Toys & Games

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition is in shops now, devoted to toys and games over the past six decades.

Among its wonders, I've interviewed Alex Loosely-Saul from The Who Shop (where I spent a lovely afternoon drinking lots and lots of tea), and former head of licensing Richard Hollis, designer Dave Turbitt and current creative development executive Ross McGlinchey about the role of BBC Worldwide in matching toys to the series since 2005.

Speaking of interviewing people involved with Doctor Who, I've added a 2015 interview with SFX producer Kate Walshe from Millennium FX to my Koquillion archive site - and another interview will be added next week, too.

And I've posted a special thread on Twitter. since today marks 50 years exactly since filming began on The Evil of the Daleks.

(I might have mentioned I've written a book about that story...)

Doctor Who: 1993

After episode 695 (Survival, part 3)
Thirty Years in the TARDIS, first broadcast 29 November 1993
<< back to 1992

It really is bigger on the inside...
Thirty Years in the TARDIS (1993)

What a joy Thirty Years in the TARDIS was - a celebration of Doctor Who that concentrated not on its worthiness but how it made us feel watching. At the time, it didn't look as if Doctor Who would ever return to our screens. It had been off the air for four years, a special anniversary story had stopped production almost as soon as it started, and Children in Need's Doctor Who / EastEnders crossover didn't exactly convince a mass audience that the show deserved resurrecting.

I love Dimensions in Time, but Thirty Years was something to be proud of as a fan. Director Kevin Davies worked wonders to achieve so much more than just a series of clips and contributors: it's full of monsters and special effects, and a sense of Doctor Who not just as something from the past but a series that could still deliver real thrills.

Best of all is a shot towards the end where a small boy enters the TARDIS. Despite what I've said before about Doctor Who no longer being for children, here's one discovering the main wheeze of the series in exactly the way that the audience did in the very first episode. But this time we follow behind him, moving from the police box exterior into the control room all in one single shot.

That magical effect had never been done on Doctor Who before, and wouldn't be done again (or at all in the series proper) until last year's Christmas special:



I think that's extraordinary: the very idea that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside is at the very heart of the show. It's so wildly ridiculous; yet in this trick shot it's there before our eyes.

I remember being amazed in 1996 that the television movie, with its massive budget, failed to include that effect with the other expensive set pieces. I looked out for it in the 2005 series - and then read in Doctor Who Magazine that Russell T Davies had hoped to feature it. There are good reasons why not: it's a relatively simple trick requiring a pair of locked-off cameras, but it requires a lot of setting up. The time it would eat up in a recording day simply made it impractical. (Last year's Christmas special did the legwork in CGI.)

It occurred to me, reading Russell's explanation, that it would be a simple enough trick to do in an audio. All I needed was enough dialogue in the scene to cover them walking from the door to the console, as the sound effects changed. So, entirely for my own self-indulgence, I wrote it into the play I was writing at the time: The Settling, delivered in October 2005.

The scene is Drogheda in 1649, some time after Oliver Cromwell has massacred the town:

MARY:
All names have meanings. I’ll probably choose something loyal to the king. Charles the second, I mean.

DOCTOR WHO:
Here we are.

HE FISHES FOR THE TARDIS KEY.

MARY:
You keep supplies in this? For our journey?

ACE:
Yeah, sort of. So what names would mean loyalty?

AS DOCTOR WHO SPEAKS, HE OPENS THE DOOR AND – ALL IN THE SAME SCENE – THE WOMEN FOLLOW HIM INTO THE TARDIS. NB: THIS IS THE ‘MCGANN” TARIS INTERIOR FX.

DOCTOR WHO:
"Charles", obviously, for a boy. For a girl… "Elizabeth" would say "monarchy". Though it’s also a favourite of the Puritans. Cromwell’s mother, his wife and his favourite daughter are all called Elizabeth.

DOCTOR WHO WORKS THE CONSOLE.

ACE:
That’d be diplomatic, then. [BEAT] Oh yeah. Mary, should’ve warned you about – [this place.]

DOCTOR WHO:
(KINDLY) It’s all right. You’re safe in here.

ACE:
Yeah, but mind the mess. We’ve been redecorating.

