“The museum is a powerful and extraordinarily malleable cultural sorting house. [Museums] are places for demonstrating that the West is best, regardless of what the West has actually been up to. For example, when we hear the story of how Napoleon’s troops in Egypt at the turn of the nineteenth century resorted to using dynamite to blow up a large, basalt statute of Rameses II, we needn’t worry in the way we do about the Taliban [destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas]. Even if they did blow up the Egyptian sculptures, Napoleon’s motive was to get them into the French national collection. They would be safe there.” (p. 188).
Subtitled “Ten lies that made the West”, this insightful and often funny book is full of historical details that challenge all kinds of presumptions. The ancient Athenians, for example, wouldn’t recognise our political system as democracy. Their whole system was about governing themselves; we elect other people, usually from the elite, to do so on our behalf.
Or there’s what Magna Carta did — or rather didn’t — do to fundamental rights here and abroad. I’d never even heard of the contemporaneous Charter of the Forest, which now seems a far more radical document, providing rights for ordinary people to land and resources; some of its provisions were still in force until 1971.
Over the course of 10 chapters, Subhadra unpicks a series of assumptions about the “civilised” and the “savage”, such as the superiority of the written word over the spoken, or the roots of political frameworks or psychological insights. In doing so, she shows how art, science and history are bound up in and blinded by a constructed, self-aggrandising narrative.
Subhadra addresses numerous elisions from the historical record that serve to feed this false story. Repeatedly, women and non-white people and cultures have been left out of the story. I was fascinated to learn that Abraham Maslow’s work on the hierarchy of needs and on self-actualisation, which I studied as part of my training to be an adoptive parent, owes a great deal to his time among the Siksiká people in Northern Alberta — now the Northern Blackfoot Confederacy. Maslow later said he’d been inspired by news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour; Subhadra uses Maslow’s own work and accounts from women who knew him to set the record straight.
I should declare an interest in that I know Subhadra and get a credit in the acknowledgements (I had to check with her what for). The Dr is also cited as a source at one point. Some of what’s covered here I’d already heard, having seen Subhadra’s stand-up comedy act and heard her Boring Talk for the BBC on Jeremy Bentham’s “Auto-Icon”.
But there’s a great deal here that was completely new to me — a richer, stranger more diverse history than the one I thought I knew. What a delightful way to discover the myriad ways in which I’m wrong.
The Drifter was created for STW-9 in Perth, Western Australia, by David Whitaker, a British writer probably best known as the first story editor of Doctor Who and the subject of my recent biography. The series ran for 21 episodes over 22 weeks 1973-74, and I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who can add to the following.
Background
The series owed something to an outline for The Lover dated 4 April 1966 and submitted to the Writers' Guild eight days later. David proposed that this would be filmed in colour, presumably in the style of The Saint or The Baron made for ITV. It would have seen Richard Young travelling Europe and getting into various scrapes and adventures, with David describing the character as a modern-day Casanova (whose unexpurgated autobiography had just begun to be published).
Richard Young’s itinerant lifestyle follows a fire that killed his parents and destroyed their Sussex home in 1961. This was probably inspired by a real-life fire that swept through the London home David shared with his parents sometime in 1960 or 1961.
The Lover was not picked up but by 1970 David had reworked the idea in a full movie screenplay, Man on a Tightrope, for Armitage Films — the company that made the low budget science-fiction film Night Caller (1968) and horror Burke and Hare (1972). The main character is Richard Logan, an adventurer who has been living an itinerant life since the death of his wife five years previously in a fire. He’s recruited to expose a criminal gang by the enigmatic Nicholson — a name probably inspired by David’s mother, who was born Nellie Nicholas. The film was never made.
In February 1971, David was in Australia, discussing ideas for TV shows with David Aspinall, assistant production manager at STW-9 in Perth. According to a report in the Australian TV Times on 17 February, David was to write 12 ten-minute plays for the channel in different genres that would help to meet newly imposed quotas on locally produced programmes and could be used to train crews.
Then, in 1973, STW-9 recorded a pilot episode of The Drifter created and written by David, with Aspinall as executive producer. The network duly commissioned a 10-part series and later extended that to 26 - all to be written by David. But before completing this number, the series was cancelled at short notice.
The Drifter
Regular cast: James Halloran (Alan Cassell), Owen Nicholas (Sydney Davis), Lucie Martin (Helen Naeme), Miss Zeigler (Valda Diamond).
Only the first two of 21 episodes are known to survive, and are currently on YouTube.
The title sequence shows, in a series of still captions, Halloran on his wedding day, then with his wife and two children, then a newspaper clipping tells us his family died in a fire.
01. If You Can’t Join Them, Beat Them (tx Saturday 15 December 1973)
TV listing: “What do you do with a case full of money and the police breathing down your neck?”
A flight lands at Perth Airport and airline staff have to carry off a drunk, unconscious passenger, who carries a ticket in the name of “J Smith”. This is, in fact, James Halloran, some 18 months after the deaths of his wife and children.
He wakes to find himself in bed at the home of air stewardess Lucie Martin — and wrongly assumes he picked her up the night before. After this embarrassment, Halloran is visited by Dr Lindeman, a passenger who helped him off the plane. In fact, Lindeman spiked Halloran’s drink and caused the whole distraction as part of an insurance scam.
Lindeman offers Halloran $10,000 to continue with the plot. It looks as though Halloran will agree but he then shops Lindeman to the authorities. Meanwhile, an enigmatic man called Owen Nicholas collects Halloran’s unclaimed suitcase from the airport and keeps hold of it to use as leverage.
02. Love On Tuesday At Three O’Clock Please (Saturday 22 December 1973)
TV listing: “Owen Nicholas persuades Halloran to answer a risqué advertisement.”
Recorded in studio on 7 November 1973
Guest cast: Lynn Canfield (Jenny McNae), Faith Royal (Adele Cohen), Len (Max Bartlett), Barry (David Lyon), Judith (Olwyn Summers)
Crew: Camera - Tony Graham, Ian Jobsz and Brett Wiley; Lighting - Brian Grosse; Audio - David Muir; Make-up - Pauline Dunstan; Settings - David Crosby; Properties - Noel Penn; Graphics - Victor Longbon; Videotape editors - Ivan De Souza, Jim McLoughlin and Ray Shaw; Floor manager - Mike Meade; Technical director - Kevin Mohen; Director’s assistant - Pat Green; Executive producer - David Aspinall; Director - Brian Green; Producer - John Hanson.
Lynn Canfield is drugged by two men who then undress and photograph her, and later send a blackmail demand. She goes to Owen Nicholas for help, and he uses his leverage to get James Halloran to investigate.
Faith Royal, who runs the escort agency used by Canfield and sent the demand, doesn’t want money; she wants Canfield to recruit further victims. Halloran takes a job with the agency while Nicholas’s secretary, Miss Zeigler, poses as a potential stooge, and together they put a stop to the scheme. Halloran, who is still staying with Lucie Martin, now seems bound to work with Nicholas — who is an associate of Halloran’s father-in-law, and keen to get the drifter back on his feet.
