UK – Page 5 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

05 “She is wise and unafraid…” from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

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:

Because I do know — I have two very favorite — yeah my very favorite fandoms are Doctor Who and The Monkees and somebody did this lovely piece of fan art which I just fell in love with so I love how fandom blends together and you know the whole community that you create with other people who love what you love but today we’re going to talk about the writing of this new female Doctor right? I used to actually have a Matt outfit I like to wear and I had a Peter outfit that I like to wear but now I’m going to have to kind of have to go with the fact that hello I bought this two years ago here at WhoCon, so it’s really fun. Anyway, this was actually the title and this is a line right from the first episode. What I loved is this business right? “She’s wise and unafraid and I believe in her.” One of the things I noticed about what Chibnall had to do right away and I know that we all have some gripes about some of the stuff he’s done but I think that he made some very good choices in the beginning and a lot of that has to do with writing and hiring some other very good writers who brought in some aspects of the show we hadn’t had before.

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04 My Writing from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

Transcript:

So Written By Magazine. Journal of Screenwriting again obviously coming from that standpoint and California History. I do some pop culture for them so I’m trying to figure out how to get some Doctor Who in there right? A little — I’m a little behind on Matt having actually been in the West but maybe I’ll get something on there. This is the piece that I did for Written By and as I said it’s a sample over there. It was really fun to sort of sit in the room with him. I do think he’s one of my favorite writers and that made me very happy and then these are a bunch of other books and things that I’ve written so you kind of know where I’m coming from and where these opinions come from.

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03 Russell T Davies from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

Transcript:

I also am on the editorial board for different things. Written By Magazine is the magazine of the Writers Guild. I have a sample of it over there. I got lucky one time when Russell was in town doing Miracle Day the editor was like I know you’re a Doctor Who fan. Would you like to interview him and I was like yes I would love to sit in a room and chat with him and it turned out few journalists are as Whovian of a fan as I. So we ended up chatting longer than I was meant to be there and the publicist would walk by and go “Are you all done yet?” and I thought. oh, they’re going to kick me out, and then Russell was like in a minute and he’d send the publicist away. So I laughed.

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02 Writing and Me from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years

Transcript:

I came out of television into academia. So I worked on these shows earlier in my career and learned a lot from the people who ran them right? 90210. Very popular still. Always shocked about that because there’s been lots of teen shows but I think we learned that they took these teenagers seriously and when you take your character seriously, they become friends to the people who watch and I obviously believe that’s true in Doctor Who. We all have our favorite doctors. Mine actually goes back to classic Who. I’m a Peter Davidson person but our companions. I mean they are about bringing friends into our home. That’s how TV is different than film because you have to pay to go see the people in the films but these people come into our homes where we’re having coffee or you know having pizza or whatever. So I really think it’s interesting to look at why we fall in love with these characters and for me, of course, it comes from the writing.

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01 Introduction from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

Transcript:

All right, ladies and gentlemen, it’s lovely to have you here. On my campuses, I’m kind of the Doctor of Doctor Who which makes people laugh. They’re like can you look at this academically and you can. What I’m going to talk about today is based on a chapter that I’ve written in a new book. I always feel bad about academic books. This thing is like 120 bucks because it’s meant for college libraries or whatnot and there are academics all over the UK and the US who’ve written chapters in it and of course it’s about the era of the New Dawn, the era of the Jody Whitaker Doctor. So when I saw this go up I said well I have a lot to say about screenwriting because officially this is who I am. I love that picture because it was taken at my college for an article they did on me. I worked for schools called Stephens College and we teach an MFA in screenwriting and so I always look at everything from the point of view of the person who wrote this material. I really am very interested in screenwriters more than directors because people sometimes will credit a director and I’m like well they didn’t make up the story. If you liked the twist or the character or piece of dialogue, they didn’t make that up. They just put the cameras at a lovely place and accented it. So let’s think about the people who wrote these things and so that’s what I do.

