You can now re-enter the world of Doctor Who spin-off Class with a new audio story from Big Finish, Secret Diary of a Rhodian Prince, starring Greg Austin as Charlie Smith and Jordan Renzo as Matteusz Andrzejewski.

The DWC caught up with the pair — alongside writer, producer, and composer, Blair Mowat — to discuss the new production, getting back into the role of Sixth Formers, and how writing music compares to scripting dialogue…

The DWC: Blair, obviously you were composer for the Class TV series, and have now written Class: Secret Diary of a Rhodian Prince for Big Finish. What’s the difference between writing a musical composition, which is essentially telling a story by writing, and with a script that has dialogue and various other notes for the actors? What’s the biggest challenge in doing that?

Blair: One of the similarities is that dialogue has an internal rhythm and pace, and if you listen to certain writers like Aaron Sorkin, he will talk about the dialogue and writing being like a piece of music. Where you put the commas, where you put the punctuation, it is musical in the way that people speak. And people don’t always necessarily speak exactly how they would do in real life, but certainly his belief is that good writing is like a piece of music. And I think always remember that when I’m constructing scenes, that they have this internal flow and this internal rhythm. So I think there are similarities between writing music and composing, but what I try to do is actually wear completely separate hats.

So yes, occasionally, I will put in things about ‘music here’ or ‘music there’ in the script, which I’m usually told off for by my script editor. Because most writers wouldn’t do that, but of course I know I’m going to be composing it so I almost put it in there to remind myself. But when I come at it as a composer, I take off my writing hat and I make completely different decisions that I might have done then when I was writing the script.

And once I hear it, what these guys have done with it, and what our director Scott Handcock did with the directing — it changes things. And I originally didn’t envision any music over the diary entries; I thought they should be straight like an audiobook, and then when I heard them I was like ‘no, actually some of these are quite sweeping and cinematic and they need something underneath to support that’. So that journey of being both a writer and a composer, and being the first thing and pretty much the last thing that goes on, it’s really intellectually interesting and something that I really, really enjoy. And I think I would be terrified to hand it over to somebody else to write up the music. I’d love to do that one day, but I don’t know how I’d feel about it.

The DWC: So if you got this production opportunity again to do both roles, could you write the music first? Or at least write the scenes with the music in your head first, and then the dialogue after, if you know what story you want to take the characters on?

Blair: Well, I sort of did do that! There’s a few instances where I knew exactly; I’d be writing something, and I’d think ‘gosh, how are we going to do that in a short space of time? How are we going to segway that?’ — and I just knew that it was going to be that piece of music. And sometimes it would be something that I had already written [as a composition] and it was just a case of adapting a melody. And the opening actually of the whole script relies on music for humour; the music coming in or coming out helps punctuate certain jokes or things that we do. So I think knowing that in advance of what’s possible, especially on our budget which is limited obviously by not having a TV budget, it’s really helpful to know what tools we have at our disposal upfront [that we can use to aid the storytelling].

The DWC: And because for this release you’re writing it, writing the music and also producing it, what additional tasks have you had to do  in building this whole audio together?

Blair: I mean, contracts are really boring! Hahaha. About 50% of a producer’s job is really boring, and oh my gosh…

Greg: Lots of budgeting!

Blair: Yeah, budgeting and contracts are really quite dull, and I’d say that I ended up almost producing it out of necessity, really. Also having that extra layer of control was nice, in knowing how we were going to go about things, how much time we had to do things. Because I had to fit it around all my music writing as well, so a lot of this was written on international flights or moments where I just couldn’t actually be with my keyboard in my studio writing music. And so had I not been producing it, I might have had to write it a lot quicker and maybe it not be as good. So that was really nice. But I produce my own film scores all the time; I’m literally booking musicians, booking recording spaces, scheduling things so that they happen on time, so it’s really no different to doing that, apart from the fact that there’s a lot more contracts.

The DWC: Greg and Jordan, this is a show set in school years, and being at school I think is one of the most unique experiences/mindsets in life, nothing else quite comes close to being a student; how do you try to get yourself back into that mindset? When people develop so much further from the anxieties and the stresses and particularly the agitations and the relationship with authority when you’re in that setting and at that age? Obviously as adults now in professions where everyone’s got respect for each other, but your tolerance for authority and understanding of others’ responsibilities as a sixth former is a lot different. How do you get back into sixth former mindset?

Greg: Well I’m 30 now — I’ve just turned 30 — and it doesn’t feel happy. It’s terrifying, and playing a teenager into your 30s… well, that’s every actor’s dream I suppose. I’ll take it as long as I can do it. It’s such a weird time in everyone’s experience, that transition as seeing the world that’s something under control and that the adults know what they’re doing, and I suppose that’s the first real time where you start testing that theory and realising that ‘oh, hold on, if I’m getting close to being an adult, I’m a young adult now, and I still don’t know what’s going on, maybe no one else does either’. So with respect to authority, that’s when you’re really challenging it. And especially for Charlie, it’s something — he has just had all the authority in the world taken away from him, so it’s particularly interesting for him trying to reestablish his own authority on Earth and understand where he lies in the social order of things. It’s a very interesting thing to try to portray, and as an adult it’s really hard to remember what being a kid’s like. It’s really hard to remember what life was like a year ago, let alone half a lifetime ago now, but that’s the eternal challenge of being an actor. It’s trying to find those emotions and trying to portray them as truthfully as possible. That’s the challenge.

Jordan: I just feel like I’ve never grown up, so it’s not that difficult. If anything, it depends on year by year. Sometimes, you feel like you’ve regressed and you’re like ‘wow, where’s the really wise 23-year-old that I used to be?’ But then life happens, and you’ve gone back to kid mode. It just happens. It’s tough because you’re having conversations with old boys as well and you’re like ‘this is so cool, I’m hanging out with you, old man’. ‘Old man? We’re just buddies hanging out — we’re the same age!’ I only notice it if I do too much sport or something and I start to break down in the elbows and the knees.

Greg: The pain is settling in. I turned too quickly to one side and my neck just froze up.

Blair: It gets worse, boys. It gets worse.

Jordan: You only really know you’re an adult when you adult stuff. It sounds strange, but that’s the truth. You only know when you move house or sort something out, book a flight, something that seems pretty basic now but actually that’s the difference as when you’re a kid you literally can’t and you push it off. Or you make like massive childish lists that you never accomplish. Like every day, I check them off. I guess I never think about it. That rebelling against authority, I feel the same; I guess I don’t feel any different towards — I’ve always felt like I was just moving around. I didn’t have like a traditional way of growing up. Anyway, that’s answering another question.

The DWC: You’ve mentioned previously that these are scenes that we didn’t get to see in the show, or Patrick Ness didn’t have time to fit them in — are there actually moments in this that are picked directly from scenes that didn’t end up televised from Patrick’s ideas/scripts, or is it original content?

Blair: It’s all original content. Well, we obviously reference things that happened in the show, and I certainly rewatched parts of the show just to actually hear their vernacular and the way that they speak to each other. And also to avoid contradictions, I will dip into episodes and I will be like ‘gosh, I really need to rewatch two minutes of that scene’. I have them all on my computer and I can access like episode two, 17 minutes in very quickly within seconds, then watch something and go ‘ah yes, okay, cool, that’s not quite how I remembered it’. So we definitely reference things that happened verbatim in the show, but everything that is in the diary is new content spinning on what’s already happened.

I will say that obviously when I was on set occasionally, when I visited in Cardiff, I had conversations with Patrick Ness and also with the producer Derek Ritchie, and it’s honestly quite hard now to remember exactly how much of what was said was public, how much was private, whether certain things have got in there that might have been from discussions back then. It’s almost impossible to know now, exactly. So yes, quite possibly there will be things that were mentioned that were never fulfilled on screen. I also got early cuts of the episodes, and so I saw deleted scenes that never even ended up on DVDs, which sometimes I actually remember as being in the episodes. And then I go back to the episode, and then it’s ‘oh yeah, they cut that, that wasn’t in it’. And I also have all the scripts from those eight episodes as well, so I can go back and read stuff that Patrick wrote that didn’t end up in the actual edit. And maybe sometimes even wasn’t filmed because of time constraints or other things, because I even have early versions of the scripts. So there’s a whole wealth of material for me be able to draw on, which I’m sure a very avid Class fan would love to have! So it’s fascinating, and yeah, it does help having that.

A big thank you to Greg, Jordan, Blair, and Big Finish!

You can order Class: Secret Diary of a Rhodian Prince from Big Finish now. Only 1000 physical CD pressings will be made, which you can order (alongside a complimentary download version) for just £10.99; or grab a download-only copy for £8.99.

