This is the third of five novelisations of the adventures of airline pilot Garry Halliday, following Garry Halliday and the Disappearing Diamondsand Garry Halliday and the Ray of Death. It was published by Faber in 1962, based on a six-part serial broadcast on the BBC between 16 January and 20 February 1960. The time slot was 5.25pm on Saturdays - the same as later taken by Doctor Who.
Episode 3, The Outcasts, is the only one of 50 episodes of Garry Halliday to survive. It used to be available on Youtube, from where I took screenshots of the lengthy recap at the start. While exciting music plays, a plummy voice speaks over the following still images:
"Garry Halliday, owner and chief pilot of the Halliday Charter Company is up against his old enemy…
[Image showing Terence Longdon as Garry Halliday]
"... The Voice, now engaged in a colossal scheme to kidnap five world famous atomic scientists and sell them to the highest bidder. Two scientists have already been kidnapped. Now the Voice plans to take another…
[Image showing Elwyn Brook-Jones as The Voice]
"... Professor Mundt, who has been visiting England with his secretary…
[Image showing Richard Dare as Professor Mundt]
"… Martin. At the suggestion of…
[Image showing John Hussey as Martin]
"… Inspector Potter from Scotland Yard, Halliday’s plane has been chartered to fly Mundt back to Frankfurt, much to the annoyance of…
[Image showing Nicholas Meredith as Inspector Potter]
"... Mr Smith-Clayton of the Home Office, who has been looking after Mundt’s security in England.
[Image showing Peter Myers as Smith-Clayton]
"... Bill Dodds, Halliday’s co-pilot, is on the plane with him, as well as Bill’s fiancee...
[Image showing Terence Alexander as Bill Dodds]
"... Sonya, who is acting as stewardess for the flight because…
[Image showing Juno Stevas as Sonya Delamare]
"... Jean, Halliday’s usual stewardess, has been deployed away by a fake message sent by the Voice. The only other people on the plane are three security men, but they are headed by…
[Image showing Jennifer Wright as Jean Willis]
"O’Brien, who is in reality the Voice’s principal lieutenant." At last, we crossfade into the interior of the plane, and the action ensues.
[Image showing James Neylin as O'Brien]
It's striking how complex this all is after just two episodes: lots and lots of characters and a then-and-then, House that Jack Built plot. That, of course, made it harder for viewers to join the story midway through. Compare it to the opening of the surviving second episode of soap opera Compact - with no recap, and a single, short scene involving a receptionist to bring us up to speed on everything we need to know. (This was some of what I looked at in my talk “Television Before the TARDIS” at the GallifreyOne convention in February.)
But once the recap is over, the pace of this Garry Halliday episode really picks up. The villains hold the heroes at gunpoint and demand that Halliday changes course for Switzerland. Halliday and Bill then battle with the villains, and we cut from TV recording to film for the fisticuffs. It's all very well-staged by fight arranger Terry Baker, though the book ups the stakes by having Garry grab the handle of an emergency hatch.
"He pulled down, and pushed out, and the other hand got hold of [a villain called] Crake, and impelled him through the hatch. There was a terrible roar of wind and a scream from Crake." (p. 56)
This may have been too technically difficult to realise on TV rather than something they omitted as unsuitable for children watching. It’s striking what was considered okay for this Saturday teatime adventure. There's a fair bit of killing in the story anyway and also the odd relationship between Sonya and George Smith-Clayton. Sonya explains to Bill:
"Well, [we're] not exactly chums, except that you do feel rather close to people when you've been through a lot with them. It was about seven years ago at a Commem. Ball at Oxford, you see ... and some of the boys decided to take Georgie's trousers off. ... Of course the champagne had been flowing a bit. Old Charlie champers. ... All I did was hit him over the head with a champagne bottle. It can't really have hurt him. It was empty. ... It was only a gesture of affection really. A sort of love-tap." (p. 46)
Smith-Clayton says that as a result he was in hospital for nearly 10 days. Now, this exchange occurs in the missing second episode of the TV serial so we can't be sure it was relayed exactly as in the book, but Sonya refers to the champagne bottle in the surviving third episode so some version must have been included.
So when Doctor Who began in 1963, its elements of kidnap, murder and threat were all in keeping with previous adventures shown in the same slot. What’s very different is the tone.
Having defeated the villains, Halliday then gets a call from the Voice, who has kidnapped Jean. So, despite winning the fight, Halliday ends up changing course to Switzerland anyway. The Voice also tells Halliday not to tell the authorities and gets his men to hand Halliday a suitcase of money - making it look to Smith-Clayton as though Halliday is his willing agent. Soon, Halliday and Dodds are on the run from the police while also trying to thwart the Voice's next attempt at kidnap.
It's all good, fast-moving fun, our frightfully well-spoken heroes battling all manner of accented folk, ranging from villains to eccentric character-types. One of them, a Swiss Clerk in the surviving episode, is played by no less than Jill Hyem.
I'd love to know how the TV version realised the exciting finale, in which the Voice coolly escapes in a cable car, only for Halliday to give chase on skis. Was there location filming in Switzerland? It now feels very James Bond yet predates the ski stuff in 1963 novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
There are a few other fun details, such as a sense of changing times:
"I mean, you don't say 'sir' in the nineteen-sixties." (p. 20)
We learn that Halliday is a veteran of the Korean War and has always "had the habit of attracting adventures" (pp. 20-1). But there's still the painful lack of anything for women to do. Sonya, while getting some laughs at Smith-Clayton's expense, is left behind in a cell when Bill and Halliday make their escape, and Jean spends most of the story locked up. On the last page of the novel, she "surprised us by getting married" recounts Bill; her husband is Philip Latters, a character from the previous serial, not credited in TV listings for this one. The implication is that she leaves Halliday Charter Company. I suspect she didn't have an exit on screen and just didn't appear in the next serial; I can't really blame an actor given such an unrewarding part.
In fact, this could easily have been the end of Garry Halliday since he outwits and captures the Voice. But the book ends on a cliffhanger.
"Because the news in that telegram was that the Voice has escaped from prison. Now nobody who had ever seen the Voice's face would be safe." (p. 119)
The adventure continues in Garry Halliday and the Sands of Time, if I can ever track down a copy...
The Who Shop have released two new, exclusive editions of my book David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television.
It's available in paperback in pink and in grey. It includes a bonus, four-page postscript covering some information that's come to light since the first printing in November. We'll make that postscript available as a free PDF in due course.
Through my day job as a journalist for Infotec.news, I spoke to Rebecca Paddick at Mantis PR for the latest episode of their Tech to Transform podcast.
With an imminent election, the potential impact of AI-generated content, and the continuous evolution of digital, how do reporters select their stories? And what role do technology providers play in that?
