Torchwood writer John Fay talks to Scyfilove about The New World and THAT death scene
On killing off Ianto he says: “Russell wanted that to happen, although they are my words. It was absolutely the right thing to do though from the point of view of the story and what it gave to the last episode… In my mind, I was always aware that Jack had gone through this situation many times before, and that was really interesting to me. How do you have a relationship and fall in love with someone when you know – absolutely know – you will be around to see them die?
“I still think I didn’t quite nail it. There is a line there that I never managed to put my finger on, or maybe didn’t want to… At the time, Children of Earth was the first thing I had written after my dad died and I wonder if I feel that way because I was writing about my dad in some way through that time.”
On The New World he says: “Like anything in life you can rest on your laurels, or you can try to push on again and achieve something new. That is what Russell has done. On Children of Earth he had a very clear and defined vision, but what he has outlined for The New World is equally, if not more ambitious than before…
“I mean, f**king hell, Russell has assembled one hell of a team and then there’s me! I was very impressed by the other writers when I went in to meet them.
“We worked from 9-5 each day to storyline the show, but in much greater detail than I was used to from working in England… That was more ‘we want it to be kind of like this’, a looser structure, whereas in America we beat out every detail of each episode and went one step at a time. It was fascinating to see that approach.
“We are starting from scratch to some degree, but what helps us is we have got such well established characters in Jack and Gwen that people know and love… Obviously Torchwood is an established show with an clear history which we will refer too, but we have to embrace people who maybe haven’t seen any Torchwood before. If you get too self-referential it can get dull, so what’s gone before will be referenced, but in a subtle way.”
Check out the full interview here .
