A Life More or Less Ordinary

The Flying Pig Story

2009-11-23T14:15:00.011+13:00

Today is the tenth anniversary of Flying Pig. The ambitious New Zealand-owned and operated internet retail store opened its virtual doors for business on 23 November 1999.

Had Flying Pig endured and become the success that was hoped for when it launched then this milestone would today be a cause for celebration. Imagine if you will a giant inflatable cartoon pig resembling the company’s logo floating over Auckland and a glitzy celebratory party covered by the news media.

In reality Flying Pig folded just two years after it launched. In that time the company had endured considerable down-scaling from a staff of sixty-plus at its height to just six on the day it closed.

A number of my former work colleagues look back on the venture with a degree of bitterness and regret. I understand that. Those of us who were there at the beginning were sold on the concept with the promise of expansion, growth and company shares which never eventuated.

I however have generally positive memories of Flying Pig. I am one of only two people who were there on launch day and still there on the fateful day that we were all made redundant, two years later.

I think in some small way I may have helped inspire the company’s creation. During the latter half of the 1990s I worked for the flagship store of Whitcoulls, New Zealand’s leading bookstore chain. I managed the store’s ‘Book Information’ counter, which involved sourcing non-stocked book titles from local and overseas distributors to fill customer orders. On the strength of my performance in this role I was invited to develop a proposal for an up-scaled version of the same service, to serve Whitcoulls’ customers nationwide. I pitched this to the Whitcoulls CEO who signed off on it. I got my own department located in spare space above the shop with a staff of six to eight people, handling direct phone sales, orders from stores and, eventually, Whitcoulls’ own fledgling buy-online store.

From this seed grew the idea of a separate business venture: an internet store with a vast array of books and videos. Flying Pig was masterminded by the very same Whitcoulls CEO who had approved the concept I had helped develop. The Flying Pig online store was the logical extension of that proposition.

My small team was drafted to join Flying Pig in early November 1999. In physical terms this meant relocating from the second floor of the Whitcoulls building to the basement area of a building situated in Freemans Bay. We were set up as the customer service and orders fulfilment team, which was very similar to what we had been doing at Whitcoulls.

I personally felt frustrated at what I perceived as a sideways move, so agitated to join the content management team located in the office upstairs. I was given responsibility for managing the Video & DVD category. At the time DVDs were very new on the New Zealand market; when I initially set up the DVD category there was perhaps only fifty titles available.

Flying Pig opened its virtual doors to the public for the first time on 23 November 1999 with a huge amount of promotion that included billboards and students carrying placards around the streets. Unfortunately the site wasn’t able to cope with the huge volume of online traffic this generated and promptly crashed, resulting in many calls and emails from frustrated potential customers, and unfavourable comments in the media. It is hard to assess in hindsight how much this incident affected the Flying Pig brand, but internet customers are in my experience a generally unforgiving bunch, quick to criticise and slow to forgive perceived wrongs, so I am certain that we lost a portion of our potential customer base.

Despite this early setback the entire staff enjoyed a great company outing to Waiheke Island as a Christmas party and team-bonding exercise. Who knows how much additional ‘team bonding’ might have taken place had our drunken plans for an impromptu night-time skinny-dip not been curtailed by the perhaps fortuitous arrival of the bus to take us back to the ferry!

During the early months of 2000,the company continued to grow. More staff were hired, a new larger location for the business was located, plans were developed for the addition of such diverse categories as tools and wine, and Flying Pig was to be floated on the sharemarket with staff to get shares in the business.

All of these plans for expansion came suddenly and badly unstuck in March 2000 when the so-called dotcom bubble burst with the collapse of the NASDAQ in the US. The shockwave effect on local investors who had contributed to the company’s considerable start-up and operations costs resulted in an immediate need to downscale. Plans to expand the online store, to move premises and to issue shares were abruptly shelved and some staff members were made redundant. Not long after this we vacated our sunny office space and joined the customer service and despatch team downstairs in the gloomy garage/basement area.

Those of us who survived this downsizing rallied together to make the best of a dispiriting setback. We held weekly barbecues and drinks and a light-hearted team atmosphere prevailed most of the time.

In early 2001, following further down-scaling, Flying Pig was acquired by Auckland-based magazine publishing company IT Media and a much-reduced team relocated to share office space with the likes of Rip It Up, NetGuide and NZ Rugby magazines in Kitchener Street. By this time I had been promoted to oversee the general content for the website as well as still handling the ever-growing video and DVD categories.

Within a few months IT Media also fell on hard times and began shedding titles and staff. Flying Pig’s General Manager left and I was encouraged to fill the vacated post. Despite my initial insistence that I wasn’t equipped to run the entire company, by May 2001 I found myself as the head of what was by now a rather small operation with just six staff.

The crunch time came seven months after my appointment as GM. A protracted dispute between a creditor and IT Media that I was powerless to resolve came to a head with the receivers called in to close down Flying Pig. We turned up for work one morning in early November 2001 to find the website down. A short time later we were told to leave as we had all been made redundant.

I arrived home around midday, suddenly unemployed and in a state of mild shock at the turn of events. That very afternoon I received a call from a old Flying Pig colleague, now working with Noel Leeming. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in coming to work at Noel Leeming to use my experience to help set up their online store. As one door closed, another one opened, and I'm happy to report that I was later able to bring on board a couple of my former Flying Pig colleagues.

New Zealand's most popular website, Trade Me, was established in 1999 around the same time as Flying Pig. Who knows, had things turned out differently perhaps Flying Pig might have enjoyed similar success, and ten years later, I might still be working for the company. It is perhaps unlikely though that had this been the case, that I would have ended up as the General Manager!

How I got Stripped for Action

2009-11-05T11:18:00.005+13:00

The Doctor Who: Dalek War DVD box set (recently released in the UK), contains two 1973 Jon Pertwee stories: Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks. The set has been eagerly anticipated by fans due to the extraordinarily successful colour restoration of episode three of the latter story which for the past three decades has only existed as a monochrome recording.

The DVD has personal significance as I crop up in the extras. I’m in two separate features, both instalments in the ongoing ‘Stripped for Action’ series which examines the history of Doctor Who in comics. It’s the second time I’ve appeared on a Doctor Who DVD. The first was on Lost in Time some years earlier where I talked about finding a lost episode in an interview that was shot in my living room.

The invitation to appear in the documentaries came about at relatively short notice while I was in the UK last year on a month-long holiday. I had emailed Marcus Hearn, the director of the ‘Stripped for Action’ series, back in April 2008 to let him know that I was writing a book about Doctor Who comic strips and suggested meeting up while I was in London to compare notes since our two projects covered the same ground.

Several weeks passed. Then, on 20 May, midway through my stay in London, I received a reply from Marcus. He had just seen my email having recently returned from a month-long overseas trip. Marcus asked if I was still in London and if so would I like to be interviewed on camera for ‘Stripped for Action’? I replied that I had two weeks left before I had to fly home and if he could arrange something in time I’d be happy to participate.

Marcus pulled out all the stops to arrange contracts and book studio time at short notice to accommodate my limited availability. We met up in a coffee house in Soho to work out what we should cover in the interview and using these notes Marcus came up with sets of questions. I received these a few days in advance of the recording so I that had time to consider my answers. Marcus had already delivered most of the instalments in the Stripped for Action series, two of which had already been released on DVD. There were just three left to complete the series and Marcus wanted to interview me for all of these in a single studio session. Two of the three were The Third Doctor and The Daleks which both appear on Dalek War. The third documentary has yet to be announced, so I won’t disclose the subject of that one. It shouldn’t be hard to guess what it is, though.

My contributions to ‘Stripped for Action’ were recorded at a studio in Wapping, London on Tuesday 3 June 2008. This was just a couple of days before I was due to fly home to New Zealand.

To make good use of the studio booking, Marcus arranged two regular commentators, Jeremy Bentham and Alan Barnes, for the same studio session. Jeremy is a highly-respected ‘elder statesman’ of Doctor Who fandom who had written some influential articles about Doctor Who comics back in the early 1980s. I met up with Jeremy in London earlier in my trip to interview him for my book, and he and his delightful wife Paula treated me to a very nice dinner at an upmarket London restaurant. It was a delight to meet him once more at the studio recording.

The recording session took place in a small concrete-walled studio. I sat on a chair against a green screen backdrop. In the finished documentary, the green has been keyed out and replaced with an assortment of panels from the comic strips. I was advised not to wear anything green as this would interfere with the process. The screen was illuminated by a ring of exceedingly bright green lights placed around the camera lens which I found very distracting at the edge of my vision.

Marcus sat some distance away from the camera and fed me the questions and directions. So that my comments would make sense in the documentary I had to phrase my answers as self-contained statements. For example, when I was asked to describe the style of comic artist Ron Turner, my answer needed to begin something like “Ron Turner’s illustration style was...”

Going into the recording I felt prepared and confident but once it got underway I was surprised to find the experience more of a challenge than I’d expected. I was put off by the intense lights and to my horror I started muddling my words and speaking too fast. Fortunately Marcus is a patient and understanding director, and we did a few retakes of the initial question until I had relaxed into the process. As we began recording I was directed by one of the crew to keep still and to keep my hands out of shot. When I’m speaking, like most people, I tend to move about a bit and gesticulate, so having to sit still and not use my hands felt unnatural and disconcerting. I’m still not entirely sure why I was given this direction. On the documentaries a number of my fellow commentators can be seen waving their hands around which I think in contrast makes me look stiff and uncomfortable.

