Pop Culture - The Extended Adventures of Peter Cushing's Doctor Who

Subscribed! I can't wait to see where you go with this.

A six film series? I wonder if they will all be Dalek stories, and indeed if they will all feature Cushing as "Dr. Who?" I suppose a regeneration would seem even more out of leftfield given that the movie Doctor is ostensibly completely human, but I'm sure they could just go down the Bond route and offer no in-story explanation if Cushing was either unavailable or unwilling further down the line.

If all Dalek stories, will they continue to stick to the TV stories, and how will the existence of (albeit truncated) big screen versions of the likes of The Daleks' Master Plan, Power of and Evil of affect those incomplete stories' fairly hefty later reputations with OTL fans?

I can't help but think, however, that if the film series persists as far as the Pertwee era, and if Cushing remains the Doctor and if they adapt, say, The Daemons for the big screen...there's only one actor they could possibly have playing the Master... ;)
 
If all Dalek stories, will they continue to stick to the TV stories, and how will the existence of (albeit truncated) big screen versions of the likes of The Daleks' Master Plan, Power of and Evil of affect those incomplete stories' fairly hefty later reputations with OTL fans?

A film version of The Dalek's Master Plan opens up an interesting possibility. IOTL Terry Nation tried to create a spin off Dalek series set in the same background as The Dalek's Master Plan. Maybe ITTL the pilot episode The Destroyers actually gets made as a film.


Cheers,
Nigel.
 
A film version of The Dalek's Master Plan opens up an interesting possibility. IOTL Terry Nation tried to create a spin off Dalek series set in the same background as The Dalek's Master Plan. Maybe ITTL the pilot episode The Destroyers actually gets made as a film.

Cheers,
Nigel.


Whoa Cowboy! The Dalek's Master Plan was 12 episodes. That's 300 minutes. How do you squeeze all that toothpaste into an 80 minute feature.
 
Well an amateur dramatics company in the UK was able to adapt it as a stage play

That would be Nick Scovell and company? Apples and oranges, my friend.

By the way, if you're interested in Nick Scovell's Doctor Who plays.... well, you're out of luck. But he did do a Doctor Who fan film that's on a par with the 1960's series. Millennium Trap, look it up on youtube.
 
Dalekmania!

AARU’s Doctor Who and the Daleks did not create Dalekmania. That fire had started in 1963 with the first television appearance of the Daleks themselves.

It had taken the BBC by surprise, with ratings literally climbing overnight, and children all over England playing Dalek. Even then, the BBC hadn’t really appreciated what it had. It commissioned a second Dalek serial, “Dalek Invasion of Earth’ for the second season, and it had licensed the AARU movie deal.

But even then, in 1964, the BBC had no idea how big the Daleks were. The BBC had built four Daleks for the first serial, and after it was over, it couldn’t think of anything better to do with them than to donate two to Dr. Barnardo’s Children’s home. These had to be retrieved swiftly, and two extra Daleks built for Dalek Invasion Earath.

In late 1964 the Daleks began to make public appearances, initially for the outdoor and location shooting of Dalek Invasion Earth. But those appearances were strange and bizarre enough to make the newspapers. In August, 1964, two daleks showed up on a sitcom called ‘World of His Own.” In December, 1964, a group called the Go Go’s released a single - ‘Christmas With a Dalek’ and again, the props were brought out for publicity shots. Also in December, a feature on Terry Nation again had the Daleks making appearances. They did a dance routine on the ‘Black and White Minstrel Show.’

To manufacturers were getting into the mix, there were Louis Marx tin Daleks, there were Bendy foam rubber Daleks, there were Dalek shampoo bottles, there were Dalek Playsuit costumes. By mid-1965, there were 80 different Dalek toys on the market, and more coming for the upcoming Christmas season. TV Century 21 comics and TV Comics battled it out for the rights to them, and for a time, the Daleks roamed free of the Doctor in Century 21. The Daleks even made a small cameo in the Space Museum before coming on strong in the Chase.

Meanwhile, in the summer of 1965, there were two critical events. The first was completion of principal photography on Doctor Who and the Daleks, the second was the overlapping commencement of production of the Chase. The BBC constructed a seventh Dalek for the Chase, to make up for wear and tear, and intriguingly, rented three of the movie Daleks for episode three of the serial, modifying them to fit.