Director Graeme Harper is always interesting to listen to. You’ll know him for his extensive directorial credits, including The Caves of Androzani, Utopia, and Turn Left/ The Stolen Earth/ Journey’s End.

I caught up with him at Neil Cole’s Museum celebration, chatting with Pete Jorysz (Baptist Minister and knowledgeable fan) about Warriors’ Gate.

I joined in…

Graeme: [Warriors’ Gate] had its challenges. I was First Assistant, and it had seemed fine in pre-production, then I realised in rehearsals [Director, Paul Joyce] was not going to plan how to shoot this. I had to stand next to him and write my own camera scripts. Shall we say, I learned how I would do it differently! They gave me the director’s job after that.

The DWC: You’ve done a lot of epic scale and action, like Dougie Camfield. How do you handle that with the smaller intimate details that make it human?

G: Visualisation and planning. Often, the detail comes from having the time due to good planning on the big picture to pick details up. An example, in Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, we’d finished when Russell said we need a different opening, the horror of the Cybermen being made. So we filmed it. I’d said ‘wrap’ and gone home, then I realised I hadn’t any close ups of one of the main protagonists. I rang Phil Collinson who just laughed his head off, called me a stupid B! Then he called the actor in next day and we picked up the shot.

DWC: Colin Spall was with you in that story, and in Revelation of the Daleks. You’re famous for being the only director to have worked on Classic and recent Who. How has it changed?

G: In the ’80s, I was alone in the studio. We had to compete with Star Wars and we knew we couldn’t with our resources, but I knew it had charm, was loved and popular. I tried with what little experience I had to shoot some single camera work, and keep up the pace in Androzani.

DWC: I like the pacing of The Waters of Mars, especially the slo-mo where they are packing up to evacuate the base.

G: I wanted to make sure you did not miss the reactions between persons. Lindsay Duncan underplayed it so beautifully – proved why she was the Commander.

Waters of Mars is proper adult science fiction, but under Doctor Who became cinematic.

Pete: Was it a nightmare?

G: Yes, but it was enjoyable; a problem to be solved, and a brilliant team of people to work with.

Pete: What was it like working with Tom Baker?

Margot Hayhoe, assistant floor manager and production manager, sitting at the next table, joins in.

Margot: With me, he was perfectly okay, because it [Logopolis] was his last show.

P: But he could be quite forceful in his opinions.

G: As First Assistant, I knew him well so got on with him. One time, I’d asked the crew if they would go over (the 10pm limit) for 15 minutes. He said were you going to ask the Leading Man? You had to come back strong – yes, of course I was going to, once I knew the crew would make it possible. Truthfulness goes a long way.

Davros: “I hope you got my best side. My best side is my dark side.”

DWC: I’m told you’re known for liking actors.

G: I once asked ‘why do you like working with me?’ and was told: ‘you allow actors to be good; you let them show you what they can do.’

DWC: How do you work that along with the enormous crew behind the camera?

G: The First Assistant clears the floor, the actors and director come in and work through the scene, they know their lines. I don’t tell them my plan — I just say ‘you enter here; let’s see what happens.’ You negotiate. Then I say to the crew, ‘this is the way I want to do it, these are the kind of shots,’ and we negotiate with the Director of Photography. I establish that they are at liberty to offer something they can see in a different way.

DWC: Do you have to be an extrovert?

G: You have to be NOISY! And you have to keep your eye on the bigger picture. I was mentoring someone who got that rabbit in the headlights look when she realised she couldn’t handle the knock on effects of changing one thing, under pressure of time.

Pete: What’s it like working with Russell T Davies?

G: He’s a force of nature. He’s mad! He called me one time to meet about something and we sat outside a restaurant in Soho for hours, in the rain. That’s dedication.

DWC: Would you like to be part of his new era?

G: I’m not hurt if I don’t get asked – I think most people think I’ve retired! I would LOVE to do more – I want to see what happens.

Graeme was accompanied by his lovely wife, Bernadette.

DWC: What’s it like for you when Who fans obsess about a small element of Graeme’s work?

Bernadette: It’s interesting the range he has done, from Doctor Who to soaps to Spitting Image. But in all of them, he loves actors.

DWC: Does he take his work home with him?

B: OMG! But I love hearing about it; my life has become richer.

Our lives are all richer for their association with Doctor Who, Bernadette, and for all the brilliant people who make it happen.

Thank you to Graeme, Bernadette, Margot, Pete, and, of course, Neil Cole.

Margot Hayhoe (Assistant Floor Manager, Production Manager) has worked for decades in countless BBC productions, including Doctor Who (on various stories from The War Machines to Snakedance), and The Triffids (1981). Neil Cole has just beautifully restored an original miniature from that iconic adaptation, for his Museum of Classic Sci Fi.

I spoke with her exclusively for the DWC.

DWC: From all your experience in floor managing and producing, who do you value behind the show, the ones we don’t see on screen?

Margot: All the creatives, designers, costume, make-up, and without the camera crew nothing would happen. You can’t pinpoint one because every person is important, whether they’re in for a day or much longer. It’s a big family, trying to make the best programme we can.

In the past it was a bit like a university, all the background departments, reference and photo libraries. If you rang the right department, they’d bend over backwards to get you what you needed. Then after the demand to make each part a business, it was cheaper to go out and buy a record than to borrow it from them.

Margot’s husband Mike was quietly accompanying her, staying out of the limelight. But it turned out he was a camera operator, who happened to film the Jon Pertwee into Tom Baker regeneration!

DWC: A little bit of history!

Mike: It wasn’t a big deal at the time, and what we did wasn’t very complicated. We just stopped the recording, and we felt that ‘is there anything more?’ moment. Barry Letts went out of the studio leaving Jon Pertwee lying on the floor. He brought in Tom who was lain down on the floor close to Jon, and each had a camera on them. We checked the heads were in the same position, then the effect was just the vision mixer with two levers on a desk!

The 21^st century versions involve emanations of great fireworks and SFX. We had some special effects, but didn’t use them much, regarding them as rather… obvious.

Margot Hayhoe, Graeme Harper, and Neil Cole formed a panel at the event celebrating Neil’s museum and a new film about it.

Q: Margot, how difficult was it doing Fury from the Deep with all that foam? Is it true Patrick Troughton fell in, got up, and kept filming?

MH: I can’t remember if Patrick fell over, but a lot of us did! The foam just went everywhere; it was chaos. We had all of TWO cameras to film it. The visual effects dept were very good; they said ‘release the foam!’ — this wall of foam just grew and grew. We were all edging back towards the studio wall. And we got told off for making the floor too wet!

NC: The Caves of Androzani and Revelation of the Daleks are two of my favourites. You seem to get the small budgets and make something incredible.

GH: You need a lot of experience, which I didn’t have in those days as a director. But Bob Holmes’ script was great. I was excited that I was going to do it. Sometimes decisions are made for money-saving, but work, like the decision to use real machine guns and blanks, not expensive laser effects.

B: What changes have you experienced in the BBC?

MH: Budgets are much larger, and they use single camera like movies. I miss the rehearsal time, four or five days so you could see the whole story. Now, no one has an overall feeling for how it will turn out. That’s a loss. TV has improved technically, but there’s a lot of dumbing down.

GH: We used to rehearse; in the ’90s, an hour and a half programme would be two weeks’ rehearsal. Ideas and decisions were sorted during rehearsal so the filming time was efficient. That was a fantastic system. Now, the director has to work out the plans, sometimes with the sets, in advance, and you have to visualise without talking to any actors. In 10 or 15 minutes, you’re supposed to be ready to show how it’s going to go: I find that ridiculous. Back in the ’80s, it was multi-camera, rehearse, record. Now, it’s shot backwards, forwards, and sideways, and no one has a sense of what the whole thing is. I moan about the system, but all the big studios show amazing drama, so it must work!

NC: What about ‘producer’s choice’?

Graeme and Margot both groan.

MH: Once upon a time, the BBC was a big happy family and we all helped each other out. The departments were all told to become business units, had to sell their stuff to producers. Budgets forced producers out of house. It was the death of costume, design, and all those departments. We lost all the flexibility and mutual help. Bureaucracy. In the ’60s, we were in a place of excellence, employed there.

Q: What’s it like to have part of your life preserved in Neil’s museum?

GH: Fantastic! You will definitely want to come in. No matter how much money you throw at Doctor Who, it’s still very hard work, so it’s brilliant that people want to see the work behind it. Extraordinary. You’ll never escape this fantastic family.

NC: The BBC never had a plan to look after their stuff.

