Browse content similar to Me, You and Doctor Who. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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This is an add vnture in time and space. 50 years of hair's-breadth | :00:08. | :00:15. | |
escapes, cliff hanger endings, amazing resourcefullness and | :00:16. | :00:18. | |
ingenuity. You know what I'm talking about, don't you. You know Who. Its | :00:19. | :00:25. | |
heroes are the people who weren't afade to fight for their | :00:26. | :00:31. | |
convictions. To reinvent the way we told stories. It is very funny. To | :00:32. | :00:39. | |
pioneer untried new technology. We ought to talk about deal kwa | :00:40. | :00:43. | |
Derbyshire in the same breath as Phil Spector or The Beatles. She is | :00:44. | :00:50. | |
higher placed for me. To confront the nation's fears and anxieties. | :00:51. | :00:59. | |
And create a fable that would become part of everyone's lives. Ask | :01:00. | :01:04. | |
someone who has never watched Doctor Who and I bet you they can tell whau | :01:05. | :01:09. | |
a dalek is. Saving the daily universe is the daily business of | :01:10. | :01:12. | |
the Doctor's televised career. He's achieved something more significant | :01:13. | :01:16. | |
than that. He's changed the universe in which we live. This is the story | :01:17. | :01:20. | |
of the Doctor's greatest victory, how he became part of our culture, | :01:21. | :01:26. | |
how he became in indestructible, how he got inside your head. | :01:27. | :01:34. | |
50 years ago a strange object appeared on our screens for the | :01:35. | :01:43. | |
first time. Look at this. It is a police box! What is it doing here? | :01:44. | :01:49. | |
These things are usually on the street. Feel it. Do you feel it? | :01:50. | :01:59. | |
There is a faint vibration. Doctor Who quickly became part of | :02:00. | :02:02. | |
contemporary folklore, but for some of us, he's more than that. You are | :02:03. | :02:07. | |
supposed to grow out of liking Doctor Who but this hasn't happened | :02:08. | :02:12. | |
to me. I think I might not be the only one. I am in my 40s you would | :02:13. | :02:17. | |
think I have abandoned my attachment to what is essentially a children's | :02:18. | :02:22. | |
programme but this programme has exerted a strange influence over my | :02:23. | :02:26. | |
life. I feel it has influenced my morality, the way I think about the | :02:27. | :02:30. | |
world. Some of my earliest memories of any kind at all are memories of | :02:31. | :02:35. | |
Doctor Who, images from the programme have burned their way into | :02:36. | :02:39. | |
my brain but I think Doctor Who is one of the most important things in | :02:40. | :02:43. | |
our culture, one of the most rich and interesting things that has ever | :02:44. | :02:46. | |
been made in this country. Is this really where you live? Yes and | :02:47. | :02:51. | |
what's wrong with it? It was just a telephone box. Perhaps. This is your | :02:52. | :02:57. | |
grandfather? Yes. Why didn't you tell us that? I don't discuss my | :02:58. | :03:04. | |
priefrt life with strangers. In 19 62 the BBC had a problem, a brash | :03:05. | :03:10. | |
unruly seven-year-old called ITV2, had stolen 80% of the audience, had | :03:11. | :03:17. | |
game shows and sci-fi, cutting edge theatre and Bruce Forsyth. The BBC | :03:18. | :03:21. | |
needed a loyalty programme to persuade people not to get out of | :03:22. | :03:26. | |
their chairs and switch the dial in Brucie's direction. By 1963 it had a | :03:27. | :03:31. | |
name, Doctor Who. As for who created Doctor Who, well, how long have you | :03:32. | :03:35. | |
got? Doctor Who was devised by a | :03:36. | :03:38. | |
committee. But one man has his name on the birth certificate, the head | :03:39. | :03:46. | |
of television drama, Sydney Newman. Sydney Newman was ambitious and | :03:47. | :03:51. | |
tough talking and not an raf-type in a tweed suit. He swore, he knew what | :03:52. | :03:56. | |
he wanted, he was excitedly Canadian. He had been poached from | :03:57. | :04:01. | |
ITV2, where he had set up the Avengers and given Harold Pinter his | :04:02. | :04:05. | |
first TV break. Newman put his best people on the case. Among them was a | :04:06. | :04:10. | |
staff writer called Cecil Edwin Webber, known to his friends as | :04:11. | :04:15. | |
Bunny. Bunny had been around the block a | :04:16. | :04:19. | |
few times. His stage plays had been brought to life Albert Finney but at | :04:20. | :04:27. | |
53 he was too old to be an angry young man. Bunny and the team got | :04:28. | :04:32. | |
down to work. Ideas were kicked around and kicked to death. But | :04:33. | :04:36. | |
everyone agreed that this should be an adventure in time, as well as | :04:37. | :04:40. | |
space. Stories about history, stories about science and exciting | :04:41. | :04:45. | |
dramas that would inform, educate and entertain. It was Bunny who | :04:46. | :04:50. | |
wrote up the treatment and continued the development of the idea. It is | :04:51. | :04:55. | |
his name on the top of the founding document of Doctor Who. Bunny was | :04:56. | :04:59. | |
commissioned to write the first Doctor Who story. He wanted to | :05:00. | :05:04. | |
shrink the heroes to minuscule size and make them fight spiders, but | :05:05. | :05:10. | |
Sydney hated it. Too tacky, too expensive and too impossible. | :05:11. | :05:14. | |
Bunny's script was snatched away from him and the task was passed on | :05:15. | :05:19. | |
to another staff writer. Bunny Webber never got to see his name on | :05:20. | :05:22. | |
the credits of the programme. He is just a footnote in the history of | :05:23. | :05:27. | |
Doctor Who. But I think there is a piece of the jigsaw that shows how | :05:28. | :05:33. | |
much of that early work was his. It's here. | :05:34. | :05:38. | |
To test my theory, I have tracked down a man who is another piece of | :05:39. | :05:44. | |
the puzzle. I think I might have found a little misting piece of the | :05:45. | :05:50. | |
history of Doctor Who here. This is a play by Cecil Edwin Webber, called | :05:51. | :05:59. | |
Out of the Frying Pan. In this play there is a young actor playing the | :06:00. | :06:04. | |
part of Gregory, who is that? It's me! It's me. I even played the | :06:05. | :06:11. | |
guitar in it. I would like you to read your own part, you are sitting | :06:12. | :06:16. | |
in the espresso bar in this scene. Well, what do you know, it says here | :06:17. | :06:22. | |
if a spaceship travelled faster than light it would go backwards in time. | :06:23. | :06:32. | |
Start a new journey in the spaceship in the year 500. It's not only | :06:33. | :06:40. | |
scientific, it's historical. That in embryo is Doctor Who. It is. That is | :06:41. | :06:46. | |
exactly where it's at. 1958. Is it just a coincidence or is there more | :06:47. | :06:53. | |
