wondering about the essential nature of Doctor Who. Why was it such a success? What gave rise to its long life and its popularity? What were the elements that made a quintessential Doctor Who story? I hadn’t really addressed these questions during the writing of my previous three novels in the New Adventures line (Lucifer Rising, All-Consuming Fire and Original Sin, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention) because those were not only Seventh Doctor novels but were specifically part of a long sequence of stories that had taken the Seventh Doctor well away from his television roots. We could get away with all kinds of things in the New Adventures that would certainly not have been appropriate in the televisual episodes - sex, torture, swearing… all the things that adolescent writers think are the marks of adult literature, but aren’t. For all practical purposes it was entirely right and appropriate to consider the Doctor and companions in the New Adventures to be essentially new characters who happened to share some history with their television counterparts. The Past Adventures, by contrast, were meant to match as closely as possible the style of the show in the era in which the book happened to be placed. And that meant I had to worry about what it was that made Doctor Who what it was (if you see what I mean) - what was its flavour, its essence, its style? Strangely enough, I’ve also been thinking about the same question recently, with regard to the new series. What, when we are all sitting there watching it, will make it Doctor Who (or not make it Doctor Who, as the case may be)? What’s that almost indefinable style that will mark it out as a continuation, rather than a complete overhaul? What, in short,is Doctor Who? I’ve seen a lot of discussion over the years about the same things, and most of it is rubbish. A lot of words have been written, mainly in books about SF in film and television, stating that the time-travel element of the programme opened it up so that stories could literally be set anywhere and everywhere. True, insofar as it goes, but largely irrelevant. Within about two years of its inception Doctor Who had largely abandoned the historical story, probably because they’d run out of costumes in the BBC wardrobe department. From about 1965 onwards the concept of time travel was largely confined to the occasional guest character (Shakespeare! H.G.Wells!) and the occasional colourful backdrop that might just as well have been an alien world for all the relevance it had to the story (Bonnie Scotland during the Highland Clearances!). Given that as a premise, the fact that
the TARDIS can travel in space and time effectively means that it travels in space: Earth in the 30th Century and Earth in the 40th Century are both just a futuristic Earth. Following on from this line of thought, how many stories actually depend on the idea of time travel for their plot? The Ark, certainly, where halfway through the story the Doctor and companions travel forwards in time by two hundred years and see what has become of the civilization and the people they were trying to help. Mawdryn Undead, where the idea of meeting the same character at two points during his life is critical to what happens. Apart from that… I’m at a loss. Take the time travel out of Doctor Who, treat the TARDIS as a superior kind of spacecraft, and what so you lose? Precious little. Thinking about this recently, I decided that the key to Doctor Who is indeed the TARDIS, but not because of its time travel capabilities. What the TARDIS does is to allow the series to straddle two very different styles of television programme. Consider, if you will, that TV programmes can be divided into two sorts: there’s the ones where the heroes stay in one place, a familiar and comfortable location, and solve problems from there (popping out every now and then to somewhere not too far away in terms of travelling time), and there’s the ones where the heroes are somewhere different every week, moving on to a new location. On American television the former list would include things like The Rockford Files (rememberthat ?), Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Law and Order, Smallville and many other shows (including most comedies). Anything with a standing set, basically. The existence of the standing set permits a level of comfort for the audience - something they’re familiar with, somewhere like home. The latter list contains series such as The Incredible Hulk and The Fugitive (remember them?), Jeremiah, The X-Files and The Pretender. The continual moving provides an edgy, intriguing quality to the series - the scenery and the people are always different, week on week. In the UK we might put The Bill, Silent Witness et al in the first category and, perhaps, only Travelling Man (remember that?) in the second. Financially it’s always cheaper to have a standing set. What Doctor Who has, thanks to the TARDIS, is the best of both worlds. It has a home base, a comfortable location in which our characters can relax (to an extent) and also the edgy quality that comes from having them (and us) go
somewhere new. It combines the strengths of both the major TV formats whilst avoiding some of their weaknesses (familiarity and repetition in one case; constant uncertainty and a feeling that the protagonists are not in control of their circumstances in another). Star Trek also possesses this facility of taking a comforting, familiar environment to new places, which probably accounts for some of its own longevity. So, of course, did Firefly, which is where my entire argument crashes to the ground in flames… And it’s here, in the closing chapters of the book, that my penchant for farce gets full reign. There’s a thin line between good drama and good farce: they both depend on timing for their full effect. My problem is that I take precious little seriously, and so even when I’m trying to write drama I keep veering away and heading for the nearest punchline. And so, as Shakespeare is just about to tell King James something that will completely change the course of human history, he gets pulled to one side, thrust into a wig and pushed on stage to play Lady Macbeth (which, some contemporary accounts claim, he actually did in the first recorded performance). I am indebted to David McIntee, by the way, for a discussion one night in which he suggested I use Macbeth in this book. It works perfectly (if only because I can have the Doctor playing the doctor: another punchline I couldn’t resist). But as well as comedy, we also have tragedy. Christopher Marlowe, one of England’s great dramatists, dies in a duel in place of Stephen Taylor in place of Galileo Galilei (hang on ��� it’s still comedy). If there’s one thing in this book I’m proud of, it’s the maturity of the relationship between Marlowe and Stephen. The former is a bisexual libertine with a predatory sexual appetite, the latter is a heterosexual with rather puritan leanings, but they do share a strange and rather beautiful form of love. I was pleased with that. Shortly after the book was published, I got an email from someone who had just read it. He said that he wanted to thank me for the relationship between Marlowe and Stephen. He had known he was gay for some time, but hadn’t come out to anyone. Reading about Marlowe and Stephen had, he said, given him the courage to tell his friends and family that he was gay.
