Terrance Dicks, 1935-2019

If you survey the history of Doctor Who, there are a handful of names that crop up time and again as being critical to the show’s development and success. Terrance Dicks is among those names. I learned yesterday that Terrance, Uncle Terrance to fans, passed away last Thursday.

Terrance Dicks was a prolific writer. Aside from his work on Doctor Who, he wrote for other serials (“The Avengers,” “Crossroads,” “Moonbase:3,” “Space 1999” to name a few), as well as fiction and non-fiction books. In the 1970s, when Target books wanted to start a series of Doctor Who novelizations, they turned to Terrance who ended up writing 64 of the books in the series. When the Classic series ended in 1989, he wrote original Who stories for Virgin and BBC Books. If that wasn’t enough, he also authored numerous non-Who stories for children.

Dicks joined the Doctor Who team in the late 60s to take over as script editor. One of his first writing jobs was to come up with a 10-part story to replace two stories that had fallen through. The result was “The War Games,” the final Second Doctor story which he wrote with his friend and mentor Malcolm Hulke. This is the story that introduced us to the Time Lords. As script editor for the Third Doctor, he also gave us The Master, and helped in the hiring of Tom Baker to succeed Jon Pertwee. In fact, it was Dicks who wrote Baker’s first story, “Robot.” When he handed over the script editor duties to Robert Holmes, he continued to write for the show. It was Dicks who wrote “The Brain of Morbius” (under the pseudonym Robin Bland), “Horror of Fang Rock,” “State of Decay,” and the 20th anniversary special, “The Five Doctors.”

Terrance Dicks never stopped being active in Who fandom. He was a regular at conventions, and frequently made appearances on DVD and Blu-Ray commentary tracks and special features. Among his last work were scripts for the Big Finish range of original Doctor Who audio productions.

Growing up a Whovian, Terrance Dicks’s name was as well-known to me as The Doctor or any of his companions. The first novelizations I read were by him. Anything that carried his name bore the weight of authority. Seeing him on Doctor Who DVDs over the last decade, I was surprised how well he looked and how sharp he sounded, knowing he was approaching his eightieth year. No-one lives forever, but it seemed as if Uncle Terrance would be around for many more years. Sadly, that was not to be.

Terrance will be greatly missed, and never replaced.