MARY:
(AWED) I can feel it! I can feel it all at peace! It’s like... like a church. You worship here?

DOCTOR WHO:
Not exactly. It’s our home. Ace, this is going to be tricky. I could do with your help…

PRESSING BUTTONS ETC.

ACE:
Right.

PRESSING BUTTONS ETC.

Releasing the handbrake…

THE TARDIS DEMATERIALISES.

Doctor Who: How the 
Doctor Changed my Life
cover by Alex Mallinson

(Director/producer Gary Russell suggested it should be the vast TARDIS interior from the TV movie, this being the point when the Doctor redecorates. I wish I'd thought of it first.)

That shot from Thirty Years was also in my mind when I commissioned Alex Mallinson for the cover of a book of stories by first-time authors: How the Doctor Changed my Life.

Why does that effect so get to me? There's a particular thrill when a companion takes their first step into the TARDIS, and finds that an ordinary-looking police box contains a whole impossible world.

In that trick shot, just once in all 50 years of the series, we get to take that step with them.

Next episode: 1994

Doctor Who: 1989

Episode 688: Ghost Light, part three
First broadcast: 7.35 pm, Wednesday 18 October 1989
<< back to 1988

The last shot
Ghost Light, part three

These days, it's not at all easy to get on to the set of Doctor Who and details of forthcoming stories are zealously guarded. But when the series was made at BBC Television Centre in London things were very different – as my chum Paul Condon explains.

'Above each of the studios at TVC there's the main gallery where the producer and director sit,' says Paul. 'But there's also a public viewing gallery, where people going on tours round the building can observe what's going on and BBC staff can see what other programmes are being recorded.'

Staff could also sign guests into the building – as happened with Paul in 1989. 'A friend of mine from the Merseyside local group [of Doctor Who fans] had just moved to London and got a job working at the BBC,' he says. This friend offered Paul – then aged 18 – the chance to watch Doctor Who being recorded. 'It was the first time I'd ever been to London without my family, and probably only the second or third time I'd been to London full stop. It was very exciting.'

Paul's friend wasn't the only one offering access to the viewing gallery, as Paul found when he got there. 'Over the course of the day, maybe a dozen people came in and out.' Who were they? 'I didn't really know the old guard of fandom, so I don't know. I didn't recognise them.'

There was no direct contact between the viewing gallery and the production team on the show – Paul and the others could watch proceedings in the studio but not get in anyone's way. 'But there's a sound feed so we could hear everything going on,' he says. 'There were monitors set up as well so we had the feed from the cameras.'

And what could Paul and the other fans see? 'I hope my memory of the day hasn't let me down on too many of the details. The viewing gallery is probably about 70 or 80 feet up from the floor, so it's a high vantage point. You get to see pretty much the entire studio floor beneath you, looking down into the sets, through the roofs of the rooms that have been laid out.'

Paul visited on 3 August 1989 and saw the final day of recording on Ghost Light – in which the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) takes his friend Ace (Sophie Aldred) to a haunted house in the 1880s.

Did the Victorian sets look impressive? 'Oh gosh yes. I couldn't believe that they'd managed to get that main staircase set in there. It looked incredible – and big. From our high angle, we couldn't get a very good view of most of it because the walls of the set were so high. There were a couple of scenes – stuff in Josiah's living room, pulling the drawer out with Inspector Mackenzie in it – that we couldn't see at all so we were relying on the monitors. But it looked absolutely lovely.'

What was the atmosphere like in the viewing gallery as they watched? 'Very hushed, very excited,' he says. 'People who'd been to recordings before were more nonchalant – you could tell the really excited ones were there for the first time, with wide-eyed saucer eyes. But there was a lot of excitement whenever we heard a new bit of dialogue or they moved to a new set or scene.'

So what did Paul see being recorded? 'Lots of the sequences in the main hall. Things like Mrs Grose opening and locking the doors, and welcoming people in – all that stuff from right at the beginning of part one.'

'But I think the day was really being used more for practical effects and stuff. There were a lot of retakes of Sharon Duce as Control jumping through the glass and escaping from that room. I also saw that brilliant sequence where Sophie has the flashback, with all the cockroaches and creepy- crawlies, and the police light on her while Mrs Pritchard looms up behind.'

