Terry Nation
Encyclopedia
Terry Nation was a Welsh
screenwriter
and novelist.
He is probably best known for creating the villainous Dalek
s in the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who
. Nation also created two science-fiction shows - Survivors
and Blake's 7
.
, Wales, Nation initially worked in comedy, finding a way into the industry in 1955 after a — possibly apocryphal — incident when Spike Milligan
bought a sketch he had written because he thought Nation looked hungry. During the 1950s, Nation worked for Associated London Scripts alongside Johnny Speight
and John Junkin
where he worked on hundreds of radio scripts for British comedians including Terry Scott
, Eric Sykes
, Harry Worth
and Frankie Howerd
. His big break came in 1962 when he was commissioned to write material for the comedian Tony Hancock
, initially for Hancock's new ATV television series and later for his stage show.
Nation accompanied Hancock as his chief screenwriter on tour in 1963, but Hancock continually fell back onto his old material and failed to use Nation's scripts. The two quarrelled and Nation was fired. Before this he had turned down an approach from David Whitaker to contribute to a new science-fiction series that the BBC
was setting up, Whitaker having been impressed with a script Nation had written for the science fiction anthology series Out of this World
for ABC
. Now jobless and with a young family to support, Nation contacted Whitaker and took up the offer, writing the second ever Doctor Who serial - "The Daleks
" (aka "The Mutants"). The serial introduced the eponymous creatures that would become the show's most popular monsters, and was responsible for the BBC's first merchandising boom.
Nation suddenly found himself a telefantasy writer at the centre of a media frenzy, and went on to contribute several further scripts to Doctor Who
. Various Dalek spin-off material appeared, including a comic strip in TV Century 21
and annuals. Often the material was credited to Nation, even if written by others. He and Dennis Spooner
co-wrote the 12-part story "The Daleks' Master Plan
", after which Nation attempted to market the Daleks in the U.S.
He also worked for the more financially rewarding commercial television companies, contributing episodes to such shows as The Avengers
, The Baron
, The Persuaders!
, The Champions
, Department S
, and The Saint
. In the late 1960s Nation attempted to launch the Daleks as a series in their own right in the United States.
was a post-apocalyptic tale of the few remaining humans, the population having been devastated by a plague. The show was well received, but Nation's vision for it conflicted with that of producer Terence Dudley
and the other two seasons were produced without his involvement. In a British High Court of Justice
case in the mid-1970s, which was abandoned by both sides due to escalating costs, writer Brian Clemens
claimed that he had told Nation the concept for Survivors in the late 1960s and had registered the idea with the Writers' Guild of Great Britain
in 1965. Nation strenuously denied this.
His next BBC creation, Blake's 7
, was more successful. The show told the story of a group of criminals and political prisoners on the run from the sinister Terran Federation in a stolen alien space ship of unknown origins. It ran for four seasons from 1978 to 1981, gaining a world wide following especially in the United Kingdom. Nation wrote the entire first season of the series. His input decreased over the run, the overall direction eventually being controlled by script editor Chris Boucher
, with Nation not writing at all for the fourth and final season. After its conclusion, he attempted unsuccessfully to find funding for a fifth season later in the 1980s.
In 1976 he wrote a children's novel for his daughter Rebecca (after whom he named the character of Rebec in Planet of the Daleks
): Rebecca's World: Journey to the Forbidden Planet, as well as a novel based on the show Survivors.
where he developed programme ideas and worked for various studios. Little of his work in this time was as successful as his original period in the United Kingdom. He contributed to the American TV series MacGyver
, in addition to television series such as A Masterpiece of Murder and A Fine Romance
.
Nation suffered ill health in his later years, and died from emphysema in Los Angeles on 9 March 1997. Shortly before his death he was working on another revival attempt of Blake's 7 with Paul Darrow
(who played Avon in the original series).
Welsh people
The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...
screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
and novelist.
He is probably best known for creating the villainous Dalek
Dalek
The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Within the series, Daleks are cyborgs from the planet Skaro, created by the scientist Davros during the final years of a thousand-year war against the Thals...
s in the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
. Nation also created two science-fiction shows - Survivors
Survivors
Survivors is a British post-apocalyptic fiction television series devised by Terry Nation and produced by Terence Dudley at the BBC from 1975 to 1977...
and Blake's 7
Blake's 7
Blake's 7 is a British science fiction television series produced by the BBC for its BBC1 channel. The series was created by Terry Nation, a prolific television writer and creator of the Daleks for the television series Doctor Who. Four series of Blake's 7 were produced and broadcast between 1978...
.
