FUTURE TENSE: British Science Fiction Television
Part Five / 1990–2005: ‘Terra Incognita’ — From Space Precinct to Doctor Who
The 1990s began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It marked time on the Cold War and the eventual dissolution of the USSR then shifted ideological battles to concerns about ethnic and religious fundamentalism that would culminate in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in September 2001.
Back in Britain and prior to 9/11, Thatcher’s successor John Major advocated for a classless society and the country enjoyed a post-recession boom but the political classes were clearly tainted by corruption, greed, self-interest and were out of step with a more tolerant and diverse society. When Labour returned to power in 1997 the liberal values and culture of the 1960s were eagerly rehabilitated and enshrined in meaningless postmodern branding exercises like ‘Brit Art’, ‘Brit Pop’ and ‘Cool Britannia’.
Television industry deregulation, via the 1990 Broadcasting Act, completely changed British terrestrial broadcasting. The BBC adopted an internal market and an obligation to co-produce with independent companies. Competition for funding, international sales and viewers increased as cable and satellite channels proliferated. Perhaps as a result of this, new British science fiction dramas struggled to achieve longevity due to a lack of the confidence, investment and vigorous competition that their American counterparts flourished in.
the ‘cult TV’ show had arrived
The boom in science fiction and fantasy dramas in America that began with Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the Trek franchise continuing in the spin-offs Deep Space Nine (1993–99) and Voyager (1995–2001) in the 1990s, inspired such successful and diverse productions such as The X Files (1993–2002), Sliders (1995–2000), Babylon 5 (1994–98) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003).
Often the innovative results of mixing conventions from soap opera and comic books with established science fiction and horror tropes and displaying an increasing sophistication in visual effects, a number of them opted for the development of series long story arcs. These developments went hand-in-hand with the concept of ‘quality’ prime-time television dramas being helmed by powerful writer-producer figures. Joss Whedon, Chris Carter and J. Michael Straczynski became the heirs to the work pioneered by Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman and Michael Piller on the Star Trek franchise.
Yet, these shows also heralded a ‘niching’ of the genre within television’s widening remit, augmented by new channels and new broadcasting formats, and science fiction, fantasy and horror was often aimed at a narrowly defined audience demographic. The concept of the ‘cult TV’ show had arrived.
However, the nostalgia fest of ‘Cool Britannia’ did not extend specifically to a glut of slick new British science fiction dramas. Despite a sense of cultural confidence, realism was the watch word of the day and docu-dramas, reality TV shows, crime and social realist dramas dominated prime-time. American science fiction shows such as Star Trek: The Next Generation and Quantum Leap (1989–93) were imported and formed niche programming along with repeats of old favourites such as Thunderbirds and the ITC back catalogue in a regular early evening BBC 2 slot. This nostalgic reverence for popular British telefantasy of the 1960s, something of a postmodern indulgence at the time, would gradually inspire reinvention and rejuvenation.
While Red Dwarf held the fort for original science fiction comedy productions, hybrid forms of soap opera, murder mystery and detective genres did emerge and soap opera storytelling styles had a lasting impact on the genre’s development in Britain. Early, faltering steps included London Weekend’s investment in a glossy international co-production Murder on the Moon (1989), a weak science fiction whodunnit whose geopolitics were made immediately redundant by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR, and Jupiter Moon (1990–6), satellite channel Galaxy’s attempt at a science fiction soap opera set in 2050 about the students and crew of a space university housed within a ship orbiting the titular moon Callisto. Creator and producer William Smethurst apparently sold the concept to British Satellite Broadcasting, prior to its merger with Sky, as: ‘The loves, passions, and courage of the students and crew of a space polytechnic as it ventures through the universe in search of scientific discoveries.’
The £6 million budget covered 150 episodes of live action recorded at Central Television’s studios in Birmingham, in the traditional multi camera studio format, and visual effects shot at Barandov studios in Prague. Smethurst strove for scientific accuracy despite the low production values and storylines from writers, used to working on The Archers and Doctor Who, that mixed ‘space battles and dangerous missions to volcanic moons’ with ‘a gentle story about a hamster, and another one about a donkey sanctuary.’
