You have written more companion chronicles than any other
writer, all of them extremely popular. What did you learn as a writer producing
such a prolific number of stories for the range?
Hullo Joe. That's very kind of you to say so. I wrote more
than anyone else mostly due to circumstance. For example, the outline for Home
Truths took longer than usual to get approved because it had to go via
Terry Nation's agent who needed to check on the particulars of Sara Kingdom. After
it had been a few months, and we were beginning to think it might not happen,
producer David Richardson commissioned me for what became The Prisoner's
Dilemma – and then just as I started that, the approval for Home Truths
came in, so I wrote both about the same time.
The Memory Cheats, The Uncertainty Principle
and The Anachronauts were all written because scripts by other writers
had been delayed. Well, by another writer - singular – as in each case it was
John Dorney, who kept being asked to write new things for Tom Baker and so on,
damn him. And I don't think the Oliver Harper trilogy was originally intended
to be released all within one year. David just took pity on me when I was
having a bad patch with other freelance work. That was extraordinary kindness
on his part.
I learnt lots of practical things writing my Companion
Chronicles, such as ways to create and build atmosphere, make the exposition
more vivid, and draw the audience in. I've learnt lots from the research I've
done on the stories, too – I ended up doing a GCSE course in astronomy as a
result of working on The Cold Equations, and I've read a lot of books
and things to prepare for some of the others. But the main thing I learnt was
how much I love working with the three people who really oversaw that range:
producer David Richardson, script editor Jacqueline Rayner and director Lisa
Bowerman.
Now that the Companion Chronicles have all been recorded
we have the chance to look back at the quality and variety that range has had
to offer. What do you think were the unique qualities that this range had that
made them so popular?
For me, what made the format so effective was getting into
the companions' heads and hearing their thoughts about the time they spent with
the Doctor. That's something you only get from their narrating in the first
person. It means there's a perspective not only on the particular story but of
that period of
Doctor Who more generally.
Do you have any particular favourites, both of your own
output and what others have written?
Oh, plenty. I'm very pleased with mine – as much because of
the performances, sound design and just the fun of making them as because of
what I might have written. But there are so many good ones in the range. Frostfire
– the very first one – is utterly enthralling and the feel of it was a big
influence on Home Truths. Nigel Fairs' stories for Leela were a big
influence, too – at least, they encouraged me to push what my stories might do.
To be honest, I've nicked loads from the other stories in the range: for
example, Mother Russia and The Suffering gave me much more of a
handle on Steven Taylor's character than his TV stories did. Then there are
then ones that have stopped me in my tracks and made me want to up my game,
like the amazing The Last Post. And then there are the ones that are
just a delight to listen to: The Mahogany Murders, The Beautiful
People, Peri and the Piscon Paradox, The Scorchies, Council
of War... Oh, there are too many to mention.
The First Wave features two brave decisions, to bring
back a distinctly unpopular monster (the Vardans) and to write out a companion
in a pretty permanent sort of way. Why the Vardans? Did you think they deserved
a second airing and that they were more suited to the audio medium? Was Oliver
always only going to feature in three stories? Can you tell us something of his
journey in the three stories that you wrote for him. What was it like writing
for an all male TARDIS team?
The Vardans came about for two reasons. First, I wanted
something extra for the third part of the trilogy – just as we'd brought back
Mavic Chen and Bret Vyon for
The Guardian of the Solar System. So I was
thinking of old monsters. I remembered that we'd been able to use the Guardians
in
Key 2 Time because they were owned by the BBC and so included in our
licence for
Doctor Who – we didn't have to pay extra to a writer, like
we do for the Daleks or Cybermen. So I asked David Richardson who else was
included in the licence, and the Vardans were one of those. If I remember rightly,
it's all down to
The Invasion of Time having been writing by the script
editor on the TV show while he was in post, so the work is owned by the BBC
rather than him as a freelancer. Or something.
The Vardans appealed to me because they'd not been
altogether effective on TV. With a well-realised monster, you run the risk of
producing a sequel that's just not as good as the original, whereas here I had
something to build on. And then, doing my astronomy GCSE, I had a homework
question about how far our radio signals have reached into space. That got me
thinking about who might receive those signals, and from that came the story.
Oliver Harper – his name, his background, a lot of his
character and what happened to him – was all in the brief from David Richardson.
