First 'Doctor Who' Writer Honored. His Son Contests BBC's Rights to 'Unearthly Child'

The BBC reports:Doctor Who's first writer could finally be recognised 60 years after he helped launch the hugely-popular series. Anthony Coburn penned the first four episodes of the sci-fi drama in 1963 - a story called An Unearthly Child. But after his second story did not air, the writer has been seen as a minor figure among some Doctor Who fans. However, a campaign to erect a memorial to Coburn in his home town of Herne Bay, Kent, is gathering pace a month ahead of the show's 60th anniversary. A local elected councillor told the BBC they're working to find a location for the memorial. The BBC writes that Coburn's episode - broadcast November 23, 1963 - "introduced the character of The Doctor, his three travelling companions, and his time and space machine, the TARDIS, stuck in the form of a British police box."Richard Bignell, a Doctor Who historian, believes Coburn played a significant role in sowing the seeds of the programme's success. He said: "Although the major elements that would go on to form the core of the series were devised within the BBC, as the scriptwriter for the first story, Coburn was the one who really put the flesh on the bones of the idea and how it would work dramatically. "Many opening episodes of a new television series can be very clunky as they attempt to land their audience with too much information about the characters, the setting and what's going to happen, but Coburn was very reserved in how much he revealed, preserving all the wonder and mystery." In 2013, the Independent reported:Mr Coburn's son claims that the BBC has been in breach of copyright since his father's death in 1977. He has demanded that the corporation either stop using the Tardis in the show or pay his family for its every use since then. Stef Coburn claims that upon his father's death, any informal permission his father gave the BBC to use his work expired and the copyright of all of his ideas passed to his widow, Joan. Earlier this year she passed it on to him. He said: "It is by no means my wish to deprive legions of Doctor Who fans (of whom I was never one) of any aspect of their favourite children's programme. The only ends I wish to accomplish, by whatever lawful means present themselves, involve bringing about the public recognition that should by rights always have been his due, of my father James Anthony Coburn's seminal contribution to Doctor Who, and proper lawful recompense to his surviving estate." Today jd (Slashdot reader #1,658) notes that Stef Coburn apparently has a Twitter feed, where this week Stef claimed he'd cancelled the BBC's license to distribute his father's episodes after being offered what he complained was "a pittance" to relicense them. In response to someone who asked "What do you actually gain from doing this though?" Stef Coburn replied: "Vengeance." But elsewhere Stef Coburn writes "There are OTHER as yet unfulfilled projects & aspirations of Tony's (of one of which, I was a significant part, in his final year), which I would like to see brought to fruition. If Doctor Who is my ONLY available leverage. So be it!" Stef Coburn also announced plans to publish his father's "precursor draft-scripts (At least one very different backstory; sans 'Timelords') plus accompanying notes, for the story that became 'The Tribe of Gum'."

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