Before the start - papers from the BBC Archive

The BBC have set up a special Doctor Who section on the BBC Archive site which has some very interesting old documents on it, as well as some early pictures from the series.

There's the initial Survey Group studies into Science Fiction on TV, the original idea for a 'scientific troubleshooters' series and then the early notes for Doctor Who, featuring Biddy, Lola, Cliff and the amnesiac time-traveller they call Doctor Who...

My favourite line from them? This, from Webber and Newman's background notes on the series:

But we are not writing Science Fiction. We shall provide scientific explanations too, sometimes, but we shall not bend over backwards to do so, if we decide to achieve credibility by other means. Neither are we writing Fantasy: the events have got to be credible to the three ordinary people who are our main characters, and they are sharp-witted enough to spot a phoney. I think a writer's safeguard here will be, if he remembers that he is writing for an audience aged fourteen... the most difficult, critical, even sophisticated, audience there is for TV.

I don't think there's anything in there that RTD or the Moff would argue with.

Thanks for the link, Nick. Fascinating reading.