Script Doctors | Series 3 | Chris Chibnall
Okay, I'm a Doctor Who fan – I'm an expert at seeing patterns that aren't there. But it does seem to me that there's a pattern emerging with the new writers who've been brought onto Doctor Who this year – they all seem to have a lot of theatre experience and to have moved sideways into telly. I can't work out if that's significant in any way, though, and as Chris Chibnall points out straight away, "There is no such a thing as a 'standard' writing career!"
I think that's probably a good thing – it's so hard to get into writing, it's not like there's a training school to go to. Now there are degrees in script writing and stuff, but even if you do that, you're still going to spend years having to earn some money elsewhere before you end up writing full time. I spent pretty much all of my twenties doing a variety of mad jobs with mad people – fantastic mad people! – and it was when I was about 30 that I got the first paid writing job. But throughout my twenties I was doing all these different jobs and writing at evenings and weekends. And at work, when nobody was looking! And there's an element that it's a test of how much you want to do it, as well – when you end up in that situation you realise 'this is what I really want', because you're devoting a lot of time to it when you could be going out, meeting people, having a social life… so it's a driving force, and you don't realise when you're doing it. It's only when you look back that you think 'I was insanely driven when I was 26, to do that'. The other thing is that you pick up experiences and, although it sounds very poncy, you learn about life. You don't go straight from school or college straight to being a writer without any knowledge of what it's like to earn a living. Once you are a writer, you can be in danger of being cut off from knowing what it's like to go out to work at half past eight every morning and come back at half past six.
When you say you spent a lot of your spare time writing, what sort of things you were working on?
Theatre work, it was always theatre. My first 'play', in inverted commas, was a 45-minute piece I wrote when I was eighteen. I submitted it as part of Contract Theatre in Manchester, who were running a young playwrights festival in about 1988-89. It was accepted and they workshopped it and put it on as part of their festival. So this is all their fault! That was the first time I'd been in a rehearsal room with actors and a director, and seeing what that was like, and writing drama. So that was a big thing, and from then, it's one of those things that once you start doing that, once you've been in a rehearsal room with actors, it's kind of like you're infected for ever! There's something very addictive about it.
Was that because it was your words they were working with, or was it just exciting to be there anyway?
No, I liked being there anyway. I always thought maybe I would be a theatre director, I quite fancied that. I went through my teens thinking I might be a journalist, because I did a lot of writing - fanzine articles, stuff like that.
Yes, I was coming to that – because I understand you were quite an active Doctor Who fan, in a former life, but you seemed to vanish from the scene. What appealed to you about Doctor Who, as a child, that you got involved as an active 'participant' rather than just a viewer?
Well, it was just the show I most loved on TV. My first memory is, literally, of Doctor Who, of The Sea Devils, and I checked back – and I can't have been more than two, or three at most, when that was on. How can I possibly remember them, coming out of the sea? But the show was always on in our house, so it just kind of got into me, in the way that the show does. And I see it now, with my son, who'll be four this year – I see exactly the same thing happening to him. Maybe it's genetic! I see it taking him over in the most fantastic beautiful way, firing his imagination. So it just got into me, I always followed it, bought the Doctor Who Weekly comic [which eventually mutated into DWM!] and when it was taken off-air in 1985, I was like 'Where do I get my fix from? It's not going to be on for eighteen months - that's, like, forever!'. I was living on Merseyside, and I kind of looked around to see whether there was any fan clubs - I wasn't been a member of anything at that stage. I've no idea, now, where I found out that there was a Local Group, but I did, and started going there, to these Local Group meetings which were kind of extraordinary. It was just forty people sitting in a darkened hotel room watching a really flickery copy of The Celestial Toymaker episode 4. All day! From mid-day to 8 o'clock they would just screen episodes. But also, it was incredible, because all those things you'd only seen pictures of, in the old Radio Times 1973 anniversary special… the Mind Robber robots and things – suddenly you had the episode in front of you. So I joined that, and between about 1985 and 1988 was my time being part of all that. But when I went to college in London to do drama, I fell out of all that, and drama and theatre kind of took over. Looking back now you can kind of trace the pattern and think that it was that love of drama and that love of television that Doctor Who gave me. Doctor Who came first, then a love of television, which then spreads into all the other things you watch. And you start to trace the directors and the writers, and you start to notice a Robert Banks Stewart episode of Bergerac… that's where my love of TV comes from. I fell out of touch. But the show was coming to an end then, as well…
And I have to mention Open Air - the 'viewer's reactions' TV show which you appeared on back in 1986, slagging off The Trial of a Time Lord - as DWM #375 revealed. So… are you happy to admit to that, these days?
You do things when you're 15, 16… the interesting thing is, having joined the BBC Wales family through Torchwood and now Doctor Who, and these things pop up in conversation, and you think 'My God – I did that!'. These things that you can barely remember… from my point of view, I was a 16 year old who got a phone call one Sunday night, asking 'Do you want to come on the telly tomorrow to talk about Doctor Who?'. And all I really thought was, a morning off school – fantastic! A morning away from the A-levels. And also, nobody got to go on telly then. It wasn't like now where you can get on doing a tap dance in the street. I had no idea what was going on, really. I know the show was Open Air, but I don't think we knew who was going to be on – it was just 'Come on and talk about this series of Doctor Who'. There was no agenda, really, it was completely cack-handed. [Writers] Pip and Jane Baker were there, and [producer] John Nathan-Turner was on the phone, I think. I haven't seen it for twenty years! What's weird is sitting here talking to you about it, something that was just one morning when I was 16, and bears no significance on my life other than that people now come up to me and say things. I went to the Children in Need concert in Cardiff last year, and someone came up and said "I like your glasses now – they're better than the ones you had in '86!". So it's a significant event, I suppose, in fandom terms, but I have no sense of the context of it. And also, I think, when you're a 16 year old, you're opinionated and mouthy, and if somebody asks you something, you're just going to be honest. I think I was pretty unfiltered! I wouldn't ever want to watch it again, put it that way. I can't believe people have still got videos of it…
Wait up for the Trial of a Time Lord DVD, whenever that happens. It's bound to be on there!
Yes, I guess so. Oh God. The suit is terrible, the glasses are terrible, the hair's terrible, the tie is my dad's… it's excruciating, on every level! But also the chances of me sitting here talking to you now being a Doctor Who writer twenty years later, were minuscule. That was never going to happen! So it's so hilarious, actually…
You weren't sitting the day after your first Torchwood episode went out, waiting for Pip and Jane to turn up on This Morning saying what a lot of rubbish it was?
