Dalek Empire III

We interview Nicholas Briggs, the new Dalek Emperor.

Why are the Daleks just so damn scary? Especially on audio?

There's no doubting that the Daleks are a fantastic, iconic, visual design; but their visual potential has never really been fully realised.

Don't get me wrong, I love Doctor Who and I love all the Dalek stories and the two movies, but let's face it, even in the best of them they still wobbled a bit and bumped into things. That's nobody's fault; it's just a result of relatively low budgets.

It's only in their comic strip adventures that the Daleks have actually looked really slick. On audio, you can imagine them moving in total silence and with deadly accuracy and speed. And then you've got that voice.

The use of the ring modulator was a characteristically brilliant idea from the Radiophonic Workshop and the actors who refined and developed their Dalek delivery over the years have been amazing - My favourite is Peter Hawkins, by the way. On audio, you have to channel everything through that voice.

I remember seeing actual footage (in that series The World At War) of the Nazi show-trial of the would-be assassins of Hitler. That gutteral, growling voice of the prosecuting council hurling the most blood-curdling insults at the doomed defendants is something that will always haunt me; it makes me feel cold and slightly sick even now. But there's something horribly exhilarating about evil tooå and I try to get all that into the Dalek voice, which is hopefully what makes them scary.

A number of my non-fan friends have heard bits of Dalek Empire, and they often comment on how surprised they are at how scary the Daleks sound. You see, to people like that (we'll call them 'unbelievers', shall we?) the Daleks are just a slightly daft thing from their childhoods that they remember being scared of, but that they now think are a bitå well, funny. An actress recently said to me, 'They just look like giant thimbles, though, don't they?'. A listen to chapter one of Dalek Empire III soon changed her opinion on that!

The third series has a massive cast - How did you manage to get so many people in a Big Finish production?

It's all in the planning! First of all, I wanted it to be a big story that featured lots of characters from all over the galaxy who would eventually come together for the final battle. Am I giving too much away?

Secondly, because I'm also the producer of Dalek Empire, I can use my budget as creatively as I like. As long as my sums add up, Jason Haigh-Ellery (credited as co-producer) is happy. So, by the time I did Dalek War (the previous Dalek series), I hit upon the idea of recording in character blocks, rather than episode blocks. So, for example, someone who's in all four, or in this case, six chapters need only be hired for two or three days. That immediately gives me more budget to hire other actors and pay for more studio time.

The Big Finish rule of thumb is that you usually get allocated one day in the studio per CD. So a normal Doctor Who gets two days in the studio. Dalek Empire got four days and I recorded an episode per day.

However, with a bit of budget manipulation, I can get myself a huge cast and an extra day. So the story has a broader scope character-wise and the performances benefit from more time in the studio.

When you did the first series, were you worried that people might not get into it because "it didn't star TV's Dr Who"? How pleased were you by their success?

I wasn't worried about it at all; not because I was supremely confident, but because I can be ridiculously short-sighted. It never occurred to me that people would think that, because I've always loved Doctor-less Dalek stories in the Dalek books and annuals.

It only hit me when SFX actually said that very thing in their review. Then I thought, Oh God, what an idiot I've been! Nobody's going to like this! My first hint that the tide of opinion was about to turn was when Doctor Who author Craig Hinton said to me, "Congratulations on making a really crap idea work". Naturally, I'd never thought it was a crap idea, but this did indicate that the characters and performances in Dalek Empire were starting to win over the sceptics.

How pleased was I? Well, let's see... Apart from Terry Nation's massive, invaluable input, it's entirely my creation. I write it, cast it, schedule it, plan it, organise it, direct it, do the Daleks, sound effects and music... and write the sleeve notes. And it was almost universally praised. If pride really is a sin, then I'm a great big sinner. It's so lovely when people like what you do in this line of things, because acting, writing and directing is all about communication. So when the people you're communicating with like what they're hearing and say so, it makes it all worthwhile.

I noticed on a messageboard someone saying "I won't buy the third series, as it doesn't feature my favourite characters from the first two." Is that a huge backhanded compliment?

Yes, I think you're right. But I would say that some of the main characters from the other series do return, but not necessarily as you'd expect them to. But look, I'm not so suicidally modest as to suggest that people liking the characters has nothing to do with me. I wrote them, for goodness sake, then cast them and directed them. So I'll happily take the compliment, backhanded or otherwise; but Sarah, Mark and Gareth, for example, did a fantastic job. They really bought-in to their characters.

There's often a tendency for actors to come to Doctor Who stuff and - don't get me wrong - do a perfectly good job, but they don't go that extra mile. They don't invest it with reality and gut feeling. But I was lucky. The casts of Dalek Empire and Dalek War did, and that's ultimately the reason why the listeners really bought-in to the characters and why some of them find the idea of those characters not being in the latest series so intolerable.

I have to say that I felt the same way for a moment, just before I was about to record the new series. But David Tennant, Claudia Elmhirst, Laura Rees and Ishia Bennison (who are the main cast, although there are others just as good too!) really did give it the kind of 'no-holds-barred' enthusiasm that would've made Alby Brook proud. And by the way, Alby himself (the incredibly talented Mark McDonnell) texted me to say how much he's enjoying the new series.

