Russell T Davies: Difference between revisions

Russell T Davies
Davies outside Cardiff Central railway station on 22 April 2008.
Occupation	Screenwriter, television producer
Nationality	Welsh
Alma mater	Worcester College, Oxford
Period	1988–present
Genre	Drama, science fiction
Notable works	Queer as Folk Bob & Rose The Second Coming Casanova Doctor Who Torchwood The Sarah Jane Adventures
Notable awards	Best Children's Drama 1998 Children's Ward Dennis Potter Award 2006 Best Drama Series 2006 Doctor Who
Partner	Andrew Smith

Russell T Davies, OBE, (born Stephen Russell Davies,^[1] 27 April 1963) is a Welsh television producer and screenwriter whose works include Queer as Folk, Bob & Rose, The Second Coming, Casanova, and the 2005 revival of the classic British science fiction series Doctor Who.

Born in Swansea, Davies aspired to work as a full time comic artist in his adult life, until a career advisor suggested that he study English literature; he consequently refocused his aspirations to play- and screen-writing. After he graduated from Oxford University, Davies joined the BBC's children's department on a part-time basis in 1985 and worked in varying positions, including producing and writing two series, Dark Season and Century Falls, until leaving in 1994 to become a freelance writer.

Davies moved into writing adult television dramas in 1994. His scripts generally explored concepts of religion and sexuality among various backdrops: Springhill focused on a Catholic family in contemporary Liverpool; The Grand explored society's opinion of subjects such as prostitution, abortion, and homosexuality during the interwar period; and Queer as Folk, his first prolific series, was set in the Manchester gay scene and recreated his own experiences living as a gay man in Manchester. His later series include Bob & Rose, which portrayed a gay man who fell in love with a woman, the humanistic The Second Coming, which focused on the second coming and deicide of Jesus Christ, Mine All Mine, which portrayed a Swansea family's discovery that they owned their home city, and Casanova, an adaptation of the Venetian lover's complete memoirs.

His most notable achievement was reviving and running the 1963–1989 science fiction series Doctor Who from a sixteen year hiatus, with Christopher Eccleston, and later David Tennant, in the title role of the Doctor. Davies' tenure as executive producer of the show oversaw a surge in popularity that led to the production of two spin-offs, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, and the revival of the Saturday primetime slot as a profitable venture for production companies. Davies was awarded an OBE in 2008 for services to drama, which coincided with his announcement that he would step down from as the show's executive producer with his final script, The End of Time (2009–10). Davies is currently living in Los Angeles, California and continues to oversee production of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Early life and youth career

Stephen Russell Davies was born on 27 April 1963 in Mount Pleasant Hospital, Swansea, to Barbara and Vivian Davies, a couple of Classics teachers from the suburban area of Sketty. He was the youngest of three children and the Davies' only son. Because he was born by caesarean section, his mother Barbara was placed on a morphine drip, but an overdose resulted in her suffering a psychotic episode and subsequent institutionalisation.^[2] Davies describes his mother's experience as

a complete 48-hour trip. It was like a science fiction film where she was floating in space, and giant God-like heads were talking to her. They said, "We're sending you back to a parallel Earth". Literally, it's like science fiction. Where she got all this stuff from I don't know. But they said, "We're sending you back to a parallel Earth in which your first-born child, your daughter, is dead. And if you speak to anyone in this parallel Earth, you have to stay there forever."^[2]

His father Vivian realised the overdose was the cause of his wife's psychosis and persuaded an ex-pupil, who had become a geriatrics consultant at the hospital, to intervene on his behalf. After two days, the couple were united with their newborn son.^[2]

As a child, Davies was almost exclusively referred to by his middle name.^[2] He grew up in a household which "never switched the TV off" until after Closedown, and subsequently became immersed in dramas such as I, Claudius and Doctor Who; one of his first memories, at the age of three, was watching the First Doctor's (William Hartnell) regeneration into the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) at the end of The Tenth Planet. He was also an avid cartoonist and comics enthusiast, purchasing varied series such as Asterix and Peanuts.^[3]

Davies attended the local Tycoch Primary School in Sketty and later Olchfa Comprehensive School at the age of eleven. In his first year, the main school buildings were closed off for renovation after inspectors discovered the cement used in construction had caused other public buildings to collapse. Instead, lessons were held in Portacabins, which influenced his imagination to create mystery, science-fiction, and conspiracy thriller stories about the main building. He also immersed himself in books such as Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence and The Crystal Mouse by Babs H Deal; the latter influenced him so much he could "see it echoing in anything" he wrote.^[4]

At the age of fourteen, Davies auditioned for and joined the newly formed West Glamorgan Youth Theatre (WGYT). The group's founder and director, Godfrey Evans, considered him to be "a total all-rounder" who was talented and popular with the other students. Working with the group allowed him to define his own sexual identity: he embarked on a several-month relationship with fellow youth thespian Rhian Morgan, and later came out as homosexual in his teenage years.^[5]

In 1979, Davies completed his O-Levels and stayed at Olchfa with the ambition to study English Literature at an Oxbridge university; he abandoned his aspirations of becoming a comic artist after a careers advisor convinced him his colourblindness would make such a path unlikely.^[5] During his studies, he participated in the WGYT's assignments to create Welsh language drama to be performed at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, including Pair Dadeni, which was based on the Mabinogion myth cycle, and Perthyn, a drama about community belonging and identity in early-80s West Glamorgan. In 1981, he was accepted by Worcester College, Oxford to study for an English literature degree. At Oxford, he realised that he was enamoured with the narrative aspect of fiction, especially nineteenth-century literature such as Charles Dickens.^[6]

Davies continued to submit scripts to the WGYT during his studies at Oxford: Box, a play about the influence of television, which Evans noted had contained Davies' penchants for misdirecting the audience and a mixture of comedy and drama; In Her Element, which centred around the animation of still objects; and Hothouse, an Alan Bennett-inspired piece centred around internal politics in an advertising office. In 1984, Davies performed one last time for the WGYT and came out to his parents shortly after his graduation from Oxford.^[7] After graduation, he signed up for a course in Theatre Studies at Cardiff University, which focused on the dynamics of staging theatre productions. He was duly awarded a diploma, but was left unemployed. He eventually worked sporadically for the Sherman Theatre's publicity department while claiming Jobseeker's Allowance when he was not given work. In 1985, Davies began his professional television career after a friend suggested that he should talk to a television producer who was seeking a temporary graphic artist for the children's show Why Don't You...?.^[8]

Children's television career

Davies in a blue shirt, sitting at a red drawing desk. A pencil is visible in his right hand.

Davies was taken on as a member of the BBC Wales Children's department in 1985 and was initially given one-day contracts and commissions, such as illustrating for Why Don't You...?. As he was only given three days of work per month by the BBC, he continued to volunteer for the Sherman Theatre and freelanced when he was not working for the BBC. Notably, he was approached by the Sunday Sport before its launch to provide a football-themed daily strip; he declined because he was concerned about the pornographic content of the newspaper. He also submitted a script for Crossroads in response to an appeal for new writers, which was eventually not used due to the show's cancellation in 1987. He ultimately abandoned his graphic art career entirely when he realised in his early twenties that he enjoyed writing the dialogue of a comic more than creating the art.^[9]

On 1 June 1987, Davies made his first and only appearance as a television presenter on Play School alongside regular presenter Chloë Ashcroft. Why Don't You...? line producer Peter Charlton suggested that he should take his career public, because he thought he would "be good on camera". Eventually granted the opportunity for sporadic appearances over a period of six months, he hosted one episode as a storytelling illustrator before walking off the set and commenting that he "[was] not doing that again". The appearance remains an in-joke in the industry, and the recordings were invariably requested for any wrap parties Davies attended.^[10]

