The Future Of Doctor Who

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1:52Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment, questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. Thank you for all your questions, everybody. Shall we get straight on or should we? We've got some sort of any other business, really, because after our advert, my hymn to various adverts last week. Oh, yes. Caroline has written in and she says, Dear Marina and Richard, it was so lovely to hear you refer to the boy on the bike, Hovis Advert. in your latest podcast. My wonderful dad, Alan Hepburn, was the advertising manager at Hovis in 1973 and was part of the team that produced this iconic ad.

2:26In fact, he always said that he and my mum sat by the music centre with loads of classical music LPs and came up with the idea of using Vorejac, which CDP agreed with. That's the advertising agency. He is now 91 and currently in hospital with a rather nasty infection. I'm going to see him later and we'll play the podcast to him. Hopefully it will cheer him up. Oh, Caroline, that is so lovely. I mean it is by the way it's not just one of my favourite it's I think it's routinely voted the nation's favourite ever ever goes down in history nostalgia for a time that they were never already past it's everything so it's iconic in all sense of the word and directed by Ridley Scott yeah and Caroline if you play this to your dad as well Alan get well soon and thank you for doing something that most people will never do what a lovely thing to have made such an impression but get well soon my friend shall I ask you a question please do and it's a question We've had lots of versions of this question, but Rob McGough, you are first out of the trap, so I'm going to do your version of it.

3:22Rob asks, Disney have ended their much criticised co-production deal with the BBC to make Doctor Who. Will Disney consider the whole ordeal a mistake? OK, clearly Disney have ended the deal, so they certainly consider it something they want to get out of. It's strange because it sort of happened quite late. It happened almost after the era of what we remember now as the lovely co-production money era, where basically streamers were trying to build scale and get a hold on various markets. And so lots of things were co-production and lots of very expensive things. This was the peak TV era, but people were losing money, huge amounts of money, but they wanted to build scale.

4:01So someone like Netflix was just spending enormous, unsustainable amounts of money trying to do these things. So we had all these shows. This actually came later than that. They didn't even put out a statement, Disney, saying that, you know, the statement came from the BBC saying that they had been a great partner and so on. I mean, clearly they're disappointed. I don't know if they've been a great partner. No. Listen, I'm sure they've been, you know, they're no David Harbour, but I don't know if they've been great. Obviously, they put it on Disney Plus and what they, it's quite tricky. We know what it is because it's very sort of idiosyncratically British.

4:34It's a sort of tea time family drama thing that's sci-fi as well. To them, it might have been like, well is it YA is it like or is it you know is it like Percy Jackson which has done a show that's in that kind of space that's done much better for them and you know is on the second season and all of that certainly I'm never sure they quite understood it they certainly didn't promote it in lots of ways like their native shows as it were and also by the way because Russell T Davies was such a big part of that deal and is such a big part of Doctor Who he was I think they accepted that he was going to have creative control of what it looked like so Disney executives were not able to say, I wonder if we can make this a bit more Disney, which of course was the thing everyone was terrified about.

5:16And a bit more categorizable for them in their much more set categories. And he is idiosyncratic and a maverick and all those sort of things. He's obviously brilliant and amazing and we love him. And so I think in some ways, I mean, as I say, what they want is they want there to be awards and nominations and it didn't have those. There might have been a technical award or something, but I've seen different estimates on the episode cost and I think there's kind of north end of them where people were saying it's£10 million an episode. Russell T Davies was like, oh my God, I would literally be talking to you for my moon base if that was the case.

5:51Having said that, it massively and by multiples increased what the budget was before on the BBC. Whether you need that or not, there'll always be people saying, oh, we like cardboard sets and just great stories. I personally, and this is nothing from anyone on the show, but I think they had a problem with the casting of the lead character. I think Shuti Gatwa, I am told, he didn't particularly love doing it. And it's not for everyone that role. And you are so much more than the lead in a particular drama. When it came back, and under Russell T Davison, there was Christopher Eccleston, he did it for one season, and it clearly wasn't for him either.

