Farewell To The Tardis

This post can now be found here.

The Boneless

This post can now be found here.

Tiny Tardis of TERROR

This post can now be found here.

I Was A Teenage Computer

At the table read through for 'Mummy On The Orient Express', several of the actors were unavailable due to prior commitments. This meant that various staff members read in for some of the roles. I was offered Quell or Moorhouse and declined.

I mean come on. The last time I acted was in a school play. (Okay, so I was a stand up for six years, which is kind of acting, in that every night you have to act as if you just thought of your material, rather than the truth, which is that you've repeated it so many times over the years that it's been reduced to a series of syllables without meaning that somehow get laughs.) But actually acting? Opposite The Doctor and Clara? Unthinkable.

Ten minutes before the start, as we all settled into our seats someone realised that the role of Gus the computer wasn't cast. I was asked - did I want to cover it for the read through?

I said yes impulsively.

This wasn't really acting. Not really. All I had to do was read the lines in as impassive a voice as I could muster, like a plane safety announcer.

So I did. And it was fun.

After the read through the Director and Producer for the episode complimented me on my 'performance' and asked me if I could record the lines for Gus to be played on set. I was flattered and said that I would.

A few days later, I sat in front of my laptop and tried to do just that. And I hated my nasal blocked sounding voice so much I abandoned the project for about a week. At which point I reasoned that, what the hell, I should do it anyway. Everyone hates the sound of their own voice, don't they? This was a chance to be heard on set during the recording of my first Doctor Who episode. I would there with them all in spirit, the ghost in the machine... and other pretentious guff.

So I rattled through recording all the lines in about half an hour and e-mailed them in. I didn't even have a proper mic. This was through the tiny hole in the side of my laptop.

And then I started getting rushes through. With my voice as the computer. Which was incredibly cool. I even made it as far as full assemblies of the episode before some nefarious pretender called John Sessions was employed to do it 'properly', whatever that means (joking of course. He is brilliant) But for a few months there, I was the voice of Gus, my vaguely brummy twang echoing through the train.

I would never say 'Original and best'. That's for history to judge.

.

Building A Better Mummy

So the way it worked was this: Steven Moffat gave me the title: 'Mummy On The Orient Express' and the idea that this episode would be set in space. I went away and had a think about it. And what I thought was this:

A monster on a train in space is a problem. Put bluntly: there's nowhere to hide it. As soon as someone is found dead by monster, people will search the train. So where is it hiding? Is it someone's alter ego, like Jekyll and Hyde? Is it fading in and out of visibility? Is it a ghost? Does it assemble and disassemble into snake like bandages? Do we set up arbitrary locking points along the train? Does it walk outside the train in the cold of space?

All the possible solutions I thought of felt a little meh, or made the passengers and the Doctor seem dumb for not finding the mummy's hiding place in five seconds flat.

While tinkering with all the various permutations of visibility and oblivious passengers, I started thinking about what scares you as a child. Monsters, obviously. Under the bed, in the closet, in the shadows. But also the idea that when you run and tell your parents about the monster, they tell you that there's nothing to be scared of. The monster isn't real. You were imagining things. But you know you weren't. And your parents denial of your monster makes it even scarier. You are the only one who can see it. You must face it alone.

That idea was in place in the first two page rambling I submitted on the episode. The monster that can only be seen by the intended victim. Other elements of the Foretold mythos came and went. Some of them I hesitate to mention as they may find their way into the DNA of future monsters (remember kids, use every part of the buffalo) but certain off cuts are fun to disclose.

There was a beat where the Doctor figured out how to reveal the Foretold, pulled a switch... and twenty Foretold faded in.

Oops.

There was the realisation that the only way to beat the Foretold was to crash the train into a planet full of things worse than them. Which kind of weakened the Foretold's scary factor a little.

There was Clara seeing the Foretold, and hiding inside the sarcophagus, which was then revealed as actually being a Foretold making machine, wrapping her in bandages...

All fell away over time, simplifying the narrative. The set piece of Quell's death was a favourite and we realised that the timed deaths should be the crown jewels of the episode, so more were added, of course culminating with The Doctor finally seeing and beating the Foretold.

The mummy to me has always seemed a bit of a poor cousin to the much cooler vampire, werewolf and zombie, but if we've done our job well this episode may go some way to redress that.

I hope you enjoyed it.

.

The Mummy's First Victim

There are only a few definite landmarks in my development as a writer. The Singing Detective is a big one. I was sixteen years old when I saw it and it's deft weaving of one man's memories and fantasies rearranged the furniture in my head like an over enthused lifestyle guru. It was funny, trippy, fiercely intelligent and incredibly accomplished. It's impact was seismic and I am not alone in this assessment. Many writers and creatives of my generation quote it as a formative influence, (including Paul Wilmshurst, the director of 'Mummy on the Orient Express').

And now, twenty eight years after it aired, I am putting words in the mouth of one of it's actors. Her name is Janet Henfrey and in The Singing Detective she played the formidable school teacher that so terrified the young Philip Marlow. She was marvelous then and she is marvelous now, playing Maisie's grandmother, the Mummy's first victim. 

I made a point of approaching her at the readthrough to tell her how happy I was that she had the role and how much The Singing Detective had meant to me. I also made sure I was there on set on the day her scene was filmed. I stopped just short of saying that I was really happy that she was my first Doctor Who kill. I didn't want to sound too much like a serial killer. But the link to my personal journey as a writer that she represents really makes me happy. Her character dies in style and really sets the tone for both the monster and the episode.

Bravo, Janet, bravo.

.