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

• 0:23
  None. A hamster with a blump pen knife
• 0:35
  for doing. Quicker, quicker, quicker.
• 0:39
  Quicker. So I would like to ask you about
• 0:42
  3 characters that you created that went on to have a life
• 0:47
  beyond the first story they were in.
• 0:49
  That's Thomas Brewster, Flip and Vienna.
• 0:57
  All sort of. One of them was deliberate.
• 1:02
  Thomas Brewster was intended to be a companion that was part of
• 1:06
  the Commission. I think the idea was to to go
• 1:12
  well. Hadrick had been sort of meant
• 1:14
  to be this sort of Artful Dodger in space.
• 1:17
  Let's do the Artful Dodger. Let's have a kid from Victorian
• 1:21
  times who is he was a little bit wee a little bit way a little
• 1:26
  bit sort of. You're not sure whether you can
• 1:28
  trust him. He's a bit looking out for
• 1:30
  himself. He's a bit St. as it were St.
• 1:33
  Urchin and so and without without what I was trying.
• 1:40
  I was trying to be really scary and sort of Dickensian and
• 1:44
  stuff. So because I've read lots of
• 1:48
  Dickens and this whole chunks of different Dickens stuff in
• 1:52
  there, like characters who are based on characters from your
• 1:57
  curiosity shop and so on. And yeah, and just to try and
• 2:04
  make him a sort of a bit of a sort of a dodgy geezer, as it
• 2:08
  were. And then then I think and things
• 2:16
  in when he came back or there's Eddie wrote a story called
• 2:24
  Industrial Industrial Evolution. Yeah, it was a trilogy, wasn't
• 2:28
  it? Crimes.
• 2:30
  Feast of Access, Industrial Evolution.
• 2:33
  Well, I wrote crimes and Eddie did evolution, and then we
• 2:40
  swapped pages, and so he wrote bits of crimes.
• 2:43
  He wrote some of the Mendes stuff and in evolution, like
• 2:48
  some of the Thomas Brewster stuff, and whispered quietly.
• 2:54
  But I might have done a bit of the Axel story as well and
• 2:58
  credited you know just just the boost of stuff and so that was
• 3:07
  that was but that was always supposed to be a sort of time
• 3:10
  limited companion. I think that was a sort of So
• 3:14
  the idea, the fact that he was, oh, and I did another one
• 3:18
  didn't. I did The Perfect World, where
• 3:19
  he's has a sort of weird love story, which is again, sort of
• 3:25
  quite personal because it's about a relationship I'd had
• 3:28
  which had never really got going, never really started, but
• 3:32
  was still kind of quite sweet in its own way.
• 3:37
  I just think that's just the result because it has something
• 3:39
  that this is a sort of throwaway piece of.
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  It's a fluff story I think Perfect World but has an
• 3:46
  incredibly good cast just sort of slumming it in this, this,
• 3:50
  this silly story. And the other the other two,
• 3:57
  Flip, who's named after a girl I was at primary school with
• 4:00
  called Philippa, who was always called me Flip.
• 4:04
  I don't know why, but that's and she's she was just a sort of a
• 4:09
  very minor human perspective. You know, historian, crimes of
• 4:15
  Taurus, Booster. Just someone to give a sort of
• 4:17
  an ordinary point of view. An ordinary person swept some
• 4:19
  events, but then a recording. Lisa was doing her first couple
• 4:30
  of scenes and we all just going, oh, she's good.
• 4:34
  Oh, she's really good. You know, she's taking every
• 4:37
  line and making it funny somehow.
• 4:39
  And half these lines aren't meant to be funny or aren't
• 4:43
  written, you know, just quite crap, crap, dutifully honed
• 4:47
  lines. But but she's elevating them,
• 4:51
  you know, she's sort of making them even better.
• 4:52
  And it's like, oh oh, can we bring her back?
• 5:00
  And I think it was, why bring her back as a different
• 5:04
  character. We could just bring her back as
• 5:05
  the same one, which meant for The Curse of Davos.
• 5:09
  I had this wonderful sort of opportunity which wouldn't
• 5:14
  normally come about of having a companion who sort of knows the
• 5:19
  Doctor. She's met him before, but if the
• 5:22
  Doctor was behaving oddly, she wouldn't really notice it.
• 5:27
  And you think any other sort of set up that wouldn't work.
• 5:29
  But in that story it does, because she can go.
• 5:32
  I met you in that brief adventure with the underground
• 5:35
  train and the giant bees but and that became her sort of a second
• 5:42
  introduction, a proper introduction for her and I just
• 5:47
  sort of fell in love with the character when actually it was
• 5:50
  just, you know I think it's the difference between her and Rose
• 5:57
  is Rose is is from this working class estate and stuff and sort
• 6:01
  of supposed to be from South London and stuff but she talks
• 6:05
  like she's been to harder really posh.
• 6:09
  She gives posher as she goes along.
• 6:13
  Bloom sounds like she's from Crawley, which is where I'm
• 6:16
  from, yeah. Exactly.
• 6:17
  So flip that she does sound like like sort of East End or South
• 6:22
  London, whatever. She sounds real.
• 6:24
  And that's a big difference, I think.
• 6:28
  And then later on you have Constance.
• 6:31
  Yeah, that's not just Received Pronunciation.
• 6:35
  Sort of like upper middle class sort of speaking.
• 6:39
  It's a It's a great contrast. She just sort of flew, didn't
• 6:42
  she? Flipped.
• 6:43
  Like, she really, really just ran.
• 6:46
  Yeah, and I think, I mean, I I don't know a huge amount, but I
• 6:51
  think the the people who, the fans, the people who buy them
• 6:54
  and stuff loved her and I think the writers certainly did going,
• 7:00
  oh, this is a character who's funny, you can say funny things.
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  He's got attitude, but where it isn't necessarily the sort of as
• 7:12
  that's attitude you sometimes get with Doctor Who companions.
• 7:15
  You know where it's no, this is a real person.
• 7:18
  This is, this is a character from EastEnders who's just
• 7:21
  wandered into Doctor Who, basically.
• 7:25
  And I did. I've only done Static with her
• 7:28
  since. I think I'd love to do more, you
• 7:32
  know, if she, I want the actress when she gets well enough to
• 7:36
  come back, I want them to. I want to write more stories
• 7:41
  for, you know, keep keep that going.
• 7:45
  That contrast between flipping constants, it just works like
• 7:49
  gangbusters, doesn't it? They're they're sort of
• 7:52
  effectively working class and middle upper class.
• 7:56
  Just the the accent, just and the moralities.
• 8:00
  What I find with flip as well is she's so well defined.
• 8:03
  It's one of those rare characters that goes from writer
• 8:07
  to writer to writer, and it always works.
• 8:11
  Yeah, yeah. I think it's just everyone sort
• 8:13
  of gets that sort of person. I mean, I would would think of
• 8:20
  her. I remember getting on a bus in
• 8:24
  South London and sometimes you'd have three girls sitting on the
• 8:28
  back seat of the top deck who think they're the next sugar
• 8:31
  babes. They're practicing their
• 8:32
  harmonies and they're all terrible and they're just
• 8:35
  getting drunk and laughing and playing with their phones or
• 8:39
  whatever you go. That's that's where she's come
• 8:42
  from. You know she's she's not.
• 8:46
  That's not really a Doctor Who area.
• 8:47
  People don't, you know, Doctor Who's normally I only take the
• 8:51
  best, you know he sort of picks winners, which whereas I think
• 8:58
  sometimes you want them to pick an underdog as well sometimes.
• 9:02
  And then Vienna. Vienna was an odd one because
• 9:05
  The Shadow Heart, which is a story I was very, very proud of
• 9:13
  when I wrote it. I think I cocked up the final
• 9:16
  episode because it's far too long because I was going let's
• 9:20
  do a 50 minute episode finale. That'd be fantastic.
• 9:23
  Know people would just find it more like, but the time travel,
• 9:27
  the doctor going through the episodes in the world I thought
• 9:29
  was was brilliant and had never been done before and no one, no
• 9:33
  one even cared. No one noticed.
• 9:36
  But I had this idea of going, I could have a spin off series
• 9:39
  that'd be really cool and it'll be about this sort of stepped on
• 9:45
  some guys who travelled this world on a giant in a in a snail
• 9:49
  that flat travels through space. That's going to be my spin off
• 9:51
  series. It's going to be brilliant.
• 9:54
  Well, that's what you envisage the spin off coming from that
• 9:56
  sort of story. That's what that I thought they
• 9:58
  would be the spin off. I think they could go, whereas
• 10:02
  Vienna was this sort of, I don't know, it felt like a sort of
• 10:11
  sort of things. I was thinking of going this is,
• 10:12
  this is a cliche, but then I was going, well I can't think of
• 10:15
  where it's been done before. So it's a sort of femme Nikita
• 10:19
  sort of thing. I don't know.
• 10:21
  But because you can only think of one example, it's not that
• 10:25
  much of A cliche to have as a sort of a time travelling
• 10:32
  assassin with this sort of extreme moral ambiguity.
• 10:39
  But Chase just sort of took it and ran with it and because
• 10:43
  they've cast big, as it were the cast of name from Star Trek or
• 10:49
  whatever. That's why you go oh she's the
• 10:54
  star of this story now she's on the cover now she's that's that
• 10:57
  part of the story is now much bigger and guys in the Snow
• 11:01
  Hercules. This was stepped on side.
• 11:05
  I didn't even change the name. Forget about that.
• 11:08
  No one no one even wants them back at all.
• 11:12
  So yeah then then that became a series.
• 11:14
  I was a showrunner, as it were for three years I think 3 Series
• 11:21
  of it. And then there's a fourth
• 11:23
  without me. Because I was I wanted someone
• 11:26
  else to do it. It's, and this is me being about
• 11:31
  that. It's sort of something I
• 11:32
  probably never would have looked at because I I, you know, some
• 11:37
  of the more obscure spin offs I don't really touch, but I'm a
• 11:40
  massive DS9 fan. So I was like, OK, Chase Masters
• 11:43
  in this, let's see what this is all about.
• 11:45
  And the Venus series blew my mind.
• 11:48
  Like it's suddenly started carving out this whole sort of
• 11:51
  corner of the the Galaxy over here and we were seeing sort of
• 11:56
  more seadier settings that we would normally get in Doctor Who
• 12:01
  and it was doing really interesting narrative things
• 12:03
  with memory and things like this.
• 12:05
  And I'm actually, I'm heading on to another podcast soon where
• 12:10
  you have to it's called Too Hot for CV.
• 12:12
  So it's all Doctor Who that's not on TV that they talk about.
• 12:16
  And I was allowed to choose two things and I chose.
• 12:19
  Please don't take the insult from this, but I did.
• 12:21
  Choose to forget a script, but I chose the the one where all the
• 12:26
  buildings come to life. That one.
• 12:28
  Oh yeah, that was, oh God, I'm trying to rewrite that.
• 12:31
  That wasn't it. It was was.
• 12:33
  IT guy Adams. Yes.
• 12:34
  And he hadn't done much at that point.
• 12:37
  He was new and he sent him the script and it was like a very
• 12:45
  difficult brief because I was going, you've got Vienna and
• 12:46
  you've got maybe two other actors or something.
• 12:48
  You've got, you know, suddenly it's not much money.
• 12:53
  And he's sent me saying, I go, I basically have no notes, you
• 12:57
  know, other other scripts, I have lots of notes.
• 13:00
  You know, I write it again myself.
• 13:03
  You know, I go through it and do do my own Polish.
• 13:06
  But this is, I don't need to do a Polish because he's got it, he
• 13:08
  done it, he did it right. And and so I was like I was
• 13:14
  emailing the other producers and just going, he's good, use him,
• 13:18
  use him a lot. He's going to be get him before
• 13:22
  he gets snatched away to having a better career, you know?
• 13:26
  What? What really kind of struck me
• 13:27
  about that series is because it isn't Doctor Who.
