Interview: Lloyd Rose

An American author's perspective on City of the Dead.

Can you tell us a bit about your writing origins and how you came to write a Doctor Who novel in particular? I make my living as a writer: I'm the theatre critic for the Washington Post. I wrote an episode of Homicide that was aired there last season. I've always loved Doctor Who and thought it would be fun to write one of the novels.

What unique perspective do you think you bring to the novels, coming from an American - rather than UK - cult TV upbringing?

That's hard to say, being as I'm looking at whatever my perspective is from the inside. But you know, a lot of cult British television has been shown widely in the U.S. - Doctor Who, The Prisoner, The Avengers, the Pythons, and more recently shows such as Red Dwarf and Blake's 7 and, even more recently, The League of Gentlemen.

For an American, it's there if you're interested. I think you can see in Buffy the Vampire Slayer that Joss Whedon loves British cult television (so many of his characters are British, for one thing).

The City of the Dead is unusual for a Doctor Who story in that it deals more with the supernatural than the scientific. Why did you choose to go down that route?

Well, it didn't actually feel like a choice, I just did it. I supposed the atmosphere of the city itself influenced me. But I explain the þsupernatural' elements in scientific terms, explaining magic by way of probability theory, and so on.

How true to the specific New Orleans black magic myths and legends is The City of the Dead, or have you drawn upon wider occult references?

The voodoo references and the ghost stories alluded to are specific to the city (the ghost tour in the book is based on one I actually took). The other stuff makes use of other occult traditions. And of course I made quite a bit of the latter up.

Why New Orleans in particular? Did it have anything to do with The Two Doctors almost being filmed there in the eighties?

No. I know New Orleans and thought it would make a great setting for the Eighth Doctor to have an adventure in. It's a very strange, sensual place.

You imply in your acknowledgements that Justin Richards helped to pull the novel together a little. What elements did he bring to it and is the end result the one you expected when you set out to write it?

The incidents and their order were virtually identical to what they are now, and the end result is pretty much what I expected it to be from the beginning. But the initial story just sort of drifted along. Justin kept pressing me until I finally hammered out something that had a real narrative drive to it.

He wouldn't let me get away with shortcuts or slacking off, and he has a terrific sense of story. He's both receptive and very tough, an ideal combination for an editor.

What are you your future writing plans - both for the Doctor Who range and outside of that?

Justin has in hand a proposal for another Eighth Doctor Adventure, part of the storyline that begins with The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, called Camera Obscura.

Did you prefer writing for an amnesiac Doctor trying to rediscover himself, or do you miss all the baggage of his past experiences?

My knowledge of the show is extremely spotty, being pretty much limited to the adventures of Doctors four and seven, so there wasn't a lot of baggage for me personally to miss.

• Lloyd Rose
  

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