Doctor Who: 1983

Episode 602: The Five Doctors
First broadcast: 10.30 pm on Wednesday 23 November 1983 (US); 7.20 pm on Friday 25 November 1983 (UK)
<< back to 1982

The Raston warrior robot decapitates a Cyberman -
for Doctor Who's birthday.
The Five Doctors

A lot of our response to Doctor Who is informed as much by how we first see it - who we're with at the time, the mood we (and they) are in, the stuff going on in our lives - as the programme itself. A wise chum told me he'd realised this about a recent season: his least favourite episodes were all the ones he'd watched on his own.

So a lot of the warm, cosy love I have for The Five Doctors is personal and from context. That first evening it was shown was a big event. I was allowed to stay up late to watch it with my siblings, and they drew the curtains and turned off the lights to make the experience more like a cinema. It was the last Doctor Who story we all watched together as it went out.

When I watch it again now, I still feel a thrill of memory for that long-ago evening, that particular, personal circumstance. But it's not just that. As I've grown up, become a writer and tried typing my own Doctor Who stories, I am ever more in awe of the script.

First, consider the brief given to the poor writer. Imagine you're the one that script editor Eric Saward came to.

You have to write a 90-minute TV movie extravaganza, with five leading actors all playing the main hero - so they get 18 minutes each. They all need to drive the plot, be heroic and have the best lines, and you'll need to consider the potential clash of egos on set. Oh, and the fact that one of those actors is dead.

In addition, the story should feature lots of old monsters and companions. The production team can't confirm availability of some of those companions until very late in the day, but each Doctor will need pairing up with a companion from their time on the show. And lastly, it needs to thrill a broad, general audience tuning in for the special event, as well attempting to satisfy fans. (PS the script editor especially likes the Cybermen.)

Bloody hell, that's a lot to cram in - once you've assembled the cast there's hardly room for a story. In fact, it seems to have defeated Robert Holmes, generally regarded as one of Doctor Who's best writers - if not the best. "The brief was too heavy," Saward later admitted of Holmes' involvement. "He didn't think it would work."

Saward is speaking on Terrance Dicks: Fact & Fiction, a 2005 DVD extra on Horror of Fang Rock. The documentary covers Terrance's time on Doctor Who but especially his ability to step in when things went wrong. When two stories collapsed in 1969, he co-wrote the 10-episode The War Games and saw the Second Doctor off in grand style. He then script-edited the next five years of the show - all the Third Doctor's adventures - taking a series facing cancellation and returning it to rude health. In 1977, when the BBC objected to his Doctor-Who-meets-vampires story (because it would look like it was mocking their big adaptation of Count Dracula), he quickly knocked out one of my favourite stories, Horror of Fang Rock. Basically, he's a good man in a crisis.

Terrance himself is modest about his contribution. He says on the Fact & Fiction documentary that he's often asked:

"'Were you aware you were making classic television?' Our main plan was not to have have to show the test card."

He's rightly proud of this unshowy professionalism and recalls a moment from his time as script-editor. A director called from the rehearsal hall to say there was some problem with the scripts. Terrance called back and spoke to the director's PA.

"I said, 'Tell him to ring me when he's free. And tell him not to worry because whatever it is I will fix it.' ... That just came out and I thought that sounds bloody conceited. But I thought after five years, having hit most of the problems on Doctor Who, I'm fairly confident that I can fix it."

When given the brief for The Five Doctors, Terrance's solution was simple, effective and brilliant. He treats the problem as a sort of game, and makes that game the plot. Just as he has to gather Doctors, companions and old enemies, so does the villain in the story.

I've been discussing this with my chum Jim Smith, who says that "Terrance talked once about a game where you have to take objects out of box and extemporise a story around them. The story does that, with all ingredients brought out like the prestige in a magic trick. He also (perhaps unconsciously) works that image into the story, with Borusa's gloved hands pulling the figurines of the characters out of the box and putting them on the board."

But - without disagreeing with Jim - it's far more clever than that simple game supposes. The Doctors all have their own plots to follow and don't meet up until the final scenes (and a single day's filming) which provides a neat structure for the story but also avoided potential spats between the leading men. There are even separate entrances to the Dark Tower so the Doctors don't bump into one another early.

