This feature was published in Doctor Who Magazine in September 2017. It is primarily an interview with Russell T Davies about his passion for drawing, hooked on his contribution to new poetry book Now We Are Six.
In a different life, in a different universe, Russell T Davies never became a writer. He never studied English Literature at Oxford University. He never got his big break in the BBC’s children’s department; he never wrote Queer as Folk or Casanova, and he certainly did not bring back Doctor Who. Just like Donna Noble, he turned right — and became a comic artist instead.
“It’s what I always wanted to do!” he laughs, as if it sounds ridiculous now. “I loved comics and wanted a career in art and design. But at school I was persuaded by a stupid careers teacher that I couldn’t do it because I was (mildly) colour-blind. So I thought, ‘Oh right, I’ll do something else then.’ It put me off graphics, which is where I was heading towards. But my life not doing that has been magnificent. I might feel differently if I was living in a bedsit eating scraps, sitting there going, ‘I could have been a great artist!’ — as it is, I’m very happy.”
Still, Russell likes to draw. During his time on Doctor Who, for instance, he would sketch out scenes for the aid of the design department (“nothing else I’ve done has ever required that level of visualisation — it’s a handy skill to have”). While in 2008, he contributed various cartoons and illustrations to The Writer’s Tale, the book he co-authored with DWM’s Benjamin Cook. He drew most of them on the back of an Asterix book — doodles of characters, of cut concepts, of an appeal to ‘Stefen Mofet’ to make a sexy episode called The Doctor’s Son. “I’ll keep that idea,” he chuckles. “One day I’ll return to Doctor Who with that.”
Since then, however, he hasn’t drawn much — or at least, not on anything but tabletops. But he recently decided to get back into it: buying his first professional drawing board in 20 years. And then, out of the blue, an email came from BBC Books: Would Russell be up for illustrating Now We Are Six Hundred, a new Doctor Who book based on the children’s poems of A.A. Milne?
“The coincidence was staggering,” he says, speaking to DWM over the telephone. “They literally emailed me in the week I decided to start drawing again. I just thought: ‘well, this is meant to be’. And how I love to draw Quarks and TARDISs. I was delighted, I was really thrilled. I said yes immediately. I thought of all of those other marvellous illustrators I was doing out of work — and laughed!”
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Alan Alexander Milne wrote Now We Are Six in 1927. Published a year after his seminal Winnie-The-Pooh, it was the sequel to his first book of children’s poetry, When We Were Very Young; a follow-up collection of 35 nursery rhymes, featuring illustrations by E.H. Shepard. It has been riffed upon twice; once in 2003, with Christopher Matthew’s Now We Are Sixty (about getting old), and then in 2005, with Neil Gaiman’s collection of horror-themed verse, Now We Are Sick. But Doctor Who, according to author-turned-poet James Goss, is the most fitting vessel for Milne — a compliment, rather than a pastiche.
“The idea is bonkers, but it’s also so right,” he says. “Honestly, it is. It’s very Doctor Who. It’s very clever, and it’s possibly the most stealthy weapon to get people reading poetry that’s ever been devised. Milne’s poems are all about the wonders of childhood and the innocence of being young. The twist on this is that these are childish poems written about being a very, very old child indeed.”
Spread across 50 poems, Now We Are Six Hundred is a mix of re-imagined Milne verse, and Milne-inspired originals. Of the former, for example, you’ll find The Wrong House (‘I went into a house and it wasn’t a house / It has big steps and a great big hall’) re-written about the TARDIS (‘I went into a box and it wasn’t a box / On the outside it was big, on the inside it was small’). Or Furry Bear (‘If I were a bear / And a big bear too / I shouldn’t much care / If it froze or snew’) as Dalek: ‘If I were a Dalek / And a big Dalek too / I shouldn’t much care / What happened to you’. As for the new poems, James has composed odes ranging from K-9 (‘I like to let him cheat at chess / I love to answer No with Yes’), to Adric (‘I’m very good at maths / So why does no-one like me?’), to a heartening celebration of Verity Lambert:
Young Verity went to the BBC
It was full of Men Who Knew What To Do
“Young girl, have you come to make us all tea?”
“No, I’m the Producer of Doctor Who.”
“It’s hard to explain how you write poems,” says James. “Sometimes I’d take a Milne poem and try and imagine what Doctor Who story it was really about. Sometimes I’d just spot a gap in the market — why isn’t there a poem to help you remember the Dalek Delegates from their Masterplan? It’s been a long time since I’ve written poetry — I’d forgotten how much maths there is! Many of Milne’s rhymes look simple, but the schemes underneath are so complicated. That involved a lot of counting on my fingers and swearing — how many syllables can there be in Koquillion?”
As for collaborating with Russell, this is not the first time the pair have worked together — with James having previously written under Russell on Big Finish’s Torchwood audio dramas. “I think Russell enjoyed the situation enormously,” James says. “’You’re my boss. Haha’. But he is the kindest, most encouraging person to work with, and he used the poems as a springboard for… well, it’s quite hard to describe what he’s done, but his drawings are a loving, funny, exuberant tribute to the entirety of Doctor Who. There are tiny love letters to obscure Dalek toys, to Turlough’s eyes, to Peanuts… He’s even radically changed the fate of one of his characters — you’ll be so happy when you see it.”
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It has been seven years since Russell T Davies stepped down as Doctor Who showrunner — and six since the last episodes of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. Bar a cameo in 2013’s The Five-ish Doctors, he has mostly been working on new projects; including 2015’s critically acclaimed Channel 4 drama Cucumber, and last year’s BBC One adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Was it strange for him to return to Doctor Who? Is this a sign that he, in fact, misses being in charge? Russell, with his big, bassy have-my-ear-drums-ruptured laugh, cackles as if this is the funniest question in the world.
