Robert Sloman

Robert Sloman was born in Oldham, Lancashire, England on 18 July 1926 and died aged 79 on 24 October 2005. He was an actor who later worked at "The Sunday Times" circulation department for more than 20 years, becoming distribution manager; but is best known for his work as a writer for television.

In the early 1970s he made a significant contribution to the science fiction programme "Doctor Who" on the BBC. Together with then producer Barry Letts, he wrote four stories for the Jon Pertwee era on the programme: "The Daemons" (credited as Guy Leopold); "The Time Monster"; "The Green Death"; and "Planet of the Spiders", which was Pertwee's swan song. The first of these is often one of the most well-regarded in the programme's history; while the others contained strong moral messages, especially the focus on pollution and globalisation inherent in "The Green Death". When "The Green Death" was released on DVD in 2004, Sloman contributed a feature on the writing of the story

Sloman had also planned to bring the Daleks back at the end of the third Pertwee season, Season 9, in a serial called "The Daleks in London". This plan was dropped when the production staff realised that the show wouldn't have a hook for the start of the season to entice viewers, and Sloman's serial was allegedly shaping up to be too similar to "The Dalek Invasion of Earth". Instead, writer Louis Marks was asked to alter his serial to include the Daleks – which became "Day of the Daleks".

Robert Sloman also had two plays in the West End, "The Golden Rivet", and "The Tinker", which was later turned into a film, "The Wild and the Willing".

External links

*imdb name|id=0806148|name=Robert Sloman
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/otherlives/story/0,16381,1658865,00.html The Guardian obituary by Doctor Who producer Barry Letts]