Philip Martin Interview

Interview originally published on BestBritishTV.com in 2013

Philip Martin (1928-2020) was a British TV screenwriter, an avid Everton fan, and a lovely man. He was kind enough to reflect on his career in this interview back in 2013.

1.Early in your career you made the switch from acting to writing. What was behind that decision?

I had good experiences in my acting career, playing leads in Play of the Week etc but I looked younger than my age and when I could no longer play juveniles it was like having to start all over again. By that time I was thinking about writing more than acting and the thought of not having to wait for the phone to ring was attractive-nobody could stop me working as a writer whereas someone has to cast you in a part to function as an actor. Later on I did act in some things of my own such as in ‘Gangsters’ although the roles came to me by accident when actors cast were unable to appear owing to changed work commitments and an industry strike that meant I was dragooned by the directors to step into the breach.

2.Z-Cars was one of the longest running and best loved dramas in UK TV history. As a young writer, was it daunting to get involved with such an iconic show?

I cut my writing teeth on ‘Z Cars’. I’d acted in three episodes and knew the style and format of the programme but it was a baptism of fire nevertheless-there was an ex-cop who vetted the scripts. His initials were WAR (very apt) and my script would come back with blue pencil all over it. Nor did he confine himself to police procedural matters-he believed it was his duty to protect the image of the police. As the show was live you sometimes had to write dialogue to cover the actor’s movement across the studio. During one of these passages I had two cops sitting in their car watching a pretty girl waltz by. One of the guys comments how attractive she seems. This caused an explosion of blue pencil. ‘Does this writer (me) not realise that the policeman saying this is MARRIED!’ Another era, sure, but working under such constraints taught me so much, rather in the way a journalist has to produce without any time for procrastination, Z Cars demanded a similar discipline.

3.Gangsters is probably your most famous work. What was the inspiration behind it?

‘Gangsters’ came about because David Rose the Head of BBC Drama in Birmingham had seen ‘The French Connection’ and wondered why there had never been a crime film set in Birmingham. Barry Hanson, his producer, said he knew someone who wrote crime scripts (me, again) why don’t we pay him to live in the city for three months and see if there is enough crime happening to make a film about it. That’s how it happened. What befell me during those three months is worth a section in its own right but suffice to say a lot of the background to the film was authentic and faithful to what I discovered to be going on in the Birmingham underworld at that time.

4.Gritty realism is common place on modern TV but in the 70s and 80s Mary Whitehouse was a powerful force against more adult themes in television. As a writer, was it difficult to write the show you wanted to write without upsetting her group?

Yes, my work was called violent-principally because the subjects I was writing about had the propensity to erupt into violence- I used the phrase somewhere that ‘violence is the currency that gangsters use’ and that was true. It did bring disapproval from the Mary Whitehouse brigade but for myself and other writers, being on her hit list became a badge of honour.

5.In Doctor Who, you created the slippery villain Sil. How did you set about coming up with Sil and his debut story?

Sil came about because I was in a TV studio where I had a play being recorded and was being given a hard time by a technical studio chief about the hazards of asking for a water effect in a TV studio-didn’t I realise how dangerous it was etc, etc’. So when I was looking for an alien villain for ‘Vengeance on Varos’ I was feeling bloody minded and made him a swamp creature who had to have a WATER TANK with him at all times! That was the start of Sil, then when I gave him a malfunctioning voice translation box the fun could really begin and of course Nabil Shaban made the part his own and delivered the deliciously crazy laugh that sounded like the last gurgles of a submerging hippopotamus.

6.Vengeance on Varos explored some interesting themes such as violence as entertainment. Ironically, that season of Doctor Who was criticized for being too violent. Was the criticism justified?

As I’ve already mentioned the subjects were inherently violent-the whole premise of ‘Varos’ is cruelty for public entertainment. To satisfy that premise I had to show the ordeals the unfortunates had to undergo within the punishment dome just as, for instance, what is shown in a successful film like ‘The Hunger Games’ In the present day. What did cause a problem in that season was the transmission times in the early evening of a Saturday night. A letter from an irate parent to the ‘Radio Times’ accused me of ‘exceeding the worst excesses of the second world war’. I can hardly agree with that but maybe the season should have had a later showing time.

7.Mission to Magnus never made it to TV because of the show going on hiatus. How would you have used the Ice Warriors alongside Sil?

The Ice Warriors, yes, I was asked to include Malcolm Hulke’s monsters in my story ‘Mission to Magnus’ but when I played back ‘The Monster of Peladon’ I was a little taken aback by how slowly the warriors moved -or should that be ‘lumbered’-about. My solution was to keep them under the ice cap of the planet which helped to speed them up no end. Sil was mostly kept to the warmer parts of Magnus so there was not a great deal of interaction although Sil was in cahoots with the Grand Marshall’s plans to alter the orbit of the planet so as to bring about a mini-ice age. Sil’s aim was to have a large number of woolly jumpers for sale once the temperature plunged.

8.Would you like to see Sil, King Yrcanos or your other creations featured in the new series of Doctor Who?

It would be pleasant to think that some of my creations might appear in the present day ‘Doctor Who’ though I’m told a similar character to Sil has appeared but with a pink skin rather than green. I don’t know, I’ve had a lot of fun with my guys and they live on in dvd’s and I’ve recently featured Sil again in the Big Finish audio adventure ‘Antidote to Oblivion’. Must say I had a great time revisiting some of the mysterious happenings of ‘Mindwarp’ together with the chance to explore Sil’s amoral take on the world one more time.