The Fiction Factory

Another quick update with some more fanfic news.

I’v just completed one story for a project for Obverse books, which is yet to be announced but will be a treat for fans of 20th century TV classics. I’m also working on a story for a Who-related project for Pencil Tip Publishing , which should be something really rather special.

On the subject of the Obverse, a very special project has been announced. In aid of author Tommy Donbavand, who is gravely ill and in need of support, Obverse are publishing four brand new, unofficial Dr. Who novels featuring the eccentric scientist as played by Peter Cushing. Written by a well-known Who author (who shall remain nameless), the set includes novelisations of the two Dalek movies, Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks: Invasion Earth - 2150AD, plus two novels based on Hartnell stories, imagining what further movies might have been like had Aaru kept making them. Dr. Who in "The Tenth Planet Invades the Moonbase and Dr. Who and the Ice Men from Mars pit Dr. Who against the Cybermen and the Ice Warriors.

You can buy a complete set of the four books for a discount, or buy the individual books. There's only a week left to get pre-order in though - this is a very limited edition set.

REVIEW: 'Aliens in the Mind' by Robert Holmes

The classic BBC radio drama Aliens in the Mind is currently available to stream on BBC Radio 4 Extra. A fine science fiction tale from the mind of great scriptwriter Robert Holmes, you can listen to it here (at time of posting, the serial is on episode three of its six-part run). Here is my old review of this story, originally posted on The History of the Doctor.

Aliens in the Mind began life as a submission for the Doctor Who in the late 1960s by the now legendary Robert Holmes. Then titled Aliens in the Blood, it would have featured the second Doctor, Jamie, and presumably Zoe. For various reasons, it wasn’t picked up, but the outline was several years later to form the basis of this radio serial. Holmes was apparently unable to write the script himself, and it was instead handled by one Rene Basilico - although, having been unable to find any further information on this individual, he may be a pseudonym for all I know.

Rewritten in its entirety, the story is centred on two academics, John Cornelius and Professor Curtis Lark, played by two absolute legends of horror and sci-fi. The more stoic and mild-mannered Cornelius is played by Peter Cushing, while the witty American parapsychologist Prof. Lark is voiced by Vincent Price. Cushing is, of course, perfect in his role as a gentlemanly surgeon, while Price is as wonderfully fruity and sardonic as ever. Honestly, I could listen to that man read out telephone book - what a marvellous voice he has, capable of making anything seem witty or haunting. The duo are old acquaintances, reunited when their friend, Dr. Hugh Dexter, is killed under mysterious circumstances.

Travelling to the remote Hebridean island of Lerwigh, the doctorish duo discover that Baxter’s death is just one part of a far greater mystery. For the Lerwigh is plagued by something known as ‘island sickness,’ a strange affliction that affects the locals minds in their teens. Further investigation reveals that this is merely the maturation stage for a race of mutants - human anomalies with telepathic tendencies. Tendencies that even they, for the most part, are unaware of. They’d be harmless were it not for the occasional second-stage mutation, the so-called Controllers or Masters, who have the ability to psychically control the main mutant populace.

Uncovering the signs of a conspiracy, the pair take the young Flora (Sandra Clarke) away for examination. To all appearances, she is nothing more than a mentally-disabled young adult, but is, in fact, a budding Controller, able to call her fellow mutants from anywhere within a mile radius to obey her every command. In London, they discover that the ongoing emigration from Lerwigh has created a greater threat to humanity than they could ever have realised.

It’s a slow-paced drama, concerned with gently racking up the tension rather than providing action and thrills. It’s perhaps too slow at times, dragging a little in the middle episodes, although continual revelations and plot developments maintain interest. Cushing and Price dominate a fair-sized cast, their voices always distinct against the array of Scots accents. Scenes which have them simply sitting down to dinner are used to summarise the plot, with a smattering of banter to keep it diverting. There are flashes of Holmesian wit, but the dialogue does sometimes slip into dry exposition. Nonetheless, the tension gradually mounts to a chilling finale, which manages to tie up the immediate threat, while leaving the ending open to the greater consequences. Who fans will enjoy hearing Richard Hurndall in the cast, bringing two substitute first Doctors together. There’s some subtle but effective sound work, including some very restrained gunshots, but the main strength of the play lies in Price and Cushing’s earnest depiction of the concepts, which take in telepathy, hypnotism, slavery, politics and eugenics.

