Sydney Newman embarrassed to be associated with Doctor Who

[rushy]

Quite a sad little interview. 

[burrunjor]

Newman truly was a talentless hack. He had ONE good idea of a guy travelling through time and space. That literally is it, and even then it wasn't that original an idea (Doctor Omega, the Time Machine itself.)

Everything else about DW that made it what it was, was the creation of other people. Terry Nation, Verity Lambert, William Hartnell, Raymond Cusick, David Whittaker, Anthony Coburn etc.

All of his ideas for it meanwhile were utter shit. This is the same man who didn't ever want the Daleks to show up because they were in his mind awful monsters, who hated Patrick Troughton and didn't want him cast and wanted the show to be nothing but historicals that the audience hated?

He was a total disaster and ironically the show only lasted because he was kept at arms length away from it. Also from the sounds of this he is a nasty man. Talking that way about JNT who he clearly knows f*ck all about while the guy is being kicked into the dirt and being made the fall guy by the BBC and arsehole comedians?

He's almost as stupid as Katy Manning, trying to defend Grade. 

Total arseclown.

[Deleted]

I reckon a few people will be tripping over themselves trying to find the full interview. Nothing to see here really. Newman was a twat who really didn't have a clue.

[iank]

lol You're not wrong. He gets the credit for The Avengers too, and as with Who had very little to do with the show that actually got made and which people remember. At the end of the day he was an executive, not a creative, and we all know what executives are like. You get that position so you're kept away from the actual real work.

[Deleted]

I'm actually embarrassed to be a fan of this show now. In 2013 I would say I was a fan and would often get laughed at, but I didn't care. Nowadays I don't mention the fact I like the show at all. It's quite sad really.

[Deleted]

I think the JNT bashing reveals a dark side of this fandom. Poor bloke probably died thinking every Who fan hated him and blamed him for the demise of the series.

[Deleted]

Glad Sydney didn't get credited in the end credits of classic who after seeing that wow what a jerk .

[cyberhat]

Sydney Newman changed British TV forever. When it came to drama, one of the few names who matter. Armchair Theatre and the like. Brought telly out the stone age.
Listening to this though, sounds like he was a DWB reader.

[Deleted]

I like how most people who bad mouth Nathan-Turner have never actually met him.

[rushy]

I have very mixed feelings on JNT. I don't think he was a very good producer. Most of his seasons come off as tacky and unapproachable (if you compare the direction and cinematography of the average Davison story to earlier Who, it's night and day), and the overemphasis on continuity in seasons 21-23 didn't help matters. I'm also a bit disappointed over his decision to fire Dudley Simpson. Why fire him in the first place? They could've just had him score a lesser number of stories per season.

But on the other hand, seasons 18, 25 and 26 prove that with the right script editor, JNT could produce good work. And of course, he did end up sacrificing his career to keep the show on air.

[burrunjor]

Jul 27, 2022 16:12:56 GMT rushy said:

I have very mixed feelings on JNT. I don't think he was a very good producer. Most of his seasons come off as tacky and unapproachable (if you compare the direction and cinematography of the average Davison story to earlier Who, it's night and day), and the overemphasis on continuity in seasons 21-23 didn't help matters. I'm also a bit disappointed over his decision to fire Dudley Simpson. Why fire him in the first place? They could've just had him score a lesser number of stories per season.

But on the other hand, seasons 18, 25 and 26 prove that with the right script editor, JNT could produce good work. And of course, he did end up sacrificing his career to keep the show on air.

Oh don't get me wrong I'm not saying you can't dislike JNT lol. 

Sorry if we sometimes come over as too cliquey that way. I just think that fandom on average tend to single him out for his bad decisions more than other producers. For instance, RTD doesn't get any flak for stunt casting, when his was worse than JNT's. Similarly people go on about his continuity references when Moffat did that to a far worse extent than JNT ever did. (not singling you out here Rushy LOL, don't worry as I know you can't stand Moffat, though if you did that you would be fine, again just talking about fandom in general.) 

Even when compared with other producers of the classic era he sometimes gets it worse. Barry Letts for instance overused the Master, and brought back returning enemies yet never gets the flak for it that JNT does. Also other than the strangling bit I also don't see Colin being more violent in season 22 than Tom Baker was in say seasons 12 and 13. How is the acid bath (which was an accident) worse than tossing Greel into a machine that slowly eats him away to nothing? Or tossing a guy into a shredding machine? Or poisoning Solon? 

To me JNT gets singled out the most because he was there when the show got canned. Even though a proper analysis shows that it wasn't his fault at all that it got cancelled, I feel a lot of fans take their own insecurities about the show out on him, IE  they think "what i we're just making excuses talking about Michael Grade and it really was crap." 

Sadly a lot of people involved in the classic era were like this too, like Terrance Dicks and Katy Manning. Really Katy? You're going to say Anthony Ainley made the Master camp, but praise f*cking Missy? 

