Simon Guerrier's Blog, page 92

The Plotters - in cinemas!

Hooray! Our short film "The Plotters" made the shortlist of the Virgin Media Shorts 2012 competition - and is now playing in cinemas around the country, as well as being online and on the OnDemand service and things.We are thrilled.

Brother Tom (the director) and I attended the bash in Hackney last night to see the shortlisted films on the big screen and natter to the other entrants. I even got to say hello to Andrew Lee Potts (director of "Little Larry"), who I last met on the set of Primeval when I was writing my book.

Excitingly, the Virgin team also had posters made for each of the 13 shortlisted films, and we're delighted with our own (see right).

As well as seeing it on the big screen, you can also watch “The Plotters” for free online, on TV (via Virgin Media's On Demand service and its Shorts Tivo® app) and on your mobile phone (on Virgin's brand new Shorts iPhone app). “The Plotters” and the other 12 selected shorts now compete for £30,000 of funding towards the production of another film, as well as other prizes that will be announced in November. You can vote for your favourite of the shortlisted films, either on the Virgin Media Shorts Facebook page or by tweeting the film's name with #VMShortsVote.

I'll write up a full making-of about the film when I've conquered some pressing deadlines. But in the meantime, Tom has overhauled the Guerrier brothers website and there's loads of material on "The Plotters" with which to amaze your eyeballs.

Come see me interview Robert Shearman for the BSFA on 26 September

The British Science Fiction Association is holding a free evening with writer Robert Shearman on 26 September. Rob will read one of his strange and scary stories, and then I shall interview him within an inch of his life.

You can buy Rob's books and Doctor Who CDs from the Big Finish website. And you can follow his epic quest to write 100 stories for people who bought a special edition of his last book.

The evening will start at 7pm, though you can turn up earlier if you wish. There'll be raffle for sci-fi novels, too. Location: Cellar Bar, The Argyle Public House, 1 Greville Street (off Leather Lane), London EC1N 8PQ. Map is here. Nearest Tube: Chancery Lane (Central Line).

The BSFA run events like this every month. On 28 November, they'll be interrogating Paul Cornell. See the BSFA website for details.

Doctor Who references in non-Doctor Who books

"It seemed to him, as he idled across the channels, that the box was full of freaks: there were mutants – 'Mutts' – on Dr Who, bizarre creatures who appeared to have been crossbred with different types of industrial machinery: forage harvesters, grabbers, donkeys, jackhammers, saws, and whose cruel priest-chieftains were called Mutilasians; children's television appeared to be exclusively populated by humanoid robots and creatures with metamorphic bodies, while the adult programmes offered a continual parade of the misshapen human by-products of the newest notions in modern medicine, and its accomplices, modern disease and war.”
Saladin Chamcha watches The Mutants in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (1988), p. 405.

"A collection of movie monsters are posed all along the top of the bookshelf. On instinct, I pick up the one that looks like an upside-down dustbin with rows of studs down the side. As I do, it says 'Exterminate!' and I nearly drop it. The head comes right off. There's a bankie of dope inside. And it's quality, if I'm any judge of substances. And I am."
Zinzi December fails to recognise a Dalek in Lauren Beukes's Zoo City (2010), p. 113.

"This man was wearing what looked like a Smurf hat and what I recognised as an Edwardian smoking jacket - don't ask me why I know what an Edwardian smoking jacket looks like: let's just say it has something to do with Doctor Who and leave it at that."
The first hint Peter Grant is a fan in Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London (2011), pp. 22-3.

"Tardis fanny n. A deceptively spacious snatch. A disappointing cathedral when one was expecting a priest's hole."
From Viz presents Roger's Profanisaurus Rex (2005), p. 299.

