for this last series really do the characters justice. And it’s been a real privilege to work with a fantastic guest cast, and to welcome back some old friends to the series for the final episode.”

Part one, The Edge, resolves the series two cliffhanger, which saw Abby and Zara lost in the vortex, with Abby washing up at a strange hotel on the edge of a cliff in search of Zara. But will she want to be found? Tim Bentinck and Sunny Ormonde – better known as David Archer and Lillian Bellamy in BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers – guest star as Albert and Miss Simone, along with Joe Coen as Kurt and Paul Copley as Dennis. Joe recently appeared in the TV mini series The Bible, and for Big Finish has recorded the Doctor Who audios The Elite and Binary. Paul Copley’s extensive CV includes The Lakes, Downton Abbey, the Bafta-winning Last Tango in Halifax, as well as the acclaimed Big Finish Doctor Who audio Spare Parts.

Part two, The Battle, takes Abby and Zara to the Battle of Maldon in 10th century Britain, where they discover the true consequences of their actions throughout space and time. Can they convince a historian in the far future to help them put things right? Critically acclaimed actress Geraldine James guest stars in The Battle as Chi. Amongst her many credits, Geraldine has starred in TV drama Band of Gold, as Mrs Hudson in the Sherlock Holmes films with Robert Downey Jr, and most recently in Channel 4’s Utopia. Tim Chipping (Troyand the Big Finish Companion Chronicle The Wanderer) joins the cast as Burtnoth, with Joe Coen as Olaf.

With a universe and history against them, Abby and Zara find they have nowhere else to go – apart from the one place they nearly called home. But what will they find there on the day they choose to die? Consequences, the final episode of Graceless, sees the return of Michael Cochrane and Joanna Van Gyseghem reprising the roles of Brondle and Wing, first seen in series two’s The Flood. They are joined by another old friend to the series in Fraser James, who once again plays Marek – but is it a Marek that Abby and Zara will recognise?

“Lisa Bowerman has assembled such a brilliant guest cast for this third series,” says Mark, “and to be able to welcome back Michael, Joanna and Fraser for the final episode was the icing on the cake. We’ve loved every second of making Graceless over the years, and we hope our listeners enjoy the finale as much as we’ve enjoyed making it.”

Graceless III is available to pre-order now as a three-disc CD box set for the special pre-order price of £22, or as a digital download for £17.

Doctor Who: 1976

After episode 427: (The Seeds of Doom, part six)
July 1976
<< back to 1975

Doctor Who and the Fish Invasion of London

You can establish the credentials of a Doctor Who fan with a few quick questions. Who is their favourite Doctor? What was the first story they ever saw - and do they know the name of it and when it was broadcast? What episode was first broadcast closest to the day they were born - and do they have to work it out or do they already know?

I was born in June 1976 in the gap between the end of Season 13 (The Seeds of Doom, part six, was first broadcast on 6 March) and the start of Season 14 (The Masque of Mandragora, part one, was first broadcast on 4 September). So I like to think that my birth story is the LP Doctor Who and the Pescatons, released that July.

It was the first Doctor Who story produced in the audio format, and starred the two leads of the show at the time (Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen recorded an episode of the educational radio programme Exploration Earth a few weeks before they recorded The Pescatons, but that episode - "The Time Machine" wasn't broadcast until October).

It's a daft old story - a giant space fish invades London before the Doctor and Sarah Jane can defeat it using special sound. Writer Victor Pemberton reused elements (i.e. the whole plot) of his Second Doctor story Fury from the Deep (1968) - which had itself reused elements of an earlier radio play.

Listening to it again, I realised how similar the format is to a lot of the Doctor Who audio adventures I write now for Big Finish. It's two episodes; it's a mixture of narration and dramatised scenes; there's one guest actor; and it tells an ambitious story that the TV show probably couldn't afford to realise while still trying to emulate the feel of the TV show of the time.

The Pescatons has clearly been written with Tom Baker's Doctor in mind - it's full of his eccentricity and strangeness, and the action scenes are more violent than anything from the Second Doctor's time.

