"...one
might have expected the world-dominating |
Kublai Khan
to be an impressive figure but in fact |
he
was a small, gout-ridden man..." |
Elsie
M Smith - Transcript from THE YORKSHIRE EVENING PRESS
He gets
DR WHO ideas on long walks
Are
you one of the 10½ million followers of DR WHO, the children’s
serial that has a large adult audience peeping over the youngsters’ shoulders
every Saturday?
If
so meet the man responsible for the doctor’s present adventure that have
transported him back in time to the days of Marco Polo.
He is John Lucarotti,
English by birth, Canadian by citizenship and inheriting his surname from his
Italian grandfather who was a sculptor. He was born at Aldershot, son of an Army
man, now retired and living in Devizes. His original love was the sea and he
spent nine years in the Royal Navy, including the war years before succumbing
to a latent ambition to write.
CONSCIENCE STRICKEN
Resigning from
the Navy, he decided to try out his authorship on the Canadian public. For a
time he worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and among his contribution
to them was an 18-part series on Marco Polo - “the period has always
fascinated me,” he said.
Then
he decided to free-lance but made most of his money as a door-to-door encyclopedia
salesman until his conscience began to trouble him about inducing people to buy
something they didn’t really want.
After five years
out there, he decided to take Canadian citizenship. “Canada had been
so very good to me, I felt it was a way of expressing my thanks.”
Lucarotti
also made himself known in the United States where he won an award for a radio
play and wrote a 13-part children’s serial for an American network.
WORK ON STAGE
PLAY
His return to
England was prompted by a desire to write for the theatre, and he is now working
on a stage play about Nelson, although it has to be shelved for a while he writes
a further adventure for Dr. Who, taking him back to the days of the Aztecs which
will be seen in a few weeks time.
He
has also been commissioned to write a play for the BBC’s FIRST NIGHT series
and he proposes to give it a Mexican background. “I lived in Mexico
for six months and love the country and the people."
Just how does
a man set about dreaming up the fantastic adventures that befall Dr. Who? According
to Lucarotti; it is 5 percent inspiration and 95 percent perspiration.
LONG WALKS
“I
go for long walks - people probably think I am mad, because I mutter to myself
- stare into shop windows or go in a cinema while ideas take shape. Then I do
the research and not until I have the whole thing clear in my mind do I sit down
to the typewriter.”
“The
Marco Polo stories for DR. WHO were written between July and November last year
when I was in Majorca."
I try to combine
adventure stories with reality that was or that is. The DR. WHO stories
are based on Marco Polo’s journals and a great deal of checking has been
done to ensure accuracy."
For
instance, one might have expected the world-dominating Kublai Khan to be an impressive
figure but in fact he was a small, gout-ridden little man and we presented his
as such."
A
schoolteacher told Carol Ann Ford (she plays Susan) that just as he was about
to start the Marco Polo period of history, one of the children in the class informed
him Dr. Who was based on Marco Polo."
NICE COMPLIMENT
“The
teacher said he expected to have tell the class that they must disregard everything
that saw in the series on television but in fact, after seeing an episode, he
told them that although they must discount Dr. Who’s involvement what they
were seeing was historically correct. It was the nicest compliment."
He has had to
a great deal of research on the Aztecs and in this has been helped by an expert
on this subject.
Aztec culture
was literally wiped off the face of the earth. They were a highly civilised and
cultured race. Children were strictly disciplined, there was a high standard
of morality, people retired at 50, their knowledge of astronomy was equal to
ours to-day.
“Yet
they cut out human hearts for sacrifices. There is a record of having them cut
out 10,000 hearts in one day."
I gather we shall
not see this gory piece of history in DR. WHO’s time with
the Aztecs.
A CHALLENGE
Lucarotti is not
especially interested in writing for children but he explained: “ The
big challenge for me is in getting kids interested and, at the same time, slipping
into the action some knowledge they may not have had before. Writing for children
is also very good discipline. You can fool adults with things you would never
get away with with children.”
Lucarotti’s
pastimes are skin-diving and flying, neither of which he can do here. In Canada
he had his own aircraft. As a skin-diver, the conscience that made him give up
selling encyclopedias stops him from taking a spear-gun down with him.
“The
first time I diced I killed an octopus, I thought afterwards ‘What a senseless
thing to do’”
His favourite
relaxation is finding a large hunk of rock 80 or 30 feet below the surface of
the sea and lounging on it. "It’s fascinating world down there.”
Perhaps he will
take DR. WHO down there some day.
Edited for the online version of EOH by Matthew Walter.
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