MH: They spent a lot of money creating a very accessible, well-organised costume department. PC came along and they had to sell it off. But can I remind everyone — there is a baby Triffid in the room! I am very grateful Neil has restored it; it is admirable.

Q: Why is that BBC adaptation so iconic?

MH: John Duttine was wonderful, and the Triffids themselves were scary. Glycerine gave them a horrible feel, and the SOUND really terrified people. The clacking, knocking menace. And the opening titles were eerie; they reminded me of lockdown.

NC: And it IS the book, not a movie vaguely based on the idea!

Q: What’s your best tip for how to be successful in your roles?

GH: When I was doing Bergerac, I rang Mark Campbell for advice. He said, ‘keep it moving; move the actors, move the camera, preferably both. Do that and you’ll never stop working’ – and I haven’t!

MH: Watch them, learn how to – or how not to. Be polite, and not shouty. [Margot then recounted a time when she shouted at Graeme for playing the harmonica when everyone else was trying to sleep!] Never be afraid to ask, don’t pretend you know.

NC: In the early days, edits cost so much; how did that affect you?

MH: Me, not so much, but the directors would have to accept stuff they weren’t happy with. Rehearsal helps, especially live TV like Z cars – especially if you were doing the back projection and it ran out!

GH: I was once forced by the person training me to record one straight through, as live. It was ‘orrible! But it worked like a dress rehearsal, because we did it again that evening and it was perfect.

Q: What are your memories of the big farewell on the beach scene from Doomsday?

GH: It was a big scene for Billie [Piper] because it was filmed in the middle: she had to work up to say this big goodbye to the whole show, then go back to four months more. I didn’t know either of them well, and it was a huge, 52 day block – no one has done that before or since. 15 nights of overnight shoots. I went to see them in make-up to discuss how we were going to approach it. There’s an etiquette when you’re doing close ups with artists; you do the lady first. I knew she was going to be emotional and wanted to be sure we got that on camera! We didn’t want to ‘waste’ her tears on David [Tennant]’s version. Fortunately, she wanted to go first because she didn’t think she could bring it back for a second go. But the first take was awful, windy, hair everywhere, snot! She was upset that she had to go again, but it was brilliant. Now I’m getting emotional myself!

Come back to the DWC later this week for an exclusive interview with Graeme!

I live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. 13 miles over the Moor is our neighbouring tiny town, also in the middle of nowhere. Visitors call them villages; they’re wrong: villages are usually much larger.

One Saturday earlier this month, I was walking through the neighbouring tiny town with one of those visitors, chatting about the weather, the local emergency services and human needs, the value of community. I say “walking” – I was trying hard not to float or skip in fangirl glee, because the visitor was Sophie Aldred, fresh from the broadcast of her triumphant return to Doctor Who.

We were heading for the celebration of Neil Cole’s Museum of Classic Sci Fi, a day which went on to cement that first impression; in Who, like no other show, there is no barrier between stars and fans, collectors and creators, crew, cast, and helpless obsessives. During the day, I took copious notes for our site (with permission from Neil and all featured individuals of course), and here offer you, dear reader, a tiny selection of the happy conversations that filled the day…

First, I catch up with Hal Townsend and Phil Robinson, creature creators…

The DWC: Why do you do it?

Hal: We’re such massive fans, which is how I met Neil. It is a good community he has managed to create. The events are always really friendly. My mate Phil and I create the costumes, so when we come to an event we dress up.

DWC: Do you have a favourite era?

Hal: Classic has the best story, adventure, and character development. But I’ve worked on Chris [Chibnall]’s era, and the new Russell [T Davies] specials.

DWC: Wow! I guess you can’t give us any spoilers, but can you say why we’re having to wait for so long?

Hal: Russell never, never does anything without a reason – In Russell We Trust.

DWC: And Phil, why do you do this job?

Phil: There’s such a diversity of designs, it is very inspiring; it reminds you of your childhood. And I love creating things.

DWC: As a sculptor, how do you create creature costumes in which actors can express things?

Phil: There are complex animatronics in some, but it’s also the basic material. Silicone is soft, and they add something to make it even softer, so it can cling so close to the skin, and move with the muscles underneath.

DWC: You created the new Sil costume for Nabil Shaban?

P: Yes, I went to his house and took casts and measurements to make a full body costume. And I had to go to Sophie [Aldred]’s house to make a cast of her head, in a bit of time pressure as it was a last-minute decision to make her character, Lady Na, wear prosthetics [for Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arodor].

DWC: I gather you have been involved in the upcoming RTD2 era?

Phil: Yes, but I have signed an NDA, so I can’t give you any information.

Hal: If I told you, I’d have to kill you.

Phil: I can say we helped in the team on two different kinds of monsters for the 60^th anniversary specials. Millennium Effects did monsters from 2005 until Chibnall started; now they have come back with Russell.

DWC: So can your understanding of the time it takes behind the scenes help fans with our impatience?

Phil: We were sculpting them back in April. So we have even longer to wait to see the finished product!

We all had to wait 16 years last century, but Keith Barnfather says:

‘For me, the ‘wilderness’ years never really existed. We carried on, with fan-made audio visuals, Reel Time, and Myth Makers. The ‘Classic/NuWho split doesn’t occur to us.’

It is seriously worth looking up the massive range of stories, interviews and films he’s behind. The story of Neil’s museum is here, presented by Sophie Aldred.

Steve Lyons is a Doctor Who writer who thrived through the ‘wilderness’ years, producing novels, short stories, Big Finish, and other audios. I chatted with him about conventions and fandom.

Steve: I have done it as a guest and as an attendee. It’s just brilliant that Doctor Who has this solid aspect, when we can get together and talk about something we love. It’s my favourite TV show because it very quickly became so much more than a show.

DWC: What made you a writer?

Steve: I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember reading.

DWC: What audio Who are you proudest of?

Steve: The Witch Hunters, The Crooked World, The Architects of History. When I had a companion I had created (Tracy Childs’ Elizabeth Klein) and monsters I’d created on Radio 7/4extra, it was really exciting – I had my name in the Radio Times!

John Hogg, prop replica creator, collector, and ‘Killer Auton’ actor is an excellent example of how fans become part of the show. He says:

“The first TV I remember was The Time Warrior. We couldn’t afford a TV before then. Now I’m in the credits for the Blu Ray Season 8 trailer, wearing this head I made as a killer Auton!”

Adam, collector:

“I was 3 years old, in front of Androzani. I’ve been addicted ever since; it’s been part of all my life.”

People call ‘Ol Sixie ‘The Ambassador’ but I’d say there’s another uber fan and star whose work for the show is invaluable. Sophie Aldred is such a pleasure to talk with.

DWC: As a woman of very similar age to yourself I have to ask, parachuting into the TARDIS… are you trying to make the rest of us feel inadequate?

Sophie: [Laughs] When I first saw the script, I was delighted. Chris had asked what I wanted to do, and I said whatever Ace was always doing, lots of running and jumping. Then when I saw the sheet is said ‘stunt double.’ I thought ‘oh no; health and safety aren’t going to allow me’. After day one I never saw the ‘stunt double’ again – they realised I was as foolhardy as ever!

Jamie Magnus Stone would come up to me and say; ‘do you fancy doing…? Or he’d say ‘I’ve had an idea’ and sketch it on a bit of paper. ‘If you were to lie on this plank, on a dolly, we could whiz you into the TARDIS. I said ‘Yes! Let’s go for it. The crew thought I was bonkers. I thought ‘are you really going to do this? Yes. I am.’

DWC: Is it really an encouragement to be active?

Sophie: That is exactly what I said to Chris. I would love to encourage women of my age; they have a chance. I work at it though; I run nearly every day, I dance, I eat carefully.

DWC: What does it mean to have Ace in Classic and the most recent televised Who, and maybe even going into the future?

Sophie: The outpouring, the love of the character of Ace I have received this week… I’d love to think she has a future. That Russell is looking and thinking maybe a spin off – I haven’t heard yet!

There followed a screening of Doctor on Display, then another tea and home-made cakes break, followed by Q&A panels.

Q&A: Sophie Aldred, Keith Barnfather, Roger Stevens – presenter and creators of the film – and Neil Cole, its subject.

Neil thanked the guests for coming but Sophie thanked him.

Sophie: This is not like a normal Who con; it’s very, very gentle, relaxed. Loads of time for everyone to spend time with everyone.

Q: Roger, how do you edit so much potential material?

Roger: It’s a very people focussed story, about the people, not the props. It has ups and downs. We wanted a very human story and I hope that’s what we got.

Neil: In the film, restored artefacts from the show are referred to as ‘sacred.’

Keith: One of the things about Doctor Who is there’s no other show that’s exactly like it. The line between those who make and those who watch is has blurred over the years. We are a family.