But for all it stars Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen as the Doctor and Sarah Jane, their characters don't quite ring true. The tone is really peculiar. The Doctor's narration is oddly jokey delivery, such as in this scene from episode 2:

The creature reared up; its long, pointed teeth moving in for the attack. For one moment, it looked as though the creature was going to ignore me and claw straight into Sarah Jane and the baby. To regain its attention, I had to do just about everything except turn a cartwheel. Thinking about it, I'm not too sure I didn't even do that. Anything I could lay my hands on I threw at it: stones, dustpan bins, milk bottles, even an old boot somebody had discarded in rather a hurry. But still the creature ignored me and slid closer and closer towards Sarah Jane and the baby.

It might have his voice but this doesn't sound like the Doctor. Today, that sort of thing would usually be picked up and corrected by the script editor and producer, or caught by the unblinking eye that we refer to, in hushed whisper, as "Cardiff". I suspect the Doctor making jokes while a baby was in danger would also be cause for concern.

I don't mean this as any kind of judgement on The Pescatons, just to note the historic moment and show how things have changed. After all, how can you not love a story in which the Doctor saves Sarah Jane and a baby from a giant alien fish by singing "Hello Dolly!"?

Next episode: 1977

Doctor Who: The Library Of Alexandria

Out next month is a new Doctor Who adventure by me, The Library of Alexandria, performed by William Russell as Ian Chesterton and Susan Franklyn as Hypatia.

"The port of Alexandria, 5th Century AD. The Doctor, Ian, Susan and Barbara have taken a break from their travels, and are enjoying a few weeks in the sunshine – and the chance to appreciate the magnificent Library of Alexandria. They know that the library will soon be lost to history. What they are about to discover is the terrifying reason why…"

To whet your appetite, here's Carl Sagan wandering the Library of Alexandria in 1980 for his history of science series Cosmos:

Shadow of Death and Logic

More of me that you can buy in shops. Next month, Doctor Who: Shadow of Death sees the Second Doctor and his chums on a remote world orbiting a pulsar. Frazer Hines is, as ever, utterly extraordinary at playing both the Doctor and Jamie, and narrating, while the magnificent Evie Dawnay plays a character I named after my GCSE astronomy teacher.

Then, in August, I have another Blake's 7 adventure: Logic. It's about Pol, an ordinary woman living an ordinary existence inside the domed city on Earth… until she is visited by strangers who bring chaos to her life. I'm thrilled that as well as starring Paul Darrow as Avon, Sally Knyvette as Jenna and Jacqueline Pearce as Servalan, my chum Louise Jameson stars as Pol. I wrote it with Louise in mind, and the nice people at Big Finish agreed she'd be perfect. Hooray!

Excitingly (or terrifyingly), Logic is part of a box-set so you'll also get Blake's 7 stories by Una McCormack and James Goss, too. 

Digging the Past: Archaeology on TV - BFI 19 January

The Dr has been helping the splendid fellows at the British Film Institute with an event on 19 January where you can watch a load of old telly about archaeology. There now follows a short public service announcement:

DIGGING THE PAST: ARCHAEOLOGY ON TV 
Date: 19 January 2013 | Time: 4pm | Location: BFI Southbank, NFT2, Belverdere Road, London SE1 8XT | Price: Non BFI members £10 (£6.75- concessions) | Age group: ANY |
In association with the Institute of Archaeology and the British Film Institute, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology presents three sessions looking at the way television has portrayed archaeology. Starting with early televised newsreels of excavations and discoveries including footage from 1949 taken in Cairo to more recent programmes including the controversial Romer's Egypt. The presentations cover the often eccentric characters including the legendary Mortimer Wheeler and an interview with Dorothy Eady otherwise known as Omm Seti. The end session focuses on ancient Egypt as seen by TV fiction writers with something to please everybody from the BBC's Cleopatras to Doctor Who.
020 7679 4138 | Booking through BFI box office www.bfi.org.uk or tel 0330 333 7878

Of particular excitement to me is the stuff with Mortimer Wheeler - "Archaeologist and Man of Action" as I blogged last year.

Incidentally, Wheeler also makes a brief appearance in the bit I wrote for Many Happy Returns, a special 20th anniversary adventure for space archaeologist Bernice Summerfield, all the proceeds of which go to charity. Producer / Evil Genius Scott Handcock has also tumblred credits as to who wrote what.

The writing of The Judgement of Isskar

On 29 January 2009, the Big Finish website posted my diary of writing Doctor Who: The Judgement of Isskar. That post is now long-since deleted, so here it is in case anyone cared.