No, but that would have been absolutely fair enough - I'm a fair target! But if you'd done something like that as a 16 year old, and someone came up to you in the street tomorrow and said "…and another thing about that!", it would take you a while to realise what they were talking about – that they thought it was the most significant thing about you. And it will be the thing that Doctor Who fans of a certain age will think is most significant about me, until my episode actually goes out. I've done all sorts of plays, four series of Born and Bred, Life On Mars, all that kind of stuff… but yes – I'm absolutely fair game! And I'm sure there will be plenty of sixteen year olds foaming at the mouth at my episode. But that's part of the circle of life isn't it? Do say I smiled at that point! But it kind of is. You never know what's going to come back and haunt you. I wish I was as elegant a fan as Paul Cornell, where all that would come back and haunt you is a string of beautifully written fanzine articles. My enthusiasm betrays me at times! I have to say that I actually saw it about a year later and thought "Oh blimey, on TV that came across much more viciously and vituperatively than it felt in the studio." And also Pip and Jane reacted badly to it, it hit them. But my memory is that I was struggling for words, and things came out that I thought in retrospect weren't the most polite words. But we did correspond about a year later, both of them and me, I did apologise for being rude and they accepted that. So it ended on good terms, which a lot of people wouldn't know…
So when you moved on to study drama, what did that involve?
It was a BA in Drama and English, at St. Mary's College in Twickenham – a bit of everything, that was kind of why I did it. Although I say that like it was some grand plan - I didn't get the A-levels to get into Manchester or Kent or places like that, I got into clearing at the last minute, and got into St. Mary's and did their course, which was a bit of everything – study of texts, modules on acting, stage management, lighting, theatre design, creative writing, all that kind of stuff. The summer before I went there I'd done the Contact Theatre thing – no, actually, it was the November of my first year that was on, I wrote it between A-levels and college. And I just went in really enthused about all aspects of drama – it was a great course, brilliantly taught, and I met a lot of very good friends. It was a terrific time, three years of doing millions of plays – acting, reading… the English part of it I busked embarrassingly, but the drama stuff fired me up even more, and I went on to do a little bit of acting in fringe shows after college. And quickly realised that I was no actor, as so many do! And after that, there was no going back in terms of where I wanted to work, the sphere in which I wanted to work.
It seemed to take you a few years to take it anywhere, though…
Six weeks after I graduated, my then-girlfriend wrote to Sky - who were, and still are – in Isleworth, to get a job placement. And while she was there, they asked if she knew anybody else. They had just merged with BSB and they were chronically understaffed. What had happened was, in their merger, their VT library had inherited a load of tapes, and they didn't know what was on them. And it was mainly football tapes. And so my job, when I started, was to sit for six weeks - at a fiver an hour which was fantastically good money – in this refrigerated tape library, in the corner of the room at a very old computer, logging tapes of Italian football matches - Fiorentina v Lazio, and so on – into the Sky system.
Oh God – so, essentially endless 0-0 draws…
Exactly! The guy who had been at BSB labelling some of the tapes was now at Sky, but even he couldn't read his own handwriting – he told me he didn't envy me my job. So I did that for six weeks, and then they took me on in the VT library. Then, they got the Premier League contract, completely unexpectedly, and realised they had to set up a system within Sky Sports, where they logged every shot, every goal, every close-up… so that when they did those fantastic music montage pieces, they could go to the computer system and search for a close-up of Alex Ferguson looking purple-faced, and it would tell them it was on X tape, at 14 minutes 32 seconds. The producers would log the stuff, and we would put it into this system which I built from scratch with another guy, Mark Scott. A great guy. Probably a producer now. Probably running Sky Sports! We set up this system from scratch with the software developers. So all this was really exciting, but a million miles from where I'd been – suddenly I'm a football archivist at Sky, where a year previously I'd been at a pub theatre in Richmond playing the lead in Martin Sherman's Bent! It was a career in the old-fashioned meaning of the word, meaning 'to go all over the place'. I did that for about two years, and then, as is the way with Sky, they were so short-staffed - because they're so parsimonious – the executive producer came to me one day and said "We've got an outside broadcast at a match this Sunday – you guys should come and floor-manage". So Mark and I alternated floor-managing the five-hour live Super Sunday outside broadbasts – just from being the guys in the corner of the room! Very much the Sky way…
Did your stage management training help at all, or was it a different set of skills?
It was the same set of skills, but it didn't necessarily feel like that, at 1 o'clock on Sunday in Norwich in the freezing cold, trying to get a striker into the studio for an interview. It was with Richard Keys who'd come from TV-Am, and he's still their anchor – and he's brilliant at holding the show together. But they had to bring in people, because they were doing more and more live shows – back then it was just Sunday and Monday. So they were trying to bring on people, so you got put in there. "Go and fetch George Best from his car!". In fact, the instruction usually was "fetch George Best from this door at Old Trafford, and find out whether he's match-fit"! So you go to a door at Old Trafford, and there's a white stretch limousine there being mobbed by fans, and you have to help George Best through Old Trafford, with him nodding to everyone and knowing everyone. It was a completely surreal experience. And then on Monday morning you'd be back logging the tapes again! I didn't do that for too long, only for a couple of months really – but while I was, you'd be tape-logging during the week, and then on Sunday you'd be taking round Mike Walker…
Mike Walker… Norwich City?
That's him. I remember him giving me the coldest stare. He was on the same OB as George Best, and I remember I called him "Mike". And he obviously wasn't used to being called "Mike" by somebody my age! So he was "Mr. Walker"… even though George Best was "George" to everyone. I had very long hair then and little round glasses, so Andy Gray christened me "Julian" – as in Lennon…
So how did you get from the world of football back into drama?
Well, to be honest that sort of stuff tells a better story now than it lived at the time. Retrospectively it's exciting, but at the time I'd graduated from college thinking I was going to work in theatre or whatever, and ended up doing a job about football. It was great, but either I carried on down this path, and there's a good career there and I could become a producer on the football in seven years, there would be opportunities… or I can pursue the thing I actually really want to do. I was working in TV, but it was completely the wrong bit, which is almost worst than not being there at all – how would I ever go from working there to working in, say, drama at the BBC which is what I always, always wanted.
