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Donald Henry Cotton (26 April 1928 – 28 December 1999) was a British 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.


Early BBC career

Cotton's scripts for the
BBC Third Programme The BBC Third Programme was a national radio station produced and broadcast from 1946 until 1967, when it was replaced by Radio 3. It first went on the air on 29 September 1946 and quickly became one of the leading cultural and intellectual f ...
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 Michael Henry Flanders (1 March 1922 – 14 April 1975) was an English actor, broadcaster, and writer and performer of comic songs. He is best known for his stage partnership with Donald Swann. As a young man Flanders seemed to be heading f ...
,
Antony Hopkins Antony Hopkins CBE (21 March 1921 – 6 May 2014) was a composer, pianist, and conductor, as well as a writer and radio broadcaster. He was widely known for his books of musical analysis and for his radio programmes ''Talking About Music'', b ...
, N. F. Simpson,
Donald Swann Donald Ibrahim Swann (30 September 1923 – 23 March 1994) was a British composer, musician, singer and entertainer. He was one half of Flanders and Swann, writing and performing comic songs with Michael Flanders. Life Donald Swann was born ...
, and
Sandy Wilson Alexander Galbraith "Sandy" Wilson (19 May 1924 – 27 August 2014) was an English composer and lyricist, best known for his musical '' The Boy Friend'' (1953). Biography Wilson was born in Sale, Cheshire, England, and was educated at Harrow S ...
.


Doctor Who scripts


"The Myth Makers"

In April 1965,
Donald Tosh Donald Tosh (16 March 1935 – 3 December 2019) was a BBC screenwriter who contributed to '' Doctor Who'' in 1965. He was the last surviving script editor and writer from the William Hartnell era. Career Before working on ''Doctor Who'' Tosh w ...
replaced
Dennis Spooner Dennis Spooner (1 December 1932 – 20 September 1986) was an English television writer and script editor, known primarily for his programmes about fictional spies and his work in children's television in the 1960s. He had long-lasting profess ...
as story editor on the popular
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
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 John Wiles (20 September 1925 – 5 April 1999) was a South African novelist, television writer and producer. He was the second producer of the science fiction series ''Doctor Who'', succeeding Verity Lambert, and credited on four serials between ...
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'' is the third serial of the third season of the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. Written by Donald Cotton and directed by Michael Leeston-Smith, the serial was broadcast on BBC1 in four weekly parts ...
'', 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 Henry Hartnell (8 January 1908 – 23 April 1975) was an English actor. He is best remembered for his portrayal of the first incarnation of the Doctor in '' Doctor Who'' from 1963 to 1966. In film, Hartnell notably appeared in '' Bri ...
is reputed to have been particularly unimpressed by the story and clashed with several members of the cast and crew during filming. None of the episodes of ''The Myth Makers'' still survive in the
BBC Archives BBC Archives are collections documenting the BBC's broadcasting history, including copies of television and radio broadcasts, internal documents, photographs, online content, sheet music, commercially available music, BBC products (including ...
.


"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 30 November 1965 Cotton was commissioned to write ''
The Gunfighters ''The Gunfighters'' is the seventh serial of the third season in the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'', which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 30 April to 21 May 1966. The serial is set in and around the tow ...
''. 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 The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial ...
(a setting which William Hartnell would later claim to have suggested), and specifically the infamous
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral The gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a thirty-second shootout between law enforcement officer, lawmen led by Virgil Earp and members of a loosely organized group of outlaws called the Cochise County Cowboys, Cowboys that occurred at about 3: ...
, which took place on 26 October 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 Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929) was an American lawman and gambler in the American West, including Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone. Earp took part in the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which l ...
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 George Innes Llewelyn Lloyd (24 December 1925 – 23 August 1991) was a Welsh television producer. He had a long career in BBC drama, which included producing series such as ''Doctor Who'' and ''Talking Heads''. Early life and career Fo ...
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 Ian Stuart Black (21 March 1915 – 13 October 1997 ) was a British 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 ...
's '' The Savages'', which would end up following Cotton's adventure into production. 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 The Audience Appreciation Index (AI) is an indicator measured from 0 to 100 of the public's appreciation for a television or radio programme, or broadcast service, in the United Kingdom. Until 2002, the AI of a programme was calculated by the B ...
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.


"The Herdsmen of Aquarius"

''The Gunfighters'' was Donald Cotton's last contribution to ''Doctor Who''. Another submission entitled ''The Herdsmen of Aquarius'' (or ''The Herdsmen of Venus'') was rejected by Gerry Davis in June 1966. It would have featured an "explanation" for the
Loch Ness Monster The Loch Ness Monster ( gd, Uilebheist Loch Nis), affectionately known as Nessie, is a creature in Scottish folklore that is said to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is often described as large, long-necked, and with one or mor ...
, which the storyline explained away as livestock kept by aliens.


Post-''Doctor Who'' career

After helping to create ''
Adam Adamant Lives! ''Adam Adamant Lives!'' is a British adventure television series that ran from 1966 to 1967 on BBC 1, starring Gerald Harper in the title role. The series was created and produced by several alumni from ''Doctor Who''. Proposing that an adventur ...
'', 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 1980s, Cotton novelised his ''Doctor Who'' serials as well as '' The Romans'' for
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 wel ...
. For this, he took a comedic and unusual approach and presented them in the first person. His ''Romans'' adaptation takes the form of an
epistolary novel An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse documents of other kinds with the letters, most commonly diary entries and newspaper clippings, and sometimes considered ...
told by, among other narrators, the Doctor's companion Ian Chesterton. The Gunfighters is told by Doc Holiday and has Johnny Ringo take the contract to kill the Earps in order to afford a copy of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Classical Biography. He wrote a novel entitled '' Bodkin Papers'' in 1986.


Writing credits


References


External links

* *
Index of collection of BBC Third Programme Radio Scripts
held at the
University of Delaware The University of Delaware (colloquially UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 ma ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cotton, Donald 1928 births 1999 deaths British radio writers British television writers British science fiction writers English television writers English male screenwriters English dramatists and playwrights English male dramatists and playwrights British male television writers 20th-century English screenwriters 20th-century English male writers