The Doctor Who Project (aka TDWP) began life in late 1998 when several members of the then fan group TASC (Telefantasy Appreciation Society of Canada) were discussing the fact that Doctor Who was no longer on television. This group of fans joked about what the show would be like if they were in the producers chair and in charge of making the series. This was supposed to be just a bit of fun, but one of the members, Bob Furnell, asked “why couldn’t we do our own version of the series?” From there Bob explained he had discovered an online fiction series based on the recently cancelled series “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”, where a group of fans had got together and wrote a fifth season of the series tying up all the loose ends from the previous season. Bob noted that a lot of these stories were quite good and if this idea worked for a group of “Lois & Clark” fans, why couldn’t it work for “Doctor Who”? This got everyone to thinking and they agreed that this might be the sort of project TASC might like to try out.
Four initial questions were asked…
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What if Doctor Who had never been cancelled in 1989?
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What if Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) hadn’t regenerated into the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) in 1996?
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What if the series was still in production today?
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What would we do if we produced the series?
The answers that came from those four questions proved to be quite interesting, and it was at this point that the group decided to launch a fictional version of the television series. The Doctor Who Project was born. From there, Bob and fellow TASC member Misha Lauenstein laid down the initial guidelines for the fledgling new fiction series.
Over the next several weeks, the group (consisting of Bonnie Gale, Terry Baker, Pat Burt, and Jay Demetrick) along with Bob and Misha discussed ideas that would form the basis for this new fiction series.
Progress was slow and sadly the group couldn’t come to any sort of mutual agreement on the project, and as a result, Bob and Misha took matters into their own hands. Together Bob and Misha formulated that the first season of adventures would consist of 6 original stories penned by various Doctor Who fan writers. The stories would be published in Word format and would be emailed out to subscribers weekly over a period of six weeks. The series would use the Seventh Doctor, as played by Sylvester McCoy, for the series first two stories, after which the Seventh Doctor would regenerate into the projects very own Eighth Doctor who would be played by a fictional actor by the name of Jeremy Banks-Walker. The first story of the season would see the return of the Silurians along with the Seventh Doctor encountering former assistant Elizabeth Shaw, who would accompany the Doctor during for the first three stories. For the remainder of the season, writers were asked to create a one-off companion to be featured in their story; each character had the potential of eventually becoming the full-time companion of the Eighth Doctor. The first story would be published in January 1999.
The rest as they say is history.
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TDWP has always been about originality and remaining true to the spirit of the original television series. We have always strived to be innovative and original. As we published each new season of stories, the editors, and writers, improved at their craft. Editorial comments were made on each story asking for selected changes, and together the editor and writer drafted the best story possible. Every one of our writers is committed to their craft, producing stories of up to 40,000 words. As each season was published, the writers grew, and today we produce quality original fiction. Obviously we must be doing something right as we have been the recipients of no less than 6 MediaWest FANQ awards including: "Best Doctor Who Story (General)" three times, "Best Doctor Who Fanzine (General)"; twice" and "Best Doctor Who Artist".
Our writers include some of Doctor Who fandom's best: Arnold T. Blumberg (Howe's Transcendental Toybox), Will Hadcroft (Anne Droyd and Century Lodge, The Feeling's Mutual), Kyle Bastian, Jodie van de Wetering (ABC Television), John Gordon Swogger (The Goddess & The Bull), Tim Jones, Duncan Johnson, and numerous others...
For full details on our range of exciting adventures, please visit one of the links at the top of this web page.
