Rona Munro

Born: 7th September 1959
Episodes Broadcast: 1989, 2017

Biography

Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, Rona Munro's interest in creative writing manifested while she was still a child. She was encouraged by a distant cousin, Angus MacVicar, whose many books included the Lost Planet series of children's science-fiction novels. Munro wrote and acted for the stage during her teenaged years. She studied history at Edinburgh University and became involved with the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Munro began to write steadily for the stage and radio during the early Eighties. A period performing as one-half of the comedy duo MsFits inspired one of her first television scripts, a 1989 installment of The Play On One; it featured one of the first appearances of the future Tenth/Fourteenth Doctor, David Tennant.

In 1987, Munro was invited to participate in a BBC training course, where one of the lecturers was Doctor Who script editor Andrew Cartmel. Having long enjoyed the programme, Munro asked to pitch ideas, which led to the development of Survival for Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor. Broadcast in 1989, it wound up being the last story transmitted before the BBC cancelled Doctor Who. Munro also novelised her serial for Target Books. She continued to develop occasional scripts for television during the Nineties, including an episode of Casualty. Munro turned her attention to the movies as well, writing screenplays for 1994's Ladybird Ladybird, directed by Ken Loach, and 1999's critical darling Aimée & Jaguar. She gave birth to a son, Danny, in 1991.

Following the turn of the century, Munro's focus was squarely on the stage. Amongst many celebrated works were two plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company and her award-winning trilogy of James I, James II and James III, which debuted at the National Theatre of Scotland in 2014. Munro also wrote the 2010 Emily Watson film Oranges And Sunshine. Having met future Doctor Who executive producer Steven Moffat at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006, she was delighted when he later inquired about her interest in returning to the programme. In 2017, Munro became the first writer to contribute to Doctor Who in both its twentieth- and twenty-first-century incarnations, with the broadcast of The Eaters Of Light starring Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor. She again provided a novelisation, which was published in 2022.

Credits
Writer
Survival
The Eaters Of Light

Updated 23rd July 2023