{"id":971812,"date":"2025-02-23T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-23T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/?p=971812"},"modified":"2025-02-21T10:12:26","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T15:12:26","slug":"how-doctor-who-books-formed-a-path-to-writing-the-tv-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/how-doctor-who-books-formed-a-path-to-writing-the-tv-show\/","title":{"rendered":"How Doctor Who Books Formed a Path to Writing the TV Show"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Between 1990 and 2005, when <em>Doctor Who <\/em>wasn\u2019t on TV, the show mostly existed as original novels. When Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter brought it back in 2005, several of the show\u2019s new screenwriters were chosen from the writers of those spin-off books, including Davies and future showrunner Steven Moffat. While they both had plenty of TV experience by the mid-90s, their first official <em>Doctor Who <\/em>commissions were in prose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2025, the pattern returned. Of the four new writers announced last month as having contributed episodes to the new TV season, one \u2013 novelist Juno Dawson \u2013 started out writing official <em>Doctor Who<\/em> prose fiction. Might this mean that, if we see more of this version of the show after the second season airs this spring, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.doctorwho.tv\/news-and-features\/new-fifteenth-doctor-and-belinda-chandra-novels-coming-in-may\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">newly announced <em>Who<\/em> novelists<\/a> Emily Cook (<em>Fear Death By Water<\/em>) and Hannah Fergesen (<em>Spectral Scream<\/em>) could follow in Dawson\u2019s footsteps, or is it now more of a closed shop? Let\u2019s retrace the journeys of previous writers who made the leap from <em>Doctor Who<\/em> page to screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\r\n\n\t\t<div class=\"ad-dog__cnx-container\"><script id=\"0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796\">\n\t\t\tcnx.cmd.push(function() {\n\t\t\t\tcnx({\n\t\t\t\t\tplayerId: \"106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t}).render(\"0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796\");\n\t\t\t});\n\t\t<\/script><\/div>\n\t\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-russell-t-davies\"><strong>Russell T. Davies<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Davies had pitched ideas, since adapted by Big Finish, to <em>Doctor Who<\/em> in the late Eighties, but his first story was the 1996 novel <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/doctor-who-christmas-special-theory-link-to-cult-favourite-russell-t-davies-book\/\">Damaged Goods<\/a><\/em>. Unlike his TV <em>Doctor Who<\/em>, it is astonishingly bleak. As part of the New Adventures line, it had to feature the then-current Seventh Doctor, and Davies emphasises the melancholy in the character rather than his Machiavellian scheming. Familiar elements include a family called Tyler in a London housing estate. Less familiar to <em>Doctor Who <\/em>was the cocaine tainted by an ancient Time Lord superweapon.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-steven-moffat-nbsp\"><strong>Steven Moffat&nbsp;<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Moffat contributed a short story &#8211; <em>Continuity Errors <\/em>&#8211; to the 1996 <em>Decalog 3<\/em> anthology, containing several ideas he would later re-use: the setting is a planet-sized library, he considered calling it <em>The Curse of Fatal Death <\/em>(which he would later use for his Comic Relief episode in 1999), the Doctor is referred to as a \u201ccomplicated space-time event\u201d and the story revolves around time-travel, with the Doctor changing a librarian\u2019s past to make her more amenable to lending him a book, and uses a framing device of a university lecture (one entitled <em>Doctor Who: Nice guy or utter bastard? <\/em>&#8211; the central thrust of Moffat\u2019s entire time on the show).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moffat didn\u2019t have to use the Seventh Doctor and Bernice Summerfield for this story, but given that incarnation\u2019s scheming nature, it works for a story where the Doctor manipulates people and events for a greater good, but it\u2019s also because Moffat loves Paul Cornell\u2019s work (Moffat was reportedly Cornell\u2019s best man, there\u2019s a character in <em>Continuity Errors <\/em>called Orcnell).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-paul-cornell-and-the-new-adventures\"><strong>Paul Cornell and the New Adventures<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Back in 1989 nearly every televised <em>Doctor Who <\/em>story had been novelised, and once the TV show had been cancelled, Virgin Publishing were given a licence to publish original novels. Noting that the audience for these books would be adults who had grown up with the series, the <em>New Adventures<\/em> line allowed writers to be more explicit in terms of sex, language and violence. They were advertised as being \u201cToo broad and deep for the screen\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For these (and latterly the BBC Books Range &#8211; which still has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/doctorwho\/classic\/books\/guidelines.