On Why Don't You...?, Davies took on varying jobs, including researcher, director, illustrator, assistant floor manager, and unofficial publicist for fan-mail. He was offered his first professional scriptwriting job in 1986 by show producer Dave Evans; he had entered Evans' office to collect his wages and was offered an extra £100 to write a replacement script. Davies' script was positively reviewed in the department and led to larger roles, culminating in being offered a six-month contract to write for the show after it relocated to Manchester in 1988.^[11] He would work for the show for two more years and eventually became the show's producer. He oversaw an increase in drama which tripled its audience—despite the fact BBC Manchester was not permitted to create children's dramas—which reached its climax with his last episode, comprised solely of a plot where the Why Don't You...? protagonists were trapped in a café by a supercomputer that tried to kill them.^[12]

While he was producing Why Don't You...?, Davies began to branch out within the children's department at BBC Manchester: he attended directors' courses, wrote for older audiences with his contributions to DEF II and On the Waterfront, and even accompanied Keith Chegwin to Norway to assist in producing a children's documentary about politics. The head of the children's department, Ed Pugh, offered him the chance to produce Breakfast Serials, a new series scheduled for an 8:00 am morning slot. Breakfast Serials would incorporate elements of non-sequitur comedy and popular culture references aimed more at students, such as a parody of Land of the Giants.^[13] Davies would make the decision to leave the children's department and the BBC during the production of Breakfast Serials: a friend called him after the first episode was transmitted and observed that he had "broadcast a joke about the juvenilia of Emily Brontë at eight o'clock in the morning"; the conversation caused him to reflect that he was writing for the wrong audience.^[14] However, Davies would help produce three more children's series while pursuing an adult drama career: Dark Season, Century Falls, and Children's Ward.

Dark Season and Century Falls

During his tenure on Why Don't You...?, Davies oversaw the creation and production of a story that took place in Loch Ness. The story was the precursor for his first freelance children's project: Dark Season. The show, originally called The Adventuresome Three, would featured the Why Don't You...? characters in a purely dramatic setting influenced by his favourite television shows in his childhood and the stories he had imagined at Olchfa. He submitted the script simultaneously to the head of the BBC's Children's department, Anna Home, and Granada Television. Both were interested in producing the show with minor changes: Granada wished to produce it as one six-part serial, as opposed to Davies' original plan of two three-part serials, and Home was interested in accepting the show on the condition it included a new cast of characters. He accepted Home's offer and the show was allocated the budget and timeslot of Maid Marian and her Merry Men, which had been put on hiatus the year before.^[16]

The first three episodes of Dark Season features three young teenagers in a contemporary secondary school, Reet (Kate Winslet), Marcie (Victoria Lambert), and Tom (Ben Chandler) who discover a plot by the villain Mr Eldritch (Grant Parsons) to take over the world using school computers. Eldritch is eventually defeated by Marcie and the computer expert Professor Polzinsky (Rosalie Crutchley). The next three episodes focus on a new villain, the archaeologist Miss Pendragon (Jacqueline Pearce), who becomes a part of the ancient supercomputer Behemoth. The two distinct plot elements converge at the end of the fifth episode, when Pendragon crashes through the school stage as Eldtrich is simultaneously walking into the auditorium.^[15]

Dark Season is evocative of Davies' later work, especially the Doctor Who episodes "School Reunion", which shares the common aspect of the setting of a comprehensive school, and "Army of Ghosts", which unexpectedly brings together the two major villains for the final episode. The characters of Marcie and her friends are also similar, albeit unintentionally, to the structure of the Doctor and his companions.^[15] Dark Season was the first series for which he was given the writing credit "Russell T Davies", the initial being arbitrarily chosen to distinguish himself from the BBC Radio 4 presenter, and the first series that he was commissioned to write a novelization for, which features a more ambiguous climax and the foreshadowing of a sequel set in an arcade similar to the one featured in the The Sarah Jane Adventures serial Warriors of Kudlak.^[17]

Davies had formulated a second series for Dark Season, which would follow a similar structure. The first half of the series would take part in the arcade mentioned in the novelisation, and the second half would feature the appearance of psychic twins and the re-emergence of the villain Eldritch. The concepts were transferred to its spiritual successor, Century Falls, which was produced in 1993 at the request of Dark Season director Colin Cant. The series primarily used the "psychic twins" concept and was set in an isolated village based on those in the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors.^[18]

The series focuses on the overweight teenager Tess Hunter (Catherine Sanderson), whose family moves to the eponymous village, where legends state no child had been born in the village for forty years. Tess meets the Naismith twins Ben and Carey (Simon Fenton and Emma Jane Lavin), whose psychic visions are linked to the village's eponymous waterfall. The series focuses on the disaster that took place that caused the supposed infertility, and the three teenagers' efforts to prevent the deity Century from fusing with Tess' unborn sister.^[18]

Conceptually, Century Falls is much darker than its predecessor Dark Season and any of Davies' later work, which Davies attributed to the trend that inexperienced writers "get off on the dark stuff".^[19] The series also offers a sense of realism in its protagonist—who is neither heroic or aspirational, and has poor social skills—and the non-avoidance of the word "fat", which the Daily Mail praised as "something that defies the Thought Police".^[20] Century Falls was the last script he wrote for the BBC's children's department for fourteen years, although he had begun to formulate another successor: The Heat of the Sun, which would have continued Century Falls' dark themes. If scripted, the series would have included the concepts of psychic powers and world domination in the near-future setting of Christmas 1999 and New Year's Day 2000.^[21]

Children's Ward

While he was writing Dark Season and Century Falls, Davies continued to seek freelance projects elsewhere, which included three scripts for the BBC children's comedy ChuckleVision. One such venture in 1991 led him to Granada Television, where he edited scripts for the ITV children's medical drama Children's Ward under the supervision of eventual Coronation Street producer Tony Wood and his former boss Ed Pugh. By 1992, he had been promoted to producer and oversaw an increase of focusing on larger contemporary issues. In 1993, he wrote a script featuring a teenage boy that had been infected with HIV via a blood transfusion, which deconstructed the prevalent assumption that only gay people contracted HIV:^[22]

Jason Lloyd

You must be a poof if you've got AIDS.

Richard Higgs

I'm not gay, and I haven't got AIDS; I'm HIV positive. But just for the sake of an argument let's say I was homosexual. Would it matter? What difference would it make?

Jason

[You'd] fancy me, wouldn't you?

Richard

There's not a boy, girl, man, or woman alive who could possibly fancy you. Look around. Where's this queue of people dying to ask you out? They don't exist, Jason, because you're stupid, you're bigoted, and you don't matter one little bit.

