Lawrence Miles's Internet Resignation
Here, for posterity, and those of you not into the whole newsgroup thang, is Lawrence's 'all-purpose internet statement' (originally posted on rec.arts.drwho on 17th August 1999).
(Supposing you found out that everything you thought was completely right. Wouldn't that be scarier?)
Hi. This isn't an attempt to start a discussion of my own, because (a) I'm not actually connected to the WorldWide Web, and (b) I don't know anything about newsgroup protocol anyway. (For example, I've only just figured out that there's no such thing as a sarcastic tone of voice on the internet, and that people therefore can't tell when you're being serious and when you're taking the piss. Remind me of that the next time I say anything about any other Doctor Who writers. Or their pets.) This is my version of a press release,
I suppose. Am I allowed to do that, or what?
Firstly: yes, Interference is my last Doctor Who book, and no, I have no idea why anybody thinks I've got another one coming out in March. Until a few days ago, I was seriously thinking about writing one more, simply because Stephen Cole told me that it wouldn't be too hard getting hold of the rights to use the Daleks. Frankly, a Dalek book sounded too good to resist. Now, however...
Well, to be honest, I feel like I've lost my mandate. The thing about Interference is that I took the writing of it very seriously indeed, which I suppose is a bad habit for a Doctor Who writer, but what can you do? That bloody book changed me; it made me face up to things I hadn't wanted to think about, and as a result I feel like a completely different individual to the one who started work on it. And because I was so lost in the guts of it, because I believed (and still believe) that it's the best thing I've ever written, I ended up convincing myself that it was a Great Work. "Great" with a capital "G", of course, meaning "very big" rather than "very good". It never even occurred to me that anyone might see things differently. I mean, I knew a lot of people wouldn't like it, obviously, but I think I assumed that even those who hated it would see it as a work of High Bigness.
Stupid mistake, really. The truth is, Interference is so big - not just in length, but in the amount of ground it covers - that everybody can find something in it they object to. Which means that even people who like the book only like it conditionally. I don't know exactly how to explain this, but... writing's a vocational thing for me, not just a job. I think every book I've written has been better than the previous one, because I feel as thought I've got a moral duty to make sure it happens that way. And that's where the problem lies. If I wrote another Doctor Who novel, I'd have to make it better than Interference. But the reaction to Interference has been so "conditional" - just look at those magazine reviews, for God's sake! - that writing my Great Dalek Novel would be a horrible, heartbreaking experience. Bettering Interference would be a gut-wrenching task in itself, but at the same time I'd have to be aware that nobody really liked Interference much to begin with. All in all, I'd probably go mad.
I think it was the review in DWM that finally settled things. I mean, I'm used to bad reviews by now, and I've had a lot worse in the last couple of years. But it wasn't what Ness Bishop said that hurt so much, it was her reasons for saying it. All the things she had a problem with in Interference are side-effects of the way I think, side-effects of the way I write... in short, it's not the book that's the problem, it's me. I have to face the fact that whatever I write from now on, I'm never going to get a better response, because that's who I am. Which is as good a reason for retiring as you'll ever hear.
There are two kinds of Doctor Who writers, of course. There are people who do things the old-fashioned way - John Peel immediately springs to mind, for some reason - and there are people like me, who only exist to mess things up a bit. I wanted to write a Dalek book because none of the messing-things-up writers have ever gone anywhere near the Daleks; because I imagined that when the news reached the newsgroups, even people who didn't liked any of my other books woull be surprised/confused/curious. (And I know I'm not the only one to feel that way, seeing as on eother less-than-traditional writer also planned a Dalek book that fell through...) However, after Interference, I have to face up to the truth. For an awful lot of people, it wouldn't be a case of "wow, Lawrence Miles is writing a Dalek book". It'd be a case of "Christ, doesn't he ever give it a rest?".
Which is what I mean when I say that I feel like I've lost my mandate. It's not polite for any writer to keep churning out books and expecting people o buy them, especially when he knows that most of the readers aren't on his side to begin with. And even if the people who like Interference are having problems with large chunks of it, then I've got to acknowledge that the longer I go on, the less people I'm going to have behind me. I don't have the ego to fight a single-handed war against the continuity, basically. Which is why I'm not writing any more books, which is why I'm not even going to be tempted by the prospect of Daleks, and which is why - ultimately - this is going to be my last posting around here for a while.
Goodnight and thankyou,
L.M.
P.S. Whatever Gary Gillat says about that DWM interview, I don't remember giving my "frank opinions" about any of the other writers. Then again, David Darlington kept buying me vodka throughout the afternoon, so my memory of things isn't exactly perfect. I know I said something damning about Christopher Bulis at one point, but that's hardly going to set the world on fire.
Lawrence Miles : The Last Ever Interview
28th May 2000
The Potential Last Ever Doctor Who Interview with Lawrence Miles
(This interview was originally conducted for a fanzine/website called THE ROOM WITH NO DOORS, which fell through. However, as the interview covers all the major points - and as Lawrence is planning on ending his Doctor Who career any second now - it seemed a shame to waste it. Note that although the original interview has been edited for grammar and format, this version contains marginally slanderous sections which would probably have been cut from the fanzine).
Firstly: are there any questions you don't want to be asked in this interview?
Er. I'd rather you didn't ask me who my favourite SF authors are. I keep being sent these little questionnaires to answer, for fanzines and websites and whatever, and I've had to stop answering them now. It's not that I don't want to, I just... can't think of anything interesting to say about any of the questions they ask. "Who are your favourite SF authors?" turns up on about 80% of them, and that's usually the point when I have to give up. Oh, and asking about the Enemy [from ALIEN BODIES] isn't a very good start either. Actually, I think the best question I've ever had is the one Ben Woodhams asked me in the pub. "The Enemy out of ALIEN BODIES: Why should we care?". God, that man's irritating. Intelligence and looks. Can't stand that combination.
So what was the answer? Why do you think we should care?
I don't think you should, really. When I wrote ALIEN BODIES, I just thought it'd be a nice idea to give the BBC Books a solid background to work with. I thought it'd be nice to have this big time-war going on just over the horizon, I thought you could do a lot of interesting stories around it. Only two or three other people ever bothered, of course, but it gave me something to go on. It was never supposed to be a big murder-mystery type of thing, with this huge question hovering over it. At the time, I was planning on revealing who the Enemy was in the next book I did, but Stephen Cole stopped me doing it. And I'm kind of glad he did, because now I can keep the whole Big Time Lord War thing in reserve for the future.
Does that mean you're going to write more books?
No. It means I'm still holding out for Doctor Who: The Animated Series.
Are you really serious about that?
Only in a long-term pipe-dream kind of way. Look, think of it like this. Eventually, there will be another TV series of Doctor Who. And it will fail horribly, because inevitably it'll be aimed at the kind of fan-targeted SF market that didn't even exist until Star Trek: The Next Generation came along and spoiled everything. Doctor Who only works as a family adventure series, but when it finally comes back you can bet any money you want it'll be like Babylon 5 or something. It'll only last one series, maybe two. So then the TV programme will be dead forever, the license will be in limbo, and nobody will ever want to pump more money into it as a TV concept. Not a live-action TV concept, anyway. But animation's just getting to the point where it's breaking through properly, especially now there's so many computer-generated effects around and people are starting to forget the difference between "real" film and CGI. Pretty soon, British animation companies... the Cosgrove-Halls of the twenty-first century... are going to realize that there's a massive amount of potential in a British Manga-style movement. We're the perfect country to do that kind of thing, to do the European equivalent of Akira or Ghost in the Shell or whatever. And I want to be there when it happens, and I can't think of a better spearhead for the whole thing than an anime version of Doctor Who. I'm thinking ten years into the future here, obviously.
So if you got the chance to do this, would you tell the whole story of the Time Lord War as you see it?
Well, epic wars are great for animation. Planets getting wiped out, million-strong armies of Cybermen marching across battlefields, Time Lord warships the size of moons... brilliant visuals.
But supposing the War turns up in the future BBC Books? Presumably, there's nothing you can do to stop Justin Richards using the ideas you laid down in ALIEN BODIES or INTERFERENCE.
He won't, though. That's not what he wants to do. As far as I know, the War thing gets... sidetracked... in THE ANCESTOR CELL. It's going to be pretty much removed from the Doctor Who universe.
How?
I don't know. I asked Stephen [Cole], and he wouldn't tell me. Faction Paradox is involved somewhere, though. I think one of the points of THE ANCESTOR CELL is to remove everything I ever invented from the continuity. It's a mass clear-out of loose ends, and most of them are apparently mine. They're getting ready for Justin's new beginning.
How do you feel about that? Do you think it's a good idea?
I think it's funny. The only thing that bothers me is the fact that Stephen's nicked a big chunk of one of my stories to do it.
Can you explain...?
Well, it's... a bit complex. Back in late 1998, while I was still working on INTERFERENCE, I was starting to think about what I might do next, and... I kind of went a bit overboard. I do that, sometimes, I just get horribly over-enthusiastic. I'd been into some bookshop or other, and I'd seen that the poxy Star Trek> people were doing this mini-series of interconnected books inside the range, so there's this set of about six titles telling one great big story. Or something. And I was a bit hyper at this stage, so I thought, that's what I can do. I can write a series of half a dozen "maybe" books, about a potential future Doctor and a potential future Gallifrey. War and all. This was before I'd seen THE INFINITY DOCTORS, obviously. I thought, I can pitch them as one big six-book set, and then the BBC can put them out in the PDA slots or something... you can see how I was starting to go a bit funny, can't you? Ridiculous thing to think about, I suppose. But anyway, I went to see Stephen at the BBC offices, and I started to explain this huge concept to him, telling him about this massive story arc and all the things I wanted to do with it. I didn't even have an appointment or anything, I just turned up one morning and started waffling on at him in the lobby of BBC Worldwide. So he sat there for about twenty minutes, just staring at me while I explained the whole course of the future as I saw it. He looked really nervous.
Is this standard practice when pitching a book idea?
No. Like I said, I was a bit hyperactive that week. Anyway, the first story in this cycle was supposed to be called REQUIEM. So it's set on Gallifrey, but it's a version of Gallifrey that knows there's something bad coming, and it's starting to get paranoid and it's putting itself on a war footing. Then what happens is, this enormous artifact materializes in the sky over the Capitol. This huge, black, bone-like thing, which nobody can figure out and none of Gallifrey's people can get into. Everyone assumes it's some kind of enemy warhead, except that it doesn't attack, it just... sits there. Waiting. Then the Doctor arrives, and it turns out he's the only one who can get on board, because the artifact's directly linked to his destiny as well as the future that's bearing down on Gallifrey. Except that what he doesn't realize, until it's too late, is that he's being set up by Faction Paradox. The artifact mission's part of their plans for the Doctor's future, following the damage they did to his biodata in INTERFERENCE. You get the general idea. Stephen didn't respond to the idea very well, though. Probably because of the way I pitched it, I should think. I'm just astonished I was sober at the time.
Getting back to THE ANCESTOR CELL...
Well, just look at the back cover blurb [of THE ANCESTOR CELL]. You can find it on the internet, somewhere. I mean, I haven't actually read the book, because Stephen won't let me see it. No matter how much I beg. But from the back cover, THE ANCESTOR CELL seems to be set on Gallifrey. Which is getting paranoid and putting itself on a war footing. Then this big black boney thing appears in the sky... and just sits there... and only the Doctor can get on board it... and it's linked to his destiny as well as Gallifrey's... except that he's being set up by Faction Paradox... and it's all to do with what happened to his biodata in INTERFERENCE...
Is this a serious accusation of plagiarism? Are the two really that similar?
That's what I'll be interested in finding out, when the book's finally published. I 'phoned Justin [Richards] when I read the blurb, and asked him whether Stephen was just taking the piss or something. He didn't know what I was talking about. The next thing I know, Stephen calls me up and starts haranguing me, saying things like "it's not remotely like your story, what are you talking about?". And I'm shit at confrontations, especially over the 'phone, so I ended up folding like a bloody deckchair. I'm on the 'phone going, "well all right then, if you say so...". Pathetic, really. Look, I'll put it this way. From what I can gather, what's on board the black boney thing in THE ANCESTOR CELL is completely different to what was on board the black boney thing in REQUIEM, so I'd say there isn't enough similarity for a lawsuit or anything. But the fact remains that, eight months after he rejected my black mysterious artifact hovers over Gallifrey in a Faction Paradox conspiracy storyline, Stephen... with Peter Anghelides, of course, who probably doesn't know anything about REQUIEM at all... went and wrote a black mysterious artifact hovers over Gallifrey in a Faction Paradox conspiracy storyline of his own. Seeing as nobody's ever done a story anything like that before, it's a bit of a coincidence. It's not as though it were something straightforward, like we'd both come up with plots set in the Spanish Civil War or anything.
Are you angry about this, or just surprised?
Not angry. Irritated, maybe. The point is... and whatever Stephen says about the two stories being different, this is the big issue... if I now wanted to do anything with my story idea - if, say, I wanted to rewrite it to fit Justin's version of the Doctor Who universe - then I couldn't. It's already been done. And that's irritating, because if I ever do get the chance to do the animated series thing ten years in the future, then REQUIEM is the story I've always thought about starting the series with. So I'm putting this in black and white now, all right? Ten years from now, if I write a TV script about a big black boney thing arriving over Gallifrey, I want it on record that it was my idea in the first place. Nyah-nyah nyah-nyah-nyah.
On the other hand, not everything you've come up with has been welcomed into the continuity with open arms. For example, your ongoing claim that the New Adventures and the BBC Books take place in separate "bottled" universes...
I don't think people understand why I did that. Everyone seems to think it was just me trying to come up with some fiendish masterplan or other and force it on everyone else, like, "yes, I have just invented a new universe and you will obey me". That wasn't the point at all. When I started writing all this stuff about the different universes, I genuinely thought everyone would reach that conclusion. I mean, the BBC started off with THE EIGHT DOCTORS, which directly contradicts the whole of BLOOD HARVEST. The two can't exist in the same continuity. Or they can, but you have to ret-con them to the point of stupidness. So when I read that, I honestly assumed that nobody would try claiming the NAs and the BBC Books were co-existent. That was how I felt when I started setting things up in ALIEN BODIES, anyway. After that, I started to realize I was on my own. Kate Orman kept mentioning Yemaya, Gary Russell did that god-awful sequel to THE SCALES OF INJUSTICE, and McIntee put Koschei in THE FACE OF THE ENEMY whether anybody wanted him to or not. If I'd known everyone was going to go that way, I never would have bothered with the whole bottled-universes thing. But then, that means I wouldn't have written DEAD ROMANCE either, I suppose. Personally, I still think it's stupid to pretend the two are part of the same universe. They feel different. The BBC Books have always been really weak when they're pretending to be the Virgin books. That was the trouble with VAMPIRE SCIENCE from the start, you can tell the authors are just gagging to get the Seventh Doctor back.
In THE SHADOWS OF AVALON, the Brigadier makes a point of talking about Bernice's wedding. Do you think that was a deliberate attempt to deny the bottled-universes idea?
Probably. And they call me childish. God, I wish I'd never started it all now. I don't know how clear it was, but the point I tried to get at in DEAD ROMANCE is that the Gods of Dellah could just be the Time Lords from the BBC Universe, escaping their doom by shifting into another continuity. Only they're from a higher level of being, so they end up with these massive God-powers. Of course, that all got fucked over by TWILIGHT OF THE GODS, probably because Mark Clapham wanted to suck up to Lance Parkin again by bringing back the Ferutu. I mean, if he wanted to ignore the bottled-universe thing, fine. Everybody else did. But he could have at least had the good grace to think of something vaguely interesting instead. There's this huge build-up at the end of TWILIGHT, this sense of "ooh, we're going to meet the Gods, we're going to meet the Gods", and then it's revealed that... they're these minor villains who got used once in a Missing Adventure a couple of years before. Somebody goes "my God, it's the Ferutu", and all over fandom you can hear people doing a mass impression of It's a Mystery on the Mark Radcliffe programme. "It's the Ferutu!" "Whoooooooo?". I think Mark [Clapham, not Radcliffe] still believes that the whole mythology revolves around Lance. Whereas anyone with any sense, of course, knows it really revolves around Ben Aaronovitch. Hah.
You don't like Lance Parkin's work, then?
No, no, I think he's a great writer. As a writer, anyway. I just don't think his plots are very interesting, that's all. JUST WAR was an astonishing book, bloody amazing, and what's most amazing about it is that it's a debut novel. If you compare that with CHRISTMAS ON A RATIONAL PLANET, CHRISTMAS just looks crap and embarrassing. But since then... I don't know. I don't really remember much about what happened in COLD FUSION. I know all the background details, about ancient Gallifrey and the Doctor's relationship with... whatever that ancient Gallifreyan woman's name was. I just don't remember much about the actual story. I know the Doctor gets attacked by this bloke with a shark's head, and that's about it. Which is kind of my point. It's the same with THE DYING DAYS and THE INFINITY DOCTORS, I think. The incidental details of THE INFINITY DOCTORS are fantastic, there's all this great material about the Sontarans and the Rutans, and the Doctor living in these old rooms like some half- mental Oxford don or something, but... it's what actually happens that's the problem. There's this enormous artifact from the future... [Yawns.] ...and living on it are these people who go through their lives backwards... [Makes mumbling sleepy noises.] ...and then the Doctor goes through this relationship stuff with that Gallifreyan woman again... [More sleepy noises.] ...and then there's this mind-duel showdown with Omega that's just like every other mind-duel showdown you've ever read since THE TIME-WITCH in Doctor Who Weekly... [Starts snoring.] Yes, I've got to admit, I got a bit bored with that one.
What about BEIGE PLANET MARS?
Not fair asking. Lance had an enormous drag-factor there. Why are we talking about Lance Parkin, though? Change the subject, quick. He's one of the few other writers who's still talking to me.
So do you approve of what's going to be happening in the Eighth Doctor books from now on, post ANCESTOR CELL?
Er.
More specific?
I really liked the look of what Justin [Richards] was going to do, when he took over as editor. He sent me a rough outline of the way he thought the mythology worked, and it was great. There was a big article at the front that basically said, "well, when you think about it, neither the Doctor nor the TARDIS are strictly speaking Necessary...". I laughed like a pig. But it's just... I don't know. With all respect to anybody I might bump into in the future, I'm not sure he's got the writers to pull it off. I mean, he can say what he likes about changing the nature of the mythos, but he's still gone and commissioned Terrance Dicks. Also, I'm not sure I like the way he's going about plotting things out. Apparently... and this is just what I've been told, so I'll apologize now in case I'm wrong... he's got a very specific idea about what the new version of the Doctor really is, but he isn't telling any of the writers about it until they actually get commissioned. And that's a mistake, I think. Writers, especially fantasy writers, do their best work when they've got an overall direction to work with. Give a writer a decent blueprint for a universe, and he'll start looking into all the cracks of it, seeing what he can do with the ethos. How far he can push the limits. But if you say to a writer "do something that's a bit SF", they'll just write some shite with space-rockets and alien bar-rooms in it. I know a lot of writers who'd love to help Justin push Doctor Who in a new direction, but none of them really know what the direction is, so all they can do is keep sending in generic SF plot proposals. Not good. Also... I've got other reservations about the way things are going in the Doctor Who field, but... hasn't everybody?
