Delia Revealed

I can't help be impressed by how ahead of her time Delia Derbyshire was -- and in these recently revealed archives we get an idea about how advanced she was -- making sounds without synths or keyboards -- frequently cutting up and splicing together tapes and other strange things.

Verity

It is especially sad to hear on the 44th anniversary, that Doctor Who's first producer Verity Lambert has passed away. Unlike, say, Star Trek, Doctor Who doesn't have one "creator" -- but her influence is very much still there today, showing up most recently in Human Nature.

It was Verity Lambert, after all, who argued for the first Dalek story with Sydney Newman -- without which it is unlikely Doctor Who would be, well, Doctor Who.

Doctor Who isn't her only work -- her entire
biography is impressive.

The best tribute to her is that the show she helped to create is still going strong four and a half decades along, and that she will be remembered as "Doctor Who's mother" for as long as the concept survives.

As Russell T Davies says: "This is her legacy and we will never forget that."

The Doctor Who Challenge

Ok -- here's a question. Let's say that you've got ten days to convince an adult woman that Doctor Who doesn't suck.

What would you do? Anything -- individual episodes, meta-information about the series -- whatever..

I figure focusing on new series episodes are best at this point in time -- "Rose" of course is intended as a good first episode. I figure any Steven Moffat episode is a good choice as well, especially since they're generally stand alone.

The Doctor's Girls

This piece of art called Doctor's Girls is all sorts of awesome. It's nice to see all of the new fan art and fan activity that's starting to come up now that the new series is really inspiring people again -- but not just the new series (which is awesome) -- but also the classic series as well.


Doctor's Girls by *mimi-na on deviantART

The Women of Doctor Who

She's Such A Geek, a weblog about women and various geeky interests, just posted an entry about The Women Of Doctor Who. And I think that the contributions of both Verity Lambert and Delia Derbyshire were essential in making the series that we recognize today.

And while most of the recognition towards the new series has gone to Russell T Davies, there are a number of women involved in key roles as well with the new series.

At the top executive level of the BBC, both Lorraine Heggessey and Jane Tranter had (in the case of Heggessey) and still have a great contribution in making sure that new Doctor Who made it into production and supporting it.

And Julie Gardner's role as an Executive Producer is perhaps underrated. She wasn't a Doctor Who fan before she started to work on the show -- as opposed to Russell T Davies and Phil Collinson -- and that meant that she was a vital fresh pair of eyes. And I suspect that it was her involvement that really made sure that this new version of Doctor Who would be accessible for all of the people that weren't life long Doctor Who fans, especially women and girls.

Helen Raynor has been a consistent script editor for the new series, and will finally get a chance to be the first women writer for the new television series.

It has been a real oversight that the new series has yet to have women writers or directors so far, and it is good to see that change. It is especially unfortunate that it has taken the new series longer to find a woman director than it did for the original series.