The Man Who Invented the Daleks (14 page)

The story follows Seldon Bishop, one of the few who are accepted, as he endeavours to make a new life in this ‘galactic El Dorado’. The material rewards are all that he expected, and the standard of living is luxurious in the extreme, but it doesn’t take long to discover why previous immigrants have been so reticent in their accounts of the place. For the Kimonians regard humans as being on a level somewhere between household pets and playmates for their children: ‘You might have a doctorate on Earth, but still be no more than a kindergarten youngster when you got to Kimon.’ Rather than admit this fact, the humans on Kimon privately nurse their wounded pride, and engage in the traditional expatriate activities of sport and drinking. Yet, as Bishop discovers, for those prepared to adopt the correct attitude, there is hope: ‘There is only one thing that will crack this planet and that is humility.’ And finally the Kimonian project becomes clear to him. They want to provide the opportunity for future human evolution, to teach those who wish to be taught, those who are prepared to accept that as yet they know nothing and that their schooldays are only just beginning. The theme of a wiser, older civilisation taking humanity under its nurturing wing was not unusual in Simak’s work.

Of the two stories, there is little doubt where Nation’s sympathies lay. The simple narrative of ‘Imposter’, driven by action rather than philosophy, was much more to his taste than the ruminative fantasy of Simak, as was Dick’s pessimism; elements of the tale – the perpetual state of war and the concept of a robotic double – were to return in his subsequent writing. His own contribution to the series, ‘Botany Bay’, was certainly more in the mould of Dick. Set in a psychiatric institution, it depicted evil aliens taking over the bodies of the inmates with, as
The Times
’s reviewer reported, ‘an ingenious twist’ in which ‘we were made to realize that we ourselves, the inhabitants of Earth, were the sinister intruders on some simpler future world: that not only were the wrong ’uns winning, but they were us after some further centuries of decadence.’

The series was a success in terms both of ratings and critical acceptance. It attracted larger audiences than the BBC’s science fiction offering for the summer –
The Andromeda Breakthrough
, a sequel to Fred Hoyle’s
A for Andromeda
the previous year – and there was widespread praise. ‘The level of writing and direction has been encouragingly high,’ said
The Times
; ‘certainly the most intelligent and best written of its genre since
Quatermass
’, approved
Kinematograph Weekly
; while the
Yorkshire Evening Post
went one better: ‘the most accomplished thing of its kind TV has yet produced’. The
Daily Mail
was quick to praise its ultimate creator: ‘the series as a whole has been surprisingly good. Much of the triumph belongs to ABC’s story editor Irene Shubik – one of the few women to get real satisfaction out of science fantasy. Miss Shubik is an enthusiast, the venture was a labour of love for her, and it showed.’ For Nation himself, it had the added benefit of allowing him to work with one of his great Hollywood heroes, since each episode was introduced by the legendary horror actor Boris Karloff. ‘That was a great moment,’ remembered Kate Nation, ‘when he met Boris Karloff.’

The other beneficiary from the success of the show was Sydney Newman, who had shown that he could spin off hit series from
Armchair Theatre
, first with
Armchair Mystery Thriller
(1960) and now with
Out of this World.
His standing within the industry was so high that the BBC, desperately trying to catch up with its independent rival, recruited him to become its own head of drama in early 1963.
BBC SIGNS ITV ‘DUSTBIN’ MAN
, read the headline in the
Daily Mail
and, keen to cement his reputation as the nation’s chief purveyor of social realism, Newman created for the corporation
The Wednesday Play
, which was to prove even more controversial than his work on ITV. In his new role, he was also responsible for the drama output on the new channel, BBC2, that was due to launch in 1964, following the recommendations of the Pilkington Report. And one of those he recruited to staff this expansion was Irene Shubik, who became the script editor on
Story Parade
, a series of single dramas adapted from contemporary novels, ‘a sort of anthology of new fictional writing’.

It was a lucky break for Terry Nation, who now had, for the first time, a supporter within the drama department of BBC television. He had been trying since
Out of this World
to find an opening within the corporation, but without success. He submitted a proposal, titled ‘The Thousand and Several Doors’, for the series
Suspense
, but it was rejected as being ‘too derivative’ (the same conclusion that had been reached with
Uncle Selwyn
), and although he was commissioned to write a script for
Z-Cars
, it was never made. His one non-genre piece to be broadcast had come in October 1962 with an episode of the long-running police series
No Hiding Place
, which was again an ITV production.
Story Parade
was to change his run of poor luck at the BBC, and he was commissioned in 1964 to write three plays for the series.

