Reel time

You Tube now boasts a new show reel by Alex Mallinson showing his CGI skillz.

It includes clips from Alex's amazing Bernice Summerfield "Dead and Buried" cartoon (also available in full), the Cyberman DVD documentary he did for me and the brother, and some sneaky peeks at our short film, Cleaning Up.

Alex is also after your face for the cover of Graceless 2.

The Impassable Sky

As every child knows, The Gunfighters was the last Doctor Who story to have individual episodes until The Five Doctors, A Fix With Sontarans, Doctor Who (also known as the TV movie) and then Rose onwards.

On that basis, my Companion Chronicles squeezed into gaps before The Gunfighters have all had individual episode titles, at least on the scripts. I got asked online what the titles were for my latest effort, The Cold Equations, and a clever chap called Chris of Fenric then went and made this, which I like.

The awkward age

I was in Copenhagen at the weekend. The Dr had been there for a week shadowing a new Egyptology exhibition and I joined her for the last couple of nights.

On Saturday, with my birthday hoving into view, we trained out to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, with five different kinds of longship on display and lots of other cool stuff.

I liked how much they used the Bayeaux tapestry to show how these people once lived: gleaning from the comic-strip history vital clues about colours, tools and shapes, even the haircuts of different groups of people.

A panel on the history of the Vikings describes them getting over their 'awkward age' (i.e. marauding round other countries, raping and pillaging) in time to lead the Europeans on their crusades (i.e. marauding round other countries, rapings and pillaging).

But it also gave the lie to the Vikings as burly savages, showing the sophistication of their work. The ships were made from flexible, bendy planks, and then expanded over the fire to make them longer and lighter. That made strong, flexible and nippy crafty, ideal for stealth operations. But larger ships could carry plenty of cargo, and (as in Jonathan Clements' Brief History of the Vikings) there was a lot of emphasis on the friendly trade that was much more the norm than the pillaging.

Having read the Sagas of the Icelanders last year, it was good to see lots on the multicultural mixing of the time. As I explained to the Dr, the history of the Vikings is inextricably mixed up with the history of the UK.

As well as the original ships, expertly preserved, there was also a lot on the experimental archaeological project to rebuild a longship and sail it across the North Sea and circumnavigate the UK. This meant lots of footage and panels about sea-sickness, which at best disrupted watches and basic ship duties and at worst took out a third of the crew. Watching the crowded boat sitting so low in stormy and dark water, I got a sense of why the Vikings might not have been in the best moods when they arrived anywhere.

In the drizzle outside the museum there were tourists in horned helmets (though the Vikings didn't wear horns) rowing for themselves, and various beardie people at stalls selling hand-crafted Vikingish tat. I settled for a chicken sandwich - and was delighted to discover that the Danish word for chicken is 'kylling'. And just by the museum is a small fast-food place: Viking Pizza.

The Dr also took me round the prehistoric bits of the National Museum, and had clearly had a lovely week exploring other museums in the week. Copenhagen's a friendly, bustling city crammed full of people on bikes. I had a lovely time and only saw a small fraction, so am hoping to go back again.

AAAGH! goes to war

Another AAAGH! from issue #221 of Doctor Who Adventures - which stopped being on sale yesterday. Written by me, art by Brian Williamson, edited by Paul Lang (who insisted on pink Krotons) and Natalie Barnes - and posted here by kind permission.

It's my mid-season finale (because I don't have any more AAAGH!s in the pipeline as yet). So I'll have to fill this blog with something else.

Oh, I am going to Copenhagen tomorrow.

AAAGH! at Eurovision

Here's another AAAGH! by me, this one from issue #217 of Doctor Who Adventures, on sale two days before the Eurovision final. Art by Brian Williamson, edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes and posted here by kind permission.

Tomorrow: A good AAAGH! goes to war!

AAAGH! v the Silence

Here's the AAAGH! from issue #216 of Doctor Who Adventures, the week after Day of the Moon was broadcast. It was written by me, drawn by Brian Williamson and edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes - who gave kind permission to post it here.

Tomorrow: AAAGH! at Eurovision.

AAAGH! at Easter

Another AAAGH! comic strip, this from issue #215 of Doctor Who Adventures, published the week after Easter. Written by me, art by Brian Williamson and edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes - who kindly gave permission to post it here. Next time: AAAGH! meets the Silence.

