John Lucarotti spent nine years in the Royal Navy during and after the Second World War. He then went to North America to work for Imperial Oil. It was here that he began writing. Later, he scripted an eighteen-part radio series about the life of Marco Polo for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, but at one point found himself earning more money as an encyclopedia salesman than as a writer. Consequently he decided to focus on the US market. By the late 1950s he had taken Canadian citizenship, and then returned to England, where he became involved in TV work. He had recently moved to Majorca when, at Syndey Newman's suggestion, David Whitaker approached him to write for Doctor Who. Remembering his CBC series, he chose Marco Polo as his subject. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Lucarotti continued a successful TV career, creating the shows Operation Patch and The Ravelled Thread, among others, and contributing scripts to The Avengers, Doctor Who, Ghost Squad, Joe 90, The Man in Room 17, Murder Bag, New Scotland Yard, The Protectors, Moonbase 3, The Onedin Line, Star Maidens, and Into the Labyrinth, his last credited screen work in 1981. He novelized his 1976 serial Operation Patch and the 1979/1980 series The Ravelled Thread. He contributed the first Brief Encounter short story for Doctor Who Magazine in 1990, in which the author met the First Doctor in a French bar. The story was reprinted in the 1992 Doctor Who Yearbook. John Lucarotti died in Paris, France, on November 20, 1994. Dennis Spooner was script editor of Doctor Who during the William Hartnell era, and wrote several stories for the show, including The Reign of Terror and The Romans. He also wrote for the Gerry Anderson series' Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray and Thunderbirds, and co-created five espionage series' including Man in a Suitcase, Department S and The Adventurer. Spooner also created the cult detective series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). He died in September 1986. David Whitaker was the first Story Editor for Doctor Who, and was responsible for finding and commissioning writers, and it was Whitaker as much as anyone who defined the narrative shape of Doctor Who. He wrote for the Doctor Who annuals, novelized the first Dalek story and worked with Terry Nation on various Dalek-related material including the hugely successful comic strip The Daleks. David Whitaker died in 1980. William Emms was a scriptwriter who wrote for a variety of television programs including The Revenue Men (1967-68), Callan (1969-70), Ace of Wands (1970), Z Cars (1965-71) and Crossroads (1980). In 1965, he wrote Galaxy 4, the first serial in the third season of Doctor Who. It was broadcast in four weekly parts from 11 September to 2 October. Emms wrote several further scripts for Doctor Who, but they were not commissioned. However, in 1985 his novelization of Galaxy 4 was published as a Target book, and the following year, he wrote a novel in the Make Your Own Adventure with Doctor Who range of children's gamebooks, entitled Mission to Venus. He died in 1993.
