Frontier Worlds |
Winner! Best Eighth Doctor novel
in the annual Doctor Who Magazine reader’s poll.
First
published by BBC Worldwide in November 1999, ISBN: 0-563-55589-0
After writing Kursaal,
I kept in contact with the other writers of the BBC Eighth Doctor range via
e-mail. We would discuss forthcoming books, offer support and advice to each
other, and encourage better continuity and continuing development of the series
- especially the characters of the Doctor and his companions.
BBC Books editor
Steve Cole let us in on a big secret—the idea of a story arc kicked off by
Lawrence Miles’ book Interference, and which would centre around a new
companion introduced in that book, called Compassion. The rough outline of how
Compassion would develop was established over an initial five-book plan, and
authors were invited to pitch for the five available slots.
As part of these discussions,
I provided a very candid assessment of why I thought Compassion would be
extremely difficult to write for, and that as a character she introduced lots
of problems for writers.
However, after some nagging
from Steve (who also provided a somewhat pained defence of Compassion against
some pushback from the writers), I rashly provided a proposal for the third
book in the arc, and found I then had to write for the character!
Rather than ignore
what I saw were problems (by sidelining her), I decided to give her a central
role in my novel. And, by the end of it, I decided I quite liked her as a
character after all. (I’m so fickle.)
You can see from
draft 2 of my proposal to the BBC that I wanted readers to join the
story mid-way through the action; so the Doctor and his companions have been
there for a while before we join them. Have a look also at Chapter 2
to see some of this in the published version.
At the proposal
stage, Steve and I judged that some of the stuff about Compassion was too
obvious, and so I played that down a little. In the outline, the subplot of
Reddenblak is not so much to the fore, and two characters from earlier books (Alien
Bodies and The Taking of Planet Five) make a cameo appearance -
which I subsequently removed from the finished book. Other stuff was introduced
into the novel while I was writing it, as usual.
I
was more involved in the design of the cover of this book than for any of
my other published novels.
The
book received very positive reviews, and won the Doctor Who Magazine 1999
poll for Best Eighth Doctor novel. I also did a short interview for that magazine.
In-jokes:
Fitz adopts the persona of Frank Sinatra, and all the chapter titles are songs
that Sinatra sang. In the acknowledgements I name “Francis Albert” - which are
Sinatra’s christian names. And “Frontier Worlds” was the name of a fan magazine
I devised in 1979 with my friends Peter Lovelady and Tony Murray. They came up
with the name of the fanzine—I had wanted, foolishly, to call it “Darkling
Zone”—so Peter and Tony get an acknowledgement in the novel, too, for bringing
me to my senses two decades previously.
Last revised:
13 May 2003