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PREVIOUSLY ON DOCTOR WHO...

TRIP OF A LIFETIME

Our ongoing series.

MISSING PIECES

Short, silly bits that don't fit above

THE VAULTS

The older episodes, kept only for historical interest

Writers' Guidelines

While we still go under the name of Crossover Adventure Productions and we will still be doing crossover-type plays, in future we'll be making a move into doing more original plays than rip-offs from other sources.  As a result, it is no longer necessary that prospective authors need to write plays that hack lines out of other plays.  It's just too hard, and best left up to experts like us who have managed to perfect the art (nearly).  We're more interested in seeing original characters and original scripts.  Although please, try to keep the character count low.  We may have found ways in employing actors, but casts above six non-TARDIS crew characters are virtually impossible.

We do have our own TARDIS team, so no writing for the Fourth Doctor, Romana and K.9 because we simply don’t have access to Tom Baker’s and Lalla Ward’s talents. To get a good idea on what sort of characters our regular team are like, have a listen to most (of not all) of the plays in the Trip Of A Lifetime section.  

Somehow, since we began back in 1998, we’ve accumulated the reputation of being rather silly and whimsical, and that’s something we’d like to continue. There are far too many productions, fan or otherwise, that insist on their stories being dark, gritty, oh-so-serious productions with little or no humour in there whatsoever.  While we're not saying we don't do serious stories (Fear Flight is an example) and that your script couldn't be in a serious vein, keep in mind that we want our version of the Whoniverse to be fun.  We try not to take ourselves too seriously behind the scenes, so don't let them do so in the scripts.

Something we will draw the line on is the use of swearing, sex, etc. Doctor Who was always intended to be a family show and we’re trying to keep into that ideal. Unless there is a really good reason why you must have swearing in a story (and I can’t currently think of one off hand) then don’t bother. It does not make a story more adult, and there are much better ways to induce fear into an audience than using cheap shock tactics. The same goes with sex – don't even bother. Again, this is intended to be heard by people of all ages, so keep that in mind when writing.

We’d rather you didn’t use old characters from the original Doctor Who TV series.  We've had many suggestions to do Dalek, Cyberman, Master stories, etc, but we'd rather commission those ourselves.  We're really not interested in seeing stories about Gallifrey, multiple Doctors, the Last Great Time War,  The Return Of Weng Chiang Who Is Really Yartek Leader Of The Alien Voord, etc.  Same with excessive references to past episodes or a desire to tie up continuity points - if in doubt, cut it out.  We'd much rather see what you can come up with, rather than what Verity Lambert/John Nathan-Turner/Russell T. Davies did.

What we want first when you’re pitching an idea is a plot synopsis – a summary of everything that happens in your play, right from the opening scene to the moment the credits play in the last episode. Please, please don’t sit down and write your whole script out first off then send it to us – you’ll probably end up doing a whole lot of work that will need a lot of rewrites after its been through the Crossover Committee. Sending us a synopsis first can easily get rid of all those pesky problems that could come with, such as characters acting out of the norm, endings which really don’t work, or episodes that don’t look like they’ll be long enough. And getting the whole plot worked out first will certainly help you while writing it later.

After all that’s sorted out, then we’ll ask you for scripts of episodes – one at a time. There’s no use e-mailing them all to us in one go as we’ll be forever getting through them. It’s much easier to work out all the little kinks in small chunks then in one big lot.

Send your submissions to timelord23@hotmail.com in Rich Text Format (or txt format if you can’t manage rtf).  Please don't send the stories as embedded text within the e-mails as it makes things awkward at our end and not as Word Documents so we don't accidentally get viruses.  Don’t forget to include a reply address inside the e-mail itself. You’d be amazed at how often the address in the reply field can be messed up after travelling through cyberspace.

If you're new to this sort of writing, I suggest reading over the following article by Owen Spratley at the Once In A Blue Moon website, which goes into detail most of the things I've mentioned on here and more besides.  A valuable source for any aspiring audio writer.  You can read it directly here.

That’s all we have to say, so good luck with your Crossovers!

DISCLAIMER

Most of the images and sounds on this Website were found in many places around the Internet, too many to mention.  If anyone finds something of theirs here and objects to us using it, let us know and we will remove it immediately.  Although Doctor Who and the TARDIS are owned by the BBC and we don't intend any copyright infringements, please don't use these Crossovers on other Websites or anything else without out permission.  We're just having fun :-)