Script Doctors | Series 2 | Steven Moffat
"Come into the living room," says writer Steven Moffat, offering me a cup of coffee. "I don't let anyone into my office any more, it's in too much of a state. I don't think it's been tidied since the last time you were here..." Steven, that was well over a year ago... "Er, yeah. The piles of 'stuff' have started to encroach on my workspace, somewhat..." In which case, the pleasant, large, airy living room will do very nicely, ta. "Russell's just emailed me again, by the way." Memories of last summer and being told I wasn't getting any information at all come flooding back. He's not - "No, no, no. He was just saying that the title of my episode had got out, so did I mind if he announced it in Doctor Who Magazine...". Phew. Calm. It's mainly Series One I want to talk about anyway. Calm. Relax...
How did your title get out, anyway?
Someone left a script lying around. And because there's so much interest among people who've really nothing else to do, that will get out.
Why don't they give the episodes 'project codenames', like in the software industry?
Well, they absolutely could, so I don't really know. I think they can't be arsed! Nobody really cares... and it's not like anything that happened last time harmed the show. I mean, it couldn't have done a great deal better, could it?
Not realistically, no.
No. Modern television just doesn't do that.
Sitting on the Sunday and someone calls and says 'Do you know it got 10.8 million', your response is just 'Don't be ridiculous - Doctor Who hasn't got that for about 25 years!' Anyway, your episodes you wrote getting on for a year go. What else have you been up to?
I've been doing a new series, which is going to go, called Jekyll, which is a modern-day version of Jekyll and Hyde, which has been green-lit so that's going to happen. So mainly that, and of course another episode of Doctor Who. You say it was a year ago, but by the time I actually finished on The Empty Child, it was certainly after principal photography had finished. We had to add a scene. And I was working on it throughout the shooting. And I think with The Girl in the Fireplace, as I'm now entitled to call it, I was working on that by the time of the dubs for The Doctor Dances. I think I had my computer with me at the dub on occasion. So it doesn't really feel like 'a year ago'...
So it's a bit of a treadmill...?
Well, I'm going to be off it shortly because they're shooting mine any second now, and I'm doing another one for the third series - but I'm going to get off the rollercoaster for a while. I love it, but you do sort of think 'I have to make a living as well'...
Looking back at your two episodes from last series, they got quite a phenomenal response - I'd reckon it's one of the best stories we ever got on TV. Are you happy with it, looking back?
I'm phenomenally happy, yeah! I could be petty, but the general shape of it's good. I wish we'd used the right kind of tape recorder, of course...
Does that really matter that much, in terms of the story? I mean, it's not a huge issue, is it...?
No, but it's almost impossible that they could have had a tape recorder, it would have had to be a wire recorder. There were tape recorders in that time, but they were in Germany, which suggests that the Germans were playing particularly fair during the war by giving Doctor Constantine one of their tape recorders! And because of the running times... because both of my shows were two or three minutes under, that means every last line of dialogue that I wrote is in the show, every last lingering camera shot, every pan and hesitation! There are moments, I suppose, where it would have been nice to trim a little bit off...
Do you think that's made much of a difference to the pacing of it? I quite liked the slightly slower pace...
I think it was always intended to be a slower-moving build. I just mean that at times... normally, on any other show I've ever worked on, you'd ideally be wanting to lose two or three minutes, so you make up your mind which of those lines you, strictly speaking, need - and you lop one off. But I'm being incredibly picky - it looked nice, the special effects stuff is gorgeous, just like a story book, it's just amazingly well done. And there's lots of corridor-running and lurching monsters - it looked very Doctor Who to me...
Yours was one of the few stories to get those couple of minutes to run up and down corridors - there wasn't a lot of that going on...
Yes, well, 45 minutes is a tough length. I've got corridor-running in my new one as well!
Were you aware as you were writing it what a special effects nightmare you were creating?
We're all melodramatising that a bit. I was told, 'It's a two-parter, so spend the budget!'. So you put things into the first draft, and you think 'Can they really...?' - but I'd seen the CGI effects on war documentaries and things like that, so I thought it was worth a punt. And they really went for it. They sort of made the decision to go for it - there's an element in the new one as well where they've said 'Okay - we are going to do that!' They've lowered their heads and said 'Somehow, we are going to do this!'. And that attitude means you got to see Rose hanging from a barrage balloon. It has the advantage that it's Doctor Who and it's slightly romanticised - it didn't have to look precise, you know what I mean? That's not what the London Blitz would have looked like - the planes were too low and they didn't actually go on bombing raids in the perfect moonlight - but in terms of one of those big painted illustrations in the old Eagle Annuals, it was absolutely spot-on.
In terms of giving the audience the impression of what was going on? If you had shown the Blitz exactly how it was, you probably wouldn't have been able to see anything...
You'd see nothing except tracer fire. You wouldn't see the planes - you might hear them. And it would have looked like Iraq, you know? It wouldn't look romantic or nice at all, and we were going , absolutely blatantly, for 'romantic London' with the brave and plucky Brits surviving attack by the nasty Germans. Which is why you've got Captain Jack turning on the lights on Big Ben, and all that bollocks... when I say 'bollocks', I mean there are logical problems with certain aspects! But it's hard to hit the right level of logic in Doctor Who. The plot has to make sense, but it all takes place in a world where Robin Hood really did help the poor, and Sherlock Holmes actually lived in Baker Street, it takes place in a world that's slightly different from our own. It's the musical version of Oliver!, as opposed to Charles Dickens' version...
Talking about it being a romanticised view of it, you could tell just occasionally - in terms of the theme of your story and some of the lines of dialogue in it - that it was definitely by the guy that wrote Coupling. You are just sex-mad, aren't you? It's the first Doctor Who story ever that's, fundamentally, all about shagging...
I don't know if I'm actually sex-mad in the sense that I have any more interest in actual sex than anyone else. I've hardly ever written a sex scene. But I think it's one of the most fascinating motivations for people, you know? How it creeps into everyday conversation, how it creeps into the way people relate to each other, I think that's fantastic. It's the consequences of human beings having these enormous sex drives and having to go round dealing with their lives, I think that's funny. Basically, for all else that we do, we really like arses! I don't find anything sleazy or nasty about that, I think that's sweet and endearing and easily the nicest thing about human beings...