While not the classic Holmes’s reputation might suggest, Aliens in the Mind is a worthwhile and intriguing example of audio science fiction.

HAMMERAMA: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

You can't have Hallowe'en without a bit of Hammer, and despite the unseasonal blazing sunshine this gone Hallows Eve, I turned to the film that put Hammer Horror on the map. Hammer had, of course, been around for many years before The Curse of Frankenstein, and had dabbled in sci-fi and horror with such titles as The Quatermass X-Periment. Yet it was Curse that would kick off their reputation as the masters of British horror. Full colour X-certificate gothic horror with just enough gruesomeness and gore to shock and entice the British public in equal measure. While tame by the standards of today's gut-drenched horror films, Hammer's chillers were scandalous by the standards of the time. Critics savaged Curse as debased and depraved as much they applauded its acting and production techniques.


There have been dozens of films based on Shelley's novel Frankenstein, already almost 140 years old when Hammer produced its own version. There were already numerous such films by 1957, the most famous and well-regarded being Universal's 1931 film. The success of this was jealously guarded by the company, and Universal did everything they could to ensure that Hammer could not replicate any elements of the monochrome classic. Every adaptation of the novel has played fast and loose with the source material, and Hammer's is no different. Indeed, the need to differentiate their version from Universal's perhaps led to the very different plot used in Curse, which bears little resemblance to that of the novel. Bookended by the possibly insane Baron Frankenstein telling his story while awaiting the hangman's noose, the storyline retains the fundamentals of the scientist stitching together a creature from human corpses and bringing it to life with electricity, but little else. Notably, one element to make it through was the Creature's encounter with a poor blind man, albeit playing out quite differently than in the book. It's a scene notably absent from Universal's version, although it was worked into its sequel, Bride of Frankenstein. However, while in the novel and Bride it is used to develop sympathy for the Creature by providing someone who does not see his terrible visage, Curse uses it to ramp up the horror and danger posed by the Creature.


This is, of course, the first outing for Hammer's classic double act, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, although not the first ever film to feature them both (that was a 1948 production of Hamlet, although Lee was uncredited). The duo would star in a number of films together for Hammer, often as opposing characters, and struck up a deep and famous friendship. Cushing is absolutely fantastic as Victor Frankenstein; idealistic, engaging, yet chillingly amoral and oozing with hubris. In spite of his great intellect, he is a borderline sadist, taking very little time to progress from drowning puppies to murdering old friends in cold blood. Not to mention his cold-hearted affair with his own housemaid, little more than a sex object used by the Baron to sate his baser impulses. Lee, however, is rather wasted here, with little opportunity to show the skill that later made him so renowned. Cast primarily for his height (his role almost went to Carry On... star and future Ice Warrior Bernard Bresslaw), he has no lines and surprisingly little screentime. Nonetheless, Lee manages to bring both fearsome power and an injured vulnerability to the part of the Creature.


Part of the agreement of terms with Universal was that Hammer's version of the Creature could not look like the infamous flat-topped version played by Boris Karloff. Make-up artist Jack Pierce created a unique new look for the Creature, and while it will never be as widely recognised as the Universal version, it has its own distinct quality. It's a particularly unpleasant version of Frankenstein's creation, with rotten, pallid flesh boasting very visible stitching. One eye is white with cataract, while the other is piercingly intelligent. It's a deeply unsettling image.

The film has a small cast, with the bulk of scenes going to Frankenstein and his teacher, accomplice and eventual enemy, Paul Krempe, played with conviction by Robert Urquhart. Melvyn Hayes is impressive, and convincingly Cushing-like, as Victor's younger self. Hazel Court is also very good as Elizabeth, the potential Mrs Frankenstein. But it's Cushing who owns this film, his every scene bristling with charm and threat in equal measure. He is, quite appropriately, electrifying.



