A bit of spring cleaning has turned up some more drabbles that I wrote. I mentioned the ones I had published in this post, whereas these are three examples that I wrote in 1991 but did not submit.
It’s interesting to see what was on my mind in 1991 – a rather grumbly observation about intellectual property licensing; pondering what would happen if and when the Doctor reached a thirteenth regeneration; and killing off K-9 several years before I wrote my Decalog 3 story “Moving On” (1996) and audio play Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre (2002), each of which put the tin dog out of action. (Read more about the latter here.)
My other two drabbles were published inDrabble Who in 1993 to celebrate Doctor Who‘s 30th anniversary and to raise money for the Royal National Institute for Blind People (RNIB) Talking Books Fund.
If you would like to contribute to the RNIB, their online donation page is here.
SENSOR BALLS
Don’t expect any charitable contributions from us – we’re the guys in the black (and gold), and the only thing we’ll give you is trouble.
Asking us for favours, you’ll come to realise, is as productive as trying to squeeze the contents out of a sealed tin can.
Look us in the eye, and we’ll stare you down in unblinking, uncaring incomprehension.
Exterminate any hope you may entertain of a deal – and if you dare to take the plunge without prior permission, we’ll give you some stick.
Kindly don’t argue when we roll up again: we are Terry Nation’s muscle.
TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA
When you’re practically immortal, the only end of age always seems an impossibly long journey distant. To you, a thousand years old can barely be conceived. To a mayfly, you are the god.
Today, I face my middle age with equanimity.
The flaw, perhaps, is that living fast means dying young.
Borusa escaped, after a fashion, by challenging Rassilon, his continued existence evidenced by the furious flashing of his eyes.
The Master took one life for thirteen more.
On the whole, though, it’s unlucky for most.
What must a Time Lord do when time finally runs out? Cheat, of course.
BUILT-IN OBSOLESCENCE
Five months later, some of the novelty had worn off. A journalist knows the currency of a recent story, and the transience of human interest.
She should have guessed when the gears first started to crunch and the print-out was exhausted. Now, crouched by the side of the machine, so was she.
Brendan honked. “Again?”
She withered him with a glance. “The problem with self-diagnostics is what to do when they go wrong.”
“Sounds recursive.” Brendan munched, disinterested. “First year psychology. Logic.”
Crumbs bounced.
She slapped the side of the computer, piqued.
“So typical of the Doctor to forget the instruction book.”
Today is the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, first broadcast on Saturday 23rd November 1963.
I’ve always been a fan. How lucky I am since 1996 to have written professionally published Doctor Who novels, short stories and audio plays. And more recently, to produce and script edit Doctor Who Short Trips audios for Big Finish Productions
Half Doctor Who‘s lifetime ago, I contributed to a collection calledDrabble Who. David J Howe and David B Wake commissioned 100 short stories each of exactly 100 words (a drabble), to celebrate the programme’s 30th anniversary and to raise money for the Royal National Institute for Blind People (RNIB) Talking Books Fund.
It was published at a time when Doctor Who was off the air, kept alive by fans and fanzines and conventions, reruns and video releases, and a series of original fiction published by Virgin Books to which I would later contribute.
It seemed appropriate that Drabble Who was written by a large representative group of those people: fans, researchers, TV actors and writers and production team, novel writers and editors.
To my delight, two of my drabbles were included. Better still, each shared a page with a contribution written by an actor from the TV series: Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor) and Louise Jameson (Leela). What a delight it has been to work with them subsequently on Big Finish audios that I produced and script edited.
The print run for Drabble Who was limited to 1,000 copies, and thirty years later the book is long out of print. So as my celebration for this year, here are my two contributions to that publication.
If you would like to contribute to the RNIB, their online donation page is here.
INITIAL PARAGRAPHS FROM A DRAFT LETTER TO MY OLDEST COMPANION
PETER ANGHELIDES (Writer/Researcher)
Theft and disguise started my career, I suppose, though appearing first on that monochrome world Earth established my distinctive style.