6:28David Tennant, revolution, you know, bought it, he grew up a... It's fair to say it was for him. Yeah, it was for him, but he was a Doctor Who obsessive. So was Peter Capaldi, who came next but one. and they fully understood what the nature of that role is. You're not just the lead in that thing. You are an ambassador. You do all sorts of other things and it all feeds back. But it sort of occupies a role in the life of the nation to some degree. Matt Smith, who was so young, who is absolutely one of the most amazing Doctor Who's of all time. I think he's incredible. Sorry, one of the most amazing doctors of all time.

7:02I think he's incredible. It's extraordinary that he played it with such sensitivity and he was both old and young at the same time. He did it amazingly. But he also understood that you're a form of ambassador. I didn't get that at all from Shuti Gawa at all. I think he had other projects. He wasn't that committed to that thing. I definitely think that the Americans thought that he wasn't necessarily 100 % available there to be a kind of... He's definitely in demand for obvious reasons. Yeah, and he's done lots of different things and he's done theatre. He's done, you know, two plays and whatever in the time of all of that.

7:34He said, you know, I'm getting old. I'm 33. okay as i say it's a failure to call someone who fully understood the full implications and weight and responsibilities of the role and also actually i think if you are the lead in a big american tv show and this for this purposes is both there are certain things that might be expected of your time and perhaps that didn't occur and it's it's absolutely a deal that made sense for the bbc and made sense for Disney. You do all sorts of collaborations in this business and a lot of the times they don't come off for lots and lots of reasons. But you have to look back and go, was this a mistake?

8:12I don't think it was. I think that Russell T Davies felt that he would have the same creative control he would have elsewhere, but with more money. And I think Disney were thinking, we've got this piece of IP, this franchise, that if we can just get a bit of traction on this, this can serve us for the next 10 years because we can have lots and lots of spin-offs. we can build a whole universe around Doctor Who, this thing that we feel has been undervalued and there are lots of places. And they were already starting to do that. There's the spin-off, the war between the land and the sea and things like that.

8:41So they are coming. Yeah, but it absolutely made sense for both sides. Yet sometimes, for whatever reason, it just doesn't work. And sometimes personnel change in organisations and sometimes... And cultural change, I have to say. I'm afraid in contemporary America and contemporary Disney, where they're thinking, oh we corrected too closely towards what I mean for want of a better phrase a woke agenda they're now moving away from that and back to some reason back to some form of what they consider to be returning to some form of mainstream again I don't you know I can tell you what those sort of thoughts are and Russell T Davies is an enemy of all of that and he'll do whatever he wants he's not going to compromise but the reason that Disney signed up is the same reason that lots of other people will sign up as well because it does feel like it's an underutilized piece of IP.

9:32Yeah. So if I can just talk about the magic of show business for a moment, you know, it feels like you could really create a huge world out of this. And there are plenty of big media companies with very deep pockets at the moment, content companies at least, that, you know, somebody else, it would be worth their while to put some money into this. And BBC are very good now at doing deals with other people. Or, you know, whether it's an all-encompassing umbrella like Disney, which comes with certain expectations, as you say, and where there has to suddenly there is a corporate thing that is bigger than, you know, Disney is one of the few corporate things that is bigger than the BBC.

10:06But it's such a great franchise. And you could see a way through this that Doctor Who lives forever on a different streamer. So, yeah, I think, you know what? Wrong place, wrong time, right idea. Okay, Richard, one for you from Jamie, who says, I'm on holiday in Turkey. It's lovely. Thank you for asking. and I saw someone reading a book with the worldwide best-selling author on the front cover. It made me think, what do you need to do to be classed as a worldwide best-selling author? Does shifting a few copies in Latvia and Chad make you worldwide, for instance? It is a very specific thing, actually, if you want to call yourself...

10:41So there's lots of different things to see in the front cover of a book. A Sunday Times bestseller, you might see. Now, that means it has to be in the top 10 of the Sunday Times. It only needs to be there for a week and it only needs to be on one of their charts. So if it's, they have the hardback fiction, paperback fiction, hardback non-fiction, paperback non-fiction. If you're in any of those top tens, you are a Sunday Times bestseller. You will then sometimes see number one Sunday Times bestseller. That is self-explanatory. That means that it was, that means it was number one. I remember in week two of Thursday Murder Club, when that came out, it went to, I think it went to number two in Ireland, because Graham Norton is always number one in Ireland.

