Class

Doctor Who's latest spin-off drama begins this month on BBC Three, so DWM asked writer Patrick Ness to reveal what he's got in store for us...

PREVIEW BY BENJAMIN COOK

Tanya, April and Charlie in Episode 2: The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo.

Patrick Ness didn’t expect to be writing Class. “But you take a good idea when it comes,” he says, “and embrace it.”

In 2013, the London-based, Virginia-born, award-winning Young Adult (YA) novelist penned a Doctor Who short story, Tip of the Tongue, published by Puffin – and starring the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa – to celebrate the show’s 50th anniversary. ‘An arresting tale,’ DWM said of it at the time. ‘It’s taut, bringing themes of being an outsider, of desperation to fit in and belong in a community, wrapped up in the inherent awkwardness of teenage life.’ Soon afterwards, Who’s executive producer Brian Minchin invited Patrick to write a TV episode. “It was fantastic to be asked,” says Patrick, but he’d only recently done “a bunch of work for other people” and was keener to do something “really, really new”.

Then Brian revealed that the producers were thinking about making a post-watershed spin-off series set in Doctor Who’s most famous school – and Patrick’s eyes lit up. What was it about the ‘spin-off set in Coal Hill’ premise that grabbed Patrick, shook him by the shoulders, and made his mind race with thrilling possibilities?

“I wish I knew,” he tells DWM. “I’d go after those ideas all the time if I did. You never know when or how something’s going to grab you; the trick is just to recognise it when it happens and take it with both hands. But it felt rich with possibilities, and that’s what you want in any idea. The chance to portray some of the things that I put in my books was definitely one, plus a raft of new characters and plots in an already fascinating universe.”