The Man Who Invented the Daleks Page 11
It was a lucky break for Terry Nation, who now had, for the first time, a supporter within the drama department of BBC television. He had been trying since Out of this World to find an opening within the corporation, but without success. He submitted a proposal, titled ‘The Thousand and Several Doors’, for the series Suspense, but it was rejected as being ‘too derivative’ (the same conclusion that had been reached with Uncle Selwyn), and although he was commissioned to write a script for Z-Cars, it was never made. His one non-genre piece to be broadcast had come in October 1962 with an episode of the long-running police series No Hiding Place, which was again an ITV production. Story Parade was to change his run of poor luck at the BBC, and he was commissioned in 1964 to write three plays for the series.
Of these the most significant was an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s novel The Caves of Steel, first published in Galaxy magazine in 1953. Shubik was an admirer of Asimov’s work, and indeed of the man himself; ‘one of the most interesting and amusing men I have ever met’, she was later to comment of the writer whose stories, particularly those dealing with robotics (a word he coined), had made him one of the leading figures in science fiction. The Caves of Steel was among his best work, and the resulting BBC production was immediately acclaimed as a triumph.
Set three thousand years in the future, the novel depicts a society in which Earth has colonised fifty other planets, the Outer Worlds. A division has arisen between the overcrowded, primitive Earth and these Outer Worlds, on which the descendants of the settlers, known as Spacers, are technologically more advanced, and where human and robot societies are closely integrated. In the Great Rebellion, the Outer Worlds achieved independence from Earth, and the Spacers and Terrestrials now live in uneasy harmony. The Spacers are still human, but have been genetically selected over many generations and have therefore evolved differently – among other things, they have a life expectancy in excess of three hundred years, largely thanks to the abolition of disease.
The story is set in New York, which, like other major population centres on Earth, is now a massive conurbation, enclosed in a vast steel dome (hence the title of the novel) so that it has become like a super-sized mall, with no view of the outside to disturb its air-conditioned security. Inside the dome, society is run as a strict hierarchical bureaucracy, with no room for ‘individualism and initiative’ (despite an underground movement of dissidents known as the Medievalists). This artificial community is entirely dependent on technology and therefore highly vulnerable; as one character explains, water has to be brought into the City, air requires constant circulation inside the dome, and the whole thing is powered by nuclear plants that need uranium supplies: ‘The balance is a very delicate one in a hundred directions, and growing more delicate each year.’ Any interruption to this ecosystem would have terrible consequences. ‘When New York first became a city, it could have lived on itself for a day. Now it cannot do so for an hour. A disaster that would have been uncomfortable ten thousand years ago, merely serious a thousand years ago, and acute a hundred years ago would now surely be fatal.’ This was to become one of Nation’s favourite themes, though in the Asimov story the more immediate threat to social stability comes from the robots that are gradually being introduced into everyday life. ‘Do you fear robots for the sake of your job?’ a character is asked, and he replies, ‘And my kids’ jobs. And everyone’s kids.’
Within this setting, the plot is essentially that of a detective novel. A scientist, living in the Spacer community just outside the City, has been murdered and a New York detective named Elijah Baley is assigned a humanoid robot partner for the investigation. The deliberate, and mostly successful, mixing of science fiction and mystery conventions inspired many other writers, including Nation himself, who – particularly in Blake’s 7 – was to use science fiction as a base from which to explore other genres; the episode ‘Mission to Destiny’ was similarly a straight murder mystery, even if it were set on a spaceship. Other elements of The Caves of Steel were also to be evident in his later work, especially that idea of the fragility of modern life.
The one major change made by Nation is the imposition by the Spacers of a 48-hour deadline for solving the case; unless the murderer is caught within that time, New York City will be occupied or destroyed. The introduction of a time limit makes perfect dramatic sense until, with just half an hour left, the threat of violence is withdrawn; instead there’s a new deadline, this one taken directly from the book. Nation’s fondness for countdowns, which was to become a feature of his writing, is here an awkward and unnecessary intrusion.
