Lent to me with assurances of its brilliance, this was approached with some scepticism: I still regret reading Faithful, the year of emails between Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan. My concerns wre misplaced. Russell T Davies embraced Benjamin Cook's idea of a candid sharing of the process and products of a year writing Doctor Who. Davies' openess and Cook's astute enthusiasm combine in an entertaining revelation of the creative process and Davies' motivations. I cannot imagine a better book on television script writing, on Doctor Who, or on RTD himself. Davies' cartoon illustrations alone would have made this worthwhile. The whole package is an astonishing feast. ( )

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This book is essential reading, not just for the Doctor Who fan, but for anyone who is even slightly interested in the show, or more broadly who is interested in the process of writing for television.

It is structured as a year-long email conversation between journalist Benjamin Cook and Russell T Davies about the process of writing the fourth season of New Who, from Voyage of the Damned to Journey's End. (Also briefly including Time Crash.) On the scale of loving or hating RTD, I am sort of in the middle: I respect and admire his achievement in reviving Who in the first place, which I think in the end puts me just slightly on the 'love' side of the divide, but I don't always like his writing, or his public persona. This book reinforced both my positive and negative prejudices about him as a professional, but it grounded them in a much deeper understanding of his personality, and in the awful responsibility of the writer on a show like Who: his loyalty and his guilt circulate around his key colleagues - Julie Gardner, Phil Collinson, David Tennant - and worrying that he won't produce the goods with adequate quality or promptness.

Vast amounts of draft script are included in the book, much of which made it to screen. I found the roads not taken rather interesting - who was the comedienne who might have played Penny, the companion who never was because Catherine Tate accepted the invitation to return? Imagine if Dennis Hopper had been available? And at the very end of the book, Cook rightly persuades Davies to drop a really awful linking script between Journey's End and The Next Doctor.

But even more interesting is to see what the fundamental idea of each story actually is. They are not always very strong. The Stolen Earth/Journey's End is almost entirely about showing rather than telling:

...Daleks, en masse. Lots of gunfire and exterminations. And the biggest Dalek spaceship ever - more like a Dalek temple. Christ almighty! The skies over the Earth need to be changed to weird outer space vistas. Also, visible in the sky, a huge Dalek ship exterior. The size of a solar system! This will probably explode. Like they do.

And Davros.

So the episodes are seen at this point largely as spectacle rather than story; the most effective bit, the end of Donna's travels with the Doctor, emerges rather late in the day from Davies' fevered imagination. One may not always like the solutions he comes up with, but the insight into the creative process. Is utterly fascinating and compelling.

(Certain sections of fandom will not be pleased by what he has to say about the internet. Too bad. To paraphrase Neil Gaiman on George R.R. Martin, Russell T Davies is not your bitch.)

There is a surprising amount of death in the book: Christopher Ecclestone's driver, David Tennant's mother, Verity Lambert, and most of all Howard Attfield, called from his sick bed to reprise his role as Donna's father, but unable to complete the scripts. After his death, his scenes are reshot with Bernard Cribbins. The show must go on.

Indeed, that is the bigger lesson from the. Book. If Doctor Who is sometimes less than perfect, it happens basically because The Show Must Go On, and because the writers and producers have determined to put on screen what they can. It is rather amazing that it ended up so well as often as it did.

Anyway, this is probably the most interesting book about Doctor Who that will ever be written. If you are even slightly interested in the subject, get it. ( )

The concept of this amazing book is simple: the book records a series of emails between Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies and journalist Benjamin Cook written for about a year during series four. It's a very candid look into television production and the writing process, with Davies discussing broad writing issues, such as the evolution of ideas and the creation/development of characters. But it's also a fantastic look into the making of Doctor Who -- we get to read series breakdowns, first rough drafts, details about casting and script meetings, and see cartoon sketches by Davies himself. One of the highlights for me was reading the development of the Bad Wolf bay scene from episode 4.13, "Journey's End." By including several drafts of the script, along with Davies' thoughts, we're able to see the thought processes involved in the full evolution of the scene. This is truly THE book to get if you are a fan of Doctor Who. ( )

The first thing that makes this book interesting is the format.. a series of emails (and the occasional text) between Russell T Davies, and Benjamin Cook, a journalist who writes many of the Doctor Who articles. This communication continues over a year, whilst the scripts for series 4 are being written, and many aspects were hitting the news, such as David Tennant leaving to play Hamlet, and Steven Moffat taking over from Russell.

The emails are pretty much unedited, and they give quite an interesting insight into Russell himself, and fans of his writing will enjoy references to his other shows, such as Queer As Folk, and Bob and Rose.

It’s also a book about writing and story telling - if you ever thought that script writing in particular is easy, prepare to think again!

Above all though, this is of course a book about Doctor Who - it’s just fascinating, as a fan, to see the series change and develop; to see Russell change his ideas; and to see how changing circumstances affect the scripts.

Throughout the book are photos, many of which are stills from the show, and cartoon sketched by Russell. As well, of course, as snippets of the scripts.

This isn’t really a book for the younger fans, but is, at last, one for the adults. Whether you want to learn more about the man, the writing, or the show, there is plenty to keep you reading.

For fans, it’s an absolute must-read!

This book comprises a series of emails exchanged between television writer Russell T Davies and magazine writer Benjamin Cook during the year that the former was working on series four of Doctor Who. That makes it sound a bit dull. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love Davies's writing-- not just in Doctor Who, but in other shows such as Casanova, The Second Coming, and Bob & Rose. He's got such a first grasp of character-- everyone in his stories always feels like real people caught up in these extraordinary events. This book, oddly, is just the same way. You feel Davies as a person, in all his ups and downs, in all his sad moments and funny moments, in all his triumphs and disasters. It's an extraordinary insight into the way the mind of one writer works. I don't write like this man does. I don't think I could. He's mad. But then, that's presumably the reason he's winning BAFTAs and I'm not. Like everything Davies rights, this book is funny and heartrending at the same time. And it's also supremely candid; this is certainly the best "making of" book we've gotten about the new Doctor Who so far. Filled with fun facts you can pester your friends with while watching "Partners in Crime"! Oh, and did I mention that it's also filled with Davies's own cartoons, which are extraordinarily cute?