Thursday, January 1, 2015

AUTHOR! AUTHOR!


For a while there during the RTD era, the Tenth Incarnation of the Doctor and his companions were meeting famous English authors almost once a season:
  • Charles Dickens
  • William Shakespeare
  • Agatha Christie
And the Sixth Incarnation met HG Wells.

We haven't seen that happen since (unless you want to count Winston Churchill), but I think it's a theme that should be revisited at least once every season.  Spark an interest in reading the same way "Vincent And The Doctor" opened up a world of art to my 7 year old nephew at the time.

So here are a few authors (not all of them English) whose lives and works might lend themselves to a 'Doctor Who' episode:
  • J.R.R. Tolkien (perhaps something about the Forest of Cheem being an inspiration?)
  • Mary Norton
  • Walter Scott
  • L. Frank Baum
  • Arthur Conan Doyle (although Sherlock Holmes was real and Dr. Watson was the actual author!)
  • Mark Twain (a Sea Devil on board a riverboat?)
  • Jane Austen
  • G.K. Chesterton
  • Stephen King (which would link to a 'Quantum Leap' episode - and King could play himself!)
Just some ideas.....

BCnU!

1 comment:

Hugh said...

All good suggestions, but I have two I want to see:
Francois Villon (though the scenario I have might work better as a Big Finish or prose story with a classic Doctor), where it turns out his companion to the "Ballade of By-Gone Ladies" turns out not to be the "Ballade of Olde-Tyme Lords" but, in fact, the "Ballade of Old Time Lords," a message to Gallifreyans.
And...Oscar Wilde, with Stephen Fry reprising that role (and for your purposes thus providing a link to _Ned Blessing_) . Given Fry is now older than Wilde was when he died, I envision a story set in the twentieth century (perhaps allowing Wilde to meet Captain Jack Harness) in which it turns out Wilde was able to cheat death through an alien trick that proves _Dorian Gray_ was not simply or purely fiction.