Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen

by Adams, Douglas

  A second rescue fleet arrived from a nearby star. The Mareevians denounced the rescuers for the personally upsetting wording of their welcome message and refused to let the fleet land until it apologised. The rescue fleet had watched helplessly as the continents had burned, begging to know what their error had been. The rescuers were profuse in their regrets, explaining they’d only learned the language on the flight over and their signal strength was low because they were using most of their power to hold off a vast tectonic shift.

  The people of Mareeve II dismissed all this as evidence of a grotesquely lazy patriarchy and were even more offended by the thinness of this excuse.

  It turned out that the rescue fleet had misplaced an apostrophe. For the people of Mareeve II there was no greater crime.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said the rescue fleet, and went on their way.

  When the Doctor and Romana turned up, the planet was quiet and still.

  They opened the door. In the distance, a lonely man was picking his way through the magma streams.

  ‘I say,’ the Doctor called to him. ‘Anything we can do to help?’

  ‘Ignorant scum!’ the man shouted back. ‘How dare you assume I need your help? You’re trespassing. Get off my world.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ the Doctor called. ‘You do seem to be surrounded by a lot of lava.’

  ‘I find it highly insulting that you should presume to know what my problems are and aren’t,’ the man yelled, and threw some pumice stone at the ship. ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Ah well, if you’re quite sure,’ the Doctor said as he tossed the Perspex Rod of Justice out through the door, and he and Romana went on their way.

  The sun was rising on Bethselamin, and Romana and Andvalmon were breakfasting on the terrace. He looked at the bail in front of them.

  ‘The Doctor not coming?’ Andvalmon said, offering her some more pearl fruit.

  Romana waved it away. ‘He says he’s had quite enough perfection. That sunrise is magnificent.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Andvalmon said, pouring them each more tea.

  ‘You should go into the tourist trade,’ she said. ‘You’d make a mint.’

  Andvalmon frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

  Romana smiled and sipped her tea. ‘Tourists are a great way of making you appreciate the peace and quiet.’

  At a dark end of the Universe, eleven War TARDISes observed the peace and quiet of existence narrowly. This was not what they’d been led to expect. They’d been promised an endless glorious bloodbath. Instead, eternity carried on much as normal.

  ‘What do we do now?’ they were just beginning to mutter to each other. They had been imprisoned for millions of years. Finally they’d been granted their freedom. Freedom that had come with a plan. A plan for glorious, unending battle. Now they were here. And nothing was happening. The War TARDISes began to experience a new feeling. Despair.

  As they did so, something began to happen to the darkness. Was a shape tugging itself out of it? The figure of a man, a man so gloriously dark, so utterly black that distant starlight was swallowed by his skin? And was the figure beginning to speak to them in a voice so deep and rich that it was like treacle? ‘Greetings,’ the figure bellowed. ‘I am the Black Guardian and—’

  Just as the War TARDISes began to focus on the figure, it was gone, folding back into non-existence with a hasty slam.

  Zipping past and landing in front of the First Eleven was a small, neat dart of a ship. Clambering out of it were two dapper, enthusiastic figures.

  ‘Good evening,’ bowed the taller one. ‘My name is Richfield.’

  ‘And I’m Wedgwood,’ trilled the smaller one.

  ‘Now then,’ smiled Mr Richfield. ‘You appear to find yourselves at a loose end. Have you considered rebranding?’

  On the planet of Krikkit, Romana and the Doctor sat on deckchairs looking up at the sky.

  ‘I do like your outfit,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Really?’ Romana was wearing cricket whites, and they suited her perfectly.

  ‘Mmm,’ the Doctor said. ‘Fascinating game. When you think about it. I should learn more about it at some point.’

  ‘True,’ said Romana. ‘It doesn’t seem so harmful now, does it?’

  They were sat on the edge of a field. A group of Krikkit children were being taught to play by Sir Robot. The Doctor had managed to reassemble him, and he’d done a better than expected job – the poor thing barely limped at all, and, if he sometimes spoke in Esperanto, then it gave him a jauntily continental air. Or so the Doctor claimed.

