Eric Saward ( / ˈ s eɪ w ʊ d / ; born 9 December 1944) is a British radio scriptwriter who worked as a screenwriter and script editor on the BBC's science fiction television series Doctor Who from 1982 to 1986. He wrote the stories The Visitation (1982), Earthshock (1982), Resurrection of the Daleks (1984) and Revelation of the Daleks (1985).
30-675: The Two Doctors is the fourth serial of the 22nd season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who , which was first broadcast in three weekly parts on BBC1 from 16 February to 2 March 1985. The serial is set on an alien space station and in and around Seville. In the serial, the alien time traveller the Sixth Doctor ( Colin Baker ), his former travelling companion Jamie McCrimmon ( Frazer Hines ) and his current companion Peri Brown ( Nicola Bryant ) work to save
60-491: A cameo role as the ill-fated hacienda owner the Doña Arana. The Two Doctors was one of several stories from this era to provoke controversy over its depiction of violence. In 1985, Australasian Doctor Who Fan Club president Tony Howe criticised the murder of Oscar with a kitchen knife as being an instance of "sick, shock violence" that was present for "cheap shock value only". Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times awarded
90-679: A gold foil-embossed cover, it was billed on release as the 100th novelisation and featured an introduction by John Nathan-Turner. The Two Doctors was released on VHS in November 1993. It was released on DVD in the UK in September 2003 in a two-disc set as part of the Doctor Who 40th Anniversary Celebration releases, representing the Colin Baker years, with many extra features, including
120-485: The Jim'll Fix It sketch A Fix with Sontarans . The DVD contains a full-length commentary provided by director Peter Moffatt and actors Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Frazer Hines, and Jacqueline Pearce. The DVD was subsequently incorporated into the box set Bred for War , along with The Time Warrior , The Sontaran Experiment and The Invasion of Time . Following the sexual abuse accusations regarding Jimmy Savile ,
150-533: The BBC children's programme Jim'll Fix It featuring Colin Baker in character as the Sixth Doctor . It was broadcast on 23 February 1985. It is not generally considered to be canonical by Doctor Who fans (although a book in the Big Finish Short Trips series nevertheless features a sequel to it). All releases are for DVD unless otherwise indicated: Eric Saward Saward's father
180-645: The Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown . Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines return to play the Second Doctor and his companion Jamie McCrimmon in The Two Doctors . Their last on-screen appearance was (briefly in the case of Hines) " The Five Doctors " in 1983. Anthony Ainley returns in The Mark of the Rani as The Master . Kate O'Mara makes her first appearance as the Rani in The Mark of
210-632: The comic book medium with the eponymous limited series Lytton , centred on the character he created for the Doctor Who serials Resurrection of the Daleks and Attack of the Cybermen . Saward lived in the Netherlands for three years, where he was briefly married. Saward's long-term partner is Jane Judge, who was the BBC production secretary for the Doctor Who office when he became script editor on
240-507: The Cyber-Controller from The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967). The series moved back to once-weekly Saturday broadcasts. All episodes were 45 minutes long, though 25-minute edits were produced for foreign markets. Although there were now only 13 episodes in the season, the total running time remained approximately the same as in previous seasons since the episodes were almost twice as long. A specially written segment produced for
270-515: The Cybermen , as well as those of The Visitation and Slipback , for Target Books ' Doctor Who range. Earthshock was novelised by Ian Marter . Saward eventually wrote novelisations of both of his Dalek stories, which were published in 2019. Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner and Saward aroused controversy in 1985 because many of the stories of Colin Baker 's first season as the Sixth Doctor contained numerous scenes of graphic violence and darker themes, which many commentators believed
300-509: The DVD was withdrawn from sale but has since been rereleased with the offending sketch removed. The BBC has made the serial available for download on Apple iTunes . It was released in issue 45 of Doctor Who DVD Files . It was released as part of the ‘Doctor Who The Collection: Season 22’ blu-ray box set on 20 June 2022. An extended cut of Part One was included as an extra on the set with a runtime of 47:33, running 3 minutes and 11 seconds longer than
