Moffat named Doctor Who supremo

Scriptwriter Steven Moffat was today named lead writer and executive producer on hit BBC1 drama Doctor Who.Moffat, who has written a number of episodes of the show - including the acclaimed 'Blink' episode which won him the writer prize at this year's Bafta Craft Awards - will replace Russell T Davies. Davies, the key creative figure behind the Doctor Who revival in 2005, stands down next year.

The appointment makes Moffat Doctor Who's showrunner - the key creative force behind the programme - on the fifth series, which will be broadcast on BBC1 in 2010. As well as 'Blink', his previous work on Doctor Who includes 'The Girl in the Fireplace' for series two which earned him his second Hugo Award. His first was for the series one two-parter 'The Empty Child'. Davies said: "It's been a delight and an honour working with Steven, and I can't wait to see where his extraordinary imagination takes the Doctor. Best of all, I get to be a viewer again, watching on a Saturday night!"

For the current series, Moffat has written 'Silence in the Library', a two-parter starring Alex Kingston that transmits later this month on BBC1. Moffat said: "My entire career has been a secret plan to get this job. I applied before but I got knocked back because the BBC wanted someone else. Also I was seven. Anyway, I'm glad the BBC has finally seen the light, and it's a huge honour to be following Russell into the best - and the toughest - job in television."

Davies and Julie Gardner, the BBC Wales head of drama, have worked on the fourth series of Doctor Who and are working on four specials for broadcast in 2009. In 2009 BBC Wales, which makes Doctor Who, will also have a new head of drama when producer Piers Wenger takes over from Gardner.

The BBC fiction controller, Jane Tranter, said: "The Tardis couldn't be in safer hands. Steven's talents on both Doctor Who and beyond are well known. He is a writer of glittering brilliance, comedy and depth, with an extraordinary imagination and a unique voice. Steven has a wonderful mix of being a committed Doctor Who fan and a true artist, and his plans for the next series are totally thrilling."

Steven Moffat's professional television career began in 1989 as a writer of all 43 episodes, over five series, of the fondly remembered ITV children's drama Press Gang, starring Julia Sawalha and Dexter Fletcher. He won his first Bafta for the show, for best children's programme.

The writer, who was born in 1961, went on to write two BBC sitcoms, the first of which, Joking Apart, was about a breakdown of a couple's relationship. It starred Robert Bathurst and Fiona Gillies and drew on Moffat's own experiences around the break up of his first marriage. He joked afterwards that the series "lasted longer" than his actual marriage. Moffat also wrote Chalk in 1997, which was set in a school and starred David Bamber as headteacher Eric Slatt. The BBC1 comedy drew on Moffat's early life as an English teacher.

However, it was with BBC2 sitcom Coupling, produced by his second wife Sue Vertue and broadcast from 2000, that Moffat's career really moved into another gear. The show, featuring an ensemble cast including Jack Davenport, Sarah Alexander and Gina Bellman, dealt with the ups and downs of the love lives of a group of young single friends. Coupling ran for four series and won a best TV comedy prize at the British Comedy Awards. NBC commissioned a US version, but it was axed after only three episodes – a failure Moffat blamed loudly and publicly on the network for meddling with the creative team behind the show.

More recent work includes the six-part thriller Jekyll, starring James Nesbitt and Michelle Ryan, which was shown on BBC1 last year.

On Doctor Who, Moffat has penned some of the series' most critically acclaimed episodes. His episodes are among many fans' favourites, although perhaps the best praise came from Russell T Davies, who revealed in an interview that he often edits scripts for the series but "doesn't touch a word" of Moffat's episodes.

Moffatt will continue as one of the directors on the board of Hartswood Films which produced Coupling and Jekyll, and for which he is also developing a new comedy Adam & Eve. It is about a boss and his PA, who are long-term friends but never get together. He has also just delivered the screenplay for Tintin, the first instalment of the trilogy of films featuring the iconic Belgian comic-strip hero. Steven Spielberg will direct the film for DreamWorks, with a cast featuring Thomas Sangster and Andy Serkis.

There has been much speculation in recent months about who would replace Davies as the creative leader of Doctor Who and Moffat has generally been a popular candidate among the show's fanatical fan base – although there have been a few dissenting voices who worry that his writing for the show might suffer. Time will tell.

Hands off the Doctor Who knitting circle

Where is the Time Lord when you need him? A faceless behemoth is bent on crushing an innocent earthling and Doctor Who is nowhere to be found, reports Lucy Mangan. To add insult to injury the earthling is a dedicated Whovian. So dedicated, in fact, that Mazzmatazz (as the 26-year-old blogger is known) has for some time been posting knitting patterns on the internet to show others how to recreate, through the medium of cottonwool and yarn, cuddly versions of the villainous Ood and Adipose aliens from the current BBC series. The BBC, however, has taken exception to this since someone tried to sell one of her patterns on eBay. This, the broadcaster evidently felt, represented a clear and present danger to the £800m a year its commercial arm makes through its intellectual property and merchandising rights every year and it has unleashed its lawyers on her.

The readiness of giant corporations to confuse an excess of enthusiastic fandom with an insidious commercial threat is not heartening. The existence - suddenly revealed to the wider public - of a Whovian knitting community, however, is. The briefest of searches reveals that there are people out there engaged in Tom Baker scarf knitalongs, swapping encouragement over those tricky colour-changing points at a woolly Dalek's "shoulders", sharing patterns for K-9 tissue holders, knitted Tardises (Tardii?), and even a truly resplendent version in cream and red wool of Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor.

