It's cold outside

“'A fool always wants to shorten space and time; a wise man wants to lengthen both.'
John Ruskin – who had never tried to walk to the South Pole – quoted with some irony in Wilson's sledging journal, 11 December 1902”

David Crane, Scott of the Antarctic, p. 217

I bought David Crane's Scott of the Antarctic three years ago, when I visited Scott's ship Discovery in Dundee. Have finally got round to reading it.

Robert Falcon Scott's two trips to the Antarctic – first in 1901-04, then in 1910-12 – are remarkable Boy's Own adventures from an age of imperial confidence and conquest just a breath before the First World War. Constantly we're reminded that those who survived the trips South were then to face the trenches. Scott, like the Titanic which sank a month after his death, seems to prefigure the Great War as a bookend to the triumphant Victorian era. For Scott's sometime-friend JM Barrie, Scott seemed to embody the heroism of the day. Why, though, does he still resonate today?

Crane has access to diaries, letters and naval accounts, as well as the slew of books written by Scott himself and those who knew him. He provides an authoritative account that strives to paint Scott neither as hero nor villain, and addresses criticisms from those that have.

It's full of choice details, too. We know, for example, that in 1891, Nelson's Victory was moored on the Thames (p. 47). Or there's the way Scott's party adapted Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book.

“Recipes for the cooking of beef were used for the seal and those for duck and goose for skua and penguin.”

Ibid., p. 197n.

A letter from Scott's wife Kathleen while he's out stumbling toward the South Pole shows that tabloid tactics have not changed in the last 98 years.

“19 November [1911], Kathleen's [letter]:I worked all morning. Then a 'Daily Mirror' man came to see me and upset my greatly. He said if I would allow a photograph of the infant writing a letter asking for money for you to appear in the 'Mirror' he was convinced he could get four thousand pounds ... My dear, I do humbly beg your pardon if I have done wrong, but I said no. Not only can I not bear my weeny being bandied about in the half-penny press, but also I doubt greatly that any sum approaching four thousand pounds would be got. Dearest, I do hope you approve. I couldn't bear it, though.”

Ibid., p. 516.

That letter is given in an eerie, three-page sequence intercutting Scott's last diary entries with the letters his wife was still sending from England. The domestic worries contrast with the ordeal out in the snow, and Kathleen natters about friends she's had dinner with, no suggestion that Scott's not coming back. Scott himself, as Crane says, seems to have written himself out of the future of their son.

We, of course, know Scott's not going to make it; even if we didn't, Crane makes the reaction to Scott's death the subject of his first chapter. It's the same trick as in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia; the legend first, then the real man. (Lawrence and Scott were near contemporaries and might well a good comparative study.)

There is, then, a peculiar, morbid tone to Scott's story, counting down the days to that last diary entry where Scott signs off, “It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.”

A decade before that penultimate sentence, Scott made his first journey to the Antarctic on Discovery, the people of Cape Town came out to see them.

“'Heard an amusing yarn of lady being asked why she was coming on board this ship,' Royds [Scott's First Lieutentant] noted, 'replied that in case of any disaster think how interesting it would be to know that she had actually spoken to and seen the officers!! Nice way of looking at things and not very bright for us.'”

Ibid., p. 128.

It's as if every move that Scott makes is moving him closer to death, as if it's all been destined. That's a danger with biography; in retrospect, where we end up is out starting point so of course the route to it makes perfect sense. But living through it, we're faced with choices and chances whose outcomes we cannot predict.

There are still plenty of gaps in our knowledge about Scott. Little is known about his early life. There are a few instances of his name in school registers and log books, some surviving notes to his mother. Crane assumes this means young Scott did little good or bad to distinguish himself from his generation – otherwise there'd be a record. Instead, Crane explains what's known of a typical life in the navy as a rough guide to the molding of Scott.

We've an insight into the Scott of 22 when he writes home in 1890, on the Amphion as it makes its way back from Honolulu. Scott and his bored shipmates have had a race to grow beards:

“'I was a bad last – a brilliant idea struck me that checking my hair proper, would help to “force” the beard, so I had my back cut with one of those patent horse-clipping arrangements; it didn't seem to do the least much good, but it gave me a very weird appearance.'”

Ibid., pp. 43-44.

There's something telling here in the bold plan, the fearless of embarrassment or failure, and the plan then not working. Later, there's little but teasing rumours about Scott's love life prior to his meeting his wife. Crane holds back from theorising, and admits:

“Biography can confidently offer profounder insights [into any life] only by pretending to a knowledge that it does not possess.”

Ibid., p. 348.

Again there are telling details in what we do know. Scott wanted a simple wedding, not in naval uniform. He seems to have feared any kind of bother on the day; a simple, straight-forward marriage attended by “enough admirals to stock the world's fleets” (p. 374) and a telegram from the king.Scott's letters to Kathleen – before and after the marriage – seem desperate to assure her of his feelings. This, I thought, suggested he either came across as cold or that she needed constant assurance. Kathleen's character is not the subject of the book, but I found the moments Crane devotes to her fascinating. She's tough, resourceful and independent. Other explorers – like Nansen – take her for dinner in Paris. And other women cannot stand her.

Scott himself says little in his diaries of the squabbles between the explorer's wives on their second journey south – the wives making the trip as far as New Zealand. Perhaps he's too polite to mention such things, perhaps he didn't even notice. There's a sense of a bullishly single-minded leader, striking out to his doom.

He had to be single-minded. The book reminded my of the Dr's study of archaeological adventures, where egos, national politics and luck are all as important reasons for going as the scientific needs. Scott's constantly weighed down by his own personal circumstances, and the need to provide for his mother, sisters and wife. Perhaps that explains his need to escape into an icy cold but all-male endeavour.

In fact, for trip two, the scientific needs get chucked over the shoulder as Scott discovers midway to the south that his old rival Amundsen is heading for the ice as well. You can practically hear the fiendish Norwegian twirling his moustache.

I can't help feeling that if Scott had been the one to suddenly announce he was also heading South that Crane and history would remember him for his wily pluck. Amundsen was better equipped, experienced and knows how to use his skis. I'm hardly betraying my country to say so.

In fact, the paucity of knowledge about what Scott was facing comes as quite a shock.

“On the eve of Discovery's voyage it was a commonplace that the world knew more of Mars than it did of Antarctica.”

Ibid., p. 315.

It's not just the cartography. Scott is woefully, dangerously ignorant of the value of dogs and mules in pulling sledges. The motorised equipped has not been properly tested, and the English don't know how to ski. Their knowledge of nutrition ultimately ruins the second expedition, and greatly imperils the first. Crane is good at explaining exactly what the cold did to the explorer's bodies. It's not for the squeamish.

Even for those in the crew not attempting the Pole, the rations were not adequate. Scott's diaries from the first trip South include his anguish at the “evil” of scurvy. As Crane explains:

“Behind this prickliness lay centuries of ignorant prejudice and an association in the popular and scientific mind with venereal diseases that time had done little to lessen. The irony of it was that for all practical purposes, science had left Scott in a worse position for combating scurvy than it had his predecessors a hundred years earlier. As early as the 1740s the young Scottish surgeon James Lind had demonstrated the curative powers of lemon juice, but after the virtual elimination of scurvy from Royal Navy ships, a shift from the use of lemon to the less effective West Indian lime had combined with the confusing evidence of polar expeditions to leave Lind and his remedy discredited.

The cause of scurvy is, in fact, a vitamin C deficiency, resulting in an inability of the body to produce collagen, a connective tissue that binds muscle and other structures together. Three years after Discovery's return Alex Holst and Theodor Frolich were close enough to an understanding to demonstrate that scurvy was a dietary problem with a dietary solution, and yet even then prejudice, professional jealousies and institutional resistance – those classic symptoms of scurvy's medical history – meant that there was still nothing like a consensus on its causes. 'I understand that scurvy is now believed to be ptomaine poisoning,' Scott could still write in 1905.”

Ibid., pp. 195-6.

Despite – perhaps because of – these fearsome shortcomings, this is a story of great heroism. Scott and Crane are both keen to underline the good qualities of the men, over any petty squabbles in their own accounts.

“It is a measure of the man that Royds – and Cherry, too – go on with it in spite of his fears, but the age that gave us the White Feather and shot men with shell shock had little time for such sensitivities.”

