Andrew Cartmel
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Andrew Cartmel is a British science-fiction writer and journalist. Raised in Canada, he took a post-graduate course in Computer Studies and worked on computer-aided design for Unigraphics Solutions in Cambridge, England during the mid-1980s, before he turned more to writing and managed to gain an agent on the strength of two unproduced scripts, also attending workshops run by the BBC Television Drama Script Unit.
In 1987, Cartmel was hired as the script editor for the twenty-fourth season of the iconic science-fiction programme Doctor Who, having been recommended to the producer John Nathan-Turner by the producer's agent, who had seen some unproduced scripts Cartmel had written. Cartmel worked on the programme for the next two years, overseeing the final three seasons of its original run on BBC One. He brought in several new writers, taking the series in a new creative direction.
The most lasting legacy of this new direction was the so-called "Cartmel Masterplan", a backstory that restored some of the mystery of the Doctor's background and eventually would explain exactly who he was. Unfortunately, although hints were dropped in the last two seasons, the proposed revelations never materialized on screen as the programme was taken off the airwaves in 1989.
However, even if Doctor Who had not come to an end in 1989 Cartmel would have left the show anyway, as he had already been head-hunted due to his success there to take over the Script Editor's role on the BBC's hugely popular medical drama series Casualty.
After one season working on Casualty in 1990, Cartmel left the television industry for the rest of the decade. During the 1990s he wrote comic strips for 2000 AD and Doctor Who Magazine and three Doctor Who novels for Virgin Publishing in their New Adventures series. This series had used elements of the "masterplan" as part of their overall story arc for the Doctor, particularly the last Seventh Doctor novel Lungbarrow (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/ebooks/lungbarrow/index.shtml), written by Marc Platt.
In 1999 his first original novel, The Wise was published in Virgin's short-lived series of new science-fiction novels, Virgin Worlds. The same year, he became editor of the science-fiction magazine Starburst, although the appointment was a short one and he left the magazine in 2000. In 2001 he returned to television as the Script Editor of the second season of Channel 5's fantasy / adventure series Darkest Knight, writing what proved to be the series' final episode at the end of the season.
Recently he has also returned to writing for Doctor Who, contributing a script, Winter for the Adept, to Big Finish Productions' range of full-cast, licensed Doctor Who audio dramas in 2000, and in 2003 writing the Doctor Who novella Foreign Devils for Telos Publishing.
As of September 2004, Cartmel currently has two new books in development. The first, an account of his work on the Doctor Who television series entitled Script Doctor - The Inside Story of Doctor Who 1986-89 is due for release in February 2005. The second book, a mainstream science-fiction novel called Swine Fever, is currently due in May 2005.
He lives in London.