You can find John's first interview here - http://docohobigfinish.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/john-dorney-interview.html
The
Elite, Hexagora, Guardians of Prophecy, The First Sontarans and the
Rosemariners (plus all of the fourth series stories and the Lost Stories
boxset) all started with written storylines. These have varied from about two
and a half pages for the Elite to around twenty for Lords of the Red Planet.
Children of Seth was lots of script extracts and storyline extracts in a rather
complex jumble. Power Play (under the title of Meltdown) was, I believe half
scripted. And Luxor was obviously a full script.
The next
stage of the process is deciding on writers. If the original author is still
with us and interested in doing the script, they do it. Otherwise we try and
find someone we'll feel is a good match for the material and will have a
certain affinity for that writer's style. Usually this is a gut thing, you can
pretty much see who's right instantly. Marc Platt and Christopher Bailey seemed
obvious, for example, and both me and David Richardson immediately went for
Jonny Morris for Valley of Death. I knew Simon Guerrier would do an amazing job
of The Mega, and thought the feminine ethos and magical realism of Queen of
Time would be a perfect fit for Catherine Harvey. Sometimes you're up against
busy schedules, and sometimes there are
a couple of people who'd do different but equally interesting passes on the
material, so it's not always as cut and dried as that, but it's usually an easy
process.
The next
stage is much the same as with any regular release. The writer works up a
storyline from the original breakdown, fixing the bits they don't feel work,
and it goes to the BBC, then they script it. Each different writer will go
about this a different way. I'm quite savage with the storylines I've got,
pulling them apart, putting them back together in slightly different ways. Some
other writers are more reverential. A lot of the time the writers rework their
own original ideas. Donald Tosh's storyline was an interesting one - he'd
reworked his original idea for a DWM article years before, which wasn't
precisely similar to the one he sent us... but anything in one that didn't
quite work, worked beautifully in the other and vice versa so we combined the
two.
Do you try and make them as authentic as possible or is
there the temptation to shift them towards the sort of storytelling Big Finish
is doing nowadays?
Authenticity
is key, but at the same time I don't want the emptiness of pastiche. My rule of
thumb is that everything in the scripts must be something that could plausibly
have appeared on screen if it had been made at the time. So this meant that
with Foe from the Future, say, I spent ages trying to find the funniest looking
and sounding car to name check in one sequence (well, second funniest as
someone had already used Ford Prefect)... but one that would have been around
at the time. I tried to avoid using any continuity that would have appeared
afterwards (I'm sure someone referenced Sontarans in one of the stories
predating Time Warrior at some point and I nixxed that), whilst at the same
time trying to avoid anything that contradicts later episodes - which meant loaning Cathie Harvey the
Lance Parkin History so that none of the dates she used clashed with future
events.
Sometimes
this is easier than you think - having Tegan meet a Dalek didn't contradict
Resurrection in any way, as no one at any point in that story bothers to ask
what that metal creature is. Yes, maybe Tegan would say 'oh, no, not the Daleks
again' and she doesn't... but that's no odder than her failure to say 'what the
blazes is that?'
Now every
now and then somebody will stop by and say 'oh, now I don't think this bit of
dialogue is very period, they're trying to ape the new series' - I'm thinking
in particular here of moments like the Doctor saying 'Hurt them and you'll be
punished' in the Elite, or some people saying the fourth Doctor comes across a
bit eleventh Doctor in Foe... if people feel that, they feel that, but it's
wrong to suggest that it's a conscious intent to ape the new series, or even
our own newer stuff. What feels authentic in the moment when you're
writing is very much a personal thing.
Obviously, we're writing these scripts in the twenty first century, and you
can't do that in a vacuum, you're a product of your time, but these lines go in
because they feel right and true to the character. For every person who doesn't
buy it as period, somebody else will come along and say 'no, that's totally
period'.
Certainly
with the Elite I wanted to make it feel absolutely like the eighties, so I watched
as many Davison stories as possible. I dropped in as many Sawardisms as I could
- random references to the previous story in the opening TARDIS scene.
Pointless continuity reference (to, I was delighted, one of our other Lost
Stories, the Rosemariners). Stemp gets killed off for no good reason when the
plot's run out of things for her to do. And ending with somebody killing
themselves in an act of self-sacrifice. And the sound effects and music really
sell that period feel. Really love it!
Do you more often have a germ of an idea or a treatment or
a full script to start with?
Almost
always a full treatment. Luxor is the only exception, I think, maybe Power
Play. Sometimes there isn't really enough for four episodes (I needed to flesh
out The Elite quite a bit). Sometimes you have too much - two full storylines
for Lords of the Red Planet, where I ultimately cherry picked the best bits of
both. And sometimes frustratingly incomplete - a missing final episode for Foe
from the Future.
