BBC Cult Dr Who - The Sands Of Time

by BBCi Cult

  That, more than anything, is why Rassul appears briefly early on in this part of the book. It is to remind us how much is still the same, and to show too - since he has a car - how things have moved on. How much more sophisticated and prepared is the villain now? After all, we - and the Doctor - may have just arrived, but Rassul and the Mummies have been waiting for us all the time. We still don't know what exactly he is up to, but hopefully there is a feeling that events are reaching their culmination and that before long all will be revealed.

  Instalment Eight

  Author's Notes: Instalment Eight

  The Napoleon vignettes were amongst my favourite to write. I had come across a reference somewhere - I forget where, I'm afraid, to his visiting the Great Pyramid. It was a reliable source, a history book or some learned archaeological tome, so I assume it is true. Apparently - as in The Sands of Time - Napoleon insisted on entering the pyramid alone. When he emerged he was white-faced with shock and refused to say what had happened. Of course, he may just have got spooked by the darkness and shadows, and since he aspired to rule the world didn't want to admit to a fit of the heebie-jeebies.

  The short section where he almost relates what happened, I have a feeling, was also related as 'fact.' But I can't check without remembering where I found it - and perhaps this is simply my invention.

  As to what Napoleon actually saw in the context of our story here, I leave as an exercise for the reader!

  In many ways this story only works for the Fifth Doctor. We've already talked about the dynamic of which companions to use and why they seem to fit so well. Of course, I started from the point of knowing who would be involved, so a lot of that is deliberate right from the start. There are Who books that can, could, and have been intended for different Doctors and companions. But this isn't one. The idea of having to change it for the Sixth Doctor and Mel just wouldn't work at all. It always was for the Fifth - and most vulnerable, and in many ways most human - Doctor.

  Which meant that one thing I could take for granted was his ability to pilot the TARDIS with reasonable accuracy. He uses it a lot in this story. Far more, I think than in anything else I've written (though no doubt someone will point out I'm wrong, if I am). This is the 'short hops' era when the TARDIS is a means of transport between locations and times almost without comment. When subsidiary characters are invited on board without much comment from either the Doctor or the character.

  As Gareth Roberts said in his TARDIS Inside Out piece in DWM recently, that does debase the TARDIS and detract from its mystery. It may be, as he says, a lazy way for writers to move the story about. Let's face it, this was all too often the case. But it also opens up possibilities. It's a shame that - like the notion and implications of time travel itself - the possibilities were ignored. Maybe The Sands of Time helps show how it could have been done in a more original and interesting manner, and maybe how it should have been done.

  Less original, as several reviewers have pointed out, is the idea of gathering together Egyptian artefacts to form a sort of critical mass for the rebirth of the undead villain of the piece. It's a trick used (grotesquely and effectively with body parts and life energy) in the terrific Stephen Sommers version of The Mummy. But before that, it was the basis for Bram Stoker's novel The Jewel of the Seven Stars.

  This is a novel that has been filmed twice. The second version - The Awakening, starring Charlton Heston and Stephanie Zimbalist - isn't a patch on the Hammer version though: Blood from the Mummy's Tomb. This is a rare mummy movie in that there is no mummy, at least not in the traditional sense. And the twist ending is terrific!

  So, does The Sands of Time consciously and deliberately pay homage to Blood from the Mummy's Tomb? Was I imagining Vanessa as played by Valerie Leon? Of course I was...

  Instalment Nine

  Author's Notes: Instalment Nine

  Writing action sequences is difficult. You have to keep things moving, while keeping it very clear what is happening. The moment the reader has to pause and work out who is where, or doing what, then you have lost them. At the same time, clarity must not be wordy. Brevity - short staccato sentences - punctuates the action and gives it pace.

  Like any writing, it's something you get better at as you work at it. Writing is a craft as well as an art - practice is everything. When people ask me what they must do to improve their writing, I tell them they need to write a lot, and they need to read a lot. Seeing what works - or doesn't - for other people is very instructive.

  Does the sequence of the mummy attacking Norris's cottage work? I think so, for the most part. Like almost everything, I would execute it differently today I'm sure. But my approach remains the same. If there's a complicated sequence of actions to go through, then I play them out in my mind. I watch with my mind's eye as the action unfolds. When I'm sure that I am clear on what happens - because if it isn't clear to me it won't be clear to anyone - then I simply describe what I see. Like transcribing the action of a movie.

