The Last Time Round
I've delivered! I've delivered the last Doctor Who script I'll ever write! Only counting solo-written ones, and ignoring credited and uncredited rewrites and minisodes, that's 42 in total, I think. Good number, 42. The Douglas Adams number. Back in the day I wrote 43 episodes of Press Gang, but they were shorter, so I suppose that I've written more Doctor Who than I've written anything else. Who cares about this? Me, that's who. Nobody else in the whole world gives a damn about those numbers (not even Tom Spilsbury, and numbers are his favourite thing), but what are you going to do about it - fire me?
Oh, but it's such a simple thing to say, that I delivered a script - so as it's my last go, let's unpack that a little.
A few weeks ago, I was slaving over my first draft. That's the big one, the first draft. Don't let anyone tell you that the first draft is just a discussion document or a Work In Progress - it's not 'just' anything. It's your honest, heartfelt, flailing attempt at perfection. You're aiming for the top of the mountain. You're going to miss, of course, but you've got to try or it means nothing. Whoever got out of bed who didn't have hope?
Something else: the first draft isn't the first draft - it's just the first draft you let anyone read. No idea how many before that. How many times you write each scene, in fact. The first draft is just where it starts for everyone else.
I finished, I pressed SEND and because it was a warm evening, I went out to sit in the garden. I made it halfway to my chair in confidence. Then I started worrying about just how bad that script might be...
The next day, after a production meeting, I sat in the Soho sunshine, on a bench with Brian Minchin, and because time was pressing, he gave me a few notes. Delicate and kind, of course. I listened, and didn't agree, but I promised to have a look.
And when I read it again, oh, I didn't like it at all. Argh, the pain. The parts I worked hardest on seemed scrappy and disjointed. The few sections I'd rushed a bit were the only ones I liked at all. And of course, all Brian's notes were entirely correct. "Not up to scratch," I sighed to my wife that evening. I went back in from the garden, sat down at my computer, and started the second draft.
Ah, the second draft. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? What it means is this: I wrote it all over again. That's what you do. You start from the beginning, you remember what the point of the story was, you fight your way back to what you were trying to say in the first place, and you start climbing back up the mountain. Hopefully the right mountain this time. Oh, and you add more jokes. Always add more jokes. No sane person ever objected to laughing. If you're the only person not laughing at the joke, good news - you are the joke!
I slashed and burned and rearranged. Yeah, that third word really lets that sentence down, doesn't it? That wouldn't make a Game of Thrones - they slash, they burn, they move things around a bit. But hey, I'm a writer, I'm not supposed to be exciting.
This time I pressed SEND and made it all the way to my garden chair, before the stomach-clenching dread and the certainty that I'd get fired.
"They can't fire you this time, dear" said my wife without looking up.
"Did I say that out loud?" I asked.
"You don't need to," she said.
This time everyone seemed happy. Rachel Talalay, who had been happy the first time, was even happier now.
Nick Lambon, our script editor (whose brain is so clever his hair stands vertical in the updraft) said he'd had a few logical problems with the first draft, said they'd all been solved. But he had some new ones. His hair remained vertical. Mine remained curly, like it was all being sucked back down by the vacuum below.
A day passed, as days do, and everyone remained happy. I considered being happy myself, but I'm from Scotland where happy is worse than naked. Speaking of Scottish, Peter Capaldi emailed. He was mostly happy (that's Glasgow for ecstatic) but had a couple of thoughts. I read the email on my phone, held discreetly under a restaurant table as I was out for dinner with friends - they'd never have suspected a thing if I hadn't shouted, "I've got an email from Doctor Who!!"
I agreed with the first of his points immediately, but wasn't sure about the second. Peter is always clever, though, so I promised to give it a go.
The next day I sat down to my third draft. And I mean third draft. Because you can't just fiddle about with a couple of scenes, you have to start from the beginning again. You need to know the new stuff fits. So you start at the foot of the mountain and climb it all over again, making sure all the hand-holds still work. Everything must still link together, the new stuff must look like it was always there - like it's necessary. And you know what? Peter's first point worked perfectly well, but his second - a subtle realignment of the Doctor's attitude in the final scenes - was bang on the money. The ending was suddenly so much better. Doctor Who is always right.
Then, of course, the readthrough - my very last one. It went well, most of the jokes got laughs, and everyone seemed happy and/or vertically haired. I noticed there was a missing beat towards the end of the story, and we all worried there was a plot-fudge in the middle (no, really??) so I went straight home, worrying about what to do. I wrote my fourth draft the next day. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Changed more than I expected to, but it all felt sound and clear and strong. I added a joke for luck. And there it was at long, aching last - the shooting script.
Pressing SEND! Good luck studio!
We're a week into shooting now. I had a chat with Peter on the set, and we came up with a new take on a moment, which I'll try to make work later today. I have a few other ideas, and possibly a tiny extra scene, but by the time you read this, the script should be done. Well, till we tear it apart in the cutting room, and make a whole new show!
So that's how it was, the last time round. That's how it always was, back then, in those lovely days that still make me still smile as I nod to sleep in my garden chair; those dear, dead, distant days when I used to write Doctor Who.
