Category: Europe

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Of course, he invents Captain Jack who, you know let’s face it, he’s admitted a million times it’s really like his dream boy and then – everybody’s dream boy. Hello. Exactly and how can he not be right but he said – Russell has said several times – which I think is very important what he wanted to show on television were things he wished he’d seen as a child and what he’d never seen was two men be romantic with each other. Not like pornographic sex, romantic right? The fact that they could dance together in public and that was acceptable. Such an amazing – it doesn’t seem like that much but it’s that much right and it was to him because he’s writing from the perspective of the little boy that he once was and what wasn’t he shown. So really impressive to me how much they moved the needle forward in terms of gay representations. Of course, we’re talking about men here not necessarily women yet but you know you open one door, you start opening it a little bit more.

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Now we know it was invented by Russell and Russell comes to us from Queer As Folk which was a huge sort of new thing and this starts in the UK before it even comes to the States and the States kind of ruined it. I don’t know if you see the English version it’s much better than the American version. It is trippy. Isn’t it sad? This sadly – I mean please, please, please, I never want an American version of Doctor Who and they’ve talked about it, and then they kind of kibosh it. Yeah, they’ve talked about it. It’s like oh no no no no no but so so we know that his career was built – I mean he starts in soap operas as we know and soap operas get disrespected but in fact some of the most innovative stuff happens on tv first in soap operas and that’s true in the States as well right? There were gay characters for the first time. There were interracial marriages for the first time. These happened on soap operas because only women were watching and they were stay-at-home mommies or wives and so who cares what they’re watching right? Nobody gave it a thought except that’s how then stories seeded into prime time right and we finally grow and like that. So he starts in soaps and he moves into Queer As Folk and then he moves into Doctor Who.

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So we’ll get into Torchwood which is what we’re here to talk about. This whole – my interest in Torchwood bled into another academic friend of mine – a guy named Martin Griffin he was on my Ph.D. committee and he knew I liked both Doctor Who and Torchwood. He was actually from Scotland and he would talk about the show. He knew it as a child and so he was – thought it was interesting there was an American who knew it as well as he did. So we got along really well even though my dissertation had nothing to do with Doctor Who. It should have now that I think about it, but when the show aired – when Children of Earth aired – I had an argument with the ending and he and I had this long watercooler conversation about it and about – I don’t know – six months later he called me and he said you know I just saw a call for papers, which you get in academia a lot is people are putting together book collections about different things and they want people to write a chapter on whatever the topic is. So for instance what I did yesterday was a chapter on the new female Doctor and how it was to write her and that was a chapter in one book. Well, he called me and said this book called Torchwood Declassified was being put together and he thought the two of us could write a chapter based on my argument with the ending of Children of Earth and I was like really? We could write something? They said well there’s going to be a symposium in Cardiff but since I live in the UK, I will go and present the paper. You don’t have to be there but you’ll get credit. You’re supposed to get that you know credit on your resume and when you go to conferences. So I was like okay I’ll write the thing because that’ll be fun and then when they accepted it and they invited him to the event I was like well why shouldn’t we go to Cardiff? Why am I not taking a vacation to Cardiff If I can? I can write it a little bit off my taxes because it’s business. So in fact, we went – we presented at the thing. So this whole thing all started with a conversation.

Transcript:

All Right. Welcome, everybody. It’s so interesting to me because I mean, hello, Doctor Who is gorgeous and I also really love Torchwood. I mean who thought you could get a spin-off off this show and then gee that was a great idea. There was a great character and then it’s really lovely how they sort of seeded it in right and we’re gonna talk a little bit about Martha cause you know Martha belonged in this show except then she got the other gig on Law and Order which was like okay good for the actress but you belong in this world. I know you can’t really like me too. Me too. You can’t cosplay Law & Order. It’s really not that interesting. It’s just not the same exactly. So we are gonna chat about Why Torchwood Still Matters to me. This is me. You’ve seen me. It’s just a fun picture my college took of me. I did this – I’ll do this really fast. I did this yesterday. I work for a college called Stephens College. We teach an MFA in Screenwriting and I believe representation is just so important. This gets us back to Martha right. The fact that Doctor Who was thinking about representation and how well they’ve been doing that over the years. I was a TV writer before I got into academia. So these are all shows that I worked on. So I’m very interested in things from the writing standpoint not really directing or anything else. Written By Magazine – this magazine the Writer’s Guild – got a sample over there because I was able to interview Russell when he came to town to be doing Miracle Day because I knew I was the only person on the editorial board who knew the show. They’re like would you like to go talk to him and he was great because like other journalists don’t always know his work as well. I’m gonna go talk to this guy and they were discussing little details and it was very fun. Of course, I wanted to go can I write on the show but he’d already hired really cool people who we will talk about in a little bit. This is the article that was so fun to do and just to be sitting in the same room and thinking about what it was like to throw ideas around with him was very cool and there’s a bunch of books that I’ve done.