Salvage Mission - Revisited

Daleks are a bugger to write. Now this isn't the case for some people, but I've always found them tricky. However, for this story I didn't want it to be about the Daleks. I wanted it to be more focused on Davros. Now before we go on I must admit my love for Davros. He is one of my favourite Doctor Who villains. Big Finish's I, Davros certainly added to my love for this character as it fleshed out his history and revealed the disturbing lengths this loopy scientist would go to insure the success of his experiments. Along with that I was always impressed by Davros and the performances given by both Terry Molloy and Colin Baker. For whatever reason, the Sixth Doctor and Davros seem to have a very good rapport, and I loved the idea of having a Davros story where the Daleks aren't key. Many fans will argue that where Davros is involved, the Daleks become nothing more than tin-can foot soldiers, lacking personality and guile. I can understand this, but I can understand why writers like Eric Saward put more focus on Davros simply because he's a more interesting character. Although I wanted to keep Daleks to a minimum, I wanted to make sure that the Daleks weren't just foot soldiers and that they were just as crafty and manipulative as ever. When I started out with this idea I had no intentions of showing how Davros created his Imperial Daleks as seen in Remembrance of the Daleks. That just sort of evolved from the story as I planned it (ignoring Big Finish's The Juggernauts, simply because my stuff didn't consider their tales to be canon. But it's definitely worth a listen).

I have no idea where the deadly nebula and the salvage crew concept came from, but I like the idea of the Renegade Dalek shuttle from Revelation of the Daleks being caught there, with Davros a prisoner of his creations. I also wanted Davros to be terrified of these Daleks, after all they were experimenting on the Daleks he had created on Necros. The idea was that the Daleks were going to new levels of horror that even he was unaware that they were capable of. And that scared the pants off him. Then in true Dalek fashion, not unlike Power of the Daleks and Victory of the Daleks, the Renegade Daleks pretended to be nice, with only Davros, the Doctor and Peri aware of their true nature. Davros would finally get his own back by experimenting on the Renegade Dalek captor, ultimately turning him into the Special Weapons Dalek. This was inspired by what I had heard of the Special Weapons Dalek from Ben Aaronovitch's novelisation of Remembrance of the Daleks, that this Dalek was insane and feared by all the others. I think it had something to do with radiation or something, but instead I decided that if Davros was to mutate a Dalek that hated his guts into his personal bodyguard, that would drive said Dalek even more around the bend. Trapped in his casing, unable to do nothing but follow orders. After all, he never speaks on TV.

Another element to this story was Davros' claw hand. This was taken from one of the comics, Nemesis of the Daleks perhaps? Not sure. Never read it. I just remember seeing Davros with the claw of a movie Dalek and thinking "What a cool idea", so I nicked it! The claw was quite tricky to make out of Milliput, it didn't want to retain the shape and trying to get it flat like the movie claws was nigh n impossible. So what I ended up with was a claw that kind of resembled the one from the comic/movie. I added a few lines and dots to make it look more mechanical and painted it silver. The whole thing was constructed around a cocktail stick ,which was trimmed down and secured with blu tack in Davros' wrist socket.

This was a really fun story to write and perform, especially the Davros bits, and the Sixth Doctor is always a real pleasure to write. It's also the first story to feature Kat! The first of many appearances! Charlotte returned as Peri, who still impresses me with her impersonation of Nicola Bryant, and Cameron Robb and Jonathan made up the rest of the salvage crew. I was overjoyed with the response this story received and continues to receive. Certainly a favourite of mine. If I'm not mistaken there is now a Big Finish story out which has a similar theme to this story, a rescue ship picking up lost ships... Who's been watching my videos, eh?

Hell on Earth - Revisited

Whenever I'm asked "What's your favourite story out of the ones you've made?" it's always Hell on Earth. This story came into my head in an instant, which is a rarity. Usually I'll come up with a basic idea or scenario and then structure out scenes in my head before typing, but this hit me like a cricket ball to the groin. I wanted to do another Peter Davison story, but I didn't want to do anything with the Daleks or the Cybermen, which is a problem when you look at the Davison era of the toy shelf!

I make no reservations in admitting this story was based on The Woman in Black (the play, not the film with Daniel Radcliffe), which I had gone to see in London with two friends. I've always been freaked out by the paranormal and that sense of otherness, and this play was full of shocks and scares galore. So it was from that I decided I wanted to do a haunted house story. Other than the setting I plucked two things from that play, the first was the blood curdling shriek of a woman (which I think only happens once or twice in my story) and the name Mr Kipps. Come on, that's a great name for a butler.

So what of the Master and the return of the Mara? Where did that come from? Well I wanted to use the Anthony Ainley figure, and although it grinds my gears he's in that ruddy tux it actually works here. He was always popping up in Davison stories in some pointless disguise, so it fit. The Mara on the other hand, well I'm not sure. I guess I knew I wanted to do something paranormal and creepy, and Kinda has some really mad, creepy, what-the-hell-is-happening moments to it, and so that's what I wanted to replicate. All of this came to me as we were walking from the theatre. The bare bones were there and then I went home and wrote it. There wasn't much to think about, it just sort of flowed and wrote itself within about a week. Very fun to write, and even more fun when you imagine the real actors and the real settings. I've never written a script and thought how it would look with toys. I cross the toy bridge when I have to film it!

