The best Carole Ann Ford’s drama movies

This docudrama travels back in time to 1963 to see how Doctor Who was first brought to the screen. Actor William Hartnell felt trapped by a succession of hard-man roles. Wannabe producer Verity Lambert was frustrated by the TV industry's glass ceiling. Both of them were to find unlikely hope and unexpected challenges in the form of a Saturday tea-time drama. Allied with a team of unusual but brilliant people, they went on to create the longest running science fiction series ever made.

Walter Pinner is the titular Punch And Judy Man plying his trade in the seaside town of Piltdown. Unhappily married to his social climbing wife, who gets him to perform at the 60th Anniversary celebrations of the town in front of all the local dignitaries, his hatred of snobbery comes to a hilarious head.

The TARDIS crew lands in the Himalayas of Cathay in 1289, their ship badly damaged, and are picked up by Marco Polo's caravan on its way along the fabled Silk Road to see the Emperor Kublai Khan. The story concerns the Doctor and his companions' attempts to thwart the machinations of Tegana, who attempts to sabotage the caravan along its travels through the Pamir Plateau and across the treacherous Gobi Desert, and ultimately to assassinate Kublai Khan in Peking, at the height of his imperial power.

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Susan, Barbara, and Ian to the planet Skaro where they meet two indigenous races — the Daleks, malicious mutant creatures encased in armoured travel machines, and the Thals, beautiful humanoids with pacifist principles. They convince the Thals of the need to fight for their own survival.

The TARDIS materialises inside an Aztec tomb. Outside it, the Doctor and his companions soon discover that Mexico in the 15th century is a bloodthirsty and dangerous place... And with Barbara mistaken for a reincarnation of an ancient high priest called Yetaxa, the history teacher thinks that she can put an end to the barbaric human sacrifices once and for all. But can she rewrite history without disastrous consequences?

The TARDIS arrives on the planet Marinus on an island of glass surrounded by a sea of acid. The travellers are forced by the elderly Arbitan to retrieve four of the five operating keys to a machine called the Conscience of Marinus, of which he is the keeper. These have been hidden in different locations around the planet to prevent them falling into the hands of the evil Yartek and his Voord warriors, who plan to seize the machine and use its originally benevolent mind-influencing power for their own sinister purposes.

The TARDIS returns to London; however, it's the 22nd century. With bodies in the river, and quiet in the docklands, the city is a very different place. The Daleks have invaded and it's up to the Doctor to thwart them once again.

As they slowly recover from the shock of being thrown to the TARDIS floor, the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara all seem to be acting strangely. It gradually dawns on the travellers that what they have been experiencing is an attempt by the TARDIS itself to warn them of something. The Doctor finally realises the fast return switch he used when leaving Skaro has stuck, and the ship has been plunging back to the beginning of time and its own destruction.

The doors of the TARDIS open of their own accord just before it materialises, running out of control. On emerging, the travelers find the ship has been reduced in size and they are now only about an inch tall. As tiny people, they stumble across a plot by a ruthless businessman, Forester, and his misguided scientist colleague, Smithers, to launch a new insecticide, DN6 — a product so destructive that it would kill not only those insects harmful to agriculture but also those vital to it. Forester is willing to commit murder to ensure the success of his business, as civil servant Arnold Farrow discovers to his cost. The criminals are brought to justice when the Doctor and his friends — hampered by the fact that Barbara is ill from the insecticide — tamper with the telephone in Smithers' laboratory, fuelling the suspicions of the local exchange operator, Hilda Rowse, who sends her police constable husband Bert to investigate.

The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan arrive in the TARDIS on board a spaceship. Their initial concern is for the ship's human crew, who are suffering from telepathic interference from the Sensorites, but Susan communicates with the Sensorites and finds the aliens fear an attack by the humans and are just defending themselves. Travelling to the Sense Sphere (the Sensorites' planet) the Doctor seeks to cure an illness to which the Sensorites and Ian have succumbed, but finds it has been caused by deliberate poisoning. The political manoeuvring of the Sensorite City Administrator poses another threat to the TARDIS crew as he seeks to discredit and implicate them.

Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, two humble teachers during 1963, discover a genius student's grandfather, simply known as "the Doctor", and his police box time machine. Deciding that the pair knows too much about his otherworldly origins, they are whisked away on a journey through time and space.

The TARDIS materialises not far from Paris in 1794 — one of the bloodiest years following the French Revolution of 1789. The travellers become involved with an escape chain rescuing prisoners from the guillotine and get caught up in the machinations of an English undercover spy, James Stirling — alias Lemaitre, governor of the Conciergerie prison.