330-533: The Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks . Saward also wrote the 1983 short story Birth of a Renegade in the special magazine published by Radio Times at the time of " The Five Doctors " (1983), the 20th Anniversary Special' (and Starlog Press in the United States) and the 1985 radio play Slipback which was broadcast on Radio 4. He wrote the novelisations of The Twin Dilemma and Attack of
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#1732780920839360-884: The Head of Projects. The Doctor tells Dastari that the Time Lords want the time experiments stopped, but Dastari refuses. Also on board are the Androgums, a gluttonous alien species who are conspiring with the Sontarans to take over the station. The ship's Androgum cook, Shockeye, drugs the crew's dinner to give the Sontarans an opportunity to invade. In the TARDIS, the Sixth Doctor has a vision of his second incarnation being put to death. He decides to consult his old friend Dastari to see if he can help. The Doctor and Peri arrive on
390-559: The Rani . Terry Molloy returns to play Davros in Revelation of the Daleks and also played Russell in Attack of the Cybermen . Maurice Colbourne returned as Lytton from the story Resurrection of the Daleks in Attack of the Cybermen . David Banks makes his third of four appearances as a Cyber-leader in Attack of the Cybermen . Michael Kilgarriff reprises his role of
420-540: The Second Doctor and Peri, but Jamie throws a knife at her wrist, making her drop the gun. Chessene goes into the module, hoping to escape, but the sabotaged module explodes, killing Chessene and reverting her back to her Androgum self. Jamie and the Second Doctor depart in their TARDIS, whilst the Sixth Doctor tells Peri they're both going on a vegetarian diet from now on. Robert Holmes, a vegetarian , wrote
450-562: The brief revised to feature the Second Doctor and Jamie, but the setting had to be changed to Spain instead when the expected funding for location filming in the United States fell through. In his 1986 interview for Starburst , script editor Eric Saward said he thought this story was "poorly directed". This story marked the final appearance of Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor and the final on-screen appearance of Frazer Hines as Jamie. Veteran actress Aimee Delamain appears in
480-401: The first and only time in the series' first run it featured 45-minute episodes in its entirety. During transmission, BBC1 controller Michael Grade announced an 18-month hiatus for the series, partly citing the violence depicted in the stories of the season. John Nathan-Turner produced the series with Eric Saward as script editor. Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant continue their roles as
510-524: The location filming around the hacienda and up and down the alleys in Seville is evocative, and the guest cast is brilliant". The novelisation of this serial, by Robert Holmes, was published in hardback and paperback in August 1985 as the 100th Doctor Who release by Target Books . This was Holmes's only complete novelisation and seeks to clear up some of the continuity errors in the original broadcast. With
540-423: The original broadcast episode. Doctor Who (season 22) The twenty-second season of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 5 January 1985 and ended on 30 March 1985. It opened with the serial Attack of the Cybermen and ended with the serial Revelation of the Daleks . The season returned to the traditional Saturday transmission for the first time since Season 18 , but for
570-529: The others arrive. Shockeye leaves the Second Doctor, who slowly reverts to normal. Chessene and Dastari take them back to the hacienda at gunpoint. The Sixth Doctor frees himself and kills Shockeye. Chessene sees the Doctor's blood and starts licking it. Dastari realises that no matter how augmented she may be, Chessene is still an Androgum, and decides to free the Second Doctor, Peri, and Jamie. When Chessene sees this, she shoots and kills Dastari. She tries to shoot
600-756: The season and gave it as one of his reasons for putting the series on an 18-month hiatus from 1985 until 1986. Saward defended these scenes, saying they were intended to be dramatic and to warn audiences against real-world violence. Saward had a sometimes strained relationship with Nathan-Turner, which gave rise to occasional tensions behind the scenes. When asked in July 1988, "If you could go back and start again, what would you change?" he replied, "the producer". Saward often objected to Nathan-Turner's insistence on hiring novice Doctor Who writers, which led to Saward having to work hard, not always successfully, on unsuitable scripts submitted by inexperienced contributors. Saward
