History Creator / RussellTDavies

[[folder:Tropes applying to him:]]
* LyingCreator: [[invoked]] It has become well-known in the ''Who'' fandom to never trust anything Davies says.
** For one thing, he once said that he didn't like the Master and wasn't planning on bringing him back. This proved to definitely ''not'' be the case.
** Davies also said he didn't like multi-Doctor stories, only to dedicate a whole Children in Need short to one.
** This has caused fans to distrust him when he says something sensible and thankfully true, such as "It's better not to show the Time War."
** Davies used a phony name, an anagram of ''Series/DoctorWho'', during production of the 2005 series to prevent would-be pirates from spotting the tapes. That phony name would later become [[Series/{{Torchwood}} the name of a spinoff series]].
** After [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E13Doomsday "Doomsday"]], he told the press Rose was gone for good. He told Creator/BilliePiper, "See you in two years".
** RTD's still lying in regards to ''Doctor Who'' even after stepping down from it. He said he would never write an episode for Creator/MattSmith's Doctor. Guess who guest stars in the RTD-penned ''Series/TheSarahJaneAdventures'' story [[Recap/TheSarahJaneAdventuresS4E5E6DeathOfTheDoctor "Death of the Doctor"]].
* PromotedFanboy: He's very much a fan of ''Doctor Who'' who also got to bring it back and be the showrunner. Twice, as of 2021.
* ProudToBeAGeek: Self-admitted, and as such he writes geeky characters sympathetically.
->''"What I like about [[Series/{{Torchwood}} this show]] is that a lot of the staff, and I include myself, are geeks. So there was no way we would write a geek as an idiot, as anally retentive, as thick."''
-->-- Behind the Scenes feature for ''Recap/TorchwoodS1E9RandomShoes''
[[/folder]]

->''"What I like about this show is that a lot of the staff, and I include myself, are geeks. So there was no way we would write a geek as an idiot, as anally retentive, as thick."''
-->-- '''Creator/RussellTDavies''', Behind the Scenes feature for ''Recap/TorchwoodS1E9RandomShoes''

* ''Series/Century Falls''

* ''Century Falls''

Stephen Russell Davies (born 27 April 1963 in Swansea, UsefulNotes/{{Wales}}), better known as Russell T. Davies, is a British producer and screenwriter, born in Swansea. He added the T to his name because there was already a Russell Davies in UK media.

Stephen Russell Davies (born 27 April 1963 in Swansea, Wales), better known as Russell T. Davies, is a British producer and screenwriter, born in Swansea. He added the T to his name because there was already a Russell Davies in UK media.

* AttackOfTheKillerWhatever: He frequently creates monsters and threats out of innocuous Earth things: mannequins, stretches of skin, game shows, Santa Clauses and Christmas trees, monks, little old ladies, giant crabs, angels, human fat, GPSs, beetles, manta rays, water... and that's just ''Doctor Who''.

Originally from a background in children's TV, he wrote and produced a number of adult dramas between the mid 90s and the revival of ''Series/DoctorWho'' in 2005, most notably ''Series/QueerAsFolk'', and soon became one of the most influential and popular TV writers in the UK.

* ''Series/QueerAsFolk''

[[/folder]]

* BigFun: He's rather large, and is always seen to be jolly and enthusiastic.

* PromotedFanboy: He's very much a fan of ''Doctor Who'' who also got to bring it back and be the showrunner.
** Twice, as of 2021.
* RidiculousProcrastinator: He has [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_T_Davies#Writing_style admitted]] to being this himself, and isn't happy about it.
* VitriolicBestBuds: His relationship with Steven Moffat. The two get along fabulously, but they will frequently take the piss out of one another.

* MagicVersusScience: This conflict comes up in the ''Doctor Who'' episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E2TheShakespeareCode "The Shakespeare Code"]], and in ''Wizards vs. Aliens''.

-->--'''Frank Cottrell-Boyce''', when asked what Davies' greatest contribution to British television was.

* GrandFinale:[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]] was one for both his time as the showrunner and Creator/DavidTennant's time as the Tenth Doctor.

