The book is quite a read, and covers almost 50 years of television; this should come as no surprise to anyone that has read Turner’s previous works such as Crisis? What Crisis? and Rejoice! Rejoice!, two sizable accounts of usually nostalgic eras (the books cover Britain in the 1970s and 1980s) that are looked back on with some rare but welcome realism.

A diversion from these volumes (“I do like the ’50s though: from Austerity Britain to the cusp of Swinging London is a great story!”), the story of Terry Nation and the memorable worlds that he created is a must for all fans of Doctor Who and cult and classic television.

I was fortunate enough to be able to speak to Alwyn in 2011 about Terry Nation and his remarkable career.

What aspect of Terry Nation’s career most interested you?

It’s only a small part of the book – for the obvious reason that his later work was more significant – but I’m fascinated by the early days when he was writing comedy shows for the radio back in the 1950s. Television was already making inroads, but radio still just about had the upper hand as the most important medium and, then as now, there was more scope for new ideas and new talent to get a hearing.

And Britain in the mid- and late-1950s was an exciting place. The 1960s were so noisy and have been so heavily chronicled that it’s easy to forget how much change there was in society and culture in the previous period. Nation was only a fringe player at that stage, but he was there and, like so many others, he was trying to make his name.

There are a couple of photos in the book of him and his then writing partners, Dave Freeman and John Junkin, looking wonderfully in period: shapeless trousers, heavy-knit jumpers and ungreased hair. They were part of the same generation that gave us the Angry Young Men, and who helped to transform the country.

How do you find the Hancock era material translates to modern audiences?

I grew up listening to my dad’s old reel-to-reel tapes of Hancock’s radio shows, and he was always my comedy hero. So I knew the story of how Hancock walked away from the BBC and from his longstanding writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, to make a series for ATV, with Nation writing four episodes. But I’d never actually seen that series – I don’t think it’s ever been repeated, and hasn’t appeared on video or DVD.

Watching the shows now, it would be hard to make a claim that Nation was in the premier league of comedy writers. None of the episodes are completely satisfying, either in the writing or the performance – Hancock was drinking quite heavily at this stage – and certainly they’re not up to the standard of the Galton and Simpson work.

But they’re better than they’re given credit for. So much of Hancock’s story has been filtered through the BBC’s version of events, and the implication has always been that he did nothing of worth after leaving the corporation (an account that doesn’t do justice to his superb film The Punch and Judy Man). There are scenes in Nation’s episodes that are very nearly vintage Hancock, even if the whole shows don’t quite hang together. And there are moments when the magic is turned on and you can see why Hancock continues to be so revered as a comedian. Given the problems of working with Hancock in that period, Nation did a pretty decent job.

Do you have a favourite episode from Nation’s work? Is there a favourite series?

Terry Nation created many shows including Blake's 7

In objective terms, I think the best writing is in the first three episodes of Survivors, the first episode of Genesis of the Daleks, and ‘Countdown’ from the second season of Blake’s 7. This is his mature work, when he was at the peak of his powers, and they all bear repeated viewings. (Though it’s always worth noting that they weren’t intended to be seen more than once, since repeats were much rarer in those days, and the video revolution hadn’t yet happened.)

But personally I have a fondness for much of his action adventure stuff in the 1960s and early-1970s. I don’t tire of watching Roger Moore and Tony Curtis sparking off each other in The Persuaders!, and I love the unglamorous grittiness of The Baron. And his 1972 play The Amazing Robert Baldick was a fine piece of work that could have developed into something of a classic if the pilot had resulted in a commission for a series.

The cover of the book has drawn some interesting comments, was it chosen to evoke that action TV era?

It’s a great cover, isn’t it? Sometimes I’ve found that the design of a book jacket is left to the last minute and can be a little disappointing. On this one, it was a long process of working through options and I think it’s ended up as the best cover I’ve ever had. There’s a nice pulp feel to it, harking back to – as you say – the action shows, but also to the comics that Nation grew up with.

The lack of character development aside through much of Nation’s work, do you find that modern TV series are harking back to that sort of era, or is it something that never really went away?

I’m not sure I entirely agree with your comment about the lack of character development. When it seemed appropriate – particularly in Survivors, but also in Blake’s 7 – he was perfectly capable of writing fuller characters.

But in general, Nation’s focus was on creating exciting adventure stories. And there’s always a need for that. It’s what he grew up reading, and watching at the movies, and he extended the tradition of action tales very successfully. He once talked about coming out of a screening of the first Star Wars film (which was released in Britain the month before Blake’s 7 debuted) and being green with envy at the special effects and the size of the budget. But those considerations aside, he was working in very much the same sort of field.

The sort of tale that makes you want to keep reading or keep watching to see what happens next and how it all resolves itself – that’s the essence of story-telling, and always will be. Escapist entertainment is seldom given proper critical respect, but it never goes out of fashion with the public.

Why do you think Terry Nation’s work has endured?

A classic Dalek moment as Nation's creations rule Earth

The best of his work still endures because of that element of story-telling. The conventions change, so that the trappings may look dated, but the essence remains: they’re cracking good tales.