The success of The Curse of Frankenstein would lead to the production of six sequels, all but one featuring Cushing as the mad Baron. More significant is that Curse launched Hammer into focusing almost solely on Horror until the mid-seventies. Hammer immediately went into production on Dracula, which reunited Cushing and Lee and allowed the latter to show just what he was capable of. Dracula, its own follow-ups, and the 1959 release The Mummy, cemented Cushing, Lee and Hammer as the new faces of horror.  

HAMMERAMA The Abominable Snowman (1957)

Nigel Kneale's best known contribution to science fiction is, of course, Quatermass. However, he also scripted several other tall tales, one of the best of which, The Creature, was aired as a ninety-minute television play by the BBC in 1955. As with The Quatermass Experiment two years earlier, The Creature was well-enough received to catch the eye of Hammer Film Productions, and was remade as a feature film for in release in 1957.


Like many such early productions, The Creature was not recorded, so we can be very thankful that Hammer chose to buy the rights and develop a cinematic version. The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas, to give it its full US title, could like quite clichéd to a modern viewer. Indeed, the English scientist on the trail of a legendary beast wasn't a new story even in the fifties. Professor Challenger was up to this sort of stuff in 1912, and that was a holdover of the classic Victorian explorer trope. Yes, this is all very Boy's Own Adventure stuff, but it's a solid, well-written and well-made example of that genre.


The film is bound to score points with me because it stars Peter Cushing, who reprises his role as Dr. John Rollason from the original. This is still early in Cushing's movie career, only his second film for Hammer, after his big break earlier in the year, The Curse of Frankenstein. The sturdy, gentle and terribly English naturalist Dr. Rollason is a standard Cushing performance, subtly physical and perfectly proper. He outclasses everyone else in the film. He's in a different league to Forrest Tucker, who plays the brash American entrepreneur Dr. Friend. The only reason he's even in this film is to get the film to sell in America. In return for providing an American name actor, co-producer Robert Lippert received the US distribution rights. It's the same reason we got the woefully miscast Brian Donlevy as Quatermass. Still, he might not be the greatest actor, but Tucker fits the arrogant yeti hunter part well.


Keeping the British end up is Richard Wattis, a well-known face in comedy from the fifties and sixties, as Rollason's fretful sidekick Peter Fox. Maureen Connell gets little to do as Helen, Rollason's wife, except exclaim her worries about her husband, until the revised final act, wherein she and Fox mount a rescue. These characters were not in the television version, and while they are a little surplus to requirements for the early part of the film, they allow for a more rounded cast and more complex relationships than otherwise. Arnold Marle is reasonably dignified as the Tibetan lhama, and there are at least some actors of Asian descent in smaller roles. As an aside, I think it's pretty clear that Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln saw either this or the original. Their Doctor Who story The Abominable Snowmen has almost exactly the same set-up and plot beats as this. They added in the alien intelligence and made the yeti robots, but take that away and they're practically the same story.


Very little alteration was made to the script for the movie version, thanks to its already compact running time, although director Val Guest made some uncredited rewrites to speed things up a little. Guest, who had collaborated with Kneale on the two Quatermass adaptations for Hammer, made a good call. While the film is pretty snappy for one of its vintage, it slows down abominably (sorry) in the middle section. Once the premise and location are set-up, the actual hunt for the yeti goes slowly until the final thirty-five minutes, when the Creature itself finally makes itself known.



Wisely, Guest keeps the yeti in the shadows for most of the film, with the explorers only on the cusp of its discovery. This serves the central theme of the story, that of rapacious humans being the true beasts rather than the noble snowmen, and saves them from the impossible task of making a realistic and budget-friendly monster. We receive only glimpses of the Creature, the most significant for much of the film being the huge, hairy hand that rips through the canvas of a tent. Once Rollason finally comes face to face with the beings, a theorised sideline of hominid evolution, we are treated to a glimpse of a face. It's a subtle design and a powerful moment, selling the strength and intelligence of the apelike beings. It's a strong outing for early Hammer, enough of a chill factor to be recognisably theirs but clearly before they had elected which direction they would be following.