  Once I have something written, once the sequence of events is mapped out on the page, then I embellish it. Some description, some striking imagery will have been included anyway just by way of description. Now I finesse that - cutting out repeated words and phrases, trying to find interesting and new ways of describing things. So long as they aren't too distracting - in a sense, originality at this point would actually work against the effect I'm trying to achieve. There are times when it's good to pull the reader up and out of the prose and have them think about the way I've used a word or phrase or an image I've invoked. But this isn't it. This is the time to keep them absolutely inside the story, so caught up in the action that they are breathless with it by the end.

  And after the action you need a few quieter moments for the readers to get their breath back and relax back into the story. It sounds paradoxical, but the story stops when the action starts. A fight or battle or chase does not forward the plot in and of itself. So afterwards, that's the time to slip in some development that makes it seem like more has happened than is actually the case. In this instance the quiet moment is the image of the mummy carrying Vanessa through the swamp in the moonlight. It is a signature image for the book - something I knew would happen during the story even before I knew what the story was. What else could I have had on the cover - twice?!

  This is the part of the book where as well as the action hotting up, the revelations start to come. It is time to start unravelling the mystery - to reveal people's real motives and agendas. Balancing the exposition with that revelation is a delicate balancing act. At some point, exposition becomes info-dump. You need to add in enough character and action and surprises to avoid the readers realising they are being spoon-fed background information they will need to understand later events.

  One way of doing this is to make that information surprising and significant in and of itself. An obvious example here (and stop now if you've not yet read the instalment) is the revelation that whoever 'stole' the tomb - the man who we now know must be in league with the villains - has a distinctive walking stick. I've already set that up so that, I hope, that simple and otherwise innocuous piece of information will twist the story round and stand it on its head - it will undermine and reframe the reader's understanding of what is really going on.

  It's a trick I often try. The best example of it I can recall is in the under-rated and oft-ignored 1991 Kenneth Branagh / Emma Thompson film Dead Again. If you've seen the film, you'll already know exactly what scene - what line - I'm referring to. Interviewing Andy Garcia's character, Branagh's character asks him a final, simple, apparently inconsequential question. Garcia's answer is equally innocuous - except we, and Branagh, know something that Garcia doesn't. We have the context, and suddenly not only does everything make perfect sense but we realise that we have completely misinterpreted everything that has so far happened in the film...

  I've tried to recreate the feeling and effect of that moment more times than I can remember. Perhaps the closest I've come
is the 'wheelchair' revelation in my Sixth Doctor novel (still available from all good bookshops!) Grave Matter. But that, of course, is a story for another day...

  Instalment Ten

  Author's Notes: Instalment Ten

  It's a more subtle 'reversal' than the walking stick business in the previous instalment, but our discovery that the girl sacrificed in the opening sequence of the book was Rassul's daughter alters our perceptions. In particular it alters how we see Rassul and interpret his motivation and involvement. It is all too easy to have villains who are simply 'evil'. The trick is to provide enough sympathetic background that we can empathise if not sympathise with them...

  Part of the appeal of the Daleks, despite the 'totally evil, no redeeming features' argument, is the fact that we understand where they came from. In terms of the narrative, they were born out of the horrors and possibilities of the Cold War. The product of a xenophobic era of history... Not so much a 'dislike for the unlike' as a 'there but for the grace of God...' appeal perhaps.

  Drama comes from contention and a clash of ideals. The very best drama is provoked (if that is the best word) by the argument and disagreement between two people who while irreconcilable are both right. Think of Crimson Tide.

  So having Rassul turn out to be motivated by events and feelings which we would all find it difficult to react to differently ups the drama and the stakes. Right when we know the Doctor has to win, there's a shade of sympathy and understanding for the man we thought was the villain. The revelation also throws into context his reaction to Nyssa's comment about fathers not outliving their daughters. As I've noted before, this is a book about fathers and daughters...