I was thrilled to be trusted with that assignment and loved working with actor
Tom Allen. The initial idea was to base Oliver on Dirk Bogarde's character in
the film Victim (1961), in which a happily married barrister is
blackmailed having been photographed in a car with a young man. So I watched that film and some other ones
with Bogarde, did some research into the stock market of the 1960s, and wrote The
Perpetual Bond round that. David also got me to listen to The Suffering,
which helped with the comedy bits and rounding out Steven's character.
Once that had been recorded, I based the second two stories
much more on the characters of Steven and Oliver as played by Peter and Tom,
and talked to them a bit about where it was all going. I only realised as I was
writing the last one that I'd left no space between the three stories for more
adventures with Oliver, but I rather like the idea that there's no room for any
more. I spend my whole time slotting new adventures in between the TV stories,
so it feels a bit wicked to say no, there can't be more for Oliver. And I think
it makes us feel his loss more, too. Also, I am a rotter.
As for writing an old-male TARDIS team, it makes for a
different feel of story but I'm not sure what it changes in terms of the
writing. I introduced a female Vardan in the last story as much because I knew
she could be played by director Lisa Bowerman (and for no extra cost) as to
balance things out in terms of gender. Does that make me a bad person?
The Anachronauts is a double length companion chronicle
featuring the first Doctor, Steven and Sara. What benefits/disadvantages does
the extended length bring with it? What appeals to you about writing for Sara
Kingdom? Do you think that The Daleks' Masterplan lends itself for all these
additional adventures?
The Anachronauts had to be written very quickly, as I
remember, because it was a replacement for something else that had been
delayed. And then I managed to lose 7,000 words of it when my Word template
crashed, despite me being diligent in backing up all the time. So I really
don't remember much of the writing except as one big panic.
The original idea was to tell two separate stories that then
turned out to be one big story. I thought that was making life easy for myself,
as I was used to writing Companion Chronicles of the normal length. I don't
think it ended up making anything easier. Ho hum.
The other problem was that I'd already written a trilogy
each for Steven and Sara, so struggled a bit to find something new to say about
them. For those stories, I'd picked over the TV episodes of The Daleks'
Master Plan, so this time I read John Peel's novelisations, which included
more on their relationship and gave me something new to hook on to. As I said
before, the Companion Chronicles let you cast new light on a particular era of Doctor
Who, so it's a question of finding that angle. But whether The Daleks'
Master Plan lends itself to all these new stories... Er, I have a vested
interested in saying yes, of course it does. Dare you to say otherwise.
You corrected me on my misunderstanding of the
Uncertainty Principle in my review - was it your intention to teach a little
science to the audience? Is it tough to crack a scientist like Zoe and make her
inner thoughts accessible to a wider audience? How much did you work in
collusion with John Dorney regarding the overarching framing device of Zoe in
prison slowly remembering her time with the Doctor?
I hadn't planned to teach anyone anything. It's more about
what I find interesting, and interesting enough to explore in a story.
Shadow
of the Past came out of something someone said: a soldier returning from a
long stint in Afghanistan that he saw his job as going where things were
kicking off, standing in the middle and shouting “Stop”.
The Guardian of the
Solar System came from the clock in
The Hudsucker Proxy – one of my
favourite films. If the thing I'm noodling over is a bit of history or science,
I try to get it right in the story, which means reading up on it or – even better
– finding someone who knows about it and taking them for a drink. It's as much
about keeping the job interesting for me, and encouraging me to learn something
as I write these things. My worry is to ensure I don't get derivative. There's
always something new – as least for me – in what I'm writing.
I think I struggled more to get in the mindset of a
scientist with Liz Shaw in Shadow of the Past, and picked the brains of
my friend Dr Marek Kukula for that. With Zoe, I really just followed what John
Dorney had done.
John did a great job with Zoe in Echoes of Grey, and
my job in The Memory Cheats was just to say what happened next – which
was like a parlour game, and great fun to do. John – and producer David
Richardson – then had quite firm ideas about what the trilogy (as it was then)
would be, so I think there was more rewriting and remoulding than usual to fit
with those plans. I remember arguing that Zoe should be happier and more
fulfilled in her life after the Doctor, because I am a big softy. That didn't
fit with John's diabolical schemes, so my happy skippy ending got over-ruled.
The man is a monster.
