Ten Reasons To Love Russell T. Davies
Jan. 10th, 2010 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakSince we've not only changed Doctors but headwriters/main producers, here's my post of looking back and naming aspects I loved about Doctor Who during the Russell T. Davies years, specifically things he as writer and producer was responsible for. Note: I'd appreciate it if you didn't reply by comments on all you hated about the RTD years. God knows that one could easily write a post devoted to the flaws and mistakes in his writing/producing of DW, but it is not this post.
1.) Families and friends of Companions. Now, Rose was by no means the first Companion whose relations we saw on screen - there was Peri's stepfather, Tegan's aunt, Nyssa's stepmother and father (ahem), for example. Nor was she the first whose relationship with a family member was a part of her characterisation - Ace's Mommy issues were pretty important. However, these other family members tended to be a one story kind of deal. We did not see them again. If they weren't killed off upon introduction anyway, we never found out what they thought about the Companion's travelling the universe with the Doctor, or what it was like family/friends and Companion to reunite later. One of the most basic innovations of the RTD years was to give each of his Companions family members and/or friends the audience kept reencountering. Out of sight was no longer out of mind. And very memorable relations and friends they were, too. Which brings me to:
2.) Memorable recurring characters. This overlaps with the first item, but not completely. Some of these memorable RTD created recurring characters were directly connected to the current Companion, though not all. (A memorable character not related in any way to the Companion but recurring would be Harriet Jones. Now there is a reason why The Christmas Invasion is my least favourite of the Christmas specials, but the fact that Harriet would not exist without RTD is truer than in most other cases, because she does not show up in a single episode he hasn't personally written. Every single line she ever says on screen, from Aliens of London to The Stolen Earth, is pure Rusty.) Sometimes they had a development arc of their own (see Mickey in Rose versus Mickey in Doomsday, for example), sometimes a character started out as a cameo and was developed into an instrumental part of the show (Wilf in Voyage of the Damned to Wilf in End of Time). I love most of these people in varying degrees, and no matter which one you name, I could tell you instantly a scene featuring them as a focal point that has written himself into my mind and emotionally resonates with me to this day. I've known shows far more flawless than Doctor Who which did not accomplish this. (Say, the first season of Mad Men - haven't watched any of the subsequent seasons yet.)
3.) Memorable one shot characters. And then there are the characters we only got to meet once, in a single adventure, never again, and who still became instantly memorable. Jabe from End of the World, for example, Brattigan from Gridlock, Mr. Copper in Voyage of the Damned, Jackson Lake in The Next Doctor, most recently Adelaide Brooke in Waters of Mars. (If you like also Donna in Runaway Bride, where she was written as a one shot, before there was any possibility of bringing her back.) (Note: and these are only the one shot characters from RTD's episodes, not from episodes by other writers he edited and produced.) My viewing life would be much the poorer if I had never "met" them.
4.) Great balance of writing for both newbies and old school fans. So you have a 40 plus years old cult show to revive, with decades of continuity; and you also want to reach an audience which can't tell its Dalek from its Cybermen, and who at best when asked about having any Doctor Who memories could come up with "wasn't there something about a scarf?". Also, the show's format has changed so you have only 45 minutes per story, except in the rare case of a two parter, which means you really can't waste twenty minutes on exposition about who the hell we're dealing with this week and what their backstory within the show is. What do you do? Well, some show makers go for a "reimagining", i.e. same name, different and new story, which is what Ron Moore did with Battlestar Galactica. J.J. Abrams recently solved a similar dilemma for Star Trek by offering a canon Alternate Universe. What RTD did was to a) come up with the Time War and b) reintroduce old elements from the show other than the Doctor and the TARDIS bit by bit over the course of five years instead of all at once. And he managed to do it in watchable, interesting ways instead of making one part of his audience go "yes, we know all that already" and the other go "what the hell is he talking about?". One of my favourite examples of conjuring this particular rabbit out of a hat remains Utopia with its reintroduction of the Master. It doesn't matter whether you've already watched every single episode featuring the Master from the moment Roger Delgado made his entrance in Terror of the Autons or whether you're a New Who fan who until this moment has never seen another Time Lord other than the Doctor: it's one hell of a watching experience. "Say my name", yes indeed.
