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Interview - Jonathan Morris (Part One) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

0:00
And you know, I was going through Wikipedia today.
0:02
Man, you've been busy, ain't you?
0:03
You've been very busy. I've been busy updating my
0:07
Wikipedia site. That's what I've been busy
0:09
doing. Yeah, yeah.
0:14
I mean, one of the things is even people, if people get the
0:18
impression that I've done, you know, three scary stories in a
0:23
row for me writing them, I might have written those like over
0:27
four years and done lots of other different stories between
0:30
them. So yeah, I mean, I mean you get
0:37
all these sort of briefs and stuff going, can you do a a
0:40
story like season 12 or something and you go, OK, you
0:44
know, so sometimes the briefs might be a bit saney, you know,
0:50
they might be asking me to do the same thing.
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But even then I don't, I don't think.
0:56
I mean, one of the sort of problems or challenges you face
1:00
with these things is that there's been 2 / 200 bigger
1:04
Finnish stories plus hundreds or hundreds of TV stories and comic
1:11
strips and books. So you do not just trying to
1:15
avoid repeating yourself, you've got to try and avoid what
1:18
everyone else has done. And so that pushes you to do
1:24
more interesting things, I think.
1:26
Because, you know, you could do have a really boring idea.
1:33
I know I'd do a Doctor Who meets the Phantom of the Opera in the
1:40
in the late 19th century. It's like been done.
1:43
You can't do that. You know that that story's
1:46
happened in 1977 or 1976, whatever.
1:50
You can't do anything like that. So you have to come up with
1:52
stuff which is more interesting every time.
1:57
And certainly over the last couple of years, I think it's,
2:02
I've got a bit eccentric. It started getting a bit madder
2:05
because I started going how what can I get away with, not get
2:09
away with, but what can I, how can I surprise, you know,
2:14
because so if you've read 200 or listen to 200 doc stories, you
2:19
know the format, right? Well, you know, the tricks you
2:24
come up with certain expectations of going, oh, this
2:26
is going to be a history story. So it's going to be about
2:32
something threatens to change history in the doc has to make
2:34
sure that it's changed back and then he has to escape and you
2:38
try and sort of go, OK, that's what I know what people are
2:41
going to come be coming to it with.
2:44
So let's try and do something different and it's always
2:47
turned. I always think of you as a very
2:51
I feel like I'm doing the interview now.
2:52
Do you know I may, I may cut someone up here?
2:54
Actually don't. You know, I I always think of
3:00
you as like a very funny writer. Then when I sort of step back
3:02
and go well I want my absolute favourites like Martha off.
3:06
One of his absolute favorite big finishes is Protect and survive.
3:09
He loves that one. One of my favourites is static
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and I I bloody love anacrophobia as well.
3:15
So like when you're when you do scary, I think.
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I think they're my favourites, you know, because you give me
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the bloody willies, that's why. Yeah, I think you've named
3:28
something which which turned out really well when you're doing.
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I mean it it the same with comedy, but I think with
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particularly with something scary, you were sort of hoping
3:40
that it's going to be further down the line the director, the
3:44
cast and the sound design and music are going to make it work.
3:48
You know it's all going to be as scary as it can be and stuff and
3:54
certainly with Static the casting that were fantastic.
3:59
You know, they were on the form that day, those two days.
4:02
And Jamie, who directed it, did a great job and it just came
4:09
together. And and there'll be other times
4:12
where I've written scripts, which I go, this is really,
4:14
really scary. And it doesn't quite.
4:18
I mean, I did one without the Cloisters of Terror, which again
4:24
I thought was a really scary one when I wrote it.
4:26
But it's kind of nice. But it didn't quite have that
4:29
sort of visceral quality that I think Static got and protect and
4:35
survive. Yeah.
4:37
I think the I won't ruin it, but I'm terrible for doing spoilers
4:43
on this podcast. But the ending of Static I
4:48
didn't see coming at all. I don't think we were brave
4:50
enough to go there, but I'll, I'll leave out there and just
4:54
say everyone go and buy it, you know?
4:57
Yeah, I mean, it's a ghost story, you know, And ghost
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stories have a different role of the the genre ghost stories have
5:05
have shocking, heart wrenching, saddened.
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So ghost stories don't have happy endings.
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Sorry. You know, So again, it's just
5:17
seeing how what can I do? How can I surprise people?
5:54
Hamster with a blunt penlight for doing.
5:56
Quicker, quicker, quicker, quicker.
6:00
Welcome back to a Hamster with a Blumping knife.
6:03
We are not doing a Doctor Who commentary podcast today.
6:07
Today I am with one of my all time favourite Doctor Who
6:11
writers, whether that is writing novels, writing Big Finish
6:16
audios, writing comic strips. It's Mr. Jonathan Morris.
6:20
How are you doing today, Johnny? Hello.
6:22
It's lovely to be speaking to you, Joe.
6:24
It's lovely to be here. We have met once before, you
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know. Do you remember?
6:30
Did you come to a signing something?
6:32
Was it? Oh.
6:33
You did a reading, had a oh. Yes, I did a reading about.
6:36
I was like I gave a talk on my life, on my career.
6:41
Yes, that was about that would be when I was promoting Goodness
6:47
me, was it The Who the The Monster Volt was before lockdown
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wasn't it? It was quite a while ago.
6:54
Oh. Way, way before this.
6:57
This. Yeah.
6:57
Yeah. I mean, I think the Tomorrow
7:00
windows had been out for a little while.
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And I said to you of Mike earlier that you wrote Inside
7:06
the book, I was your #1 fan 10 out of 10, which is still the
7:10
best review I've had today, thank you very much.
7:14
And that was the only way. I the only reason I travelled
7:16
all that way, you know, was to come and see you.
7:19
I was desperate to meet you. Unfortunately, you were a very
7:21
busy man. But I did get like about.
7:23
I've got about a minute with you.
7:25
I'm very happy. My my memories, I had to do 2
7:28
talks in the same day, and the second talk I did the same talk
7:32
again and I didn't get all the stuff.
7:34
I got laughed the first time, went completely flat.
7:37
The second time. It's like, OK, I now understand
7:39
what it's like to be a comedian. Now this is this is OK.
7:43
What did I do? It was funny the first time.
7:48
I find, you know, whenever when I do these podcasts, every time
7:50
I try and script myself, it just falls flat.
7:53
The best thing to do is just to make it up as you go along.
7:56
But one thing you definitely don't do is make it up as you go
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along. When you're writing these
7:59
fabulous Doctor Who stories, can I ask you first, then what is
8:06
your Doctor Who story? I asked everybody this, Like so
8:09
when did you first discover Doctor Who?
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Well, it's in the in the mists of childhood.
8:17
So I don't think there was an inciting incident.
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There wasn't a one one thing that happened.
8:27
So I have memories of, you know, watching the TV show from around
8:33
horror find Walk Part 4. So I would have been just four
8:37
years old and because I remember seeing The Invisible Enemy and
8:44
going, oh, I've seen this one before so I watched, I watched
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the repeat of that. And by the time you get to 1979,
8:53
it's going in deep. You know I've, I'm watching it
8:57
once and it's the whole thing is like, you know, it's like total
9:04
recall. It's a perfect memory, you know.
9:06
So for years, even though City Death, there was no scripts or
9:09
synopsis, I was going and the spaceship explodes and then it's
9:15
purple blossom and the camera pulls up and you see the Eiffel
9:19
Tower and it's like it was all in.
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It was it was vivid and stuck there.
9:24
And then I was just reading the novelizations, the Target books,
9:30
and I remember 1 Christmas I sort of the main present was
9:35
this big sort of cardboard box and sort of opened it up.
9:38
And I think my mother had been around charity shops and car
9:42
boots and stuff for about 3 months and there was about 40
9:47
Target books, you know, all ones I hadn't got because she had a
9:51
list of ones already have. I can't imagine your excitement
9:55
opening. That book, I was just going
9:57
outside and by the end of that day, Christmas Day, I'd read one
10:00
already and she was going, don't read them so quickly, you'll use
10:04
them up, you know. But, and also, I mean, one of
10:07
the great lessons I learned from Green Notes is I'd get the
10:10
target book and I'd go go through the pages until the
10:14
Doctor turned out and I'll start reading from there.
