The latest issue of Quench is out now, and my interview with Russell T Davies at last sees print! The Quench website can sometimes take a while to be updated, so I’ll post the interview on here. Enjoy!
“I can come here in the mornings and sit and have a coffee. Just watch the world go by, I love it, absolutely love it,” Davies tells me as we sit down to talk in a café down in Cardiff Bay, just round the corner from where Torchwood supposedly have their underground Hub.
Despite masterminding the media juggernaut that is Doctor Who and its spinoffs, Davies was very happy to find time to speak to his friendly neighbourhood student newspaper about his writing. At an impressive 6’6”, one of Britain’s top television writers is something of a friendly giant. He has a boundless enthusiasm, with the superlatives flowing fast and free.
“We’ve just finished the first three episodes, and they’re the most spectacular things we’ve ever, ever produced,” he says proudly. But as Doctor Who hits its third series, can we expect any changes to the format?
“The format is to be different every week – different story, different setting, different cast, very often a different style every week. With that as a given, you don’t want to change it too much.”
The show seems as energised as ever, with series three taking us across time and space to 1930s New York, a spaceship in the 42nd century, the planet Malcassairo, as well as many other times and places besides.
Series three also sees the introduction of Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones.
“She’s absolutely lovely, we’re dead chuffed with her. She brings a whole new energy with her to the TARDIS,” enthuses Davies. As with Rose, Martha’s family also play a role in the series. So far Francine, Leo, Tish and the rest of the Jones clan have featured less than Mickey, Jackie and Pete Tyler, but as the series approaches the end, watch out for them again and a crucial decision one of them will face.
Rose ended up separated from the Doctor forever in a parallel universe in the previous series’ tear-jerking finale. But if Rose and new girl Martha could ever meet, how would they get on?
“Hahahah! I was thinking about that the other day… you could have a BBC novel about it,” Davies laughs, clearly taken with the possibilities of the idea. “Very like Sarah Jane meeting Rose, I think, like in the story School Reunion. Sparks would fly! They both know who he is, they’d both muscle in on each other’s territory, but both end up getting on brilliantly by the end. It’d be gorgeous, wouldn’t it? But it’s not happening!”
Davies already had a distinguished writing career to his name before reviving Doctor Who. He studies at Worcester College, Oxford, and went on to work in television. But what’s not as well known is that he spent a year studying in Cardiff. I ask Davies about his time here.
“When I came to Cardiff there was this most fantastic course, a Theatre Studies course, which was run by the university but based at the Sherman Theatre… they chose 15 people every year for a year long course and you formed a theatre company, the Sherman Arena Company with set budgets and design budgets and they taught you lighting and choreography and things like that… Really, really lovely, so, that’s when I first came and lived here.”
Do you ever feel like you’re spearheading a Welsh takeover of the television schedules?
“Hahaha! Not a takeover, but I honestly feel one of my most important tasks is getting Welsh people on TV. Before Doctor Who and all this came along, I wrote a series called Mine All Mine for ITV with a highly Welsh cast. It’s very important to normalise it as a voice, as an accent, because television is full of Scottish and Irish characters, and we’re genuinely under-served.
“Things like Torchwood are very strongly Welsh, and I’ve had Welsh accents in Doctor Who. You start to acclimatize, and it’s a very long process. It requires twenty dramas in a row to do it properly. But I’ve got three or four already, and other people will have to keep on doing it. It’s a long process, but you’ve just got to keep chipping away, and I’m very proud of it, very determined.
“There are brilliant actors here in Cardiff who don’t get a look-in from casting directors in London because they’re Welsh. There’s a genuine bias, even if they’re good at putting on an English accent, they’re not seen, they don’t get put on telly. It’s monstrously unfair. So more of it!”
So when did you decide you wanted to be a writer?
“Hmmm… that’s a good question. I was only writing comic strip stuff, theatre stuff, things like that. My own comic strip, not published of course. But it was always boiling away in there. And I never even thought of it like a practical job, because I didn’t know any writers, and in those days – I’m very old! – you wouldn’t see interviews with writers and things like that. The only source of that kind of information, interestingly enough, was Doctor Who. Doctor Who Magazine was my very first insight into television production that just didn’t exist anywhere else. It’s quite a commonplace thing now, to open up The Observer, and there’s an interview with Paul Abbott, Jimmy McGovern or someone. Not so much back then, so writers were like strange different creatures… it seemed like the most impossible job in the world.
