I am – Hercules!!

“School Reunion,” the “Doctor Who” episode televised by the SciFi Channel tonight, is big. Not only do the iconic characters of Sarah Jane Smith and K9 – not seen in “Doctor Who” since 1983 – return, but “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” icon Anthony Stewart Head makes his first “Who” appearance.

Longtime AICN spy “Gaspode” interviews the episode’s writer:

Writer Toby Whithouse talks about ‘School Reunion’

[When I first read the script for ‘School Reunion,’ I instantly thought it was going to be one of the highlights of Doctor Who’s second season. Having been introduced to the original series in the mid-eighties when American PBS stations began showing the Tom Baker episodes, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Doctor-Sarah Jane dynamic, and the notion of bringing back a now-middle-aged companion back into the TARDIS to confront her younger replacement was, let’s be honest, a fanboy’s dream come true. There were so many cool moments in the episode, from the ‘Can you top this?’ conversation between old and new companions, to Mickey the Idiot’s realization that he was in fact the metal dog, and the addition of Anthony Head as the school’s demonic headmaster.

Just to clarify a couple of minor points about this interview with Tony Whithouse, it actually takes place long before definite news about The Sarah Jane Adventures spin-off series, which has just gone into production in Cardiff. And the writer’s comments about probably not making any money from the spin-off was no more than a casual comment and should not be construed as sour grapes. The reason I mention it is because the written word doesn’t necessarily carry the exact tone of the original conversation, so I don’t want anybody to take one innocuous statement out of context. At any rate, enjoy the interview, and if Herc is interested, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see who I have lined up for you next week…]

Do you consider yourself a writer who acts or an actor who writes?
Toby Whithouse: I think I’ve become a writer who occasionally does a bit of acting. The emphasis has changed over the last few years as the writing work has really taken off, and acting is one of those jobs that you just have to be prepared to drop everything for auditions, work and so on, and it got to the point where I’m just not really in a position to do that anymore. My career as a writer is such more secure and I never really had that as an actor, consequently I was quite happy to make the transition.

But if you’re an actor, is it hard to be taken seriously as a writer?
Whithouse: I’ve got nothing to compare it to, so I don’t know whether it was an easy shift to make or not. It didn’t seem particularly difficult at the time. The impulse to write came out of necessity, as opposed to any kind of master plan. I was going through one of many periods of unemployment as an actor, and was becoming really fed up with it all. I had just come out of a TV series where I had been a regular for a couple of years, and was being sent a lot of scripts as a result of that, and I’d read these scripts and think, ‘This is absolute rubbish!’ Even though I’d never written anything myself, I was sure I could write something better than that.

And then I’d go along to these auditions, not actually getting the job anyway, so ultimately the reason I starting writing was so I could act. I thought, ‘I’ll write something for myself, and put it on in a tiny pub theater just with me and my mates!’ thinking it would give me an opportunity to act, but ultimately what happened was the play took on a life of its own. It got me a literary agent, and was then sent to various theaters, it won an award at one of the theaters, and it was the opening production in their new theater in London, so it began to spiral out of control. Suddenly I was being offered lots of television work, and my wife was pregnant with our first child at the time, so there was no real decision to be made because at the same time, the acting work wasn’t happening, and I wasn’t being offered the kind of work I wanted to do as an actor. And the other thing is, as a writer, you have so much more control and autonomy, which you don’t have as an actor. You’re at everyone else’s beck and call.

How did Doctor Who first come up?
Whithouse: Julie Gardner the executive producer was one of a number of producers I had met in my first few years as a writer and we got on fantastically and hoped that we would one day work on something together. And then she was made head of drama at BBC Wales and rang me up one day and said, ‘Would you like to do an episode of Doctor Who?’ so I leapt at the chance.

