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If you're not reading Neil Gaiman's blog, well... I'm not really sure why I'm friends with you.
But he's posted an unused introduction he wrote for a Doctor Who novel. And in it, he nails exactly what it is l love about both Doctor Who and Gaiman's Neverwhere:
For a start, I had become infected by the idea that there are an infinite number of worlds, only a footstep away.
And another part of the meme was this: some things are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. And, perhaps, some people are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside, as well.
...
A final Dr Who connection – again, from the baggy-trousered Troughton era, when some things were more than true for me – showed itself, in retrospect, in my BBC TV series, Neverwhere.
Not in the obvious places – the BBC decision that Neverwhere had to be shot on video, in episodes half an hour long, for example. Not even in the character of the Marquis de Carabas, who I wrote – and Paterson Joseph performed – as if I were creating a Doctor from scratch, and wanted to make him someone as mysterious, as unreliable, and as quirky as the William Hartnell incarnation. But in the idea that there are worlds under this one, and that London itself is magical, and dangerous, and that the underground tunnels are every bit as remote and mysterious and likely to contain Yeti as the distant Himalayas...
An infinite number of worlds, only a footstep away...
Oh yes. Oooh yes.
I was always a daydreamer. In primary school, while the other kids were off playing kiss chasey, my small circle of friends and I would be huddled around an old tree stump, pretending it was the TARDIS console. The monkey-bars became the landing gear of a spacecraft. And there was a giant wooden climbing frame (seriously huge- twice the size of an adult) that became an alien pyramid on an alien world.
I once spent an entire weekend playing Lord of the Rings, incorporating everything into my game: chopping firewood, eating dinner, taking the dog for a walk. (I was the only one playing this game - imagination, like long-distance running - is a lonely sport.)
And that's why Neverwhere was so exciting when I first read it.
Because it's not set in some unattainable fantasyland. It's set in a real city, with real landmarks. The imagination is not some distant country. It radiates out from us, bathing the streets and train stations and office blocks of our everyday lives, and makes us see them in strange and dazzling new lights.
But he's posted an unused introduction he wrote for a Doctor Who novel. And in it, he nails exactly what it is l love about both Doctor Who and Gaiman's Neverwhere:
For a start, I had become infected by the idea that there are an infinite number of worlds, only a footstep away.
And another part of the meme was this: some things are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. And, perhaps, some people are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside, as well.
...
A final Dr Who connection – again, from the baggy-trousered Troughton era, when some things were more than true for me – showed itself, in retrospect, in my BBC TV series, Neverwhere.
Not in the obvious places – the BBC decision that Neverwhere had to be shot on video, in episodes half an hour long, for example. Not even in the character of the Marquis de Carabas, who I wrote – and Paterson Joseph performed – as if I were creating a Doctor from scratch, and wanted to make him someone as mysterious, as unreliable, and as quirky as the William Hartnell incarnation. But in the idea that there are worlds under this one, and that London itself is magical, and dangerous, and that the underground tunnels are every bit as remote and mysterious and likely to contain Yeti as the distant Himalayas...
An infinite number of worlds, only a footstep away...
Oh yes. Oooh yes.
I was always a daydreamer. In primary school, while the other kids were off playing kiss chasey, my small circle of friends and I would be huddled around an old tree stump, pretending it was the TARDIS console. The monkey-bars became the landing gear of a spacecraft. And there was a giant wooden climbing frame (seriously huge- twice the size of an adult) that became an alien pyramid on an alien world.
I once spent an entire weekend playing Lord of the Rings, incorporating everything into my game: chopping firewood, eating dinner, taking the dog for a walk. (I was the only one playing this game - imagination, like long-distance running - is a lonely sport.)
And that's why Neverwhere was so exciting when I first read it.
Because it's not set in some unattainable fantasyland. It's set in a real city, with real landmarks. The imagination is not some distant country. It radiates out from us, bathing the streets and train stations and office blocks of our everyday lives, and makes us see them in strange and dazzling new lights.
