Tag Archives: writer: david fisher

The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope; The Androids of Tara, by Terrance Dicks and David Fisher; and a play by Paul Cornell

Posted on by

David Fisher’s novelisation of his 1978 Doctor Who story, The Androids of Tara, has recently been published in paper form (it had been around as an audiobook for ages). It is a story which draws very strongly on the 1894 novel The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope,so I thought I should go back to the beginning and re-read that as well. The second paragraph of the third chapter of The Prisoner of Zenda is:

I took an early luncheon, and, having bidden my kind entertainers farewell, promising to return to them on my way home, I set out to climb the hill that led to the Castle, and thence to the forest of Zenda. Half an hour’s leisurely walking brought me to the Castle. It had been a fortress in old days, and the ancient keep was still in good preservation and broad moat, which ran all round the old buildings, was a handsome modern chateau, erected by the last king, and now forming the country residence of the Duke of Strelsau. The old and the new portions were connected by a drawbridge, and this indirect mode of access formed the only passage between the old building and the outer world; but leading to the modern chateau there was a broad and handsome avenue. It was an ideal residence: when “Black Michael” desired company, he could dwell in his chateau; if a fit of misanthropy seized him, he had merely to cross the bridge and draw it up after him (it ran on rollers), and nothing short of a regiment and a train of artillery could fetch him out. I went on my way, glad that poor Black Michael, though he could not have the throne or the princess, had, at least, as fine a residence as any prince in Europe.

In case you don’t know, the story concerns one Rudolf Rassendyll, a minor English aristocrat, who visits the central European kingdom of Ruritania only to discover that he is an exact double of the new king. The new king gets drugged and kidnapped by his half-brother, who is scheming to take the throne, and Rudolf is co-opted to pretend to be the monarch, through the coronation, and courting the lovely princess Flavia. There’s lots of exciting sword-fighting and derring-do, especially around the castle of Zenda where the real king is being held, and the half-brother’s henchmen include an evil Belgian. It’s a slightly deeper book than most readers may think, with reflections on dynastic duty and honour, and it’s a cracking good and short read. You can get it here.

I remember hugely enjoying The Androids of Tara when it was first broadcast in later 1978; I would have been eleven. When I came back to it in 2008, having read The Prisoner of Zenda in the meantime, I wrote:

Almost all of The Androids of Tara is basically a lift from The Prisoner of Zenda – Romana actually finds the fourth segment of the Key to Time, the ostensible point of the plot, in the first episode while the Doctor is off fishing. But it is all great fun – Mary Tamm gorgeous as ever in all her parts (ie all her roles), the villainous count yelling “Next time, I shall not be so lenient!”

I noticed that Declan Mulholland, playing the Count’s sidekick Till, did so with a marked Ulster accent. I checked back on his one previous appearance in Doctor Who, in The Sea Devils, but his character is too busy dying in agony to really display much of an accent there.

When I came back to it in 2011 for my Great Rewatch, I wrote:

The Androids of Tara is one of the most shamelessly derivative Who stories ever, so obviously ripped off from The Prisoner of Zenda that apparently even some of the lines are the same. But it’s done with great style and affection, with particularly the guest cast enthusiastically in it – most especially Peter Jeffrey’s evil Count Grendel, but the others as well (and a special shout-out for Declan Mulholland’s Ulster/Mummerset accent as Till). In a season where every story is a quest for a segment, it’s refreshing to have the segment found in the first ten minutes and then get on with the planetary intrigue. Mary Tamm doesn’t have to do much as Princess Strella, which again is a sign of the times.

One minor casting point is that this is the last of Cyril Shapps’ four appearances in Doctor Who, playing the Archimandrite this time, and the only occasion on which his character is not killed off.

On reflection, the story’s relationship with The Prisoner of Zenda is a little more complex than I said in either of my previous write-ups. The Doctor and Romana land in the middle of a Zenda-like plot, but take it in some different directions (and some similar). Rather than the central character being the King’s double, it is his sidekick who is the princess’s double; but the doubles double up thanks to the android theme, with Mary Tamm playing four different roles in the end. Several of the set-piece scenes are indeed lifted directly from Anthony Hope, but with variations – the drugged drink combines two slightly different events from the book; K9 intervenes directly to assist both getting into the Pavilion and getting out of the castle. (In fact we see more aggressive action from K9 here than usual.) Contra what is sometimes asserted, I don’t think any of David Fisher’s lines is a direct lift from Anthony Hope. But it is recognisably the same story, rewritten to have the Doctor, Romana, K9 and android duplicates.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of Terrance Dicks’ original novelisation is:

‘Castle Gracht, my dear,’ said Count Grendel proudly. ‘Ancient home of the Grendels of Gracht.’

