RTD: Doctor Who- The Writer's Tale

[SiHart]

Coming this autumn from BBC Books:



Could be an interesting read...

Si xx

[Dave Tudor]

Ooh! Looks very interesting!

[Rob McCow]

He bestrides the TARDIS console like a colossus, the Doctor Who logo flying out of his pants. This will be one popular book!

[SiHart]

"I've never written a book about the untold story of Doctor Who before..."

Si xx

[Paul Monk]

Philip Pullman seems an unusual choice to write the foreword.
I like the look of this book.

(I still think Ben Cook lives in RTD's wardrobe)

[Si Hunt]

Is he leaving Doctor Who? If not, to be brutally honest he'll be saying very nice things about a lot of very nice people, and we'll not get the hoped-for lifting the lid on unreasonable actors, unreliable writers and the whole Eccleston debacle.

Si.

[Rob McCow]

It'll still be worthwhile if it contains his original plans and ideas for the series. How much did he have mapped out in advance?

[Dirk Gently]

Yes, he is leaving Doctor Who, I'm just not sure whether the book will be out before or after he's left.

[Andrew Curnow]

I would definitely like to get that, but I think Si's right in that there's unlikely to be any real dirt in it.

[Si Hunt]

On the other hand, look what news has emerged today... could be juicier than we thought!

Si.

[Andrew Curnow]

Maybe... but it's coming out later this year, when he's still got the specials to do; and it's an official BBC book. So he's not in any sense left yet, and won't have done until a while after this is published.

[Si Hunt]

Bah. I'll hold out for the scandalous one then.

Si.

[Pip Madeley]

Revised cover:



Tennant must not have time to do the afterword. Anyway, cheapest price is £15 delivered at Amazon.co.uk (link affiliated!)...

[Andrew Curnow]

Is it just my eyes, or does RTD's left leg below the rail not line up with the left leg above the rail??? (That's his left, the right hand side as you look at it.)

[shada pavlova]

Bloody hell, you're right!

I never thought RTD would need a leg double...

I'll probably be given that for christmas by somebody.

That & Trial of a Time Lord.

[Andrew Curnow]

It must be some kind of photo cover-up conspiracy (like the moon landings). Maybe there's somebody else in charge, and the bloke we think of as RTD is actually just a model - that's the genuine left foot of the man in charge with "RTD" photoshopped on top of him. It's literally the only possible explanation...

[Dave Lewis]

Surely "The Writer's Tale" has already been told?

[Milky Tears]

It really could've been Mr Hopper in 'Voyage of the Damned'!

http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle4759150.ece

[Lord President]

I thought, don't ask J.K. to write a Doctor Who, ask her to be in a Doctor Who! We've done Dickens, Shakespeare, Agatha Christie...why should kids think that all great authors are dead? Imagine it. A cold Edinburgh Christmas Eve. J.K.Rowling walking through the snow, pursued by a journalist. “What are you going to write after Harry Potter?”

The diffcult second album...Later, J.K. sits down to write. At the same time, a Space Bug (maybe the same as Donna's time-psych creature in 4.11), probably put there by the Rita Skeeter-type journalist, leaps onto her back. ZAP!

J.K.'s imagination becomes real! A world of Victorian magic replaces the present-day world. The Doctor arrives and has to battle through a world of witches and wizards, with wands and spells and CGI wonders, to reach J.K. Rowling at the heart of it all... That's either brilliant or more like a Blue Peter crossover.

But worth trying. It's different, certainly. So, Julie is trying to set up a meeting with J.K. ...Imagine those opening titles: DAVID TENNANT flying at you, then J.K.ROWLING!...Imagine the Doctor in a world of magic made real - that would be glorious. So, there we go. That's under way.

Did anyone else pick up on this? What a God-awful idea!!!!!!!!

I'm so glad they went with the original 'Cybermen in Victorian Snow' idea!

[Pip Madeley]

And it was Tennant himself that vetoed the idea! Interesting to know they knew as far back as early 2006 about the plans for 2010.

[WhiteCrow]

Yeah the JK idea really stinks. I think half the fun of having historical writers is playing around with "this might have inspired them to write ...". You can't really do that with a contemporary writer.

