One of the first things I did when I took over as producer on 20 October 1969 was to ask Audience Research for a breakdown of the "Who" audience--and I discovered that 58% of it was over the age of 15; in other words, the majority of our viewers were adults. Yet that also meant that 42% were children of all ages, the children that the programme was aimed at from the start, and we certainly couldn't let them down. So we tried to offer the stories on several different levels: first and foremost, we wanted good drama, solidly based on character; secondly, a fascinating science fiction idea and/or a theme with relevance to a real issue (such as the mining corporation versus the settlers in Doctor Who: Colony in Space: Episode One (1971), or the ecological background of Doctor Who: The Green Death: Episode One (1973)); thirdly, a cracking action adventure; and lastly, scary bug-eyed monsters for the younger children. Maybe we went too far sometimes--and Philip [Philip Hinchcliffe] and Bob [Robert Holmes went much further than Terrance [Terrance Dicks] and I did--but this is one of the core features of Doctor Who (1963). The stories also had to have integrity, in the total plotting and in the detail.
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