Doctor Who - Documentary s01e13 Episode Script

Doctor.
Doctor.
""The Sensorites"".
Poor, unloved ""The Sensorites"".
Nestling, lost somewhere down the back of the fans" collective sofa.
There it lies at number seven in that heady first year of Doctor Who.
It didn`t even have the decency to get wiped so that we could all mourn its loss and imagine how brilliant it must have been.
It"s not a story anybody really talks about.
And we certainly don"t know that much about it.
And there"s one man in particular that we know practically nothing about.
This guy.
Peter R Newman.
Who on earth is Peter R Newman? All that there seems to be in the vast repository of cyberspace about Peter R Newman is that he was and that he died in 1 969.
And also that he died in 1 975.
So as well as there being practically nothing about him, he also suffers the ignominy, poor chap, of having died twice.
I think it"s time to bring out the big guns.
MAN: Hello? Hello, is that Rob Shearman? SHEARMAN: Hello, that sounds like Toby Hadoke.
-It is indeed.
-Hello, Toby, how are you? Yeah, hello, is that the offices of Doctor Who Magazine? MAN: Hello, Toby.
Yes, you know it`s the offices of Doctor Who Magazine, you write for us.
Peter R Newman.
SHEARMAN: Peter R Newman who would be, what, the writer of ``The Sensorites``? That"s the fella, yeah.
MAN: Peter R Newman.
Um, well, uh Hmm.
SHEARMAN: I`m not sure there`s actually anything to know.
I think people have been trying to find out for years.
MAN: Now, the trouble is, Toby, Peter R Newman died way back in the `70s before Doctor Who Magazine had even started, so no one ever really interviewed him or knew much about him at all.
SHEARMAN: I know, of course, absolutely nothing about him.
He wrote ``The Sensorites``and then disappeared off the face of the Earth.
Better men than I have uncovered all sorts of documents that have chronicled the development of Doctor Who in its early years.
But with Peter R Newman, they"ve always drawn a blank.
We haven"t even found so much as a photograph.
He"s a true enigma, we know nothing about him.
So in true Doctor Who style, with limited time and scant resources, we"re going to solve this mystery.
HADOKE: I live just down the road from the magnificent Alexandra Palace, icon of British broadcasting.
And I`m here today to meet a man who I hope will help me to uncover the truth about Peter R Newman.
He`s the best researcher in the business.
And if he can`t track the Newman trail, no one can.
Ladies and gentlemen, Richard Bignell.
So, Peter R Newman.
What do you know? (LAUGHS) Well, to be honest, Toby, very little.
There seems to be very little information about him.
I"ve tried looking into his life in the past, but never really got terribly far.
Yeah, I mean, I"ve read all the books and magazines and they"re all very vague, they all seem to quite fudge the issue.
-There"s a lot of ambiguity there.
-Yeah, that"s right.
There"s also been sort of these various rumours going round that he suffered from depression, maybe even committed suicide.
But this is Doctor Who we"re talking about and, you know, a lot of rumours with Doctor Who turn out to be codswallop.
Yeah, quite.
But you know, if it"s one of those things that you"d be interested to have a look at, I"ll be more than delighted to try and help you out and see what we can actually find out about him.
Oh, yeah, well, absolutely.
Even if we just find out what the ""R"" stands for.
-(LAUGHS) -So where do we begin? Well, I think I"ve got a lead on Peter"s death certificate, and that"s in Westminster.
So shall we go and have a look? Oh, Watson, the game"s afoot.
HADOKE: So Richard and I are off to explore the Westminster Register Office.
Let`s hope we can start to unravel this mystery here.
So this is where we all end up.
-As a name in one of these.
-Looks like it.
So you"ve tracked a Peter R Newman -That"s right.
-to this vault.
And it should be this one, I think, Toby.
Okay.
But they"re common names, so we don"t actually know yet that this is our guy.
No, that"s right.
So hopefully the death certificate should tell us.
We"re looking for entry number 1 80.
Here we go.
HADOKE: Okay.
-Peter Richard Newman.
-HADOKE: Okay.