What reservations?
Oh, sod it. I might as well just say. It's Gary Russell, isn't it? It's bloody Gary Russell.
Again... more specific?
Well, let's look at the facts. The man's work is crap. He can't write, his [this next bit's been removed because it's probably actionable] for him, and ironically it turned out to be his best book. Nobody likes what he does. DIVIDED LOYALTIES is, if I'm not mistaken, currently the lowest-rated Doctor Who book of all time on the rankings chart. But he insists on taking over as much as fandom as possible, and making things utterly miserable for anyone who wants to do anything interesting. Because the fact is this. The Doctor Who books aren't just read by ageing long-term fans. I've now known four people who got into Doctor Who through reading the EDAs, and the BBC's sales figures are at an all-time high. INTERFERENCE has sold more than anything else I've written, I know that much. The point is, a new fanbase... a fanbase that actually wants to go somewhere... is gradually building up, and the Gary Mafia at DWM seems to be doing everything it can to make sure it all gets fucked up. There's been a kind of division in fandom for a while now, with the old school reading DWM and the newbloods getting together on the internet... I mean, two new full-length Doctor Who stories get released every month, but DWM traditionally gives them less space than interviews with people who were in one episode of the series back in 1978... but I think it all came to a head in that themed "what's been happening to Who since the TV series went of the air" issue. There was this great big blatant headline, saying something like "SOME HAVE SEEN THE NEW RANGE OF BIG FINISH AUDIOS AS THE RETURN OF REAL DOCTOR WHO". Yeah, sure. Never mind the fact that some of us have been doing everything we can to build up a next generation fanbase. Just get a couple of has-been character actors to do the voices, and suddenly that's real. For fuck's sake... but anyway. After that, I remember thinking there should be a proper BBC Books website, a kind of on-line version of DWM just for book issues. Well, for the "new wave" fanbase in general, but with the books at the core of it. I later heard that Mark Clapham was going around saying the same thing, so he's not completely useless. Anyway. I 'phoned up Jac [Rayner] at the BBC... who's a lovely person, by the way, probably doesn't have an enemy in the world... and suggested that someone should do this website thing, seeing as DWM was never going to give us the support we needed. I even volunteered to write for it. She said she thought it was a good idea, and went to talk to someone at the office about it. And what's the next thing that happens? The first regular Doctor Who news-posting from BBC Worldwide arrives on the internet, and it's full of plugs for the Big Finish audios. See what I mean? Gary won't be satisfied until he's got his fingers in every corner of fandom, even though everybody knows he's crap at what he does. When Doctor Who finally dies... and it will die, because now the newcomers are going to start turning away again, and you're going to be left with this dwindling audience of fifty-year-olds who just buy the CDs because they've got Peter Davison's picture on the front... he'll be more responsible than any other single individual.
Do you really think that's going to happen?
Probably. Personally, I've more or less given up on Doctor Who now. That's why I'm doing this interview, I think, so I can get everything out of the way before I go on to something else. I can't even be arsed reading the books any more. I'll be looking at THE ANCESTOR CELL, for obvious reasons, but after that I can't really summon up the will to bother. I say, learn a lesson from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Take the best bits and move on.
But didn't you want to write for the Big Finish audios? [Note: in retrospect, this question is clearly being asked just to stir things up. -LM.]
No! Absolutely not! I'm told that's what Gary Russell's been going around telling people, and that's probably when I finally lost the will to carry on. All I wanted to do was ask him about bloody Daleks.
Meaning?
Oh... there was a point, when Justin took over as editor, when it looked like I might get the chance to do a Dalek book for the BBC. Now, this was the time when Big Finish had just announced that they'd be doing Dalek audios, and it looked as though... if I did do this book... it'd be coming out about the same time as the audios. So I thought, well, this might look bad. It was before DWM brought on the big fan-schism, and at that point I didn't really want people saying I was trying to go into competition with Gary Russell or anything. So I 'phoned him up, in the hope that we could synchronize storylines and make it look like it was all part of one big project. He was out, though, so I left a message on his answerphone. No, two messages. Asking him to 'phone me back. And of course, he never did. The next thing I know, I'm told that I've been officially blacklisted by Big Finish... like I'd ever want to work for the bugger... and apparently, Gary's bouncing around the place telling people that I desperately wanted to write an audio, and that I kept 'phoning him up and pestering him about it. This after two calls where I just asked him to 'phone me back. I mean, I've just about learned to live with the fact that he's a talentless wanker, but it's the fact that he's been lying about me behind my back that really... oh, you know. The fuckwit.
Let's rewind a bit. What happened about the Dalek story? Was this before you decided to "resign"?
No, no. It was the last overhang from... hang on, I'd better explain the background to this. After I wrote INTERFERENCE, I kind of reached the point where I'd written myself into a tight spot. I couldn't just write an "ordinary" story about aliens taking over Earth, or whatever. If I did another Doctor Who book, it had to be something quite big to follow up what I'd already done. When I talked to Stephen Cole about this, I gave him a list of about five story ideas I'd be happy doing, in a sort of it's-this-or-nothing way. Anyway, one of the ideas was the Dalek story, because, let's face it, nobody has ever really done Daleks properly, definitely not in the books. And Stephen said that this was actually a possibility, because of... I don't know. Something about the way the rights to Daleks were going. I remember telling that to David Darlington, when he did that DWM interview. I was trying to do this building-things- up thing, going "oh, well, I probably won't be doing another one unless... no, no, I can't tell you". Bit pathetic, really. Never mind. So, I started working on this Dalek idea, and I began collaborating with... somebody else, who I won't name right now. The thing is, it was all very up in the air. When I decided to resign full stop, I didn't really think it'd be a problem. But then my collaborator started pushing things, and it turned out that Justin as editor-elect really was looking into Dalek stories, and... well, I thought I could get away with doing one more book, seeing as it was already under way. And I never said I wouldn't co-write another one. So I submitted the Dalek plot to Justin, although by the time it was finished I was working on my own again and it only had my name on it. All very complicated.
So what happened?
Justin rejected it.
Why?
Erm... actually, he never told me. I didn't know what his plans for the series were at the time, though. He's made it clear since that he's completely overhauling the mythology, so it could just have been that it involved too many fixtures of "old" Doctor Who. Which is to say, he doesn't want stories with Time Lords in, and Time Lords were fairly central to the Dalek plot. On the other hand, maybe he just didn't like the story, I don't know.
Does this happen a lot? I think people assume that anything submitted by a known Who writer is bound to get accepted...
Is it bollocks. I've had as many rejections as results. Twelve triers, six passes. Not including the REQUIEM cycle thing, which I suppose is a big fat concept rather than an actual book.
Why so many rejections? What have you done wrong?
I think I've just pushed my luck, generally. SECONDS was rejected by Simon [Winstone?] at Virgin because he said it was too similar to CHRISTMAS ON A RATIONAL PLANET. He was wrong, mind you. THERE ARE WORSE THINGS THAN ANGELS was rejected by Nuala Buffini... she was Stephen's predecessor at the BBC... because she said it was "too graphic" for what they thought was going to be a family line, although she did say lots of nice things about it. ENDS was rejected by Stephen because it was supposed to be a sequel to ALIEN BODIES, and he thought it was too cosmic and gave too much away. THE SPECTACULAR AFTERLIFE OF BERNICE SUMMERFIELD was rejected because it was set thirty years in the Virgin series' future and was about Bernice's offspring. See what I mean about pushing my luck? THE WAR was rejected because... actually, I don't know why. Stephen never even bothered sending me a letter. I think he thought I was just taking the piss. And then there was VALENTINE'S DAY. The Dalek one. I think I deserve bonus points for not using the words "of the Daleks".
Was THE WAR actually about the War? As in ALIEN BODIES?
Yeah, but it was... a bit peculiar. It was the week the Comic Relief special got shown. I thought, fuck it, some idiot's going to send Stephen a Thirteenth Doctor proposal, I might as well do it myself. I 'phoned him on Monday morning in the hope of being the first one to suggest it, and he told me that David A. McIntee had already left him an e-mail message over the weekend. The thing was, it was supposed to be a story set on Earth during the Big Time Lord War, where history's come unstuck and all these alternate histories are overlapping. So you're never sure whether the Thirteenth Doctor's canonical or not, basically. My thinking was that BBC Worldwide would have the rights to merchandize thousands of old BBC programmes from the '70s and '80s, so what I wanted to do was go through the archives looking for all these old TV characters... most of them from sitcoms... and put them on Earth with the Doctor. There's this big concentration camp where the authorities put strays from other realities, so the Doctor finds herself couped up with all these fallen heroes from the BBC's past, and sharing a cell with Fletcher out of Porridge. The climax of the story was meant to be an assault on the Enemy's base, in which the Doctor and Captain Mainwaring out of Dad's Army lead a suicidal light-brigade assault across the final battlefield. Oh, and that was the other thing I was going to do. You know how in these war stories, one of the main characters is always a traitor working for the enemy army? In THE WAR, the traitor was going to be Mrs. Slocum's Pussy. Because it's a purely conceptual entity, it only exists in her head, and it turns out to be a Shift working for the Enemy. Like in ALIEN BODIES.
And Stephen Cole didn't bother writing back?
No. I think this is my cue to say something like "can't imagine why".
Does it bother you much, when something's rejected? Looking back on it now, do you regret that these stories weren't published?
Depends. Simon was wrong about SECONDS, certainly. It was nothing like CHRISTMAS, he'd just missed the point. It would've been a much better book than DOWN, without question, and it also would have been the first appearance of Faction Paradox. It was sort of supposed to be The Italian Job, with the Third Doctor leading this band of criminals on a raid to rob the Matrix tapes from Gallifrey. In the Whomobile. With little hover-pods instead of minis. On the other hand, I think Stephen was right about ENDS. And I'm glad ANGELS got rejected, because if I'd written it then I wouldn't have done ALIEN BODIES and I never would have figured out what I really wanted to do. Similarly, DEAD ROMANCE is probably better than SPECTACULAR AFTERLIFE would have been. But THE WAR would've been fun, I suppose. And I've got to admit, I'm still very sad that Justin turned down VALENTINE'S DAY. I always get very enthusiastic about a book when I start planning it out, but with VALENTINE'S DAY there was just so much I wanted to say, it was... well, I ended up plotting it out page-by- page, that's how stupidly full it would have been. It would've said everything I've ever wanted to say in a Doctor Who novel. But when you look back at your rejections, the worst thing is seeing the books that got commissioned in their place. Whatever Simon thought about SECONDS, surely it would've been better than A DEVICE OF DEATH? And wouldn't ANGELS have been better than THE EIGHT DOCTORS? Or how about ENDS and THE WAGES OF SIN? All I can say is, that book by Colin Brake next February had better be bloody good to beat VALENTINE'S DAY.
Let's be clear on one thing here. Are you really never going to write another Doctor Who book?
People keep asking me that, and to be honest I think they all miss one thing. I don't think I could get commissioned again if I tried. When I wrote ALIEN BODIES, the BBC Books didn't have any direction at all. By her own admission, Nuala Buffini knew nothing about Doctor Who, and ALIEN BODIES was the first thing Stephen Cole commissioned on his own. There was a sense of a new start going on, so I ended up writing something with a sense of "well, suppose the TV movie had taken off, what would I have done with the series?". And in doing that, I came up with a little sub-bubble of the continuity. Even if most people ignored my version of the Doctor Who universe, it was always at the root of what I did. But now, of course, that's all gone. That bubble-universe is gone, Justin's removed it all. If I wrote another Doctor Who book, I'd have to start again from scratch, and seeing as I no longer have the opportunity to make a fresh start of things... because Justin's already got a direction in mind, even if he won't tell anybody what it is... I think I'd be a bit lost. So I'd so no, I'm not going back now. The only thing I'd really like to do is VALENTINE'S DAY, because I've already half-written it in my mind, and to me it unquestionably looks like the best thing I've ever done in Doctor Who. I suppose there's always a chance Justin might let it through one day. Once he's built his own version of the mythology, there might be things to take the place of the Time Lords and make it a feasible proposition again, who knows? On the other hand, he might just not like the story very much. As I said, he never really made that clear to me.
Coming back to your resignation...
It always comes back to my resignation.
Do I take it that you're completely unrepentant?
I kind of regret doing it, but only because... the thing is, if I hadn't done it then I probably wouldn't write another Doctor Who book anyway, but I regret closing the door that completely. If I'd known then what I knew now, I wouldn't have posted a message [on the newsgroups] like that.[or rather get Mark and Jess to do it since Loz knew nothing about the net]
What do you know now that you didn't know then?
Anything about the internet at all.[see? told you! - M&J] Please bear that in mind, I'm not on the internet, the information revolution passed me by completely. For one thing, since I posted the message I've found out that writers are always doing that kind of thing. They post these whining, pitiful pseudo-resignations, then come back when enough people have gone "no no, we love you really, please come back". It's a standard tactic, which... which I want to put myself a long way away from, obviously. I knew bugger all about web politics, and I made the terrible mistake of saying what I actually meant. Not for the first time.
Do you think that's how people perceived it? A plea for sympathy?
Probably. I know that most people, even the ones who quite like me, didn't understand why I'd done it. Again, you've got to remember that I'm not net-friendly. The only real feedback I've ever had for my books... the only feedback... is what I've read in the reviews.[that's not true fact-fans] And all the reviewers for the major fan-magazines, Dreamwatch and TV Zone and SFX and whatever, are all a bit conservative. Traditionalist Doctor Who people, like the whole DWM axis. Which means I've never done very well. I've never had more than an 8 out of 10 for a Doctor Who book, so statistically speaking even Christopher Bulis is doing better than me. When I wrote INTERFERENCE, all I wanted to do was push things forward a bit, open the series up so everyone could go to new places with it. ALIEN BODIES had done pretty well in the SF press, eights rather than sevens, so I thought I had a mandate to keep doing the same thing. That was the important thing, I thought. Having a mandate. When the reviews for INTERFERENCE started turning up, I just felt... like I'd done something that shouldn't have been done. That I'd exceeded my authority, maybe. Reading that resignation message again, it looks to me like the kind of discussion you have with your partner just after you've had a big fight. You know. "Well... I don't think there's any point going on with this relationship, do you?". That's how I felt. Now I've seen more of the internet, I realize that I did have a mandate to do what I did, but only from the point of view of one fan-faction. That was the faction I'd always been aiming for, though, so I suppose I should have kept my big mouth shut. INTERFERENCE has got a fair amount of support on the internet, from what I've seen. If I'd known that at the time, I never would have done anything as stupid as sending a resignation letter to people who basically quite like me.
But presumably it was the DWM review that was the final straw? From the message, that seemed to be the real problem.
Well... to be honest, that wasn't the worst review. The worst one was in SFX.
I don't think I saw it.
The reviewer said that the book hung together pretty well, and was fairly entertaining. He gave it three stars out of five.
That's a bad thing?
I wrote INTERFERENCE because I cared about it. It was a very personal experience, just the process of writing it changed me personally, and I don't give a toss how that sounds, it's true. The idea of somebody being ambivalent towards it... I just found myself looking at this review and thinking, is that it? Is that how little difference it makes? And, more importantly: is that what you think I'm doing, just churning out Doctor Who filler like most of the PDAs are? I'm horrified by the idea that anyone might think I'm so casual. I do what I do because I mean it. A lot of the time, people who've reviewed my stuff... John Binns [former TV Zone reviewer] especially... have been critical of it being "clever". John's perception seems to be that I sit there at my keyboard thinking, "hmm, what kind of intellectual self-referential themes can I work into the story today?". It never seems to strike these people that I do what I do because I care. I've never written anything to show off, not even CHRISTMAS, which was only that tangled and over-written because I was too young and stupid to know better. I've never rush-written a book, I've never written a book just for the money. Perhaps that's the problem. I care too much, I get too involved, and it turns me into a kind of zealot. At least Vanessa Bishop [in the DWM review] had the good grace not to be ambivalent. Incidentally, the funniest thing about me I've ever read in a review was Vanessa's critique of THE TAKING OF PLANET FIVE, where she said it was a story that the "originator" of the story arc... meaning me... "could never have written". That made me laugh out loud. TOP-5 is exactly the kind of book I'd write if I took all the safety-catches off. I think I'm kind of scared to do stories like that, because I secretly don't think people would understand them. It's just the irony of it. To an extent, I suppose INTERFERENCE was written down slightly so that the traditionalists could understand it, but possibly it backfired on me. I vow never to write down for anybody ever again.
But is it really true that all the magazine reviewers are "traditionalists"? Isn't this two-faction idea a bit simplistic?
I'd say it's true, though. It's yet another reason why the BBC Books are handicapped from the start. The reviews are like the Radio Times film guide, they give points for efficiency rather than inventiveness. It's like... LAST OF THE GADARENE got 10 out of 10 in Dreamwatch, because it was - quote - a "perfect Pertwee". In other words, it's exactly like something that was on television thirty years ago. And that's meant to be a good thing, is it? If someone told me that one of my books was like a thirty-year-old TV programme, I'd slap them. No disrespect to Mark Gatiss, who was great in The League of Gentlemen and in Doctor Who Night and everything, but it's not hard doing a book like that. There's no imagination at work there, it's a bunch of set pieces just strung together in the most efficient way possible. I could probably rush off a book like that in about a week, if I didn't know better. So let's put this in perspective. Say you're a writer. You're going to write a Doctor Who book, and the only immediate feedback you're going to have comes from the magazine reviews. You've got a choice, then. You can write something daring and progressive over a course of months, something that does great new things with the continuity but runs the risk of getting an unsympathetic old-school reviewer and ending up with a 6 out of 10. Alternatively, you can write something totally formulaic in a couple of weeks, but make it 100% efficient to hit just the right old-fashioned Doctor Who chord, and therefore guarantee at least one 9 out of 10 in the fan-press. Maybe even a 10. What do you do? You want positive feedback, you want people to like your material. So how likely is it that you're going to go with the "progressive" option? Not only is there no incentive to do anything original, there's a good chance you'll be punished for doing something original, that's all I'm saying. Is it any surprise that the series is in decline now? Is it any surprise that nobody's bothering to do anything that's actually good? This is another reason why I'm glad I found out about the internet polls, by the way. Because at least now I've got some backup for claiming to be good at my job. So I don't just sound sore about getting a long string of mediocre reviews.
You say you could do a typical PDA in a week. But is that really true, or an exaggeration? Surely it doesn't take that much longer to do a good 300- page book than a mediocre 300-page book?
Doesn't it? I don't know. Most of the time you spend writing a book is the time you spend working everything out, not the time you spent actually typing words. That's what I find, anyway, although apparently I'm quite a fast worker. As far as I'm concerned, if you stick with a format that's been tried and tested over decades you can run off a Doctor Who novel in no time. I'm always amazed by the PDAs. I just think to myself... is that it? Is that all it takes to impress people?
Are people actually impressed, though? Don't they recognize mediocre stories as filler?
Tell that to the DWM readers. And even the newsgroup-based readers, sometimes. Just look at THE WITCH-HUNTERS.