Footnote: in addition to reintroducing the big stuff bit by bit, there are also the inside jokes which are never off putting to newbies or time consuming. Cases in point: the Doctor, when visiting Scotland, introducing himself as Jamie MacCrimmon in Tooth and Claw instead of using his usual alias John Smith. If you're a new fan, the significance of this passes you by, but you don't have to get it in order to follow on screen events; you simply assume he does it for variation. If, on the other hand, you're an Old School fan, you're bound to go "awwwwwww, he still loves Jamie", as this is the name of the Second Doctor's Highlander Companion. Or the Doctor's explanation to Donna in The Sontaran Strategem about having worked for UNIT "in the 70s, or was it the 80s?" Again, if you're a new fan, you just assume he's talking from a time travellers perspective. If you're an Old Who fan, you're in stitches about this dig at the infamous UNIT dating controversy.
5.) "What marvelous nonsense", to quote Jackson Lake as he first gets to view the "real" TARDIS in The Next Doctor and thus gives a great description of the show's central premise of a man and his friends time travelling in a blue police box. At his best, RTD can offer a mixture of slapstick, insanity and genuine pathos andn the result is awesome and very his DW years. From End of the World, where we get both the pure camp of all the aliens dancing to Tainted Love and the intimate character moments like Jabe asking the Doctor why her scanner identifies him as belonging to a dead species, via Gridlock (with the traffic jam from hell taking years and years of time and the Doctor inventing car jumping on the one hand and the Martha-puts-the-stool-down defining character moment on the other) to End of Time with its "how many different outfits can we put John Simm into?" versus "I wonder who I'd be without you" extremes.
6.) Casting: here RTD-as-main-producer excelled. For starters, he wasn't afraid of risks. Billie Piper pre-DW was known mainly for being a former teenage pop singer. Catherine Tate was a well-known comedian, but that very fact worked against her in the perception of many people, even after The Runaway Bride. (Both professional critics and a lot of fandom were forced to eat their words in this regard during s4 when he threw serious character scene after serious character scene about Donna at them.) Freema Aygeman was relatively unknown. Like every producer, RTD also used the "big name in one shot role = casting coup designed to draw viewers" principle, but I can think of only one example where the result was an underwritten role (Kylie Minogue as Astrid). Otherwise, the well known actors gracing the show in the last five years were used very well and effective indeed, from Simon Callow as Charles Dickens to Lindsay Duncan as Adelaide Brooke. And then, of course, there were the two actors he picked to play the Doctor himself. He had worked with both before - with Christopher Eccleston in The Second Coming, and with David Tennant in Casanova - and while other BBC worthies had undoubtedly their say, it stands to reason RTD's was the main decision of casting the Ninth and Tenth Doctor. I'm very glad about both choices, and the rich variety of situations he threw them in, from madcap comedy to stark tragedy.
7.) Uses and twists of the formula. You can do historical, space adventure or invasion of the week on a show like Doctor Who, but some constants remain. First and formost, there's the Companion. (Or the companions, but after Five's day, Team TARDIS usually consisted of just one Companion at a time.) If the audience doesn't care about the Companion on this show, you're screwed. One of the most basic tests of any DW producer, therefore, is whether he or she is able to create Companions the audience can feel for. Now of course I had my own preferences and varying degrees of affection during their tenure, but I can honestly say that each of the three main Companions of the RTD years - Rose, Martha and Donna - endeared themselves to me when introduced. I wanted to know more about them and was looking forward to following their stories. There was never a sense of "ho, hum, so this is the new girl, see if I care". Of the part-time Companions, I loved Mickey best and wasn't as smitten with Jack Harkness as most viewers, but I found him enjoyable enough and wouldn't want to miss him from the DWverse. And I also loved when RTD got experimental with the formula, be it with the Doctor-as-Companion/Companion-as-Doctor twist of The Next Doctor ("I'm your companion!" says Ten to Jackson Lake, and he is, fulfilling the usual companion functions of helping and healing for him) or with the two stories under his tenure which really would not have worked with a Companion in them, albeit for different reasons: Midnight and The Waters of Mars, both showcasing, in different ways, why the Doctor needs a Companion so much.
