Gary downie7/1/2023 ![]() The Production Diary is an impressive and fascinating piece of work. And that was Richard Molesworth’s lockdown project. Molesworth discovered an old file of JNT’s expenses receipts: not, he admits, “on first examination the most exciting pieces of Doctor Who paperwork I’d ever come across”, but closer examination revealed interesting titbits: for example, working lunches with Tom Baker, Peter Davison, and Colin Baker, which, when cross referenced with production dates, made it possible to recreate JNT’s production diaries, day by day, from his first planning of Season 18 to his exit from the BBC with the bin bags, 11 years later. He and Gary Downie bundled everything in bin bags and left this huge archive in his garage, where much of it stayed until it was eventually offered to the Restoration Team, of which Richard Molesworth is a member. The BBC wanted the office space and everything – scripts from 1963 onwards, letters, videos, production diaries, photos, props – was going to be chucked in a skip if JNT didn’t remove it. As we all know, production on the original series of Doctor Who ceased in 1989 and Nathan-Turner’s last, thankless task, before being made redundant by the BBC, was to clear out the Doctor Who production office. His partner, Gary Downie, survived him for a few years before also passing away before his 60th birthday. Nathan-Turner died tragically young, in his early 50s. ![]() Richard Molesworth wrote an excellent book, The John Nathan-Turner Doctor Who Production Diary, 1979-1990, published in 2022. What do Doctor Who fans do when their planet is in the grip of a pandemic and they have to isolate in lockdown, with less freedom of movement than Amy inside the Pandorica? Some, according to a report in the London Times, built a replica movie Dalek from scratch.
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