But you're probably the first person to quite so obviously bring it into Doctor Who, in terms of that terribly subtle metaphor you were using...
Oh, dancing? That's carried on into the next one... er, yeah [laughs]. Well, you know, I'm not the first. It's always been there. He travels with pretty girls. I recently watched, again, the final scene of The Green Death, and - apart from being just stunningly good, as good as you get, just gorgeous - that's not a paternal goodbye. It's not! It just isn't! He can't even look the other bloke in the face, and off he sulks in his car. He's a man absolutely in love. There is a sort of a fan conception of the Doctor as being emotionally aloof and distant, but I don't see any of it on television. When has he been aloof and distant? I can't think of an emotion, from the petty to the epic, that he hasn't expressed. He's emotionally incontinent - he loses his temper, he has ridiculous affections for idiots. At what point is this man Sherlock Holmes or Mr. Spock? And when has he ever turned round and said he has no interest in the opposite sex? Which is what I liked about that scene, because all it is is the Doctor saying 'Why do you assume that I don't? You could grant the likelihood that I've been around the block a bit - I probably have...'
It then led on to the title of your second episode, which I thought was marvellous. When I first heard it I thought it was great, but I also had at the back of my mind a niggling thought that it could have been a pisstake, the sort of title someone could have come up with just to wind up a couple of fans, or to trace the source of a leak...
I only used it as the title because when I was writing the scene with the line 'The world doesn't end because the Doctor dances', I thought - 'The Doctor Dances'? That's good, we'll call it that... but it doesn't just mean the Doctor fucks - or the Doctor 'loves', more accurately - it means that he performs, he steps up to the plate, he kicks monster arse. He shows what you can do, because it's him on top of his game, really, because he has a big victory in that episode, it's a very major deal for him. And in his mind it's a big deal - that from absolute despair, he managed to land it quite so well.
It is probably the happiest ending ever committed to videotape - is that something you set out to do from the off?
Yes, I absolutely knew what the story was, it was all plotted about the nanites, as we called them - nanogenes, at the last minute. It was about a little boy coming back to life - because possessed creatures never get 'dispossessed' in Doctor Who. And also one of the things I think works very well in Doctor Who is to keep the mystery going for as long as possible. Traditionally Doctor Who stories fall into three sections: first there's investigation, then there's the fighting - which is the Doctor's weak part, he's usually back in the lab at that point, he's rubbish for fight scenes, it's almost demeaning to see him in those scenes - and then the coup de grace. And I think keeping the 'mystery' going for as long as possible gives him a bigger role to play... so, in a way, everybody got so apocalyptically sinister because it's fantastic if the Doctor has something big to deal with and you just flip it so you see it's not that sinister, it's not that big a deal. There is no alien mastermind at work here at all, these creatures aren't actually all that sinister, this is just a mistake, and the Doctor will make it better. It's the perfect victory for the Doctor, because he isn't a warrior, he's a scientist. So that felt good to me.
His response to it was heightened, you mean, because for a change he wasn't having to blow up some monsters..?
Exactly - he's just correctly identifying the problem, which comes down to 'Admit that he's your child!' Which is very camp and ridiculous. I always laugh when she says 'Yes, I am your mummy!'. I'm not making myself terribly clear on this point, but I knew that I wanted it to be terribly, terribly sinister, and then to flip quite dramatically at the last second. Because, just sentimentally, I like big victories. I don't like sacrificial lambs. I like the hero that brings everybody home, I think that's exciting, and I can't really be arsed with this feeling of 'Shame we didn't bring Trevor back with us as well...'. I like 'Aaah! Here comes Trevor - he's alive too!'. I like that!
So you're not into the 'bittersweet' thing?
Well, I'm saying this, but you haven't seen The Girl in the Fireplace... if there's a point to the bittersweet thing, fair enough - but I like big victories. And I like it when a film teases you with the possibility of a really dark ending. Have you seen The Shawshank Redemption?
I have, yes...
That teases you right to the brink of this nastiest ending on Earth, it makes sense that he's hanged himself... and then he hasn't, and this huge nonstop voice-over to the end of the movie saying 'No - everybody is absolutely fantastic!'. I loved that feeling, and Doctor Who's on at 7 o'clock in the evening and it should be a bit like that. Also, it does buy you the right to be a bit darker earlier on...
Given that you were writing this thing which was totally unlike anything else on around it or which had been in that slot recently, were you worried that Doctor Who might look kind of, well, ridiculous in today's TV?
Oh, I still think it looks ridiculous. I think Doctor Who is the most extraordinary show, it's Hammer Horror in the Generation Game slot. Which is a bizarre idea, it's actually quite scary.
And we all grew up used to it...
...we're used to that idea, but would you have accepted that, as controller of BBC ONE? 'We want to do some really quite visceral body horror. At about 7-ish, opposite Ant and Dec'. Doctor Who, even at its campest and sweetest, has a lot of death in it. It's only because it's such an ancient tradition in this country that we've got away with it. And maybe a touch of Harry Potter creeping in there, because Harry Potter can be quite nasty... But what's great about it is that it re-establishes that children's staple, of the children's horror story. You say something's scary to a child, that's a recommendation, it's a good thing. They like being scared. But no, it's an absolutely odd idea that opposite The Empty Child or The Unquiet Dead, which are the darker ones - although even the lighter ones are quite dark - or opposite The Parting of the Ways, you've got some frothy game show, which does feel as though it belongs at that time in the evening. And yet, that's why it's special - because there's always a hint in Doctor Who that it's got one foot in that light entertainment camp as well, somehow. It's never completely straight...
Certainly even in this recent series, even the darkest ones have humour in them...
There's always absolute silliness being vigorously embraced. One of my favourite moments in mine wasn't actually my idea. I wrote the banana in, but Chris wanted to keep the banana fully in shot when he was being chased down the corridor by the gas mask people. This was actually quite sinister... and he's running along with a banana! I loved that, because any old horror movie can do running up and down corridors, but only Doctor Who could have a banana in it. Which I think is what makes it tonally quite special, quite distinct.