More from Jim: "I love how the Third Doctor recounts an establishment view of Rassilon, the Dark Times and so on ('old Rassilon put a stop to it') while the Second, a more anarchic and less establishment figure, regales the Brigadier with conspiracy theories of how Rassilon invented and played the game before he banned it and how he may still be alive inside his own Tomb. At least some of which turn out to be true."

The Five Doctors is packed with brilliant moments: the Doctors being chased by black triangles; the fizzing insides of a Dalek; the Doctor running away from his own people at the end. There are nice continuity fixes, too: the fact that a Time Lord can be given a new regenerative cycle when his first one is used up; the Third Doctor meeting the Cybermen (the only Doctor at that point not to have done so). And so much of the dialogue sparkles: I particularly love “I am the Master – and your loyal servant”.

Jim says: "I love that the Master takes his mission seriously. When he rages at the end that 'I came here to help you Doctor, a little unwillingly but I came. My offers were scorned! My help refused!' he's actually telling the truth and no one - not even the audience - believes him."

"Then," Jim goes on, "there's Terrance's use of imagery from Browning's Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came - see from versus XXXI. This seems like a stretch until you remember Fang Rock's indebtedness to The Ballad of Flannen Isle."

Terrance dodges round one of the Doctors being dead by having an actor stand in for William Hartnell - but also, tastefully, starts the story with a perfectly chosen clip of the man himself. Midway into the story, the replacement First Doctor is paired up with the current Doctor which again works structurally as well as practically (there's less of a potential clash with a for-one-night-only Doctor). All the Doctors have great moments of wit, intelligence and courage and get some brilliant lines.

Then, after a draft of the script had been completed, one of the Doctors decided not to be involved. That should have spelt disaster but Terrance fixes things deftly, again using archive footage to fill the gap and also reworking the other Doctors' roles. Watching it that first time, I wished Tom Baker had been in it more but never suspected he'd not been there at all.

If the Doctors get the best bits, the companions are less well served, just tagging along in his wake, asking questions that prod the plot along. I wonder how much that's due to them still being swapped round at the last minute, or to the constraints of squeezing in so many people.

There's an effort to mark out their characters but it's all a bit sketched in and glib. Susan sprains her ankle as if that's something she always did (it isn't; she did it once in The Dalek Invasion of Earth). Jim: "Which was, of course, one of only two First Doctor stories Dicks had novelised. Did he flick through it for research? Or just remember novelising that moment?"

Poor old Turlough fares worst, getting very little to do: he draws a picture, worries in the TARDIS then has to stand still not talking. Jim: "I like his 'Die, it seems' gag. And 'Big, isn't it?' about the bomb. Black humour is key to Turlough, I think. So we get that if nothing else."

There's no mention at all of Kamelion, the robot companion introduced in the previous story.

Other things niggle. It's a shame that the Eye of Orion is clearly the same location as the Death Zone (though that's not an issue with the script). A thrilling scene where the Third Doctor rescued Sarah from the Autons was changed to a cheaper one where she falls down a steep slope; a good fix on paper but the way its shot doesn't make it look very perilous (and again not an issue with the script).

Jim drew my attention to one odd script thing in the scene at UNIT HQ: the sergeant doesn't know who the Doctor is and won't let him in, whereas Colonel Crichton tried to have the Doctor invited to the reunion and failed. So he certainly knows of the Doctor. When the Doctor gets into the office, the colonel dismisses the sergeant and lets the Doctor stay because either he knows who this Doctor is by sight (they've never met, but he may have seen pictures or whatever) or he accepts Lethbridge-Stewart's recognition of him as reason enough. Then at the end of the scene the colonel says:

CHRICTON:
What the blazers is going on? Who was that strange little man?

SERGEANT NOT-BENTON:
The Doctor?

CHRICTON:
Who?

Which, as Jim said, completely reverses their positions/knowledge. On the DVD commentary at this point, Terrance says the joke wasn't his but Saward's. And it's not in Terrance's novelisation of the story, either.

Whatever the case in that scene, Saward clearly helped improve the story overall. He suggested that it was too obvious if the villain turned out to be the Master. He also thought the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane needed to face one more obstacle before reaching the Dark Tower. To answer that, Terrance came up with the one new monster in the story, in a scene that typifies what makes The Five Doctors so brilliant.

The Raston warrior robot is a budget-conscious creation - a non-speaking actor in a simple costume. Its sensors are primed to detect any movement, on which it fires arrows and bladed discs. Again, it's making a game of the problem: the Doctor and Sarah Jane end up playing Blind Man's Bluff.