Is it literally a case of splitting the material between
the companions who are still with us or did you make certain decisions
creatively to focus on the companions that you did?
It's
largely a question of looking at who could have plausibly been in them at the
time - usually a wide range given a lot of development time - and then making
choices depending on who would be good for the material. Nyssa and Tegan for
the Elite was an obvious opportunity - one who would be eligible and one who
wouldn't. The Rosemariners storyline featured Victoria, but had it been made it
would have featured Zoe, so we had a choice there and we went with the one we
felt would help the story.
Can you tell of any stories that you were completely
unaware of or ones that surprised you because they weren’t made?
In every
case, I can sort of see why they didn't happen, but it's usually about clashing
elements (First Sontarans with Two Doctors) or budget, or busy writers (Foe).
It's never about quality of ideas - in every case this was a huge loss to us
(hence 'Lost Stories') as the actual ideas were terrific.
Of the finished results do you have any favourites?
I think
Jonny's done a brilliant job of Guardians of Prophecy. It feels so authentic
and fun. I'm particularly proud of that because when David was looking for
titles I suggested it. I'd got a bit obsessed with how fandom had seemed to
forget it - it was the first missing storyline I'd become aware of after seeing
Jonny Byrne talk about it at a Local Group meeting in the eighties or nineties.
I think it was the first to get a synopsis in DWM. Though when I got the gig,
it wasn't mentioned on any of the missing story websites. So I suggested it -
and it was the quickest deal on any of them. Emailed David about it on Monday
morning, sent photocopies through of the DWM article at lunch time, deal had
been struck by the afternoon.
The First
Sontarans is fabulous. Andrew hadn't done a full cast audio before, so there
were quite a few notes on the first draft, but he learnt quickly and produced
something amazing. I remember swinging by the studio for one day - getting the
mad cross section of historical action and space-ship battles in the same day
really emphasise the story's scope.
And,
obviously, I love the Elite! I'm terribly proud of that, my first full length
Who audio. (SPOILER PHOBES, LOOK AWAY NOW) The end of episode three twist was
mine and I literally jumped around the house in excitement when I was allowed
to do it. The thinking was that the Dalek was in the original storyline for a
few lines at the end before getting killed quickly, and end of story. David had
initially suggested introducing it at the end of part three, then suggest end
of part two... which made me think 'hold on... what if I still only have it in there for an episode?' Gave it a
presence in episode two too to sweeten the deal, but by then it was the whole
thematic point of the story - that we've forgotten what makes the Daleks scary
- not the voice, not the armour, not the 'exterminate' but what they represent.
That was
the twist I was keen to protect. I didn't really mind if people spot it's a
Dalek. Some people think the cover gives it away, some people think the voice
does. Others miss it completely. But a lot of people knew the storyline already
so that wasn't really an issue. I begged not to publicise the Dalek, but that
was so that people didn't buy it expecting a 'Dalek story'. And whilst it is a
Dalek story, I suppose, it's a story about the Daleks and what they are...
they're not really in it. If you've bought it for Dalek action and you get one
Dalek that never leaves its room, never says exterminate, never kills anyone
and is dead within one episode, you'll piss people off. If the Dalek is a
bonus, then it's a nice surprise. So yep, love that one.
Can you tell us anything about the upcoming tales?
The first
three are all Brian Hayles storylines. Richard Bignell provided us with a large
selection of them - about a dozen I think, all published in his excellent
fanzine Nothing at the End of the Lane, or in Red Planet's case, the Prison in
Space script book - essential purchases. The final one is a Bill Strutton
Pertwee tale called the Mega.
Not much
to say other than I love them all, I think it's a really strong final season.
Cathie's take on Queen of Time is beautiful and witty, much like Cathie
herself. Matt's done a fab recreation of the period with The Dark Planet to the
degree Maureen O'Brien couldn't believe she never made it for TV! One thing I'd
learnt from writing Foe from the Future and watching six parters on TV is that
they work best when you make them big and epic, and that's a very definite
Hartnell trait. Huge journey's that justify the story length. Matt really ran
with that and it has a similar feel to Macedon and Luxor. Simon's Mega is a
great romp to finish the range, an infectiously joyous action movie as you'd
expect from the Pertwee years, with just a hint of TV comic about it. Hugely
enjoyable.
I've
written Lords of the Red Planet. It's kind of a 'genesis of the Ice Warriors'
but with a twist. And it is, again, an epic with a phenomenal cast. Michael
Troughton as a benevolent scientist, Abigail Shaw as our villain, and Charlie
Hayes as an egotistical princess (you couldn't be in the guest cast without a
famous parent!). Nick's on Ice Warrior duties again and is wonderful doing some
unusual variations on a theme. I think it'll be a lot of fun.