Afterwards, my look changed several times – shifting shades of light and dark, subtle variations of line and effect, though I could on occasion transform completely, be unrecognisable or obvious, camouflaged or transparent even to you.
Recognition’s rarely a problem now in our spins around the universe.
Doubtless my looks belie my age, but then I transcend more than expectations.
I’ve known many of your friends, Doctor, yet remain your truest companion.
Sharing the changing times is what keeps us close.
MARK FOUR
PETER ANGHELIDES (Writer/Researcher)
Working from memory isn’t always easy, but working from reports is perhaps more difficult. A few months’ effort though, and you’d have thought I’d had blueprints.
One last minor adjustment, and the lights blinked on. The tail aerial wagged a wary greeting. The radar sensors pricked into life.
I flicked briefly over the tongue of ticker tape.
“Old technology. You’re a collector’s item already.” It hummed, a mechanical question in a rising note.
“I hardly suppose I need to introduce myself,” I murmured, running a clean finger along the burnished black casing.
“Affirmative, Master,” whirred K-9. “I will obey you.”
A beautifully designed collectible version of my Tenth Doctor and Donna story Pest Control has been announced. What a treat now that David Tennant and Catherine Tate are returning this month to TV Doctor Who.
Demon Records, a subsidiary of BBC Studios, have put together a six LP release of my story Pest Control, read by David Tennant, along with Dan Abnett’s story The Forever Trap, read by Catherine Tate.
Dan and I have each written a new introduction to our stories, reflecting on how we went about the original commissions and what it means to us today.
You can see more details of the specifications in the official BBC announcement. The artwork and design is by Sam Goddard of Oink Creative, and Michael Stevens coordinated the project. And you can preorder from a variety of retailers here.
These two audio stories were the first that the actors performed in role as original stories outside the TV series. That was always the hope when I was writing the script, though it wasn’t until after I had delivered my manuscript that David was confirmed as the reader of mine.
David Tennant and Catherine Tate return to Doctor Who this month, and I’m reminded how much I enjoyed writing adventures for them back in 2008.
One was the BBC Audio Pest Control. It was the first brand new spinoff adventure that David Tennant performed as the Tenth Doctor, and is still on sale in a single CD or a collection
The other was a six-page comic for BBC online, who commissioned it as one of ten stories to demonstrate the capabilities of one of their online interactive elements.
The BBC was keen to have “value add” stuff on its website, and other examples (all now defunct, alas) included a Trailer Maker, the “TARDIS Cam”, “TARDIS Trumps”, and TARDIS Tennis on BBC Sport.
Comic Maker
The Comic Maker was a make-your-own-adventure tool based on a drag-and-drop template that contained backgrounds, character images, speech bubbles, and the other artefacts of a comic strip.
Eight of the commissioned authors were TV writers and script editors: Lindsey Alford, Stephen Greenhorn, Keith Temple, Joseph Lidster, Brian Minchin, Paul Cornell and Helen Raynor.
Two other professional authors, Jacqueline Rayner and I, were asked to write stories too because of our previous work on Doctor Who tie-ins. I had written novels, short stories and audio scripts, and was known to the online team as one of the authors of the Doctor Who Fear Forecast web series.
So I wrote the final comic strip of the ten.
BBC online suggested that we each submit a script and they would create the online version. I thought the Comic Maker tool was impressive and easy to use, and I wanted to create my own comic with it for them to copy across to the public site.
I had great fun devising a narrative and dialogue to make amusing use of the available backgrounds, character expressions and artefacts, and tested it out on my two school-age children.
The Baktek Illusion was my six page comic with appropriate “page turn” moments and reveals, transitions between frames, cropped images, and dozens of individual creatures at one point.
