"The writer also wanted to reward India Fisher [Charley] for her earlier work. “I wanted to give India a present. I thought she’d been so remarkably good in Chimes, and I just wanted to see what an actress of her ability and enthusiasm would make of something like Scherzo. Bless her heart, she certainly seized that and ran with it.”
India adored the challenge. “It was Shearman so I just adored it. I was so honoured that he’d written it for us. No one had ever written a play specifically for me! I had no issue with the ‘love’ aspect of the Eighth Doctor and Charley’s relationship, so I thought Scherzo was a wonderful exploration of it. And I’m a sucker for the bizarre, so kissing and melding into one entity was right up my street.
“We recorded it as live, in one take. We had a †¨read-through and then we just did it. Weirdly, being a two-hander makes that easier. By then, Paul [McGann] and I were very in tune with how the other one worked, we set up our mics facing one another and just went for it. I loved working like that and it made sense of all the emotion and crescendos.”
Rob adds, “The inspiration was that Gary told me that when the Doctor went into this new universe, he was sacrificing himself. I remember wanting to do something with that – he had given up his life for Charley, and everything and everyone he knew, but then she goes and follows him in. I remember thinking, ‘Wouldn’t that really annoy him, as he’s sacrificed himself for nothing, because she’s gone in too, making that sacrifice invalid.’
That’s what I wanted to do, but as a result I had the Doctor being very un-Doctorish, being very angry throughout it, as he couldn’t deal with Charley’s declaration of love for him, which was something the TV series hadn’t dealt with at the time, the whole idea of a companion having feelings for the Doctor."”