They also discussed the ways journalism is evolving in response to advancements in big data analytics and visualisation tools.
Looking at public sector tech, Simon explains how the growing importance of privacy and cybersecurity issues could impact the focus and approach of tech journalism in the near future.
As sustainability becomes a more prominent concern, particularly in the tech industry, the pair discuss how journalists can raise awareness and foster dialogue around environmentally friendly practices and innovations.
They also covered a few other topics, like the way technology can connect us all, how news should add light not noise, and… the science of teddy bears…
The new issue of the official Doctor Who Magazineis out in shops now, with lots of information about the TV series starting next month. I've written a bunch of things for this issue, too:
pp. 26-27 Who crew: A head of schedule
An interview with executive assistant Sophie-May Twose.
pp. 28-34 Script to screen: Stooky Bill and family
An in-depth feature on the development of the puppets seen in last year's special episode The Giggle, in which I speak to executive producer Joel Collins, production designer Phil Sims, head of department modeller and fabrication manager Barry Jones, director of Automatik VFX Seb Barker, puppeteers Olivia Racionzer and Eliot Gibbins, and actress Leigh Lothian who played the voice of Stooky Sue.
pp. 36-37 Gallifrey Rises
My report on last month's Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles, including interviews with programme director Shaun Lyon, Star Trek writer David Gerrold, and fans Erika and Katarina.
"My gnomic utterances," said Fen severely, "reduce themselves to three: that I do not believe in the crime passionnel; that the motive for murder is almost always either money, vengeance or security; and that none the less it is sex which is at the heart of this business." (pp. 198-9)
It's years since I read The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin, a brilliant, daft and inventive mystery featuring Gervase Fen, Oxford don and amateur sleuth. Some stuff in the past year has prompted me to pick up Fen's other cases.
One such prompt was Life of Crime by Martin Edwards. Then there's the beautiful new edition of Crispin's short stories which I got for Christmas. And then there's the bits about Crispin in the BBC's files on early Doctor Who, which I dug through when writing my book.
(A digression: Edmund Crispin and Doctor Who...
On 5 March 1962, Eric Maschwitz, working as assistant and adviser to Donald Baverstock, the BBC's Controller of Television Programmes, asked the head of the script department Donald Wilson whether science-fiction stories on TV had to be done as six-part serials, in the manner of Quatermass or A for Andromeda. Maschwitz asked if there was scope for standalone, 50-minute stories, either run singly or as part of a series. Asa Briggs, in his history of the BBC, suggests this was prompted by the large audience that tuned in on 20 February to watch John Glenn make the USA's first crewed orbital spaceflight; I've heard others suggest that Maschwitz may have been inspired by the US anthology series The Twilight Zone (1959-64), which was first broadcast in the UK on ITV's east of England franchise Anglia Television from 4 January 1962.
Whatever the case, Wilson saw the value of this idea and on 17 April replied to Maschwitz saying that he'd set up a unit to report on this. A four-page report, written by Donald Bull, was delivered on 25 April. Bull said he and his colleague Alice Frick had consulted studies of SF by Brian Aldiss, Kingsley Amis and Edmund Crispin, and Frick also met with Aldiss in person.
Crispin's name cropped up again a year later when, on 23 May 1963, Frick reported to Wilson (now head of serials) that she'd met with the author. Having at that point edited three volumes of Best SF anthologies for Faber, Crispin was able to provide Frick with names and addresses of writers he thought could produce good science-fiction for TV. These were: JG Ballard, Kingsley Amis, Robert Conquest, Brian Aldiss, Eric Frank Russell and Harry Harrison. Crispin also suggested that he might compose the theme music for whatever it was Frick and Wilson had in mind.
I think we can guess what that was. Frick's memo to Wilson was written one week after he, BBC staff writer CE Webber and head of drama Sydney Newman finalised a three-page "General Notes on Background and Approach" document for a new science-fiction serial called Doctor Who. Frick's memo - and Donald Bull's report from the year before, which cites Crispin - are included in a folder of early Doctor Who production paperwork ("Doctor Who General B", T5-648-1) held at the BBC's Written Archives Centre in Caversham. So Crispin was surely being consulted about established SF writers who might write for Doctor Who, and he then put himself forward to write the theme music.
That's not so odd as it might sound. Crispin was, under his real name Bruce Montgomery, a composer, producing orchestral works as well as scores for more than 30 films including Doctor in the House (1954) and Carry On Sergeant (1958), and various sequels of each. Much of his screen work was for this kind of light comedy, so he might have seemed an odd fit for the science-fiction series Wilson had in mind. But I'm struck that the titular sergeant in the first Carry On film was played by William Hartnell, who two months after Crispin's meeting with Frick was cast as Doctor Who.
Anyway, I digress...)
The Case of the Gilded Fly is Crispin's first novel, published in 1944 and set in October 1940. It begins with different people all arriving in Oxford, effectively a long, comic prologue about the shortcomings of trains. Among these characters are various actors, a writer, a journalist, an organist, a professor of English language and literature who is also an amateur detective, and a chief constable who is a published literary critic.
"By Thursday, 11 October, they were all in Oxford. ... And within the week that followed three of these eleven died by violence." (p. 21)
That sets up a suspenseful plot but things then proceed rather gradually, the first death not discovered until as late as p. 74. By then, we've established that actress Yseut Haskell has few friends among the company of the play she is rehearsing, meaning everyone is a suspect - if, in fact, she's been murdered. It just so happens that her body is found in a room downstairs from where Gervase Fen lives with his wife, so they are quickly caught up in the case. In fact, Fen deduces who killed Yseut that same night and then spends most of the rest of the book keeping this fact to himself, so as not to interrupt rehearsals of the play. That surely means he has some responsibility when the murderer kills someone else...
If this is not very satisfactory, there is also a fair bit of what feels like cheating - Fen and the author keeping evidence from us, so they have more to work with than we do. The last full chapter involves 10 pages of Fen spelling out everything, which feels a little clunky - at least some of this could have been revealed earlier, to avoid such lengthy exposition.
While this first novel by Crispin could be improved structurally, it's also great fun - and constantly surprising. At one point, there's the incongruous image of a room in an Oxford college filled with monkeys and typewriters but - to the disappointment of the academic study being conducted - declining to write Shakespeare. On another occasion, we get a vision of halcyon days before the war.
"'Tell me, Nigel,' said Fen, whose mind was on other things, 'were you here for the celebrations on All Hallow E'en three or four years ago?'
'When the college danced naked on the lawn in the moonlight? Yes, I was involved - in fact suffered disciplinary penalties which must have paid for the SCR port for several weeks.'
'Those were the days. Were any fairies in evidence?'