— Russell T Davies, Children's Ward, 1993^[23]

Davies would leave the role of producer in 1994, but continue to write for the series on occasion. Most notably, he was requested to write the 100th episode of the series, which aired in October 1996. Instead of celebrating the milestone, he wrote a script about a recently emerging threat: paedophiles in online chat-rooms. The script focused on a The X-Files fan who was drawn in by a paedophile's offer of a rare magazine. In the dénouement of the episode, the child recounts the tale of his near abduction and describes his attacker as "just a man like any other man". The episode would eventually earn Davies his first BAFTA award: the 1997 Children's BAFTA for Best Drama.^[22]

Adult television career (1994–2004)

During his production tenure on Children's Ward, Davies continued to seek other freelance writing jobs, particularly for soap operas; his intention was to eventually work on the popular and long-running Granada soap Coronation Street. In pursuit of this career plan, he would storyline soaps such as Families and write scripts for shows such as Cluedo, a scripted game show based on the board game of the same name, and Do the Right Thing, a localised version of the Brazilian panel show Você Decide starring Frank Skinner. One of his writing jobs, for The House of Windsor, a soap opera about footmen in Buckingham Palace, was so poorly received that his future scripts for the show would be written under the pseudonym Leo Vaughn.^[24]

In 1994, Davies quit all of his producing jobs, and was subsequently offered a scriptwriting job on the late-night soap opera Revelations, a tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of organised religion. Most notably, the show would feature his first overtly LGBT character: a lesbian vicar portrayed by Sue Holderness, who came out of the closet in a two-hander episode with Carol Nimmens.^[25] He then let his contract expire and pitched a new early-evening soap opera to Channel 4, RU, created by Bill Moffat, father of Press Gang co-creator Steven Moffat, and co-written by him and Paul Cornell. Although the slot was eventually taken by Hollyoaks, he and Cornell mutually benefited from the pitch: Davies introduced Cornell to the Children's Ward producers, and Cornell introduced Davies to Virgin Publishing. Davies would write one Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures novel, Damaged Goods, in which the Doctor tracks a Class A drug across several galaxies. A sub-plot in the book was in turn the inspiration for The Mother War, a never-produced thriller for Granada featuring the character of Eva Jericho, and a calcified fetus in her uterus.^[26]

Davies continued to propose dramas to Channel 4 including Springhill, an apocalyptic soap-opera co-created by his colleagues Frank Cottrell Boyce and Paul Abbott, which aired simultaneously on Sky One and Channel 4 in 1996–97. Set in suburban Liverpool, the series focuses on the pious Catholic Freeman family and their encounter and internal conflict with Eva Morrigan (Katharine Rogers).^[27] He continued to storyline for the second series, but submitted fewer full scripts; he had been commissioned to write for the new Granada soap The Grand, and accepted to storyline for Coronation Street for several weeks—albeit as a holiday cover for the permanent storyline—and to write a straight-to-video special, Coronation Street: Viva Las Vegas!.^[28] The second series continued the penchant for symbolism; most notably it depicted Marion Freeman (Judy Holt) and Eva as personifications of good and evil, and climaxed with a finale set in an ultra-liberal dystopian future where premarital sex and homosexuality are embraced by the Church.^[29] Boyce would later comment that without Davies' input, the show would have been a "dry run" for Abbott's hit show Shameless.^[30]

Davies' next project was The Grand, a period soap drama set in a Manchester hotel during the interwar period. It was designed to be a valuable show in a ratings war with the BBC, scheduled at 9 pm on a Friday night. After the original writer abandoned it, Granada approached him to write the entire show.^[31] His scripts for the first series reflect the pessimism of the period; each episode would also feature its own emotional trauma on the staff, including a soldier being executed for desertion, a destitute maid threatening to illegally abort her unborn child to survive, and a multi-episode arc that depictined the chambermaid Monica Jones (Jane Danson) killing her lover in self-defence but nevertheless being executed for his murder.^[32] Despite the dark tone of the series, the show was renewed for a second series.^[33]

The second series had a lighter tone and greater emphasis on character development, which Davies attributed to his friend Sally, who had previously warned him of the adult humour in Breakfast Serials; she told him that his show was too bleak to be compared to real life. Davies highlighted the sixth and eighth episodes of the second series as a time of maturity as a writer: for the sixth episode, he utilised then-unconventional narrative devices such as flashbacks to explore the hotel barman's closeted homosexuality and the societal attitudes towards sexuality in the 1920s;^[34] and he highlighted the eighth episode as when he allowed the series to "take on its own life", by deliberately inserting plot devices such as McGuffins to enhance the comic relief of the series.^[35] Although it was well received, the series' ratings were not high enough to warrant a third series. After the cancellation of the series and the death of Princess Diana, an existential crisis and near-overdose persuaded him to detoxify to make a name for himself by producing a series celebrating his homosexuality.^[36]

Queer as Folk

I'm queer. I'm gay. I'm homosexual. I'm a poof, I'm a poofter, I'm a ponce. I'm a bumboy, batty-boy, backside artist, bugger. I'm bent. I am that arse bandit. I lift those shirts. I'm a faggot-ass, fudge-packing, shit-stabbing uphill gardener. I dine at the downstairs restaurant, I dance at the other end of the ballroom. I'm Moses and the parting of the red cheeks. I fuck and I am fucked. I suck and I am sucked. I rim them and wank them, and every single man's had the fucking time of his life. And I am not a pervert. If there's one twisted bastard in this family, it's this little blackmailer here. So congratulations, Thomas. I've just officially outed you. [beat] Oh, and one more thing: did I mention I've got a baby?

— Stuart Jones (Aidan Gillen) coming out to his parents in the first episode of Queer as Folk 2.^[37]

After his near-death experience in September 1997, Davies started to develop a series for Channel 4 which reflected the "hedonistic lifestyle" of the gay quarter of Manchester he was leaving behind. Encouraged by ex-Granada executives Catriona MacKenzie and Gub Neil to "go gay", the series would focus on a group of friends in Manchester's gay scene, tentatively titled The Other End of the Ballroom, and later, Queer as Fuck.^[38] By February 1998, when he completed the first draft for the series première, the series was known under its eventual title Queer as Folk.^[38] The series emulates dramas such as Band of Gold in presenting realistic discussion on sexuality, as opposed to "one-sided" gay characters in soap operas such as Eastenders, and eschews "heavy-handed discussion" of issues such as HIV, instead focusing on the party scene on Canal Street.^[39]

After he wrote the pilot, he started to approach actors for the main characters.^[40] For the role of Stuart Jones, Christopher Eccleston was Davies' first choice, but was turned down in favour of his friend Aidan Gillen.^[41] The roles of Vince Tyler and Nathan Maloney were quickly given to Craig Kelly and Charlie Hunnam, and the secondary character Alexander Perry, originally written for the television producer Phil Collinson during his brief acting career, was portrayed by Anthony Cotton, who would later portray the gay character Sean Tully in Coronation Street.^[41] After Channel 4 allocated a budget of £3,000,000 to the series, Red Productions, owned by his friend and former colleague Nicola Shindler, was brought in to produce the series, and Cracker and Hillsborough director Charles McDougall and The Grand director Sarah Hardin were asked to film the series on location in Manchester.^[42] The eight forty-minute episodes emulated experiences from his social life, including an episode where the minor character Phil Delaney (Jason Merrells) succumbs to his excesses and dies unnoticed by his social circle.^[43]

The series transmission in early 1999 came when Parliament were discussing LGBT equality; the series première aired on the day the House of Lords was discussing the Sexual Offences Act 1999, which would have reduced the age of consent for homosexual couples to 16.^[44] The transmission of the première was controversial, in particular because of Nathan's age of 15, and received 136 complaints to Ofcom, in addition to disapproval from his parents and conservative activist Mary Whitehouse.^[45] The controversy surrounding the series was amplified when the sponsor Beck's withdrew after several episodes, and when homosexual activists argued that the series was not representative of gay culture. Nevertheless, the show garnered 3.5 million per episode and a generally positive reaction from fans, and was renewed for a two-episode special due for the following year.^[46]

Broadcast in February 2000, Queer as Folk 2 was driven by the plot element of Vince's half-sister's wedding and emphasised the relationship between Vince and Stuart.^[47] The special ended with Vince and Stuart leaving Canal Street for another gay scene in a pastiche of Grease, and Nathan being the figurehead of a new generation in the Manchester gay scene.^[48] On the heels of the special, Davies pitched the spin-off Misfits, a late-night soap opera set in a boarding house owned by Vince's sister Hazel,^[49] and The Second Coming, a series depicting the Second Coming of Christ in contemporary Manchester.^[50] Of the two series, The Second Coming was greenlit, but dropped by Channel 4 along with Misfits in late 2000.^[51] Instead of contesting the cancellation of The Second Coming, he left Channel 4 and vowed to not work with them again.^[50]

