Dr. Who . . . and me?

David Ryan (2nd from right) with (l-r) Producer John Nathan-Turner,
Janet Fielding (Tegan), Mark Strickland (Turlow)
 and Peter Davison (5th Doctor Who) on set in 1983

(note: I posted this blog article first on my website, DavidRyanMediaSolutions.com, back in Aug. 2011. As I moved on to other professional situations, I've since let the DRMS site go dormant. I've received several requests to re-post this article on my current personal blog here. I've updated the article a bit. Enjoy! - DRy)

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So it was in August 2010 that I arrived at work (then at Video Labs in Rockville, MD)  and opened a new email that said,

“Are you the David Ryan who was on assignment with the Doctor Who team in 1983 that produced The Awakening story?”

I smiled.  With the age of the internet, I knew it was just a matter of time before they found me.

Let me digress.

Back in the 80’s, when I was working at the Denver PBS affiliate, KRMA-TV, I produced a documentary on the then exponentially growing popularity in America of the campy BBC TV sci-fi series, Doctor Who, which at the time was being aired primarily by PBS stations.  Aficionados of the series will recall that actor Tom Baker played the Doctor at that time.

Now, if you are not familiar with Doctor Who, the overarching storyline is about the adventures of a human-looking alien of the Time Lord race, known as the Doctor.  Time Lords have the ability to travel through the fourth dimension.  It turns out that the Doctor is sort of a renegade Time Lord and his time vehicle (aka a TARDIS) is in the shape of an old British police call box (that defies normal physics by being spacious with many passageways and rooms on the inside).

The Doctor and his companions constantly stumble upon crisis situations where they are called upon to intervene for good – not in a typical comic book super-hero manner, rather more in a quirky, almost geeky fashion.   And oh yeah, Time Lords don’t die, they just regenerate into a new body when the time comes.  (How convenient for carrying the series forward as lead actors change.  The series began in 1963.)

My producing that documentary about the series back in 1982 came about through a series of coincidences.  At the Denver PBS station, I was among the corral of on-air pledge drive hosts.  I had a knack (ok, zaniness) for successfully soliciting pledges during the PBS lineup of children’s programs and weekend special programming, shows like Doctor Who.

Pledges from the fans of the Doctor Who series turned out to be numerous, and the station figured they could further capitalize on the interest by having me produce a documentary exploring in more depth the appeal of the series and selling the resulting program to fellow PBS affiliates.

My crew and I went to Chicago to videotape at a Doctor Who conference attended by hundreds of fans (aka “Whovians”).  We also met and taped interviews with the show’s BBC producer at that time, John Nathan-Turner, and stars, writers and other personnel connected with the series who had “crossed the pond” to attend the convention.

The folks from the BBC were naturally very supportive of our documentary, both at the convention and in the months afterwards.  The final-edited program, titled, "Once Upon A TIme Lord," ended up being a big success, with lots of airplay here in the States.

Well, for a PBS television guy like me back then, having an “in” at the BBC was very valuable.  I had always dreamt of getting an opportunity to spend time at the BBC.  So I took advantage of the connections I had made with the Doctor Who team, and eventually producer John Nathan-Turner helped get me approved for one of the BBC’s professional exchange programs.

I was granted a leave of absence from my Denver station and was off to London for four months of observation of the production activities of Doctor Who.  Too cool!

I was also fortunate that a college friend and her husband had a house in London with an extra room located four blocks from the Doctor Who office and the nearby BBC Studios in Shepards Bush.  Excellent!

The Doctor Who team, for both the series and for the particular two-part program, “The Awakening,” (featuring Peter Davison as the 5th Doctor) to which I was assigned, couldn’t have been nicer.   John Nathan-Turner also arranged for me to have pretty much carte blanche within the BBC -- and coolest of all, he allowed me to take photos of whatever I wanted pertaining to my activities with the Doctor Who series.

