CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 02/23/07

The Heart of Who:
Doctor Who's Paul Cornell

by jason davis

Twenty years ago, Paul Cornell was just a fan of Doctor Who, but now, he's an in-demand writer crafting some of the most poignant episodes of the series that inspired him to write. CS Weekly finds out how Cornell turned a dream into a career.

Paul Cornell turned his passion for the classic science fiction series Doctor Who into a career eventually writing over a half-dozen novels (British Summertime) and contributing scripts to a myriad of television programs like Casualty and his own series Wavelength before finally realizing his childhood dream by contributing the episode "Father's Day" to the first season of the new Doctor Who. He was at that Doctor Who convention alongside Steven Moffat, and so sat down with CS Weekly to discuss the origins of his writing career and what do you do when you fulfill your long-time ambition.

Why did you become a writer?
I started writing, as a child at school, as a way to abuse and insult my English teacher who, I assumed, would be horrified by me writing a ten-page essay as opposed to the two- or three-page minimum things I'd normally been turning out. She, of course, was delighted and gave me high marks for it. Doing that was some kind of release for me—a sudden expansion of horizons. I kept puttering along in the background until my original career choice—to be an astrophysicist—fizzled out in the first couple weeks of an astrophysics degree at the University College, London. I had to fall back on writing and start selling things in order to survive. I very much recommend poverty as an inspiration to writers.

What was your first sale?
I won a competition to write a short play for BBC2. I also started selling comedy sketches to radio and getting my first Doctor Who novel right about the same time. The Doctor Who novel came about because Peter Darvill-Evans, the editor, had let all fandom know about his plan to start a new range and invited submissions, and rather wonderfully liked mine and said yes to it, which had originally been a bit of fan fiction because I'd been writing for fanzines all this time.

What was it like to be the first non-professional writer to tackle a Doctor Who novel?
It was just a dream come true, really. I became a TV writer in order to someday write Doctor Who when it was brought back. Someday, I knew there would be Doctor Who, and I needed to be in a position to write for it.

Your first TV sale was a contest. How did that work?
It was a contest called Debut on 2 for a 20-minute play. Eight people got to have their plays made and put on BBC2. It was an anthology—the sort of development thing that the BBC does all the time. Pete Postlethwaite (The Usual Suspects) was in it.

And that kicked off your TV career?
Six years later, I got my second TV credit, which was Children's Ward. I'd been working on the Doctor Who books and [future Doctor Who executive producer] Russell Davies asked if I wanted to be put in touch with the producers of Children's Ward because I'd given him [editor] Rebecca Levene's number so he could write a [Doctor Who novel]. I was assuming I was a science fiction writer, and since science fiction on television was out of the question, I felt that I couldn't write for television, but Russell showed me that a writer can write anything. I wrote six Children's Wards and I suddenly became a medical writer—Casualty, Doctors, Holby City. Coronation Street I worked on a year, wrote one episode, and then bounced down the steps as it became clear that I was not suited to that show in any way, shape, or form.

This is all largely stuff to make money, though my years on Casualty I'm very fond of. Back in those days, we had the budget and the will to do paramedic-led, serious drama. Casualty goes through phases of being a soap and phases of being a medical drama depending on what the budget allows. In that particular phase, it was very much a medical drama.

What sort of shows influenced you as a TV writer?
Apart from Doctor Who, Sapphire and Steel, which showed that you could run a show on inference and metaphor and you didn't necessarily have to explain a single thing. I think that's still a tremendous piece of work—especially since it was a primetime piece of work—people forget that. It was designed to be watched by, and was watched by, my mum doing the ironing. It was elusive and metaphorical, but at the same time, told you everything you needed to know in terms of storytelling. It's still under-appreciated.

Shows like Secret Army, Poldark, The Onedin Line, Survivors—shows that the BBC made offhandedly in the 1970s. In the days when you could still treat television as a proscenium arch and it was thought all right to do so. You could represent, in a show like The Pallisers, the court of Romania by a potted plant, a plush velvet curtain, and the noise of a dance happening just out of view. In I, Claudius, the Roman arena is represented by a balcony, some rose petals, and a record of a crowd. This is okay. This is under-exploited. I think it's further away than ever now, but to some degree—if the audience are told they're watching some television that is theatre—then they will understand the concept and go with it. The output of the BBC in the 1970s really is something to behold.

