Jack was based off Spike??!! And other oddness

[ericadawn16]

Torchwood Magazine, Issue 17, October/November 2009

Russell T. Davies

Question and Reply about Steven under cut
Killing Steven must have given you pause, though?

"No, because that literally came out of the story, and when I started writing, we didn't know that would be the ending. In fact, when I wrote the first draft, Steven didn't die. It was Julie and Euros and everyone else who read it who convinced me that he had to. Originally, I'd resisted it, but they were right...Besides, it is a science fiction death: it's not like you're seeing a child strangled, or something awful like that. It's absolutely horrible, but it does have a gloss of fantasy about it."

Gwen...

"Frankly, Rhys is very killable, because it would put Gwen through so much dramatically, but eventually you've got to realize what you've got, as a colleague of mine who worked on soap operas used to say 'You don't rape Snow White.' In other words, you shouldn't punish your central characters to the point where they become the walking wounded. It's one of those science fiction format things again, where writers often think that the lead characters are there to be punished, and I think we bordered on that in series one."

Jack...

"He was meant to be Spike from Buffy. Before series one was even cast, I thought the Doctor and Rose might be getting a bit comfortable by episode eight, so I had to get a man on board to shake things up a bit."

Fourth series...

"If there is a fourth series, I don't think we'll be rebuilding the Hub. It won't be business as usual, otherwise Children of Earth might as well never happened."

Gareth David-Lloyd

Question and Reply about Ianto under cut
Would you go back if asked?

"Oh, I'd love to work with that team again, yes...I don't know how they would go about bringing Ianto back again though, unless it was a flashback. It was quite final when he died. so they'd have to be quite clever about it. But I'd happily come back if it was believable and didn't spoil the lovely final scene we did. As long as it didn't cheapen it, then yes, I'd be there."

I'd just like to say to most of this...WTF???

Comments

[jackdavfan692.livejournal.com]

Yeah? What I saw must not have been the full story, then.

I guess you could say I'm kind of in that group, too. When I rated part two on Gallifrey Base after watching it (my username is the same as the one I had for DWF, if you want to find me. I'll be spending most of my time in the Doctor Who-related part of the forum.), I gave it a 9/10, and though I didn't post in the thread where we could rate the story as a whole, I'd say my rating would have been 10/10. Now that I've thought about it more, though, both those ratings have changed. Part one I'd give 9/10, because some of the "the Master has superpowers" stuff was a bit over the top, but everything else, including that surprise cliffhanger ending where we're informed that the Time Lords are back, was great.
For part two, I'd drop the rating down to, oh, 8/10. It lost a point for two main reasons. First, the whole thing with the Time Lords returning wasn't quite as epic as I thought it would be. It was set up as this dire threat to Earth, time, and the universe at the end of part one, but I didn't get the same sense of urgency when they materialized on Earth in front of the Doctor and the Master. I loved the twist of the Master being the one to send them back into the Time War, Lord President Rassilon & the Doctor's confrontation, and the Doctor being thrust into making the difficult decision to either kill the Master or return the Time Lords to where they came from (basically killing them all again), but that was about it. The other reason for the drop in rating is I felt Donna was way underused. In part one, we had her memory starting to come back. My thought was "Great =)! I wonder if she'll survive her "remembering", and if she does, how? Is she going to play in important role in eliminating the threat the Doctor has to face?" But we didn't get any of that. Just her falling asleep, and waking up with still no memory of the Doctor and their travels together. The other quibble I have with this part, though it's a minor one, is why on earth did RTD pair Martha up with Mickey? I imagine including them in the same scene was a means for Ten to say goodbye to both of them at the same time, but why have them be married? It's totally out of sync with what we know from both Doctor Who, and if you want to include it, COE. Hinting that Martha recruited him to UNIT (I assume, judging from the way the two of them were dressed) would have been plenty.
Also, like you said to me in a reply to one of my LJ posts, Ten's parting gift to Jack was a big letdown, if you assume his goodbye took place during the period after Jack left Earth at the end of COE. Having the note say something meant as an encouragement for him to go on without Ianto would have been better than what it did say, IMO.

***Looks at what I just wrote*** Wow, that's a long paragraph :P. What about "The End Of Time" didn't you like, besides Ten's goodbye present to Jack?