“I entered television production and I loved it, just loved it full stop. And I spent a lot of years there, because of that I’d meet with writers and work with writers, but I worked in children’s comedy and stuff like that.”
How did you make the transition from working on shows like Why Don’t You? and Chucklevision to writing award-winning shows like Queer as Folk?
“I was so singled minded in those days, so determined, I look back and laugh at myself. I was working at BBC Manchester and down the road, literally 500 yards apart was Granada, which was a powerhouse in Manchester, even more so then than it is now… so I literally thought I was in the wrong building. I was so determined I left my job at the BBC and went on the dole with no money… I was a producer by this stage, they thought I was mad!
“But I said ‘No, I’m in the wrong job’, and so left that and went to Granada and went making contacts, knocking on doors… Determined as I was, it worked, and it only took about three months. I blagged my way into a job as a script editor, having never been a proper script editor. And on my first day at work, I was on Children’s Ward, with Paul Abbott and Kay Mellor, who now run television drama. It was like the gods were shining on me that day.
“Within a week I’d met, like, thirty writers, all at different stages in their careers. That was really an eye-opener… It convinced me anyone could do it, but it’s hard to make a living doing… The head of Children’s BBC really tried to put me off. She said to me ‘You won’t do it – it’s cold out there.’ But I didn’t believe her! And I was right!”
About the humanism in your writing, I begin… “A proper interview. Hooray!” Davies beams. In The Second Coming, Christopher Eccleston’s working-class Son of God tells humanity that if they want the position of God, then take the responsibility. Do you think humanity can take that responsibility?
“We’re still alive! I think you have to recognise that responsibility, rather than referring upwards. I think that’s something of what religion is… [But also] I think religion is a very primal instinct within humans, a very good one, part of our imagination. It’s as fundamental an instinct as it is to look up at the sun… It’s that in-built, that hard-wired. I think even the most in-born atheist like myself would look up when we talk about this sort of stuff. It’s a solar thing.
“It’s equally clear that the power of the religious over the White House is terrifying. I know when The Second Coming came out, people started saying on Newsnight Review that religion hardly matters in the world any more. Next thing we know, we’re practically in a holy war… It’s going to go on for centuries, unless we deal with it all very quickly. This is so ingrained, this is the axis of power in the world now, and the philosophical struggle in the world from now on. And that is fundamentally based on religion.
“So anyway, yes, I think we have to [take responsibility], but we’re a long way off it. But I’m not an enemy of that instinct that tells us to look upwards.”
In Torchwood, Captain Jack speaks disparagingly of our “neat little categories” when it comes to sexuality, and Bob and Rose upset some in the gay community by having a gay man fall in love with a woman… “Well, they’re idiots!” Davies says. What would you say your view of sexuality is?
“I don’t think my view of sexuality is quite as fluid as I portray it on screen, because what you’re portraying on screen is extraordinary events happening to ordinary people. The fact that it’s a drama means it’s got to be more dramatic! A lot of people are just straight, and equally, I’m just gay. There’s a fair amount of fixedness, within which, you have to look at the possibility that anything can happen…
“That doesn’t mean anything should happen or always does happen. Most times nothing happens and you stay as you are. I think you’ve got to be realistic, and behind that, when I’m writing there’s obviously a big political bias to get this stuff on screen because I believe in that visibility. I believe those stories should be told, and gays are naturally going to like that.”
Do you see yourself as having any responsibilities as a writer beyond telling a good story?
“That’s interesting… No. Not really. I think the story is the thing, because if you start to imagine other responsibilities, then you’re starting to imagine other people’s voices in your head, and the most important thing you can do is keep your voice pure and strong. This doesn’t mean not listening to criticism – actually, it probably does mean not listening to criticism…
“If after I’d written Queer as Folk I’d felt very responsible to that gay audience that was watching, then that could have convinced me not to write Bob and Rose, which is probably the finest thing I’ve ever written. I still think that episode one is just about perfect, and that’s very rare… But you could argue that my responsibility as a gay man then becomes a responsibility not to write a drama in which a gay man becomes straight.”
