Writer Terry Nation, pictured in 1955.
Writer and story editor Dennis Spooner in the early 1980s.
A shopkeeper (John Barrard) attends to the clothing requirements of the Doctor (William Hartnell) in The Reign of Terror (1964).
Doctor Who is the everything bagel of TV shows, with a sprinkling of every genre inside it – including those it will never be filed under, like costume drama or romance, because the sci-fi and fantasy tag trumps all others. But while there are some genres Doctor Who merely dabbles in, comedy has become an integral part of the formula. It’s baked right into the bagel.
“Comedians will argue for hours about what ‘comedy’ is,” says stand-up Tom Neenan of the Wheezing Groaning Sound podcast, “and every definition can be applied to Doctor Who. Characters undone by their own flaws – I present, Irongron [in The Time Warrior, 1973-74]. Taking a sideways, satirical view on the world – sounds a lot like The Sun Makers [1977]. The absurdity of combining two juxtaposing images or ideas – try a Mummy on the Orient Express [2014]… in space. They’re all wrong, of course. The true definition of comedy is a Yeti sitting on your loo in Tooting Bec.”
It was due to a comedy writer that Doctor Who lasted more than a few months. Though Terry Nation had some sci-fi scriptwriting experience when he was invited to submit ideas for Doctor Who, he mostly worked in comedy, knocking out the scripts for the first Dalek serial (1963-64) between being fired by Tony Hancock and taking a sketch-writing gig with Eric Sykes. Nation quickly became one of the Doctor Who’s main scriptwriters, and did much to establish the tone of the series’ first year – but it featured very little comedy. It’s conceivable Doctor Who could have just continued in this vein, but instead Dennis Spooner turned up and wrote The Reign of Terror (1964).