Feature Category: Interviews

Jake Thornton is the game designer responsible for the likes of Lost Patrol and DeadZone. His latest game, DreadBall Xtreme, is currently on Kickstarter and is a sequel to the very popular future sports boardgame, DreadBall. We caught up with him to find out more.

Starburst: Tell us about DreadBall Xtreme.

Jake Thornton: DreadBall is the board game version of the eponymous futuristic sport. This is played in massive arenas under the bright lights of the media and a watching crowd of hundreds of millions across many worlds. On the pitch, two teams try to carry or throw the ball past their opponents in order to score in one of 3 strike zones. If one team ever gains a 7-point lead then they win immediately by a landslide.

DreadBall Xtreme aka DBX is the dark side of that sport. Shying away from corporate sponsorship and publicity in general, this is the DreadBall equivalent of illegal boxing or street racing. It is organized by dubious characters from the criminal underworld known as sponsors, and features a wide array of both human and alien players that are, to say the least, a little different to the famous names of the major leagues who are familiar from their endorsements of breakfast cereals and sports cars.

With no referee to enforce the normal rules, Xtreme is far more violent than the main arena version of DreadBall. Some teams try to win by simply wiping out their opponents, others try to win by a landslide before they are battered to death, still more aim for a balance between these opposite ends of the spectrum. As sponsors can hire almost anyone (for a price) the teams contain a wide and ever-changing mix of all the many races from the Warpath universe.

Why does DreadBall need an extreme edition?

DreadBall has always needed its Dark Side! From the very outset we had two versions of the game in mind, and the only reason we didn’t launch this when we did the first Kickstarter was that the campaign didn’t get far enough to make it all at once. In fact, the very last thing we did on that first Kickstarter was a character from DBX who has since become something of a mascot for the company: Blaine.

How different is it from sports board games of the eighties?

I’ve never been much of a sports fan, strange as that may sound, so I didn’t play many of them. I was aware of a few real world simulations from Avalon Hill like good old Statis Pro Football and the like, but I never got round to playing them. The big player in the fictional sports board game arena was always Blood Bowl from Games Workshop, which I did play. That came out in the mid-80s and has dominated the thinking of this genre of games ever since, running through several editions.

Comparisons between DreadBall and Blood Bowl were so inevitable that I wrote an article on my blog about this called the elephant in the room which was ready when the game went live. It’s both a fair and obvious question and we had to consider it properly. In fact, if you’ve played both games then it’s apparent that there’s nothing much they share in terms of how they work. Beyond them both being fictional sports games they have little in common.

One often cited difference is the speed with which DreadBall plays. Blood Bowl is a fine game, but it is often criticized as being quite slow. This depends a lot on the players, of course, and perhaps this slowness is more perceived than real, but it’s certainly not the case with DreadBall. That sense of speed and movement was a core image when I designed the game. Think about it as moving like the most hectic of ice hockey matches, but without any time outs or pauses. That’s what I was aiming for. Even when the ball is relaunched after a successful strike the game never resets – they just launch the ball into the arena with the players carrying on from wherever they might have been when the strike was made. And the game rages on.

How different is it from the previous game?

The balance between familiarity and change has been the main challenge of this design. On the one hand you don’t want to mess too much with a game that people like. On the other hand, there’s no point in designing a new game if it’s just the same as the old one. Where to pitch that balance?

The concept of DBX has been in the background since the start, with a brief mention of it in the core rules of the first DreadBall game. We always intended to make it a separate game and so I’ve had the time to quietly put ideas away in a notebook throughout the development of the first DreadBall game and beyond. Now I’ve come back to revisit those notes and expand on them.

So how different is it? Well the core mechanics that move your players about the pitch and determine the success of slamming your opponents or throwing the ball remain the same. There’s no need to reinvent those just for the sake of doing so. This means that we have a solid system at the heart of the game which we know works and that people like. It also means that existing players of DreadBall can move from one game to the other fairly easily.

The main differences are driven by the background story that underpins this variant of the game: the ad-hoc nature of the pitches and the dodgy sponsors that run the teams.

The playing area of a normal DreadBall pitch is the same every time. With DBX they can’t guarantee that. The area they can find to play in might have concrete pillars down the middle, or rows of crates obliquely across the middle. This means that the board has a number of different set ups to pick from. It also means that the board has more than just your team and the opponent’s on it: there are obstacles to dodge round too. Taking the illegal and violent tendencies of the people organizing this into account, some of these obstacles are also booby trapped with explosives, just to liven things up a bit.

The main arena version of DreadBall is a highly organized sport with a great deal of corporate sponsorship for individual players and teams alike. Teams like the Trontek 29ers and Greenmoon Smackers are household names that every school kid knows. Even if individual players change the team remains. In DreadBall Xtreme there are no teams in this sense. The sponsors give the sport an equivalent permanency, with The Warden or Blaine being known to everyone in the circuit. The players they hire tend to come from groups that are familiar to them and in which they have contacts they can use. With the Warden’s many years in the penal service he knows just which lock-ups to search for potential recruits, and who to bribe to get them released for an afternoon’s game. Blaine is a criminal of interplanetary reputation (and warrants) who can call on a wide variety of dubious alien characters. Recently he has made his name with teams comprised mainly of Asterian pirates, and this has become something of a signature.

As hiring players in DBX is largely about money, a sponsor can theoretically hire almost anyone. This contrasts strongly with DreadBall where teams can only draw from a narrow pool. Whether this extra choice is exciting or overwhelming depends on you as a gamer, but it is very different.

DeadZone is very much a cross between a board game and skirmish game. Where does this new game lie between those two types of game?

It’s very much a board game. A board game that uses finely sculpted and made miniatures as playing pieces, but a board game all the same.

What single game have you designed that you’d love to give the Xtreme treatment too?

I don’t think the other games I’ve designed need it. When I design games I try to make something that reflects the movie in my head, and while it’s fun to come back to a game and see how it can be tweaked, it’s only relevant here because that was the plan all along. DreadBall needs its evil twin to tell the whole story. Other games are complete as they are.

Would you ever do another version of Lost Patrol?

I’d very much like to. I did ask Games Workshop about this some years ago and it seems to have fallen in between two stools in terms of licensing, so it’s unfortunately not very likely. That said, I’m sure it could be done if there was a will to on their part. I’d certainly be happy to. I’ve even been writing the odd expansion on my blog in the meantime.

Are tabletop games the next big thing?

No, I don’t think so. Tabletop games (in the sense of both board games and wargames) offer a type of face-to-face interaction with real people that is impossible to replicate with digital alternatives no matter how many instant message services are built in. This makes them unlikely to go away despite the omnipresence of digital gaming. However, I can’t see them becoming more than one possible way of playing. I think that this mix is actually a good and healthy thing for gaming in its wider sense.

What would your dream project be?

One without a deadline.

DreadBall Xtreme’s Kickstarter runs out on March 16th.

What Became of Harley Warren? is a new play based on ‘The Statement of Randolph Carter’ by H. P. Lovecraft and is being produced by Re:Conception Theatre. We caught up with director Russel Anderson to talk to him about this strange production and their crowd funding campaign.

Starburst: Why the Mythos?

Russel Anderson: Basing a play within the Lovecraft Mythos was the suggestion of company member Andrew Scott. At first, in honesty, there was a little doubt about the feasibility of the idea: it is not necessarily immediately obvious how one goes about staging Lovecraft. But that is also a wonderful challenge: reading through various Lovecraft stories with the possibility of staging something in mind, various possibilities, ideas and interpretations start swimming to mind, many of them very exciting!

The idea of trying to produce a horror play was intriguing. It is not something done often and many forms of horror would be incredibly difficult to produce in the theatre. Lovecraft’s writing works on the principle of a building tension, a growing uncomfortableness which builds and builds until it has brought you to somewhere fantastical and horrifying, and the possibility of trying to replicate that sensation in a theatre environment was intriguing.

HP Lovecraft is a gentler sort of horror. What is the appeal?

Today, horror is often associated with guts and gore and things that many people don’t necessarily want to watch.  The unfortunate downside of this is that the reliance on shock and graphic violence tends to remove a psychological element. With Lovecraft, the horror exists in what we don’t see, or what we expect to see but are never shown. It is an atmosphere, a suggestion, an intimation rather than explanation. And it is recognisable human nature, in some ways, they could be thought of as warped parables – warnings of humans overstepping their reach due to our curiosity and need to understand the un-understandable. The danger of hubris. This is what makes it so attractive and challenging for theatre.

What makes the stage production unique?

Horror is an incredibly rare genre in the theatre, The Woman in Black and Ghost Stories are the only two major horror productions which spring to mind, so right off the bat the fact we are producing a psychological horror is fairly unique, particularly as we are constrained in considerations of set and stage-trickery. For example, jump-scares, a mainstay of film and television horror, are incredibly difficult in a small theatre space. This has meant that we have had to focus solidly on the writing, ensuring that we are successfully building a sense of unease and tension throughout.

The other element of Lovecraft, of course, is that his writing is very much grounded in a supernatural mythos, again, the supernatural is not something you encounter in the theatre very much. The incorporation of this, along with finding convincing, executable, and creatively satisfying ways to produce it has proved to be an enjoyable challenge. We’ve had to find ways to lead the audience to a point where they can accept the more fantastical elements of the mythos, moment-by-moment.

Our storytelling structure has really helped with this: the play is Carter relating his story to a detective. This has allowed us to play with the storytelling, the detective comes into scenes demanding explanations, or taking on the parts of supporting characters, so that what could be a fairly straightforward “a-b-c” structure is deconstructed by the characters during the play, and it allows a wider story to be told by only three actors.

Why a stage production?

