Interview: Justin Richards

Books consultant and writer looks back from Time Zero.

This Q & A is based on the burning books issues identified by our Who site visitors in late 2002.

Is Time Zero as printed actually the story you set out to write? I got the feeling at the start you were going for something more epic than the solid base-and-guns adventure we got at the end. (Question from Edward Harrison).

I think there always has to be room for the action and adventure side of things in a Who novel. No book ever ends up exactly as planned when it's finished. But Time Zero wasn't any greater deviation than usual – I got all the philosophical argument, if you like, that I wanted into it.

There was one thing I did have in my initial thoughts and didn't do because of space. The book's at the upper limit of the word count anyway. But initially I planned that the alternative-evolution creatures would be intelligent Saurians – the result of dinosaurs not dying out and evolving intelligence.

I didn't do that in the end for a few reasons. One was that it would have introduced a whole new culture that needs time and space to make plausible and þreal' and that would have stretched the book too thin in other places. Also, without a lot of extra effort it would have been difficult to explain how this race is different from the Silurians.

Added to that, the real þenemy' isn't apparent till quite near the end of the book so I wanted some monsters to appear earlier on and keep the interest up. And also getting the Saurians' motivation across would have been tricky in amongst everything else – I'd envisaged them as having found the window between the worlds while experimenting along similar lines to the scientists at the Institute in Siberia, then they come through to get the research from our world and find out what's going on. That aspect got absorbed by the SAS contingent – the þnew' force who turn up and change the dynamic.

But despite that, Time Zero was pretty close to what I set out to do. It's about decisions and choices and the implications of free will – how difficult it is to make a choice sometimes. That's still there and I hope it's as strong a theme as it needs to be without reaching for the sledgehammer.

Whilst like a great many other readers I have enjoyed the recent story arc in the Doctor's Adventures, I now feel it's time to return the Doctors memory and allow him to deal with the repercussions from his actions. Are there any plans to do this? If not why not? There is a danger of reader fatigue with a story line stretched on for too long. (Question from Andrew Clarkson).

There's two things here, I think. One is that we have an ongoing backstory, about Sabbath and time and reality being out of joint. That will be resolved, although with an Eighth Doctor Adventures every other month it will take longer than we'd originally planned.

The second thing is the Doctor's memories – which is a separate strand. That's not part of a story as such, that's part of the narrative landscape – the context in which we tell the stories. To my mind, asking when the Doctor will get his memories back is a bit like saying: "Okay, so this Troughton guy was good up against the Daleks and Cybermen, and the Giant Crabs thing was quite fun too. But when are we getting the real Doctor back, then?"

That's not to say he won't at some stage remember some or all of what's happened. But it doesn't have to happen any time soon, or even at allå The Third Doctor had to wait a while, after all. And I don't think the viewers were tuning into þThe Time Monster' thinking "Oh this has gone on enough – when's he going to get back his memory of dematerialisation theory?"

Without going into details, how far ahead are the Eighth Doctor Adventures planned beyond the current (apparent) arc at this stage? Will the decrease in the number of novels in 2003 affect any arcs or storylines? (Question from Geoffrey D. Wessel).

We commission about a year ahead of publication, and we plan what we want to do (in broad terms) about six months ahead of that. More or less. So we know what happens at the end of this ongoing Eighth Doctor Adventures thread, though at the moment we're slightly behind on commissions just because it's summer so some of the people who have to give approvals and so on at BBC Worldwide have been away on holiday or are catching up having just got back or whatever.

Having fewer Eighth Doctor Adventures has made us rethink how we step through the story, and it will certainly inform what we do next once some of the current dangling threads have been tied up nicely.

Is the cutback in the production of original novels temporary or permanent? When the 40th Anniversary year is past, can we expect to see 22 novels a year again? (Jack Bevan).

That's a business rather than a creative decision, though obviously I get asked for my opinion. The advantage of doing fewer novels is that we free up the resources and time and people's financial and reading commitments so we can do more books that are not straight novels. The disadvantage is obviously that there are fewer books. So it's a bit of a trade off.

We said the change was, I think, þfor the time being.' And as soon as the Time Being decides otherwise we'll change again. But there are lots of factors involved, and all I can say at the moment is that current plans are to stay with one per month, and those current plans take us to the end of 2003.

Are there going to be any special plans for the anniversary? (Question from lan Byrne, Robert Thomas and others).

Yes. We've announced some of them, though I have to say some of what we've announced we want to do may not happen if some other exciting plans we have come to fruition. So the Big Dalek Book may be postponed – it overlaps with the Big Anniversary Book (lots of Daleks in that!), and we've got a couple of other things we want to do too. So we need to juggle to get everything in. The main delivery from BBC Books will be a massive, heavily illustrated and very lavish book that goes into the whole story of Doctor Who – the narrative side of things, telling the entire 40 year story right from the start in considerable detail. Of course there's behind the scenes stuff as well and lots of new material. It's an enormous project, but it's looking really good so far.

