Who On Who?

Elisabeth Mahoney enjoys an amiable wander through Doctor Who lore with David Tennant and Russell T Davies

I'm not convinced that the world exactly needed Who On Who?(Radio 2) given the plugging of all things Doctor Who recently and the fact that this chat between David Tennant and Russell T Davies expressed little more than mutual admiration, but it was an amiable wander through their time together on the show.

The lively banter between them helped. Davies's phone beeped just after the interview started. "I like the fact you haven't turned your phone off," Tennant said in a mock snap. There was comic self-deprecation from both. "Listen to me, like Steve Wright," quipped Tennant after a smooth, borderline cheesy link into some music. Davies mulled over that question mark in the programme title. "You're Doctor Who," he told Tennant, "and nobody knows who I am."

The most interesting material concerned how Davies had adapted his writing style for the genre. "My natural style doesn't explain what's going on. I will not have characters sitting down explaining why they're doing things," he said. "In science fiction you have to do that because they're not doing real things." But he has changed some conventions too, such as adding in more emotion than audiences were used to. "It's not good enough to write sci-fi as cold and emotionless," he argued. "I just carried on writing it as drama."