Primarily because we are a theatre company. In seriousness, it was during a pitching session for potential productions that the possibility of Lovecraft was raised. The idea of attempting it was intriguing. There was, on my part, an initial question of whether it was possible to stage Lovecraft effectively, which, of course, then meant that I really wanted to try! 

One of the most difficult things was deciding which story to use as our foundation. We talked about a few (I would have loved to try The Rats in the Walls, but we felt that was too far a stretch at our current resource level), and at one point we were playing with the possibility of creating something based around elements from lots of different stories, but in the end we agreed that The Statement of Randolph Carter gave us a good, solid framework to build a play around, but allowed us plenty of room to take influence from Lovecraft’s wider writings. The great thing about the story, from the play-writing perspective, is that there is a lot of scope to explore the back-story, and through doing that we have been able to draw in those elements from the wider mythos.

Why go to Kickstarter to raise funds? How has crowdfunding changed theatre?

Crowdfunding is dramatically changing the way emerging artists of all genres are able to produce work. Until recently, companies were very limited in their options. Funding bodies only have a limited amount of capital to offer, so lots of companies are in competition for a small pot. This can mean that a large amount of creative decisions are made not because of a company’s true ideals, but because they feel it’s the best way to meet the funding criteria. Similarly, in commercial theatre there are certain plays that always do well; there are hundreds of productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for precisely this reason – it sells.

The obvious problem with this is that creativity suffers. In order to produce great work, you need to take risks, but all too often artists feel that they cannot take risks for fear of not getting funding, or not selling tickets. After all, we need to balance the budget.

Crowdfunding provides another route, one which perhaps allows more room for experimentation and risk. By asking for a low investment from a wider range of investors, often people who may have a direct interest in the project you are creating, you are making it easier for people to help you take that risk.

The other great thing about crowdfunding is that is gives potential audiences a chance to help the projects they would like to see – projects that might not exist under other models – come to fruition.

We had a couple of reasons for trying Kickstarter. Firstly, we were going to struggle to produce the performance to the quality we wanted, in the couple of venues we wanted for our first run. In order to be able to play both Oxford and Aylesbury, we would have to sacrifice the quality of set, props and costumes; to get the quality of set, props and costumes we wanted, we would have to sacrifice a performance run. And due to it being a small run this time round (what you might call the development-run), we would not be eligible to apply to most grant-giving bodies, which generally want to part-fund larger touring runs. So, we thought we would see what happened if we asked for help, and offered a little something in return. We have been amazed by the generosity of the responses we have had; if nothing else, it proves that people really are willing to help one another with little or no expectation of anything in return (the most popular reward chosen by our backers has been ‘none’).

Will you tour?

I would love to take this production on tour: I have called this run a ‘development-run’, and now that we know what the play is – the scale, transport needs, costs etc. – we are in a good position to plan out the practicalities of a future tour. It would seem to be a huge wasted opportunity not to. But it’s something that still needs working out!

What do you plan for the future?

Individually, our lives are all in slightly transitionary periods. I have recently begun a PhD in Drama, for which I will be producing a variety of experimental performances with Re:Conception Theatre. The other members of the company are currently either studying or applying to study various postgraduate degrees, so where our lives carry us in the next few years will be exciting to see.

As a theatre company, Re:Conception will continue to devise and produce original work, as well as continue to run successful productions – as mentioned, the plan is to tour What Became of Harley Warren? beyond this initial run. We’re not sure yet what our next production will be, though we’ve got our eyes on a particular H. G. Wells short story…

The What Became of Harley Warren? Kickstarter is running until March 7th. The play will be premiered at the Aylesbury Limelight Theatre on the 25th/26th April, as well as the 3rd to 4th July at the Old Fire Station, Oxford.

We sat down with legendary axeman Slash to talk about his new horror movie production company, Slasher Films, their first release, Nothing Left to Fear, the seven gateways to Hell and, of course, music…

Starburst: Can you tell us a little about Nothing Left to Fear?

Slash: It’s a horror movie about a young family that relocates to a small community in rural, mid-west America on the pretence that they’re going to take over the congregation there and live this country lifestyle. They were asked to move there by the present Pastor who’s retiring. It turns out to be a very sinister plot that gets them there and everything goes horribly wrong.

The movie is based around the legends surrounding the Kansas town of Stull. How much do you know about these stories?

I’m very aware of it, more so now, when I first got the script I wasn’t. The writer told me I should look online and check it out. It turns out that Stull is literally one of these seven gateways to Hell – the others being in Europe and South America – and so that in itself was pretty fascinating.

Have you been to Stull yourself?

No. We wanted to shoot there but the community wasn’t very keen on us making this movie as it were. They definitely didn’t want us to shoot there. I’ve been through Kansas, but I’ve never been to Stull. I’m planning on going there at some point but I doubt we’ll get welcomed with open arms. The interesting thing about it is, if you read extensively through all the different points of view about Stull, there’s a lot of people defending its innocence, for want of a better word. There’s a lot of people that will say that that dilapidated church has been standing there since the 1700s and for the better part of the last 100 years, although it was torn down in in the ‘90s, it was a roofless frame for a long time and the actual crypt or cemetery that everybody is talking about being the gateway, the one where all the kids go and party and worship the devil that they had to fence off, is not really the cemetery at all. There’s another one that’s hidden and grown over that’s much more creepy than the one that’s infamous. It’s an interesting story and people defend it to the point that you want to ask a lot of questions about the origin of this. It’s not just a bunch of people from college that made it up, there’s always some deeper meaning behind these mythologies and there is a history going all the way back to the 1700s that there was witch burning there. There has to be a deeper truth to it than just a lot of rumours.

What was it about the NLTF script that made it the first production from Slasher Films?

It was just a great little story and sort of original. You’re dealing with a lot of familiar horror subjects but at the same time it had its own unique way of going about it. The seventh gateway of Hell possessing the younger sister was unique into itself. The God fearing young family being lured into this seemingly pleasant community on the pretence of happiness and a pleasant future for the kids and then it turning out to be something horrific. That was all really appealing to me. There were a few other good scripts as well at the time and we started developing four and the only one that didn’t really have any red tape and baggage attached was Nothing Left to Fear. Realistically, it was also the most financially feasible for a first time production company. All things considered, it was my favourite of the four stories because it was the simplest and the most innocent. It had that slow beginning where you meet this young family and it has this slow development and so it had a certain charm because of that. The other ones were flat out horror movies from the opening credit until the end.

Are you happy with the completed film?

It’s great. For something that we did for a couple million bucks, initially it was supposed to be more, I was really pleased with how it looks and how it sounds and how we managed to get the story together in a twenty day shoot. I thought we did a really good job. The director did great; any lesser director we would have had a cheap looking, low-budget, typical DVD bargain bin kind of movie. It ended up having a lot of really good qualities to it. There are things, of course, that I think are wrong with it, but I think every producer and director ends up thinking that way. All things considered, I think we did a great job.

What is the goal of Slasher Films?

It’s really an outlet for me to be able to produce horror movies that I like. I grew up on what I think are some of the great horror movies of the day, of the ’60s and ’70s and the ’80s as well, but then the genre took a turn in the late ’80s and ’90s where I lost interest in it. So given the opportunity to produce, I wanted to try and bring back more story driven and character driven feature style horror movies that were more about what you don’t see hiding in the dark that really scares you as opposed to just being jolted all the time. Something that was a little more psychological. When it comes down to it, something that really sets up and makes your hairs on your neck stand up and you’re waiting for something to happen. Right now, I think horror movies have become so dumbed down that you almost know exactly what’s going to happen and have all been about visually stunning you with dismemberment, eating of entrails and all of that kind of stuff and it’s more unnerving than it is scary.

Too much gore in lieu of scares.

Right. Some of them are good, they have their place, it’s cool and I watch them all the time but the ones that I really love were the ones that were more left to the imagination and I think that’s the style that’s always been my favourite. Movies that really put the fear of fucking God in you – that’s what I’m working towards.

So what’s your favourite scary movie?

That’s a tough one. I always revert to the movie I saw when I was about nine years old, which was The Omen. The acting was great, the story was great, the cinematography was great, the directing was great – it was just a really good movie that happened to be a scary movie. You don’t see that that often anymore.

Is this your first soundtrack?

I’ve been involved in a lot of scoring situations. I didn’t write but performed all of The Wrestler, the Darren Aronofsky movie, a couple of years ago and I did an entire score for a really low budget movie from a Mexican director named Olallo Rubio called This Is Not A Movie. I’ve had bits and pieces – I did a lot of work for Quentin Tarantino back in the ’90s where we just used bits of music for scenes, stuff like that – so I’ve been around for a while, but this is probably the first proper movie that I’ve sat and really scored and used a sound designer and scoring composer to orchestrate the music. It was definitely a unique experience for me and a stepping stone for all the next movies I’m going to make, I’ll definitely be involved with the score.

How easy was it to collaborate on the score with Nicholas O’Toole?

Nicholas is great. Because I don’t have a ton of scoring experience, he was great because I’d be able to sit down in my own comfort zone and write everything on the guitar and then give it to him. He would interpret it all in an orchestral format and we sat shoulder to shoulder doing this. He’s a really genius guy and really talented and it was good for me to be able to work with somebody like that and be able to realise the music that I was writing being done like that because I don’t have the time to sit down and score an entire movie by myself, I’m too busy with my own thing as far as music goes. I’ve got a band and records coming out all the time. So it’s great to sit and write something really natural and hand it over to someone like Nicholas and have him make it work. A lot of the stuff that we did while I was on the road was computer to computer. It was all very interesting, a lot of work, but a great learning experience for me.

What’s next in the pipeline for Slasher Films?

That’s what I’m trying to sort out now. I’m knee deep in scripts at the moment. I’ve been through probably about thirty-odd stories and reading a lot of books to see if there’s something I want to make. At this point I have a bunch of really great ones and it’s going to be a matter of deciding which one I want to do, so I’m pretty excited at the moment.