Is there a moment from the first two series that you're terribly proud of?

There are loads of moments that I'm immodestly proud of. But I was particularly pleased at how effective a moment it is when Mirana and Marber die.

I was pleased that John and I had the guts to let the story get that realistic and I thought Teresa and Ian gave excellent performances. Right up until they gasp their last, you think they're going to be rescued. I even almost hope they will be whenever I listen to it now.

That hope is reflected in the way Kalendorf hopes against hope that they will still be alive when he discovers their escape pod years later. It's totally unreasonable for him to hope, but he can't help hoping. That's a painful reality we all encounter at some point in our lives. Aaargh. I'm really quite unpleasant, aren't I?

The series has evolved a style of intricate story-telling devices and incredibly detailed sound design. Has there ever been a moment when you've felt you've gone too far with either?

The question makes me suspicious that you think I have gone to far at some point. But I'm largely happy with it, especially from the story point of view. My trusty script editor, John Ainsworth, is fantastic at reigning in my excesses and is very hot on making sure that each scene has a point.

There was a danger in Dalek War of some of the future perspective scenes - with Saloran and Tarkov - losing their point; but John was very good at encouraging me to give them their own progression. This led me to have the actors, Karen and Steve, do a bit of improvising for one of the scenes.

As for the sound design, I do like to experiment with this. What I do would not work on Radio 4, for example. You have to sound design radio drama in the knowledge that listeners will not be giving it their full attention or will only be playing it on a mono radio.

But I think the committed nature of our audience and the fact that it's sold on CD means that I have licence to push the envelope a little with challenging the audience to pay more close attention.

There's the Varga sequence on Jupiter, in particular, which involves a lot of long establishing sound effects and heavy breathing in the undergrowth; I don't think that was Radio 4 material... it's more like a film soundtrack, which I think is allowable if you don't do it all the time. There's also a sequence in Chapter 3 of Dalek Empire III which is largely just footsteps and breathing; but I think it works. See what you think.

Is there a moment of sound design that's been incredibly complicated to achieve, and which you think everyone's missed?

I don't know whether anyone missed it, but the sequence of Kaymee crash-landing on Graxis Major took me a whole day to do, but it only takes a few seconds to happen in the finished product.

I think a lot of really involved sound design goes unnoticed by an audience. But you don't want them to be thinking, Oh my god, that's complicated. You just want them to be thinking, Yeah, that sounds like a spaceship landing. You just want things to sound the way they should.

Sometimes, that means you have to do a lot of complicated work. Mostly, that's fun. Sometimes it's a pain in the arse... but mostly it's fun.

Could a similar series be made for the Cybermen?

Yes, I think so. It would be a very different kind of story for the Cybermen, because in many ways they have a bit of pathos about them. They always seem to be running out of spare parts or on the verge of extinction. But as with the Daleks, these inhuman foes are best defined by the humanity of the heroes they're fighting.

And in turn, the fascinating nature of the threat from þmonsters' makes the characters who fight them potentially very interesting. To do a Cyberman spin-off series, you'd just have to find the right kind of characters in the right kind of situation. It's something I'd very much like to do.

Well done on making the Varga scary last year. Is there another Doctor Who monster you wish you could redeem?

Thank you. How about the Quarks or the Krotons? Or the Servo Robot? I don't quite think they could have their own series. I think the Ice Warriors could, though. They used to terrify me. And Alan Bennion was brilliant, wasn't he? I'd love to get him back as the star of an Ice Warrior spin-off series.

The Mentor was a really interesting character. How was she created, and will we see more of her?

There are no immediate plans for the return of the Mentor. She was created because I thought that it might be interesting if the Daleks from the alternative reality, who were going to be a bit þnicer' than our Daleks, had not been stupid enough to kill their own leader. I was going to have a version of the scene from Genesis of the Daleks, in which the Daleks decide not to kill her.

Initially, I thought it might be fun if she was just very normal and chatty... not Dalek-ish at all. Then Clayton Hickman suggested that I get Terry Molloy in to do an alternative version of Davros; but Gary Russell beat me to it by commissioning the Davros story. So, I went back to my original idea, but thought it would be interesting to make her cold but not necessarily evil.

In many ways, I think the Mentor is the only sane character in Dalek War. She has the right idea when she says the war cannot be won. But it really works because of Hannah Smith's brilliant performance. I'd met her a few months before, working with her in rep at the Theatre Royal Nottingham, and it struck me how vocally adept she was. And she is lovely to work with too. She goes that extra Dalek mile!

How disappointed are you that the Daleks won't be in the new series?

Massively disappointed. How can you do Doctor Who without the Daleks? Any proper Doctor Who TV series has to feature them at some point. They're as much an icon as the TARDIS or the Doctor himself. And because they're the most evil thing ever, they define the Doctor as a hero.

With all the advances in TV technology and the bigger budgets, it would have been great to see Daleks that don't wobble or bump into things. I believe that at some point in the future, all the contractual difficulties will be sorted out and the Daleks will return. You can have Doctor Who without the Daleks and you can have the Daleks without Doctor Who; but sooner or later, they have to meet up. That's just the way things should be.