'Actually, there was a fantastic scene that got cut, with Mrs Pritchard going after Ace and pulling out a machete from under her skirt! It looked almost Carry On – presumably that's why they cut it. But yeah, we saw lots from each of the episodes. They were bouncing round the story quite a lot.'

Did that make it difficult to follow the plot? 'I had very little idea what the hell was going on. But when I got back from it I wrote a little article for the Southport Doctor Who club, full of teasers and hints about what to expect, as if I did!'

How long was Paul there in the viewing gallery? 'To start, I probably had about an hour and a half. Then we went to the BBC Club, had a bite to eat and a drink, and went back for a bit more.'

He was there to see the shot of Mrs Pritchard and Gwendoline being turned to stone. 'There was a lot of stuff with cameras being reset at different angles so that the actual petrification effect was done pretty much live in camera with an electronic overlay over it.'

It was the last shot of the day, and of that year's Doctor Who. 'Some of the cast and crew went to the bar but we didn't hang around,' says Paul. 'We'd been there all afternoon, I'd seen what the BBC Club looked like and my mate wanted to go home. It was the end of a working day for him. I hoped I'd be able to come back again the next year and see more. But, well...'

As it turned out, Ghost Light wasn't merely the last Doctor Who story to be recorded in 1989 (though not the last to be broadcast). It was also the last television Doctor Who story to be made until 1996, the last to be made in the UK until 2004 and the last to be made at BBC Television Centre ever.

Paul didn't suspect the series was about to be axed as he left TV Centre that night. 'No one did at all at that point. There may have been whispers going around the production team but certainly as fans we had no idea.'

Doctor Who may have left TV Centre for the last time, but Paul ended up working there. 'Yes, for the last three years of its existence, when the Entertainment department was in there. I'd often take friends on tours round the building and show them places used in Doctor Who, like the entrance to the World Ecology Bureau [in The Seeds of Doom] that's really just a door into the studios. I'd give them a tour through all the public viewing galleries to see what was on. They'd usually gasp at how high up it is, and how big and empty those spaces are when there's nothing in them. It took me back to the first time I saw them.'

As Paul says, when he took me for a tour in late 2010, many of the studios stood empty and unused. Earlier this year, TV Centre closed for the last time. Paul sighs.

'My department moved out into one of the new buildings where The One Show is filmed. About two weeks before Television Centre closed, I took part in a staff recreation of the Roy Castle tap dancing routine. Ridiculous! But, you know... It was one of the last things filmed at TVC.'

'And then, a week before it closed, I was going into a meeting there. There was hardly anything left. But as I was coming in, there was a camera crew in the concrete doughnut. I thought, “What on earth are they filming now?” I looked over to the left, and there was Mark Gatiss with the biggest grin on his face. Bloody Doctor Who was filming! It was for An Adventure in Space and Time, with Verity Lambert, Sydney Newman and Carole Ann Ford, on the reactions as they arrived. That was the perfect goodbye to TVC for me. It was literally the last time I went into the building.'

Verity and Sydney at TVC, Feb 2013
From Planet Mondas, via BlogtorWho

Next episode: 1990

Revealing Diary - a short film by the Guerrier brothers

SFX exclusively reports that the Guerrier brothers and a handsome gang of desperadoes made a short science-fiction film, Revealing Diary. You can watch it here:

 

We’re really pleased with the film, which was made as part of Sci-Fi London’s 48-hour challenge (#sfl48hr) – though a last-minute technical hitch meant we missed the deadline.

That’s especially frustrating given the hard work of the cast and crew – who gave their time for free – and the amount of preparation that my brother Tom and I put into it. But we weren’t alone: of 368 entrants, 161 films were submitted. In the hope it helps future entrants – or just because it's of interest to anyone else – here’s what we did and how it went wrong.

I've included links to the cast and crew's Twitter accounts where available. They were amazing and you should give them paid work.

Spoilers obviously follow. Watch the film before proceeding. 


HOW WE PREPARED
The competition is to write, shoot and complete a film of between three and five minutes within 48 hours, based on elements given to you at 11 am on the Saturday morning: your film’s title; a line of dialogue; a prop; and an optional scientific theme.