Early career
Born in CardiffCardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
, Wales, Nation initially worked in comedy, finding a way into the industry in 1955 after a — possibly apocryphal — incident when Spike Milligan
Spike Milligan
Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan Hon. KBE was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor. His early life was spent in India, where he was born, but the majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He became an Irish citizen in 1962 after the...
bought a sketch he had written because he thought Nation looked hungry. During the 1950s, Nation worked for Associated London Scripts alongside Johnny Speight
Johnny Speight
Johnny Speight , was a British television scriptwriter of many classic British sitcoms.He emerged in the mid 1950s. He wrote for the radio comics; Frankie Howerd, Vic Oliver, Arthur Askey, and Cyril Fletcher. For television he wrote for the Arthur Haynes Show, Morecambe & Wise, and Peter Sellers...
and John Junkin
John Junkin
John Francis Junkin was an English radio, television and film performer and scriptwriter.In 1960 Junkin joined Joan Littlewood's Stratford East Theatre Workshop, and played the lead in the original production of Sparrows Can't Sing...
where he worked on hundreds of radio scripts for British comedians including Terry Scott
Terry Scott
Owen John "Terry" Scott was an English actor and comedian who appeared in seven Carry On films. He also appeared in BBC1's popular domestic sitcom Terry and June with June Whitfield...
, Eric Sykes
Eric Sykes
Eric Sykes, CBE is an English radio, television and film writer, actor and director whose performing career has spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and/or performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Peter...
, Harry Worth
Harry Worth
Harry Worth was an English comedy actor and comedian...
and Frankie Howerd
Frankie Howerd
Francis Alick "Frankie" Howerd OBE was an English comedian and comic actor whose career, described by fellow comedian Barry Cryer as "a series of comebacks", spanned six decades.-Early career:...
. His big break came in 1962 when he was commissioned to write material for the comedian Tony Hancock
Tony Hancock
Anthony John "Tony" Hancock was an English actor and comedian.-Early life and career:Hancock was born in Southam Road, Hall Green, Birmingham, England, but from the age of three was brought up in Bournemouth, where his father, John Hancock, who ran the Railway Hotel in...
, initially for Hancock's new ATV television series and later for his stage show.
Nation accompanied Hancock as his chief screenwriter on tour in 1963, but Hancock continually fell back onto his old material and failed to use Nation's scripts. The two quarrelled and Nation was fired. Before this he had turned down an approach from David Whitaker to contribute to a new science-fiction series that the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
was setting up, Whitaker having been impressed with a script Nation had written for the science fiction anthology series Out of this World
Out of This World (UK TV series)
Out of This World is a British science fiction anthology television series made by ABC Television and broadcast in 1962. A spin-off from the popular anthology series Armchair Theatre, each episode was introduced by the actor Boris Karloff. Many of the episodes were adaptations of stories by...
for ABC
Associated British Corporation
Associated British Corporation was one of a number of commercial television companies established in the United Kingdom during the 1950s by cinema chain companies in an attempt to safeguard their business by becoming involved with television which was taking away their cinema audiences.In this...
. Now jobless and with a young family to support, Nation contacted Whitaker and took up the offer, writing the second ever Doctor Who serial - "The Daleks
The Daleks
The Daleks is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in seven weekly parts from 21 December 1963 to 1 February 1964...
" (aka "The Mutants"). The serial introduced the eponymous creatures that would become the show's most popular monsters, and was responsible for the BBC's first merchandising boom.
Nation suddenly found himself a telefantasy writer at the centre of a media frenzy, and went on to contribute several further scripts to Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
. Various Dalek spin-off material appeared, including a comic strip in TV Century 21
TV Century 21
TV Century 21, also known as TV 21, was a weekly British children's comic of the 1960s and early 1970s. It promoted the many television science-fiction puppet series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Century 21 Productions...
and annuals. Often the material was credited to Nation, even if written by others. He and Dennis Spooner
Dennis Spooner
Dennis Spooner was an English television screenwriter and story editor, known primarily for his programmes about fictional spies and his work in children's television in the 1960s...
co-wrote the 12-part story "The Daleks' Master Plan
The Daleks' Master Plan
The Daleks' Master Plan is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The twelve episodes were aired from 13 November 1965 to 29 January 1966...
", after which Nation attempted to market the Daleks in the U.S.
He also worked for the more financially rewarding commercial television companies, contributing episodes to such shows as The Avengers
The Avengers (TV series)
The Avengers is a spy-fi British television series set in the 1960s Britain. The Avengers initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed . Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants...
, The Baron
The Baron
The Baron is a British television series, made in 1965/66 based on the book series by John Creasey, written under the pseudonym Anthony Morton, and produced by ITC Entertainment. It was the first ITC show without marionettes to be produced entirely in colour...
, The Persuaders!
The Persuaders!
The Persuaders! is a 1971 action/adventure series, produced by ITC Entertainment for initial broadcast on ITV and ABC. It has been called "the last major entry in the cycle of adventure series that had begun eleven years earlier with Danger Man in 1960", as well as "the most ambitious and most...
, The Champions
The Champions
The Champions is a British espionage/science fiction/occult detective fiction adventure series consisting of 30 episodes broadcast on the UK network ITV during 1968–1969, produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment production company...
, Department S
Department S
Department S is a United Kingdom spy-fi adventure series produced by ITC Entertainment. The series consists of 28 episodes which originally aired in 1969–1970. It starred Peter Wyngarde as author Jason King , Joel Fabiani as Stewart Sullivan, and Rosemary Nicols as computer expert Annabelle Hurst...
