Brilliant Doctor Who Things

Good morning.  Dark forces are stirring in the Doctor Who universe.  And by "dark forces", I mean "things about to be released which I worked on".

The Brilliant Book Of Doctor Who 2012 is out today!  As with last year's inaugural release, it's a wonderful annual-style affair, officially sanctioned by the BBC and with the participation of many members of the Who writing and production team.  I've written a few things in it.

For months now, I've been dying to tell you that I've written a piece which reveals what happened in the three month gap between the episodes The Impossible Astronaut and Day Of The Moon.  This was, as you might imagine, incredibly good fun if slightly mind-warping at times.  I really went to town on this thing, printing out a map of America and charting Amy, Rory and River's separate paths around it with differently coloured pens.  A tidied up version of this map is included in the piece, illustrating excerpts from the three characters' diaries.

I looked for times and places in late '60s America when The Silence's influence on humanity might have been inferred by the TARDIS crew.  This was, of course, made easier by Steven Moffat's original conception of the creatures' look, which was cleverly meant to have prompted man's popular image of alien lifeforms in the first place.  I also got to write an introduction from the Doctor himself, explaining the whole three-month plan.  It was great to write for Matt Smith's Doctor and Amy again, having had so much fun with them in this year's BBC audiobook Doctor Who: The Gemini Contagion.

I also wrote the front page of The White Flag, the newspaper on the home planet of Gibbis from The God Complex.  As you can imagine, given the cowardly, invasion-loving nature of Gibbis' race, this was a proper hoot.  The whole book looks amazing and I'm currently trying to resist reading too much of it.  Still want to be reading it over Christmas.

My Big Finish audio play Army Of Death is on the horizon and a few snippets have been released in advance of its December 31 release date.  There's the splendid cover, for a start (get a load of that skull), and you can also now hear the trailer on the Big Finish site.  Love that trailer - it's all "skeletons" this, "death" that.  I've been interviewed about the play for Doctor Who Magazine and Doctor Who Insider, so those pieces should be emerging over the next couple of months.

Army Of Death has a great cast. Besides the joy of Paul McGann as the Doctor, as Julie Cox as Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, it boasts David Harewood (Robin Hood, Doctor Who and Dan Turner's forthcoming feature The Man Inside, which I script edited), Eva Pope (Waterloo Road), Carolyn Pickles (Harry Potter, Emmerdale), Mitch Benn (Radio 4's Now Show), Joanna Christie (the stage play Equus) and Trevor Cooper (Spooks!).  Can't wait to hear the finished article.

Pining for more Doctor Who?  As ever, there's plenty of Who activity beyond the TV set. Good day to you.

You can buy The Brilliant Book Of Doctor Who 2012 at Amazon UK here.

You can pre-order Army Of Death at Amazon UK here.

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My ebook How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne And Everyone Else is out now on Amazon UK, Amazon US and Amazon.de.  You can also get a Triple Pack of file formats (PDF, ePub, Kindle/mobi) direct from me.  Full details here, you splendid individual.