Doctor Who Worldwide is saddened to report the passing of classic series director Fiona Cumming.
Beginning her career as an actress she started her career at the Royal Scottish Academy before a variety of roles in theatre and television and an eventual move into the production side of the industry.
Moving to London in 1964 she gained a post as an assistant floor manager at the BBC, first working on Doctor Who for the Season Three William Hartnell classic The Massacre. She would soon be promoted to production assistant and gained two further credits on the series, Patrick Troughton’s The Highlanders and The Mutants, starring Jon Pertwee.
Shortly after this she completed the BBC’s internal director’s course, and in 1974 she was taken on as a staff director, working on the likes of Z-Cars, Angels and cult classic The Omega Factor. After turning freelance in 1979, Fiona would work on show’s as diverse as God’s Wonderful Railway Square Mile of Murder and Blake’s 7 before returning to Doctor Who to direct four Peter Davison serials between 1981 and 1983 - Castrovalva, Snakedance, Enlightenment and Planet of Fire.
Speaking to Doctor Who Magazine, Cumming spoke fondly of her time on the series, revealing Enlightenment as the favourite of her four serials:
“Of all the scripts, [Enlightenment] was the one that appealed most initially. I think the idea of a space race is wonderful, and I’d seen quite a bit of the Black Guardian and I liked that feeling of black / white and good and evil, coupled with the fact that those two actors together were outrageous! If you actually go into it, though, the hole in the Eternals is that they’d all know who won as they knew everything.”
And also revealed how she had been the inspiration behind Planet of Fire‘s Lanzarote setting:
“I sent John Nathan-Turner a postcard from a holiday in Lanzarote as a gag, saying something like ‘Weather wonderful, planet smashing, troglodytes willing – how about it?’. The following year we went back. The more I walked around it, the more I thought how terrific it could be, so I took a roll of film specifically with none of the family in it. When I came back I had them developed and put them on John’s desk. He loved it and said if it was ever possible, he’d definitely think about it. In the months that followed, he started saying things like ‘If there were ways’, and finally ‘When we do it’, but he never actually said I could direct it. He’d taken it as read!”
Fiona was scheduled to direct a fifth story during Colin Baker’s time as the Doctor, Wally K. Daly’s The Ultimate Evil, which would have been the second story of the “lost” 23rd Season that was planned for broadcast in early 1986. She also made an uncredited cameo appearance as a tourist at Windsor Castle during Silver Nemesis starring Sylvester McCoy.
Fiona Cumming passed away on January 1, our thoughts are with her family, friends and colleagues at this difficult time.
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