Me, You and Doctor Who The Culture Show


Me, You and Doctor Who

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This is an add vnture in time and space. 50 years of hair's-breadth

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escapes, cliff hanger endings, amazing resourcefullness and

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ingenuity. You know what I'm talking about, don't you. You know Who. Its

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heroes are the people who weren't afade to fight for their

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convictions. To reinvent the way we told stories. It is very funny. To

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pioneer untried new technology. We ought to talk about deal kwa

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Derbyshire in the same breath as Phil Spector or The Beatles. She is

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higher placed for me. To confront the nation's fears and anxieties.

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And create a fable that would become part of everyone's lives. Ask

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someone who has never watched Doctor Who and I bet you they can tell whau

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a dalek is. Saving the daily universe is the daily business of

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the Doctor's televised career. He's achieved something more significant

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than that. He's changed the universe in which we live. This is the story

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of the Doctor's greatest victory, how he became part of our culture,

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how he became in indestructible, how he got inside your head.

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50 years ago a strange object appeared on our screens for the

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first time. Look at this. It is a police box! What is it doing here?

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These things are usually on the street. Feel it. Do you feel it?

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There is a faint vibration. Doctor Who quickly became part of

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contemporary folklore, but for some of us, he's more than that. You are

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supposed to grow out of liking Doctor Who but this hasn't happened

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to me. I think I might not be the only one. I am in my 40s you would

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think I have abandoned my attachment to what is essentially a children's

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programme but this programme has exerted a strange influence over my

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life. I feel it has influenced my morality, the way I think about the

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world. Some of my earliest memories of any kind at all are memories of

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Doctor Who, images from the programme have burned their way into

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my brain but I think Doctor Who is one of the most important things in

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our culture, one of the most rich and interesting things that has ever

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been made in this country. Is this really where you live? Yes and

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what's wrong with it? It was just a telephone box. Perhaps. This is your

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grandfather? Yes. Why didn't you tell us that? I don't discuss my

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priefrt life with strangers. In 19 62 the BBC had a problem, a brash

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unruly seven-year-old called ITV2, had stolen 80% of the audience, had

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game shows and sci-fi, cutting edge theatre and Bruce Forsyth. The BBC

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needed a loyalty programme to persuade people not to get out of

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their chairs and switch the dial in Brucie's direction. By 1963 it had a

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name, Doctor Who. As for who created Doctor Who, well, how long have you

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got? Doctor Who was devised by a

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committee. But one man has his name on the birth certificate, the head

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of television drama, Sydney Newman. Sydney Newman was ambitious and

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tough talking and not an raf-type in a tweed suit. He swore, he knew what

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he wanted, he was excitedly Canadian. He had been poached from

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ITV2, where he had set up the Avengers and given Harold Pinter his

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first TV break. Newman put his best people on the case. Among them was a

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staff writer called Cecil Edwin Webber, known to his friends as

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Bunny. Bunny had been around the block a

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few times. His stage plays had been brought to life Albert Finney but at

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53 he was too old to be an angry young man. Bunny and the team got

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down to work. Ideas were kicked around and kicked to death. But

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everyone agreed that this should be an adventure in time, as well as

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space. Stories about history, stories about science and exciting

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dramas that would inform, educate and entertain. It was Bunny who

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wrote up the treatment and continued the development of the idea. It is

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his name on the top of the founding document of Doctor Who. Bunny was

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commissioned to write the first Doctor Who story. He wanted to

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shrink the heroes to minuscule size and make them fight spiders, but

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Sydney hated it. Too tacky, too expensive and too impossible.

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Bunny's script was snatched away from him and the task was passed on

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to another staff writer. Bunny Webber never got to see his name on

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the credits of the programme. He is just a footnote in the history of

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Doctor Who. But I think there is a piece of the jigsaw that shows how

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much of that early work was his. It's here.

