History Creator / RobertHolmes

These aren't just ''any'' stories though. Included in his work are many that were crucial in the show's mythos and worldbuilding, introducing the Autons, the Sontarans, the Master, quite a bit of Time Lord mythology[[note]] such as the idea of Gallifrey, 13 incarnations, the Eye of Harmony, and Rassilon[[/note]] and several companions. His contribution to ''Doctor Who'' cannot be overstated and we're willing to bet at least one of his stories turns up on your top 10 list, probably more. Creator/StevenMoffat called him "the man who showed us how to write ''Doctor Who''", while Creator/RussellTDavies lamented how [[SciFiGhetto the BBC had no respect for him]], and compared the first episode of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E6TheTalonsOfWengChiang The Talons of Weng-Chiang]]" to Creator/DennisPotter.

* ThoseTwoGuys: And frequently so well-written they became [[invoked]][[EnsembleDarkhorse pretty popular]]. Some of the more popular examples include showman Jago and police pathologist Litefoot (TheyFightCrime!), con artists Garron and Unstoffe, and mercenary Sabalom Glitz and his incompetent assistant Dibber.

* ArmedWithCanon: He spent a lot of time kicking at things from the Pertwee era that he disliked (like the Third Doctor's InvincibleHero problems) and providing explanations for NecessaryWeasel tropes in the show that had been previously ignored (AliensSpeakingEnglish, WalkingDisasterArea, HeroBall). He also retconned Time Lord society into a DecadentCourt of elderly bureaucrats because he disliked the {{Utopia}} concept that the previous era used, something that is still fairly controversial. He was also the first writer to confirm that regeneration can happen across gender, [[note]] Holmes rather established the limitation of incarnations to thirteen [[/note]] though he envisioned Time Lord society as a One-Gender Race of men unlike later writers.

* ArmedWithCanon: He spent a lot of time kicking at things from the Pertwee era that he disliked (like the Third Doctor's InvincibleHero problems) and providing explanations for NecessaryWeasel tropes in the show that had been previously ignored (AliensSpeakingEnglish, WalkingDisasterArea, HeroBall). He also retconned Time Lord society into a DecadentCourt of elderly bureaucrats because he disliked the MarySueTopia concept that the previous era used, something that is still fairly controversial. He was also the first writer to confirm that regeneration can happen across gender, [[note]] Holmes rather established the limitation of incarnations to thirteen [[/note]] though he envisioned Time Lord society as a One-Gender Race of men unlike later writers.

These aren't just ''any'' stories though. Included in his work are many that were crucial in the show's mythos and worldbuilding, introducing the Autons, the Sontarans, the Master, quite a bit of Time Lord mythology[[note]] such as the idea of Gallifrey, 13 incarnations, the Eye of Harmony, and Rassilon[[/note]] and several companions. His contribution to ''Doctor Who'' cannot be overstated and we're willing to bet at least one of his stories turns up on your top 10 list, probably more. Creator/StevenMoffat called him "the man who showed us how to write ''Doctor Who''", while Creator/RussellTDavies lamented how [[SciFiGhetto the BBC had no respect for him]], and compared the first episode of "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" to Creator/DennisPotter.

''Series/DoctorWho'' wasn't the only British science fiction institution Holmes wrote for. He was offered the script editor's position on ''Series/BlakesSeven'', which he declined, recommending Creator/ChrisBoucher for the job. He eventually wrote four episodes for that series, including "[[Recap/BlakesSevenS4E11Orbit Orbit]]", where Avon stalks Vila through a shuttle in order to [[ShootTheDog throw him overboard to save weight]].