03. Heads I Win, Tails You Lose (Saturday 29 December 1973)
TV listing: “There is always one big winner at the weekly poker game. The Drifter doesn’t want to play, but must put up with the cards he has been dealt.”
04. Life And Death (Saturday 5 January 1974)
TV listing: “Halloran becomes deeply involved with Owen Nicholas — and finds himself investigating an ingenious murder attempt at the hospital.”
05. There’s Always An Angle (Saturday, 12 January 1974)
TV listing: “The Drifter breaks away — at last — and finds himself staying in a motel operating in an unusual way.”
06. Rogue’s Gallery (Saturday, 19 January 1974)
TV listing: “Halloran investigates when Ramon Salamander buys a stolen Renoir.”
Guest cast: Ramon Salamander (Neville Teede), Salamander’s mistress (Vynka Lee-Steere)
A photo of David Whitaker and Vynka Lee-Steere was published in the edition of TV Week for 8 December 1973 (p. 13), suggesting the episode was recorded around this time. The accompanying piece says that Lee-Steere plays the, “mistress of a millionaire armaments manufacturer who is selling illegal arms to subversive organisations”.
A preview in the Western Australian on 19 January (p. 33) says that Salamander, “is suspected of stealing a Renoir painted in 1874 [and]James Halloran, the drifter played by Alan Cassells is assigned to find out where the Renoir has gone”.
Salamander is also the name of a villain in a Doctor Who story written by David, The Enemy of the World, which ends with Salamander being ejected from the TARDIS just after it leaves Australia… so perhaps this is the same character.
07. Things That Go Bump in the Night (Saturday, 26 January 1974)
TV listing: “Is there a plot afoot to ruin Harry Starr or has a ghost really invaded his new block of flats?”
A photograph in what may be the 15 or 22 December issue of TV Week shows star Alan Cassell with guest star Perth actress Sally Sander, who was presumably a guest star in this or the following episode.
08. The Strong Shall Inherit the Earth (Saturday, 2 February 1974)
TV listing: “Murderer Manny Rossiter escapes while on his way to gaol and plans to kill Owen Nicholas.”
A photograph in the TV Week published the day of broadcast shows Robert Foggetter (presumably as Rossiter) with a gun, leaning over the top of car to take a shot, while behind him there's a man with stocking over his head. The caption says that, “a realistic fight scene, car chase and ambush will be seen in this week’s episode of The Drifter.”
09. With A Little Help From My Enemies (Saturday, 9 February 1974)
TV listing: “Halloran helps a schoolteacher who discovers that one of her pupils possesses dangerous drugs.”
10. Death In The Garden (Saturday, 16 February 1974)
TV listing: “Mary Auben is a nice old lady who lives on a valuable property coveted by a nearby factory.”
The listings magazine also quotes a line of dialogue from the episode, spoken by an unnamed lawyer: “It’s astonishing what an oral life we lead — eating, drinking, talking, smoking, tasting, singing, biting, kissing and some habitual drug users inject themselves under the tongue.”
11. The Body of a Girl (Saturday, 23 February 1974)
TV listing: “Shirley, a 25-year-old prostitute, is in danger when she causes trouble."
12. The Beginning of the End (Friday, 1 March 1974)
TV listing: “Owen Nicholas puts Halloran in the centre of a fierce quarrel between scientific research and conservation.”
A news report in TV Week on 2 March revealed that actress Helen Neeme, playing series regular Lucie Martin, was pregnant — so she may have left the series before the end.
13. A Legal Way to Steal (Friday, 8 March 1974)
TV listing: “Halloran learns of a way to part people from their fortunes. But Owen Nicholas is much too fascinated with the attractive Myra to show interest.”
14. The Death of Janet Halloran (Friday, 15 March 1974)
TV listing: "Halloran receives a phone call from his wife Janet — who was burnt to death in a fire one year ago."
15. The Death of Janet Halloran (part 2) (Friday, 22 March 1974)
TV listing: “What is the organisation FSD and what was its connection with Janet Halloran? What was the secret she could not tell her husband?”
16. Breakdown (part 1) (Friday 29 March 1974)
No listing given.
17. Breakdown (part 2) (Friday, 5 April 1974)
TV listing: “An attractive girl and half-a-million dollars — the Drifter can have both for the price of a bullet.”
Cast: final listing to credit Helen Neene.
[12 April, no episode shown as it was Good Friday; a movie was broadcast instead]
18. Black, White and Red (part 1) (Friday. 19 April 1974)
TV listing: “Someone turned Rod Taylor into a living vegetable because of his fight for a principle and nobody wants Halloran to find the truth.”
19. Black, White and Red (part 2) (Friday, 26 April 1974)
No listing given.
Guest cast: James Setches, Andrew Carter, Frank McKallister.
20. The Valley of the Shadow (part 1) (Friday, 3 May 1974)
TV listing: “When Captain Keith Colby is invalided out of the army he asks the Drifter to help him find the man who tried to kill him.”
The 4 May edition of TV Week (p. 61) includes a photograph with the caption that, “Scriptwriter David Whitaker created a role for himself in a recent episode of The Drifter. He appeared as a businessman (right) with actors Laurence Hodge (left) and Norman Macleod.” The caption doesn’t say which episode this is from. David Whitaker kept a copy of this photograph and one of him being made-up for the part, presumably by Pauline Dunstan (credited at the end of episode 2).
21. The Valley of the Shadow (part 2) (Friday, 9 May 1974)
TV listing: “The Drifter is involved in a bizarre case of revenge against Keith Colby.”
Star Alan Cassell, quoted in TV Week on 25 May, said that,“Ironically, the episode I enjoyed most was the last one [as] I finally got myself into bed with a bird and there was a realistic fight scene that worked very well. … The fight was in fact so dynamic, a fellow actor ended up with two stitches in his lip.”
But he’d also had no warning of the cancellation. A total of 21 episodes had been broadcast over 22 weeks. The press referred to tentative plans to make further episodes at a later date, in colour. This doesn’t seem to have come anything.
On 3 October 1979, David wrote a synopsis for a novelisation of his Doctor Who story The Enemy of the World, adding the first name “Ramon” to the villainous Salamander, underlining the link between him and the character of the same name in The Drifter.
This is a novelisation of the second Garry Halliday serial, about the adventures of an airline pilot (see my post about the first one, Garry Halliday and the Disappearing Diamonds). The book was published in 1961, based on the six-episode serial broadcast on BBC Television on Saturday tea-times from 26 September to 31 October 1959.
The first serial was considered enough of a success for two new Garry Halliday serials to be commissioned, apparently at once. This was mentioned in press previews ahead of the the second serial - in the Nottingham Evening Post, 10 September 1959, p. 15 and the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 18 September 1959, p. 9. But the third serial wasn't broadcast until January 1960.