Ibid., p. 169.

There have also been criticisms of Scott's ultimate achievement, and though the second trip might have been overshadowed by Amundsen reaching the pole first, and then Scott's death, Crane is keen to bolster Scott's scientific achievements. Yes, science was secondary to the race for the pole, but Scott died with important rock samples on him, and he'd kept notes and observations till the end. His first journey is also of massive importance to Crane's case:

“The massive volumes of results and observations that came out under the auspices of the British Museum and the Royal Society over the next nine years are the unarguable legacy of Discovery's scientific work.”

Ibid., p. 308.

But none of this is what makes Scott such a hero, that makes him still a hero today when all the attitudes and world-view he was part of and stood for have long since gone their way. What makes Scott a hero is his death – and the way he and his men met it. The death of Oates, walking out into a blizzard with a dryly delivered quip worthy of James Bond, is all the more moving in context.

More than that, Scott's a hero because he failed. That, as George Orwell argued, is a uniquely British kind of heroism.

“English literature, like other literatures, is full of battle-poems, but it is worth noticing that the ones that have won for themselves a kind of popularity are always a tale of disasters and retreats. There is no popular poem about Trafalgar or Waterloo, for instance. Sir John Moore’s army at Corunna, fighting a desperate rearguard action before escaping overseas (just like Dunkirk!) has more appeal than a brilliant victory. The most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction. And of the last war, the four names which have really engraved themselves on the popular memory are Mons, Ypres, Gallipoli and Passchendaele, every time a disaster. The names of the great battles that finally broke the German armies are simply unknown to the general public.”

George Orwell, “The Lion and the Unicorn”, Essays, pp. 142-143.

Scott might be a Victorian explorer, but what his adventures most made me think of were the Apollo missions to the Moon, just a half-century later. At least after reading this account, the lunar landings seem so much less risky compared to the journey's south, where the ice tore through the crew and their equipment and ship, slowly eating them away.

I've seen President Nixon's pre-recorded TV address had Armstrong and Aldrin not made it back off the lunar surface. Would they have been bigger heroes in the national and global consciousness for that failure? Or would they have quietly brushed under the carpet?

Now the science bit...

Here's my talk at the Royal Observatory from Tuesday night, which seemed to go down okay.

The use and abuse of science in Doctor Who

Hello.

As Marek said in his introduction, my name is Simon Guerrier and I write Doctor Who novels, short stories, audio plays and comic strips. I’ve also written similar things for Robin Hood, Primeval, Being Human and Blake’s 7. This talk is about some of what goes through my head when I’m writing.

What follows are my own thoughts. I can’t speak for how other writers do things, let alone for my bosses at the BBC or my various publishers. I’ll use examples from other people’s work, but that doesn’t mean I know what they were thinking when they wrote it.

The title is ‘the use and abuse of science in Doctor Who’, but I’m not going to list the times the show gets its physics right or wrong. Paul Parsons’ book The Science of Doctor Who far more ably explores the real scientific ideas behind many of the Doctor’s adventures.

Arthur C Clarke in his introduction to that book says Doctor Who is more 'fantasy' than science fiction; it's not really worried about getting the science right.

I think that's far more true of something like Star Trek, which is full of stuff like tachyon beams, baryon sweeps, quantum fluctuations and event horizons. I don't even know what those things are – they're just listed on the “Physics and Star Trek” page of Wikipedia. There isn't a “Physics and Doctor Who” page. I looked.

That doesn't mean Doctor Who isn't scientifically literate. It just does different things with science – which I'm going to mean real developments in physics, chemistry and biology. My original plan was to arrive here with the latest issue of New Scientist and explain how we could work up each of its headlines into a Doctor Who story.

We would take, for example, the lead feature on the cover. And I'd ask you all, 'How could this threaten the world?' and, 'How could the Doctor stop it?'

But I don't think we can do that. Here's the [then] current issue. There's a picture of a huge meteorite hanging above the earth, and it says in big letters, '72hrs until impact – what can we do?' That's a Doctor Who story right there.

Look, the cover also says, 'Free will – you do have it, after all'. Which will come as no surprise to those of you who've seen recent episodes like Turn Left or Father's Day – where we see what happens when history gets changed. It's also true of the 1970 story Inferno. Or, to be honest, any Doctor Who story where the Doctor encourages an ordinary supporting character to step up and make a difference.

Doctor Who gets its stories from everywhere, by asking the same questions. How could developments in transplant surgery threaten the world? That question gave birth to the Cybermen, way back in 1966, monsters who've volunteered to have their brains and emotions replaced with hard wearing metal and plastic. Ask the same question of new treatments to keep us young and slim and you get the Lazarus Experiment turning Mark Gatiss into some kind of giant scorpion, or the cute little Adipose, where the fat literally walks away.

Even when Doctor Who is stealing from sources that aren't science, it's still underpinned by science. It takes the 1959 Hammer film The Mummy and turns it into the the 1975 story Pyramids of Mars. In Doctor Who the Egyptian God is really an alien and his army of mummies are robots.

It also turned The Mummy into the 1967 story, Tomb of the Cybermen, with the story transposed to an archaeological dig in space. In the Hammer version, George Pastell plays Mehemet Bey, worshipper of Karnak, who pretends to be a friend of the archaeologists then entreats the risen Mummy to kill them. In the Doctor Who story Pastell plays much the same part, but here he's a member of the Brotherhood of Logicians.

It's the same story, but the trappings of superstition have been swapped for the trappings science. They're not walking corpses animated by ancient Egyptian magic, they're cybernetic men who've been in cryogenic sleep. It's a completely different thing. The trappings of science make the story more credible. Science is an authority with which we cannot argue.

This, though, is 'Bad Science', according to page one of the book by Ben Goldacre. He speaks on page 1 of people for whom 'science' – in quotes – is, wrongly, 'a monolith, a mystery, and an authority, rather than a method.'

I'll come back to that definition later.

But the writers of Pyramids of Mars and Tomb of the Cybermen would probably laugh at the criticism that they were guilty of bad science. For one thing, they'd say, they were only interesting in writing a good story.

Before we go any further, it would help to have an idea of what a good story is.

There’s a whole publishing industry on just this topic, which I’m glibly going to boil down to just one sentence:

People we want to spend time with want something they cannot get easily.

You can test the hypothesis by applying it to your own favourite stories. We don’t have to find these people heroic or noble, we just want to spend time with them. We might not like them were we to meet them in person, but from a safe distance as readers or viewers, we want to see how they do.

They might want to stop a war or monster. They might want a particular girl to notice them. They might realise the thing that they longed for to begin with isn’t really what they want at the end. But that's the core of your story. You go off and write it up. How do you know if it works?

If you tell a joke, you know it works because people laugh. You can tell the same joke a lot of different ways – which you will, depending on who you are telling. You might use a five-act structure, you might just skip to the punchline. What matters is the laugh. Whatever you've done, whatever technique you've used, if they don't laugh it isn't funny.

Writing stories, we don’t just want to make an audience laugh. We want to shock them, surprise them, make them nod and smile and cry. Good writing contrives to affect the reader. Think again of your favourite stories and how they made you feel.

I don’t mean to be cynical. There are lots of tricks in writing – ways to make the sentences more active and vivid, the sensations more affecting. But to entice and absorb the reader takes more than a few gimmicks; it takes craft and skill. Clever method alone will leave the reader cold.

This has traditionally been a criticism of science-fiction: that the stories hang on a neat scientific idea or a plot twist that makes the reader think but doesn’t make them feel. The ideas might be clever and interesting, they might make for good science, but the execution feels clinical. I know many people who say they don’t read science fiction specifically because that’s what they expect: sf is hard work rather a good story.

The best-loved science fiction stories tend to bridge this gap between the heart and mind. The neat idea might create a 'sense of wonder' – the universe is massive, we’re small and insignificant. Or the neat idea might play to our fears – civilisation crumbles as aliens invade or there’s a nuclear holocaust.

This still often means that the idea comes first in a lot of science fiction. The starting point is not people we want to spend time with want something they cannot get easily. The emphasis seems to be that an exciting thing happens, and here are the people it happens to.

Think of the 'characters' – in quotes – in a lot of big budget movies. Are the heroes of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Twilight people we want to spend time with? Would Bella Swan hold our interest if she didn't hold hands with a vampire? Would Sam Witwicky be worth our time if his car hadn't just blown up the pyramids? Or are they only interesting because of the exciting events in which they get caught up?