Then his finale got delayed so I was asked to write another
instalment, and The Uncertainty Principle was much easier because I had
a better grasp of what David and John needed it to do. As a courtesy, John then
sent me the script for his finale, Second Chances, and I got to make a
few suggestions. (I am hoping my idea for big, happy ending with dancing and
cake makes it to the final version.)
The Library of Alexandria is one of my favourites, a
stunning tour de force performance from William Russell bringing to life an
emotive, educational script. I loved the fact that a monster from the Bernice
series (the Mim) turned up into the most unlikely of Doctor Who eras. What was
the reasoning behind that? Although the production team in the shows early
years were ambitious this is a story that would have been far beyond their
resources. Is that ever a consideration when writing a script? Do you like to keep
things as authentic as possible or simply let your imagination determine the
scale of the story? What sort of research did you have to do to capture the
setting? Can you say a few words for William Russell's contributions.
Thank you. It all came from watching Carl Sagan's
Cosmos
series, which I'd got on DVD for my birthday. There's a sequence in that where
he wanders round a mocked-up version of the library of Alexandria and helps
himself to the long-lost books. I wanted to do a historical story after so many
ones about physics, and that had the right feel.
My touchstone was the TV story Marco Polo, which told
a huge story spanning months of time and whole continents. So in my head, The
Library of Alexandria is an adaptation of a seven-part TV story that had
lots of filming at Ealing to do the harbour bits.
But having set that up, the second half of the story just
seemed a bit flat – I didn't want to do what happens in the film Agora,
where Hypatia just happens to stumble onto Keppler's laws of planetary motion
hundreds of years before he did. And I didn't want the Doctor and his friends
to just meet her, have a chat and walk away. So I introduced the alien book...
and then the aliens looking for it seemed a natural progression. Then it seemed
fun to set up what seems like a pure historical story, and have a monster
cliffhanger. I used the Mim because they're my creation, free to use and can
smash things. (Strictly speaking, I used them in a Doctor Who short
story before they appeared in Benny's adventures.)
Once I'd written the script, I sent it to my clever friend
John J Johnston (who you can watch here explaining that Sutekh wrote the first
recorded chat-up line in history, to his brother:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqb7E2nor34).
John gave me some great notes – not just about the history I'd got appallingly
wrong, but also where things weren't clear and so on. He also advised on the
artwork for the cover.
I was delighted to get to write for William Russell, though
sadly other commitments meant I couldn't be at the recording. What an amazing
job he did, bringing it all to life. Though, of course, he says there was never
any question of Ian and Barbara getting together. HE IS WRONG.
Your final companion chronicle (for the time being) is
The War to End All Wars. Do you think that Steven makes a good narrator for
these stories? Was the centenary of the First World War an influence in the
telling of this war story? Will we ever learn the outcome of the framing
narrative? Is there space for more stories featuring Dodo?
Er, yes, I think Steven is a good narrator or I wouldn't
have used him. And Peter Purves must think I'm not too terrible as a writer
because he asked for me to write more for him, which is how The War to End
All Wars came about. That's probably the nicest compliment I've ever been
paid for my scribbling.
I wrote the script wanting to push Peter a bit – he's a very
good and versatile actor, and I knew he'd make it work. And yes, the centenary
of the war was a big consideration. As I say in the sleeve notes, my first idea
was to write a story as if it had been made in 1966 for the TV show and
influenced by the writing of Alex Comfort, after Matthew Sweet told me that
Comfort was one of the people Gerry Davis considered as a scientific advisor on
Doctor Who. Comfort wrote about the mentality of war, which gave me the
in for the story. And then it struck me that, if the story had been made for
television in 1966, any old men in the cast would probably have served in the
First World War. So I was thinking about how a family show on the BBC at the
time would handle the sensitivities of something like that.
The Doctor-in-a-jar was a very late addition, after wise
Jonny Morris pointed out that the copy of the Doctor's mind survives at the end
of The Savages. I wrote the cliffhanger ending in the hope that I could
somehow force Big Finish to do more Companion Chronicles, or at least give me a
job on the Early Adventures, or somewhere.
As for what happens next... I know what I'd like to happen
and I've talked it through with producer David Richardson. As to whether you
get to hear those devious schemes, and in what format that would be... Wait and
see.