And, of course, the greatest survivors of all are the Daleks. They’ve been around for nearly half a century now and they show no signs of going away. There are young kids coming to them now who are as captivated as their grandparents were back in the 1960s. When Nation sat down to knock out that first Daleks story in 1963 – rushing through the assignment in a week in order to get back to what he considered proper writing – he tapped into his own love of adventure stories and pulp science-fiction and conjured up an enduring myth. How these things happen is always a mystery, but their instant resonance can’t be denied.

I say in the book that the Daleks are the single most enduring creations of British television in the 20th century. It’s a bold claim but I really can’t think of any rivals. The Daleks were created specifically for the screen – rather than being adapted from literature – and their continuing appeal is not dependent on any specific writers or actors; they exist simply as themselves.

There is obviously some shared qualities between the Doctor and MacGyver (disrespect for violence, ingenious escapes, etc), but do you think that these types of characters can be in other shows or movies, or was it something that Nation brought to each show that stuck?

The same traits do turn up with great regularity in Nation’s work. He did like a hero who eschews violence and relies on his own improvisations to escape dangerous situations. And a lot of it comes from the thrillers he read as a child. Heroes like Sherlock Holmes, the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Saint – these characters might occasionally resort to fisticuffs or even, in extremis, to a weapon, but mostly they depended on their wits.

And that has an enduring appeal: the idea that brute force can be vanquished by intelligence and ingenuity, that a protagonist can triumph despite overwhelming odds. This is how we’d like to believe the world works, even if the evidence from real life suggests that it’s not quite true.

The man himself, Dalek creator Terry Nation

Terry tried very hard to protect the interest of the Daleks and make sure that they would always be of viable interest. Do you feel he protected them a bit too far or would you say that he did a good job making sure they were not over used?

After the first year of Daleks appearing everywhere on television, Nation’s main concern was that they shouldn’t be portrayed in a comic light. He reasoned that once they became laughed at on television, they would lose some of their power to scare young viewers. (The one major exception was Spike Milligan’s 1975 sketch in Q6, for which Nation gave his personal permission, in return for Milligan’s help with his career twenty years earlier.)

He was surely right to insist on this. There were always plenty of Dalek jokes and Dalek cartoons, but by keeping a tight grip on their official usage, Nation did preserve their mystique. During his lifetime, they remained unequivocally amoral. It’s a rare thing to have a fictional baddie who doesn’t acquire any sympathetic qualities through over-exposure, and it was worth hanging onto.

Discover more about Alwyn’s work at his website, www.alwynwturner.com. Meanwhile you can still purchase The Man Who Invented the Daleks: The Strange Worlds of Terry Nation by Alwyn W. Turner from Amazon where the RRP is reduced to just £13.25!

Finally, many thanks to Alwyn for taking the time to talk to us.

This week’s Kasterborous podKast with a “K” features James McLean in a specially recorded interview with the writer and Doctor Who fan John Kenneth Muir, who discusses the series, related matters and his various books.

John Kenneth Muir is an award-winning author of an impressive 22 reference books and guides to popular film and TV series in the sci-fi, comedy and horror genres. Most importantly for our purposes, John is also the creative force behind the celebrated and the popular media blog, Reflections on Film and Television – reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com – and writer of ”A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television” and ”A History and Critical Analysis of Blake’s 7″.

James spoke to John about all manner of related topics, and managed to edit down the mammoth interview into a special 80 minute podKast with a K for our listeners.

So in a break from the usual podKast programming, click play to hear James and John Kenneth Muir discussing some very interesting stuff…

You can of course subscribe to our RSS feed to enjoy the podKast, use the buttons above to listen now or download and you will also find us listed on iTunes!

To find out more about John, you can check his blog above (updated daily) or visit www.johnkennethmuir.com. In addition, you can find out more about his recent 832 page hardback title Horror Films of the 1990s on Amazon or by visiting the publisher’s website.

Next week’s podKast will once again signify a break from the norm as we welcome one or two special guests to discuss Doctor Who Series 6!

You’ve been associated with Doctor Who in print for quite sometime now, how did you first get involved?

Depends on what you mean by ‘involved’ I guess. I was an avid viewer that became a fan – or maybe, actually, I was always a fan! My first professional involvement was writing some short pieces for Doctor Who Monthly, as it then was. Some character studies of villains, I think was my first stuff – which followed on from some fanzine work doing similar stuff. Then, a few years later, I got involved in the Virgin New Adventures novel series.

I was at University with Andy Lane, and he and Jim Mortimore wrote the brilliant Lucifer Rising which gave me the kick I needed to think maybe I could do one. I was a professional author at the time, writing user guides and help text and online tutorials for IBM. So I wasn’t daunted by the prospect of producing a lot of good quality text to a deadline. I wrote a proposal and some sample chapters and Peter Darvill-Evans at Virgin liked what I’d done and commissioned Theatre of War.

You’re Creative Consultant for the BBC Books range, what does that job entail?

Basically it means that I help the Editorial Director at BBC Books by giving him Doctor Who advice and doing the hands-on editing. So I work with Our Friends in Cardiff to decide what authors we want to approach and what sort of brief to give each of them. Then I do the standard editor’s job on each book, but with the added responsibility for making sure they conform to the various BBC guidelines and fit in with what the Doctor Who plans are for TV.

So, glorified editor really, but with the advantage that because I’ve been there for a while everybody assumes I must know what’s going on.

I guess you get quite a few writers pitching to you each week?

