Derrick Sherwin 1936- 2018

When people list the great Doctor Who producers and showrunners, Derrick Sherwin is often overlooked because his period as producer was brief involving just two stories. However they were hugely significant stories and his influence on the programme was considerable. He cast both Jon Pertwee and Caroline John, created UNIT and has also been credited with creating the Time Lords. He rejigged the series to an Earthbound setting and also oversaw the programme’s move from being shown in black and white to colour. Provocative, outspoken and passionate he sounds like a difficult person to work with but his influence on Doctor Who looms large to this day. 

The two stories that Derrick Sherwin helmed are classics though he had already been a sort of unofficial deputy producer beforehand. The epic `War Games` brought Patrick Troughton’s tenure to a close and `Spearhead from Space`  introduced Jon Pertwee. It’s important to note that by 1969  Doctor Who’s ratings had fallen and there was talk of cancelling the show so you could say- and Derrick Sherwin had no doubt- that he saved Doctor Who. The 1970 season was effectively its last chance and it was Sherwin who came up with the idea of exiling the Doctor to Earth. He totally rebooted the series moving it to a more contemporary setting with the Doctor working to save the planet from various alien threats. In tandem with this the series moved from a dialogue led drama to a more action orientated one with similarities to the likes of The Avengers. Though it was Quatermass which inspired Sherwin to take a new direction especially as he disliked adventures set in outer Space. Though the limitations of this format quickly became clear the template was retained and expanded upon by Sherwin’s successor Barry Letts. It is tempting to imagine how the series would have fared had Sherwin not left so soon. While much of ` War Games` sticks to the well- established second Doctor palette it is `Spearhead` where Sherwin’s vision for Doctor Who is unveiled and it has more in common with the modern series than it does with late 60s one..

In a 2009 interview he described the somewhat chaotic situation behind the scenes at the time also giving an insight into his approach: “I was landed with a great pile of scripts that had to go into production immediately after the holiday break. The director had sent them back and said he wouldn’t do them. Pat Troughton had thrown a wobbly – they really were appalling! So I spent the entire Christmas, apart from Christmas Day, rewriting the first two of three episodes of that story, to get it into some sort of reasonable shape. I found Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln (writers of ‘The Dominators’) tough guys to work with. They were aggressive writers, insofar as they were very difficult to convince that they had made a wrong move if something needed adjusting or a piece of dialogue needed changing. They fought for every dot and comma.”

Derrick Sherwin did his National Service in the Royal Air Force before launching his creative career. He began working as an artist and stage manager in the theatre. On television he worked across disciplines in the Fifties and Sixties as a writer, actor and producer. Acting roles included appearances in series such as Sunday Night Theatre, William Tell, Here Lies Miss Sabry, Danger Man, Richard the Lionheart and Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre. He wrote or script edited the series United (1967-68) as well as writing an episode of Emergency Ward 10 and two episodes of Z Cars. It was little known at the time that he also penned the first episode of The Mind Robber as a story editor on Doctor Who.  In 1968 he  wrote `Invasion` one of the best remembered stories which introduced UNIT and soon after he became producer of the series. However he was taken off Doctor Who to produce a show being co-produced with Germany, Paul Temple, which ran for 37 episodes from 1970-71 after which he produced the less well known The Man Inside.

Other production credits are Ski Boy (1973) and Perils of Pendragon (1974). He set up an independent production company SkyBoy in 1974 and continued writing mainly for children’s dramas Kin and Co and Nobody’s House (both 1976). Some biographies say that in the early 1980s he was running the world’s first computer animation company Electronic Arts but there is no evidence of this in histories of the company which was founded in the US.  Later he abandoned the arts altogether and after divorcing moved to Thailand where he earned a living in the tourist industry. 

Latterly he often seemed snippy about Doctor Who despite twice making a serious bid to produce the series during the 1990s when it was off the air and calling his memoir `Who’s Next`. The book was by his own admission cynically released to cash in on the fiftieth anniversary of the show which he said he was “pissed off” not be involved in. The book pulls no punches describing his difficult working relationship with Patrick Troughton (whom he claims was suffering from stress) as well as having less than kind words for Peter Bryant. Sadly the text also betrays him to be a man from another time with some of the prejudice and attitudes that suggests. He was dismissive of the 2005 revival which he called “bullshit”. Indeed later interviews he gave seemed to find him angry about most things. Perhaps what it all boils down to is that he hadn’t really wanted to be taken off the series in 1970 when he’d hardly got started.