David Maloney

Directing

David Maloney

Born 1933-12-14 · Alvechurch, Worcestershire, England, UK

David John Lee Maloney (14 December 1933 – 18 July 2006) was a British television director and producer, best known for his work on the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who, Blake's 7 and The Day of the Triffids. Maloney joined the BBC as a television production assistant and trained to be a director at the corporation. His directing credits included the police series Z-Cars, Softly, Softly: Taskforce and Juliet Bravo, and an adaptation of the Walter Scott novel Ivanhoe (1970). He first worked on Doctor Who as a production assistant to Christopher Barry on the serial The Rescue (1965). He directed eight Doctor Who serials between 1968 and 1977. He became, along with Douglas Camfield, one of producer Philip Hinchcliffe's two favourite directors. He then became the producer of the first three seasons of Blake's 7 (1978–80), which included directing three episodes himself. He left Blake's 7 to produce the last series of When the Boat Comes In (1981). He also produced the BBC's adaptation of John Wyndham's novel The Day of the Triffids (1981). After his work in television drama, Maloney moved to factual programme-making and travelled the world making various documentaries for the ITV contractor Central. Towards the end of his life, he appeared in a number of TV and DVD documentaries about his work on Doctor Who. He also provided DVD commentaries for three of the serials he directed, The Mind Robber (1968), Genesis of the Daleks (1975) and The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977).

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks poster
8.9

The Time Lords dispatch the Doctor to the past of the planet Skaro on his deadliest adventure yet — to prevent the creation of the Daleks.

Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks

1975

Blake's 7: The Beginning poster
9.0

In the far future, freedom fighter Roj Blake, framed by the all-powerful but corrupt Galactic Federation, escapes his captors from his sentence to a harsh penal colony and, helped by a handful of fellow convicts and armed with a superbly-equipped alien spaceship, sets about restoring freedom to the galaxy.

Blake's 7: The Beginning

1985

Doctor Who: Planet of the Daleks poster
7.0

On the jungle planet Spiridon, the Doctor, Jo and a Thal group find a slumbering army of Daleks ready to awaken.

Doctor Who: Planet of the Daleks

1973

Blake's 7: Duel poster
NR

Supreme Commander Servalan assigns the task to the deadly Travis-his orders simply to seek, locate and destroy Blake's 7! Travis and his Mutoid crew clash with Blake in a crucial struggle over the Federation's secret cypher machine and again in desperate hand-to-hand combat on a mysterious dead planet. Finally, they confront each other on a barren ice world as Blake attempts to rescue the resistance leader, Avalon. This time, however, Travis is expecting him, and a terrible trap awaits. . .

Blake's 7: Duel

1986

Doctor Who: The Krotons poster
6.4

The TARDIS arrives on the unnamed planet of the Gonds, who are ruled and taught in a form of self-perpetuating slavery by the alien Krotons — crystalline beings whose ship, the Dynatrope, crash-landed there thousands of years earlier after being damaged in a space battle. The Krotons are in suspended animation, in a crystalline slurry form, awaiting a time when they can be reconstituted by absorption of mental energy. Periodically, the two most brilliant Gond students are received into the Dynatrope, nominally to become "companions of the Krotons", but in truth to have their mental energy drained, after which they are killed.

Doctor Who: The Krotons

1969

Blake's 7: Orac poster
NR

A spaceship crashes approaching the planet Cephlon and when the crew of the Liberator answer the distress call they find their own lives endangered. Blake is caught in a desperate race against time to save the lives of the crew and also find the mysterious ORAC. Once in Blake's possession, ORAC predicts the future of Blake and his crew by showing them an image of the Liberator blown to atoms in space. Blake is powerless to alter their inevitable destruction, and when the Liberator is seized by a hostile force, a series of terrifying events sets the prophecy in motion.

Blake's 7: Orac

1986

Blake's 7: Orac poster
NR

A spaceship crashes approaching the planet Cephlon and when the crew of the Liberator answer the distress call they find their own lives endangered. Blake is caught in a desperate race against time to save the lives of the crew and also find the mysterious ORAC. Once in Blake's possession, ORAC predicts the future of Blake and his crew by showing them an image of the Liberator blown to atoms in space. Blake is powerless to alter their inevitable destruction, and when the Liberator is seized by a hostile force, a series of terrifying events sets the prophecy in motion.