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To test my theory, I have tracked down a man who is another piece of

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the puzzle. I think I might have found a little misting piece of the

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history of Doctor Who here. This is a play by Cecil Edwin Webber, called

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Out of the Frying Pan. In this play there is a young actor playing the

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part of Gregory, who is that? It's me! It's me. I even played the

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guitar in it. I would like you to read your own part, you are sitting

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in the espresso bar in this scene. Well, what do you know, it says here

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if a spaceship travelled faster than light it would go backwards in time.

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Start a new journey in the spaceship in the year 500. It's not only

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scientific, it's historical. That in embryo is Doctor Who. It is. That is

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exactly where it's at. 1958. Is it just a coincidence or is there more

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to it? It is where it came from. But I have no recollection, I haven't

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tied the two together until now. A few years after starring in Bunny's

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play Richard joined the BBC's drama department. He was given a daunting

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new job, directing some of Doctor Who's earliest and most ambitious

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episodes on a shoe string budget Chaos, but creative chaos. For half

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an hour television we were allowed an hour-and-a-half to record and we

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were told never go over. What happened if did you go over? Do you

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want to see the scars! It was a live-type performance. The concept

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behind that was that the excitement of theatre and real-life performance

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would overcome any technical glitches, which sometimes happened.

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Luckily Richard had an ally, the BBC youngest ever producer, verity

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Lambert. Verity trusted me and guarded my back. She took a lot of

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flak on my behalf because she knew I was not prepared to compromise. Part

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of a new generation of programme makers, verity and Richard were

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young, risk taking, iconoclastic, a breed apart from the BBC

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establishment. I had been quite lucky in terms of my career in that

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I was producing Doctor Who when I was 27 and even for a man in those

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days that was quite young. I did have about two or three months when

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I first joined the BBC when I was seemed to be much younger than

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anyone else and a woman. I can remember derision at Ver itity. It

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was the first time a woman producer I think, had been created in the

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serials department. She was very fashion conscious, wore a different

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hat every day and they used to come out and snigger and say to me "what

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hat is she wearing today". It wasn't nice. She had a good hyde on her and

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could take it. Maybe they were sniggering at me, too. They were

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probably sniggering behind my back. It wasn't just sniggers, there were

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those within the BBC who wanted to strangle Doctor Who in its cradle,

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close it down after a few episodes. But Verity soon made that

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impossible, by deliberately disobeying her boss. Sydney Newman

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told Verity, no bug-eyed monsters. You broke this rule in the fifth

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episode. Absolutely. What was his response? Verity said she thought he

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was going to kill her. This is the first time the Dahl ex-appeared

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on-screen. They very nearly didn't make it there at all. -- daleks. She

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came out with the dalek business and I was livid. She said they are not

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bug eyed monsters, they were once living creatures, with brains and

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their brains have become so large their bodies needed the metal casing

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to support the brain. These strange new creatures were the invention of

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a writer named Terry Nation. He was a comedy writer. His vision was

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darker than anything the tea time audience had ever seen. The daleks

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had a catch phrase and they weren't the first to use it. The word

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exterminate had a history. As did other dalekisms like the habit of

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talking about themselves as the masters and their fondness of

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phrases like final solution. Exterminate all humans. Terry Nation

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had clear memories of the threat of German invasion. That didn't happen

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of course, but the Nazis did occupy his nightmares. Terry Nation was a

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child of war and an only child. His mum was an air raid warden and his

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dad was in the army. So when he went down to the shul ter he went alone

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and down there in the dark he would make up stories, about himself,

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about the war. It's hard to say what Terry Nation thought the daleks

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ought to look like. The script he wrote is vague on that point. It was

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the designer who had to put them on the screen. It is often say Ray

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Cusick based the design for the dalek on one of these. What he

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originally wanted was something much more elaborate, something with an

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ten eye and moving parts, but he only had ?60 to spend on each one so

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had to resort to more mundane objects.

