Doctor Who: 10 Great Writers For Future Series

2. Lucy Prebble

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1pP90sy574 Notable Work: Secret Diary of A Call Girl, Enron Lucy Prebble has been a showrunner herself, and a frequent collaborator with Billie Piper on both the critically-acclaimed play The Effect and Secret Diary Of A Call Girl- a seriously good drama worth checking out if you haven't already. In short, she is more qualified than most to write for the show. But Prebble is even more well-known for her play Enron, one of the most entertaining and sharp pieces of British theatre in a long while and is currently being developed for the big screen by George Clooney. This is a writer who looks set to explode into the stratosphere at any moment, so before she does it'd be a good idea to get her to write an episode. Like Helen Blakeman, Prebble is more prolific as a playwright, but this is a distinct advantage and a quality it'd be nice to see in more of Doctor Who now. It's hard to say what a Lucy Prebble-scripted episode would be like, but perhaps it might be some kind of satire- a funny and sexy affair (but not the kind of "sexy" that is forced, and has been embarrassingly present in Doctor Who for a while now). Prebble is also a journalist, and may bring the same bite to be expected from a Charlie Brooker script. As covered in Newsnight, towards the end of the classic run Doctor Who was distinctly political and anti-thatcherite. But at the same time, in terms of quality it was the strongest it had been in a while. Maybe writers like Prebble are exactly what the show needs to push it in a new direction with an older Doctor and a change of tone. With writing like that, it might even bring about a golden age of script for the show that we haven't seen since the early Tom Baker years.