'We counted at one stage of the evening and deduced the presence of an unknown among us. But whether it was a fairy or just one of the dons we never knew.'"(pp. 117-8)
None of this is for the sake of the plot; it just adds to the fun. There are gags and literary allusions, the title of the book taken from Act IV, scene 4 of King Lear - though the author makes us look it up ourselves.
The murder of Yseut Haskell is ingeniously devised to fool the police into thinking it was suicide. Crispin, a composer, makes clever play with music in the plot - the organist's sheet music and use of organ stops are vital to unravelling the mystery, and the sound of a gunshot is masked by a radio playing the fortissimo re-entry of the main theme during the overture from Wagner's DieMeistersinger (p. 194). I've seen it suggested that the climax of Crispin's later Fen novel The Moving Toyshop (1946)was, ahem, homaged by Alfred Hitchcock in the ending of Strangers on a Train (1951). Surely the method of disguising the murder of Yseult in this novel can be seen in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), the Oxford college transposed to the Albert Hall.
This is Fen's first published case but we're told he's worked on several mysteries before this and is well known for his work as a sleuth. It's not the best detective story but it's a very promising start.
Sisters Laleh and Myung live deep inside the Whale of Babel, but can pass from this extraordinary, vast creature into other worlds. But Myung has a wanderlust to explore these worlds more fully and meet other people, which means abandoning her beloved sister. There's also the enigmatic legend of Great Wisa to make sense of...
On another world, in another time, Magali Kilta and her adopted sister Wisa are strange in different ways. Magali glimpses moments of the past and future while Wisa can speak to animals and trees. These powers must be kept very secret on the island of Esi, as the locals are terrified of the forthcoming festival of madness, where other worlds and realities bleed into their own. Those suspected of early signs of insanity are hounded out of the community or even killed.
Via ghosts, legends, dreams, and fragments of history and memory, we piece together how the two pairs of sisters are linked, and all they've been through and lost...
I've been entirely enchanted by this strange, rich and imaginative fantasy told on an epic scale. It's beautifully written and full of characters who feel real, for all they dwell in the most incredible, fantastic realms. These places are vivid and tangible, full of tastes and smells and textures.
There's plenty of suspense to keep the reader hooked. Myung visits an island called Ojda, not knowing (as we do) that her guide Blajine is plotting to kill her. In the years and months counting down to the festival of madness on Esi, there's an ever-growing threat of violence borne from the community's fear of insanity being infectious. As madness blooms across the island, things are especially tense - and strange. I couldn't put the book down.
There's plenty, too, on the way we are shaped by ghosts of the past and the stories we tell ourselves. At a critical junction, one pair of sisters is not reunited because one of them, having heard the full story, bitterly rejects the other, who then makes sense of why:
"I am the right person, just not the same person. It is what happens when you wait for someone to come back to you or you make a map to go somewhere you once loved: they change. Nothing is ever as you left it. ... She disappears. I want to follow her, but I know it won't help. I ache for her. Centuries of waiting and [one of the sisters, but I won't spoil which one] cannot greet me because it is not as she imagined it. Centuries of holding on to a ghost of herself, only to learn it was never going to be like it once was." (p. 389)
What really stays with me is the way time and experience bring perspective to so many of these characters, and to the reader. In the closing pages, the whole thing comes together so that we understand all the connections. It's at once satisfying and sad, the fragments knitting together to make sense of these different sisters, and the love and loss inside them.
A week ago I took the Lord of Chaos to see Dune Part Two at the cinema, him having caught up on the first part just the night before. It's been churning away in my head all this time.
The thing that really strikes me is what a sensory film this is, the bass continually rumbling our seats and muscles, and then lots of tingling ASMR. That's all in tune with the wonders seen on screen, everything ever more epic. Combined, this is a feast for the senses, a film you less see as feel. The plot is also continually intriguing, and the result, a bit to my surprise, captivated his lordship for pretty much the almost three-hour run.
The serious tone of it all makes it easy to mock - some have pointed out that the plot if basically, "He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy", set on a planet of cocaine. The Lord of Chaos was also tickled by Kieran Hodgson's bad movie impressions.
True, the villains are all a bit straightforwardly wicked - black-and-white characters from a black-and-white world. Where the film really works, I think, is in the nuance elsewhere: different factions within the Fremen, the Bene Gesserit endeavouring to play all sides at once, and a sense of complexity and richness in the peoples depicted that meant, even though I know the novel, I wasn't quite sure how it would all turn out.
Some notable things in the book (and 1984 version of the film) are not included here, and I wonder if those will feature in Part Three - and so won't spoil them here. I'll also be interested to see if a further instalment still feels like Dune if set more extensively on other worlds.
As with Craig Miller, I chatted to David Gerrold at the GallifreyOne convention last month and bought his book when I got home. The Trouble With Tribbles charts the development of the first script he sold to TV, which is a classic episode of the original Star Trek. We follow how David first approached the production team, the initial story ideas he sent in, the more detailed storyline and notes he got back, and continue on through to a shooting script - reprinted here in full. There are then his notes on what happened during filming and the response his episode got.
First published in 1973 (mine is a reprint by Virgin Books in 1996), it's naturally of its time, the jokes on set between filming include cast members playing their roles effeminately, while David tells us which women in the cast and crew he thinks beautiful. At one point, he blushes during lunch shared with star Nichelle Nichols when,
"she dropped some cottage cheese down into the cleavage of her skimpy costume." (p. 235)
But this leads to something more insightful as he discusses how meeting Nichols changed his sense of how to write characters from other races and cultures, and the significance of featuring Sulu and Chekhov in this prime-time American show - though not in the same episodes, because Chekhov was brought in while actor George Takei was away filming The Green Berets. This is admirable though I suspect David wouldn't phrase some of this in quite the same language today. Of course, that's inevitable in a book written 50 years ago - and about events from five years before that. But I'm struck by this juxtaposition of an imagined, progressive future couched in a language so much of the past.
Another detail from history is the problem of David's IBM Selectric Typewriter typing 12 characters to the inch when most TV scripts were typed in what he calls "pica", or 10 characters to the inch. The effect was that David typed,
"an extra three words per line, of fifty words per page." (p. 134)
When his first draft script was copied into the correct format, it came out at 80 pages rather than the required 66 and needed extensive cuts. In my first professional jobs as a scriptwriter, duration was still generally judged by number of pages, and a couple of my early scripts which had lots of quick-fire exchanges, each speaker saying just a few words at a time, ended up running short. Now I'm much happier with a word count: 9,500 words pretty much always comes out as an hour of audio drama.
