When Tom Baker took on the role of Doctor Who, his professional life wasn’t going at all well: unable to find acting jobs, he was working on a construction site, which led to the nickname ‘Boiler Suit Tom’. That didn’t last long, though: in his long coat and even longer scarf (which came about by accident when costume designer James Acheson gave too much wool to the knitter, Begonia Pope – Baker himself suggested he wear the finished result), Tom became quite the nattiest Who to date. His Doctor also had a great fondness for jelly babies (a taste shared with Ronald Reagan) and he quite simply made the role his own. Plotlines became darker and scarier, leading to a complaint from Mary Whitehouse, chairwoman of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, that young viewers might be traumatised, but viewing figures soared higher than ever. In time, they were forced to lighten up a bit, with Baker adlibbing very successfully, finally gaining up to 19 million viewers for some episodes of the series City of Death.
Tom Baker was an incredibly hard act to follow, and despite some sterling performances, no one ever quite did. Peter Davison, fresh from the success of All Creatures Great and Small was a natty Fifth Doctor, and probably the best looking (and, at 29, youngest) to date; he was followed by Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh, Paul McGann, in a TV movie, as the Eighth – and that, would have appeared to be that. By the end of the 1980s, Doctor Who appeared to have run out of steam. In 1989, Jonathan Powell, then Controller of BBC1, suspended the show, and although the BBC said it would one day return, no one really believed him. It had had an incredibly good run, but they’d been there and done everything that they possibly could. Doctor Who, it seemed, was no more.
But one man had a very different take on it all. An increasingly successful player on British prime-time television throughout the 1990s, one man thought that not only was there still a lot of mileage left in Doctor Who, but that it could scale greater heights than ever before. That man was Russell T Davies – and he was about to bring about one of the most spectacular comebacks television had ever known.
CHAPTER 3
DOCTOR WHO REGENERATES
‘All planets have a North’ – the Ninth Doctor
Doctor Who had lain dormant for over a decade. The younger generation vaguely knew the programme as something their parents had watched; the parents had fond memories. But it was over. It was a programme that had had its day. Shaky sets, iffy special effects and a certain dated quality attached itself to the name – Doctor Who was a very happily remembered but lost part of the nation’s past.
But one man didn’t think like this. He believed that Doctor Who had a huge role to play in the twenty-first century, that the franchise was not dead but sleeping, and that, in short, it was high time Doctor Who made a comeback. And this particular man was in a position to do something about it.
Stephen Russell Davies was born 27 April 1963, in Sketty, a suburb of Swansea, and he was to make his beloved homeland a very crucial part of the series he was shortly to revive. Russell went to Olchfa School and, like most children of his generation, he adored watching Doctor Who on a Saturday night; he went on to read English Literature at Worcester College, Oxford. After that he attended a Theatre Studies course run by Cardiff University and based at the Sherman Theatre, before joining the BBC. He took the in-house director’s course, as a prelude to a career behind the cameras, and around this time, in the late 1980s, added a T to his name to distinguish himself from a well-known radio presenter. Russell T Davies was on his way.
Although it was a series for adults that was to make his name, Russell really learned his trade in children’s television, something that a decade or so later was going to stand him in very good stead. He was part of the children’s department at BBC Manchester from 1988 to 1992, producing Why Don’t You? and beginning to write for the first time. He wrote three episodes of the children’s comedy series Chuckle Vision and he also created Breakfast Serials. In all, this was perfect training for the seismic effect he was going to create when the Doctor finally reappeared in 2005.
Russell’s first venture into science fiction came in 1991, when he wrote a six-part children’s drama called Dark Season, a very successful venture starring the young Kate Winslet. This was followed by Century Falls, another children’s serial, although this time with a very much darker edge. In 1992, he moved to Granada Television, where he produced and wrote the children’s drama series Children’s Ward. In 1996 a sign of what was to come emerged, when Russell was introduced to Virgin Publishing and ended up writing a Doctor Who novel, Damaged Goods. More successes followed, as he began to move towards adult television, contributing to Coronation Street, among many others, and becoming a full-time writer on period drama The Grand. Within the world of television, it was this that really made his name.
But it was another series that was to introduce him to the wider world. Russell left Granada to join another organisation, Red Production Company, where he worked on a programme called Queer As Folk, first broadcast on Channel 4 early 1999. The series charted the lives of three gay men living in Manchester’s gay village around Canal Street, Stuart (Aidan Gillen), Vince (Craig Kelly) and Nathan (Charlie Hunnam). The series was for more explicit about homosexuality in both its subject matter and dialogue than mainstream audiences were used to, eliciting a certain amount of shock. But it brought Russell to the attention of the wider populace.
Even then, however, as he was busy shocking the grown-ups, there were signs that Russell had something else on his mind. Put simply, Queer As Folk was littered with references to Doctor Who. There was the episode where Vince was given a model of the Doctor’s robotic dog, K-9. A copy of Damaged Goods, that Doctor Who novel, was left in Vince’s bedroom. On another occasion, Vince and a conquest end up watching Genesis of the Daleks and on a further occasion still, Vince has to choose between two men, Cameron and Stuart. He goes for Stuart, because Stuart could name all the actors who have played Doctor Who.
