The UK Sci-Fi TV Book Guide: Chimera by Stephen Gallagher

An edition of Chimera released to tie in with the 1991 ITV television adaptation.

Script Writer
Stephen Gallagher

Television Details
Chimera
4 × 60 Minutes / ITV / Colour

07/07/91 Part One
14/07/91 Part Two
21/07/91 Part Three
28/07/91 Part Four

Archive Details / DVD Releases
A heavily-edited compilation of Chimera was released on video in the UK in the 1990s (Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com).

Cover image of New English Library edition

Chimera

NO SCHOOL UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

The village schoolhouse is in use as a morgue. There has been a tragedy at the remote Jenner clinic. It has always been a place of secrets — and now, something terrible has happened.

Meanwhile, high in the valley by Ravens' Crag Farm, the Gaskell children reach home. The farmyard is quiet. The gate stands open. The Gaskell boy tugs at his sister's sleeve. 'Look', he says, and Sarah nods.

In the middle of the yard, the Strange Boy is waiting for them.

Publisher New English Library Format Paperback Publication Date 1991
ISBN 0-450-53757-9 Original Price £3.99 Country UK

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General Notes

Doctor Who and Warrior's Gate cover image

Stephen Gallagher's first work for television was Warriors' Gate, a Season Eighteen story for Doctor Who, a series which he returned to two years later with Terminus. He novelised both of these stories under the name John Lydecker.

With the exception of an episode of Rockliffe's Folly in 1988, he didn't write for television again until 1991, when he adapted his first original novel, Chimera, for Anglia Television.

In the gap between his two Doctor Who stories and Chimera he spent most of his time writing novels, and it was his third original novel, Oktober, published in 1988, that he would later adapt and direct for Carnival Films.

In 1995 he wrote two episodes of the ITV anthology series Chiller: Prophecy, which he adapted from the novel by Peter James, and the superb Here Comes the Mirror Man, based on The Kingston File, his own radio play which was produced for BBC Radio 4 in 1987. Also in 1995 he contributed the first of his ten episodes for BBC1's hi-tech action series BUGS, on which he was also credited as a consultant for seasons Two and Three.

More recently he has written The Kingdom of Bones, a ninety-minute episode of Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, written a feature-length episode of Rosemary and Thyme and created the ITV1 series Eleventh Hour.