10:16
But anything that happened before the Doctor turning out,
10:20
you know, which is, you know, 3 blokes in a power station
10:23
discussing keeping the Impala shaft running, I would ignore
10:29
because it doesn't matter, you know, the story begins with the
10:32
first bit of the Doctor. That means you missed the
10:35
fabulous first line of Dalek Invasion of Earth.
10:38
Do you remember that? Oh yeah, the ruins of the city.
10:41
I mean, I think that's probably my favorite one, but that's OK
10:46
because the before the Doctor turns up, I think it's only
10:49
about half a page. It's not too bad.
10:54
I can remember parts of that vividly because it has the odd
10:58
line where Ian is hoping against hope.
11:01
So you can find a cutting thing and I was for years ago.
11:03
I don't know what hoping against hope means.
11:05
I still. Don't.
11:09
And it has all the stuff you know about.
11:11
If you twist your ankle, you should put a wet handkerchief on
11:13
it, which I'm sure is producing on the TV, which isn't in the TV
11:18
version, but we all think it is because we remember it from the
11:20
book, so. I think Barbara wets to Hanky,
11:24
doesn't she? But I don't think it's a magic
11:27
cure for a twisted ankle. No, I think, I think they go off
11:30
script towards him there. And so all the stuff they've set
11:33
up gets anyway. I've read a whole book about
11:35
that. I've read a book about them in
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terms of my story. Then yeah, getting Doctor Who
11:43
Weekly as it was issue 26, which is the Star Beast, final part of
11:50
the Star Beast and the annuals and stuff.
11:54
It was all just ways of keeping it going in your head when it
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wasn't on television and you know, and then you'd have to get
12:03
a video recorder with the five doctors.
12:05
So then you can watch things again and again and you find
12:11
ways of getting out the stores you buy them.
12:13
A great expense. Again, Tower the Zygons.
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Sent by surface mail from Australian stuff.
12:19
Extraordinary things and it was just it brought me such
12:27
excitement and such joy and and I don't know if it is because
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I've spoken to other fans about this and they all, they all
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reached the age of having intonations of immortality and
12:43
going why did I get to talk to him?
12:44
OK, well, my childhood was quite happy.
12:48
I think I was left to my own devices a bit because of my
12:55
parents had to look after my brother a lot.
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But I, you know, just sitting and reading Doctor Who books or
13:03
drawing monsters or writing my own stories, which happened very
13:07
soon. You know, I've got one from.
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I was about 1980, so I've been about 7:00.
13:14
That's when I wrote my first Doctor Who novel.
13:20
It's just happiness. And it wasn't.
13:22
It wasn't, but it wasn't to escape any sort of pain or
13:25
anything, as I called. It was just, I've been very
13:28
lucky. So yeah, and then you get sucked
13:33
into fandom. You get sucked into fanzines and
13:38
the dress and stuff and local groups and things, mainly just
13:43
because you want to see all the stories you haven't seen.
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That's that's the overriding factor.
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You go to conventions and then have a panel where it'd be, I
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don't know, people, Richard Franklin and John Levine and you
13:57
go, but they're showing the chase on a shitty in a in a
14:01
rubbish copy in the next. I want to watch the chase.
14:03
I might not John Levine and Richard Franklin, they're not
14:07
going anywhere. I might never get the some
14:09
chance to see the chase again. So so you go and you just go to
14:14
watch the videos, which seems an odd way round now, but I think I
14:19
made the right choice. Yeah, for sure.
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So yeah, and and then becoming writing the stuff it was.
14:29
I had a well deserved hiatus from Doctor Who during most of
14:33
the 90s and but then I started reading the books again and you
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know, there are two types of got two, but they're the ones where
14:45
you go, oh this is brilliant. Like I wish I could do something
14:48
like this. And as one should go, this is
14:51
fucking terrible. They'll print anything.
14:54
They must be desperate for writers, and I think they're
14:59
about 5050, you know? You've read my reviews in Yeah,
15:02
that's basically the two directions I'll go.
15:05
So and I was sort of inspired to go OK I can I can do this and
15:13
all the best writers are moving on or have left so there is a
15:17
vacancy. And so I was on a yeah, an
15:26
Internet form of some sort called where I put together the
15:30
synopsis for festive death and everyone was sort of raving
15:37
about it. So I sent it in and I got it,
15:39
got me it, got commissions. And I slipped the letter from
15:43
Justin Richards, which was, again, that was an incredibly
15:47
joyous letter to receive, because then I sort of felt, OK,
15:57
I can go to the Tavern now, You know I can.
16:01
Strives. Yes, yes.
16:04
I mean, because everyone else had earned their stripes doing
16:07
fanzines and stuff during the 90s and I hadn't been around so
16:13
and so yeah, that was sort of open things up and I've sort of
16:19
been doing it ever since. I mean there have been gaps
16:21
which people will not have noticed because of things being
16:24
released. But you know, there's been gaps
16:27
of a year or two years since over that period.
16:30
Well, I haven't done anything for Big Finish, no BBC books,
16:33
nothing for Doctor Magazine, but because of things still being
16:38
released, you think I haven't gone away and then I come back
16:43
and it's seamless. So because I remember talking to
16:48
going to Eddie Robson at a big Finnish party once, I was going,
16:51
why am I here? I haven't done anything for Big
16:52
Finnish for three years and it was going all right, but we've
16:57
had stuff released in the last two months, you know, it's just.
17:01
Just enjoy the booze, all right? Yeah, yeah.
17:03
No, it's good parties. Yes, 2025 years.
17:07
Next year there's got to be a party for that.
17:10
I've got to say, one of, you know, life, it goes up and down
17:13
and lots of things happen. And one of the constants in my
17:16
life is over the last 20 years, I can be guaranteed that a
17:20
Jonathan Morris story of some kind or another is going to come
17:23
out and I'm going to really enjoy it.
17:26
OK. So thank you for that.
17:28
That's that's quite I I I have read some of your reviews so I
17:33
know that isn't always. Oh, OK, I've got a review.
17:38
It's very rare though, isn't it? It's fair.
17:40
But acknowledge that I mean there's two things.
17:42
One is I I think I'm, I can, I'm a versatile writer so I can
17:46
write good things and bad things.
17:48
You know other writers like John Donnelly, he's he can only do
17:51
good stories. He's very limited in his range,
17:54
whereas I can do good and tell. I in fact said on I've got a a a
18:00
big Finnish podcast called Finnish Big.
18:02
And I recently said when we were covering blood ties that it's
18:09
astonishing. You know, I say to me, Roach,
18:11
can you have Doctor Who stories for 20 years now?
18:13
And he ain't gone off the boil. Like, I don't know how he keeps
18:16
his imagination fertile, but somehow he does it.
18:21
Yeah, I I don't know. I think I just love it.
18:27
That's sort of where it comes from.
18:29
I mean it is a it's not an odd thing actually, because I have
18:37
watched so much of not doing enough, you know that I don't
18:41
watch it very often just for pleasure.
18:45
Because I mean if I, for instance, if I've just written
18:49
a, let's say a Doctor and Tegan story, I'll have what I've had
18:56
the Doctor and Tegan stories on iPlayer on bit box playing in
19:01
the background before I've written it while I was writing
19:04
it. So those stories have been
19:05
refreshed in my mind. So I sort of sort of watching
19:09
them for work reasons to get the voices in my head.
19:13
So I think, I also think one of the sort of important things is
19:16
to have lots of interest outside of Doctor Who.
19:20
So I try to sort of read, read science fiction, novels and
19:27
films and all sorts of things. I don't tend to listen to other
19:34
people's stories very much or read other people's books
19:41
because it because it is partly because it's like a busman's
19:44
holiday. It's the same thing and it's so
19:47
I'm not enjoying it properly and I'm also enjoying it.