After that, the hype went into overdrive. The Chase aired first, which ironically meant that some of the movie Daleks had their first appearance on television. Then in August, the movie hit the theatres.

The thing was, the movie had eighteen full sized Daleks to promote the hell out of the film. Suddenly a squad of Daleks were in Cannes, terrifying the topless bathers. At least one Dalek was shipped all the way down to Australia. A few made it to America. But mainly, most of those 18 Daleks were busy making a whirlwind of tours across the English countryside, appearing at Toy Stores, Department Stores, at Fairs and Festivals. They were available for any number of photo opportunities. There were actual contest giveaways where contestants could win a full sized Dalek.

The movie didn’t create Dalekmania, but it poured gasoline on the fire, offering a multi-media spectacle, full colour stereoscope Daleks in the movie theatres, while at the same time, the Daleks ruled television, while toys abounded and the full sized props of both the TV series and the movies, some twenty-five specimens found themselves making personal appearances and magazine appearances everywhere.

To illustrate the timing, Dalek Invasion of Earth had run from the 21th of November, 1964, to the 26th of December, 1965; the Dalek cameos in the Space Museum was on April 4 and May 26, 1965, The Chase ran from May 22 to June 26, 1965; Doctor Who and the Daleks, the movie, launched August 23, 1965; Mission to the Unknown, Nation’s backdoor pilot, aired October 9, 1965; The Dalek Masterplan ran from November 13, 1965, and ran to January 29, 1966. A stage play, Curse of the Daleks, opened its doors on December 21, 1965 running through January, 1966, Between November 21, 1964, and January 29, 1966, the Daleks were on television or in the movies for a minimum of thirty of those weeks, plus treading the boards on stage, guest appearances, photo ops, magazine appearances, personal appearances, radio songs, over eighty different kinds of toys and whatnot.

The Doctor Who and the Daleks movie was a runaway success, both taking advantage of and feeding on the incredible promotion and popularity. The movie was an EVENT taking place in a Mania, and the promotional resources of the movie, the availability of its Daleks, the availability of its stars like Roberta Tovey for appearances (and she made appearances, she even released a novelty Doctor Who single for the radio at Christmas), the stature of Peter Cushing, it all pushed and pushed.

Amicus films, lead by Rosenberg and Subotsky immediately announced a new Doctor Who movie. “Dalek Invasion Earth 2150" - The Doctor didn’t even get his name in the title, that was how big the Daleks were.

Discussion of the new film started April, 1965. It wasn’t until December 16, 1965 that the new Dalek movie was official. In particular, Milton Subotsky was beginning to drag his feet, feeling that the wave of Dalek hysteria was going to crest and break sooner or later.

By that time, production was already well underway.

NOTE: You're getting tired of this certainly, but all of this is exactly as in OTL. There really was Dalek Shampoo, Kids Costumes and 80 different toys by mid-1965. The Daleks really did do guest appearances on sitcoms and a dance number on the 'Black and White Minstrel Show' (shudder!) It really was that huge a national phenomenon. Sorry about all the backstory, but it seems to me that to really know alternative history, you have to know the history. You have to set the stage. ....Ah, who am I kidding. I love digging this stuff up.
 
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Curse of the Daleks

In December, 1965, between Doctor Who and the Daleks, and Daleks Invasion Earth, there was a sneaky hidden entry into the AARU universe.

In particular, there really was a stage play, 'Curse of the Daleks' starting December 21, 1965, and running through January, 1966. Written by Terry Nation and David Whittaker. It didn't involved Doctor Who at all. They only had the rights to the Daleks, not to the rest of the show.

The play is set about 50 years after the original Dalek serial (or perhaps 50 years after a Dalek/Human war). The Daleks have been cut off from their power supply and have gone dormant. A couple of generations later, humans start visiting the Dalek world and accidentally reactivate them. At first, the Daleks play nice....

Why is this set in the AARU universe?

Interestingly, the production featured a total of FIVE operating Daleks, and therein lies a tale. Where did they come from? Who built them? What happened to them?

As it turns out, the stage production couldn't afford to build five Daleks. So they borrowed them.... from the producution of AARU's Dalek Invasion Earth 2150. The first appearance of some of the movie Daleks was on stage, much as the first appearance of some of the original movie Daleks had been on television.

Now, since the second movie was only official on December 16, 1965, and the stage play started on December 21, 1965, less than a week later, that doesn't give much time to build five Daleks. In fact, it's no time at all. The construction of these Daleks had to have been no later than November/ December.