!!''Doctor Who'' stories written by Holmes:
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E4TheKrotons "The Krotons"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E6TheSpacePirates "The Space Pirates"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E1SpearheadFromSpace "Spearhead from Space"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS8E1TerrorOfTheAutons "Terror of the Autons"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E2CarnivalOfMonsters "Carnival of Monsters"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E1TheTimeWarrior "The Time Warrior"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E2TheArkInSpace "The Ark in Space"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E3PyramidsOfMars "Pyramids of Mars"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E5TheBrainOfMorbius "The Brain of Morbius"]] (co-written by Creator/TerranceDicks, credited as "Robin Bland")
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E3TheDeadlyAssassin "The Deadly Assassin"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E6TheTalonsOfWengChiang "The Talons of Weng-Chiang"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E4TheSunMakers "The Sun Makers"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E1TheRibosOperation "The Ribos Operation"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E5ThePowerOfKroll "The Power of Kroll"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E6TheCavesOfAndrozani "The Caves of Androzani"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E4TheTwoDoctors "The Two Doctors"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS23E1TheMysteriousPlanet "The Mysterious Planet"]]
* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS23E4TheUltimateFoe "The Ultimate Foe"]] (Part One; Part Two was written by Creator/PipAndJaneBaker)

* [[Recap/DoctorWhoS23E4TheUltimateFoe "The Ultimate Foe"]] (part one; part two was written by Creator/PipAndJaneBaker)

These aren't just ''any'' stories though. Included in his work are some (some might say ''most'') of the all-time classics of the show, including:

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E1SpearheadFromSpace Spearhead from Space]]"
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E1TheTimeWarrior The Time Warrior]]"
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E2TheArkInSpace The Ark in Space]]"
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS13E3PyramidsOfMars Pyramids of Mars"]]
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E3TheDeadlyAssassin The Deadly Assassin]]"
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E6TheTalonsOfWengChiang The Talons of Weng-Chiang]]"
* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E6TheCavesOfAndrozani The Caves of Androzani]]"

Yep, this is the guy who gave us the Autons and the Sontarans... and, as if that weren't enough, wrote the first appearances of the Master, quite a bit of Time Lord mythology[[note]] such as the idea of Gallifrey, 13 incarnations, the Eye of Harmony, and Rassilon[[/note]] and some of the best companions. His contribution to ''Doctor Who'' cannot be overstated and we're willing to bet at least one of his stories turns up on your top 10 list, probably more. Creator/StevenMoffat called him "the man who showed us how to write ''Doctor Who''", while Creator/RussellTDavies lamented how [[SciFiGhetto the BBC had no respect for him]], and compared the first episode of "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" to Creator/DennisPotter.

** Holmes wrote "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E4TheTwoDoctors The Two Doctors]]" with the intent of re-contextualizing the first six seasons of the show: feeling that it would be out of character for the folks on Gallifrey to just lost track of a TARDIS, he envisioned the First and Second Doctors as having been secretly working for the Time Lords the entire time. This would end up sowing the seeds for "Season 6B", an AscendedFanon theory (based partly on tie-in comics made during the hiatus between Seasons 6 and 7) which states that the Second Doctor briefly had his sentence at the end of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E7TheWarGames "The War Games"]] postponed in exchange for acting as an agent of the Time Lords.

** He gets exactly thirteen lives because Holmes needed the Master to have a reason for returning to Gallifrey and being close to death, and a finite number of regenerations was a good hook. (Usefully for the future, he also introduced the idea that you could be granted more regenerations in the exact same story.)
** He made the Time Lords a DecadentCourt of [[NotSoOmniscientCouncilOfBickering useless, self-involved old men]] because he needed to dramatically justify why the Doctor ran away. (His thinking ran that if the Time Lords really were omniscient Guardians of Time, then by definition the Doctor running away and getting stuck in was a ''[[VillainProtagonist bad]]'' [[VillainProtagonist thing]].)
** Holmes sowed the seeds of Season 6B when he decided to write "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E4TheTwoDoctors The Two Doctors]]" without working around how Troughton's Doctor predated concepts like "Time Lords", "Gallifrey" and the evolved conception of regeneration.

Many of his plots have a formula -- crippled super-villain tries to regain power -- but they vary widely from that initial idea. Holmes was very fond of ThoseTwoGuys: many of his stories are advanced by a double act of supporting characters. His Holmesian Double Act in "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", showman Jago and police pathologist Litefoot, were so popular that a spinoff was briefly considered, and eventually realised in 2010 by Creator/BigFinish. He died before he could finish "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS23E4TheUltimateFoe The Ultimate Foe]]"; it would require others to finish that one off. It's also a shame that we never got to see "Yellow Fever and How to Cure It", a story planned for the original Season 23, which would have featured the Master teaming up with the Nestene Consciousness in Singapore.