What's wrong with THE WITCH-HUNTERS?
Well... it's a bit rudimentary, isn't it? It's not terrible or anything. I think Steve Lyons could be a really good writer, if he bothered doing something interesting for once. CONUNDRUM was lovely. But I read THE WITCH-HUNTERS, and I thought... yeah, piece of piss. That's a two-week job, if you ask me.
So why do people like it? It's one of the most popular BBC books...
It's got that "ahhhhhhh" factor, I suppose. The easiest way to get the audience on your side is by making them feel sorry for a character. The witch- hunts are very emotive, there's a lot of human tragedy there. It's not real emotion, though, is it? It's just the basics. People love a bit of tragedy.
Is that true? Conventional wisdom says people like happy endings.
Twaddle. Shagger Cornell said the same thing when he started writing THE SHADOWS OF AVALON, and he was wrong as well. People love tragedy. Look at the facts. DEAD ROMANCE: my most popular book, among those who've read it, and it's a tragedy on a massive scale. HUMAN NATURE: Paul's most popular book, probably the most popular Seventh Doctor novel, and it's essentially the story of a doomed love affair. Titanic: most successful movie ever made. Love Story: first ever queue-round-the-building blockbuster. Hamlet and King Lear: two of the most well-known stories in the western world. When it's done properly, tragedy's the most popular kind of fiction, I'd say.
Why did Paul Cornell make a statement like that? What was the context?
Oh, it was all to do with the ending of SHADOWS OF AVALON. Stephen Cole wanted something very dark and operatic, with the Time Lords trying to... violate the reborn Compassion, but Paul wouldn't play it that way. He said his beloved audience would hate it, because they preferred feel-good fiction. Bollocks. What the Doctor Who readers don't like, what they react badly to, is mass slaughter. Jim Mortimore isn't particularly well-liked as a writer, despite the obvious talent there, because he takes a historical viewpoint. Individuals aren't important, the way he does things, so there are characters getting killed off left, right and centre. And that's not a very Doctor Who kind of attitude. Real human tragedy, on the other hand, works very well. But Paul refused to acknowledge that, and it's one of the reasons why THE SHADOWS OF AVALON is such a mess, I think. It's this vast operatic story, but he keeps copping out to give the audience touchy-feely feel-good moments. The most telling thing is the way the interior of Compassion-TARDIS is described at the end. I was the one who did the original designs for that, and the way I wrote it Compassion's internal space was supposed to be quite scary, it was like being stuck inside somebody else's head. Everything was slightly off- centre. When Paul finished the book, there was a big compromise there. Some of the interior was scary, but then there were these ridiculous brightly- coloured signs with bubble-writing on, and things like that. It sums up the whole story. He made Compassion as schizophrenic as the rest of the book. I mean, I always hate it when people play up to their audience like that. A decent writer shouldn't even be able to say a sentence like "oh, but the fans will hate it...". It's like I said earlier, if I did one bad thing with INTERFERENCE it was not going the whole way, it was writing down just in case some people got left behind. Stupid move.
Is there a personal agenda here, though? How much of the Compassion plot was your idea?
Pretty much all of it. You know how Paul turned on me recently in that interview he did? I thought that was bloody typical. I gave him the one interesting plot element in AVALON, and I didn't even get proper credit for it. Without the Compassion thing, it would've just been a shite book about faeries. As it was, it was a shite book about faeries with a horribly botched ending, but at least it was an improvement.
Paul Cornell's criticism of you was that you'd broken the Doctor Who writer'scode by criticizinG other writers. Fair, do you think?
Fair. But I don't remember signing any official agreement when Virgin signed me up. Nobody told me about this "code". The thing is... I've got a reputation as one of the most arrogant people in the whole of fandom, and it's kind of funny. If you want to know what "arrogant" means, my God... you make a criticism of Gary Russell or Paul Cornell or someone, they never forget and they never forgive you for it. The word "bitch" isn't big enough for what these people do. And you should hear the abuse I've had over the last couple of years. But unlike 90% of the other writers, it doesn't really bother me. I still hang around with people who've been completely insulting. The problem is, I don't have a sense of diplomacy, that's all. I don't have any tact. The other writers bitch about each other behind their backs, whereas I just come out and say what I think. That's the problem Paul has with me, I think. Oh, and I don't have tits.
...?
I've tried to be nice to him. I've always tried. But if he can't shag you, he's just not interested. The only sure-fire way to get on that man's good side is by having XX chromosomes. He's never had any patience with me at all. That was the really funny thing about that interview he did, where he started slagging me off. He said the politics in INTERFERENCE reminded him of a "seventeen-year-old virgin". It was just so telling, because what he's actually saying there, when it comes down to it, is: "I'm wiser than you are because I've shagged more birds." I mean, fair enough, he probably has had sex with more people than I have. His exploits are far more legendary than mine. I just thought that was a very funny attitude, coming from someone who calls me a misogynist.
Why does he think you're a misogynist?
Because of my fanzine. The one I give out at the Tavern. I keep taking the piss out of Kate Orman, so in Shagger Cornell's world that means I hate women. It's the way things work on his planet. All right, let's get down to basics here. We're talking about a man who spends his life acting like a caring, sharing new man just so he can get into the pants of as many women as possible. And this isn't just me being bitter, some of Paul's own friends told me this about him even before I'd met the man. In a court of law, the character witnesses would be lined up around the building three-deep. And I'm a misogynist for having a go at Kate Orman. This is getting really personal now, isn't it? Maybe we should go back to focusing on Krotons.
Maybe not. There was recently a big fight about the Paul Cornell interview on the newsgroups, in which Kate Orman and Jon Blum got personally involved. Is there a kind of power-block thing going on here? Paul and his friends against you and your friends?
I don't have any friends. [sniff... poor little loz..] Not among the writers. You've got to remember, the writers are so stuck-up it's funny, they do a Cornell on you if you even dare to suggest there was anything wrong with their last book. The readers aren't like that. When the debate started on the newsgroup... was it Jade Pagoda, somewhere like that?... the way I heard it, while the authors were getting uptight about it all the readers were just egging them on, going "yeah, go on, have a fight". The readers like seeing the writers twat each other, because they know that, by and large, the writers need a good slap every now and then. It's like that fanzine of mine. Cornell reads it and starts whining about how nasty it is, but as soon as he turns his back all his friends start giggling about it. I should know, I've seen them. And after Paul turned on me, I specifically went out of my way to make sure the next issue of the fanzine was as offensive and unacceptable as possible. Issue eight was completely horrible, it was going too far even by my standards. But nobody has ever complained about it on the newsgroups. Why? Because everyone who got a copy thinks it's funny, and they're just not telling the other writers about it. As for the Kate Orman thing... I think she and Jon take the whole fandom thing much too seriously, really. I've been calling Mark Clapham an arse to his face for ages, but when I said it on the internet Kate started going on about how it was a shame that a professional writer should start flaming other people blah blah blah etcetera etcetera. It's nothing, it's trivia. God knows enough people have come up to me and started telling me what's wrong with INTERFERENCE.
What do they say is wrong with INTERFERENCE?
That it's too long, usually. I used to ask them how much shorter it should be, but I've given up now. They normally say something like "about a book". Actually, did I say I didn't have any friends among the writers? That's not true. I'm still on good terms with Jim Mortimore. Who's also in exile from Doctor Who. Says it all, really.
Do you actually like anybody else's books?
There's almost nothing I like in the BBC range, it's true. THE TAKING OF PLANET FIVE is good, ZETA MAJOR's quite entertaining. Oh, and then there's Jim's stuff, EYE OF HEAVEN and CAMPAIGN, which I have read and which is blatantly better than anything else BBC Books have put out this year. But the Virgin novels were something else entirely. By my reckoning, about one in every five of the Seventh Doctor books was a classic Doctor Who story, and that's an incredible turn-out when you think about it.
Possibly the reason you've attracted so much criticism is that you keep attacking the sacred cows of Doctor Who fiction -
Now you're just trying to trick me into talking about Kate Orman in the same sentence as "sacred cows". I've been set up like this before. It's entrapment, and I'm not falling for it.
I was about to ask... who do you think is the most overrated Doctor Who writer? Seeing as there are so many of them, according to you.
Matthew Jones! Ha-haah! Both his books are bollocks, and people still can't see through them. Actually... it's great being able to come out and say this. I used to have to be really diplomatic about Matt's stuff all the time, because he's a big important script-editor man these days and I once submitted a TV script to him. But he hated it, and I'm not likely to try again, so I can say what I like. Wheeeee!
But BAD THERAPY is remembered as one of the seminal NAs...
Yeah, well, there's two reasons for that. For one thing, it's the first time most people found out about Roz dying. It's a huge impact, coming at the start of the book the way it does. TIME FLIGHT would probably be remembered as a classic if EARTHSHOCK hadn't been transmitted on time. The other thing is, people are really gullible when it comes to "in-depth characterization" stories. The easiest way to get an audience on your side is by coming up with these poxy little characters who've had major traumas in their lives, and spinning the whole story around that. Right at the start of BAD THERAPY, we're introduced to this human protagonist character... God knows what he's called... who's this teenager trying to come to terms with his sexuality in the harsh and prejudiced world of the 1950s. Or whenever it's set, I forget. So immediately, the audience goes "ahhhhhhh". It's like what I said about THE WITCH- HUNTERS, it's the literary equivalent of saying "look at the lovely little kitten!". And all Matthew Jones' characters are like that, they're these crap little demographically-targeted stereotypes. Any bugger can do that, but it's the worst kind of writing there is. And BAD THERAPY is a bloody badly-written novel. Even apart from the fact that it's just a bunch of set pieces looking for somewhere to happen. Even apart from the fact that the plot structure doesn't work, and the heroes let the villain just walk off on two separate occasions so that he can come back and menace them later on. Even apart from the fact that it's got the most laughable cop-out ending of the whole series. Even apart from the fact that Peri turns up just as a random piece of fan-wank. Am I getting the point across, d'you think?
Let's go back to this script. Matthew Jones rejected something you wrote, is that it?
Yep. So this is all going to sound like pure bitterness on my part, isn't it? I thought I was onto a winner there. I thought, if anyone in television's going to like what I want to do, it's going to be him. Stupid thing to think, that. Shows I'm not a professional.
What did you write? And why didn't he like it?
It was... wait a minute, let me make something clear here. I'm quite prepared to accept that the script I did may have been complete cack. I'd never written a script before, I didn't know where to start, it was probably all a bit of a mess. No argument with the man for rejecting me. It was his reasons I found a bit worrying. Basically... it was a script for an action serial. Can I start by explaining what's wrong with television?
If you like but we're getting short on tape.
All right. The thing is, people in television... and I'm not criticizing Matthew Jones now, this is a general thing... people in television only know other people in television. They're out of contact with anything other than the culture of TV production. I mean, let's look at it in terms any fanboy can understand. TV companies are absolutely certain, completely sure, that people don't like... say... science-fiction. And yet, at the same time, almost every major movie success over the last few years has been an SF movie. The Phantom Menace, The Matrix, Men in Black... and in a wider context, let's forget about SF and see the bigger picture. Every recent major movie I can think of has been an adventure story. People love to go to the cinema to watch adventures. Why? Bloody easy to see why. There aren't any adventure stories on television any more. Detective thrillers, grittily realistic dramas, horrible flatshare comedies... hundreds of them. Adventures? Bugger all, except things that get filed away on BBC2 at tea-time. And the reason's simple. TV people only know the TV people world, so the only kind of success they really understand... beyond even the ratings... is the approval of other TV people. If you make, say, a hard-hitting drama serial about the troubles in Northern Ireland... another one... then all your TV friends are going to slap you on the back for making such a bold artistic statement. But if you went and made the British equivalent of Xena: Warrior Princess, everyone would be a bit embarrassed. Just look at the figures. Reruns of SPEARHEAD FROM SPACE were getting higher audience turn-outs than The Priory on the other channel, but The Priory gets all the media exposure because... well, because everyone in the media knows Zoe Ball. The point I'm getting at is that a truly modern action-adventure serial... not SF, as such, but something that'd have the same cultural impact The Avengers had in the '60s... would be massive, if you did it properly. Nobody's going to do it, though, because nobody who works in TV wants the embarrassment factor. They cancelled the BBC2 run of Doctor Who and put on repeats of The Fresh Prince of Fucking Bel-Air, not because Will Fucking Smith gets higher ratings... he doesn't... but because he's not as embarrassing. Says the BBC. For God's sake, isn't it fairly obvious that it should have been us who came up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Massive international success, but if you'd taken it to the BBC they would have told you to piss off and leave them alone. It's what we do. It's what we do well. It's supposed to be ours.
So was that the script you wrote? A modern Avengers?
Yes, but at the time I didn't know enough about scriptwriting to pull it off. Like I said, I'm happy to admit that the script didn't work. But again, it's not the rejection that got me worried. It was Matt Jones' reasons for rejecting it. That scared me off television forever.
What were his reasons?
Well, there's the specifics and the overall view. The biggest individual problem, he said, was that the characters were... hang on, what was the word? Superficial, I think he said. The characters were superficial. And I thought... yes, of course they were. That's how adventure stories work. Great TV programmes don't work through in-depth characterization, they work through being iconic. Doesn't matter what kind of adventure it is, the rules are always the same. The lead characters are great symbols. If you tried dissecting their psyches, they'd fall to bits in a second. And then it occurred to me... the programmes Matt's working on now are things like Love in the Twenty-First Century. You get tons of programmes like that these days. It's the This Life influence. All these terrible, horrible shows about whining middle-class professionals having personal crises and talking over their relationships with each other. By the way, did you see the episode of Love in the Twenty- First Century that Shagger Cornell wrote? God almighty. My mother -my own mother - saw it, and described it as... quote... "fucking awful". Anyway, the point is this. Modern TV makers think these whining, petty characters make great television. And I'd rather chew my foot off that write something like that. Whenever some new TV company talks about resurrecting Doctor Who, they always start using phrases like "character-driven", don't they? God save us from character-driven TV, I say. Great television runs on iconography, not on giving characters stock emotional problems and letting them drone on about them for hours on end.
You're saying that Matthew Jones doesn't understand this, but that doesn't make sense. Matthew Jones is a Doctor Who fan, surely?
Not the point. He's in TV now. Part of the TV people world. Let me explain, just so people don't think this is sour grapes. And let me emphasize again that my script probably was crap, I'm not arguing about that. The thing is, it worried me. The rejection letter began with something like... I can't remember the exact words... "ah, the script reminded me of the old days when I used to write New Adventures". And throughout the rest of the text, there was this underlying assumption that the New Adventures were somehow an inferior thing. You just got this constant impression that, yes, he really was a bit embarrassed about this whole Doctor Who thing in his past. That's what I mean about finding his reasons scary. Let's keep one thing in mind here. Matt wrote an episode of Love in the Twenty-First Century, and a couple of million people saw it. Pretty big audience, compared to the readership of BEYOND THE SUN or something. But people are still going to care about BEYOND THE SUN for years to come, like it or not. And five minutes after his TV show ended, barely anybody in the world gave a toss any more. That's the real crux of what I'm getting at here. When you go to the TV world, you forget what's important because you're playing by the rules of all the other TV people. I mean, I've learned a lot since I wrote that script. I know how things work now, and if nothing else I hope I've convinced people that I'm a fairly smart and fairly competent writer. Knowing what I know now, it'd be a piece of piss to get into television, or at least get as far as the development stage. All I'd have to do is write a sex-heavy comedy-drama about a bunch of twentysomethings sharing a flat in London. I could do it tomorrow. No problem at all. But I would, quite simply, rather die. I want to do things people will care about. Things that are iconic. Things that matter.
You're only telling half the story, though. Red Productions also made Queer as Folk, and that does matter, in the way you mean. Millions of people across the world cared about it.
Oh, yes. It was very good indeed. But that's just the thing. I think... I think.. that the TV people see a completely different show to the rest of us. Queer as Folk is brilliant because it is iconic. The characters are symbols. It doesn't matter where you live or what your sexuality is, within twenty minutes of the first episode you know who all the characters are. They're not deep. You know why Stuart does what he does. You know how Vince is going to react to any given situation. You know where Nathan's heading. Straight away, they become as mythic... as brilliantly, inspirationally shallow... as characters out of Shakespeare or Dickens. And yet, I'd bet all the money I own that the people in the production office think they're making a "character-driven" programme. It works, it works brilliantly... the first series did, anyway... but I'm pretty sure they don't know why it works. After all, they're only TV people. The one episode that does try to do in-depth psychological-background character-building, the one where Stuart goes back to see his family for the first time, is the really crap, boring one that everybody fast-forwards through on video. I stand by every word I said. Iconic TV works. That's why Queer as Folk worked. Do you know much about Chuck Jones?
The cartoon man?
He created Road Runner. When people think about cartoons, nine times out of ten they think about Warner Brothers cartoons. When they think about Warner Brothers cartoons, nine times out of ten they think about the ones made by Chuck Jones. All the things we think we know about the Warner Brothers universe... the nature of Bugs Bunny, the nature of Daffy Duck, the rules of the chase as applied to Wile E. Coyote... they're all down to Chuck Jones. He didn't invent all the characters, but he defined most of them. He deliberately and consciously honed in on what made the characters work, on their most primal dynamics. The Bugs and Daffy cartoons that stick in people's minds are almost all his. Then he did the same strip-down job to the cartoon medium as a whole, and the result was the original Road Runner series. Road Runner is culture in its purest form... I'm sorry, I've just realized how stupid that sounds. Never mind, it's true anyway. It's the whole cartoon medium in a nutshell, boiled down to one never-ending chase with rules that feel like they're instinctive to us these days. Nobody seems to have noticed that Chuck Jones quite simply created the most powerful and inescapable myth of the twentieth century. Because when you get down to the fundamental truth of an idea, you've got something that's got power. Genuine power. People sometimes talk about this in a very disparaging way, like it's a case of bringing things down to the lowest common denominator, but that's the opposite of what you're doing. It's like you're honing the culture to a razor-sharp point. You're creating something that's primal and... kind of dangerous. Myths... real myths, not that wanky market-driven Anne-Rice-stroke-Neil-Gaiman shite you get these days... aren't stereotypes or cliches. They're just inescapable, which is why Chuck Jones is possibly the greatest creative genius who ever lived. And yes, the characters out of Queer as Folk are minor myths as well. Their environment's quite a specific one, but the same principles apply. I mean, they should last a decade or two. Wile E. Coyote will probably survive for centuries.
Is this the reason you do what you do? Do you want to make myths that survive?
Yes. It'll take a while for me to learn how to do it, though. Obviously, the problem with the Doctor Who books is that it's such a small field. Not just in the sense that the audience is a bit on the small side, but... you're limited in what you can do. It's a finite universe, other writers define the limits of it. I suppose it's a kind of training-ground, really. I learned to write there. CHRISTMAS ON A RATIONAL PLANET is okay, but it's not great. You can tell it's a first-time novel. Very clunky. I think I can honestly say that every book I've done has been better than the previous one, even down to the fact that INTERFERENCE 2 is marginally better than INTERFERENCE 1. It's a learning- curve for me. I'd be bloody disappointed if I peaked now.
