Happy 50th Anniversary, Doctor Who!

Okay, actually this Saturday, November 23, marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most popular science-fiction TV series of all time, but I figure why wait until then to join in on the celebration? I’m an unabashed Whovian who traces his fanboy interest all the way back to the late 1970s (to use the in-vogue phrase: Tom Baker was my Doctor), and the show has had a definite influence on my writing over the years. For instance, if you reversed the dynamic of my novel series, The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, instead of a teen Goth leading lady the main character would be Sebastienne Mazarin, a 400-year-old being who can change their appearance, and who fights monsters with the aid of a much younger female companion. Does that concept sound familiar?  😉

But, you ask, why bring up Doctor Who’s anniversary here at The ’Warp’s blog, when the company mainly publishes dark urban fantasy material? Well, it’s because I once had the opportunity to write one of the Doctor’s adventures!

In 2005, I was contacted by Doctor Who and X-Men novel author Steve Lyons, with whom I worked on a project or two during my editorial days at ibooks, inc. He explained that he was supposed to be part of an upcoming anthology called Doctor Who: Short Trips: Farewells, published by Big Finish Productions (the folks who create the bestselling Doctor Who, Stargate, and Dark Shadows audio dramas). Farewells was the latest—and scheduled to be the last—volume of Big Finish’s Doctor Who: Short Trips anthologies. The problem for Steve, though, is that he was overcommitted in his writing assignments, and had told the book’s editor (and another Doctor Who author), Jacqueline Rayner, that he’d have to bow out—and then recommended me to take his place. Wow! (Even then, my Whoish fandom was known to…well, pretty much everyone.)

Jacqueline got in touch with me and explained the premise: each story would be a literal “farewell,” with the Doctor saying good-bye to someone or something. She rejected my initial idea: “I’d like to show that the Fifth Doctor’s annoying companion Adric wasn’t a complete asshole before he died” (he wasn’t all that popular with the DW fanbase)—but I wasn’t about to give up, so I quickly pitched her another idea:

The final season starring Tom Baker (the show’s eighteenth) was fairly maudlin, with this sense of doom throughout that built up to the death of Tom’s Fourth Doctor in the season ender, “Logopolis.” This mood was accentuated in the season opener, “The Leisure Hive,” by a sudden change in the Doctor’s wardrobe, which had gone from six years’ worth of multicolored scarves and bohemian attire to a somber, uniform burgundy color scheme.

Fiction-wise, why would that happen? I asked. What caused that change in the Doctor’s lighthearted character?

And then I told her the reason why…