In fact, a lot of David’s other comments on writing chimed with me, too. On page 10, he tells us he was effectively prepping for his work on Star Trek long before the series was even created, as he'd been a devoted reader of sci-fi for years. Such prep, he says, is essential because it means we're ready to respond when opportunity arises. As he says (p. 15), opportunity knocks only softly - his allusion is to a moth at the window - so we need to be alert as well as ready to respond. I wish I'd read this when I was starting out.
Then there's what he says is the key to breaking into television:
"You're competing with the pros now. You have to be better than they are. ... You have to do something outstanding to make the producers notice you. You have to do it on merit alone, because you have no previous credits and nothing else working for you." (p. 49)
On Star Trek specifically, and ongoing series more generally, he says the usual rules of storytelling don't apply. He'd learned before working on Star Trek that, in movies, novels and plays,
"the importance of the story was that the incident it tells is the most important event that will ever happen to this character."
But heroes having weekly adventures can't sustain this kind of drama.
"You can't run your characters in emotional high gear all the time. You'll burn them out, they'll cease to be believable." (p. 47)
The trick, he says, is to avoid falling into formula stories; by doing something different, you stand out. But I wonder if your story can be about the most important event in someone's life - that's what your guest characters are for.
Another telling insight into Star Trek is producer Gene Coon's note on David's story premise, dated February 1967, for what became the Tribbles episode. David originally envisaged it involving a new company on an alien planet going into competition with a huge, well-established corporation over the production of grain. The grain element survived into the broadcast story, but Coon wrote in pencil:
"'Big business angle out. One planet against another.' Translated, this meant: 'On American television, big business is never the villain. Make the conflict between two different planets instead." (p. 55n)
In addressing this, David suggested involving aliens from an episode in the first year of Star Trek; the producers decided to include Klingons in three episodes of the second year, including David's episode. The veto on bad business therefore led to a major development in the wider lore of Star Trek.
On the whole, this is a fascinating and insightful deep dive into the making of Star Trek, and gives the impression of a really fun and supportive show to have worked on. David is an enthusiastic, witty guide, honest about his own shortcomings so that we might learn from his mistakes. He's awe-struck by his experience - and the result is that so are we.
Two additional thoughts. First, this particular edition includes a plate section of black-and-white photographs that is really odd. Two of the photos are from The Trouble with Tribbles itself, and there are a few from other episodes of the time and of cast members more generally. But there are also some pictures of cast members out of character - William Shatner seen with his wife, Leonard Nimoy seen with his wife and with his son. There are then photos from the movies Star Trek V, Star Trek VI, the casts of spin-off series The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and a picture of the USS Voyager - none of which get mentioned in the text. I suppose the intention was to make the book appeal to fans of contemporary Star Trek in 1996, but I think they might have felt a little short-changed. It's odd, because David wrote a new introduction to this edition but doesn't mention his work on the first Star Trek movie (in which he briefly appears) or as a writer on The Next Generation. There's no mention of that year's Deep Space Nine episode Trials and Tribble-ations (in which he again cameos), with which this edition was surely meant to coincide. I wonder what happened - and will ask David the next time we meet.
Secondly, via Genome, I looked up when The Trouble With Tribbles first aired in the UK: on Monday, 1 June 1970 (two days after Episode 4 of the Doctor Who story Inferno). It has been repeated on the BBC 10 times since then, on the last occasion in 2007.
Of little interest to anyone else but I think I first saw it at 6pm on Thursday, 28 November 1985, when I was nine and a half. That's brought back vivid memories of being sat with my brothers at the kitchen table eating jacket potato and having special permission from my mum to have the TV on at the same time. I remember saying to my dad, though probably not about this particular episode, that Star Trek didn't seem old like episodes of Doctor Who that sometimes got repeated. It felt on the same level as new episodes of The A Team and every bit as glamorous.
This wasn't my introduction to Trek.Earlier in the year, for my ninth birthday, we rented the VHS tape of The Search for Spock which had just come out, because (to me) the cover looked like Star Wars. While I was captivated, my two school friends got bored and went out to the garden to play. My mum told me join then, reminding me that this didn't mean I'd miss the film; I could watch it later. Video was still a novelty.
Anyway - all a bit self-indulgent but this book has given me a bit of a rush, my own ancient past woven into this vision of the future.
I've met Craig Miller briefly a couple of times at the GallifreyOne convention in Los Angeles but this is the first year I got to speak to him at any length. Craig worked in fan relations at Lucasfilm promoting Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, and then had roles promoting a whole load more of my favourite films, including Excalibur and The Dark Crystal, before writing on various animated TV shows. Last month, he told me about happy days working with Jim Henson and we compared notes about Craig's former colleague Alan Arnold, whose book Once Upon a Galaxy: The Making of The Empire Strikes BackI found so extraordinary.
When I spoke to him, Craig had sold out of his memoir, Star Wars Memories, so I bought a copy when I got home. It's a loosely chronological series of anecdotes about his time working to promote those two movies, from slide-show presentations at sci-fi conventions months before the first movie came out to people queuing round the block days in advance to see the first screenings of Empire.
There's loads of great stuff here, including a very revealing, lengthy interview with the often reclusive Harrison Ford conducted on 2 October 1979 (pp. 254-264), in which Ford talks openly about what makes the part of Han Solo so good for him as an actor, and why it appeals to an audience. There are also lengthy interviews with Anthony Daniels, the actor who played C3P0 (pp 340-357) and writer/director/producer George Lucas (pp. 369-75). Each is good in conveying a sense of the person interviewed - Ford agitated by the "Hollywood publicity machine" churning out "a total crock of shit", Daniels self-effacing about the disconnect between being feted in Hollywood one day and being back in the UK scrubbing his kitchen floor the next, and Lucas guarded about future plans.
As well as covering the making of the films and the personalities involved, there's a lot on publicity and the merchandise deals which Craig was directly involved in. As a fan who works in spin-off stuff myself, a lot of this really resonated. I was especially fascinated by the deal done over Star Wars figures, which were so much a part of my childhood.
"Another thing about the Kenner deal was that it included in the agreement that as long as Kenner paid a minimum royalty of $100,000 a year, they would be able to keep the licence for Star Wars toys for as long as they wanted. [But in the late 80s/early 90s] there hadn't been any Star Wars movies for a while and it didn't look like there would ever be. So [some executive] stopped paying the royalty. And the licence reverted to Lucasfilm." (p. 54)
A few years later, Lucas announced the Star Wars prequels and the same toy company - now owned by Hasbro - didn't want anyone else doing the toys.
"The new deal for the master toy licence for Star Wars ended up costing Hasbro close to a billion dollars in cash and stock." (p. 55)
It's interesting, too, to see the efforts made to ensure Star Wars characters remained in character even when appearing on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, such as vetoing the request to have R2D2 sing a version of the ABC because the droid doesn't speak English.
