[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jnt_3046.jpg]]
->''"When I first worked on [[Series/DoctorWho the show]] it was in the role of floor assistant, the most junior member of the production team, basically a kind of glorified call boy."''

John "JNT" Nathan-Turner (born John Turner, 12 August 1947 – 1 May 2002) was the longest-running producer of ''Series/DoctorWho'', lasting from August 1980 to August 31, 1990, overseeing the last season of Creator/TomBaker and the entire tenures of Creator/PeterDavison, Creator/ColinBaker and Creator/SylvesterMcCoy.

Nathan-Turner started working at Creator/TheBBC as a television floor assistant, working on shows like ''The Pallisers'', ''How Green Was My Valley'', ''Angels'', and ''Series/{{All Creatures Great And Small|1978}}''. He got his start on ''Doctor Who'' in 1969 as part of the floor crew. The first serial he worked on was the Creator/PatrickTroughton story [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E6TheSpacePirates "The Space Pirates"]]. He was promoted to production unit manager under Creator/GrahamWilliams in the late 1970s (he was in charge of the budget).

At the end of Season 17, Williams decided to step down as producer. When the BBC couldn't get George Gallaccio to take his place, the role was given to Nathan-Turner. Owed to his relatively young age, at just 33 years, Nathan-Turner was mentored by former producer Creator/BarryLetts, who acted as executive producer, also collaborating with new script editor Creator/ChristopherHBidmead. In his first season, which was also the last season with Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, Nathan-Turner immediately made a series of drastic changes: a new opening, a new version of the theme song, having scores done in-house at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (instead of using longtime composer Dudley Simpson), and an insistence on not working with previous directors and writers of the series (with rare exceptions like Pennant Roberts, Creator/TerranceDicks and Creator/RobertHolmes).

Nathan-Turner believed that ''Doctor Who'' had become a parody of itself in the last years of the Tom Baker era, and he wanted to re-emphasize the more sci-fi aspect of the series. He also cut down the Doctor's outfits to a LimitedWardrobe of one or two getups per incarnation, each with a distinctive question mark motif (largely for merchandizing), did away with the use of stories over four parts[[note]]though [[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E4TheTwoDoctors "The Two Doctors"]], which consisted of three 45-minute episodes, would feature a comparable runtime to the old six-parters and was edited as such in international airings[[/note]], and brought back the Master, an iconic villain from the Third Doctor era who had [[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E3TheDeadlyAssassin only appeared once]] in the Fourth Doctor era. Under Nathan-Turner's command, the Master would again have more recurring appearances.

At the end of Nathan-Turner's first season, both Bidmead and Letts left their posts on the series along with Tom Baker and Creator/LallaWard, the latter of whom had played companion Romana. Peter Davison was hired as the Fifth Doctor, with a new trio of companions, the earthling Tegan and the aliens Adric and Nyssa. Creator/EricSaward became the new script editor, and he stayed in the series from 1982 to 1986. Davison would be Doctor for three seasons, being replaced by Colin Baker in 1984.

In 1985, after Colin Baker's first season as the Sixth Doctor, BBC controller Michael Grade (who hated the show) imposed an eighteen-month hiatus on the series. The series returned in 1986 with a completely rewritten twenty-third season and a reduced number of episodes per season. At that point, Creator/EricSaward, who had a bad relationship with Nathan-Turner and disapproved of Colin Baker's casting, finally gave up following a spat over the proposed season finale and left the series midway through the story's production. At the end of Season 23, Colin Baker was fired by the BBC.

At that point, Nathan-Turner also wanted to leave ''Doctor Who'', but the BBC effectively forced him to stay on the show by making clear that it would be cancelled outright if he departed and that his association with the programme had rendered him toxic within the Corporation, making it unlikely that he'd be given opportunities to produce other shows. Sylvester [=McCoy=] was hired for the lead role and Creator/AndrewCartmel became the new script editor for the series; because Nathan-Turner shifted to a more laissez-faire approach after the ordeal with Grade and Saward, Cartmel became the main creative force of the Seventh Doctor era. ''Doctor Who'' would last another three years before it was finally unceremoniously cancelled at the end of 1989. Nathan-Turner officially resigned as the show's producer the following August, concurrently with the closure of its production studios.

