Doctor Who_ Nightshade - Mark Gatiss [109]
- is the preference for the wintry seasons. From the ‘burnt a gap there, should anyone want to pop a story in! Anyway, turnip smells of Hallowe’en’ (we call them turnips where I here’s the Seventh Doctor and Ace as I felt I’d like to see come from, although they’re really swedes and we used to them. The Doctor’s savage response to being called hollow them out and put candles in them. Pumpkins were Professor was simply a reflection of my own prejudice. I just only ever glimpsed in American films. Eeh, we were poor hated that affectation. The Doctor himself is feeling but we were ‘appy) to Christmas. I couldn’t bear the nostalgic, tying in with the theme of the whole adventure, summer. Now I’m older, I love the summer and, though missing his home, or whatever home represents.
there’s nothing quite like the smoky loveliness of October I created the Tertiary Console Room because I thought it’d and the magic of Christmas, I find I absolutely dread the be lovely to have one and I was very fan-boyish about the dark winter evenings. Maybe I’m afraid there’s something TARDIS in those days. Christopher H Bidmead had sort of out there...
created TARDIS lore overnight and the notion of an infinite I had a shot-silk blue dressing gown at the time, which is ship slightly obsessed me. I remember loving the idea of a why the Doctor’s wearing one and I notice how much Ace’s patch of open ground inside the TARDIS and I think there’s
‘tape-deck’ now leaps out as a period touch! Tape-deck!
a beach in another of my books. I wanted the third control Imagine!
room to be like a church with the console like an altar and I’m sure I hoped it would be used by every other writer on Chapter Three
the New Adventures - which it wasn’t! I have a feeling it might’ve turned up in one.
I remember reading in a review somewhere that the Betty Yeadon’s brother being eaten by sharks is directly characters of Winstanley and Hawthorne were there as a inspired by the famous Indianapolis speech in Jaws - a film I tribute to The Daemons. This isn’t quite true. Although the absolutely adore. I suppose Alf is more likely to have been cut-off village is a Doctor Who staple and I adored The on an Atlantic convoy than in the Pacific but there are no Daemons, the names were certainly unconsciously man-eating sharks in the Atlantic...
borrowed. At that time, I hadn’t seen the story in years and named the Abbot after my friend’s dad! I suppose 308
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DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
Hawthorne was prickly so that’s why he ended up with that Nigel Kneale, of course, invented the concept but it never name, although Damaris Hayman may have been, as I say, loses its thrill or its spookiness. So here it is again, couched lurking at the back of my mind.
in my best cod-17th Century...
The Doctor’s memory of falling off the radio telescope couldn’t really be avoided. I mean, you would think about it, Chapter Four
wouldn’t you? I’ve always had a soft spot for Logopolis. So baffling but so strange. And with a funeral quality unlike Ah, the Civil War! So good, we actually had three of ‘em.
any other story. In fact, a reference to it recurred in my new No mystery here. Always been faintly obsessed by this TV episode The Idiot’s Lantern but it was cut at a late stage.
period and eventually got to do a full Troughton historical Shame!
on the subject. I decided to dramatise the incident in the A lot of my own Christmas memories are again rolled out manner of a flashback. It was a chance to write some here. I have such sharp recollections of those wonderful
‘period’ dialogue but also a little snapshot of summer times, the smells, the colours, the sheer excitement. The light amongst all the wintriness. It’s quite a nice section, I think that snow gives off through curtains, the cold lino in the and the battle’s well-drawn. Did I put Captain Jackson in kitchen, trying to resist the temptation to