DOCTOR:
Freeze, Sarah Jane. If you move, we're dead.

And then a troop of Cybermen arrive...

Cor. No wonder this scene was most often used to promote the story. Simple, cheap and thrilling, it is perfect Doctor Who.

Next episode: 1984

Doctor Who: 1980

Episode 534: Full Circle, part 1
First broadcast: 5.40 pm, Saturday, 25 October 1980
<< back to 1979

My earliest memory of anything:
K-9 and the Doctor, Full Circle part 1

This is where I come in. My earliest memory of anything at all is the Doctor crouched with K-9 in the reeds, watching the Marshmen emerge from the swamp – and then the scream of the closing credits.

It's still a brilliant moment, beautifully shot and directed. Years later, when the Haemovores rose up from the sea in The Curse of Fenric (1989), I assumed it was a homage. Then, as I watched my way through all of old-skool Doctor Who, I assumed both were nicked from The Sea Devils (1972).

But – as this blog has been making quite evident – what do I know about anything? So I asked Full Circle's writer Andrew Smith whether that was intentional, and also about how he came to write Doctor Who on TV while still in his teens...

SG: Hullo Andy. So, as I've told you, that scene is my first memory of anything ever.

AS: Wowza.

How much of it was nicked from The Sea Devils?

None it it! (Laughs) The cliffhanger of them coming out of the marsh was one of the first things I thought about when I was writing the story. That was the standard at the time, which people have forgotten now. The usual thing was that your main monster would turn up as the cliffhanger of episode one. It's kind of what I did with [2012 audio story] The First Sontarans, too. People complained that you don't hear a Sontaran in that until the end of the first episode – but that's classic, godammit!

A lot of old stories would start with what I like to call a “Stuart Fell sequence”, which is some hapless person being killed by something we don't see. And then we see what it was at the end of the first episode.

Yeah, and in Full Circle it was actually Stuart Fell! He gets dragged underwater by a wire. Yeah, the whole thing is set up for the monsters and then there they'd be at the end. Of course [director] Peter [Grimwade] and [film cameraman] Max Samett just did it fantastically well. It's quite a daring way to film it, all in silhouette, really. I was so glad to see Max Samett interviewed on the DVD. I meant to mention him on the commentary because I remember him very clearly on location. The stuff that he did was incredible. We were lucky with the weather and everything else as well. I was really impressed with it when I saw it broadcast, even having been there.

[Andy's kindly provided me with this scan of a polaroid photo taken by Continuity when the Marshmen were being filmed emerging from the lake. “I scanned it to send it to you, so it's previously unseen,” he says. Yes! An exclusive!]

Continuity shot from the filming of Full Circle
Care of Andrew Smith

How old were you at the time?

That was filmed four days before my 18th birthday, so I was 17 when I wrote it.

It's quite a thing to have written Doctor Who in your teens.

Yeah.

You talked to Toby Hadoke in his podcast about writing to the production team and being a fan, but did you know other people who were writing and sending stuff in? Was there a gang of you?

No. I wasn't a member of anything. I don't think I even knew local groups existed. I was in the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, which I joined after I'd been to the Doctor Who Exhibition in Blackpool in I think October '75 – Planet of Evil was on, so whenever that was – where I discovered the Target novels. That was when the fandom stepped up a gear. It would have been fairly soon after that that I joined the Appreciation Society. I think their details were in the novels at the time and that's when I found out about them. But I wasn't aware of any groups. I was still at school – and then university, later in the year. But I wasn't associated with anyone else who was writing, I was just getting on with it and not really aware of my age.

It's funny, I was interviewed by Radio Free Skaro and they asked if I ever mentioned my age when I wrote in. I'd never been asked that before. I thought about it and no, I didn't, but then I can't think why I would have. If you were 22 or 38 or 52, would you mention your age? I didn't. I think I was 14 or 15 when I sent the first one in. I didn't mention my age because you just wouldn't. At what point do you say, 'Oh, by the way, I'm 14' or whatever? You want to write, you've written something and you want to see if people like it so you send it in. The mental process is... Well, I never thought I'd be too young to do it.

So when did they realise how old you were?

I really don't know. (Laughs!) I came down to see Douglas Adams and they were filming The Creature from the Pit – so whenever that was, sometime in early '79, I think. He'd have met me and realised but whether we sat down and discussed my actual age I don't know. It was never an issue really.