8.) One-on-one character exploration via conversation. Speaking of formulas: in your avarage RTD Doctor Who story, there will inevitably be at least one, more usually several scenes betweeen one mad chase sequence and the next, where two characters just sit down and talk, and it gets incredibly intimate, with both audience and characters catching glimpses of each other's souls. (Sorry for the pathos, but it feels earned in the context.) Rose and the Doctor watching the doomed Earth from the observation dome view screen in End of the World. Donna and the Doctor on the rooftop in The Runaway Bride. Martha and the Doctor in the New Earth alley. Jack and the Doctor finally having it out in Utopia while Jack is repairing the macguffin of the episode. That heartbreaking conversation between Sylvia and Donna in Turn Left in the middle of the night. Wilf and the Doctor in the café in End of Time I, and later on the space ship in End of Time II. The "I wonder who I'd be without you" scene between the Master and the Doctor in the same episode. These type of character scenes are RTD's signature pieces, and I think the most artful thing of all about them is that they would not be as effective if they didn't come smack in the middle of the usual DW style craziness, because the contrast to the before and after only heightens their effect.
9.) The writing team. Unless you're JMS, or Aaron Sorkin in the early years, you don't write all episodes, you need other writers, and you need a working climate in which they thrive. Of the stalwarts during the RTD years, Stephen Moffat and Paul Cornell could be depended on delivering great episodes, Gareth Roberts was good and reliable with the comedy (especially when writer-related, as in The Shakespeare Code and The Unicorn and the Wasp), Helen Raynor oddly enough was generally better in Torchwood, but her last two DW episodes, the Sontaran two parter in s4, I really liked, and Chris Chibnall ironic enough was better than in Torchwood (where he was the headwriter for the first two seasons). Rob Shearman in s1 of course was fabulous, and James Moran's The Fires of Pompeii from s4 has become one of my favourite all time DW stories. Choosing good scriptwriters is as important as choosing the right actors, so this, too, is something I appreciate about RTD.
10.) Doctor Who Redux. Now I've heard it said that because DW is such a decades old cult classic, it was bound to be revived sooner or later, and that any other producer would have succeeded in this task if given same by the BBC. Somehow, I doubt that, and not just because of the infamous Movie of Doom from the 90s. Don't get me wrong, I don't think RTD was the only producer who could have managed it. But I don't think many others could have managed to a) revive the show for more than one season (my poor Blake's 7, which got some very mediocre radio plays for a revival, being a case in point; as far as I know, the recent attempt at another Prisoner didn't get too keen a reception, either, despite Ian McKellen as Number Two; so much for the idea that decades old cult shows always have a ready made audience) , b) make the show into one of the most popular of the country (let's flash back to rating figures for the Sixth and Seventh Doctor), and c) get the sheer wealth of talent in both the acting and writing department to work with them. If you listen to audio commentaries, "I wanted to work with Russell (again)" is a frequent reason cited why actor X signed up for the show. RTD might be inclined to piss off fans in the occasional interview, but apparantly he's really good at keeping actors and writers charmed and loyal. (With the actors, one obvious reason is that he's a really good "tailor", i.e. excells at writing parts that challenge them and showcase their talents: cases in point would be the part of Sky from Midnight for Lesley Sharpe, and her in synch-speaking scenes with David Tennant, or the DoctorDonna scenes from Journey's End where Tate and Tennant get to pick up each other's mannerisms and reflect them back.) I doubt we'd ever have gotten Eccleston for Nine without RTD, given that the man doesn't seem to care too much for the DW franchise as such. There definitely would never have been a Catherine-Tate-played companion. John Simm? Maaaaybe. Derek Jacobi? Not so much. And so forth. Not being able to jump between different timelines, I'm unable to say with any absolute certainty that another producer might not have done a much better job, or an equally as good one, might not have avoided the various flaws of the RTD years. But what I am able to say is that this one by and large gave me, as a viewer, very, very much, and more to love than to be angry about, and that I would not have wanted to miss out his tenure of the show. So, oh talented and sometimes infuriating Welshman: thank you!
