1963 (production)

1963 in

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the DWU • production history • vital statistics • releases

1963 was a year in which a number of events important to the production of Doctor Who and its spin-offs occurred.

January

• 14 January - Sydney Newman took over the role of BBC Head of Drama.

March

• 29 March - C. E. Webber, on orders from Sydney Newman, sent a report to Donald Wilson, in which he described a potential science fiction programme which would eventually become Doctor Who. The report described suitable characters for the "five-o'clock Saturday audience": the handsome young man, the handsome well-dressed heroine aged about 30 and the mature man. The initial thought was of a laboratory-set programme with scientists for protagonists, although this was eventually scrapped in the next report.

May

• 16 May - A document, prepared by Donald Wilson and C. E. Webber and Sydney Newman, was submitted to Donald Baverstock which outlined the concept of a proposed programme called Dr. Who.

June

• 24 June - David Whitaker appointed as script editor.

July

• 12 July - William Hartnell met with Verity Lambert and Waris Hussein to disuss the part of the First Doctor. (INFO: "The Forest of Fear")

August

• 7 August - William Hartnell has his first costume fitting and make up test.
• 12 August - Director Waris Hussein started the ball rolling with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, explaining to Brian Hodgson the need to find a good effect for the sound of the dematerialisation of the TARDIS.
• 12 August - Donald Wilson wrote to Sydney Newman to once again impress upon his boss the importance of moving Doctor Who from Lime Grove Studios to BBC Television Centre and/or Riverside Studios. Said Wilson: "I feel most strongly that Dr. Who must from time to time explore the full range of technical resources, otherwise we shall lay ourselves open to criticism for lacking in imagination and boldness."
• 13 August - Sydney Newman replied to Donald Wilson's memo of the day previous. He claimed to entirely be on Wilson's side, and asserted that he was misled as to Lime Grove's meagre production capabilities. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that they were in a pickle now that he agreed to Lime Grove on the basis of the misinformation he received. Newman said that he will "do the best [he] can" to get a studio that's capable of producing a story in which the TARDIS travellers are shrunk to miniature size. In the end, however, this story, eventually called Planet of Giants, was postponed even further than Wilson had envisaged in his memo to Newman.
• 20 August - First filming on "An Unearthly Child", the first ever episode, began. The session at Stage 3A of Ealing involved the recording of some of the elements of the opening credits.
• 21 August - Jacqueline Hill went to BBC Television Centre for film tests of her make-up and costume as Barbara Wright.
• 21 August - Producer Verity Lambert finally got a chance to have an extended conversation with designer Peter Brachacki about the set design of An Unearthly Child. He had, up to this date, been very busy with other projects, making it impossible for Lambert to express her design views.
• 30 August - Rex Tucker took a long-planned holiday to Majorca. This ended his stint in the Doctor Who production office. According to some reckonings, he was actually the series' first producer, having been hired before Verity Lambert. Still, he never saw an on-screen credit until he directed season 3's The Gunfighters. Had the programme's production dates not been pushed back several times, he would have been the director of either An Unearthly Child or The Daleks — both of which he did pre-production work on.
• 31 August - Further filming of opening credits elements at Studio 5 of TV Centre. (Though the two sessions cover most of the elements used in the title sequence, some other howlaround elements would ultimately be used from a previous BBC production in 1960, Tobias and the Angel.)

September

• 3 September - Title sequence assembled from the pre-existing and newly recorded elements by Richard Barclay at Ealing.
• 18 September - The incidental music for An Unearthly Child was recorded by Norman Kay at the Camden Theatre. (INFO: An Unearthly Child)
• 20 September - William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, Jacqueline Hill and William Russell all meet together for the first time, for a publicity photo shoot at TV Centre.
• 21 September - Rehearsals for "An Unearthly Child" began at a Drill Hall on Uxbridge Road.
• 27 September - The first episode, "An Unearthly Child" is recorded. This version of the first episode was beset by technical problems, and the BBC subsequently rejected it for broadcast, authorising a rare "do-over" for later in the year. The outcome of these filming sessions was later dubbed "the Pilot Episode".