Q: Sophie, what’s next in line for you?

Sophie: well, from the sublime to the ridiculous, I’ve just been voicing a Barbara Cartland novel – lots of skin-tight pantaloons! You can’t plan as an actor.

Q: What was that scene [in The Power of the Doctor] with Sylvester like?

Sophie: I recorded my bits in the cold and wet dripping cave in the Brecon Beacons. I don’t think Sylvester would have like that very much! I’d been given a non-actor to read his lines, so I asked would you mind if Barnaby [Edwards, Dalek Operator] read in his lines. He did quite a good impression of Sylvester! Then we did the other way round. We had this lovely morning, Sylvester in his costume – there was something about him in that hat and scarf and jumper. Pretty emotional. Then I looked up and there just ‘happened’ to be a couple of hundred people dropped into watch!

After that scene, I was supposed to go home. I saw them [Peter, Colin, Sylvester, and Paul] in their trailer, and I thought ‘I can’t go home!’, so I stuck around. So for the rest of the day I played all the other Doctors. I read in their lines – it was the best Doctor Who con ever! Chris had come in specially for that day. An amazing day.

At the end of the day, the Cybermen came in and saw all the Doctors walking off, and said, oh no! something else we have to keep quiet about!

Q: What was the Companions Anonymous scene like?

Sophie: It was weird, the room was hazy with dry ice. Jodie [Whittaker] wasn’t in the scene but came in just to be there and see everyone. Everyone was so kind to William Russell, especially John Bishop [the first male companion and the most recent]. The floor manager knew he was struggling, came over and knelt in front of him, so tender. I actually thought a couple of days later ‘was that all a dream?’ Joyful to be together, reverential.

Neil: Colin was back on telly – in his element!

Sophie: Colin felt vindicated, to be back in the fold, doing such a great job.

Q: What got you into Doctor Who?

Sophie: I watched as everyone did. But I watched through a crack in the door, and made my brother watch so he could tell me about it in case I had to close the door!

I wanted to watch Jodie’s because it’s an icon. I’ve met so many girls and younger women wearing the Jodie costume, and a friend rang and said they’re showing the Rosa episode in school history class.

Neil: [who is also an art teacher] I have shown the Vincent episode in Art so many times.

Q: What was it like being back in The Jacket?

Sophie: The costume manager was going to make a replica, but I said use the real thing. So she kept it carefully. She told me ‘I’ve had so many people come to see The Jacket.’ In the scene where I pull it out of the floor in UNIT, they said ‘we’re going to do the Hero shot.’ I said ‘ooh, nice’. They said ‘no, not you – the Jacket!’

Keith: Maybe a spinoff?’

Q: What does the character of Ace mean to you?

Sophie: Everything. When I walked into John Nathan-Turner’s office with his Dalek curtains and framed Tom Baker Y-fronts, who’d have thought I’d be here 30-something years later?

You sign NDAs. The only person who knew was my husband because when my agent rang I burst into tears. He said what’s the matter? I said [mimicking sobbing] ‘Nothing’s the matter; I’m going to be in Doctor Who again!’

Keith: You rang and said something’s happened but I can’t tell you. So I knew, but you couldn’t say, so I couldn’t ask. What would life be like without Doctor Who, all the friends? We wouldn’t be here.

I don’t think any of us can imagine life without Doctor Who. Where else would you hear a ring-modulated Dalek utter ‘Oopsie daisy’? Its operator was a young girl, doing well with the big heavy travel machine. She is part of the Who family, evidence that there is No Other Show quite like it..

Bonus Material: Exclusive regeneration scene for the DWC, performed by Jason Lythgoe Hay and Avenue Who puppets

Video not working? Try clicking here.

Kaleidoscope is the latest Third Doctor Adventures release from Big Finish. Featuring the Season 11 line-up, the story sees the Doctor, Sarah Jane and the Brigadier faced with a mysterious visitor from another world:

“His name is Kaleidoscope. He claims to have travelled halfway across the universe to warn all humankind that it stands on the brink of extinction. And a certain tenacious young journalist has got an exclusive interview with this alien messiah…

But it’s not Sarah Jane Smith who’s got the out-of-this-world scoop – it’s her rival, the unscrupulous Jenny Nettles. Sarah’s busy helping the Doctor and UNIT work out if Kaleidoscope is for real or a fake when RAF Phantoms scramble to intercept an unidentified something homing in on a top-secret missile base.

It seems like Kaleidoscope’s apocalyptic predictions might all be about to come true.”

We had an opportunity to speak to Big Finish’s Third Doctor, Tim Treloar, and Sadie Miller, who once again plays Sarah Jane Smith.

The DWC: Thanks very much for your time. The new release is Kaleidoscope and it’s got a rather wonderful cover, Tim, of the Doctor riding a jet ski, by the looks of it. I’m assuming you didn’t get to do that?

Tim: Yeah, I did. Big Finish paid £30,000 and let me have three hours on a jet ski.

The DWC: (Laughs) Right. Well, I’m pleased you specified that one.

Tim: I know! I didn’t, obviously. I’d have loved to have done. I should have put that in my rider, shouldn’t I?

The DWC: Yeah, definitely. And is it fair to say that it’s quite an action-oriented story, this one?

Tim: Oh, it certainly is, yeah, certainly.

The DWC: And thinking back to Jon Pertwee’s time, he did love his cars and his motorbikes and so on.

Tim: Yeah, he loved gadgets, didn’t he? Certainly did: Bessie and the TARDIS obviously. Every Doctor has the TARDIS.

The DWC: Sadie, I know you used to go to the conventions with your mum. Did you come across Jon Pertwee?

Sadie: Yeah, I did. I met him a few times and he was always lovely, always very ‘on’, very ‘the Doctor’. I think he did sort of rub some people up the wrong way, but I found it quite charming, really. I really liked him. I thought he was a lovely person, very warm and affable and very much there for the fans. He knew what the fans wanted from him and he wanted to give them the Jon Pertwee experience. But I thought he was a lovely chap.

The DWC: That’s really nice to hear. And one of the most interesting things about having Sarah in the Big Finish stories now is that, because she was in the series for quite a long time, you get to play with different Doctors and at different points in Sarah’s time with the Doctor. Does that make a difference to how you might approach it? I know that this one, for example, is a bit earlier in her time. Maybe she’s a bit less experienced, a bit more unsure of things?

Sadie: Yes, definitely. And I think she had a very distinct relationship with the Third Doctor, as opposed to the Fourth. So you always want to bring in the different shades. I think with Jon’s Doctor, it’s still very much what I would call a more traditional companion role, where he is the Doctor and she is following him, and then with Tom it’s more of a friendship, and a bit more of that banter coming in. But with this one, I think she’s still finding her feet, certainly as a journalist and also in the world of travelling with the Doctor as well.

The DWC: Tim, a similar question to you: you’ve obviously done these releases for a while with different people alongside you. Does it make a difference? Does it make it more varied to have different companions alongside you?

Tim: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, totally, yeah, with the three companions that I’ve got: Katy [Manning as Jo Grant], Sadie, and Daisy [Ashford, who plays Liz Shaw]. Completely different and all equally brilliant. But, yeah, there’s a different energy with each of them. I suppose the Jo Grant period is more a sort of traditional Doctor in charge, and then he’s challenged more with the likes of Sarah. You’ve got all highly intelligent women, but different energies with them. So I think stories reflect that as well.

The DWC: I was reading an older interview from when you started playing the Doctor, and it was mentioned that Tom Baker was one of the first people to pick up on the fact that you sounded rather like Jon Pertwee.

Tim: Yeah, that was actually my first Big Finish job. It was Destination Nerva, it was called, and I was playing this zombie Victorian, sort of effete lord. He was quite camp. And Tom said to Nick [Briggs], he said, ‘He sounds like someone, who is it? He sounds exactly like Jon!’ It started there, really. So it’s a bit lucky that I got cast in that particular role, which led on to playing the Third Doctor.

The DWC: Well, if it was good enough for him…

Tim: Well, yeah, exactly. I can’t do a Tom Baker voice, though. It’s very hard, that one.

The DWC: Yeah, that’d be a challenging one to do, Tom Baker. Judging from the blurb about the new release, it’s a longer story. The scale of it seems quite big. I know the last Third Doctor one, The Annihilators, was quite an epic story. It seems like they’re upping the scale?

Tim: Yeah, they went for the seven-parter, didn’t they? So that was a departure. That meant, I think, one less day recording for us, which is a bit unfortunate, because normally we do two stories for a box set. But that was great experience as well. Yeah, it’s great.