11:16So after the first week, we called it Sunday, number one Sunday Times bestseller. from the second week because it had been the top 10 in Ireland where you're allowed to call it an international bestseller. Very good. Essentially it means two if it's in two territories you're in the official countries. That's a trend. Yeah that is a trend. Worldwide bestseller I think is not an official thing but you would not be able to do that if you had not been in more than two charts around the world. The Latvia and Chad question is interesting because if you they would not be the first territory that you had sold to if you weren't already an international bestseller yes so if you sell in the uk and you sell in america and you sell in germany or italy the big big big markets that's when all the other markets come along so how does it go just out of interest it goes it would go well the first place we sold thursday murder club was germany weirdly it's the first deal we signed before we'd even signed the uk deal just because we it's the uk deal took slightly longer for lots of reasons so germany was the first country to buy thursday Murder Club, which is lovely for me because they had no idea what point this was.

12:20They just liked the book. It would normally go UK and sometimes you would do a UK. Well, UK and UK is often UK and Commonwealth. So if you sell to the UK, your publisher will also then have the rights in Canada, South Africa, all the Commonwealth territories, essentially. It's not always the case. Mine are carved out, so I have different deals in different territories. I bet you do. But that would be the normal thing. You would often on submission, which is when you send a book to different publishers, you would send it on submission to the US and the UK at the same time. That's normal because there's lots and lots of links between those territories.

12:58So UK, US, Germany, because it's the next biggest market. And then, you know, you have your Italy's. Yeah, I was going to say. France is always tricky. France is the place that's the place I don't sell. They're trickier there. But some people sell millions in France. And I just, I go over there and everyone's like, no, this book we don't like. And you're like, come on, guys. But yeah, so Italy, those big European countries. And then all the Eastern European countries will come in. South America then comes in. And then if you're out in, you know, Japan, China, that would tend to be, you know, maybe six months later when they've seen sales figures from other places.

13:35But yeah, so you cannot call yourself a bestseller if you haven't been in that top 10. you cannot call yourself an international bestseller if you haven't been in uh uh two top tens so now we can win like new york times bestseller which is another lovely thing to be but you yeah you can't fake any of those things at all so it always means something specific worldwide i assume is the same as international i assume it would be a you know a thing but yeah you you can't do it unless you've been in uh two top tens and you can't be an international number one bestseller if you haven't been number one in two territories.

14:07So it's very, very, very specific and people are getting an awful lot of trouble if they put something on there that they couldn't then back up. Who do you get in trouble with? Who are the book police? That is such a good question. I imagine that, yeah, the Publishers Association, I don't know. There are the sort of big publishers and if one of the publishers broke rank, they wouldn't be invited to parties anymore. I think is how it works. That line of work is hialge. It's hialge. Yeah, it really is. Thank you, Jamie. Marina, Gary Powell has a question for you. Hi, Gary. On vinyl sales, it's a simple question, keeps it tight.

14:44Who is making money from the resurgence in the popularity of vinyl? Well, keeping my answer tight, at least at the start, Gary, I would say record companies and artists. You are completely right that it's climbing as a share of revenue for the UK recorded music industry, which I think, which was worth, I've written this down, it is, last year was worth 1.49 billion and vinyl accounted for 145 million. So as you can see, it's a lot. If you add in CDs to that, so physical copies of music, it's 246 million. So... I mean, you wouldn't say no to it. No, I mean, and in the US, it's even bigger. It's a much higher margin per unit, obviously, with a physical copy of music than it is for any sort of stream.

15:31As you can see, there are certain people who really have driven it. Someone like Taylor Swift, who is, you know, there's so many different editions, physical editions of Life of a Showgirl. I was saying to you earlier, my daughter asked for one of them. She asked for the record, and I was like, do you know what this is? I mean, you don't have anything to play this on. I mean, what? And she's like, no, I just wanted. It's a collectible. And people, in an era when people have grown up sort of renting everything, you know, people used to sort of treasure their copies of movies and things like that.

