David Tennant on Doctor Who
By Johnny Davis 29 March 2012
From the GQ archive: With its provocative scripts, brilliant acting and touches of sexual tension, the Noughties' Doctor Who is the toast of UK primetime. We take the TARDIS back to April 2007, when Johnny Davis met the Time Lord, then in the form of the Converse-wearing David Tennant.
Where do you start with David Tennant and Doctor Who?
Even after he has explained that his calling as an actor came aged three, watching the Third Doctor Jon Pertwee regenerate into the Fourth Doctor Tom Baker, that he spent his childhood racing around the garden wearing a multicoloured scarf ("I had two. Granny was a firm knitter") and that, a year into his role as the Tenth Doctor, he still spends downtime manoeuvring a remote-control K9 around the floors of his Cardiff flat, there is still more. There is still The Story Of The Doctor Who Credits. "It always bothered me," he explains. "It struck me that 'the Doctor' was his name, whereas Doctor Who was the name of the show. He's not called 'Doctor Who'. His second name isn't
'Who.'"
The credits, alas, had it wrong. "I talked to the producer. Obviously, I've got enough Asperger's syndrome kicking around that I had to get that particular box ticked. It wasn't contractual. I wasn't going to the wall on it.
But I think I'm right in saying there are certain copies of the DVD boxset that have the old version. It's been corrected in the second pressing. "Oh dear," he says. "I sound like such a dweeb now, don't I?"
It can hardly have escaped your notice that Doctor Who is no longer just for dweebs. Nine million viewers make it second only to the soaps as Britain's most-loved TV programme. The jewel in the BBC's crown, since its 2005 comeback it has won 28 of its 28 ratings slots, causing ITV execs to hide behind their sofas while it exterminates everything - Harry Potter, *Ant &
Dec*, Celebrity Wrestling - they chuck in its path. It has spawned sci-fi spins-offs for both adults and children,
Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. It's started a vogue for nostalgia TV; Robin Hood, Dixon Of Dock Green and Blake's 7 have all resurfaced back onto the timetable of TV or radio schedulers thanks to the Doctor's massive success.
And it has been responsible for Britain's bestselling toys - a far cry from the Eighties when Elizabeth Sladen, who plays companion Sarah Jane Smith, wrote to the BBC to complain about the quality of her own action figure. "It's one of the most valuable commodities on TV," says Jez Frampton, chief executive of brand consultants Interbrand. "If you were Rupert Murdoch and it came up for grabs, you'd want to get your hands on it. Not quite on the level of Sky's Premiership, but getting there."
Ratings are one thing. Rarely does TV match commercial clout with credible kudos. Yet Doctor Who has won big at the BAFTAs and scored National Television Awards all round for David Tennant, predecessor Christopher Eccleston and companion-to-both Billie Piper. Head writer/franchise overlord Russell T Davies, already regarded for edgy shows Queer As Folk and
Casanova, picked up the Dennis Potter Award For Outstanding Writing For Television.
All the more remarkable given that the programme, first aired the day after President Kennedy's assassination, had been away for 16 years: mothballed after being reduced to a third-generation take on Tom Baker's definitively dotty Time Lord. So low had its stock fallen, newspapers seriously entertained the notion the new Doctor would be played by Paul Daniels. Yet under Davies' loving touch, it has regenerated into superlative character-driven drama, full of human truths, scripts turning on a dime between comedy, tragedy and social satire while an £800,000-per-episode budget banished wobbly sets forever. New Who found friends in unlikely places: Andrew Marr, Simon Pegg and Richard Wilson fell over themselves to appear, Franz Ferdinand started coming on stage to the theme while Buckingham Palace confirmed its Royal appointment. "The Queen loves the programme," said a spokesperson. "She has asked the BBC to send her copies."
It's all gravy to Clayton Hickman, editor of Doctor Who Magazine. After 27 years he's watched his circulation double, reaching a hitherto inconceivable demographic: "We now get letters from girls. Never in my wildest imagination did I think that would happen. But Russell has reinvented the family-viewing genre. They said families would never sit down together in the multichannel age. Well, who are these ten million people then, eh?"
