1974

Timeline for 1974

20th century | 1970s

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Events

• Reginald Tyler died, still working obsessively on revisions to his The True History of Planets. (EDA: Mad Dogs and Englishmen)
• The Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller arrived in England at a service station on the M62 sometime in the winter. (BFA: Horror of Glam Rock)
• Evelyn Smythe would later recall that the class of 1974 ^{[statement unclear]} were a particularly difficult bunch. (BFA: The Marian Conspiracy)
• The Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones went to London to find that a cat had turned people into sand figures. (IDW: Agent Provocateur)
• Liam McShane, the younger brother of Dorothy Gale "Ace" McShane, was born. (BFA: The Rapture)

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

• 05 - DW: The Time Warrior Episode 4 was first broadcast.
• 12 - DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs Episode 1 was first broadcast. The episode bore the on-screen title Invasion to preserve the cliffhanger of episode 1. This was the first time since the final episode of DW: The Gunfighters aired in May 1966 that an episode has carried a title different than that of the complete storyline.
• 14 - Paul Whitsun-Jones, who played the Squire in DW: The Smugglers and the Marshal in DW: The Mutants, died from appendicitis.
• 17 - Target Books followed its successful 1973 reprintings of novelisations from the 1960s with the publications of its first newly commissioned adaptations, DWN: Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion by Terrance Dicks, based upon the Third Doctor serial DW: Spearhead from Space, and DWN: Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters by Malcolm Hulke, adapting DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians. Auton Invasion would be the first of many Doctor Who novels written by Dicks over the next thirty-plus years and Target would continue to novelise Doctor Who adventures for the next twenty years. The practice of giving novelisations titles differing from the broadcast versions would continue off-and-on into the 1980s, though it would occur 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 would write not only the lion's share of Target novelisations, but also contribute to most of the later lines of spin-off continuation fiction.
• 19 - DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs Episode 2 was first broadcast.
• 26 - DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs Episode 3 was first broadcast.

February

• 02 - DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs Episode 4 was first broadcast.
• 09 - DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs Episode 5 was first broadcast.
• 16 - DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs Episode 6 was first broadcast.

• Richard Franklin departed the series as a regular, though he returned later in the season.

• 23 - DW: Death to the Daleks Part 1 was first broadcast. 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 - DW: Death to the Daleks Part 2 was first broadcast.
• 09 - DW: Death to the Daleks Part 3 was first broadcast.
• 16 - DW: Death to the Daleks Part 4 was first broadcast.
• 23 - DW: The Monster of Peladon Part 1 was first broadcast.
• 30 - DW: The Monster of Peladon Part 2 was first broadcast.

April

• DWN: Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon was first published.
• DWN: Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks was first published.
• 06 - DW: The Monster of Peladon Part 3 was first broadcast.
• 13 - DW: The Monster of Peladon Part 4 was first broadcast.
• 20 - DW: The Monster of Peladon Part 5 was first broadcast.
• 27 - DW: The Monster of Peladon Part 6 was first broadcast.
• 28 - Production began on DW: Robot, the first story featuring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.

May

• 01 - The final studio recording session for DW: 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 - DW: Planet of the Spiders Part 1 was first broadcast.
• 11 - DW: Planet of the Spiders Part 2 was first broadcast.
• 18 - DW: Planet of the Spiders Part 3 was first broadcast.
• 25 - DW: Planet of the Spiders Part 4 was first broadcast.

June

• 01 - DW: Planet of the Spiders Part 5 was first broadcast.
• 08 - DW: Planet of the Spiders Part 6 was first broadcast, concluding season 11 and ending in Jon Pertwee's regeneration into Tom Baker. Richard Franklin also departed the series permanently with this episode.

September

• Doctor Who Annual 1975 published.
• 9 - Jim Tyson, who played one of the tourists on the Empire State Building in DW: The Chase, died from a heart attack.
• 22 - Stephanie Bidmead, who played Maaga in DW: Galaxy 4 died.
• 30 - Tom Baker and Philip Hinchcliffe were interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Good Morning Sou'West.

October

• 17 - DWN: Doctor Who and the Dæmons and DWN: Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils were first published.

November

• 12 - Peter Davison made his TV acting debut in, "One of These Days", an episode of Warship.
• 21 - DWN: 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 SP: Doctor Who and the Daleks in The Seven Keys to Doomsday premiered at The Adelphi Theatre. This was the first professional stage play to feature the Doctor, and the first Doctor Who-related stage play since SP: The Curse of the Daleks in 1965-66.
• 28 - DW: Robot Part 1 was first broadcast, launching Season 12. Besides properly introducing Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, the episode also saw Ian Marter debuting as new companion Harry Sullivan.