Why the gap? One issue was the availability of the cast. The Radio Times listing for the first episode of this second run says that star Terence Longdon (who played Garry Halliday) was appearing in The Sound of Murder at London's Aldwych Theatre while Elwyn Brook-Jones (returning as the villainous Voice) was in The Crooked Mile at the Cambridge Theatre. Those commitments probably explain why - again, as per Radio Times - this was a "BBC recording" rather than broadcast live (as with the first serial).
(The stage productions must have given permission for the actors to appear in the TV serial at the same time as their stage commitments; the plugs in Radio Times were probably part of the agreement - I've seen evidence of that with other productions.)
Also returning was Terence Alexander as Halliday's co-pilot Bill Dodds, who narrates the novelisation. He's got a more distinctive, slightly Woosterish voice compared to the first novelisation.
“Hullo! Bill Dodds talking. Are you receiving me?
I expect you are. Loud and clear, as we say in radio communication - I've always had a good carrying voice.
If you've read a book called Garry Halliday and the Disappearing Diamonds, you'll know who I am, and who Garry is, and about Jean Wills, our stewardess, and about the Voice. If you haven't, then you'd better read it, because I'm not going to explain all over again. Life's too short, and anyway there are probably going to be more books after this one, and I can't keep doing it. I expect there'll be many more books as Garry has adventures, and Garry's an adventurous type.” (p. 10, opening Chapter 1)
Jean Wills was back, but with actress Ann Gudrun (better known as Gudrun Ure) replaced by Jennifer Wright - and still not having a great deal to do in the story. The cast was also expanded, with Bill's fiancee Sonia Delamare played by Juno Stevas and Garry's plucky nephew Tim Halliday played by David Langford.
The story opens with Garry, Bill and Jean having set up their own airline, the Halliday Charter Company, and flying a party of holiday-makers out to Paris. Tim sits next to a nervous man whose only luggage is a box containing a jigsaw puzzle. When Tim expresses interest in the puzzle, the man is rude - and when the jigsaw pieces fall out into the cabin, he calls stewardess Jean a "stupid, clumsy bitch" (p. 22), which is a bit of a shock in a TV serial/book aimed at children.
They gather up the jigsaw pieces but Tim, in revenge for the rudeness, keeps one piece. It then turns out that the back of the jigsaw puzzle is written on in invisible ink, and Tim now has a vital part of a message being delivered on behalf of the Voice.
Garry and his friends attempt to make sense of the message and trace how it is delivered, while at the same time the Voice instructs his minions to recover the missing piece of the jigsaw and kill those who get in the way. As in the first serial, this includes an attempt to destroy Garry's plane while in the air.
A preview in Junior Radio Times supplement (included in the Radio Times covering the first episode, via the link above) reveals that this was an ambitious production with location filming abroad:
“There have been film locations in Paris and also down at Ferry Field Airport at Lydd, Kent. Once more Silver City Airways have kindly afforded us every facility, and the Managing Director was recently mistaken for one of our actors playing the part of a high-pressure business executive!
There are more thrilling aerobatic film sequences and a number of specially staged fights, for The Voice’s men are out to get Garry this time, come what may, and their methods change from the use of poison gas to the use of plain fists.” (Junior Radio Times, p. 3)
I'm also struck by how often it veers on the edge of what's suitable for kids: one man compromised by the Voice discusses committing suicide; young Tim Halliday witnesses another man falling to his death; the police seem very relaxed about our heroes shooting a helicopter out of the sky (p. 125). There's fair bit of smoking and drinking, and Bill's views on women - he falls in love with Sonia after she "clonked me on the lug-hole with a kipper" (p. 11). At one point, Garry says of Bill's interest in the secrets hidden on the jigsaws:
“He's a bit kinky about invisible ink.” (p. 37)
At the same time, the plot races along and is full of daft jokes to lighten the mood - Bill gets confused by police sergeant George Eustace having two first names (p. 35), and there's later a police sergeant in Keswick with the surname Love. The local inspector presumably spoke to him with an accent:
“Wait, Love. Wait. Not so far. Instructions must be adhered to, Love, or where would the world be, I ask you.” (p. 121)
The plot hinges on the invention of a new kind of heating appliance.
“It was a cheap way of heating by doing without coal, or gas, or oil; his invention simply extracted heat from the atmosphere, and used that.” (p. 71)
That seems prescient - a kind of air-source heat pump offering green, renewable energy - but the application of the technology is very much of its time. The Voice sees the potential to focus the energy produced into a death ray, a weapon effectively like a cut-price nuclear bomb.
Such a weapon is of interest to Dr Edmundo (Richard Warner), who our narrator describes as,
“one of these middle-aged South American chaps with mahogany faces and black moustaches, who are always having revolutions in countries with unlikely names.” (p. 38)
He's a stock villain, a racist cliche - and this is not the only time Bill Dodds shares disparaging remarks about foreigners. At one point, he uses a particular word - which I won't repeat here - which is even more shocking than "bitch" to see in a book written for children.
Edmundo employs "thugs" who aren't named in the book but on screen were "Sebastiano" and "Perfidio". The latter, appearing in the last two episodes of the serial, was played by Walter Randall, who later played similar, small villainous roles in Doctor Who. These were the only two episodes of Garry Halliday that Randall appeared in, which means we know someone else who had an uncredited role on the production - and went on to write for the series.
“Douglas [Camfield] was commissioned [to write] for the [Garry Halliday]serial because he had worked on it in 1959 as an AFM where he met actor Walter Randall for the first time, and who would become one of his closest friends, as well as the go-to man for playing middle eastern villains.” (Michael Seely, Directed by Douglas Camfield, p. 34.)
Camfield wrote an episode of the eighth and final Garry Halliday series, which was not a serial but comprised six standalone episodes. But we're getting ahead of ourselves...
The ending of this second story makes use of the fact that no one (except the viewer watching at home) knows what the Voice looks like. Throughout proceedings, he's communicated with his minions remotely, him seeing them on a TV screen, them only hearing his politely couched threats. But the final page of the book promises a rematch, with a closing line that reads to me like the promise of a conclusion to a trilogy:
“Whether it's my choice or the Voice's choice, at some time, in some place, we're going to finish things between us.” (p. 126)
Sadly, I've not yet tracked down a copy of the next novelisation, Garry Halliday and the Kidnapped Five (1962), but can trace something of the plot from listings - and the only surviving episode of Garry Halliday. More on that coming soon.
Oh, and the cover art for this novelisation is by Ley Kenyon, who as a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft III forged passports and other documents in the lead up to the Great Escape, and then illustrated Paul Brickhill's book.
I'm featured briefly in the new 2024 Yearbook from that lot at Doctor Who Magazine. For his piece on last year's Doctor Who books, Richard Unwin asked me a few questions about The Daily Doctor (which I co-wrote with Peter Anghelides) and Whotopia (which Jonathan Morris wrote with assistance from Una McCormack and me). There's even a photo of me, stood outside my old house in London sometimes before lockdown.