Gives his occupation as being a writer, so it looks like we"ve got the right guy.
Okay, and the death is 22nd of February, 1 975, which is one of the two years that we had.
That"s right.
Ties in.
Gives the cause of death here as being massive cerebral haemorrhage.
So, looks like he probably had a stroke or a blow on the head, something like that.
So that Hopefully we can scotch the suicide thing with that.
Looks like it.
I can"t say I"m disappointed.
I"m looking for a you know, find out some fun stuff about Doctor Who and not uncover a man"s disaster.
It gives his address at the time of death here as being Balfour Road, in Ilford, in Essex.
I"ll go and have a look at that, Toby, and see whether or not we can find any family or friends in that particular area.
Much as we would probably like to disagree, there"s more to one man"s life than Doctor Who.
So I think I should maybe try and find out what he was doing for the rest of his life when he wasn"t writing ""The Sensorites"".
"Cause I"m sure he got up to plenty more.
Excellent.
All right, -let"s see what we can find out.
-Okay.
One thing we do know about Peter is that four years before ""The Sensorites"", he had a script produced by the mighty Hammer Films.
It was called Yesterday`s Enemy and it was made here at Shepperton Studios.
I`m here to meet Hammer`s archivist, Marcus Hearn, to see if Yesterday"s Enemy can shed any light on our Mr Newman.
So for the uninitiated who might not have seen it, can you describe Yesterday`s Enemy for us? Yesterday`s Enemy is a war film about a British unit who are cut off behind enemy lines in the Burmese jungle in 1 942.
The commanding officer is so desperate to get the information about Japanese troop movements, that he executes a couple of innocent Burmese villagers.
Unfortunately for him, the British then get captured and the Japanese use exactly the same tactics on them.
So it"s not your typical Hammer horror.
There"s no Peter Cushing, no Christopher Lee, no buxom women screaming at horrific monsters.
Not at all.
No, in fact, Yesterday`s Enemy was in many ways a reaction against that type of film.
In 1 959, when it was produced, Hammer was at the peak of its commercial success, but it was suffering from a perceived credibility crisis.
Peter Newman was one of a number of intellectual writers that Hammer looked to to try to restore their reputation.
It"s quite an uncompromising film, isn"t it? Quite a tough one.
It is an uncompromising film.
I mean, lots of people were alarmed that Hammer were making a movie about British war crimes.
And Newman had to defend himself from several ex-servicemen who insisted it couldn"t possibly be true.
But the film was nominated for four BAFTAs, so it made a good impression in the industry.
You could say it"s thematically similar to ""The Sensorites"" in the idea of soldiers stuck behind enemy lines having to resort to rather unpleasant ways of perpetuating the war.
They are very rough quarters here, you"ll have to excuse that.
But I"m sure you"re both used to battle stations by now.
-Yes.
-Excuse me.
Number Two, you can take over ammunition detail now.
You"ll find the new supplies all ready.
HEARN: I think Yesterday"s Enemy is a more accomplished work than ``The Sensorites``.
But one thing they do have in common is that they both give equal consideration to both sides of the conflict.
Uh, now I"m not suggesting this was particularly innovative, even in 1 964, but it was quite rare in Doctor Who.
So what happened next? Did Newman write any other films for Hammer? For a while in the late "50s and early "60s, Newman was Hammer"s golden boy and we know he was commissioned for two or three other scripts.
But none of them were ever produced because of either lack of money or censorship problems.
But there were other examples where projects collapsed because he was asking for too much money.
By 1 96 3, Hammer certainly considered that he had priced himself out of the market and didn"t approach him for anything else.
Now, you"ve spoken to many people associated with Hammer over the years.
Did any of them have any memories of Peter himself? Well, from the people I"ve spoken to and the evidence that survives in the archive, it seems there was a slightly fractious relationship.
Um, although he does remain an enigmatic figure.
Oh, the plot thickens.
Thank you, Marcus.
It"s been really helpful.
No problem.
While I`ve been talking Hammer with Marcus, Richard has been very busy.
So, how goes it, Mr Bignell? Ah, Toby! Hiya.
