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colinbakerstreet asked:

[2/2] Sometimes I read/hear a story, or see a painting/sculpture, which inspires me to join the conversation that humanity is having with itself. You're one of two writers I've come across this year that are giving me such inspiration (the other being Dylan Thomas... I didn't discover Under Milk Wood until this year, and wow). Looking forward to more of your work! x

Oh, that’s hugely kind - and it really helps making this silly and difficult writing job worthwhile! Thanks - and especially for venturing outside my Doctor Who work!

shearrob reblogged

disasterlesbianamelia

‘Forgive me for not getting up to greet you, but they’ve…cut off my legs.’

whooooaaa, first dalek juice and now this? rob shearman’s mind is a grim place to be

scriptscribbles

Brilliant, isn’t it?

Finished it a couple of hours ago. Yes, it is, though the final part does get just a little messy. I’m not quite sure what to make of ‘it all still happened, but in the shadows’. It makes a good contrast to the Doctor’s failed speech at the start of part four, now he’s he realised telling them to reject the Daleks was part of the problem, but it feels rather….clunky.

That being said, there’s so many brilliant moments and the critiques of capitalism and imperialism using nothing but the show’s own iconography are just stunning. Also, Part 2 and 3 are genuinely among the best cliffhangers of the series. Part 2 is the weaker of the two, but it’s still so good because at that point the prisoner in the tower is clearly set up to be Davros, with the creator line (if you remember that this was a 40th anniversary story it looks even more obvious). As for Part 3′s, ‘Come with me to witness my death…or my revenge!’ is such a good line for a Dalek I got actual chills.

Flaws or not, I think it’s an unambiguous classic anyway. I’m very glad this is my first experience of Six because I think if I saw The Twin Dilemma first I would hate him.

Thank you for the kind words - and for what it’s worth, I agree with you about the ending! I never really worked out how to solve it. I didn’t want to hit the reset button, because I hate stories being just airbrushed away like that because they have a paradox in them, and it would mewan that nothing had had any consequence - but at the same time you can’t reinvent all of twentieth century history and not put the toys back in the box when you’ve finished with them! I remember asking whether I could leave the paradox to stand, so that the English Empire really *did* take place - and then resolve it all in a sequel story a year later, in which the Doctor and Evelyn have the very adventure with the Daleks in 1906 that caused the situation in Jubilee in the first place! (Quite rightly, I was told not to be greedy, and to wrap up my story properly!) I did my best with Jubilee, but I think it’s a bit clumsy, that ending, and I should have done better. Sorry!

shearrob reblogged

colinbakerstreet

Scherzo remix: Gallifrey series 4 AU (prompted by this image)

Length: 6,551 words (including 230 words from the end of 4.2 Disassembled) Format: almost entirely dialogue CW: body horror, dark themes

I think this is rather clever.

shearrob reblogged

Don’t look at me like that, it was tardis-scooter’s idea, I’m just the terrible person who decided to draw it s̗̖̺̖͉͕ì̩̹̥͍͈l͓L͎͈͉͙̜̻y̤̝̦̠̭͎̰ ̼̪̣̭̟l̼͕̹̭̲̠ͅI̡͍tţ͔̳̭͕͇L̵͕̙̝̼͙̟͚e̟͘ ̩̼ͅg̢̻ì͖̦R̩̯̭̣l͓̭͇̱̖̜ ̼̜̙̟̥͖̜ẖ̴̭̺̱͎e͍͖͓͎̥͡L̵̜̦͈͎͓̠͇P ̟̰̘͎h҉̤E͇͔̣̤l̘͚̣̝ͅṕ̞͎̭̤̱̼?͈͇̣͍

R.I.P.

I met Terry Pratchett precisely twice. Once was when I rode alone in a hotel elevator with him, and I was too shy to say anything. And once, years later, when I told him about that - and he laughed and laughed. What a lovely man.

I know it seems small comfort today, but when a writer who has touched as many lives as Terry Pratchett dies, leaving behind an enormous body of work for readers yet unborn to discover, you realise he's not really gone, he'll live forever.

#terrypratchett

shearrob reblogged

shout out to robert shearman for being weird step-uncle to the entire classic who fandom

I wave back weirdly in return. Possibly grinning too widely. Possibly giving too much wiggle in my wave to my elbow.

...And everyone backs away.

shearrob reblogged

beyondthesunrise

Cosplay stuff

I started thinking about my cosplay for LIWho this year, and while I’d love to be Eight again, I think I wanna switch it up a bit. I have a few ideas that aren’t too hard to execute, but there’s one I really wanna do, but have no clue how to do it: Scherzo!Eight and Charley. I had this idea last year, and was in the same position of not knowing how to do it. Maybe this year I’ll find a way.