• 13:30
  You just got licensed to do other things, you know, exciting
• 13:35
  different things, You know, it's what pushed the envelope a
• 13:37
  little bit as well. That was fabulous.
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  I mean the the brief I always gave to the writers was to make
• 13:43
  it Philip K Dick stories. And his stories are all about
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  altering perception, usually perception of memory, of time,
• 13:54
  of reality and stuff. Or you know, robots that are
• 13:57
  people and people think they're robots and all that sort of
• 14:00
  stuff where it is. And that's sort of taken off as
• 14:06
  a sort of science fiction genre. That's what science fiction is
• 14:10
  in a way, because all the other science fiction writers are
• 14:14
  Philip K, because new generation have fallen away because they
• 14:17
  go, Oh no, it's a date. It's about those ideas about
• 14:20
  self, about where artificial intelligence begins and ends and
• 14:25
  all things. So I was very keen for it to be
• 14:29
  that sort of story and also to to employ people I knew were
• 14:35
  good, who would kind of interesting takes and who were
• 14:41
  also who were who were pestering me.
• 14:44
  They wanted to wait for it and stuff and also to go, oh, Steve
• 14:47
  Lyons hasn't done anything for like 10 years.
• 14:49
  Let's get Steve Lyons back and get him back doing stuff for Big
• 14:52
  Finish. Why are we using him more and
• 14:54
  stuff like that? He's.
• 14:54
  Fantastic, isn't he? It's obscene that he's used as
• 14:58
  little as he is. Yeah, so it was my way of going,
• 15:01
  I love Steve Lyons work, let's get I want him to do something.
• 15:06
  And again, the other one was James Goss, which sounds bizarre
• 15:11
  given how much he's done with Big Finish since.
• 15:15
  But at the time, I don't think he'd done anything for Big
• 15:16
  Finish. It was probably one of his first
• 15:18
  ones, if not his first. And later on when I was script
• 15:23
  editing the Doctor Who Range, I got him in to do Mask of
• 15:26
  Tragedy, which again was his first Doctor Who thing for Big
• 15:29
  Finish. So you know, he owes it all to
• 15:33
  me his entire career because I I got him in.
• 15:40
  I'd be repaying the favours. Yeah, he he got me to do a a
• 15:46
  torture eventually. So yeah, it was.
• 15:48
  So we're not equal, but he's he's he's made a couple of steps
• 15:53
  in the right direction. Can I ask you about adapting The
• 15:59
  Lost Stories, You, Valley of Death, Guardians of Prophecy and
• 16:06
  the Ark? Those are the three which have
• 16:09
  been announced and released so far.
• 16:11
  Always exciting. OK?
• 16:14
  I always ask that again, what's coming up and everyone just says
• 16:17
  bugger off, you know? That's all I can tell you.
• 16:20
  Who knows that? Who knows?
• 16:21
  There might be more. But how do you go about
• 16:27
  dramatising something that never made it onto the screen?
• 16:29
  I'm assuming with some of those things there's just a very small
• 16:31
  synopsis rather than an actual script.
• 16:34
  Yeah, I mean, I I, I put Damaged Goods into the same category
• 16:39
  really because it's the same sort of project.
• 16:44
  Even though that wasn't a lost story, that was a novel
• 16:46
  adaptation, it was the same sort of approach.
• 16:48
  I mean is how what have you got to start with, you know with
• 16:52
  Philip Hinchcliffe it was 2 pages of the synopsis.
• 16:56
  So I could I was basically doing all the work there trying to
• 17:03
  trying to find some sort of slot logic to it but it pose a four
• 17:06
  part structure on it everything and then with God as a proxy as
• 17:13
  a was a 20 page synopsis. It was quite detailed.
• 17:18
  It was really sort of for part one I had so much stuff and I
• 17:22
  had to take leave stuff out. I think in in the sort of the
• 17:27
  the council of the government he'd like named about 20 other
• 17:30
  characters. It's like but we're not going to
• 17:33
  do anything. And so but as it got as it went
• 17:38
  on, it got less and less sort of detail.
• 17:41
  And so again it's just trying to find a four part structure and
• 17:46
  then for the ARC that was a script that existed as a four
• 17:50
  part script. So, but my thinking with that
• 17:56
  was that if it had been made, you know, it would have gone
• 18:00
  through the normal process of Robert Holmes giving it a little
• 18:04
  bit of a Polish. It had gone to the rehearsal
• 18:06
  rooms and Tom Baker and Liz Sladen and Ian Marta would have
• 18:12
  given it Polish and stuff. So parts of the script which
• 18:16
  were a bit rough should we say a bit first drafty.
• 18:23
  I changed and proved mainly for to spare the writers blushes as
• 18:29
  it were, and but also because if people are paying you know £15
• 18:34
  for ACD of this, I think it's more important for it to be good
• 18:40
  than for it to be exactly what's in the script.
• 18:44
  Because I had to change the script anyway, because I had to
• 18:48
  have people talking during the spacewalk sequence stuff.
• 18:51
  I had to sort that out so it works on audio.
• 18:55
  I had to remove 1 character and change the gender of another and
• 19:00
  stuff just to make it more doable and stuff.
• 19:04
  So I I changed a lot of lot, but I did have to change some of the
• 19:10
  dialogue to make it good. Make it is while remaining truth
• 19:14
  of the original story, which is kind of nuts and kind of it's
• 19:19
  not a brain story but you try and have something which is
• 19:23
  enjoyable. You know, the way I put it is
• 19:27
  like when you watch the Time Lash.
• 19:32
  You know Time Lash is not a good story, shall we say, but it's
• 19:39
  really enjoyable. I really, really.
• 19:41
  Enjoy it because it and I mean with with Guardians of Prophecy
• 19:48
  there's a bit of that I go in OK it needs to be a bit like Colin
• 19:51
  Baker, Doctor Who. So end of episode one is the
• 19:56
  guards going shoot him. Episode 2 is someone entering
• 19:59
  going no don't shoot him that's that's that's every cliffhanger.
• 20:04
  It's like I'll tell from the Peter Davis here.
• 20:05
  It's just works on that basis. Eric Sayward definitely could
• 20:09
  have script edited that you know.
• 20:11
  Yeah, but you just you wanted to be authentic to enter the year
• 20:14
  and stuff. And yeah, but with a valley of
• 20:21
  fear. That was 2 pages of just an
• 20:25
  idea, which was which I sort of had to sort of go, OK, what
• 20:33
  would what was Philip Hinchcliffe thinking and stuff?
• 20:35
  So he he was very happy with it, apparently.
• 20:37
  So I'm glad he won't take it OK. How about Damaged Goods, then?
• 20:43
  Because I've made no secret of the fact that I think damaged
• 20:46
  books. Damaged Goods is an exceptional
• 20:48
  book, but it's sort of graphic in ways where I just don't think
• 20:53
  it's an exceptional Doctor Who book that I listened to the
• 20:56
  audio, the Big Finish audio version of it, and I was like,
• 20:59
  OK, this has ironed out any issues that I had with this.
• 21:03
  It's so much more palatable without losing any of its sort
• 21:06
  of power. How do you go about taking a
• 21:11
  book like that? And a very popular book as well.
• 21:13
  Yeah, I mean I I don't know if I say I was a huge fan of the New
• 21:22
  Adventures, but I did read most of them.
• 21:23
  So I'm a true Dog Day fan. Like I I read lots of books I
• 21:26
  don't quite enjoy. So that is the true fan and
• 21:31
  we're sort of like damaged Goods.
• 21:32
  I would love a lot of it but the bits where it was being adult
• 21:38
  for adults sake which is what the new Ancient ventures did
• 21:41
  sometimes like the all the stuff about cocaine and stuff I just
• 21:48
  thought well that's that's stopped it feeling like Doctor
• 21:50
  Who and which I always feel a bit comfortable with a bit feels
• 21:58
  a bit I don't know I like I I think that's an easy thing to do
• 22:05
  so you don't really win any points from the from when I'm
• 22:08
  doing my my my scores. So when it came to adapt it, I
• 22:13
  mean the the I'm not even sure was the brief.
• 22:16
  I just sort of assumed it was OK, Well, we're doing Doctor Who
• 22:19
  like it's on television there. Imagine that Russell had been,
• 22:24
  you know, gone off on a holiday around the sort of Maldives for
• 22:29
  two weeks and he couldn't be contacted by phone and someone
• 22:32
  had just gone, OK, we need to turn damaged goods into a
• 22:35
  two-part story for television, heaping Russell's voice as much
• 22:40
  as possible. And we're not faking his voice,
• 22:44
  you know, writing in his style, in his using his approach, which
• 22:49
  I think I'm quite good at. I can quite, I think I can do as
• 22:53
  an impressionist, I think I can do a good Russell.
• 22:56
  I think I can do a good Stephen as well.
• 23:00
  Useless skill because they're both still exist, so.
• 23:04
  It's exactly what Russell said during the writers tale about,
• 23:08
  you know, doing a ton of script editing on those first four
• 23:11
  series. And they say, yeah, I had to do
• 23:12
  a lot of work, but I was always trying to use their voice like
• 23:16
  the the writer's voice. Yeah.
• 23:18
  So it's it's trying to keep it shooting and trying to keep the
• 23:21
  story and the characters weren't making it simple enough that it
• 23:29
  fitted and even for a big finish has a huge cast.
• 23:33
  You know, they pushed the boat out there, but even then I'd I'd
• 23:39
  half the cast. I think about half of them.
• 23:43
  I wish I'd cut a couple more. There's a couple of bits of
• 23:46
  actors doubling up in there which I don't like.
• 23:49
  And in retrospect, if I'd known that had been a problem, I would
• 23:51
  have cut those characters completely somehow.
• 23:55
  I don't know how, but I've kind of.
• 23:59
  I've tried, but I think the end result, the cast, Ken Bentley's
• 24:08
  direction and his tolerance of me sitting behind him telling
• 24:13
  him what to do more than I should have done for this one,
• 24:19
  and the sound design music, I think it was just fantastic.
• 24:22
  I think it's an incredibly good end result, I think and because
• 24:29
  when I was writing as well, I was thinking Russell, but I
• 24:31
  wasn't really thinking. I was thinking I was watching
• 24:34
  the Second coming and Cruz folk and stuff.
• 24:37
  I was going, it's that Russell is writing it.
• 24:40
  It's not really the Doctor Who 2005.
• 24:44
  I was writing it. I want to give a bit of that
• 24:47
  sort of sort of dangerousness then I think sort of study sort
• 24:55
  of boldness and stuff. But yeah, it's an interesting
• 25:00
  one to do because there'd just be scenes where the 7th Doctor
• 25:05
  is talking to the ex end form, the end form what was previously
• 25:12
  the Kappa. And in the book it goes on for
• 25:15
  six pages. You go, that's fine, they can
• 25:17
  just talk about the old times and six pages, that's only takes
• 25:21
  6 minutes to read. That's fine.
• 25:23
  And you go look at that, the script and go, that'll be 20
• 25:26
  minutes. I've got to go.
• 25:28
  How can I just go through that and just take out everything
• 25:30
  That is absolutely essential because Sylvester doesn't like
• 25:36
  long speeches. Where can I get this, this every
• 25:38
  sort of speech? Because Russell in the book
• 25:41
  gives gives a doctor's speech. Us the last half a page.
• 25:44
  And you go, if we give that to Sylvester, we'll kill him.
• 25:47
  We'll just sort of groan from inside the booth and then we'll
• 25:49
  just see you be empty. You go, Where's Sylvester?
• 25:52
  He's collapsed. So he's paring stuff down a lot.
• 25:56
  And but then the bit I really like is because Joe lives to a
• 26:02
  script everything as well and we have a scene at the end where
• 26:05
  the two mothers get together and they're just talking which isn't
• 26:09
  really in the book and but this is the best bit and that's the
• 26:13
  most rustly bit. Again.