The Awakening - studio

And boy, did I take photos . . . predominantly color slides, because I knew they would be the best format at the time for giving presentations of my trip when I returned home to the States.  (Remember, this was well before digital photography, and making presentations projecting 35mm slides was state of the art at the time.)

When I got back to Denver, I indeed gave a number of presentations about my experiences to my colleagues at the PBS station and to various television industry trade groups.

And then I packed away those slides, along with the rest of my memorabilia from that summer experience, and proceeded on with my career, which included moving to the DC/Baltimore area.  Yes, I did remain in touch with several of the contacts I had made over in England.

The powerful reach of the appeal of the Doctor Who series was certainly made apparent to me one day in the mid-90’s when I was directing a satellite videoconference for a government agency in DC.  There in a TV control room deep inside a government building, one of the crew members hired along with me for the event, Al Faison (great guy and superb multi-talented tech dude and director himself, by the way), came up to me and asked, “Are you the David Ryan who worked with Doctor Who in the ‘80’s?”  Imagine my surprise.  Turns out he was (and remains) an avid “Whovian,” and he had read an interview in a fan magazine with John Nathan-Turner where my time spent with the series had been mentioned in passing.

Fast-forward another 15 years, (during which time I had further encounters with die-hard “Whovians,”) to the winter of 2010 when I started thinking that I probably ought to digitize  those slides I had in my possession.  

So I began the tedious process of scanning.  Yeah, I had in the back of my mind that given the power of the internet and the on-going interest of the series, someone likely would track me down and ask if I had any memorabilia from the series -- even though John Nathan-Turner had by now passed away and my contact with anyone from the 1983 production team had pretty much dropped off.

Then arrived that email in August 2010 from a researcher for producer Chris Chapman of Dene Films in Newcastle, England.  Chris then communicated with me directly.  Turns out the BBC has over the past few years been releasing episodes of Doctor Who on DVD, and The Awakening was now in line (or as they say in England, in the "queue.")

Independent production companies, like Dene Films, are engaged by the BBC to produce the background special features to these DVD releases.  And sure enough, Chris and his team had run across production notes from the series indicating that a “Yank” named David Ryan from Denver had been allowed to take production stills.  Good ‘ole Google.  They typed in my name, “producer” and “Denver” and came up with my DavidRyanMediaSolutions.com website.

Chris asked whether I might still have any of those slides.  Needless to say, he was thrilled when I replied that I did, and after negotiations, I employed Dropbox uploads to send him a bunch of the photos I had taken those many years ago.

The result is a superb DVD.

Chris and his team deftly integrated my slides in to his background special features that contain interviews with the actors and production personnel connected with The Awakening, including director Michael Morris, who had been so gracious allowing me to tag along beside him back in 1983.

Yeah, it was gratifying seeing my old slides being put to such good use.

The DVD Chris sent me is a PAL version packaged with a second DVD of a story titled, “The Gunfighters,” featuring the original Doctor, portrayed by William Hartnell.  As far as I can tell by searching on the internet, The Awakening DVD is also available in NTSC as a single DVD release via Amazon and other online distributors.

After a hiatus of several years, Doctor Who is back in production today and can be seen on BBC America and various PBS stations.  Storylines and production values have been enhanced many times over from when I was observing the series in the 80's.  No longer can it be described as “campy” or “charming tounge-in-cheek” sci-fi.  No matter, I think it is great, and I have started watching it again.  (They've just announced the twelfth Doctor.) I highly recommend that you check the series out as well.

And oh yeah, lesson to keep in mind: keep those old photos.

Your comments are most welcomed.

Should You Care about Sub Teacher Pay in Howard County?

Howard County Public School System Superintendent Dr. Michael Martirano recently stated to the Howard County Council during a working session, that of the thirteen years a typical student spends within our public school system, about one year of that time, cumulatively speaking, will be in classrooms led by substitute teachers.

Today, we have a substitute teacher shortage here in Howard County.

HCPSS Superintendent, Dr. Michael Martirano,
at May 15, 2019 County Council work session on HCPSS FY 2020 budget.
Sitting next to him is Board of Education Chair, Mavis Ellis.