As an indication of the shifts inherent in a less regulated television industry and the emerging dominance of Rupert Murdoch’s own Sky satellite broadcasting company, 108 episodes of the 150 made were shown on the Galaxy channel before BSB closed. The remainder were then broadcast by the Sci-Fi Channel in 1996. It was hardly the second coming for British science fiction television.
Gerry Anderson re-entered the fray with Space Precinct in 1994. This was developed from Space Police, an unsold 1987 pilot film, as a British-American co-production with Mentorn Films and Grove Television Enterprises. This futuristic police procedural offered Anderson’s usual visual and technical flair and many episodes were directed by high profile British directors such as John Glen, Sid Hayers and Piers Haggard. There was a good writing team in place but many of their staff were based in the US while the production staff made the series in the UK at Pinewood Studios and this often led to a lot of miscommunication.
Space Precinct did struggle to realise its ambitions — Anderson wanted Kojak in space while one of its lead writers Marc Scott Zicree wanted it to be as gritty and realistic as Hill Street Blues — but there were engaging, witty characters, good visual effects for the time (despite a disappearing budget that eschewed blue screen techniques for what was, even then, seen as old school model shooting) and often some interesting stories. It was shown on Sky One in the UK before migrating to that aforementioned ‘Cult Zone’ slot on BBC 2. The early evening slot on BBC 2 also forced Anderson to reshoot an episode to make it suitable for a pre-watershed audience and it suggested the series was pitched at older children and adults and then, in what must have felt like déjà vu for Anderson, poor scheduling in America, where broadcasters couldn’t fathom if the show was for children or adults, doomed it to failure.
‘an Avengers for the 1990s’
Crime and espionage mixed with science fiction was an increasingly popular hybrid but Bugs (1995–9) and Crime Traveller (1997), co-productions made by independent Carnival Films for the BBC, also reflected the pitfalls in science fiction’s convergence with other narrative styles and trying to satisfy multiple stakeholders within Director General John Birt’s shake up of outsourcing and co-production management at the Corporation. In the middle of this shake up, a certain Time Lord also deigned to make a reappearance.
Bugs was described in 1995 by series consultant Brian Clemens as ‘an Avengers for the 1990s’. Its mix of science fiction, espionage and adventure featuring a team of hi-tech experts foiling the exploits of assassins, arms dealers, hijackers and blackmailers — with all the requisite stunts, explosions and tongue in cheek dialogue — was perhaps more akin to the camp absurdity of ITC’s Department S.
An ‘office romance’ soap element ran in parallel with stories where the team confronted larger than life villains while their Canary Wharf locations provided a cool, modernist veneer. Despite its absurdities and formulaic premise, Bugs also articulated growing millennial fears about technology in Britain’s post-industrial society, pre-figuring the Y2K threat to global information and banking systems and the continuing fears of computer hacking and terrorism. It was popular enough to run for four series, even though it briefly faced cancellation after the third, and yet it seemed to foreshadow many similar ensemble adventure and espionage dramas to come, such as Spooks and Torchwood.
However, when these dramas eventually proved difficult to sustain as potential replacements for Doctor Who an appropriate solution was to consider reviving the Time Lord in 1996’s BBC-Fox-Universal back door pilot for a new co-produced series. Producer Philip Segal, former vice-president of Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, brokered a deal where Fox committed to a TV pilot with the potential of going to series and stumped up half of the $5 million budget. The rest was matched with money from the BBC and Universal.
While the pilot movie had very good production values, was well directed by Geoffrey Sax, and offered a brilliant piece of casting in the form of Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, the finished product was riven with contradictions. It attempted to regenerate the Time Lord, with Sylvester McCoy handing over to McGann, introduce a new Doctor and all of the attendant lore and mythology of the original series as well as a plot involving the Master and a set of new companions to American audiences unfamiliar with the series — all within the running time of 85 minutes. It had its work cut out for it.
In attempting to conform to the style of US dramas, Doctor Who also ended up as a slightly bland mid-Atlantic spectacle, rendered risk-averse by trying to serve several investors at once and not particularly pleasing any of them. In the US it was also competing for its slot opposite a major baseball game and a pivotal episode of sit-com Roseanne but in the UK it was highly rated and pulled in 9 million viewers. Such were the hazards of co-production deals that the BBC didn’t take up the option to continue production even though there was a great deal to enjoy in the pilot and it proved there was still life in the old franchise yet.
