The Witchfinders

The Witchfinders

I think it was Christmas 1984 that I received my copy of Arthur C Clarke's collection of essays going by the slightly unwieldy title of 'Report On Planet Planet Three And Other Speculations'. Having only really heard of him through his 'Mysterious World' TV series, I lapped up these thoughtful articles and soon followed them up with the similar 'Profiles Of The Future'.

It was through these works that I became familair with his so-called Three Laws:

(1): When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

(2): The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

(3): Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The Third Law is touched upon in Ben Aaronovitch's script for 'Doctor Who : Battlefield' and when I came to write my own 'Toby & Lucie : Moon Of Death' in 2010, I could hardly fail to give it a nod also.

So I did grin when it pops up again in 'The Witchfinders', especially as Alan Cumming had ended up sitting next both 'Round The Archives' stalwart Warren and his copy of my book whilst on a plane to Scotland.

Alan did borrow the book for a while, which led to some confusion as to what had happened to it when Warren got off the plane, although it turned out it had simply been left behind, rather than half-inched by anyone.

I do think it amusing that there is a very small possibility that Mr Cumming might have glanced upon the following section, set on a magical moonbase in June of the year 1178...

LUCIE: What was it Arthur C Clarke used to say? "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"?

TOBY: Clarke's Third Law. Of course, it works the other way around, too... Mind you, I'd like to see what old Arthur C would have made of all this...

LUCIE: He'd probably do a half-hour documentary on it and say at the end that personally he didn't believe a word of it...

(Keen watchers of 'The Goodies : Bigfoot' might spot another allusion there)

But Alan's performance in Joy Wilkinson's 'The Witchfinders' made us laugh too, and Warren's close encounter with him surely makes him a honourary member of the 'Round The Archives' team, if only in passing.

Magic, our Alan!

'Toby & Lucie' is available from Lulu here.

Our video about 'The Witchfinders' can be seen here.

(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)