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Robert Holmes: A Life In Words
Those that know the work of Robert Holmes will not be at all surprised by the effusive and expansive appreciation in which he is held today by his colleagues, peers, and contemporaries. Whether writing scripts for the far-flung fantasies of 'Doctor Who' or 'Blake's 7', or for the more everyday gritty reality of 'Bergerac', 'Shoestring', 'Juliet Bravo' or 'Public Eye', Robert Holmes was one of television's most innovative, creative, respected—and least lauded—of talents from the '60s, '70s and '80s.
Now, for the first time, this book examines his work in detail. For this is Robert Holmes' life in words.
Now, for the first time, this book examines his work in detail. For this is Robert Holmes' life in words.
443 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 31, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 10, 2016
I don't really know how to write this review without mentioning that I watched Doctor Who yesterday. Amidst the tears, depression, and grief at watching someone who is in entertainment terms an unabashed supervillain be elected President, I found solace in the adventures of a hero who doesn't believe in violence or guns, who fights the monsters that scare us, who loves so much that he has two hearts, who tears down injustice and unfairness so that people, all people, are treated fairly and beautifully.
One of the key players in creating this vision of the hero is a guy named Robert Holmes, who wrote for the series over a span of seventeen years. He is responsible for a number of innovations in the series, including the two hearts, naming The Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey, Time Lord society and culture (including the 12-regeneration limit), Sontarans, Autons, the characters of Jo Grant, Sarah Jane Smith, Romana, Mike Yates, The Master, and the 3rd Doctor. He also oversaw the writing for the first three and half seasons of stories for The 4th Doctor, the creation of Leela and K-9, the introduction of Davros. He has brought me joy through cracking scripts, a wonderful imagination, outlandishly good characters, whip-smart dialogue, and a love of storytelling.
So knowing there's a book about him, I had to read it. And boy was it disappointing.
I think the biggest issue is how much this book isn't the book I wanted it to be. It is almost exclusively about all the writing Holmes did over his career, writing and editing tons of television I had no idea about. Holmes had a very successful career that left him very workmanlike. But if it weren't for the power and size of Doctor Who and his role during its classic run, he would be a total footnote in history. And a lot of this book feels like Molesworth grappling with that fact. It feels like a book that doesn't have much interest in anything but showing how he was just a normal writer with a penchant for one excellent show.
This book spends a lot of time summarizing and synopsizing bsically everything Holmes did (and in some places didn't end up) writing for television. But Molesworth doesn't talk about the implications and what that means for who Holmes was as a person. I feel like I learned more about Holmes, who he was, how he became to be such a brilliant writer from the writings of others about the stories he wrote. A top-line, here's what he wrote is just scraping off the top of who this guy really was, and Molesworth (or at least this book he wrote) is incapable of digging deeper into what this guy believed and analyzing all of the implications of all the things he actually wrote.
So really, this was disappointing. And yes, the early and scattered reviews I heard about this book warned me that it was not the Holmes book any of us wanted. Or needed. And those reviews are all correct. If you want a better idea of Holmes, who he was, what he believed, it'd be better to watch his old stories and read analyses by those who love those stories. Because they paint a better picture than this book did. And yes, the part of this book that is about his script editing on Doctor Who is particularly illuminating, but, as with his actual script editing, it flies by too quickly and leaves us wanting more.
But if you want a list of all the things Holmes did that give you a synopsis of every major thing he ever wrote that wasn't Doctor Who, this is totally for you. I just can't imagine that, being that this is a book for Doctor Who fans because Holmes is best (and perhaps only) known for his Doctor Who work, that this book would actually be for you. Which is, unfortunately to say, anybody.
One of the key players in creating this vision of the hero is a guy named Robert Holmes, who wrote for the series over a span of seventeen years. He is responsible for a number of innovations in the series, including the two hearts, naming The Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey, Time Lord society and culture (including the 12-regeneration limit), Sontarans, Autons, the characters of Jo Grant, Sarah Jane Smith, Romana, Mike Yates, The Master, and the 3rd Doctor. He also oversaw the writing for the first three and half seasons of stories for The 4th Doctor, the creation of Leela and K-9, the introduction of Davros. He has brought me joy through cracking scripts, a wonderful imagination, outlandishly good characters, whip-smart dialogue, and a love of storytelling.