Yes. And because of the way the commissioning and approvals process has to work, we never – well, almost never – follow up on an unsolicited novel proposal. There’s always going to be some reason why it clashes or won’t fit or has the wrong tone for what we need in 12 months time or whenever. That said, I’m sure there must be an exception – where we have gone with a reworked version of something that arrived from an established author on spec, as it were. But I can’t think of it right now! It’s a good but frustrating position to be in. Good because there’s so many interested and talented writers to pick from, and frustrating because there are so many more than we can give work.

As much as anything, my job is to ensure there’s a balance between the books in any set of three – in terms of narrative style, content, plot, setting, and getting authors who complement each other. So the most frustrating thing is that there are half a dozen brilliant and enthusiastic writers I want to work with that I’ve not yet found a good ‘slot’ for. Bringing them in for a project that they’re not absolutely suited to wouldn’t be fair, so we have a few – equally frustrated! – authors waiting impatiently in the wings…

How do you deal with unsolicited manuscripts?

Politely. To be honest, as I said just now, an unsolicited proposal isn’t going to be suitable for all sorts of reasons. The best the author can hope for is that their proposal bumps them up our list of possible writers and makes us aware of just how good they are!

What makes the perfect Doctor Who novel?

I think much of the appeal of Doctor Who in general is that there’s no single answer to that! Every Who novel – or TV script, or audio, or comic strip – is different and unique. You have to ‘get’ the Doctor Who flavour into it. It has to be a Doctor Who story – not just some story that happens to have the Doctor in it. And that means he has to be instrumental to the way that story develops and concludes.

Which of your own books is your favourite and why?

Oh crikey. I get asked that on school visits a lot. Every time, in fact! And of course it’s impossible to answer – for my Doctor Who books, or my other novels. I like them all, and I know that some are better than others. But there again, some of the less perfect books could be favourites because I remember the exhilarating challenge of having to write Millennium Shock, for example, in 18 days. My standard ‘escape’ is to say that I actually have three favourite books right now. The first is the one I’ve just finished – because all the hard work is over and one with! The second is the one I’m working on at the moment, because it’s just such brilliant fun. And the third is the one I’m going to write next – because I’m looking forward to it so much and have so many ideas and it’s going to be unbelievably fantastic.

Have you ever tired of the series?

Not really. I’ve had times when I was more enthusiastic about it, but no I’ve never tired of watching, reading or writing Doctor Who in any form!

Who’s your favourite Doctor to write for?

I think they’re all favourites for different reasons. The more challenging are the Doctor’s where the actor’s physical performance is to the fore as well as the way he speaks. So the current 11th Doctor is quite tricky to get right, and so is the Second Doctor. But there’s a challenge too in – for example – getting the rhythm and flow of the 10th Doctor’s speech, or the randomness of the Fourth…

How do you approach the reference books? Surely these must take months to put together?

Each is different – and each has a tight deadline! Things like the Monster Miscellany or Companion Compendium for CBBC Books are slightly easier as the design is all done in-house, and I’m not ‘in-house’ for those. So I deliver the text – including my thoughts for how to illustrate it – and I’m done. For the BBC Books stuff like the Ultimate Monster Guide and so on, I’m also responsible for working with the designer – usually the brilliant Lee Binding – so that’s an added joy, of course, but also a lot more work!

Have you toyed with the idea of pitching a story for the TV series?

Oh all the time. But like I said about unsolicited submissions for novels, the TV people don’t want bundles of scripts that don’t fit with their direction and plans dropping through their letter boxes. They know who I am and what I can do and maybe one day they’ll come and ask. But to be honest, while I have some experience of writing for TV, it’s pretty thin. And the way you construct a narrative in prose form as a novel is very different from how you tell a story on television. Some writers can manage both – and I envy them. But the craft side of it is very different.

But hey – we can all dream!

What do you hope the new production team will bring to Doctor Who?

Sadly – or maybe fortunately – I’ve taken so long to get round to answering these questions that you all now know what they’re doing! Brilliant, isn’t it?!

Tell us about your other writing such as The Invisible Detective series.

I keep busy with so many things it’s difficult to know where to start! But just recently I’ve been doing some work with Big Finish on the Jago & Litefoot series – as a writer and also as script editor. That’s been – and continues to be – great fun, and I’ve got some other Big Finish work coming up that I think is probably super-secret for now. In prose, I have a couple of books out from Faber & Faber in a series called The School of Night, about teenage exorcists. Faber also publish my Department of Unclassified Artefacts books, which have been well received – “The Death Collector”, “The Parliament of Blood”, and “The Chamber of Shadows”. And most recently I’ve been finding out about electronic publishing. I have a novel called “The Skeleton Clock” that’s available for the Amazon Kindle and in formats for other eBook Readers from www.Smashwords.com – so get downloading!

Justin Richards, thank you very much!

Sean also played a policeman in David Tennant’s first full episode as the Tenth Doctor, The Christmas Invasion, in 2005. However this wasn’t the first time that the two had met each other; when we spoke, Sean recalled encountering David at an event. “What a nice guy! We sat and chatted for a while, and all the time I thought `have I met him before?`… it wasn’t until I was on the train home when I realised I’d seen him in [pre-Doctor Who BBC drama in which Tennant starred] Blackpool!”

