Steve Thompson
Born: 1967 (as Stephen Thompson)
Episodes Broadcast: 2011, 2013-2014
London-born Steve Thompson was an ardent Doctor Who fan as a
child: aged ten, he attended a party dressed as a Voc Robot from 1977's
The Robots Of Death. He obtained a degree
in mathematics from the University of Warwick, and spent the next twelve
years as a teacher at Tiffin School in Kingston upon Thames, London,
eventually becoming head of maths. By this time, Thompson had married
barrister Lorna Skinner. In 2000, he left his job to care for their
newborn son, the first of five children. Thompson began to dabble in
writing, and the result was a play called Damages. It received
interest from the Bush Theatre, where it was performed in 2004 to rave
reviews, earning Thompson the Meyer-Whitworth Award for new playwrights.
He became writer-in-residence at the Bush Theatre and his next work,
Whipping It Up, transferred to the West End.
The success of Thompson's plays led to work in television, starting with
two episodes of Doctors in 2005, followed by scripts for The
Whistleblowers and Mutual Friends. Meanwhile, Steven Moffat
and Mark Gatiss were setting up their Arthur Conan Doyle adaptation
Sherlock when Moffat attended a performance of Whipping It
Up. In need of a third writer for the show, he decided to invite
Thompson aboard. With Moffat also in charge of Doctor Who, it was
perhaps inevitable that Thompson would soon find himself writing for
Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor as well. His first contribution was the
pirate adventure The Curse Of The
Black Spot in 2011, followed by 2013's Journey To The Centre Of The
TARDIS. With Peter Capaldi having taken over as the Twelfth
Doctor, Thompson and Moffat collaborated on 2014's Time Heist.
By this point, Thompson had also written for programmes such as
Silk, the revival of Upstairs Downstairs, and
Sinbad. In 2016, he conceived the period drama Jericho,
for which he was an executive producer and lead writer. Thompson then
contributed to Deep State before developing Vienna Blood,
based upon Frank Tallis' Liebermann Papers. In the Twenties, he
co-created the historical drama Leonardo with Frank Spotnitz.
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