Following my session I got to sit and watch as Jeremy (who had arrived during my recording) took my place in front of the camera. I could sit and listen to Jeremy talk all day; he knows his subject very well indeed and is also clearly a confident and accomplished speaker. I had kept my answers fairly brief and to the point, whereas Jeremy expounded at great length, impressively covering the answers to a whole range of questions in a single informative and detailed monologue.

Alan Barnes turned up after Jeremy and I had finished our contributions. After a short break Alan went into studio to record his segments and Jeremy and I left to catch the train home. The walk to the station gave me the opportunity to chat some more to Jeremy about my book and he was very supportive of the project and subsequently sent copies of some early articles he’d written about the comics.

I received my complementary copy of the DVD box set from 2|entertain earlier this week, so one and a half years after the recording I've finally seen the finished results for the first time. I'm never comfortable with seeing myself on screen, and this combined with recalling just how uncomfortable I'd felt during the recording itself, meant that it was with some trepidation that I watched these features. Just a handful of my responses have made it on to the documentaries - but I consider that a good thing; my limited appearance makes them slightly easier to watch, and I'm relieved that my discomfort isn't as evident on screen as I'd feared.

Alas, the credit’s not quite right (as seen in the screen shot). I’m billed as the author of The Comics Companion which should be The Comic Strip Companion. I’ve already had people who have seen the documentaries contact me to ask where and when the book’s available. The answer is that it’s not finished yet. I’m hopeful that it will be out sometime next year, and it is being published by Telos.

Priest and Prestige

2009-08-20T12:31:00.005+12:00

I first encountered the work of British science fiction author Christopher Priest in 1987 when I purchased a secondhand copy of his novel A Dream of Wessex in the Old Book Cellar on Albert Street, Auckland. That shop has sadly long since disappeared, but my admiration for Priest's writing has endured for more than two decades.

I have all of Christopher Priest's novels and short story collections, and own as many as four different editions of each book. In my defence I'll point out that Priest does sometimes revise his work in later editions so a certain degree of duplication is essential to keeping up a full set of his work (that's my excuse anyway, and I'm sticking to it).

Priest's books have sat untouched on my shelf for a few years now, not through any disillusionment, I hasten to add, but simply because he hasn't put out anything new to re-engage my interest in recent years; his most recent novel The Separation was published in 2002. I renewed my interest in Priest's writing when, whilst recently scanning my bookshelves for something to read, I pulled out The Separation (I only own one copy of this particular title!).

The Separation is a complex and compelling epic story following the lives of twin brothers who experience very different versions of the events of World War II. The novel presents conflicting, overlapping versions of reality and the reader is left to make sense of which bits are 'real' and which are illusory. It is a distillation of the recurring themes of identity, of mirrored experiences and of perceptions of reality which appear in many of Priest's books and short stories, and mark him out as, in my view, a simply outstanding writer.

While still engrossed in re-reading The Separation I was inspired to find out if there was any news of Priest's next novel, so I looked up his website. I'd discovered and bookmarked this a few years back but hadn't visited it in a while. I was pleasantly suprised to discover that in the interim Priest had established his own imprint, GrimGrin Studio, and had so far published four of his own books which were available to purchase via mail order.

I promptly sent off an enquiry email to Priest, with a heady mixture of awe and delight at the fact that I was communicating directly with someone whose work I had admired from afar for such a long time. I received a very pleasant and informative reply from the man himself, telling me all about his new and upcoming books. I sent off my paypal order last week and yesterday received four very handsome editions, all signed and personalised.

I've already finished reading one of those four books, The Magic: the story of a film. It is a fascinating insight into both the novel and the film versions of The Prestige. Even if you've never heard of Christopher Priest it's likely that you will be aware of this box-office-topping 2006 film directed by Christopher Nolan, with its all-star cast of Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, David Bowie and Scarlett Johansson.

The novel on which The Prestige is based was published in 1995, eleven years before the film's release. In The Magic Priest begins by revealing his inspirations and the writing process. I was astonished to learn that he wrote the novel as three drafts, each a complete re-write with no cutting and pasting from the previous version.

The narrative then moves on to various bids for the film rights, with Priest opting in 2000 to take a chance on the then little-known director Christopher Nolan. Nolan is best known today as the director of the incredibly successful Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but back then all Priest had to go on was Nolan's low-budget, independent film The Following. Priest had no input on the screenplay for The Prestige, which was written by Nolan's brother Jonathan. He was keep so far out of the loop during the long period between the initial optioning of the film rights and the film's eventual release six years later, that incredibly his only source of information about the film was what he could glean from the internet via Google Alerts.

In his descriptions of going to see the film, at first at the press screening and twice more at the cinema, Priest appears to be an anonymous observer in the crowd; his only concern after the initial screenining is to dash off to his train, and is later able to eavesdrop apparently without fear of being recognised as cinema goers discuss the film.

The last few chapters of The Magic are given over to an analysis of how the film differs from the novel and Priest's views on what worked and what was less successful in the screen version. He might be forgiven for coming across as a little bitter at some of the decisions taken with the material, but it is a balanced, well-considered appraisal.

The two stage magicians, Borden and Angier, central to the story of The Prestige are rivals each seeking to comprehend the secret behind the other's 'vanishing man' act. It strikes me that there seems to be a slight metatextual echo of this in The Magic. It is a stretch to describe the two Christophers, Priest and Nolan, as rivals, but certainly there is an element of a clash in the British author and the Hollywood director's respective visions of the story in different mediums, but when Priest admits in The Magic that he is unable to figure out how Nolan achieved certain shots this seems to mirror something of the magicians' inability to discern exactly how the other's prestige is achieved.

The Magic leaves me wanting to re-read The Prestige, something I'm certain I'll do quite soon now that I have embarked on my re-read of Priest's oeuvre (right now, I'm mid-way through The Extremes), but I also want to re-watch the DVD of The Prestige. I was disappointed by the film the first time I saw it, feeling that it wasn't a patch on the novel, but having read Priest's own views on the film's strengths and weaknesses, I'm keen to give it another go.

Chopping and Changing

2009-07-28T12:28:00.003+12:00

During the weeks since my last post announcing the completion of the first draft of my book, The Comic Strip Companion, I've been editing the manuscript. I was looking forward to this part of the process, but it is proving to be a bit of a challenge.

Having spent the best part of two decades as the editor of a fanzine, I've had a fair bit of experience of proofing and editing the work of other writers, and I think I've become fairly adept at this.

What I've discovered is that I'm not nearly so good at editing my own work. I can stare at something I've written and struggle to see the faults. The problem is simply that when I read over my own work I know in my head what it's supposed to say, which gets in the way of recognising what I've actually written.

Ultimately the book will need a fresh eye to read it over and pick up the bits I've missed, but before then I need to do an edit and a rewrite to pull it into shape, and that's what's keeping me busy at present.

It's not just about tidying up the words; I've also been rearranging the structure. The book follows the format of an episode guide and, as part of each entry, I've written about each story's various reprints. Reading back over the finished book I could see that the entries for stories without any reprints seemed a lot more readable. These entries didn't interrupt the narrative flow with diversions to discuss a reprinting that had occurred twenty or thirty years later.

Another problem I had with the reprint sections was that some of the observations I was making were common to a number of the reprints, such as (for example) the removal of artist credits, or the colouring of black & white strips. This resulted in a large amount of frankly rather awkward repetition.

The solution came to me as I embarked on the editing process: remove all of the individual reprint sections and group them all together in an Appendix at the back of the book. All of that unnecessary repetition was dispensed with as I discussed features relevant to a whole swag of reprinted stories within a few concise paragraphs. As a consequence, my word count plunged. I think I lost in the region of six thousand words in just one day, which sounds alarming, but they we re words I really didn't need and, much more importantly, the book has significantly improved.

Right, back to the editing.

First Draft Finished!

2009-06-08T20:05:00.002+12:00

I've just this hour finished writing the last section of the final chapter of my book, The Comic Strip Companion (Vol 1: 1964-79).

I began writing on 14 April 2007, so it's taken me slightly over two years to get to this point.

As my book takes the form of an episode guide my work has been mapped out for me from the start; I've had to chronicle stories both good and bad and find something uniquely meaningful to write about each and every one of the Doctor's first fifteen years of comic strip adventures.

I've maintained a spreadsheet to keep track of my work, so I can see at a glance that I've scrutinised and documented the contents of 1,993 individual pages of comic strip, as well as a stack of reprints not included in that total. The word count stands at 207,189.

Work on the book is far from complete, however. There's a few short supplementary sections to be added and the whole manuscript's going to need revising from beginning to end.

I'm planning to put the book aside and focus my attention elsewhere; on another, shorter writing commission I have waiting for me. I'm hoping that this will clear my head, so I can come back to the manuscript with a relatively fresh eye. I've edited work by many other writers over the years, so I hope I can be equally efficient with my own material.

New Companion

2009-05-30T01:07:00.007+12:00

The new Doctor Who companion will be played by Karen Gillan.