1.) Families and friends of Companions. Now, Rose was by no means the first Companion whose relations we saw on screen - there was Peri's stepfather, Tegan's aunt, Nyssa's stepmother and father (ahem), for example. Nor was she the first whose relationship with a family member was a part of her characterisation - Ace's Mommy issues were pretty important. However, these other family members tended to be a one story kind of deal. We did not see them again. If they weren't killed off upon introduction anyway, we never found out what they thought about the Companion's travelling the universe with the Doctor, or what it was like family/friends and Companion to reunite later. One of the most basic innovations of the RTD years was to give each of his Companions family members and/or friends the audience kept reencountering. Out of sight was no longer out of mind. And very memorable relations and friends they were, too. Which brings me to:
2.) Memorable recurring characters. This overlaps with the first item, but not completely. Some of these memorable RTD created recurring characters were directly connected to the current Companion, though not all. (A memorable character not related in any way to the Companion but recurring would be Harriet Jones. Now there is a reason why The Christmas Invasion is my least favourite of the Christmas specials, but the fact that Harriet would not exist without RTD is truer than in most other cases, because she does not show up in a single episode he hasn't personally written. Every single line she ever says on screen, from Aliens of London to The Stolen Earth, is pure Rusty.) Sometimes they had a development arc of their own (see Mickey in Rose versus Mickey in Doomsday, for example), sometimes a character started out as a cameo and was developed into an instrumental part of the show (Wilf in Voyage of the Damned to Wilf in End of Time). I love most of these people in varying degrees, and no matter which one you name, I could tell you instantly a scene featuring them as a focal point that has written himself into my mind and emotionally resonates with me to this day. I've known shows far more flawless than Doctor Who which did not accomplish this. (Say, the first season of Mad Men - haven't watched any of the subsequent seasons yet.)
3.) Memorable one shot characters. And then there are the characters we only got to meet once, in a single adventure, never again, and who still became instantly memorable. Jabe from End of the World, for example, Brattigan from Gridlock, Mr. Copper in Voyage of the Damned, Jackson Lake in The Next Doctor, most recently Adelaide Brooke in Waters of Mars. (If you like also Donna in Runaway Bride, where she was written as a one shot, before there was any possibility of bringing her back.) (Note: and these are only the one shot characters from RTD's episodes, not from episodes by other writers he edited and produced.) My viewing life would be much the poorer if I had never "met" them.
4.) Great balance of writing for both newbies and old school fans. So you have a 40 plus years old cult show to revive, with decades of continuity; and you also want to reach an audience which can't tell its Dalek from its Cybermen, and who at best when asked about having any Doctor Who memories could come up with "wasn't there something about a scarf?". Also, the show's format has changed so you have only 45 minutes per story, except in the rare case of a two parter, which means you really can't waste twenty minutes on exposition about who the hell we're dealing with this week and what their backstory within the show is. What do you do? Well, some show makers go for a "reimagining", i.e. same name, different and new story, which is what Ron Moore did with Battlestar Galactica. J.J. Abrams recently solved a similar dilemma for Star Trek by offering a canon Alternate Universe. What RTD did was to a) come up with the Time War and b) reintroduce old elements from the show other than the Doctor and the TARDIS bit by bit over the course of five years instead of all at once. And he managed to do it in watchable, interesting ways instead of making one part of his audience go "yes, we know all that already" and the other go "what the hell is he talking about?". One of my favourite examples of conjuring this particular rabbit out of a hat remains Utopia with its reintroduction of the Master. It doesn't matter whether you've already watched every single episode featuring the Master from the moment Roger Delgado made his entrance in Terror of the Autons or whether you're a New Who fan who until this moment has never seen another Time Lord other than the Doctor: it's one hell of a watching experience. "Say my name", yes indeed.
