The New Doctor! A Doctor Who Alternate History Story

Part 42 - Interview with David Burton, Dreamwatch Bulletin, Autumn, 1993

DWB:  A lot of people say Volcano plays very much like a sequel to the Jon Pertwee serial, Inferno.

BURTON:  Well, that's because it is.

DWB:  Really?

BURTON:  Oh yes. Definitely. That was decided early on, when Barry Letts was coming into the project. We wanted to do something that would be directly inspired by the BBC series. It was always a popular serial, Barry Letts had produced it and he'd directed it, him and Doug Camfield.

The idea we played with was obviously, back in Inferno, we'd seen the evil doubles of all the characters. Except for the Doctor? Where was he? Well, Jon had his hands full with his own role, there was no time to shoot an evil twin, and that would have complicated his plot. But it left things open - was there an evil twin? If so, where was he? What was he up to?

DWB:  Probably not trapped on Earth.

BURTON:   Oh probably not. But he'd definitely be a much worse criminal than the Doctor ever was, and when the Time Lords caught up to him, he'd have to be shut up somewhere. So once we decided on that, well it made sense that he'd be involved somewhere behind the scenes in blowing up his earth. And why would he want to do that?

DWB:   To escape?

BURTON:   Yes, Jon Pertwee's Doctor was all about escaping exile on Earth. So we were actually doing a missing part of the story.

DWB:  You should have had Jon Pertwee do the part of Mister V.

BURTON:   We asked him.

DWB:  Really?

BURTON:   Oh yes. He was very flattered, but he had to turn it down. It just seemed too strenuous. He was willing to do a cameo at some point. If we'd managed a second season, we would have found something for him. He's Jon after all. Then we asked Christopher Lee. He couldn't do it, scheduling. A shame, he had some ideas for the part. Peter Cushing, too frail, that was a shame. We went over and had a nice chat, but the minute we got there, it was clear he wasn't up to it. He died about a year later. Malcolm McDowell, oh he would have been just brilliant, but we couldn't begin to meet his price. We ended up with Ian McKellan, we wanted someone who could pull off Jon's flourish. And (laughs) he had Jon's nose.

DWB:   Ian McKellen? He must have been expensive? How did you manage to get him?

BURTON:   (Lays finger on nose) Trade secret. That was Barry all the way. Barry managed to talk Ian into doing it, at a price we could afford. The last serial was Barry's baby from top to bottom. He produced, directed, helped write it.

You really can't underestimate the degree to which it was Barry's show. He masterminded every part of it - selected the locations, supervised every shot, edited, sat in on the sound mix. It was no one's show but Barry's. He was committed to it. Even when he decided he couldn't stand the rest of us, that show was his, he couldn't let it go.

DWB:  So Ian McKellan was really playing Jon Pertwee, playing the Doctor?

BURTON:   In a sense, yes. We watched Inferno, and a couple of Jon's other serials together. I remember him very much copying some of Jon's mannerisms. On the set, there's a point where I thought - that's exactly how Jon would play it. I would have loved to have seen him back for the second season. Volcano was going to be the springboard after all.

DWB:  You were planning a second season?

BURTON:   Well, of course we were. We had a proposal in to the BBC. We wanted to do at least three seasons.

DWB:   What would that have been like?

BURTON:   We were going to go for thirteen episodes this time. Three, three-part serials, and one four part. If they didn't go for that, our back up plan was a six episode proposal. Either way, the through line was that Citizen V, the evil counterpart to the Doctor -