It all went swimmingly well until I got to page six when, to my dismay the Comic Maker site barfed. There was no back up, so I lost everything and my children discovered I knew a number of novel swear words.
Now you see it…
I had taken the precaution of doing some low resolution screengrabs as I went along. And with time running out to get the story complete for the weekly release schedule, I reluctantly sent my script to the BBC online team so that they could reconstruct the pages.
The Comic Maker code was abandoned as part of that change, and all ten comics vanished. Unlike other pages on that old site that can still be searched on bbc.co.uk or found in archive.org, the comics pages used Comic Maker as their platform for displaying on the web and are therefore not online anywhere.
Under the circumstances, it’s tempting to say that the whole thing is a bit of a blur. But I remember it quite well – I just don’t have a copy of the original.
If anyone does have an archive of those ten Comic Maker stories, please get in touch. In the meantime, the best that’s available are story summaries on the TARDIS wiki:
The Apple Vision Pro announcement intrigues me. When you look at the launch video, it looks excitingly like all those heads-up display things we’ve been seeing in the new Star Trek series.
But then you realise that you’re watching those Star Trek shows while looking at a flat screen telly with someone sitting next to you on the sofa watching the same telly. And the Star Trek displays manifest in the room without other viewing technology. Whereas the Vision Pro wraps your head in a just-for-you headset display.
And it’s eyewateringly expensive. Though this Mashable article is an interesting bit of speculation about entry-level price points.
For all the chat about it, I’ve yet to see compelling examples of use cases for this new tech. The examples are about step changes in user interactions with existing interactions or activities: “operate all these familiar apps, but with your eyes!” and “read web pages and play your existing videos and games on a huge screen of any size!”
Most strangely of all, the Apple video celebrates what appears to be a dad taking 3D images of his playing children while he has his head in the device, thus experiencing the moment at not-quite-first-hand. It’s even worse than being totally absorbed, hidden behind your iPhone screen as you take landscape photos; lift your head up and you could instead enjoy the beauty of the scene with your own eyes. Or, in this case, look at your kids with your own eyes.
The advertising and press hype seems to be about the number of patents and the cleverness of the hardware, rather than examples of how it transforms or replaces things in everyday life or business or introduces completely new things. But perhaps I’m reading the wrong articles.
Most of all, though, this “new era of spacial computing” reverts to the individual experience, rather than the shared or collaborative one. This “profound new way to be together” advocates telepresence at the expense of literal presence.
Because you are enclosed and immersed in the device, it has to play back to you a version of the world beyond, via its cameras. And it also has to play back a version of you to others beyond it, whether it’s your eyes displayed to someone in the same room as you, or an uncanny valley avatar of you to the people with whom you’re on a Facetime call. The ingenuity of creating a scanned replica of you springs specifically from a new inhibitor that the device itself introduces, which is that your head is encased and obscured by the device.
I look forward to seeing a rather more compelling use case for it. Making it available to a development ecosystem, and priming the channel with access to existing apps, may mean that the “killer app” or use case will appear, and someone will make it so. For the moment, it looks to me like my Star Trek world will have to wait a bit longer before I decide to engage.
I’m delighted to say that I’ll be attending this year’s GallifreyOne convention in Los Angeles. What a treat! Once I know what my schedule is, I’ll post more information. Which will be a good excuse to update this blog after too long an absence.
Big Finish announced today some work I’ve been doing for them. I’ve been script editor on three boxsets in TheWorlds of Blake’s 7 series of full-cast audios. The producer is David Richardson. You can read the official announcement here.
All three box sets can be preordered now, along with three tie-in audio novels.
Featuring the enigmatic race from Season B episode Weapon. What are the unrevealed secrets and motivations of the Clone Masters, who on TV we met briefly in that TV episode and later heard about their untimely demise in the Season C episode Children of Auron.
The cast includes Jan Chappell as Cally, Sally Knyvette as Jenna, and both Travises! What a treat it was to hear Stephen Greif and Brian Croucher reprising the role in studio.