The question of why Doctor Who, traditionally the seizer of techno-geek imaginations, should have been so readily embraced by the crafty set probably has as many answers as there are Tardis-knitters. For some it will simply have to do with the pleasure of recreating easily recognisable iconic items. For others, the innate humour of juxtaposing intergalactic technology and/or cosmic villainry with such homespun domestic skills. And for others, as one blogger points out, it will have something to do with the fact that the average Whovian and the average knitter tend to have a lot of time hanging heavy on their hands. Even heavier soon, of course, if the BBC has its way.

A working life of pain

What does it take to forge a career leaping off tall buildings? Just a healthy fear and a childlike sense of fun, Dean Forster tells Leo Benedictus...

Dean Forster gets asked about his job so often that he has learned a routine. "It's usually five questions," he says, casually self-assured in wraparound shades as we sip coffee together in Henley-on-Thames. "Have you met anybody famous? Have you been hurt? Is the money good? How did you get into it? And ..." He falters for a moment as a cold wind whips around our faces. "... something else."

So how does he deal with it? "For years I used to shrug quite a lot and say, 'Oh, I'm embarrassed.' Then I realised that's what the job entails, and now I love it. Absolutely love it." He does not have to convince me. His pleasure at the prospect of talking about his job is unmistakable - even if some of that early bashfulness still lingers at the edges of his schoolboy smile.

The answers to the five - sorry, four - routine questions are quick to arrive. Yes, he has worked with several famous people (including Gary Oldman and Tom Cruise). His injuries, though minor, have been numerous too. "Just as a chef's going to burn himself," he shrugs, "we get battered and bruised." And at anything up to several thousand pounds a day, the money is indeed good. But if injuries or anything else prevent him from working, he is keen to point out, his income falls to zero. As for how he got into doing stunts for a living, well, he was never really into anything else.

"My family used to own a motorcycle display team called the Mohicans," he explains. "In the 60s, my uncles used to dress up as Red Indians on BSA Gold Star motorbikes and do jumps at fetes and carnivals. As soon as I could walk, they put me on a bike to do little jumps. And it progressed into other areas." From judo and gymnastics to bicycles and trampolines, if it was fast, physical or involved generally throwing yourself about, then the teenage Forster was obsessed with it.

How to make a living from his passions, however, was the thing that gave him more trouble. At first, the closest he could get was working as a lifeguard in his local sports centre, and yet he knew that this was not enough. "I sat down one day and thought, what do I really, really want to do?" he remembers. "And that was it: I really, really wanted to be a stunt performer. And from that day, that's it, that's been my whole adult life - all I wanted to do."

Which is a good thing. Without such single-minded dedication to his work, Forster probably would not have made it. There are no training courses available in the UK for aspiring stunt performers, so in order to build up his skills he had to find work. And yet he would not be able to work without joining the register of the Joint Industry Stunt Committee, which meant producing six separate sporting qualifications at national or county level and finding at least 60 days' employment as an extra in order to gain experience in front of a camera. Even then, once he was registered as a probationary stunt performer, for three years he could only work under the supervision of a coordinator.

"And having those qualifications allows you to go on the stunt register," he cautions. "But it doesn't make you a good stunt performer." For this he had to practise individual skills, on his own or with colleagues, on the job or in his spare time, while trying to impress enough people to build up contacts in the film industry. Even now he is a fully qualified stunt coordinator, the learning continues. "I can call [a rental company] and ask them for an airbag, build a tower, and then spend a day practising high falls," he suggests, by way of example. It sounds expensive. "Yes," he agrees. "But doing the high falls is good money." This is the usual equation for stunt performers, of course: the more dangerous the stunt, the more they get paid. And they get the same again each time they do it.

So how much, I wonder tentatively as we move inside to a more sheltered table, does one actually have to learn about jumping off a building on to a giant airbag? "The higher you go, the smaller that thing gets," says Forster. "You're standing there on the edge ready to jump, and your whole body and mind are going, 'Don't do this. You do this and you're going to die.' When you're looking down like that, then it does become really, really difficult. And it's never as simple as you think. [In my last high fall] there was computer animation above me, and it was going to hit me so I fly backwards. And they wanted me twisting through the air."

What stunt is he best at then? "Fire. Absolutely 100%." He picks up his phone, taps a few buttons, and holds up a picture of a man with a large gun who is wearing a bomber jacket that is engulfed in flames - a lot of flames. "That's me," he announces, bringing the image further forward for me to see. "That's my favourite." It is hard to imagine that his wife likes it much.

In fact, this immolation masterpiece was not even part of a film, he explains, but was taken by a stunt coordinator friend of his for publicity purposes. "It was the first time I'd done it," he says. "There's a lot of science involved. And you do get burned. I know a few people who've got some really bad burns. Touch wood, I haven't." He reaches out for the table top. "When I hit the deck, they said the flames were 15 feet above my head." He is wriggling in his seat with excitement. "We're still kids," he admits. "I think 90% of stuntmen are still children at heart."

But fun aside, surely he is just a little afraid when somebody is about to set him on fire? "There has to be fear, otherwise you become complacent," he says, "and if you become complacent you'll get hurt... You're not nervous the first time, because it's something different. The second time you do it, that's when you're scared, because you really know what to expect... It's not everybody's cup of tea, but it's what we do."

That glint is back in his eye. Clearly he does enjoy a bit of danger - or is proud of himself for braving it, at least. Yet everything he does, he insists, is as safe as it can be. "We're not daredevils," he says. "We take calculated risks... If somebody said to me now, 'Jump through that window.' I'd say, 'No. Do I look stupid?' With a stunt it's different, because they'll put little dents in the window, so the second I go through it it's going to explode. And I'm going to wear knee pads and arm pads to protect myself. And there aren't going to be people walking past the window - or if there are they're going to be stunt performers who know I'm coming through." I glance outside. None of the well-dressed ladies of Henley look like stunt performers.

