Doctor Who, Season 18 on Blu Ray

The 'as-yet unscheduled' limited edition Blu Ray release of Doctor Who season 18 is now on the schedule for a February 2019 UK launch.  It includes a feature titled The Writers' Room, filmed in a secret location (okay, it was a rather fine pub in Stoke Newington) where Chris Bidmead, Andrew Smith, John Flanagan and I got together for a summer afternoon of chat and Who memories.

Andrew has described the get-together as a highlight of the year, and I entirely concur. If you enjoy watching it half as much as we enjoyed making it... well, then I guess we'll have had twice as much fun as you.

Other new bonus features include commentary tracks with Tom Baker on The Leisure Hive, and Lalla Ward and Rachel Davies on State of Decay, both moderated by Matthew Sweet, while Warriors Gate gets a surround sound mix masterminded by sonic supremo Mark Ayres. Along with the new material comes the stuff previously compiled for the DVDs.

Oh, and I expect there are some shows on there as well.

And while I've got you here, don't forget this:

Pre-order the Blu Ray Set

More on the Audio Novel

Leytonstone: the Afterword

The second in Stephen Volk's Dark Masters trilogy of novellas, each of which delves into the fictional psyche of a real-life figure from the darker end of the popular arts, Leytonstone is an extended riff upon a well-known incident from the early life of Alfred Hitchcock. I was honoured to be asked to write an afterword to its original edition from the Spectral Press.

Now all three novellas have been collected together into a single hardcover volume by PS Publishing, and a thing of great beauty it is. Leytonstone now takes its place between Whitstable (featuring Peter Cushing) and Netherwood (Dennis Wheatley, in a tale of an uneasy alliance with 'Great Beast' Aleister Crowley).

There are no afterwords in this new edition, either mine or that of Mark Morris for Whitstable; but you can read my little Hitchcock essay here, if you like.

You don't have to have read the novella. Though you may want to, and you should.

But don't say you were never warned...

 

Read the Afterword

Buy the Trilogy 

Scraps of WHO

A quick note on some Doctor Who-related stuff I've got coming up in the New Year. I'll give more details on each in due course but for now, just the headlines...

• During the summer I was one of four Season 18 writers participating in a filmed chat for the as-yet unscheduled Blu Ray release. All of us around a table in a rather nice pub. I've seen an early cut and it's turned out rather well.
• I've signed a contract for a BBC Audiobook of the Terminus novelisation, and...
• After banging on about the 'lost' version of the Warriors' Gate novelisation for many years, I finally bit the bullet and reassembled the text from surviving fragments, again for BBC Audio. The production will be something special. With BBC Books focusing more on recent material, there are no plans at this stage for a print version.
• Frank Collins is working on The Black Archive #29, a book-length study of Warriors' Gate. Along with interviews from me, director Paul Joyce, and others, he's had access to all my drafts and working papers in the Hull History Centre.
• Neil Cole's Museum of Classic Sci-fi in the Northumbrian village of Allendale features some pieces from Warriors' Gate and, most impressively, the original Garm mask and costume from Terminus.

More on each of these as news becomes available.

And in the meantime, there'll be the audio release of Casting the Runes, a contemporary production featuring Tom Burke, Anna Maxwell Martin, with Reece Shearsmith as Karswell, from Audible in December.