Just last week I was discussing the new companion with Toby Hadoke, a fellow fan who was visiting from the UK. As well-informed as Toby is about various aspects of the series, he didn't know who would be playing the new companion. We both thought that an announcement had to be imminent though - and sure enough just days later a name has been revealed.

I was working on my book late tonight and happened to flick over to Facebook and spot that someone had just mentioned the casting. I looked up the BBC News site to see the full announcement, which again had only just been posted. This is quite a novelty for me as usually by the time I find out about a piece of major Doctor Who news it's already all over the Internet.

I notice that a Google search for Karen's name at this stage doesn't bring up many useful results - all that will soon change, I'm sure. I also see that Karen's Wikipedia page was only created today - mere minutes after the announcement.

So who is Karen Gillan? All I've seen of her is her role as an unnamed soothsayer in The Fires of Pompeii. I expect there will be many fans rewatching that episode now in an attempt to get an idea of what Karen is like as an actress.

I think it's interesting that a trend's developing, in that Karen follows in the footsteps of Freema Agyeman and Catherine Tate, each of whom first appeared in a one-off role in the new series prior to being offered a regular part as the companion. Perhaps we're getting to the point where we'll start looking rather closer at each actress who appears in Doctor Who and sizing her up as the next companion!

Boldly Going...

2009-05-10T21:42:00.005+12:00

The first Star Trek movie I watched on the big screen was The Wrath of Khan. I went to see it with my first girlfriend, who was far more obsessed with Star Trek than I was. She was utterly inconsolable when Spock died at the end.

Seeing the new Star Trek film today I was left wondering how she might have reacted. No doubt she would have been relieved that Spock survived, but there’s some fairly radical retooling going on regarding the series continuity, with some devastating events that might induce weeping among some hardcore Trekkies.

I’ve watched most Star Trek episodes and movies and I once belonged to an SF club dominated by trekkies, but I wouldn’t call myself a fan. It certainly didn’t bother me that the new film effectively erases or at least drastically alters events from the moment of Captain Kirk’s birth onwards.

The new film does for Star Trek what the Daniel Craig version of Casino Royale did for the James Bond franchise in that it goes back to the beginning and retells the origins with a fresh outlook and a thoroughly modern appearance. The slate isn’t wiped entirely clean however. Just as Casino Royale retained Judi Dench’s M as a link from the old to the new, Star Trek has Leonard Nimoy’s Spock popping up to reassure viewers that this really is still the same old series.

The changes to the heavily-continuity laden Trek universe wrought by the film very cleverly reboots the franchise from the beginning - all bets are off as to what happens next for Kirk and his crew - whilst at the same time still allowing for the prior existence (from the elderly Spock’s perspective at least) of all of the television series and movies.

I thought the cast were on the whole very good, allowing for the fact that the actors had the difficult task of replacing some very well-established performers. For me the stand-out was Karl Urban, who absolutely nailed Dr McCoy’s dry cynicism.

Above all else, this film unequivocally breaks the ‘curse’ of the odd-numbered Star Trek films!

Meeting One’s Heroes

2009-04-07T16:38:00.008+12:00

Rochelle and I spent this last weekend in Wellington during which time we promoted Rochelle’s new company Retrospace at the Armageddon expo. Almost the entire weekend was spent selling merchandise and I found that this provided an opportunity to meet many fans that I wouldn’t have a talked to had I been at Armageddon as just another attendee. I was stunned at the number of young pre-teen and teenage girls who professed to be fans of the series and obviously knew all of the new series stories in great detail, proudly claiming to have watched "every episode of Doctor Who" (meaning of course everything from 2005 onwards) . These fans seemed to identify very much with David Tennant’s Doctor (rather than, say, Rose or Martha), and at least a couple of young female fans were dressed up as the Tenth Doctor.

One of the first people I met on the first day of the expo was a young man called Floyd. Upon sighting issues of TSV on the table, he asked me if I knew Paul Scoones. When I explained that I was he, Floyd almost exploded with delight, asking to shake my hand and have his photo taken with me. He’d read TSV since he was a boy, and really was genuinely was awed to meet me. I'm not recounting this incident in order to mock him. Although I felt undeserving of his accolades, at the same time I was also impressed that he had such respect and admiration for my work. I met many more TSV readers over the course of the weekend that had nothing but kind words to say about the magazine, but no one came close to this guy in terms of sheer unbridled enthusiasm.

Later in the weekend I got to take Floyd’s place and meet one of my own personal heroes, the Fifth Doctor himself, Peter Davison. Davison, along with Mark Strickson (who played Turlough) were two of a handful of star guests at the expo.

I had been asked by the organiser, Bill Geradts, to interview Peter and Mark in a panel on stage on both days of the expo. I arrived with a prepared list of questions covering aspects of the careers of both men, only to learn from Bill that the two actors had decided that they didn't want to be interviewed and instead preferred to take questions from the audience. I was a bit deflated at this habving gone to some effort and also told a number of people that I'd be conducting the interviews, but at the same time I was also a little relieved. I’d been concerned about how the interview would be received by both the actors and the audience alike. It also freed me up to spend more time on the Retrospace sales table where it rapidly became clear that Rochelle would be swamped with customers for most of the weekend.

Photo: Peter Davison (L) and Mark Strickson (R) on stage at Armageddon.

I needed to present Peter Davison with a copy of the latest TSV issue, which contained an interview that Adam McGechan had conducted with him many months earlier. I waited around until the autograph queue had slowed to a trickle, and then joined the end of the line. The woman immediately ahead of me had a large stack of photos for Peter to sign, and I could see that although he was still being pleasant to her, that he’d really rather be doing something else.

I nipped past the woman and instead struck up a conversation with Mark Strickson, who was sitting next to Peter. I’d interviewed Mark almost twenty years earlier at an Auckland convention, and told him this. Mark understandably didn’t recall our earlier meeting, but it broke the ice and I told him that I was writing information subtitles for the BBC Doctor Who DVDs, and we compared notes on a couple of specific incidents from his stories that I’d been researching.

Peter Davison had up until this point looked to me understandably rather weary at having signed so many autographs, but as he listened in on our conversation his face lit up with a broad smile and he began talking to me, offering his own thoughts on the stories we were discussing. He asked about which titles I was working on and the three of us discussed the upcoming releases. (I won’t go into specifics as all of the titles I’m doing have yet to be announced on the schedules.)

Having gained Peter’s undivided attention, I then got to talking with him about his other roles and I told him about my great appreciation for another of his series, A Very Peculiar Practice. We shared our mutual hope that the second series would one day come out on DVD (Peter felt that the fact that it was made by BBC Birmingham had effectively shut it out of the schedules). He seemed delighted at my suggestion that At Home with the Braithwaites was his opportunity to play a raving unhinged character after having been perhaps the only truly sane one in Peculiar Practice.

I presented Peter with TSV 76, and he seemed genuinely touched that I’d gone to the trouble of handing it to him in person. We shook hands and he thanked me very much for talking to him. I think he was relieved that I’d talked to him as a fellow professional, our common ground being that we both worked on the BBC Doctor Who DVDs, and that I hadn’t asked for a photo or an autograph like so many hundreds of fans had done over the weekend.

I came away from that meeting feeling elated at having met a childhood hero. Peter Davison had been my Doctor when I was a teenage fan, and for nostalgic reasons remains a firm personal favourite amongst all of the actors to have played the role.

As I'm sure Floyd would agree, it can be a thrilling experience to meet one’s heroes.

Watchmen

2009-03-10T22:32:00.004+13:00

David Bishop introduced me to Watchmen when he loaned me the graphic novel sometime in the second half of 1989. I was sceptical as I'm not much of a fan of superhero comics, but David assurred me that this was something different, something extraordinary.

Watchmen blew my mind. It opened my eyes to the wondrous potential of comic strip narrative structure. I marvelled at the dense, multi-layered plot, the frequent time shifts, the metaphors, hidden clues in the artwork and the sheer scale of the story.

Twenty years later, I've just seen the movie version on the big screen. I can't think of any other movie project that has spent as long in development as this one. I've waited years to see it, and thankfully it didn't disappoint.

The direction was superb, clearly taking many visual cues from pages of the comic. It was an odd sensation recognising so much of the imagery as familiar in a movie I had never seen before. It was equally jarring when the movie did diverge from its source material such as, for example, the outward appearance of Veidt's Antarctic fortress.

The cast for the most part were very good indeed; I especially liked Patrick Wilson's Dan Dreiberg and Jackie Earle Haley was just perfect in the pivotal role of Rorschach. Malin Akerman's performance as Laurie was however disappointingly a bit flat. Maybe she was directed to underplay the part, but I didn't engage with the character as much as I did with the other costumed heroes.

I've read that the movie has had at least half an hour cut from the theatrical release, which will be reinstated for the DVD. Although I could see the gaps I believe that's because I'm familiar with the source material. It looked pretty seamless to me on screen, and the only exception I can think of being Hollis Mason, most of whose scenes were chopped, leaving him as a character who crops up briefly early in the movie and is never seen again.

The major difference between the comic and the film is the ending. I wasn't expecting this to be the case, but I actually prefer the movie version. I don't believe that a giant squid-like alien would have been in keeping with the tone and style of the rest of the movie. I always thought it jarred a little in the comic.

Just as in the comic, there's a lot to take in when watching the movie, and I suspect that it will reward multiple viewings. I'm certainly very much looking forweard to getting hold of the extended version on DVD.

