"Well, it's here, a day I thought would never arrive." "I'm on my way into White City," "Centre House, BBC, to have my first meeting about writing for Doctor Who." "Well, that passed off very well." "Very warm and lovely reception." "Everyone unbelievably excited that we're actually doing Doctor Who." "Can't quite believe it." "A lot of pinching going on." "That's Russell." "Yeah, so now..." "I sort of took them through my ideas... based on Russell's original outline of the story." "So, what I'm sort of juggling with at the moment is the idea of... the story of the maid... and her dead brother." "And, I suppose, giving it a more serious edge." "The idea that..." "she's eager for the dead to come back." "And, in fact, the aliens, which are at the moment not necessarily power crazy, just trying to survive." "Their idea of housing themselves in the dead is not a bad notion, as far as they're concerned." "Obviously, to humanity at large, it's beyond the pale." "I suppose the only real danger at the moment is that I think everyone's expecting me to kind of produce a romp." "You know, spooky, definitely spooky, but mostly a romp and, funnily enough, all the themes of... spiritualism and death and mourning in it..." "I don't know, I somehow think, against expectations, it might turn out to be a bit more serious." "Actually, slightly nervous about starting after all these years." "Although, I've told everyone, I've had it in my head for 30-odd years." "But it's very different thinking, "This will be the one."" "This is actually going on television." "This is Doctor Who, not just... a book, or even an audio play." "It's the real thing and it's extraordinary how much pressure I'm feeling." "I think I might ring up a couple of the others and see how they're feeling and..." "Also, the big question is how to write this new Doctor based on Russell's first episode and then, presumably, on the casting of whoever it is." "We don't know yet." "But, yeah, that was a..." "Couldn't really have gone better." "It's the kind of meeting you like to think you have all the time, but rarely do." "So, I better get on with it." "Well, it's going well, I think." "It is turning into a bit more of a romp than I expected." "Which is probably good news, I didn't want it to be maudlin." "Then I tried to find a way of defeating them through the properties of the gas that they exist in." "That's why they're hiding in the pipes, it's their natural environment." "So the logical thing was to change the state of the environment they inhabit." "So cooling it seemed to be the logical thing, that's what you do with gas." "You can cool gas, change its state, and when you change it, when you remove the carbon dioxide and other properties from it, it becomes liquid." "So I thought, maybe that's the way to defeat them." "Liquefy them, bottle them up." "Shut them away, put them in the fridge." "The others and I went out for an Indian meal yesterday in Hammersmith, a place called Chula." "Steve Moffat, Paul Cornell, Rob Shearman and we kind of just had a group hug over the bhajis." "I'm just so delighted to be doing it, not quite believing we're allowed to." "Eased out titbits about our stories and then as the drink flowed, more and more came out." "Huge chunks of dialogue and plot, everyone getting very excited." "I have to say that the stories sound just wonderful." "And I just thought, "God, as a season, this has got such..." "It's so juicy." ""God, people, hopefully, are just going to love it."" "So, I'm thinking, I'm kind of really only starting the whole episode with the Tardis scene." "Russell is very keen to have journeys in the Tardis now much more dangerous." "The floor plates lifting, the Doctor's barely in control of it." "So, this is their first journey into the past and we have to make more of it." "In that way, which kind of gets back to my original idea about it, you won't see anything of 1869 until it's through Rose's eyes." "So the first thing you see of it will be the Tardis doors opening into that snowy garden at night and all the wonder of that followed by... straight into the séance, and then the Gelth arriving and all that." "They also wanted more of the Gelth personified." "Now, that's something I've been slightly going against to avoid the kind of "Doctor" cliché." "But, I think, maybe they're right." "I think..." "Phil Collinson said, "Maybe the reason it's a cliché" ""is because that's what Doctor Who does very well" ""and you kind of want those moments."" "It's frustrating." "A frustrating process." "I cannot seem to do... do it at the moment." "I'm going to go for a walk now." "Try and blow some cobwebs away and... have a think at the heart of it." "I probably need to read Russell's script again to get more of the flavor of the new approach." "I think what's happening is I'm..." "It's becoming too traditional, doctor-companion relationship and..." "Not that I don't want to... you know, destroy all that, but..." "Yeah, difficult." "Very difficult." "It's Christopher