Is there any lore that Nomad was based on the Daleks?

[UnknownSample]

Laypeople think it's "obvious" that any similarity is proof of deliberate imitation, but that's bull. The fact is, accidental similarities happen so routinely that they're a constant source of frustration to writers. We all try to be original, precisely because it's so damn hard to avoid being unintentionally similar to what someone else has done or is doing. The number one reason why TV story pitches or fiction-magazine submissions are rejected is "We've already bought a very similar story." I encountered that multiple times in just the few occasions when I tried pitching to Star Trek back in the '90s. When I sent in my first TNG spec script, the episode "Quality of Life" did a similar story just 10 days after I mailed it. One of my DS9 pitches was similar to "Empok Nor," which came along the following year. One or two of my VGR phone pitches got rejected because they were already doing something similar, and when I pitched a reworked-for-VGR version of my DS9 spec script to Joe Menosky, he asked where I got the idea, because it was similar to an original screenplay he'd written.

So you are absolutely wrong to assume that similarity is "obviously" proof of deliberate influence. That is not how it works. Similarities happen by accident all the time. They are very hard to avoid, no matter how hard we try -- and we do try, because nobody wants to be accused of unoriginality. But it's inevitable that different works will happen to have similarities. Because there are only so many concepts out there in the pool of cultural references, only so many plot structures that work, and only so many situations that are identifiable and meaningful to an audience. That's why it's so commonplace for different creators to come up with similar ideas without trying, and why it's so enormously wrong to assume that similarity proves imitation. It's not imitation, it's parallel evolution.

And you are absolutely wrong to assume that I thought that similarity proves imitation!!! Good post, and thanks for the professional slant on it. While it appears to me as if both Andromeda and Farscape were a bit too influenced by Blake's 7, geez, I don't know anything for certain. There are only so many classic SF shows, anyone pitching a show probably knows them better than the average viewer. The basic situation of B7 is too good not to re-use...

 

[Christopher]

And you are absolutely wrong to assume that I thought that similarity proves imitation!!!

You specifically said that the makers of Andromeda were "obviously" influenced by Blake's 7. That phrasing presents it an unambiguous fact rather than just a possibility.

While it appears to me as if both Andromeda and Farscape were a bit too influenced by Blake's 7, geez, I don't know anything for certain. There are only so many classic SF shows, anyone pitching a show probably knows them better than the average viewer.

Yes, influence does happen from time to time. But so does accidental similarity, all the time. Which is why it shouldn't be presumed to be "obvious" that a similarity was deliberate. As I said, all works draw on the same pool of cultural references, so different works will often independently draw on the same antecedents. Heck, Blake's 7 itself was basically a mix between The Magnificent Seven (itself an adaptation of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai) and Robin Hood, along with influences from Doctor Who, Star Trek, and Star Wars. And since many, many other works of fiction have drawn on those same influences, it's hard to tell what's directly influenced by Blake's 7 and what's just taken from one of B7's own influences.

 

[Lance]

I looked it up. Doctor Who didn't even air in America until the 1970s, and it's not like anyone was illegally downloading it on the internet back in 1967 . .. .

Doctor Who is unlikely to have been on STAR TREK's radar back in the day.

Absolutely. And the opposite is very true as well: Doctor Who in the 1960s has been accused of using several ideas astonishingly close to Star Trek ones, but the reality is that Trek didn't begin airing in Britain until 1969, and unless the producers were globetrotters (not common back then), the chances are pretty good that any similarities between the shows prior to that time are purely coincidental. Bear in mind that even Star Trek used a pool of ideas that were not original, although it brings its own take to them. Doctor Who and Star Trek writers probably read the same sources, independently of each other.

Later instalments of Trek and Who alike have borrowed liberally from each other, and even acknowledged it on occasion. But this was almost certainly not the case in the sixties.

 

[Greg Cox]

Exactly. One still occasionally runs into the fan "theory" that Gary Seven was somehow based on Doctor Who, but that's really just more of a case of noting accidental similarities years after the fact, after both Who and Trek achieved global fame and awareness.

And, yes, Christopher is quite right that accidental similarities happen more often than people might think, especially when you're dealing with such well-trodden ground as robots, spaceships, time-travel, and so on. As I like to put, just because Author A wrote a story about vampire mermaids and, years later, Author B wrote a story about vampire mermaids, that doesn't necessarily mean Author B stole the idea from Author A--or that they even knew about that earlier story. It might be just that two authors independently came up with the idea of vampire mermaids, working from the same old myths and legends and tropes.

I used to read the submissions to a certain New York publisher, and I still remember the time we received two multi-generational family sagas about life in Appalachia on the very same day.

It happens.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Dr. Whom

Good grammar is laudable, but I don't think the spelling changes with its use in a sentence.

 

[telerites]

Good grammar is laudable, but I don't think the spelling changes with its use in a sentence.