Talking about the careful structure of your plot - when I spoke to you in the middle of the writing process last year, you were trying hard to claim that what you had just done was finish episode one and write yourself into a corner. Now, I didn't believe a word of it. I've seen Coupling, and I knew there was no way you'd written yourself into something you didn't have a way out of. How much bullshit was that you were talking?
It was mostly bullshit! [Laughs] I knew how I was going to get out of it, and I knew that getting out of it would bring the monster right back to their doorstep. But you were a viewer, so I wasn't telling you that! You can't always do it, but if you do have that double thing - it's absolutely logical what the Doctor does, but it's such a ridiculous idea. Can you imagine any other horror movie or science fiction show doing anything as ridiculous as sending monsters to their room? I think that's so Doctor Who...
And it was obvious as soon as he'd done it, but you didn't see it coming...
There's a thing, I think it was Douglas Adams who wrote that the character of the Doctor is rarely intentionally funny, it's just that he makes so many connections so quickly, and understands things in such a particularly insightful way, that his logical leaps can seem funny to us, but it's just his mind working far faster than our minds can. And I think that was, hopefully, a good example of it. It's like writing a Sherlock Holmes story, I imagine - never having written one - that you set him up in a situation where he can be really, really clever. And kids will love that, kids will just love the idea that Doctor Who sent the monster to its room. I noticed on the internet there were some Doctor Who fans who thought that was a slightly silly resolution. 'Slightly' silly? It's a bonkers resolution! There are people in gasmasks calling for their mummy! I would submit that we've left sense behind some time ago! And I think that results from a misidentification of what Doctor Who is. Doctor Who isn't Doctor Who unless it's a children's show. I don't mean that adults don't watch it, of course they do. I love it! But adults love children's stories, and children's stories are something where the main imperative is: Story. Not analysis of character, not analysing moral complexities... just get the fuck on with the story, and everything else can fit around that. Which I now think has changed the way I write television. I now think 'Well, let's just do Story. Let's not piss around with all that yakking!' I've been doing it so wrong... you're laughing, but no, I really do think that! That's what Doctor Who has reinvented. It's an extraordinary thing to say as a writer - I was just saying this to Mark Gatiss - that it doesn't occur to us, to just do the story. So let's not say 'I want to write about a man who's thinking this or that'. No. Write about a man who's attacked by a giant red badger. Do something that's a story, with really good twists and surprises in it. If you think about it, that's what 24 does, it's pure incident. 'What happens next' isn't a scene between two people, what happens is that this incident happens to that person. Foreground the story. Do stories!
You were saying last year that you'd become a bit pigeonholed as a sitcom writer, that if you write a sitcom people will pay attention but that that's less the case if you try to write a drama script. Are you then bringing this notion of 'story being paramount' into your comedy, or would you like to work more in drama?
I'd like to do more drama, because unexpectedly Doctor Who has been so brilliant for me, disproportionately so. This will sound self-regarding but it's genuinely the case - it's changed the way I'm looked at, as a writer. Not that many people give a shit about how I'm looked at, not that many people bother looking... but for those people who are concerned about looking at writers, it's absolutely changed the category. Absolutely. And I really did think when I got involved that everyone was going to think Russell really wrote it all, and that I was just doing it to gratify a childhood impulse. But no, it's ended up being an absolute career-changing event. From the director-general of the BBC to the people applying for tickets at Teddington studios, everybody knows that I wrote Doctor Who. It's brilliant!
Something else you were talking about before which relates to that, is that you said you always try to write a 'filmable' draft rather than having a lot of drafts going back and forth. When we spoke last, you'd just submitted a first draft of your first episode - so to what extent was that the draft that was filmed?
Well, it depends what you call 'back and forth' - if you read that draft, you would read a hell of a lot of what you saw on screen. There was a glitchiness, in that I discovered I'd set up a whole load of things in the first episode that I didn't need in the second, or that made it over-complicated. So the main thing that happened was actually reducing the number of characters, but I think the sequence of scenes was identical. There was more for the kids to do, they sort of ran right through the story, but they got taken out not for any artistic reason but more because filming kids at night is a logistical impossibility. Originally they all got taken over at the end... but no, it was very very recognisable, only with a few extra strands. I mean, I was new to doing Doctor Who then, I now feel like a veteran - in that I did far less to-ing and fro-ing over the new one, because I sort of got the hang of it. Everyone gets the hang of it - Russell and Helen and Julie get the hang of knowing 'That never works when we try that kind of scene, it's always a disaster, so that's just a waste of effort, let's just do one of these kind of dialogue scenes here, and concentrate the action over there' - so you do start to get the hang of that. And in a way it's like writing sitcom, where there's no point having an 'outside' scene if it's not paying its way, so let's just have an 'inside' scene. There was much less to change this time, but last time it was still the same story, same climax - just more complexity. I'd over-estimated how much plot I would need, and I did end up with the situation where Chris's long speech at the end was originally twice as long to explain all the extra plot elements, and I knew by the time I handed it in that we could very easily take some units of plot out...
...without doing major surgery?
There was never major surgery to it. It's one of those things where it was very obvious which bits were working, and which bits felt slightly... redundant. The major difference you would notice was that originally the Doctor and Nancy didn't meet until the crash site at the very end. Which now seems to me the most mental decision on Earth! I'd done my second drafts, and everyone was broadly happy, but we were all just thinking 'They should meet!'. And I just thought 'He walks out of the TARDIS and meets her'... and there is a kind of glitchiness, in that it is a bit odd that they meet up and then she goes back to the house she was already in. It creaks a bit. And when I read it, I thought it looked obvious - it seemed as if he was just haunting this one dining room, this little boy - but visually, on screen, it didn't bother me at all.
Would the end have worked that way...?
