Of writers in connection to a certain show
Feb. 7th, 2010 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakLike many a person on my flist, I woke up to the thrilling news we'll get Neil Gaiman writing an episode in the next season of Doctor Who (meaning not the first Moffat one, currently shooting, but the one after that). This is one of my long time fannish dreams come true, and seems to indicate that five years of wooing does the trick with Neil G., considering JMS lobbied him for that long in order to get him to write a B5 episode as well. (Resulting in one of my favourite B5 episodes, Day of the Dead.) I'm bouncing like a wild woman over here.
From DW's future to DW's immediate past: I already reviewed The Writer's Tale back when it first came out, and have now read the updated edition, containing RTD's and Benjamin Cook's exchanges about the specials (and Childen of Earth, and The Sarah Jane Adventures) as well as more neat illustrations. The new part is, much like the original, in equal measures entertaining, fascinating and frustrating, much like its author's writing. Here are some of my favourite parts in quotes and comments:
RTD gets the crucial idea for 4.16 aka The Waters of Mars and by extension The End of Time:
"There is a tiny key lurking in 4.15 where the Doctor says - for the first time in twenty-five century Doctor Who - that he stole the TARDIS. To new viewers, he must seem best of mates with the Time Lords, all that rebel stuff has been put to one side - and quite rightly; since I imagine that became irrelvant once the TIme War broke out. He was hardly going to carry on a personal grudge once the whole of creation was at stake. No, he went back home and joinedup, albeit in a maverick-y, Doctor-y way, I'm sure. (Maybe I should write that Time War novel one day? I've got so much of it worked out in my head.) By bringing back that element, the rebel, suddenly he becomes fascinating in a whole new way. All that stuff in The Fires of Pompeii about not breaking the Laws of Time - suddenly in 4.16, for the first time, he realises: who says so? Why not? He's the only Time Lord left. (...) It's not just a nice emotional, brave decision to save the Mars colonists; it's arrogance, it's the Doctor extending his powers... until the Ood calls him to his death at the end. Pride, then a fall. This feeds into this new format, the companionless Doctor. I've always believed what Donna says at the end of The Runaway Bride, that the Doctor is dangerous on his own, that he needs a human with him. I'd been vaguely worried that none of the Specials was proving this, but here's my chance. (Always listen to those worries!) Also, it's what I wanted from that first nation of David's last episode, before it became a two-parter - the story set on board the clapped-out spaceship, which was probably the Tenth Doctor battling with his id, his dark side, his monstrous power. Now, we get the chance to play that on Mars!"
Very interesting to me: in the first draft, Adelaide didn't die, just as in the first draft for CoE, Steven did not die, but survived by magic of plot device. In both cases, RTD realized he was chickening out of the logical ending, and in the former case, that just the Ood showing up at the end of Waters of Mars (with Adelaide a mere horrified bystander watching the encounter between Ood Sigma and the Doctor) was not the emotional punch/slap/whatever you want to call it the Doctor needed, plus it wasn't enough of a reaction from Adelaide to what had happened given who she was.
Generally, there were far more struggles with the Torchwood scripts than with the Doctor Who scripts, which inevitably lets me conclude this is why CoE is the best writing Russel T. Davies has done in years with hardly any of the flaws and all of the virtues, whereas the DW specials a mixture of both. (I.e. struggling with a script is good for him! More of that RTD, more of that!) Some of the TW rewrites were because Martha and Mickey were included in the early versions - Martha was also planned as the guest star of the s2 Sarah Jane Adventures finale, and when Freema A. became unavailable for both stories Martha was replaced by the Brig on short notice - but there were more obstacles. The most illuminating entry comes when Our Rusty has his emotional breakthrough while writing Day One. It bears reminding that with the exception of the TW team cameos in Stolen Earth/ Journey's End, he had not been writing these people since the TW pilot. So guess which scene made them emotionally accessible to him and got the creative juices flowing? Ianto coming out to his sister and Jack with his daughter.
