If you’re a fan of “Doctor Who” and wondered about what it takes to be a writer for a show of this caliber, check out this interview with Phil Ford. Ford is the writer for the BBC’s “Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars” and the animated series “Doctor Who: Dreamland”.
Author Phil Ford has been writing television for almost fifteen years, with such credits as Coronation Street, Bad Girls, Taggart, and New Captain Scarlett to his name. He is currently the head writer and co-producer of the Doctor Who spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, and aside from Russell T Davies he is to date the only writer to have contributed to all three Doctor Who shared-universe series: Doctor Who, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures. On 28 November, 2009, this Examiner sat down to speak with Phil about his career and his life-long dream to work in Doctor Who.
Q: To start, let’s talk about you. Growing up, were you always interested in becoming a writer and did your education play any part in this desire?
Phil: Definitely. I found out very early on that writing was the only thing I was ever any good at. It was around age eleven, when I was in junior school, that I discovered I could write and my love for writing shaped my education and then my career. I grew up in a small mining town where the thought of going to work in television or doing any sort of writing was utterly bizarre – it really was not a thing to do. So it seemed that the only way someone like me could make a living was to become a journalist. I had a placement to go to the University of Sheffield to study English, but in the end I didn’t go and instead I started training as a journalist. I did journalism for about ten years and during that period I took a side road into advertising and public relations. Then around 1994 I started seriously thinking about writing for television.
Q: And how did your television writing career begin?
Phil: Well, in 1994 I got myself an agent and I began the process of writing various speculative scripts, which my agent then took to broadcasters in the hope of finding the right producers who would want to take me on and use my scripts. My first commission was in 1996 for the series Taggart. It took a year to write that series; and while I was writing it I was also taken on to write for ‘Corrie’ [Coronation Street] to do their Christmas 1997 episode. I stayed with ‘Corrie’ for five years and I wrote about eighty-six episodes for them. But I first started with Taggart, which was a three hour story, or three sixty-minute episodes, and that series came out the week after my first ‘Corrie’ episode. One interesting series I wrote for in 2006 that’s actually never been shown in the UK was Bombshell. That was a TV series about the British army; I wrote one episode for that.
Q: Do you know why the series was never broadcast?
Phil: I don’t know why exactly, but I suspect since it was produced before the military landscape changed and it all blew up in Afghanistan and Iraq that the show was no longer seen as relevant. Whatever the reason, it was a shame; it was a good series from the scripts that I saw.
Q: Let’s talk about scriptwriting. As a writer, how much creative input did you have in crafting the storylines for those series?
Phil: Writing input really varies on television. Partly it depends on your workload and in an ideal world once you’ve finished one thing you’re busy writing something else. But it really depends on the series. For example, Bombshell was heavily storylined by the creators, so there wasn’t so much input the writers could give. You could add some ideas, but not nearly as much as is possible with The Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood, or even Doctor Who.
But really the input level changes from show to show. I’ll give you another example: ‘Corrie’ had a team of fifteen writers and we came together every two weeks to thrash out storylines amongst ourselves. For other series like Bad Girls and Bombshell, the stories were worked out by the creators and the storyliners, and the writers would then come in and, putting it crudely, ‘make the storylines work.’ That doesn’t sound very charitable to them, but really what the writers do is just add the mechanics.
Q: Do you, as a writer, ever wish that your viewers knew more about what you add to the story?
Phil: No, not really. Television is by nature a collaborative process with lots of people working together. And that’s why I appreciate the whole process, because at the end of the day the people watching television just want to enjoy it, and if people do then it’s paid off and our job is done. I don’t want people to see the joints of it, because if they do then you’ve failed. It’s all dreamworks, television, which has the same purpose as film: to take people away. So it doesn’t bother me not to be known by the audience as a writer. On the other hand, I wish people would notice who the writers are more, since the writers tend to be the ones who write an episode.
Q: Looking back on your writing career until now, do you have a particular series for which you have especially fond memories? Do you have a favorite episode that you wrote?
Phil: I had a great time working on Bad Girls, which grew out of ‘Corrie.’ A lot of TV is not what you know but who you know, and the same people who helped me get onto ‘Corrie’ then set up their own production company called Shed; and they invited me to do Bad Girls. I think my favorite episode that I wrote was the very final episode of Bad Girls, although we didn’t know it was the last until we were producing it. Another favorite series I took part in was New Captain Scarlet, which was a CGI version of the Gerry Anderson story I grew up with. I wrote most of the episodes for that one. Writing for New Captain Scarlet was really fun for me because before that time most of my work was in ‘Corrie,’ a soap involving fairly stylized but realistic stories. To go from that genre to sci-fi was marvelous, since those were the kinds of shows I always wanted to make. More importantly, working on New Captain Scarlet very much helped me to do what I do now.
