The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Those of you who have been enjoying the second season of ITV’s Primeval (which I think has really improved this season) will be aware that next week’s episode features a runaway mammoth. What you may not be aware of is that this particular episode comes from the pen of one of our top UK writers, the Hugo-nominated Paul Cornell. Paul has written for a wide variety of shows, from children’s series like Wavelength to the adult drama of Casualty, but genre fans will know him best for his scripts for Doctor Who, which include some of the finest episodes of the revived series – Human Nature, the Family of Blood and Father’s Day.

(Paul Cornell, pic pinched from his blog)

Somehow Paul has also found time to pen a number of books – from Doctor Who-set adventures to his own well-received original SF novels – and try his hand rather successfully as a comics scribe too, with XTNCT (with D’Israeli) from 2000 AD/Rebellion and Wisdom for Marvel (with Trevor Hairsine and Manuel Garcia), which recently won the Silver in Comics Nexus’ awards in the Best Limited Series category, and yet still manages to have time to turn up at a number of conventions around the UK. With his episode of Primeval due to air this coming Saturday it seemed like a perfect time to pitch a few questions in his direction:

FPI: Hi, Paul and thanks for taking some time to chat to us. Next Saturday’s episode of ITV’s Primeval (the second series’ penultimate episode, I believe) comes from the pen of your good self. Can I ask how did you land the writing gig for this – was it a story you pitched to them or did the producers approach you?

Paul: They approached me for the first series, but I was too busy back then. Having seen the first season and loved it, I went knocking on their door for the second. I’m handling a lot of ongoing plotlines, so a lot of it is me playing with the stuff they already had in place, which suits me down to the ground.

(I’d love to hear how Drive Time radio traffic reports this jam… The Colombian Mammoth from the penultimate season 2 episode of Primeval, borrowed from the official site, (c) ITV)

FPI: Obviously you can’t give too much away for fear of spoiling the episode for us all, but can you give us a little teasing hint of what we can expect? We already know from the trailer at the end of last weekend’s story that it involves a mammoth running around and not, I’m guessing, in the cute Ice Age manner.

Paul: It’s a Colombian Mammoth (not the hairy kind) which appears on the motorway, in broad daylight, so it’s kind of upping the ante for when and how anomalies appear. But as the trailer’s already shown, that’s just the starting point for the episode.

FPI: Ah, the Colombian Mammoth, infamous, if I remember correctly, for smuggling drugs in their trunks (unless I just imagined that). The first series of Primeval was enjoyable although largely reliant on a monster-of-the-week formula. The second series still has regular new monsters but has expanded considerably to take in a shadowy conspiracy, the team questioning the morality of the government keeping these incidents secret from the public despite deaths (and I imagine a mammoth on a motorway is going to be very hard to hush up!) and the possibility of the present having been altered during one of the temporal anomalies, which I’ve found much more interesting and satisfying from a dramatic point of view. Again I know you can’t give away too much ahead of the transmission, but can you tell us did you get to play with any of these aspects of the developing story arc?

Paul: Well, that’s mostly what I’m doing, pulling a lot of those threads together and setting it up for Adrian’s big finale episode. I love the idea of changing the show’s format via time travel. That’s got to be a first. It’s so brilliantly daring!

(Mellie the Mammoth packed her trunk and ran away to the circus… Professor Cutter enjoys a walk with his mammoth in Primeval)

FPI: Paul, you’ve written for a number of shows in your career, but you do seem to have a distinct leaning towards the fantastic genres, not least with penning stories for Doctor Who, which I’m guessing must have been pretty exciting for you on a personal level since you’re a big Who fan. And of course your novels and comics have also embraced SF&F (and the Who universe) – what is it about the genre that draws you in, both as a reader/viewer and as a storyteller?

Paul: I think you can say more about the world through SF than you can with mainstream fiction. Cosmology tells us that some of the possibilities about the basics of who we are and how we live boggle the mind. Holby City’s not going to get there. I’d say Doctor Who at the moment, as the biggest show in the land, is reflecting and defining public opinion more than any other piece on TV, and doing it entirely through SF.

(Freema Ageyman, David Tennant and Jessica Hynes in the Paul Cornell-scripted Human Nature from Doctor Who, (c) BBC)

FPI: Your two-parter for the last season of Who – Human Nature and the Family of Blood – have been consistently trumpeted by many (including myself) as some of the best of the show since its return. How satisfying was it to be allowed not only to pen more Who but to be allowed to explore the emotional and moral ambiguities and complexities of the life he leads and the price he and those around him pay for being the hero?

Does Russell T Davies encourage this kind of emotional development of the characters? I’m asking because although there are some nice touches in the original series (like Tom Baker’s agonised “do I have that right” speech in Genesis of the Daleks) I don’t recall it going to quite that level before and found it fascinating in the way it adds emotional depth to the character and consequences to his actions.

Paul: Of course Russell does, that’s his central point. We need to know these characters emotionally. Adventure without identification just isn’t possible any more. I think maybe the change in attitude among the audience is something to do with first person computer games.

You’re used to being the one having the adventure. So the hero has to emotionally engage with you a bit more to drag you in. But it was ever thus: we need to care about the characters. Old Doctor Who was splendidly distant about that.

FPI: So after this episode airs what’s the next upcoming Paul Cornell story we can look forward to? Any more plans to write for Who? And with two graphic novels under your belt – Wisdom and XTNCT – are you planning to write more for the comics medium in the future too? Would you like to pen something for the new Who comics IDW are publishing if the chance came along, or, for that matter, are there any existing characters you’d like a crack at if the opportunity arose?

Paul: I’m working at the moment on a new ongoing series for Marvel, details of which should emerge very soon, something for radio, a novel, a one off for TV and I’m pitching my own series. Fingers crossed. So all in all I’m keeping busy.

(Paul’s recent Wisdom graphic novel from Marvel, cover art by Trevor Hairsine)

FPI: You certainly are, but I guess it helps keep you out of mischief! One last question we usually ask our guests – which books or comics are on your bedside table just now and are there any new writers or artists you’ve come across and would recommend folks watch out for?

Paul: I’m reading Peter David’s Tigerheart, a wonderful re-imagining of Peter Pan, and Inside Straight, the new Wild Cards collection edited by George R.R. Martin. I’d recommend David Louis Edelman’s Infoquake, a big business SF thriller, and anything Chris Roberson does in his current Chinese future SF series (see the December issue of Interzone for a good example of this – Joe).

FPI: Paul, thank you very much for taking some time out of writing a different script with a pen in each hand and probably your toes too from the sound of that schedule. And best of luck with the pitch for your series, we’ll look forward to hearing more about that and the new Marvel work soon.

Paul: Ta!

Paul’s episode of Primeval will air on ITV1 on Saturday 16th of February at 7.15pm, so make sure to tune in; ITV has an official site here with plot synopsis, cahracter information, pictures and video clips. For regular updates on the many works Paul is beavering away on check out his blog, the House of Awkwardness.