Mervyn Haisman
Born: 15th March 1928 (as Mervyn Oliver Haisman)
Died: 29th October 2010 (aged 82 years)
Episodes Broadcast: 1967-1968
Mervyn Haisman was born in Woolwich, London. As a youth during World War
Two, he was evacuated to Deal, Kent and later Machen, Wales. He won a
scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and was then called
up for his National Service with the army. This provided Haisman with
experience entertaining his fellow troops and, after demobilisation, he
formed a repertory company which toured American military bases in Great
Britain. In 1951, Haisman married Vina Lane, with whom he would have a
son, David, and two daughters, Amanda and Judy. He settled down with a
job in insurance, but still acted occasionally. In 1963, Haisman
appeared in an episode of No Hiding Place, where he made the
acquaintance of fellow actor Henry Soskin.
Haisman began writing in the mid-Sixties, with his first credit being
a 1967 episode of Dr Finlay's Casebook. He and Soskin (now going
by “Henry Lincoln”) decided to collaborate, and they were
commissioned to write 1967's The
Abominable Snowmen for Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor. Here
they created the robotic Yeti and their master, the Great Intelligence,
whom they were quickly asked to bring back in 1968's The Web Of Fear. Their second
serial introduced Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, as played by Nicholas
Courtney; promoted to Brigadier and made head of the United Nations
Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT), the character would become a lynchpin of
Doctor Who in the early Seventies.
Haisman and Henry Lincoln's The
Dominators was transmitted under the alias “Norman
Ashby”
Having enjoyed considerable success with their first two Doctor
Who adventures, Haisman and Lincoln were quickly asked to provide
another story for later in 1968. This was The Dominators which,
unfortunately, proved to be a much more tumultuous project. First the
serial was truncated by an episode against the writers' wishes, leading
them to demand that it be transmitted under the alias “Norman
Ashby”, created from the names of their fathers-in-law. Then, a
dispute arose regarding merchandise rights for the Quarks, which had
been introduced in The
Dominators. The pair would never write for Doctor Who
again; a third Yeti story they were working on, “The Laird Of
McCrimmon”, was abandoned.
Haisman and Lincoln went on to write the screenplay for the 1968 horror
movie Curse Of The Crimson Altar, starring Boris Karloff and
Christopher Lee, and episodes of television programmes such as The
Expert. Their partnership ended in the early Seventies, but
Haisman continued to enjoy success writing on his own throughout the
decade, earning credits on shows like The Intruder and Crown
Court. He was also the script editor of various series including
Sutherland's Law and The Onedin Line. During the Eighties,
Haisman wrote for programmes such as Jane and Howards'
Way; he was also the script editor on My Brother Jonathan.
Work in the Nineties included The Adventures Of Swiss Family
Robinson, while his final credits were on Revelations in
2003, by which time he and his wife had retired to València, Spain.
Haisman died of heart failure on October 29th, 2010.
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