Terrance Dicks

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Terrance William Dicks (14 April 1935-29 August 2019),[1][2] whom fans have long affectionately called "Uncle Terrance", script edited the Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee eras of Doctor Who and wrote many Doctor Who episodes, novels and novelisations, becoming one of the most prolific authors and scriptwriters.

Profile

Overview

Terrance Dicks began his long association with Doctor Who in 1968, when he joined the production team during the Second Doctor story The Web of Fear. He eventually became full time script editor, during the next season, beginning with the story The Invasion. His first notable writing for the show was The War Games, an epic, ten-episode collaboration with Malcolm Hulke.

Dicks served as script editor through the whole Jon Pertwee era, alongside Producer and life-long friend Barry Letts they both crafted a hugely successful era of the show. He handed the reins to Robert Holmes with the coming of Tom Baker. Dicks continued to supply scripts for the series under his name and pseudonyms, specifically "Robin Bland" which was used when too many changes were made to his script for The Brain of Morbius.

Between seasons 13 and 14, he unsuccessfully attempted to sell a version of Doctor Who to BBC Radio, which would have starred Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen. (INFO: The Seeds of Doom)

At roughly the same time, he submitted what would become State of Decay to the Doctor Who production office. It remained unproduced for several years as the BBC had recently produced a new version of Dracula. His final script for televised Doctor Who was for the twentieth anniversary story The Five Doctors.

In 1973, Dicks, along with other writers from the TV series, were commissioned by Target Books to write novelisations adapting TV episodes. Over the next two decades, Dicks became the most prolific author of the line. He was editor of the range at one point. In later years, when Target adopted the policy of commissioning the original teleplay writers to novelise their works, Dicks became the "go-to guy" when the original teleplay writer was deceased, unable or unwilling to adapt their work in book form.

The Target Books line went on a 24-year hiatus after 1994, with Dicks' last novelisation for Doctor Who being 1990's The Space Pirates. Dicks wrote original novels for virtually every line of Doctor Who fiction, with notable exceptions being Virgin Missing Adventures, Telos Publishing, Big Finish Productions' Bernice Summerfield series of books and the current hardcover series of BBC Books novels, although he wrote two entries in the Quick Reads novella series, most notably Made of Steel, which introduced fans to Martha Jones a full month before her TV debut. He is one of only a handful of Classic Era TV writers to have written licenced Modern Era stories (others include Andrew Cartmel, who has written for the Doctor Who Adventures comic strip, and Rona Munro, who contributed a script to Series 10).

He also co-wrote The Making of Doctor Who, the first non-fiction book about the series.

In 2007, Dicks returned to writing episode novelisations by adapting Invasion of the Bane for a new series of novelisations based upon The Sarah Jane Adventures, published by Penguin Character Books.

Although most closely associated with Doctor Who, Dicks has also worked on other projects, such as a mid-1970s series of novels featuring the adventures of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Of the first ten incarnations of the Doctor, Dicks wrote novels and novelisations featuring all of them except the Ninth.

He also contributed to the charity reference book Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who.

Contributions to the Doctor Who universe

Major characters and concepts created in a Terrance Dicks script or substantially developed by him as script editor include the Time Lords (in The War Games, co-written with Malcolm Hulke), as well as the Master played by Roger Delgado. More minor creations include the Rutans, the War Lord, the Death Zone and Morbius.

In-universe his name is given to a library at St Luke's University. (COMIC: The Lost Dimension)

The first part of Spyfall was dedicated to his 'Masterful' talents.

Television credits

As writer

Doctor Who

Direct-to-video

As script editor

Doctor Who

Dedications

Spyfall "Masterful" dedication.

Prose

Novels

Target Novelisations

Junior Doctor Who

Target Books

Virgin New Adventures

BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures

BBC Past Doctor Adventures

BBC Quick Reads

Virgin Bernice Summerfield New Adventures

The Sarah Jane Adventures Novelisations

Short Stories

Brief Encounters

The Target Storybook

Dalek

Daily Mirror

Bernice Summerfield short stores

Non-fiction

Stage plays

Audio

Big Finish Doctor Who stage plays

Sarah Jane Smith

Companion Chronicles

Video game

Contributions to the mythos

Major characters and concepts created for or debuting in a Terrance Dicks script include:

Documentary appearances

to be completed

External links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ TCH 14
  2. ↑ Toby Hadoke. "Terrance Dicks obituary". The Guardian. 3 September 2019. Accessed 30 January 2023.
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