Dr Who and the Auton Attack
Obverse Books charity novel
A swarm of meteorites lands in close formation in the English countryside... for the second time in a few months. Somehow that is linked to strange activity at a plastics factory, and bizarre behaviour at the highest levels of society. Dr Who is asked to help but soon even he is under attack.
Nowhere is safe and nothing can be trusted as the Autons attack.
Notes:
Movies are usually on a much bigger scale than TV. When I wrote these adaptations - actually adaptations of fictional adaptations - it was important that they should feel like novelisations of films that really could have existed. That meant that I more or less had to write - at least in my head - the scripts or probably more accurately the detailed storylines of the films before I wrote the novelisations.
There's something else I had to do with these films - I had to try to filter my writing through the background material I was writing alongside the novelisations. The particular flavour of the writers and directors had to be taken into account. I read or watched work by each of the writers and directors so that I could get an idea of their styles. I was probably most enthused by writing a pastiche of Robert Holmes. In a sane and just world, everyone would know Robert Holmes. He was a really great TV writer. He wrote for dozens of TV shows and he was fabulous. He could write scripts that were scary, witty, slapstick funny and deeply moving all at the same time. His dialogue was deliciously sharp and there was usually a real sense of mischief in his work. He is, in my opinion, the best writer to have worked on classic era Doctor Who (that's 1963-1989 for non-fans). The idea of him doing a big screen Doctor Who script for a movie overseen primarily by Hammer Films was just a joy. I have absolutely no doubt that he would have done a better movie than me, but I really, really enjoyed the chance to pay homage to a hero.
Nowhere is safe and nothing can be trusted as the Autons attack.
Notes:
Movies are usually on a much bigger scale than TV. When I wrote these adaptations - actually adaptations of fictional adaptations - it was important that they should feel like novelisations of films that really could have existed. That meant that I more or less had to write - at least in my head - the scripts or probably more accurately the detailed storylines of the films before I wrote the novelisations.
There's something else I had to do with these films - I had to try to filter my writing through the background material I was writing alongside the novelisations. The particular flavour of the writers and directors had to be taken into account. I read or watched work by each of the writers and directors so that I could get an idea of their styles. I was probably most enthused by writing a pastiche of Robert Holmes. In a sane and just world, everyone would know Robert Holmes. He was a really great TV writer. He wrote for dozens of TV shows and he was fabulous. He could write scripts that were scary, witty, slapstick funny and deeply moving all at the same time. His dialogue was deliciously sharp and there was usually a real sense of mischief in his work. He is, in my opinion, the best writer to have worked on classic era Doctor Who (that's 1963-1989 for non-fans). The idea of him doing a big screen Doctor Who script for a movie overseen primarily by Hammer Films was just a joy. I have absolutely no doubt that he would have done a better movie than me, but I really, really enjoyed the chance to pay homage to a hero.