Newman wrote back to Grade with a suggestion that he take direct control of the series as executive producer, that Patrick Troughton should return to the role of the Doctor for a season, and then regenerate into a female, with Newman suggesting either Joanna Lumley, Dawn French or Frances de la Tour to succeed Troughton. Grade then suggested that Newman meet the current Head of Drama, Jonathan Powell, for lunch to discuss the Canadian's ideas. Newman and Powell did not get on well, however, and nothing came of their meeting. Newman was also unsuccessful in an attempt to have his name added to the end credits of the show as its creator. Acting Head of Series & Serials Ken Riddington, to whom Newman's request had been referred, wrote to him that "Heads of Department who originate programmes have to be satisfied with the other rewards that flow from doing so." Newman returned to Canada again in the 1990s, where he died of a heart attack in Toronto in 1997, aged 80. At the time of his death, his partner was Marion McDougall. Legacy In September 2003, a version of Newman played by actor Ian Brooker appeared in the straight-to-CD Doctor Who Unbound radio play Deadline, written by Rob Shearman and released by Big Finish Productions. The play was set in a world in which Doctor Who had never been created, existing only in the imagination and memories of fictional writer Martin Bannister, played by Derek Jacobi. As part of the plot of the play, Bannister was unable to clearly remember whether Newman had been Canadian or Australian, with the Newman character's accent changing according to Bannister's varying memories. For the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who in 2013, BBC television commissioned a dramatisation of the events surrounding the creation of the series, entitled An Adventure in Space and Time and written by Mark Gatiss. Newman was portrayed by Scottish actor Brian Cox. A biography of Newman by Ryan Danes, titled The Man Who Thought Outside the Box, was released in April 2017 by Digital Entropy Publishing. Notes References Danes, Ryan The Man Who Thought Outside the Box: The Life and Times of Doctor Who Creator Sydney Newman. Dunkley, Christopher. A hard act to follow.'' "Financial Times." Wednesday November 5, 1997 (page 23). External links Sydney Newman at the National Film Board of Canada Sydney Newman fonds (R738) at Library and Archives