So you say INTERFERENCE is better than ALIEN BODIES?
By a long shot. I don't know how anyone can think otherwise. ALIEN BODIES was my first real book, it was the point where I took myself off automatic and realized where I was going wrong. For the first two, I was just writing books because I could. The idea of doing something better never crossed my mind. I remember seeing CHRISTMAS rated as something like the eighteenth-best NA in the rankings chart, and thinking, "yeah, that's fair enough". How the hell can you set your sights that low? So anyway, ALIEN BODIES was when I worked out what I wanted to do, and because of that it's kind of only halfway there. It's very patchy, especially in the flashback sequences. I think I was just knackered. The flashbacks were written last, because I didn't want to break the flow of the main plotline, and by that point I'd been writing pretty solidly for about six months. I finished DOWN... which was 360 pages to start with, I overwrote horribly... then went straight into a 40-page story for a Decalog, then went straight into ALIEN BODIES. By the time the flashbacks came around, I'd written 700-odd pages without taking a break longer than a day. I was running out of words, and I think it shows. I could do it twice as well now. Wait a minute... no, I'd like to retract what I said earlier. I do know why someone would prefer ALIEN BODIES to INTERFERENCE. My own argument works against me, doesn't it? ALIEN BODIES works because it's mythic. A lot more mythic than INTERFERENCE is.
Deliberately so?
It was one of the things fuelling the book [i.e. ALIEN BODIES], I think. Every great myth has got an endpiece to it. Arthur has to put the sword back in the lake, Robin has to do that firing-an-arrow-to-mark-his-burial-place thing. But here was the Doctor, the great British myth of the twentieth century, and he'd never had a Gotterdammerung waiting for him down the line. ALIEN BODIES was kind of necessary, I thought, as a "back cover" to the legend. The point where it ends, at some time in the future. It's a very mythic thing to do, whereas INTERFERENCE... which is a lot more personal, and it's certainly a much better-written book... doesn't really bother with the myth thing so much.
There's the ending, though. The Nelson-like fall of the Third Doctor. That's mythic.
I suppose. To an extent. I thought it should be done for the same reason that the ending of EARTHSHOCK had to be done. When you watched Doctor Who as a kid, it kind of lost some of its edge from the start, because you knew for a fact how things were going to turn out. The Doctor's always going to survive, and so are his companions. But then EARTHSHOCK comes along, and changes everything. From that moment on, you're never quite sure if you're on safe ground. It's the reason I still quite like it, despite the plot loopholes the size of Canada and the crap macho dialogue. It's like EARTHSHOCK justifies the whole existence of programme. And I've always felt that the Missing Adventures... or PDAs, or whatever you want to call them... have got a similar problem. The Doctor can't die. The companions must live. We know the future, it's not even an issue. That was why I did what I did in INTERFERENCE. Even if they don't like it, I hope people realize there's a purpose behind it all. It's suppose to justify the existence of the PDAs. From that point on, you can never be sure what the outcome's going to be. I didn't do it out of malice. And I certainly didn't do it to take the piss out of PLANET OF THE SPIDERS.
It strikes me that you've got a very Faction Paradox attitude towards the mythology. The idea that change in itself makes things more valuable.
I suppose so. It didn't occur to me at the time. Somebody on the newsgroups suggested that you can think of Faction Paradox as being the living embodiments of post-modernism, and I kind of like that. Bit Pseud's Corner, maybe, but it's near the mark. Mark Clapham once said that he thought the ending of INTERFERENCE copped out, because after the Doctor's shot the Faction people turn up and reaffirm that everything's going to turn out more or less all right. The whole of the Baker run still happens, in other words. But I'd like people to bear in mind, when I wrote it I thought I'd be doing more Doctor Who stuff. As it turned out, I never got to write BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE SPIDERS, or that REQUIEM thing, and I never got to explain that things really aren't all right. And now everything's being reset again in THE ANCESTOR CELL, so please don't blame me. I had reasons, that's all I want people to remember. Similarly, I had a very good reason for bringing in I. M. Foreman in the Dust storyline. I told David Darlington [interviewer for DWM] that I did a Foreman story because somebody had to do it, and I think he misunderstood what I meant by that. I didn't mean the continuity was gagging for it, I didn't mean it was a hole that needed filling. It had to be done for a sense of closure. With the INTERFERENCE arc, it looked like the Doctor was finally going to shed all his skins and go off on a new path. New motivations, new TARDIS, new everything. And that's exactly what's happening now, although Justin's future isn't quite the one I'd been expecting. I. M. Foreman is the oldest legend in the canon, it's the oldest unanswered question of the Doctor Who universe. By finally bringing the series full-circle like that, you're performing a kind of going-away ritual. That was what I thought was necessary. But I kind of fucked it up a bit.
In what way?
I. M. Foreman just isn't a very good character. The blindfolded version isn't, anyway. I like the female version, I like the Number Thirteen version, but the central "leader" persona isn't really up to scratch. He's meant to be this great mythic figure, we've been waiting to see him for years, but when he shows up he's just a generic trickster-archetype thing. Which is a reasonable plot device for the story I'm telling, but it still looks a bit weak to me. That's the one thing about INTERFERENCE I'd like to do again.
What should he be like?
I'm not sure. I could have written him as some great baptist swamp- preacher, in that American Deep South style. That'd fit the Dust setting quite well, I think. Do him as this hellfire-and-damnation Gallifreyan priest. Alternatively... still in Deep South mode... it might've been nice to do him as a fat black guy in a rocking-chair. The old classic American story-teller figure. Kind of like that character in the Harry Hill programme, you know? "Weeeeeeeeeeell, Mister Fitz Kreiner, there was nothin' he liked more than to play his gee-tar..."
I think we should start to wind it up there.
Why, because I've started doing comedy accents?
Mainly.
Fair enough.
One more question needs asking. If you're really not going to write any more Doctor Who books, then what are you doing now?
I'm writing for Faction Paradox, thank you very much. It's like I said. We take the best bits of what we've done so far, and we move on.
So you don't feel that the Faction's too close to Doctor Who?
No. I'm too much of a monomaniac, probably. While I was writing INTERFERENCE, I think I started to realize that I didn't really want to write about the Doctor any more. I was more interested in the universe around him, and as it was my book that meant the little sub-bubble universe I'd built up since ALIEN BODIES. Which isn't really the Doctor Who universe at all, of course, although it does owe a huge debt to Robert Holmes. So I feel very very comfortable writing stories set in that universe which don't, for example, contain the word TARDIS. Besides, I think Faction Paradox have done their bit in the novels. It would've been terrible, to keep inflicting them on people who just wanted a Doctor story rather than a time-travelling voodoo-cult story.
Will this be a novel, a series of novels, or what?
I don't know. I feel like... I can't explain it very well. When I started putting together the Faction's world, it was... like I was on the edge of reaching something. It's like I said earlier, about big myths. There's something there. Something very big and very important. Important to me, I mean. I get the sense that this is what I've been aiming at all the time, but... I don't know how to get a handle on it yet. I feel as though the Faction Paradox thing will be the most important thing I do, but I don't think that means I'll have an instant best-seller on my hands. I think it means that ten years from now, I'm suddenly going to get the hang of it and finally hit the nerve. Maybe as a book, or a script, or... I don't know. It'll take me a while to get it right, that's what I'm saying. For the time being, though, it looks like BBV's going to be where it's developed.
As an audio?
Yeah. I told Stephen [Cole?] that a few weeks ago, and he just laughed. I think there's the sense that BBV's the bastard runt sibling of Big Finish. Because they both do this Doctor Who derivative stuff, but Big Finish were the ones who ended up with the license. So BBV isn't taken very seriously by some people, I don't think. I know I've had a lot of flack for it. Slagging off Gary Russell on one hand, and saying that I wouldn't be seen dead working for Big Finish, then going straight to the competition who are supposed to have an even smaller... I don't know what you'd call it. Powerbase, maybe.
So why are you doing it?
Because BBV want to do it. Because I've found somewhere where I can do what I want, and do it properly. No Doctor, no fan-wank, no fan-politics. And the distribution's going to be smaller than any of the books I did for the BBC, but so what? It's going to be good anyway. It wasn't until I started writing the first Faction script for BBV that I figured it all out. What it meant. Why I was doing it. Where I was going. I get to write the scripts I've always wanted to write, get paid for them, and figure out how my universe works in the process. Sorted. Respect due.
The obvious question is... if THE ANCESTOR CELL's got the Faction in it, will the continuities match?
I doubt it. I did try asking Stephen what he was going to do, but he wouldn't tell me. He said he'd put in a reference to my first BBV script, if I told him what to write. I told him to sod off. Typical, isn't it? He goes and nicks my story concept, then he messes up my nice new continuity. He'd better not have Grandfather Paradox show up, that's all. I've got a nasty feeling about a title like "THE ANCESTOR CELL". It'd be like having Judge Dredd take his hat off or something.
Lawrence Miles and the Ancestor Cell
The Ancestor cell was commissioned as the final book of the BBC range that encompassed Stephen Cole's role as commissioning editor. Incoming editor Justin Richards considered a new direction for the series, and wanted to wipe the slate clean, eliminating much of the contunity that had commenced with "Alien Bodies".
As anyone could be sure, Lawrence felt that he was, for this one time, entitled to comment truthfully and openly about the novel. Here is the review, that was given to Simon Bucher Jones, who posted it originally to the Jade Pagoda
My Review of THE ANCESTOR CELL,
by Lawrence Miles.
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Dear God, where do I start?
With a disclaimer, possibly. The trouble is, I've got an obvious vested
interest here. THE ANCESTOR CELL's on my patch. It is, on the whole, a book
designed to remove from the continuity everything I've ever invented. I
mean, I'd hate anyone to think I'm *prejudiced*. So maybe I'd better explain
that, for many years, my relationship with Stephen Cole has been one of
constant play-fighting: this is a man who, when he was still my editor, I
used to address with letters headed "Dear Chimp-Lips". I knew, right from
the start, that he wouldn't take the slightest bit of notice of any of "my"
ideas on how this part of the series' history should turn out.
But the problem with THE ANCESTOR CELL isn't that it messes up anything
*I* might have thought of. The problem with THE ANCESTOR CELL is that it's
shit. It's dull, it's stupid, it's badly-written, and it's got a plot that
makes virtually no sense at all, a bunch of loose ends roughly tied into the
shape of a book with a couple of crowd-pleasing set-pieces so randomly
thrown into the mix that, in retrospect, there's almost a kind of shame in
having read it. Interesting, then, how *all* the positive feedback to the
book has revolved around the apocalyptic ending: as with EARTHSHOCK, the big
climax seems wilfully designed to draw the attention away from the fact that
the story leading up to it is entirely meaningless.
The real problem here, beyond all the laughable attempts at tying up
every loose end in sight (whether they need tying up or not), is that the
book's tragically, crashingly banal. It's a novel which seriously believes
itself to be a world-shaking, cataclysmic epic, but which in its "middle
act" largely consists of drab Time Lord supporting characters running up and
down corridors being chased by spiders, combined with exposition scenes so
massively over-inflated that they make Julia Sawalha's arse look small. What
we've basically got is THE INFINITY DOCTORS with all the good bits missing,
a desperate attempt to do something big and important which can't tell the
difference between "epic" and "just happens to be set on Gallifrey".
Gallifrey. That's as good a place to begin the dissection as any.
Gallifrey's always been a touchy area. In THE WAR GAMES it's something
huge and significant, a place of unimaginable power and influence, a perfect
mythic "core" to a perfect mythic universe. In THE DEADLY ASSASSIN Robert
Holmes spoils things slightly by setting it out as an "ordinary" society,
but at least he's got the grace to do it with some degree of majesty. Later
Terrance Dicks works do a pretty good job devaluing the Gallifrey myth,
turning it into just another hi-tech planet full of people with funny
one-syllable names, but THE ANCESTOR CELL goes to astonishing new lengths in
ripping the guts out of the mythos and removing anything that might possibly
have been interesting about the place. The Gallifreyan sequences open with a
clique of bored rich kids dabbling in the black arts, and it's impossible to
adequately describe the crushing *wrongness* of all this as a plot device.
Even apart from the fact that the "bored rich kids" routine is one of the
biggest clichés in modern fantasy fiction... even apart from the fact that,
for a storyline that's supposed to bring the series to the point of
apocalypse, it's hideously mundane and inappropriate... even apart from all
that, at what point did Gallifrey acquire a capitalist economy, exactly? A
race of hyper-scientists who can casually engineer stars, who can access any
point in time and have nigh-infinite resources at their disposal, suddenly
turn out to be bothered by money worries and keep running out of funds, just
like every other shite bunch of humanoids in the universe. Even at its worst
(i.e. THE EIGHT DOCTORS), the crass Dicks version never went this far. The
legend has been taken to pieces and pissed on by authors who don't even have
the slightest imaginative thing to add to the mythology, and when the planet
finally detonates the only possible reaction is to breathe a sigh of relief
that nobody can do anything worse with it. Along with DIVIDED LOYALTIES -
and at the end of the day, THE ANCESTOR CELL is to the EDAs what DIVIDED
LOYALTIES is to the PDAs - this is as low as the mythos can sink.
And then there's the Enemy. Oh, Christ, yes. Now, let me reiterate this,
because I don't want anyone thinking I'm bringing my own agenda into things
again. I knew, right from the start, that THE ANCESTOR CELL would thoroughly
ignore any of my own ideas about who the Enemy are and what they're trying
to do. Not a problem. But *this*... it's not that the answer's "wrong", it's
that the answer's so fucking stupid, so breathtakingly pointless. The Enemy,
we learn, are a bunch of proto-life urges from the dawn of time which have
been hanging around unseen for aeons soaking up TARDIS energy, but which can
only finally manifest themselves when the Time Lords drop a
Klein-bottle-cum-bottled-universe into the space-time vortex, wherein the
energies of the bottle leak throughout the continuum until the Doctor's
re-forming TARDIS can assemble itself around a raw seam of the leakage and
give the proto-life urges physical purchase on the universe, at which point
they immediately begin to attack Gallifrey. Well, who'd have thought it?
After all the hype, after all the build-up, it turns out that the Time Lords
are being menaced by three pages of meaningless technobabble. If the authors
had claimed that the Enemy were a bunch of intelligent monkeys, it would
have made more sense than this. Never mind *my* agenda: if I were a reader,
the crushing, devastating disappointment of this ludicrous, farcical,
embarrassing cop-out would have made me give up on the series in a second.
But the sheer banality of it all - that what's supposed to be an
earth-shaking revelation turns out to be an awkward mish-mash of
pseduo-science - pretty much sums up the whole messy, confused affair. (I
could also point out that the universe-in-a-bottle clearly *isn't* a Klein
bottle, and that the only thing it's got in common with a Klein bottle is
the word "bottle", but why bother nitpicking when the entire thing's so
obviously fucked?)
It's incredible to think that the authors could possibly have topped this
level of stupidity, except maybe by revealing the Doctor's real name and
claiming that it's "Fred", or by having his father turn up and reveal
himself to be Rassilon (both on the same wavelength of mindless banality),
but somehow they manage it when Grandfather Paradox turns up and - hey,
guess what? - it's a future version of the Doctor! Well, fuck me. Again, sod
the fact that it's obviously not true, just concentrate on the mediocrity of
it all. If *anyone* can give me a plot idea more crass and predictable than
this, I'll literally give them money. And once you've accepted that he's
just the Valeyard with a new haircut, the Grandfather - despite being a
projection of a future (and thus more experienced) Doctor - turns out to be
so dense that the Doctor proper can out-think him at almost about every
turn. Cole's claim that neither the Enemy nor the Grandfather are "definite"
answers (the book leaves a 1% chance of ambiguity in both cases) doesn't
change the fact that THE ANCESTOR CELL is peddling fifth-rate ideas. Not a
shred of creativity has gone into any of this mess. And when it comes down
to it... seeing as it's a fan-fic staple, with a pedigree going back twenty
years or more, is the destruction of Gallifrey really such a great twist? Or
is it exactly what you'd *expect* a desperate writer to do if he had the
task of coming up with something "big" to finish off the series? Because,
let's face it, if THE ANCESTOR CELL were fan-fiction then nobody would ever
be able to take it seriously.
(I could continue in this vein, but if I were to point out the truly dire
use of Faction Paradox - which loses every aspect of its culture that ever
made it interesting, and turns into a collection of God-awful Scooby Doo
villains who dress up in hooded robes and hang around laughing in deep boomy
voices - I'd be accused of self-interest again. All I'd like to add on the
Faction front is that in ALIEN BODIES and INTERFERENCE the Faction never
once kills anybody, the closest it ever comes being the ritual suicide of
one of its own members. Now all of a sudden it's a dull and witless military
operation, which runs around the place slaughtering everything in sight and
plotting to take over the universe just like every other piss-poor bunch of
no-hopers in the continuity. When did these people turn evil, I wonder?
"Evil" rather than "dissenting", that is. Maybe they experienced one moment
of true happiness, or just got a good shag, or something.)
There are good moments, it's true, but pitifully few of them, and even
these suffer in the context of a hopelessly muddled and fundamentally trite
storyline. The Doctor's final statement to Grandfather Paradox - that the
Grandfather cut off his own arm because it was the hand "that did this" (cue
the destruction of Gallifrey) - is in itself a moment of high drama, but
falls to pieces as soon as you notice that (a) like the rest of the story it
makes no sense at all, as by the book's own logic a timeline in which
Gallifrey is destroyed can't possibly have produced the Grandfather, and (b)
it only focuses attention on the fact that the destruction of Gallifrey is
ultimately caused by the Doctor pulling a big lever. You know those shite
computers in old SF serials that have "self-destruct" buttons stuck right at
the front of the casing? It's like that, really.
It doesn't make sense. *None* of it makes sense. From the laughable
opening (with Fitz suddenly talking about a hatred of wasps for no good
reason halfway through a life-or-death struggle with Romana's war-TARDISes)
to the ridiculous ending (the amnesiac Doctor needs a hundred years alone
with the recovering TARDIS, so his closest friends decide to abandon him on
a hostile pre-alien-contact Earth with nobody watching over him before
sodding off out of his life), it's singularly inept, and singularly *wrong*,
in almost every detail. On a more personal note, for months now I've been
telling myself that I'm not going to bother reading any more DOCTOR WHO
books from hereon in (it's all getting a bit much, and THE ANCESTOR CELL
seemed as good a place to stop as any), so in the final analysis I feel
almost grateful that the authors have made it so easy for me to give up.
After this, it all seems so worthless. So completely futile.
It's predictable. It's moronic. It's pointless. And in these respects,
it's the perfect way of rounding off the Eighth Doctor series.
And Peter Anghelides gave me a free copy. And I sincerely hope he doesn't
read this.
