"Doctor Who, dreamed up by Newman himself with the writer Terry Nation..."

TV Just to show what goes in here, comes out there....

From an email sent Mon 26/11/2007:

To: Guardian Readers Editor (reader@guardian.co.uk)
From: Me

Hello,

It's really disappointing to see the myth that Terry Nation co-created Doctor Who repeated in the obituary for Verity Lambert. Sydney Newman created Doctor Who, although a lot of creative work on what the series would be like was shouldered by Lambert who was producer from the off and the first director Waris Hussein. Nation was a writer for Tony Hancock and didn't become involved with the series until he was sacked after falling out with the comedian and had recently called by his agent who suggested this children's programme would be a nice stop gap. Doctor Who fans groan every time they see this in print, particularly in the first edition of Trivial Pursuit where it was an answer to a question.

I do think it's something that could be corrected in the on-line version of the obituary since that's the kind of thing which is used by researchers, and as written it lessens Lambert's creative input which was considerable.

Take care,

Stuart Ian Burns.

From the on-line obituary as of 28/11/2007:

"The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Wednesday November 28 2007:

"Verity Lambert was the producer of Doctor Who from the start of the series, rather than the second batch of episodes, as we said in the obituary below. Terry Nation played no part in creating the series, but began writing for it later."

I suspect that I wasn't the only one ....