He may have made the revived Doctor Who into Britain’s favorite television show, managed to put Cardiff on the science fiction map with Torchwood and struck a blow for unexpected MILFery with Sarah Jane Adventures, but that doesn’t mean that Russell T. Davies is up for any kind of television challenge. One gig that he turned down? Writing for George Lucas’ new live-action Star Wars series. That shocker, and more, is revealed in his new book, The Writer’s Tale.The book – a series of emails between Davies and journalist Benjamin Cook – isn’t released in the UK until this Thursday (No US or publisher or release date has been announced, but we’re hoping that changes very soon), but British magazine SFX got their hands on a review copy and found themselves very surprised by what’s inside:
Naturally, the emails have been filtered and edited, but this still feels surprisingly uncensored for an official tie-in book. Take the chapter which discusses online fan criticism: it’s titled “BASTARDS”. You might understand why when you read about Helen Raynor’s reaction to browsing the forums: “She was literally shaking afterwards. Like she’d been physically assaulted”. Davies also breaks his “never criticise the old series” rule (describing Sylvester McCoy’s debut as “a deep, dark trough”) and clarifies the extent of his “script polishing” – often a 60% rewrite, sometimes almost 100%.
They also run down just some of the revelations within the book. In addition to Davies’ declining to meet with Lucas to discuss a role in writing Star Wars, you’ll also find out about the missing Mark Gatiss script for Who (He’d previously written “The Unquiet Dead” and “The Idiot Lantern” for the series before a third script was dumped at the last minute), why Owen died instead of Ianto on Torchwood and the secret origin of Davros. Portions of the book have already appeared online – We’ve linked to them in Morning Spoilers – but clearly the full version of the book contains much more nerditry than just JK Rowling’s non-involvement in Who and the identity of the next Doctor. We’ll be waiting eagerly for our import versions to arrive in the mail. Doctor Who – The Writer’s Tale [SFX]
