Born: 9th February 1969 (as Neil Claude Gadd)
Episodes Broadcast: 2013

Neil Gadd was born in Bristol. His mother, Edna, suffered from post-partum depression and eventually abandoned her family. She returned after two years to bring her children to live with their new step-father, Derek Cross, whose surname Neil assumed. A devotee of the fantasy genre -- including Doctor Who -- Neil started writing and illustrating comics from the age of eight. However, his family life faced further upheaval when his step-father stole money and ran away with another woman. His difficult childhood finally took its toll on Cross' behaviour, and he was eventually forced to leave home. After years of living precariously, he took night classes to complete his basic schooling. Cross then pursued higher education at the University of Leeds, from which he graduated in 1995 with a Masters of Arts degree in English.

Cross soon found work in sales at Picador, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers, but his aspiration was to be a writer. His first novel, the crime thriller Mr In-Between, was released in 1998, and was followed by several further entries in the genre. Cross married a New Zealander named Nadya, with whom he had two sons. Early in the twenty-first century, the family relocated to her homeland. Around the same time, Mr In-Between was adapted as a movie; although he was not involved with the script, Cross did make an uncredited cameo appearance. In 2006, he published a memoir entitled Heartland.

The BBC commissioned Cross' crime drama Luther, which starred Idris Elba

Having established his credentials as an author, Cross decided to try his hand at adapting his fourth novel, 2004's Always The Sun. This led to an invitation to contribute to the fifth season of Spooks in 2006; over the next two years, he would write seven further scripts for the series, as well as one installment of The Fixer. Cross' success prompted the BBC to commission his crime drama Luther, which starred Idris Elba and included Eighth Doctor Paul McGann in a recurring role. Cross was both the producer and writer for all five seasons between 2010 and 2019. A 2011 prequel novel, Luther: The Calling, would be his final book as he turned his attention to scriptwriting full-time.

For some years, Cross had made known his interest in writing for Doctor Who. Although the programme's original twenty-first-century showrunner, Russell T Davies, had hoped to bring Cross aboard, his availability precluded this. When Cross' friend, Caroline Skinner, became Doctor Who's executive producer, she arranged for him to write a story for Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor, which became 2013's spooky Hide. The script was so well-received by the production team that Davies' successor, Steven Moffat, immediately asked Cross for another adventure. The result, The Rings Of Akhaten, would actually precede his earlier script by two spots in the broadcast order. The same year, famed director-producer Guillermo del Toro hired Cross to perform some uncredited rewrites on his big-budget action movie Pacific Rim, and to contribute to the screenplay for the horror movie Mama.

In 2014, Cross developed the short-lived pirate series Crossbones for American network NBC; it provided him with his first credit as an executive producer. At one stage, he was also expected to contribute to that year's Doctor Who run -- Peter Capaldi's initial season as the Twelfth Doctor -- although this did not come to pass. Cross went on to mix crime and science-fiction to create Hard Sun. In the Twenties, he adapted his 2009 novel Burial as The Sister. Cross also co-created The Mosquito Coast, based upon Paul Theroux's 1981 book.