After Full Circle I did a play for television. We were in production when the series it was part of was previewed in TV Times and they talked about me and the other writers. It said 'Andrew Smith, 23, blah blah blah'. I spoke to Robert Love, who was the Head of Drama at Scottish Television at the time and who'd given the interview with my age in it. I said, 'Where did you get the idea that I was 23?' He said, 'Oh they asked your age and I said that was about right. Was it?' I said, 'Actually, I'm 18.' He went: 'Oh!' As I said, we were in production at the time – and from that point on I was patronised by the director. Not by Robert; he was really good. But the director, no question, patronised me, didn't buy me another drink (laughs) and wasn't sure about letting me in the bar. It was really odd.

So Doctor Who wasn't the only show you had pitched to? 

Yeah, because I pitched to things like Shoestring and other shows and even got some feedback. I remember feedback from Robert Banks Stewart where he talked about stuff he'd done on Doctor Who and other programmes he'd written. I remember he was quite impressed that I knew about a daytime series he'd written called Rooms. So there was that and there would have been a couple of other things. I wanted to write, it wasn't just writing for Doctor Who. Doctor Who was always there.

The first thing I had on telly wasn't Doctor Who, it was a quickie on Not The Nine O'Clock News. I'd written comedy sketches for Week Ending before that. I was 15 or 16, I think, when I had my first sketch performed on Week Ending. So yeah, I was pitching around a few places. It took about three years, I think, to get to the point on Doctor Who where they said, 'Okay, we'll ask you to write a script and see what we think'. Whereas of course on other programmes they'd have finished their run before you got to that point.

You've talked elsewhere about writing more Doctor Who and one of your unused stories became The First Sontarans last year. But at what point did you decide to stop writing and join the police?

It was about four years into it. I was always really interested in joining the police and wanted a bit of excitement: it was that positive thing of wanting to do it. With the writing as well, there were a few things: the insecurity of it worried me, especially projecting very far ahead and knowing it would be a constant gamble. I knew other writers, older than me, and saw what they went through. And I just liked the idea of the excitement and the security of the police.

It's a mug's game being a writer, that's what you're saying.

Well, no, it was great. But it would have been a real leap in the dark and I recognised that if I carried on doing it, I'd probably have a feast or famine existence. It would have been a gamble with no guarantees of anything. I'd really enjoyed it but what I also found was that there was almost no time off. That thing of holiday? No chance. I'd think, 'I'll go on holiday but I'll take the typewriter with me anyway'.

In those four years I always had a commission for something until I had to begin turning things down as I approached the start date with the police. There was always that constant pressure of not having a working day. I just felt guilty. Again, sometimes I do now. I've decided to stop, sit down and watch TV with the family or whatever and I think, 'Should I be back there continuing?' You'll know this: sometimes you can't stop. Sometimes it's a little like pushing a bus. It takes a bit of effort to work up momentum but once it's going it's difficult to stop the bugger.

Last thing: Full Circle is all about evolution. Lalla Ward (Romana) has since married Richard Dawkins. Is it right that he's seen it? What does he make of it?

I have no idea! In fact, we didn't discuss it, I don't think, when she recorded The Invasion of E-Space (2010). We chatted about a lot of things but I don't think we talked about Full Circle. We never did a thing of 'Oh, do you remember when...' It was more just a chit-chat and what have you.

Do you think the story would stand up to his scrutiny?

(Long pause) To be honest, I don't really know. I'm aware of him but I've not read his books. I don't think I've ever seen an interview with him. About the only time I've ever seen him speak was when he had that cameo in Doctor Who. (Laughs).

Well, that's no help at all, is it? Andrew Smith, thank you very much!

(Postscript: when Dawkins was interviewed by Benjamin Cook for Doctor Who Magazine in 2008, he mentioned his wife being in the series:

“I didn’t watch it at the time, but I’ve loved seeing many of her episodes on DVD...”

But which episodes?!? I must know!)

Next episode: 1981

Doctor Who: 1977

Episode 455: Horror of Fang Rock, part 2
First broadcast: 6.15 pm, Saturday 10 September 1977
<< back to 1976

Leela threatens Lord Palmerdale,
The Horror of Fang Rock, part 2
(image swiped from Doctor Who gifs)

As wise Jonny Morris puts it in the most recent Doctor Who Magazine,

"this story is the third in what has to be the most impressive run of stories in the show's history."