  The end of the book is the place to tie up the loose ends as well and sort out the villain. The trick here is to set things up so there isn't too much remaining to be done after the story has really finished. We can all, I suspect, think of books - and films - that had a colossal, exciting ending. Then went on for another twenty pages or minutes explaining things and winding down. Not terribly satisfying - and one reason surely why the film of The Return of the King was curtailed before the final showdown with Saruman in the Shire...

  That said, I couldn't resist the coda with the sphinxes by Cleopatra's Needle in London. Partly this was because it was while I was in the process of writing the book that I discovered the sphinxes are the wrong way round. The 'dummy' sphinxes were facing the other way, and when the real ones were put in place they were positioned facing backwards - and no one knows why. Well, here's one possible (if rather incredible!) explanation at last. The other pay-off I wanted to deliver was the changed relationship between Atkins and Miss Warne (who BBCi pointed out to me should by convention be called 'Mrs' as head of the domestic staff even though she isn't married - I could pretend that I deliberately ignored this for clarity... but you live and learn!). The Marcus Scarman visit also seemed 'right' though quite what it portends I leave to the reader to decide. Perhaps he will be inspired by Kenilworth's stories and decide to excavate in the same area of Egypt. Who knows? But it is a final little twist of time - events of the Doctor's future perhaps dictating the events of his own past...

  When I wrote The Sands of Time, I was working for a large computer company. I started there as a technical writer, though by this time I had moved into interface design and future technology. But I still went for coffee (and beer) with some of the technical writers - in particular Craig Hinton and Peter Anghelides. Being Doctor Who fans and aspiring authors - Craig had written The Crystal Bucephalus by then - Craig and Peter were of great help reading through my drafts and making suggestions. Thanks to Craig, I discovered all about the magnetic properties of Mars and included that, for instance. So belated thanks to them both for their help!

  Neither of them gave any indication that they were unhappy with the way the book ended, or that it was in some ways rather reminiscent of Pyramids of Mars. But it was something I was conscious of, as we shall see...

  Alternative Ending

  Author's Notes: Instalment Eleven - Alternative ending

  All authors have times when they decide that everything they've written is absolute rubbish. I try to keep my own moments of self-doubt to a few minutes rather than hours or days. There was only one occasion realty when I decided might have got it all completely wrong and remained of that opinion for long enough to do it all again.

  One of the things I set out to do with The Sands of Time was to build on Pyramids of Mars, but not to debase it. The worst form of debasement is inventing a convenient weakness in the enemy for the Doctor to exploit - so I was dead against that. Having him discover (or worse, simply remember) that the Osirans are allergic to gold, for example, would have rather punctured the whole thing.

  But this did give me a problem when devising an ending for the story. My decision was to use a variation on the ending of Pyramids of Mars - the Doctor uses the same inherent weakness but in a different and hopefully surprisingly imaginative way.

  Having sent my draft manuscript to Rebecca Levene, the editor at Virgin, I began to have my doubts. What if the readers weren't that impressed - if what I had written realty was just a re-run of the end of Pyramids? So I thought about whether I could change the ending while remaining true to my original intention and without having to rewrite the whole book. And I wrote a different ending.

  When Rebecca Levene, the Who Editor at Virgin, sent back her comments, she didn't seem to have any problem with the ending of the story as originally written. But I'd already got an alternative. Not wanting to waste it, I decided perhaps we could have both endings, leaving readers to decide which they preferred. So I added this chapter to the end of the book. Then I sat back and waited to see if Rebecca would notice.

  Of course, she did notice. And - quite rightly - she suggested that having both endings was probably a touch self-indulgent and quite redundant. Which would I prefer to keep? I decided to keep the original, which I think is cleaner and more focused. It is also, of course, the ending I had in my mind when I wrote the rest of the book - the ending everything else was designed to lead up to.

  But somewhere, in another quantum universe, people have read (and I hope enjoyed) the alternative instead. So here it is. I leave you to make your own mind up which, if either, you prefer.

  It has been printed before - in I, Who 2 published by Mad Norwegian Press in the USA in 2001. But this is the chapter's first 'British' mass market appearance and the first time it has appeared in the context of the novel as a whole.

  Obviously, I hope you enjoy it. But do read it as a curiosity, not as the bona-fide end of the book in some authorial 'Director's Cut' of the novel. Because Rebecca was absolutely right - The Sands of Time is better focused and less fragmented without it.