SWF: Doctor Who Day (hurrah!)
International Screenwriters Festival: 29th October 2009
On Day 4 of the Screenwriters Festival, you could have attended sessions on taste and offensiveness in humour, films with a social conscience, porn, getting sued (these three sessions not being linked in any way, shape or form), marketing yourself through social media… or Doctor Who, Doctor Who, and more Doctor Who. For the last day was weighted rather heavily towards the Once Upon A Time Lord thread, and was a little thin on the ground for anyone not up for adventures through time and space.
Fortunately I am an ardent fan of all things Who, so after three days of quite serious talks and sessions, I was quite content to tag around after the assorted Who crew.
Classic Who Panel
Under the watchful eye-plunger of a classic Dalek, lurking at the back of the stage, self-professed Who fan Jason Arnopp hosted a panel of writers Terrance Dicks and Bob Baker, producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Andrew Cartmel. More entertaining than educational, the session threw the earlier workings of the BBC drama departments into grave disrepute, all activities apparently centering around the free BBC bar until work absolutely had to be done. From the many tales of Dicks and Baker, it seems Doctor Who could only ever have been made by accident rather than plan, and indeed Dicks denounced the whole script department as an utter ‘shambles’.
If that dampened my regard of the 80’s BBC any, Hinchcliffe’s mournful declaration that Doctor Who was cancelled in the end because no-one in the Beeb’s upper hierarchy loved – or even cared – for it finished the job.
Andrew Cartmel meanwhile inherited Doctor Who to script edit just after its semi-cancellation at the end of the ailing Colin Baker era. With no expectations on the show and needing an injection of new creativity, he took a risk unlikely to be seen again from the BBC in hiring a fairly new crew to write Sylvester McCoy’s episodes. It was not a disaster, but did not save Doctor Who from a near-terminal cancellation three years later.
The New Who
After lunch journalist Ben Cook hosted a discussion between outgoing new-Who producer Phil Collinson, writers Gareth Roberts and James Moran, and director James Strong. The session started with a rousing show reel of the finest moments of the 9th and 10th Doctors and soon turned to the difficulties the writers face in constantly challenging a character who is pretty much cleverer than everyone else put together.
This dilemma has led to such memorable episodes as Roberts’ devastating ‘Fires of Pompeii’, where the Doctor is faced with the grimmest consequences of his travels through time – an issue set to be explored again in November’s upcoming ‘Waters of Mars’, where David Tennant’s Doctor will begin his own undoing by breaking the laws of time.
There was also discussion about working with a show runner like Russell T Davies. Davies would give the writers only a logline or ‘ingredients list’, before tweaking the final scripts himself and adding in all the overarching plot references – Roberts, for example, had no more idea than the audience why Donna is told in Pompeii that she has ‘something’ on her back, even though he’d written the rest of the episode!
The Further Adventures of Who
These being Torchwood, Sarah Jane Adventures, K-9, audio books and novelisations. Oh, and comics. And magazines. And short story anthologies. And… oh never mind. Will it ever end?
Well, hopefully not, and certainly the panel of Michael Stevens (DW audio books writer), Gareth Roberts, James Moran, Joseph Lidster (Torchwood and audio book writer) and moderator Jason Arnopp seem to agree. Is Torchwood dead? How can it be? we cried. How can it be? even Roberts wailed. No, have faith. But even if the TV show is over, the continuing adventures of Captain Jack & Co are safe in the hands of Big Finish publications and BBC Audio. Even death can’t stop a character (or Doctor, thank goodness) reappearing in an audio book or original novel.
Once again more interesting than educational, the panel discussed the way the Doctor Who universe had been expanded to tap a number of audience demographics – with Torchwood very successfully grabbing the ‘adult’ market and Sarah Jane Adventures bringing alien mayhem to a new generation of children – and challenges of writing for different mediums. What the session did reinforce for new writers is that there are more ways to break into writing than just TV or film, even if that’s your final intended destination.