Furious, Frowned Upon and Contractually Obliged by Stephen Maslin 19/12/15
On the DVD extras for City of Death, there is a documentary dedicated to the writer David Agnew (credited with the writing of two Who TV stories: The Invasion of Time and - predictably enough - City of Death). In it, an assortment of luminaries talk about how elusive and mysterious he was. Now, if one did not know the truth of the matter, the somewhat stilted manner of the documentary might be a little hard to fathom. The truth is simple: Agnew, of course, did not exist. Neither did his compatriots Norman Ashby, Guy Leopold, Stephen Harris or Robin Bland. Splendid fellows, all of them; in fact, miraculous: all of them managed to write a Doctor Who story without the benefit of actual existence. So, why were they summoned into being from the realms of Pseudonymia?
PROTEST
(i) Norman Ashby
Heaven help us but The Dominators was originally supposed to be a six-parter. Deemed too thin for six (it's way too thin for even five), script-editor Derrick Sherwin was ordered to squidge the two last episodes into one. Having not been consulted, writers Haisman and Lincoln took umbrage and insisted that their names be taken from the credits. Thus it was that Norman Ashby was born, though 'his' contribution is hardly stellar (and would have been no better had no cuts been made). In fact, The Dominators is quite probably the worst Second Doctor outing of all. Norman Ashby, thy name is mud.
Mr Ashby's contribution: 2/10.
(ii) Robin Bland
1975. Terrance Dicks submits his script for The Brain of Morbius and leaves for foreign parts. Script-editor Robert Holmes is asked to undertake a rewrite in his absence. Dicks returns, considers said rewrite to be too excessive and orders it put out under some "bland pseudonym", hence the name. Had the excessive rewrite not been by Robert Holmes, then The Brain of Morbius would not have shone as brightly as it does. It is frankly too long and the Sisterhood of Karn do try the patience, but it is a classic nonetheless: creepy, compelling and often hilarious. (Need one point out that Philip Madoc is superb.)
Mr Bland's contribution: 9/10.
RULE-BENDING
(i) Guy Leopold
I've no idea if this is still the case but back in the day, the BBC really didn't like production staff writing for their own show. So it was that, having enlisted the help of Robert Sloman in writing The Daemons, Barry Letts then had to disguise his own involvement with the name Guy Leopold. (Letts' subsequent three co-writings with Sloman were all simply credited to Sloman.) Like so much of Season 8, The Daemons is a real period piece. Any future cultural historian wanting to know what British people were like in 1971 could look no further. By no means the worst of Sloman and Letts' collaborations, it does however lack the depth of The Green Death, and the delicious end-of-term feeling of Planet of Spiders.
Mr Leopold's contribution: 7/10.
(ii) Stephen Harris
Although a seasoned writer for television, Lewis Grieffer's original script for The Pyramids of Mars was deemed totally unusable. The rewrite it got is so all-embracing that what we end up with often feels like pure Robert Holmes. And hooray for that! The perfect start for almost any story that isn't called The Power of Kroll. Paddy Russell's superb direction leaves image after image indelibly imprinted on your brain, matched by Dudley Simpson's outstanding score and magnificent performances throughout. For all its flaws (it does have some), it is still one of those stories of which everyone concerned can be justifiably proud. Fictitious though he may be, Stephen Harris is a god.
Mr Harris' contribution: 10/10.
UNION DUES
David Agnew
The BBC of the 70s was a very strictly unionized affair, although, by subterfuge, one could occasionally skirt round the restrictions. One such ruse was to call up David Agnew. In reality, this was an in-house pseudonym used when the freelance author of a TV drama was unable to undertake requested script changes and they had to be carried out by the production staff. In Doctor Who, the name was used twice and refers to different groups of people: The Invasion of Time by Williams and Read; City of Death by Williams, Adams and Fisher. Although there exists little similarity of tone between these two stories, there is a similarity of scale. These are BIG stories: a lot is at stake. City of Death has always been rightly upheld as a high-point (but also perhaps an end point), whereas The Invasion of Time has needed some positive reappraisal, its unique approach to dealing with tight budgets still causing as much head-scratching as delight.
Mr Agnew's contribution: 9/10.