Secret SERVICE
JACQUI STONEBRIDGE was in charge of Doctor Who’s press and publicity at the time of its launch. But she didn’t want to give everything away, she tells ROBERT BROWN...
Some of the many publicity prints prepared by Jacqui Stonebridge for Doctor Who in the 1960s, with programme information on their reverse sides.
Carole Ann Ford as Susan in a 1963 publicity shot for the very first episode of Doctor Who.
Ian (William Russell), the Doctor (William Hartnell), Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) and Susan in The Sea of Death, the first episode of The Keys of Marinus (1964).
The time travellers escape back to the TARDIS in The Firemaker, the final episode of 100,000 BC (aka An Unearthly Child, 1963).
The Doctor and the Toymaker (Michael Gough) in The Celestial Toymaker (1966).
Jacqui Stonebridge vividly recalls the lead-up to the transmission of Doctor Who’s first episode in November 1963. “The big thing, at the very beginning, was revealing that the TARDIS was a telephone box,” she points out. “That was a huge secret. There was an embargo on it, under life or death. Nobody was allowed to say anything, because it was a big shock, wasn’t it, at the time?”
Though Jacqui’s name is probably unfamiliar to even the most seasoned Doctor Who fans, she has a special place in the programme’s history. As part of the BBC’s Publicity Department, she had sole responsibility for creating and distributing Doctor Who’s press materials during its first five years on air.
Talking to Doctor Who Magazine from her home on the coast of Cornwall, near St Ives, Jacqui still has happy memories of her time on the programme. “I was 22 on the 15th of November 1963,” she says, “and the following week we launched the programme. That’s how I remember it all so clearly! The Daleks came along the following year and they seemed to capture the public’s imagination. It meant that the programme quickly attracted a lot of attention.”