16:02Everything is rented. Everything is streamed. It's strangely, people have come back to it. And it's also, obviously, music retailers, as in actual stores, bricks and mortar stores, they're seeing more football. And it's, there's more of it. But, and obviously, vinyl pressing plants, all of those sorts of things. but in general you make so much more money obviously from a physical copy of anything it's a proper old school thing which is that there is a margin in it but they're trying to make it new school and you see someone like Taylor Swift who really doesn't have need of doing this has put so many of the latest album there's so many different physical editions you can have record companies and artists and every artist nowadays in the old days as we've talked about before would have had some sort of blanket deal on what they took and now everyone's got these individual contracts because otherwise sometimes they don't even need to be with a record company I mean, it's almost like merch these days.

16:53It is. A vinyl album. You know, it's like a T-shirt. Yes. But you're, I think we need to get a record player. Not you and me. Yeah. But I was talking to Ingrid about it the other day. I was saying, will you get a record player? It's just nice. Yeah. There's something nice about putting, you know, the needle down. I was trying to explain it to my daughter and thinking, yeah, you know, it would be really nice to be just doing that. Yeah, I know what you mean. And obviously lots of other people are having these sort of thoughts. So anyway, that is the relatively brief answer to that question, Gary.

17:19I would sell an album for cost price, but I would then do a cheaper version which had adverts in between each track. You'll just do your own deal for definite. Always do your own deal. Always thinking. Always thinking. Shall we go to a break now? Yeah, let's do this. Shall we go to an adverb? Yes.

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19:24Welcome back, everybody. This is a question from the entire Stewart family for you, Richard. As in the Tudors and the Stewarts. Yeah, actually the different spelling, but I feel that they are their own dynasty. And yes, I'm treating them as such in the asking this question. Can you please help me with an answer for our inquisitive six-year-old? Yes, that might be our youngest questioner yet. Yes. What's the process for the author and illustrator working together in a children's illustrated book? Is it words, then pictures, or more of a collaboration done in stages? Also, how do illustrators get paid for this type of work?

19:55Is it a one-off fee or royalty-based or a combination? Thank you very much for that question. What a good question from a six-year-old. Everyone else that's got their six-year-olds in the back of the car just going, why don't you ask a question like that? Then we can be on the podcast. Yes. Genuinely, it changes from book to book. So if you are a writer with a great children's story, then often a publisher will put you with an illustrator. Or, you know, when you spend a lot of time in children's publishing, you kind of know illustrators. And so, you know, if you get the combination of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, who, you know, are the best-selling authors pretty much in the whole world.

20:37You know, they've worked together forever and ever and ever. Sometimes people will do both themselves. You take someone like Nadia Shireen, who's one of our great children's book writers. She does the illustration and she does the words. And so she doesn't have to worry about what comes first. But I asked Nadia Shireen, and genuinely, if you've not read her book, she is, I think, our finest children's author. And this is the definitive answer from the definitive author. she said what often happens is that an author will write a story and submit it to a publisher the author may have someone in mind they would like to illustrate it but it is the publisher who makes the pairing the publishers will probably show the story to different illustrators and see who's the right fit and also whose schedules match up if you're an illustrator who already has an impressive portfolio then publishers will search around they'll do the other way around for a suitable text as they will be keen to use you and this is where having an agent is useful to as they will be able to share your work with as many publishers as possible so if you're a writer they'll look for an illustrator if you're a great illustrator they'll look for a writer the author and illustrator will typically both be paid in advance and if the book sells loads of copies they may start to get royalties after they've earned out that advance if the book doesn't sell loads of copies the author and illustrator will get to keep their advance anyway all different groups of people work very very differently so axel scheffler for example julia donaldson some of the first books she did were based on things that she'd already written so songs she had written so axel would take a look at that do the drawing send them to julia she would send something back say i'm not sure about this i'm not sure about that like elton john and bernie torpin yeah um if for a reference that your six-year-old will understand uh so did she ever want ring down to a hotel front desk like elton didn't ask if they could make the wind stop blowing julia donaldson i genuinely doubt it although that's a good name for a book could you make the wind stop yeah He's hilarious about it by the way.

22:24Very, very funny. Julia Donaldson. He is of overindulgence. Oh yeah. As I say, six year old asking the question. Julia Donaldson is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. In fact, almost all children's authors are the nicest people you'll meet in the whole world. I went to a reception recently and Julia Donaldson was there. Chris Riddell was there. Cressida Cowell, he does How to Train Your Dragon. She was there. I mean, Chris Riddell's books are so beautiful. Yes, and again, he will often do both or sometimes he'll work to other people's things. The big gossip there was, I said, talk to me about this celebrities doing kids books, come on.