It was not purposeful, just a typo.

 

[Leviathan]

Well, a Dalek-Space probe fanfic cannot be far off...

 

[diankra]

The first definite cross-fertilisation between Who and Trek was that Terrance Dicks suggested putting out the original Making of Doctor Who in 1972 because he'd read The Making of Star Trek and thought "What a good idea, we should do one about Who."
He may have read some sort of Trek episode guide as early as 1969 (possibly the one in MoST, passed to him when the BBC were buying the UK screening rights?), as he's mentioned that Trek was an inspiration when writing the War Games (along with sheer desperation).
Roddenberry seems to have first heard about Who in the mid 80s, as a friend recalled seeing him discover its existence when asked what he thought of it at a con panel ("And it's been running for how long? Wow!")

 

[Christopher]

Roddenberry seems to have first heard about Who in the mid 80s, as a friend recalled seeing him discover its existence when asked what he thought of it at a con panel ("And it's been running for how long? Wow!")

That's about what I would've expected. People today often don't realize that classic Doctor Who was very much a cult show in the US, nowhere near the mainstream success the new series is. It had its loyal following, to be sure (myself included), but it was tiny compared to Star Trek or Star Wars fandom.

My best friend in high school was a major SF fan, but he only knew about Doctor Who secondhand from what I and others told him about it. I remember when we were book-shopping together and I bought the first edition of The Doctor Who Programme Guide, with a cover painting of the first five Doctors, and my friend was surprised at how different they all looked. He'd known from our conversations that there had been multiple actors playing the Doctor, but he'd just assumed they'd all be the same physical type, like the different James Bond actors.

 

[UnknownSample]

You specifically said that the makers of Andromeda were "obviously" influenced by Blake's 7. That phrasing presents it an unambiguous fact rather than just a possibility.




Yes, influence does happen from time to time. But so does accidental similarity, all the time. Which is why it shouldn't be presumed to be "obvious" that a similarity was deliberate. As I said, all works draw on the same pool of cultural references, so different works will often independently draw on the same antecedents. Heck, Blake's 7 itself was basically a mix between The Magnificent Seven (itself an adaptation of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai) and Robin Hood, along with influences from Doctor Who, Star Trek, and Star Wars. And since many, many other works of fiction have drawn on those same influences, it's hard to tell what's directly influenced by Blake's 7 and what's just taken from one of B7's own influences.

If I say "YOU WIN!!" will that be enough for you? I also said I liked your post and thanked you for it.

People always know what they've just said or posted. They don't need to have it quoted back to them, as if they don't know what their own point was. That's my current, biggest complaint about the Internet lately... Someone will actually go to the trouble of clarifying, explaining more precisely what they meant, to eliminate misunderstandings, and then the other poster comes back with "Oh, but you SAID..." Like a prosecuting attorney "catching" somebody at something. Just accept someone's clarification and move on.

 

[johnnybear]

I knew this idiot who kept a hatred for Trek that lasted for forty odd years because it replaced Who on Saturday evenings back in 69!
JB

 

[johnnybear]

Exactly. One still occasionally runs into the fan "theory" that Gary Seven was somehow based on Doctor Who, but that's really just more of a case of noting accidental similarities years after the fact, after both Who and Trek achieved global fame and awareness.

And, yes, Christopher is quite right that accidental similarities happen more often than people might think, especially when you're dealing with such well-trodden ground as robots, spaceships, time-travel, and so on. As I like to put, just because Author A wrote a story about vampire mermaids and, years later, Author B wrote a story about vampire mermaids, that doesn't necessarily mean Author B stole the idea from Author A--or that they even knew about that earlier story. It might be just that two authors independently came up with the idea of vampire mermaids, working from the same old myths and legends and tropes.

I used to read the submissions to a certain New York publisher, and I still remember the time we received two multi-generational family sagas about life in Appalachia on the very same day.

It happens.

Yes Gary Seven was very similar to Doctor Who! In fact you could say he was a blueprint for Jon Pertwee's Doctor in the seventies except that the producers admitted that the inspiration for that era was more The Avengers and Quatermass than anything else before it returned to it's usual space travelling pattern in the ninth series in 72!
JB

 

[the vet]

I remember my Dad coming back form a work trip to Wasington saying he'd seen DW on American tv but this was in the 70s, I don't think it was shown on american tv tll then

 

[the vet]

I don't know about Nomand--but the Daleks might have been inspired by newspaper articles depicting Sputnik III
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Sputnik_(PSF).png
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KXcw9ALHtFQ/SRrMT0lxpuI/AAAAAAAABA8/sKVNXoiCilI/s320/Sputnik3.png

The Sontary ships remind me of the Vostoks

The mechanoids remind me of Telstar

 

[johnnybear]

The Pertwee episodes were shown in the US in the early to mid seventies I believe with a less than enthusiastic response so the show wasn't widely continued there until the Tom Baker stories hit there in 78 I believe and took the country by storm!
JB

 

[the vet]

 

[Christopher]

Yes Gary Seven was very similar to Doctor Who! In fact you could say he was a blueprint for Jon Pertwee's Doctor in the seventies except that the producers admitted that the inspiration for that era was more The Avengers and Quatermass than anything else before it returned to it's usual space travelling pattern in the ninth series in 72!

