purplecat

A Writer's Tale by Benjamin Cook and Russell T. Davies is a (just about) year long email interview come conversation between Benjamin Cook (a Doctor Who Magazine writer) and Russell T. Davies about the writing process. It encompasses the writing of the 2007 Christmas Special (the one with Kylie in) and then Season 4. And it's a pretty fascinating read.

( Details under the cut )

On parrot_knights recommendation I recorded then watched Mark Lawson talking to Russell T Davies on BBC4 late last week. While I accept the arguments many have put forward that RTD is no more likely to tell the truth when talking to Mark Lawson on BBC 4 than he is when talking to Dr Who Confidential on BBC3, I think his interest here was in selling the "Russell T Davies" brand rather than the Dr Who brand and that he recognised this audience wanted a little more by way of self-criticism and introspection that the relentless "fantastic!, wow!, daleks!, lovely people! amazing!" that he spouts whenever asked about Dr Who. Though, to be honest, there wasn't a great deal of self-criticism on show even here.

As well as the points parrot_knight picked out I was interested to hear a new justification for the lack of exotic alien worlds. Usually, when asked, RTD asserts that viewers are not interested in aliens; in fact this was clearly the answer Mark Lawson was expecting since he framed the question in terms of his personal relief that Rose opened in an everyday department store. Instead RTD said that on a BBC budget an alien world almost inevitably looked crap, and like a quarry. He compared the show to Heroes which, he claimed (and I've not seen any of season 2) couldn't make Orange County look like Feudal Japan on a much large budget so they were almost bound to fail in trying to make a quarry in Wales look like an alien planet on Dr Who's budget. Whether this is the real reason, or perhaps that he was worried that BBC4 viewers probably were (with the exception of Mark Lawson) interested in alien planets I couldn't say.