The Philip Hinchcliffe Years - The DNA of Doctor Who

A Kickstarter has been launched for the first in a new series new series of large-format books on the creative team behind Doctor Who. This first volume examines the years 1974-77, as overseen by producer Philip Hinchcliffe.

From Morbius to Krynoids, Eldrad to Wirrn, ROUNDEL PUBLISHING takes an in-depth look with unrivalled access to the architect of some of the most revered years of Doctor Who's history! 

Available in softback, hardback or deluxe hardback options including the option to receive signed copies, exclusive art prints and even the chance to get a personal message from Philip himself! 

The book is edited by Gary Russell and designed by Will Brooks, with essays on each one of the Doctor Who stories from the period and insights from Hinchcliffe.

I've written the essay on Planet of Evil (1975) and the way this adventure and the production team at the time more generally borrowed from classics of sci-fi. Other contributors include Louise Jameson, Graeme Burk, Hannah Cooper, Matt Dale, Hayden Gribble, Toby Hadoke, David J Howe, Robin Ince, Alex Kingdom, Emma Ko, Trey Korte, Aaron Lowe, Sophia Morphew, Kim Pfeifer-Adams, Mick Schubert, Kenny Smith, Matthew Sweet, Matthew Toffolo and Ian Winterton. 

The Kickstarter runs until 30 November. See the site for loads more details - and to bung us some cash.

Doctor Who Magazine #597

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine is packed with stuff about the forthcoming TV specials that begin two weeks today, and all the other goodies being released as part of the 60th anniversary - including the more than 600 episodes of 20th century Doctor Who added to iPlayer and the new Tales from the TARDIS series.

I've got one thing in this issue: the latest Sufficient Data infographic takes us right back to the beginning of Doctor Who, with everything we know takes place in the Doctor's life before the first TV episode.

But there's also handsome adverts for my two new books, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television and Whotopia - The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse. In fact, I only realise now, with everything put out on iPlayer, that our new book is the perfect guide to all these episodes, providing loads of ways into it. How clever, and they didn't tell us!

The Doctor Who Magazine website also has a competition to win a copy of Whotopia, open until 8 December. Good luck!

David Whitaker seen on television

In August 1964, Doctor Who's first story editor, David Whitaker, wrote up a CV for his new agent, Beryl Vertue, ahead of leaving his staff job at the BBC to go freelance. That CV is a key source in piecing together David's wide-ranging career. Before becoming a writer, David had been a professional actor and his CV refers to acting work in both radio and TV - but without saying what this involved.

We know David worked for BBC Radio in Belfast while working on stage at the New Theatre at Bangor, 1954-55, but not the productions or roles. In October 1955, he was one of four unnamed sailors in The Voyage of Magellan produced by Rayner Heppenstall.

As per the Radio Times listing, this play was repeated. That may explain why a recording of it survives - made for this repeat and retained in case of further broadcast. As a result, this is one of two known records of David's voice, and although he's part of the ensemble rather than playing a named character, we can identify him in the crowd thanks to the other recording we have of him. I'll come to that in a moment.

Sadly, the BBC's Written Archives Centre (WAC) in Caversham does not hold paperwork relating to The Voyage of Magellan to give us more information, such as whether it was first broadcast live or recorded in advance. Details of this and any other roles David might have had on radio are not included in the "radio contributions" files for David held by WAC, which instead cover writing work he did for television outside his staff job.

As for the TV acting work he did before 1964, no details are known to survive - though I take an educated guess in my biography, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure in Television. But once he'd left his staff job at the BBC, David made a number of other appearances on TV...

Alys and Alan Hayes alerted me to the fact that, on 30 June 1967, David and his wife June Barry were among the celebrities gathered for the 1,000th episode of BBC Two's arts discussion programme Late Night Line-Up. For this, guests from previous episodes (including David Attenborough, Jonathan Miller, Robert Morley, Nyrie Dawn Porter and Ned Sherin) were entertained by comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, assisted by a pre-Monty Python Terry Jones. This programme survives in the BBC archive. Here are two screenshots:

Terry Jones (standing) serves Peter Cook and (his back to us) Dudley Moore, while John Hopkins (with beard) looks on, David Whitaker and June Barry beside him.

Peter Cook standing over Dudley Moore, while John Hopkins, David Whitaker and June Barry watch.

The bearded man sat next to David is the playwright John Hopkins, with whom David worked and corresponded in the BBC script department while they were both on staff there. Hopkins wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film Thunderball (1965), which originally included a reference to Daleks:

BOND (grunts) The Daleks have taken over! 

Here's Hopkins again later the same year that he sat next to David, having just won an award for his script for Talking to a Stranger (available on YouTube), starring Judi Dench - seen second from the left:

TV Awards, 17 November 1967
Eric Portman, Judi Dench, Sydney Newman, Donald Wilson, Basil Coleman, John Hopkins

In the middle of the picture are (in glasses) Sydney Newman, leaving his job as BBC Head of Drama after five years, and beside him tall Donald Wilson, Newman's former head of serials. These two men created Doctor Who and I'm not aware of any other photograph of them together.

