I left it rather late to decide, but in the end could not resist — I haven’t been since 2009. The best fun of all is meeting folk from all over the place over an extended weekend event. And while I’m there, I hope to take part in some discussion panels.

I’m also happy to talk about the new series of Blake’s 7 audios released during the month by Big Finish – if that’s not considered too infra dig by the attendees of what is ostensibly a Doctor Who convention.

For more information about the convention, check out their website. And if you can’t attend, follow along the #gally tag on Twitter or see Facebook.

As part of a special Doctor Who day recently, the interview was published on a German sf portal here. And while  Google Translate will do you a nice translation of that back into English, I thought you may also like to see my original replies to Susanne.  What I like about this interview is that, as a translator, Susanne was interested in some of the mechanics of writing.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself for the introduction part of this interview?

Over the past decade and and half, I have written dozens of things that tie in to TV series – novels, talking books, audio plays, short stories, even a comic strip. They almost invariably relate to Torchwood or Doctor Who. That’s a TV series I have watched and enjoyed since I was a child.

I used to write amateur short stories and magazine articles even when I was still  at school. So these days, it’s like I am being paid for my hobby! I have a list of what I’ve written on my website http://anghelides.org 

You have been writing a lot of novels based on TV series – what is the difference in writing for established characters as opposed to something completely fictional?

Usually when you write for established characters, you know that they cannot be completely changed by the end of your story. Mostly that’s because the TV series defines who they are, and you’re not supposed to contradict that. You must “return” them to their starting point, because the books are bought by tens of thousands of people whereas the TV series is seen by millions.

As a contrast, Ian Rankin say of his series of novels: “To fully understand and appreciate the growth (and regression) of Rebus (and all the other recurring characters), it is interesting to read the series in the order the books were written.” Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle could have their heroes die when they chose to. But with a TV tie-in, you know your principal cast will survive, and their characters will be the same at the end of your story.

That sounds like a problem for an author, because you really want your heroes and heroines to develop, to be changed by what they experience in your novel. They are the people in the book with whom the reader will identify. If those characters learn nothing, and are unmoved by their experience, the reader will not feel engaged by the story.

One way around that is to create some new characters with whom the reader can identify – but that can’t be at the expense of the regular characters, because those are the reason that the readers bought your book in the first place.

And fortunately, another way around it is that the characters in Torchwood develop, change, even die sometimes on TV. So you can weave some threads in your novel to suggest that the events of your novel contribute to that. There are several actions and events in Another Life like that. Fans of the series recognise it for what it is, and more casual readers just think it’s part of the novel.

How did you get involved with writing novels for Doctor Who and Torchwood?

In 1989, the BBC stopped making Doctor Who for television. Virgin Books began to publish some original Doctor Who novels. Several of my friends wrote for that series, and I also did some short stories for Virgin. When the BBC decided to make a one-off Doctor Who TV Movie in 1996, they also decided to start publishing the books under their own imprint. So I suggested an idea for a novel, and they commissioned it – and after that, they  invited me to write more.

That was a particularly interesting time to write TV tie-in novels. Because the BBC was making no new Doctor Who for television, the people writing the books were able to continue developing the story of Doctor Who without worrying about contradicting the TV series. In that sense, the books were new Doctor Who for the thousands of dedicated fans who wanted fresh stories.

That changed in 2005 when the BBC started making new Doctor Who for TV, and they began to commission a different style of tie-in novel. Then Torchwood was commissioned the following year as an independent programme of its own, using the character of Captain Jack who had first appeared in Doctor Who. So BBC Books had decided from the outset that they would commission tie-in novels to accompany the new series.

I was one of the three authors they commissioned initially, because the publishers and production office thought our previous books were a good track record for the kind of thing they were looking for with these new titles. These new Torchwood books were aimed at an older audience, and were nearly twice as long as their Doctor Who counterparts.

I think BBC Books must have liked  Another Life, because I was the first person they asked to write a second Torchwood novel.

You obviously need to do a lot of research – how did you prepare for writing  Another Life?

I was first approached about writing the novel in April 2006, and it was commissioned the following month. But the first TV series wasn’t broadcast until the end of October 2006. So a lot of my research was to learn about the series concept, the characters, the location, and what was happening in those first 13 episodes without ever having seen the show.

