Donald Cotton
Encyclopedia
Donald Cotton was a writer
for radio
and television
during the black and white era. He also wrote numerous musical revues for the stage. His work often had a comedic bent.
include Echo and Narcissus (1959), The Golden Fleece and Stereologue (both 1962) and The Tragedy of Phaethon (1965, described as a comedy despite the name). In 1960, he introduced Voices in the Air, a programme whose script included work not only by Cotton but also by other notable contributors including Harold Pinter
, John Betjeman
, Michael Flanders
, Antony Hopkins
, N. F. Simpson
, Donald Swann
, and Sandy Wilson
.
replaced Dennis Spooner
as story editor
on the BBC
science fiction
programme Doctor Who
, and soon thereafter contacted Donald Cotton, an old acquaintance, to write for the programme. Tosh and incoming producer John Wiles
were keen to push the boundaries of the programme, and felt that Cotton might be able to deliver a high comedy. His first script, The Myth Makers
, a tongue-in-cheek historical based like several of his radio plays on Greek mythology, pushed comedic elements to the limit. Cotton's planned episode titles were altered due to BBC disapproval of the punning theme the author had devised for them. Only the original name for the second episode, Small Prophet, Quick Return survived at Tosh's insistence. William Hartnell
is reputed to have been particularly unimpressed by the story and clashed with several members of the cast and crew during filming. Regrettably, none of the episodes of The Myth Makers still survives in the BBC Archives
.
. The idea was that this would, again, be a humorous take on the historical story; this time, the target would be the American Wild West (a setting which William Hartnell would later claim to have suggested), and specifically the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
, which took place on October 26, 1881. Eschewing detailed historical research, Cotton opted to hew closer to the version of the Gunfight which had passed into contemporary mythology, with Wyatt Earp
as a stolid enforcer of the law and Doc Holliday
as a rascally anti-hero. Once more, Cotton’s script played fast and loose with other elements of true Wild West history.
To Cotton's chagrin, both Wiles and Tosh resigned from Doctor Who at the end of December 1965, to be replaced by producer Innes Lloyd
and story editor Gerry Davis
. Lloyd and Davis disliked the historical genre, believing that the viewing audience was more interested in science-fiction stories, and also felt that the comedic bent of The Gunfighters did not fit with their more serious vision of Doctor Who. For a time, the production team considered cancelling the story altogether and replacing it with Ian Stuart Black
's The Savages, which would end up following Cotton's adventure into production. Regrettably, the production team's fears about the quality of The Gunfighters appeared to be borne out when the final three episodes equalled or exceeded the series' lowest Audience Appreciation scores to date. Indeed, The O.K. Corral episode, rating only 30%, would prove to be the all-time low-water mark for Doctor Who. These disastrous figures helped strengthen Lloyd's conviction that historical serials should be eliminated from Doctor Who altogether. This was not the only controversy surrounding The O.K. Corral: a dispute had arisen between director
Rex Tucker
and Lloyd over the editing of the episode, leading to Tucker requesting that his credit be excised.
, Donald Cotton mainly confined his attention to writing and performing for the stage, although he would also become a novelist and columnist
. He helped Tony Snell write the satirical 1968 album Medieval & Latter Day Lays, also known as Englishman Abroad. In the Eighties, Cotton novelised both his Doctor Who serials as well as The Romans
for Target Books
. All three rank as the most comedic and possibly the most unusual in the book range, being told in the first person and from a broadly humorous standpoint. He also wrote a novel called Bodkin Papers in 1986.
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
for radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
during the black and white era. He also wrote numerous musical revues for the stage. His work often had a comedic bent.
Early BBC career
Cotton's scripts for the BBC Third ProgrammeBBC Third Programme
The BBC Third Programme was a national radio network broadcast by the BBC. The network first went on air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in Britain, playing a crucial role in disseminating the arts...
include Echo and Narcissus (1959), The Golden Fleece and Stereologue (both 1962) and The Tragedy of Phaethon (1965, described as a comedy despite the name). In 1960, he introduced Voices in the Air, a programme whose script included work not only by Cotton but also by other notable contributors including Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
, John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
, Michael Flanders
Michael Flanders
Michael Henry Flanders OBE, was an English actor, broadcaster, and writer and performer of comic songs. He is best known to the general public for his partnership with Donald Swann performing as the duo Flanders and Swann....