Among the myriad treats in the same issue, I was especially taken by Jason Quinn's interview with digital archivist Helen Randle from BBC Library and Curatorial Services, talking about the wealth of old paperwork - memos, sketches and sheet music - that is being unearthed and shared. You can dig into this stuff in The story of Doctor Who from the BBC archives, and click "follow" to get notified of updates. It's even available outside the UK.
Next month, I'll be at the enormous Doctor Who convention Gallifrey One in Los Angeles, where the headline guests include Sir Derek Jacobi, Billie Piper and Alex Kingston.
The schedule for the whole weekend is now online, with an option to see the bits I'm doing. Those are:
Friday, 16 February
11 am - Television Before the TARDIS (Program D)
When Doctor Who began 60 years ago, there was nothing like it on TV — but that doesn’t mean it came from nowhere. Simon Guerrier explores how this cutting-edge science-fiction evolved out of developments in sitcom, soap opera and variety shows, and the adventures of an airline pilot. What, exactly, did the creation of Doctor Who owe Sammy Davis Junior?
4 pm - Autographs (Autograph alley)
7.30 pm - Gadgets and Gizmos Aplenty (Program C)
Doctor Who is nothing without a healthy dose of mechanical gadgetry, gizmos and tools, from the TARDIS itself and its infinitely customizable console, to the various permutations of the Doctor’s trusty sonic screwdriver (which seems to do everything except actually be a screwdriver!), from K-9 to Bessie and the Whomobile, and everything else over the years. We’ll take a look at the most – and least – plausible inventions and gizmos, and work out whether much of this stuff would function in the real world, and how. Moderated by Simon Guerrier. Panelists: Brian Uiga, Erin Amos, Matthew Mitchell.
Saturday, 17 February
2 pm - Worlds That Might Have Been (Program D)
TV and film are full of alternate takes on both history and future. We’ll take a look at the genre, in both science fiction & fantasy TV and film as well as pop culture touchstones (the Marvel and DC universes tend to do it more than any other, it seems!), and ask ourselves why reimagining our past and future is so appealing… and if we can live with the unpredictable consequences, good or bad. Moderated by Craig Miller. Panelists: Simon Guerrier, Barbara Hambly, Robert Napton, Ian Winterton.
3 pm - The Legacy of Douglas Adams (Program B)
Gone, but never forgotten… the popularity of one of Britain’s greatest satirists continues to inspire us and endures even today. From his early contributions to Doctor Who to the universality of his timeless classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, we’ll take a look at Adams’ contributions to the human zeitgeist and why his humor, and his humanity, will live forever. Moderated by Stacey Smith? Panelists: Kevin Jon Davies, James Goss, Simon Guerrier, Gareth Kavanagh.
Sunday, 18 February
10 am - Kaffeeklatsch: Simon Guerrier & Peter Anghelides
I read a proof version in May and was asked if I'd provide an endorsement. My response then is now partially quoted on the back cover:
"A brilliant compendium of the brilliance of Doctor Who fandom. Intelligent, insightful and incredibly wide-ranging, this is a really engaging collection. I love the mix of new analysis and older pieces to give a comprehensive overview. A perfect introduction for those new to Doctor Who scholarship, and packed with interest for more established scholars. There's so much here I'd never even thought of. I finished it then immediately wanted to start reading again."
The book republishes some classic takes, with excerpts from The Making of Doctor Who (1972) by the series' then script editor Terrance Dicks and regular writer Malcolm Hulke, a 1973 letter to Radio Times by a teenage Peter Capaldi (later the Twelfth Doctor), and a 1995 post to rec.arts.doctor.who by Steven Moffat who was later executive producer of the series. There's a piece on 'canonicity' by my friend Paul Cornell, addressing his TV adaptation of Human Nature for the Tenth Doctor on TV when it was originally a novel featuring the Seventh Doctor.
There are excepts from cultural historians John Tulloch and Henry Jenkins, whose work I read closely while at university half a lifetime ago. This sits alongside an except from Pier Britton's authoritative book Design for Doctor Who, and a piece by Mary Robinette Kowal detailing the Doctor Who references hidden in her historical fantasy novels.
But what really thrilled me is the new essays original to this collection that cover an enormous range of ground. As I said in my endorsement, there's loads here that was new to this long-in-the-tooth hardcore fan. That was especially true of Magdalena Stonawska's piece on fandom in Poland, Eloy Vieira and Lilian FranÇa on fandom in Brazil and Ting Guo on fandom in China. There's stuff on fanzines and figurines and the financial cost (more than £300!) of following multimedia adventure Time Lord Victorious (of which I wrote one instalment). There's loads here to illuminate, inspire and challenge - and to argue with. What a delight.
(One slightly odd thing: I'm described on the back cover as "producer and author of How The Doctor Changed My Life (2008)", but I edited rather than authored that book, and it was quite a long time ago. I've done one or two other related things since.)
This is a concise, 125-page novelisation of the first Garry Halliday serial. The children's TV series about the adventures of an airline pilot ran for a total of 50 half-hour episodes, broadcast on Saturday evenings between 28 February 1959 and 29 September 1962; 11 episodes were then repeated between 5 November 1962 and 27 July 1963. For more than three years, Garry Halliday was a fixture in the schedule but it was then largely eclipsed by the series of serials that replaced it in the same Saturday teatime slot: Doctor Who.
While I was researching the life of David Whitaker - who worked on two Garry Halliday serials before becoming first story editor of Doctor Who - I read some contradictory stuff about the earlier series. Despite what you may read elsewhere, it was not adapted from books by Justin Blake; instead, the five books published 1960-65 were novelisations of broadcast TV serials. Nor did the TV series comprise a single 'trailer' episode and then two serials of 16 and 33 episodes respectively; there were seven serials of either six or seven episodes, and then an eighth series of six one-off episodes.
Such misconceptions are common when discussing old TV that no longer exists (only one episode of Garry Halliday survives in the archive), based on decades-old memories. The novelisation is a record of what has been lost, its six chapters providing a useful precis of the six broadcast episodes, with details of plot, pace and tone, and even descriptions of some of the sets. It can also help correct other misconceptions.
For example, the villain of the series is known as The Voice because even his own hench-people never see him in person. Some sources say that in the first serial The Voice disguised himself by shining a powerful light in the faces of those who report to him. The novelisation makes clear he works from an office with a two-way mirror and his minions are only admitted to the so-called Mirror Room. It may be that the light shone in people's faces is from a later serial, or it may be that what a viewer remembers is the way the Mirror Room scenes were shot, with close-ups of anxious hench-people.
What's more, Halliday is here a pilot for the British Overseas Airways - surely a little too close to the real-life British Overseas Airways Corporation (1939-74). It's only after this first adventure that he sets up his own airline, Halliday Charter Company.
