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The following feature first appeared in SFX issue 372 of SFX magazine. You can purchase a hard copy here.
We can’t talk about the anniversary, the return of David Tennant, the future of the series, the spin-offs, before addressing one of the biggest comebacks in sci-fi history. Everyone knows where they were on 24 September 2021 when the news broke that Russell T Davies was returning as Doctor Who’s showrunner. To quote a certain Time Lord: “What? What?! WHAT?!” Davies had given up the reins in 2010 after a farewell tour to rival Cher.
This feature first appeared in SFX magazine - Subscribe here to save on the cover price, get exclusive covers, and have it delivered to your door or device every month.
But now – like the ageless diva herself – he was back and spearheading the 60th anniversary specials. “The original press release just said that I was doing the specials,” Davies tells SFX, “and I absolutely insisted on saying ‘and future seasons to come’. Seasons plural, because I said the future would look insecure otherwise. So I was inserting those words into press releases myself.”
He’s a man who cares for, nay loves Doctor Who. He knows what fans think – he’s been one his whole life. He knows how the machine works. But this time he’s got an army and an international streamer behind him. This is RTD2 – but before we talk about the new era, we need to take a step back…
Big return
It’s no wonder fandom was surprised – a return was something Davies said he’d never do. “That’s automatic, though, in fairness,” he counters. “Even though I’d been dying to do Doctor Who for years, ever since I left, I’d automatically say I’m not because someone’s in the job. You’d sound like an idiot if you’re on the sidelines going, ‘I’d love to do it again!’ Actually, if I did want to do it again I’d phone them up and say, ‘Can I write an episode?’ “The truth of it is that I’ve been inventing Doctor Who stories since I was five. So it’s like second nature to me and that never stops. I don’t think of stories for my job, I have this job because I think of stories all the time. That’s what I do all day long, every single day.”
“There are certain stories we’re telling in the season to come that have been playing in my head for years. Season one, episode one is a story I invented on the day I walked into Bad Wolf for our first meeting. I went, ‘Oh, that’s a good idea’. So there’s things I’ve been thinking about for 20 years, there’s things I’ve been thinking of for 40 years, there’s things I thought of yesterday. So what I’m saying is that it never stops.”
The question, then, might be why give up the job in the first place? Anyone that’s watched television since 2010 will already know the answer. “Oh, because I had other things to write. Also, it’s exhausting. It’s a properly knackering job. But look at what I did afterward. I did loads of stuff.” Aside from that understatement – look at those awards! – he’s been in demand to do other people’s “stuff” too. “I got asked to showrun a British Marvel show, but [they said] ‘We can’t tell you what it is,’” he laughs loudly. “To this day, I watch them and I can’t work out which show that was going to be. Obviously planning to make a British Marvel show that I haven’t seen. Has that happened?”
But there was only one British show that held his heart(s): Doctor Who. Albeit with a difference. “If I’d gone back to the old show, with the old production methods, that would have been a retrogressive step because of the learning from that. The whole point of moving on is the learning stuff,” he explains. “So when the BBC made contact with me and said they were looking for streaming, and that it would have a bigger budget, part of the joy for me was learning how to work with a bigger budget."
“I know we’re not allowed to talk money but… all the shows I’ve ever worked on have one-third of the budget of this. I worked on one show with about half the budget. It’s fascinating, there’s an awful lot to learn. Phil [Collinson, producer]’s done Gentleman Jack with HBO, which is a good budget. Equally, at the same time, Jane Tranter and Joel Collins [also producers] have done His Dark Materials, which is a bigger budget. So they’re learning how to make cuts and scale things down. So it’s very interesting. We’ve all come to it with a lot to learn and a lot of passion, and that’s good.”
“At the risk of sounding sanctimonious, but I really, really mean this – they were going to do this to the show anyway and I genuinely thought, ‘It needs looking after.’” He chuckles. “Do you remember, before the Paul McGann movie materialized, there was talk of selling it to America, there were rumors there would be a rapping TARDIS. Remember that? People said the TARDIS would have a voice and it would rap.”
Potential spoiler for 2024! “Of course, I’ve done that. I do it very well!” he jokes. “We were all terrified of an international version [in 1996]. So I had that instinctive terror of what might come. So it was genuinely a need to look after the show. Because it’s a very odd show, it’s very precise. Its rules are very strange and, like the British constitution, unwritten. We’re just discovering how unwritten constitutions are deadly now… after 200 years of democracy, we’re realising how wrong it is. “So I thought, I felt needed. I absolutely did. That’s the cover line – ‘I felt needed!’ says Russell T Davies.”
