Terrance William Dicks (14 April 1935 – 29 August 2019) was, of all the Doctor Who franchise's myriad behind-the-scenes contributors during its classic era, probably the closest thing the show had to a single public face.
Script editor and writer on chunks of the original 1963-89 run of the television series. Noveliser of many, many of the stories during The '70s and The '80s. Author of further Spin-Off novels, and various assorted other fiction and nonfiction works associated with the show. In latter years, an all-round benign 'godfather' to and commentator upon the franchise. Across all these roles he contributed more to the series, and was involved with it for a longer period of time, than anyone else.
Above all he was a hugely prolific writer. Startlingly, the vast number of popular and accessible novelisations that he produced of the TV adventures, especially during an era when these were often the only way to revisit past stories, mean he can be plausibly claimed to have introduced more British children — especially boys — to a love of reading than just about any other author to have ever lived. He became beloved of generations of Whovians to the extent he acquired the Fan Nickname 'Uncle Terry'.
Dicks was first hired as assistant script editor on Doctor Who in early 1968 through the recommendation of his friend and fellow writer Malcolm Hulke. He became full script editor later that year, starting with "The Invasion", and the following year co-wrote the Second Doctor's concluding story The War Games with Hulke. For all five seasons in which Jon Pertwee played the Third Doctor, Dicks and the producer Barry Letts had creative control of the show. Although he was not credited as a writer on any of those stories, he made heavy contributions to the scripts during his era and presided over (or at the very least allowed to happen) the creation of the core mythology of the Whoniverse. He co-created the Time Lords and their non-intervention policy, and the Doctor's archnemesis the Master. Even though UNIT did not originate with him (but did first appear in a story he script-edited), he nurtured the concept along and oversaw the promotion of the Brigadier from guest star to series regular.
The equally legendary Robert Holmes (a very different kind of writer yet just as notable in Who terms) took over from him as script editor, though Dicks immediately wrote the Fourth Doctor's debut Robot and, later, further adventures in Horror of Fang Rock and State of Decay — plus an early version of The Brain of Morbius, but asked for his name to be removed from the story because of the extent to which the scripts were rewritten for budgetary reasons by his friend Holmes. Come the Fifth Doctor's era, he was the obvious go-to man to pen the 20th anniversary multi-Doctor special The Five Doctors, which would end up becoming his final script for the TV series.
Terrance Dicks' most visible and perhaps most valuable contribution to the franchise however was his involvement, from 1973 to the end of the original TV run, with the licenced novelisations for Target Books. He personally wrote sixty-seven of these (many of them adapting stories from the era in which he did his main work on the show, but dozens for other Doctors too), which practically became synonymous with his name as a result, and acted as an unofficial head writer and administrator for the series. The largely strict page-count, Dicks' straightforward yet vivid prose, the books' ability to transcend the televised adventures' budget limitations, and the fact that for much of this period there was no way of actually watching the stories again after their initial transmissions, meant that legions of youngsters — plenty of whom may have had little interest in reading otherwise — absolutely devoured them for years on end. Dicks' volumes are reckoned to have sold some three and a half million copies in the '70s alone, in ten languages. And some of those young readers became writers in turn, with Neil Gaiman, Mark Gatiss and Paul Cornell among those to have acknowledged his influence on them.
During the "Wilderness Years" following the television show's cancellation in 1989, prior to its revival in 2005, Dicks wrote thirteen original novels across the various prose sections of the Doctor Who Expanded Universe. Among the most significant were the second Doctor Who New Adventures novel Timewyrm: Exodus, and the first Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Eight Doctors.
Other oddments in the Who franchise include the stage plays Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys to Doomsday and The Ultimate Adventure, and their audio adaptations, the novelisation of The Sarah Jane Adventures' first episode Invasion of the Bane, and, with Malcolm Hulke, the first-ever Doctor Who nonfiction book The Making of Doctor Who, as well as a few other nonfiction Who works. He also recorded many, many DVD Commentaries and documentary appearances.
Old-school fans still often demanded that he be invited to write a TV story again for the revived 21st-century series. Dicks would eventually contribute to the modern franchise with Made of Steel and Revenge of the Judoon, two "quick read" novels aimed at a younger age range, featuring the Tenth Doctor and companion Martha Jones.
Aside from his work for Doctor Who, he wrote well over a hundred original books for children, mainly in the crime, adventure, and Funny Animal genres. Perhaps the most notable were the 10-volume series The Baker Street Irregulars, inspired by the Sherlock Holmes characters of the same name.