Q: What you do now would be a dream-come-true for many sci-fi fans: writing for Doctor Who and its spin-offs. Growing up, were you a Doctor Who fan?
Phil: I was a massive Doctor Who fan! I remember Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker as my Doctors and Lis Sladen was my favorite companion. Writing for the series now makes me feel like I’m a big kid in a toybox! The best part is I get to take out the toys.
Q: And how did you first get involved in writing for the Doctor Who universe? What were the first episodes you wrote for the series?
Phil: Well, while I was doing New Captain Scarlett I enviously watched the first series of Doctor Who; I wished I’d been involved in it. I was invited to the BAFTA screening of the last episode of Doctor Who’s first series and I ran into RTD – we’d met while working on ‘Corrie.’ We talked and he told me he was fan of New Captain Scarlett, and I begged him for a job on Doctor Who. Sometime after that I was contacted by Julie Gardner [Doctor Who executive producer], who invited me to write for The Sarah Jane Adventures.
Q: You wrote a number of stories for both The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood during this period. Take us through that process to give us a sense of the writing order of the stories.
Phil: The first story I wrote for Sarah Jane was ‘Eye of the Gorgon.’ Around the same time I was also approached to write for Torchwood – not ‘Something Borrowed,’ but another episode called ‘The Dead Line.’ Meanwhile back at Sarah Jane I’d finished the Gorgon story, but Russell, who was due to write the finale of Sarah Jane series one, was so busy he asked me if I could write the finale. That story became ‘The Lost Boy.’ Since I was now doing that script ‘The Dead Line’ went into suspended animation until I could finish ‘The Lost Boy.’ By the time I was ready for that the Torchwood series two storyarc had changed enormously, and so ‘The Dead Line’ no longer fit: it was a strong Owen story; but they decided to kill him so it didn’t work anymore.
Now during the Torchwood writing meetings the idea came up for a wedding episode [for the characters Gwen Cooper and Rhys Williams] and I was asked to write it. I accepted, of course. RTD made it clear he wanted the tone of the story to be a big romp episode, which was funny because on ‘Corrie’ I’d written disastrous weddings. This was the story that became ‘Something Borrowed.’
Q: Whatever became of ‘The Dead Line?’
Phil: ‘The Dead Line’ itself was originally going to be used in Torchwood series three, but again the plans for that storyarc changed completely and ultimately the story became a radio play. [Editor’s note: “The Dead Line” is now available on audio book!]
Q: And how did you go from writing individual scripts to becoming the head writer for The Sarah Jane Adventures?
Phil: I guess I just wrote stuff they liked! But it was a blast writing that first series, and before pre-production began for Sarah Jane series two I got phone call from Julie inviting me as head writer, and I said yes. They also gave me a co-producer credit, which means I can fiddle with other people’s scripts.
Q: And how has it been heading up The Sarah Jane Adventures?
Phil: I love the show and I love Lis Sladen. It’s a huge blast to work with her and the kids – Tommy, Danny, Anjli – they’re all great kids and a great cast; they work so hard on the show, and it’s the same with everyone else on the team. Yes, we have had problems with budgets; in fact the budget has been sliced every year, but the team somehow keeps pulling it out of the bag. It’s truly an astonishing atmosphere on that show and on the whole family of Doctor Who shows, largely due, I feel, to the way show is run at the top by Russell and Julie. They have a real love for the show and its people.
Q: During its run so far The Sarah Jane Adventures has featured several returning monsters from Doctor Who, including the Slitheen, Sontarans, and Judoon. As the head-writer and co-producer, how much authority do you have over when and which existing monsters can appear in the stories?
Phil: I think this is a point which I should definitely put into perspective: Yes, I am the head-writer, but RTD is still very much involved in Sarah Jane, so every decision goes through him. So, if we want to use Sontarans or whatever then Russell is the person who ultimately has the final word. Of course, the man is a genius so I’d have it no other way.
During our writers’ meetings everyone gets together for story possibilities, and at that point somebody might say “I’d like to do a story with Sontarans or a shape shifting alien that can take over Sarah Jane.” It’s there we kick the ideas around – it’s not necessarily a democracy because Russell’s word is law and always will be – but everyone has a hand in creative process. My role as the head writer with Nikki [Wilson, producer] and RTD and Gary [Russell, Script Editor] is honing the ideas. It’s like I said earlier: television is a collaborative process.
Tonight, “Doctor Who: The Waters Of Mars” premieres on BBC America, Saturday, December 19, 9:00pm ET/PT! Check out the schedule of the remaining David Tennant “Doctor Who” episodes here.
[Source] Examiner
