Hot take: We (the collective Media We) are not asking Shonda Rhimes enough questions about science fiction and fantasy! Which is absolutely wild, because it turns out Shonda Rhimes — so commonly associated with medical heartbreak, the powerful bonds of female friendships, law, and political intrigue — is really into sci-fi and fantasy. And, frankly, that shouldn't surprise any of us, because those genres have all the things we love (and more!) from shows like Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder.
So when I realized that my boss and I were watching the same non-Shondaland shows (and that we're both still absolutely wrecked by "The Body" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), I knew I had to talk to her about them. We decided to start with Doctor Who, the long-running BBC time travel, adventure drama, which she caught up with multiple times over and I... well, I love the Ponds with all my heart, and let's just leave it at that. Shonda was gracious enough to let me record our conversation, so that the rest of you could learn about why she adores The Doctor in all its forms — Donna Noble's strength; how her dog ended up named River Song; and, of course, what a Shonda Rhimes episode of Doctor Who would look like, because she's thought about it.
A lot.
Kendra James: So the first thing is, when did you get into Doctor Who?
Shonda Rhimes: Oh my God, I've been watching Doctor Who I feel like forever now. I want to say, I probably started when I finished Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I didn't have anything to watch. I think I went through a phase of misery and depression, asking myself, "What am I going to watch?"
KJ: You didn't watch Angel?
SR: Oh no, I watched Angel. That's part of what I mean when I say Buffy. Once that all ended, then I think I found Doctor Who, and The Doctor was my newest obsession after that.
KJ: Did you start with 9 and Christopher Eccleston?
SR: Yes, I started with season one of the current series, but it definitely wasn't in real time. I had to go back and watch. I think that David Tennant was already there when I started, but I literally am a start-at-the-beginning kind of person.
KJ: And so what drew you in?
SR: I am a big sci-fi nerd in general. I love sci-fi. With Doctor Who I loved the idea of time travel, the idea that he could regenerate. Rose was amazing too — season one, it's kind of all about Rose being amazing. But also, in every story they went to different places, and every story and every world was completely different. As a television writer? Come on! The creation of what they did on a weekly basis was amazing.
KJ: Yes! I've always loved the concept of the TARDIS. I just don't always love how they execute it.
SR: Well see, that's what's so funny. On Doctor Who, sometimes the special effects were super lame. Sometimes the visuals were super lame. Sometimes they didn't work at all. It didn't matter. The concept of what the TARDIS was — and is — is amazing. The concept of Gallifrey, where Doctor Who is from, and what happened to him being the only one left of your entire species? That was all amazing. All of that stuff. It was just beautiful story.
KJ: When you started watching, did you see it as a kids' show as it was sort of originally conceived? Or did you immediately see it as having evolved into something more?
SR: I definitely don't see it as a kids' show. I was surprised when I read something about it being a kids' show. But then again, Russell T. Davies who revived it, he doesn't strike me as a kids' writer either. So, I wasn't ever thinking of it as a kids' show.
KJ: Do you have a favorite era of showrunner? Whovians tend to have very particular opinions on them.
SR: Probably Russell Davies, because he started it all, and because of David Tennant. The introduction of David Tennant as 10 is one of the best written introductions of a character ever. And The Girl in the Fireplace, by Stephen Moffat is, to this day, one of my favorite things. There's just a lot of great episodes that evolved and came about while Davies was there.
KJ: The Master was part of that right? That's ultimately my favorite Who arc.
SR: Right. The whole Master storyline happened during that period of time, and that was when the Weeping Angels came about. See, all of that? That was all Russell.
KJ: Do you have a favorite companion?
SR: Donna.
KJ: Donna? Oh, interesting.
SR: I know. A lot of people don't say Donna.
KJ: I wouldn't.
SR: I know, and a lot of those people are all Rose forever people. And I like Rose, and I think Rose is great. But I've watched it — and I'll be honest, I've watched the whole series, I don't know, a bajillion times. I think there's something about Donna though, being this girl from Chiswick who has nothing, who has no idea what her future is going to be, who thinks that the best she could do is to be somebody's dental assistant or secretary, who's mother doesn't expect much of her. They believe that she's gonna live a small life. But she ends up living this larger-than-life, big existence. She ends up saving the world. To me, there's something about her that makes her amazing.
Martha Jones is also incredible, and what Martha does is incredible. Donna's more verbal, much more verbal. Martha's very quiet a lot, and there's something lovely about that. But to me, Donna doesn't fit. She doesn't fit, and she manages to make it in this world. I love that about her.
KJ: What's your favorite arc?
SR: Well for me it is The Master, too. I mean, I did not see that coming, and I could not stop watching. I remember staying up all night because I was like, "I'm going to watch all of these episodes, and I'm not going to stop until I'm done. I have to know what happens." It was just so well done and so disturbingly laid out. And so well back-laid and plotted. To watch The Doctor sort of be reduced to nothing, to know that there was another Time Lord out there...it was just beautifully done.
KJ: Did you ever get into Torchwood following that?
SR: Of course I got into Torchwood. I love Torchwood.
KJ: I think after awhile, I preferred Torchwood for a bit over Doctor Who. I mean, I did the same thing with Buffy and Angel. Buffy was my everything, but I ended up preferring...
SR: Angel. Yes. The end of Angel, the finale, is my favorite thing ever. It's the finale that I talk about the most with everybody. My writers probably really hate me for it, because I'm always like, "It's got to end like Angel. It's gotta be like the end of Angel." And everybody's like, "What are you talking about?"
KJ: Standing in the rain.
SR: Standing in the rain. The monsters are coming and they're ready to go. And my writers are like, "How does that have anything to do with this?"
KJ: I'm now also remembering how brilliant that finale actually was because it's the complete opposite of the end of Buffy where they end standing in...