Besides these on-screen appearances, however, Sean has played a key part in a couple of Big Finish’s spin-off series over the past few years – every Doctor Who fan’s dream! Spotted on stage by (Big Finish head honcho) Jason Haigh-Ellery, Sean was given a couple of CDs (“I remember one was Sword of Orion and the other was the first Charley Pollard one, Storm Warning, about the R101 disaster. I thought they were cracking!”) and invited to send in a showreel.

Unfortunately, however, Sean was overlooked for some time, mainly thanks to his material being misplaced and remaining unrecovered until Big Finish moved offices. It wasn’t long before then-producer Gary Russell was in touch, offering Sean a role in 2004’s The Natural History of Fear alongside Paul McGann and India Fisher.

It turns out following further discussion that as Doctor Who fan himself (“I used to buy DWM in the 1990s”) Sean was a big fan of the Eighth Doctor. “I really love Paul McGann’s Doctor. I think the TV Movie was much maligned, it had a lot going for it… the script wasn’t the strongest but everything else like the design and the feel of it and the Doctor above all else was great, I loved his Doctor!”

“If that had been my only association with Doctor Who I could have died happy having it on my CV – that would have been great. To work with Paul McGann was great – he was a really nice guy… we had a break during recording and we were talking about plays and I mentioned a play about the First World War and it’s a subject that I’m passionate about and he’s very knowledgable about, and he suddenly came alive. Of course he was in (classic BBC serial from 1986) The Monocled Mutineer which was something I watched as a boy and I had to pinch myself: here I was in a studio with the guy!”

Thankfully, Sean was already in mind for something else… “We were in the pub afterward, me, India, Gary Russell and Conrad [Westmaas, audio companion C’rizz] and India turned to Gary and said `Sean was really good you could use him again!` And Gary uttered in his inimitable manner `hmmm` and I thought that was that!” Yet a few months later Gary Russell called Sean offering him a part in a new serial – picking it up at his local post office, Sean couldn’t believe it: “I didn’t realise it was the entire series he had offered me!”

In his hands were four scripts for the first series, and it seems Gary Russell had omitted to mention that he was offering Sean a regular role in an audio series with some of his childhood heroes – Lalla Ward, Louise Jameson and Mary Tamm – not to mention John Leeson! “I couldn’t believe it – here I am working with these guys!

“I just felt very fortunate and privileged and I still feel that and appreciate Big Finish and Gary using me. It’s a job I love doing, I’m working with people I grew up watching and respect, and in that respect Gallifrey was just terrific!”

Playing the shady yet admirable Coordinator Narvin, Sean has become a staple ingredient of the sprawling political machinations of Gallifrey, challenging Romana, sending Leela on errands and generally making his presence felt. A new fourth series of Gallifrey is released in March 2011, five years after the third. So why the wait?

“As you know, season three ended on a controversial cliffhanger – a lot of fans said `you can’t leave it there!` But it was never Gary’s intention to leave it there – he intended to do another series but the more busy he was with BBC Wales and Doctor Who and Sarah Jane Adventures and so on, the less likely it seemed it would happen.”

“I was at the Regenerations convention at Swansea last year and Gary came up and said `I might have some work for you` and I said `Oh what’s that?` and he said: `a fourth series of Gallifrey!`”

Recorded in September and November 2010, the series features episodes from David Wyse “a big Doctor Who fan” and Gary Hopkins, as well as a script co-written by Gary Russell and Scott Handcock.

Interestingly, Gary Hopkins has also previously contributed an episode of I, Davros, another Big Finish series in which Sean has appeared. It’s interesting that Sean Carlsen has appeared in some of the more politically-toned Big Finish productions rather than the standard Doctor Who action adventure releases.

“Yeah, I only just realised this recently myself! Obviously Gallifrey is political and I know The West Wing was a big influence on it and obviously I, Davros is quite a political story in its own way as well, and The Natural History of Fear is very Orwellian and has shades of 1984.

“I’m just happy to do anything Big Finish put my way, but certainly with Gallifrey I absolutely love doing and from time to time I’ve been lucky enough to do a Doctor Who from time to time, such as the one with Paul, and I’ve done one with peter and just recently we had the Sixth Doctor in Gallifrey so that just leaves Sylvester doesn’t it?!

“And Tom Baker of course!”

Available this month from Big Finish, Gallifrey Season 4 can be purchased on CD or MP3 from www.bigfinish.com/Gallifrey-Season-4.

(Many thanks to Sean Carlsen and David Richardson for their help with the interview.)

We began by simply asking Al to tell us what the DWRS is all about:

“The Doctor Who Reprint Society is here to provide a voice for all the Whovians that want to see the novels made available again. There’s a generation of fans now who just weren’t aware of Who when the books were being published as well as a collection of Who fans who only knew of the TV series and didn’t discover the books until it was too late to collect them easily. I fall into the latter group myself. I became aware of the Eighth Doctor books in 1997 when I came across a copy of The Eight Doctors in a second hand bookshop. I loved it. It was very obviously a continuation of events from The TV Movie, yet as I read the last few pages it became something else as well. As the Eighth Doctor met the Seventh it became apparent to me that the books that I’d glanced over in other bookshops were more than mere novelizations of episodes I didn’t recognise, they were episodes themselves. Being the continuity obsessive that I am I felt I couldn’t continue with the Eighth Doctor’s adventures until I had found all of the Seventh’s.

