[2] Turner was later taken on by the BBC as a television floor assistant, working on every type of show (from light entertainment to news and current affairs), including–more importantly for his later career–drama.
Shows produced by the BBC's drama department that he worked on included The Pallisers,[3] How Green Was My Valley, Angels, and All Creatures Great and Small.
An assignment to the BBC's light entertainment department also led to him spending two years working on The Morecambe and Wise Show, prior to the act's move to ITV in 1978.
Nathan-Turner worked as an assistant floor manager on two serials in the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who: The Ambassadors of Death (1970)[6] and Colony in Space (1971).
He strongly felt that people working on the programme (especially Williams, script editor Douglas Adams and star Tom Baker) had stopped taking the show seriously: it was parodying science fiction, rather than presenting serious storylines.
Nathan-Turner also dispensed with the services of long-time composer Dudley Simpson, who had provided the incidental music for the majority of the Doctor Who serials of the 1970s and all of the Williams era stories.
With Simpson departed, the Doctor Who incidental music under Nathan-Turner's stewardship would be provided by electronic composers including Peter Howell, Paddy Kingsland, Malcolm Clarke, Roger Limb, Jonathan Gibbs, Keff McCulloch, and Mark Ayres.
This at once led to difficulties, with the second story to enter production, Meglos (1980), suffering from all the problems which Nathan-Turner had identified in the show's scripts under Graham Williams (a lack of realism, an over indulgence in comedy).
Nathan-Turner, however, was largely focused on generating publicity for the series, something which he also achieved by the device of casting high profile, well-known actors (sometimes from the world of light entertainment) as guest stars.
In addition to his work on the television series, for some years during the Eighties Nathan-Turner's interest in light entertainment led to him producing an annual Christmas Pantomime, at the Tunbridge Wells Theatre, starring the incumbent Doctor and other members of the cast.
[12] Criticism of his production decisions was wide-ranging, from employing too many back-references (thereby limiting the scriptwriters, and confusing the casual viewer), to employing excessive violence in Colin Baker's 1985 season,[13] to his hostility to using writers and directors from the show's past, and in the casting of guest stars best known for roles from light entertainment rather than from drama (including Rodney Bewes, Beryl Reid, Richard Briers, Ken Dodd and Hale and Pace).
Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times argued that "John Nathan-Turner should be applauded for enticing big-name guest stars and his 'stunt casting' of actors in wildly inappropriate roles often pays off", although he cited Briers as an example who was "shockingly bad".
[14] He was criticised for the casting of companions purely as gimmicks: the character Tegan Jovanka (an Australian air-stewardess played by Janet Fielding) was introduced solely to curry favour with viewers in Australia; whilst Peter Davison reported that the American character Peri Brown (played by Nicola Bryant) was introduced only in an attempt to endear the show to American viewers.
[16] In 1986, after the series had returned (with fewer episodes in the season), Grade insisted that Nathan-Turner replace the actor he had cast as the Sixth Doctor, Colin Baker, as a condition of it continuing.
Davison disliked what he considered the "designer look" of his cricket attire; Baker didn't approve of the tasteless multi-coloured outfit he was given (as he detailed in the documentaries The Story of Doctor Who and Trials and Tribulations); while McCoy was dissatisfied with his pullover being covered in question marks, which he found "overstated".
"[23] After the series ended in 1989, and until shortly before his death, Nathan-Turner continued to be involved in Doctor Who-related events, and remained a familiar face at conventions for many years afterwards.
Also during the early 1990s, Nathan-Turner produced the earliest Doctor Who commercial releases on audio cassette, for the BBC Radio Collection, creating narrated adaptations of television serials for which only the soundtrack remained.