Born: 20th May 1926 (as John Vincent Lucarotti)
Died: 20th November 1994 (aged 68 years)
Episodes Broadcast: 1964, 1966, 1975

John Lucarotti was born in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire. He became a Royal Navy pilot during the Second World War, and remained in the service for nearly a decade. He married Lorna Blaney in 1950, and the following year they immigrated to Canada. Living in Toronto, Ontario, Lucarotti was an aircraft engineer and then an encyclopedia salesman before turning to writing. He contributed a plethora of scripts to both the television and radio arms of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where Sydney Newman was the Supervisor of Drama Production. Lucarotti became a Canadian citizen in 1956, but decided to return to the UK a few years later.

Newman had preceded Lucarotti to Great Britain, taking a post as Head of Drama at ABC. Newman helped Lucarotti obtain commissions on ABC series such as The Avengers and The Protectors, and he soon found work with other companies, including episodes of Ghost Squad. Newman moved to the BBC at the start of 1963, and Lucarotti soon followed. In 1956, he had researched and written a lengthy serial entitled The Three Journeys Of Marco Polo for CBC Radio. He now found himself commissioned to write an adventure on the same topic for Newman's new series, Doctor Who: Marco Polo. Another historical, The Aztecs, followed soon thereafter, inspired by time Lucarotti had spent living in Mexico.

Lucarotti was frustrated when a succession of story ideas failed to materialise

A year later, Lucarotti was invited to contribute to Doctor Who again. However, a succession of story ideas -- one set around the 1857 Indian Mutiny, another about the Viking discovery of Newfoundland -- failed to materialise. Frustrated, Lucarotti was finally able to make progress with The Massacre Of St Bartholomew's Eve, only to see his scripts substantially rewritten by story editor Donald Tosh.

Lucarotti then moved on to other programmes, including episodes of United! and Paul Temple. He also wrote more than thirty scripts for the oil industry drama The Troubleshooters. In 1969, he married Rose-Marie Sandy, and they had a daughter named Charlann. In 1974, outgoing Doctor Who script editor Terrance Dicks recommended Lucarotti to his successor, Robert Holmes; Dicks and Lucarotti had worked together on the science-fiction drama Moonbase 3. Holmes engaged Lucarotti for the serial that would become The Ark In Space. Once again, however, Lucarotti found his work largely jettisoned. This would be his final contribution to Doctor Who.

Lucarotti's later credits often indulged his passion for all things nautical, such as Operation Patch, Treasure Island and The Ravelled Thread. (Indeed, such was his love of the sea that he often lived on a houseboat moored at various ports. His first Doctor Who serials had been written in Majorca, and the Revenge Of The Cybermen in Corsica.) He also took the opportunity to novelise his Doctor Who serials for Target Books. Lucarotti and his wife ran restaurants in London and France prior to his death from spinal cancer on November 20th, 1994.