The three novel authors met the script editor, Brian Minchin, who explained all that to us. Brian was terrific – so enthusiastic about the potential of the series, and keen to see the books were properly-researched and well-prepared. The authors also got to see concept artwork for the main set, and some of the props, because that was all still being built at that stage.

You have probably rewatched Torchwood for writing the novel – is that another way of watching?

For Another Life, there were no episodes to watch! I wrote the first draft before I’d seen a single broadcast episode. At a late stage, I did get a chance to view the opening episode at a special screening for the BBC productrion and publicity team. My novel was published just before the conclusion of Torchwood series 1’s original TV transmission.

When I wrote my second novel, Pack Animals, that tied in with the second TV series. Things had changed for the characters by that stage, so I was able to read a lot of the series 2 scripts before I wrote my first draft, and even saw some of the episodes before I submitted the book.

Did you get to go on set and, if so, how was that and who did you talk to?

Yes, I went with the other authors to visit the studios in Cardiff, South Wales. The original plan, I think, was to get to a design briefing meeting in June, and subsequently to talk to producer Richard Stokes, his script team, the art department, and the lead publicist. But it wasn’t possible to arrange something at such short notice. The production team were quite understandably almost completely engrossed in the very complex work of creating 13 episodes of a brand new TV series.

We were driven to the studios by a Brand Executive, Matt Nicholls, who gave us some background on various Cardiff locations. And one of the script editors, the marvellous Gary Russell, showed us around the main studio. We saw the sets for some of the regular cast, including the top-floor Victorian flat  where Gwen and Rhys lived, and the Torchwood dungeons where they locked up the alien Weevil. There was a little set for Ianto’s Torchood reception area, too, with tourist brochures in neat piles and newspapers over the windows.

But most exciting of all, we went on the Hub set. It was enormous, and built on two levels right next door to the Doctor Who TARDIS set. The lower level had the Hub’s basin area, full of water. That led up to a level where all the computer work stations stood beside the cog-wheel entrance. Then there was a walkway to the recessed autopsy area, a hexagonal tank with a barred window to one side. We went through Jack’s office with its curved desk and filing cabinets, and then into a small games area before reaching the glass screen doors of the armoury.

From that, a spiral staircase led up to a small landing where we could see Ianto’s coffee machine, and from there into the conference room that dominated the upper level.

Tha balcony around the main hub area had portholes out towards the Bay, and we were told that they would occasionally show fish swimming outside.

I dutifully made notes of things that interested me, things I saw or heard about that gave some insights into the characters – the contents of a noticeboard, the fruit bowls on a desk, one of Rhys’s magazines with the front cover headline saying “get a six-pack stomach in six weeks”, a full-ashtray in Toshiko’s kitchen  (she was originally going to be a chain-smoker who gave up after episode 7).

You describe the alien ship very meticulously – do you do sketches of locations for writing?

I’m terrible at drawing. I visualise things, and then write down descriptions in words. For the Torchwood main locations, I had the benefit of seeing them for real. When it’s a hospital or an army camp, I can see those for real or find photos of them. For purley invented things like the alien ship, I work out what I think it will look like so that I can organise the “action” of a scene convincingly.

The location Cardiff itself plays a very important role in Another Life that obviously took a lot of effort – why was that so important to you?
Part of the brief about Torchwood was that Cardiff was central to the series. The Hub is positioned in the heart of the Millennium developments that replaced much of what was Tiger Bay, and the area has beautiful new buildings like the Millennium Centre and the Senedd, right next to the redbrick Pierhead Building that was built a century. And of course there’s the Water Tower, which people now tend to call “the Torchwood tower,”  that allegedly reaches down into the Torchwood Hub. (We had already seen the moss-covered base of the tower in the underground studio set, dripping with water.)

Long before the Water Tower became a tourist attraction for Torchwood fans, we three authors all stood on the flagstone in front of it and had our photo taken.

So with all that in mind, I decided that I was going to make Cardiff one of my „characters“ in the novel, and transform it out of all recognition during the story. Like all the other regular characters, of course, it had to be returned to normal by the end of the book!

Are you from Wales, or do you speak Welsh? 

No, I don’t speak any Welsh at all. Prior to this, the only time I had been to Wales was for family holidays.

The novel features rain and rain and rain – is that a normal thing for Cardiff?