There's lots on fan culture, conventions and activities of the period, and the differences between the US and UK. Craig has to explain to his US readers what he means by Blu Tack (p. 292), while staff in UK hotels in 1979 were repeatedly foxed by requests for ice coffee (p. 299), providing hot coffee served with either ice or ice cream. Towards the end, Craig lists contemporary reviews and criticisms of The Empire Strikes Back - that stuff isn't explained, that it's too jokey, or otherwise not true enough to what's gone before - that have continued to be made of new Star Wars films ever since.
On p. 392 he points out an amazing detail in The Empire Strikes Back which, despite having seen the film a thousand times, I'd never noticed before. But he also raises a question which I think I might be able to answer. On pp. 401-403, he puzzles over the appeal of characters such as Boba Fett, Darth Maul and Captain Phasma when we learn so little about them in the films. As he says, they look pretty cool but I think it's also important that they're blank slates. As well as how little we learn about their stories, two of them are masked and one is heavily made up, which adds to their mystery. They are characters on whom we as viewers can project. That absence of explanation invites us to imagine their stories, their lives - so they offer us a way in to this universe.
In fact, that kind of participation is what this book covers so well. I've read lots of other things about the making of Star Wars, focused on cast and crew. Craig's book is about how the production teamactively engaged with and encouraged fans to take Star Wars to their hearts and into their lives. There's lots to learn from here. And lots to be grateful for.
“The museum is a powerful and extraordinarily malleable cultural sorting house. [Museums] are places for demonstrating that the West is best, regardless of what the West has actually been up to. For example, when we hear the story of how Napoleon’s troops in Egypt at the turn of the nineteenth century resorted to using dynamite to blow up a large, basalt statute of Rameses II, we needn’t worry in the way we do about the Taliban [destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas]. Even if they did blow up the Egyptian sculptures, Napoleon’s motive was to get them into the French national collection. They would be safe there.” (p. 188).
Subtitled “Ten lies that made the West”, this insightful and often funny book is full of historical details that challenge all kinds of presumptions. The ancient Athenians, for example, wouldn’t recognise our political system as democracy. Their whole system was about governing themselves; we elect other people, usually from the elite, to do so on our behalf.
Or there’s what Magna Carta did — or rather didn’t — do to fundamental rights here and abroad. I’d never even heard of the contemporaneous Charter of the Forest, which now seems a far more radical document, providing rights for ordinary people to land and resources; some of its provisions were still in force until 1971.
Over the course of 10 chapters, Subhadra unpicks a series of assumptions about the “civilised” and the “savage”, such as the superiority of the written word over the spoken, or the roots of political frameworks or psychological insights. In doing so, she shows how art, science and history are bound up in and blinded by a constructed, self-aggrandising narrative.
Subhadra addresses numerous elisions from the historical record that serve to feed this false story. Repeatedly, women and non-white people and cultures have been left out of the story. I was fascinated to learn that Abraham Maslow’s work on the hierarchy of needs and on self-actualisation, which I studied as part of my training to be an adoptive parent, owes a great deal to his time among the Siksiká people in Northern Alberta — now the Northern Blackfoot Confederacy. Maslow later said he’d been inspired by news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour; Subhadra uses Maslow’s own work and accounts from women who knew him to set the record straight.
I should declare an interest in that I know Subhadra and get a credit in the acknowledgements (I had to check with her what for). The Dr is also cited as a source at one point. Some of what’s covered here I’d already heard, having seen Subhadra’s stand-up comedy act and heard her Boring Talk for the BBC on Jeremy Bentham’s “Auto-Icon”.
But there’s a great deal here that was completely new to me — a richer, stranger more diverse history than the one I thought I knew. What a delightful way to discover the myriad ways in which I’m wrong.
The Drifter was created for STW-9 in Perth, Western Australia, by David Whitaker, a British writer probably best known as the first story editor of Doctor Who and the subject of my recent biography. The series ran for 21 episodes over 22 weeks 1973-74, and I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who can add to the following.
Background
The series owed something to an outline for The Lover dated 4 April 1966 and submitted to the Writers' Guild eight days later. David proposed that this would be filmed in colour, presumably in the style of The Saint or The Baron made for ITV. It would have seen Richard Young travelling Europe and getting into various scrapes and adventures, with David describing the character as a modern-day Casanova (whose unexpurgated autobiography had just begun to be published).
Richard Young’s itinerant lifestyle follows a fire that killed his parents and destroyed their Sussex home in 1961. This was probably inspired by a real-life fire that swept through the London home David shared with his parents sometime in 1960 or 1961.
The Lover was not picked up but by 1970 David had reworked the idea in a full movie screenplay, Man on a Tightrope, for Armitage Films — the company that made the low budget science-fiction film Night Caller (1968) and horror Burke and Hare (1972). The main character is Richard Logan, an adventurer who has been living an itinerant life since the death of his wife five years previously in a fire. He’s recruited to expose a criminal gang by the enigmatic Nicholson — a name probably inspired by David’s mother, who was born Nellie Nicholas. The film was never made.
In February 1971, David was in Australia, discussing ideas for TV shows with David Aspinall, assistant production manager at STW-9 in Perth. According to a report in the Australian TV Times on 17 February, David was to write 12 ten-minute plays for the channel in different genres that would help to meet newly imposed quotas on locally produced programmes and could be used to train crews.
Then, in 1973, STW-9 recorded a pilot episode of The Drifter created and written by David, with Aspinall as executive producer. The network duly commissioned a 10-part series and later extended that to 26 - all to be written by David. But before completing this number, the series was cancelled at short notice.
The Drifter
Regular cast: James Halloran (Alan Cassell), Owen Nicholas (Sydney Davis), Lucie Martin (Helen Naeme), Miss Zeigler (Valda Diamond).
Only the first two of 21 episodes are known to survive, and are currently on YouTube.
The title sequence shows, in a series of still captions, Halloran on his wedding day, then with his wife and two children, then a newspaper clipping tells us his family died in a fire.
01. If You Can’t Join Them, Beat Them (tx Saturday 15 December 1973)
TV listing: “What do you do with a case full of money and the police breathing down your neck?”
A flight lands at Perth Airport and airline staff have to carry off a drunk, unconscious passenger, who carries a ticket in the name of “J Smith”. This is, in fact, James Halloran, some 18 months after the deaths of his wife and children.
He wakes to find himself in bed at the home of air stewardess Lucie Martin — and wrongly assumes he picked her up the night before. After this embarrassment, Halloran is visited by Dr Lindeman, a passenger who helped him off the plane. In fact, Lindeman spiked Halloran’s drink and caused the whole distraction as part of an insurance scam.
