Today’s blog is a (hopefully) exciting one where I get to announce my forthcoming book properly…
‘Queer Aliens and Gay Folks, how Russell T Davies changed TV’
Out on 21st September 2023, published by the lovely Calon Books!
What’s it about? (aside from an excuse for me to cosplay the 10th Doctor at events this Autumn?)
Well, according to the press release:
The television writing of Russell T Davies defies easy categorisation, ranging from children’s programmes, across Shakespeare, historical drama and comedy, to the landmark series that have made him a household name: Queer As Folk, Doctor Who and It’s a Sin.
Gay Aliens and Queer Folk takes a deep dive into the queer narratives Russell T Davies has brought to our screens, exploring how each work created new space for LGBTQ+ stories to enter our living rooms and looking at their impact on the people who saw themselves reflected on mainstream television, often for the first time.
Covering Russell T Davies’ career from his earliest work to his highly anticipated return to the TARDIS for Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary and highlighting key themes such as politics, sex, AIDS and the role of Wales in his writing, Emily Garside reveals how Davies broke down barriers, showing gay characters unapologetically living their lives to the full and celebrating the complexity and joy of queer identities.
Which all sounds very cool, I think? (can you tell I didn’t write it? I might have just gone, ‘uh aliens and gay stuff’)
But jokes aside, how did this book come about? And what’s it all about?
Well, firstly, in part thanks to my little Schitt’s Creek book! Which is a wonderful moment of actually having ‘one thing leads to another’. I lucked out that this little pink book came out just as Calon books were being set up, and one of their lovely editors had read it, which opened up a conversation with them. Many suggestions and conversations later about potential books (anyone who knows my ADHD/Autism brain can imagine how wide a gamut that ran), and we settled on Russell T Davies as a subject.
This is where it gets proper spooky…we agreed on the proposal and I was waiting for the contract (standard) and after meeting a friend for coffee checked my email, to find the contract- hooray. I then opened Twitter to find it, and my notifications blew up because Russell T Davies had announced he was going back to Doctor Who.
This was either brilliant (as the 10th Doctor would say) or terrifying. I’m going with Brilliant for now.
But what’s it about?
Well, you know if you’re a certain age of Millenial nerd and you remember watching Queer as Folk in secret and then realized the Queer as Folk guy wrote the new Doctor Who and he then gave you a new fangirl thing, with that and Torchwood and showed you some gay people on BBC for what felt like the first time…. Then he also wrote that fucking terrifying thing with Russell Tovey and Emma Thompson and then, by the time you were a proper grown up broke your heart with Colin in Its a Sin and then said ‘hey you need to revisit your early 20s love of all things Timelord but gayer this time’?
That.
Russell T Davies has been that constant queer presence for many of us. That, if he’ll let me say it, the queer elder that many of us lacked. For the 30 and 40-something Millenials, he’s that; he’s the guy who is just ahead of us, showing us what that world is and giving us advice. It’s not always perfect advice, sometimes it’s a little bit questionable even, but we’ve got to make our own queer mistakes. He’s also going, ‘Hey, here’s some queer stories, here’s our folklore, our history have some of that.’ while also going, ‘Here’s some totally silly moments you should know about.’ Rusty T (as I’m fond of calling him) has been there, making TV a little bit more queer for us for two decades, and this is about celebrating that.
So what am I talking about in this book? Well, fortunately and unfortunately, Russell has written a lot of TVs, and a lot of it queer, so I couldn’t quite manage a chapter for everything. But there’s a bit of everything you’d expect; Queer as Folk, Doctor Who, Torchwood, Cucumber/Banana, A Very English Scandal, Years and Years, and Its a Sin get their own chapters. But alongside that, there’s a series of ‘coda’ chapters that look at running themes in Davies’ writing; women, Welshness, Politics, Sex, and more.
In writing this, I’ve got to write about some of my favourite things about Davies’ writing that until now I’ve never had a chance to. So delving into the way Welshness infuses his work, yes, but also a deeper dive into why the Doctor’s asexuality is really important to a lot of folks.
In writing it, too, I got to revisit my love of his work. Not just the obvious ones like Queer as Folk or Who but the more obscure ones. In doing that I found an even greater love of some, like A Very English Scandal which I’ll say now is one of the most underrated things Davies has written, and indeed one of the most underrated pieces of historical drama in recent years. Also underrated, criminally so, was Cucumber, which in a dramatic sense was again one of the more interesting ones. One thing I won’t be revisiting again in a hurry is Years and Years, which, don’t get me wrong, is one of the most stellar pieces of television ever written. But my god, is it terrifying. More so years after its broadcast when so much of it has come to pass. Back to the fluffy aliens, we go.
I also got to relive my Who/Torchwood fangirl era. That time for me was such a formative time of life as a queer person particularly. And the personal journey of reliving that- some of which makes it into the book- was special. Yes, I have cultivated my fashion sense after the 10th Doctor for fifteen years, yes, David Tennant remains on the shortlist of who this asexual panromantic gal would sleep with; no I will not be taking questions at this time. I probably can’t explain how formative Torchwood was to a certain type of fangirl then, or how important Captain Jack and Ianto, or Captain Jack and Captain Jack was…but I will try in this book.
So that’s the book- it’s a ride through two and a bit decades of Russell T Davies’s work…from Canal Street to Daleks and back again (via political corruption). I’m really excited to share it with the world as it’s been a true joy to write.
And of course, I’m hoping to be out and about with it- so if you’re a bookshop or somewhere that would like me to come and give a talk please let me know!
You can pre-order the book from wherever you buy your books (in the UK currently, but internationally coming soon). Indie bookshops are great, and also here’s the Waterstones link to buy it.
For publicity enquiries, please contact Lucy Ramsey lucy@ruthkillick.co.uk 07809 216781 or Ruth Killick publicity@ruthkillick.co.uk 07880 703741. To place an order, please contact maria.vassilopoulos@press.wales.ac.uk. For more information on UWP and Calon, please contact abbie.headon@press.wales.ac.uk.