In the wake of the relative failure of 1996's Doctor Who, Saturday evenings were briefly occupied by Crime Traveller. Created by Anthony Horowitz, it merged science fiction and police procedural and offered ‘light entertainment’ drama in the mode of Carnival’s other adventure series, Bugs. A CID detective Jeff Slade discovers Holly Turner, a forensic scientist working in his department, owns a time machine bequeathed to her from her father. Jeff rescues his career by using her time machine to solve cases. The soap element was provided by the growing romantic attachment between Jeff and Holly. It was also a relationship influenced by ITC adventure shows and the Mulder / Scully dynamic of The X Files.
Deemed something of a success with 11 million tuning in for the opening episode ‘Jeff Slade and the Loop of Infinity’, the ratings fell back to an average of 8 million for the remaining seven episodes of the series. Critics attacked it for being too lightweight and undemanding even though its time travel conundrums often tested the Saturday evening audience that tuned in. However, its ‘light entertainment’ credentials didn’t translate into mainstream success and Horowitz believed a second series wasn’t commissioned because, in essence, the BBC took its eye off the ball: ‘There was a chasm at the BBC, created by the arrival of a new Head of Drama and our run ended at that time. There was no-one around to commission a new series… and so it just didn’t happen.’
Far more interesting were Dennis Potter’s Cold Lazarus and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, both ambitious but flawed attempts to maintain British science fiction’s reputation on television in 1996. Neverwhere, a dark fantasy set in hidden, parallel version of London, was a psychogeographic exploration of urban history and mythology that recalled the innovative adult and children’s series of the 1970s and reflected the contemporary comic book work of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Based on an idea first proposed by Lenny Henry, it refashioned the standard quest narrative into a meditation on entropy and decay, of a parallel past where the hero from our world becomes the reluctant saviour of the strange kingdom of London Below.
The BBC’s initial decision to shoot the series on video and ‘filmise’ in post-production was abandoned and left the production values of Neverwhere rather harshly exposed by its untreated video. It was unfairly compared to late 1980s Doctor Who, which had switched to all video production in 1986, despite Neverwhere’s innovative, surreal narrative and characters. Director Dewi Humphreys made excellent, atmospheric use of some little known subterranean London locations in lieu of expensive sets. It’s non naturalistic visuals were supported by an excellent cast including Paterson Joseph, Peter Capaldi, Hywel Bennett and Freddie Jones.
The BBC and Channel 4 collaborated on the final television works of Dennis Potter prior to his death from cancer in 1994 and, set in a dystopian 24th century Britain dominated by corporations and media empires, Potter’s final work Cold Lazarus depicted a conflicted society where terrorist cells attempted to circumvent the population’s seduction by corporate controlled virtual reality experiences.
At the center of this conflict is cryogenically preserved writer Daniel Feeld, the main character of the accompanying series Karaoke (both series were made by the same production team and shown by both BBC 1 and Channel 4), whose memories are deemed ripe for commercial exploitation by scientists and media moguls alike. Potter offered a warning about losing British culture and history to the assault from globalisation and capitalism and the damage Thatcherism and media baron Rupert Murdoch had already inflicted. Both works articulated Potter’s desire to see culture preserved against the wreaking ball of a consumer passivity manipulated by multi-nationals.
A timely dissection of the postmodern condition, Cold Lazarus did struggle to visualise the author’s ambitions and it may have seemed slightly out of step with some of the cinematic and televisual stylisations of science fiction in the 1990s. Crucially, it demonstrated the political tradition within science fiction on television was now badly eroded. Yet, looking back at it now Potter was on the money about the commodification of truth and lies and whether we have free will to tell our own biographies.
these narratives speak ‘of terminus, implying there is little that can be done’
The cinematic stylisations of films like Lifeforce (1985), The Fly (1986), Alien 3 (1992), Independence Day (1996), Starship Troopers (1997), and The Matrix (1999) also tapped into the major health scare of the era. AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) seemed almost like a science fiction concept itself: an incurable disease, spread by sexual contact, drug use or blood transfusion, incubated relatively undetected until it emerged and destroyed the immune system completely. By 1989, thousands were dead, dying or infected and a culture of paranoia, hysteria and misconception ensued. The AIDS virus was appropriated by cinema and television as a metaphor for issues of security, defence and immunity in the face of bodily and cultural invasion and, as the millennium approached, a response to the culture wars raging in the US about militarism and nationalism and the struggle for identity and individuality in a media saturated society.
