Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a writer. Some of his works included The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony and The Trial. (PROSE: Nanomorphosis)

In the 1920s in Vienna shortly before his death, Kafka constructed a complex virtual narrative for River Song to help her fight against the Discordia. In order to achieve this, he was plugged into the TARDIS's telepathic circuits. Kafka used Prague's St Vitus Cathedral as an architectural model in the construct. He also had a brief encounter with the Fourth Doctor, who came to their rescue, as well as to retrieve his TARDIS, which River borrowed without permission.

After River left Kafka almost at the deathbed, his friend Mr Brod came to visit him and was grappling with the dilemma whether to fulfil Kafka's wish to burn all his writing or not. Dora was also invited to attend Kafka in his final hours. (AUDIO: Whodunnit?)

Legacy
Emily Blandish had not read any of Kafka's works. Detective Honoré Lechasseur brought him up after stating that it would seemingly be impossible for the Doctor to be "magically transformed" into her, a woman. He had, in fact, regenerated into a new man. (PROSE: The Cabinet of Light)

After Fitz Kreiner's trial for supposedly bombing St Anthony's Chapel, he described the predicament he'd found himself in as "some Kafka-esque parody of justice." (PROSE: The Domino Effect)

When Peri Brown had been at school, she had spent a term studying the works of Franz Kafka. She had found them fascinating as well as highly disturbing. On the Vipod Mor, she at first compared the people there to be like characters in a Kafka story, but later decided it was more like a story written by a psychotic Lewis Carroll. (PROSE: Slipback)

When naming great minds who had worked in Prague, the Eleventh Doctor noted that Kafka wrote there. (COMIC: The Broken Man)

Behind the scenes
David Tennant starred as Franz Kafka in Murray Gold's BBC Radio audio play Kafka the Musical. He won "Best Actor" at the BBC Audio Drama Awards for the part. He was also played by Richard E Grant in Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life, written and directed by Peter Capaldi.