Back to David. On 5 March 1969, he was one of the hosts of the Writers' Guild awards held at the Dorchester Hotel in London. The moment that he announced the plaque for 'Best British Light Entertainment Script' awarded to the writing team behind Marty [Feldman] was captured on film and opens the surviving documentary One Pair Of Eyes: No, But Seriously, first broadcast on 7 June. It's the second surviving example of David's voice and you can currently view this on YouTube, but also here is a screenshot:

David Whitaker and Marius Goring
Writers' Guild Awards, 5 March 1969

Beside David is Marius Goring, the actor who'd played a villain in David's TV serial The Evil of the Daleks (1967) and his film Subterfuge (1968, but not released until 1971).

In 1972, David had a cameo role in The Far Country, his own adaptation of the Nevil Shute novel, produced by Eric Tayler for ABC in Australia and first broadcast on 9 February that year. Sadly, David's appearance is not included in the surviving footage from the serial.

Two years later, David wrote another role for himself in the STW-9 series he originated, The Drifter. Again, sadly, this doesn't survive but David's role was covered in the local listings magazine:

'Photo News' from (Australian) TV Week, 4 May 1974

David kept this page from the listings magazine and was also sent the original photograph, plus another one showing him being made-up for this role.

Laurence Hodge, Norman MacLeod and David Whitaker in The Drifter (1974)

David Whitaker made-up for The Drifter (1974)

Although he lived for another six years, these are the latest dated photographs of David Whitaker.

James Beck (Walker in Dad's Army) and David Whitaker

Here are two stills from the earliest known TV appearance by actor James Beck, later famous as spiv 'Joe Walker' in Dad's Army.

Ivor Salter, Ronnie Corbett and James Beck
in Crackerjack, BBC TV, 19 March 1958

Michael Darbyshire and James Beck
in Crackerjack, BBC TV, 19 March 1958

This role in Crackerjack is from three years before what's usually cited as Beck's first TV role - as 'Roach' in The Fifth Form at St Dominic's (1961). (Dave Homewood's exhaustive list of Beck's TV credits says Beck might also have been in episodes of I Made News and Fabian of the Yard in the 1950s.)

The Crackerjack sketch, 'Cops and Robbers', was written by its regular comic guest stars Ronnie Corbett and Michael Darbyshire. Darbyshire receives a visit from Beck's 'Police Inspector Bright', who warns him to be on the look out for a dangerous criminal called 'Kelly' (Ivor Salter). Corbett and Darbyshire are excited by the chance to play Sherlock Holmes and catch the crook. Mayhem ensues... 

Radio Times listing for 19 March 1958
with credit for 'David Whittaker' (sic)

Although this sketch was written by Corbett and Darbyshire, I think Beck probably got the part through his friend David Whitaker, who was credited in that week's Radio Times as writer of the rest of the episode. David will have written host Eamonn Andrews's links, the 'party' games played by the child contestants and so on.

Beck and Whitaker met as actors in repertory theatre in Paignton in the summer of 1955. Two years later, still in Paignton, Beck had a role as 'Arthur Leicester' in A Hand in Marriage, a play David wrote and co-directed. Immediately after this production, David began a full-time job in the Script Unit at the BBC, and quickly worked on a wide variety of shows, Crackerjack among them.

A little after this TV appearance, in October 1958, Beck began a long stint at the York Theatre Royal, where he made life-long friends with a number of other cast members, including Jean Alexander (later 'Hilda Ogden' in Coronation Street), Trevor Bannister (later 'Mr Lucas' in Are You Being Served?), June Barry (later 'Joanie Walker', daughter of Annie, in Coronation Street and also 'June Forsyte' in The Forsyte Saga) and Alethea Charlton (an amazing character actress who later played the cavewoman 'Hur' in the first Doctor Who serial).

That last piece of casting may again have come about through David Whitaker, who was story editor on the first year of Doctor Who. Alethea was also bridesmaid when June Barry married David in the summer of 1963, and James Beck gave away the bride. The gang of friends are all visible in the surviving film from the day, some of which is including in our documentary Looking for David included on the Doctor Who - The Collection: Season 2 box-set.

St Mary Abbots Church, Kensington, 8 June 1963
Groom David Whitaker, bride June Barry, bridesmaid Alethea Charlton, ushers Trevor Bannister and  James Beck

According to June Barry, David was also at Beck's home on 31 July 1968 to watch the first episode of Dad's Army go out. More on all this in my book, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television, which is published this week.

David Whitaker in Sheffield, 1954

My book David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television, is published this week, a biography of the first story editor of Doctor Who and a key figure in the early days of that series. 

One key source was actor Alan Curtis (1930-2021), who was interviewed on 9 April 2014 by my friend Toby Hadoke. This was largely about Alan's role in 1966 Doctor Who story The War Machines, but he also mentioned being friends with David and gave some insights into his character. You can hear that interview in full here:

• Toby Hadoke's Who's Round: 163: Alan Curtis

Prompted by Toby, I visited Alan on 16 August 2016. As well as sharing his memories - which I detail in the book - Alan kindly allowed me to nose through his scrapbooks from 1954, when he and David worked together between March and September as part of the Harry Hanson Court Players repertory company, performing a new play every week at the Lyceum Theatre. 

