I love this book….seriously…I bloody LOVE it!
I’ll set the scene.
When I get a book to review I sit down with a large coffee, pen and paper in hand settle into a comfy chair and then proceed to look for both positives and negatives. I don’t care who has written it, it could be penned by a friend and I would still pick it apart. I’m like that, I can’t help it. If a book is boring, so be it but I’ll say so, and heaven help a book with lots of typos!
Now, Doctor Who has a special place in my heart (I won’t lie, just in case it does make me a teeny bit biased). I wept when the final series died, then grudgingly loved the film, even if they did do the dirty on Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor. When I found out that I had a tenuous family link to the second Doctor it made me proud, but sad that I’d never known that side of the family, although it did make my daughter something of a hero at her theatre group. I have always loved the show and when it came back I was dubious to say the least…but from the very first show that Russell did I knew, as we all did, that he had created magic and not only resurrected a family favourite but breathed new life into a national treasure.
So, I’m sitting with a coffee and I settle down to “The Writer’s Tale: the final chapter”, and as if by magic The Sarah Jane Adventures came on the telly at the very time I settled in my seat. I’m so lucky to have been given a copy to review but I decide that it isn’t going to sway me, I’ll tell it like it is, after all what is the point of reviewing a book if you don’t? The publishers won’t thank you for it (well…they might), the writer’s won’t and the prospective readers certainly won’t. How many times have you bought a book with a great review only to find that its rubbish and the people who reviewed it were just sycophants with an interest in the product? Well that won’t happen here.
Now call me a nerd but when I opened the book for the first time, I went straight to the index (well I am an indexer), then to the contents and the Key to References. I have issues with the index but I’ll come to that later, the Key to References had me smiling. There in front of me were listed all the episodes of Dr Who, Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures. I love that kind of thing (carry on with the nerd references) but then you have a Who’s Who…fabulous! Too many times in a large book of this kind you get names thrown at you from all directions, and unless you have an eidetic memory it can be a bugger remembering everyone. This is one of those simple but effective lists that take the pain out of having a bad memory, and it’s interesting – who’d have known that Gethin Jones was a Cyberman AND a Dalek?? Well obviously I did after reading through the list. There you go, that’s one pub quiz question I’m ready for!
In the introduction Russell mentions taking out the scandal, the lies and the swearing. Well I’m sorry but if by some miracle of modern technology Russell reads this, this bit’s for him – mail me darling….I love a bit of SL&S…forward me the bits you left out. I won’t tell a soul, honest!
The index. This is the only area that lets the book down. The indexer (yes, they are real people) could have done with more space in which to index the book properly, although with a book of this type it is very difficult to index anyway. If you are looking for information on a subject, once you get more than 6-10 page numbers after a heading you start to lose the will to live. As an example I’ll take Julie Gardner, RT’s partner in crime. Look her up in the index and you’ll find over 200 separate page numbers showing where she turned up; most of these I expect are passing mentions with no actual useful content. No-one is going to trawl through all those pages just to see where she is mentioned – what you need are qualifiers to help you decide where you need to be. An index is like a road-map of the book, it should give you direction and the hope that you will reach your destination refreshed and ready for the next trip. An index of this type just shows you where names of all the important people have been mentioned, it is more of a concordance and as an index is virtually useless.
Getting down to the actual book, the format just draws you in. The narrative is basically e-mail correspondence sent between Ben Cook and Russell T Davies, with text messages, e-mails to others, scripts thrown in for good measure and there are brilliant illustrations throughout. The original book takes you to 2008, but if you already have it and don’t know whether to buy the updated version….the next part of the book is a large as the first! With over 300 pages of new material this is one seriously sized book that takes you to the end as we know it. And I didn’t mention the photographs…there are snapshots inserted into the book that will have you smiling, although I must admit to flinching when I saw the final picture of Matt Smith and David Tennant…that will take some getting used to.
If you are a fan of Dr Who or Russell’s work then you will absolutely love this book. But you don’t need to love Dr Who – this is a book for writers. What is made perfectly clear right at the beginning shocked me, and continued to shock all the way to the end. Russell T Davies is filled with the same doubts and fears as every other writer. There are times when he actually worried that his work is crap. RTD…thinking his work is rubbish? Unbelievable! This book brings you the highs and the lows, the fears and doubts, the deadlines and production costs, the cigarettes and the wandering around Cardiff feeling like a zombie. When reading this book you MUST look at the times of the e-mails and note the fact that not only do Ben & Russell like a good header title (quite often ending in the word ARSE) but they never seem to sleep. I’ve lost count of the emails sent at 3am.
There is so much in this book that I can’t begin to write about it all, you have to read it for yourself. There are thoughts on how to write scripts, what type of stage direction works best, editing, delivering, sticking to budget and sticking (or not) to deadlines. There are times when the show must go on, and times when the fun seeps through. We are taken through the whole process from beginning to end in a wonderfully candid way and are allowed a look into how Russell T Davies thinks and creates. Everything rolls around in his mind trying to find a state of existence, the thought processes he calls the “Maybe” appear right from the start, and it’s fascinating when you realise that the physical writing is the very final stage of the journey before all hell breaks loose and the scripts become reality. Cudos must go to Ben for asking the questions he did; the rapport between the two is wonderful, and you really do feel that you are eves-dropping on a private conversation between two friends.
All in all, this book is wonderful. It’s like sitting in a squishy, comfy armchair in the corner of Russell’s study. You can almost hear the clicking of his keyboard.
I would highly recommend “The Writer’s Tale: the final chapter” to anyone who is interested in writing, television, Dr Who, Russell T Davies, Ben Cook…hell ANYONE at all!
But for the writers I’ll leave the final words to the man himself…
“when nothing is real and nothing is fixed, it can go anywhere. The Maybe is a hell of a place to live. As well as being the best place in the world”
http://www.thewriterstale.co.uk/