Forster's first paid stunt was in fact very similar to the scene he has just described. It was for a "water explosion" in the film Mission: Impossible. "Tom Cruise is in a restaurant in Prague," he recalls. "He throws his chewing gum at the [aquarium], and the restaurant caves in with water, and then he runs out of the restaurant. I was sitting opposite Tom Cruise when that happened, doubling the actor he was talking to. That was my first job."

Since then, he has worked on The Fifth Element, Tomorrow Never Dies, Lost in Space, Layer Cake, Dr Who, Life on Mars and many other projects. And yet still he is waiting to try the one stunt he has always dreamed of, the one that entices him even more than fire. "My absolute ultimate," he says, getting restless in his seat again, "and I was booked to do this a few years ago - although truthfully I would have done it free of charge - would be the classic jumping off a bridge on to a steam train, and running from carriage to carriage to carriage. Actually I would probably pay to do that. But they found somebody else."

Forster's chance to run along a train may yet come, although his time is running out. At the age of 40, as is normal in his profession, he now takes more work as a coordinator and less as a performer. "I feel like I've got another 10 years of performing in me," says Forster, who keeps fit practising karate. "and then we'll see what happens then. When I'm 50 I don't really want to be knocked down by a car or fall down stairs. Not because I don't want to," he adds hastily, as if anyone might doubt his enthusiasm, "just because of all the aches and pains."

Martha's next move

As Freema Agyeman returns to Doctor Who, she tells Andrew Pettie about her character Martha’s evolution, saucy fan mail and her designs on Hollywood...

One of the fringe benefits of owning a Tardis should be that it allows you to duck out of sticky social situations. On Saturday, however, Doctor Who (David Tennant) uses his Tardis to materialise right in the middle of one of the stickiest imaginable, as he and his new companion Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) come face to face with his former assistant Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman).

The Doctor hasn’t seen Martha since the end of the last series. But series creator Russell T Davies has kept her busy by transplanting her character to Doctor Who’s BBC2 sister show, Torchwood. Thanks to the experience, Martha, says Agyeman, is a changed woman. “Martha left the Doctor to be with her family and complete her medical training,” she explains. “But because of all the experience she had battling aliens as his companion she also works for [paranormal investigation agency] UNIT. That’s made her tougher and more independent from the Doctor. In the last series they had a kind of student-teacher relationship, whereas now she knows how to tackle dangerous aliens on her own. In a way, she’s outgrown him.”

Martha has also moved on romantically, allowing her unrequited feelings for the Doctor to fade into friendship. In fact, Agyeman reveals, “Martha’s got someone new in her life. She’s engaged – to another doctor as it happens.”

Martha Jones’s career is going from strength to strength. But what of Freema Agyeman’s? It has been rumoured that she was replaced as the Doctor’s companion because of a backstage rift with David Tennant. “Oh my God, I’d never heard that!” she exclaims, taken aback. “David and I are very different people – we listen to different music, we like different things – but I think that can be a good thing, and was part of the reason I got the job. David was always someone I could learn from, somebody I could ask questions. He made me feel completely welcome from day one. I’m really upset that people think we didn’t get on.”

Agyeman believes Martha’s transfer to Torchwood has also helped her to develop as an actor. “Although there’s obviously an overlap between the two, Torchwood is a very different show from Doctor Who – it can be much darker. As a genre, sci-fi gives the writers freedom. Playing Martha in Torchwood has given me a great opportunity to stretch my acting muscles.”

Martha has been an instant hit with Doctor Who’s notoriously obsessive – and picky – fans. “I get lots of letters from six, seven and eight-year-olds telling me how they want to be Martha Jones,” she says. “Even grown-ups shout out ‘Hey Martha!’ to me in the street. And at the DVD signings, by the time some fans get up to the desk to meet the Doctor and Martha they can hardly breathe they’re so excited. They just stand there shaking. It’s one of the amazing things about Doctor Who that it touches people on such a grand scale.”

Despite all the attention, though, Agyeman has taken overnight celebrity in her stride. Even slightly alarming romantic overtures from fans haven’t fazed her. “I’ve yet to receive a marriage proposal,” she says with a chuckle, “but I did get a rather, erm, suggestive letter. The writer was saying how he’d love to be my assistant and obey my every command, which I guess was flattering. It certainly made me laugh.” (Note to potential suitors: Agyeman has a boyfriend, Jamie. They met shortly before Agyeman won the role of Martha when her “bread and butter job” was working as a theatre usher.)

Whenever her time on Doctor Who and Torchwood comes to an end, Agyeman has designs on Hollywood. She’s a devoted fan of comic-book adaptations such as Spider-Man and the X-Men franchise. “I really enjoy the crazy action sequences and pace of those films,” she says. “I suppose in that way comic-book adaptations are quite like Doctor Who. Those are the films I enjoy watching, so I imagine I’d also enjoy acting in them.”

For now, though, Agyeman is very happy with life as Dr Jones, and delighted by her return to the Doctor Who fold. Initially, she was worried that her first day of filming would be “like your first day back at school, when you worry that everything will be different”. But thanks to all the familiar faces among the cast and crew it was “like [she’d] never been away”.

“Being part of Doctor Who is like being a member of a club,” she says. “Whether it’s sending someone a text, or meeting up to go out for dinner, everyone stays in touch. When you’re in the Doctor Who family, you stay in the Doctor Who family. It’s like a nice version of the Mafia.”

Doctor Who is on Saturday, 26 April on BBC1 at 6.20pm

Catherine Tate is not bad!

As Doctor Who fights the alien hordes, can a middle-aged comedienne be any help? Actually, yes, thinks Caitlin Moran...

