Terrance Dicks
[4] His breakthrough into television came when friend Malcolm Hulke, whom he met when he rented a room from him,[4] asked for his help with the scripting of "The Mauritius Penny", an episode of the second series of ABC's action-adventure The Avengers, for which Dicks was awarded a co-writer's credit.[5] He was appointed head script editor the following year and earned his first writing credit for the programme when he and Hulke co-wrote the 10-part serial The War Games, which concluded the series' sixth season and the Second Doctor's (Patrick Troughton) tenure.Concepts and topics included the respect for all life (The Silurians), Great Britain joining the European Economic Community (in metaphor in The Curse of Peladon),[9] apartheid (The Mutants),[10] global pollution (The Green Death) and equality for women (with the inclusion of Sarah Jane Smith as companion).[4] After stepping down as script editor, Dicks continued his association with Doctor Who, writing four scripts for his successor, Robert Holmes: these were Robot (1975, Tom Baker's first outing as the Fourth Doctor), The Brain of Morbius (1976, for which Dicks was credited under the pseudonym Robin Bland after his displeasure at Holmes' re-writes prompted him to request that it be shown "under some bland pseudonym"),[11] Horror of Fang Rock (1977) and State of Decay (1980), a re-written version of a story originally titled The Vampire Mutations,[11] which had been due for production during season 15.The BBC decided that the vampiric theme would clash with the plot of its new adaptation of Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, which was due for transmission at roughly the same time, and replaced it with Horror of Fang Rock.As Dicks explains in an interview in the documentary Built for War (included on the 2006 DVD release of The Sontaran Experiment), he served as the unofficial editor of the Target Books range.[11] In this role, he would attempt to enlist the author of the original scripts to write the novelisation whenever possible, but if they refused or had other commitments, Dicks would usually undertake the work himself (although he also recruited other writers, including former Doctor Who actor Ian Marter and former series producer Philip Hinchcliffe).[15] During the 1990s, Dicks contributed to Virgin Publishing's line of full-length, officially licensed, original Doctor Who novels, New Adventures, which continued the series' storyline following the TV cancellation in 1989.When Letts returned to directing in 1985, Dicks succeeded him as the producer of the Sunday Classics, overseeing productions such as Oliver Twist (1985), David Copperfield (1986) and Vanity Fair (1987),[20] before retiring from the BBC in 1988 to resume his career as a novelist.As well as his numerous fictional works, Dicks also penned several non-fiction books for children,[20] including Europe United, A Riot of Writers, Uproar in the House, A Right Royal History and The Good, the Bad and the Ghastly.