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Young Sherlock
Happy to see that my old friend Andy Lane is the writer chosen to helm a series of Young Sherlock Holmes adventures approved by the Estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. According to the announcement on the United Agents site, “The Colossal Schemes of Baron Maupertuis (is) due to be published in Spring 2010. The…
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Television Q and A
How did you begin your career in television? I was writing for radio at the time. It was a science fiction piece for Radio 4’s Saturday Night Theatre and Martin Jenkins, my producer, sent the script over to the Doctor Who production office. So out of the blue came this call to go over and…
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Truth in Escapism
Andy Greenwood’s comment on Crusoe and the Doctor, directing us onward to a fan’s mashup of Doctor Who images cut to the music from the Happy Days title sequence, made me think. In today’s Guardian, playwright Mark Ravenhill writes: “in the minds of many programme-makers, there now seems to be a crude binary option: you’re…
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Crusoe and The Doctor
I have no idea what brought this about. But it’s neatly done and kind of beguiling. Play it again. You know you want to.
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Sound Effects and TV History
This link from Mark Ayres tells of plans to issue a CD box set celebrating the 50th anniversary of the BBC’s now-defunct Radiophonic Workshop, pioneering in-house department responsible for themes and sound effects across a range of programmes. Ah, that original version of the Doctor Who theme – described by my godson as “ghosts screaming…
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Mister Memory
Many years back I was interviewed by a reporter from the Manchester Evening News who asked me to sign a couple of Doctor Who books for his children. Later, when I was jotting down his contact details in my address book, I noted the names of the children as well. I met him again more…
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You’re Kidding Me
WTF – Torchwood Babies????
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Out of the Unknown
The classic BBC anthology series. Only a few still exist, but when they first aired I watched them all. Best TVSF I’ve ever seen, because they treated the literary sources with the same fidelity and presumption of serious intent given to any classic adaptation. I’ve no doubt they’d appear creaky and flawed if I saw…
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The Nature of the Beast
Given that I’m a zillion miles from the action and not even an American writer, this isn’t the place to come for front-line news on the WGA strike. But what’s going on out there is an important and necessary step in evolution that’s going to affect us all, and we’ll be feeling its effects sooner…
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Crude, but Effective
Every little community has its in-jokes, and each community has its bottom-of-the-pecking order geek who catches on late and then fails to realise when everyone else has moved on. In the world of Doctor Who – which has become a big world again, due to the success of the TV series’ revival – the fast-track…
Hauling Like A Brooligan
Stephen Gallagher
