Secret History: The Doctor Who TV submissions
I subsequently used the plot of Black Cardinal in Nemesis the Warlock; it’s beautifully illustrated by Bryan Talbot, and I think it works extremely well.
Welcome to my Secret History of Comics, where I’ve shared with you all my anecdotes and insider knowledge of creating Marshal Law and Charley’s War. Next year I’ll publish these secret histories in book form, along with more secret histories of my most iconic characters.
Now we’re in a rather special section on Doctor Who, in the run-up to the transmission of Star Beast, the first Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special!
All my Doctor Who posts will be collected and published in my new book Pageturners: How To Create Iconic Stories From The Creator of 2000AD, out shortly after Star Beast is broadcast! I will be putting the book on Amazon for pre-order very soon.
I can’t wait to share the Pageturners cover with you all! It’s by artist Mike Donaldson (he of Spacewarp, The Beano and The Broons fame) and it’s a real smasher. More on that soon.
All my lovely generous paying subscribers will receive a free e-book of Pageturners, and my very generous founding members will each receive a signed paperback edition.
The first Doctor Who post that I kicked off with is free to all readers, but you have to be a paying subscriber for just £5 per month – or £50 for an annual subscription – to read the rest of the posts (there’s a free preview every week).
The Secret History of Doctor Who covers my surprisingly long history with the Time Lord. And it will give you the full lowdown on the Star Beast: how the comic book story originated with the brilliant artist Dave Gibbons, and how it came to be regenerated for the 60th Anniversary TV Special. I’ll be sharing lots of insider stories about the Star Beast that Doctor Who fans will only get to read here.
1) The Night Crawler
This was submitted by me and John and to TV script editor Anthony Read. So this must have been in 1978 when Graham Williams was the producer. Kevin O’Neill had told me that Graham was open to submissions by new writers, so we thought we should give it a go. Not least because neither of us saw much future in working for 2000AD—the pay was awful and the publishers bought all rights. That’s still the case today. There had to be a better alternative.
The Night Crawler featured a prison on an asteroid with some hideous alien attacking the prisoners. We scripted episode one, but it was rejected because Anthony felt it was too like a British prison on Earth. A kind of Interstellar ‘Porridge’. With hindsight, I’m sure he was right.
John and I always disliked science fiction clichés such as the alien wanting to take over the world and we debated if we should have something different for our alien’s motivation. I had my eleven- and thirteen-year-old cousins staying with me at the time, so we ran it past them. They thought it would be brilliant if the alien was set on the conquest of the world, so we realised our adult cynicism was getting the better of us and adjusted the story accordingly.
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