Lawrence Miles interview with Mark & Jess & The Members of the Menace mailing list
(Complete barring part three, and part eight was never included) 11th March 2001
i've included little notes as usual in [parentheses] - Dan
Original Editorial comments are in Blue
64 THOUSAND-DOLLAR QUESTIONS:
THE "READER'S CHOICE" INTERVIEW WITH LAWRENCE MILES
PART ONE: THE ANCESTOR SELL-OFF
(FACTION PARADOX, THE WAR, AND SEVERAL VERY LONG AND INVOLVED ANSWERS MOSTLY RELATING TO CONTINUITY WITH THE MINIMUM OF PERSONAL INSULTS EXCEPT POSSIBLY NUMBER EIGHT)
1.What did you think of the Earth Arc series of novels?
I don't know, I haven't read any of them. After THE ANCESTOR CELL I swore not to read any more of the books... not necessarily because of the quality of THE ANCESTOR CELL... and I think everyone I know assumed I was joking. However, people regularly tell me about anything important that might happen in the EDAs, which means I can successfully bluff in any conversation about the current direction of the series. (FATHER TIME suggested a much brighter future for the range post-Earth-Arc, I thought, but wasn't the last third disappointing? Mind you, I personally was thoroughly disgusted with the lack of ambition displayed by ESCAPE VELOCITY. THE TURING TEST was good, though. Especially the gay bits.)
This means, I suppose, that THE ADVENTURESS OF HENRIETTA STREET is going to be written by someone who doesn't have the slightest idea of how Anji's supposed to turn out. Possibly I should just do a TRANSIT and have her possessed for most of the story. Actually, wouldn't it be great if Justin introduced a new companion and then made sure she was possessed in every single book, so nobody ever found out what she was really like? I'm sure the writers would thank him for it.
2.Will your BBV audios contradict THE ANCESTOR CELL regarding the nature and ultimate fate of Faction Paradox?
Well, I'll do my best.
Actually, it's easy to ret-con THE ANCESTOR CELL into submission. Remember, in ALIEN BODIES and INTERFERENCE we never see Faction Paradox from the "present": the implication in ALIEN BODIES is that in the Gallifreyan now, where Romana's just become President and Borusa's somehow been released from Rassilon's tower twice over, Faction Paradox is only just being created (if the NA universe and the BBC universe are the same, as the Cornell/Orman axis seems to feel, then presumably the Faction's founded by Grandfather Paradox after his escape from Shada in CHRISTMAS ON A RATIONAL PLANET). The Faction's agents in ALIEN BODIES are clearly from the Doctor's future rather than from the Time Lord present, because in their time the war's already started. As the INTERFERENCE Faction also comes from the future, then so must Mother Mathara in THE ANCESTOR CELL, and the idea that we're looking at a far-future version of the Faction is backed up by the fact that the group's clearly degenerated into a parody of itself by this point. Which means that the destruction of Gallifrey is only caused by "late Faction" agents from the future, changing the accepted version of history and preventing the War and such. Therefore, everything that happens in THE FACTION PARADOX PROTOCOLS... when they eventually turn up... is part of the "old" order.
Alternatively, you could pretend that Gallifrey wasn't really destroyed at all and that the CIA-type Time Lords just retroactively took the planet out of history Celestis-style in order to avoid the War, something which involved hiring agents to dress up in Faction Paradox masks to convince the Doctor and Romana that the planet was under attack. This is the WAR OF THE DALEKS theory of Gallifreyan genocide, and it makes about as much sense as the official version.
3.Who did you envision as Grandfather Paradox?
Is that the word? I thought it was "envisage".
Well, apart from anything else, I never meant the Grandfather to ever appear in person. He's like the Doctor's name or Judge Dredd's face, he's one of those things that instantly loses its value as soon as you even think about revealing it. And he certainly isn't the Doctor, which is what THE ANCESTOR CELL suggests. I never envisaged/envisioned him, physically, when I was writing any of the books.
If I had to have him appear in person, I'd probably make him Ronnie Barker in PORRIDGE. The Norman Stanley Fletcher of Shada. With one arm.
4. And who's supposed to play Compassion?
Nobody. I suspect that's why she didn't come off very well as a companion. The thing about the books is that even though most of the writers know it's not television, they can't help pretending that it is, which means they have trouble grasping anything unless they can think of it in TV or movie terms. (If I can be critical for a moment, I think that's why THE INFINITY DOCTORS was so weak in the plot department: it was the designed to be the perfect story for a Hollywood version of the series, and in that it succeeds brilliantly, but unfortunately it's a book.) I thought it was interesting when Mark Clapham - who's a constant critic of just about everything I do, ever - took the piss out of Compassion by saying that the only indication in INTERFERENCE of what she was meant to be like was that "she didn't really look anything like Nicole Kidman". Never mind the pages of dialogue, the in-depth descriptions of habits and mannerisms, the whacking great document full of character notes I wrote for the BBC. What Mark immediately focused on was the one line in INTERFERENCE which describes her not only in purely visual terms, but in terms of modern cinema. Frankly, what actress she most resembles is pretty much irrelevant. She doesn't look like anyone famous, because Hollywood doesn't tend to let big-boned ginger women be film stars, so if you're going to insist on a movie parallel for a character then you're automatically going to put massive limitations on the kind of characters you can use. There's someone in THE ADVENTURESS OF HENRIETTA STREET who's supposed to end up as an ongoing villain/anti-hero, and I've figured out that the only way I can explain him to anybody else is by saying "he's like such- and-such an actor playing such-and-such an established fictional character", which is a bit depressing.
On the same subject... Anji has been described in the official literature as being "like Milly out of THIS LIFE", and I've been told that a lot of American authors-in-waiting have complained that this is deeply unhelpful if you don't live in Britain and haven't seen THIS LIFE. I'd just like to say that it's also deeply unhelpful if you do live in Britain but would rather cut off your own feet than watch that kind of whining, moronic, post-yuppy shite. But seeing as I've already compromised my other principles, you might as well watch out for my forthcoming PDA, INVASION OF THE EVIL SPACE-WITCH WHO'S EXACTLY LIKE THAT ONE WITH THE BIG TITS OUT OF ALLY McBEAL.
5. Could you tell us what VALENTINE'S DAY was going to be about (besides simply being a Dalek book)?
Right. (Spits on hands.) Let's take this from the top.
One of the problems with INTERFERENCE - and this has been pointed out to me by several people on more than one occasion - is that, if anything, it doesn't go quite far enough. The Doctor gets his biodata corrupted, and we're told that this screws up his entire timeline from "Planet of the Spiders" onwards, but this seems to make no difference to anything at all apart from a bit of messing about with the Third Doctor in THE ANCESTOR CELL. It's not so much that INTERFERENCE has a reset switch built-in: the trouble is that it makes a vast change to the continuity which then has absolutely no important consequences.
The reason for this, predictably, is that INTERFERENCE was supposed to be the start of something that never happened. Throughout the whole "Cole era" it started to become pretty obvious that the way to do something big and ridiculous in the continuity wasn't by telling Stephen what you were planning... he'd just shake his head and go "dear oh dear oh dear" or something... but by pushing the idea a bit of a time, so it crept up on him without him noticing (if I'd asked to write a two-volume book right from the start, I'm fairly sure he would have told me to sod off). I did have plans for the "fractured biodata" storyline, to begin with. The point was that eventually, the Eighth Doctor would realize that thanks to the damage done in INTERFERENCE he couldn't possibly let himself regenerate again, because if he did he'd become something so completely horrible that even Faction Paradox weren't ready for the consequences. Which meant that he'd have to force himself to go into retirement, or even self-imposed exile, just because he couldn't risk exposing himself to any risk. It obviously wouldn't have been a permanent arrangement, but what I had in mind was an open-ended kind of storyline where the universe would turn out to be incapable of looking after itself without the Doctor, which meant he'd have to train his own replacement under the combined patronage of the Time Lords, Faction Paradox, and any other parties who wanted to get involved. This was going to lead to no end of trouble, of course, almost certainly ending up in a situation in which either (a) the Doctor or (b) the Doctor's replacement would become unstable and enter a life-or-death struggle with the other.
You see what I mean about pushing an idea one bit at a time. Apart from anything else, no single writer's got the right to set up a storyline like that on his/her own and push it through single-handed. So rather than trying to sell it to the editor as a long-term plan, I did hope to just poke at it piece-by-piece, seeing whether it'd develop on its own and whether anybody else would want to mess around with it. If I'd known that Justin was about to take over and that the big reset button was going to be pushed, I probably would've suggested it as a short- term storyline leading up to the beginning of the Earth Arc.
So. The point of VALENTINE'S DAY, at least in the beginning, was that it was supposed to be the story where we first see the Doctor in exile and find out what the consequences of his retirement might be. The basic idea was that with the Doctor gone from the universe, some kind of balance had been disturbed, and the Daleks - who'd been a bit manky and continuity- heavy up to that point - had suddenly come into being as the major power the Time Lords have always been scared of. Which is the spur that forces the Doctor to come out of retirement for just long enough to start creating his replacement. The plot was supposed to be set on Earth (the training-ground) over the course of a whole century, starting on February 14, 2000 AD, and ending exactly a hundred years later.
I did try adapting it slightly after Justin took over. I suggested setting it right at the end of the Earth Arc... where ESCAPE VELOCITY is now... because it seemed fitting somehow that the Earth Arc stretched from 1900 to 2000, leaving VALENTINE'S DAY to cover the hundred years immediately afterwards. But apart from the obvious Dalek copyright problem, at that stage I didn't know that Justin was going for an absolute cancellation of all past continuity, so even the second draft of the story probably wasn't appropriate. Wheeeeeh. It feels quite good, getting all that off my chest. I'd just like to add that VALENTINE'S DAY was, without question, the strongest plotline I've ever come up with; that I'll always be sorry I never got to write it; and that if Scott Grey ever leaves his post, it'd make a great ongoing comic-strip in DWM. There, I've said my piece.
6.Was your "masterplan" all worked out, or did you come up with stuff like the bottle and Grandfather Paradox in CoaRP and make the rest up as you went along?
There wasn't really a "masterplan". Not one set in stone, anyway. You can't do that in a series that's got several dozen people all working on different stories at the same time. It's like the VALENTINE'S DAY idea: there were things which I thought might be interesting, but all you can really do is write the book and hope other people like it enough to go along with it. Grandfather Paradox and the bottle were both made up on a whim, so it was only when I wrote ALIEN BODIES that I started building up the bigger picture. (I've sometimes been asked whether I actually knew who the enemy were when I wrote ALIEN BODIES. The truth is that when I started it, I meant the enemy to be one of those unseen-and-unknowable factors, part of the "mystery" atmosphere of the DOCTOR WHO universe rather than a lead into a story arc. But by the end of it I'd somehow figured out exactly what was going on and why. Which is why the book worked, I think. People who like self-contained stories liked it because the War came across as this grand, deliberate, unanswerable mystery. People who go for story arcs liked it because it suggested something bigger happening in the background.)
"Masterplans" seem to be falling out of fashion now, and I think that's because we're moving out of the BABYLON 5 era and into the BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER era. BABYLON 5 proved that even on stupid American television you can put together a great big ongoing story with no reset switches, so even though BABYLON 5 wasn't (consciously?) an influence it's true that ALIEN BODIES was definitely a product of the era. But huge story-arcs are a bit awkward, because so much changes in the small detail that the overall picture falls apart if you pan it out for too long, and I counted at least two mixed metaphors in that sentence. What BUFFY's teaching us now is that continuous character/idea development are fantastic, but within that framework it's medium-range storylines which work best. Every season of BUFFY brings in a new master-villain, obviously, but the crucial factor is that every year the master-villain gets slightly bigger. We start with the local King Vampire; then we see major-league vampires from outside the community turn up in town; then we find out that the thing which built this town is a lot scarier than the vampires; then the American government gets involved; then things start to get global. So I'm expecting time-travel by season seven. (And, if I can digress for a second, it strikes me that the reason season four was felt to be such a disappointment was that the series had the impossible task of finding a villain more interesting than the Mayor.) I don't know if anyone's already pointed this out, but the Earth Arc seems to be the beginning of BUFFY-era DOCTOR WHO. A year is about the ideal length for an ongoing plot device, I'd say, and whatever happens the next plot device has always got to be a step up from the last.
I know Lance Parkin's currently got his own masterplan, revolving around the Future- Empire and the Klade and such ("K-L-A-D-E? Why, that's an anagram of... how interesting"), but I'm not convinced it's going to come off if it's left open-ended. If I were in his shoes, I'd talk to Justin about structuring it into a finite ten-book or twelve-book sub-plot, and drawing it to a definite conclusion at some point. That's what I wish I'd done with the whole war thing, and with Faction Paradox as well. Sorry, I've strayed from the point a bit here, haven't I? And I think you'll find that the designated abbreviation for CHRISTMAS ON A RATIONAL PLANET is actually "CRaP".
7. Can you tell us what the plot and title of your book were that got rejected (the one with the giant bone structure appearing near Gallifrey) so that I can mentally edit out THE ANCESTOR CELL and replace it with that instead?
To be fair, it didn't get officially "rejected" because I never wrote it down. I just forced Stephen Cole to sit in the foyer of BBC Books and listen to me explaining it, so I don't file it with the six book ideas that really did get rejected, in writing and everything. I won't explain the plot... other than the fact that it involves a big black boney thing materializing over Gallifrey, obviously... because I might re-use it at some point, and I'll feel completely justified in doing it, nyaaah. It was supposed to be called REQUIEM, though. (That was the day I had a funny turn and tried to convince Stephen to let me write a series of six non-canon novels, to be written over the course of two years, all set in the Doctor's future. This was before I read THE INFINITY DOCTORS, obviously. Thank God he didn't want me to do it.)
8. What was your initial reaction to Kate and Jon's portrayal of Faction Paradox in UNNATURAL HISTORY? Has it changed?
(1) Oh, no. (2) Oh, no.
I was apparently quite critical of UNNATURAL HISTORY in that DWM interview I did... I can't remember exactly what I said, because most of it was so dull that it just dropped out of my memory... but I remember being surprised when Paul Cornell told me that I'd crossed some invisible line of author decorum somewhere. As far as I was concerned, I'd just casually said that Faction Paradox hadn't been done the way I would've done them, which I think is fair comment. And yet this is, oddly, where my reputation as a savager-of-authors seems to have started. God, when I think of all the things people have said about me behind my back...
I remember having a long conversation with Jon Blum, when UNNATURAL HISTORY was just being started, about the set-up of Faction Paradox. The trouble is, we really only talked about it in terms of Time Lord politics, about who was really working for whom and how all the various policial factions might be involved. And the problem with the Faction in UNNATURAL HISTORY isn't a problem with the Faction's place in the universe, it's purely one of aesthetics. There's nothing to suggest there's any real link between the group we see in ALIEN BODIES and the group we see in UNNATURAL HISTORY, it might as well just be a generic sinister-society-working-behind-the-scenes. I mean, there's this small boy in San Francisco who turns out to be a Faction agent who's duplicated himself several times over... what's that all about? What's that got to do with a bunch of people who walk around with great big bat-skulls over their heads? Doesn't seem to fit, somehow.
To be fair, though, Faction Paradox aren't even done properly in ALIEN BODIES. So it's not really surprising that they didn't work anywhere else. Another reason why I'm happy to be doing THE FACTION PARADOX PROTOCOLS is that it's the best chance I've had to do everything right, for once.
9.Did you read Harlan Ellison's "Paladin of the Lost Hour" before creating the Eleven-Day Empire?
If I had a brass farthing for every time someone asked me if I've read such-and-such a novel... to be honest, I don't really read at all. Apart from research matter, I can't remember the last time I read anything longer than a plot synopsis (I think we can accurately describe most of the DOCTOR WHO novels over the past couple of years as "research"). Generally, I tend to stick to television.
Hold on... where have I heard the name "Paladin of the Lost Hour" before? It sounds familiar, for some reason. Hmm.
10. How does the Eleven-Day Empire tie in with the fact that the calendar changed from Julian to Gregorian at diffferent periods in different nations?
I think what INTERFERENCE suggests... and it's definitely a lot more overt in the audio script... is that the Eleven-Day Empire is based purely on British time. The missing days were purchased by Faction Paradox from George II in 1752, probably just a symbolic gesture but then again that's the whole point. In fact, it's only Eleven-Day-London that's inhabited, although technically the realm stretches as far as the limits of "British time". (Liz Halliday did point out that Russia only switched to the Gregorian calendar in the early twentieth century, and that they had to shift the date by twelve days, so possibly there's a Russian-style Faction Paradox outpost somewhere called the Twelve-Day Empire. Must steal that.)
PART TWO: FUTURE PROJECTS (THE MEANING OF "AHS")
11.Was the decision to write another Who book entirely profit-motivated? If so, are you mad?
"Profit"? Out of DOCTOR WHO fiction? Yes, I can see how you'd call me mad. If you mean "am I doing it for the money?", though, then... to be honest, yes. "Survival" more than "profit", I think. And that doesn't make me mad, it just makes me a poxy whore who's just sold out most of his artistic principles. It's a hard trap to escape, though. If you're rapidly running out of living expenses and you've got a choice between (a) getting a job shifting crates at the local dairy or (b) writing another DOCTOR WHO book, you're probably not going to go and work for Job's even if they have got big plastic cows on the roof of their building.
This puts a huge responsibility on me, though. Having written a book for all the wrong reasons, I'm now duty-bound to make sure it's my best work. Paul Cornell tells me that these are exactly the same circumstances under which he wrote THE SHADOWS OF AVALON.
12.Why hang around the Doctor Who scene? If it constrains you, why not write a non-Who novel?
You show me a publisher who's ready to give me an advance for the kind of rubbish I want to write in a novel, and I will. (It doesn't even have to be a very big advance...)
13.Why not write scripts, which is clearly where the money is?
You show me a TV company that's ready to commission the kind of rubbish I want to write for television, and I will. (It doesn't even have to be a very big TV company...)
14.Will this new BBC novel be more ambitious than INTERFERENCE?
I'm not sure. It's just that... what's really pissed me off over the past few years, whenever one of my books gets reviewed, is the way I've been accused of being "experimental". "Experimental", for God's sake... by the standards of modern literature, INTERFERENCE is positively ordinary, and if you're talking about style (although not content, I admit) then Kurt Vonnegut was writing novels not unlike DEAD ROMANCE about thirty years ago. I mean, they're "experimental" in the sense that they're nothing like Target novelizations, I suppose, but other than that...
The reason I bring this up now is that THE ADVENTURESS OF HENRIETTA STREET really is experimental. Which really just means that I can't think of any other book that's like it (there probably is one, but if so I've never read it). And the real problem is, it's turned out that way by sheer accident. I was planning on writing something nice and straightforward, but two chapters into the thing it became fairly obvious that it wasn't going to work. So it went "experimental" purely because that was the only way I could tell the story. Which means John Binns is probably going to say I'm trying to be "clever" again, only he's going to have to do it to my face this time.
Is that "ambitious"? It strikes me that "ambitious" suggests trying to do something, whereas with THE ADVENTURESS OF HENRIETTA STREET I'm not really trying to impress anybody any more. Actually, most people will probably find it completely unreadable. So I'm not sure "ambitious" is the word, for something that's mostly developed by accident and can't even guarantee audience satisfaction. I think I'd call it "taking the CAMPAIGN trail". Still, what do I know? I was convinced that INTERFERENCE was going to be the most overwhelmingly popular thing I'd ever written, and that everybody was going to hate DEAD ROMANCE.