Part of the strength of The Robots of Death, The Talons of Weng-Chiang and Horror of Fang Rock is how well written the new companion is. Leela is a brilliant character: bold, brave and never stupid, she's grown up as a "savage" (the word the series uses) on an alien world where life is very hard. She's a sci-fi twist on Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion, but for all the Doctor is Professor Higgins, teaching her about science and manners and getting her to put some clothes on, he never quite tames the savage within. Leela's best moments are when she doesn't behave like a lady.

Yet there's something troubling about a companion so comfortable with killing, who'll reach for a weapon whenever there's a problem. Tom Baker objected, too, insisting that when Leela kills someone in her first story that the Doctor replies with cold fury:

That wasn't necessary. Who licensed you to slaughter people? No more Janis thorns, you understand? Ever.

After that, she tends to wound not kill people (aliens apparently don't count).

Why is it a problem? It's not as if the Doctor hasn't previously had companions who are ready to fight and kill. All the male companions until Harry were called upon to fight and kill baddies, usually brawling with bare hands as if that's morally better. Sara wanted to kill the Doctor the first time she met him; Zoe was skilled in martial arts (as was Jo, though she rarely used it). The Doctor and his friends are frequently caught up in battles that leave their enemies dead.

Leela, though, is unlike any other companion before or since because of her relish for killing. As I said, we rarely see her kill after her first story so it's all in her words. There's her response to Palmerdale that I've chosen as my image:

Silence! You will do as the Doctor instructs, or I will cut out your heart.

There's more in part four, as she taunts the Rutan:

Enjoy your death as I enjoyed killing you!

Later, the Doctor's chides her again - but she won't be chided.

DOCTOR:
Been celebrating, have you?

LEELA:
It is fitting to celebrate the death of an enemy.

Most brutally of all there's the moment she thinks she's been blinded right at the end of the story.

LEELA:
Slay me, Doctor.

DOCTOR
What?

LEELA:
I'm blind. Slay me now. It is the fate of the old and crippled.

This response to disability is foreshadowed in the opening episode, where Leela misunderstands a reference to Reuben "killing himself" with work, and asks if he is crippled. It's a shocking idea to put into the mouth of our main identification figure in a family show on at Saturday tea-time. Yes, it helps that the Doctor tells Leela quite clearly that she's wrong - but I'm not sure quite enough.

Part of the problem is the strength of the imagery. It's not just Leela's death we conjure in our minds but also that of the old and crippled. I spoke before about how the language used can make Doctor Who more vivid and horrible than anything we're shown on screen.

And yet, I think it's important that when Leela says these things she's not dressed as a savage: she's in ordinary jeans and a jumper. It's a brilliant juxtaposition: the words she uses cut against how she appears. She might look like an ordinary young woman but inside she's something wild. It's very rare in the old show to get inside a character's head and see the world as they do - but with Leela we do.

It's a shame that, from the next story, Leela takes a retrograde step and puts her animal skins back on. Actress Louise Jameson has said before that it's almost as if those in charge could (unconsciously) only allow such a strong female character if at the same time they took her clothes off. But I'm not sure I agree, because when they take Leela's clothes off her again the writing stops being as strong.

With the one exception of The Sun Makers - where Leela gets lines like,

You touch me again and I'll fillet you.

- for the rest of Season 15 she is written as rather a generic companion, chasing round after the Doctor to ask him what's going on. How much more brilliant and rich and rewarding if she had worn ordinary clothes? The writers would have had to remind us in dialogue and action that she wasn't what she seemed, and that would have meant more compelling stories and better served the character.

For all she grew up on another planet, Leela is a human - the last human companion in the series for some time. But when she's written well, with such bloodthirsty imagery, she's the most alien best friend the Doctor ever had.

Next episode: 1978

My first ever rejection letter

Excitement! I have found my first ever rejection letter, received in April 1992 from Gary Russell, then editor of Doctor Who Magazine. I was 15 at the time, and it was just a few months since Gary's interview with novelist Paul Cornell (in issue #181, December 1991) had made me realise that being a writer was something I might actually do, not merely something to dream of like being an astronaut or pop star.

I sent Gary a terrible short story in which the Fourth Doctor and Romana land somewhere and, er, that's it, and surprisingly the response was a form letter:

I've had a lot of form letters since. They're the usual response to unsolicited on spec submissions. It took me a long time to realise that collecting rejection letters - forms ones, then form ones with notes on your submission, then ones with notes on your submission that invite you to try again - is a big part of being a writer.