The script writing credits and other story details for the three episodes are yet to be announced, so keep an eye out for further announcements about that. Lisa Bowerman is the director. The box set is available in September.
How did Bayban become the Butcher that the Liberator crew encountered in his startling original appearance in City at the Edge of the World, the Season C episode? And how could he possibly have survived the end of that story?
It’s a glorious return to Blake’s 7 for Colin Baker, who clearly relished returning to the role in his studio performance.
The author and director credits for each story are yet to be announced. The box set is available in December.
We know from Season B’s episode Shadow that the villainous Terra Nostra are involved in whatever is dirty, degrading, and cruel on every civilised world. So in this box set, we explore what further influence they have in the Blake’s 7 galaxy.
Writing and directing credits are yet to be announced, as is any information about cast members for these three audios. More news on that later in the year, with the box set being made available in January 2022.
One thing you’ll notice is that Michael Keating is mentioned in the announcement as a cast member… but we haven’t yet revealed where he appears in the run of stories.
So watch out for more information on these nine brand new full-cast audios during the year. There are surprises in store!
It’s been a joy to work with the team on these episodes, and I can’t wait for you to find out more about the wonderful writers, amazing cast, and thrilling stories.
Occasionally I do press interviews. This is the text of one I sent off to Starburst magazine (interviewer Tony Jones) in 2014.
It’s from around the time that Big Finish had released my Blake’s 7 audio play Mirror, but covered lots of stuff about other writing.
Starburst: Peter, thank you for sparing the time to answer a few questions.
Peter: You’re welcome. Thanks for asking them.
Starting back in the 1990s: your first novel was pitched when you heard that the BBC was re-launching the Doctor Who novels and was accepted. What had you done before that? Had you always written but never been published?
I was involved with fan publications in my teens, and put out a Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 fanzine called “Frontier Worlds.” Through that, I made a lot of friends, including people like Craig Hinton, Paul Cornell, Justin Richards, Gary Russell and Andy Lane.
They all subsequently wrote novels for Virgin Publishing. Indeed, as far as Virgin was concerned, Paul pretty much established the credentials and credibility of writers who came from a background in fandom. I suppose Virgin was an appropriate name for such a group of talented but previously-unpublished authors.
As it happened, in the early 90s, I also worked in the same office as Justin and Craig. I was very admiring of how they and had got their Doctor Who novels published by Virgin. Probably quite jealous, too. When Andy and Justin edited a couple of the Decalog short story anthologies, they asked me to pitch ideas. I wrote “Moving On” for them, and then a non-Who story called “C9H13NO3 .”
Kursaal was pitched before you knew that the Eighth Doctor would have a companion called Sam Jones. How hard was it to adapt your pitch and were you happy with the end product?
My original proposal was written for the Eighth Doctor, and used the same approach as the TV Movie in that the Doctor arrived alone and left alone. I knew BBC Books planned to continue Virgin’s approach, which was to publish two novels per month – one Eighth Doctor and one Past Doctor. And I was pitching to them before any of the BBC novels had been announced.
I hoped to write for the Eighth Doctor, though I’d have been happy to have done one of their Past Doctor series instead. To maximise my chance of getting commissioned, I explained that my story would also suit any “Doctor-plus-single-companion” combination.
Mind you, if they’d said “the Doctor’s going to be travelling with three companions and a talking cabbage,” I’d have replied instantly, “You know, I think that would also work brilliantly for my story, and here’s how…”
Anyway, I told them that I could place the story in periods of the TV series when the Doctor was not accompanied by two or more fellow travelers. I didn’t suggest any feeble excuse that one or more “missing” companion had been unfortunately locked in the TARDIS throughout.