• 26:14
  Yeah I wrote that that's that's me actually pretending to be
• 26:17
  Russell. But because it it annoyed me
• 26:19
  that in the book they didn't really have a scene together.
• 26:22
  It just so much else was going on.
• 26:25
  The plot didn't have room for that moment and I didn't have a
• 26:29
  moment for the character to to bring up the point that it's
• 26:33
  damaged goods. I want to bring the baby back,
• 26:36
  you know, I want my child. I want to return this child and
• 26:38
  get the other one. Because that again had been, it
• 26:43
  had been mentioned in sort of thought in the book but never
• 26:49
  spoken out loud. So yeah, I want to sort of make
• 26:52
  it slightly more overt, that part.
• 26:55
  Just think it's an extraordinary achievement that audio like,
• 26:58
  like you said, just the performances, the writing, the
• 27:01
  music, the title music is extraordinary as well.
• 27:06
  I bought the Super Deluxe version, you know of all the
• 27:08
  glossy pictures inside as well. So it's a precious thing on my
• 27:11
  shelf, that version of damage. I just did Russell.
• 27:15
  Listen to it afterwards. Yes, but I'm I don't know if he
• 27:19
  listened to it, he must have done.
• 27:21
  But he read the script, which is the whole point.
• 27:23
  He read the script and he was just effusive.
• 27:27
  Effusive. I mean effusive, but with 20
• 27:30
  notes. All this is marvellous.
• 27:34
  Just change this, would you? But all the notes are good notes
• 27:36
  you're saying, and they're not like go away and write it again.
• 27:40
  Notes which are which are which are which are fine if you're
• 27:45
  being paid quite a lot of money, but if you're not being paid
• 27:47
  well, our money being plus to write again is quite needs more
• 27:50
  effusiveness than he'd deliver. You know, they're all sort of
• 27:56
  helpful sort of structural things.
• 27:57
  He was going, I would just do this, do that.
• 28:00
  And he did the same with Dimension Canon as well, where
• 28:02
  he gave notes on the scripts of that which are just like he's
• 28:06
  read it and he's generally delighted, effusive, but he's
• 28:13
  gone. Oh, I don't like this bit
• 28:14
  because you do it a different way and it's like, well, this
• 28:18
  is, this is gold. You know, this is like, I'm not
• 28:20
  going to, this is the best advice I can.
• 28:24
  Yeah, I'm going to keep that. I'm going to do that.
• 28:27
  So there are a few bits of that. But the other thing that really
• 28:31
  attracted me to damage because is that people thought it
• 28:35
  couldn't be done. And that's why I really wanted
• 28:37
  to do it. Because it was written in such a
• 28:40
  way that it wasn't written as a sort of a pastiche of ATV story.
• 28:45
  Because if you look at, you know, the romance of crime and
• 28:48
  go, oh, it's easy. It's easy to imagine how that
• 28:51
  would be done because that's written in the same idiom as TV
• 28:54
  Doctor Who book. Is so a dull, isn't it?
• 28:57
  It's. Yeah, but it's just you have
• 29:00
  long scenes where there's no talking, you know, it's just
• 29:02
  all, it's just all people characters thinking about stuff.
• 29:10
  And so that attracts me and just like going well, if I wanted to
• 29:12
  do another one, I was do the also people transit or one of
• 29:15
  the really difficult ones? Transit.
• 29:17
  Oh, I'd love to sing that. Yeah, but I'm not a not a huge
• 29:21
  fan of the book, but I want to sort it out.
• 29:23
  I want to make it. I want to make it as good as it
• 29:26
  a really fantastic story. But yeah, but but the damage
• 29:35
  goes sort of how can I top that? That's the best one.
• 29:39
  Fantastic. OK, so I've got I've got
• 29:43
  questions all over the place here about various ranges that
• 29:49
  you and I'm trying to think of how to how to pare it down do.
• 29:54
  You want I can get shorter answers, no?
• 29:56
  No, please don't, because the answers are great.
• 29:59
  OK, The Companion Chronicles. You wrote seven stories in the
• 30:03
  Companion Chronicles. It's been so far.
• 30:05
  Yeah. Oh, thank you.
• 30:08
  Thank you for that. And.
• 30:10
  So that's sort of first person narration.
• 30:16
  Yeah. I I really like those because
• 30:19
  there's an intimacy between the listener and the character
• 30:22
  telling the story. Did you choose the companions
• 30:28
  that you were writing for or you pitching there?
• 30:32
  You did a lot of different characters.
• 30:34
  Yeah. I I think, I don't know.
• 30:41
  I think I'm I might have been offered a menu of like four or
• 30:45
  five or something. I think that might be how it
• 30:47
  worked. I know the first one was a bit
• 30:51
  of a Cocker because the format changed after I wrote it or
• 30:56
  something. So it was it started off as a
• 30:59
  third person story and then they they make divided into four
• 31:02
  parts with cliffhangers and it was is.
• 31:04
  That the beautiful people. Yeah, which is, I can't tell.
• 31:07
  You something about that. That for some reason Marv Roth,
• 31:12
  whenever he feels unwell, he has to listen to the beautiful
• 31:16
  people because it always makes him feel better.
• 31:18
  He loves that story so much so every time.
• 31:20
  I've heard that more than any other baby story.
• 31:24
  Well, no. I mean, Lenovo was having a ball
• 31:26
  with it. She was finding it very funny
• 31:27
  and stuff. I think that's one of the ones
• 31:34
  where she said she was. She was reading it to Richard
• 31:36
  Dawkins when they were sitting up in bed together.
• 31:41
  And then there's the format sort of changed quite quickly after
• 31:47
  that, becoming sort of first person narratives.
• 31:53
  And then I think John Dorny or Mark Platt broke the format by
• 31:58
  going actually, we're not doing a do for first passing stories
• 32:00
  at all. We're just going to have
• 32:01
  adventures where it's one person on their own.
• 32:05
  So then you start getting stuff like Ghost and The Machine and
• 32:09
  Mastermind where they are just very small car stories, they're
• 32:13
  not really companion Chronicle, they're not really, you know,
• 32:17
  one person telling a story very much at all.
• 32:22
  So yeah, they were interesting as a sort of a very sort of
• 32:29
  character based sort of stories really, I think.
• 32:33
  Very popular, aren't they? Yeah.
• 32:38
  I mean we're very happy with the Glorious Revolution because it
• 32:40
  was a bit of history that I didn't know before I went to
• 32:43
  the, went to research it really and which is actually sort of
• 32:47
  because it's not really taught in schools here.
• 32:51
  But I think you go to Northern Ireland and they go, this is the
• 32:55
  most important sort of week in British history there's ever
• 32:58
  been. And Fraser with that point was
• 33:03
  going he could do the Second Doctors voice.
• 33:07
  So suddenly I could write scenes where the Jamie was talking to
• 33:09
  the Doctor without having to have said Jamie said, the Doctor
• 33:13
  said, Jimmy said, Oh no, I can just have scenes, just the
• 33:17
  scenes of those two. And that just as I said that's
• 33:21
  that became more and more what the stories became, I think.
• 33:29
  And then you tellson the Volt, which was a sort of a sort of
• 33:33
  anthology thing, almost of bits and bobs.
• 33:39
  Oh, and the the Great Space Elevator, which is a sort of a
• 33:44
  trout and pastiche where you know, again there's a sort of a
• 33:52
  first person one I think, and is obviously a first person from
• 33:58
  Victoria, then looking back on it after after she's like 70
• 34:03
  years old and stuff. So I think that was that was a
• 34:08
  cool story. That was just all the trap, trap
• 34:10
  and cliches stuck together. There was foam and all that sort
• 34:13
  of static electricity and all that stuff.
• 34:16
  I remember ghosting the machine, really scaring me.
• 34:19
  It was it Louise Jamieson that directed that one.
• 34:22
  Yes, yes. Yeah, really.
• 34:24
  Lots of great audio tricks in the years you know.
• 34:29
  I just. I just wanted the absolute agony
• 34:31
  of deciding that every word that's in Part 2 had to have
• 34:35
  been previously appeared in part one.
• 34:38
  And you just believe me. You do not want to set yourself
• 34:41
  that task or something where you're trying to write dial and
• 34:45
  go OK when you really need that word.
• 34:48
  OK, so I have to go back to part one and put that.
• 34:49
  Put it in there. But if I if I take another word
• 34:52
  out, I mean I've used that word later and I can't take it out.
• 34:56
  So and I did it, I think. I don't think anyone spotted any
• 35:02
  mistakes. No, gosh, very, very.
• 35:06
  Crazy, but that's the mental thing to do.
• 35:08
  OK, you know, it's almost, I don't know, brecked or
• 35:10
  something. To go.
• 35:13
  All the lines from this part of the story have to be lines taken
• 35:16
  from the first part, but in a different order.
• 35:18
  It's kind of a very old thing to do.
• 35:21
  I we have come to expect this sort of thing from you.
• 35:23
  You know you one of your first stories was you can there's two
• 35:27
  discs here and you can listen to it in either order.
• 35:30
  Yeah, the infamous flip flop. Yes.
• 35:38
  Infamous what influence? Oh, it's been a bit of AI mean.
• 35:44
  Some people love it and I'm not going to disagree with them.
• 35:47
  I think. I think they're completely
• 35:48
  correct to love it and enjoy it and get and understand all the
• 35:51
  complexities and subtleties and the nuances of the story and the
• 35:59
  what it's saying is actually quite liberal and it's basic
• 36:05
  message, which is the society shapes views and people who say
• 36:14
  if we if we hadn't done that, the grass would have been green
• 36:17
  on the other side. That is a trap.
• 36:18
  That is wrong. That isn't a fair judgement, you
• 36:21
  know, It's the it's the level Chamberlain thing of going.
• 36:26
  If Neville Chamberlain hadn't tried to make a piece of Munich
• 36:30
  with Hitler, would things have been better?
• 36:32
  Was he a fool? Was he?
• 36:34
  And you can't judge. You can't judge.
• 36:37
  You don't know what the other version of history would have
• 36:39
  been. And that's what it's about for
• 36:43
  me. That was what it was about at
• 36:44
  the time. But context changes.
• 36:51
  There's something which you've written in 2002 can can have a
• 36:58
  different context in 2010 years later, 20 years later and it can
• 37:03
  be seen to be presenting a view which it wasn't at the time,
• 37:10
  which is interesting process. I mean it's it's how these
• 37:16
  things can be and I think that's possibly a sign that's a good
• 37:20
  story that if it can, if it has those sort of like you have
• 37:24
  different interpretations put upon it that people can get
• 37:27
  different things out of it. But but that said if people
• 37:31
  getting things out of it which they interpret as being the
• 37:35
  authors opinions, even my opinions now or my opinions then
• 37:42
  you know just because I write something, it doesn't mean I
• 37:46
  agree with it. You know, if I I like Vienna
• 37:50
  stories, it doesn't mean I think being a time travelling assassin
• 37:54
  is actually a cool thing to be. You know that's a.
• 37:57
  Shame. I really thought that's what you
• 37:59
  thought, you know? I know it's and some of the
• 38:04
  stuff which is which was sort of playing against this sort of
• 38:13
  subverting the idea of political correctness at the time in 2022
• 38:19
  now looks like I'm opposing it. But it it wasn't that.
• 38:24
  It was just I don't know the thing.
• 38:31
  The thing is I did that I'm a story called I I Love Dread,
• 38:33
  which is far worse for this sort of thing.
• 38:35
  And I got away now and you don't care.
• 38:37
  I know what, I just did that on Finnish Big and I excuse my
• 38:40
  language. I fucking love that.
• 38:43
  And I was like I said in the in the episode, this could never be
• 38:47
  done. Now in a million years they
• 38:50
  wouldn't touch this, but. It is outrageous in certain
• 38:53
  ways. The things that it takes a bit,
• 38:54
  it takes the Mickey out of gay rights, which is, I mean, I'm
• 38:58
  100% in favour of gay rights, but that doesn't mean I can't
• 39:00
  take the Mickey out at the. Same time as a gay man, you
• 39:03
  know. I took no offence whatsoever.