Lindeman offers Halloran $10,000 to continue with the plot. It looks as though Halloran will agree but he then shops Lindeman to the authorities. Meanwhile, an enigmatic man called Owen Nicholas collects Halloran’s unclaimed suitcase from the airport and keeps hold of it to use as leverage.
02. Love On Tuesday At Three O’Clock Please (Saturday 22 December 1973)
Guest cast: Lynn Canfield (Jenny McNae), Faith Royal (Adele Cohen), Len (Max Bartlett), Barry (David Lyon), Judith (Olwyn Summers)
Crew: Camera - Tony Graham, Ian Jobsz and Brett Wiley; Lighting - Brian Grosse; Audio - David Muir; Make-up - Pauline Dunstan; Settings - David Crosby; Properties - Noel Penn; Graphics - Victor Longbon; Videotape editors - Ivan De Souza, Jim McLoughlin and Ray Shaw; Floor manager - Mike Meade; Technical director - Kevin Mohen; Director’s assistant - Pat Green; Executive producer - David Aspinall; Director - Brian Green; Producer - John Hanson.
Lynn Canfield is drugged by two men who then undress and photograph her, and later send a blackmail demand. She goes to Owen Nicholas for help, and he uses his leverage to get James Halloran to investigate.
Faith Royal, who runs the escort agency used by Canfield and sent the demand, doesn’t want money; she wants Canfield to recruit further victims. Halloran takes a job with the agency while Nicholas’s secretary, Miss Zeigler, poses as a potential stooge, and together they put a stop to the scheme. Halloran, who is still staying with Lucie Martin, now seems bound to work with Nicholas — who is an associate of Halloran’s father-in-law, and keen to get the drifter back on his feet.
03. Heads I Win, Tails You Lose (Saturday 29 December 1973)
TV listing: “There is always one big winner at the weekly poker game. The Drifter doesn’t want to play, but must put up with the cards he has been dealt.”
04. Life And Death (Saturday 5 January 1974)
TV listing: “Halloran becomes deeply involved with Owen Nicholas — and finds himself investigating an ingenious murder attempt at the hospital.”
05. There’s Always An Angle (Saturday, 12 January 1974)
TV listing: “The Drifter breaks away — at last — and finds himself staying in a motel operating in an unusual way.”
06. Rogue’s Gallery (Saturday, 19 January 1974)
TV listing: “Halloran investigates when Ramon Salamander buys a stolen Renoir.”
Guest cast: Ramon Salamander (Neville Teede), Salamander’s mistress (Vynka Lee-Steere)
A photo of David Whitaker and Vynka Lee-Steere was published in the edition of TV Week for 8 December 1973 (p. 13), suggesting the episode was recorded around this time. The accompanying piece says that Lee-Steere plays the, “mistress of a millionaire armaments manufacturer who is selling illegal arms to subversive organisations”.
A preview in the Western Australian on 19 January (p. 33) says that Salamander, “is suspected of stealing a Renoir painted in 1874 [and]James Halloran, the drifter played by Alan Cassells is assigned to find out where the Renoir has gone”.
Salamander is also the name of a villain in a Doctor Who story written by David, The Enemy of the World, which ends with Salamander being ejected from the TARDIS just after it leaves Australia… so perhaps this is the same character.
07. Things That Go Bump in the Night (Saturday, 26 January 1974)
TV listing: “Is there a plot afoot to ruin Harry Starr or has a ghost really invaded his new block of flats?”
A photograph in what may be the 15 or 22 December issue of TV Week shows star Alan Cassell with guest star Perth actress Sally Sander, who was presumably a guest star in this or the following episode.
08. The Strong Shall Inherit the Earth (Saturday, 2 February 1974)
TV listing: “Murderer Manny Rossiter escapes while on his way to gaol and plans to kill Owen Nicholas.”
A photograph in the TV Week published the day of broadcast shows Robert Foggetter (presumably as Rossiter) with a gun, leaning over the top of car to take a shot, while behind him there's a man with stocking over his head. The caption says that, “a realistic fight scene, car chase and ambush will be seen in this week’s episode of The Drifter.”
09. With A Little Help From My Enemies (Saturday, 9 February 1974)
TV listing: “Halloran helps a schoolteacher who discovers that one of her pupils possesses dangerous drugs.”
10. Death In The Garden (Saturday, 16 February 1974)
TV listing: “Mary Auben is a nice old lady who lives on a valuable property coveted by a nearby factory.”
The listings magazine also quotes a line of dialogue from the episode, spoken by an unnamed lawyer: “It’s astonishing what an oral life we lead — eating, drinking, talking, smoking, tasting, singing, biting, kissing and some habitual drug users inject themselves under the tongue.”
11. The Body of a Girl (Saturday, 23 February 1974)
TV listing: “Shirley, a 25-year-old prostitute, is in danger when she causes trouble."
12. The Beginning of the End (Friday, 1 March 1974)
TV listing: “Owen Nicholas puts Halloran in the centre of a fierce quarrel between scientific research and conservation.”
A news report in TV Week on 2 March revealed that actress Helen Neeme, playing series regular Lucie Martin, was pregnant — so she may have left the series before the end.
13. A Legal Way to Steal (Friday, 8 March 1974)
TV listing: “Halloran learns of a way to part people from their fortunes. But Owen Nicholas is much too fascinated with the attractive Myra to show interest.”
14. The Death of Janet Halloran (Friday, 15 March 1974)
TV listing: "Halloran receives a phone call from his wife Janet — who was burnt to death in a fire one year ago."
15. The Death of Janet Halloran (part 2) (Friday, 22 March 1974)
TV listing: “What is the organisation FSD and what was its connection with Janet Halloran? What was the secret she could not tell her husband?”
16. Breakdown (part 1) (Friday 29 March 1974)
No listing given.
17. Breakdown (part 2) (Friday, 5 April 1974)
TV listing: “An attractive girl and half-a-million dollars — the Drifter can have both for the price of a bullet.”
Cast: final listing to credit Helen Neene.
[12 April, no episode shown as it was Good Friday; a movie was broadcast instead]
18. Black, White and Red (part 1) (Friday. 19 April 1974)
TV listing: “Someone turned Rod Taylor into a living vegetable because of his fight for a principle and nobody wants Halloran to find the truth.”
19. Black, White and Red (part 2) (Friday, 26 April 1974)
No listing given.
Guest cast: James Setches, Andrew Carter, Frank McKallister.
20. The Valley of the Shadow (part 1) (Friday, 3 May 1974)
TV listing: “When Captain Keith Colby is invalided out of the army he asks the Drifter to help him find the man who tried to kill him.”