Is the plan to release one a year?

That really depends. The production process is normal, but the development process and the business behind getting a movie made is so fucking slow it’s unbelievable. So I would love to have one, two movies out a year. I think once I get the gears going I’ll be able to start doing that but it’s hard to say at this point if I can do it. I think I should be able to easily get one a year done but I’d like to be able to do more.

NOTHING LEFT TO FEAR is out now on Blu-ray/DVD/VOD.

Starburst Magazine caught up with Steve Lyons to discuss his career as a writer. His first book, The Red Dwarf Programme Guide, was published in 1993 and twenty years ago his first Doctor Who novel came out in January 1994.

Starburst: Did you always intend to become a writer? Was it your interest in TV shows such as Red Dwarf and Doctor Who that led you to start writing or was it always an ambition?

Steve Lyons: I always wanted to be a writer, and I always wanted to write the things I loved. So, when I was a kid, I wanted to write books about kids solving mysteries and unmasking fake ghosts. Later on, it was comic books and, yes, Doctor Who, of course. I’ve no idea where that ambition came from, it was just always there. I think the first time I sent a book to a publisher was when I was twelve.

Your first Doctor Who novel Conundrum came out in 1994 – how did that come about and how did you find the writing?

I was sending unsolicited submissions to Peter Darvill-Evans at Virgin Publishing – which is how most of the writers of the New Adventures got started. He’d rejected my first three attempts – although he had let me co-write The Red Dwarf Programme Guide in the meantime – and I had pretty much given up trying. Then, the publishing frequency of the New Adventures was increased, and Peter needed ideas in a hurry. He wrote to his existing writers, but also to the authors of the ‘most promising’ rejected submissions, which included me. That was a great ego-boost, and it gave me the incentive to pull a fourth idea together. By then, I’d read more of the early New Adventures, and I think I just had a better idea of what Peter was looking for, because this time I made it into print.

I had a great time writing Conundrum, because it was my first novel, I was realising my life’s dream, and that kept me from thinking about what hard work it actually was. I was also given six or seven months to write it, which meant  I could take my time and have fun and experiment a little, trying to find my writing style. I wrote the book completely out of sequence, just tackling scenes as the ideas came to me, which isn’t something I would do now.

Since Conundrum you have had many more Doctor Who novels published; which is your favourite Doctor and TARDIS crew to write for and why?

I love writing the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie, because I’m very fond of their era of the TV series, but also because they all have very distinctive voices which is great for audio especially. I also like writing characters that were maybe sold a bit short on TV, which would include the Sixth Doctor and Mel. Really, though, I just enjoy having a variety of Doctors, companions and types of story to choose from. It keeps Doctor Who fresh for me, even after having written so much of it.

You wrote The Fires of Vulcan for Big Finish which was released in 2000. Since then you’ve written many fans’ favourite episodes (mine included) such as Colditz, Blood of the Daleks and Architects of History – how do you feel when your stories are still passionately discussed many years after their release?

I think it’s fantastic, and I spend way too much time lurking on fan websites to see what they’re saying about me! I don’t get that sort of feedback from my other writing – not to the same extent, anyway, and with some projects there’s been nothing at all – and it’s one of the things that keeps bringing me back to the Doctor Who universe.

You were the first writer to write for both Lucie Miller – how do you feel when the character then evolves? Are you interested in how they turn out or are you happy to see them move on?

Well, Lucie is really Alan Barnes’s character, she was fully formed before I met her. So, although I got to write her first, I’ve never felt any particular ownership over her.

Klein is different, she is very much my creation and I’m not really sure yet how I feel about her going her own way without me. On the one hand, it’s flattering that one of my characters has been picked up by other writers and her story continued. But then, I hear about major changes being made to Klein’s background, without my being involved or consulted, and that just feels wrong. I haven’t heard the latest Klein stories yet, I probably should.

Klein fascinates a lot of fans and has now appeared in eight separate Big Finish releases. What do you think the appeal is?

A lot of it is in Tracey Childs’ performance, of course. We all just melted in the studio when we first heard her playing the character in Colditz. Otherwise, what I like about Klein is her total self-assurance and the fact that she challenges the Doctor and his morality with cold, hard logic. And, actually, she thinks a lot like him – specifically, like the manipulative Seventh Doctor of the New Adventures – it’s just that she takes everything a bit further.

November 2013 saw the release of the Blake’s 7 Liberator Chronicles Volume 6 in which you wrote Jenna’s Story. Was this a gap in the show that you always wanted to explore? Jenna gets some very bleak treatment in this story – was that always the intention or did the story just write itself? How well defined do you think the TV show left Jenna’s character given how early she left?

I’d never thought about exploring Jenna’s fate before – but when I was asked to do it, of course I jumped at the chance. When you write a lot of ‘missing episodes’ of TV series, set between other episodes, you rarely get the chance to decide the fate of one of the series’ stars.

I think we all knew from the beginning that Jenna had to die – I think it would have been a betrayal of that brilliant final TV episode to have saved her – and so, ‘Jenna’s Story’ was always going to be taking us towards that inevitable end and was always going to be bleak because of that. I did skip a year or so in Jenna’s life, though, so maybe she had a bit of fun during that time…

I think Jenna’s character was pretty well-defined at the beginning of Blake’s 7 – but then, she seemed to be relegated to a back-up role in most episodes and didn’t get many chances to shine. I didn’t feel I had to redefine her at all for ‘Jenna’s Story’, it was more a case of bringing out the character that we always knew was there but rarely saw.

Of all your Big Finish Audios which is your favourite , which was most challenging to write and which was most enjoyable to write and why?

The story of which I’m proudest would be The Architects of History, because it stars my companion and my monsters – the Selachians, from the BBC Doctor Who novels – and because it’s the culmination of a story arc that I plotted and therefore the only chance I’ve had to write a big ‘season finale’. Also, I’m proud of it because it was on the radio, and because people seemed to like it!

The most challenging one to write was The Fires of Vulcan, just because I was new to the audio format and it took a while to get used to it, and the most enjoyable one was Resistance because Anneke Wills was playing the part of Polly for the first time in over forty years and I was writing it! I also loved writing Sapphire & Steel, and I think my actual best Big Finish script might be my second story in that series, Perfect Day.

You mentioned Sapphire and Steel and you’ve also written stories for The Tomorrow People and, with Chris Howarth, books about Blackadder and Star Trek. Would it be fair to say you watch rather a lot of cult television? Is there a show you’d like to write for that you haven’t yet?

I would love to write for Sliders, I just think it had the best format for a science-fiction series ever. Farscape would be brilliant too. Or if any publishers want to continue Prisoner: Cell Block H in book form, here I am…

With 2014 just begun what can we look forward to?

Good question! I recently wrote an Eleventh Doctor Who audiobook, The Last Frontier, which should have been out in January – but the publishers, AudioGO, went under and I don’t know what’s happening with that now. I’m hoping that the new stewards of BBC Audiobooks will salvage it, not least because it features the Doctor’s first ever visit to Salford.

Otherwise – I have more Blake’s 7 coming up this year and a Warhammer novel and audio. Doctor Who-wise, I’m a regular on the Doctor Who Adventures comic strip, which is the best job in the world, and I’ve written one of Big Finish’s upcoming Early Adventures, for the usual suspects of the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie again.

And finally, if you had the choice between travelling in the TARDIS or on the Liberator which would you pick?

It has to be the TARDIS, doesn’t it? So many more places and times to go and at least the outside chance that some of them won’t be deadly. Although, in fact, I probably would be killed by monsters as soon as I stepped out of the door, so I’m probably better off staying at home.

Steve, thanks very much for taking the time to answer a few questions and we look forward to hearing your next audios.

Marvin Kren, the Austrian-born director behind cult zombie classic RAMMROCK discusses his latest release, BLOOD GLACIER…

Starburst: I just finished watching Blood Glacier and I must say I thought it was fantastic.

Marvin Kren: Oh thank you, thank you, I appreciate that.

It was very old school, like a throwback to an ’80s horror movie.

That was my intention.

I also found Rammrock immensely entertaining, refreshing almost. Like it injected adrenaline into a stagnant genre; was that your intention with Blood Glacier too?

Yes, well, it was never my intention to show the world that I could do it better, but you always try to make the best films you can. And you have to find a new approach, so I guess I tried to find within the genre, a personal touch, tried to find my auteur note.

To create, along with my screenwriter, characters whom I know from my private life and somehow, weave these characters into a horror film. Or a zombie film. But that’s just my personal approach, and if somehow you get something new from that combination, then yeah, great.

And plus I like to play with the genre, take the codes and play with them, combine them with other stuff.

Are there any other genres then, that you’d like to ‘play’ with?

Oh, I would love to do a thriller, a western of course – and right now I’m working with my writing partner Benjamin in person – so it’ll be a comedy, a dark drama, and a statement to our way of life.

It’s in a very early stage right now, but hopefully we’ll be shooting in the summer.

You’ve said before that you and Benjamin Hessler have a very back-and-forth collaborative method of writing – of crafting the story.  So I’m curious, where and how did the idea for Blood Glacier originate, and how did the almost sinister environmental message evolve?

Well, we got so much unexpected attention from producers after Rammbock – and there was this one old, really classy producer from Austria, and he liked us, and he liked the idea of doing something like Rammbock.

And, well, actually, we didn’t do our homework and so in our meeting I just had to present to him this daydream that I had, which was about a hiker in the mountains; he climbs the mountain and looks down and there is this huge bug, like a giant beetle. So I pitched him this, it sounded a little more elegant in German, and he just knew that he could sell a horror film set in the Alps.