Eccleston." "Doctor Who is Christopher Eccleston." "An amazing sequence of days." "Starting on Friday, there was just suddenly, all over the internet, a real buzz in the air." "I went in to see Lorraine and said, "Is it true?" And she said, "What?"" "And they're all... it was all very secretive." "Negotiations still going on." "And then by the end of the day he had been announced." "And they sort of bounced into it." "Very strange." "Very positive reaction all around." "Most people I've spoken to had initial thoughts that... of his dour sort of TV persona is at odds with the fun of Doctor Who, but I just keep thinking of..." "First of all, having worked with him and met him and he's a nice guy and he wants to do..." "He wants to have more fun in his life, in his career, rather." "Secondly, you know, you could have said the same about William Hartnell." "Tough guy image and yet he found something in Doctor Who which was never given to him anywhere else." "So I think it's a fantastic choice." "And as I said to Russell in an email the other day, it's the kind of heavyweight casting that finally kicks into touch, well, for some time at least, those sorts of tabloid stories about" "Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen or Debbie McGee or other non-actors or Weathermen being given the best job in television." "So, it's a statement of intent, it's a serious decision and it's marvelous, I think." "And now, of course, we'll start thinking about tailoring the scripts to him." "It's April the 6th, I think." "I'm on the floor here because my chair has just broken." "Here I am, nevertheless, in Lisbon." "Adding a little local color to this video diary." "Very funny idea, change of direction to open it out a bit." "To get away from the house is to set it in a funeral parlor... have the Gelth already coming through Gwyneth, although she doesn't know it... and sort of experimenting on various members of the dead so that the undertaker and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Sneed," "as they are now going to be, are much more..." "It's actually a source of professional embarrassment that they can't keep the dead down." "And I can see lots of scenes immediately, very exciting and funny." "And I came up with the idea that Dickens has a fan who pursues him through all his readings." "He stops in the middle of the reading and we see him because the woman, his fan is in the front row, she's actually been dead for a week." "And she's on the loose from Sneed's parlor and they're traipsing around Cardiff in a hearse trying to track her down." "So there is a lot of stuff there, a lot of fun." "Building towards a climactic séance where the Gelth come through properly, which I think is very good." "All sound stuff." "I just wonder, in the middle of this whether I'm going to lose a lot of the Gwyneth drama, which I really like." "The immediate problem was, I thought, starting from a much more comedic place." "The scene I love immediately where a man is shown in to see his dead relative, has a quiet moment, she reaches up from the coffin and starts to throttle him and the undertaker comes in and, unexpectedly," "rolls his eyes and shouts," ""Gwyneth, get your ruddy bones down here." "We've got another one!"" "So, it was hard in that context to then... as it were, rescue a lot of the grimness." "I know, I mean, that's what Russell wanted." "'Cause he thought it was just becoming too grim and it was in danger of being Play for Today rather than Dr. Who, which is absolutely true, I think." "It's just a process and it's difficult." "It becomes difficult to hang on to things you really treasure because they simply don't work anymore." "So, I wrote a whole draft... with Mr. and Mrs. Sneed and then realized that Mrs. Sneed was superfluous because the heart of the story is still Gwyneth and Gwyneth's powers." "And I put in all that stuff about her knowing how much sugar the Doctor takes in his tea and upped that to show that she had latent psychic powers she wasn't aware of." "And I brought in a fake medium, Gideon Mortlock, who was going to do all that stuff, all the fun stuff there." "Sent it away and then got a very positive response." "Had a great meeting." "And the big thing was to give Dickens this journey of his and..." "It's about him confronting the fact that his rational beliefs just don't count for squat." "So, I'm pretty pleased with what I've done." "He kind of runs away and then makes a bold decision to come back and help the Doctor." "And it is he who comes up with the notion of turning on the gas taps to draw the Gelth out, which I thought worked well." "Whether it's right or not, I don't know, but it seemed like the only way to give him a real job at the end." "Tell us more coherently where we are." "Where we are." "The three of us, the four of us, you count as well, even though you're behind the camera." " I am camera." " We're at the Chula and are meeting collectively to go through the first read-through of the new series of Doctor