Born: 10th October 1931 (as Victor Francis Pemberton)
Died: 13th August 2017 (aged 85 years)
Episodes Broadcast: 1967-1968

Victor Pemberton was born in Islington, London. An early indication of his writing prowess came when, at just eleven years old, he had an article published in Life magazine which offered a child's perspective on life during wartime. Pemberton delivered mail and worked in the publicity department at 20th Century Fox, before his National Service in the Royal Air Force saw him hosting his own radio programme. After demob, Pemberton worked as a clerk for a travel agent. At this point, he was living with two actors, including his later husband, actor David Spenser. Pemberton routinely criticised the material they were given to rehearse, and so they challenged him to demonstrate that he could do better. Pemberton promptly sold his first radio script in 1961, and had several more plays produced in the years that followed.

In 1964, Pemberton submitted a storyline entitled “The Slide” to the Doctor Who production office. Although it was rejected, a modified version (which replaced the Doctor with a different character) was later commissioned by Peter Bryant for broadcast on the BBC Light Programme. Meanwhile, having left the travel agency to concentrate on his writing, Pemberton started supplementing his income by taking jobs as an extra. This led to a handful of credited roles, including episodes of No Hiding Place and The Rat Catchers. Pemberton then played scientist Jules Fauré in the 1967 Doctor Who serial The Moonbase, which starred Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor. A few months later, Pemberton earned his first writing credit for television, on an episode of Send Foster.

Peter Bryant brought Pemberton onto Doctor Who as an assistant story editor

Later in 1967, Peter Bryant joined Doctor Who as its story editor. Remembering Pemberton from the radio version of “The Slide”, Bryant brought him aboard as an assistant story editor, beginning with The Evil Of The Daleks. When Bryant was promoted to producer on a trial basis for The Tomb Of The Cybermen, Pemberton was credited as its story editor. But while Bryant was eventually made Doctor Who's producer on an ongoing basis, Pemberton decided to return to freelance writing following uncredited work on The Abominable Snowmen (in which Spenser appeared as the young monk Thonmi) and The Ice Warriors. Instead, he immediately scripted Fury From The Deep, the first story to feature the sonic screwdriver. A subsequent proposal, “The Eye In Space”, was abandoned.

Pemberton saw out the Sixties by writing for Adventure Weekly and serving as the script editor on A Handful Of Thieves. His last acting credit came in 1970, on an installment of BBC Play Of The Month. Pemberton then concentrated on writing, including episodes of Timeslip, Tightrope and Ace Of Wands. He also continued to write prolifically for radio and, in 1976, scripted a Doctor Who audio drama for Argo Records called The Pescatons, featuring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.

During the Eighties, Pemberton began working on language education programmes for the BBC, while still contributing occasional scripts such as the telefilm The Case Of The Frightened Lady. He also spent time working in the Kuwaiti and Nigerian television industries. In 1986, Pemberton novelised Fury From The Deep for Target Books; a prose version of The Pescatons would follow in 1991. For the Jim Henson Company, Pemberton produced framing sequences for the British editions of Fraggle Rock. In 1987, he and Spenser formed the documentary-maker Saffron; the following year, they won an International Emmy Award for Gwen: A Juliet Remembered, about Dame Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies.

In the Nineties, Pemberton forged a new career path as a novelist, starting in 1991 when he was asked to adapt Our Family, a semi-autobiographical radio drama he had written in 1989. Pemberton's prose version was so successful that it spawned more than a dozen novels set in wartime London. He continued to work on these books after he and Spenser moved to Spain; they married there in 2006. Spenser died in 2013, and Pemberton passed away on August 13th, 2017.