ISSKAR - THE WRITER'S DIARY

(29/01/2009)
Simon Guerrier, the writer of Doctor Who: The Key 2 Time - The Judgement of Isskar, opens up his diary of the production...

18 December 2007
As detailed in my post about the writing of Home Truths, it began with drinks at Jason Haigh-Ellery’s swanky club in London. He, David Richardson, Nigel Fairs and me discuss the wheeze of a new mini-series. The Doctor will once again have to search out the six segments of the Key to Time, over three releases. He’ll be helped by two living “tracers”, who’ll develop over the series.
I bagsy the first story because I really want to create a new assistant for the Doctor. We knock some ideas back and forth and I think I have a rough idea of the story. But it needs to be written quickly, as we want to book Peter Davison just after he has come out from his stint on Spamalot!
Later Joseph Lidster joins us and we drink Champagne. Joe is glamorous like that.

19 December
I send in my first, 1,964-word outline for a story called “TBC”. That’s not me being post-modern, I just haven’t thought of a title. Episode one ends with the return of an old friend of the Doctor’s.
Later that day, David says it would be nice if the first segment “was something other than a rock”. Episode three is also too much like Dead London and / or Brave New Town. I suggest changing the setting to Blackpool – the segment could be the tower!
Strangely, no one is won over. Anyway, Jonathan Clements is writing the second story which will be set on Earth. I say I’ll try to limit myself to the rest of the universe.

20 December
My second, 2,146-word outline incorporates a whole day of email discussion with the chiefs. I’m asked to incorporate snake venom, to set up something in the final release of the series. It’s only writing this blog that I realise it now doesn’t feature in The Chaos Pool.
David vetoes setting the opening scene in a disco. And episodes two and three are too much like The Dark Husband. I’ll need to think of something else.
We also discuss titles. I suggest, “The Unravelling”, “The Unravelling of Time”, “The Collapse of Time” and “No Name”. There is a long and terrible silence…

31 December
I send round draft three of an outline, now called “The Collapse of Time”. It is 2,278 words and the opening disco has been swapped for a war. “War or disco?” says David. “Only on Doctor Who…”

3 January 2008
Notes from Alan Barnes on the series as a whole. He thinks the first episode of mine is too like The Boy That Time Forgot, and worries that overall it lacks structure. I suggest replacing the old friend with an old monster: “We’ve never done Terileptils, have we?”
David suggests “an Ice Warrior story set at the height of their empire...”.
We also discuss Manichaeism, Robert McKee’s “Story” and names for our new assistant. I google girls’ names and their meanings.

4 January
Nick Briggs confirms he has no plans to use the Ice Warriors in 2009; we just need to check that the BBC are happy for us to use them.

7 January
Now called “The Gods of War”, I send round a rough 758-word synopsis to check I’ve got the main bits of the story right. “At this stage, the Ice Warriors are a bit Generic Monster, in case we don't get permission to use them. I've much more detailed notes, but want to keep it brief at this stage.”

8 Janaury
The Doctor Who team in Cardiff confirm we can use the Ice Warriors. Everything is looking good…

9 January
David thinks the title is too like the Unbound story Masters of War, out a month before my one. So my 2,826-word outline (draft four) is now called “The March to Destruction”. The two tracers are called “Eve” and “Janus” – though that’s still subject to improvement.

10 January
Alan has notes on my outline. “Overall, this is an improvement on the first, but it needs sharpening up and ridding of the really obvious pompous, portentous and pretentious labelling that's dragging it right down at present.” He’s got a list of points for me to work through.
I grumble to myself. Especially since every one of them is right.

11 January
David also has his own notes. “My one concern,” I respond, “is with ‘Eve’ being able to teleport. If she can do that, she and the Doctor can get out of any jeopardy just by her thinking about it.” We come up with a solution that meets some of Alan’s concerns too. We also discuss the names – and how our tracers gain them. I suggest “Julia” – at random. Jason likes “Amy” and “Zara”.
Draft five, featuring Amy and Zara, is 3,578 words long and features pan-dimensional handbags.

12 January
David sends round some notes beefing up the background of the two tracers. He suggests that “Zara has chosen another traveller (not the robot featured in Simon's outline) – a more ruthless, dangerous man…” He suggests a few other things which also all end up in the final story.