“The 48 hours begins from when all teams have their brief (around Noon on April 14th) and all the creative work must take part in that time period. The only pre-production permissible is the organising of cast and crew (the Team), securing equipment and scouting for possible locations.”

Rule 12 of the 48 hour film challenge rules 

Tom (the director, @guerrierthomas) and I had talked about the 48-hour challenge before, but started to get serious on 28 March, when Tom emailed to ask if I was free the weekend of 14-16 April. I was, so that was that: we’d do it.

Pre-planning in Starbucks

Over the next week, we read the challenge rules, spoke to friends who’d taken part before and watched lots of previous winning and not-winning entries. We made notes on what we saw, and on what we could do that might help our film stand out.

A lot of previous films were set in apocalyptic ruins or wastelands. A lot were very bleak and graded brown and grey. A lot starred men who looked like Tom and me (30-something nerds who needed to shave and spend more time in the gym). So we wanted something present-day, colourful and chirpy, and with prominent roles for women.

Since we – as filmmakers – had to respond to whatever brief we were given, I suggested setting our story in a TV studio. Our characters would be hosting a live, cool show and then respond to some sci-fi event. They might get reports of a plague or alien invasion, or they’d interview the boffin behind some new invention. We gambled on me being able to make that setting work whatever we were given.

Tom planned to shoot most if not all of the film on the Saturday afternoon and evening. If need be, we could shoot a small amount on Sunday morning, but we’d need to wrap by lunchtime so that he could concentrate the remaining hours on the edit, sound mix and grading before delivering the completed film on Monday morning. Again, we gambled that I’d be able to write within that plan.

As our stars, I suggested two actresses I’d worked with since 2008 on Doctor Who and Graceless audio plays for Big Finish (@bigfinish). I rang them both on 4 April and they agreed to take part. My tentative plan was that Ciara Janson (@CiaraJanson)would be a presenter on the TV show and Laura Doddington (@LDoddington)her director.

Tom suggested the other three actors, though we wouldn’t know who they’d play until we got the brief. Once I knew we had Anton Romain Thompson (@This_Is_ART) and Adrian Mackinder (@AdrianMackinder) onboard, and James Rose just for the Sunday, I made notes on possible roles they might play.

For example, Anton was eventually Ciara’s co-presenter, but he could have been a guest – either showing off an invention or giving a first-hand account of some sci-fi event. We asked Adrian to bring a suit to the filming because I thought he might be Laura’s executive producer, arriving in the midst of the crisis and ordering her to change the content of the show… This was as much as I could prepare in advance for whatever brief we got.

Tom also pointed out that a lot of the previous winning films had at least one striking special effect. Tom worked in special effects before becoming a director, so we discussed the kinds of simple but striking effects that were feasible. He made sure our crew included CG supervisor Chris Petts (@ChrisPettsVFX), as well as a strong art direction team in Simon Aronson (@TheMakingSpace) and Gemma Rigg (@MUTEtheFILM). Again, that kept our options open.

I’d had a TV studio in mind for the shoot but it wasn’t available. Tom and I called round various contacts looking for alternatives. On the Tuesday and Wednesday before the challenge, me, Tom and Sebastian Solberg (our Director of Photography, @SebSolberg) visited three possible locations – all working TV studios. Millbank Studios offered us eight hours from noon on the Saturday. At first, this was for more than our budget would allow but they thankfully then offered us a discount.

To give the film a sense of scale, we provisionally planned three ‘sets’ – the studio, the gallery and a green room. Tom suggested that the green room scenes would not need to be recorded at Millbank – where we were on limited time. If those scenes were kept short, we could use another, cheaper location on the Sunday morning. I begged use of a meeting room at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL, which would need minimal set dressing – just a table with a mirror.

Tom planned to have an editor assemble footage while we were still shooting on Saturday and then work through the night, so that we’d have a rough edit of the whole film relatively soon after wrapping on Sunday. We would have a finished edit by about 10 pm.

Tom and I would then stay up Sunday night and Monday morning while the sound design by Tapio Liukkonen at Kaamos Sound, soundtrack by Matthew Cochrane (@matcochr) and grading were completed. It was a tight schedule, but we had a certain amount of “give”. The whole thing had to be made in 48 hours but we were determined to produce a high-quality short.