It can be! The last time I took my family to Cardiff, it was very rainy indeed. But I’ve also been to Cardiff when the weather has been beautiful – blue skies and warm sun. In fact, that’s exactly how it was when I went there for my set visit. I knew I was writing a story where a storm would drown the city, and yet I was seeing it in bright sunshine!

How did you come up with the storyline for Another Life?

Unlike some other science fiction series, the regular characters in Torchwood don’t always get on together. There’s a rivalry and tension between them at various stages in series 1, that builds to the series climax where Owen confronts Jack. That was one starting point – Owen’s aspirations to take charge, to take the initiative and become like Jack.

The other thing I liked was that throughout series 1 Jack, for his own reasons, has kept everyone but Gwen in the dark about his immortality. So what’s the worst thing that could happen to him? To be possessed by a creature that will not leave him until he dies.

My original story outline was reviewed by Gary Russell and Executive Producer Russell T Davies, and after I got their feedback and approval I used that as the basis for writing the novel.

The novel features the simulation game “Second Reality” – is that something you yourself are facinated by? There is “Second Life” after all…

I was interested in virtual reality environment like “Second Life” because people have used them for games and social interaction. But I also see that they have potential for things like training or data analysis through physical interaction.

One of the things I learned early on about the fictional world of Torchwood was that they had lots of computing resources, so I thought they would be able to have lots of other realistic interactions in these “virtual presence” environments – and in a way that would make an interesting story.

They pointed out my error in saying: “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe” doesn’t use the serial comma… instead of “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe” doesn’t use the serial comma… 

They also provided some more examples of  ”titles that contain punctuation” — like “Rider from Shang-Tu”, which is the earliest example, from the William Hartnell story Marco Polo, though someone should tell the BBC website people that.

But my favourites (because this is the acme of pedantry from Jonny Morris) are the Troughton episodes that appeared on-screen in quotation marks! Examples include “The Krotons” and “The Space Pirates”. Or perhaps more accurately,  ”"The Krotons”" and “”The Space Pirates”” I suppose.

And then there were suggestions for other punctuation related titles, my favourites of which were “Question Mark of The Rani” and “The Clause of Axos”, both from Laurie Hooper who therefore wins the internet.

Being a Doctor Who fan, obviously the most important thing for me to do immediately is to pedantically analyse the title.

So ”The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe” (38) is comfortably the longest on-screen Doctor Who TV episode title, ahead of:

• [Update] The Sylvester McCoy story “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy” (31)
• The Jon Pertwee seven-part story “Doctor Who and the Silurians” (28) which uniquely had “Doctor Who and the…” in its on-screen episode title.
• “Guests of Madame Guillotine” (27), from the days when the William Hartnell stories named each episode separately — in this case, episode two of a story now known as “The Reign of Terror“.

These counts assume you include “spaces”. But this latest story is still easily the longest even if you only count letters.

Another episode with a count of 27 is “Small Prophet, Quick Return” — which was the first to contain punctuation, specifically a comma. That was 46 years ago, as episode two of what we call “The Myth Makers“.

Other on-screen episode titles containing punctuation are:

• The Tom Baker story “Warriors’ Gate“
• The David Tennant stories ”The Idiot’s Lantern“, ”The Doctor’s Daughter“, and “Journey’s End“
• The Matt Smith stories “Amy’s Choice“, “The Doctor’s Wife“, and “Let’s Kill Hitler“.

The shortest on-screen episode title is “42” with a count of two. The TV Movie does not have an on-screen episode title, so that cannot be counted as “zero”. “42″ is also the episode with the fewest letters in it (zero), and also has the unusual distinction of having fewer characters appearing in its title (two) than appear in the episode (twelve, including the Doctor and Martha). [Edit] As Paul Rhodes comments (below), it is not entirely unique in this respect.

“The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe” doesn’t use the serial comma (sometimes called the Oxford comma or Harvard comma), which would have upped the count to 39. Despite the serial comma being preferred usage in the US, there’s no suggestion that BBC America will recaption the story as “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe”.