15. Is your new novel better than INTERFERENCE, in your opinion?
I don't know. Even apart from the fact that I'm barely a third of the way into it, I'm having trouble judging it. It's... well, it's experiemental. I'm having a hard time making any comparisons.
Actually, ADVENTURESS almost feels like coming full-circle. In a sense, it's supposed to be CHRISTMAS ON A RATIONAL PLANET done properly (in fact, as I know Justin hasn't read all the New Adventures I did seriously consider just re-submitting the plot of CRaP and this time writing it without any of the pathetic in-jokes or the adolescent pap). I'm going back to the same period, anyway. 1782 rather than 1799, this time. And there's prostitutes.
16. Will your new book feature any of the elements from the War?
Don't you just love the way "War" always ends up in capitals?
The answer is no, definitely not. A new start had to be made when Justin took over, and although his solution wasn't the one I'd have gone for - he decided on a total reset, whereas I would've plumped for a replacement Doctor - it's a good enough decision, so I'm not going to try to argue with it. I don't think there'd be any excuse for me to start sneaking references to the War or Faction Paradox into a new DOCTOR WHO book. Well, possibly in a PDA, but definitely not in an Eighth Doctor story. If the reset's going to have any value, it's got to be complete. I've set myself the restriction of not having any past references in the new book, and so far I've managed to stick to it.
17. Will we ever see Lolita from "Toy Story" [in PERFECT TIMING 2] again? Is she the same TARDIS that Susan stole from the Master in LEGACY OF THE DALEKS?
It's... not impossible that she'll turn up again. But only a piddling minority have read "Toy Story" anyway, so I can't really bring her back in a blaze of publicity. There's nothing worse than a writer who keeps bringing back his/her old characters in the misguided belief that everyone's going to like and/or recognize them. Remember INFINITE REQUIEM? Remember PLAYERS and BUSINESS UNUSUAL and MILLENNIUM SHOCK? Remember that geeky kid who turns up in the middle of THE ROOM WITH NO DOORS and makes you go "who the hell's this?" until the book points out that you really should have remembered every single minor character from RETURN OF THE LIVING DAD? (At this point I'd just like to say that Faction Paradox were barely even mentioned in the first draft of INTERFERENCE, and that I was only confident enough to put more Faction material in after I found out about UNNATURAL HISTORY. Because nothing justifies a personal obsession like seeing somebody else get involved in it.)
The implication of "Toy Story" is that Lolita was the TARDIS originally stolen from the TIme Lords by the Master, although she's had several owners since then. To be honest, I'm not really very up on the continuity of the Master's TARDIS - not as it relates to LEGACY OF THE DALEKS, anyway - so I'm not sure whether Lolita's the one Susan ended up with. Mind you... it'd be kind of interesting, wouldn't it? Given the relationship between Lolita and the Doctor's TARDIS, and given that it was supposed to be Susan who named the things.
I'd better think about that. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.
18. Will we ever see Christine Summerfield again?
It's... not impossible.
19. Do you own the rights for the character Compassion? If so, any chance of her appearing in the BBV audios?
Oh, you noticed that. Well, it's... not impossible.
20. Will you be doing anything with Homunculette? Was he Guest in INTERFERENCE? (I'm basing this on Homunculette using the alias Nathaniel in THE TAKING OF PLANET 5, and Guest was called Nathaniel before he was "remembered" in INTERFERENCE.)
I don't think there's any connection, unless Simon and Mark were planning something peculiar. And personally I can't help feeling that there's no point using Homunculette as a character unless it's against the War background.
At one point I was thinking of putting Homunculette in INTERFERENCE, but regenerated. The point of Homunculette is that he's completely insensitive to anybody's feelings apart from his own - he's a Time Lord, he knows he's superior to everyone else, he doesn't have the same need to pander to other people's standards that the Doctor has - and I remembered what Patrick Troughton said in the old interview, that when he was trying to decide on a character for his Doctor he thought about doing the whole thing in black-face. Field Time Lords like the Doctor tend to come up with elaborate costumes when they regenerate, so I was going to have Homunculette turn up as a black-and-white minstrel. A scary black-and- white minstrel, mind you. In the "creepy clown" kind of mould. I just wanted to do the scene where he meets Sam, and Sam just stands there staring at him. And Homunculette stares back at her, and says: 'What?'
I told one of the other writers that, and he said I'd get lynched. But anybody who's now seen Mark Gatiss and his friends in THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN should know what I was getting at. Papa Lazarou. That's it exactly.
21. Do the two Saudis left in the TARDIS an the end of INTERFERENCE appear in ADVENTURESS?
Didn't they get taken care of in THE ANCESTOR CELL? I know Stephen came up with this bizarre technobabble explanation of how the TARDIS pulled itself back together... which I've now completely forgotten... and I thought it had something to do with the Ship using the life- energies of the Saudis to regenerate itself, or something. I don't know. Maybe he took that bit out of the finished book, I can't remember.
22. What's this comic strip I've heard about that DWM turned down and is being printed by Paul "Brax" Castle?
It's a comic strip that DWM turned down and is being printed by Paul "Brax" Castle. And I can't help wondering whether it was Paul who asked this, in a desperate attempt to get a plug in. Alan Barnes rejected the script because it was too similar to a story he'd already commisioned... although, in retrospect, it wasn't that similar... so now Paul's hoping to put it out as a special fanzine edition at around the same time the new book comes out.
That's about all there is to it. Except to say that it's got Cybermen in it. Oh, and that this is the second time DWM's rejected a comic script of mine because it was too similar to one they were already doing. If it happens again, I'll start to get suspicious.
23. Are you writing BBV's next video project?
No.
24. Was your application to research at the British Library successful, and if so what are you researching?
I didn't bother applying. I checked their catalogue, and they didn't have the book I was after. I wanted a 1779 edition of HARRIS'S LIST OF COVENT GARDEN LADIES, but the earliest one they had was from 1788 and that's no bleeding use at all.
Now I remember. "Paladin of the Lost Hour" was the name of an '80s TWILIGHT ZONE episode, wasn't it? So presumably it was based on the Harlan Ellison story. God, I'd forgotten about that. I remember, because it had Danny Kaye it, and I liked Danny Kaye when I was a kid (it was one of his last performances, I think). He played this old man who had to look after a magic watch, and the watch was important because stored inside it was all the time that had been lost when the Gregorian Calendar had...
...oh, shit.
25. So is this your last ever Doctor Who book? And is that your final answer or do you want to phone a friend on that one?
Depends whether the dairy's hiring.
64 THOUSAND-DOLLAR QUESTIONS:
THE "READER'S CHOICE" INTERVIEW WITH LAWRENCE MILES
PART FOUR: GENERAL PRINCIPLES
(I.E. THOSE THAT HAVEN'T YET BEEN COMPROMISED)
30. Why do you and some of the authors make the Time Lords asexual when it might be more fun to give them a bizarre alien sexuality?
Hmm. Several points here. First, I don't think it's accurate to say me and "some of the authors": asexual Time Lords are pretty much an industry standard, I should think (it was certainly specified in the old Virgin guidelines). Secondly, I'm not sure I make all Time Lords asexual, given that I'm still convinced the Doctor and I. M. Foreman have sex somewhere between books one and two of INTERFERENCE. Even if nobody else is.
But the overall answer is that I don't think it'd be a good idea to give the Time Lords bizarre alien sexualities, for the simple reason that they're not aliens. At least not in the usual SF sense of the word. The trouble is that these days, all TV fantasy tends to compare itself to modern STAR TREK, which means that any alien race is just perceived as something with a fixed set of funny customs and (probably) some bad prosthetic make-up. The Time Lords in the TV series aren't like that, though, at least not when they're at their best. They're an elemental force, they're the invisible power that holds the universe together, they're like immortal sorcerers out of folklore rather than super-aliens with big spaceships. This is the real reason that I object to books like DIVIDED LOYALTIES and THE ANCESTOR CELL, I think, because they take the most mythic part of the TV series and do it a massive disservice by treating it as ordinary, banal SF. (It's ironic, given Gary Russell's obsessive devotion to the programme, that DIVIDED LOYALTIES - which is full of American family-values-style characterization and hinges around flashbacks to the central character's days at the Academy - is structured exactly like a modern STAR TREK episode rather than a DOCTOR WHO story, which is the antithesis of everything I personally feel DOCTOR WHO should be: it might not be deliberate, but it's worth noting that it's even got the same title as an episode of BABYLON 5.) The very thought of the Time Lords having a sexuality at all... except for the renegades, obviously, which I still can't help feeling is why they're renegades ("grandfather")... seems off-the-case to me, and I'd say that to give them a weird alien sexuality would just turn them into another bunch of weird aliens. They deserve better. Or they did, anyway, before Justin Richards had them all blown up.
31. Any interest in doing a PDA?
Not really. Right from the start, I thought the PDAs/Missing Adventures had a built-in direction problem. The thing to remember is, you can't just put DOCTOR WHO the TV series on paper and expect it to work as a novel. As a nostalgia piece, yes, which I know is what a lot of the old school fans buy the books for, but not as a novel in itself. The New Adventures did a great job of taking the Seventh Doctor from the TV series and "streamlining" him into a character who'd work on the page, but to do that you need a kind of momentum, you need to keep the character evolving. If you've got a bunch of scattered stories about an old Doctor, in no real order and at irregular intervals, you're inevitably going to end up with something that's only going to work if you want a quick fix of the good old days.
Well, maybe not "inevitably". It is possible to do a good PDA, but the format's always going to be a major drag factor, I'd say. As far as I'm concerned, the only truly great Missing Adventure is MANAGRA, which works by being first and foremost a genuinely great modern fantasy novel. The fact that it's a DOCTOR WHO novel as well would be almost irrelevent, if it didn't have such a perfect depiction of the Fourth Doctor that you can almost hear Tom Baker doing the lines. And what are the odds of getting a genuinely great modern fantasy novel out of your average DOCTOR WHO author? Without the mythology to back it up, how many writers are going to be able to do something that stands up on its own? God knows I've never managed it. Then again, in my defence, that's not really what I've been trying for.
32. Do you still like the old DOCTOR WHO TV stories and books, or have they become tiring?
I was hoping nobody was going to ask me that...
The truth is, these days I've got embarrassingly little interest in the TV series, and I don't like admitting it because it makes me sound a lot more cynical than I really am. The reason the TV series has lost its appeal, I think, is that the New Adventures turned up. DOCTOR WHO was, and always has been, my native mythology (I've said this before, haven't I?). It's what I grew up with, it's what I know best, it's the universe that seems to come naturally to me. The problem is, by the early 1990s I was coming out of adolescence and I was starting to look for something... how shall I put this... a bit more complex than re-runs of THE PYRAMIDS OF MARS. I wasn't reading Target novels any more, basically.
When the New Adventures turned up... when Ben Aaronovitch, Paul Cornell, Andrew Cartmel, Marc Platt and (later) Jim Mortimore set the pace for the early novels... it felt as if DOCTOR WHO had decided to grow up at the same rate, and suddenly I felt like I was more in tune with the mythology than ever. As far as I'm concerned, the period between TIMEWYRM: REVELATION and the DYING DAYS is (apart from a bit of a dip around the BLOOD HARVEST era) the greatest age in the history of DOCTOR WHO, and to be honest, in retrospect a lot of the TV series looks a bit simple by comparison. There are stories which looked fine to me five years ago, but which now look a bit on the ropey side, and it's got nothing to do with the cheap effects work. In short, I think that for me the New Adventures are DOCTOR WHO, and have been since the early 1990s.
Which doesn't mean I don't still have a lot of affection for the programme. I've frequently been accused of having a kind of contempt for the TV series, and frankly that's bollocks. If you don't like DOCTOR WHO then you shouldn't be writing DOCTOR WHO books, surely?
33. Since you've "used" the Third Doctor in ALIEN BODS and INTERFERENCE, what is your (no doubt considered) opinion of Pertwee in the role?
I like the inverted commas around "used". It makes me sound as if Pertwee were my dirty bitch.
The reason I "used" the Third Doctor was because, more than any of them, he represents the Doctor. If you use the others it's almost like you're summoning the presence of the actor, you're tying the Doctor to one particular point in history, but because the mythology of the programme's mainly rooted in the '70s (for most people, anyway) the Third Doctor becomes... definitive, really. You could make the same argument about the Fourth, but most of the appeal there comes purely from Tom Baker's performance and it doesn't work as well on paper. In both ALIEN BODIES and INTERFERENCE I had to use an old Doctor as something symbolic rather than as a piece of fan-wank, so Pertwee seemed the best option. (This goes back to what I was saying about the PDAs. A Seventh or Eighth Doctor story doesn't involve "summoning up" the actor in the same way, because there are "literature-friendly" versions of them which have been developed in the course of an ongoing series, and which have got more to do with the needs of literature than with Sylvester McCoy or Paul McGann.)
Another reason why "old-school" fandom disturbs me slightly: the importance placed on actors. I've never really been interested in actors, much. I mean, writers are interesting. Yes, I'd quite like to know what influenced Robert Holmes to drastically change his style after TERROR OF THE AUTONS and develop such a keen understanding of comedy from CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS onwards. But I really don't need to hear the amusing on-set recollections of someone who played "Second SIlurian" in 1970. Someone showed me the raw, unedited footage of THE CLAWS OF AXOS... with all the actors standing around between the takes... and the only conclusion you can draw from it is that Jon Pertwee wasn't a very nice man to be around when he was working. Now, why the hell would anybody want to see a thing like that? It's just depressing. Same thing goes for Tom Baker. Where I come from, if you stagger around every pub in the region poisoning yourself half to death and shouting at people for no reason then everyone calls you a twat. Do it in showbusiness and you're a "great character".
The point is, actors do their jobs and it's not really any use getting deeper than that. Did you mean to write "ALIEN BODS", or was it a typo?
34. Does it make you hurt inside when you hear the bad writing in the Big Finish audios, or are you so bitter inside that it's all just a bad joke?
Ah. I hate to sound like I'm being wilfully ignorant, but... I've never heard any of them. Or any audios at all, really. When I started on the Faction Paradox job, BBV offered to give me some of their CDs to listen to, but in the end I thought it'd probably be better if I didn't know what the form was. When you think about it, the only reason CITIZEN KANE ended up as such a seminal movie was that Orson Welles didn't know you weren't supposed to be able to do that kind of thing in the cinema.
Because obviously, THE FACTION PARADOX PROTOCOLS is at least as important a cultural landmark as CITIZEN KANE. Look, it was just an example, that's all.
35. What is bad writing? Why? And have you done any?
Big topic. The "what is bad writing?" question really has to be answered in two ways (why do I feel like I'm writing essays rather than doing an interview?):
1. The Big Picture. On the whole, my view is that anything ordinary is quite literally evil... or the closest you can get to evil in this life, anyway... which means that "bad writing", or any other form of "bad culture", means banal culture. It's not for nothing that I keep using the word "banal" as the worst insult imaginable. Even the most malicious, destructive, murderous act can have an important dynamic effect on a society - the Second World War killed millions, but in the process left behind a world order in which further World Wars and further slaughter on the Holocaust scale was literally impossible, at least in the west - whereas banality does damage to a culture than can potentially be irreperable. If a culture embraces mundanity as an ideal, and its only aspiration is to be as average as possible, then it's as good as dead. I've occasionally said that banality is a worse crime than genocide, and that therefore Will Smith and Jennifer Aniston are worse than Stalin, but people generally assume I'm either joking or drunk. Because as far as I'm concerned, the ideal state for any society is one in which the populace is forced not to conform whether they like it or not (which, ironically for such a totalitarian philosophy, is literally as far away from fascism as it's possible to get).
2. The Smaller Picture. Anything with the Celestial Toymaker in it is shit.
On a purely technical level, leaving out the cultural and social ramifications: yes, I've been responsible for a lot of bad writing, and it always irritates me slightly that nobody ever notices it. This is why I'm always annoyed by the suggestion that ALIEN BODIES is my best book. I just find myself thinking, my God, have you read the thing? Bits of it are just embarrassing. The flashback sequences, especially. I wrote them after I'd done the main storyline, and by that time I was running out of words. I'd just written DOWN... the 360-page version... plus a 40-page DECALOG story, so by the time I'd reached the end of ALIEN BODIES I'd done 700 pages without more than day or two off. So the flashbacks are a bloody mess. All of them try to build up complex environments in the space of about ten pages, and all of them fail miserably. How anybody can look at that and say it's better than INTERFERENCE, I'll never know. Mr. Qixotl's story, especially, is a truly nasty piece of cack.
Hooray! Chaos-2 has just won the ROBOT WARS final. I wasn't really bothered who came in first, as long as it wasn't bloody Stinger. It was touch and go for a minute there.
36. Why aren't you on the internet?
Well, I've got a modem. But apparently it needs something called a "windsock" (winsoc? windsoc?) that lets it talk to my computer. Don't ask me. To be frank, the real reason I'm not on the internet is that although I love the idea of new technology, I find the petty, fiddly, designed-for-technicians-only nature of modern PCs completely revolting. I grew up with computers; I was the first kid on my block to have a VIC-20, back in the early '80s; I was taught BASIC by my cousin the cybernetician at the age of seven (my age, not his); I was part of the first generation that considered home computers to be pretty much a normal part of domestic life. So if I'm alienated by the Microsoft age, then something must have gone very, very wrong somewhere. The idea that you can buy something like a modem but that you have to get a specialist in just to make it work properly is so ridiculous it's beyond words.
I'm sick of the fact that whenever I use someone else's computer - usually to get at the internet, it's got to be said - and I ask how you do such-and-such a thing, they say "oh, that's easy, you just..." before launching into thirty seconds of technobbable and then looking astonished when I don't understand any of it. Bad software forces people to speak a specialist language and to constantly repeat specialist codes, which means that computer users are effectively auto-programming themselves to be ideal Microsoft consumers. Frank Herbert once pointed out that machines condition people to treat other human beings as machines, although it strikes me that this isn't a problem as long as you're using the right kind of machine. But PCs are conditioning people to treat other human beings as fellow micro-serfs, as if it's perfectly normal to be slaved to a system that's obscure, unwieldy, and not really liked by anyone. It'd be no problem at all for a software company to design systems that anyone can use without any need for specialist language, but it's not in their interests to do things that way.
Just in case this makes me sound like I'm anti-technology, I'd like to point out that I only buy CDs and I can't stand vinyl.
37. You ventured briefly into comics with your 2000 AD strip [Lawrence's note: three pages ten years ago does indeed qualify as "briefly"]. You're the sort of writer who would thrive in comics, one would imagine. Will you look towards original comic work in the future?
It's not like I haven't tried. Certain people I could mention... well, mainly Dave Stone... seem to be under the impression that as I'm a qualified writer, I should be able to get a job in comics whenever I like. Can I bollocks. Nobody's going to care about a DOCTOR WHO writer, it's like being one step up from graffiti. I tried submitting a story idea to 2000 AD last year and they didn't even bother writing back. And where else am I going to go in this country? If you're an artist, it's easy, you just draw a nice big impressive picture and everyone can see at a glance wheteher they want to hire you or not. On the other hand, anybody can write a comic-book script. Hardly anybody can do it well, mind you, but it's not as if it's easy making a case for yourself.
