Doctor Who: The Alien Worlds Collection

Born in South Australia in 1918, Bill Strutton worked as a clerk before joining the Australian army during World War 2. He served in the Middle East and later in Greece. Captured by the Germans in Crete, he spent several years as a prisoner of war. After the war, Strutton came to live in England where he pursued a career writing. He worked as a journalist as well as writing novels and television scripts. Strutton’s only script for Doctor Who was The Web Planet, commissioned in late 1964 and broadcast in 1965. He died on 23 November 2003, the day of Doctor Who's 40th anniversary, aged 85 years.

Brian Hayles wrote for radio, television and film, including such series as The Archers, United! and Z Cars. Hayles' work on Doctor Who included adventures for the first three Doctors. His first story was the well-remembered 'The Celestial Toymaker', and after his historical adventure 'The Smugglers', Hayles wrote 'The Ice Warriors' - introducing the creatures for which he is best remembered. He wrote three further Ice Warriors stories, the last two featuring the Third Doctor and set on the feudal planet Peladon. Brian Hayles died in 1978.

Terrance Dicks became Script Editor of Doctor Who in 1968, co-writing Patrick Troughton’s classic final serial, The War Games, and editing the show throughout the entire Jon Pertwee era to 1974. He wrote many iconic episodes and serials for the show after, including Tom Baker's first episode as the Fourth Doctor, Robot; Horror at Fang Rock in 1977; State of Decay in 1980; and the 20th anniversary special, The Five Doctors in 1983. Terrance novelised over sixty of the original Doctor Who stories for Target books, including classics like Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen and Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, inspiring a generation of children to become readers and writers. He died in August 2019, only weeks before the publication of his final Doctor Who short story, ‘Save Yourself’, in The Target Storybook.

David Fisher was approached by script editor Anthony Read to write for Doctor Who and the result was the 100th story, The Stones of Blood, transmitted in 1978. Fisher first met Read when the latter was setting up a series called The Troubleshooters in 1965. Fisher went on to write for Orlando (1967), Dixon of Dock Green (1969), Sutherland's Law (1973) and General Hospital (1977). As well as The Stones of Blood, Fisher also contributed The Androids of Tara, The Creature from the Pit and The Leisure Hive to Doctor Who. The first two stories were novelised by Terrance Dicks, but Fisher decided to pen the latter two himself for the Target range.

Following his work on Doctor Who, Fisher wrote for Hammer House of Horror (1980), Hammer Mystery and Suspense (1984) and collaborated with Read on a number of historical books with subjects including World War Two espionage, the Nazi persecution of Jews and the Nazi/Soviet pact of the early 1940s.

Stephen Wyatt was born in Beckenham, Kent and brought up in Ealing in West London. He was educated at Latymer Upper School and then went on to Clare College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge, he directed the 1973 Footlights Revue, Every Packet Carries a Government Health Warning, as well as productions of The Mikado, Handel’s Semele and Verdi’s I Due Foscari. His first full-length comedy, Exit, Pursued by a Bear, was produced at the Edinburgh Festival in 1973. After a brief spell as Lecturer in Drama at Glasgow University, he began his career as a playwright in 1975 as writer/researcher with the Belgrade Coventry Theatre in Education team. In 1982 and 1983 he was Resident Writer with the London Bubble Theatre. Stephen has worked widely as a freelance playwright in theatre, radio and television ever since. He also has considerable experience as a teacher, workshop leader and script reader and in the creation of audio guides. The first piece he wrote for television was a play called Claws which led to his being commissioned to write Paradise Towers and then The Greatest Show in the Galaxy for Doctor Who. In 2008, his play, Memorials to the Missing, won the Tinniswood Award for best original radio script of 2007 as well as Silver in the Best Drama category of the 2008 Sony Radio Awards. He spent two years as Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Sussex and in the autumn of 2011 he took up a post as RLF Writing Fellow on Greenwich University’s Maritime campus. Author biography by David J. Howe, author of The Target Book, the complete illustrated guide to the Target Doctor Who novelisations.