So, the plot. On several flights back from Amsterdam, keen-eyed Halliday (Terence Longdon) spots an unexpected sight: what look like weather balloons but smaller. Halliday's co-pilot Bill Dodds (Terence Alexander, later Charlie Hungerford in Bergerac) - who narrates the novelisation - and stewardess Jean Wills (credited in Radio Times as Ann Gudrun, but better known as Gudrun Ure aka Supergran) fail to spot the balloons, and the authorities don't believe him either.
When Dodds tells a friend in the pub about this, they are overheard by a trainee steward called George Bassett (Geoffrey Hibbert), who then reports this conversation to The Voice. It turns out that Halliday has stumbled on to a diamond-smuggling operation. On his next flight, Halliday diverts course so that Dodds and Wills finally see a balloon but Bassett convinces them not to report this without better evidence; they agree to bring a cine camera with them on their next flight.
But as that flight takes off, Bassett has planted a bomb among the luggage...
In the second episode / chapter, Halliday learns of the bomb and disposes of it in the nick of time. In Amsterdam, he and his friends then investigate where the balloons have been launched from. They deduce it must be somewhere near the coast and drive around asking local people what they might have seen. This leads them to a windmill, where they are apprehended by two gunmen...
And so it goes on, Halliday surviving a series of scrapes. The obvious comparison is to the adventures of Biggles, though it reminded me a lot of John Buchan's Hannay stories. The diamond-smuggling plot may owe something to James Bond - the first Bond film wasn't out until 1962, but the novel Diamonds are Foreverwas published in 1956 and Ian Fleming's non-fiction book The Diamond Smugglers the following year. To expose the villains, Bond pretends to be a diamond-smuggler called Peter Franks; Halliday also pretends to be a diamond smuggler, but is really working on behalf of police inspector Franks. (The film version of Diamonds are Forever (1971) features stuff set in Amsterdam but the original novel does not.)
Just as with the adventures of Bond and Hannay, some elements mentioned in passing are a shock to the modern reader. The most glaring example is the racist joke when Dodds and his friends are in the cockpit scanning the air for balloons,
"and looking like a lot of daft coons watching a whole in the road or something" (pp. 20-21)
This comes from Dodds, who is a otherwise presented as a well-meaning bungler - we're told on the first page that his nickname is "Hopeless". He's largely there for comic relief; there's a fun sequence when he tries to pretend that the fugitive Halliday is not hiding in his house, and a more suspenseful bit towards the end of the story when, not privy to what's really going on and only trying to help, he leads the police to the wrong house, leaving Halliday in a fix with the enemy. In fact, there are some very effective moments of suspense and some genuine threat, such as the prospect of a whole plane-load of innocent people being murdered just to cover The Voice's tracks. I can see why the series hooked viewers.
The cover of the book may also tell us something about the popular appeal of the series. The artwork is by Lee Kenyon, based - we're told in the inside flap - on photographs supplied by the BBC. The top half of the cover is dominated by a close-up portrait of Elwyn Brook-Jones as The Voice, moodily lit and photo-realistic. Beneath him, in medium shot, is a more comic-strip portrayal of Halliday and Dodds in the cockpit, neither a particularly good likeness of the actors and Dodds looking off to one side at two balloons in the sky. The emphasis is surely on the villain, suggesting that he was the chief appeal.
I'm also struck by how little Jean Wills has to do, for all she insists on not being left out of things. She may have had more dialogue in the TV version but says very little in the book, and the only other female character is the unseen airport announcer. We can compare that to the first year of Doctor Who where Susan Foreman and Barbara Wright have so much to say and do, alongside a number of notable female guest characters.
It's also odd to read a story made for children that includes a visit to the pub and people smoking, or that includes the discomforts of a strip search. Oddest of all given that this is narrated by a co-pilot is the lack of any details about flying a plane, what's involved in navigation or changing course, or even the protocols of communication with the ground. The nearest we get is on page 68 when Halliday spells his name out in a joke-version of the NATO phonetic alphabet.
"Garry said: 'H for Holland. A for Amsterdam. L for Latitude. Another L for Longitude. I for Interesting. D for Diamonds. A for Altitude. Y for Yours Truly.'"
But while Dodds tells us a little about his own past - service in the RAF, where he was teased for being "Hopeless" - we get very little sense of Garry Halliday as a person, beyond his dogged determination and usefulness in a fight. Perhaps most revealing is when Dodds lists the contents of Halliday's overnight bag:
"Pyjamas, a couple of handkerchiefs, spare socks, a tie, slippers, a flashy silk dressing-gown one of his girls gave him for Christmas, a Penguin book by Raymond Chandler and another by Jane Austen, sponge-bag with toothpaste, toothbrush, razor and shaving soap." (p. 90)
This determined adventure hero reads Austen but doesn't pack a change of underpants. And does "one of his girls" mean he's a womaniser or a dad? We're not told - because the series entitled Garry Halliday isn't really about him.
The latest issue of ginormous Doctor Who fanzine Vworp Vworp!is now available, with 180 glossy pages devoted to the very first episode, An Unearthly Child, plus a DVD with added wonders.
My piece, "David the Goliath" (pp. 23-25) is on the thesis that without David Whitaker as story editor, Doctor Who would never have survived its first year. I endeavoured to be objective in my biography; here, I was asked to let rip.
The DVD includes an animated version of "A Meeting on the Common", the first chapter of David's 1964 novelisation Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, itself adapted from the TV serial that comprises Doctor Who episodes 5-11. The animation, effectively a new opening for all of Doctor Who, is directed and animated by Mel Meanley, adapted by Ian Winterton and stars Stephen Noonan as the Doctor, Adam Grayson as Ian, Helen Stirling-Lane as Barbara and Kerry Ely as Susan. Here's the trailer:
In my book, I discuss why this meeting takes place on Barnes Common and the elements of David Whitaker's real life that fed into it. In fact, the new animation is not the first dramatised version of this material, as I learned from The John Nathan-Turner Production Diary 1979-1990 by Richard Molesworth (Telos, 2022). Richard was then kind enough to let me have sight of the original paperwork.
In the summer of 1981, Philip Lewis - a BBC employee based in Room 4, 16 LS at Broadcasting House in London - wrote to Doctor Who producer John Nathan Turner about a script he (Lewis) had written for 'Episode 1' of Doctor Who and the Daleks, adapting the early chapters of David Whitaker's novelisation as an audio play. Lewis wanted the producer's permission to allow the Studio Amateur Dramatic Group (SADG) of the BBC Club to record this, on the proviso that it would be made by and played for club members only, and was not intended for broadcast. The idea was to use it as an exercise in adapting a novel for radio. Lewis assured the producer that the Daleks didn't feature - i.e. the episode concluded before they made their first appearance.