It sounds kind of like being 'typecast'…
Very much like that. You would start to develop relationships with the people at Match of the Day because they would call up to borrow footage, and they would say "If you ever want to come over here", and you would think, aaaarggh!! But at the same time, all of my mates were working in pubs and I did have a great job. I was being bloody-minded, really. So I applied to do an MA in Theatre & Film in Sheffield, and got funded by the British Academy, which was just fantastic. It's another one of those things where you think "How did it happen, that I got that?". I don't know, but I did, and I wouldn't have been able to do it otherwise. So I did this MA at Sheffield University for a year, which was great – again, I met a lot of good people, and it felt good to be back doing theatre, directing stuff and all that. And living in Sheffield for a year was brilliant, it's a beautiful city, an amazing place to be a student. My then-girlfriend was still living in Twickenham, and had seen this job in a local paper for a local theatre company – one that operated out of Teddington, that did tours all round the country. They wanted an admin assistant. They were paying what might have seemed less than nothing, but I'd been a student for a year so it was like riches. Even though it was much less than I earned at Sky. So I got this job at DGM productions, run by a guy called David Graham. Not that David Graham – instantly you're thinking "City of Death", aren't you?! That would have been even better, wouldn't it...? You could trace my life like it was Doctor Who Connections. No, different David Graham, although he had once been an actor. And what he specialised in was very cheap touring theatre shows that did compilation musicals. So you'd do a 60s show called Twist And Shout, which would have a threadbare script, and a brilliant band, and forty songs from the 60s. There was always a story in there, just about. He put on these shows, and Twist And Shout was the first one I worked on. In the lead – and this was considered a big coup for the company – was Mike Holoway, of Flintlock and Tomorrow People fame. It was him and Paul Shane, from Hi-De-Hi. The show that audiences have been waiting for! But it toured round and, I have to say, it's very easy to be cynical, but you put that show on stage, with a couple of genuine old pros like them who knew stagecraft, and every night, whichever theatre it was in, it got a standing ovation. It must have played for about forty, fifty weeks across a couple of years, all across the land – and people loved it. It wasn't sophisticated, but it was tight and entertaining.
It can be easy to be cynical about that, but entertaining a mainstream audience is a difficult thing to do…
The easiest thing is to be cynical about anything, because it's very easy to pick things apart. The most difficult thing is to be creative. That's not to say this is the most difficult job in the world, but actually to bring something into existence that wasn't there before is inherently a positive, exciting act – but it also makes your head hurt. You'll know that, with the music you do. And to tailor it for a mainstream audience who are going to be paying 25 quid or 20 quid or even a tenner… you've really got to hit the marks, you've got the give them a 'good night out', in that old John McGrath sense of the word. And DGM did that! So I stayed two or three years there, and we did a couple of those – and I wrote the script for one. David said "We're doing a 50s one, it's called Tutti Frutti, we don't have a script, we're going to start rehearsals in two weeks… do you want to write it?". And it was pretty much that this was Friday and we needed to get casting going on Monday… it was so awful. So awful!
So you were given a bunch of songs and told to string them together…?
Yes, basically! It was a terrible, terrible script. All the seventeen year old clones of me who are going to bang on about my Torchwood and Doctor Who work – they should read Tutti Frutti. It played either Glasgow or Edinburgh, I think it was Edinburgh, and the review, which was a damning, damning review which I still have framed, said "The cast perform the script like it was written in capital letters – as it probably was". And I thought, that's probably fair. It was not a work of subtlety or genius. Bang to rights! You can never get angry about a review like that, you can't think you've been misrepresented, you just think, absolutely – it's a fair cop!
Presumably, though, your writing got better thereafter…
Well, let's wait and see! It's definitely got more efficient… that wasn't the main thurst of my writing, though. In the evenings and weekends all through Sky and DGM, I was writing, and I got a play accepted by a Fringe theatre, a room above a pub in Hampton Wick. And this was a play about three college mates who meet up every year for a reunion. They get drunk and they reminisce and things go disastrously wrong – fairly standard stuff, it was a standard theme around the time, that kind of Mojo, Jez Butterworth, Royal Court thing. A lot of plays about 'blokes'! I don't mean that I was a part of that, mine was a year or two after that, it was me being influenced by them…
Was this, like, part of the 'Loaded' generation…?
A bit before that, I think – I think the Loaded generation came almost as a result of that. It was before 'bloke' was a bad word. But context aside, it was about three lads in a room, and the guy who ran the theatre company, Grip Theatre – they'd advertised for plays, and I'd written this one specifically for that purpose and sent it in, and the guy rang me up and said "This is great! And not only is it great, but we can do it! All the other plays I've got are set in forests with 97 year old wizards, and I can't do that in a room above a pub!". So he put it on, and said "You can be our writer in residence, and for the next year or so, we'll back you – write whatever you like, and we'll put it on". Which was the most extraordinary act of faith. The guy was my age, our age, and this one play had struck a chord with him - and it had a few jokes in it, so it was sort of a black comedy, I suppose you could say. So I wrote another two short plays that year, and got very involved with the running of the theatre, brought in another writer to be the writer in residence the year after. And suddenly there was like this powerhouse of new work, in this tiny corner of south west London! The great thing about somewhere like Hampton Wick is that there's a great theatre-going audience but no other fringe venues, other than the Orange Tree in Richmond – so we'd be sold out all the time. Amazing audiences seeing these barmy new works where we'd all be trying things out. And often there would be ladies in their sixties coming to see shows about blokes and swearing. But it was, essentially, where I learned stagecraft – because you would write a play, and it would be on four weeks later, and I lived round the corner and I would go along every night to see what worked and what didn't, and hone it and hone it. So it was amazing – you learn about jokes, about stagecraft, about getting characters in and out of scenes... it was interesting what you said about the mainstream, because – how do you entertain people? I'm very interested in that, I'm not a writer who sits in a corner writing the dark, dark piece. To me it's about, as well as saying the things you want to say, how do you entertain people – and that's where I learned some aspects of it. Whatever little I know, I kind of learned there! The third play I wrote for them was called Gaffer, which was a one man show about a football manager. Because in my last year at DGM Productions, the director David had seen the George Best and Rodney Marsh show that went round theatres. They would go out and sell out a theatre and answer questions and stuff, and he looked at that and thought "That is money for old rope – you don't need a set, or rehearsals…"
It's after-dinner speaking, as much as than anything else…
Exactly that! So he thought we had to get into this, and we looked around. We went to see Tommy Docherty do his after-dinner, stand-up thing in somewhere like Camberley. And it wasn't a big venue, 300 seater, but he sold it out and held the audience rapt. So we got him and Malcolm Allison and put them together and did that show. David was going to chair it, and it was a show you could do out of the back of a Mini, essentially – the theatre would provide chairs, you'd need a couple of microphones, and in the second half they'd answer questions from the audience. And then on the day of the first show, which was at St. David's Hall in Cardiff, weirdly, my boss said to me "I can't do the show tonight – will you go and chair it?". But, but… I'm going out tonight! So I went and did that, I did fifteen dates with them around the country, including a sold-out gig at Leeds City Varieties where they used to do The Good Old Days, a beautiful old music hall theatre. So I have played Leeds City Varieties, alongside Tommy Docherty and Malcolm Allison, to a sold-out audience. Find me another Doctor Who writer who can say that! Or any other person in the whole world, come to that. So I spent a lot of time with them and they were amazing company, extraordinary characters – and I couldn't get their voices out of my head. So to exorcise that, I wrote a monologue about an old-time football manager who is struggling with the modern game – struggling, essentially, with what Sky had brought into the game. And the big moment at the end of the first half is that they've had a big FA cup run, and he's kissed by the young striker – this young Michael Owen, Wayne Rooney type. So the whole second half was about that, about 'Is he gay?', in the homophobic world of football. And it was all done by one actor who played all the parts - it was quite theatrical, and one of the pieces I'm most proud of. It was revived in 2004, and I rewrote it slightly, and it got an amazing response then – I think the time was really right for it in 2004 for some reason, I think because people were starting to talk about gay footballers, so coincidentally it hit a nerve then.
