Donald Baverstock

Donald Baverstock was the Controller of BBC One who ordered Sydney Newman to create the Saturday tea time show that became Doctor Who.

History with Doctor Who

Baverstock was actively engaged in the creation of the programme. He had several well-documented meetings and written exchanges with Sydney Newman in the run-up to the series' premiere, dating back to at least 1962. On or about 20 May 1963 he personally signed off on the format document prepared by Newman, Donald Wilson and C. E. Webber, saying that series was "looking great". (REF: The First Doctor Handbook) After much internal discussion over the course of several months, it was Baverstock who eventually personally decided on 5 July 1963 that the length of Doctor Who episodes would be 25 minutes, as they would remain until 1989.

Baverstock was also responsible for continuing to extend the commission of the programme as it progressed through production. At first green lighting only a four epsiode commitment, he extended it to thirteen on the strength of what eventually became known as "The Pilot Episode". He soon reversed his decision, however, after he started looking at the numbers harder.

Within days of giving the go-ahed to the 13-week commitment, he fired off a memo to Donald Wilson that nearly cancelled Doctor Who before it had remounted "An Unearthly Child". He claimed to have been deceived about the cost per episode and flatly said that he could not justify the apparent "true" expenses of Serial A.

Last week I agreed to an additional £200 to your budget of £2,400 for the first four episodes. This figure is now revealed to be totally unrealistic. The costs of these four will be more than £4,000 each ... Such a costly serial is not one that I can afford for this space in this financial year. You should not therefore proceed any further with the production of more than four episodes.Donald Baverstock 18 October 1963

And he put up other roadblocks for Doctor Who.

He was a key figure in the long-running dispute over whether the show could move from what Donald Wilson and later Verity Lambert considered the wholly inappropriate Lime Grove Studio D. In June 1963, he denied a request to move Doctor Who's specialised recording equipment to Riverside Studios so that his own pet project, That Was the Week That Was, could enjoy the superior facility. He was involved in several other meetings with various BBC executives and department heads about the headaches caused by Lime Grove's inadequate facilities.

Later, Donald Wilson and he clashed after Baverstock withdrew a commitment for Unearthly to be featured on the cover of Radio Times in November 1963. (DWMS Summer 1994)

After the BBC

When Hugh Greene, Director-General of the BBC, decided to make Baverstock switch places with his BBC2 counterpart in early 1965, Baverstock saw it as a demotion and resigned from the BBC. In accordance with half of Greene's original plan, he was replaced by Michael Peacock.

He then went on to Yorkshire Television where he helped to create, amongst other programmes, Emmerdale Farm, the soap opera that would long employ Doctor Who actors from Frazer Hines to Jenna-Louise Coleman.

Fictional portrayals

A caricature of him, called "Mr Borusa", was played by Mark Gatiss in The Pitch of Fear, a broad fictionalisation of Newman's pitch meeting for Doctor Who.

External link

• Donald Baverstock at the Internet Movie Database