• 39:05
  I thought it was hilarious. But it's it's exactly what's
• 39:09
  going on now, isn't it? With the the whole Davros thing.
• 39:11
  You know what was acceptable when Stolen Earth Journeys end
• 39:15
  came out and what's acceptable now?
• 39:17
  We're in a different place. Yeah, I mean, I I I put up on my
• 39:22
  blog. I wrote an article for Doctor
• 39:23
  Magazine at the time, 15 years ago, about why Davos made me
• 39:29
  uncomfortable for what he was representing in terms of
• 39:34
  disability and stuff, which they didn't publish, but they
• 39:38
  published a very similar article a couple of years later.
• 39:40
  So it's not that I was censored or anything like that, but even
• 39:45
  in 2007 or whatever it was, it was becoming a bit sort of
• 39:51
  obvious that this, this was, this was something that should
• 39:56
  have been added to the list of things we don't do anymore.
• 39:58
  And now it is that has been added to that list.
• 40:00
  And that was great I think, but and I'm not going to disagree
• 40:06
  with that because I was one of the people who wanted it to be
• 40:08
  put on the list 15 years ago. So I'm.
• 40:10
  I'm delighted you know. Well, I would certainly say
• 40:13
  whatever inference people were taking from flip flop, if they
• 40:17
  explore the rest of your output, they would surely see that's not
• 40:21
  the case at all. Well, yeah, that that's the
• 40:23
  other context of going, you know, sometimes you can write
• 40:28
  things which are presenting different views that you don't
• 40:37
  know. But also, stories aren't
• 40:39
  lectures. They're not about me giving them
• 40:43
  presenting a message. Sometimes they might be.
• 40:45
  You know, I think the Paradox Planet is generally an
• 40:49
  environmentalist story, you know, and all sorts of stories
• 40:54
  about things like, you know, the decency of things like
• 40:58
  compassion and free will and things like the trap of like
• 41:08
  regrets and things like that. They have sort of all sorts of
• 41:11
  sort of themes and ideas in them.
• 41:15
  Yeah, you're right. I mean, I think they are sort of
• 41:20
  all sort of very much in keeping with the ethos of Doctor Who,
• 41:24
  you know, the ethos of Russell's stuff and Stephen's stuff and
• 41:28
  Chris's stuff. It's all, you know, be kind and
• 41:34
  stuff. It's all well I yeah, I'm I'm
• 41:41
  sort of you know I've I've was on gay rights marches like in
• 41:45
  the mid 80s and stuff I've. I was at gay pride in the 90s.
• 41:51
  I was when I ran the Eurasia fan club and website where you know
• 41:55
  I'd go to the clubs and meet you know members who were you know
• 42:00
  you can eat. You get a message from.
• 42:01
  Sorry, this is massive digression.
• 42:03
  No, go on. I get messages from members that
• 42:05
  eraser fan club going, You've got me down as this, this, under
• 42:09
  this name. But I've transitioned and I'd be
• 42:11
  have a membership card under this name.
• 42:13
  And again, brilliant. I'd go, do you want to have a
• 42:17
  different photo as well That'd be that's cool, you know.
• 42:21
  And so I was sort of experiencing that in a sort of
• 42:25
  absolutely sort of this is just day-to-day, this is normal and
• 42:29
  cool and not even remarkable, you know, not even like eyebrow
• 42:34
  raising, you know, throughout the sort of 90s and stuff.
• 42:42
  And so that's where I come from. And now obviously I, I am a
• 42:49
  member, I'm a councillor for a political party which also, you
• 42:52
  know, has very, very obvious and clear manifestos on LGBT plus
• 43:00
  rights and stuff. So yeah.
• 43:02
  I think with your work as well, I was thinking of a few examples
• 43:07
  there. I always feel like you put in a
• 43:09
  very good if you are going to tackle something, you put in a
• 43:12
  very good balanced view of two opinions.
• 43:15
  So immediately what I spoke to mine was Resurrection of Mars,
• 43:19
  where you had the Doctor and Tanzin coming at that that
• 43:25
  dilemma at two very different points of view.
• 43:27
  But I don't think as the writer you were siding with either of
• 43:32
  them. You just gave them both their
• 43:33
  point of view and then left the the listener to make up their
• 43:37
  mind. And I really, really like that.
• 43:39
  I think that way. Good drama lies.
• 43:41
  Yeah. Oh yeah, that that is absolute
• 43:43
  drama is, I think, which is difficult decisions.
• 43:46
  What the hell would I do? I was thinking.
• 43:49
  Yeah. You're going, we're going, you
• 43:51
  put someone in a impossible situation and go, which way will
• 43:55
  they jump? And that whole story was, it's a
• 43:59
  kind of a version of what I think it's called.
• 44:00
  It's called the trolley problem. I didn't know it by that name at
• 44:04
  the time. This idea that the Doctor at the
• 44:07
  end of Part 2 is about to blow up this base on Damos and save
• 44:13
  everyone but destroy nice warriors.
• 44:15
  And then he gets his text message from Sheridan Smith.
• 44:20
  It's a text message because we can't pay her for the other
• 44:22
  extra episode. But I go and he decides not to
• 44:28
  blow it up. And then other people die as a
• 44:30
  result of that and you go that is absolutely the Doctor's
• 44:32
  morality, that he will drop everything to save one person.
• 44:39
  But then other people then think that will make the situation
• 44:42
  worse and other people go. If you just let Lucy die
• 44:47
  everyone be safe now and there's scenes in that where which are
• 44:51
  apps where which has been called to account on his.
• 44:55
  And Paul McGann is brilliant and I got feedback from going, he's
• 44:58
  really loving playing this sort of stuff because this is, you
• 45:05
  know, this is this is what being an actor is about.
• 45:07
  It's. And when you do that, when you
• 45:09
  give people a character a difficult choice and you find
• 45:14
  out how they jump, that is what tells you what the character is.
• 45:17
  Because people think that sometimes the characters are
• 45:21
  help someone speaks or their background or where they come
• 45:25
  from or their age or whatever or their gender or their class.
• 45:30
  Well, actually what a character is, is if there's a house on
• 45:34
  fire and they know there's a baby in the house, do they run
• 45:39
  into the house to save the child or do they stay outside?
• 45:43
  You know, that is when we find out what sort of person that
• 45:47
  person is. And in that situation, you know,
• 45:51
  both outcomes are valid. You know not everyone has to
• 45:54
  rush, rush into a boat and get killed trying to save a child.
• 46:00
  But that tells you everything about that character and you
• 46:02
  want to create those situations again and again.
• 46:05
  What I like though is there's no, there's no judgement on
• 46:10
  either character in that situation and I think they're so
• 46:14
  easy. Can be.
• 46:15
  I know there was some involvement.
• 46:17
  So infamously there was some involvement in the Lovecraft
• 46:21
  invasion and which did become a bit of a lecture and it's, you
• 46:26
  know, it's utterly condemned and basically treated like a
• 46:29
  villain. Well, I think the original idea
• 46:32
  for that was to have a sort of more balanced argument and OK,
• 46:35
  this fellow had it, some unfortunate opinions, but was
• 46:40
  also like a fertile creative person as well.
• 46:43
  But it was very sort of dictatorial where it was in
• 46:45
  Resurrection of Mars. I didn't get that sense at all.
• 46:48
  It was just like let the characters breathe, let them
• 46:50
  have their opinions and and you weren't sort of falling either
• 46:55
  way. It's not.
• 46:56
  It's refreshing. Yeah, I I I like.
• 46:59
  I don't know about the Lovecraft story, but I wouldn't pitch a
• 47:05
  story of the doctor meeting Wagner, for instance.
• 47:08
  You know, can we do that story within meeting Beethoven or
• 47:11
  meeting Mozart? That'd be much nicer.
• 47:14
  You know, don't do Wagner, because that just takes it out
• 47:18
  of Doctor Who. It makes it a doctor, not stops
• 47:20
  it being a Doctor Who story. I feel like we're we're skipping
• 47:24
  over a whole world of Big Finish here.
• 47:26
  May if I can be charming enough to tempt you back another time
• 47:31
  to explore some of the areas that we haven't covered.
• 47:33
  I was going to ask you two more questions about Big Finish and
• 47:38
  then skip over to the viewer questions because there was
• 47:43
  another range where you had a lot of input and that was with
• 47:47
  Jagger and Lightfoot. Yes, yes.
• 47:51
  And what I wanted to ask about was like, on paper, it feels
• 47:56
  like you can tell one type of story, you know, super
• 48:00
  supernatural goings on in Victorian London.
• 48:04
  So like, what were the storytelling possibilities
• 48:06
  there? Because you wrote 7 scripts for
• 48:08
  that range. Yeah, I were.
• 48:11
  I I absolutely adored something. Tom Baker.
• 48:17
  But I adore that Christopher and Trevor and characters and and
• 48:27
  Lisa directing it and Justin being in charge of it and stuff.
• 48:30
  It was just a wonderful format, wonderful series and stuff.
• 48:37
  You're right. I mean, it is quite limited in
• 48:39
  terms of the stories, but that you just try and find things you
• 48:44
  can do. You know, you try.
• 48:45
  And I mean, in a sense, it gives you a baseline of going, This is
• 48:49
  the standard story. And in the first series, I think
• 48:54
  we all did the sort of standard stories you could do.
• 48:58
  And then in the second series, it's like, OK, we can't tell
• 49:00
  those stories again. Now everyone has to sort of go
• 49:05
  off somewhere. And so I did Theatre Dreams,
• 49:08
  which is, I think that. Was the first time when I was
• 49:12
  like, wow, we really can go to some unusual.
• 49:14
  Places. Yeah, that's that is a Philip K
• 49:16
  Dick story. But in Victorian times that is.
• 49:19
  OK, let's we've got different multiple realities and stuff.
• 49:24
  And then the two series I wasn't involved with, you had time
• 49:29
  travel and Matthew Sweet doing a weird thing on the underground
• 49:32
  with a timely, but all it was getting weirder and weirder.
• 49:37
  And I haven't gone off to Venus, which is, which is just a sort
• 49:42
  of a pastiche of Victorian science fiction, you know?
• 49:46
  A four story trip to the 1960s with that fabulous version of
• 49:50
  the Fade tune. Yeah, that was that was I had so
• 49:55
  much heavy lifting to do an episode there because I just
• 49:57
  established the entire format and stuff.
• 50:02
  The actor from Whole Histories was in it.
• 50:05
  It was wonderful. Ben Willebond I think is yeah.
• 50:11
  And then I did one on the boat, which was Christopher Priest's
• 50:16
  story. Christopher Priest and science
• 50:18
  fictional author was going how would he do a Jacob like that
• 50:21
  story. So it's a Christian priest story
• 50:23
  and it's sort of like Jagwin Lightfoot visit the dream
• 50:26
  archipelago type of thing. He he does these weird stories
• 50:29
  about places where dreams and times all get mixed up, which I
• 50:35
  just would be funny if you just see this other boat or
• 50:38
  otherwise. And there's another dragon,
• 50:39
  Lightfoot. They had so much fun doing those
• 50:43
  accents, didn't they? Subtlety.
• 50:47
  Had left the building and. Oh gosh.
• 50:52
  And then I did a skeleton key I think which was a lovely pun and
• 50:57
  a nice sort of story about shale dredging of shale leading to
• 51:08
  village being inundated which is all based on factor of stuff
• 51:11
  that happened and a very sort of yeah that worked out that came
• 51:16
  I'm just going to do all worked out really well and even the
• 51:18
  year of the back which was just a I'm stuck.
• 51:23
  I'll just stick three ideas together and see if I can make
• 51:26
  something work out of Victorian nannies that are also vampires.