The Justice of Jalxar was highly anticipated because of the
reunion between the fourth Doctor and Jago & Litefoot. Is it daunting to
write something that fans have been waiting to experience for several decades?
What was your goal when approaching this tale?
Same as
with any script, I suppose, to write the best story I could. Something that
didn't demean the memory of Talons but worked as a story in its own right and
could work if you hadn't seen Talons, hadn't heard any of the Jago and Litefoot
stories and so on. It's why it's set ten years after the regular audios, incidentally
- I wanted to write a script where the dialogue could work had it been
transmitted in the seventies, but also worked in a post Professor Dark world.
I'm slightly amazed that people miss Litefoot querying the Doctor's appearance.
It's definitely there, but it's deliberately brief because who wants to waste
time doing continuity admin when there's a story to tell?
Who did you find it easier to write for – Louise Jameson
or Mary Tamm –
since they play such different characters?
Louise I
was very used to, I'd been writing for her for over a year what with Jago and
Litefoot - I realised, incidentally, that I've written more material for Louise
as Leela than anyone else, TV series included. Nick's catching up rapidly,
though!
Mary was
therefore more of a challenge, but she seemed to click from the very first go.
I think
I'm fortunate in that capturing the voices seems to come quite naturally to me.
I think growing up watching these stories helps, the voices are in my head
already if that doesn't sound too crazy. Sometimes these will need tweaks - I
added a bit more psychoanalysis for Romana in draft two because David felt
no-one had done that enough and it was a key factor - but by and large, as long
as I can imagine the actor saying it, then it feels right.
What strengths does Romana bring to the series?
She's
very good at puncturing the Doctor's pomposity. I also think they work well as
a team - I've mentioned before that I love the Jamie/Zoe dynamic where they
patronise each other, and there's something similar with the Doctor and Romana,
they both think they're a bit better than the other and they need to keep them
out of trouble. Leela's always learning, and whilst she can often see through
the Doctor's bluster, Romana's the one where there's always a shifting power
structure.
The cover is excellent –
do you have a favourite of all your releases?
Love the
Demons of the Red Lodge cover, though I'm only a quarter of that, and I adore
Adrian Salmon's Dead Man's Switch cover (I bought the original illustration off
him - that's getting framed too!). And I've only just seen Anthony Lamb's
beautiful cover for The King of Sontar, full of drive and energy.
So most
of them, I think is the answer!
You’re
companion chronicle The Rocket Men was met with almost universal acclaim. Did
you approach this as a story that finally had Ian say those out loud that some
of us have been longing to hear for a long time?
I always
try to look for an emotional hook, if I can, something to lead me into the
story. I think character journeys are the most important element of story
telling. I saw a play the other day which I found a little unsatisfying because
whilst the plot ended somewhere different from where it started, all of the
characters were effectively the same people. They'd not grown or changed in any
way. That's what you need to make it stop being just a plot and become a story.
Having
said that, the actual hook was the very last thing I thought of - though the
moment I did, it unlocked the rest of it. I'd already decided I wanted to do
rocket-men in the old fashioned republic serial style. And I knew from that
that the cliffhanger had to be someone being thrown into mid-air to fall... For
a long time, that was Ian, as it was his story. It was only later, when I
thought 'what if it was Barbara', and the line 'I'll never let you fall again'
came to mind that the whole thing clicked.
Was that your decision to bring their relationship out into
the open?
It was. I
emailed David to ask if we could do it, and we got the word back that the Sarah
Jane adventures had confirmed their marriage, so I was fine to run with it.
How difficult was it to writer a script with the dramatic
device of finishing and ending each scene with the same phrase?
Not
particularly hard, from what I recall. I knew what the scenes were going to be,
and then it was just a matter of tweaking the lines at one side of the break to
reflect the other. Most of the time, this barely needed any work at all. I
can't quite remember why I did that. Given that I'd set myself all manner of
rods for my own back (present and past tense sections; the present sections
being 'live' with only spoken dialogue by the actors we had, none for those we
didn't... and reversing that in the past sections; having to hold back
information for an entire episode) it seems baffling that I threw in another
complication. I suspect it probably happened by accident in the early stages
and I thought 'oh, why not!'
Do you have a favourite moment in this story?
The ends
of the episodes, and the reveal in two. Howard Carter is one of my favourite
sound designers and he's particularly fabulous at episode endings and he does
it with both here - he does it with the end of parts five and six of Foe from
the Future too - the build at the end of part one in particular is wonderful.