"I had such a good time this afternoon, writing scenes of people chatting in kitchens. Gay people in kitchens. Ordinary stuff. It's been so long since I could do that. Four years? Five? I think that's why this script has taken so long: I've been gearing up to finding that style again. (Or did I find it too easy? Ah, never happy.) But how nice to write Torchwood characters as real people, with families, feuds, aches and pains. That's the direction I always wanted to take it in for Series Three. Back to home and hearth. Chris Chibnall wrote such beautiful stuff at the end of Series Two by writing a prequel story for every character in Fragments (...) He showed me where to go. Come home, he said. Come home."
Leaving aside the opinion on the Fragments backstories, which, err, I don't share for all cases involved, I think that quote illustrates something about both Davies as a writer and about why the CoE depiction of Team Torchwood (even letting aside the far different context they were placed in due to the general plot) felt a bit different to the one in previous seasons. For example, I can honestly say that Ianto's scenes with his sister (and brother-in-law!) made him emotionally real to me in a way he hadn't been before. (This is a personal opinion, as always.) I got from indifference to s1 Ianto to mild fondness for s2 Ianto, but he still was my least favourite regular and I simply did not have any interest. However, Ianto in the kitchen with Rhiannon, struggling with his coming out confession, her reactions, and his expression when Johnny then wandered with his "hello, gay boy!" comment? That was a character I could empathize with. (Plus, you know, I loved Rhiannon.) His "...he is very handsome" re: Jack worked for me when the s1 stopwatch scene just left me cold (and bewildered due to its chronological placement shortly after Cyberwoman), and the Adrift making out had me shrugging. And I think that might be because of what Davies' choice of phrase - "come home" - betrays, because those kitchen scenes parallel if anything not earlier Torchwood but Queer as Folk. Both with the family dynamics and the whole coming out element, which in the s1-2 TW environment of "who cares about your sexual orientation?" is not there. Of course, you can complain about the juxtaposition of a Ianto who feels comfortable telling Martha re: Jack's lovemaking that it's "very avantgarde" in s2 and a Ianto who needs a lot of prompting before admitting to his sister he's in love with another man in s3, but on a Watsonian level you can explain that with Martha being a co-worker, and family being different. And you know, if I had to choose between keeping one of those scenes? I'd go with the CoE one any day.
Not unrelated to the above, Benjamin Cook gets some remarkably personal stuff out of RTD, about his mother, growing up in Swansea, being gay and coming out.
"When did I realise I was gay? I've never reached a satisfactory answer to that question - I look back and I can't think of any one specific moment - because I suppose I've always known, even before I had the right words for it. There was no choice. It was always men. My first crushes were on boys. (Is anything in your adult life as strong as those very first crushes? The burning madness of them! Does everything get duller as you get older?) I've no sense of ever going off girls, because I was never 'on' them. (..) I only told my parents that I was gay once I'd already left home. Even then, they must have guessed. My dad - with the only observant thing he's ever said in his entire life - just said, "You've always drawn men". He was right. I used to draw constantly back then, all the time, like a compulsion, and it as always handsome cartoon-y men, with strong jaws and big quiffs of hair. So, yeah, mum and dad were fine - not delighted, let's be honest, but they both loved me way beyond any issue. But with a big, loud, fey, arty son, let's face it, it must have been screaming at them. I know that my mum worried, because she associated 'gay' with drugs and promiscuity. I went on to write Queer as Folk which didn't help! But we didn't alk about this stuff much. (...) I know what you mean about Swansea in the 70s, but I think there's a lie told about small communities - whether that's rurral places, small towns, or closed groups - that they claim that they 'don't know any homosexuals'. Look a little deeper, and they do, and always have, for generations. There's always been funny old Uncle Douglas who never got married; those two stern women who live together in that old house; someone's camp little son who doesn't like football. It's there, and it's accepted, quietly, tacitly. The moment that it becomes too overt, too sexual, too challenging, then the headlines flare, the blood pumps, and the extreme reactions get trotted out - maybe because people are scared, because they simply haven't thought about it, or because they love to strike an official stance, or because they're embarrassed by sex in any shape or form. But when all that dies down, Uncle Douglas, and the two women, and Walter the Softy, they're still there, and not driven out. It's a funny subject, this one, because 'coming out' sounds so simple. As though it happens once. But I think I still come out in some shape or form, somehow, somewhere, to someone, almost every day. I'm always aware of it, a lurking 'does he know?' Yes, even me. A friend of mine, who's my age and has had roughly the same xperiences as me, astonished me only a few years ago when he said, 'I think I need a year off. I think I need to move house, or maybe just go away, so that I can come to terms with it.' With what? 'Being gay.' That staggered me, because it sounds so true. I'm really not sure what that means, and I'm certainly sure there's no magic answer to it all, but something is ringing a bell there. It's never over... is it?"
