Richard Molesworth interviews prolific TV writer Chris Boucher, whose work in small screen sci-fi is legendary…

Chris Boucher is perhaps best known to fans of television science fiction for his work writing for Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 in the late 1970s, and then creating the series Star Cops in the 1980s. He also script edited every episode of Blake’s 7, as well as script editing whole seasons of big-hitting BBC cop shows such as Bergerac, Juliet Bravo and Shoestring. In the late 1990s, Boucher returned to worlds of Doctor Who, writing four original novels for BBC books, and also helped devise the audio drama science fiction series, Kaldor City.

Boucher first began writing for television in the late 1960’s, initially veering towards comedy productions, clocking-up scripts for episodes of Dave Allen at Large and Romany Jones by the early 1970s.

In 1976, he pitched a story idea for BBC’s Doctor Who. What influenced Boucher to contact the Doctor Who production team (comprising of script editor Robert Holmes, and producer Philip Hinchcliffe) about writing for the series in the first place?

Boucher pauses for a moment before answering. “Memory is malleable, and this is more than forty years ago now, but it seems to me that my agent, John Hayes, may have suggested Doctor Who as a possibility for me. I’m fairly sure he made the initial approach to the BBC on my behalf.”

So did Boucher have a desire to write science fiction at the time? That would have been something of an about-turn from the comedy background he had built-up at that point.

“I was a long-standing and fairly well-read science fiction fan, but if the opportunity to write for Bill and Ben - The Flowerpot Men had presented itself, then the handbrake turn to which you refer would have been in the direction of Children’s TV.”

FOOT IN THE DOOR

So how difficult was it for him, as a writer new to the series, to get his foot in the door with the Doctor Who production team?