Back to School

2009-02-28T15:13:00.002+13:00

Many years ago I trained as a Secondary School teacher. It seemed at the time like the best option to make full use of my university degree in History and English. I completed the one-year course, during which I taught in three different schools, and graduated with a Diploma of Teaching.

The problem was that after graduation there was a shortage of jobs in teaching. I could count the list of vacancies on one hand. The only use I made of my DipTch qualification was to do some short-term, private tutition work, helping students prep for their exams. Eventually I moved into other work, and left teaching behind.

My teacher training never seemed like a wasted year of my life; as a manager of a number of staff in three different companies, I've found that many of the basic principles of classroom teaching have served me well. My teacher training gave me the skills to be an effective communicator, to keep people on task, to plan effectively.

Much as I enjoy writing, it's not lucrative enough to sustain me financially, so I've been giving so thought about what I want to do next. Preferably something that leaves me with enough time to continue writing part-time.

So I've been thinking about relieving teaching. My DipTch is still recognised; I just need to do a retaining course to get back up to speed and get registered.

I started looking into this last week and learned that the goverment funds free courses for returning teachers, to encourage people like myself to get back into the profession.

TeachNZ, the teacher recruitment unit of the Ministry of Education, pointed me in the direction of my old alma mater, the University of Auckland. When I finally got through to the right person (which was a mission in itself), I learned that there is indeed a retraining course coming up, but there's some doubt over whether it will take place as the course has not received any funding.

If the funding doesn't come though, the course won't take place. Without this course I cannot register and I cannot teach.

Meanwhile in the newspapers and on the television we're told that the goverment is pouring millions into job creation schemes. How about putting some of that money into teacher training...?

Making Progress

2009-02-19T01:14:00.003+13:00

I've reached an important milestone in the writing of The Comic Strip Companion.

As of tonight, I’ve finished the last of the chapters dealing with all of the Doctor Who comic strip stories originated in TV Comic, Countdown and TV Action magazines from 1964 to 1979, which is the period covered by this volume. I've so far written 159,311 words. I've written individual entries for 166 different comic strip stories or, to put it another way, 1,601 comic strip pages - and that's not counting all of the various reprints which I've also covered.

Most of the book is now written - but there's still more to be done.

There are other comic strips published during this period that, although they are not considered part of the regular series, it would be remiss of me not to cover them in the book. These include the strips that appeared in: the Doctor Who Annuals; the Dalek Annuals; the three 1960s Dalek books; The Daleks strips from TV Century 21 comic; and the American comic adaptation of the first Dalek movie. This material amounts to an additional 56 stories, which might sound like a lot but many of these stories are significantly shorter than the ones I've already covered. This extra material will form supplementary chapters located at the rear of the book.

I've also got some recently discovered archival material that I need to find places to write about in the chapters I've already written. This previously unseen material casts new light on the origins of the Doctor Who strip and provides additional insight into the development of a number of the early strips. The documents also include three story proposals which were never published. This information has never been published elsewhere and will undoubtedly be of great interest.

I need to devote some time as well to revisiting some of what I’ve already written. I started work on the book nearly two years ago and over that time I've gradually tweaked the format and style as I’ve progressed through the chapters. I need to revisit the earliest sections I wrote and do some revising so that the whole book ends up with a readable, consistent format and style.

Right now though, I feel a sense of achievement in having written all fourteen chapters that form the main body of the book. There’s a way to go before I’m done, but now it feels like the end is on the horizon.

Going Down in History

2009-02-12T17:06:00.003+13:00

I'm concentrating most of my time on writing my book (latest word count: 152,000 words or thereabouts), which is why I haven't blogged in the last month.

I do however want to take a moment to mention the lovely surprise I received on opening the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine (#405) today. Editor Tom Spilsbury's 'On this Month' column (which takes a nostalgic look at a past issue) casts an eye over issue 275 from ten years ago, and covers the article I wrote for that issue (one of my first professional writing commissions), about the return of The Lion. I wasn't expecting this, so it was a delightful to see that Tom namechecked both myself and Neil Lambess, and even quotes Neil on his likening of the find to something out of Indiana Jones.

After all this time it's still a thrill to see myself and Neil remembered for our small contribution to Doctor Who history.

Here's the item:

The Eleventh Doctor

2009-01-05T15:16:00.003+13:00

“Hello, Paul? It’s Ben from Radio Live here. I’ve just spotted the news about Doctor Who. I'm wondering if you would talk to Jemma on our show tomorrow morning about it.”

That was the phone call I received yesterday, and as a result at 6:55am this morning I was on air talking about Doctor Who. I couldn’t help thinking that, ten years on, history was repeating itself. When the news broke about the return of the missing episode in January 1999 I was hounded by the television radio and print media.

But Radio Live wasn't calling about a missing episode. The news was that the BBC had just announced the casting of the Eleventh Doctor. Even though I’d only discovered the identity of the actor myself less than an hour before that phone call, I agreed to the interview.

The casting of the Doctor had taken place in secrecy, as these things do, fuelling a media frenzy in the UK ever since 29 October 2008 when Tenth Doctor David Tennant publically announced his resignation live on television whilst accepting the National Television Award (for Outstanding Drama Performance). It’s a measure of just how massive Doctor Who is these days that speculation flooded the UK news media.

Fan discussion forums were just as busy, endlessly debating the merits of such supposed contenders as Paterson Joseph, David Morrissey, Chiwetel Ejiofor and James Nesbitt among many others. Billie Piper was even mooted as a strong contender, which seems absurd – not I hasten to add because of her gender, but because having been so strongly identified in the series as Rose Tyler, having her play the Doctor just simply would have been way too confusing.

Betting agencies soon got in on the act, with updated lists of their odds widely reported. It’s perhaps instructional to note for future casting speculation that they were well off the mark; the actor awarded the role didn’t even appear in Betfair’s top 20 picks, just hours before the announcement (which leads me to wonder if he was tempted to put a wager on himself; that could have been a nice little earner!).

The announcement was made on Doctor Who Confidential, a BBC television documentary screened in the UK on Saturday evening. I downloaded it Sunday morning while staying well clear of the rest of the internet, least I spoil it for myself. Rochelle and I then sat down and watched the special in the early afternoon, seeing for the first time Matt Smith, the man who will be the Eleventh Doctor.

At just twenty-six year old, Matt Smith is the youngest of the eleven Doctor actors, but only a few years younger than Peter Davison was when he accepted the part of the Fifth Doctor (he was 29). Apparently the producers were not particularly looking for a young man when they began the casting process, but the final decision to go with someone so youthful must surely have been guided by such factors as the ability to cope with the gruelling recording schedule (which could easily wear out an older actor); and also to appeal to the series’ huge audience of children (I’m sure Matt Smith will look more appealing on the covers of the Doctor Who Adventures magazine than, say, James Nesbitt).

I’m not familiar with any of Matt Smith's roles and didn’t recognise his face or his name (though as I’ve watched The Secret Diary of a Call Girl and part of Ruby in the Smoke – in both of which he starred opposite Billie Piper – I realise that I must have seen him before). I like the idea that the BBC has gone with a virtual unknown. I think some of the Doctors, and Peter Davison most of all, suffered from strong public association with prior roles (Davison was already well-known as veterinarian Tristan Farnon from All Creatures Great and Small).

I like the fact too that Matt Smith has very slightly unusual facial features, including a high forehead and a prominent chin. Looking a little bit odd ought to be a plus factor for the Doctor. Tom Baker for example had a rather distinctive appearance (bulging eyes, huge bushy hair, too many teeth) which all helped him to define the part as his own. In his interview he waggled his fingers very expressively while talking, which immediately struck me as very 'Doctorish', and something I'd be keen to see him carry over into his performance.

It’s likely to be a year and a half before we first get to see Matt Smith playing the Doctor on television, but I for one am looking forward to see what he does with the role in 2010.

The Lion's Roar

2009-01-03T11:20:00.007+13:00

This morning I received a text message from my old friend Neil Lambess wishing me a happy tenth anniversary.

It was ten years ago today that Neil phoned me to ask if I'd meet him later that day.

That was, for me, the beginning of a whirlwind of events that earned us a place in Doctor Who history books. Neil had contacted Auckland film collector Bruce Grenville, who apparently had a missing Doctor Who episode 16mm film print in his possession. Bruce agreed that Neil and I could come around to his Grey Lynn flat and view it on the evening of Sunday 3 January 1999.

The missing episodes are the Doctor Who equivalent of the holy grail; film prints and videotapes junked and destroyed by the BBC in the 1960s and 1970s in the belief that no one would ever miss them. This was in the days before repeat screenings were commonplace and home video was unheard of.

Bruce had the first episode of a 1965 story called The Crusade. The individual episode was called The Lion. It was the only known surviving copy in existence.

My own contribution to the discovery was to negotiate for the loan of the film print. The BBC wanted to borrow it long enough to clean up the film and make copies. I communicated with the BBC's restoration team and persuaded the collector to loan the film. I was nervous that at any moment the negotiations could have fallen through, and I'll never forget the moment I walked back to my car with the film safely clutched under my arm.

For one evening I was in possession of perhaps what was - at that moment - the rarest, most coveted Doctor Who item in existence. Here's a photo of me taken that evening, clutching the film.