Will you ever do any more Eighth Doctor Adventures featuring the Daleks or K9 or indeed do an Eighth Doctor Adventures Cybermen or Auton story? Should we expect to see any old nemeses of the Doctor returning in either range? (Question from Martin Penny, Aaron Climas, Dave Johnson, Marc Ofner, Chris M, Mark Nolan).

I'm sure we will. Well, maybe not K9å The universe is a big place, and it's refreshing for the Doctor to meet new and different threats and enemies. But eventually he has to come up against something from his past. He did meet the Master of course in Henrietta Street (or did he?!). So who knows who else might eventually pop out of the woodwork when we least expect it? That said, there's nothing planned for the immediate future, I have to say.

In a previous Doctor Who Magazine interview, Justin said that Sabbath had made some cameo appearances in the Eighth Doctor range prior to Henrietta Street. Is he able to tell us what they were, or at least give some clues? Thanks (Question from Eamon McGing).

Have a look at The Slow Empire and Father Time.

Why can't the Doctor be regenerated in the books? I understand since The Burning he has essentially regenerated, yet how much more trauma can he withstand? Surely the BBC has sufficient writers more than able to cobble up a believable "look" for him. When/if the Doctor returns to video, find an actor to fit what you've created (Question from Jerry McFarland).

We could regenerate the Doctor. There's nothing to stop us. Except that I believe it's good to keep a physical image that the readers are familiar with and relates directly back to the programme. Otherwise it's easy to forget our heritage entirely and spin off in the wrong direction. From a practical point of view, it's useful – and marketable – to be able to stick Paul's face on a few covers now and again.

So the only sort of regeneration I'd consider, aside from one motivated by a new film or series, is a character upheaval like in The Burning rather than a physical change.

Once the backlog of Past Doctor stories has been cleared, why not just stick to releasing the ongoing line of novels - the Eighth Doctor books - and leave the Past Doctor stories to Telos Publishing and Big Finish's audios? (Question from Jack Beven).

It's an interesting suggestion. And maybe the answer is simply that you could make entirely the opposite argument just as easily – Why not just do Past Doctor Adventures, and treat the Eighth Doctor like all the others so he gets his turn in amongst them? You could do Eighth Doctor Adventures with Sam, or set during the Earth-Arc thingy.

Big Finish tend to do what we do – ongoing Eighth Doctor Adventures and stand-alone Past Doctor Adventures in effect, though they schedule them differently.

Telos's license (as I understand it) is to produce novellas that appeal to the sci-fi collectors' market and which explore areas and use authors who would not fit comfortably into the BBC's own line of books. So in theory there's no overlap there.

In order to keep with tradition, would BBC Books consider novelisations of both Death Comes To Time and Real Time (after all, with a few exceptions, all the other official BBC stories have been novelised)? (Question from Colin John Francis).

We decided not to pursue the television stories that haven't been novelised as they are all available on video, and we hope and intend to publish them in script books eventually.

We have been considering Real Time and Death comes to Time. I wouldn't want to þgive up' a slot for an original Who novel to do a novelisation though. So it would have to be a special publication of some sort. And that needs careful consideration and justification and since it's new territory BBC Worldwide would have to be sure the return was worth the investmentå So, it's possible but at the moment we don't have any plans. Sorry.

Any chance of getting somebody like Lee Sullivan to give us a picture of the current TARDIS crew. It would look good on the website (Question from Colin John Francis).

That's a nice idea. I'm aware that we don't put the Eighth Doctor Adventures companions on the book covers – or at least we haven't so farå Maybe we'll look into that.

Fitz has been with the books for a few years now - are there any plans to give him a rest and bring someone new aboard the TARDIS ? (Question from Stuart Brookes).

Keep reading. You never know what might happen. (and that doesn't mean þyes' necessarily, to either question.)

Twenty Years from now do you honestly believe Doctor Who will still exist in any form (novel, audio, TV, Film etc...) or will our favourite Time Lord merely be a pleasant memory to a few surviving old fogies (myself included)? (Question from Cainim Truax).

I do think the Doctor will still be around actually. We'll just be getting to the eagerly-awaited DVD release of The Horns of Nimon (crammed full of extras, no doubt). Hopefully by then we'll have a new holo-series as well – probably being beamed to the colony on Vulcan to take their mind off that nasty business with the Daleks.

Yes, Doctor Who will run in some form for all of time. Well, till Gallifrey explodes anyway.

Festival of Death is considered one of the best Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventures, What kind of inspiration did you have for that story and how long had you had the idea? (Question from Ashley Catton).

You're very kindå But you're being very kind to Jonathan Morris who actually wrote Festival of Death. Which, you're right, is a belter!

Are there any plans to bring back the terrible BANDRILS??? (Question from Jonathan Morris).

Maybe as a team-up story with the Fungoids and the Plasmatonså The great thing about Doctor Who is that it inhabits a universe where anything – however outrageous – is possible.

Oh, and by the way – there's a guy who wants to ask you about some book you wrote.

• Justin Richards
  

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