Interview: Keith Topping

A bumper-sized chat with the author behind Byzantium!

Like many writers working in Cult publishing these days, you cut your teeth in the world of fanzines. What did you learn from that experience and what was the best thing to come out of it?

You learn how to write for an audience - albeit a small one - get critique from them, and use those comments to improve your writing. You learn how to grab the readership - and this applies to both fiction and journalism. The basic building-blocks of any successful piece of writing; the structure of a sentence, the way in which you can keep the reader interested by making a point every now and then.

It was a valuable training ground and that's possibly the reason why myself and so many of my contemporaries are now doing this for a living in one form or another. Just look at British Doctor Who fanzines from 15 years ago - it's scary. Half the BBC writers, half the staff at Visual Imagination... [came from them.] Talented bunch of lads, all needing a push in the right direction.

Favourite work? Well, The Hollow Men came directly out of the fan fiction that both myself and Martin [Day] were writing, and it's my favourite book so far, so I guess you could say that.

Along with fellow Who writers Martin Day and Paul Cornell, you created a whole variety of programme guides and invented a style that others still copy.

When we wrote The Guinness Book of Classic British TV in the early '90s, we wanted to celebrate the fan's way of watching TV; which isn't, necessarily, how professional reviewers watch TV. We liked the "close attention to detail" stuff - spotting goofs, flaws, bits where somebody says the wrong thing. But we also wanted to celebrate TV as a medium.

It's never had a good press, particularly in relation to cinema. You can get any number of film guides in WH Smiths, but try finding a decent TV guide and the choice is more limited. So, from that, when we started writing such books for Virgin, we wanted to continue with that idea.

The major Doctor Who resource at that time was Jean Marc Lofficier's Official Programme Guide. A fine book as far as it goes; gives you all the information you need about what happens in the episodes, who's in them, and when they were broadcast. But it didn't actually tell you anything about the nuts-and-bolts of the programme - why the fans watch it. Why they become fans. The funny lines, the silly clothes, the continuity, the "oh, I know where they ripped-this-bit-off-from." That's where The Discontinuity Guide and The Avengers Programme Guide came from.

We wanted to write books that said "okay, here's an episode; something really funny happens ten minutes in. There's another bit where a wall shakes. The actor playing third-monster-to-the-left later went on to be somebody really famous in another series. The plot's almost exactly the same as an episode of Department S that we watched last week," all the kind of things that fans say when they're watching an episode with a couple of friends, a few beers and a pizza on a Friday night.

Once those two books, in particular, showed that such ideas - books written for fans by fans - could be published and, more importantly, could sell, that became pretty much industry-standard.

I've noticed recently, particularly in America, most of the new unofficial (and in some cases official) series guides are using the idea of categories and including fun sections.

The greatest compliment I've ever had paid to me and the work I do was when Keith DeCandido, who wrote the episode guide section of the official Buffy Watcher's Guide, commented in an online interview that he'd been influenced by the work that Martin, Paul and I did in The Discontinuity Guide, The New Trek Programme Guide and X-Treme Possibilities (our book on The X-Files). That was a bit of a special moment for me.

Once I began writing them myself - my unofficial Buffy guide, Slayer, was my first solo work - I started to move away from purely concentrating on what happens on-screen to finding out a bit more about the people who make the show, which I'd never much bothered with before. Buffy fascinates me, I admit, and so do its writers and producers. And again, that seems to have influenced the next wave of younger writers who are now doing similar books.

How did that style evolve and what's the most bizarre fact about a show you've uncovered in your research?

I've come across plenty of bizarre stuff. Slayer, in particular, seems to have become a dumping ground for anybody who's found out some obscure fact or reference. I get emails and letters virtually every day from people saying "you might want to include this in the next edition". Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

One of the most intriguing was a list of really obscure references in Buffy that I'd missed in the first edition. I mean outrageously obscure. Lines of dialogue from 15th century religious texts and the like. Sadly, I've only been able to check a fraction of them, but one or two do appear in the next edition.

When the BBC took over the publication of the Doctor Who books, what was expected from the first Past Doctor novel - your Devil Goblins From Neptune?

