The Man Who Invented the Daleks
Read The Man Who Invented the Daleks Online
Authors: Alwyn Turner
Praise for
The Man Who Invented the Daleks: The Strange Worlds of Terry Nation
‘Even if you can’t stand science fiction, the chances are that you’ve seen something either written or inspired by Terry Nation. The man who invented the Daleks was not just the brains behind one of the most enduring fictional monsters in television history, he was also one of the most popular storytellers of the last half-century. In this spectacular biography, Alwyn Turner shapes Nation’s extraordinary career into a wonderfully rich account of British popular culture since the war. Carefully researched and beautifully written, his book covers everything from the early days of
Doctor Who
to the madly overwrought pleasures of
Blake’s 7
, taking in such classics as
The Avengers, The Persuaders!
and
Survivors
on the way. From the aftermath of a devastating pandemic to a lost city on an alien world, from Nazis in space to Robin Hood in the far future, this is a splendidly entertaining journey into the stranger corners of the modern British imagination. I loved it’
Dominic Sandrook, author of
State of Emergency – The Way We Were: Britain, 1970–1974
‘
The Man Who Invented the Daleks
is more than a biography of the writer Terry Nation. It’s a group portrait of a whole generation of TV writers who worked in the adventure serials and series of the Sixties and Seventies, and the importance and vitality of popular TV narrative in that era. Nation was one of several script writers zig-zagging their way through the hectic lives of the Saint, Doctor Who, Mrs Peel and Steed, creating new mythologies for late-Twentieth-Century Britain’
Paul Magrs, novelist and scriptwriter
Praise for
Rejoice! Rejoice!: Britain in the 1980s
‘Put[s] into cold perspective what at the time we were too befuddled with emotion to understand … Turner has produced a masterly mix of shrewd analysis, historical detail and telling quotes … The book is full of wry asides and amusing anecdotes … Indispensable’
James Delingpole,
Mail on Sunday
‘One of the pleasures of Alwyn Turner’s breathless romp through the 1980s is that it overflows with unusual juxtapositions and surprising insights … The tone is that of a wildly enthusiastic guide leading us on a breakneck tour through politics, sport and culture, bursting with weird nuggets of knowledge gleaned everywhere from semi-forgotten John Mortimer novels to Wham! singles’
Dominic Sandbrook,
The Sunday Times
‘This kaleidoscopic history … provides a vivid and enjoyable guide to these turbulent years. Ranging broadly across popular culture as well as high politics, and featuring
Doctor Who
and Ben Elton as prominently as Michael Foot and Michael Heseltine, Turner brings the period alive and offers insights into both sides of a polarised nation’
BBC History Magazine
, Pick of the Month
‘Turner’s account of the 1980s is as wide ranging as that fractured, multi-faceted decade demands … deft at picking out devilish details and damning quotes from history that is less recent than you think’
Victoria Segal,
MOJO
‘Turner does an excellent job in synthesising the culture and art of the day into the wider political discourse. The result is resolutely entertaining’
Metro
Praise for
Crisis? What Crisis?: Britain in the 1970s
‘Alwyn Turner has certainly hit upon a rich and fascinating subject, and his intertwining of political and cultural history is brilliantly done. His book makes me so relieved I wasn’t an adult at the time … This is a masterful work of social history and cultural commentary, told with much wit. It almost makes you feel as if you were there’
Roger Lewis,
Mail on Sunday
‘Turner appears to have spent much of the decade watching television, and his knowledge of old soap operas, sitcoms and TV dramas is deployed to great effect throughout this vivid, brilliantly researched chronicle … Turner may be an anorak, but he is an acutely intelligent anorak’
Francis Wheen,
New Statesman
‘An ambitious, entertaining alternative history of the 1970s which judges the decade not just by its political turbulence but by the leg-up it gave popular culture’
Time Out
‘Entertaining and splendidly researched … He has delved into episodes of soap operas and half-forgotten novels to produce an account that displays wit, colour and detail’
Brian Groom,
Financial Times
‘Turner combines a fan’s sense of populism (weaving in references to a rapidly expanding popular culture) with a keen grasp of the political landscape, which gives his survey of an often overlooked decade its cutting edge’
Metro
‘Fascinating … an affectionate but unflinching portrait of the era’
Nicholas Foulkes,
Independent on Sunday
Primarily I must thank those who were kind enough to share their memories of Terry Nation, to supply additional information, to put me in touch with others or simply to point me in the right direction when I might otherwise have got lost:
Alan Simpson, Anthony Brockway, Barry Cryer, Beryl Vertue, Brian Clemens, Carey Clifford, Charles Braham, Cy Town, David Gooderson, David Foster-Smith, David Howe, David Richardson, Deb Boultwood, Dudley Sutton, Gareth Owen, Harry Greene, Ian Dickerson, Jaz Wiseman, Jonathan Bignell, John Flaxman, Mat Irvine, Michelle Coomber, Paul Fishman, Peter Purves, Ray Galton, Sir Roger Moore, Roy Baines, Stan Stennett, Tanya Howarth, Terrance Dicks, Tessa Le Bars, Tony Tanner, Trevor Hoyle and Wyn Calvin.
