We sit down with the showrunner to chat about the new series of Doctor Who, starring Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu…
Hello Russell! We’re very excited about the new series! The Doctor has a new companion, Belinda Chandra, joining him this year. She’s played by Varada Sethu, who we’ve already seen in a different role in last year’s series, in the episode Boom…
Russell: Well, that was so lucky. There’s a history of Doctor Who spotting its stars in previous episodes. It happened with Freema Agyeman [in 2006], and many years ago, it happened with Colin Baker, when he appeared as a Gallifreyan guard [in a 1983 Peter Davison adventure], and then became the Doctor. And even Catherine Tate had a dry run [in the 2006 Christmas special], and then we brought her back. I’d already invented Belinda – she was called Belinda Finch back then, just as a placeholder name. It was simply a matter of finding the right actor. We saw a lot of people, but the funny thing was, we were still editing Boom, written by lovely Steven Moffat. When you edit an episode, you watch it about 50 times, if not more. Seriously, that’s how many times! I was sitting here at my desk, and every single time I’d watch Varada, I’d love what she’d done, and I was really sad that I hadn’t got to write for her myself. I was musing on the fact that Doctor Who eats up talents, and stars, and sets, and monsters, and ideas… and then you move right on to the next thing. And suddenly, after 27 other people had auditioned, I sat here in this very office and thought, ‘Oh my God, why don’t we just ask Varada?’ So, I sent an email, and it was like a little chain of explosions going off in the New Year’s sky. It just went, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes’, all the way up to Disney. Everyone said ‘yes’, right up to the bosses, because we all loved her. It was one of those easy situations where everything just fell into place. Hooray.
Will you be drawing attention to the fact that Belinda has a doppelganger in the 51st century?
Russell: Yes! There is a little link. I mean, the Doctor clearly recognises her. He’s seen someone with exactly the same face before. He does a little DNA test, and she is indeed a 3000-year distant relative of Mundy Flynn. So, in this world of Doctor Who, why is that a coincidence? What’s going on? Is he destined to be with this woman, at this point in time? Events unfold across the series… and we’ll answer that. It’s great. It’s just nice for fans. It gives it a bit of depth. You can tune in quite happily not having seen Boom – although if you haven’t seen Boom, go to the iPlayer right now and watch it.
Well, of course we’ve seen it!
Russell: I know you have, darling! I mean, the Choicers out there – the TV Choice readers. Let’s call them Choicers!
How does Belinda’s arrival change the show’s dynamic? And how does she get on with Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor? She is a bit older than Ruby Sunday (played by Millie Gibson), isn’t she?
Russell: Yes, she is a little bit older. She’s actually slightly older than Ncuti, I think. Obviously, the Doctor is a billion years old, but nonetheless, she plays as the same age as him, which gives it a slightly different dynamic. I felt that quite naturally, the Doctor became a little bit paternal with Ruby Sunday. It was a great thing we did, casting someone that young, but the consequence of that was the Doctor became slightly paternal. While looking at the second series, I thought, ‘We’ve got the youngest, sexiest, most talented man in the universe – that’s enough paternal, it’s time to let him rip!’ So, we’ve kind of got an equal alongside him. And the tagline to the whole series – as you’ll have seen with the Disney posters – is ‘Get her home!’ It’s a whole series of trying to get Belinda home, because it’s no spoiler to say in the first five minutes of action, she finds herself on an alien planet. And then, it’s not giving away too much to suppose that the Doctor saves her, and would normally take her straight back to Earth, but can’t! He keeps bouncing off the 24th of May 2025 – a real date, that is heading towards us at lightning speed. So, what on earth could have happened on that terrible day? Again, that unfolds over the series. It’s not so heavy that you need to be an expert in Doctor Who to follow it. It’s just a fun link through the episodes, that builds up to a huge, devastating climax, which is very exciting!
So, we’re guessing that’s also the transmission date for the two-part finale?
Russell: Yes, episode seven goes out on May the 24th. Will we ever reach episode eight? Maybe the world will be destroyed, and the Doctor will die, and there will never be an eighth episode? Maybe it will just be a blank screen for 45 minutes? No spoilers for this one!
Can you tell us a little bit about the mix of stories?