, Antony Hopkins
Antony Hopkins
Antony Hopkins CBE is an English composer, pianist, conductor, and radio broadcaster.Hopkins was born in London under the name Ernest William Antony Reynolds; his surname was changed during his childhood to Hopkins...
, N. F. Simpson
N. F. Simpson
Norman Frederick Simpson was an English playwright closely associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. To his friends he was known as Wally Simpson, in comic reference to the abdication crisis of 1936.-Early years:...
, Donald Swann
Donald Swann
Donald Ibrahím Swann was a British composer, musician and entertainer. He is best known to the general public for his partnership of writing and performing comic songs with Michael Flanders .-Life:...
, and Sandy Wilson
Sandy Wilson
Sandy Wilson is an English composer and lyricist, best known for his musical The Boy Friend .-Biography:Wilson was born Alexander Galbraith Wilson in Sale, Greater Manchester, and was educated at Harrow School and Oriel College, Oxford. During the war he served in the Royal Ordnance Corps in Great...
.
The Myth Makers
In April 1965, Donald ToshDonald Tosh
Donald Tosh was a BBC screenwriter during the 1960s who contributed to the Doctor Who programme in 1965.Before working on Doctor Who Tosh was briefly script editor on the series Compact, and had helped to develop the show that eventually became Coronation Street.Tosh was the story editor for the...
replaced Dennis Spooner
Dennis Spooner
Dennis Spooner was an English television screenwriter and story editor, known primarily for his programmes about fictional spies and his work in children's television in the 1960s...
as story editor
Script editor
A script editor is a member of the production team of scripted television programmes, usually dramas and comedies. The script editor has many responsibilities including finding new script writers, developing storyline and series ideas with writers, ensuring that scripts are suitable for production...
on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
programme Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
, and soon thereafter contacted Donald Cotton, an old acquaintance, to write for the programme. Tosh and incoming producer John Wiles
John Wiles
John Wiles was a television writer and producer, now best known for being the second producer of the popular science fiction serial Doctor Who, succeeding Verity Lambert...
were keen to push the boundaries of the programme, and felt that Cotton might be able to deliver a high comedy. His first script, The Myth Makers
The Myth Makers
The Myth Makers is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 16 October to 6 November 1965. The story is set in Homeric Troy, based on Iliad by Homer...
, a tongue-in-cheek historical based like several of his radio plays on Greek mythology, pushed comedic elements to the limit. Cotton's planned episode titles were altered due to BBC disapproval of the punning theme the author had devised for them. Only the original name for the second episode, Small Prophet, Quick Return survived at Tosh's insistence. William Hartnell
William Hartnell
William Henry Hartnell was an English actor. During 1963-66, he was the first actor to play the Doctor in the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.-Early life:...
is reputed to have been particularly unimpressed by the story and clashed with several members of the cast and crew during filming. Regrettably, none of the episodes of The Myth Makers still survives in the BBC Archives
BBC Archives
The BBC Archives are collections documenting the BBC's broadcasting history.- Overview :The archives contain 1 million hours of media material dating back to the 1890s, with early material on wax cylinder. With other materials such as photos and written documents the archive contains 11 million...
.
The Gunfighters
Tosh and Wiles were so pleased with his first script that Donald Cotton was quickly asked to submit another idea for Doctor Who, and on November 30, 1965 Cotton was commissioned to write The GunfightersThe Gunfighters
The Gunfighters is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, set in 19th Century America on the days leading up to the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral...
. The idea was that this would, again, be a humorous take on the historical story; this time, the target would be the American Wild West (a setting which William Hartnell would later claim to have suggested), and specifically the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a roughly 30-second gunfight that took place at about 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona Territory, of the United States. Outlaw Cowboys Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne ran from the fight, unharmed, but Ike's brother...