It was different. I forget how it worked, the reasoning was slightly different - because we'd seen Nancy concealing her age from the kids and I think it was Jack who said 'She looks 15 but actually she's 21' or something like that, and the Doctor put it all together. But no, it didn't work as well like that, until we had Nancy meet the Doctor earlier. It was quite nice in that Rose found a Doctor-substitute, and the Doctor had Nancy as a Rose-substitute. It was one of those things where you think 'This is a major problem, how the fuck am I going to make this work?', really obsessing about it - and eventually, you just write it so he just walks out of the TARDIS and she's there. Piece of piss! And I did actually happen across another piece of advice from old Doctor Who, I think it was Jonny Morris who quoted it to me, saying 'After the first scene, it is imperative that the Doctor and his companion only meet characters as we meet them' - that's how we get to know them, we don't see them behaving independently. The Doctor meets them and they have interest conferred upon them by having interacted with our regulars. And that's absolutely right. There was a draft where the Doctor didn't turn up at the kids' meal, it was just the kids - but we got a bit freaked as to how good that scene would be just with the kids in it...
Everything that you're saying about it is making me think that the final decisions were the right ones...
Well, there were good things that we lost, which was a shame in a way - but it was definitely better, those were definitely good changes. But it was partly just learning how to make Doctor Who. Things like the Doctor and his companion meeting the characters at the same time we do - because if you think about it, it's a show about an enigmatic space traveller and his sexy sidekick. You don't want to meet some other fuckers wandering about 18th century France until you know why they're interesting! Unless they rip their faces off to reveal some bile and mucous, fuck them! 'I do not care about your ordinary lives'!
Because you wrote a two-parter, you obviously didn't just have a cliffhanger that needed resolution, you had the little 'Next Week' teaser in between - and in your case it got shifted to the end of the credits, instead of before them as it was on all the other instalments. How did that come about?
I don't know what the true story is, you'd have to ask Russell, but I think this is the story: when I saw Aliens of London, I reacted as most people did; to the shock of seeing Christopher Eccleston fall to the floor dying - and, okay, he's not really dead - but then, a literal heartbeat later, seeing him running around cheerfully just killed the mood. So I emailed Russell saying 'At least for the two-parters, you've got to move that trailer after the credits'. After the credits is fine, I think, because you've had a moment to enjoy it. I think having the trailer at the end of a 'resolution' scene is fine - say you've got say the happy ending of The Doctor Dances, all you're saying with the trailer after that is 'But next week they're in trouble again!'. On Aliens of London you had the opposite of that, saying 'They're in trouble - but don't worry, they're having fun in the same set next week!'. And so I did email Russell asking to move that, and he said 'We're not allowed to'. First of all, they were putting the trailers in to make sure the episodes were up to length - and if you do it one week you have to do it every week - and he said 'We're not allowed to do it at the end of the credits'. And that's the last I heard of it, until I got my finished tape of The Empty Child and saw that they had moved the trailer to the end - so I don't know what happened. It looks to me - you can probably tell, with your ears - but it sounds as if it's just an edit, as if they've just taken the trailer chunk out and stuck it on at the end... I think it was because they got so many remarks about it, and maybe the fact that I remarked on it as well. It didn't matter at all in a case like Bad Wolf, because we wanted to see that - the episode ended with the Doctor going into action, and then we got some glimpses of some Dalek-based action, which is exactly what we wanted to see at that point.
And are you proud of having come up with what has to be the most successful Doctor Who catchphrase since 'Exterminate'!?
'Are you my mummy?'! It's a little fey, isn't it? [laughs] 'Resistance is useless!', 'Exterminate!' and... 'Are you my mummy?'. But yes, that's brilliant. I've heard it, I've heard kids say it. And people say it to me all the time. All the time.
And is that getting on your nerves?
No, I'm past the stage where I'm worried about that, I'm delighted. I always say back 'Yes, I am your mummy! I will always be your mummy!'
And that must freak these people out a bit...
Sometimes it does... if they're expecting me to react in different ways. But no, that's brilliant, I love that. Not quite as big as 'Exterminate', but people remember the show about the wee boy in the gas mask...
Yes, it's got that iconic status already.
I didn't even plan for it, it's not like I sat and thought up a catchphrase, I just wanted to set up the 'Yes I am your mummy' moment, that's all it was about. You can't ever sit and say 'We'll get the kids saying this in the playground', it wouldn't work. So I'm not that clever. But it was delightful - and certain things just worked. The design department on Doctor Who are just astonishing, brilliant - you give them stuff to do like a 1940s setting, and people in gas masks. 'People in gas masks' is a very cheap idea for a Doctor Who monster, but still very scary, and that really worked. The first time I went to filming and saw it, I realised it was scarier than I thought it would be - these people walking towards you very slowly in gas masks...
I know that Mark's episode, The Unquiet Dead, got in a bit of trouble for supposedly being too scary - did you get any of that sort of criticism?
No, because in fact mine is the less scary episode for a child. I would hesistate to show The Unquiet Dead to my little boy, because there are dead bodies coming to life, actual dead bodies, and that's scary. That shot of the old lady coming toward the camera is very frightening - very well done, brilliant, and very scary. But I think my Doctor Whos are scarier for adults, or even for teenagers, than they are for little kids. It wasn't quite as full-on, viscerally frightening as The Unquiet Dead. There are things like the hand coming through the letter box and 'Are you my mummy' which really freaked out adults, and the kids weren't quite so scared. Children aren't so frightened of eerie children... my boy did think it was scary, but I had absolutely no hesitation in showing it to him. My boys are 6 and 3, and the 6 year old is into Doctor Who, and he follows it. The show must be quite well pitched, in that he does follow the plot, he does get it. He followed Father's Day perfectly, no problem. Russell's very shrewd on that, knowing that you only have to explain 'just enough' - 'Something's gone wrong, so the TARDIS is empty'. Some wee geek somewhere is going to worry about why - but something's gone wrong with time, and ta-da! Because at the age of 6, you wouldn't question it.
And it gives you a great moment, and that's all you need?
And people will remember the moment of Chris opening the TARDIS and it just being a police box, long after they've forgotten why it happened. It's a great moment, and that was Paul's idea - it's stunningly effective. It's a 'man looks inside box' moment that it somehow gobsmacking!
So how's the mood going into series two on the crest of all that success?
