Terry Nation

You may be looking for his DWU counterpart or the Time Lord.

Terry Nation (8 August 1930-9 March 1997^[1]) was a writer who was responsible for numerous Doctor Who television stories between 1963 and 1979 and was notable for creating the Daleks.

Career

Outside of Doctor Who, he is best known for creating Blake's 7 and the post-holocaust drama serial Survivors. Nation was born in Wales and worked as a writer for Tony Hancock before Hancock fired him.

Nation wrote for science fiction series such as Out of This World, Festival and Out of the Unknown and later moved on to action series such as The Saint, The Baron, The Champions, Department S, The Avengers, The Persuaders! and The Protectors. He also served as script consultant on The Baron, The Avengers and The Persuaders!.

He later moved to America where he produced episodes of MacGyver. He died of emphysema in Los Angeles in 1997. In later Doctor Who TV stories he has been credited as the creator of the Daleks in on-screen credits.

In the DWU

Like with many of the individuals behind Doctor Who, Terry Nation exists within the DWU. Terry Nation was first seen in COMIC: Dalek Invasion of Earth 2150 B.C., where he had seemingly travelled back in time and was in the process of patenting the design to the Daleks in their first invasion of Earth in 2150 B.C.. Nation was later mentioned in PROSE: The Dalek Invasion of Toyshops as being one of many Preliminary Operatives working for the Daleks (the other agents were also named in reference to real world people who worked on Doctor Who). A version of Terry Nation was later cited on a DVD boxset as the creator of the Daleks in an alternate universe in COMIC: The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who.

Finally, a Time Lord Castellan called Terrynate was mentioned in PROSE: The Time Lord Letters, a clear allusion to Terry Nation.

Legacy

Following his death in 1997, his Doctor Who career was commemorated in the documentary Terror Nation.

Credits

Writing

Television

Prose

Short stories

Other

Notes

Though credited with the authorship of The Dalek Chronicles and the various Dalek annuals (indeed, each of the four 1970s publications were titled Terry Nation’s Dalek Annual”), the actual extent of his creative input on the author(s) remains unknown. Many of the short stories and comic strips in the annuals appear to share both his preference for downbeat/shock endings and apparent belief that tape recorders would remain cutting-edge technology for centuries yet. (Mission to the Unknown, The Daleks’ Master Plan)
Terry Nation created and wrote much of the dystopian sci-fi television series Blake's 7. He also created Survivors and was involved in several other series produced by ITC, such as The Baron and The Persuaders!. He script edited the final series of The Avengers, featuring Linda Thorson as Tara King.
Nation's later work shifted to American television, including writing and producing episodes of the action-adventure show MacGyver for ABC.
His prose writing was largely restricted to commissioned short stories for a range of newspapers, magazines and Dalek specials. However, he did write a fantasy novel, dedicated to his daughter and published in 1975, called Rebecca’s World, and also chose to personally novelise the early episodes of Survivors (published, 1976). However, he never opted to novelise either his Blake’s 7 or Doctor Who scripts, content (at least concerning the latter) for Target Books to assign another author to the task. This was most commonly Terrance Dicks, who novelised The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, The Android Invasion, and Destiny of the Daleks. His other scripts were adapted by David Whitaker, Philip Hinchcliffe and John Peel.
Nation was the last writer of Doctor Who's original season to pass away; until his own death, he remained the show's earliest surviving writer for nearly 20 years.

Miscellaneous

Documentary

Contributions to the mythos

External links

Terry Nation at the Internet Movie Database

Footnotes

↑ Doctor Who Guide

[1] Doctor Who Guide

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