Christopher H. Bidmead

Then it descended eternally into the dark depths that lay beneath.

That was Vincent Price bringing you The Price of Fear with Roger Snowden, Anne Jemison and Christopher Bidmead.

An Eye for an Eye was first recounted and dramatized by William Ingram and produced by John Dyess.

THE END

going to say, and then we kind of – because it was only one year.

But how much of that was J&T and how much of that was Christopher Bidmead, our story editor at the time? I

have an issue with that line of thinking.

Okay.

plays.

And his command of the medium was so sharp and his dialogue was so compelling that the senior drama script editor at BBC Radio took the extraordinary step of explicitly recommending Sallward to Christopher H. Bidmead, who was the Doctor Who script editor at the time.

That is a massive leap.

I mean, a recommendation straight from the radio drama department to the desk of one of the BBC's flagship science fiction shows.

Um, a potential poison chalice of a question.

Do you think the series would have survived until the end of the decade had Christopher H. Bidmead stayed on as script editor for Season 19, meaning Eric Saward never becoming script editor?

Well, I, that's...

The way that's worded is like Christopher H. Bidmead would have-

Saved it

... been as successful carrying on.

I think it would have survived if Eric Saward hadn't been around at all, yes.

But in, Christopher H. Bidmead instead still might have been a, not a good choice.

And I think both, I'm sure we'll get onto this later, but both Doctor Who and Star Trek, I think, suffer a bit too much if it takes itself too seriously and goes, we're hard science fiction characters.

Well, on that subject, as we leave 1979 and the start of the Star Trek movie franchise, and, well, speaking of hard sci-fi, there's a man called Christopher H. Bidmead and another man called John Nathan-Turner who are about to take over Doctor Who and bring in some hard sci-fi.

But all of that will be in episode two.

Until then, I was Mark.

No, I wasn't expecting, you know, I didn't have that expectation, but I do think maths in a nearby is a terrible story.

The problem is, the problem is this, is that it's Chris Bidmead.

Now, Chris Bidmead has got the heart and soul of a poet.

but he has got the typewriter of the mathematician.

Yeah.

That's the reason why these plots get different opinions on them.

And

Chris Bidmead is not Chris Chibnall.

Because it's a wonderful way of getting your mind into those areas.

If you have a planet that is going to materialise around other planets and mine them dry, Christopher H. Bidmead was, I imagine, sobbing when he saw that on TV and thought, something has to be done.

This is not

real science.

And the people as a primitive computer is brilliant imagery.

But I just don't think Christopher Bidmead has any idea how to turn that into a story.

The sense of the apocalypse with the end of the universe, what was coming to an end.

I adore that.

Events cast shadows before them, but the huger shadows creep over us unseen.

It's a very evocative beginning, very unique to Christopher H. Bidmead.

And he ended up, as a former actor, recording the audiobook version of this himself.

And that audiobook version is a delight.

Yeah.

I, my favorite part of that is Christopher H. Bidmead, uh, like immediately starting the podcast with Lovett Bickford, the director, going, "So what, what are you doing here, Lovett?" [laughs]

[laughs]

"What's the deal with this pan across the beach?" Just calls him out for it right on the carpet, right then and there.