BBC Audio Doctor Who Boss Talks Past, Present and Future

0:00 hi I'm Claire Corbett and this is the Sirens of audio I need a stand for my that's why I don't have notes I hate are you ready what are you looking at you're trying to organize myself okay here we go [Music]

0:51 thank you [Music] g'day audio files this is the Sirens of audio the show that explores the universe of Doctor Who in the audio medium and I'm Dwayne and I'm Philip you've got to start a sentence with and you never should start a sentence with and should you oh if you're talking it's different I should never write a sentence with that well generally speaking occasionally there might be good good reason to it but you should have a deliberate reason for doing this hello audio files why are we doing all this what are you talking about with the grammar oh I don't know so we're going to be talking a lot about books today so books are on my brain and writing and stuff like that so okay uh and particular audio books because today on the show we're going to be talking with Michael Stevens who's the commissioning editor editor for BBC audio so he's in

1:39 charge of looking after the target novelization range and lots and lots of other things and he's been in a similar role for many many years so it's going to be fascinating to have a chat with him to see the process behind commissioning these audios and the decisions that get made along the way because there are some some choices that are made that uh I sometimes think I wonder about how they came to that choice particularly when it comes to readers and things like that I mean why is Stephen Pacey reading um Terminus for instance yeah so that's that's a specific question I want to put to him so with that in mind Philip yes there is one thing we need to do first you know what that is yeah I do yeah we're going to jump down the rabbit hole here we go

2:25 [Applause] [Music] did you notice Philip yeah we went up Robert told this though which is good it's been a long time since we've got purple Hill so yeah I'm mixing it up again all right so in this Rabbit Hole topic I want to talk about the the target novelizations is is what going to be a big part of our conversation today and Doctor Who in different media I was looking through the lists of audio books today and there are masses and masses of books that I have never heard and I don't think I've got enough life left in me to ever hear them have you know have you ever seen looked at a list of what's out there I have most of them yeah you've

3:14 been you've been very pedantic in collecting pretty much everything I I'm Dreadful I've just how I'm still matters Beyond me so yes I so my question is Have you listened to everything at least once no no I'm I'm masses behind I mean it's probably the audiobook is they just take so long to get to yeah and um and I've got them all downloaded now onto my iTunes and I can't speed up iTunes so it makes love a bit harder can't you no well if someone knows how to speed them up but no I don't think it's speed up iTunes maybe maybe I should look some more because if I could have been great um I tried to start listening to them all and

3:59 I started buying them all on CD as they came out on CD so all my original targets novels because I I have the entire Target collection so every paperback I have with any recover of every paperback I own which is stupid and I'm now three quarters of the way through my hardback collection because once I collected every Target cover I decided Well there's a couple of cheap hardbacks and I thought oh they're pretty cheap I'll buy them and then they're not so cheap anymore with the ones I'm getting and so when the CD started coming out I started getting the CDs as well to add to the collection then now I don't buy the CDs I just download usually from audible or do I get most of my target of some audible which I think

4:45 I can spit up automation system up there but I do tend to transfer them onto my iTunes because I always have that in the car with me ready to go yeah there is an a media player that I use called VLC media player and that will play the mp3s and uh that speeds it up right so I mean I love the target novels I've just listened to the Romans and laughed all through it um it was I mean that's always been one of my favorite novels anyway um so yeah I I think they're great I love what they do with them but it's just finding time and just since starting this podcast not only do I have to get through every month's big finish content and new stuff the the new stuff then you throw in extra things because we have guests on either things so with

5:32 all the audio listing I have to do to stay on top of this podcast has fallen to the side unfortunately and that's where I say that I well we're talking big finish now but on the big finish app I say there should be a a speed changer I noticed on the big finish podcast this weekend that someone commented on the on that that they remember Nick and Benji ripping into me about uh changing the speed however for purp for things like what we do it's I think it's important you can if if you're listening to an audio book that goes for nine hours and you listen to it at 1.5 there's an extra three hours you've got exactly um it's I I think it's better to listen to it far a bit fast than not at all exactly I agree for review purposes anyway if I was just listening to it for

6:18 pleasure then uh I probably wouldn't speed it but because I want to listen to this and then I want to get on to the next thing the next thing I think it it comes in handy it's a handy little tool for being able to speed through so what have been your favorites you've listened to in the target range oh my absolute favorite right now is the Romans yeah absolutely it's a short book too isn't it only runs for about not even two and a half hours two and a half hours yeah it's pretty short so that was you know not much longer than a big finish audio story they're probably about the same length actually when you include the extras and uh and music suites on the end so um but and they had seven different readers in that book so I thought that was a really nice way to enjoy that story which is one of my favorites from the

7:04 black and white era anyway and it it's it's the same story but totally different and it's a a really nice way to enjoy that story yeah yeah it's great but I'm trying to get rid of the the myth makers does the same thing I think that meant to make some other or be no I forget how the myth makers it's done in a unique way as well I mean they've been adding voices in terms of dialect and Cyberman for a few years now and there was a a nice change to add that in so it's good that they continue to work out how to be creative and obviously they've got the audience to make it worthwhile yeah absolutely but we keep we keep rebuying this media whenever they repackage it yes well that's whatever form we've done the soundtrack generation is this in the blue rays

7:51 yeah that's where you finally put your foot down well I'm feeling bad about it though are you oh I just I keep looking at all this content that's coming out and going oh but yeah I'm still resisting by the time I changed my mind it'd be too late I can't buy the ball yeah well see I never got all the VHS when they came out I got uh quite a few of them but not I didn't get the whole collection so I only really started seriously collecting from DVD on and yeah with the with the new features that you've got on the Blu-ray I think it's uh really good so I don't I don't feel quite as ripped off as you I don't think when it comes to the amount of outlay you've spent because the VHS were expensive weren't they oh I know and I think I sold off I actually sold them all off about 250 I think is that right

