Ex-producer Derrick Sherwin speaks out

...and boy is he testy.

Highlights:

Quote :

The scripts, both existing and commissioned, were dreadful and getting
the authors to follow a re-write brief was impossible since writing for
Doctor Who was considered at the time to be as prestigious as cleaning the gents toilets on Shepherd’s Bush Green.

Quote :

I don’t think they fully appreciated what I was trying to do with
introducing UNIT and, in my opinion, the series regressed from then on,
except for a short time when Tom Baker gave it spirit as one of the
replacement Doctors.

Quote :

I was sent copies of each new series and was impressed that the extra
cash from the co-production had happily seemed to have ended up on the
screen. I liked some of the stories but not those that travelled back
in time into history – something I thought should never have been
tackled for the obvious reasons. History is history: don’t tamper with
it. But if the new producers want life breathed into the old series,
they’ve only got to ask.

Not sure what to make of it - he has an "old fart waving his walking stick at the young whoopersnappers" vibe about him. He makes a lot of noise about how no one "got" what where he was going with UNIT, but then fails to make clear where he would've gone with it, so we can learn the error of Barry Letts' ways (now there's a phrase that you don't see very often).

One other things I thought was fascinating:

Quote :

Patrick Troughton was getting fractious as the leading actor because
his workload had become impossible. Eventually, he cracked. I had
already decided to ease his burden by introducing UNIT as a secondary
storyline participant. It was about this time that Patrick decided that
he’d had enough and had a big row with Peter, who bid him farewell.

I've never read an account of Troughton's departure as being one where there was some huge falling-out; as much of a grain of salt as I take the rest of Sherwin's article with, this point is interesting in that he's one of the few people who was actually there who's still around to talk about it.

Where did you get the info, Earl??

Sorry, I didn't mark the link too clearly in the original post; here's Sherwin's article.

According to the book About Time Volume 2, Troughton's reasons for leaving were the work load and that he'd played the part long enough. During the 1960s Doctor Who was in production nearly year round. There were also a lot of problems
with scripts falling through during Pat's final year. I'm not sure how to take Sherwin's comments. He sort of comes across as bitter that he hasn't received more recognition for his work on Doctor Who but he didn't produce that many stories either.