Chris Boucher is a British televisionscreenwriter and script editor. He is known for his frequent contributions to two genres, science fiction and crime dramas, and worked on series such as Doctor Who, Blake's 7, Bergerac, The Bill and Star Cops.
Biography
Prior to becoming a television writer, Boucher had worked at Calor Gas as a management trainee and he also gained a Bachelor of Arts in Economics at the University of Essex. In science fiction, he wrote three Doctor Who serials in the late 1970s: The Face of Evil, The Robots of Death and Image of the Fendahl. One of his contributions to Doctor Who was the creation of the character Leela, the savage companion who featured in the series during 1977 and 1978. The character was inspired by the Palestinian terroristLeila Khaled. Boucher was commissioned for the programme by Robert Holmes, who suggested that Boucher should be appointed as script editor for the science fiction series Blake's 7. He served in this role for the entirety of its four-series run, and also wrote several episodes himself, including the final episode. In 1987 he created his own series Star Cops, which combined the science fiction and crime genres. The series encountered several production problems and was not a ratings success, lasting only nine episodes. In the genre of police dramas, between working on Doctor Who and Blake's 7, Boucher was the script editor on the second season of the drama Shoestring, which followed the investigations of private detective and radio show host Eddie Shoestring. In 1982, following the end of Blake's 7, Boucher script edited and wrote for the third season police dramaJuliet Bravo. He later moved on to script edit the detective show Bergerac, working on the programme throughout the 1980s. All of the abovetelevision programmes were produced in-house by the BBC and broadcast on the BBC 1 network, with the exception of Star Cops which was shown on BBC 2. For the ITV network, he briefly contributed to Thames Television's police drama The Bill during the mid-1980s. Later works included several Doctor Who novels for BBC Books, all featuring the character of Leela, and a series of straight-to-CD full-cast audio dramas entitled Kaldor City, which combine elements from his Doctor Who serial The Robots of Death with his Blake's 7 work.
Views and advocacy
Boucher is an avowed atheist. He disapproves of the introduction of religion into government policy and the education of children.
