Who Reviews The Writers Tale by DJ Forrest

 

The Writers Tale is a collection of emails sent between Benjamin Cook of Doctor Who Magazine and Russell T Davies, over the course of a year, which took in Season 4 Doctor Who, including the Specials, Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures, and including snippets of scripts from the episodes and how they were often changed before the final cut. 

It gave an insight to one of my favourite writers and producers of Doctor Who and how stressful it can be juggling so many ‘plates’ as it were, of scripts, and deadlines but the end results are always spectacular. 

I only wish I’d read this book first, because there is so much more to read in the emails than in the first book. 

If you read it from First book to Second, it makes reading the Second book a little bit of a chore, because a lot of the emails are the same, except with additional portions, but you don’t know that at the time, unless you open the First book to match, which I probably should have done. Except then, it becomes more of a study process and I’m only really looking for about an hour’s read before I shut the lights off for the night. So ideally you need to read the Second Book first and then jump to the scripts in the First book, to know what Russell is talking about. I wish I’d done that. 

However, that aside, I learnt a lot more about writing, the techniques of writing, character building, and so much more. I learnt that Russell’s take on the idea process is similar to how I think, and for a long time, I barely made notes except in my head. I worked with music on a loop for action scenes and discovered that Russell also did this, although he almost played the song to death – which after a while I stopped because it was driving me nuts!!! 

But you do need to read this book first. It makes more sense, and it’s more enjoyable, because the emails are longer, and it put me in the mood to re-watch Series 4 and Donna Noble.

What I enjoyed about the book, is that Russell never throws any idea away, and over the years and the various shows he’s written, including all the non-Doctor Who shows, you can see how an idea that he’d wanted for say Doctor Who, was later introduced into another series. I could see the ideas for one particular group of people being used in a futuristic series which later became Years and Years. Although I haven’t as yet seen the RTD series Boys, I discovered that other ideas in the book were later used for this – I made that discovery after a recent interview with Nathan Sussex who plays a part in Boys. 

There is so much to learn about Russell and his techniques, that it’s definitely not a book I want to part with. There are so many helpful tips for writers, that it would be crazy to let it go. You feel his pain and anguish regarding certain elements of his writing for Doctor Who, and how much Torchwood, in particular was a hard write for him. Kind of like you’re spinning so many plates and trying to keep them all spinning, until you have to stop and take a break, before you kill yourself. Torchwood took a lot of time and trouble to put together but you could imagine the cogs moving for ideas, but they’d be far different to those of Doctor Who. I found a great sympathy for him as a writer. We never think about that when we’re demanding more stories, or asking why certain characters have to be killed off. A good death scene is powerful in a drama, but yeah, losing a key component of the team, is gutting for many. 

The book is almost the thickness of War and Peace and if like me, you’ve only an hour a night to read it, you’re going to be reading this for some months to come. I’m over halfway through the book. There are photos of the cast of Who, including some great ones of David and the Master, and RTD with Phil and Julie. 

I would have loved to have been Ben, emailing back and forth with Russell, including into the early hours of the morning. Those 2am emails! They must have been such fun times back then. 

I miss that era of Doctor Who. You felt connected to the characters. You already loved the actors, and you’d been to Cardiff and wanted to revisit the sites where they filmed the series. The FX and the builds were absolutely awesome and that’s what reignited my passion for Who, and the spin-offs. Re-watching old episodes. The humour and All that running. 

I miss those times. 

I miss Russell T Davies. Thank you, Ben, for putting this together, what a wonderful way of learning how a script writer works, and all the pressures of working in the industry.