Dr Who - Missions to the Unknown
Obverse Books charity anthology
The Kroton Trap
The Death of Man
Channel 6
The Haunted Tower
Number 13
The Evil of the Daleks' Masterplan
Six adventures for Dr Who...
An unusual shop, a haunted tower, a room that isn’t there, a voice from the past and a planet where showing intelligence is deadly are just some of the challenges faced by Dr Who and his family.
Every day brings a threat from the Unknown for Dr Who. Notes: This book was pretty well planned in advance. I had always planned to write the bulk of it myself and in the end, I wound up writing five out of six stories. The other - the opener - was written by Tim Gambrell. Tim is a fabulous writer. I really like his work - he's also incredibly easy to work with which is also something I think is important. He's written for all four anthologies and has been involved with the development of the whole Cushingverse project. The Death of Man and The Evil of the Daleks' Masterplan are the final two parts of the arc started in Escape to Danger. The title for the last episode shows what the arc is - a mash-up of The Evil of the Daleks and The Daleks' Masterplan. Obviously it sliced out the majority of plot from both stories and focused on the main themes, but I think it worked, as did our versions of Bret Vyon and Sara Kingdom, who had a very different relationship than their TV counterparts. Channel 6 is possibly my favourite short story in the whole run. It came from a conversation I had with Paul Magrs. It's got whimsy in it but it's just a story about love. The Haunted Tower and Number 13 are a deliberate move towards a more Hammer flavour, which is apt given that the series was a Hammer production for the BBC. The Haunted Tower should have the feel of a spooky BBC production from the 70s, that kind of atmospheric studio based production... I think it may have had some kind of The Stone Tape influence. Number 13, on the other hand, was not just influenced by M.R. James (thanks to my dear chum Daniel McGachey I became a great admirer of M.R. James) and when I was thinking of a Hammer-y story for this anthology, I heard about the BBC doing a James ghost story for Christmas. That made me think of how a Dr Who story by James would be... well, timing was against that, so how could I adapt a James story for the series? And then I was chatting to some folks about Crossroads... and suddenly a sort of mash-up between James and Crossroads came to mind, and suddenly it was obvious that I should adapt Number 13. And there we have it.
An unusual shop, a haunted tower, a room that isn’t there, a voice from the past and a planet where showing intelligence is deadly are just some of the challenges faced by Dr Who and his family.
Every day brings a threat from the Unknown for Dr Who. Notes: This book was pretty well planned in advance. I had always planned to write the bulk of it myself and in the end, I wound up writing five out of six stories. The other - the opener - was written by Tim Gambrell. Tim is a fabulous writer. I really like his work - he's also incredibly easy to work with which is also something I think is important. He's written for all four anthologies and has been involved with the development of the whole Cushingverse project. The Death of Man and The Evil of the Daleks' Masterplan are the final two parts of the arc started in Escape to Danger. The title for the last episode shows what the arc is - a mash-up of The Evil of the Daleks and The Daleks' Masterplan. Obviously it sliced out the majority of plot from both stories and focused on the main themes, but I think it worked, as did our versions of Bret Vyon and Sara Kingdom, who had a very different relationship than their TV counterparts. Channel 6 is possibly my favourite short story in the whole run. It came from a conversation I had with Paul Magrs. It's got whimsy in it but it's just a story about love. The Haunted Tower and Number 13 are a deliberate move towards a more Hammer flavour, which is apt given that the series was a Hammer production for the BBC. The Haunted Tower should have the feel of a spooky BBC production from the 70s, that kind of atmospheric studio based production... I think it may have had some kind of The Stone Tape influence. Number 13, on the other hand, was not just influenced by M.R. James (thanks to my dear chum Daniel McGachey I became a great admirer of M.R. James) and when I was thinking of a Hammer-y story for this anthology, I heard about the BBC doing a James ghost story for Christmas. That made me think of how a Dr Who story by James would be... well, timing was against that, so how could I adapt a James story for the series? And then I was chatting to some folks about Crossroads... and suddenly a sort of mash-up between James and Crossroads came to mind, and suddenly it was obvious that I should adapt Number 13. And there we have it.