Who's Who?

What is about a man in a police box hurtling through space and time that’s proved a hit with generations of viewers? David Lemon spoke to three Doctor Who writers to find out

Jane Tranter, Controller of BBC Fiction, has said that of all the series she’s been involved in, the one she’s most proud of is Doctor Who. Not prestigious adaptations such as Bleak House or Cranford, not the time-travelling Sweeney of Life On Mars, but a show that first aired in 1963 and was axed in 1989.

Today, with the show comfortably nestled in the Christmas Day slot previously occupied by Del Boy and Rodney, it’s not that surprising a statement. But let’s go back a few years. When the original series disappeared from our screens, it was dismissed as irrelevant; past its sell-by date. The glory days of Tom Baker (for many still the definitive Timelord and to date the longest on-screen occupant of the TARDIS) had passed, and on a sheer spectacle level, there was no way the modest BBC effects budget could ever compete with the post-Star Wars blockbuster. Apart from a 1996 TV movie starring Paul McGann, it seemed the Gallifreyan’s galaxy-hopping was consigned to the world of fandom and the odd repeat on UK Gold.

Yet, four series and three Christmas specials later, Doctor Who has regained its place in pop culture. How did Russell T. Davies and his writing team manage to get so much right?

Rather than offer pet theories on the increased role of the companion and influence of emotion-driven fantasy series such as Buffy, it’s probably best I let some of the writers speak for themselves.

Robert Shearman was responsible for bringing back the Doctor’s most iconic enemy in Dalek, a tense stand-off between Christopher Eccleston’s ninth Doctor and what appeared to be the last of its evil species. As well as being a TV scriptwriter, playwright and novelist, Robert wrote several Big Finish audio adventures for the Doctor during what he dubs the series’ “wilderness years”.

Paul Cornell is another regular contributor to the Timelord’s off-screen adventures. In addition to the tear-jerking Father’s Day for season one of new Who, Paul adapted his Who novel Human Nature as a two-part adventure for tenth Doctor, David Tennant. He also writes for earth-bound series such as Holby and Coronation Street, and is behind the comic book revival of another Blighty-loving hero, Captain Britain.

James Moran wrote the darkly comic horror film Severance and for the post-watershed Who spin-off Torchwood before his season four Who episode, The Fires Of Pompeii. James is also part of the writing team behind another spin-off from a popular BBC series; the future-set Spooks:Code 9.

Were you all big fans of the original series? Was it the old cliché of hiding behind the sofa as a kid?

Robert Shearman: It's hard to exaggerate how big a Doctor Who fan I was. Between the ages of 12 and 15 it was the biggest thing in my life. The funny thing was, I never much enjoyed sci-fi but Doctor Who never felt like sci-fi. It never stayed still long enough to develop much of a coherent house style. It was as likely one week to be horror, or another to be a comedy, or another to be a straight historical adventure, as it was to be something set on a spaceship. I think that's what appealed, really. That it was never the same show twice. It took a firm hold of my imagination and, although I outgrew it a little once I found girls, it never completely went away.

James Moran: I've been watching Doctor Who my whole life and have always been a science fiction fan: Star Trek, Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Quantum Leap, The Prisoner – most of the usual suspects. I grew up watching Tom Baker and then Peter Davison and, while I did get scared a lot, I never hid behind the sofa (it was impossible, because our sofa was against the wall.) I don't know how all these people claim to have hidden behind their sofas as kids, unless they all lived in massive, Friends-style apartments with the sofa in the middle of the room. I suspect many of them didn't actually watch the show and are retconning their own childhood to jump on the bandwagon. And that sentence probably tells you way, way too much about me.

Paul Cornell: I tried to the write for the original series but I was much too young and had no experience. It went off air for 15 years and in that 15 years I actually became a TV writer so that if it did come back, I could write for it. I kind of deliberately got into TV and started getting TV credits so I might do that, at the same time as writing books and audio plays. I got to know Russell T. Davies and, basically, loads of writers who were also Doctor Who fans grew up together through fandom. We always wanted one of us to bring the show back if we could and Russell got big enough to swing it.

Were you given a list of things to include by Russell T. Davies or did you end up pitching completely original stories?