The 4 May edition of TV Week (p. 61) includes a photograph with the caption that, “Scriptwriter David Whitaker created a role for himself in a recent episode of The Drifter. He appeared as a businessman (right) with actors Laurence Hodge (left) and Norman Macleod.” The caption doesn’t say which episode this is from. David Whitaker kept a copy of this photograph and one of him being made-up for the part, presumably by Pauline Dunstan (credited at the end of episode 2).
21. The Valley of the Shadow (part 2) (Friday, 9 May 1974)
TV listing: “The Drifter is involved in a bizarre case of revenge against Keith Colby.”
Star Alan Cassell, quoted in TV Week on 25 May, said that,“Ironically, the episode I enjoyed most was the last one [as] I finally got myself into bed with a bird and there was a realistic fight scene that worked very well. … The fight was in fact so dynamic, a fellow actor ended up with two stitches in his lip.”
But he’d also had no warning of the cancellation. A total of 21 episodes had been broadcast over 22 weeks. The press referred to tentative plans to make further episodes at a later date, in colour. This doesn’t seem to have come anything.
On 3 October 1979, David wrote a synopsis for a novelisation of his Doctor Who story The Enemy of the World, adding the first name “Ramon” to the villainous Salamander, underlining the link between him and the character of the same name in The Drifter.
Asha Akindele ensures life in the Lower Quarter of planet Gahraan in the year 6066, just about managing not to speak out against the Emperor - a crime punishable by death. In London in 1812, time-traveller Obi Amadi is keen to rekindle his relationship with Prince George, the heir to the throne. Asha and Obi don't yet know that they're part of an ancient prophecy, involving a third "hero"...
I loved this sprawling, rich science-fiction fantasy that hurtles back and forth through time with zip and imagination. The characters and their worlds are well drawn, their lives full of heart-wrenching choices that make for thrilling drama. There are lots of basically good people, trying to do the right thing despite knowing it will hurt others.
A lot of epic space opera features quotations from invented histories to add scale to proceedings. Here, we soon learn that the historian whose work frames much of the adventure - Ishoal Nisomn, ex-acolyte of the Aonian Archives - disappeared in mysterious circumstances. That mystery then becomes an extra thread of the story in a way that works really well.
I'm generally not keen on plots about prophecies where characters are destined to fulfil particular roles or do particular things. That tends to mean they resist but then accept a pre-ordained path, so lack agency of their own. But here, the prophecy is woolly enough, and open to enough interpretation, that we're never quite sure how things will play out.
The Principle of Moments is the first book in The Order of Legends and I'm keen to see where things go next.
The new issue of Doctor Who Magazinehas arrived, with a handful of things by me in it.
pp. 14-20 Script to Screen: The Goblin Crew
In a deep-dive feature on the creation of the goblins and their king for Christmas episode The Church on Ruby Road,I spoke to executive producer Joel Collins, production designer Phil Sims, Neill Gorton from Millennium FX and Will Cohen from Milk VFX.
pp. 36-37 Can You Fix It?
An interview with director's assistant Abdoul Ceesay.
p. 82 Insufficient Data: Sunday Supplemental
A new infographic by me and Roger Langridge exploring the issue of Sundays in Doctor Who - and Doctor Who on Sundays.
I'm a guest on the latest edition of the Doctor Who Literature Podcast, this time discussing the novelisation Timelash by Glen McCoy, first published in December 1985 and based on his TV story broadcast earlier that same year.
We recorded this at the Gallifrey convention in LA last weekend and you can hear me being constantly distracted by the extraordinary spectacle of people in ever more inventive costumes milling about us. At one point, even the unflappable Jason is left speechless by the Sisterhood of Karn assembling beside us for a photo.
I had an amazing time at the Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles this weekend. What a buzz! But also I didn't sleep at all on the journey home so have returned something of a brain-mushed wreck.
My talk on Television Before the TARDIS went well, and - in what's becoming a tradition - I was then interrogated by Steven from podcast Radio Free Skaro. Steven also spoke to Shaun Lyon (programme director of the convention) and Peter Harness (who is launching Constellation today), so I feel in very august company.
Out now, two new documentaries tell the story of the original Doctor Who novels published 1991-2005. A load of editors and authors (including me) are interviewed, most of us while at the Novel Experiences convention run by WHOOVERS in Derby on 13 May last year.
I loved those books which, more than anything else, made me a writer today. I was one of the last first-time writers to be commissioned for one, right at the end of the BBC line. What a thrill to be included in the line-up, to count such brilliant people as peers.
Standing: John Peel, Jeremy Hoad, Colin Brake, Nick Walters, Daniel Blythe, Peter Anghelides, Steve Cole, Simon Guerrier, Paul Magrs, Martin Day, Mark Morris, Andrew Hunt, Simon Messingham, Paul Ebbs. Seated: Mags L Halliday, Robert Dick, Steve Lyons, Nigel Robinson
I'm on the latest episode of the Cinema Limbo podcast all about neglected movies. This time, host Jeremy Philips and I analyse the 1977 Australian film The Last Wave directed by Peter Weir and starring Richard Chamberlain. As I said at the start, two things amazed me about this.
First, I thought I knew Peter Weir's work pretty well but have never heard of this odd, early film.
Secondly, watching it really helped bring together lots of my thinking about the context in which it was made and efforts to combat the 'cultural cringe' in Australia, which I detail in my book on David Whitaker.
The 600th issue of Doctor Who Magazineis out now! Last night I was in London to celebrate this audacious landmark at a swanky knees-up. Really good to meet up with lot of old friends - and meet in person for the first time people I've been working with for yonks.
The new issue features some bits by me:
pp. 32-27 Tower of Strength
I spoke to production designer Phil Sims about UNIT Tower (aka The Penguin), as featured in The Giggle last year and due to be seen again later this year.
pp. 46-47 The Lonely Nights of the Long-Distance Runner
An interview with production runner Thani Subkhi.
p. 82 Sufficient Data - Take Cover!
An infographic of DWM cover stars over the past 600 issues. Sadly, this will be the last Sufficient Data illustrated by brilliant Ben Morris, who I've worked with since our days together on Doctor Who Adventures a thousand years ago. We've collaborated all sorts of fun stuff, including our book Whographica with Steve O'Brien, and Ben even laid out my family tree as a gift for my parents. Thanks Ben, for everything.
This is a novelisation of the second Garry Halliday serial, about the adventures of an airline pilot (see my post about the first one, Garry Halliday and the Disappearing Diamonds). The book was published in 1961, based on the six-episode serial broadcast on BBC Television on Saturday tea-times from 26 September to 31 October 1959.
The first serial was considered enough of a success for two new Garry Halliday serials to be commissioned, apparently at once. This was mentioned in press previews ahead of the the second serial - in the Nottingham Evening Post, 10 September 1959, p. 15 and the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 18 September 1959, p. 9. But the third serial wasn't broadcast until January 1960.