So I suggested: First Doctor plus Dodo; Second Doctor plus Jamie; Third Doctor plus Jo or Sarah; Fourth Doctor plus Sarah, Leela, Romana or Adric; Fifth Doctor plus Nyssa or Peri; Sixth Doctor plus Peri or Mel; Seventh Doctor plus Mel or Ace; Eighth Doctor plus any new BBC Books companion.
As well as trying to offer lots of options, I suppose I was showing off a bit to people at BBC Books who I suspected may not have known a lot about Doctor Who. (Little did I know that one of them was Steve Cole. Whatever happened to him, eh?)
I’d therefore already considered how I could adapt my outline to accommodate a completely new companion, and it wasn’t too much of a chore to incorporate Sam Jones. I quite like writing things where I’m asked to incorporate specific things, anyway. It’s a writing challenge.
In your blog, The Red Lines Page [anagram!]…
Yes, there are others. Possibly not suitable to mention in a family magazine!
…the blog has your original query pitch and then various other items such as scene by scene breakdowns, all of which is of interest to any author. Do you put these posts up for posterity, as a monument to your own production process or to help others? Do they reflect the way you still write today?
“Web logs” started to become popular in the late 90s, and I don’t recall there being a lot of them when I started writing. This was the decade before Facebook and Twitter. (Gasps of horror and disbelief from your younger readers. Some of whom probably think Facebook is already a bit old hat.)
Nevertheless, those days weren’t all writing by candlelight on a wax tablet. We had newsgroups in which people like Paul Cornell and Jon Blum and Kate Orman and Steven Moffat would discuss writing. Some people even had their own websites, lovingly hand crafted in HTML. Gary Russell had an interesting site that contained helpful advice and information.
I’d found all that free stuff useful for my writing. And I’m vain enough that I like talking about myself and what I do. So I thought, why not try “paying it forward” and publish stuff about my own experience of writing? If it’s helpful, that’s OK. And if it’s not, well, I enjoyed writing it anyway. Sometimes you write stuff just because it’s fun, and not because you get paid for it. (Who do I invoice for this by the way?)
Anyway, I set up a web site where I published all my original proposals for novels and audios and short stories, plus information about the writing process, and summaries of all the reviews I’d read of my stuff – good, bad, or indifferent, it didn’t matter. One or two reviewers e-mailed to say they were a bit cross about having rude parts of their reviews quoted, which just made me laugh.
When my web host changed, I decided it was easier to start again on a new blog and move stuff across when I had time. I picked WordPress as the least painful popular free platform. I’ve started to republish some of the web site stuff again at http://anghelides.org Though I am a lazy blogger, and I don’t do it as much as I used to. Never mind, there are plenty of bright young things doing new and interesting stuff instead of me.
You’ve written a number of books and several short stories for Doctor Who and other ranges, amongst which is Torchwood. How did that come about?
It turns out that “paying it forward” wasn’t just a help to other people, it was a help to me, too! BBC Books needed to find me when they were launching the Torchwood novels to accompany the new TV series, and they found my contact details (like you did!) on my website. I think I have Gary Russell to thank, too, because he was working on the TV series and had suggested a number of plausible candidates to BBC Books for the new novels.
That whole experience was brilliant. I’ve had the great good fortune that people have asked me to do a number of “firsts” in my writing… the first Eighth Doctor audio book for BBC Audio, the first Tenth Doctor audio story read by David Tennant, the first full-cast Blake’s 7 audio…
It’s a privilege, and also very flattering, to be entrusted with such things. How fantastic was that, then – to be writing the first Torchwood novel, and working with Andy Lane and Dan Abnett before Torchwood had even aired on TV? We were writing them as they were making that first series. The novel has been released as an audio book, skilfully adapted by Joe Lidster and read by John Barrowman. And translated into German by Susanne Döpke. There’s even a Hungarian version.
You’ve also written several audio scripts, not just Doctor Who and Torchwood but also Sarah-Jane and Blake’s 7. How do you find writing for audio compared to novels and short stories?