Which of these two extremes is Doctor Who – characters we want to spend time with or ciphers to whom these things happen? You might argue that each episode of Doctor Who is based round an exciting thing happening in some new location. The TARDIS lands just in time for an alien invasion or the trial of some gadget that will overturn the laws of physics. We learn about what’s happening from a cross-section of people we’ve not met before, who are mostly killed off over the next 40 minutes.

These people are often well drawn and memorable. And Doctor Who is generally good at avoiding the cliché that we only learn something about a character’s back story if they’re about to die. But these are not generally ‘people we want to spend time with’ in the sense I used before. They’re there to add colour to the exciting thing that’s happening.

Here's a telling thing. In the whole 46-year history of Doctor Who, there are very few supporting characters who I think would support their own series. There’s Jago and Litefoot in the 1977 Tom Baker story, The Talons of Weng-Chiang. There’s Sally Sparrow in the 2007 story, Blink – with David Tennant and the walking statues.

That’s partly down to the quality of those stories. A recent reader survey in Doctor Who Magazine voted Talons the fourth and Blink the second best Doctor Who stories ever – fourth and second out of 200.

The quality of the writing means they're not merely supporting characters. They’re not just there to add colour to what’s going on in the stories; they’re people we want to spend time with. It’s a shame that at the end of Blink Sally Sparrow doesn’t join the Doctor for more adventures – she’s the companion he never quite had. Jago and Litefoot have just been reunited in an audio play for Big Finish; a story of their own, without the Doctor. It's part of Big Finish's ‘Companion Chronicles’ series, usually reserved for the companions who travelled with the Doctor for more than a few stories.

Companions are different from supporting characters. The Doctor and his companions are people we want to spend time with. They want to explore, and when there’s trouble they want to help. They can never do that easily.

The Doctor and his companions are the focus of the stories. Especially in the series as it’s been since 2005, the Exciting Things Happening in each episode tell us more about the Doctor and his companions than the other way round. There’s an alien invasion or some gadget that will overturn the laws of physics, but the hook of the episode is how the Doctor and his companions feel. I think that mix is what's given the recent series such a massive, broad appeal.

It's important to note that this attention on relationships and feelings does not come at the expense of other parts of the story. I've heard it said that while the Doctor's relationships remain difficult in the new series, the Events Happening are dealt with too easily. The Doctor just presses a button, or has some pseudo-science answer where he might as well wave a magic wand. New Doctor Who, I've heard more than one person say, is more interesting in holding hands than the story.

I don't think that's true; at least, it's not something that's new to the series since 2005. The old Doctors would just as often escape danger with a single bound. They would confuse the villain's computer which would blow up the villain's base, or variations on that theme. If you were lucky the villain would be killed by his own killing machine. Just as with the new series, there were a lot of supporting characters ready to sacrifice their lives.

The show has always needed to wrap its stories up neatly, with the Doctor at the heart of the answer. And I don't think that's very different from other shows. Star Trek, for all its credentials on Wikipedia, often wraps up its episodes in the last couple of minutes with the timely invention of some new technology or law of physics. Star Trek's scientific advisers might ensure the words used in the script sound scientifically accurate, but that's just using the trappings of science to validate the ending of the story.

All endings are contrived: a writer chooses if they’re happy or tragic, who lives and who dies. It feels more contrived in Victorian novels when a rich relative dies and leaves our heroine a fortune if we’ve not heard of that relative before. So writers seed clues and props that can be used in the solution. Ideally, the solution comes as a surprise but also seems, in retrospect, inevitable, even obvious.

There's a good example in Blink, second best Doctor Who story ever. The weeping angels look like statues, and we know they can only move if no one is looking at them. Sally and Larry hide from them in the TARDIS, but the TARDIS dematerialises, leaving Sally and Larry behind. They're surrounded by the angels. They can't look at all the angels at once. There's no way they can escape.

Except the angels stand perfectly still. We already know why: they can only move if no one is looking at them. And they're looking at each other.

The story uses only what we already know, it makes the Doctor central – he withdraws the TARDIS – and afterwards the solution seems so obvious. It's a trick, a contrivance, but it's perfectly done.

So what we want in a story is people we want to spend time with who want something they cannot get easily. We want the story to move us, to make us feel differently. And we want an ending that doesn't feel like it cheats.

So – and sorry if you were thinking this as well – where does science come into all that? The next bit is about stuff I've written, so sorry it's all a bit me, me, me.

First, if you're going to have science in your story, you should endeavour to get it right.

In 2005, I wrote my first Doctor Who novel, The Time Travellers, in which the first Doctor and his companions meet some scientists testing a time machine. In accepting my outline for the story, editor Justin Richards said I'd have to make sure I got the physics right.

You'll be sorry to hear I didn't invent time travel for the purposes of the book. I did read some books on quantum theory – including Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. I also got a doctor of particle physics at the University of Manchester to look over my notes. He agreed I should use quantum entanglement. As he said – I love this quote:

The best thing with high energy physics is that you can do very weird things... and they are allowed!

He made notes on the book as I wrote it, as did a couple of mates with science degrees, and I hope they helped save me from any too galling mistakes. In return, I borrowed his name for the head of the time travel experiment in the book, and had him blown up by a nuclear bomb.

Trying to get the details right is important. It's not just about using the trappings of science. There are those who argue – the people who wrote the Physics and Star Trek Wikipedia page, for example – that this sort of thing even drives science forward, with well grounded science fiction stories acting as thought-experiments in which to test theories.

I'm not wholly convinced by this boast. A lot of SF ideas and technology would never work in the real world, at least not quite as described in the stories. Star Trek fans make much of how the series showed hand-held communicators in the mid-60s, decades before mobile phones. But you watch those old episodes of Star Trek now and it's striking how people hold their communicators – it's out in front, not up to their ear.

Doctor Who's guesses have been more off-target. The 1966 story The War Machines sees William Hartnell's Doctor battle a new super-computer called WOTAN. What makes WOTAN so utterly evil? He can speak to other computers down the telephone line. This was years before the ARPANET, the first fragile version of the web.

But even if grounding the story in real science does not advance science in itself, it can spread scientific ideas an theories. A 1982 story called Earthshock sees the Cybermen crash a spaceship into the Earth which wipes out the dinosaurs. A lot of Doctor Who fans at the time, including me, grew up thinking this was based on fact: that the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 and a half million years ago was the result of some foreign body hitting the Earth.

This is generally the consensus opinion among scientists now. But this idea, called the Alvarez hypothesis, is a relatively new one and it took time to be accepted. It was first proposed by Luis and Walter Alvarez in 1980, and so would have been a New Scientist headline just when writer Eric Saward would have been pitching the idea what became Earthshock.

A radical new theory and its central to a tea-time family adventure series, the episode with the crash watched by 9.6 million viewers in the UK on first transmission. I think that's probably the nearest Doctor Who's come to Star Trek's communicator. Doctor Who, ahead of the game in cutting edge science. It doesn't happen very often.

And if nothing else, grounding the fiction in real science means you don't break the illusion of reality, so keep the audience caught up in the story. In fact, these details can add a sense of reality to the story, drawing the reader further in. George Orwell once wrote that,

"The outstanding, unmistakable mark of Dickens’s writing is the unnecessary detail."

Another benefit to the writer is that getting the science right means you have to consult with other people. Writing generally means lots of lonely hours sat in front of a computer plonking down the words, so finding people who can answer your questions helps to keep you sane.

I'm here today, away from my computer, as a result of asking Marek questions. I've written a story, Shadow of the Past, featuring Liz Shaw, the third Doctor's companion. Liz, we learn in her first TV story, has degrees in medicine and physics and her job is to investigate 'the strange, the unexplained'. I needed to make that part of the story; when a meteorite crashes in the Pennines at the start, she'd want to measure and test it.

I asked Marek what tests she might do. I also asked how much notice her friends at UNIT sometime in the 1970s or 80s might have of a meteorite crashing on Earth. Marek sent me back a long email which I pasted straight into the script. This talk is the least I could do.

