John Nathan-Turner: The Early Years

John Nathan-Turner will be remembered as a figure of contradictions - the quiet man in the loud shirts, the Doctor Who producer who vowed to make the show more serious and ended up hiring Ken Dodd and casting Bonnie Langford as a regular. He sought out quality writers such as Robert Holmes and Philip Martin and hired others after bumping into them by chance beside a BBC elevator. But long after the headlines of a thousand fanzines have faded and time has engrained a sense of perspective, he will be remembered as Doctor Who's longest-serving producer; a resolute programme-maker who guided the show through years of upheaval, regeneration, degeneration, delirious highs and agonising lows.

John Nathan-Turner was born in the Midlands on 12 August, 1947. A keen interest in the arts led to a job at the BBC where he filled his CV with increasingly impressive job-titles - Assistant Floor Manager, Production Assistant and Production Unit Manager - working across a range of series including The Pallisers, Nicholas Nickleby and All Creatures Great and Small. Amidst these jobs were stints on Doctor Who, initially working as floor crew on The Space Pirates (1969) and returning for The Ambassadors of Death (1970) and The Colony in Space (1971) before his first onscreen credit as Production Unit Manager for The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977). This was producer Philip Hinchcliffe's final story and throughout the following producer's tenure, Nathan-Turner grew increasingly involved with the show, handling the budget and developing ideas about how he could guide Doctor Who. Following Graham Williams's departure in 1979, Nathan-Turner was appointed series producer, the latest in a line stretching back to Verity Lambert in 1963. In a sense, he also became 'JN-T', the name by which fans referred to him, as if like the Doctor or his nemesis the Master, he was now another character in the mad mythology of Doctor Who, thereby rendering his full name prosaic and irrelevant.