Biography

Born in East Ham, London, England in 1935, Terrance Dicks was educated at the local grammar school and went on to study English at Downing College, Cambridge. After two years' National Service in the British Army, he got a job as an advertising copywriter. This lasted for five years, during which time he started writing radio scripts as a sideline. Eventually he switched to full-time freelance writing, first on plays and comedy series for radio and then in television on programmes including The Avengers (1961) and Crossroads (1964).

He became a junior script editor on Doctor Who (1963) towards the end of the Patrick Troughton era, working under producer Peter Bryant and script editor Derrick Sherwin. During this period he has said that he felt like "something of a spare part", although he would make a very significant contribution in bringing Robert Holmes to the series, who would go on to become the series' most popular writer. Dicks also co-wrote (with Malcolm Hulke) Troughton's final story, the epic The War Games: Episode One (1969). Following the departure from the series of Bryant and Sherwin in 1969, Dicks formed a close working relationship with the next producer, Barry Letts, and they were responsible for the five popular seasons which starred Jon Pertwee as the Doctor. During this period they also co-created the science fiction flop Moonbase 3 (1973), which lasted just one series.

After writing Tom Baker's debut story Robot: Part One (1974), Dicks returned to a freelance writing career. He also script-edited some of the BBC's classic serials, which reunited him with Letts as producer on the likes of Great Expectations (1981) and Jane Eyre (1983). He was also made a producer for the first time on the highly popular Oliver Twist (1985), which according to Dicks saved the classic serial strand from Michael Grade's axe when he was controller of BBC One.

Dicks made two contributions to Doctor Who (1963) during the John Nathan-Turner years in the 1980s despite the producer's reluctance to use established writers. He wrote State of Decay: Part One (1980) and agreed to pen the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors (1983) when Robert Holmes turned it down. He has also written two spin-off plays, "Doctor Who and the Daleks in Seven Keys to Doomsday" in 1974 and "Doctor Who - The Ultimate Adventure" in 1989. He has written well over fifty novelizations of televised serials and several original Doctor Who (1963) novels for Virgin's "The New Adventures" range. Today he is, among his other writing projects, one of the UK's most prolific authors of children's fiction.