Doctor Who director Christopher Barry has died at the age of 88.
Christopher Barry was the show’s longest serving director, working on 43 episodes from The Daleks with William Hartnell in 1963 to The Creature from the Pit with Tom Baker in 1979. He was one of only three directors to have worked with all of the first four actors to play the title role.
Barry also directed The Rescue, The Romans, The Savages, The Power of the Daleks, The Daemons, The Mutants, Robot and The Brain of Morbius, some of the most popular Doctor Who stories in the show’s long history.
When the series was off the air in 1995 he also directed the straight-to-video spin-off story Downtime independently produced by Reeltime Pictures.
Christopher Barry began his career in films, working as an assistant director on productions such as Meet Mr. Lucifer (1953), The Love Lottery (1954) and The Ship That Died of Shame (1955). By 1958 he was directing, working on the BBC’s Starr and Company, the crime drama Private Investigator and the long-running soap opera Compact. He also directed episodes of Paul Temple, Moonbase 3, Poldark, Angels, Nicholas Nickleby, The Onedin Line, Z Cars, All Creatures Great and Small, Nanny and Juliet Bravo. He also directed eleven episodes of the TV adaptation of John Christopher’s The Tripods.
Christopher Barry died after a fall at his local shopping centre in Banbury in Oxfordshire.