So we came together to start writing, to put together everything that we liked, and then I found this picture of this glacier, this ‘bleeding glacier’. This glacier, and this is a real thing, I saw it on the internet, and I just thought it was a fantastic metaphor for the world we are living in; nature is bleeding, and now it’s trying to fight back.

Taylor Glacier in Antarctica. The ‘blood’ is actually run-off from an iron-rich lake buried deep within.

And I think that automatically, when you’re doing a monster film, you have that political message straight away – and here with nature herself mutating into the monster, you have that environmental message too, of conservation.

The opening 30mins were some of the tensest I can remember from the genre; the slow buildup to the reveal isn’t seen as much now in contemporary horror films – were you worried at all that this old-school approach wouldn’t resonate with current fans?

Imagine, in the first cut, it was an hour until you saw the first monster, but the test screenings were that awful, that we had to cut half an hour out!

The beginning was just the lives of these scientists up there in the mountains; how they argue with each other, how they hate each other – and I loved that, because it was just a very slow process, seeing how the humans were more ugly a monster than the actual creatures.

But, yeah, people didn’t like it, so the writer and I had to figure out which parts to cut – which in turn ended up being good for the story.

Would you say the ‘less is more’ motto was more of a budgetary or stylistic choice?

I guess both. Of course. In the first moment we planned to do a creature feature, we tried to say ‘thank you’ to John Carpenter, and to Ridley Scott, and all those masters – and they did their horror in that way – they showed the monsters only briefly so that the audiences had to create the rest of them in their imagination.

Though of course, we never had the money of a Hollywood picture, I still believe in the imagination of the spectator, and that this way is better than just projecting onto them my own fantasies.

Gerhard Liebmann, who plays the lead Janek – what a star-making role this is for him.

He’s even at the Austrian Film Pride event, where he’s nominated for Best Male Actor 2013.

It’s well deserved.  How important was it to the film to get the casting for this part just right?

Well I started with his character it was that important. Gerhard was used to playing these little supporting roles as a little chubby man – and I saw him in a comedy actually, and I just loved the darkness in his eyes, the kind of rhythm he had. I knew that I had to meet him then because he just looks too authentic – in one way like a normal person on the street, but with a potential to be the tragic hero.

And he’s the polar opposite of the scientists in almost every way.

He’s just such an amazing actor, he’s like the chameleon; he isn’t the same in every film, he really does become another person. Sometimes you have to take a chance on that, and I was just lucky enough to have the idea to meet him.

Speaking of which, your mother was terrific in this film. Such an unexpected delight.  How was it directing her?

Very hard.

There is footage of her at the Toronto film festival, where you welcome her up to the stage and she does the splits!

Yes, the biggest drama queen you could ever imagine.

And in this culture, she would say to me, “Oh you want to become a filmmaker? Ok then, but I am going to be in all of your films”. And she has. Otherwise I’m afraid she’d put a spell on me – she’s the boss.

Benjamin calls her his second mum too – he wrote this part, actually for her.

You’ve mentioned previously that the work of Werner Herzog was a big influence on your depiction of the scientific community here in Blood Glacier.

Well The Wild Blue Yonder – I loved the way in which Herner portrayed the science community – and we took that same realistic approach here. I wanted all the actors to see that movie; I wanted the art directors to see just this movie, and to use the same sort of materials. Werner is always such an inspiration.

You already mentioned John Carpenter and Ridley Scott; who else would you say has influenced your career, and what aspects of your own work do you think could inspire the next generation of filmmakers?

I’m very into Roman Polanski – whenever I’m shooting a movie I watch him and find great influence. The works of Kurosawa too, and also there are just some great improvisational artists that I find inspiration in.

And I’d like to see my work as entertaining on one hand, but as transporting some kind of message – like a Trojan horse. That’s what I would like to pass on to others; the outside is the entertaining horse but the inside is where the message is – and that’s what counts, that combination of the drama within the genre.

And please, forgive my English.

Trust us Marvin, your English is much better than our German!

BLOOD GLACIER is out now on DVD and Blu-ray.

Mark Jones, the man behind cult movies like Leprechaun and Rumpelstiltskin, not to mention having worked on a whole host of shows that were favourites from our younger years, has teamed with Sadie Katz for his latest feature, Scorned. Starburst grabbed half an hour with the duo and got the lowdown on the revenge thriller, not to mention the juicy details on just how the two came up with the idea, and Jones gives his thoughts on the Leprechaun series and a possible new, crazy franchise with fan-favourite Warwick Davis.

Starburst: So, tell us about Scorned.

Mark Jones: Well, it’s kind of, I guess you could call it a cross between Fatal Attraction and Misery with young people. It’s basically a girl finds out her boyfriend’s been cheating with her best friend through his cell phone, text messages, and basically knocks him out, ties him up, texts the girl and invites her away for a weekend at a lake house. She shows up thinking she’s going to be having a rendezvous with the guy but this character proceeds to…

Sadie Katz: Get her revenge.

MJ: Get her revenge on the two. AnnaLynne McCord, who plays the lead, was terrific. She was kind of a young Kathy Bates, a young, pretty Kathy Bates. And Billy Zane did a terrific job, and Viva Bianca, who was the girl he hey cheated with, she did a terrific job.

It seems very much like a revenge thriller. How gruesome does it get?

MJ: Well, y’know, it’s funny – it’s not a bloodbath particularly, but there are scenes where she teaches her a lesson and puts her fingers in a vice, takes a tooth out… some psychological torture, along with a little bit of violence.

SK: It also has a little bit of a funny… there’s a little bit of cutting humour to it. I think it’s every man’s worse nightmare, to piss off a woman. And this woman’s pissed!

MJ: Anybody who’s dated a female will understand this.

SK: I’m guessing she’s PMS-ing. She’s having a pretty bad PMS episode.

MJ: She also has some history, that we find out later, of being in a mental institution when she was a little girl, and she’s off her medication and taking pills and drinking, so she gets pretty crazy. But it’s got some twists and turns.

With the films you’ve done before, Mark, there’s often a sense of dark humour. Is that prominent here as well?

MJ: Yes. There was a lot of humour in the script. AnnaLynne McCord responded to the script because of the humour.

SK: It’s cheeky. It has that… the thing is, when you really watch somebody lose their cookies, especially a woman, there’s something inherently funny about that when you’re off your rocker. The thing is, she really feels, the character Sadie really feels that she’s doing something that down the line will help them stay together. So it’s a little bit of therapy for her – that’s her version of it.

With yourself, Sadie, we understand this is your first major writing gig. Where did the ideas come from? Was it a case of some bad exes?

SK: Well, actually, the biggest thing is Mark and I had written something before, a script, and then we had a particularly crazy break-up and, it’s funny to say this, but I didn’t react very well to it. We were discussing the fact that I keyed somebody’s car and maybe that seemed excessive. However, most of my girlfriends thought it was completely normal and the guy had it coming to him. That feeling of the loss of control, Mark and I kept talking about it. You’re like out of your mind at that moment, then later on your like “Oh my gosh! This is terrible!”

MJ: I just figured it was a way to make some money out of a relationship that got a little bit crazy now and then . But we’re actually terrific friends.

KS: Yeah, actually that was mine and Mark’s relationship, by the way.

MJ: I dunno, that’s kind of an exclusive that we’ve only told you.

SK: We haven’t told anyone that.

So it was a therapeutic process writing the film then?

MJ: Yes, yeah. It’s interesting. I think the great thing about the movie, we found that women really like the movie and they kind of get it; they’re sort of rooting for Sadie. There is a twist at the end, which I won’t give away, but it kind of doesn’t go where you think it’s gonna go. But we had fun with it – it crosses all age levels. Older people watch it, and they’ve all been on dates, they’ve all had girlfriends at one time. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and it actually is a very good looking film; we had great production value. We actually shot in Ohio, and we were able to take advantage of a great tax credit and bring up the production value.

SK: The people in Ohio were really, really excited that we were shooting. They didn’t have anybody else shoot there.

I guess the main question is, in the real-life break-up there were no fingernails being pulled off and no teeth being knocked out; it was all quite civil, yeah?

MJ: No . Yeah, we took a little bit of creative license. We’re actually good friends, and we’ve got another movie that looks as if it’s going to go. So we said, ok, we’ll at least turn it into a great writing team.

SK: That’s Hollywood and LA for you.

You said the movie works for all ages, but we guess for the younger audience members, who have maybe not been involved in a serious relationship, it acts as a warning sign to treat women well…

MJ: Actually, I think the warning sign is to tell all men to erase their texts . Don’t let ‘em see your texts!

Mark, you’ve been active since the ‘70s, mainly with writing gigs, but you’ve only directed 6 or 7 features. Is there any reason for this?

MJ: I started as a writer very young, actually in cartoons, and then I got into prime time and did a lot of the action shows like The A-Team and Knight Rider. I loved directing and it was a lot of fun. The first one was Leprechaun, which I wrote, and I liked directing, but writing is really where the power is and, that’s where the money is at times. But it’s a lot of fun to make small pictures and I’ll continue to do that. The next picture we’re doing, I wrote and I’ll be directing.

Most will know you best for Leprechaun and Rumpelstiltskin, but you also worked on Alf, The A-Team, Superboy, Scooby-Doo, James Bond Jr. and Police Academy. You had your fingers in many pies…

MJ: I did! Years ago, when I was young, I wanted to be an animator but I wasn’t a good enough artist. And I got into the animation studios as a gofer, Xerox processor, and I kept saying I wanna animate… but the animators said to get away from animation and become a writer. So I started writing a lot of animated shows, then produced, and then just a natural progression to live-action. But I will say directing is the most fun. You don’t do anything, you let everyone else do you work for you when you direct.

Mark, you’re synonymous to a certain generation with your horror movies, more recently Triloquist, and Sadie you’ve dabbled in horror. What appeals to you both about horror?

