Russell T Davies Interview: Giving "New Energy" to a "Classic Show"

“I think the most extraordinary thing about Doctor Who is that it’s one long story that’s never stopped. Which, considering how many different showrunners, producers, and lead actors have come in with new changes, is remarkable. It’s such a great survivor, and it survives by being itself.”

Russell T Davies has always been a big believer in Doctor Who’s ability to be anything it wants to be, which is why it’s a show that’s been around in some form for over 60 years. His return to the show after 13 years away was an exciting prospect for fans, and speaking to GLHF, it’s clear that he’s not lost that vision for what Doctor Who should always be.

“One of the things I thought coming into it was not to reinvent the wheel,” Davies says. “I don’t think it needs reinventing, I think it’s a wonderful classic show that, in many ways has never changed, but what you want to do is bring 2024 to it. That’s what I do no matter what I’m writing, whether I’m writing about gay life in Manchester, politics in London, or nightlife in New York, I always want to make it look like today.

“I want to think about where we are in the world and what’s happening to the world, what the taste of things is – it’s very important to bring that to it. But I do that automatically, I don’t have to put much thought into it, actually, and I feel very trusted by the BBC and Disney+ to let my voice be heard. They don’t stop me, nothing’s ever censored or challenged, it’s a very fruitful relationship.

“I want to give it new energy, but that you can see in the form of Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson. It’s a great joy in my life to find actors like that – and I’m not saying I sit back and take it easy – but they’ve certainly made my life a million times easier just by being themselves.”

Davies has spoken before about how Ncuti and Millie were easy choices for their respective roles, saying the auditions were very straightforward, but once he got on set with them, he found a whole new side to their personalities.

“I was surprised by how funny they are,” he explains. “I always thought Eric in Sex Education [played by Ncuti Gatwa] was hilarious when he needed to be and equally tragic when he needed to be, but Millie came from a soap opera background in which her character had been a drug addict, and a hostage, and had tried to murder her own father.

“She comes from that strain of British soap opera that can be very dark at times with a lot of crime and modern urban problems, so I had no idea how funny she was. There’s an expert comic there that you don’t know about until you see her spinning jokes and being physically funny, that was a real joy to discover because that suits my writing and it suits Doctor Who brilliantly.

“When the chips are down she can be as tragic and heartfelt as needs be, but to get that level of comic timing with someone that young – she was 19 years old at the time – that’s really rare. My god, what a great performance that is.

In our interview with Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson , one thing they emphasized about Davies is how particular he is when it comes to the wording in his scripts. Russell is a very experienced wordsmith, and he stands by his decision to be strict over his words.

“If ever they’ve got a better way to say things then I’ll listen to that, and they do sometimes, but you have to watch it,” Davies elaborates. “On all programs, I’ve slaved over every word, and I’ve sat there at 2am deciding whether a sentence begins with ‘and’ or ‘but’ or ‘the’ or ‘yet’, and I think if you allow too much improvisation you’ll find a lot of repetition.

“It’s not an actor’s job to know what the next scene starts with, so if they finish a scene and they add a ‘Well, that’s the end of that’, and then the next scene begins with ‘Well, what are we going to do next?’ it starts to sound a bit cheap and generic. So yes, I’m very specific, I’m paid to sit here and choose the right words, and these scripts go through many drafts with a thousand notes.”

He’s encountered this problem on Doctor Who before, where he regretted not being more protective over his writing.

“It’s a funny thing,” he says. “I sound a bit didactic about it, but there was one actor in one episode many years ago who rewrote all his dialogue, and I very grudgingly accepted it. What happens is that character disappears from the story because he falls out of the rhythm of the action around him. It affects performance in ways that no actor can quite see. It’s my job to have the bigger picture – there’s a rhythm to these things – and once you fall out of that, suddenly you don’t fit into the edits or the characters who are sticking to the structure have more strength.

“So it was amazing to watch. We didn’t do it on purpose, but I watched that character disappear – which was a lovely character but is now never discussed as a great Doctor Who character because he kind of slides off the screen.

“Ooo that sounded didactic, didn’t it?” he says, taking a sip of tea.

Davies has written six of the eight episodes in this series, with one of the remaining episodes being written by another former Doctor Who showrunner, Steven Moffat, who is penning his first episode since 2017, simply titled, Boom.

“Steven is obviously a genius, I knew him of old, and he’s my friend.” Davies explains. “You can’t blame me for embarking on a brand-new enterprise and getting a friend on board. Not just that, but a friend who will deliver world-class drama. Let’s not forget he invented the Weeping Angels, he gave away a major movie franchise with that one simple idea that alone could’ve made him a million at the box office – and every idea he has is like that.”

Moffat has said in many interviews that he’s always hesitant about the idea of returning to write Doctor Who, but in the end, it didn’t take that much convincing from Davies to get him on board.

“Two phone calls,” Davies says. “It wasn’t quite immediate. As he says himself – he’s written something like 60 episodes or more, and he has a slightly busy career. It must be said, he’s not exactly short of work – asking him to write an episode is like jumping onto a runaway train, but of course, he loves it. Once he pitched the idea of [Boom] set on the world of Castarian 3, I just leaped on it and said ‘ Please come and write that’, I begged, it’s a brilliant episode, absolutely brilliant.”

The other episode, titled Rogue, is written by the duo of Kate Heron, most famous for writing season 1 of Loki, and Briony Redman, who is a well-known stand-up and improv comic.

“I hugely admire Kate Heron’s work on Loki,” Davies tells us. “Obviously, I wanted women writing, and I’m aware that we haven’t got enough women writing or writers of color, which we’re fixing in the next series to come. Kate and I made contact over Loki and she then introduced me to Briony, who might not be so well known unless you move in comedy circles where in improv and stand-up she’s a legend, and they just bring their own style.

“That’s what you want, you want a Doctor Who episode like no other, and my god I love that story, I can’t wait for you to see that story. It’s the richest, loveliest, and most heartfelt story of the lot.”

Ultimately one of the most enjoyable things about Doctor Who is that it can house such a wide range of ideas side-by-side while still pushing a parade of optimistic ideals for the future of humanity, and Davies thinks there’s one key fact that has continually made that possible for over 60 years.

“It’s freedom, absolute freedom,” he says resolutely. “[The Doctor] doesn’t have a boss to report to, no one ever tells him off. He lives the life of a child, really. He goes where he wants and does what he wants – if a child could do whatever they want, they’d never go to bed, they’d run around at midnight, they’d play with all their toys, they’d imagine monsters in corners – there’s a fantastic child’s imagination at the heart of it, and I think if the show keeps tapping into that it never goes wrong.”

You can check out our spoiler-free Doctor Who Season 1 review if you want to find out what form that imagination takes in this new era of the show.

The first two episodes of Doctor Who Season 1, Space Babies and The Devil’s Chord, release on BBC iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ in the rest of the world at 7pm ET on Friday, May 10, 2024/midnight BST on Saturday, May 11, 2024. Both episodes will also be airing back-to-back on BBC One in the UK on Saturday evening.