Footnote: in addition to reintroducing the big stuff bit by bit, there are also the inside jokes which are never off putting to newbies or time consuming. Cases in point: the Doctor, when visiting Scotland, introducing himself as Jamie MacCrimmon in Tooth and Claw instead of using his usual alias John Smith. If you're a new fan, the significance of this passes you by, but you don't have to get it in order to follow on screen events; you simply assume he does it for variation. If, on the other hand, you're an Old School fan, you're bound to go "awwwwwww, he still loves Jamie", as this is the name of the Second Doctor's Highlander Companion. Or the Doctor's explanation to Donna in The Sontaran Strategem about having worked for UNIT "in the 70s, or was it the 80s?" Again, if you're a new fan, you just assume he's talking from a time travellers perspective. If you're an Old Who fan, you're in stitches about this dig at the infamous UNIT dating controversy.
5.) "What marvelous nonsense", to quote Jackson Lake as he first gets to view the "real" TARDIS in The Next Doctor and thus gives a great description of the show's central premise of a man and his friends time travelling in a blue police box. At his best, RTD can offer a mixture of slapstick, insanity and genuine pathos andn the result is awesome and very his DW years. From End of the World, where we get both the pure camp of all the aliens dancing to Tainted Love and the intimate character moments like Jabe asking the Doctor why her scanner identifies him as belonging to a dead species, via Gridlock (with the traffic jam from hell taking years and years of time and the Doctor inventing car jumping on the one hand and the Martha-puts-the-stool-down defining character moment on the other) to End of Time with its "how many different outfits can we put John Simm into?" versus "I wonder who I'd be without you" extremes.
6.) Casting: here RTD-as-main-producer excelled. For starters, he wasn't afraid of risks. Billie Piper pre-DW was known mainly for being a former teenage pop singer. Catherine Tate was a well-known comedian, but that very fact worked against her in the perception of many people, even after The Runaway Bride. (Both professional critics and a lot of fandom were forced to eat their words in this regard during s4 when he threw serious character scene after serious character scene about Donna at them.) Freema Aygeman was relatively unknown. Like every producer, RTD also used the "big name in one shot role = casting coup designed to draw viewers" principle, but I can think of only one example where the result was an underwritten role (Kylie Minogue as Astrid). Otherwise, the well known actors gracing the show in the last five years were used very well and effective indeed, from Simon Callow as Charles Dickens to Lindsay Duncan as Adelaide Brooke. And then, of course, there were the two actors he picked to play the Doctor himself. He had worked with both before - with Christopher Eccleston in The Second Coming, and with David Tennant in Casanova - and while other BBC worthies had undoubtedly their say, it stands to reason RTD's was the main decision of casting the Ninth and Tenth Doctor. I'm very glad about both choices, and the rich variety of situations he threw them in, from madcap comedy to stark tragedy.
7.) Uses and twists of the formula. You can do historical, space adventure or invasion of the week on a show like Doctor Who, but some constants remain. First and formost, there's the Companion. (Or the companions, but after Five's day, Team TARDIS usually consisted of just one Companion at a time.) If the audience doesn't care about the Companion on this show, you're screwed. One of the most basic tests of any DW producer, therefore, is whether he or she is able to create Companions the audience can feel for. Now of course I had my own preferences and varying degrees of affection during their tenure, but I can honestly say that each of the three main Companions of the RTD years - Rose, Martha and Donna - endeared themselves to me when introduced. I wanted to know more about them and was looking forward to following their stories. There was never a sense of "ho, hum, so this is the new girl, see if I care". Of the part-time Companions, I loved Mickey best and wasn't as smitten with Jack Harkness as most viewers, but I found him enjoyable enough and wouldn't want to miss him from the DWverse. And I also loved when RTD got experimental with the formula, be it with the Doctor-as-Companion/Companion-as-Doctor twist of The Next Doctor ("I'm your companion!" says Ten to Jackson Lake, and he is, fulfilling the usual companion functions of helping and healing for him) or with the two stories under his tenure which really would not have worked with a Companion in them, albeit for different reasons: Midnight and The Waters of Mars, both showcasing, in different ways, why the Doctor needs a Companion so much.