So knowing there's a book about him, I had to read it. And boy was it disappointing.
I think the biggest issue is how much this book isn't the book I wanted it to be. It is almost exclusively about all the writing Holmes did over his career, writing and editing tons of television I had no idea about. Holmes had a very successful career that left him very workmanlike. But if it weren't for the power and size of Doctor Who and his role during its classic run, he would be a total footnote in history. And a lot of this book feels like Molesworth grappling with that fact. It feels like a book that doesn't have much interest in anything but showing how he was just a normal writer with a penchant for one excellent show.
This book spends a lot of time summarizing and synopsizing bsically everything Holmes did (and in some places didn't end up) writing for television. But Molesworth doesn't talk about the implications and what that means for who Holmes was as a person. I feel like I learned more about Holmes, who he was, how he became to be such a brilliant writer from the writings of others about the stories he wrote. A top-line, here's what he wrote is just scraping off the top of who this guy really was, and Molesworth (or at least this book he wrote) is incapable of digging deeper into what this guy believed and analyzing all of the implications of all the things he actually wrote.
So really, this was disappointing. And yes, the early and scattered reviews I heard about this book warned me that it was not the Holmes book any of us wanted. Or needed. And those reviews are all correct. If you want a better idea of Holmes, who he was, what he believed, it'd be better to watch his old stories and read analyses by those who love those stories. Because they paint a better picture than this book did. And yes, the part of this book that is about his script editing on Doctor Who is particularly illuminating, but, as with his actual script editing, it flies by too quickly and leaves us wanting more.
But if you want a list of all the things Holmes did that give you a synopsis of every major thing he ever wrote that wasn't Doctor Who, this is totally for you. I just can't imagine that, being that this is a book for Doctor Who fans because Holmes is best (and perhaps only) known for his Doctor Who work, that this book would actually be for you. Which is, unfortunately to say, anybody.
July 14, 2019
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3214143.html
This is a nice chunky biography of the greatest of the writers for Old Who. I don't say that lightly. If you check the Doctor Who Dynamic Rankings site, you will see that no other Old Who writer comes close to his record of classics: credited writer of The Caves of Androzani, Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Deadly Assassin, The Ark in Space, etc etc; script editor (and sometimes more than that) for the great Tom Baker years, including Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, The Robots of Death, The Seeds of Doom, Horror of Fang Rock, Terror of the Zygons... Molesworth clearly writes as a fan, but as one who has done immense due diligence, watching all of the surviving Robert Holmes episodes of this, that and the other (in fact he is credited as author of more episodes of Emergency Ward 10 than of Doctor Who) and tracking down interviews, convention appearances and correspondence as well as talking to the many surviving members of the production team who worked with him. (He doesn't seem to have got much out of any members of the cast.)
I have read autobiographies of two other Old Who script editors, and this is better than either. Derrick Sherwin's Who's Next is a rushed pot-boiler, and Andrew Cartmel's Script Doctor is an excellent micro-study of the last three years of Old Who but has little to say about anything else. Holmes was a young officer in Burma (again!) in the second world war, and then tried his hand as a policeman and a journalist before becoming a full-time television writer. His first Doctor Who story was The Krotons, which is actually quite a good idea let down by the poor production values of Patrick Troughton's last season, and his second was The Space Pirates, a rollicking space opera which might have a better reputation if more than one of its six episodes had survived. He bonded with Terrance Dicks, the new-ish script editor, who commissioned him for the opening story of three of Jon Pertwee's five seasons, introducing the Sontarans, the Autons, Sarah Jane Smith, Jo Grant, Mike Yates, Liz Shaw, the Master and the Third Doctor himself. He was then prevailed upon to take on the script editor's role with the arrival of Tom Baker as the lead actor, working with Philip Hinchcliffe as producer in a combination of talents that was never surpassed in Old Who, and perhaps not in New Who either. He stayed on for a few more stories after Hinchcliffe's departure, and wrote several other things that I remember vividly - as script editor of Shoestring, he wrote the 1980 episode "Mockingbird" which sticks in my mind after 39 years; there was the 1981 series The Nightmare Man; and "Orbit", the third-last episode of Blake's 7 and one of the absolute best. (Avon: "Dammit, what weighs seventy kilos?" Orac: "Vila weighs seventy-three kilos.") I must hunt down the 1965 series Undermind, for which he wrote the last two episodes.