But I'm still really looking forward to the new series. The moment I saw The Second Coming, I knew Russell T. Davies was the right man to be at the creative centre of Doctor Who. He's an extraordinarily good writer who has that incredible knack of writing good, popular drama while still imbuing it with something that lifts it into a higher realm... and he loves the programme too! The omens are more than favourable.

This is pretty much a labour of love for you - from writing, through to direction, post-production and Dalek voices - have you ever got to the end of a day listening to electronically treated versions of yourself shout at each other and felt slightly hysterical?

Yes. Although, strangely enough, I'm less hysterical now that I do all the voices myself in the studio with the other actors there. For the first series, I did them with Alistair Lock in a very small room in his home. We had lots of fun, but I think we did go slightly mad when we did that. It always took me some time to recover.

But doing them with the rest of the cast is great, because I can have fun scaring them. And some of them do really get scared. I love it.

Is there a TV story where you feel the Daleks really didn't work? And how would you fix it?

The voices were terrible in Revelation of the Daleks. Graeme Harper told me that he deliberately took a lot of the modulation off them to make them sound different. I think Graeme is a brilliant director and a lovely man; but he was wrong about that. They just sounded really stupid and ineffectual. So, I would have cranked up the modulation.

They were also poorly served by the story. But this was in the era when Davros dominated and the Daleks said little more than 'I obey' and 'exterminate', which was a bit of a waste.

What's been the most fun about creating a post-apocalyptic universe? And the most frustrating?

Creating a fictional world is always a question of creating convincing tips of icebergs. You give a bit of detail which suggests a lot more below the surface which, hopefully, you don't have to spend your time working through intricately... unless you're writing Lord of the Rings.

The His Dark Materials trilogy does this brilliantly, creating its realities a bit at a time, but not overloading us with detail. This inspired me in the way I decided to make the post-Great Catastrophe galaxy unfold in Dalek Empire III.

You create reasons for people to know stuff, as well. For example, Siy Tarkov has been asleep for twenty years, so someone needs to fill him in. The most frustrating thing is finding the right details to give without overloading the audience with boring exposition.

Rather than trying to avoid this, I thought I'd tackle it head-on by making a lot of the information-giving deliberately frustrating and painful to listen to, by giving Siy a terrible stammer. People tell me it makes you really listen hard to him, which was my intention. I wanted the audience to have a strong, immediate reason to pay attention. Steve Elder really threw himself into all that, and gave himself quite a sore throat!

The characters in the first chapter are all really lovely. They're not going to have to die, are they?

Well, there's a deadly plague spreading across the galaxy and the Daleks are well known for exterminating people. What do you think the chances are that no one's going to get killed? Get real! But that's what makes it, hopefully, good drama. You create people you care about and put them into the most horribly dangerous situation. Hold on, isn't that the format for the latest series of Big Brother? Oh no, hold on again, I said 'people you care about'.

Do you ever catch yourself impersonating the Dalek Emperor in the shower?

Never. But non-Doctor Who fan friends are always asking me to be a Dalek. I even, very naughtily, slipped one into a play I was doing up North recently. All the characters on stage had to toast "The Mexicans" and I always used to do it as a Dalek, which made everyone laugh... but we were all meant to be drunk, so I think it was allowable.

For the last two years, the Daleks have had fiendishly complicated plans. Do you run the various schemes past people just to check that it all makes sense?

This is where John Ainsworth comes in. As well as undertaking general script editing duties, he listens to all my story ideas. He's very good at working out what I'm trying to achieve and then helping me to do it. In other words, he doesn't have his own agenda, he just works out how to develop mine more effectively.

I also talk through ideas with my good friends Rob Shearman and Clayton Hickman. Rob and I always discuss our story ideas, and he's always full of good advice, but doesn't worry if I don't always take it.

Clay has really liked Dalek Empire from the beginning and is massively positive and supportive. His enthusiasm and absolute faith that I'll come up with something good has been a great encouragement to me, and is probably one of the biggest reasons why I actually managed to finish writing Dalek Empire III.

What's your favourite "ooh look, it's the Daleks!" Episode One cliffhanger?

Probably the end of episode one of Death to the Daleks, which I totally steal at the end of chapter one of Dalek Empire III. Also... I don't particularly like Destiny of the Daleks, but I thought the idea of them smashing through the wall was great, though. Imagine that with a big budget!

What keeps you coming back to the Daleks? Is there a new facet we'll discover about them this year?

I've created a story that keeps running. But, most importantly, the Daleks themselves are unstoppable. They are so ingenious. You can never totally wipe them out.

Even if you say they're dead and gone, you just know there'll be some survivors left somewhere. What we encounter in the Daleks this time is their ability to play the long game and be a lot more cunning. And just as they had the infusion of þnew' knowledge in terms of the Ka-Charrat data in Dalek Empire, this time there's another influence giving them a slightly different perspective. Keep listening.

• Dalek Empire CD
  
• Big Finish
  

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