The DWC: Are you back in the studio now for recording?

Tim: Sometimes, yeah. I’m recording something later from home, but I go to a studio which is not too far from me. It’s about 40 minutes away, outside London, which is great in the countryside. It’s the same studio that Tom records in. That’s quite fortunate that they let me do that because I can keep pretending that I’m very scared of going on the tube!

The DWC: Sadie, does it make a difference in terms of whether you’re recording virtually or in a studio? Is it a different type of energy?

Sadie: Yeah, definitely. I mainly record from home but I’m online, so I can record with everyone else in real time. But for this story, I had to record all of it completely on my own, just with another actor reading in. In some of the scenes, I had one take to do it in to get it all done. So I’ll be very interested to hear how the sound engineers worked their magic to get it all spliced together. But it is nice when you can be in the studio and get to know people a bit more and have that chemistry.

Tim: It’s much more fun. The last one was in the studio in Wadhurst, and everyone was down there and it was just great: actors together, the banter, and inappropriate humour! It’s great, I’ve really missed that.

The DWC: A last question for both of you. What would you say is the biggest thing you’ve learned through doing Doctor Who with Big Finish?

Sadie: Well, I guess for me, it’s almost like being part of a repertory company. So you come in and although you may not be playing different characters – Tim and I broadly play the same role – you get to meet such a wide breadth of actors, but then there’s that core team that you get to work with again and again. I think it gives you that confidence to try different things, even within the same character and the same performance, which I really enjoy. You’ve got almost that safety net underneath you. And as Tim said, everyone gets on so well and has a lot of fun, so it feels very collaborative. No matter which director or engineer you’re working with, it’s always a really enjoyable session.

Tim: Yeah, I’d agree completely with Sadie on that, I’d replicate exactly what she said. That’s what it’s all about. And it’s a lot of fun. It’s always a lot of fun. It’s great when you part the core team, you can welcome people to your culture. You got Nick Briggs there as well, who’s very much in the Whoniverse, so it’s just fantastic. It’s always a very friendly environment we create and foster.

Our thanks to Big Finish, Tim Treloar, and Sadie Miller.

Kaleidoscope is available on CD and download from Big Finish.

Being granted an interview with Christopher Eccleston would always be a big deal; for a Doctor Who fan who was introduced to the show through the Ninth Doctor, however, it’s doubly so. It’s fair to say that, without Eccleston (alongside many others, notably former showrunner Russell T Davies and ex-producers, Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson), the Doctor Who Companion website wouldn’t be here.

But everything is a big deal when it comes to Eccleston and Doctor Who. Rightly so. Every time he appears at conventions, it’s huge news. Whenever someone thinks about the show’s heady comeback in 2005, Christopher’s smiling face is an intrinsic part of those memories. His return to the role of the Doctor for audio company, Big Finish was a massive revelation, something that many fans hoped would happen but something which seemed unlikely.

It was for Big Finish that Eccleston was talking to media outlets now, ahead of the release of The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Ravagers in May 2021.

Restrictions imposed by lockdown actually proved a boon, though: no, these interviews couldn’t be face-to-face, but we could talk in between his recording for further boxsets. It gave us an intimate feeling, as if gaining brief access to the inner sanctum of Big Finish. Indeed, Chris seemed very at ease, seemingly fresh from a lunch break and raring to go. The atmosphere was warm. When I tell him it’s great to talk to him, it’s 14-year-old me talking, and this big kid is heartened to hear him reciprocate.

Eccleston appears a natural actor, at home when performing, when immersing himself in another character, another world. Naturally, I wonder how far this extends, how flexible the scripts are for these new audio adventures. Was he keen to offer notes and tweak the scripts like some of his predecessors (Tom Baker being the best-known example of this)?

“No, I’ve never been an actor who ‘notes’ writers, never – I don’t believe [in it]. If there’s a script I don’t like, if there’s writing I don’t like, I just don’t take part,” Chris says. “I was trained in the Seventies and Eighties by absorbing the very high standard of television writing for British television, and then I went to drama school and I trained myself on Shakespeare and [Henrik] Ibsen and [Johan August] Strindberg, and a central thing of my training is honouring the writer, protecting the writer.

“And what I find with writers is, unlike some directors, they have huge respect for the intelligence of their audience: they know that an audience is highly sophisticated, far brighter than us television programme makers, and they never write down; they always write up,” he continues. “And I feel like within the [Big Finish] module, there’s a great deal of conversation between – there’s the central hub, the team, and they draw the writers together, so there’s a consistency in the writing of the Ninth Doctor’s voice. But there’s also that great thing that you get from episode to episode where he’s stretched somewhat by the individual writer that keeps it fresh – both in the television series and in the audios – for the actor playing it. Because he is every one of us, I think. He belongs to everybody within that creative process. And that shape-shifting element to his persona is lovely.”

All three stories in Ravagers are written and directed by Nicholas Briggs, creative director for Big Finish Productions (although we’re teased with many other writers for subsequent sets).

Of course, Eccleston and Briggs worked together when filming Doctor Who Series 1, with Briggs on set to provide the voices of the Daleks in Dalek and Bad Wolf/ The Parting of the Ways.

Looking back, then, are there any stories from 2005 Ecceston would like to do again, to remake on audio?

“I wouldn’t,” he says. “I wouldn’t remake; I think the beauty of this for me is to make the audio things and not to refer back. I don’t think we need [to] – the strength of the writing that Big Finish have means that we don’t have to refer to the television series and I don’t want to revisit all that. It stands; those 13 episodes stand, for good or for bad, and if I were one of the people at Big Finish, I wouldn’t brief a writer like ‘let’s take x, y, or z and redo it’ – No, let’s create something entirely new.”

That’s definitely what’s whetting the appetite of Doctor Who fans, the chance to spend more time with the Ninth Doctor and see him approach new situations. It has, after all, been some 16 years since we last saw this incarnation (although footage is sometimes reused, i.e. The Day of the Doctor steals a brief moment from The Parting of the Ways).

In that time, Eccleston has done a wealth of productions – The Shadow Line, The Borrowers, Thor: The Dark World, Safe House, The Life of Rock with Brian Pern, and many more – but are there any he thinks would translate well to audio? After all, Big Finish doesn’t solely do Doctor Who: the company’s other work includes The Picture of Dorian Grey, Sherlock Holmes, and Shakespeare.

“Well, I’m not finished with Macbeth,” he enthuses. “I did 119 performances of Macbeth; I want very much to revisit that on the stage in London in a much smaller, more script-based, intimate, stripped-back production. I really want to do that on stage, and I will go back to it; I’m not finished with Macbeth. And I would very much like to do Macbeth with Big Finish. There’s a couple of Shakespeares I’d like to do – Richard the Third, Coriolanus, Shylock in Merchant of Venice.”

I suggest The A Word too. The series, in which he plays Maurice Scott, whose grandson is diagnosed with autism. The BBC show is a huge success and a spin-off is even in the works. But could it work without the audience seeing those stunning Lake District vistas? “I think A Word would work wonderfully with that central notion of autism and communication and failure to communicate; I think that would translate great to audio!” he says. “Off the top of my head, I can’t think of other stuff. But I think that communication element to The A Word and of course the richness.”

His love for the Bard quickly draws him back, as he continues: “And you can be very psychologically precise with Shakespeare and strip back what you sometimes get, which is directorial overload, of gimmickry and stuff, and it’d be nice to take all that back.”

Although time is short, it feels like we’ve covered a lot already, and Eccleston’s passion for great storytelling really shines through. Nonetheless, he’ll soon be ushered back to the recording booth. That afternoon, it sounds like he’s about to record the fourth volume of The Ninth Doctor Adventures, which, it has since been revealed, will feature Jon Culshaw as the Brigadier.

It sounds like things could get heavier for the Doctor again, so now I wonder what part the Time War plays in these upcoming Big Finish productions. It’s been expanded upon a lot since Eccleston left Doctor Who, so would Chris like to expand on that more, or would he prefer to be cast free from those shackles and explore the more fun side of the Doctor?

“Well, yeah, what’s been interesting, apart from I think the one we’re doing at the moment, the Doctor has been very light and that’s been wonderful,” Chris concludes. “I think probably I’m slightly known for the heaviness. He carried the guilt of the survivor and the scars of that. I think that was essential to the first series; I think that’s why they needed me – because I could bring some of that. And all the actors before me could bring that; it’s just that because it’d be quiet for so long, I think it needed a little bit of weight and credibility in a sense. And I’d done a lot of that with things like Our Friends in the North and Cracker and [playing] Derek Bentley [in] Let Him Have It, Shallow Grave… So that was useful.