“If I could have my own shot in a TARDIS I would go back and tell myself to grab any and each book I saw. But I don’t, so I formed the DWRS instead.”

As it turns out, the idea to do just that – form the DWRS – has roots not just in the classic era of the show, but also in Season 30 with David Tennant.

“The seed for the DWRS was planted when I saw Silence in the Library for the first time. I found myself nodding to the Doctor’s point about the printed word. And when we were introduced to the concept of the Library having a brand new copy of every book my first thought was ‘They’ve got a copy of Lungbarrow in there!’ In fact I like to think it was a reprint of Lungbarrow that the Doctor told Donna not to read for fear of spoilers…

“The DWRS started properly however when I got involved in a thread on Gallifrey Base about how people got hold of the books. The two methods suggested were paying silly money for the books on eBay or obtaining PDF scans of the books. A friend of mine had some of the PDF copies. I tried to read them, but they were far from ideal. The formatting was off on occasion and typos cropped up from OCR software glitches.

“When the idea of letting the BBC know we wanted these books came up the general feeling was that the BBC wouldn’t listen to individual fans. It was at that point I formed the DWRS to be the voice of those fans that want reprints. We number over 100 now and are still growing.”

Of course, when you have a group with 100+ members, you’ll have to have leaders. Aside from Alasdair, there are two other members who play a significant role in the Reprint Society’s day-to-day activities.

“The DWRS is made up of myself, Jesse Lax and Greig Byrne.

“Jesse is the Creative Director of Kwaai Games and showcases his own art through AHiL [AllHopeisLost] Designs. I came across him while I was seeking help putting a logo together for the site on Gallifrey Base. He kindly offered to put a logo together for me, and while we were discussing design options we started talking about the DWRS and other things and when the logo was finished Jesse decided he’d like to stay on and help me design a look for the site. Such is the quality of Jesse’s work that I was delighted that he wanted to stay on and help.

“Greig and I met through our wives and have struck up a friendship all of our own. Apart from working on setting up the new web site Greig’s experience as a writer for TheAppleGoogle and as a sports writer for the Herald (formerly known as the Glasgow Herald, a popular Scottish newspaper) is being put to good use as our resident reviewer. Greig’s point of view is especially useful as he’s had no experience of the books at all and only dabbled in classic Who until the new series brought Who back into fashion. He brings a fresh, non-biased view to the book reviews, as well as his own brand of humour.”

“I couldn’t tell you exactly which book I read first as I devoured my first five in quick succession.”

The three of them – Jesse, Greig, and Al – seem to share a progressive vision for the DWRS that will make sure the website never stands still.

“We have quite a few developments in mind for the DWRS. When I first started the site I was a lone voice crying in the wilderness, but not unlike a certain Time Lord I seem to have acquired companions and a following. As the team and membership has grown we’ve been discussing ways of expanding the DWRS site. Greig has started to review Time Wyrm: Genesys and plans to keep reviewing other Who books, Jesse is a perfectionist who can’t help but work to make the site look professional. Between them they’re currently working to move us from our current server to our very own one. The new site will have a few improvements over the current one including a brand new, more user friendly, forum and regular interviews. For my own part I’ll be starting to track down authors to find out their opinions on reprints and attempt to find out who owns the rights to their books. As for other media, we’re going to stay focused on the printed word.

“Ultimately the DWRS exists to get the most sought-after volumes back into the hands of fans. Of course if that happens then we’d have to shut up shop and move onto the next project. Which would be arranging reprints of the Target books.”

Return to Earth sees players get the chance to control Amy or the Doctor as they help the SS Lucy Gray, a human colony ship, return to earth, unravelling a Cyber plot and preventing the Daleks from harnessing the power of a Time Axis on the way.

Meanwhile Evacuation Earth (pictured, right), set before Return, sees Amy and the Doctor arrive in the Lake District to watch the  SS Lucy Gray leave the planet before a solar flare attack, only for the TARDIS to be fused to the ship.

The Doctor and Amy scramble on board to free the TARDIS, only to discover the ship can’t leave- the Silurians have built a ship underneath the fleeing craft- While, waiting above them, looms a Dalek space craft.

Having turned his hand to professional writing during his gap year Smith discovered the world of small press comics. Penning and inking his own work, he set about handing out copies around comic conventions and from his own market stall – London Underground Comics in Camden.

A chance meeting with Clayton Hickman at the Doctor Who Magazine table at one such convention lead several commisions including Total Eclipse of the Heart, being published in the Doctor Who Storybook 2010 and Blue Moon, which was published on the BBC website to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of the Apollo Moon Landing.

Smith has already begun to make great strides-escalating with his first novel, Nuclear Time, audio-book, The Runaway Train and now his first entry into a medium he’s been a life long fan of:

Firstly, Doctor Who: Return to Earth and Doctor Who: Evacuation Earth: What can you tell us about each game?

Evacuation Earth is a ‘point-and-click’ puzzle-adventure with a Douglas Adams-y kind of tone. It’s funny (I hope), with some gorgeous artwork and a cast of slightly crazy characters!