One last Ianto- related quote: "And then I came home, and watched the death of Ianto Jones on the rushes. Killed by Smokey the Space Pelican. I cried! Like an idiot! I created that man. It's a bit of a sentimental scene, but we can trim it down in the edit."
On to more lighthearted, DW and otherwise matters. Here we have RTD fanboying Disney:
"Beauty and the Beast was my best experience in a cinema ever. (No, stop!) I went along to a Manchester cinema on a Tuesday afternoon, ages after it was released, and I was the only person in the auditorium. I laughed, I cried, I cheered when all the furniture decides to fight. Plus, it's easily the best Disney film. I've seen it dozens of times. I love it. It's sacrilege to say so, but aht golden period of the late '80s to the 90s produced the best Disney cartoons of the lot."
Then there's the moment when he decides Wilf will be the companion for the finale:
"Both Bernard and Wilf have been ticking away in my head ever since I watched those final scenes of Journey's End, with him saluting the TARDIS in farewell. That's why you should watch stuff on transmission- it's inspiring! I thought, isn't it a shame that he never got to look inside the TARDIS? (...) All of a sudden, clear as day, I thought: I cannot let him go. I cannot let it end like that. I can't, I can't, I can't. I MUST write more stuff for him. Wilfred unleashed! We wanted different stort of companions for all these Specials, so what would be better than Gramps? As I said to Julie, bringing back Wilf will mean including a bit more Donna (hooray!), but she's not getting her memory back. No way. That's fixed. That really would spoil past stories. You'd have to glimpse her throughout this new story, just in the background, the Doctor having to avoid her, Wilf filling in the Docto on what's happened to her life."
Then there's the Davies-Moffat correspondance on the regeneration, where RTD can't resist bad puns:
"Moff: Can we make sure David is wearing his tie when he regenerates? It's for a new bit in Episode 1. You're going to tell me that he defats the baddies by blowing up his tie or something...?
RTD: Yes, he will be all tied up. (You'll see what I mean.) Do you want to see the new Doctor at the end of David's last episode? We've talked about this, but I have a head like a sieve. It'll end with INT: TARDIS, blaze of light, all the usual shenanigans... and then the New Man appears? Feels nice and traditional. But maybe you want to see him for the first time when he arrives in Series Five, Episode 1. Your call, boss!
Moff: It's definitely both our calls. My thinking at the moment: if we get it right, and we will, we'll have build up this regeneration to a national event. If we DON'T see the new Doctor, it'll be a big fat let-down. If I were eight, I'd be spitting. Furious! (...) Clincher: it's the only time we'll see the Eleventh Doctor (!!) in the old (!!) control room. And that's not just the fanboy completism that drives me every waking and sleeping moment of my life: it somehow matters. I mean, it's tempting, holding him back, because it's a good entrance in Episode 1 - but you get that anyway. But what do you think? To hell with whose call it is. Nothing is more important than getting this right.
RTD: > it's a good entrance in Episode 1.> Hey, I'll be the judge of that! Me and my fanboy mates. I will be posting on the message boards. Oh, I think we both agree. Partly because it feels like tradition, but also because I've sort of precluded ending on a regeneration cliffhanger wiht The Stolen Earth, because a lot of people would feel like they've seen it before. If we show Doctor Eleven, lots of kids will feel that natural dismay, they'll go "I don't like him" as soon as tehy see him, but in a way I LOVED feeling that as a kid. It's part of teh process. And it never stopped me watching. Because then you watch his first full episode, and fall in love with him. You're right, seeing the new guy reminds you that Life Goes On."