I wish Google Earth had a “What Everyone’s Thinking!” application. If it did, and you’d clicked on it for the past two weeks, the primary thought-bubble over the UK would have been “Oh – Catherine Tate’s not that bad, is she?”

For before this fourth series of the relaunched Doctor Who was broadcast, her jammy enlodgement as the Doctor’s assistant was, for many, a source of great sorrow. She had not, let’s face it, proved a particularly winsome turn in The Runaway Bride– the poorest of all the Christmas specials. With an acting range that seemed to consist wholly of shouting while facing left, shouting while facing right, and shouting in some snow, her Donna Noble was kind of untaken to everyone’s bosoms that festive afternoon.

“How was Christmas?” people would ask.

“OK. Apart from Catherine Tate,” others would reply.

And everyone would nod, understandingly.

Tate is often compared with Marmite – you either love her, or you hate her! – but she’s not like Marmite at all. Marmite is an inconsequential sandwich spread, that you can quite easily take or leave simply by deciding whether to put it on your toast or not. Catherine Tate, on the other hand, IS THE NEW ASSISTANT IN DOCTOR WHO. There is no taking or leaving there. I mean, it’s not like we’re ever going to stop watching it, is it? Tsk. Prft. Tsk. Of course not.

But, as the notional Google What Everyone’s Thinking! application suggests, she’s not working out too badly at all, now she’s up and running in a whole series. The main beneficiary of her enrolment has been the atmosphere in the Tardis. It is unexpectedly pleasant to be, once again, in a time-travelling wardrobe free of sexual tension. In the latter half of the last series, particularly, the show was starting to feel like some manner of intergalactic Alfie – any sentient being with receptive genitals simpering at the Doctor, while he cranked his eyebrows up and down like a seesaw.

Donna Noble, then, makes a nice change. I’m quite enjoying what is already becoming the Default Shot in the show – the Doctor running intently, in pursuit of some intergalactic foe; followed, an amusingly long time later, by a puffing, panting forty-something woman who is clearly thinking, if not actually saying: “Doctor! Slow down! A bit of wee has come out!”

Last week’s episode – centred on Pompeii – was a belter: spooky, funny, very clever, and letting an old-school draught of space-time chill blow across Saturday night as it set up some potent, Bad Wolf-style series arcs. Donna was told she had “something on her back”, while the Doctor was informed “She will return.” Google’s What Everyone’s Thinking! informs me that, at this point, 78 per cent of the British population bounced up and down on their sofas shouting “ROSE! He means ROSE! I’m totally getting that reference! IT MEANS ROSE IS COMING BACK!”

This week – The Planet of the Ood – we have another series arc to add to the pot. “Soon, your song will end,” the Doctor is informed – and presumably not a reference to the Simon Bates show’s Our Tune, which ended in 1997; news that surely reached even the remotest pockets of the galaxy. This is another really, really good episode – one that will have you staring at your screen and asking, once again, “How can something so good be happening so early on a Saturday night, in my own front room?”

The Doctor and Donna land on the planet of the Ood – the old Who creatures from series two, who look like a fat Yul Brynner holding a ball-cock and eating a squid. The Doctor explains to Donna that he feels like he “owes the Ood” a good turn, what with, last time, having wholly abandoned them to Satan on a planet being sucked into a black hole. And it’s hard to deny that he may have a point there. He discovers that the Ood are not an intrinsically compliant species who love to serve, as was presumed last time we saw them – but are, in fact, all slaves, owned by a giant corporation.

As the Doctor does his handsome best to liberate them, followed by Donna, puffing and panting, ten minutes later, time is found to make a couple of pertinent asides about good old planet Earth, too.

“We don’t have slaves,” Donna says.

“Who made your clothes?” the Doctor asks.

And she really, really isn’t that bad when she says it.

Doctor Who, Saturday 19 2008, BBC One, 6.20pm

David Tennant and his landlady

On Saturday night David Tennant returned to the small screen as Doctor Who. The 36-year-old is considered by many viewers to be the best incarnation yet. Far from milking his celebrity, though, he hardly ever speaks to the press and is wary of adding his name to worthy causes. In this rare interview, his former landlady (Arabella Weir) talks to him about his religious background, his hybrid car and his views on fame. She also reveals what she knows about his steely character and his flamboyant take on clothes

Since he was just three years old, David Tennant has passionately wanted the role of Doctor Who. No doubt he wasn’t the only one who thought he could play a Time Lord – but it was an unlikely aspiration for a boy who, like Gordon Brown, was a son of the manse. And unlike all those other little boys, he did indeed grow up to play the Doctor – currently in his 10th incarnation on Saturday night television.

His father, the Rev Sandy McDonald, is a Church of Scotland minister in Paisley, near Glasgow. So David went to church regularly all through his childhood – and his father also happened to be the minister for his primary school. According to David, Sandy is “a dramatic, lively, engaging and entertaining speaker” (and I can attest to this, having seen him in the pulpit).

Was it witnessing the effect and popularity of his father’s addresses, I ask, that drove him towards acting as a career?

“Possibly. I was very young when I decided that’s what I wanted to do, so it’s hard to know how much of a conscious influence Dad was. I remember, after seeing Jon Pertwee turn into Tom Baker in Doctor Who, having a conversation with my parents at a very young age about actors and what they did. I remember getting the distinction between a character and an actor, as they explained it. I understood what fiction was very clearly – and I always feel uneasy when people talk about children not understanding the difference between fantasy and reality. I can only have been three, and was just enthralled by [Doctor Who]. But I was quite clear that I didn’t want to be a Time Lord – I wanted to be the person who played a Time Lord,” says David, who had to change his surname to Tennant when he started acting because there was already a David McDonald in Equity, the actors’ union.