8:36 yeah just sort of gave them all away to drop a lot and they're big too so they take up a lot of space as well so yeah it's it's an amazing show isn't it Doctor Who that they can keep repackaging these things over and over again even Doctor Who in the Daleks has just recently got a a reprint as a graphic or kind of a graphic novel Illustrated novel I've bought it I just haven't got it yet yeah pretty good to come who published that was that BBC that did that or someone else I don't know I just saw it and bought it because that's what I do see that's an interesting audio book as well because that is uh and it's interesting too digest that story uh through the book version uh and

9:22 therefore you know hence the audio book as well because it's uh it's got a completely different beginning to the adventures of the doctor it's quite definition and all in first person and William Russell does an amazing reading one of the first that's one of the first ones I bought was William Russell yeah doing doing the Daleks yeah yeah that's great it's a great beginning but it doesn't really change the characters a lot then what they were none of the child yeah so yeah the the target audio novelizations is is a collection that I've you know sadly haven't collected all of them got a lot of them but I'm really appreciating them more since we're I've been forcing myself to listen to them so I can talk about them on the podcast it's great yep they're really really good things and the the other things that BBC audio are doing with things

10:10 like um beyond the doctor they're really interesting stories too so there's just so much in Doctor Who is there any other uh show that is so inventive do you think out there no it's pretty Limitless it's Limitless in its Skype it is so there's just so many things you can do with it it's probably the most um diverse ranging franchise that there is so it's going to be interesting to see what happens with Russ with bad wolf Studios and what they do with that see how much more content we get out there yeah I mean it isn't Star Wars a probably the two things that are out there that does does the most in terms of different mediums wide and wider

10:55 universes um yeah and I believe in Star Wars seems a little bit more constrained than than Doctor Who does it's it's more in a time period yeah of 100 years which hasn't changed much definitely yeah very good just a little chat about those things just thought that'd be interesting to talk about since we're talking about uh the the target books in particular and we'll jump out of the rabbit hole actually I'll throw in a little bit of the Romans and give you a taste of of what that sounds like and we'll come back with Michael Stevens in a moment chapter 18. a poisoner remembers extract from the autobiography of locusta it was another busy day in the

11:40 pharmaceutical department and I remember reflecting that if business continued to improve at that rate it would kill itself off before it got fairly started and where would I be then I asked myself having only one pair of hands at that stage in my career and that couple time worn and gnarled with arthritis or some such Affliction which in the present state of medical knowledge we do not truly understand although I work constantly at a wonder drug in my spare time if any keeping a sharp lookout for unwanted side effects because who knows when they might not come in useful no what I really needed it seemed to me if I was to give of my worst whenever

12:25 requested was an assistant to take the weight of my crucibles now and then so let me get on with a spot of high-level Government research into astrology like the rest of my coven who were doing very well for themselves thank you with horoscopes of the famous while I slaved away for peanuts in my rotten Grotto no sooner had this long but half formulated thought being caught in my attention and there came a knock on the laboratory door causing me to drop a hot goblet on my frock and emit an Eldritch scream and there stood a Perth young party who asked me if I could direct her to the Imperial Apartments as she seemed to have got lost her likely tale I thought

13:13 and was about to invite her to a final wine tasting will it occur to me that here might be just The Apprentice my Enterprises required and I asked her if she'd ever considered a career in toxicology as it was a growth industry right now she said she'd try anything once and introduced herself as Vicky of no fixed address which could be convenient I thought if the arrangement didn't work out so I agreed to give her an hour or so's probationary period during which she could make herself generally useful taking the drudgery out of my work by handling the victim to Crypt delivery side of the business and since she was on her way to the

13:59 throne room any old Tau perhaps as a favor to the empress she wouldn't mind taking up a couple of sparkling drinks this one for Nero and that one for his new lady friend who was almost certain to be with him round about now and if not then give it to whoever was as it seemed a Pity to waste it I then turned my back for a moment and was gratified to see in the mirror that she immediately switched the glasses which I had depended upon having misinformed her as to which was which so here I had a thoroughly dishonest and unscrupulous child who was almost certain to give every satisfaction and

14:45 sudden death quite impartially seemed I had chosen well Michael Stevens is the commissioning editor for BBC audio's Doctor Who range and he's been involved with other brands such as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Agatha Christie Alan Bennett and Terry Pratchett he's also produced several stories for the big finish short trips range it's our great pleasure to welcome Michael to the Sirens of audio g'day g'day hi nice to see Bo thanks for joining us now many who work in Doctor Who these days were huge fans as kids was that the case with you yes definitely I became a fan probably at the age of three

15:30 um three or four and uh yeah yeah it's it's very strange isn't it we've all got this experience it hooks you in and it doesn't really leave you and uh yes I I all the way through growing up um into my teens and Beyond yeah Doctor Who has been there uh as a constant what's your earliest memory we love we always love to talk about it earliest memories don't we I have a very um interesting early memory in that I for many years have have believed it it's a scene from day of the Daleks and specifically it's a scene where the

16:17 Daleks have the doctor prisoner and he's on lying on the table and in the background um you see the title sequence and the the faces of the previous two doctors and I am sure that that is my earliest memory and yet the dates don't the dates don't quite work in that I would have been less than two on original transmission and um I can't remember what the repeat transmission was for the dialects if indeed there was one so it's a little bit of a mystery unless it was a clip I would you know that I was seeing in some other TV show don't know but after that

17:04 I have fleeting memories of some of the Poetry stories but it was really with Tom Baker that I became to you know I started to sit up and take notice and remember things so then all the way through and because I yeah as I say I I was uh when Tom Baker started I I've been three or four so it was from then on that uh you know I would never not see it or if we couldn't see it for some reason you know had to go somewhere we'd either have to rush back to to get to see Doctor Who or I'd miss it and you know be pretty upset uh and then quickly got into recording the audio from