One November morning, the Doctor is once again saving the world from Daleks. Albeit very, very slowly. It takes nine months to film a 13-episode series and here's why: one day of shooting equals just four minutes of TV. Today a stage at BBC Wales has become a sewer beneath Thirties Manhattan. Episode Five, Series Three of reborn Who is the conclusion of a two-parter. It concerns a plot to create Dalek-human hybrids and features the Pig Men, amiable sorts with porcine faces and human bodies. It concludes with typical restraint with the Doctor scaling the Empire State Building while lightning crashes around him. Trapped in the sewer is a group of humans, including the Doctor's new companion, medical student Martha Jones, played by Freema Agyeman. Daleks have them surrounded. "Silence! You will form a line! Moooove!" "Just obey!" shouts Martha, of her companions. "The female is wise! These are strong specimens! They will help the Dalek cause!"
A Dalek extends its sucker, scanning their brainwaves. "Low intelligence!"
It transpires the most terrifying race in the universe (and originally a Nazi allegory) are played by Nicholas Briggs, a middle-aged man in comfy shoes and a burgundy pullover, sat stage right at a small table with a script and a "ring modulator" that makes his voice raspy. "The trick to playing the Daleks is to remember they're very, very cross," explains Briggs. "They've got a serious inferiority complex." Later, he fluffs his lines. "Arse!" barks a Dalek.
© PA Photos
The Doctor Who production is enormous. It has grown into an industry: its own studio complex, more than ten times larger than the rest of BBC Wales. "It has the feel of
[Buckinghamshire James Bond studio] Pinewood," says James Strong, director of four Whos and two Torchwoods. "What Russell is developing is a mini studio system going back to the old American model, where you shoot three different shows simultaneously." Filming also takes place on location in Cardiff, something that's resulted in perhaps Doctor Who's most singular feat yet. "They've managed to make Cardiff look sexy," says Strong. "Some achievement."
The Wales Tourist Board reckon the show's now responsible for one in five of the city's visitors. "Thanks to Doctor Who, there's been real investment in creative industries and a new confidence and buoyancy there," says Andrew Davies, Minister for Enterprise in Wales. "Should they give Russell T Davies the keys to the city? I couldn't think of a better person."
You can't have shagging in the TARDIS," says David Tennant. "It would be wrong. Still, there is this idea that they're travelling around in space in a small blue box and what do they do when the cameras aren't on?"
He's sat in his trailer, discussing Doctor Who's recent sexual awakening. The flirting between the Doctor and his female companions functions as a sort of Moonlighting-style will-they won't-they, even though you know they won't. It started with Billie/Rose, of course. And though the Doctor spends some of the new series moping after his old pal, Martha soon cheers him up. By Episode Two they're in bed together in Shakespearean England. "There was an underwear scene in an early draft but we nixed that," says Tennant. "It was bordering on inappropriate. The final scene is saucy enough. But as with everything in Doctor Who, it's not all that it seems."
Perhaps, but one can hardly imagine his predecessors getting up to such shenanigans: crumbly old Patrick Troughton or - heaven forbid - Sylvester McCoy. In fact, producers always forbade any overt suggestion of romance. But then those actors would hardly have been much cop as Casanova; the 2005 TV role for which Tennant won much praise. Perhaps that's why the Times christened him "the first Timephwoard". "That's the Times?" he boggles. "It's, er, quite surprising..."
Or why the Pink Paper voted him the Sexiest Man In The Universe, above Brad Pitt and David Beckham. "I know. That was flattering, wasn't it?"
Still, he was recently bought down to earth. "The other night somebody came up to me and said, 'You're chatting to my girlfriend and she's got you on her voucher list' - you know, the idea that there are five people you get a voucher for that you're allowed to have a go on and not bring the relationship into jeopardy - 'but luckily you're a lot less good-looking in real life.' It's a bit depressing. If I worked in Asda, nobody would look twice."
Billie Piper is less backward about coming forward on Tennant's charms. "He is huge with women and the gay scene," she says. "I get endless calls from girlfriends. You know, I'm meeting David in Camden and suddenly they'll just show up. 'Oh, fancy bumping into you...'"
The two are firm pals, Tennant calling her "Bill" and her saucily nicknaming him "David Ten-inch". Of a weekend, he can sometimes be found escorting actress partner Sophia Myles round Billie's house for dinner. They became a couple when Myles played Madame de Pompadour on Doctor Who and... he's not about to say any more, thanks very much. "Relationships are hard enough with the people you're having them with," he sighs. "Let alone talking about them in public."