Something else I've discovered: a real scientific concept is a great springboard for a monster. An episode of QI gave me an idea for a monster that I've then used several times. Stephen Fry explained that even if you liquidise a living sponge, it can put itself back together. Liquidise two spongers together and they separate themselves out. Imagine a monster like that? You'd never be able to kill it. But, since it's all made of nerve tissue, you could easily hurt it and incur its wrath.

My editor at the time, Gary Russell, suggested that this spongy monster should also have the power to change shape and mimic other people. Shape changers, he explained, are cheap to do on audio because they are not an additional voice. Thus were born the Mim, who feature in lots of my stuff. And when I wanted to destroy their planet, there was plenty of information available by googling on what might make sponges extinct.

Incidentally, QI seems to have got the stuff about the sponges from The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins details HV Wilson's 1907 experiments on sponges on page 500. You could mine Dawkins' book for monsters. It's packed with good stuff. There are the sea squirts that eat their own brains when they mature, or the starfish even Dawkins calls 'Martian' because they're so unlike other life forms on Earth. Doctor Who, incidentally, gets a name check on page 284. Anyway.

Even better, sometimes getting the science right can drive the story that follows. I've written a Blake's 7 audio play due out later this year, about the early life of Blake's friend Jenna Stannis. Jenna has grown up on a space station and thinks planets are a bit backward. My wheeze was to have a teenage Jenna race spaceships with a boy that she fancies.

Script editor Ben Aaronovitch liked the idea, but tossed back my first draft because I had avoided the physics. He explained that his vision for the show didn't include star drives and other made-up convenience. Our heroes can't just press a button to make their spaceships go. At his insistence, I had to go ask my clever friends about orbital mechanics and delta-v.

You can't race space ships in vacuum. If they're both the same shape and have the same thrust they'll be perfectly matched. So my race now takes place through an asteroid field, where the ships get pinged with dust and rocks, and the pilots need skill to keep themselves on a steady course. The dust rattling off the nose cone will also, I'm hoping, make it sound good on audio.

I worried how I'd explain the physics stuff to the listener without bogging down the story in explanation. So I've used the complexity of the physics as a plot point. They race without using their ships' computers, doing all the calculations in their heads. That means they're also trying to put each other off. So I've got an important plot reason for Jenna mentioning off-hand to the guy she's racing that she's not wearing a bra.

It's important, though, that the background research doesn't take over the story. One common complaint from scientists is that we writers are happy to get our science wrong, but would never dream of inaccurately referencing history or literature. We do that all the time.

In the 2005 Doctor Who story The Unquiet Dead, the Doctor meets Charles Dickens. Writer Mark Gatiss has clearly done his research and the Dickens here has a complicated love life and a scepticism for the supernatural. The real Dickens, however, had suffered a stroke about eighth months before the events of this story. The Doctor admittedly says that he'll die in the following year, but this Dickens isn't grey-faced and limping, as the sources suggest - that would be too depressing for a Saturday tea-time. The story fudges the details; it's a recognisable, well-drawn impression of Dickens, but not the man himself.

We could make the same case for the Victorian Cardiff seen in the story: it's an impression of the time, as much to do with the conventions of period drama on television as it is about the history.

Steven Moffat – the new Head Writer of Doctor Who, and the author of Blink – talked about just this issue earlier this month. He was speaking about his forthcoming new version of Sherlock Holmes, set in the present day. He said:

"The moment you do a period piece, you've got one of two approaches. You either funk it up a bit and try and pretend that the Victorian era was just like now, or you lavish detail on it. In either case you make the background the story. Now that is lovely [in] a story that's about Victorian England. The Sherlock Holmes stories are detective stories. The background should stand at the back and, frankly, the foreground, the great heroic stories of detection should be what it's about."

It doesn't just apply to period pieces. Think about the physics in a contemporary-set show. EastEnders, for example, doesn't bog itself down in detailing how the beer pumps work at the bar of the Queen Vic. They're just there in the background, and if whoever is serving needs to go change a barrel, we know it's for some important plot reason. They won't be at the bar to hear some piece of information, or they'll have a meeting with someone downstairs that no one else will see.

In a sci-fi show, if you don't explain the beer pumps, some people feel that you're cheating. In EastEnders, they're a background detail. They help us believe that we're watching events in a real pub. They can even play a part in the driving the story. But they're not what the story's about.

Sometimes Doctor Who does foreground the science. The Doctor's had scientific companions – doctors of physics and medicine. He's been up close to black holes and seen the invention of the steam train. In the Curse of Fenric, his companion Ace, who dropped out of school in the 1980s, knows more about logic and programming than the scientists working on the first computers.

But science needs to know its place in the story. We have to accept that Doctor Who is fiction, that for all it might source its monsters from real science, they're grown to suit the needs of the story.

And yet I think there's an important way in which Doctor Who uses and even promotes science. And I think it something Doctor Who has over many other shows and heroes. It's got the Doctor.

His attitude to science is crucial. He explicitly says he's a scientist several times in the first decade of the show. He also describes himself as a pioneer among his own people. He's a horologist and chronometrist – he likes clocks – he took a degree in medicine with Lister and he clearly knows all the loopholes of intergalactic law.

Sometimes that gives him an authority, but more often it explains what he does.

He's interested in everything, and with him, everything is interesting. Every Doctor Who episode grapples with the strange and scary. It loves subverting the normal and everyday. Even when the TARDIS lands in an ordinary, suburban street you know the monsters are lurking. Ipods and Sat Nav and shop window dummys suddenly mean something else.

Wherever he goes, the Doctor asks awkward questions. What's going on? What made it like that? What can we do to help? The core of a Doctor Who story is the surprise reversal of expectations. "It's Not What You Think, Doctor!" Or, "They're Not What They Seem!" Cue end titles.

The Doctor exposes the truth, disproving theories however ancient and guarded. He's not afraid to challenge assumptions. He can make himself unpopular by making people face difficult truths. And he wants us to look for ourselves. He teaches not just his companions but everyone he can to use their brains, to question, to work out what's really going on. That drive and courage is at the very heart of science.

Think of what happened to Galileo for suggesting the Earth circled round the Sun, not the other way round. A lot of science if counter-intuitive. Quantum physics and orbital mechanics defy the way we think the world should work. Ben Goldacre describes the results of the Cochrane Collaboration, a systematic review of medical research.

"This careful sifting of information has revealed huge gaps in knowledge, it has revealed that 'best practices' were sometimes murderously flawed, and simply by sifting methodically through pre-existing data, it has saved more lives than you could possibly imagine."

Ben Goldacre, Bad Science, p.98.

I said I'd return to Goldacre's definition of 'bad science'. He spoke of people for whom 'science' – in quotes – is 'a monolith, a mystery, and an authority, rather than a method.' These are the people caught up in the Doctor's adventures, who he teaches to see things differently. He makes them ask questions.

Here's Elton Pope at the end of the episode Love & Monsters, when his world's been turned upside down:"

When you're a kid, they tell you it's all grow up. Get a job. Get married. Get a house. Have a kid, and that's it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It's so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better!"

Doctor Who might not always get its physics right, it might fudge the details, but it's intrinsically about a delight in the universe, in exploring, in asking questions. And that's why it's good science. Thank you.

So close you must be there

Busy writing up my talk for tomorrow evening in Greenwich on the use and abuse of science in Doctor Who.

Meanwhile, m'colleague Mark Morris has also announced the line-up for Cinema Futura, a book in which distinguished celebs - and me - gush about their favourite sci-fi movies.

I'm doing Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965), in which Peter Cushing, Roy Castle, Jennie Linden and Roberta Tovey travel by TARDIS to the petrified jungles of Skaro, where they meet... Well, I don't want to spoil it.

I love the Dalek movies, and previously wrote about them at length for Doctor Who Magazine. Those articles were, you'll be thrilled to hear, my first ever freelance gigs.

Mark's also ensnared me into the Morley Literature Festival next month; we'll be appearing with Robert Shearman and Mark Michalowski at Morley Library from 6 p.m. on Wednesday, 14 October, to discuss our Doctor Who writing and stuff.

(I'll also be in Manchester on Sunday, 11 October with a whole bunch more Doctor Who writers.)

Courage, mon bruv

Went to see Mother Courage and her Children at the National last night, which is not – as I'd hoped – a nursery rhyme with a happy ending. Instead, Fiona Shaw tries to run a racketeering business through a never-ending war and keep her three children alive.

