Doctor Who and Me
Me and Doctor Who go way back. When I was a kid, it was more than a television show to me. To be honest, it still is, and I feel hugely fortunate to have worked on the show across many different levels. Even today, my relationship with Doctor Who continues to, well, regenerate…
I was lucky enough to grow up in a era before instant access to pretty much anything that you have an inclination to watch was a thing. The Target novelisations were the only way to access most of the Doctor’s early stories and like many fans, I devoured them.
Whenever either of the Cushing Dalek movies was screened on the BBC, my sister and I were euphoric that we’d get an hour-and-a-half of the Doctor’s adventures and in case you’re wondering - the second one. Come on! It has so much more charm, drama and the best piece of Sugar Puffs product placement of any movie set 200 years in the future.
Growing up in Blackpool, the Doctor Who Exhibition on the Golden Mile became a second home and of course, watching the episodes as they were broadcast felt more important than little things like sunlight and oxygen. I joined a local fan group (not LINDA, I hasten to add…) and even today, one a fellow member remains one of my best friends.
It goes without saying I began to acquire bootleg VHS copies of my favourite stories. The copies were often 6th or 7th gen and in a terrible state, which made them feel all the more precious. I love City of Death for example, but can’t fully enjoy a pristine copy. It just doesn’t feel right! And as the years rolled by where Doctor Who was absent from our screens, I watched and re-watched and re-re-re-re-re-watched so many great stories.
From a writer’s point of view, I feel I learnt a lot from the show’s ‘classic’ era. Such as? Well, the necessity of having regular cliff-hangers within one story, the joy of supporting characters who become familial and the notion that even during a scene where the universe itself is at stake, the right joke will heighten, rather than diminish the tension.
Before 2005 I occasionally worked on Doctor Who in varying tenuous capacities. I had an infinitesimally small job on the TV Movie starring Paul McGann and was part of the team that worked on the DVD release of the first series of ‘New Who’, which saw Russell T Davies revive the show with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose.
But I only began working on the programme properly (at last!) during the final phase of David Tennant’s tenure as the Time Lord. What. A. Joy.
I was Doctor Who’s Online Producer, which sounds much grander than it was. I’ll save details of my time on the show for another time, but I’ll just say that I intended to stay a couple of years but spent almost a decade.
Oh, I’ll also say that a highlight was getting to play the Doctor himself in one episode - very, very briefly! That was awesome. And fun. And I’ll never forget when the Doctor was me! I wasn’t offered the job full-time, bizarrely enough, and my time at BBC Wales came to a close a few months after the TARDIS keys had been handed to the wonderful Jodie Whittaker.
During those ten years I wrote a few small things that made it to the screen. Some good. Some mad. Some, well, somewhere in between. I also wrote several short stories including The Horror of Coal Hill, which you can still read here.
When I left to write full-time I worked on a couple of Doctor Who projects before the genius team at Maze Theory approached me to write a Virtual Reality game for them. I’d come up with characters, plot-line and a script (including dialogue for the then Doctor, Jodie) and they would do the hard bit, inventing puzzles and actually putting the whole thing together. Richard Wilkinson composed the incredible, frankly epic music and the whole thing was called Doctor Who: The Edge of Time. Glorious!
I later wrote a phone game for Maze called The Lonely Assassins. I pitched the idea of doing a sequel to Blink that would feature Ingrid Oliver as Osgood and Finlay Robertson as Larry Nightingale. It would feature a return to Wester Drumlins and, of course, the main threat would be posed by the Weeping Angels. And darn me, but they went for it and The Lonely Assassins was born. As always, Maze did a sensational job with the game/interactive episode and the company we worked with - Kaigan Games - brought an extraordinary amount of expertise to the table. The result was something one critic called, ‘the best Doctor Who game ever’.
Later still I wrote the console game The Edge of Time which expanded the story of the VR experience, bringing in Cybermen and a new enemy that I had enormous fun creating: the CyberReaper, brilliantly realised by the designers and producers. That project also involved working with Jodie Whittaker and David Tennant again – always a highlight of any production they’re involved with!
I remain a Doctor Who fan. I caught a few minutes of Genevieve the other day. It’s a 1953 movie starring Kenneth More about a race to Westminster Bridge in vintage cars. At one point, the central characters drive past a police box and immediately, in my head, that must be the TARDIS and I’m quite sure the Doctor is close by, engaged on some dangerous adventure whilst Kenneth and co. race across London, blithely unaware of his presence. Now, Genevieve is quite a fun film, but I’d much rather know what the Doctor is up to! Perhaps it’s the Second Doctor and he momentarily spotted one of the vintage cars, and it was really that glimpse that led him to procure Bessie when he was exiled to earth… I’ll shut up.
I’ve been lucky enough to meet twelve of the actors who’ve portrayed the Doctor in the television programme. Wonderful individual. All of them. Met countless companions and been beguiled by their stories. I’ve added, in some very small way, to the mythos and been immeasurably buoyed by strangers who’ve reached out to tell me they enjoyed one of my short stories or games. (If you’re one of those people – thank you!)
Whatever happens next, I can’t wait to see where the series goes as the TARDIS continues to take us along in its journey through everything that ever happened or ever will. Will I get to write for the Doctor, or the Doctor’s universe again? I do hope so. But I honestly don’t know. Time will tell. It always does.