-Well, we"ve had some success.
-Excellent.
We"ve managed to find Peter"s birth certificate.
Yeah, now, I might be being stupid here, but we"d got the death certificate, which had got the date of birth on it.
So I don"t quite follow why that"s going to be any use to us.
The birth certificate actually gives us two very important pieces of information.
First of all, it tells us exactly where Peter was born.
In this case, in Ilford, in Essex.
So we now know that Peter was born in Ilford, he was living in Ilford when he died, and we also know from the death certificate that the informant of Peter"s death was his brother Francis, who was also living in Ilford.
So it looks like the family stayed very much in one location.
-Okay.
-But it also tells us something else rather interesting and that"s the maiden name of Peter"s mother, which in this case is Holland.
Now, what I"ve been able to do is have a search online and I"ve been able to look under Peter"s mother, and look in the Ilford area, and we"ve been able to find his brothers and sisters.
And here we have all of Peter"s brothers and sisters.
So here we"ve got Peter in the middle.
His oldest brother, Harry, born in 1 91 8, and his youngest sister, Sheila, who was born in 1 931 .
Oh, wow, so So while I"ve been busy finding out about, you know, his writing and his work and things like that, this is actually picturing his family and wow, lots of potential people, I guess, that could possibly, what, conceivably be findable.
Well, do you want to know the good news? -All right.
-Okay.
I"ve also had a look in the electoral registers, I"ve had a look in the telephone directories and in the land registry records.
And I"ve been able to find one of Peter"s family living not far, just outside of Ilford, in the borough of Brentwood.
I thought we"d pretty much finished because we got a bit of stuff about the man and his work.
But now with this, you"re saying there"s a possibility that there might, there might possibly be somebody alive that actually knew Peter.
That"s extraordinary.
That"s above and beyond.
You"re a genius! Yes, I know I am, Toby.
Richard has sent me out on the road to visit a lady who we believe to be Peter R Newman`s sister.
Her name`s Vera, and I`ve arranged to have a little chat with her and her niece, Helen.
All these corridors look the same.
Feels like we`re finally getting somewhere.
Moment of truth.
-Hello.
-Helen? -That"s me, yes.
-Toby.
-Oh, hi.
-You"re Peter R Newman"s niece? I am, yes.
Come in.
Auntie, this is Toby.
-This is my Auntie Vera.
-How do you do? Thank you very much for letting us into your home.
Um, I"ve come to ask about Peter.
Oh, you want to know about Peter? Oh.
Here"s Peter.
Oh, he"s actually here.
Oh, my goodness.
So this is him? Peter R Newman, I presume.
Yes.
That"s Peter.
I had no idea what he looked like.
My lovely brother.
So what was it like growing up with Peter? A lot of fun, actually.
He was always up to things, always doing things.
Making plans.
He ran away from school with his brother and he tried to join the army.
He met this deserter and he wanted to change over with him.
He didn"t know he was a deserter then.
I had the police knocking on the door, they thought he was the deserter! He went back to school but, uh because he tried to run away and join the army, he was expelled.
And what did he do in the war? He was a pilot, first of all.
That"s right, he was a pilot.
And Wasn"t he in Burma for a while? He was in Burma, yes.
He had a very tough time in Burma.
And that was when he wrote Yesterday`s Enemy? He wrote Yesterday`s Enemy on the strength of that, that"s right.
He met a very nice Japanese officer and he got on very well with him.
And I think he put a lot of that into the film.
And what do you think he thought of ""The Sensorites"", the story he wrote for Doctor Who? He was quite excited about it.
And when it came on television, he invited a lot of his nieces and school friends there.
And they were all terribly excited about it.
And the transmission broke down halfway through.
And he didn"t like the Sensorites" costumes, did he? He thought the costumes were a little bit silly, but I don"t know what he would have thought about them now.
Do you think that he was happy that he had written something for children? Yes, yes, he was happy.
He had a vivid imagination and that"s what he enjoyed doing.
He was quite thrilled, actually.
And what kind of man was Peter R Newman? How would you sum your brother up? Always fun to be with.
Peter was a man who appealed to everybody.