17:51 the TV uh yeah which was a little foreshadowing of what I'd like later do for BBC audio so so what led you into a career in audio publishing was it um uh what you think did you start out with the BBC writing copy and liner notes is that how you started yeah I did yes it was a complete lucky chance I I was working as a website editor actually for a publisher or rather a Bookseller and I used to get the magazine called the Bookseller which is a sort of trade publication and uh at that time you had jobs advertised in there and a job was advertised for a

18:37 copywriter for what was then called BBC Radio collection and I immediately knew that this was the sort of thing I I wanted to do in fact I think I'd already decided by then my one of my dream jobs would be to work for radio times and this was pretty close because actually it was in the same building and it was at that point BBC Radio collection was the publisher of BBC radio programs and indeed some TV soundtracks but you know the names mentioned in the advert Alan Bennett um Agatha Christie uh Sherlock Holmes I I was a I you know I listened all the time to BBC Radio

19:22 and um so I applied for that and um after several interviews and tests and things uh because it was a copywriting job uh I I got that job so I moved to London for that and um joined a small team it was a small team back then and we were publishing on cassettes and CDs wide range of BBC programming what does a copywriter do well in this instance uh with this specific job it was writing the sleeves for all of the releases so the sales copy on the back and then the tasks and credits and um sometimes we would

20:09 commission a sleeve note or we would write our own sleeve note so if it was an Agatha Christie Drama We would write a biography of Agatha Christie or anything that was pertinent to the the title also if we wrote adverts um anything Associated you know we used to do a catalog so I would write the introduction to the catalog and all that sort of thing so in in advertising copywriter is you know specifically writing adverts aren't they but in publishing and as I say in this specific instance it was writing any of the copy any of the words for um for the range

20:55 and that was a really interesting job and on my first day I was presented with proofs for uh Doctor Who I think it was slip back and the mythmakers those were the two forthcoming audio releases the audio the doctor audio range was in its early very early days then and the proof you know it was pretty pre-digital or rather it was pre online proofing and things like that so we would physically get these big proofs coming you'd you'd have to mark them up and send them back to the printer interesting so from the BBC you went to audio go that seemed like uh was that about the mid 2000s that that happened

21:41 yeah but it rather than um it being a company that I went to audio go was formed from what was then called BBC audiobooks because uh yeah I'll try and keep this as brief as possible BBC Radio collection was part of BBC worldwide when I first joined we then bought um a small audio book company called cover to cover that happened to publish the Harry Potter audio books and suddenly the Harry Harry Potter took off and we had this huge business this then LED BBC worldwide to buy

22:26 another audiobook company called chivers and they were based in bath and all these companies formed a larger company called BBC audiobooks that's what we that's the business that we began in bath after several years that business was uh 90 share was sold to a group of private investors and the the name audio go was formed so it moved away from being a BBC owned company but it still had the BBC publishing license and it became audio go so you know we all continued the business continued ostensibly as it was it just had a change of name and then audio go

23:13 ran until 2013. so audio go did something quite special in Doctor Who something that big Finnish had already tried to do and not succeeded and that was get Tom Baker to come and do full cast audio so were you around at the time involved in that getting Tom to come and do those I certainly was yeah I certainly was what had happened was in 2005 we'd started the the target audiobook range um which was my idea and I set it up and we began and one of the early readers who we got for the range was Tom Baker because um it just seemed like the obvious thing to do to ask Tom to read some target books

23:58 so he read the giant robot pyramids of Mars the brain of orbius and the Creature from the pit and it was while he was recording the fourth of those pyramids of Mars that he said to us in studio uh wouldn't it be marvelous if we had some original Doctor Who stories and so we said yes it would Tom that would be wonderful uh you know if you're interested in doing that and we had a lunch and um that was a very memorable time when we talked about what we could do and Tom had a few ideas

24:45 and so I went away and put together a sort of structure for hornet's nest and then I got all Mars on board and um he wrote the scripts for hornet's nest and the key tenets of of The Hornet's Nest were that the doctor was living in a cottage in Sussex and he had a housekeeper and Tom as far as I recall Tom came up with the name Mrs Whimsy I came up with the name nist Cottage and uh we were I the idea I had was that the

25:30 Brigadier would um be reunited with a doctor that's those are the the scripts that we we made and so from that point on Tom was fully on board uh he hadn't reprized the role of the doctor since 1981 in any great form I think he'd done that children in need and um this was his uh his chance to to return to the role of the doctor which he he relished and um you know we sort of flew by the seat of our pants with the first series and we were discovering what we could do and how we could do it and um it went very well so then we could we we repeated the exercise with two more series there's

26:16 something rather horrible about fighting monsters who aren't even alive you can't hear them breathing because they don't breathe and they can sneak up on you easy as anything because their footsteps are soft and muffled they're inside Russell was stuffing and sawdust and so you have to listen very very carefully in the night to hear them approach they mostly come out at night that's when stuffed animals go hunting their victims rarely hear them until it's too late there's a strange smell perhaps formaldehyde a whiff of mothballs an aroma of spoiled leather or musty fur being dead doesn't deter these beasties from trotting and traipsing about in the night and some of them are quite

27:02 dangerous you know oh yes that snow leopard in the study you'd have your head off as soon as look at you the giant head and the downstairs hall to give you a nasty thumping if he was so inclined I first became aware of these nocturnal misdeeds a few short weeks ago I was on a little break here in the peaceful Countryside and I happened upon a local paper's garbled reports of the death of a cabinet minister he'd been trampled to death in his own bed a terrible imprint of a hoof upon his forehead a hoof print belonging to an Alpine Ibex mic not a goat one normally Associates with Sussex quite and not something one would expect to be attacked by in the middle of the night in one's own bed

27:47 so what's the story with um big finish doing full cast audio BBC audio and audio go at that stage um was there any sense of like was there a sense of competition between you at all or just totally different projects happening totally different projects happening big finish has always been a licensee of BBC worldwide and ostensibly in the 2000s they were a licensee of BBC audio books so you know we had a close and very sort of friendly business relationship and they had started in late was it 98 99 with their their range

