It was great to be able to attend this year’s SD WhoCon in San Diego and present this lecture on “The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years” in which I discuss how successful I think showrunner Christopher Chibnall was in making that transition.
It gave me a chance to talk about the creative work of a showrunner/screenwriter while also reconnecting to some friends we had met at this same convention some 3 years ago – and to talk about one of my favorite subjects – Doctor Who!
Transcript:
The other important thing is casting who would be around her. So, as the showrunner, he is casting all of these new characters and he’s inventing them from scratch and so we looked at this group of people and thought OK, who does he surround the first female Doctor with and it was important to him, I also think he promised and mostly came through on diversity and diversity is one of those words that gets tossed around a lot. Some people are saying let’s get rid of that word. Let’s go with inclusion. It just means let’s tell more stories. Let’s tell a wider range of stories that we haven’t had a chance to see before. So he committed to that and by virtue of who he chose to follow her obviously, we are going to get some different stories that had not yet – I mean it’s 50+ years of a TV show. What new things can you possibly write? And, of course, for The Doctor that comes from the people who follow him. So I think that these were very good choices.
I recently presented a talk on Torchwood (Why Torchwood Still Matters) where I highlighted a few ways in which the show (airing from 2006 to 2011) came up with progressive and innovative ideas that are being used by other franchises today.
I always enjoy attending the SD (San Diego) WhoCon because the audiences are so well-informed on the Whoniverse and Whovians love Captain Jack and the crew that made this spinoff program so engaging.
Transcript:
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.
One of the things Friends did well was they did that wonderful episode which was about economic diversity and not thinking about that. It was where they all wanted tickets to some fancy concert and the three of them had really good jobs and the three of them didn’t right and the three offered to buy their friends tickets and there was that real sense of I don’t need you to be above me. I don’t want to recognize that we have these economic differences and it was yeah it was a really timeless episode but it is shocking that the most ethnic person on the show was Joey you know. We’ve had Italians been here a long time. We don’t really qualify. Like I’m Sicilian but we don’t qualify as any kind of minority, underrepresented, voice. You know except that my relatives will complain about all the mafia movies because we’re more than that but at least we get movies right? At least people get Oscars for playing our characters. So yeah that’s the thing that’s interesting and different. It’s changed. It really is.
One of the benefits of attending conferences is that you can meet the editors from the companies that have published some of your books face to face. That happened at the recent SCMS conference where I met Intellect editor James Campbell and he invited me to be a guest on his InstagramLive show.
We even had time to nerd out on our own favorite classic films across the eras which brought up fun memories of Angels with Dirty Faces, Back to the Future, Bonnie and Clyde, and of course, all things Star Wars from the original 3 to The Mandalorian. It’s always so fun to talk to fellow cinephiles.
Speaking with Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author, teacher, and television screenwriter. Today we cover everything from women in screenwriting to our favorite Jimmy Cagney movies and Friends.
It was great to be able to attend this year’s SD WhoCon in San Diego and present this lecture on “The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years” in which I discuss how successful I think showrunner Christopher Chibnall was in making that transition.
It gave me a chance to talk about the creative work of a showrunner/screenwriter while also reconnecting to some friends we had met at this same convention some 3 years ago – and to talk about one of my favorite subjects – Doctor Who!
Transcript:
Even Steven toyed with it between Matt and Peter, And I love Peter Capaldi. He’s an excellent actor, but there was a moment there and he just kind of went no…not yet, right? So I think that Chris had the guts so we have to give him credit for that. And it’s important that Jody recognized it was going to be a little shocking to people and, again, love Peter but Peter was like well, I think boys are losing a role model and then somebody said, Dude, women can be role models to men. It’s ok. Right? And boys can see strong women in the world. That’s actually going to be good for them later in life. So, it was a little delicate and he took the shot.
I recently presented a talk on Torchwood (Why Torchwood Still Matters) where I highlighted a few ways in which the show (airing from 2006 to 2011) came up with progressive and innovative ideas that are being used by other franchises today.