RTD's Russell-Tovey-Crush is as alive as ever in the addendum to The Writer's Tale as it was in the original edition. Seriously, Russell Tovey is the most fanboyed actor in the entire volume as far as looks and charm are concerned. His two Doctors, Tennant and Eccleston, get plenty of nice words on their acting, and DT on his being a trooper and always there for the show etc., but they're evidently not crush material. Whereas Tovey is. Which, of course, leads to:
"I thought of the Midshipman Frame bit on the spot. (...) Poor Jack is so alone at the end of Torchwood Series Three, and deserves something happy. Plus, the episode needed a laugh. It was a proper moment of creativity, of real invention, the words 'Midshipman Frame' typed themselves out in front of me. Or maybe I just think about Russell Tovey all the time."
He does notice other people when Tovey is around, though:
"More importantly, stuff like Wilf and the Doctor sitting, watching the Earth, talking about Palestine, and rewards, and guns, and life, is why I became a writer in th first place; stuff like that proves I should be a a writer, that I'm doing the right thing with my life. Also, it proves how much of this job means finding and writing for great actors. (...) The whole point is to find actors like David and Bernard, actors who can do anything, actors who, literally, inspire me. They make writing challenging, and brave, and wonderful. PUt those two in a room, and I think I can write anything. Anything. Which feels brilliant. Oh, and Addams, too. I know she hardly matters, but she's important to me. I love Addams. There is something so vivid and right about her. I absolutely love that woman, Sinead Keenan, who plays Russell Tovey's girlfriend, Nina, in Being Human. I think she's a stunning talent, and I found myself writing Addams for her. It's not often I do that, write for a specific actor, but she's an inspiration. She's so good. ANd lo and behold, she's free, so we've cast her. She's a cactus!"
Subplots thought of and discarded for End of Time included the Doctor trying the obvious, inciting one of the human Masters against Real Master by ways of ego (the Master's) and temptation/seduction (just how far did you want the Doctor to go on that account, Rusty?), and failing (because 'Dane!Master would have said "Sorry, but I think I'm wonderful!"), which RTD wrote out again because then most of the Doctor's interactions would have been with Dane!Master instead of with the genuine article, and he did want genuine Doctor/Master interaction. So out went the Finch!Master scene and in came the "You could be beautiful" scene, which definitely works better.
Most interesting defensive self comment: "Dumbos think that I'm turning the Doctor into God, when clearly I'm saying that God doesn't exist, that we mythologise real people, events or aspirations into deities, and pay the price for it."
And now comes my absolutely favourite RTD quote from the revised Writer's Tale
"I just channel-hopped and caught The Sound of Drums. Am I on drugs when I write these things?"
From DW's future to DW's immediate past: I already reviewed The Writer's Tale back when it first came out, and have now read the updated edition, containing RTD's and Benjamin Cook's exchanges about the specials (and Childen of Earth, and The Sarah Jane Adventures) as well as more neat illustrations. The new part is, much like the original, in equal measures entertaining, fascinating and frustrating, much like its author's writing. Here are some of my favourite parts in quotes and comments:
RTD gets the crucial idea for 4.16 aka The Waters of Mars and by extension The End of Time:
"There is a tiny key lurking in 4.15 where the Doctor says - for the first time in twenty-five century Doctor Who - that he stole the TARDIS. To new viewers, he must seem best of mates with the Time Lords, all that rebel stuff has been put to one side - and quite rightly; since I imagine that became irrelvant once the TIme War broke out. He was hardly going to carry on a personal grudge once the whole of creation was at stake. No, he went back home and joinedup, albeit in a maverick-y, Doctor-y way, I'm sure. (Maybe I should write that Time War novel one day? I've got so much of it worked out in my head.) By bringing back that element, the rebel, suddenly he becomes fascinating in a whole new way. All that stuff in The Fires of Pompeii about not breaking the Laws of Time - suddenly in 4.16, for the first time, he realises: who says so? Why not? He's the only Time Lord left. (...) It's not just a nice emotional, brave decision to save the Mars colonists; it's arrogance, it's the Doctor extending his powers... until the Ood calls him to his death at the end. Pride, then a fall. This feeds into this new format, the companionless Doctor. I've always believed what Donna says at the end of The Runaway Bride, that the Doctor is dangerous on his own, that he needs a human with him. I'd been vaguely worried that none of the Specials was proving this, but here's my chance. (Always listen to those worries!) Also, it's what I wanted from that first nation of David's last episode, before it became a two-parter - the story set on board the clapped-out spaceship, which was probably the Tenth Doctor battling with his id, his dark side, his monstrous power. Now, we get the chance to play that on Mars!"