"The twins watched copious amounts of television (Julia joked that they had to learn the language somehow), but tonight they seemed to be making a point of sitting down to watch a particular programme. It turned out to be Doctor Who.
   Elspeth hovered above them, lying on her stomach, chin resting on folded arms. Isn't there anything else on TV? She was a snob about science fiction and hadn't seen an episode of Doctor Who since the early eighties. Eh, I suppose it's better than nothing. She watched Julia and Valentina watching the television. They are their soup slowly from mugs and looked keen. Elspeth happened to glance at the screen in time to see the Doctor walk out of the Tardis and into a defunct spaceship.
   That's David Tennant! Elspeth zoomed over to the television and sat herself a foot away from it. The Doctor and his companions had discovered an eighteenth-century French fireplace on a spaceship. A fire burned in the hearth. I want a fire, Elspeth thought. She had been experimenting with warming herself over the flames of the stove on the rare occasions that the twins cooked anything. The Doctor had crouched down by the fire and was conversing with a little girl in Paris in 1727 who seemed to be on the other side of the fireplace. Is it sad to fancy David Tennant when you're dead? This is a very strange programme. The little girl turned out to be the future Madame de Pompadour. Clockwork androids from the spaceship were trying to steal her brain.
   'Cyber-steampunk or steam-cyberpunk?' asked Julia. Elspeth had no idea what she meant. Valentina said, 'Look at her hair. Do you think we could do that?'
   'It's a wig,' said Julia. The Doctor was reading Madame de Pompadour's mind. He put his hands on her head, palms enclosing her face, fingers delicately splayed around her ears. Such long fingers, Elspeth marvelled. She placed her small hand on top of David Tennant's. The screen was deliciously warm. Elspeth sunk her hand into it, just an inch or so.
   'God, that's weird,' said Valentina. There was a dark silhouette of a woman's hand superimposed over the Doctor's. He let go of Madame de Pompadour's face, but the black hand remained where it was. Elspeth took her hand away; the screen hand stayed black. 'How did you do that?' said the Doctor. Elspeth thought he was speaking to her, then realised that Madame de Pompadour was answering him. I must have burned out the screen. What if I could do that with my face? She tucked her entire self into the TV and found herself looking out through the screen. It was wonderful inside the television, quite warm and pleasantly confining. Elspeth had only been in there for a second or two when the twins saw the screen go black. The TV died."
A ghost excited by The Girl in the Fireplace, in Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry (2009), pp. 132-3.

Illustration by BH Robinson of "Electro-Magnetic Waves", from David Carey, 'How it works': Television, (1968) p. 21.

"During an interview for Rolling Stone in November 1973, Bowie launched into a disquisition on song's place in his planned Ziggy Stardust stage production: 'The end comes when the infinites arrive. They really are a black hole, but I've made the people because it would be very hard to explain a black hole on stage ... Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a starman, so he writes "Starman", which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch onto it immediately. The starmen that he is talking about are called the infinites, and they are black-hole jumpers. Ziggy has been talking about this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the earth. They arrive somewhere in Greenwich Village.' Bowie's affinity with home-grown science-fiction permeates much of his work, and he has always enjoyed this Quatermass-style juxtaposition of the fantastic with the banal, of the mystical with the homely, of black holes with Greenwich village. Remarkably, this account of 'black-hole jumping' and of Ziggy's ultimate fate ('When the infinites arrive, they take bits of Ziggy to make themselves real because in their original state they are anti-matter and cannot exist in our world') is identical to the storyline of the BBC's tenth anniversary Doctor Who special The Three Doctors, a high-profile reunion of the show's lead actors which had been broadcast a few months earlier, while Bowie was in London recording Aladdin Sane."
The origins of the song "Starman" in Nicholas Pegg, The Complete David Bowie - Expanded and Updated Sixth Edition (2011), p. 236. (It's not the only reference to  Doctor Who in the book.)

Any more? Ideally, with page references, please...

Care of Sean McGhee of stylish pop band Artmagic:

"'This is it', says Chris. He tells us about his 'really good dream' last night. 'I was in Dr Who and the drawings on the carpets were satanic messages. It had chases and everything.'"
Pet Shop Boys Versus America (1994), p. 196.

David Bryher reminds me of this one (which nicks from descriptions of the fourth and fifth Doctors in the works of the all-mighty Terrance Dicks):

"[The Pirate Captain's] years of staring at the ocean had given him a nice even tan, and when asked to describe himself in letters to pen friends he would tend to note that he was 'all teeth and curls' but with a 'pleasant, open face'."
Gideon Defoe, The Pirates! in an Adventure with Communists (2006), p. 4.

Ian Farrington supplies this one:

"Inside were long rows of blue teleportation booths. Their shape and color reminded me of Doctor Who's TARDIS."
Ernest Cline, Ready Player One, p. 73.

