Nightshade (series)

Nightshade was a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC from 1953 to 1958. The series starred Edmund Trevithick as the titular Professor Nightshade and was rebroadcast on BBC Two in December 1968, shortly before Trevithick's death in Crook Marsham. (PROSE: Nightshade, PROSE: The Left-Handed Hummingbird)

The Eighth Doctor was a fan of the series, judging by the fact that he once told Dave Young that he had "never really rated TV science fiction since they got rid of Nightshade." (PROSE: Escape Velocity)

Sacker compared the escapades of Jago and Litefoot to an episode of this series, "only far less plausible". (AUDIO: The Last Act)

Behind the scenes
Author Mark Gatiss has stated that the fictional series was designed as a tribute to Quatermass, a BBC science fiction series of the 1950s which had a great influence on Doctor Who, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s. Given the implication in both TV: Remembrance of the Daleks and PROSE: The Dying Days that the eponymous Bernard Quatermass is a real person in the Doctor Who universe, it is possible that Nightshade would in effect serve to replace Quatermass. If that were the case, it's similar to the relationship between Doctor Who and Professor X.