Five soundtrack adventures of stories lost from the TV archive
John Lucarotti (Author)
John Lucarotti was born in England and spent nine years in the
Royal Navy during and after the Second World War. He then went to
North America to work for Imperial Oil. It was here that he began
writing. Later, he scripted an eighteen-part radio series about the
life of Marco Polo for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, but
at one point found himself earning more money as an encyclopedia
salesman than as a writer. Consequently he decided to focus on the
US market. By the late Fifties he had taken Canadian citizenship,
and then returned to England, where he became involved in TV
work.
He had recently moved to Majorca when, at Syndey Newman's
suggestion, David Whitaker approached him to write for Doctor Who.
Remembering his CBC series, he chose Marco Polo as his subject.
Throughout the Sixties and Seventies, Lucarotti continued a
successful TV career, creating the shows Operation Patch and The
Ravelled Thread, among others, and contributing scripts to The
Avengers, Doctor Who, Ghost Squad, Joe 90, The Man in Room 17,
Murder Bag, New Scotland Yard, The Protectors, Moonbase 3, The
Onedin Line, Star Maidens and Into the Labyrinth, his last credited
screen work in 1981. He novelised his 1976 serial Operation Patch
(Target, 1976) and the 1979/1980 series The Ravelled Thread (Puffin
Books, 1979). He contributed the first Brief Encounter short story
for Doctor Who Magazine in 1990, in which the author met the First
Doctor in a French bar. The story was reprinted in the 1992 Doctor
Who Yearbook (Marvel, 1991). John Lucarotti died in Paris, France,
on 20 November 1994 aged 68.
Dennis Spooner (Author)
Dennis Spooner was script editor of Doctor Who during the William
Hartnell era, and wrote several stories for the show, including The
Reign of Terror and The Romans. He also wrote for the Gerry
Anderson series' Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray and Thunderbirds,
and co-created five espionage series' including Man in a Suitcase,
Department S and The Adventurer. Spooner also created the cult
detective series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). He died in
September 1986.
David Whitaker (Author)
David Whitaker was the first Story Editor for Doctor Who, and was
responsible for finding and commissioning writers, and it was
Whitaker as much as anyone who defined the narrative shape of
Doctor Who. He wrote for the Doctor Who annuals, novelised the
first Dalek story and worked with Terry Nation on various
Dalek-related material including the hugely successful comic strip
The Daleks. David Whitaker died in 1980.
William Emms (Author)
William Emms was a scriptwriter who wrote for a variety of
television programmes including The Revenue Men (1967-68), Callan
(1969-70), Ace of Wands (1970), Z Cars (1965-71) and Crossroads
(1980). In 1965, he wrote Galaxy 4, the first serial in the third
season of Doctor Who. It was broadcast in four weekly parts from 11
September to 2 October. Emms wrote several further scripts for
Doctor Who, but they were not commissioned. However, in 1985 his
novelisation of Galaxy 4 was published as a Target book, and the
following year, he wrote a novel in the Make Your Own Adventure
with Doctor Who range of children's gamebooks, entitled Mission to
Venus. He died in 1993.
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