David Maloney

David Maloney (14 December 1933 - 18 July 2006) first worked for Doctor Who as a production assistant during season 2. By the late Troughton era, he had taken the BBC's directorial course. He was entrusted with the plurality of the episodes in season 6. Because he helmed The War Games, he was one of an elite number of directors to offer his own representation of the regenerative process. He took a break from Doctor Who, but returned for a significant stretch of episodes during the late Pertwee and early Baker eras.

Because he directed the generally-highly-regarded serials of The War Games, Genesis of the Daleks, The Deadly Assassin and The Talons of Weng-Chiang, few directors of the 1963 version of Doctor Who are as fondly remembered as Maloney.

At the time, however, Maloney was at the centre of allegations that the show had become too violent during Philip Hinchcliffe's tenure. Some of these rebukes were fairly levelled at him personally. He rewrote the opening to Genesis of the Daleks into a more violent version. This displeased writer Terry Nation and morals activist Mary Whitehouse. (DCOM: Genesis of the Daleks) His direction of The Deadly Assassin famously featured a drowning scene that was so criticised by Whitehouse that it was edited from the videotape master. (DCOM, INFO: The Deadly Assassin)

In 1977, Maloney appeared in "Whose Doctor Who," an instalment of The Lively Arts news programme which addressed the criticisms levelled by Whitehouse and others about the show allegedly being too intense for younger viewers. After his time on Doctor Who, he became a producer, overseeing the first three seasons of another popular BBC science-fiction series, Blake's 7, during the late 1970s and early 1980s. He also produced the BBC's famous 1981 adaptation of John Wyndham's novel.

He died on 18 July 2006. The documentary The Matrix Revisited was dedicated to him.

As production assistant

 * The Rescue
 * The Romans
 * The Ark

As director

 * The Mind Robber
 * The Krotons
 * The War Games
 * Frontier in Space (minor: reshot ending to part six as a consequence of directing next serial)
 * Planet of the Daleks
 * Genesis of the Daleks
 * Planet of Evil
 * The Deadly Assassin
 * The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Interviews and commentaries

 * Adventures in Space and Time
 * Carnival of Monsters
 * The Doctors: 30 Years of Time Travel and Beyond
 * The Lively Arts: "Whose Doctor Who"
 * DCOM: Genesis of the Daleks