If that wasn’t an indication of what Russell was thinking, nothing was. He continued to work on television programming for adults, winning Writer of the Year in 2001 at the British Comedy Awards, and in 2003 he worked on TV serial The Second Coming. This won him a Royal Television Society Award. It also got him acquainted with the programme’s star – Christopher Eccleston.
Unlike most writers and producers, Russell was now a famous man in his own right. But despite the groundbreaking nature of Queer As Folk, it was not to be until the mid-Noughties that Russell could be said to change the face of television, with the reintroduction of Doctor Who. Russell had made no secret of the fact that he was a fan of the series: in particular he cited Robert Holmes, who was a writer in the Tom Baker days, saying that he had written some of the best dialogue ever to be heard on television. He had also said that the only thing that would tempt him back to the BBC would be the chance to work on Doctor Who.
As far back as 1999 that possibility had, in fact, been on the cards. Russell had held meetings with the then BBC1 Controller, Peter Salmon, which had ultimately come to nothing. One of the problems was that BBC Worldwide wanted to make another Doctor Who film. However, nothing had come of that either, and by 2003, BBC1, now being run by Lorraine Heggessey, again decided to stake a claim to the famous name. Along with the BBC’s Head of Drama Jane Tranter, Lorraine approached Russell. One of the biggest upheavals in recent television history was about to begin.
On 26 September 2003, it was announced that Russell T Davies was going to become the executive producer and chief writer of a new series of Doctor Who, the first to be filmed in more than 15 years. Filming would take place in Cardiff and the new show would air in 2005.
‘It’s funny because, as a long-term fan of the show, it was like I was a 40-year-old focus group, working on what worked and what didn’t,’ Russell said, shortly before he stepped down. ‘I never liked the Time Lords. I always thought they were slightly boring and bumped the programme down, so the decision to get rid of them was just imm
ediate.’ In actual fact, of course, they too were to reappear.
Russell was very aware of what a unique programme it was and the hugely different ways in which he could take it further. ‘It’s such an unusual show because it’s different every week,’ he said. ‘You can do a comedy episode. You can do a dark, psychological episode. You can have romps. You can have love stories. Because it’s always changing, you don’t need to worry too much about the change. We all just hang on for the ride, really.’
The usual speculation began about who would be the new Doctor, especially important now as it would to all intents and purposes involve totally recreating a character most children were now unfamiliar with: on 20 March 2004, it was announced that the Ninth Doctor was to be Christopher Eccleston.
Born 16 February 1964, Christopher, unlike Matt, was neither extremely young nor unknown when he took on the part. Born into a working-class family in Salford, Lancashire, Eccleston (like Matt) originally wanted to be a footballer, but found that his real talents lay in acting. He did two years on the Performance Foundation Course at Salford Tech, before moving to London’s Central School of Speech and Drama. His career took off slowly, but he began to make his mark.
In 1991, Christopher had his first real breakthrough, when he won the part of Derek Bentley in the film Let Him Have It, after which repeated appearances on Cracker began to register him in the public’s eye. In 1994 he took a step up further with a role in Shallow Grave (Ewan McGregor was a co-star); two years after that, he started in the very successful Our Friends In The North (Daniel Craig was a co-star). He was well and truly on his way.
As usual, however, Doctor Who was to overshadow everything before and since. From the moment Christopher hit the screens in 2005, a very cool Who, complete with northern accent, to inform his assistant Rose Tyler (Billie Piper – possibly the most famous assistant to date) that, ‘Every planet has a north,’ the role was his own. But for reasons that were never entirely clear, Christopher was only going to take on the role for one season. Some people believed he feared typecasting (and indeed, he is one of the few Whos to have escaped that so far) and others that he found the workload too burdensome, although that was later hotly denied. Either way, or for whatever reason, he wasn’t going to stay in the role for long.
And he certainly appeared to be happy enough at first. What was it, Christopher was once asked, that attracted him to the role? ‘The scripts, which are mainly written by a writer called Russell T Davies, whom I’ve worked with before,’ he said. ‘The character was very different from anything I’d done before because he’s very funny and light, and I’ve done a lot of heavy, serious drama. Actors are only as good as the script they’re speaking – and these are good scripts.’
He had also actively sought out the role himself. ‘I emailed Russell T Davies and I asked him to put me on the list of people he was going to audition,’ said Christopher. ‘And then I auditioned and they taped it, and I got the role.’
Unlike everyone else involved in the new venture, however, Christopher had not been a long-term fan. It was perhaps this that made him realise the dangers of staying in the Tardis for too long – although he was to become very shirty when asked about it after he departed the role. For him, it appeared to be the new challenge rather than nostalgia that appealed.