How did that revival come about?
A director, Gareth Machin who was director of Southwark Playhouse, read it. We'd worked together, I'd done a one-act play at Bristol Old Vic. He'd done a lunchtime spot for new writing when he was an associate director there – and he read Gaffer a year or two after I'd written it and said he'd really love to do it one day, and when he became artistic director of Southwark Playhouse he said let's do it – and it really did well then. And it's a big hit in Germany now – it was staged in Berlin during the World Cup. The guy who translated Trainspotting does my plays in German. The play I had on at Soho Theatre in 2001, he translated that and it's gone all round the world. Incredibly and for no discernible reason!
Presumably by the time of that revival you were already on television – how did it come about?
Through writing Gaffer I got an agent, who asked what I wanted to do and where I saw myself, and I said I'd really like to have a crack at TV. I've only remembered this just now talking to you, but even at that first rehearsal at Contact Theatre in 1988, the director looked at my script and said "Yeah, it's quite televisual, this" – so it's interesting how that can inform the way you write, with fast cutting and so on. So I started getting meetings with TV people, and it sort of escalated from there, really. I did an episode of Crossroads, of the revival – before it went mad. There were two revised Crossroads: the revamp, and then they took it off and revamped the revamp, when it went really mad…
They were trying to 'gay' it up, really…
Yes, they were. The first revamp, I thought, was pretty good and it had a sense of itself, and the stories were quite interesting – but it struggled in its slot, to be honest. But, yes, I did episode 25 or something of that, and that was my first credit that went out. And off Gaffer, I got the chance to do a monologue for Carlton, a monologue about a tube driver called Stormin' Norman. Actually what had happened was, Carlton used to run a screenwriting course for up and coming writers. They'd take ten writers every year – Rob Shearman did this course a couple of years after me. It was terrific actually, and nobody does anything like that any more. John Yorke does something a little similar at the BBC. So I did that course, and off the back of that and Gaffer, they approached me to do one of this series of four monologues. It was about a tube driver on his last day at work. And I got to go and ride on a tube train, and drive it for one stop, as research. And working with James Bolam was great – he was magnificent and really generous to me, and very supportive. So it was a pretty extraordinary experience – I think that was before Crossroads, although it went out a bit later. So it was a really idyllic first TV experience – it was done very cheaply and only went out in London, but it was amazing, a very positive experience - because TV can be bruising, for a writer.
So how did you get from there to devising Born and Bred? It seems to have happened very quickly that you got a show of your own.
Yes – madness, really! What tends to happen in TV is that once you start working with somebody, everybody else crowds round you and you tend you get a little bit more work out of it. And I'd just started working with Diederick Santer, who's now executive producer on EastEnders, a big cheese at the BBC. He's very nice and gets younger looking every year! To the extent that last time I was in the BBC I mistook him for a runner, which may have damaged my career prospects… He'd read a short play of mine when he was working at Granada with Sue Hogg and Simon Lewis, and he said he'd really like to work with me on something, and that they had this idea on the shelf from a guy called Nigel McCrary. It was like, a page of A4. Nigel is an ex-copper and now he comes up with ideas for shows - he'd been behind Silent Witness, and New Tricks is one of his too. And he'd had this idea for an ITV Sunday night show – it needed an overhaul and proper working out, but it 'had something'. So I had a look at it, and I think a bit of nostalgia crept in – I was thinking that I'd really love to do an All Creatures Great And Small type show. I felt Sunday night shows had become quite po-faced by that stage. They'd lost a bit of their sense of joy and fun. Heartbeat was on, Down to Earth was just starting and so was Monarch of the Glen, and those shows were a bit more upbeat, but there had been series like Badger and Harbour Lights, which had been slightly humourless, and didn't have a real sense of joy at their own existence, or that sense of energy and fun that All Creatures Great And Small had. I think All Creatures is a classic of the genre of rural, feel-good drama. 'Feel-good' is a bit of a dodgy phrase, but… something which is entertaining which deals with light and shade. So we worked up something and pitched to ITV, who turned it down, and then Sue and Simon were poached by Greg Dyke at the BBC, and went over and formed their own little unit within the BBC, and took this show with them. And the BBC, after a bit of umm-ing and aah-ing, and reworked, eventually green-lit this show as Born and Bred. And nobody was more surprised than me, to suddenly have a Sunday night 8 o'clock show that I was writing and had co-created. It was a shock – particularly so coming from theatre. Because I finished episode 1, and thought "Oh my God – there are six episodes! What do I do in episode two?". Because I'd never returned to anything like that, you don't in theatre… but there it was. I never really got that moment, though, of 'Wow!', because everything is always such a drawn-out process, by the time they've green-lit it, you're just thinking "Thank God we've got an answer… oh hang on, that's really great!". You never have that filmic moment of opening the champagne. So that was me in at the deep end, to be honest – in the best possible way. It was a mixture of very light, quite broad comedy with, at the centre of every episode, a proper dramatic, serious story, which was the reason there was a cottage hospital at the centre of the show, because you want those big serious stories coming in with relative ease each week. It was very much constructed for the slot, Sunday night at 8. And we got the most incredible cast - Phil Collinson set up the show and put this brilliant cast together, who I still speak to. It was an extraordinary ensemble, actually – James Bolam and Michael French really complemented each other as father and son, and then you had people like Clive Swift as the vicar, a wonderful actor, and John Henshaw, and Maggie Steed. I'm so proud of that show for a number of reasons, one of which is that I think it's very hard to create those shows – it goes back to the mainstream thing, actually. It has to be mainstream and it has to be enjoyable, and sometimes you can write shows forgetting to be enjoyable, and I think that's what's beautiful about the work that Russell does, is that it's hugely entertaining as well as having lots to say and being very bold. And my job with Born and Bred was to do this big, all-singing, all-dancing Sunday night show – sixty minutes. What Born and Bred taught me was pace of storytelling - I wanted it to be very fast. And it was hard work, you know? All TV is hard work, and I think the thing I learned, especially on the first year, was that it's a miracle that any television gets to the screen. Because there are so many things that can go wrong, or just be one per cent off. That one costume, that one hat on that one person can ruin that scene, or the wrong person in the background in that scene, or the pacing of the edit, or the score, or three wrong lines of dialogue at the start of the episode… before you even think about rain on location or not having enough outside shots or not enough time to do the interiors or… there are so many things that can go wrong. And when you get on to Doctor Who and Torchwood, you can add in special effects and prosthetics as well! And it was a big hit – the first year we ended up with 9 million viewers by the end of the series, and it built – it never lost audience across an episode, and never lost audience across a series for the first three years.