SK: I’m a really scaredy cat, so I think the thing is, y’know, I still sleep with the lights on… The idea of scaring other people like that is a visceral, crazy feeling, to be afraid of things, it’s a drama.

MJ: I like horror because it’s just, as a filmmaker you bring every element; you bring music and lighting and characters. I just think they’re more fun to make as you’re bringing a little bit of fantasy. Leprechaun, a lot of people noticed that I sort of made a live action cartoon. It was colourful and bigger than life, almost like Scooby-Doo. I find it fun.

SK: It’s a little bit of a fantasy that people can relate to.

Were there any particulars films or actors/actresses that drew you to cinema when you were younger?

MJ: As a kid, I loved everything. I have a very eclectic… I like the dark dramas, Leaving Las Vegas, I liked Time Machine as a kid, the original George Pal’s Time Machine… I was just a lover of movies. Anything that was on television, I watched.

SK: I was really a fan of Jodie Foster when I was younger. The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane is a movie that I was kind of obsessed with. I like Juliette Lewis a lot and all her edgy stuff, especially the stuff she did near the beginning. I think Mark and I have the same thing; we were born just knowing that we had to be in entertainment. I don’t remember ever wanting to be anything else.

MJ: I never limit what I wanna do. It’s sort of, we get an idea and it inspires me and then I say let’s write it. The next film that is likely to go is a very dark drama based on a true story about a home invasion, so that’s sort of on the lines of almost, tone-wise, In Cold Blood. That’s what I love: you can do one movie completely different to the next. And I think Scorned is a little different to my usual horror movies, like Leprechaun and Rumpelstiltskin, because there’s no little person and no monster other than the lead character.

We loved the Leprechaun films and Rumpelstiltskin, but they’re about these mythical creatures. Scorned is a lot more of a grounded, basic, primal story about a pissed off woman.

MJ: There was a point where I said “OK, I can do something beside a little ventriloquist puppet or a little leprechaun; I can actually do something that has more of an adult theme.” And Scorned does. Again, I give Sadie a lot of credit, because, I think, working together we were able to bring it to another level. The dialogue is very real and I think the picture works on a much different level, so it was fun to do.

As mentioned, you are most famous for the Leprechaun series. You wrote and directed the first film then produced the second one. How involved were you with any of the later films where the character went to space, to Las Vegas and to the hood?

MJ: I was involved financially – I made sure they gave me my credit and my money was actually terrific, and we may do a project together again. On number two, I produced, I consulted on it but wasn’t as active on it because I went over to do Rumpelstiltskin. The others, I didn’t really have much of an input other than they would let me read the scripts and then take a phone call and probably didn’t listen to anything that I had to say.

How did you feel on the direction the series went in? It’s an outlandish premise in the first place but the series went in a completely different direction with the later films.

MJ: I probably would’ve done it a little differently but, y’know, Leprechaun in the Hood and Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood have such a following. I’m not going to dismiss the fact that people seem to love ‘em. They got silly and they didn’t take themselves serious, and Warwick, again, maintained the character and did a great job. As long as the cheques kept coming in, I was happy.

When the first film came out in 1993 it was much more believable to have a leprechaun as the main villain, whereas it would almost be laughable these days. That said, WWE Studios is remaking Leprechaun. Did you ever have any talks about that?

MJ: Actually, yes, I’ve read the script. Oddly enough, and we’re in an actual discussion now because there’s some interesting drama going on, they went to, really, a first draft of mine before the actual Leprechaun that we made which had some comedy in it. They want back to a crazy, killing creature and they’re making it much more of a horror movie and they’re not using Warwick, which I think is a mistake. But they’re doing it more like a monster, which, oddly enough, is the original script that I gave the studio. Then I rewrote it and went in the direction that that first one went. So there’s some interesting legal positions we’re all taking on it, which will be interesting. I think it’s all gonna get handled and solved. They think they’re creating a new franchise with Leprechaun and I don’t think they quite realised that they just went back to my actual first draft that the studio had. So there’s some legal manoeuvring we’re doing. But we’ll see when it comes out.

You said you’re working on a project after Scorned. What can you tell us about that?

MJ: There’s a couple. There’s one – there’s a home invasion one that Sadie and I wrote – and that’s a very dark drama. It’s based on a true story that happened in Wichita, Kansas on Christmas Eve. There is another franchise that I’ve created called Vamprechaun, which is a vampire bites a leprechaun and he turns into a vamprechaun. It’s a tiny little vampire. That’s one that we’re in discussions with Warwick Davis to play the lead, and Warwick and I will come up, hopefully if it gets going, we’ve come up with the next franchise. It’s a little bit… we’re sort of saying to Lionsgate in the new one , which I think Warwick was the reason that people loved the Leprechaun movies, we came up with kind of a comedy horror that I think is bubbling right now and I think it’s going to go. In the next few months you’ll probably hear some press on it.

SK: I’m actually, right now I’m directing a documentary about a wild party. It’s something that’s kind of top secret but I’m doing that right now. On the acting front I have a couple of films that are coming out. Chavez Cage of Glory is coming to video. I’m waiting for a film that’s coming up, but there’s things like that.

MJ: Also, Sadie has a cameo in Scorned.

SK: So does Mark .

MJ: I have a little cameo at the end too. But no, Sadie also has an acting career and she will probably, I have a feeling she’s going to force us to write a script and she’s gonna probably star in it, so that’ll be something coming up.

Maybe getting involved with Warwick?

SK: That would be great! He’s great!

MJ: Warwick came in a couple of years ago, and I met with him… he’s terrific. Every time he comes in, we try and get together. He’s a great guy.

Have you mentioned Vamprechaun to him at all or is it just that you have him lined up for it?

MJ: We’ve discussed it, yeah. I had a number of phone calls with Warwick and we’ve discussed Vamprechaun, so we’re trying to see if we can put that deal together. I think fans of Warwick will absolutely love it.

You have a world at the moment where you have giant sharks versus giant octopuses so why not a vampire and leprechaun movie with Warwick Davis?

MJ: I think it’s a very clever way of using his popularity, him being the Leprechaun, my creating the series, and we’ve come up with a totally unique character that’s never been done. I think it will work well.

And that will take a similar tone to the Leprechaun films?

MJ: Absolutely! There’s a lot of comedy. You’ve got a tiny little vampire who’s gotta bite people on the ankles as the neck he can’t reach, so we’re not taking this serious. It’ll have the vampire gore but it’s a comedy horror.

Scorned is out on DVD and Blu-ray as of today, and keep an eye out for future collaborative projects from Mark Jones and Sadie Katz at www.facebook.com/SadieKatz and by following @sadie_katz.

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Having directed the low-budget likes of  THE HAUNTING OF WHALEY HOUSE and CORPSES ARE FOREVER, Jose Prendes was approached by Asylum – producer of all things low-budget and brilliantly surreal – to write a script for MEGA SHARK VS MECHA SHARK. Yes, the star of the MEGA SHARK series is going up against his robotic equal! Not only that, Prendes is about to release the first of his Sharkpocalypse trilogy of novels, SHARCANO. Starburst got to cover all of these topics and a host more, including three simple words: Sharks. Zombies. Together.

Starburst: With Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark, was that your idea or did Asylum approach you with the story concept?

Jose Prendes: Asylum approached me, and I tried to make sense out of it. But I feel that everyone at the studio, and the fans, knew the perfect direction to go in was a Mecha match-up.

What can we expect to see from the movie?

My goal was to deliver a unique and fun shark movie. You are always hampered by a low budget and limited elements, but if you focus on the characters and try and build the world up, you give the audience something else to focus on. Also you can expect to see a lot of Mega smashing into Mecha and vice-versa!

With the ‘out there’ idea of a giant robotic shark, did this cause any issues for yourself when writing the film? Did you have to do any research into robotic organisms and obey the laws of science or did you have free creative reign to do whatever?

I’ll be the first to admit that the premise on the surface is completely ridiculous and, yes, it was a bit difficult to reconcile it in any kind of logical way in the script. I had a few ideas that I really liked, but those got changed along the nine drafts I was asked to do. The version we have now is set in a world where the Mega has appeared before, so the government has been preparing for a second coming, much like what happened in Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla 2. Also, contrary to popular belief, the Asylum is a stickler for research, so yes, I did base a lot of the film on actual technological developments and factual shark research.

The last decade or so has seen a plethora of crazier and crazier shark films. Do you think that there is anything that would be deemed too far or too much, or is it a case of the more bizarre the situation than the more enjoyment the audience can take out of it?

I think it would be a bit much if shark porn became a thing, but you never know. However, I think audiences like it crazy; it’s more fun that way. Does it make the subgenre disposable? Yes, frankly it does. We would all still love to see something primal and frightening like Jaws again.

We’re big fans of these ridiculous shark tales, but a lot of the general public scoff at some of the ideas in place. As a writer and director, does it irk you that some people refuse to leave logic at the door when watching these films and insist on viewing everything in such a serious way?

It’s funny because some people can love a brain-dead theatrical film, but pour copious amounts of hate on a TV movie, regardless of whether it’s, as you call it, a “ridiculous shark tale” or not. It is always frustrating and heartbreaking when an audience downplays your work and doesn’t appreciate it at the very least as entertainment. Despite what they might believe, we all care, and we all tried to make art. At least I tried, but the end result certainly wasn’t 100% up to me. However, I think director Emile Smith did a bang up job with the tools at his disposal.

What do you think is the next step for Mega Shark and for the shark subgenre?

Who knows where the hell they’ll go to next, but I hope they bring me back because my idea for part four is All Monsters Attack. But they might want Mega to fight a giant snake or something; they haven’t had that match-up yet. But whatever happens, I can tell you that Mecha HAS TO be a part of it!