to it? It is where it came from. But I have no recollection, I haven't | :06:54. | :06:57. | |
tied the two together until now. A few years after starring in Bunny's | :06:58. | :07:02. | |
play Richard joined the BBC's drama department. He was given a daunting | :07:03. | :07:09. | |
new job, directing some of Doctor Who's earliest and most ambitious | :07:10. | :07:17. | |
episodes on a shoe string budget Chaos, but creative chaos. For half | :07:18. | :07:25. | |
an hour television we were allowed an hour-and-a-half to record and we | :07:26. | :07:29. | |
were told never go over. What happened if did you go over? Do you | :07:30. | :07:33. | |
want to see the scars! It was a live-type performance. The concept | :07:34. | :07:38. | |
behind that was that the excitement of theatre and real-life performance | :07:39. | :07:44. | |
would overcome any technical glitches, which sometimes happened. | :07:45. | :07:51. | |
Luckily Richard had an ally, the BBC youngest ever producer, verity | :07:52. | :07:58. | |
Lambert. Verity trusted me and guarded my back. She took a lot of | :07:59. | :08:02. | |
flak on my behalf because she knew I was not prepared to compromise. Part | :08:03. | :08:07. | |
of a new generation of programme makers, verity and Richard were | :08:08. | :08:11. | |
young, risk taking, iconoclastic, a breed apart from the BBC | :08:12. | :08:17. | |
establishment. I had been quite lucky in terms of my career in that | :08:18. | :08:25. | |
I was producing Doctor Who when I was 27 and even for a man in those | :08:26. | :08:30. | |
days that was quite young. I did have about two or three months when | :08:31. | :08:34. | |
I first joined the BBC when I was seemed to be much younger than | :08:35. | :08:38. | |
anyone else and a woman. I can remember derision at Ver itity. It | :08:39. | :08:43. | |
was the first time a woman producer I think, had been created in the | :08:44. | :08:51. | |
serials department. She was very fashion conscious, wore a different | :08:52. | :08:54. | |
hat every day and they used to come out and snigger and say to me "what | :08:55. | :08:59. | |
hat is she wearing today". It wasn't nice. She had a good hyde on her and | :09:00. | :09:06. | |
could take it. Maybe they were sniggering at me, too. They were | :09:07. | :09:13. | |
probably sniggering behind my back. It wasn't just sniggers, there were | :09:14. | :09:18. | |
those within the BBC who wanted to strangle Doctor Who in its cradle, | :09:19. | :09:22. | |
close it down after a few episodes. But Verity soon made that | :09:23. | :09:26. | |
impossible, by deliberately disobeying her boss. Sydney Newman | :09:27. | :09:34. | |
told Verity, no bug-eyed monsters. You broke this rule in the fifth | :09:35. | :09:39. | |
episode. Absolutely. What was his response? Verity said she thought he | :09:40. | :09:43. | |
was going to kill her. This is the first time the Dahl ex-appeared | :09:44. | :09:48. | |
on-screen. They very nearly didn't make it there at all. -- daleks. She | :09:49. | :09:58. | |
came out with the dalek business and I was livid. She said they are not | :09:59. | :10:04. | |
bug eyed monsters, they were once living creatures, with brains and | :10:05. | :10:09. | |
their brains have become so large their bodies needed the metal casing | :10:10. | :10:13. | |
to support the brain. These strange new creatures were the invention of | :10:14. | :10:18. | |
a writer named Terry Nation. He was a comedy writer. His vision was | :10:19. | :10:23. | |
darker than anything the tea time audience had ever seen. The daleks | :10:24. | :10:27. | |
had a catch phrase and they weren't the first to use it. The word | :10:28. | :10:33. | |
exterminate had a history. As did other dalekisms like the habit of | :10:34. | :10:37. | |
talking about themselves as the masters and their fondness of | :10:38. | :10:44. | |
phrases like final solution. Exterminate all humans. Terry Nation | :10:45. | :10:48. | |
had clear memories of the threat of German invasion. That didn't happen | :10:49. | :10:53. | |
of course, but the Nazis did occupy his nightmares. Terry Nation was a | :10:54. | :10:58. | |
child of war and an only child. His mum was an air raid warden and his | :10:59. | :11:02. | |
dad was in the army. So when he went down to the shul ter he went alone | :11:03. | :11:07. | |
and down there in the dark he would make up stories, about himself, | :11:08. | :11:13. | |
about the war. It's hard to say what Terry Nation thought the daleks | :11:14. | :11:17. | |
ought to look like. The script he wrote is vague on that point. It was | :11:18. | :11:21. | |
the designer who had to put them on the screen. It is often say Ray | :11:22. | :11:28. | |
Cusick based the design for the dalek on one of these. What he | :11:29. | :11:35. | |
originally wanted was something much more elaborate, something with an | :11:36. | :11:40. | |
ten eye and moving parts, but he only had ?60 to spend on each one so | :11:41. | :11:45. | |
had to resort to more mundane objects. | :11:46. | :11:49. | |
Somehow the team had to transform four ply wood props into a | :11:50. | :11:53. | |
terrifying monster. The description of a dalek is that it is meant to | :11:54. | :11:59. | |
glide effortlessly, as though it was on a sort of anti-gravitational | :12:00. | :12:07. | |
pull. Four golden casters and cramped actors doing this and that | :12:08. | :12:11. | |
at the same time, can you imagine. Was there a knack to directing the | :12:12. | :12:14. | |
daleks, was it something you learned because you had a lot of experience. | :12:15. | :12:19. | |
These are creatures that are meant to have mutated into a jelly in the | :12:20. | :12:26. | |
middle of a vast pepper pot. They are actually helpless. God knows how | :12:27. | :12:32. | |
they eat or reproduce, but... Very carefully! But what must energise | :12:33. | :12:44. | |
them is fear. Look, the disease has reached us here. We cannot delay, | :12:45. | :12:51. | |
but what are we to do, is this the end of the daleks. We all agreed | :12:52. | :12:55. | |
that they were on the point of hysteria. So there was enormous | :12:56. | :13:02. | |
tension in their voices and it came out like that. It is like they were | :13:03. | :13:09. | |
suffering inside. It was Klaus phobia. -- Klaus ra phobia. | :13:10. | :13:18. | |
You will be exterminated. You understand. Exterminated. I | :13:19. | :13:23. | |
understand. When the daleks returned in Doctor Who's second season they | :13:24. | :13:28. | |
blitzed London and the survivors became slaves, collaborators, | :13:29. | :13:33. | |
resistance fighters and Britain went mad with gratitude. Suddenly the | :13:34. | :13:39. | |
ratings soared over the ten million mark. There was a word that went | :13:40. | :13:47. | |
with it, a medical word, Dalekmania. From 19 64 the real dalek invasion | :13:48. | :13:53. | |
