Terry Nation honoured with blue plaque
Wednesday, 20 November 2013 - Reported by John Bowman
Screenwriter Terry Nation was being honoured today with the unveiling of a blue plaque at the house in Wales where he was born.The event was due to take place at midday at 113 Fairwater Grove West, Llandaff, Cardiff, just a few miles from where Doctor Who is now made.
Organised by the Llandaff Society, its chairman, Geoffrey Barton-Greenwood, told the BBC that he met the Dalek creator while the latter had been visiting friends in the area after his move to Hollywood.
He said:
I knew immediately who he was. I had been watching the Doctor Who series from the very beginning. I didn't at that stage know that he was a Llandaff boy. He was obviously a very impressive character. He had stature and gravitas.
There are stories of neighbours seeing him, as a boy, sitting on the back step jotting down story ideas in his notebook. He put the success of Doctor Who and the Daleks down to "good old-fashioned stories, lots of danger, with tremendous adversaries. And the Doctor beating big villains".
Nation was born in 1930 near fellow writer Roald Dahl, and Barton-Greenwood suggested that he might have been playing with the name of "Dahl" when he came up with "Dalek".There are stories of neighbours seeing him, as a boy, sitting on the back step jotting down story ideas in his notebook. He put the success of Doctor Who and the Daleks down to "good old-fashioned stories, lots of danger, with tremendous adversaries. And the Doctor beating big villains".
There is a connection in that they are "Daleks" and Roald "Dahl" was only from around the corner. I think Terry Nation might well have been having a play on words.
It would be an extreme coincidence that these guys came from such a short distance apart and yet came up with this sort of affinity.
Before he wrote for Doctor Who, Nation was a comedy writer and penned material for, among others, Tony Hancock. The comedian's nephew Tim Hancock, who now looks after the Nation estate, was due to unveil the plaque. It would be an extreme coincidence that these guys came from such a short distance apart and yet came up with this sort of affinity.
In May 2002, blue Heritage Foundation plaques to the memory of William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee were unveiled at BBC TV Centre in London.
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