User:DaveJB/History of Doctor Who 1980-1989

This is a history of the Science Fiction TV show Doctor Who between the years 1980 and 1989. It covers Tom Baker's final year and the eras of Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.

The end of an era[edit]

As John Nathan-Turner was a new producer and a restructure of the Drama Department meant that MacDonald would not be able to offer the direct support that had been available to previous producers, the latter appointed Barry Letts (now working as a senior producer in the BBC drama department) to return to the series as Executive Producer and oversee Nathan-Turner's initial season working on the series. Letts had, in fact, been offering unofficial advice and comment to Graham Williams for some time beforehand.

Nathan-Turner and the new script editor, Christopher H. Bidmead, sought to return to a more serious tone for the series, reining in much of the humour that had been prevalent during Williams' tenure. This displeased Baker, who did not see eye-to-eye with Nathan-Turner on the new direction. The new producer also sought to bring the show "into the 1980s", commissioning a new title sequence, bringing all the incidental music in-house to be produced electronically by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and commissioning Peter Howell of the Workshop to come up with a brand new arrangement of the series' famous theme tune.

These changes arrived with season eighteen in the autumn of 1980, when the audience for Doctor Who had fallen dramatically to around five million viewers, due chiefly to competition from the ITV network's American import Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. There was a further blow when Tom Baker decided that after over six years in the part he would leave the role at the end of the season. His departure was heavily publicised in the press, with Baker attracting much comment for his tongue-in-cheek suggestion that his successor could be a woman, which the publicity-aware Nathan-Turner was not quick to deny.

A younger Doctor[edit]

The producer initially sought actor Richard Griffiths to succeed Baker, but when he proved unavailable, cast actor Peter Davison, with whom he had previously worked on the popular drama series All Creatures Great and Small. Davison was very different to his four predecessors, being much younger, in line with Nathan-Turner's desire for the Fifth Doctor to be completely unlike the massively popular Fourth, so that the public would not draw unfavourable comparisons between the two. Davison's Doctor was arguably the most human of them all, and the one whose vulnerability was emphasised the most. The Fifth Doctor, more often than not, reacted to circumstances around him rather than being proactive, and had the air of a young aristocrat about him, in contrast to Baker's bohemian personality.

Davison made his first appearance at the end of the season eighteen closer Logopolis, although it was to be a year until his first full season in the part began in 1982. In the meantime, Controller of BBC One Alan Hart had decided to move the programme from an autumn to a spring transmission slot. This was partly because after eighteen years on Saturday evenings, he had also decided to change the transmission date, running the series twice-weekly on weekdays instead of once a week on Saturdays. This had the effect of halving the number of weeks the series was on-air to thirteen instead of twenty-six, and moving from an autumn to a spring debut. Additionally, Davison was also working on the BBC situation comedy Sink or Swim and was unavailable to record enough episodes to make an autumn start date viable.

This experiment in seeing the viability of running a twice-weekly drama serial would later lead to the launching of the massively popular soap opera EastEnders in a similar slot. It also had the short-term effect of doubling the Doctor Who audience, with the story Black Orchid being the final story of the regular run - and the only one of the 1980s - to break the double-figure millions barrier for the story overall, with a recorded figure of ten million viewers. The last individual episode with over ten million viewers was the first part of 1982's Time-Flight.

During production of the nineteenth season, Bidmead decided to move on and was replaced as script editor, first on a temporary basis by Antony Root and then on a more permanent basis by Eric Saward, who remained in the role for several years. He and Nathan-Turner oversaw an increasing reliance on the show's history in following seasons, with the return of various characters and adversaries from the Doctor's past, culminating in the twentieth anniversary special 90-minute episode The Five Doctors in 1983.

Davison left the part after only three seasons in 1984. He had been advised by Patrick Troughton to stay no longer than three years, and was also disenchanted with the quality of the scripts on the programme during the twentieth season. Although he felt things had improved in the twenty-first, by then his departure had already been announced, and Nathan-Turner had selected actor Colin Baker - who had guest starred in the season twenty story Arc of Infinity - to replace him. Colin Baker became the Sixth Doctor on screen in March 1984 at the conclusion of Davison's final story, The Caves of Androzani.

Trials of a Time Lord[edit]

Baker's first full season in 1985 was reasonably successful despite several changes. Alan Hart had decided to experiment with doubling the length of Doctor Who episodes, with season twenty-two comprising of thirteen 45-minute episodes rather than twenty-six twenty-five minute ones as had previously been the case. The series also returned to Saturday evenings, where it continued to draw reasonably respectable figures of seven to eight million viewers for most episodes even though it faced stiff opposition from another American import on ITV, The A-Team. Baker's portrayal of the Doctor also met with criticism. A more bombastic and overbearing personality than any of the others, the Doctor's use of deadly force against his enemies in a few stories caused controversy.

