TARDIS Travel Agent
- Publication: Starlog
- Date: number 225 (April 1996)
- Author: John S. Hall
- Page: 52
- Language: English
Paul Cornell charters the Time Lord's newest & oldest exploits.
Two years after the BBC put Doctor Who on indefinite hiatus in 1989, the Doctor resumed his travels in space and time via the printed word. Virgin Books SF editor Peter Darvill-Evans put out a call for all authors interested in taking the Time Lord and his companions on new adventures. Among those who responded was a young writer named Paul Cornell, who certainly took to heart Darvill-Evans' credo to continue and expand upon Doctor Who's basic premise. Since his first submission five years ago, Cornell and his take on the "Whoniverse" has proved a major shaping force for the Doctor's New Adventures.
Born in Wiltshire, the west country of England, in 1967, Cornell says he "became a Doctor Who fan out of fear. I was too afraid to watch the program at first, but finally I decided I was too old not to watch it—and promptly tuned in to 'The Brain of Morbius.'" This 1976 variation on Frankenstein, starring Tom Baker as the Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, drew sharp criticism from British media watchdog Mary Whitehouse for its then-graphic violence and grisly imagery. "The fact that after four episodes of tension, the Doctor actually won at the end, really amazed and relieved me," Cornell remembers. "The other kids in the playground would talk about how horrifying Doctor Who was, and I had seen it, watched it and made it through to the end. Kids today don't have the release of safe scares. I think Doctor Who should always be frightening, because it's important to be scared in safe ways when you're a kid. This is why Mary Whitehouse basically mined Doctor Who, in that she pressed the BBC so hard to clean it up that they deprived it of fear."
Although he had watched Doctor Who since 1976, Cornell didn't become a full-fledged fan until "the early Davison Era [1981-1984, when Peter Davison took over from Baker]. I didn't really contact fandom until the show's 20th anniversary celebration at Longleat; that really kindled my interest in being a fan." One of the ways he expressed his interest was by writing his own adventures for the Doctor and his companions. "I really grew up as part of a whole movement of fan fiction writers—Andy Lane, Justin Richards, Craig Hinton—in the mid-80s. Loads of us who would later write New Adventures were all writing in the same fanzines together. Jackie Marshall's Queen Bat published what became my first novel, Revelation, under the title Total Eclipse in five or six parts back when it was a Fifth Doctor story."
Cornell initially went to the University College of London to study astrophysics. "I did it for a week, couldn't handle the math and failed completely. After a term, I went on to fail as a writer in Barrow In Furness, and nearly worked in the shipyards! Then, I heard from a fellow fan fiction writer that they were offering a writing course at Crewe & Alsager College. I went into a Humanities B.A. there—writing, philosophy, English. Then, I went on to do an M.A. in writing at the University of Lancaster, where I'm currently in the middle of a writing Ph.D."
Time Shares
For the first four New Adventures, Darvill-Evans decided that the Doctor (as portrayed by Sylvester McCoy) and Ace (Sophie Aldred) would battle a time-traveling female cyborg called the Timewyrm. After first encountering her in ancient Babylon in John Peel's Genesys, the Doctor and Ace pursued the Timewyrm to a parallel WWII Germany and Adolf Hitler in Terrance Dicks' Exodus, and to the end of the universe in Apocalypse by Nigel Robinson. Cornell's Revelation concluded the saga, with Ace battling a childhood nemesis and actually journeying into the Doctor's tortured psyche to excise the Timewyrm. Set in the pastoral English village of Cheldon Bonniface, one of the book's more unique characters was a sentient church named Saul, "an accumulated wisdom, an intelligence formed from the focus of so many dutiful minds over such a long time."
Cornell deliberately engineered several tie-ins in his novel with Exodus because "I just wanted to work with Terrance Dicks." Dicks (STARLOG #107) had been Who script editor from 1970 to 1974, wrote several key episodes and novelized more than 60 stories. "My Dad used to read me Terrance Dicks books when I was ill. I used to worship the ground the man walked on. One of the best things about my current lifestyle is, I can call Terrance up and ask him to go down to the pub!"
Why did Darvill-Evans decide to give Cornell the chance to write his first novel? "I think Virgin accepted me because I really dived in confidently," the writer says. "Other people would have been trying to be small, quiet and sensible, but I just did this huge operatic thing. As I was living practically in poverty in Manchester at the time, I danced down the hallway when I got the letter."
Readers and critics alike hailed Revelation as innovative in its treatment of Doctor Who. "I think it was the first example of fan fiction in the New Adventures that really said, 'We don't have to be shackled to the TV show. We can do whatever we like!' " he opines. "It came straight out of what all of us fan fiction writers were doing, which was expanding the boundaries. Unlike Star Trek books—where everything is absolutely solidified and you can't move the characters on—we were given permission to change the characters in the New Adventures. It was exactly in the spirit of Doctor Who; things always change."