  The children were laughing. At the edge of the pitch, Jal was waiting with her babies in their pram.

  Considering it was the most evil planet in the Universe, it all looked all right. Quite normal in fact.

  ‘They’ve still a long way to go,’ said Romana.

  ‘Yes,’ the Doctor admitted, ‘but I think they’ll get there.’

  ‘And what of Hactar?’

  ‘Ho-hum,’ the Doctor smiled. ‘He wanted nothing more than to be dispersed. But I’m not giving him, nor the War TARDIS, the chance to carry on. Instead, I adapted the Supernova Bomb. In a funny way, they both get their last wishes.’

  ‘What?’ asked Romana.

  The Doctor checked his watch and pointed up to the sky. ‘Look,’ he said.

  Perfectly on cue, there was a distant, silent whoosh and the vast Dust Cloud imploded in on itself, torn out of the sky.

  A curtain rose above the planet of Krikkit. The Universe revealed itself to the people, gradually and beautifully, and this time there was no screaming, no madness, no despair. Just a weary, thoughtful acceptance as the people of the most xenophobic planet in the Universe looked up at the rest of creation and thought, ‘You know what, I suppose it’ll just have to do.’

  And, as the Doctor and Romana sat in their chairs and watched, for the first time ever, the children played cricket under the light of the stars.

  APPENDIX 1

  LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND PHOTOCOPYING

  The story of The Krikkitmen begins at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday. We know this because we luckily have Douglas Adams’s desk diary for 1976. The entry for 12 July reads:

  Doctor Who 11.00 a.m.

  They loved The Pirate Planet and suggested The Cricketers should be a film.

  [Programme Development Group] … loved H.H.G.

  One of the happiest days of my life …

  Phone John Cleese.

  We know that Adams met with Robert Holmes and Tony Read – the outgoing and incoming script editors of Doctor Who, both of them seemingly impressed by the radio pilot of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Not certain that Hitchhiker was going anywhere, Adams had no idea that he was about to become quite phenomenally busy, and was just delighted by the chance to write for Doctor Who

  Fans of dates will be thrilled to hear that, during the week of 24 July, Adams was hard at work on both his first Doctor Who TV script (The Pirate Planet) and his idea for a Doctor Who film at the same time. ‘Dr Who Film Presentation’ (presumably the first draft of the treatment on which this book is based) was written on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, with ‘Dr Who Telly’ filling the rest of the week. He also went for a run at 7.30 a.m.

  Work on The Pirate Planet went so well that soon the cast were shivering in a Welsh quarry. But whatever happened to The Krikkitmen?

  DOCTOR WHO: A SHORT HISTORY OF MOVIES

  There have been two Doctor Who feature films (confusingly not including 1996’s Doctor Who: The Movie). If you don’t have them on your shelves, race to hunt down Dr Who and the Daleks and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150AD

  There have also been dozens of ideas for a Doctor Who feature film that have never been made – notably including Doctor Who Meets Scratchman, devised by the then-Doctor, Tom Baker, and Ian Marter, one of his early TARDIS companions. Baker, in an early example of crowdfunding, found himself deluged with fans’ pocket money, which put him well on the way to raising the budget – but sadly, lega
l advice forced him to return the cash.

  For a long time it has been assumed that The Krikkitmen was either a rejected TV idea, or a film proposal that went nowhere.

  Until now.

  (I have always wanted to say that.)

  MEANWHILE, IN THE ARCHIVES

  When I was novelising The Pirate Planet, I was helped enormously by the library at St John’s College, Cambridge, where Douglas Adams’s papers are held, and also by Mandy Marvin and Kathryn McKee. For The Pirate Planet, they provided me with handwritten notes, abandoned storylines and drafts. They were similarly marvellous with The Krikkitmen – on my first ever visit to the archive, Miss Marvin had put the box on one side for me as a treat, kind of like an academic’s afternoon tea. I opened it, more out of politeness and general enthusiasm than anything else. I expected I knew only too well what was in The Krikkitmen folder. I was wrong.

  On the journey home, I got an email from a colleague at BBC Books.

