Authors: Russell T Davies, Benjamin Cook
Price: £16.99 (Amazon price: £11.04)
ISBN: 978-1-846-07861-3
Pages: 704
Publisher: BBC Books
Published: January 14th (that’s tomorrow, baby)
Writing’s not easy. It’s very hard. Ask a writer. Go on. Any writer. They’ll tell you about it at length. Really quite absurd length.
Journalist Benjamin Cook asked Russell T Davies how hard writing is, some time just before the launch of the third series of Doctor Who in February 2007, and the resulting email and text correspondence lasted, well, years. But in a radical move, Cook and Davies decided to turn all that correspondence into a book, and thus Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale was born.
Since then, Russell T Davies has continued to tell Benjamin Cook just how hard writing is, and the additional 300 pages or so of correspondence have been collected together and added to the original book to produce Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale – The Final Chapter. This not only continues Davies’ insights into writing for Doctor Who, as well as Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures and indeed television in general, but also looks at the politics of television, the nature of television production, how PR and the press work, and more.
And if you keep reading this exciting review, you’ll be able to win a copy of it. How’s that for fun?
Stretching to 704 pages, including index for handy access, this is possibly the longest ‘final chapter’ in human history. It’s spread over two parts – the original Writer’s Tale followed by the collected correspondence which continued over the course of the production of The Sarah Jane Adventures – series two/three, Torchwood: Children of Earth, the four specials this year, the publication of The Writer’s Tale and Rusty’s eventual departure and handover to Steven Moffat.
Although I’m sure there’s been polishing here and there, this is a pretty unexpurgated collection of emails, covering everything from Rusty’s deep love of Russell Tovey through to exchanges with The Mill about CGI work and lunches with Catherine Tate; there are also excerpts from scripts that did get made as well as some that didn’t. So whoever you are, you’re bound to be able to take at least something away with you from this, provided you do at least have some interest in either writing or Doctor Who.
You might find yourself skipping over large chunks because you’re really not that interested in Charlie Hunnam’s arse but you are in how Dennis Hopper nearly made it into Voyage of the Damned – or you might skip over how Dennis Hopper nearly made it into Voyage of the Damned but not over Charlie Hunnam’s arse. I’m sure there’ll be a broad church of readers here.
For me, though, the most fascinating parts of the book are
- The writing ‘revelations’
- The production compromises
- How Rusty writes scripts
- What Rusty did but we didn’t know he did it
Writing revelations
Now, if you write at all – even a blog or articles for magazines – and you write copiously and at a reasonable standard, more or less everything Rusty tells you about what writing’s like will ring true to you: the horror of deadlines, trying to find ideas, sources of inspiration, trying to structure well, knowing when something is awful and you’re going to have to ditch large chunks of it, how ideas evolve and combine with new ideas, the crippling self-doubt and so on.
If you’ve ever tried to write fiction, it’ll all strike home even more and the book is dotted with useful insights, in particular, about what TV writers often do wrong. Unfortunately, there’s no handy bit in the index to make these easier to find. Which is sad, because there are very few books out there that deal with TV writing in so informative way.
So, if you have any interest in writing for television – or want to be put off it straight away – get this book.
The production compromises
Anyone who’s ever been interested in television in a serious way knows how much of what we see on the screen is a combination of luck, accident, compromise and collaboration. Almost never do producers, writers and directors set out from the beginning to produce what you see on screen: they start off with something else. The Writer’s Tale demonstrates that very clearly what you see on-screen with Doctor Who is the result of a whole combination of events, many of them outside the production team’s control. Whether you like nu-Who or not, by the time you’ve finished the book, you’ll realise just how much work went into making it at least and that maybe the production team shared some of your concerns, too, but things just went a bit pear-shaped.
The list of horrific compromises – and sometimes fortuitous events – is long. Martha was originally going to appear at the end of the second series of The Sarah Jane Adventures but Sweet FA’s defection to Law and Order meant that she was replaced by The Brigadier at the last minute. Noel Clarke bailed on Torchwood: Children of Earth just a few weeks before the read through – and he was supposed to be in episodes four and five. A Northern lass called Penny was originally going to be the Doctor’s companion during series four and the Doctor was going to love her like he loved Rose – David Jason might even have been her dad. But fortunately, a chance chat between Catherine Tate and Jane Tranter meant that Rusty found out Catherine wanted to come back and Donna became the companion for series four instead.
