Doctor Who: the creators of the Daleks, Cybermen and Ice Warriors – revealed

Kit Pedler

Scientist Kit Pedler needs little introduction to TV sci-fi fans. In 1966, he acted as adviser on Doctor Who and created the Cybermen, going on to pen many of their encounters with Patrick Troughton’s Doctor. In the late 60s/early 1970s Pedler developed Doomwatch, with his writing partner, the former Doctor Who script editor Gerry Davis.

In 2013, Miwk Publishing, who released the biography The Quest for Pedler, approached RT to see if we had kept any images of the Doomwatch writing team. We’d published photographs on two occasions in 1970, including this colour shot of Kit Pedler, Gerry Davis and Doomwatch producer Terence Dudley (who'd go on to write and direct Doctor Who episodes in the 1980s).

Sadly, the originals weren’t to be found in the RT Archive.

Amazingly, however, we did trace another photoshoot with Kit Pedler (solo portraits, above), which can be dated to 1974. (Kit Pedler died in 1981, aged 53.)

Brian Hayles

Another big name associated with Doctor Who in the 60s and 70s, Hayles’s significant claim to fame is as creator of, first, the Celestial Toymaker in 1966 and then the Ice Warriors in 1967. He wrote all 22 episodes featuring the Martian warriors until 1974.

Very few official photographs of Brian Hayles are known to exist, so these are a lovely find. They were taken in 1968 for a profile RT ran on the in-demand writer. Brian Hayles also wrote for Z Cars, Doomwatch, Out of the Unknown and for many years The Archers. His last work for the BBC was The Moon Stallion, a children’s serial aired a month after his sudden death in 1978, aged 47.

Terrance Dicks

Terrance Dicks is another of the heroic luminaries of Doctor Who. In his dual role as writer and (1968–74) as script editor, he perhaps had greater influence than any other person in shaping 20th-century Doctor Who. He oversaw the entire Jon Pertwee era, the introduction of the Time Lords, the Master, companions Jo Grant and Sarah Jane Smith, and he wrote Tom Baker’s debut serial…

Starting circa 1974, Dicks became the most prolific writer for Target Books, the novelisations of the Time Lord’s televised adventures, teaching a generation of young fans the pleasures of sharp and economical writing.

This RT photoshoot took place in August 1983 (photographer Chris Ridley), a few months before The Five Doctors, the 20th anniversary special written by Dicks.

A great interviewee Doctor Who convention favourite, Dicks died in 2019, aged 84.

Douglas Adams

World famous as author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in the late 70s Douglas Adams spent a year in the script editor’s seat on Doctor Who. During Tom Baker’s tenure, he penned several hugely popular adventures, including The Pirate Planet and City of Death. His six-part serial Shada was abandoned midway through production because of industrial action at the BBC.

In these rare RT shots from June 1985, Tim Roney photographed Adams outside BBC Broadcasting House in central London. He’s holding a towel (the essential item for all galactic hitch-hikers!) together with Emma Cochrane, a 15-year-old fan invited to “meet the author” on Radio 4’s Bookshelf (23 June 1985).

(Douglas Adams died aged 49 in California in 2001.)

Andrew Smith

Aged just 17, Doctor Who fan Andrew Smith was the envy of all aficionados when commissioned to write for the series in 1980. Here he is on the set of Full Circle, his highly regarded four-parter serial from Tom Baker’s final season, with Matthew Waterhouse, another teenage fan, who’d just been cast as boy-companion Adric. (Photographer Tim Roney)

“How young we both look!” says Smith, recalling the 1980 RT photoshoot vividly: “Matthew and I were interviewed on the theme of being two teenagers getting our TV breaks. The shots were taken on the set of a spacecraft's science lab, with various scientific instrument props laid out on the table.

“The continuity person was standing close by, telling us repeatedly not to touch any of the props. She was wary that we would move one, causing a continuity error. It's such a strong memory, and she was so insistent, that I'm surprised to see Matthew holding onto the microscope.”

Later a chief inspector in the Metropolitan Police, Smith has resumed writing in recent years – audios dramas for Big Finish and (now defunct) AudioGo, about Doctor Who, Blake's 7 and Survivors.

Robert Banks Stewart

An influential force in TV in the late 70s and 80s, Robert Banks Stewart had created Shoestring for BBC1 starring Trevor Eve and was photographed here by RT's Don Smith in 1981 when launching Bergerac, which would become a huge success for BBC1.

Doctor Who fans know his name for his work on two highly regarded stories from Tom Baker's second series, Terror of the Zygons (1975) and The seeds of Doom (1976). He died in 2016 aged 84.

Terry Nation

Creator of the Daleks and, later, BBC1 hit dramas Survivors and Blake’s 7, Terry Nation was a long-time Radio Times favourite, with half a dozen RT photoshoots across two decades. He was the creative “face” of Doctor Who in the 1960s and 70s, much as Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat have been in recent decades.

Many of our shots of Terry Nation have been published before, but one or two surprises lurked in the RT Archive...

He gave us his first interview in December 1964, for an article promoting The Dalek Invasion of Earth. To the untrained eye, the image (above) looks deceptively like Nation is sitting in front of a board adorned with Dalek photos, but it is in fact a montage.

Here is the original portrait at his desk (above). You can see that, even then, a cigarette was deemed unsuitable for a family audience and was cropped for the montage.

And, miraculously, the original composite (below) used in the 1964 RT article still exists in the Radio Times Archive 50 years on.

Radio Times went on to stage several photoshoots with Terry Nation (see below).

NB All images © Radio Times Archive

Huge thanks to Radio Times repro technician Ian Crabb for his contribution to this article. [Updated in 2020]

Further images from our 1964 shoot with Terry Nation

In 1972, Terry came to our offices in Marylebone High Street when we ran a Dalek competition. Photographed by RT's stalwart photographer Don Smith.

In 1973 we commissioned Allan Ballard to photograph Terry Nation at home with some of his creations for RT's Doctor Who Tenth Anniversary Special.

In 1975 he was again photographed by Allan Ballard with fledgling fourth Doctor Tom Baker to promote the classic serial, Genesis of the Daleks.

The final RT shoot was in 1977 for the launch of his series Blake's 7, photographed by John Timbers, with Terry Nation looking a tad Dave Allen.

More shots from our 1970s shoot with Kit Pedler.

Further images from our 1968 photoshoot with Ice Warrior creator Brian Hayles.

A couple more shots by Tim Roney of actor Matthew Waterhouse and writer Andrew Smith on the set of Full Circle (1980).

Robert Banks Stewart in his office in 1981, photographed by Don Smith.

An alternative shot of Terrance Dicks from 1983, photographed by Chris Ridley.

Contact sheets of Tim Roney's 1985 shoot with Douglas Adams at BBC Broadcasting House in London.

Finally, some very rare shots of Peter Ling and Hazel Adair. This writing team brought the soap Compact to BBC TV in the early 1960s, devised Crossroads for ATV in 1964, and in 1968, Peter Ling wrote the well-regarded Patrick Troughton Doctor Who, The Mind Robber. RT's Don Smith took these photos on 5 November 1963.

All images © Radio Times Archive