Bob & Rose

After The Second Coming was dropped by Channel 4, Shindler continued to pitch the show to other television networks. At the same time, Davies was writing a new series based on a gay friend who married a woman and fathered a child. He saw the relationship as a promising concept for an unconventional love story and asked the couple about their relationship to develop the show.^[52] After originally developing the series around the prejudice that he and his gay friends had shown, he realised he was creating caricatures for the purpose of exposing them, and instead focused on telling a traditional love story and gave the couple the traditionally British names of Bob Gossage and Rose Cooper.^[53]

To simulate a classic love story, the plot required antagonists, in the form of Bob's best friend Holly Vance and Rose's boyfriend Andy Lewis (Daniel Ryan). While Andy, named after Davies' boyfriend, Andrew Smith, would be a minor character and written out after three episodes, Holly would feature throughout the entirety of the series.^[53] Bob & Rose would thus follow a similar format of Queer as Folk, the triumvirate of main characters being composed of a couple and an outsider living in contemporary Manchester, and inverted the traditional "coming out" story by focusing on Bob's uncharacteristic attraction to Rose; Bob describes his sexual life by simply speaking the line "I fancy men. And her.".^[53] The series was therefore similar to the Kevin Smith film Chasing Amy (1997), as they both portrayed a romance between a straight character and gay character and the resulting ostracism from the couple's social circles, much like The Second Coming shared its concept with Smith's 1999 film Dogma.^[54]

After successfully pitching the show to ITV, Red Productions joined Davies in casting the show, initially approaching Jonathan Creek star Alan Davies to portray the role of Bob.^[55] Despite being heterosexual, he heartily accepted the role and spent several weeks researching first-hand Manchester's gay scene with series director Joe Wright. His only objection to the role was Bob supporting Manchester United F.C., the team Shindler had named Red Productions for, because he supported Arsenal F.C..^[55] The part of Rose was given to Lesley Sharp, her first leading role following her portrayal of secondary characters in past Red shows Playing the Field and Clocking Off, and Jessica Stevenson was cast as Holly by ITV Head of Drama Nick Elliott, following her performance in the Channel 4 series Spaced.^[55]

The series was filmed in the southern suburbs of Manchester between March and June 2001, often using Davies' own home as a green room, and aired on Monday nights in September and October 2001.^[56] Despite critical acclaim, including two British Comedy Awards and a British Academy Television Award nomination, the series had lower viewing figures than expected and was moved to a later timeslot for the final two episodes.^[57] Although the series was not as successful as he hoped, the show helped Davies rekindle his relationship with his mother shortly before her death, just after the transmission of the fourth episode, which he sees as "possibly the best thing [he has] ever written".^[57]

The Second Coming

You are becoming Gods. There's a new master of creation, and it's you! [You've] unravelled DNA, and at the same time you're cultivating bacteria strong enough to kill every living thing! Do you think you're ready for that much power, you lot?

— Stephen Baxter (Christopher Eccleston), The Second Coming

Shortly after the transmission of Bob & Rose, Davies was approached by Abbott to help write for his new BBC show Linda Green. He accepted the offer and wrote an episode where the titular character, portrayed by Liza Tarbuck, and her friends attend a schoolmate's funeral and become psychologically haunted by the deceased woman's solitary life.^[58] His first work for the BBC in eight years prompted them to continuously approach him with concepts for period dramas; he would continuously decline in response because his only intention was to revive Doctor Who, which had then been on hiatus for over a decade.^[58] In 2002, he met with the BBC to discuss the revival of the show and producing The Second Coming; in both cases, the BBC were unable to commit to either, and he once again declined to work for them.^[58] After the BBC rejected The Second Coming, Shindler proposed that the series should be pitched to ITV. Despite the story's controversial message, the critical success of Bob & Rose encouraged the channel to commission the series for broadcast.^[58]

The Second Coming had been several years in the making and had endured many rewrites from the first draft presented to Channel 4 in 2000, but retained its key concept of a realistic depiction of the Second Coming of Christ with a humanity-centred deity.^[50][59] One of the major removals from the script, due to time constraints, was a long sequence titled "Night of the Demons": the main character, a shop assistant named Stephen Baxter who discovers his divine lineage, takes over a hotel with his disciples and eventually encounter several of the hotel's employees that have been possessed by the Devil.^[60] Several similar sequences were removed in favour of the serial being a thriller set in the days before Judgement Day.^[60]

An experienced actor was required to play the role of Steven Baxter; Davies approached Christopher Eccleston, who had previously been approached for the role of Stuart in Queer as Folk, based on his performance as Nicky Hutchinson in the drama Our Friends in the North.^[61] Eccleston accepted the role and helped Davies make the character more human after he observed that "Baxter was getting lost amid his loftier pronouncements". The character of Judith, who would represent the fall of God, was given to Lesley Sharp after her performance in Bob & Rose, and the role of the Devil was given to Mark Benton.^[61]

The Second Coming was controversial from conception. When it was a Channel 4 project, it was the focus of a Sunday Express article a year before its original projected transmission date of late-2001.^[62] The series would again receive criticism when it was rumoured in the industry it would be broadcast over the Easter weekend of 2003.^[63] The series was eventually broadcast from 9–10 February 2003 to 6.3 million and 5.4 million viewers respectively, and received mixed reactions from the audience.^[63] Davies would receive death threats for its atheistic message and criticism for its anti-climatic ending,^[62] but would later be nominated for two Television Awards and one Royal Television Society Award.^[63]

Mine All Mine

Davies' next project would see him return to Swansea to film a series centred on a family's discovery that they owned the entire city. Based on the tale of the Welsh pirate Robert Edwards and his descendants' claim to 77 acres (310,000 m²) of real estate in Lower Manhattan, New York City, The Vivaldi Inheritance, later renamed Mine All Mine, was born out of Davies' return to Wales and his reflection of the role of family since his mother's death.^[64] The series was a departure from his trend of experimental social commentary and was instead designed to be a mainstream comedy utilising Welsh actors, including a planned but not realised cameo appearance by Swansea-born Hollywood actress Catherine Zeta Jones.^[64]

Because the series was centred on an entire family, Red Productions was given the task of casting eleven principal characters:^[65] the role of family patriarch Max Vivaldi was given to Griff Rhys Jones, at the request of ITV for prolific actors;^[65] Rhian Morgan, Davies' ex-girlfriend from the WGYT, was cast as Max's wife Val;^[65] Sharon Morgan as Max's sister Stella;^[65] Joanna Page as Candy Vivaldi;^[65] Matthew Barry and Siwan Morris as the Vivaldi siblings Loe and Maria;^[65] Hi-de-Hi! actress Ruth Madoc as Val's sister Myrtle Jones;^[65] and Jason Hughes as Maria's boyfriend Gethin.^[65] The series, specifically the family's composition of two daughters and a gay son, mirrored his own upbringing to the point where Davies and his boyfriend would refer to the show as "The Private Joke".^[66]

Directed by Sheree Folkson and Tim Whitby, the series was filmed in late 2003, in areas of Swansea Davies remembered from his childhood. Production was stifled when the crew was dissatisfied with the series finale's pacing, an opinion shared by ITV when they scheduled it into four hour-long slots and a ninety-minute slot shortly prior to Christmas 2003.^[67] As a result, the production team agreed to edit the final two episodes into a 90-minute finale.^[67] Eventually, Mine All Mine would be his least successful series, ending its run with just over two million viewers, which he later blamed on the series' high eccentricity.^[67]

Casanova

Gentlemen, I'm sure we can sort this out amicably. Look at it this way: if you could do what I could do, you'd do it too! But you can't. I can. And I have. And I'll do it again. So you should be happy for me, just a little tiny bit, don't you think?

