First Draft Finished!

I've just this hour finished writing the last section of the final chapter of my book, The Comic Strip Companion (Vol 1: 1964-79).

I began writing on 14 April 2007, so it's taken me slightly over two years to get to this point.

As my book takes the form of an episode guide my work has been mapped out for me from the start; I've had to chronicle stories both good and bad and find something uniquely meaningful to write about each and every one of the Doctor's first fifteen years of comic strip adventures.

I've maintained a spreadsheet to keep track of my work, so I can see at a glance that I've scrutinised and documented the contents of 1,993 individual pages of comic strip, as well as a stack of reprints not included in that total. The word count stands at 207,189.

Work on the book is far from complete, however. There's a few short supplementary sections to be added and the whole manuscript's going to need revising from beginning to end.

I'm planning to put the book aside and focus my attention elsewhere; on another, shorter writing commission I have waiting for me. I'm hoping that this will clear my head, so I can come back to the manuscript with a relatively fresh eye. I've edited work by many other writers over the years, so I hope I can be equally efficient with my own material.

New Companion

The new Doctor Who companion will be played by Karen Gillan.

Just last week I was discussing the new companion with Toby Hadoke, a fellow fan who was visiting from the UK. As well-informed as Toby is about various aspects of the series, he didn't know who would be playing the new companion. We both thought that an announcement had to be imminent though - and sure enough just days later a name has been revealed.

I was working on my book late tonight and happened to flick over to Facebook and spot that someone had just mentioned the casting. I looked up the BBC News site to see the full announcement, which again had only just been posted. This is quite a novelty for me as usually by the time I find out about a piece of major Doctor Who news it's already all over the Internet.

I notice that a Google search for Karen's name at this stage doesn't bring up many useful results - all that will soon change, I'm sure. I also see that Karen's Wikipedia page was only created today - mere minutes after the announcement.

So who is Karen Gillan? All I've seen of her is her role as an unnamed soothsayer in The Fires of Pompeii. I expect there will be many fans rewatching that episode now in an attempt to get an idea of what Karen is like as an actress.

I think it's interesting that a trend's developing, in that Karen follows in the footsteps of Freema Agyeman and Catherine Tate, each of whom first appeared in a one-off role in the new series prior to being offered a regular part as the companion. Perhaps we're getting to the point where we'll start looking rather closer at each actress who appears in Doctor Who and sizing her up as the next companion!

Boldly Going...

The first Star Trek movie I watched on the big screen was The Wrath of Khan. I went to see it with my first girlfriend, who was far more obsessed with Star Trek than I was. She was utterly inconsolable when Spock died at the end.

Seeing the new Star Trek film today I was left wondering how she might have reacted. No doubt she would have been relieved that Spock survived, but there’s some fairly radical retooling going on regarding the series continuity, with some devastating events that might induce weeping among some hardcore Trekkies.

I’ve watched most Star Trek episodes and movies and I once belonged to an SF club dominated by trekkies, but I wouldn’t call myself a fan. It certainly didn’t bother me that the new film effectively erases or at least drastically alters events from the moment of Captain Kirk’s birth onwards.

The new film does for Star Trek what the Daniel Craig version of Casino Royale did for the James Bond franchise in that it goes back to the beginning and retells the origins with a fresh outlook and a thoroughly modern appearance. The slate isn’t wiped entirely clean however. Just as Casino Royale retained Judi Dench’s M as a link from the old to the new, Star Trek has Leonard Nimoy’s Spock popping up to reassure viewers that this really is still the same old series.

The changes to the heavily-continuity laden Trek universe wrought by the film very cleverly reboots the franchise from the beginning - all bets are off as to what happens next for Kirk and his crew - whilst at the same time still allowing for the prior existence (from the elderly Spock’s perspective at least) of all of the television series and movies.

I thought the cast were on the whole very good, allowing for the fact that the actors had the difficult task of replacing some very well-established performers. For me the stand-out was Karl Urban, who absolutely nailed Dr McCoy’s dry cynicism.

Above all else, this film unequivocally breaks the ‘curse’ of the odd-numbered Star Trek films!

Meeting One’s Heroes

Rochelle and I spent this last weekend in Wellington during which time we promoted Rochelle’s new company Retrospace at the Armageddon expo. Almost the entire weekend was spent selling merchandise and I found that this provided an opportunity to meet many fans that I wouldn’t have a talked to had I been at Armageddon as just another attendee. I was stunned at the number of young pre-teen and teenage girls who professed to be fans of the series and obviously knew all of the new series stories in great detail, proudly claiming to have watched "every episode of Doctor Who" (meaning of course everything from 2005 onwards) . These fans seemed to identify very much with David Tennant’s Doctor (rather than, say, Rose or Martha), and at least a couple of young female fans were dressed up as the Tenth Doctor.