He was a lovely man, Peter.
He was a lovely brother.
That"s all I can say about him, really.
HADOKE: So, ""The Sensorites"" is the last credit that Peter gets.
Did he carry on writing? Um, well, he seemed to be quite frustrated with himself.
I think he did try to carry on writing, but he seemed to have writer"s block.
He was always up in his room typing and there was all bits of paper everywhere.
And he"d get frustrated and come downstairs and his hair had been all ruffled.
He"d get a glass of milk from the fridge.
Mum would say, ""Don"t talk to him, leave him alone.
""Just let him get on with it.
"" And then he"d just go quietly back up to his room again.
Um, there again, sometimes we"d hear him typing, and then maybe not.
So nothing else got produced, which meant he must have been very frustrated by that.
I think he was, definitely.
So if he wasn"t making ends meet as a writer, how did he earn a living? Um, he got a job in the Tate art gallery as a porter, which I think he enjoyed and I think he enjoyed it even more when a film crew came in one day to do some filming.
And he really liked helping them out that day, and remembering all the old ropes and just giving them a hand.
So he never lost the hunger for the industry.
No, I think that always stayed with him, it never went away.
And he died in 1 975? That"s right.
He did.
He died tragically.
He"d seen his brother die a few weeks before of cancer.
And he was at work and he fell down a flight of stairs and hit his head on one of those great big iron radiators and he went into a coma.
I was waiting for him to come home and normally I"d see with him his mac on with a newspaper, The Evening Standard, under his arm.
But that night he didn"t turn up and I wondered and heard a knock at the door and it was a policeman informing us that there"d been an accident and he"d gone into a coma.
-And you were 1 1 .
-I was 1 1 , yes.
And I always remember that.
-It must have been really sad for you.
-It was, yeah.
And yet, all these years later, you get another strange knock on the door and it"s people asking you about Doctor Who that your uncle did all those years ago.
Is that I mean, that must be very strange.
It is.
After all, I mean, that"s, what, back in the "60s when he wrote this, so it"s a long time-lapse.
But you had no idea that he was this sort of enigmatic figure that we knew nothing about? No idea at all.
I"m really pleased, actually, that we can remember him like this.
I guess with Doctor Who, he"ll always have that bit of immortality attached to it.
Mmm-hmm.
It does look that way.
Well, look, thank you so much for your time and for sharing your memories of Peter.
I really do appreciate it.
Nice to meet you.
Thank you.
There"s a twist in the tale.
Helen has given me this CD, which has a recording of Peter reading some Shakespeare.
Now, this dates back to a time when you had to go into a shop especially to have your voice recorded, as a novelty.
So it"s astonishing that it still survives.
So let"s have a listen.
Ere had we early arisen, when there came this news from France.
It seems our king`s proposal, in peace and faithful merit, that he had forfeit all such claims to the French crown, save for those provinces held as liege by his father, has met with the disapproval of the French procurators, who divide their king to reflect our leader`s offer, and have such insolence as to demand those provinces for themselves but truth to force have warned us that of which themselves are guilty.
Um Wow.
Well Hello, Peter.
I went into this hoping to find out some biographical information about a Doctor Who mystery.
Um, what did the ""R"" stand for? I thought that would"ve been an achievement to find that out.
Certainly find out about his writing and what informed the themes of ""The Sensorites"", a Doctor Who story that nobody talks an awful lot about.
Uh Didn"t expect to find out what he looks like and meet his family.
Uh and find out that he was a man of contradictions.
He was somebody that joined up the army, or tried to join the army very early and yet his experiences led him to write about the war in very pragmatic and honest terms about its brutality.
Um A man who was desperate to write, and yet difficult to work with.
Um and frustrated and actually unable to produce anything more than the two works that we know of his.
And then, to hear him, to have a piece of Peter that actually survives after all this time, I think that"s quite amazing.
So we found him, Doctor Who`s man of mystery.
And even though he died nearly 40 years ago, I think I"ve got to know a little something about the man that was Peter R Newman.
And I"ll certainly never watch ""The Sensorites"" in quite the same way again.