Production management assistant
A production management assistant is not a production assistant or a production runner. Instead, a PMA has much more to do with administration, rather than actual production. They are much closer in function to the production secretary. Indeed, in the early years of BBC Wales Doctor Who, it was common to see the combined credit, "production/script secretary", and the job description seen on a 2011 BBC advert seems to indicate that the job of the production/script secretary was being definitively split. According to BBC Vision — the branch of the BBC that ultimately produces Doctor Who — a PMA:
- books travel and accommodation
- does basic purchasing
- processes expenses
- books meetings and resources
According to this 2011 definition, then, there was very little distinction between a production secretary and a PMA.[1]
The term came into use during series 5, and its close relationship to the script/production secretary position is made clearer by the person who actually received the credit. Clare Thomas, who had previously been credited during the RTD era as a script secretary was suddenly a PMA under Moffat.
