Born: 5th June 1968 (as Gareth John Pritchard Roberts)
Episodes Broadcast: 2007-2011, 2014

Gareth Roberts was born in Chesham, Buckinghamshire. He became a fan of Doctor Who from a young age, and it inspired some of his earliest writing. Roberts studied drama at King Alfred's College and Liverpool Polytechnic. His first novel was 1993's The Highest Science for Virgin Publishing's Doctor Who: The New Adventures range featuring the Seventh Doctor. The following year, Roberts made the first of several occasional contributions to the comic strip in Doctor Who Magazine with a Fifth Doctor story called The Lunar Strangers. Two more New Adventures novels would follow, but he really hit his stride when Virgin launched The Missing Adventures as a companion line featuring earlier Doctors. Roberts' first book for this range was 1995's The Romance Of Crime, the start of a trilogy of stories for the Fourth Doctor, the second Romana and K·9. He also wrote The Plotters, a well-received historical novel starring the First Doctor, and contributed short stories to several anthologies.

Meanwhile, Roberts had begun to embark on a career in television. In 1996, he started providing storylines for the soap opera Springhill, and then worked in a similar capacity on Coronation Street. Roberts joined Emmerdale as a story editor, and subsequently wrote several episodes. He also contributed scripts to Brookside. Moving away from soap after the turn of the century, Roberts wrote for programmes like Swiss Toni and the revival of Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased). But Doctor Who remained a professional interest of his, and he co-wrote two audio dramas for Big Finish Productions with Clayton Hickman: 2001's The One Doctor for the Sixth Doctor, and the following year's Bang-Bang-A-Boom! for the Seventh Doctor. Roberts and Hickman also collaborated with Mark Gatiss on a failed bid to revive Doctor Who at the BBC.

Roberts wrote short preludes, called TARDISodes, for each episode of the 2006 season

When Russell T Davies successfully brought Doctor Who back to television shortly afterwards, Roberts became heavily involved with tie-in media. He wrote three Ninth Doctor stories for the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, as well as the 2005 novel Only Human for BBC Books. Davies then asked Roberts to develop Attack Of The Graske, an interactive adventure for the BBC Red Button Service which was launched at Christmas 2005. The following year, Roberts wrote short preludes, called TARDISodes, for each episode of the 2006 season, as well as the novella I Am A Dalek for the BBC Books Quick Reads line. He was also involved with various iterations of the Doctor Who Annual, Yearbook and Storybook.

Finally, Roberts was assigned a script for the series itself, and 2007's The Shakespeare Code would become the first of three adventures he wrote or co-wrote for David Tennant's Tenth Doctor. At the same time, Roberts collaborated with Davies on Invasion Of The Bane, the 2007 pilot for The Sarah Jane Adventures. He would become one of the spin-off series' most prolific writers, receiving a credit on nine further stories. Roberts novelised the Tenth Doctor's involvement in 2009's The Wedding Of Sarah Jane Smith, which also featured his memorable recurring villain, the Trickster. He was also responsible for what unexpectedly turned out to be the show's final serial, The Man Who Never Was, in 2011. With The Sarah Jane Adventures ending prematurely after the death of its star, Elisabeth Sladen, Roberts moved on to write for the replacement series Davies had devised, Wizards Vs Aliens.

Roberts returned to the main Doctor Who series in 2010 with The Lodger, based on the last of his Doctor Who Magazine comics. This was the first of two stories which would pair Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor with the affable everyman Craig Owens, played by James Corden. In 2012, he was given the honour of producing the long-awaited novelisation of the late Douglas Adams' incomplete Doctor Who story, Shada. Roberts then co-wrote 2014's The Caretaker for Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor. Subsequent television work included episodes of Jekyll And Hyde and The Librarians. Roberts intended to return to prose with a short story for Doctor Who: The Target Book, a 2017 anthology from BBC Books. However, his contribution was dropped from the volume following complaints about comments Roberts had made on social media regarding transgendered individuals.