Doctor Who: Redacted’s Juno Dawson on the secret history of the new spin-off

We caught up with scriptwriter, series creator and author Juno Dawson to find out more about the series’ origins, how returning showrunner Russell T Davies gave his input and what we can expect for the next seven episodes. Plus, bonus LINDA content for all you LINDA fans out there.

Hi Juno – from your perspective, how did the Doctor Who: Redacted story begin?

It’s been 84 years… It really has. I was approached by lovely Ella Watts from BBC Sounds in the middle of 2019. I’m the first to confess: I was like, “I don’t get it.” Even though I had written for Big Finish audio on the Torchwood range previously, I was like, “A podcast, but a script? I don’t understand.”

And then we did some brainstorming. I just like the idea. I like the idea of there being a podcast within a podcast.

And I did think, “What if there were these three girls who love conspiracy theories, and they’ve kind of clocked that something strange is happening with this blue box, and there’s this legend of the Doctor, but they’re way off?”

So it’s been in the works for a while?

Well we recorded the pilot in January 2020, and, of course we knew that Doctor Who: Redacted involved some sort of a viral threat. In January 2020, we were all like, “This is relevant. Snatched from the headlines. Ooh, COVID – it’s a good job that’s not in our country.” And then, of course, it completely shut down everything. I thought that was going to be the end of the project.

And then, well, a year-and-a-half later, almost out of nowhere, I got this email saying, “We’ve got the greenlight. It’s happening. PS We need the scripts tomorrow.”

And so it went from being this sort of period of huge inactivity to it being an absolute mad dash in order to have it ready for the Easter special. The run-up to April has been a lot.

What was the original pitch the BBC gave you?

There was a very strong conviction that they shouldn’t do, I suppose, the expected thing– which is, after the televised episodes, have a bunch of fans and a recognisable BBC face just dissecting the episode.

They knew that was a bad idea because there were so many fan podcasts doing that. So it felt like to come on and say, “This is the official Doctor Who podcast” was actually quite disrespectful.

But BBC Sounds did want an official Doctor Who podcast. Doctor Who hadn’t existed in that space before. Ella’s background is massively in audio drama, and she felt there was a space for this kind of podcast within a podcast.

There’s a long history of Doctor Who characters being riffs on Doctor Who fans, right? Like LINDA from Love & Monsters, and Clive from Rose…

Yeah, we said really early on that if Russell T Davies was bringing back Doctor Who now with that episode, Clive would have had a podcast. 100 per cent. And possibly so would LINDA.

There was a very, very brief chat about whether we went back to LINDA, and did the official LINDA podcast. But that would have required much more input from Russell, and obviously he’s got his hands full. He’s a busy man. So we went our own way.

Also, you want to bring something new to it. While there are lots of Easter eggs and lots of references to Doctor Who past – Shawna, Abby and Cleo and their lives, they are 100 per cent my invention. That’s what gets me interested as a creator as well.

With that said, there are plenty of returning characters – Kate Stewart, Rani and Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor to name a few.

Yes, obviously, so far, on the podcast, you’ve heard from Anjli [Mohindra], and you’ve heard from Jodie. There are plenty more cameos to come. And each one of them was so professional, and the way they’re able to just slide into these old roles was a really joyful thing.

Did you have a wish list for characters?

Now there’s a question! We did have a big, long list. I will say, Russell… There were some characters we weren’t allowed to use. That’s all I will say. And maybe Russell has reasons for that. This is all I’m going to say.

Actually, I don’t know that. Even I don’t know the answer to that. We were just told no in some cases.

For me, the dealbreaker was whether or not we’re going to get the Doctor. And I did want Jodie. I would have been devastated if we hadn’t. And, of course, by the time we actually got to recording, Jodie had wrapped her last episode of Doctor Who. So we were kind of like: “We’re basically calling a Doctor out of retirement, to come back.”