In later years, Nathan-Turner co-wrote the 1993 charity special "[[Recap/DoctorWho30thASDimensionsInTime Dimensions in Time]]" for the show's 30th Anniversary. He was responsible for the direction of the home-video releases of ''Doctor Who'', and produced some of the earliest of the show's bonus features in the form of short documentaries on specific Doctors and villains. A long term drinker and smoker, this ultimately developed into full-blown alcoholism, leading to his health failing in his waning years; he died of an infection at the age of 54 in 2002, just a year before the announcement that ''Doctor Who'' had been revived.

Nathan-Turner was the first openly gay creative director for the series; his partner, Gary Downie, was a fellow co-worker at the BBC and ultimately became BBC Television's production manager. ''Doctor Who'' wouldn't have another heterosexual creative director until Creator/StevenMoffat took on the position in 2010, thirty years after Nathan-Turner was first given the reins.

Accusations emerged in the mid-2010s, in a book by former ''Series/BluePeter'' producer Richard Marson, that Downie was a serial sexual predator who used JNT's position to groom and assault young men (the age of consent for gay men in the UK was 21 at the time). According to the book, Marson himself was one of his victims, claiming that Nathan-Turner was also known to make inappropriate advances to young men and turned a blind eye to his partner's abuses.
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!!Tropes in his work include:
* ContinuityPorn: Nathan-Turner sought to appeal to ''Series/DoctorWho'''s hardcore fanbase by bringing back monsters, characters and other elements from the show's past. This reached ContinuityLockout levels in stories such as "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E1AttackOfTheCybermen Attack of the Cybermen]]", which required detailed knowledge of two stories that hadn't been broadcast for nearly 20 years (and were {{Missing Episode}}s at the time) in order to understand the plot.[[invoked]]
* DarkerAndEdgier: Nathan-Turner sought to move ''Doctor Who'' away from the lighthearted and comedic tone of the show under Creator/GrahamWilliams' tenure, and as such retooled the series into a more serious, dramatic direction. This reached its peak during Season 22, when the show featured an abundance of morally-grey characters, including the Doctor himself, and levels of FamilyUnfriendlyViolence not seen since the Creator/PhilipHinchcliffe era. After drawing the ire of BBC controller Michael Grade, Nathan-Turner eased off on the grit for Seasons 23 and especially 24, but moved back into a proto-Revival Series mix of weighty drama (minus the violence) and morally-grey characters afterwards.
* NoHuggingNoKissing: Nathan-Turner is the producer who most aggressively enforced this policy in ''Doctor Who''. He forbade Creator/PeterDavison from touching any of his female companions onscreen, particularly due to one of them being about the same age as he was. John Nathan-Turner originated the often quoted "No hanky-panky aboard the TARDIS", a phrase which first appeared in a January 1984 Magazine/TimeMagazine article about the show.
* StuntCasting: As ''Series/DoctorWho'' producer, Nathan-Turner was fond of casting well known actors in roles very different from what they were known for playing, in order to boost publicity. Most infamously, he cast grandmotherly comedienne Creator/BerylReid as a tough space freighter captain in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E6Earthshock Earthshock]]".
* VacationDearBoy: By his own admission, Nathan-Turner started setting ''Doctor Who'' stories in exotic locations purely because they had the budget to go there for location shoots.
** The first example, dating from his days as main production assistant rather than producer, was when he realized they had the budget to shoot "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E2CityOfDeath City of Death]]" in Paris -- and, in fact, it would be cheaper to actually shoot it there rather than do it in a studio -- so long as they rejigged the script for a modern-day setting.
** When he took over as producer, Nathan-Turner tried to include overseas filming in at least one serial per season: "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS20E1ArcOfInfinity Arc of Infinity]]" was partially set in Amsterdam, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E5PlanetOfFire Planet of Fire]]" was a crew holiday in Lanzarote, and "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E4TheTwoDoctors The Two Doctors]]" had to switch from New Orleans to Seville when funding for the former fell through. Problems with overseas shooting in Seville[[note]]Nathan-Turner was informed during production of "The Two Doctors" that one of the scenes filmed in Spain had been ruined by a scratch on the negative after the two actors involved in the scene had returned to England, and they had to be flown back out again at significant expense, only for it to later turn out that the reported scratch was virtually invisible and the original footage was perfectly fine. This led to Nathan-Turner either being ordered not to film outside the UK again by BBC executives or deciding not to -- reports vary -- although it ended up being academic as the budget was cut for later seasons and they could no longer afford overseas shoots.[[/note]] for the last of these meant that overseas filming was subsequently abandoned, and ''Doctor Who'' would not shoot outside the UK again for the remainder of the Classic era.
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