Doctor Who: The Earth Adventures Collection

Victor Pemberton's career started in radio when his flatmates challenged him to write a play because he was criticising another. The result was The Gold Watch in 1961, the first of many radio scripts. His first television script was for Associated Rediffusion’s Send Foster (1965), concerning the exploits of a junior reporter on a local newspaper. He also worked as an actor to supplement his writing income and this led to director Morris Barry casting him in Doctor Who (The Moonbase). After a brief stint writing and script-editing Doctor Who in the mid-Sixties, Victor contributed to Timeslip and Ace of Wands and wrote numerous other scripts for radio and television. He produced Fraggle Rock in the 1980s, as well as setting up a Writers’ Television Workshop in Lagos, Nigeria, and working in Kuwait on a drama series about the daily life of a Gulf Arab family (Bait Abu Khaled). In 1990, Headline books invited Pemberton to write a novelisation of a BBC Drama series he had penned called Our Family. This was published in 1991 and led to a successful career as a novelist, and to date he has published fifteen ‘family saga’ novels, including Where the Swallows Come Again (2008).

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.

Eric Pringle was born and bred in Morpeth, Northumberland, and took a degree in English and American Literature at Nottingham University. After spending several years working in insurance, he ended up writing and editing various publications, including staff newspapers. After deciding to take up writing as a career, Pringle wrote plays and one-off episodes for series on HTV, Yorkshire TV and BBC 2, including The Cornforth Practice in 1974. His play, Jogger, was made by Radio 4 in 1983 and a play in the series The Ten Commandments was transmitted by the BBC's World Service.

Much of Pringle's more recent work has been for the radio, including adaptations of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and J. B. Priestley's The Good Companions. His 2001 Radio 4 play Hymnus Paradisi about the life of composer Herbert Howells won a Sony Award.

Also in 2001, his children's novel, Big George, illustrated by Colin Paine, was published by Bloomsbury. This has been followed by two sequels: Big George and the Seventh Knight (2002) and Big George and the Winter King (2004).

Born in Wimbledon in the early 1950s, Marcus Platt attended technical college to learn catering before giving up a job with Trust House Forte to work at the BBC on the administrative side, involved in the cataloguing of data regarding the BBC’s radio output followed by a post as a selector in the BBC’s Sound Archives. He was a Doctor Who fan from the programme’s start, which led him to become a member of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society and a contributor to fanzines and Doctor Who Magazine. He submitted a number of ideas to the series towards the end of its initial run. One of these eventually became Ghost Light (1989). He went on to adapt his own story and Ben Aaronovitch’s scripts for Battlefield for the Target range of novelisations. He wrote two original novels for Virgin (Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible, 1992; Lungbarrow, 1997). He also penned the spin-off video Downtime, featuring the Brigadier, Sarah Jane Smith, Professor Travers and the Yeti, and novelised his script of this production for Virgin in 1996. Platt continues to contribute to the Doctor Who universe with several audio scripts for Big Finish’s range of plays and entries in a number of short story anthologies also published by Big Finish. He has also written for the 2007 audio revival of Blake’s 7. His audio story Spare Parts was the inspiration behind the 2006 Doctor Who television story Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel, for which Platt received an on-screen credit, although he himself did not write the teleplay. Author biography by David J. Howe, author of The Target Book, the complete illustrated guide to the Target Doctor Who novelisations.

Marc Platt wrote the TV Doctor Who story Ghost Light first broadcast in 1989. He has written many Doctor Who audio plays for Big Finish Productions including Loups-Garoux, Spare Parts, Cradle of the Snake, The Silver Turk. Auld Mortality, A Storm of Angels and The Doctor’s Tale. He also dramatised two stories by former Doctor Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe: The Ghosts of Gralstead and The Devil’s Armada (both with Tom Baker). He has recently dramatised The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for audio. Blake’s 7 audio plays include Flag and Flame, The Sea of Iron and Drones. He is a published author with several TV tie-in novels and short stories to his name.