The new issue of The Essential Doctor Who is out now, devoted to Invasions of Earth - Alien Threats from Beyond the Stars. It includes some of my typing.
Also in November, guild members received Writers News with an introduction from the new chair - an editorial Whitaker wrote each issue for the next 18 months in his role.“In the election of officers, David Whitaker was unanimously elected to the chair, with R Vernon Beste re-elected as deputy chairman. Councillors elected were Denis Norden, Wilfred Greatorex, Zita Dundas, Vince Powell, John Lucarotti, Lew Greiffer, John Boland and George Markstein.”
The Stage #4464 and Television Today #403, 3 November 1966, p. 9.
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| Flower (Kay Patrick) in 1966 Doctor Who story The Savages. |
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| The first page of The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua |
"the outcasts of the post-Revolutionary era with minimal artithmetical skills and economic power: hairdressers."Woolley then goes on to explain, so simply even I could understand it, how Charles Babbage was inspired by this idea to create his difference engine - effectively, automating the hairdresser part of the process.
Benjamin Woolley, Ada Lovelace - Bride of Science, p. 151.
"The station clock also came to serve a symbolic purpose. Where the church clock oversaw communal events, a gathering of people who lived with each other and knew each other's affairs, the station clock was the meeting point for strangers, for people trying to escape their localities - for breif encounters of a sort Ada herself would soon experience."Incidentally, I wrote a short story about Ada Lovelace and dinosaurs, "An Experiment in the Formulae of Thought", included in Irregularity (Jurassic London: 2014).
Ibid., p. 275.
It's 50 years today since the broadcast of The Tenth Planet episode 1, in which a startling new monster was introduced to Doctor Who.
I had an amazing time last week at the Gravity Fields science festival in Grantham and Stamford, where m'colleague Dr Marek Kukula and I were talking about The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who. 
In the 1964 Doctor Who episode World's End, the TARDIS materialises on the banks of the Thames – but something is very wrong. A sign warns that, under emergency regulations, it is forbidden to dump bodies into the river.
DOCTOR: Ah, here, look. At least we know the century, dear boy. Look.Now, this calendar is a simple method of telling the audience that we're some 200 years in the future. But I think it also suggests something about the mechanics of the world we've arrived in, as I'll explain in a moment.
IAN: 2164.
Another man, David Campbell, continues the story:CRADDOCK: Meteorites came first. The Earth was bombarded with them about 10 years ago. A cosmic storm, the scientists called it. The meteorites stopped, everything settled down - and then people began to die of this new kind of plague ... The Daleks were up in the sky just waiting for Earth to get weaker. Whole continents of people were wiped out. Asia, Africa, South America. They used to say the Earth had a smell of death about it.
The Earth and all its surviving people have become resources for some merciless Dalek project. So what about that calendar? Does it seem likely that after the plague, the invasion and the enslavement of the human race, people continued to print and publish calendars? Or does it seem credible that the Daleks produce them for their human slaves, using our Arabic numerals rather than the Dalek lettering seen elsewhere in the story?DAVID: The plague had split the world into tiny little communities, too far apart to combine and fight, and too small individually to stand any chance against invasion ... About six months after the meteorite fall, that's when the saucers landed. Cities were razed to the ground, others were simply occupied. Anyone who resisted was destroyed. Some people were captured and were turned into Robomen, the slaves of the Daleks. They caught other human beings and many of them were shipped to the vast mining areas. No one escapes. The Robomen see to that.
DOCTOR: If the Daleks were going to attack Earth, as you seem to fear, then you must tell Earth to look back in the history of the year 2157 ... History will show how to deal with them.It's a passing reference. We don't know if 2157 is the date of the meteorites, the plague or the arrival of the Daleks on Earth - or of all three. And perhaps the Doctor has muddled his dates. But if we take him at his word, the invasion of Earth began six years before the production of that calendar.
