Moorcock strikes back at angry Doctor Who fans

Author Michael Moorcock has attempted calm the fears of Doctor Who fans worried about the BBC's plans to allow him to write a novel about the Time Lord.

Announcing the news last week, Moorcock wrote on his own website: "Looks like it's official. I'll be doing a new Dr Who novel (not a tie-in) for appearance, I understand, by next Christmas. Still have to have talks etc... with producers and publishers but we should be signing shortly. Should be fun."

The BBC has confirmed it is in talks with Moorcock, but said nothing had yet been signed.

Moorcock, 69, has been writing novels since 1961. He would seem to be a perfect match for the dimension-skipping Doctor Who, since like the long-running BBC series, many of Moorcock's books are concerned with what he calls the 'Multiverse' - the idea of alternative realities which exist simultaneously.

Judging by remarks on his internet forum, Moorcock's fans are generally positive about the prospect of their hero writing a Doctor Who novel, but fans of the Time Lord himself seem less impressed.

Their fears prompted Moorcock to write a pointed response on his web forum at the weekend. "I've been watching Dr Who since it began," he wrote. "Haven't liked all the doctors and after Peter Davison stopped watching regularly until the new BBC Wales series."

Moorcock claims that since Tom Baker (pictured above) starred as the Doctor in 1974, "a lot of my ideas crept into the stories and so in many ways I'll be writing a story which already echoes my own work".

The author went on to accuse Doctor Who fans of "a suspicion of the outsider which you used to get when someone with a reputation as a non-[science-fiction] writer would decide to write an sf novel.

"I hate these presumptions of exclusivity either in my own corner of the literary world or elsewhere," he adds, telling Doctor Who fans that they will just have to wait and see.

In a parting shot, the distinguished author, who has written more than 100 novels, writes: "I've been asked to write Dr Who scripts or stories almost since the series began, because I was known to enjoy Dr Who. Only recently did the time feel right to me to do one. I'm going to enjoy that, too."

Angry fans of the Time Lord should at least take comfort from the fact that any Doctor Who novel written by Moorcock is likely to be truer to the genre than whatever comes out of the pen of Richard Curtis.

It was announced in September that the rom-com director, responsible for Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually, will be writing an episode of the new television series of Doctor Who. ·