It's a bombastic, lively version of Berthold Brecht's play, full of his trademark interventions to remind you that you're watching a play. The stage directions are read out, and a recording of Gore Vidal summarises scenes before you see them, so there's spoilers aplenty. Whopping great signs hang from the air pointing out the names of characters and what the set's meant to look like. Before each half the technicians held the stage, getting this ready and acting as if they were. I'm also not sure the house lights were down as much as usual, so you were aware of everyone else watching.

Despite all this clever estrangement stuff, I was pretty quickly caught up in the action. Shaw is enthralling and the rest of the cast do their best to keep up. It's a funny, rude and sweary play, defiant against the unyielding misery of war.

I think I might even have read it before, or at least studied the brilliant scene where Mother Courage must pretend not to recognise her dead son or be executed herself. It's a great bit of drama: compelling because there's no easy way out, no argument that will save things. It's telling that Courage, so full of fire most of the time, here has nothing to say.

The setting is the Thirty Years War in the first half of seventeenth century, but Brecht wrote it in response to the Nazi invasion of Poland. There are plenty of Irish accents in the cast of his version, and bits of army uniform from today's conflicts, to pepper the play with contemporary relevance. It's nicely judged: the struggle to survive and even profit from war, and its terrible cost, never feel like a we're being lectured.

Partly that's the way the thing bashes along, never pausing for breath. There's not even time to applaud the songs from Duke Special that punctuate the story. At 3 hours 10 minutes – with a 20 minute interval – it's still a long play, especially for a half-man, half-orang-utan who doesn't quite fit in the £10 seats.

Wondered if they'd noticed that too, and skipped over a couple of scenes later on just to get to the end. The Dr then told me that the first preview a couple of weeks back had not had a second half – as reported in the Guardian. A play where the director comes out and explains you're only getting part one? I think Brecht would have loved that.

(Incidentally, this is blog post #850.)

Cumberbatch

Amazon have cover, cast and blurb for my forthcoming Blake's 7 plays - "The Dust Run" and "The Trial".


Back as the re-imagined Jenna Stannis is Carrie Dobro. Benedict Cumberbatch - soon to be seen as Sherlock Holmes in the new series from Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat - plays Townsend, and Stephen Lord - off of EastEnders - is Nick. Which is a good name for a thief.

I went along to the recording at the end of October, and the cast were simply magnificent. Hooray!

In the lead-up to the release itself, we'll be posting up all sorts of behind-the-scenes stuff at Blakes7.com. Have to write something for that myself. Lawks.

ETA: Ben Aaronovitch blogs that I'm useful as a shield.

Surfacing again

Swansea was great fun. Met some old mates and made some new ones, and pleased to have finally have met Leslie after we've corresponded so long. Queued up for Derek Jacobi's autograph and explained I'd bought the Dr I, Claudius as a Valentine's present. Jacobi twinkled, "Did it work?"

On Monday, the Dr took me out to Mumbles - two clumps of rock at the end of Swansea bay that get their name from the French word for boobies. We also clambered up to the rather fine Oystermouth Castle and had an ice-cream as we walked back into town.

All along the pathway were open-air exercise things: hurdles and balance bars and weights. They stood ignored by the walkers and cyclists, the traffic hurtling by.

On Tuesday we nosed round the Egypt Centre at Swansea University, where volunteers pounded from every corner to offer help and insight. Lots of cool objects - divided into Death and Life - and the signage included stuff written by the volunteers themselves.

There was plenty of information for all levels of interest, and dressing up clothes and activities for kids. It probably also helps that the Egypt Centre is one part of a general arts and activities centre. The Dr took studious notes.

Then we were back on the train to London, where I got a whole bunch of writing done. Am steeped in writing right this second, and deliver something big by the end of the month. Also got a speech, a play, and an audition piece to write, plus some filming to organise and prep.

Have caught up on Derren Brown and on Last Chance to See, and was enthralled by Wounded last night, a documentary about the rehab of two soldiers who lost limbs in Afghanistan. Can't imagine anyone but the BBC making such a programme and showing it at prime time. Glorious.

And I am also reading, slowly, Scott of the Antarctic and The Ancestor's Tale. They're both heavy tomes full of top facts and telling detail. Will try to write something about them.

Right. Back to the grindstone...

Can you save her?

First details are up at www.canyousaveher.com of "Girl Number 9", a six-part dark drama thingie written by James Moran and starring folk from Torchwood, being webcast from the end of October. There's also a Twitter feed for the film, upon which more nuggets of goodness are promised. How very exciting.

Surfacing

Just raising my head from an ocean of exciting, unannounced work things to say hello. Hello.

Also, I'll be in Swansea this weekend for the Regenerations convention, where I'm on the same bill as Sir Derek Jacobi. Mostly, I'll be in the dealers room flogging copies of the Inside Story of Bernice Summerfield (a book which features more than a third of the convention's guests, as it happens). I'll also be in the bar. Do come say "Hi", "I read your blog," and "What would you like to drink?"

Oh, and on 29 September I'll be speaking on the use and abuse of science in Doctor Who at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. If you're coming along, please don't throw things.

No second chances

As I type these words, I'm listening to the first episode of a 1989 radio series. It's on radio and it's 20 years later, but the series is called “Last Chance to See...” Even more ironically, the BBC are also showing a new TV version, retracing the steps of the radio series and which I've been eagerly anticipating since I first heard mention of it in January.

As I said then,

“The Observer sent [Douglas Adams] and a zoologist, Mark Carwardine, to Madagascar to write a Sunday supplement feature of the endangered aye-aye. Adams had such a nice time that (when he'd finished his commitments to Dirk Gently) he and Cawardine then swanned off round the world writing up other endangered species. There was a Radio 4 series, apparently a CD-rom and a book - my favourite of all Adams' efforts.”

Stephen Fry takes the tall, wordy, clumsy place of the late Douglas Adams. Nicely, he was living in Adams' house while Adams made the original trip.

Adams almost drowned slipping off an island in the original version, and Fry doesn't manage much better. But it manages to mix the new style of documentary on TV, where some Know-Nothing Celeb goes out to Discover Something, with the old-skool method (looked down upon by idiots) where the presenter is a bit of an expert already and has Something to Tell Us.

Carwardine is a dryly funny, enthusiastic native guide and there's a nice bit of intercutting of our two presenters' video diaries where they both worry the other will think them stupid. Between them, it's like a day-trip with two nerdy boys, teasing each other about urban myths and practicalities, and what happens if you pee in a particular lake.

The radio version had wry footnotes read by Peter Jones, as he'd done in Adams' Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the TV version we get Stephen Fry (who took Jones' part in the movie of Hitch-Hiker) and some graphics that suggest the ecosystem is all made of clockwork. The diddle-ow(g)! chord that precedes these bits sounds a bit like the diddle-ow(g)! from the Eagles' “Journey of the Sorcerer”, also the theme tune to Hitch-Hiker.

But more than that, Hitch-Hiker delighted in skewering our perspectives of our relative unimportance and ignorance about the universe around us. “Last Chance to See...” does something similar, but it counts the awful cost of our stupidity – and it's all real. It is, as I said before,

“amiably, compellingly harrowing. There aren't many other books like that.”

As with the original, the joy is not just in them poking their noses at rare species, but in what they spot along the way. Adams has a superb way with analogy that can wholly change how you see how things work. This, too, has asides where Carwardine goes to look at a snake in a tree or warns of vampire bats. In just making the practicalities of getting to see the creatures part of the story, it suggests a complexity of territory, teeming with competing interests and needs. Man and animals and economics and everything co-mingle, spin off each other, a rich density of co-dependent stuff.

It's also got a serious message about the industrial scale destruction of habitat and whole species, and I'm interested to see what the series will say about What Can Be Done. But, one episode in, this is superb.

I'm also dead excited about the start of Derren Brown's new set of events, which begins later this evening with him predicting the Lottery numbers. I've been hooked by Brown's antics since earlier this year, and blogged about his book.

And, speaking of documentaries, I also really enjoyed A Portrait of Scotland, in which Peter Capaldi traced the particular Scottishness of the history of portraiture and the particular portraitness of the history of Scotland. Not really a subject I knew much about before, which is what made the programme so appealing.