His parents, though always encouraging and supportive, tried to steer him towards more secure careers. However, David tells me that he “never once wavered” from his chosen path – rather extraordinary, considering that he’d decided on his future while still a pre-primary school toddler. Steeliness is probably his defining characteristic – and he was obviously just as steely then as he is now.

We know each other well, having first met in October 1993. As a jobbing actor, I’d gone to Glasgow to play a part in a series called Takin’ Over the Asylum – about a hospital radio station based in a mental health facility. My first scene was with a young Scottish actor – it was of course David, who was playing a bipolar teenager. He was 22 and had only just started acting, yet his confidence and determination were extraordinary. We hit it off straightaway, and early the following year he moved to London where he rented a room in my house for five years.

His subsequent success owes much to his aforementioned steeliness. That is not to say he’s ruthless, unkind or lacking in generosity; quite the contrary. But he is absolutely determined – in fact enviably so for a man in a business that positively engenders insecurity and self-doubt. He has always been able to look after himself. At 17 he left home to go to live in Glasgow – first with his older sister and then with a succession of fellow students – until he graduated from drama school in 1991. This made him unusually self-sufficient for his years. And he’s very organised. When we lived together I was always teasing him about his alphabetised CDs, for example.

Still single (the tabloids have, usually erroneously, linked him with various women, including Kylie Minogue), David is pretty careful in all his choices. The only area in which he goes positively mad is in his choice of clothes. In fact his wardrobe can be very flamboyant, which is why those who know him quickly gave him the monicker of “metrosexual”. In the early days many of my friends (principally male, I’ll admit), thought that he must be gay. “He has to be – you’re his best friend, and look at the way he dresses,” they’d protest.

Leaving aside the suggestion that an association with me reflects on a man’s sexuality, I had to break it to them that just because a guy wears a red velvet suit and is able to form a close friendship with a woman he isn’t sleeping with doesn’t necessarily mean he’s homosexual. David, meanwhile, took all this teasing in his stride; he is so unmacho and fair-minded that the speculation about his sexuality never bothered him . “Why would it?” he’d say. Now, that’s what I call a real metrosexual.

In all the time I’ve known David he’s never been out of work. It’s not that he is the best actor in the world – it’s more that his success is down to a fusion of talent and unshakable self-belief. It’s quite bizarre witnessing how famous he’s become. Often, when we go out together, large groups of women will visibly go weak at the knees. Does he mind being pestered by fans? “It comes with the territory,” he says. “Some days it’s tricky; other days, not at all – and, anyway, who am I to complain about how hard it is to be famous? It’s not.”

Unlike some, David doesn’t leap indiscriminately at the endless party invitations and goodies offered to celebrities; he’s also increasingly reluctant to give print interviews. Is this because he’s a control freak, I suggest, and doesn’t like the idea of not being able to control what’s written about him? “Erm, it is slightly controlling of me, I agree,” he says. “But it’s all too easy to become defined by your press cuttings. I’m much happier going on a radio show and talking nonsense for 20 minutes. I’m an actor, after all.”

He also subscribes to the Marlon Brando take on actors who sound off about world affairs: “Just because a guy’s famous doesn’t make what he thinks interesting.” But, I point out, I know he cares about climate change – and he did just buy a hybrid car.

“Exactly,” he replies. “Now, I’m clearly no Al Gore, but I liked the idea of doing my bit. And then you get someone telling you that the environmental cost in manufacturing a [Toyota] Prius [petrol-electric car] is worse than driving some gas-guzzling monster for 10 years. I have no idea what the truth is, although of course I should have found out. The person who told me that may have a grudge against Toyota. So I really don’t want to get into the trap of sounding off about anything I don’t know enough about. It’s very easy to get seduced into believing your opinion is informed just because people ask you for it.”

What about using celebrity to promote a worthwhile cause – isn’t that a good idea?

“It is a fact that sprinkling a bit of celebrity over certain causes probably can make a difference. And maybe it’s pompous to sit at home thinking that I want to preserve my integrity when, actually, if you waved a wee flag for something, it might make a few quid for a worthy cause. It’s a balancing act that I find a bit of a struggle, to be honest. Mostly I just muddle through, trying to do the decent thing from moment to moment. Is it churlish to have the power to influence things and choose not to because you fear being misrepresented? I don’t know. I don’t manage to be consistent about it, anyway. I’m never sure how vain to be.”

It takes a cool head not to be inflated by the news that fans voted him the best Doctor Who of all time, in a BBC magazine survey. And they will certainly be pleased to know that David hasn’t come close to tiring of his Time Lord role yet. Indeed there are three feature-length specials on the horizon. Meanwhile, he is about to take on the arguably more challenging role of Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Naturally, he’s quite nervous about scaling this particular rock-face – but then, if he weren’t, he’d probably cock it up. “I always have that Presbyterian voice in my head, saying, ‘Could do better’,” he admits. “But I quite like that.”

The new series of Doctor Who continues on Saturdays on BBC1

The great sci-fi shoot-out

It's back! The best science-fiction TV series ever created is at last returning for its long awaited fourth series. And so, by a curious coincidence, is Doctor Who, snarks Dominic Maxwell...

Yes, Battlestar Galactica really is that mighty. If your only knowledge of BSG is from its initial incarnation, a so-so space-opera starring Dirk Benedict in the late 1970s, that may be hard to take seriously. But not only is the new show better than the original, it's also stronger drama than pretty much anything out there, give or take a Sopranos or a Wire. It's brilliantly written, perfectly played, and credits its audience with plenty of intelligence.

Meanwhile, Doctor Who has grown cocky. Confidence has turned to glibness, as the Doctor cheerily saves himself with a smart comment and a spizz of his sonic screwdriver. Can it ever again be the best science-fiction series around? Not on Battlestar Galactica's watch - here's why.

