An old interview with Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat and others
elisi has posted a link to a post on tumblr with quotes from a certain article from Doctor Who Magazine. They were interesting so I dug up the whole article :)
In 1999, DWM asked writers: Paul Cornell, Russell T Davies, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, Lance Parkin and Gareth Roberts about Doctor Who and its future. Then, in 2008, they showed them their answers again and asked for comments. You can read it here.
When asked if there's a place for Doctor Who in 2000s, I like how everyone else say "yes, sure" but Russell T Davies goes straight ahead and discusses money, sets and locations. In 2008, he says his first episodes had budgetary savings in-built but it doesn't feel this way.
It's interesting how Steven Moffat in 1999 says Doctor Who is a children's programme but in 2008 denies it. I believe it was true before 2005. I shouldn't say that because I haven't watched majority of the classic episodes, but from the bits I've watched and read about, I can imagine it's true. I've seen a programme where some Doctor Who fans (Chris Chibnal was one of them) discussed a 1986 season; adult people in the telly, wearing suits and being completely serious about Doctor Who's plot and characters, it just felt wrong (I found it for you: click! Look at that young Chris, he doesn't look like a man who's bound to succeed in life, and here he is). I'm not saying Davies' era is made for adults - the man invented the Slitheen! - but it presents quite dark vision of the world. Take out all silly monsters and gags and you're left with a world where a girl like Rose has no prospects, a woman like Donna can't find a permanent job, people kill the unknown and doing the right thing always means sacriface and loss. Also, if the cleverest man in the universe and a pacifist has to destroy his own race to save the universe from extinction, well, that's pretty grim. And can attract older viewers who recognize that world. Because that world's better with the Doctor than without him.
On the other hand, Steven's words from 2008: Doctor Who is a fairy tale. I don’t mean it’s like a fairy tale, I mean it is a fairy tale. It’s like all the dark and strange myths we invent to tell our children, In ways they’ll understand, that the world around them isn’t always safe, and there are people out there who might want to harm them. Fairy tales are metaphors for the dangers and seductions that lurk away from the path. Look at me. I’m 46 and l still talk about the world in fairy tale language. Maybe l never learned another way.
If I was to describe the Eleventh Doctor's era in two words, it would be "fairy tale". I think in 2010 Doctor Who came back to being a children's programme for most of the time, and this is why some fans who fell in love with RTD's era rejected it. I learnt to appreciate it.
A fairy tale
Russell T Davies: Maybe the solution [to the problem with money to create new sets every episode] is to go back to those first Pertwee years, with the Doctor trapped on Earth. This is certainly not my favourite formula, but it’s more easily achieved using real locations. That’s not the way I’d like it, but it certainly makes it achievable. Already, you’ve compromised your principles! Very difficult problem, this.
And 2008 Davies says he's not thought about it once when he started working on 2005 return. Yet the only planet the Doctor visits in season 1 is Earth, with Platform One and Satellite 5 being the only locations outside the Earth so the budget must have been tight. Funny thing is, I didn't realise how much Earth-bound the first season was (and the second one, too) until I specifically thought about it. You get a impression that they travelled into many places.
Also from Russell: Maybe Earthbound stories aren’t a compromise, maybe they’re vital. I hate Earthbound in terms of all that cosy UNIT stuff which would just look childish now. But then, thinking about it, if there was a new series, and if I was one of the writers, then I’d keep my own adventure on Earth. I’ve just got a gut feeling about this, but I think that if the moment the opening titles are over, you go into a Scene One that’s set on a purple planet with three moons, and some man in a cloak is making a villainous death threat … then the audience would just switch off in their millions. That’s just an instinct, but I think you should set all that high flown end-of-the-world stuff in a very real world of pubs and mortgages and people.
Even then, he knew exactly how he was going to do it. I think he was absolutely right.
It feels more real when it's on Earth.
Look at those two answers:
Russell: I think the whole of television is becoming a bit more character-led. It would have to be more personal, more emotional - more ‘real’ in that sense. I really think you couldn’t get away with the shallow character development the show had in the past- no more screaming girlies! (...) An emotional content has got to be stronger, more interesting, more open, to grab a wider audience. In other words, it’s got to be written well- which is not as easy as it sounds!
