The Man Who Invented the Daleks (53 page)

Given his approach to writing, and the sheer quantity of material he turned out, it is hardly surprising that Nation repeated himself from time to time: those ticking bombs, for example. ‘Terry Nation had a thing about bombs,’ reflected Terrance Dicks. ‘You can rely on a bomb turning up in every Terry Nation script, somewhere or other.’ But then he was far from alone in having his obsessions and his familiar tricks.

The last series from the pen of Dennis Potter, for example, one of the most acclaimed and revered of all television writers, was
Cold Lazarus
(1996), a science fiction piece set four hundred years in the future, in which scientists are accessing the memories contained in a disembodied head that is held in cryogenic suspension. It’s an intriguing piece of work that contained much that would have looked very familiar to Nation. Helmeted security guards gun down members of a resistance group, the head floats in a tank, echoing the imagery of the
Blake’s 7
episode ‘The Web’ (or even ‘The Keys of Marinus’), and a flirtatious, megalomaniac woman seeks to create a disturbing half-hour virtual-reality serial that will enable her corporation to sell anti-anxiety pills; just to make clear that Potter knows his references, she insists that it should have ‘No bug-eyed monsters’. But, this being Potter, no one is much surprised when the memories that the scientists tap into turn out to be those of a boy growing up in the Forest of Dean in the 1930s, nor that the boy is sexually assaulted and later becomes a writer.

That was the key difference between a writer such as Potter and one such as Nation. In all his most celebrated and lauded work, Potter wrote from his own experience. He may have drawn explicitly on popular culture with the music and detective fiction of the 1930s in, say,
The Singing Detective
, but the psoriatic arthropathy from which his central character, Philip E. Marlow, suffers is the same condition that Potter himself had.

There is no equivalent in Nation. When he includes a disability, it tends to be immobility. Time and again his work includes characters trapped in wheelchairs: Dortmun in ‘The Daleks Invasion of Earth’, Lucien in ‘A Memory of Evil’ (
The Baron
), Mother in
The Avengers
, as well as Steed in Noon Doomsday’ and Baron von Orlak in ‘Legacy of Death’ from the same series, Davros in ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, Vic Thatcher in
Survivors.
While a couple of these weren’t actually his creations – Mother came from Brian Clemens, while it wasn’t Nation who put Vic Thatcher in an improvised wheelchair – it is clearly a recurring image. But it’s not drawn from life, and nor is there any consistent theme. Dortmun leads the resistance against the Daleks, but the scientist who created the monsters is also confined to a chair. There is nothing to be read into these cases except that Nation recognised the dramatic potential of a character with limited mobility. And that he was influenced by other fiction. Much of the enduring power of
Treasure Island
, for example, is derived from the disabilities of Blind Pew and the one-legged Long John Silver. More directly there were recent cinematic examples of characters in wheelchairs, Blanche (Joan Crawford) in Robert Aldrich’s
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane
(1962) and Peter Sellers’s eponymous antihero in
Dr Strangelove.
Nation’s reference points were almost always to be found in the literature and cinema that he enjoyed or admired. One of the few pieces of work that was inspired directly by his own life was the writing of
Rebecca’s World
for his daughter.

Beyond the familiar images, there was also in Nation’s work a coherent vision, a set of recurring themes that identify his preoccupations. From Skaro onwards, we find ourselves repeatedly witnessing the decay of societies, whether through conflict, decadence or disease. And from ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ onwards, many of those societies are under enemy occupation, places of repression, collaboration and personal betrayals; Nation never forgot the fears of his nine-year-old self, sheltering from the bombing raids that were intended to prepare the ground for a Nazi invasion of Britain: ‘As a wartime child, I grew up when bombs were dropping and men were trying to kill me.’ The horrors of the time shaped his adult writing. ‘Much of sci-fi promises a bright future – even if my view is rather bleak,’ he once reflected, and it was a portrayal that grew ever bleaker as Britain’s economic and social decline became more pronounced, as the optimism of his post-war youth faded. Even when the country was congratulating itself on its swinging international image, he was writing tales of dissent; the Doctor may have thwarted the evil plans of the Daleks in ‘Invasion’, but the images that linger are of slave labour camps and of aliens occupying the streets of London.

