Darkpaths began life approximately 22 years ago when I was a young boy of 10.
The adventures began in the school playground. My friends and I were huge fans of Doctor Who and it was all we played in the playground, much to the amusement of our fellow pupils.
At the time the 7th Doctor was the latest incarnation and so I created an 8th incarnation to be played by Richard O'Brien. My friend, Matthew, was an 11th Doctor who had short, curly hair with a moustache, and Alex played the 13th Doctor - an older gentlemen with a blue cloak enblazoned with a golden question mark.
We got up to all sorts of adventures, but at the age of 11 we were all due to move on to new schools. The friendship was to be broken up. The adventures were at an end. The final adventure featured the coming together of all the Doctors and previous companions as the 13th Doctor faced his final battle. At the climax of the story the 13th Doctor was killed, but the Time Lords appeared and granted him a reprieve, giving him a while new set of regenerations.
And so the 14th Doctor was born.
The 14th Doctor was a woman. And the adventures ended.
Around 10 years later, in around 2002, is were the real basis for Darkpaths began in the form of a series of nine stories named the Ninth Doctor Adventures (NDAs).
In 2002 Doctor Who wasn't on the air and didn't show any signs of returning. It existed with Big Finish Audio dramas, BBC books and the comic strip in DWM. All three mediums presented stories for classic Doctors and for the current, 8th Doctor protrayed by Paul McGann.
I was always interested in writing for an unexplored, future incarnation and still hoped that one day Richard O'Brien would play the Doctor. I decided to bite the bullet and create a 9th Doctor, played by O'Brien.
The NDAs continued after the 8th Doctor BBC book "The City of the Dead" and ignored anything the BBC made after that (which would eventually lead to giving me a headache).
The Ghosts of Cologne
The series started with this story. The prologue contained the regeneration of the 8th Doctor into the 9th and then picked up two weeks later with the Doctor fighting ghostly apparitions in Cologne, 2005. There he met Cathy Parker (a girl with a mysterious past), and the German architect Daniel Markt.
The basic ideas of this story was eventually used in the Darkpath debut "The Ghosts of Winter", replacing Cathy with Caroline and Daniel with Danny (although a character called Cathy Parker - Caroline's adopted mother - did appear later in the series).
The setting of Cologne and many of the "moments" from this original story will feature in the next Darkpaths story, "The Trees of Cologne".
Children of the Universe
Like the previous story, "Children of the Universe" was stripped down and the basics used for the Darkpaths
story of the same name. However this time the story was a much more indepth, sprawling mess. It featured the return of the Master, UNIT, orphanges plucked out of time and killer dogs.
Eye of the Jungle
The Darkpaths version of this story is near enough word for word a copy of the
original. It has been edited a little and some of the characters altered. The main alteration, of course, was the removal of former 7th Doctor companion Bernice Summerfield, replacing her with new former companion Ivy Coldstone.
The Vanishing Man
Again, the basics of this was used for the Darkpath version, except the story was simplified. In this version
we discover what led to the 8th Doctor's regeneration and we also discover that during the regeneration his body was split into two. One human half became the 9th Doctor, whereas the Time Lord half became the bitter, twisted, violin-playing John Smith. Smith teamed up with the Master and at the end of the story the TARDIS was destroyed, forcing the Doctor and his friends to escape in another Time Lord - Wilson's - TARDIS whilst the Doctor faced an uncertain, Human future.
Lost In Time
The started of series 2. This bares no resemblance to the story of the same name in the Darkpaths series.
This story is actually a crossover with the time-travelling comedy "Goodnight Sweetheart". It is also our first real introduction to a mysterious group called the Temporal Guardians, who have taken over from the Time Lords after Gallifrey's destruction in the 8th Doctor story "The Ancestor Cell". They are led by a silvery, naked Jayna, who is later revealed to be a former wife of the Doctor.
This story also featured the return of the Meddling Monk.
The Fear Factor & Putty Love
Being more or less standalone, these stories were another two that were word for word turned into a
Darkpaths story with a few minor changes.
Faces
This was our big story where we discover that Cathy Parker was adopted. In this story we meet her real parents, Len and Tanya, who kidnap her and show her that she has time energy running through her. The ideas filtered through into Darkpaths.
The Nine Heads of Death
This was altered heavily and turned into "The First Eleven". In this version the Doctor
is persued by Death's Head (from the Marvel series of the same name) and is also heavily crossed over with Transformers and features Shockwave, Rumble and Ratchet.
And that's where it all ended. I began writing "Lockdown", but never finished it.
Doctor Who suddenly returned to the screens, my 9th Doctor was erased from existing and I got too tied up in BBC books continuity. I was sorry it didn't have an ending, but that's the way it all was.
Should the series have continued the Doctor would have continued to have become more and more human. There would have been stories featuring death and the afterlife, Cathy falling in love with a merman and a return to Cologne. The Apparites would have been revealed to be the dead souls of the Time Lords and eventually I planned to write the Doctor out of the series.
The series would have also changed from Ninth Doctor Adventures, to "Pathways".
Stories that would have been written would have been "Deadly Homecoming" (which eventually became "Village of the Daleks"), "The Sea of Change", "Death's Door", "Extinction" and "Call of the Spirits".
The series would have continued without the Doctor, headed by Cathy, Daniel and a number of other characters with special abilities, before seeing a brand new Doctor reborn after series 3.
And so that's how Darkpaths was born. Years later I'm much happier with the series I have now, but I still look back fondly on some of those stories I wrote when I was younger.
