Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment

Ian Marter

Ian Marter is best remembered by Doctor Who fans as the actor who played the Fourth Doctor's companion Harry Sullivan. In fact, his first role in Doctor Who came a couple of years earlier when he played the character of Andrews in 'Carnival of Monsters'. Marter worked with his friend Tom Baker on ideas for a possible Doctor Who film, and together they developed a script. Though the film was never made, Marter continued to write and novelised nine Doctor Who adventures for Target books. Ian Marter died in 1986. Robert Holmes, the original script writer of 'Ark in Space', served with distinction in the army and also in the police before becoming a journalist and television writer. Holmes went on to become one of the Doctor Who's most prolific writers. He took over as script sditor of Doctor Who in 1974 during one of the programme's most successful periods at the start of the Fourth Doctor's era, and established a background and society for the Time Lords that has endured to this day. Robert Holmes wrote for many other series including Doomwatch, Spy Trap, Dixon of Dock Green, Blake's 7 and many others. Holmes died in 1986, while working on the final episodes of the Doctor Who story The Trial of a Time Lord.