When I reread this in 2008, I wrote:

Another standard Dicks write-what’s-on-the-screen treatment.

Not much more to say. You can get it here.

It is delightful that we now have Fisher’s own version of the story, filled out in a number of directions. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

The reason for this was that Madame Lamia had become interested in the crystal that the stranger had been found with. Lamia had broken two diamond-tipped drills on it and not even scratched the surface. Yet this strange woman, who was the spitting image of Princess Strella, kept insisting it was quartz. But it was like no quartz that Madame Lamia had ever seen. However, her concentration was shattered by the Count’s entrance at full gallop roaring like an angry bull.

As previously mentioned, this is actually the 2022 print version of a 2012 audiobook, slightly adapted for the page (as Steve Cole explains in an endnote). It is thoroughly satisfying. The social structure and recent history of Tara are explained in depth, if still not completely believably, and it’s very clear that the relationship between Count Grendel and his engineer Madame Lamia is sexually as well as economically exploitative. The whole thing feels very much bulked up rather than padded out, and I’m very glad that the BBC asked Fisher to have another go at it before it was too late. You can get it here.

For fun I went and reread Paul Cornell’s sequel, “The Trials of Tara”, which you can find in Decalog 2: Lost Property, a 1995 anthology of short stories which you can get here. I didn’t especially call attention to this story when I first read the book, but it’s an entertaining mashup of the Seventh Doctor and Bernice Summerfield returning to Tara to find that things have gone wrong in their absence, with that notorious android, the Candyman, also turning up, and the whole thing told in (more or less) iambic pentameter as a stage script, with elements of pantomime (Benny cross-dresses, the villains are appropriately villainous). The third scene opens as follows:

Scene 3. Another clearing, with TARDIS

Enter the Doctor and Bernice.

Doctor: This is the sweet and charming planet Tara.
Home to android smiths. And nobles.
On which I own a field or two of land
Having earned it. In royal serrvice.
My intent is to visit my old friend
Prince Reynart, and his princess bride Strella,
Who did resemble my friend Romana.

It’s actually really amusing, and I should have paid more attention on first reading it; it was a nice chaser to the three books. I don’t know of any other Taran spinoff fiction.

The Stones of Blood, by Katrin Thier (and David Fisher, and Terrance Dicks)

Posted on by

I remember watching and hugely enjoying The Stones of Blood when it was first broadcast in 1978. I’ve come back to it several times and it retains its charm. When I came back to it in 2008, I wrote:

The Stones of Blood was one that I remembered fondly from first time round, and I liked it again on re-watching three decades later. Perhaps, now that puberty is behind me rather than yet to come, I appreciate Mary Tamm’s costumes as Romana all the more. But of course I also have a fascination with megaliths, and this is the only broadcast story that really uses them (though see also the SJA story The Thirteenth Stone). And of the three stories featuring an ancient cult in England within a few years of 1980, this is the only one that really pulls it off well (the other two being Image of the Fendahl and K9 and Company).

When I came back a couple of years later for my Great Rewatch, I wrote:

We are back on firmer ground [after The Pirate Planet] with The Stones of Blood. This just shows the difference that a decent plot (as opposed to a decent script, which Adams was capable of doing) and good casting and direction can make, though unfortunately we are now slipping into Romana as screamy girl rather than smart aleck, which is a shame, especially as the story has two excellent female leads in Beatrix Lehmann and Susan Engel. (I must also add that the viewing experience on DVD is greatly enhanced by the extras, which include a documentary with Mary Tamm exploring the Rollright Stones where it was filmed.) 

It’s a story of two halves, Satanic cults (as previously seen in Image of the Fendahl and The Masque of Mandragora) and then the abandoned prison spaceship with the ruthlessly homicidal justice machines. The story wobbles a bit at times – Beatrix Lehmann, who died a few months after filming, is notably shaky on some of her lines – but stays just the right side of the quality divide. The location filming around the stones is particularly memorable, (including particularly K9 on one of his few field outings) and well blended in with the studio scenes. I am really looking forward to the new novelisation by David Fisher, the author of the original script; the original Terrance Dicks novelisation is workmanlike but not terribly memorable, but Fisher’s two previous novelisations of his own stories – The Creature from the Pit and The Leisure Hive – are particularly good, among the best Fourth Doctor books and certainly better than the TV originals.

