Back to the future: My Russell T Davies interview revisited
Russell T Davies on Doctor Who, the TV industry and more, including religion, humanism and sexuality in his writing – back in 2007!
Back when I was an undergraduate student, I was privileged to have the opportunity to interview Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies for Gair Rhydd, Cardiff University’s student newspaper, in spring 2007 shortly before series 3 of the revived show aired.
With Russell T Davies back in the helm and rebooting the show once more with Ncuti Gatwa as the new Doctor, I thought this would be a good time to republish my interview. I’m still proud of it almost 17(!) years on.
It was great to meet Davies again at the RTS screening of The Star Beast on the 60th anniversary itself on 23rd November. I’ve got lots of thoughts on the anniversary specials, but with a house move underway (moving day is next week!), I’m going to have to wait until 2024 to gather some overall thoughts together on the latest regeneration of the show.
On the Doctor Who beat…
Before the interview, here’s a round-up of some of my other writing and speaking on Doctor Who - with the anniversary, I’ve had chance to don the scarf and play the part of Christian Doctor Who “super-fan”!
Premier Christianity article: Doctor Who at 60: The spiritual themes behind the sci-fi phenomenon
Premier Christian Radio interview: Jesus is the ultimate Time Lord
God in Film Podcast - Doctor Who 60th Anniversary special - Is being Jesus’ disciple like being a Doctor’s companion?
Equip.org: The Romantic Rationalism of Doctor Who
On to the interview…
The RTD interview
“I can come here in the mornings and sit and have a coffee. Just watch the world go by, I love it,” Davies tells me as we sit down to talk in a café down in Cardiff Bay, just round the corner from where Torchwood supposedly have their underground Hub.
At an impressive 6’6”, one of Britain’s top television writers is something of a friendly giant. He has a boundless enthusiasm, with the superlatives flowing fast and free.
“We’ve just finished the first three episodes, and they’re the most spectacular things we’ve ever, ever produced,” he says proudly. As Doctor Who hits its third series, can we expect any changes to the format? “The format is to be different every week - different story, different setting, different cast, very often a different style every week. With that as a given, you don’t want to change it too much.”
The show seems as energised as ever, with series three featuring the Family of Blood, the planet Malcassairo, the return of Captain Jack and the arrival of the Doctor’s mysterious nemesis, Mr Saxon. It also sees the introduction of Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones.
“She's absolutely lovely, we're dead chuffed with her. She brings a whole new energy with her to the TARDIS,” enthuses Davies. “As with Rose, Martha's family also play a role in the series. So far Francine, Leo, Tish and the rest of the Jones clan have featured less than Mickey, Jackie and Pete Tyler. But watch out for them again towards the end of the series – one of them will have a crucial decision to make.”
Davies already had a distinguished writing career to his name before reviving Doctor Who. He studied at Worcester College, Oxford, and went on to work in television. But what's not as well known is that he spent a year studying in Cardiff. I ask Davies about his time here:
RTD: When I came to Cardiff there was this most fantastic course, a Theatre Studies course, which was run by the University but based at the Sherman Theatre. They chose 15 people every year for a year long course and you formed a theatre company, the Sherman Arena Company with set budgets and design budgets and they taught you lighting and choreography and things like that. Really, really lovely, so, that's when I first came and lived here.
Do you ever feel like you're spearheading a Welsh takeover of the television schedules?
Hahaha! Not a takeover, but I honestly feel one of my most important tasks is getting Welsh people on TV. Before Doctor Who and all this came along, I wrote a series called Mine All Mine for ITV with a highly Welsh cast. It's very important to normalise it as a voice, as an accent, because television is full of Scottish and Irish characters, and we're genuinely under-served. It's a long process, but you've just got to keep chipping away.
So how did you make the transition from working on shows like Why Don’t You? and Chucklevision to writing award-winning shows like Queer as Folk?
I was so singled minded in those days, so determined, I look back and laugh at myself. I was working at BBC Manchester and down the road was Granada, which was a powerhouse, even more so then than it is now, so I literally thought I was in the wrong building. I was so determined I left my job at the BBC and went on the dole with no money. I was a producer by this stage, they thought I was mad!
But I said ‘No, I’m in the wrong job’, and so left that and went to Granada and went making contacts, knocking on doors... Determined as I was, it worked, and it only took about three months. I blagged my way into a job as a script editor, having never been a proper script editor. And on my first day at work, I was on Children’s Ward, with Paul Abbott and Kay Mellor, who now run television drama. It was like the gods were shining on me that day.
About the humanism in your writing...
A proper interview. Hooray!
Thank you! In The Second Coming, Christopher Eccleston’s working-class Son of God tells humanity that if they want the position of God, then take the responsibility. Do you think humanity can take that responsibility?