I've never had anything I've written inspire cosplay before, and I think that this is unimaginably cool. So in the nicest possible way, let's all point at eightofhearts in the hope that something comes of this! :)

Hello! Not been on tumblr for a while, because I have been frantic trying to finish my new book. And now I'm not really on tumblr either, but on a hotel balcony in Cyprus, as a reward for *nearly* finishing my book. Because I take rewards when I can. Just letting you know - I've received very kind messages wondering if I'm all right, and I am. Especially at the moment. What with the balcony and everything. :)

shearrob reblogged

ilikesallydonovan submitted:

Miles Richardson with Helen Goldwyn and Jane Goddard, as pictured in the booklet of The Sound of Fear.

You’re not the only one who can submit pictures of Miles Richardson (with glasses) to other people, you know.

Amazing.

That's my wife, that is! Sitting down, looking somewhat bemused, as marriage to me has no doubt taught her.

transclaude asked:

I saw today that you're coming to Big Finish Day Six. I'm looking forward to meeting you but I don't own any of the things you wrote in a CD format. Tenth Planet were pretty unclear on what we're allowed to bring for signing, do you know at all?

I'm afraid I don't know at all! I say, if it's pretty vague, then act accordingly, and discreetly bring what you want signed. If I'm on a formal autograph table and under penalty of death not to sign anything except CD covers, don't be concerned - off duty I'll be very happy to scribble on anything. :) Hope you have a great day, and I see you soon!

nyctosaurid asked:

Maybe I've gotten myself confused but I believe the retcon of your dalek was retconned itself in series 5. Amy Pond has no memory of the 2007 daleks despite being from 2010, so it's implied the event itself was erased from history by the cracks in time. I don't think it was ever brought up again, so it's ambiguous as to whether people remember or not in the end. It's quite possible Van Statten and everyone working for him honestly wouldn't know what a dalek is.

Sure, if you like! I just don't see Doctor Who's time travel working quite that way. If an event is erased from history by another event, I don't see why if that new event is erased by a third event why the first event magically pops back into existence. It's erased!

It's not simply a matter that Van Statten and his staff didn't know what a Dalek was, it's that their entire storyline could not have taken place in 2012 if The Stolen Earth took place beforehand. It's not just memory, it's motivation and point.

And I'm perfectly cheerful about that - and several weeks later Steven destroyed the universe anyway, and had it rebooted, simply so that none of this would be an issue! Even if Dalek somehow reappeared in history because of a crack, even that state of affairs is thrown into confusion by what happened afterwards.

But that's just my take on it - I see where you're coming from, and you're very welcome to disagree! :)

la-petite-fantome asked:

Oh my TARDIS of Gallifrey craftysquidz just recently showed me your Doctor Who audio story Scherzo and....wow! It was amazing, so much creativity and insanity I find you an amazing writer please keep writin' buddy!

Thank you! I keep plugging away at it every day - and it's made all the easier by kind messages like yours! :)

vigilforgallifrey asked:

Hello, sir! It's great to have you interact with us fans on tumblr. I just had to come say that on the topic of "Dalek" and when it's set, it's quite funny that it is stated that the president of the United States in 2012 is a Democrat, and that prediction turned out true!

Entirely down to me. :)

Do you remember why Dalek is set in 2012?

Russell asked for it. Simple as that.

We probably wouldn't bother with a near future setting if it were produced today. I know why he wanted it at the time, though - we were six episodes in, and still demonstrating that the TARDIS could go anywhere in time and space. Rose visiting her own near future, and being able to comment upon the fact she'd now be in her twenties, was potentially enough a piece of wonder for the audience as going to the last days of planet Earth.

Of course, it never occurred to me that there'd still be new Doctor Who being made in 2012. (Well, it occurred to me - in a sort of forlorn hope! - but the idea it would make it to even a third or fourth season seemed unlikely. That's not how TV usually works in the UK any more - the idea of a new series being able to hope to match the classic series' 26 year run seemed utterly impossible. Now - I wouldn't bet against it!)

shearrob reblogged

meisiluosi asked:

Recently found a vid that has the several parts of the "Foolish King" story compiled into a single audio. Makes for a superb bedtime story! And I'd like to ask - how was the whole "divergence arc" put together? How much of it was planned when you were writing Scherzo and did you have any idea of what would the key episodes be about? Or was the story of the foolish king incorporated later?

shearrob answered:

I’ll be honest - I didn’t have a clue where the divergent universe was going! I just assumed the eighth Doctor was going to be in it for a long while - and since I was writing the first story in there, I should go as weird as I could with it, just to establish it *was* different, and then other writers could pull back later.

