Mark Gatiss

Mark Gatiss
Birth date:	17th October 1966
Work in the DWU
Main roles:	Richard Lazarus

Mark Gatiss (born 17th October 1966, in Sedgefield, Durham, England, UK) has been a major creative force in the production of Doctor Who fiction since the 1990s. Given his accomplishments as a Doctor Who author, screenwriter, audio writer, audio actor, screen actor, documentary narrator, and documentary subject, no other individual truly comes close to Gatiss in terms of the breadth of his contributions to the Doctor Who franchise.

Televised Doctor Who

Just in terms of televised Doctor Who, Gatiss has contributed four scripts to the BBC Wales version of Doctor Who, made two guest appearance, and been the sometimes-narrator, sometimes-subject of Doctor Who Confidential. Although other writers had previously enjoyed small roles in the 1963 version of Doctor Who, he was the first to have had a large speaking role — much less a part the size of Professor Richard Lazarus, who was the titular villain of The Lazarus Experiment. He also made two brief, uncredited, appearances as a Spitfire pilot in Victory of the Daleks and A Good Man Goes to War.

As of Victory of the Daleks, Gatiss has became the only person to have written and starred in the same episode of Doctor Who, and he claimed that it also made him "the first and only person so far to write for the series and be in it twice".

This episode also gave Gatiss the oppurtunity to write for his seventh different televised Doctor. This surpasses the number of different televised Doctors for whom Paul Cornell has written (but they are on level ground if the Shalka Doctor is counted). Both writers are, however, behind Terrance Dicks, who has written original stories for eight different televised Doctors — and has written for nine different Doctors, if one counts Target novelisations.

With his role in this episode, Gatiss has also achieved something of another Doctor Who record. As of April 2010, he has acted with nine of the eleven actors to have played the Doctor, though not always when that actor was playing the Doctor. It was the sixth different Doctor he had encountered in a piece of performed Doctor Who. Although Elizabeth Sladen appeared alongside nine incarnations of the Doctor, one of "her" Doctors is Richard Hurndall, and she has never appeared with William Hartnell, Paul McGann or Christopher Eccleston.

Doctor Who work in other media

Outside the programme proper, he has written various officially licensed novels, televised spoofs and audio plays, and has sometimes lent his voice to Big Finish Productions. Counting BBC-made spoofs and these audios, he is alone with Sir Derek Jacobi in having played both the Doctor and the Master.

Work with Doctor Who personnel outside of the programme

Gatiss also has significant relationships with Doctor Who luminaries that extend beyond the programme itself.

For instance, he is a sometimes-partner of Steven Moffat, with whom he created and produced Sherlock, a TV series (into which he starred as Mycroft Holmes) that was in production at BBC Wales at the same time as Moffat's first series as head writer of Doctor Who. He also played Robert Louis Stevenson in Moffat's Jekyll.

He has had some form of professional or semi-professional contact with every actor to have played the Doctor except William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. David Tennant is his most common acting partner amongst people who've played the Doctor. They've been on screen together on several occasions — most prominently in The Quatermass Experiment and the episode "Drop Dead" of Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), which also featured Jessica Hynes. He's also been alongside Tennant in Bright Young Things, which also co-starred Fenella Woolgar, Stephen Fry, Bill Paterson, Richard E. Grant, and Jim Broadbent; and the English-language cast of the Norwegian animated adventure Free Jimmy, with Simon Pegg, Jim Broadbent and Steve Pemberton. He and Tom Baker have occasionally crossed paths, through their mutual connection to Matt Lucas. Gatiss script edited several episodes of Little Britain, on which Baker was the regular narrator, and fellow Doctor Who Confidential narrator, Anthony Head, played a leading role. Later, Baker and he both appeared as actors in Lucas' The Wind in the Willows. Christopher Eccleston once appeared on an episode of Gatiss' show, The League of Gentlemen. Peter Davison and he were in several BBV productions at the start of Gatiss' career, but they have not, as of 2010, acted together in a fully professional production, except on Big Finish Productions audio. By virtue of his participation in The Zero Imperative, he's acted on-screen alongisde Caroline John, Jon Pertwee, Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker, Louise Jameson, and Sophie Aldred.

Works in the Doctor Who universe

Series	Production relevance	Role	Adventure
Televised Doctor Who	Writer		The Unquiet Dead
	Writer		The Idiot's Lantern
	Actor	Richard Lazarus	The Lazarus Experiment'
	Writer, actor	"Danny Boy" (uncredited)	Victory of the Daleks
	Actor	"Danny Boy" (uncredited)	A Good Man Goes to War
	Writer		Night Terrors
Big Finish Doctor Who	Actor	Walther Schwieger	The Sirens of Time
	Writer		Phantasmagoria
	Actor	Karl Hendryk	The Mutant Phase
	Actor	Thinnes	Sword of Orion
	Actor	Vincenzo	The Stones of Venice
	Writer, director		Invaders from Mars
	Actor	The Master	Sympathy for the Devil
Officially licensed spoofs	Writer, actor	Terry Scanlon	Global Conspiracy
	Writer, actor	The Doctor	The Web of Caves
	Writer, actor	Mark	The Kidnapping
BBV P.R.O.B.E. series	Writer, actor	William Bruffin	The Zero Imperative
	Writer, actor	Georgie	The Devil of Winterborne
	Writer, actor	Alfred Emerson	Unnatural Selection
	Writer		Ghosts of Winterborne
Virgin New Adventures	Author		Nightshade
	Author		St Anthony's Fire
BBC Past Doctor Adventures	Author		The Roundheads
	Author		Last of the Gaderene
Doctor Who Confidential	Documentary subject	Himself	Various episodes
	Narrator		Series 2
Doctor Who Greatest Moments	Documentary subject	Himself	The Enemies, The Doctor
BBC DVD documentaries	Documentary subject	Himself	Putting the Shock into Earthshock, Waking the Dead

References