, which took place on October 26, 1881. Eschewing detailed historical research, Cotton opted to hew closer to the version of the Gunfight which had passed into contemporary mythology, with Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was an American gambler, investor, and law enforcement officer who served in several Western frontier towns. He was also at different times a farmer, teamster, bouncer, saloon-keeper, miner and boxing referee. However, he was never a drover or cowboy. He is most well known...
as a stolid enforcer of the law and Doc Holliday
Doc Holliday
John Henry "Doc" Holliday was an American gambler, gunfighter and dentist of the American Old West, who is usually remembered for his friendship with Wyatt Earp and his involvement in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral...
as a rascally anti-hero. Once more, Cotton’s script played fast and loose with other elements of true Wild West history.
To Cotton's chagrin, both Wiles and Tosh resigned from Doctor Who at the end of December 1965, to be replaced by producer Innes Lloyd
Innes Lloyd
Innes Lloyd was a British television producer of BBC drama producers.-Doctor Who:...
and story editor Gerry Davis
Gerry Davis (screenwriter)
Gerry Davis was a British television writer, best known for his contributions to the science-fiction genre. He also wrote for the soap operas Coronation Street and United!....
. Lloyd and Davis disliked the historical genre, believing that the viewing audience was more interested in science-fiction stories, and also felt that the comedic bent of The Gunfighters did not fit with their more serious vision of Doctor Who. For a time, the production team considered cancelling the story altogether and replacing it with Ian Stuart Black
Ian Stuart Black
Ian Stuart Black was a novelist, playwright and screenwriter. Both his 1959 novel In the Wake of a Stranger and his 1962 novel about the Cyprus emergency The High Bright Sun were made into films, Black writing the screenplays in each case.He also wrote scripts for several British television...
's The Savages, which would end up following Cotton's adventure into production. Regrettably, the production team's fears about the quality of The Gunfighters appeared to be borne out when the final three episodes equalled or exceeded the series' lowest Audience Appreciation scores to date. Indeed, The O.K. Corral episode, rating only 30%, would prove to be the all-time low-water mark for Doctor Who. These disastrous figures helped strengthen Lloyd's conviction that historical serials should be eliminated from Doctor Who altogether. This was not the only controversy surrounding The O.K. Corral: a dispute had arisen between director
Television director
A television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...
Rex Tucker
Rex Tucker
Rex Tucker was a British television director in the 1950s and 1960s.He was born in March in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire. Amongst his work, he was a driving force during the formative stages of Doctor Who in 1963, acting as a caretaker producer prior to the arrival of Verity Lambert...
and Lloyd over the editing of the episode, leading to Tucker requesting that his credit be excised.
The Herdsmen of Aquarius
The Gunfighters was Donald Cotton's last contribution to Doctor Who, although another submission entitled The Herdsmen Of Aquarius (or The Herdsmen Of Venus) was rejected by Gerry Davis in June 1966.After Doctor Who
After helping to create Adam Adamant Lives!Adam Adamant Lives!
Adam Adamant Lives! is a British television series which ran from 1966 to 1967 on the BBC. Proposing that an adventurer born in 1867 had been revived from hibernation in 1966, the show was a comedy adventure that took a satirical look at life in the 1960s through the eyes of an Edwardian .- Character...
, Donald Cotton mainly confined his attention to writing and performing for the stage, although he would also become a novelist and columnist
Columnist
A columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs....
. He helped Tony Snell write the satirical 1968 album Medieval & Latter Day Lays, also known as Englishman Abroad. In the Eighties, Cotton novelised both his Doctor Who serials as well as The Romans
The Romans (Doctor Who)
The Romans is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from January 16 to February 6, 1965. The story is set during the era of the Roman Empire in the reign of Nero.-Plot:...
for Target Books
Target Books
Target Books was a British publishing imprint, established in 1973 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co Ltd, a paperback publishing company. The imprint was established as a children's imprint to complement the adult Tandem imprint, and became well known for their highly successful range of...
. All three rank as the most comedic and possibly the most unusual in the book range, being told in the first person and from a broadly humorous standpoint. He also wrote a novel called Bodkin Papers in 1986.
External links
- Find-A-Grave profile for Donald Cotton
- Index of collection of BBC Third Programme Radio Scripts held at the University of DelawareUniversity of DelawareThe university is organized into seven colleges:* College of Agriculture and Natural Resources* College of Arts and Sciences* Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics* College of Earth, Ocean and Environment* College of Education and Human Development...