Who with Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper." "We'll read through some episodes written by Russell T. Davies, who isn't here because he's a smart arse." "And how have you enjoyed the experience so far'?" "So far, I've had a whale of a time." "I've absolutely loved it." "Brilliant." "I never get to write anything like this." "I only get to write about breasts and people having complex love lives." "To write about monsters and have cliffhangers..." "Monster's breasts and complex love lives." " Yes." " That's the difference." "A moment in my script, I don't know if it's gonna survive so I'll put it here, there's a major plot twist around breasts." "I don't think I can get away with that." "Working out how I'm going to write the sequence." "Is that the sound of Robert Holmes spinning'?" "Yes." "Right, moving now across." "Please identify yourself." "I'm Paul Cornell." "Tell us some more about yourself." "I'm a rather bad writer of television but quite a good writer of novels, I think, who's lucked out and finally got his dream come true since I was ten of writing a Doctor Who." "Tell us a little about your story, Paul." "Mine's called "Wound in Time" and it's about Rose's past and family." " Which episode is it'?" " Eight." " How have you enjoyed the experience so far'?" " It's been fantastic." "This is so upbeat." "I love it." "I've got to do what I want to do and..." "I'm thoroughly proud with what I've written." "Excellent." "You know the only sad thing?" "They'll never clear this music." "Might get you out there..." "Please identify yourself." "I'm Rob Shearman." "I'm also a writer on the new series." " What a coincidence." " Yes." "We're all here." "Which episode are you kind of writing'?" "I'm kind of writing episode six, which hasn't got a title at this second for various reasons, which may or may not become clear next time." "Surely this is okay'?" " Oh, yeah." "Of course it is." " Well, my episode was called "Dalek"." " And..." " What's it about'?" "We read the episode one, episode four and episode five around a big table at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff." "And, yeah, it's gobsmacking." "It's actually now really happening." "Doctor Who is..." "We're actually starting." "And Christopher Eccleston is extraordinary." "He's got the charm and the humor and all the light touches and the great serious gravitas that I was hoping for." "And he's got an amazing rapport with Dame Billie Piper, as Rose." "And it's just going to be such fun." "And actually seeing it for the first time, obviously everyone was very nervous 'cause read-throughs are always very tense, sitting around a big table and just seeing all the cast just relax and have fun with it." "And just seeing how well it's going to be." "I'm terribly excited here." "Doctor Who starts again now." "August the 4th." "Bray Studios." "On location, Miss Marple, as you can probably tell." "And we looked at some... sort of, mood boards for episode three and they had done their research, lovely stuff, and then we talked about casting." "To my delight, they had seen Alan David, an old favorite of mine, who was top of my list for Sneed, and they loved him, so I'm really..." "Fingers crossed for that." "Today is the day, Doctor Who day." "In the car on the way to Cardiff... for the first day of shooting on my episode of Doctor Who, The Unquiet Dead." "It's been a long journey and we've still got to get to Cardiff." "But the sun is shining, it's a beautiful day." "The beaches are open." "And, well, can't wait." "He'll take any man's place if he can." "How it..." "Sorry." "I'll stop." " Cut there." " Recut and reset." "Sorry, that's not what he says'?" " "How it happened."" " How it happened." "I'm doing it in night-vision like Most Haunted." "Dickens says, "What phantasmagoria is this?"" "And Mrs. Peace stands up and she lets a cry come from her lips and the ghost rises from her face and starts swirling about above her head." "About a foot above her head." "So what I need you to do is to react to that action." "And action." " Oil Leave her alone." "Doctor, I'll get them." " Be careful." " Cut." " Thank you." "Simon, obviously, it's a great sort of tribute to the script that he's such a Dickens expert." "He's so enthusiastic." "Chris was saying to me how he is completely dedicated to it, he really wants to go for it." "He loves the idea." "And...it was magic, really." "The strangest thing of all was just hearing people casually saying "the Gelth"." "Especially the first assistant, saying, "So the Gelth..." ""The Gelth are streaming up into the upper circle and you," ""you look at that and the Gelth come through." "And then the Gelth will..."" "It's just a silly name for a Doctor Who monster." "Power." "Fantastic." "So, I had a wonderful day." "One of the nicest days of my whole life probably." "Euros, say some words for my video diary for this episode." "Tell me why it is your favorite episode out of anything you've ever done." "I'll have to have subtitles."