However, the Board of Education/HCPSS staff withdrew an initially-proposed $6/day raise for subs (whose bottom pay level is currently $80/day) within the HCPSS FY 2020 budget submitted to the County Council -- while keeping in substantial pay raises for both collective bargaining and other non-collective bargaining units.

While many subs view their work as a way to "give back," that is not drawing enough qualified substitutes to fill both long-term and daily vacancies. The situation is indeed approaching a crisis situation. Subs and on-the-ground school staff know that to be true, and various statistics support that as well.

For example:

• HCPSS used to, up until recently, be able to fill approximately 95% of daily teacher vacancies. Today, that figure is more like 85%.
  
• And on Mondays and Fridays, the number of vacancies is often 600+, with only approximately  70 - 75% of those likely to be filled.
  
• The number of days subs are being asked to cover all six periods in high schools has increased dramatically. (Salaried high school teachers carry a four or five-period load.)
  
• And while long-term sub positions used to almost always require certification, that prerequisite, in reality, has pretty much "gone out the window." Just ask the administration personnel at any HCPSS school.

Substitute teachers do much more than act as sitters. Even the minimum requirements call for more than that. Most subs try to add some value to the instruction. In fact, some teachers rely on daily subs to actually teach content. For example, while I am not a former teacher, I do have a masters degree, and I happen to know Spanish. So I often conduct skills review and introduce new concepts. My current day rate is $90/day. (Remember, subs do not receive any benefits.) Yeah, do the math.

There are, of course, other reasons for the severe shortage of substitute teachers. For example, aspiring teachers feel less inclined to view subbing as an entry path. And the current overall high employment rate in our economy is another factor. While, as previously stated above, many subs see subbing as a way to “give back,” there are indeed many others who must rely on subbing to be one of their significant income streams. Those folks are rapidly being lured away by higher-paying opportunities in today’s economy.

Raising the daily rate by $6 might not fully solve the brewing sub shortage crisis, but to not do that will most certainly serve to only make it worse.

You might well ask, what exactly defines “worse”? Already administrators and teachers are scrambling on a daily basis throughout the school system to cover classes, taking them away from their primary duties of providing the quality education we expect here in Howard County. Without a pay raise for subs, that daily scramble will only intensify.

Indeed, there are hard choices to be made within the HCPSS FY 2020 budget. But this matter of raising substitute teacher pay should be viewed as a separate issue from balancing the budget. It is an issue of fairness. And in truth, given the way figures of millions of dollars have been thrown around in various work sessions, providing the subs a $6/day raise would turn out to be pretty much a "rounding number."

Substitute teachers deserve a raise now given the pay raises that are being allocated throughout the rest of system.

Howard County Council Memeber, Liz Walsh,
at May 15, 2019 County Council work session
on HCPSS FY 2020 budget.

As Council Member Liz Walsh said in the same May 15 work session with the Board of Education and HCPSS leadership, 

“I do worry that we are leaning on our substitute teachers to fill needs that are in some of the most difficult positions, and that the demands on them are not reasonable when compared to what we are asking our salaried teachers to do, and so to then not include them in pay increases that are otherwise being extended to our other educators, simply because they do not have a negotiated agreement, doesn't seem equitable."

Dr. Martirano is to be commended for stating that a community-wide review of the whole substitute teacher paradigm needs to be undertaken. And he says plans for that are underway. In the meantime, the Board of Education needs to do the right thing now by providing substitute teachers with the overdue raise of $6/day, regardless of what total funding amount is finally allocated for the HCPSS FY 2020 budget from the county government.

Comments to the HCPSS Board of Education can be written via this email: boe@hcpss.org

David is a retired video producer who currently runs an online marketing video business. While having never been a certified teacher, he nonetheless very much enjoys “giving back” working also as sub, primarily within high school Spanish and Social Studies classes throughout our great county. He can be reached at dcryan7@gmail.com