David Whitaker Author & Editor

David Whitaker was the first Story Editor for Doctor Who, and was responsible for finding and commissioning writers, and it was Whitaker as much as anyone who defined the narrative shape of Doctor Who. He wrote for the Doctor Who annuals, novelised the first Dalek story and worked with Terry Nation on various Dalek-related material including the hugely successful comic strip The Daleks. David Whitaker died in 1980. Victor Pemberton's career started in radio when his flatmates challenged him to write a play because he was criticising another. The result was The Gold Watch in 1961, the first of many radio scripts. His first television script was for Associated Rediffusion’s Send Foster (1965), concerning the exploits of a junior reporter on a local newspaper. He also worked as an actor to supplement his writing income and this led to director Morris Barry casting him in Doctor Who (The Moonbase). After a brief stint writing and script-editing Doctor Who in the mid-Sixties, Victor contributed to Timeslip and Ace of Wands and wrote numerous other scripts for radio and television. He produced Fraggle Rock in the 1980s, as well as setting up a Writers’ Television Workshop in Lagos, Nigeria, and working in Kuwait on a drama series about the daily life of a Gulf Arab family (Bait Abu Khaled). In 1990, Headline books invited Pemberton to write a novelisation of a BBC Drama series he had penned called Our Family. This was published in 1991 and led to a successful career as a novelist, and to date he has published fifteen ‘family saga’ novels, including Where the Swallows Come Again (2008). Robert Holmes was a scriptwriter for numerous television programmes including Dr Finlay's Casebook, Dixon of Dock Green, The Saint, Juliet Bravo and Bergerac. He was involved with Doctor Who for over fifteen years and wrote numerous scripts including Jon Pertwee's debut serial as the Third Doctor, Spearhead from Space, and Fifth Doctor Peter Davison's final serial, The Caves of Androzani (voted by fans in 2009 as the best Doctor Who story in history). He introduced both the Autons and the Sontarans to the show and was script editor during the first three years of Tom Baker's tenure as Fourth Doctor. Holmes also contributed to several other sci-fi shows including Doomwatch, The Nightmare Man and Blake's 7. He died in 1986, aged 60.