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The Quest For Pedler - The Life And Ideas of Dr Kit Pedler
“...a staggeringly-thorough piece of work, exhuming scripts, lecture notes, obscure magazine articles and interviews and with contributions from many of Pedler’s family and friends. Literally no stone has been left unturned in presenting an exhaustive record of the life and times of a unique and rare talent” Starburst Magazine
For many people, Kit Pedler is best remembered as the man who created the Cybermen for Doctor Who, a real life scientist who was brought in to act as an advisor and bring some science to the fiction. The Cybermen were his ultimate scientific horror: where the very nature of a man was altered by himself, by his own genius for survival, creating a monster. Pedler was that rare animal, a scientist with an imagination. He liked to think 'What if...?'
With two doctorates to his name, and as Head of Anatomy at the Institute of Ophthalmology investigating the nature of the retina, Dr. Kit Pedler began to share the suspicions being voiced in the 1960s towards the role of the scientist in society, who saw research as an end to itself and left the moral dilemmas to the politicians in a world where the people were conditioned to accept an intolerable environment. He was at the beginnings of the 'Soft' or 'Alternative Technology' movement that wanted to develop a sustainable science that would not deplete the world of its natural resources or poison the environment with its pollution.
Together with his friend and writing partner Gerry Davis, he created the hugely successful and controversial BBC1 drama series Doomwatch, which captured this fear and frightened the adults as much as the Cybermen scared the children.
The series changed his life and launched him as a prophet of doom, whose stories uncannily predicted real life ecological accidents and disasters and became a much sought after pundit in the press and on television.
Resigning from the Institute, Pedler turned his back on the world he had spent his adult life working in, and spent the rest of it campaigning for a real Doomwatch, to stop the unnecessary and cruel animal experiments in the laboratory (which he himself had seen in his earlier academic days), experiment in what we would now call eco-friendly housing, alternative technology and began to change his own relationship to the world. This lead to his book The Quest For Gaia, published in 1979 where he envisaged how a Gaian life-style would work in the post-industrial age. He also designed and built a nuclear bomb in rural Kent.
Before his premature death in 1981, he had just finished a documentary series for ITV called Mind Over Matter, which was the first serious look at the world of the paranormal through the eyes of his enquiring and rational, but imaginative mind.
With contributions from his family, friends, colleagues and critics, this book tells the story behind a fascinating, charismatic, complicated, and demanding human being; a natural teacher who didn't just want to pontificate about the problems facing the world in a television or radio studio, but actually do something practical about them.
For many people, Kit Pedler is best remembered as the man who created the Cybermen for Doctor Who, a real life scientist who was brought in to act as an advisor and bring some science to the fiction. The Cybermen were his ultimate scientific horror: where the very nature of a man was altered by himself, by his own genius for survival, creating a monster. Pedler was that rare animal, a scientist with an imagination. He liked to think 'What if...?'
With two doctorates to his name, and as Head of Anatomy at the Institute of Ophthalmology investigating the nature of the retina, Dr. Kit Pedler began to share the suspicions being voiced in the 1960s towards the role of the scientist in society, who saw research as an end to itself and left the moral dilemmas to the politicians in a world where the people were conditioned to accept an intolerable environment. He was at the beginnings of the 'Soft' or 'Alternative Technology' movement that wanted to develop a sustainable science that would not deplete the world of its natural resources or poison the environment with its pollution.
Together with his friend and writing partner Gerry Davis, he created the hugely successful and controversial BBC1 drama series Doomwatch, which captured this fear and frightened the adults as much as the Cybermen scared the children.
The series changed his life and launched him as a prophet of doom, whose stories uncannily predicted real life ecological accidents and disasters and became a much sought after pundit in the press and on television.
Resigning from the Institute, Pedler turned his back on the world he had spent his adult life working in, and spent the rest of it campaigning for a real Doomwatch, to stop the unnecessary and cruel animal experiments in the laboratory (which he himself had seen in his earlier academic days), experiment in what we would now call eco-friendly housing, alternative technology and began to change his own relationship to the world. This lead to his book The Quest For Gaia, published in 1979 where he envisaged how a Gaian life-style would work in the post-industrial age. He also designed and built a nuclear bomb in rural Kent.