13 January
Alan provides some useful notes that help the structure of my story. Now, over three Acts, I’ve got moments he’s marked “Call to Adventure”, “Refusal”, “Crossing the Threshold”, “Supreme Ordeal”, “Reward” and “Resurrection”.

14 January
Draft six is 4,132 words long. I suggest a new title, “The March to Oblivion”. David counters with “Six Segments to Extinction”, “The Harbingers of Doom” and “Something deadly, doomy, gloom gloom gloom?”
I suggest “Martian Law” and then “The Race Against Time” – which I really like because it’s got several meanings in the story.
We’re racing against time ourselves, with the outline still not agreed. David doesn’t want Amy “gaining a sense of humour from the segment”, so I tweak the outline, and then tweak it again.
Draft eight still doesn’t seem to be doing what Alan and David want, and they’ve asked me to ignore some of their earlier comments and swap things back to how they were. It’s frustrating; we seem so close to something really exciting, but it’s just not quite working right.
I amalgamate everyone’s comments into one long email and tick them off one by one. “Easy ones first, and then there's things I am - shockingly - daring to dispute.”
Jonathan Clements, meanwhile, is only on draft three of his outline. The slacker.

15 January
Over the phone with David, we agree what needs to be done. Draft nine comes in at 4,898 words. In the accompanying email, I flag up a change of emphasis. “Amy and Zara are consciously aping the people they learn from, rather than automatically taking on attributes. This makes them less like C'rizz, and means I can also make them less blank-slate zombies when we first meet them.”
I’ve stolen this from Eddie Robson; in his book on the Coen brothers’ films, he notes that this is what the Dude does in The Big Lebowski.
Draft nine, and Jonathan’s draft three, go off to the BBC. Amazingly, they’re approved that day – I think David might have begged. Now I have until 11 February to deliver the scripts. But Jason would also like some scenes in advance, so he can audition Amys and Zaras.

20 January
I deliver the first draft of what will be my first scene – its seven pages long and 999 words, and includes the words “gin and tonic”. The Doctor is travelling with Tegan and Turlough (though he’s not with them in the scene). David asks me to change that to Peri. Jason worries that “pan-dimensional handbags” were used in an Iris Wildthyme play, so I change them to satchels.

29 January
I’m well into writing. David lets me know Jason will be directing mine, with Lisa Bowerman directing the rest of the mini-series. He’s also in the last stages of confirming the writer for the final story. And he’s spoken to Justin Richards who asks how my story ties in with events in Red Dawn. I promise to re-listen to that story.

6 February
I send Jonathan and David a draft of my first two episodes, so they can see how Amy and Zara are coming along. David tells me to forward them to our Third Man – now revealed as Peter Anghelides.

10 February
A draft of the whole thing goes round the houses. Peter Anghelides says some nice things – but then he’s in a good mood that day having just been rung up by David Tennant.

12 February
David Richardson has a “passing fancy” – that Jonathan and Peter should try and copy the style of the opening of my episode three. Hooray – a note I don’t have to deal with! I get on with packing for the Gallifrey convention in Los Angeles – and after that a holiday.

14 February
David sends me notes from him and Alan. Alan suggests a new title – The Judgement of Isskar, and there’s comments marked “Zara’s agenda” and “Superwomen”. I am too busy schmoozing with celebrities to answer.

15 February
David sends me a note on Scene 52. But I am still busy schmoozing. He rings me, and we agree I’ll get the rewrites done in the next week, while I’m on the beach in Melbourne.

20 February
Melbourne is wet and grey so I spend a day at the laptop. I can only find three things with which to disagree with Alan and David. I think we should keep the segue between Scenes 3 and 4, and the one between Scenes 11 and 12. I also dispute that Scene 27 should be “less I, Claudius”; I’ve based it on my experience of working in the House of Lords.
I then trek down to the internet café with the script on a USB dongle. The internet café doesn’t have Microsoft Office, so I can't open the Word file. But I send my rewrites with a list of 13 other possible titles – none of which my masters like.

5 March
Back in London, I quickly work through a list of small tweaks from David – most of them typos or slight rephrasing. Wembik no longer uses the word “okay”, and the fifth Doctor is made to sound less like the tenth.