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Somehow the team had to transform four ply wood props into a

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terrifying monster. The description of a dalek is that it is meant to

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glide effortlessly, as though it was on a sort of anti-gravitational

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pull. Four golden casters and cramped actors doing this and that

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at the same time, can you imagine. Was there a knack to directing the

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daleks, was it something you learned because you had a lot of experience.

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These are creatures that are meant to have mutated into a jelly in the

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middle of a vast pepper pot. They are actually helpless. God knows how

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they eat or reproduce, but... Very carefully! But what must energise

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them is fear. Look, the disease has reached us here. We cannot delay,

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but what are we to do, is this the end of the daleks. We all agreed

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that they were on the point of hysteria. So there was enormous

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tension in their voices and it came out like that. It is like they were

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suffering inside. It was Klaus phobia. -- Klaus ra phobia.

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You will be exterminated. You understand. Exterminated. I

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understand. When the daleks returned in Doctor Who's second season they

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blitzed London and the survivors became slaves, collaborators,

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resistance fighters and Britain went mad with gratitude. Suddenly the

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ratings soared over the ten million mark. There was a word that went

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with it, a medical word, Dalekmania. From 19 64 the real dalek invasion

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of earth began. They occupied sweet shops, comic scripts, school fetes,

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the Blue Peter studio, Britain hadn't seen a craze like it since

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The Beatles. I have three daleks here this afternoon. Less

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frightening than the big ones. These you can eat. How did a tin pot Nazi

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become the nation's sweetheart? Why was Blue Peter turning an allegory

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for the SS into walnut whip. Why are the daleks so appealing then? They

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are hideous and monsterous and we adore them, too. Well, I think they

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first arrived in 1963 and by about that time, the memory of the war was

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fading. What the war gave us was a common enemy. So the Dahlenings come

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along and again we can unite against a baddie. The other thing, if we

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have an enemy, we don't have to own our own dark side. We can project it

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all out on to the enemy. Why are we as a society so attracted to horror

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though? We are not actually in control of dying, death, disease,

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disasser. But I think we like to play like we are in control of it.

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We know we can switch the television off, for example, and that is why

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question like a fairground ride because it will give us an

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adrenaline hit without actually being in any real danger. I think

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that is what Doctor Who does as well. This is how the ride began,

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with uncanny rushes of light that told the audience they were going to

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be Transport 2000ed beyond the world of ordinary television. All part of

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Verity Lambert's master plan. Verity wanted a theme tune that was

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equally unearthly and this was the band she was desperate to sign, Les

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Structures Sonores, performance artists who created sculptures from

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glass and metal and used them to make music, but their price turned

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out to be as avant-garde as their work. Verity needed to find a cheap

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solution, one that was in-house at the BBC. So what does a brilliant

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young woman do in that situation? Looks for another brilliant young

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woman and she found one at the end of this corridor. The radiophonic

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work shop was a tiny sub division of the BBC, buried at the unfashionable

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end of Maida Vale studios. But within it, all kinds of strange and

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wonderful experiments were taking place. In room 11B a green metal

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lamp shade could be transformed into the shimmering sound of desert heat.

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A fistful of swar Faying ga could Transport 2000 you to the planet of

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the Fungoids. And a key scraped against a broken piano could conjure

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the sound of the TARDIS. The work shop was a tiny paradise for anyone

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who wanted to experiment with sound. To make music with static, feed

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back, razor blades, tape loops and the rush of electrons through the

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atmosphere. Then all we have to do is cut the notes to the right

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length. We can join them together on a loop and listen to them. Delia

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Derbyshire was a Cambridge graduate and one of the workshops brightest

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minds. She was 25-years-old when she was briefed to arrange the Doctor

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Who theme. It was composed by Roy Grainer who got the on-screen credit

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but he barely recognised what Delia had done, with his simple tune. Ten

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years later, she had given up music altogether. She worked for British

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Gas, she drank too much, she died in 2001, boxes of music forgotten in

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heratic. -- her attic. She created a work that will never grow old.

