What would he think about Doctor Who (his creation) going on 50 years later?

He hated it when he was alive so I doubt he'd have changed his mind.

Apparently he offered to replace JNT as producer in 1985, though apparently he wanted Patrick Troughton back in the role, as well as for it to be aimed purely at children, with 2 child companions, and he wanted a 'created by Sydney Newman' credit on every episode, which they said no to.

Essentially sounds a little like Sarah Jane Adventures...

Didn't he also suggest a female Doctor around the same time?

Would this be at about the same time the UK edition of Trivial Pursuit came out? It must have annoyed old Sydney to see the urban myth about Terry Nation creating Doctor Who perpetuated on such a scale.

May I ask why he hated Doctor Who?

It was a BBC VERSION of (& response to) "pathfinders". So, had to be true to BBC Charter, to inform & educate & entertain (in short, "improving"). Hence the 2-stories sequence of 1 in speculative future, followed by 1 in known historic past ....... but the daleks were 50s sci fi "monsters". Did he not see the Nazi connection ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Luna

https://sites.google.com/site/firstamongdoctors/daleks

He hated once it became the opposite of what he'd wanted the series to be.

Pathfinders is "strangely similar" to Stowaway to Mars, putting it firmly in the tradition of Brit Sci FI ......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stowaway_to_Mars

AsI understand it, Mary Meadows was an early "lesbian figure" in uk tv drama .......

.... I think he would have seen Nu Who - poor scripts and highly reliant on cgi graphics - as basically a video game.

"It's television, Jim, but not as we know it .........."

I'm not sure that I follow you here. Pathfinders in Space is almost painfully educational/improving: an awful lot of time is taken up with characters saying things like "It's a pity that THE MOON DOESN'T HAVE MAGNETIC POLES, or we could have used a compass to navigate". By contrast with this clunky ineptitude, Doctor Who wears its educational remit lightly, and I see no reason to suppose that Newman was, in any case, opposed to family drama serials' being improving. But perhaps I have completely misunderstood your point.

I don't know why you would see Professor Mary Meadows as an early "lesbian figure" in UK TV drama, either. There is an obvious, if understated, heterosexual romance between her and Conway Henderson running through her 3 series. Now, if you'd mentioned Professor Madeleine Dawnay from the 2 A for Andromeda series, I would have been more inclined to agree.

OOPS! I have, haven't I? Your point is that Newman wanted it to be an educational/improving programme like the Pathfinders series, and then along came the Daleks, who were not, ostensibly, improving or educational at all.

Still, if I remember correctly, he did at least acknowledge to Verity Lambert later on that she had been right, & he had been in the wrong about this.

Jesus. No offense to Patrick as I would have loved to have seen more of his Doctor but... that sounds truly abysmal. If that happened, I suspect the series would have been cancelled before 1989, and there would be no revival at all - if anything, a complete reboot with Eccleston as the First Doctor could have been made, but I doubt it would achieve the same amount of success that the current show has.

sorry it was mary MORRIS in pathfinders. playing the strong woman - lesbian role .

she was also in Dr Who story Kinda. By which time she was quite old with a very interesting face, and a superb actor.

worth checking out kinda just to see her.

Don't forget that during Eccleston's tenure it was never actually made clear whether the new programme was meant to fit with the old continuity. The reappearance of Sarah Jane the next year was the first strong statement in either direction.