One of the first people I met on the first day of the expo was a young man called Floyd. Upon sighting issues of TSV on the table, he asked me if I knew Paul Scoones. When I explained that I was he, Floyd almost exploded with delight, asking to shake my hand and have his photo taken with me. He’d read TSV since he was a boy, and really was genuinely was awed to meet me. I'm not recounting this incident in order to mock him. Although I felt undeserving of his accolades, at the same time I was also impressed that he had such respect and admiration for my work. I met many more TSV readers over the course of the weekend that had nothing but kind words to say about the magazine, but no one came close to this guy in terms of sheer unbridled enthusiasm.

Later in the weekend I got to take Floyd’s place and meet one of my own personal heroes, the Fifth Doctor himself, Peter Davison. Davison, along with Mark Strickson (who played Turlough) were two of a handful of star guests at the expo.

I had been asked by the organiser, Bill Geradts, to interview Peter and Mark in a panel on stage on both days of the expo. I arrived with a prepared list of questions covering aspects of the careers of both men, only to learn from Bill that the two actors had decided that they didn't want to be interviewed and instead preferred to take questions from the audience. I was a bit deflated at this habving gone to some effort and also told a number of people that I'd be conducting the interviews, but at the same time I was also a little relieved. I’d been concerned about how the interview would be received by both the actors and the audience alike. It also freed me up to spend more time on the Retrospace sales table where it rapidly became clear that Rochelle would be swamped with customers for most of the weekend.

Photo: Peter Davison (L) and Mark Strickson (R) on stage at Armageddon.

I needed to present Peter Davison with a copy of the latest TSV issue, which contained an interview that Adam McGechan had conducted with him many months earlier. I waited around until the autograph queue had slowed to a trickle, and then joined the end of the line. The woman immediately ahead of me had a large stack of photos for Peter to sign, and I could see that although he was still being pleasant to her, that he’d really rather be doing something else.

I nipped past the woman and instead struck up a conversation with Mark Strickson, who was sitting next to Peter. I’d interviewed Mark almost twenty years earlier at an Auckland convention, and told him this. Mark understandably didn’t recall our earlier meeting, but it broke the ice and I told him that I was writing information subtitles for the BBC Doctor Who DVDs, and we compared notes on a couple of specific incidents from his stories that I’d been researching.

Peter Davison had up until this point looked to me understandably rather weary at having signed so many autographs, but as he listened in on our conversation his face lit up with a broad smile and he began talking to me, offering his own thoughts on the stories we were discussing. He asked about which titles I was working on and the three of us discussed the upcoming releases. (I won’t go into specifics as all of the titles I’m doing have yet to be announced on the schedules.)

Having gained Peter’s undivided attention, I then got to talking with him about his other roles and I told him about my great appreciation for another of his series, A Very Peculiar Practice. We shared our mutual hope that the second series would one day come out on DVD (Peter felt that the fact that it was made by BBC Birmingham had effectively shut it out of the schedules). He seemed delighted at my suggestion that At Home with the Braithwaites was his opportunity to play a raving unhinged character after having been perhaps the only truly sane one in Peculiar Practice.

I presented Peter with TSV 76, and he seemed genuinely touched that I’d gone to the trouble of handing it to him in person. We shook hands and he thanked me very much for talking to him. I think he was relieved that I’d talked to him as a fellow professional, our common ground being that we both worked on the BBC Doctor Who DVDs, and that I hadn’t asked for a photo or an autograph like so many hundreds of fans had done over the weekend.

I came away from that meeting feeling elated at having met a childhood hero. Peter Davison had been my Doctor when I was a teenage fan, and for nostalgic reasons remains a firm personal favourite amongst all of the actors to have played the role.

As I'm sure Floyd would agree, it can be a thrilling experience to meet one’s heroes.

Watchmen

David Bishop introduced me to Watchmen when he loaned me the graphic novel sometime in the second half of 1989. I was sceptical as I'm not much of a fan of superhero comics, but David assurred me that this was something different, something extraordinary.

Watchmen blew my mind. It opened my eyes to the wondrous potential of comic strip narrative structure. I marvelled at the dense, multi-layered plot, the frequent time shifts, the metaphors, hidden clues in the artwork and the sheer scale of the story.

Twenty years later, I've just seen the movie version on the big screen. I can't think of any other movie project that has spent as long in development as this one. I've waited years to see it, and thankfully it didn't disappoint.