Elsewhere, however, there is some fine writing, particularly in the opening shot of the domed city, with a voice-over by Baley (played by Peter Cushing): ‘New York City. The culmination of man’s mastery over environment. Fourteen million people crowd beneath its protective dome. And out there in the open country: Spacetown. Unwelcome and unwanted. With its handful of Outer World scientists seeking to change us, interfering, trying to impose new cultures.’ The terse phrasing drew on the style of contemporary American police shows, reapplied to paint a compelling vision of the future in a beautifully succinct piece of scene-setting.
Broadcast in June 1964 and repeated the following August, the play was a popular hit for the new BBC2, which was seen as something of a minority channel from the outset. The repeat attracted a respectable audience share of 13 per cent and got a reaction index from the BBC’s sample panel of viewers of 61, slightly above the average rating of 60 for television drama of the era (even a play as celebrated as Nell Dunn’s Up the Junction only rated 58). It also won over the critics. ‘A fascinating mixture of science fiction and whodunit which worked remarkably well,’ judged John Russell Taylor in The Listener, ‘despite a slightly specious, dragged-in attempt to suggest a parallel between the characters’ attitude to robots and ours to racial minorities.’ The Times’s reviewer was likewise impressed, calling it ‘highly successful’, though he too wondered about the subtext: ‘the story hinges on a fanatical hatred of robots by most humans in a remote future. Why do they hate them? We are supposed, apparently, to link up immediately with race hatred in the modern world, but that, though it may work in a novel or short story, just will not do in a play. In a play we want to know more of the whys and hows.’ Unequivocally enthusiastic was Dr Anthony Michaelis, the Daily Telegraph’s science correspondent: ‘I could find no fault whatsoever with the scientific extrapolation to the future. Every small item was remarkably well thought out and beautifully achieved.’ His praise was spoilt only by a sideways dig at another series with which Nation was already involved: ‘The first science fiction programme on BBC2 last night was an outstanding success and certainly surpassed most similar works on BBC1, such as Fred Hoyle’s A for Andromeda and Doctor Who.’
Nation was also responsible for an adaptation of Ira Levin’s 1953 novel A Kiss Before Dying, a less significant contribution to the series, partly because it had already been filmed – with Robert Wagner and Joanne Woodward in 1956 – and partly because it was a straightforward thriller, a genre much more familiar on British television than futuristic science fiction. Its status has been further eroded by the success of subsequent films of Levin’s work, including Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil. Even so, the story of an amoral social climber who seduces three sisters in turn, killing each before moving on to the next, was well received at the time: ‘a highly polished, holding piece of light entertainment’, noted The Times. Nation, too, was happy with the result: ‘I actually sat back and forgot I’d written it and watched it and enjoyed it.’ The piece was, like ‘The Caves of Steel’, directed by Peter Sasdy, a Hungarian who had fled to Britain after the crushing of the 1956 uprising. Sasdy was also in line to make the third of Nation’s commissions for Story Parade, an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s short story ‘The Fox and the Forest’, though in the event it was left to the less experienced Robin Midgley to direct.
Indeed the whole production histor
y of ‘The Fox and the Forest’ was plagued by problems. Nation himself was not the first choice of writer; the project had already been to two others, Ken Taylor and Ilona Ference, and the latter had produced a full script, which Shubik rejected. She instead offered the job to Nation, noting: ‘I am confident he will do an excellent job on it, as both his other adaptations have been first class.’ When he delivered the script, however, three months behind schedule, she was less impressed, considering it too violent and too rooted in contemporary gangster slang. Even after he did a rewrite and received his fee of £500, it was passed on to yet another writer, Meade Roberts, who was paid a further £200 to rework it further. Since Bradbury was receiving $1,000 for the rights with, unusually, an additional $1,000 for each repeat (the standard arrangement saw a 50 per cent reduction for repeats), it was already proving to be an expensive production.
