The Chattath FactorBookmark and Share

Sunday, 19 December 2010 - Reported by Chuck Foster
Fineline Productions have released the first part of a new Doctor Who adventure in their original story series:

The Chattath Factor
by Will Hadcroft

An inhuman creature is stalking the English countryside, leaving murder in its wake. The Doctor and Jenny arrive to investigate, but before long the Doctor is fighting for his life in the home of a dangerous scientific radical, whilst Jenny and the local vicar are besieged by creatures driven by the darkest passions.

» Production Notes
» Download Part One.
 

The Chattath Factor has been a long time in development, with author Will Hadcroft commencing work on the story in 2002 after publication of his children's book, Anne Droyd and Century Lodge. On developing the story, Hadcroft recounts the influence of the successful partnership of Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks on his approach:
I watched the Reeltime Myth Makers videos interviewing Barry and Terrance to remind myself how they went about putting a story together. Something that stood out was their insistence on having a theme, a thread running through the adventure. It wasn’t that the writer should lecture the viewer/listener about a moral point or some political issue, but rather choose a theme that served as a foundation to the story and stick to it.

So I settled on the theme of man’s dual nature, the saint and the sinner, Number Six and Number One, in the same person. I also wove in as a secondary theme my preoccupation with the spirituality versus reason debate, and had the two opposing views represented by Pastor Daniel Jacobs and Doctor Joseph Winston.

Keen to make my Doctor Who story a good one, I pondered on what tended to work best in the TV series. Adventures set in the Middle Ages, the 19th century or the war years always hit the spot. The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Horror of Fang Rock, The Visitation, and The Curse of Fenric were all highly regarded. So I set my story in the 19th century.

Gareth and I treated the project the way Barry and Terrence used to handle the TV series: the writer does three rewrites, and then if it still isn’t up to scratch, the script editor tidies it up.
It has been produced and directed by Gareth Preston:
This is in part a homage to the Philip Hinchcliffe/Robert Holmes era of the programme, a period myself and Will are very fond of. Probably the biggest challenge production-wise was getting the sound of the monsters right. Hope you like them.

It was also marvellous to have John Ainsworth in the cast. Back in the eighties he had played recurring timelord villain Askran in the Audio Visuals, the fan audios which originally inspired me to create Fine Line. So I was delighted to have John and his cultured voice in one of my productions.

Thanks to all the actors and Will for their talents and patience with me getting around to sharing their efforts with the rest of the world.
The story was recorded in 2006, but with other projects taking priority, it wasn't until last year that it was finally mixed; since then, music has been especially written by Peter Dudley for Will Hadcroft in the style of Dudley Simpson, with part two in preparation for release in the next month or so.


You can find the first and successive episodes of The Chattath Factor from the Fineline Productions website, along with the previous stories in the series.






FILTER: - Fan Productions - Audio