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52 Conclusion from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Thanks to the gracious invitation from my Screenwriting Research Network colleague Paolo Russo – and a grant he was able to procure (and in the before-Covid time) I was able to spend a week at Oxford Brookes University working with the screenwriting masters students in Paolo’s course. At the culmination of the week, I gave this lecture on how writers rooms worked in the States.

Transcript:

…and if you don’t think novelists are writers who collaborate think about the fact that all these guys hung around with each other in a writer’s group and read stuff to each other and took notes from each other and made changes based on those notes. Those were writer’s rooms. The Eagle and whatever that pub is called I haven’t gotten to yet …that was a writer’s room right and from that room not only did we get those books. We got this collaboration. Phil Jackson is great. I love him. He’s brilliant. He does great stuff. He doesn’t do it alone. He’s just the guy who’s willing to do the interviews. His wife doesn’t care to do interviews. I don’t know what’s wrong with her but she’s making me crazy right because we’re forgetting that two women co-wrote this movie. That’s what makes it so much better for our times right? They got the best-adapted screenplay award. Two women and a guy made The Lord of the Rings into what it is. I think that’s really important. So who remembers what I said my teaching philosophy was

three things matter

Words matter, Writers matter, and Women Writers matter.

Thank you very much. You’re listening. This thing is good. All right and this is important to me. It’s not just what I know. It’s spreading that around this is my first graduating classroom at Stephen’s MFA. As I said it was an all-female college. So it’s about spreading the word. Writers are teachers with a giant podium. What’s your opinion of how this world should work? Put it out there and the bigger audience you get the more influence you get. Forget YoutTube and who does makeup well. Those aren’t influencers. People who tell stories — I seriously — they’re not — people who tell stories are influencers because stories teach us to feel and that’s what you get paid to do which I love. So again these are a bunch of books I use when I’m just thinking about putting this together. So if you’re interested in reading about showrunners, those are a bunch of books that do interviews with them, and of course, this is the bunch that I’ve written and that’s all I have to say. So I guess we’re doing a q a now right? so if people have questions, I am totally open to your things.

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51 Teacher Make Good Writers from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

For me, teachers make good writers. Right? Obviously Icatered this to where I have come and been happy to be. I actually — went too fast — this was my facebook post the other day. I don’t like a lot of words on the screen but I couldn’t resist this because I’ve never been to Oxford before.

So I found this little church just off Wharton Road where he was once a congregant and I had to find the picture and send it back to my husband and the cat just found me which I thought was cute but seriously I mean how long has the guy been dead and I’m still fascinated by the things he wrote? They still mean something to me and my family. Likewise, writers make good teachers.

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50 Collaboration Is Required from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

What I hope you learned from me today is that a writer’s room requires collaboration. It’s always about sharing and talking with the other people to make the product better and participation. You can’t just sit in a corner. You have to be part of that conversation or your perspective will not be included and that’s bad for you and anybody else who looks like you. It’s your job to represent when you’re in the room. So you need to be able to do that. Plus I love this quote of Einstein’s — Imagination. You’re selling your imagination. Who gets to do that? What job do you get to do that in except writing? I think that is the coolest thing in the world.

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Why Torchwood Still Matters with Dr. Rosanne Welch (Complete), San Diego Who Con 2021 [Video]

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.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

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49 Speaking Up In The Writer’s Room from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

…and I really say that to the girls a lot because when I have my classes, often when I just open pitching up — anyone can start pitching their ideas — who’s first? We’ll go through a line of like four guys and then I have to stop and go “Does anyone notice anything odd right now?” and I promise you it will be a boy who says “None of the girls have pitched yet.” The girls haven’t even recognized that they are waiting their turn. No one will give you a turn. You have to take a turn or you won’t move as far as you like as fast as you like. So speaking of the big deal and I hate to say it but I learned how to cuss in a writer’s room because sometimes that was the only way to get attention. If I threw out a good four-letter word, all of a sudden everybody was looking at my section of the table which doesn’t make my mother very happy, but it was a silly thing right? So you have to think about managing yourself and managing the other people that you are around. That’s a big deal.

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
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† Available from the LA Public Library

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