Some of the show’s other writers have made no secret of the fact that they are huge fans of the original series. Can that be a liability in some ways, because this is basically a new Doctor Who, that’s not necessarily mired in four decades of continuity?
Whithouse: Absolutely, although the irony is, my episode ‘School Reunion’ is the only one that really hearkens back to the past with the inclusion of the two ex-assistants, Sarah Jane and K-9. But I think my advantage was not really being immersed in that world, when I had my first meeting to talk about my episode with Russell and Julie, and they said to me, ‘We want you to bring back Sarah Jane and K-9.’ Had I been more of a fan, I think that would have filled me with absolute terror, to bring back these two characters. I knew they were big, popular characters within the mythology, but I hadn’t realized how iconic they were in the eyes of a lot of the fans. Had I been involved more in that world, it would have put the fear of God into me, but as it was, it was just another element I had to take on, so it didn’t particularly faze me.

When you’re writing your first script for the series, do you sit down with Russell T. Davies and hammer out a lot of things in advance?
Whithouse: On the whole, a lot of the stories for Doctor Who are very self-contained. There are little serial elements over the course of the series, and Russell always has what will happen over the course of the series in his mind, so in the first series, it was the whole Bad Wolf thing. There were also little things that he would hint at in certain episodes, that would suddenly become clear in a later episode and so on, but aside from that, there is much less of a serial element than there is in most other drama shows, consequently it was actually much more of a solitary thing than one would imagine. I’ve worked on a few shows that have been devised by a group of writers, where we’ll all sit down for a few weeks at the beginning of the project and talk about what we want to happen in the series, whereas Russell has kind of done all of that on his own, so you are brought in individually and told about the certain things that he wants to include in your episode. Aside from that, you’re sent off to go and write the script.

Didn’t Russell do some workshops in the first season to give the writers a better idea what he wanted in the new Doctor Who?
Whithouse: I think it’s so much more difficult in the first series, because you have nothing to work from, whereas by the time myself and the other guys started writing on series two, we had series one to look back on, so we had a model to work from. When he did the first series, even though it’s very loyal to its past, he was essentially completely reinventing it, and I think that’s been Russell’s greatest achievement. He’s managed to stay loyal and keep the real diehard fans very happy by not betraying the past of the show and not belittling it, but at the same time, making it fantastic and exciting and enthralling for a new generation.

How did the premise you come up with the original premise for ‘School Reunion?’
Whithouse: It was a lot of back and forth. In my first meeting with Russell and Julie, they just said, ‘We want you have K9 and Sarah Jane, and aside from that, go away and write whatever you want.’ Halfway through that process, Russell said, ‘Yeah, I really like these elements, but I want you change these bits and set it in a school.’ My story originally took place in a completely different setting, but I wrote up the other than that, I want to completely change it. Take that bit and that bit, but set it in a school,’ whereas before it had been in a completely different setting. So I kept the elements that Russell wanted to retain and changed the setting to a school, which they really liked, so it was very much a collegiate process.

What were the key elements that you retained?
Whithouse: The idea of something being done to a group of people to enhance and accelerate their intellect, and then those people being used to create or decipher or solve something. In the story, the children are basically having their brains artificially enhanced so they can work on this ancient mathematical equation that when it’s solved gives the villains the power to create anything they want, so it’s the idea of humans being used as extra memory on a computer to work out this problem for the villains.

Apparently when you began writing ‘School Reunion,’ Lis Sladen hadn’t been officially confirmed yet, so in a sense, weren’t you still writing a spec script for Sarah Jane Smith at that point?
Whithouse: That was a slight worry of mine. It’s interesting that you say that, because I wasn’t really aware of that, but it doesn’t really surprise me in the slightest.

But you couldn’t have just replaced Sladen with a different Sarah Jane-like character?
Whithouse: I know, and had they lost her, I don’t know what they would have done. Also, the other thing that happened halfway through the development was that for one reason or another, my episode suddenly got bumped forward. I was originally going to be writing something like episode 11, but after I sent in the final storyline for the school story, they rang me up and said, ‘Okay, the good news is that everybody is absolutely delighted with your storyline, and we want you to go to script. The bad news is, we need it in three weeks, because it turns out you’re writing episode three!’ which was a bit of a surprise, but it all worked out absolutely fine.

