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Doctor Who

Doctor Who Literature: Paradise Towers

I listened to Bonnie Langford’s reading of the book and it was splendid. The cover art is by Alister Pearson, who defined the look of Doctor Who art when I wandered into the cosmos.

Build high for happiness!

On 30 November 2024, I recorded the first of three Doctor Who Literature podcasts I was booked to do after my initial appearance in March 2023. As the trio are in relatively rapid succession—each novelizing a story from one of Sylvester McCoy’s three seasons in the title role—I suggested to host Jason Miller that we record them in the reverse order of publication, River Song-style, with us referring back to things in future episodes.

As I mention in this episode, disappointingly—for me—recorded first, I am wont to take things one step beyond reasonable. (Rrroll that R for the full McCoy.)

Happily, Jason—the other Jason, the one that hosts the show—fulfilled my long-standing desire to meet Jim Sangster, whose work I’ve admired for decades, so I’ll forgive his chonologia…next time.

Wallscrawl stating "Pex Lives".
©1987, 2021 by BBC Studios.

You can listen to our discussion of Doctor Who: Paradise Towers by Stephen Wyatt on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, and don’t forget to have a look at Jim’s video—featuring the vocals by Antony Owen—that cracked me up just before we started recording.

Patreon Preview: Steven Moffat

Note: This is a preview of “The Strange Comedy of Doctor Who and Mister Moffat”, my 3,300-word interview with Steven Moffat. To read the full essay, please join my Patreon account at the $10 “Fresh copy!” level.

“I always wanted to be a writer,” said Steven Moffat, thumbing a goodnight text to his wife—eight hours in our future and headed for bed—into his Blackberry. “There was never a time where I wanted to be anything else. I can’t recall any other ambitions, quite honestly.”

It was Saturday, 17 February 2007, and we were sat in a quiet corridor of the Los Angeles Airport Marriott, the din of a nearby convention underscoring our conversation.

“The very first things I wrote were an adaptation—a very bad one, as you’d expect from a seven-year-old—of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and endless Doctor Who stories. I have the distinction—this year—of writing my own new version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Doctor Who; hurray, I’ve really made progress there.”

To continue reading, please join me on Patreon. Your interest in my work is much appreciated.

JASON DAVIS
Freelance Writer

Doctor Who Literature: Chris Boucher & Harlan Ellison

On 19 February 2022, I recorded material for two episodes of the Doctor Who Literature podcast.

For my first episode, I told host Jason Miller how my love for Doctor Who led me to Harlan Ellison, who wrote the 1978 introduction for the U.S. editions of Doctor Who novelizations published by Pinnacle Books. (I share the segment with Doctor Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe, who returned to pay tribute to writer Chris Boucher.)

You can listen on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.

Anthony Coburn (1917–77)

Though Sydney Newman oversaw the conception and C.E. Webber wrote the initial format, it was Anthony Coburn who wrote the first produced script:

In the street we hear two things. We hear the striking of three o’clock from a nearby clocktower and following teat we hear the approaching crunch of a pol iceman on his beat.

We see the policeman only as a vague, slowly-moving figure, coming towards us in the fog.

We pull back to see the policeman against these Gates.

In one of the gates is a smaller entry gate. This is closed.

The policeman flashes his torch on the gates.

We read the faded writing on the gates. I. M. FOREMAN, SCRAP MERCHANT, and a smaller, newer sign: “PRIVATE — KEEP OUT”

The policeman pushes the smaller gate, which opens. He looks through it into the yard. Then he closes it and moves on.

We stay on the gate. We see swirling of fog in front of the small gate and slowly it opens, creaking a bit as it does.

There is all manner of junk lying about the yard.

We see a police box.

Anthony Coburn (1917–77)

C.E. “Bunny” Webber (1909–69)

Wilson, noting the following requirements for “the Saturday serial,” tentatively called The Troubleshooters:

  1. It must attract and hold the audience.
  2. It must be adaptable to any [science fiction] story, so that we do not have to reject stories because they fail to fit into our setup.

and outlining its principal cast:

The handsome young man hero
The handsome well-dressed heroine aged about 30
The maturer man, 35 – 40, with some “character” twist
[Sydney Newman would add “a kid to get into trouble”]

The “maturer man” would subsequently age several hundred years and one could argue his “`character’ twist” might be that he was neither a man, in the broader sense of a human native to Earth or—per Newman’s hypothetical suggestion in 1986 or the fact of 2018—in the sense of gender. Nevertheless, C.E. Webber (1909–69) was among the earliest key contributors to a legend.

Webber (left), is pictured with Enid Bagnold and John Whiting in this photo from the Bentley Archives.

Sydney Newman (1917–97)

Sydney Newman was offered a job by Walt Disney in 1938, but couldn’t accept due to an inability to secure a work visa. He returned to his native Canada and found work as a film editor. By 1954, he’d become CBC’s Supervisor of Drama Productions, and exports of his television work secured an invitation to the UK, becoming Head of Drama at ABC before being lured to the BBC where he assembled the team required to create “the Saturday serial.”

“We required a new programme that would bridge the state of mind of sports fans, and the teenage pop music audience, while attracting and holding the children’s audience accustomed to their Saturday afternoon serial. It had to be a children’s programme and still attract both teenagers and adults. Also, as a children’s programme, I was intent upon it containing basic factual information that could be described as educational, or, at least, mind opening for them. So my first thought was of a time-space machine with contemporary characters who would be able to travel forward and backward in time, and inward and outward in space. All the stories were to be based on scientific or historical facts as we knew them at the time.”
Sydney Newman (1917–97)

Photo uncredited.

Terrance Dicks (1935–2019)

“The Doctor believes in good and fights evil. Though often caught up in violent situations, he is a man of peace. He is never cruel or cowardly.
“In fact, to put it simply, the Doctor is a hero. These days there aren’t so many of them around…”
Terrance Dicks (1935–2019)