Eyewitness 33 Years Ago Today
The first Dr Who was screened
No one anticipated how huge Dr Who was going to be. Just before it went on, the BBC got cold feet. It was supposed to run for a year, but they said, 'We've got to finish it in 13 weeks'. We were all so inexperienced and the budget was £96,000, which was a lot in 1963. There was this feeling, 'Do these people know what they're doing?' When the head of department saw the Dalek episode, he thought it was terrible. I realised something was up when all the friends I drank with started rushing home to watch it. The brief had been to attract children from six to 14, but I never worried too much about that. It was because we existed in this twilight world between children and adults that we could free ourselves and produce this oddity. It utterly changed the perception of sci-fi.
Original producer Verity Lambert
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