Doctor Who - The Six Doctors
Obverse Books charity novel
The Doctors are being kidnapped from all through time and space and transported to the dreaded planet, Maladoom, where the Cybermen wait... along with the Daleks, Ice Warriors and countless other foes from the Doctor’s past.
Can the Doctors save the universe... ...and can the Doctors all be trusted? Notes: When I set about working out Peter Cushing's tenure as Dr Who, I knew there had to be an end, a definitive end for his run in Tardis. Initially the plan was for five films ending with Dr Who and the Yeti Invasion of London but that fifth book wasn't going to be ready when I needed it so we went with a first batch of four books, which posed the question of what to do with the Yeti Invasion of London... well, there were other stories still to tell and a background story to tell, too. So that expanded to a rin of eight movies, ending with an outlier, Dr Who's Greatest Adventure. But that still felt light for Cushing's run. So the plan for a radio series was added, and if Cushing was doing radio Dr Who for the BBC wouldn't he do TV Doctor Who for them as well...? Maybe in the anniversary specials? And that gave me the natural end point for him... 1983, the 20th anniversary. Should he just have been slipped into The Five Doctors? Well, that would have been obvious but didn't Robert Holmes have a story idea called The Six Doctors? What was that all about? Well, there's not a lot of detail but once I had what Holmes had come up with, I saw a way to use a lot of that in a different story than The Five Doctors. And I saw a way for that to tie into Peter Cushing's Dr Who having his final adventure. This was probably the most complicated novel I've ever written. There are so many different plot strands - each of the six Doctors has their own plot, plus there is the story on Gallifrey and the Master's plans... in the end I had to go back to basics, the way I'd been taught to write a comic strip back in 1985, but jotting it down scene by scene instead of picture by picture, just a few words for each scene, usually noting which Doctor and companions and which enemy or plot development. It looked like a list and in my head it felt like a bit of a jigsaw, but I really do think it worked. I think it works as an adventure and I think it's got a solid emotional farewell to Peter Cushing's Dr Who. Writing this also did what I thought was impossible - it made me respect Terrance Dicks even more for writing The Five Doctors, juggling all those Doctors and companions, and making it work. He was a hero already, but this added gloss to it.
Can the Doctors save the universe... ...and can the Doctors all be trusted? Notes: When I set about working out Peter Cushing's tenure as Dr Who, I knew there had to be an end, a definitive end for his run in Tardis. Initially the plan was for five films ending with Dr Who and the Yeti Invasion of London but that fifth book wasn't going to be ready when I needed it so we went with a first batch of four books, which posed the question of what to do with the Yeti Invasion of London... well, there were other stories still to tell and a background story to tell, too. So that expanded to a rin of eight movies, ending with an outlier, Dr Who's Greatest Adventure. But that still felt light for Cushing's run. So the plan for a radio series was added, and if Cushing was doing radio Dr Who for the BBC wouldn't he do TV Doctor Who for them as well...? Maybe in the anniversary specials? And that gave me the natural end point for him... 1983, the 20th anniversary. Should he just have been slipped into The Five Doctors? Well, that would have been obvious but didn't Robert Holmes have a story idea called The Six Doctors? What was that all about? Well, there's not a lot of detail but once I had what Holmes had come up with, I saw a way to use a lot of that in a different story than The Five Doctors. And I saw a way for that to tie into Peter Cushing's Dr Who having his final adventure. This was probably the most complicated novel I've ever written. There are so many different plot strands - each of the six Doctors has their own plot, plus there is the story on Gallifrey and the Master's plans... in the end I had to go back to basics, the way I'd been taught to write a comic strip back in 1985, but jotting it down scene by scene instead of picture by picture, just a few words for each scene, usually noting which Doctor and companions and which enemy or plot development. It looked like a list and in my head it felt like a bit of a jigsaw, but I really do think it worked. I think it works as an adventure and I think it's got a solid emotional farewell to Peter Cushing's Dr Who. Writing this also did what I thought was impossible - it made me respect Terrance Dicks even more for writing The Five Doctors, juggling all those Doctors and companions, and making it work. He was a hero already, but this added gloss to it.