• Who Made Whom? by Robert Seulowitz
• Author Watch by Norman Dewhirst

Who Made Whom? by Robert Seulowitz 7/7/00

Over the course of it's 26 year history, the Doctor Who television series -- created by a committee of BBC-TV staffers under the direction of Donald Wilson in 1962 -- was (re)conceived, built and executed by an army of producers, writers, designers, actors and directors, each of whom exerted some degree of influence over the evolution of the stories and characters.

The cast changes alone are mind-boggling: The lead role changed hands six times -- something no other television show in history could even attempt, let alone pull off effortlessly -- and, depending on how you count them, some 30 or more other regular actors came and went.

But, more significantly, behind the camera the creative leadership was in near-constant flux, as a wide variety of people, often with wildly differing views on everything from story formats to production details, exerted various degrees of control over the development of the series. The show had 9 different Producers, 16 Script or Story Editors, 60 Directors, and more than 65 writers.

Nearly 40 years later, with the benefits of hindsight and video tape, the modern Doctor Who connoisseur can sift through the fan magazines and viewers guides and compare and contrast the best and worst the show had to offer. The opportunity to assess the contributions of the many creative talents who brought Doctor Who to life (and death!) is irresistible. Who, in fact, made Doctor Who what it was and is? Who's vision had the most lasting impact?

Strangely, in my (albeit limited) perusal of fan literature, this question is rarely if ever addressed directly. While preferences for and controversies over specific actors, producers and writers abound -- all of which, of course, tend to involve profoundly personal issues of taste and timing. While it is impossible to escape personal bias, it should be possible (and, I hope, interesting) to review the history of the show and identify the most prominent of the creative minds involved and articulate their contributions. Having done so, it may even be possible to draw some reasonably clear, if less than definitive, conclusions about the relative value of those contributions.

Let's start with the obvious, if clumsy, weight of numbers.

Armed with Doctor Who: The Television Companion by Howe and Walker [BBC Worldwide, 1998], I recently compiled a small database of production information, in order to see what patterns of personnel would emerge. My basic unit of measurement was the "Adventure" rather than the "Episode" as each multi-episode televised narrative tended to have very clearly defined involvement from a discrete group of creative people (whereas changes in broadcast strategies over the years would make episode counting less useful as an indication of involvement, as the earlier seasons have a significantly higher episode-to-adventure density).

In order to facilitate number-crunching, I made the following (possibly suspect) decisions:

1. Season 23 (The Trial of a Time Lord) is treated as 4 separate "Adventures," as per page 492 of the Howe/Walker book. 2.
2. Shada is included as an Adventure, although it was never transmitted.
3. Mission to the Unknown (aka "Dalek Cutaway") from Season 3 is treated as a separate "Adventure".
4. The Five Doctors anniversary special is excluded (largely because all the cameos throw the numbers off).
5. The 1996 Fox-TV movie is excluded because it was not part of the continuous BBC-TV series.
6. Involvement includes uncredited substitutions and contributions, as identified by Howe/Walker.

By tallying up the number of Adventures each person participated in, we can identify the most prominent figures in the series' development, at least in terms of pure physical proximity. The table below assigns 1 point for each story that person Produced, Edited or Acted in, and 2 points for each story Written or Directed. These point values are, admittedly, somewhat arbitrary, but the intention is to reflect the relative strength of influence over the content of the series. While actors are the most visibly apparent element of the show, the writer and director are in fact much more important in the process of shaping not only the narrative itself but also the televised image itself.

Here are the results: Top 50 Most Influential People & Characters in the Development of the Series Doctor Who

