Party Like It's 1998!

I’ve always tried to write for charity anthologies if people ask me to. Partly it’s because they played a role in me getting started in the world of Doctor Who, but also because I can. So when an email popped into my inbox inviting pitches for a charity anthology that was going to celebrate the BBC Books Eighth Doctor Adventures - an era of Who that I think has lost out in terms of historical importance and often gets a little sidelined - I couldn’t think of any reason why I wouldn’t want to send an idea in.

I thought a little about what it was about the EDAs that I enjoyed, and why this version of the Eighth Doctor should get a little love as opposed to the Big Finish version that has become all but ubiquitous. I’m not going to pretend that the character and the era didn’t have issues, sometimes seeming to veer between wetly ineffectual and callously alien depending on that month’s author’s opinion of the TVM and more often than not getting struck down with amnesia. But when he was done right - frequently by Kate Orman and Jon Blum - he became very much a new version of the Doctor: kind, compassionate, emotional and ultimately hopeful in ways that prefigures Jodie Whittaker or Ncuti Gatwa in the role. Done right, he was just the kind of contrast the books needed to his previous self, the more manipulative, plotting Seventh Doctor of the print world.

I knew I wanted to pitch a story that brought out that contrast. As I thought that version of the Seventh Doctor was probably at his peak in Stephen Moffat’s Continuity Errors, I decided I would write a kind of spiritual sequel to that story, with the Eighth Doctor finding himself in the same position of needing somebody else to do something that they were unwilling to do for him.

I pitched the idea, and quickly got a response. I set down to write the story between finishing As A Kang Should Be and my next Black Archive. Generally I aim to write at least 500 words a day, which is a very low bar I set myself when my children were young and not sleeping but has since proved to be a useful psychological aid: if things are going well, then I can happily write over my target; if they are going badly, well even on my worst days I can usually get 500 words down, even if a lot of them end up getting deleted in the end.

Fortunately, this wasn’t my worst day and it wasn’t very long until I had the story finished. And now we’re nearly at the point where you can read it, and whilst I hope you enjoy it I don’t think you’ll need much persuading to buy the book. Yes, it’s for a good cause, but it’s also chock full of new stories from the actual people who made the EDAs what they were: John Peel, Gary Russell, Steve Lyons, Jon Blum, Nick Walters, Simon Bucher-Jones, Mags L. Halliday, Colin Brake, Jonathan Morris, (plus Andrew Hunt, who helped kick off the New Adventures way back when) and all under the watchful eye of Paul Magrs. Plus there are stories from some of Obverse’s best writers: trust me, even if it wasn’t for charity, you’d want a copy of this one.

But this one will sell out fast and when it’s gone, it’s gone: maybe preorder your copy today, just to be sure?