Darkness On The Edge of Town

[Pip Madeley]

Discussion about Paul Clement's Fifth Doctor story "Darkness On The Edge of Town" for the PS website will be held here from Friday 1st December.

[Anthony Williams]

well, it's now online, here: http://www.planetskaro.org.uk/creative/fanfic/

let us know what you think!

Ant x

[Paul Clement]

let us know what you think!

I think Paul Clement should stick to doing the washing up.

[Andrew Curnow]

I've read up to the end of chapter one, but I didn't want to post anything until I'd finished it off. So far so good (although the pedant in me has spotted a couple of typos) and Davison's portrayal has been caught particularly well I think.

[Paul Clement]

(although the pedant in me has spotted a couple of typos)

I found one in the last line of the whole story too. I should have given it another check through beofre I sent it off.

[Pip Madeley]

I found one in the last line of the whole story too. I should have given it another check through beofre I sent it off.

Collect them up and they can be recified.

[Andrew Curnow]

And then after that, they can be rectified.

(There'll be thrashings in the Admin office tonight, I can tell...)

[Paul Clement]

As he reached the periphery of the, he looked back but the man who had once been Sebastian Marwood had gone,

Last paragraph of the epilogue. There's a word missing, it should read periphery of the crowd.

[Pip Madeley]

Last paragraph of the epilogue. There's a word missing, it should read periphery of the crowd.

I meant collect them up in an e-mail, don't use this thread to nit pick

As for you Curnow, well, you like Open All Hours, so I'll let you off. For now...

[Paul Monk]

I did have a version where I corrected the typos but it got lost in the great computer crash (when Jody spilled wine on the laptop) and in the haste to get the story to Pip I forgot to go through and check again.
So my fault. Sorry.

[Andrew Curnow]

Read the Interlude section this morning after breakfast, which was very enjoyable - you can't beat a good cliffhanger! And again, the regulars all come over very well, even to such details as Turlough's habit of always looking behind him as he moves.

Edited to add:I also thought that this summed up Turlough in a nutshell: "Work wasn’t a particularly pleasant notion to Turlough and manual work even less so"

[Paul Clement]

When I wrote the first part of what is now the interlude section, I asked Treena to read through it as I was concerned that maybe I had gone a step too far. She felt that perhaps maybe I had and I had another good read through of it, and decided that keeping it in served a purpose in showing what the Old Ones were like and decided to keep it as it was. I'd love to know if anyone felt I had gone too far in that section.

you can't beat a good cliffhanger!

I had that cliffhanger in mind almost from the outset. I'm quite pleased with the way that it panned out, though at the time I wasn't sure I'd done it justice.

[SiHart]

I'm really enjoying Chapter One. I can hear the regulars saying all their lines!

Si xx

[Paul Clement]

I can hear the regulars saying all their lines!

Thank you, Si. That was one of the things I was worried about whether I had got right.

[Andrew Curnow]

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS




I would say the regulars are all very well-handled. Turlough especially comes across as very faithful to his on-screen self, but at the same time with a bit more depth.

Having finished the story now, I have to first say that I really enjoyed it. The various interludes back to the Great Old Ones broke the story up nicely, and I didn't twig how exactly that strand would tie up with the main action until very near the end - also, by having followed the 'backstory' to Lloigar in the interludes it neatly avoided having a huge 'infodump' speech from the Doctor.

If I had to make some criticism, I would have to say I did think the climax was just a bit rushed - Lord Marwood flings himself and Sebastian back into the vortex, and it's all over so quickly. But that is very much a minor criticism, it was just what struck me as I was reading it.

And the epilogue was very unexpected, a neat 'da-da-da' twist ending. All in all, a really enjoyable read, and hopefully the first of many on the new PS site!!