Holmes' life ended sadly early. He died aged only 60 in 1986, half-way through writing the final story of that year's Doctor Who season. This was the much contested Trial of a Time Lord arc, for which Holmes had contributed the first four episodes and was due to write the final two (but died before starting the last one). A higher-up at the BBC had sent round a brutal deconstruction of the flaws of the first four episodes (generally now referred to as The Mysterious Planet), which clearly deeply wounded Holmes and possibly even contributed to his illness and death. In a career of a quarter of a century, nobody before had been quite so brutal about his writing. It's painful reading, and the one positive thing I will say is that the account here raises Eric Saward's reputation in my view, as he attempted (but failed) to shield Holmes and also keep the show on the road. But between the lines it's clear that Holmes no longer had what he had once had had. Between 1982 and his death in 1986, literally the only non-Who scripts he sold were three episodes of Bergerac and five for a short-lived drama series set in a Citizens Advice Bureau. Brutal though it is, the BBC higher-up's criticism of The Mysterious Planet is mostly pretty well-founded.
This is good material for a wider study of how the BBC (and indeed British television) changed in the Thatcher era (1981 is the point at which it all seems to go wrong). But it's an engaging book in its own right, illustrated with treatments and out-takes from Holmes' writing. It's also striking how few people seem to have a bad word for him (cf John Nathan-Turner). It would be interesting to know a bit more about his war record and early journalism, but otherwise this is a pretty decent example of biography of an important figure in cult sf.
This is a nice chunky biography of the greatest of the writers for Old Who. I don't say that lightly. If you check the Doctor Who Dynamic Rankings site, you will see that no other Old Who writer comes close to his record of classics: credited writer of The Caves of Androzani, Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Deadly Assassin, The Ark in Space, etc etc; script editor (and sometimes more than that) for the great Tom Baker years, including Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, The Robots of Death, The Seeds of Doom, Horror of Fang Rock, Terror of the Zygons... Molesworth clearly writes as a fan, but as one who has done immense due diligence, watching all of the surviving Robert Holmes episodes of this, that and the other (in fact he is credited as author of more episodes of Emergency Ward 10 than of Doctor Who) and tracking down interviews, convention appearances and correspondence as well as talking to the many surviving members of the production team who worked with him. (He doesn't seem to have got much out of any members of the cast.)
I have read autobiographies of two other Old Who script editors, and this is better than either. Derrick Sherwin's Who's Next is a rushed pot-boiler, and Andrew Cartmel's Script Doctor is an excellent micro-study of the last three years of Old Who but has little to say about anything else. Holmes was a young officer in Burma (again!) in the second world war, and then tried his hand as a policeman and a journalist before becoming a full-time television writer. His first Doctor Who story was The Krotons, which is actually quite a good idea let down by the poor production values of Patrick Troughton's last season, and his second was The Space Pirates, a rollicking space opera which might have a better reputation if more than one of its six episodes had survived. He bonded with Terrance Dicks, the new-ish script editor, who commissioned him for the opening story of three of Jon Pertwee's five seasons, introducing the Sontarans, the Autons, Sarah Jane Smith, Jo Grant, Mike Yates, Liz Shaw, the Master and the Third Doctor himself. He was then prevailed upon to take on the script editor's role with the arrival of Tom Baker as the lead actor, working with Philip Hinchcliffe as producer in a combination of talents that was never surpassed in Old Who, and perhaps not in New Who either. He stayed on for a few more stories after Hinchcliffe's departure, and wrote several other things that I remember vividly - as script editor of Shoestring, he wrote the 1980 episode "Mockingbird" which sticks in my mind after 39 years; there was the 1981 series The Nightmare Man; and "Orbit", the third-last episode of Blake's 7 and one of the absolute best. (Avon: "Dammit, what weighs seventy kilos?" Orac: "Vila weighs seventy-three kilos.") I must hunt down the 1965 series Undermind, for which he wrote the last two episodes.
