A word with Lance Parkin
Lance spoke to us recently regarding Doctor Who in print and on screen and just what connects the two.
Do you feel the tone of the new series was set in part by the New and Eighth Doctor Adventures?
They share a lot of writers, we've seen a pretty faithful adaptation of Human Nature on television. So the only question is how much of the tone was set by the books. A lot of people set their minds to 'updating Doctor Who' since 1989, and it's inevitable that some of us would come up with similar answers, if only because a lot of them liked Buffy. I've said before that the main contribution of the books (and audios) is that they gathered together a group of people who 'got' Doctor Who, and understood it could be a modern, vibrant thing rather than a piece of seventies nostalgia.
There are plenty of other influences. Watch the Eccleston season, then watch Men in Black, and you can see that's been a huge influence. The TV show is aiming to be more colourful than the books, more entertaining for kids (which is a good thing). Doctor Who allows you to pick and choose, but I think that was the big barrier to it coming back to TV in the nineties: it could have been Chuckle Brothers, it could have been Twin Peaks. The thing everyone thought was it had to be 'cult television'. The genius thing Russell T Davies did was to insist on it as a big Saturday evening family show. And that was something the books could never have been, they had to be for Doctor Who fans. I know a lot of existing fans who gained a new enthusiasm for the series because of the books, I don't know too many people who started out completely cold on Doctor Who and were won over by the books.
There are plenty of other influences. Watch the Eccleston season, then watch Men in Black, and you can see that's been a huge influence. The TV show is aiming to be more colourful than the books, more entertaining for kids (which is a good thing). Doctor Who allows you to pick and choose, but I think that was the big barrier to it coming back to TV in the nineties: it could have been Chuckle Brothers, it could have been Twin Peaks. The thing everyone thought was it had to be 'cult television'. The genius thing Russell T Davies did was to insist on it as a big Saturday evening family show. And that was something the books could never have been, they had to be for Doctor Who fans. I know a lot of existing fans who gained a new enthusiasm for the series because of the books, I don't know too many people who started out completely cold on Doctor Who and were won over by the books.
Obviously the tone of the current books is set, as it should be, by the tone of the TV series. Could the New and Eighth Doctor Adventures have achieved as much as they did if they hadn't been written during a period of cancellation for the series?
I don't think the two are necessarily related. In practice, you're always going to be driven by a TV show, because more people watch TV and it costs more money to make, so there's literally more invested in that. Big decisions like companions and regenerations would be led by the demands of the TV series. You'll always be able to assume people have seen the TV series, you can never assume they've read a book. As I say, I think the books were incredibly conservative, in the sense of their 'rate of change'. But one of the things that amazed me writing a New Series adventure was how the telly people barely affected it. I wasn't allowed to say how the sonic screwdriver recharged, and they wanted the title changed from The Hidden Fortress to The Eyeless. That was it. I didn't feel in any way restricted. It was certainly easier to accommodate that than, say, getting Compassion to work as a companion.
There are certain elements that fans of the books have recognised as familiar in the new series. Armoured Rhino Cops and Ghosts from another dimension spring to mind. Do you enjoy seeing these familiar elements cropping up in the new series?
Most of the similarities are big iconic things either from Doctor Who or elsewhere – I did a giant spaceship over London in The Dying Days, Russell T Davies did in The Christmas Invasion. I don't know from what mystical wellspring artists gain their inspiration, but I came up with it by watching Independence Day and thinking 'that would be cool to see in Doctor Who'. Again, this comes down to the same influences. I don't imagine for a moment that Russell T Davies remembered the rhino people from Trading Futures when he created the Judoon. He may well have got the idea from the same Billie Piper music video I did.
Are you optimistic about the BBC reprinting further volumes if yours prove to be successful?
Yes, is the short answer. The BBC have a backlist of hundreds of Doctor Who books. I don't know what the thinking has been at BBC Books to this point, but the sheer number of titles must have made it hard to work out what to do with them. It's easy for fans to come up with dream scenarios, but printing and distributing books costs money, and there are always other things you can do with those resources. If you go down the road of licencing the books to small presses, the economics simply don't work. The books would have to be incredibly expensive and hard to buy.
The way this is going to work: my BBC Books will come out as ebooks, and that's pretty straightforward. The new series books are out for the Kindle, and available internationally. The print-on-demand thing is the innovation. It's part of the Random Collection, and that's Random House's print on demand service (BBC Books are owned by Ebury who are part of Random House). If you order one of the books, they will print a copy for you. It'll cost very slightly more than a regular book, about a pound more, but it'll look pretty much identical to the previous edition.
It squares one of the circles in publishing, which is matching supply and demand. The issue isn't environmental: books are made from trees and last a lifetime ebook readers are made from plastic, mercury and lithium, and last a couple of years, so paper books are more environmentally friendly. But printing books people don't buy is still wasteful.