‘I wasn’t a huge fan of the series but there are two things I did tune in for,’ Christopher said. ‘Firstly, the regenerations – when one actor took over the role of the Doctor from another actor. I thought it was fascinating that it was the same character but he looked different, and I wanted to see how they did it special effects-wise. And secondly, to see the inside of a Dalek. The Daleks are the Doctor’s greatest enemy and they are brutal and sinister and vicious but they also have something else going on inside them. There were always a couple of episodes where that would be revealed. And that was fascinating – the psychology and the special effects. We have that in the new series.’
Christopher was tactful enough not to be drawn on the issue of past favourites. ‘No that would be wrong to say,’ he said. ‘The Doctors in my time were Patrick Troughton, who was the first one that I saw and in a way I lean towards him because he was the first one I saw. I thought Jon Pertwee was fantastic and Tom Baker I also thought was fantastic.’
Then there was the new assistant. Billie Piper was also a curious choice: until then she had been best known for a brief pop career and an equally brief marriage to Chris Evans. She was to prove a spectacular success, and unlike Christopher, would stay for more than one series. However, at the time she was very much an unknown quantity.
‘They love each other,’ Eccleston said of the relationship between the Doctor and Rose. ‘They’re best friends and they kind of finish off each other’s sentences, understand each other’s mood swings and reasoning but, as in all good relationships, they have lessons to teach other. Traditionally over the last 40 years, the Doctor has been the hero and the companion is a bit vulnerable. But here we’ve got an equal – we’ve got a hero and a heroine. She saves his life later in the series. She’s as brave and courageous and intelligent as he is.’
No Doctor Who would be complete without the monsters, of course, and there were going to be plenty in the new series to send children behind the sofa. ‘In episode eight, there are creatures called the Reapers – they terrify me,’ said Christopher (and if they frightened Doctor Who, what chance the rest of us?). ‘The Slitheen are pretty frightening and there are the Gelth, and Cassandra from episode two. But for me, it would be the Reapers. They fly and they plunge down from above. They’re allowed on to planet earth because there’s been a break in time. It’s like a wound in the natural order of things and they slip through. And the Daleks – they’re frightening. Not in the way they look – as they look quite old-fashioned – but the psychology is very frightening. They’re the Doctor’s Achilles’ heel and they know all about his history, and they are able to understand the way his mind works. So it’s the psychology of Daleks as much as anything – apart from the fact they want to take over the world!’
Christopher was hopeful this would all have the desired effect on the viewers. ‘[It will] terrify them, I hope!’ he said. ‘And move them and entertain them. The Doctor’s really concerned that people accept other life forms, regardless of colour or creed. If he’s got a problem, he will always think of some curious way to approach it. He just loves life – hopefully it will encourage children to love life.’
The series, when it first aired, garnered very positive reviews. Christopher was generally agreed to be a grittier Doctor, Billie was a revelation, and while there was some grumbling from diehard fanatics about changes to the theme tune and title sequence, it was generally judged to be a huge success. There was widespread astonishment, then, when four days after the series debuted on 26 March 2005, the BBC released a statement from Eccleston saying that he was leaving after one series, because he didn’t want to be typecast.
Confusion deepened when it then emerged that the statement went out without Christopher’s consent. Later in the year, Christopher was asked what it was like to work on the show: ‘Mixed, but that’s a long story,’ he replied. Nor was he very pleased when the actor Alan Davies said that Eccleston had been ‘overworked’, something he point blank denied. There was some degree of anger from fans about the decision, so much so that the website Outpost Gallifrey (now Gallifrey One) actually had to close down for two days as postings became so heated. It was certainly a shock.
It has never been made entirely clear exactly what lay behind it all, although the closest anyone came to finding out was when Russell T Davis gave a speech at the National Theatre. He addressed the subject head on, saying that Christopher’s contract had been for a single year because no one had known whether the revived show was going to succeed. But succeed it did. Eccleston turned out to be a hugely popular Doctor, and won the Most Popular Actor at the National Television Awards for his portrayal of the part.
Whate
ver his subsequent feelings about the show, Christopher was enormously touched by the reaction he got from the fans. ‘In all the 20 years I’ve been acting, I’ve never enjoyed a response so much as the one I’ve had from children and I’m carrying that in my heart for ever,’ he said. But the fact remained – he was off. And in his place there would shortly step the person many believe to be the greatest Doctor of them all.
David John McDonald was born on 18 April 1971 in Bathgate, West Lothian, Scotland, and grew up in Ralston, Renfrewshire, where his father, the Reverend Alexander McDonald, was the local Church of Scotland minister. David was the youngest of three: he attended Ralston Primary and Paisley Grammar School, where he started taking part in school productions, partly encouraged by his English language teacher Moira Robertson. From very early on, it was obvious that David had a real talent.
David was three years old when he told his parents that Doctor Who had inspired him to want to become an actor. Fourteen years later, he began to pursue that goal in earnest when, aged 17, he became one of the youngest students at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. In the intervening years he became obsessed with Doctor Who, watching every episode he could and even meeting the great Tom Baker at a book-signing event in Glasgow. He had a Tom Baker Doctor Who doll, and would allow his obsession to impinge on his schoolwork – for example, by writing an essay on Intergalactic Overdose.
Matt Smith--The Biography Page 4
