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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.