Name	Produced	Edited	Directed	Wrote	Acted	Points
Holmes, Robert	-	23	-	18	-	59
Letts, Barry	31*	-	6	4	-	51
Nathan-Turner, John	49	1	-	-	-	50
Baker, Tom	-	-	-	-	42	42
Dicks, Terrance	-	29	-	6	-	41
Saward, Eric	-	27	-	4	-	35
Hartnell, William	-	-	-	-	30	30
Whitaker, David	-	10	-	8	-	26
Pertwee, Jon	-	-	-	-	24	24
Williams, Graham	18	1	-	2	-	24
Troughton, Patrick	-	-	-	-	23	23
Davis, Gerry	-	15	-	4	-	23
UNIT/Lethbridge-Stewart (et al)	-	-	-	-	22	22
Nation, Terry	-	-	-	11	-	22
Jamie (Frazer Hines)	-	-	-	-	21	21
Barry, Christopher	-	-	10	-	-	20
Davison, Peter	-	-	-	-	19	19
K9 (J. Leeson/D. Brierly)	-	-	-	-	19	19
Lambert, Verity	19	-	-	-	-	19
Sarah (Elisabeth Sladen)	-	-	-	-	18	18
Tegan (Janet Fielding)	-	-	-	-	18	18
Baker, Bob & Martin, Dave	-	-	-	9	-	18
Camfield, Douglas	-	-	9	-	-	18
Maloney, David	-	-	9	-	-	18
Romana (M. Tamm/L. Ward)	-	-	-	-	17	17
Barbara (Jacqueline Hill)	-	-	-	-	16	16
Ian (William Russell)	-	-	-	-	16	16
Hulke, Malcolm	-	-	-	8	-	16
Hinchcliffe, Philip	16	-	-	-	-	16
Lloyd, Innes	16	-	-	-	-	16
Jo (Katy Manning)	-	-	-	-	15	15
Spooner, Dennis	-	6	-	4	-	14
Grimwade, Peter	-	-	4	3	-	14
Bryant, Peter	10	4	-	-	-	14
Nyssa (Sarah Sutton)	-	-	-	-	13	13
Sherwin, Derrick	2	5	-	3	-	13
Adams, Douglas	-	7	-	3	-	13
Bidmead, Christopher H	-	7	-	3	-	13
McCoy, Sylvester	-	-	-	-	12	12
Hayles, Brian	-	-	-	6	-	12
Pedler, Kit	-	-	-	6	-	12
Read, Anthony	-	8	-	2	-	12
Cartmel, Andrew	-	-	-	12	-	12
Briant, Michael	-	-	6	-	-	12
Clough, Chris	-	-	6	-	-	12
Jones, Ron	-	-	6	-	-	12
Martinus, Derek	-	-	6	-	-	12
Baker, Colin	-	-	-	-	11	11
Adric (Matthew Waterhouse)	-	-	-	-	11	11
Peri (Nicola Bryant)	-	-	-	-	11	11

* = Includes his involvement as Executive Producer in Season 18, although later statistics are based only on the Seasons he actually Produced.

There is some overlap in this chart, as in the case of Writers who were Script Editor when their own stories were produced, but on the whole that sort of double-duty can only have magnified that person's importance to the program. As it stands, the top 10 are in a defensible if not necessarily definitive order.

A few more observations:

The Producers

Nathan-Turner produced - by a wide margin - more Adventures (and more episodes) than any other Producer in the program's history. If you include the 2+ seasons he spent has Unit Production Manager, his tenure as a senior executive with Doctor Who encompasses nearly half the show's life span.

Sherwin (2) and Wiles (4) produced the fewest, neither having the job for a full season. Curiously, Derrick Sherwin was called upon to produce what are arguably the most important Adventures in the show's history, The War Games and Spearhead from Space -- the transition both to color and to Jon Pertwee's Doctor.

Producers and Doctors

Hinchcliffe, Williams, Lambert and Bryant had the advantage of spending their entire terms with the same actor as the Doctor, whereas Nathan-Turner saw 4 changes in the role. Interestingly, it's poor Patrick Troughton, not Tom Baker, who saw the most changes at the top, with no less than 5 different Producers running the show during his brief three years in the Tardis (Baker saw only 4 in his 7 years).

Letts and Pertwee enjoyed the longest partnership, running 23 Adventures. Lambert/Hartnell and Nathan-Turner/Davison were both 19 Adventures long.

As for the Companions, Nathan-Turner liked Janet Fielding enough to keep her around for 18 Adventures, longer than the Ian/Barbara team whom Lambert employed for the first 16 Adventures. Williams had no use for UNIT (created by Lloyd but employed most heavily by Letts), which never appeared in any of his episodes. Nathan-Turner dropped K9, whom Williams brought back even after he had found a way to get rid of him, only to introduce Kamelion, the only companion not played by an actor.

Producers and Directors

In the category of Producer/Director teams, Nathan-Turner called upon Chris Clough and Ron Jones 6 times each, and Peter Moffat 5 times. The only other 5-time pairing was Lambert with Richard Martin. Letts had a stable of Directors he used two or three times; only 2 of his Adventures were Directed by men he would not hire again. By contrast, Lloyd worked with 13 different Directors to film 16 Adventures. Williams is a close second, with 14 Directors on 18 Adventures, mostly new to Doctor Who (only Pennant Roberts, Michael Hayes and the ubiquitous Christopher Barry had worked with previous Producers - oh, and Alan Bromly, who Williams dismissed during production of Nightmare of Eden).