There's a new Doctor, so that's going to change things a bit. Maybe there will be the same level of nervousness this time, because you want it to continue with the same level of success. There was a certain terror with the first series, particularly for Russell who was putting his neck on the line. He had an unassailable drama writing career, unassailable. Nothing bad was going to happen to Russell, he was sorted forever and in the history books. So he does this, which was the only thing he could possibly have done that could have failed. Because even if he has a show that fails - and I suppose as he's very fond of saying, his Welsh drama recently [Mine All Mine] didn't do all that well - it didn't get bad reviews, it was well-regarded. So he did the one thing that could actually crash him. So you have to keep that in mind - and I think it's genuine, when he says all that stuff about how he thought it was going to fail, I think he was for real. In the dark night of his soul I think he believed that. And it's great for me because I just did those two episodes, I got to play with it and go away again...
But didn't you get that as well? Obviously to a lesser degree, but you'd had a successful career doing something else and decided 'I want to do this', and you could have crashed and burned as well, in that case.
I was terrified - the way I felt when I first started, I remember thinking 'What if this is something that I can't do?'. But actually, that would have meant nothing to my career at all - I'm going to get work, I've got my little niche, my little place in the firmament in a small and minor way. So that would be fine - but I would have been so embarrassed, and upset, if I couldn't do it, if I hadn't been any good at it at all. I had stage fright on the first week of trying to write it. 'Doctor', 'TARDIS'... these were frightening words to look at. It's one thing to do a short story or a spoof or anything like that, that's fine but it's not actually Doctor Who. Actually Doctor Who is that thing up there [points at television set], that's what it is. I'm not saying any of those other things are lesser, they aren't - but that is what it is, at 7 o'clock on a Saturday. And I was frightened when I started doing it...
And obviously you were involved right through production and post-production - but once, say, the first half-dozen episodes had been on and it was going really well, did the fear come back? 'What if everyone hates mine?'
Oh yeah - but it didn't come back, it had never gone away. And weeks into transmission, I still hadn't seen my episode with special effects and music... so it never went away. And even when you watch it, if it hasn't gone out in public yet, you don't know what anyone's going to think. And I kept worrying it was a bit slow, 'This is dull', 'Is any of this funny?', 'Is any of this engaging?'. And the first time I began to get an inkling that it was more than just 'all right' was when I went round to Rob's on the night his episode went out, and he had a few friends round, and I had my tape with me, a more-or-less finished tape of The Empty Child, and they insisted I put it on and it really went very well. And then I did go and see The Doctor Dances at the dub, on a big screen with some fantastic speakers - and that bit when Captain Jack's spaceship flies in and catches the bomb... you don't quite get the impact on television, but the way the ship flies in, it's a big cinema moment.
You mentioned Jack there, which is what I was about to come to - it was you who introduced him, but he was part of the brief for the series. To what extent was the character your creation?
Well, what I was given was exactly what you read in the DWM special, the pitch document. And Russell also said, as a last-minute thing without making any great emphasis on it - so this is all my fault! - 'Oh, and should it ever come up, Jack's omnisexual, he's pansexual, he's not straight, he's not bi - he'll shag anything. But that probably won't come up!'...
That was a red rag to a bull, wasn't it?
Well, I love that element of Jack - it's so brilliant because it seems to me absolutely logical that James Bond would shag anything. And he's James Bond, basically, isn't he? Well, I was writing James Bond. And James Bond just wouldn't be as uptight as me! But what I liked about it, though, is that I don't think it ever occurs to Jack that there's anything unusual about that, or that anyone else around him, like the Doctor and Rose, are a little bit more 'monosexual' - I don't think he's actually noticed. Quite hard to do in a way, to bring that out - because it's just background noise for Jack he never bothers mentioning it, so other characters have to notice it.
You were talking about the new series having a new Doctor, which is obviously one of the biggest stories of the year for Doctor Who. How early in your writing process did you find out that you weren't writing for Chris?
Oh, at the same time you found out! In fact, I didn't even see the headlines in the papers, Paul [Cornell] told me, he phoned me up or got me on Yahoo Messenger or something, 'Have you heard the news that Chris has quit?'. And I was literally, that day, sitting down to start work on The Girl in the Fireplace. So I had to email Russell, in my usual grump, saying 'What the fuck's going on?!'. And he said 'It's too long to explain - phone me!'. I knew who it was, insofar as any of us had any doubt who it was going to be. A fantastic case of somebody simply casting themselves! By common consent, the entire nation said 'It's David Tennant, isn't it?'. I think I told you that after watching Blackpool I emailed Russell - I've still got the emails - and said 'Well, there's Doctor 10' and he emailed back, saying 'You're the fourth person to say that'...
Well, I was saying 'Oh Doctor Who's on' every time he's appeared on TV for about the past eighteen months. How little I knew...
But there is something very, very Doctorish about David. And look at Blackpool and Casanova... I haven't actually asked anyone on the production about this, but I don't think there was a great deal of debate about who to cast. And he's known to love it, he's known to be a fan, therefore he will give it the full-blooded attention that the part requires. And I suppose there's also the question of what other actor of his level - and he is actually a very high-level actor now, having played the lead in several major BBC dramas, he's now a major name, he's all over the shop - what other major star was going to take over from Chris?
And given that it had been someone as big as Chris, it needed to be someone that big again...
And someone that good again. And Chris is a phenomenal actor...
Given that it happened the day you were sitting down to start work - did you still sit down and start work that day?
Yes, I did. Because there's a certain amount of Doctor Who work that is going to be the same whoever is playing the Doctor. 'They walk out of the TARDIS and something dreadful happens to them'... it wasn't a huge adjustment. I had my chat with Russell, which wasn't very long, about how things were going to be with David Tennant now playing that part. So: still not posh, still none of that faux-eccentricity. I sat and watched Casanova, and got used to the idea of him being the Doctor, and I wrote my episode completely separately from Russell writing his, and when we compared episodes we'd written the same Doctor, it was very similar. In fact, I think we'd written, on one occasion, the same line. I think David maps very easily onto that part - so much of what he does is a bit Doctor Who-ish, you know?
And have you seen him in action yet?
