A.L. Kennedy on The Drosten’s Curse

Patrick Kavanagh-Sproull speaks to the author of the new Fourth Doctor novel.

After kicking off the Time Trips e-book range a couple of years ago with The Death Pit, Costa prize-winning novelist A.L. Kennedy has revisited her Fourth Doctor adventure and expanded upon it, the end result being the full-length The Drosten’s Curse. It’s quirky and fun, well written with spot-on characterisation and it doesn’t demand to be taken seriously. It’s greatly enjoyable and definitely worth checking out.

One can hope that in between pitching even more Doctor Who book ideas to the BBC, Kennedy found time to answer a handful of questions about The Drosten’s Curse. One can hope.

When you wrote The Death Pit back in 2013 did you ever consider that you would be revisiting it two years later?

The idea I first submitted to the BBC was the idea for The Drosten’s Curse – it was clearly too long, so they suggested the Time Trips story should be the opening of that idea with a cliffhanger ending. I really hoped they would let me finish the whole idea – and they did.

Did you ever think about starting afresh with a full-length novel – or was it never a possibility?

I’d love to do another novel, but I wanted to work out the one I had first.

I’m interested in why you chose two one-off companions rather than one of the regular assistants. In our last interview, you mentioned liking Sarah Jane. At one point Bryony even puts on her Andy Pandy dungarees. Did it suit the story to create Bryony and Patterson or did you just not want to use someone like Sarah Jane?

I always preferred the episodes, when I was a kid, when the Doctor was between assistants and I was particularly taken by The Deadly Assassin – both as a kid and when I rewatched it. The timeline of The Drosten’s Curse comes just after the Assassin adventure on Gallifrey. For this adventure, I wanted the Doctor to have to start from scratch and to think that he was losing his mind. Another book would have one of the established companions.

One of the characters in The Drosten’s Curse is called David Agnew, which is also the name of the 80s ‘writer’ behind City of Death and The Invasion of Time – was this a homage or did you come up with the name first?

I’m a great fan of Douglas Adams and think the combination of Who and Adams was the perfect team. The name and the style of the book was all a homage to Adams.

Would you ever consider returning to write for Doctor Who again?

I would happily do so, of course. It was fun and more fun is always good.

The Drosten’s Curse by AL Kennedy is out now, published by BBC Books, price £18.99 in hardback.