Return to Earth sees the player return to the Lucy Gray, the original crew are long since gone and the ship has had quite an overhaul during its time amongst the stars. But on it’s way home something sinister has happened…

It’s a third-person action-adventure game with a lot of epic moments and some very nifty puzzle-elements. It’s also got my favourite character in the form of Ivy, the ship’s AI, and the actress who plays her gives this wonderfully funny deadpan performance. It also features the rather surreal use of some somersaulting yappy-dog toys!

It sounds like the games should be played in that order, but both are complete, stand-alone adventures. They’re aimed very much at the show’s audience, so kids aged 7-12, although I hope the whole family can enjoy them, especially the Wii game- there’s a few nods and winks for the parents and I know I’ll be sitting on the sofa with my eight-year-old brother helping him through the tricky bits!

Andrew Smith is a particularly good example of this – after falling off the map for years (“I’m an inspector in the Metropolitan Police”) Smith was tracked down and was a key draw among the extras for the 2007 release of the E-Space Trilogy DVD boxset.

Since then, he’s found himself back in the world of Doctor Who and has contributed a new script to Big Finish’s fascinating series of Companion Chronicles. The Invasion of E-Space stars Lalla Ward as Romana, tells the story of a previously unseen adventure in E-Space, and is out this month.

I spoke to Andrew recently, and learned that there is also a very good chance of more from Andrew, which seems like quite a comeback; however I was more interested in just how he found himself writing about the Doctor, K-9 and Romana again after all these years!

“I was a guest at a Doctor Who con in Glasgow back in May last year. David Richardson and Nick Briggs from Big Finish where there as well, and I spoke to David and he asked if I would be interested in writing for them and we discussed a story that I had been commissioned to write for the Colin Baker period. I almost talked myself out of it – I thought the BBC wouldn’t want us to do it.”

“Then a few months later he phoned me up and asked if I would like to write a companion chronicles involving Romana II and set in E-Space.”

Often in these cases, the writer is given a shopping list of things to include or ignore, and it seems that while some of the classic Season 18 characters are involved in the adventure, not all of them are.

“One of the things was not to mention or involve K-9. Adric is in the story, obviously not as Matthew Waterhouse. The other character is Marni Tellis, a law enforcement officer who comes across Romana, Adric and the Doctor. It set between State of Decay and Warrior’s Gate.“

You’ll have to wait for the adventure itself to find out any more than that! Smith was just 17 when he was commissioned to write the script for Full Circle, the opening tale of the E-Space trilogy. That is obviously quite a large gap – but more to the point, isn’t the concept of a circular, organic and lost history a bit deep for a 17 year old?

“[The lost history] was something that evolved – no pun intended – but that wasn’t in the original storyline called ˜The Planet That Slept’. The starliner was a ship that had just crashed, but there was always this idea that every 40 years the mists would come and the whole planet was a living thing. It developed through meetings with Chris [Bidmead] and John Nathan-Turner where it became quite meaty.

“I think some of the key things remained even when we went over to the generational idea.”

Speaking of generations, I was keen to find out what Andrew thought about the departure of Tom Baker, which also occurred in Season 18. It seems that he has some interesting recollections about his own involvement with Doctor Who in the late 1970s

“Tom Baker for me is the best Doctor there has ever been – he’s also made some of the worst stuff I think! The season before had become very silly in bits, and there was a feeling at the time that perhaps the next Doctor wasn’t going to be long in coming.”

Younger Doctor Who fans probably won’t be aware that new producer John Nathan-Turner – under the stewardship of former producer Barry Letts as executive – ushered in an exciting new era of the show that was visually dynamic, took advantage of advances in video effects and even got a new theme tune. This was in sharp contrast to the series in the mid-1980s, just a few years later, with the same man at the helm. Did JNT stick with it too long?

“John came in for a lot of stick and a lot of people forget that he turned it around and got Tom Baker under control.

“[Later on] he wanted to get out of it, and you know creativity is a well, and you can only go there so many times. Something like Doctor Who has so many facets and can be done in so many styles and it needed an injection of fresh creativity on a fairly regular basis, but I think John deserves a lot more credit than he gets these days.”

One of John Nathan-Turner’s appointments was that of the science-oriented Christopher H Bidmead as script editor.

“Oh, he was very into science! I remember him sitting reading new scientist magazine, and that’s Chris’ thing, he really understands science and he’s a real one-off. When we met for the commentary for the [E-Space Trilogy boxset] DVD he was still the same character, older but full of energy and a real confidence.

“But I still have no idea about why they gave me a job like that at my age.”

Back in 2009 Doctor Who Magazine published an interview with Christopher H Bidmead in which the former script editor was quite critical about elements of Russell T Davies’ stewardship of Doctor Who since 2005.

“I remember reading that and thinking it was so Chris, and he just speaks his mind! He’s passionate.

“RTD has produced a lot of material, wrote the bulk of the episodes across 4 series and the job he has done has been phenomenal. I remember the first down I sat down and watched Rose and it was fantastic. He made so many choices that were spot on in bringing Doctor Who back.

“Other things, like Utopia, the last 10 minutes are superb. The strange thing is that even now, Rose comes out that well in polls, but we just happened to watch it yesterday because my kids want to watch it and it’s great. Four of the first 5 episodes were written by Russell and the reason the show is doing so well 5 years later is because of the work done by Russell T Davies and Phil Collinson.”