There wasn't a great deal of time and I didn't have the facilities to scan pages from the scrapbook, but I grabbed some snaps thinking I could come back another time - which sadly never happened.

Sheffield Court Plays - 1954:
Douglas Neill (producer); Rex Holdsworth; Anne Sherwin; Iris Gilbert; Carol Howard; Alan Curtis; Lizbeth Cassay; Derek Clark; David Whitaker; Hugh Anthony; Gerard Hely; Mary Clarke; Edouin et Rachelle (in their own arrangements at Two Pianos); settings designed by Robert Pitt; constructed by Joseph Keeley

David Whitaker, a photograph I suspect taken before late 1953 when he underwent plastic surgery on his nose.

"Here Gerard Hely is measured by Iris Gilbert for his costume while David Whitaker, Derek Clark and Louise Jervis break from the Victoria Hall rehearsal to watch."

Cast list for Reefer Girl, a true story by Lorraine Tier, with David Whitaker in the role of 'John Parsons'. It was performed twice-nightly from Monday, 5 April 1954.

Cast list for A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, with David Whitaker in the role of 'Howard Mitchell'. It was performed twice-nightly from Monday, 28 June 1954.

'Five Hours' Emotion Nightly' - review of A Streetcar Named Desire from unknown newspaper, with David Whitaker bringing 'naive simplicity' to his role.

Bookmark flyer for the Harry Hanson Court Players, with David Whitaker credited above the title for  It's A Boy by Austin Melford, beginning week of 2 August 1954.

Cast list for Dracula by Bram Stoker, with David in the role of  'Doctor Seward'.  It was performed twice-nightly from Monday, 26 July 1954.

Cast list for Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring, with David in the role of 'Officer O'Hara'. It was performed twice-nightly from Monday, 9 August 1954.

David Whitaker, standing second from left, in cricket whites and hat as part of the Sheffield Court Players team, which played on Sundays (their day off from the theatre)

The Victorian Chaise-Longue, by Marghanita Laski

On Sunday, 23 July 1963, BBC staff director Waris Hussein met for the first time with Verity Lambert, the newly appointed producer of a series to be called Doctor Who. “So far we have one writer and no scripts,” Hussein wrote in his diary. “I put forward Marghanita Laski’s name as a possible.” 

“I’ve no idea now why I suggested her," Hussein said earlier this year. Laski was best known at the time as a critic and panelist on TV shows such as What's My Line? But she was also a novelist and of her various novels my bet is that, 60 years ago, Hussein had in mind her odd, 100-page The Victorian Chaise-Longue (1953). He might even have had in mind the TV version: adapted and directed by James MacTaggart, it was screened on BBC Television on 19 March 1962.

The story is told from the perspective of Melanie or Melly Langdon (who has the same initials as Laski), a young woman who has recently given birth to a healthy son but is herself ill with TB. In an attempt to aid her recovery by exposing her to more sunlight, she's allowed out of the confinement of one room in her  Islington home and can spend afternoons in the drawing room. There, she lies propped up on an old chaise-longue.

We cut back to her visit to an antique shop (also called a junk shop), seeking a cradle for the then forthcoming baby. There's some fun stuff as she projects an air of idle fancy rather than of being after something specific, to prevent the staff trying to foist something on her for an unreasonable price. This done, she then forms a bond with the young man serving her and they locate the shop's sole cradle - a "hopelessly unfashionable" Jacobean model in dark-carved oak.

“‘I can't say I fancy it myself,’ admitted the young man. ‘It will probably go to America. There's quite a demand for them there, for keeping logs in, you know.’

‘My cradle will have a baby in it,’ said Melanie proudly, and they enjoyed a moment of sympathetic superiority, the poor yet well-adjusted English who hadn't lost sight of true purposes.” (p. 18)

In short, she's a demonstrably intelligent, driven young woman with agency and attitude. When she then spots an old chaise-longue that takes her fancy, she buys it on the spot.

We return to the present - but briefly because soon after the recuperating Melanie/Melly is seated in this antique piece of furniture, she finds herself somewhere else amid people other than her husband. To begin with, Melanie thinks she's been kidnapped but we come to realise that she's been transported back in time 90 years to 22 April 1864 (p. 37), and into the body of another young woman, Milly, who is trapped on the same chaise-tongue while also suffering from TB. At times, Melanie can access Milly's thoughts and memories, and is even swamped by them. She struggles to make her predicament understood and to find a means of escape. As she fails to escape or get through to those around her, she uncovers Milly's awful story.