These days, the backlist barely exists. Booksellers, particularly supermarkets, want this month's big titles, not shelves of things that will sell at some point in the next few years. They simply don't want a bookcase full of fifth Doctor books. The print-on-demand and ebook versions are experiments. If the BBC see the books are selling, they'll want to do more. If people prove willing to buy Doctor Who books this way, the BBC will want to encourage that.
On a more pragmatic level, the deal I've signed is a good one for the author. There are ebook deals out there where the author doesn't get paid much, or at all. So the publisher is happy, the author is happy, so we just have to see if the readers will be.
The way this is going to work: my BBC Books will come out as ebooks, and that's pretty straightforward. The new series books are out for the Kindle, and available internationally. The print-on-demand thing is the innovation. It's part of the Random Collection, and that's Random House's print on demand service (BBC Books are owned by Ebury who are part of Random House). If you order one of the books, they will print a copy for you. It'll cost very slightly more than a regular book, about a pound more, but it'll look pretty much identical to the previous edition.
It squares one of the circles in publishing, which is matching supply and demand. The issue isn't environmental: books are made from trees and last a lifetime ebook readers are made from plastic, mercury and lithium, and last a couple of years, so paper books are more environmentally friendly. But printing books people don't buy is still wasteful.
These days, the backlist barely exists. Booksellers, particularly supermarkets, want this month's big titles, not shelves of things that will sell at some point in the next few years. They simply don't want a bookcase full of fifth Doctor books. The print-on-demand and ebook versions are experiments. If the BBC see the books are selling, they'll want to do more. If people prove willing to buy Doctor Who books this way, the BBC will want to encourage that.
On a more pragmatic level, the deal I've signed is a good one for the author. There are ebook deals out there where the author doesn't get paid much, or at all. So the publisher is happy, the author is happy, so we just have to see if the readers will be.
If the reprints of your BBC books are successful what books from the BBC range would you like to see reprinted next?
There are so many ways to play it. I have them all already, of course! I think it should follow demand, but I love the books by Kate Orman, Paul Magrs and Lloyd Rose. I love Hope, History 101 and The Book of the Still. It would be extremely odd not to have Lawrence Miles' books in the mix.
Do you think that reprinting the entire NA/EDA line is a practical option or is the BBC’s current plan of reprinting selected volumes on a Print on Demand basis the way forward?
Do I think a traditional reprint of the entire EDA/PDA line is practical? No. Do I think a limited 'best of' type run is practical? Possibly. Do I think they should all be out there as ebooks, with a print-on-demand option? Yes. I think it's the best of both worlds. I don't think you can just dump them all out on ebook, it will have to be rolled out. But in a few years, if the demand is there, I don't see any reason why all the books aren't available this way. Every single book has people who love it to bits, so every single book should be available.
Would the new generation of fans benefit from selected reprints of the old books and if so what volumes in particular would you recommend?
I think the new generation of fans will find a great many things to like in the books. There's no shortage of Doctor Who, of course – three TV shows, all the spin off books and audios from those, Big Finish, several comics, the audiobooks, the Tom Baker/Paul Magrs series. That's just the new stuff. I imagine most new fans are still catching up with the old TV show. But the books were written by fans for fans, we were able to move things along and play around with the format. And there wasn't a house style, so you're bound to like some of the books, it's just a question of working out which ones.
Having written some of the most popular of the Doctor Who books as well as a couple of the Big Finish Audio Plays do you ever feel like you’d like to write an episode of the new series? Or did the death of Ian Richardson put paid to that notion?
Would I like to write a television episode of Doctor Who? Well … yes, of course I would. This is not my decision. Do I think it would be a piece of cake? No. A long time ago I was a storyliner on TV, I appreciate that writing for television is not an easy job, that there are all sorts of pressures and imperatives that a novelist doesn't have to factor in or change course to accommodate. Just watch the fifth season DVD boxset and listen to the commentaries, where it becomes obvious that the heavy rain basically disrupted all the British location filming. Heavy rain makes finishing a novel easier, you don't get to go outside to play, you have to stay in and work. To be honest, I'm not sure I could do a better job than anyone who's written for the show, and I don't think I could get near the best episodes. I'd want to run faster than the lion if I was doing it.
Having written the last New Adventure as well as the last Eighth Doctor Adventure did you wander if the 10th Doctor range of books was coming to a premature end when you were asked to write the Eyeless?
Heh. No. I have done a number of 'last' books, but in my defence I've done plenty of 'firsts', too. First print-on-demand titles. See? I'm not just the Grim Reaper.
You’ve stated before that The Gallifrey Chronicles was left deliberately left semi-open just in case the 2005 series of Doctor Who failed to capture the public’s imagination. Given that the darker 9th Doctor seems to hail straight from the New Adventures would you have continued with him rather than the 8th given a choice?
As with the McGann movie, I'm sure – if the rights situation allowed it – the books would have picked up with the shiny new tenth Doctor and Rose and carried on from there. Book one: Barcelona! Or perhaps managed to find some gap before Bad Wolf and been ninth Doctor, Rose and Jack books.