Which means it was getting good 'word of mouth'?
And also, if you looked at the figures, in the first year we beat Where The Heart Is, which was the established big show on ITV, so the next year they moved Heartbeat against us, which was 'like for like'. And you would see from the quarter-hour figures that people would turn over during the commercials to catch a bit of Born and Bred… and they would stay with it. Our figures would go up across the hour and theirs would go down – we'd gain something like 700,000, maybe a million. And I was very proud of that. We worked very hard on the pace of storytelling and the mix of light and shade. And we had some great guest actors in as well – my favourite episode is one with Bill Patterson in playing Maggie Steed's errant husband, and that was a brilliant masterclass in acting…
As well as writing, you were head writer in charge of other writers contributing scripts. Was that the first time you'd been in charge of other writers like that? And what did you learn from that?
Oh God – how long have you got? [laughs] You learn how other writers work, you learn how to tell stories across multiple episodes, you learn how to try and seed stories in other peoples' episodes… it's easier to say what you don't do. I think it's really about how you communicate a vision of a show, and how you bring everybody onboard, and how you get everybody writing the same thing. With something like Born and Bred it was tricky, because the differences between that show and other shows of the same genre, of that rural Sunday night drama, weren't enormous, but they were significant, because tonally we were really different. We did some very surreal comedy, some very odd stories – but you also wanted a really emotional story at the centre. And it was quite difficult, particularly in the first year, to communicate that to people who had worked on or seen those other shows in the same genre. We wanted to be a bit sillier and a bit more fun and a bit more odd – but to have a moving story at the centre. So within that genre we were doing a very specific thing. Whether anyone picked up on that is a different story – but the idea was that within the parameters you wriggle about a bit and have a bit of fun. The thing about leading other writers is that it's about being supportive and encouraging – just about being there, really. To talk about how to execute ideas, hopefully to become a team. It's a tricky thing.
One of the things you moved on to do after that was a couple of episodes of everyone's second favourite show, Life On Mars, which was very much the 'word of mouth' hit of 2006… how did you cope with moving from this cosy mainstream show, very 'older viewer' friendly, to this young, energetic piece in a totally different genre?
I think as a writer, you can get typecast as easily as an actor, and I was very conscious of that. With four series of Born and Bred, I did three years and was very lightly involved in the last year, I rewrote two scripts but I'd gone off to work on other stuff by then, some development projects. I'd just started working with Kudos Productions on a development project, I'd had a couple of meetings with them starting to talk about an idea. And then Kudos rang me and said "We've got this show that's been green-lit, it's a bit odd – would you like to do an episode?". In the meantime, what I'd been doing was turning down work on a lot of rural, 'feel-good' family dramas – because I didn't really want to be doing that forever. And anyway, I did seventeen episodes of Born and Bred in three years, and there's only so much you can say in that genre. So with Life On Mars they literally just rang me up while I was busy doing a couple of other things – but they said "read this script", which was episode one that Matthew [Graham] had written. And I thought it was the most incredible script. I'd been reading a lot of America scripts for pilot episodes – this is two years ago, really, and everybody was bemoaning that America TV was much bolder. And I thought, if this had been an America script I'd have been screaming "Why don't we do this stuff over here?!". It was so beautifully worked through, it was so bold and confident and funny, everything you'd ever want. So I thought, "I can't not write this" – but it was very difficult to sort the schedule out. I spoke to Claire Parker, the producer, and said I didn't think I could make it work out in terms of timescale. And her response was "I have to tell you – the lead actor is John Simm.". Okay. I'll do it! However, whatever - I'll make it work out! And that took it to another level, because you just thought that was going to make it so special and then she mentioned Philip Glenister. It was 'un-turn-downable', really! Kudos are a delight to work with, they're a brilliant, supportive creative team.
Actually, your first script, which was the penultimate one of the first series, was quite a pivotal one, wasn't it? That's quite surprising, given that you were the 'hired hand' writer on the series – the only one not involved in the show's creation.
Yes, and they gave me completely free reign – they said go for it, and we'll pull you back if necessary. And after the readthrough of my script, in his fantastic way, Matthew said "Who would have thought the creator of Born and Bred would be our greatest tragedian?". There aren't many laughs in that script! But they said, it's episode 7, push it as far as you want. It's kind of a chamber piece.
Is that because by week seven the tone will be well-established enough to allow a bit more pushing of the envelope?
Possibly, although you never think like that while you're working on it – retrospectively, analytically, yes! It sits there comfortably because you're confident in the show at that point. But no, they were just bold. They had a belief in what they were doing, and they were going to push it as far as they could. They weren't going to fail through being cautious! And you always want to work with those people - it's the same as working with Russell, and Julie Gardner. You go as far as you can with it and you don't hold back, you don't not commit yourself for fear that you might get it slightly wrong. And I think that's an ethos that spreads across Life On Mars, Doctor Who, Torchwood… you go for broke, and that makes it very exciting TV. So I did an episode for series 2 of Life On Mars as well.
What with Torchwood and all, how did you ever find the time?
2006 was my year of pain! One Life On Mars, four Torchwoods and one Doctor Who, plus a script for Kudos on a different project, which is awaiting a second draft. And we moved house and had our second baby. It was a busy year!
Speaking of Torchwood, how did your involvement in that come about?
I don't know! [Guffaws]. I really don't know…
It could be seen as surprising that you came straight in on Torchwood without doing a Doctor Who first, and given quite a substantial chunk of responsibility on it… or is that must me being parochial?