That suggests the warehouse is not in active use by either the Daleks or the human resistance - which is why it's a convenient place to hide a murdered Roboman. But that also suggests the calendar found in the drawer there is a few years' old - so the TARDIS has arrived sometime after 2164. If the Doctor is right in Day of Armageddon about the invasion beginning in 2157, then Craddock's "about 10 years ago" suggests this is c. 2167, and the warehouse has been abandoned for about three years. But it was still being used six years into the invasion.DOCTOR: A musty smell. This place hasn't been used in years.
For all the parallels with the earlier story, we don't see any Robomen in this Dalek-conquered Earth. Instead, the human Controller and his staff of technicians and guards collaborate with the Dalek regime - the Doctor calls the Controller a "Quisling". In fact, we seen this sort of collaboration in The Dalek Invasion of Earth when the Doctor's friend Barbara meets a woman and girl who appear to be free:CONTROLLER: Towards the end of the 20th century, a series of wars broke out. There was a hundred years of nothing but killing, destruction. Seven-eighths of the world's population was wiped out. The rest were living in holes in the ground, starving, reduced to the level of animals.
JO: So the Daleks saw their opportunity and took over.
CONTROLLER: There was no power on Earth to stop them.
DOCTOR: So they've turned the Earth into a giant factory, with all the wealth and minerals looted and taken to [Dalek planet] Skaro.
CONTROLLER: Exactly. Men who were strong enough, of course, were sent down the mines, the rest work in factories.
JO: Why? Why are they doing all this?
CONTROLLER: They need a constant flow of raw materials. Their empire is expanding.
The woman and girl soon betray Barbara to the Daleks in exchange for a small amount of food. To survive, these humans conspire in their own oppression.WOMAN: We make clothes for the slave workers. We're more use to them [the Daleks] doing that than we would be in the mine.
DOCTOR: Several of the planets the Daleks have colonised are suffering from the same disease. They're dying in millions. Now they need that chemical just as badly as you [humans] do.
The Daleks had the ability to travel in time in three of their four previous onscreen adventures, The Chase (1965), The Daleks' Master Plan (1965-6) and The Evil of the Daleks (1967). But note that the Dalek says "again". They're using time travel to rewrite the events of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, coming back to conquer the Earth at the same point in future history, but this time doing it better to more efficiently exploit Earth's resources.DALEK: The Daleks have discovered the secret of time travel. We have invaded Earth again. We have changed the pattern of history.
So the Doctor prevented the invasion in Day of the Daleks from ever happening, but not the one from The Dalek Invasion of Earth - which now takes place as before. There's a clue as to why that might be in part 3 of Remembrance of the Daleks, when the Doctor warns Ace about changing history:ACE: And now [the Daleks] want to conquer the Earth [in 1963].
DOCTOR: Nothing so mundane. They conquer the Earth in the 22nd century.
DOCTOR: Ace, the Daleks have a mothership up there capable of eradicating this planet from space, but even they, ruthless though they are, would think twice before making such a radical alteration to the time line.Note that it's not that they wouldn't do it, just that they'd think twice. Why?
In Genesis of the Daleks (1975), the Time Lords send the Doctor back in time to the point where the Daleks were created. He is meant to either destroy the Daleks entirely, or affect their creation so that they will develop to be less aggressive. It's effectively what the Daleks do in Day of the Daleks - using time travel to pre-emptively weaken a rival.TIME LORD: We foresee a time when they will have destroyed all other lifeforms and become the dominant creature in the universe.
The suggestion is that, despite provocation, the Time Lords are not acting against the Daleks - yet Davros is still plotting to wage war on them. Then, in Remebrance of the Daleks, the Daleks battle for control of a remote stellar manipulator that will give them the same power over time as the Time Lords.DAVROS: You are soft, like all Time Lords. You prefer to stand and watch. Action requires courage, something you lack.
Also announced is BBC Audio's Eleventh Doctor Tales, a collection of 14 original audio adventures that includes The Empty House, written by me and expertly read by Raquel Cassidy. The set is out in October but available to pre-order.