We’re still alive! I think you have to recognise that responsibility, rather than referring upwards. I think that’s something of what religion is... [But also] I think religion is a very primal instinct within humans, a very good one, part of our imagination. I’m not an enemy of that instinct that tells us to look upwards.
It’s as fundamental an instinct as it is to look up at the sun... It’s that in-built, that hard-wired. I think even the most in-born atheist like myself would look up when we talk about this sort of stuff. It’s a solar thing.
It’s equally clear that the power of the religious over the White House is terrifying. I know when The Second Coming came out, people were saying on Newsnight Review that religion hardly matters in the world any more. Next thing we know, we’re practically in a holy war. It’s going to go on for centuries, unless we deal with it all very quickly. This is so ingrained, this is the axis of power in the world now, and the philosophical struggle in the world from now on. And that is fundamentally based on religion.
In Torchwood, Captain Jack speaks disparagingly of our “neat little categories” when it comes to sexuality, and Bob and Rose upset some in the gay community by having a gay man fall in love with a woman...
Well, they’re idiots! I don’t think my view of sexuality is quite as fluid as I portray it on screen, because what you’re portraying on screen is extraordinary events happening to ordinary people. The fact that it’s a drama means it’s got to be more dramatic! A lot of people are just straight, and equally, I’m just gay. There’s a fair amount of fixedness, within which, you have to look at the possibility that anything can happen.
Do you see yourself as having any responsibilities as a writer beyond telling a good story?
That’s interesting... No. Not really. I think the story is the thing, because if you start to imagine other responsibilities, then you’re starting to imagine other people’s voices in your head, and the most important thing you can do is keep your voice pure and strong. This doesn’t mean not listening to criticism - actually, it probably does mean not listening to criticism.
If after I’d written Queer as Folk I’d felt very responsible to that gay audience that was watching, then that could have convinced me not to write Bob and Rose, which is probably the finest thing I’ve ever written. I still think that episode one is just about perfect, and that’s very rare. But you could argue that my responsibility as a gay man then becomes a responsibility not to write a drama in which a gay man becomes straight.
Speaking of criticism, Torchwood got something of a mixed reaction. Charlie Brooker compared it to Scooby Doo with swearing, blood and sex, for example. What do you think of these criticisms?
We don’t really pay much attention to it really, equally, when Doctor Who is praised to the skies, we don’t pay any attention to that. Praise is just as unhelpful as criticism. We know what’s working and what isn’t, which is not necessarily what you think is working and what isn’t, and never will be, and we’ll work on that.
And that Charlie Brooker column was hilarious, brilliantly written, the man’s a fantastic polemic writer. But if you turned round to Charlie Brooker and said ‘So does that mean you think television dramatists should listen to the word of TV columnists?’, he’d run away in horror!
Doctor Who is a very optimistic show. Do you think that optimism is always honest and justified? For example, in the episode Boom Town, the Doctor faces a dilemma between justice and mercy - taking the villainous Margaret Slitheen to her home planet, where she will be executed for her crimes, or letting her go in the hope that she will change. (“In that restaurant up there!” Davies says, pointing to where the Doctor and Margaret discussed that question over a last supper together in that story.) In the end, the TARDIS returns her to an egg, giving her a chance at a new life, but it just seems to be a magic answer out of nowhere.
Yes, I see what you mean, but of course it comes out of magic, because that is our only option, because what is the resolution to the debate around that table up there. What is it? Imagine the outcry if the Doctor had decided one opinion either way. He couldn’t, he literally couldn’t. There is no answer to that debate. We all want a chance to start again, we’d all go back and redo things. Only science fiction can give you that ending.
What I love about that, is you’re having a philosophical debate that eight-year olds can sit there and get involved in, about the death penalty. The whole planet hasn’t come up with an ending to that argument, and we never will. And that’s why the Earth opens and the sky shakes, that is literally a sort of divine intervention.
“Everything has its time, and everything dies.” When the time comes, should that apply to the Doctor?
Ooh no, never! He’s beyond that now. If someone took over and the show got axed, and they decided to kill him in the very last episode, you and I know he wouldn’t be dead. In ten years time, someone would come along and say ‘Oh look, he was wearing the Crystal of Gothnar and has been resurrected!’, or they’d just open with scene one in the TARDIS with him flying along.
I think it’s very important when you’re writing it that you don’t write him as immortal. A couple of times in this series we point out that being able to regenerate doesn’t mean you can’t die. If he were shot through the heart, he’d be dead. He wouldn’t have time to regenerate, to trigger the process.
Everything has its time, and that includes this interview.
Not short answers, as you can tell, Caleb - a lot of transcribing, I’m sorry! I hope you can edit me down. This will have to be a special pull-out brochure - gair rhydd, 100 pages with Russell T Davies!”
With massive thanks to Russell T Davies for the interview! Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary specials are on iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ worldwide, with Ncuti Gatwa’s official debut in The Church on Ruby Road airing on Christmas Day.