One issue is that Melanie's knowledge of the 1860s is imperfect and she can't think what to say to convince anyone. Then, when she settles on an idea, there is a further obstacle:

“If I speak of Cardinal Newman and he's happened already, it proves nothing at all. If I could say that the Government will fall and the Prince Consort will die, there's no proof it's going to happen. Discoveries and inventions, she thought then, that's what I'll talk about, that must prove it to him. We have aeroplanes, she said tentatively in her mind, and then she tried to repeat the phrase soundlessly with her mouth, but the exact words would not come. What did I say, she asked herself when the effort had been made, something about machines that fly or was it aeronautic machines? Wireless, she screamed in her mind, television, penicillin, gramophone-records and vacuum-cleaners, but none of these words could be framed by her lips.” (p. 58)

In short, some powerful force prevents her from saying anything aloud that Milly would not understand, which effectively prevents her from altering future history. This is similar to the strictures in the early background notes on Doctor Who revised in July 1963 - soon after Waris Hussein recommended this book - about not being able to change or affect established events. 

However, I think I've identified another source for the conception of the mechanics of time travel seen in early Doctor Who, which I get into in my imminent book, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television (plus details of when Whitaker worked on something with Laski). Instead, I think Hussein was probably thinking of the tone and feel of this short story. The website of Persephone Books, which published the edition of Laski's novel I read, comes with an endorsement by novelist Penelope Lively: 

“Disturbing and compulsive ... This is time travel fiction, but with a difference… instead of making it into a form of adventure, what Marghanita Laski has done is to propose that such an experience would be the ultimate terror…” 

The first broadcast episodes of Doctor Who are scary, the events an ordeal for the crew. So I wonder if that's what Hussein brought to the series, via Laski...

Oh, and one last excellent fact about Laski, from the introduction by PD James to my edition of the novel:

“In one of her obituaries, Laurence Marks described how she gave evidence in the 1960s for the defence in the prosecution of the publisher of John Cleland's bawdy comic novel, Fanny Hill. Miss Laski told the court that this book was important because it illustrated the first use in English Literature of certain unusual words. The judge asked for an example, to which Miss Laski replied 'chaise-longue'.” (pp. viii-ix)

See also: me on The Inheritors by William Golding (1955) and its influence on the first Doctor Who story 

Doctor Who Magazine #596

The super new issue of Doctor Who and the Star Beast Magazine is out tomorrow and is largely devoted to the imminent new episodes of TV Doctor Who, which is all jolly exciting.

I've a handful of things in the new issue. As well as featuring (for the third time) as one of the beauties on page 3 (see below), there's also a news item about my forthcoming book David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television and the launch for it to be held at the Portico Library on 9 November.

On pages 38 and 39, there's "Effective Management", my interview with VFX editor Matt Nathan - the latest of a regular series in which I pester members of the crew. On page 48, there's the first of a new regular feature by me, "Stasis Cube", devoted to a frozen instant in time (in old money, a "photograph") which is bigger on the inside. It's inspired by the series of blog posts I did 10 years ago, starting with an arresting image from the first episode of Doctor Who.

Finally, on page 82, there's the latest "Sufficient Data" infographic, illustrated by Roger Langridge and this time devoted to the number of original instalments of comic strip per incarnation of the Doctor published in DWM over the past 44 years. My post on how I worked out the last "Sufficient Data" seemed to go down well, so here's some more faff about this one.

Deputy editor Peter Ware suggested something related to DWM comic strips to tie in with coverage of The Star Beast. After a bit of thinking, I shared a picture of the "tree maps" we'd used as chapter title pages in our infographics book Whographica, with boxes of different sizes corresponding to the relative number of pages each chapter had.

My idea was to lay a framework of boxes-of-relative-size over a single, full-page illustration of all the Doctors, so that each Doctor appeared in their respective box. I had in mind something like the cover to the first Secret Wars - see my attempt to explain this, right - with lots of characters in one image, and perspective making some bigger than others. 

This seemed a big ask of the poor artist, so I also suggested that some of the less well represented Doctors might be in silhouette, or in some cases we could use pre-existing artwork from respective eras, blown up in a Pop Art / Roy Lichtenstein way - a David Gibbons Fourth Doctor, a John Ridgway Seventh Doctor, etc. The decision was made to produce one big bit of artwork crowded with 15 Doctors.

With that basic idea approved, I then had to decide exactly what I was measuring.

Editor Marcus Hearn asked for the focus to be on strips from DWM. That was a relief given the volume of comic strips produced by other people. But even this "simple" data set included complications. For example, the first instalment of Ninth Doctor strip Monstrous Beauty wasn't published in a regular issue of DWM but an accompanying supplement. I thought we should include it because it came as part of the package that came with issue #556, so was part of the whole. Marcus went further and asked me to include associated publications. I dug through boxes of old issues working out what this would comprise, and made a list of original comic strips featured in DWM Special Editions, Yearbooks, Storybooks and the 2006 Annual.

DWM has sometimes reprinted comic strips and it didn't seem fair to include the same strip more than once. I initially suggested that they had to be "new to DWM", which meant including in our count some strips first published in Incredible Hulk Presents (Hunger from the Ends of Time! in DWM #157 and #158) and TV Comic (Flower Power in #307). But that surely meant we also had to include all the strips reprinted in Doctor Who Classic Comics, which would have sizeably skewed the figures. We decided to exclude all reprints.

