'Doctor Who' Showrunner Russell T. Davies Knows Grief

By Hannah Sole | TV | December 12, 2023 |

By Hannah Sole | TV | December 12, 2023 |

The last of the three 60th anniversary specials of Doctor Who aired on Saturday, thereby (probably) ending David Tennant’s bonus run as Fourteen, while leaving the door open for more. The specials were a glorious nostalgia-fest that managed to bring back some joy, tie up some loose ends from Thirteen’s era and set up Fifteen’s run.

In my recap for ‘The Giggle’, I talked a little about bigeneration and its impact on canon, creating some retirement options for weary Doctors and opportunities for some familiar faces to reappear. It’s interesting story-wise; I saw some concerns about it undermining Ncuti Gatwa’s upcoming season, but I don’t think we’ll be watching it with our eyes peeled for Bonus Tennant every week.

What I loved about it comes from something more personal, and for that I need to give you some context. Like Kaleena, I was not ready to bid farewell to Tennant as Fourteen; to say that his return with Tate was just what the doctor ordered for 2023 is an understatement. I lost my father and my brother this year, a few months apart, and on Saturday evening, I was at a community memorial service for people who had lost loved ones this year. Suffice to say, I had been crying my eyes out for some time before coming home to watch ‘The Giggle’, and as I sat down to watch my favourite Doctor die — again — our boys, particularly my brother, were not far from my thoughts.

So many of the year’s big shows have reminded me of my brother because being massive nerds was our thing. How could I watch The Wheel of Time without texting him highly irritating questions and him refusing to give me spoilers whilst rolling his eyes at my inability to remember names? Stop calling him Headband Man. No, they aren’t called trollops. Loki season 2 has passed unwatched. I couldn’t even face Taskmaster. I relied on my anxious TV habits, the re-watches, where nothing suddenly takes you by surprise; you can brace yourself for the hard episodes or just skip over them entirely so they don’t really happen this time around. Anything new was carefully curated and vetted. I’d been stung by that before: two weeks after my father passed away, my brother and I went to see Derren Brown’s ‘Showman’, which — surprise — was about what it’s like when your father dies. It was great! But… oof.

However, exceptions had to be made; Doctor Who is my beat, and I wasn’t going to miss it. Besides, by the time the specials began, I was ready for some happy memories. My brother had been looking forward to the return of Russell T Davies, though he hadn’t been a fan of Nu-Who initially, and very much enjoyed feeling exasperated by it. My sister and I watched it together, and she laughed that he “would hate this” several times. I expect his take on bigeneration would be quite different to mine, and that’s OK.

The thing is, Russell T Davies knows grief. He lost his husband in 2018, and coming back to the Who-niverse was therapeutic:

The writer explained that while coping with the loss of Andrew hasn’t got any easier with the passing of time, returning to Doctor Who has brought him a sense of “comfort” because it connects him to a time in his life when his husband saw him working on the show.

“I’m quite glad that I’ve gone back to writing Doctor Who because psychologically I’m thinking, ‘He knows what I’m doing now,’” he reflected.

“It gives me comfort. It’s when you do new things he never experienced that it feels odd and you don’t enjoy it so much.”

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It makes another paradox; connection via shared interest, but a renewed sense of separation when they never get to experience the new version. Grief is a bugger like that. It stings when you don’t expect it, sneaking something different into the comfortable and familiar.

I don’t know for sure if grief fuelled some of RTD’s choices in the specials, but there’s another thing that happens when you have suffered a loss: you know your people. You can spot them in a crowd. It’s a sad club that no-one wants to be in, but once you are, there’s comfort to be found.

I see you, Russell. And I think I know why bigeneration came about. It’s not just the ‘in case of emergency, summon David’ button, is it?

Writers are often told, “kill your darlings”, which is all very well when it’s hypothetical, but when you know what it’s like when the pain is real, there must be times when you simply can’t bear to do it. That’s what the specials have been for me. Sure, the big fixes might sound like fan fiction, but what if, for a lovely moment, the writer can resurrect their darlings and let them live happily ever after?

What if the thing you really need is a visit from your future self to give you a hug and tell you it’s going to be OK?

Oscar Wilde joked that fiction is when “the good end happily, the bad unhappily”; it’s true, the world can be a sad and cruel place, and if there is a god, they are the hands-off kind. But fiction? Fiction exists in the mind of the person creating it, who can shape it to their will, long before it exists in the mind of the reader or the viewer. And in science fiction, the rules are whatever you want. The writer is not dead; the writer is god. While other writers have chosen the way of pain, the second coming of RTD is characterised by benevolence. No half-measures either; there’s little comfort in those, as shown in the Toymaker’s puppet show.

A happy ending isn’t a cop out. Feelings don’t have to be sad to be profound. Happiness isn’t easy, and it’s not an absence of depth. Sometimes it takes a lot of work. Sometimes it’s an epic quest. Sometimes it’s a gathering of family, sharing memories and toasting friends who are just absent, glimpsed from a distance at first, then out of the frame, mentioned in dispatches, waging a private war on moles. We’re not lucky enough to have a visit from our future selves to give us a hug and tell us it’s going to be OK, but we’ll get there, the long way round.

Sometimes, everybody lives. That is what science fiction means. Thank you, Russell, for letting me shed some happy tears again.