Doctor Who - Audio Details

Hallowe'en 1938.

A month after a mysterious meteorite lit up the skies of New York state, Martian invaders laid waste to the nation. At least, according to soon-to-be infamous Orson Welles they did.  But what if some of the panicked listeners to the legendary War of the Worlds broadcast weren't just imagining things?

Attempting to deliver Charley to her rendezvous in Singapore 1930, the Doctor overshoots a little, arriving in Manhattan just in time to find a dead private detective. Indulging his gumshoe fantasies, the Doctor is soon embroiled in the hunt for a missing Russian scientist whilst Charley finds herself at the mercy of a very dubious Fifth Columnist.

With some genuinely out of this world 'merchandise' at stake, the TARDIS crew are forced into an alliance with a sultry dame called Glory Bee, Orson Welles himself and a mobster with half a nose known as 'The Phantom'.

And slowly but surely, something is drawing plans against them.  Just not very good ones...

I WROTE MY FIRST STORY for Big Finish, Phantasmagoria, two years ago.  After the initial thrill of actually being able to write the words "TARDIS" and "Doctor" I must admit I found the format of writing for a past Doctor a little restrictive.  It was great fun, of course, but nothing like being presented with the opportunity to write for a 'new' Doctor.  With only the TV Movie to go on, I found it really liberating to be able to say "this is what Doctor Who is like now".  That's why, after an initially quite serious draft of Part One, the story became ... well, a bit silly.

I had the idea wilst lying in the bath and it made me laugh.  What if there'd been a real alien invasion during Orson Welles' War of the Worlds?  After that it was just a question of working out what the story could actually concern.  I knew I wanted a brassy, old-New York feel with lots of mobsters, Nazis, Communists and fast film-noir dialogue.  As for the Doctor himself, I tried to get a lot of Paul McGann's real-life brio and cheekiness into it.  This is a Doctor who can be quite reckless, just to see how things might turn out.

Directing the story was an added bonus and I'd like to say how grateful I am to the whole cast for making it such a laugh.  We were only in the studio for a couple of days but there was a real 'company' feel.  The kid in me was genuinely touched at how thrilled everyone was to be in Doctor Who.  Simon Pegg, in particular, for all his dabblings with the Force, basked, grinning, in the 'wintry Saturday-nightness' of the experience.

I know we'd all do it again like a shot.

Mark Gatiss, December 2001