The Paul Spragg Competition: Best Before 2024…
- Katherine Wheeler
- May 8
- 7 min read
Updated: May 14
Welcome welcome! If you’re new here, I’d like to introduce you to a tradition I’ve kept up for quite a few years now of uploading my previous Paul Spragg entry to the internet whenever the competition is announced for the new year. I’ve got a fair few on here that you can look through, some good, some… better left in the drafts. Think of them like past exam papers. Though as my partner pointed out, they didn’t actually win anything, so maybe don’t take that quite so literally.
You can see the actual winning entries on Big Finish’s website, but what you don’t see often are the ones that didn’t make it and I think it’s useful to have a wide range of examples when you’re prepping to enter.
So, if you’re curious about what makes (what I hope is) a passable entry, read on! I’ll do a short analysis of what I think went well and what I’d improve with the benefit of hindsight underneath the story.
(developed into a Doctor Who Remnants story)
Brave the Night- a Ninth Doctor story
Synopsis
Sometimes, breath forgets to come. In the deep and desperate night, as sleepers fall into
dreams, they jolt awake. Sometimes, in the dark, where old soldiers lie, breath is stolen never
to be returned… and The Slumber will never give it back.
Sitting amongst ruined stars on the very fringes of the universe, an old hospital whirs with the
rattle of ancient machines sustaining the lives of those taken by The Slumber. A beast many
miles high— or several feet short. With a blazingly bright yellow eye— or millions,
depending on whose screams you listen to. The Slumber is invisible to all but its victims,
appearing in different forms each time it strikes and dragging them into an endless sleep.
Sanctuary Hospital is losing more and more patients and Florian Pilori is exhausted. A hastily
trained field medic and deserter, she was so sick of seeing battlefield upon battlefield of death
that she’d run to the edge of the universe and never looked back. Everyone in this hospital is
a casualty of the War: beaten, screwed up and spat out. Now, its corridors and gang of
runaway medics is her home. In the dead of night, Florian fights to save another patient from
an invisible enemy. But there’s no way to fight a creature you can’t see, let alone kill. What
else is there to do but call for a doctor?
The Doctor answers an urgent distress call from the planet Sanctuary, where Florian and her
team all have one question— what is this monster and how do they protect patients from
something no one else can see? The Doctor doesn’t believe it exists— sometimes in war there
are monsters, but sometimes there’s just pain and the bad luck that comes after.
First, the Doctor isolates each patient to make sure there’s no possibility of a virus. Next, he
scans for any life signs unaccounted for in the hospital’s records. Nothing’s working. More
and more patients are falling asleep in their empty rooms, just out of his grasp. After trying
everything, the Doctor takes away the one thing all the sightings of The Slumber have in
common and turns out the lights. The Doctor still thinks they’re all going mad— until he
starts to see it too, faint lights from out of the dark. That’s when he begins to doubt... is there
really no such thing as The Slumber?
The Doctor brings candles from the TARDIS to lay a trap. He instructs the medics to bring all
the patients into one room and place one candle in front of each of them. The patients are to
keep the flame flickering with their breath. If the Doctor can see where The Slumber is going
to strike next, then he can reason with it. With all the patients in the same room for the first
time, they begin to compare their stories of the war; the last things they saw before they came
to the hospital. Red lights, blue lights, blurred faces, dark shapes… It’s then that the Doctor
realises, The Slumber isn’t a monster at all, but each soldier’s last memories of the battlefield.
In the dark and the cold, panic attacks would feel like dying. To clumsy machines with basic
programming, it’s not fight or flight but cryofreeze.
The Doctor tells all the soldiers to take a deep breath in and to hold it, focus on the light.
They breathe— in, hold, out— nothing comes. Then again— in, hold, out—again and again
until the candles burn down. When the night is over, the Doctor must leave again. He tells
Florian and the medics to listen. Knowing what they know and knowing that they’re safe, the
soldiers can sit, calm by the bedsides, and hold their hands. In, hold, out.
Extract (opening)
Sickness was a city. In the early hours, when the hospital lights dimmed and the shadows of
machines formed high rises, there was nothing but breath. The heavy grind of rattling lungs
and wounded groans blanketed the air like engines in the dark. It was there, through the
streets of the dying, that Florian ran.
She had been many things before she’d been a medic in Sanctuary Hospital: a dead father’s
daughter, a soldier’s last ‘hello’, a coward, a runaway, and a deserter. In this place she was
just Florian, Florrie for short, no last name— no, not even if you asked. Back then, she’d run
from a war bigger than her whole galaxy. Now, she was running towards a monster. “Med
50: ward report. We have a patient in distress— calling for immediate backup!” She shouted
into her communicator.