(It's a sign of the changing times that whilst those shelves behind me are still in the same position in my study, these days they're filled with DVDs rather than videotapes...)

I despatched the film to the BBC's Doctor Who restoration teamin London by secure FedEx courier the following morning.

These days, the episode can be viewed on the BBC DVD Lost in Time. In addition to the episode, the DVD contains an interview with myself, Neil and Bruce Grenville. Our contribution to Doctor Who is recorded for posterity.

A decade on from that historic find, Neil and I remain very proud of our achievement. Neil - thanks for the memories, my friend. Isn't it time we found another one?

The full story of the film's discovery can be read online here.

TSV 61

2008-12-30T10:44:00.006+13:00

TSV 61 was added to the online archive earlier this month, eight years after its original publication in December 2000. This allowed the issue’s limited selection of festive content to once again appear seasonally relevant. Witness in particular the Karkus doing battle with a Cyber Santa; many years before the Cybermen got to appear in a televised Doctor Who Christmas story!

Alistair Hughes’ cover artwork is a superb pastiche of the film poster for Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and promotes the extensive coverage of the Prime television screenings of every complete Hartnell and Troughton story during 2000. I’m resisting calling them repeats since eight stories (The Keys of Marinus, The Aztecs, The Sensorites, The Web Planet, The Chase, The Gunfighters, The Dominators and The War Games), had never previously screened in New Zealand - and to date none of these have rescreened either. (How about it Prime - isn't it time for some fresh screenings of episodes made before 2005...?)

In the previous issue I put out a call to readers to write up their views having watched each of the stories on Prime. Vernon McCarthy and Gerald Joblin both sent in brief pieces, and Robert Boswell contributed the bulk of the issue’s coverage. Robert had written several pieces for TSV in the past, but as he was outside the regular pool of writers appearing in each and every issue, he brought a relatively fresh perspective to the subject. Robert did such a sterling job of critiquing the Sixties Prime stories that I invited him back to cover the 1970s stories for later issues.

The highlight of the issue though, and an item that continues to this day to attract much interest from readers, was the coverage of the Seven Keys to Doomsday play. The 1984 staging of this Doctor Who production in Porirua had been overlooked by fans for many years. It later transpired that several readers knew about the play and members of the Wellington Doctor Who club chapter had inherited props from the production, but I for one remained completely ignorant of its existence for sixteen years.

TSV’s intrepid investigative reporter Graham Howard discovered the facts about the play, tracking down and interviewing theatre director Brian Hudson. The interview arrived along with a stack of black and white photographs, photocopies of the programme booklet, newspaper clippings and adverts all related to the production. I was only able to use a limited selection of this material in the article (more of which appeared in a later issue when Graham interviewed actor Michael Sagar who played the Doctor in the play), but the addition of this issue to the online archive has meant that all of this material can at last be displayed for all to see.

In September 2000 a discussion thread about the play started on rec.arts.drwho. Alden Bates (who posted to the thread) recently linked to it in his blog and I was astonished to find a posting from myself on the thread. I have absolutely no recollection of writing that post (the memory’s obviously not what it once was), though I’ve no doubt it was me who wrote it. It’s obvious I think that when I posted that message I had no knowledge about the play’s existence, and my reply reads as if I’m sceptical about the veracity of the rumour. In hindsight this seems rather unintentionally rude towards Alden, who posted a couple of newspaper clippings as evidence that the play actually existed. I’m sorry, Alden - you were of course absolutely correct.

The timing of the rec.arts.drwho thread is intriguing, as Graham’s article about the play appeared in TSV just two months later. I don’t recall a late change to the content, but work on the issue must have been well under way at this point, implying that the play article was a relatively late addition to the line-up.

Elsewhere in the issue, the Disc-Continuity Guide column made its last appearance in print. At this point it was already in the process of transforming into a comprehensive online guide to the Big Finish audios. (The last update to the guide was in 2005.) It was also the end for regular book reviewer Brad Schmidt, who decided to call it quits following a two-year stint during which he wrote 46 book reviews, some of which were originally credited to ‘James Schmidt’. I initially shouldered the task of reviewing the books myself but struggled to find the time to read all of the new titles in time to review them on top of everything else I needed to do for the issue, so I was very grateful when Jamas Enright volunteered to take over as TSV’s regular book reviewer.

Read the issue here.

Fellow TSV 61 bloggers:
Alden Bates
Jamas Enright

120,000 words

2008-12-24T22:25:00.003+13:00

As of tonight I've hit two targets in the writing of my book, The Comic Strip Companion.

I've just completed another chapter - that's eleven in total I've written now (another six to go before the book's finished). I've also just passed the 120,000 word mark. This is a significant personal milestone.

When I started writing the manuscript last year I estimated that the entire book would be 120,000 words long. The contract I signed with the publisher stipulated a 100,000 word minimum; I thought at the time that 20,000 words over this would be a comfortable margin.

It has long since become apparent to me that this was an hugely overly conservative estimate, and I now expect that the book will end up being somewhere around 185,000 words.

The process of writing the book has been governed by setting targets and planning ahead. I have mapped the book out on an Excel spreadsheet and I update this each day. My aim has been to write about at least one complete comic strip story each day, though of late my writing time has been reduced to three days a week due to other commitments.

I wanted to complete the latest chapter before taking a few days off over Christmas, and I've managed this with a few hours to spare; next week it'll be time to open another Word document and start work on another chapter, every day a step closer to completion!

Who is... The Next Doctor?

2008-12-14T19:31:00.003+13:00

This is the burning question for many Doctor Who fans right now, mere days away from the broadcast of the new episode due to screen in the UK on Christmas day.

The Christmas special, entitled The Next Doctor, features David Tennant's Doctor encountering another individual also calling himself the Doctor, played by David Morrissey (and thus reuniting the two Davids, who were previously seen together on screen in the wonderful Blackpool mini-series).

A brief preview clip from the story (which I'm assuming is the entire pre-credits sequence) screened as a fundraiser for the Children in Need charity appeal a couple of months ago, showing the Doctor's initial encounter with this other Doctor.

But is Morrissey really the Doctor...? The BBC isn't saying - and speculation is especially rampant in light of the recent news that David Tennant is stepping down from the role in 2010. Despite intense media speculation, his successor has yet to be announced, and it's likely that any casting revelation is deliberately being held back until sometime after the screening of The Next Doctor, in order to maintain the air of mystery and anticipation surrounding this episode. There doesn't seem to be likely though that David Morrissey will take over from David Tennant as the new star of the series as the episode was recorded many months ago, long before Tennant announced that he was leaving.

So assuming that this is a one-off role for Morrissey as the Doctor, it seems to me, based on the preview clip - and absolutely no insider knowledge - that there are four possible scenarios regarding the question of the Next Doctor's identity:

1) The Imposter Doctor: He’s someone else, a con-man knowingly masquerading as the Doctor for some reason. This would appear to be the most obvious answer, were it not for the fact that in that preview clip the Next Doctor doesn't seem to recognise the Doctor as anyone special, at least initially treating him as an ordinary bystander. He mentions the TARDIS to his companion, Rosita, has his own sonic screwdriver, and appears to be aware of the Cybermen. If he's a ordinary guy pretending to be the Doctor, he's rather too convincing. So I don't think this is the most likely scenario.

2) The Arch Doctor: He’s someone else, but genuinely believes himself to be the Doctor, having been exposed to the Doctor’s memories. There’s a precedent for this in Series Three when the Doctor used the chameleon arch to place his memories and personality inside a fob watch (in the episodes Human Nature / Family of Blood), and when this watch found its way into the possession of a human school boy, Tim Latimer, his limited exposure to the watch provides him with some of the Doctor’s memories. What if the Next Doctor has one of these watches and has had his mind altered so that he thinks and behaves as if he really is the Doctor? It’s a theory given weight by a couple of advance publicity photos, which shows the Next Doctor with a fob watch. If this is the case though, where does he get his TARDIS (the one he mentions to Rosita), from…?

3) The Rift Doctor: He really is the Doctor, but from an alternate universe. The presence of the new series version of the Cybermen in this story makes this scenario all the more plausible. The Cybermen originated in a parallel reality and crossed over into ‘our’ world through the rift. In the previous story, The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End, the walls between dimensions broke down, enabling Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith and Jackie Tyler to return to our world from where they had been sealed off in an alternate reality. What if the Next Doctor is from that reality (or another one), and has come through the rift with the Cybermen? I’m favouring this scenario being the mostly likely one, but there’s another to consider…

4) The Real Doctor: He is actually the Doctor. Not someone pretending, not transformed by a watch, and not from another reality. Well and truly the Next Doctor; the Eleventh Doctor, the one that the Tenth Doctor will one day regenerate into. This scenario is possible if, in the course of events in this story, the Doctor does something to change his future so that this Next Doctor is wiped from history and never comes into existence. It’s an appealing idea, but perhaps not the most likely outcome.

If I were a betting man my money would be resting on scenario #3, but anything’s possible. The answer may even turn out to be something I haven't even considered above. For some time in the lead-up to last year's Christmas special, Voyage of the Damned (AKA The One With Kylie Minogue), fans thought that the story was set in the past aboard the actual Titanic, rather than - as it transpired - a replica spacecraft version of the ship in the present day. So this wouldn't be the first time that we've been led to believe one outcome when the truth is something quite different...

