Matthew Graham: Fear Her, the Rebel Flesh/the Almost People and Future Writing

Hello again. Matthew Graham, the writer of the Rebel Flesh and the Almost People, was interviewed recently by Den of Geek about his next few episodes, Fear Her and some other subjects. The link to read the whole interview is at the bottom of the page.

When asked about how he came to write for Doctor Who Series Six:

Well, I was hoping to do the last series, the first Matt Smith series. I had a very nice lunch with Piers [Wenger, executive producer] and Steven [Moffat] and we talked about ideas and had this storyline for a single. And we were quite excited about it, but I was whizzing backwards and forward to America a lot at that time, and I was also gearing up on the last series of Ashes To Ashes, which I knew needed all hands to the pumps.

So, I just panicked and thought I wouldn't have enough time. So, I contacted Steven and said I've got to bow out, regretfully. And then after the series went out, I got an e-mail from Steven, a typical Steven e-mail in capital letters, that read "thanks for abandoning me to do the series on my own. So what about series 2?" I couldn't say no, really!

When asked about the connection between Fear Her and The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People:

It's brand new. It's totally brand new. I've just watched them, actually, and I think they are absolutely fab. I think they're some of the best writing that I've ever done. And it's brilliantly directed, and brilliantly made. And I just hope everyone likes it.

I really hope that those who maybe thought that Fear Her was too childish and too silly, I'm hoping that that will silence them. This is my response!

When asked about Fear Her:

I'm actually thrilled with it. It's not what I'd have chosen if I'd come to Doctor Who, obviously. When you come to Doctor Who, you want to tell a story with monsters. You want spaceships. You want the Tardis in mortal peril. You want big, epic science fiction adventure. Of course, you do. That's why you write it.

But I was just so thrilled to be asked to write it, even when Russell [T Davies] said, "Look, it's going to be a more inexpensive episode, and it has to take place on a housing estate," I still said, "Fine."

I wanted to write for David Tennant, for Billie Piper, and be part of TV history. So, I said, "Absolutely." I was thrilled with it.

What we had set out to do right from the start with Fear Her was tell a story that was aimed very much at children. For children, not really for adults, not really for the older Doctor Who fans.

It was aimed at the kids, because Army Of Ghosts and Doomsday were coming up, and they were going to be very big, very dark and very traumatic. And Russell wanted a playground adventure. He said, "How old is your son?" At the time he was seven. So, he said, "Write this one for your son." That's what I did. I did something that was in primary colours, that had a scary voice in the cupboard. I always say that other people got cybermen, I got two blokes with a red lamp rattling a wardrobe!

But, to be honest with you, I didn't go online particularly and read the responses. From my side of it, the response was brilliant. I had loads of kids write to me and say how much they enjoyed it. And it was only later I realised that the older fans had reacted badly to it. So, I went, "Well, it's a shame that they have, but it wasn't meant for them."

The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People are different. As far as I'm concerned, this is proper, across the board Who. Adults, kids- if they can watch it, because it is scary. I showed it to my wife the other night, and there were a couple of images in it where she went, "Actually, that's quite scary. That's not very pleasant." And I notice that it's going out a bit later. I wouldn't be surprised if they put a warning out beforehand.

I was happy with Fear Her, but when I came back I did say, rather selfishly, "I want epic, I want monsters! And science fiction, and gadgets, and lots of stuff happening." And they gave it to me!

When asked about the Flesh:

The Flesh? Well, all the stories in Doctor Who start with a basic idea from Steven. And I went and spent a day with him in his kitchen, and he said, "I want to do something about avatars." And I said, "Oh, Steven, are you sure?" I mean, the film was still playing at the time in cinemas. And he said, "No, no, no, this will be good. This will be like The Thing."

So, it's workers that create copies of themselves to do jobs that are too dangerous, too unpleasant. And he said, "I don't know how, but somehow, these things take on a life of their own." And I thought, "Okay, that's better," and then we started talking.