of earth began. They occupied sweet shops, comic scripts, school fetes, | :13:54. | :13:56. | |
the Blue Peter studio, Britain hadn't seen a craze like it since | :13:57. | :14:01. | |
The Beatles. I have three daleks here this afternoon. Less | :14:02. | :14:05. | |
frightening than the big ones. These you can eat. How did a tin pot Nazi | :14:06. | :14:11. | |
become the nation's sweetheart? Why was Blue Peter turning an allegory | :14:12. | :14:18. | |
for the SS into walnut whip. Why are the daleks so appealing then? They | :14:19. | :14:22. | |
are hideous and monsterous and we adore them, too. Well, I think they | :14:23. | :14:28. | |
first arrived in 1963 and by about that time, the memory of the war was | :14:29. | :14:34. | |
fading. What the war gave us was a common enemy. So the Dahlenings come | :14:35. | :14:39. | |
along and again we can unite against a baddie. The other thing, if we | :14:40. | :14:45. | |
have an enemy, we don't have to own our own dark side. We can project it | :14:46. | :14:49. | |
all out on to the enemy. Why are we as a society so attracted to horror | :14:50. | :14:57. | |
though? We are not actually in control of dying, death, disease, | :14:58. | :15:03. | |
disasser. But I think we like to play like we are in control of it. | :15:04. | :15:07. | |
We know we can switch the television off, for example, and that is why | :15:08. | :15:10. | |
question like a fairground ride because it will give us an | :15:11. | :15:14. | |
adrenaline hit without actually being in any real danger. I think | :15:15. | :15:18. | |
that is what Doctor Who does as well. This is how the ride began, | :15:19. | :15:26. | |
with uncanny rushes of light that told the audience they were going to | :15:27. | :15:30. | |
be Transport 2000ed beyond the world of ordinary television. All part of | :15:31. | :15:37. | |
Verity Lambert's master plan. Verity wanted a theme tune that was | :15:38. | :15:41. | |
equally unearthly and this was the band she was desperate to sign, Les | :15:42. | :15:46. | |
Structures Sonores, performance artists who created sculptures from | :15:47. | :15:51. | |
glass and metal and used them to make music, but their price turned | :15:52. | :15:55. | |
out to be as avant-garde as their work. Verity needed to find a cheap | :15:56. | :16:00. | |
solution, one that was in-house at the BBC. So what does a brilliant | :16:01. | :16:05. | |
young woman do in that situation? Looks for another brilliant young | :16:06. | :16:08. | |
woman and she found one at the end of this corridor. The radiophonic | :16:09. | :16:16. | |
work shop was a tiny sub division of the BBC, buried at the unfashionable | :16:17. | :16:21. | |
end of Maida Vale studios. But within it, all kinds of strange and | :16:22. | :16:25. | |
wonderful experiments were taking place. In room 11B a green metal | :16:26. | :16:32. | |
lamp shade could be transformed into the shimmering sound of desert heat. | :16:33. | :16:39. | |
A fistful of swar Faying ga could Transport 2000 you to the planet of | :16:40. | :16:45. | |
the Fungoids. And a key scraped against a broken piano could conjure | :16:46. | :16:51. | |
the sound of the TARDIS. The work shop was a tiny paradise for anyone | :16:52. | :16:55. | |
who wanted to experiment with sound. To make music with static, feed | :16:56. | :17:00. | |
back, razor blades, tape loops and the rush of electrons through the | :17:01. | :17:04. | |
atmosphere. Then all we have to do is cut the notes to the right | :17:05. | :17:08. | |
length. We can join them together on a loop and listen to them. Delia | :17:09. | :17:14. | |
Derbyshire was a Cambridge graduate and one of the workshops brightest | :17:15. | :17:18. | |
minds. She was 25-years-old when she was briefed to arrange the Doctor | :17:19. | :17:22. | |
Who theme. It was composed by Roy Grainer who got the on-screen credit | :17:23. | :17:27. | |
but he barely recognised what Delia had done, with his simple tune. Ten | :17:28. | :17:32. | |
years later, she had given up music altogether. She worked for British | :17:33. | :17:38. | |
Gas, she drank too much, she died in 2001, boxes of music forgotten in | :17:39. | :17:49. | |
heratic. -- her attic. She created a work that will never grow old. | :17:50. | :17:57. | |
What is its power? It feels kind of time travely and scientific and | :17:58. | :18:05. | |
alien and I think that song has great momentum. That is one of the | :18:06. | :18:09. | |
single most influential bits of music on my career because it is the | :18:10. | :18:13. | |
one I have grown up with. It's part of what made me do what I do. I | :18:14. | :18:18. | |
can't think of anything else that was like it. I can tell you want a | :18:19. | :18:24. | |
moment. These are the original master tapes of the Doctor Who theme | :18:25. | :18:29. | |
from 19 636789 Is that Delia Derbyshire's writing? Probably. | :18:30. | :18:36. | |
Inside is the reel itself. I am not even wear wearing white gloves. | :18:37. | :18:43. | |
Amazing. Will this bear being loaded on to the machine to listen to? | :18:44. | :18:46. | |
Absolutely. What do you think it would have been | :18:47. | :19:27. | |
like to hear this music for the first time? It must have been | :19:28. | :19:32. | |
shocking at the time to hear that on Saturday evening, tea time. This | :19:33. | :19:36. | |
piece of high experiment where you would expect to hear something like | :19:37. | :19:42. | |
the theme tune of duke box jury. It is the first thing that brought this | :19:43. | :19:46. | |
kind of music to a family audience. It is what The Beatles were doing, | :19:47. | :19:50. | |
it is what Pink Floyd were doing with Dark Side Of The Moon. All this | :19:51. | :19:54. | |
culture coming together to create these, what we now look on as | :19:55. | :19:58. | |
pivotal moments in contemporary music history. We ought to talk | :19:59. | :20:06. | |
about Delia Derbyshire in the same breath as Phil Spector or The | :20:07. | :20:10. | |
Beatles then. Yes, absolutely, she is higher placed for me! | :20:11. | :20:15. | |
Derbyshire's theme tune wasn't Doctor Who's only genius idea. | :20:16. | :20:19. | |
Changing the lead actor in a burst of light, that was pretty clever, | :20:20. | :20:23. | |
too. But it wasn't enough. By the end of the 19 60s, viewing figures | :20:24. | :20:28. | |
from half what they had been at the height of dalek main yachlt the | :20:29. | :20:33. | |
programme had been through two doctors and half a dozen producers, | :20:34. | :20:38. | |
all with ideas about what the show ought to be. When Patrick Troughton | :20:39. | :20:43. | |
announced his departure it seemed like Doctor Who had come to the end | :20:44. | :20:45. | |
of its natural life. But the show didn't die. In 19 70 it | :20:46. | :21:01. | |