Less than two weeks from now we'll know for certain. Can't wait!

"Our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared"

2008-11-05T21:38:00.003+13:00

Today is a day of change, a day that will surely go down in history. Today is the day that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.

Although as a British citizen residing in New Zealand I am of course ineligible to vote (in the US - I am a registered NZ voter of course), I have nevertheless followed the American presidential campaign as it has unfolded over the months. I was appalled at the possibility that Sarah Palin might become Vice President. I was rooting for Obama when it looked like he was going to be defeated by Hillary Clinton at the Democratic candidate in the primaries. I was delighted when he won then, and I am simply thrilled that he has won the presidency today.

It is a moment of huge historic significance. America, a notoriously deeply conservative nation with a troubled history of deep-seated racism, has elected an African-American as their next leader. What is much more significant to me on a personal level is that for the first time someone of my generation - a person who is a mere seven years my senior - will be the President of the USA.

Watching Barack Obama's victory speech tonight, I was moved to tears. He is a truly great orator. The highlight, for me, of Obama's speech was when he dwelt on key moments of American history, prompting a stirring, rising chant of "Yes we can" from the crowd.

It remains to be seen whether Obama will succeed in achieving all that he has set out to do. The challenges before him - including rebuilding the shattered economy and ending the war in Iraq - are immense, but from what I've seen of Obama, he seems to have the requisite will and the determination to realise these goals.

My hope is that some years from now, historians will look back on the election of Obama as the time everything changed - for the better.

TSV 60

2008-10-22T15:07:00.006+13:00

I was surprised to find my name mentioned in a recent issue of the really rather superb Canadian fanzine Enlightenment, where I’m described as holding the record for the longest-serving Doctor Who fanzine editor for my 15 consecutive years on TSV. I’ve never thought of my stint on TSV as record-breaking. 15 years is however a long time, and as I’ve progressively revisited each of the issues for the online archive, I can recall the various ebbs and flows of my enthusiasm for TSV. Issue 60, published in June 2000 - two-thirds of the way through that 15-year editorship - marked one such turning point in my commitment to the fanzine.

As the previous issue’s editorial indicated I had by this point become just a little weary of finding new things to say about the television series after ten years of waiting for it to come back. I was re-energised with enthusiasm however with the news in April 2000 that Prime television would be screening every complete story, from the beginning. I knew from the moment I first learned about this that it had the potential to deliver enormous benefit to TSV, both in the form of a fresh and relevant re-evaluation of the series, and additionally inspire an influx of new readers.

I first read the news in the Herald newspaper, when TSV 60 was in the early stages of assembly. I faxed off a letter to Prime the same day, introducing myself and telling them about the club, asking for information about screening dates to publish in TSV. A reply came back from Prime’s publicity department, asking me for advice and assistance. Over the next few months I fact-checked their press pack (correcting a number of inaccuracies before it went out to the media), composed the programme listing synopses for some of the Hartnell episodes and made two guest appearances on Alice Worsley’s Prime Living television show. Best of all, I was interviewed by the Listener, complete with the club's website address:

The Listener (13 May 2000).

Effectively I became Prime’s go-to guy for anything to do with Doctor Who. Prime's receptionists were briefed to pass on the club's contact details to anyone who called up wanting to know more about Doctor Who - which in turn boosted to TSV’s readership numbers (strangely enough the readership hasn’t increased in the years since Prime commenced screening the new series in 2005).

The Prime screenings were only just getting under way when this issue appeared, so the coverage only extended to my editorial, a news report and a mention on the front cover “Back on NZ TV – from the beginning!”). The issue was however packed with content. Recent video releases Planet of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks were examined by Peter Adamson and Alistair Hughes in Battle Beyond the Sofa. These two guys are big fans of the Sixth and Third Doctors respectively, but although this article provided an ideal opportunity to fight their respective corners, Peter reviewed Planet and Al reviewed Revelation. The talented duo also illustrated the front and back cover illustrations to support this article.

As I write this, the 2008 Auckland Armageddon pulp culture expo is just a few days away. This event has become a regular fixture for sci-fi, fantasy and gaming fans over the last decade, and to think that it ultimately evolved from organiser Bill Geradts’ monthly Auckland Chapter Doctor Who club meetings that he used to hold in his front living room! Armageddon has hosted several Doctor Who guests over the years, but the earliest was Jeremy Bulloch, who attended the March 2000 event, where Jon Preddle interviewed him for TSV. Bulloch was promoted at Armageddon as bounty hunter Boba Fett from Star Wars, but Doctor Who fans know him for his roles in The Time Warrior and The Space Museum.

Many of TSV’s most interesting articles, in my view, zero in on a particular aspect of the series’ fiction and attempt to reconcile this across all of the various media (TV, books, audios, comics, etc). A School for Scoundrels did just this with the subject of the Doctor’s school days, taking its lead from the extensive flashback sequence in Gary Russell’s then-recently published novel Divided Loyalties. The class ‘photos’ are fun too, and I’ve often wondered who Peter Adamson based each of the likenesses on.

Russell T Davies’ highly acclaimed drama series Queer as Folk screened on NZ TV in early 2000 and Neil Lambess and Nigel Windsor both contributed pieces for TSV 60 inspired by the series. It aggravates me a little that New Zealand television censors saw fit to take their scissors to certain scenes, but if that’s what it took to get it screened here at all then so be it. This was probably the first time TSV had ever mentioned Russell T Davies; the announcement that he was to revive Doctor Who was still three years away at this point, but there he is quoted in Nigel’s article, proclaiming “Oh I love Doctor Who!” I’m delighted to say that, despite the controversial nature of Queer as Folk, I never received a single word of complaint about the coverage of this series in TSV.

TSV 60 also sees the concluding half of my interview with Andrew Pixley, in which he talks about what he’s written other than DWM’s Archives (for which he is best known). In my frequent conversations with Andrew I recall that he was keen to dispel any notion that all he wrote was the Archives, so this was his opportunity as I saw it to put the record straight and talk about his wider interests, even those beyond Doctor Who. I love episode guide books, so I was particularly interested to get his views on what were the best examples of these.

The Foundation of Science by Jamas Enright marked the return of text fiction to TSV after a two issue absence. I’d had Jamas’s story in reserve for a year; it had been lined up to appear in TSV 58 and then 59 but each time I’d had to bump it due to space considerations. Aided by the lack of a comic strip story for this issue - and of course a keen desire not to have to apologise to Jamas for a third time - the story finally saw print.

These days Kelly Buchanan publishes Faction Paradox novels – a Doctor Who spin-off of sorts - through her company Random Static, but in TSV 60 she collaborated with Wade Campbell in on an informative and in-depth look at another series of spin-off books, the Bernice Summerfield novels. The article charts the entire 'Doctor-less' New Adventures range produced under the Virgin Publishing imprint. The article was timely as the series ended months earlier with Twilight of the Gods, Virgin’s very last New Adventure and in some ways the end of a decade-long publishing success story. Of course Bernice Summerfield went on to enjoy many more adventures in print (and on audio) under new producers Big Finish; perhaps it’s time for a follow-up article examining this range…?

In recent months I’ve been looking at a number of other online magazines and note that many of these (Shooty Dog Thing, Whotopia and Pantechnicon to name but three), offer issues as downloadable PDFs. I'm keen to do the same for TSV in addition to continuing to present the content as HTML pages. While I was preparing this issue for its online revival, I have also been reworking the original Publisher files to produce a PDF version of the issue. It’s not finished yet, but I’m intending to make this available soon.

Read the issue here.

Fellow TSV 60 bloggers:
Alden Bates
Jamas Enright

What's the point of Postcodes?

2008-10-16T17:30:00.003+13:00

From today's NZ Herald Sideswipe column:

NZ Post has just launched its "what's your postcode?" campaign to remind people about using postcodes, writes Paul. "My wife went to post a parcel at the Victoria St post office in Auckland's CBD and although the parcel was correctly addressed including the postcode, for Kaiwaka in Northland, the staff at the counter were unable to locate the code on their system and consequently informed her that they couldn't accept the parcel!"

The 'Paul' in this item is me. When Rochelle related the story to me, I got on the NZ Post website and used their postcode finder to look up the code she'd used in the address. It came up instantly with the correct details. I've no idea why the staff at the post office were incapable of doing this. Coincidentally, the glossy brochure from NZ Post promoting the Postcode education campaign arrived in our mail box on the very same day that this incident occurred!

Getting back into the Groove

2008-09-22T21:51:00.004+12:00

Today has been a day of shifting gears and getting back on track.

For many months now, I've been writing The Comic Strip Companion, a book about every Doctor Who comic strip created in the 1960s and 1970s (and yes, there are a lot of them).

I had to lay the book to one side to tackle another, quite different writing job. I can't say much about that other piece of writing yet (I'll blog about it when it's been announced), but I will say that this was a hugely different discipline to writing the book, and I found it enormously challenging to get into the right headspace for the duration. That's now done and delivered.

So, after about a month of doing very little on the book, I've just resumed work on it.

Time to take stock. Where am I at with this? A few facts and figures might help. When I left off in mid-August, I'd completed the first drafts of nine chapters, which between them cover 87 comic strip stories. My total word count when I left off was 98,116 words (Believe me, I was sorely tempted to push on to the next chapter to break that psychological 100,000 barrier!).