After leaving Doctor Who, Dicks and Letts created an extremely grim hard science fiction BBC show, Moonbase 3. The series did not last long. He then worked on many adaptations of classic novels and other literature for the Beeb. His early pre-Who TV work included episodes of The Avengers and Crossroads.
Dicks was still appearing at Doctor Who fan conventions and on DVD Commentary into his 80s. He passed away in August 2019 at the age of 84, to the sorrow of his many fans and colleagues from throughout his long and storied career, receiving a cavalcade of tributes from writers and producers who had been associated with and inspired by Who of all eras.
Known For:
- Alan Smithee: He took his name off "The Brain of Morbius" because the final script bore very little comparison to his original version. When Robert Holmes asked him what pen name he wanted, Dicks dismissively suggested the story go out under "some bland pseudonym". It was duly credited to 'Robin Bland', which Terry found hilarious.note
- Author Appeal: In his Expanded Universe work — continuity, vampires, World War II (and especially Winston Churchill), continuity, Prohibition-era Chicago gangsters and continuity.
- Author Catchphrase: He has many, commonly subject to Affectionate Parody:
- Perhaps the most iconic were his stock descriptions of "the mysterious traveller in time and space known only as the Doctor...". In order, they were:
- The First Doctor, "a crotchety old man in a frock coat with long flowing white hair".
- The Second Doctor had "baggy check trousers and a mop of untidy black hair".
- The Third Doctor had "a shock of white hair, a hawk-like nose and an old/young face".
- The Fourth Doctor was "a curly-haired man in a battered, broad-brimmed hat and an incredibly long scarf" with "a casual bohemian elegance".
- The Fifth Doctor had, "a slight, fair-haired figure with a pleasant, open face" (which The Complete(ly Useless) Doctor Who Encyclopedia considered a disturbing disfigurement that thankfully wasn't present on screen).
- Another of his most iconic was "A wheezing, groaning sound" that came from "the incongruous shape of a battered old London police box", when the Doctor's TARDIS materialises or dematerialises. (He did not, however, come up with the equally famous and much-referenced chapter title "Escape To Danger", which first appears as Part 3 of "The Web Planet" by Bill Strutton.)
- He also had stock descriptions for each recurring alien menace. The Ice Warriors, for instance, were "a once proud race".
- One novelisation had "hum of power" appear three times in two pages. That phrase, and "bench packed with complex electronic equipment" appeared so often that he must have been taking them off the scripts.
- Perhaps the most iconic were his stock descriptions of "the mysterious traveller in time and space known only as the Doctor...". In order, they were:
- Beige Prose: In the Target novelisations. Dicks' prose was plain, but extremely descriptive and readable, which is what gave him such a sterling reputation as an author for children.
- Creator Thumbprint: "A wheezing and groaning sound..." "The mysterious traveller in time and space known only as the Doctor..." "Capacious pockets..." "A pleasant, open face" to describe the Fifth Doctor. Etc., etc. So ubiquitous that SFX magazine sponsored a "Write Like Terrance Dicks" competition
in order to come up with a comparable description for the then-incumbent Eleventh Doctor — with Dicks as judge.- See also this page, which lets you write like Dicks with just a few dice rolls.
- See also this page
- Darker and Edgier: With the arrival of the Doctor Who New Adventures, series, he adjusted his style accordingly, often to rather incongruous effect.
- Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: He had a faint speech impediment, hence his fan nickname of "Cuddly Uncle Tewwy"
- Fleeting Demographic Rule: Known for his rule that, in an age before home video or frequent multi-channel repeats, no story should expect the audience to remember another story that happened more than three years previously.
- I Have You Now, My Pretty: His works in the Doctor Who Expanded Universe (the later ones particularly) began to see a lot of scenes wherein the main female characters would be threatened with rape by the bad guys.
- Kid Detective: The Baker Street Irregulars series, about a teenage Sherlock Holmes fan who with the aid of his friends solves crimes.
- Lighter and Softer: His Doctor Who novelisations (arguably intended for a younger audience than the show) tended to downplay the darker and more adult moments. He also wrote a few "junior" novelisations which took this further.
- Money, Dear Boy: One of the world's most shamelessly charming public practitioners.
- Self-Plagiarism: When writing for the novel ranges, he tended to recycle stories he wrote for the TV series. In one case (the novel World Game) he literally cuts and pastes large sections from a previous novel.
- Stay in the Kitchen: On record as saying that feminism in the '70s was something the show had to deal with "much to [his] disgust" and that he believed the woman's job on the show was to look pretty and get rescued by the Doctor.
- Those Two Guys: Fans tend to see him and Barry Letts as this. He himself considered Letts to have been his best friend.
- Verbal Tic: In interviews, he often ended a sentence with "you see".