I mustn't have been too disappointed by this first response as I sent Gary more stories. You can see how much better they were by the response I got six months later:

At the same time I also sent a script for a Judge Dredd story to 2000AD, and the form rejection letter I got back wasn't even signed (though someone had asterisked the paragraphs I should pay attention to).

Over the next few years, I continued to send things to Doctor Who Magazine and 2000AD, and also sent in proposals anywhere else I could think of. My first rejection letter from the publisher of Doctor Who books in 1994 was so detailed, generous and encouraging that I probably owe my career to it.

I finally got commissioned by Doctor Who Magazine at the end of 2001, with a two-part feature published in early 2002. Later that year, I also got commissioned to write a Doctor Who short story, in Big Finish's Short Trips: Zodiac. That was edited by Jacqueline Rayner, overseen by Gary Russell. That led to me writing lots for Big Finish, and a couple of years later I helped Gary write form letters in response to submissions.

2000AD turned me down, again, with a form letter just last year.

(Thanks to Gary for permission to post these.)

On finishing a notebook

Last night I finished a notebook I've kept since 29 December 2011 (when I was in Egypt). I've kept notebooks since I was in my teens, and find them very useful to refer back to – pinching ideas from my past to pitch anew to unsuspecting bosses. It's not a diary, but flicking through this latest volume reminds me what I was working on and having ideas about, and what preoccupied the insides of my head.

There are the day-to-day notes as I wrote one novel, 10 plays and three short films, marking down new clever wheezes or things I'd need to go back and fix. There are pitches for yet more plays, films and comics, notes on what I was reading or watching (much of it later blogged here), fragments of conversation – real and imagined – and turns of phrase or interesting words or ideas.

As an insight into the terrible mess of my brain, here is a selection:

21/1/12

Lord Wallace of Tankerness is asked if he knows of a case of suicide in a young offenders' institution and responds, “I associate myself with expressions of regret” - [House of Lords, 24/1/12; col. 987.]

12/5

Page 21 of A Bullet in the Ballet (1937) refers to “con. men” - NB the full stop.

Undated

Do we know what we vote for? Have we read the manifestos, interrogated the data and understood the arguments? Generally, no; we are lazy. We buy newspapers and follow Twitter accounts that confirm our opinions. We avoid complex or counterintuitive issues and the testament of evidence in favour of the glib and easy. We elect a smile, a soundbite, a cipher, not a problematic and uncertain truth. Rule so we don't have to think about it – that is your mandate, nothing more.

10/6

Doctor Who - The City in the Clouds ([Rough idea for a Companion Chronicle set in Season 1, but beaten to it by clever Jonny and his Voyage to Venus)

In space, maybe on zeppelins linked together to create a city in the temperate zone on Venus – a city in the clouds.

All a bit Dan Dare (which Ian has read, confiscated from his pupils), and they realise that this futuristic world is in the early 17th Century, the same time as Galileo is on Earth recording the phases of Venus for the first time.

Barbara falls in love and Ian has to take her back to the TARDIS (he uses her mum Joan to convince her to leave). Her lover will think she died.

They have to get down to the planet's surface – the hottest place in the Solar System – to recover the TARDIS. Need local people's help. They don't use money there, it's all about reputation and respect – like crowdsourcing, or your number of followers on Twitter. So the Doctor and Susan etc. have to be storytellers, scientists, busking their way in the society, getting themselves known – and only for the right reasons. Loss of face can ruin everything. That's where we meet them at the start of part one, the Doctor as a Punch and Judy man.

[Before I knew about Jonny's story, I realised that was too much like Patrick Troughton's role in The Box of Delights before I knew Matt Smith would do some Punch and Judy business in The Snowmen.]

21/8

Video going round of a guy mocking iPhone users for taking photos of their food. We're often fooled into thinking we're part of something because we consume it. There are all the tweets and fan activity involved in watching a TV show (a passive experience), or the adverts that sell the idea that by eating a burger or drinking a fizzy drink we're part of the Olympics.

21/10

After the accident, people would say to him, 'Do you dream you'll walk again?'

And he would consider – as if it were the first time he'd been asked – then say, 'No, only of being able to fly.'

14/11

We used to tease her

That in the freezer

Below the croquettes and fish fingers and peas

She kept the bodies of one or two geezers

Who thought they'd got lucky

When she invited them home.