— Giacomo Casanova (David Tennant)'s "manifesto" and first lines in the serial.^[68]

Shortly after the transmission of Mine All Mine, the BBC commissioned Davies to produce the revival of Doctor Who, completing his decade-long quest to return the series to the airwaves.^[69] At the same time, he was developing two scripts: the first, a cinematic adaptation of the Charles Ingram Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? scandal, was cancelled after he accepted the Doctor Who job;^[70] and the second, a dramatisation of the life of the Venetian adventurer and lover Giacomo Casanova, would be his next show with Red Productions.^[71]

Davies' association with Casanova began when London Weekend Television producers Julie Gardner, Michele Buck, and Damien Timmer approached him to write a 21st-century adaptation.^[71] He accepted to script the series because it was "the best subject in the world" and, after reading Casanova's memoirs, sought to create a realistic depiction of Casanova instead of further perpetuating the stereotype of a hypersexual lover.^[71] The series was originally written for ITV, but was turned down after he could not reach an agreement regarding the length of the serial.^[71] Shortly after the ITV declined to produce Casanova, Gardner took up a position as Head of Drama at BBC Wales and brought the concept with her. The BBC agreed to fund the series, but could only release the money required if a regionally-based independent company produced the series. Davies turned to Shindler, who agreed to become the serial's fifth executive producer.^[71]

Davies' script takes place in two distinct time frames and required two different actors for the eponymous role: the older Casanova was portrayed by Golden Globe and Honorary Academy Award winner Peter O'Toole, and the younger Casanova was portrayed by Olivier Award nominee and upcoming television actor David Tennant.^[68] The serial takes place primarily during Casanova's adulthood and depicts his life among three women: his mother (Dervla Kirwan), his lover Henriette (Laura Fraser) and his consort Bellino (Nina Sosanya).^[68] The script takes a different approach to Dennis Potter's 1971 dramatisation; instead of Potter's focus on sex and misogyny, the 2005 serial focuses on Casanova's compassion and respect for women.^[68]

Casanova was filmed alongside the first few episodes of the new series of Doctor Who, which prompted producers common to both projects, including Davies and Gardner, to make daily journeys between the former's production in Lancashire and Cheshire and the latter's production in Cardiff.^[72] Red Productions also filmed on location overseas in a stately home in Dubrovnik, and alongside production of the identically titled 2005 Lasse Hallström film in Venice.^[68] The existence of two adaptations led to resources being shared by the two teams and the unofficial names of "Little Casanova" and "Big Casanova" respectively.^[68] On its first airing on BBC Three in March 2005, the first episode attracted 940,000 viewers, a record for a first-run drama on the channel, but was overshadowed on BBC One by the return of Doctor Who in the same month.^[72]

Doctor Who (2005–2009) and beyond

Since watching the First Doctor's regeneration into the Second Doctor in 1966, Davies had "fallen in love" with the show and, by the mid-70s, was regularly writing reviews of broadcast serials in his diary: his review of The Ark in Space (1975) complimented the creative use of BBC studios to create "terror and claustrophobia"; and he wrote that the first episode of The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977) featured "the best dialogue ever written; it's up there with Dennis Potter".^[73] His screenwriting career also began with a Doctor Who submission; in 1987, he submitted a spec script set on an intergalactic news aggregator and broadcaster, which was rejected by script editor Andrew Cartmel, who suggested that he should write a more prosaic story about "a man who is worried about his mortgage, his marriage, [and] his dog".^[73]

During the late-90s, Davies lobbied the BBC to revive the show from its hiatus and reached the discussion stages in late 1998 and early 2002.^[74] His proposals would update the show to be better suited for a 21st-century audience, including the transition from videotape to film, doubling the length of each episode from twenty-five minutes to fifty, keeping the Doctor primarily on Earth in the style of the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) UNIT episodes, and removing "excess baggage" such as Gallifrey and the Time Lords.^[74] His pitch competed against three others: Dan Freedman's fantasy retelling, Matthew Graham's Gothic-styled pitch, and Mark Gatiss' reboot, which would make the Doctor the audience surrogate character, instead of his companions.^[75] Davies also took cues from American fantasy television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville, most notably Buffy's concept of series-long story arcs and of the "Big Bad".^[76]

In August 2003, the BBC had resolved the issues regarding production rights that had surfaced as a result of the jointly-produced Universal Studios–BBC–FOX 1996 Doctor Who film, leading the Controller of BBC One Lorraine Heggessey and Controller of Drama Commissioning Jane Tranter to approach Gardner and Davies to create a revival of the series to air in a primetime slot on Saturday nights, as part of the BBC's plan to devolve production to its regional bases. By mid-September, they accepted the deal to produce the series alongside Casanova.^[77]

Doctor Who was the first show he voluntarily wrote a pitch for—regularly, he opted to outline concepts of shows to commissioning executives and offer to write the pilot episode, because he felt that a pitch made him "feel like [he's] killing the work".^[78] The fifteen-page pitch outlined a Doctor who was "your best friend; someone you want to be with all the time", the eighteen-year-old Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) as a "perfect match" for the new Doctor, avoidance of the forty-year back story "except for the good bits", the retention of the TARDIS, sonic screwdriver, and Daleks, removal of the Time Lords, and a greater focus on humanity.^[78] His pitch was submitted for the first production meeting in December 2003, with a series of thirteen episodes obtained by pressure from BBC Worldwide and a workable budget from Julie Gardner.^[78]

The first new series of Doctor Who featured eight scripts by Davies, the remainder being allocated to experienced drama writers and previous writers for the show's ancillary releases:^[79] Steven Moffat would pen a two-episode story, while Mark Gatiss, Robert Shearman, and Paul Cornell would each write one script.^[79] Davies also approached his old friend Paul Abbott and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling to write for the series, but both declined due to existing commitments.^[79] Shortly after securing writers for the show, Davies stated that he had no intention to approach writers for the old series; the only writer he would have wished to work with was his childhood hero Robert Holmes, who died in May 1986,^[79] halfway through writing his contribution to The Trial of a Time Lord.^[80]

By early 2004, the show had settled into a regular production cycle. Davies, Gardner, and BBC Controller of Drama Mal Young took posts as executive producers, while Phil Collinson, an old colleague from Granada, took the role of producer.^[81] Davies' official role as head writer and executive producer, or "showrunner", consisted of laying a skeletal plot for the entire series, holding "tone meetings" to correctly identify the tone of an episode, often being described in one word—for example, the "tone word" for Moffat's "The Empty Child" was "romantic"—and overseeing all aspects of production.^[81]

The production team was also tasked with finding a suitable actor for the role of the Doctor. Most notably, they approached seminal film stars Hugh Grant and Rowan Atkinson for the role. By the time Young had suggested The Second Coming and Our Friends in the North actor Christopher Eccleston to Davies, Eccleston was one of only three left in the running for the role: the other two candidates are rumoured in the industry to have been Alan Davies and Bill Nighy.^[82] In accepting his role as the Doctor, Eccleston created his own characteristics based on Davies' life, most notably, his catchphrase "Fantastic!":

[The central message of the show is] seize life, it's brief, enjoy it. The Doctor is always saying "isn't it fantastic?", which is one of Russell's favourite words. "Look at that blue alien, isn't it fantastic? Oh, it's trying to kill me. Never mind, let's solve it."