TOUGH OPPOSITION

BSG starts with the villains, the Cylons, knocking off billions of people - leaving the 40,000-odd survivors the sole remnants of humanity. Mankind's chief weapon? The rusty old spacebucket of the title. The Cylons' chief weapon? Having white-hot technology, looking human (handy for infiltration) and never dying. Cybermen? Daleks? Amateurs.

PEOPLE GET HURT

OK, Billie Piper got sucked into another dimension, and Kylie copped it. Other than that, though, not much really gets to our invincible Time Lord. In the ensemble BSG, there's always the danger that one of our heroes might die at any moment. The President (Mary McDonnell) has cancer; Admiral Adama (Edward James Olmos) gets shot at close range by one of his own crew, and several second bananas lose their lives as the show progresses.

IT'S NOT FOR KIDS

Which, OK, doesn't make this an entirely fair fight. But BSG depicts an adult moral universe that comes in lifelike shades of grey, where people must often choose between competing evils. Doctor Who, meanwhile, is a family show. You don't have to be a kid to enjoy it. But it helps.

SEX, SEX, SEX

There is sexual attraction in the Tardis, but thankfully no consummation. The rebooted BSG, however, was sexed up from the off, as super-sexy Cylon Number Six (Trisha Helfer) literally screwed secrets out of Gaius Balthar (James Callis). And while Number Six looks smashing in a cocktail dress, and the more rippled male cast members aren't averse to getting their shirts off, the sex isn't just titillation: it deepens the drama.

IT'S REALLY FILMED IN SPACE

It isn't? Well it certainly looks like it is. Respect to the special effects on the new Doctor Who, but BSG looks out of this world.

IT PLAYS A LONG GAME

You can't really watch BSG out of sequence, as each season has a shape. In last season's Doctor Who, on the other hand, the Master conquered the Earth in two episodes.

SCARCITY BRINGS VALUE

This fourth season will be its last, which means there's no time for the show to repeat itself. BSG episodes can be overcomplicated, but there are no actual duds. Doctor Who, meanwhile, has too many brisk one-offs in which the aliens barely have time to announce their grievances before they've been sassily outfoxed.

BREADTH OF REFERENCE

Doctor Who is the story of a superman hero. BSG is the story of a human society, and looks at the competing priorities of government and military, leader and worker, duty and desire. It also features sexy people in fetching outfits. In short, it's got the lot.

Battlestar Galactica Revisited, Tues, Sky One, 9pm (followed by The Phenomenon at 9.30pm & Razor, 10pm). The fourth series starts next week. Doctor Who, Sat, BBC One, 6.20pm

Russell tussles with the return of Doctor Who

As Doctor Who returns for a fourth series writer Russell T Davies tells Andrew Pettie about the Doctor's new companion played by Catherine Tate, and what his favourite monster is...

One of the few underwhelming things about Russell T Davies is that the ‘T’ in his name doesn’t stand for anything. Davies inserted it early in his career to distinguish himself from the Radio 2 presenter Russell Davies. Now, though, he prefers to use it as the excuse for a series of preposterous fibs. ‘I always make stories up about what the T stands for,’ he says. ‘Like “The” or “Tussle”. That’s my favourite one: Russell Tussle Davies. Though I actually hate the T. It always looks strange to me.’

These days, as the writer and executive producer of the regenerated Doctor Who, which returns for a fourth series on Saturday, Davies is famous enough to discard it. Unlike most television writers, he is regularly recognised in the street. ‘It happens all the time, especially in Cardiff [where Doctor Who and its sister show Torchwood are filmed],’ he says. ‘Kids walk up and start talking to you. I think it’s nice that children realise that somebody like a writer even exists on a TV drama, because I don’t think I did at that age. Also, whereas adults might complain about a character they didn’t like or tell you who they want to see as the next companion, children ask you what’s your favourite monster and why – which is much more fun.’

Davies’s favourite monsters, in case your children have yet to ask him, are the Daleks. He has one in his front hall. ‘I love Daleks,’ he says. ‘I think they’re brilliant. That’s why I insisted that we shouldn’t change the design. They still work after 45 years – Daleks are a design classic. I honestly think they’re iconically beautiful.’

Although Davies is anxious to preserve some of Doctor Who’s cherished traditions, he also feels compelled to reinvent it. For the fourth series, the Doctor (David Tennant) will have a new companion, Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), who previously appeared in the 2006 Christmas special, The Runaway Bride. ‘There’s a danger that we could settle into a rut,’ Davies explains. ‘That’s why we’ve started each series with a new set of lead actors. It reinvigorates the show. I love the fact that Donna’s a little bit older than the Doctor, and that she’s not in love with him, as our other companions have each been to some extent. He needs a challenge.’ That’s not to say Donna’s predecessor Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) has been airbrushed from history. As well as appearing in Torchwood, Agyeman will return in episodes four and five of the new series of Doctor Who.

Other special guests include Sarah Lancashire, Alex Kingston and Felicity Kendal, who Davies says stars in an ‘Agatha Christie-style murder mystery. She plays Lady Edison, the lady of the house with secrets to keep…’ Davies sounds most excited, however, about episode two, which is set in Pompeii. Any of the 13million viewers who saw last year’s Christmas episode, in which a space ship named The Titanic almost crashed into Buckingham Palace, will expect the spectacular. ‘The Pompeii episode is so ambitious,’ Davies says, ‘that we had a script that was easier to film standing by, in case someone turned round and said, “This is impossible.” The whole thing was terrifying, and a nightmare to film, but that’s what makes it good in the end. It’s a glorious episode.’