Replying on 4 June, Nathan Turner agreed in principle that this project could go ahead but wanted to check with Martin Hussey, merchandising assistant at BBC Enterprises, whether the project needed the blessing of Roger Hancock, agent of Dalek creator Terry Nation. The producer forwarded Hussey the script the following day; a copy of his covering memo survives. There's no record of a reply and the script doesn't seem to have been returned, so is not included in the Nathan Turner archive.
But if SADG recorded a version of the script by Lewis, it may well have been technically accomplished. SADG helped BBC staff learn key skills in production. For example, Bob Wood was a senior clerk working in the current recordings retention unit at Broadcasting House in the 1960s, but joined this (and other) groups:
"At SADG, I learnt to be a radio studio manager and producer, eventually becoming their technical training officer and winning a technical trophy ... In 1970, after successfully completing the POA/SM training course, I left London and moved to Glasgow as a radio studio manager at BBC Scotland." (Bob Wood, "BBC hostels & the summer of love", Prospero issue 6 (December 2018), p. 8.
UPDATE!
I’ve been in touch with Philip Lewis, who now works as a voice artist with credits including a radio announcer on Emmerdale. You can find out more (and employ him!) via his website.
So, what about his adaptation of Doctor Who and the Daleks?
“As far as I know, it never got recorded,” Philip tells me. “At least not with my involvement. And I don’t have a copy of the script. In the intervening years I’ve moved house a number of times.”
But why adapt this particular Doctor Who novelisation, which was then 17 years-old? “The answer to that lies in the letter I wrote to the then producer – basically it was an exercise in adapting a book for radio. I seem to remember around that time I did several partial adaptations of other books and Doctor Who was just one of them.
“And no, I’m not the Philip Lewis who produced Pot Black, although I did meet him once.”
I've really enjoyed this new six-part series on Curiosity Steam, with my hero James Burke returning to the subject of the unexpected history of change. There are two big differences between this and the 1978 series Connections that Burke made for the BBC, which I blogged about a decade ago. (Since then, it's been released on DVD by Simply Media in 2017 and is, er, currently all on YouTube).
First, that original series had - like lots of the BBC's science documentaries then and now - a lot of Burke out in the field, striding through picturesque locations to illustrate his thesis. Here, things are on a smaller, less expensive scale with the older Burke on a virtual set, his arguments illustrated by what looks like stock footage and bits of CGI swirling around him. At some points they use CGI to animate him - he even dances (!) - and there are also some props, such as when he dons the Macktinosh waterproof coat he's telling us about. But the effect of all this is to underline that these are basically lectures. It's all more TED talk than Brian Cox out on a mountain pointing at stars.
Nowhere is this more starkly evident than in Episode 5, where Burke discusses the usefulness of the vacuum flask. He makes his case then turns and points behind him, as in the screenshot above. We get a CGI animation of a rocket blasting off - a fun gag and call-back. In the original, out on location and perfectly timed to the launch of the Titan-Centaur rocket carrying Voyager 2 in space, it creates an iconic bit of TV:
(Burke's old programmes are full of extraordinary, ballsy stuff like this. He explains gravity while sat on a roller-coaster, and hands the Apollo astronauts a plastic bag they all recognise and asks them to explain how this was used as a toilet in space.)
Secondly, each episode in the new Connections begins with a change that hasn't happened yet: a prediction of the near future. The old BBC series used connections to explain how we got to be where we are; this new series is about where we're going.
To give a sense of the format, Episode 1, Seeing the Future, begins with Burke talking about the potential of quantum computing to crunch such vast sets of data that it will be able to predict the future to a high degree of accuracy. We then duck back in time to 1814 and the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's toothpick. Animation in a style slightly reminiscent of Monty Python shows Napoleon escaping from Elba.
An example of the animation from Connections with James Burke
The fun is in seeing how Burke will get from this toothpick to quantum computing in a series of logical steps. Those steps are often surprising because of unintended consequences of a given change or new invention. Sometimes it's a less direct connection. For example, Napoleon's toothpick was supplied by George Bullock, and Bullock's brother William didn't just ship stuff out from the UK but also brought stuff home, organising exhibitions of exotic stuff in "living museums". To ship such stuff from far-off locales, Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward perfected the "Wardian case", which meant plants survived long journeys. That, in turn, meant Robert Fortune could smuggle tea plants out of China and help set-up tea plantations in India, with a profound impact on trade.
We're then on to the ships used to carry these good quickly - the clippers using sail and then the iron ships powered by steam. Then we're onto the same ships carrying palm oil, and it's use in soap, and the way that was packaged and branded... On and on it goes, a hop-scotch through time, with regular recaps of the connections so far.
Episode 2, The End of Scarcity, predicts the universal replicator by following the chain from Louis XIV's wig.
Episode 3, In the Net, predicts humans merging with the internet and Episode 4, None of This is Real, predicts avatars that are indistinguishable from humans, with AI as the gatekeeper to knowledge - the latter reached by following a chain from shipworm.
Episode 5, Designer Genes, gets to the titular editing of who we are from coffee beans in Leipzig, and the final episode, Limitless Energy, predicts energy autonomy based on perovskite solar cells leading to a post-scarcity society with no need for climate change or war - all from the starting point of a potato.
Burke is an engaging and often funny speaker, with just the right tone of irreverence for these leaps of imagination. For example:
"In 1852, one of [William Bird] Herapath's students notices, as you would, that if you add iodine to dog's urine, if the dog has already been fed quinine - okay, okay, but this is what geeks do - then you get needle like crystals." (None of This is Real)
These crystals polarise glass, leading to the invention of both polarised glasses and the polaroid camera.
But there's plenty of serious stuff behind these arguments. A key theme is the way science can open up opportunities and provide benefits for all. In discussing the steps that lead to designer genes, he notes that two brilliant women responsible for key connections along the way, both died while young. Given that the end point is about improving health, he asks what Ada Lovelace and Rosalind Franklin might have gone on to contribute if they'd lived longer.
That, I think, is another key difference from the original series, which I felt assumed a male viewer, Burke speaking to his peers. This is all much more inclusive and I don't think Burke is now talking to his own generation. Instead, he addresses those who will follow, encouraging them to take part in the bright future he sees ahead. That's what really strikes me about this series: it's optimism for where we go next.
Over a series of long drives and shorter washings-up, I've worked my way through this 35+ hour reading of Our Mutual Friend, the novel by Charles Dickens first published in 1864-65, and the last novel he completed. The audiobook version was brilliantly read by David Troughton.
Lizzie Hexam is scared of the Thames but dutifully joins her father in his boat to scour the water for valuable jetsam. One night her father finds the body of a dead young man, identified as John Harmon. Harmon is the heir to a fortune, conditional on his marrying a Miss Bella Wilfer - who he has never met. With Harmon dead, the fortune passes to an eccentric but kindly couple, the Boffins. And they feel they ought to do something by Miss Wilfer, so take her in as their own. But Bella, the Boffins and lots of people around them are affected by this new-found wealth, and not always for the better. The Boffins have also taken on a secretary, John Rokesmith, who has a mysterious past...
