"Writing Magical History Tour" by Si Hart

It all began with a bang, quite literally.

The ending of Soap of Fatal Death caused us a few problems. We wanted to do something huge and amazing that would make everyone desperate to hear the next PS Doctor Who adventure… but what to do? More than a few ideas were traded between Si and I before one day we settled on destroying the TARDIS with the loudest, biggest explosion you’d ever heard. Quite exciting wasn’t it?

Anyway, that left us with a pretty big puzzle to solve. How do we do a story that follows on from that, especially since we’d destroyed Doctor Who’s two biggest icons, The Doctor and the TARDIS! It certainly wouldn’t be fair to leave another writer to try and deal with that, and anyway, we had a few ideas about what we wanted to do with story 3, as it was known for quite some time.

Of all the many things we mapped out early on in the writing of Magical History Tour was that we wanted it to focus on our two companions, Nick and Rob. We like them both enormously. They’re really capable companions, who were capable of carrying a story on their own, and we wanted a chance to see how they’d cope without the Doctor there to get them out of the trouble they were bound to find themselves in. We both agreed that Dave and Steven who play them deserved a chance to shine.

That was all very well, but where and when would they end up? Si had secretly written Keepsake, which established that Rob would be back at home in 2007 with his Mum in Putney, but just where had Nick ended up? One thing both of us had talked about doing a historical story, because having been to the future in Echoes of the Protii and to the present day in Soap of Fatal Death it seemed like the obvious challenge for us to tackle. We both had ideas about where and when we wanted to set the story. Si fancied doing a pirate story with lots of swashbuckling action, which sounded great fun. Meanwhile I was thinking that it’d be great do a swinging sixties story, set in London in the Summer of Love. There were loads of potential in both settings for a really good Doctor Who story… but that wasn’t enough of a challenge! Could we make them work in the same Doctor Who story?

Yes! It took some doing, and many emails between us, but Si hammered out a workable plot centred on the three time zones: present day Putney, early 1967 and the seventeenth century. The 1967 strand would feature Nick meeting a celebrity: Beatles manager Brian Epstein, while Rob was stranded at home in 2007 with his Mum leading a mundane and boring life. We wanted to look at how they both adjusted to a life without the Doctor and whether they could lead a normal life without him. As I said to Si at one stage during the plotting period, "to me this story is essentially about our characters Nick and Rob trying to live without the man who’s been their inspiration- it's about them trying to find a new inspiration in their lives to replace the Doctor, who's gone for good, maybe. That's why Rob hits on Emma and why Nick has a deep relationship with Brian..." One of them copes with it all rather better than the other, but for now I’m not revealing which one does and which one doesn’t!

Including a real person in the story was a new challenge for the both of us. We did a great deal of research to make sure that we didn’t mess up the characterisation. I’m a bit of a Beatles fan, so that wasn’t too onerous a task! I read his autobiography, A Cellarfull of Noise in order to get a good idea of his “voice” and a general biography of him written from interviews with his colleagues, friends and acquaintances, which was really useful, as it showed the way he presented himself to the outside world.

As is quite well known, Brian Epstein died in August 1967 through the incautious use of prescription drugs. He was quite a sad man in many ways, a bit lost after The Beatles stopped touring and not very sure if he had any place in the world. This fitted neatly with Nick’s predicament, as Nick certainly doesn’t belong in 1967 either. Brian’s cruising in London parks gave us a perfect meeting point for the two and from there on, there was much fun to be had with the two of them. Writing someone real is quite a challenge. What I didn’t want to do was to be disrespectful to him by mocking him in the story. That would make all the hard work we’d put into the research a waste of time.

Meanwhile, Rob has problems of his own, and makes the mistakes that we’ve come to expect of Rob, doing the wrong things at the wrong time! It was fun to write for Rob, though I have to confess that I prefer to write for Nick, whom I think is a far more sympathetic character, but I suspect that Mr Hunt prefers Rob, so it all evens out!

And of course we’ve got a charismatic villain this time round, instead of the monsters of Protii or the disembodied threat of Soap’s Exec. Si was really set on this idea, as again it’s something we’ve not attempted before, and it would also give one of our cast a good part to play. Finding his motivation was one of our biggest challenges. We didn’t want to make him evil for the sake of it, and the inclusion of his family meant that if he put them in danger through his actions, there would have to be a really good reason why he would do so. I think we eventually found a good reason, but quite what it is, you’ll have to wait and see!

Just for the record, the story had various working titles: Curse of the Fallon, Stranded in Time, The Life of Brian, Time Gash and finally, Magical History Tour! There you go, that’s my Andrew Pixley moment done!

So now all we have to do is record it! Easy huh?

Simon Hart.

The Real Brian Epstein

Brian Epstein was born on September 19th 1934 to Jewish family; parents Harry and Queenie. Unlike archetypical heroes of rock, we can't claim that he worked his way to fame and fortune from an underprivileged background - he was brought up in Childwell, a classy area of Liverpool, and fell from a troubled and unproductive education into a ready-made role in the family's furniture business, Epstein & Sons.

Brian's success was, however, bourne of his own natural charisma and ability as a salesman. He liked the good things in life, always appearing well dressed and debonair in overall appearance. The combination of these attributes gave him the aura of a successful businessman, not to mention having an eye for talent which lead him to spot and put his faith in The Beatles. From the day he stood, mesmerised, as he first watched them play at Liverpool's Cavern, it was Brian's trust in the abilities of his charges, and his wise decision to approach them on their own terms (how many managers have been able to claim an acknowledged status as a "fifth" member of the band?) that forged the working relationship that saw the Beatles go from strength to strength. The band never stopped bettering their own achievements, at least not until after Brian's death, when they rapidly fell apart.

But Brian Epstein was a troubled man, as we will discover in Magical History Tour. His 'double life', split between the charming, smooth-talking manager that guided The Beatles towards being unarguably the most famous and popular band in pop music history, and the troubled loner that cruised at night for illicit and damaging sexual affairs. We attempt in the story to explore this man of contradiction by speculating on what would happen if his salvation had indeed one day arrived; a man who could rescue him spiritually from his loneliness. A man who once travelled in time and space in a Police Box shaped time machine with a Time Lord called the Doctor, but who was now as marooned and in need of stability as Brian himself. It was an irresistible storytelling opportunity, and one we hope you enjoy hearing played out.