returned in colour with a new Doctor, Jon Pertwee. And much more | :21:02. | :21:06. | |
punch. It had a new producer, too, Barry | :21:07. | :21:20. | |
Letts, a buddist and veg tearia, with a passion for science and | :21:21. | :21:25. | |
politics. He worked out what was really frightening people in 19 70s | :21:26. | :21:30. | |
Britain. Not strange beings on an alien world but the people who were | :21:31. | :21:35. | |
running the country. Look out! Jon Pertwee's Doctor had a tufrj of | :21:36. | :21:43. | |
James Bond and he went into acting for the British Government. His | :21:44. | :21:47. | |
world was the Britain of the near future, a place of crumbling | :21:48. | :21:52. | |
warehouses and sinister missile bases and government research | :21:53. | :21:57. | |
stations. All of which inevitably conceal secrets. How serious was | :21:58. | :22:03. | |
Doctor Who's politics. Malcolm Hulk, the author of many of the political | :22:04. | :22:07. | |
stories in this period was a member of the Communist Party. Is that | :22:08. | :22:11. | |
legible in these stories? I don't think he had a secret plot to thak | :22:12. | :22:15. | |
these ten-year-old minds and turn them into lefties, because it didn't | :22:16. | :22:19. | |
work. It is important to remember at that stage, the Heath government was | :22:20. | :22:24. | |
elected. The first attempt since before the war to turn British | :22:25. | :22:28. | |
politics back towards the right. And he failed. It is no way you are | :22:29. | :22:33. | |
going to write this contemporary science fiction stuff without | :22:34. | :22:41. | |
dipping into current events. How much longer before this countdown | :22:42. | :22:45. | |
begins A matter of hours. Under great pressure from the government. | :22:46. | :22:50. | |
It won't be for much longer. They are on to Whitaker you know. | :22:51. | :22:55. | |
Remember the Doctor has discovered the existence of this place. He is a | :22:56. | :23:00. | |
very intelligent man. He suspects my involvement. We ought to dispose of | :23:01. | :23:07. | |
him. You have to remember what the over arching prism of the Pertwee | :23:08. | :23:11. | |
era is about. It is a scientist allying himself to a military | :23:12. | :23:14. | |
organisation in order to fight invaders. That is a pretty right | :23:15. | :23:22. | |
wing base, it might be if the writers were left wing, they were | :23:23. | :23:26. | |
trying to drop these things in to say this isn't the militaristic | :23:27. | :23:30. | |
stiff upper lip programme it would otherwise have been. There is some | :23:31. | :23:33. | |
anxiety in Doctor Who about the return of the right, isn't there. | :23:34. | :23:40. | |
You get these rogue general figures, there are faintly Oswald Moseleyish | :23:41. | :23:44. | |
characters and there is that sense that there might be a group within | :23:45. | :23:49. | |
British society who would like a much more authoritarian Britain. | :23:50. | :23:53. | |
Probably there was a group like that in society. I remember raising the | :23:54. | :23:57. | |
issue when I became a member of parliament. A few rogue elements in | :23:58. | :24:02. | |
MI5, meeting and discussing, shall we have a coup. You are going to | :24:03. | :24:12. | |
destroy all the civilisations of man, leaving earth for another | :24:13. | :24:15. | |
planet, that was one thing, but this is evil. Civilisation has destroyed | :24:16. | :24:21. | |
me, it is time to make a fresh start. We can guide man on to a | :24:22. | :24:27. | |
better path. Jon Pertwee's Doctor had given the programme a sense of | :24:28. | :24:31. | |
moral and political engagement, but it had also tied it down to the | :24:32. | :24:37. | |
earth. It was time to get away from warehouses and Whitehall and leave | :24:38. | :24:44. | |
domestic politics behind. The Doctor joined the counter-culture and went | :24:45. | :24:49. | |
off into space to discover himself. The new Doctor was Tom Baker, an | :24:50. | :25:00. | |
actor who used to be a monk, Baker was the most moss terous and mess | :25:01. | :25:04. | |
Merrick actor to play the part. He took over the minds of the children | :25:05. | :25:10. | |
watching. Took over mine, too. He did it with the strange fruit of the | :25:11. | :25:16. | |
gothic manages, Doctor Who took the literature and cinema of nightmares | :25:17. | :25:24. | |
and remade it for kids. It took Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and made the | :25:25. | :25:28. | |
The Brain of Morbius. It made this monster, too, the | :25:29. | :25:44. | |
talons of Weng-Chiang. The whole tomb of 19th and early 20th century | :25:45. | :25:49. | |
popular culture robbed for its best bones. Sherlock Holmes, Jack the | :25:50. | :25:57. | |
Ripper, Fu Manchu. These nightmare worlds were made in nightmare | :25:58. | :26:01. | |
circumstances. The year they shot this inflation hit 23%. Are you | :26:02. | :26:11. | |
trying to attract my attention? They did it any way with props, latex and | :26:12. | :26:16. | |
polystyrene and hot wire. The illusion would never have worked | :26:17. | :26:23. | |
without a bit of help. Dudley Simpson was Doctor Who's unofficial | :26:24. | :26:26. | |
house composer, for the whole of the 19 70s. What instruments? I was | :26:27. | :26:39. | |
thinking of the cello with the marimba. Music for television film | :26:40. | :26:45. | |
is there to do a number of jobs, it is there to make the pictures look | :26:46. | :26:49. | |
better. It is there to tell the audience what to think occasionally. | :26:50. | :27:01. | |
When you In this story there is a giant unterrifying rat, but it is | :27:02. | :27:04. | |
terrifying with the music put to it. That is what the music is there for. | :27:05. | :27:21. | |
Dudley Simpson, deadly Dudley, wanted Doctor Who to sound as scary | :27:22. | :27:23. | |
as Hammer Horror. Hammer though had something the | :27:24. | :27:52. | |
Doctor could only dream about - money. They could afford an | :27:53. | :27:57. | |
orchestra of 60. Dudley had a six-piece band. For a half hour | :27:58. | :28:02. | |
programme he could only pay for 90 minutes of studio time. You were | :28:03. | :28:07. | |
Dudley's right hand man, his percussionist, you played on the | :28:08. | :28:14. | |
original cue we are listening tochlt Half the time we didn't rehearse it. | :28:15. | :28:19. | |
Absolutely hair raising but delightful. Dudley was put to the | :28:20. | :28:26. | |
test in the fourth episode of the talons of Weng-Chiang much He needed | :28:27. | :28:31. | |
to leave viewers screaming to find out what happened next. It is a | :28:32. | :28:34. | |
classic Doctor Who cliff hanger. So what this music is telling us is | :28:35. | :28:48. | |
that the monsters have won. What strikes me about this is the | :28:49. | :28:59. | |
eccentricity of the strings here. Dudley was trying to find the way | :29:00. | :29:05. | |
