Barbara Clegg obit

Barbara Clegg 1926-2025

 She was not on the list.

The writer Barbara Clegg has died at the age of 98.

Barbara Clegg wrote the fifth Doctor story Enlightenment first broadcast in 1983.

Clegg was born in Manchester in March 1926 the niece of the founder of the Littlewoods empire. After graduating from Oxford she worked as an actress performing in many Shakespeare plays and touring across the UK and Australia

In the 1960s, she began writing for Radio starting with scripts for Mrs Dale's Diary.

Television followed where she contributed scripts for both Coronation Street and Crossroads.

In 1981 she wrote her first Science Fiction story, The Chrysalids, adapted from the novel for Radio 4.

In 1983 she was asked to contribute a script for Doctor Who and therefore became the first woman to write a script for the series. The story would be the final one in the Black Guardian Trilogy.

It was the only script commissioned for the television series but one of her ideas Point of Entry was later used by Big Finish in the audio range.

Barbara Clegg died on 7 January 2025

Clegg was born in Manchester, England on 1 March 1926. Her parents were Herbert Clegg and Ethel Moores, sister of Sir John Moores who founded the Littlewoods Empire and they ran an artificial flower making factory in Manchester. She spent her early years in Gatley.

After obtaining an English degree at Oxford University, Clegg decided to pursue a career in the theatre. Initial work as an understudy led to more substantial roles, most notably her turn as Cleopatra opposite Cyril Luckham's Caesar at the Liverpool Playhouse. A high-profile tour of Australia with Katharine Hepburn followed, performing plays such as The Merchant of Venice, but by this point Clegg was looking to move into television, a medium where more money could be made with roles in Emergency Ward 10 and The Dream Maker. She then started writing scripts and in 1961 contributed seven scripts for the television soap opera Coronation Street.

After writing for several radio and television serials, including for Crossroads and a radio dramatisation of The Chrysalids, Clegg was asked to submit ideas for the science fiction television series Doctor Who in 1981. Her storyline, titled The Enlighteners, involved a space-bound race using anachronistic sailing ships. Doctor Who script editor Eric Saward decided to use Clegg's story as the last part of a trilogy of three stories, known informally as the Black Guardian Trilogy, as it involved the return of the Black Guardian.

To integrate The Enlighteners into the trilogy, portions of the story were rewritten at the request of the production team and the Black and White Guardians replaced the originally planned "Enlighteners". Since the title could no longer refer to those entities, the story was renamed Enlightenment. She was the first woman to write a serial for Doctor Who.

The serial was Barbara Clegg's only commission for Doctor Who, other story line ideas being rejected by Saward, and later Andrew Cartmel. However one of those ideas, "Point of Entry", was later written up as a full script by Marc Platt and released as part of Big Finish's series of Doctor Who: The Lost Stories. Another "The Elite", was released in 2011.

She wrote a book about the life of her uncle Sir John Moores, called The Man Who Made Littlewoods, which was published five weeks before his death in 1993.

Writer

Doctor Who: Target Novelisation Audiobooks (2005)

Doctor Who: Target Novelisation Audiobooks

Podcast Series

written by

2020

1 episode

 

Doctor Who: The Lost Stories (2009)

Doctor Who: The Lost Stories

8.1

Podcast Series

story

writer

2010–2011

2 episodes

 

Gems (1985)

Gems

7.2

TV Series

Writer

1985–1986

6 episodes

 

Paul McGann, Colin Baker, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, William Hartnell, Sylvester McCoy, Jon Pertwee, and Patrick Troughton in Doctor Who (1963)

Doctor Who

8.4

TV Series

by

1983

4 episodes

 

Together (1980)

Together

6.8

TV Series

written by

1980–1981

11 episodes

 

Once Aboard the Lugger...

TV Series

script

1963

1 episode

 

Strange Concealments

TV Series

writer

1962

7 episodes

 

Peter Adamson, Jean Alexander, Johnny Briggs, Margot Bryant, and Doris Speed in Coronation Street (1960)

Coronation Street

5.6

TV Series

written by

1961

7 episodes

 

Actress

The Dream Maker (1963)

The Dream Maker

5.6

Miss Ventnor

1963

 

Strange Concealments

TV Series

Kate George

1962

7 episodes

 

Deadline Midnight

4.0

TV Series

Stella McLaren

Vera

1960–1961

2 episodes

 

Drama 61-67 (1961)

Drama 61-67

7.0

TV Series

Ruth

1961

1 episode

 

The Victim

TV Movie

Ethel Taylor

1961

 

The Citadel

8.3

TV Mini Series

Telephone operator

1960

1 episode

 

The Dark Man

TV Movie

Audrey Regan

1960

 

Emergency-Ward 10 (1957)

Emergency-Ward 10

6.2

TV Series

Nurse Jo Anderson

Nurse Jo Buckley

1958–1960

98 episodes

 

The Desk Set

TV Movie

Sadel Meyer

1958

 

Armchair Theatre (1956)

Armchair Theatre

7.5

TV Series

Rosemary

Rose Taylor

1956–1957

2 episodes

 

BBC Sunday-Night Theatre (1950)

BBC Sunday-Night Theatre

7.0

TV Series

Christina Deed

1956

1 episode

 

Additional Crew

Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctors (1997)

Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctors

7.0

Video Game

Special contributions to the City of Thoughts

1997

 

Self

Winner Takes All

Video

Self

2009