But we were very wrong -

It wasn't one or two.

Something inside her

Moved like a spider

Spinning them in and dispatching them

Then cooking them up for her guests

Despite her reservations that these men

Could be counted as fair trade.

She liked the big-boned ones

Who made lewd remarks

And promised not to treat her respectably.

Their steaks were good for marbleising

And she saw putting them on the menu

As a service to women her age.

27/12

Rewatching The Snowmen. Why does Madame Vastra look a bit different from how she did in A Good Man Goes To War? She's a lizard and sheds her skin, so looks a little different after each shedding. (Also, it's considered rude to point that out.)

4/1/13

Billy Connolly, interviewed by Mark Lawson, describes “middle class” as “the kind of people who had dressing gowns as children”.

7/1

Michael Rosen on Radio 4's Word ofMouth investigating stenography and Hansard (in the Commons). Stenography machines are phonetic and you press keys simultaneously. Need 200+ words a minute to be accurate and keep up with speech. Some stenographers are certified to 250 words. The quality is “down to a price, not up to a standard”.

Dickens by Claire Tomalin

Claire Tomalin's biography of Charles Dickens is full of what George Orwell, speaking of Dickens' strengths, called the “telling detail”. There's the irony of this so-English author who called himself a citoyne of France. As so often, the reality is richer and more interesting than the myth. And there's a great deal of myth around Dickens.

As Simon Callow observed last year (the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth),

“Dickens the domestic monster has become part of the intellectual landscape, along with some increasingly lurid speculations about his sex life.”

Simon Callow, The Great Charles Dickens Scandal by Michael Slater – review, The Guardian, 23 November 2012. 

Callow spells out the evidence to the contrary, but Tomalin sticks to the "domestic monster" version, and details how the master of prose was expert at weaving convenient fictions round his misdeeds. A fantasist who treated those around him as if they were his own creations, it reads as a warning about the ego of writers.

Tomalin seems to like Dickens for his role in social reforms and she also appreciates some of his (male) characters, but generally she finds his work overwrought. The sense is that his books have been spoiled for her because of what she knows about his life.

“You want to avert your eyes from a good deal of what happened during the next year, 1858.”

Claire Tomalin, Dickens, p. 294. 

And yet I felt Tomalin was sometimes just as guilty as Dickens of massaging facts to suit a moral purpose. She indulges in conspiracy theories about Ellen Ternan – not merely whether Ternan and Dickens has sex, but whether Ternan had a son by Dickens (Tomalin spells out a tragic supposition where the child dies in France), and whether she was with Dickens when he suffered his last stroke. Tomalin presents what scant evidence exists for and against these claims, though makes her own beliefs plain - I thought not wholly convincingly. The truth is that we don't know: the evidence is too poor and a lot of it merely circumstantial. But having raised the possibility of a child with Ternan – and listed the historians who disagree – Tomalin then treats it as fact.

She is also rather shocked at his ruthlessness to family, but he's given these people multiple chances and hand-outs, and generally they abuse his kindness and sense of duty. I felt more sympathy for a man whose relatives continually expect him to rescue them financially and abuse his patience. His struggles with money, and his need for an appreciative audience, struck a chord with this particular writer.

I wonder at Tomalin's own perspective as the wife of a famous novelist and playwright. There's no sense of the strange relationship with readers – for example that writing is painfully slow and lonely, yet a reader who responds will find the work immediate and intimate. I'd have liked more on his method: the volume of words per day, the number of revisions, his planning and ability to adapt his plans as a book progressed. It doesn't especially explain what made Dickens' work so different or appealing – either in his own time or today.

A BBC documentary last year dared suggest that Dickens' work invented the forms of early cinema. Given Tomalin's assessment of Dickens' amateur dramatics, I think its truer to say early film used lots of the forms of theatre, which was also an influence on him. His rich characters ache to be performed, his plots creaking under their strain. That often leads to actors hamming them up, but in the books themselves and the best adaptations, the more these larger-than-life people are played absolutely straight, the more effectively we will feel for all that they are put through. (That's why I think The Muppet's Christmas Carol is the best ever adaptation of Dickens: Muppets playing out a kitchen-sink drama absolutely straight is a perfect match for Dickens.)

