Welcome to ‘City of Monsters’ of ‘The Fifth Doctor by Tim Bradley’ series! This story has a bit of a history in terms of its writing. I originally wrote this four-part adventure from January to February in 2013 – the year of ‘Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary. It was meant to be the first tale in a trilogy by me.
The trilogy would’ve been a multi-Doctor one, featuring the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors visiting the planet of what would be called Teruvada 16. I managed to write the first story of the trilogy, ‘City of Monsters’ and was hoping to write the second one with my best mate Stephen Buckley from school.
Sadly this didn’t happen as I became really busy during that 50th anniversary year and Stephen wasn’t able to write the story with me at the time. But I’m glad I completed ‘City of Monsters’ early in that year and it’s a trilogy that I can revisit when I’m able to in future, now that I’ve uploaded the first tale on my blog.
The other two stories of the trilogy would’ve been ‘Vault of the Cybermen’ with the Sixth Doctor and ‘Museum of the Daleks’ with the Seventh Doctor. I would like to write up and add ‘Vault of the Cybermen’ someday, but first I’ve got another Cybermen story to upload to my blog before I get to it.
One of the inspirations for this adventure was to have a team-up of the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Billy with Jo Jones, formerly known as Jo Grant in the series. This came about when I had a photo with Sarah Sutton and Katy Manning at a Birmingham comic con taking place at the NEC in November 2011.
I’d also previously written a special adventure called ‘The Robots of Lonmar’ featuring Nyssa, Billy, Jo, Victoria and Ace. So this is essentially a follow-up to ‘The Robots of Lonmar’ with the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Billy reuniting with Jo. Except this time, Jo is now older and married since the previous time.
It was interesting to write for an older Jo, set after her adventures with the Third Doctor compared to writing for a younger Jo in ‘The Robots of Lonmar’. I’d also seen ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’ story ‘Death of the Doctor’ featuring Jo with Sarah Jane and the Eleventh Doctor. This story is set after that.
I wasn’t sure how to go about this and how to reunite Jo with the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Billy initially. I originally had in mind to set the story first in a rock maze where our heroes would find themselves trapped in. Eventually, I didn’t use that idea. I used it instead for the first story of ‘The Coins of Deno’.
It was only after some thinking that I came up with the inspired idea of having the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Billy meet Jo inside a miniscope. Thus the story became a sequel to one of the most well-loved stories of the Jon Pertwee era, ‘Carnival of Monsters’. I had fun in writing this as a sequel to that story.
Because it’s a sequel to ‘Carnival of Monsters’, I had to include the Drashigs in it which was fun to do. I also included the Autons who were in ‘Spearhead From Space’ and ‘Terror of the Autons’ as well as the Ogrons from ‘Day of the Daleks’ and ‘Frontier In Space’. I also included robots and dinosaurs here.
The idea of this trilogy, as well as having it set on Teruvada 16, was to include a connection to the 50th anniversary of ‘Doctor Who’ at the time. With ‘Vault of the Cybermen’ and ‘Museum of the Daleks’, it was obvious because of their monsters. With ‘City of Monsters’, there are Drashigs, Ogrons and Autons in it.
I gradually developed the history and the society of Teruvada 16 as I wrote the story with our Lurman showpeople Bork and Tulu presenting their show to King Garnik and Prince Ernpic of the Nargdu race. The story features a lot of themes of racism and prejudice that were essential to ‘The Teruvada 16 Trilogy’.
In preparing and rewriting this story for my blog, I’ve included a character that is now based on a certain Timelord007. This character was originally called Corporal Felix Reeve, but now he’s become Corporal James Darby. I hope you’ll enjoy my take on Timelord007’s alter ego. I’m sure he will too. 😀
And if you’re wondering why I have Jeff Rawle, Keeley Hawes, Ralph Fiennes and Orlando Bloom on the cover for ‘City of Monsters’, well I originally had them in mind for characters in the story. Jeff Rawle is Bork; Keeley Hawes is Tulu, Ralph Fiennes as King Garnik and Orlando Bloom as Prince Ernpic.
‘City of Monsters’ was a lot of fun to write for at the time back in 2013 and it was a lot of fun to prepare and rewrite for on my blog. I hope you’ll enjoy what is currently the first of ‘The Teruvada 16 Trilogy’. Find out what will happen to the Doctor, Nyssa and Billy and how they’ll discover Jo and face many monsters.
TIM BRADLEY, March 2019
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