Sydney Cecil Newman was born in Toronto on 1st April 1917 to a Russian Jewish immigrant father. He arrived with a distinguished track record of success in production on both sides of the Atlantic, and with a brief to shake up the Corporation's drama department and bring it into the 1960s. A brash, outspoken Canadian, his arrival at the BBC was a shock for an establishment more used to employing products of the country's public schools and university system. If there is one man who can claim to be the true father of Doctor Who, one man without whose inspiration, guidance, and care the series would never have been made, then that man is Sydney Newman, who joined the BBC on Wednesday 12th December 1962, exactly 50 years ago today. Today, we examine the career of the man who was to reinvigorate BBC television drama and sow the seeds for an icon of the genre. The report started events that would lead to the transmission of the first episode of Doctor Who. In the summer of 1962, the BBC commissioned a report into identifying specific science-fiction stories suitable for adapting for television. The sixth in our occasional series marking the 50th anniversary of events leading to the creation of a true television legend.
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