He planned to set it in a factory and I had it in my head that I wanted to do something in a monastery with a The Name Of The Rose feel to it.

When asked about any ongoing narrative bits:

Yes, yes I have. But I've got two cliffhangers, which is not bad for a two-parter. I've got my part one cliffhanger, and I've got a part two cliffhanger that leads into Steven's A Good Man Goes To War.

I can say this because the premise of this final scene was given to me. I wrote [the cliffhanger scene] and I put my own dialogue in. [Steven] said, "This is what's got to happen," and it was just great. Just whoa! People are not going to be able to wait until next Saturday!

When asked about the episode cliffhangers:

I wrote the script, I said, "I'm finished," and then Steven said, "Now I know exactly what I'm doing with episode seven. I need you to do something like this." And he explained what he wanted it to include and I loved it.

I've said it before, I think, that it's like being the writer and the viewer at the same time. And you're also going, "Wow, what's going to happen next?"

What I find about cliffhangers is that there's the easy cliffhanger, which is to put the Doctor in jeopardy. And everyone knows that the next week he's not going to be dead. They used to do that in the old days as well. I tried to make my cliffhanger something that is just a ratcheting up of the story. So, at the end of The Rebel Flesh, you're not thinking, "Is the Doctor going to die?" You're thinking, "Oh, my God. What's going to happen now?"

Finally, when asked about writing future episodes:

I haven't, no. I said to Beth at the read through that if I can do any more I'd love to, and she said, "Oh, yeah. That'd be great."

But I didn't push it then, because I know they've still got their heads still full of this series. But I floated it out there, that I'd happily come back.

They seem very, very pleased with the episode, so I hope that they'd consider asking me back.

To read the whole interview, follow the link below:
http://www.denofgeek.com/television/891987/matthew_graham_interview_on_writing_doctor_who.html

Neil Gaiman: Doctor Who Writing Future

Hello again. Neil Gaiman was recently interviewed by Den of Geek, including questions about writing future episodes and the episode which is broadcast tomorrow: the Doctor's Wife. Take a look at the interview below and follow the link at the bottom of the page to view the entire blog.


When asked about the future of writing Doctor Who scripts:

So the person before you, who was from the Radio Times, said are you going to do it again? And I said well, I would love to write another episode of Doctor Who. I loved writing it. And I can think of nothing more fun than doing another 45 minute episode of Doctor Who, that’d be great.
Then I found myself saying something, and realising it was true as I said it. Which was I think I’ll only do it if I come up with an idea that’s better than this one. It’s not like… do I want to become a regular Who writer? No, I don’t want to become a regular Who writer. What I’d love to do is every now and then go oh my God, I’ve got this amazing idea for Doctor Who.
And what’s interesting is, having done this episode, I can now look at some of the ideas I’ve had throughout the course of my life since the age of, ooh, four, for Doctor Who episodes.


When asked about the idea behind the Doctor's Wife:

This one fed off stuff I’ve been thinking about since I was kid. And doing [some of] that wouldn’t make a good episode, or it would make a good episode, but it wouldn’t throw enough of a weird spanner into things.

There’s stuff where the mystery drives the engine. And the problem with the stuff where the mystery drives the engine sometimes is that every fannish impulse is immediately to go woah, what we want to know is X, Y and Z. So why not do a story with X, Y and Z in? And for me I actually got to do one of those. My episode really is one of those ones where it actually does give you more of stuff than you’ve ever asked, or sometimes wondered.

But in doing that I realised what an incredibly fragile thing that is. Because if you actually answered all the questions… well, think of one. Was William Hartnell’s Doctor actually Susan’s grandfather? So what happened to their family, and what was going on back there on Gallifrey that they would have fled, and that you would have had a grandfather and a granddaughter? Which is an absolutely fascinating question, which I can guarantee is not answered in my episode. But it’s also one of those weird little engines that possibly if it were answered, things would be less interesting, rather than more.