The word “Doctor” has appeared in 14 on-screen episode titles, with half of those within a seven-week period during the Jon Pertwee era:

• “The Death of Doctor Who” in the William Hartnell story “The Chase” (They called him Doctor Who? Did no-one get the memo?)
• “A Holiday for the Doctor” in the William Hartnell story “The Gunfighters” (the last time that multi-episode Doctor Who stories had individual titles for nearly forty years).
• Seven episodes of “Doctor Who and the Silurians”
• The Christopher Eccleston episode “The Doctor Dances” (also written by Steven Moffat)
• “The Doctor’s Daughter”
• Another Christmas episode, David Tennant’s “The Next Doctor” (debate among yourselves whether this counts as a reference to the Doctor or not)
• “The Doctor’s Wife” (who we all know is really Neil Gaiman as this reveals)
• The Matt Smith story “Vincent and the Doctor“

And the word “Doctors” appears in episode titles on another seven eight occasions: “The Three Doctors” (four episodes), “The Five Doctors” (originally one episode), and “The Two Doctors” (two three episodes).

As you can see, I am greatly looking forward to the Christmas episode (and not just the opening titles). And you’ll also notice I have far too much time on my hands.

Edit: Now with further corrections here http://peteranghelides.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/widows-peekabooboo/

I had an enjoyable time at recent Blake’s 7 convention in Oxford. I attended as a guest with my B7 audio colleagues David Richardson and Simon Guerrier. So my thanks go to Clare and Diane for the invitation and their hospitality. It was fun to see Gareth Thomas again, and meet Michael Keating properly for the first time. Stephen Greif even turned up at one point.

During the event, Gareth and Michael did a live audio commentary on the final episode, Blake, as part of the convention’s theme: “Return to Gauda Prime”. And it reminded me of my first visit to Gauda Prime 30 years ago, with my two friends Peter Lovelady and Tony Murray. The three of us attended the studio recordings of that final episode.

It’s hard to imagine that happening these days. In recent years, I’ve had the good fortune to get into the Doctor Who and Torchwood studios in Cardiff as part of my work writing novels and audios. But that sort of thing is still rare, and visitors have to sign confidentiality agreements. The most significant scenes are recorded on closed sets, with access restricted only to those with a need to know.

The Blake’s 7 episode we went to see recorded in 1981 included the destruction of Xenon base, the final crash of Scorpio into a forest, the return of Blake, his death at the hands of Avon, and the killing of all the main cast. So you can imagine the confidentiality agreement we had to sign before they would let us into the studio.

None at all. We just turned up.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s all the more surprising we were invited. It came about because the three of us ran a modestly successful fanzine called “Frontier Worlds”. Our friend Jeremy Bentham had worked on the original Doctor Who Weekly, and he’d suggested that we send a portfolio of our work to Stewart Wales, the editor of Marvel’s new tie-in magazine Blake’s 7 Monthly. Stewart saw enough potential to invite us to a meeting in London, and while we were there we could also visit the set of the TV series. Stewart also put us in touch with producer Vere Lorrimer, who invited us to visit a TV recording. The next opportunity turned out to be the penultimate recording day for the final episode of Series D. And at the time, that’s all we knew.

Our first priority on the day was to visit the offices of Blake’s 7 Monthly. We’d anticipated Fleet Street, but it turned out to be a set of rooms up several flights of stairs above a barber’s shop. And by the time we were there, Stewart wasn’t – he’d been called away to a Marvel meeting. We had some lunch and came back, but still no Stewart. Instead we had a chat the former editor of AD: 2000 before scurrying off across town by tube to BBC Television Centre in Wood Lane.

Blake’s 7 was the drama series with which the BBC replaced a police series called Softly, Softly: Task Force.  Like most BBC drama serials, it was recorded on video using a multi-camera set-up in the TV studios  within the Corporation’s main production centre in Shepherd’s Bush. Some external scenes were filmed on location in advance of the studio work.

Ahead of the studio days, the cast would rehearse in a large multi-storey building down the road in Acton (and thus nicknamed the “Acton Hilton”). Rooms the size of a dance floor were arranged so that the outlines of studio sets were marked out with simple poles and tape lines, with perhaps a cardboard miniature of the set design to look at to help visualise everything. The cast would learn their lines and movements (or “blocking”) for the studio days. And the director would plan her camera positions, with the production manager marking up a script with camera moves and edits so that everything was ready for the intensive rehearse-record days to follow in TV studio sessions. Towards the end of the rehearsal period, a “producer’s run” took place for the producer to see the proposed performances and provide any notes he may have.