10 March
David seems happy with the script, but asks me to rework the climax as a separate, standalone scene. “We're auditioning Amys and Zaras again on Friday, but there are so few scenes of them actually together. And if they are together, other people are in the scene too.” I get it done that afternoon, and then David suggests something else…

15 March
As requested, I send David an 808-word outline for a Companion Chronicle featuring Zara and her boyfriend Zinc. David sends me notes the next day – “Let's not have the Doctor in it. Let's be bold!” So the haggling begins once again… Eventually, Zara and the seventh Doctor’s assistant Ace will share a cell in The Prisoner’s Dilemma. And the Doctor shows up after all.

31 March
David confirms that The Judgement of Isskar has been signed off, and will be recorded on 24-25 April. I can come along if I behave. I ask who he’s cast as Amy and Zara.

1 April
David responds by text: Penelope Keith and Brenda Fricker.

Then I notice the date…

The Judgement and Isskar and The Prisoner's Dilemma are now available to buy on CD and download

The writing of Home Truths

On 10 December 2008, the Big Finish website posted a blog entry about the writing of the Doctor Who story Home Truths. The blog - and that post - have long since vanished, so on the off-chance anyone cares, here it is again.

SIMON GUERRIER TELLS SOME HOME TRUTHS

(10/12/2008)
House Proud
How long does it take to write a Doctor Who audio? Simon Guerrier, author of the Companion Chronicle Home Truths, checks his diaries…

Tuesday 11 December 2007, about 09.00 
I’m wending my way through Notting Hill on the 52 bus, off to a freelance job writing a sticker book, when I bump into Nigel Fairs. He’s off to Big Finish’s usual studios and we gossip about what we’re both up to. The Wake is finished so my duties on Benny are over. I’ve got to type up my notes on How The Doctor Changed My Life, but otherwise I’m not doing much. Ever tactful, Nigel says we should work on something again soon.

Wednesday 12 December, 15.36
An email from David Richardson. Nigel has suggested me for something they’re planning, “a 5th Doctor mini-series that is a sequel to the Key to Time series, for release in 2009”. Can I come along to “a preliminary writers’ meeting for either the morning of Wednesday 19 or the afternoon of Wednesday 20,” at Jason Haigh-Ellery’s swanky club in London? No, I can’t – I’m still writing a sticker book. “You’re fired,” says David.

Thursday 13 December, 20:20
“How busy are you in the early months of 2008?” asks David Richardson. “Besides the Key 2 Time... I'm gonna be producing the third series of Companion Chronicles, and wondered if you'd be interested in writing one...”. 

Tuesday 18 December, after 18.30
The preliminary writers’ meeting. We drink posh drinks in posh surroundings and discuss the bare bones of Key 2 Time. I meet David Richardson in the flesh for the first time and beg to be allowed to write for Sara Kingdom. I’ve got this wheeze for the framing sequence, of an older Sara recalling her adventures with the Doctor even though she died as a young woman. David says he’d like a historical story – or at least something very different from the sci-fi adventures Sara enjoyed onscreen.

Wednesday 19 December, 13.55
I send round my first outline for what will one day be The Judgment of Isskar. Some things survive to the final version – the fifth Doctor, the Key to Time, the last scene of part four. Everything else – new companions called Mary and Angie, the return of an old friend of the Doctor’s, a fake London of 2009 – gets binned over the next few weeks.

Wednesday 24 December, some time in the afternoon
I make my first notes on the Sara Kingdom story, in which the TARDIS visits a spooky family home at Christmas. The gist of the final story is there in the outline. I’m stealing the second character – who I’ll later name after my friend Robert Dick – from the Superman comic strip “For Tomorrow”. 

Sunday 30 December, 18.21
I send David a rough 500-word outline for “The House of Pleasure”, “a science-fiction twist on a haunted house story, perhaps with a Christmas flavour like the BBC’s old MR James adaptations.” David is pleased, wants it “to drip with that black and white TV feeling” but worries the title sounds rude. I suggest “Home Comforts” and “House Proud” while he contacts Jean Marsh’s agent.

Thursday 3 January 2008, 12.17
“HOOOOOOOOOOORAY!” says David’s email. Jean Marsh has agreed to reprise Sara Kingdom. I resend my outline to David for passing to Big Finish script editor Alan Barnes. I explain that “I've changed it from House of Pleasure to House of Judgment, which is also the name of a prose poem by Oscar Wilde. Which, of course, I knew beforehand.”

