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Producer's Notes:

After the nightmare production of Shakedown, making this next story was a breeze in comparison. By this time I was involved in an amateur dramatics group and was able to draw from a fresh pool of acting talent. In addition Joe and Paul were both working in Manchester so it was easy to organise three evening recording sessions in Anne Pugh's living room in which nearly all the material was recorded. I've got very fond memories of recording this story. Everyone was on the same wavelength, there was plenty of creativity in the air and we had a lot of fun. It is slightly ironic really since the actual story is pretty grim.

Lawrence Ahlemeyer wrote an intelligent hard SF thriller with the classic scenario of a small group of humans in a hostile alien world. Like me he was a fan of the Audio Visuals and I think that is reflected in the story. I remember reading the script for the first time and thinking that hardly anything needed doing to it. In fact probably the only major change was making Spenton the security officer a lot more nastier than he was.

I asked James Leatherbarrow to compose a new theme tune for us because I loved his music. Again I wanted something that suggested the real Who theme rather than copied it and James' Vangelis inspired piece turned out to perfect. In fact I decided to make it the de-facto theme for season one and dubbed it on to the previous stories. Colin Naylor, a friend of Joe and Lawrence's provided a terrific music score.

Whilst this story was largely edited on tape, I used my PC to created the alien background sounds and then fed the output of the soundcard into the mixer. I also used the PC to create the voice of the Thegarans.

Present Infinite also brought in our first proper companion for the Doctor. Raman was an attempt to move away from the traditional companion but ultimately I think he proved that there is a reason why most companions fit a certain type of character. He is effectively a second Doctor and there isn't really room for two of those. Nevertheless he provides a good foil for Joe's more laid back incarnation

Writer's Notes:

Like my current writing project for Gareth (and in the tradition of Douglas Adams, I suppose), Present Infinite existed in the form of an idea for years before it finally became a full script. Posting the end-product on the Web is a typically generous gesture by Gareth, and it also gives me the chance to look back and be self-critical.

There are still lots of things I like about PI, but I do think its terribly slow to get going and it contains a few fan-ish continuity references that would probably irritate me now. However, the main reason for adding those asides was as a nod of acknowledgement towards the Audio Visuals plays of the 1980s - PI was not so much my attempt at a Doctor Who story as my attempt at an AV story.

I always thought the best AVs were the ones that used spooky locations and hostile environments (Blood Circuit, Sword of Orion, Endurance), and that these stories in particular exploited the audio medium to maximum effect. Having such a menacing atmosphere (very much down to Jim Mortimore's great music) really gets the imagination going, so I thought it would be good to try and replicate this in PI.

The other element I'm pleased about is the characters. Lots of audio dramas suffer from using too many characters, all sounding the same, but I'm glad we managed to avoid that in PI. I thought the cast did a great job too in bringing my set of rather exaggerated stereotypes to life.

Gareth's post-production work was, shall we say, 'interesting', but we must remember PI was only his third production, and we were still back in the days before digital editing came along.

Now, where did I get to with Final Frame...?