The BBC website link

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7618537.stm

[WhiteCrow]

It really could've been Mr Hopper in 'Voyage of the Damned'!

http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle4759150.ece

Oh yes - imagine what we could have got. I have visions of a Blue Velvet Dennis Hopper playing Max, and donning a mask, whilst humping Kylie Minogue.

Imagine what an alternative to the Queens speech that would have been on Christmas Day.

[Pip Madeley]

More interesting facts:

STEVEN MOFFAT began work on the first episode of SERIES 5 back in January

KATE WINSLET was the first choice for River Song

[Rob McCow]

SFX gave it five big stars.

You can douse all the other books about new Who in lighter fuel and spark up your Zippo - this is all you need. It’s the only one that opens a door into the brain of the series’ showrunner.

It’s essentially the world’s longest interview. Hewn from a year-long exchange of emails between Russell T Davies and trusted journo Ben Cook, it records every up-all-night scripting session, and every flash of inspiration on the way to Tesco. It comes as close as a book can to answering that deathless question, “Where do you get your ideas from?” Fascinatingly, it also captures the paths not taken: Mark Gatiss’s World War II-era episode, with monsters on the loose in the Natural History Museum; Dennis Hopper playing Mr Copper in “Voyage of the Damned” (yes, he really was offered that role!); the phantom existence of Penny Carter, the Northern companion who never was.

Naturally, the emails have been filtered and edited, but this still feels surprisingly uncensored for an official tie-in book. Take the chapter which discusses online fan criticism: it’s titled “BASTARDS”. You might understand why when you read about Helen Raynor’s reaction to browsing the forums: “She was literally shaking afterwards. Like she’d been physically assaulted”. Davies also breaks his “never criticise the old series” rule (describing Sylvester McCoy’s debut as “a deep, dark trough”) and clarifies the extent of his “script polishing” - often a 60% rewrite, sometimes almost 100%.

Other miscellaneous things we learn include:
* Davies was asked to meet with George Lucas to discuss writing for the Star Wars TV series - he decided to decline.
* He was also asked to appear on Dancing On Ice!
* “The Shakespeare Code” was meant to include a swordfight scene, but a stuntman was hit in the eye with a sword during filming.
* Ianto was going to die in Torchwood season two, not Owen - the scripts were changed at the very last minute.
* The first idea for the season four opener was a story about wild dogs called Vorlox coming through a portal from another world, but Davies decided it was “too Primeval”.
* An earlier idea for “Partners in Crime” featured botox injections that cause alien transformation.
* Episode eight of season four was originally planned as a Tom MacRae script in which the Doctor goes live on Most Haunted.
* Midshipman Frame from “Voyage of the Damned” nearly came back in “The Stolen Earth” - as did a young Margaret Slitheen (Annette Badland even recorded a line).
* Davies also wrote a scene showing how a young Davros became horribly injured.
* As originally shot, “Journey’s End” ended with two Cybermen looming up behind the Doctor.

It’s a brutally honest book, and the self-portraiture is not always flattering. This book should help to dispel the popular misconception of Davies as some kind of big gay Laughing Cavalier, the man forever booming, “Marvellous!” on Doctor Who Confidential. There’s more to him than the PR game-face mistaken by some for smug self-satisfaction. Here, we see other sides to him: the procrastinating writer, consumed with self-doubt; the man who logs onto a Who forum to “see how shit I am”; the exec ruthless enough to dump that Gatiss script (a year’s work) without a twinge of empathy.

It’s not perfect – it would have benefited from a little more ruthless editing. And it’s not a manual, like Robert McKee’s Story: it won’t tell you to how to write, only how one man writes. All the same, by demystifying the process, showing that writing isn’t magical but the result of (often agonising) hard graft, it becomes inspirational. For anyone considering writing professionally, it’s a vital purchase.

This book might get pretty decent sales.

[WhiteCrow]

It does look pretty unmissable doesn't it? I was hoping to put of buying it.

I was thinking it'd be fun to emulate this with the PS Audios ahead of the next batch of episodes, but then ...

the exec ruthless enough to dump that Gatiss script (a year’s work) without a twinge of empathy.

Brought out the old and bitter Mr Crow. Grrrr ...