All of this unfair treatment does tend to blind JNT's supporters to his genuine faults however it must be said and we do need to watch that we don't end up becoming another cult. 

To me JNT was genuinely terrible for the following things. 

1/ The man did not understand the limits of the shows budget. Most previous producers usually have one or two terrible stories effects wise, like the Web Planet or Dinosaurs or Ark in Space, or Kroll, but actually most of the effects for true who still hold up, at least by tv standards. IE Linx the Sontaran, the Silurians, the Yeti, the Zygons, the Medusa, the Autons, the Cybermen, the Ice Warriors, the Daleks, the Ogrons, Magnus Greel, Krynoids, are no worse than the monsters in say Buffy made 30 years later, and better than the monsters in Supernatural, Charmed, any iteration of Star Trek, and Xena. 

The earlier producers knew what the limits were and avoided big spectacles like Dinosaurs and giant monsters.

However JNT tried to compete with Star Wars and do these big special effects spectacles and the results were always disastrous. Warriors, the Magma beast in Caves, the Mara, the kitten man in season 20, the tractators are all f*cking laughable. It's no wonder that Peter Davison always bitched about the effects in his time more than other Doctors, including those from the 60s. That says it all. 

2/ He never in my opinion got the handle of the companions until Ace. They were either bland, (Nyssa) annoying (Peri, Tegan, Adric) or both (Mel). He seemed to think the companions role was unimportant, and worse as time went on he made the female companions more girly, wimpy and useless to annoy the feminists who were complaining about the show. Ace was the first time it seems he allowed the companion to have a personality and story arc, but it was too little, too late. 

3/ His taste was very tacky. From Colin's coat, to the question mark lapels, to Mel and Peri's clothes. He instantly disproves the gay men have great taste myth LOL. 

4/ He definitely became a bit too much of a showrunner than a producer in the Colin Baker era. Now admittedly I think part of this might have been caused by Eric Saward, who seemed to be too shy and awkward for the role of script editor and often didn't complain about things he didn't like to JNT's face. Still either way it's obvious by that time that the success of the show had gone to JNT's head and he saw himself as the custodian of the show. Everything he wanted had to happen like that awful coat, or casting Bonnie Langford. 

By the McCoy era he'd been humbled, which is why that era is better. 

Still overall these don't cancel out the good things he did for the show, namely casting 3 great actors in the role, bringing back villains like the Master and the Cybermen and making them legit threats again, producing some of the best stories in the shows history, protecting it in dark times and introducing some great story arcs like the Davros arc and the Fenric arc. 

[Deleted]

JNT produced Remembrance of the Daleks which means that if he were alive I would happily let him stick his pinky finger in my urethra.

[UncleDeadly]

Jul 27, 2022 16:44:49 GMT burrunjor said:

The earlier producers knew what the limits were and avoided big spectacles like Dinosaurs and giant monsters.

Barry says hi...

[burrunjor]

Jul 27, 2022 17:39:45 GMT UncleDeadly said:

Jul 27, 2022 16:44:49 GMT burrunjor said:

The earlier producers knew what the limits were and avoided big spectacles like Dinosaurs and giant monsters.

Barry says hi...

Yeah I mentioned that, being one of the few examples of a producer getting too ambitious from before the JNT era, like the Web Planet or Kroll or Robot. All producers are bound to have one story like that. Point was though JNT did it regularly in the Peter Davison era, which honestly is when I think DW got a reputation for having terrible effects. Sure some stuff from before looks ropey, but by the standards of the time it was fine. It's 80s Who when the show starts to fall behind. Even then though I think the McCoy era's effects for the most part are absolutely fine. In fact I'd say they hold up better than the monsters and effects in a lot of shows made decades after like again Supernatural, Xena, Once Upon A Time etc. 

The Davison era is the low point production wise for DW I'd say. 

Invasion of the Dinosaurs only happened because they got conned. The guy told them that he could do incredible dinosaur effects on the cheap, so they wrote a Dinosaur story. However when they saw what they actually looked like, it was too late to change it. 

They were foolish for trusting this obvious swindler, but still it was an honest mistake and not typical of the Pertwee era's effects. The Drashiggs for instance are very well done, whilst Azal was kept in the shadows for the most part, and the mask for Azal again I don't think is any worse than say a Buffy Demon. 

[iank]

I must confess I'm less of a JNT defender these days, as much as I love the McCoy era. While much of season 18's humourlessness is down to Boring Bidmead, he played up to the worst aspects of fandom by putting the boot into the Williams era (very unprofessional) which is far superior to his own, and ditching Romana in favour of the Terrible Trio was a true WTF decision (though, to give him credit, it's down to him overruling Bidmead that we got the Decay we did instead of a no doubt boring shite version) and once Romana goes, I'm sorry but the companions largely suck until Ace and I do find the Davison era very colourless and dull with a few exceptions like Earthshock, Five Doctors and Androzani. And yes, that coat was a massive misjudgment.
80s Who is still better than most New Who but I do far prefer 60s and 70s Who these days.