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The story "A Brave New World" was written in the days of the BBC Doctor Who Message Boards, in 2002, and was 'inspired' (if that's the word) by the appearance of an option called 'ALERT A MODERATOR' on the boards. In the real world, this simply meant that if somebody posted something which you thought was offensive, or in some way breached the board's rules, you could click on the button to contact The Powers That Be (whoever they be). For whatever reason, it sounded to me like a cliffhanger just waiting to be written. So I had my cliffhanger, now I only needed a story to go around it. (Incidentally, that isn't as rare and "arse about face" (stop me if I'm getting too technical) as you might think - it is, I think, fairly well known in fandom that Terry Nation's original Dalek story was entirely the result of a dream he had one night, in which he found himself menaced by a sink plunger.) It quickly became obvious to me that, although I may well have spent far more time than is good for me revelling in Doctor Who in all its various forms, I genuinely could not think of a single idea for a proper story - thankfully, Russell T Davies didn't get in touch about me writing for the new series, so I was saved from that embarrassment. I could, however, very easily think of writing something which was in essence just a send-up of the Message Board environment, with various other elements chucked in along the way as the fancy took me. Part One is the shortest (and although it's tempting to write here that "This tale grew in the telling" I won't, in a rare example of my shying away from being pretentious), and is almost, arguably, a 'straight' episode. From there on, though, the length of the episodes increases inversely with the level of sanity. What was to be a four parter started to grow, when I realised that I hadn't actually given any thought to what might happen once the Doctor had Alerted the Moderators. Along the way, the story expanded in directions I hadn't expected (the throwaway Star Wars line that momentarily amused me at the end of part five, becomes significant in part six, for example) and also, lacking much discipline, there are an awful lot of homages (by which I mean unlicensed rip-offs) to various Who (and some non-Who) stories and moments and even, as with the end of part six, dialogue. Some of the references may be lost on anybody who never found their way to the Doctor Who Message Boards at the BBC - but as long as you know that Emily was the main Mod, and certainly she seemed to be the only one who ever did anything, that's probably enough to get you through. Oh, and you might also need to know that there was an ALERT A MODERATOR option. Or did I already mention that? The second story, "A Strange Old World", is a sort-of-but-not-quite sequel, and was inspired simply by my love of the 1979 season of Doctor Who, which I may possibly have mentioned elsewhere. Even in the real world, that set of episodes seemed to have a particularly troubled production, what with strikes and abandoned scripts and the like - from knowing that, it was a short, albeit mentally-questionable, leap from the fairly well-detailed facts, to a fictional 'explanation' for those occurrences. Whereas the first one had ended up longer than expected, the second story sometimes feels a bit rushed. It would have been lovely to write a proper, novel-length story, bringing in such sub-plots as Tom Baker & Lalla Ward's romance, and including far more material with Williams & Adams, but if I had tried to do that not only would I probably never have finished it, but even if I had it would never have fitted comfortably onto a Message Board. The story attempts (whether it succeeds or not you'll have to decide for yourself) to present England in 1979 as a country where television in general (and Doctor Who in particular) is the main news issue, with politics very much an also-ran. So, for example, the general election of that year (which saw Helen A become our first woman PM) plays second fiddle to the rumours that Graham Williams may be replaced as Producer of Doctor Who. This is for no deeply textual or satirical reason, but is simply because, in as far as I was aware of the outside world in 1979, that was the order of priority that I would have placed on it. (One could reasonably argue that I haven't changed much in the intervening 25 years.) Again, there are lots of things thrown in simply because they seemed like a good idea at the time, from JN-T "doing a Davros" to the title spiel from Quantum Leap. There are also several 'real' people in the mix this time. Although the story does to a large extent make fun out of the people concerned, I ought to stress that it really is only meant in fun and certainly not intended to deride or mock anybody. It's actually quite saddening to think that both Producers, and one of the Script-Editors, responsible for all the Doctor Who that I can actually remember watching first time around (1979-1989) are now gone. Two more things I ought to add - first, I originally got as far as writing the first seven parts of this story, before grinding to a complete halt. After several months I decided to start posting it onto the Message Boards, on the basis that this would then force me to write the remaining episodes. By sheer luck (Pertwee might have called it serendipity) the announcement of Doctor Who's return to TV came at just the right time for me to not only incorporate it, but for it actually to form a neat tie-up to a story that would otherwise have ended rather lamely. The other thing is that I did do a bit of Internet research into the dates of the various events in the production run of season 17 so most of the story's events are accurately set. However, in reality "The Armageddon Factor" which finished season 16, and the end of which was one of Douglas Adams' first jobs on the show, was completed late in 1978, and not actually in 1979 at all. I ignored this rather inconvenient fact, again for self-indulgent reasons - namely, I liked the opening scene between Adams & Williams in part three, and wasn't about to let the facts get in the way of it!! And finally... if you find yourself with way too much time on your hands, please feel free to try and compile a definitive list of the various sources I have homaged (aka ripped off) in these stories. As your starter for ten, I'll tell you that both stories start with quotes from Target books... Andrew Curnow, at home, October 2004
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A Brave New World
A Strange Old World Coming soon |
