Ian Stuart Black, who died in October 1997 aged 82, was an experienced television writer who made an important contribution to Dr Who in the key period of the mid-sixties when Patrick Troughton took over the title role of the series from William Hartnell. Stuart Black served three years with the Rank organisation developing film ideas before leaving to become a television scriptwriter, his debut being Fabian of the Yard in 1954 for the BBC.
His most famous television work, apart from his 3 scripts for Dr Who, was in the celebrated spy series Danger Man, which starred Patrick McGoohan and which ran for six seasons between 1960 and 1968. Stuart Black contributed five episodes to the series, as well as acting as its associate producer for a period.
It seems that Stuart Black specifically asked the then-script editor, Donald Tosh, for an opportunity to work on Dr Who because his children were regular viewers of the programme. As he later recalled, "they didn't believe I was really a writer because I hadn't done a Dr Who". Although Tosh commissioned The White Savages, as Black's storyline was originally titled, it was his successor as script editor, Gerry Davis, who oversaw the development of the story before it was screened in May/June 1966.
The Savages was the first Dr Who story to have an overall story title on the screen, as opposed to the individual episode titles which had been used up to that point. It also marked the departure of Steven Taylor, who had served as one of the Dr's companions since The Time Meddler almost a year before.
Unfortunately, The Savages no longer survives in the BBC Film & Videotape Library, and although an off-air version of the soundtrack exists it has not been released on audio tape yet by the BBC.
The story was directed by Christopher Barry, a reliable director whose previous Dr Who credits included the first Dalek story and who would go on to handle Patrick Troughton's debut story The Power of the Daleks, and The Daemons - a highlight of the Pertwee era. The Savages also featured some location filming at quarries near Chalfonts in Buckinghamshire at a time when location filming was something of a rarity in the series. It also boasted a good supporting cast, including the likes of Ewen Solon and Frederick Jaeger. Judging by the soundtrack, the story comes across as an intelligent morality play with themes similar to those explored in Galaxy 4 at the start of the season: namely that the appearances can be deceptive and that one person before being truly able to judge their character.
Stuart Black's next Dr Who story was in fact screened directly after The Savages. The War Machines was developed from an idea provided by Dr Kit Pedler, who was working as an unofficial scientific adviser to the series at that time. It was unusually set in contemporary London, a setting which the series had not used since the very first episode 'An Unearthly Child' (although the serial that began Dr Who's second season, Planet of the Giants, had been set in contemporary England, the Tardis crew were miniaturised in this story and so could not interact with the other characters in the normal way).
Furthermore the story used extensive location filming in central London which became am important feature of the production, since the Post Office Tower in particular was pivotal to the story. Location filming, which had been conspicuous by its virtual absence in the first season of Dr Who, was now becoming a regular feature of the series and helped to add a greater degree of realism to the show. This was further helped in the case of  The War Machines since BBC newsreader Kenneth Kendall and BBC radio announcer Dwight Whylie both play themselves in the story. One of the main themes of Stuart Black's work on Dr Who is that of mind control. In The War Machines a revolutionary new computer, WOTAN (Will Operating Thought Analogue) is able to hypnotise and control the minds of its creator Professor Brett and several other people, including Dodo and