1974

1974 in

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the DWU • production history • vital statistics • releases

1974 was the year of Professor Alec Palmer and Emma Grayling's investigation of the ghost that haunted Caliburn House. On the night of 25 November, the Eleventh Doctor and Clara Oswald visited the Caliburn House, and helped locate the ghost, who was actually a human time traveller named Hila Tacorien. Using Emma's psychic powers, the Doctor crossed a wormhole to get to the pocket universe in which Hila was trapped, bringing her back to Normal Space. He later retrieved the Crooked Man from the pocket universe as well, reuniting him with his mate. The day was also notable as the start of the relationship between Alec and Emma, which would later give birth to Hila, their great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. (TV: Hide)

Amongst the other things that happened during this year were:

• Reginald Tyler died, still working obsessively on revisions to his The True History of Planets. (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen)
• The Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller arrived in England at a service station on the M62 sometime in the winter. (AUDIO: Horror of Glam Rock)
• Evelyn Smythe would later recall that the class she taught in 1974 were a particularly difficult bunch. (AUDIO: The Marian Conspiracy)
• The Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones went to London to find that a cat had turned people into sand figures. (COMIC: Agent Provocateur)
• Liam McShane, the younger brother of Dorothy Gale "Ace" McShane, was born. (AUDIO: The Rapture)
• After sailing down the Amazon "for months" Jo Grant and Cliff Jones arrived in in a "village in Crystaluna" and she called UNIT to say hello to the Doctor, but was told that he had "left UNIT and never came back." (TV: Death of the Doctor)

Behind the scenes

Unknown dates

• Jon Pertwee and Elisabeth Sladen recorded a special ten-minute mini-adventure featuring the Third Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and the Daleks for the BBC Radio programme Glorious Goodwood. This appears to be the earliest known original Doctor Who audio story. It was never broadcast, but was eventually included on one of the Doctor Who at the BBC CD releases in 2005.
• Doctor Who received one of its first pieces of major critical recognition when it received the 1974 Writers' Guild Award for Best British Children's Original Drama Script. This fact was trumpeted on the covers of Target novelisations published afterwards.

January

• 02 - Voice actor Toby Hadoke was born.
• 05 - Episode four of The Time Warrior was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 12 - Episode one of Invasion of the Dinosaurs was first broadcast on BBC1. The episode bore the on-screen title Invasion to preserve the cliffhanger of the first episode. This was the first time since the final episode of TV: The Gunfighters aired in May 1966 that an episode carried a title different than that of the complete storyline.
• 14 - Actor Paul Whitsun-Jones died.
• 17 - Target Books followed its successful 1973 reprintings of novelisations from the 1960s with the publications of its first newly commissioned adaptations, PROSE: Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion by Terrance Dicks, based upon the Third Doctor serial TV: Spearhead from Space, and PROSE: Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters by Malcolm Hulke, adapting TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians. Auton Invasion was the first of many Doctor Who novels written by Dicks over the next thirty-plus years and Target continued to novelise Doctor Who adventures for the next twenty years. The practice of giving novelisations titles differing from the broadcast versions continued off-and-on into the 1980s, though it occurred less frequently from the late 1970s.
  • Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion also marked the start of a long and prolific association between Dicks and the world of Doctor Who printed fiction; over the next thirty-five years he wrote not only the lion's share of Target novelisations, but also contributed to most of the later lines of spin-off continuation fiction.
• 19 - Episode two of Invasion of the Dinosaurs was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 26 - Episode three of Invasion of the Dinosaurs was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 30 - Actress Olivia Colman was born.

February

• 02 - Episode four of Invasion of the Dinosaurs was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 09 - Episode five of Invasion of the Dinosaurs was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 16 - Episode six of Invasion of the Dinosaurs was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 16 - Richard Franklin departed the series as a regular, though he returned later in the season.
• 23 - Part one of Death to the Daleks was first broadcast on BBC1. This episode was later deleted by the BBC. Although another copy was eventually discovered, this was the most recent episode to have been successfully "junked" by the BBC archives.

March

• 02 - Part two of Death to the Daleks was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 05 - Actor Matt Lucas was born.
• 09 - Part three of Death to the Daleks was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 16 - Part four of Death to the Daleks was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 23 - Part one of The Monster of Peladon was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 30 - Part two of The Monster of Peladon was first broadcast.

April

• PROSE: Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon was first published.
• PROSE: Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks was first published.
• 06 - Part three of 'The Monster of Peladon was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 13 - Part four of The Monster of Peladon was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 20 - Part five of The Monster of Peladon was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 23 - Actress Verona Joseph was born.
• 27 - Part six of The Monster of Peladon was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 28 - Production began on TV: Robot, the first story featuring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.

May

• 01 - The final studio recording session for TV: Planet of the Spiders and for Jon Pertwee was held. Tom Baker, already in the midst of production of his first story, attended and filmed a regeneration sequence.
• 04 - Part one of Planet of the Spiders was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 11 - Part two of Planet of the Spiders was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 18 - Part three of Planet of the Spiders was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 21 - Actress Juliet Cowan was born.
• 25 - Part four of Planet of the Spiders was first broadcast on BBC1.
• 27 - The edited 90-minute compilation of The Sea Devils, as first broadcast on 27 December 1972, received an unscheduled repeat showing as a replacement for the rained-off Yorkshire -v- Lancashire cricket match.

June

• 01 - Part five of Planet of the Spiders was first broadcast.
• 08 - Part six of Planet of the Spiders was first broadcast on BBC1, concluding the eleventh season of Doctor Who, and ending the Third Doctor era.

July

• 31 - Actress Emilia Fox was born.

September

• The Doctor Who Annual 1975 was published.
• 9 - Actor Jim Tyson died.
• 22 - Actress Stephanie Bidmead died.
• 30 - Actors Tom Baker and Philip Hinchcliffe were interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Good Morning Sou'West.

October

• 05 - Actor Marshall Lancaster was born.
• 11 - Writer Ian Mond was born.
• 17 - PROSE: Doctor Who and the Dæmons and PROSE: Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils were first published.

November

• 09 - Actor Ian Hallard was born.
• 20 - Actor David O'Donnell was born.
• 21 - PROSE: Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen was first published. This was the first published novelisation of a Second Doctor story.

December

• 16 - The stage play Doctor Who and the Daleks in The Seven Keys to Doomsday premièred at the Adelphi Theatre. This was the first professional stage play to feature the Doctor, and the first Doctor Who-related stage play since The Curse of the Daleks in 1965-66.
• 16 - Voice actor Setsuji Satō was born.
• 28 - Part one of Robot was first broadcast on BBC1, launching Season 12. Besides properly introducing Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, the episode also saw Ian Marter debuting as new companion Harry Sullivan.