19:50
I'm also I find myself going envying if it's if it's good or
19:55
trying to listen to I'm going oh I can nick that or being
20:01
frustrated because it isn't up to standard and that's that's
20:03
bringing that's making it work again you know it still come
20:05
becomes work so. CR And so I just try and keep it
20:14
fresh. I mean, and I don't think I've.
20:19
I mean the story I've told before I think is there was a
20:21
Peter Davison story I was writing which was Prisoners of
20:26
Fate. I think it begins with the
20:29
TARDIS picking up a distress signal and being forced down to
20:32
lab. And as I was writing it, you
20:36
know, the TARDIS scene at the beginning of it's picked up a
20:40
stress signal and I was going, I've written a scene before.
20:44
This is just crap, you know. You know, I've, I've done this,
20:49
I did this in cobwebs, you know, it's exactly the same scene.
20:52
And I can't. I'm as I'm writing it, I'm
20:54
finding it boring, you know, because it's just doing stuff
20:58
that's doing 44. But I couldn't find a way of
21:03
writing it. It was interesting.
21:04
I just couldn't because it was. I was just like I was having
21:07
people taking the piss in the scene, which is never a good
21:09
sign without having to go, oh, it's another distressing or it
21:13
must be Tuesday. So in the end I just cut that
21:17
scene, just went straight to Thomas as land.
21:19
And it's like, oh, that works because I've avoided repeating
21:22
myself. And I mean, I have generally
21:28
always tried to avoid repeating myself.
21:30
Like any writer there are. There are ideas and themes that
21:34
sometimes I revisit, sometimes deliberately, sometimes
21:39
unconsciously, but I'm always sort of going, going.
21:45
If it's going to go on the shelf over there with all the others,
21:48
it needs to be a different one. It needs to be doing something I
21:52
haven't done before, because that's what keep that is.
21:54
What keeps it fresh is trying to tell a story which is doing
22:02
something in which is in some way new, and keeping it new.
22:07
Taking it right back, so I've got a question I want to ask you
22:09
about something you said earlier that you wrote your first Doctor
22:12
Who story at 7 years old. Did any of those ideas ever end
22:16
up in your Doctor Who stories that you wrote a lot, a lot
22:19
later? Because I'd love to know what
22:20
that was. It's called Doctor Who and the
22:26
Conqueror of Time because I didn't quite know what how to
22:30
use the word conquest. Oh, I saw.
22:33
I just saw a massive conquer then.
22:35
Yeah, no. And it's it's actually I I think
22:37
it's quite suspicious because it's about a spaceship which is
22:42
full of ghosts, and then the ghosts turn out to be Cybermen.
22:46
And I think actually Russell might have seen my story and it
22:52
that the first time that's happened, it's not the last time
22:54
something like that's happened. And I haven't used that in any
23:00
sort of stories because it is bits of of target novel stuck
23:06
together. But that said, there's a story I
23:09
came up with when I was about 14, which I have used in a story
23:15
which is coming up, which hasn't been announced yet, which is I'm
23:19
sure I'll mention it in the time going.
23:21
This is an idea that I've been pitching for 35 years and it and
23:29
when I worked out the whole story, it wasn't just an idea,
23:31
it was 6 parts. This is episode one, episode 2,
23:35
and although I've lost that original synopsis, when I came
23:38
to write it again I could remember it.
23:41
Wow. So when it came to writing
23:46
Festival of Death, I don't know what the sort of submissions
23:50
policy was like back in the day. Was it a case that the synopsis
23:56
was gaining traction online and that's what sort of caught
24:01
Justin Rich's attention? Or is it a book that ended up on
24:04
I Hate This Word but ended up on the slush pile or?
24:08
Yeah, I don't. I don't think Justin knew
24:12
anything about the the writers group.
24:17
I think it was just a slush pile thing.
24:24
I mean, by that point I'd written stuff for weekending on
24:30
the radio and things, and I'd written press releases and stuff
24:37
for the record company I was working for.
24:39
So I wasn't a complete sort of untested writer, but it was.
24:46
I just sent in the synopsis with a nice sort of covering letter.
24:50
And I mean two things. One is, I've seen other people's
24:56
synopsises when they write the Doctor Who stories, and they're
25:00
always quite dry and quite sort of boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
25:06
Whereas I sort of go, no, this is the story, this is exciting.
25:09
So I'm going and then the Daleks burst in and it's like
25:12
exclamation mark, exclamation mark.
25:14
And Oh no, we're going to and put in the dialogue, you know,
25:18
put in the feeling, put in the the stuff that's going to be
25:21
actually what's happening in the story.
25:23
What's this important? It isn't just a list of things
25:27
that happened because that can be very, very boring, you know,
25:29
You know, DeVos enters the room, He finds the plug, he leaves.
25:34
You know, you need to. So even now I try and make the
25:39
there's an opposite, an entertaining thing to read
25:41
because you, you are trying to sell, you know, you're trying to
25:46
sell, You're trying to sell a script or trying to like sell an
25:49
idea. And the great thing is he just
25:51
didn't like that enough, not only to Commission it, but he
25:56
also forwarded it to Gary Russell.
26:00
And that's how I got commissioned to blood type,
26:01
because because Gary, Gary knew me because he was a member of
26:07
the Eurasia fan Club. So he's going, oh Johnny, he
26:09
does the funny newsletters. He's a nice guy.
26:14
And he'd he read this an obsess. And so he was going, oh, I can
26:17
Commission Johnny to do blood, blood type.
26:19
And I'll come out first. I'll come out the full fest of
26:22
death and it would have done, but at that point, Big Finish
26:28
for commissioning stuff. Bit like now, about two years in
26:31
advance, ever coming out, you know, it took ages, ages and
26:34
ages. You'd write the script, it would
26:36
be recorded for another year. It was a long, long time.
26:40
But because of that I had written it about the same time
26:43
as first to death. It was two things really close
26:46
to each other. I think every now and again in
26:50
the 90s and 2000 and like a book would come along like a Time 1
26:56
revelation, like just war, like the Left Hand Honey Boat where
27:00
you're reading it and you go, oh this is something special.
27:04
You know it's a debut author from a new and I remember
27:06
Reading Festival of Death and just going this is something
27:09
amazing. I I I really hope we see this
27:13
guy again. That was a very complicated
27:16
book. How on earth did you begin
27:19
plotting that? But.
27:20
Well, it was. I mean, and it was difficult.
27:25
I mean, it was difficult anyway, because as I was writing it, I
27:28
was learning how to write a book.
27:30
And certainly the first three or four chapters I wrote, I wrote
27:34
about 10 times over, you know, sending up to my friends going,
27:38
how can I make this better? I'd get notes, and I'd part of
27:43
their own process is to learn what are good notes.
27:46
A lot of bad notes, you know. What a what A lot of notes which
27:49
are helpful, which will just like people just pointing out
27:52
punctuation, which is like does. That include editors as well, or
27:55
is that just friends? Yeah, well, there's there's
27:58
you've learned to know what what a good note is.
28:00
Or because a note note should be people pointing out a problem
28:06
but not telling you how to solve it.
28:08
Because that can be something they've just they haven't
28:12
thought about, you know, because.
28:15
And if you tell me there's a problem with a script, I can go
28:17
away and think about it for an hour and come up with a really
28:20
good solution. Someone given me a note, they
28:22
might have only thought about it for 10 seconds.
28:24
Oh, and do this. So you want to have the freedom
28:27
to do better things. So anyway, festive death, it was
28:31
planned quite meticulously, and even then I was rewriting this
28:40
going back to make them go back and go back and fit and stuff.
28:44
And I remember I had AI walked to and from work, it was like 45
28:51
minutes there, 44 minutes back. So and in that time, this is
28:57
before mobile phones and before I did the disc man.