The story concerned two fugitives from a future dystopia – Earth in 2155 – who have been granted the highest possible privilege of being allowed a holiday in time. Arriving in Mexico in 1938, they decide to try to lose themselves in the crowd and remain in a happier age, but are hunted down by an agent from their own time, who explains that they cannot so easily evade their responsibilities. ‘The rabbits may hide in the forest,’ he tells them, ‘but a fox can always find them.’ It’s a tense but very brief tale that, unlike Nation’s two other commissions for Story Parade, required some expansion, and his response was a device that was to become characteristic of his work: the raising of hopes only to dash them. One of the renegades is caught and about to be deported back to the future, when the other appears and shoots dead their pursuer. But it’s a false salvation and eventually they are recaptured. Nation also tried to change the period to 1963, just before the assassination of John F. Kennedy – playing on contemporary anxieties as he would on Doctor Who – though he was overruled by the director and Bradbury’s original pre-war setting was restored.
The delays in the writing process meant that ‘The Fox and the Forest’ didn’t appear in Story Parade, as originally intended. Instead it formed part of the first series in 1965 of Out of the Unknown, a new BBC2 project, again helmed by Irene Shubik, which was explicitly based in science fiction and was essentially an extension of Out of this World. The play was finally broadcast in November 1965, appropriately enough on the second anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, and it received some critical praise; it was ‘one of the most convincing produced plays in the series’, according to Television Today, and Mary Crozier in the Guardian wrote that the ‘feeling of remorseless pursuit was steadily instilled with a nightmarish intensity’. But Shubik herself was unhappy with the final product, and the audience too was unimpressed: the piece received a reaction index of just 52, the lowest for any of the twelve episodes in the season. It never received a repeat screening.
By this stage, however, its success or failure made little difference to Nation. For by now he was one of the most successful television writers in the country, fully occupied on a variety of projects, many of which were concerned with the creatures that had finally catapulted him out of the ranks of the unknown.
Chapter Five
Life on a Dead Planet
In July 1963 Tony Hancock again ventured out on a string of stage performances, this time one-week engagements in Nottingham and in Manchester in preparation for a six-week residency at the Talk of the Town in London, and again he was accompanied by Terry Nation. In the event, however, Hancock’s confidence, already fragile following the failure of the television series, was further dented by poor ticket sales, and he cancelled the London booking. His state of mind was not improved when, during the first week, he finally split with Nation; having previously parted from Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, and then from Philip Oakes, he was clearly struggling to keep hold of his writers.
It was while they were in Nottingham that Nation was contacted by his agent with an offer of work: ‘The BBC are planning a new children’s science fiction show, would you like to do it?’ His immediate response, as someone who had never written for children, was entirely negative: ‘How dare they? I don’t do things like that.’ Hancock demonstrated supportive outrage, resorting to a catchphrase from his early days on the radio show Educating Archie: ‘A writer of your calibre, writing for flippin’ kids!’ Then came the falling out: yet another argument about Hancock’s reluctance to use new material, a feeling on Nation’s part that he was being underused and undervalued, a blazing row and a storming out. Only on the train back to London did Nation calm down enough to realise that he was now out of work, with no income to speak of and with considerable domestic expenditure looming (he had committed himself to the installation of central heating in the three-roomed Hampstead flat where he and Kate lived). There was only one offer on the table. Fortunately it was still available and, having retracted his refusal, he was duly sent the writer’s guide for the new series, which he learned was to be entitled Doctor Who.
There was, however, one further contribution from Hancock, at least in his own mind. During those all-night conversations with Nation, the two men had ranged freely over a large number of subjects, including an idea for a film about Earth after the final death of humanity, a planet populated entirely by robots. Hancock’s concept of how these androids might look was said to be ‘an inverted cone, covered in ping pong balls and with a sink plunger sticking out of its head’.
