Dad's Army

Dad's Army was a TV series. Geoff Noble watched the show. (PROSE: Beautiful Chaos ^[+]Loading...["Beautiful Chaos (novel)"])

Some of its episodes were thrown out but reemerged at church fetes, (PROSE: The Eighth Wonder of the World ^[+]Loading...["The Eighth Wonder of the World (short story)"]) and Dad's Army was listed next to Doctor Who and Callan as examples of television shows with deleted content on a Wackopedia article about the partially lost David Bowie album Low/Profile. (PROSE: Low/Profile ^[+]Loading...["Low/Profile (short story)"])

Captain Mike Yates began to feel like the character Corporal Jones after telling people not to panic. (PROSE: Deep Blue ^[+]Loading...["Deep Blue (novel)"]) The Twelfth Doctor referred to the First Doctor as Corporal Jones. (TV: Twice Upon a Time ^[+]Loading...["Twice Upon a Time (TV story)"]) Jones was played by Clive Dunn. (PROSE: Twice Upon a Time ^[+]Loading...["Twice Upon a Time (novelisation)"])

In 1759, Scotland's best soldiers were taken to Europe to fight the French in the Seven Years' War. The Tenth Doctor compared the troops left in Scotland to Dad's Army. (PROSE: The Many Hands ^[+]Loading...["The Many Hands (novel)"])

Flip Jackson compared the elderly people of Formicia fighting a war wearing battle armour to "Dad's Army meets The Terminator". (AUDIO: The Middle ^[+]Loading...["The Middle (audio story)"])

Ace described the way the Heletians treated the people they conquered as making the Nazis' conquests look like Dad's Army. (PROSE: Theatre of War ^[+]Loading...["Theatre of War (novel)"])

Behind the scenes

Inspired by the series, The Home Guard contained numerous references to Dad's Army. Note the Union Flag arrows in particular.

• The Big Finish audio story, The Home Guard, was partially inspired by Dad's Army after writer Simon Guerrier read the cultural assessment of the series given in Dominic Sandbrook's history of 1960s Britain, White Heat. Guerrier began writing the story as a pastiche of Dad's Army but felt the script was too derivative and rewrote it. References to Dad's Army do remain, such as the cover's Union Flag arrows which are identical to those seen in the Dad's Army opening sequence. The Second Doctor also calls Jamie "stupid boy", Captain Mainwaring's catchphrase. Additionally, Brian Murphy's character Robert Collins was based on Private Godfrey. (BFX: The Home Guard)
• The character Captain Mainwaring from Dad's Army would have played a major role alongside several other BBC television characters in Lawrence Miles' unproduced Doctor Who novel The War.
• Private Godfrey appeared in Kim Newman's novel, The Bloody Red Baron, which features the appearances of many characters from various novels, films, and TV series, including Lady Jennifer Buckingham from The War Games.
• Much like Doctor Who, some black and white episodes of Dad's Army are also missing from the BBC archives, although this has been contained to just three of six Series 2 episodes and two Christmas sketches. One episode, A Stripe for Frazer, was reanimated in 2016 and originally released on the BBC Store alongside The Power of the Daleks. The three missing Series 2 episodes were remade in 2019 starring new actors, not dissimilar to the UCLAN remake of Mission to the Unknown from the same year.
• Also like Doctor Who, Dad's Army received a 2018 TV movie, We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story, dramatising the origins of the series to commemorate its 50th anniversary, similar to 2013's An Adventure in Space and Time.
• Jon Pertwee was originally offered the role of Captain Mainwaring, but had to turn it down due to a theatrical tour. His cousin Bill played Mr. Hodges.

Shared cast members

• Peter Butterworth, Fulton Mackay, Geoffrey Hughes, Philip Madoc, Alan Tilvern, John Ringham, John Cater, John Leeson, Talfryn Thomas, Erik Chitty, Pat Gorman, Roger Avon, Derek Ware, May Warden, Bob Hornery and Barbara Windsor appeared in the series.
• George Roubicek, Bernard Archard, Derek Newark, Scott Fredericks and John Baskcomb appeared in the 1971 film.
• Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon, Toby Jones, Blake Harrison, Bill Paterson, Mark Gatiss, Daniel Mays, Annette Crosbie, and Holli Dempsey appeared in the 2016 film.
• Kevin McNally, Christopher Villiers, Timothy West, Tracy Ann Oberman, and Kevin Eldon appeared in Dad's Army: The Lost Episodes.
• In addition, Clive Dunn, who played Lance Corporal Jones, also appeared as Doctor Fotheringown (a parody of the First Doctor) in the It's a Square World sketch The Doctor's New Invention. Bill Pertwee, who played Chief ARP Warden Hodges, is a distant cousin of Jon Pertwee.