Why the gap? One issue was the availability of the cast. The Radio Times listing for the first episode of this second run says that star Terence Longdon (who played Garry Halliday) was appearing in The Sound of Murder at London's Aldwych Theatre while Elwyn Brook-Jones (returning as the villainous Voice) was in The Crooked Mile at the Cambridge Theatre. Those commitments probably explain why - again, as per Radio Times - this was a "BBC recording" rather than broadcast live (as with the first serial).
(The stage productions must have given permission for the actors to appear in the TV serial at the same time as their stage commitments; the plugs in Radio Times were probably part of the agreement - I've seen evidence of that with other productions.)
Also returning was Terence Alexander as Halliday's co-pilot Bill Dodds, who narrates the novelisation. He's got a more distinctive, slightly Woosterish voice compared to the first novelisation.
“Hullo! Bill Dodds talking. Are you receiving me?
I expect you are. Loud and clear, as we say in radio communication - I've always had a good carrying voice.
If you've read a book called Garry Halliday and the Disappearing Diamonds, you'll know who I am, and who Garry is, and about Jean Wills, our stewardess, and about the Voice. If you haven't, then you'd better read it, because I'm not going to explain all over again. Life's too short, and anyway there are probably going to be more books after this one, and I can't keep doing it. I expect there'll be many more books as Garry has adventures, and Garry's an adventurous type.” (p. 10, opening Chapter 1)
Jean Wills was back, but with actress Ann Gudrun (better known as Gudrun Ure) replaced by Jennifer Wright - and still not having a great deal to do in the story. The cast was also expanded, with Bill's fiancee Sonia Delamare played by Juno Stevas and Garry's plucky nephew Tim Halliday played by David Langford.
The story opens with Garry, Bill and Jean having set up their own airline, the Halliday Charter Company, and flying a party of holiday-makers out to Paris. Tim sits next to a nervous man whose only luggage is a box containing a jigsaw puzzle. When Tim expresses interest in the puzzle, the man is rude - and when the jigsaw pieces fall out into the cabin, he calls stewardess Jean a "stupid, clumsy bitch" (p. 22), which is a bit of a shock in a TV serial/book aimed at children.
They gather up the jigsaw pieces but Tim, in revenge for the rudeness, keeps one piece. It then turns out that the back of the jigsaw puzzle is written on in invisible ink, and Tim now has a vital part of a message being delivered on behalf of the Voice.
Garry and his friends attempt to make sense of the message and trace how it is delivered, while at the same time the Voice instructs his minions to recover the missing piece of the jigsaw and kill those who get in the way. As in the first serial, this includes an attempt to destroy Garry's plane while in the air.
A preview in Junior Radio Times supplement (included in the Radio Times covering the first episode, via the link above) reveals that this was an ambitious production with location filming abroad:
“There have been film locations in Paris and also down at Ferry Field Airport at Lydd, Kent. Once more Silver City Airways have kindly afforded us every facility, and the Managing Director was recently mistaken for one of our actors playing the part of a high-pressure business executive!
There are more thrilling aerobatic film sequences and a number of specially staged fights, for The Voice’s men are out to get Garry this time, come what may, and their methods change from the use of poison gas to the use of plain fists.” (Junior Radio Times, p. 3)
I'm also struck by how often it veers on the edge of what's suitable for kids: one man compromised by the Voice discusses committing suicide; young Tim Halliday witnesses another man falling to his death; the police seem very relaxed about our heroes shooting a helicopter out of the sky (p. 125). There's fair bit of smoking and drinking, and Bill's views on women - he falls in love with Sonia after she "clonked me on the lug-hole with a kipper" (p. 11). At one point, Garry says of Bill's interest in the secrets hidden on the jigsaws:
“He's a bit kinky about invisible ink.” (p. 37)
At the same time, the plot races along and is full of daft jokes to lighten the mood - Bill gets confused by police sergeant George Eustace having two first names (p. 35), and there's later a police sergeant in Keswick with the surname Love. The local inspector presumably spoke to him with an accent:
“Wait, Love. Wait. Not so far. Instructions must be adhered to, Love, or where would the world be, I ask you.” (p. 121)
The plot hinges on the invention of a new kind of heating appliance.
“It was a cheap way of heating by doing without coal, or gas, or oil; his invention simply extracted heat from the atmosphere, and used that.” (p. 71)
That seems prescient - a kind of air-source heat pump offering green, renewable energy - but the application of the technology is very much of its time. The Voice sees the potential to focus the energy produced into a death ray, a weapon effectively like a cut-price nuclear bomb.
Such a weapon is of interest to Dr Edmundo (Richard Warner), who our narrator describes as,
“one of these middle-aged South American chaps with mahogany faces and black moustaches, who are always having revolutions in countries with unlikely names.” (p. 38)
He's a stock villain, a racist cliche - and this is not the only time Bill Dodds shares disparaging remarks about foreigners. At one point, he uses a particular word - which I won't repeat here - which is even more shocking than "bitch" to see in a book written for children.
Edmundo employs "thugs" who aren't named in the book but on screen were "Sebastiano" and "Perfidio". The latter, appearing in the last two episodes of the serial, was played by Walter Randall, who later played similar, small villainous roles in Doctor Who. These were the only two episodes of Garry Halliday that Randall appeared in, which means we know someone else who had an uncredited role on the production - and went on to write for the series.
“Douglas [Camfield] was commissioned [to write] for the [Garry Halliday]serial because he had worked on it in 1959 as an AFM where he met actor Walter Randall for the first time, and who would become one of his closest friends, as well as the go-to man for playing middle eastern villains.” (Michael Seely, Directed by Douglas Camfield, p. 34.)
Camfield wrote an episode of the eighth and final Garry Halliday series, which was not a serial but comprised six standalone episodes. But we're getting ahead of ourselves...
The ending of this second story makes use of the fact that no one (except the viewer watching at home) knows what the Voice looks like. Throughout proceedings, he's communicated with his minions remotely, him seeing them on a TV screen, them only hearing his politely couched threats. But the final page of the book promises a rematch, with a closing line that reads to me like the promise of a conclusion to a trilogy:
“Whether it's my choice or the Voice's choice, at some time, in some place, we're going to finish things between us.” (p. 126)
Sadly, I've not yet tracked down a copy of the next novelisation, Garry Halliday and the Kidnapped Five (1962), but can trace something of the plot from listings - and the only surviving episode of Garry Halliday. More on that coming soon.
Oh, and the cover art for this novelisation is by Ley Kenyon, who as a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft III forged passports and other documents in the lead up to the Great Escape, and then illustrated Paul Brickhill's book.