I do have a body of work that's perhaps not on the radar of Doctor Who fans – four years of Born and Bred, 26 episodes of mainstream drama, running it and being involved in edits and casting and overseeing other peoples' scripts. I'd worked with Julie, obviously, she was the executive producer on Life On Mars. We'd done a development project together years and years back when she was a producer under Mal Young, and got on very well and kept in touch. But she just phoned me up while we were doing Life On Mars, she said "I've got something here you might like – email me in a couple of months". And we met up in August 2005, sitting in the corner of this bar, and she told me it was this post-watershed spin-off of Doctor Who with Captain Jack. Did I want to do it? Yeahhhh! But I wasn't available. But she said not to worry about that. Classic Julie! At that stage it was just an offer to do one episode, but knowing it was a series of thirteen, I said if they needed me to do more, whatever I could do to help, use me as much as they needed to. And so a couple of months later she rang up and said "Well, actually… do you want to be the lead writer, and do four episodes?". And I said yes – I'd really like to do what I did on Born and Bred and be across production as much as possible. To be out there at tone meetings and talking to directors…
Sort of fulfilling Russell's Doctor Who role…
There's a team of people who make the show and we all work very closely together. We all have opinions and things that we'll throw in, we all work very hard to make the show, really. And I'm across all thirteen episodes and give notes on edits and rushes and things…
How much of the format of Torchwood had been established before you came on to it? Was it just Captain Jack?
The 'format' I saw at the time was a page and a half of Russell's pitch, and they weren't even called Torchwood in that, actually. So we set off from that, and the point where we knew what it was, was when Russell's first script came in. And then we all had a mad dash! What appealed to me was that sheer 'un-knowability' of it, that it wasn't like anything else that was on TV, I couldn't really place where it would fit. And that's the sort of show you want to be on board. Exactly like Life On Mars – you don't know how it's going to go, it's scary, and scary is exciting, scary is the place you want to be, so you're not getting complacent. We talked at the very first story meeting about whether it would be more serialised than Doctor Who or whether there would be a 'case' every week - if it were serialised it would be cheaper and slightly easier to do, whereas if it was standalone 'case of the week' with a new alien or alien device that was going to be much harder. And everybody went "Story of the week!". You've got to go for the big targets, the big unachievable things. So the format of the show was pretty clear- the reason it's a brilliant format is that you can tell so many different stories. It's almost as broad as Doctor Who, because you've got 'the rift' which can bring anything to you. So the challenge was in the choice of stories to tell each week. Although tonally it's very different to Doctor Who, it's covering similar story ground – there's always a science fiction element to it.
Was there ever thought that it might be more 'grounded' or everyday than that, given that it was more or less set in one time and place?
We rarely reference Doctor Who in our discussions – the key thing from the start was that this had to be its own thing. It was very clear from the start what the parameters and objectives for Torchwood were: that it was post-watershed, BBC Three – because there was no confirmation at that stage of any terrestrial broadcast. There were words in Russell's original pitch document like 'wild' and 'dark' and 'sexy', and it's all those things. So we were all conscious of finding an identity for the show which wasn't in relation to Doctor Who. Because the really great spin-off shows don't necessarily share aspects. Look at Frasier and Cheers. As shows they're very, very different - Frasier's much loftier, intellectual farce – but they're equally brilliant shows. I was thinking on the drive down here today, actually – how on earth do you get to Mork and Mindy from Happy Days? How did that happen?! So you're not necessarily going for the same audience at all…
And presumably that just comes about from people following their instincts down interesting avenues…
Yes. Perhaps as a fan you analyse things too much, and I can understand that, I've done it myself - "They must have done Y because of X, they must have done that because of this" – but actually, all you do as a writer or producer is follow the things that interest you. And sometimes you're in a cul-de-sac, and sometimes it's a huge big open road that you think you could drive down forever. You follow the passions, the things that seem dramatically and emotionally interesting. You discover things by doing them, there's very little sitting around theorising about it. Get out there and try it! Might work, might not, we'll have a look afterward – but go and get your hands dirty and do it!
And how are you developing Torchwood for its second year? Any changes in format and tone because it's going straight to terrestrial TV?
No, it's the same show. We had the audience research in the other week, and the response we had from the mainstream audience was phenomenal. So when the questions about "What do you want in the second series?" were raised, it's all the same things that were at the centre of the first series. Obviously there are some things we can do better, some things we've learned – but that's what happens between first and second series. And also we know what the show is this year. The first year on Torchwood was phenomenal – Russell delivered his first script in January, and we were on air in October with a run of thirteen episodes. It's the fastest turnaround I've ever known. I wrote my episode of Life On Mars series 2 before I started on Torchwood, and that was broadcast in February this year, months after the whole of Torchwood had been broadcast! So there was a fantastic energy to the first series of Torchwood. Russell and Julie do get things done, and I think also the channel really wanted it for that slot. People were desperate for it, and now people are desperate for series 2! There was a three-way fight between channels as to who was going to get it… it's been a huge hit. I'm aware it's a controversial show in some ways, but I like that, I think it's good. And on any objective level, it's a very important show to the BBC and its audience loves it. The consolidated viewing figures are extraordinary. The total figure for the first episode across all screenings and all channels was 6.5 million, and they weren't expecting those figures. I remember talking to Jane Tranter at the launch, and she said that if the first episode got a million she'd be happy! But that was the figure we were getting by episode ten for the first transmission when we were up against Lost. The total figure across all screenings settled around 4 million, the Appreciation Index figures remained strong throughout. It will be interesting to see how it goes on BBC Two. BBC Three was a lovely place to be – we were looked after, they scheduled it brilliantly and promoted it brilliantly. I think it will be a tougher fight on BBC Two, but we're all aware of that and I quite like that.
So, to move sideways – much as you've done yourself – you've ended up contributing to series 3 of Doctor Who… how does it compare to the, er, 'side-project'?
Side project!? Side project!? Yes, to be fair, Doctor Who is the 'parent show'-
Er, yeah - that's the expression I was looking for!
Yes. I'm toying with you…
…so what happened last year that four episodes of Torchwood, plus supervisory duties, wasn't enough for you to contend with?
I got asked! When I first started on Torchwood, and first met Julie and Russell – I'd never met Russell before at all – Julie said "Yeah, maybe you'd like to come and do an episode of series 4 of Doctor Who, if you like". Yeah, wait and see how it all goes. But then, in July last year, about a week after my new baby was born, during the filming of Cyber Woman – which I'd been writing literally the morning my wife went into labour – having said I was going to need a couple of weeks of paternity leave, during that 'paternity leave', I got a text from Julie saying "Can you give me a call? It's nothing bad…". So I rang her up, and she asked if I wanted to do a Doctor Who this year. And I think I quite surprised her by saying "Can I think about it?" – because it was rapidly becoming clear what a tough schedule Torchwood was on. To get all the scripts in and get everybody in line, and in production terms it was such an ambitious show for its budget and its schedule. It's hard, just as Doctor Who is, they're both the same in those terms. So I was right in the middle of that, and off looking after my wife and children. So I took a day or two, but I did think "I can't! There's no time!". I knew my writing schedule on Torchwood would take longer than it was supposed to… As I said, you never get the 'champagne moment'. But also, at the back of your mind, you're thinking that you can't not do Doctor Who – it's a brilliant show. I was at a tone meeting for another block of Torchwood, and across the room Julie mimed typing at me and mouthed the words 'Doctor Who'. And I said "Yeah, alright!". So Julie, Russell and I had a meeting in the car park, and I said I didn't know how I was going to be able to do it, what with my schedule. Julie said "Oh, you'll be fine". And as Russell has said, Julie could sell snow to eskimos!
