Ben Aaronovitch | |
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Born | Ben Dylan Aaronovitch 22 February 1964 Camden, London, England |
Occupation | Author, screenwriter |
Notable works | Rivers of London Remembrance of the Daleks |
Spouse | Marie Fofana (m. 1992) |
Relatives | Sam Aaronovitch (father) Owen Aaronovitch (brother) David Aaronovitch (brother) |
Ben Dylan Aaronovitch (born 22 February 1964) [2] is an English author and screenwriter. He is the author of the series of novels Rivers of London . He also wrote two Doctor Who serials in the late 1980s and spin-off novels from Doctor Who and Blake's 7 .
Born in Camden, [3] Aaronovitch is the son of the economist Sam Aaronovitch who was a senior member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, [4] and the younger brother of actor Owen Aaronovitch and journalist David Aaronovitch. [5] He attended Holloway School. [6]
Aaronovitch left school with no particular plan. “Instead of going to university I basically faffed about. I had a series of terrible jobs, the kind you get when you have no qualifications.” These included working as a security guard for Securitas, which he says taught him “to understand shoplifting a lot better... So it did come in quite handy later, for work”. [7] During one of the short-term jobs he submitted some scripts to the BBC, which led to him writing Doctor Who stories, and finally, while working at Waterstones, Aaronovitch published his first Rivers of London novel, which rapidly became a word-of-mouth success, enabling him to write full-time. He is passionate about diversity in literature, [8] and in 2020 he founded the Future Worlds Prize, then known as the Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award, aimed at opening up science fiction and fantasy publishing to more diverse writers. [9]
Aaronovitch wrote two Doctor Who serials, Remembrance of the Daleks (1988) and Battlefield (1989), for BBC television, and also the novelization of the former. [11]
He wrote one episode for Casualty (1990) and was then a regular writer on the science fiction series Jupiter Moon . [12]
He subsequently wrote or co-wrote three Doctor Who spin-off novels in the Virgin Publishing New Adventures range; he created the character Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart who became a semi-regular in the New Adventures. He has also written a novel and several short stories published by Big Finish Productions featuring the character of Bernice Summerfield, who was originally developed in the New Adventures. He also co-wrote a Doctor Who audio drama for Big Finish, and has written a number of Blake's 7 spin-off audio dramas.
Knight Fall
In May 1987, Aaronovitch submitted “Knight Fall” to the Doctor Who production office for Season 25. The story concerned privatization. [13] Script editor Andrew Cartmel liked the story ideas, but felt that the script was inappropriate for the series and had too many supporting characters. [13]
Transit
After failing to feature Aaronovitch's “Knight Fall” storyline to production, Aaronovitch submitted a story in June 1987, entitled Transit . The story would see the Doctor and Ace in the future, land in a metro station, and discover transportation portals that could lead any body throughout the Solar System, but one of the portals leads a gate way to hell. [13] Even though Aaronovitch's scripts of “Transit” never came to fruition, he would adapt the story as a book for Virgin New Adventures series in December 1992. [13]
Bad Destination
During Summer of 1988, Aaronovitch submitted a three-part adventure story for Doctor Who’s 27th Season (which never came to fruition), and was called ”Bad Destination”. The story would feature The Doctor seeing Ace as a captain of a hospital spaceship which is being under attack by the Metatraxi. [14] The story, however, was abandoned when, in September 1989, the BBC cancelled Doctor Who after its 26 Season, due to declining audiences. [13] [14] In July 2011, Big Finish Productions released the story as Earth Aid, by Aaronovitch and Cartmel. [13]
The short stories below are published in 'Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection'.
The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of extremely xenophobic mutants principally portrayed in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. They were conceived by writer Terry Nation and first appeared in the 1963 Doctor Who serial The Daleks, in casings designed by Raymond Cusick.
Skaro is a fictional planet in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was created by the writer Terry Nation as the home planet of the Daleks.
Remembrance of the Daleks is the first serial of the 25th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The serial was first broadcast in four weekly episodes from 5 to 26 October 1988. It was written by Ben Aaronovitch and directed by Andrew Morgan.