I haven't seen film, but I was at two readthroughs, including the readthough for mine, and it was amazing. On readthrough performance alone, David is the best Doctor ever. He's one of those dazzling technicians, in that he can do anything with a line, he really can do anything with a line. Now, a certain amount of Doctor Who dialogue is inevitably going to be 'There's a spaceship over there, let's go and look at the spaceship', and David can find ways of undercutting it and spinning it. He puts a lot of very good spin on his dialogue, and I think he'll be astonishing. I think he will conquer the world as the Doctor. But you've always got to wait and see - one of the things with David is... do you know David?
Actually, yeah, I've worked with him!
...of course - one of the things is that David in person is just an incredibly nice bloke, an extremely courteous, kind, pleasant man. With a Paisley accent, which is kind of weird. Have I told you my funny story about his Paisley accent?
Not that I recall...
Sue [Vertue, Steven's wife and noted TV producer] and I were at a wrap party for Sue's sitcom, and we got back very drunk. So I staggered upstairs to get my messages, and I hear this message that I assume is from me! It's this Scottish voice going 'Hello, it's very late...' - and I assume I've left a message for Sue and forgotten about it. '...Ah, Steven, yes..' - and the voice starts raving on about my script. And I think 'Fucking hell - I've phoned myself about how good I am! My ego has got so big it's phoned me! This is unhealthy, I've got to see someone...'. And then at a certain point he remembers, in that scatterbrained David way, to say 'Oh, it's David Tennant, by the way...'. But then, of course, I was incredibly thrilled to have a message on my answerphone from Doctor Who himself. Saying I was clever! But anyway, as I was saying - in person David is this very pleasant, quite good-looking bloke. On screen, a whole new thing happens, he becomes quite mad, quite dangerous. His eyes become different, and you think he's actually got a touch of the Chris thing, of being slightly scary. There's something odd about his eyes, and his edgy, brittle manner that I think becomes very arresting and quite powerful...
It's really noticeable in Blackpool, where it's a very small performance in physical terms, he's not throwing himself around like on Casanova, but you can't take your eyes off him.
Exactly. And he was up against David Morrissey, who's fantastic, and stole the show from him. He is absolutely making his presence felt, which is just astonishing. And even as Casanova where he's playing a loveable, affable bloke, underneath it he's got this dangerous thing. It wouldn't surprise you if he turned round and was quite mean to you - and I think that's probably quite close to his Doctor. I think the Doctor should have that thing that he's not just 'nice', although he is very nice he's also slightly dangerous. What I liked about Chris was that there was something about Chris that was slightly mental - his Doctor, you're not quite sure where you are with him, 'I like you but I don't quite know where I am with you'. There's a moment in The Long Game where he's saying goodbye, and then as they turn away he suddenly becomes serious - and it's not an ordinary actor that can do that, that can just turn the temperature like that. And I think we're going to see David doing the same stuff - that's what he's got to rise to, but I think he will. More humour, obviously - he's funny, David, and it would be daft not to use that.
So if your script is finished and submitted, is that the last input you'll have on the show for a while?
You never finish on Doctor Who! I was looking yesterday at the emails between myself and Helen from during the shooting of The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, and I think we exchanged an email every single day about what we were going to have to change that day. 'We've lost this set, so we've got to do that somewhere else...' - so I know I've got a ton of, not difficult work, but fiddly work.
And has this season been planned out in advance the way that, to some extent, the last one was?
This is one of my 'I don't know' answers - I'm early in the run, and I don't know if there was a story document at the time I got involved, because there was a certain amount of debate over who was the Doctor, who was the companion, all that stuff. So I don't actually know, but I'm doing episode 4 so I don't need to know - and I'm quite happy not to know!
So does that mean that this episode is your creation from the ground up, this time?
What I was given, which is already out on Outpost Gallifrey, is that it's 18th century France and Madame De Pompidour. So I was given a setting and a historical personage I had to introduce. So therefore I had a fucking book to read! Again! I've made it very clear I'm not reading another book for Doctor Who - next time it's the future, it's in space, and I'm not doing any fucking reading... anyway, beyond that it was very different from what they were expecting me to do, story-wise. Which caused them a moment's consternation, but they were very happy. I was given last time what you saw in the DWM special, there wasn't any more to the brief than that; a little boy lost and a gang of kids. And this time I've probably got slightly less than that... but anyway, once you start these things, you can't get a lot from half a page. I imagine that what they're trying to do at the moment is get as many different writers 'Who-ed up' as they can, because they're hoping that this will have a long run, and so they're hoping that there will be a lot of writers out there able to do it. This time I was fairly clear that I could only write one, because I've got other stuff. I'm not claiming that I turned one down, but I was quite busy. And yeah, I'll be doing one next year.
Of all the writers other than Russell, you certainly had the highest profile in terms of things like Doctor Who Confidential - they showed the tone meeting for your episodes, for instance...
They're doing my episode as 'script to screen' again, so I'm back at the tone meeting. And they did my script meeting on camera, which was kind of weird. By that stage we were trying to make up 'notes', because there weren't any left...
So it's all about this lump of mercury that Robert Holmes has just made up?
It was getting very close to that! Russell and I going off on a tangent for ages about getting the Moxx of Balhoon into it in the background... I think I was the first of the writers, but not the last, to go to a tone meeting. But then, I think they were probably relaxing into it by then. By the time I came along last year Russell was very, very busy, so they really needed me to be more pro-active, perhaps, I don't know. Certainly in the first year I was very involved in the day-to-day maintenance of my own script. But who the hell knew how to do Doctor Who? It's an absolute learning curve every time.
Yeah - with the first few episodes, you have to think it's amazing that they're any good at all, given that they were more or less making up how to make a show like this as they went along...
Oh, very much. I don't know if you've gone back and looked at them. I loved them at the time, but having gone back and looked at them - it is all very good, but it's just nothing like as good as the second half of the series. I think a switch is flipped around the time of Dalek, maybe...
Dalek's certainly where I think it really kicks in to unstoppable form...
