FEATURE BY ALAN BARNES
Malcolm Hulke pictured in 1963. Photo © Studiocanal.
A publicity shot of Patrick Troughton as the Doctor on the set of The War Games, the 1969 serial written by Hulke and Dicks.
The late Malcolm ‘Mac’ Hulke is remembered as one of Doctor Who’s most significant scriptwriting talents of the late 1960s and early 70s – and as the author of many of the very best Target Books novelisations. Alongside the series’ then-script editor, his protégé-turnedcollaborator Terrance Dicks, Hulke co-wrote The War Games (1969), which at last revealed who the Doctor really was (a Time Lord), and why he spent his time messing about in the fourth and fifth dimensions (he’d stolen a TARDIS, and left his home planet in search of kicks). He invented the Silurians, the sleeping Earth reptiles deposed by Man, and brought social and political subtext to the Doctor’s adventures, too – exploring, for example, xenophobia in the Silurians stories, and Cold War sabre-rattling in Frontier in Space (1973).
The first edition of Malcom Hulke and Terrance Dicks’ seminal book The Making of Doctor Who.