Interview: Mags L Halliday

Interview with the author of History 101.

Tell us a bit about the history of History 101. Did the novel have a long gestation period?

I suspect so, based on how quickly others seem to get ideas into a workable novel, but by my standards it wasn't that long. I first started on it in Autumn 1999. I sent it away in Spring 2000, then it was batted back and forth until it was commissioned, with me rewriting the synopsis three times.

The first rewrite was the worst - I had to completely rip apart the plot and rebuild it because the structure was too similar to an upcoming Past Doctor Adventure. That first rewrite never even got sent in as it was so appalling.

After I sent version three along, I was asked to incorporate recurring elements. The final version was where various bits suddenly slotted into place. Being asked to add Sabbath was a boon, in the end, as it added extra elements of suspicion to the characters' motives.

What are your thoughts on Sabbath, and his role in the current Eighth Doctor arc?

The sherry-swilling southern pansy. I could drink him under the table. I like him, as by adding his presence to History 101 I got a far better-shaped plot.

In the series he works as the antithesis of the Eighth Doctor in that he is controlled where the Doctor is chaotic, calm where the Doctor is manic. [He] has a plan which he is implacably following instead of bouncing about the universe like an over-enthusiastic puppy.

He has his accomplices, just as the Doctor as his þassistants' (although we never seem to call them that any more). I think the Eighth Doctor Adventures needed a sustained and explicable background threat to the Doctor's wanderings.

I sort of wish there'd been a moment at the end of The Crooked World in which Anji pulls the sheet off a large ghost and says "why...it was old Mr Sabbath all the time," although the main problem with him is that he lurks about in the background and everyone can spot it's him. This is why he's in the first paragraph of History 101.

Why set History 101 during the Spanish Civil War? What was your particular fascination for the period?

Cheap wine.

The Spanish Civil War is one of the great ideological war zones of the 20th Century.You've got pretty much all the 'isms' in there (fascism, communism, socialism, anarchy - okay, that's not an -ism). Add in the fact that, although it is the first total war as we now understand the concept, but that it's been totally passed over in Doctor Who in favour of World War II stories.

I've always loved historical Doctor Who stories. After I first read The Reign of Terror, I went down the local library and borrowed a book on the French Revolution. So I think historically-based Doctor Who ought to go to places that it hasn't been before.

There's several thousand years of recorded history about cultures totally different to our modern Western lives and I want to go to those places and times. Not Berlin, 1942, or whatever.

Tell us about your research for the book - and any unusual facts you turned up during the process.

There's a fabulous curry house just off Las Rambles in Barcelona which does superb genuine, totally veggie, Indian cuisine. There's also a Museum of Chocolate with a replica of the Sagrada Familia made out of the stuff.

Research is one of my great loves - I could spend my life just following the threads of footnotes in factual books. I read mountains of books, went to the Imperial War Museum's exhibition on the Spanish Civil War, visited þthe Spanish room' in Tate Modern several times (since re-hung).

Then I shamelessly went to Barcelona on the pretext of þlocation scouting'. I did actually find several places that became locations in the book (the square with the curry house, for example, is where one of the characters meets his end).

The oddest thing I uncovered - from talking to my parents about life in the 1930s - was that one of my distant cousins fought at Madrid. On the Republican side, fortunately.

Which of the current TARDIS crew works best in History 101 and why?

Both were useful in terms of giving perspectives but I prefer Fitz, personally. Oddly, feedback so far suggests Anji works better...

I have a huge soft spot for Fitz. He's the kind of guy I could spend an evening in a pub with, whilst Anji and I would probably ignore each other. I had to really think to find ways in which I could create a point-of-view for her which didn't involve her now long-dead boyfriend or her job, neither of which interested me - both of which, by the time I was writing History 101, were seen as being her defining characteristics. Several bits of her more anecdotal thoughts are taken from my own life (like her thoughts about the gym, or chocolate).

Fitz, obviously, is Fitz: although he doesn't chase a single bit of skirt, he makes up for it in the amount of booze and fags he gets through. I realised at one point he was more like Withnail, wandering through a war zone. I did try to throw in a bunch of stuff about him having been a small boy during the Blitz, though.

Tell us about the story that you've written for the MythMakers fanzine to tie in.

Well, this harks back to the old New Adventures days. Richard [the editor] asked me to write a þPrelude' to History 101, just like the ones they used to have to New Adventures novels in Doctor Who Magazine.

I foolishly said yes and then had to come up with a plot for it.

I wanted to avoid the problem Preludes used to have of either being a pointless TARDIS scene or of being about characters who are unknown until you've read the book. So I kept the original character unnamed and set it in two different time zones: for the Doctor and Fitz, it's a Postscript to History 101; to Anji it's a Prelude.

But people ought to buy the þzine for Mssrs Parkin and Morris as well...

I gather you have also written Doctor Who þDrabble'. Can you explain what that is and what your drabbles were about?

Oh dear. They're a form of literary exercise: to write a story in no more and no less than 100 words. Years back David J Howe did a collection of them for charidee (þDrabble Who') and there was a competition for it in Doctor Who Magazine. I sent one in, about poor Harry nearly suffering a heart attack at Madame Tussauds, and it got in the book. All the others were just exercises.

Your website claims that you've written a Doctor Who/ Buffy crossover story set in a pub. What's that all about?

Oh dear, oh dear. This may take some time...

On alt.drwho.creative (a Usenet group for fanfic) there's a pub, This Time Round (TTR), which exists Outside Continuity. This is where all the Doctor Who characters go to relax when they aren't busy with adventures. As it's Outside Continuity, normal rules don't apply.

And within TTR there's been an ongoing, multi-authored story arc called To Die For (TDF). This is basically a Manga-style romance (i.e. lethal fighting and a denial of attraction) between Adric and Nyssa. Nyssa, when Outside Continuity, being a bit of a weapon-wielding Psycho. None of this is my fault.

What is my fault is dragging Buffy and Spike in as a parallel storyline to run alongside Adric and Nyssa's bickering. This is season five Buffy and Spike, so [they are] in the almost-lethal fighting and denial stage. This led to Spike and Adric becoming drinking buddies...

The whole thing kind of fizzled away due to a) being busy with History 101 and b) events in Buffy season six. Be thankful it died before I did the Adric/Spike body swap episode...

One thing I would say is that writing parts of TDF helped me with understanding how to write in a shared universe like the Eighth Doctor Adventures - how to do your own thing whilst not negating others' work.

What next for Mags L Halliday?

Going downstairs to finish off a tub of Ben and Jerry's.

I've got a fair chunk of work in Faction Paradox: The Book of the War which was great fun to write. I developed a Soviet offshoot of the Eleven Day Empire - like a voodoo version of Doctor Zhivago. I've also been mapping the Eleven Day Empire's London, which means I can now frighten Londoners by knowing far too much about the city.

I'm back in research mode for a couple of novel ideas, one of which would be Doctor Who, but I'd rather not jinx þem by discussing them now. I'm also meant to be finishing a comic script for a small press comic called The Girly Comic , which hopefully will work, although I've not tried comics before so I may fall flat on my arse. Am I allowed to say þarse'?

Is there a particular moment in time you'd like to alter?

I'm sometimes tempted to wish away the more embarrassing personal moments, but I generally suspect history of being messy enough already without anyone trying to fix things and unravelling it entirely.

• Mags L Halliday
  

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