Holmes' life ended sadly early. He died aged only 60 in 1986, half-way through writing the final story of that year's Doctor Who season. This was the much contested Trial of a Time Lord arc, for which Holmes had contributed the first four episodes and was due to write the final two (but died before starting the last one). A higher-up at the BBC had sent round a brutal deconstruction of the flaws of the first four episodes (generally now referred to as The Mysterious Planet), which clearly deeply wounded Holmes and possibly even contributed to his illness and death. In a career of a quarter of a century, nobody before had been quite so brutal about his writing. It's painful reading, and the one positive thing I will say is that the account here raises Eric Saward's reputation in my view, as he attempted (but failed) to shield Holmes and also keep the show on the road. But between the lines it's clear that Holmes no longer had what he had once had had. Between 1982 and his death in 1986, literally the only non-Who scripts he sold were three episodes of Bergerac and five for a short-lived drama series set in a Citizens Advice Bureau. Brutal though it is, the BBC higher-up's criticism of The Mysterious Planet is mostly pretty well-founded.
This is good material for a wider study of how the BBC (and indeed British television) changed in the Thatcher era (1981 is the point at which it all seems to go wrong). But it's an engaging book in its own right, illustrated with treatments and out-takes from Holmes' writing. It's also striking how few people seem to have a bad word for him (cf John Nathan-Turner). It would be interesting to know a bit more about his war record and early journalism, but otherwise this is a pretty decent example of biography of an important figure in cult sf.
August 25, 2022
Robert Holmes is perhaps best known for his work as writer and script editor on 'Doctor Who', but his career covered a large array of television series including soap operas and other science fiction series.
Richard Molesworth has written clearly and comprehensively on the tragically short life of a writer who had a large impact on drama on British television.
Richard Molesworth has written clearly and comprehensively on the tragically short life of a writer who had a large impact on drama on British television.
January 24, 2016
Robert Holmes: A Life in Words is an interesting book talking about the great man’s career in writing for television and, it is fair to say, that he wrote a hell of a lot of television from Emergency Ward 10 to Dr Finlay's Casebook to Doctor Who to Blake's 7 to Shoestring to Bergerac.
Probably more interesting to me was that he wrote some episodes of Miracles Take Longer a drama set in a Citizens Advice Bureau which flopped in the mid eighties and is probably entirely forgotten but possibly still in existence, unlike a lot of his work.
You don't get to know much about the man himself apart from what some of his colleagues have to say about him which is more often than not highly complementary but apart from the fact that was obviously very driven and focussed when writing we don’t really get to know the man that well, which is a bit of a shame.
The stuff about his work on Doctor Who was obviously very interesting to me and you do get the impression that Philip Hinchliffe was basically pushed and would happily have stayed in the job.
There was a lot of mentions of the politics in the BBC regarding the issues they had when Holmes had to completely rewrite scripts from the bottom up and the arguments they had with upstairs at the beeb because they had to pay him a fee for writing as well as paying him to be a script editor, which is only fair as he was doing two jobs at that point both writing and editing.
It is explained in the book exactly why that had to happen, and the fact that he was able to do it basically saved the day as otherwise they would have had nothing to broadcast. It is also telling that these episodes that were written on the hoof were often the best of the Holmes stories.
I really enjoyed this book.
Probably more interesting to me was that he wrote some episodes of Miracles Take Longer a drama set in a Citizens Advice Bureau which flopped in the mid eighties and is probably entirely forgotten but possibly still in existence, unlike a lot of his work.
You don't get to know much about the man himself apart from what some of his colleagues have to say about him which is more often than not highly complementary but apart from the fact that was obviously very driven and focussed when writing we don’t really get to know the man that well, which is a bit of a shame.