Friday 4 January, 18.42
“Cute,” says Alan, and points out that “Stephen” should be spelled with a “v”. Whoops. He also says: “It's a spooky house at Christmas. The Chimes of Midnight is probably the single most highly regarded BF production. It's kind of cornered the market in spooky houses at Christmas. I think it'd be more interesting to make it a crazy space house, in an abandoned futuristic Ideal Home exhibition or something.”

Sunday 6 January, 11.50
I send Alan and David a 1,200-word outline for “The House of Judgment”, this time detailing the progression of events in the story. Alan suggests we call it “Dream Home”. He also feels that once Sara knows what’s happening it ends too quickly. “My instinct would be to go for a realisation-ordeal-resolution sort of thing, where Sara realises what's going on but something gets in the way.”

Monday 7 January, 10.38
I send David a revised outline, now called “Home Truths”. David reminds me it needs to be in two episodes, so I add a cliffhanger. We get back to discussing my Key 2 Time outline: whether I can use the Ice Warriors and whether new companions Eve and Janus should both travel with the Doctor in part one.

That script becomes the priority for the next few months. Then David wants me writing a completely different Companion Chronicle linking to the Key 2 Time. Zara (formerly Janus) will share a cell with Ace in The Prisoners’ Dilemma.

17 April, 12.32
The synopsis for Home Truths has been approved by the estate of Terry Nation – who created Sara Kingdom. The BBC approves it too, with a couple of minor changes.
A week later, we record all three Key 2 Time plays. In May, I’m busy writing – and rewriting – The Prisoners’ Dilemma and then the first draft of Home Truths.

Monday 2 June, 10.24
I send David the first draft of Home Truths. I check Lisa Bowerman is directing the story because I’ve an idea for part two…

Thursday 5 June, 14.50
Jacqueline Rayner provides some additional comments on the script – “structurally it seems fine, they're mainly small niggles”. I make these changes that afternoon and also suggest that, as per Doctor Who of the time, the story should have individual episode titles. I suggest “The Dream House” for part one followed by “Home Truths”. David stares at me strangely.

Wednesday 11 June, 10.55
The BBC approves the script. David has to book it into studio and we need to cast someone to play Robert. 

Monday 16 June, all day
Recording of The Prisoners’ Dilemma. I go along, get in the way and talk to Lisa Bowerman about the feel of Home Truths. She listens with heroic patience. 

Thursday 19 June, 10.25
I answer David’s questions about my two Companion Chronicles for a forthcoming feature in Doctor Who Magazine.

Tuesday 3 July, 11.54
I provide David with blurbs and liner notes for both Companion Chronicles. I mention that, with Home Truths, Sara has been in more Doctor Who episodes than Captain Jack Harkness. David cuts that bit.

Monday 7 July, 14.59
David tells me Home Truths will be recorded on 8 September, since Jean Marsh is in a play until then. I check my diary. Drat! I’ll be in Seville.

Friday 18 July, 18.33
I enthuse to David and Simon Holub about the cover for Home Truths, which has been put up on the Big Finish website. Simon sends me a large version of the artwork. Hooray!

Monday 8 September, 12.44 (local time)
I text David to see how the recording is going, while stood in front of the cathedral glimpsed in The Two Doctors. Then I have an ice cream.

Saturday 18 October, 15.43
Paul Wilson, who runs the Big Finish website, kindly provides me with a download of Home Truths, which has gone off to be pressed. I’m meant to be doing my tax return. Instead I am grinning and giggling. Cor, it’s so much better than I’d hoped. I send an email to David Darlington thanking him for the impressive sound design. Only it wasn’t him who did it.

Wednesday 12 November
The huddled masses are able to download Home Truths from the Big Finish website and the CDs are posted out.

On writing Blake's 7

The tyrannical forces from the Horizon website have interrogated me and posted my full confession about writing Blake's 7. I am just off to be shot.

Robert Shearman interviewed by me - podcast

Listen to Robert Shearman read a new short story in a special podcast. Rob was the guest of the British Science Fiction Association in September, where he performed "The Dark Space in the House in the House in the Garden at the Centre of the World" and was then interviewed by me.

Hear the podcast at http://thedoctorwhopodcast.com/upload/RobShearmanBSFA.mp3 WARNING: the podcast includes adult themes and language, and is not suitable for children.