Very interesting to me: in the first draft, Adelaide didn't die, just as in the first draft for CoE, Steven did not die, but survived by magic of plot device. In both cases, RTD realized he was chickening out of the logical ending, and in the former case, that just the Ood showing up at the end of Waters of Mars (with Adelaide a mere horrified bystander watching the encounter between Ood Sigma and the Doctor) was not the emotional punch/slap/whatever you want to call it the Doctor needed, plus it wasn't enough of a reaction from Adelaide to what had happened given who she was.
Generally, there were far more struggles with the Torchwood scripts than with the Doctor Who scripts, which inevitably lets me conclude this is why CoE is the best writing Russel T. Davies has done in years with hardly any of the flaws and all of the virtues, whereas the DW specials a mixture of both. (I.e. struggling with a script is good for him! More of that RTD, more of that!) Some of the TW rewrites were because Martha and Mickey were included in the early versions - Martha was also planned as the guest star of the s2 Sarah Jane Adventures finale, and when Freema A. became unavailable for both stories Martha was replaced by the Brig on short notice - but there were more obstacles. The most illuminating entry comes when Our Rusty has his emotional breakthrough while writing Day One. It bears reminding that with the exception of the TW team cameos in Stolen Earth/ Journey's End, he had not been writing these people since the TW pilot. So guess which scene made them emotionally accessible to him and got the creative juices flowing? Ianto coming out to his sister and Jack with his daughter.
"I had such a good time this afternoon, writing scenes of people chatting in kitchens. Gay people in kitchens. Ordinary stuff. It's been so long since I could do that. Four years? Five? I think that's why this script has taken so long: I've been gearing up to finding that style again. (Or did I find it too easy? Ah, never happy.) But how nice to write Torchwood characters as real people, with families, feuds, aches and pains. That's the direction I always wanted to take it in for Series Three. Back to home and hearth. Chris Chibnall wrote such beautiful stuff at the end of Series Two by writing a prequel story for every character in Fragments (...) He showed me where to go. Come home, he said. Come home."
Leaving aside the opinion on the Fragments backstories, which, err, I don't share for all cases involved, I think that quote illustrates something about both Davies as a writer and about why the CoE depiction of Team Torchwood (even letting aside the far different context they were placed in due to the general plot) felt a bit different to the one in previous seasons. For example, I can honestly say that Ianto's scenes with his sister (and brother-in-law!) made him emotionally real to me in a way he hadn't been before. (This is a personal opinion, as always.) I got from indifference to s1 Ianto to mild fondness for s2 Ianto, but he still was my least favourite regular and I simply did not have any interest. However, Ianto in the kitchen with Rhiannon, struggling with his coming out confession, her reactions, and his expression when Johnny then wandered with his "hello, gay boy!" comment? That was a character I could empathize with. (Plus, you know, I loved Rhiannon.) His "...he is very handsome" re: Jack worked for me when the s1 stopwatch scene just left me cold (and bewildered due to its chronological placement shortly after Cyberwoman), and the Adrift making out had me shrugging. And I think that might be because of what Davies' choice of phrase - "come home" - betrays, because those kitchen scenes parallel if anything not earlier Torchwood but Queer as Folk. Both with the family dynamics and the whole coming out element, which in the s1-2 TW environment of "who cares about your sexual orientation?" is not there. Of course, you can complain about the juxtaposition of a Ianto who feels comfortable telling Martha re: Jack's lovemaking that it's "very avantgarde" in s2 and a Ianto who needs a lot of prompting before admitting to his sister he's in love with another man in s3, but on a Watsonian level you can explain that with Martha being a co-worker, and family being different. And you know, if I had to choose between keeping one of those scenes? I'd go with the CoE one any day.
Not unrelated to the above, Benjamin Cook gets some remarkably personal stuff out of RTD, about his mother, growing up in Swansea, being gay and coming out.
