The Final Chapter
ISBN: 9781846078613
Description
Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook expand their in-depth discussion of the creative life of Doctor Who to cover Russell's final year as Head Writer and Executive Producer of the show, as well as his work behind the increasingly successful Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures spin-offs.
Reviewed on 3rd February 2010
This second book is just as good as the first, although that is partly because the first half of this volume is the text of the first book, just without the scripts. The second half is brand new and covers the time from the end of the first book to the end of Russell T Davies' tenure at Doctor Who in the form of an e-mail exchange between Davies and journalist Ben Cook.
For someone dropping into this without having read the first part there are a few places where the first half doesn't make sense. In the original, scripts in progress were included at the points where Davies sent them to Cook, but to save space these have been removed from this volume. The text still makes reference to these extracts though, and no notes have been added to explain where they were meant to be.
Honestly, I didn't find the second half to be as enjoyable as the first. The two authors seem to be more comfortable with each other and Ben is less 'invisible' than before. The discussion tends to be less about writing Doctor Who and more of a biography of Davies - both his history and day-to-day life. The e-mails become longer and longer throughout, which isn't a bad thing but loses some of the informality of the original book.
Overall though it's still a good book. It's absolutely huge, and addictive reading - it almost makes you feel like you are part of the conversation and actually know the participants. I'm just hoping that the story doesn't stop here, and that Ben can continue to correspond with Davies though his next projects, or with Steven Moffat who has taken over Doctor Who.
