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The Gary Russell Interview
In conversation with Eddie
You know, sometimes you make to list the things someone has achieved and it just blows you away. Gary Russell is one of those guys. In the world of Doctor Who he’s done just about everything. Not content with editing Doctor Who Magazine, oh no, he novelized the TV Movie, has written NA and EDAs and pioneered – that’s pioneered people – the audio treat we call Big Finish… ah, but that’s not all… he’s script edited Torchwood AND Sarah Jane Adventures, and, at last, makes it onto Doctor Who with the final three specials. So, racing round Upperboat in a virtual hover disc looking in offices, under desks and in cupboards, I finally cornered Gary and sat him in The Mind Probe… what follows is, just about, spoiler free…
You come from a breed of “professional fans” – how does that happen? What was your path from “enthusiast” to “professional”?
Luck, pure and simple. Being in the right place, at the right time, and smiling sweetly at Alan MacKenzie at PanoptiCon 81 and havin’ a laugh with him, so he remembered me two years later. Everything spiralled out of that really…
You obviously have great love for the “classic series” (I hate that term, to me it’s all one series…), what are your earliest memories? Favourite Target novelisation, writer, era, etc?
The Tenth Planet regeneration is the earliest memory I have, but I didn’t really get addicted till the repeat of Evil of the Daleks, at which point I was glued. Pertwee is obviously ‘da man’ for me, season seven being fairly flawless. So my faves: Inferno, Silurians, Mind of Evil, Curse of Peladon, Carnival, Frontier, Dinosaurs… Hmmm… there’s a definite Malcolm Hulke bent in there, too! And although I’m not a fan of Tom Baker’s era very much, if I was trying to introduce the show to a newcomer, it’d be Robots of Death or Terror of the Zygons I’d show them to say how good it could be. My fave Target – has to be Doomsday Weapon or Cave Monsters. Or Day of the Daleks (my first).
Did the stalwarts of your childhood –Hulke, Holmes, Dicks etc – make you want to write?
Hulke, definitely. Everything I do now includes my head saying, ‘How would Hulke write his character?’ He’s why I write, and why I prefer character/people stories to space opera or action stories. But I’m also inspired by Lewis Carroll, Hugh Walters (look his books up), Frank Baum, the Fantastic Four, Agatha Christie and Rudyard Kipling!
How does it feel moving from “fan” to “hey, I’m getting paid for that…”
Scary. Daily. Except I haven’t moved from ‘fan’ – I’m still there! Some might say still too much!!
You novelised the TV Movie, with some nice continuity references in there. Considering this was an American product were they ok with these? You became the new “Terrance Dicks” with that…
Ha! As if… I wanted more. In my original draft there was a brief reference to Ace being home safe and when they look into the Eye and see McCoy, I had the rest of ’em flash by as well. BBC Books took all that out, saying it would alienate kids who had no idea about the history of Doctor Who. Bless their mad ways!
And of course you also wrote 'Regeneration', a “making of”. I presume your editorship of DWM helped get you that kind of access?
Nope, that was due to me doing the novel, which was a direct result of me doing the Destiny of the Doctors computer game. I got on well with Phil Segal and at a convention, we just talked about a making of… and bingo, he asked me to sort it, write it with him, and so on. Everything is always about being in the right place at the right time and being nice to people. Zero talent, lots of chutzpah, that’s me!
How easy was the transition between that kind of writing and the NA type?
Terrible. Which is why I only did one NA. I was so far removed from that style of Who writing, so not part of that gang, that mentality, I was so obviously wrong for that range. It’s why I stuck to past Doctors – I felt comfortable with that. It was the same with the Eighth Doctor novels – I did[i] Placebo Effect[/i] but again came up against this wall of other writers who seemed to dictate that the books needed to go in a direction completely at odds with my opinion of what DW is about, so I never did another of those. And because I was crap at them, it was very easy to stay away.
Considering the variety you wrote for… unfair question, do you have a favourite?
Legacy, ’cos it was the first. Business Unusual ’cos it was exactly the story I wanted to tell. Beautiful Chaos ’cos it made RTD happy.
How did Big Finish come about?
I always wanted to do Doctor Who on audio – it’s a perfect medium, and done properly it can be fantastic for fantasy fiction. Dirk Maggs was doing great stuff at the BBC in that field and much as I loved Phil Clarke and especially Barry Letts – one of the kindest most genuine people in the world – I felt that Paradise of Death and Ghosts of N-Space failed because they didn’t play with the medium very well. They tried to be TV stories but on audio rather than audio stories first and foremost. Me and Jason approached the BBC for a licence just around the time I did the TV Movie novel, but were batted away. So we went off with Nick Briggs and did the Benny stuff, which two years on led to the Beeb, thanks to Steve Cole, coming to us and asking if we’d ever be interested in doing Who stuff. The circle turns…
What’s it like to be writing for a Doctor and then actually hear him say those words?