The stuff about his work on Doctor Who was obviously very interesting to me and you do get the impression that Philip Hinchliffe was basically pushed and would happily have stayed in the job.
There was a lot of mentions of the politics in the BBC regarding the issues they had when Holmes had to completely rewrite scripts from the bottom up and the arguments they had with upstairs at the beeb because they had to pay him a fee for writing as well as paying him to be a script editor, which is only fair as he was doing two jobs at that point both writing and editing.
It is explained in the book exactly why that had to happen, and the fact that he was able to do it basically saved the day as otherwise they would have had nothing to broadcast. It is also telling that these episodes that were written on the hoof were often the best of the Holmes stories.
I really enjoyed this book.
February 9, 2024
This is the ultimate specialist audience 5-star book. Basically, if you're into UK archive TV from the 1950s-1980s then this book is your jam, scones and butter. Molesworth kicks off the book with an anecdote about getting access to Holmes' actual writing study in his home, about 20 years after his passing. This sets off a headrush of ambition to write the book. It is literal documentary-style using the archives of the study to show the working career of a popular TV writer from the mid-late 20th century. It may well be the most comprehensive micro-account of this area of cultural history in existence.
On Holmes himself, Molesworth does not give us any amateur psychology or literary analysis. But a complex and rich picture of Holmes does still emerge, namely of a man deeply committed to the art of clever, popular adventure fiction with serious intellectual and character depth. Holmes synthesised Victoriana, witty early 20th century British pop fiction, and ideas-driven golden age SF to create a deeply influential strand of genre writing. Nigel Kneale has grown in recogntion over the years (deservedly) but Holmes, along with Brian Clemens and Terry Nation, also merit wider consideration as important postwar TV dramatists. Their influence is everywhere.
On Holmes himself, Molesworth does not give us any amateur psychology or literary analysis. But a complex and rich picture of Holmes does still emerge, namely of a man deeply committed to the art of clever, popular adventure fiction with serious intellectual and character depth. Holmes synthesised Victoriana, witty early 20th century British pop fiction, and ideas-driven golden age SF to create a deeply influential strand of genre writing. Nigel Kneale has grown in recogntion over the years (deservedly) but Holmes, along with Brian Clemens and Terry Nation, also merit wider consideration as important postwar TV dramatists. Their influence is everywhere.
February 3, 2023
I'm somewhat amused by the reviews of people complaining that there isn't much about Holmes' personal life. Molesworth has done an excellent job researching and collecting information for this book, which has a very clear and obvious focus on his writing career. It has to. That's all he has to work with.
This is not a book for someone who wants a good story. Instead, it's for scholars of television and aficionados of Holmes and his work. I would have loved to learn more about him as a person, but the idea that someone's life can be chronicled in that way is arrogantly inaccurate. For most people, what we leave behind are breadcrumbs and questions. So it is with Robert Holmes.
Kudos to Richard Molesworth. I appreciate so much his dedication toward shining a light on such an underappreciated craftsman. It seems fitting, too, that what personality we glimpse of Robert Holmes is wry, modest, and somewhat unknowable...in perfect dramatic sympathy with the sparse ingredients available for pondering his inner life.
This is not a book for someone who wants a good story. Instead, it's for scholars of television and aficionados of Holmes and his work. I would have loved to learn more about him as a person, but the idea that someone's life can be chronicled in that way is arrogantly inaccurate. For most people, what we leave behind are breadcrumbs and questions. So it is with Robert Holmes.
Kudos to Richard Molesworth. I appreciate so much his dedication toward shining a light on such an underappreciated craftsman. It seems fitting, too, that what personality we glimpse of Robert Holmes is wry, modest, and somewhat unknowable...in perfect dramatic sympathy with the sparse ingredients available for pondering his inner life.
May 8, 2017
Biography of TV writer Robert Holmes, and a look back at his career writing for some of the best known TV programmes such as Doctor Who, Blake's 7, Bergerac and Shoestring.
There is plenty to enjoy and learn about in this detailed biography, for me there was a little too much detailing of plots and outlines for never commissioned TV shows, and that detracted from the narrative of the life of Holmes.