But The Unquiet Dead was very good... but yes, just in terms of Chris knowing what he was doing, and in all-round confidence. It kind of really got more like Doctor Who, and that trajectory has continued with the new series. Reading Russell's most recent script, it's pure Terrance Dicks! It's the script that Terrance would write! I think Russell has maybe got slightly impatient with the idea that he couldn't do a 'trad' one, so it's a very 'trad' Doctor Who, and it's great, it's fantastic.
There is an element of grass-roots fandom which seems to think Russell's episodes aren't as good as the rest - which firstly I think isn't true, but secondly and probably more importantly, he wasn't writing the same thing as the other writers on the first series.
Yes, and I guess it's really worth trying to say something about that. First of all, he deliberately gave away the show-stopper episodes, and did the 'connective tissue' for the middle run of the show. He takes over at the end and does a storming job on the final two-parter, but the rest of the time he's doing the low-budget episodes, and... he does things like, because I've got loads of gags about the sonic screwdriver in my episodes, he went back and made sure that the audience knows it's called a 'sonic screwdriver'. And he knows he's got to save money at one point so he sets a show in Cardiff, and he doesn't give that to someone else, he does it himself - he does all that stuff. Also, the reason the show has worked is that he's found a way of locating Doctor Who in modern television. It really looks like it belongs - if you catch an episode on UK Gold unexpectedly, some old Doctor Who, and you're not braced for it... depends what episode it is and sometimes it can be really good, but you think 'That's not now, that's does not belong on that television set right now, it just doesn't'. Russell, with his incredible knowledge of all modern television - because as far as I can see he does nothing except watch television! - he knows exactly how to fit this show in. The creation of the Tyler family, and positioning the Doctor as the 'troublesome relative' - which is what he is, he's the worrying uncle or family friend who turns up after a long while and takes the daughter away - that is so brilliant, it's a brilliant bit of writing. And that's more than writing, it's authorship, it's being the author of the thirteen episodes, being the person who says 'This is what this show is going to be' - and people like me come along and do 'writing', we write that story, but the base from which it all operates is Russell's. And you despair when you read these cretins, some of the things they say. Russell's writing is at such a high level... there's a line in the first episode which you could lecture on, it's so brilliant. It's in a conversation between Rose and Jackie - Rose says something about getting a job at a butcher's, and Jackie says 'It will be good for you. That shop was giving you airs and graces'. And in that one line, I submit, there isn't anything you don't know about these two people, or about that life, or about that world. You know everything about limited ambition, about the relationship between the two of them, about the envy and the crushing absence of horizons. It's a phenomenal bit of writing.
It's almost a Steptoe and Son relationship...?
Yes! And that's the colour and depth Russell brings to it. And when he approaches episodes - possibly not so much now, he's probably more able to throw himself into the Doctor Who 'daftness' of it - but he was very concerned at the beginning, you can see it in Aliens of London and in Rose, what he's really doing is saying 'This is a show that belongs here and now - it's set on a council estate, there are people you know, you know a guy like Mickey, you know someone like Rose and you definitely know Jackie, and here's their eccentric friend the Doctor, their slightly annoying neighbour'. It locates the show back on television for now, and it's a brilliant piece of writing.
Say, for the sake of argument, that you had been bringing it back - would you have approached it like that, or would it not have occurred to you to?
I'd have done a certain number of things exactly the same. I would definitely have got rid of the Time Lords, that was an overdue lopping-off; I would have got rid of the posh Doctor, all that stuff. The thing that I can't put my hand on my heart and say 'I'd have done that' about was the whole Tyler family thing, which is what makes it brilliant. I don't have Russell's depth of knowledge of modern television, and that's what made him the right person to be doing the job he is - he knows his Doctor Who and he's a brilliant writer, but thirdly and most importantly he knows what's on that box! And I don't, not to anything like the same degree. I think 'the Tyler effect' is incredibly important in Doctor Who. Maybe not to the fans, but the fans don't need to be sold Doctor Who, they know it. But to people who are going 'Is this show really me?' and then seeing bits of their own lives and those of people they know, and the Doctor coming into that life and intruding a bit, they feel they've got a connection with it, and that's why it worked.
Murray Gold was the first person I heard say this, but not the last - that all of that made Doctor Who, for the first time in quite a while if not ever, female-friendly.
Yes. I mean, that's going to be a hard thing to sustain, because obviously the next companion comes along and the show will just be the Doctor's again, but I suppose that's inevitable. But yes, it's a very female-friendly show now, having not been before. But then, women control the remote control in most households, they're the ones who decide what's going to be watched. So it better be female-friendly! I never quite buy the idea that Rose is the Doctor's equal, she's not close to the Doctor's equal, but in narrative terms it's her adventure as much as it is his. And if you're doing a show that's recording for nine months of the year you better set up episodes - like The Long Game - specifically to give the two leads some time off. In that one there's quite a lot of screen time without either of them. It's cleverly written, but they're only in certain of the sets, so you don't need them at all the week you're shooting in some of the sets and they can get some time off at home. And again that's the kind of stuff that Russell takes on himself, as opposed to giving to other writers. Which is very noble of him! His work, his chief work, his main task in writing the show, and executive producing the show, was to sell it back to the mainstream audience. Therefore he does things that seem irrelevant to the audience that already loved the show. All of his effort - well, 90% of his effort - was in doing that, selling it to the mainstream audience. So all of that stuff is just going to seem, to people who already watch it, 'Why are you bothering with Jackie and Mickey and Rose and that council estate?' It's going to seem irreleveant to them, which is why they don't, necessarily, like it so much. But then he chooses to turn on his fan engines in The Parting of the Ways - which has a reference, I think, to every single Doctor Who story ever made! Is there a line of dialogue that goes by in that show without you saying 'That's from Frontier In Space', or whatever? You can almost see Russell saying 'Right, we've done twelve episodes - here we go! Open up an old issue of TV21, and I want that and that and that'! He's having a party, because he knows how to do it now.
Do you think you're winning the season polls then? I think it'll be between you and the final two episodes...
Er, I think it probably is. [sheepish laugh].
But that's not arrogance, that's just realism!
Realistically, though... I guess it's hard for a show with TV21 spaceships, and eight thousand Daleks, and a regeneration not to get my vote! I think I probably want that one to win! Because I've always wanted to see that...
