David Whitaker (1928 - February 4 1980) was one of the people responsible for the creation of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He helped create the concept of the series, and served as the series' first script editor .

He also wrote a number of Doctor Who serials himself, including two stories featuring the Daleks, considered by many to be classics. Other Dalek work included writing the Dalek comic strip in the children's magazine, TV Action , and the 1965 stage play The Curse of the Daleks.

In 1964, Whitaker was commissioned to write two novels based on the series, which along with a third by Bill Strutton became the core of Target Books' long-running and popular series of Doctor Who novels. The second was an adaptation of his own Doctor Who serial set during the Third Crusade; the first was, perhaps inevitably, an adaptation of the series' first Dalek story. (Ironically, Whitaker's own Dalek stories were, due to copyright complications, the last to be novelised, finally seeing print in 1993.)