  ‘How was the archive? Did you find a forgotten Douglas Adams script?’ she joked.

  ‘Uh. Yes,’ I replied.

  HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

  The thing is, every Doctor Who fan feels they’ve always known what The Krikkitmen was. It was a rejected Doctor Who idea that ended up as the third Hitchhiker book, Life, the Universe and Everything. Shamefully, I was one of those people. Until I read the treatment.

  Because the treatment for The Krikkitmen wasn’t just the standard couple of sheets of paper you’d expect for a television show. It was 33 closely typed A4 pages, going into a great deal of detail and including a large amount of dialogue. It wasn’t just a set of ideas – it was a full roadmap, complete with backseat driver.

  Life, the Universe and Everything uses some of the story of The Krikkitmen, but, as when Adams reused other parts of his Doctor Who work in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, it’s substantially changed. The start and end points are fundamentally the same, but the journey The Krikkitmen takes between them is a longer route over new ground. It is a journey much helped by the way that Adams kept working on the treatment for four years.

  A PICTURE PARTNERSHIP PRODUCTION

  On 18 June 1980, Picture Partnership Productions applied for a loan. It was for development of the script of ‘Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen’. Tom Baker was on board (and there was money in the budget for his input into the script). The document also tells us that the film would have been produced by Brian Eastman and directed by Leszek Burzynski. Eastman is now a prolific producer (Poirot, Whoops Apocalypse, Rosemary & Thyme and Crime Traveller), and Burzynski is a respected producer of documentaries. From the tone of the application, things looked hopeful for Adams, Baker, Burzynski and Eastman to make a Doctor Who film.

  By the time of the loan application, Adams had been working on The Krikkitmen for four years and there was clearly momentum building. The film was licensed by the BBC, it had a star, a big name writer, a director and a producer. This was a lot further than most Doctor Who films would get. And yet … The Krikkitmen just didn’t happen. It could be argued it was because Tom Baker left Doctor Who the next year – but that’s pure conjecture after the fact. After all, Baker’s last episode went out in March 1981, and there was an unprecedentedly long gap until Peter Davison’s Doctor debuted in January 1982. Long enough to release a film? Maybe.

  1982 was also the year that the book Life, the Universe and Everything was published. So, clearly something happened to stop the film, and happened with enough time for Adams to write Life, the Universe and Everything. Twice (we’ll get to that).

  Sadly, it would be another twenty-five years before Adams had a film produced – even more annoyingly, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie came out after his sadly early death.

  He once told an audience at MIT: ‘Getting a movie made in Hollywood is like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it.’

  GOING INTO BAT

  As well as the extensive treatment, the Adams Archive provided me with a wealth of material, including a hundred and something pages of an abandoned version of Life, The Universe And Everything (It’s charming, and a lot of it is written as diary entries by Arthur Dent). Some of the material is much closer to the treatment of The Krikkitmen, so I have included about a dozen pages of this manuscript in the finished novel.

  In the archive was a folder that Ms Marvin admitted was curious in its ordering. After the first TV series of Hitchhiker, plans were made for a second. What I hadn’t realised until now was that Adams wrote a complete script for the first episode. However, Adams was a fiendish re-user of paper, so the script of Series 2 Episode 1 is collected, very precisely out of order, as the reverse sides of something else entirely.

  As Series 2 Episode 1 sees Arthur and Ford arriving on Earth to do battle with the Krikkitmen, I’ve included some material from this, but sadly not the following stage direction:

  ‘THE LANDSCAPE WILL BE BEAUTIFUL, ALMOST UNREALLY BEAUTIFUL AND LUSH. TRICKY, I KNOW, AS THIS IS PRESUMABLY A MODEL SHOT. STILL, WE’RE NOT HERE TO HAVE FUN ARE WE?’

  Slightly more tangentially, Ms Marvin also provided me with a treatment for a Doctor Who idea co-written by John Lloyd and Douglas Adams. It’s much more the length you’d expect a treatment to be. It’s brief, untitled, and deals with the problems caused to the universe by a civilisation emerging from Slow Time. I have not used anything from this, but it is interesting to see how the Slow Time idea was percolating in Adams’ consciousness. I am grateful to John Lloyd for giving me permission to read it.