I'm glad you mentioned Survivors…
Tremendously influential. Terry Nation really knew how to create a format that he could read off the back of an envelope and everyone in the room would get it. That's what television is about.

How did you come to write for Doctor Who?
I had written the first attempt to bring Doctor Who back—The Scream of the Shalka online animation. I think that made people in the BBC have to think, "Is that what we're going to do? Is this going to be Doctor Who from now on?" I think as soon as Russell appeared, they decided, "No, it isn't." He called me up and said, "I've got very bad news. You're not going to be able to do anymore of those animations." That's the man all over—his first thought was how would his news affect me? He didn't just call me up and say, "I've got Doctor Who!" Of course, within minutes, I was leaping up and down about his bad news. At the end of that phone call he said, "Well, you know, if you're not careful, you know…bye."

I went another six months before I got the next phone call, during which time, all of us who thought we might have a shot at it got increasingly nervous, agitated, and paranoid. Russell called me up and said, "What are you doing right now?" I said, "I'm putting in some oven chips [aka french fries]," and he did five minutes about how oven chips are a sign of home and hearth, community and family, and then he said, "I asked you because I wanted you to remember what you're doing because this is the call you've waited for all your life. Come and write Doctor Who." Horribly, I tried to do comedy and said, "Well…I don't know." He said, "Oh, if you're busy…" and I spent the next five minutes saying, "No, no, no! Absolutely, I want to do it!"

In America, TV writing is mostly done by writing staffs lead by the showrunner. How does Doctor Who differ from that model?
It's very different. I think it's an attempt to move a little toward the American system because this is the first showrunner we've had in British television. Normally, a showrunner would be concealed in the joint personhood of the script editor and the producer. Where the showrunner might lie in that system has always been variable and elusive. In Doctor Who, Russell has the power to do anything from top to bottom, and that's very useful. He can stop something if it's not working and put something new in its place and he doesn't have to ask a lot of people about that. That's one of the things that makes the show so successful.

I work with a script editor—in the case of "Father's Day," Elwen Rowlands; in the case of the new one, Lindsay Alford. We knock drafts back and forth and, every now and then, I'll go into a production meeting with myself and the script editor, maybe some other script editors, always Russell, and often Julie Gardner, who's the executive producer but has a great ear for story. The more she's involved, normally speaking, the better everything story-wise is, because she will listen for 45 minutes and then turn around and say, "How about this?" and it'll break the story. She's an excellent producer story-wise, and I think she's deserved all the success she's got.

Did you find a big difference between novel Who and TV Who?
Only in terms of the normal difference between prose and television. I was specifically asked to write Doctor Who like I'd written it in the books. That is to say, emotional Doctor Who, which somehow has become my stock and trade. I always thought this is how the show should be, possibly because I connect it to emotional events in my own childhood. Because Doctor Who always was there in my imagination while these big human dramas were playing out around me, it became part and parcel of that, and when I write Doctor Who, it's got those emotions in it. It was nice to have the opportunity to do that on television… especially in the new two-parter, which they've done very well with.

What advice for would you give new writers?
I've got some very specific advice for writers that concerns criticism. When somebody who is in the position to do so—an editor or publisher—gives you criticism of your work, the thing you do not do is justify it or try to argue. I've seen this happen so many times. They'll say, "What I thought was wrong was this…" and the writer will say, "Oh, no. You see, what I was trying to do there was…" Instead of what you should say, which is, "Okay. All right. I see." Then, take the criticism onboard, absorb it, and change as a result. It's the hardest thing to do, but it's also the most useful single thing for you to do. You have to seek harsh criticism. If you show it to your mum, she's not going to give you the harsh criticism you need. Your job is to seek out harsh criticism of your work.

Jason Davis is the DVD Manager for CS Weekly , a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.

Paul Cornell, Doctor Who courtesy BBC Home Video

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