I’ve always had at least one friend who talked about the old Dr. Who television show with such animation and goofy enthusiasm I’d always meant to watch a few episodes just to see what they were going on about. A couple of years ago, languishing in a London hotel room, I discovered the new Dr. Who, brought back from British television’s hinterlands by Russell T Davies, Phil Collinson, and Julie Gardner. I fell head over keister for it.
The Writer’s Tale is a year-long email correspondence between Russell T Davies, Head Writer of Dr. Who from 2005-2010, and Benjamin Cook, a London-based writer and journalist. It covers the year Davies wrote and produced Season 4 of Dr. Who, and his decision to begin the process of handing the series to another writer.
Two years later they published an expanded version of the book, called The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter which continues the story for another year, marked by the writing and production of five Dr. Who specials and Davies’ passing the show on to his successor, Steven Moffat.
Benjamin Cook puts himself in the position of being our man on the ground, which is good, because we probably aren’t cheeky enough to ask a busy fellow like Russell T Davies to bare his soul in print! While it’s clear they were on friendly terms from the beginning, over the course of the correspondence Cook becomes more than just an interviewer; he is a confidant and an outlet for Davies to share his worries about friends, collaborators, and the show. He distracts and supports Davies with questions, building a relationship until he is able to make solid suggestions for scripts which, at one point, result in major story changes. His life isn’t as exposed as Davies’, but you get a bit of an idea of what it is like to be a young media journalist and writer in London*.
Cook’s intention in questioning Davies was to take “…a progressive look at not just the scriptwriting and storytelling processes, but also Russell’s role as showrunner of [Dr. Who]” and “to find out what it’s like to live and write under such a weight of expectation”.
“Weight of expectation”. Yes, there was certainly a lot of room to arse it up, what with the deadlines, schedule juggling, production hiccups, editing and rewriting scripts, not to mention dealing with leaks to the press! Davies went through a tumult of emotion, bombarded from the outside, as he had to promote and produce as well as write scripts for three different shows and edit other writers’ work.
It’s very clear that Davies knows a lot about his medium and his industry. His beautifully well-reasoned explanations of guidelines he developed to handle situations ranging from challenging cultural images and handling funding issues, to mentoring writers with potential, all back up his assertion “that the real world is part of the writing process, too”, a point anyone who wants to create for a living has to face up to eventually. Davies and Cook also share moments of inspiration, transformation of dead ends, and here and there in answer to direct questions from Ben, pointers on writing, producing, and working in television.
Davies is aware of the contradictions that arise when talking about passions over time, and of the contrasting sides of himself he uses as filters in different situations. He knows when being a bastard will be helpful, and when it’s all about being nice or fucking off. He doesn’t hide any of it, though he often questions himself. What comes through is his deep-seated need to live up to the vision for the story he shares with his friends and collaborators. He works as hard as he does out of respect for executive producer Julie Gardner, who shook her caboose to get him as much money as possible, producer Phil Collinson, busting his hump every day, and the cast and crew who kicked ass as long as it took or froze their bums off to bring that vision to fruition. For me, reading about what drives him was the best part of the book, especially as it covered his last 2 years on a show that he was instrumental in turning into a star-making, spin-off creating machine. Where many people would rest on their laurels, he keeps kicking himself in the pants to make it even better.
I only found one area to be a disappointment. In Book One, arses are mentioned 7 times in the email subject headers, sometimes more than once! Cook and Davies dedication to one of the most important and multifunctional parts of the human anatomy is admirable; however, in Book Two they lose their focus. It took fully 7 months for them to find it again, with the header “Prince Charle’s Arse”, but even then they were only able to keep it up for less than 2 months**. Disappointing from men of their caliber.
*Fun.
**There were 4 mentions in those 2 months, so, measured in ‘arses per month’, those are the most outstanding of the entire correspondence.
(BBC Books, 2010)
Comments