(Zagreus wasn’t written either - not even at the time Scherzo was *recorded* - so I was pretty much just dancing in a void! But I like dancing in voids. It’s what writing is about!)

The tale of the foolish king was written in segments, right between the episodes of Scherzo - just as you hear them. They were rewards for me to write after the increasingly hard and bitter dialogue! I really wanted there to be something stylistically that gave a strange fairy tale vibe to Scherzo - it makes the ‘otherness’ of the universe feel all the more acute. And to play with the idea of sentient sound on another level to the one the main story could offer. (And, let’s face it, just to break up the Doctor and Charley’s story a bit, and give us all some relief!) I like that tale - it’s one of the things that inspired me to go into short story writing proper, which is what I do mostly with my days now, writing very weird books. But I’m not entirely sure it’s a fairy tale that works on its own without the Doctor Who bit to contrast with it. (I don’t know! I just get that feeling.)

Thank you for liking it, though. You have a weird taste in bedtime stories, and one that I greatly approve of!

Thanks for the answer! Now, all that makes Scherzo all the more impressive! (I must admit that after Scherzo and Natural History of Fear I was slightly disappointed by how normal some of the stories got. I still liked most of them and downright loved some of them - like The Last or Caerdroia - but I just wanted more of them to be more like Scherzo or Natural History of Fear or Time Works (if I remember correctly, that was originally supposed to be a divergence story as well? Certainly feels like one - more so than for example The Twilight Kingdom…). But maybe that would have been a tad too off kilter even for BF Doctor Who (I’d certainly like it, though)…:-)

I guess the story of the foolish king does work better within its original context - but it’s such a beautiful piece of writing that it can stand on its own, I think. The reason I asked about the whole creation process behind the divergence arc was that I think the story works very nicely not only as a part of Scherzo but also as a kind of a frame of reference throughout the whole story arc. It sets up patterns and themes that keep popping up throughout the divergence series (or maybe I’m just reading stuff into stuff - I’m super good at that…;-)).

Oh, you may not be reading into it at all! Or not inaccurately, in any case. Just writing something in one story means it can affect what someone else does in another! I'd love to believe that the little story I had Paul McGann read that cold day in Bristol went on to influence adventures as yet unimagined afterwards. That would be thrilling. (Just as 'The Next Life' clearly echoes Scherzo - which made me rather pleased and smug.)

That was always the joy of writing Big Finish. We'd be inspired by each other's work when they came out every month, and our next scripts would reflect that. (Scherzo was hugely influenced, of course, by Neverland - which was the most recent eighth Doctor story in release when I'd written it.)

Thank you so much for the kind words. I must admit, I'm very fond of that little fairy tale - it might be my favourite individual thing I wrote for Doctor Who.

meisiluosi asked:

Recently found a vid that has the several parts of the "Foolish King" story compiled into a single audio. Makes for a superb bedtime story! And I'd like to ask - how was the whole "divergence arc" put together? How much of it was planned when you were writing Scherzo and did you have any idea of what would the key episodes be about? Or was the story of the foolish king incorporated later?

I'll be honest - I didn't have a clue where the divergent universe was going! I just assumed the eighth Doctor was going to be in it for a long while - and since I was writing the first story in there, I should go as weird as I could with it, just to establish it *was* different, and then other writers could pull back later.

(Zagreus wasn't written either - not even at the time Scherzo was *recorded* - so I was pretty much just dancing in a void! But I like dancing in voids. It's what writing is about!)

The tale of the foolish king was written in segments, right between the episodes of Scherzo - just as you hear them. They were rewards for me to write after the increasingly hard and bitter dialogue! I really wanted there to be something stylistically that gave a strange fairy tale vibe to Scherzo - it makes the 'otherness' of the universe feel all the more acute. And to play with the idea of sentient sound on another level to the one the main story could offer. (And, let's face it, just to break up the Doctor and Charley's story a bit, and give us all some relief!) I like that tale - it's one of the things that inspired me to go into short story writing proper, which is what I do mostly with my days now, writing very weird books. But I'm not entirely sure it's a fairy tale that works on its own without the Doctor Who bit to contrast with it. (I don't know! I just get that feeling.)

Thank you for liking it, though. You have a weird taste in bedtime stories, and one that I greatly approve of!

elisedorian asked:

When I started watching NuWho, I was't sure I would like it. Then came 'Dalek'. It's just... brilliant. A lot of my love for this episode comes from Eccleston's fantastic acting, but I have you to thank for putting words in his mouth. So - thank you.

Chris is extraordinary in it, isn't he? I'm ever so grateful to him for that!

Thank you for the kind words.

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