Russell: I think Doctor Who is at its best when it’s taking wild swings, when every week is staggeringly different – not just a different setting, but practically a different genre. So, episode one this year is a very big space opera romp. It’s literally full of robots and spaceships and space cities, in a way we’ve never quite done before. There’s quite a 1950s design to it – there’s a science-fiction city, with towers and spires and robots and things zinging past in the sky. It’s surprising how little we do that, and that really looks gorgeous. Episode one is called The Robot Revolution, with great big monsters with lasers and battles… and Belinda, thrown into the middle of it! That’s the key to it. Then, we go straight from that to Miami in 1952, where a cartoon character has come to life. That episode is called Lux, and it’s really gorgeous. Alan Cumming is the voice of Mr Ring-a-Ding, and that’s quite scary! From that, we go to a planet 500,000 years in the future, which is good old-fashioned scary episode, which we didn’t really do last year. We didn’t do a proper scary one. I think 73 Yards [from last year] was more disturbing than scary, but The Well is proper old horror. And then, off it goes, off it goes! We come back to Earth for episode four, Lucky Day, where you see what’s going on in modern-day Earth, with a story based on Ruby Sunday. And then we are at Lagos in 2019 for a very strange and quasi-supernatural episode, The Story & The Engine. Then we have The Interstellar Song Contest, which is hilarious, and much tougher than you think. Everyone thinks that episode is going to be a camp old laugh, but it’s terrifying, that one! And then we head into a great, big two-part finale – Wish World and The Reality War – the like of which you’ve never seen before, and it’s very exciting.
We know there are some familiar characters returning. You’ve already mentioned Ruby Sunday, but Melanie Bush (Bonnie Langford) is also back, alongside Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) and the rest of the UNIT gang. What does it bring to the show, to see these familiar faces alongside the new?
Russell: It’s great, just seeing them. As an old television fan, I hold very close in my heart that episode of The Avengers where Tara King walks past Emma Peel on the stairs. I think that’s a great moment! I probably watched that when it first transmitted – two of Steed’s companions walking past each other. So, I absolutely had to deliver on this. There are some great big action scenes of the Doctor and Ruby being together. You have to wait for it, but it’s well worth paying off. It’s just lovely. And every year, I love going back to that UNIT team. I simply love working with Jemma Redgrave. She is one of the finest actors in the land. It’s an honour to have her just turning up every year! I think it gives a nice continuity to the Doctor, knowing that there’s always that UNIT base he can go back to, which is slightly different every year. Plus, we have lovely Mel, and Shirley is back too. We missed Shirley last year, because beautiful Ruth Madeley who plays her was busy filming Nightsleeper – that mad old show on a train! Oh, I loved that. Sadly, that meant we didn’t have any Shirley last year, but she’s back, big time. We get three episodes’ worth of Shirley this time, which is lovely. Doctor Who is a show where you can land anywhere, and go anywhere, and do anything, so it’s nice to have some little bits of continuity – things that can bring you down to Earth and say, ‘This is the same show’. And it’s good to develop the Doctor’s relationship with those people. It’s a nice spine to have underneath it all, while allowing for him to run off to another planet a thousand years in the future, where he might die a horrible death!
Can we talk about some of this series’ brand-new guest stars? You’ve already mentioned Alan Cumming, but there’s Freddie Fox as well…
Russell: Lovely Freddie Fox! We seem to have got the entire cast of Slow Horses coming in, as we also have Kadiff Kirwan and Christopher Chung! That was down to Ben Williams, who directed episode six, The Interstellar Song Contest. I had never watched Slow Horses, so he said ‘Nonsense!’ and slapped me. And then, there was a long weekend where I watched every single episode, and I realised it’s one of the greatest shows ever made. Suddenly, the stars of that keep popping up everywhere, which is a joy. I’ve always stayed in touch with Freddie Fox ever since I worked with him, 10 years ago, on Cucumber [Russell’s 2015 Channel 4 drama]. I think he’s not just a great actor, but a very clever and decent man. I love Freddie, and he’s very dear to me. We’ve always been looking out for the right thing to work with each other, and this came along, so it’s a joy! We also have Charlie Condou from Coronation Street, who is an absolutely brilliant talent. He’s so funny in episode four. Not just funny – he gets into some really big dramatic stuff. He’s brilliant. There are lots and lots of other people too, some of whom we haven’t announced yet. Ariyon Bakare is in episode five playing a villain called The Barber, and that’s a terrific guest role. He’s really centre-stage in that. I love him, gorgeous man.
