Transmat:Doctor Who

The Mind of Evil

File:Mind of Evil - Doctor Who DVD

The Mind of Evil was a Third Doctor story that brought a radical change in the way United Nations Intelligence Taskforce was portrayed. Instead of being a primarily investigative body interested in alien or unexplained phenomena, here UNIT was mostly seen as a simple security force, guaranteeing the safety of international diplomats. In other words, the "United Nations" portion of their acronym was stressed over the "Intelligence Taskforce" bit — as would later happen in such stories as Day of the Daleks and The Time Warrior. Meanwhile, the main plot about the mind-control device was something writer Don Houghton intentionally included as an homage to A Clockwork Orange. Evil went badly over budget, thanks in no small part to one of Doctor Who's rare usages of a real helicopter in the concluding episode. An unimpressed Barry Letts therefore withdrew director Timothy Combe from his informal "director's rota", and Combe never worked on the programme again.

The women who gave Doctor Who back to us

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Think Doctor Who is just for boys? Don't you believe it. Not only was the show's very first producer a woman, but it would never have come back without the fierce advocacy of Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner. Considering her importance to Doctor Who it's somewhat ironic that Tranter's only on-screen credits are for Torchwood: Miracle Day. But Gardner, her "partner in crime", is tied only with Russell T Davies as the most prolific producer in Doctor Who history.

Industrial action

Click for a video of a 21st century geek as he takes delivery of one of the two Paintboxes used by the BBC in the 1980s

The Quantel Paintbox was a graphics workstation that allowed Doctor Who to have a primitive form of colour grading in the 1980s. To find out more about the "business of show", go to category:production information, where you can read about colour separation overlay, low loaders, telerecordings, vidFIRE, rostrum cameras, 2" quad tape, Ealing Studios and tons more.

Surprising guest star

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Though largely unknown to non-British audiences, Ken Dodd was a major star in the United Kingdom when cast to play the Tollmaster in the Seventh Doctor serial, Delta and the Bannermen. Find out more about the thousands of actors who have been on Doctor Who by exploring Doctor Who guest actors.

Ex-Doctors never die, they just make audios

The careers of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors are significantly longer in audio than on television. Check out their latest works at category:2024 audio stories.

The relevance of comics

Officially, only The Lodger has been explicitly adapted from a comic strip — also called The Lodger.

However, several stories have clearly taken material from comic strips — often those in Doctor Who Magazine. The Shakespeare Code contains a good amount of material from A Groatsworth of Wit, and the notion of the Doctor absorbing the time vortex in order to spare a companion was explored in both The Parting of the Ways and The Flood.

The first of the "money men"

Donald Baverstock was the BBC executive who set the the wheels in motion that eventually led to the creation of Doctor Who. Essentially the original commissioner of the programme, he hired Sydney Newman and later imposed a sense of financial responsibility upon producer Verity Lambert.

But Baverstock wasn't the only BBC executive to have a profound impact on the development of Doctor Who. Make sure you read about Lorraine Heggessey, Mark Thompson, Danny Cohen, George Entwistle, Tony Hall, Shaun Sutton, Sydney Newman and others.

Things released on 8 November

• 1965 - Part three of the TV Comic story Enter: The Go-Ray was published.
• 1969 - Part one of the TV Comic story The Night Walkers was published.
• 1975
  • Part three of Pyramids of Mars premiered on BBC1.
  • Part three of the TV Comic story The Space Ghost was published.
• 1979 - DWM 5 was published by Marvel Comics.
• 1980 - Part three of Full Circle premiered on BBC1.
• 1984 - DWM 95 was published by Marvel Comics.
• 1986 - Part two of Terror of the Vervoids premiered on BBC1.
• 1989 - Part three of The Curse of Fenric premiered on BBC1.
• 2005 - The Claws of Axos was released on Region 1 DVD.
• 2007 - DWA 42 was published by BBC Magazines.
• 2010
  • Part one of Lost in Time premiered on CBBC, followed by episode five of Sarah Jane's Alien Files.
  • Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series was released in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray.
• 2011 - The Witch from the Well and The First Wave were released by Big Finish Productions.
• 2012 - DWA 294 was published by Immediate Media Company London Limited.
• 2014 - Death in Heaven premiered on BBC One.
• 2018 - Molten Heart was published by BBC Books.
• 2022
  • Sullivan and Cross - AWOL was released by Big Finish.
  • A World of Demons: The Villains of Doctor Who was released.
• 2023 - Mission: Find Lilith was released by BBV Productions.

Did you know…

• ... that Love & Monsters director Dan Zeff was already a three-time BAFTA winner before he tackled the Abzorbaloff?

• ... that David Hasselhoff's singing was so abhorrent to the Doctor that he went to the fall of the Berlin Wall twice just so he could avoid hearing Hasselhoff perform? (PROSE: Autonomy)

• ... that the instructional pamphlet, So You're Caught in a Rocket Attack, was once consulted by the Doctor when he actually was in the middle of a rocket attack? (PROSE: The Well-Mannered War)

• ... that both Jackie Tyler and Clyde Langer could make shepherd's pie? (TV: World War Three, TV: The Gift)

• ... that Halohawks were capable of flight despite having no wings? (COMIC: Danger Flight)

8 November births and deaths

• 1927
  • Director Lennie Mayne was born.
  • Actor Ken Dodd was born.
• 1937 - Actor Malcolm Taylor was born.
• 1941 - Actor Nerys Hughes was born.
• 1942 - Actor Su Douglas was born.
• 1956 - Writer Richard Curtis was born.
• 1958 - Actor John Gillett was born.
• 1983 - Actor Chris Rankin was born.
• 1984 - Director, writer and actor Scott Handcock was born.
• 1992 - Actor Zaqi Ismail was born.
• 2012 - Actor Roger Hammond died.
• 2021 - Studio sound supervisor Hugh Barker died.

Production history for 8 November

• 1963 - The studio recording for "The Firemaker" took place at Studio D of Lime Grove Studios. (INFO: "The Firemaker")
• 1967 - Location filming at Climping Beach for The Enemy of the World concluded. (TCH 11)
• 1968 - Episode eight of The Invasion was recorded at Lime Grove Studios D. (TCH 13)
• 1972 - Location filming The Three Doctors took place. (REF: Doctor Who The Handbook: The Third Doctor)
• 1977 - Studio filming for The Invasion of Time took place at BBC Television Centre studio 8. (REF: Doctor Who The Handbook: The Fourth Doctor)
• 2005
  • Rewrites for The Christmas Invasion known as "salmon script revisions" were made. This changed Guinevere One's television coverage, Daniel Llewellyn arriving at the Tower of London and the A-positive people being returned to normal. (DWMSE 14)
  • Big Finish's audio adaptation of the unproduced TV story Night Thoughts was recorded at the Moat Studios.
• 2011 - The Big Finish audio story The Emerald Tiger was recorded at the Moat Studios.
• 2016 - Big Finish's audio anthology The Third Doctor Adventures: Volume Three took place at the Soundhouse.
• 2017
  • The Big Finish audio story The Lure of the Nomad was recorded at the Moat Studios.
  • Big Finish announced the fourth series of The Third Doctor Adventures.
• 2018 - The Big Finish audio story The Moons of Vulpana was recorded at the Moat Studios.
• 2019 - Big Finish's The Paternoster Gang audio anthology Heritage 4 was recorded.
• 2022 - Big Finish's audio anthology Comrades-in-Arms was recorded at the Soundhouse.