* SoftReboot: When ''Doctor Who'' came back in 2005, Davies could adequately be described as a man utterly terrified of continuity running amok, like in the 1980s. Information about the Doctor and the show's lore was tightly controlled and parcelled out in the tiniest possible portions. When it became an enormous hit, he relaxed this policy (cf. "School Reunion"), but never truly abolished it. Even the montage of previous Doctors in "The Next Doctor", the most 'for the fans' moment in his tenure, was included solely on the suggestion of producer Julie Gardner, whose judgement he trusted specifically because she was not a classic Whovian.
** Particularly used with the Cybermen. In the revived show, they were given a new origin, a new design, and a new place in the show, but since they hailed from another universe they were stated to be different from the Cybermen of the classic series.

** The Daleks. A recurring element with them under Davies's run was them becoming "infected" with human thoughts and emotions. The Doctor also points out how they live their whole lives without being touched and and alone.

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

Stephen Russell Davies (born 27 April 1963 in Swansea, Wales), better known as Russell T. Davies, is a British producer and screenwriter, born in Swansea. He added the T to his name because [[NamesTheSame there was already a Russell Davies in UK media]].

* The 2005 revival of ''Series/DoctorWho'' (31 episodes, plus one 2005 Children in Need special, written or co-written, 2005-2010. Returned to the position after Chris Chibnall’s departure.)

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mv5bmje1mzexmdq5mf5bml5banbnxkftztgwmtkynje2ntm_v1.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[{{Recap/TheFiveishDoctorsReboot}} Quel dommage, Davros!]]]]

Liberally uses AuthorAppeal, and as a result, placed Wales firmly in the centre of the Franchise/{{Whoniverse}} alongside London. Also became famous for finally upgrading all the [[invoked]]HoYay subtext in ''Doctor Who'' to proper TV canon, for abolishing NoHuggingNoKissing in the series forever, and for dialing all of the above -- Wales, HoYay and tons of sex -- UpToEleven and beyond in ''Series/{{Torchwood}}''.

Davies has written several ''Doctor Who'' episodes and specials over his tenure as producer, and been responsible for rewrites on many more. He stepped down from the position following the conclusion of production on the Creator/DavidTennant era, handing the reins to Creator/StevenMoffat. He is currently set to return to the position in 2023, after the departure of Moffat's own replacement Creator/ChrisChibnall.

Known as RTD (or sometimes "Rusty") by Whovians, he has a penchant for naming characters "Tyler" and/or "Smith". He also tends to inject {{Camp}} and {{Technobabble}} in very large doses, and his characters are [[EveryoneIsBi highly likely to be bisexual]].

* AuthorAppeal: UsefulNotes/{{Wales}}, HoYay, self-aware campiness, and, in ''Doctor Who'', the Daleks.

Liberally uses AuthorAppeal, and as a result, placed Wales firmly in the centre of the Franchise/{{Whoniverse}} alongside London. Also became famous for finally upgrading all the HoYay subtext in ''Doctor Who'' to proper TV canon, for abolishing NoHuggingNoKissing in the series forever, and for dialing all of the above -- Wales, HoYay and tons of sex -- UpToEleven and beyond in ''Series/{{Torchwood}}''.

** The TARDIS started out broken; completely unsteerable to the point where the Doctor can never leave a place and time that he's not completely done with, because he can never return. During the Fourth Doctor's tenure, he switched to using the "secondary control room", which allowed him to steer the TARDIS for the first time ([[FanWank onscreen, anyway]]), although due to his personality he often wouldn't and even installed a "Randomiser" to make control of it impossible again. The new series establishes right from the very beginning that the Doctor knows how to fly his TARDIS now, showing it capable of manoeuvres stated to be completely impossible for most of the Classic Doctors (the earliest example being the Ninth Doctor's AndAnotherThing rematerialization in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E1Rose Rose]]"), but every so often a story will start with the Doctor mis-steering the TARDIS and ending up somewhere unwanted, such as "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E7TheIdiotsLantern The Idiot's Lantern]]" ('50s Britain and not '50s America), "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E2ToothAndClaw Tooth and Claw]]" (the Victorian era rather than the '70s), and completely {{Deconstructed}} in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E4AliensOfLondon Aliens of London]]" (a year after Rose left instead of a few hours).