By the way, more episodes of Doctor Who have been directed by someone named Micheal than any other name (12%).

Producers and Story Editors

But it is the Script or Story Editor/Producer pairings that are often cited as Dynastic in nature. Nathan-Turner and Saward had the longest joint tenure, lasting (nearly) 27 Adventures. Letts and Dicks teamed for 23, and Hinchcliffe and Holmes for 16. The latter is interesting because it is the only exclusive Producer/Editor team in the shows' history - discounting Sherwin's 2 Adventures with Dicks (Lett's worked on 3 Adventures with Holmes as Script Editor before handing over the reins to Hinchcliffe, or he would have had no other Editor than Dicks as well). Every other Producer (even Wiles!) worked with at least two different Script Editors, if not more. Nathan-Turner went through a total of 5 (one of them being himself), despite his long-running partnership with Saward.

Producers and Writers

Compare the above to their use of writers. Nathan-Turner produced scripts written by 29 different writers - by far more than any other Producer - 22 of them by writers he would only produce once. Of those, 18 had never worked for previous Producers. In fact, during the last 5 seasons, only two (Holmes and Saward) of the 14 writers employed had ever written an episode of the show before! This was a level of chaos (creativity?) not seen since the Troughton years; Lloyd and Bryant (also Wiles and Sherwin) rarely produced two Adventures by the same writer.

On the other hand, Letts and Williams rarely produced scripts NOT written by established writers - in fact, all of Williams' Adventures were written by experienced "Doctor Who" vets who had written for his predecessors (the only exception being himself). Letts teamed up with Malcom Hulke 6 times and Hinchcliffe with Holmes 5 times. Only Lambert, who produced five scripts by Dalek-meister Terry Nation, had worked with the same writer more than 3 times before Letts became Producer. Letts, with Bob Sloman, also wrote 4 Adventures, becoming the first Producer to Co-Write (and also Direct) his own Adventures.

Producers and Plots

If Letts had the most consistent writing, he also had the most consistent villain -- the Master, who appears in 8 of his 24 Adventures (36%!). Hinchcliffe was overly fond of Robots and Androids, who appear in 5 of his 16 stories (31%), and Mad Scientists, who appear in 4 (25%). 3 of Bryant's 10 Adventures (30%) feature the Cybermen, and more than 20% of Lambert's stories featured -- as one might expect -- Daleks. Hinchcliffe gave us the Dalek's paterfamilias, Davros, but Nathan-Turner brought him back no less than three times. Nathan-Turner also employed Anthony Ainley 10 times as the Master (20%), and 5 times cast some other rival or fallen Time Lord as the Doctor's nemesis. Williams was by far the most creative in this respect - more than two-thirds of his stories feature an original, non-repeating Villain, most of them human(oid).

Letts set the vast majority of his Adventures (67%) in the Present - largely due to an intentional decision to restrict the Doctor to modern Earth for several seasons. Williams and Nathan-Turner set more than half of their stories in the Future [For purposes of this study, any Adventure featuring what appear to be humans on planets other than Earth is considered to be set in the Future unless the people have been specifically identified as some other race]. Both Letts and Williams set only 1 Adventure in the Past, while, on the other hand, Lambert, who helmed the show at a time when it was conceived to be, at least in part, educational, set nearly half her Adventures in Earth's Past, the most by a wide margin.

Of course, as we all know, most of the Doctor's Adventures have taken place, in whole or in part, on the planet at the center of the Universe, Earth. Lloyd, not Letts, is the most Earth-bound of the Producers, but only by inches (69% to 67%). Nathan-Turner set just under half of his many Adventures on Earth, and Williams - again being quite the maverick - the least with only 28% of his Adventures touching down near Croyden.

Hinchcliffe created two stories set on Earth Orbiter Nerva, one of which features no other planets per se, and Bryant rolled his one "Wheel in Space." Williams set 11% of his oeuvre, too, on board vessels in deep space with no planetfall. Nathan-Turner did this nearly as often (including the entire 23rd season, give or take) but the other 5 producers never did at all.

Earth's Moon was visited by Lloyd and Letts once, and that tourist's paradise, Skaro ("Sun, sand and suffering on the most totally evil planet in the Universe!") was host to Lambert, Lloyd, Hinchcliffe and Williams. Sherwin was the first to set foot on Gallifrey, but Nathan-Turner spent the most time there.

What Do these Numbers Mean?

