Artist's notes

Doctor's Visits, or a trip through time with your humble illustrator.

So. Drawing the oldest doctor for the newest format, eh?

An interesting proposition, and you can see the results as they accompany the chunks of Andy Lane's The Empire of Glass over the next few weeks. I always enjoyed its brisk pace, its detail and humour and humanity. It's got the lot; murder, monsters, poison, mistaken identity, good food, hangovers, Shakespeare and, of course, the Doctor!

As with much in life, for all of us that lack a handy Type 40 around the place, the task of revisiting this book has been time travel by virtue of memory alone. Firstly, back to the mid-90's when I worked on the Virgin non-virtual edition, but also to much earlier times. As detailed in Mr Lane's notes, he and I go back a long, long way (before many of you regular website cultists were even born, no doubt), but not as far back as the Doctor and I.

The years just peel away when I consider how long I have loved this programme and this character, and how they have kept resurfacing in my work and play. Born in the frozen winter of 1962, I was too young to watch William Hartnell, ironically, but from the captivating Pat Troughton onwards I was hooked.

While never active in Who fandom, having moved to London to attend art school I joined pub meetings with Mr Lane, and contributed images for some of their publications (E=MC³ and Wondrous Stories), as I continued to learn my future trade as an illustrator. I even dabbled with written fiction, centred on The Second Doctor. My epic piece involved Doctor Two meeting a pre-Delgado Master in Nazi Germany, but I most enjoyed writing small interludes for Wondrous Stories. I tried to distill the essence of that Troughton era, where the Doctor was at once child-like and naughty, yet able to turn on a pin and face the terrors of the Universe square on. (Andy and I always wanted to do a Troughton-centric magazine just called Doctor Two.)

During my college years I managed to get permission to visit the BBC Special Effects Workshop, spending a fascinating half a day in the company of Mat Irvine, veteran of Swap Shop and other tv of my early teens. Dusty old Cybermen heads lay about the place and I regarded them with due awe, reduced to a kid again in moments. Irvine came across as a hugely over-worked individual who gave total dedication to his job, at the expense of his own peace of mind. Only later, as a working designer, would I fully grasp the situation of creative people in an industry environment. It's a heady mix of imagination, compromise, clock-racing and small victories.

Then, in the spring of 1983, I secured a visit the BBC Production Offices, sketching JNT during his 'typical working day' for a college project. He seemed to love the attention, and the work formed the basis for a collection of sketches. While there are only so many ways you can depict a man on a telephone, it did allow me the chance to wangle a set visit that summer.

So, what was the story I saw filming in-studio, you ask? It was Warriors of the Deep. (Just lucky I guess.) A very surreal afternoon ensued, spent in a sweltering studio Three, watching headless Silurians fluffing their lines and Peter Davison in an Up The Aussies T-shirt. The set was still being painted and there was an air of barely-contained mirth, possibly due to the murderous heat. Add to this the majesty that was the Myrka and you get the idea. Yet, even with these insights into the nuts and bolts behind it all, the wonder never went away.

Perhaps most strangely, I helped organise a Who-themed life drawing day at St. Martin's School of Art, around the time of The Five Doctors. A bemused pair of (naked) life models re-enacted Doctor and companion in a series of generic poses in the life studio. (All quite innocent, I assure you.) For the record, our Doctor was a six-foot three black guy, an ex-dancer, who appeared with the merest of props (a hat and a scarf). He'd never seen the show but carried it all off with surprising dignity.

My love of the character weathered the post-cancellation years with ease, as I joined so many in the plunge backwards. Retro-time travelling to keep the flame going, fuelled by the stalwart efforts of DWM, in the face of Doctor-less television. When the New Adventures arrived it just felt so right. From Paul Cornell's haunting close to Timewyrm: Revelation on I didn't look back for many, many books. When my old pal Mr Lane bacame a Virgin author I was delighted, but not as much as I was when he introduced my work to Rebecca Levene. I subsequently provided illustrations for his All-Consuming Fire, and later the two pieces you will find nearby, which topped and tailed The Empire of Glass. At last I was part of 'official' Who story-telling.

That whole period was a breeding ground for so many writers who used the Time Lord as a way to get their words in print, later moving on and out, particularly in the direction of television. I am jealous of, and delighted for, those of them that are now working on the new series. It's a special thing to be able to dream splendid dreams and make a living from it. The sheer winning enthusiasm of Russell T. Davies' current production notes column in DWM so often conveys this.

My own career has likewise gravitated towards television since around '95, when I began storyboarding for commercials, drama and comedy, and the Who thread continues to run. In working on both series of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), for instance, I had the pleasure of meeting Tom Baker on several occasions, which was always a (gin and) tonic. The sweetest, smallest moment of all, though, occurred a couple of years back. I crossed a props hangar in the BBC TV Centre, on the way to the loo. Glancing to my side, there it was... the TARDIS, resting between engagements. I walked up to it and climbed in, without a second thought. Well you would, wouldn't you? Strangely, it was the same size on the inside as it was on the outside.

The results of my going back down the years to Andy's text fuse a very stark, contrast-driven, black and white style, produced by the delicious bite of real ink into real paper, with this new virtual access route for the readership. There were no computers when I developed my love of drawing in traditional medias of paint, ink and pencil.

My approach is not to go for photo-likeness in the images, but to try and do the job of an illustrator as I've always seen it, which is to present added flavour to the ideas in the text. Atmosphere that truly adds to the push of the words is what I'm after here. Andy and Rob Francis and I debated the most suitable points, characters and events in the ongoing chapters, and it's from these that I've drawn the work you'll see. These won't be drawings that look like photographs, but I hope you like them. The cover is an attempt to recreate the feel of the early Doctor Who annuals, with an image that conjures the taste of the book without showing you an event as you'll find it in the text. It even has a genuinely inaccurate TARDIS, as they often did.

All I'm doing here is by way of a tip of the hat to those creative people who made Who so exciting in the past.

Now, of course, there are people making it again. New adventures ahead, and fond memories in the making.