Talk:Bernard Lodge

Paper trail - Norman Taylor

I've added a {{facts}} tag to this piece of info on the page:

A paper trail would seem to exist in the BBC's archives which indicates Taylor was the principal discoverer of the "howl-round effect" seen in 1960s and early 1970s Doctor Who titles.

The source cited doesn't actually provide the paper trail, nor does Norman Taylor's page, nor does the title sequence page source this illusive paper trail. Is this source lurking somewhere? --Tangerineduel / talk 14:43, November 11, 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, the source is just the BBC Archives. According to The First Doctor Handbook, there's a memo dated 18.9.63 from R. W. Bayliff (Head of Technical Ops for TV Studios) to Verity. She had written him earlier (on 12.9.63, in fact) to get Norman Taylor credit on the pilot ep for the howl-around effects. But Bayliff denied permission for this credit because the notion of pointing one camera into its monitor wasn't deemed to meet the BBC's internal requirements to be "both artistic and substantial, or of significant interest to viewers".

He was in the room supervising the equipment when Lodge created the opening theme, but it's best perhaps to think of Taylor as kind of the "IT guy", not the creative. He would apparently have it differently, at least as of that 2010 interview. But it's important to note that neither Verity nor Lodge have any obvious responsibility for "stealing" from Taylor. Neither would have necessarily known him as the inventor "howl-round". To them, it was the product of Taylor's boss, Ben Palmer (who, as a department chair, wouldn't have been expecting individual credit). They, and in particular, Bernard Lodge, believed that they were studying Palmer's innovation when they took a very long look at the titles for Amahl and the Night Visitors in the summer of 1963.

Yes, Taylor claims now to be dismissive of Lodge for getting credited with Taylor's idea, but that seems unfair to me. Taylor is a victim of BBC policy, not some sort of a rip-off.

Indeed, there is some suggestion by Lodge himself, that Taylor may have come up with the single line at the very beginning. All Lodge says in The Handbook is that he "can't take credit" for that bit, but doesn't actually say who can. Still, we can probably assume that the tech guy (Taylor) and the ideas man (Lodge) talked to each other in the process and came up with something together. Of course, there was also a camera operator present in the studio that day, so it's possible he, too, had some influence on the design.

And there's no doubt that Verity tried to credit Taylor. She was well known to have loved the titles, a fact we're reminded of in the recent An Adventure in Space and Time. So she probably wanted to highlight the value of the titles creator to the BBC by giving credits that emphasised the work involved. Though she was denied the ability to credit Taylor, it's certain the work of someone like Taylor would be credited in the BBC Wales version. He's definitely a part of the story of Doctor Who.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  22:43: Mon 25 Nov 2013