The direction was superb, clearly taking many visual cues from pages of the comic. It was an odd sensation recognising so much of the imagery as familiar in a movie I had never seen before. It was equally jarring when the movie did diverge from its source material such as, for example, the outward appearance of Veidt's Antarctic fortress.

The cast for the most part were very good indeed; I especially liked Patrick Wilson's Dan Dreiberg and Jackie Earle Haley was just perfect in the pivotal role of Rorschach. Malin Akerman's performance as Laurie was however disappointingly a bit flat. Maybe she was directed to underplay the part, but I didn't engage with the character as much as I did with the other costumed heroes.

I've read that the movie has had at least half an hour cut from the theatrical release, which will be reinstated for the DVD. Although I could see the gaps I believe that's because I'm familiar with the source material. It looked pretty seamless to me on screen, and the only exception I can think of being Hollis Mason, most of whose scenes were chopped, leaving him as a character who crops up briefly early in the movie and is never seen again.

The major difference between the comic and the film is the ending. I wasn't expecting this to be the case, but I actually prefer the movie version. I don't believe that a giant squid-like alien would have been in keeping with the tone and style of the rest of the movie. I always thought it jarred a little in the comic.

Just as in the comic, there's a lot to take in when watching the movie, and I suspect that it will reward multiple viewings. I'm certainly very much looking forweard to getting hold of the extended version on DVD.

Back to School

Many years ago I trained as a Secondary School teacher. It seemed at the time like the best option to make full use of my university degree in History and English. I completed the one-year course, during which I taught in three different schools, and graduated with a Diploma of Teaching.

The problem was that after graduation there was a shortage of jobs in teaching. I could count the list of vacancies on one hand. The only use I made of my DipTch qualification was to do some short-term, private tutition work, helping students prep for their exams. Eventually I moved into other work, and left teaching behind.

My teacher training never seemed like a wasted year of my life; as a manager of a number of staff in three different companies, I've found that many of the basic principles of classroom teaching have served me well. My teacher training gave me the skills to be an effective communicator, to keep people on task, to plan effectively.

Much as I enjoy writing, it's not lucrative enough to sustain me financially, so I've been giving so thought about what I want to do next. Preferably something that leaves me with enough time to continue writing part-time.

So I've been thinking about relieving teaching. My DipTch is still recognised; I just need to do a retaining course to get back up to speed and get registered.

I started looking into this last week and learned that the goverment funds free courses for returning teachers, to encourage people like myself to get back into the profession.

TeachNZ, the teacher recruitment unit of the Ministry of Education, pointed me in the direction of my old alma mater, the University of Auckland. When I finally got through to the right person (which was a mission in itself), I learned that there is indeed a retraining course coming up, but there's some doubt over whether it will take place as the course has not received any funding.

If the funding doesn't come though, the course won't take place. Without this course I cannot register and I cannot teach.

Meanwhile in the newspapers and on the television we're told that the goverment is pouring millions into job creation schemes. How about putting some of that money into teacher training...?

Making Progress

I've reached an important milestone in the writing of The Comic Strip Companion.

As of tonight, I’ve finished the last of the chapters dealing with all of the Doctor Who comic strip stories originated in TV Comic, Countdown and TV Action magazines from 1964 to 1979, which is the period covered by this volume. I've so far written 159,311 words. I've written individual entries for 166 different comic strip stories or, to put it another way, 1,601 comic strip pages - and that's not counting all of the various reprints which I've also covered.

Most of the book is now written - but there's still more to be done.

There are other comic strips published during this period that, although they are not considered part of the regular series, it would be remiss of me not to cover them in the book. These include the strips that appeared in: the Doctor Who Annuals; the Dalek Annuals; the three 1960s Dalek books; The Daleks strips from TV Century 21 comic; and the American comic adaptation of the first Dalek movie. This material amounts to an additional 56 stories, which might sound like a lot but many of these stories are significantly shorter than the ones I've already covered. This extra material will form supplementary chapters located at the rear of the book.

I've also got some recently discovered archival material that I need to find places to write about in the chapters I've already written. This previously unseen material casts new light on the origins of the Doctor Who strip and provides additional insight into the development of a number of the early strips. The documents also include three story proposals which were never published. This information has never been published elsewhere and will undoubtedly be of great interest.

I need to devote some time as well to revisiting some of what I’ve already written. I started work on the book nearly two years ago and over that time I've gradually tweaked the format and style as I’ve progressed through the chapters. I need to revisit the earliest sections I wrote and do some revising so that the whole book ends up with a readable, consistent format and style.

Right now though, I feel a sense of achievement in having written all fourteen chapters that form the main body of the book. There’s a way to go before I’m done, but now it feels like the end is on the horizon.