Someone else who we know is coming back this series is the enigmatic Mrs Flood, played by Anita Dobson. Hopefully there will be some answers about her – but maybe a bit more mystery before we get them?
Russell: Absolutely! I won’t give away Mrs Flood’s first appearance, because it’s very funny. But you will very quickly see her. You won’t have to wait long to meet Mrs Flood. And then she starts popping up at different times and places. I mean, we did that last year with Susan Twist’s character, but she didn’t know who she was. Mrs Flood very much knows who she is, and I can absolutely promise you big reveals when you’re least expecting it. And, oh, it doesn’t disappoint! It’s really glorious to see Anita Dobson grabbing some of these scripts and devouring them. It’s really one of the great joys of my life, actually. I loved seeing her at the Proms. When she walked on stage, the audience loved her. I’ve rarely seen an actor handle a big crowd of 5000 people as well as she did. She owned that room, and that’s a very big room to own. She’s magnificent, and you realise what a classy actor you’ve got there. I absolutely love her. I was as surprised as anyone when she turned up in EastEnders [during the soap’s 40th anniversary episodes in February]. She kept that quiet!
It just goes to show how much more impactful these things can be when you watch without spoilers getting out, doesn’t it?
Russell: Exactly. But it’s hard with Doctor Who, because when a programme has been loved this much for over 60 years, there are people who are literally dedicated to spoiling it. We face the situation almost every day, thinking, ‘Do we make everything so secret that it’s almost impossible to work on, and we don’t trust each other? Or do we just shrug and sigh?’ My basic line is, ‘Yes, all right, things might get spoiled for 5,000 people online’. My nieces, who are in their twenties, don’t read that stuff, so most people still get nice surprises, and haven’t been spoiled. We live in a television world, where it’s all the buzz. But that’s actually a very small world, I think. Every time we put our heads in our hands, and we’re really sad that something’s been spoiled, we have to look up, and look at the bigger horizon and say, ‘Actually, it’s fine’. Also, there are still three or four things that have not been spoiled so far, that I’m very excited about.
As with last year’s series, these new episodes are going onto iPlayer before their BBC1 transmission later that evening. Are you happy about that?
Russell: Yes, like most BBC dramas now, Doctor Who is now going up at 8am. That’s just the way the world works. If anyone would like to come and complain about that, I would offer you a free ride at the TARDIS, back 10 years when those complaints were valid. So, if you’re worried about spoilers, make sure you watch each episode at 8am, as soon as they go up on iPlayer. But OK, fair enough, you might not want to watch at 8am. And some people need to be online, for all sorts of reasons. It’s a very easy thing to say – ‘Don’t go online’. Although, equally, I think a lot of people say they need to be online when they don’t. So, actually, have a word with yourself! If you can’t control yourself, then you’ll be spoiled, and that’s nothing to do with me!
Can you talk us through some of the monsters we’ll be seeing this year? How satisfying is it when you think, ‘I’ve got a new idea for a Doctor Who monster’?
Russell: It’s great. You always want to vary it. For example, we’ve got Mr Ring-a-Ding this year, who is an animated monster, which I’ve always wanted to do. I wanted to do this back in 2005, but the cost of it was impossible. Believe you me, that’s expensive. Proper hand-drawn animation is possibly one of the most expensive things you can ever try to do on a screen, let alone on a television budget! That’s very, very hard to do, and it’s magnificent. The Frame Store did that for us – a lovely designer called Ian – and it was a great learning process. I had never worked with step-by-step animation before. There were all these stages you have to sign off, and we all learned so much over the whole process. So, you’ll get an animated monster, who is far more frightening than he sounds, actually. I think there’s something odd about cartoons. Mr Ring-a-Ding is based on those Fleischer cartoons from the 1930s. The adventure takes place in 1952, but I can remember seeing Fleischer cartoons in London cinemas in the 1970s. There’s something really creepy about Fleischer cartoons. You can never quite tell who’s a human who isn’t. Look at Betty Boop – that’s the strangest-looking woman in the world, frankly! She’s bizarre. So, Mr Ring-a-Ding taps into that oddness and weirdness. Then, in episode one, you’ve got great big, stunning robots. There’s another creation in that episode as well, which we’re not talking about yet, but one that I actually find quite scary. And in episode four, written by Pete McTighe, there is a good old-fashioned prosthetic monster called the Shreek, really terrifying the pants off you! And then, oh my God, the finale has some great physical creations and some great CGI creations. There’s a really bizarre world called the Bone Palace in the finale. That’s such a strange setting. It’s really quite surreal and weird and unnerving, and I love it! Some of the designs in that are just creepy! There is some really good stuff to come.