Most of the time, as writers, we don’t get to see the effect that we have with our books. Most of the time, as writers, we assume our books are read, enjoyed or not, and then replaced with the next one on the list. Knowing that what we write can affect someone’s life, that someone’s world has been changed by our writing, is humbling and exulting, all at the same time. I’ve never forgotten about that email, and I’ve tried, in my writing since, to remember that words sometimes have effects outside our control. So, to the guy who emailed ��� I hope things worked out for you. Notes: Chapters Fifteen and Sixteen Is Doctor Who science fiction? Discuss in one thousand words or fewer. I recently had cause to wonder about this. I was pitching to do a novel in a(nother) well-known continuing science-fictional universe, and I was asked to submit an example of my work. Given that all my previous Doctor Who novels have been, to a large extent, bound up in the continuity of the show, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that The Empire of Glass was probably the best novel- length example of science fiction that I had on the shelf. And then I had this horrible realization that it wasn’t science fiction at all - it was fantasy. And that started me wondering about the show itself. Consider The Empire of Glass first. Yes, it has spaceships and aliens and ray- guns, but aren’t these just trappings? Would the story itself still work if, instead of Jamarians and Greld and all the rest we had dwarves, elves, gremlins, kobolds and a whole panoply of supernatural creatures? What if, instead of the Armageddon Convention being an interstellar peace conference it was a last ditch attempt to bring peace to the supernatural realm, organized by one of the local deities? What if the Doctor and Braxiatel were more like travelling wizards than Time Lords? What if the spacecraft were magical chariots and the floating island of Laputa were kept aloft by enchantment rather than anti-gravity? You see what I mean? In the space of a few hours I could rewrite the book so it changed from science fiction to fantasy, all without changing the characters, the plot, the style or the underlying theme of the book more than a smidgen. It’s fiction, certainly, but it’s notabout the science. The science is no more than a convenient background in the book, in the same way that Venice is a convenient background.
A sobering thought. My thoughts started going wider. Take Star Trek. It’s a TV series about people who can disappear in one place and appear in another (transporters), who can kill by pointing their finger (phasers) and who can create entire villages and towns populated by thinking beings with just a wave of their hands (holodecks). How many Star Trek stories are fundamentally about the science (and I don’t count mentions of “chroniton fluxes” as science, thank you very much)? Not that many. Extend that thought a bit further - how much of Doctor Who actually needs the science in order to stand up? Probably more than in Star Trek, but not more than half. Finally, and not before time, we stagger towards the end of the book. Virtue is rewarded, villainy punished. Some people die, others live. And we don’t have to put up with the intensely irritating dialogue of the Greld any more. My God, if I could go back and change one thing in the book it would be to make Albrellian talk properly. Notes: Chapter Seventeen and Epilogue And so, as the sun sinks slowly in the West, we bid our reluctant farewell to The Empire of Glass. And the big question is, of course, what’s it all about? I occasionally go to conventions - sometimes as a guest, more often nowadays as a punter (if you will forgive the phrase). It’s a chance to relax, see friends, drink a lot and get my four year old son used to the idea of people dressed up in strange costumes. In fact, one of the funniest things I’ve seen for years is a full- size, highly realistic Dalek singing Old MacDonald’s Farm to him at a recent con in Plymouth, but that’s an entire other story. Anyway, David McIntee (another long-time Virgin, as it were) and I occasionally find ourselves running writers workshops at these conventions. The idea is that, as we’ve managed to get ourselves into print, and have some kind of reputation for being readable, we must have some kind of insight into how books should be put together. David and I have evolved a list of “rules” for writers, which we trot out each time as if they are something new and wondrous. In fact, they’re based on stuff that other, better writers have been talking about for years (most important of which is Robert Heinlein’s famous dictum about how to write: apply seat of trousers to seat of chair). One of the things that I am pretty hot on is that books
