Peter Grimwade
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Peter Grimwade (June 8, 1942-May 15, 1990) was a British television writer and director, best known for his work on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.
After joining the BBC in the late 1960s, he first worked on Doctor Who as a Production Assistant on Jon Pertwee's first serial, Spearhead from Space (1970). He would occupy this position on a further five serials. In 1977 he got his first chance to direct, being asked to film some model shots for the serial The Robots of Death while the serial's actual director was working on location. Tom Baker, meanwhile, used Grimwade's name to replace the scripted "Grimwold's Syndrome" illness mentioned in the script. The serial's Production Unit Manager, George Gallaccio, would later allow him to make his full directorial debut on the episode "Out of Body, Out of Mind" in the series The Omega Factor (1979).
Grimwade next directed some episodes of the drama series All Creatures Great and Small (1978) (which coincidentally featured Peter Davison, who Grimwade would direct for twice and write for three times on Doctor Who) before returning to Doctor Who as a director. After directing the serial Full Circle (1980) Grimwade was given the task of directing Tom Baker's final serial, Logopolis. When Peter Davison became the Doctor, Grimwade first directed him in the serial Kinda (1982) and then directed Earthshock, featuring the return of the Cybermen to the show after eight years and the death of the character Adric.
Earthshock would prove to be the last time he was a director on the series. A year later, Grimwade was scheduled to direct the serial The Return (which would ultimately become Resurrection of the Daleks). Industrial action initially prevented the serial from being filmed, and Grimwade decided to take several crewmembers, including script editor Eric Saward to lunch. He did not, however, invite producer John Nathan-Turner, apparently because he intended to take him for a meal separately. Nathan-Turner was incensed by this, and vowed never to work with Grimwade again.
Prior to these events, Grimwade had written two serials - Time-Flight and Mawdryn Undead (1983). Afterwards, Grimwade was asked to write Davison's penultimate story, which would become Planet of Fire. Due to the fact that the story's requirements were in constant flux, mainly due to uncertaintly over the filming location and cast changes, he eventually became frustrated and allowed Saward to finish the serial. Outside of Doctor Who, Grimwade wrote and directed on the ITV children's drama series Dramarama (1983).
When the BBC gave the publisher W. H. Allen the rights to use Vislor Turlough in the novel Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma, W. H. Allen offered Grimwade a chance to publish an original novel. The result was Robot (ISBN 0-352-32036-2), a book filled with Doctor Who references.
Afterwards, Grimwade left the BBC and mainly worked in producing industrial training videos. He died in 1990 of leukemia.
Many of the actors to work under Grimwade thought he was an extremely demanding and somewhat overbearing director; Saward commented, on a featurette included on the DVD release of Earthshock that if the guns used in the serial had been real, Grimwade would have been killed before the first day's filming was over.