"When did I realise I was gay? I've never reached a satisfactory answer to that question - I look back and I can't think of any one specific moment - because I suppose I've always known, even before I had the right words for it. There was no choice. It was always men. My first crushes were on boys. (Is anything in your adult life as strong as those very first crushes? The burning madness of them! Does everything get duller as you get older?) I've no sense of ever going off girls, because I was never 'on' them. (..) I only told my parents that I was gay once I'd already left home. Even then, they must have guessed. My dad - with the only observant thing he's ever said in his entire life - just said, "You've always drawn men". He was right. I used to draw constantly back then, all the time, like a compulsion, and it as always handsome cartoon-y men, with strong jaws and big quiffs of hair. So, yeah, mum and dad were fine - not delighted, let's be honest, but they both loved me way beyond any issue. But with a big, loud, fey, arty son, let's face it, it must have been screaming at them. I know that my mum worried, because she associated 'gay' with drugs and promiscuity. I went on to write Queer as Folk which didn't help! But we didn't alk about this stuff much. (...) I know what you mean about Swansea in the 70s, but I think there's a lie told about small communities - whether that's rurral places, small towns, or closed groups - that they claim that they 'don't know any homosexuals'. Look a little deeper, and they do, and always have, for generations. There's always been funny old Uncle Douglas who never got married; those two stern women who live together in that old house; someone's camp little son who doesn't like football. It's there, and it's accepted, quietly, tacitly. The moment that it becomes too overt, too sexual, too challenging, then the headlines flare, the blood pumps, and the extreme reactions get trotted out - maybe because people are scared, because they simply haven't thought about it, or because they love to strike an official stance, or because they're embarrassed by sex in any shape or form. But when all that dies down, Uncle Douglas, and the two women, and Walter the Softy, they're still there, and not driven out. It's a funny subject, this one, because 'coming out' sounds so simple. As though it happens once. But I think I still come out in some shape or form, somehow, somewhere, to someone, almost every day. I'm always aware of it, a lurking 'does he know?' Yes, even me. A friend of mine, who's my age and has had roughly the same xperiences as me, astonished me only a few years ago when he said, 'I think I need a year off. I think I need to move house, or maybe just go away, so that I can come to terms with it.' With what? 'Being gay.' That staggered me, because it sounds so true. I'm really not sure what that means, and I'm certainly sure there's no magic answer to it all, but something is ringing a bell there. It's never over... is it?"
One last Ianto- related quote: "And then I came home, and watched the death of Ianto Jones on the rushes. Killed by Smokey the Space Pelican. I cried! Like an idiot! I created that man. It's a bit of a sentimental scene, but we can trim it down in the edit."
On to more lighthearted, DW and otherwise matters. Here we have RTD fanboying Disney:
"Beauty and the Beast was my best experience in a cinema ever. (No, stop!) I went along to a Manchester cinema on a Tuesday afternoon, ages after it was released, and I was the only person in the auditorium. I laughed, I cried, I cheered when all the furniture decides to fight. Plus, it's easily the best Disney film. I've seen it dozens of times. I love it. It's sacrilege to say so, but aht golden period of the late '80s to the 90s produced the best Disney cartoons of the lot."
Then there's the moment when he decides Wilf will be the companion for the finale:
"Both Bernard and Wilf have been ticking away in my head ever since I watched those final scenes of Journey's End, with him saluting the TARDIS in farewell. That's why you should watch stuff on transmission- it's inspiring! I thought, isn't it a shame that he never got to look inside the TARDIS? (...) All of a sudden, clear as day, I thought: I cannot let him go. I cannot let it end like that. I can't, I can't, I can't. I MUST write more stuff for him. Wilfred unleashed! We wanted different stort of companions for all these Specials, so what would be better than Gramps? As I said to Julie, bringing back Wilf will mean including a bit more Donna (hooray!), but she's not getting her memory back. No way. That's fixed. That really would spoil past stories. You'd have to glimpse her throughout this new story, just in the background, the Doctor having to avoid her, Wilf filling in the Docto on what's happened to her life."
Then there's the Davies-Moffat correspondance on the regeneration, where RTD can't resist bad puns:
"Moff: Can we make sure David is wearing his tie when he regenerates? It's for a new bit in Episode 1. You're going to tell me that he defats the baddies by blowing up his tie or something...?