I'd never been quite sure when I was writing if the cliffhanger was Barbara
getting pushed out of the airlock or Ian's leap. It's baffling to me now that I
ever considered the former. I think I wasn't sure if it made the twist obvious
- scripting twists is one of the big difficulties of writing I think. You can
never put yourself in the position of the audience. With the rest of the
material you can always have a reasonable feel for where they'll emote, where
they'll laugh... but not where they'll be surprised as you always know what's
coming and can never be in a position of ignorance. You'll never know how much
you can reveal without blowing the gaff. So when people bought into that
cliffhanger and then bought into the rug pull, then I was delighted. It was a
trick which could only work in a Companion Chronicle, and whilst I'd usually be
wary of those as it can feel a shade tricksy, I'm very fond of that.
You must have been thrilled when you heard the finished
result, especially William Russell’s
passionate performance.
Of
course. He's easily one of the best actors the series has ever employed and his
voice is a thing of beauty. It's a privilege to have him speak your words, but
frankly I'm thrilled when I hear him do anything, he's that good. He makes me
forget I wrote it and I get caught up!
The Fourth Wall is one of my absolute favourites from the
main range in the past couple of years. What can you tell me about the
conception of this story?
Very
little, actually, as I think I wrote up the initial proposal about a decade
ago! The idea came, I think, from being
intrigued by the magical realism of the Woody Allen film 'The Purple Rose of
Cairo', a film I've still never watched all the way through, oddly. I initially
came up with the idea when Big Finish did an open submission window about 2003,
and it was rejected! And with good reason - whilst a lot of the eventual plot
was there, it wasn't really right yet, there were structural flaws. I think,
given that I'd quite a good writers cv at the time, I'd rather arrogantly
assumed they'd take it on anyway and give me development time. One of the major
ones I remember was that after the half-way point, when the villain broke out,
the story never really grew. It just became 'run away from the monsters'. The
fix on that was the quest for multiple Lord Krarns. I needed to raise the
stakes.
However,
there were ideas in the other two stories they liked as well - the Porcians in
one and the fake out companion death in the other - and asked if I could
squeeze those bits into mine as well. I thought writing Flip out would be
tricky, but it went surprisingly well. I figured out how to revive her in about
ten minutes of swimming (my usual thinking time!), and tweaked the plot
slightly. Originally, Doctor Shepherd died at the end of part two, but in the
new version she fulfilled Flip's role from the original draft. This meant I had to lose a slight subplot of
a faint romance developing between Flip and Laser - there just wasn't enough
time to build the bond.
The
Porcians were tricky. I was also a little concerned that including them in an
already quite high-concept and crazy storyline might knock it too far into
wacky (I think you can usually get away with about one 'funny' thing in a story
before it starts to totter), so it was something I had to tread carefully
with... and I know that for some people it's all a little too demented, but I
think the story eventually worked better with them and they did illustrate the
story's point and theme rather effectively. Oddly, they came even further back
in the process, the initial idea turned up in an incomplete fanzine storyline
for an old Local Group mag we called 'The Hourly Press', twenty years. The
final cliffhanger was of their first appearance and I never got to explain who
they were. The oddest thing is that they seem so much more relevant now in our age
of talent and reality shows than they were then!
Was it daunting being ‘promoted’ to the main
range?
I think I
just thought 'about time'! No, that's a joke - I think I'd written enough at
that time, and had high-profile stuff like new Tom Baker audios coming up, that
it was just another job. They're not really all that different. It's one of the
reasons I tend to prefer talking about it as 'the monthly' rather than 'main'
range, it's not more important just because it was the first series we released.
They're all important, I don't see it as a promotion.
How did you find it writing for Sixie and was there a great
deal of collaboration regarding Flip considering this was her first trilogy of
adventures?
Sixie
surprised me - Colin's so witty and loquacious that I didn't really notice his
Doctor isn't much of a joker. The sixth Doctor's gags are deliberately big and
bad puns, that sort of thing, and a lot of the humour comes from the outside
with him (like the 'quarry' gag in part one - the laugh is in the pause rather
than in what he says), and sometimes it's laughing at him and his pomposity. I
think I really noticed this as I'd just come off writing the fourth Doctor,
where you practically can't shut him up for jokes, where the problem is keeping
him serious.
Are the (delightful) Porcians going to get another airing?
We talked
about it at the recording and it's a possibility. I'd quite like to bring them
back at some point, certainly, but it would have to be the right story. They're
a little tricky to write as actual antagonists, you see. But I've ideas of what
I could do with them, a few gags already written and a title in mind. We'll
see. You can't tell - I'd never have guessed the Rocket Men were going to
become recurring villains, but that happened!
Can you discuss a little more the intriguing idea about the
responsibility of writers towards their characters that you explored in this
adventure?