Was there an element of thinking you couldn't turn it down because it's the biggest show on TV – and if you'd said you couldn't, you might not have been asked again…
Yeah, there's an element of that, but I think you just want to do good work, and work with the best people. And I really think that Russell and Julie, and the Kudos people, are producing the best shows on television at the moment. There's lots of great stuff out there, it's a great time to be working in TV drama – and they're right at the pinnacle, and a joy to work with as well. They're enthusiastic, positive, creative, collaborative… it doesn't get any better. And also, I think a big thing for me was that I wanted to write for David Tennant. Because he's the best Doctor in the world, for me. He's brilliant, and I couldn't turn down the opportunity to write for him, I think he's magnificent. So it's all those things combined. The first feeling you get is fear! Fear and terror. Never mind that there are thirty-whatever years of the original show – on this series alone, the benchmark is high, you've got to be up to the standards, and that's terrifying. So terror, really, was the main thing! You hope you can do something that's exciting. But n my case it all happened very fast, so the pressure was always on.
A lot of the writers have a background as an active fan of the show, who've gained some of their early experience in writing by working on Doctor Who spin-offs – novels, audios and so on. Even Moffat wrote a short story or two! But you seem to have come by a totally different route to end up in the same position – not a word of Doctor Who writing until your script this year.
I was just an audience member on the first series. A very happy audience member!
But I guess watching Rose must have been the first time you'd thought about Doctor Who in quite a long time. How did you react to Chris and Billie, given that you'd once been so close to the original show?
I was just blown away by the skilful creation of a new version that kept all the things I loved about the show, about the classic series, with a modern sensibility and an emotional core. It's tricky going back and watching old episodes now, because I think emotionally there's very little there. There's some terrific, amazing stuff in there, but it's a very different beast. But what they managed to do on the new show is extrapolate all the good bits, and lose all the bits that – as a fan – you tried to forget about anyway! Russell knew which bits to love, and which bits weren't necessary or useful for a mainstream audience. What I thought at the time was, how can this show not have been on air for however long it's been? It felt so right so quickly that by the time you got to something like episode 3, you thought, how has this show ever not been there? And now it's even what you do at Christmas – Christmas Day, 7 o'clock, you watch Doctor Who. And that's insane – four years ago, it was nowhere! So I just watched it as a delighted viewer. And I can watch it with my wife now. I can watch Doctor Who with a girl! Hooray!
It really wasn't happening in 1986, was it?
I thought Gareth Roberts said something quite interesting, which is that even when Tom Baker was as his height, it wasn't the huge popular cultural success that it is now. It was a great show that everybody loved, but now it has an impact beyond being a TV show. It's like everybody adores it, everybody loves David Tennant, the toys are selling millions, there are two spin-off shows… it had something like five Radio Times covers last year. It's very easy to take that for granted. You talk about what it was like in 1986 – actually you were watching a show that really had no place in public affection whatsoever, it was regarded with derision. Whatever your opinions of that season, and I think there were great things about that season, don't get me wrong – I love every season of Doctor Who! – but you could not admit to being a Doctor Who fan in 1986. Which is really why it was doubly idiotic to go on television as a Doctor Who fan, I must say! At the age of 16 you shouldn't be in a television studio talking about Doctor Who – you should be out getting drunk and getting laid! Thank God for college, that's all I can say…
It did seem that the 1985 postponement crippled the original show – no matter what happened thereafter, it was struggling…
Well, when your channel actually publicly says "We don't really want this show"… I thought it was really telling that in [script editor, 1987-89] Andrew Cartmel's book where he talks about his interview with Jonathan Powell, and Powell said "Who's Doctor Who for?", and Cartmel said "Doctor Who is for everyone", and Powell said "No – Doctor Who is for kids."
So now that you have actually written an episode of Doctor Who, were the mechanics of that process any different to those of Torchwood or any other show? Because you're being led by a distinctive lead writer who's also an exec, did that mean the writing process was different?
No, not really, because I was used to working with Russell and Julie anyway, so I knew they were going to be supportive. But no, it was like doing an episode of Life On Mars or something, you really want to do it, and you know there are certain guidelines and parameters within which you have to fit. On my episode, Russell came in and said "These are the things you need" – I think Helen Raynor called it a shopping list – "Set it here, I want a bit of this, that and this". And then it's your job to go away and put it together with a coherent shape. Which is the hard bit! Your job is to make sense of that shopping list, and that's hard.
I can see a parallel with that musical you wrote all those years ago – a shopping list of songs, which you have to turn into something.
Yes, that's true. I think it's very often your job on series television, and we do it to other people on Torchwood. And some episodes, like episode 13 of Torchwood, I knew that it was pulling together a lot of strands from the series up to that point, and the series theme of temptation - of the most dangerous thing about Torchwood being Torchwood itself – are all there in that final episode. So even on Torchwood as a lead writer, I have a responsibility to do a lot of the 'heavy lifting' – the beats for the regulars, the movement of their journey across the series. Cyber Woman and Countrycide in particular are very relationship-driven, putting things in place that we needed for the end of the series. So whatever position you're in as a writer on a show, there are things you have to do, and whether you give yourself those shopping lists or whether someone else hands them to do, it's still your job and it's still the thing that will have you crying at 1am, sobbing "I can't do this". Crying at 1am is part of the job, it really is! Staring at the computer, and thinking it's impossible to put all these things together, is absolutely part of the job. Possibly more so on Doctor Who and Torchwood, because they are twice as difficult as other shows – you've got to have a creative, big concept sci-fi story, then add action, then you've got to find some emotional core to it. You don't get away with anything on these shows, they're very exposing, and I absolutely hold my hand up – some of the episodes of Torchwood I think I was still learning. These shows are really, really hard, that's what unifies them, and the standards are really high, the quality of writing is very strong. Look at something like Out of Time, episode 10 of Torchwood, and think that no other show would do something like that, it's beautiful – the quality of writing on that episode is amazing.