• 51:35
  The exhibit in the centre of London which is a globe which is
• 51:39
  a real thing that happened then and Young Jago and Leifert.
• 51:45
  And the fourth thing is there's a post box where you can post
• 51:47
  letters to the past which and it kind of came together.
• 51:52
  I think it was a bit of a it's one of those things where one
• 51:58
  idea and it's there isn't one strong idea.
• 52:00
  And so you've got 444 less strong ideas standing on each of
• 52:06
  the shoulders, wearing a big raincoat, trying to get into the
• 52:09
  Strong Idea Club. I've I've heard so many Big
• 52:16
  Finish behind the scenes interviews now and you know like
• 52:19
  they can be repetitive and you can hear the same, oh, we're all
• 52:21
  having a wonderful time and the lunches are great and all of
• 52:24
  this, you know, and of course because it's good marketing.
• 52:28
  But Jager and Lightfoot was the one series where you absolutely
• 52:34
  would not need anyone to tell you that.
• 52:37
  You can just tell by listening to the stories that everything's
• 52:40
  coming together. They're they're just those
• 52:42
  brilliant central performances, the atmospherics, the sort of
• 52:46
  the energy of the writing. It just felt like it was the one
• 52:49
  spin off where everything was cohering.
• 52:52
  Yeah, I mean, I don't know if this is a bit rude, but it's no
• 52:56
  insult. This is not intended to insult
• 52:58
  anyone else. But after I did the first one, I
• 53:03
  turn up for some of the recordings, as you do as a
• 53:05
  writer. And when I turned up for those
• 53:09
  recordings, I walked through the door and be like Johnny and it'd
• 53:12
  be like Christopher, Benjamin and Trevor.
• 53:15
  We're just like, oh, I love the script.
• 53:18
  We talk about it. We oh, another another classic
• 53:21
  from Johnny Morris. We love you.
• 53:23
  And that just that was lovely. I mean other ones I've just sort
• 53:27
  of walked in and you know I've, I've felt like the actors have
• 53:34
  got other things on their mind rather than talking to the
• 53:37
  writer. But with those it was always, oh
• 53:40
  they made me feel such a part of it And you know they'd come back
• 53:47
  and go, oh we've got without reminded the Theatre Dreams.
• 53:50
  Trevor was going, oh, I love this script this is, this is
• 53:53
  like Brex, this is extraordinary.
• 53:56
  You know what you've done is extraordinary.
• 53:59
  So, so when you get that sort of feedback, that's sort of a
• 54:04
  lovely memory to have and it makes, I think that comes
• 54:07
  through in the end result that you realise that everyone is
• 54:11
  just there's so much love in the room, which sounds hawkish, but
• 54:14
  you know what I mean? I did a telephone interview with
• 54:18
  Trevor Baxter sort of around the mid seasons of Jayco and
• 54:23
  Lightfoot and I was giving like a strict time limit.
• 54:27
  And I said oh Trevor, I'm going to have to let you go now
• 54:30
  because I've been told just Oh no, come on now, we've just got
• 54:34
  going. And he he told me about treading
• 54:36
  the boards and all these fabulous place.
• 54:38
  Now what a fella, What a loss. Yeah, it was.
• 54:45
  It was. I mean, I did, oh gosh, avenues
• 54:49
  of possibility, which was a really heartbreaking situation
• 54:52
  because I'd written that or planned it with Jacob and
• 54:58
  Lightfoot. And as I was writing it, it
• 55:03
  became obvious that Trevor couldn't do it.
• 55:06
  And it was. I got an e-mail going.
• 55:09
  If you can get the scripts of all of his bits in tomorrow, you
• 55:14
  might be able to record them. And I kind of can't do that.
• 55:19
  I can't. I can't, you know, just write
• 55:21
  his lines and then try and fit everything else in the round.
• 55:25
  I have to finish that. I just read it properly because
• 55:28
  I always wanted to be crap, you know, they'll just be.
• 55:32
  But he wasn't well and he couldn't have done it anyway
• 55:35
  because he passed away two or three days later.
• 55:41
  And in the story, I just got to the bit where they get this
• 55:46
  parallel version of Earth where the Nazis have taken over
• 55:48
  whatever it is and they open the cell door and lightfoots in
• 55:52
  there. And I'd just written Lightfoot
• 55:54
  coming on and just and that's why it stopped.
• 55:57
  So I'd never got as far as writing a line for him in the
• 56:01
  story. So that was very sad, I think.
• 56:09
  I mean, and the story misses them.
• 56:12
  I think it's kind of obvious that it's it's not, it's not all
• 56:20
  that it could have been. Absolutely.
• 56:22
  What makes that series work is Jayco and Live, isn't it?
• 56:26
  Yeah, it'd have been. It would have been lovely to
• 56:28
  have him in there. I mean the other thing with that
• 56:30
  story is I this because the end of that story is Charlie Pollard
• 56:36
  just busting, just going zagreous.
• 56:40
  You know, I I've met the 6th Doctor.
• 56:42
  You know, all this stuff because what can you do that's fun?
• 56:49
  And I was, I wanted the ultimate thing to be going.
• 56:51
  When you see that house over there, that's Edward Grove.
• 56:57
  Or was it to be set at the same place?
• 56:59
  And I emailed them, Rob, can I have a place to set part of my
• 57:03
  story in that house again? And he's going no, because
• 57:10
  because Rob was going less than he's going.
• 57:13
  He didn't want anything to sort of what was the chance to be on
• 57:18
  its own, as its own thing, and not to be reprised in any, even
• 57:22
  even in what would have been a tribute of just, well, it
• 57:25
  actually wouldn't have been a tribute.
• 57:26
  It'd been thrown into the kitchen sink.
• 57:28
  Would have been gorgeous though. Well then the last question to
• 57:33
  ask you is, I know things have been announced recently, but
• 57:38
  what can I thought? I'd say we what can I expect
• 57:41
  from Jonathan Morris in the future with regards to Big
• 57:44
  Finish? Well.
• 57:47
  That you can talk about. That's the thing you see because
• 57:51
  obviously it's very exciting that Big Finish have a schedule
• 57:56
  of announcing things and stuff. So I don't want to sort of
• 57:59
  preempt or usurp them. I mean, I don't think anyone is
• 58:03
  going to be shocked and stunned at the thought that I might have
• 58:07
  written more for the Doctor stories which will be coming out
• 58:14
  over the next a decade or we have, because they've.
• 58:20
  I mean there's a lot of stuff for the 4th that's been recorded
• 58:25
  and some really, really good stuff.
• 58:27
  Some really stuff I'm really proud of, you know?
• 58:31
  Some and not just the same sort of story, lots of different
• 58:34
  things and even progressive things that.
• 58:42
  But like years ago I did the first stopping story, which was
• 58:44
  all women. And I'm trying to sort of push
• 58:47
  on and do other things in a sort of that haven't been done before
• 58:51
  as well. When it stops recording, I'll
• 58:54
  tell you, Hannah, I have the the harmony show story, Invasion of
• 59:03
  the Body Sealers, which is a weird one.
• 59:07
  Yeah, that's the first thing. I think first time that Sadie
• 59:14
  played Sarah for Big Finish. I mean, other stuff has come out
• 59:18
  before them, but this this is one of the first recorded, so it
• 59:24
  was just sort of lovely to write the doctrine, Sarah for the
• 59:26
  first time. There are moments you know where
• 59:29
  it's uncanny with. Sadie And then I've got.
• 59:38
  I've got the the Bannerman Rd. the only text on the world
• 59:43
  thing, which is what? What happened?
• 59:46
  I'll tell you how this works, is what happened.
• 59:47
  So I wrote the script and they record it.
• 59:50
  And then a year later I'm going, well, it hasn't come out yet.
• 59:53
  I'll read my script again just to enjoy it for myself.
• 59:57
  And then the six months go ask him, I'll read my script again.
• 1:00:00
  So for things like the volume, I've read that script every six
• 1:00:05
  months because I just love it and go it might not have come
• 1:00:08
  out yet. When it comes, by the time it
• 1:00:09
  comes out, I'll be bored of it. But.
• 1:00:11
  Every six months I read that script.
• 1:00:12
  OK, yeah, I got it. That's that's.
• 1:00:15
  I love that. I'm hungry for those.
• 1:00:17
  That first set was amazing. Yeah, so that's what I've been
• 1:00:23
  reading back. And and Fugitive of the
• 1:00:26
  Dialects, which is nuts. Is this the the Sidney Newman
• 1:00:33
  memo? Nuts Exclamation mark.
• 1:00:37
  Because just just imagine it's a Doctor Who story.
• 1:00:40
  Where? So there are no ideas off the
• 1:00:42
  table. OK, so and I wrote the synopsis.
• 1:00:52
  Like I said, when I before I do synopsis and stuff, I do
• 1:00:55
  exclamation marks in and this is jokes and dialogue and stuff and
• 1:01:00
  I got a lovely mouth on it going.
• 1:01:02
  You just think, OK, that is the best synopsis I've ever read.
• 1:01:05
  Oh great. I just.
• 1:01:08
  I was loving every single bit of that because it's fun.
• 1:01:13
  It's out. It's outrageous and moving and
• 1:01:17
  heartbreaking and controversial and daft.
• 1:01:24
  And it's it's everything. Yeah.
• 1:01:30
  So I'm just. I can't wait to hear it, to hear
• 1:01:33
  what they've done. I just want to.
• 1:01:36
  I know, I know what would come out because I'll hear an
• 1:01:37
  explosion from fandom going. He did what?
• 1:01:45
  Oh, wow. Jason, I can't wait.
• 1:01:47
  That sounds amazing. Johnny, would you do me the
• 1:01:52
  great honour of answering some questions from the Hamster
• 1:01:56
  audience before we go? I I think I can cope with.
• 1:01:59
  I'm sure they'll be. If they're if they're laced with
• 1:02:01
  enough compliments, I might be able to get through it, so.
• 1:02:05
  How's your voice holding up? We'll be going three hours now.
• 1:02:08
  Genetically, That's OK. I'm enjoying this as well.
• 1:02:11
  Okey dokey let's. So listeners have to put put up
• 1:02:14
  with. That isn't it.
• 1:02:15
  Oh, I think the no, these interviews go down a storm,
• 1:02:17
  don't you worry, Daniel Knight says.
• 1:02:22
  Genetics of the Daleks is one of my favorite audios.
• 1:02:25
  It's part of the Time Lord Victorious series, but works as
• 1:02:28
  a good stand alone episode. How easy was it getting the
• 1:02:31
  balance? Also, I imagine Tom Bakers
• 1:02:34
  actually sticking his fingers up when he asked for two sugars in
• 1:02:37
  his tea. Yes, he'd be sticking up.
• 1:02:40
  Three fingers or four fingers it'd be.
• 1:02:43
  That was an odd, odd one that was just tying in with the Time
• 1:02:49
  Lord victorious, and also tying in with the escape ring.
• 1:02:54
  Which I have now played. Yeah.
• 1:02:55
  So I was sort of I was given a setting a beginning and an
• 1:03:00
  ending and I was trying to sort of Weaver meaningful stories
• 1:03:05
  from between that where. But this is also during
• 1:03:10
  lockdown. So it was a quite technical
• 1:03:16
  exercise of writing a story where and if anyone at the
• 1:03:21
  escape room wanted the story changed, I could do that easily.
• 1:03:25
  If anyone from the Time Lord victorious people wanted the
• 1:03:27
  story changed or a computer game that was tying with it, I could.
• 1:03:34
  It was sort of nuts and bolts thing where I could take things
• 1:03:37
  in and put things back quite easily.
• 1:03:40
  And then for recording it was written.
• 1:03:41
  So OK, this is Tom Baker. He turns up 20 minutes in
• 1:03:46
  because we might only get him for 20 minutes.
• 1:03:49
  This might be, you know we've I've got to give other
• 1:03:54
  characters because it's all going to be recorded remotely.
