Russell T Davies on his other Doctor Who return: "None of this was planned"
The once and future showrunner opens up on his rediscovered Doctor Who script Mind of the Hodiac.
If you’ve paid any attention to popular culture over the last few months, you may have heard the shock news that former Doctor Who boss Russell T Davies is returning to take charge once more for Who’s 60th anniversary year – but you might not know that this isn’t his only Doctor Who project in the offing.
In fact, before we had any idea he was returning to the main TV series fans were already excited at the news of a very different Who return for the acclaimed screenwriter –an audio drama. It all started when Davies dug out an old script he’d written as a young fan in the 1980s, and eventually Doctor Who audio producers Big Finish came on board to bring the story to life for real.
Now, Davies’ unfinished Mind of the Hodiac – completed by Scott Handcock and starring Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford – is coming soon, the first Who script we’ve seen from Davies for over 12 years. And with a load more scripts on the horizon, it’s fair to say that it’s a moment of odd synchronicity for the It’s A Sin creator.
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“This whole thing… it’s very strange that I’m coming back to Doctor Who at the same time, because none of this was planned,” Davies told Doctor Who Magazine. “But it feels all as one. It feels like a whole. It feels like it was meant to be.
“Who would have thought, as I sat there in that little flat in Roath in Cardiff, bashing away on an electric typewriter my mother had bought me for my 21st birthday…? Obviously I was writing it in the hope it would be made – and here we are, all these years later.”
Though for star Colin Baker – who was playing the Sixth Doctor at the time Davies originally wrote the script, and now brings it to life in voiceover – the process makes perfect sense given the long tradition of Doctor Who fans eventually becoming creative titans in their own right.
“Doctor Who is kind of a self-generating programme, in that all the people who make it are people who saw the programme back in the mists of time, and loved it so much they became writers, producers, directors, actors…” he said.
“It’s like some creature that cannot be killed, because it spawns new creative talent. And Russell is the prime example. As a young fellow, he took a shine to a programme – which, by happenstance and good fortune had Bonnie and I in it at the time – and he wrote a script for us. Not for the other ones, but for us! So we got the benefit of this wonderful story.”
And according to co-star Langford, you can see the seeds of Davies’ 2005-2010 Doctor Who style in the story Mind of the Hodiac tells.
“If you look at the programme when Russell brought it back, you can see those roots in this script,” she told DWM.
“One of the reasons people love this programme is because it has this sort of fantastical, infinite opportunity – and when you’re young, you want to think that your life could go anywhere. But with Russell’s scripts it starts at home, it’s about the human race. It brings a kind of reality to the fantasy.”
For fans desperate to see what Davies does next with the main series, it sounds like Mind of the Hodiac will be the perfect amuse-bouche. Just try not to bolt it down all at once – it’ll be a while before we get the main course.
Mind of the Hodiac will be released by Big Finish in March 2022, while the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine is out now.
For more, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or our full TV Guide.
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
