Gareth Roberts
Gareth Roberts (born Gareth John Pritchard Roberts 5 June 1968[1]) was a writer for Doctor Who and several of its spin-offs.
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
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[[edit] | [edit source]]
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 also mocked the fact that Rose Noble, and by extension actress Yasmin Finney, is transgender on his Twitter account.[8][9]
Bibliography[[edit] | [edit source]]
Television[[edit] | [edit source]]
Doctor Who[[edit] | [edit source]]
- 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[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Ultimate Guide (Beginning & end scenes)
The Sarah Jane Adventures[[edit] | [edit source]]
- 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[[edit] | [edit source]]
Interactive Red Button story[[edit] | [edit source]]
Tardisodes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- 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[[edit] | [edit source]]
Novels[[edit] | [edit source]]
Virgin New Adventures[[edit] | [edit source]]
Virgin Missing Adventures[[edit] | [edit source]]
BBC New Series Adventures[[edit] | [edit source]]
BBC New Series Adventures - Quick Reads[[edit] | [edit source]]
BBC Books Doctor Who novelisations[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Sarah Jane Adventures novelisations[[edit] | [edit source]]
Short fiction[[edit] | [edit source]]
Doctor Who Magazine[[edit] | [edit source]]
Brief Encounter[[edit] | [edit source]]
Virgin Decalogs[[edit] | [edit source]]
Short Trips[[edit] | [edit source]]
- 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[[edit] | [edit source]]
Doctor Who Yearbooks[[edit] | [edit source]]
Doctor Who Storybooks[[edit] | [edit source]]
Audio[[edit] | [edit source]]
Big Finish Main Range[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The One Doctor (with Clayton Hickman)
- Bang-Bang-a-Boom! (with Clayton Hickman; he also voiced News Anchorman)
Novel Adaptations[[edit] | [edit source]]
- 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[[edit] | [edit source]]
DWM comic stories[[edit] | [edit source]]
- 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)[[edit] | [edit source]]
Stage play[[edit] | [edit source]]
Unproduced stories[[edit] | [edit source]]
External links[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Gareth Roberts at the Internet Movie Database
- Official Twitter account
- Official YouTube channel
- Official Facebook page
- Gareth Roberts Interview By Warwick Gray
Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- ↑ 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.