Russell T. Davies Reveals One A Surprising Doctor Who Writing Secret That Will Shock Some Fans

Doctor Who has long enchanted fans of different stripes with the show’s unmatched ability to evolve and change along with its titular protagonist, but the show’s current franchise head and most accomplished scribe has a surprising anecdote to share concerning that dynamism.

Doctor Who is a property so old and well-regarded that it’s had to colorize many of its oldest episodes for modern audiences, at least the ones that still survive to this day. First gracing British screens more than six decades ago in 1963, the franchise owes its longevity to the narrative device known as regeneration. When members of the titular Doctor’s race take lethal damage, they undergo regeneration and acquire a new, healthy form devoid of the injuries and peculiarities of the previous incarnation but retaining all the memories and being effectively the same person. Over the years, this framing device has allowed 14 different actors to portray 15 different iterations of the same Doctor, each bringing something unique and fondly remembered to the role when all is told.

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While every new iteration of The Doctor has resonated with different fans to different degrees thanks to that perceived uniqueness, recent comments by Davies and another accomplished scribe on the show concerning their approach to writing the characters shift the praise quite a bit. In a recent back and forth circulated on the official Doctor Who X account and other social media profiles featuring Davies and fellow Doctor Who writer Steven Moffat, the franchise mainstays give a somewhat shocking answer when addressing fan questions on how they approach writing the different Doctors so uniquely. “It’s also fundamentally the same,” Davies says shortly, with Moffat concurring and offering his own short explainer on how things play out. “It’s the same character… the parts that are different just happen in your head by looking at that person and hearing them.”

The choice of a new Doctor has always been made with some care and yielded an exceptionally unique portrayal, with big names as unique as Alan Rickman and Brian Blessed even considered for the role at various points in the character’s history. It makes sense that the writing would be informed by the differences between actors themselves, but the two scribes take even this assumption down a notch.

“I mean, I think if you sit and deliberately try to write a different Doctor, you just end up with mannerisms,” Davies offers. “Affections. Nonsense. Ephemera. And that’s not what the character is at all.” The two then hit on a very important and oft-overlooked part of the Doctor’s characterization. “The Doctor would never actually call himself eccentric,” Moffat explains, summing up his thoughts. “And yet that’s used as a descriptor all the time. But he’d never think of it!” The conversation then quickly turns to the current Doctor Ncuti Gatwa, with both writers praising his own unique spin on the character.

That last point seems to cut to the heart of what Davies and Moffat have in mind when talking about writing the Doctor all the same. For a character as spirited as the Doctor, who is often blissfully aware of just how much they stand out in every single circumstance, the eccentricities and unique traits can’t really come from the writing itself, lest it come across as either forces or meta-humor. Instead, the actor taking on the role seems to be the best source to transmit that unique something from the page to the screen for all to see. This personal incarnation can then be fed back into the pen for future episodes in ways that come naturally to the actor already, just like the two writers describe doing with the current lead. While there are some murmurs that the latest Doctor might already be close to being done with the role, Gatwa has already also left his mark on the franchise with his own unique take on the Doctor, despite being written as the same man that David Tenant was before they split, and the same (wo)man that Jodie Foster was during her own run.

While the future of the Doctor Who franchise is a bit uncertain at this time, there’s no question that it will persevere past this point. When Gatwa hangs up his Tardis keys and moves on to other projects, fans can rest assured that the next Doctor will bring yet more uniqueness to the role despite the brilliant writing staying more or less the same.

Doctor Who is available to stream on Disney+ in the United States.

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Source: Doctor Who/X