We were still calling round for crew on the Friday evening – several people were keen but had other commitments, while others (understandably) wouldn’t work for the terms we could offer. Some people could only work one of the two days, or only for a part of the day. But finally we had a full team, including Natasha Phelan (@natashaphelan) as 1st assistant director and Simon Belcher (@nimbos) as sound recordist.

Our crew was largely made up of professionals working in TV and film. Two members of the crew had worked on 48-hour films before. We felt we were as prepared as we could be. But I still hardly slept the night before…

We agreed to meet the cast and crew at 11 am at the Pret down the road from Millbank. I took my laptop, with Final Draft loaded on to it.

OUR BRIEF
I had to write the film based on the brief we were given. Tom received our brief by text message at 11.05:

Title: Revealing Diary

Line: I should probably leave around Noon to be safe… Can you make that happen  

Prop: “Sketch: We see a character write a list of 6 words, the first word beginning with R (does not need to be a name or real word) – they then do a small doodle by the last word”

Optional: Man in coma explores mind as environment 

Once we got the text message, I had to act quickly, deciding the rough outline and what roles the actors would play. Our costume supervisor Becky Duncan was only available that morning, so once she had a rough brief from me, she quickly took Ciara and Laura up the street to go shopping in Primark. I sat typing the script at my laptop while Tom and the crew discussed how they’d shoot my story. We agreed that Simon A would provide us with a fake book and a trick mirror.

At noon we moved from Pret to Millbank Studios, where the crew prepared the “set” for filming. They asked me questions as I worked – such as what the live TV show would be called. I needed an answer on the spot. Our given line of dialogue said “by Noon”, so it had to be a late morning show. I suggested “Late Wake Up” and Tom rang Alex Mallinson (@HelloAlexBam) who quickly emailed over different graphics to choose from.

The set of Late Wake Up

By half twelve, I had a first outline of the script, which Tom read through and made notes on. By one, he’d agreed the script, and Ciara and Laura had their costumes. Tom led us through to the TV studio “set” where the actors read-through what I'd written, with me doing the stage directions. The cast and crew asked questions and clarified some points, we read it again, and by half one we were ready to start filming…

SHOOT
Sebastian (our DoP) shot the film on a tiny, handheld Canon 60D and used a Glidecam 2000 to keep the shot steady. He and Tom went through the shots while I was still writing, working out an opening shot to play the titles over. They went for a fairly standard shooting style, playing the scenes out in their entirety, starting with wides and then shooting close-ups.

Shooting

We shot everything twice – given the limits on us, that was the quickest and safest way. We shot quickly, Tom keeping the atmosphere friendly and fun – as you can see from the photos. The first scene took several hours to complete, the longest part of the short. It was quite dialogue heavy, which takes longer to shoot and cut – a lot of competition films had kept the dialogue to a minimum. We made it work because the rest of the film (effectively two scenes) were more visual and could be put together quickly.

Everyone mucked in. Most of the crew appear on screen at some point as extras. There wasn't much need for Chris' VFX brilliance while we shot, so he played the most prominent cameraman. Even Gary, the technician supervising us, had a role in our last shot – that all helped make the film look more expensive.

Chris, Laura and I all took turns holding the boom mike – it's not heavy, but holding it high up and out over the actors is knackering.

Meanwhile, Gemma and Simon hurried to the nearby Oxfam Bookshop to buy a hardback book that Adrian's character could plug on the show. Simon then battled technology to produce a bespoke dust jacket, with Adrian's best photo on the back.

Shooting the green room scenes

Sunday’s shoot at the Petrie museum should have been quicker, but we’d not anticipated the complexity of the effects shot – and weren’t ready to start filming until after our 1 pm deadline. I'd already agreed to provide some writing work for the museum on a quid pro quo basis. Tom negotiated an extension on the shoot by offering to do some video editing.

The delay was worth it as soon as Gemma and Simon presented the trick effect, and once we were filming we got through the material quickly. We were wrapped and packing up by 3.

We decamped with all our kit to the Marlborough Arms round the corner for much-needed late lunch – and beer. It had been a brilliant, fun shoot, the cast and crew a delight to spend the weekend with.

