Memoriam

Episode availability

Companion status

• Christine features in this story

Episodic cast list

* Jim Timmons' name misspelt.

Production crew

Notes

• The Delaware Theme features at the end of Episode 3.

Writer's comments / notes

Memoriam was my second Everlasting Films audio drama. It is 3 episodes long, and is more focused on Christine. I'm rather fascinated by Christine's character as a companion, and was curious as to how she would react within the framework of the story. But don't worry- the Doctor doesn't get shoved to the side either.

• The name of a bunch of characters in Memoriam are based on people I knew. Erin was a close friend in high school who also happened to be the daughter of my British Literature teacher, and a big influence on me. Mr. Cahill was my History teacher in 8^th grade. Mr. Patterson was my English teacher in the first semester of 12^th grade. Mr. Patterson was another big influence on encouraging me to write- he probably never knew it, but I thought I'd pay a little homage by writing him into one of my stories. Karen is named after my wife, and Mary-Beth is named after another old friend of mine.
• One of the themes in Memoriam is my love of Doctor Who in its various forms, and specifically focusing on the book range. Oddly enough, just before Memoriam was finished, the BBC Doctor Who range was cut back from two books a month to one- distantly echoing the cancellation in the audio.
• During history class, Christine is about to study a chapter on Puerto Rico- foreshadowing a future story I would do set on the island, Emblems of Darkness (163).
• The NoMen mentioned in the first Mister When and Lady Jane sequence are of no relation to the previous Everlasting Films audio The Un-Men (133)- in fact, I didn't even know there was an audio called this until after Memoriam was complete! The NoMen were actually a group of bad guys I created for a comic book I wrote back in 1993, still sadly unpublished. It also follows a weird streak I've begun of referencing bizarre, unseen adventures for the Doctor and Christine.
• Originally, Memoriam was pitched to have Christine stuck in the Land of Fiction (from the 2^nd Doctor TV story The Mind Robber) but Thomas Himinez wisely rejected the idea, and suggested that I come up with something more original.
• Memoriam was the last story that I worked in any capacity with Thomas Himinez as script editor. He commissioned it, and soon thereafter got promoted to producer. Thus, Memoriam is the first story in which I worked with script editor Fawn Adamson.
• From commission to completion, Memoriam took about one year to write. My grandmother died during the synopsis stage and I halted work for about two months; thus, it took about as long as Past Imperfect (158) which was 5 episodes long.
• At the end of Memoriam, when Christine asks to set a course to 21^st century Earth, and the Doctor complies, it was originally meant to be a lead-in to my next audio drama that I had planned, but those plans were side-tracked when Emblems of Darkness (163) was commissioned.
• The first drafts of the synopsis for the story had Christine in her room, crying quite a bit, trying not to have a mental breakdown from recent events. Fawn Adamson made sure that I made Christine "suck it up" more (phrase mine, not her's) and not cry as much.
• The opening Shakespearean quote by Christine is from A Midsummer Night's Dream Act 1, Scene 1, spoken by Lysander.
• An earlier draft of the story had Christine actually going to Mary-Beth's party, and having a twisted, surreal moment when one of the party-goers reads a poem about a dark place called "Mu" (which is really the world that Christine is on). Christine wound up running out of the party. If I recall correctly, Fawn Adamson liked the scene but thought that it was superfluous, so out it went.
• Fawn Adamson gets credit for the joke about the Doctor losing his high score of Tetris!

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