I
remember being quite struck by a Lawrence Miles comment in an interview where he
said he didn't kill people off willy-nilly because he didn't want to be killed
at the random caprice of some heavenly script-writer. That was developed when I
saw the film Sudden Death - a surprisingly not terrible Jean Claude Van Damme
film, with a slightly unpleasant attitude to death. I tried to understand why I
felt that I could take the death in Die Hard, but this film made me struggle.
I'm still not entirely sure, but there's a sense with the former that it takes
care to show the impact and effect of every murder. When a good character dies,
it has consequences, people are shocked and horrified (if there are no
witnesses other than us an audience, it's done with brutality so we don't get
kicks from it). And they have reasons
to be there - they serve to illustrate a point. There are a couple I can
remember in SD where people are killed in a mean-spirited manner, but it sort
of felt like it was supposed to look cool. I thought the makers were slightly
siding with the killer, gleefully murdering innocents.
You're
writing action/adventure drama, so people are going to die, but ideally, if
you've written your story well enough, the audience should feel pain when the
characters die. You should feel pain as you write them dying. And the
characters in the stories should know this is a horrible thing. These should be
real people, not cannon fodder.
Of course
- I'm a total hypocrite. I'm one of the most gleeful mass killers in Big Finish
- off the top of my head The Elite, The Foe from the Future, the Fourth Wall,
the Burning Prince, Echoes of Grey... yep, all massacres. But I try to keep
them horrible and shocking. Because that's what murder is.
The Wrath of the Iceni was one of the most vivid adventures
of the first season of 4DAs. How much about Boudica did you already know about
and how much research did this story entail?
I knew
the rough outline of her story, the bare bones. Childhood memories of Tony
Robinson narrating her history. But really, very little - which was odd as at
the time of writing it I was living not too far from her original home and a
model Iceni village.
The main
thing I realised when reading, the main thing I discovered, was that I thought
she was utterly horrible. It's important to bear in mind that the only sources
we have for her are Roman texts, sometimes written with a particular political
point of view to impart, so they're not necessarily unbiased... but they're not
terribly flattering to the Romans either (they're where we get the raped
daughters from, after all) and they're the only source we have so we can't just
imagine a bowdlerised version and guess she was nicer. The more I read up on
her the more shocked I was that this icon of England and feminism was an awful
example of both. Yes, she was mistreated, very badly, but she was a willing
collaborator until it went bad for her, and then gleefully massacred women,
children, the aged and the infirm. Not someone to be celebrated in my view,
which is why she is the closest the story has to a villain.
Was it a mission statement to bring together two strong
female characters (Leela and Boudica) and contrast their approaches to war?
Not
exactly. The concept just happened. As I've said before, the brief was 'romans
in Britain' and I woke up that night, though 'Leela meets Boudica', then
thought - 'yeah, that's it' and went to sleep again.
From that
point on, the arc of the story is relatively clear. Leela meets Boudica,
becomes enamoured with her, decides to go... then changes her mind and rejoins
the Doctor. It was just a question of finding the reason for that, and my
increasing dislike of the real historical figure supplied me with that reason.
If I made
a mistake in the scripting, I think it was giving the Doctor lines about how he
isn't able to change history, because I think people then start viewing it as
being a 'companion learns they can't change history' story a la The Aztecs and
see the rest of that story through that filter when it isn't that at all,
leaving them feeling a bit 'it's been done'. I've seen that turn up a few
times, and I think that's a total misunderstanding of the piece. She certainly
doesn't learn that, and it barely turns up as a notion in episode two, but the
idea's already been planted. The important arc of the story is Leela is swayed
by Boudica... but then what she learns is that not all fights are just. She
leaves Boudica because she learns she's not noble or wise or good... not
because of notions of 'history', which is an esoteric point borne out of
convenience for the show rather than being based on logic. The story is about
how our idols often have feet of clay, and how acts that seem noble initially
can be anything but - not anything like 'you can't change history'. To convey
this properly, the Doctor's chief objection should probably have been 'don't
listen to her, she's not very nice'... but that would have rather given away
where it was going and is harder for Leela to ignore (she wouldn't know why
not, given the context, any more than I do!). And in the context it's probably
something the Doctor would say... so actually, maybe it isn't a mistake as
such, it's the right choice with unfortunate consequences!
How demanding was it trying to capture Leela’s voice on
audio?
Pretty
easy, much as with Romana. I think I struggled a bit in the initial drafts of
Swan Song, needed to make her less technological. But once you've got the tone,
it's a doddle. I'm so used to her now, I don't really have to think about her
lines any more.
The Burning Prince is practically told in real time,
buzzing with energy and excitement. Was it difficult to try and keep that sort
of momentum and impetus going throughout an hour and half tale?
