History[]
Well, Calladra Productions kind of just began, out of the blue. Really, what spurred my interest to do this was the fact the wonderful Doctor Who Audio Dramas kept rejecting my stories, and it gets frustrating after a while! If I had my own audio series, then I could be my own boss. So, after joining a podcast with Lee Sands, Mathew Urch, and Nicholas Cochran, I talked with Nick, and we talked about doing this. We elected to have him as our Doctor. To explain for people new to Doctor Who why our Doctor would be American, we envisaged Matty as the Doctor to get our listeners started...
So, the original plan went as follows. Matty was to be around for one story, tentatively titled, "Siege of the Cybermen". In the story, which never achieved much substance other than the ending, the Doctor was to have infiltrated CyberControl, and have sent Whitney back to the TARDIS to keep her safe in case the plan went awry... Which it does, killing most of the Cybermen and rendering the CyberController's emotional inhibitor useless. Able to feel emotions now, the Controller goes on a terrifying rampage, culminating in him beating the Doctor to death, screaming, "HOW DARE YOU! HOW DARE YOU INTERFERE!" He then slowly died. Whitney, having viewed this on the scanner, ran out and got the Doctor back into the TARDIS. He regenerated and the rest could have been history... Except for one hitch.
The hitch being that Matty was really good in the role of the Doctor, plus I was beginning to have my doubts about an American Doctor. The die-hard fans would shun us, and generally I didn't feel it would be well-received. So, after deciding this, I went to work cobbling together a pilot.
Remember how I had rejected DWAD stories? Well, I had an idea for a little audio drama, independently made, featuring their David Segal incarnation of the Doctor and his companion Susie Jo Parker, who was mute. This saved the hassle of having to get someone to play her. The audio drama, "The Devils of Gallipoli" was to have taken place between the DWAD stories "Space Trap" & "Terror on Terra". But then the project hit a brick wall. David Segal, I was informed, had no Internet, and his recent appearances in the DWADs had been done by special recording session. Well, what now? Let it sit, of course. Although, I did have a cover made for when I planned to adapt it as a short story.
Now that we decided to use TDOG as our pilot, it was time to write the dang thing. Well, thankfully, in my head I had a plot loosely strung together. With that, I set out writing the script. It took maybe 2 days to write, hence why it is so short. It actually was about as long as I estimated it to be. Now, we had the Doctor cast, we had myself as the voice of the Sea Devils, I was fairly certain, at this point we could get R. Douglas Barbieri and Lee Sands on board, now we needed to find the companion... Someone to play a Miss Whitney Anderson of Chicago, Illinois.
Well, it was easier said than done. Like many things. No one bit the line for the audition. No one at all! There were plenty of views, but no one submitted anything. So, after a sleepless night, I got up and got on Facebook. I saw that April Sadowski, who played Emmeline in the DWAD "Equilibrium" (originally "The Quinkins"), was online. "Hmmm... Maybe I could ask her?" I thought to myself. I talked with Lee about it and he said go for it, so I did. Thankfully, she accepted without hesitation. I had new hope! I had a guy for the Doctor, a simply awesome actress as the companion, and I had the monsters -- because I was the monsters! I even talked with Doug and got him on the project. This was going well! "I can do this!" I thought.
Then, April sent in her lines... Well, when she described her Whitney voice as a cross between Donna Noble and Amy Pond, I said to myself, "Um, what? What does she mean? Whitney's American." I listened to the voice and, after talking with April, we though it best for Whitney to have been born in England, and when she was young, to have moved to America. Hence the line, "But I'm still British!"
Now, I have Matty's lines, I have April's lines, and then I got Doug's lines. So, I send Lee a message asking him to read these lines and send them to me. He doesn't. Well, by now I already have most of the story put together in Audacity! So, time to take matters into my own hands. I'm doing the Sea Devils, why not the Ensign, too? No one would be able to tell that I'm playing both parts. So, I quickly recorded all of the lines, and finished everything, and then... Yay! I was done. I had successfully made my first audio drama!
But here comes the next part... Getting us out into the public eye. Hmmm... Well, I think we can manage, once "Calladra" is out.
Links[]
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