It covered a lot of ground at a steady, even pace, full of detail and insight. It also gave a nice portrait of its presenter – losing his glasses, discussing his own past and asking smart questions about the paintings. Capaldi's passion for the subject and his technical skill in drawing and the techniques involved in painting took me completely by surprise – I thought he'd be one of these Know-Nothing Celebs but he turned out to have Something to Tell Us.

This unexpected second skill is what the French refer to us Le Violon d'Ingres – because the great painter was also a mean fiddler, which seems very unfair to us ordinary mortals. I'd like to think that there was some kind of trick to it, that perhaps it's all down to Capaldi having appeared in two things written by my chum James Moran.

Perhaps I, too, could seem all clever if I'd only acted for James....

Belgium and the master detective – not Poirot

Had a fine weekend in Brussels, sampling beer and museums. It was a little odd how quiet the museums were, and how many had bits closed or empty or being moved.

Comics are a big Belgian thing, with huge great murals of favourite characters painted on various buildings and a huge Tintin in pride of place at the Gare Midi, where the Eurostar comes in. The Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinee showcases a massive range of original comic artworks, profiles of major figures in the genre, and lots of stuff about Tintin. Found the shop a bit disappointing, partly because so little of the comics on offer were available in translation, and partly because the souvenir things were all madly expensive. For a museum devoted to the subject, it didn't seem to be trying too hard to spread the word.

The museum is housed in an old department store designed by Victor Horta, and we also had a nose round his beautiful Art Nouveau house. Horta and his contemporaries went a step further than William Morris, applying the elegant curves of his furniture and interior design to architecture itself. The Dr's a big Morris groupie, so Horta's house was perhaps the highlight of the trip.

It's a tall, multi-story terraced town house, the insides scooped out to maximise the light. Even on a dreary grey day the glass roof and yellow furnishings filled the place with golden glow, so it felt warm and homely. And for all the rich elegance of the construction and furnishing, I could easily see small children and cats gamboling about the place; a practical family home as well as a work of art. There were so many lovely little features, like the flip-round urinal in the master bedroom.

Afterwards, we toured nearby streets on the trail of other houses by Horta and his mates. There were several gorgeous, decorative frontages – though they're private houses now so we couldn't peak inside. I'd love to know how the interiors work for their modern owners, how much has been remodelled and how well Ikea furniture fits in those elegant spaces.

In fact, we did a lot of walking, pottering around, our route linked together by the places and bars of interest as listed in the Rough Guide. (The Dr, the seasoned traveller, swears by the Rough Guide and has a whole shelf of different editions and countries.) There was some really very fine beer along the way – the 9% Chimay Blue brewed by the Trappists, the 8% Kwak in it's distinctive, round-bottomed glass that needed its own special stand, and the traditional Timmermans Geuze Lambic which is full of yeast and bits of dandruff, tastes more like cider than beer, and wasn't really me.

Then there was the food. We sampled a skewer each of strawberries dipped in white chocolate, which was quite difficult to eat without looking filthy. There were freshly grilled waffles and cream, a bucket load of mussels, and on our last night a really good meal in Le Kanoudou Resto.

Belgium seems to have played some kind of piggy-in-the-middle for most of its history. It was at the heart of disputes between Catholics and Protestants and their relevant empires, and was at one time referred to as the Spanish Netherlands. There's still a certain tension between the French and Flemish-speaking populations, so we tried to offend no one by only speaking English. In 1830, the poor lot got lumbered with Queen Victoria's uncle Leopold as king, the other European nations again deciding what was best for Belgium. Leopold did okay, it seems, but his son Leopold II is probably best remembered for the country's total disaster in bossing someone else around for a change.

We took the tram out to the palatial Museum de l'Afrique Central, which is about to close and be re-fitted with a slightly less racist elan. The place was built on the profits of the rubber trade and Leopold II's internationally censured colonies in the Congo. And inside it's like a stepping back into another age.

For one thing, the entrance lobby is full of statues of helpful white folk bringing civilisation to the black savages. The exhibits are of stuffed and mocked-up wildlife, with – I felt – the indigenous people grouped in with the flora and fauna. There's an argument that the museum merely shows the attitudes of a previous age – Tintin and the comics in the Comic Museum showed a similar racial stereotyping, and Tintin and the Congo these days comes with a warning. But just seven years after the museum first opened, the 1904 Casement report attacked the abuses in the Belgian colonies – so much so Leopold II gave them up.

There was a small exhibit on the history of the Congo, and another on Stanley – whose archive the museum now holds, and who denied all the stuff being said about abuses (I must read Tim Jeal's biography of Stanley, which is staring at me on the shelf). Though, too, a few of the captions in the rest of the place admitted perhaps the whole enterprise hadn't exactly been a Good Thing, it hardly scratched the long and complex history. We'd like to go again after the re-fit, though the Dr wasn't sure how radical that would be...

Got back yesterday and having waded through the emails I rushed out to the Albert Hall to hear AN Wilson and Steven Moffat discuss Sherlock Holmes with Matthew Sweet, with suitable passages from the canon read by David Warner. It was a lively, funny and insightful natter, available on iPlayer for the next few days. Steven let slip a few clues about his forthcoming, modern-day version which will star Benedict Cumberbatch. He also said something interesting about the problems of setting Sherlock Holmes in period, where the background details become more important than the adventure.

Later this month, I've got to give a talk at the Royal Observatory about the proper science in the sci-fi nonsense I knock out, so I'm nicking that.

Glass of vino with some chums afterwards – some of whom I'd not seen in an aeon – and then curry. Was a bit starey-eyed and tired after the long weekend, but don't think I did anything too foolish. Or at least, no more foolish than normal. Now pelting through a big thing that needs writing that's not yet been announced, while on Thursday I think I have to be a policeman. More on that in due course...

"Come, do your husband's bidding!"

To the posh singing last night as a first birthday treat for the Dr. Scarlet Opera's Orfeo ed Euridice is on until Saturday at the Bridewell Theatre and very good it is too.

For those who don't know their Greek mythology (or haven't read the Sandman comic), Orfeo has just married Euridice when she only goes and dies. He's a bit miffed about this, so heads down to the Underworld to grab her back. The deal is he can lead her up to Earth again so long as he doesn't look at her until they both back out in the open. And he's not allowed to tell her why he can't look at her, either. So all the way up, she's wheedling and nagging. And he can't help but glance round...

The 1762 operatic version by the splendidly named Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck plonks on a deus ex machina happy ending which maybe misses the whole point (and I presume means this Orpheus doesn't get torn apart by Crazy Ladies). It's a smallish show - three leads and a chorus of five. But that suits baroque opera well, and means the voices and diction is all quite distinct.

It's also an effectively simple production. The only set is a lot of dry ice and a line of hanging branches, through which ghosts can step eerily. The performers wore simple robes, and when the chorus appear as the Furies they've got hoods and masks that made me think of ninjas. Orfeo wears a small dagger in his belt which, until he then wants to use it in Act Three, I thought was some kind of compensation for his being played by a lady.

Oh yes: Orfeo and Euridice are both played by ladies. There is girl-on-girl kissing and everything. Bargain.

Afterwards there were drinks and much earnest discussion of how women are judged by their bits, and then a long trek home through the pouring rain. We got chips and soaked but had a splendid night.

Am off to Brussels tomorrow in the next stage of the Dr's birthday. But two bloggers to follow just at the moment: George Orwell blogs from this day in 1939, on the declaration of war. It's worth working through his earlier posts on the lead-up, too. He's got a canny eye for detail as he scans the various papers, and he also let's you know what the weather's like.

Meanwhile, yesterday in 1666, Samuel Pepys was woken to news of London going up in smoke. It's a terrific, vivid bit of reportage. Though no mention of the role played by the Terileptils.

Shaw thing

The spangly seventh issue of free Big Finish magazine Vortex includes news of a new thing of mine. "Shadow of the Past" will be out in March next year. It features the return of the Third Doctor Who's scientist pal Liz Shaw, as played by Caroline John, recounting an adventure to a UNIT soldier played by Lex Shrapnel - off of New Minder and the Thunderbirds movie.

Meanwhile my chums on the Audio Time Team have nice things to say about Home Truths and about The Drowned World - the latter of which the new issue of Doctor Who Magazine describes as "magnificent". Christian Cawley at Kasterborous also thinks it,

"a work that succeeds in telling at least 4 stories at once that rich in mood, tone and dialogue and thoroughly enjoyable."

Hooray!

