Doctor Who: The Master Collection

Malcolm Hulke was a prolific and respected television writer from the 1950s until the 1970s. His writing credits included the early science fiction Pathfinders series, as well as The Avengers. Hulke was first approached to write for Doctor Who when the series first started, but his idea for The Hidden Planet was not pursued. In 1967 he wrote The Faceless Ones (with David Ellis) for the Second Doctor. By 1969, Hulke's friend and occasional writing partner Terrance Dicks was Script Editor for Doctor Who and needed a ten part story to replace other scripts and write out Patrick Troughton's Doctor. Together, they wrote The War Games, which for the first time explained the Doctor's origins and introduced his people, the Time Lords. Hulke continued to write for Doctor Who, providing a story for each of the Third Doctor's series. Malcolm Hulke died in 1979, soon after completing his novelisation of The War Games.

Barry Letts started his career as an actor. He began in repertory in York whilst also working for a local radio station in Leeds. After a chance meeting with BBC producer/director Rex Tucker, Letts started working with him first on radio and then on television. His first television appearance was with Patrick Troughton in a 1950 production of Gunpowder Guy, about Guy Fawkes. Eventually Letts decided he wanted to go into directing and attended the BBC director's course in 1967. He worked on episodes of Z Cars and The Newcomers before directing the six-part Doctor Who story 'The Enemy of the World' in 1967. Following this he became producer of Doctor Who in 1969. After he left Doctor Who in 1974, he found himself marking time by working as a sort of assistant to Head of Drama, Ronnie Marsh, until he decided to return to directing and approached various producers for work. It was because of this that he came to direct 'The Android Invasion' for Doctor Who in 1975. Straight after that came a production of The Prince and the Pauper for John McCrae. However, McCrae was promoted to Head of Drama for a New Zealand TV station and so Letts was asked to take over as producer of the classic serials on BBC1. In the late Seventies and early Eighties Letts returned to Doctor Who for a time as executive producer. He continued to work as a director, particularly on the classic serials which were at the time being produced by Terrance Dicks. In 1993, Letts wrote a new radio production of Doctor Who called 'The Paradise of Death', and this was followed in 1995 by 'The Ghosts of N-Space'. Letts has since written several original Doctor Who novels, and has also completed the first part of an autobiography called Who & Me, published in an online format in 2006, and as an abridged audiobook in 2008.

Christopher Hamilton Bidmead was born in 1941. He trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and subsequently played leading roles on the West End stage and television. For several years he was a regular voice on radio as a member of the BBC Drama Repertory Company.

He began scriptwriting while working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and by the early Seventies was writing television scripts for the Thames TV serials Harriet's Back in Town and Rooms. At the same time a long-standing interest in science drew him towards technical journalism. His articles in the New Scientist prompted BBC producer Robert Banks Stewart to recommend him for the post of script editor on Doctor Who when it was vacated by Douglas Adams at the beginning of the '80s.

After a year in that role he signed off on the job by delivering two stories, Logopolis and Castrovalva, and returned to freelance projects - including a third Doctor Who story, Frontios, and novelisations of all three for the Target range of books.

His stint on Doctor Who introduced him to the use of personal computers, and for the past quarter century he has continued to work as an IT journalist, writing for a range of publications including Wired magazine and The Daily Telegraph. Over the last decade he has been a regular columnist on PCPlus magazine.

(Author biography by David J. Howe, author of The Target Book, the complete illustrated guide to the Target Doctor Who novelisations.)