Bear with me!

Just a bit of fun. This is a message with no real content. I want to see how easy it is to spread!

This is a testing time for the NHS

You can't have helped noticing, well you can but bear with me, people all over the UK troubled by the way the NHS is being treated. There's been an unmandated, untested, hugely wasteful restructuring of it by the coalition government partners (even if you believe the 'reforms' are good that's unarguable), a lot of media stories leaped on and or generated by politicians talking the service down (often frighteningly misinformed either through deliberate spin or ignorance- look at the way the Leeds children's heart service was treated) and while all that's gone on their have been real term cuts in provision, denied and denied and proven, despite promises this would not happen.
The service is being talked down, beaten down and cut down, in the face of widespread public alarm.
Many people have been particularly perturbed by the silence of the mainstream media in the face of this, particularly the BBC, another British institution the government seems keen to smear, slash and silence into submission.
As a result, lots of people are using social media to articulate their views that aren't being reflected by mainstream broadcasters but in the last day or so I've seen a worrying cluster of such people saying their attempts to share their messages are being blocked by the market leader in sticking things up on a virtual noticeboard to share among friends, Facebook.
If that's true, it's very troubling indeed and we'll need to find out why. So, as a tiny test, I'm putting up my own NHS message here to share on Facebook when I've published it. If it gets through and appears on my wall it proves nothing either way, of course. If it doesn't, I'll be beyond angry and will let you know.

Promotional Messages

Hello, hello! Sit down, get yourself comfy! Reach for your credit card. It's been too long.
Today is International "Did You Know There Is Stuff You Can Buy?" Day, the anniversary of which is celebrated daily in most parts of the world.
But wait, that's not all!
There's also some free stuff (but nothing like as much).

Free thing 1: No Tomatoes
A BBC Radio 4 Extra repeat run of my BBC 7 (eeh, those were the days) sketch show commences on Tuesday the 26th of March.  Go here to read all about it with my name everywhere or here if you'd rather minimise my involvement but be one click nearer playing the episodes.
No Tomatoes can be listened to for free on demand on iPlayer radio anywhere in the world (each episode available for a week after transmission). Free! It is an excellent bargain at that price.

Free thing 2: A Trailer
Do you see how the amount you get for nothing plummets as you go down the list?
My Doctor Who audio play The Alchemists has a trailer, and you can hear it for absolutely nothing by clicking the "Listen to Trailer" button on this page (also an excellent page to buy it from). It's set in 1930s Berlin, involved a truck load of research and has nothing to do with the synopsis someone's put up for it on Wikipedia! They've quite intelligently extrapolated from the blurb but, erm, completely made their own story up (citation needed).
The Alchemists is now out in August, having been unlucky with a couple of delays since it was first announced however long ago it was. One was an actor availability issue that pushed recording back and the other was a last minute technical issue which meant the CD wouldn't be ready in time for the revised release date. It's all glamour, isn't it?

Not that dear stuff 1: Things by me on Amazon.co.uk
Look at this lovely list! There's lots of Doctor Who related stuff here- fictional, factual, passing quite near Doctor Who and waving, and the book I wrote on UK TV History focusing on the independent production sector, which is properly all grown up and not even a teeny bit about Doctor Who.
All the items are at marvellous competitive prices due to Amazon's policy of not paying the tax it should and only accepting stock at evilly discounted prices. I will of course get stuff all or next to stuff all for any of these purchases. Maybe, if you get some of this not dear stuff this way you should think about getting some of the stuff that actually helps smaller companies survive directly from them.

Stuff that will be pretty good value for money that you can't quite order yet 1: A short story
I'm writing a story set in Phil Purser-Hallard's City of the Saved Universe (which he maintains is mainly this Universe plus some stuff that hasn't happened yet). It's in a category all of it's own of original Science Fiction that waves at a Universe that nods and winks to the Doctor Who one. There's a bit of a preview here in lieu of Obverse Books, the lovely independent publishers behind it, managing to monetise your interest in it and bunging up an order page.

Stuff that was free as a download you need to pay more to get hold of in CD form 1: The Revenants
My audio drama that was given away with Doctor Who Magazine in mp3 form is soon to be yours to own in a format audiophiles don't dislike quite as much. It's being offered as part of a deluxe Doctor Who CD boxset. You can get the 2 CD multiple Doctor audio adventure separately cheaper, but for spending a bit more dosh it'll also come in really lovely packaging along with 2 CD documentaries (one about the adventure's making and the other about the history of Big Finish, the company that makes the Doctor Who audios) and my play.
This is however a limited edition so I suspect if you don't go for it this year it'll be tricky to get hold of in years to come. You can buy that here.

Stuff that is freely given and is thus valued as worthless 1: My Love to All of You.
No, really. I'm proud of you for getting this far down this litany of self promotion. Thank you.

