Out of the Unknown (1965–71), which ran for four seasons. Some of the ITV companies were imitating American styles of production, shooting some of their series on film rather than in the multi-camera electronic studio for lucrative sales in the 'international' market. One producer who was keen to make science fiction for the commercial network was Gerry Anderson, who initially used puppets for his shows. His science fiction shows in 'Supermarionation' include Supercar (1961–62), Fireball XL5 (1962–63), Stingray (1964–65), Thunderbirds (1965–66), Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967–68) and Joe 90 (1968–69). Their success led his backers ITC to finance the live-action shows he most wanted to develop. The first of these was UFO (1970–71), which featured American actor Ed Bishop as the head of an undercover military organisation with responsibility for combating aliens who came to Earth in the eponymous space craft. A planned second season was delayed and eventually reformatted as a new show, entitled "Space: 1999" (1975–77), which ran for two seasons and was a moderate success. Television science fiction in the '70s The 1970s is viewed by fans of the genre as a 'golden age'. Doctor Who was going through its strongest period with first Jon Pertwee (1970–1974) and later Tom Baker (1974–1981) in the leading role, already firmly entrenched in the public consciousness. Various former Doctor Who alumni had moved on to produce their own acclaimed genre programmes as well. The series' former scientific adviser Dr Kit Pedler and former script editor Gerry Davis collaborated to create Doomwatch (1970–72), a series which recounted the story of a governmental scientific group formed to investigate and combat ecological and scientific threats to humankind. In the Quatermass tradition of allegorical storytelling (Nigel Kneale was invited, but declined to contribute scripts to the programme), it used its science-fiction basis to try to convey real warnings about the state of the world, as well as telling tense, dramatic stories and not being afraid of shocking its audience, such as in the killing off of popular lead character Toby Wren (played by Robert Powell). Writer Terry Nation had created the Dalek race for Doctor Who in 1963, and thus assuring much of its early popularity. For the rest of the 1960s Nation had concentrated on writing for ITV film series, but in the early 1970s he returned to science fiction, contributing Dalek stories to Doctor Who again from 1973 to 1975 and