Season 5: Taranium Core

Terry Nation was born on 8 August 1930 in Cardiff, and is most famous for being the creator of Doctor Who’s mortal enemy, the Daleks, and somewhat less famous for being the creator of Survivors (1975) and Blake’s 7 (1978).

Terry Nation started his career as a stand-up comedian, and wrote hundreds of comedy scripts for radio and television, including, famously, several episodes of Hancock (1963). However, it was his science-fiction adaptations in Out of This World (1962) that brought him to the attention of Doctor Who script editor David Whitaker.

Nation wrote the first four Dalek stories for the Hartnell Era — The Daleks (1963), The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964), The Chase (1965), and The Daleks’ Master Plan (1966). After a seven-year absence from the show, Nation returned in 1973 with Planet of the Daleks (1973), and wrote three more Dalek stories after that — Death to the Daleks (1974), Genesis of the Daleks (1975), and Destiny of the Daleks (1979). He also wrote two non-Dalek stories — The Keys of Marinus (1964), and The Android Invasion (1976).

Apart from his involvement in Doctor Who, Nation was a prolific television writer, writing episodes for the sort of shows we ended up watching on Bondfinger, including The Persuaders!, The Saint, The Avengers, and The New Avengers. In 1980 he moved to Los Angeles, where he wrote scripts for MacGyver and A Fine Romance.

So productive was Nation’s writing career that people have sometimes been tempted to dismiss him as a hack. But Nation was a gifted professional writer who could be relied on to produce interesting ideas, compelling set pieces and exciting action sequences. In Season 5 of 500 Year Diary, we’ll be reclaiming the word hack, and finding new ways to respect Nation’s work not just as a scriptwriter but as someone with a credible claim to have laid the very foundations for what Doctor Who became.