Typically, technical preparation happened in the morning of a studio day, with the cast prepared in costume and make-up ready for recording sessions in the afternoon and evening – usually completing at or before 10 pm.

For us three visitors, therefore, arriving after lunch on the penultimate studio day meant that we’d get a tour of the sets and a chance to see rehearse-record later in the day.

Vere Lorrimer met us at TV Centre reception – a charming bespectacled man wearing a leather jacket. He shook our hands and invited us to follow him to the studio. He led us through some doors and past the heavy black curtain that encircled the studio. We saw some greenery, and then were brought into the centre of the huge, cold room. The hundreds of ceiling-mounted studio lights were off, and would be switched on later only for the recording, when the room would become a lot warmer as a result.

Between the sets was the paraphernalia of recording – cameras, sound booms, and monitors in colour and black and white because, as the producer explained to us, “some people will be seeing the programme that way at home.” Yes, it really was that long ago. At the time, there were only three TV channels in the UK — BBC1, BBC2, and ITV in its various franchises around the country. Channel 4 was not due to start until the following year, and cable or satellite channels were a distant thought.

We saw various sets from Gauda Prime, including the tracking gallery and the hut in the forest, before we were led past the Scorpio set. That should have been an early clue for us – wires and boxes led from the set all over the place, with a beam hanging ominously from the roof. Vere Lorrimer explained that  this was a fixed set, and Scorpio was wired for explosions later, when pine trees would be placed into the set to make it look as though the ship had smashed into a forest.

As we were about to move on, Vere Lorrimer introduced us briefly to effects man Jim Francis, with whom he had a brief discussion about saving Orac and Slave from the wreckage for some sort of display later on. Peter Tuddenham was going to make a tape for this. I’m not sure if anything ever came of that.

The final set was the flyer, with a huge blue screen behind it to facilitate the Colour Separation Overlay (CSO) that would make it “fly”. Blue was the more usual keying colour for this video effect, whereas these days “green screen” is more familiar than “blue screen” work.

Treading cautiously to avoid setting off any Scorpio explosions, we passed “Orac’s World”, a small enclosed space behind the Scorpio set where Peter Tuddenham provided the voices for the Slave and Orac computers live during the recording. There was a large microphone for Slave, and a close-contact “racing commentator’s” mike for Orac. The familiar Orac whining and squeaking was put on in post-production. Vere Lorrimer explained all this in an enthusiastic running commentary of his own, doing a little impression of each computer in the process.

Peter Tuddenham had told us during a “Frontier Worlds interview” that during Terminal, the concluding episode of the previous season, he discovered that someone had put a bowl of flowers in his little performance space, which was then known as “Zen’s Den”. If only we’d known what was to happen during our studio visit, perhaps this time we could have left a wreath.

We traversed the metal stairs which led up the side of the studio wall to the gallery, where the crew’s most senior staff were at work.

In my next post, I’ll explain more about what we saw during the recording, and what success we had with Blake 7 Monthly.

The “missing adventures” are Foe from the Future (devised by Robert Banks Stewart and adapted by John Dorney) and The Valley of Death (devised by Philip Hinchcliffe and adapted by Jonathan Morris).

John is also script editor for the brand new full-cast audios. They are:

• January: Destination Nerva by Nicholas Briggs
• February: The Renaissance Man by Justin Richards,
• March: Wrath of the Iceni by John Dorney
• April: Energy of the Daleks by Nicholas Briggs
• May: Trail of the White Worm by Alan Barnes
• June: (Title TBA) by Alan Barnes

It’s fantastic that Tom Baker has got involved with the excellent Big Finish team, along with Louise Jameson (for these stories) and Mary Tamm (for a further set, with titles and authors still to be announced).

I’d been hoping to be involved with the “Leela” stories, and was approached in January this year about writing something based on Nerva Beacon. This went through a number of iterations, all the usual stuff before a script is actually commissioned: initial idea, outline, remove something a bit too like the TV series, add/remove K-9, four-episode outline, two-episode outline… Until alas, at the end of March, it became a zero-episode outline. BF felt that the story wasn’t working out, and so it didn’t go to script. Mine was initially called The Unwanted Army, but by the end its title was Flames of the Karvadi.