[(Bidmead has since attempted to clarify some of his observations in this interview - check out the comments section of this post at www.colinbrockhurst.co.uk)]

Bidmead oversaw a selection of thrilling and visually stunning stories, such as Meglos and Warrior’s Gate; however Andrew recalls that while something might have been good on paper, it didn’t necessarily translate well to screen.

I had the scripts for Meglos beforehand and remember being disappointed when it came to screen. But you know Chris and John both did a really good job on that series. I watched Warrior’s Gate when the DVD came out and I thought, ˜what a fantastic story!’

“Stephen Gallacher did a fantastic job, and Keeper of Traken is another great story from that season.”

It is now 2010 – Andrew’s episodes of Doctor Who went into production over 30 years ago. Yet somehow, despite being a member of Her Majesty’s constabulary and the 24/7 routine this entails, Andrew has managed to maintain this interest in writing. Or has he?

“I haven’t really! I’ve been writing since I was 7 – I got a typewriter for my 7th birthday. One of the things that got me into writing when I was 17 was that I’d always wrote and then I went into it professionally for 4 and half years. When I went into the police service I was still writing. I wrote for myself and the way it went is that the most of my career I’ve been in an area of policing with long unpredictable hours away from home, and it’s only recently as I’ve become management that my hours have become a bit more predictable.

“I couldn’t have done this 4 or 5 years ago; if David or anyone had said to me ˜could you deliver a script in one or two months?’ then my answer would only have been ‘well, possibly!’

“So now with hours being a little more predictable, it’s come at a good time. I was always fastidious about deadlines; they’re like a promise that you have to keep. So it was the right time.”

It has certainly fallen in the right way for Andrew – and with a few scripts for Big Finish, he could be in a good position to move back into TV land.

“I would love to! I’ve got 4 years left of my police career and I hope to continue doing some writing over the next 4 years and hopefully on a more fulltime basis when I retire.

“In terms of writing for the TV series now, I can’t think about that – why would it happen, why should it happen? There’s no reason it should and I certainly wouldn’t’ ask, I’m happy to sit back and watch the stuff they’re doing at the moment.

“When I did it before, there’s this impression I wanted to write just for Doctor Who, and I didn’t! I was sending stuff in to other shows, Shoestring, Blake’s 7 and it was encouraging what I was getting back, and then the series would end whereas Doctor Who was always on.”

Well, this has been a fascinating chat with Andrew – but time has caught up with us. I’ve just got the chance to ask one more question – does he have any plans to do any more work with Big Finish?

“Yes – in fact I am. I’m doing something else at the moment but it’s full cast, and I can’t say which Doctor.”

That’s quite a cliffhanger – we can’t wait to see how it turns out!

Over the past month we’ve told you about Bernice Summerfield: Dead and Buried, the first-ever CGI adventure starring Benny, the Seventh Doctor companion in the Virgin New Adventures!  We recently engaged in a discussion with the story’s animator, Alex Mallinson, who shared with us some wonderful anecdotes about his career thus far, including what it was like putting everyone’s favourite off-screen archaeologist… well, on the screen!

The roots of Alex’s interest in animation stem from the 1980s, “the heyday of the action/adventure film, usually replete with special effects and that certainly inspired me. I’m a bit of a combination of hermit and control freak, perhaps stemming from years of quietly crafting my own, lonely worlds in Lego and I’m sure that the solitary nature of animation appeals on that front.

“My biggest two influences are Doctor Who, whose special effects always had that accessible quality which looked like one could aspire to; and a Miyazaki animation called Laputa: Castle in the Sky, which I saw aged about 9 and which utterly blew me away. Epic themes, airborne pirates, robots and explosions. So I suppose it’s that love of spectacle and fantasy that drove me to use animation to create the things I could never see.”

This fascination with the bold and astonishing genre of visual storytelling eventually led Alex, ironically, to the Whovian-treasured audio-play makers at Big Finish, whom Alex admired long before working with them.  “I spent several years working in video games and my last employer was little better than a production line for run-of-the-mill titles. I stumbled across the Big Finish site around that time (remember the old one which stretched down for miles?!) and escaped from the drudgery of work into the Whoniverse.

“Once I went freelance as an illustrator I approached them to see if they were interested in my work. There are two very good reasons why they didn’t hire me at that time. The first was that my work was very pedestrian (and occasionally still is if inspiration doesn’t strike before the deadline) and the second was that I’d rampaged merrily across message boards trailing deeply insulting remarks, never suspecting for a moment that the people involved might read these comments. In my meagre defence, it was largely a way of venting frustration that I wasn’t involved. Simple jealousy I suppose.”

This “simple jealousy” that nearly every Whovian has experienced at some point during his or her fanhood, may have temporarily prevented Alex from his Big Finish debut, but even the Doctor Who audio masters could not stop a zombie outbreak:  “At a Shaun of the Dead signing I met the writer Jim Swallow and got chatting. He introduced me to John Ainsworth, who employed me on his Space 1889 audio range and got me into Big Finish working on the adverts. He then introduced me to Nick [Briggs] and before long, Big Finish was my biggest client, in fact I don’t really think of them as clients any more! They’re the best bunch I’ve ever worked for.”