Russell: The key ingredient is death. I’m not being all bleak here, I mean death in that great, fabulous, thriller way. (...)There’s such a great sense of danger ticking away underneath all the time. Death stalks Doctor Who in every single scene, and I love it for that. It just raises the stakes, makes you love those who survive all the more. Blimey! Does that sound very odd?
If someone wondered if it was really Russell answering the questions, the sentence about death was a final proof :) It's crazy how acurately those sentences describe Davies' Doctor Who. He's made it character-led and brought death to every episode he's written.
Gareth Roberts might have predicted some things wrongly, but here he is talking about the companion: To keep younger viewers watching today, however, there’d need to be a deeper emotional context to the Doctor-assistant relationship.
Gareth: (...) the assistant fancies the Doctor… what are they gonna do about it?
Rose was probably the one companion who got her own human Doctor. Was it too much? When will we see the Doctor/companion love again?
It wasn't Russell who mentioned love! :) And what are Doctor Who's essencial elements according to Steven Moffat?
Steven: The core elements are a Police Box, a frock coat and cliffhangers.
As Steven was the only one who didn't agree that the stories in new series should be self-contained with a story arc in the background, I'm not surprised to hear about cliffhangers from him. In my opinion, his experiments with the format in seasons six and nine didn't end well so either others were right, or it hasn't been done properly.
What elements can return in a new series? Paul Cornell: Almost certainly, unless a better deal is struck, not the Daleks. It would be as scary as it always was, which is, to anybody over the age of seven, not very.
Mark Gatiss and Gareth Roberts wanted the Daleks, though. I think they were actually frightening in some episodes - "Dalek" being the best example - but they stop being dangerous when they don't manage to achieve anything and don't kill a single person in an episode. If they weren't so iconic, they'd vanished.
Russell, Gareth and Steven agreed that Time Lords and their story were redundant. Russell: To be realistic, I’d chuck away half the background - the moment the Doctor started talking about Gallifrey and Time Lords, I’d just cut it. Excess baggage. I'm glad he didn't cut it but rewrote it. According to Gareth, what Russell actually did was to turn the absence of the Time Lords into something mythic and unknowable. So when the Doctor talks about Gallifrey in "Gridlock", it's anything but dull. Russell says in 2008: When ‘continuity’ shifts to become ‘mythology‘, then it resonates, and is fascinating, even to the newest of viewers. Sure, I was dying to learn more about Gallifrey! He said he's learnt it from JK Rowling. Thank you, JK!
Turning continuity into mythology
Steven: I’d chuck out all gratuitous continuity because it’s dull - and all that yawn-inducing Gallifrey rubbish with it. I don’t care where the Doctor came from or why he travels around the universe - I just want him out of those TARDIS doors and having adventures.
So what happened in season 9 with the hybrid story? Why did you change you mind, Steven? I wasn't the only one who felt that there was no need to add anything about the reasons why the Doctor left Gallifrey.
This is not the only time when Steven changed his mind.
Steven: Although I loved Peter Davison and Paul McGann - probably the two best actors in the role - I don’t think young, dashing Doctors are right at all. The Doctor should always be a bit more Picard and bit less Kirk. He should be 40-plus and weird-looking - the kind of wacky grandfather that kids know on sight to be secretly one of them. I thought Rowan was perfect, if a little on the young side, because kids have always loved him …
Said a man who hired the youngest Doctor ever ;)
To conclude, some wise words from Lance Parkin:
If you want Doctor Who to be ‘like it used to be’, watch your videos; if you want it to be like the New Adventures, read the New Adventures. As with the McGann and Atkinson stories, I’d expect huge swathes of fandom to reject the new series out of hand as a betrayal of everything that they stood for. It just wouldn’t be Doctor Who otherwise!”
Good point, as how many fans rejected New Who? Or Eleven's era? Or Twelve's?