29:02
So I had nothing to do but think about what I was going to write
29:05
that evening, because I'd spend the whole day thinking about
29:09
what's the next bit I'm going to write, what the next 2000 words
29:13
going to be. And in that time is when I
29:18
worked out all the plot parts and stuff and, you know, came up
29:23
with jokes and ideas. Because I was determined that it
29:31
would be a good book, the best possible book I could write.
29:36
Because like, you know, you think it's going to be your only
29:38
chance. You think this might be it.
29:41
You know you. It's your lucky break.
29:44
You don't want to blow it. Because without wishing to be
29:50
rude, OK, I didn't want to write the Menagerie.
29:54
I understand. What you're saying I?
29:57
I haven't read The Menagerie, but I just know it's reputation
30:00
is. That was Martin's first book,
30:03
and it just went down like a lead balloon and.
30:06
He's written some stunning books after that, you know, Yeah.
30:09
He's a he's a good writer and stuff.
30:10
So something went wrong with this first one, I don't know.
30:15
Or maybe it's brilliant and everyone's just misunderstood
30:18
it, but I didn't want to be that situation as being, you know,
30:24
breaking wind and a lift. I wanted it to be something
30:29
where. And also you know Justin had
30:31
sort of taken a bit of a leap of faith on it and stuff and and
30:35
all the people supporting me in the forum and Stafford were
30:39
behind me. So I don't want to let people
30:40
down, but it was me. It was mainly because I don't
30:42
want to let myself down and I was really, really excited to
30:45
have opportunity. We've recently covered it on the
30:49
Hamster Book Club. I put them together some of the
30:52
smartest people I know. This is one of the smartest
30:54
Doctor Who books I know. I'm going to bring together some
30:56
of that. And honest to God, these people
30:58
go looking for, you know, TS that aren't crossed and I's
31:02
aren't dotted and they couldn't find a one, even though it's
31:06
absolutely it's so tightly plotted.
31:08
That book S glorious. It is.
31:12
I mean it has, I mean I I I'm very, very proud of it.
31:15
I think there's bits that I don't need to be in there.
31:19
It could be a simplified a bit because there's a whole stuff
31:26
about a little girl, a ghost of a little girl, and it's like,
31:32
I'll take that to be honest because that's that's all nicked
31:37
from Event Horizon anyway, so it shouldn't be in there.
31:42
So I'm very proud of. I'm also proud of things like
31:46
because it has cliffhangers and one of them is the there's this,
31:52
they're trapped between. I think it's some well, let's
31:57
say let's say it's the giant spiders, the arachnopods, and
32:01
this sort of vortex on the other side, and the doctor solves it
32:07
by going, OK, let's just turn the gravity 90°.
32:10
Yeah, it's that be great. So, so when they do that in the
32:14
TV series, you know, the time of the angels.
32:17
I was going well, I know she has read my book.
32:19
I know he's read that one. I feel that happens quite a lot.
32:23
You know, the more I explore these books in the 90s, I'm
32:26
like, yeah, they've been paying attention.
32:27
They've been reading. Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a good
32:33
gag to do, and it's also something the Doctor Who never
32:37
had the money to do before. But it would always be quite
32:39
fun. Well it's it was almost like a
32:44
quite a bold move to write a book in season 17, which I
32:50
believe at the time was not considered very fondly as a
32:54
whole. I think only Gareth Roberts
32:57
before had had a stab at it and I've I remember that book coming
33:01
out and everyone was going well. We need way more books set you
33:05
know during this period. But I know something that's
33:09
points in your direction quite a lot is I think I've used the
33:13
term Douglas Adams esque, which is it sounds derogatory.
33:17
It's not at all because I think Douglas Sanders is the smartest
33:19
bloke to have ever written for Doctor Who and for anyone to
33:24
even attempt to do that and to get it right and for it to feel
33:28
authentic. And I think that happens with
33:30
Festival of Death. I think it happens with the
33:31
Tomorrow Windows as well. Clearly, I'm assuming you're a
33:35
big fan. I am.
33:38
And I I when I was doing First of Death, I was.
33:43
I've always been a big fan of that 1979 series because like I
33:47
said, that's the one that imprinted itself on my memory.
33:51
And I I I don't think at the time I even thought it was
33:55
funny, you know, I thought, I just thought it was a serious
33:57
adult drama that had various lines in it, which I didn't
34:02
understand. But watching it going on video,
34:05
I was going, this is really, really good, you know, even
34:07
though things like nightmare reading has got really tight
34:11
script and absolutely brilliant plotting.
34:17
So, yeah, I mean there is with that.
34:22
And I mean that festival death was before he died and 12
34:27
windows came afterwards. And so certainly this was meant
34:31
as a sort of a tribute. And it was a tribute not in the
34:36
sense of being a pastiche of his work, but just going, this is
34:41
what I think he would have liked, you know, This is what he
34:45
would enjoy. But since then I haven't really.
34:54
I suppose Max Warp was a bit comedy bit bit Hitchhikers as
34:58
well. But that's it now.
35:01
I've tried my feelings. I've done that, you know, and I
35:05
don't want to and I, you know, I think when the sad thing with
35:12
with Doug Adams is the Canon of work is quite small and so you
35:16
there's not much to revisit it visit you can't go back and read
35:19
your stuff again and again because you know I read I read
35:23
Hitchhikers about five years ago.
35:26
You know, I I don't know if I'll ever read it again because I
35:28
think I've read it enough times. And so it's just a sense I've
35:34
done that and there's other great writers I want to rip off
35:39
as well as Douglas Adams. The only the only other audio
35:44
where I remember listening to it going, my God, you know, like
35:48
Alexander would love this pitch is the Paradox planet.
35:53
So the. War, the war between the the you
35:56
know, the descendants, and the answer.
35:57
I've just no, you're right that's that is Douglas Adams one
36:01
as well actually. Because one of the ideas in it,
36:07
which is that time travellers go back in time to get the sort of
36:12
power crystals which they need in the future which have all
36:14
been used up. That is taken from one paragraph
36:20
joke in an obscure hitch like a story called Young Zephor Plays
36:26
It Safe, which has this one sort of one paragraph about this time
36:33
travel thing where and I was going, OK, I can make a whole, I
36:37
can make a whole story out of a whole 90 minute adventure out of
36:40
that one paragraph because his ideas were so vivid and rich and
36:44
clever. You're going to go, OK, we could
36:47
do more with that. But also, I mean that story is
36:51
extremely heartfelt in terms of the sort of, I'm not even sure
36:58
it's subtle enough to be called an analogy.
37:00
It is, you know, it's about fossil fuels and global warming
37:03
and us destroying the planet for people in 205 hundred years
37:09
time. And we're going to sort of look
37:10
back on us and think we were selfish and stupid and they're
37:18
not going to be wrong. You know that that is the case.
37:20
So it's. Not the first time you know that
37:23
I've listened stroke. Read something of yours and I
37:29
thought, oh God, that is 1 cheeky premise.
37:31
How on earth is he going to pull that off?
37:34
I remember feeling the same thing about Crimes of Thomas
37:37
Brewster when you were doing all of the DI Menses meeting the 6th
37:40
Doctor. All out of order.
37:42
And I'm going how are we doing this?
37:44
How does this work? And of course, just like you
37:47
basically do a load of gags around it, you know, like, Oh
37:49
well, I'm going to pretend, you know?
37:51
But yeah, I can't remember exactly what happened there.
37:53
But I what I suspect is that Alan Barnes was script setting
37:56
it and he had very firm ideas about he's always really hot on
38:00
the continuity and goes, oh, it has to happen between this story
38:03
and this story and I'll go, but it made more sense for it to be
38:07
later on or it says no, it has to go here.
38:09
OK yeah. It has a whole bit where she's
38:15
pretending to be the Doctor, And so I get all the female doctor
38:20
jokes out and we can move on and it's just, but it's just, I
38:27
think, I think it's showing that I'm progressive.
38:29
But I did it before the TV show, though I am, because yeah,
38:36
that's a deep cut. I can barely remember that
38:38
story. That's.
