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"It's the best idea ever invented in the history of the world!" Russell T Davies.
The Screenwriters' Festival 2009 presents a raft of sessions devoted to one of the most remarkable and enduring icons of British television. It all started out as a mild curiosity in a junkyard in 1963 and went on to captivate and terrify family audiences across the country for 26 years, then to be revivied in 2005 to thrill the nation all over again. Now, as head writer Russell T Davies hands over the showrunner duties to Steven Moffat and 10th Doctor David Tennant prepares to regenerate into 11th Doctor Matt Smith we take a closer look at how this special show has stood the test of time.
Further additions to the line-up will be announced over the coming weeks...
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Screenwriter and journalist Jason Arnopp reactivates the Time Scoop to summon together a panel of writers, producers and script editors from across the 26 years of Doctor Who's original run. How do they explain the programme's enduring appeal? How did the fundamentals of the programme and the nature of the Doctor and his adventures evolve and to what extent was this dictated by changes in the television landscape and advances in the industry?
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Journalist Benjamin Cook (co-author of ‘The Writer's Tale' with Russell T Davies), dials out on the Sub-Wave Network to gather together some of the Doctor's greatest real-world allies whose contributions since 2005 have seen the show not merely revived but reborn... indeed Regenerated! The same, yet different, the new Doctor Who has not only scaled new heights of popular and critical sucess but has along the way re-discovered the Saturday night family audience and recrafted the television landscape! How did this happen?
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The interim years between 1989 and 2005 saw numerous further adventures for the Doctor across a range of media; novels, comic books, animated web-casts, audio-books, and the ongoing officially licensed audio adventures produced by Big Finish productions (all new audio-plays starring original cast members). The return of the televison series has further fuelled these extra-curricular adventures and the show itself has spawned spin-offs of its own in the form of Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures. This year, even the legendary Tom Baker has been persuaded to recharge his sonic screwdriver for a new series of BBC audio-plays. Screenwriter and journalist Jason Arnopp investigates...
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A Dog's Life: K-9 Regenerates The fourth Doctor's fine-four-fendered friend and occassional chess partner K-9 has not only guested once or twice in the new Doctor Who opposite David Tennant's Tenth Doctor and Elizabeth Sladen's Sarah-Jane Smith but is soon to appear in his very own adventure series (nearly 30 years after the one-off special 'K-9 and Company'). Creator Bob Baker and his collaborator Paul Tams explain the project's evolution and reintroduce us to our favourite digital dawg! "Affirmative!" |
Sessions are subject to changes and amendment.