Of these the most significant was an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s novel
The Caves of Steel
, first published in
Galaxy
magazine in 1953. Shubik was an admirer of Asimov’s work, and indeed of the man himself; ‘one of the most interesting and amusing men I have ever met’, she was later to comment of the writer whose stories, particularly those dealing with robotics (a word he coined), had made him one of the leading figures in science fiction.
The Caves of Steel
was among his best work, and the resulting BBC production was immediately acclaimed as a triumph.

Set three thousand years in the future, the novel depicts a society in which Earth has colonised fifty other planets, the Outer Worlds. A division has arisen between the overcrowded, primitive Earth and these Outer Worlds, on which the descendants of the settlers, known as Spacers, are technologically more advanced, and where human and robot societies are closely integrated. In the Great Rebellion, the Outer Worlds achieved independence from Earth, and the Spacers and Terrestrials now live in uneasy harmony. The Spacers are still human, but have been genetically selected over many generations and have therefore evolved differently – among other things, they have a life expectancy in excess of three hundred years, largely thanks to the abolition of disease.

The story is set in New York, which, like other major population centres on Earth, is now a massive conurbation, enclosed in a vast steel dome (hence the title of the novel) so that it has become like a super-sized mall, with no view of the outside to disturb its air-conditioned security. Inside the dome, society is run as a strict hierarchical bureaucracy, with no room for ‘individualism and initiative’ (despite an underground movement of dissidents known as the Medievalists). This artificial community is entirely dependent on technology and therefore highly vulnerable; as one character explains, water has to be brought into the City, air requires constant circulation inside the dome, and the whole thing is powered by nuclear plants that need uranium supplies: ‘The balance is a very delicate one in a hundred directions, and growing more delicate each year.’ Any interruption to this ecosystem would have terrible consequences. ‘When New York first became a city, it could have lived on itself for a day. Now it cannot do so for an hour. A disaster that would have been uncomfortable ten thousand years ago, merely serious a thousand years ago, and acute a hundred years ago would now surely be fatal.’ This was to become one of Nation’s favourite themes, though in the Asimov story the more immediate threat to social stability comes from the robots that are gradually being introduced into everyday life. ‘Do you fear robots for the sake of your job?’ a character is asked, and he replies, ‘And my kids’ jobs. And everyone’s kids.’

Within this setting, the plot is essentially that of a detective novel. A scientist, living in the Spacer community just outside the City, has been murdered and a New York detective named Elijah Baley is assigned a humanoid robot partner for the investigation. The deliberate, and mostly successful, mixing of science fiction and mystery conventions inspired many other writers, including Nation himself, who – particularly in
Blake’s 7
– was to use science fiction as a base from which to explore other genres; the episode ‘Mission to Destiny’ was similarly a straight murder mystery, even if it were set on a spaceship. Other elements of
The Caves of Steel
were also to be evident in his later work, especially that idea of the fragility of modern life.

The one major change made by Nation is the imposition by the Spacers of a 48-hour deadline for solving the case; unless the murderer is caught within that time, New York City will be occupied or destroyed. The introduction of a time limit makes perfect dramatic sense until, with just half an hour left, the threat of violence is withdrawn; instead there’s a new deadline, this one taken directly from the book. Nation’s fondness for countdowns, which was to become a feature of his writing, is here an awkward and unnecessary intrusion.

Elsewhere, however, there is some fine writing, particularly in the opening shot of the domed city, with a voice-over by Baley (played by Peter Cushing): ‘New York City. The culmination of man’s mastery over environment. Fourteen million people crowd beneath its protective dome. And out there in the open country: Spacetown. Unwelcome and unwanted. With its handful of Outer World scientists seeking to change us, interfering, trying to impose new cultures.’ The terse phrasing drew on the style of contemporary American police shows, reapplied to paint a compelling vision of the future in a beautifully succinct piece of scene-setting.