AAAGH! meets the Doctor

Another AAAGH!, this time from Doctor Who Adventures #213 earlier this year. You might like to know that AAAGH! goes to war in the current issue out in shops now, in a strip featuring the Krotons, a Slitheen and Chris Moyles.

As always, the above strip is by me, illustrated by Brian Williamson and edited by the splendid Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes, and posted up here with permission. Paul's also posted up one of his AAAGH!s - in which Nervil and Mrs Tinkle meet the EastEnders.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

Feast your eyes on Stuart Manning's brilliant poster for Cleaning Up, a short film starring Mark Gatiss, Louise Jameson and Anton Romaine Thompson. It's directed by Thomas Guerrier and - by some staggering coincidence - written by me.

We're in the final stages of post-production and are already elbows deep in submissions to film festivals and whatnot. I'll be hollering on a lot more when there's more to be hollered, but in the mean time you can join the Cleaning Up Facebook massive and the official Cleaning Up Twitter experience.

The Ordeal

It’s 20 years since I took my first GCSEs - four of them, a year early, what with going to posh school. Tomorrow morning, me and Nimbos and a motley gang of heroes sit GCSE Astronomy, which we’ve been studying at the ROG since September.

It’s been a really interesting course. I’ve looked through a telescope for the first time, ordered a robotic telescope in Las Palmas to take pictures of galaxies for me, and had some nice nights out in the pub. But there’s a massive amount to keep all in my head and I’d forgotten my keen terror of exams.

It doesn’t help that exams are so entirely counter-intuitive to a hack like me. I spend a lot of my life having to write authoritatively about complicated subjects, which means reading up on them quickly, distilling that simply and then doing check upon check. I try to use at least two reliable sources and then get someone expert to read it over anyway.

This very process got me on to the course. I asked television’s Marek Kukula to read over my first draft of Doctor Who and the Cold Equations. With great tact he explained my grasp of the complex stuff was quite good, but my basic maths and physics was appalling.

Too often as I’ve revised my scrawling notes and gone through past papers my first thought has been, ‘I know where to find the answer to that’. I know exactly which book has the best looking Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, which photocopies unpick the Equation of Time and which magazine details all the things the Huygens probe found out about Titan.

The freelance skill, hard learned over years, is to know where to check these things and not to rely on my memory. Or that’s what I’m telling myself as I jangle in terror at the coming ordeal.

AAAGH! and the Atraxi

Another AAAGH!, this time from issue #209 and featuring the Atraxi and a Weeping Angel. As before, script by me, art by Brian Williamson, edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes, and posted up here with the kind permission of the lovely Doctor Who Adventures.

AAAGH! and the Racnoss

Putting up my AAAGH! meets Idris comic strip went down well so I've permission from my splendid bosses at Doctor Who Adventures magazine (every Thursday, with free gifts and mayhem) to put up more.

Each week, young Nervil and his robot Mrs Tinkle, find jobs for old Doctor Who monsters. This is my first one, from issue 207 in February. It features the Empress of the Racnoss (from The Runaway Bride), and a joke in the last panel which I came up with when I was little.

Written by me, illustrated by clever Brian Williamson, edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes.

Two plays

I have two new plays out this month. Sorry.

First there's Dark Shadows - The Creeping Fog, Click the link for trailer, more details and to buy the damnable thing. The story, set in a London museum during the Second World War, stars David Selby (he's in The Social Network, you know) and Matthew Waterhouse. Thrillingly, it's Matthew's Big Finish debut (but he's not playing Adric. Or is he? Is he?!? No he isn't.)

Producers James Goss and Joseph Lidster commissioned me because I didn't know too much about Dark Shadows. They wanted a standalone, spooky story that would appeal to old-skool fans of Dark Shadows but also to a broader audience. So this is, clearly, the perfect thing to buy now so that you're all set for the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie next year. Yes it is. Quiet at the back.

Lots more about Dark Shadows at the Collinwood site, run by clever Stuart Manning who also did the cover for my story.