If you watch Part One its mainly just "weird stuff is happening", and that's what I was after. I wanted the people watching to be scratching their head's going "What the frig is going on?", but I wanted them to want to know what's going on and tune in next week, and I think the Master cliffhanger added to that. The scenes set within the Darkness of the Inside were shot to resemble the scenes in Kinda as much as possible. Although Snakedance gets mentioned and the crystal link idea is used, I wanted to keep it closer to Kinda as that is the best of the two Mara stories. I was also keen to work Adric (which was needed for The Honour of War, which was produced not long after) as well as some other monsters to reflect the Doctor's fears and inner demons.

This story also featured a few new customs, namely Turlough, which was fashioned out of the head of an Auton on a Primeval figure's body, and Tegan, which used my original Peri custom. New hair, destroy the old Milliput and repaint! Yes, painting her dress did take ages. Another special addition was the Mara. Now when I wrote this story I just assumed I'd find a decent looking snake toy online and use that... well if I still had the original rushes with the snake toy you would see it looked worse than the Kinda snake! I don't think any footage of the rubber snake made it into the story, or if it did the real Mara from Snakedance overlays it. Yes, it was so horrendously awful that I had to rotoscope footage of the real Mara puppet onto a green background and chroma key it into the footage. Not ideal, and I don't think it looks too bad. Certainly better than that rubber toy.

Overall, this was an enjoyable story to film, but by Jove it was a fun story to write and edit. This story got a really lovely response when it went out, and I was thrilled. Sadly, the BBC took umbrage to my use of the title sequence and took a lot of the episodes down, and with it those lovely comments. So when you see the title as 'Copy of Doctor Who...', that's because it is. And for those wondering why I used Davison's console for the Master's TARDIS rather than the one made by AFT, well that's simply because it's what the BBC used to do!

Matt

Terra Nova - Revisited

             

In the run up to the release of the first half of the 3rd season of 8th Doctor adventures, I'm going to be revisiting some older stories and take the opportunity to explain why I wrote them and give some behind the scenes info.

Terra Nova came about for a variety of different reasons. The first was my utter desperation to produce another 60s era story. Sadly Hartnell's rogues gallery consists only of Daleks, a Mechanoid and Cybermen, the latter is impossible to use with Hartnell as they appear for the first time in his final story. Troughton's Doctor also suffers from only Daleks and Cybermen, and I was reluctant to do more Cybermen stories as I have produced loads and I knew the Daleks would be featured en masse in the 3rd season of 8th Doctor stories. This left me with only one option, Ice Warriors and the 2nd Doctor!

The Ice Warriors were a monster I had wanted to revisit for a while. I wanted a story where there were no Ice Lords and they were just bad,they still remarked on their code of honour but weren't really the sort to uphold it in their current situation. I was also keen to do a historical story. Now historicals with action figures are very hard to produce, which is why I seldom write them, and the reason for this is that there are very few historical figures that are in scale with the 5" Doctor Who line. However, I was really keen to get a historical story out there and as such I came up with the idea of the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria crossing paths with the Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova expedition. Why Terra Nova? I'm not sure. In fact I can't recall whether I decided to do the Terra Nova expedition and then decided on the Ice Warriors, or if I decided on Ice Warriors and then thought about Terra Nova. Regardless, I knew that I wanted the Doctor's involvement to be linked in with their tragedy but in such a way so that it did not impact the true historical events too much and did not undermine the memory of these brave explorers. The content had to be treated incredibly carefully and I wanted to make sure that each of the characters were presented as brave men. Their adventure with the Doctor was merely a side step from what actually happened. After they lost their race to the South Pole, Scott and his men embarked on a return journey that cost them their lives, but in this story they would save the planet from Ice Warrior enslavement and, tragically, no one on Earth would ever know. A great deal of research went into the story in order to ensure things could link up with historical documentation closely.

Hasbro's 3.75" Indiana Jones line had previously worked alongside the Doctor Who figures in The Destroyers of Worlds and so I looked to my vast collection of Star Wars figures for a cast of characters. Assorted variations of Hoth Troopers and Luke Skywalker and Han Solo in Hoth gear would serve as the cast. Moustaches were added to some doubles in order to distinguish them all! Victoria was a new custom based on her outfit from The Abominable Snowmen and The Ice Warriors, using a Primeval figure as the base. Apologies for not knowing the character's name, to me she was just custom fodder! Ideally I would have liked the 2nd Doctor to have worn his fur coat, but sadly the figure was never, and as of yet hasn't been, released. As such the idea of Heat Packs were created to get around the reasons as to why the Doctor and his friends weren't freezing to death!

The set designs were, as ever, supplied by the wonderful Philip Lawrence at AFT Downloads. The ice sculptures featured in the main chamber were simply glasses frosted with snow i.e. talcum powder. The title sequence had to be altered, simply because YouTube copyright wouldn't let me use the originals. So a little alteration here and there allowed me to produce something similar but different enough to be accepted by YouTube.

Overall I loved writing this story. It was one of those rare instances where it just flowed. Filming it was also fun, although there were many moments where Victoria fell over and I turned the air blue! Sadly the story did not quite get the views I had hoped for when compared to some of my other stories. Whether it was because of the slow 60s pacing, the black and white footage, or because no one really liked it, I cannot be certain. But I was pleased with the end result both in terms of the script and the finished film. Terra Nova meets The Ice Warriors meets Tomb of the Cybermen is my best way to describe it, the latter being totally unintentional and only really occurred to me while I was editing it! A huge amount of thanks goes to Kathrine Thomas, who did a wonderful job as the shrieky Victoria, and to Jonathan Toffolo, Porle Miller and John Mabey who supplied voices for the Terra Nova crew. Their assorted voices really made the authenticity stand out.