* EverybodysDeadDave: In at least three of his stories, he butchered nearly all his guest cast. In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E6TheCavesOfAndrozani The Caves of Androzani]]", the only person to make it off Androzani alive is Peri - he even kills the Fifth Doctor!

** Holmes' final contribution to the Whoniverse mythos, the Valeyard, reads as a scathing critique of the Sixth Doctor, amplifying all of his most antagonistic traits to create an offshoot of the Doctor that's so impenetrably full of himself that he's willing to jeopardize his own timeline if it means potentially saving his own skin (as shown in part one of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS23E4TheUltimateFoe "The Ultimate Foe"]], the last script Holmes finished before he died).

*** "The Caves Of Androzani" takes Saward's habit of painting the Fifth Doctor as weak and ineffectual by putting him in a brutal world of EvilVsEvil where all he can do is try and survive, but deliberately showing the Doctor's [[{{Determinator}} bravery, determination and self-sacrifice.]]
*** "The Two Doctors" skewers the Sixth Doctor era's brutal violence by bringing it over the top with a nauseating story about cannibalism, and its love of ContinuityPorn by giving the viewer a strong dose of WhatMeasureIsANonHuman.

*** "The Two Doctors" [[IncrediblyLamePun skewers]] the Sixth Doctor era's brutal violence by bringing it over the top with a nauseating story about cannibalism, and its love of ContinuityPorn by giving the viewer a strong dose of WhatMeasureIsANonHuman.

*** "The Two Doctors" [[IncrediblyLamePun skewers]] the Sixth Doctor era's brutal violence by turning it UpToEleven with a nauseating story about cannibalism, and its love of ContinuityPorn by giving the viewer a strong dose of WhatMeasureIsANonHuman.

** Holmes' two scripts for Creator/EricSaward are often interpreted as Holmes saying "[[IWillShowYouX You want grim violence? I'll give you grim violence!]]":

* ThoseTwoGuys: And frequently so well-written they became [[EnsembleDarkhorse pretty popular]]. Some of the more popular examples include showman Jago and police pathologist Litefoot (TheyFightCrime!), con artists Garron and Unstoffe, and mercenary Sabalom Glitz and his incompetent assistant Dibber.

These aren't just ''any'' stories though. Included in his work are some[[note]]Some might say ''most''[[/note]] of the all-time classics of the show, including:

''Series/DoctorWho'' wasn't the only British science fiction institution Holmes wrote for. He was offered the script editor's position on ''Series/BlakesSeven'', which he declined, recommending Creator/ChrisBoucher for the job. He eventually wrote four episodes for that series, including "Orbit," where Avon stalks Vila through a shuttle in order to [[ShootTheDog throw him overboard to save weight]].

* ArmedWithCanon: He spent a lot of time kicking at things from the Pertwee era that he disliked (like the Third Doctor's InvincibleHero problems and the rampant sexism present in much of the writing) and providing explanations for NecessaryWeasel tropes in the show that had been previously ignored (AliensSpeakingEnglish, WalkingDisasterArea, HeroBall). He also retconned Time Lord society into a DecadentCourt of elderly bureaucrats because he disliked the MarySueTopia concept that the previous era used, something that is still fairly controversial. He was also the first writer to confirm that regeneration can happen across gender, [[note]] Holmes rather established the limitation of incarnations to thirteen [[/note]] though he envisioned Time Lord society as a One-Gender Race of men unlike later writers.

* AuthorTract: Being one of the most openly political writers in the show's history has lead to more than a few cases of this; among other examples, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E4TheMonsterOfPeladon "The Monster of Peladon"]] features an extended sequence featuring Sarah Jane relaying Holmes' own support of second-wave feminism, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E4TheSunMakers "The Sun Makers"]] is essentially one big diatribe about how much Holmes hated taxation, and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E4TheTwoDoctors "The Two Doctors"]] is an extended ode to Holmes' ethically-based reasoning behind his vegetarianism (to the point where he made the Doctor become vegetarian for pretty much the remainder of the classic series).