28:33 they were doing forecasts drama and we were majoring on um single voice you know and when it came to Hornet's Nest originally it was not set up as a forecast drama it was really set up as a multi-voice narrative and my my original idea was that the doctor and the Brigadier would recount Adventures to each other and as they were recounting they would you know do the voices as it were it would be a sort of um an amalgam of an audio book and uh a multi-voice reading

29:20 I think we quickly realized that that had limitations so a few more characters were brought in however we still didn't look upon that first series as a true forecast drama but then it just developed um across the three Series so by the end it pretty much was forecast Audio Drama but we didn't suddenly we didn't then think all right so this is what we do now we do all it was an exception um that that Tom Baker series and then we really once we stopped doing that we returned to doing the the target audio books the audio original stories that we commissioned the BBC books novels and so on and I think similarly over at Big

30:05 finish they have as the years have gone by they've moved into you know they had the short trips range which were single voice readings and latterly they've started doing full length audio novels so I think there's always been the realization that we can all do we can all play with the format we can all try and do different things and there's there is room for it because that's what Doctor Who is so good at is he's accommodating such a lot of stories to be told so it's certainly I don't think it's ever really been a case of us being in competition it's just we do we

30:55 we do broadly we do different types of audio but sometimes there's crossover sometimes we we swap a little bit you know so you've been the commissioning editor all the way from audio go to now or did that did something change so that you became the commissioning editor at BBC audio afterwards since 2013 or how's your role progressed since those days when I joined uh radio collection they quickly realized that I had an interest in and knew lot about the Doctor Who range and um none of my colleagues did and so they were really glad to hand the reins over of the range to me so I started really being the commissioning editor of

31:40 the Doctor Who range probably in 2002 and the first thing I did was set up Doctor Who the BBC which um was the arc that you know the the range of releases which went into the radio and TV archive and brought out all of these um interviews uh behind the scenes features that hadn't been heard for years going all the way back to the 60s and it together it tells we've actually just released it as Dr the BBC The Collection nine volumes and it tells an amazing behind the scenes story of Doctor Who so yes I started really looking after the Doctor Who range way back in 2000 to 2003 then when we moved to bath when

32:29 we became BBC audiobooks I became a commissioner uh I think for a little time I was looking after the copywriting team and then I became a commissioning editor um looking after or not just Doctor Who but a whole range of stuff since 2013 um I have I did I did a stint working on the general range but now I look after Doctor Who solely and I also work on the demon records Doctor Who releases so that's the vinyl box set releases that we're now putting out are you familiar with those yes yes I am

33:15 yeah beautiful love uh they're great for the artwork those those covers aren't they they are yes they're really nice very nice yeah yeah some very sort of high high spec on the production so and Demon also put out uh other BBC titles as well so we've done things like Faulty Towers Blackadder um the Neil Gaiman um radio dramatizations and stuff like that so what else does your job involve as commissioning editor what what are your other responsibilities what what does a week look like for you to say we were a small team back here in the early 2000s is true but

34:02 we're an even smaller team now and really uh I I I initiate titles I think I decide what we're going to publish and then see them all the way through to publication so um and I I work with a band of um Freelancers um producers sound Engineers or sound designers and um graphic designers and so my my job is to ensure that we keep publishing Doctor Who titles and to populate the schedule every year and then to prepare the scripts cast the readers

34:47 assign sound designers um enable The Producers to be able to record so uh I I provide an information sheet for every title which gives it's a sort of sheet on um characters characterizations how voices should sound and um do the same for the sound designer because uh certain voices we try to match to their TV counterparts we we only do that with a handful of characters you know the Daleks the Cybermen and K-9 other than that we sort of we give ourselves free reign we think we're not slavishly trying to replicate

35:35 um the sound of the TV episodes so um well I think yeah it's good to enjoy these stories on a you know as a completely unique experience I think I think that works well I think so as well and I think particularly with the target range it does exist in its own little sub-universe I think doesn't it because you know there's been so many of them deviate from what we've seen on screen and um so it's nice and right at the start with the target range we the Simon power the the person who has sound designed most of there's just one title that he hasn't sound designed in in terms of the target range he devised

36:20 um a sound for the interior control room and it was not like I think I must have said you know don't want to use the TV interior let's come up with our own so he came up with this one and you know that has been the sound of the inside of the tile it's through all of the target books and I think people now really like it and they you know the the so the series has its own sort of continuity are you allowed to have access to the sound effects of the BBC you don't don't use the music at all is that for copyright reasons as well no um again we just decided um on the target range we wouldn't use the theme music because again it's sort

37:06 of Fosters an expectation that you're going to listen to a TV episode in a way so um we don't do that on our audio Originals we do use the the doctor theme tune on those and indeed usually if we do a BBC book and in fact with the modern Target novelizations we have been using the the TV theme tune at the start and end but with the the classic uh range as you might call it we just never did but yeah we do have access to the BBC sound effects so we've had a story an audio original which features the the

37:52 time lord stays us and so we use we use the effect from the invasion of time and The Deadly Assassin on on those you know who decides What actors going to do the recordings I decide that you know we built up a sort of repertoire of of readers over the years and um some who joined us right at the start are still reading for us now such as Jeffrey Bieber's others have moved away from recording maybe you know have retired some of some of our readers are retired and others are new to the range and it's always a case of trying to match the voice I think I

38:38 always think the the most important thing is to match the voice to the tone of the book and sometimes the story is is dominated or heavily influenced by a particular character you know it's that character's voice that shapes The Narrative or drives the narrative and so you really want to get that voice correct so you look for somebody who you know can naturally do that voice also as you'll be aware we've also always striven to have some people who have readers who are associated either with Doctor Who generally or perhaps with a specific story so you know first thing I'll do is really look at that is there anybody from the original TV

