The first inspiration for Teen Dream was a strange kind of ghosting on our TV, due to a hopelessly mal adjusted aerial. It looked like binary codes embedded on the picture that floated across the screen from time to time. The idea that it might be something sinister crossed my mind and I knew it would be a good place to start.

 

I then wrote a short introduction in which the Tenth Doctor and friends landed in the garden of  Television Centre and wondered if it was somewhere futuristic. I didn’t have any idea where else to take it. I had an idea about The Doctor performing on Top of the Pops, but abandoned it as far too unlikely. Then I thought it would do for a Theta Sigma story instead.

 

Then I read a newspaper article about the possibility that Television Centre could be closed down, something that Doctor Who fans especially regard as horror. But the possibility of it becoming a kind of ‘Big Brother’ style closed set for a reality TV show. Teen Dream, is about as likely an idea as any reality show on TV at present.

 

Ironically, the phone on competition scandal erupted a week after I wrote the scenario in which Cam was voted off by a rigged phone in.

 

Alvin the gay make up man, by the way, is another of the MSN support staff who I promised to ridicule in my stories. All the other incidental characters are totally fictional, especially Barry Masefield – at least I don’t think there is anyone quite that obnoxious in show-business. Della in wardrobe is another long-running internet joke on somebody who was asking for it. Mikhail Gradsky, however, the unseen kingpin of the plan to take over the country is sort of obvious when it is remembered that Gradsky is the original Ukrainian name of the Showbusiness impresario Grade family.

 

Kohb, of course, was introduced as a man who liked to perform, a conjurer with a stage show. Putting him in front of an audience and letting him shine was a good way to ensure one of them won. It would have been too easy if Chrístõ had won. Kohb gets his fifteen minutes of fame in this last episode featuring himself and Cam.

 

The word macishlughm used by Kohb as a term of endearment is a variation of the phrase “mo chuisle’ in Irish which means ‘beloved’ – more or less.

 

 

The disused underground station at Wood Lane, is actually a former set from Doctor Who. It was used in The Dalek Invasion of Earth in 1964. There are some interesting ‘then and now’ pictures of it on the DVD extras of that episode. I think, however, if it might be part of a renewal project the means it probably won’t be like that by 2013. It does, however, fit beautifully into this story, and it is a fitting tribute to past Doctor Who episodes.

 

Another tribute to Doctor Who, is the 50th anniversary of a popular and long running TV series about a time traveller that preceded the Teen Dream final. I couldn’t resist that bit. Of course, Doctor Who is fifty in 2013, although the anniversary is in November, not in the summer. And the ratings quoted for it – 19 million - are just a little hopeful.

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/jan/11/broadcasting.bbc