I first read this novel in 1998 having loved the BBC TV adaptation starring Keeley Hawes as Lizzie Hexam and Paul McGann as the aesthete Eugene Wrayburn who falls for her, Anna Friel as Bella Wilfer and Steven Mackintosh as John Rokesmith. The thing that struck me then was the book's attention to water - the river Thames, the locks and canals, the connections afforded by its flow.
Except that's not what he did at all, as I learned in 2015 from "Charles Dickens and Science", a talk given at Gresham College by Lord Hunt of Chesterton, for which the video and full transcript are still available. It turns out that engineer John Scott Russell, who identified in his designs for ships that waves have an associated force, worked for Dickens as the railways editor at the Daily News and provided the technical detail in Our Mutual Friend, where the behaviour of the water of the Thames articulates the science of fluid dynamics decades ahead of its time.
Rereading the novel now, what struck me most was the number of subterfuges involved. Rokesmith and the Boffins deceive Miss Wilfer. Though they claim this is for her best interests, and things all work out in the end, I can't imagine anyone would really accept such deception so readily. Yet Miss Wilfer is also involved in deception: she gets married without telling her busy-body mother and sister, while her father has to pretend he wasn't at the ceremony.
These are all good people lying for good reasons but there are deceptive villains, too. The Lammies marry thinking that one another is rich; when they realise they have no money between them, they must continue to hide the truth from everyone else. Roger Riderhood and Bradley Headstone both attempt to leave false trails to incriminate others. Then there are characters who deceive themselves: Headstone over Lizzie's affections, Silas Webb over his rights to the Boffins' fortune.
At the heart of all this is the difference between the 'mask' we present to other people and society as a whole, and the importance of being true to ourselves and our loved ones. And yet that truth is not the same thing as honesty. A lie is okay, even virtuous, when it is meant to aid someone else. The morality here isn't simple black and white, one thing or the other. The dynamics are more fluid.
On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov is called before the Emergency Committee of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs in Moscow. He's identified as the author of Where Is It Now?, a poem published in 1913 and considered by some to be a call to action after the failed revolt of 1905. But despite these credentials, the count is also an aristocrat, was out of the country during the revolutions of 1917 and is deemed to have "succumbed irrevocably to the corruptions of his class" (p. 5). He is placed under house arrest in the Hotel Metropol and remains there for years...
But he does more than just survive; he flourishes.
This is an extraordinary, bewitching novel - a man out of his time in a fast-changing new order, his old-world values at odds with the officiousness of modernity. Rostov is a charming, suave protagonist, able to assist and advise a broad range of those he encounters in the hotel, building up friendships and even a family. It's a story of one man against the odds like so much thrilling spy fiction - and there's a feeling of le Carre throughout, which I mean as high compliment. (Rostov likens himself more to Sam Spade in the film version of The Maltese Falcon).
Yet what really makes this work is that it's often so playful and fun. The reader is just another in the line to fall for Rostov's charm. And then, in the last section, there's a direct threat to Rostov and someone he holds very dear, and it all gets much more suspenseful, to the very last page.
A Gentleman in Moscow was the last novel my late father finished reading - while in hospital for almost the last time - and the last book he recommended to me. Reading it has been a little like a conversation with him, not least because I can see why he'd have liked it so much. There's something of my dad in Rostov, and his wit and worldview. For all this novel enthralled me, it's taken a while to finish, in part because I've been busy on other things. But now, on completing it, I realise I lingered - a book, and connection, I didn't want to put down.
"What is the story behind the stars? Many of us gaze up into space and marvel at the Milky Way, but do you know what you're really looking at?
The Art of Stargazing is the ultimate insider's guide to the night sky in which award-winning space scientist and The Sky at Night presenter Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock shares her expertise and unique insights into the marvellous world of stars. Take a tour of the 88 constellations and explore the science, history, culture and romanticism behind these celestial bodies.
In this must-have handbook for budding stargazers - and anyone looking for a little more wonder in their lives - Maggie will help you to identify stars and teach you the basics of naked-eye observation, offering fascinating facts plus advice on kit, 'dark sky' locations and much more. Also included are beautiful illustrations to accompany each constellation and an easy-to-read sky map. With Maggie by your side, the night sky will truly come alive."
My credit in the indicia
It's the fifth book published in the past few months that I've written or worked on - the last year or so has been extremely busy, jumping from project to project. Bit knackered now.
Watching the glorious The Daleks in Colour last night, I was especially struck by the bleakness of the story and world, a tale of nuclear holocaust made in an age when that was a stark possibility. As my chum Toby Hadoke pointed out to me a while ago, the second episode of the original serial, “The Survivors” (in which we first see the Daleks), was recorded on the evening of 22 November 1963, just hours after the cast and crew learned of the assassination of President John F Kennedy and the whole world seemed poised on a knife-edge.
“I know how much my husband cared about peace, and how the relation between you and him was central to this care in his mind. He used to quote your words in some of his speeches - 'In the next war the survivors will envy the dead.'”
Khrushchev seems to have been credited for this evocative phrase in the 20 July 1963 issue of Pravda (I've not been able to check this but it says so here). Whatever the case, President Kennedy quickly picked up on the phrase, quoting it on 26 July in his radio and television address to the US people on the nuclear test ban treaty - a transcript and recording can be found on the website of the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
“A war today or tomorrow, if it led to nuclear war, would not be like any war in history. A full-scale nuclear exchange, lasting less than 60 minutes, with the weapons now in existence, could wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans and Russians, as well as untold numbers elsewhere. And the survivors, as Chairman Khrushchev warned the Communist Chinese, 'the survivors would envy the dead.' For they would inherit a world so devastated by explosions and poison and fire that today we cannot even conceive of its horrors.”
These words were very widely reported, such as in the Daily Telegraph the following day (it's a front-page story, but the line about survivors is on p. 16 where the news story continues). That was on Saturday, 27 July 1963 and, despite what Kennedy said, I think people could very well imagine the horrors. Surely it can't be a coincidence that this was probably also the weekend over which Terry Nation wrote his 26-page storyline for a Doctor Who serial at that point entitled "The Survivors".
The storyline does not include a date but we can deduce when Nation wrote it from two surviving documents in the BBC's Written Archives Centre. On 30 July, BBC Head of Serials Donald Wilson produced notes for a preliminary meeting about the promotion of Doctor Who and listed the first three serials then currently planned: the caveman adventure The Tribe of Gum aka An Unearthly Child, the ultimately unmade The Robots and the story that became Marco Polo.
The following day, story editor David Whitaker produced one-paragraph synopses of these three stories - plus a newly commissioned fourth one: Nation's serial was now under the title “The Mutants.” So: Nation wrote the storyline over the weekend, surely influenced by the leading news story and Kennedy's evocative phrase, then met with Whitaker on the Monday or Tuesday and was commissioned for the story.