I believe that the BBC thought the TV movie was going to be very big - which, of course, in this country it was - and that we were going to get a new series (which, sadly, we never did). So, they came at it very much from a point of view of, "let's have a series of rattlingly good adventure novels just like the series used to be on TV." A bit different from Virgin's ideas but, to be fair, not that different.

Was it an idea you had previously developed for Virgin Publishing, and were you required to adapt it for your new bosses?

Devil Goblins was on the table at Virgin when the BBC got the license back and, I think, that may have contributed to Martin and I getting the book accepted. We had a completed synopsis and sample chapter written and ready to go within a day of the BBC asking for submissions. Right place, right time I guess. Pity about the novel!

Having written for several Doctors now, which do you most enjoy writing for and why? Any Doctors that are harder to write for than others?

I've done four so far, and I'm working on a fifth. My favourite to watch was Peter Davison. I loved the era, and the sense that the series was becoming grown up, and I enjoyed writing King of Terror because of it.

My favourite Doctor and companion team to write for are the seventh Doctor and Ace and that's probably why The Hollow Men is my favourite novel. They just seem to click. There are three that I haven't tried my hand at yet, although I've got a nice idea for a second Doctor historical that I'd like to do at some stage. But, they're all good. They're all Doctor Who, that's the magic of the series.

You have often been praised (and sometimes criticised) for your 'pop culture' references - even in historical novels like Byzantium! How did this become a trademark of yours and what appeals to you about it?

I just like using songs, or lyrics as chapter titles. It's something I was doing when I was writing fan fiction fifteen years ago. It's not really a big issue. Occasionally references will slip into the book itself. Again, it's not a big deal.

That's kind-of got away from why I include pop culture in my work. Dunno. Because I'm a child of my age I guess. A line I once wrote for [a character of mine called] Johnny Chester in a bit of fan-fiction seems appropriate here: 'I'm a child of the 60s. Brought up on an undiluted diet of guitar pop, tacky SF TV, horror films, superhero comics and the power of football and socialism.'

I've just had a very interesting conversation on one of the fan forums about self-indulgence and whether a writer's work can be divorced from their world-view. The only thing I can really say about the way I approach writing a novel is that unless you're writing it in a very calculated way with regard to your potential readership (i.e. writing something aimed to appeal to a specific demographic) then, by the very nature of the process what you write (particularly if it includes aspects of your own personal politics, your religion, etc) is what pleases yourself and with the hope that it'll please other people too.

I was specifically asked this question a while ago by an interviewer: "Who do you write your novels for?" I gave him the only honest answer that I could. "Me... and, secondarily, anybody else that wants to read them". Any other answer would have been a lie just as, I suspect, any other answer from any other writer alive or dead, would have been too. If that makes me self- indulgent, then yeh, I kind-of agree.

But I think it makes virtually every other author from the greatest to the very worst guilty of exactly the same thing. Is Finnegan's Wake self indulgent? Is Hamlet? Is Dracula? Is Timewyrm: Revelation? The answer to them all is "yes," because those writers were, first and foremost, writing something that satisfied themselves. The fact that others caught on to what they were doing was, and remains, a bonus.

My politics might have changed but my sense of entertainment never has! And, you know, when you find out that your heroes - Iain Banks, Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, Jason Katims - are all fanboy geeks at heart just like you, it kind-of makes you sleep easier at night!

Tell us a little about Byzantium! and why you chose that time period and TARDIS crew.

I've wanted to write about the Romans for years. Fascinating culture, fascinating people. Really advanced and civilised, yet they killed people with gay abandon and enslaved half the world doing so. I've been working on Byzantium! off-and-on for about seven years but, after King of Terror, finally dragged a plot together.

At that stage, all I knew was that I wanted it to be a first Doctor story. There was some discussion about where it might fit in. I hoped, at first, that I could set it between Susan leaving and Vicki arriving. I didn't want particularly to include a fourth companion but I really did want to use Ian (who's great for comedy and action, and very much an "everyman") and Barbara who has that wonderful sense of history and knowledge about her.

Justin [Richards] actually suggested that, since they're in 64AD anyway, with The Romans, I could set it there. And, in a way, I'm glad I did because as soon as I started writing it, Vicki came alive in my mind. I thought this girl can be pivotal to the story - let's build it around her instead of, as I was planning originally, Barbara.

How do you go about researching a book like that? Do you trawl the internet or are libraries still the place for real research?