“And I think as for possibly further down the line, at the moment he’s free of his angst, and [he’s] questing, and enthusiastic, and comedic, and loving, but who knows, further down the line, if we want to go to a darker tone, that’s a possibility.”

To think we’ve gone all this time without saying the one word the Ninth Doctor is most associated with. Nevertheless, chatting to Christopher Eccleston has been fantastic.

Thank you to Chris, and to Steve and Caitlin at Big Finish.

The Ninth Doctor Adventures begins in May 2021 with Ravagers and continues with three further volumes, to be released in August 2021, November 2021, and February 2022.

A version of this interview (and more) appears in 100 Objects of Doctor Who, available now.

A new Doctor Who and cult TV website has launched, featuring the work of Doctor Who Companion contributors. Indeed, its editor is Christian Cawley, who co-created Kasterborous, the forerunner to the DWC. Sol3, however, is a very different sort of site, a satirical magazine not afraid to tackle any subject (or use occasional bad language).

We interviewed Christian in our usual thorough, inimitable, exhaustive way about Sol3…

What?

Sol3 is a monster. It’s conceived as a sort of Daily Mash/Babylon Bee take on the UK sci-fi/cult pantheon, a satire through that lens of a shared cultural reference.

There might be scope for the occasional “bigger” thing like Game of Thrones or Star Wars but I want to keep it in that sort of ITC, BBC, ITV, and classic fantastical fiction. So for example there might be a touch of Westworld, but not The Walking Dead. Life on Mars might get in via Bowie, but that’s a stretch.

Sol3 is inspired by a minor (but funny) segment of the old Black Scrolls fanzines. Gareth Kavanagh has dispatched his blessing for this project.

Why?

The urge to make people laugh or even just introduce a wry half-smile in these “dark times” was probably the main driving force.

So much of our lives these days can be reflected in fiction, directly and indirectly.

When?

I’m aiming for multiple daily posts, currently for morning, lunch, and evening. Early on, these are simply headlines and images, with an obligatory “more to follow” or a contextual witticism. Every other day there is space in my schedule for a longer post, but until I have established a team of contributors it’s very short, sharp, silliness.

How?

How do I intend to make it different from all the other Doctor Who sites out there? Good question; glad you asked.

As mentioned, it’s not just Doctor Who that appears here, although that is currently the denominator. The presence of the Doctor, the Avengers (Steed and Mrs Peel, not the lycra fetishists), the Tracey Island people… they should all be enough to push Sol3 beyond those other sites.

Plus we get the opportunity to build a sort of secondary layer of reality, an internal text that gives us PM Monoid (inspired by Boris Johnson’s ridiculous hair), Joe Biden as a Hartnell-esque dodderer, and Servalan as Supreme Commander of the European Union.

Where?

Look past your feet. Otherwise, Sol3 is hosted courtesy of Kasterborous.co.uk. You’ll find it at sol.kasterborous.co.uk

Well, what’re you waiting for? Off you pop. But do come back to the DWC for our top-quality reporting, won’t you?

September is a time for taking stock and saying farewell to summer, but for many people summer was a bit of a non-event. We could have been at a barbecue – instead we were faced with crowded beaches, cancelled festivals, boarded-up campsites, and the general sense of despair that settles in when everything is shut. Chris Phillips, it seems, knows this better than anyone, and as we chat on this balmy evening (morning, if like him you’re in Idaho) I can detect a sense of lockdown fatigue. “I feel like Arnie at the end of the second Terminator film,” he says. “You know, where he’s had his arm crushed and his eye out and he’s staggering across the factory floor dragging his feet, muttering ‘I need a vacation’.”

He’s undoubtedly earned it. Chris has spent the last couple of months assembling a new episode of Velocity, the fan film series that launched three years ago, starring local comedian (and Chris’s partner) Krystal Moore as a nattily dressed, American acccented female Doctor. Since the Doctor regenerated in her minimalist (not to mention art gallery sized) console room, she’s locked horns with Davros, defeated a Dalek empire, met a new Master, come face to face with Weeping Angels at Stonehenge, and even met Sophie Aldred. Almost. How do you follow that?

By redoing Tron, it seems. Velocity has once more gone old school, and for this next venture we’re back in the 1980s, at a software company about to launch its latest product on an unsuspecting public, little suspecting that the code hides a couple of rather nasty surprises. It’s once more up to the Doctor to save the day, but in order to do that she’s going to have to be digitised. It’s a neat little summation of how the film was produced – remotely, in the middle of a pandemic, one actor at a time, with appropriate social distancing observed throughout the entire shoot.

“I thought the aesthetic would translate well to a low budget,” Chris – whose four-year-old loves the film – explains. “I’d already planned on doing a Tron episode, which by the very nature of it was already going to have a lot of green screen anyway. So in the end we decided to green screen the whole lot. We shot it in a room at my office – we have a green screen room here. I’m masked up. The camera was on a tripod, the boom mic’s on a tripod – I’m the other side of the room 20 feet away from them, and they ran through their lines one at a time. You need another actor to bounce off, so we had Krystal on the webcam on an iPad, doing the other lines.”

And after that, he says, he spent most of his evenings editing. “Digital effects are fun when you design the first one and think ‘Oh, that was really cool’. Then you realise you’ve got to copy that to the other 30 shots in the scene, and it becomes a pretty laborious task, quite quickly.”

Laborious, but safe. “The population density’s about 20 people per square mile here,” he says. “In Essex, where I’m from, it’s 2,000 per square mile. So some of the health concerns you’d have in the UK are less prevalent here, at least in this state.” Yes, how are things over there? It turns out ‘over there’ is the wrong way to phrase it, and that it’s a fallacy to assume that America’s response to the pandemic is all-encompassing. “Things aren’t centralised,” Chris clarifies, “and it is a state-by-state government. To the rest of the world, the U.S. seems like one thing, and it isn’t like that at all. What’s happening in Washington D.C. feels very far off.”

I’m wondering, though, just how Covid has left its mark. “One of the things we agreed about getting our family through it was that it’s okay to let circumstances upset you or make you feel bad. Whether it’s the pandemic or the racial justice protests and all the conversation about that, or these wildfires, it’s okay to feel sad about that. But it’s not okay to use any of that as a way to tell yourself not to bother or to not do the things that you want to do.”

At a half-dozen video episodes (plus various special stories), Velocity is fast gaining its own sense of continuity. This, as we end up discussing, is poisoned chalice territory, although for the moment Chris isn’t worried – if anything, he’s revelling in it. The story of Episode Six weaves in a number of previously established characters – regulars to the series will spot Paycen Styhl, who plays tech guru Kevin Apiary, briefly donning a VR helmet, during a scene he shot on his phone while infected with Covid (he’s since made a full recovery). “The plot of Tron worked well with the characters we’d already set up – the cyborg woman, the ’80s yuppie businessman. So it felt like a nice way of tying it in.”

The fear that he’ll lapse into navel-gazing is seemingly never far from his radar, which is why every Velocity instalment has to pass what Chris refers to as ‘the Brian Test’, named for his manager, Brian. “He’s in his mid-40s – he’s into fishing, he’s into baseball. He doesn’t watch any sci-fi. Can he sit and watch this for 10 minutes, understand it, and come away thinking ‘Yeah, that wasn’t too bad’? If I can do that, then I know I’ve ridden the line of weird niche Doctor Who geek culture, and something that was watchable for a general audience.”

Is that what Chibnall’s been doing? Chris thinks about it for a moment before responding. “I think he went really open on the first season, and then he got so much hate from the long term fans that in the second season he went really into the nerdy stuff. I think he’s struggling with the same issue – obviously there’s slightly more resting on his shoulders than on mine.”

Acknowledging that there is no one way to produce the show – “However well you think you know Doctor Who, you can quite easily bump into other people who think completely the opposite” – Chris nevertheless recognises the dangers of ignoring John Lydgate’s maxim about trying to please all of the people all of the time. “I’d rather the episodes were more different – different writers, different directors. Imagine if each episode was like The Twilight Zone – just completely different every week, and the lynchpin is the Doctor. Or you could come up with a really tightly packaged season that was plotted episode by episode and told a bigger story. I think the problem with what they’ve done is that they’ve tried to go in the middle.”

Series 12 was big on revelations; its biggest, arguably, coming in the shape of a brand new Doctor – reduced, Chris notes with a sense of annoyance, to “a two-episode bit part”. How did he react to the sight of Jodie Whittaker digging up a TARDIS buried next to an abandoned lighthouse?