Davies, who seems almost alarmingly enthusiastic about Doctor Who, sounds as if he could go on making it forever. He has already written this year’s Christmas special (‘It’s set in the Victorian era. So expect plum pudding, death and disaster’). But after a hiatus in 2009, when there will only be two one-off specials, Davies will step aside for a new executive producer, Piers Wenger, to oversee series five, which is scheduled to air in 2010. Davies, a perfectionist, doesn’t strike you as someone who will find it easy letting go. But he insists he’ll cope. ‘The day I leave Doctor Who I will just walk away,’ he says. ‘I would never want to hang on as a ghost of what I was. I would be a nightmare! I’d be that voice at the back of the set going, “Oh, I wouldn’t do it that way.”’

Davies already has plans for what he’ll write next. He’s keeping his ideas to himself (‘In case someone steals them’) but the writer of Channel 4’s groundbreaking gay drama Queer as Folk says he’s eager to return to similarly grown-up themes. ‘I’d love to do another nine o’clock drama,’ he says. ‘There’s a whole world of drama and emotion and honesty that has no place in Doctor Who. I once got very, very stuck writing an episode of Doctor Who and on that night I watched Peter Morgan’s Longford. I’m dying to do something that risky, that real. It was just so brilliant and there I was writing about the interior of a space ship. I thought, “What am I doing with my life?” Luckily, though,’ he beams, ‘the space ship was fantastic.’

Doctor Who is on BBC1 on Saturday, 29 March at 6.20pm

David Tennant: The good doctor

The most powerful actor in television is also, by all accounts, the nicest bloke in showbiz writes Tim Walker...

British drama boasts but a handful of truly timeless roles. Many attempt to play them, and many fall short of perfection. Few get the chance to take on two such characters, but this year David Tennant has just that opportunity.

In July, Tennant begins a season in Stratford, playing Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Though this versatile and popular actor may never find himself heading up the list of great Danes that includes Mark Rylance, David Warner and Laurence Olivier, his reputation as a British cultural icon is nonetheless secure. A poll conducted by the BBC in 2006 found that he was the nation's favourite Doctor Who – beating Jon Pertwee, Christopher Eccleston and even Tom Baker to the title. Last year Tennant, who is 36, came in at number 24 in a recent media power list, making him the most powerful actor in television. He's also, by all accounts, the nicest bloke in showbiz.

Doctor Who returns next week for its fourth series (and Tennant's third) since it was so successfully relaunched by writer-producer Russell T Davies in 2005. The Doctor's latest adventures are, as ever, under wraps, the plot twists and turns as shrouded in secrecy as a new Harry Potter novel. What is known, beyond the fact that Catherine Tate will be playing the Time Lord's assistant, is that Tennant's sparkling performances will carry the show again.

"In this series we've pushed the Doctor further than he's ever gone before," says Davies. "I've made 39 episodes with David now, and I'm still going, 'My God, I've never seen him do that before.' He's just limitless. Sometimes you find yourself writing for actors and allowing for their traits. There's nothing worse than sitting at your desk at two in the morning thinking, 'I can't have them cry in this scene, because they're no good at crying,' which you find with actors sometimes. But there's none of that with David. You can watch him in Doctor Who, and then in a serious drama like Recovery [in which he played a husband recovering from a serious head injury], and it's like you're watching a different man. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire he has a small part, but it's a perfect little distillation of evil. You can write anything for him. You're never bored, and you never want him to have bad lines of dialogue. You want to do your best for him."

Last year Tennant won the National Television Award for most popular actor. The BBC has such confidence in that popularity that it has given him time off to play Hamlet, a commitment that rules out a Doctor Who series for 2009. Instead, there will be three bank holiday specials spread through next year, with a fifth full series reaching our screens in 2010, to which Tennant is already informally committed. "I think it's genuinely exciting that he's playing Hamlet," says Davies. "I keep asking him what he's going to do with it and he doesn't know yet. He hasn't had time to concentrate, but it's a brilliant bit of casting. You'll get people in that theatre who would never normally go and watch Hamlet at the RSC. There'll be kids there who, in 60 years' time, will remember when they saw their first Hamlet."

Tennant has a thoroughly congenial reputation, and not just among luvvies. Newspaper diarists, who often find themselves at the sharp end of a dressing down from a celebrity, say he's a perfect gentleman, always polite and ready to talk when cornered at a media event. He is one of the few public figures approved by celebrity gossip site Popbitch, which has posted more than one tale of Tennant's loveliness and largesse. And Davies positively gushes with praise for his star. "People can get tired and ratty on set, but David never does. There must be times when he feels low, but he feels the responsibility of leading the team. It's not his job to lead. As an actor, he could be miserable as fuck if he wanted to be. But he's a proper leader of men."

Tennant was born David John McDonald in West Lothian in 1971, the son of a local minister in Paisley, who later became a national figure as Moderator of the Church of Scotland. After taking part in the BBC's genealogy documentary strand Who Do You Think You Are? in 2006, Tennant learned that the Northern Irish branch of his family had been embroiled in the Troubles. He was unsettled to hear of his ancestors' involvement with the Orange Order, but glad to reveal that his grandfather, Archie McLeod, was a professional footballer with Derry City FC.

A fanatical Doctor Who fan even as a toddler, Tennant claims he told his parents he wanted to be an actor aged just three, so inspired was he by the Pertwee and Baker incarnations of his fictional hero. Thus he knows full well the enormous responsibility that comes with the role. "Playing the Doctor is a massive duty," says Davies. "David is brilliant with the kids and other fans who accost him in public. The glorious thing is that he was there as a child, loving Tom Baker and Peter Davison, so he knows how important it is to a kid when they meet him."

