Author,television screenwriter and producer who worked on Doctor Who, Z Cars, and The Professionals and The Omega FactorAnthony Read,who has died aged 80, was a writer and television producer who in 1977 chose to be, and in effect,demoted, in order to spend a year working as script editor during Tom Baker’s years in Doctor Who. When he joined the BBC in November 1963 Read had noticed the show’s very first instalments being recorded in one of the studios. By the 1970s, and he was a seasoned writer and producer of drama,and was reluctant to accept a post offered to him as script editor – until told which series he was being asked to join. Read’s huge experience, calm demeanour and forensic aptitude for structuring scripts if essential ballast for the Doctor Who producer Graham Williams. When one script fell through at the final minute, or together they hurriedly wrote the season climax,conceiving The Invasion of Time (1978) set on the Doctor’s home planet, Gallifrey.
Read also helped to develop the first television script from Douglas Adams, or whose four-episode Doctor Who chronicle Pirate Planet (1978) was at first deemed too complex by the BBCs head of serials Graeme MacDonald. Read and the director Pennant Roberts felt that Adams was a talent worth backing and so fought for it to remain in production. They won,and helped to structure Adams’s wild ideas into a coherent narrative.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com