Who Review presents an exclusive Big Finish preview, which saw Alex Hewitt speaking to writers Georgia Cook, Max Kashevsky, and writer/producer Alfie Shaw about the forthcoming Eleventh Doctor Chronicles boxset, Everywhere and Anywhere.
This boxset opens with a Christmas special – Georgia Cook‘s Spirit of the Season. Georgia explains, “Alfie contacted me saying, ‘would you like to write a Christmas ghost story? We know you like writing ghost stories.’ And I said I’d love to.” As well as ‘Spirit’ in the title posing a double-meaning, there is also another Clara that shows up in this episode…
“People can decide whether or not they like the Clara in this story,” Georgia continues, “she was very, very fun to write for and the actress [Becky Wright] is fantastic, so I’m very excited for everyone to meet her.” As Christmas stories go, this looks darker than the regular affair. Georgia insists, “it’s got some jokes in there, some japes, some funny times, and maybe, possibly some not-so jokes and japes and funny times.” In terms of the setting, what’s the general atmosphere for Georgia’s ghost story? “It’s a big, Victorian house in the middle of nowhere, trapped in a snowstorm. As all the best ghost stories are.”
“It’s very funny. All the jokes,” Georgia elaborates, although it’s not entirely convincing – this sounds like perhaps a darker tale, in the spirit of Charles Dickens or M. R. James… “Exactly. M. R. James is one of my favourite ghost story writers.” This story also sees the debut of a new theme for the Eleventh Doctor! “Oh nice, that’s Christmas for me! That’s very cool, I wasn’t aware of that.”
Next up, we have Max Kashevsky‘s episode, All’s Fair. Very little is known about this one… “This is also the episode where Roanna comes back,” Alfie says, “this is our Wild Blue Yonder, where we can’t say anything else about it. There’s a great joke in there about America.” Something we do know about this story is that it’s set at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Max explains, “that was one of the last things to come together. We thought of all of the different aspects of the premise, and then at the end it was a bit like, ‘where should we set this?’ And then Alfie wanted it to be San Francisco, because that’s very comic book-y and fun, and then at the very, very end I suggested making it the World’s Fair.”
Max confirms that this setting gives the story a more cinematic scope: “it’s a little more RTD-ish, or like Series 7 – a big movie-poster idea which the Loki series has now stolen. An iconic location which works really well. It gives you a good hook.” As Roanna returns here, what did Max make of continuing hers and Valarie’s romantic storyline? “It’s really easy to write stuff when someone’s already written great characters for you, so that’s some of the fun of doing a continuing series like this. Being able to hear a sneak peak of Angus [Dunican]’s story, The Yearn, meant that you get a really great idea of what Roanna’s like, what their dynamic is, and then you get to build on that.”
“Part of the goal with this one was to kind of fast-forward everything. At the start of the story, they’ve met, they’ve had their meet cute, they’ve had a couple of calls, but they haven’t actually had their first date yet. By the end of it, it feels like they have this incredibly tight, detailed, interwoven relationship. That wasn’t the original core intention but I think that’s one of the fun side effects of it – that it feels like they’ve had this whole massive, romantic, epic story in 45 minutes.”
Following All’s Fair is Alfie Shaw‘s story, the finale of the boxset. Sins of the Flesh is a new, nuanced take on the Cybermen, exploring the idea of conversion therapy. Alfie says, “there are lots of ways to take that in the wrong direction, so it is basically: a Cyberman finds a conversion therapy group and says, ‘if you put all the people you don’t like in these “redemption suits”, we will purify them and then when they come out they will be exactly what you want them to be.’”
What gave Alfie the inspiration for this episode? “I was watching a documentary on conversion therapy and at the beginning there is a group of people who are praying, and the way they are praying is they stomp in unison. And the way they stomp made me go, ‘oh, it’s the Cybermen.’ If a Cyberman did rock up, these people wouldn’t go, ‘oh my god, alien invaders!’ they would go, ‘hallelujah, our prayers have been answered.’” Alfie has very strong thoughts on conversion therapy and confirms that Sins of the Flesh is “very explicitly about that. And it went through lots of sensitivity readers, and we made sure to cast from the LGBTQ+ community so that if there were any issues to be raised, they could be raised on the day.” Thinking about it, Cybermen do feel like an obvious fit for this sort of story. “It felt like a perfect use of the Cybermen,” Alfie elaborates, “a great sci-fi way to address this horrible thing in a horrific but sanitised way. The reality of it is a lot more horrific – which is a strange thing to say when you’re talking about people being turned into Cybermen. We’re using that to flag how awful this process is.”
It’s also – incredibly – only the third-ever Eleventh Doctor Cyberman story. Alfie says, “I wanted to make sure that they were front-and-centre of the story, because a lot of the time in the Moffat era the Cybermen are someone else’s lackey. I wanted something that highlighted the horrific truth of them. [Everywhere and Anywhere] is definitely the bleakest boxset of the lot – and it’s not exactly been super happy fun times up until now!” Max confirms, “oh yeah, it’s depressing as hell.”
Alfie’s determined to highlight the comedy: “there are some good jokes in there!” Max mentions his favourite is one about sharks in Spirit of the Season. Georgia says, “hilarious in context.” We know there’s an America joke in All’s Fair, but what about the final part of the boxset? Alfie says, “I’ve got a great joke in mine about puberty.” So those are the jokes to listen out for: sharks, America, and puberty.
The writers then give their take on the name for this series. It comes between 7A and 7B, so those titles are sort of taken. Is The Eleventh Doctor and Valarie Lockwood too boring? Alfie says, “this has come up online. Series 7 and a half is what some people use.” Max prefers ‘Series 7V’. “V for Valarie! Most of the titles [of these boxsets] are Matt Smith quotes. We could call it The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles: Va-Voom! or something.”
To finish up, Alfie has some guidance for listeners: “things are starting to come back from Volumes 3 [Geronimo!] and 4 [All of Time and Space] in this one. Things are coming back into play. If people haven’t got to the first two sets it would be a good point to catch up. If they have, maybe give them a relisten just to familiarise because things do start to come back in quite a significant way. Things will then come back in an even bigger way in Volume 6 [next February’s Victory of the Doctor], but Everywhere and Anywhere is when we’ve thrown all the threads out there and by this one all the threads are in play for the finale.”
Doctor Who: Everywhere and Anywhere is available to pre-order now from bigfinish.com, ahead of its release on Tuesday 19th December. Many thanks to Georgia, Max, and Alfie for taking the time to chat to us. In addition, our interview with cover artist Carrie Tankersley can be found here.
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