— Christopher Eccleston^[83]

Filming for the show started in July 2004 on location in Cardiff for "Rose".^[84] The start of filming created stress among the production team because of unseen circumstances: several scenes from the first block had to be re-shot because the original footage was unusable; the Slitheen prosthetics for "Aliens of London", "World War Three", and "Boom Town" were noticeably different from their computer-generated counterparts; and, most notably, the BBC came to a gridlock with the Terry Nation estate to secure the Daleks for the sixth episode of the series, to be written by Rob Shearman.^[84] Shearman and Davies were forced to rework the script to feature another race, until Gardner was able to secure the Daleks after a month of negotiations.^[84] After the first production block, which he described as "hitting a brick wall", the show's production was markedly eased as the crew familiarised themselves.^[84]

The first episode of the revived Doctor Who, "Rose", aired on 26 March 2005 and received 10.8 million viewers, and favourable critical reception. Four days after the transmission of "Rose", Tranter green-lit a Christmas special and a second series. The press release accompanied a leaked announcement that Christopher Eccleston's would leave the role after one series; in response to this, David Tennant was later announced as Eccleston's replacement.^[85]

Tennant had been offered the role of the Doctor when he was watching a pre-transmission copy of Casanova with Davies and Gardner. Tennant initially believed the offer was a joke, but after he realised they were serious, he accepted the role and first appeared in the 2005 Christmas special "The Christmas Invasion".^[86][87] Doctor Who continued to be one of BBC's major programmes throughout Davies' tenure, and resulted in record sales of the show's official magazine, a resurgence in spin-off novels, and the launch of the children's magazine Doctor Who Adventures and toy sonic screwdrivers and Daleks.^[88] The show's popularity ultimately led to a resurgence in family-orientated Saturday night drama, the ITV show Primeval and the BBC shows Robin Hood and Merlin being specifically designed for the slots.^[88] He was also approached by the BBC to produce several spin-off series, eventually leading to the creation of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.^[89]

Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures

In October 2005, BBC Three Controller Stuart Murphy invited Davies to create a post-watershed Doctor Who spin-off in the wake of the parent series' popularity.^[89] Torchwood, named after a anagrammatic title ruse used to dissuade leaks of Doctor Who's first series, incorporated parts of his abandoned project Excalibur with the pansexual 51st century time-traveller Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) and a team of alien hunters in Cardiff.^[89] The show began production in April 2006 and was marketed through foreshadowing in the main story arc of Doctor Who's second series, which portrayed Torchwood as a covert governmental organisation that monitor, exploit, and suppress the existence of extraterrestrial life and technology.^[91] Upon its transmission, Torchwood was one of BBC Three's most popular shows; however, it received criticism for "adolescent" use of sexual and violent themes. This led the production team to alter the format to be subtler in its portrayal of adult themes.^[89]

Concurrently, he was approached to produce a CBBC show which was described as Young Doctor Who.^[92] Reluctant to diminish the mystery of the Doctor's character, he proposed a show starring Elisabeth Sladen as the once-popular companion Sarah Jane Smith. The Sarah Jane Adventures was a show similar in style to the failed 1981 spin-off K9 & Company, and portrayed Sarah Jane investigating aliens with local schoolchildren in the London Borough of Ealing.^[92] The show was given a backdoor pilot as the Doctor Who episode "School Reunion" and premièred in its own right with "Invasion of the Bane" on 1 January 2007. The show was more successful than its predecessor; it received more favourable reviews than Torchwood and a significant periphery demographic that compared the show to 1970s Doctor Who episodes.^[92]

The workload of managing three separate shows led Davies to delegate writing tasks for Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures to other writers so he could focus on writing Doctor Who.^[93] After Billie Piper's departure as Rose Tyler in the second series finale "Doomsday", he suggested a third spin-off, Rose Tyler: Earth Defence, a compilation of annual Bank Holiday specials featuring Rose in a parallel universe version of Torchwood.^[94] However, he reneged on his idea, believing that Rose should stay off screen, and abandoned the idea even though it had been budgeted.^[94]

The Writer's Tale and writing the fourth series

In September 2008, BBC Books, an imprint of Random House Publishing, published The Writer's Tale, a collection of emails between Davies and Radio Times and Doctor Who Magazine journalist Benjamin Cook. Dubbed the "Great Correspondence" by Davies and Cook,^[95] The Writer's Tale covers a period between February 2007 and March 2008 and explores his writing processes and the development of his scripts for the fourth series of Doctor Who: "Voyage of the Damned", "Partners in Crime", "Midnight", "Turn Left", "The Stolen Earth", and "Journey's End". The book's first chapter focuses on Cook's "big questions"^[96] on Davies' writing style,^[95] character development—using the Doctor Who character Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) and the Skins character Tony Stonem (Nicholas Hoult) as contrasting examples—,^[97] formulating ideas for stories,^[98] and the question "why do you write?".^[96] After several weeks, Cook assumes an unofficial advisory role to the scriptwriting and the development of the series. The book's epilogue consists of a short exchange between Davies and Cook: Cook changes from his role as "Invisible Ben" to "Visible Ben" and strongly advises to vastly alter the denouement to "Journey's End" from a cliffhanger that led into "The Next Doctor"—which had occurred in the previous three series finales, "The Parting of the Ways", "Doomsday", and "Last of the Time Lords"—to a melancholy ending that showed the Doctor alone in the TARDIS. After three days of deliberation, Davies accepts Cook's suggestion and thanks him for improving both episodes.^[99]

After its release, the pair embarked on a five-stop signing tour to promote the book in October 2008, visiting Waterstone's branches in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, and Cardiff.^[100] The book received universally positive reviews. Most notably, Veronica Horwell of The Guardian wrote that Davies was the "Scheherazade of Cardiff Bay" and opined that the book should have been twice the published length.^[101] Ian Berriman of science fiction magazine SFX gave the book five stars and wrote that it was the only book necessary to gain a knowledge of the show's production and secrets.^[102] Television critic Charlie Brooker was inspired by the book to devote an entire episode of his BBC Four show Screenwipe to interviewing television writers.^[103] Also, television couple Richard and Judy selected the book as a recommended Christmas present in the "Serious Non-Fiction" category of their book club.^[104] A second edition of the book, The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter, was released in January 2010 by BBC Books. The second edition added 350 pages—before excising draft scripts included in the first edition—and covered Davies' final months producing Doctor Who, co-writing the five-part Torchwood miniseries Children of Earth, planning David Tennant's departure and Matt Smith's arrival as the Doctor, and finishing with his move to the United States.^[103]

Post-Doctor Who career

Davies planned to depart from producing the show in 2009 after writing four special length episodes, following Gardner and Collinson's concurrent departures. His departure from the show was announced in May 2008 alongside a press release that named Steven Moffat as his successor.^[105] His role in late-2008 was split between writing the 2009 specials and preparing for the transition between his and Moffat's production team; one chapter of The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter discusses plans between him, Gardner, and Tennant to announce Tennant's departure from the role live during the ITV-broadcast National Television Awards in October 2008.^[106] His final full script for Doctor Who was finished in the early morning of 4 March 2009 and filming of the episode closed on 20 May 2009.^[107][108]

Davies' next planned project is a Red Productions drama codenamed MGM (More Gay Men), a series first formulated in 2006 and focusing on middle-aged gay men—as opposed to Queer as Folk's focus on gay teenagers—and has expressed interest in returning to art to write a graphic novel.^[109][110] He was also unsuccessfully approached by Lucasfilm to write for the mid-2010s-premièring Star Wars live-action television series.^[109] Davies moved with Gardner and Jane Tranter to the United States in June 2009,^[111][112] and currently resides in Los Angeles, California.^[112] He continues to oversee production of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures; he will be the head writer of the fourth series of Torchwood, to be broadcast in 2011,^[113] and write one story for The Sarah Jane Adventures, Death of the Doctor, which will include Matt Smith as the Doctor and Katy Manning as the Doctor's former companion Jo Grant.^[114]