I initially thought I'd count pages of comic strip per Doctor. This proved something of a headache. The very first issue of DWM, then called Doctor Who Weekly, is a good case in point:

• The first episode of main comic strip The Iron Legion comprises five pages
• The Doctor doesn't appear on the first page, so should we count this as four or five pages?
• Do we count the single-panel comic-strip appearances of the Doctor to introduce back-up strips War of the Worlds and The Return of the Doctor? In deciding this, does it matter that these are "new" pieces of artwork rather than reprinted from the main strip?
• Do we include the inside front and back cover, with its full-colour illustrations in comic-strip format, complete with panel boxes, to which readers were invited to add their transfers, creating their own strips? The Doctor features in artwork on both pages. 
• Do we include the comic-strip illustration accompanying the letter from the Doctor?

Depending on the answers to the above questions, the Fourth Doctor appears in four, five, six, seven, eight, nine or ten pages of comic strip in this single issue. (Plus there's a photograph of him with a comic-strip style speech bubble.)

If we count pages in which the Doctor appears, things are also complicated by some plot lines where what looks like the Doctor turns out not to be - for example, with the "Nick Briggs" incarnation in Wormwood (DWM #262-#265). There are also strips where events depicted are a dream, such as in The Land of Happy Endings (DWM #337).

Comics material in back issues of DWM also included Lee Sullivan's half-page comic strips advertising Big Finish releases, produced in the same style as his work for the regular DWM strip. If we included those, then why not the comic-style illustrations of text stories or  reviews? Given the DWW/DWM regular comic strip can be funny and satirical, was there also a case for including the Quinn and Howett / Nix View / Jamie Lenman / Lew Stringer joke strips? Should I also include pages of comic strip published by DWM/Panini as extra material in collected editions - such as artwork showing the newly regenerated Ninth Doctor featured in the book version of The Flood?

The thing is, there's a useful precedent here. There's a canon of Doctor Who TV episodes, though they can considerably vary in length, and we know which mini-episodes and sketches don't count, however much they might feature the right actors in character tied into the lore. The Five Doctors is an episode and Time Crash isn't. On the same basis as producing infographics on episode numbers, I focused on numbers of instalments of DWM strip.

Even then, I puzzled over how to include Evening's Empire. The first instalment of this was published in DWM #180, then the rest of it failed to appear until published in compendium form some years later. The compendium version used the same artwork from the first instalment but amended some captions and dialogue - so did that make them "original" rather than reprints, meaning they should be counted twice?

Do the collected editions of Evening's Empire and of The Age of Chaos count as one instalment each, or do I count them by the number of episodes/chapters they comprise? Dividing them up was surely counting the format for publication as originally intended rather than how these stories were actually published. 

Since we were including Yearbooks and Storybooks published by DWM/Panini, should I also have included the comic strip from Doctor Who Adventures - but only during the period it was published by Panini?

We haggled over this to come up with a discrete set of data from which we could produce a set of different-sized boxes without requiring too many footnotes, which are always a problem to squeeze in to a single-page infographic. We handed this all to Roger Langridge, and he's made it look amazing.

WHO Corner to Corner | Peter Anghelides & Simon Guerrier

M'colleague Peter Anghelides and I were the guests of the WHO Corner to Corner podcast, hosts Geoff and Paul grilling us on our recent book Doctor Who - The Daily Doctor and everything else we've been up to. It includes stuff on the Blake's 7 range of audio plays that Peter produces (and I've worked on), my forthcoming books Whotopia, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television and my deep dive into 1964 Doctor Who story The Edge of Destruction for the Black Archive.

Black Archive #67 The Edge of Destruction

Another new book by me, and the perfect accompaniment to my biography of David Whitaker, this is a deep dive into 1964 Doctor Who story The Edge of Destruction. 

• Buy The Black Archive #67 The Edge of Destruction

While so much of the early history of Doctor Who is documented in great detail, the BBC's Written Archives Centre holds no production file for this odd little two-part serial. Inspired by a trip to the Large Hadron Collider last year (yes, really), I've tried to establish exactly what we know for certain about the making of this story. Was it really written over a weekend? How would it have been different if - as originally planned - these episodes ended Doctor Who for good? And why does the TARDIS have roundels?

Blurbs as follows:

‘Really, there’s no more time for these absurd theories.’

Doctor Who can go anywhere in time and space, and visit any alien planet or historical figure it pleases – that’s rather the point of the show, after all. But in only the third serial, the production team decided to set a story entirely inside the TARDIS, with no other cast than the regulars.

Simon Guerrier has ten theories relating to this most unexpected of early stories, and one about the readers of this Black Archive…

Pages: 108
ISBN: 9781913456450
Author: Simon Guerrier
Publication Date: October 2023

This is my second title for the Black Archive range; in 2017 I also wrote #11 The Evil of The Daleks.

David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television - preorder now

Hooray! You can now pre-order ny new book David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television - a 180,000-word biography of the first story editor of Doctor Who, and much more besides. It's published on 6 November. 