I always enjoy attending the SD (San Diego) WhoCon because the audiences are so well-informed on the Whoniverse and Whovians love Captain Jack and the crew that made this spinoff program so engaging.
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.
Host: Were there any – are there any current female and screenwriters that you would sort of recommend we go and check out is there anyone making interesting work other than yourself, of course.
Rosanne: I think the beautiful thing about now is there are many of them. There aren’t TOO many of them but there are many of them. So we’re beginning to see opportunities come to a lot more women. Again what’s interesting to me is I worked in television more than film and tv has always been a better writer’s medium. Writers and Executive Producers are in charge. The directors are the journeymen who come and go. So there’s more power there. So you’re still seeing more powerful women arrive in the television scene – obviously like Shonda Rhimes – to create your own production company and to create constantly these high-powered, very well-received pieces. That’s a place where women have more power. So something like Shonda Rhimes, of course, is someone you can’t help but look up to because she created her career, you know, properly one step at a time. This movie. That movie. This sequel. That sequel. The next thing you know I’m doing this and bam – Grey’s Anatomy, right? So and Grey’s Anatomy has been on 15 seasons? That doesn’t happen much these days either. It’s become that sort of comfort tv that I know when it went to Netflix it’s one of the highest viewed pieces on Netflix even though it’s a rerun. People love it right and she created that. She just understood the sensibility of the time and she was ahead of the game and the multicultural world we all live in. I mean you’re living in New York right and the great joke about Friends is how could it be that there were all those friends who sat in a coffee shop and there was no one of color whoever came by. So we’ve moved beyond that right but she was already like there 15 years ago.
One of the benefits of attending conferences is that you can meet the editors from the companies that have published some of your books face to face. That happened at the recent SCMS conference where I met Intellect editor James Campbell and he invited me to be a guest on his InstagramLive show.
We even had time to nerd out on our own favorite classic films across the eras which brought up fun memories of Angels with Dirty Faces, Back to the Future, Bonnie and Clyde, and of course, all things Star Wars from the original 3 to The Mandalorian. It’s always so fun to talk to fellow cinephiles.
Speaking with Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author, teacher, and television screenwriter. Today we cover everything from women in screenwriting to our favorite Jimmy Cagney movies and Friends.
It was great to be able to attend this year’s SD WhoCon in San Diego and present this lecture on “The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years” in which I discuss how successful I think showrunner Christopher Chibnall was in making that transition.
It gave me a chance to talk about the creative work of a showrunner/screenwriter while also reconnecting to some friends we had met at this same convention some 3 years ago – and to talk about one of my favorite subjects – Doctor Who!
Transcript:
So I think Chibnall was set up to do this. So when I think about the job of a head writer in the states we call that a showrunner and they’re using that term a little bit in England not so much but a little they’re sort of getting into that. So the showrunner’s job is everything. You’re really truly in television the writer is in charge. You’re producing the whole thing. In film, a director comes in after a script has been bought. They can hire other writers. They can make changes. By the time it’s done sometimes you don’t even recognize it as your own work. In tv – you know if you know about Shonda Rhimes and the other big showrunners – they’re in charge all the way through and it’s the directors who come and go episode to episode. So, in this case, I’m looking at him as a showrunner and what he provided to the show. In the very beginning of course he’s the first guy that had the guts to change the character into a female. It had been hinted at, chatted about since Tom Baker’s day. We knew that it could happen. We heard about other Time Lords who changed genders. Nobody quite had the guts to do it.
Host: What women in filmmaking inspired you as a practicing filmmaking screenwriter?