There, that was nearly fun, wasn't it?
I've recently had some casting news on future plays which has made me very happy indeed, but I can't say much now. One of the people involved has mentioned it on the internet, but even I couldn't find it until I really hunted, so I suspect you won't either. I had the advantage of knowing their name. All will become clear.
I know people like to find out stuff in advance (and that's pretty much the only reason you've got this far down this list) but it's probably better to wait and avoid the anticipointment of piecing together something in your head that real life then fails to match. That person who made up their own version of The Alchemists on Wikipedia is going to feel very let down for starters...

Base Camp

Hmm,
I've been working on tackling negativity recently. Not positive I've succeeded.
I've also written a couple of things that aren't quite announced yet. Both quite different (more of them later) and both from synopses I created long before writing.

Synopses are funny things- they're obviously a vital tool for the commissioner and the writer, they're the map of where you're heading, but sometimes they're treacherous documents.
The ground that looks safe and easy to traverse on the map turns out to be ridiculously slow and boggy sometimes, sections of the journey you'd imagine would take ages zip by at alarming speed, areas where you hoped to find buried treasure turn out to have been looted and you end up having to go to places marked "Here be dragons", which rarely ends well.
Dragons, as a rule, are either inconvenient or non-existent.

Both the last two synopses have been distinctly slippery maps, partly because the me who drew them up is quite a distance from the me who had to follow them, but they've got me to the end of their journeys. The points of interest on route may have changed, and in one case I had to take a massive detour to guarantee I'd still get to my final destination but we're there and I'm ready for the next trips and the suns shining.
I think I might sit the sunshine for a bit and make up some jokes. That's the plan anyway. It may change.

Recent doings and Revenants (slight return)

Hello. Excuse the dust. I've been doing stuff.
First things first- I think some time ago I promised those of you who cared some background info on my Doctor Who Companion Chronicle, The Revenants once it was no longer a free download and the chances of spoilers had reduced.

It started with the brief to do something with Ian Chesterton missing his family and home, so from that came the idea of putting him just near enough home in time that he could feasibly end his adventures early and return to his old life. The idea of missing families suggested setting the story just after Susan left the Doctor too. This had the advantage of getting William Russell out of playing two womens' roles in the play.
A daft Brighton Rock and Hancock's Half Hour shaped late 50s/early 60s idea came next, and left sharpish. I've been intrigued for years by Piers Britton's notion of 60s Dr Who as a clash of Modernism and Edwardian styles and thought a story where Brighton Mods were science fictional might work but it was too silly to sustain. Anyway, The Space Museum is already 60s Who's definitive Teddy Boys versus Mods in Space story.

David, the producer, suggested going down a Quatermass line instead and the new storyline became essentially two thirds of my later Counter-Measures story, The Pelage Project. The major differences were a completely different climax, a hinted at origin story for the villain Temple which is only homeopathically in the finished play and a large section at a school. Exploring the utilitarian, indoctrinating schooling of Pelage was a natural fit for Ian, and could be done without child actors in the Companion Chronicles format.
Child actors are tricky- their working hours are limited and the really good ones are in constant demand. Write a child part for audio and you can easily end up in trouble- you may get an adult impersonator or a child who's not up to carrying the weight of story you've given them.
Anyway, after that plot went to Counter-Measures I had to come up with a new one for Ian. I had the idea of doing something playing with folklore and magic influenced by the writer Alan Garner and a book by Mollie Hunter that had scared and enthralled me as a child, The Haunted Mountain. The Haunted Mountain's story is set in Scotland and it set me thinking about using Scottish legends, which in turn reminded me of an amazing holiday around the archaeological sites of Orkney and Shetland.

They're beautiful, mysterious islands and you can easily get in touch with that part of you that's scared of weird stuff in the night up there. There's also a real sense of time layered on itself too. Time as a space or a landscape, not a straight line. Sounds a bit bonkers but there you are.
I decided to do a story that suggested Time on Orkney was a mess (and it was probably at least partly the Doctor's fault) with fairies and ogres and so forth creaking at the edges of it. The twist was they'd all be revealed to be different people's visions of the other tribes they interacted with in prehistory- slight, non-Iron working, tribes became fairies warily trading with lumpen thuggish incomers, ogres. The idea was we share traditions of both 'species' because we're descended from both tribes and our traditions have intermingled. On Orkney the word 'Trow' covers magical beasties of both descriptions, fay and brutish.
There's a lovely, atmospheric Radio Scotland programme called When Standing Stones Come Down To Drink about Orkney and Shetland traditions which captures a lot of the atmosphere I was after http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wnlct. I hope it's repeated some day, it's well worth a listen.

Anyway, that idea was a touch nebulous, involved and undramatic, and, as David pointed out, was likely to be vetoed by the BBC for including fairies. Fairies basically exist and are as you saw them in Torchwood in the Doctor Who universe. Anything else is going to be a hard sell. David suggested doing something a bit like Joe Dante's Gremlins instead. That was when I decided to invent the Marsh Wains. They're Marsh Children really (I spelled the Scottish word "wean" the less common "wain" to try and disguise that). They're based on the real preserved bog bodies you find all over Northern Europe, but mine are much gloopier and creepier, with the whole still being alive and being entirely made of peat thing.

