“I had a few letters saying that it was self-indulgent, and one even said ‘solipsistic’ – but if you buy a book stuffed full of my e-mails, what the hell are you expecting?!” Russell discusses The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter, in the new issue of the BBC-licensed Doctor Who Magazine…
“We didn’t really plan a second book,” Russell T Davies says of this January’s follow-up to 2008’s The Writer’s Tale. The original book comprised a candid and in-depth e-mail correspondence between Russell and DWM journalist Benjamin Cook, spanning February 2007 to March 2008. It documented the writing and production of Series Four, tackling everything from the courting of JK Rowling to the snubbing of George Lucas, taking in chicken pox, press leaks, the companion that never was, Steven Moffat’s thighs, and the loss of Russell’s third-best pair of trousers in Soho. “But Ben and I just kept on writing to each other,” explains Russell. “It had become a habit. As it went on, it sort of became clear that there was one last gasp between the end of the original book and the end of my work on Doctor Who, so it seemed quite a small step to take… which then tuned into 350 bloody pages!”
The new volume, called The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter, features 135,000 words of new material, across 13 chapters, taking the correspondence up to September 2009 and covering David Tennant’s final episodes as the Doctor. It’s as candid, as honest, and as impulsive as the first book… which is thrown in for good measure. “I’m proud of both books,” says Russell. “That’s important to me – that I was honest, and said stuff about writing that I haven’t seen anywhere else. After the first book was published, I had a few letters saying that it was self-indulgent, and one even said ‘solipsistic’ – but if you buy a book stuffed full of my e-mails, what the hell are you expecting?!”
Doesn’t demystifying the writing process make Russell’s job harder, ultimately?
“I did worry, actually. I thought I might wreck my own scripts, because I’d exposed the wiring, and made the whole thing fuse… or something. Look how good it’s made my analogies! Or is that a metaphor? You see, I’m broken. But when it came to the next script, I just put my head down, and got on with it. Writing is so full of fear and panic that the last thing on my mind was what I’d said in the first book.”
In the second book, and knowing that his e-mails might be published, did Russell censor himself as he went?
“There wasn’t any censorship,” he says. “These e-mails are written in the heat of the moment, often in the small hours. The whole point of them is to unburden myself of everything that’s in my head. Start to plan that, and modify it, and I’d be doubling my own workload.”
So, to what extent does this new edition complete the story told in the first?
“It’s not so much a snapshot – a year in the life – as a story with a proper beginning, a middle, and an end,” acknowledges Russell. Topics include the killing of Ianto Jones, an ABBA/Torchwood crossover, slagging off Prince Charles, and the arrival of Matt Smith. “If I’d been in the middle of my time on Doctor Who, we couldn’t have kept going every year, or whole rainforests would have been cut down. But we had the chance, in the new pages, to look back at Series One, and all the peaks and troughs along the way, so there are a good few more memories in the text. And by covering the end of David’s time, we do get to talk about Operation Cobra – the plan to announce David’s departure live on ITV, which was still the maddest thing we ever did. I read those chapters back and think: we were inane! But I wouldn’t have missed a second of it.”
BUY IT BECAUSE: It includes lots of exciting things. Here are DWM’s edited highlights… Page 344: “Imagine kissing Davros!” Page 364: “The Doctor on board the Enterprise, puncturing Starfleet pomposity…” Page 407: “Torchwood is in a desperate state. DESPERATE! I am weeping.” Page 459: “Some sod has had their photo taken with me, and given me BLOODY FLEAS!!!” Page 474: “I realised that I’m channelling The Faceless Ones.” Page 524: “There’s still no sign of the missing £300,000…” Page 538: “Daleks, they’re just dicks in bins.” Page 622: “The fans will says it’s Romana. Or even the Rani. Some might say that it’s Susan’s mother. But of course it’s meant to be –” Page 660: “Michael Jackson wants to visit the TARDIS set at 4.30pm today!”
