Donald Tosh
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Donald Tosh was a BBC screenwriter during the 1960s who contributed to the Doctor Who programme in 1965.
Before working on Doctor Who Tosh was briefly script editor on the series Compact, and had helped to develop the show that eventually became Coronation Street.
Tosh was the story editor for the Doctor Who stories between The Time Meddler and The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, working with producers Verity Lambert and John Wiles.
On Tosh's final story, The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve by John Lucarotti, Tosh performed a substantial rewrite of the scripts, both to align them with historical accuracy and also to accommodate William Hartnell's dual role as both the Doctor and the Abbot of Amboise. On the final episode the story editor's credit was given over to his successor Gerry Davis and Tosh was co-credited.
He also performed an extensive re-write of The Celestial Toymaker by Brian Hayles. Most of this work, however, was in turn rewritten by Davis. Tosh claimed that the trilogic game was the sole retention from his version of the script.
As of July 2006, he is the only script editor from the William Hartnell era still living and, together with Louis Marks and Glyn Jones, one of only three writers to have contributed to that period of Doctor Who still alive.
After leaving television Tosh worked for a time for English Heritage. He was Head Custodian of Sherborne Old Castle, Dorset and St Mawes in Cornwall. He now resides in Suffolk.