Alex’s “biggest client” allowed him to produce animated trailers for audio stories featuring some of the Doctor’s most infamous opposers, including Cyberman.  “It was quite early on in my BF career, I don’t think I’d done any covers at that stage and it was another way to get their attention and do work that inspired me. I’d been working on adverts and virals for a while at that point so I felt fairly confident. In retrospect, the Cyberman’s chin is too big. They’re buggers, those Invasion Cybs, the mask proportions are odd and every time I tweak it, it throws something else out. I had fun with the spaceship designs, which were meant to be utilitarian but ended up looking a bit like lions. The models have cropped up in all sorts since.

“Just as you can recognise bits of old BBC spaceships all over Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who, so those ships have ended up in Viyran vessels and the whaling ship from Song of Megaptera. There’s even a bit of it in the Benny animation.”

Good news is, he’s just submitted a sketch for approval for the Series 5 box set and has also completed “two illustrations for The Brilliant Book of Doctor Who – that’s out towards the end of the year and two promo single covers artwork for Iron Maiden. It’s been a crazy month or so.”

“…my illustration is more graphic illustration because I treat the brief like graphic design…”

When Kasterborous started Ant was a lowly web designer, a job he found himself in after years of study. “I spent seven years of study from 92-2000 with a year break in-between. The first course was a foundation course, something thats really necessary in grounding your skills and finding a path you are interested in.

“The second was a HND in packaging design, but when I came home to find work, there was none, so I had to take a year out and assess my options. I managed to sneak onto the BA Hons Graphics course at Liverpool John Moores University and did what I should have done a few years earlier, got into graphic design.

This seems to have been the moment of realisation for Anthony who has become one of the most admired Doctor Who illustrators working today, something he attributes to his grounding in graphic design.

“I’d say my illustration is more graphic illustration because I treat the brief like graphic design rather than just a straight up illustration. “

All of this has come from a long standing interest in art which naturally stretches back to when Anthony was a young boy. “I spent a lot of time drawing when I was a kid, especially drawing Doctor Who stuff. I was okay at copying pictures but never really developed my drawing skills into anything concrete, but as I’ve always had an eye for commercial design I pursued Graphic Arts.”

As is the case for many creative professionals, early in his career Anthony found himself in a job that promised much but delivered little. “The web was just taking off as a visual medium, rather than just simple pages of data, when I managed to swing a job just outside of Manchester. It was a nightmare! First off, on my first day I was looking for the company building, and this guy came out of a terraced house and called me in. The job was in his house!”

Kasterborous was launched after Anthony and I got talking in the old Outpost Gallifrey forum. As a creative outlet for both of us, it lead to Ant being noticed as an illustrator with a pretty unique approach, something that lead to freelance work. With early Doctor Who images on Kasterborous quickly evolving from striking monolithic images into detailed illustrations from the school of Chris Achilleos/Frank Bellamy, I imagined that reaction to  his work must have come as a surprise.  “I wouldn’t say it came as a surprise as such because I just had a brainwave one night that I should try and bring that kind of work back but with a modern twist.

“I’d been doing those little pop art illustrations for Kasterborous so we wouldn’t upset the BBC for using images, but eventually it wore me out doing them 2 or 3 times a week. Once I’d taken that pressure off and decided to experiment a bit I had the idea of bringing back a retro style but for the new series.”

We spoke to Robert recently about some of his best known work, and began with “Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical”, his recently-released book of short stories published by Big Finish. 

Well let’s start with the present then – Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical is your new collection of short stories. It’s an interesting title – how does it relate to the tales within?

I like to pretend the new book is something of a self-help manual for the lovelorn! You know, so that anyone who has romantic problems can dip inside, and find the answers they need. So the collection is perfect if you need to know what to do in the event of your wife leaving you, and giving you your own heart back sealed in a Tupperware box. (And exactly what measures should be taken if every day after she’s left you find it’s growing knobbly specks of bone.) Or how you should react if your other half vanishes off the face of the earth, taking away an entire small landlocked European nation with him.

These are stories about love, rather than love stories themselves: the pig in the Garden of Eden composing the very first love song when he falls hopelessly for a woman, the Devil trying to write romantic fiction. There are ghost cats and mutant rabbits and strange succubi who do bizarre things to you when they kiss you.

My last collection, ‘Tiny Deaths’, was a comic meditation on mortality from lots of different angles – this time I’m putting that peculiar urge we all have to reach out for other people, to matter to someone else, under the microscope.

You’ve written for TV, radio and stage – do you have a particular favourite? Is there any medium you would like to write for or have any upcoming plans to do?

Well, there’s always opera! Seriously, I love opera – I had a girlfriend years ago who sung opera as a chorus member, and I devoted myself to Verdi and Mozart and Donizetti simply so I could chat her up! There was talk about me working on an opera back in the mid-nineties, but it came to nothing – I’d love to get my teeth with an interesting composer into something dark and modern. It all comes back to the stage for me, really.

For my first ten years as a full time writer I wanted nothing more than to be working in the theatre, both as writer and director. And my twentysomething self would be appalled, I know, at how I’ve tried to spread my wings subsequently, and try different media. But I still see myself really as a playwright, and feel most comfortable taking a theatrical space and trying to transform it into something else.

I’m writing my first stage play for some years very soon, and I’m very excited about it. And I’m going to be very clever (I hope), and do it alongside my new novel and new short story collection, and new work for radio and TV. I want to be very busy in 2010.