Happy Birthday Doctor Who

At 5.16pm on the 23rd November 1963 the BBC premiered “An Unearthly Child” and UK television viewers were introduced to the incredible world of Doctor Who for the first time.

William Hartnell was the Doctor, a strange old man who could travel through time and space in his police box. Little did anyone know that this was just the first incarnation of a character who would go on to be so iconic for well over half a century, 59 years and counting.

Doctor Who first appeared on the BBC Television Service at 17:16:20 GMT on Saturday, 23 November 1963; this was eighty seconds later than the scheduled program time, because of announcements concerning the previous day’s assassination of John F. Kennedy.It was to be a regular weekly programme, each episode 25 minutes of transmission length. Discussions and plans for the programme had been in progress for a year. The head of drama Sydney Newman was mainly responsible for developing the programme, with the first format document for the series being written by Newman along with the head of the script department (later head of serials) Donald Wilson and staff writer C. E. Webber; in a 1971 interview Wilson claimed to have named the series, and when this claim was put to Newman he did not dispute it. Writer Anthony Coburn, story editor David Whitaker and initial producer Verity Lambert also heavily contributed to the development of the series.

The show was originally designed to be an educational adventure of sorts for families, learning about history and science depending on where they travelled.

sources

Doctor Who is 59!

https://geekireland.com/doctor-who-quick-guide-the-first-doctor/

Fawlty Towers

The key to good comedy is timing, someone once said. If that is the case John Cleese and Connie Booth must have the best sense of timing ever.

As the title suggests I am talking about ‘Fawlty Towers’ although it may seem there were hundreds of episodes, there were in fact only 12, spread over 2 seasons.

The first episode of Fawlty Towers aired on 19 September 1975. Audiences were keen to see what John Cleese would do after Monty Python, but at first the situation comedy received some less than enthusiastic reviews. However the strength of the writing and casting – with Cleese as hotelier Basil Fawlty – ensured the series was a great success.

The series is set in Fawlty Towers, a fictional hotel in the seaside town of Torquay on the English Riviera. The plots centre on the tense, rude and put-upon owner Basil Fawlty (Cleese), his bossy wife Sybil (Prunella Scales), the sensible chambermaid Polly (Booth) who often is the peacemaker and voice of reason, and the hapless and English-challenged Spanish waiter Manuel (Andrew Sachs). They show their attempts to run the hotel amidst farcical situations and an array of demanding and eccentric guests and tradespeople.

The idea of the show came from Cleese after he stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, Devon in 1970 (along with the rest of the Monty Python troupe), where he encountered the eccentric hotel owner Donald Sinclair.

Stuffy and snobbish, Sinclair treated guests as though they were a hindrance to his running of the hotel (a waitress who worked for him stated “it was as if he didn’t want the guests to be there”). Sinclair was the inspiration for Cleese’s character Basil Fawlty.

Fawlty Towers was written by Cleese with his wife Connie Booth. The shows were intricately plotted farces, and no dialogue was written until the plot had been finalised. The ensemble cast included Prunella Scales as Basil’s wife Sybil, and Andrew Sachs as the well-meaning but incompetent waiter Manuel. Booth provided an important element of sanity and calm as Polly the chambermaid.

Only 12 half hour episodes were ever made. The decision to stop making Fawlty Towers when it was at its creative height, leaving a distinct legacy, inspired later comedians such as Ricky Gervais. In 2000 Fawlty Towers was voted the best British television programme of all time in a BFI poll, above Cathy Come Home and Doctor Who.

There are so mamy hilarious moments I could pick, but this is my favourite. Who has never heard the expression “Don’t mention the war”

sources

https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/september/fawlty-towers/

When the world turned color.

I remember one of my sons , when he was a toddler, asking when the world turned color. I had to laugh at the innocent question, for he thought that prior to color movies and TV, the world had been black and white.

To answer his question, well at least from a TV perspective, it was in September 1941, 2 years into WWII.

The Scottish engineer, innovator,and one of the inventors of the mechanical television,John Logie Baird, had been working to produce a two-color image.

He did this by by placing filters in front of  two tubes and  then project them onto a smaller screen to enhance the effective intensity.The subject he used to demonstrate his invention had had a very colorful life herself.

Paddy Naismith had been a race driver,chauffeur to Prime Minister Mr Ramsay Macdonald, air hostess and actress. In September 1941 John Logie Baird used a live image of Paddy Naismith used to demonstrate the first all-electronic color television system, The  picture had 600 lines of resolution, and used a monochromatic cathode-ray tube with a rotating transparent color wheel in front of it.

It wasn’t until 1951 when the first color TV were sold, and initially they were taken of the market again a month after the sales. It was only until the 60s when first tv shows were broadcast in color.

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