The concept of the new series came, as did so much at this time, from Sydney Newman. There was an awkward gap in the BBC television schedules around teatime on Saturdays, falling between two firmly established presences: the four-hour sports show Grandstand, which ended at five o’clock once the football results had been broadcast, and the BBC’s token pop show, which had occupied the slot just after six o’clock ever since Jack Good’s ground-breaking Six-Five Special had been launched in 1957 (it was now the home of Juke Box Jury). Thereafter the evening programmes for adult audiences began in earnest, with the likes of Dixon of Dock Green and The Rag Trade. Some of that difficult hour was filled with the news, but there was, felt Newman, a need for a regular drama show that would primarily appeal to children, but wouldn’t alienate the adult audience left over from Grandstand, a transition programme suitable for family viewing. ‘It was never intended to be simply a children’s programme,’ he insisted in later years, ‘but something that would appeal to people who were in a rather child-like frame of mind.’ And he concluded that what was needed was a science fiction series.
It was not an entirely novel concept. Apart from encouraging Irene Shubik’s ventures into science fiction, Newman had, while he was at ABC, brought to the screen Target Luna and its spin-off Pathfinders in Space, which itself spawned other Pathfinders series. Written by Malcolm Hulke and Eric Paice – who had earlier written for a television series of Gert and Daisy – these were straightforward children’s shows, but there were elements that would reappear in the broader-based Doctor Who, particularly the use of cliff-hanger endings to episodes, with the protagonists left in a situation of danger.
Newman shared Shubik’s distaste for the bug-eyed monster tradition of science fiction, and the new concept was intended to avoid this, revolving around a ‘senile old man’ in a machine that was capable of travelling through space and time. Since he couldn’t quite control the ship (later named the TARDIS, standing for Time and Relative Dimension in Space), it repeatedly plunged him and his companions into adventures that would be both entertaining and educational. Sketchy as it necessarily was at this stage, the idea already had the one key element that was to make it so distinctive. The central figure was not a blue-eyed, square-jawed space ace, as a generation used to the likes of Dan Dare might expect; rather he was to be an eccentric scientist, the kind of man you would normally expect to see shuffling around his laboratory, mumbling to himself, but now let loose in the universe. As an outsider, Newman appeared to have a slightly disparaging view of Britain’s potential for space exploration: bumbling rather than barnstormin
g, hesitant rather than heroic.
The format that emerged was largely shaped by Verity Lambert, who had worked as Newman’s assistant on Armchair Theatre and was now promoted to be producer of the new series, and by David Whitaker, the script editor. The central character, known at this stage as Doctor Who, was to be accompanied by his granddaughter, to allow the young audience a figure with whom to identify, and by two of her teachers; since they taught science and history, these latter would be able to expound upon the futuristic and historical situations in which they found themselves. They were to carry no weaponry and were to be reliant only on their ingenuity and initiative to escape any dangers they might encounter. (The addition of the teachers indicated the would-be educational element of the show, augmenting the traditional combination of scientist and young woman common in science fiction since it was first borrowed from Prospero and Miranda in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.) A first script was commissioned from Anthony Coburn, and Whitaker then approached a number of writers who he thought might be able to provide stories in four to six episodes for a series that was scheduled to run for fifty-two unbroken weeks. ‘They were all friends or friends of friends,’ he later explained. ‘People I knew I could trust not only to produce a good story within the restrictions we had, but also to work to a tight deadline.’
Among them was Terry Nation, whose work on Out of this World qualified him for embarking on a science fiction project, and who knew Whitaker from the days when they had worked together on The Ted Ray Show. He was not, however, impressed by the writer’s guide he received. ‘When I first read the brochure the BBC had prepared for writers and producers,’ he would say in later years, ‘I was absolutely convinced it couldn’t last but four weeks. I thought it was dreadful.’ Deb Boultwood remembered him visiting her father, Nation’s old writing partner Dave Freeman, at the time and being no more enthusiastic: ‘Terry came round and Dad asked, “What are you doing?” And he said: “I’ve got a series; it’s children’s TV but it brings in the money.” And that was the Daleks.’