Then there's Doctor Who and the Cold Equations, starring Peter Purves and Tom Allen. Click the link for a trailer, more details and to buy yourself six copies. It's an exciting space adventure which has already earned 10/10 from the nice Doc Oho. Following on from The Adventure of the Perpetual Bond, the first Doctor Who and his friends Steven and Oliver find themselves on a spaceship... and things then go a bit wonky with aliens and stuff.

The lovely cover is by Simon Holub. Tom is interviewed in the new, free issue of Vortex magazine (issue 28). We recorded a third Steven and Oliver story last week.

Some comics

Very exciting to see that there'll be a book of Jamie Smart's amazing Doctor Who searches. I've loved Jamie's work since I first saw Fish-Head Steve in the DFC - which you can now read in full on his site. And for older but no less silly readers, there's also Corporate Skull, again free and on the internet, you lucky, lucky swine.

But enough about other people.

As well as lovely, silly, AAAGH!, I've also been writing a few other comic strips for Doctor Who Adventures. That includes "The Very Cool Bow Tie!" in issue 218 (from a couple of weeks back) which included Amy and Rory in pre-Raphaelite costume for no other reason than my amusement.

I raise this as I've not really talked about comics work on here before. I've pitched on-and-off to 2000AD since I was 16, and am still gathering rejections. But as well as Doctor Who Adventures, I've written comics and short stories for GE Fabbri's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, have just completed a comic drawn by William Potter about a team of superheroes, some of whom are autistic, and wrote an eight-page strip for Electric Sheep magazine.

The strip, "Final Cut" is drawn by Pearlyn Quan and you can see a PDF preview here. I wrote it last summer, and am a bit surprised reading it now how not-entirely-cheery it is.

Francis Galton and eugenics

YouTube now boasts a video of the Dr's short lecture on Francis Galton and the legacy of eugenics, but I don't seem to be able to embed it here so you'll have to click the link.

Galton, who invented the term eugenics and liked his statistics, also sported a fine pair of sideburns which are still the fashion. The Dr's worked on exhibitions and things to mark the centenary of his death.

AAAGH!

Since January, Doctor Who Adventures has featured a back-up comic strip, AAAGH, in which a small boy and a robot lady find odd jobs for Doctor Who monsters. It's basically an excuse for mayhem, silliness and celebrity guests. I have written a whole bundle of them, usually while giggling madly. Here's Idris, Doctor Who's wife and wheels in one, popping by the office.


Doctor Who Adventures is out every Thursday. Thanks to Paul Lang, creator of AAAGH and evil overlord, and editor Natalie Barnes.

Podcasts

Three podcasts on which I witter:

Bad Wilf
Me and Joseph Lidster on writing, recorded 5 March 2011.

Radio Free Skaro
Me and brother/boss Tom Guerrier discussing our Doctor Who DVD documentaries in January.

Adventures in Time and Space and Music
I rabbit on about stuff, including music in Doctor Who, while a bit jet-lagged in Chicago last November.

Rules for hacks

At least a year ago, Erykah asked for some advice on being a freelance writer. I've been freelance since August 2002 and have employed lots of freelancers – but couldn't think of anything particularly useful. Since then, I've been scribbling things down as they occur and have got a list. What follows is some things I was told when I started out and some things I wish I'd been told.

“The code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules.”

Barbossa, Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003).

First, there's no great secret to writing. You write stuff, you try to make it as good as possible and you send it to people.

While you wait for them to reject it, you write something else. You collect rejection letters. Some of them will include advice or guidance, or even ask you to send something else. Then, if you're both good and lucky, you might get some work. If you don't muck that up, you might get some more work. Slowly, gradually, you get more.

You keep writing, trying to make it as good as possible and sending it to people. The rejection letters still come...

Then there's what I wrote three years ago:

Nobody owes you a job
Really, they don't. Even if you know them, even if you bought them drinks, even if they employed you before. Even if your idea or finished story is the most fantabulous thing in the universe. When they say "no", they mean it. Don't hang on like a stalker ex. You just walk away.

Likewise, if they say, "That sounds interesting - email me," or "Can you write that up," that's code for "Go away just now." Don't continue to harrass them about your brilliant idea; you're just making them less likely to love it. Especially if they're in a pub or anywhere else not on duty. They don't owe you this. And it's really very creepy if you're still following on their heels, explaining your brilliant idea, as they go to the toilet.

