Doctor Who - Audio Details

In the depths of space a little known district harbours a terrible secret. Long known as a place of death, it claims thousands more lives as a great corporate space-fleet goes to war. As the fleet screams out in fear and pain, an irresistible voice calls out to three travellers and a macabre mind sets a deadly trap.

The Doctor, Peri and Erimem face the terrors of Talderun and the wrath of a corporate empire as they struggle to understand the hideous secret of the domain of the dead a district known in legend as Nekromanteia.

WHEN GARY RUSSELL ASKED ME to write a Doctor Who story I accepted at once.  Why?  Because I'm a writer and script editor in TV and the chance to play with a format as innovative as Doctor Who is rare indeed.

I've loved the programme since I was a tot, so I just couldn't say no.  Whilst conceptualising the "grand space opera" that Gary asked for, I was writing my new archaeology book: Lost Civilizations.  At the same time I was script producer on a comedy drama series called Is Harry on the Boat? for Sky One and so I was filming/living on location in the Mediterranean for six months.  A lively "alien" culture, mountain temples and mysterious legends surrounded me as I was bombarded with troubling BBC World Service reports on Al-Qaeda and Iraq.  Also, whilst in Spain, I hated being separated from my beloved horses.  All of these influences came together to create Nekromanteia.  The market full of Pakhars (a race created nearly 10 years ago by Gary in his Doctor Who novel Legacy) can be visited in a place called Almunecar, in Spain; it was a direct lift from my experiences there (no human-sized rodents though) and the fantastic Alhambra palace in Grenada inspired the temple complex on Talderun.  If you have the opportunity, why not visit the Alhamba while listening to Nekromanteia on your headphones?  It'll blow your mind!

It was an irrisistable challenge to write Doctor Who in a contemporary way.  I hope you like it.  For my part, the experience convinced me that the series would work on TV today.  So, I vote that we let the mad old intergalactic hippy have another spin around the cosmos.  Do any of my colleagues in TV drama agree?

Austen Atkinson, New Years Eve 2002