Doctor Who - Audio Details

Christmas Eve in the year 3060, and the planet Puxatornee is home to a prosperous human colony.

A space craft has arrived in orbit carrying the Slithergees, a race of obsequious alien slugs. Their home world has been destroyed and they are humbly requesting permission to settle on the first moon.

And if they don't get permission, then they are humbly threatening to declare all-out war.

The future hangs in the balance. The decision rests with Bailey, the colony' s president - but she has other things on her mind...

Christmas Eve in the year 3090, and the planet Puxatornee has changed beyond all recognition.

The Doctor and Mel arrive, on a completely unrelated mission to defeat a race of terrible monsters, and soon discover that something rather confusing has been happening to history...

WHEN ASKED WHY HE'D WRITE plays and then store them under his bed, unread, for six months, Joe Orton would explain that he was allowing them to 'mature'.  The idea being that by the time he came to look at the scripts again he would have gained some critical distance and developed as a writer.

Flip-Flop went through a similar process, though rather than being hidden under the Joe Orton's matress the script was stored of Gary Russell's hard drive.  I came up with the initial idea in August 2001 whilst writing Anachrophobia, and completed the first draft in February 2002.  Then the second draft in June 2002.  And the third draft in December 2002.  Then is was recorded in March 2003, and if all has gone according to schedule you're reading this in July 2003.

A lot has happened over that time, and I think Flip-Flop reflects that.  I'm certainly not the person I was back in 2001.  The story has grown more serious, and more silly, just as I have grown more serious, and more silly.  And we've both got a great deal more complicated.  So I hope you enjoy it.  It's a farce-political-satire-mystery-time-travel-romance-tragedy-action-adventure-horror-comedy.  Just like my life of the last two years.  Except for the bit about time-travel.

Oh, and one additional thing.  This story is told over two CDs, one black and one white, the idea being that it can be enjoyed irrespective of whether you listen to the black one first or the white one first.  Indeed, because you can listen to it in two defferent ways, you are effectively getting two stories for the price of one and this release therefore represents excellent value for money.

But it's not a puzzle, to try to find out which way round is the 'proper' or 'canonical' way of listening to the CDs.  Because there honestly isn't one.

Jonathan Morris, March 2003