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Lawrence Miles is the author of several Doctor Who novels. He also created the Faction Paradox and the Future War that the Time Lords were going to have
- "thought it'd be nice to have this big time-war going on just over the horizon, I thought you could do a lot of interesting stories around it. Only two or three other people ever bothered, of course, but it gave me something to go on. It was never supposed to be a big murder-mystery type of thing, with this huge question hovering over it. At the time, I was planning on revealing who the Enemy was in the next book I did, but Stephen Cole stopped me doing it. And I'm kind of glad he did, because now I can keep the whole Big Time Lord War thing in reserve for the future." ' [1]
He is colloquially known among some fan circles as 'Mad Larry', usually for is demented ideas and comments, he frequently posts (some might say) extreme views (more like essays) of the most recent episodes of the new series on The Beasthouse (Lawrence Mile's blog).
Miles is also known for attempting to set the BBC Books (EDA/PDAs) apart from the Virgin Novels (NA/MAs)
"The BBC Books have always been really weak when they're pretending to be the Virgin books. That was the trouble with VAMPIRE SCIENCE from the start, you can tell the authors are just gagging to get the Seventh Doctor back." [1]
Miles does have particular views and understanding of Doctor Who (as is shown in his About Time series), he is very passionate about certain elements of Doctor Who.
"I'd say that the existence of Anji as a companion is probably the worst sign in Doctor Who so far. Back in the days of the New Adventures… back when we were more optimistic and we knew that the corporate lifestyle was repulsive...she'd be treated as a piece of self-obsessed parasitic vermin, and not without good reason, but suddenly we're supposed to be empathising with her. ...It's not the fact that she's got this job in the City that I object to, it's that she's actually proud of it. ...the idea of a companion who's defined by something that mean-spirited and trivial is just… vile." [2]
According to a 2000 interview he doesn't like Lance Parkin's work, but he is one of the writers still talking to him. [1] One writer who Miles certainly doesn't...agree with is Gary Russell as he states...
"The man's work is crap. He can't write, his [this next bit's been removed because it's probably actionable] for him, and ironically it turned out to be his best book. Nobody likes what he does. DIVIDED LOYALTIES is, if I'm not mistaken, currently the lowest-rated Doctor Who book of all time on the rankings chart. But he insists on taking over as much as fandom as possible, and making things utterly miserable for anyone who wants to do anything interesting. Because the fact is this. The Doctor Who books aren't just read by ageing long-term fans. ...The point is, a new fanbase... a fanbase that actually wants to go somewhere... is gradually building up, and the Gary Mafia at DWM seems to be doing everything it can to make sure it all gets fucked up." [1]
Miles has also said in talking about writers
"writers always take the laziest possible route if you don't put them under the whip. The problem is that I can't normally risk saying things like this, because there's so much ego among the writers - there are so many people who insist on being treated like some kind of "fandom elite", or who insist on being treated like "professionals", or who want to believe in this ludicrous code of conduct which makes it illegal for anyone to say anything bad about them even if they act like complete tits - that whenever I say something like "ooh, Compassion was used really badly, it was crap" people immediately assume that I'm making it personal. Which I'm not, usually. I know that (Paul) Cornell, for one, was very critical of the way I slagged off the other books which had used Faction Paradox and said that you had to give up the idea of autonomy if you're working in a shared universe. And that's true, absolutely true." [2]
However in discussing companions he did like
"That's probably why I liked Roz Forrester as a companion, because apart from her overall grumpiness she had nothing in common with the people who wrote her or the people who read about her. She was spiky and awkward and vaguely racist, she had a background that wasn't remotely comparable to the background of any of the readers. The writers had to try bloody hard to get to grips with her, and that made her worth doing, it made her a genuine character in a way that Bernice and Anji aren't and I suppose never could be." [2]
Miles is also noted for creating Sabbath (another recurring concept/villain) in the Eighth Doctor Adventures.
"After I wrote the synopsis Justin said that he’d quite like to use Sabbath as a recurring character, which was quite surprising because the synopsis didn’t really describe him and by that stage I had no idea what he was going to be like. I didn’t even know how he was going to look, at the time. Maybe Justin just picked up on the character because he’s got a very good name for a quasi-villain. Sabbath, I mean, not Justin. I’m not sure I remember any of Sabbath's development coming from anybody else. I think I just wrote him the way I eventually saw him, then sent in the book once it was finished. But I was drunk a lot of the time, so I could be wrong." [2]
While Miles did state that "As far as I know… and I’m always the last to know these things, so I could be talking rubbish… Sabbath isn’t going to be turning up as a lead villain much."[2] this did not totally fail to occur, several authors using Sabbath as a background villain or opposite to the Doctor.
The Book of War was a project Miles begun as he explored various mediums (following his work with BBV). "I've always seen the Time Lords as being elementals rather than aliens anyway, so I suppose the point is that The Book of the War uses the mythological elements from Doctor Who but nothing else." [2]
Bibliography
Doctor Who Novels
- Christmas on a Rational Planet
- Alien Bodies
- Interference - Book One: Shock Tactic
- Interference - Book Two: The Hour of the Geek
- The Adventuress of Henrietta Street
Bernice Summerfield Novels
Faction Paradox
Prose
- The Book of the War (editor)