One more thing, which I mentioned yesterday in my interview with BBC News (and tweeted back in July). Nation’s thrilling, 26-page storyline, on the basis on which scripts were commissioned, used the words “execution”, “elimination” and “extinction”. Whitaker summarised the plot in one paragraph for his colleagues, and used a word Nation had not: “exterminated”.
Agoraphobic detective Elijah Baley is sent to the wide open spaces of the planet Solaria to investigate a murder. This is a planet where people don't mix in person, only by remote "tridimensional" video link (think Zoom but in 3D), and there's no sign of a murder weapon. It's a classic locked-room mystery but it takes Baley's outsider's perspective to spot the obvious factor that everyone else overlooks...
It's been fascinating to reread this classic sci-fi murder mystery first published in 1958, which I originally read in my teens. I don't think then that I knew of its obvious influence on the 1977 Doctor Who story The Robots of Death. And I hadn't made the connection before to Baley's frequent exclamation "Jehosophat" and the 1983 Doctor Who story The Five Doctors. When, in that, the Third Doctor exclaims "Jehosophat", I'd thought it showed his intimate knowledge of the past - a reference to the fourth king of Judah in the Old Testament. But used in the same manner that Baley says it, it's a word from the future.
More extraordinary is how modern some of this novel seems. There's a lot on the psychological impact of not meeting in person but communicating remotely, with which we've all got first-hand experience thanks to lockdown. Asimov's view is that the technology enables a phenomenon that becomes self-enforcing: the less people interact in person, the more horrified they are by the prospect of doing so, leading to a whole culture of isolation. Baley, as visitor, becomes attuned to their horror at the very notion of physical contact. Just the suggestion of proximity, the thought of touch and breath and smell from other bodies, can lead to extreme reactions - in line with some recent conversations I've had with friends about how slow we've been to resocialise.
Extending from this horror of contact, the Solarians struggle to say the word "children" because of what their existence implies; without quite spelling it out, there's an implicit aversion to sex. A key distinction is made on Solaria between "viewing" (remotely) and "seeing" (in person). On page 51, murder suspect Gladia Delmarre steps out of the shower in front of a shocked Baley and thinks nothing of it herself because he's not physically present. On page 118, Baley is quick to stop another woman, Klorissa Cantoro, from undressing in front of him. This stuff, I think, is titillation for the adolescent, male and straight audience assumed to be reading, but any reading is overshadowed by the author's own dealings with women.
"Asimov, who described himself as a feminist, casually groped female fans for years." Astounding, by Alec Nevala-Lee, p. 12.
The women here are certainly objectified. At no point is Baley at risk of seeing male Solarians naked as it would not have the same effect. Also, Solarians recoil at the duty to marry and have children, but there's no suggestion that some of them might do so because they are anything other than heteronormative and sexual. For all the outlandish rules of this society on another world, it takes for granted various social norms that seem rather parochial now.
I'm also stuck by what feels incongruous for a futuristic story: Baley smokes a pipe. Perhaps that's in line with something he says on page 183: "having eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, is the truth." But for all he might be moulded in the form of 19th century detective Sherlock Holmes, only transposed to the future, The Naked Sun is bound up in anxieties of its time.
We're told, for example, that the imposition of marriage and procreation keeps the population stable, and that the murdered man is a fetologist, working to screen and improve the genetic stock on explicitly eugenicist lines.
"And no one would believe me capable of so seriously psychotic an act as murder. Not with my gene make-up. So don't waste accusations on me." (pp. 126-7)
That idea of purity among the minority elite on Solaria plays against the slave-class majority: we're told (for example, on p. 191) that robots outnumber humans 10,000 to one. The analogy in the book is to the helots, the Ancient Greek people subjugated by the Spartans. But there's surely a more contemporary resonance in what's being described here, to civil rights in the US and anticolonialism abroad. More than proximity, there's a greater terror to this elite - that this majority might become conscious of this gross imbalance of power.
"But what if some human threatened to teach the robots how to harm humans; to make them, in other words, capable of revolting?" (pp. 190-1)
An age ago, when I did my master's degree in science-fiction at the University of Reading, one tutor suggested a good way to grasp the workings of any given utopia: look at how children are raised in it. One thing that's striking now is that Baley (and perhaps Asimov, too) takes for granted the old saying, "spare the rod, spoil the child": it's seen as fundamentally problematic that robots, programmed to never harm humans, won't inflict "discipline" on the children in their care. The implication is that such discipline is physical, i.e. beating the child.
Just as troubling, we see that children on Solaria instinctively play together in person and need touch and affection (the latter supplied by robots), but are gradually taught to isolate themselves from one another. They are taught to recoil from one another - and to depersonalise others. On page 134, we learn one small boy views Baley as an inferior kind of human because he is from Earth, and therefore someone who, like robots, can be the target of arrows.
This idea of how people can come to be seen is central to a book about exposure under the titular naked sun. Given the careful distinction between "viewing" and "seeing", it's notable that Baley's partner R. Daneel Olivaw is not recognised for what he really is. The Solarians assume (and at one point someone's life depends on thinking) that he is human, when he is a robot. The Solarian robots do not have names and each has a specific function. Yet for all they are treated like appliances, they have feelings - upset if a human does their jobs, or if a human is hurt. Olivaw is a more complicated case: the Solarians unwittingly treat him as a person - but so does Baley, for all he knows the truth. He might be a bit dismissive of and irritated by this robot, but no more so than he is with other humans. Olivaw has some agency but The Robots of Death takes the logical step not taken here: that robots are an oppressed people deserving liberation.
Other things are striking about The Naked Sun. The women characters are rather two-dimensional (for all we view them in 3D), Baley is often cross and difficult for no particular reason, and there's no great concern at the end that his actions lead to someone's death. For all it's a murder mystery in the classic style, with various different suspects all (viewed) together at the end as the detective puts his case, I didn't feel we were encouraged to play along in making sense of the evidence and guessing whodunnit.
Yet most striking is Baley's conclusion. He's a maverick loner on an alien world where he doesn't fit in. When he returns to Earth at the end, the suggestion is that his experience means he no longer fits in at home. A lot of classic science-fiction I've read is about maverick individuals, their will pitted against the wider, impersonal system. There's something of that here: in a final twist, Baley makes a decision not to punish one guilty party and to have framed someone connected to but not actually guilty of the murder.
But that's not what Baley concludes here. He tells his superiors that the people of Solaria have given up,
"something worth more than atomic power, cities, agriculture, tools, fire, everything. [They've given up] The tribe, sir. Cooperation between individuals." (p. 195)
The analogy is to the scientific community, where peer review can point out faults and lead to better progress being made. But I'm struck by this rejection of the individual in favour of the collective. It's surely a rejection of elites living in seclusion and luxury in favour of something more equitable - even socialist.
In August 1964, Doctor Who's firststory 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.