They're also looking for family, or a replacement for it, just like Ian and the Doctor. The core story is (and I realised this in horror, only when I came to finish it) pretty much that Steven Moffat tells in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. It is also a "broken spring" story. No real villain just a technological mistake that needs resolving.
The never-ending magical battle of the dead on Hoy comes from Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedin_and_H%C3%B6gni We're lucky that Barbara has read this. She is the world's greatest history teacher.
At one point I was going to have the Marsh Wains at the old naval base on Hoy. There's all sorts of exciting tunnels and oil and things there but it was too fussy for a story that's essentially an hour long two-hander. Janet's cottage was much more contained.
Janet's cottage is based on a croft interior from the Stromness museum and Janet herself is based on Janet Forsyth, a historical Spae Wife http://www.orkneyjar.com/folklore/witchcraft/stormwitch.htm. If the plot had carried on being about fractured time she almost certainly would have been her, and her miraculous rescue from Marwick's Hole would have been down to the Doctor's intervention. The Orkneyjar site above is terrific for lots of  Orcadian lore, actually. It's a really great resource. Go here after and then book a holiday.

The Wissfornjarl, sadly, does not exist. Similar figures do but him I invented, the name is just the Norse words for wise old chief. Similarly, the barrow the TARDIS is discovered in has not been found on Hoy yet. There are several broch mounds there and there could well be more, but we've not found them in quite the area I put Janet's home. Ideally, I wanted the TARDIS to be inside The Dwarfie Stane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarfie_Stane but annoyingly the Neolithic engineers didn't get the proportions quite right for stuffing police boxes in.

The, as yet undiscovered, barrow is much more like Maeshowe http://www.maeshowe.co.uk/maeshowe/runes.html. This does raise a question though. The barrow would be likely to have been closed up about 5000 years ago (though there's evidence these days they were popped in and out of for generations), did the Doctor go back that far?
He might have done. He might be the sole reason Time is messed up on Orkney. He might be the sole originator of the myth of the Wissfornjarl. He might have lived the 5000 years between him and Ian and Barbara a day at a time or tried a speedier, technological approach to get back to them. On the other hand he may just have spent a few years or decades on Hoy. I deliberately left the options open for the listener.

One of the things I like in folkloric stories are the gaps for your imagination, and this is purposely one of those. All we know is that, while he waited, the Doctor read a selection of books he seems to know well in later years that it seems unlikely he did when we first met him! I think that book the second Doctor has with the sea weed creature listed in it is one of them.
Barbara's place in the modern day is a similar gap in the story. I think she's now dead and seeing her equivalent is part of what brought Ian back to Orkney. You don't have to think she's dead though, and I don't want you to either. If she is I'm certainly not going to be the one to tell you.

Second things, second- I've been writing some more for Big Finish in recent months. Another thing for Ian and another set slightly later in the first Doctor's era which I've done the first draft of but which has much more work awaiting (the secondary characters aren't quite there yet).

Third things, third- I'll be writing a marginally Who related but in no way Who story for Obverse books at the start of next year, but right now I'm going to write something with no series name above the title for a change and see how that goes.

Matt

The very wonderful Matt Kimpton has died.  He was 35.

About 1% of what you need to know about him is here.  I probably only knew about 7% of what I needed to.

He was funny and kind and clever.  That's the main other thing you need to know.

"We will sing of him in the great mead hall, and, because he will be a hero then, we will get things wrong and fail to tell it all and rewrite details as we recount his story.

"He will be a pebble smoothed into story and reduced to mere legend, but those of us who knew the man will always know a man is more than a story that shifts from teller to teller, more than a beacon in the dark and more than any number of symbols you can wrap up and carry in words."

I will miss my friend.  I'm so glad he was here and so grateful to the people who loved him, cared for him and helped make him who he was.

Breathe easy, Matt.

Counter-Measures is go!

It's here at last, the first four instalments of science fiction thriller, Counter-Measures were released on Thursday!  It's a series of audio dramas from those lovely people at Big Finish that lives somewhere in between the BBC's 1950s Quatermass and 1970s Doomwatch series and, despite being a Doctor Who spin-off, it requires no Doctor Who knowledge whatsoever.  Our heroes are two scientists and an RAF captain who were caught up in bizarre alien goings on with the Doctor in 1963 and have now been reunited in a government funded team investigating the odd.  It's gritty and witty, action-packed and tense, has an utterly exemplary cast and sounds beautifully 60s. 

Here's an audio teaser...  The Big Finish Counter-Measures preview.

The series has had a gratifyingly great response so far, with lots of lovely comments already.  Mine (pictured below) is episode 3 and the whole boxset is eminently buyable right now, and as if 4 hours of top-notch drama isn't enough you get an hour of the creators talking about it on a bonus disc too.  Imagine!  Whole minutes of me chunnering with little thought or preparation but spoken aloud not typed.

You can be one of the series' eminent buyers right here!  Do it now, before the planet is doomed.  While you're there, you might also want to pre-order this, a Doctor Who story by me.  It's out next April so only order it if you think we're just a bit doomed and will make it to next year, or think we're so doomed you may as well just throw all your money away now.