Rosanne: I was the kid who watched a lot of tv because I was an only child and I lived with my immigrant Sicilian grandparents and my mom, but she was at work all day, especially in the summer vacation and that was before parents arranged play dates and drove you to your friend’s houses for so many hours and whatnot. You were just on your own. So you went to the library. You found a bunch of books. So I read up a lot of the early female screenwriters. People like Anita Loos and Adele Rogers St. John and so I knew they existed and I was really interested in their work, but it wasn’t available to see right? Nobody was showing that sort of thing on television. So tv shows and tv writers in that period really struck me. I did a book on The Monkees a few years ago because Treva Silverman was the first female writer of a television show — a comedy writer — who didn’t have a male partner and she eventually went to the Mary Tyler Moore Show and she won a couple of Emmys. So she had quite a good career. So I started to realize there were women doing this writing thing and then I started to look into older films and find names in the past but there was this period in Hollywood where the Silent period and a little bit into the Talkies is very much — I saw another academic years ago at a conference say that early aviation and early film were back-to-back and that women were deeply involved in both and as soon as they became money-making franchises and men created studios and were the bosses, they offered women who had done the job before jobs — new contracts — as junior writers and they’re really big women like Anita Loos whatever — I’ll just go write novels. I don’t need you. Like this is — I don’t — I’m not a junior anything. So they disappeared from the sort of textbooks that started to appear in film studies and it was all these men, right? So you really had to start looking for them and of course, now there are better books out there. Cari Beauchamp has a wonderful book on Francis Marion who is the first woman to win two Oscars for writing and she was the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood.
One of the benefits of attending conferences is that you can meet the editors from the companies that have published some of your books face to face. That happened at the recent SCMS conference where I met Intellect editor James Campbell and he invited me to be a guest on his InstagramLive show.
We even had time to nerd out on our own favorite classic films across the eras which brought up fun memories of Angels with Dirty Faces, Back to the Future, Bonnie and Clyde, and of course, all things Star Wars from the original 3 to The Mandalorian. It’s always so fun to talk to fellow cinephiles.
Speaking with Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author, teacher, and television screenwriter. Today we cover everything from women in screenwriting to our favorite Jimmy Cagney movies and Friends.
Sian Heder reminded us how hard it is to be both a writer/artist AND a Mom – but we do it anyway — So do it anyway.
AND she won 2 major awards for a film about a young woman chasing a dream. That has happened only 3 other times in Oscar history (for Gigi, West Side Story, My Fair Lady – all musicals). Don’t let them tell you female stories aren’t powerful enough to earn awards – or audiences.
It was great to be able to attend this year’s SD WhoCon in San Diego and present this lecture on “The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years” in which I discuss how successful I think showrunner Christopher Chibnall was in making that transition.
It gave me a chance to talk about the creative work of a showrunner/screenwriter while also reconnecting to some friends we had met at this same convention some 3 years ago – and to talk about one of my favorite subjects – Doctor Who!
Transcript:
I tend to teach Broadchurch. I think it’s one of the best mini-series that I’ve ever seen. I always think something’s really good if I can’t guess the ending because yeah then you’re like okay you got me because I’m really looking at every single moment and if I don’t know then you have done some very good writing and I really love that. I think of course looking at the fact that Olivia Coleman before she won her Oscar and now her Emmy for The Crown recognizing a powerful actress a little bit earlier than other people did and bringing her forth and of course because of Broadchurch, we get to Jody right and I just — she — in the midst of this terrible tragedy was as strong a person as she could be. She wasn’t just in a corner weeping and crying and all that. So I think he’s always treated women intelligently and respectfully.
![11 Casting Supporting Characters...from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/rmw-whocon-2021-chibnall-11.jpg)
![02 My Interest In Torchwood from Why Torchwood Still Matters with Dr. Rosanne Welch, San Diego Who Con 2021 [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/rmw-whocon-2021-torchwood-02.jpg)
![10 Previous Hints At A Female Doctor ...from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/rmw-whocon-2021-chibnall-10.jpg)
![01 Introduction from Why Torchwood Still Matters with Dr. Rosanne Welch (Complete), San Diego Who Con 2021 [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/rmw-whocon-2021-torchwood-01.jpg)
![05 Interesting Women Screenwriters? from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch and Intellect Books [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/rmw-intellect-05.jpg)
![09 In TV, The Showrunner is in Charge...from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/rmw-whocon-2021-chibnall-09.jpg)
![04 Who Inspired You? from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch and Intellect Books [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/rmw-intellect-04.jpg)
![08 More On Chibnall's Earlier Writing...from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/rmw-whocon-2021-chibnall-08.jpg)