After leaving Paisley Grammar School, Tennant trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where he adopted his stage name after reading an article on Pet Shop Boys frontman Neil Tennant. Among the institution's many esteemed alumni are Robert Carlyle, Alan Cumming and James McAvoy. After graduating, Tennant found work with the Scottish agitprop theatre company 7:84, so named for the 7 per cent of the UK's population who supposedly control 84 per cent of its wealth. Like that other famous son of the manse, Gordon Brown, Tennant is a lifelong socialist, and even appeared in a party political broadcast for the Labour Party in 2005.

He moved to London in the early 1990s to lodge with his friend, the comic actress and writer Arabella Weir, whose success with The Fast Show soon rubbed off on her flatmate. During the 1990s, he worked often with the RSC, and switched between comedy and tragedy with ease, playing Touchstone in As You Like It in 1996, and Romeo in Romeo and Juliet in 2000. Though it's television that gave him the fame necessary to play Hamlet, Tennant has always said the theatre is his natural home. He will be joined in Stratford this summer by another sci-fi Shakespearean, Star Trek's Patrick Stewart, as Hamlet's treacherous uncle Claudius.

In 1996, Tennant appeared in Michael Winterbottom's film of Jude, which starred the ninth Doctor Who, Christopher Eccleston. By then the young Scot was a BBC regular, taking larger and larger roles in the corporation's dramas, working for a decade to achieve his eventual, "overnight" success. In 2004, he landed one of the lead roles in the corporation's hit musical drama Blackpool. Doctor Who, and all that part entailed, followed, but Tennant has maintained a busy itinerary full of other projects, including the forthcoming biopic Einstein and Eddington, in which he plays Einstein's contemporary, Sir Arthur Eddington.

Tennant's private life has occasionally been the subject of decidedly non-fevered tabloid speculation. After splitting with his long-term girlfriend Sophia Myles last year, he was briefly rumoured to be dating Kylie Minogue, who appeared in a Christmas special episode of Doctor Who. Tennant has since confirmed that he's in a relationship with a low-profile BBC colleague, Bethan Britton. His co-stars have nothing but praise for his talents and his character, and there's never been a whiff of scandal about him.

The Pink Paper once granted Tennant the title of "sexiest man in the universe", but despite having played Casanova for a BBC3 miniseries, Tennant's good looks are not of the movie star variety. He is skinny and angular, with limbs that can flail with comic urgency as Doctor Who, or crazed hostility as they did when he played the deranged Barty Crouch Jr in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. His tall, lean physiognomy will set him apart from the other notable Hamlets of recent years – among them the chubby Simon Russell Beale, the slight Ben Whishaw and the testosteronic Toby Stephens.

He won the role of Doctor Who after impressing Davies on the set of Casanova in 2005, but even Davies himself has been shocked by the wild success of the show and its star. "The show's success is so mad that I don't think any of us will get our heads round it till it's all over and we look back on it in 10 years' time and say, 'Blimey, that was weird,'" says the writer. "But I think what the public like about David is his energy. He glitters on screen; there's a vitality to him that is undeniably what has worked with the Doctor. On set we're surrounded by props and monsters and explosions and things often go wrong. When they do we say to each other, 'Well, at least we've got David.' We put the camera on him and it just comes to life."

Eick adapting Children of Men for the small screen

David Eick is writing a pilot script for a TV version of Children of Men. The story originated with P.D. James's science-fiction novel and was adapted for film in 2006 with Clive Owen in the lead role.

Eick, who steered the Battlestar Galactia and Bionic Woman remakes, is looking to make the proposed series a faithful adaptation of the book. "It's really taking root more in the origins of the novels in that it will focus on the cultural movement in which young people become the society's utter focus," he explained to Sci Fi Wire. "Much like our culture, whenever Lindsay Lohan does something [and] it becomes the headline of every news show, it's about how, when you don't have a responsibility to the next generation and you're free to do whatever you want, where do you draw the line?"

Eick added that the pilot would differ from the film and explore ideas of social responsibility and freedom. "It's a very compelling, human question that science-fiction has always explored extremely provocatively," he said. "It's not really a war show like the movie was. It's more an exploration of that issue."


Elsewhere, Doctor Who will lose 1.5m viewers per show because of BBC One's decision to move it from 7pm to 6.20pm, according to executive producer Russell T Davies. The drama will take up the new slot when it returns on April 5 to allow I'd Do Anything to air at 7.10pm. Davies said he was worried because the series is the last full run of Who before 2010. Next year there will be three specials. "At 6.20pm, it'll get 1.5m less viewers than it already has," he said, speaking at a Broadcast event in London. "I've told them this, but they won't shift at all. You need to maintain slots and they've gone and cocked it up now. Maybe they're right, but I think they're wrong."

The producer, who was behind the revival of the show, also confessed to rewriting others' scripts if he did not like them. He said: "I'll rewrite 100% if I have to. With Steven Moffat's scripts, I don't touch a word, but anyone else's I do... We're not there to experiment and we're not there to let someone fail. You've got to do everything you can to make it brilliant every week."


In other news, Tahmoh Penikett, Fran Kranz, Dichen Lachman and Enver Gjokaj have joined the new series from Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. The drama is about a group of men and women, known as dolls, who are charged with carrying out a series of "assignments". They can be imprinted with different memories, skills, language and abilities appropriate to each task.

Penikett (Battlestar Galactica) will play FBI agent Paul Smith who wants to find the dolls, viewed by others as an urban myth. Kranz (Welcome to the Captain) joins as bright-spark programmer Topher Brink who does the imprinting. Lachman (Neighbours) and Gjokaj takes the role of dolls Sierra and Victor respectively. Both are friends of main doll Echo who begins to become self-aware. Eliza Dushku (Buffy, Angel) has already signed to play Echo.

Fox is planning a seven-episode season of the show for September.

Further reading: Welcome to Josh Whedon's Dollhouse