Why do you think that the last decade or so has seen yet another boom in shark movies?

I have no clue, but I love sharks. They are the scariest thing in the world to me. Jaws has kept me safely on dry land since I saw it as a child. I’m just glad I get to indulge in my fear for fun. And with my new novel Sharcano, I got to really dig into my nightmares. I’m hoping it’s the start of a literary shark fiction boom, too!

Out of the shark movies to come along in the last 10 years, which ones are your personal favourites?

I loved Bait and I actually really enjoyed Ghost Shark, believe it or not.

And which ones did you think were just too bizarre and unworkable?

I honestly wasn’t a huge fan of the first two Mega Shark movies. I hope fans think my entry is an improvement, but who knows. I certainly tried my best to improve on the deficiencies I found in those entries.

You’ve written the Sharcano novel. Surely that has to be turned into a movie, right?

Sharcano was my attempt at telling a B-movie concept like Mecha or Sharknado, but in a no-holds-barred, balls-to-the-wall way. Without having to worry about real world issues like budget, my goal was to write the baddest ass shark sci-fi horror thriller. I tell people it’s The Stand meets Jaws! As for the film version, that is up in the air. But we have one very huge producer taking a look at it right now with some very intense interest.  

Having worked on the likes of Corpses are Forever, The Haunting of Whaley House, and Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark, do you see yourself as contained to the horror genre and its subgenres?

Horror has really just been all that’s presented itself. Like all filmmakers, I’m a fan of everything. I don’t think any artist likes to consider themselves “contained”. But scary movies were my brother and sister when I was growing up as an only child, so I feel very comfortable in that world. If that is all I do for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t regret it.

On The Haunting of the Whaley House, what was it like to work with such a legend of the genre in Lynn Lowry?

Lynn was amazing! I was such a fan of hers from Shivers and I Drink Your Blood and The Crazies, then one day she reached out to me for a part in Whaley, because I was posting about the production on Facebook and we had been “friends”. I sent her the script, because I just so happened to have a role that was perfect for her, and she loved it. It was a quick one day shoot, but I got to interview her in between setups for one of the special features. I tried not to geek out while directing her, and left it all for the interview. She was lovely and kind and brought a welcomed sense of connectivity to the world of genre films that I loved. I was working with one of my idols, someone who had worked with major horror guys I admired, and I felt like I was playing in the same playground.

What’s up next for you, and are there any other particular creatures or spooky elements that you’d like to tackle?

I’ve got a lot coming soon. I’ll be directing my fourth film in February called The Divine Tragedies, which is a surreal serial killer thriller based on the true crime case of Leopold and Loeb. I describe it to people as American Psycho meets Videodrome. Also, I’ve written a young adult novel called Elementary, My Dear Watson, which will be published in March and features the infamous Sherlock Holmes and John Watson as kids in boarding school where they supposedly first met and that’s the first in a series. Also, Sharcano is the first in a trilogy that I am calling The Sharkpocalypse Series. The second part of the trilogy is Sharks of the Living Dead, and yeah we are finally going to be able to see zombies fighting sharks. That one should be out around July, hopefully to compete with Sharknado 2. Also, if all goes well, my bloody spaghetti western script A Magnificent Death from a Shattered Hand will be finally going into production. It will be directed by Thomas Jane, who is also starring with Nick Nolte and Jeremy Irons.

After the documentary debut Z CHANNEL: A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, Xan Cassavetes now makes her feature film bow with the sleek, stylish and sexy gothic vampire tale, KISS OF THE DAMNED. STARBURST was lucky enough to sit down with Miss Cassavetes to talk European horror filmmakers of yesteryear and get the inside scoop on her lusty vampire romp…

Starburst: As well as directing Kiss of the Damned, you wrote the script. What inspired you to tell this particular story?

Xan Cassavetes: Exactly what prompted me was a tour through that house . The house was giant and lonely and vacuous, and it was just sort of a weekend house for some people; it wasn’t very lived in, and it felt that way. They wanted to know if anybody had any ideas to do a horror film, and, whilst I wasn’t really visualising straight-up horror, I did think of this lonely girl living there temporarily, passing through on her way to wherever… her eternal road. And that’s how I thought of it; just from a tour of this house. I think that triggered some weird subconscious memories of my own life, and the next thing you know, I have a screenplay and I’m shooting it without too much time to think about it; where everything came from in my mind.

Before this you did the Z Channel documentary, and this is quite a different route for you. So it wasn’t a conscious effort to go down a more horror route?

Well I really have pretty eclectic taste in movies, because of Z Channel probably; it caused me to appreciate a lot of different stuff. Here in the US, everyone always expects you to make an indie style movie, and I really did have another movie that I was gonna make but I dropped, that was much straighter. When I say much straighter, I mean more socially acceptable in many ways. What appealed to me about this movie, especially making it at 45, this was the first time I got to make a narrative film, the first time I was allowed to. I just liked the idea at this point in time that didn’t cater to any audience except for myself. If I liked it, then some people would like it. It’s not too thoughtful or too wacky – it is what it is. It was really great to make something just from a string of consciousness and something based on atmosphere, and some of the things, y’know, that trouble me about being alive.

There’s a very European flavour to Kiss of the Damned. Was that always the intention?

Yes. I love this way that a lot of European directors, like Bellucci and Nic Roeg, portray this whole mythology of women, without making it stupid or superficial or shallow. There is something truly magical about women, whether you like it or not. There tends to be a nightmare or a dream… there’s something mystical. I love that European way of looking at women. A woman is a woman, not woman as in girl. I love that perspective to that much more common European filmmaking; to look at a woman, even if she’s 20, she’s going to be dressed like a woman in those ‘70s’ movies. It’s that ‘80s and ‘70s idealisation of a woman to be a woman; to go through the intense things women go through, and not really understand how to make it work. It’s always been very fascinating to me, and I thought that would be a very cool approach to vampires that way too. A woman is, y’know, maybe a little bit intimidated by her own sexuality as well as her own fear of hurting someone, and what physical contact means with someone, and what attraction means… not just fear of being a vampire, but fear of being a woman.

There’s a very sexy side to the film. Is that something that you were trying to strive for?

Yes, for sure. In the movie I’m writing now there’s no sex scenes, because there doesn’t need to be any sex scenes. I mean, a vampire movie, and all the scenes that have sex in them in that movie are very narrative and there’s a lot more at stake in those scenes beside the kind of sex they’re going to be having.

You’ve said about the guys that had an influence on you, were there any particular films or names that you drew from when making this? What horror films and directors were you a fan of growing up?

You can probably guess, the Giallo guys – Dario, Fulci, Martino, Franco – and I love Jean Rollin. I worship him. He’s the most loving horror filmmaker ever.

Over here we had Hammer, in the States you had John Carpenter, Wes Craven…

Hammer, yes! John Carpenter, yes! Wes Craven, yes! All of that! I mean, there’s so many really scary movies. I remember I went to see Suspiria in the theatre – that’s how old I am! I had no idea, I didn’t realise it was Dario Argento. I just walked in and I saw that, at, like, 9-years-old. I will never forget being that scared. That’s the dragon that you’re always trying to chase… like you need to be that scared again as soon as possible. I remember this movie called Tourist Trap that is super, super, super scary to me. I haven’t seen it since I was 10 though. But the scariest of all time is Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

As a writer, as a director, what are your ambitions?

I find that being a woman of a certain age, that through my life what works best for me, what appeals to me most, is not really knowing or having a set idea of who I am, who my people are, where I feel comfortable, what I can count on. I like to just be a slave to what excites me, and sometimes those things are so out of the blue and random that it makes it exciting to me. So I would just like to stay light on my feet and just not be a phony… just be open to anything that’s worth doing and exciting me to the point that I wanna share it with other people.

KISS OF THE DAMNED is out now on DVD/Blu-ray. For our full interview, check out STARBURST Issue 397, on sale now in all good newsagents and digitally.

After exploding onto the scene with Saw, Leigh Whannell has made quite the name for himself in the horror community. Effortlessly switching between writing and acting, the 37-year old Australian has been involved in a plethora of choice chillers, such as the first three Saw movies, Dead Silence and the Insidious series. With Insidious: Chapter 2 hitting DVD/Blu-ray this week, we caught up with Leigh Whannell to talk about the sequel and more. Read on for a preview of our interview, which will be available in full in Issue 397, on sale January 17th… 

Starburst: With the sequel, did you and James consider any other routes to take it or was what we saw in Insidious: Chapter 2 always the plan?

Leigh Whannell: Yeah, we did. When we first sat down to talk about it, we had many different ways we could go; we thought about making a prequel at one stage; we thought about the film being the story of Josh Lambert back when he was a kid, and that idea, I guess, ended up being the opening scene of Insidious: Chapter 2… but at one stage it was going to be the whole film. Then we talked about other different angles; maybe we could have a different family and what they’re going through. Then finally we decided we wanted to finish off the Lamberts’ story. We obviously ended the first film – I don’t think I’m ruining anything by saying – with an open ending; Josh was possessed and you didn’t know what was going to happen. So, once we decided to go in that direction, it really set the film on a really straight course… all the pieces were there, we knew the questions that we had to ask.

So where do you get the ideas for these films from and what movies inspired yourself; what particular horrors and thrillers stood out to you?