There is a brief, considered pause. “What annoyed me about the whole thing was that they milked the press for two weeks – ‘It’s really progressive, isn’t it?’ – but I don’t see her getting her own season. It felt like a missed opportunity. Obviously the mystery’s still out there – who is this lady? How is she connected to the other Doctors? But if you’re gonna give someone that exposure, at least give them a really good go at it, with a decent story. Maybe Big Finish will give her a 10-CD box set at some point.”

That’s probably a given, and with this likelihood established we go back to talking about Velocity. What is it that drives him to produce Doctor Who films?

“It’s a great sandbox for telling stories. I’ll be 40 next year, and I’d got to the point in my life where I wanted to start getting good at making drama. And you can do it as a hobby now. This doesn’t have to be a pipe dream – one day I’ll go to Hollywood. You ask: how do I make drama, and make it fun, and have a nice family life? There’s a lot going on the world that sucks, and it’s been nice to cheer people up for a few minutes.”

Cheering people up seems to be the way forward – both for Chris, and for Krystal, who has been doing doorstep comedy routines while the clubs are closed. She brings a sense of gravitas to the role, something Chris is keen to develop, at least within the confines of the 10-minute stories the team are producing. A future episode, for example, will feature an encounter with Juana Inés de la Cruz , notable Mexican writer and nun, and will mostly be a two-hander, with no green screen. It’s uncharted waters for Doctor Who, but for Chris it’s a chance for character progression, which is necessary when you’re doing short episodes; otherwise “you cram so much in, you almost leave the Doctor out”.

“This was a huge problem with Chibnall’s seasons, and I’ve found it tricky as well. The Doctor becomes the exposition, and isn’t a character. The Doctor can be anything, and ends up being nothing. One of the things I like about Eccleston is that you get a really strong feeling of who he was.”

Hence the need to bring back established characters – and one way Velocity bucks the trend is by subverting them. Hence this latest episode re-introduces Gloria (Jen Potcher), the mother of Keven the tech guru, who in a somewhat bizarre twist was eaten by the Vashta Nerada in the show’s Christmas episode, before being promptly resurrected as a cyborg. It’s certainly different, but for Chris it’s a way of tackling the ageism prevalent in the acting world, and a woman who “auditions for the lead parts, but doesn’t get them.”

“Jen is a great friend of ours. She does a lot of work in Idaho – commercials and the like – but as far as local work is concerned, they cast a beautiful 20-year-old as the leading lady and then Jen gets to be the mum or the granny, a lot of these side roles. She was telling us about these auditions, and I thought ‘Oh no, I’ve cast you as a mum, a witch, and a whore!’

“So I thought ‘Let’s make her an action hero’. And I came up with this Terminator-style holographic. And just as a joke, in the Christmas episode, I put her in all these ridiculous situations and left it open.”

It is ridiculous, but it’s also important, because this is a problem that needs to be addressed, and if the industry won’t do it, the fans will. Now entering its fourth year of production, Velocity shows no signs of slowing down, largely because the team has never really allowed it to speed up – two or three episodes a year is enough to keep everyone busy, and they seem to like it that way. Still, there is a momentum, a sense of casual universe building, a loose continuity – Krystal and Chris at the helm, guiding their unconventional, bowler-hatted Doctor off to new adventures. With Gloria, I ask him?

Chris laughs. “If this were Big Finish, she’d get a box set.”

You can catch up with Velocity, completely free on YouTube now.

Chris Phillips is tired but buoyant. He’s just got back from the local Cheesecake Factory, where he and his family have been attending a birthday celebration. For many of us, Cheesecake Factory will instantly conjure images of The Big Bang Theory, but supposedly there’s no connection: it is, I’m informed, “sort of like Ikea for food”, where every meal is laden with calories and you can feed a family of 4 for about 15 dollars, without even touching the cheesecake. “If you’re not careful you can eat about 3 or 4 days’ worth of food by accident,” he says. “That’s America for you.”

I’d love to know more, but sadly we’re not here to talk about transatlantic dietary trends, so instead I ask him about Doctor Who. Chris, together with his partner Krystal, heads up the Velocity project, a series of fan films charting the adventures of an ‘alternative’ Thirteenth Doctor, a sprightly female incarnation played by Krystal herself. We first chatted in the summer of 2018, just as the Velocity team were putting the finishing touches on their second adventure. Fast forward to the present day and a lot’s happened: Jodie Whittaker’s first series landed, to a somewhat mixed response, and Velocity has another 3 published episodes under its belt – the latest of which is really quite special. Out of the blue, Chris gets in touch to ask if we’d like to do a follow-up piece. We certainly would, which is what leads me to a Skype chat with Chris and Krystal from their home in Boise, Idaho, on a sunny Labour Day afternoon.

For the uninitiated, Velocity features a newly-regenerated Doctor cavorting through time in a cavernous TARDIS with a series of sidekicks, some of whom are more complicated than they seem at first glance. Krystal’s Doctor cut her teeth tangling with witchfinders in Essex (prognosticating a Series 11 moment months before we knew anything about it) and then swooped back to the present to fight the Daleks, not to mention their creator. Their latest adventure sees them rewind the clock 30 years to the summer of 1989, where an underground rave is about to be rudely interrupted by some rather statesque monsters.

The talking point for Episode 4, of course, is that they managed to get Sophie Aldred. It’s only a cameo – 7 or 8 lines – although it’s enough to light the internet touchpaper. “Cameos are big at the moment,” says Chris, citing Marvel, “but it’s mostly fan service.” Those hoping for a glimpse of Aldred herself are liable to be disappointed: Velocity is shot on location in Idaho, and thus Ace’s appearance is limited to off-screen dialogue. But off-screen dialogue fits with the story: “I realised I’d set it in 1989, the year Doctor Who was cancelled. And I wondered… what would Ace be up to?”

Still. Giving it away in the episode description is a bit of a spoiler, surely? Isn’t that the sort of thing you want to keep secret, to maximise the impact? “We didn’t announce it until the episode came out,” says Chris. “I almost wasn’t going to reveal it, and leave it to be a complete surprise – but I also know, because of the horrible way the internet works, that we’d get far less views.” The number-crunching confirms his hunch. “Usually, with any kind of web series, you’ll see a kind of terminal decline after your first popular one. But this one – 2 years after our first – has been the strongest. That made me feel like there was a bit of longevity in it; we can keep making them.”

Chris and Krystal share writing duties for the series, but this particular story is his work, and you can tell: it’s an authentic pastiche of ’80s British culture, embedded with psychedelic backgrounds, archived news footage, and references to The Bill. Chris himself appears in a brief role as a policeman – “A couple of days’ hair growth makes me look like I’ve got quite a thick moustache, and I’m wearing a white shirt with a couple of black pieces of card stuck on my shoulders. That was a very cheap outfit.”

The Doctor may be fighting Weeping Angels, but it’s safe to say the episode is haunted by the spectre of Keith Flint – who died during its production and who lived in Chris’s home town of Braintree, Essex (“Everyone we knew as kids had a story about Keith”). Originally set at The Barn, the notorious club where the Prodigy supposedly met, the action was transferred to Stonehenge when Chris decided the location was too niche. Still, the legacy remains, not least thematically. “Back in the ’90s, [the Prodigy] got arrested under copyright laws because they stole everything. To me, that was the synergy between the fan film stuff and the music genre: we’re both stealing stuff and remixing it, so as a theme it worked quite nicely.”

The beat is still thudding round the Velocity team’s makeshift Stonehenge when the monsters turn up – and it was here that the team ran into some difficulties. “I muddled my way through making the Angels,” Chris admits. “I’m not sure I entirely succeeded. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to see a real person or not, and with our tight turnaround and how little time I have to make it I worried about covering someone head to foot in grey. I’d seen a lot of cosplays online and I was having nightmares about filming and then having to refilm it and spending 10 hours in makeup. I thought ‘I can’t ask someone to do that’. Although I’m sure someone would…”

The results may look a little odd at first glance, but it fits with the theme. There’s something very ’80s about the way the Angels fly in; it’s like something you’d expect to see in a music video, or perhaps a classic BBC production that’s dated far less than you feared it would. But Chris has a far simpler explanation: “They’re meant to be stuck in a time warp!”

“One of the strengths of our show is that it looks a bit different. We didn’t even have the Weeping Angel girl there on set for the others to react to, which was quite tricky to do. That’s just the way it worked out. Each episode has this ridiculous compromise where afterwards I’ll think ‘Oh, I wish we could have done that, but…’. The reality is, these things would never get finished if I did things the way I really wanted to do them. I’ll have such high hopes for each episode, but I’ve got a family and a job and other freelance work on the side. I love doing this stuff, but I love being able to pay my rent. We’ve got a 3 year old boy who doesn’t stop eating.”