38:40
Joyous You've got the doctor, an evening slide slide.
38:43
You think smive on a boat on the Thames with robot mosquitoes
38:48
attacking them. How could you possibly forget
38:49
that? But I I can't.
38:50
I can't. It's it's not any sort of
38:53
criticism of it. It's just the fact I've done so
38:55
much that even the good stuff, if I if I'm sure if I listen to
39:01
it again, I could talk for two hours about that one story.
39:03
It's all up here. Go, go listen to it.
39:07
We'll have another conversation. All right.
39:09
Yeah. Like when I do listen to them
39:11
back now, because there's been so long, some of them, I can
39:14
actually sort of listen to them and go, oh, this is really good
39:18
and you know, I'll never be that good again.
39:21
But so I listened to bits of cobwebs a couple of weeks ago
39:27
and I was going, this is, this is really strong, this actually
39:30
works quite well. So yeah.
39:34
I know it was one of the ones I was quite hard on, you know, I
39:36
should go back and listen to that one again.
39:38
The thing I'm learning with Finnish big is what the hell do
39:40
I know? Because I'm going back and
39:42
listening to all the we're sort of around 45 of the main range
39:45
at the moment. And all the ones I dismissed
39:47
back in the day, I'm finding absolute joys in.
39:50
So there's certainly a lot of re listenability in so many of
39:54
those big Finnish adventures, I think.
39:56
Yeah, maybe with cobwebs the the frustration is that.
40:02
Nisa has a pet robot, which I think is called Loki, and in my
40:09
first draft, her pet robot was called Adric, which I thought
40:12
was really funny because then the cast list will be the
40:16
Doctor, Nisa, Teegan, Taylor and Adric.
40:18
Oh great, but also it's going, who can we get to play Adric for
40:23
robot? I was going to get Wil Wheaton.
40:25
It'll be hilarious. He'd.
40:27
Probably do it as well. So this is when he was very
40:31
available again. But let's get the let's get the
40:33
American ad trick to play this. And so that's always like.
40:39
But that joke would have overwhelmed the whole story, you
40:41
know? No one wouldn't take anything
40:44
else seriously if I'd done that. I think my view, I was pushing
40:47
against the return of Tegan, who I've now fallen in love with
40:50
through Big Finish, who I which I never did with the TV show.
40:54
So they've done a mass they've essentially taken that character
40:58
and given her a massive sense of humour and it's a revelation.
41:01
Then you just let Janet Fielder relax and she's the best
41:05
character in it. Yeah, I think it took a while
41:11
for Janet to sort of get back into the swing of things so, but
41:20
I think so but so some suck. And also I think one of the
41:28
things with that story to begin with, I was told to write Tegan
41:32
sort of dialled up version or sort of 110% make a absolutely
41:37
ultra Tegan where she's, you know, she's saying rabbits and
41:41
she's talking about her, her aunt and stuff.
41:45
And that that just so that people just so people listen to
41:52
it and go Tegan is back. But that's not really good stuff
41:59
to play because it's really sort of a cartoony version.
42:03
And then after about 15 minutes in the story, it's sort of I
42:06
start writing the counter properly and it sort of works
42:09
out much better, I think. By the time you get to the
42:12
entropy play again, Prisoners of Fate and things like that are
42:15
just so relaxed into the role By that point, you know and just
42:19
loving and. The and the Waters Amsterdam,
42:22
which I think is fabulous. My sort of overlooked classic.
42:26
I think so. We listened to that last week,
42:31
actually. Do you know I'm.
42:32
I'm in the advantageous position now of being in a relationship
42:35
with another Doctor Who fan who's also a big Finnish fan.
42:38
So we listened to a lot. We put that one on last week.
42:42
Can I take us back to the books for a second?
42:46
So, Anacrophobia, thank you for the nightmares because I still
42:53
see that man slashing his wrists and the cogs and words jumping
42:57
out to this day. So thank you very much for that.
43:01
Is it true? I I There's a passage in one of
43:06
the spin off books I who that says that you and Rob Schumann
43:10
were writing to each other whilst he was writing Charles of
43:13
Midnight. You were writing an acrophobic
43:15
because they were both sort of Sapphire and Steely's style
43:20
works that you weren't sort of overlapping.
43:24
That is absolutely true. That is, that is exactly what
43:29
was happening. Because I know, certainly.
43:34
I think when I was doing an acrophobia, I had this idea
43:36
about characters being called in time loops and doing the same
43:39
things again and again. And when I saw that he was doing
43:43
that in chimes at midnight, I went I can't do that.
43:46
That's too similar. I'm not sure if what I was
43:52
writing affected him, but yeah, we were doing very sort of
44:01
similar stuff. And today, because it's Saffron
44:05
Sterling and it's also the mood of it, and it's about time.
44:07
And both of them. Time itself, you know, is a sort
44:13
of this sort of nebulous threat, which is a very sapphire silly
44:18
thing to do. So yeah, and also that's sort of
44:23
the old, that's the particular era where you're doing stuff you
44:28
can't do on TV. Because on TV was not not not
44:35
even a concern at that point, not even a sort of a twinkle in
44:38
Russell to Davis's eye or anything.
44:42
So stuff like the slitting, the lists and the lists and stuff,
44:45
or I think the doctor slices open someone's chest and up and.
44:49
There's. A pendulum swing.
44:54
Oh fabulous. Yeah, they won't.
44:55
They can't do that on TV, even though what I'd written was
44:59
actually something that you could, you could make that on
45:02
TV. It'd be the cheapest book to
45:04
episode ever because you're just going to go to an abandoned
45:08
bunker and put people to put clocks on their heads and that's
45:13
your monster, you know, it's the cheapest monster you can have.
45:17
I'm still surprised I haven't done that because that is such a
45:19
cheap thing to do. So yeah, I think times went
45:27
better. I mean, I love chimes, but I
45:31
adore an agoraphobia. It's one of my favourites of
45:35
that role. So, well then you say anything
45:39
goes. Can I skip forward to Touched by
45:43
an Angel? Because suddenly we're the new
45:47
series is back. So Doctor Who is back and I
45:51
believe you like, you know, things are being looked over in
45:54
Cardiff. Like, was there a lot more
45:56
restrictions in writing that book?
46:03
Not with that one. I mean with other stuff there
46:05
has been, particularly the comic strips that was stuff was
46:08
getting looked over a lot with Touched by an Angel.
46:13
I think the synopsis had been approved and I mean I was in a
46:22
sort of position where it was Amy and Roy had already been on
46:25
screen for a year, so their characters have been quite well
46:31
established. I wasn't going to get that
46:32
wrong, you know. And in terms of the properties
46:39
of the Weeping Angels, I think Stephen was fairly cool with me
46:42
doing what I wanted to do. So in the sense that if I didn't
46:48
anything, which is too outrageous, he could always do
46:49
ATV store, which contradicts it later on anyway, but he didn't,
46:53
you know, it doesn't actually, it all fit.
46:55
It still fits. It's lovely because there's
46:58
nothing in the next door which has what we sing.
47:00
We be angels. He doesn't go, what are they?
47:02
It actually he actually reacts as though he has seen before.
47:08
So yeah, I mean, and that was very much making it feel like
47:14
the TV show. Not, not, not writing a TV
47:20
episode script as it were and novelizing it, but just going,
47:23
you want to give people reading it the same feeling they get
47:25
from the very best TV episodes by Stephen Moffitt at that
47:29
point. And certainly stuff like Vincent
47:35
and the Doctor had really impressed me by how far you
47:38
could take the emotion and how far you could take the emotion
47:42
without it being without backtracking afterwards.
47:45
You know, is touched by an Angel, is about grief and death.
47:52
And you can you could imagine a version of that book where it
47:56
ends with the Doctor pressing a button on his old screwdriver
48:01
and the character who has to die is saved and lives and that
48:09
would. But then people wouldn't like
48:12
that book as much because I don't think it would matter.