RTD: Yes, he will be all tied up. (You'll see what I mean.) Do you want to see the new Doctor at the end of David's last episode? We've talked about this, but I have a head like a sieve. It'll end with INT: TARDIS, blaze of light, all the usual shenanigans... and then the New Man appears? Feels nice and traditional. But maybe you want to see him for the first time when he arrives in Series Five, Episode 1. Your call, boss!
Moff: It's definitely both our calls. My thinking at the moment: if we get it right, and we will, we'll have build up this regeneration to a national event. If we DON'T see the new Doctor, it'll be a big fat let-down. If I were eight, I'd be spitting. Furious! (...) Clincher: it's the only time we'll see the Eleventh Doctor (!!) in the old (!!) control room. And that's not just the fanboy completism that drives me every waking and sleeping moment of my life: it somehow matters. I mean, it's tempting, holding him back, because it's a good entrance in Episode 1 - but you get that anyway. But what do you think? To hell with whose call it is. Nothing is more important than getting this right.
RTD: > it's a good entrance in Episode 1.> Hey, I'll be the judge of that! Me and my fanboy mates. I will be posting on the message boards. Oh, I think we both agree. Partly because it feels like tradition, but also because I've sort of precluded ending on a regeneration cliffhanger wiht The Stolen Earth, because a lot of people would feel like they've seen it before. If we show Doctor Eleven, lots of kids will feel that natural dismay, they'll go "I don't like him" as soon as tehy see him, but in a way I LOVED feeling that as a kid. It's part of teh process. And it never stopped me watching. Because then you watch his first full episode, and fall in love with him. You're right, seeing the new guy reminds you that Life Goes On."
RTD's Russell-Tovey-Crush is as alive as ever in the addendum to The Writer's Tale as it was in the original edition. Seriously, Russell Tovey is the most fanboyed actor in the entire volume as far as looks and charm are concerned. His two Doctors, Tennant and Eccleston, get plenty of nice words on their acting, and DT on his being a trooper and always there for the show etc., but they're evidently not crush material. Whereas Tovey is. Which, of course, leads to:
"I thought of the Midshipman Frame bit on the spot. (...) Poor Jack is so alone at the end of Torchwood Series Three, and deserves something happy. Plus, the episode needed a laugh. It was a proper moment of creativity, of real invention, the words 'Midshipman Frame' typed themselves out in front of me. Or maybe I just think about Russell Tovey all the time."
He does notice other people when Tovey is around, though:
"More importantly, stuff like Wilf and the Doctor sitting, watching the Earth, talking about Palestine, and rewards, and guns, and life, is why I became a writer in th first place; stuff like that proves I should be a a writer, that I'm doing the right thing with my life. Also, it proves how much of this job means finding and writing for great actors. (...) The whole point is to find actors like David and Bernard, actors who can do anything, actors who, literally, inspire me. They make writing challenging, and brave, and wonderful. PUt those two in a room, and I think I can write anything. Anything. Which feels brilliant. Oh, and Addams, too. I know she hardly matters, but she's important to me. I love Addams. There is something so vivid and right about her. I absolutely love that woman, Sinead Keenan, who plays Russell Tovey's girlfriend, Nina, in Being Human. I think she's a stunning talent, and I found myself writing Addams for her. It's not often I do that, write for a specific actor, but she's an inspiration. She's so good. ANd lo and behold, she's free, so we've cast her. She's a cactus!"
Subplots thought of and discarded for End of Time included the Doctor trying the obvious, inciting one of the human Masters against Real Master by ways of ego (the Master's) and temptation/seduction (just how far did you want the Doctor to go on that account, Rusty?), and failing (because 'Dane!Master would have said "Sorry, but I think I'm wonderful!"), which RTD wrote out again because then most of the Doctor's interactions would have been with Dane!Master instead of with the genuine article, and he did want genuine Doctor/Master interaction. So out went the Finch!Master scene and in came the "You could be beautiful" scene, which definitely works better.
Most interesting defensive self comment: "Dumbos think that I'm turning the Doctor into God, when clearly I'm saying that God doesn't exist, that we mythologise real people, events or aspirations into deities, and pay the price for it."
And now comes my absolutely favourite RTD quote from the revised Writer's Tale
"I just channel-hopped and caught The Sound of Drums. Am I on drugs when I write these things?"