Speaking of criticism, Torchwood got something of a mixed reaction. Charlie Brooker compared it to Scooby Doo with swearing, blood and sex, for example. What do you think of these criticisms?
“Um, we don’t really pay much attention to it really, equally, when Doctor Who is praised to the skies, we don’t pay any attention to that. Praise is just as unhelpful as criticism. We watch the show, we work on it, we know what’s working and what isn’t, which is not necessarily what you think is working and what isn’t, and never will be, and we’ll work on that.
“And that Charlie Brooker column is hilarious, brilliantly written, the man’s a fantastic polemic writer. But if you turned round to Charlie Brooker and said, ‘So does that mean you think television dramatists should listen to the word of TV columnists?’, he’d run away in horror!
“It’s the same sort of argument that happened about whether we should have a focus group of two thousand people telling us what to do. Absolutely not – it’s just not the way to work.
“So some things worked, some things didn’t, we’ll work on it. There’s new things we’ll see if they work as well, but industry-wise, it’s a record-breaking programme, a huge success… It is seen as a programme in need of a lot of work, and that’s what we do, keep it working.”
Doctor Who is a very optimistic show. Do you think that optimism is always honest and justified? For example, in the episode Boom Town, the Doctor faces a dilemma between justice and mercy – taking the villainous Margaret Slitheen to her home planet, where she will be executed for her crimes, or letting her go in the hope that she will change. (“In that restaurant up there!” Davies says, pointing to where the Doctor and Margaret discussed that question over a last supper together in that story.) In the end, the TARDIS returns her to an egg, giving her a chance at a new life, but it just seems to be a magic answer out of nowhere.
“Yes, I see what you mean, but of course it comes out of magic, because that is our only option, because what is the resolution to the debate around that table up there. What is it? Imagine the outcry if the Doctor had decided one opinion either way. He couldn’t, he literally couldn’t. There is no answer to that debate. Margaret didn’t have an answer, and the Doctor doesn’t have an answer. So magic is the only option for your ending, which is to give the only option that doesn’t actually exist in the real physical world, which is the chance to start again. We all want a chance to start again, we’d all go back and redo things. Only science fiction can give you that ending.
“What I love about that, is you’re having a philosophical debate that eight-year olds can sit there and get involved in, about the death penalty. The whole planet hasn’t come up with an ending to that argument, and we never will. And that’s why the Earth opens and the sky shakes, that is literally a sort of divine intervention.”
“Everything has its time, and everything dies.” When the time comes, should that apply to the Doctor?
“Ooh no, never! He’s beyond that now, If someone took over and the show got axed, and they decided to kill him in the very last episode, you and I know he wouldn’t be dead. In ten years time, someone would come along and say ‘Oh look, he was wearing the Crystal of Gothnar and has been resurrected!’, or they’d just open with scene one in the TARDIS with him flying along.
“I think it’s very important when you’re writing it that you don’t write him as immortal. A couple of times in this series we point out that being able to regenerate doesn’t mean you can’t die. If he were shot through the heart, he’d be dead. He wouldn’t have time to regenerate, to trigger the process.
“But never! I cannot imagine the day. If someone killed him on-screen, it wouldn’t work, like with Sherlock Holmes or Robin Hood. I honestly think he’s got that folk-hero status, and I’m very proud of that.”
Everything has its time, and that includes the interview, though after an hour of talking with Russell T Davies, I have more than enough material, and I thank him for taking the time to talk to Gair Rhydd.
“Not short answers, as you can tell, Caleb – a lot of transcribing, I’m sorry!” he apologises unnecessarily. “I hope you can edit me down. This will have to be a special pull-out brochure – Gair Rhydd, 100 pages with Russell T Davies!”
Doctor Who is currently airing on BBC1. Torchwood will return to BBC2 in 2008. For an extended version of this interview, keep an eye on http://quench.gairrhydd.com/