Fans needn’t worry that he isn’t going to stick around, either. “No, I’m planning season three now, there’s plans for season four. Absolutely. Who knows? Who knows. I’m not getting any younger.” He chuckles when SFX asks if this basically makes him the new John Nathan-Turner, the producer of the last series of Classic Who. “I love JNT. I swear I would have given him a job. I would have made him part of the team. He’d be head of international sales, he’d be doing all that. I mean it. He would’ve absolutely continued. That’s part of bringing Mel back, part of what we’re doing with Bonnie Langford, was to right a wrong. I think, alright, she perhaps wasn’t done brilliantly at the time. But I think memory has been a bit sour with her and a bit bitter over her character. I want to put that right and have a better Mel and a proper Mel, a Mel that John Nathan-Turner would be proud of. So he’s very much mentioned in conversation a lot of the time.”
Those wonderful toys
Speaking of the past, Davies reveals that continuity did concern production initially. “It’s been very interesting. How much of the past can we mention? Is it a blank slate? Can you mention Tegan? Can you mention Susan? Can you mention anything in the past? And they’ve [Disney] been incredibly open about it. We’re living in a very fortunate age now where the history of shows is respected, and continuity is respected. “That’s helped, actually, if I can refer to a past enemy, as long as I can justify it, like bringing back the Toymaker. I wanted to do that because he’s from the ’60s and it was the 60th anniversary, it just all made sense."
“My lord, one of the most exciting days of my writing life was page one of ‘The Giggle’ script when I realized how brilliant the Toymaker was. I thought he’d be a good villain, that I’d have a laugh with him. I started writing the script and I thought, ‘This is the best villain ever created.’ So powerful. So funny. So dangerous, so evil. I love him!” Neil Patrick Harris, who plays Toymaker is, he says, “phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal.”
Any such concerns arose largely before the show’s new global home on Disney+ was secured, he stresses. “Obviously, that was written before the streamer was decided. Bear in mind, a lot of this went into production. It could have been Netflix, it could have been Amazon. It could’ve been anyone – you could say any name there that we went to. It’s our job to go to every single streamer in the world. All of them were very interested. So I’m writing this knowing that no matter where it went out it would go to a bigger audience – [so] do you have to explain who the Toymaker is? “I’ve got to say, in a science fiction setting, a great cosmic villain called the Toymaker played by a big star kind of makes sense anyway. Spider-Man could swing into an apartment tomorrow and meet the Toymaker and you’d go, ‘Oh, it’s that kind of villain.’ So he makes sense enormously.”
“There is a flashback. Let’s say it. There is a flashback to Michael Gough [the original Toymaker], which is wonderful. It’s funny; when I handed in that script my agent went, ‘Ooh, I remember the Toymaker – played by Michael Gough’. So there’s a very powerful memory of him. She’s not a science fiction fan at all. “So where we thought there’d possibly be resistance to old characters and old continuity and adventures, there’s been none. As long as there’s some nice clarity to it. They will ask, ‘Who’s this, who’s that?’ But they know equally that fans will come on board for that. It’s been lovely. It’s been really lovely.” He does a knowing laugh. “And other characters: dot dot dot,” he grins.
Unleash the beast
Famously, the first special, “The Star Beast”, began life as a Marvel comic in 1980. What made Davies want to revisit it? “I don’t think I gave it much thought, it just popped into my head,” he shrugs. “The whole point of the story is that the Doctor meets Donna Noble again. So therefore it has to be on Earth, so therefore she’s going to come across something alien and so therefore it’s handy if she comes across one alien. She’s not going to come across an invading army, that’s going to ruin the story. So it very quickly starts to narrow itself down. ‘The Star Beast’ is very much ET. It’s a traditional story. So to fi nd that pattern pre-existing in Doctor Who with [writer] Pat Mills and [artist] Dave Gibbons attached… We’re in an age of comic book adaptations, little knowing – that was a Marvel product then – that we’d be under the same banner as Marvel. But it’s a great story. I was 16 years old when that was published and I’ve always loved it. To this day you can say ‘The Star Beast’ to a fan and they’ll know what it is. There’s not many properties you can do that with.”
