Dominic Sandbrook
Dominic Sandbrook was interviewed for Running from the Tax Man about the making of The Sun Makers.
Simon Guerrier's story for The Early Adventures range, The Home Guard, was partially inspired by Sandbrook's history of 1960s Britain, White Heat, and its assessment of Dad's Army in particular. Sandbrook's name was given to the character Jill Sandbrook. (BFX: The Home Guard)
Cultural assessments of Doctor Who[[edit] | [edit source]]
Sandbrook's works of late 20th century British history cite Doctor Who, among other forms of contemporary entertainment, as reflective of the culture and values of their native eras. As such, his books discuss many aspects of Doctor Who in their contemporary cultural context.
Never Had It So Good[[edit] | [edit source]]
Doctor Who is not discussed extensively in Never Had It So Good but Sandbrook does explore the growing popularity of science fiction during the mid-20th century, through the context of the early years of the Cold War. The conflict generated a fascination for apocalyptic storytelling, and with it, stories about alien invasions. The Quatermass series was one of the notable works to capitalise on this interest, and its success would go on to inspire, among numerous other franchises, Doctor Who. The more direct origins of Doctor Who resulted from the BBC's drive to diversify their televised output in response to growing commercial competition from ITV during the 1950s. Hugh Greene, Director-General of the BBC, successfully recruited Sydney Newman to the Corporation as Head of Drama. Doctor Who was one of the many programmes produced at this time under Newman's management.
Chapter 19 gives the most attention to Doctor Who and its first season in 1963 in the context of the rise of television. With reference to Sydney Newman and Verity Lambert, he notes that the series gained popularity for its fusion of the old with the modern, and that The Daleks was instrumental in its enduring popularity in this regard. Dalek merchandise became immensely popular with younger viewers, while the series itself began to gather a much larger periphery demographic as well. A publicity photograph of the earliest Daleks surrounding a red London policebox is among the illustrated material featured in the book.
White Heat[[edit] | [edit source]]
Chapter 3 examines technological changes during the 1960s, beginning with the Post Office Tower. As such, Sandbrook mentions The War Machines and notes that contemporary viewers seemed to find the idea of computers controlling human minds “preposterous”. Man-vs.-machine storytelling was becoming more popular, as shown by The Invasion, and in the conceptualisation of the Cybermen more generally (a still from The Invasion, showing the Cybermen in front of St Paul's Cathedral is among the illustrations). By this point, Doctor Who was firmly part of a vibrant British culture.
Mary Whitehouse's criticisms of the series are briefly addressed. Sandbrook attributes her objection to “strangulation... by obscene vegetable matter” to the Krynoid, although fails to see the threat this ostensibly posed to British morals.
Dialogue from The Ice Warriors, between the Second Doctor and Clent discussing the disappearance of spring, prefaces Chapter 29, an exploration of 60s modernism.
State of Emergency[[edit] | [edit source]]
Sandbrook prefaces Chapter 3, "Ghosts of 1926", with an extract from Doctor Who and the Green Death by Malcolm Hulke, before examining the industrial action of the early 1970s. The extract involves Dai Evans and Clifford Jones discussing the General Strike of 1926.
Chapter 5, discussing environmentalism, is titled "The Green Death". It calls its televised namesake "by far the most radical Doctor Who story of the era". It also references The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Spearhead from Space, Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Sea Devils, Inferno, Planet of Evil and Invasion of the Dinosaurs as other serials which contain elements reflecting 70s environmental concerns. Despite the series' educational roots, these stories often were usually very critical of scientific types, whose plans almost invariably resulted in disaster.
Discussing children's entertainment in Chapter 9, Sandbrook notes that 70s Who was popular with older children despite – or rather because of – its frights, which came under frequent criticism. Terror of the Autons was debated in the House of Lords for its use of Auton policemen, while Planet of the Spiders was blamed by the Church of England for increased arachnophobia among children. He concludes that the BBC, “sadly and foolishly”, yielded to parental pressure and the likes of Mary Whitehouse, ushering in the lighter Douglas Adams era. He calls the giant rat from The Talons of Weng-Chiang “one of the worst-realised monsters not merely in the show's history, but in the history of human entertainment.”
Chapter 10, examining feminism, opens with a paragraph about Sarah Jane Smith's introduction in The Time Warrior, which reflected the changing attitudes of the period. It also notes that Sarah Jane's successor, Leela, was among more liberated female characters of the era but perhaps appealed more to male viewers than female.
Sandbrook discusses The Curse of Peladon as an expression of support for Britain's entry into the European Economic Community, The Monster of Peladon as support for the NUM during the 1974 miners' strike, and Robot as a partial parody of the Central Policy Review Staff.
Seasons in the Sun[[edit] | [edit source]]
Acknowledging that Doctor Who, despite being escapist fantasy, regularly ventured into the headlines of the day, Sandbrook singles out The Sun Makers, the satire on taxation born out of Robert Holmes' battle with Inland Revenue. He calls the serial “By far the most entertaining shriek of rage against [Denis] Healey's tax policy”, “a very unlikely source” for such a parody, and “one of Tom Baker's strangest adventures.”
Sandbrook notes that, by 1979, the Doctor Who Appreciation Society had a higher membership that the 1,500-strong membership of the entryist group Militant Tendancy after they took over the youth wing of the Labour Party. In the same year, rampant strikes in the television industry continued to cause chaos at the BBC, one of the consequences being the cancellation of the planned Doctor Who season finale. Douglas Adams recycled some of the material for his novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