Blake's 7: Orac

1986

Clowns poster
NR

Arthur is about to celebrate his 80th birthday and his family is gathering for a party. It is a time for celebration, but also for family tensions and a reassessment of how we all spend our lives.

Clowns

1989

Blake's 7: Aftermath poster
NR

The Intergalactic War is over. The Combined forces of Earth's galaxy have triumphed over the invasion force from Andromeda, but the price of victory has been high.

Blake's 7: Aftermath

1986

Blake's 7: Aftermath poster
NR

The Intergalactic War is over. The Combined forces of Earth's galaxy have triumphed over the invasion force from Andromeda, but the price of victory has been high.

Blake's 7: Aftermath

1986

Doctor Who: The Armageddon Factor poster
5.5

The final segment of the Key to Time is at the heart of a devastating war between neighbouring planets Atrios and Zeos. The Fourth Doctor discovers that a sinister entity is manipulating events and the cost of obtaining the final segment may be more personal than he imagined.

Doctor Who: The Armageddon Factor

1979

Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang poster
8.1

Death stalks the fogbound streets of Victorian London: young women are going missing, horribly mutilated bodies are found floating in the Thames and criminal gangs terrorize the innocent. At the heart of this tangled web sits the mysterious Li H'sen Chang, sorcerer and hypnotist, and his grotesque sidekick Mister Sin. The Doctor dons deerstalker hat and cape to seek out the sinister force lurking in the shadows of the metropolis, for the Talons of Weng-Chiang are reaching out to shred the human race.

Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang

1977

Doctor Who: The War Games poster
9.7

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive on an unnamed planet. At first believing themselves in the midst of World War I, they realise it to be one of many War Zones overseen by the War Lords, who have kidnapped large numbers of human soldiers to form the greatest army the universe has ever seen. At the helm of this plot is the War Chief, another renegade Time Lord like the Doctor. The creeping realisation sets in that the Doctor cannot solve this problem alone, and that his days of wandering may be at an end...

Doctor Who: The War Games

1969

Doctor Who: Planet of Evil poster
6.8

Picking up a distress call from the edge of the known universe, the Doctor and Sarah Jane find themselves on Zeta Minor where a geological team has run afoul of some strange goings on...

Doctor Who: Planet of Evil

1975

End of the Line poster
NR

Life in a Scottish New Town

End of the Line

1984

Doctor Who: The Mind Robber poster
8.1

To escape from the volcanic eruption on Dulkis, the Second Doctor uses an emergency unit. It moves the TARDIS out of normal time and space. The travellers find themselves in an endless void where they are menaced by white robots. Having regained the safety of the TARDIS, they believe they have escaped — until the ship explodes. They find themselves in a land of fiction, where they are hunted by life-size clockwork soldiers and encounter characters like Rapunzel, the Karkus, and Swift's Lemuel Gulliver.

Doctor Who: The Mind Robber

1968

Doctor Who: The War Games in Colour poster
5.8

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive on an unnamed planet. At first believing themselves in the midst of World War I, they realise it to be one of many War Zones overseen by the War Lords, who have kidnapped large numbers of human soldiers to form the greatest army the universe has ever seen. At the helm of this plot is the War Chief, another renegade Time Lord like the Doctor. The creeping realisation sets in that the Doctor cannot solve this problem alone, and that his days of wandering may be at an end...

Doctor Who: The War Games in Colour

2024

Doctor Who: Frontier in Space poster
7.5

In the 26th century, the Doctor and Jo uncover a plot by the Master to provoke an interplanetary war between Earth and Draconia.

Doctor Who: Frontier in Space

1973

Doctor Who: The Deadly Assassin poster
8.5

Summoned back to Gallifrey, the Doctor is framed for the assassination of the Time Lord President. To prove his innocence, he must stand for election himself, uncover the traitor in the Time Lord High Council, fight a hooded killer in a nightmare cyberspace world of his enemy's devising and battle against an old foe now out to destroy the Time Lords: The Master.

Doctor Who: The Deadly Assassin

1976

Aliens poster
NR

In June 1940 Italy entered the war alongside Germany. With Britain threatened by a German invasion, thousands of ordinary Italians living in the UK were arrested and thrown into internment camps.

Aliens

1982

Eve Set the Balls of Corruption Rolling poster
NR

Adolescents will always be obsessed by the same old subject, even when they are educated by nuns. Six ex-Classmates meet for the first time in 12 years and hilarious memories change into highly emotional situations.

Eve Set the Balls of Corruption Rolling

1982