But it also brings its own complications for some fans: how can this version exist when it’s already been a comic? “But that doesn’t bother me for a second,” Davies insists. “It’s how there are two different versions of ‘Human Nature’ – and there are two different versions. And yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone stand in the town centre and sob because the television version has made the book not exist. They don’t. We’re very clever. We balance all these different versions,” he chuckles. When we meet in a Cardiff hotel in September, he says they’re delivering the fi nal version of second special “Wild Blue Yonder” the following day. “It has taken an awfully long time to make,” he considers. “It’s funny, it’s one of those episodes where everyone sat there saying, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to make this’ and guess how we made it? Green screen.”
More laughter. “Nothing changes, really! There’s almost a danger of building it up too much. It’s a very great story. It won’t surprise you that much. It’s great, it’s absolutely thrilling. I love it to death – I shouldn’t underplay it, should I? But if I fall into this pattern of going, ‘It’s the most unusual thing you’ve ever seen,’ you’ll sit there and go, ‘Oh, I’ve seen that before.’ “With the build-up to these three specials in people’s minds, there’s been a lot of invention going on online. But I did say right at the beginning, these are,” he says, banging the table with each word, “three. Separate. Stories. “It’s very important to say, actually, you’re not watching a three-part story. You can tune in for any one of these episodes and start from scratch. It’s more of a mini-season. That’s what it is, it’s a mini-season. I like that.”
There is, of course, a full new season, with Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor, to come in 2024. “That’s where the Disney launch will really be starting,” Davies explains. “Disney love these specials, are dropping them and going to support them, but the massive Disney launch starts in [REDACTED] with season one. “Because I think people are beginning to ask, ‘Why is there no big Disney push behind this?’ That’s coming in [REDACTED]. “Ooh, we’re not supposed to say [REDACTED], are we? Next year, season one. Yes, we’re calling it season one.”
We’ll let you catch your breath – we imagine there’s a collective gasp, a clutching of anoraks, a seizing of sonics. Not series 14, not season 40 – controversial! Davies chuckles at our geekery. “What fun that is, to be controversial.” At this point Murray Gold walks over and says hello. “Go away,” he tells his returning composer. “Time is money, I’m selling the show. I love you, darling!” This is, we say, a nice segue into getting the old band back together, which almost feels like a pipe dream. “We all worried,” Davies admits. “We worried since the day we agreed to do it, because that’s part of making the show, but the person who was last on the list was probably Phil [Collinson], because he was producing Nolly for me. I was thinking, ‘Well, I don’t want to take the producer off my lovely show being made in Manchester.’ What a weird business position to be in!
“Daily, I was telling him all of our plans. I think he just snapped and went, ‘Oh god, can’t I produce it?’ and I was like, ‘Oh alright then’,” he roars with laughter. “No! He’s one of the nation’s top producers. I did wonder if he’d be interested. There was a great moment when I told him I was going back to Doctor Who and he literally walked into my hallway and fell onto his knees,” he laughs again. “I partly assumed he’d think, ‘Oh, I’ve done it already’. Once we asked him – once we begged him – to do it, he raced. That was a great day. Of course, taking it to [production company] Bad Wolf was automatic as well. It’s literally named after a Doctor Who thing. It is weird how it all fell into the right place. The fact that they made His Dark Materials in Cardiff, and most of all because they were coming to the end of that. So these vast studios were empty as we came along. The timing of it is really quite strange.”
Who's the man?
That all feeds into the bigger picture, with work now much further ahead on Doctor Who and the show being seen in more countries than ever before. “What thrills Disney, actually, not just the BBC, is to make it annually,” Davies says. “That’s quite a rare thing for streamers as well. So that’s absolutely the plan. There are plans for spin-offs. Not the ones you read about online all the time."
“But there are… it’s taking us a while to get into the groove of production. There are big plans and equally, they’re not too big. I look at some of those [other] franchises and frankly, I think you’re spreading yourself too much. We’ve got to see how successful this is. There’s also a certain amount of caution. I love it, I think it’s brilliant, I’m so happy with it – who knows? Who knows how it’ll go down in those 204 countries? So we’ll see.”
Doctor Who the complete collection is available to stream on BBC iPlayer and Disney+ right now.
For more check out our list of upcoming TV shows heading your way in 2023 and beyond.
