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:
This comes from the writer’s room and they do those a little bit differently in the UK as well. They don’t necessarily have everyone on staff meeting every day the way we do in the states but he hired a group of people to write certain freelance episodes expecting to get this variety of stories that we had not yet seen before and so he was looking to hire more women of course and more people of color which was not you know a record that Doctor Who had going well for it even moving into the Steven Moffat years. So he made a commitment and he followed through. What’s interesting about a lot of these writers is they came out of theater where there’s a little bit more chance sometimes because you can do smaller plays in smaller locations around the country and then someone can sample your writing. It’s hard to break into television even in the UK. It’s even a smaller business than here. So he was looking into other places to find new writers for these shows and I think again I think he succeeded there.
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