Kit Pedler
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Dr Christopher Magnus Howard Pedler (1928 - 27 May 1981) was a British medical scientist, science fiction author and writer on science in general. He normally wrote under the name of Kit Pedler.
He was the Head of the Electron Microscopy Department at the University of London, where he published a number of papers. Pedler's first contribution to TV was for the BBC programme Horizon.
In the mid-1960s, became the unofficial scientific adviser to the Doctor Who production team. Hired by Innes Lloyd to inject more hard science into the stories, Pedler formed a particular writing partnership with Gerry Davis, who was story editor on the programme. Their interest in the problems of science changing and endangering human life had led them to create the Cybermen.
Pedler wrote three scripts for Doctor Who: The Tenth Planet, The Moonbase and The Tomb of the Cybermen. He also submitted the story outlines that became The War Machines, The Wheel in Space and The Invasion. In the years between Pedler's death and his own Gerry Davis frequently stated that, although Pedler produced some strong story ideas, he was not a particularly good scriptwriter and that he, Davis, would contribute a lot to the writing, even when not credited as doing so. This is impossible to verify and production office documentation neither confirms nor denies Davis's assertions.
Pedler and Davis also devised and co-wrote Doomwatch, a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme which ran on BBC One for three seasons from 1970 to 1972 (thirty-seven fifty-minute episodes plus one unshown) covered a government department that worked to combat technological and environmental disasters. Pedler and Davis contributed to only the first two series.
Pedler and Davis re-used the plot of the first episode of the series, The Plastic Eaters, for their 1971 novel Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater.
His non-fiction book The Quest for Gaia gave practical advice on creating an ecologically sustainable lifestyle, using James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis.
He died of a heart attack at his home in Doddington, Kent, while producing Mind Over Matter, a series for Thames Television on the paranormal.
He is buried at All Saints' Church in the Kent village of Graveney, where he lived before moving to nearby Doddington.
[edit] Bibliography
- Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters (1971) (with Gerry Davis)
- Brainrack (1974) (with Gerry Davis)
- Doomwatch: The World in Danger (1975)
- The Dynostar Menace (1975) (with Gerry Davis)
- The Quest for Gaia (1979)
- Mind Over Matter (1981)
[edit] References
- Fortean Times Issue 209, April 2006