The actor Anthony Keetch provided the above, from a strip in the 1981 Shiver and Shake Annual, pp. 90-6.

Stevens

Two weeks ago tomorrow, our beloved, daft Blue Cat was hit by a car. We think she was returning from a raid on the bins of the fish and chip shop on the main road, and it looked like she wouldn't have known anything about what hit her. In some ways, that's how I'd like to go.

We've been devastated by the loss, even now expecting her to prowl through the catflap at any moment, "prooting" and asking for food with her customary lick-lick-bite-bite. Our other cat, Shaggy, has sat watching the top of next door's garage, where Blue Cat liked to sleep, as if wondering why she's still not been down for her tea.

But we now have a new cat, Stevens (yes, named after both Yusuf Islam and The Green Death):

Our new cat, StevensStevens is a much shier, more cowardly cat than Blue Cat, or at least she was. Since yesterday she's been hollering at the top of her voice in the middle of the night, and craving of attention. Which suggests she hasn't yet been neutered and is currently on heat. So we've booked a trip to the vet for a few weeks' time.

Poor old Shaggy is rather terrified of her, I think because she wants something he cannot provide. Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques? That's my household at the moment.

Ancient Egypt Smash - comic-writing workshop

This week, I helped Kel Winser with a comic-writing workshop for 17 year-olds, run at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. I've done events like this before, and am generally asked in to talk about being a jobbing writer and the sorts of things that come up when I'm writing comics. I also have original artwork from a strip I wrote (drawn by the amazing John Ross from Doctor Who Adventures), and it helps the kids to see the stages the work goes through before it goes to print.

This time we tried something different and I was more involved. Kel asked me to write a script for the attendees to draw. The idea was that each attendee would draw one or two panels each, telling the story between them. They'd have to work together to agree character designs, setting and so on.

The museum was also keen for me to include aspects of Egyptology (and the workshop included an exercise in drawing objects from life), something about modern Egypt, the practice of archaeology itself and the ancient culture of Egypt - which isn't exactly easy in three pages of six panels each. So here's what I wrote:

ANCIENT EGYPT SMASH!
Script © Simon Guerrier 2012

PAGE ONE (OF THREE) – SIX PANELS

PANEL ONE
Establishing shot: Egypt in the future. A mix of the ancient and the futuristic. Pyramids (not the ones at Giza – something more unusual), but with skyscrapers nearby, and flying cars. Small detail in this: an archaeological dig, with the entrance to an excavation.

CAPTION:
Egypt. 2212 AD.

PANEL TWO
A dark tomb being excavated. Closed doors with hieroglyphics (or your own strange writing) on them. In front of them kneels a figure, a silhouette, holding a torch as she reads. Though we don't know it yet, she's a woman – but we'll meet MAGGIE in the next panel. There are other archaeologists working nearby.

CAPTION:
Where incredible finds are still being made...

MAGGIE:
So it says... Oh.

MAGGIE 2:
“Death to men who enter here...”

PANEL THREE
MAGGIE lifts a torch to investigate what she's found. She's an accomplished archaeologist, but she's NOT River Song or Lara Croft or any other hero you already know. Her clothes are practical but futuristic. She wears glasses.

MAGGIE:
Good job I'm not a man.

MAGGIE 2:
But you lot best stay back...

PANEL FOUR
Same as PANEL TWO, but MAGGIE pushes the doors with her hand and the doors creak open. We can just see inside parts of the two giant ROBOTS inside.

CAPTION:
Creeeeeeeek!

PANEL FIVE
MAGGIE holds the torch up to examine two huge robots, their designs based on Egyptian gods (you pick which ones). ROBOT 1 and ROBOT 2 look brand new. We need to see their faces, and their blank, staring eyes (to make the next panel work).

MAGGIE:
They're amazing. So perfectly preserved!

Page one, panel six
by RyanPANEL SIX
Close on the robots' faces as their eyes light up. MAGGIE falls back in horror. The ROBOTS speech bubbles are in a different, more mechanical typeface and the bubbles are more square.

ROBOT 1:
That's real nice of you, puny human.

MAGGIE:
Oh!

PAGE TWO – SIX PANELS

PANEL ONE
ROBOT 1 and ROBOT 2 smash their way through the doors and out of the tomb. The archaeologists run away, but MAGGIE tries to keep up with the robots.