• 1:03:59
  So I had to think in terms of the technicalities of that.
• 1:04:01
  So obviously my favorite thing with the story is you have this
• 1:04:09
  mutant, this person, this person who's been turned as a garlic
• 1:04:12
  and some sort of just reads the doctor reads his name going time
• 1:04:15
  and visual, which is a joke which I've had for about 5 years
• 1:04:20
  of of Terence Dicks holding this book which has TARDIS manual,
• 1:04:24
  but it's got the blessing in the place, it's time and visual.
• 1:04:28
  And I finally got that stupid in joke into the story.
• 1:04:33
  It's literally a joke, for one, you're the only person that.
• 1:04:36
  Can possibly get it. If I explain to people, when I
• 1:04:38
  explain to people, they might laugh.
• 1:04:42
  OK, so I've got a question here from Rod, who who says firstly,
• 1:04:46
  A heartfelt thank you for writing some of the very best
• 1:04:49
  Big Finish stories with superbly tight, intricate plotting that
• 1:04:52
  always pays off and rewards the listener.
• 1:04:55
  Probably my favorite Big Finish is Protect and Survive.
• 1:04:58
  That's two votes for protect and survive in this house.
• 1:05:01
  Were you concerned about doing something so radically
• 1:05:04
  different? I was.
• 1:05:09
  I was certainly the edge of what we can get away with, I think in
• 1:05:12
  terms of horrific events. I mean, one of the where it came
• 1:05:19
  from is that, you know, growing up in the 80s, this is my
• 1:05:23
  nightmare. And I literally, I've had many,
• 1:05:26
  many nightmares about nuclear war.
• 1:05:29
  And then you watch threads and you go, well, they know you can
• 1:05:31
  have even more nightmares about nuclear war when you watch When
• 1:05:35
  the When the Wind Blows. I think it's cool and various
• 1:05:42
  books and stuff. And it was, it was always a
• 1:05:48
  horrible thing looming in my mind and protecting survivors, a
• 1:05:54
  way of exercising that as getting out of my system, coming
• 1:05:56
  to terms with it. We're just using it, just
• 1:05:59
  exploiting it. So yeah, it was right on the
• 1:06:05
  edge of what you get away with. I mean, and I remember the
• 1:06:08
  recording of that, which was kind of, again, there's nothing
• 1:06:15
  uncomplimentary what I'm about to say, OK?
• 1:06:20
  But the first scene with Ace and Hex and the Tardis where it's
• 1:06:23
  going out of control and the Doctor's missing is a really
• 1:06:26
  ordinary scene for Doctor Who. You know, it's just standard
• 1:06:29
  Doctor Who stuff and all the TARDIS has gone out of control
• 1:06:32
  and it's rubbish stuff to write and it's rubbish stuff to write,
• 1:06:34
  but it had to be there. And then the story actually
• 1:06:38
  begins. They get out of the TARDIS, they
• 1:06:40
  meet the couple and stuff and Oh my God, you know, Sophie
• 1:06:47
  Aldridge. And we were just amazing.
• 1:06:49
  It's like, oh God. And because you might have only
• 1:06:55
  seen Sophie Aldridge playing Ace, you don't realize, oh,
• 1:06:58
  that's just one thing she can do.
• 1:07:00
  You know you aren't. They were just they're
• 1:07:04
  absolutely knocking out of the park and there's a bit later on
• 1:07:06
  where they get changed places with these sort of gods whatever
• 1:07:11
  they are and they have the accents and stuff and you go and
• 1:07:14
  they've changed the characters and it's like oh, I'm glad I
• 1:07:17
  thought that in because I was worried because I could have
• 1:07:19
  gone so wrong. I could have but they've
• 1:07:23
  absolutely got oh that's better. That's better than I thought.
• 1:07:28
  So yeah, that's one of the ones where it all paid off.
• 1:07:32
  And I mean, I could, I could talk for a long time, like how I
• 1:07:37
  cooked up that script so badly. But I'll do it another time.
• 1:07:40
  I I can remember listening to that for the first time.
• 1:07:44
  I took a break after the end of episode one, which I'll still
• 1:07:46
  consider to be one of the most terrifying Cliff angers in any
• 1:07:50
  Big Finish. Yeah, really, really Dark Rod
• 1:07:54
  goes on to ask as well. This is you've successfully
• 1:07:57
  written continuity heavy stories such as Revenge of the Swarm, as
• 1:08:01
  well as Canon light adventures like Static.
• 1:08:04
  What are the particular challenges when tasked with both
• 1:08:07
  these briefs? When you find just I wish you
• 1:08:10
  find personally more rewarding as an author.
• 1:08:17
  Well, we've entered the pool as I can say it's a misunderstood
• 1:08:24
  classic. I think I was a bit mean about
• 1:08:26
  that one. I was very proud of my script.
• 1:08:32
  I don't think it came across. I don't think the tone worked.
• 1:08:43
  I mean one of those things when you, when you write one of your
• 1:08:48
  reviews and it's glowing 10 out of 10 or whatever, I go, well,
• 1:08:52
  that's the script. You know, I can, I'm happy if
• 1:08:55
  you say, oh, it's 5 out of 10, a great disappointment.
• 1:08:57
  I just go. Well, the cast got that up the
• 1:09:00
  door of. Course.
• 1:09:05
  I'm not saying that happened in this case, because I think, I
• 1:09:10
  mean, if you don't like the invisible enemy as much as I do,
• 1:09:14
  then it's possibly a hard sell. I don't know.
• 1:09:16
  Anyway, I I don't know. I mean, I think when is the
• 1:09:23
  continuity heavy? If it's something I love, you
• 1:09:25
  know if it's like doing a sequel to The Invisible Enemy or
• 1:09:30
  hypothetically doing as a sequel to The Keys of Mariners or
• 1:09:34
  something, or oh. Please write that.
• 1:09:37
  Yeah, Or or having Vicky been coming back and stuff.
• 1:09:44
  If it's something I absolutely love, generally I love most of
• 1:09:46
  them. I mean, then I'm just enjoying
• 1:09:50
  it and it's a tribute. I mean, it's me paying tribute
• 1:09:54
  to different things. So yeah.
• 1:10:00
  And also also Constituity heavy is always a sort of because I I
• 1:10:06
  don't try and put much in. I try try and keep it as as
• 1:10:10
  minimal as possible. But I think I'm static as one of
• 1:10:14
  the ones I'm most proud of. I I begrudgingly give some of
• 1:10:19
  the credit to the Jake, the cast and the director and stuff.
• 1:10:22
  But even as I was writing it, I was going, oh, this is, this is
• 1:10:27
  good. You know, this is working really
• 1:10:29
  well. And it is also, it's drawn from
• 1:10:33
  personal experience and having crappy holidays and holidays in
• 1:10:37
  raining caravan parks and stuff. So you know.
• 1:10:42
  I remember the the first review I read of that was this is the
• 1:10:46
  Scariest big Finish. It's the charms of midnight or
• 1:10:49
  something like that, you know. And I was like, surely not.
• 1:10:51
  And then I'll listen to it. It was.
• 1:10:55
  It absolutely was. It was well.
• 1:10:56
  That was, that was my goal. Because obviously I'm deeply
• 1:10:58
  frustrated that people always go, what's the best Big finish
• 1:11:03
  and they go Charles a bit night spare parts and then, I don't
• 1:11:07
  know, maybe the one doctor or something.
• 1:11:08
  And it's like those were years ago.
• 1:11:11
  I mean, I'm not saying they're crap, they're all grim, but that
• 1:11:14
  was 20 years ago. Can we have something more
• 1:11:15
  recent? Trying to get into the top ten
• 1:11:18
  at least? I think it was all the things
• 1:11:19
  that sort of scare me in horror movies because you had that
• 1:11:22
  central performance and it was very unbalanced, you know, like
• 1:11:28
  on the edge. So that was very scary.
• 1:11:30
  You had the ick factor of these nasty things coming out of trees
• 1:11:33
  and things like this. It was really nasty.
• 1:11:35
  And then just the atmosphere of it as well.
• 1:11:37
  It just worked on every level. Daniel Rawnsley asks which
• 1:11:42
  doctor or companion has been the hardest to write for so far.
• 1:11:51
  I saw this question, so I know I've worked out my advanced
• 1:11:54
  answer in advance, which is it's Mel.
• 1:11:57
  Mel is the hardest because I've got a bit of a cold on it.
• 1:12:02
  It's definitely because on TV the character was only sort of
• 1:12:07
  sketched in and Bonnie Langford was being asked to play a
• 1:12:12
  character that was basically Bonnie Langford in space, you
• 1:12:16
  know, And so there's not a lot to work with in terms of the TV
• 1:12:24
  episodes. And I think with Flip Flop, I
• 1:12:28
  sort of veered towards making a bit of a caricature or almost a
• 1:12:32
  spoof of the character I was taking.
• 1:12:34
  I was, I was following on from one doctor and just sort of
• 1:12:40
  making Mel a bit of a joke, which was the wrong thing to do,
• 1:12:43
  which is one of the problems with Flip Flop.
• 1:12:46
  So when I came back to doing We are the dialects, I was going,
• 1:12:48
  I'm not going to do that again. I'm going to write Mel as a
• 1:12:51
  proper character. I'm not.
• 1:12:53
  I, you know, I've seen Bonnie Langford in EastEnders and
• 1:12:55
  stuff. She can bloody act her socks
• 1:12:57
  off. She's brilliant.
• 1:12:59
  There's no point in doing that. That stupid super perky hot shoe
• 1:13:08
  show bit of nonsense that was in doctor mid 80s.
• 1:13:11
  I'm going to write Mel as if she was a character now and write
• 1:13:15
  her properly and that's that's the way to go.
• 1:13:20
  But that and for that, obviously I was looking at other scripts
• 1:13:24
  that people had done and stuff and but that's that's that's why
• 1:13:29
  she's the most difficult because I think they kind of got the
• 1:13:33
  character character wrong. Well, not wrong, but they did.
• 1:13:37
  They didn't do much. It was it was a thankless part
• 1:13:40
  for her to play in the 80s and people wouldn't accept that.
• 1:13:43
  Now, you know, you the fans wouldn't accept that.
• 1:13:47
  I think the actors would rightly think that was demeaning and as
• 1:13:52
  a writer you just you'd be sort of lowering your game to be
• 1:13:57
  writing sort of that sort of stereotype.
• 1:13:59
  So yeah, that's why it's Mal, I think.
• 1:14:02
  A lot of people are are very excited about body language
• 1:14:05
  coming back to the TV series and and saying you know finally, you
• 1:14:08
  know she'll be written for as an actual character.
• 1:14:11
  But I think Big Finish has been forging away with that for the
• 1:14:14
  last 20 years. You know with stuff like the
• 1:14:16
  Juggernauts, with stuff like we are the dialects, the recent he
• 1:14:18
  be set, she's incredible in that purity.
• 1:14:22
  Yeah. So when when she was quoted in
• 1:14:25
  DWM as saying, you know, I've never gone near a computer
• 1:14:27
  program in my life, I was thinking, when you go put We are
• 1:14:30
  the dialects back into your player, all right?
• 1:14:32
  And you're wrong. Yeah, they should.
• 1:14:37
  I mean, the actors don't count the audios sometimes.
• 1:14:40
  Heartbreaking. Well.
• 1:14:41
  They should. But I can understand why actors
• 1:14:45
  think more of being paid lots of money to be on ATV set for two
• 1:14:48
  weeks rather than being in a studio for a day.
• 1:14:52
  So yes, I can understand why that sticks in the memory.
• 1:14:56
  Bit of a naughty question here from Andrew Kernow rereading the
• 1:14:59
  Tomorrow Window, Tomorrow Windows.
• 1:15:02
  That whole opening party with real life celebs is basically a
• 1:15:05
  blueprint for star-studded season finale style of 2005.