Rewatching it again, I liked it a bit more if anything; it clearly too Beatrix Lehmann a couple of scenes to get comfortable with the situation but once she gets in the swing, she is great. And the monstrous Ogri are depicted as pretty horrifying even though we see very little of what they actually do to people (apart from the unfortunate lady camper). I also liked the clues that the segment is around somewhere nearby, which I picked up on more than on previous watches.

Unusually, though not uniquely, there are two different Target novelisations of the story, the first being a rather workmanlike effort by Terrance Dicks. The second paragraph of its third chapter is:

Romana straightened up, releasing her end of the tape. A sudden loud cawing sound made her jump. A big black bird was perched on the stone above her head. Romana jumped back. ‘What’s that?’

A longer novelisation by the story’s original author, David Fisher, was released on audio a few years back and is now available in book form. The second paragraph of its third chapter is:

The figures pushed back their hoods, revealing themselves to be Mr de Vries, a plump man sporting a wisp of a beard on his chin, and Martha Vickers, a middle-aged lady with the face of a discontented bulldog. She was a resident of the nearby village of Bodcombe Parva, and a member of the local Women’s Institute. Her fellow members would have been astonished to see her there, because she was known to be non-religious and only sang ‘Jerusalem’ under protest. In fact, ever since meeting Mr de Vries a couple of years ago, she had been a pillar of his Druid circle, gradually initiated into the inner mysteries of the BIDS. She used to hunt in her younger days, and unlike some of the other group members was not disturbed by the sight of blood. Hence her presence at all the sacrifices.

I wrote up both novelisations when the audio of Fisher’s version came out in 2011:

Earlier this year the BBC released a new novelisation of an Old Who story – David Fisher, who wrote the original TV story The Stones of Blood, has now converted it not to a print novel but to audiobook format, read with great gusto by Susan Engel (who played the villain of the piece on screen) with John Leeson doing K9’s lines. I had been looking forward to this with hopeful enthusiasm, as Fisher’s novelisations of his other two stories are among the best of the Target range.

I am very glad to say that I was not disappointed. The audio is about twice as long as the original series (four hour-long CDs), and Fisher has bulked out the material with lots more character background and atmosphere than was possible on screen – the full story of the campers gruesomely slain by the Ogri, for example, and various brazen but humorous infodumps. There are lots of decent sound effects as well. Very highly recommended.

I also went back and reread Terrance Dicks’ original novelisation of the story for comparison. It must be a lot shorter than Fisher’s new text. I noted of it three years ago that it is “a standard Dicks write-what’s-on-the-screen treatment, somewhat flattening a rather good story” and I found no reason to change my views. I did think Dicks handled the climax of the story with some finesse, but the rest it pretty thin.

The print version is topped and tailed by some lovely personal reminiscences about Fisher by his son Nick Fisher and by the BBC Audio commissioning editor Michael Stevens. It remains a good read.

As my regular reader knows, I myself am pretty interested in megalithic sites and in their mythology. Katrin Thier, the author of this monograph, apparently shares my interest and has given us a good chunky read with no less than seven chapters, not counting introduction and afterword. There’s plenty to say about this story and where it fits in British popular culture.

An introduction sets out Thier’s stall, reviewing the previous careers of writer, director and guest cast and describing the ‘folk horror’ and Gothic modes, and making a link to Irish independence,

Chapter 1, “The Stones”, starts with the bold proposition that “the main guest stars in The Stones of Blood are the King’s Men at Little Rollright in Oxfordshire, playing the Nine Travellers.” Thier reviews the cult of medievalism, especially around the Rollright Stones themselves, and looks at the origin of the Ogri.

Chapter 2, “The Druids”, reviews what is really known about the Druids and the Gorsedds.

Chapter 3, “Megalithic Afterlives”, looks at the scientific investigation of megalithic monuments and how it has been reflected in popular culture (including The Goodies episode “Wacky Wales”, which features Jon Pertwee as a homicidal cultist). Its second paragraph is:

When the Doctor explains to Romana that the circle is a ‘megalithic temple-cum-observatory’, he expresses an interpretation widespread in the 1970s, suggesting that the prehistoric builders of these monuments were not simple undeveloped countryfolk, but were in fact highly sophisticated, maintaining a class of scientists to rival those of the ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. The evidence for this was seen in the way many of these monuments seemed to be laid out to allow astronomical calculations. The study of this idea now called archaeo-astronomy (although ‘astro-archaeology’ is also sometimes found, reflecting the different emphasis assumed by different scholars). The idea arose partly out of the well-established observations that some of the major monuments interact with points on the sun’s annual circuit, especially the solstices, and a simple explanation for this is that the monument points to the event it is used to celebrate.

