Doctor Who's showrunner writes exclusively for DWM... This issue Russell is writing from the eye of the Doctor Who publicity storm as it takes the TARDIS to The Big Apple!

I am writing this in New York! It’s the Doctor Who press junket (definition of junket: a sweet milky pudding, or a promotional trip, discuss). This is how it works. We’re put in a hotel, me, Ncuti, Millie, plus their agents, with fleets of publicists. We all have a chocolate TARDIS in our rooms, to welcome us! (And none of this comes out of the licence fee, don’t worry.) Then an entire floor of the hotel is set aside; there’s a room of food, which ends up untouched because we’re so busy, plus rooms with cameras in, one for each of us. (You’ve seen these rooms on every bit of publicity made in the last 20 years, usually a dark curtain with the logo in the background, often with Alison Hammond nearby. I wish! We want Allison!) And there’s another room where, for half an hour every day, Ncuti and Millie and me are brought together to face a zoomful of journalists, 20 faces in boxes, all staring at us. This is my least favourite half hour of the day; Ncuti and Millie look beautiful, I look like the Werthers Original Grandpa.

Then it’s back to our individual rooms. I sit there, on camera. Sometimes a journalist will come to sit opposite me, but most appear on camera, from Spain, from Berlin, from Rio. And it’s fast! The PR in charge tells them ‘You have six minutes.’ Once in a while, it’s ‘You have nine minutes’ and I wonder what Faustian pact has gained them the extra time. Once a day, someone has 15 minutes and I think this must be a Pulitzer winner!

This amounts to, on average, 28 interviews every day. 48 if you include that zoom. Over three days that’s 144. It’s dizzying! The thing is: you’re encouraged to repeat yourself. Or you’d go mad. No one has 144 different anecdotes. At the same time, you’re encouraged to, as the PR speak has it, ‘Bring your roses.’ I hooted at that phrase, but I’ve come to like it. It means, give out gifts. Have certain stories that you can choose for each journalist; that’s for you, that’s for you, that’s for you. And now and again, if you really like an interviewer: have the bunch!

It becomes a mad blur. I repeat. I forget I’ve repeated and repeat again. I act, I try to make every story sound new. Sometimes I lie. Sometimes I bait. An imp in my mind still wants to find 144 stories - isn’t that my job?! - so while I talk, a searchlight in my head is sweeping those dark corners for treasures. I’m in a freefall of words and find myself saying things I haven’t thought about for years. Lots of journalists ask about The Devil’s Chord, how the expensive copyright on Beatles tracks inspired my idea to have Maestro taking music away, but then suddenly, one afternoon (is it afternoon? The windows are still curtained, we are cocooned) I find myself saying, “It’s Peer Gynt.” A pause. “Oh?” “Yes, it’s Act IV of Peer Gynt, the tumbleweeds appear and tell Peter: We are the songs, you should have sung us. A thousand times, you stifled and strangled us. In the mine of your heart, we’ve lain and waited, we were never summoned. Curse you, curse you.” A pause. A silence. Then. “So what was it like to work with Jinkx Monsoon?!”

But that’s true, that’s what inspired Maestro draining Timothy Drake’s heart. Where do you get your ideas from? Ibsen! Somehow the blur of words has woken that fact from its hiding place.

On and on it goes, and it’s knackering - though I’m not complaining, I love this stuff because I think it’s important. We want Doctor Who in every headline across the world. So onwards, onwards!

Then suddenly, oh faithful DWM reader, it all comes full circle. Out of the blue, one journalist - I’m sorry, I can’t remember, was it Eric? - finishes his six minutes. “Thank you, bye!” But then he says quickly, “I just wanted to say…”

Argh, hurry up, the switchover from one interviewer to another is fast! It’s brutal! You’re on a bobsleigh, Eric, you’ve got about eight seconds! What?!

“I just wanted to say thank you for your page in Doctor Who Magazine.”

“Oh. Wait! What? This page?”

“If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have got into journalism, I wouldn’t be doing this job today.”

“Really? Gosh! But how - ?”

“Well, because - “

Click!

“Hi, this is Amber from HotSpike in Chile! What was it like to work with Jinkx Monsoon?!”

Gone. Eric. If it was Eric. Goodbye.

But what a lovely thing to say. No one’s ever said that before. And I reckon there’s a chance that Eric might still be reading, so…

Thank you. Hugely. Thank you.

Onwards.

“Amber, we had so much fun! Like Ibsen says…”