On television The Uninvited (1997), Oktober (1998), Invasion: Earth (1998) and The Last Train (1999) all shared these recurring millennial anxieties while riding on the coattails of The X Files but British science fiction’s abrasive questioning of political and social ideologies were somewhat abandoned in the rush to chase the international co-production dollar. There was an overriding sense that most of the effort was expended in just getting these dramas to the screen but they all had something to say about a mythical ‘end time’ as the year 2000 appeared on the horizon. As Catriona Miller noted, these narratives speak ‘of terminus, implying there is little that can be done. If survival is possible, it is random. There is no meaning, and such choice as we have is only how we will face our ends.’
Leslie Grantham’s 1997 drama The Uninvited referenced alien invasion conspiracy themes, a reconfiguration of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but was a rather anodyne affair despite its attempts to hook into environmental concerns and government paranoia narratives so adeptly mustered by The X Files. Similarly, Invasion: Earth resembled a big budget variation on Quatermass, with the BBC- Sci-Fi Channel co-production costing £750,000 per episode and crammed with military hardware and personnel and groundbreaking CGI effects. Writer Jed Mercurio’s concept, of an Earth caught in a war between alien refugees and aliens inter-dimensionally farming planets by stealthy infection of the population, was visceral enough but its stodgy mix of militarism, unresolved sexual tension, and its American backing and lead actor seemed to be endemic to such mid-Atlantic co-productions and lessons had not fully been learned from 1996’s Doctor Who.
More effective was Oktober, directed by writer Stephen Gallagher in 1998. A conspiracy thriller produced by Carnival Films and initially considered by the BBC, it was based upon his own best selling novel and, at the time, was a rare outing for horror and science fiction on prime time ITV. It powerfully developed Gallagher’s concerns about capitalism, science and ethics previously voiced in ITV’s adaptation of his successful novel Chimera in 1991 and explored the paranoia about the dark activities of pharmaceutical corporations. With extensive location filming in Switzerland and London, the reality bending story followed English tutor Jim Harper, a rewarding performance from Stephen Tompkinson, who becomes unwittingly mistaken for a spy and is enmeshed in the dodgy pharmaceuticals company Risinger-Genoud.
He is killed but after being revived using an experimental drug he discovers it has catastrophic side effects and previous tests on Russian soldiers have reduced them to a catatonic state, where their minds and memories have become linked subconsciously. Writer Stephen Gallagher tapped into biochemist Rupert Sheldrake’s questionable idea of ‘morphic resonance’, which as Sue Blackmore notes, proposes that ‘memory is inherent in nature, so that when a certain shape or structure has occurred many times, it is more likely to occur again — not through any conventional interaction but through the new distance-defying process of “formative causation”’.
As the year 2000 dawned, one further example of this apocalyptic ‘end of days’ trope was Matthew Graham’s The Last Train, made for ITV in 1999. It managed to avoid the clichés within the trend for apocalyptic cinema, the jingoism of Independence Day and Armageddon (1998) particularly, and its story of a group of train passengers who have been cryogenically frozen by accident shortly before a huge asteroid hits the earth, thawing out years later to find a shattered world, was a restrained exploration of the harsh realities of survival in a Sheffield left devastated by the effects of the asteroid strike. Its final episode provided a neat twist and a sense of optimism to a series that emulated Survivors and Threads and, as Daniel O’Brien noted, was ‘a highly creditable effort’ that ‘used the central cataclysmic breakdown of society to explore the tensions, friendships, hostilities and moral choices with the group’ as they come to terms with a changed world.
In 2000, the Working Title-BBC production Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) reworked ITC’s quirky ’60s detective series for the vaudevillian double-act of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. However, it equally defined the problems inherent in revitalising key programmes in the history of British telefantasy, where success relied on the cult appeal of the original to a mainstream audience. While it successfully merged the anarchic comic personas of the leads with The Fast Show writer Charlie Higson’s penchant for the supernatural, bizarre and absurd aspects of British culture, it failed to deliver a series that pleased both the Saturday night mainstream and ‘Cult TV’ audiences.