39:23 story who I could perhaps read it and if there isn't then who else might be a good person to to put to that story yeah I I like clear call but for instance who recently did Pfizer Pompeii is absolutely spot on she was fantastic in that Dan Stark is fantastic as an all-rounder so he's good but I do look at titles like I think Enlightenment is it with Stephen Stephen Pacey what made you go for Stephen Pacey because he has no connection with Doctor Who and he hasn't done many other books either so what was what was your just decision behind uh casting him well Stephen I knew was a very accomplished audiobook reader and if you

40:09 look on Audible uh you'll see his name assigned to countless audio books and at the time uh he's he's read term he read Terminus and he read Enlightenment and I think Terminus was the original recording that Stephen made for us again thinking about the characters you had older the the space pirate you had turlo and you had all of the veneer so a lot of male voices and um there's something about the tone of the story and the the tone of Stephen's voice that I just thought might work well

40:56 and um so that was the first one that he did and um I thought it was a terrific reading when it came to it just by chance had to be the subsequent story Enlightenment um I thought obviously that I might work very very nicely for Stephen as well and of course sometimes you are working with your your schedule and access availability and also you're looking at well which other readers have are coming out this year um and trying to get a mix of voices and of names and so on so Stephen is you know a very talented

41:42 recruit to the range really and he he also read one of our audio Originals a Kairos ring so here's an example I think of uh of a very few um people who haven't been in Doctor Who of course I always think of Blake seven really as doctor's sister show uh so there's there's that that John culture is another example of somebody who's certainly at that time had never been in Doctor Who but I had a hunch that John might make a very good audiobook reader so we got in touch with him and we we um myself and my um at the time my boss

42:29 we met with John this was you know going back quite quite a few years now and uh we had a chat with him and he said he would be interested so the first title that he did was the ark in space that turned out really well of course you know if you're bringing somebody new to the range you you're listening you're waiting with baited breath for the recording to come in and see how it's gone but uh for you know John's obviously went terrifically well he was obviously uh he was a an obvious person to do fourth doctor at the time I thought because he was famous but he's Tom Baker impression and sure enough you know I mean the five

43:16 doctors yeah I was gonna survive yeah five doctors yeah what I quickly realized was that John is a huge fan of the Third Doctor I think you know in many ways possibly the Third Doctor is his doctor in terms of when he was growing up so he let me know that he was very keen to read some Third Doctor stories which he has now done and uh and the five doctors yes uh he was the man really to do that and I think he loved doing it another voice that he loves doing is the Brigadier you know I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to this reunion the chance to meet old friends again bring it air cried and put down his glass there's one chap we've been trying to

44:01 get held off for ages mysterious sort of fellow used to be your unpaid Scientific Advisor the Brigadier smiled ah the doctor that's right the doctor the Brigadier smiled reminiscently wonderful chap all of them cried and looked curiously at him then more than one was that well yes and no said the Brigadier to his relief they were interrupted by the buzz of the desk intercom flick the switch yes the voice of the duty Sergeant crackled out someone's arrived I'm not expecting anyone who is it

44:48 there was a tinge of desperation in the Sergeant's voice tone of the Sergeant's voice changed as he addressed the Unseen intruder I'm sorry sir you're not allowed in there what send a familiar voice indignantly me not allowed I'm allowed everywhere just get out of the way will you thank you the office door was flung open and a little figure popped inside eluding the grasp of the unit sergeant the newcomer looked swiftly around the room pretty good here he rushed across to them and shook hands warmly good heavens said the Brigadier faintly

45:33 is it really you for once I've been able to steer the Tardis correctly and here I am Brigadier Crichton caught the duty Sergeant's eye it's all right sergeant yes sir said the sergeant woodenly and withdrew Creighton studied the newcomer curiously he saw an odd looking little fellow in a Shabby old frock coat and rather baggy checked trousers untidy black hair hung in a fringe over his forehead and his dark brown eyes seemed humorous and sad at the same time the little man looked hopefully up at the Brigadier I'm not too late am I what for your speech as guest of honor

46:19 Brigadier cried and looked at him in astonishment how did you know the Brigadier would be here saw it in the times impossible the report is still here tomorrow's times said the little man witheringly he turned to the Brigadier who is this fellow Colonel Crichton my replacement the little man sniffed mine was pretty unpromising too can I ask a question about covers because I mean one of the distinctive things about all the range is just you know magnificent covers and targeted amazing covers which are still loved by many you have gone for traditional covers for most of the audiobooks but then you pull out ones that aren't so um visitation modern

47:05 and dead Terminus why decision about when you decide to use a Target cabin when you don't is that a copyright thing or something else the main intention was and still is really to use the original book cover if possible and for I would say 80 of the time we do that in the early days there were a few variations where for example when we did the doctor and the giant robot we had the original cover getting the name of the artist terrific terrific renowned Peter Brooks Peter Brooks and then we

47:51 had the reprint cover which is that lovely dark blue with this the very striking image of the the robot's head and that's actually that that was the copy that I had in my collection so I'd grown up with that and so I just made the decision and I you know you have to be a little bit the the Rangers in its early days it was ostensibly a new audiobook range you have to have a little bit of a commercial eye on things and think well you know our sales team are going out to to retailers and they're presenting this range which is going to look the most impressive and I decided for Dr the giant robot that that reprint cover would actually be the most impressive and we did the same I think with planets of the spiders as well

48:39 we also did it with the sea devils and in all of those cases we went with these the second edition artwork but for the most part we go with the original the three that you mentioned Terminus Morgan Undead and the visitation they had all had photographic covers originally and I didn't want to do photographic covers but I do remember commissioning Nick Spender for the the visitation cover and being very pleased with it and Nick also was commissioned to the cover of an unearthly child which he did and that is that is a beautiful cover and that's another reason why it's such a shame that we we didn't get to release that one it may have been you know that I just