(This happened to me once. Well-meaning bloke still pitching to me while I was having a pee.)

Make it easy
James quotes the great Wil Wheaton's "Don't be a dick". And that's true. Be as not like a dick as you can be. (I see various people at least raising their eyebrows at me of all people saying this.) But also make things easy for the people you are working with, and also those people you're not. It's a small world and you never know when you'll bump into these people again, or what position they'll be in. You don't want to be the difficult genius who makes everyone's lives just impossible. Be the perfectly competent workman who can just get on with the job.

That doesn't mean just doing whatever they say. If you think something's wrong, you say it; you get to argue your case. But if whoever's in charge then makes a decision, you kind of have to abide by it. No use storming off or shouting at them. They're the ones in charge. As it will tell you in the contract you signed.

You don't want to have to surrender your genius? Well, you'll have to produce it yourself. Good luck! You want someone to stump up the cash and make your writing into a real thing? Then they get a say.

Don't get comfortable
Once you've been doing this a while, once you've found your style and "voice", make sure you're still stretching. Try different styles, try different voices. The broader portfolio of things you can do, the more likely you'll stay employed. But also (and perhaps more importantly) the more you stretch and hone your writing. As one editor told me recently, when it feels easy you are doing it wrong.

Pay the rent
There's this idea of writers in smocks in garrets, all booze and syphilis and frustration. I know people who've lived off food parcels, or been late on a deadline 'cos their word processing kit got impounded by bailiffs. Get a day job if you need to. Get one that involves writing if you can. (Again, writing adverts and labels and speeches and jokes all stretches what you can do.)

And don't carp on at your editors, like it's all their fault. Especially when they pay you on time. You don't want to give them the impression they employ you out of pity rather than 'cos you're good.

Call for back-up
I've got an accountant, know a few lawyers and have used their sage advice quite a lot. It's much easier to chase madly late payment. One time I was several thousand pounds out of pocket at Christmas, and had to get a lawyer involved. Having big guns on your side is good because they have to start taking you seriously.

(I don't, though, have an agent. I don't need one for what I do at the moment; it's all take-it-or-leave-it fixed rates and conditions. It's haggling over that stuff which - I think without having one - that an agent is for. They have the awkward conversations so that you don't have to. They're not there to edit your stuff or tell you you're brilliant (though the good ones do that as well).

Enjoy it
You don't have to be a writer. Or rather, you can write just for yourself. So if you're going to make a go of writing for a living, just remember that it's your choice. 'Cos if it's just like any other daggy old job, you might as well get one with more regular payment and hours.

And also try to:

• Do as you're told
  Write what you've been asked for, to the word count and deadline. If that's ever going to be a problem, say so in advance – your editor should never have to chase you.
  
  
• Ask questions you don't know the answers to
  What's the point of writing something that only confirms what you already know? Even if you're explaining something, make sure it includes something you didn't know when you started.
  
  
• Avoid lies
  There's an internet eager to catch you getting things wrong in your writing. But also, don't lie about the work you've done or people you've worked for. Older freelancers might say they faked stuff on their CVs early in their careers but these days it's much easier to check obscure references.
  
  
• Be skeptical not cynical
  
  
• Let meaning choose
  If you haven't already, read George Orwell's Politics and the English Language, which is such a brilliant manifesto for good writing.
  
  
• Say yes to work if you can
  At least when you're starting out, you don't know what a job might lead to and it's also good to be the person editors go to when they get stuck.
  
  
• Add something that's just you
  Sometimes called "added value", there are 100 other hacks queued up to take off you, so what makes what you do unique?
  
  
• See people in person
  You're more likely to be kept in mind – and get more work – if people see you in person. That doesn't mean stalking your editors, but an occasional meet-up is good (and often involves drinkies). Also, many people who don't work from home think you're getting away with something if you do - and, of course, you are.
  
  
• Always have a notebook on you
  And use it. Bit of stories, bits of dialogue you overhear, things you see in the news. Partly it means you'll retain these gems, but also you'll free your brain to think of more ideas.
  
