Beginnings

It was terrific to see “Doctor Who” back on BBC television, early Saturday evening! Engaging, through the sincerity of its performances, suspenseful, in that you really didn’t know in what direction the tale was going to turn, and full of hidden terrors, in the shadows flickering across a seemingly deserted and unknown terrain. Whatever dangers are to be faced, it doesn’t help any companion if they don’t feel able to trust the Doctor! He makes up excuses to have his own way, oblivious to the hazards in which he may be placing them, allowing curiosity to get the better of him. Unrushed, with time to slowly build the narrative, to dwell upon ideas to consider their implications, the story places the TARDIS crew in considerable peril. What is the object found on the forest floor outside the ship - a bomb? Who has left it there and what is its purpose? Who can be relied upon - the Thals? Who is to be believed - “The Daleks”?

How unfortunate for Russell T Davies, supposedly the saviour of British television drama, that his latest offering should premiere on the same night as a welcome, and long overdue, repeat of a serial representing a master class in economically effective writing! And, written by a supposed hack!! Almost immediately, Terry Nation has the explorers fall ill, succumbing to radiation sickness, and just as they encounter the conniving inhabitants of Skaro for the very first time. But, the mysterious old man, leading the crew, is equally devious - disastrously to the travellers’ detriment… One of their number, a science teacher, is paralysed from the waist down. They are all imprisoned inside an alien city, forced to lay a trap against those who have befriended them, while the youngest has to face her fear and journey again amongst the petrified trees, alone, to fetch drugs to combat their deteriorating and debilitating condition. Will “The Daleks” allow the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara to use the medicine or do the exterminators want it for themselves?

The Early Life of Verity Lambert

Such is the way of life that having just celebrated the origins of “Doctor Who” in my previous post, I am saddened to report the death of the show’s original Producer, Verity Lambert, on Thursday, 22nd November, 2007. She died on the eve of her most famous creation’s forty-fourth anniversary and just five days before she would’ve turned seventy-two. Verity’s numerous achievements beyond our much-cherished, then-fledgling, Saturday teatime series are well-documented elsewhere so, as you might expect of this author, I am going to focus on her enormous contribution to the success of my favourite programme. Back in 1963, having moved to the BBC from ITV, at the request of Sydney Newman, she was given charge of producing a new, semi-educational, family-orientated science fiction serial at the tender age of twenty-seven. Not only did she become the youngest person to hold such an important position at the Corporation but she was also the only woman which, at that time, was unheard of! Sydney’s faith in her was well-founded though, as borne out in her realisation of his concept. There was minor disagreement over the introduction of those bug-eyed monsters the Daleks but, on realising their popularity, Canadian Newman acquiesced that Verity obviously knew the series better than he did!

Verity Lambert stayed with “Doctor Who” for two years producing a total of seventy-eight episodes (each approximately twenty-five minutes in length) transmitted between Saturday, 23rd November, 1963 and Saturday, 9th October, 1965. “An Unearthly Child”, the opening episode, introduced us to the Doctor, as played by William Hartnell, and his three companions: science teacher Ian Chesterton (William Russell), history teacher Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and Granddaughter Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford). Central to the story is the teachers’ discovery, in a scrap yard of all places, of the Doctor’s TARDIS; a ship which can travel through space and time disguised from the outside as a Police Box! Ironically, Verity’s final broadcast episode, “Mission to the Unknown”, featured none of the regular cast but was used by way of an introduction to the massive twelve-part “Daleks’ Master Plan” epic which would follow the four-part historical “The Myth Makers”. Between her first and last episodes she oversaw three full Dalek serials, the first two of which, “The Daleks” and “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”, are undoubted classics while the latter, “The Chase”, exploded into an all-out battle between the Daleks and the Mechonoids. As her time on the series drew to a close, Verity introduced us to the Zarbi on “The Web Planet” and the Meddling Monk (Peter Butterworth), the original renegade with a TARDIS of his own, in “The Time Meddler”. Perhaps because this was a time when everything seemed fresh and new, the sheer volume of creativity that the original Producer of “Doctor Who” brought to the programme has never been surpassed and is never likely to be.

Happy Birthday to Who

Forty-four years ago today BBC Television gave birth to a little science fiction series which went on to become a national institution. That show was, of course, “Doctor Who”. It was carefully constructed so that three generations were represented aboard the TARDIS. The Doctor was a Grandfather. This was so embedded on my consciousness that when the original Doctor, William Hartnell, requested a holiday, and a plea went out for someone to replace him for a couple of weeks, long before the concept of regeneration was introduced, I responded in keeping with the original concept. I wouldn’t dream of going so far as to suggest that I gave the Producer the idea of replacing dear old Bill but I wrote to “Junior Points of View” and naturally suggested my Grandfather take over at the helm of the console room. My letter was read out on the programme. There are records kept of these things at the Beeb and what I wrote, all those years ago, later resurfaced in an article in “Doctor Who Magazine”. In turn, the periodical of all things “Who” requested that if anyone who had featured on this comments show of the Sixties had stayed with “Doctor Who” would they please get in touch. I turned out to be their only respondent which probably means nothing other than that I need to get out more!

Anyway, I digress! Alongside the Grandfather figure of the Doctor were the two parental symbols in the guise of history and science schoolteachers Barbara and Ian. Clever idea that, to have figures of authority and learning to contrast the lead’s non-establishment outlook who could both look forward and back at events in time. Then there was the teenage girl, Susan, for all us children to relate to; a brilliant child in some respects while a typical transistor radio-listening teen at other times. And she was the paradox pivotal to hooking the viewer in “An Unearthly Child”, the opening episode of “Doctor Who”. Four characters providing the perfect model of how to root a fantasy show in reality. I’m told by my own parents that I watched the series from the beginning but my earliest memories are of the two stories, recorded as part of the first series but held over to open the second, “Planet of Giants”, with its oversized box of matches and rather large kitchen-sink plughole, and the disused warehouses at the start of “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”. It saddens me, more than a little, to think that the singular wise old sage has given way to the common young action hero but it is remarkable to think that the thirtieth series of travels in time and space will be on our television screens in 2008... A double Happy Birthday to “Doctor Who”!