feeling listless

Books Lance Parkin is probably one of my favourite Doctor Who writers. His novels topped and tailed the BBC's Eighth Doctor range (you can read the first one here though it wasn't published by the BBC -- it's complicated) and he produced the great non-official chronology which I keep banging on about AHistory. It's a tragedy that despite having tv experience (storylining Emmerdale of all things for a period) he's not yet been tapped to write a television episode, especially since his work has certainly already influenced what we've been watching every Saturday night.

Finally, though, he's been commissioned to write a spin-off novel for the Tenth Doctor, The Eyeless, and has set up a blog to talk about the process of writing and offering tips to other budding scribes. Predictably his analysis strays into the whole concept of what the franchise is about:

"The synopsis is a quick way to make sure that the stories are all sufficiently different. In a series that’s been running as long as Doctor Who, it’s very easy to come up with an historical character or setting or type of monster that’s been in a story before (it's harder not to, at times). All series and genres have formulae and only tell certain types of stories – Doctor Who is a great deal more flexible than most (Paul Cornell once said ‘the format is there’s no format’), but I don’t think I’m being massively controversial when I say that there are some old stalwarts – the alien invasion; the base under siege; the planet that seems nice but is secretly ruled by aliens; the everyday object that turns deadly as part of the invasion plans; a shipwrecked alien having to kill to survive. In any given year, the Doctor will face evil insects, evil robots and aliens disguised as people. There will be stories set in the past, present and future. It’s the rules."

Which pretty much nails down most of the types of story which have appeared over past forty odd years. Something which I do hope Steven Moffat resurrects when he takes over is the pure historical, or a story where the only fantasy element are the Doctor and his TARDIS. It wasn't until the third series in the 60s that the sci-fi elements began to intrude into the historical setting, in fact. The problem was that these histories usually had lower rating than those describing what was happening to the Daleks that month and were generally done for laughs so were eventually dropped early in the Troughton era. Done right though these could be exciting even if it doesn't turn out that an alien is behind it after all. Imagine especially the companion walking around wondering when the spaceship is going to turn up because that's what happens in every adventure...