Was that too bitter? Sorry. I just feel like I've messed up my whole life and pissed away every serious opportunity I've ever had, that's all.
Hey, but hasn't Paul Cornell got a fat arse!
-0-
It's not like I haven't tried. Certain people I could mention... well, mainly Dave Stone... seem to be under the impression that as I'm a qualified writer, I should be able to get a job in comics whenever I like. Can I bollocks. Nobody's going to care about a DOCTOR WHO writer, it's like being one step up from graffiti. I tried submitting a story idea to 2000 AD last year and they didn't even bother writing back. And where else am I going to go in this country? If you're an artist, it's easy, you just draw a nice big impressive picture and everyone can see at a glance wheteher they want to hire you or not. On the other hand, anybody can write a comic-book script. Hardly anybody can do it well, mind you, but it's not as if it's easy making a case for yourself.
Was that too bitter? Sorry. I just feel like I've messed up my whole life and pissed away every serious opportunity I've ever had, that's all.
Hey, but hasn't Paul Cornell got a fat arse!
-0-
64 THOUSAND-DOLLAR QUESTIONS:
THE "READER'S CHOICE" INTERVIEW WITH LAWRENCE MILES
PART FIVE: POPULAR CULTURE (BUT MOSTLY KENICKIE)
38. How much of a Kenickie fan are you? I ask due to your references to one of the finest bands ever to have existed in both DEAD ROMANCE and INTERFERENCE, and I sincerely hope Lauren, Marie, Johnny and Emmy-Kate will (fictionally at least) reunite in THE ADVENTURESS OF HENRIETTA STREET in order to let my jump and down with excitement.
Oh yeah, I knew there was something else I had to put into ADVENTURESS. Actually, I did tell myself that I wasn't going to put any contemporary cultural references into the book... because I'm sick of historicals where companions mooch around the dark ages making jokes about Britney Spears... so I'd probably better be a bit more low-key this time.
Oh, and get a life.
39. Where in blazes are the references to Kenickie in DEAD ROMANCE or INTERFERENCE? I don't do subtle. [This was in response to the previous question.]
"Subtle"? In DEAD ROMANCE there's four lines from the chorus of a Kenickie song that get repeated at strategic points throughout the book. In INTERFERENCE there's at least one entire chapter named after a Kenickie track, in big chapter-heading letters and everything. What are you looking for, for heaven's sake? Pictures? A free CD? What?
Hang on. We are talking about Kenickie the band, aren't we? Because if you're going through DEAD ROMANCE and INTERFERENCE looking for that bloke out of GREASE who ended up in BABYLON 5, you're going to be disappointed. I should think.
40. Do you rate Lauren Laverne as a solo performer on the basis of her first EP and that version of "In the Bleak Midwinter"?
As with All Saints, there were definitely two "camps" inside Kenickie. Unlike All Saints, both were necessary. I've heard Lauren Laverne's solo material, and it's fine, but there's something wrong somewhere. I've seen Rosita live, and they're fine to, but there's still something wrong somewhere. Neither half on its own could pull off something like "Classy", I'm sure of that.
That's enough questions about Kenickie. Ed. (This is of course Lawrence's own internal Ed. - Mark (really edding and not wanting to get in trouble for removing questions))
41. Have you seen the George Pal movie THE SEVEN FACES OF DOCTOR LAO, and did it in any way inspire the sequences on Dust in INTERFERENCE?
I wouldn't say it inspired the Dust sequences, exactly. It's more accurate to say that I saw THE SEVEN FACES OF DOCTOR LAO on television while I was putting INTERFERENCE together and thought, "yeah, I'll steal that".
Maybe that's simplifying things slightly. LAO was one of my favourite films when I was little. Seeing it again in 1998, I couldn't figure out why I'd never noticed that Doctor Lao has seven different forms and travels around in a circus tent that's bigger on the inside than on the outside. By then I'd already figured out that I wanted I. M. Foreman to turn up... not because I thought it needed an explanation for the sake of the continuity, which I know is what some people have said, but because I thought it was a good way of trying to bring closure to the "old" Doctor's life before the books moved onto something new... and the circus seemed to be a pretty good model for it.
Actually, now I look at it... that answer isn't really any different from "yeah, I'll steal that" at all, is it?
42. What was the last record you bought?
Billie Holliday: The Quintessence. God, that sounds terrible, doesn't it? Like I'm turning into Jazz Man. But that's nothing. The sleeve-notes are in French.
64 THOUSAND-DOLLAR QUESTIONS:
THE "READER'S CHOICE" INTERVIEW WITH LAWRENCE MILES
PART SIX: "SELF-REFERENTIAL CLEVERNESS"
43. What expectations did you have for this interview, and what do you think of the questions?
They're all a bit polite, aren't they? Given that I was leaving myself open, I was kind of expecting a bit more... you know. Venom. "Do you want a fight?", or something. But it's all very respectful.
64 THOUSAND-DOLLAR QUESTIONS:
THE "READER'S CHOICE" INTERVIEW WITH LAWRENCE MILES
PART SEVEN: ON OTHER WRITERS
(LET'S FACE IT, THIS IS GOING TO BE THE POPULAR BIT)
44. You've been described as a person who will hug you one minute, then insult you to your face mischeviously the next. This has, evidently, not gone down well with many in the WHO community. Do you feel this is a symptom of your personality, or is it a performance of sorts that you reserve for fandom? DOCTOR WHO fans are some of the nicest people in the world, but they can be excruciating pedants, and among them are many maladjusted and gauche people who struggle in social situations. Are you one of these, or do you act like one of these to show whatever scorn it is you feel for the less appealing side of fandom?
Who described me that way? I'll bloody skin him, once I've finished hugging him.
Overall, what I've discovered about fandom is that all the people in it - at least the people I've met so far - are perfectly nice, even the ones who can't stand my books. I regularly bump into people, especially at the Tavern, who'll tell me in detail why they thought INTERFERENCE was crap before starting an entirely civil conversation about something else completely. But the important thing to notice, the thing that I think says it all, is that the only people who have any real problem with me whatsoever are, without exception, other authors.
We're scum, basically. The authors, that is. We write one book... even half a book, in some cases... and suddenly we think we're serious artists whose opinions must be valued above all others, whose works must not be criticized in any way on pain of excommunication. I really don't want to start another dispute with Paul Cornell at this point, but it's got to be said this his assessment of DOCTOR WHO fandom in his S/FX column - "seething cesspool of hatred", I think it was - was one of the most horribly inaccurate things I've ever heard said. I've got to admit, I wonder whether it's significant that he should say something like that just as people started slagging off SHADOWS OF AVALON after years of treating him as a god of the range. I wonder whether it's significant that he was one of those who considered even a mild criticism of UNNATURAL HISTORY to be an unacceptable attack on its authors. I wonder, most of all, if a lot of the writers can tell the difference between criticisms of their work and personal insults.
(As I've only got a low-grade version of Word, I'm reading these questions from a text file that doesn't put all the spaces between the words. I therefore misread the first line of this question as: "you've been described as a person who will hug you one minute, then sit on your face mischieviously the next...")
45. What do you think of Paul Magrs' books? I don't think you've said anything about him in previous interviews, and since he's one of the few writers doing interesting things with DOCTOR WHO it might be interesting to hear your opinions.
Ah. Er... mmm.
I spoke to Paul Magrs the other day, actually. He's writing the book that comes after mine, so we were comparing notes. He's a very nice man. And, what's more, he's one of the few authors who doesn't currently have any issues with me whatsoever.
Um, next question?
46. Do you have regrets about pissing off such a large section of the DOCTOR WHO "community" of authors? If not on a personal level, then on the level that it must be harder to find work (obviouly the Big Finish Benny books are out)?
Until now I haven't really cared, on the grounds that I don't really have much of a desire to write a Benny book and/or a DOCTOR WHO audio (which is, as far as I'm concerned, just a PDA with noises). But now... now I've started compromising myself and doing things just because I need a job, I've started to wonder. Paul Magrs - did I mention what a nice man he is? - told me that when Big Finish needed a script for an Eighth Doctor story in a hurry, he sat down at his desk with a bottle of vodka and wrote one in two evenings, and as a result he can't even remember a lot of what he wrote. How much is he going to get paid for that, exactly? 1,000, maybe? So I can't help feeling that this whole "85,000-word novel" thing isn't really a very efficient way of staying alive. I mean, I actually cared about THE FACTION PARADOX PROTOCOLS, and did I get anything like that kind of money? I think not.
Come to think of it, though: when it comes to Big Finish I couldn't really have stayed on good terms with the Chairman if I'd tried. All I did was leave a message on his ansaphone asking something about Daleks, and the next thing I knew I was blacklisted. It wasn't as if I went out of my way to cause trouble.
47. Justin Richard's job isn't set in stone. He has a finite tenure: how long, who knows. The bottom line is, Lawrence Miles is a name which sells DOCTOR WHO books. Would you apply to be the editor of the BBC Books line if a vacancy opened (barring the matey-matey nepotism that seems part and parcel of Doctor Who politics)? What would you do, pare the number of books coming out a year or increase them? Ask for greater input from a regular stable of writers, or try to do it all yourself?
Several points here. First, the statement that "Lawrence Miles is a name which sells DOCTOR WHO books" simply isn't true. The books are sold to a fixed audience, and the sales figures barely waver from novel to novel, apart from the fact that after 1997 the figures started going steadily downhill. My name's well-thought-of on the newsgroups, it's true, but the pro-future EDA readership on the internet is only half the audience. The pro-tradition DWM readership is more likely to avoid a book with my name on it than buy it. Let's look at it in terms of pure numbers: a book by an author with a certain reputation - me, or Lance, or Kate, say - will probably sell a few hundred copies more than most. A few hundred copies. And yet when DIVIDED LOYALTIES became the only book to receive television advertising... a nice big picture of it got shown at the end of every DOCTOR WHO episode when BBC2 did their run of repeats last year... the sales went up by thousands. Which makes you realize how unimportant the individual author is. (Whenever I used to consider doing a non-WHO novel, my logic was always: well, ALIEN BODIES is popular and sold 14,000 copies, so if only a fifth of the people who liked it buy my "proper" book then it'll still sell well enough to make it all worthwhile. Then the sales figures for DEAD ROMANCE came in, and they weren't even as good as one-fifth of ALIEN BODIES even though it had a partial DOCTOR WHO connection behind it.)
But as to the question of me being editor... yes, I'd love the job, because it's a piece of piss and you're allowed to do it from your own bedroom. All you've got to do is shout at other writers every now and then, and I'm used to doing that in a purely unpaid capacity. As a matter of fact... nearly three years ago, I went to see Stephen Cole at the BBC just after he'd had a big argument with his superiors. I remembering him saying to me, maybe only half- joking: "I'm sick of this job, do you want it?". A couple of weeks later he hired Jac Rayner as a helper, and after that she became an assistant editor, and after that Justin got brought in, and then Stephen left and... it just occurs to me that if I'd been slightly sharper, and said something like "oh, if you ever need any help, you've got my number", then... well, you know. It feels like a bit of a missed opportunity, that's all. (Looking back on that last paragraph: doesn't it look to you like the kind of anecdote Les McQueen would come out with in THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN?)
The question is, would anybody really hire me as editor? I suspect I'm not considered reliable enough. They'd probably anticipate over-ambitious story arcs and ridiculous stretchings of the format. Not to mention the obvious diplomacy problem, although I feel that might be an advantage as much as anything. I'm assuming that when an editor resigns he gets a say in who his successor might be, so my money's on Lance to be the next editor.
And obviously, the number of books produced per year needs to be cut. I remember saying back in 1997 that you can't produce 22 novels a year and expect them to be any good. I remember saying that there was so much overkill going on, so much pap being put out, that the sales figures were going to plummet. I remember Stephen saying that he agreed completely, but that BBC Books wouldn't let him cut the quota. And bingo, the sales did drop, to the point where the range came damn near cancellation. But what can you do? If you tell BBC Worldwide that you want to halve production, you effectively tell them that you're halving the profits on the range, so even if the sales figures drop by 50% they're still making more money by putting out two a month. Of course, what they didn't expect was that at one stage the sales dropped to below 50%, but you can't argue with bureaucracy. Now there's the audios on top of everything else, and we're approaching the point where there are more PDAs than actual TV stories for them to fit between. This continuity's going down choking, surely? Can't have more than another two years, unless a new TV series or movie turns up.
(I've just watched the first episode of the new series of SPACED. They lay into THE PHANTOM MENACE after five minutes, and I got so upset that I couldn't concentrate on the rest of it, although I think I saw Mark Gatiss at some point. What I'm trying to work out now is, does the fact that an assault on THE PHANTOM MENACE can make me stop watching SPACED mean that I'm exactly the kind of person who should really be watching SPACED?)
48. The range has new writers coming in all the time, but many are faceless scribes, pouring out more of the same nondescript storylines. [Lawrence's note: I'd like to say at this point that I really didn't write any of these questions myself.] Would you like to see the BBC range put more emphasis on demanding more innovative styles from its writers? What would you like to see from new writers to the range, and is it time for a massive overhaul of the regular writing "crew"?
Technically, yes, it's time for a massive overhaul. But that leaves you with the question of where your new writing talent is going to come from. Let's be honest, you're not going to find many gifted young writers lining up to be DOCTOR WHO novelists, and you're certainly not going to find enough to fill up 22 books a year. Virgin turned up at the perfect time in the 1990s: it was that point when the new writers were just young enough to understand modern fiction, but just old enough to remember, and have a great deal of affection for, DOCTOR WHO as it used to be. If I became editor tomorrow... say, by a KIND-HEARTS-AND- CORONETS-style campaign of assassination... exactly who would I go to for new ideas? Even if the output were cut, I suspect I'd just end up calling in all the old hands. Similarly, it's all very well talking about "demanding" more innovative styles, but I challenge you to go up to [ANOTHER NAME EDITED] and "demand" something like that out of him. (I should point out, though, that I think innovation's really just for the Eighth Doctor books. PDAs are for traditionalists, EDAs are for progressives. That's only fair.)
Ironically, though - given your description of "faceless scribes" - Steve Emmerson literally has no face. It's a rare medical condition.
49. What do you think of Dave Stone? Do you see your writing as similar to his in that humour stalks two- abreast with the serious agendas of particular tales? (Is perhaps the work of Donald Cotton an influence on you both, WHO-wise?)
You are joking, aren't you?
Dave Stone and I are similar in that we can both be easily insulted without repercussions. If you say one single bad thing about [NAME EDITED FOR LEGAL REASONS] then he won't talk to you ever again and he'll blacklist you from working for his company forever. On the other hand, people frequently come up to either me or Dave and say something horribly insulting... actually, lots of people come up to me and do that, it's my job to do it to Dave... and we just go "yeah, you're probably right". Except, of course, that Dave usually manges to stretch "yeah, you're probably right" out to about half an hour and give detailed examples of every point he makes. Other than that, the only thing we've got in common is that we've both [EDITED FOR REASONS OF DECORUM]. I don't think the writing's at all similar, except possibly in the case of DOWN. We might both appreciate the use of the word "abreast" in this question, but I couldn't say for sure.
Besides, I'd bet money that he doesn't even know who Donald Cotton is.
50. What's the most untrue thing anybody has ever said about you (to do with the novels, not personally)? Is there anything you've said about another author that you now wish you hadn't?
You mean, the most untrue thing apart from every review of every one of my books ever? It was probably when Paul Cornell came up to me at the Tavern and told me that the only reason I criticize Kate Orman is that I'm jealous because I know she's a better writer than everyone else. It's impossible to argue against that one, really. It's like someone coming up to you and saying "the only reason you slag off Hitler is because secretly you know he's right and you're just pissed off that you'll never do anything as important as Mein Kampf". Oh, and the other thing that springs to mind is Steven Moffat insisting that "deep down you know ALIEN BODIES is the best thing you've ever written, and you know nothing you write is ever going to have the same impact again". I think I just stared at him.
The only things I've said about people in fandom that I'm now uncertain about were all in one issue of the Tavern fanzine (for anyone who's collected the set, it's issue eight, the one with the extra half-page stapled to the front). I was under stress at the time, because my cat had just died and it was that point when Paul started attacking me on the internet for reasons I couldn't understand. So I think I just thought "sod it", and all of a sudden the gloves were off. And to be honest, a lot of it is very funny, but there are parts I don't even remember writing. There's a line about Vanessa Bishop which, in retrospect, even I don't find acceptable. Apart from anything else, I don't have anything against Vanessa Bishop. There was a time when I was the only one at the Tavern going around saying how good "The Diary of Jackie Jenkins" was, when everybody else was slagging it to bits. I think I must have been going through my Eminem phase.
Besides, I'd bet money that he doesn't even know who Donald Cotton is.
50. What's the most untrue thing anybody has ever said about you (to do with the novels, not personally)? Is there anything you've said about another author that you now wish you hadn't?
You mean, the most untrue thing apart from every review of every one of my books ever? It was probably when Paul Cornell came up to me at the Tavern and told me that the only reason I criticize Kate Orman is that I'm jealous because I know she's a better writer than everyone else. It's impossible to argue against that one, really. It's like someone coming up to you and saying "the only reason you slag off Hitler is because secretly you know he's right and you're just pissed off that you'll never do anything as important as Mein Kampf". Oh, and the other thing that springs to mind is Steven Moffat insisting that "deep down you know ALIEN BODIES is the best thing you've ever written, and you know nothing you write is ever going to have the same impact again". I think I just stared at him.
The only things I've said about people in fandom that I'm now uncertain about were all in one issue of the Tavern fanzine (for anyone who's collected the set, it's issue eight, the one with the extra half-page stapled to the front). I was under stress at the time, because my cat had just died and it was that point when Paul started attacking me on the internet for reasons I couldn't understand. So I think I just thought "sod it", and all of a sudden the gloves were off. And to be honest, a lot of it is very funny, but there are parts I don't even remember writing. There's a line about Vanessa Bishop which, in retrospect, even I don't find acceptable. Apart from anything else, I don't have anything against Vanessa Bishop. There was a time when I was the only one at the Tavern going around saying how good "The Diary of Jackie Jenkins" was, when everybody else was slagging it to bits. I think I must have been going through my Eminem phase.
51. Has anyone ever spread
vicious false rumors about you?
Yeah, I did it myself. I made up a completely untrue story about something someone said about me, and started spreading it around just to see what would happen. A couple of months later one of the other writers repeated it to my face as if it were bona fide true. Which either means that I'm very clever or he's a moose.
52. What do you really think of Kate Orman and Jon Blum?
Sigh.
This information is of almost no interest to anyone. But I said I'd answer anything, so I will. Except the question about Paul Magrs, obviously. Did I mention that he's thinking of coming to the Tavern soon? Nice man.