CAPTION:
Crash! Thunk!

ARCHAEOLOGIST:
Eeek!

MAGGIE:
But you're... You're alive.

ROBOT 2:
Well, d'uh. God's don't die.

PANEL TWO
The ROBOTS stand outside the dig, gazing off at the skyscrapers, the flying cars (as PAGE ONE, PANEL ONE). MAGGIE running after them, struggling to keep up.

ROBOT 1:
How long did we sleep?

ROBOT 2:
I'll check the position of stars...

Page two, panel three
by ChantellePANEL THREE
ROBOT 1 leaning over to look, in amazement, at the reading on ROBOT 2's wrist. MAGGIE tries to intercede.

ROBOT 1:
Woah! What?!?

ROBOT 2:
Must be a glitch.

MAGGIE:
The doors of your tomb were sealed more than 4,000 years ago.

PANEL FOUR
The robots, shocked, turn on MAGGIE.

ROBOT 2:
The humans tricked us!

MAGGIE:
What? We didn't do anything!

PANEL FIVE
ROBOT 2 gestures at the skyscrapers, the flying cars.

ROBOT 2:
They locked us away – and built a world of their own!

ROBOT 2 2:
So we'll smash it!

PANEL SIX
The ROBOTS take to their air, leaving MAGGIE behind.

MAGGIE:
Wait! Come back!

MAGGIE 2:
What have I done?

PAGE THREE – SIX PANELS

PANEL ONE
The two ROBOTS smash a famous landmark from somewhere round the world. The bigger, the madder, the more recognisable, the better.

CAPTION:
Smash!

ROBOT 2:
Ha ha!

PANEL TWO
The two ROBOTS destroy ANOTHER famous landmark somewhere round the world. It has to be from a different country than the one in PANEL ONE.

ROBOT 1:
Good to stretch after all that time asleep.

CAPTION:
Crunch!

PANEL THREE
The two ROBOTS in the air, one holding on to a warplane, the other smashing into one. Behind them, lots of warplanes attacking.

CAPTION:
The humans try to fight back, but...

ROBOT 1:
Is this the best they can do?

CAPTION:
Clunk! Crunk!

PANEL FOUR
The ROBOTS in the air, the ground below them littered with broken planes and tanks.

ROBOT 1:
Okay. What do we smash next?

PANEL FIVE
From behind the robots as they look down – at a children's playground, with swings and slides, kids playing.

ROBOT 1:
Oh wow!

ROBOT 2:
Perfect.

Page three, panel six
by KelPANEL SIX
The giant ROBOTS... on the swings. Small children stare and point and laugh.

ROBOT 1:
This is amazing! Wheee!

ROBOT 2:
Yeah, okay, humans. You can keep your world.

END

Make your own comic drawn by Lee Sullivan

In 2007, I devised a task for a comic-writing workshop aimed at teenagers being run by the V&A's Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. The following four images by amazing comics artist Lee Sullivan were printed out on postcards.

Use the images to tell a story. You decide which order they go in, and add captions and speech bubbles. You can add to the images or create new panels of your own. You don't have to use all (or any) of the panels. Enjoy.

(Please note: you're welcome to try the task yourself or share it with your friends so long as you don't make money from it. The task and scripts are (c) Simon Guerrier 2007, and the artwork (c) Lee Sullivan 2007.)

To prove the idea worked, I wrote two short scripts using the images in different combinations. In discussion with the organisers, I avoided super heroes, violence and explosions, and also tried to tie the images and stories to the age and experience of the kids attending. But the kids were (and you are) not limited by those restrictions.

VERSION ONE

PANEL 1
RED-HAIRED GIRL and BOY IN CAP are on their phones, BLOND BOY is whistling and MONSTER looks at us.

CAPTION:
Just another day waiting for the 57.

CAPTION 2:
With an invisible monster.

MONSTER:
(THINKS): Cor, I’m bored. I’ll use my powers to make that pretty girl see me and fall in love.

PANEL 2
RED-HAIRED GIRL and BLOND BOY looked shocked. BOY IN CAP gazes at MONSTER.

MONSTER:
(THINKS) Drat, missed!

PANEL 3
RED-HAIRED GIRL and BLOND BOY hold hands. BOY IN CAP struggles in the arms of MONSTER.

