From the Beano to Doctor Who

Writer Iain McLaughlin travels through time with the man from Gallifrey – and Winston Churchill. Caroline Lindsay listens in

Self-confessed geek Iain McLaughlin has written a Doctor Who audio play which has just been released as part of The Churchill Years, Volume 2. Called Human Conflict, it’s partly set in Dundee, Iain’s home town, and Churchill is played by veteran actor Ian McNeice.

“It’s an adventure with chases, shoot-outs and daring escapes but at heart it’s about the weight that lies on a person’s shoulders when they’re making decisions in a war,” Iain explains.

“Churchill made enormous decisions which must have weighed heavily on him, even when he knew they were the right thing to do. The play is really about bearing the weight of one’s own decisions,” he continues.

“The Doctor understands that in this story. He made decisions in the Time War that haunt him. Now Churchill is in similar territory.”

Iain credits a long career as a writer on DC Thomson’s comics, including the iconic Beano.

“I’m immensely fortunate. I’m a geek who has managed to make a living from all my geek interests,” he laughs.

“I always loved comics, so when I started work in the DC Thomson comics department aged 18, it was like heaven. I was doing what I loved.

“My time on the comics was the best grounding a storyteller could get and taught me about structure and character and pacing.”

What he learned at DC Thomson started seeping into other parts of his life, and today Iain writes family drama, young adult books and noir thrillers.

“But I always go back to write the geek stuff I love,” he smiles.

As a long-term Doctor Who fan – and with several books about the Time Lord under his belt – Iain talks a little more about his new audio play.

“Churchill goes on a night-time car chase through the city centre as he tries to escape Nazis before having a shootout on Trades Lane,” he says.

“He also commandeers an office in a large sandstone building at the head of Reform Street where he’s visited by the ninth Doctor. And there’s a lieutenant Fleming who may or may not be James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming – whose father attended the High School.

“There’s even a scene of Churchill reading a Beano,” he continues.

“DC Thomson played a huge part in keeping morale high in this country in those terrible times by continuing to print the Beano and Dandy.

“Kids loved them and soldiers took issues away to war. Plus the Beano and Dandy are part of the DNA of Dundee.”

Before he started writing the play, Iain listened to old Churchill speeches to get his cadence and rhythms, as well as Ian McNeice to understand his take on old Winston.

“I have a reasonable knowledge of Churchill anyway but I read a few books on him and found some old documentaries which sharpened some things up,” says Iain.

“For the Doctor’s side of things, I watched all Christopher Eccleston’s episodes, who played the ninth Doctor.”

He used Churchill’s Dundee connection as the starting point for the play.

“There are moments of history that are dominated by one extraordinary individual and Churchill was one of those figures. He was absolutely the right man for the job as wartime PM.

“I knew that he had been MP for Dundee and hadn’t been a popular figure in the city. So the question was, why would he come back? What could pull him back?

“It had to be something major. It also had to be something the Doctor could really understand and be part of. The ninth Doctor believed he used a doomsday weapon to end the Time War. That made me think of arms development and that was pretty much the plot starting to come together.”

Iain reckons the Doctor is the ultimate hero.

“There’s a description from a former script editor on the show saying that the Doctor is never cruel, never cowardly, always kind,” says Iain.

“He doesn’t use fists to solve the problem. Intelligence, wit, creativity are how the Doctor gets things done.

“That’s a pretty unusual hero for kids to have these days; one that’s saying that brains are more important than brawn. I like that.”

With a new novel –The Omega Factor: Spider’s Web, based on the 1979 TV series – and another Doctor Who spin-off recently published, Iain is never short of inspiration and loves the challenge of writing.

“Every time you look at the blank computer screen you know you have to write something, you have to create something, and you know you can’t mess about waiting for something to happen. That usually pushes the brain to get creative.”

To buy Doctor Who: The Churchill Years Vol 2, visit www.bigfinish.com