Gareth Roberts (born Gareth John Pritchard Roberts 5 June 1968[1]) was a writer for Doctor Who and several of its spin-offs.
Biography
His first contributions to Doctor Who, in the early 1990s, were several novels in Virgin Books' New Adventures and Missing Adventures lines; these books were generally well-received by fans, with four of them eventually being adapted by Big Finish in their Novel Adaptations range. Roberts went on to contribute to a wide variety of other Doctor Who ranges and media, including novels for subsequent Doctors and several episodes of the television show.
As a fan of the Graham Williams/Douglas Adams era, he used the Fourth Doctor, Romana II, and K9 TARDIS team more than any other Virgin writer; years later, he was chosen to be the BBC Wales representative for the documentary about the Graham Williams era included with the UK DVD release of The Ribos Operation, and he would later novelise the unfinished Douglas Adams script Shada.
Roberts's debut in comics was 1994's Plastic Millenium, which was the first appearance of Mel in comics. He went on to be a recurring comics writer during the Ninth Doctor's era, and he would often reuse ideas from his comics for his television episodes: he showed the Ninth Doctor visiting William Shakespeare in A Groatsworth of Wit before writing the episode The Shakespeare Code; and his series 5 episode The Lodger was an adaptation of his 2006 comic of the same name.
Outside of official Doctor Who, Roberts contributed to the charity reference book Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who, and was interviewed in issue 485 of Doctor Who Magazine for the revival series' tenth anniversary.
Controversy
In September 2017, Roberts posted a tweet on his Twitter account that gained some media attention for being trans-misogynistic.[2][3][4][5] In early May 2019, BBC Books released details about an upcoming Doctor Who anthology that would include a short story by Roberts;[6] a month later, Roberts announced in an article that his story would not be included in the anthology after other contributing writers threatened to withdraw from the publication due to Roberts' tweets.[7]
Since then, Roberts has continued to promote transphobic talking points on his Twitter account, most especially aimed at attacking transgender individuals. This included a reply on the 24th of September 2023, mocking the fact that Rose Noble, and by extention actress Yasmin Finney, are transgender.[8][9]
Bibliography
Television
Doctor Who
- The Shakespeare Code
- The Unicorn and the Wasp
- Planet of the Dead (with Russell T Davies)
- The Lodger
- Closing Time
- The Caretaker (with Steven Moffat)
Documentaries
- The Ultimate Guide (Beginning & end scenes)
The Sarah Jane Adventures
- Invasion of the Bane (with Russell T Davies)
- Revenge of the Slitheen
- Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?
- Secrets of the Stars
- The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith
- The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith
- The Empty Planet
- Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith (with Clayton Hickman)
- The Man Who Never Was
Comic Relief Special
Interactive Red Button story
Tardisodes
- Tardisode 1
- Tardisode 2
- Tardisode 3
- Tardisode 4
- Tardisode 5
- Tardisode 6
- Tardisode 7
- Tardisode 8
- Tardisode 9
- Tardisode 10
- Tardisode 11
- Tardisode 12
- Tardisode 13
Prose
Novels
Virgin New Adventures
Virgin Missing Adventures
BBC New Series Adventures
BBC New Series Adventures - Quick Reads
BBC Books Doctor Who novelisations
The Sarah Jane Adventures novelisations
Short fiction
Doctor Who Magazine
Brief Encounter
Virgin Decalogs
Short Trips
- Return of the Spiders
- Special Occasions: 1. The Not-So-Sinister Sponge (with Clayton Hickman)
- The Brain of Socrates
- What Has Happened to the Magic of 'Doctor Who'?
Doctor Who annuals
Doctor Who Yearbooks
Doctor Who Storybooks
Audio
Big Finish Main Range
- The One Doctor (with Clayton Hickman)
- Bang-Bang-a-Boom! (with Clayton Hickman; he also voiced News Anchorman)
Novel Adaptations
- The Highest Science (adapted by Jacqueline Rayner from the novel by Roberts)
- The Romance of Crime (adapted by John Dorney)
- The English Way of Death (adapted by John Dorney)
- The Well-Mannered War (adapted by John Dorney)
Comics
DWM comic stories
- The Lunar Strangers
- Operation Proteus
- Target Practice
- The Last Word
- Doctor Who and the Nightmare Game
- The Love Invasion (with Clayton Hickman)
- A Groatsworth of Wit
- The Lodger
Doctor Who Magazine (special issues)
Stage play
Unproduced stories
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ People Pill
- ↑ Bleeding Cool: Doctor Who Writer Gareth Roberts Tweets Trans-Misogynistic Remarks
- ↑ The Mary Sue: Doctor Who Writer Gareth Roberts Talks Vile, Ignorant Trash About Trans Women
- ↑ Telegraph.co.uk: Doctor Who writer criticised for tweeting jokes about 'trannies'
- ↑ Pink News: Doctor Who writer hits out at ‘trannies’ and ‘rainbow cult’
- ↑ Coming Soon announcement on Blogtor Who
- ↑ Statement on BBC Books and Transgenderism. medium.com. Archived from the original on 2019-06-03. Retrieved on 2019-04-03.
- ↑ Yasmin Finney confirms her Doctor Who character Rose is trans. cultbox.com. Retrieved on 2023-09-24.
- ↑ Gareth Roberts on X: "@Spacecrafting76 I’m trying not to say anything about this, but I have just lolled very hard." /X. twitter.com. Retrieved on 2023-09-24.