Michael Simpson has reviewed my Primeval book for the Blogger News Network, and thinks it,

"an entertaining, undemanding entry in the Titan series that should satisfy fans of the series and anyone who wants to get a taste of what the show is about. It was a quick and enjoyable read that left me looking forward to the next novel. Hopefully that won’t be too long coming."

Which I guess is okay. As Scott says, its tempting to wade in and point out where reviews are wrong, how they haven't spotted your genius or aren't looking at it in the right context. But that's not how this works. You write the thing as best you can then take the custard pies.

They are not children, they are monsters

I remember when working bank holidays meant time and a half. Not any more.

On Thursday and Friday I was ensconced in a recording studio watching my Blake's 7 audio plays come together. The fantastic cast (which will get announced shortly) battled with a script full of physics and Lagrangian points, and I couldn't be more delighted.

Having done a fair bit of audio stuff for rival company Big Finish, it's odd seeing how another company does it. There were more of us in the room behind the mixing desk, and there were generally more takes per scene. Both days we were pushing the six p.m. deadline.

Also, at one point I read in a few lines and saw how it felt from the other side of the glass. You play the scene, try not to stumble over the words, and then wait in weird silence while the masters deliberate. There's a particular skill in a director being able to articulate clearly how they want the scene done differently next time.

After finishing on Friday, there was a party to go to, where I saw a whole bunch of chums I'd not seen in ages and the Dr was delighted to be chatted up by someone who thought she could only be 28. Hooray!

Saturday and Sunday I was working at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, as a resident "Doctor Who expert" (their words) getting kids to invent scary monsters. The Observatory had plenty of information on weird planets, moons and space stuff, so the kids chose a place, then tried to think what sort of creature would live there. On an ice planet the monsters might be covered in fur, or have to eat lots just to keep warm...

It was good fun if a little exhausting. And I think generally the girls came up with the bloodier, grislier monsters. I hope their parents don't have nightmares.

Today I have been catching up on the writing - I've got a couple of pressing deadlines at the moment so scribbled lots in my notebook while in the studio. Now trying to make sense of my terrible handwriting, Frank telling the journalists to let him grieve in peace. And I've also got the washing up to do.

1 in 100

Had my picture taken yesterday morning by George Bamford, as part of his “Young Guns” project. The wheeze is he'll snap 100 “young, influential people” for an exhibition and book – more on that when it happens. Of course, my job is to throw their youth and influence into sharp relief. One of these kids is not like the others...

I'm not exactly brilliant at having my picture taken. When we got our wedding photos back all those years ago, the Dr complained I was pulling daft faces. I, um, wasn't. So now I tend to. But I've also been snapped by a few professionals – ones who make you close your eyes tight and scrunch up your face the moment before they snap you, and one nice lady who made me sit in a hedge.

George, though, just asked me about Doctor Who – how do the books work, what did I know about next year, have I visited the set... As I answered he snapped away, and then we looked at what he'd got. All very easy, really. Apparently I've got an animated face with good cheekbones, which is nice to know. And he must be a professional because I don't look like an orang-utan.

Scary, but not an orang-utan.


Me, yesterday morning. Portrait by George Bamford.

Songonyms

I don't usually write about music. The whole point of music is that it's different from writing. Like a joke, the moment you start explaining it the thing doesn't work. And yet...

Some songs are very like other songs. Famously, the Hammond organ bit of Procul Harum's “A Whiter Shader of Pale” was inspired by J.S. Bach (see this archived page for much learned discussion on what and to what extent).

“La Bamba” by Richie Valens is pretty much the same tune as “Twist and Shout”, while there's more than a little of “My Way” in Bowie's “Life on Mars” – as this superb version shows. (See The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain website for more splendiditude.)

I also keep hearing TV themes in pop tunes. The NME has spotted that Muse's “Uprising” is a lot like Doctor Who. But S Club 7's “Reach for the Sky” is the theme tune to Duck Tales and Alexander O'Neal's “Criticize” is the theme tune to Duckula.

And then there are the lyrics. Ronan Keating's “When You Say Nothing At All” has the same message for the ladies as Joe Dolce's “Shaddap You Face”.

Any more?

The Wire

Watched episode 5.10 of The Wire earlier, and so have finished the series. It's a justly lauded, extraordinary show 'pon which many finer minds have commented. I have some non-spoiler thoughts for those who haven't seen it, and then will leave a gap before blowing the surprises.

It took a while to go into. Episode 1.1 just felt like an okay, adequate cop show. Some cops trying to stop some drug dealers, who eventually set up a wire-tap to listen in on their phone calls. They drink and swear and are caught up in the bureaucracy. And often they're not very bright. Murders happen less because of motives than from accident, stupidity or bitter pragmatism.

At first that means it can seem more cynical than smart. Scott's not got to the end of it because he really doesn't like one particular sweary scene - and it doesn't exactly make the "good guys" look good. Other mates have suggested watching it with subtitles to pick up the slang and detail. But stick with it. Pay attention. And it will reward you.

In fact, it's a lot like In The Night Garden - a kids' show from them that did Teletubbies and narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi (I'm appearing on the same bill as him next month). Like In The Night Garden, you're first reaction might well be "meh". But once you've seen a few episodes you get how it works, and then you are monstrously hooked.

For me it was a scene in about episode four or five, with two cops discussing a murder. And we - the audience - saw other characters discuss the same events in an earlier episode. There's no acknowledgment of that - no flashback, no "previously", no concession to having missed an episode or detail. But just knowing what those other guys said a couple of weeks back changes this later scene, and the episode and the whole of the case.

And The Wire is full of such details. It's got a huge cast, with intricate connections between them. There are good and bad cops, there are good and bad drug dealers, there are those caught up in between. A few people have said that it's more like a novel than a TV show - and I don't think that's being dismissive of TV. Rather The Wire takes its time laying down the plot and building character, and trusts us to keep up with it all (and flick back if we need to).

It's rich and dense and detailed. Though there are exciting bits, it's generally rather gently paced, teasing us with false leads and scenes that go nowhere, in amongst them the crucial clues.

But I've also some specific thoughts for those who have seen it.

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SPOILER

SPOILER

There's a fair bit I don't think works. The end of Bubble's apprentice at the end of Season 4 is too melodramatic - like something out of a soap opera. And the Bad Thing McNulty does in Series 5 didn't ring true, either.

Yet on the whole it is brilliant. There's the way each series focuses on some next aspect of the city - the docks, the roped-off area, the schools and the papers. There's the brilliant characters, lovable and exasperating and real. My favourite is Bunk Moreland, the cigar-chomping dour crusader played by the superb Wendell Pierce. And Idris Elba would still make an awesome Doctor Who.

On top of that, there's the rich character development - the clash between Avon and Stringer Bell, the maturing of Prezbo, McNulty trying not to crash. I love that characters keep coming back with no explanation who they are - the dockers, the lawyers, the guy trying to get Bubble clean.

I love how much it depends on smart, professional people with insight born from experience. I love that they've then got the balls to show these people being very smart in a long scene where the only word spoken is "fuck". I love how it teases us with almost-revelations: us knowing the connection between two characters but the watching cop missing it because of a pee break.

I also love the ruthlessness of it; the sudden, unexpected deaths of major characters which completely change the focus of the series. The scattering of random, mad incident within the tightly plotted stuff. No one is safe, anything can happen...

Baltimore is a brutal place with little mercy. But what makes the struggles of this vast dramatis personae so compelling is the promise of some small hope. The hoodlum might escape the cycle of violence, the addict the addiction, the cop might succeed in getting his man despite the paperwork and politics - or at least not lose his home-life in the process. It's not the acts of crassnass, stupidity and cruelty that make the show work, but the constant, exhausting battle to defeat them.

Nights out

For one reason and another, I've not really been out much over the last few months. But I've been making up for lost time.

On Tuesday, I was a guest at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, where you can choose from 300 different anonymous drams, based only on location of distillery and some sumptuous descriptions. I've a particular love for Islay malts from when I worked in the wine trade, so tried three splendid samples of those - including one listed as an "explosion of coal-dust and flying saucers". (My phone's predictive text favoured "anal" and "cock" before "coal", the electric scamp.)On Wednesday, I was in Bristol for work - although it felt more like play. I love Bristol - it's pretty and busy and vibrant, with all kinds of cool stuff happening there. You might like to know that I based the Starship Brilliant in The Pirate Loop on a trip to the SS Great Britain.