Sometimes sh*t happens, but sometimes wonderful things do, too, and The Writer’s Tale shows you the whole ugly-pretty mess. It’s also worth noting that a whole load of things that might be happening under the reign of Steven Moffat might well have been instigated by Rusty – that World War 2 script looks like it’s been hanging around for a while, for example, but got shunted out the way in series four because of promises to Freema Agyeman among others (assuming that’s Mark Gatiss’s that is).
How Rusty writes scripts
Everyone has different styles of writing, and whether you love Rusty’s writing or hate it, he has a very distinctive style. What comes out of the book clearly is how he writes, what building blocks he starts with, how he assembles them and so on.
Now, if you hate Rusty, you can see from this the cause of all the problems: how he gets big ideas and skips the pre-amble to them that might have made them work better; how everything’s left to the last minute so sometimes the idea isn’t properly formed when it hits the screen and so on. The ending of Torchwood: Children of Earth has been much criticised because it seems to come out of nowhere and the sacrifice of Jack’s grandson is somewhat unnecessary. Rusty admits he put so much thought into the previous episodes, that the last episode didn’t get enough attention from him. And when you consider some of the alternative ideas that could have been used (an anti-puberty drug), you’ll be glad he got at least that far in the planning stage.
But when you look at just how much pressure is on him throughout, holidays cancelled, etc, you can understand that a lot of the time, it’s probably the best anyone could do in the time available with the resources they had.
And if you love Rusty, you can see all the things that make his scripts great as well: his hatred of jargon and explanations, unnatural dialogue, the lack of emotions in old Who, his focus on character, his humour and so on. It’s all there
You can hate the episodes, but at least you can understand and sympathise; or you can love the episodes, but see how things could have been better. It’s illuminating.
What Rusty did but we didn’t know he did it
Well, if you read the first one you probably knew at least some of these things, but
- Rusty was responsible for big chunks of Human Nature/Family of Blood
- He’s a very good rewriter of scripts. Part of James Moran’s original Fires of Pompeii script is included, along with Rusty’s rewrite, and Moran’s script is really very good; Rusty’s almost total rewrite really lifts it incredibly, though.
- A lot of the ideas for series two of Torchwood were Rusty’s. He was even going to write the first episode – the blowfish in a sports car was his idea – and originally he planned for Ianto to be killed and brought back, before Owen was eventually selected for death and rebirth.
- Martha only lasting a season then returning in future episodes and other series was planned before season three had even finished.
- Rusty probably should have had co-credits on a lot of the scripts, he did so much rewriting
- He used to go to Outpost Gallifrey – now Gallifrey Base – a lot when he was depressed about his work. I would argue that’s ‘contra-indicated’. And although he would disagree, I would argue it’s also very, very easy not to go to Gallifrey Base. Really, it is.
In fact, if you’re looking for a list of revelations, either read the book or read this list from SFX.
In conclusion
I can’t quite say this is “un-put-down-able” because it isn’t. The huge completist nature of the endeavour means this is probably something for dipping into, reading chunks of, re-reading, folding corners over, making notes about and so on. If you don’t like Rusty (or even Benjamin Cook for some reason – why? What’s he ever done to you?), you will end up screaming at the book in hatred at various points – but you’ll probably end up thinking he’s not quite the man you thought he was, since he’s not the arrogant talentless hack that many would have him be. He really isn’t.
It is, however, of real interest to Doctor Who fans, writers, would-be writers and anyone interested in TV production in Britain. If you’ve already got the first book, there is much of further interest, although more for those interested in the day-to-day details of making Who and co, rather than those who want further writing tips.
On the whole, recommended, although maybe just a little bit too completist for its own good.
COMPETITION TIME
Yes, I’m done with my review copy, so I’m going to pass it on to someone else who might want it. If you leave a comment below, you’ll automatically be entered into the utterly random prize draw, and on Monday 18th January 2010, I’ll use the good old Internet random number generator to find out who’s won the copy. European, US and Canadian entrants only (yes, I am willing to post it to you air mail if someone in North America wins).
I promise it’s still in pristine condition.