In the post 9/11 world, the domination of Western culture and politics was no longer unbreakable. In the millennium paranoia and division, spin and crisis were the reactions to a nebulous recasting of the new enemies of the state. The cultural response in film and television, in America particularly, was to dramatise this within the concept of the ‘just war’, memorialising a tragedy which in itself was a horrible reflection of the hyper real destruction depicted in countless films of the 1990s.
Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to support the American invasion of Iraq in the aftermath of 9/11, based on unsubstantiated evidence that the regime was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, tapped into an escalating paranoia and mistrust in the power of the state and a giant shift in foreign policy ideology regarding non-interference in the internal affairs of other states.
The US political thriller 24 (2001–14) tapped into the mood of fear and paranoia engendered by the attacks and the ongoing ‘War on Terror’ and its British counterpart Spooks (2002–11), about a group of counter-terrorist agents working for MI5 in London, had already been in development at the time and made adjustments to its scripts to reflect the changing times and political context. Created by David Wolstonecroft, thirteen of the episodes were written by Howard Brenton, a radical political writer who had caused some controversy in the 1970s, eventually being sued for obscenity by Mary Whitehouse over his play The Romans in Britain. His television work also included the surreal, paranoid crime thriller Dead Head (1988) and he brought a visceral, grounded touch to the glossy espionage drama where, as producer Andrew Woodhead acknowledged, ‘Howard’s knowledge of the world, his experience and knowledge of politics mean his scripts are so real and so prescient. He’ll write something and then it seems to happens.’
Arguably, Spooks adopted the aesthetic of quality television that had gained a reputation in America and one which the BBC acknowledged was setting new benchmarks in television drama. Social realist and heritage dramas continued to act as ‘tent poles’ for prestigious drama but science fiction and fantasy was still seen as an expensive risk taking for what was perceived as a narrow audience. Two dramas of the post-9/11 period, Sea of Souls (2004 -7) and Russell T Davies’ mini series The Second Coming in 2003, were important in developing British science fiction with mainstream audience appeal.
The former was a supernatural-paranormal investigation series initially co-produced by BBC Scotland and Sony Television, trading on The X Files and Buffy-The Vampire Slayer’s convergence of a group’s personal and emotional lives with paranormal and supernatural conspiracy narratives. It concerned the activities of a Parapsychology Research Unit within a Scottish university (certainly there are echoes of The Omega Factor here) where the team investigate apparently supernatural occurrences.
As Catherine Spooner noted, the series mixed the supernatural, team dynamics, humour and horror — and offered a critique of science based rationalism and faith— with the tropes of ‘British workplace-based dramas such as Casualty or The Bill, and scenic detective serials such as Midsomer Murders and Inspector Morse.’ By the third series, now produced by BBC Scotland and Carnival Films and with an increased budget for visual effects, the encounters with psychic phenomena seemed to take precedence over what Spooner saw as ‘the more sophisticated questions the earlier two series raise.’
The Second Coming was Davies’ complex, provocative, witty and emotionally powerful examination of religion and faith in a contemporary, secular society suddenly confronted with Judgement Day and the return of Christ in the form of video shop assistant Steve, played by Christopher Eccleston. Davies, a confirmed atheist, had been writing another draft of the drama when 9/11 happened and he reflected ‘I started out writing it thinking is religion irrelevant these days and suddenly we find ourselves in the middle of a holy war. I remember sitting there thinking “Bloody hell — it’s right at the front of the agenda again… even though the Holy War might in fact be to do with oil and land and Imperialism and stuff like that.’ While Davies tackled some emotive subject matter, The Second Coming featured many recognisable tropes, particularly how he depicted the media and public reaction to events, a world experienced through digital media that would run through his revival of Doctor Who.
‘devil-worshipping Nazi lesbian’
A writer engaged with many social issues, Davies had established himself via the groundbreaking Queer As Folk (1999–2000) and Bob and Rose (2001). Prior to stints on soaps such as Coronation Street, Springhill and Revelations, it was his children’s dramas that perhaps prepared his route to Doctor Who’s return in 2005. Davies found himself working in an era of children’s television facing great economic challenges when market forces were applied to production at the BBC and commercial rivals bowed to the demands of advertisers and high ratings as a marker of success. With the successes of Grange Hill and Byker Grove there was a move away from fantasy into soap genre realism. International co-productions, with an eye on global markets, were the only way to make high quality adaptations of fantasy classics like The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Borrowers.