The story outlines used as interludes made navigating through the book a little harder than normal and really should have been appendices, I just skipped through a lot of these unmade TV shows.
Obviously the author had done a lot of research and went-to-town on setting down all possible dates and documenting any missed times for scripts, which became a little laborious. Richard Marson's biography on John Nathan-Turner (Both of whom do feature in this book) is a good example of how to better do this type of biography and concentrate on the narrative of a life and how the writer is trying to tell it.
It got better once on to the subject of Doctor Who and these were the most interesting sections around production battles, script development and BBC practices. I'm not sure I learnt anything more about how Robert Holmes would set about writing a script, there seemed to be little investigation of his writing method and thought processes. It seemed we had plenty of comment from Terrance Dicks, Barry Letts and other Doctor Who production personnel but I thought we could have had more out of them on how Holmes worked as a writer, rather than general debates around the portrayal of violence.
I also thought the book was let down in places by poor proofing, but of interest to those who want to know more about writing for television and certainly a most detailed depiction of a writers' life.
There is plenty to enjoy and learn about in this detailed biography, for me there was a little too much detailing of plots and outlines for never commissioned TV shows, and that detracted from the narrative of the life of Holmes.
The story outlines used as interludes made navigating through the book a little harder than normal and really should have been appendices, I just skipped through a lot of these unmade TV shows.
Obviously the author had done a lot of research and went-to-town on setting down all possible dates and documenting any missed times for scripts, which became a little laborious. Richard Marson's biography on John Nathan-Turner (Both of whom do feature in this book) is a good example of how to better do this type of biography and concentrate on the narrative of a life and how the writer is trying to tell it.
It got better once on to the subject of Doctor Who and these were the most interesting sections around production battles, script development and BBC practices. I'm not sure I learnt anything more about how Robert Holmes would set about writing a script, there seemed to be little investigation of his writing method and thought processes. It seemed we had plenty of comment from Terrance Dicks, Barry Letts and other Doctor Who production personnel but I thought we could have had more out of them on how Holmes worked as a writer, rather than general debates around the portrayal of violence.
I also thought the book was let down in places by poor proofing, but of interest to those who want to know more about writing for television and certainly a most detailed depiction of a writers' life.
September 20, 2017
Enjoyed this, found it interesting, learned a few things, but could have included a bit more investigative research.
February 13, 2014
A thorough and enjoyable biography of the man. It does suffer slightly from the obvious lack of sources that would have allowed a closer insight into his life, like a personal diary or in-depth interview with his wife, and numerous episodes such as one or two spells of ill health that stopped him working remain obscure, but it makes the best of the sources available.
The book does struggle to back up its claim that Holmes should be considered alongside Plater, Potter, Rosenthal and the other great TV dramatists of his generation, however. As an in-depth survey of his work, it shows Holmes to have been a master craftsman of thriller-type stories, but not an originator of great character-driven drama. Molesworth could have been a little more frank in acknowledging that it's not for nothing that Holmes never wrote a Play for Today. If he had managed to originate a long-running series of his own, however, he would surely be considered alongside Brian Clemens and Nigel Kneale, which would be just.
The book does struggle to back up its claim that Holmes should be considered alongside Plater, Potter, Rosenthal and the other great TV dramatists of his generation, however. As an in-depth survey of his work, it shows Holmes to have been a master craftsman of thriller-type stories, but not an originator of great character-driven drama. Molesworth could have been a little more frank in acknowledging that it's not for nothing that Holmes never wrote a Play for Today. If he had managed to originate a long-running series of his own, however, he would surely be considered alongside Brian Clemens and Nigel Kneale, which would be just.
August 14, 2014
Not much I can say, is there? If you grew up at a certain time under certain stars, this will be essential reading. If you don't know what I'm talking about, move on, nothing to see here.
This book is very complete. Possibly too complete. It's database-fan rather than passion-fan. But still plenty to enjoy.
This book is very complete. Possibly too complete. It's database-fan rather than passion-fan. But still plenty to enjoy.
March 6, 2023
Great and well researched read about perhaps the greatest writer Doctor Who ever had.
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