Robert Holmes

Robert Colin Holmes was a British television writer born in Hertfordshire, England in 1928. His earliest known television work was on the TV series Emergency-Ward 10 in 1957. Since TV episodes from this era were not normally preserved, it is unclear which episodes of the show Holmes may have been involved with.

During the 1960s, Holmes wrote the teleplays for select episodes of other programs including Knight Errand Limited, Deadline Midnight and Ghost Squad. In 1964 and 1965, he wrote four episodes of the Scotland-based medical drama, Dr. Finlay's Casebook, including "The Hallelujah Stakes", "The Old Indomitable", "The Doctor Cried" and "Charity, Dr. Finlay".

Between 1968 and 1986, Robert Holmes was regular series writer on the long-running sci-fi series Doctor Who. He is noted for introducing Jon Pertwee's iteration as the Third Doctor with the serial "Spearhead from Space", which also happened to be the first colorized serial from the show. For this story, Holmes created the robotic Autons, which became one of many such recurring adversaries featured in the program. Holmes' first serial on Doctor Who was the four-part episode, "The Krotons", which aired from December, 1968 to January, 1969. His final work on the series was in 1986 where he wrote five installments from the fourteen-part storyline "The Trial of a Time Lord", which comprised the entirety of series twenty-three.

Robert Holmes passed away on May 24th, 1986 at the age of 57.