Bit of both. Mainly books either from libraries or my own collection (see the acknowledgements page for further details), but the Net is also useful. You read a lot and make loads of notes. You try and visualise the raw data you're being given.

For instance, I read a great book by Everett Ferguson called Backgrounds to Early Christianity. Absolutely essential. Couldn't have written Byzantium without it. Loads of details on not only Christian practices, but also Greek and Roman and Jewish too. It was like a universal databank.

So much praise to the author there because he wrote something that not only was a valuable asset to a writer, but also hooked me as a reader too. I now know more about first century sex-cults like the Dionysians than I ever did before reading this! See, history can be fun!

Being an authority on so many modern series, do you think Doctor Who can still hold it's own against the big US shows and are there any true heirs its throne?

The concept is still incredible. You can go anywhere. You can do anything. You can write about history in a way that no other series will allow you to.

Let's put it this way, my first four novels have been in order; a 1970s spy-pastiche, a contemporaneous West Country horror story, a contemporaneous technological espionage thriller with an SF/horror backdrop set in California and a straight historical set in first century Greece. Now that's a pretty staggering range for any writer.

If Stephen King walked into his publishers tomorrow and said "I'd like to write a historical story set in the middle-ages,"... I think he'd be persuaded otherwise! I think, as a writer, Doctor Who's format is second to none.

Whether the series could survive on TV in a post-X-Files, post-Next Generation, post-Buffy world is another matter. The thing that always set the series apart was the imagination of its audience. But, do teenagers today have an imagination when it's all done for them with video games and DVDs?

It's terrible, I'm sounding like my dad here, but I do sometimes wonder if my generation wasn't the last to have a sense of adventure when it comes to imagination. Dreaming, as Blondie once said, is free... but, not if you've got a Play Station and a copy of Tomb Raider.

I feel like somebody in a Hovis commercial now. "In t'my day, we had t'Cybermen..."

Was the Los Angeles location of King of Terror influenced by your regular convention trips to America?

Hugely. Enormously. LA's a place and a half. Blow's your mind the first time you step off a plane at LAX, get in a car and fifteen minutes later you're cruising along Sunset watching all the neon and the whole world passing you by.

I'd heard before I went that it was plastic and artificial. "You'll hate it." It is plastic and artificial. I fell in love with it within minutes. First time there, I just went native simple as that. They got the sun and they got the palm trees as The Clash once said!

I remember coming back from that trip and reading an interview with Tim Booth from James who was saying that your first time in America sends you slightly crazy because of the 'open twenty four hours a day' idea. I knew exactly what he meant.

So, anyway, yes, King of Terror was a total reaction to my first two trips to the States for conventions. Setting, aesthetics, large chunks of the dialogue, the works. I freely admit that. I've been back six times now, to L.A., San Francisco, and Minneapolis (nice town - got lots of friends over there).

I get over periodically just for holidays when I'm not working. I may end up there - it's certainly better than Tyneside on a wet Wednesday afternoon in the middle of November, that's for sure. And it's where they make all the films.

What are US conventions like these days and how does it feel to be a guest rather than an attendee?

The first convention I attended was Gallifrey One in 1998. At the end of it, all the British writers there - Gary Russell, Paul Cornell, Andy Lane, Martin Day, myself - were all saying "I'm going to write a novel set in LA when I get home!" To date I'm the only one that has (though Jonny Miller's got one coming out later in the year - and very good it is too).

The conventions themselves are very different to UK ones. Most of the audience are very knowledgeable about the book range (in some case more than the authors). They like what we do, or if they don't, they're nice about it.

Case in point: this year, after one of the panels at Gallifrey, a girl got me to sign King of Terror and then droned on for the next five minutes about all of the things that she didn't like about it. I couldn't get a word in edgeways! "Was there anything you did like?" I asked at the end, with my bottom lips wobbling. "Yes" she said, kissing me on the cheek, "the author" and then she left! True story!

For three or four days, you're in another world. Treated like a bleeding film star or something, and God Bless whomsoever invented the concept of 'room parties' - I have got to reimport those back to the UK! And, it's always a joy to be in L.A., even if the weather's more reminiscent of Tynemouth. The way in which myself and my fellow guests from Britain are always received and treated by both the convention organisers and the attendees, more than makes up for any sogginess on our part.