JM: They have a rough idea of most of the episodes, so for mine they knew they wanted to do ‘the Pompeii episode’, but they didn't know what the story would be. You get the setting, and some things they want included – as long as you hit those, you can do what you like with the story.

RS: Dalek was taken from a play I wrote called Jubilee; a big broad black comedy about the way that as fans we'd all got so used to the Daleks we'd forgotten that in the sixties their creator, Terry Nation, saw them as a metaphor for Nazi fascism. By the time I wrote it, you could see them on ITV advertising KitKats, or buy them as merchandise for kids. They'd become safe. What appealed to Russell was that single Dalek imprisoned and tortured by humans. But it had to appeal this time to viewers who would have no idea what it represented. That was enormously enjoyable; knowing there were eight-year-olds out there watching it who wouldn't know why anyone should be frightened of a talking pepperpot, sitting with parents who did!

While certain elements of the original series – the TARDIS, a (usually female) companion, the Doctor re-generating, Ron Grainer’s spine-tingling theme – remain intact, what aspects did Russell T. Davies feel needed to be changed for 21st century audiences?

PC: The old show was, generally speaking, not very emotional; it was very stiff upper lip and stoic in a lot of ways. It’s changed a lot and right now is designed to be this absolute beast of a show that satisfies every single audience member from little kids to grandparents by providing something for each of them on an almost circulating basis. Those of us who were writing it in the 15 years it was off air were used to it being a niche show, a cult show – although I hate the word ‘cult’ because it’s applied so randomly now. Dr Who is now the most popular drama in Britain; that’s not a cult.

RS: The Doctor himself, really. There's a danger of making him seem very patrician; a rather smug man who likes using long words and being a bit arrogant and being so markedly eccentric that you want to thump him. That was the problem with some of the latter years of the classic show. In spite of some great scripts and performances, the Doctor could too easily come across less like a character and more like a caricature. We all found early on that we wrote the Doctor that way; rather archly. Russell was determined this new Doctor would be more relaxed than that.

JM: It seems simple now, but just revamping it and bringing the pacing into line with modern day shows was essential. One story, one episode, 45 minutes – just like the other shows we watch now. If they'd brought it back with a long series, and each story was four, six or eight parts long, it would have died again. I still love watching the previous version, but if it was going to be on primetime TV and compete and get viewers, it had to move with the times. Which it did.

You were all either writers for audio adventures or long-term fans so presumably you knew the original series inside out. But was there anything about writing new Who that proved surprising or particularly difficult?

RS: Adapting can be so much more difficult than starting something fresh because there's no baggage with the latter; you create a story according to its needs. For the first few drafts I inevitably found myself either responding to or reacting against the previous script I'd written. I really just wanted to cut loose. Ironically, when we lost the rights to the Daleks somewhere around draft five, and we were forced for about a month to come up with something new that wouldn't rely upon existing iconography, I found that freedom. It was a stressful time but it benefitted the script. At some stage everyone should have a draft where everything they've taken for granted is removed from them.

PC: We were just insanely experimental in season one and there was a point where I had a virtually doctor-less draft as it looked like at one point that Christopher [Eccleston] wasn’t going to do the full season and I was going to have to ease up on him. We also started with the instruction to have no monsters, but things changed a lot. Once we were into season three things were much smoother and much quicker.

JM: It's the hardest show to write for because there are no rules, but once you start writing, you realise there are loads of rules – it’s just that they’re unwritten ones everyone subconsciously knows. The only actual rule I remember is: don't use the TARDIS as a taxi. Once they land and get into an adventure, they're on foot, or using local transport, etc. That keeps things more immediate and visual, and lets us see the place they're in, rather than lots of TARDIS scenes. There's more than 40 years of history peering over your shoulder, whispering "That's not right, he wouldn't say or do that, you're an idiot" and the audience of millions over your other shoulder, saying "You'd better not mess this up or we will destroy you – oh, and you're an idiot". Then there's your ten-year-old self, who doesn't want you to let him down.

While you were writing, how aware were you of the pressures of delivering a show that would satisfy a primetime Saturday night audience?

