Stay tuned for DarkMedia’s featured interview with Neil Gaiman, this week.
by Paul Bowler:
The Cybermen make their eagerly anticipated return to Doctor Who this week in Nightmare in Silver, the penultimate episode of season seven, written by the acclaimed fantasy author Neil Gaiman.
Born in 1960, Neil Gaiman moved to the US twenty years ago, where he now lives in Massachusetts. He is one of our most celebrated fantasy authors, with over 1.8 million followers on Twitter. His Sandman comic books are now treasured collectors items. In 2005 Gaiman’s novel, Anansi Boys, also debuted at number one in the New York Times bestseller list, and Stardust was a big hit for Homeland’s Claire Danes. In March this year, Neverwhere was also serialised on Radio 4, staring Benedict Cumberbatch and James McAvoy.
Neil Gaiman has watched Doctor Who since the first Dalek episodes in 1964. In his recent interview with The Radio Times magazine, Gaiman spoke of his love of the series: “My Mum didn’t approve but I could watch it at my grandparents’, who has a reassuring sofa I could hide behind.” He enjoyed the early episodes of Doctor Who, but watched the show less frequently during the Tom Baker years, and he didn’t like the attempt to reinvent the series in 1996 with the TV Movie starting Paul McGann. “It had all the wrong beats,” Gaiman continued. Although he was initially dismissive when Doctor Who returned in 2005, he did eventually give the new series a chance: “It wasn’t until Jane Goldman, Mrs Jonathan Ross (and Stardust screenwriter), kept saying to me, ‘You’d love the new Doctor Who. We’re all watching it here.’ She was so convinced that she sent me DVD’s and by the time I got to the Empty Child (written by Steven Moffat), I was in love.”
He started blogging about the new series after watching the Doctor & Rose parting (in 2006) with his daughter, Maddy: “I loved the fact that I had a 12 year-old who I could watch TV with and both love it in the same way. My daughter is now 18 and has been doing astronomy courses, which she attributes purely to Doctor Who. I love that.”
Nightmare in Silver takes place on a intergalactic amusement park, with a chess-playing Cyberman, and features guest stars Warwick Davis and Tamzin Outhwaite. Having already written the award winning sixth season episode The Doctor‘s Wife (2011), Neil Gaiman was asked by show runner Steven Moffat (who is also a big fan of Gaiman’s Sandman comics) if he would like to bring back the Cybermen and make them scary again.
Determined to recreate how terrifying the Cybermen appeared when he watched The Moonbase (1967) as a child, Neil Gaiman had some very clear goals in mind for the return of the Cybermen: “The design from 2006 is really powerful, if clanky. They came from a steam-punk universe but didn’t disturb me in the way they did when I was a kid. Now they’ve redesigned the Cybermen to look more warlike and dangerous.” The Cybermen have a sleek new look for Nightmare in Silver. One aspect that really stands out is their way that their faces seem better proportioned than the 2006 version, which brings the Cybermen closer to the 60’s look reminiscent from such stories as Tomb of the Cyber men (1967).
Nightmare in Silver also features two newcomers to the TARDIS crew, Angie (Eve De Leon Allen) and Artie (Kassius Carey Johnson), the children who Clara is a nanny to, who first appeared in the season premier The Bells of St John. Now that the children have discovered the truth about her time travelling adventures, Clara persuades the Doctor to take them all on a trip, and he knows just the place for them to visit: “The Doctor has been talked by Clara into taking the two kids she looks after, Artie and Angie, for an excursion, a day out, and he decides to take them to Hedgewick’s World, the biggest, best and most wonderful amusement park in the galaxy, a quarter of a million years in the future, because he has a golden ticket and it gets four people in for free, gets you free ice creams and it gets you to the front of any line, which is great because the lines for the Spacey Zoomer can go on for weeks. And that’s where it starts.”
However, their visit to Hedgewick’s World does not quite according to plan for them: “Unfortunately, it also starts with them discovering that Hedgewick’s World has been closed for several years and there’s almost nobody on it now except for a small army troop on manoeuvres and a mad old showman named Mr Webley who landed his spaceship there after it closed and is now there with a Cyberman that plays chess. That’s where it begins. This is also 1,000 years after the end of the big human/Cyberman war – where we won.”
Nightmare in Silver also features an impressive cast, with some well-known actors joining Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman for this adventure. Neil Gaiman explained more about their characters: “Jason Watkins plays Mr Webley, this wonderful, slightly alcoholic old showman touring the universe with a waxworks and chess-playing Cyberman. Warwick Davis is his henchman, who is called Porridge. He’s affable, sweet and helps Webley and cannot wait to get off this planet.”
As well as Mr Webley and Porridge, the Doctor and Clara met up with a team of soldiers who are stationed at Hedgewick’s World: “Tamzin Outhwaite is a captain named Alice Ferren who’s in charge of the platoon doing troop exercises on an abandoned amusement park planet and as we discover, as the story goes on, it’s actually a punishment platoon. They’re all people who’ve got into trouble. She was sent there for disobeying orders. They’re not the kind of crack troop you’d want if it so happened that a Cyberman moves in – a new model Cyberman that we haven’t seen, who is absolutely lethal and hyper-intelligent.”
Nightmare in Silver looks set to be one of the scariest Cybermen stories to date. When asked about his hopes for the episode Neil Gaiman said: “It has a few scary little bits.” On rating the fear factor he added: “It’s running at about a five or a six. I’d love to do a nine. I’d love to do something that sends adults behind the sofa, too.”
You can see Nightmare in Silver on Saturday 11th of May on BBC America
DarkMedia contributor Paul Bowler is a self-Confessed Sci-Fi Geek, Doctor Who fan, and Zombie Disposal Expert. He likes movies, comic books, and all things PS3. He likes to write about his interests, would love to write a novel one day, and also enjoys chatting to the many people he has gotten to know on Twitter. When he’s not busy being an Impossible Astronaut, he likes to take a break from his adventures in time and space to enjoy some of his favourite tv shows and movies – preferably with a nice cuppa tea & a sandwich! You can follow him on Twitter @paul_bowler, or find him at his website, Sci-Fi Jubilee.
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