When asked about writing the Doctor's dialogue:

I was writing the first draft before even Matt had auditioned. So I was doing what Moffat did in his first draft of The Eleventh Hour, which a lot of people did during season five, which is that you’re really writing for a hypothetical Doctor. And you kind of had David Tennant’s voice in your head, but you know it’s not going to be that, so it’s getting a bit bland.

What was great for me was, having already written my version, the first draft, the point where my episode got bounced from episode 11 of last season to episode four of this season, I had the luxury that nobody else had of, at that point, I got to watch Matt. I got to rewrite all of Matt’s dialogue, going, I know what he sounds like now. I got to go in and un-Tennant any lines of dialogue that were Tennant-y. Even though they were good Tennant-y things.

And oddly enough, the couple of lines that remained weren’t the best. I thought I should have lost them too. Yes, it was a great line, but it’s not quite Matt. And that for me was the fun of getting to do my draft. It really was for Matt.

But no, I didn’t have any trouble writing the dialogue for the Doctor. I think my favourite moment of pure Doctor, and here I will actually give something away, there is a moment in the episode where everything has gone as wrong as it can possibly go, and the Doctor is talking to himself, and says “I don’t actually know what to do now”. And he says “That’s a new feeling”.

And I thought, what I liked best about that line was that I could have given it to any of the 11 people who have played the Doctor. You can see Christopher Eccleston delivering that. You can see Patrick Troughton. Tom Baker. And they all would have delivered it differently, and it’s a line that’s pure Doctor.

When asked about writing for Doctor Who:

There’s a point where you’re so much more vulnerable… if I’d written an episode of something I hadn’t grown up with, House or something like that, and scenes had been lost, just the normal give and take creative arguments with producers that I’ve had on making movies and things… you’d come away and go, that’s part of what you’re doing.

With Doctor Who, something’s changing that you didn’t want changed, and it feels like you were just punched in the balls by Santa Claus [with due credit to Paul Cornell for the analogy!] It’s like no, arrgh. And you have to take a deep breath and say, that’s okay. But it’s because you love the thing so much that you can care about it.

Finally, when asked about the difference between the end of Series Five and the beginning of Series Six:

When it was episode eleven of the last season, I talked to him and said, what do you want me to do. And the hardest thing with that is when I did it as episode 11, I knew that we were going into that final two-parter, and that everything was going bad. So it was downbeat, and had a very sad ending. And it was the Doctor and Amy, because Rory didn’t exist.

Except there’s a point where she’s going through his jacket pockets in that version, and found her engagement ring, and couldn’t figure out what it was. That all had to go, and suddenly I’m episode three or four of the new series, and we’re starting the series. So we’re very upbeat, and we needed to change the minor key of the end of the last one.

There was a heartbreaking monologue in my first draft by Amy, towards the end, where you get to see what it’s like to be the companion from the companion’s point of view, and she got to talk about essentially in that version how sad it is, in some ways. One day something will happen to her, she’ll get married, she’ll get eaten by monsters, she’ll die, she’ll get sick of this, but he’ll go on forever. And it was heartbreaking, which now, I didn’t want to lose that, but I had to go, how can I make this upbeat? Because it’s not in the right place now.

And for that matter, she’s no longer missing an engagement ring and a Rory from her life, and slightly out of things, and worried, and missing this thing in her head. It’s now her and Rory, so I had to reshape all of the things that happened in the last half of the adventure, when they’re inside the Tardis and stuff is happening. It’s now no longer one person. It’s now two of them.

And it gives you a different dynamic. So yeah, there was that stuff. But that’s the nature of the game. And the truth is, the reason I got moved from episode eleven… from the last block of the last season to the first block of the new season was, they ran out of money! And my episode is expensive. It’s not that I sit down to write an expensive episode. There were these ways to make it cheap when I started out, like having a cast of essentially three guest stars…

The link for the full interview is below:

http://www.denofgeek.com/television/880521/neil_gaiman_interview_all_about_writing_doctor_who.html