Douglas Camfield

Douglas Gaston Sydney Camfield (8 May 1931 – 27 January 1984) was a British television director, active from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Camfield studied at York School of Art and aimed to work for Walt Disney. He was a lieutenant in the West Yorkshire Regiment and was training to be in the SAS but due to an injury, he pulled out of the application process.^[1] His programme credits include Doctor Who, Z-Cars, Paul Temple, Public Eye, The Lotus Eaters, Van der Valk, The Sweeney, The Onedin Line, Blake's 7, Shoestring, The Professionals, Out of the Unknown, The Nightmare Man, the BBC dramatisation of Beau Geste, and Ivanhoe, the 1982 television movie. Camfield was known for his strict professionalism and was held in high esteem by many actors, producers and writers.

Early life[]

Camfield was commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps in 1951 during his National Service. Later that year, he transferred to the West Yorkshire Regiment (Territorial Army). He was promoted Lieutenant in 1952. He left in 1956 for health reasons. It has often been noted by those who worked with him that Camfield always retained an affection for the army and brought military standards of organisation to the programmes he subsequently directed.^[2]

Doctor Who[]

He is particularly well known for his work on Doctor Who and was production assistant on its earliest serials, both the pilot and broadcast versions of An Unearthly Child, and Marco Polo.^[3] Camfield directed many other stories in its first thirteen years:

• Planet of Giants-episode 3 only^[4]
• The Crusade^[5]
• The Time Meddler^[6]
• The Daleks' Master Plan
• The Web of Fear
• The Invasion
• Inferno (first two episodes, and the location scenes only for episodes 3–7, the remainder directed by an uncredited Barry Letts)^[7]
• Terror of the Zygons
• The Seeds of Doom

One of Camfield's notable contributions to the series was the casting of Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who became one of the most long-running and popular characters in its history.^[8]

He submitted a script for the series to producer Philip Hinchcliffe called "The Lost Legion", which involved aliens and the French Foreign Legion (a subject which fascinated him).^[9] However, the story never made it into production.

He was also one of eight members of the then-production team, the image of whom was seen during the mind-bending sequence of the serial The Brain of Morbius and inferred to be an early incarnation of the Doctor.^[10] Notably, the incarnation represented by his image appeared again in a flashback sequence of the Virgin New Adventures novel Cold Fusion.^[11]

Personal life[]

Camfield suffered a minor heart attack in 1970 during the production of the seven-part Doctor Who serial Inferno, forcing him to step down having directed only the first two episodes.^[12] He died of a heart attack on 27 January 1984.^[13] He was married to actress Sheila Dunn,^[14] whom he cast in the Doctor Who stories The Daleks' Master Plan, The Invasion, and Inferno. They had a son, Joggs, who as of 2012 was working in the music industry. Joggs featured heavily in a DVD tribute documentary "Remembering Douglas Camfield," which was included in the 2013 DVD release of Douglas' Doctor Who serial Terror of the Zygons.

Legacy[]

In 2013, as part of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations for Doctor Who, the BBC produced a drama depicting the creation and early days of the series. Camfield appears as a character in the drama An Adventure in Space and Time, portrayed by actor Sam Hoare.^[15]

References[]

External links[]

• Douglas Camfield at IMDb