around a small budget. It was a new kind of organ, it was designed for | :29:06. | :29:10. | |
rock bands and cabaret clubs but Dudley had something much more | :29:11. | :29:13. | |
horrible in mind. The BBC's original has been lost, so Mark has found a | :29:14. | :29:21. | |
cunning way of recreating the sound. Six keyboards. Six keyboards doing | :29:22. | :29:27. | |
the work of this organ. What is this giving us? It is doubling the size | :29:28. | :29:33. | |
of the band, all the wood winds and filling out the brass. He is very | :29:34. | :29:39. | |
clever, ahead of his time. He was using it to increase the size of his | :29:40. | :29:46. | |
or chest trachlt One, two, three... | :29:47. | :30:04. | |
Are you happy now? I am very happy. You were there when this was done | :30:05. | :30:28. | |
the first time. How experimental is the music, how innovative is it? | :30:29. | :30:33. | |
Serve listening, it was something that wasn't around perhaps at that | :30:34. | :30:38. | |
time. Perhaps more in the classical world, where other composers were | :30:39. | :30:46. | |
coming along, so we got more used to it later, but it was really a bit | :30:47. | :30:51. | |
off the wall. Which is great. That kind of 20th century avant-garde | :30:52. | :30:56. | |
music, that is making its presence felt in Doctor Who in the way it may | :30:57. | :30:59. | |
not have been in other dramas? Very much so, very much to the fore. By | :31:00. | :31:07. | |
1977 Doctor Who was moving through dark waters, far too dark for some. | :31:08. | :31:12. | |
This is the moment where it overstepped the mark. The apparent | :31:13. | :31:19. | |
drowning of Tom Baker, a sight that incurred the wrath of the Doctor's | :31:20. | :31:25. | |
greatest enemy. What brother her most was the freeze frame. The final | :31:26. | :31:30. | |
shots sft programme with the image left in the mind of the child for a | :31:31. | :31:35. | |
whole week. Mary Whitehouse won the argument. How would it survive? The | :31:36. | :31:42. | |
answer is right here: In the dialogue. | :31:43. | :31:47. | |
I say, what a wonderful butler, so violent. Doctor Who became funnier | :31:48. | :31:56. | |
but not everyone saw the joke. Head of serials said: At first glance | :31:57. | :32:01. | |
this serial hardly evidence is the increased calibre of writing I | :32:02. | :32:05. | |
expected this year. It is littered with schoolboy humour that will | :32:06. | :32:09. | |
reduce Tom's authority and credibility hopelessly. If we allow | :32:10. | :32:13. | |
Tom to get his hands on material like this, then surely it is an open | :32:14. | :32:18. | |
invitation for him to become even more flippant and unmanageable. I | :32:19. | :32:24. | |
feel I know more about the programme than the write writers do. They feel | :32:25. | :32:29. | |
they know more than me, it is a question of who wins. Like a lot of | :32:30. | :32:34. | |
big personalities, they tend to steam roller over everybody. The | :32:35. | :32:39. | |
problems came up in the rehearsal room, when he wanted to change | :32:40. | :32:44. | |
things. It says are you hurt and I have been shot, he says have you | :32:45. | :32:49. | |
been hurt. I thought I might be able to say, it is time I put him away a | :32:50. | :32:56. | |
bit. At one point Tom Baker said let's get rid of the companion, all | :32:57. | :32:59. | |
I need is a talking cabbage and there was a sense he was so powerful | :33:00. | :33:04. | |
it might have actually happened. Absolute rubbish. In 19 79 a writer | :33:05. | :33:12. | |
set to become one of the 20th century's cult literary figures | :33:13. | :33:16. | |
stepped in as the story editor. He might be the person to bring Tom | :33:17. | :33:23. | |
Baker to book. One of the things you did was nurture the talent of a | :33:24. | :33:29. | |
young man called Douglas Adams. How did you discover him? I was tipped | :33:30. | :33:34. | |
off by a guy, who was the script editor for radio drama, for draft | :33:35. | :33:42. | |
scripts of hitch hikers guide to the galaxy. I didn't know he had been | :33:43. | :33:48. | |
knocking on the door of Doctor Who. When we were close friends in the | :33:49. | :33:51. | |
70s we shared a house in Roehampton and I found him in there one day | :33:52. | :33:56. | |
before hitch hiker happened in tears on the bed saying I can't go on with | :33:57. | :34:00. | |
this, I am not getting anywhere and I can't get any work, and I am going | :34:01. | :34:05. | |
to give it up and become a ship broker. He was obvious very, very | :34:06. | :34:10. | |
bright. The intelligence shot out of the scripts all the time. The basic | :34:11. | :34:14. | |
problem was structure. He wasn't a structure man and he came up with a | :34:15. | :34:21. | |
pirate planet idea. It was so way out, I loved t but I can't say how | :34:22. | :34:26. | |
it was going to do. We have to find a way. | :34:27. | :34:40. | |
If Douglas Adams was a brilliant writer had you did you feel when you | :34:41. | :34:46. | |
heard he was going to inherit your job as script editor which requires | :34:47. | :34:50. | |
a great deal of discipline? I thought it was madness frankly. | :34:51. | :34:55. | |
Douglas was deeply unsuited anything organisational. He was famously | :34:56. | :35:01. | |
inefficient. What was it like to be script edited by Douglas Adams? It | :35:02. | :35:07. | |
was all the things that script writers are not supposed to do. | :35:08. | :35:11. | |
Anthony's brought a script that Douglas doctored, the horns of | :35:12. | :35:13. | |
Nimon. With authentic ageing marks on | :35:14. | :35:25. | |
there. 1979. Hello I am the Doctor, I dropped in on passing. When we | :35:26. | :35:38. | |
actually see it on the screen, "dropped in?" . I am the Doctor. I | :35:39. | :35:50. | |
dropped in. It is very funny though. It is not | :35:51. | :35:57. | |
supposed to be funny! Douglas was just amazing fun. That is why he got | :35:58. | :36:03. | |
on so well with Tom Baker. Two ebullient guys. Huge bodies. Great | :36:04. | :36:10. | |
an tights for food and drink, and staying up all night and talking. By | :36:11. | :36:15. | |
night Douglas was in fine form. But by day he was tearing his hair. | :36:16. | :36:22. | |
Douglas Adams started with huge literary ambitions. He approached | :36:23. | :36:27. | |
writers like Tom Stoppard and Alistair Beaton, but he found that | :36:28. | :36:30. | |
established writers either said no or found Doctor Who an impossible | :36:31. | :36:35. | |
task. His solution was to perform enormous rewrites on everyone's | :36:36. | :36:38. | |
scripts. But the laws of time were against him. I had become script | :36:39. | :36:43. | |
editor of Doctor Who and writing on Doctor Who. I had this book based on | :36:44. | :36:47. | |
The Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy to write and I was going away at | :36:48. | :36:51. | |
that in the evenings and then I had also a second series of hitch hiker | :36:52. | :36:55. | |
to write on the radio and then on top of that, I had to start working | :36:56. | :36:58. | |
on the scripts for the television series. Douglas in a flap was an | :36:59. | :37:04. | |
extraordinary sight, which had milling arms and sweat breaking out. | :37:05. | :37:12. | |
One day in 1979 disasser struck, one of Douglas's writers failed to | :37:13. | :37:15. | |
deliver. Filming was due to start on Monday. Graham said you are going to | :37:16. | :37:20. | |
have to write a script, a four episode script, so he took me back | :37:21. | :37:25. | |
to his house, locked me in his study. And basically hosed me down | :37:26. | :37:32. | |
with whisky and black coffee for the weekend. It should have been a | :37:33. | :37:40. | |
disasser but City of Death is one of the Doctor's greatest triumphs, it | :37:41. | :37:45. | |
tackles philosophical ideas about the notion of authenticity. It is | :37:46. | :37:55. | |
quite genuine, I assure you. I recognise the hand writing, mine. It | :37:56. | :38:00. | |
examines the value of art and it's got the show's best ever cameo. | :38:01. | :38:06. | |
Divorced from its function and purely as a piece of art, it is | :38:07. | :38:13. | |
curiously counter pointed by the redundant vestages of its function. | :38:14. | :38:20. | |
The art lies in the fact it is here. The 16 million view whores tuned in | :38:21. | :38:25. | |
liked it too. It was its highest rated Doctor Who in the 20th | :38:26. | :38:35. | |
Douglas went off to natural success, but the ghosts of Doctor Who stayed | :38:36. | :38:43. | |
with him, much of what he wrote afterwards, reworked ideas he | :38:44. | :38:47. | |
conceived for the series. At least one person though was very | :38:48. | :38:52. | |
glad to see the back of him. A young production unit manager who had been | :38:53. | :38:56. | |
watching from the wings. In 1980 he got his chance to transform the | :38:57. | :39:01. | |
programme and became Doctor Who's longest serving producer. His name | :39:02. | :39:05. | |
was John Nathan Turner. John Nathan Turner wanted to make British | :39:06. | :39:10. | |
science fiction taken serious lichlt Doctor Who became high concept and | :39:11. | :39:19. | |
glossy. John Nathan Turner wasn't an intellectual but his team were. | :39:20. | :39:28. | |
The programmes influences were French cinema and high mathematics. | :39:29. | :39:33. | |
It was as if it had gone from being a rag week joke to the high | :39:34. | :39:38. | |
seriousness of the seminar room. The tea time audience didn't go mad for | :39:39. | :39:43. | |
it but the fans loved it. They saluted jain John Nathan Turner as | :39:44. | :39:49. | |
the fans' producer and an idea occurred to him. Perhaps everyone | :39:50. | :39:53. | |
could be a Doctor Who fan. Do you think John looks like the producer | :39:54. | :40:03. | |
of Doctor Who. I recognised him by his Hawaiian shirt. The Doctor Who | :40:04. | :40:11. | |
convention is a strange and beautiful thing. I have always loved | :40:12. | :40:13. | |
them and so did John Nathan Turner. John Nathan Turner was exactly what | :40:14. | :40:27. | |
Doctor Who needed at the time he became producer. He understand what | :40:28. | :40:33. | |
a fan met network meant to a show. John's biggest legacy is recognise | :40:34. | :40:39. | |
recognising the power of the brand. He saw way before anybody else this | :40:40. | :40:42. | |
had international potential. That is everybody who is here today. Yes. He | :40:43. | :41:00. | |
was involved in our wedding. The sad fan stereotype, you have your T | :41:01. | :41:06. | |
shishgts very bad -- shirt, very bad hair, never kissed a girl. He is | :41:07. | :41:14. | |
dressed at Tigan in case you were wondering. JNT encouraged his | :41:15. | :41:20. | |
doctors and companions to see conventions as part of the gig. I | :41:21. | :41:24. | |
got the job on Monday, on Thursday they flew me to Atlanta. I arrived | :41:25. | :41:32. | |
in a heat wave, I had never been to a convention, I was astonished. JNT | :41:33. | :41:37. | |
understood the passion Doctor Who inspired in its fans. He listened | :41:38. | :41:44. | |
carefully to their ideas and feed back, and even commissioned a script | :41:45. | :41:49. | |
from one of them, a 17-year-old called Andrew Smith. He was always | :41:50. | :41:55. | |
full of ideas about how to sell Doctor Who. Did you become part of | :41:56. | :41:59. | |
that strategy? I did a number of interviews, it was unusual for a | :42:00. | :42:03. | |
writer. You were the teenage prodigy. I can remember reading | :42:04. | :42:07. | |
those articles and thinking, why can't that be me. I have heard that | :42:08. | :42:14. | |
from others. John said later it also had the effect that a lot of | :42:15. | :42:20. | |
teenagers started winging scripts in expecting them to be produced. 1983 | :42:21. | :42:25. | |
was a PR triumph for John Nathan Turner. Doctor Who celebrated its | :42:26. | :42:31. | |
20th anniversary and 50,000 fans turned up for a birthday convention | :42:32. | :42:36. | |
at Longleat. Behind the scenes, much uglier events were taking place. A | :42:37. | :42:42. | |
recent book suggests that JNT had begun to abuse his power. Richard | :42:43. | :42:48. | |
your book alleges that John Nathan Turner had sexual contact with | :42:49. | :42:51. | |
dozens of fans, some of who were the age of 16. What is the background to | :42:52. | :42:55. | |
this, what happened? What happened was that John was in this position | :42:56. | :43:01. | |
where he was producing a show that had an enormous youthful fan base | :43:02. | :43:05. | |
and he had social access to them, at conventions and sometimes they were | :43:06. | :43:10. | |
invited to recordings at the BBC. John was very flamboyant, very | :43:11. | :43:14. | |
party-loving gay man and I think fuelled by alcohol, fuelled by the | :43:15. | :43:18. | |
fact he was a party animal, in certain situations he would see | :43:19. | :43:23. | |
people who caught his eye and would try it on. How long was this going | :43:24. | :43:29. | |
on for? I think that knowing the way John was, from almost the first time | :43:30. | :43:32. | |
he would have had the opportunity, until the entd of his time as | :43:33. | :43:36. | |
producer on Doctor Who and beyond when he start today work in the | :43:37. | :43:39. | |
theatre. Do you believe these encounters were consensual? I | :43:40. | :43:44. | |
haven't found any examples of John himself being involved in | :43:45. | :43:48. | |
non-consensual activity with fans. But I think in speaking to some of | :43:49. | :43:54. | |
these partners of John now, they are middle-aged men and see these things | :43:55. | :43:57. | |