Writing style

Davies is a self-admitted procrastinator, often waiting hours or days for concepts to form before committing them to the script. In The Writer's Tale, he describes his procrastination by relating a story from his early career. His early method of dealing with the pressures of delivering a script was to "go out drinking", and had a varying success ratio. On one occasion in the mid-1990s, he was at the Manchester gay club Cruz 101 when he thought of the climax to the first series of The Grand. As his career progressed, he instead spent entire nights "just thinking of plot, character, pace, etc" and waiting until 2:00 am in the morning, "when the clubs used to shut", to overcome the urge of procrastination.^[115] Davies described the sense of anxiety he experiences while writing in an email to Cook in April 2007, in response to Cook's question of "how do you know when to start writing?":

I leave it till the last minute. And then I leave it some more. Eventually, I leave it till I'm desperate. [...] I always think, I'm not ready to write it, I don't know what I'm doing, it's just a jumble of thoughts in a state of flux, there's no story, I don't know who A connects to B, I don't know anything! I get myself into a genuine state of panic. [...] Normally, I'll leave it till the deadline, and I haven't even started writing. This has become, over the years, a week beyond the deadline, or even more. It can be a week—or weeks—past the delivery date, and I haven't started writing. In fact, I don't have delivery dates any more. I go by the start-of-preproduction date. I consider that to be my real deadline. And then I miss that. It's a cycle that I cannot break. I simply can't help it. It makes my life miserable.

— Russell T Davies to Benjamin Cook, 3 April 2007.^[116]

He expanded on his email two weeks later, in response to Cook's query about the supposed link between major depressive disorder and creativity. He explained that his anxiety and melancholy during the scriptwriting period still allowed him to keep on top of his work; on the other hand, he thought "Depression with a capital D [didn't have] any such luxury", but acknowledged the link.^[117]

Davies explained in length his writing process to Cook in The Writer's Tale. When creating characters, he initially assigns a character a name and fits attributes around the name. In the case of Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) in his inaugural series of Doctor Who, he chose the name because it was a "good luck charm" after being used in Bob & Rose and later justified the name as part of his desire to make the series "essentially British"; he considered Rose to be "the most British name in the world" and feminine enough to subvert the then-current trend of female companions having "boyish" names such as Benny, Charley, and Ace. When he was writing for The Grand, the executive producer requested that he change the female lead character's name, a decision that led to the "character never [feeling] right from that moment on".^[118] The surname "Harkness", most notably given to his pansexual time-traveller Captain Jack Harkness, is a similar charm, first used in 1993 for the Harkness family in Century Falls and ultimately derived from the Marvel Universe hero Agatha Harkness,^[119] while the surname "Tyler" is similarly used because of his affection for how the surname is spelled and pronounced.^[120]

Davies also attempts to channel his writing by using music that fits the theme of the series as a source of inspiration: Doctor Who was typically written while listening to the scores of action-adventure films; Queer as Folk was written to Hi-NRG music "to catch [the] sheer clubland drive"; Bob & Rose was written to the Moby album Play, because the two works shared a "urban, sexy, full of lonely hearts at night" image; and The Second Coming shared the concepts of "experimental[ity], anguish, dark[ness], [and] pain" of Radiohead albums.^[118] More specifically, he wrote the early drafts of the fourth series Doctor Who episode "Partners in Crime" while he was listening to Mika's Life in Cartoon Motion, and singled out the song "Any Other World" as a "Doctor Who companion song" with lyrics that matched Penny, the planned companion for the fourth series.^[121]

When he creates new scripts, he considers the dénouement of a story to be representative of the work as a whole, and often formulates both the scene and its emotional impact early in the process, while writing the scenes last due to his belief that "[later scenes] can't exist if they aren't informed by where they've come from".^[122] Davies is a strong advocate for the continued use of the cliffhanger ending and opposes advertising that sacrifices the impact of storytelling. In pursuit of his quest, he instructs editors to remove scenes from press copies of episodes he writes; the Doctor Who episodes "Army of Ghosts",^[123] "The Stolen Earth",^[124] and the first part of The End of Time^[125] all end with their cliffhangers removed, and Rose Tyler's unadvertised appearance in "Partners in Crime" was excised.^[126] His most prolific cliffhanger was in the script of "The Stolen Earth", which created an unprecedented amount of interest in the show.^[127] In an interview with BBC News shortly after the episode's transmission, he argued that the success of a popular television series is linked to how well producers can keep secrets and create a "live experience":^[128]

It's exciting... when you get kids in playground talking about your story, about who's going to live or die, then I consider that a job well done, because that's interactive television, that's what it's all about: it's debate and fun and chat. It's playing a game with the country and I think that's wonderful.

— Russell T Davies, "Struggle to keep Who secret", BBC News Online^[128]

In writing his scripts, Davies attempts to both create imagery and to provide a social commentary; for example, he uses camera directions in his scripts more frequently than newer screenwriters to ensure that anyone who reads the script, especially the director, is able to "feel... the pace, the speed, the atmosphere, the mood, the gags, [and] the dread". His stage directions also create an atmosphere by their formatting and avoidance of the first person.^[129] Although the basis of several of his scripts derive from previous concepts, he claims that most concepts for storytelling have been already used, and instead tries to tell a relatively new and entertaining plot; for example, the Doctor Who episode "Turn Left" shares its concept most notably with the 1998 film Sliding Doors. Like how Sliding Doors examines two timelines based on whether Helen Quilley (Gwyneth Paltrow) catches a London Underground train, Davies uses the choice of the Doctor's companion to turn left or right at a road intersection to depict either a world with the Doctor, as seen throughout the rest of the fourth series, or an alternate world without the Doctor, examined in its entirety within the episode.^[130] The world without the Doctor creates a dystopia, which he uses to provide a commentary on Nazi-esque fascism.^[131][132] Davies generally tries to make his scripts "detailed, but quite succint", and eschews the practice of long character and set descriptions; instead, he limits himself to only three adjectives to describe a character and two lines to describe a set to allow the dialogue to describe the story instead.^[133]

Davies also uses his scripts to examine and debate on large issues such as sexuality and religion, using his homosexuality and atheism as reference point. He refrains from a dependence on "cheap, easy lines" that provide little deeper insight,^[134] his mantra during his early adult drama career being "no boring issues".^[23] Queer as Folk is the primary vehicle for his social commentary of homosexuality and advocation of greater acceptance. He used the series to challenge the "primal [...] gut instinct" of homophobia by introducing homosexual imagery in contrast to the heterosexual "fundamental image of life, of family, of childhood, [and] of survival".^[134][135] Torchwood also tackles the theme of sexuality, exploring the characters' own sexuality and subverting homosexual and bisexual stereotypes and the expectation of heterosexuality, using contemporary Cardiff as a setting,^[136] and Bob & Rose examines the issue of a gay man falling in love with a woman. His most notable commentaries of religion and atheism are The Second Coming and his 2007 Doctor Who episode "Gridlock". The Second Coming's depiction of a contemporary and realistic Second Coming of Jesus Christ eschews the use of religious iconography in favour of a love story underlined by the male lead's "awakening as the Son of God".^[129] In contrast, "Gridlock" takes a more pro-active role in debating religion: the episode depicts the unity of the supporting cast in singing Christian hymns such as "Abide with Me" and "The Old Rugged Cross" as a positive aspect of faith, while simultaneously depicting the Doctor as an atheistic hero which shows the faith as misguided because "there is no higher authority" in the episode.^[134] He also includes his commentary as an undertone in other stories; he described the sub-plot of the differing belief systems of the Doctor and Queen Victoria in "Tooth and Claw" as a conflict between "Rational Man versus Head of the Church".^[134]

Recognition

Saving it from extinction.

