Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale - Chapter 2
Chapter 2 - Catherine, Kylie, and Dennis
In which Kylie Minogue sings the Muppets, Russell turns down a fifth series of Doctor Who, and Charlie Kaufman is told to sod off
I actually identified a lot with Russell during this chapter when he spoke of the actual point of starting to write. He said: “When do I know when to start writing? I leave it till the last minute. And then I leave it some more. Eventually, I leave it till I’m desperate... I get myself into a genuine state of panic. Except panic sounds exciting... This is more like a black cloud of fear and failure.” And I realised that I do almost the exact same thing. I do it with my assignments and studying and, to a lesser extent, with jobs at work. I don’t start, because I don’t know exactly where to start. And instead, I think about how I should be working on my assignment, and about how I’m never going to get it done, and it’s just going to be a disaster.
And so my days where I should be working on something specific or studying end up like this: “Every single minute of the day, every single sodding minute, is labelled with this depressing, lifeless, dull thought: I’m not writing. I make the time disappear. I don’t know why I do this.” It is so true though. I always manage to find something else to do, but at the end of the day, I just feel worse because I’ve not done what I know I should have done!
Though there are days where you just feel lousy and want to crawl up into a little ball and sob, Russell makes a point that I completely agree with: “The depression thing. I fight shy of the word depression, because real depression is so debilitating and awful that I feel a bit arrogant even to assume that I’ve touched upon it.” Because even though it feels horrible, somehow we pull through and it is possible to get up the next morning and get done what must be done. Even if it a bit late, or not perfect, we manage to stay on top of things. And I would hate to diminish what others go through by even suggesting that this misery is anything like depression.
Moving on to Doctor Who related aspects of the chapter, in this chapter we read the emails about Catherine and Kylie agreeing to be on the show. I found it very interesting (though not really surprising), that Russell’s thoughts when they were suggested was along the lines of it’s never going to happen. In fact the suggestion that Catherine Tate could be interested in doing a whole series gave rise to the comments “bollocks, of course”, “surely Catherine’s agent is going to rugby-tackle her?”, and “this is madness”! The reaction to Kylie’s interest in being on Doctor Who was “don’t worry, it’s never going to happen”.
But as we know, both happened, which meant the end of Penny. The potential-companion who was just coming together has been relegated to being another Character In Search Of An Author. It’s a little bit sad really.
But I love the character of Donna and in this chapter we also get some of the first ideas of 4.1 - in particular, that brilliant scene where the Doctor and Donna spot each other from outside opposite sides of the room! I find that scene hilarious! And Russell hasn’t figured out the villain for the story yet - it started with an idea about these strange wild dog creatures called Vorlax which burst out from behind some wooden boards over a window that the Doctor and Donna are standing in front of - the window being a portal to another world. It’s an interesting image, and could probably work in a different episode. But the little Adipose are strangely cute!
I wonder in what chapter those will be thought of…