  I also had access to a pile of notes and musings that went into the writing, both of The Krikkitmen and the various versions of Life, the Universe and Everything. I shamelessly let them inform this novel, especially in the depiction of the various planets the Doctor visits on his quest.

  One planet, that of the Great Khan, in fact comes partly from a sketch Adams wrote for a 1975 TV series called Out of the Trees. He later re-adapted it as The Private Life of Genghis Khan for The Utterly, Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book – altering the ending to tie it into Life, the Universe and Everything. A copy of some of the sketch appears again, its other side used, in the folder that also contains the opening script of television Hitchhiker Series 2. Taking it as a sign, and, since Adams was a prolific self-borrower, I’ve allowed Genghis Khan to help me out here.

  OTHER PROBLEMS, OTHER OPPORTUNITIES

  The big change from the outline of The Krikkitmen is that the companion is now Romana. Many people have assumed that this is a story for the Doctor and plucky journalist Sarah Jane Smith. True, in some versions of the outline, the companion is Sarah Jane Smith. But in other versions, she is simply called Jane.

  I was at a crossroads. If I made ‘Jane’ Sarah Jane Smith, then she couldn’t go to Gallifrey (famously the reason for her leaving the Doctor originally, and still a sore point when she met David Tennant’s Doctor). As BBC Books’ other Douglas Adams adaptations have featured Romana and K-9, it seemed somehow right to use them for The Krikkitmen. Also, the Fourth Doctor’s travels with Sarah Jane were, if not po-faced, certainly pretty stormy weather. Would a scientific caper really be in keeping with all their adventures in dark horror?

  Initially, I came up with a sort of solution which would allow us to keep Sarah Jane. It’s included at the back of the book – and it’s up to you to decide if I made the right decision. Anyway, after many emails, it’s now a lap of honour for the Doctor and Romana – zipping through across space-time and saving pretty much all of it one last time.fn1

  Various other changes have sneaked into the book. In the outline, the Doctor and Jane head to Gallifrey where they are simply told a lot of stuff. When it came to writing Life, the Universe and Everything, Adams left himself a note: ‘For a history of the Krikkitmen we could use a mixture of newsreel and things.’ And so, following his lead, the Doctor and Romana vanish into the Matrix to explore. Similarly, in the outline, the Doctor simply narrates the sto
ry of Alovia. In this book, he and Romana dash off there.

  The book also features a reappearance by the Time Lord prison of Shada – or rather, and this is where it all gets interconnected – the earliest outline of The Krikkitmen features the first description of a Time Lord prison, which is eventually given a name in Adams’s scripts for Shada, which also features as a key plot point a trip to a Time Lord prison to liberate its occupants. (Still with me? Well done.) As this seems another great example of Adams borrowing from himself, it seems easier (and will probably score me an extra point on Fan Bingo) to make these prisons one and the same, rather than creating another impossible-to-get-to Time Lord prison.

  While we’re on the subject, the planet of Bethselamin appears in The Krikkitmen. It also appears as the mysterious ‘Perfect Planet’ which formed Adams’ first approach to The Pirate Planet, so I’ve borrowed aspects from there for its appearance here. This is not the only appearance of a Bethselamin in Adams’s work – he keeps trying to name planets Bethselamin until one finally makes a brief, chilling appearance in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

  Anyway, you’ve been reading Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

  NOTE

  Material from the papers of Douglas Noël Adams, St John’s College Library appears by permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge

  POSSIBLE TITLES FOR A DOCTOR WHO FILM

  (a note by Douglas Adams)

  Title Not Doctor Who and the … Unless jokey ‘Doctor Who saves the Universe’

  Possibly The Doctor and …?

  ‘The Doctor’?

  Planet on the Edge of Time.

  The Galaxy Haters.

  The Final Function / Hactar’s Final Function.

  The Time Doctor

  Doctor in Space/Time

  The Last Bomb of All.