Did you have to do go back and do a refresher course of old Sarah Jane and K-9 episodes from the original series?
Whithouse: The thing is the method of storytelling within Doctor Who from the past and the way it’s done now couldn’t be more different, so stylistically, it was more useful to watch Russell’s first series rather than go too much into the past. In terms of facts and figures and characters and so on, I actually remembered a little more than I thought I did, and they sent me tapes and DVDs of Sarah Jane episodes, because her character is really what I needed a refresher on. But as I said, because Russell had reinvented it, I don’t think anyone would have thanked me if I had written a story that was too much like the previous Doctor Who, because the way that it’s done now has changed so radically, and I think it was more important that I got that right.

It’s almost a detriment to come in too prepared, isn’t it?
Whithouse: Absolutely, and also (hopefully) the process is very fluid, so you need to be open to new ideas, so no, it doesn’t really pay to come in with too hard and fast an idea of what to do.

How did the addition of Anthony Head as the headmaster affect the story? He brings a certain cache from his work on Buffy, doesn’t he?
Whithouse: It was interesting when we had our read-through of the episode. It was David’s first read-through as Doctor Who and absolutely blew the roof off the place. He was jaw-droppingly fantastic, and you really got the sense that this was the part he was born to play. It was the read-through for the Christmas episode, episode one [‘New Earth’] and my episode all in one afternoon, and David was absolutely stunning, but also Anthony Head was there as well. I can’t remember his first line of the script, but it was something like, ‘What do you want?’ and just the way he said it was so creepy and chilling and so predatory that everybody in the room giggled, and he obviously reveled in the part. He’s just extraordinary; terribly sinister, but very seductive as well. Particularly after playing the straight man in Buffy and in Little Britain, two of the things that he’s principally known for, in this episode, he absolutely takes it to town.

Did you know from the beginning that you were bringing Mickey in to join the group for the next few episodes?
Whithouse: This was the one big change that happened while I was writing it. Mickey didn’t appear in my first draft, so when I handed it in, they said, ‘Sorry, things have happened and now we’ve actually got Mickey in for the whole series as well,’ so I had to filter him in. That was the biggest change that happened during the course of it.

But his story splits off quite well, doesn’t it?
Whithouse: Yeah, exactly. And there’s some mileage to be had out of that, when he’s sent outside to sit in the car and watch from outside, so he’s slightly the one who’s told to hold the coats while everyone else gets on with the action.

Which leads to the classic line where he realizes ‘Oh my God, I’m the metal dog!’
Whithouse: We’ve all felt like the metal dog at some point in our lives. In a way, it’s funny, because I’ve done quite a few interviews about this episode, and the emphasis is always on Sarah Jane, but ironically, I found it more difficult getting the role of K-9 right, because when K-9 was originally in the show, television was very different back then. Finding a role for him now, particularly in this re-imagined Doctor Who was very difficult, because he was quite a difficult character to take seriously. He was basically an unconvincing robot, so it was quite tricky finding the right role for him within this story.

Again, it struck me that there was this interesting similarity between K-9 and Mickey, because the relationship between the Doctor and Rose is so intense, with this other character on the periphery, and it was always thus. The relationship with the Doctor and his companion was always a very intense, slightly bickering, flirtatious, albeit celibate marriage, with this other character trundling around and getting under everyone’s feet, and I suddenly thought, ‘My God, that’s what Mickey is doing!’

Is there a generation thing involved with the character, where kids love K-9, fans of the original series feel nostalgic towards him, and almost everybody else hates that damn dog?
Whithouse: I must say when I was growing up, I had a K-9 toy, so I loved K-9, absolutely. But ultimately writing for him as a grownup, I just felt, ‘Oh, shut up!’ and I was quite exasperated by him at times. He is unquestionably a character that appeals much more to children than to adults, and I think that was the problem including him in the story. It immediately made the story slightly more comic, and not necessarily in a good way.

Didn’t K9 get blown up in one of your early drafts? Why did you eventually bring him back as good as new?
Whithouse: I think the reason for that is basically because Doctor Who has an incredibly complicated copyright situation. There isn’t an overall ownership by the BBC, so certain characters are owned by certain people. For example, the Daleks are owned by someone separately to Doctor Who, and I think it’s the same with K-9, consequently part of the deal to get him back is that he has to live on to fight another day at the end. But right up until the last draft, K-9 sort of went down in a blaze of glory.