October

• 4 October - After viewing the pilot episode, Sydney Newman officially rejected the Pilot Episode in a lunch meeting with Verity Lambert and Waris Hussein and authorised a remounting of the episode. According to Howe and Walker, this was a contingency that had been planned for. Over the next couple of weeks, numerous revisions to the script and changes to costuming and characterisation were undertaken.
• 9-11 October - Filming for "An Unearthly Child" restarted at Ealing Studios following September's false start.
• 10 October - Donald Wilson wrote an extensive memo to Donald Baverstock, Sydney Newman, Joanna Spicer and Richard Levin. He passionately argued for a higher special effects effort than the SFX department had apparently been prepared to give. He also pushed back against the apparent institutional sloth in deciding whether to go beyond the first four episodes. Wilson argued that the Doctor Who production team needed a longer commitment, due to extraordinary lead time necessary to produce the show.
• 11 October - Director Christopher Barry outlined his initial thoughts on serial B to script editor David Whitaker. At this stage they thought they were making a story called The Mutants, but posterity would remember the story as The Daleks — the story that turned Doctor Who into "must see TV".
• 14 October - Rehearsals for the remount of "An Unearthly Child" took place on this Monday. It was followed by three more days of rehearsal, leading up to recording on the evening of Friday 18 October. Though it wasn't the first rehearsal in Doctor Who history — the so-called "pilot episode" had been rehearsed, of course — it was this week-long rehearsal period that set up the basic production pattern which would last for years afterwards.
• 16 October - Donald Baverstock ordered thirteen episodes of Doctor Who, after being satisfied with the promise of the so-called "pilot episode". At the same time he ordered John Mair to give him hard numbers about the cost of the series' special effects. When those numbers proved shockingly high just a few days later, a mini-crisis briefly threatened to shut down the show.
• 18 October - Studio filming for the very first Doctor Who episode took place at Lime Grove Studio D.
• 18 October - Verity Lambert decided that designer Peter Brachacki was unsuitable for Doctor Who, and demanded a replacement. Barry Newbery and Raymond Cusick were considered, and got to work. Newbery's plans, however, were too costly for Donald Baverstock, who sent a memo to Donald Wilson in complaint.
• 18 October - Director Christopher Barry received the first attempts at the Dalek voices from J. N. Shearme. Two different approaches arrived through Barry's letterbox: one using computer synthesis and the other using a vocoder. Barry indicated he was particularly interested in the vocoder approach, but no final decision was taken on this day.
• 25 October - Margot Maxine became the first actor to walk off the set of Doctor Who when she refused to have her teeth blackened. An extra, she was to have played one of the cave people in "The Cave of Skulls"
• 25 October - Christopher Barry replied to J. N. Shearme's 18 October message, informing him that the BBC had decided not to use either of the methods suggested for Dalek voices — vocoder and computer generation — and that most would be done live, in-studio.
• 29 October - John Mair sent a memo to Joanna Spicer, detailing season 1's stories and their costs at the time. Donald Wilson and Verity Lambert met with Spicer, and agreed to go along with the earlier proposition made on 22 October.

November

• 1 November - The studio recording for "The Forest of Fear" took place at Lime Grove Studios. (INFO: "The Forest of Fear")
• 8 November - The studio recording for "The Firemaker" took place at Studio D of Lime Grove Studios. (INFO: "The Firemaker")
• 11 November - Pre-filming for "The Expedition" took place at Ealing Studios. (INFO: "The Expedition")
• 15 November - Studio recording for "The Dead Planet" took place at Lime Grove Studios. However, the episode was beset by technical faults, forcing it to be re-recorded on 6 December. (INFO: "The Dead Planet")
• 16 November - The first-ever television trailer for Doctor Who was broadcast.
• 21 November - The first ever Doctor Who press conference was held to launch the new show. All four lead actors and David Whitaker attended the event at BBC Langham.
• 21 November - Radio Times published an article announcing the debut of Doctor Who, dated 23 November. This was the first Doctor Who-related article ever published.

December

• 30 December - The Audience Research Report on the first episode of Doctor Who was filed with the BBC.