Russell T Davies - Writing Style

Writing Style

Davies is an admitted procrastinator and often waits hours or days for concepts to form before he commits them to the script. In The Writer's Tale, he describes his procrastination by discussing his early career: at the time, his method of dealing with the pressures of delivering a script was to "go out drinking" instead. On one occasion in the mid-1990s, he was at the Manchester gay club Cruz 101 when he thought of the climax to the first series of The Grand. As his career progressed, he instead spent entire nights "just thinking of plot, character, pace, etc" and waited until 2:00 am, "when the clubs used to shut", to overcome the urge of procrastination. Davies described the sense of anxiety he experiences in an email to Cook in April 2007, in response to Cook's question of "how do you know when to start writing?":

I leave it till the last minute. And then I leave it some more. Eventually, I leave it till I'm desperate. ... I always think, I'm not ready to write it, I don't know what I'm doing, it's just a jumble of thoughts in a state of flux, there's no story, I don't know who A connects to B, I don't know anything! I get myself into a genuine state of panic. ... Normally, I'll leave it till the deadline, and I haven't even started writing. This has become, over the years, a week beyond the deadline, or even more. It can be a week—or weeks—past the delivery date, and I haven't started writing. In fact, I don't have delivery dates any more. I go by the start-of-preproduction date. I consider that to be my real deadline. And then I miss that. It's a cycle that I cannot break. I simply can't help it. It makes my life miserable. —Russell T Davies to Benjamin Cook, 3 April 2007.

He expanded on his email two weeks later in response to Cook's query about the supposed link between major depressive disorder and creativity. He explained that his anxiety and melancholy during the scriptwriting period still allowed him to keep on top of his work; on the other hand, he thought "Depression with a capital D any such luxury".

Davies explained in length his writing process to Cook in The Writer's Tale. When he creates characters, he initially assigns a character a name and fits attributes around it. In the case of Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) in his inaugural series of Doctor Who, he chose the name because he considered it a "good luck charm" after he used it for Lesley Sharp's character in Bob & Rose. He presented his desire to make the show "essentially British" as another justification: he considered Rose to be "the most British name in the world" and feminine enough to subvert the then-current trend of female companions and their "boyish" names, such as Benny, Charley, and Ace. While he was writing for The Grand, the executive producer requested that he change the female lead character's name, a decision that led to the "character never right from that moment on". The surname "Harkness", most notably given to Torchwood lead Captain Jack Harkness, is a similar charm, first used in 1993 for the Harkness family in Century Falls, and ultimately derived from the Marvel Universe hero Agatha Harkness, and the surname "Tyler" is similarly used because of his affection for how the surname is spelled and pronounced.

Davies also attempts to channel his writing by using music that fits the theme of the series as a source of inspiration: Doctor Who was typically written while he listened to action-adventure film scores; Queer as Folk was written to Hi-NRG music "to catch sheer clubland drive"; Bob & Rose was written to the Moby album Play, because the two works shared an "urban, sexy, full of lonely hearts at night" image; and The Second Coming shared the concepts of "experimental, anguish, dark, pain" of Radiohead albums. More specifically, he wrote the early drafts of the fourth series Doctor Who episode "Partners in Crime" while he was listening to Mika's Life in Cartoon Motion, and singled out the song "Any Other World" as a "Doctor Who companion song" with lyrics that matched Penny, the planned companion for the fourth series.

When he creates new scripts, Davies considers the dénouement of a story to be representative of the work. He often formulates both the scene and its emotional impact early in the process, but writes the scenes last due to his belief that " can't exist if they aren't informed by where they've come from". Davies is a strong advocate for the continued use of the cliffhanger ending and opposes advertising that sacrifices the impact of storytelling. In pursuit of his quest, he instructs editors to remove scenes from press copies of episodes he writes; cliffhangers were removed from the review copies of the Doctor Who episodes "Army of Ghosts", "The Stolen Earth", and the first part of The End of Time, and Rose Tyler's unadvertised appearance in "Partners in Crime" was excised. His most prolific cliffhanger was in the script of "The Stolen Earth", which created a public sense of "Doctor Who fever" in the week preceding its conclusion. In an interview with BBC News shortly after the episode's transmission, he argued that the success of a popular television series is linked to how well producers can keep secrets and create a "live experience":