Man, it's a relief to see you say that. Usually people jump to the conclusion that Gary was based on Who instead of the other way around, even though most of the Who elements that are similar came along after "Assignment: Earth." (The sonic screwdriver was introduced within weeks of Gary's servo, but at the time, it was literally just a sonic screwdriver, not yet the multipurpose tool it would become later.) Indeed, A:E was originally developed as a non-Trek-related half-hour series in 1966, around the end of the Doctor's first incarnation, so even if Roddenberry could've somehow been aware of Who at the time, he would've only been aware of it as the adventures of a heroic young man and a teenage girl who wandered through time and space with an elderly eccentric from the future and rarely spent any time on present-day Earth. It would've borne no resemblance to "Assignment: Earth" at that point.

Conversely, the format change that put the Doctor on present-day Earth, defending it against threats, was conceived in the Patrick Troughton era, before anyone in the UK could've seen "Assignment: Earth." The "pilot" for that new version of the series, "The Web of Fear," was broadcast a month before A:E aired in the US, and the plans had been in development even longer. So they just happened to develop independently. As Greg Cox has remarked before, it's likely that they were both drawing on the high-tech spy craze of the era to some extent. There's an element of The Day the Earth Stood Still to A:E as well.

I suppose that, since the sonic screwdriver didn't begin acquiring multiple functions until later seasons, it could conceivably have been influenced by Gary's servo. But it's more likely that they're just both sci-fi riffs on a Swiss Army knife. And aliens having a single tool that can do everything is a pretty common trope, if for no other reason than that it saves money on prop building. (See also the Kelvans' belt devices in "By Any Other Name," Korob's scepter in "Catspaw," the Vians' hand devices in "The Empath," even the tricorder to an extent. There are no doubt a few in Who as well.)

 

[Redfern]

True, Doctor Who did not appear in the US until the 70s in "selected markets". But if one faithfully read "Famous Monsters of FilmLand", Forrest J. Ackerman's pop media genre magazine, one would have gotten a "hint" of the future. In September of 1965, a correspondent for "Famous Monsters" went to England to interview Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee and attend the "World Science Fiction" Convention. While there, he learned about a particularly peculiar series about a time traveler with a phone booth as his conveyance. Given the thrust of the periodical for which he wrote, the adversaries fascinated him more. the article eventually published was titled "Daleks Invade England".
I'm guessing this article was first printed in late 1965 or early 1966. I'm vague about that detail because I first read a "reprint" published in issue 129, nearly a decade later, 1976, not realizing at the time that it was, indeed, a reprint.
So, yes, Doctor Who was almost unknown to Americans in the mid 60s, but not totally. We can assume there may have been a handful of people who had friends or relatives in the UK who told them about this odd show, a small group of employees at the offices of "Famous Monsters..." who spoke with the articles author, and a few thousand movie monster fans who read the published article. But, yes, percentage wise, when averaged against a US population of, what, 150 million (?), that still amounts so close to zero as to make no serious difference.
Here's what I find really neat about this article. At the time the author gathered his information, William Hartnell was still the Doctor. So there were no notions about "regeneration" (or "renewal" as Troughton described it), or the idea that a series of vastly different looking actors with their own distinctive personalities would carry on the character as a "tea time" tradition (off and on) for another 53 years. (Though, funny enough, the piece does not feature a photo of Hartnell or the iconic police box.)
Oh, here's a .PDF of the article in question.
http://cuttingsarchive.org/images/c/c2/1976-10_Famous_Monsters.pdf

 

[johnnybear]

The sonic screwdriver originated with Troughton rather than Pertwee believe it or not in a story called Fury From The Deep in 1968 but transmission wise which came first, Assignment or Fury?
JB

 

[Christopher]

The sonic screwdriver originated with Troughton rather than Pertwee believe it or not in a story called Fury From The Deep in 1968 but transmission wise which came first, Assignment or Fury?
JB

The sonic screwdriver debuted in episode one of "Fury From the Deep" on March 16, 1968. "Assignment: Earth" aired just 13 days later on March 29.

Of course, both episodes were written and shot some time earlier. The earliest script for A:E, which did contain references to the servo, was written in November 1966, based on a premise and outline from April 1965. "Fury" was initially written in October 1967 under the title "The Colony of Devils." Production-wise, A:E was shot in January 1968 and "Fury" in February '68. So A:E came first in writing and production but was aired second.