September 10th, 2013 5 comments

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Script Doctor Forwarded by Sylvester McCoy

Script Doctor (Andrew Cartmel) Forwarded by Sylvester McCoy

Available from www.miwkpublishing.com

Miwk Publishing Ltd are proud to announce a reprint of Andrew Cartmel’s script editor memoir originally published in 2005, due to be released in November 2013 and available to order now.

In 1987 Doctor Who was a series in the middle of an on-going crisis. Producer John Nathan-Turner had been ‘persuaded to stay’ even though his programme had only a year earlier been cancelled by ‘the powers that be’.

Yet again those on-high stepped in to interfere with the show and asked him to recast the Doctor. But JN-T had other problems too, during season 23 his script editor Eric Saward had quit very publicly.This vacancy was filled by Andrew Cartmel. Within very few months he had to find writers for the new season, write out the current companion, introduce a new companion and establish a new Doctor as well as planning ahead to the following season that would mark Doctor Who’s 25th anniversary.

For three years Andrew Cartmel, with the support of JN-T, pushed Doctor Who into a new direction. The show was moved to a weekday slot again up against ITV stalwart Coronation Street but still put up a good fight in its last three years. His writers Ian Briggs, Ben Aaronovitch, Stephen Wyatt, Malcolm Kohl, Rona Munro, Marc Platt, Kevin Clarke and Graeme Curry, had never written for Doctor Who before. This new broom sadly came too late and the show was cancelled again in 1989. But Cartmel’s legacy and his ‘Master-Plan’ would live on.

What he started was picked up and taken into the nineties by a new generation of writers who would eventually bring Doctor Who back to our screens in 2005.

‘Script Doctor’ is a memoir of those times, from his first day in the office to his first day on set right up to hastily penning the final few lines of the last story broadcast in the original run. Helping to cast the new seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, and create a new companion in Ace, played by Sophie Aldred, ‘Script Doctor’ is an intimate tale which sees a team of dedicated, creative new wave at the BBC, battling the old-guard and attempting to push the envelope.

Miwk Publishing are absolutely delighted to be reprinting this unique insight into an era of Doctor Who which, while dividing fandom at the time, has seen a reappraisal in recent years following the release of the stories on DVD and the subsequent scrutiny of the era in the accompanying special features.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Andrew Cartmel is a novelist, playwright and screenwriter.

His work for BBC television includes a three year stint as the Script Editor on Doctor Who during the Sylvester McCoy era. In collaboration with McCoy and a crack team of writers, he fashioned a new brand of scripts for the show, darker and more funny than their predecessors and, critically, always striving to put the Doctor at the centre of the action.

Since those lively and memorable days, he has been commissioned to write for the TV shows Midsomer Murders, Dark Knight and Torchwood. He has also toured as a stand-up comedian and his stage play Under the Eagle was hailed by Time Out London as ‘bitingly funny’.
Lately he has been devoting himself to writing crime novels, the latest of which is a new series of mystery thrillers featuring the Vinyl Detective, a record-collector turned sleuth.

Available from www.miwkpublishing.com

Categorised under: Autobiographies and biographies, Books