Tom called the editor to ensure things were on schedule, then stayed for an orange and lemonade with the crew.


THE EDIT – AND CRISIS
Tom and I took a cab to the “unit base” (Genium Creative, the office where Tom works. The editor hadn't finished the edit of all Saturday's footage, so Tom worked on editing the Sunday material and I made a quick dash home.

Having fought the Sunday service on public transport, I was back for half 9 and the takeaway Tom had ordered. Things were going well – and the footage looked amazing.

But as we tried to put the footage from both days together, we discovered a problem with the synching. The more we tried to trace the fault, the more embedded it appeared. Then the computers crashed. At 11 pm – 12 hours from the competition deadline – we effectively had to start the edit again from scratch. We had lost 24 hours of edit time from the 48-hour schedule.

Tom ploughed on anyway, finding me tasks to do such as making tea and compiling the credits. The editor left us at midnight – the time we'd always agreed he would work to.

That was our main failing. If we were doing this again, we'd make sure we had more than one person able to edit footage working through the final night. It would help if I knew how to do some basic assembly – I've since read Roger Corman's advice that the crew should all be competent in every part of production.

The morning wore on. Tom had worked for six hours non-stop when we took stock of the situation. We were both tired, and there was still a lot of work to do. We would be able, Tom thought, to deliver a rough edit of the material to the competition – the scenes in the right order, with basic sound and no grading. Or we could miss the deadline and finish the film later in the week, properly.

We drown our sorrows at 7 am

We made the decision to hold off and, exhausted, went for breakfast and then home to bed. Later in the morning, Tom emailed the cast and crew to tell them what had happened. Everyone was very supportive – again, a testament to the sense that we'd made something good.

In the next few days, Tom worked on the film, fitting it round other commitments. In principle, he tried to finish it within the time we felt we'd lost, the new cut taking him 12 hours in total. That self-imposed limit proved less practical when it came to tweaking the edit and working on the grade and sound.

It was frustrating to miss the deadline, but we don't regret a thing. We'd strongly recommend taking part in the 48 hour competition, whatever your experience in film-making. Apart from the technical problems at the last minute, we had a brilliant time making our film and have learned a lot that will be very useful on our future projects. We're already planning our next films.

We didn't submit Revealing Diary to the competition because we thought it was a good film in its own right and wanted to finish it properly. We're proud of what we achieved and very grateful to all those people who gave their time and expertise for free.

Sci-Fi London has announced the shortlist of top 20 films from the competition and the winners will be announced this Sunday. Congratulations to them – and to everyone who completed their films on time. We appreciate what an achievement that is.

Simon Aronson has posted more photos from the shoot.

Share and share alike?

The not exactly new but current issue of SFX (#171, July 2008, The X-Files on the cover) includes a three page feature by Jonathan Wright on spin-off novels and shared universes.

Wright talks to a whole bunch of important people: critic and writer Roz Kaveney; Mark Newton, assistant editor on the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street books; my boss Justin Richards; writers Rob Williams, Peter David, Kevin J Anderson, Una McCormack and, er, me.

In such esteemed and clever company, I get just a paragraph towards the end. But here's what I originally said:

Let's get this one straight out of the way, franchise work is maybe regarded as not creative in the same way that 'original' work is. What's your take on that?

Original work probably seems harder because you've got to start from scratch – the people, the setting, the tone. A franchise at least gives you a rough idea of what's expected and your major characters. But you've also got to find a way to do new things within that same set-up and that gets trickier the longer a franchise has been going. There's 45 years of Doctor Who – television episodes, books, audio plays, comic strips. Fans are quick to spot repetition, but the fun – for you and for them, I think – is in producing new twists and ideas. It's sort of a parlour game. Is that any less creative? I'm not sure. It's certainly different.

I think franchise writing is also safer for a writer. There are fixed guidelines, word counts and contracts, so it's a lot less risky to write. Original work doesn't just need writing, it needs much more work to get publishers interested and then to get punters to buy it. That's a lot of investment and there might be very little return. With a franchise you know there's already an audience.

Are the rules with existing franchises slightly different to when you're pitching a new [thing]?

