Dr Who and the Claus of Axos
Obverse Books charity novel
A new star appears in the sky...
Just before Christmas a new, bright star lights the night sky. In homes all across Britain, gifts are appearing, apparently given by Santa. These gifts bring good will and good cheer to the whole country...
only Dr Who remains suspicious...
Dr Who must not only save the Earth, he has to save Christmas...
Notes:
There are times I am a self-indulgent fellow. This book is one of those occasions. Once I'd had the idea of expanding Peter Cushing's era into radio, and the radio had grown to four series, I found that I wasn't quite ready to let go of Dr Who on the radio just yet. I had also been wondering about a way to put Cushing's Dr Who into a Christmas setting somehow. There's something warm and comfortable about what we came to call the Cushingverse, which I thought would be very much in keeping with my own memories of Christmas in the 1970s. That's when I was a kid and Christmas was the most exciting day ever. So I wondered... how about a Christmas special on radio?
And here we are.
The Claus of Axos...
The truth is, I had the title before I had the story, but once I had the title I was able to start fitting things to it. There would be Axos, there would have to be a Santa Claus. Would that be Dr Who? No, that would be obvious... if it was the Claus of Axos it would have to be someone belonging to Axos. The villain in the TV version was the Master and the meta narrative for the Cushingverse was that this came a year after Dr Who and the Curse of the Daemons. That meant I could use our Master, Frankie Howerd. I could use Colonel Cameron as well... and I could develop him by having Olivia Hawthorne in it as well... except in the novelisation of Dr Who and the Curse of the Daemons I had mentioned Olivia using her magic/telekinesis to show Cameron their wedding. So I set this after the wedding and had the newly weds heading to spend Christmas with Dr Who and his family.
I dipped very heavily into my memories of Christmas in the 1970s. The crepe paper decorations and the coloured lights twinkling through the snow are lifted directly from my memories, which all revolve around my mum. Mum had these beautiful, ornate crepe decorations which unfolded and unrolled to form bells and lanterns in the most gorgeous colours. My sister pointed out that they had a very particular smell, too. I dredged through my childhood memories and piled all of that into this to make it as nostalgic as possible, the closest I could get to easing people born at a certain time back to the 1970s. After all, isn't Christmas about nostalgia and memories?
There is a very, very rare first printing of this with a slightly different cover and slightly shorter text (no short story at the end) which went to friends at Christmas two years before this was generally available. If you have one of those originals, it's a rarity. The second edition contains some extras - a short story, Radio Times extracts etc., so that the two editions are different. Somewhere on Facebook you might be able to find a little trailer video for this, which I cobbled together in about half an hour. It's not sophisticated but I like it.
Just before Christmas a new, bright star lights the night sky. In homes all across Britain, gifts are appearing, apparently given by Santa. These gifts bring good will and good cheer to the whole country...
only Dr Who remains suspicious...
Dr Who must not only save the Earth, he has to save Christmas...
Notes:
There are times I am a self-indulgent fellow. This book is one of those occasions. Once I'd had the idea of expanding Peter Cushing's era into radio, and the radio had grown to four series, I found that I wasn't quite ready to let go of Dr Who on the radio just yet. I had also been wondering about a way to put Cushing's Dr Who into a Christmas setting somehow. There's something warm and comfortable about what we came to call the Cushingverse, which I thought would be very much in keeping with my own memories of Christmas in the 1970s. That's when I was a kid and Christmas was the most exciting day ever. So I wondered... how about a Christmas special on radio?
And here we are.
The Claus of Axos...
The truth is, I had the title before I had the story, but once I had the title I was able to start fitting things to it. There would be Axos, there would have to be a Santa Claus. Would that be Dr Who? No, that would be obvious... if it was the Claus of Axos it would have to be someone belonging to Axos. The villain in the TV version was the Master and the meta narrative for the Cushingverse was that this came a year after Dr Who and the Curse of the Daemons. That meant I could use our Master, Frankie Howerd. I could use Colonel Cameron as well... and I could develop him by having Olivia Hawthorne in it as well... except in the novelisation of Dr Who and the Curse of the Daemons I had mentioned Olivia using her magic/telekinesis to show Cameron their wedding. So I set this after the wedding and had the newly weds heading to spend Christmas with Dr Who and his family.
I dipped very heavily into my memories of Christmas in the 1970s. The crepe paper decorations and the coloured lights twinkling through the snow are lifted directly from my memories, which all revolve around my mum. Mum had these beautiful, ornate crepe decorations which unfolded and unrolled to form bells and lanterns in the most gorgeous colours. My sister pointed out that they had a very particular smell, too. I dredged through my childhood memories and piled all of that into this to make it as nostalgic as possible, the closest I could get to easing people born at a certain time back to the 1970s. After all, isn't Christmas about nostalgia and memories?
There is a very, very rare first printing of this with a slightly different cover and slightly shorter text (no short story at the end) which went to friends at Christmas two years before this was generally available. If you have one of those originals, it's a rarity. The second edition contains some extras - a short story, Radio Times extracts etc., so that the two editions are different. Somewhere on Facebook you might be able to find a little trailer video for this, which I cobbled together in about half an hour. It's not sophisticated but I like it.