Russell T Davies - 5

You're a big fan of Doctor Who. Did you know what you wanted to do with it when you took it on?

I did know it very well, and there are a million different versions I could have made, but in the end I probably didn't think about it too much and just sat down and wrote on instinct. Because they'd come to me, they said we want you to do it, so in the end you've got to have the nerve or the confidence to say they want a version of this in the way that I write. They want the Russell T Davies version of Doctor Who, which is always going to have barmy mothers, and sexy men, and jokes, and a sense of humour that switches to darkness in the flick of an eye. That's my style and speed and energy and I'd like to think I bring an honesty to it as well.

It's a weird one, Doctor Who, because in many ways it's the one piece of work I've written that bears an audience in mind more than any other, and it's the most successful. As a writer I'm a bit stuck on this, because as a writer you're meant to sit and say story is the most important thing, don't think about the audience, just follow the story, and I have done that for years. Now I find myself genuinely sitting there, not with charts and things but instinctively thinking I want more women watching this, I want the old fans watching this, I want children watching this, and doing things to take care of that. And when Doctor Who started in 1963 it was a very specifically designed programme. It was actually put together by a focus group for that slot on a Saturday night, it was invented. It wasn't one man. A whole summer's worth of research went into it saying what people want. Put a child in it, put responsible adults in it, put a mysterious old man in it... All the format was worked out by committee. So in some ways I'm still being true to that and going, actually, well that worked then and I think it'll still work now.

You still could never have foreseen it would work, it's still a massive shock, it still surprises me to this day, it delights me to this day that it works. But we couldn't have predicted that, so when you see it happening it's actually quite strange. You sit there thinking, record-breaking viewing figures, number one in the charts, you sit there thinking that's what I planned. Which is weird, it's not meant to go that way.

How much do you plan what you write?

It's sort of half-planned and half-improvised. I'm in a really lucky position because being an executive producer, I'm there all the time. So I think about it all day and every day. I've got every option going through my head all day, every day. But in the end the story tells itself to you. You sort of look at them and you think well Rose Tyler loves being with the Doctor, and it's just common sense, there's no other ending, she's never going to choose to leave. I'm never going to kill her, so you've got to invent two parallel universes and split them up, and it's got to be that big. You know she can't be injured or lost or something like that, she's got to be safe with her parents, and you literally end up inventing a whole parallel world in order to solve a plot problem.

How did you come up with the idea for The Sarah Jane Adventures?

Sarah Jane was the Children's department coming to us saying "The kids love Doctor Who, we'd love a spin-off." Well they wanted the young Doctor, I mean no way I'm having that. You imagine how terrible that would have been, a little teenager on Gallifrey running around. But I said "Right what we have got is Sarah Jane who's just come back, and she's got a life and she lives on Earth, so that would fit in." So you sort of roll with it.

The other thing that's happened is that this is huge for BBC Wales. These programmes mean hundreds if not thousands of jobs. The BBC is talking about moving Casualty from Bristol to Cardiff, and Casualty has hundreds of jobs, bringing millions into the city by doing that. So I do think Wales was disenfranchised, and wasn't known for anything. And we discovered they've been making a lot of Welsh language stuff, and English language stuff for the region that simply hasn't been seen on the network, and it was great to go there and discover how brilliant they were and they said well we want more of this.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7