How much of the final rewrite did you get to do yourself?
Whithouse: Ultimately the final polish that Russell did on the script was… I have to be careful about this to be honest, but from what I’ve heard, I got away with very little change. There were a couple of bits he changed because of the overall story arc, like the inclusion of a reference to Torchwood, which he put in. Aside from that, there were lines of dialogue that he changed that ultimately was at the 11th hour.

Aren’t those changes generally made because of production necessities?
Whithouse: Again, I have to be really careful talking about this. There was very little situational stuff in my episode that was changed. If you saw the draft where K-9 lived, that was the shooting script.

What have you heard about a possible Sarah Jane/K-9 spin-off series?
Whithouse: I’ve heard rumors about that as well, but I couldn’t comment either way. If it’s happening, I would imagine there will be an official press release quite soon, but I’ve heard whispers about that as well. Sadly, maybe they’re keeping the information from me deliberately, because I’ll want money! I won’t get a penny out of it I’m sure.

Was ‘School Reunion’ a rewarding experience?
Whithouse: It was. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I did thoroughly enjoy it, and being a man of a certain age, there comes an enormous satisfaction out of writing at the beginning of a scene, ‘Interior, TARDIS.’ I did really enjoy it

Were you aware of the enormous fan following for the series?
Whithouse: Believe me, I realize that now, but I didn’t have any idea at the time. Normally a job finishes when you finish the script or they film it or they transmit it or whatever, but I have to say, this job is going on forever, and I’m really enjoying it. In a strange way, I almost feel that I’m being set up for a fall, that ‘Oh my god, I really hope after all this that particularly the fans and the audience actually likes the episode!’ After all this build up, it would be horrible if they watched it and thought it was dreadful.

What’s been going on work-wise since you finished your Doctor Who script?
Whithouse: I had a play on in London, so that kept me busy for a couple of months. I’m now writing an episode of Torchwood the spin-off series and I just handed in the second draft of that. I’ve also written the first episode of a sitcom and I’m waiting to see what’s happening with that, and while I was working on Doctor Who, I wrote an episode a series called Hotel Babylon, so that was recently on air. I’m actually developing two SF shows at the moment. Now that I’ve had a taste for it, I can’t stop doing it. There was this project that I’ve been devising for ages and something about it really wasn’t working, it wasn’t coming together in the way I wanted to, so with the agreement of the producer, we turned it into a SF thing and suddenly it’s now made it a much easier proposition. Now that I’ve had a taste for it, I want to turn everything into SF. All I can say about one of them is it’s about a group of super-powered people trying to live in our world. It’s about how super-powered people would work and exist in our world, so it’s quite a realistic approach to SF. At the moment, I’m working on the treatments for both of them.

It’s ironic, the BBC was very anti-SF for a while, so even if they were airing a series with a strong SF element, they would do their best to describe it as something else.
Whithouse: It was absolutely the kiss of death. Any broadcaster would run a mile from the suggestion of SF, so one of Russell’s fantastic achievements is that he’s brought that back into the mainstream again. It used to be a dirty word, and now all of a sudden they can’t get enough of it.

So Doctor Who could be a good calling card for you?
Whithouse: I hope so. As I say, it’s something I’m really proud to be a part of, and it’s been such a phenomenon, the show, I’m delighted to have been a part of it. I certainly remember watching the last episode of the original series, and I don’t think could have imagined that it would come back with such an explosion as well to the point where it’s given the prime slot on Christmas day. That is absolutely amazing, and I think there’s nobody more surprised about that than Russell and everybody at BBC Wales.

Are your kids old enough to watch the series yet?
Whithouse: No, ironically, my daughter is four and my son is seven so the first series was too frightening for them to watch. We let them watch the Christmas special, and I don’t think my daughter quite got what was going on, but my son is now a complete convert and absolutely loves it, which I’m thrilled about. I think particularly because my episode is set in a school, hopefully that will give it an extra point of interest as well.

So Dad is cool now?
Whithouse: Oh yeah, absolutely, not that it’s ever been a problem! No, it certainly hasn’t done me any harm whatsoever. I’ve written quite a lot of stuff before, and I’ve won a couple of awards, but suddenly I’ve done an episode of Doctor Who and everything changes!

Girls Starting to Like You Too Much?? Time To Nerd. It. Up.

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