differently. Most of them, even the ones that have affection and respect | :43:58. | :44:01. | |
for John, I think they all recognise that really what he was doing was | :44:02. | :44:05. | |
wrong and they shouldn't have been in that position and that he was | :44:06. | :44:12. | |
crossing a line in a very big way. The idea of John Nathan Turner abugs | :44:13. | :44:18. | |
his power for sexual advantage is pretty grim, but I suppose now it | :44:19. | :44:25. | |
has become part of that long narrative of Doctor Who's behind the | :44:26. | :44:29. | |
scenes history which in the 80s was about to reach its most difficult | :44:30. | :44:35. | |
moment. Doctor Who is to take a rest. The | :44:36. | :44:40. | |
BBC announced today that the Time Lord who has been on our screens for | :44:41. | :44:44. | |
some 22 years now will be off the air for 18 months. I was told that | :44:45. | :44:48. | |
my era had terrible viewing figures. It didn't. They were just the same | :44:49. | :44:52. | |
as Peter's and every bit as good as some of Tom's. It was the heads of | :44:53. | :44:58. | |
departments that really gave every impression of not wanting to be | :44:59. | :45:01. | |
bothered. They really wanted more and more side line the programme so | :45:02. | :45:06. | |
it could be gone and not be the garish embarrassment to them. | :45:07. | :45:18. | |
Like Band Aid, pop stars gathered to end the famine of low budget TV | :45:19. | :45:26. | |
science fiction. Publicity promised Elton John and holly Johnson and who | :45:27. | :45:30. | |
turned up, Bobby from Bucks Fizz and Hazel Dean. | :45:31. | :45:40. | |
There was that appalling record which I resisted, I can't remember | :45:41. | :45:50. | |
what it was called. Doctor in Distress. Bring him back now we | :45:51. | :45:55. | |
won't take less. The one person who shouldn't be involved with it is the | :45:56. | :45:59. | |
person with a vested interest in it continuing. Doctor Who hung on for | :46:00. | :46:05. | |
three more years. Three years with plenty of fresh ideas and enner ji | :46:06. | :46:10. | |
but the BBC did its best to throttle any chance of success. The | :46:11. | :46:15. | |
schedulers factifies it had to Coronation Street. The ratings were | :46:16. | :46:21. | |
low. By 1989 Doctor Who was gone. The generation was robbed of their | :46:22. | :46:25. | |
Doctor Who. My children grew up without a Doctor Who in their lives. | :46:26. | :46:28. | |
I knew they were wrong, I really did. I remember when it finished, I | :46:29. | :46:34. | |
thought these people are fools. But they wanted to bring on El Dorado. | :46:35. | :46:42. | |
The last episode went out on sixth December 1989. Where to now? Home! | :46:43. | :46:54. | |
The TARDIS. Yes. There are worlds out there with the skies burning, | :46:55. | :46:57. | |
the sea is asleep and the rivers dream. Come on Ace, we have work to | :46:58. | :47:06. | |
do. Doctor Who walked off the screen, | :47:07. | :47:14. | |
but he didn't die. The fans wouldn't let him go. For them Doctor Who | :47:15. | :47:19. | |
hadn't been a kid's TV show, it had been an inspiration. Why is it so | :47:20. | :47:27. | |
important to us, why has it captured us in this way? It is the main | :47:28. | :47:33. | |
character, the Doctor. There is just something about that possibility of | :47:34. | :47:37. | |
opening that blue door and being invited to take a journey into time | :47:38. | :47:43. | |
and space, it does seem to tap into something in the British manages, | :47:44. | :47:51. | |
which is - imagination which is as profound as Sherlock Holmes. We live | :47:52. | :47:57. | |
in a world of geek empowerment. The geeks are coming to rule the world. | :47:58. | :48:01. | |
Like a lot of fans, I was hideously bullied, and the Doctor stood for | :48:02. | :48:07. | |
those things that the bullied stand for, and against those things that | :48:08. | :48:12. | |
the bullies seem to stand for. You are so right. As you were talking | :48:13. | :48:16. | |
about that, I suddenly found myself thinking of something I have not | :48:17. | :48:20. | |
thought about in years, a moment when me and my best friend, who we | :48:21. | :48:28. | |
were both Doctor Who fans, we were way laid down a dark alley by the | :48:29. | :48:35. | |
school bully and it is something - my friend I am sorry to say | :48:36. | :48:40. | |
committed suicide some years later, but I can remember that what | :48:41. | :48:47. | |
happened when we met them, was that I shouted out what Patrick Troughton | :48:48. | :48:52. | |
almost said in those situations and you probably know what this is. Rub | :48:53. | :48:58. | |
like a rabbit. -- run like a rabbit. When I say run, run and we did it. | :48:59. | :49:10. | |
These are fanzines I made at the age of 12, 13, 14-years-old. This is my | :49:11. | :49:16. | |
earliest writing which was ever sold. Have a look and they are quite | :49:17. | :49:21. | |
shocking in many ways. I am shocked because I bought these, I sent off | :49:22. | :49:27. | |
postal orders to you. I didn't know it was you who produced these. I | :49:28. | :49:32. | |
never worked out how to cash a postal order. I have your life in | :49:33. | :49:40. | |
this cardboard box here. This is terrifying. The mutant phase, part | :49:41. | :49:46. | |
two. Absolutely stunning. Daleks in that. Every copyright in the world | :49:47. | :49:54. | |
broken. The amateur adventures of Doctor Who. This is how it all | :49:55. | :49:58. | |
started. You were making these in the 80s in your bedroom. More like a | :49:59. | :50:00. | |
living room. What do you get if you cross a | :50:01. | :50:16. | |
scorpion for a dexocorn? It is a joke. Hello Greg. | :50:17. | :50:27. | |
I haven't heard any of that since the 1980s. I am amazed actual | :50:28. | :50:38. | |
actually how quite good that sounds. We learnt so quickly what we could | :50:39. | :50:42. | |
and couldn't do. Every person taught themselves what to do by trial and | :50:43. | :50:46. | |
experiment. I think almost everything about the new Doctor Who | :50:47. | :50:52. | |
happened in those 15 years that fans erroneously refer to as the | :50:53. | :50:56. | |
wilderness years. They are full of excitement and rides and wild times | :50:57. | :51:01. | |
and great creativity. I think it does every franchise good to lie | :51:02. | :51:06. | |
fallow for a while. That gap allowed fans to take over from the original | :51:07. | :51:09. | |
people that did T We loved it, we fell in love with the procedure. We | :51:10. | :51:13. | |
had no idea that it would lead to careers for any of us. It was a | :51:14. | :51:19. | |
hobby. Doctor Who had trained up his army of writers and now they were | :51:20. | :51:23. | |
ready to take him back where he belonged. The right people were | :51:24. | :51:27. | |
