Terry Nation Would Had Been 81 Today (Yesterday)

Terry Nation, the creator of the Daleks (with nods to Raymond Cusick who designed them and of course Davros himself) for Doctor Who as well as the creator of the popular British sci-fi series, Blake's 7 would had been 81 years old today (well, now yesterday (8th of August) by the time you are reading this unless you are in Hawaii for the next hour or two). Of course his credits extend further than Doctor Who and Blake's 7. There was The Survivors, and episodes of various televsion series he contributed to both in the UK and US during the course of his career.

We lost him all too soon at the age of 66 in 1997. It was about ten years (give or take) before then when I had an opportunity to sit down with him and interview him. Unfortunately, the audio of that interview has slipped through a time vortex or a crack in space. Hopefully it is re-materialize at some point. I don't even have any photographs to share from that time. Perhaps like so many other cast and crew that I was meeting at that time I assumed there will always be the next time if I didn't get a photo that time. Sadly, there was no next time in my case with Terry Nation. 

My memories of Terry Nation is that he was very open about his work. You could tell he enjoyed having the opportunity to speak about it. There was certain intensity about him. He would be quick to correct you if presented with information that didn't jive with what he knew to be the case. Not in a rude a way, by any means.

Whether you enjoy the Daleks or wish they would go away for awhile, one thing is undeniable. Without them there may not be any Doctor Who today. The show's popularity exploded early on in its infancy with the help of the Daleks and what is effectionately called, "Dalekmania" during the 1960s. It resulted in two feature films featuring the Daleks (starring Peter Cushing as "Dr. Who") during that time period. The Daleks quickly became iconic and of course was immediately associated with the Doctor Who television series. So with that, we all owe Terry Nation, along with the aforementioned Raymond Cusick of course, thanks for the success of the Daleks in the early years of Doctor Who.

Dalek photos by Louis Trapani. Terry Nation photo sourced from Wikipedia.