I've pitched original things to other people, but not very successfully. So what do I know?

Related to the above – do fans expect certain things of franchises and is that something you think about very much?

Yes, I think they probably do, but I'm not sure how you go about measuring those expectations. There are vocal minorities in most fan communities whose opinions could skew your thinking. But also you want to surprise and excite your readers, so you're looking for new perspectives anyway. You can talk to fans, or eavesdrop on their
conversations, but I think you can only really respond to your expectations. When pitching my first Doctor Who book I was thinking about the kinds of Doctor Who books I'd liked reading myself. Ones where the Doctor and his companions were prominent. Ones with mad ideas. Ones where I didn't know where it was going to go next. Even if it's not a franchise you know particularly well, you do your research and you work out what elements you yourself are a fan of.

To what extent can you decide plotlines?

For the Doctor Who books, all these things have to be approved by a great number of people but you're the one coming up with the ideas. My first Doctor Who novel, The Time Travellers, is pretty much the 5,000 word synopsis I send on spec to BBC Books in early 2003. My second Doctor Who novel, The Pirate Loop, began as a whole series of ideas I sent range editor Justin Richards after he asked for something science-fiction. We spent about a week batting the ideas back and forth, pruning them into shape. That outline then had to be approved and the approvers made some suggestions. I think the Doctor and Martha spent less time together in the original outline.

I've also commissioned stories where I gave authors a one-line or one-paragraph outline and then left them to do the rest. That works well if you're commissioning a whole series. It seems to work best if the authors aren't given too many things to squeeze in and are left to come up with the plot themselves. They tend to be keener and more creative when its their own idea.

How does the commissioning/editing process work?

These days, they call you. The editors might have an idea for the kind of thing they're after – a space story, or anything so long as it isn't set in London. They might tell what else they've got lined up and just want you to fill the gap. There's usually some general guidelines to the series – rules and footnotes you might not pick up as an outside observer. There's a set word count, deadline and contract, so you just need to come up with the outline.

Once that's approved, you go away and write the thing. Then there's various stages of editorial – a close reading by your immediate editor who might ask for all manner of changes, a proof read by a sub who'll be checking grammar and inconsistencies, and then the panel of approvers who check for tone and style. They might also ask you to tweak things to make them more in keeping with forthcoming stories.

Do you think such developments as the boom in fan fiction/online shared worlds/a more 'interactive' future will change our ideas about what shared universes are?

Fan fiction has been going a long time. There's a wealth of authors now who started out in fanzines. Back in 1990 Virgin Publishing were so impressed with the Doctor Who stories published by fans that they invited them to pitch for their New Adventures line. But that's a rare example, at least as far as I know, of a publisher actually reading fan fiction – or admitting that they have. Fan fiction's value – to me, anyway – is that it gets wannabe writers writing and gets their writing seen. You gain confidence and practical skills, which helps when then sending your work out to the professional publishers.

Do your 'original' work and your franchise work feed off each other?

Yes. You come up with ideas that maybe don't fit the thing you're working on just then, so you jot them down to use later in something else unrelated. Or you go off on tangents which prove to be whole other stories. But also just the practical stuff plays a part – you work with an editor on a franchise line who then gets a job with a
different publisher. It's even smaller scale stuff – I've learnt tricks writing copy for the government and advertising that's been useful in my fiction. My own sentence structure is certainly better having had to produce and edit other people's stuff. The great thing about writing – especially if you don't really have any other abilities – is that you can make use of any experience.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Um…

A brief bio of yourself would help a lot too.

I am 31 [not any more] and live in south London with a bright wife and a dim cat. I have written stories for as long as I can remember, though for a long time not very good ones. I started pitching to 2000AD at the age of 16, and the Doctor Who books when I was 18. It took 10 years to get a book commissioned, though by then I'd had some Doctor Who short stories published by Big Finish. I've been a freelance writer since 2002. I'm editing my third anthology of Doctor Who short stories at the moment. "How The Doctor Changed My Life" features 25 stories by first-time authors of fiction, the winners of a competition we ran last year. It is published in September 2008.

The SFX website boasts Rob Williams answering the same questions. Incidentally, this is my 650th post, in 3 years and 27 days.