Russell T Davies Interview

Telegraph
Having had the pleasure of sitting down for an hour or so with Russell T Davies, writer and executive producer of Doctor Who, I found myself with a vast amount of material that couldn't be squeezed into the interview that ran in today's paper. So, given the enormous popularity of the series, I thought it might be interesting to provide an approximate transcript of the interview as a Q&A, slightly tidied up, allowing a bit more of Davies's voice and passion to come through. (Warning: this is very, very long.)

The Time Lord and the lady: David Tennant with Michelle Ryan

The day before we met, Davies had finished work on the show's Easter Special at 11.30pm in Cardiff, before being driven up to London, arriving at 2am. Shortly after dawn, he was on the BBC breakfast sofa, before squeezing his six-foot-six frame into the chair opposite me, and tucking in to a badly needed breakfast...

So, what are you allowed to tell us about tonight's show?

It's an hour-long special, a great big spectacular - the 60-minute specials are always a chance to spread our wings a bit and flex out. It's a good old roller-coaster adventure, this one - sometimes the stories are very dark, sometimes they're very funny, but this is a great big adventure, a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit Flight of the Phoenix, a little bit Pitch Black. It's got deserts... these big vistas, it's got a nice scale to it.

You've filmed partly in Dubai - isn't there a danger that shows look a bit strange when they go abroad?

It can be a bit dislocating. Fortunately, Doctor Who is a show that travels from place to place every week. Yes, it's a bit odd when you take a sitcom crew and put them in Spain. But fortunately, Doctor Who just fits - and you know, it was one of my last chances to stretch my wings, because one of the hardest things to do is an alien planet. Frankly, you end up in a quarry or a beach. And I'm quite happy to do things in a quarry or a beach - but this just gives us the size for once. We'd budgeted very wisely, and we actually had the scope to give you an endless horizon.

Whose idea was it?

It was my idea to go into the desert, just because it fitted the story. It was always an option for one of the specials to go abroad - it took an awful lot of planning, but you can do anything if you turn enough great minds to it.

And how was the trip?

I didn't go. You have to account for every penny, and that would have been a waste of a ticket. People often think it's a jolly when you go abroad, but it's a nightmare. Imagine doing your job, but transplanted to a different country, surrounded by strangers, and under pressure of time, and under pressure to make every penny and every second count. It's a horrible thing to do. It's really not fun.

They had to get up at 5.30am to get to the place in the desert where we were filming, there was a sandstorm, so we lost a day's filming almost completely. They certainly weren't in one of those big posh hotels you see on the telly.

So Michelle Ryan's in it...

Yes, she plays an international jewel thief, like you do.

And Lee Evans is an academic?

Malcolm Taylor - he's hilarious. What a nice man, what a lovely man. The bus ends up on an alien planet, and he's left back on Earth, trying to get them home. It's a race against time, really - they're stuck in a desert with a nine and a half ton bus which travelled through a wormhole, but how do you turn it around to get it back? How do you get the engine working? How do you get the wheels out of the sand? And there's a great big swarm approaching...
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