But looking beyond that...
I'm not sure I can!
...the series certainly needed that enormous climax, it's part of what everyone was looking forward to, that it was going to culminate in something big.
No, it was fantastic, it looked so great and it was so well written, and that scene where the Doctor, as a hologram, talks to Rose - my little boy Joshua turned to me and said 'I'm almost crying!'. Now if you can get a 6 year old with a lump in his throat, that's seriously good stuff. So I don't know, I would kind of think... if I'm strictly honest I think The Empty Child is probably better than Bad Wolf - although I think Bad Wolf's fantastic as well - but The Parting of the Ways beats my second episode. Come on, it's a writer as good as Russell and a million Daleks and a regeneration - it's the heartland of Doctor Who. I like the episodes where the Doctor changes, I always have - and I like the episodes with the Daleks, and making big speeches. It was everything like! You can't do it every week... that's the weird thing about doing Doctor Who, because it completely re-awakened my 'fan-ness'. For the other eleven episodes, I'm just a fan, that's all I am. And then suddenly it's by me, and then suddenly it's not by me again! But for the rest of them I'm marking up my DVD-Rs with the episode titles like everybody else. Then I get one in the post, because I wrote it! [laughs forever, more or less!] It's kind of weird. At the script meeting that we were filming for Doctor Who Confidential, I'm asking things like 'So... is it John Leeson doing it, then?' I'm asking fan questions!
You said last time that Doctor Who was a special case, in that it was the first successful example of you working for other people, working to someone else's specifications. Does the success of what you've done mean that you're more likely to do that again, or is it still a special case?
No, it's still a special case. In fact, it's become an even more special case, in a way - because even at the time I spoke to you last year I still felt very much like 'writer for hire'. But at the end of the shooting, I didn't feel that way - because I wasn't actually at much of the shoot, but I was so materially involved in all the things I normally do on a show, and have been on this run as well, that I now don't feel quite as 'writer for hire', I feel as if I've got my little area of the show that's mine. That's probably self-deluding, but it does feel that way. But I don't have much interest in that, it's absolutely only Doctor Who. I couldn't summon the interest to do it elsewhere, even if I loved the show. I mean, I'd be unlikely to be offered an episode of The West Wing, but I couldn't imagine wanting to write one anyway. I want to watch it, very very much, but there is something very special about literally, and actually, no exaggeration, achieving your childhood ambition. And I mean actually your childhood ambition. People will often say that something was their childhood ambition when it probably wasn't, but for me this actually was. So that's different.
And is it a different feeling this year knowing that you're working on something that's proven to be a success?
Well remember that I kind of segued into the success! I already had said yes to my second series episode, and was starting to plot it, before the show went out.
But is there any sense of treading on eggshells because at some point something is bound to go wrong?
I don't feel that yet. I suppose it will sometime. Maybe I'm being self-deluding again and I don't know how Russell and Julie and Phil and Helen feel, maybe they do feel like that - but it all feels very strong to me. I can't see why this would go wrong now. I shouldn't say that! But it feels very strong. Second series, you know? Second series tend to be good. Third series can be tricky and fourth series can be a fucker, but second series is when you should be slightly enjoying it!
Isn't there any worry about the show having to establish itself all over again?
Because it's got a new Doctor? It seems remarkable, even the press you read all seems remarkably sanguine about that. 'It's just lost it's hero, but that's fine, someone else will play it now...'
Yes - and I thought the only problem with losing Chris was the timing of the announcement.
It's hard not to think that, but it was probably inevitable. Maybe it seemed bad at the time, but as the show wore on and we all knew he was leaving and that he was 'the doomed Doctor', maybe it all helped play into the feeling toward the end of the show?
Certainly in the latter half of the last episode you can't help but wonder 'How's this going to happen?', which contributes to the atmosphere - when if you didn't know that it was going to happen, then that sense of anticipation might not have been there. And as a final question - and I'm sorry to bring your owns words up here to haunt you, but it's an obvious question that arises - you always used to say that writing drama was a piece of piss compared to writing comedy. Given that you're mainly working on Doctor Who and this new Jekyll thing these days, are you still finding that's the case?
[Long pause, sheepish grimace] It's easier. Yeah.
Oh. I thought you would turn round say 'No! I was talking crap!'...
I mean, there are different demands and different problems and nothing is ever easy, God knows. You can be as slow as anything, and I'm a bit stuck on my drama at the moment... but when it comes right down to it, sitcom - and I don't just mean comedy, I mean 'audience sitcom' - is K2. It's harder than other stuff. I don't mean that it's better, or nobler, or richer - it's probably not, it's probably smaller and weedier and nastier. But as a technical challenge it's the hardest thing I have ever done. And I'm quite relieved not to be doing it right now! The credit you get for one halfway funny line in Doctor Who is so disproportionate - because people don't expect it to be funny. So people say 'It's terribly funny about the sonic screwdriver' - but if that had been in Coupling, I would be pretty sure I wouldn't get a laugh at that. Because Coupling, or any sitcom, comes into the room like a party bore saying 'I'm going to be very funny now! Oh God, am I going to be funny! Oh, just you wait until I say some funny stuff!' - and if you start that way, it's very hard to make people laugh. But if you start with grim wartime London and people in gas masks... and then make a halfway decent joke about a banana, wahey! So it's all context. It is all difficult, of course it is, and it's always equally difficult, in a way, to do something as well as you can. But I would be lying if I didn't say that Coupling was just grimmer...
You get more long dark nights...?
The long dark nights are probably about the same, because you're solving plot problems. But if I write three pages of script, and the characters are all in character, and the plot has moved on, and they've said vaguely interesting and maybe quite witty things - and if that's Doctor Who or Jekyll, then fine, and you move on to the next bit. On Coupling, you're thinking 'Now: where are the laughs?' - now, we've all claimed we don't do this, but bollocks we don't! - there's three on this page, none on that page... you do all that. It's an extra thing to have to do. It's like writing drama, but having to walk backwards while you do it. What was it Ginger Rogers used to say? 'I could dance everything that Fred Astaire could, backwards and in heels'. Comedy is 'backwards in heels'!