It's exciting when you get kids in playground talking about your story, about who's going to live or die, then I consider that a job well done, because that's interactive television, that's what it's all about: it's debate and fun and chat. It's playing a game with the country and I think that's wonderful. —Russell T Davies, "Struggle to keep Who secret", BBC News Online

Davies attempts to both create imagery and to provide a social commentary in his scripts; for example, he uses camera directions in his scripts more frequently than newer screenwriters to ensure that anyone who reads the script, especially the director, is able to "feel... the pace, the speed, the atmosphere, the mood, the gags, the dread". His stage directions also create an atmosphere by their formatting and avoidance of the first person. Although the basis of several of his scripts derive from previous concepts, he claims that most concepts for storytelling have been already used, and instead tries to tell a relatively new and entertaining plot; for example, the Doctor Who episode "Turn Left" shares its concept most notably with the 1998 film Sliding Doors. Like how Sliding Doors examines two timelines based on whether Helen Quilley (Gwyneth Paltrow) catches a London Underground train, Davies uses the choice of the Doctor's companion to turn left or right at a road intersection to depict either a world with the Doctor, as seen throughout the rest of the fourth series, or an alternate world without the Doctor, examined in its entirety within the episode. The world without the Doctor creates a dystopia which he uses to provide a commentary on Nazi-esque fascism. Davies generally tries to make his scripts "quite detailed, but very succinct", and eschews the long character and set descriptions; instead, he limits himself to only three adjectives to describe a character and two lines to describe a set to allow the dialogue to describe the story instead.

Davies also uses his scripts to examine and debate on large issues such as sexuality and religion, especially from a homosexual or atheist perspective. He refrains from a dependence on "cheap, easy lines" that provide little deeper insight; his mantra during his early adult drama career was "no boring issues". Queer as Folk is the primary vehicle for his social commentary of homosexuality and advocation of greater acceptance. He used the series to challenge the "primal ... gut instinct" of homophobia by introducing homosexual imagery in contrast to the heterosexual "fundamental image of life, of family, of childhood, of survival". His next series, Bob & Rose, examined the issue of a gay man who falls in love with a woman, and how their respective social circles react to such a romance. Torchwood, in Davies' own words, is "a very bisexual programme", and demonstrates a fluid approach to both gender and sexuality "almost from its opening moments": for example, the lead character Captain Jack Harkness nonchalantly mentions he was once pregnant; and later, the other lead characters discuss Jack's sexuality. The gay website AfterElton opined that Torchwood's biggest breakthrough could be "queer representation" by showing Captain Jack as a character whose bisexuality is explored but not his only character trait.

His most notable commentaries of religion and atheism are The Second Coming and his 2007 Doctor Who episode "Gridlock". The Second Coming's depiction of a contemporary and realistic Second Coming of Jesus Christ eschews the use of religious iconography in favour of a love story underlined by the male lead's "awakening as the Son of God". In contrast, "Gridlock" takes a more pro-active role in debating religion: the episode depicts the unity of the supporting cast in singing the Christian hymns "Abide with Me" and "The Old Rugged Cross" as a positive aspect of faith, but depicts the Doctor as an atheistic hero which shows the faith as misguided because "there is no higher authority". He also includes his commentary as an undertone in other stories; he described the sub-plot of the differing belief systems of the Doctor and Queen Victoria in "Tooth and Claw" as a conflict between "Rational Man versus Head of the Church".

Like other scriptwriters during Doctor Who's original tenure, several of Davies scripts are influenced by his personal politics. Marc Edward DiPaolo of Oklahoma City University observes that Davies usually espouses a "left-leaning" view through his scripts. Beyond religion and sexuality, Davies most notably satirises the United States under George W. Bush on Doctor Who: the Slitheen in "Aliens of London" and "World War Three" and Henry van Statten in "Dalek" were portrayed as sociopathic capitalists; the Daleks under his tenure echoed contemporary American conservatives in their appearances, from religious fundamentalists in "The Parting of the Ways" to imperialists in "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks"; and in "The Sound of Drums", a parody of Bush is murdered by the Master (John Simm), who was presented in the story as a Prime Minister reminiscent of Tony Blair. Other targets of satire in his Doctor Who scripts include Fox News, News Corporation, and the 24-hour news cycle in "The Long Game", plastic surgery and consumer culture in "The End of the World", obesity and alternative medicine in "Partners in Crime", and racism and paranoia in "Midnight".