Billie claims they all get drunk and salsa round her lounge.
Who's best at drinking? "Well, Billie likes a drink, but neither of us are exactly big swiggers," says Tennant.
She says she has to be picked up off the pavement outside Camden pubs. "She can say that about herself! I'm not going to! I'm remaining squeaky clean..."
David Tennant was born David McDonald 35 years ago in Bathgate, West Lothian, his new surname taken from one half of Pet Shop Boys', singer Neil. He was raised on church property, his father a moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland ("our equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury"), something that failed to dampen his enthusiasm for plastering his bedroom with the secular Madonna. "Her 'Like A Virgin' era. The string vest! Against the wall! Of course, you think you're so sophisticated, you can't imagine your parents thinking you're having a sexual awakening."
At 17 he went to the Royal Scottish Academy in Glasgow. He joined socialist theatre group 7:84, toured in a van with Daniela Nardini and Ashley Jensen, future stars of This Life and
Extras, stripped for What The Butler Saw ("the girl I was playing opposite got the fright of her life") and, aside from 16 rejections from Taggart - a rite of passage for Scots actors - he's been on a steep trajectory since. He fizzed through 2004 murder-mystery Blackpool, was briefly unhinged as Barty Crouch Jr in the fourth Harry Potter and devastated in last month's Recovery, playing a construction-site boss rebuilding his life after a car accident. Everyone agrees he's among our finest actors, nominated for an Olivier and winning the Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland.
Some other things about David Tennant: he has an irrational fear of moths. He loves the Proclaimers. He's sure there's life on other planets. He's flatulent when nervous ("I will always have a fart just before I go on stage"). And twice he's been caught speeding down the M4 from Cardiff to London in his Skoda. "It's the best car I've ever had," he says. "It certainly doesn't need to be any faster."
So why is Doctor Who so successful? James Strong thinks he knows. "It's three words," he says. "Russell T Davies."
Davies' father played rugby for Swansea, but his son's interests lay elsewhere. Primarily, settling down on Saturday tea time with tinned peaches, Ideal milk and Tom Baker's Doctor. "I would not miss it," Davies, 43, booms down the phone from "Who Towers", the well-heeled Cardiff Bay flats the BBC provides for its stars. "I loved that feeling. You're in town, it's getting dark. And you think, 'It's on soon.'"
Davies' ambition was actually to work for Marvel Comics, curtailed after a teacher told him that, being colour-blind, he'd never make it. So he went into TV. After an unhopeful start presenting an episode of Play School and scripting
ChuckleVision, he hit big at the turn of the century writing Queer As Folk (Daily Mail-rattling gay soap), The Second Coming (Daily Mail-rattling drama where a shop assistant realises he's the Son of God) and later, Casanova (starring Tennant). Fêted as TV's flagship writer, the story goes that he would only return to the BBC if he was allowed to get his hands on Who. "Mmm, partly," he says. "It sounds good. I would have meetings and they'd say 'Do you want to write A Tale Of Two Cities?' 'Do you want to write this?' 'Do you want to write that?' And I'd say,
'No. I just want to write Doctor Who.'" "You have to remember it was a massive risk for him," says
Doctor Who Magazine's Clayton Hickman. "The show was a laughing stock. And he gambled his whole reputation on bringing it back."
The bigger the gamble, the bigger the payoff. Davies is now the 28th most powerful person in UK media, according to a poll by the
Guardian. He says his signature trick is what he calls Big Pictures; blockbuster scenes more associated with movies - a spaceship flying into Big Ben, Billie dangling from a barrage balloon during the Blitz, the TARDIS bouncing down the Westway - but it might also be a touch of mischief. Doctor Who has featured digs at the Iraq war, man-on-man snogging and Anne Droid, a robot Anne Robinson. "My favourite is the [2006] Christmas episode," he chortles. "We're transmitting on the nation's biggest religious festival and showing the creation of the earth - saying it was made by a great big alien spider."
Then there was Torchwood. In what was presumably a first for sci-fi TV, one character inquired of another, "When was the last time you came so hard, you forgot where you were?" In another episode, a lascivious alien caused two strangers to have sex in a ladies' toilet while a security guard looked on, masturbating. "Oh yes, he was having a good old wank, wasn't he? Ha ha! How brilliant!"