49:25 didn't um I just wanted to do something different than than the second edition artwork can't remember Alistair of course has been a wonderful contributor to the range and in recent years he has taken it upon himself to rework some of his Originals and so I think you know yeah the dialogue looks amazing that reworking he's done yeah yeah yes absolutely and he's he's he's working on some others we just possibly today or tomorrow certainly this week sometime the cover of silver Nemesis should be going up which again he's he's reworked

50:12 so it may have been the back in the back when we did Morgan Undead and Terminus you know going back a few years now uh if we were doing those today Aleister might say oh I actually I think I could rework some of these um but that that wasn't the case how difficult is it to get a book shape cover onto a square CD can be very difficult it can be very difficult some covers lend themselves a lot more easily than others because for instance you know we've got a terrific um graphic designer Kevin minty of minty design who who has done most of our covers sometimes it you know if if an image all of the target books were really in portrait style if an image happened to

50:58 be bounded by space you know outer space stars and so on they're not very easy to extend left and right to make a square if though somebody's shoulder ends you know uh somebody's arm ends at the shoulder then it's a rather bigger challenge to extend the arm fully and you know we do if we can the other thing that we're having to work with is the current Doctor Who logo and some give more room than others so yeah it can be can be a bit of a challenge of course it's it's rather nice now to have the the new logo and the version of the new logo that

51:44 we're using is what's known as the horizontal version so it's the the Doctor Who words but it's without the background diamond because of course that diamond just cuts right down into your your artwork it's rather nice that that is also the version that was used on the target books in the 70s so in a way it's coming home but I was really Keen that all of our 2023 titles should carry the new logo so we had that little moment in late 2022 and we were waiting for the assets uh so that we can get get going on the artwork but we've we've Managed IT so the Romans was the first title that had the new logo now speaking of the Romans we were

52:31 talking about John colshaw a little while ago and he appears in the Romans with six other readers in that book it's not one of the longest books ever but we've got six different readers tell us about the process in deciding to to present the audio book this way it's fantastically done by the way it's my favorite audiobook it was obvious really because of the way the book was written in that epistolary style uh it's it's a mix of letters and diary entries it was an obvious candidate for doing a multi-voice reading a talented single voice reader could of course have plowed all the way through and and done all of the voices but it seemed like a good opportunity to do something a little bit

53:17 different and Jamie Glover has recently read three first doctor stories that feature Ian Chesterton so in a way he's taken over the mantle of Ian Chesterton for the target range so the Well from of course the superbly talented William Russell So Jamie seemed like an obvious person to read Ian's diary no Ian's letters to the Headmaster and then I just had to think about you know other other people who we work with and the characters that they they might suit and Tim trelaw has done this lovely characterizes characterization of

54:03 ascaris it's hilarious it is so funny it's so good oh he's got a touch of the the Welsh valleys to his voice Just a Touch Yeah dance like is a wonderful first doctor yes we we have a couple of candidates for first doctor voices now and um Dan has read first doctor stories for a doctor who annuals range and uh John colshaw has done the same and he does a super post doctor but um I thought that genre might be very nice as Nero

54:50 and that Dan as you say he's very very accomplished at the first doctor so that was the way that worked out then we were working with Maureen O'Brien because I had I had asked Maureen to read a few other bits for different releases and I also thought it would be really nice for her to read something from the Romans as she was in the original Romans so she makes what you might call a cameo appearance doesn't she it's just one one of the many entries in in the book is read by her but she she really knows that the poison had danced so well like yeah back and forth at the wonderfully

55:35 done yeah and it's nice that she's encountering Vicky it was her her character then of course Barbara's uh Lou Jameson yes which I thought would be a nice a nice fit you know and um who else have we got there is that everybody I think it might be okay yeah clear oh Claire yes Claire Claire now you see Claire first I first knew of Claire because she did a uh she had a role in Hornet's Nest with Tom Baker and Claire is you know amazingly talented uh voice artist and since then she's read a

56:21 couple of books for the the target range she read a big BBC books novel The droston's Curse I'm not sure if you're familiar with that one it's actually a fourth doctor story and that came out well probably about 10 years ago now so Claire reads that and she's done other other titles for us over the years so uh yeah I just thought about thought about Claire we had on the program and just she just talked through her method of preparation and it was just thorough and will prepare cheese yeah it was very interesting to listen to that from her perspective um because uh you know she did she did

57:07 she was at pains to mention the engineers as uh as she called them uh and of course she's an example of a reader who now does record from home so does have to be more in control of the technical aspect um than a than a reader that just turns up into Studio but um yeah it was interesting I mean the the preparation that a reader has to do that the homework that they have to put into it is is sizable um but we are there in the background offering tips and guidance and um saying you know have voices

57:54 ought to sound but at the end of the day of course the reader has to be comfortable with with what they're doing so you can't impose too much upon them and some readers do a high level of voice characterization and others don't and both is fine really now you were holding it up before another range that's come out recently is beyond the doctor how did that range was that your idea yes um it it was and it was really just came out of uh thinking what else might we do

58:40 because we have a range of audio original titles that we've been publishing since I think 2007. they tend to be an hour and 10 minutes single stories and they can feature any of past doctors with or without companions and that continues to this day but uh I just thought well is there is there another way of looking at Original Stories is another aspect and I've always been interested in the idea of what happens to Companions after they leave the

59:26 doctor so I sort of thought well let's let's try and uh have a few stories just featuring companions so they don't actually feature the doctor the one of the first ones that I commissioned was the Kairos ring from Stephen Gallagher and that's features Romana um after Warriors gate files I also asked um another long-term collaborator Paul Mars to come up with some ideas and so Paul came up with the idea of Bessie come home I think it was Bessie come home that he came up with first