The source of the distress call was mottled blue, his body quivering with tension. Florian
scrambled to start up the dusty equipment, the machines wheezing to life in time with the
man’s strangled breaths. He barely registered her as she arrived, his gaze somewhere over her
right shoulder as he tremoured back and forth. “It’s going to get me. The Slumber.”
“It won’t.” She said, cocking her gun. This time, whatever was out there wasn’t going to get
away. “If I know what to aim for, I can kill it dead. Just tell me what you see and keep
talking.”
The man’s voice trembled. “It’s so bright. Red and gold, with so many eyes— getting closer
and closer.” He shakily lifted a hand. “Right there.”
Florian followed his gaze and spun towards the dark. Lights twitched in the distance,
monitors flashed up numbers and flickered life signs across the walls. Blue and green glowed
faintly up ahead. She squinted into the gloom; she could feel her pulse thudding through her
trigger finger. “Stick with me, soldier. What’s out there?”
“Can’t you see it? It’s close, it’s coming right at me!” There was a gasp behind her, and she
heard one last horrible choking breath. “Please don’t take me! Please—”
Bang! Florian fired into the dark. The monitors roared and sparks burst from the shot.
Nothing but the bullet clattered to the floor. No monster in the dark. No eyes and no trace.
She had lost.
She turned back. In the bed, the old soldier lay at peace. The machine beside him told her all
she needed to know.
“Patient report. Time of Sleep recorded. Heart rate slowing. Temperature falling. Breathing—
” Florian clenched her fist. “There’s nothing there. It’s like the others. Med 50, repeat:
somebody, anybody, please. I need a doctor.”
Analysis
Okay. I’ll admit, I really like it. I’m sorry but I loved writing this and coming up with it. A “monster” that responds to breath being beaten by a candle? Come ON, that rocks, I’m sorry. My 2023 entry sucked and to finally have an idea that didn’t was such a thrill. Having each patient see a different thing when looking at The Slumber because it’s the last thing they remember seeing of the battlefield, I maintain, is a cool idea.
Pros
I didn’t want to involve the Time War in a major way because the Time War is boring. Looking at what happened in it, having things laid out explicitly on the page really stunts the imagination. So you have soldiers who are recovering from it instead. Just ordinary people on the ground caught up in the action. No grand old Time Lords, no Daleks, no big pew pews and spaceships.
I did my favourite thing I like to do with these entries and gave the story a female protagonist. At the time, there had been one female protagonist out of all the Paul Spragg entries and nothing against any of the writers but that was disappointing to me. I think it’s important that women appear even if their gender has nothing to do with what they’re doing. Women exist in space… and in the past… and in the future! As it happened, the winning entry for 2024 actually had a female pro/antagonist so cheers Patrick Ross!
This story also speaks to my own experience with mental health. I’ve experienced fight or flight many, many times and it has felt exactly like I was going to die then and there. So it’s me writing from the heart, knowing that fear that I’m describing. Old soldiers don’t just need patching up, but they carry with them some horrible trauma and they don’t always have that hand to hold.
Cons
What is the functional difference between cryosleeping and dying here if the patients hearts stop? This was something I thought of whilst writing and mulled over, but I thought cryosleep was still the most effective option. Like in all Sci-Fi, I hoped that readers could potentially suspend their belief and hate Tweets.
Reading this, you could think that I was advocating for a “just breathe and you’ll be fine” approach to panic attacks. Possibly.
“The extract is melodramatic”. Yes, but this is like saying that your hot chocolate has too many sprinkles on. Boo hiss!
Looking at the winning entry, it’s far slower and more prose-like. The writer has included plenty of dialogue to show off what he can do and has got the voices bang on. The script is written from perspective and is brimming with character, Bill is sewn through it from top to bottom. Great storytelling.
“The Ninth Doctor does a Time War thing!!!!” This could have been off putting for two reasons:
Nine doesn’t really have much to do with the War because he avoids it + it’s kind of time locked-ish. Maybe him landing in this Time War hospital was a stretch.
Nine is 1 of 3 Doctors that were involved in some way with the War. Maybe choosing him seemed a little predictable… but to be honest, I anticipated that and still chose Nine as the main character because quite simply he just works the best— and clearly, Big Finish aren’t scared of picking the same Doctor multiple times to win so I didn’t think this would be an issue.
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