should actually beabout something. I don’t meant the plot, I mean a single idea that underlies the entire book. For instance, James Cameron’s film Aliens appears, on the surface, to be about a rescue mission to a colony attacked by strange creatures. In fact what it isreally about is motherhood - Ripley has lost her own daughter thanks to being in suspended animation for so many years; Newt has lost her own mother to the Aliens; Ripley “adopts” Newt as a substitute daughter and comes into conflict with the Alien Queen, who is also trying to protect her own progeny. It’s a film about two mothers battling for the survival of their children. Or take Spiderman - superficially a film about a boy who gains incredible powers after being bitten by a spider, but really about falling in love with someone unavailable. What has all this to do with The Empire of Glass? Well, I’ve tried to ensure that underlying all of my books is some one-line theme that drives the plot and gives the characters some deeper motivation. Lucifer Rising, for instance, was about how actions are driven by deeply hidden secrets - every major character in the book has some secret that causes them to act in a certain way. Original Sin is, fundamentally, about the nature of evil - many characters in the book do evil things, for a whole variety of reasons. What the book does is to ask whether any of these reasons are actually justified. All- Consuming Fire isn’t about anything except how much fun it is to write a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, which is one of the reasons why the book hasn’t lasted terribly well. When I started writing The Empire of Glass, I decided that it was going to be about the conflict between science and religion. The era it was set in and the characters I was using seemed almost to beg me to address this question. Indeed, two of the book’s characters (Shakespeare and Marlowe) are believed to have been part of a secret society called The School of Night whose avowed aim was to debate whether or not God existed. Another character who gets mentioned in the book but never appears - Sir Walter Ralegh - was also a key member of this society. So, a lot of what happens in the story is driven by this desire to investigate the point at which people stopped looking for supernatural explanations of events and started looking for scientific ones. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. It’s only now, with the benefit of hindsight and a chance to think at length about
the book and the Andy Lane who wrote it, that I’ve realized the book isn’t about the conflict between science and religion at all - or, if it is, that’s a subsidiary issue. The real subject of the book is obsessive behaviour. Most of the characters are driven by some kind of obsession, from Marlowe’s need to shock and outrage people, through Galileo’s obsessive bragging and arguing to Cardinal Bellarmine’s fervent religious belief. Irving Braxiatel is an obsessive collector of suppressed books (at least, he is by the end of it) and the alien Albrellian obsessively chases after Vicki. How could I have missed all this? The answer is that I was too concerned with my own obsessions at the time. I used to have what I guess could be referred to as a drinking problem, and the book is suffused with not only the overt signs of this - lots of taverns, lots of beer, lots of hangovers for Galileo and Steven - but also the covert signs as well, the fact that the characters are driven, by and large, by these obsessive forces they can’t control. Fortunately, and without getting maudlin about the whole thing, I managed to stop drinking quite so much. I suspect the writing of this book helped. It was, I now recognize, something of a cathartic experience. Not, in fact, unlike the writing of these notes. So, If you are still with me (and I will understand if you aren’t) then thank you for not only reading the book but also allowing me to wibble on about all kinds of things that seemed important at the time. If nothing else, I hope I’ve conveyed the message that there’s more going on in these books that might be apparent at first sight to the casual reader. And, of course, to the writer…
Search
Read the Text Version
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- 109
- 110
- 111
- 112
- 113
- 114
- 115
- 116
- 117
- 118
- 119
- 120
- 121
- 122
- 123
- 124
- 125
- 126
- 127
- 128
- 129
- 130
- 131
- 132
- 133
- 134
- 135
- 136
- 137
- 138
- 139
- 140
- 141
- 142
- 143
- 144
- 145
- 146
- 147
- 148
- 149
- 150
- 151
- 152
- 153
- 154
- 155
- 156
- 157
- 158
- 159
- 160
- 161
- 162
- 163
- 164
- 165
- 166
- 167
- 168
- 169
- 170
- 171
- 172
- 173
- 174
- 175
- 176
- 177
- 178
- 179
- 180
- 181
- 182
- 183
- 184
- 185
- 186
- 187
- 188
- 189
- 190
- 191
- 192
- 193
- 194
- 195
- 196
- 197
- 198
- 199
- 200
- 201
- 202
- 203
- 204
- 205
- 206
- 207
- 208
- 209
- 210
- 211
- 212
- 213
- 214
- 215
- 216
- 217
- 218
- 219
- 220
- 221
- 222
- 223
- 224
- 225
- 226
- 227
- 228
- 229
- 230
- 231
- 232
- 233
- 234
- 235
- 236
- 237
- 238
- 239
- 240
- 241
- 242
- 243
- 244
- 245
- 246
- 247
- 248
- 249
- 250
- 251
- 252
- 253
- 254
- 255
- 256
- 257