Yeah, it
is quite pacey, isn't it? I was very tempted to change the title when I was
writing it to one word - 'Run'. I doubt I'd have been allowed that though! I
think I had to persuade Alan to let me go over the word count because I was
certain the whole thing was going to have to be played at such a breathless
lick that the scripts would have to be a little longer than usual to come in on
time.
Was it
difficult to write? Not really, you just try to keep that energy whilst you're
writing. The big action sequences I tended to write quite breathlessly, driving
the writing through, doing the
scripting in one go, trying to reflect the actual material. The quieter moments
- and there are surprisingly plenty for all the talk of its speed - I took at a
more relaxed pace.
Is it easier to write the first part of a trilogy of tales
(setting up) or to wrap everything up?
When Alan
and I talked through the ideas for the trilogy, it wasn't set in stone which
one I was going to write. It tends to get talked of as the 'Drashani Trilogy'
but that's misleading as they're barely mentioned in the Shadow Heart. The
brief was a trilogy about the birth and development of a villain. When I
finally nailed down what I though the character could be, story one was so
detailed that it was obviously going to be mine. It also gave a reasonable
framework for story two... but I didn't have a massive idea of how to finish it
off. So I think the finale is tougher.
Had I written story two as well, I suspect I'd have got more of a sense of
where it could go for a third script, but in the original discussion I think
the furthest I'd got was vaguely along the lines of 'A History of Violence'.
Was it easy to find companion replacements in this story
and is it refreshing to write for the Doctor unencumbered with companions?
I didn't
really think in terms of companion replacements. I'm not sure they're vital to
telling Doctor Who stories, I'd argue that none of the Kylo trilogy really have
companion replacements as such. If your story features a character who's a
natural fit for that sort of role (like Nicola Walker's fab Liv Chenka in
Robophobia) then go with that, but there's a certain freedom you gain without
having companions, a different type of storytelling you can go for.
As an
example, when I was writing this I was aware I'd made life difficult for Ken
because there's a long, half-hour action sequence from the middle of episode
one to the middle of episode two - and for the most part, because of the way
the story is structured, the entire cast are all present throughout. And there
were seven actors, which is one more actor than we have booths for in the
studio. So Alan Barnes suggested a way of splitting the cast up, Kylo getting
sent off in an escape shuttle with his own few cast members, the rest in the
crashing ship, the way we'd do it with a companion. I was kind of against this
as I thought you can tell a different type of story with only the Doctor, more
focused, and we should try and embrace that (also it did rather mean that the
Doctor wouldn't really get much of a chance to actually meet Kylo, which would
neuter the rest of the trilogy in my eyes). So Ken just had to suffer.
Having
said all that, Shira in the story is clearly a decoy based on the idea of the
substitute companion. I'm quite proud of that feint, and the first episode in
particular. Really chuffed that it was released on its own as a freebie because
I love the build of the second half.
This trilogy received something of a mixed response with
much of the praise being focused on your tale –
is there something about space opera tales that turns people off?
Well, I
don't think it's been 100% love for The Burning Prince, and I think The Shadow
Heart doesn't come out too badly with fans! Jonny's a brilliant, brilliant
writer and he utterly nailed that, a really tough brief and he pulls it off
whilst throwing in some wonderful structural innovation. I think Rick had a
tough gig with Acheron Pulse - he had to do the most trad one, and that's
tough.
I do
think that Doctor Who fans don't always like sci-fi. I'm not totally sure that
I do! I think Doctor Who is often mistaken for sci-fi, when it's more a science
fantasy thing. And I'd say the more hard edged stuff this story represents
isn't a natural fit for me. Nick can do this sort of stuff brilliantly in his
sleep, whereas I... I think my style is more 'scientific romance'. Not in the
sense of it literally including romance, but that it's a little more fanciful
and playful and light. Despite my blood-thirsty tendency to massacre everyone.
Therefore
in an otherworldy story, you're already against it, so you have to find
humanity in the aliens. They don't have to look or be human for me to connect
with them if I understand them, if I can empathise with them. And I suspect
that's another problem with the trilogy, some people don't really 'get' Kylo.
If you have an unpleasant character in a villain role, people are willing to
buy that, but I think the fact he doesn't really fulfil that sort of function
in the Burning Prince wrong-foots people. Within the context of this single
story, he fills a role that in any other script would be taken by a likeable,
sympathetic figure. They think they're supposed to like him, or feel sympathy
for him (which they're not, really) and seem to resent the fact that they
don't. I've never really bought the Marvel comics notion that someone can turn
from totally good to totally evil over-night a la Doctor Octopus, etc, I think
they have to have the potential for being bad before that, so he's spoilt,
petulant, quick tempered and a murderer even before he's an actual full-blown
villain. He doesn't deserve what he
gets, because no-one does, but disliking him for being deliberately dislikeable
seems perverse. I'm happy that he's not a cliche.