I've another five chapters to write, plus three appendicies which are each probably going to be long enough to be considered chapters in their own right - so there's still a lot left to do.

Today, rather than launching straight into a new chapter, I decided to get back into the mindset by revising Chapter Six (which covers the comic strips published in 1970). The revisions included adding in a whole new subsection, and trimming down some overly wordy bits.

Having completed this revision, I took the plunge and sent this newly polished chapter out to a test audience for feedback and comments. I held off doing this until now because I didn't want the distraction of replies while I was working on the Other Project. Now it's time to start soliciting and receiving that constructive criticism. I've emailed a group of seven readers, and just hours later, I've already received my first feedback which has already got me thinking about making a few tweaks to the format. I'll hold off doing that though until I see what the others have to say.

Missing Targets

2008-08-24T17:03:00.006+12:00

My obsession with Doctor Who grew out of a love for the highly collectable Target novelisations of the Doctor's television adventures. When I was a boy I used to seize any opportunity to nip into a bookshop and peruse the shelves for the highly distinctive slim paperback books. I arranged these carefully in series order and accorded them pride of place on my bookshelves. Once I'd caught up with all of the books already available it became a matter of tracking down each new monthly release. Because each novelisation was based on a television story I always knew exactly how many gaps there were in the book series and how many titles there should be in total when the range was complete (this latter figure was of course adjusted annually to keep up with each new season of television stories).

The Target range finally ended in the early 1990s, following on the heels of the cancellation of the television series itself. The 154 novelisations covered almost but not quite all of the television stories as there were at that time. There were, frustratingly, just five gaps remaining on the bookshelf. The missing Targets were three Fourth Doctor stories, all scripted by the late Douglas Adams, and two Dalek stories scripted by Eric Saward. Due to unsuccessful negotiations with these writers, the publishers were prevented from completing the set. So close, and yet so far.

It was a desire to fill these niggling gaps that inspired me to produce my own versions of the missing novelisations. I novelised two of the five stories myself, and three other writers adapted one story each. When the books were offered as a set of five they proved extremely popular with fans worldwide (whom no doubt like me had those niggling gaps on their bookshelves). I found myself struggling to keep up with demand and had to keep reprinting in ever greater numbers. Although these books were always strictly amateur non-profit publications, this unfortunately didn't prevent buyers from onselling these with a markup. I decided to let the books go out of print and instead issue them completely free of charge as online ebooks. It has taken a couple of years to get all five books online, but I'm delighted to announce that the last of these, Doctor Who and the City of Death, went up yesterday.

The set of five novelisations can be read online (and downloaded) here.

Campaign

2008-08-22T14:03:00.003+12:00

The Crusade is not the only 'lost' Doctor Who story featuring the First Doctor that I’ve helped rescue from oblivion. I also had a hand in the restoration of author Jim Mortimore’s self-published novel, Campaign.

Jim’s novel has a fairly turbulent background. Campaign was originally commissioned by BBC Books as a purely historical adventure set in various time periods during the life of Alexander the Great, but the book Jim delivered was late, underlength, and differed radically from the original synopsis, becoming a mind-bending adventure about multiple realities set largely within the confines of the TARDIS and, for the most part, only tangentially dealt with Alexander’s life. The book was cancelled so Jim took it upon himself to self-publish the book for charity in 2000.

The limited-run paperback proved popular with fans, garnering many online rave reviews, and consequently completely sold out of its limited print run.

In late August 2006 I was browsing the Outpost Gallifrey Doctor Who discussion forum, and read a thread about how copies of Campaign, which was by now long out of print, was changing hands for large sums of money on Ebay. My only prior contact with Jim Mortimore was when I had bought copies of Campaign off him years earlier, but I dropped in an email suggesting that he take a look at the TSV website where David Bishop’s Who Killed Kennedy novel had been reissued as an ebook free for all to read and accompanied by new supplementary material including a chapter-by-chapter commentary. I proposed that if he was interested, we could perhaps do something similar for Campaign.

Jim responded positively, writing “THAT is a brilliant idea. What do you need from me?” and started bombarding me via email with some highly creative suggestions including randomised alternative endings, a complete rewrite of the manuscript, an interactive slideshow, and especially composed music (Jim’s also a musician) to accompany the book. None of this eventuated, but it demonstrates just how enthusiastic Jim was initially about the project.

We soon struck a major setback; when I’d worked on the Who Killed Kennedy ebook David Bishop had been able to supply me with an electronic copy of his complete manuscript which made things fairly straightforward. After some time spent searching his files Jim confessed that he couldn’t find a copy of his manuscript; it had apparently been lost forever in a PC crash a couple of years earlier.

I could sympathise with Jim’s predicament; I lost many years worth of TSV files in my own disastrous computer hard drive failure in 1998, and subsequently spent ages painstakingly restoring these by scanning pages of the print master copies. Scanning a copy of the book was the only practical solution that would enable the continuation of the Campaign ebook project. I scanned the first few chapters from my own copy, but as anyone who has ever tried to do this with a paperback book will attest to, this is very tricky and results in both poor quality scans and a book with a wrecked spine.

Jim sent me a defaced copy of the book that I could use instead. The only way in which it was 'defaced' was that Jim had written a dedication on the title page and then scribbled it out. I didn’t allow myself to think about how much the book could still have fetched on ebay, as I took a sharp knife and sliced away the spine. The result was a set of perfectly flat pages that made scanning considerably easier, if still very time-consuming, but on 26 January 2007 I scanned the entire thing from end to end, and tidied up as many of the text recognition errors as I could find to create a Word document of the complete novel.

Jim was delighted to once again have an electronic copy of his novel, and told me he was going to set about restoring it to its original layout and also begin work on the supplementary features. I told him to take as much time as he needed, and in June 2007 he emailed me three documents. The first was an article tracing the history of the book from his initial idea through to its final cancellation; the second a chapter-by-chapter commentary, and the third a collection of reviews of the book harvested from various internet sites. These items were, in total, almost as long as the novel itself.

I had three main concerns about the content of these three articles. Firstly, Jim had included a great deal of the private email correspondence between himself and various individuals at BBC Books, some of which pertained to a dispute over the book’s commissioning and contract. I was naturally worried that if this material was published on the TSV website we could potentially invite legal action from the individuals concerned. Secondly, Jim hadn’t held back in his use of swear words in his commentary and while this was clearly genuine and heartfelt, I was mindful of the broad age range of fans reading at the TSV website, and felt the swearing needed to be toned down. Lastly, I wasn’t comfortable with a wholesale reproduction of all of the reviews from other sources, especially if these could still be found elsewhere online.

I put this feedback to Jim and he agreed to try to seek the necessary permissions. I didn’t hear much from Jim for several months. He finally got back to me in November, saying that the permissions would not be forthcoming and conceding that a rewrite was therefore required. Jim asked me to edit out what I thought needed to be removed, but by early February 2008 I still hadn’t found time to do this as I was by now working on a book project of my own and had little time to spare. I suggested to Jim that I pass the project on to Jamas Enright. Jamas is a long time TSV contributor who has done some excellent work proof reading the online reissues of TSV. Jamas admired Campaign, and his online review of the book was among Jim’s collection of critiques from the internet.

Coincidentally, in February 2008, the Doctor Who Forum’s Campaign discussion thread has a comment from a member with the user name ‘fridaydalek’, saying “Anyone know if Mr Mortimore plans / can be persuaded to release an ebook? Who Killed Kennedy is available in this format.” This was uncannily close to the truth of what had been in the planning stages for over a year, but no hint of this had been disclosed to more than a select group of people directly involved with the project. Another user responded saying that this couldn’t happen because Jim had been threatened by the BBC’s legal department. Jim was quick to post a reply himself saying that this wasn’t true, he’d never had any such contact from the BBC over Campaign.

Jamas began working with Jim on editing the Campaign supplementary material in early March, but another setback came in later that month when Jim emailed both Jamas and myself out of the blue to say that he was pulling the ebook project and was instead going to publish the book with all of the controversial emails intact. I was understandably most disappointed at this sudden about face. I challenged Jim on his reasons, and his explanation was that although he was fine with the work Jamas had put in, he was sick of the way he had been treated by BBC Books and wanted the whole unexpurgated truth to come out. The trigger for this was an experience he’d just had with Big Finish over a Doctor Who audio play that he’d been commissioned to write and was then cancelled. Jim said, “The fact is I’m sick of being kicked in the arse for doing what people ask, and having no recourse but to allow them to make it out to be my fault when their lack of professionalism sends the whole sorry mess spiralling down the pan.”

A month later, Jim emailed again to say that he’d reconsidered, and was now happy for the ebook to appear online, with Jamas’s edits intact. Jim wrote: “Why? I hear you mumbling, in weary abandonment. You were right. You guys put a f**kload of work into this and this book would not now exist without you. That means a *lot* to me. Far more than any stupid gripe with a f**kwitted editor.”

Campaign - the ebook version – was published online by TSV website editor Alden Bates on Monday 28 April, the day before I flew out to the UK for a five week holiday. I made a tentative arrangement with Jim to meet up for a beer in London to celebrate the relaunching of Campaign, but circumstances alas prevented me from finding a suitable time to do this.