Audio scripts are a lot shorter, for one thing, so it’s possible to draft them faster, then iterate more frequently and extensively if necessary. With a novel or short story you have an editor providing input, whereas audio continues to be a varied collaborative effort all the way through the process – producer, script editor, director, the performances in the studio, and finally the edit with the sound effects and score.
Novel writing is painting pictures in words for your readers, whereas audio scripts are providing the guidance for a performance. And while characters do talk to each other at times in a novel, an audio script is principally dialogue.
Now those are wild generalisations, of course. You can incorporate interior dialogue and narration into an audio, and you can have conventional dialogue sequences in a novel – especially one that is inspired by a TV series.
But the common element of both is having a compelling story, interesting characters, and staying true to the spirit of the franchise without slavishly copying it.
In 2013 Big Finish released Warship which was the first full cast adventure for the original Blake’s 7 cast. If that weren’t enough of a challenge it also plugged a massive gap in the show’s canon. Did you approach this differently from other stories and was this part of the show’s history you always wanted to tackle?
I’ve loved Blake’s 7 since it was first broadcast – round about the same time that I was also a huge, huge fan of Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. I watched Blake’s 7 from the opening episode, and celebrated it in that fanzine I mentioned earlier.
When Big Finish asked me to write Warship, I suppose I was a bit conflicted at first. On the one hand, like any contemporary fan, I always wanted to know what happened at the end of the second series that meant Blake and Jenna were no longer in the third. On the other hand, some of the magic of any series lies within those gaps that fans like to fill for themselves with personal theories they don’t want contradicted.
And on the third, Andromedan hand, how could I possibly resist the opportunity to write the first full-cast audio for the actors I’d loved in the original series?
Even so, despite my geekish continuity credentials as a longstanding fan, I researched the gap by rewatching the entire series. I did a load of research to remind myself and confirm my thoughts. Plus, it was a great excuse to watch those original stories again. I sheepishly confess that I watched several sequences where I could spout the dialogue in synch with the actors.
In the end, I devised an exciting story in the style of the TV series that fits the continuity. Most listeners seemed to agree. Except for those whose pet theories I contradicted, obviously.
(Yes, I know we didn’t see any Blake’s 7 Andromedans with three hands. And they weren’t named as Andromedans, either.)
Of all the ranges you’ve written for so far do you have a favourite and how do you as a writer view their differences?
That’s like asking parent which child they love best! (If my children are reading this, then obviously I love you best. Yes, you. Don’t tell the other one.)
I have honestly loved writing all of them – whether Doctor Who audios for Big Finish, or Torchwood novels for the BBC, or Sarah Jane Adventures for AudioGo, or original fiction for Virgin. I seize opportunities I’m offered by people who I enjoy working with, to write about characters I love, for people who enjoy those TV series as much as I do.
Without breaking any confidences can you let us know what you’re working on at the moment or at least give us some clues?
It’s bad luck to discuss stuff that hasn’t actually been commissioned, and it’s bad manners to mention anything that has been commissioned but not announced.
I once made the mistake of telling people that I was writing a Big Finish script for the first series of Tom Baker Doctor Who audios – the opening one (another first!) set on Nerva Station. They kindly invited me to pitch. I did several detailed drafts and revisions, including a four-part version and a two-part alternative. But in the end they weren’t happy enough to commission it.
I’d already pitched things for some of the earlier attempts by BBC Audio and Big Finish to bring Tom Baker stories to audio. This time I really thought it was going to happen, and I felt utterly wretched to miss out. Well, “miss out” is probably a bit misleading – nothing is ever a done deal until the contract is signed, and the recording is complete.
That’s why Big Finish – quite rightly – don’t tend to announce anything until the studio work is complete. I’ve had other things turned down, of course – that’s not unusual for writers, and you need to be resilient. But I’ve never felt as devastated as on that occasion.
So I’m not going to tempt fate, or upset anyone, by saying or hinting anything. Sorry!