* StrawFeminist: Averted most of the time, due to Holmes himself being a second-wave feminist.

** Holmes sowed the seeds of Season 6B when he decided to write "The Two Doctors" without working around how Troughton's Doctor predated concepts like "Time Lords", "Gallifrey" and the evolved conception of regeneration.

* WriterRevolt: Holmes was also known for taking the piss when given a "nightmare brief" or a shopping list of story elements to include. "Carnival of Monsters" was supposed to be StrictlyFormula, so he wrote a serial in which the Doctor and Jo are trapped in featureless corridors being chased by generic monsters for the amusement of a bored audience. "The Ribos Operation" was supposed to set up a Good VS Evil meta-plot, which he immediately subverted by writing the BigGood as a quietly intimidating bully and the Doctor befriends a pair of honest con artists instead. And he ultimately bounced off "The Five Doctors" because he couldn't find a way to include every single thing the producer was demanding in a way that made sense to him as a writer.

** The Doctor gains his second heart because Holmes needed something to get the Brigadier out to the rural Essex hospital the Doctor was in, and reporting a patient with two hearts worked perfectly. It also emphasised the Doctor's [[HumanAlien alien-ness]] in the new Earthbound format. The Doctor would pick up more alien physical traits [[NewPowersAsThePlotDemands as the plot required them]] during Holmes' tenure as script editor.

* WriterOnBoard: Occasionally quite obvious, though rarely detrimental to the plot. "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E4TheTwoDoctors The Two Doctors]]" made the Doctor a vegetarian like Holmes (and this actually held for twenty years). "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E4TheSunMakers The Sun Makers]]" was a jab at the Revenue office (because they subjected him to a grueling tax audit because he'd been paid as both an employee and a freelancer for the BBC during his period as script editor). "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E3TheDeadlyAssassin The Deadly Assassin]]" is commonly seen as taking some potshots at the ridiculousness of the House Of Lords and the Oxbridge establishment, too.

* UnwantedAssistance: His characters don't stand around and wait for the Doctor to save them, they work on their own solution to the problem. Usually they end up just making things worse (see Recap/DoctorWhoS6E4TheKrotons and Recap/DoctorWhoS10E2CarnivalOfMonsters for good examples).

* BloodierAndGorier[=/=]DarkerAndEdgier: Along with producer Creator/PhilipHinchcliffe, he was responsible for Doctor Who's "gothic horror" period in the mid-Seventies, and really tested the limits of what they could get away with.

* BloodierAndGorier[=/=]DarkerAndEdgier: Along with producer Philip Hinchcliffe, he was responsible for Doctor Who's "gothic horror" period in the mid-Seventies, and really tested the limits of what they could get away with.

* "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E1SpearheadFromSpace Spearhead from Space"]]

* ArmedWithCanon: He spent a lot of time kicking at things from the Pertwee era that he disliked (like the Third Doctor's InvincibleHero problems and the rampant sexism present in much of the writing) and providing explanations for NecessaryWeasel tropes in the show that had been previously ignored (AliensSpeakingEnglish, WalkingDisasterArea, HeroBall). He also retconned Time Lord society into a DeadlyDecadentCourt of elderly bureaucrats because he disliked the MarySueTopia concept that the previous era used, something that is still fairly controversial. He was also the first writer to confirm that regeneration can happen across gender, [[note]] Holmes rather established the limitation of incarnations to thirteen [[/note]] though he envisioned Time Lord society as a One-Gender Race of men unlike later writers.

** He made the Time Lords a DeadlyDecadentCourt of [[NotSoOmniscientCouncilOfBickering useless, self-involved old men]] because he needed to dramatically justify why the Doctor ran away. (His thinking ran that if the Time Lords really were omniscient Guardians of Time, then by definition the Doctor running away and getting stuck in was a ''[[VillainProtagonist bad]]'' [[VillainProtagonist thing]].)