RS: Oh, horribly aware. But ultimately that wears off, all that excitement and artificial responsibility – the real responsibility is always the same: to write a decent script that doesn't let down the rest of the series. Once I'd written my first “Exterminate!” in draft one, it all got much easier.

PC: Initially I felt the pressure of writing Doctor Who for television. Just typing the word ‘Doctor’ and then some dialogue is pretty daunting if that’s been your ambition for the last 15 years! We do have a vast production system which kind of sweeps you along and helps and makes everything easier, but it is daunting.

JM: It becomes very clear as soon as they announce you as a writer for the new series that you're working on the biggest show in the country, because everyone wants to talk to you about it. So many people asked me what would happen, but I didn't tell a single soul. I was too scared that I'd be the one who'd leak something. So at first it's terrifying and mad and brilliant and exciting, all at once. It's such an intense process and so much work, you literally don't have time to be scared. The day the episode is actually on TV… that's when you get scared.

How long did your episodes take from script to screen?

PC: Eighteen months and about 16 drafts on Father’s Day. Six months and three and four drafts on Human Nature and Family Of Blood. The process has got a lot swifter now we know what the show is.

JM: In TV you normally get about two weeks to do a draft, that's about average. I got the job on the 9th May, and they filmed in September, so it was a pretty fast turnaround. It wouldn't normally be that fast, but because it was such a big number in terms of production, they had to sort out the location shoot as early as possible. Which was good, because it meant there wasn't time to get too worried about it.

RS: I think I was on Dalek for a little over six months. It felt like quite a long process, but it was part and parcel of building up the series anew. Russell was responsible, of course, for putting his own stamp upon the revival, for characterising the Doctor his way – but since Chris Eccleston wasn't cast until after my third draft we were all still learning as we were going along.

Is there any advice you could offer anyone hoping to write for Doctor Who?

JM: The best advice is: Don't. Don't write something with a Who feel, or designed to appeal to the producers. I got in with Severance, a slasher movie, Curfew, a dark, bleak horror, and a surreal comedy TV pilot – none of which bear any relation to either Doctor Who or Torchwood. Write your own stuff, write what you love the most, write what you want to see, write from the heart, without thinking "will this fit on BBC1 at 7pm?", just follow the story and ideas. It doesn't have to be clever, it doesn't have to be stupid, it doesn't have to be anything - it just has to be something you want to watch. Whether that's period drama or cannibal comedy, just go for it; it's your idea, after all. It'll take you a while to become a good writer, and you'll need to get feedback from friends or other writers. You must get harsh, brutal feedback from others, and write, keep writing, keep rewriting, it's the only way to improve. There really is no magic solution or short-cut, you have to write and write and then write some more.

PC: I have one sentence of writing advice which I give as general advice: it is your job as a writer to seek out harsh criticism of your work and change as a result of it. In terms of a Doctor Who audience it’s important to get a body of work that will lead you there and to not be daunted; to become part of the team, to always keep asking and not to get scared and shut yourself off and panic.

Finally, what do you think lies at the heart of Doctor Who's enduring appeal?

PC: Our hero being an intellectual, someone who doesn’t carry a weapon, who always uses diplomacy first and never pre-judges the creatures he encounters. He’s always happy to shake something by the tentacle. He’s one of the very few heroes who isn’t built on violence.

JM: They kept the things everyone loved – it's still about a bloke in a blue box who travels in time and fights monster, which I think is part of the appeal. It's a simple, clever concept, which means anything can happen every week, and it can go on forever. And the great ideas and stories are still there, most importantly.

RS: There's a passion to new Who. Not only within the stories – although it searches for the emotional beats very openly – but behind the scenes. I saw Russell recently, and he told me the reason it's a success is because Doctor Who was always a great concept; if you treat it with care and respect, it'll work. And it'll still hopefully catch the imagination the way it did mine, by flagrantly refusing to settle down to telling one type of storyline. It constantly surprises and thrills.

David Lemon blogs at jetpacksandsuch.blogspot.com His debut feature Faintheart is in cinemas in Feburary 2009.

This article first appeared in the Guild's magazine, UK Writer (Autumn 2008)