Malcolm Hulke, creator of the Earth’s pre-historic inhabitants the Silurians and the Sea Devils, had an illustrious writing career that is being documented in a new book, Things Are Not Always What They Seem.
Being self-published by the author later this year, Things Are Not Always What They Seem by Michael Herbert explores the late Hulke’s body of work in television and print and his political stances and activity.
The left-wing Hulke was active in his industry’s trade union, the Writers’ Guild, throughout his career and his view of the world influenced some of the situations he put into his scripts for shows such as Doctor Who, The Avengers, and Crossroads.
His Doctor Who stories in particular were staunchly political, regardless of whether they were reflective of his own views, with the Silurians’ ongoing claim to their home planet, the Interplanetary Mining Corporation and the humans’ general colonisation objectives in Colony in Space, and the settings of The War Games some of the most notably political narratives.
In total, Hulke had seven writing credits in Doctor Who, two of which were stories co-written, and he also had uncredited rewrites of The Ambassadors of Death. He contributed to the Second and Third Doctors’ eras, and also wrote seven novelisations of stories from that run. Only one of those, Doctor Who and the Green Death was a prose retelling of a story he had not originally penned.
Hulke’s television career began in the late 1950s, and he continued writing into the 1970s. He died in 1979.
After co-writing The War Games with Terrance Dicks in 1969, he worked with him again on The Making of Doctor Who, a 1972 publication that provided additional insight about the characters that had appeared in recent stories at the time but also documented the production process of the show too.
Herbert’s biography of Hulke draws upon interviews with his friends, family and colleagues, letters he had written, and most notably his MI5 file – a reminder that his political position and party affiliation was not the safest to have during his lifetime.