Tonally that episode was something of a departure for Torchwood as well – it barely felt like the same show as the preceding weeks. Much slower and more romantic…
What we very deliberately set out to do was try out lots of different tones, lots of different stories, and see what worked. Because you can do that across thirteen episodes, and that's actually what the best series have. If you want longevity, you need to encompass a different set of things. You don't want to be ploughing the same furrow – so very deliberately there are horror movies, big sci-fi concepts, a big romantic movie in there, lots of different things, and that's very deliberate. Also, I think it means your audience doesn't take you for granted – so we're allowed to wrong-foot the audience as well. Think you know what the show is? Well, it's not just that, it's also this. We really wanted Torchwood to be a multitude of things, and I think it did that – right from the start people were saying "It's not what I thought it was going to be", as if that's a bad thing. I think that's a great thing, even if it means it takes people longer to get used to you. Also, with thirteen episodes you've got to keep it fresh – it's a very, very long run. Life On Mars, in total, will be sixteen episodes – that's the show finished, which is a really good decision. Torchwood's run will be at least 26, so we've got to keep those things ticking, we've got to surprise people.
Yes, you did mention longevity there – do you mean longevity in terms of a long run of episodes, or longevity in the minds of the viewers?
Well, both, actually – but it's designed to run, although you can never take that for granted. You can clearly see with the format of Torchwood that it could run and run, if that's what we all creatively decide and it's what the channels want. The fact that they're commissioning it for thirteen episode runs… very few series get that. So it's already a long runner by getting to series two, frankly!
Yes, I recall that when Doctor Who came back we were all surprised it got as many as thirteen. And assuming series four happens, that's at least 54 by the end of next year… anyway – what was on your shopping list, that you'd be able to talk to me about?
Well, what do you know?
Nothing. I didn't even know what it was called until a few days ago! And now I know two more digits than I did…
Actually, I kind of like the fact that nobody knows anything at the moment! I really liked it with Fear Her last year, that nobody really knew what it was going to be about until it happened. So I'm slightly reluctant to say…
Well, let's examine what I know – it's called 42, it's episode seven, exactly halfway through the run, and people have already started discussing two possibilities – one is that it's an homage to Douglas Adams, and the other is that it's an homage to 24, and takes place in real time. Any validity to either of those notions?
Yes! The joke of the title is that, really, obviously – 'is it something to do with the meaning of life?'. It's a playful title. It's very different to the stories either side of it.
Was the 'real-time' aspect of it part of your 'shopping list'?
No, it actually happened during script discussions, it was an idea that we thought would give the episode a lot of energy and pace. It was Russell's idea - we were talking about doing something different with Doctor Who that hadn't been done before, and I do kind of like those episodes that have real energy and momentum to them. You have to work very hard on 'pace' on Doctor Who, so it was Russell's really rather brilliant idea to do it in real time. And because it's in an enclosed atmosphere anyway, the story was really designed to increase atmosphere and tension, at the same time as being a great laugh. I suspect we're going to have on-screen graphics and things like that – at one stage we were talking about having a clock in the corner of the screen, but I think we decided that was taking it one step too far. But part of the joke obviously is that an episode of Doctor Who is forty-two minutes long… so God bless all those 'detective' fans! But the idea suits the pace of the story and it suits the show. It's very different to either of the stories either side of it, and it gives the episode a nice big hook – because it's not really the centre of the episode, there are more thing I think in his column Russell has pointed out that it's not set on Earth, so it's not an Earth-based story. Although two of the words Russell mentioned in Production Notes that are supposedly in my script have actually been cut from subsequent drafts! At the very first conversation, Russell had suggested a different story idea, and then there was a gap after that conversation where I had to go away and write episode 13 of Torchwood, and when I came back it had turned into a different episode. I think the first one would have been twice as expensive – although I'm sure they'll do it in series 4… Visually, the episode is set in the same universe as The Satan Pit – if you swivel the camera round from the rock those episodes are set on and you look halfway across the galaxy… that's sort of where mine is set. Very industrial, grimy, sweaty, people working hard for a living.
And how did you find dealing with the new companion, Martha? What have you brought to her development? Were you involved in discussions, or given a set of scripts and told to get on with it?
Again, you just tend to work off what's already there. I think fans do have this vision that people sit around and discuss aspects like that, you know, "We're going to discuss Martha and I'm going to give you seventeen bullet points about her personality" – but I can't stress enough that you get on and do it, and then you see if you've got it right. So I read all the scripts that were already in existence – and just like if you read series 1 episode 1, you know who Rose is, the same is true of Martha in Smith and Jones this time. You can see the differences between her and Rose, and the similarities, and what role she performs in the show. And as ever, when you're writing, you want to give her something juicy to get her teeth into. Part of the brief was to give Martha a big story, to give her a lot to do - she's a strong companion. Inevitably she'll be front and centre, because she's a vital character. You want to keep the companion active, you want to give her something to do, but she's there and she does have a dramatic life of her own, not just in relation to the Doctor – although the relationship between the two of them is interesting as well. Again, as a writer on any show, rule one is 'use your leading actors as much as you can', and when you've got David and Freema, that's easy. And particularly when you've got David, you've got an actor who can do anything, he's just magnificent. So that's the exciting part of the shopping list!
And what stage is your episode at, as we speak? Did you attend the readthrough or any of the recordings? And has David, for instance, brought anything unexpected to it?
It's finished filming now, I think they're filming Utopia at the moment. I was at the readthrough and the tone meeting and things like that, you're continually tweaking things, even as they're filming… David brings energy and integrity and warmth and dynamism and charisma… and surprise, actually. Just from the limited amount I've seen! You can see it on the rushes, he gives the director and the producers 'choices'. But overall, what he brings is brilliance, and I don't mean that flippantly, I mean it absolutely genuinely. He brings brilliance to the show and to every script he works on. You know you're in the presence of a truly special actor, and it's just a joy to write for him. I only went down to the set for about half a day, on my way to a Torchwood meeting, and that was the 'Oh my God, I've written Doctor Who' moment. Because at the readthrough you're still working, you're thinking about whether the script's working, what amendments you're going to have to make, so you don't get that moment. It's only once you're filming it and you're on set – and, as a writer, you're fantastically useless on set, so it's great for half a day and then you go. Your work should be done by the time they're filming… so that was exciting. Seeing them running along a corridor in a huge old paper mill, and Graeme Harper shouting "Energy!" at them! That was exciting. Being filmed by David for his 'video diary' was plain weird. That was when I got a bit freaked out!
And has it been a rewarding enough experience that if Julie phones up tomorrow and says "It's nothing bad, but… can you give us another one?"
Yes, I loved it. It's very doubtful that the schedules would work out, that just gets crazier and crazier. These are rare times to be involved in shows that are so exciting and so at the centre of everybody's discussion of television – these are the shows on everybody's lips, Torchwood and Doctor Who and Life On Mars are the shows everyone wants to be working on. So it's a privilege, actually… so yeah, I'd do it again, but I don't think the schedules will work out that way again. We all broke our backs this year, I got tonsillitis from exhaustion at one stage while I was writing. It's hard to fit it all in!