• 1:15:10
  So my question is, do you get royalties from RTD for the idea
• 1:15:15
  and he then puts in brackets? Plus, it's a really good book
• 1:15:18
  too, obviously. I'm glad he enjoys it.
• 1:15:22
  I think there's it's a it's a mess.
• 1:15:24
  It's a lovely mess. I love.
• 1:15:28
  It's it's it's got all sorts of stuff in it, good and bad or
• 1:15:35
  just lots of good bits stuck together.
• 1:15:39
  But see, Ken Livingstone is probably, he's probably
• 1:15:44
  problematic now isn't it? So.
• 1:15:48
  So I'm just going to thank God I didn't have, you know, in that
• 1:15:52
  party because that would have been ordered.
• 1:15:55
  There was, there was a lot in there about Ralph Harris, you
• 1:15:57
  know? Yeah, it was a different.
• 1:16:03
  Go and listen to I love Judge Dread.
• 1:16:04
  Go. I think we should.
• 1:16:07
  It's great. No, I think it was just, I don't
• 1:16:14
  know, I was just sort of telling what was going on at the time in
• 1:16:16
  terms of TV and and how things are done and also things like
• 1:16:23
  the Second Coming. Russell had already done all
• 1:16:25
  that he done. You know, when Chris Truxton
• 1:16:27
  comes back as Jesus, we cut to this morning with Richard and
• 1:16:32
  Judy. So it was already there.
• 1:16:35
  And the party with the celebrities, I think.
• 1:16:38
  I'm not sure if I was. I think some of that was nicked
• 1:16:43
  from, I think Lance Parker had done that in the dying days
• 1:16:45
  already. So I don't know, you just want.
• 1:16:51
  I just wanted to sort of make it more now.
• 1:16:54
  I think the moment was supposed to be a now book where this
• 1:16:57
  festival death was supposed to be a 1979 book.
• 1:17:00
  So anything which anything which makes it absolutely of that day
• 1:17:04
  is wonderful. Trouble with that is my the
• 1:17:07
  first episode of Two Hot for TV I went on to.
• 1:17:10
  That was my choice. The tomorrow windows because I
• 1:17:14
  just adore the book And Dylan, the host, he went on to name
• 1:17:20
  everybody who was at that party. And I went, good grief, I said.
• 1:17:23
  You know, this was so hot in the day.
• 1:17:24
  Now it's it dates it down exactly the.
• 1:17:28
  Celebrities of the time. Yeah, I mean, I should go back
• 1:17:33
  and reread it. I mean, I have, I have odd
• 1:17:34
  memories. And I mean, one of the things
• 1:17:37
  I'm most proud of is you have a scene which ends with someone
• 1:17:40
  going to the toilet and it cuts back like 20 years later and
• 1:17:44
  they've just finished going to the toilet somewhere else.
• 1:17:46
  It's like that's what you call that's a scene transition.
• 1:17:49
  That's a great, great standard. I have seen many writers attempt
• 1:17:53
  to do the Agatha Christie Poirot going through all the suspects.
• 1:17:57
  Moment. Yeah, many, many people try and
• 1:18:00
  fail. The tomorrow Windows version of
• 1:18:02
  that is still the best by a mile.
• 1:18:07
  That that the real business that does feel like when the end of
• 1:18:11
  the world was on TV with the mocks of Balhoon and stuff, in
• 1:18:15
  the face of that he was a similar sort of thing.
• 1:18:17
  It was just like, I just know I don't I.
• 1:18:21
  Think you've got You've got the first period.
• 1:18:22
  Of a lamp called Poos or whatever you think it's this
• 1:18:26
  small alien was just taking the being very very childish and
• 1:18:31
  just taking the Mickey out of alien bodies as well, so.
• 1:18:34
  I remember this. Wonderful you did an interview
• 1:18:35
  at the time. This is calling it's task now.
• 1:18:37
  You know an interview you did 20 odd years ago.
• 1:18:40
  And you were like, you know, I wanted to write a doctor but I
• 1:18:43
  didn't want to do this. No continuity in malarkey.
• 1:18:47
  So you just throw it all in that book.
• 1:18:49
  Honestly, you've got this. A grayas in there, Daleks in
• 1:18:51
  colour. I mean just any reference you
• 1:18:53
  can put, it's just. Yeah, well, I went a bit mad,
• 1:18:55
  but because I could, because at the time the lights were going
• 1:19:02
  out, you know, for Doctor Who, it seems an odd thing to do.
• 1:19:06
  But at the time, I for the first half of the book, as I wrote it,
• 1:19:11
  I thought Doctor Who was ending. I thought the book range was
• 1:19:14
  ending. I mean, I thought tomorrow's
• 1:19:16
  when it would be the last one, because I know that nothing has
• 1:19:21
  been commissioned after it. I was kind of depressing, you
• 1:19:25
  know, going and then by the time I got nearly all the way
• 1:19:31
  through, some more books have been commissioned.
• 1:19:34
  So it wasn't completely the last one.
• 1:19:37
  It hadn't killed the range. And then I submitted it.
• 1:19:41
  And then I think 2 days later, Doctor Who's coming back on
• 1:19:45
  television. No, it was too late.
• 1:19:47
  Just like I knew Doctor was coming back by that point.
• 1:19:49
  But then two days after I submitted it, Christopher
• 1:19:52
  Eggleston was cast. So I at the proofing stage, I
• 1:19:57
  stuck in a reference to Christopher Eggleston.
• 1:19:58
  It's. The first appearance look.
• 1:20:00
  It's Recon Doctor Who. I know you said earlier about
• 1:20:04
  Festival of Death and you know you thought that was going to be
• 1:20:07
  the only time you were going to do it, so you threw everything
• 1:20:09
  in. Well, if you thought the books
• 1:20:11
  were ended after you absolutely threw everything into the
• 1:20:14
  Tomorrow Windows thing, that's going to be the last one you
• 1:20:19
  crashed, dummy. That's the name here, says Death
• 1:20:23
  to the Doctor is one of my favorite Doctor Who comic strips
• 1:20:27
  with beautiful art from it's put at Hotel Fred.
• 1:20:32
  Yes. What a language, Yes.
• 1:20:34
  It's such a fun story. Did you ever plan any other
• 1:20:37
  Doctors to be in it and had to change it or was it always just
• 1:20:40
  those six? I think, I think it was just
• 1:20:49
  that. I can't remember.
• 1:20:50
  It wasn't going to be all of them because there had been too
• 1:20:54
  many. And I put in Ecclestone because
• 1:20:59
  I hadn't written for him. And I wanted to at least have
• 1:21:02
  one panel and be writing for the 8th Doctor and the first the 2nd
• 1:21:09
  Doctor just so I could do the joke of a panel in black and
• 1:21:12
  white. And then Roger took it even
• 1:21:16
  further by making the alien black and white all the way
• 1:21:18
  through. I think so, but I think I'm it's
• 1:21:26
  one of those things where once you've done that joke once, if
• 1:21:29
  you did that joke seven or eight times, it's not being funny, so.
• 1:21:33
  So I've got a comment rather than a question here from my
• 1:21:36
  good friend Simon Hart. Can you let him know that the
• 1:21:38
  Auntie Matter is my favorite? A real glimpse of how I imagined
• 1:21:43
  Season 16 B to be fun and witty. It's it's actually one of the
• 1:21:50
  ones where I can listen to it again.
• 1:21:51
  I I absolutely. I'm, I adore that one and that's
• 1:21:56
  one of the list of about 20 stories I'll go they could do
• 1:22:00
  that on television tomorrow. That's so absolutely easily
• 1:22:04
  shaped. You know it's just PG would have
• 1:22:07
  stopped doing and it's with maritime people for sort of
• 1:22:15
  forget that after Doctor Who she just did she did sitcoms.
• 1:22:17
  She's a comedy actress. She's a brilliant at it.
• 1:22:19
  And Doctor Who never really used that part of her sort of the
• 1:22:25
  talent. So yeah, I'm very proud of that
• 1:22:30
  one. Thank you.
• 1:22:31
  Thank you. Sigh.
• 1:22:32
  Yes. English Giraffe says Thank you
• 1:22:35
  for writing Anacrophobia. Not only one of my favourite
• 1:22:38
  edas, not only the scariest story in the series, but also a
• 1:22:42
  story that's in my top 10.2 stories overall.
• 1:22:46
  Just to comment again, yeah. Is that that top?
• 1:22:48
  I hope that's top 10 books or or top ten, everything.
• 1:22:52
  That's fantastic. Top ten everything.
• 1:22:54
  Yeah. Oh, there's definitely some.
• 1:22:55
  There's definitely some books I would have in my top ten
• 1:22:58
  everything. Oscar Groucho asks.
• 1:23:01
  If the 14th Doctor was to stare into a Tomorrow windows this
• 1:23:05
  evening, who on earth would they see?
• 1:23:11
  Oh, hang on. Where he'd see.
• 1:23:19
  Is this Just checking. I've been paying attention.
• 1:23:20
  Let's go. How we're going on?
• 1:23:23
  Very possibly. Simon Garner Photography says
• 1:23:27
  Static is one of my all time favourite Big Finish
• 1:23:29
  productions. Creep me out a fair few times,
• 1:23:32
  but in a good way. Also, I've got a lot of comments
• 1:23:35
  coming here. Mike Clues asks which one of
• 1:23:40
  your favourite works of Hang on a minute, let me try that again.
• 1:23:47
  I think he's asking which is your this is tough.
• 1:23:50
  Which is your favorite work of Doctor Who that you've done,
• 1:23:54
  that you've actually enjoyed the process of doing?
• 1:24:03
  I've just written one, which I enjoyed massively.
• 1:24:05
  But that's not going to be announced for ages, possibly.
• 1:24:13
  I don't know. I think it would be something
• 1:24:14
  like the antimatter. I just loved that.
• 1:24:16
  That was great. Fun and static was one where it
• 1:24:21
  was just going really well. I was writing it and touched by
• 1:24:25
  an Angel. I think those those are the sort
• 1:24:27
  of ones. I mean sometimes writing stuff.
• 1:24:31
  It's been like wading through treacle, I think.
• 1:24:36
  I think I did a thing called emancipation of the Daleks which
• 1:24:41
  I felt I found incredibly difficult to write.
• 1:24:46
  I got stuck twice which happens to be parts in the part one in
• 1:24:49
  the Part 2 is when I got stuck and but and so it was incredibly
• 1:24:56
  difficult but I think the end result was really good.
• 1:24:58
  I'm very, very happy with it. I think it went really well, but
• 1:25:01
  that was probably the hardest because it was also that was
• 1:25:04
  during lockdown and when I was, you know, my father died and
• 1:25:10
  stuff. So it was just a whole time to
• 1:25:12
  be writing a Doctor Who's story. So that's why I got stuck and I
• 1:25:16
  left it for six months. Whatever.
• 1:25:19
  That was a story. I could not predict where it was
• 1:25:22
  going next from half an hour to half an hour.
• 1:25:25
  In fact I, I, my other half started listening to it and then
• 1:25:29
  stopped and said you have got to hear this tonight, this, this.
• 1:25:33
  I know you. He knows I'm not a massive fan
• 1:25:35
  of the Muffet. Here he goes.
• 1:25:36
  This is absolutely the Muffet you want to see.
• 1:25:39
  So yeah, God, it was fabulous. I've said fabulous a lot, aren't
• 1:25:44
  I? Sorry Johnny, I'll think you're
• 1:25:45
  fabulous. Michael Mills asks what is your
• 1:25:49
  preferred order for listening to flip flop?
• 1:25:56
  My preferred order is to listen to Emancipation of the Daleks
• 1:26:02
  instead because because that's revisiting the same idea but
• 1:26:07
  doing it better. I think that is how I want to do
• 1:26:11
  flip flop now don't listen to flip flop.
• 1:26:15
  I mean, I'm proud of it and stuff, but I've emancipation of
• 1:26:18
  the darks is is the same idea. Ish.
