Paul Erickson was a Welsh

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

, most active in the 1950s and 1960s. He contributed generally single episodes to a wide variety of British television

British television

Public television broadcasting started in the United Kingdom in 1936, and now has a collection of free and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are over 480 channelsTaking the base Sky EPG TV Channels. A breakdown is impossible due to a) the number of...

 shows, most typically of the crime drama genre, although he did occasionally generate science-fiction scripts. In the 1950s, he would have generally been considered a B-film or telemovie writer, offering theatrical audiences such work as Track the Man Down

Track the Man Down

Track the Man Down is a 1955 British drama film written by Paul Erickson and directed by R.G. Springsteen.The melodramatic crime caper centers on a robbery at a greyhound racetrack that results in the unintentional murder of a guard...

, Secret Venture

Secret Venture

Secret Venture is a 1955 British B-movie thriller film directed by R. G. Springsteen and starring Kent Taylor, Jane Hylton and Kathleen Byron.-Plot:...

, and Three Steps to the Gallows

Three Steps to the Gallows

Three Steps to the Gallows is a 1953 British crime film directed by John Gilling and starring Scott Brady, Mary Castle and Gabrielle Brune. An American comes to London to attempt to save his brother from being hanged for a murder he didn't commit....

. By the 1960s, however, his work was almost exclusively for episodic

Episode

An episode is a part of a dramatic work such as a serial television or radio program. An episode is a part of a sequence of a body of work, akin to a chapter of a book. The term sometimes applies to works based on other forms of mass media as well, as in Star Wars...

 and anthologic television. He sold three scripts for the third season of The Saint

The Saint (TV series)

The Saint was an ITC mystery spy thriller television series that aired in the UK on ITV between 1962 and 1969. It centred on the Leslie Charteris literary character, Simon Templar, a Robin Hood-like adventurer with a penchant for disguise. The character may be nicknamed The Saint because the...

, adapted William Tenn

William Tenn

William Tenn was the pseudonym of Philip Klass , a British-born American science fiction author, notable for many stories with satirical elements.-Early life:...

's short story, "Time in Advance

Time in Advance

Time in Advance is a collection of four short stories by science fiction writer William Tenn...

", for Out of the Unknown

Out of the Unknown

Out of the Unknown is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between 1965 and 1971. Each episode was an independent dramatisation of a separate science fiction short story...

, wrote The Ark

The Ark (Doctor Who)

The Ark is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 5 March to 26 March 1966...

for Doctor Who

Doctor Who

Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

, and contributed to The Inside Man

The Inside Man (TV series)

The Inside Man is a British television series that was shown in twelve one-hour episodes in 1969. The mystery drama series, produced by London Weekend Television starred Frederick Jaeger as criminologist Dr. James Austen....

and Paul Temple

Paul Temple

Paul Temple is a fictional character created by British writer Francis Durbridge for the BBC radio serial Send for Paul Temple in 1938. Temple is an amateur private detective and author of crime fiction...

.

He was briefly married to Lesley Scott

Lesley Scott

Lesley Scott is the first woman to receive a writing credit in the history of the British science-fiction program, Doctor Who. She received a full co-writing credit for the 1966 serial, The Ark, despite having contributed nothing to the script. The credit came at the request of writer Paul...

, who received screen credit for co-writing The Ark, but contributed nothing to the scripts.

Since many Doctor Who novelization

Novelization

A novelization is a novel that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work.Novelizations of films usually add background material not found in the original work to flesh out the story, because novels are generally longer than screenplays...

s were not written by the original screenwriter, it is significant to Doctor Who fans that he wrote The Ark for Target Books

Target Books

Target Books was a British publishing imprint, established in 1973 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co Ltd, a paperback publishing company. The imprint was established as a children's imprint to complement the adult Tandem imprint, and became well known for their highly successful range of...

.

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