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">an archived FAQ page<\/a> online) open submissions were encouraged. Peter Darvill-Evans, the first editor of the range, noted the desire and knowledge present in fanzines and had been encouraged by the fourth novel in the series &#8211; <em>Timewyrm: Revelation <\/em>by Paul Cornell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cornell\u2019s novels helped shape the New Adventures line, telling stories that were adult in content without being brazenly childish (several novels, revelling in the freedom to describe sex and violence, gave the series a reputation for gratuitousness) and taking the Seventh Doctor\u2019s characterisation as dark as it could go (writing the only good version of Ace\u2019s departure so far) and adding new companion Bernice Summerfield (an archaeologist who is still appearing in Big Finish stories to this day).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cornell also delved into the past, exploring past Doctors as they appeared in the Seventh\u2019s mind, expanding background events in <em>Inferno <\/em>and <em>Planet of the Spiders<\/em> to the extent that some fans consider these additions canon. Russell T. Davies praised Timewyrm: Revelation, in the 2013 non-fiction tie-in <a href=\"https:\/\/tardis.fandom.com\/wiki\/Timewyrm:_Revelation_(novel)#cite_note-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Vault<\/a>, as follows: &#8220;Paul bloody Cornell gave us <em>Doctor Who<\/em>, but he made it real. I mean, real people, laid bare, exposing all their anger, passion, and, damn it, nobility.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you can see why Cornell was chosen to write <em>Father\u2019s Day <\/em>for the 2005 series, and to adapt his 1995 New Adventure novel <em>Human Nature <\/em>for series three. A lot of what carried over from the New Adventures to the revived television seriesechoed the style and content of Cornell\u2019s novels. While he was far from prolific in terms of TV scripts (moving into comics in his later career), he\u2019s probably the most influential writer of <em>Doctor Who <\/em>in the Nineties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cornell ended up trying to bring back <em>Doctor Who <\/em>with the <em>Scream of the Shalka <\/em>project, an animation which was &#8211; for two months in 2003 &#8211; going to be the official continuation of the show before Davies\u2019 relaunch was announced. He wasn\u2019t the only writer who tried. Mark Gatiss, Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman also pitched a full reboot.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-mark-gatiss-and-gareth-roberts\"><strong>Mark Gatiss and Gareth Roberts<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Gatiss\u2019 and Roberts\u2019 debut New Adventures novels were their first professional writing credits. Gatiss wrote <em>Nightshade<\/em>, published in 1992, with Roberts\u2019 <em>The Highest Science <\/em>out the following year. The latter featured the Chelonians, mentioned on screen in <em>The Pandorica Opens<\/em>, bulky and aggressive turtle-creatures, who would appear in multiple books but never on screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gatiss had the higher profile as a writer\/performer: he wrote and appeared in several Direct-to-Video features for BBC Productions (Reece Shearsmith appearing in two). Their eventual success as writer\/performers in <em>The League of Gentlemen <\/em>(first as a live show, then radio, then on television). Roberts regularly worked on soaps for ITV and Channel 4. Both wrote for Charlie Higson\u2019s reboot of <em>Randall and Hopkirk <\/em>in 2001. While Gatiss made no secret of his affection for the Pertwee era, Roberts was a huge fan of Season 17 (the one script edited by Douglas Adams) and wrote a trilogy of books featuring the Fourth Doctor and Romana evoking that era.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both writers contributed popular stories, with Roberts also writing the Tardisode preludes that accompanied series two and contributing regularly to <em>The Sarah Jane Adventures<\/em>. Gatiss called time on his involvement with the TV show when Steven Moffat stepped down as showrunner, but is still occasionally acting in Big Finish productions. Roberts fell out with the production team after season eight, and began tweeting gender critical views in 2017, which led to him being <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/entertainment-arts-48526656\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dropped from a 2019 <em>Doctor Who <\/em>story anthology<\/a> when other writers withdrew from the project due to his involvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-juno-dawson\"><strong>Juno Dawson<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Dawson\u2019s first official <em>Doctor Who <\/em>story was 2018\u2019s novel <em>The Good Doctor<\/em>, a Thirteenth Doctor adventure with echoes of <em>The Ark <\/em>(1966) and <em>The Face of Evil <\/em>(1977)<em>. <\/em>She was also the lead writer on <em>Doctor Who: Redacted<\/em>, a two series audio story, and is rumoured to have written an episode based around Eurovision in Space (which also formed the basis of a 2002 Big Finish story <em>Bang-Bang-a-Boom!