David Solomons’ second Doctor Who novel, The Maze of Doom, is out now from BBC Children’s Books, featuring the 13th Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan. It’s a follow up to his novel The Secret in Vault 13 for the current TARDIS team. Solomons has been writing screenplays for many years, with his first feature film an adaptation of ‘Five Children and It’. He chatted to Paul Simpson during lockdown about all things Who…

 

Thanks you for another enjoyable tale for Jodie and co. I think you’ve captured their expressions and the body language.

Good, I’m glad you enjoyed it

How far back do you go with the Doctor? Have you been a fan for a long time?

Yes. I think the truth is I’m a fan of old Who, particularly the original Who. My Doctor’s Tom Baker but I do remember watching Jon Pertwee. The Secret in Vault 13 was my Tom Baker book and this one is more of a Pertwee book. I can vividly remember Planet of the Spiders and the regeneration: it’s one of my early childhood memories.

It’s a funny thing: I have huge fondness for the show and there’s parts of it that have stuck with me and have influenced everything that I’ve done but I wouldn’t characterise myself as a knowledgeable fan. ’ve got a bit of knowledge and there are a few references sprinkled around.

What was your pitch for this one, the storyline you pitched Cardiff?

It was maybe slightly different from the regular way this happens in that [BBC Children’s Books] came to me and asked me to write a couple of books. They obviously wanted a pitch and at that point I only had a pitch for book 1. I had a strong pitch for The Secret of Vault 13 which they loved and sent me to write that and didn’t actually ask about book two.

When it came to writing the next one I went back to an idea, a non Who idea, I’d had ages ago about the British Museum being a giant Faraday cage and that the exhibits are all incredibly dangerous. Actually what the museum’s there to do is to house the most dangerous exhibits and artefacts from across the world and it’s designed in such a way that it damps down their supernatural or otherwise dangers. Of course, in one of the moves a crate is moved outside the range of the Faraday cage and the statue inside, a minotaur, escapes into the London Underground.

It was that notion of the modern maze and ancient minotaur that tickled me. I thought. “Well, that sounds like a Who story.” And that was it. I gave my editor that over a very brief lunch, and he sent me to write.

The first one had been a galaxy hopping, planet hopping adventure, and I wanted this one to be Pertwee on Earth. I did have this idea I really liked, that Doctors just reflect their era and that Pertwee in some way reflects Bond and that kind of thing. I quite fancied writing that sort of Bond style Doctor Who adventure with the corporate villain and yachts and underground bases and that sort of thing so I’ve got the cable car and that kind of stuff.

I wanted to combine those two ideas and that was long before I knew that the new series would start with a double episode called Spyfall!

Jodie’s Doctor and Graham particularly fit into that milieu very well in Spyfall, as they do in yours. Whereas Ryan and Yaz are slightly more fish out of water…

One of the challenges that I’ve had, which the series has clearly struggled with, is that there’s so many characters and to give everybody a satisfactory bit – never mind an arc – has been difficult in the format that they’ve got.

In a novel it’s obviously easier: you can lay things out and you can split them up a bit, take your time a bit more but I think character wise, they’re not so different. the two youngsters, that’s where it gets a bit tricky.

So, how did you try to differentiate between them?

I guess in this book Yaz is a bit more active. Ryan is infected early on: he’s caught in an explosion and his character changes a bit. He’s sidelined a bit to be honest and I think that was partly a solution. What happens to him is integral to the plot and that whole storyline is something that he goes through but it also let me concentrate on the other three. He doesn’t play as active a part just because he’s physically laid low for a deal of it.

One thing I noticed was that you introduce some of the concepts in the show as if new, things like the sonic, the size of the TARDIS. Was that a deliberate thing?

My brief was different: this was specifically for younger readers and this might be their first exposure to Doctor Who and although there are two books one can’t assume that they’ll pick them up in order so the decision was taken to introduce as if it’s brand new each time.

When I read the description of the sonic, I thought it was the first time I’ve seen a print description of the sonic that makes me absolutely know what it looks like.

Yeah, I mean those things are hard because they exist and if you choose the wrong word someone goes “that’s not it at all”. I think people might not be able to describe them but they have a sense of exactly what they look like and probably what they feel like in their heads.

The trickiest one wasn’t actually this novel, it was the first one where the BBC wouldn’t pre-release anything right?

This book is a kind of Doctor Who / James Bond… well it’s not really a crossover but it has elements of that. I wasn’t told about Spyfall but the one note I got was I had this scene which is still there, in the wardrobe on the TARDIS when they find the dinner suits. The Doctor’s talking about how she never gets to dress up for a mission and it came back that they are in dinner suits in the new series, so could I have that it’s “always” great to dress up for a mission rather than “never”.

I’ve written two novels and I’m very happy with what I’ve done but given everything that’s happening in the world at the moment, it’s a shame that it’s coming out in this but what are you going to do?

I think for kids Doctor Who has a reassurance level and knowing that the Doctor is still out there having adventures – whether it’s television, it’s audio, it’s a new book or an eBook which is what most people are going to get it as in the first instance – it’s part of that reassurance that I think kids of all ages need.

Like everything at the moment, that seems beyond my control, so I’m not worrying about it too much.

In terms of Doctor Who generally, for you, do you get attracted to certain Doctors and periods of the show?

Yes. For me, it’s so closely associated with my childhood, with watching with my Dad. It was Saturday evenings back then and just the visceral fear watching it and really the brilliance of Tom Baker’s performance which I don’t think I fully appreciated at the time but can now.

I stuck with it, I watched it up until it was cancelled and certainly rejoined to see what new Who was about. I’ve enjoyed those. My son who is 7 is not so interested in the genre stuff that I like, but oddly my four year old daughter who’s far too young to be watching Doctor Who loves it! That’s been really lovely: we’ve watched Jodie – certain episodes, not all of them; I think a couple of them are a little intense – and she loves it. In fact this book is dedicated to her, to Lara. It’s full circle

Would you like to write for one of the other Doctors?

Yes, I would. I think that my writing schedule is such that that would be quite difficult to do, on a practical level but as an idea yes I think that would be super. I would love to do that. I haven’t got a pitch yet but…

What else are you currently working on?

Well, I have just delivered the first draft of a new middle grade novel for the publisher Nosy Crow I’ve been writing for for the last 5 years. I finished one series with them and this is the beginning of possibly a new series. So that’s ongoing.

I’ve got a couple of screenplay commissions that I’m writing with my wife and that’s going to occupy a lot of time. And there’s scripts that I know that are going to come back and need more work so it’s a busy old time.

The Maze of Doom is out now from Penguin Books. Click here to order from Amazon.co.uk

Thanks to Phoebe Williams & Harriet Venn for their help in arranging this interview