Interview: Gary Russell

Man of many talents on Instruments of Darkness and more.

Tell us about your latest book, Instruments of Darkness, and the ideas behind it

This is, to be pretentious for a moment, my first 'personal' book, in which I draw from 38 years' worth of life. It's a book about love and friendship and betrayal and hurt and people misinterpreting the simplest things.

It has adventure and mystery and fantasy of course, but the central theme is friendship and love and the way the distance between the two can be a heartbeat or a chasm. The fact that it's the third in a series about the same bad guys is separate to all that, but I'm glad I've had the chance to wrap it up... sort of...

Like David McIntee's works, there's a hint of James Bond in this book. Are you a bit of a fan and do you think that both Bond and Who hold a similar appeal to Cult fans?

Well, I am a huge Bond fan (books and movies) but it's not a conscious thing in Instruments of Darkness. I'm more inspired here by the works of James Hudnall, Chris Claremont and Stan Lee, with a touch of The Omega Factor and The X-Files.

Have you been on a bit of a mission in your books to do the character of Mel some justice?

When I wrote Business Unusual, it was with the express intention of proving that if you got over the ridiculous assertation that Bonnie Langford was 'bad' (she wasn't), then the character of Mel had a lot of untapped potential, particularly with the Sixth Doctor.

I've tended to do this in my novels - Ben and Polly, Liz Shaw, Adric and Nyssa - always trying to make something out of the characters that people write off without trying to learn more.

Can you tell us a bit about the setting up of Big Finish, how you managed to get Paul McGann on board and if we might ever see Tom Baker play the Doctor for you?

Well, I didn't set up Big Finish - Jason did some years back. We merely joined forces when I needed backing for the Bernice Summerfield project. When BBC Worldwide came to us and said they wondered if we wanted a licence to do Doctor Who, we were flabbergasted but pleased and said 'yes' very quickly. We then set about deciding what we would do, and along with Colin, Sylvester and Peter, we contacted Paul McGann. He just took longer to come aboard than the others but the intention from our side was always there to include him.

Tom Baker was slightly different - we had no direct link to him (Nick Briggs and I knew the other three personally after many years on the convention circuit and I had made contact with Paul's representatives during the writing of Regeneration) so we had to bide our time.

Eventually we made the approach via other people in Tom's entourage but after initially being interested, Tom backed off slightly. I think he feels he wants to do Tom Baker rather more than he wants to do the Fourth Doctor, which may not be so good for our market. But we'll have to see. As time goes by, who knows what might happen.

Can you tell us a little about the creation of Evelyn Smythe and why you think she works so well with the Sixth Doctor?

Evelyn came into existence because I remember reading that Tom Baker had once said that he thought Emilia Rumford from The Stones of Blood (seventy-ish dotty professor-type) would have made a superb companion for him. Whilst I was never quite so convinced about that pairing, the idea of an older, more mature, lady for the Doctor appealed. And it felt very right for Colin's Doctor. Colin is a terribly well-read, well-educated actor who enjoys wordplay and genuine wit.

I'd worked with Maggie Stables who comes into the same category and it just seemed ideal. I was at a brilliant convention in Minneapolis sitting around a pool, as you do, with some mates and we started throwing ideas around about who Evelyn Smythe could be. Within an hour, we had it down and emailed off to Jason for his input and the rest, as they say, is history. Instruments of Darkness lists the guilty parties in its "thanks to" section.

Ever since then, I knew I wanted to put her into prose before anyone else did - I mean, yes BBC Books would need to ask permission if they wanted anyone else to use her, but it would've been churlish to say no, so I just made sure I got there first. It gave me the chance to furnish her with a detailed backstory that the audio medium neither allows or, frankly, requires.

I'm very fond of Evelyn and thought that the friction between her laid-backness and Mel's forthright energy would be fun, with the Doctor not knowing which way to turn.

Do you write the Doctor Who you always wanted to or do you approach the books differently to traditional Who?