1:00:13 which is Bessie which was left to feel I wasn't quite thinking of Bessie when I was thinking of past Companions of the doctor but uh you know we talked about it we kicked around some ideas and I suddenly thought this is a brilliant idea we must do this we've all we also did sleeper agents which was a Polly and Ben's story read by Annika Wills and during the course of writing those two I think this is how it worked Paul came up with some sort of guest characters and a story arc started to evolve featuring those characters so then we added uh London 1965 which

1:01:00 features Ian and Barbara and then we've we we we realized we had a sort of little story arc going on which is so we Loosely call it the penumbra Saga and um it has now concluded with the final story called The penumbra Affair and that features Mrs Whimsy so again it's a little bit left of field because obviously Mrs Whimsy isn't a TV companion but she's become very dear to a lot of our listeners through the nest Cottage series and um we have previously had single voice audio Original Stories featuring Mrs Whimsy and the doctor read by Susan Jameson so that's what has happened so far with

1:01:47 beyond the doctor it wasn't intended really to be a story arc and the first release the Kairos ring is separate stands alone but it just so happens that the other four that we've done so far have all now formed part of this penumbra um story arc we don't have any immediate plans to to do more but I I I'd like to do more a bit further in the future because you know so obviously some characters there isn't a lot to say about after you particularly Patrick for instance uh and others of course have had a strong afterlife in the big finish range and so

1:02:33 it might be difficult to come up with alternative and alternative history for them or might be counterproductive to do that so you know it's just if the if the opportunity arises I think we'll do more no that's excellent I particularly enjoyed Bessie come home and London 1965 those two really stand out as some as something really different and unique uh in the in the Doctor Who audio ranges yeah I'm glad you enjoyed those I I agree and you know that's Paul's Talent yeah he's he's very very talented writer um I really enjoy working with Paul and um we've we've collaborated a lot over the years it's very original he's very witty

1:03:20 um he's he's very off the wall and I I often sort of have to Reign that in a little bit uh but yeah he's he's great very talented and almost at once all my glorious modifications were put to the test we were instructed by the Brigadier to present ourselves forthwith and a series of Secret locations at each of them there had been strange and impossible goings-on fourth with the doctor had cried appalled I was delighted to Bear my new owner and his young friend Liz Shaw to all these distant places I was desperate to race all the way there on my beautiful new Wheels to rev

1:04:05 my impossible engines and to get them there just as forth with as ever they liked oh dear is that a growing skepticism on the face of my devoted Mr Foreman as the afternoon wanes and the Shadows lengthen in our corner of the junkyard I tell him the top secret tale of the lizard people hidden away sleeping under wendley Moore such a long time ago now 50 years but that's a drop in the ocean compared with how long those reptile people had slept oh yes clever reptiles who dated back from the time of the dinosaurs they'd been slumbering in bunkers far

1:04:53 underground like scaly Rip Van Winkles hoping to evade disaster when a certain meteor had collided with their world thanks to a mechanical failure they slept for much longer than they had meant to well I know how that can go they then woke many millions of years in the future only to discover that the Apes as they called them now ruled Supreme on their planet Earth I was at hand with the doctor and Professor Shaw at the Brigadier when the lizard men came creeping out of their Subterranean base they were wreaking havoc and planning Revenge I was called upon to hurtle across the Moors with jeeps and all kinds of military escorts I did feel

1:05:39 proud I was in the thick of the action taking the doctor to the very heart of the adventure where he went head to head with his opponents and tried to reason with them he tried to make peace this was to be my role for the next few years I would transport the doctor to where he needed to be in order to save the whole planet and I took my duties very seriously of course so can you tell us a little bit about your involvement with the big finish short trips you produced a few what was your involvement there I did yeah well that was just after uh audio go came to an end in 2013. and um you know my big finish very

1:06:24 kindly asked me if I would like to produce some some of the short trips which I did um I'm not a technical producer so I don't sit in the studio and you know run the control board so producing in that instance was a case of commissioning scripts and and then casting and pairing and working working with uh again the sad designers and so on and and the producer who's going to be in studio and I did go I did attend mini if not all of the actual Studio recordings for those at the time

1:07:12 and uh I think yeah I've got fond memories of a lot of those stories did first second third fourth doctor yeah I think we actually we covered all of the doctors did we do a Seventh Doctor I can't remember now but yes that was fun to do for a time and then but quite quickly in 2014 the Doctor Who the the Doctor Who ranged did re-emerge the BBC audio Doctor Who range did re-emerge um dumb straight out of London except that it was actually being done by by me in bath uh again working on this this basis that you know we record we record

1:07:58 um most of our titles or many of our titles at ladbrok audio in so in London with Neil Gardner who's really the producer who has has Saturn and worked with the the readers for I would say the majority uh titles in the last 10 years so yeah that's how we began again and because I I became that that picked up again and I I started working on that then I I didn't continue with any any more big finish work but it was very nice to to work uh work with them I think Lisa Bowman produced several of those short trips and uh yeah happy memories of go down and working

1:08:45 with Lisa who's great big finish presents Doctor Who short trips Washington Burns outside the house Major General Robert Ross dragged himself from under the body of his Fallen horse he knelt down beside the body of his old friend then looked at the flag of truce in his hand Ross turned back to the rest of the men in his party he could see that Coburn was smirking the Admiral clearly knowing what Ross was about to order no more truce next to him the gentleman from The Chateau seemed to be thinking hard but then he always seemed to be thinking hard Ross turned to the small group of sailors that Coburn had brought up with

1:09:31 them and calmly ordered them to burn the townhouse to the ground rear Admiral George Coburn turned to the gentleman from The Chateau it seems you were right doctor there'll be fires burning tonight silently the doctor nodded [Laughter] [Music] big finish we love stories we've just had announced over the last couple of days I think at the time of recording some new Target novelizations coming out the middle of the year yeah so we got audio books to go with those oh those ones yes I see what you mean yes absolutely uh

