Friday, 29 November 2013

Interviews Steve Tribe by DJ Forrest



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)

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