There are two exciting editions of the book. You can order the paperback directly from publisher Ten Acre Films and it will be available from all good bookshops.

There's also an a fetching, bright pink hardback exclusively from The Who Shop.  

Both gorgeous covers are by that genius Stuart Manning.

I'll be launching this David Whitaker book at the Portico Library in Manchester on the evening of 9 November. ETA I'll be signing at The Who Ship in London from 1-3 pm on Saturday, 11 November.

Blurb for the book as follows:

To celebrate 60 years of Doctor Who, discover the extraordinary, little-known life of one of its chief architects, David Whitaker. As the show’s first story editor, he helped to establish the compelling blend of adventure, imagination and quirky humour that made – and continues to make – the series a hit. 

David commissioned the first Dalek story, and fought for it to be made when his bosses didn’t like it. Regeneration, the TARDIS being alive, the idea of Doctor Who expanding to become a multimedia phenomenon in comics, books and films… David Whitaker was all over it. Yet very little was known about this key figure in Doctor Who history – until now. Why did he fall out with Irving Berlin? Was he really engaged to Yootha Joyce? And how did an assignment to Moscow badly affect his career? 

Doctor Who Magazine #595

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine boasts an interview with Bonnie Langford, the actress who played companion Mel in 1986, 1987, 1993 and 2022 - and who will be back on screen in Doctor Who next year. As always, interviewer Benjamin Cook peppers a fun chat with new facts and revealing insight, and it's a joy to eavesdrop.

Accompanying this, there's a feature by Laurel Hart in praise of Mel. Plus there's the regular "Sufficient Data" infographic by me and Ben Morris, this time detailing Mel's myriad screams.

A few people have asked about methodology and what these things actually involve. So...

Much as I wish it had all been my idea, editor Marcus Hearn proposed an infographic based on Mel's screams to tie in with the rest of the issue, and suggested I look at waveforms and decibels. After some time trying to dig into that myself, I called in the technical genius of Nimbos who ran a spectral analysis of Mel's first three screams from the closing moments of Part Nine of The Trial of a Time Lord.

In the graph above, the vertical Y axis shows frequency in Hertz and the colour represents volume in decibels. The first scream, circled on the left, begins at about 3,000 Hz and then drops to about 2,000 Hz - roughly moving from a C note to a B. More or less the same thing happens in the second scream, circled to the right of the first scream and in the centre of the image. A third scream, circled to the right of this, seems to be a partial repeat of the second scream, presumably to extend it and added in the edit.

Below this, also circled on the right of the graph, is the start of the closing theme. At 988 Hz, this is a B, so Bonnie pitched her screams an octave above this, starting at C and then descending to B to segue neatly into the theme music, as per the instruction from director Chris Clough.

In each scream, the volume peaks at about -28 dB, though obviously volume is dependent on the setting of your speakers. But how loud a scream sounds to us can also be affected by context, and note how much other sound - or orange - there is going on at the same time: incidental music, explosions, and yet the screams are distinct.

When we compare screams from episodes, the context can be different - for example, without incidental music or explosions. That means a scream might sound very different, and yet turns out to be at a similar pitch and volume. Other factors that might affect what we're measuring include how sound was originally recorded, how that's been adjusted for the Blu-ray releases we worked from, and how the sound may be compressed or otherwise affected in undertaking this kind of analysis.

Accepting the potential margins of error, we at least had a starting point for comparison with other episodes. This, for example, is the spectrum for Mel's screams while trapped in the Rani's bubble trap in Part Two of Time and the Rani:

It comprises more but shorter screams, and the context of music and sound effects is different, so this graph is very different from the last one. Yet the screams (outlined in the green box) are all at about 2,200 Hz, and many feature the same kind of pitch shift from C to B as we saw before. The context is different in these two episodes but Mel's screams are very similar.

In fact, across her tenure in Doctor Who, Mel's screams are impressively consistent. Unfortunately for me, that means the data is not sufficiently varied to make for an interesting infographic.

While Nimbos worked diligently on this spectral analysis, I watched every one of Mel's episodes, skipping forward to the scenes in which she appeared to note the time and duration of all screams. This raised some issues over the precise criteria for defining a scream. Screams often occur right at the end of an episode and so are included in the recap at the start of the next episode - should those be counted once or twice? There are occasions when Mel cries out warnings or shouts things like "Nooo!" - but do those count as screams? There are also instances when, because of music, sound effects or other activity on screen, I couldn't be certain if Mel was screaming or not. I could identify the start and end of some screams to the accuracy of a tenth of a second but others are clouded by surrounding noise and I needed a consistent approach - ultimately deciding to round up each scream to the nearest full second.

These factors then had to be relayed in the infographic, in as few words as possible.

Having gone through the episodes twice to ensure the data was right, I then had to come up with a way to present the result visually in an engaging way, led by a new and striking illustration. It's difficult to do this until you have the data in front of you and a sense of its scale, range, peaks and troughs. 