Before his premature death in 1981, he had just finished a documentary series for ITV called Mind Over Matter, which was the first serious look at the world of the paranormal through the eyes of his enquiring and rational, but imaginative mind.
With contributions from his family, friends, colleagues and critics, this book tells the story behind a fascinating, charismatic, complicated, and demanding human being; a natural teacher who didn't just want to pontificate about the problems facing the world in a television or radio studio, but actually do something practical about them.
- GenresDoctor Who
496 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
June 7, 2014
There’s currently a minor cottage industry in biographies of prominent Doctor Who production personnel – after plenty of actorly reminiscences and the salacious revelations of John Nathan-Turner’s biography attention’s turned to the writers. Russell T Davies was the subject of a cash-in biography, and has been followed by Robert Holmes with Malcolm Hulke to come. In the meantime Miwk have delivered a big fat life of co-creator of the Cybermen Kit Pedler.
You can see why they’ve opted for a life of Pedler. The problem with a lot of these books – the Holmes biography in particular – is the lack of a hinterland. Good as they may have been in their field there’s nothing of special interest to many of these personnel beyond their work. This emphatically isn’t the case with Pedler. He came to Doctor Who from a scientific background and began his writing career when Davis was looking for ideas to fuel the programme – Pedler was the only one who used cutting edge ideas as fuel rather than explaining why these things couldn’t happen. This ended up a productive partnership, resulting in several Doctor Who scripts and perils-of-science drama Doomwatch. Having increasingly lost his faith in science, his last decade featured him warning against the dangers of pushing too far and becoming involved in environmental projects.
Seely is pathologically fair minded in his treatment of Pedler. His research seems thorough, from family sources and friends to press articles. He covers Pedler’s early life, which is a long way from a smooth, glittering path to scientific success that you might expect from a casual acquaintance with the facts of his life. He’s scrupulously fair in his assessment of Pedler’s scientific qualifications and achievements, not shying away from Pedler’s habit of claiming to know more than he did. And, without being scandalous, he details a private life a little more colourful than you might have thought. We also get a full Doomwatch script. By modern standards it’s almost hackwork, all bad dialogue and forced plotting. Perhaps Terence Dudley was right to force Pedler and Davis out in a bitter production coup.
It’s Pedler’s faults and interests that make this a fascinating read - his loss of belief in science and progress, the interest in Gaia theory and his forthrightness in many areas are all good material. It might not provoke much interest beyond Doctor Who and cult TV circles, but it deserves to.
You can see why they’ve opted for a life of Pedler. The problem with a lot of these books – the Holmes biography in particular – is the lack of a hinterland. Good as they may have been in their field there’s nothing of special interest to many of these personnel beyond their work. This emphatically isn’t the case with Pedler. He came to Doctor Who from a scientific background and began his writing career when Davis was looking for ideas to fuel the programme – Pedler was the only one who used cutting edge ideas as fuel rather than explaining why these things couldn’t happen. This ended up a productive partnership, resulting in several Doctor Who scripts and perils-of-science drama Doomwatch. Having increasingly lost his faith in science, his last decade featured him warning against the dangers of pushing too far and becoming involved in environmental projects.
Seely is pathologically fair minded in his treatment of Pedler. His research seems thorough, from family sources and friends to press articles. He covers Pedler’s early life, which is a long way from a smooth, glittering path to scientific success that you might expect from a casual acquaintance with the facts of his life. He’s scrupulously fair in his assessment of Pedler’s scientific qualifications and achievements, not shying away from Pedler’s habit of claiming to know more than he did. And, without being scandalous, he details a private life a little more colourful than you might have thought. We also get a full Doomwatch script. By modern standards it’s almost hackwork, all bad dialogue and forced plotting. Perhaps Terence Dudley was right to force Pedler and Davis out in a bitter production coup.
It’s Pedler’s faults and interests that make this a fascinating read - his loss of belief in science and progress, the interest in Gaia theory and his forthrightness in many areas are all good material. It might not provoke much interest beyond Doctor Who and cult TV circles, but it deserves to.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review