Born: 7th March 1931 (as Brian Leonard Hayles)
Died: 30th October 1978 (aged 47 years)
Episodes Broadcast: 1966-1967, 1969, 1972, 1974

Brian Hayles was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire. Interests in art and sculpture led him to become a teacher, first in Canada and then in Birmingham, West Midlands. The experience of writing productions for his students led Hayles to submit scripts for radio and television. Early radio work was broadcast from 1951, but it wasn't until 1962 that he earned his first television credit, a play called The Badger Game. Hayles soon found himself regularly contributing to programmes such as Swizzlewick, Crossroads and Z Cars. In 1965, he left teaching to write full-time; that year, he devised a thriller called Legend Of Death and co-created the football drama United!.

During 1965, Hayles also submitted several ideas to the Doctor Who production office, of which The Celestial Toymaker was taken forward. His scripts underwent substantial alteration, first by story editor Donald Tosh, and then by his successor, Gerry Davis. Nonetheless, Hayles was soon commissioned for The Smugglers, William Hartnell's penultimate serial as the First Doctor. During the tenure of Second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, Hayles created the eponymous monsters of The Ice Warriors and brought them back for a sequel, The Seeds Of Death. Other late Sixties television included episodes of Public Eye, Coronation Street, and Out Of The Unknown. For radio, he wrote the first of hundreds of episodes of The Archers in 1968.

Hayles made the unusual decision to portray benevolent Ice Warriors

Hayles continued to offer ideas for Doctor Who following Jon Pertwee's debut as the Third Doctor. He was finally successful with The Curse Of Peladon, highlighted by the unusual decision to portray benevolent members of the Ice Warrior race. Its sequel, The Monster Of Peladon, would be Hayles' final contribution to the series, although in the mid-Seventies he would novelise both The Ice Warriors and The Curse Of Peladon for Target Books.

Beyond Doctor Who, Hayles contributed to series such as Doomwatch and Barlow At Large during the Seventies. He also wrote screenplays for the movies Nothing But The Night, Warlords Of Atlantis and Arabian Adventure. In 1975 he published Spring At Brookfield, a tie-in to The Archers. Sadly, Hayles died suddenly on October 30th, 1978; he was only forty-seven years old. His last creation for television, the children's fantasy series The Moon Stallion, debuted sixteen days later.