Chris Boucher
Born: 1943 (as Christopher Franklin Boucher)
Died: 11th December 2022 (aged 79 years)
Episodes Broadcast: 1977
Chris Boucher was born in Maldon, Essex. He joined Calor Gas as a
management trainee, and his employers supported his completion of a
Bachelor of Arts in Economics at the University of Essex. In 1966,
Boucher married Lynda Macklin. When the first of three sons was born in
1969, Boucher decided to supplement his income through writing. He
started contributing jokes to Braden's Week, and then wrote for
other comedy series such as Dave Allen At Large and Romany
Jones. In early 1975, Boucher began seeking writing opportunities
beyond comedy. A lifelong fan of science-fiction, he submitted a
storyline entitled “The
Silent Scream” to the Doctor Who production office.
Although producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes
found it unusable, they saw enough potential in Boucher's writing to
warrant further discussions.
Over several months, the three men worked together to develop The Face Of Evil. It featured Tom
Baker as the Fourth Doctor and aired at the start of 1977. Here Boucher
introduced a clever savage named Leela, who was so popular with
Hinchcliffe and Holmes that they decided to keep her as an ongoing
companion. As such, Boucher was also commissioned to write the
subsequent adventure, The Robots Of
Death. The following season, he contributed Image Of The Fendahl. Boucher was
discussing a fourth Doctor Who serial when he was offered the
chance to become the script editor of Blake's 7, the BBC's new,
more adult science-fiction drama. He remained with the show throughout
its four-season run and wrote nine episodes, including the 1981 series
finale.
Boucher then became the script editor of crime dramas Shoestring,
Juliet Bravo, Bergerac and The Bill, contributing
scripts to each of them. He made contact with the Doctor Who
production office again in 1984 with a proposal entitled “The Pool Of Death”,
but nothing came of it. Boucher finally returned to science-fiction in
1987 with his own creation, Star Cops, only to find himself
frequently at odds with its producer; it was cancelled after a single
season. Boucher turned to prose during the Nineties, first producing
five Star Cops novelisations. BBC Books later published a
sequence of four new adventures for the Fourth Doctor and Leela,
starting with Last Man Running in 1998. In 2002, he wrote an
audio drama called Death's Head for Magic Bullet Productions. It
was part of the Kaldor City range which drew upon elements of
both The Robots Of Death and
Blake's 7. Boucher died on December 11th, 2022.
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