Richard Senior is a Doctor Who editor and director. As of October 2024[update], he is the only Doctor Who editor in BBC Wales history to direct an episode. He was also the first person to make their television directorial debut on Doctor Who.
He was interviewed on The Monster Files episode The Monster Files: The Antibodies and the Doctor Who Confidential episode River Runs Wild.
As editor[]
Senior began his association with the programme during the first Russell T Davies era when, according to Julie Gardner, he made "all our BBC One trailers for Doctor Who".[1] Though it is unclear exactly how accurate Gardner's statement was, and for how many episodes he cut the trailers, it is known definitively that he at least created the main Voyage of the Damned BBC One spot.
He continued on into the Steven Moffat era, where he "graduated" to cutting the episodes themselves. Throughout series 5, he provided "additional" editing, but was not credited for any episode upon original transmission. His only actual credit for editing was for doing the screen sequences seen in the 2010 Doctor Who at the Proms.
As director[]
His first directing gig was for the 2011 National Television Awards sketch, but it's unclear whether he actually got on-screen credit for this project; credits were given only at the end of the evening, and not over the Doctor Who segment itself. He did, however, receive unambiguous credit as director, at time of transmission, for Time and Space, two mini-episodes broadcast during the 2011 Comic Relief fundraiser.
His first full episode of Doctor Who — and indeed of any television series — was Let's Kill Hitler. He also did some of the Night and the Doctor mini-episodes for the series 6 box set, though he was left uncredited[2], as well as Meanwhile in the TARDIS, produced at around the same time for the series 5 box set.
Senior also directed the pre-recorded scenes for The Crash of the Elysium on 29 April, but these were dropped from the final release.[3]
Career[]
Since working on Doctor Who, Senior directed a number of episodes for series 6 and 7 of M.I. High for CBBC, as well as a few episodes for BBC One's Silent Witness and Poldark, Channel 4's Humans, and BBC Two's The Last Kingdom.