We’re 20 years on from Doctor Who’s 2005 comeback, which you masterminded, with Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper. What would your 2005 self make of where Doctor Who is today, if he could have seen into the future? Would he have believed it?
Russell: Never! We never could have imagined still being here in 20 years’ time. You were there, Tom! We all had conversations late into the night at the bar in 2005, at press launches. The most any of us would have dared to think was, ‘What if we’re still here in 10 years’ time?’ Certainly, we were wondering if we would get a second year. We would dreamily talk about five years. Once in a while, if we’d had too much to drink, we’d think, maybe 10 years. But 20? Absolutely never. I don’t think it was ever said, not even as the wildest dream. So, it’s quite astonishing. We decided not to celebrate it particularly, but now we’re here, I’m wondering if I made the right decision. I was very much aware that Doctor Who had had its 60th anniversary [in 2023], and before that, it celebrated the 100th anniversary of the BBC [in 2022]. But actually, what’s wrong with the party? There is going to be a special extra episode of Doctor Who: Unleashed, all about the anniversary. That’s new information for TV Choice, actually! There will be a lovely, really well-researched Unleashed episode, which means there will be nine Unleashed episodes in total. There is also going to be a Radio 2 documentary with Jo Whiley. So, we are doing some stuff to celebrate the anniversary. It’s not being completely ignored.
Do you think your approach to Doctor Who has changed massively over the past 20 years?
Russell: Not massively, to be honest. I think you’re always racing to catch up with Doctor Who. And actually, it’s interesting. The world and society keep throwing up new villains. It will be very interesting to talk about that post-transmission. Back in 1963, when the world was staggering, and not even a generation had passed since the end of World War Two, Terry Nation created the Daleks as an analogy for the Nazis. And that’s what the world keeps on doing. Evils keep on rising up. Problems keep on rising up. You keep putting that into the framework of Doctor Who. There’s a lot of that this year. That’s a post-transmission conversation, but that’s very much at the forefront. So, yes, I think you’re taking the temperature of the world, and touching on that as you go along. You can’t write any other way, I think.
Given that it was quite a while back that you filmed most of this series, you must be getting excited about finally having it released, and seeing the reaction to it?
Russell: Well, it’s funny, because we’re still working on it. There are some little digital bits to be done with episode six, and we haven’t quite signed off on episodes seven and episode eight. It’s another month’s work, maybe? No, it’s probably another fortnight’s work to go. So, yeah, it’s nice and busy, and I love it! It doesn’t feel like the past tense at all, because the episodes just feel like they’re all queuing up. You keep them in mind all the time, but it’s almost time to unleash them – literally! It’s very exciting.
Finally, you’re known for being a massive TV fan yourself, so what else have you been enjoying recently? Give us some recommendations for TV Choice readers!
Russell: I am halfway through Adolescence on Netflix at the moment, which is just amazing. It’s horrifying… and terrifying. What the hell are we doing? It’s five great ideas all piled on top of each other. One of those great ideas would have been enough. One of those cast members would have been enough. It’s an absolutely astonishing piece of work. Jack Thorne [the co-writer] is just the king – I adore him and Stephen Graham. So, I loved that. I very much enjoyed the EastEnders 40th anniversary. I thought that was enormous fun. I loved Black Doves at Christmas. I thought that was brilliant. What else am I madly into? I’m an old-fashioned viewer, and I’m still watching The Apprentice. I’m still there! It’s so guaranteed to go wrong, that it never goes wrong! It’s the most brilliant thing.
Doctor Who returns on BBC iPlayer and BBC1 on Saturday 12 April
Tom Spilsbury has been a writer for TV Choice and its sister publication Total TV Guide since 2021. He was previously the longest-serving editor of the official Doctor Who Magazine from 2007 to 2017, and has contributed to the Doctor Who DVD and Blu-ray ranges. His favourite stories include The War Games, The Robots of Death, The Five Doctors, Partners in Crime, The Time of the Doctor and Hell Bent.