Registering here the outpouring of memorializing I've mainly joined in with elsewhere. Terrance Dicks was a great storyteller, a wry colluder with the childhood imagination, a subtle improver of memories of lost television. He was also acutely aware of structure, genre and his and his work's place in time, and of his work as collaborative act, ( Read more... )

Russell T Davies's talk to Worcester College, Oxford and (by invitation of the provost) the Oxford (University) Doctor Who Society was enjoyable. I wasn't in the target audience, of course - there was a lot of talk about how to get into television and how Russell failed to get into the BBC training course three times, ending up by going in as a ' ( Read more... )

gervase_fen reports on our expedition to Birmingham of last month, in search of recently-recovered archive television.

Also posted at http://sir-guinglain.dreamwidth.org/2016/12/08/missing-believed-wiped-central.html.

More musings on Doctor Who and national identity from me have been published at John Connors's Time Lines blog. I've written an introduction with more ideas at The Event Library, and the posts themselves are available at part two and part three.

Also posted at http://sir-guinglain.dreamwidth.org/2016/09/13/dont-shoot-hes-british-parts-two-and- ( Read more... )

On Tuesday night I was discussing broadcasting history with someone and mention was made of Asa Briggs. Within an hour his death was announced. A few hours later, I learned of Sylvia Anderson's death; and now, Cliff Michelmore, a broadcaster who was moving into a retirement phase in my childhood but who still loomed large. The sense of twentieth- ( Read more... )

An introduction to 165 Eaton Place revisited at The St James's Evening Post.

Also posted at http://sir-guinglain.dreamwidth.org/2015/10/27/cant-sleep-blog-about-old-television.html.

As alluded to earlier... Richard Marson's biography of Verity Lambert, first producer of Doctor Who and guiding force behind much, much else, reviewed by me at The St James's Evening Post.

Also posted at http://sir-guinglain.dreamwidth.org/2015/04/13/drama-and-delight.html.

So much for evading a social life on the grounds that I had a conference paper to write. The conference paper is not yet begun; a day off tomorrow, I think, to begin it. Instead, some recycling has been done and I've almost finished Richard Marson's biography of Verity Lambert; a short review might appear here or elsewhere at some point.

Also ( Read more... )

The userpic associated with this post is from a Doctor Who comic strip drawn by Gerry Haylock for TV Action, and Countdown to TV Action by Steve Holland tells the story of this comic and its first incarnation Countdown. Unexpected characters in its tale are Rupert Murdoch (whose role in the decline and demise of TV21 I had not known) and John ( Read more... )

Over half-way, and a day when I managed a look at the art show - some beautiful images, including the TARDIS landing in the universe of The Magic Roundabout, with K9 meeting Dougal - and greeted some more people including the gentlemen of the Doctor Who Restoration Team after their panel, one of whom wrote to me when I was thirteen and had rashly ( Read more... )