Rather, Tomalin concentrates on conjuring the man himself, and it's a vivid and distinctive portrait. She paints Dickens as a hypocrite – the generous, jolly, social reformer is a predatory bully and bore. I think that's a little unfair on a hard-working man who lifted himself out of poverty and tried to help others too. That drive and purpose also makes this a difficult read: a man so full of energy and things to say withers away page after page, so many of his friends and family dying poor and prematurely. The story doesn't end with Dickens' death in 1870: Tomalin continues to explore his legacy and the damage wrought by his affair up until 1939, and the deaths of the last of his children. It's the shadow of a monster, not a cause of celebration. So it's a captivating book, but not a joy, and the monster not wholly convincing.

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.

My next big thing

Paul Magrs started a thing of getting people to talk about their next big thing. Last week, Joseph Lidster did it and nominated me. So here is my response.

What is the title of your new book?
Instead of a book, Joe “Makes His Own Rules” Lidster talked about his episodes of Wizards Vs Aliens. So my next big thing is also not a book but the short film, The Plotters, which you can watch here:


(The Plotters is also on YouTube.)

Where did the idea come from for the book?
My brother Tom and I have been working together for a few years – him as a director, me as a writer / dogsbody. We made a series of documentaries for the old-skool Doctor Who DVDs, and then last year completed our first short film, Cleaning Up, a thriller starring Mark Gatiss and Louise Jameson.

Since then, Cleaning Up has been playing film festivals and getting us in to see agents and productions companies. At Shortcutz in April (where we won Best Film), Nik Powell – director of the National Film and Studio School – advised us that there was a demand for strong comedy films, and we were keen to show our range by doing something different.

We knew the deadline for the Virgin Media Shorts competition – to make a short, self-contained film of no more than 2 minutes 20 seconds – was coming up. But I also knew from experience that comedy is not necessarily my strongest area. So we looked around for help.

We’d already worked with comedy writer and producer Adrian Mackinder on another short, Revealing Diary, so took him out for drinks. Tom and I both suggested ideas for a comedy short, and then Adrian mentioned an idea he’d already been working on a while back with writer Hannah George, about Guy Fawkes and the Plotters. We thought it was brilliant, so – with Hannah’s kind permission – Adrian unearthed their script and we went from there…

What genre does your book fall under?
Historical comedy.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Adrian stars as Guy Fawkes. The rest of the cast was made up of good, comic actors Tom and I already knew: Barnaby Edwards and Nicholas Pegg (who I knew from Doctor Who things: they play Daleks on TV); Anthony Keetch and John Dorney (who I knew through production company Big Finish); my friend Will Howells who’s a rather good stand-up comic; and a number of fine fellows Tom knew. I also played a policeman at the end.

The first cut of the film was well over four minutes, with some amazing comic turns from the actors. They were brilliant. So it was agonising having to cut so much of that to fit the time.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?Remember, remember... who are you again?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
We posted the film to the Virgin Media Shorts competition website, and in September it was one of 13 films to make the shortlist – you can see all 13 at www.virginmediashorts.com. As a result, it’s now playing in more than 200 Picturehouse cinemas around the UK, in front of main features, as well as on Virgin OnDemand and Tivo. That’s all very exciting in itself, and then tomorrow (8 November) we find out which of the 13 films wins additional prizes.

Tom and I are not currently represented by an agency, though we’ve had some promising meetings with agents in the last few months.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Adrian provided me with his and Hannah’s original script on 24 May. My first notes followed that same day, and then we knocked it back and forth between me, Adrian and Tom. I provided them with a nearly-there draft on 2 June and we had a locked version on 9 June, although that was still titled “Five Eleven”. The next day, a friend pointed out that that joke had been done in an episode of Mongrels, so instead I, er, pinched the name of a Doctor Who book by my friend Gareth Roberts.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 
If I had no humility at all, I would say Monty Python, Blackadder or Horrible Histories.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Tom is a fierce and pitiless tyrant of a boss. We also had a limited budget and amount of time to make another short, so the competition deadline and Adrian and Hannah’s idea all fitted perfectly. There was about six weeks from deciding we were going to make the film to delivering it.

But the gag of the film is based on the famous picture of the plotters in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection:

The Gunpowder Plot Conspirators, 1605
National Portrait Gallery #334a

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
This handsome, behind-the-scenes picture:

I now have to tag five writers to continue this thing and answer the same questions on Wednesday next week. They are: Ben Aaronovitch; Scott Andrews; Niall Boyce; Andrew Cartmel and Una McCormack.