48:14
And I had to come on. I had to come up with a
48:17
different a happy ending, which works when the main, it's not a
48:21
spoiler, it's in the first chapter, it's in the prologue, I
48:23
think by the main one of the where Rebecca, Rebecca Whittaker
48:28
dies. And so I have the ending where
48:33
you see it winds back to the beginning of relationship and
48:37
how they met, which in any relationship there's sort of the
48:42
two moments, there's the two moments of maximum love.
48:46
I think in any relationship, one is when it begins and one is
48:51
when it ends, I think, and that's when you feel the
48:55
strongest. And so as to go from one to the
48:59
other, I think and sort of keep it going.
49:03
And I as I was writing, I had tears rolling down my cheeks and
49:07
stuff and going on because I was, I was in it.
49:10
Now when you when you write a story, you are feeling what the
49:14
characters feel. You're absolutely inside
49:16
everything. And I'd finish it, print it out,
49:21
give it to my give it to my girlfriend and my wife, and
49:26
she'd read it in hand and she'd come back.
49:28
So I was going, you bastard, with tears shimmy down the
49:30
streets going, how could you do that?
49:32
Well, they can make it free for free because I found that.
49:34
But so moving my reviews out there were, I'll say I'm in
49:38
tears as well. And it was.
49:40
It was one of those NSA talks. I wish.
49:44
I wish this had been ATV episode or could be made as a TV
49:47
episode. And it was another time, one of
49:49
those times where I thought, this is very cheeky.
49:51
How on earth do you do the Weeping Angels?
49:53
You know, an alien race that doesn't talk in blouse?
49:57
And you did it brilliantly. Yeah, well that was.
50:01
I mean that's why they why did the thing of Blink does, which
50:08
is they're in Blink, but they don't feature very much in
50:10
Blink. I think they're only in about if
50:12
you add up all the scenes and how much time they take up on
50:15
screen. It's very small.
50:17
And so you wanted to ration their appearances.
50:19
And also it was a it was a pain to trying to write them because
50:26
you know when you're writing any sort of scene, you're writing
50:29
verbs in terms of stuff, action happening, things moving.
50:34
And with angels, it's and the and the Weeping Angel was still
50:40
standing there. It was a bit closer.
50:43
And so it was very. But I loved writing that book so
50:50
much because I put a lot of my own sort of life in it and my
50:54
own sort of feelings about things that have happened to me
50:57
in the past. And it and it worked to sort of
51:00
get things out of my system that had been praying on my mind for
51:05
years and years before that. So yeah I think that's why why
51:10
it's a bit more powerful than usual and stuff and it just it
51:14
just came together really well and yeah I'm I'm that's one of
51:19
the things I'm I think that's the best book by a long way.
51:22
So yes. One of the the things we talked
51:25
about when we did the book club on Festival of Death was whilst
51:29
there are emotional moments in it, it is very much like it
51:32
feels like a classic Dog Who story.
51:35
So you know, it's sort of like plot, character, emotion,
51:39
they're all on par. Whereas you could feel the
51:41
influence of the new series and that sort of push of emotion and
51:46
sentiment in Touched By an Angel, Oh, it's fabulous.
51:50
Yeah, Yeah. I want to sort of don't dial
51:54
that up to them to to the maximum externally because
51:58
that's what it's about. You know it's not really about
52:00
the, I mean there's time travelling and there's
52:04
blindovich limitation effect and Babble and stuff, but it's not
52:08
about that really. It's a love story.
52:10
It's about a boy and a girl falling in love and having
52:15
adventures together and the Weeping Angels just happen to be
52:17
in the background while they're university together.
52:22
Then they all, they go to Rome and and yeah, they have the
52:26
wedding stuff. I mean, I I'm so, I love the
52:29
wedding thing because it's like you have this one chapter which
52:32
suddenly turns into a Richard Curtis movie.
52:36
Because in my experience, when you get married, that's one day
52:38
of your life where your life is a Richard Curtis movie where the
52:43
the biggest threat is that there's mud on the bride's
52:46
dress. So the Doctor uses the TARDIS to
52:49
get a brand new clean dress straight away.
52:53
So you have this movie, obviously it's it's emotion, but
52:57
sometimes they make you need the joy, you need the absolute laugh
53:00
out, loud winds as well to sort of set that off I think and to
53:04
make you care about the couple. Wish you did and it did.
53:08
That wonderful thing you mentioned.
53:09
Vince and the Doctor have just the profound effect the Doctor
53:13
and his companions can have on normal people's lives as well,
53:17
which I always think is a great story to tell.
53:21
Yeah, I mean, they're not in it very much because they're just
53:27
trying to stop the angels and stuff.
53:29
I mean, yeah, I think, I mean, they have lots of things to do.
53:35
It's not like passive observers or anything, but it's it did.
53:43
I think there's a couple of scenes in there where Amy's
53:45
going, why can't you just save her?
53:46
You know, Because that is, and that is one of the sort of
53:51
things that Doctor Who never quite solves in a way.
53:55
I know Russell sort of tried to interrogate it a couple of times
53:58
in The Fires of Pompeii and Orders of Mars.
54:03
This idea that you can save people, but then it becomes a
54:08
problem in itself. It looks like you shouldn't
54:10
bring it up at all, isn't it? Because then you suddenly start
54:13
thinking about all the time is when maybe you should have saved
54:15
somebody. Yeah, and some, but but in this
54:20
story, it's like the whole story is about the fact that she's
54:22
dead and she's gone. You know, she's not going to
54:25
come back. So I mean, you could do it like
54:32
a like the angels in Manhattan ending where there's a time
54:36
paradox and everything is restored to normal and
54:38
everything's happy. But again, I don't think that is
54:42
the ending the story needs. And I was, but in terms of
54:48
interference, I don't recall really getting anything for that
54:51
one. I think it was.
54:53
I think I must have got it right.
54:54
I was, I was very, I was trying to, you know, I wasn't.
54:58
And also I'm trying not to sort of overstep any marks because
55:03
once the series came back, the guidance on what you can and
55:06
cannot do shifted quite dramatically to the point where
55:16
you can't do stuff which is as extreme as they do on TV.
55:19
Now. You know, because on TV it's
55:24
Stephen writing on Russell, they can get away with stuff.
55:29
Whereas if it's in a book which is which an 8 year old might
55:34
pick up and take him to their bedroom and read on their own,
55:37
people worry about it a lot more.
55:39
And so I mean like Touched by an Angel has a love story, but it's
55:47
very sort of coy in terms of the sexual relationship.
55:53
And I know, I think because I wrote it so long and cut it
55:58
down, I think they used to have Mark as a gay friend who has a
56:07
which I which I could keep, which was fine.
56:11
But I know that I had a thing where I had another friend who
56:13
had mental health problems who's committed suicide.
56:17
And as I was going, that's too much that just, you know, that's
56:23
the sort of thing where if you're going to do that in a
56:24
story like Vincent from the doctor, that is the story.
56:27
You can't just put that in a sort of bit of background.
56:32
I mean, I think it's understated in a sort of way that they have
56:35
this sort of group of friends at university and some of them
56:39
aren't there anymore later on. And that could be for any number
56:42
of reasons, but that's why. So.
56:46
And can I? Let's take a leap away from the
56:49
printed page into a much glossier page.
56:55
And the comic strips, Because you wrote the comic strips.
57:00
So was it a year and a half? Yes, I think it's about 20
57:06
issues or something. Yes, it was an extended period,
57:09
wasn't it? So how?
57:09
How did that come about? Well, I don't.
57:17
Various comic strips for the for the storybook for Clayton before
57:22
that. I think that's what that's the
57:24
first one I did was the storybook.
57:27
And then I did a couple of comic strips.
57:33
I did one which was called Death the Doctor, which was quite fun
57:37
and the time of my life with Donna.
57:41
Breaking my heart. The time of my life.
57:42
Oh boy. That one.
57:44
Yeah. So again, can you do emotion in
57:48
comic strips? Can you actually Sort of?
57:50
You can. And you can.
