IGN: What is the dynamic with Rex and the other new character, Ester? What kind of sensibilities do they bring to Torchwood?
Davies: I don't want to give away too much. Rex certainly brings dynamism and energy and hostility towards Torchwood. He wants to know who the hell they are and why the hell they're so important and they can get out of his way… at first. There's a great, fun, sparky, sexy sort of antagonism to the whole thing. Ester is much calmer, but through the course of the story, she suffers some great, powerful, emotional stories as it goes on. In some ways, she's a bit of an innocent abroad and soon learns not to be. And that plays off Gwen's experience with these things. The fact that Gwen still is the most ordinary woman in the world, and Jack's huge perspective of things, having lived for thousands of years… Just telling Rex that he can't die is a hilarious scene. There's a lot of fresh material there that we'll mine, but again the new story will always move us forward.
IGN: You have a wonderful writing staff for The New World…
Gardner: We were so lucky! Oh my god, they were brilliant together.
IGN: Were you just looking down a list, pondering, "Can we get this person and this person?"
Gardner: We just worked really hard at it. I think Jane Espenson came to us first of all. We had known her work, obviously, in incredible detail. So many shows. So we started talking to her about it and she had worked with and liked working with Doris Egan a lot. Of course, I'm an avid viewer of House, and we'd watched her episodes of Smallville.
Davies: And it turned out she'd watched Torchwood.
Gardner: Yeah, and then you meet people. You're not talking about the job at that point. You start to meet them and you realize you talk about drama in a similar way…
Davies: It's a great compliment to realize they've watched our shows in the same way we've watched theirs. We usually go into the room thinking, "You won't have heard of us," but especially the science fiction community, they're so global and so welcoming.
IGN: Now that Doctor Who has done its latest big reinvention with Matt Smith, do you think the two series have completely split off at this point, or do you think another crossover is possible?
Davies: Steven [Moffat] knows the plot of The New World. As a courtesy, I sent him a synopsis and said, "Is that going to clash with anything you're doing?" We both have enough awareness of each other's worlds to avoid that. And I still executive produce The Sarah Jane Adventures in Britain. I'm still working on that, and that works in synch with Doctor Who. So we are still very much aware of each plans, without spoiling each other's news. We're very careful to make sure that we behave within the Doctor Who world, while still being completely free to tell our own stories.
IGN: I think the curiosity fans have is how Jack would react to this Doctor, since he had a specific relationship with the previous one.
Davies: Well, Steven said he'd love to see Jack in Doctor Who. So if Steven says that, Steven will make it happen, I would think. That's not inside information, but I bet one day it will happen. I'd love to see it. It would be marvelous.
Full interview here
Streaming Options
Sign Up for the SpoilerTV Newsletter where we talk all things TV!
Recommendations
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