And, best ending ever:
Russell: God help anyone in charge of bringing it back - what a responsibility!
In 1999, DWM asked writers: Paul Cornell, Russell T Davies, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, Lance Parkin and Gareth Roberts about Doctor Who and its future. Then, in 2008, they showed them their answers again and asked for comments. You can read it here.
When asked if there's a place for Doctor Who in 2000s, I like how everyone else say "yes, sure" but Russell T Davies goes straight ahead and discusses money, sets and locations. In 2008, he says his first episodes had budgetary savings in-built but it doesn't feel this way.
It's interesting how Steven Moffat in 1999 says Doctor Who is a children's programme but in 2008 denies it. I believe it was true before 2005. I shouldn't say that because I haven't watched majority of the classic episodes, but from the bits I've watched and read about, I can imagine it's true. I've seen a programme where some Doctor Who fans (Chris Chibnal was one of them) discussed a 1986 season; adult people in the telly, wearing suits and being completely serious about Doctor Who's plot and characters, it just felt wrong (I found it for you: click! Look at that young Chris, he doesn't look like a man who's bound to succeed in life, and here he is). I'm not saying Davies' era is made for adults - the man invented the Slitheen! - but it presents quite dark vision of the world. Take out all silly monsters and gags and you're left with a world where a girl like Rose has no prospects, a woman like Donna can't find a permanent job, people kill the unknown and doing the right thing always means sacriface and loss. Also, if the cleverest man in the universe and a pacifist has to destroy his own race to save the universe from extinction, well, that's pretty grim. And can attract older viewers who recognize that world. Because that world's better with the Doctor than without him.
On the other hand, Steven's words from 2008: Doctor Who is a fairy tale. I don’t mean it’s like a fairy tale, I mean it is a fairy tale. It’s like all the dark and strange myths we invent to tell our children, In ways they’ll understand, that the world around them isn’t always safe, and there are people out there who might want to harm them. Fairy tales are metaphors for the dangers and seductions that lurk away from the path. Look at me. I’m 46 and l still talk about the world in fairy tale language. Maybe l never learned another way.
If I was to describe the Eleventh Doctor's era in two words, it would be "fairy tale". I think in 2010 Doctor Who came back to being a children's programme for most of the time, and this is why some fans who fell in love with RTD's era rejected it. I learnt to appreciate it.
A fairy tale
Russell T Davies: Maybe the solution [to the problem with money to create new sets every episode] is to go back to those first Pertwee years, with the Doctor trapped on Earth. This is certainly not my favourite formula, but it’s more easily achieved using real locations. That’s not the way I’d like it, but it certainly makes it achievable. Already, you’ve compromised your principles! Very difficult problem, this.
And 2008 Davies says he's not thought about it once when he started working on 2005 return. Yet the only planet the Doctor visits in season 1 is Earth, with Platform One and Satellite 5 being the only locations outside the Earth so the budget must have been tight. Funny thing is, I didn't realise how much Earth-bound the first season was (and the second one, too) until I specifically thought about it. You get a impression that they travelled into many places.
Also from Russell: Maybe Earthbound stories aren’t a compromise, maybe they’re vital. I hate Earthbound in terms of all that cosy UNIT stuff which would just look childish now. But then, thinking about it, if there was a new series, and if I was one of the writers, then I’d keep my own adventure on Earth. I’ve just got a gut feeling about this, but I think that if the moment the opening titles are over, you go into a Scene One that’s set on a purple planet with three moons, and some man in a cloak is making a villainous death threat … then the audience would just switch off in their millions. That’s just an instinct, but I think you should set all that high flown end-of-the-world stuff in a very real world of pubs and mortgages and people.
Even then, he knew exactly how he was going to do it. I think he was absolutely right.
It feels more real when it's on Earth.
Look at those two answers:
Russell: I think the whole of television is becoming a bit more character-led. It would have to be more personal, more emotional - more ‘real’ in that sense. I really think you couldn’t get away with the shallow character development the show had in the past- no more screaming girlies! (...) An emotional content has got to be stronger, more interesting, more open, to grab a wider audience. In other words, it’s got to be written well- which is not as easy as it sounds!