Next came a book which never made the final cut. "I wrote a story called Soul Eye, which was about UNIT vs. the Autons [the animated plastic servants of the octopod Nestenes featured in two popular Third Doctor tales]. It was an Arthurian story, using Excalibur [as shown in the Seventh Doctor adventure "Battlefield"] to attack the Autons, who I felt were the Silent Knights of Mallory. It got turned down for being too continuity-ridden, though, and many concepts in it ended up in a later book, No Future. Darvill-Evans just started hinting, 'Well, we're not too sure...we want something spacey.' He wanted to do his Future History cycle—a bunch of novels set in space in the future."
In response, Cornell crafted Love and War, a pivotal book in the New Adventures. In the 26th century, nearly all races use the beautiful planet Heaven as their burial ground. There, the Doctor and Ace meet well-spoken archeologist Professor Bernice "Benny" Summerfield and a group of gypsy-like Travelers. However, an ancient fungoid race, the Hoothi, has been using the dead of Heaven as part of their plan to reestablish themselves in the universe. The Doctor defeats them, but at the cost of Jan, the Travelers' leader whom Ace has fallen in love with. Furious and disgusted with the Doctor's constant manipulation of her, Ace leaves after a bitter argument. On her 30th birthday, Bernice joins the Doctor in his travels.
Because the New Adventures editor had wanted Ace to leave the novels temporarily, "there was a sort of companion audition," Cornell says. "We were all called upon to submit ideas for companions in the plots of our new books. This is where Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart comes from in Transit, and of all things, [famed author] William Blake in The Pit! Can you imagine William Blake traveling in the TARDIS? He would just keep on spouting religion all the time!"
However, Darvill-Evans decided on Cornell's creation, Bernice Summerfield. Benny grew up largely on her own after her father disappeared in mysterious circumstances during the Dalek Wars and her mother died during a Dalek raid. An expert on humanoid body language, she writes constantly in her ever-present diary, and her glib, sarcastic tongue is tempered by an over-reliance on her brandy flask. "Bernice is based hugely on Emma Thompson and her character in the movie The Tall Guy, but various other influences have come into play," her creator explains. "Basically, she's me in a frock!"
Package Tours
Responding to fans' requests for fiction featuring the first six Doctors, Darvill-Evans and his successor, Rebecca Levene, created the Missing Adventures series in 1994. "Despite trying not to get the first book, I did," Cornell recalls. "I thought at the time they were bound to start with a Fourth Doctor book, and [fellow New Adventures author] Gareth Roberts had The Romance of Crime already planned as a Fourth Doctor/ Romana story, so I changed my Fourth Doctor vampire story plot to the Fifth Doctor, thinking they were bound to let Gareth start first, and they didn't!"
Goth Opera follows events chronicled in Dicks' New Adventure Blood Harvest, itself a sequel to Dicks' Fourth Doctor vampire story "State of Decay." The Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa arrive in modern-day Manchester and do battle with a renegade Time Lady, Ruath, and Yarven, the last undead servant of the Great Vampire. "That was a nice opportunity to work with Terrance again," Cornell says. "Because we both had auditioned vampire books at the same time, the editor thought, why not amalgamate them? I read Blood Harvest thoroughly while writing Goth Opera and thus managed to do a complete tie-in. That was really a good experience."
Writing for the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa instead of the Seventh Doctor, Benny and Ace presented no problem to Cornell, because "all of my fan fiction had been Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa, so they were the ones I felt easiest writing for. Although I've come to adore the Seventh Doctor and his companions, if I were to return to the Missing Adventures, it would be for another Fifth Doctor book. I think Peter Davison is the best actor to have ever played the Doctor. They represented a wonderfully balanced team. You had the roughness of Tegan, the gentleness of Nyssa, and both of them represented different sides of the Doctor's character."
Before he left Virgin, Darvill-Evans called in Cornell and several other New Adventures writers for a meeting. "He already had Blood Heat [set 20 years after "Doctor Who and the Silurians" in an alternate universe where the Silurians had killed the Doctor and successfully reclaimed "their" Earth] and Conundrum—which revisited the Land of Fiction from 'The Mind Robber'—on his desk and he wanted a series tying them together." Cornell came up with the premise of bringing back the Monk, the first fellow Time Lord the Doctor encountered in "The Time Meddler" and "The Daleks' Masterplan." Mortimus (as Cornell dubbed him) now hated the Doctor for stranding him on an ice planet and tried to exact his revenge by using the powers of a Chronovore to trap the Doctor and his companions in different parallel universes.
Cornell's No Future concluded the five-book Alternate Universe cycle. In a parallel 1976, London and UNIT face a stealthy invasion from the telepathic Vardans. While Benny ends up as lead singer in a punk band, Ace (who had rejoined the TARDIS crew three years older and even more hard-bitten) must decide whether her loyalties lie with Mortimus or the Doctor. "There's a little group of people who like No Future, but I'm not really fond of it," the author admits. "I like the Vardans and some of the detailing, but it was a bad book written at a bad time and really reflected the state of mind I was in at the time, which was horrid. The final chapter, where I've avoided explaining anything until the end, so the characters all sit around and say, 'There's just one thing I don't understand, so let's explain the plot!' is just the most awful thing I have ever done to mankind. It's a terrible book!"