HAMMERAMA: Fear in the Night (1972)

This is the first in an occasional series of reviews as I go through my Hammer Horror collection in no particular order. New 'I Was Raised by Spacemen' on the way too!

Fear in the Night (1972)


Fear in the Night is one of the later films of Hammer's great movie period. It's one of those lesser known films that most people have never heard of, fewer still have seen. I had never seen it before, so I picked it out of the box set to begin my Hammerama. It's easy to see why it's less well-known; it lacks the gothic horror trappings that Hammer are most famous for, and it's terribly slow and light on action for the vast majority of its runtime. It takes an absolute age to get going. The opening titles run over completely incident-free establishing footage. I can't imagine a film starting like this today. Audiences would get up and leave before the characters were even introduced.


It's a slow burn psychological horror, the sort of thing Hammer did less often and to less acclaim, but were nonetheless very good at. Although posters billed Joan Collins as the big star – and very good she is too, a real vicious bitch – the main protagonist is Judy Geeson as Peggy. Geeson is gorgeous, boyish and wide-eyed, convincing perfectly as a naïve young woman in over her head in a situation she doesn't understand. There's an uncomfortable atmosphere throughout the film, a sense that nothing is under Peggy's control. It's revealed early on that Peggy has recently been institutionalised due to a nervous breakdown, and while she is cared for, nobody lends her claims of assault any credence. Of course, the fact that her new husband Robert, played by a marvellously sinister Ralph Bates, is clearly up to something adds to the unsettling feel.


Stealing every scene he's in is Peter Cushing, always the man to turn to if your horror film needed a boost and a touch of class. He plays the wonderfully named Michael Carmichael, a one-armed, psychologically damaged headmaster, and is horribly creepy throughout. He's far, far too tactile and overly friendly, in a disquietingly false way. He just makes your skin crawl. He comes out with lines like, “Do you like tying knots in things?” Wisely, director and writer Jimmy Sangster follows the edict that, if you reveal a noose in the first act, you must use it in the third.



The setting of a seemingly empty boys' school adds a touch of Hammer's gothic ethos to the proceedings, and the exact nature of the plot remains a mystery until the final act, when the pace rapidly increases. For a short time, it looks like this might be a ghost story, but it's far more mundane and cruel than that. It's a slow, strange film, but worth giving time.

Doctor by Doctor (Sidestep 1)

Grandad, We Love You:

Peter Cushing, 1965-66

Yes, Peter Cushing is getting an entry. Of course he is. OK, his version of the character exists wholly outside the continuity of the show, but so what? Cushing played Dr Who in two movies which, for decades, were the only regularly repeated Doctor Who on TV. The regular airing of these two films made them some of the most seen Doctor Who of the twentieth century, far more familiar to casual viewers than the Hartnell serials they were based on. Dr Who and the Daleks and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD are the earliest clear Doctor Who memories I have (I do have some very vague memories of watching the McCoy stories on first broadcast). It was only years later, when I got into the series proper, that I learned that they were not ‘proper’ Doctor Who.

Both of the Aaru/Amicus Dalek movies are Technicolor remakes of black-and-white serials; tartrazine-infused explosions of sound and colour aimed at a broad cinema audience. The main story beats of The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth are kept, but the plots are necessarily streamlined to cut the serials down to fit ninety minute runtimes. Comedy is brought to the fore, taking much of the edge off the originals. It’s fair to say these movies don’t have a particularly high standing in fandom, but I enjoy them. They’re simple, straightforward sci-fi for kids. Dr Who and the Daleks is tremendous fun, from the Dayglo Thals to Daleks reimagined as supreme interior decorators (check out all those lava lamps!) Daleks – Invasion Earth tones down it down somewhat, and, although it’s generally regarded as the better film, I prefer the first. The second film is certainly technically superior, but it drags in the middle. It’s naturally speedier than the original serial, but that was intended to be watched over the course of six weeks.