Special thanks to Tony Cullen and Tony Keen at the BSFA, Tony Whitmore for recording the evening and James "Tony" Rockliffe at thedoctorwhopodcast.com.

Lord Lethbridge-Stewart

In August 2004, I attended the recording of the first Doctor Who audio play I'd written, about the Doctor's friends at UNIT.  The story, "The Coup", was given away on a covermount CD with Doctor Who Magazine #351 later that year and is now available to download for free from the Big Finish website.

"The Coup" was a pilot for a new UNIT spin-off series. In my episode, the Doctor's old friend General Sir Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart (more often known as "the Brigadier") called out of retirement to announce that UNIT is being merged with another security force, just as Silurians attack London.

While we were recording it, I got to chat to actor Nicholas Courtney about whether he'd been asked to appear in the new TV version of Doctor Who (which had started filming just a few weeks before). We also chatted about where the Brigadier might go next, and - since I'd recently started freelancing for the House of Lords at that point - talked about the Brig being made a noble and gallant Lord in honour of his services to Britain and the earth. Nick seemed rather taken by the idea, and mentioned it when he appeared on Doctor Who Confidential in 2005.

I wrote up a rough idea in case Big Finish wanted ideas for a second series of UNIT. I pitched it a couple of years later when there was a suggestion of featuring our new UNIT characters in one of BF's new main-range Doctor Who stories. I've reworked it and repitched it to a few other people, but it was never quite what they wanted and/or wasn't practical because of Nick's declining health.

Since it will never happen now, here's the outline as it was the last time I pitched it. At that time, I was asked to pitch it without a specific Doctor or companion in mind, hence the generic "Sharon":

Doctor Who: The Little Monsters 

Outline by Simon Guerrier 

Pre-titles:

The Doctor and Sharon arrive outside a primary school in Bolton, some years into the future. The school is surrounded by soldiers, the press and people wielding placards. The Doctor pushes his way through and introduces Sharon to his old friend the Brigadier – now in the House of Lords but in charge of this morning’s operation. 

The Doctor quickly explains UNIT’s mandate to Sharon: investigating alien activity on Earth and protecting the humans. And then spaceships drift down through the clouds above them. A vast war fleet of different species, says the Doctor, united in a common aim. 

There are cries of outrage from the local people as Lethbridge-Stewart welcomes the visitors. This is all his doing, explains the Doctor. Alien children are arriving from all across the galaxy, and this is their first day at school. 

Titles. 

The Doctor helps UNIT (Chaudhry etc. from the UNIT series) to look after the school and handle the media. People object vociferously to humans being taught alongside aliens, and it’s ironic that UNIT be the ones to protect the aliens. 

Things aren’t helped when a human child and an alien have an argument, and the human child gets badly burned. The media are on it, and it takes all Chaudhry’s PR savvy to keep the school open the next day. Children can’t be held accountable to the same standards as adults, and there’s still a lot to be learnt. Anyway, now Earth has made itself known in the galaxy, parents can’t afford to be parochial about education. This is the only way for humans to thrive.
Despite this, there are fewer pupils in the next day, many being kept at home. They’re short on teachers too, so the Doctor helps out where he can. 

Sharon goes with Lethbridge-Stewart to London, where he is answering questions in the House - what they are doing is still accountable to the British people, as well as being watched with interest by the world. The noble Lords give him a roasting, but no one can deny Lethbridge-Stewart’s history of saving the planet, and his commitment to keeping it safe. They seem to have won the moment. 

Sharon is on the news. She’s able to explain that yes, it is a bit weird with the aliens. She gets scared too, and it’s worse seeing places she knows threatened. It brings out instinctive feelings, but they need to be stronger than that. 

There’s amazing things to be seen in the galaxy, and amazing things to be learned. And she feels sorry for anyone who’s going to miss out because their parents are too scared to let them.
And then, in the Doctor’s class, there are some disruptive elements. There’s a fire in the school, and then human parents storm the place to rescue their children. They don’t mean to, but it ends up with them taking a whole load of alien children hostage. They are good people, just anxious about their own children. 

With the Doctor and Chaudhry caught up there, Lethbridge-Stewart and Sharon are in the House of Lords when there’s an alien invasion, and the Commons is taken over. But unlike the career politicians cowering in there, the Lords is full of old men with military experience. Lethbridge-Stewart and Sharon rally them into a resistance, and they take back the Palace of Westminster. 

