Your
job has to be the hardest one imaginable; in directing the authors on their
books to run to a certain point and not cover a topic that might appear in a
current episode on the television.
How
do you keep on top of all of that?
Steve: Oh, I think actually writing the
things is unimaginably harder. I’m just steering and helping; the writers are
the ones melting their brains and keyboards to come up with the books.
(Naturally, this is not actually my opinion when they eventually deliver a
manuscript, and I have to get to work on it…)
In terms of keeping on
top of things, for Torchwood we
always had tremendous support and guidance from both Gary Russell and Russell T
Davies.
Peter
Anghelides says you deserve a few pints for the job you’ve done. If you ever
come to my neck of the woods, I will indeed buy you a few pints – seriously!
Steve: Peter has much wisdom.
How
did the planning of the novels come about, as you’ve also written factual books
about Doctor Who including The Time Traveller’s Almanac which I swear by? You’ve also written Companions and Allies and
The TARDIS handbook, and co-wrote The Dalek Handbook with James Goss – that’s
the next book on my list to pick up.
Where do you find the time?
Steve: Time. I used to find the time by not
sleeping. Ever. Now I just complain that there’s not enough minutes in the
hour. I’ve happily co-opted RTD’s explanation that his ideas are gestating for
weeks and months and years before he actually sits down in a blind panic to
write it all out (see his wonderful The
Writer’s Tale for the full story on that). Also James is the perfect
co-writer: we’ll discuss something, I’ll wander off for a few minutes and
return to find 10,000 words in my inbox.
Planning
the novels. I came on
board very late in the day on the first three Torchwood novels, which were commissioned and overseen by Gary
Russell. When Gary became one of the writers on the second batch, I became more
involved. Each time we had confirmation of another run of the TV series, I’d
approach potential authors for novel pitches, hopefully choosing people who’d
give me a good ‘balance’ of ideas and styles. I’d whittle those pitches down to
a set of three, and there’d often be several weeks of back and forth with the
writers, honing their ideas to (a) give an interesting and diverse collection
of stories, (b) reflect the evolving tone of the TV series, and (c) not
encroach on or contradict the show. Those pitches would go to BBC Wales for
feedback from Russell and Gary. Once we had their go-ahead, each writer would
be set a frankly impossible deadline to deliver the goods.
With
the countless Doctor Who novels in circulation have you also been responsible
for keeping these running in and around the various episodes on the television?
Steve: I do work on them, yes (I think
there’s only one Doctor Who
publication from BBC Books that I’ve not worked on in the past eight years),
but Justin Richards is the one doing what I did on Torchwood, with considerably more panache and much less swearing.
I
love the idea of Nina Rogers, how did that character come about?
Steve: That was me, in a fairly blatant
rip-off of what Russell had done with ‘Bad Wolf’, ‘Torchwood’ and ‘Mr Saxon’ in
Doctor Who. I now think Elton Pope in
Love & Monsters and Eugene in Random Shoes were also subconscious
influences, though I honestly didn’t realise that at the time. I just liked the
idea of somebody living/working in Cardiff being perpetually on the periphery
of what Torchwood were up to without her or them noticing. So I drew up a very
rough sketch of who Nina was and started asking writers to incorporate her,
briefly and inconspicuously, in their novels. ‘If you’ve got a couple of innocent bystanders in a scene, who survive,
please call one of them Nina’, that sort of thing. She debuted in Sarah
Pinborough’s Into the Silence, then popped up in Mark Morris’s Bay
of the Dead – in a sequence about 80 times longer than I’d anticipated!
Mark’s stuff being brilliant, of course, I loved it and never considered
dropping or changing it, so Nina got a rather more substantial presence than
I’d intended. Oddly, though, nobody seemed to pick up on her popping up in
everything, until Consequences ended her story.
Well, almost ended her
story… I later snuck her into ‘We All Go
Through’, which James and I wrote for the final Torchwood Magazine.
When
you’re planning the novels to tie in with the episodes, how much leeway are the
writers able to have in terms of writing their story, how much involvement do
you have in their story, how does the process work?
Steve: Once we’ve agreed a detailed
storyline, as per your earlier ‘planning the novels’ question, the writers have
an almost entirely free hand, within the parameters of that agreed storyline. I
might ask for an element to be reworked or expanded occasionally, and I once
had to physically restrain Guy Adams (by email, which is tricky) from turning
the back of the Hub into a subaqueous Batcave built on a James Bond budget…
(Must check with Guy if that’s actually true.)
I
love Torchwood and I especially love Doctor Who, that’s what I grew up with,
from Jon Pertwee as the 3rd into Tom Baker as the fourth
onwards. But I especially love the
Torchwood books as they all tie in with the other books in the series, aside
that is from the more recent books that fit in and around Miracle Day. Did you have any involvement in these and
indeed the audiobooks around the time of Miracle Day?
Steve: Yes, I did all of those. The novels
leading into Miracle Day were all
based on ideas given to us by Russell T, thankfully, as the US co-production
meant there were even stricter limits on how much we could be told about what
was coming up. The audiobooks also had a lot of input from Russell, so we could
avoid doing anything that might be cancelled out by any subsequent series.
Unless, of course, any subsequent series were to pick up from the very last
moments of Episode 10…
Did
you have any input in Exodus Code?
Steve: Yes, I worked closely with John and
Carole on developing the storyline, which went through several incarnations
over quite a long time. James Goss and I then shared editing duties on the
text.
