Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow...
Not a plea to fellow Twitter users, just the lyric of a song that popped into my head as I sat down to compose this first posting of September. Strange how associations in one's memory come together, because the nostalgic nature of the words above are in some ways entirely in keeping with the subject of this update.
As any fan will know, we're currently celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the creation of Dr Who on television. The first Doctor was played by William Hartnell and as a child of the 60's, he was 'my' Doctor. An original companion in that first series was a character called 'Ian Chesterton' played by William Russell and in 1965, Maureen O'Brien became another of the Doctor's companions, 'Vicki'.
If indeed you are a Dr Who aficionado, not much of what I've just written will be news. What is news is that this month, Big Finish are scheduled to release a three-disc audio-drama featuring William and Maureen reprising their original roles, with William also taking on the responsibility of playing The Doctor. Additional cast members in this story include the brilliant Charlie Norfolk - and me.
To say that I'm keenly looking forward to listening to this release is something of an understatement, particularly as it's been quite a wait already. Recording began in February 2012 with my contribution to the story taking place in April.
For all kinds of reasons, it's sometimes the case that when recording
an audio-drama, not everyone is present at every session and in this
particular instance, I worked exclusively in studio with William;
Maureen and Charlie had already recorded their respective roles before I
became involved. I've enjoyed working with Charlie on other stories
including Dr Who: Rat Trap and Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of The Baskervilles and not only is
she an amazingly talented and versatile actress, she's also great fun
to work with. Similarly, I've had great pleasure working with Maureen
O'Brien on subsequent Big Finish productions, further details of which are
yet to be revealed.
I originally posted information about The Dark Planet last August, the essence of which is repeated below:
The Lost Stories, Big Finish’s audio productions
of stories that were devised for television but never made, will return in 2013
for a fourth and final season.
“It’s been a hugely
satisfying – and sometimes Herculean! – job reviving these previously lost
adventures,” says producer David Richardson, “but we feel that with these last
four stories that the line will have run its course. These new tales are for the
first three Doctors and, like the hugely popular
Farewell
Great Macedon, they’ll be told with a mix of enhanced narration and
dialogue.
“The first three stories all have a theme – they are
all adapted from original paperwork submitted by Brian Hayles, who wrote
The
Ice Warriors,
The Seeds of Death,
The Curse of Peladon and
The Monster of Peladon.” The series kicks off in September 2013 with
The
Dark Planet, which is six episodes long and has been adapted by Matt
Fitton. The story is performed by William Russell and Maureen O’Brien with guest
stars John Banks and Charlie Norfolk, and is set on a world where light and dark
are at war. “It was an extraordinary experience to record this,”
says David. “The script feels so authentic to the era that Maureen was convinced
she’d actually filmed it back in the Sixties. She took quite some convincing
that it hadn’t actually already been made!”
As a coda to that posting, I said of William:
"I'm old enough to remember Doctor Who from the very beginning and it was
therefore a particular pleasure to have
spent several days in the studio working with William on this adventure. A true
legend to any Doctor Who fan and truly a gentleman, I feel proud to have been a
part of this project and to have had the great honour of working with William
Russell."
Since April 2012, I've had the great pleasure of working with William on other Dr Who adventures, which are still in the Big Finish pipeline. The sentiments I expressed about my first collaboration with him were confirmed on those subsequent occasions; a hugely talented actor, a gracious and modest man and a delightful colleague.
And so, after seventeen months of keen anticipation*, here it is: Dr Who: The Dark Planet
Somewhere far back in the early days of the universe the TARDIS lands
on a world lit by a dying sun. Missing from the Doctor's star maps and
dotted with strange crystalline statues, it is a world ripe for
exploration. But it is also a world of destruction.
Venturing out onto its surface, the time travellers find themselves
drawn into an age-old conflict between the two species residing on the
planet - people of Light and Shadow. Proving a catalyst for the
escalation of the conflict, the Doctor and his friends need either to
create a peace or to pick a side.
Because in times of war, nothing is ever black and white.
William Russell Ian Chesterton Maureen O'Brien Vicki with John Banks and Charlie Norfolk
Written by Brian Hayles Adapted by Matt Fitton
Directed by Ken Bentley
Dr Who: The Dark Planet is scheduled for release in September 2013
* * * * *
*Seventeen months does seem a long time to wait for a recording to be released; however, at the moment, I'm working on a story which I understand is scheduled for release sometime in 2016...
The arms race between the Soviet Union and the
USA was the most dangerous confrontation in the history of the world.
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s decision to place nuclear missiles in
Cuba, and US President John F. Kennedy’s willingness to call his bluff,
brought the Soviet Union and the West to the edge of a cataclysmic
nuclear war. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile
Crisis, Robert Holmes, a British diplomat in Moscow during the early
1960s, provides an answer to one of the greatest mysteries of the Cold
War. Kennedy’s confidence in his brinkmanship hung on the evidence
provided by Oleg Penkovsky, the MI6/CIA agent inside Soviet military
intelligence. 