However, among the soaps and the classics there were some superb contemporary science fiction and fantasy dramas made for children. Russell T Davies was responsible for two serials that harked back to the children’s television of the 1970s he had enjoyed. Their contemporary themes and settings supplanted the 1980s vogue for ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’. 1991’s Dark Season mixed witty dialogue, postmodern comic strip exuberance, empathetic identification figures and bold concepts. Its featured Reet (a young Kate Winslet), Thomas and Marcie’s battles against Aryan villains attempting to brainwash the world with computers and, in its second story, ‘devil-worshipping Nazi lesbian’ Miss Pendragon’s bid to revive the Behemoth war computer buried under the school playing field.
Two years later, Davies returned with Century Falls. When Tess Hunter and her mother move to an isolated village they discover its terrible past is connected to the psychic abilities of a twin brother and sister and an ancient evil force is about to be recreated anew in the unborn child Tess’s mother is carrying. A mature, atmospheric, scary, enigmatic fantasy, it paid homage to 1970s serials like Children of the Stones, Sky and Raven and, with its ancient temples and psychic twins, television’s folk horror traditions. Director Colin Cant capitalised on the trademark visuals and atmosphere he had established in spooky children’s serials such as Moondial (1988) and these underscored an emotional story about loneliness and adolescence.
There were some notable children’s dramas to follow and 1994’s Earthfasts, from the novel written by William Mayne, also recycled the tropes of 1970s children’s drama. Set in the Yorkshire moors, Mayne’s serial featured teenagers Keith and David who investigate the strange movement of ancient stones on the Yorkshire moors. The hillside opens and they encounter an 18th century drummer boy, Nellie Jack John who has been looking for King Arthur’s treasure. Bewildered by the future he returns to the tunnel under the hill but leaves behind an inextinguishable candle. The candle acts as a key to open a portal in time and the mythical legends of the moor start to awaken from their long sleep. An insightful and atmospheric story, it tapped into British mythology and landscape to express teenage anguish and turmoil.
Mythology also featured in Screen First’s production for BBC of Alan Garner’s Elidor in 1995. Garner’s The Owl Service and Red Shift were celebrated television productions and a serialisation of Elidor had been attempted several times. Packed with allusions to English and Irish folklore, exploring the boundaries between the magical and the mundane to reflect how children are more open minded than adults, Don Webb (who had written many of the opening episodes of Byker Grove) updated Garner’s story of four Manchester children who find themselves transported to the medieval parallel dimension of Elidor and stalked by the evil forces threatening to engulf it. It was a laudable attempt but didn’t quite work as pacing and uneven acting abilities undid much of the effort put into the visual effects and music.
For ITV the decade’s reformulation of science fiction as ‘cult’ merely inspired a short-lived remake of The Tomorrow People, co-produced by Tetra and Nickelodeon for Thames in 1992. Produced by Roger Price, the original creator/producer, it lasted three seasons. Price handed over writing duties to Grant Cathro and Lee Pressman from the second season onwards and it was a modestly popular success. In 2000, ITV’s Life Force was a striking and inventive pro-ecology, global-warming drama set in the Britain of 2025. Most of the country is underwater and two scientists, Richard and Amy Webber have established a school of physicists to work with environmental group Greenwatch. When the Webbers are arrested, four children, two of them telepaths, are abandoned to fend for themselves. Sadly, complaints about its disturbing images saw it pulled from the CITV weekday schedule and abandoned in a Sunday morning slot and it remains a little remembered gem.
Accompanied by comedy fantasy The Worst Witch (1998–2001 and recently revived in 2017) and time travel adventure The Magician’s House (1999–2000), these were the last gasps of a tradition for fantasy and science fiction in children’s drama and by the millennium many broadcasters had ditched their commitment to children’s fare altogether. Investment in children’s programmes halved by 2007 and the BBC’s output faced challenges from the internet, gaming and satellite channels. Yet, out of these adult and children’s dramas of the 1990s and their disparate connections emerged a group of producers and writers who would join Russell T Davies in his attempt to achieve what seemed like the impossible in 2005: to make Doctor Who appeal to the widest audience possible.
Next time: Part Six / 2005–2019: ‘We’re all stories, in the end’ — From Doctor Who to Black Mirror and beyond
