Douglas Camfield

Education

He studied at York School of Art and aimed to work for Walt Disney.

Career

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. His programme credits include, Z-Cars, Paul Temple, Van der Valk, The Sweeney, Shoestring, The Professionals, Out of the Unknown, The Nightmare Manitoba, the British Broadcasting Corporation dramatisation of Beau Geste, and Ivanhoe, the 1982 television movie. 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.

lieutenant has often been noted by those who worked with him that Camfield always retained an affection for the British Army and brought military standards of organisation to the programmes he subsequently directed. He is particularly well known for his work on and was production assistant on its earliest serials, both the pilot and broadcast versions of An Unearthly Child, and Marco Polo.

Camfield directed many other stories in its first thirteen years:

Planet of Giants-episode 3 only

The Crusade

The Time Meddler

The Daleks" Master Plan

The Web of Fear

The Invasion

Inferno

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.

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). However, the story never made it into production. Notably, the incarnation represented by his image appeared again in a flashback sequence of the Virgin New Adventures novel Cold Fusion.

In 2013, as part of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations for, the British Broadcasting Corporation 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.

Membership

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.

Interests

• Writers

  Camfield was known for his strict professionalism but was well liked personally by many actors, producers, and writers.