Chapter 4, “The Women”, explores the fact that the two main guest stars are women and that Romana rather than the Doctor carries a lot of the plot. This ties into Graves and Mallory, of course. A nice note – although on screen, Beatrix Lehmann is older than Susan Engel who in turn is older than Mary Tamm, Professor Rumford is the youngest of the three characters, a mere 70ish, whereas Romana is in the first half of her second century and Cessair of Diplos is thousands of years old. (Cessair is a genuine if obscure Celtic figure, but should of course be pronounced with a hard ‘c’.)

Chapter 5, “‘To Wit, a Celtic Goddess'”, looks more deeply at the goddesses – the Morrigan, Nemetona, the Cailleach, Ceridwen and the origin of the Great Seal.

Chapter 6, “Mere Mortals”, looks at the origins of Vivien Fay / Cessair’s other identities. I love this coincidence: the site of the Nine Travellers was supposedly owned at one time by the Little Sisters of St Gudula. St Gudula of course is the patron saint of Brussels, but is also the name of a key character in Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, who in the BBC’s 1966 TV adaptation was played by… Beatrix Lehmann!

Chapter 7, “Leaving Earth”, looks at hyperspace, slightly jarring with the themes of the previous six chapters (as indeed the hyperspace parts of the story jar with the rest).

An afterword, “Reithian Gothic?”, points out that the story is really quite informative about megalithic sites and lore, and would have sent the curious viewer off to find out more. It certainly fed my own interest, both on first watching at eleven and since.

This is a good analysis of a good story, even if it’s light on the production details which I usually enjoy hearing about. You can get it here.

The Black Archives
1st Doctor: The Edge of Destruction (67) | Marco Polo (18) | The Aztecs (71) | The Myth Makers (65) | The Dalek Invasion of Earth (30) | The Romans (32) | The Massacre (2)
2nd Doctor: The Underwater Menace (40) | The Evil of the Daleks (11) | The Mind Robber (7)
3rd Doctor: Doctor Who and the Silurians (39) | The Ambassadors of Death (3) | The Dæmons (26) | Carnival of Monsters (16) | The Time Warrior (24) | Invasion of the Dinosaurs (55)
4th Doctor: Pyramids of Mars (12) | The Hand of Fear (53) | The Deadly Assassin (45) | The Face of Evil (27) | The Robots of Death (43) | Talons of Weng-Chiang (58) | Horror of Fang Rock (33) | Image of the Fendahl (5) | The Sun Makers (60) | The Stones of Blood (47) | Full Circle (15) | Warriors’ Gate (31) | Logopolis (76)
5th Doctor: Castrovalva (77) | Kinda (62) | Black Orchid (8) | Earthshock (51) | The Awakening (46)
6th Doctor: Vengeance on Varos (41) | Timelash (35) | The Mysterious Planet (79) | The Ultimate Foe (14)
7th Doctor: Paradise Towers (61) | The Happiness Patrol (68) | Silver Nemesis (75) | The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (66) | Battlefield (34) | The Curse of Fenric (23) | Ghost Light (6)
8th Doctor: The Movie (25) | The Night of the Doctor (49)
Other Doctor: Scream of the Shalka (10)
9th Doctor: Rose (1) | Dalek (54)
10th Doctor: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (17) | Love & Monsters (28) | Human Nature / The Family of Blood (13) | The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords (38) | Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead (72) | Midnight (69)
11th Doctor: The Eleventh Hour (19) | Vincent and the Doctor (57) | The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang (44) | A Christmas Carol (74) | The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon (29) | The God Complex (9) | The Rings of Akhaten (42) | Day of the Doctor (50)
12th Doctor: Listen (36) | Kill the Moon (59) | Under the Lake / Before the Flood (73) | The Girl Who Died (64) | Dark Water / Death in Heaven (4) | Face the Raven (20) | Heaven Sent (21) | Hell Bent (22)
13th Doctor: Arachnids in the UK (48) | Kerblam! (37) | The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos (52) | The Haunting of Villa Diodati (56) | Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children (70) | Flux (63)
15th Doctor: The Devil’s Chord (78)