Like the Logopolitans, anyone with the time and inclination can attempt to construct worlds out of numbers - worlds of meaning, at any rate. But the simple statistics recapped above can be seen to shed some light on the history and development of the show, and to validate impressions shared by many fans.

After the initial success of Lambert's combination of Terry Nation-penned Dalek stories and Earth-based History Lessons, the program went through a confused period during the Troughton years, being lead in different directions simultaneously, introducing many concepts and exploring new territory, but unable to find a consistent voice. Ratings dropped, and the show's future seemed uncertain.

The Letts/Dicks team brought a coherent vision and direction to the show. They solidified a camp of Writers and Directors, developed essential themes and ideas, assembled a pool of competent and versatile actors, and set the tone of compassionate humanism and cheeky wit that would dominate the program for the two decades that followed. They were rewarded with increased popularity.

Hinchcliffe and Williams built upon this foundation, finding creative new avenues for the show to explore and freeing it from some of the restrictions of the Letts years - clearly benefiting from the skill and experience of the Writers and Directors Letts had trained. They could break free of Earth and it's history, and all-too-familiar villains like the Daleks and the Master, secure in the knowledge that the fans would join them wherever they went. During this period, ratings achieved their all-time highs.

Then comes Nathan-Turner, who deserves perhaps equal measures of praise and blame for his stewardship of the series (not to mention more than one paragraph to sum him up!). At first, under Letts' guidance (as Executive Producer, though he had maintained a strong involvement in the show prior to receiving that title), Nathan-Turner continued the experimentation with new ideas (E-Space, strange races on weird planets), but soon attempted to return to the Letts/Dicks formula of familiar villains putting the Earth in jeopardy. Over the long course of his career, Nathan-Turner devoted most of his attention to the design and presentation of the program -- his fondness for the same directors and the improvement of visual effects -- rather than on the development of the characters and themes of the show. He brought in new writers with no prior relationship with the show, including stories written or suggested by fans, and frequently brought back old villains and locations to build a sense of continuity that was often lacking in the scripts themselves. The results were a strange mixture of consistency and confusion, recurring motifs and jarring strangeness. Ratings declined to their lowest levels, but surged at times to those of the Letts years.

If one judges by ratings alone, then Hinchcliffe and Williams were the most successful, and certainly their Adventures have enjoyed the most success abroad. But they could not have achieved what they had without the groundwork laid by Letts (nor he without his predecessors). The case can be made, however, that Nathan-Turner's combination of new writers with old villains and formulae was unwise, even counterproductive. In fact, the glaring fact is that the best Adventure of his administration was actually penned by a stalwart veteran whose credentials go back to Troughton's tumultuous tenure. A writer who spent nearly as much time in the Tardis as any of the actors who played the role.

Who was this man, this entity who unified the person of the Doctor through time and space? What one writer did more Producers hire than any other? What creative, visionary genius stood in the vortex of swirling agendas, budgets, personalities and props that are the atoms of "Doctor Who" for 18 years and split them wide open, unleashing a melange of wisdom, humor and wonder that brought millions of fans to the Tardis doors?

Who, not to put too fine a point on it, put the "The" in "The Doctor"?

That man would be Robert Holmes.

Author Watch by Norman Dewhirst 24/1/01

Your intrepid explorer and author hunter has been traveling the world in search of the long lost hidden authors. Here are my findings :-

Stephen Cole and Peter Anghelides fighting over who should get the credit for The Ancester Cell.
Cole : You take the credit.
Anghelides : No you take the credit.

Dave Stone down the Cambden town market in desperate need of a joke book, that actually has funny jokes.

Gareth Roberts who for some reason (punishment for acts in a past life?) on the creative team of Emmerdale the 2nd worst soap in the UK. He has created a bar owner called Bernice - hehehehehehehehehehe.

Lawrence Miles locked up in Stephen Coles basement. (I would have got him out but that was a tough looking guard dog.

Jacqueline Rayner working as project editor for BBC, producer for Big Finnish, BBC author, Big Finnish author, writing some telepress thingy, searching for Lawrence Miles, part of the time team, contributor to DWM - f^*k does this girl sleep?

Paul Magrs standing at a bus stop for the last three weeks. Someone asked him why he was there and he is still in the middle of answering them.

Paul Cornell at a Radiohead gig.

Neil Penswick locked up in Peter Darvill-Evans' basement.

Peter Darvill-Evans at home screaming why do fans always bring you up when talking about me.

Kate Orman on an anger management course.