Do
you think there will be any more novels for Torchwood or audio books? I’d love for there to be more Torchwood
novels as I’ve enjoyed collecting them and am still working my way through the
novels, and although I’ve not read them in any particular order, I find them
thrilling, entertaining and it fills in the gaps between the episodes. And although some were a little freakish and
scary, for the first few pages, I’ve found the entire series entertaining and
often look out for Nina. It was Joseph
Lidster who explained the novels in more detail, pointing out the order by
which they ran which made me realise I was reading them backwards!!! He also
pointed out Nina, explaining who she was, so that was interesting to read about
her in Consequences and again in Bay of the Dead, the mention in The House That
Jack Built and mention of her briefly in The Undertaker’s Gift. I’m not sure of the others, as I say I’ve not
read them all in order.
Steve: More? I really hope so – it’s all
down to if and when the series comes back on television. I think the Miracle Day novels and audiobooks
demonstrated that there’s more than enough potential for them to carry on, but,
realistically, TV tie-ins need some TV to tie in with. I’m delighted you’ve
enjoyed them all so much.
Nina – back to Nina, as
if I’ve not rambled enough about her – and fantastic Joseph Lidster. Joe took
that one and ran with it; I think he’s shown you the amazing character
background he drew up for her. I think his Consequences story is utterly beautiful.
The order of her
appearances is: Into the Silence, Bay of the Dead, The House that Jack Built, The
Lost Voyage of Osiris (Torchwood Magazine short story), Risk Assessment, The
Undertaker’s Gift, Consequences, We All Go Through (Torchwood Magazine short
story).
The
Doctor Who series stretches over many years and it would be nice no fantastic
if the Torchwood series would also stretch beyond where we are, or have stories
that filled in around Children of Earth, or pre-COE. I loved Ianto in the books more than I
possibly loved him in the series on television, perhaps because he had more of
a role in the books. His lines were
often more wittier, the dry humour that we’ve grown to love. Was this a conscious decision to give Ianto
more of a role within the books, or is this decision down to the writer?
Steve: We were all keen to fill in and
around the whole history of Torchwood – David Llewellyn’s story in Consequences, for instance, goes right
back to Victorian Torchwood.
Ianto… Was he in Torchwood? His role in the novels,
really, reflected his developing role in the series itself – the first three
novels were set before Cyberwoman, so
his role was more limited but, once you get into Series Two and the novels
around that, he’s obviously doing a lot more. In the novels, I guess the big
one is Almost Perfect, since that was the first book set post Exit Wounds. But I think the lead
characters were written and acted so marvellously on TV that they were all a
joy to write (or edit).
Obviously
with Torchwood on a hiatus, what projects are you involved with now?
Steve: Lordy. Lots of Doctor Who, as always. Sherlock.
Lots of quiz books. The Sky at Night.
The Archers, for some reason. I
recently edited a fabulous book by Kevin Howlett on The Beatles’ BBC
appearances. I’m hoping we’ll get a new tie-in range off the ground next year
that’s nothing to do with Who.
I
love the Almanac, I know I’ve said that before, but the work that went into
this book must have taken a considerable length of time, the dates and
times. It’s obviously an extensive
amount of research involved in Jack’s time line, was it ever a headache,
especially since with time travel there’s a lot of flitting back and forth. It did confuse me when I tried to space out
Jack’s life from start to present, such as when he joined up with 9th
Doctor and Rose when Margaret Slitheen was caught, and the rift opened up, Jack
would already have been part of Torchwood at that point, would he not? (see this is where my head almost exploded
lol)
Steve: Ha. It’s all quite simple, except
for the bits that aren’t. Gary Russell’s The
Twilight Streets deals in part with what Torchwood-era Jack was up to
(hiding in the Hub, basically) while Ninth-Doctor-Jack was meeting Margaret
Slitheen. (Mind you, The Twilight Streets
may also make your head almost explode.) Where it all gets even more fun is
when you notice that there was another Jack there that day – cryogenic-storage-Jack
who’d spent 2,000 years buried under Cardiff/stored in the Hub. If Ianto had
ever decided to spring-clean those storage units…
How
long did it take to put the Almanac together?
Steve: No idea now. Couple of months,
probably.
Is
the Dalek handbook only available online or can you purchase it in the high
street shops? I’m currently writing up
The History of Daleks and I feel this book will be a godsend in my research.
Steve: Well, my local Waterstones has a
copy, so I guess it’s still in some shops. 100,000 books being published each
year does tend to squeeze titles out of the high street fairly rapidly, though.
Why
are the Torchwood novels only 50,000 words?
The reason I ask is I was always of the belief that novels were 80,000
words, what was the reason behind the limit to 50,000?
Steve: The first batch were 70,000–90,000
words… and they were too long. Too long, mostly, in purely practical terms – the
turnaround on TV tie-ins is incredibly short, since we can’t even get going
until we (or, rather, BBC Wales) know, say, who the new companion is or what
the season structure is. Getting synopses revised and approved, editing,
copy-editing, typesetting and proofreading manuscripts, printing, binding and
distributing copies… those processes eat up an enormous amount of the available
schedule, and it’d simply be unreasonable to expect any author to produce
80,000 words on the remaining timescale. Having said that, there’s not a
50,000-word limit; it’s actually a minimum, beyond which any given story
can expand as much as its plotting will withstand.
Every
writer whom I’ve interviewed has always mentioned you and in a good way of
course. You are truly an amazing person
to have pulled all of these books and audios together to fit around the
episodes of the best sci fi programme next to Doctor Who. How do you relax, shut off from work, or do
you eat, sleep and breathe the Whoniverse?
Steve: Er, thank you. Doctor Who and Torchwood
are just parts of the work I do, albeit fairly large parts. I relax by being
exhausted by my two children, or by drinking Abbot Ale.
Photo Source
http://www.theworks.co.uk/images/9781849904810_Z.jpg
(history of the universe in 100 objects)
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/6/29/1277812022300/The-Archers-cast-2006-006.jpg
(the Archers)
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3498/4082095052_27d08d88a7.jpg
(Torchwood novels)
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