Douglas Camfield

Douglas Gaston Sydney Camfield (8 May 1931 – 27 January 1984) was a British television director, active from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Douglas Camfield
Born	Douglas Gaston Sydney Camfield (1931-05-08)8 May 1931 India
Died	27 January 1984(1984-01-27) (aged 52) Hounslow, London, England
Occupation	Television director
Years active	1961–1984
Spouse	Sheila Dunn ​ (m. 1965)​
Children	1

Early life

Camfield studied at the York School of Art and aimed to work for The Walt Disney Company. He 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 to lieutenant in 1952 and was training to be in the Special Air Service, but due to an injury he pulled out of the application process. It has often been noted by those who worked with him that Camfield always retained an affection for the army and brought military standards of organisation to the programmes he subsequently directed.

Career

His directing credits included Doctor Who, Z-Cars, Paul Temple, Public Eye, The Lotus Eaters, Van der Valk, The Sweeney, The Onedin Line, Blake's 7, Shoestring, The Professionals, Out of the Unknown, The Nightmare Man, the BBC dramatisation of Beau Geste, and Ivanhoe, the 1982 television movie. Camfield was known for his strict professionalism and was held in high esteem by many actors, producers and writers.

Doctor Who

He is particularly well known for his work on Doctor Who 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 (Camfield directed the first two episodes and the location scenes for episodes 3–7; after Camfield suffered a heart attack during the production, the rest was directed by producer Barry Letts, who was uncredited)
• 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 longest-running and most popular characters in its history.

In 1967, Camfield submited an initial script, co-written with Robert Kitts, titled Operation Werewolf. It was not brought forward by then producer Innes Lloyd, but was later adapted by Big Finish Productions in 2024. Shortly after directing The Seeds of Doom, Camfield was comissioned by Philip Hinchcliffe to write a four part serial for Doctor Who in 1976. The Lost Legion, would've centered around a North African outpost of the French Foreign Legion and two alien races at war. It was also going to feature the death of companion Sarah Jane Smith. After repeated submission delays it was dropped from the schedule.

He was also one of eight faces whose images are seen during the mind-bending sequence of the serial The Brain of Morbius (1976), inferred to be early incarnations of the Doctor. Notably, the incarnation represented by his image appeared again in a flashback sequence of the Virgin New Adventures novel Cold Fusion.

Personal life

Camfield died of a heart attack on 27 January 1984. He was married to actress Sheila Dunn, whom he cast in the Doctor Who stories The Daleks' Master Plan, The Invasion, and Inferno. They had a son, Joggs, who featured heavily in a DVD tribute documentary, Remembering Douglas Camfield, which was included in the 2013 DVD release of Camfield's Doctor Who serial Terror of the Zygons.

Legacy

In 2013, as part of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations for Doctor Who, the BBC 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.

External links

• Douglas Camfield at IMDb