And thank goodness, she was really up for it. She didn’t even hesitate. It was just a big, old yes. You know, the day she came in was, I think, the best day of my career so far.

We’ve mentioned Big Finish – you’ve written for them before, and they’re the face of Doctor Who audio drama. What makes Redacted different?

Initially, there was some conversation about stepping on Big Finish’s toes. I love the guys at Big Finish. I’ve worked for them. They are lovely. I mean, in some ways, they were my first script commissions.

So there was conversations around how to make it different. At one point, we were going to use interview sections with real people, and real experts. So if the Blue Box Files girls had been studying spiders in Sheffield, we would have brought in a real-life sort of arachnid scientist.

And then we were like, “We are making this so complicated.” Audio drama is a big, wide world. Our episodes are shorter – 20, 25 minute chunks, whereas with Big Finish, you know, you’re sitting down to listen to a big, hour-long instalment.

Also, I wanted them to be commute length. And the commute in this country tends to be about 25 minutes.

That’s smart!

That, again, took me back to the 1980s episodes – like, the last time Doctor Who was 25 minutes long.

We’ve had three episodes now, and things are getting more sci-fi as our heroes discover people forgetting the Doctor – what can we expect from the upcoming seven episodes?

There’s a couple of about-turns. I will say that episode 4 and episode 7 represent some unusual turning points.

So we are slightly on step ahead of Cleo and Abby and Shawna, in that we do know who the Doctor is, and we do know what the TARDIS is. So you don’t want 10 weeks of them going, “What could it be? Oh my gosh. Maybe it’s aliens.” “No way. Aliens don’t exist.”

Because that becomes a bit Lois Lane syndrome, which is like: it’s Superman! We can all see it’s Superman. Abby, Shawna and Cleo, in their own unique ways, are very intelligent and very street-smart. So we couldn’t have them just dithering around for 10 weeks, talking about old Doctor Who adventures.

I would say: keep your eyes peeled on episode 4 and episode 7, where actually everything slightly takes a bit of a chicane, and you go in a bit of a different direction.

And then the last three episodes, I will say, are almost one action sequence told over three parts.

After that, will the story be concluded or could we see more from Redacted? Or maybe another podcast story?

There is room to tell more stories, and I think that’s something that Russell really understands as well, which is that there is now a Whoniverse. From Doctor Who, we’ve had Torchwood, we’ve had Sarah Jane, we’ve had Class. There’s always room to tell stories within this precinct, because you’re looking at a precinct that transcends time and space. There are so many more stories that you can tell.

Charlie Craggs is a really good friend of mine. I know she really wants to play Cleo again. So it would be lovely to see Cleo Proctor return for more adventures.

On record, I would say to Russell T Davies: if you want to use any of the Redacted characters, I give you my blessing. You are welcome to them. Hire Charlie Craggs. Keep Charlie Craggs in work, is what I say to that.

You’re a longtime fan, and you almost wrote for a spin-off before on season 2 of Class – how does it feel to finally get your Doctor Who spin-off?

It’s like Brokeback Mountain. Why can’t I quit you, Doctor Who? It’s because I’m a fan. It was my first love. You know, I do dearly remember the Sylvester McCoy era, and then I massively got into it in a big way during the ‘90s, when I didn’t have any friends. I used to buy them on VHS, and Doctor Who was my friend.

When the call comes, when the Bat signal comes on, I’m never going to turn it down. Even though sometimes I don’t have time and space to do things.

I did Big Finish. I did the novel, The Good Doctor. And when Ella came to me, I really had my plate full. But I was like, “It’s Doctor Who. If you, in your 30s, were to go back, and say to 13-year-old you, ‘You just turned down the chance to write Doctor Who,” 13-year-old me would just be inconsolable.”

So I’m never going to not answer the call, basically.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Doctor Who: Redacted releases new episodes on BBC Sounds on Sundays. For more, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or our full TV Guide.

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