Jim went ahead and got new editions of his book published in hardback, with all of the supplementary material in the back. Jim promised copies of this new edition for myself, Jamas and Alden as a thank you for the work we’d each put into the project. In August the books were finally posted to us and turned up in the mailbox just a couple of days ago.

The new edition is a heavy substantial hardback printed on good quality paper with a glossy, full colour dustjacket. I’m name-checked in the book’s introduction, and it’s a pleasure to not only be associated with such a good-looking tome, but also to finally have a copy of the book I helped in some small way to make possible, almost two years to the day after I first suggested to the author that it ought to be reissued.

The online version of Campaign can be found here.

TSV 59

2008-08-18T16:04:00.006+12:00

In my editorial for TSV 59, published January 2000 I took the occasion of the turning of the decade to bemoan the fact that, notwithstanding the McGann TV movie, fans had gone ten years without newly-produced television Doctor Who. I wrote of the unexpected thrill that myself and a couple of friends had experienced when we first watched the cliffhanger ending of The Curse of Fenric episode three, a thrill that had been missing in the intervening years; and concluded by making a simple yet heartfelt request: "Can we have our series back, please?"

I had to wait a few more years after that editorial appeared but I’m happy to say that my request was granted and I'm now experiencing that cliffhanger thrill again, most recently at the conclusion of The Stolen Earth, which was so astonishingly unexpected it actually had me wondering whether I just seen the Tenth Doctor's swansong. Honestly, I cannot understate this: I adore the new series of Doctor Who and it's brilliant beyond words that it has been such a phenomenally huge success.

TSV 59 however belongs to a time when fans were still clutching at whatever passed for something new about Doctor Who. It seems highly unlikely that a spoof Comic Relief sketch would receive such prominence now, but there’s The Curse of Fatal Death (scripted by current producer-in-waiting himself, Steven Moffat), on the front cover. Actually that’s a rather good piece of artwork by Alistair Hughes which cleverly pastiches Target’s The Five Doctors novelisation cover.

There’s more goodness from Al Hughes inside the issue, in the form of a Lara Croft-inspired picture of Leela. The artwork appeared in black and white in the issue, but in an early example of the TSV website supporting the issue’s content, a link was provided for readers to check out the full colour version online. (Now, of course, the whole issue's on the website.)

Al’s finest work this issue is in the form of an eight page comic strip called Our Final Battlefield which is just stunning. When I first laid eyes on this I emailed Al and told him he should send a copy to Doctor Who Magazine to see if they might be interested in printing it. I’ve no idea if Al did, or if he received a reply, but to my mind it was certainly worthy of consideration.

TSV 59 also has some rather good articles, including an insightful examination of the subtext of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy by Peter Adamson. This caused a bit of a problem when an emailed comment was included that wasn’t intended for publication. Thankfully this genuine misunderstanding was soon smoothed over without the need to do anything as drastic as withdrawing the entire print run (though this was initially requested), but I have of course removed the offending comment for the online edition.

Peter was a prolific contributor to TSV for many years, delivering both quantity and quality with inspiring regularity. His input, if not always his name, infuses at least half of this issue’s content. The Machinery of Survival is one of his articles, a thorough examination (I’m tempted to write dissection) of the rather gory subject of converting humans into Cybermen. Now that’s why I think Cybermen are far scarier than Daleks.

I mentioned in a previous commentary that legendary TV historian Andrew Pixley has something of an aversion to being interviewed, claiming that the process of writing the Doctor Who Magazine Archives was simply too boring to talk about. I disagreed, and after some gentle persuasion on my part he agreed to an email interview. The first half appeared in this issue, and I think makes fascinating reading for anyone like me who regards Andrew’s Archives as the most thorough and reliable reference work ever produced on the behind-the-scenes history of Doctor Who. I just wish that these will someday get reissued as bound book editions, as it would be a lot easier to look things up if I didn't have to shuffle through more than a decade’s worth of magazines.

Even if you're already familiar with Andrew's interview from the print edition, I recommend looking up the online version as it includes a new postscript by Andrew in which he brings his comments up to date. I should add too that Andrew offered to write this for the online edition when he observed that the issue was due for republication, without any prompting from me. That's the kind of generous and thoughtful man he is.

Read the issue here.

Fellow TSV 59 bloggers:
Alden Bates
Jamas Enright

TSV 58

2008-07-17T21:43:00.006+12:00

At the moment almost all of my writing is taken up with chronicling Doctor Who comic strips from years gone by. What started out as an interest in the comics as part of a wider focus on all things to do with a certain Time Lord has just within the last couple of years narrowed to a singular obsession as I've developed the manuscript of what will eventually be my first professionally published book.

So it is that looking back at TSV 58, first published back in September 1999, I’m interested above all else in the article it contauins about the making of one of the Doctor Who Magazine comic strips. This item will in time no doubt end up being listed in my book’s bibliography (but not until the second volume).

It’s My Party and I’ll Die if I Want To was an insight into the writing and drawing of DWM’s 1998 anniversary strip, called Happy Deathday. The article was written by Warwick Gray, better known to DWM readers by his professional name Scott Gray. Warwick – or rather Scott as I should call him from here on in – is possibly TSV’s greatest success story. Scott was illustrating and writing for TSV when he was still living in his mother’s basement in suburban Dunedin. The early years of TSV owe a great deal to Warwick's creative input, as I'm sure both long time subscribers and those who've had a thorough look through the online archive will be aware.

I remain very proud of the fact that we published Scott Gray’s earliest Doctor Who comic strips, the very same work that he submitted on spec to Doctor Who Magazine and resulted in work as a comic strip writer and assistant editor on DWM when he moved to the UK in the early 1990s. Scott is now widely regarded as one of the very best things ever to happen to the DWM Doctor Who comic strip, and it's a shame in my opinion that he stepped down as the regular writer when Paul McGann's Doctor was replaced by Christopher Eccleston.

I’ve kept in contact with Scott, and have caught up with him on a few of my UK trips (though circumstances conspired against us meeting up for a drink on my most recent foray to Britain in May this year). Despite his considerable success with his comic strip writing – which is really rather extraordinary good, it has to be said – Scott’s never forgotten TSV, and back in 1999 enthusiastically volunteered this article on the writing of one of his strips for DWM. As this particular story was a team-up with artist Roger Langridge, another ex-pat Kiwi now living in London, it was the ideal strip to write about for TSV.

I think if I recall correctly, the roughs came first. Scott adored Roger’s rough versions of the strip and thought they deserved to be printed. So that’s no doubt what got him thinking of TSV as the ideal place to showcase these. I think Scott wrote his article to give the roughs some context. As it was I didn’t have the page space to print the entire strip, but I did feature many excerpts with comparison panels from the finished version seen in DWM.

With the online publication of this issue I recently took the opportunity to pull out some dusty old box files and locate the original roughs Scott sent me all those years ago, still stored carefully away in a folder, with post-it notes still attached to the pages. There are no page constraints for an electronic issue, so for the first time ever, Roger Langridge’s roughs, plus his preliminary sketches for each of the Doctors, are finally available for all to enjoy.

Still on the subject of comic strips, but elsewhere in the issue, A Locked Room Mystery was significant for finally completing the set of all eight Doctors (as there were back then). TSV had published at least one ‘serious’ comic strip story for each of the Doctors except the first, so finally it was William Hartnell’s turn, in a suitably claustrophobic tale set entirely within the TARDIS.

Around this time of TSV 58 I know I was becoming concerned with the ever-growing number of VHS releases. I was determined to publish a review of each and every story as it was released, but with the frequency of VHS releases increasing as BBC Worldwide set its sights on completing the range within a few years, and the gap widening between TSV issues, inevitably each issue would have quite a few video reviews. So I started to look for ways to diversify these, and hit on the idea of doing a commentary in print. I put the proposal to Peter Adamson and Alistair Hughes, who responded enthusiastically, coming up with the regular Beyond the Sofa feature. These days this feature would be referred to as a ‘fan commentary’; only in print, rather than on DVD.

I can’t really make any claim to originality for the idea. I’d seen it done with SFX magazine’s regular 'Couch Potato' feature, and I think Pete and Al may also have been inspired by this source. Some readers thought TSV might have copied DWM, as their long-running Time Team commentary feature had only just begun at this time. I do know that I’d already put the idea for what became Beyond the Sofa to Pete and Al by the time I first laid eyes on the 'Time Team' feature in DWM 279, as I recall being astonished that we’d come up with a fairly similar approach at pretty much the same time.

Peter also drew the front cover artwork (providing regular cover artist Alistair with what was probably a much-needed break), and Peter’s piece ties in nicely with the focus on Nightmare of Eden for the Beyond the Sofa feature.

I’m fond of the New Adventures novels, so it was a pleasure to publish Jamas Enright’s comprehensively researched piece on All-Consuming Fire. I’d done something similar myself for Happy Endings, another New Adventures novel, back in TSV 49, and if time had permitted, I would like to have had more annotated guides in this vein in TSV.

As it was, by this time I was doing less and less of the writing for TSV myself. This was an incredibly busy and sometimes stressful time for me; a change of job was just around the corner and over the following two years I'd experience a meteoric rise from call centre supervisor to the general manager of the company. But enough about me - go off and read TSV 58!

Read the issue here.

Fellow TSV 58 bloggers
Alden Bates
Jamas Enright