Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

One of the key people in any joint creative endeavour is the person at the centre, which in the case of Big Finish audios is the producer. Amongst his credits, David Richardson is responsible for many of the highly successful revivals of 20th century shows the company has produced over the last decade, including The Avengers, and on the last day of recording at Moat Studios, he sat down with Paul Simpson…

Looking back on The Avengers, what’s been the biggest challenge of producing this compared with the other ranges that Big Finish do?

I guess the biggest challenge was trying to make it as close as possible to the source material. Obviously it couldn’t be the same with different actors playing the lead roles but we did an awful lot of work in trying to make sure that what we were doing would tonally be authentic to what had been achieved in 1961 – so all the effects we tried to make sure were authentic to the material, the style of performances we’ve tried to keep authentic to the era. It’s just been really about having a different approach to casting and writing, and the final edits.

What was that a question of reining things in? They have felt “closed-in” in the way that those old series had, almost with a theatricality about it.

It’s interesting you say that, because by saying “reined-in” it makes it sound as though it’s minimalist, but actually it requires a lot more detail than most people would imagine.

Most people don’t realise that when we record here we’re only recording the voice, so there are no other sounds or movement on the recording track whatsoever. People’s footsteps, if someone shuffles in a chair or reaches for a telephone, if they open a door – every single thing in the episode that is not part of the actor’s voice or performance is created afresh by our sound designers.

The aim was to make it sound naturalistic, as opposed to some of the other stuff we do which is very big sci-fi. The Avengers operates in the same kind of tonal areas as something like The Omega Factor or Survivors, or perhaps Counter-Measures where we’re trying to make it sound very real as opposed to a hyper-reality.

You originally could do just 12 episodes, then it was extended to the whole of the first series. Are there things you’d have liked to do from the start that you couldn’t, such as the order you did the stories?

It doesn’t worry me about the order we record them in. People have noticed that normally each spine of the CD front and back has the episode number on them. But when we first started doing these, and our licence was to make the 12 missing episodes for which there were full scripts, I decided from the very first box set that I would leave the second spine on each disc blank just in case we went back and did everything. So if people want to reorder them into transmission order on their shelves, it works absolutely perfectly because there’s no numbering there to mess it up. That covered us for the fact we were recording out of order.

I don’t feel worried that we recorded them out of order; I just feel blessed that we’ve been allowed to do it all.

Some people did question why we wanted to remake the two episodes that actually exist [Girl on the Trapeze and The Frighteners – at the time of this interview, Tunnel of Fear’s recovery hadn’t been announced], but for me it was part of completing the picture. It would have meant that that first series always remained unfinished. If we hadn’t got those last two episodes, there was no final work that presented the first series of The Avengers. That has allowed us to say: “here you have all 26 episodes of that first season”.

One of the things that Big Finish does well is taking these older series and adding in the emotional elements that television didn’t do at the time. There feels like there has been an element of that in The Avengers. Is that something that you as producer have wanted to have so they have a Big Finish feel as well as an Avengers feel?

I don’t think so. I think that comes from the writers that have adapted it. You mention that – I wouldn’t be surprised if those were, say, John Dorney’s scripts, because John tends to write very much from the heart. And he’s always said his way into stories, the very first thing he looks at when he finds his way into a story, is the emotional angle. I think that’s probably John filtering through into the scripts a little.

I don’t think it’s been in any overt sense, so it still feels to me that it’s in keeping with the period.

Is there something that you would call a Big Finish approach when you’re reviving series such as The Omega Factor, Survivors or The Avengers?

I don’t know if it’s a Big Finish approach; I think it’s the fact that there’s a team of people working on it and we as a group are a very tight group of people working together. It is an approach we have as we move into doing it. If it’s something I’m working on with Ken [Bentley] and John Dorney and Matt Fitton, there will be probably be similarities in approach because that’s how we as a group do things with things actually being unsaid. We have a shorthand with each other.

It’s that dynamic between you…

Yes. And it’s a lovely way to work. We will carry on working together as a group because we don’t always see eye to eye or agree on things necessarily; we will come almost close to arguing on points. Certainly on box sets of Counter-Measures things have got very heated when we’ve talked it through. But it’s that kind of heated conversation that only good friends can have: you then move on from the conversation without there being any sore feelings. It only comes out of enthusiasm for what you’re doing…

It’s creative passion.

It is. We never fall out over it but it’s just part of who we are as we work together.

Did you ever for a second think you would be creating new stories for the shows you were covering as archive material when you were at TV Zone?

No. Not at all. If ever I think back on it, I find it absolutely bonkers that I’m doing this job. I still find it bonkers from the point of view of someone who loved the series.

All of my life I’ve loved these series: I saw The Avengers when I was about four or five years old watching the Diana Rigg episodes on telly. Every time we get to do a show like this, it’s a brand new exciting experience, and every time we get to do something new within that realm of the series, it becomes new and exciting, and we get all fired up.

In a way we’re paid to play – we’re earning our livings from the stuff that when we were kids my parents, certainly, would say, “put away this rubbish, you’re not going to be able to do anything with it”!

I’m sure when I was younger my parents were deeply worried about the fact that I was a teenage kid who was audio-taping Doctor Who off the telly on a Saturday night. They thought that was really bizarre, but they still let me do it. There’s another friend of mine who was doing the same thing, and his parents made him stop because they thought it was weird, but the fact I was allowed to do it inspired my creativity and got me interested in how audio could work. You get to know the nuts and bolts of what you can add to a basic audio recording to make it more visual. I think that’s what led me to where I am now by some strange route!

In the extras, you are given credit for the number of story ideas that you come up with – why aren’t we seeing your name on a script, or a Short Trip? Have you ever been tempted to put yourself in the firing line on the other side?

There are two sides to that. When I first joined, I did explore the idea of writing at Big Finish and I think to be a writer is a really brave thing, because you’re really exposing yourself and putting it out there. If something gets a bad review or it’s unsuccessful, the first person who’s in the firing line is the writer. I realised early on that if I did write something and it was hated, it would probably destroy me.

That self-knowledge is more than a lot of people have got!

I also think that the world isn’t waiting for David Richardson to write a Doctor Who or an Avengers script. There are lots of people who are very experienced at doing it and people who are coming in new – we’ve taken in a lot of new writers recently who are very very good, and will be better than I am. If we are putting all this money into a production, and if people are buying our stuff, it’s not about me having an ego trip writing a script, it’s about putting the best possible script out there. I trust all the other writers we use far more than I trust myself.

I don’t regard myself as a good writer: maybe I would be if I did a lot more of it but as it stands at the minute, I don’t regard myself as a good writer. I think I’m a good producer, actually – it’s taken me quite a few years to get to the level where I can say that – but I think I should stick to what I know and what I can deliver.

What defines a good producer? Bringing out the best in the people around you?

I think part of it is choosing good people to surround yourself with. That’s not to say I’ve ever been in a situation where I’m surrounded by bad people at Big Finish, but it’s just being secure in people at every single stage of the production. There are a lot of people involved in any one production across the board; it’s just having the support of that team.