This first appeared in issue 226 of Doctor Who Magazine. It appears here by kind permission of Clayton Hickman, having been found for me by Stephen Graves, to whom many thanks are due.

In those days, Doctor Who Magazine had a little bit of fiction for every Who novel, and I tended to write plots with that in mind. This just introduces many of the supporting cast, and lets Alexander display his full Simon Callowness.

Prologue

I wrote about five thousand words of a much more standard opening for Human Nature, and then just stopped, because it all felt very blah and I wasn’t interested in it. I needed something that would give me a kick and make it all roar along, so I scrapped what I’d done and did this instead.

The book sort of stutters into life like the quick opening scenes of a movie, mostly to reflect Bernice’s messed-up inner life.

The first two quotes (from issue 48 of the fanzine Paisley Pattern, an article by David Darlington, and from Melody Maker 27/7/94, Paul Mathur’s review of The Prodigy in concert) are flung in, inside the narrative like that, almost as challenges to myself, to live up to that heart on the sleeve open-ness that Darlington had commented on in that fanzine article about the New Adventures (and, as a sort of joke, to address him directly), and to add some… noise, really.

I don’t know why, as an author, I do a lot of things. I’m running on instinct a lot of the time. Sorry.

Clive is an old friend of Bernice’s from Love and War. The Doctor has that Little Johnny Piper thought from the song Puff The Magic Dragon a couple more times in my books. Gareth Roberts’ Sylvester impression used to include the line about clay models. After the book was published, a very talented fan was kind enough to send me a clay model of a Zygon as a result.

Bernice’s ‘recent acquaintance’ is Sherlock Holmes, who she meets in All-Consuming Fire. Opeks and Grotzis are currencies from the TV series, and I get the first appearance of my signature owl in early this time. They play quite a big role in this one. John Smith is an alias adopted by the Doctor in the TV series from as early as The Wheel in Space, and more often during the Pertwee years.

Chapter One

The title, Don’t Forget To Catch Me is a line from Saint Etienne’s Hobart Paving. This was before I knew the band, but it’s references like this, which made Gerard Johnson⁠ — who plays keyboards for them⁠ — get in touch with me.

I was privileged to write sleeve notes for their Places to Visit E.P., and even more privileged recently when Gerard accompanied the Saint Etienne vocalist, Sarah Cracknell, on Hobart Paving itself at my wedding.