Let's go through this step by step. THE LEFT-HANDED HUMMINGBIRD is quite good. SET PIECE is one of the ten best DOCTOR WHO novels written. SLEEPY is good. RETURN OF THE LIVING DAD is quite good, but basically just more of the same. THE ROOM WITH NO DOORS is even more of the same, and it's starting to get dull. WALKING TO BABYLON is my least favourite New Adventure ever. VAMPIRE SCIENCE is awful. SEEING I is better, but really just SET PIECE with all the best bits taken out. UNNATURAL HISTORY was described by [NAME OF FORMER EDITOR OF DWM] as "the worst novel ever written", and although I didn't agree I couldn't be bothered arguing with him.
However, if we're talking about general principles, then I've put an appendix at the end of this document that should cover just about everything else anyone might want to know about
64 THOUSAND-DOLLAR QUESTIONS:
THE "READER'S CHOICE" INTERVIEW WITH LAWRENCE MILES
PART NINE: STUPID
(THINGS I REFUSE TO BELIEVE ANYONE REALLY WANTS TO KNOW, BUT WHICH I'VE INSISTED ON FULLY ANSWERING ANYWAY.)
53. Jar-Jar Binks: amusing comedy sidekick or Servant of Satan?
Harmless functional dynamic. Not a great character, but at the same time he does his job and doesn't irritate in the way he's often said to. The real problem with Binks is that he's the modern Chewbacca, but George Lucas doesn't seem to have realized that Chewbacca only works because he's funny and dangerous. If I'd script-edited THE PHANTOM MENACE...
God, the kind of parallel universes we're creating here today... I'd have made Jar-Jar a burbling idiot who also happened to be a hyper-effective assassin (hence his exile from Otah Gunga).
Consider how much stronger the storyline would have been if, during the rescue of Amidala from the Battledroids, Jar-Jar had suddenly drawn his own weapon and proved himself to be a death-machine on a par with the two Jedi Knights.
But still a loud-mouthed twat at the same time.
54. Milk or plain chocolate digestives?
It's not an issue with digestives, but it's got to be milk chocolate Hob-Nobs.
55. Do you eat shellfish?
I'd rather not. No ethical or religious objections, of course. I just don't like the salty aftertaste it leaves in your mouth. Oh, wait a minute... is this question euphamistic? Because whenever a hardline Christian starts talking about the Bible's stance against homosexuality, somebody always points out that the same page of the Bible which condemns homosexuality as sinful also condemns the eating of shellfish as sinful, and that Christians don't tend to enforce that rule with quite so much passion. So maybe this is meant to be a metaphor, with "shellfish" as a code for something else entirely. In which case, the answer is... I'd rather not. No ethical or religious objections, of course. I just don't like the salty aftertaste it leaves in your mouth.
It's all gone a bit Spartacus, hasn't it?
56. Do the Teletubbies have a hidden agenda?
Are they as loveable as they appear?
Yes: to develop formative language skills
in children below the age of eighteen months.
And yes: they are. Are you stupid or something?
57. Hypothesis:
Gary Russell isn't such a bovine author when you think about it. Although criticised for unsophisticated writing, one needs to consider the cleverness of his titles.
DIVIDED LOYALTIES: while one of the best-selling books, and loved by some, it's also loathed by many in fandom. It has, literally, divided loyalties.
PLACEBO EFFECT: the books is sequelitis tosh, yet, despite being such an underwhelming story gave everyone their Eighth Doctor "fix" for the month, in the same way that the act of receiving medicine for a patient is treatment in itself. Quite literally, it produced a placebo effect.
BUSINESS UNUSUAL: presented as a book with strange things happening, yet a very average, run of the mill story. Quite the ironic title, as it's business as usual for Gary.
Do you agree, and what do you think the subtle joke regarding INSTRUMENTS OF DARKNESS will be?
I think it'll result in Gary Russell getting his mouth around a big black oboe. (I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. I just like the sound of it.)
58. Is it true that Paul Cornell had non-consentual sexual congress with one of your cats? Well, why not?
He's humped everything else that moves.
Both my cats have passed away in the last couple of years. Neither death was, as far as I know, caused
by the mating habits of Paul Cornell.
Did this question come from Daniel O'Mahoney, at all?
59. Lawrence, are you pondering what we're all pondering?
I think so. But where are we going to find an inflatable model of Mandy Dingle at this hour?
64 THOUSAND-DOLLAR QUESTIONS:
THE "READER'S CHOICE" INTERVIEW
WITH LAWRENCE MILES
PART TEN: CLIQUEY SCUM
(QUESTIONS ASKED BY/ABOUT PEOPLE I KNOW PERSONALLY, WHO ARE CLEARLY JUST TAKING THE PISS)
60. [This question follows the announcement on the BBC's website that the new book would be called THE ADVENTURES OF HENRIETTA STREET, and Lawrence's contention that this would be silly.]
Isn't it true that it could be called the ADVENTURES OF HENRIETTA STREET if there were a character in it called Miss Henrietta Street? Besides, who says street's don't have adventures? Did Danny live in vain?
(From Simon Bucher-Jones.) Oh, that's right. Start suggesting links between my books and the work of Grant Morrison, why don't you? It's not like I've heard that before.
True fact: in early 1997, before ALIEN BODIES, I submitted a synopsis to the BBC called THERE ARE WORSE THINGS THAN ANGELS, which was set in the 1970s and featured a British proto-UNIT paranormal investigations team quite clearly based on Reagan and Carter out of THE SWEENEY.
THE INVISIBLES #25 came out two days after it arrived on Nuala Buffini's desk, and frankly I've never been so glad that something of mine got rejected. Bearing this in mind, anybody who's known me for a while will understand why I find it funny that when Grant Morrison recently appeared on Channel 4's DISINFONATION, the man who several years ago had been a quiet, floppy-fringed indie-kid was revealed to have turned into a drunken skinhead in a big leather coat. Remind me, who's stealing whose material here?
Mind you, few things have been quite as funny as hearing Mark Clapham and Jim Smith trying to convince me that I ripped off the prologue of DOWN from an old edition of DOOM PATROL, due to the fact that both stories feature a villain standing on some stairs.
61.THIS QUESTION IS NAUGHTY. OR THE ANSWER IS. OR SOMETHING. IT'S GONE
Those of you with a cached copy of the earlier version of this page with the question and answer still present should hang on to it as it will be very valuable in the future. Probably.
62. Why do you confuse people, at seven thirty in the morning no less, by sending them bits of paper with reviews of Lego on them and absolutely nothing else? No explanation, nothing. (BackRubSlut.)
It's for the next Bible, you fool. Let's be honest, Lego reviews are at least as interesting as the War Diaries of Simon Guerrier. Anyway, what do you mean "no explanation"? Didn't you read the back?
And if your postman insists on coming at seven thirty, that's your problem. You should get a middle-aged slacker like mine. Then you'd be safe until half eleven.
63. Lawrence, do you compete with Tat Wood? (Anonymous.)
Yes. We sneak off to the Tavern toilets together and see which of us can get it closest to the ceiling.
64. Fancy submitting a joint "Ultimate Fantastic Four" proposal to Marvel? Your famous and have written at least one comic, I'm less famous but know everything about the Fantastic Four.
(Simon Bucher-Jones, again.)
If this means that "Ultimate Fantastic Four" (whatever it may be) is known to be accepting submissions from gits like us, then yeah, I'm in. On the other hand, do I really want to ally myself with someone who can't even spell "you're"?
64 THOUSAND-DOLLAR QUESTIONS:
THE "READER'S CHOICE" INTERVIEW WITH LAWRENCE MILES
REPEATS
We did specify that only questions which haven't been asked before were valid, so the following were disqualified:
- Who was/is The Enemy?
- And what was the situation with the bottle?
- Who are your influences for writing,
both in DOCTOR WHO and outside?
APPENDIX:
ON KATE ORMAN, PAUL CORNELL, INTERNATIONAL PARTY-POLITICS, THE MEANING OF INTERFERENCE, THE BIRTH OF THE STEAM TRAIN AND THE ROLE OF THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IN MODERN SOCIETY
(OR: "YOU BLOODY NON-CONFORMISTS,
YOU'RE ALL THE SAME")
It's worth putting the "what I really think of Kate Orman" subject to one side of the main text, because the answer gets right to the heart of just about everything else I've said. Besides which, I'm expecting this to take several pages and I don't want to have to go straight from a summary of an entire life's philosophy into questions like "what do you think of Jar-Jar Binks?".
So let's start with the question as it was asked, and work backwards from there.
The problem I have with most of Kate's material - and it's been bothering me right from the start - is something I think of as the Big Lie. When Paul Cornell started writing New Adventures, he set up a very definite framework for the DOCTOR WHO universe as he saw it, which (like SURVIVAL) was brilliantly in tune with its age. The Cornell universe was essentially a liberal universe, which seemed appropriate, because ever since 1963 the Doctor's been a self-willed individualist. The essentials of the early '90s DOCTOR WHO universe were fairly simple. The universe itself was, if not left-wing, then at least left-of- centre; the forces of darkness in this post-Thatcherite era were (justifiably) right-wing, reactionary, corporate scum; the Doctor, as Time's Champion, carried libertarian values with him wherever he went; other liberal-minded people were the universe's "chosen ones", who would, inevitably, inherit everything once the powers-that-be had been toppled (this greatly appealed to the generally left-field fan audience, natch); and the proper, civilized, code of conduct involved adherence to exactly the kind of good, solid liberal values which since then have been lazily smeared by the Conservative/Republican front as "politically correct".
The idea that the universe itself believes in liberal values, and that the chiefly-liberal readership is therefore being rewarded by having the Doctor as its imaginary proector and totem-figure, is obviously a lie. But it's a good lie, one that worked well in the context of Cornell's early work. Let's put this in perspective: in the early 1990s Britain was still reeling from Thatcherism, an age in which the administration did everything short of criminalizing the kind of "alternative lifestyles" and underdog sub-cultures which, traditionally, the Doctor has been inclined to protect and which, traditionally, make up a large slice of the DOCTOR WHO fanbase. So this is something far more fundamental than just party-politics. In the same way that the '70s UNIT stories painted a picture of an imaginary (idealistic) green-and-pleasant England against which any number of alien invasions could take place, "Cornell England" - a kind of England that stretches as far as Heaven in LOVE AND WAR - was a perfect backdrop for the anti-corporate push of the early Virgin stories. None of it was true, but DOCTOR WHO has never been exactly realistic, so used in this context it's actually very endearing. Even the Brigadier, who in the TV series often comes across as a reactionary military buffoon, by NO FUTURE has become a perfcet zen warrior. And he's the better for it.
The problem is.... the problem is that whenever I read Kate's material, I get the horrible feeling that she doesn't realize the Big Lie is actually a lie. Paul always seemed to know he was presenting us with a mythic ideal, but with Kate I get the disturbing feeling that she believes every word of it. Which gives an almost religious, and certainly very zealous, feel to some of her books. They're almost suggesting that the universe really is on the side of the late-twentieth-century liberal, and I find that alarming. Apart from the obvious lack of perspective, you really shouldn't touch politics unless you've got something to say in the field, and the overall sense of "just vote for a vaguely left-wing party every four years and everything will turn out all right, and the world will be a lovely place filled with fluffy little ducks" is a bit unnerving (and as for the naivity... the right-wing, pro-morality vigilante movement that led to the creation of "Take Back the Night" has been responsible for acts of chronic violence against anyone - male or female - who stands in its way, but in VAMPIRE SCIENCE Sam officially authorizes the movement as "nice" and there isn't even the slightest hint of a counter-argument). It all reached a kind of crisis point in WALKING TO BABYLON, which is still my least favourite New Adventure ever written, and which for me went beyond "disturbing" and into the realms of "unacceptable".
Re-writing the whole world in order to prop up a specifically late-twentieth-century agenda is bad enough, but WALKING TO BABYLON sets about re-writing the whole of history. Lady Ninan is supposedly a resident of ancient Babylon, but speaks and acts like a twentieth- century post-feminist liberal, thus "proving" that "people like us" have been making the world a lovely place in which to live throughout history; despite living in a city under constant threat of foreign attack, the Lady lets Bernice, a complete stranger and obvious alien, stay in her house without any form of introduction simply on the pretext that "people like us" have to stick together; Bernice has a relationship with a (Victorian, or early Edwardian?) traveller- cum-archaeologist who, despite the Victorian era's notoriety for male violence, bigotry and misogeny turns out to be such a "new man" that he becomes a stereotypical perfect gentleman from a Barbara Cartland novel; the two of them embark on a relationship which has every possible jagged edge systematically smoothed away by the text, almost as a demonstration of how nice, kind, polite and utterly unthreatening men can be picked up in any historical period; he's even completely unaware of the existence of male prostitution (!) - despite being well-schooled in history and hailing from an era in which most of the major scandals of the day involved public figures being found in homosexual brothels - in order to sledgehammer home the fact that he's so non-existant as a sexual presence that he can't possibly cause Bernice any harm or heartache, and as all good twentieth-century liberals know that's what good relationships are made of.
It's not just the fact that any historical context is thrown straight out of the window. It's the fact that it's been done to facilitate such a false, banal, "consensus-approved" romance. The uber-politics of WALKING TO BABYLON are presented as an ideal, but to put it bluntly if I lived in an "ideal" world this sterile then I'd kill myself in a week. It'd be going too far to compare the novel to the kind of disinfected, state-endorsed culture described in books like 1984, but I'm going to anyway because that's how it made me feel.
Yet WALKING TO BABYLON went straight to the top of the New Adventure polls when it was released, and in a sense it's not surprising. It tells the audience exactly what that audience wants to hear. Act in the "proper" manner and you, too, can live in a lovely soft- edged universe where everybody believes in exactly the same principles, regardless of their background or century, and you might even get to have sex with - according to your preference - either (a) Bernice or (b) a pretty, blushing young man who might as well have been lobotomized for all the personality he's got. This isn't a romance, this is Newspeak- culture, and like all Newspeak-culture it works because it's essentially reassuring. To an extent, it was the disgust I felt... no, I'll go further than that, the anger I felt... after WALKING TO BABYLON that resulted in DEAD ROMANCE, a book which I assumed would send exactly the opposite message and probably end up right at the bottom of the polls. So I still can't quite believe what happened. The point is that when it comes to politics, I've spent most of my life despising the right-wing tendency simply because I grew up in an era when Thatcher was systematically neutering British culture almost beyond the point of recovery. And I really don't want to see supposedly left-wing people doing exactly the same thing, thanks.
As people who go to the Tavern might know, a couple of months ago I got into a big scrap with Paul Cornell on the subject of politics. Paul's a dedicated supporter of New Labour, something which - given the current administration's willingness to suck up to even the most right-wing of American Presidents, given the military-industrial evil to which Blair's given his whole-hearted support, given the government's ultra-right-wing stance on subjects as diverse as asylum seekers and privatization, given the way in which Thatcher's "slavery to the Republican Party as a central pillar of policy" has been taken up again with a vengeance, given that in the next couple of months Labour will be introducing a bill which literally outlaws all public protest in Britain by re-defining it as "terrorism" (a piece of legislation even Thatcher might have balked at, but brilliantly presented in a sugar coating rather than an iron glove) - is something I find genuinely upsetting. Perhaps I was wrong, all those years ago. Perhaps Paul really didn't know that the Big Lie was just a way of telling stories. Perhaps he genuinely believed every word. The notion that the world of books like HAPPY ENDINGS might actually be related to the real world as Paul sees it, rather than just being an idealistic fantasy-setting, is deeply worrying.
If it seems like I've strayed off the subject here, it's only because Paul himself told me that "whatever you say about Kate you say about me, because we believe in exactly the same things", and that in itself frightens me. If I believed for one moment that anybody thinks just like I do, I'd probably go mad. The liberalism of DOCTOR WHO is the liberalism of the individual, the free-thinker, the eccentric and the obscure, not the liberalism of concensus politics. If nothing else, INTERFERENCE was intended as a statement in favour of individual responsibility, an argument that the "easy answer" route of the Big Lie isn't workable, that if any kind of utopia's going to be created then it's going to take a damn sight more than an occasional trip to the ballot-box and the hope that if you leave everything up to the most prominent available concensus then everything will sort itself out in the end. Especially if that concensus is already slaved to corporate military-industrial interests (it's not for nothing that INTERFERENCE started off at COPEX, and though I'd never be stupid enough to say that all political parties are the same, it's true that the Labour government is just as happy with the arms trade as the Conservative government was).
The other thing which still haunts me about my argument with Paul is that when I tried to explain this to him, his response was:
"And do your followers know that?"
For me, the idea of having "leaders" and "followers" is a stupid, infantile throwback to the days when we were all apes in the forest, unfortunately reinforced in every playground in the world. I don't belong to anybody's pack; I don't want to be forced to respect anyone; I definitely don't want to be respected myself. Significantly, when Paul asked me if there are any other writers I do like he did it by asking if there was anyone to whom I'd bend the knee, itself suggesting a master-and-servant relationship which I can't say makes me comfortable. I know enough to realize that history extends way beyond the quagmire of Thatcherism and the ideals of twentieth-century liberalism, just as I know that it's the individual mutation rather than the ape-pack which is responsible for virtually all human progress. In the early nineteenth century, while British inventors were giving birth to the industrial revolution and (just as importantly) Stephenson was skilfully using the media to adjust people to the idea of the rapid-transit age, the two parties in the British Parliament believed they were making their own vital contribution to history by debating a bill about how close to each other people should be able to sit on public trains. I choose this example just because the 1760-1820 period's my own field of interest, but there are demonstrations to be found wherever you look for them. Remind me to tell you the story of "the Turk" some time.
Personally, I get edgy whenever the cashier in the bank insists on calling me "Mr. Miles", and when a few weeks ago I went to a restaurant where the waiter insisted on pulling my chair out for me so I could sit down I felt like screaming and running out of the building. I don't want to be in charge of anyone, any more than I want anyone to be in charge of me, and I have the sneaking suspicion that the reason THE ADVENTURESS OF HENRIETTA STREET is turning into such an inaccessible book is that I'm subconsciously trying to destroy any following I might have accidentally built up. It's co-operation that drives humanity, not concensus (the two are very different), and the idea that any supposedly left-wing concensus is supposed to speak for myself and my entire generation - let alone all of history - is something I just can't accept. Not in Westminster, and not in WALKING TO BABYLON. Paul tells me that this makes me right-wing, but... with the greatest of respect... seeing as his idea of a political statement is saying "Thatcher is crap" in TIMEWYRM: REVELATION and my idea of a political statement is starting off an entire DOCTOR WHO novel as a detailed satire on the British government's collusion in the international arms-and-torture trade, there's probably room for re-definition of the term "right-wing" here. I can't explain in one sound-bite what my political beliefs are, and if I could I don't think they'd be beliefs. They'd be catchphrases. "Nice to see less tax cuts, to see less tax cuts, nice."
And that's what I think of the work of Kate Orman, and the work of Paul Cornell, and indeed the world in general. I'm glad I said all that. It should answer just about every question anybody will ever ask me again. Apart from the "who are the enemy?" one, obviously.
Incidentally, the outcome of the squabble in the Tavern remains uncertain. I was too drunk to argue my case convincingly, but as Paul was the first one to use physical force I may well have won the debate by default.
Or is this whole argument, as Steven Moffat suggested, just a dispute between the People's Popular Front of Judea and the Judean Popular People's Front?