  
• Listen
  This includes listening to yourself, honing your instincts about what works and what doesn't. Paul Abbot described Russell T Davies as making “good choices” in his writing
  
  
• Keep up with paperwork, contracts, invoices
  
  
• Show don't tell
  
  
• Use the medium
  If you're writing TV, write something that couldn't be a film. If you're writing audio, write something that couldn't be a novel.
  
  
• Write something every day

Selling out
If you're going to sell out, at least a good price. (That one from my late Grandpa.)

Voice
You often get told when you're starting out that you need to develop your own voice in your writing. And while that's true, I'm not really sure how you do that other than to write lots of stuff. So don't worry about the voice, just keep writing.

It's not just the writing
Punctuality, reliability and how easy you are to work with are all important. This happens a lot: an editor says they need a freelancer. People in the office suggest people who do good work: A, B and C. “But A is annoying to sit next to,” says one of the subs. “And B never makes the tea,” says one of the designers. “C bought us Percy Pigs!” remembers the posh chap in marketing. Freelancer C gets the job.

A list
The only power you have as a freelancer is to turn work down. So you've little control about where your career goes or the sorts of work you might do – you can pitch for stuff, but you might not get it. When I started out, a wise man suggested writing a long list of everything I quite fancied writing, big and small, likely and fantastic. Once you've got that list, you can work out which items need to come first. For example, you (now) won't get to write a Doctor Who book until you've written some other books – so get on with those other books. You won't be asked to write an episode of Doctor Who until you've written some other TV – so get on with your spec script.

Your own stuff
I wish I'd been told this at the start rather than slowly working it out. I love writing spin-off stuff – and it's made up a lot of my career, But the stuff that will make your name and give you most satisfaction is the stuff that's completely your creation. (It's also the stuff that's most likely to make your fortune, since you don't have to share or hand rights to anybody else.)

Ideas are the easy bit
Don't be precious about your ideas. Having a good idea is like spotting someone pretty. The hard work is getting them to go out with you.

Don't fuck the fans
It's easy to exploit people who like your work. They might buy you drinks or ask advice or want something more personal than an autograph. It's not you they want but your status, your validation for their investment. So don't take the piss. You're not required to give them time, but at least be polite. If you are going to conventions and things, remember that it's work. And most importantly, make what you're writing worth their time. Fans should make you try harder.

You are not important
You're judged by your work, so make that work good and let it speak for itself. Also, watch how you deport yourself online – Twitter, Facebook and blogs are also you writing. What do your entries there say about you as a writer? People who might give you work are likely to google your name first - will they be impressed by what they see? Don't be dooced and don't be a dick.

You can also read James Moran's advice on writing from back in 2008.

Normal service will be resumed

Hello. Not blogged in ages. Been caught up in lots of things. Moved house, took on lots of work, have an exam next month... But even the Dr noticed I'd neglected the blog, so I shall endeavour to do better. Starting now.

The balloon hoax

Went to see Piccard in Space last night, a new opera by Will Gregory, best known for his work with Goldfrapp. It told the story of Auguste Piccard - inspiration for Professor Calculus in Tintin and, with his brother, for Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek - travelling up to the Stratosphere in 1931, in a balloon of his own design to conduct an experiment on light that would prove Einstein's theory of relativity.

Einstein appeared, wild-haired and womanising, to explain the experiment - though I only understood it because the same light experiment was the subject of Jim Al-Khalili's brilliant documentary, Everything and Nothing, last week.

Piccard got the audience to sing along to the formula for the deviation of time, there were a few good jokes (a big song about a broken barometer leaking mercury that would eat up the aluminium balloon and so kill our heroes undercut by the mercury being 'hoovered' away by low pressure, or Piccard explaining that he is not from Mars but Belgium), and it was all quite fun.

But the departing audience no wiser about what exactly Piccard had proved or how, or even why Newton was made out to be such a villain. So if the plan was to excite and inspire people who wouldn't normally be interested in complicated physics, it didn't exactly work. Worse, the promised Moog synthesisers never really stood out, and I've seen better lab-coated nerdy performances from the Radiophonic Workshop. (That's still a much kinder response than reviews in the Independent and Telegraph.)

But, prompted by the conductor, we followed the performance by traipsing over to Festival Hall to see the real balloon on display. Small, fragile, primitive, making the achievement and the daring to attempt it all the more extraordinary... A real source of wonder.