57:53
And so I've done those, particularly those last two with
57:57
David Turner and they've gone down really well with readers
58:00
and Scott who was sort of the over supervising editor of the
58:07
comic strip and they sort of, you know, I'm good friends with
58:13
Stephen and stuff, so I was sort of quite good at doing stuff
58:17
which was quite similar to his. So it would match up in terms of
58:20
style, which became a problem quite quickly because I was
58:30
trying to go, what would Steve, what sort of Steve stories will
58:32
Stephen tell? And I got it right.
58:35
And it's like, you can't do this story.
58:37
You can't because I was going, I do this brilliant arc which ends
58:40
with the TARDIS being possessed by this alien intelligence,
58:44
which is sort of changing all the coders round inside and
58:46
trying to kill them inside it. And I've got like a year into
58:51
that and they're going, oh, that's no games doing that story
58:54
go, OK, man, you. But that would happen again and
59:01
again during that period because I had a story where Amy and Roy
59:08
were tending to dolls and it was like, oh, you can't do that
59:13
because that's coming up too. So I mean, the one thing that
59:19
did surprise me is in the comic strip I had Amy, I think she's
59:24
nude in the first story and then she's sort of a in a sort of
59:28
Japanese school girl outfit later on.
59:30
And then she's as a nurse later on.
59:33
And I was going surely Stevens going to do that, you know,
59:36
because she was a in her first story.
59:39
Surely you're going to. It sounds like it does.
59:42
Sound like it, but it didn't go down that way.
59:44
So I I thought he I thought that was I thought the dressing up as
59:48
a piece was going to be a motif. That we continued.
59:51
But it wasn't so. Was it?
59:53
I mean, it was clearly a structured series of adventures.
59:56
Because it culminates, doesn't it, in the Child of Time where
59:59
everything sort of comes together?
1:00:01
Were you asked to? Sort of?
1:00:03
Present a season like that. Yeah, there are two parts to it.
1:00:08
My part of it was really the idea of the TARDIS being
1:00:15
infected and then dragging in things where at the end of each
1:00:19
story it would just it starts off being very small where you
1:00:23
see the the plants that Leopardine have been turned into
1:00:26
little Tardises and stuff. And it gets more and more overt
1:00:30
with each story that you see people being sucked into the
1:00:32
TARDIS and being forming, because I do be forming this big
1:00:38
TARDIS monster basically. But when it became clear that we
1:00:44
were up, the direction I was heading was towards Neil Gaiman
1:00:46
story. Scott wanted this other element,
1:00:52
which was the Japanese Guild Shioka at putting her in it,
1:00:58
which was his idea. So, so that made it like 20
1:01:02
times more complicated because we now have these two arcs
1:01:06
working towards something where when we got to our apotheosis,
1:01:15
and I was really sort of struggling a bit then because in
1:01:22
the first version of that story I had an idea, which I used
1:01:28
later on in a vortex size of people seeing themselves frozen
1:01:33
and thinking, oh, they must be from my future, but actually
1:01:36
it's just from their past and they don't remember it.
1:01:39
So it's that sort of thing going on just because that way I could
1:01:42
have Rory in the comic strip because it had been pissing me
1:01:46
off that people kept on going, oh, it doesn't count on the
1:01:49
strip because Rory isn't in it. So where does it fit?
1:01:53
So I wrote this version of Potheosis where Rory comes back
1:01:59
and I sort of got an e-mail thing, I think from Tom and
1:02:01
Peter just going, could you do that again without Rory in it?
1:02:06
Because that makes it really complicated and we don't want
1:02:09
him in it. So.
1:02:14
And then, and then for the last one, when you're asking earlier
1:02:19
about stuff I'd written as a kid, when I was about 15, I
1:02:24
planned out a Doctor Who series. You know, I'd moved on from
1:02:28
doing scripts and synopsis. I was a showrunner in my own
1:02:31
head by that point. And episode one of that series
1:02:35
ended with the planet Earth being blown up going.
1:02:40
That's your first cliffhanger. Boom.
1:02:42
Earth destroyed. Stop.
1:02:44
Big. Yeah.
1:02:45
And so I got to use that, use that at the end of part one of
1:02:48
Child of Time going planet has been blown up.
1:02:50
Get out of that. And you did.
1:02:56
I'm going to ask two questions about the comics, one which is
1:02:59
going to make me sound extremely dense, but please be kind with
1:03:02
me. And the other I'm just very
1:03:04
curious about. So one is, how on earth do you
1:03:09
start putting together a story which is effectively a series of
1:03:16
still images with sort of pace and momentum and moments of
1:03:21
drama and things like that? I resisted reading the comics
1:03:26
for a long, long time because I just didn't think it was
1:03:28
something. And then when I got my first
1:03:30
graphic, I did the end game one first and I read that through,
1:03:33
and then I just bought all of them because I was obsessed.
1:03:38
But to this day I'm like, I I'm not sure I could do it.
1:03:41
I'm not sure I could sort of write down a synopsis which is
1:03:45
effectively a series of still images.
1:03:50
It enlightened me. It's an odd thing to do.
1:03:52
It's quite close to writing a movie script, I think, in terms
1:03:56
of the grammar, I mean, I was very like, I had Scott Gray as
1:04:01
my sort of executive producer, as it were, not just give me
1:04:06
advice. But I'd send this script in and
1:04:09
then two days later and come back having been rewritten by
1:04:12
Scott going, This is how you this is how you write a comic,
1:04:15
strip script, journal, and you get feedback from the artists
1:04:19
and stuff going of what they could do and what they couldn't
1:04:22
do and how many boxes you can have on a page.
1:04:25
And there's a lot of learning. But also I'd read comic strips
1:04:27
since I was a kid, so I knew a lot of the grammar
1:04:30
instinctively. I mean, like you try and end
1:04:35
every page in a little bit of a mini cliffhanger, you know,
1:04:38
that's sort of a scene change if you're turning the page.
1:04:41
That's a really good way to see change scenes and stuff.
1:04:46
And what was I going to say with that?
1:04:50
And there also, I mean the one thing which is essential is
1:04:54
every panel, every box, as it were.
1:04:58
Is something happening? It has to be a verb.
1:05:02
It has to be. The Doctor punches the Dalek in
1:05:07
the face. It can't be The Doctor has
1:05:10
punched the Dalek. It can't be the Doctor is
1:05:13
punching the Dalek. It has to be a verb.
1:05:15
It has to be. So it's like a series of
1:05:17
actions. Yeah.
1:05:20
So if you can do sort of the Amy jumps, jumps, jumps off the and
1:05:28
lands on and jumps onto the train, OK, you're thinking what
1:05:33
is actually the picture going to be?
1:05:34
The picture is going to be here in midair and that's going to be
1:05:37
sort of like so you are you're trying to tell a story and it's
1:05:46
it's it's just a movement because sometimes you read comic
1:05:51
strips where it's just people talking, you know, and it's
1:05:57
they're in a flat or something and all the all the angles are
1:06:01
the same and stuff. And I I was told again and again
1:06:07
don't write it like that. Write it as action.
1:06:09
Write it as sound effects. Explosions do all the stuff they
1:06:13
can't do on TV, so it does probably have tower blocks
1:06:17
turning into axons and stuff and floating each other.
1:06:21
We'll have a musical episode and the comic strip and did The
1:06:27
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe wine and stuff.
1:06:29
And you're just going what? How can I sort of take it
1:06:32
further? You know, do stuff which hasn't
1:06:35
been done before, Show off, you know, hopefully get more gigs
1:06:39
off the back of it. That's what you're trying to do
1:06:41
all the time, really. I always love seeing where the
1:06:45
four pages here, I seem to remember with super nature there
1:06:49
was like there was a page or two and then you turn the page and
1:06:53
then it was the full spread of Amy and the Doctor and the big
1:06:57
lush forest. You know, like making a
1:06:59
statement of like here we are. It's the 11th Doctor in the
1:07:02
comics. Yeah, I mean part of that is
1:07:06
Scott sort of insisting on these things and particularly for the
1:07:11
final for the cliffhanger I think because then you just go,
1:07:17
so the second to last page would be, I go have eight panels, it'd
1:07:21
be back and forth between scenes or locations, it'd be fast and
1:07:27
lots of information, lots of stuff happening.
