The DNA of Doctor Who - The Philip Hinchcliffe Years

I've just received my copy of this handsome new book, to which I contributed an essay on the 1975 Doctor Who story Planet of Evil and what it draws from classic works of science-fiction.

The obvious influence, of course, is the 1956 movie Forbidden Planet, which the BBC broadcast at 6.35 pm on Wednesday 6 November 1974 - just right to inspire the development of the Doctor Who stories that became Planet of Evil and The Brain of Morbius. I dig into that and also how the same film influenced early Doctor Who as well as other sci-fi such as Star Trek (citing the excellent ‘Gene Roddenberry’s Cinematic Influences’ by Michael Kmet from 2013) and Star Wars (see the 2012 Wired interview, ‘Ben Burtt on Star Wars, Forbidden Planet and the Sound of Sci-Fi’ y Geeta Dayal).

Hinchcliffe says on the documentary made for the DVD release of Planet of Evil (by my friend Ed Stradling) that he suggested the ‘flying eye’ drone seen in the story, having read of something similar in a science-fiction story at the time. The Dictionary of Surveillance Terms in Science Fiction at the Technovelgy site helped me suggest some candidates for that story.

I also mention Isaac Asimov’s own timeline-of-the-future for his various short stories and novels, which I drew from ‘A page from Isaac Asimov’s notebook’, Thrilling Wonder Stories, vol. 44 #3 (Winter 1955), p. 63.

Edited by Gary Russell and published by Gareth Kavanagh at Roundel Books, you can buy The DNA of Doctor Who - The Philip Hinchcliffe Years from the Cutaway Comics site.