Barry Leopold Letts was an English actor, television director, writer and producer, best known for being the producer of Doctor Who from 1969 to 1974.
32 Facts About Barry Letts
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Barry Letts then became the producer of the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who for five years, overseeing almost the entirety of Jon Pertwee's tenure as the Third Doctor and casting Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.
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Barry Letts produced or directed many of the BBC's Sunday Classic drama serials from 1976 to 1986, and returned to Doctor Who in 1980 to be the executive producer for its eighteenth season.
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Barry Letts was associated with the series for many years, with active involvement in the television programme from 1967 to 1981 and with later contributions to its spin-offs in other media.
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Barry Letts later played one of the leading characters in the Terence Fisher directed film, To the Public Danger, a heartfelt plea against dangerous driving.
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Barry Letts appeared in the highly regarded Ealing Studios productions, Scott of the Antarctic and The Cruel Sea, in supporting roles.
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Barry Letts appeared as Colonel Herncastle in the 1959 television adaptation of Wilkie Collins's novel The Moonstone, and played roles in The Last Man Out and The Avengers.
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Barry Letts gave up his acting career after completing the BBC's director's course.
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However, in his memoir Who and Me, Barry Letts related how he naively used matte boxes to allow Troughton to act face to face with himself, when in fact optical printing was already available and the same could have been accomplished in post-production.
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Barry Letts became the series' producer in October 1969, replacing Derrick Sherwin, with Jon Pertwee recently cast as the Doctor.
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Barry Letts embraced the technological innovations which came with moving the series into colour, most notably his enthusiasm for Colour Separation Overlay.
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Barry Letts oversaw the celebration of the programme's tenth anniversary in 1973, uniting the first three Doctors in the first multiple Doctor story, The Three Doctors.
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Notable changes Barry Letts made, as related in his autobiography Who and Me, included producing the show in two-episode blocks, rather than as separate episodes: rehearsing two episodes for a fortnight, and then recording those two episodes back-to-back, thereby reducing the demands on the studio scenic crews, who only had to erect and strike the sets once a fortnight instead of once a week.
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Barry Letts retired the original howl-around title sequence used, with variations, from 1963 until 1973, introducing as its replacement the classic time tunnel special effects sequence which would run, until 1980, behind the opening and closing credits for every episode produced in seasons 11 to 17.
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When he was offered the chance to become producer on the series, Barry Letts made it a condition that he be allowed to continue to direct.
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The Head of Serials agreed to this, and Barry Letts directed three Doctor Who serials during his time as producer: Terror of the Autons, Carnival of Monsters and Planet of the Spiders.
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Barry Letts directed most of the studio scenes for Inferno after Douglas Camfield was taken ill during the production.
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Barry Letts later provided an official obituary for Sloman in December 2005, published in The Guardian.
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Barry Letts wrote the scripts for two radio plays based on the show, starring Jon Pertwee with Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane, broadcast in the 1990s: The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space.
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Barry Letts wrote two original Doctor Who novels published by BBC Books: Deadly Reunion and Island of Death.
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Barry Letts continued to record commentaries and interviews for DVD releases of his Doctor Who episodes until shortly before his death in 2009.
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Barry Letts frequently gave interviews, attended conventions, and made personal appearances in connection with the show and his work on it and indeed other aspects of his career.
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Barry Letts enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Terrance Dicks, established in 1969, and they frequently attended events as a team.
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Barry Letts directed for numerous series and serials, before settling into the role of producer of the BBC's Sunday classic serials.
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Barry Letts oversaw more than 25 serials in this capacity, over an 8-year period, including Nicholas Nickleby, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Dombey and Son, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Invisible Man, Pinocchio, Gulliver in Lilliput, Alice in Wonderland, Lorna Doone, Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Children of the New Forest, Beau Geste and Sense and Sensibility.
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Barry Letts's final directing work was on the BBC soap opera EastEnders which he worked on periodically from 1990 to 1992.
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Barry Letts taught directing for the BBC at Elstree Studios.
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Barry Letts had a small cameo role in the film Exodus, broadcast on UK Channel 4.
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Barry Letts suffered from cancer for many years before his death.
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Barry Letts was survived by his three children: Dominic, Crispin and Joanna.
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Barry Letts described Letts as "the big link in changing my entire life".
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Issue No 417 of Doctor Who Magazine included a 12-page tribute to Letts and featured contributions from former colleagues including Frazer Hines, Mary Peach, Terrance Dicks, Nicholas Courtney, Graeme Harper, Katy Manning, Christopher Barry, Elisabeth Sladen and Baker.