Broadcast in June 1964 and repeated the following August, the play was a popular hit for the new BBC2, which was seen as something of a minority channel from the outset. The repeat attracted a respectable audience share of 13 per cent and got a reaction index from the BBC’s sample panel of viewers of 61, slightly above the average rating of 60 for television drama of the era (even a play as celebrated as Nell Dunn’s
Up the Junction
only rated 58). It also won over the critics. ‘A fascinating mixture of science fiction and whodunit which worked remarkably well,’ judged John Russell Taylor in
The Listener
, ‘despite a slightly specious, dragged-in attempt to suggest a parallel between the characters’ attitude to robots and ours to racial minorities.’
The Times
’s reviewer was likewise impressed, calling it ‘highly successful’, though he too wondered about the subtext: ‘the story hinges on a fanatical hatred of robots by most humans in a remote future. Why do they hate them? We are supposed, apparently, to link up immediately with race hatred in the modern world, but that, though it may work in a novel or short story, just will not do in a play. In a play we want to know more of the whys and hows.’ Unequivocally enthusiastic was Dr Anthony Michaelis, the
Daily Telegraph’s
science correspondent: ‘I could find no fault whatsoever with the scientific extrapolation to the future. Every small item was remarkably well thought out and beautifully achieved.’ His praise was spoilt only by a sideways dig at another series with which Nation was already involved: ‘The first science fiction programme on BBC2 last night was an outstanding success and certainly surpassed most similar works on BBC1, such as Fred Hoyle’s
A for Andromeda
and
Doctor Who
.’

Nation was also responsible for an adaptation of Ira Levin’s 1953 novel A
Kiss Before Dying
, a less significant contribution to the series, partly because it had already been filmed – with Robert Wagner and Joanne Woodward in 1956 – and partly because it was a straightforward thriller, a genre much more familiar on British television than futuristic science fiction. Its status has been further eroded by the success of subsequent films of Levin’s work, including
Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives
and
The Boys from Brazil.
Even so, the story of an amoral social climber who seduces three sisters in turn, killing each before moving on to the next, was well received at the time: ‘a highly polished, holding piece of light entertainment’, noted
The Times.
Nation, too, was happy with the result: ‘I actually sat back and forgot I’d written it and watched it and enjoyed it.’ The piece was, like ‘The Caves of Steel’, directed by Peter Sasdy, a Hungarian who had fled to Britain after the crushing of the 1956 uprising. Sasdy was also in line to make the third of Nation’s commissions for
Story Parade
, an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s short story ‘The Fox and the Forest’, though in the event it was left to the less experienced Robin Midgley to direct.

Indeed the whole production history of ‘The Fox and the Forest’ was plagued by problems. Nation himself was not the first choice of writer; the project had already been to two others, Ken Taylor and Ilona Ference, and the latter had produced a full script, which Shubik rejected. She instead offered the job to Nation, noting: ‘I am confident he will do an excellent job on it, as both his other adaptations have been first class.’ When he delivered the script, however, three months behind schedule, she was less impressed, considering it too violent and too rooted in contemporary gangster slang. Even after he did a rewrite and received his fee of £500, it was passed on to yet another writer, Meade Roberts, who was paid a further £200 to rework it further. Since Bradbury was receiving $1,000 for the rights with, unusually, an additional $1,000 for each repeat (the standard arrangement saw a 50 per cent reduction for repeats), it was already proving to be an expensive production.

The story concerned two fugitives from a future dystopia – Earth in 2155 – who have been granted the highest possible privilege of being allowed a holiday in time. Arriving in Mexico in 1938, they decide to try to lose themselves in the crowd and remain in a happier age, but are hunted down by an agent from their own time, who explains that they cannot so easily evade their responsibilities. ‘The rabbits may hide in the forest,’ he tells them, ‘but a fox can always find them.’ It’s a tense but very brief tale that, unlike Nation’s two other commissions for
Story Parade
, required some expansion, and his response was a device that was to become characteristic of his work: the raising of hopes only to dash them. One of the renegades is caught and about to be deported back to the future, when the other appears and shoots dead their pursuer. But it’s a false salvation and eventually they are recaptured. Nation also tried to change the period to 1963, just before the assassination of John F. Kennedy – playing on contemporary anxieties as he would on
Doctor Who
– though he was overruled by the director and Bradbury’s original pre-war setting was restored.