The Van Helsing Mysteries. Season 1.

[David Flin]

@RyanF looks at Hammer's 1970's Van Helsing Mysteries. Another look at a might-have-been series. Comment here.

 

[Thande]

For some reason this isn't appearing on The Site Formerly Known As Twitter when I post it (blame Elon Musk) so apologies if it shows up twice later.

 

[Charles EP M.]

In this timeline, Doctor Who is feverishly rewriting a story to be about Dracula

 

[varyar]

I love it. Young Me would’ve watched this show all the time.

 

[RyanF]

In this timeline, Doctor Who is feverishly rewriting a story to be about Dracula

They were trying OTL. Terrance Dicks wrote The Vampire Mutations for season 15, script edited by Robert Holmes, but the BBC's Count Dracula serial around the time meant they were asked to stop. It was replaced by the equally Gothic Horror of Fang Rock. Dicks returned to combining Doctor Who and vampires a couple years later in State of Decay.

However, that was a few years down the line from the first season of The Van Helsing Mysteries in this ATL, and unfortunately comes too late for The Claws of Axos to go all in on the earlier title The Vampire From Space.

I love it. Young Me would’ve watched this show all the time.

Glad you enjoyed it, given the format was inspired by your Aella the Amazon articles.


Speaking of inspiration, there was some method in deciding on the episodes rather than just my own fevered imaginings, which informed almost everything else. I started out with the writers that either worked on Hammer films around the time or would later write episodes for Hammer's 80s anthology series and were already active television writers. I then looked at horror or adventure scripts those writers would do subsequent to the POD and tailored them to Van Helsing. That means each episode of this series does have a counterpart in OTL.

I'd like to throw it open to the floor for rampant speculations on which episode pairs with which OTL work. Some of them might be more obvious than others.

 

[varyar]

Glad you enjoyed it, given the format was inspired by your Aella the Amazon articles.

I'm happy my work has born such great fruit. It's an interesting sub-genre to play in, isn't it?

 

[IanBertram]

Curt Siodmak, not Sidomak

 

[David Flin]

Curt Siodmak, not Sidomak

Corrected.

 

[RyanF]

The sources for the episodes listed in the article, writers are the same as mentioned therein:

• "Dracula Today" - from Hammer Films's Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)
• "Terror from Within" - from the Thriller episode "Won't Write Home Mom - I'm Dead" (1975)
• "The Desperate Hours" - from the Thriller episode "The Crazy Kill" (1975)
• "Powers of Darkness" - from The Omega Factor episode "The Power of Darkness" (1979)
• "The Caravan" - from the Play for Today episode A Photograph (1977)
• "Out of Body, Out of Mind" - from The Omega Factor episode "Out of Body, Out of Mind" (1979)
• "The Nine Maidens" - from the Doctor Who serial The Stones of Blood (1978)
• "Guardian of the Abyss" - from the Hammer House of Horror episode of the same name (1980)
• "The 5 Golden Vampires" - from Hammer Films's The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
• "Dr. McDee Must Die" - from the fifth serial of Sapphire & Steel (1981)

Was inspired to use real productions as the basis for the episodes by those various extra album by The Beatles works like Stephen Baxter's "The Twelfth Album", which use as their basis songs composed by the individual members of The Beatles after the breakup.

 

[varyar]

I got the golden vampire one, at least. (Is this good or bad?)

 

[RyanF]

I got the golden vampire one, at least. (Is this good or bad?)

Yes.