Davies is fastidious about scripts. It's not uncommon for him to demand a dozen rewrites, before getting the Tipp-Ex out himself. "Twelve rewrites? Absolutely. If not more. I will not have them substandard. I can't bear it. I will not let them out of the office." "It's not one of these shows where some weeks are good and some are terrible," says James Strong. "There's a consistency because it's one man's vision. Russell oversees every aspect, from the rushes to the casting."
Which brings us to new girl Freema Agyeman. The history of
Doctor Who companions is not without incident. Tom Baker was so taken with one of his - Romana, played by the seventh Viscount Bangor's daughter Lalla Ward - he married her (Ward is now married to Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist). Elizabeth Sladen has been so unwilling/unable to shake the tag of Sarah Jane Smith, she has reprised the role no fewer than eight times. Then there was Bonnie Langford. Bought in as "perky" keep-fit fanatic Mel in an attempt to salvage ratings after Michael Grade waved the axe in 1986, even hard-core fans couldn't stomach the Doctor being served carrot juice in the TARDIS. The show dematerialised soon afterwards, apparently forever.
Twenty-seven-year-old Agyeman achieves a first by having been killed off before she's even started. She played a minor part culminating in death-by-Cyberman in 2006's series; enough to convince Davies she could fill Bille's boots. One newspaper summed up her career as "a decade slogging through The Bill and
Casualty" (a touch unfair, she only graduated in 2000).
But the appointment's certainly a step up. Last year she was working in Blockbusters. "I remember selling the Series One boxset to someone," she says. "Weird how life can turn out."
We meet for tea in a London's Courthouse Hotel Kempinski. She is on her Christmas break, halfway through filming the latest series.
She's very excited. Is she ready to become a pin-up? "Oh wow," she says. "I can't assume these things. Billie's a sexy girl. But I see it as a family show. Think of the children!"
Agyeman grew up in Hackney, the middle child of three born to an Iranian mother and Ghanaian father. She was first on TV in 2003, in the revived-but-doomed Crossroads playing Lola Wise, a minxy kitchen assistant. "A little loudmouth who wanted to chase the boys."
Bits in Holby City, Casualty and The Bill followed, though up until Doctor Who she was also supporting herself with odd jobs. It sounds as if she was ready to call it a day. "Everyone's got their own time on it. Maybe people are happy to try for 50 years. If Doctor Who hadn't arrived, I'm sure I'd still be doing some form of acting. Maybe as a mother with three children, in the club down the road, doing a play."
She describes the latest Doctor-companion chemistry thus: "She's keener than him."
One December morning Doctor Who's cast and crew gather in London's Soho Hotel for a screening of the Christmas Special. Ahead of March's new series, a man from the BBC introduces the episode as, "Like having Sgt Pepper up your sleeve but putting out 'Penny Lane'/ 'Strawberry Fields' just because you can."
Afterwards, there's an opportunity for journalists to ask the cast questions. Somewhat to the surprise of those involved in the show, the press interest that started when Eccleston and Billie joined has refused to die down. "Bloody hell," says guest star Catherine Tate, surveying the room of camera crews, "I feel like Tom Cruise."
There are inevitable questions about whether Tennant is missing Piper, who the guests in the new series are, and, most inevitably of all, when Tennant might be planning to leave. "I've been very careful about not hinting anything ever," he says, good-naturedly. "I've tried to remain as noncommittal as possible and I think I shall maintain that stance today."
We talk about this later. "I've sort of made a decision. But nothing's set in stone. Can't I just enjoy it while I'm here?
Pierce Brosnan tells a story - not to me, I don't hang out with him - that literally in his first press conference for Bond it was, like, 'When are you leaving?' I'm in no hurry to rush away. But I also want to leave while I'm still loving it."
Later, a newspaper suggests Tennant will quit in 2008, during Series Four. The BBC issues an ambiguous counter-claim, saying he is "absolutely committed to the show".
The biggest testament to Doctor Who's success, however, is that perhaps none of this matters all that much. "Now it's become a success again, you realise it will always keep coming back," says Clayton Hickman. "Someone will reinvent
Doctor Who for each new generation. He's like Sherlock Holmes, a British cultural icon. It's a testimony to the people in the Sixties who thought it up." "It is," he says, "just a brilliant idea."
Originally published in the April 2007 issue of British GQ.
Click here to read GQ's interview with current Doctor Matt Smith for Men of the Year.
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