It still surprises us when they're so nice to us. It shouldn't because we should be used to it by now. The hospitality shown is amazing. We come to their country, drink lots of their beers and crack a few half-way witty one-liners on the panels, and, in return, these lovely warm and friendly people take us into their homes, feed us, watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer with us, take us sight-seeing, buy our unworthy products, and laugh at our inane jokes. This doesn't, really, seem to be a fair swop!

I kind-of dig 'em, you might have noticed!

So, why the move from books to novellas then? Do you find it an interesting discipline to write something shorter?

It was a different skill, and something that I'd always wanted to attempt. Writing a novel is like a marathon, if I can pull in a very pretentious sporting metaphor at this point. A novella is more like a 5,000 metres race. There's more tactics involved. You have to get the pace exactly right otherwise you might peak too early.

I'm interested in writing anything that extends me as a writer and makes me better rather than just doing the same thing over and over again - that's why I try to mix it all up; novels, novellas, journalism, factual books, even TV and radio. They're all different aspects with their own rules and their own limits. You can, if you're good, bring the skills from one type of writing into another, but first of all you have to learn the discipline.

To use another pretentious sporting metaphor, it's like a martial art. You can't become a black belt before you've been through a lot of other levels. Even if you can break bricks with your bare hands.

What guidelines did David Howe give you regarding the style of the novellas and how do they differ from what the BBC expects from a Doctor Who author?

[There is] surprisingly little difference other than the word-count, obviously. At the end of the day it's all Doctor Who, isn't it? David did say that Telos were looking for innovation, the kinds of stories that - for one reason or another, not necessarily controversial - couldn't be told in a BBC novel. Because they were smaller, or more intimate, or whatever. He also told me not to be hamstrung by any type of continuity and that kind of thing although, ironically, mine takes place in the immediate aftermath of a very well known TV story and does refer quite a bit of the events of that story. Making it a continuity-fest of obscene proportions from a Telos point of view! Novellas, as opposed to novels, are often more about mood and atmosphere and characterisation than your traditional 85,000 word novel.

But they both still tell a story, they both still require dramatic moments and techniques. I think the main difference is scale.

It's an unusual choice to tell the story from the Fourth Doctor's point of view. What did you discover when you got inside his head?

Doubt and uncertainty. Fear of failure. Fear of the unknown. Fear of emotion. A lot of fear. This is something that the TV series briefly touched upon (Image of the Fendhal, most notably) but it's not something that many of the novels have actively gone after. I wanted to write a Doctor Who ghost story that would scare people so much they'd require a change of underwear after reading it.

The only way to successfully get that resonance was to have the narrator be as terrified as, hopefully, the reader. It was very interesting when I first pitched the idea. David said something along the lines of "I always thought a lot of the fourth Doctor's clowning around was a bluff," and I used that line, or at least that idea, within the story.

This is very much season 14 Doctor, informed by the events of The Hand of Fear (the loss of his best friend) and The Deadly Assassin (being a Manchurian Candidate on his homeboy turf). I wanted this Doctor to be as dark and introverted and otherworldly as it was possible to be whilst still, hopefully, retaining the essential 'Tom-ness' of Tom.

Writing the thought processes and the non-dialogue narration was, I have to admit, really tough. The idea of getting into someone's head when you've only got how they talk to base it on was a stimulating challenge. And, I think, a rewarding one. I'm still not really sure if it's the best thing I've ever written. There are parts of it that surprise me, I didn't think I had the ability to got to some of the places that the prose dose.

But other bits I still don't think are a patch on the best moments of The Hollow Men, which remains the fictional work by which I have to be judged, I reckon.

I believe the novella was inspired by an actual visit to the Queen Mary. Tell us more.

It was, [at the] Gallifrey One convention, late February 2001. The day after it finished a group of friends of mine were heading down to Long Beach harbour and asked if I wanted to come along. David Howe was in our party too. It was a really strange trip - six people in a car built for four!

The Queen Mary was a fascinating place in itself (and, of course, you've got the big white dome next door where they filmed Stargate and Batman Forever, and a massive Russian nuclear submarine to walk through). We did the "ghosts and legends" tour and, about halfway around I remember saying to David "there's a novel in this, you know." "Make it a novella!" he said. So, when I got on the plane a couple of days later I used the time I'd normally be sleeping to think about ideas for a story that would fit into the Doctor Who mould.