Shadow of Death was your contribution to 50th anniversary
audio series, Destiny of the Doctor. I found it refreshing to have a story with
the most juvenile of TARDIS teams (the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe) treated so
seriously. Was that a consideration? These stories play like companion
chronicles written in the third person. Is that a difficult adjustment to make
when you are used to writing in a different style? How was the running
narrative with the eleventh Doctor turning up in these stories determined? It
is a chilly, unnerving tale...were you pleased with the end result?
I didn't really think about their ages, to be honest. It was
more about trying to match the feel of Season 6, in particular
The Seeds of
Death – which is magnificently strange and spooky, and then stops rather
abruptly when the Doctor finds the solution. I'm not sure I quite managed it: a
few people have said the ending of my story is a bit glib and easy,
undercutting what's gone before. Oops.
The third person narration was fine – in fact, if it had
been first person, I'd have had to explain how Zoe or Jamie could remember the
events to recount them, given what happens to their memories in The War
Games. And it makes for a different feel, and ties the Destiny of the
Doctor stories together.
I'm really pleased with that story, and Frazer was amazing
in getting the atmosphere exactly right. It's incredible watching him work,
jumping from narrator to Doctor to Jamie without pausing, always making it
clear who is speaking at any time. The effectiveness of the story is really
down to him making that work so well.
As for the Eleventh Doctor, I don't think I'm breaking too
many confidences when I say that the original plan was to have Matt Smith cameo
in each story. As I remember, that didn't happen for boring logistical reasons
– we needed to deliver the first two stories quite early to get them out in
shops by January and February 2013 and the schedules didn't work. So my
favourite bit of the script I wrote – the meeting of Frazer Hines' Second
Doctor and Matt Smith's Eleventh – had to be massively reworked. These things
happen, but when I hear the story now, I do miss that daft scene.
FRAZER
(NARRATING)
He was in
the observation room where he'd first met Sophie and the others. Tables and chairs were arranged in front of the
huge window that looked out on
the amazing sky, the barren surface of the planet and the ruined city. The Doctor knew he shouldn't linger,
that the whatever-it-was might follow him any
moment. But he couldn't resist such a view.
And then he
stopped. In the glass, like a ghost, he saw his own reflection. And beside it...
SECOND
DOCTOR:
(HORROR) Oh
no! Whatever it is, no! I don't want to hear it! (BEAT) Well, say something, can't you? It is you,
isn't it? I mean, me. Somewhere under that chin.
(BEAT)
ELEVENTH
DOCTOR:
Hello,
Doctor. You look... I was going to say “well”, but you look sort of jumpy. I've caught you at a bad
time.
SECOND
DOCTOR:
Well, yes,
actually. I've just escaped from a -
ELEVENTH
DOCTOR:
I know
I've caught you at a bad time. I remember this happening to me.
SECOND
DOCTOR:
Oh. Well
then, if you're me and if you remember, you'll know exactly what I'm going to say -
SECOND
DOCTOR and ELEVENTH DOCTOR:
What noise
annoys an oyster?
ELEVENTH
DOCTOR:
Satisfied?
SECOND DOCTOR:
Hardly.
You're breaking all the laws of time. Our people are going to catch up with you...
ELEVENTH
DOCTOR:
Doctor, I
need your help.
SECOND
DOCTOR:
Of all the
pompous, conceited... The laws of time are important. We can't just make up the rules as we go along.
ELEVENTH
DOCTOR:
You do.
SECOND
DOCTOR:
I know what
I'm doing! Give me one good reason why I should help you. I mean, apart from you being me.
Another good reason.
ELEVENTH
DOCTOR:
We have a
lot in common. Look. Bow-ties are cool.
SECOND
DOCTOR:
(OUTRAGE)
Cool? COOL? (BEAT) Oh, do you think so? I suppose they are. Look, all right, I'm not saying I'll help
but tell me what it is. And hurry up. As you
must remember, there's an invisible monster in that room behind me.
ELEVENTH
DOCTOR:
I want you
to turn round and go back in that room.
(BEAT)
SECOND
DOCTOR:
Ah.
What can we expect from you next, Simon?
I am currently producing a documentary for Radio 3's Sunday
Feature, which will be on in the autumn. It's about Elizabeth Cromwell, wife of
Oliver. I am also writing some Big Finish things I can't tell you about, and
attempting to interest people in some other things I wrote. And there's that
movie script for Cleaning Up which needs some work doing on it... I say
“some”. A bit like our staircase to the Moon needs a bit of work.