* GrandFinale:[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]] was one for both his time as the showrunner and David Tennant's time as the Tenth Doctor.

** The Daleks had suffered some extreme VillainDecay by the end of the Classic series, becoming quite easily explodable and harmless even in great numbers, as well as having no agency thanks to the introduction of their leader, Davros. This was not helped by the species being a UK cultural meme for forty years - impressions of their obnoxious, squawky voices and jokes about their use of [[SpecialEffectsFailure plungers]] [[ImprobableWeaponUser as weapons]] and (imagined) inability to climb stairs were something of a hack comedian standard routine. The new series reintroduced the Daleks in the episode "Dalek", in which we find out that the Dalek race was on the brink of annihilating the Doctor's race, and the Doctor had to commit genocide against both species in order to save the universe itself - the Dalek in the episode gets a much less shrill, much scarier and much more expressive voice than the original series Daleks had, is treated realistically as the death machine that it is, and incorporated elements from the very first Dalek serial (such as the idea of Daleks as objects of pity as well as revulsion) in order to make them just as terrifying as they had first been forty years ago. Throughout both Davies' (and later Moffat's) showrunning of the revival era, there's also been an added emphasis on delving into the psychology of the Daleks and the Doctor's relationship with them. (For example, they claim they grew stronger in fear of him. He's tempted by them to lose his temper several times, and also ponders in private whether he could maybe redeem them one day, somehow.) This effort helped the Daleks return to the sort of nuance and cred they had as antagonists back in the 60s and 70s. And Davros, previously overused in the classic era after his first appearance, has had a guest role in only one story during RTD's run.

** Over the course of the classic series, the Daleks grew from a single-minded race united under an emperor or other leader to a conflicted race fighting a civil war amongst themselves, largely due to the introduction of Davros, who played his army of Daleks against the rest. When they reappeared in the new series, the Time War backstory completely removed all mentions of infighting between themselves, and Davros does not appear for several seasons. Their stripped-down and muted design in the new series also harkens back to their first appearances in the 1960s, rather than the more colorful and trimmed looks in the later eras of the classic show.

** The TARDIS started out broken; completely unsteerable to the point where the Doctor can never leave a place and time that he's not completely done with, because he can never return. During the Fourth Doctor's tenure, he switched to using the "secondary control room", which allowed him to steer the TARDIS for the first time ([[FanWank onscreen, anyway]]), although due to his personality he often wouldn't and even installed a "Randomiser" to make control of it impossible again. The new series establishes right from the very beginning that the Doctor knows how to fly his TARDIS now, showing it capable of maneuvers stated to be completely impossible for most of the Classic Doctors (the earliest example being the Ninth Doctor's AndAnotherThing rematerialization in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E1Rose Rose]]"), but every so often a story will start with the Doctor mis-steering the TARDIS and ending up somewhere unwanted, such as "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E7TheIdiotsLantern The Idiot's Lantern]]" ('50s Britain and not '50s America), "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E2ToothAndClaw Tooth and Claw]]" (the Victorian era rather than the '70s), and completely {{Deconstructed}} in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E4AliensOfLondon Aliens of London]]" (a year after Rose left instead of a few hours).

** In "Turn Left", an alternate-universe version of Britain is ruled by a fascist government that, among other things, ends up transporting immigrants to "labor camps". WWII veteran Wilf spots the resemblance.

* SoftReboot: When ''Doctor Who'' came back in 2005, Davies could adequately be described as a man utterly terrified of continuity running amok, like in the 1980s. Information about the Doctor and the show's lore was tightly controlled and parceled out in the tiniest possible portions. When it became an enormous hit, he relaxed this policy (cf. "School Reunion"), but never truly abolished it. Even the montage of previous Doctors in "The Next Doctor", the most 'for the fans' moment in his tenure, was included solely on the suggestion of producer Julie Gardner, whose judgement he trusted specifically because she was not a classic Whovian.

* UrbanFantasy: Most of the episodes under his run centered around aliens in regular earthly settings, both present and past.