1:07:29
And then the final page single single image splash axons
1:07:36
walking through Japan, fantastic or planet Earth blows up or
1:07:43
something, which is big because I mean I think a couple of them,
1:07:49
the cliffhanger is half a page of Amy's turned into a moth or
1:07:54
something and it doesn't work as well.
1:07:57
I think if they've been a full page that would that's, I mean
1:08:01
that's what they do all the time now.
1:08:02
It's always a full page because otherwise it just doesn't have
1:08:09
that sort of cliffhanger you may feel to it, I think.
1:08:13
Well, my other question about the comic said was obviously
1:08:16
this is a massively collaborative process because
1:08:20
you're writing this all down and then it's all going to be
1:08:23
brought to life by an artist. Does it always look how you
1:08:28
envisaged? No, it usually looks better.
1:08:34
I think. I think generally it was just
1:08:39
wonderful. It was a wonderful process.
1:08:41
I think I only ever had to make one criticism of the art art
1:08:44
once, which was just because there's an alien in the room we
1:08:49
shouldn't, which was going nobody walks in the next over
1:08:52
the pages when it comes in. So it's just oh, it was a
1:08:54
mistake. It was just a because asking an
1:08:57
artist to redraw a panel is, you know, that's, you know, it's
1:09:03
really sort of sort of a joker card.
1:09:07
You can't ask for that very often.
1:09:10
And that's usually because you've made a mistake in your
1:09:13
writing in the 1st place. But now I think the stuff that
1:09:20
Dan Mcdade did with The Screams of Death was fantastic language.
1:09:26
It was, I mean, it was wonderful.
1:09:27
They're all wonderful. I mean, the only thing I wasn't
1:09:32
totally happy with was the Adrian Salmon one because what I
1:09:39
wanted was, I don't know if you'd if you'd seen the
1:09:43
beginning of the film Yellow Submarine.
1:09:45
There's a sequence with Eleanor Rigby where it's photographs of
1:09:50
places which have been sort of given washes of colour and I
1:09:54
wanted the the Brighton whereas a sea front to be done like
1:09:59
that. So it was like a photograph with
1:10:02
a of a Victorian seaside as a wash colour.
1:10:07
So it wouldn't be a drawing, it'd be drawings of the Doctor
1:10:10
naming other characters in the front of this, but the
1:10:12
backgrounds would be manipulated photographs and that didn't go
1:10:21
through the process. So it didn't end up like that,
1:10:23
which I think it's a pity. I think that would have been
1:10:25
cool. That made it stand out, I think.
1:10:28
Would be bold enough to say that I think on occasion with the
1:10:34
comics, it's as visually stunning as Doctor Who has ever
1:10:38
been. Like, I I can, I can vividly
1:10:41
depict and see the the Doctor of the Widow and the Wardrobe,
1:10:45
wardrobe, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe strip, that
1:10:49
fabulous library that they walk into at the beginning, and all
1:10:54
the sort of art. Well there's going on around the
1:10:56
boxes and it's just gorgeous but you must have got some some of
1:11:01
them back in sometimes and just been it just blew your mind
1:11:03
away. I've.
1:11:05
Got something on my wall over there.
1:11:07
I just love them so much. But yeah, I mean particularly
1:11:11
that one was one where the the artist got it.
1:11:16
Rob. Bob Davis did that one and he
1:11:22
went with it and he just, he was adding stuff of his own, which I
1:11:26
hadn't written into the stories talk.
1:11:27
He was putting extra little monsters in the back in the
1:11:29
corners and stuff. So I think he has someone
1:11:33
turning into a fish person. I just put that in the story.
1:11:38
Yeah, I think and also that was, that's another one of those
1:11:42
ideas that had been around for about 10 years because back when
1:11:46
Big Finish did The Unbound series, you know, Derek Jacobi,
1:11:53
one that Rob Schumann did and stuff at the time I pitched this
1:11:57
and going I want to do a Doctor Who story as though it was
1:12:00
written by CS Lewis and John Masefield in that sort of style.
1:12:06
What if Doctor Who had been around in 1930s, how would you
1:12:09
have been men, never heard anything back.
1:12:14
Well, you could have had, you could have had that story, you
1:12:17
know, 10 years earlier if they'd opened that e-mail.
1:12:21
It's a cruel piece of this business, isn't it?
1:12:23
And. Then they're missed out.
1:12:24
So it shows that nothing is ever no good idea gets wasted.
1:12:29
It always just gets used again. And lots of stuff has been like
1:12:33
that. This might have seemed like a
1:12:35
bit of an unfair question because you did a lot of them,
1:12:38
but you have like a particular favorite of the comics.
1:12:47
We narrowed down to about 5. I like the time of my life.
1:12:52
I like Death of the Doctor. I love the professor with the
1:13:03
language and the wardrobe and do not go gentle into that like one
1:13:09
which is just set in old people say, Which again was.
1:13:16
It was a different sort of story.
1:13:18
It was a smaller story and yes, it was a it was a rip off of the
1:13:23
Twilight, I know that. But those those are the ones I
1:13:28
think work best I think. But I'm, you know and the Peter
1:13:34
Capaldi one, I think I'm sort of massively proud of them all.
1:13:40
I wish I could do more. I mean, I was always sort of
1:13:43
quite grumpy that the other people doing the comics title or
1:13:46
whatever doing the they never asked me to do any more friend.
1:13:49
I've been delighted to do so, but who knows?
1:13:53
Who knows? Never forget the first time
1:13:55
reading time of my life and all those snapshots into oh man, I
1:14:02
want. I want to see what I want all of
1:14:04
these to be a comic, like when they're little kids in the
1:14:07
school and that, you know. When each page, each page of
1:14:10
that had a reason for it, which was it was, you know, one of
1:14:16
them was the the dogs, which was the dogs, which was a Russell
1:14:25
Davis sort of nonsense thing of every sort of alien is basically
1:14:29
a human animal head stuck on a human body.
1:14:32
And there was a page which was like an alien's pastiche or
1:14:35
predator pastiche, and then there's a Steven Moffat page,
1:14:39
and then there was a history gone wrong page.
1:14:42
And then there was a Doctor Magazine in the 1990s
1:14:47
psychedelic story page. So it was like each story was
1:14:54
the different genre of Doctor Who.
1:14:56
I was to get them all in in some way.
1:14:59
And it's like you said earlier it is one of those times where
1:15:03
there's a gut punch at the end which you know people probably
1:15:07
wouldn't expect from comics. But it it's like when Izzy was
1:15:14
turned into destry, you know and and in beautiful freak and I
1:15:17
just felt so much reading that or when she first kissed I can't
1:15:21
remember the name that the first lesbian kissing Doctor Who you
1:15:23
remember the moment things like that.
1:15:25
And then the ending of that with the Donna the hologram.
1:15:31
This is, you know this is a series of still pictures but it
1:15:35
just goes to show the story is good.
1:15:37
It can move you. Yeah, and because it was quite
1:15:43
close to the TV episode, I think people still have the actors
1:15:45
voices in their heads and stuff and it sort of fitted quite well
1:15:49
and people really couldn't see where it was going I think as
1:15:51
well, because you just seem it was quite jokey for like 9 pages
1:15:56
and then suddenly it's serious for the 10th.
1:15:59
You sort of tapped into that. Everyone going well, there
1:16:02
wasn't enough. She only had one season, yeah.
1:16:05
That was the point of this thing that was going we've only got 1
1:16:08
issue. We've got to try and give the
1:16:09
impression she's been had a whole year's worth of comic
1:16:12
strips. Can you give her a year's worth
1:16:14
of comic strips? And one.
1:16:15
Issue Boy, can I Yes.