I usually sketch some rough ideas before settling on something to include with my written-up brief for the illustrator, so that queries or objections can be raised before it gets laid out. Sometimes this takes a while - and the solution then springs to mind as I'm doing the washing up. But the way to convey this particular data set presented itself during my watch-through and I mocked up the following:

As Ben Morris worked on that, it became evident that showing both time of screams and duration made things too cluttered. That meant further revising the data set to trim down the text presented. Then assistant editor Peter Ware had to point out, with heroic tact, that I'd cut one small bit we needed. Eek!

The result seems to have gone down well. If you like this sort of thing, there's a new "Sufficient Data" infographic every four weeks in DWM. You can still buy Whographica, a book of Doctor Who infographics, by me, Steve O'Brien and Ben Morris. Steve and I also wrote a book of infographics about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Oh, and you might like to read my own interview with Bonnie Langford for DWM in 2014.

Finish Big interview

Last week, I was grilled by Mark and Joe from Finish Big about a whole bunch of audio plays I've worked on for production company Big Finish - the adventures of Bernice Summerfield, the sci-fi series I created Graceless and my work on the Doctor Who Companion Chronicles. 

Now you can watch a confused old man trying to remember things and articulate some kind of cogent thought.

David Whitaker book launch - 9 November

Hooray! We'll be launching my new book David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television at the Portico Library in Manchester on the evening of 9 November 2023.

• Book tickets from Eventbrite for the launch of David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television

Full blurb as follows:

To celebrate 60 years of Doctor Who, discover the extraordinary, little-known life of one of its chief architects: David Whitaker. As the show’s first story editor, he helped to establish the compelling blend of adventure, imagination and quirky humour that made — and continues to make — Doctor Who a hit. David commissioned the first Dalek story, and fought for it to be made when his bosses didn’t like it. Regeneration, the TARDIS being alive, the idea of Doctor Who expanding to become a multimedia phenomenon in comics, books and films… David Whitaker was all over it. 

Yet very little was known about this key figure in Doctor Who history — until now. Why did he fall out with Irving Berlin? Was he really engaged to Yootha Joyce? And how did an assignment to Moscow badly affect his career? Simon Guerrier, author of a new biography of David Whitaker, will be interviewed by Carol Ann Whitehead.  Books will be on sale.

Biographies:

Simon Guerrier has written countless Doctor Who books, comics and audio plays. He’s also the author of Sherlock Holmes — The Great War and had produced a number of documentaries for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. 

Carol Ann Whitehead is a trustee of the Portico Library, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; Deputy Chair of the Chartered Management Institute Women’s Board; and a Chartered Companion. She heads the Zebra Partnership, a boutique publishing, events and campaigns agency. 

Ten Acre Films publishes a range of high-quality books on the history of TV, including, most recently, Biddy Baxter: The Woman Who Made Blue Peter and Pull to Open – 1962-1963: The Inside Story of How the BBC Created and Launched Doctor Who.

Doctor Who Magazine #594

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine is the last under the editorship of Marcus Hearn, who has been so supportive of my efforts over the years. In fact, his (and others') work in the 1990s uncovering the early days of Doctor Who was a big influence on lots of what I do now, and Marcus has been really supportive of my various deep dives into obscure and leftfield bits of history. He commissioned a piece I pitched about Solzhenitsyn and The Ambassadors of Death, and another on the significance of The Face of Evil being the only Doctor Who story to mention 'eugenics' in dialogue (at least it was when I wrote the feature).

This new issue features the latest instalments of two regular features devised by Marcus and written by me. In All Decs on Hand (my best headline in an age), I interview assistant set decorate Verity Scott and set decorator's assistant Lois Drage. In Sufficient Data, Roger Langridge illustrates my take on the last of the reader's poll winners - this time, the winning stories of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctors respectively.

These features will continue under the new editor and we've also been discussing some new things. More of that to come...

By coincidence, I got home to find this new DWM waiting for me after a long drive, in which me and the children were entertained by David Tennant's reading of How to Train Your Dragon (2003) by Cressida Cowell, which was different enough from the films to keep my guessing and is full of fun twists and adventure. It's also fun to hear Tennant's skills as a storytelling with multiple characters and accents, and I quietly thrilled to him referring several times to the 'The Green Death'. But what really struck me - and Lady Vader - is the absence of female characters. A book about young Vikings from another age.

Doctor Who Magazine #593

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine boasts three new things from me.

First, in 'Snakes Alive!' (pp. 22- 25), I spoke to writer-director Pete McTighe and actors Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton about making The Passenger, the mini-episode of Doctor Who released on YouTube just last week to promote the forthcoming Blu-ray set of the 1983 series.

Then, in 'Texting at Work' (pp. 38-39), I spoke to Sophie Cowdrey and Aled Griffiths, graphics assistants on the forthcoming new series of Doctor Who. (I previously spoke to Sophie for DWM's 2020 Yearbook and worked with her on The Women Who Lived in 2018.)

Finally, 'Sufficient Data' (p. 82) is another infographic by Roger Langridge and me, this time devoted to what readers voted as the best of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors' best stories.

