Terrance Dicks (born 1935 in East Ham, London, England, UK) is a British writer, best known for his work in television and for writing a large number of popular children's books during the 1970s and 80s.

After leaving school, Dicks studied English at Downing College, Cambridge, and later did two years of National Service in the British Army. Following his discharge from the armed forces, he worked for five years as an advertising copywriter, and began writing radio play scripts for the BBC in his spare time.

His break in television came when his friend Malcolm Hulke asked for his help with the writing of an episode of the popular action / adventure series The Avengers, on which Dicks received a co-writer's credit on the broadcast. He also wrote for the popular ATV soap opera Crossroads, before in 1968 beginning work on the series with which he was to become most closely associated when he was employed as the assistant script editor on the BBC's popular science-fiction series Doctor Who.

Dicks went on to become the script editor proper on the programme the following year, and earned his first writing credit on the show when he and Hulke co-wrote the epic ten-part story The War Games which closed the sixth season and the era of Second Doctor Patrick Troughton. He had, however, been the uncredited co-writer of The Seeds of Death earlier in the season, after performing extensive work on writer Brian Hayles ' original scripts.

Dicks went on to form a highly productive working relationship with incoming Doctor Who producer Barry Letts , working as the script editor on each of Letts' five seasons in charge of the programme from 1970 to 1974. After his departure, Dicks continued to be associated with the programme, writing three scripts for his successor as script editor Robert Holmes: Robot (1975, the opening story of Tom Baker's era as the Fourth Doctor), The Brain of Morbius (1976, broadcast under the name 'Robin Bland' after Dicks' displeasure at Holmes' rewrites to the story led him to declare that it should go out "under some bland pseudonym") and Horror of Fang Rock (1977).

Dicks also contributed heavily to Target Books' range of novelisations of Doctor Who television stories, writing over fifty of the titles published by the company. It was through his work on Doctor Who books that he became a writer of children's fiction, penning many successful titles during the 1970s and 80s, some of which have recently been reprinted and made available again by the Big Finish company.

In 1980 Dicks returned to the Doctor Who fold when he wrote State of Decay for the eighteenth season. State of Decay was in fact a rewritten version of a story entitled The Witch Lords which had been due for production during season fifteen, but had been hastily withdrawn and replaced with Horror of Fang Rock when the BBC decided that its vampiric theme would clash with their high-profile adaptation of Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, which was due for transmission at around the same time. Dicks made his final contribution to televised Doctor Who in 1983, when he wrote the ninety-minute twentieth anniversary special episode The Five Doctors.

During the early 1980s he worked again as script editor to Barry Letts' producer, this time on the BBC's esteemed Sunday Classics strand of period dramas and literary adaptations. When Letts departed the staff of the BBC in 1985, Dicks succeeded his colleague as the producer of the strand, overseeing productions such as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Vanity Fair, before he himself left in 1988 and the Sunday Classics strand in that form came to an end.

During the 1990s, Dicks contributed to Virgin Publishing's line of full-length, officially-licensed original Doctor Who novels, the New Adventures, which carried on the story of the series following its cancellation as an ongoing television programme in 1989. Dicks penned three Doctor Who novels for Virgin, and continued to write occasionally for the franchise following the take-over of the books licence by BBC Books in 1997 - indeed, he wrote their first novel, The Eight Doctors, which is the best-selling original Doctor Who novel to date. His most recent contribution to the range was Deadly Reunion, a 'Past Doctor Adventure' set during era of the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) which he had script edited. This novel was published in November 2003 to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of Doctor Who, and was co-written with Letts.

Other work has included two Doctor Who stage plays (Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys to Doomsday (1974) and The Ultimate Adventure (1989)); co-creating and writing for the short-lived BBC science-fiction series Moonbase 3 (1973) and contributing to the ITV science-fiction series Space: 1999.

External links

• Internet Movie Database entry http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0225605/
• List of Doctor Who contributions on the Outpost Gallifrey fan site http://www.gallifreyone.com/dwdata.php?id=Terrance+Dicks
• Entry on the official Doctor Who site from BBC.co.uk, including an interview http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/books/author/terrance_dicks.shtml