• 1:26:22
  You know, it's not repeating itself, but it's the idea of
• 1:26:25
  alternative versions of history and how people change because of
• 1:26:30
  how history changes. Yeah, that's that's my answer.
• 1:26:35
  Emancipation of the Daleks. Fan of various things asks is
• 1:26:41
  there anything that you have wanted to do but weren't allowed
• 1:26:45
  to? We sort of touched that a little
• 1:26:48
  bit haven't we? About things that.
• 1:26:50
  Yeah, there's been there's been comic strip stuff where it's
• 1:26:53
  been sort of in the first comic strip.
• 1:26:56
  I was going to I wanted to do for Matt Smith.
• 1:26:59
  This is a this is a thing, which is I had this idea about
• 1:27:04
  people's reflections in mirrors being evil, and so people would
• 1:27:08
  be dragged into mirrors and then their reflections would come out
• 1:27:11
  of the mirror and replace them. And I've I've written the first
• 1:27:15
  part of the story, which is about a little boy sitting up in
• 1:27:17
  bed, and he's got a wardrobe with a mirror in front of it at
• 1:27:21
  the end of his bed. And he sees in the mirror his
• 1:27:24
  reflection of the boy and sitting up in the bed.
• 1:27:26
  And the boy in the mirror then gets out of bed and starts
• 1:27:28
  walking towards the mirror, you know, quite chilling, which is
• 1:27:34
  because that's what my bedroom was like when I was growing up,
• 1:27:36
  you know, it was a nightmare I had and I submitted that.
• 1:27:41
  And I'm going, oh, no, we're doing that in the next series.
• 1:27:43
  It's going, are you OK? Good luck.
• 1:27:47
  And then I watched the first Matt Smith series, and it's not
• 1:27:51
  in there. This is this is one of those
• 1:27:53
  stories that they were developing that they never made.
• 1:27:57
  And so I couldn't do my story because of the of something
• 1:27:59
  which never happened either. I mean, they vaguely used the
• 1:28:02
  new idea later on from the pilot story, but that was.
• 1:28:08
  It was a book as well, wasn't it, Martha.
• 1:28:10
  Martha in the Mirror in the NSA. So what was that before then?
• 1:28:15
  That might have been before then, yeah.
• 1:28:17
  But I I I don't know about that. I didn't read it, so yeah.
• 1:28:21
  Anyway, anyway, those. So that's one which I was
• 1:28:26
  couldn't do. And I've had ideas rejected,
• 1:28:30
  Lots of ideas rejected, but they're only rejected
• 1:28:34
  temporarily, You know, eventually sometimes their time
• 1:28:37
  will come around, you know, So like the story which became
• 1:28:44
  Maelstrom, you know, that was what I'd submitted as a book
• 1:28:47
  idea 10 years earlier and stuff. So there's not really anything.
• 1:28:53
  I had a mad idea about doing a story in the Falklands Wall and
• 1:28:57
  I think they've got the feedback going.
• 1:28:58
  It's too soon. It's like it's 40 years ago.
• 1:29:03
  No, it is history. But no, it's too soon.
• 1:29:07
  Well, talking of history, James H asked if you were told that
• 1:29:11
  your next story had to be a pure historical, which era would you
• 1:29:15
  set it in? Well, you're trying to find
• 1:29:20
  something which hasn't been done, which is a tricky 1I Joan
• 1:29:28
  of Arc hasn't been done yet. So I'd like to do that.
• 1:29:33
  So I'm concerned that someone else might do it better than me.
• 1:29:36
  So, or the anarchy, the whole business with Stephen and
• 1:29:41
  Matilda, that would be quite fun to do as well, because that's a
• 1:29:46
  bit of history, which is really sort of exciting and dramatic.
• 1:29:49
  It's a civil war, but it's also people don't really know much
• 1:29:53
  about it, so people could listen to it or read it without knowing
• 1:29:56
  what the ending was going to. Be as usually the historicals
• 1:29:59
  are like the the most you know, the less obvious ones, where you
• 1:30:04
  can sort of go afterwards and do a bit of research as well.
• 1:30:07
  Ian Winterton asks if you could only write Doctor Who in one
• 1:30:13
  medium audio prose comic, which would you Which would you
• 1:30:17
  choose? At least, but will leave TV out
• 1:30:19
  of this choice. Audio.
• 1:30:26
  Audio is the least amount of work is prose is, you know you
• 1:30:33
  have to write loads and comic strips you have to describe
• 1:30:36
  everything, which is a huge amount of writing as well.
• 1:30:39
  And audio, I think I've got quite good at that, so I'd stick
• 1:30:42
  with audio. And I had one other question
• 1:30:48
  from Rod. If you had completely free
• 1:30:51
  reign, which TV era would you have liked to have written for
• 1:30:55
  and why? It doesn't say if he's talking
• 1:31:02
  about actually on the TV or. Well, if it's if it's during my
• 1:31:07
  lifetime, I'd quite like. I'd like to have done something
• 1:31:11
  during Stephen Moffitt's time. Well, I don't know.
• 1:31:20
  Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm if for as far as
• 1:31:26
  writers are concerned, I think Andrew Cartman's era was a bit
• 1:31:29
  of a golden era for writers. I think any sort of other errors
• 1:31:33
  would be kind of heartbreaking because you'd just be turning up
• 1:31:38
  to the read through and discover that the script editor had
• 1:31:40
  rewritten your work completely and that Tom Baker was just
• 1:31:43
  taking the Mickey out of it, whatever.
• 1:31:45
  So I'm not sure I'd want to be a writer for the back back in the
• 1:31:52
  60s or 70s. I don't think.
• 1:31:53
  I don't. I think there's a reason why
• 1:31:56
  they all sort of died at the age of 15.
• 1:31:58
  I think it's a very stressful job.
• 1:32:01
  Oh, if we're if we're going round again with Russell and I
• 1:32:04
  suppose you've only got Four Seasons to wait and then Moffett
• 1:32:07
  will be back in charge and and then we can get that script on
• 1:32:11
  TV. Yeah, I mean, at the moment he
• 1:32:13
  says he won't, but it'll be it might be a situation of I'm
• 1:32:20
  asking him, offering him lots of money and then sort of going,
• 1:32:23
  well, if I don't do it, no one else will.
• 1:32:26
  And I don't know. I think if it's if it's if
• 1:32:33
  there's more resources behind it and it's eight episodes a year,
• 1:32:36
  it might actually be less stressful than it was back in
• 1:32:39
  the day. But who knows?
• 1:32:41
  I don't know. I've got one last question and
• 1:32:44
  it's from me. And it's sort of ties into
• 1:32:47
  something you said a little earlier.
• 1:32:48
  We're talking about Big Finish and that is, have you ever
• 1:32:51
  written a script and then Eva attended the recording, got the
• 1:32:55
  finished result and been just blown away by a name that they
• 1:33:00
  brought in to play a character? I mean, I'm almost willing to
• 1:33:05
  bet that happens frequently, but because the the talent that they
• 1:33:08
  pull in. Yeah, I mean for the for the Max
• 1:33:19
  Wolf, I wasn't at the recording, but that has an insane, insanely
• 1:33:22
  good cast. And when for for the parents, it
• 1:33:31
  was Jane Asher that was kind of kind of amazing because I'm a
• 1:33:37
  Beatles fan and so I go, she went, she went to India with
• 1:33:40
  Paul McCartney. You know, obviously you can't
• 1:33:43
  ask about that, but if she brings it up in conversation,
• 1:33:45
  you go, oh, I didn't know you knew Paul McCartney.
• 1:33:48
  How interesting did you? Did you got any nice holidays
• 1:33:51
  this? Is going to make terrible
• 1:33:54
  podcasting because I can't remember the name the the
• 1:33:56
  villainess in the Aussie matter. Oh, Miss Marple, yes, I know you
• 1:34:02
  mean. Gosh.
• 1:34:03
  Glorious. Absolutely.
• 1:34:05
  She's chewing that up and spitting it out, isn't she?
• 1:34:10
  Yeah. Julia.
• 1:34:12
  Julia. Oh.
• 1:34:15
  I can't. Remember.
• 1:34:18
  I mean it's quite late in the evening now but.
• 1:34:21
  Yeah, we are three hours in now, yeah.
• 1:34:25
  But the actor who played Maxwell Anderson in Time Travel Village
• 1:34:33
  One. Oh my God, I forgot my own
• 1:34:34
  title. Now in the summer, who is Mark
• 1:34:40
  Williams? And he's one of the few times
• 1:34:43
  I've suggested an actor for a while and they've gone with it.
• 1:34:46
  And he was brilliant as Max Letterson.
• 1:34:52
  And during part of the recording, Peter Davidson had to
• 1:34:56
  sort of step out. And so he was reading in for
• 1:34:57
  him. So I was just just going, he's
• 1:35:01
  playing Doctor Who and he was going, I can't believe I'm
• 1:35:04
  playing Doctor Who this, this is a lifetime ambition.
• 1:35:07
  Somebody record this. So I so I've heard Mark
• 1:35:11
  Williams's Doctor Who, and he's really good now.
• 1:35:13
  They should consider him often after shooting.
• 1:35:15
  I think he's busy doing Father Brown right now, which is quite
• 1:35:19
  similar parts. Why not?
• 1:35:22
  Johnny just leaves me to say thank you so much for your time.
• 1:35:26
  Thank you so much for the stories because I wasn't lying
• 1:35:29
  when I said, you know, over the last 20 years, whether it's a
• 1:35:32
  book or a comic or an audio, you've just you've thrilled me,
• 1:35:37
  you've entertained me, you've made me laugh, you've made me
• 1:35:40
  cry. I think you're one of the very
• 1:35:43
  best Doctor Who writers, and I am thrilled to hear that.
• 1:35:48
  I've still got a lot more coming as well.
• 1:35:50
  Yes, I mean, let's make it clear this isn't a valedictory
• 1:35:54
  interview. There's there's a lot more in
• 1:35:57
  the solid content, Morris pipeline, Evergreen sort of a
• 1:36:02
  strategy. There's more coming up and some
• 1:36:06
  really good stuff, really really exciting stuff that you would
• 1:36:10
  just be shocked and stunned and delighted by.
• 1:36:13
  I I'd also say thanks thanks for your support chair over the last
• 1:36:19
  20 years or it's been I do read reviews sometimes I only if the
• 1:36:24
  score was really low I'll just look at that and not read the
• 1:36:28
  rest of it and. I hate very often, you know,
• 1:36:30
  very rare. I just go, oh God, the director
• 1:36:33
  really messed that one up. And just thanks to everyone who
• 1:36:38
  sort of has been bought buying the stuff over the years, Who's
• 1:36:42
  by the Doctor magazine, for the comic strips, for the books, the
• 1:36:47
  audios, who's the very the monster Volt, utopia, all these
• 1:36:54
  things. Because I I think my job is
• 1:36:59
  insane. I feel like a competition
• 1:37:00
  winner. It's it's a joke.
• 1:37:04
  It's a it's a dream. You know, it's a wonderful thing
• 1:37:06
  to be able to do. I work incredibly hard, you
• 1:37:09
  know, I am constantly in mortal dread of the next generation
• 1:37:16
  coming along and pulling the rug out from under me and very
• 1:37:18
  conscious of of that. And I'm very grateful for this
• 1:37:23
  opportunity and to being able to do it for so long and to work
• 1:37:28
  with so many great actors and other writers and directors and
• 1:37:34
  so on. If I if I die tomorrow, that'd
• 1:37:36
  be quite nice sort of thing to. But I'm not going to.
• 1:37:39
  But yeah, thank you to you and everyone.
• 1:37:42
  Everyone is listening. It's really it's appreciated in
• 1:37:45
  this direction just as much. Less valedictory, more
• 1:37:49
  celebratory. Sure, we say.
• 1:37:51
  Thank you, Johnny. Thanks for your time.
• 1:37:53
  Thank you.