Tom Baker couldn’t
have asked for a better kick start to his Big Finish career than The Foe from
the Future, after listening to that critically acclaimed tale people were
chomping at the bit for more.
Was this a collaboration between Robert Banks Stewart and
yourself or were you given the bare bones of the story and tasked with fleshing
it out with character and incident?
Robert
felt I should have a free hand to do what I wanted with it, so it was largely a
question of me working up his 1976 synopsis. I did get a random email from him
one day where he was lovely about it, quite out of the blue, which was
obviously rather special!
The
synopsis is one of the few that is, word for word, in the public domain as it
was published in the back of the Adrian Rigelsford Hinchcliffe years book. It
gets increasingly less detailed as it goes along and there's no sixth episode.
Episode
one was about three pages of relatively detailed storyline, even scene
breakdown. I stuck to that fairly precisely (bar for including a TARDIS library
scene at the top as I thought there needed to be a slow entrance for the Doctor
and Leela). The major additions were Butler and Charlotte from the village,
largely to give other characters people to talk to in scenes that would
otherwise have been completely silent. In a few cases - like teleporting the
Doctor in episode three - Charlotte got Leela's part of the storyline, but by
and large I developed her separately as she didn't exist (her main sub-plot was
conceived largely to provide the pun punchline at the story's end). Butler was
part of a conscious decision to ape Robert Banks Stewart stories from the TV
show, that Chase/Scorby set up.
Episode
two and three I tried to finesse a bit, collating a few capture/escapes into
one to avoid it being too much of a runaround. And trying to smooth over the
two/three location change a bit.
I felt
when reading it that you can slightly feel Robert running out of steam the
further he goes on. Each episode gets shorter and less detailed. By the time we
get to episode five, it's a single page that basically amounts to 'the Doctor
builds a gun... it doesn't work'. I was gratified when Robert was interviewed
in DWM that he said pretty much the same thing. He recognised himself in the
first three episodes, less in four and five, so I think my instincts to punch
up the second half were right. I've said before that I view the story as
starting almost entirely with Robert (episode one), and ending entirely with me
(episode six) and that the rest work on a sliding scale between the two. By the
time you get to episode four, there's rough similarities between my script and
the storyline, but nothing like the direct correlation of episode one. I tried
to keep things like the cliffhangers broadly the same (the exception being
episode five's cliffhanger, where I added about five extra elements of peril,
because really, a story should be ramping up - if the cliffhanger at the end of
a fifth episode isn't the biggest thing ever, it should be!). And the major
characters all die at the same place in the narrative and in a broadly similar
way.
Having
said that, I did deliberately up the gruesome sadism a bit, to capture that
Seeds of Death feeling, which is why so many people die horribly, and the
villains all get rather hoist on their own petards.
How do you begin pacing a six part Doctor Who story without
resorting to padding?
I think
the old thing about a two parter followed by a four parter works, although I
think Foe is more 2:3:1, which is closer to classical structure. I did try and finesse the episodes across
this a bit though, so it's less obviously chunks of discrete plot, threads
crossing over across the broad structural chunks.
Otherwise,
I think it comes back to what I said regarding the Lost Stories - scale. You
have to make the story big enough to justify the length. That's true every
time. I thought when I was casting around for ideas for what eventually became
'Special Features' that the key to a one-parter is an idea that you couldn't
write any longer. It can't just be a condensed two parter (unless you're a
Steven Hall level genius). It has to be a small idea you explore fully. And it
works all that way every time. The type of villain I have in a two parter, and
what they're up to (the slightly amateurish villainy of Stone et al in Jalxar,
for example) is smaller than in a four parter (warring families in The Burning
Prince) and that in turn is smaller than in a six parter (entire species and
universes). For a six parter you're writing an epic - so there need to be
enough threads and characters and scale to justify it. Certainly, I loved
having that amount of time. I was able to build arcs into the story for
everyone, give every character their own journey, set things up five episodes
in advance in some cases. And take my time letting the characters grow. I think
the length is one of the reasons I like it so much.
Swan Song and Beautiful Things were both highlights of
their respective seasons of Jago & Litefoot. Is it as much fun writing for
these two characters as it appears?
Was Swan Song an attempt to do something completely
different with the range and set the majority of the tale in the modern day?
Perhaps,
but it was Justin's idea so you'd have to ask him. I loved the set up though,
and again that script's something of a favourite. I'm aware it's had something
of a mixed response from the fans because they don't feel it fits the series as
they view it, but I'm really proud of it and think if you release your
inhibitions and view in independently and objectively, it's not a bad piece of
work.