8.) One-on-one character exploration via conversation. Speaking of formulas: in your avarage RTD Doctor Who story, there will inevitably be at least one, more usually several scenes betweeen one mad chase sequence and the next, where two characters just sit down and talk, and it gets incredibly intimate, with both audience and characters catching glimpses of each other's souls. (Sorry for the pathos, but it feels earned in the context.) Rose and the Doctor watching the doomed Earth from the observation dome view screen in End of the World. Donna and the Doctor on the rooftop in The Runaway Bride. Martha and the Doctor in the New Earth alley. Jack and the Doctor finally having it out in Utopia while Jack is repairing the macguffin of the episode. That heartbreaking conversation between Sylvia and Donna in Turn Left in the middle of the night. Wilf and the Doctor in the café in End of Time I, and later on the space ship in End of Time II. The "I wonder who I'd be without you" scene between the Master and the Doctor in the same episode. These type of character scenes are RTD's signature pieces, and I think the most artful thing of all about them is that they would not be as effective if they didn't come smack in the middle of the usual DW style craziness, because the contrast to the before and after only heightens their effect.
9.) The writing team. Unless you're JMS, or Aaron Sorkin in the early years, you don't write all episodes, you need other writers, and you need a working climate in which they thrive. Of the stalwarts during the RTD years, Stephen Moffat and Paul Cornell could be depended on delivering great episodes, Gareth Roberts was good and reliable with the comedy (especially when writer-related, as in The Shakespeare Code and The Unicorn and the Wasp), Helen Raynor oddly enough was generally better in Torchwood, but her last two DW episodes, the Sontaran two parter in s4, I really liked, and Chris Chibnall ironic enough was better than in Torchwood (where he was the headwriter for the first two seasons). Rob Shearman in s1 of course was fabulous, and James Moran's The Fires of Pompeii from s4 has become one of my favourite all time DW stories. Choosing good scriptwriters is as important as choosing the right actors, so this, too, is something I appreciate about RTD.
10.) Doctor Who Redux. Now I've heard it said that because DW is such a decades old cult classic, it was bound to be revived sooner or later, and that any other producer would have succeeded in this task if given same by the BBC. Somehow, I doubt that, and not just because of the infamous Movie of Doom from the 90s. Don't get me wrong, I don't think RTD was the only producer who could have managed it. But I don't think many others could have managed to a) revive the show for more than one season (my poor Blake's 7, which got some very mediocre radio plays for a revival, being a case in point; as far as I know, the recent attempt at another Prisoner didn't get too keen a reception, either, despite Ian McKellen as Number Two; so much for the idea that decades old cult shows always have a ready made audience) , b) make the show into one of the most popular of the country (let's flash back to rating figures for the Sixth and Seventh Doctor), and c) get the sheer wealth of talent in both the acting and writing department to work with them. If you listen to audio commentaries, "I wanted to work with Russell (again)" is a frequent reason cited why actor X signed up for the show. RTD might be inclined to piss off fans in the occasional interview, but apparantly he's really good at keeping actors and writers charmed and loyal. (With the actors, one obvious reason is that he's a really good "tailor", i.e. excells at writing parts that challenge them and showcase their talents: cases in point would be the part of Sky from Midnight for Lesley Sharpe, and her in synch-speaking scenes with David Tennant, or the DoctorDonna scenes from Journey's End where Tate and Tennant get to pick up each other's mannerisms and reflect them back.) I doubt we'd ever have gotten Eccleston for Nine without RTD, given that the man doesn't seem to care too much for the DW franchise as such. There definitely would never have been a Catherine-Tate-played companion. John Simm? Maaaaybe. Derek Jacobi? Not so much. And so forth. Not being able to jump between different timelines, I'm unable to say with any absolute certainty that another producer might not have done a much better job, or an equally as good one, might not have avoided the various flaws of the RTD years. But what I am able to say is that this one by and large gave me, as a viewer, very, very much, and more to love than to be angry about, and that I would not have wanted to miss out his tenure of the show. So, oh talented and sometimes infuriating Welshman: thank you!