Well, weird. But remember, I didn’t really write very much BF stuff. I co-wrote two with Alan (he did the good bits that people loved), one Unbound (which no one at BF bar me liked) and a Gallifrey (in an emergency). So I was a prolific director and obviously produced the first 90-odd of the main range, but I rarely got to hear my words spoken. And quite right too – the object was to bring in as many diverse writers as possible and tell their stories.
Did you achieve everything you set out to?
Yeah. To make good stories, lots of good writers, get Janet Fielding, Bonnie Langford and Paul McGann on board. Let Colin Baker be the Doctor he always should have been had he been given the right push, and entertain people who paid good money for something. I’m happy and very proud of my BF run.
I’ve asked Nick and David this too… do you have an ultimate Who story you would love to make?
Gallifrey – from dawn to dusk. And not a bloody loom in sight. The entire history of the planet and people (hinted at in Zagreus, in the Colin Baker section, which was why I wrote that) right up to, well, now I guess the Time War. No, actually, up to where the Gallifrey audio series began.
And another hot potato… Big Finish: canon or not canon?
Irrelevant. Who cares? It’s about enjoying stories and adventures, not about whether it’s ‘real’ or not. It’s just a bloody series of fictional adventures on telly, CD, book, comic strip etc, none of it’s real!
Aaaand another one… there have been suggestions in the past to “recast” the Doctors no longer with us… how would you feel about that? It’s been suggested to do this in a multi-Doctor story like Dreamland, which you’re directing…?
I would never recast. Period. End of discussion.
That was my segue, by the way into… "Dreamland"… What can you tell us about that?
Good segue, slick. (thanks – Ed) It’s a 3-D animation across six episodes with the Tenth Doctor in 1950s America, dealing with aliens, the military, Roswell, bobby socks and escaping. In a box. Always be prepared to escape in a box.
This is a proper, bona fide, tenth Doctor adventure, isn’t it? Where does it fit in the chronology of the series?
Between Waters of Mars and the final two eps.
And also, at long last, you script edit the series Proper with the last three Specials… now, I know what you’re going to say, but I have to ask… what can you tell us about them?
They are fantastic. They will make you cheer, scream and, above all, cry. Anyone not crying throughout the last 15 minutes of 4.18 has no heart, soul or taste. They are Russell’s best work. He is my writing hero, so I’m biased and the Doctor is played for the final time by one of the best actors I ever had the joy of doing Big Finishes with. Nothing, but nothing, could be better. And it’s Julie’s last story as exec, too, which was bittersweet ’cos I didn’t want her to leave for America, but now I’ve moved into her lovely house in Cardiff and she ain’t ever getting it back! Ha!
Is there a distinct difference between editing Torchwood, Dr Who and Sarah Jane?
Yes and no. It’s knowing the audience, the timeslot and thus the editorial stance. But telling a good story is telling a good story regardless of the series. Doctor Who was a thrill to be involved in a lifelong passion, Torchwood just grabbed me the moment I read the first scripts and I begged to work on it, Sarah Jane is something I feel very jealously possessive of and as someone who loves good kids TV drama of the past, it’s where I currently feel most comfortable. I have simply the best job in the world. Period. And again, nowt to do with me per se, but down to Julie and Russell taking an enormous gamble. For which I shall always be grateful and try as often as possible not to give them cause to regret it.
OK, onto fandom now. I listened with interest to your comments about OG and Spoilers – being a huge figure in the world of fandom, what’re your thoughts on spoilers and the flame wars which erupt around them?
I don’t do DW forums since OG closed (apart from Roobarbs, ’cos I love shite telly) so flame wars etc don’t have any resonance with me. I’ve said this before and I’ll repeat it again, ad nauseum – if forums had a policy whereby people posted stuff but it didn’t go live for 24 hours, during which time you could edit or delete your own words as often as you liked, forums would be a healthier, more respected place. As it is, give people the ability to give unfiltered knee-jerk reactions to things they haven’t really thought about (it’s why magazines have editors), and you get the nonsense you deserve. Do I care about spoilers? Not my place to care one way or another. If people are dumb enough to want to be spoiled, they will be. 95% of what you read as spoilers are utterly invented by a new breed of fan who wants to be ‘famous’ for contributing nothing but being ‘famous’ on forums and thus invent rubbish to seem cool. Great, good luck to them. Strikes me as a rather empty kind of soul, but each to their own. So no, I don’t care, personally or professionally, about spoilers – most of them are wrong.
And what have you got coming up in the future? More SJA?
Yeah, hope so. We’re at the planning stages for a potential SJA series four – but obviously we’ll have to see how series three goes down. Fingers crossed. I could happily work on SJA for another ten years!
Our best wishes to Gary and thanks for the interview...
Waters of Mars airs in November
Sarah Jane Adventures is back on 15th October.
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