With Beautiful Things, how easily did you find the worlds
of Jago & Litefoot and Oscar Wilde colliding?
What do you think is the reason for the continuing success
and excitement surrounding this range?
Great
actors playing characters. It really is as simple as that. I like some stories
more than others, that's bound to happen... but what I'm addicted to and what
keeps me coming back are Trevor and
Christopher.
Of your stories of late what has been your most rewarding
experience?
Well, of
the ones I can talk about, probably The Assassination Games. Having the monthly
range release for the 50th Anniversary month was a lot of pressure (that's the
one I mentioned earlier) and I always wanted to have a story that lived up to
that. Alan had given me quite a shopping list and it took quite some time
before I had a story that worked for me, but when I did I really really
loved it. There's a James Bond influence there, both the films and the books -
such a quintessential sixties figure, but too big a style of story to fit into
the hour long tales of regular Counter-Measures storylines - suddenly I had the
space to do it justice. Bond fans will probably notice the quite obvious
specific influence on the story, but I've thrown in a few twists of my own that
no-one's done before. And for anyone who thought the plot of The Burning Prince
was too simple, this one is for you. You'll have to properly pay attention,
it's enormously complicated - something I feel is sort of required if you're
going for a McCoy story.
I think
it's a lot of fun. In particular I love the villains and I may want to try and
bring them back at some point too as I think they have the potential and the
originality to make that work. One of the actors told us of his increasing
delight as he read the script - 'Oh, I'm a bad guy... Oh, I'm a really bad
guy... Oh, I'm an 'X' bad guy planning 'Y'...'
It was lovely to write for the C-M team. It took me until series two
before I got to run with them, and I discovered they're all terrific to write,
very similar to Jago and Litefoot in that it almost happens without you
thinking. And another joyous aspect was setting it between seasons twenty five
and six. No-one ever uses that gap and I wanted to see what it gives you - an
angst free Ace is probably the big one. She's just having a ball saving the
world and constantly saying 'Gordon Bennet' and other fun expostulations. So
that one - I adore it.
That's
probably more a question of it being the latest one I've done, of course,
reasonably fresh in my head. So I should probably mention the next two Tom
Baker scripts I've got - the King of Sontar and the Crooked Man. One of the
nicest things people have said about me on the forums was that you'd never be
able to tell my scripts were by the same person, because they're largely
different in style, and these two really emphasise that, I think. Sontar is an
action script, Crooked Man is more elegiac and fairy tale - a scientific
romance, not science-fiction (something I think is probably characteristic of
most of my work), with a fair sense of humour.
I'm
entertained by the fact people on Facebook and Twitter have thought we might
not be aware of the Leela/Sontaran meeting in Invasion of Time. We're fans, of
course we do! It was a minor level head-scratcher, I'll admit. I didn't want
Leela to go all amnesiac, that's too obvious and easy - she remembers
absolutely every part of the adventure, and yep, she meets more than one
Sontaran. Fortunately the story concept worked in my favour, and a careful
viewing of Invasion of Time helped me out too. I'll warn you in advance, though
- it isn't spelt out and you'll need to pay close attention to both stories in
the balance to get it, but I'll happily go into detail after the release for
anyone who misses it!
Crooked
Man... not sure what I can say about this one. Creepy goings on in an English
seaside town, that about sums it up.With a few twists and turns. Rather
unusually, it's a story where the Doctor and Leela don't really split up.
There's a couple of pages where one might have raced off ahead of the other,
but by and large they hang out together, which was fun to write.
What can you tell us of the future with Big Finish and
other projects?
For Big
Finish - more of the same. Lots of writing, some acting, some script editing.
I've a small part in the 50th anniversary release The Light at the End, a
little thank you for helping it to become reality and get made! I got to read
in for most of the different Doctors at different times, which was fun. I think
people will really enjoy it.
I've been
adapting the missing episodes of The Avengers into audio. By and large, I've
barely touched them as we wanted to keep them as close as possible to how they
would have been transmitted. This has meant switching off my editors hat and
avoiding solving plot holes, tying up loose ends if they weren't solved or tied
up fifty years ago! I'm really looking forward to this one - the casting for
Steed and Keel should have been impossible, but the choices are so spot on I
bought into the project immediately. They'll be terrific.
Lots of
exciting scripts for all manner of ranges I can't mention. The letter i becomes
problematic for somebody both new and old. An old enemy meets a new creation.
The dark finale for a new range. Other things to adapt, an old friend in new
forms.
3 comments:
Great interview. Do you just email your questions to your interviewees, or have you ever interviewed them in person?
I email the questions, the writers get to think through their answers. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Great interview. John Dorney is swell!
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