SR: They're standing in the sun! Yes.
KJ: I haven't watched either of those in full in so long.
SR: I haven't watched Buffy in a long time. And I think it's because — and this is going to sound really weird, but I'm scared of "The Body." I don't want to watch "The Body" again. That really destroyed me for a long time.
KJ: Yeah. I'm sometimes just afraid that it won't hold up.
SR: That's what I mean. That episode really destroyed me, and I don't want to watch it again and discover that it's not going to destroy me again. Does that make sense?
KJ: Completely. Because that show shaped so much of how I thought about everything through high school, through college. I don't want any part of that to be diminished.
SR: Angel and Buffy was my early 20s, and it was a thing. And then for me, the Torchwood part of it later was that I watched Torchwood kind of hungry for something to watch, and then I ended up loving it so much. Not when they went to America, but when they're in Wales with all those wonderful characters.
KJ: Barrowman was such a good find for them.
SR: John Barrowman was amazing. We had him on Scandal! He was Mellie's fixer for, I think, one or two episodes. He was wonderful. I really liked him. And I loved Eve Myles as Gwen. She's incredible. She was also in Broadchurch, which, by the way, is just a whole Doctor Who reunion.
KJ: So, getting back to Doctor Who proper, I know your kids named the dog River Song.
SR: Okay. So that, for all the people who don't know — and I don't want to hear the hate. I'm not a dog person. I've never been a dog person. I just did not grow up with a dog. I didn't grow up with animals. I'm not a dog person. I am a book person. But I feel like my daughter Harper, who is 16, has been campaigning for dogs since she was 5. And I have a 7-year-old, and a 5-year-old right now, and they've all been campaigning for dogs forever.
I feel like they literally got me. I had been teetering on the fence when they came to me. And they were like, "We decided to name the dog River Song." I don't even know if they totally knew what they were doing, but I feel like they had to. I don't know. It's so stupid. But I was like, it's a sign. And so, we got the dog and they call the dog River, and I call the dog River Song.
KJ: Now, had they seen the dog already, and it looked like a River Song? Or did they just say, "Whatever this dog looks like, we're calling it River Song?"
SR: No, whatever the dog is, the dog's name was going to be River Song. It was the only name they all agreed on, apparently. Because apparently, two of them wanted River, one of them wanted Song, and they named the dog River Song.
KJ: Are they all into Doctor Who, or did you bring them in?
SR: They're not all into Doctor Who, in that my kids don't watch a lot of television yet. But they all — this is really weird — they all know what the TARDIS is.
And I will admit something that's really nerdy. This is going to sound terrible. I have a really big, old house. And this big, old house has an elevator in it. A creaky, small, strange elevator that I always joke that when I'm 100 I'm going to really need — but we never, ever use it. But, we were having everything refurbished, and the first thing I did was make them make the inside of the elevator look like the outside of the TARDIS.
KJ: So the interior is blue?
SR: You have to see it. My decorator would be horrified. But it's reminiscent of the TARDIS. Blue-ish, wooden shapes, and the whole nine yards.
KJ: I respect that. In my apartment in New York we had exposed brick, and I covered it in fake ivy and painted yellow numbers on the wall, so that it would look like Wrigley Field. It's the burden of being in a fandom. How many Doctor Who tchotchkes, trinkets, and items do you have?
SR: For awhile people were giving me a ton of things. Too many things. So I have a Doctor Who cookie jar, and I have a USB charger that's a TARDIS. I have a lot of little TARDIS-shaped things. And I have a sister, my oldest sister Delores, who's 12 years older than me — she is also obsessed with Doctor Who. She's the person who wears Doctor Who pajamas, and all of that stuff. So, there's a lot of stuff between the two of us.
KJ: How do you feel about Jodie Whitaker so far, as 13?
SR: I always have a hard time with a new doctor. Every single time a new doctor shows up, I have a very hard time accepting the new doctor. Which is kind of written and baked into the show, which I think is kind of interesting. Although, I'm having less of a hard time with this new doctor, Jodie Whitaker, than I did two doctors ago, Matt Smith. I had a very hard time accepting Matt Smith because I loved David so much.
But because it's the 13th Doctor, and then there's a group of them all traveling together, it's a very different vibe this season. And I like her as The Doctor. She somehow manages to embody the piece of the former doctor that's still in there. That is interesting.
For me, what's different is, it's a totally different writer running the show. So, that's the thing that I think that people need to remember. Viewers aren't necessarily responding to the fact that it's a woman playing The Doctor. What they're responding to is that it's a completely different writer writing the show. That's the big difference, and that was the big difference with Matt Smith. That's what the big difference becomes whenever a writer changes. It's not the actors as much as it is the voice that's being given to the actor.
KJ: What does Shonda Rhimes' season of Doctor Who look like? Have you ever thought about this?
SR: Yes, because they did ask me once if I would write an episode, but I happened to be writing three shows at the time. I was running Grey's, and Private Practice, and Scandal. I think I was doing all three at once.
KJ: And there's only so much Sorkin-esque energy that a person can have.
SR: Exactly. It was ridiculous. But I don't know. I mean, I like to believe that I would have done some amazing episode, like with the Weeping Angels — like the episodes I love the most. But the episode that feels the most like something I probably would have ended up doing is the one where 10 dies. 'Cause we all know, I write things with good death. But the one where David Tennant dies and he says, "I'm not ready," or the one where Donna starts to wind down. And you realize, Oh! her brain's going to burn up and we have to return her so that she never remembers who she used to be.
I probably would have ended up writing something like all of those heartbreaking episodes I loved, as opposed to some of these really genius, amazing, sci-fi twists that I admire so much. I love them. I don't know that I have them in me. I think that's why I enjoy them so much.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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