The Doctor and Chaudhry also put together a resistance, but they’re combating human parents. They are caught up in the hostage negotiations, and seem to be getting somewhere when the news comes through that Lethbridge-Stewart demands a surrender from the aliens. It looks like he may have just declared war. 

And then Sharon’s mum is on the news. She’s much older than Sharon knows her, because this is the future. And she seems to know what Sharon’s future is… (depending on which companion this is, we could foreshadow all sorts of good stuff). 

The press have tracked her down, and she explains that yes, she fears for Sharon’s safety, but that she can’t wrap her up in cotton wool. Better she’s allowed to go and explore, than she never sees anything ever. Sharon’s mum says she’s proud of her daughter for wanting to do all she’s done. And she, Sharon’s mum, has to think about what’s best for her, and not be scared that she’s growing up. 

The alien and human parents back off, to find their children are already getting on with each other while their backs were turned. Apparently it is cheating to use you ability to fly in hopscotch. An armistice is agreed, and the Doctor makes sure the children see their parents apologising to each other. That is his lesson for the day. 

Everything seems fine with Lethbridge-Stewart’s legacy for the future. Chaudhry is much happier that UNIT is safe-guarding finger-painting rather than hunting down monsters – it’s a much easier sell to the press. And Sharon’s mum knows better than to tell Sharon what’s in store for her – even though it’s heart-breaking.

Three new CDs you can buy with your money

I have some more product out with which you can swap you hard-earned cash.

Doctor Who and the Uncertainty Principle is out this month. The Second Doctor Who and his companions Zoe and Jamie investigate a strange death and - long after she's stopped having adventures with the Doctor - Zoe continues her struggles with the sinister Company. It's performed by lovely Wendy Padbury, with her daughter Charlie Hayes returning as Company lawyer Jen.

• Top fact: the first time I met Wendy, she asked me to explain what Torchwood was (she'd been out of the country when it was on) and the more I told her, the less she believed me.

Blake's 7 and the Magnificent Seven is also out this month, as part of the Liberator Chronicles Volume 2. Jenna and Avon meet another band of rebels who are also battling the Federation - and might be doing it better than Blake is. It's performed by Jan Chappell and Paul Darrow.

• Top fact: Jan Chappell starred in straight-to-video coolness Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans in 1994. It was trying to follow up the success of that which led producer Jason Haigh-Ellery to set up Big Finish Productions. Big Finish later gave me my first gig writing fiction and I am slightly in love with them.

Doctor Who and the Empty House is out next month. When the TARDIS materialises in rural England in the 1920s, the Doctor and his friends Amy and Rory discover a crashed spaceship nearby. It’s the beginning of a nightmarish adventure for them...

• Top fact: Raquel Cassidy, who reads the story, played a space-wasp for me in The Judgement of Isskar - something she was kind enough to remember when I interviewed her on behalf of Doctor Who Adventures at the filming of The Rebel Flesh.

Graceless on the wireless

All this week, BBC Radio 4 Extra are broadcasting my original sci-fi series Graceless. You can listen to each episode, for free, on iPlayer up to a week after broadcast. Here are some handy links to each episode:

1.1 The Sphere
1.2 The Fog
1.3 The End
2.1 The Line
2.2 The Flood
2.3 The Dark

Abby and Zara were created to search for the missing pieces of the Key to Time. But having completed their mission, they're on their own in a universe that can be dangerous and unpredictable... They have special powers - they can teleport anywhere or when, and they can get into people's heads. But more often than not, that only gets them into more trouble...

The series stars Ciara Janson, Laura Doddington and Fraser James, with a guest cast including Colin Spaull, Patricia Brake, David Warner, Michael Keating, Derek Griffiths, Michael Cochrane, Joanna Van Gyseghem and Susan Brown.

You can also buy both series from Big Finish, as well as Abby and Zara's earlier adventures in the TARDIS. Speaking of which, here's a lovely illustration for that first adventure that Brian Williamson (yes, the chap who does AAAGH!) produced for Doctor Who Magazine. Cor.

Ice Warriors, the Fifth Doctor and Amy in
The Judgement of Isskar
Art by Brian Williamson

I'm busy writing series three of Graceless at the moment, which should be released next year.