This is third time unlucky with Tom Baker for me. I didn’t get very far with the original BBC Audio project in August 2008 that eventually became Hornets’ Nest. At the time, BBC Audio was variously calling that “Project Beehive” and “Codename Felt Hat”. Then I was one of the writers who Big Finish asked to pitch ideas in March 2009, when they were at the point of one of their periodic approaches to Tom Baker. One of the several ideas I had was a reworked version of what eventually became Ferril’s Folly.

So although those all came to naught, I did get the chance to write that “Companion Chronicle” set in the Fourth Doctor’s era. And even if things don’t work out in the end, as inevitably can happen in the overall process, it’s always nice to be asked. Not everything makes it from pitch to publish.

I won’t say too much more about Flames of the Karvadi here, because the location and timing was specified as part of my original brief from BF. From the title of Nick Briggs’s replacement, I don’t think I’ve given too much away so far! But obviously, if I decide not to reuse my own original story elements, characters, and monsters for something else, I may post the story outline here.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to hearing the new Tom Baker audios in January. One additional exciting snippet from that DWM news story is that Geoffrey Beevers is returning as the Master in Alan Barnes’s season finale.

Q: Why has there been such a long delay between Ferril’s Folly being announced and actually released?

A: I forget when it was first mentioned in DWM, but I seem to recall that Big Finish originally approached me at end of 2007. They liked my proposal, which was set slap bang in the middle of the Key to Time season. Then they asked me to write the conclusion to their “Key 2 Time” trilogy [The Chaos Pool], plus I was already busy with my Torchwood novel “Pack Animals”. So I asked them which they wanted more, and they chose The Chaos Pool, and I ended up writing for the other Romana.

I think doing a Key to Time story so close to their sequel trilogy would have been a bit too similar anyway, and as a result they commissioned Nigel Robinson to do Mary Tamm’s first Romana Companion Chronicle, and set it between Seasons 16 and 17.

Q: Did the story change significantly in the years between the original commission and the final recording?

I’m one of those writers who will cheerfully reuse or cannibalise stuff rather than waste it. I suggested the story as part of something else Big Finish were doing, and I also pitched it as an idea when I was one of the authors BBC Audio was considering for the Hornet’s Nest Tom Baker audios (then rather splendidly codenamed “Felt Hat”, I seem to recall). That was reworked to foreground the Doctor, of course.

But BBC Audio went a different way on that, and the other thing with Big Finish didn’t happen. I asked them if they still wanted it as a Companion Chronicle, and they said “yes” in a tone that suggested they’d never doubted it. The only significant change over three years was that I removed a chase sequence where pylons stalked the Doctor across the landscape, because in the meantime Steve Cole had also thought of that and used it in his BBC Audio Ring of Steel.

Q: Anything you’re willing to say about the character of Lady Ferril herself?

I thought it would be good to have a strong female villain, like Vivien Fey from that era of the programme. And to more strongly differentiate her from Romana’s cut-glass English accent, I made her American. I’m not always convinced by some of the “American” accents we’ve heard on Doctor Who over the years, but Madeleine Potter is the genuine article in Ferril’s Folly. She’s brilliant.

I wasn’t expecting the authors to be announced yet, but it seems that if you dig deep enough on this page you can find out who we are.  My story is called “Counterfeit”.

As well as the audiobooks, there will be a series of new original novels published.  And the audio versions of the Trevor Hoyle novels The Way Back (read by Gareth Thomas) and Cygnus Alpha (read by Paul Darrow) are also available (originally released in 2009). No sign of “Project Avalon” or “Scorpio Attack”, alas.

I am of course delighted to be involved in the launch of this series of new stories. Along with Doctor Who, Blake’s 7 has been one of my abiding passions, going back to when my friends and I published a fanzine called “Frontier Worlds” that coincided with the first transmission of the show in 1978/9.  I even wrote a fan novelisation of the final TV episode “Blake” in the 1980s (post transmission, obviously), after my pals and I had the great good fortune to see that episode being recorded at BBC Television Centre.

Come to think of it, our fanzine even published some fiction by a young Blake’s 7 enthusiast called David Richardson. Whatever happened to him?

A note for pedants: the first three audios are set between “Project Avalon” and “Breakdown” in the first series. But as any fule kno, the first series was called “Series A” and not “Series 1″. So perhaps they will have the “production codes” A9.1, A9.2, and A9.3.