New Destinations
For his next writing projects, Cornell collaborated with fellow writers Keith Topping and Martin Day; the trio had previously produced the well-received Classic British TV. They had chosen a formidable task: taking the many dangling plot and continuity threads from 26 years of Doctor Who and weaving them into a more-or-less coherent tapestry. Since most of the show's writers and producers had been primarily concerned with turning out watchable TV fare, they often disregarded internal continuity, much to fans' later chagrin. But rather than gleefully pointing out every little error like Phil Far-rand's Nitpicker's Guide to Star Trek, The Discontinuity Guide took a fonder look at the British series. "We basically divided Doctor Who into three parts, watched a third of it each and then commented on each other's stuff. This is why our reviews are so all over the place; we ended up not agreeing with each other's reviews quite a lot!"
Next, the collaborators took a similar approach to Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine with their New Trek Guide. "Because I got so bored with Star Trek, I actually shaved my percentage from one-third to one-sixth because I just couldn't stand to see any more Trek! Unfortunately for me, the book has gone on to be quite a good seller!" Cornell recounts ruefully.
Returning to the Whoniverse, Cornell decided on a less frantic pace for Human Nature. For reasons known only to himself, the Doctor has temporarily become human. He and Bernice arrive in the English village of Farringham during summer 1914; Benny stays in the village while the Doctor. now Doctor John Smith of Aberdeen, teaches at the local boys' military school and begins a touching courtship of one of his fellow teachers, Joan Redfern. Unfortunately for everyone, a family of Aubertides—omnivorous shapeshifters who can assume the form of any creature they've eaten—will do anything to get the Time Lord's genetic information.
According to Cornell, Human Nature had a very difficult genesis. "I had the central idea of the Doctor becoming human, and I couldn't make it work! Initially, it had Cheldon Bonniface and Saul the Church from Revelation, then it was about terrorists armed with Krynoid pods in a modern-day British village. Then, I had the Hoothi coming to Earth, and then the 13 incarnations of one Time Lord ganging up and working together. But that didn't work logically. We just could not find a menace that would go with the Doctor becoming human. So I was on holiday in Australia and I sat down with Kate Orman [author of the New Adventures The Left-Handed Hummingbird and Set Piece] and the two of us thrashed out what became the final plot. I'm really grateful to her for her clarity of mind. I've always wanted to do a romance in Doctor Who and I thought the Seventh Doctor was the ideal Doctor to do it with. It was nice to do something very human and small for a change instead of destroying the universe! Human Nature is very much my favorite of anything I've done."
Most recently, Cornell has written Happy Endings, the 50th New Adventure, due for publication in May. "It's a book about Bernice's wedding; she meets her fiancé Jason in the 49th book, and they get married in Saul the Church in 2010. The book features something or somebody from every previous New Adventure; it's a celebration of the New Adventures and has happy endings for everybody, fixes a lot of continuity problems, and the Doctor gets back his original TARDIS, which he had lost in Blood Heat. There's a chapter written by all but two of the other New Adventures authors; we couldn't get Jim Mortimore or Andrew Cartmel."
Happy Endings also represents a happy ending—at least for the time being—to Paul Cornell's association with Doctor Who fiction. "It's not that I'm fed up or anything; I just really want to push myself to do other things," he explains. "If I get another really good idea, I shall come back and do it, certainly." As well as helping update Classic British TV for a second edition, he'll be writing a 13-part TV show for Nickelodeon called Chase to Fade, "a teenage comedy/ drama which should start filming soon if all goes well. I've also been having a series of lunches with an editor at Random House and we're talking about my writing a fantasy novel sometime soon."
JOHN S. HALL, Massachusetts-based writer, profiled Craig Bierko in issue #221.
Captions:
The Doctor has left the airwaves. but thanks to a group of novelists like Paul Cornell, his adventures go on.
"Other people would have been trying to be small, quiet and sensible, but I did this huge operatic thing," says Cornell of how he got noticed by the editors of Virgin Books.
An ancient fungoid race threatens from the cemetery planet of Heaven in Cornell's Love and War.
Longtime Doctor Who writer Terrance Dicks was a big influence on Cornell. can call Terrance up and ask him to go down to the pub!" Cornell happily notes.
Human Nature is very much my favorite of anything I've done," reveals Cornell.
Like the show itself, the Doctor Who Discontinuity Guide is all over the place" according to Cornell.
A very Trek-weary Cornell was forced to cut down his contribution to the successful New Trek Guide.
The five-book Alternate Universe cycle imagined other realities for the characters, and in Cornell's No Future, ex-companion Benny became a punk singer.
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- APA 6th ed.: Hall, John S. (number 225 (April 1996)). TARDIS Travel Agent. Starlog p. 52.
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- Chicago 15th ed.: Hall, John S.. "TARDIS Travel Agent." Starlog, edition, sec., number 225 (April 1996)
- Turabian: Hall, John S.. "TARDIS Travel Agent." Starlog, number 225 (April 1996), section, 52 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=TARDIS Travel Agent | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/TARDIS_Travel_Agent | work=Starlog | pages=52 | date=number 225 (April 1996) | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=22 November 2024 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=TARDIS Travel Agent | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/TARDIS_Travel_Agent | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=22 November 2024}}</ref>