<\/em>, co-written by Gareth Roberts). This makes her the first writer to make the move from tie-in novels to TV Who since 2007, when <em>The Shakespeare Code <\/em>was written by Gareth Roberts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-a-closed-shop\"><strong>A Closed Shop?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Dawson\u2019s journey from book to screen is a reminder of the positives of the so-called \u2018Wilderness Years\u2019, when the show wasn\u2019t on television. The open submissions policies of spin-off producers led to, of course, some patchy stories, but also meant that <em>Doctor Who <\/em>could be pulled into new and interesting shapes, influenced by a wide array of voices. The notion of what <em>Doctor Who <\/em>could be was expanded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fan Fiction is still around, of course, but the show\u2019s success since returning in 2005 puts a question mark on whether there will ever be similar opportunities for aspiring writers; the period in the Nineties where writers could pitch their vision of <em>Doctor Who <\/em>and get it published was messy and flawed, but revolutionary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Between 1990 and 2005, when Doctor Who wasn\u2019t on TV, the show mostly existed as original novels. When Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter brought it back in 2005, several of the show\u2019s new screenwriters were chosen from the writers of those spin-off books, including Davies and future showrunner Steven Moffat. While they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":971821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"dog_exclude_from_homepage":false,"dog_do_not_display_featured_image":false,"dog_external_link":"","dog_product_price":0,"dog_product_button_label":"Buy 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This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v26.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How Doctor Who Books Formed a Path to Writing the TV Show | Den of Geek<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With two new Fifteenth Doctor novels arriving this May, we revisit the Doctor Who screenwriters who started out writing official tie-in Who fiction.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/how-doctor-who-books-formed-a-path-to-writing-the-tv-show\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Doctor Who Books Formed a Path to Writing the TV Show\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With two new Fifteenth Doctor novels arriving this May, we revisit the Doctor Who screenwriters who started out writing official tie-in Who fiction.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/how-doctor-who-books-formed-a-path-to-writing-the-tv-show\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Den of Geek\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-02-23T13:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Doctor-Who-The-Spectral-Scream-book-cover-detail.jpg?fit=1200%2C675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andrew Blair\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Andrew Blair\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading 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On December 25 2023, the Fifteenth Doctor\u2019s first big adventure will arrive, starring Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, and Millie Gibson as new companion Ruby Sunday. TV presenter Davina McCall will play herself in the episode, solving the long-teased mystery of which 2005\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Books&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ncuti Gatwa in Doctor Who \"The Church on Ruby Road\"","src":"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Doctor-Who-Ncuti-Gatwa-Christmas-Special.jpg?fit=1754%2C1170&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Doctor-Who-Ncuti-Gatwa-Christmas-Special.jpg?fit=1754%2C1170&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Doctor-Who-Ncuti-Gatwa-Christmas-Special.jpg?fit=1754%2C1170&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Doctor-Who-Ncuti-Gatwa-Christmas-Special.jpg?fit=1754%2C1170&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Doctor-Who-Ncuti-Gatwa-Christmas-Special.jpg?fit=1754%2C1170&resize=1050%2C600 3x, https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Doctor-Who-Ncuti-Gatwa-Christmas-Special.jpg?fit=1754%2C1170&resize=1400%2C800 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":968502,"url":"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/kerblam-writer-back-for-doctor-who-series-15-three-new-voices\/","url_meta":{"origin":971812,"position":1},"title":"Kerblam! Writer Back for Doctor Who Series 15 Plus Three Newcomers","author":"Louisa Mellor","date":"January 27, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, Russell T Davies can\u2019t write them all himself, can he? It\u2019s been common knowledge to readers of Doctor Who Magazine that series 15\/season-two-as-they-insist-on-calling-it will feature four episodes written by showrunner Davies, plus four by other writers. Would Steven Moffat emerge from Who retirement once again? 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