— Frank Cottrell Boyce, when asked his opinion on Davies' greatest contribution to British television drama.^[137]

Davies has received recognition for his work since his career as a children's television writer. Davies' first BAFTA award nominations came in 1992 when he was nominated for the "Best Children's Programme (Fiction)" Television Award for his work on Children's Ward.^[138] Children's Ward would be nominated in 1996 and later win the Children's Drama award in 1997.^[139][140] His next critically successful series would be Bob & Rose, which was nominated for a Television Award for Best Drama Serial, and won two British Comedy Awards for Best Comedy Drama and Writer of the Year.^[141][142] The Second Coming was nominated for the same Television Award in 2003.^[143] His work on The Second Coming also earned him a nomination for a Royal Television Society award.^[144]

Most of Davies' recognition came as a result of his work on Doctor Who. In 2005, Doctor Who won two Television Awards—Best Drama Series and the Pioneer Audience Award—and he was awarded the honorary Dennis Potter Award for writing.^[145] BAFTA Cymru also gave him the 2005 Siân Phillips Award for Outstanding Contribution to Network Television.^[146] In 2006, he was awarded the accolade of "Industry Player of the Year" at the Edinburgh International Television Festival.^[147] In 2007, he was nominated for the "Best Soap/Series" Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award—along with Chris Chibnall, Paul Cornell, Stephen Greenhorn, Steven Moffat, Helen Raynor, and Gareth Roberts—for their work on the third series of Doctor Who.^[148] He was again nominated for two BAFTA Awards in 2008: a Television Award for his work on Doctor Who,^[149] and the Television Craft Award for Best Writer, for the episode "Midnight".^[150] He has also been nominated for three Hugo Awards, all in the category of "Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form": in 2007, the story comprising "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday" was defeated by Steven Moffat's "The Girl in the Fireplace";^[151] in 2009, the episode "Turn Left" was defeated by Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog;^[152] and in 2010, all three of his scripts which were eligible for the award, "The Next Doctor", the Davies–Roberts collaboration "Planet of the Dead", and the Davies–Ford collaboration "The Waters of Mars", were nominated.^[153]

Davies' work on Doctor Who has similarly been recognised by the public. During his tenure as executive producer, only Steven Moffat's "Silence in the Library", which was scheduled against the final of the second series of Britain's Got Talent, had failed to win in its timeslot. The show's viewing figures were consistent, and high enough that the only broadcasts to have consistently rivaled Doctor Who for viewers in the weekly BARB charts were EastEnders, Coronation Street, Britain's Got Talent, and international football matches.^[154] Two of his scripts, "Voyage of the Damned" and "The Stolen Earth", broke audience records for the show by being declared the second most viewed broadcasts of their respective weeks, and "Journey's End" became the first episode to be the most viewed broadcast of the week.^[155] The show currently enjoys consistently high Appreciation Index ratings: "Love & Monsters", regarded by Doctor Who fans as his worst script,^[156] gained a rating of 76,^[157] just short of the 2006 average rating of 77;^[158] and the episodes "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" share the highest rating Doctor Who has received, at 91.^[159][160]

Among Doctor Who fans, his contribution to the show ranks as high as the show's co-creator Verity Lambert: in a 2009 poll of 6,700 Doctor Who Magazine readers, he won the "Greatest Contribution" award with 22.62% of the votes against Lambert's 22.49% share,^[161] in addition to winning the magazine's 2005, 2006, and 2008 awards for the best writer of each series.^[162] Ian Farrington, who commented on the 2009 "Greatest Contribution" poll, attributed Davies' popularity to his range of writing styles, from the epic "Doomsday" to the minimalistic "Midnight", and his ability to market the show to appeal to a wide audience.^[161]

Davies' work on Doctor Who has led to accolades out of the television industry. Between 2005 and 2008, he was included in The Guardian's "Media 100": in 2005, he was ranked the 14th most influential man in the media;^[163] in 2006, the 28th;^[164] in 2007, the 15th;^[165] and in 2008, the 31st.^[166] The Independent on Sunday also recognised his contributions to the public by including him on consecutive Pink Lists, which chronicle the achievements of gay and lesbian personalities: in 2005, he was ranked the 73rd most influential gay person;^[167] in 2006, the 18th;^[167] in 2007, the most influential gay person;^[168] in 2008, the 2nd;^[169] and in 2009, the 14th.^[170] He was awarded an OBE in the Queen's 2008 Birthday Honours list for services to drama,^[171] and an honorary fellowship by Cardiff University in July 2008.^[172]

Production credits

• Why Don't You...? (various roles including director, assistant floor manager, and writer, 1985–90)
• Play School (presenter, one episode, 1987)
• On the Waterfront (sketch writer and script editor, 1988–89)
• DEF II (uncredited sketch writer, 1989)
• Breakfast Serials (producer and writer, 1990)
• Dark Season (1991)
• Children's Ward (1992–96)
• Families (storyliner, 1992–93)
• ChuckleVision (three episodes, 1992)
• Century Falls (1993)
• Cluedo (one episode, 1993)
• Do the Right Thing (uncredited scriptwriter, 1994–95)
• The House of Windsor (various episodes, several uncredited, 1994)
• Revelations (co-creator and writer, 1994–95)
• Coronation Street (storyliner, 1996)
  • Coronation Street: Viva Las Vegas! (1997)
• Springhill (storyliner and writer of seven episodes, 1996–97)
• Damaged Goods (Virgin New Adventures Doctor Who novel, 1996)
• The Grand (various episodes, several uncredited, 1997–98)
• Touching Evil (one episode, 1997)
• Queer as Folk (co-producer and writer, 1999–2000)
• Bob & Rose (co-producer and writer, 2001)
• Linda Green (one episode, 2001)
• The Second Coming (executive producer and writer, 2003)
• Mine All Mine (executive producer and writer, 2004)
• Casanova (executive producer and writer, 2005)
• Doctor Who (executive producer, showrunner, and head writer, 31 episodes and three mini-episodes, 2005–10)
  • Doctor Who Confidential (executive producer, 2005–10)
  • Tardisodes (executive producer, 2006)
• Torchwood (creator and executive producer and writer of four episodes, 2006–)
  • Torchwood Declassified (executive producer, 2006–)
• The Sarah Jane Adventures (creator, executive producer, and writer of one special and one story, 2007–)

Doctor Who franchise writing credits

Year	Show	Episode
2005	Doctor Who	"Rose"
		"The End of the World"
		"Aliens of London"
		"World War Three"
		"The Long Game"
		"Boom Town"
		"Bad Wolf"
		"The Parting of the Ways"
		"Doctor Who: Children in Need"
		"The Christmas Invasion"
2006		"New Earth"
		"Tooth and Claw"
		"Love & Monsters"
		"Army of Ghosts"
		"Doomsday"
	Torchwood	"Everything Changes"
	Doctor Who	"The Runaway Bride"
2007	The Sarah Jane Adventures	"Invasion of the Bane" (co-written with Gareth Roberts)
	Doctor Who	"Smith and Jones"
		"Gridlock"
		"Utopia"
		"The Sound of Drums"
		"Last of the Time Lords"
		"Voyage of the Damned"
2008		"Partners in Crime"
		"Midnight"
		"Turn Left"
		"The Stolen Earth"
		"Journey's End"
		"Music of the Spheres"
		"The Next Doctor"
2009		"Planet of the Dead" (co-written with Gareth Roberts)
		"Doctor Who: Tonight's the Night"
	Torchwood	Children of Earth, episodes 1, 3, and 5 (episode 3 co-written with James Moran)
	Doctor Who	"The Waters of Mars" (co-written with Phil Ford)
2009–10		The End of Time (one scene written by Steven Moffat)
2010	The Sarah Jane Adventures	Death of the Doctor

References

Bibliography

Citations

External links

• Russell T Davies in Conversation, 23 March 2009: Davies holds a BAFTA-sponsored talk on children's television.
• Template:BFI-screendb-person
• Russell T Davies at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com person

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