The Daleks is the second serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on BBC TV in seven weekly parts from 21 December 1963 to 1 February 1964. Written by Terry Nation and directed by Christopher Barry and Richard Martin, this story marks the first appearance of the show's most popular villains, the Daleks, and the recurring Skaro people, the Thals. In the serial, the First Doctor, his granddaughter Susan Foreman, and her teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright land in an alien jungle and are captured by the Daleks, a race of mutated creatures who survive off the radiation that remains in the atmosphere after a nuclear war with their enemies. As the group attempt to escape the Daleks, they discover more about the planet and the ensuing war, and attempt to broker a peace.
The Virgin New Adventures are a series of novels from Virgin Publishing based on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. They continued the story of the Doctor from the point at which the television programme went into hiatus from television in 1989.
Andrew J. Cartmel is a British script editor, author and journalist. He was the script editor of Doctor Who during the Sylvester McCoy era of the show between 1987 and 1989. He has also worked as a script editor on other television series, as a magazine editor, as a comics writer, as a film studies lecturer, and as a novelist.
Professor Bernice Surprise Summerfield, or simply Benny, is a fictional character created by author Paul Cornell as a new companion of the Seventh Doctor in Virgin Publishing's range of original full-length Doctor Who novels, the New Adventures. The New Adventures were authorised novels carrying on from where the Doctor Who television series had left off, and Summerfield was introduced in Cornell's novel Love and War in 1992.
The Dalek Invasion of Earth is the second serial of the second season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by Terry Nation and directed by Richard Martin, the serial was broadcast on BBC1 in six weekly parts from 21 November to 26 December 1964. In the serial, the First Doctor, his granddaughter Susan Foreman, and teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright discover that the Earth in the 22nd century has been occupied by Daleks. They work with a human resistance group to stop the Daleks from mining out the Earth's core as part of their plan to pilot the planet through space.
Since their first appearance in 1963 there have been a number of variant models of the Daleks, a fictional alien race in the BBC science fiction television programme Doctor Who.
Ace is a fictional character played by Sophie Aldred in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A 20th-century Earth teenager from the London suburb of Perivale, she is a companion of the Seventh Doctor and was a regular in the series from 1987 to 1989 and returned in 2022. She is considered one of the Doctor's most popular companions.
Justin Richards is a British writer. He has written science fiction and fantasy novels, including series set in Victorian or early-20th-century London, and also adventure stories set in the present day. He has written many spin-off novels, reference books and audio plays based on the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, and he is Creative Consultant for the BBC Books range of Doctor Who novels.
Lungbarrow is an original novel written by Marc Platt and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Published in Virgin Books' New Adventures range, it was the last of that range to feature the Seventh Doctor.
The Big FinishShort Trips are a collection of short story anthologies published by Big Finish Productions based on the BBC Television series Doctor Who, beginning with the collection Short Trips: Zodiac in December 2002 and ending with the loss of their license in 2009. The Short Trips name was inherited from similar collections published by the BBC, who decided in March 2000 that it was no longer financially viable to produce collections of short stories. Big Finish Productions negotiated a licence to continue producing these collections, publishing them in smaller runs and in hardback, thus allowing for a higher cover price and increased profit margins than on the BBC collections.
Lee Sullivan is a comic artist who lives and works in the UK.
The 26th season of Doctor Who premiered on 6 September 1989 with the serial "Battlefield," and consisted of four serials, ending with "Survival," which was the final episode of Doctor Who for 15 years, until the show was revived in 2005. John Nathan-Turner produced the series, with Andrew Cartmel script editing.
The twenty-fifth season of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 5 October 1988. It comprised four separate serials, beginning with Remembrance of the Daleks and ending with The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. To mark the 25th anniversary season, producer John Nathan-Turner brought back the Daleks and the Cybermen. The American New Jersey Network also made a special behind-the-scenes documentary called The Making of Doctor Who, which followed the production of the 25th anniversary story Silver Nemesis. Andrew Cartmel script edited the series.
The Rivers of London series is a series of urban fantasy novels by English author Ben Aaronovitch, and comics/graphic novels by Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel, illustrated by Lee Sullivan.