I’m grateful to all of them and to those who wished not to be named (or whom I inadvertently forgot to mention).
In particular, my thanks to Alan Stevens, Mark Oliver, Steve Groves and Stuart Cooper, who allowed me advance access to material in order that I could meet my deadlines, and to Richard Cross for being helpful beyond the call of duty.
Lance Parkin and Paul Magrs were kind enough to read this in its unpolished first draft and make extremely helpful comments, suggestions and corrections.
Obviously none of the above should be considered to condone the contents of this book. Apologies too to everyone whose work and words I’ve quoted in such a cavalier fashion, probably missing all the important points.
As ever, there’s a whole heap of people at Aurum without whose contributions this book would never have made it to the shelves, including: Barbara Phelan, Bill McCreadie, Graham Coster, Graham Eames, Jodie Mullish, Liz Somers and Natalie Ridgway. Mark Swan designed the jacket and Steve Gove was a superb text editor.
I continue to be grateful for the support and advice of Thamasin Marsh, who lived with this project for its entire duration.
Finally, and especially, my thanks to my editor, Sam Harrison, whose suggestion this book was, and who has been hugely helpful throughout. It’s been a pleasure working with him, and any complaints about anything you have read should be addressed directly to him.
This book is dedicated to Harry Greene and John Summers, two men I’ve been privileged to know and who also happened to know Terry Nation.
13
Surviving
Appendix: The Works of Terry Nation
Vote Dalek!
T
he 2005 General Election was not one of the great moments in British political history. There was no doubt from the outset that the result would be a return of the incumbent Labour government, even though its prime minister, Tony Blair, had taken the country into a series of wars, the last two of which at least (the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq) were proving unpopular. The Conservative opposition was in such disarray that its senior MPs had recently staged a palace coup to remove their leader, Iain Duncan Smith, before he had a chance to lead the party to utter humiliation at the polls, but even his replacement, Michael Howard, was able to do little more than steady the ship, increasing the share of the vote by less than one percentage point. And although the Liberal Democrats did increase their number of MPs, they remained firmly in third place.
In the absence of any discernible interest in the outcome among the general public, the BBC’s weekly listings magazine,
Radio Times
, chose to ignore the workings of democracy and instead used its cover to herald a much more interesting event that was also happening that week: the return to television after sixteen and a half years of the Daleks, one of whom was to appear in that week’s episode of the newly resuscitated science fiction series
Doctor Who.
There was an acknowledgement of other concerns, with the creatures pictured in front of the Houses of Parliament, echoing a scene from ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ (broadcast in 1964, a year when Labour’s election victory under Harold Wilson really did mark a change in political eras), but there was no doubt what the big story was. Just to be clear, the fold-out cover also promised a free Dalek poster for every reader, and bore the slogan: vote dalek!
It was a striking piece of artwork, good enough that when, in 2008, the Periodical Publishers Association organised a survey to find the best British magazine cover of all time, it came top of the poll, fighting off competition from
Vogue’s
memorial issue for Princess Diana,
Tatler’s
shot of Vivienne Westwood dressed as Margaret Thatcher and
OK!’s
exclusive coverage of the wedding of David and Victoria Beckham. As a tribute to Britain’s enduring fascination with the Daleks, it was hard to know which was the greater honour: dominating the
Radio Times
or triumphing over such iconic national figures. In any event it was a handsome compliment to the 42-year-old inventions of a television scriptwriter named Terry Nation, who had died in California eight years before the cover appeared.