Dave Martin passed away

David Ralph Martin, writer: born Birmingham 1 January 1935; twice married (one son, two daughters); died Bridport, Dorset 30 March 2007.

Dave Martin's great contribution to science-fiction television was to create the robot dog K-9 for Doctor Who with his long-time writing partner Bob Baker. While scripting the 1977 story "The Invisible Enemy" for the cult series, the duo decided that their character Professor Marius might be lonely in space, so the scientist used his technological skills to make the metal mutt, complete with data-analyser computer, which he then gave to Doctor Who - in the incarnation of Tom Baker - as a parting gift.

The pair's brainchild, designed by Tony Harding, built by the BBC's visual effects department and voiced by John Leeson, proved so popular that the decision was made to keep it - and some subsequent scripts were rewritten to incorporate it. K-9 became not only a valuable ally to the Time Lord, but also his longest-lasting companion. Last year, K-9 Mk III was seen alongside David Tennant - the 10th Doctor - in the "School Reunion" story and the character will soon get its own series, combining computer-generated images of the dog and live action, with Baker acting as a producer.

Born in the Handsworth district of Birmingham in 1935, Dave Martin studied English at Bristol University, before joining the city's Old Vic Theatre as a flyman, operating the curtains and scenery, then working as a copywriter for a local advertising agency.

At the time, Martin regularly bought Gauloises cigarettes from a grocery store run by Bob Baker, who also made animated films. When Baker explained that an attempt to make one based on the Peter Grimes character in George Crabbe's 1810 poem The Borough had fallen through following the sudden death of the director, Michael Reeves, the pair decided to try to get it produced themselves. Although that first effort failed to make it to the screen, they kept going as a writing partnership and were commissioned by HTV, the ITV company based in Bristol, to pen a play for regional screening. The result, Whistle for It (1968), starred Brian Cox in the story of two rivals trying to woo a woman.

Persistence in submitting further plays brought its reward when Martin and Baker were invited to London by the BBC producer Derrick Sherwin and commissioned to write episodes of Doctor Who. They came up with eight over nine years (1971-79), covering the period when Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker played the time-traveller.

Martin and Baker were commissioned to write more one-off plays for the ITV network. They began with the crime drama Thick as Thieves (1972, winner of the Royal Television Society's Best Regional Production Award), starring Leonard Rossiter, who also featured as a debt-collector-turned-private detective in their thriller Machinegunner (1976), in which the writers took bit-parts themselves, as "Scruff 1" and "Scruff 2". They also wrote the four-part drama Murder at the Wedding (1979) and the children's series Sky (1976), King of the Castle (1977) and Follow Me (1977).

Unlike Baker, Martin did not find television his preferred medium and wanted to write novels and poetry. So the pair split amicably and Baker became drama editor at HTV. While Baker then went on to find success as a writer of the Wallace & Gromit films, Martin penned the crime novels I'm Coming To Get You (1995), An Arm and a Leg (1998), Dead Man's Slaughter (2001) and Dead Man's Bay (2005).