I think what people forget about 2005 is that on the very morning Doctor Who launched, the BBC management were downplaying expectations. The episode went out opposite Ant and Dec. I think the reasonable expectation was that there would be thirteen episodes all getting about five million viewers and that would be nice, but it wouldn't be coming back. Then there were nightmare scenarios of the series just out and out failing, with everyone hating it.
But, hypothetically, OK, the TV series ended with the ninth Doctor becoming the tenth. The novelists would have all bought copies of Casanova and based the character on that. I suspect it would have been hard to avoid the temptation to link the Time Wars. After that … well, I doubt all that much would change. We have the ideas we have. I'd have ended up writing The Eyeless eventually, I guess a couple of the TV scripts could have ended up as books instead. If the Virgin books had continued, they have ended up doing a lot of the things the EDAs did. If the EDAs did, they'd have ended up doing a lot of what the NSAs did.
I think one of the big failings of the books in the late nineties was that this whole new JK Rowling, Philip Pullman market exploded, and a Doctor Who range could really have synched up with that. That's sort of what the books are trying to do now, but the TV show inevitably dominates the book range, now. That's the irony, though: if the books had continued, with a brief to be wacky and out there and experimental, they'd have still been far more conservative than the TV series. See how far the show has come in five years, compare that to even the progress the New Adventures made.
I think what people forget about 2005 is that on the very morning Doctor Who launched, the BBC management were downplaying expectations. The episode went out opposite Ant and Dec. I think the reasonable expectation was that there would be thirteen episodes all getting about five million viewers and that would be nice, but it wouldn't be coming back. Then there were nightmare scenarios of the series just out and out failing, with everyone hating it.
But, hypothetically, OK, the TV series ended with the ninth Doctor becoming the tenth. The novelists would have all bought copies of Casanova and based the character on that. I suspect it would have been hard to avoid the temptation to link the Time Wars. After that … well, I doubt all that much would change. We have the ideas we have. I'd have ended up writing The Eyeless eventually, I guess a couple of the TV scripts could have ended up as books instead. If the Virgin books had continued, they have ended up doing a lot of the things the EDAs did. If the EDAs did, they'd have ended up doing a lot of what the NSAs did.
I think one of the big failings of the books in the late nineties was that this whole new JK Rowling, Philip Pullman market exploded, and a Doctor Who range could really have synched up with that. That's sort of what the books are trying to do now, but the TV show inevitably dominates the book range, now. That's the irony, though: if the books had continued, with a brief to be wacky and out there and experimental, they'd have still been far more conservative than the TV series. See how far the show has come in five years, compare that to even the progress the New Adventures made.
Do you consider the books to be canon?
There's no 'canon' for Doctor Who, everything's available for use. Both new types of Daleks look more like 'movie Daleks' than anything from TV, and the movie Daleks look like the Daleks from the Annuals and comic strips. Human Nature was hugely influential on Doctor Who for ten years before anyone pointed a camera at it, far more so than, say Galaxy 4 or Terminus.
We asked our members what 4 books they would want in Lance Parkin Collection. They chose Dying Days (almost unanimously), Cold Fusion, Just War and the Infinity Doctors. The real question? What would Lance Parkin like to see in 'The Lance Parkin Collection'?
Hmmmm ... Just War, The Infinity Doctors, Father Time, The Eyeless.
Just War's a first novel, I look at it now and see all sorts of things I'd
do differently now, but I also see it's written by someone who's hungry and keen.
The Infinity Doctors just has so much going on, it's a long, packed book.
Father Time's just grounded and personal and applies everything I learned while storylining for television.
The Eyeless ... a book about a generation gap which is one of two stories depending which side of the gap you're on. It's either a spooky kids story with the Doctor joyfully leaping over monsters and traps or it's one with children being ritually abused and a broken Doctor impregnating a woman who's still mourning for her girlfriend.
Plus they're set past-present-Gallifrey-future, each one's a different Doctor.
Eh, did you just confirm that the 8th Doctor isn't the Doctor portrayed in The Infinity Doctors?
He's clearly not the eighth Doctor of mainstream continuity. He does look like Paul McGann.
Just War's a first novel, I look at it now and see all sorts of things I'd
do differently now, but I also see it's written by someone who's hungry and keen.
The Infinity Doctors just has so much going on, it's a long, packed book.
Father Time's just grounded and personal and applies everything I learned while storylining for television.
The Eyeless ... a book about a generation gap which is one of two stories depending which side of the gap you're on. It's either a spooky kids story with the Doctor joyfully leaping over monsters and traps or it's one with children being ritually abused and a broken Doctor impregnating a woman who's still mourning for her girlfriend.
Plus they're set past-present-Gallifrey-future, each one's a different Doctor.
Eh, did you just confirm that the 8th Doctor isn't the Doctor portrayed in The Infinity Doctors?
He's clearly not the eighth Doctor of mainstream continuity. He does look like Paul McGann.
And finally, do you think we’ll ever see paper reprints of Just War, Cold Fusion or The Dying Days?
BBC Books are aware of the Virgin books, but not interested in reprinting them. I don't know all the factors that go into their decision, so can't really speak for them on that.