630-607: The season's scripts. He subsequently denounced Nathan-Turner in an issue of Starburst . After resigning from Doctor Who , Saward's continued an association with the series. In the 1990s, he wrote linking narration for Doctor Who audio releases of missing episodes and later appeared in interviews on DVDs of his serials. He also contributed a short story to the Big Finish Short Trips collection. Saward has not worked in British television since leaving Doctor Who . In 2020, Saward made his first foray into
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#1732780920839660-629: The serial as an allegory about meat-eating, hunting and butchering. "Androgum" is an anagram of "gourmand". Holmes's original brief from producer John Nathan-Turner was to write a serial taking place in New Orleans , involving the Sontarans, the First Doctor portrayed by Richard Hurndall and the Doctor's granddaughter Susan Foreman , played by Carole Ann Ford , reprising their roles from " The Five Doctors ". Hurndall's death in April 1984 saw
690-566: The serial two stars out of five, stating: " The Two Doctors wasn't dire, but the actors and audience deserved better." In Doctor Who: The Complete Guide , Mark Campbell awarded The Two Doctors seven out of ten, describing it as "a Doctor Who version of Last of the Summer Wine as sponsored by the Vegetarian Society ." Television historian Marcus Harmes says of it "Besides the inherent joy of having Troughton and Hines back,
720-410: The series on the strength of a recommendation from the senior drama script editor at BBC Radio . He received a commission to write the story The Visitation . This in turn led to his appointment as script editor on the recommendation of Antony Root , who had briefly replaced Bidmead. In addition to his role as script editor, Saward also wrote the television stories Earthshock , Resurrection of
750-410: The ship, Chessene asks Dastari to turn the Second Doctor into an Androgum instead. They also intend to eliminate the Sontarans. Dastari implants the Second Doctor with a 50 per cent Androgum inheritance. The Second Doctor and Shockeye go to a restaurant and order gargantuan amounts of food. When the restaurant's owner, Oscar, demands that they pay, Shockeye fatally stabs him, just as the Sixth Doctor and
780-413: The station and are taken prisoner by the Sontarans. The ship lands in Seville, Spain, where the Androgums and Sontarans take over a local hacienda to use as a base of operations. Dastari reveals his plan to dissect the Second Doctor's cell structure to isolate his symbiotic nuclei and give them to Chessene, an Androgum technologically augmented to genius levels. Upon discovering there are two Time Lords on
810-473: The younger Second Doctor ( Patrick Troughton ) from the biogeneticist Dastari ( Laurence Payne ), who intends to steal the knowledge of how to travel in time from the Second Doctor's genetic make-up. This serial marks Troughton's final appearance as the Second Doctor before his death in 1987. The Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon land the TARDIS on board Space Station Camera, where they talk to Dastari,
840-557: Was an engineer at de Havilland in Hatfield, Hertfordshire . He was raised in Welwyn Garden City . He cited David Mercer , Brian Moore and Harold Pinter as early influences. Saward's career as a scriptwriter began with drama for radio while he was working as a teacher. Later he was able to cross into full-time writing. He was approached by then Doctor Who script editor Christopher H. Bidmead to submit some ideas to
870-439: Was eventually able to bring veteran writer Robert Holmes back to the series and they became friends before the latter's death. Saward's working relationship with Nathan-Turner deteriorated further. He had disagreed with Nathan-Turner's casting of Baker as the Sixth Doctor and, following the 1985 hiatus, problems peaked during the production of The Trial of a Time Lord in 1986 when he resigned as script editor before completing
900-408: Was inappropriate for a programme aimed at a family audience (the season featured acid baths, hangings, cell mutation experiments, executions by laser, cannibalism, poisonings, stabbings, suffocation by cyanide and a man having his hands crushed). Disapproval came from members of the general public, some Doctor Who fans, and BBC 1 controller Michael Grade publicly criticised the violence featured in
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