Russell T. Davies

Doctor Who: Russell T Davies on the re-writing of the Time War

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Russell T Davies has been doing some interviews, to help promote a brand new book of Time Lord poetry, that he’s provided the illustrations for. It’s a lovely book, that’s on sale now.  As part of his interview tour, he gave an interview to Doctor Who megafan Frank Skinner, on the latter’s Absolute Radio show. As a consequence, Doctor Who talk ensued!

In a light-hearted conversation, Skinner quizzed Davies about how he felt when Steven Moffat re-engineered the Time War narrative that he’d written into the show when he brought it back. Was, Skinner asked, Davies in any way “miffed” that an important piece of Doctor Who lore was reworked?

“When you leave Doctor Who, you have to take a deep breath and think it’s all up for grabs now, it’s all there to be rewritten”, Davies said.

“But not retrospectively, surely?” asked Skinner.

“You’re very clever”, laughed Davies. “It was an interesting evening”, he said of the night Day Of The Doctor premiered. “But I love that episode”. With a grin on his face – and it’s important to note that there was no criticism being aimed – Davies laughed that “it wasn’t so much the Time Lords reappearing, it was all the Daleks shooting themselves. Couldn’t any of them dodge that?!”

Davies also admitted that since he left Doctor Who, his mind hasn’t come up with one story in the series he’d want to tell. “A year before I knew I was leaving, my mind had moved onto other things”, he said.

It’s a really good interview, and well worth listening to in full, here.

Absolute Radio

Doctor Who: Now We Are Six Hundred: A Collection Of Time Lord Verse is available now, written by James Goss and illustrated by Russell T Davies.