To answer the first question, I mean, you say where do we get our ideas from? That is the eternal question – I wish someone would write a book called ‘Where You Get Your Ideas From,’ which would outline where they come from. But, to me, ideas are the most mysterious things in the world; they are like little nuggets of gold that just float around in your subconscious. And if you think of your subconscious as this big swamp that just absorbs everything you’ve ever seen or heard… I feel like ideas float around in there and every now and again one of them will float to the surface and pop into your conscious mind and you’ll have an idea. But I really obsess on this subject, it’s actually really interesting, now you mention this, because I’ve been thinking a lot about it recently; about where ideas come from. I don’t know where they come from. It’s such a mysterious, ethereal thing to talk about, and I wish that I could make ideas appear in my brain on command. Sometimes I’ll sit out in my backyard with a notepad, and I’ll sit down and I’ll go, “Right, idea time!” Then I’ll just stare out at the horizon for 3 hours and nothing will happen. It’s really frustrating! I’ll put the pad and pen down, and I’ll go and do something else… maybe I’ll go driving off somewhere, and whilst I’m on the way to go and get lunch, all of a sudden, from nowhere, when I’m not thinking about it, an idea will hit me. So it’s a really mysterious process. As far as what films have influenced me, and there’s been so many, it depends on which part of my life you’re talking about. When I was really young, it was your standard Spielberg/Lucas film – Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, Star Wars – that was really the crucible for me. And then, when I was in high school, a teacher I had introduced me to more grown-up cult films, like Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver… I started really getting into those. Then when I went to film school, that’s when it got really artsy. I was watching films about Yoko Ono having salad applied to her face, and two hour Andy Warhol films that were just a shot of a building… and you had to sit there, stroking your chin, pretending that you’re getting the meaning of it all. So it’s been sort of an up and down period, but I remember in my teens I was obsessed with anything horror; I was obsessed with the Freddy films. One of the things that I like about the Saw films is that kids will come up to me today and say that Jigsaw, to them, is what Freddy Krueger was to me… and he really is. I think I can say, without any embarrassment, that Jigsaw sits alongside Freddy, Jason and Michael Myers now.

There’s been an eighth Saw film rumoured. It’s a little hazy whether it’s a continuation or a reboot. Do you have any involvement in that at all?

No. Over the years, a lot of people have asked James and I would we be interested in going back and making another Saw film, maybe a reboot or a continuation. And it’s something that I have a lot of affection for – but I think, what excites me the most about filmmaking and storytelling, is introducing the world to a new set of characters, to something they haven’t seen before. And I do feel like Saw has run its course within me creatively. That’s not to say that someone else with a fresh set of eyes couldn’t give it a completely different spin, but I feel like there’s so many other stories that I want to tell. I feel like people would be excited about it for the 5 minutes in which that announcement dominated the small corner of the Internet where people care about horror news. I could just imagine if I said, “Yep, I’m going to write the next Saw film,” there’d be a few headlines and people such as yourself might write about it and say, “The original one has returned.” Then once that initial surprise was finished, it would just be me in a room with a computer and no one would be forgiving… it would just be like, “Well now you’ve gotta produce the goods.” I feel like no one would really care once that announcement had been made. I feel like I just have too many other stories that I would want to write. Look out for Cooties – that’s a horror comedy that I wrote with a friend of mine, coming out this year sometime.

James has come out himself and said, in terms of directing, he’s seemingly done with horror. Is there any chance that you could see yourself directing the third Insidious?

I’ve thought a lot about that actually. I haven’t even made up my mind. What I want to do is write a third film and then, sort of, almost take off my writing hat and give myself amnesia somehow; read the script as though someone else has presented it to me as somebody else’s script and see if I really like it. If I really like it, I think there’s a chance that I could direct it. It really depends on how the script turns out for me and whether I’d be the guy for the job. But even somebody else directing it, if it wasn’t me, I’d want to be closely involved just to make sure that they really got the world of Insidious right.

INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 is out now on DVD/Blu-ray. To read our full length interview with Leigh Whannell, check out STARBURST Issue 397, on sale January 17th.

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Gary Russell is the very definition of the Doctor Who renaissance man, having gone from editing the official magazine to script editing Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, via writing New Adventures novels and producing at Big Finish, along with a host of other things. Just prior to Gary’s departure for Australia, where he is currently producing a children’s sci-fi series, Starburst Magazine was lucky enough to sit down with him and have a conversation encompassing his entire Doctor Who career to date.

Starburst: How did you get the job in Cardiff?

Gary Russell: I was asked to go and do the Doctor Who The Inside Story book for Russell; he wanted a writer he knew so he put me forward for it. Actually I think it was Gillane at Confidential had put my name forward first of all, and Russell went, “Oh God yes, that’s brilliant,” because I’d written the Regeneration book and everyone loved that. Which is lovely.

And so I went up to Cardiff, and I started going up to Cardiff on a very regular basis, quite a few days a week; when I wasn’t doing Big Finish stuff I was saying to Jason, “Look, I’ve got to go to Cardiff for three or four days.” I worked my schedule around it and like I say, by that point Alan was around so it made life a little bit easier and I could nip up to Cardiff and interview people – go round the country actually interviewing people. And one day I was in Manchester interviewing Russell for the book – he was the last person I interviewed for the book, because I wanted his opinion on everything that everyone else had said, really, because I wanted him to say, “Yes or no, that’s not true”; even though it comes down to a matter of perspective, the bottom line is, it’s Russell’s programme, so he has the final say on everything. And actually of course, he didn’t want a single word or anything changed at all, because he’s like me, he’s very warts and all and says, “No, if someone thinks that then that’s their opinion. It might be mad, but that’s their opinion!”

So I was supposed to be up there for about an hour and a half, and I think I was up there for six hours with him, and we were chatting away and he said, “Look, what do you want to do with your life? Are you planning to stay at Big Finish forever?” And I was saying, “No, I’ve had this sort of slight meltdown, and it’s been eight years and that’s a long time, and I love it, but I think the time will come eventually that I have to let it go.” And he said, “Well, what do you want to do in life?” I said, “Oh you know, I’ve always wanted to get back into telly.” And he said, “Oh, do you want to write TV?” And I said, “No. No I’m not interested in writing. Script editing, producing, that sort of thing.” He went, “Oh well that’s fun. That’s worth knowing.”

About two days later I got a phone call, from someone I didn’t know at BBC Wales called Matthew Bouch, who rang me up and said, “I’ve just been talking to Russell and Julie about you. He says you might be looking for some advice about how to do script editing. Next time you’re up in Cardiff, pop into my office, say ‘Hello’ and I’ll talk you through how you get into the industry.” And I thought, ‘Well that’s a nice opportunity.’ So I went up there, did whatever interviews I was doing, went and met Matthew, talked to Matthew for about an hour, and he said at the end of it, “Excellent. Well, can you start next Monday?” And I went, “Is this a job interview?” And he went, “Not at the beginning, but it turned into one, didn’t it?” And I said, “Oh my God. Yes, obviously! – but I’ve got lots of commitments at Big Finish.” And he went, “That’s all right, we’ll let you do that. Let’s say you’re up here three days a week, the other two days you’re with Big Finish until you’ve got everything out of the way that you need to get out of the way.”

Which at that point I think was Joe and I, Davros; I think they were the only things I sort of had outstanding. And so other than Martin’s World War One story which sadly I was unable to direct, which is a shame because I’d like to have done – the two I didn’t direct that I had set up and was working on that I really wish I had directed, one was Martin’s and I really wish I could have done Dan Abnett’s Nocturne; they were the two scripts that I really really loved that I had to let go, not to take anything away from Circular Time or any of the other stuff that I’d been working on that Nick eventually made, but I was well along with both Nocturne and No Man’s Land and I really wish I could have done those. Particularly No Man’s Land, I did love No Man’s Land.

But you know, the BBC were fantastic at letting me go off and wrap up what I had to with Big Finish. So I started in Cardiff in June, but I didn’t finish at Big Finish until November, so I was running the two jobs simultaneously for that length of time. And that was fun. And there I suddenly was up in Cardiff, getting myself a flat up here, and going, “Oh my God, big life change, I’ve moved to another country!” Ha!

And then you got to work on TV Doctor Who.

That was the supreme irony, I wasn’t really. I went up to Cardiff to be a script editor in the drama department; there was no guarantee I was going to work on Doctor Who; the only Doctor Who stuff that I was working on was Russell had asked me, because he knew I understood Worldwide and I understood licensing and I understood good storytelling and I understood Doctor Who, blah blah blah, if I would take over all “additional fiction”, and as it turned out all factual as well. Doing all approvals and you know, commissioning and all of that sort of stuff that went with it. So every time somebody wanted to propose a book or a comic strip, or a factual book about Doctor Who, or the back of toy packaging or anything like that, it came through me, and then Russell and Julie never had to worry about it, because they knew somebody was looking after it who knew what they were doing. Which is lovely and I did that. And because of that, I had to be across every single aspect of Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sarah Jane. And that was quite fun, so I was kind of like a script editor, without actually script editing Doctor Who.

But, on my very first day in Cardiff, when I was looking particularly lost and terrified, Brian Minchin threw nine scripts in front of me and said, “Have a look at those and tell me what you think of them.” And it was nine episodes of Series One of Torchwood. And I read them and I fell in love with that series and about three days later, was talking to Russell, somewhere either on the phone or over a cup of tea or something, and said, “Do you know what? God, I really would love to work on Torchwood. This series is amazing.” And he said, “Fine. Well when we come to do Series Two, if we come to do Series Two, we’ll get you onto that.”

And that’s exactly what happened, I did Series Two of Torchwood, and then while doing that also went onto Series Two of Sarah Jane, and worked on the two of those for a couple of years. And then eventually, the only Doctor Who I ever did was The Waters of Mars and The End of Time One and Two. The only episodes that I ever worked on properly. I did actually script edit a lot of Blink, because Helen was unavailable when Blink was in the initial parts of production, I mean Helen did a week, then I did about two or three weeks after that, I did all the tone meetings and production meetings and script revisions and everything on Blink, and then Helen came back to finish it off. And she very kindly asked if we could have a joint credit on Blink, and the high-ups in BBC Wales went, “No! Only one script editor per story.” Helen got the credit on Blink, and that’s fair because she did the hard work on it, I did the easy fun stuff.

