Matt Jones

Born: 5th August 1968 (as Matthew David Jones)
Episodes Broadcast: 2006, 2008

Biography

Appropriately enough, Doctor Who loomed large in the formative stages of Matt Jones' professional writing career. His first published work came in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine starting in 1995. The same year, Jones wrote a First Doctor story for the anthology Decalog 2: Lost Property from Virgin Publishing, and followed it with the 1996 novel Bad Therapy, an adventure of the Seventh Doctor for Virgin's Doctor Who: The New Adventures range. Another New Adventures novel entitled Beyond The Sun followed in 1997, by which time the series had switched its focus to former companion Bernice Summerfield. In 1998, Jones adapted Beyond The Sun as an audio play for Big Finish Productions, and contributed a tale of the Second Doctor to BBC Books' inaugural Short Trips collection.

It was around this time that Jones began to pursue work in television. In 1999, he script edited Russell T Davies' groundbreaking Queer As Folk, as well as Love In The 21st Century, for which he also wrote the final episode. As the century turned, Jones was a script editor for Clocking Off and Linda Green, provided storylines for Coronation Street, and wrote for Children's Ward. Nonetheless, he still found time to contribute a short story to 2000's Professor Bernice Summerfield and The Dead Men Diaries, which launched a new series from Big Finish Productions. Television was very much Jones' focus, however, and he earned his first producer's credit on his own script for single drama Now You See Her. He then created Serious And Organised and co-created POW with future Doctor Who writer Matthew Graham, becoming an executive producer on the latter; he also took the reins of Shameless.

Perhaps inevitably, after Davies became the executive producer of Doctor Who he invited Jones to write for the programme. As a result, the horror-tinged The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit was broadcast during the 2006 season, with David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor. Two years later, Jones' Dead Man Walking was part of the second season of the spin-off series Torchwood. Jones also wrote a story for Panini Publishing's The Doctor Who Storybook 2010. Meanwhile, after a stint as the producer of Talk To Me, Jones became an executive producer on both the British and American versions of Skins, and a supervising producer on the international co-production Rogue. Amongst his scriptwriting credits were episodes of Dirk Gently, Mr Selfridge, Lucky Man and The Split.

Credits
Writer
The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit
Dead Man Walking

Updated 13th May 2022