A bit of both really. The prose medium is obviously vastly different in practice than a TV script, and allows for the flexibility that can give you the envelope-pushing piece of genius that is [The Adventuress of] Henrietta Street or you can have a more traditional romp such as Instruments of Darkness.

I think so long as you are true to Doctor Who and remember its not about sex, violence, swearing and an unlikable lead character, you're on the right track either way.

Do you find that you had to take a different approach writing for the BBC as opposed to Virgin?

Not particularly. Because of the TV Movie novelisation, I was probably the first person to know I was going to do a BBC Book before people knew the BBC were doing the books, and I discussed that quite a lot, especially as I was doing a sequel to a Virgin Book.

As I had no interest in Virgin's New Adventures and concentrated on the Missing Adventures, the change of publisher was of little consequence. The only real change was not working with Rebecca Levene any more and that Business Unusual had a bizarre dog on the cover that I'd rather it hadn't!

Do you consciously aim for a different style and atmosphere with your Doctor Who books, as opposed to your work on the Big Finish audio adventures?

Well, I've not written any audios, but as the producer/script-editor, I suppose I tend to look for seventy five percent 'trad' and twenty five percent 'envelope-pushers' on the audio front. We have a significantly different audience to the novels - I think our chunk of the audience likes its traditional Who, but if you don't watch out, it's easy to become complacent and because we are, basically, looking back most of the time (obviously the McGann plays are a different kettle of fish), you have to press the "reset" button all the time. Or do we...?

I like taking small chances now and again - Evelyn's existence is a case in point, because if it becomes boring for me, it's twice as boring for the listeners. We're also doing other companion-type things.

The Eye of the Scorpion introduces the character of Erimem, the Doctor's first non-Caucasian companion I guess (bar Sharon in the old Doctor Who Magazine strips). When Iain McLaughlin wrote the scripts, he didn't intend her to stick around, but we had such a good actress play the part that part-way through recording Jason and I looked at each other and agreed we'd use her again.

I think Jason thought I'd asked Iain to write the script that way, but it was pure serendipity. And we're also making some modifications to Ace, starting in Colditz, to perhaps suggest that she's growing up a little.

Do you think the current writing style would translate well into any future TV productions?

Well, that's pretty much a chicken-and-egg situation. I think we owe Virgin a debt of gratitude for doing what they did with the New Adventures. They made it work, for the most part and there wouldn't be a book range if they hadn't wanted to move away from the TV show and do their 'too broad, too deep for TV' stuff.

But had they not done that, had they just said "we'll only do like-TV stories" would we miss them? That said of course, the Seventh Doctor era was, story-wise, unlike any that had gone before, so maybe that change had already started.

So I'm glad that ten years on, there's room for both. As to whether the book and/or audios would translate into TV stories - I hope not. A TV series should be as fresh and innovative as this one was in 1963, and if you read a book or listen to an audio drama and think "I could easily see that being done on TV" then the author/producer has failed to use his respective alternate medium properly.

You've covered a lot of bases during your professional career - acting, writing, producing and more - which has been the most rewarding and why?

Writing is the most satisfying, but the least likable - I love the process of coming up with ideas and I love seeing a finished novel. I loathe and detest the writing process but it's a necessary evil. Producing the audios is fantastic - I love working with other people, shaping their dreams into a script, working with actors, directors etc. That's the best job, and one I'd love to do for a new Who TV series!

But I must say, I enjoyed my three years at Doctor Who Magazine enormously and found that the most stimulating and consistently fun job I've done.

What's next for Gary Russell then?

Sleep. I wish... Well, there's the 40th anniversary to come, which Big Finish will certainly be marking, I would like to do another novel one day (Adric and the Fourth Doctor this time I think...)

I'm working on a big three-year project with HarperCollins to tie in with the Lord of the Rings movies - the Art of... books, for which I have to do one per film to be released alongside the DVDs (which means we can use stuff that other books can't because there'll be nothing screen-sensitive in them) and I'm hopefully doing a new version of my pseudonymous Virgin guide to Frasier book early next year.

And yeah, sleep...

• Gary Russell
  

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