1:10:17 fingers crossed yes um I just had a quick look and there haven't been any readers announced yet so that's no coming soon I'm literally working on it at the moment the challenge with new books is always and uh been Claire alluded to this is always that we aim to sim Pub the audio publication with the book but of course the script hasn't been lying around on a shelf for years like the target books The Script is new and is still being written and copy edited and proof proofread and so on so there is that uh a period of time where you hope you will have the script

1:11:04 in time to record and edit and add the sound design and so on and get off to the manufacturers in time for publication date what is the turnaround that you need to be able to record edit add sound design well I tend to allow um a 10 to 11 months for sound design which just means that the sound designer who you know may be working on several projects so that's at any one time it has has a comfortable amount of time to do his or her work that can be contracted if if we need a really quick turnaround but tend to

1:11:52 allow a month for that recording only needs one or two days but it has to fit in with the reader's availability and Studio availability as well and then that requires um I mean Neil does turn around it it's pretty quickly so he he can have what we call a vocal edit ready in a week really that goes off to the sound design and then once that once the sound design has come in then I listen and give feedback to the sound designer once I've done that and it it then goes off somewhere else and is proof listened to so there we have a band of proof

1:12:38 listeners and they are reading it alongside the script and that's where they will pick up on you have proof listeners like you have proof readers I've never imagined that to all your books can proof listen listen to how to get that job I'd love that I'm free I'm free for that what is that it sounds like a good job and I think the the people who do it uh enjoy it but it's demanding oh it does it'd be great yeah if it's an eight hour book that's not really eight hours you know if I when I'm listening I listen you know when I'm in the car when I'm walking when I'm doing the washing up you know and I'm taking it all around with me all the time

1:13:24 but what I'm not hearing is a tummy Rumble or a um a little hiccup in the editing or a Fluff of a line and that's where the proof listeners have to do a really close listen so for that eight hours that's eight hours you've got to spend sitting at a desk with the script and with the the sound on a really good um set of headphones and you have to have really good hearing and that's where their work is invaluable so yeah I mean you may well enjoy it but it's uh it's hot it's it's quite hard you can't skimp on that yeah

1:14:11 yeah so they they do that but if you've got any positions open I would love something great job yeah okay well the best yeah I feel I feel like I do it anyway half the time yes I know I mean the amount of audio that you guys must have have to listen to It's live yeah I know very very hard to keep up now in terms of these new books coming out because now we know that the audio is coming out at the same time as the novel will the people design the front book cover think of you at all or not that one comes out with you no okay yeah you think you could actually work together wouldn't you in terms of one product that actually works

1:14:58 it's interesting BBC books are over there doing their thing and with a couple of them the audio's already been done hasn't it Warriors Gates being produced as a book but that's I think that's got extra bits in it that aren't on the audio but the audio has already been done is that right that's correct yes so Warriors gate is an example of uh we we commission the expanded version of steam Gallagher's story which was actually as as I'm sure you know his original manuscript that he submitted to target books and was rejected uh by Jonathan Turner who at that time you know was was looking over what target books were doing very closely uh I forget now what

1:15:45 or the basis on which sure well I think I think it was too it was too long and it didn't feel that it represented the story closely enough it wasn't there he expanded and changed a lot of things well because yeah what he wanted because the TV show got rid of all the stuff he liked and so he He restored the back of the book and then John moved into it again sure absolutely so uh a few years ago I approached Stephen and said well you know could we do the it to become a bit of a myth um in fan circles I suppose the original script of Warrior's gate and I knew a few people who had been involved in talking to Stephen over the years and saying well you know could could this be done as a book now as an expanded book

1:16:32 and none of the attempts had ever really come off but when I got in touch with Stephen um it was quite straightforward he said yeah I've got it ready actually so um we did the audio version of that John colshaw read it now BBC books um approached me and said you know could would we'd be happy for them to to do the the print version which of course um you know I was very happy for them too so they're doing that they're adding in this script of the Kairos ring which I mentioned earlier which is the beyond the doctor story that Stephen wrote and I believe they're also adding in another shorter story which um I'm not I don't know anything about that

1:17:19 that one so that's going to be that volume we therefore we won't do a new audio reading we'll just stick with our version that we've got already and that's what we did with stones blood and the Androids of Tara which were also print versions of the scripts that I'd commissioned from David Fisher that came about at a period where I we went into recording the the target books and uh it was an idea that I'd had oh for many many years the idea being what if a Target book had been written by somebody else and I used to I just think yeah we know the target

1:18:05 books that we have but what if you mixed up all the author names and you had um you know Doctor Who in the Daleks written by Malcolm Hulk or uh um whatever permutations I was also aware at the time that some of the Terence dicks late 70s novelizations were Slim and much as I loved the original the Terence Dix novelization of the stones of blood which I remember you know lapping that up me too several times yeah yes yeah it was so you know it's a it's a quick read really

1:18:50 the stones of blood is one of my favorite TV stories and I had heard that David Fisher I don't know how true it is but you know it's often said that David Fisher had been disappointed that he'd hadn't been given the opportunity to novelize the stones of blood and the Androids of Tara first time round of course a few years later he did novelize the Creature from the pit um so I put all of these thoughts together and thought actually what would a novelization of the stones of blood be like if it was written by David Fisher and how much more of the story would he be able to tell us you know there's so many tantalizing references in the

1:19:37 original TV episodes about Professor Rumford Miss Faye the the cottage where they live their background and also a DeVries you know that famous line uh where um he and his wife are escaping the ogre and she said oh we could be in Plymouth in an hour or something so he said immediately right so they're in Cornwall and um in the TV series it's never actually explicitly stated where they where where it is set so uh all of these sorts and I thought well hey

1:20:23 nothing to stop us asking David Fisher if he would like to novelize it it now so I got in touch with him and he was very keen on the idea of doing that so we we talked we had some phone conversations and um he produced his first draft of the stones of blood which was wonderful um you know a really really super retelling of the story and um you know we I I edited that and worked on it with him a little bit there are a few things that um he had

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