Is there a show you’d like to write for but haven’t?
Each new incarnation of the Doctor is like a new show, and so I would relish the chance to write something for the Twelfth Doctor. I’d quite fancy writing a novel about a pre-Jack Torchwood. I enjoyed Firefly and a lot of Fringe, so those would have been fun.
I persevered with the recent revamped version of The Tomorrow People, and thought that had potential before they humanely destroyed it after one series. I liked some of its set-up, but kept thinking that I could write better dialogue. Which is a very different motivation to, say, writing for Blake’s 7, where we all aspire to write dialogue as characteristic and compelling as original TV writers Terry Nation and Chris Boucher.
I feel I’ve got it right if I sit in the recording studio chuckling as Michael Keating (Vila) is performing my dialogue. Yes, I’m afraid I do that.
Beyond writing you have a day-job: how do you juggle your time and do you keep the two worlds separate?
Writing is a hobby I get paid for – and one should always make time for the things one loves. But I can’t compromise my day job, because I really enjoy that, too.
In the past, I’ve made time in a variety of ways. It may involve booking holiday from work. Sometimes it’s writing during early mornings and or evenings or weekends. Other occasions I’ve been able to write when on a plane to a business meeting, or in the hotel.
I treat every writing commission with the seriousness of my regular job, of course – because publishers, distributors, directors, directors and so on all rely on a professional text being delivered on time and to specification.
Hmm… that perhaps makes it sound rather dry and dull. Whereas, of course, it is a fabulous and privileged opportunity to add to the franchises that inspired me to write in the first place.
And, finally, if you had the chance to travel on the Liberator or work at Torchwood which would you choose and why?
Both have a pretty high mortality rate, don’t they? I think I’d take a risk on Torchwood, because the adventure tends to come to Cardiff and I could still pop home occasionally on Bank Holidays to see friends and family. Because Weevils obviously like a long weekend as much as anyone.
Peter, thank you again for taking the time to answer a few questions, I really appreciate it.
Here’s an interview I did a while back for Big Finish.
It’s about the Blake’s 7 audio I wrote for them called Incentive (released seven years ago in 2013). It’s still available for purchase via Big Finish.
Q: How did you enjoy picking up from the events of Star One?
I’ve always enjoyed doing “jigsaw puzzle” commissions, where I’m asked to accommodate certain places or events. In some ways, I prefer it to a blank page.
Firstly, there’s the pleasure of playing with the continuity of the original series – expanding it without breaking it. And secondly, it’s a great way of getting a clear “steer” from the person commissioning the piece without being forced into a straitjacket of a pre-determined storyline. It’s my writerly incentive.
Being given a restricted or specific set of characters for the story is another example. In the case of Incentive, these were Avon and Tarrant, plus one new speaking role of my own devising. There was an additional requirement to address two other characters – Blake and Jenna – without actually featuring them at all.
It came about because I’d written Warship. Producer David Richardson was originally going to include that as a story called “The Galactic War.” [Interview about that here.]
It was to be the first of three stories in the Liberator Chronicles Vol VI box set – the other two being Jenna’s Story and Blake’s Story. David’s first thought was for me to do Blake’s Story, because he knew I’d been on-set during the recording of the Season D finale Blake in 1981. [Reported in these three previous blogs: part 1,part 2, and part 3.]
So the gag was that I’d already been to Gauda Prime.
When the original author couldn’t do “The Galactic War” for some reason, I asked to do it instead of Blake’s Story – because I’d secretly fancied doing that one all along, and had been too timid to ask. When that script expanded to become a separate release, it left a “gap” in Vol VI – and this time, I wasn’t too timid to ask to fill it.
Q: Was it a hard one to do, finding reasons for the crew giving up on looking for Blake and Jenna?