Which means that the decision to go with the second movie, the real decision to start spending money on the project, placing orders, commissioning Daleks, scripts, set design and sets, would have been taken September/October at the latest. The actual decision to go with the second movie probably took place within a month or so after Doctor Who and the Daleks.

The most significant thing, however, was that the play amounted to evidence of a fairly close relationship between Terry Nation and Milton Subotsky, for Subotsky to be willing to allow and even modify his brand new Daleks for stage half a year before they'd appear in the movie houses.
 
Hulking Out!!!

Malcolm Hulke had worked with Sydney Newman in the early 1960's on his Pathfinder series. Pathfinder were a series of children’s serials about early space exploration, starting off with simply getting into space and eventually ending with trips to Mars and Venus.

When Sydney Newman moved to the BBC and initiated Doctor Who, Malcolme Hulke was invited to submit stories as early as July, 1963, months before the series even premiered in November, 1963.

During the era of the first Doctor, he submitted scripts for the Hidden Planet, Britain 408 AD, and The People Who couldn’t remember. None of them were picked up. He would finally break through in 1967 with a second Doctor script - The Faceless Ones, and then later co-wrote The War Games in 1969.

On the show, Hulke hit his stride during the Pertwee era, starting with Doctor Who and the Silurians, and then proceeding through Ambassadors of Death, Colony in Space, the Sea Devils, Frontier in Space and Invasion of the Dinosaurs, between 1970 and 1974. He also wrote seven novelizations, mostly of his own scripts, but also including the Green Death.

But before all this, in the lean period between 1964 and 1965, Hulke proposed a radio adaptation of Doctor Who and submitted a script called ‘Journey into Time’ to the BBC. It seemed like a feasible idea. The Doctor Who franchise was already branching out into comic strips, paperbacks and movies. Radio seemed like a waiting venue, and Hulke could count on the support of his old patron, the Canadian immigrant, Sidney Newman.

The BBC turned him down.

That might have been the end of it, except for another Canadian immigrant, Doug Stanley.
 
Radio Who?

Doug Stanley was born in Halifax. In the late 1950's, Stanley joined or was drafted into the Canadian army, and from there ended up stationed in Germany in the late 50's. He ended up working for ‘British Forces Broadcasting’ in Cologne, Germany. When he got mustered out, instead of going home he stuck around and went into Radio.

Now around this time, the late 50's, early 60's, BBC Radio pretty much has a monopoly on the British Airwaves. So what you had starting up was ‘Pirate Radio’ - Radio stations which were operating outside of England, but broadcasting powerful radio signals that could be picked up.

These ‘Pirates’ sustained themselves by selling advertising from British businesses. The BBC, of course, didn’t accept advertising at all, so if businesses wanted to advertise their wares, the pirate radios were the game. There was a vacant niche, both in the airwaves and the economy, and the pirate radios moved in.

Doug Stanley was actually broadcast on the first pirate station, the poetically named ‘Commercial Neutral Broadcasting Company’ or CNBC. The piracy was literal, it broadcast from a ship anchored off the Dutch coast in 1960-61. It didn’t last, the signal was too weak to reach far into Britain.

After CNBC went down, Doug moved into Radio Luxembourg, which had a seriously powerful transmitter, capable of blanketing much of the British Isles. With good coverage, and a listening alternative to the BBC, audiences and advertisers flocked. It must have been such an amazing,optimistic time, such a remarkable thing to be involved in.

Radio Luxembourgn wasn’t just in Luxembourg. It may not have been in Luxembourg at all. All it needed was a transmitter outside of England powerful enough to reach the Isles. It had offices and operations in England. It’s commercial market was there, so they had to have English offices.

Their purchases were English music, performances English bands, and Drama were English actors. The broadcasts took place from Luxembourg, but a fair bit of the business and production was certainly in England. Radio Luxembourg may well have done in house productions, but the way that the Radio Pirates worked, I suspect they contracted out to fill their airspace.
".....there was a Canadian-born disc-jockey, Doug Stanley, who I had met whilst I was serving with the British Forces in Germany and he was just ending his period of operation there and he was looking for other things to do. He came back to England and got involved with a company called Mitchell Monkhouse Associates run by Malcolm Mitchell who was running a trio that was very well known and Bob Monkhouse who of course needs no introduction. And they were producing shows for Radio Luxembourg which were sponsored by Cadburys Chocolates and people like that and Bob Monkhouse was fronting this programme. Doug Stanley was one of the producers."​


Moving from Disk Jockey to Producer, Doug Stanley forms ‘Stanmark Productions’ around the mid-sixties, which seems to be a personal company. Stanley decided to get into producing Radio Drama.

