Ben Aaronovitch
Born: February 1964 (as Ben Dylan Aaronovitch)
Episodes Broadcast: 1988-1989
Ben Aaronovitch was born in St Pancras, London. During the mid-Eighties,
he started trying to make inroads as a television scriptwriter. In 1987,
BBC script editor Caroline Oulton helped him pitch an idea called “Knight Fall” to her
Doctor Who counterpart, Andrew Cartmel. Although Cartmel didn't
think the concept was right for the programme, it led to Aaronovitch
writing both the 1988 and 1989 Doctor Who season premieres: Remembrance Of The Daleks and Battlefield. Both featured
Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor. In 1988, Aaronovitch and Cartmel
collaborated on an unused script for a Doctor Who stage play
called War World. Some concepts were repurposed for “Earth Aid”, which
likely would have been the 1990 season premiere had Doctor Who
not been cancelled first. At the time, Aaronovitch was also developing a
second serial, known as “Crime
Of The Century”, which would have introduced new companion
Raine. Having been providing more and more assistance to Cartmel, there
was thought that Aaronovitch might have been his successor as Doctor
Who's script editor.
Instead, Aaronovitch went on to script episodes of Casualty and
the science-fiction soap opera Jupiter Moon. He novelised Remembrance Of The Daleks for Target
Books and then wrote or co-wrote three Seventh Doctor novels for Virgin
Publishing's Doctor Who: The New Adventures series. The first,
released in 1992, was based on “Transit”, another of
Aaronovitch's unmade Doctor Who storylines; the same year, he
married Marie Fofana. Aaronovitch's last television credit came on an
episode of Dark Knight in 2001. He wrote a Sixth Doctor
short story for the 2006 anthology Short Trips: Time Signature,
published by Big Finish Productions. Other work for Big Finish included
contributions to their Bernice Summerfield books and Blake's
7 audio plays, plus another collaboration with Cartmel on a 2011
audio adaptation of “Earth
Aid” for the Doctor Who: The Lost Stories range.
Meanwhile, his television career having stalled, Aaronovitch took a job
at a Waterstones bookstore. This inspired him to try his hand at
original prose, and the result was the Peter Grant series of urban
fantasy novels. The first volume, Rivers Of London, was
published in 2011, and became a major success. In addition to a number
of sequels, Aaronovitch worked with Cartmel on several comic book
tie-ins. It was announced in 2019 that a television adaptation of
Rivers Of London was forthcoming.
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