With Blake and Jenna having their journeys completed in Vol VI, the remaining question for the box set had to be: why did the Liberator crew stop looking for them during Season C? Blake gets a few passing references in the first three episodes, and nothing until the end off the season. Poor Jenna gets very little mention, and her name doesn’t pass anyone’s lips after the second episode.
I had written the post-Star One story Warship to describe Blake and Jenna’s departure from Liberator. I decided not even to have them in “flashback” in this new story, because of what else I knew was in the box set.
The other Season C question, with Blake’s absence in particular, is why Avon continues to strike out against the Federation now that he has taken control of Liberator. It surely can’t be because he’s let a couple of newcomers on board at the end of the TV story Powerplay. And so my script offers an explanation for this puzzler, too, in Avon’s closing discussion with Tarrant.
So that provided all the jigsaw pieces for what became Incentive.
Q: What was your highlight of writing this one?
I had to substantially rewrite it after I’d completed the first draft of the script.
Now, rather than get a horrible sinking feeling about it, actually, I was delighted – because the reason was a special request to change the cast.
The script was originally commissioned, and written, as a story for Avon and Vila. There were “reported” sequences for the other absent Season C cast members – Cally, Zen, and Orac, because the restricted cast requirement for Liberator Chronicles meant we weren’t going to have Jan Chappell or Alistair Lock take part in this one; and Tarrant and Dayna were not in it because neither Steven Pacey nor Josette Simon had agreed to take part in the Big Finish series.
Unbeknown to me, though, Big Finish had just secured Steven Pacey’s participation. Producer David Richardson asked me if I’d like to rewrite my script to feature Tarrant instead of Vila.
The dynamic between Avon and each of those characters is very different. And they have their own distinctive dialogue, reactions, and motivations. I reworked the script from the start. It prompted additional elements that, as I wrote the revision, honed and improved it.
Q: Again, how do you look back on it?
I’m really pleased that the extra work it required also made it a very different style. By this stage, the many previous Liberator Chronicles had experimented with ways of exploiting new opportunities with the format.
When I look back at my first one, Counterfeit, [see interview here] it seems very much more “writerly” – much more restrained in its narrative ambition, and adhering more closely to the familiar conventions of a “talking book.” From the outset with Incentive, even with Vila as the second lead, I’d wanted to use the interrogation structure to make this more like a full-cast audio (albeit with a small cast).
The rewrite gave me a further opportunity to remove some of the more obvious narration. There are scenes between the three cast members. But you’re also aware that when Avon and Tarrant relate their earlier journey, they’re not talking to an unseen audience of listeners, they are talking to Bracheeni within the action of a scene. What’s more, Bracheeni can interact with them during that narration, whether in dialogue or employing his noisy torture device.
I was also able to remove a couple of less convincing sections of Vila talking to himself while locked up – though I decided as a little in-joke to refer to the fact that he’s (silently) imprisoned in an adjacent cell.
In the TV series, even if the focus was on a subset of the principal cast for an individual episode, they were each contracted to be in all the episodes. All of them would therefore have some lines and action, even if it was only trivial. In my script, I could make a virtue of the other characters’ necessary absence by choosing not to include them in unnecessary “contractual obligation” scenes just so that the whole cast had something to say.
I was a bit sorry to lose Vila – Michael Keating is always excellent in the studio, and fun company in the green room. But how could I resist writing the first new Blake’s 7 audio to star Steven Pacey as Tarrant?
He was also terrific, of course. And the green room was lively – because of the other scripts being recorded at the same time, we had Brian Croucher and Tom Chadbon there, too, plus Adrian Lukis (playing Bracheeni) and Ken Bentley (director).
Steven Pacey and Paul Darrow at the studio recording
Today, BBC Books publishes Doctor Who: I Am the Master, a short story collection.
My story “Anger Management” opens the book, which also contains stories by Mark Wright, Jacqueline Rayner, Mike Tucker, Beverly Sanford, and Matthew Sweet. The collection is edited by Steve Cole.
The Red Lines Page 