By the time I arrived back in England, I had the germ of what became Ghost Ship. It wasn't called that and it went through a few changes (a different Doctor, for a start - it was originally going to be Troughton). I sent it to David, he liked it, made some suggestions, we batted it back and forth and then, within about six or seven weeks, I was commissioned. I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain mine was actually the first novella to be formally commissioned.

It was never going to be the first release - I think David and Stephen always had Kim Newman earmarked for that - but at one stage mine looked like being second. Then, for a variety of reasons it got pushed back to third, then fourth. But at least it's out now.

What do you make of the rumours that the Buffy people are plotting to make new Doctor Who?

"It'll never happen!" I mean, don't get me wrong, nobody on Earth would be happier to see Who back in any form and, especially, with even the vague possibility of writers like David Fury and Jane Espenson and Doug Petrie being involved. I mean, wow, you know. big news. But it's a non-starter, I feel. Money issues, and all that.

No, I think it'd be much nicer if they just concentrated on getting 'Ripper' off the ground. Which, in all senses of the word other that the name, sounds like Doctor Who to me!

Do you think Doctor Who's influence on your life as been a good thing? What's been the most rewarding consequence of being involved with it?

Oh yes, undoubtedly. I'm a full-time freelance writer now exclusively because of Doctor Who fandom and the avenues that it has pushed me down over the last decade and a half. Funnily enough I was answering a letter from somebody who'd bought one of the novels passed on to me recently and the guy said something like "it must be so hard to just sit there and write all day." I couldn't stop laughing to reply for about three hours. I said: "'fraid not, my friend. My job, get this, is sit in my gaff every day, trawling the Internet, watching US TV series, sometimes going to the library to do a bit of research, occasionally flying off to the San Fernando Valley. And then writing about it. And the best bit about it is, I get paid for it! Yeh, it's a rotten life and no mistake!"

I know that sounds incredibly arrogant but I just can't believe some days how lucky I am. I get to do as a job that most people would regard as a pretty fun hobby. It's fantastic. And that's all down to Doctor Who. So I'm grateful, never for a second let it be thought that I'm not. I know we all sometimes undervalue this daft little show made on a shoestring budget, and we hide our light under a bushel and nod mutely when our relatives tell us that we should be acting like grown-ups and putting away these childish things.

But, you know, damn 'em all to hell, this is our show, and it says something about us and we should celebrate that. Isn't it odd, the older I get the more I turn into a Militant Fanboy Radical. A Black Anorak, if you will!

What's the one untapped area of Doctor Who fiction or non-fiction that should be explored by the BBC or Telos and their current crop of authors?

Oooo, tricky one. I have to say I think the various Who lines have got it all pretty much covered. To be honest, the stories are the important thing - everything else is window-dressing. So, between the Beeb and Telos and Big Finish, I reckon there's enough diversity and innovation going on to keep most people happy. I like horror personally - always have done - so sometimes I'd like to see a few more examples of that. But then you look at a writer like Mick Lewis and you think, well, there you go - that one's pretty much sorted!

What do you make of Doctor Who fandom since the show went off the air? Has it changed for the better since fans have adopted a 'do it yourself' approach to new Who?

As with all fandoms since the Internet became such an important part of all of our lives, it's become more "instant" - reactions are instantaneous due to the nature of the medium. Whereas once, if you wanted to tell fellow fans what you thought of an episode you had to sit down and write a letter to a fanzine and, maybe a couple of months later, it'd be published. Now, within literally seconds of reading a book, you can be talking on-line. I have my own thoughts on whether that's a good thing or not but, to be honest, whether it is or it isn't, it's not going to change and I'd be a Luddite if I tried to hold back the tide, King Canute-like. I think that, in some ways, fandom has become more fractured. In other ways it's come closer together. The big online collective points, like Outpost Gallifrey and the BBC message boards and even (although it seems to be a dying a death at the moment) rec.arts.drwho still have a valid role to play. These are still, essentially, our public face.

So, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to be positive wherever possible about the past, the present and the future. I know it's difficult at times, but whenever anybody gets sarcastic or cynical about stuff I like I do tend to fall back on that old standby, "what's your great contribution to society then, mate?" Doctor Who's contribution is a lot of entertainment and a lot of episodes and novels, but also a bunch of fans who were so inspired by what they saw and read that they went off and became writers and journalists and media people themselves because of it.

I think that's possibly Doctor Who fandom's biggest boast. You look around British publishing and television at the moment and... it's us! You know, [fanzine editors] who I used to write for fifteen years ago are now important media players. We've sort of got our own Old Boys network only here it's not about what school you went to, it's about which TV show you used to watch when you were eight!

Has fan reaction to your work ever influenced your approach to subsequent books?

No. That's a dangerous road to go down 'cos once you start trying to please everybody you end up pleasing no one. Especially, perhaps most importantly, yourself. I am aware that a lot of the time I'm online I do spend far too much time talking about what appears to be my favourite subject: myself. Yeh, guilty.

But I try to use my position, such as it is, as a marketing tool - hey I'm a nice guy, please buy my book, I've got a hungry mouth to feed - but also to try and explain why the books come out the way they do. Not just mine, but everybody's. That nobody ever sets out to write a crap book. That's been useful, I feel, to bring a bit of understanding to the mix. But, sometimes you'll get a reaction that just defies logic to you.

King of Terror got a mixed feedback, but was generally received okay. I've said this before but if you put the Monthly review by Ness Bishop and Davy Darlo's in TV Zone together you'll end up with a review of, either the best Doctor Who novel ever, or the worst because Ness liked the second half but not the first half and David liked the first half but not the second! What can you do? Other than, I suppose, keep on rewriting the novel 10,000 times for every single punter with them standing looking over your shoulder saying "yes, yes, no, don't like that bit." Sorry boys and girls, but it ain't gonna happen!

What I didn't like about some of the online reviews of King of Terror was that there was (I think) an element of 'agenda' involved and I'm really not sure why I, personally, was selected for some of the hostility that I got. Not the novel, me personally. From one source, in particular, who should've known better, frankly. And I'm still quite bitter about that. I hate it when authors on the range criticise the work of other authors on the range. I think that's really bad form.

Whereas Byzantium! was almost entirely positively reviewed. Got excellent feedback. But, you see, this is the funny thing. You cannot please all of the people all of the time. The other day I just happened to be having a look at the reviews of it on this very [BBC] board and there two lads gave it a couple of absolute sizzlers. 1 out of 5. I mean, come one, you get 1 out of 5 if you spell your name right on the cover!

I think I'm getting more laid back about negative reviews. I've used this as a convention joke, I know, but at the end of the day once somebody's bought the book then whether they like it or not is somewhat immaterial. The process of writing it to be purchased is an end in, and of, itself. After that, hell, somebody's paid their six quid, they can slag it to high heaven for all I care.

Of course, it's not as simple as that outside of the context of theory because, ultimately, we've all got skin that's only as thick as our pride will allow it to be. Does fan reaction matter? Yes, but not as much as either fans or writers sometimes think it does. Does it influence you? No, because that way lies madness and sweaty palms... as a better writer than me once said.

Tell us about your other projects. I believe you have a whole string of new and updated series guides in the pipeline.

I quit the day job - Civil Service - last November after nineteen years in it. Since then, I've hardly had a day where I haven't been writing something for somebody. My West Wing guide, Inside Bartlet's White House, came out in April, Telos picked up on an idea I'd wanted to do for a long time for an unofficial guide to Stargate SG-1 which I'm calling Beyond the Gate. I've just finished the bulk of the text for that and it'll be out in November. That was a real joy to write - probably the most extensive research I've ever done for an episode guide. I've been working on TV project with Martin Day that might happen or might not, but it was a fascinating and very rewarding thing to be doing and taught me so much about another skill that I needed to acquire.

I've also just signed up with Virgin for another Buffy book - Slayer: The Next Generation - which will be more of a stand-alone book, covering season six and various other aspects of the Buffyverse. And then, not long after that, Virgin also asked me to do a guide to the series 24, which I'm calling A Day in the Life. That'll be out early next year.

[Note: this is a compilation of two interviews from summer 2001 and summer 2002]

• Keith Topping
  

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