The series once again drew some criticism for the horrific content of some of the episodes. Unlike those criticisms levelled at the earlier reign of producer Philip Hinchcliffe, however, many of these came from within the BBC itself. Michael Grade had taken over as Controller of BBC One in 1984, and was not a fan of the series. In fact, he later admitted in interviews that he "hated" the programme, and he wanted to cancel it outright. There is much debate, however as to how far his decisions were driven by his personal views. At the time, the BBC was suffering a financial shortfall due to expensive ventures such as the launch of EastEnders, breakfast television and daytime television, and savings were needed across the Corporation.

In any case, when it was announced that Doctor Who's production would be moved back a financial year, the news was interpreted as that the show was under threat of cancellation. The press and public outcry was much larger than Grade or the Board of Governors of the BBC had expected. A charity single, "Doctor in Distress", was even produced and released in March 1985. It was written by Ian Levine and Fiachra Trench and performed by a group of 30 mid-level celebrities, including Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant and Nicholas Courtney under the banner "Who Cares". The single was universally panned.

Season twenty-three eventually aired in the autumn of 1986. Production of the new season was complicated by various factors. Although the episode length had been reduced to twenty-five minutes again, the number of episodes was increased to just fourteen, only just over half the length of most previous seasons. The series was still up against The A-Team and having been off the air for eighteen months found it hard to regain viewers who had turned to ITV. Saward and Nathan-Turner had decided on an over-arching storyline for the entire season entitled "The Trial of a Time Lord", but its complexities proved confusing to both writers and viewers, with the season drawing viewing figures of only four to five million.

Problems existed behind the scenes as well. Robert Holmes, who had returned to writing for the series on a semi-regular basis in 1984, died before he could deliver the final episode. In addition, Saward and Nathan-Turner had a falling out, with Saward resigning from the programme. Despite all of this, Grade consented to allow the series to continue, but moved it away from Saturday nights into a mid-week slot once more, and limited it to one episode per week. He also ordered that a new Doctor be found, as he was not enamoured of Colin Baker's portrayal. Baker was therefore dismissed from the role.

The dark side[edit]

Nathan-Turner had thought that he too would finally be leaving the series, but with no other producer available or willing to take on the series, he was instructed to remain. As a BBC staff producer, he had little choice but to either accept this or resign from the Corporation's staff. Not having expected to be producing season twenty-four, Nathan-Turner was left with little time to prepare, hiring inexperienced Andrew Cartmel as script editor on the advice of a friend who had run a BBC Drama Script Unit course Cartmel had attended and casting little-known Scottish actor Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor. In his first season, McCoy, a comedy actor, portrayed the character with a degree of clown-like humour, but Cartmel's influence soon changed that. The Seventh Doctor developed into a darker figure than any of his earlier incarnations, manipulating people like chess pieces and always seeming to be playing a deeper game than he ever let on.

The new season was placed by Grade at 7.35 p.m. on Monday evenings opposite the phenomonally popular ITV soap opera Coronation Street. Street was the most-watched programme on British television, and the viewing figures for Doctor Who suffered accordingly, though were frequently the best for any BBC programme broadcast in the slot. The season's quality was also publicly derided by many fans of the programme, although over the following two seasons the criticism was balanced out by some happier viewers, who felt that the young team of writers being assembled by Cartmel was taking the programme in the right direction.

Nathan-Turner attempted to leave once more at the end of production on the twenty-fifth season in 1988, but was once again persuaded to stay for a further year after another BBC producer - Paul Stone, who had produced The Box of Delights - was offered the role but declined. He and Cartmel remained on the production team for the twenty-sixth season in 1989. Although the season once again drew praise, the viewing figures were disastrous, starting at around the 3 million mark and improving to only around 4.5 million by the season's conclusion. At the end of the year, Cartmel was head-hunted to script edit the BBC's popular medical drama Casualty, and Nathan-Turner also finally left the show, although no replacements were assigned for either man as in-house production was being shut down.

Although Michael Grade had left the BBC in 1988 to take up a new position as Chief Executive of Channel 4, Doctor Who remained in its poor slot opposite Coronation Street and continued to suffer in the ratings. Jonathan Powell, the new Controller of BBC One, decided to suspend the series, a decision which was clear to the production team by the end of production on the twenty-sixth season in the August.

The final story to be produced as part of the original run was Ghost Light, although it was not the last to be broadcast. That was Survival, the last episode of which was transmitted on December 6 1989 and brought the series' twenty-six year run to a close. John Nathan-Turner decided close to transmission that a more suitable conclusion should be given to the final episode as it would be the last installment of the programme for some time, and was possibly going to be the last ever. Accordingly, Andrew Cartmel wrote a short, melancholic closing monologue for Sylvester McCoy, which McCoy recorded on November 23, 1989 - by coincidence, the show's twenty-sixth anniversary. This was dubbed over the closing scene as the Doctor and his companion Ace walked off into the distance, apparently to further adventures. The Doctor Who production office at the BBC finally closed down, for the first time since 1963, in August 1990.

User:DaveJB/History of Doctor Who 1980-1989

The end of an era[edit]

A younger Doctor[edit]

Trials of a Time Lord[edit]

The dark side[edit]

Main Actors[edit]

The Doctor[edit]

Companions[edit]

Key Production Staff[edit]

Producer[edit]

Script Editors[edit]