However dark his creations became, they were always balanced by two redeeming features. First there was the element of humour, whether it were the tongue-in-cheek fun to be had with genre expectations in
The Saint
or the sarcastic wisecracks of Vila in
Blake’s 7.
Second, there was the moral consistency, the absolute belief in the need for honour, honesty and decency; though these virtues were not necessarily proof against the random violence of life, they were nonetheless to be admired and cherished. Nation’s villains – Davros and the Daleks, Servalan, Mr Glister – are wonderfully captivating creatures, but his heroes too are inspiring fantasy figures, from the Doctor and
The Persuaders!
to Abby Grant and Jimmy Garland. Even in the case of his most morally ambiguous hero, there’s ultimately no doubt that Avon is really an old-fashioned swashbuckling good guy, the kind with whom Nation himself, as a child, would have identified.

But if Nation’s mature work was firmly in the old thriller tradition of his childhood, it didn’t mean that he added nothing to that tradition or that he wasn’t responsible for technical innovations. Most influential was his popularisation of the story arc and the season cliff-hanger within television series.

The traditional format for popular dramas had been established in the USA where the need to syndicate shows to local stations meant that each episode was expected to stand alone; there was no guarantee that episodes would be shown in a particular order, and it was therefore considered wise for there to be no continuing storylines. The ITC series followed this lead, so that the essential situation in a show like
The Adventures of Robin Hood
remained unchanged from episode to episode. Even in the American series
The Fugitive
(1963), where a broad storyline ran throughout, as Dr Richard Kimble sought to prove his innocence, there was little in the way of continuing plot development; and when ratings fell low enough that the series was cancelled, it merely meant that an ending was added to tie up the loose ends. Structurally nothing much had changed since the nineteenth- century penny dreadfuls, when James Rymer’s
Varney the Vampire
(1845) had run in instalments for the best part of three years, until falling sales figures brought it to an abrupt end after 220 chapters.

There were, of course, other models used for television – the soap and the drama serial, where there was a continuing narrative thread – but science fiction and action adventure shows remained firmly wedded to the existing format. The key exception was the special case of
Doctor Who
, which was a series of serials: each episode of a six-part story followed on from the previous one, with cliff-hanger endings built into each. It was not, however, until Nation’s The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ that the first links were established between those serials, establishing the concept of continuity across the whole series. Others built on his work, but his was the first stone.

It was
Blake’s 7
, though, that was the real game-changer. In his notes for the second season, Nation spelt out his thoughts on what would later be referred to as a story arc. ‘Whilst we remain a series and not a serial,’ he wrote, it is important to have a progressive theme and an ultimate goal. This theme will be dealt with in five or six key episodes. ‘We should have some passing reference to the theme in all other episodes.’ By the end of Nation’s life, this had become standard practice, with shows like
The X-Files
(1993),
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
(1993) and
Babylon 5
(1994), but back in 1978 it was far from being an obvious idea. Nor was it normal to end a season with a major cliff-hanger that would be resolved next year; the era of the ‘who shot J.R.’ storyline in
Dallas
had not yet arrived. Nation played a key role in establishing these elements of modern television fantasy shows, with
Blake’s 7
being cited as an influence by American creators such as J. Michael Straczynski (of
Babylon 5)
and Joss Wheldon (
Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
) Straczynski even toyed with the idea of having guest appearances by
Blake’s 7
stars in his show, a cross-pollination that again Nation had attempted, with his suggestion that the Daleks might appear on
Blake’s 7.
The stylistic flourishes of Dennis Potter were more obvious in their reinvention of what television could do, but have ultimately proved far less influential than Nation’s work.

