Nigel Kneale, the “godfather of television science fiction”, died on Sunday at the age of 84. Best known for his Quatermass serials (the film version of Quatermass 2 featured actor William Franklyn, who has also died), Kneale also wrote the anthology series Beasts, spooky Jane Asher drama The Stone Tape, a classic Peter Cushing television adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the ground-breaking The Year of the Sex Olmypics, a prescient prediction of the current reality TV craze.

Although he reportedly disapproved of Doctor Who and turned down the opportunity to write for it, the series was very much influenced by Kneale’s 1950s science fiction serials, a contribution acknowledged by a direct reference to “Bernard” (Quatermass) in Remembrance of the Daleks. HammerWeb has a tribute to him here.

(See also Nick Barlow.)