Now, between the 1930's and late 1950's, Radio Drama was pretty hot. The Shadow had begun on the radio, Superman was a radio staple. In the days before television, Radio Drama, Comedy, Variety shows were huge businesses.

But starting with the sixties and the proliferation of television Radio Drama declined fast. It didn’t disappear altogether, popular programs could occasionally make a dent, and it was hanging on in outlying markets in Africa and Asia. But the economic model of radio was changing rapidly. Why listen to a drama on the radio, when you could watch it on television. Radio stars, even whole radio shows were making the jump to television.

Even Radio Luxembourg was shifting from drama to music programming.
There were reasons for that - songs were short, you could basically pop them in and out pretty much at will, stick commercials in them. They were more compact, more versatile and easier to manipulate than a half hour block of radio drama.

They were also a lot cheaper to produce, all a music program needed was a disk jockey, a radio drama needed a script, staff, actors, producers, foley effects.... And let’s face it, television was a killer. So you were seeing this precipitous decline of Radio Drama and a big sea change in the Radio Industry.

So seeing Doug Stanley hanging in there, there’s something admirable about that. This was one of the original Radio Pirates. He was a guy who had gone from disk jockey to producer, who lived and breathed the airwaves. So if Doug Stanley was doing Radio Drama, or trying to do it in the 1960's, then it was for two reasons, he really wanted to do something he loved, and he smelled enough money to make it work.

How was it going to work? Outselling. If Radio Drama was failing in England and the United States, there were a lot of markets out there - Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, India, Egypt, where television hadn’t turned things inside out. Television might be coming, but it wasn’t there yet, not to the same degree, and so Radio Drama was still viable.

The other keys, were that technology now allowed him to record and distribute productions from the cultural heartland of London. There were lots of cutting edge actors, writers, an entire entertainment industry just waiting for something to do, there was a lot of skilled production talent, now under-employed, waiting or a call.

Out in Australia, you had to painstakingly build that infrastructure up from scratch, but in London, all you had to do was make a phone call. In a sense, the possibility lay in England for a virtual radio production studio, in much the same way that Amicus had formed itself as a virtual studio. The key resources and infrastructure were all around, all you had to do was start making connections.

And try to make money, of course.

So the thing to do was to do highly produced, top notch, technically cutting edge productions in London, and then sell them to the peripheral markets that still ran Radio Drama but had a much harder time producing it themselves.

For it's first effort Stanmark produced a serial that seemed to have been somewhat successful - Bruce Courage.

....for a private company, Stanmark Productions, operated by Luxy DJ, Doug Stanley, I recorded a series of programmes, each programme 15 minutes in length called 'Bruce Courage.' It was really an up-to-date version of 'Dick Barton – Special Agent,' for all of you who remember the old Light Programme drama that ran for what seemed like forever when I was a young lad. Bruce Courage was played by Tom Adams, who used to be the face of D.F.S. in TV commercials and was also in 'The Great Escape.' He at one time was tipped to play a future James Bond. His side kick was Ginger, played by Australian, Bill Kerr. Bill is probably best known as Tony Hancock's side kick in the radio and TV shows 'Hancock's Half Hour' alongside Sidney James. Bruce's girlfriend, Vicky, was played by Valerie Kirkbright. These were recorded to sell to various radio stations throughout the world.​


These weren’t shmucks off the street. That’s some pretty respectable and recognizeable on-mike talent on Bruce Courage. People during this period, would have known who these actors were, there’s name recognition.

Going by this remark, it seems to have made some kind of go of it. Like so much of Stanmark’s production, most of it is lost to us. But there are two segments of Bruce Courage that were publicly available on promotional flexi-disks, and these have come down through the years where they’ve been put up on Youtube. Check it out here, and here....

It was in 1965, sometime between August and December that Malcolm Hulke, with his radio Doctor Who, would hook up with Doug Stanley, in the middle of Dalekmania, while the fury over the Doctor Who and the Daleks reached a fever pitch....