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What is its power? It feels kind of time travely and scientific and

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alien and I think that song has great momentum. That is one of the

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single most influential bits of music on my career because it is the

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one I have grown up with. It's part of what made me do what I do. I

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can't think of anything else that was like it. I can tell you want a

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moment. These are the original master tapes of the Doctor Who theme

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from 19 636789 Is that Delia Derbyshire's writing? Probably.

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Inside is the reel itself. I am not even wear wearing white gloves.

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Amazing. Will this bear being loaded on to the machine to listen to?

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Absolutely. What do you think it would have been

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like to hear this music for the first time? It must have been

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shocking at the time to hear that on Saturday evening, tea time. This

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piece of high experiment where you would expect to hear something like

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the theme tune of duke box jury. It is the first thing that brought this

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kind of music to a family audience. It is what The Beatles were doing,

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it is what Pink Floyd were doing with Dark Side Of The Moon. All this

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culture coming together to create these, what we now look on as

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pivotal moments in contemporary music history. We ought to talk

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about Delia Derbyshire in the same breath as Phil Spector or The

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Beatles then. Yes, absolutely, she is higher placed for me!

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Derbyshire's theme tune wasn't Doctor Who's only genius idea.

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Changing the lead actor in a burst of light, that was pretty clever,

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too. But it wasn't enough. By the end of the 19 60s, viewing figures

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from half what they had been at the height of dalek main yachlt the

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programme had been through two doctors and half a dozen producers,

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all with ideas about what the show ought to be. When Patrick Troughton

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announced his departure it seemed like Doctor Who had come to the end

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of its natural life. But the show didn't die. In 19 70 it

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returned in colour with a new Doctor, Jon Pertwee. And much more

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punch. It had a new producer, too, Barry

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Letts, a buddist and veg tearia, with a passion for science and

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politics. He worked out what was really frightening people in 19 70s

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Britain. Not strange beings on an alien world but the people who were

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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

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world was the Britain of the near future, a place of crumbling

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warehouses and sinister missile bases and government research

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stations. All of which inevitably conceal secrets. How serious was

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Doctor Who's politics. Malcolm Hulk, the author of many of the political

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stories in this period was a member of the Communist Party. Is that

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legible in these stories? I don't think he had a secret plot to thak

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these ten-year-old minds and turn them into lefties, because it didn't

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work. It is important to remember at that stage, the Heath government was

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elected. The first attempt since before the war to turn British

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politics back towards the right. And he failed. It is no way you are

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going to write this contemporary science fiction stuff without

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dipping into current events. How much longer before this countdown

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begins A matter of hours. Under great pressure from the government.

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It won't be for much longer. They are on to Whitaker you know.

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Remember the Doctor has discovered the existence of this place. He is a

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very intelligent man. He suspects my involvement. We ought to dispose of

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him. You have to remember what the over arching prism of the Pertwee

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era is about. It is a scientist allying himself to a military

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organisation in order to fight invaders. That is a pretty right

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wing base, it might be if the writers were left wing, they were

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trying to drop these things in to say this isn't the militaristic

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stiff upper lip programme it would otherwise have been. There is some

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anxiety in Doctor Who about the return of the right, isn't there.

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You get these rogue general figures, there are faintly Oswald Moseleyish

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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.

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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

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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

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domestic politics behind. The Doctor joined the counter-culture and went

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off into space to discover himself. The new Doctor was Tom Baker, an

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actor who used to be a monk, Baker was the most moss terous and mess

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Merrick actor to play the part. He took over the minds of the children

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watching. Took over mine, too. He did it with the strange fruit of the

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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

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The Brain of Morbius. It made this monster, too, the

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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

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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

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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

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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

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is there to do a number of jobs, it is there to make the pictures look

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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.

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