Despite these technical innovations, Nation’s career is ultimately defined by the Daleks, a fact of which he was more than aware, and which he happily accepted. Some of those whose work was overshadowed by a single popular success – Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes, Burgess with A
Clockwork Orange
– were keen to repudiate their creations, but Nation never gave any indication that he regretted the monsters’ extraordinary popularity. Towards the end of his life, he reflected on the generation that had grown up watching the Daleks. ‘They’d watch from outside the room, through a crack in the door, or from behind the couch,’ he mused. ‘It frightened them, but they wouldn’t miss it for the world. It must be thirty years ago we’re talking, so those little kids are now parents with children of their own, growing up and still sitting behind the couch watching. I find that quite amazing.’

The longevity of the Daleks has depended on the fact that they have changed very little since their first appearance in 1963. Many of those who influenced Nation as a child created characters who were initially on the wrong side of the law – Edgar Wallace’s Four Just Men, Leslie Charteris’s Saint, John Creasey’s Baron – but who crossed back over the line to become official or semi-official figures of respectability. In moral, if not legal, terms Avon followed their example. The Daleks never did. That was their greatest strength, even if it was the same inflexibility that also made the idea of them having their own series so implausible; they were and are the perfect supporting villains, rather than lead characters in their own right.

The failure to secure backing for the
Daleks
proposal, however damaging to Nation’s ego at the time, should not be a cause of much regret. Nor should the non-appearance of some other proposals, such as
The Team
or
No Place Like Home.
On the other hand,
The Fixers
would have been an interesting addition to his portfolio of programmes. As indeed would ‘The Red Fort’ – Nation never did write any historical stories, and it would be intriguing to see how he handled the proposition. Tales of British heroism during the Indian Mutiny were commonplace in his childhood, but might have found very different expression in the hands of a socialist writing in the wake of Indian independence. But the greatest loss is surely that of
The Incredible Robert Baldick
, a character that deserved much more than a single pilot.

Nation himself, however, expressed very few public regrets over missed television opportunities, content that he had created some of the most enduring characters on British television and originated some of its finest dramas, particularly with ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, the early episodes of
Survivors
and
Blake’s 7.
Instead, when asked in 1989 what his ultimate lifetime ambition was, he gave an entirely different answer: ‘To have written a book as good as
The Bonfire of the Vanities.
I’d love to write a
good
book, one I was truly proud of.’ Perhaps, after all, he too didn’t quite realise that his contribution to popular television, these shows that attracted such huge audiences at the time and that inspired such continuing affection, was in the same class as serious literature. Or perhaps it was simply that he’d only recently finished reading Tom Wolfe’s novel and it was the first thing that came into his head at the end of a long interview.

Back in 1974, speaking to the
South Wales Echo
, he had similarly reflected on what he would consider a permanent achievement. ‘I suppose that all writers want a bit of immortality. I would be very happy to settle for one day seeing the word Dalek in the dictionary. So as a writer’s memorial, I’d like that.’ He would, no doubt, be delighted that the
Oxford English Dictionary
did indeed come to include the word ‘Dalek’, defining it as: ‘A type of robot appearing in “Dr. Who”, a BBC Television science-fiction programme; hence used allusively.’ It was a flattering inclusion – even if the definition was inaccurate, since Daleks aren’t robots at all, and even if the citations also repeated his own myth that he named them after an encyclopaedia volume covering
‘DAL-LEK’.
But then, as Nation used to say: ‘A good story is a good story.’

A.
 
Radio

All My Eye and Kitty Bluett
(BBC, 1955) – 13-week series written by Terry Nation and Dick Barry, produced by Alastair Scott Johnston

The Frankie Howerd Show
(BBC, 1953–5) – contributions to 1955 series written by Terry Nation and Dick Barry, produced by Alastair Scott Johnston

Floggit’s
(BBC, 1956–7) – two series and Christmas special, totalling 35 episodes, written by Terry Nation, John Junkin and Dave Freeman, produced by Alastair Scott Johnston and Bill Gates

Calling the Stars
(BBC, 1957) – one episode of series written by Terry Nation and John Junkin, produced by John Simmonds