, and The Saint
The Saint (TV series)
The Saint was an ITC mystery spy thriller television series that aired in the UK on ITV between 1962 and 1969. It centred on the Leslie Charteris literary character, Simon Templar, a Robin Hood-like adventurer with a penchant for disguise. The character may be nicknamed The Saint because the...
. In the late 1960s Nation attempted to launch the Daleks as a series in their own right in the United States.
1970s
In the early 1970s, after a long absence, Nation returned to writing Dalek serials for Doctor Who, and this renewed contact led to a BBC commission for him to create a new science fiction drama series. First broadcast in 1975, SurvivorsSurvivors
Survivors is a British post-apocalyptic fiction television series devised by Terry Nation and produced by Terence Dudley at the BBC from 1975 to 1977...
was a post-apocalyptic tale of the few remaining humans, the population having been devastated by a plague. The show was well received, but Nation's vision for it conflicted with that of producer Terence Dudley
Terence Dudley
Terence Dudley was a television director and producer who directed many programs for the BBC over a number of years....
and the other two seasons were produced without his involvement. In a British High Court of Justice
High Court of Justice
The High Court of Justice is, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, one of the Senior Courts of England and Wales...
case in the mid-1970s, which was abandoned by both sides due to escalating costs, writer Brian Clemens
Brian Clemens
Brian Horace Clemens OBE is a British screenwriter and television producer, possibly best known for his work on The Avengers and The Professionals...
claimed that he had told Nation the concept for Survivors in the late 1960s and had registered the idea with the Writers' Guild of Great Britain
Writers' Guild of Great Britain
The Writers' Guild of Great Britain, established in 1959, is a trade union for professional writers. It is affiliated with both the Trades Union Congress and the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds .-Activities:...
in 1965. Nation strenuously denied this.
His next BBC creation, Blake's 7
Blake's 7
Blake's 7 is a British science fiction television series produced by the BBC for its BBC1 channel. The series was created by Terry Nation, a prolific television writer and creator of the Daleks for the television series Doctor Who. Four series of Blake's 7 were produced and broadcast between 1978...
, was more successful. The show told the story of a group of criminals and political prisoners on the run from the sinister Terran Federation in a stolen alien space ship of unknown origins. It ran for four seasons from 1978 to 1981, gaining a world wide following especially in the United Kingdom. Nation wrote the entire first season of the series. His input decreased over the run, the overall direction eventually being controlled by script editor Chris Boucher
Chris Boucher
Chris Boucher is a British television writer, best known for his frequent contributions to two genres, science fiction and crime dramas.-Biography:...
, with Nation not writing at all for the fourth and final season. After its conclusion, he attempted unsuccessfully to find funding for a fifth season later in the 1980s.
In 1976 he wrote a children's novel for his daughter Rebecca (after whom he named the character of Rebec in Planet of the Daleks
Planet of the Daleks
Planet of the Daleks is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from April 7 to May 12, 1973.-Synopsis:...
): Rebecca's World: Journey to the Forbidden Planet, as well as a novel based on the show Survivors.
1980s and 1990s
In 1980 Nation moved to Los Angeles, CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
where he developed programme ideas and worked for various studios. Little of his work in this time was as successful as his original period in the United Kingdom. He contributed to the American TV series MacGyver
MacGyver
MacGyver is an American action-adventure television series created by Lee David Zlotoff. Henry Winkler and John Rich were the executive producers. The show ran for seven seasons on ABC in the United States and various other networks abroad from 1985 to 1992. The series was filmed in Los Angeles...
, in addition to television series such as A Masterpiece of Murder and A Fine Romance
A Fine Romance (TV series)
A Fine Romance was a British situation comedy starring husband-and-wife team Judi Dench and Michael Williams. Dench's sister was played by Susan Penhaligon. It was produced by London Weekend Television and written by Bob Larbey. It was first broadcast on 8 November 1981. It lasted for 26 episodes...
.
Nation suffered ill health in his later years, and died from emphysema in Los Angeles on 9 March 1997. Shortly before his death he was working on another revival attempt of Blake's 7 with Paul Darrow
Paul Darrow
Paul Darrow is an English actor best known for his portrayal of Kerr Avon in the BBC science fiction television series Blake's 7...
(who played Avon in the original series).
Sources
- Tarrant, Graham "Obituary: Terry Nation", The IndependentThe IndependentThe Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, Thursday 13 March 1997 (page 18). - Barker, Dennis. Obituary: Terry Nation – The man who invented the Daleks. The Guardian, Thursday 13 March 1997 (page 17).
- Oliver, John. Nation, Terry: 1930-1997. "British Film Institute Screen Online"
Literature
- Alwyn W. Turner: The man who invented the Daleks : the strange worlds of Terry Nation, London : Aurum, 2011, ISBN 978-1-8451-3609-3
External links
- Terry Nation at the Museum of Broadcast CommunicationsMuseum of Broadcast CommunicationsThe Museum of Broadcast Communications is an American museum that currently exists exclusively on the Internet and not in any physical capacity. Its stated mission is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform and entertain...
- Photo