The New Doctor! A Doctor Who Alternate History Story

Part 38 - David Burton Interview - 1996

Starlane:  Now let's talk about Time Parasite?

Burtion:  Oh my, that one. I'd almost forgotten it. Not for want of trying, (laughs)

Starlane: In what sense was it a 'Time Parasite'? The monster, I mean.

Burton: I have no idea. Honestly, we just pulled the title out of our arse. We had to call it something, and 'Alien' and 'Predator' were both taken.

Starlane: It was your only single episode story. How did that come about, precisely?

Burton:  Honestly? We had a hole in our schedule. We had to make an airdate, and the scheduled episode wasn't ready. So we just threw that together really fast.

Starlane:  Seriously?

Burtion:  Oh yes. It was practically shot live.

Starlane:  The notion of an extra-dimensional predator, something that you could only see pieces of, because most of it existed in extra dimensions was quite clever. Where did that from?

Burtion:  I think that came in at the sixth pint of lager. (laughs). Honestly, I don't know. Maybe Eglin, maybe Ian. Somewhere. We were just scrambling like mad to put a story together. Someone tossed it out, and we all ran with it. It was just... what's the word the star trek fans use... psychobabble?

Starlane: Technobabble?

Burton:   Yes! That's it. Technobabble. It didn't mean much more than that. The point was, we just had to fill up minutes, so anything that killed time, that was good. Words fill up time, so they wrote me a lot of words. I had a few good speeches in there, I opened the script, and there was a full page of transdimensional this, and hyperdimensional that and other reality, barely even punctuation, and I said.... how do I even take a breath while speaking all this. They said, David, you'll figure it out. No notice at all. Get the script, go in and do it.

Starlane:  That must have been difficult.

Burton:  Oh yes! I had cheat notes all over the place, tacked out of site to the Tardis console, or below a Sontaran computer screen. In some of the shots, you can see pretty clear I'm reading straight off from paper. I think at one point, I read a stage direction out loud. Ouch! But it was up to me. Judy and Jenny were great kids, but they weren't up to reciting a whole speech, and no one else had any lines - the lads in the suits didn't speak, there were no guests. So it was just me. I had to carry the episode. Tell you what - wait, you wait here for a spot, I'll go upstairs and dig up the old script, I want to show you something. Just wait.

[PAUSE - Stop tape/start]

Burton:  Here it is. This is the script we had on the morning of shooting, the full script. Look at this. See what it says here. Right at this point.

Starlane:  It says "David says something clever here."

Burton:  Right! Right! That's exactly what it says. I came in, read this, and it said "David says something clever here." And I knew I had to pull this, literally pull something out of thin air, right on the spot. And here, over here... (flips pages) a full page speech. That's all me. I have to read that. And who am I acting with? A guy in a big reptile costume he can't barely see out of and can hardly move in. It was like playing Romeo and Juliet opposite a parking meter. It was all up to me. I had to carry the whole thing.

Starlane:  Amazing.

Burton:   You're spot on there. (Pauses reflectively) That whole hyper-dimensional predator thing. That was a good idea. I remember when it came up. I can't remember, but we all fastened onto it. In hindsight, maybe using a few lizard and insect costumes wasn't the best way to show it - but we used what we had.