NOTE: Almost all of this is still OTL. In particular, Malcolm Hulke's Doctor Who career is straight out of the book. Doug Stanley and Stanmark productions are real, as is Stanley's career, his effort to get into Radio Drama, and Bruce Courage.

There are few extrapolations based on ambiguous information.

First: I am making a leap in assuming that Hulke came up with the idea of a Doctor Who radio drama on his own. Hulke had been knocking at the door and submitting scripts and stories since before the show started, and he had a relationship with Sidney Newman. That seems logical to me. I'm not sure though. After all, Vegoda, Subotsky and Rosenberg had no prior connection or contact to the show when they started negotiating. So it's possible that Stanley had the idea, went looking for someone looking for an opportunity, and Hulke fill in with him.

Second: I am assuming that Hulke pitched it first to the BBC before he hooked up with Stanley. We don't actually know this. But we do know that BBC Radio looked at the proposal and passed on it. Hulke's script was discovered in the BBC files. Given Hulke's existing connections and affiliations with the BBC, it seems to me that if he had come up with this on his own, the BBC would be the first place he would pitch too. He wouldn't need to work with an independent like Stanley unless the BBC turned him down. Now, it's possible that Stanley was already involved with Hulke at the time of the pitch, or even that it was Stanley that developed the concept and recruited Hulke.

Third: From what I can reconstruct of Doug Stanley's business model, it seems to be based on outselling. ie - British production, foreign sales. This seems to be the thrust of his promotional materials. Frankly, I don't see how he could have assumed he would sell in England. By 1965, Radio Drama was absolutely dead in England. The youth counterculture had taken over, it was the time of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, radio was almost all music, and the only residue hanging on was some comedy and radio news. I can't imagine someone who knew the business as well as Stanley did believing that he could sell Radio Drama in England. Certainly, giving his history, I can't see him going with the BBC. So it's foreign markets.

Fourth: Timing. There's a very narrow window for these things to happen. In terms of the date of the script, 1965 seems to be the most likely period, given what we have for clues for the production. Promotional materials, which we'll cover, seem to date from no earlier than October, 1965 and no later than June 1966.
 
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His side kick was Ginger, played by Australian, Bill Kerr. Bill is probably best known as Tony Hancock's side kick in the radio and TV shows 'Hancock's Half Hour' alongside Sidney James.​

It's a minor point, but while Bill Kerr appeared in the radio series, like Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams he didn't make the transition to the TV version of Hancock's Half Hour.


Frankly, I don't see how he could have assumed he would sell in England. By 1965, Radio Drama was absolutely dead in England. The youth counterculture had taken over, it was the time of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, radio was almost all music, and the only residue hanging on was some comedy and radio news. I can't imagine someone who knew the business as well as Stanley did believing that he could sell Radio Drama in England. Certainly, giving his history, I can't see him going with the BBC. So it's foreign markets.

I think that's something of an exaggeration. The Home Service was still producing a lot of drama shows, including The Archers, which was popular enough that the death of a main character distracted people from the launch of ITV. Comedy was doing more than hanging on - you've already mentioned Hancock, and other series, such as Round the Horne and I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again were very popular (the latter was not only a fore-runner to The Goodies TV series but also I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, which has been very influential in the whole panel game genre, right down to Whose Line is it Anyway). This has continued down to the present day, with many British TV comedy series starting out on the radio. Special mention should go to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which started as a radio comedy but was produced by the drama department because they had more expertise in sound effects and other post-production.

Still, your basic point holds - outside of the BBC there wasn't much of a market for radio drama.


Cheers,
Nigel.
 
Good points, I'll rewrite.

The italicized stuff is a quote, so I'll not touch that. But I'll go back and nuance up on the radio drama/comedy side.
 
That would be Nick Scovell and company? Apples and oranges, my friend.

By the way, if you're interested in Nick Scovell's Doctor Who plays.... well, you're out of luck. But he did do a Doctor Who fan film that's on a par with the 1960's series. Millennium Trap, look it up on youtube.

There is a bit of info about them online, unfortunately their Power of the Daleks reimagined fan film got taken off Youtube over copyrite concerns or something and they won't be doing any more stage plays for similar reasons
 
There is a bit of info about them online, unfortunately their Power of the Daleks reimagined fan film got taken off Youtube over copyrite concerns or something and they won't be doing any more stage plays for similar reasons

Disappointing but not unpredictable. There seems to be scope of tolerance for fan films, but this may have crossed some arbitrary line for the BBC.
 
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