This notion of ‘good enough’ is something that permeates their work – it’s something that I recognise, and when you’re doing projects like this, it’s a sound principle. “With fan and hobby films, the ones that get finished are the tip of the iceberg. Everyone else has a film they’re working on that doesn’t get done. And that’s why I’m really harsh on myself: the internet is this bottomless chasm saying ‘FEED ME! FEED ME CONTENT!’, so you have to set yourself boundaries. I wish we could have made 10 episodes already, all twice as long.”

Still. They’ve made 4, and 2 of them had Daleks. Specifically, it’s Daleks that take over your life without you even realising: a secret invasion that calls to mind the likes of Army of Ghosts and The Power of Three. There’s a sinister corporation, an amnesiac companion, and several things blow up. It all looks very impressive, with gloomy spaceship hangars and metal monsters running amok, although “The hardest thing about that one was post-production, because it was all green screen. It’s rendering time: you set the shot up and it takes 3 hours to save.”

A multi-part narrative carries its own risks and problems, but for Chris – and Krystal, who wrote the Dalek episodes – one of the biggest challenges was maintaining the social commentary that’s part of the story’s ersatz without lapsing into preachiness (something that, it could be argued, Series 11 didn’t manage very well). The Velocity Daleks aren’t just lethal killing machines: they’re an analogy for a world where anger is instinctive and echo chambers are the new black. The Daleks built by hive (no capital), the tech company providing the backdrop to the Earth-bound elements of the story, are not creatures to be feared and loathed – they’re the next generation of Alexa, available at all good online retailers.

“We were coming off the back of the 2016 election,” Chris explains, “with Cambridge Analytica hacking everyone and people putting themselves into their own digital bubble where they’re the good guy and everyone else is the enemy. The Daleks are like the snowflakes of Doctor Who: they’re angered easily and scared easily and to a certain extent that’s why they attack. Everyone is literally retreating inside their own Dalek. In America we have the right to bear arms, so the metaphor was the computer world and home defence. We’re not that far off being Daleks, and Davros was our Steve Bannon.”

It’s a chilling vision of the future, if only because it seems so close to home, permeating both political discussion and sci-fi fandom. There is a difference between being right and doing right, which culminates in what Chris refers to as an “atmosphere of extremes – we’d rather shoot ourselves in the foot if it helps us stick to our principles”. Theoretically, television should be an escape from all this, but there is a rabid unpleasantness about fan discussions these days, and both Chris and Krystal have noticed.

“There’s something about being able to so easily and so filterlessly and so anonymously share your reactatory opinion about everything, all the time, to the entire world,” says Krystal. “It doesn’t harbour fruitful conversation or togetherness, or a friendly attitude: it’s tough. And if you grew up before the internet came to be and you knew how people interacted face-to-face before, it was different. It’s not that there weren’t issues – there are issues, always, but it’s a gasoline-on-the-fire situation.”

“We’ve got a split between the far left and the far right,” adds Chris, “and the way cyberspace hypes these arguments is to make them fight each other. The internet likes conflict; it likes clicks; it likes controversy because it generates revenue. And in the middle of it you’ve got the Doctor, who’s just trying to be nice to everyone. The new Doctor has seen the fads come and go so many times that the message was ‘Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater’. There’s a tendency at the moment to want to smash everything up.”

A self-proclaimed ‘black sheep’, Krystal grew up in a small town in Idaho before coming to Boise and getting into stand-up. She met Chris when she saw him helping an old man who’d fallen in the street (“You know he’s a keeper, right there”) and taking on the title role in Velocityhas been “a really interesting acting challenge. Because there’s so many different lives that the Doctor has lived, and so there’s certain things that in each episode I want to emotionally prepare for. So you have this wealth of material that you draw from.”

Among other things, Krystal performs stand-up comedy (“You get a thicker skin the longer you do it”), but curiously it’s her role as a parent that she draws on the most when it comes to playing the Doctor. “For me, it really rests on that unique maternal spirit. I’m a mother, and I’ve always taken care of kids, so I feel like I’ve been a mother for most of my life. And I think that comes through in a bold kind of way that works very well for the Doctor.”

I apparently look a little confused, because I’m about to get a practical demonstration. “I’ve got a good Mom Eye,” she explains, whereupon she removes her glasses and gives a hard stare, one eye thrust forward, penetrating, the brow arched, her lips subtly curved in the merest hint of a smile. It is disconcerting and mildly uncomfortable and I realise I’ve seen this before; it’s a look Krystal gives when she’s chewing someone out onscreen, although it’s quite different when you’re the one on the receiving end. “Basically, it means ‘I know I’m right, and you know what you did.'”

This is all fine and dandy, but what does she think about Jodie Whittaker?

“I’ve really enjoyed watching her. I think she’s handled this frankly nightmarish situation with grace and humour; she’s just a rock star and I admire her. Rosa was really well-written. Demons of the Punjab was a beautiful, phenomenal episode. When you can draw things out of history you can apply it to the now, so I love it when they do that.”

The bad stories, supposedly, made so little impression that she can’t remember them, but I press her a little and the Mom Eye is back, only this time it’s staring very hard at It Takes You Away. “I would have loved the frog at the end if the whole thing was a satire. It’s how you set the tone. When they’ve got a brooding, deep, sorrowful tone, and then there’s a frog, that’s classic comedy juxtaposition. That’s how it works: tension, and then pop the bubble. Graham’s dealing with the wife being dead, there’s a blind daughter, innocent mom, and then it’s like ‘These people just broke into this child’s house here! What’s going on?!?'”

Did Whittaker’s casting help Velocity, or hinder it? “It was just one of those things that was on the zeitgeist. The BBC saw what we saw – there’s enough people who want to see a show where the Doctor is female. And I honestly didn’t think the BBC would quite yet; we thought they’d wait until the next one.”

Our time is at a close, and so I have to ask about what’s next for Velocity, but Krystal is tight-lipped when it comes to upcoming content: “Christmas” is about all I can get out of her. Instead I ask about Terrance Dicks – we’re speaking on the day his death is announced – and it’s Chris who points out the sheer longevity of Dicks’ association with the programme. “A lot of people work on Doctor Who very briefly and then get turfed out. To last that long, not only have you got to be good at what you do, you also have to be a master diplomat.”

And perhaps that’s it. Being good at what you do is only half the equation: treating relationships and life with more respect than the show you’re working on is the other half. In the last minute of our call, Krystal and Chris pull their children briefly into shot so they can say hello, and with that the family are off to enjoy what remains of their Labour Day. I somehow get the feeling they’ll do this while actively not thinking about Doctor Who. Perhaps I won’t either.

You can follow Velocity on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Tenth Doctor, David Tennant has been speaking to the Independent, to promote his new series, Good Omens, which premiered on Amazon Prime at the weekend. Amid the discussion of the show’s apocalyptic themes and resonance with real world conflict, David also talked about the responsibility of faithfully interpreting source material that fans have loved since Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman published their novel in 1990.

As David says:

 “When people have lived with these characters and this story that means so much to them, you don’t want to be responsible for breaking it. I hope I don’t live to regret this, but I feel relatively comfortable that we’re on the right side of it. I think you’d have to be striking a very fundamentalist position not to see some joy in it.”

Naturally, this sense of being the custodian of something cherished quickly brought David to the subject of Doctor Who. David assumed the role he has loved since he was a child in 2005: 42 years and 9 leading actors after it had begun. This huge legacy and expectation meant he did not wear the mantle lightly, “I’d grown up with that show,” he said, “I knew that show inside out. I’d done all my research before I ended up in the part.”

Nor was it always an easy experience, even though he loved his success and the fame that it brought. The fame also carried exposure: David recently revealed that he sought therapy in early years of his tenure because stardom made him feel “very vulnerable and very raw”.

“I remember way back, when I’d be in a room and someone well known would walk in, and there’s that sort of whisper goes around the room and everyone looks. And you imagine being that person is somehow powerful. When you are that person, you walk into a room and everyone turns their head and whispers, and you feel like you’re being squashed. You feel intimidated, and you feel scared, actually.”

Playing the Doctor  ̶  and the special nature of a part that was bequeathed to him and which he later handed over to Matt Smith  ̶  also made David confront the fact that, while a universe without the Doctor might scarcely bear thinking about, the actor remains dispensable.

“…because you’re at the centre of something that you love, and that is loved, and it’s quite weird to realise that you walk off and it carries on very happily without you. As a fan, you’re delighted, but the selfish, human part of you thinks, ‘What, am I so disposable?’ And the answer is, ‘Yes, you are.’”

Good Omens is available from Amazon Prime with BBC2 showing it later this year.