there at the right time with the right degree of enthusiasm. It took | :51:28. | :51:32. | |
them to shake it up and go actually this is unique, this is an amazing | :51:33. | :51:35. | |
show. There isn't another show like this in the world. Let's bring it | :51:36. | :51:40. | |
back. Doctor Who was resurrected with the fans in charge. The very | :51:41. | :51:45. | |
people who had written those novels and fanzines. The man at the top was | :51:46. | :51:52. | |
Russell T Davies, creator of queer as as -- Queer as Folk. | :51:53. | :51:58. | |
Can we watch this now, please? Actors seem to have more power than | :51:59. | :52:11. | |
writers in television at the moment. It is an odd thing to do to the | :52:12. | :52:15. | |
culture. Balls the actor isn't the most important thing. The most | :52:16. | :52:19. | |
important thing is the writer and Russell is maintaining that. I | :52:20. | :52:24. | |
cannot emphasise enough how Russell T Davies is the central hero in the | :52:25. | :52:30. | |
return of Doctor Who. I did not get the Doctor seeing all that stuff. He | :52:31. | :52:36. | |
is more than a fan. He understood how to make it mainstream, but also | :52:37. | :52:41. | |
honour the past, which is what we really wanted to do. From the | :52:42. | :52:48. | |
beginning there was an enormous weight of responsibility. I didn't | :52:49. | :52:51. | |
want to be the exec producer that screwed up the return of Doctor Who, | :52:52. | :52:56. | |
that is for sure. Public lived without the Doctor for 16 years. | :52:57. | :53:00. | |
Russell knew if Doctor Who was going to be great once more it had to | :53:01. | :53:03. | |
appeal to people who thought they didn't like it. In particular a | :53:04. | :53:08. | |
section of the audience that had been neglected for far too long. Do | :53:09. | :53:14. | |
you think old Doctor Who is mainly for boys? I would look at that | :53:15. | :53:19. | |
assistant and go, because secretly you want to be the dok doctor, you | :53:20. | :53:30. | |
think there's nothing here for me. Do you think 21st century Doctor Who | :53:31. | :53:35. | |
has revived its view of women. Yes, it was really noticeable, they start | :53:36. | :53:39. | |
off and it is a gobby council estate girl with the acne covered up with | :53:40. | :53:42. | |
concealer, which is a huge thing. She is packing a bit of weight and | :53:43. | :53:47. | |
wearing scruffy clothes from Primark. You have never seen a woman | :53:48. | :53:56. | |
like her before. Oh my God, I am a chav. Then the other assistants, the | :53:57. | :54:02. | |
women are more than the Doctor's equal. Even though he is | :54:03. | :54:06. | |
superhumanly clever, he always needs those women to come along and they | :54:07. | :54:09. | |
battle with him and are brilliant characters in their own right. I | :54:10. | :54:16. | |
have no A-levels. No job. No future. But I tell you what I have got, I | :54:17. | :54:32. | |
have the bronze gymnastics. We also seem to offer an amazingly | :54:33. | :54:38. | |
inclusive view of sexuality in a place and a time when it is not | :54:39. | :54:42. | |
often offered to this particular audience. Yes, Russell had, having | :54:43. | :54:47. | |
done Queer as Folk, which was done as a brilliant 50-50 combination, | :54:48. | :54:53. | |
something of how he felt how he wanted to change this country, he | :54:54. | :54:58. | |
wanted to have a revolution and 50% joyful character led funny, sad | :54:59. | :55:04. | |
heartbreaking, brought that same ethos to rebooting children's sci-fi | :55:05. | :55:08. | |
show on a Saturday and many people thought that wouldn't work. I think | :55:09. | :55:13. | |
the most astonishing thing about the way he rebooted Doctor Who is that | :55:14. | :55:18. | |
he did change things. I wish I had never met you Doctor. I was better | :55:19. | :55:30. | |
off as a coward. I very much doubt we would have had civil partner | :55:31. | :55:34. | |
shipgs and gay marriage for gay people in this country without | :55:35. | :55:38. | |
Russell T Davies for Queer as Folk and Doctor Who. At a point when your | :55:39. | :55:46. | |
children and grandchildren are in the playground playing captain jack | :55:47. | :55:51. | |
and your kids have got their head around it, they understand it and | :55:52. | :55:55. | |
they are talking about time travel and the theory of relativity. Doctor | :55:56. | :55:59. | |
Who tells us in everything that it does there isn't anything that is | :56:00. | :56:02. | |
either too complicated or too good for church. We are surrounded in | :56:03. | :56:04. | |
here. What feelings did you have coming | :56:05. | :56:22. | |
into it? One of your predecessors did say I don't want to be the | :56:23. | :56:27. | |
George Lazenby of Doctor Who. Did you have that worry? You don't want | :56:28. | :56:31. | |
to be the person who breaks Doctor Who. I would ring my dad in the | :56:32. | :56:36. | |
evening and say dad what am I going to do, I don't know how to get hold | :56:37. | :56:40. | |
of this language, I don't know what I am doing. I just feel like I am | :56:41. | :56:45. | |
flailing here and he would say keep going. I believe in you, keep going. | :56:46. | :56:53. | |
To me it is a wonderful part, but it is like TV hamlet in that it has to | :56:54. | :57:01. | |
be your version and it can't be an impersonation or reinterpretation | :57:02. | :57:05. | |
because we have seen Hamlet done and the Doctor done. Is this world | :57:06. | :57:15. | |
protected? You are not the first Doctor to have come here, there have | :57:16. | :57:17. | |
been so many. What you Could Doctor Who die? Yes, of course | :57:18. | :57:35. | |
he could. Because it is said in Who folklore, after 12, coming into 13 s | :57:36. | :57:39. | |
the Doctor can no longer regenerate, that is it. The number is up. Either | :57:40. | :57:46. | |
the B BC pull one of their great shows or they invent something where | :57:47. | :57:50. | |
he can. Which is I suspect what they will do. Please welcome the 12th | :57:51. | :57:58. | |
doctor, a hero for a whole new generation, it's Peter Capaldi. | :57:59. | :58:11. | |
Doctor Who is celebrating its half century but that doesn't mean to say | :58:12. | :58:16. | |
there won't be more wilderness years to come. One day it will fall from | :58:17. | :58:21. | |
fashion and favour. But I have a prediction: It will always come back | :58:22. | :58:25. | |
and the people who will produce it and write its stories, their kids | :58:26. | :58:30. | |
right now, kids hiding behind the sofa from the daleks and weeping | :58:31. | :58:35. | |
angels and the future Doctor Who is out there now, maybe even watching | :58:36. | :58:40. | |
this. Well, whoever she is, whoever you are, I know you are going to be | :58:41. | :58:43. | |
amazing. | :58:44. | :58:48. |