There's also a plug for Whotopia: The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse, the great big volume published by BBC Books in November, written by Jonathan Morris with assistance from Una McCormack and me. It's one of five books I've got out later this year, which is why I'm a bit quiet on this blog at the moment.

But I'm speaking as part of the 60 Years of Doctor Who extravaganza at this weekend's Blue Dot festival this Sunday. Eep. 

Doctor Who Magazine #592

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine is out today. In "Quick Draw", I spoke to storyboard artist John Erasmus about his working relationship with director Mark Tonderai. John produced storyboards for the Doctor Who episodes directed by Mark - The Ghost Monument and Rosa in 2018, and the forthcoming festive episode.

In just 800 words, there wasn't space to include all the fun stuff John has worked on, though we did talk about Wednesday and Foundation (which I love), and the Amazonas Comics project John set up with Yousaf Ali Khan to connect communities in the Amazon rainforest with to schools in the UK.

The new DWM also features another "Sufficient Data" infographic. With my long-time collaborator Ben Morris taking some take away, this one has been illustrated by Roger Langridge - the first time we've worked together, though I've admired his stuff for years.

Pieces of Eighth - Letting Go

In February, Kenny Smith interviewed me about my Doctor Who short story 'Letting Go', and you can now listen to that chat on the latest episode of the Pieces of Eighth podcast.

• Doctor Who - Pieces of Eighth: 'Letting Go' on Spotify
• Doctor Who - Pieces of Eighth: 'Letting Go' on Apple podcasts

'Letting Go' written by Simon Guerrier and read by India Fisher, is included on Doctor Who: Short Trips Volume 02, released in February 2011.

Blurb: "Charley learns a lot about the Doctor when she visits the family of a dead hero."

See also:

• Short Trips recollections - on the Doctor Who short stories I wrote
• Some notes on writing Doctor Who short stories

The Daily Doctor

Details have been announced for the book I've written with Peter Anghelides, Doctor Who: The Daily Doctor, to be published in August. Blurb as follows:

The Daily Doctor is a page-a-day guide to living your best Time Lord life. As days turn to weeks turn to months, stay serene with your daily dose of the inspirational plans, pronouncements and principles that bring order this crazy and chaotic universe.

From what it means to be human, when it's best to run and the best approach to filling your pockets, this book contains nothing less than the tao of Doctor Who - 365¼ hot tips on life and how to live it!

Publisher: Ebury Publishing 

ISBN: 9781785947988 

Number of pages: 464 

Weight: 500 g 

Dimensions: 222 x 138 x 40 mm

Whotopia

BBC Books has announced Whotopia - The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse will be published on 16 November. It's written by Jonathan Morris with assistance from Una McCormack and me.

Blurb as follows:

Published to coincide with three feature-length anniversary specials, the ultimate official celebration of 60 years of Doctor Who, featuring heroes, monsters, spaceships, planets and more... all as you've never seen before. Welcome to the Whoniverse. First stop- everywhere. 

Six decades may only be a handful of heartbeats to a Time Lord, but for Doctor Who it's the adventure of several lifetimes. Evolving over 60 years, the world's longest-running sci-fi TV show has gifted us a universe of menacing monsters and unforgettable heroes. You might even call it a 'Whotopia'. 

Now you can roam free through the Doctor's dimension as never before in this special commemorative book for Doctor Who's diamond anniversary. Join all the Doctors as each tells their own story. Learn about their legions of legendary allies - and hear from the monsters' own mouths about what makes them tick. Find danger on alien worlds and threats here on Earth in all eras. And explore the gadgets, robots, spaceships, computers and mind-blowing creations that crowd the never-ending corridors of Whotopia. 

Crammed with exciting new images and in full colour throughout, Whotopia- The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse is the essential celebration of 60 years of Doctor Who.

Publisher: Ebury Publishing 

ISBN: 9781785948299 

Number of pages: 324 

Weight: 750 g 

Dimensions: 293 x 219 x 40 mm

Doctor Who and the Ark

The Ark is now out from Big Finish. I produced this full-cast audio story starring Tom Baker and Terry Molloy. It's adapted by clever Jonathan Morris from the script by John Lucarotti - this is the original version of what became TV classic The Ark in Space.

It's a thrilling and weird adventure, especially fascinating because it adds so much insight into the creative process of that much-loved TV story. There's a particularly brilliant cliffhanger but also the character of the Doctor is like nothing we've ever seen - a kindly old man who quietly slips in to fix problems, a sort of janitor of time and space. Reading the script, I kept thinking of Mr Richardson, the gently humoured caretaker at my primary school a thousand years ago.

What a thrill to work with my childhood hero Tom Baker and to hear his own thoughts on the script and how he should play this so-very-different Doctor. What a treat to work with Terry Molloy (my daughter, who overheard some of the remote recording, referred to him as 'Scary Dude'). What a brilliant cast and crew. I'm especially grateful to director Samuel Clements, sound designer Mark Henrick and composer / exec producer Nicholas Briggs. Amazing cover artist Ryan Aplin has shared clean artwork and his process.

I've now handed on the reins of Doctor Who - The Lost Stories to another producer to be announced in due course.