 Kneale never saw himself as a science @-@ fiction writer , and was often critical of the genre . He particularly disliked the BBC series Doctor Who ( 1963 – 89 ; 1996 ; 2005 – present ) , for which he had once turned down an offer to write . " It sounded a terrible idea and I still think it was , " he commented in 1986 . " The fact that it 's lasted a long time and has a steady audience doesn 't mean much . So has Crossroads and that 's a stinker " . He also slammed Blake 's 7 , which he described as the lowest point of British television science @-@ fiction : " I think the low point for me would be the very few bits I 've seen of a thing called Blake 's 7 which I found <unk> awful . The dialogue / characterisation seemed to consist of a kind of childish squabbling " and Doomwatch : " I was approached to write Doomwatch . That didn 't seem to be much good either . " Doctor Who was heavily influenced by Kneale 's Quatermass serials , in some cases even using specific storylines that were very similar to those from Quatermass . 