Russell: The key ingredient is death. I’m not being all bleak here, I mean death in that great, fabulous, thriller way. (...)There’s such a great sense of danger ticking away underneath all the time. Death stalks Doctor Who in every single scene, and I love it for that. It just raises the stakes, makes you love those who survive all the more. Blimey! Does that sound very odd?
If someone wondered if it was really Russell answering the questions, the sentence about death was a final proof :) It's crazy how acurately those sentences describe Davies' Doctor Who. He's made it character-led and brought death to every episode he's written.
Gareth Roberts might have predicted some things wrongly, but here he is talking about the companion: To keep younger viewers watching today, however, there’d need to be a deeper emotional context to the Doctor-assistant relationship.
Gareth: (...) the assistant fancies the Doctor… what are they gonna do about it?
Rose was probably the one companion who got her own human Doctor. Was it too much? When will we see the Doctor/companion love again?
It wasn't Russell who mentioned love! :) And what are Doctor Who's essencial elements according to Steven Moffat?
Steven: The core elements are a Police Box, a frock coat and cliffhangers.
As Steven was the only one who didn't agree that the stories in new series should be self-contained with a story arc in the background, I'm not surprised to hear about cliffhangers from him. In my opinion, his experiments with the format in seasons six and nine didn't end well so either others were right, or it hasn't been done properly.
What elements can return in a new series? Paul Cornell: Almost certainly, unless a better deal is struck, not the Daleks. It would be as scary as it always was, which is, to anybody over the age of seven, not very.
Mark Gatiss and Gareth Roberts wanted the Daleks, though. I think they were actually frightening in some episodes - "Dalek" being the best example - but they stop being dangerous when they don't manage to achieve anything and don't kill a single person in an episode. If they weren't so iconic, they'd vanished.
Russell, Gareth and Steven agreed that Time Lords and their story were redundant. Russell: To be realistic, I’d chuck away half the background - the moment the Doctor started talking about Gallifrey and Time Lords, I’d just cut it. Excess baggage. I'm glad he didn't cut it but rewrote it. According to Gareth, what Russell actually did was to turn the absence of the Time Lords into something mythic and unknowable. So when the Doctor talks about Gallifrey in "Gridlock", it's anything but dull. Russell says in 2008: When ‘continuity’ shifts to become ‘mythology‘, then it resonates, and is fascinating, even to the newest of viewers. Sure, I was dying to learn more about Gallifrey! He said he's learnt it from JK Rowling. Thank you, JK!
Turning continuity into mythology
Steven: I’d chuck out all gratuitous continuity because it’s dull - and all that yawn-inducing Gallifrey rubbish with it. I don’t care where the Doctor came from or why he travels around the universe - I just want him out of those TARDIS doors and having adventures.
So what happened in season 9 with the hybrid story? Why did you change you mind, Steven? I wasn't the only one who felt that there was no need to add anything about the reasons why the Doctor left Gallifrey.
This is not the only time when Steven changed his mind.
Steven: Although I loved Peter Davison and Paul McGann - probably the two best actors in the role - I don’t think young, dashing Doctors are right at all. The Doctor should always be a bit more Picard and bit less Kirk. He should be 40-plus and weird-looking - the kind of wacky grandfather that kids know on sight to be secretly one of them. I thought Rowan was perfect, if a little on the young side, because kids have always loved him …
Said a man who hired the youngest Doctor ever ;)
To conclude, some wise words from Lance Parkin:
If you want Doctor Who to be ‘like it used to be’, watch your videos; if you want it to be like the New Adventures, read the New Adventures. As with the McGann and Atkinson stories, I’d expect huge swathes of fandom to reject the new series out of hand as a betrayal of everything that they stood for. It just wouldn’t be Doctor Who otherwise!”
Good point, as how many fans rejected New Who? Or Eleven's era? Or Twelve's?
And, best ending ever:
Russell: God help anyone in charge of bringing it back - what a responsibility!