Because I love meetings, I love tone meetings, oh my God I could spend my life in tone meetings, I just find meetings like that and production meetings so exciting, and I could see the bored faces on a lot of people and I’d sit there going, ‘How could you be bored by this? We are making television; this is the most exciting thing in the world.’

Script editors generally didn’t go – I don’t know, I wouldn’t want to speak for Helen or Elwyn Rowlands or Simon or whoever and get it rewritten, I’d know why, I’d be able to say to them, “Well actually that church doesn’t have a door there, the church they’re using has got a side entrance,” or, “It’s actually in a big green field and not in the middle of waste ground.” All of these things, so I thought it was very important that script editors went on recces.

And I love them, it’s a fantastic bonding experience, and I had that with Sarah Jane, I didn’t really have it with Torchwood so much. I could honestly tell you that I could walk on the set of Torchwood and nobody really knew who I was. I could walk on the set of Sarah Jane and I knew absolutely everybody, because I’d always gone on the recces, I’d always been around, I made an effort. I think when I was doing Torchwood I was just too new and scared to make that effort. And I regret that because yeah, I love that show, but other than a couple of the key personnel involved with it, most of them, they all knew Brian because he’d done Series One, but very few of them actually knew who the hell I was. And I didn’t go on set, I didn’t go on location, I didn’t go on recces and things, because I was just a bit too scared and new to it all. But with Sarah Jane I thought, ‘No, this is what I’m going to do.’

I remember saying the first time, “Can I come on the recce?” and everyone looking at me like, ‘Are you mad?’ And Joss the director saying, “it’ll be fantastic if you came on the recce; no you must. It’ll be brilliant, we’ll have great fun!” And we did, we had a ball.

It goes back to what you called being a “control freak”, but having oversight helps to bring everything together.

And you speed things up, you’re cutting a whole wasted draft of the script out because you understand what people need. Absolutely. I think television is the most fantastic collaborative industry, and you need to be part of that collaboration because the moment you’re not part of it, the moment you set yourself aside from it, everything comes crashing down. You don’t understand collaboration, you don’t want to be collaborative, you’re in the wrong business.

Did you ever find these series spoiled for you, by being across them all?

No. Because when you’re in it, when you’re part of it, you don’t think like that, actually, it’s all exciting in a completely different way. I will say that my last couple of years in Cardiff, when I was doing all the Worldwide stuff and Steven had taken over and Matt was the Doctor, and I wasn’t remotely involved in anything other than the Worldwide stuff, then I felt it spoiled it for me, because I didn’t have a hands-on feel of it. And even though on Doctor Who as I say I wasn’t actually a script editor on most of it, Russell and Julie were inclusive, you know? Particularly Russell, who loved the fact there was a mad Doctor Who fan in the office who would remember who was the third extra on the left and what Axons’ goo was.

I remember texting him when I first read Gridlock and saying, “The Macra? You are absolutely insane!” And he went, “Nobody else in the entire office understands that reference! Nobody else knows what Macra are; thank God I’ve got someone here that I can have a laugh about Macra with!” So he was very very inclusive about that, and so obviously was Julie because Julie was amazing, and so was Phil actually. Phil Collinson was great fun, you know, him asking me all sorts of questions about Time Lord costumes, which is why the little boy playing the Master in The Sound of Drums, when he’s looking into the Temporal Schism he’s wearing a War Games Time Lord costume; that’s just because I suggested it. Phil was asking me about different Time Lord costumes, I said, “This will work really really well for that sequence.” Boom, Louise was off making that costume. Little things like that, it’s great fun.

You never had any of that once Steven and Piers were on board. Even though I was doing the computer games and everything, I never quite felt part of it. And in that respect, watching the series did feel slightly spoiled because I thought, ‘Oh, I now have to know what’s going on in these scripts,’ but I’m not as involved with them, and therefore I feel one step removed, so as a fan, it’s all a bit spoiled for me.

I was really looking forward to Series Seven because of course it’s the first series that’s gone out after I’d left the BBC. And I thought, ‘I’ll get away with this, I won’t have to know what’s going on.’ And then: “Can we have an update to the Encyclopaedia before it goes out, please?” So that was the first half of the season spoiled. And then: “Can we have an update for Christmas?” So that was The Snowmen spoiled. Then: “Can we have an update for the second half?” “Oh for Christ’s sake, can’t I just watch an episode of Doctor Who without having to have read the script first?” I know lots of people would say to which, “Oh you moaning twat!” But I really set myself up for enjoying this season without knowing.

I will say this: I know nothing about the fiftieth anniversary special, not a single beat, other than the fact there’s a Zygon in it . And I am so looking forward to that, because it’s the first Doctor Who since The Parting of the Ways that I know nothing about, and I’m so excited because I don’t have to write part of the Encyclopaedia update, because the next update will be that and Christmas, so I probably will have to know about Christmas beforehand but I won’t have to know about the anniversary. Yes! I can watch an episode of Doctor Who with everybody else! Quite literally I imagine. And it’ll all be exciting and new and fresh! First time since Christopher Eccleston said goodbye. I’m rather looking forward to it, it’s rather nice.

Russell said much the same when he stepped down.

It’s a huge difference. Gosh, fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who, how mad is that? I’ll tell you one thing. Peter Capaldi, brilliant actor. I wanted him for The Infinite Quest, and so Andy Pryor got in touch with his agent and said, “Would he be interested?” Because I knew he was a fan. And he said, “Yeah, I’d love to. My only problem is, if I do a cartoon Doctor Who, does it mean I can never be in ‘real’ Doctor Who?” And so I went to Russell and said, “I want Peter Capaldi.” And he said, “Oh that’s a good choice.” And I said, “But he’s worried that if he does The Infinite Quest, you’ll never employ him on ‘proper real-life’ Doctor Who.” And he said, “Oh God no; tell him, it’ll make no difference at all, but what a good idea Peter Capaldi would be.” As it is, Capaldi wasn’t able to do The Infinite Quest, but he was then able to do The Fires of Pompeii, and I think that was because, not that I’d suggested him, but I’d put that name out there and suddenly I think, three or four months later Russell thought, ‘Ah, yes, Peter Capaldi, we know he’d do it, he’d be brilliant.’ And then of course he did Torchwood, and now look where he is.

And I just wish he’d done The Infinite Quest, because I could say I got there first! That would have been nice.

A bit like David Tennant being in Scream of the Shalka…

Pfft to that. I’ve been using him in Big Finish years before that! Scream of the Shalka, ha! Do you know, I’ve never seen it. I had to do some quiz questions about it last week for the quiz up here, and I’ve never seen it so I had to try and find it on the internet. I’m quite looking forward to the DVD coming out, because then for me it’ll be “new” Doctor Who that I’ve not encountered before.

Is it a shame that Real Time hasn’t made it onto DVD?

I was disappointed that it didn’t end up on Shada, I thought it would. And I would live in hope that if they ever do another sort of Revisitation of a Colin story, it could have snuck its way on there. It is disappointing that it’s now the only piece of sort of BBC Doctor Who that hasn’t been given the DVD treatment.

Of course, Death Comes to Time was something entirely different…

What I’d be interested to see is what they do with Shalka, because what I’d like to see is if Shalka goes down really well, I’d love them to redo The Infinite Quest and Dreamland, and put them out properly with commentaries, and treat them like they’re part of the range like they have with Shalka. Seems odd that they never did. They always treated them as if they were a sort of a second-rate, throwaway little DVD that had to go out under the Children’s imprint and everything. We’ve done loads of commentaries at conventions and things, and I think you could sit down and do a really good commentary for Dreamland now; Phil and I would have a ball doing that. Yeah, I was disappointed really, that Dreamland and The Infinite Quest were kind of almost put out with embarrassment by 2|entertain, and now they’ve done this marvellous thing with Shalka, which is great and exactly how it should be done, but I do look at Dreamland and The Infinite Quest and think, ‘Well I’m sorry, but even just on a pure animation level – forget the story side of it, but on a pure animation level – they’re both streets ahead of Shalka, so they deserve a bit more treatment; I mean, stick them out as a double-pack or something or whatever, but it’d be nice to give them a bit of a Revisitation as well.

I don’t suppose they like to treat the new series stuff “retrospectively”, as they do with the classic series.

Yeah, it’s weird isn’t it? Considering it’s going to be ten years old quite soon.

And I guess with DVD showing signs of starting to wind down, the window to do it is shortening.

Although you know what? I’ll say this: I don’t think DVD’s going to die soon. I think people do like “physical”; I don’t think Blu-ray will usurp it completely. I think the two will co-exist quite happily. I don’t think download of video material will replace DVDs with the general public; I’m always disappointed it’s done it with music, but I think music is a lot more disposable, and it’s in bite-sized chunks, so you can download a three-minute single. But I think no one is going to want to spend their entire life downloading movies and downloading TV series. Lots of people do, but I think as a rule of thumb, people will always want to hang onto a solid thing. If you’re going to pay more than five quid for something, actually, you don’t want to pay five quid for a load of electrons floating in the air. I think DVD won’t go away, so if anyone does ever find any more missing stories, then I think there’ll always be a home for them on DVD. I don’t think anyone’s going to turn round and say, “Oh, we can’t do that, it’s old technology.”

Although budgets for extras might be tightened, as we’re seeing with the New Series DVDs and their reduced commentaries.

Shame isn’t it? I wish they had more commentaries certainly. But you’re paying for people to come in for a day and work. So you’ve got the studio to pay for, you’ve got a producer to pay for, you’ve got a technician to record it, you’ve got Toby , and you’ve got between three and four or five, six actors; all of them have to be paid quite a lot of money, because it’s their jobs, so I can imagine that is probably the most expensive extra.