Robert Holmes

In 1944, at the age of eighteen, Holmes joined the army, fighting with the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders regiment in Burma. He rapidly earned a commission, and as such became the youngest commissioned officer in the entire British army during the Second World War. The fact that he lied about his age to get into the army was discovered at his commissioning, but apparently the only reaction was by a general who praised him, adding that he had done the same thing himself. Soon after the end of the war, Holmes returned to England and left the army, deciding to join the police. He trained at Hendon Police College, graduating the top of his year and joining the Metropolitan Police in London, serving at Bow Street Police Station. It was whilst serving as a Police officer that Holmes first began to develop an interest in writing as a career. When giving evidence in court for prosecutions against offenders, he would often note the excitement and frantic work of the journalists reporting on the cases, and decided that he would like to do similar work. To this end, he taught himself shorthand in his spare time and eventually resigned from the Police force. He quickly found work writing for both local and national newspapers, initially in London and later in the Midlands. He also filed reports for the Press Association, which could be syndicated to a variety of sources, such as local or foreign newspapers. In the late 1950s he worked for a time writing and editing short stories for magazines, before receiving his first break in television when he contributed an episode to the famous medical series Emergency-Ward 10 (1957). His work as a sports reporter took him to the Midlands, where he became the final editor of "John Bull Magazine," at the same time submitting material to Grenada TV for Knight Errant Limited (1959). Other early TV work included The Saint (1962) Ghost Squad (1961), Public Eye (1965), Undermind (1965) (his first science fiction) and Intrigue (1966) His first work for Doctor Who (1963) was a commission to write "The Space Trap," later retitled "The Krotons." Subsequently he went on to become one of the series' most popular writers, responsible for more than a dozen televised stories. He also had a successful period as Doctor Who (1963)'s script editor between 1974 and 1977. He scripted much TV drama during the seventies and eighties, including a The Wednesday Play (1964) and episodes of Doomwatch (1970), Dr. Finlay's Casebook (1962), Dead of Night (1972), The Regiment (1972), Warship (1973), Spy Trap (1972)" and Dixon of Dock Green (1955)," and he adapted the BBC's 1981 science-fiction thriller serial The Nightmare Man (1981)," from David Wiltshire's novel. He was working on further Doctor Who (1963) episodes when he died, after a short illness, on 24 May 1986.