The Brain of Morbius was attributed to Robin Bland, a pseudonym used due to Terrance Dicks's dissatisfaction with Robert Holmes's rewrites.
A pseudonym is a false name under which a writer publishes his or her work.
Few Doctor Who writers have regularly written under an assumed name, usually under very specific circumstances; most often, writers have used a pseudonym when they wrote a story but weren't legally entitled to receive credit for it.
On other occasions, a pseudonym was used as a way to share credit amongst several writers; or to express the writer's dissatisfaction in the way their story had been handled by the producers or publishers.
List[]
Writers[]
Television[]
- Norman Ashby: A pseudonym employed by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln for The Dominators after they felt mistreated by the production team.
- Guy Leopold: A pseudonym used by co-writers Barry Letts and Robert Sloman for The Dæmons.
- Stephen Harris: Pyramids of Mars had originally been written by Lewis Greifer. However the script was considered unworkable. Greifer was unavailable to rewrite the script, so Robert Holmes rewrote it and used "Stephen Harris" as a pseudonym.
- Robin Bland: Terrance Dicks was dissatisfied with rewrites to his script for The Brain of Morbius by script editor Robert Holmes. He requested that it air under "some bland pseudonym". Robert Holmes arranged that the story came out as by "Robin Bland".
- David Agnew: An in-house pseudonym used on various BBC productions rather than just on Doctor Who. Credited for scripts of The Invasion of Time, actually written by Graham Williams and Anthony Read; and for City of Death, script editor Douglas Adams's reworking of David Fisher's original script A Gamble With Time. The Elusive David Agnew, a featurette on the 2008 DVD release of The Invasion of Time, was a tongue-in-cheek profile of the pseudonymous David Agnew. In keeping with the joke, the director of the featurette is uncredited; instead, the credit Alan Smithee is used, a reference to the infamous pseudonym used by Hollywood film and television directors.
- Paula Moore: A pseudonym used for the script to Attack of the Cybermen by Paula Woolsey, though both Eric Saward and Ian Levine have claimed credit for at least some of the writing (exactly which parts of the story are theirs remains uncertain).
Comics[]
- Maxwell Stockbridge: This pseudonym (which later lent its name to the fictional town of Stockbridge from early Doctor Who Monthly stories and to prominent Stockbridge resident Maxwell Edison) concealed the identity of Doctor Who Magazine editor Alan McKenzie, among others. It was also used as the name of the author of several stories featuring Marvel's vigilante character Night Raven from 1981 onwards.
- Richard Alan: A pseudonym used by Richard Starkings for co-writer credit on his Doctor Who Magazine comics stories.
Prose[]
- John Lydecker: A pseudonym used by Steve Gallagher for his Doctor Who-related prose work.
- James Stevens: A fictional co-author (who narrates the book) used by actual author David Bishop in his Who Killed Kennedy.
- Evan Pritchard: A pseudonym used by Rebecca Levene for The Last Days published in Short Trips.
- David Agnew: A joking reference to previous "David Agnew" scripts used for some stories printed in Short Trips and Side Steps.
- Tara Samms: A pen name used occasionally by Stephen Cole for short fiction.
- Michael Collier: Another pseudonym used by Stephen Cole.
- Norman Ashby: Another supposed contributor to Short Trips and Side Steps referring to a past Doctor Who pseudonym.
- Paul Saint: A pseudonym used by Paul Beardsley on the novel The Suns of Caresh.
Webcast[]
- Colin Meek: A pseudonym employed by co-writers Nev Fountain and Dan Freedman for Death Comes to Time.
Actors[]
Television[]
- Sydney Wilson: To avoid revealing the actual identity of Koquillion (in reality Bennett), the ending credits for the first episode of The Rescue credited the actor as "Sydney Wilson", a name which combined the names of Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson.
- Radio Times listings would often credit Anthony Ainley under a pseudonym to conceal his appearances as the Tremas Master before those episodes had aired. Usually, the names took the form of anagrams of "Tony Ainley", such as "Neil Toynay" in Castrovalva or "Leon Ty Naiy" in Time-Flight, though the listing for The King's Demons listed him as "James Stoker", an anagram for "Master's joke".
- Roy Tromelly: An anagram of the name of Terry Molloy. It was used to conceal the true identity of the Emperor Dalek (in fact Davros) for most of Remembrance of the Daleks.
- Rondo Haxton: Given to Mark Gatiss for his acting role as Gantok in The Wedding of River Song.
Audio[]
- Sam Kisgart: In the tradition of Ainley's pseudonyms, Mark Gatiss was credited as "Sam Kisgart", an anagram of his name, for his role as an alternate version of the Master, in both Sympathy for the Devil and The Emporium at the End.