MONSTER:
(THINKS) She's fallen for the wrong person!

MONSTER 2:
Hmf! I’ll just have to eat this one.

PANEL 4
Bus drives away with RED HAIR LADY and BLOND BOY.

RED-HAIRED GIRL:
Is that guy in the hat… flying?

BLOND BOY:
Help!

[END]

VERSION TWO

PANEL 1
RED-HAIRED GIRL and BLOND BOY hold hands. BOY IN CAP struggles in the arms of MONSTER.

CAPTION:
Waiting for the last bus on Sunday night.

RED-HAIRED GIRL:
It’s been such a great weekend!

MONSTER:
I just want a little kiss goodbye.

PANEL 2
RED-HAIRED GIRL and BOY IN CAP are on their phones, BLOND BOY is whistling and MONSTER looks at us.

RED-HAIRED GIRL:
Yeah, I’m just seeing him off. Be home soon.

MONSTER:
Heh heh. I don’t just want a little kiss.

PANEL 3
RED-HAIRED GIRL and BLOND BOY looked shocked. BOY IN CAP gazes at MONSTER.

BOY IN CAP:
Well how about I stay with you and she takes Blondie home? 

PANEL 4
Bus drives away with RED-HAIRED GIRL and BLOND BOY.

BLOND BOY:
A swap!

BOY IN CAP:
I bet Mum doesn’t even notice.

[END]

AAAGH! Davros's milkshake brings all the monsters to the yard!

My 36th and - for the time being - final episode of AAAGH!, as featured in issue #280 of Doctor Who Adventures . As always, it's drawn by Brian Williamson and edited by Natalie Barnes, who gave kind permission to post it here. You can read all my AAAGH!s.

ETA: This Cult Den interview with me includes brief mention of AAAGH! and how it came about.

AAAGH! and the Martians

A summery AAAGH! from issue #279 of Doctor Who Adventures , and featuring two lots of Martians (sadly no room to squeeze in the Ambassadors... as well). As always, it's written by me, drawn by Brian Williamson and edited by Natalie Barnes - who gave kind permission for me to post it here. You can read all my AAAGH!s. Tomorrow, Davros's milkshake brings all the monsters to the yard.

... of DEATH.

Guerrier brothers' films news

Thrilled to learn that the spooky short film I wrote (and appear in), Revealing Diary , will play at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York this November. We had a brilliant time at Aesthetica last year, when we took Cleaning Up . We made lots of new friends and won an award which is currently on my parents' mantelpiece.

Also, while we wait to hear how The Plotters has done in the Virgin Media Shorts competition, the Virgin Media people recently chose as their blog of the week a post by our amazing director of photography, Sebastian Solberg, with lots of thrilling behind-the-scenes pics. Including this one of me looking sophisticated:

Three new CDs you can buy with your money

I have some more product out with which you can swap you hard-earned cash.

Doctor Who and the Uncertainty Principle is out this month. The Second Doctor Who and his companions Zoe and Jamie investigate a strange death and - long after she's stopped having adventures with the Doctor - Zoe continues her struggles with the sinister Company. It's performed by lovely Wendy Padbury, with her daughter Charlie Hayes returning as Company lawyer Jen.
Top fact: the first time I met Wendy, she asked me to explain what Torchwood was (she'd been out of the country when it was on) and the more I told her, the less she believed me. Blake's 7 and the Magnificent Seven is also out this month, as part of the Liberator Chronicles Volume 2. Jenna and Avon meet another band of rebels who are also battling the Federation - and might be doing it better than Blake is. It's performed by Jan Chappell and Paul Darrow.
Top fact: Jan Chappell starred in straight-to-video coolness Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans in 1994. It was trying to follow up the success of that which led producer Jason Haigh-Ellery to set up Big Finish Productions. Big Finish later gave me my first gig writing fiction and I am slightly in love with them. Doctor Who and the Empty House  is out next month. When the TARDIS materialises in rural England in the 1920s, the Doctor and his friends Amy and Rory discover a crashed spaceship nearby. It’s the beginning of a nightmarish adventure for them...
Top fact: Raquel Cassidy, who reads the story, played a space-wasp for me in The Judgement of Isskar  - something she was kind enough to remember when I interviewed her on behalf of Doctor Who Adventures at the filming of The Rebel Flesh .