After the "work" there was drinking, first in the Watershed, then Brown's, then some gay club with very bad karaoke and a kid offering us coffee beans (no, not a euphemism), and finally till 3 in the morning at our hotel. Ow. And on a school night.Wretched the next day, we toured Clifton's cafes and bookshops and bridge, where I hooked up with O. for a few glasses of soda before making the long journey home. Think Nick Park walked past us at one point, but the glorious, surprise sunshine was kicking well into my hangover so I might have been dreaming.

Took the Dr to the Dolphin for fish and wine, while out in the garden they had a live performance of what seemed to be Sherlock Holmes versus the Nazis.

Spent the day writing up, catching up and up to mischief. And off to the pub again tonight.

pp. 50-51

The Inside Story of Benny is beginning to push its way through people's letterboxes - hooray! And the fellows at Kasterborous have an exclusive PDF of pages 50 and 51.

The excerpt covers Human Nature, a 1995 novel by Paul Cornell featuring the seventh Doctor and Benny - adapted into two TV episodes in 2007 featuring the tenth Doctor and Martha Jones.

It lives!

To my amazement, and some four years after I started work on it, The Inside Story of Bernice Summerfield exists. For those who've not been paying attention, it's a 320-page, 300,000 word history of the character created by Paul Cornell in 1991 as a friend for Doctor Who in some books, who's been having adventures in novels, audio plays, short stories and comic strips ever since.

Benny herself - Lisa Bowerman - and I spent the day in a top secret location in darkest Maidenhead signing hundreds of pre-ordered copies, which people ought to receive next week.

It's just so thrilling to actually see the thing real, after all the false starts and delays. It looks absolutely gorgeous - thanks to the amazing work of designer Alex Mallinson, whom every one of you reading this should buy some Lego. It's huge, it's heavy and the writing is sort of okay.

I'd not been to the Big Finish warehouse before, and it's sort of like the one at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, only with cardboard boxes not crates. They're stacked tight and to the ceiling, crammed into every nook, every available inch filled with books and CDs. My face ached from gleeful grinning. Just so much lovely *stuff*. I wanted to build a nest and live there.

Guardian of this treasure trove was Gary Atterton, who showed us round, gave us our contributor copies and generally looked after us, while also running round fulfilling orders, answering queries and making it all work. The team have been run off his feet recently 'cos of the various offers and deals, and we watched the system working in awe. Though the only coffee they had was de-caff.

To celebrate the launch of the book, I bribed the astoundingly clever Red Scharlach with CDs and pancake, and she's created a world of Benny icons.

Hmm... Now having thoughts of badges...

Loved you not

The spanking new issue (#260) of Vector magazine includes my review of Bob Fischer's Wiffle Lever to Full. Which reminds me I meant to post an earlier review, from back in #257 last year:

Dalek I Loved You
Nick Griffiths, Orion Books 2008

Nick Griffiths writes about Doctor Who for the Radio Times. As well as covering the current series, he wrote features marking the show’s 40th birthday back in 2003 and interviewed former Doctors to coincide with the TV movie in 1996. But he’s been a fan of the show since early 1970. Dalek I Loved You is his memoir.

There’s a lot of this about. Toby Hadoke’s one-man show Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf got nominated for a Sony Award. In a regular column for Doctor Who Magazine, Neil Harris describes what it used to be like as fan – back when you apologised for rather than celebrated.

There’s little in Griffiths’ book a Doctor Who fan won’t already know, yet part of nostalgia’s appeal is that it’s so familiar. And this book is less for Doctor Who fans as those who lived through the 1970s. It’s a fun, lively account of that decade and of then being a grown-up. But, like a Channel 4 clips show, it’s often a sequence of “Do you remember X? They were rubbish!” followed by “And what about Y? Weren’t they brilliant?!?”

It’s told in broadly chronological order it. Griffiths himself has not had the most exciting of lives. He quotes from diaries in which nothing very exciting occurs. He goes to a poshish school where some of the teachers have nicknames. We learn he was an unexceptional student who’s then unexceptional with girls and work. There’s a divorce, a job he both likes and despises, and then a girl who might just understand him…

But he’s certainly a fan. He can describe the plots of old stories without having to look them up – well, most of them. The book is peppered with lists – things he remembers, likes or dislikes. He even times himself compiling his Doctor Who top ten. He’s got an encyclopaedic knowledge of top facts, a hunger for obscure details and a paralysing sense of embarrassment. This all suggests he has what Doctor Who Magazine once described as the “fan gene”.

Even his vocabulary is infused with fannishness. “Garb” and “arrant” are rarely used outside the Target Doctor Who books of the 1970s, and “see it in my mind’s eye” is how Mary Whitehouse decried a particular Tom Baker cliffhanger. (The book also features a lot of the script of Withnail & I.)

So what kind of fan is he? For all his nervousness, Griffiths has fiercely held opinions. He either loves something – an episode, a Doctor, a moment in his life – or he really hates it. He heckles bands and celebrities with delicious glee, and says himself that this attitude serves him well as a TV critic. Of course it’s okay for him to be less than excellent and have rubbish hair. He sees the world in black and white – either “brilliant!” or “rubbish!” – yet extremists are in his list of things that give him “the fear”.

As well as not being very self aware, many of his jokes feel too easy – received wisdom rather than thoughts he’s had himself. He swipes, for example, at Mary Whitehouse and Colin Baker. But now Griffiths is himself a father, does he not think Whitehouse could have had a point that the Doctor being drowned isn’t ideal teatime viewing? And Baker had no say in his scripts or costume or the direction the series was taking. He was just the visible one and so the obvious scapegoat.

This is the problem with what is otherwise a fun book: there are few original insights. Griffiths admits he’s not the most incisive reporter – Richard Dawkins even hung up on him in the midst of an interview. Rather this is about what Griffiths already remembers – and what he can google on the way. Even then, there are easily googlable errors: The author of Dalek is Rob Shearman, not Colin; it’s Arnold T Blumberg not Blomberg; the Doctor’s home constellation is Kasterborous, with a K not a C. As a result the book feels a little dashed off; just as Griffiths himself dashes off mid-paragraph to search a cupboard or rewatch a particular video.

It reminds me a lot of the kind of article in old fanzines about what the writer was doing when he (almost always a he) watched a particular episode. So a review of Terror of the Zygons will be as much about a family holiday in Cornwall that coincided with part three, where it rained too hard to go to the beach. Why do we need to know about the beach? Griffiths frets about his parents and son reading his shyly recounted sexual experiences – without ever explaining why he’s telling us about them in the first place.

Perhaps this grown-up stuff helps explain why he distanced himself from the series – The Five Doctors special in 1983 was, he says, like saying goodbye. For a long period – more than a third of the book – Doctor Who doesn’t even warrant a mention. Or perhaps the show hasn’t been quite as important to him as he makes out.

Until the very end, there’s little on why the show appealed to him, or has won him over anew. As a child, he says, it was just so unlike anything else – he lists the other shows he’d seen. He likes, he says, Doctor Who’s imagination, the Daleks, the escapism, the humour, the quarries. But his 12 year-old son Dylan describes something far more involved and emotional than this list suggests:

“I feel a bit embarrassed watching the New Doctor Who with my Dad because he’s more childish than I am, shouting at the TV to not look around or don’t look there and being scared when something jumps out at the Doctor. But it’s always a good laugh watching him because he is the best Dad in the world.”

Nick Griffiths, Dalek I Loved You, p. 279.

A friend also reminds him of a trip to a Doctor Who exhibition in the early 1990s. Griffiths had to wait until there was no one else around before gleefully trying the Dalek voice-changer. It’s telling that he doesn’t remember this himself.

The book ends oddly, with Griffiths conducting an interview he’s not very interested in and then knocking off early for a beer. You’re left wondering what he’s learnt from writing the book. Has Doctor Who shaped who he is? Has the book changed his view of himself or the show? Has it helped his parents finally understand their awkward, dorky son? Do his original props and David Tennant’s email address give him a sense of ownership of a show now so popular with everyone?

Griffiths skimps on this awkward, embarrassing stuff. Sadly that means that for all this is fun, it feels like he spent his life doing his own thing, with Doctor Who on in the background.