22:59I said, who do you not mind? Who do you not mind doing this? And the name they all came up with, Nadia Shereen was there as well, like also all the greatest of our children's authors and illustrators. I said, who do you not mind? And the person who got full marks from everyone, Dermot O 'Leary. That's lovely to know. They said, no, we love Dermot. I thought that's nice Everyone loves Dermot I love Dermot Yeah yeah exactly So Axel Scheffler is on a back end for the book So that's how he gets paid So he'll get his money up front It's the same with it Julia, Will, they're a team And he will also get money at every book you sell There are illustrators for hire So you know someone has written a book In the celebrity world as well And someone will just get paid for doing the drawings And that would be what you call a buyout Which means you get a certain amount of money That money will That's all the money that you're going to get but the loveliest books always look into if you're buying books does someone do it all themselves or if there's an author and an illustrator you can you can find out if they work together you can find out if they like each other you can find out if they've done stuff before if there's a book that doesn't tell you for example who did the illustration i mean come on shame on that book yeah yeah exactly it's all different things for all different people but you know the great the really really great well either people who do it by themselves or the great teams like julia and Axel, it is just an absolute combination of just two people who are in sync with each other who know what each other need and what each other want.

24:23Lots of little technical things like... But you absorb each... you have a sort of... you develop a combined aesthetic that has come from working in concert for so long. Yeah, exactly that. Lots of little technical things like if a... you know, how big does a speech bubble need to be had or, you know, the speech at the bottom and things like that. But that all gets worked out in the process. But yeah, so with Julia Donaldson, it'll usually be text and then Axel will work around it. sometimes it'll be different to that but lots and lots of different ways of doing it but it's lovely if someone does it all themselves or if you have a team like julio and axel who you know just adore each other and work completely in tandem and you know the real takeaway is that they all love dermot marina a question for you from gina walsh gina asks do writers care about online fan theories what happens when a fan theory is better than the actual plot okay okay fan theories is the practice of people having theories about how a show is going to pan out story wise and obviously with things within sometimes it'll just be a you know a limited series drama and people will think you know I think Hugh Grant did it I think Nicole given it or whatever it is and I think there was this easter egg in episode one or whatever it is so while something's kind of on air while it's on air but in the shows that had run for many seasons several seasons I mean you You know, we live in a, you know, the first big one of this in the modern era was something like Lost, where people were saying, OK, what's happening?

25:46Is the island moving? Is, you know, what is to explain all these things that I'm seeing on screen? And it became a sort of, and that also took off in a time where people were using the Internet more than they'd ever had done. And so people develop theories about what's going on in shows, but it's become completely, you know, there are subreddits, there's everything devoted to this, and there's just ordinary social media, people talking in real time of what's going to happen in shows. and they're very proprietorial about them, fans. It can be quite difficult for writers. A lot of writers say, you know, some of the biggest shows of our age are sort of teeming with fan theories, severance, yellow jackets, things like that.

26:23People try to say, I know what happens or I know what's going to happen. Writers, it's difficult because they do talk a lot about, even in writers rooms, people talk about, oh yeah, they'll be screenshotting this particular frame because they know that fans will like literally pause it and then look around and think and they notice everything. I mean, I remember when I was being taught literature as a teenager and you'd be doing a novel and they'd be saying, and this symbolizes this and you'd be like, yeah, but did they actually think about all of this when they're writing? The answer, certainly in modern television, which is quite close to the novelistic form, yes, they have thought about all these things.

27:02Now, the big thing is that do you get swayed? They all say, any writer will tell you, don't get swayed. First of all, stay away from them and don't read the fan theories because it will get in your head. Don't be swayed by them. If it comes out that people have guessed, a lot of these shows do have big denouements and big explanations. What has actually happened in Yellow Jackets, which is about a plane crash that happened in Yellow Jackets is interesting. There are lots and lots of mysteries. It has a 90s timeline and it has a current timeline. when the girls who were in this kind of plane crash are much older.