“Oh no, no,” he says, “not at all. [Being Doctor Who showrunner] is like being in prison. There isn’t that much hard work on any other show anywhere else in the world. I love just experiencing it now. That’s how Doctor Who should really be in your life, a thing to watch. People think I’ve stepped out of the Doctor Who world completely. But I still watch it every week. Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall are my mates. I’ve got a Doctor Who figurine on my desk. I read Doctor Who Magazine every month. I never left it at all! So [Now We Are Six Hundred] felt completely natural.”
Russell, it should be said, is more than just a stunt hire for Now We Are Six Hundred. His art is confident and joyful; witty and fun; perceptive and oh-so affectionate. An extension, essentially, of his personality; 118 pages brought to life in a way very few could. “I would describe my style as quite cartoony,” he says, “but then I get pretentious. There’s one of River Song which is based on The Swing by [18th century painter] Jean-Honoré Fragonard, for example. I always thought it looked like River Song and she’s surrounded by three men, so that made sense — surrounded by three Doctors. So sometimes I get a bit arty, but they’re mostly nice, big funny cartoons.”
How would he say drawing Doctor Who differs from writing it?
“It’s funny because you sit there thinking, ‘Oh I have to draw Vicki now.’ So you go online and you look up the photos and sit there drawing and you know, I’ve never spent an entire hour of my life thinking about Vicki before. I know who she is, I know who played her, but you don’t actually think in depth about who Vicky is. It opened up ways thinking about the show I’ve never experienced before. In the 60s, after Ian and Barbara have left, there must have been a natural urge to replace Ian and Barbara with another Ian and Barbara, but they went with Vicky from the 31st century. Astonishing.
“The companions were my favourites to draw,” he continues. “I’m not sure I got them all right. Although somehow I got something absolutely perfect about Turlough. He’s just standing there being all Turlough and you’re just like, ‘Oh my god, that’s Turlough!’ I could also draw Daleks all day long. I sneaked one of Peter Capaldi’s Daleks in there, because I love the way he draws Daleks.” He pauses to load up some of the illustrations on his computer. “Some of these I’m very very pleased with,” he says. “I got to draw all the Doctors, obviously. Now I look at it that’s not a great Patrick Troughton. I should’ve tried a bit harder there. But I loved doing that. The sheer range of it — from 1963 right up to Missy — was fantastic. Also, marvellously, these were drawn in March but there are fleeting references to a female Doctor in there. I’m very pleased with that. I guessed right. I didn’t know I was right, but I thought that was in the air.”
But, of course, what we all want to know is who James was referring to earlier. Whose fate has Russell drastically changed?
“There’s now a happy ending for Harriet Jones! There’s a lovely poem about Harriet Jones and [2007-2008 producer] Phil Collinson has always said, ‘she didn’t die on that day,’ so there she is! Obviously you’ll have to go out and buy it to find out how but yes, I show her escaping.”
And that’s canon, is it? That’s official confirmation that — in whatever passes for Doctor Who continuity — Harriet Jones Prime Minister wasn’t exterminated by Daleks in 2008’s Stolen Earth, but is in fact safe and well and unnecessarily introducing herself to everyone she meets? “Look,” he says, “if I drew it, and it’s published by BBC Books, it’s canon.”
BOX-OUT: THE FUTURE’S FEMALE
DWM finds itself speaking to Russell T Davies on July 17th, the morning after it was announced — to millions of people on BBC1 — that Jodie Whittaker will become Doctor Who’s Thirteenth, and first female Doctor. As you’d expect, he’s “completely thrilled.”
“I don’t know Jodie,” he says. “But whenever I’ve seen her interviewed on Breakfast TV or whatever, she’s been really funny and vivid, not just spouting PR lines. And that’s rare. That excites me. Someone who’s got an incredibly strong self is going to fit the Doctor perfectly… It’s wonderful. I was on a train recently and there was a little Muslim girl with her mum, and she had a magazine with Wonder Woman on the back. It was just advertising the film but this girl was entranced by this. That really opened my eyes — ‘look at how much this girl loves this’. Look at how much they have been deprived of this for all this time. I don’t think its remotely only for girls, though. I watched Buffy for seven years and loved every single word she said. There’s no problem with having a heroine for a hero at all. “
And there will be some kids sitting down on Christmas Day who don’t follow the news — and the Doctor will change into a woman and they won’t know. For those kids it will be as mysterious and as exciting as it was in 1966 when William Hartnell changed into Patrick Troughton. The program has never been that original since.”
When Russell brought back Doctor Who, in 2005, it made a name for itself as one of the most progressive shows on TV — thanks, in part, to pansexual time agent Captain Jack Harkness. Even so, is a female Doctor something he could have envisioned happening all the way back then?
“Yes, absolutely,” he says. “But I simply didn’t think of it. We did a very, very good job in 2005 but it was a different world back then. And what Chris Chibnall is brilliantly doing is making me and Steven Moffat look old-fashioned. We look like the past. And that’s exactly what we are — we are the past. This isn’t some big political strategy by the BBC. This is one man, Chris, moving into the big chair and deciding that’s what he wants to do.”
According to polling, fan reaction to the casting has been relatively positive — with social media analysis company Brandwatch stating that 80% of people posted in favour of the change, rather than against it. But of course, with the internet being the internet, negative — and often misogynistic — voices have found themselves amplified. What would Russell say to anyone to who’s unhappy with the casting?
“I think in the entire history of the world, no one has ever been able to stop a story from changing,” he says. “Because that’s all Doctor Who is — a fictional story, and stories always change. So if you stand there and try and stop it changing, you will never win. Hurray!”